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THE RENAISSANCE 1485 1625
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in
England dating from the late 15 th and early 16th century to the early 17th
century. The beginning of the English Renaissance is often associated with
the year 1485 when the War of Roses ended and it was inaugurated the
Tudor Dynasty.
Characteristics of Renaissance:
The word Renaissance means rebirth; the world was emerging from
the Middle or Dark Ages
The idea of the Divine Right of kings to rule

The development of humanistic ideas, such as the dignity of man

The focus of attention was no longer God but Man; for the first
time, man was explored as an individual, and the idea that a man
could shape his own destiny was widely accepted.
It was a time of scientific inquiry and exploration

It was the time of the Protestant Reformation, and the invention

of the printing press
RENAISSANCE LITERATURE
The writers of the Renaissance not only wanted to imitate art, they hoped
to change reality through art. They believed in the art of imitation,
gravitating toward the Greek and Roman writers and writing styles.
RENAISSANCE WRITERS
1) John Milton Paradise Lost

2) William Shakespeare the master of the dramatic genre

3) Edmund Spenser
4) Ben Johnson
SUMMARY
The Renaissance was a time of optimism and exploration as the world
emerged from the Middle Ages to a time of increased knowledge and
global confidence. Renaissance literature change the world forever
through writers such as Shakespeare.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
1.THE SONNETS
A. CONTEXT
The most important playwright of the English Renaissance was born in
1564 in England. His career bridge the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I
and he was a favorite of both monarchs.

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Shakespeares sonnets are very different from Shakespeares plays, but
they do contain dramatic elements and an overall sense of story. Each of
the poems deals with a highly personal theme, and each can be taken on
its own or in relation to the poems around it. The sonnets have the feel of
autobiographical poems, but we dont know whether they deal with real
events or not, because no one knows enough about Shakespeares life to
say whether or not they deal with real events and feelings, so we tend to
refer to the voice of the sonnets as the speakeras though he were a
dramatic creation like Hamlet or King Lear.
There are certainly a number of intriguing continuities throughout the
poems. The first 126 of the sonnets seem to be addressed to an unnamed
young nobleman, whom the speaker loves very much; the rest of the
poems (except for the last two, which seem generally unconnected to the
rest of the sequence) seem to be addressed to a mysterious woman,
whom the speaker loves, hates, and lusts for simultaneously. The two
addressees of the sonnets are usually referred to as the young man and
the dark lady; in summaries of individual poems, I have also called the
young man the beloved and the dark lady the lover, especially in
cases where their identity can only be surmised. Within the two mini-
sequences, there are a number of other discernible elements of plot: the
speaker urges the young man to have children; he is forced to endure a
separation from him; he competes with a rival poet for the young mans
patronage and affection. At two points in the sequence, it seems that the
young man and the dark lady are actually lovers themselvesa state of
affairs with which the speaker is none too happy. But while these
continuities give the poems a narrative flow and a helpful frame of
reference, they have been frustratingly hard for scholars and biographers
to pin down. In Shakespeares life, who were the young man and the dark
lady?

B.THEMES, MOTIFS AND SYMBOLS

a)Themes
1.Different types of romantic love
The first sonnets written in 13th and 14th century Italy celebrated the
poets feelings for their beloveds and their patrons. These sonnets were
addressed to stylized, lionized women and dedicated to wealthy
noblemen, who supported poets with money and other gifts, usually in
return for lofty praise in print.
Furthermore, Shakespeare used his sonnets to explore different types of
love between the young man and the speaker, the young man and the
dark lady, and the dark lady and the speaker. In his sequence, the speaker
expresses passionate concern for the young man, praises his beauty, and
articulates what we would now call homosexual desire. The woman of
Shakespeares sonnets, the so-called dark lady, is earthy, sexual, and
faithless.

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Several sonnets also probe the nature of love, comparing the idealized
love found in poems with the messy, complicated love found in real life.
2.The dangers of lust and love
In Shakespeares sonnets, falling in love can have painful emotional and
physical consequences. But many sonnets warn readers about the
dangers of lust and love. According to some poems, lust causes us to
mistake sexual desire for true love, and love itself causes us to lose our
powers of perception.
Several sonnets warn about the dangers of lust, claiming that it turns
humans savage, extreme, rude, cruel (4), as in Sonnet 129. In his
sonnets, however, Shakespeare portrays making love not as a romantic
expression of sentiment but as a base physical need with the potential for
horrible consequences.
Several sonnets equate being in love with being in a pitiful state: as
demonstrated by the poems, love causes fear, alienation, despair, and
physical discomfort, not the pleasant emotions or euphoria we usually
associate with romantic feelings.
In Sonnet 137, the speaker personifies love, calls him a simpleton, and
criticizes him for removing his powers of perception. It was love that
caused the speaker to make mistakes and poor judgments. Elsewhere the
speaker calls love a disease as a way of demonstrating the physical pain
of emotional wounds.
Throughout his sonnets, Shakespeare clearly implies that love hurts. Yet
despite the emotional and physical pain, like the speaker, we continue
falling in love. Shakespeare shows that falling in love is an inescapable
aspect of the human conditionindeed, expressing love is part of what
makes us human.
3.Real beauty vs clichd beauty
Traditionally, sonnets transform women into the most glorious creatures to
walk the earth, whereas patrons become the noblest and bravest men the
world has ever known.
Shakespeare makes fun of the convention by contrasting an idealized
woman with a real woman. In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare directly engages
and skewersclichd concepts of beauty. Real love, the sonnet implies,
begins when we accept our lovers for what they are as well as what they
are not.
Other sonnets explain that because anyone can use artful means to make
himself or herself more attractive, no one is really beautiful anymore.
Thus, since anyone can become beautiful, calling someone beautiful is no
longer much of a compliment.
4.The responsibilities of being beautiful
Shakespeare portrays beauty as conveying a great responsibility in the
sonnets addressed to the young man, Sonnets 1126. Here the speaker
urges the young man to make his beauty immortal by having children, a

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theme that appears repeatedly throughout the poems: as an attractive
person, the young man has a responsibility to procreate.
Later sonnets demonstrate the speaker, angry at being cuckolded,
lashing out at the young man and accusing him of using his beauty to hide
immoral acts. Sonnet 95 compares the young mans behavior to a canker
in the fragrant rose (2) or a rotten spot on an otherwise beautiful flower.
In other words, the young mans beauty allows him to get away with bad
behavior, but this bad behavior will eventually distort his beauty, much
like a rotten spot eventually spreads. Nature gave the young man a
beautiful face, but it is the young mans responsibility to make sure that
his soul is worthy of such a visage.

b)Motifs
1.Art vs time
Shakespeare, like many sonneteers, portrays time as an enemy of love.
Time destroys love because time causes beauty to fade, people to age,
and life to end. One common convention of sonnets in general is to flatter
either a beloved or a patron by promising immortality through verse. As
long as readers read the poem, the object of the poems love will remain
alive. Through art, nature and beauty overcome time. Several sonnets use
the seasons to symbolize the passage of time and to show that everything
in naturefrom plants to peopleis mortal. But nature creates beauty,
which poets capture and render immortal in their verse. Nature, art, and
beauty triumph over time.
2.Stopping the march toward death
Growing older and dying are inescapable aspects of the human condition,
but Shakespeares sonnets give suggestions for halting the progress
toward death. Shakespeares speaker spends a lot of time trying to
convince the young man to cheat death by having children. The speakers
words arent just the flirtatious ramblings of a smitten man: Elizabethan
England was rife with disease, and early death was common. Producing
children guaranteed the continuation of the species. Therefore, falling in
love has a social benefit, a benefit indirectly stressed by Shakespeares
sonnets. We might die, but our childrenand the human raceshall live
on.
3.The significance of sight
Shakespeare used images of eyes throughout the sonnets to emphasize
other themes and motifs, including children as an antidote to death, arts
struggle to overcome time, and the painfulness of love. For instance, in
several poems, the speaker urges the young man to admire himself in the
mirror. Noticing and admiring his own beauty, the speaker argues, will
encourage the young man to father a child. But our loving eyes can also
distort our sight, causing us to misperceive reality. In the sonnets
addressed to the dark lady, the speaker criticizes his eyes for causing him

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to fall in love with a beautiful but duplicitous woman. Ultimately,
Shakespeare uses eyes to act as a warning: while our eyes allow us to
perceive beauty, they sometimes get so captivated by beauty that they
cause us to misjudge character and other attributes not visible to the
naked eye.

c)Symbols
1.Flowers and trees
Flowers and trees appear throughout the sonnets to illustrate the passage
of time, the transience of life, the aging process, and beauty. Rich, lush
foliage symbolizes youth, whereas barren trees symbolize old age and
death. Traditionally, roses signify romantic love, a symbol Shakespeare
employs in the sonnets. Sometimes Shakespeare compares flowers and
weeds to contrast beauty and ugliness. In these comparisons, marred,
rotten flowers are worse than weedsthat is, beauty that turns rotten
from bad character is worse than initial ugliness.
2.Stars
Shakespeare uses stars to stand in for fate, but also to explore the nature
of free will. Many sonneteers resort to employing fate, symbolized by the
stars, to prove that their love is permanent and predestined. In contrast,
Shakespeares speaker claims that he relies on his eyes, rather than on
the hands of fate, to make decisions. According to Elizabethan astrology, a
cosmic order determined the place of everything in the universe, from
planets and stars to people. Although humans had some free will, the
heavenly spheres, with the help of God, predetermined fate.
3.Weather and seasons
Shakespeare employed the pathetic fallacy, or the attribution of human
characteristics or emotions to elements in nature or inanimate objects,
throughout his plays. Weather and the seasons also stand in for human
emotions: the speaker conveys his sense of foreboding about death by
likening himself to autumn, a time in which natures objects begin to
decay and ready themselves for winter, or death.
SONNET 18
This sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeares
sonnets. On the surface, the poem is simply a statement of praise about
the beauty of the beloved; summer tends to unpleasant extremes of
windiness and heat, but the beloved is always mild and temperate.
The language, too, is comparatively unadorned for the sonnets.
Sonnet 18 is the first poem in the sonnets not to explicitly encourage the
young man to have children. The procreation sequence of the
first 17 sonnets ended with the speakers realization that the young man
might not need children to preserve his beauty; he could also live, the
speaker writes at the end of Sonnet 17, in my rhyme.

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 Sonnet 18, then, is the first rhymethe speakers first attempt to
preserve the young mans beauty for all time. An important theme of the
sonnet (as it is an important theme throughout much of the sequence) is
the power of the speakers poem to defy time and last forever, carrying
the beauty of the beloved down to future generations. The beloveds
eternal summer shall not fade precisely because it is embodied in the
sonnet: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, the speaker writes
in the couplet, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
SONNET 130
This sonnet compares the speakers lover to a number of other beauties
and never in the lovers favor. This sonnet, one of Shakespeares most
famous, plays an elaborate joke on the conventions of love poetry
common to Shakespeares day.
In many ways, Shakespeares sonnets subvert and reverse the
conventions of the Petrarchan love sequence: the idealizing love poems,
for instance, are written not to a perfect woman but to an admittedly
imperfect man, and the love poems to the dark lady are anything but
idealizing.
Sonnet 130 mocks the typical Petrarchan metaphors by presenting a
speaker who seems to take them at face value, and somewhat bemusedly,
decides to tell the truth. In the couplet, then, the speaker shows his full
intent, which is to insist that love does not need these conceits in order to
be real; and women do not need to look like flowers or the sun in order to
be beautiful.
HAMLET
Analysis of major characters
Hamlet has fascinated audiences and readers for centuries, and the first
thing to point out about him is that he is enigmatic. There is always more
to him than the other characters in the play can figure out. A university
student whose studies are interrupted by his fathers death, Hamlet is
extremely philosophical and contemplative. He is particularly drawn to
difficult questions or questions that cannot be answered with any
certainty. It is also important to note that Hamlet is extremely melancholy
and discontented with the state of affairs in Denmark and in his own
familyindeed, in the world at large. He is extremely disappointed with
his mother for marrying his uncle so quickly, and he repudiates Ophelia, a
woman he once claimed to love, in the harshest terms. His words often
indicate his disgust with and distrust of women in general. At a number of
points in the play, he contemplates his own death and even the option of
suicide.
THEMES, MOTIFS AND SYMBOLS
A.Themes
1. The Impossibility of Certainty
What separates Hamlet from other revenge plays is that the action we
expect to see, particularly from Hamlet himself, is continually postponed
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while Hamlet tries to obtain more certain knowledge about what he is
doing. Many people have seen Hamlet as a play about indecisiveness, and
thus about Hamlets failure to act appropriately. It might be more
interesting to consider that the play shows us how many uncertainties our
lives are built upon, how many unknown quantities are taken for granted
when people act or when they evaluate one anothers actions.
2.The complexity of action
Directly related to the theme of certainty is the theme of action. How is it
possible to take reasonable, effective, purposeful action? In Hamlet, the
question of how to act is affected not only by rational considerations, such
as the need for certainty, but also by emotional, ethical, and psychological
factors. Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that its even possible
to act in a controlled, purposeful way. When he does act, he prefers to do
it blindly, recklessly, and violently.
3.The mistery of death
In the aftermath of his fathers murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea
of death, and over the course of the play he considers death from a great
many perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of death,
embodied in the ghost, and the physical remainders of the dead, such as
by Yoricks skull and the decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout,
the idea of death is closely tied to the themes of spirituality, truth, and
uncertainty in that death may bring the answers to Hamlets deepest
questions, ending once and for all the problem of trying to determine truth
in an ambiguous world. And, since death is both the cause and the
consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and
justiceClaudiuss murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlets quest for
revenge, and Claudiuss death is the end of that quest.
The question of his own death plagues Hamlet as well, as he repeatedly
contemplates whether or not suicide is a morally legitimate action in an
unbearably painful world. Hamlets grief and misery is such that he
frequently longs for death to end his suffering, but he fears that if he
commits suicide, he will be consigned to eternal suffering in hell because
of the Christian religions prohibition of suicide. In his famous To be or not
to be soliloquy (III.i), Hamlet philosophically concludes that no one would
choose to endure the pain of life if he or she were not afraid of what will
come after death, and that it is this fear which causes complex moral
considerations to interfere with the capacity for action.
4.The nation as a diseased body
Everything is connected in Hamlet, including the welfare of the royal
family and the health of the state as a whole. The plays early scenes
explore the sense of anxiety and dread that surrounds the transfer of
power from one ruler to the next. Throughout the play, characters draw
explicit connections between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the
health of the nation. Denmark is frequently described as a physical body
made ill by the moral corruption of Claudius and Gertrude, and many
observers interpret the presence of the ghost as a supernatural omen
indicating that [s]omething is rotten in the state of Denmark (I.iv.67).
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The dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong, forthright ruler under
whose guard the state was in good health, while Claudius, a wicked
politician, has corrupted and compromised Denmark to satisfy his own
appetites. At the end of the play, the rise to power of the upright
Fortinbras suggests that Denmark will be strengthened once again.
B.Motifs
1.Incest and incestuous desire
The motif of incest runs throughout the play and is frequently alluded to
by Hamlet and the ghost, most obviously in conversations about Gertrude
and Claudius, the former brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are now
married. A subtle motif of incestuous desire can be found in the
relationship of Laertes and Ophelia, as Laertes sometimes speaks to his
sister in suggestively sexual terms and, at her funeral, leaps into her
grave to hold her in his arms. However, the strongest overtones of
incestuous desire arise in the relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude, in
Hamlets fixation on Gertrudes sex life with Claudius and his
preoccupation with her in general.
2.Misogyny
Shattered by his mothers decision to marry Claudius so soon after her
husbands death, Hamlet becomes cynical about women in general,
showing a particular obsession with what he perceives to be a connection
between female sexuality and moral corruption. This motif of misogyny, or
hatred of women, occurs sporadically throughout the play, but it is an
important inhibiting factor in Hamlets relationships with Ophelia and
Gertrude. He urges Ophelia to go to a nunnery rather than experience the
corruptions of sexuality and exclaims of Gertrude, Frailty, thy name is
woman (I.ii.146).
3.Ears and hearing
One facet of Hamlets exploration of the difficulty of attaining true
knowledge is slipperiness of language. Words are used to communicate
ideas, but they can also be used to distort the truth, manipulate other
people, and serve as tools in corrupt quests for power. Claudius, the
shrewd politician, is the most obvious example of a man who manipulates
words to enhance his own power. The sinister uses of words are
represented by images of ears and hearing, from Claudiuss murder of the
king by pouring poison into his ear to Hamlets claim to Horatio that I
have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb (IV.vi.21). The
poison poured in the kings ear by Claudius is used by the ghost to
symbolize the corrosive effect of Claudiuss dishonesty on the health of
Denmark. Declaring that the story that he was killed by a snake is a lie, he
says that the whole ear of Denmark is Rankly abused. . . . (I.v.3638).
C.Symbols
1.Yoricks skull
In Hamlet, physical objects are rarely used to represent thematic ideas.
One important exception is Yoricks skull, which Hamlet discovers in the

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graveyard in the first scene of Act V. As Hamlet speaks to the skull and
about the skull of the kings former jester, he fixates on deaths
inevitability and the disintegration of the body. He urges the skull to get
you to my ladys chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this
favor she must comeno one can avoid death (V.i.178179). He traces
the skulls mouth and says, Here hung those lips that I have kissed I
know not how oft, indicating his fascination with the physical
consequences of death (V.i.174175). This latter idea is an important motif
throughout the play, as Hamlet frequently makes comments referring to
every human bodys eventual decay, noting that Polonius will be eaten by
worms, that even kings are eaten by worms, and that dust from the
decayed body of Alexander the Great might be used to stop a hole in a
beer barrel.
tr6
A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM
Analysis of major characters
1.Puck
Though there is little character development in A Midsummer Nights
Dream and no true protagonist, critics generally point to Puck as the most
important character in the play. The mischievous, quick-witted sprite sets
many of the plays events in motion with his magic, by means of both
deliberate pranks on the human characters (transforming Bottoms head
into that of an ass) and unfortunate mistakes (smearing the love potion on
Lysanders eyelids instead of Demetriuss).
2.Nick Bottom
Whereas Pucks humor is often mischievous and subtle, the comedy
surrounding the overconfident weaver Nick Bottom is hilariously overt.
The central figure in the subplot involving the craftsmens production of
the Pyramus and Thisbe story, Bottom dominates his fellow actors with an
extraordinary belief in his own abilities (he thinks he is perfect for every
part in the play) and his comical incompetence (he is a terrible actor and
frequently makes rhetorical and grammatical mistakes in his speech). The
humor surrounding Bottom often stems from the fact that he is totally
unaware of his own ridiculousness; his speeches are overdramatic and
self-aggrandizing, and he seems to believe that everyone takes him as
seriously as he does himself.
3.Helena
Of the other characters, Helena, the lovesick young woman desperately in
love with Demetrius, is perhaps the most fully drawn. Among the quartet
of Athenian lovers, Helena is the one who thinks most about the nature of
lovewhich makes sense, given that at the beginning of the play she is
left out of the love triangle involving Lysander, Hermia, and Demetrius.
THEMES
1.Loves difficulty

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The theme of loves difficulty is often explored through the motif of love
out of balancethat is, romantic situations in which a disparity or
inequality interferes with the harmony of a relationship. The prime
instance of this imbalance is the asymmetrical love among the four young
Athenians: Hermia loves Lysander, Lysander loves Hermia, Helena loves
Demetrius, and Demetrius loves Hermia instead of Helenaa simple
numeric imbalance in which two men love the same woman, leaving one
woman with too many suitors and one with too few. The play has strong
potential for a traditional outcome, and the plot is in many ways based on
a quest for internal balance; that is, when the lovers tangle resolves itself
into symmetrical pairings, the traditional happy ending will have been
achieved. Somewhat similarly, in the relationship between Titania and
Oberon, an imbalance arises out of the fact that Oberons coveting of
Titanias Indian boy outweighs his love for her. Later, Titanias passion for
the ass-headed Bottom represents an imbalance of appearance and
nature: Titania is beautiful and graceful, while Bottom is clumsy and
grotesque.
2.Magic
The fairies magic, which brings about many of the most bizarre and
hilarious situations in the play, is another element central to the fantastic
atmosphere of A Midsummer Nights Dream. Shakespeare uses magic
both to embody the almost supernatural power of love (symbolized by the
love potion) and to create a surreal world. Although the misuse of magic
causes chaos, as when Puck mistakenly applies the love potion to
Lysanders eyelids, magic ultimately resolves the plays tensions by
restoring love to balance among the quartet of Athenian youths.
Additionally, the ease with which Puck uses magic to his own ends, as
when he reshapes Bottoms head into that of an ass and recreates the
voices of Lysander and Demetrius, stands in contrast to the laboriousness
and gracelessness of the craftsmens attempt to stage their play.

3.Dreams
As the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer
Nights Dream; they are linked to the bizarre, magical mishaps in the
forest. The theme of dreaming recurs predominantly when characters
attempt to explain bizarre events in which these characters are involved.
Shakespeare is also interested in the actual workings of dreams, in how
events occur without explanation, time loses its normal sense of flow, and
the impossible occurs as a matter of course; he seeks to recreate this
environment in the play through the intervention of the fairies in the
magical forest. At the end of the play, Puck extends the idea of dreams to
the audience members themselves, saying that, if they have been
offended by the play, they should remember it as nothing more than a
dream. This sense of illusion and gauzy fragility is crucial to the
atmosphere of A Midsummer Nights Dream, as it helps render the play a
fantastical experience rather than a heavy drama.
MOTIFS
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1.Contrast
The idea of contrast is the basic building block of A Midsummer Nights
Dream. The entire play is constructed around groups of opposites and
doubles. Nearly every characteristic presented in the play has an
opposite: Helena is tall, Hermia is short; Puck plays pranks, Bottom is the
victim of pranks; Titania is beautiful, Bottom is grotesque. Further, the
three main groups of characters (who are developed from sources as
varied as Greek mythology, English folklore, and classical literature) are
designed to contrast powerfully with one another: the fairies are graceful
and magical, while the craftsmen are clumsy and earthy; the craftsmen
are merry, while the lovers are overly serious. Contrast serves as the
defining visual characteristic of A Midsummer Nights Dream, with the
plays most indelible image being that of the beautiful, delicate Titania
weaving flowers into the hair of the ass-headed Bottom. It seems
impossible to imagine two figures less compatible with each other. The
juxtaposition of extraordinary differences is the most important
characteristic of the plays surreal atmosphere and is thus perhaps the
plays central motif; there is no scene in which extraordinary contrast is
not present.
SYMBOLS
1. Theseus and Hippolyta
Theseus and Hippolyta bookend A Midsummer Nights Dream, appearing
in the daylight at both the beginning and the end of the plays main
action. Shakespeare uses Theseus and Hippolyta, the ruler of Athens and
his warrior bride, to represent order and stability, to contrast with the
uncertainty, instability, and darkness of most of the play. Whereas an
important element of the dream realm is that one is not in control of ones
environment, Theseus and Hippolyta are always entirely in control of
theirs. Their reappearance in the daylight of Act IV to hear Theseuss
hounds signifies the end of the dream state of the previous night and a
return to rationality.
2.The Love Potion
The love potion is made from the juice of a flower that was struck with one
of Cupids misfired arrows; it is used by the fairies to wreak romantic
havoc throughout Acts II, III, and IV. Because the meddling fairies are
careless with the love potion, the situation of the young Athenian lovers
becomes increasingly chaotic and confusing (Demetrius and Lysander are
magically compelled to transfer their love from Hermia to Helena), and
Titania is hilariously humiliated (she is magically compelled to fall deeply
in love with the ass-headed Bottom). The love potion thus becomes a
symbol of the unreasoning, fickle, erratic, and undeniably powerful nature
of love, which can lead to inexplicable and bizarre behavior and cannot be
resisted.
3. The Craftsmens Play
The play-within-a-play is used to represent, in condensed form, many of
the important ideas and themes of the main plot. Because the craftsmen

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are such bumbling actors, their performance satirizes the melodramatic
Athenian lovers and gives the play a purely joyful, comedic ending.
Pyramus and Thisbe face parental disapproval in the play-within-a-play,
just as Hermia and Lysander do; the theme of romantic confusion
enhanced by the darkness of night is rehashed, as Pyramus mistakenly
believes that Thisbe has been killed by the lion, just as the Athenian
lovers experience intense misery because of the mix-ups caused by the
fairies meddling. The craftsmens play is, therefore, a kind of symbol for A
Midsummer Nights Dream itself: a story involving powerful emotions that
is made hilarious by its comical presentation.
ROMEO AND JULIET
In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, a long feud between the
Montague and Capulet families disrupts the city of Verona and causes
tragic results for Romeo and Juliet. Revenge, love, and a secret marriage
force the young star-crossed lovers to grow up quickly and fate causes
them to commit suicide in despair. Contrast and conflict are running
themes throughout Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet one of the
Bard's most popular romantic tragedies.
Analysis of major characters
1.Romeo
During the course of the play, Romeo matures from adolescence to
adulthood as a result of his love for Juliet and his unfortunate involvement
in the feud, marking his development from a comic character to a tragic
figure. Romeo is initially presented as a Petrarchan lover, a man whose
feelings of love aren't reciprocated by the lady he admires and who uses
the poetic language of sonnets to express his emotions about his
situation. As the play progresses, Romeo's increasing maturity as a lover
is marked by the change in his language. He begins to speak in blank
verse as well as rhyme, which allows his language to sound less artificial
and more like everyday language.The fated destinies of Romeo and Juliet
are foreshadowed throughout the play.
2.Juliet
Juliet, like Romeo, makes the transition from an innocent adolescent to
responsible adult during the course of the play. In Juliet's case, however,
there is a heightened sense that she has been forced to mature too
quickly. The emphasis throughout the play on Juliet's youth, despite her
growing maturity, establishes her as a tragic heroine. Juliet is presented as
quiet and obedient; however, she possesses an inner strength that
enables her to have maturity beyond her years.
THEMES
1.Fate
From the beginning, we know that the story of Romeo and Juliet will end in
tragedy. We also know that their tragic ends will not result from their own
personal defects but from fate, which has marked them for sorrow.

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Emphasizing fate's control over their destinies, the Prologue tells us these
"star-cross'd lovers'" relationship is deathmark'd."
In Act I, Scene ii, as Lord Capulet's servant is searching for someone who
can read the guest list to him, Benvolio and Romeo enter. Completely by
chance, Capulet's servant meets Romeo and Benvolio, wondering if they
know how to read. This accidental meeting emphasizes the importance of
fate in the play. Romeo claims it is his "fortune" to read indeed,
"fortune" or chance has led Capulet's servant to him and this scene
prepares us for the tragic inevitability of the play.
The lovers will be punished not because of flaws within their personalities
but because fate is against them. Ironically, the servant invites Romeo to
the Capulet's house, as long as he is not a Montague, to "crush a cup of
wine." Only fate could manufacture this unlikely meeting with Capulet's
illiterate servant, as only fate will allow Romeo to trespass into the
Capulet's domain and meet Juliet.
2.Love
Love is another important thematic element in the play, which presents
various types of love: the sensual, physical love advocated by the Nurse;
the Proper or contractual love represented by Paris; and the passionate,
romantic love of Romeo and Juliet. How do these various types of love
relate to one another? Is physical attraction a necessary component of
romantic love? Because words are slippery, Juliet worries that Romeo's
protestation of love are merely lies. How can we know if love is true?
3.Value and doubleness
Another important theme is the idea of value and doubleness. Just as
language is ambiguous, so are value judgments. As the Friar reminds us,
"virtue itself turns vice being misapplied, /And vice sometime's by action
dignified" (II.iii.17-18). Within a flower, for example lies both poison and
medicine. Similarly, the deaths of Romeo and Juliet are tragic but also
bring new life to Verona. The Friar's own role in the play contains this
ambiguity. Although he tries to help the lovers, his actions lead to their
suffering. Shakespeare's message is that nothing is purely good or evil;
everything contains elements of both. Ambiguity rules.

4.Meaning of gender
A final theme to be considered is the meaning of gender. In particular, the
play offers a variety of versions of masculinity. One example is Mercutio,
the showy male bird, who enjoys quarreling, fencing and joking. Mercutio
has definite ideas about what masculinity should look like. He criticizes
Tybalt for being too interested in his clothes and for speaking with a fake
accent. Similarly, he suggests that Romeo's love-melancholy is
effeminate, while his more sociable self is properly masculine. Therefore,
his happiest when Romeo rejoins his witty, crazy group of male friends:
"Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou art, by art as
well as by nature" (II.iv.89-90).

13
Romeo's masculinity is constantly questioned. Following Mercutio's death,
for example, Romeo fears that his love of Juliet has effeminized him: "Thy
beauty hath made me effeminate/And in my temper soften'd valour's
steel" (III.i.116-117) so that his reputation as a man is "stain'd" (III.i.1113).
In addition, the Friar accuses Romeo of being an "[u]nseemly woman in a
seeming man" and says that his tears are "womanish" (III.iii.109-111).
What is the proper role for a man? The play seems to suggest that
violence is not the way. Mediating between Mercutio's violent temper and
Romeo's passivity, the Prince is possibly the best model of masculine
behavior in the play: impartial and fair, he also opposes civil violence.
SYMBOLS AND MOTIFS
1.Light and darkness
One of the most often repeated image patterns in the play involves the
interplay of light and darkness. The integration of the language indicates
an important motif overall. Romeo compares Juliet to light throughout the
play. Upon first sight of her, Romeo exclaims that she teaches "the torches
to burn bright" (I.v.43). She is also "the sun" who can "kill the envious
moon" (II.ii.3), and later in this scene, Shakespeare says that her eyes are
like "[t]wo of the fairest stars in all the heaven" (II.ii.15). But hers is a light
that shows best against the darkness; she "hangs upon the cheek of
night / As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear" (I.v.44-45).
Romeo is also compared with a light that illuminates the darkness; if Juliet
dies, she wants Romeo cut "in little stars/And he will make the face of
heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night/? And pay no
worship to the garish sun" (III.ii.22-25). This quote reminds us that their
light shines most brightly in the dark that it is a muted glow associated
primarily with stars, torches, and the dawn, rather than with sunlight,
which is almost obscenely bright.
Like their love, darkness is associated with mystery, emotion, and
imagination. In fact, the day works against them. At the end of their
honeymoon night, Romeo says, "More light and light: more dark and dark
our woes" (III.v.36); they must part before the light arrived so that he is
not caught and killed.
2.Nighttime
The combination of light and dark makes an interesting motif in Romeo
and Juliet. But for our young lovers, the nighttime itself is an important
motif as well. The evening hours holds all of the significant moments for
Romeo and Juliet. They meet; they pledge their love; they elope; they
commit suicide.
Nighttime represents a time when a person can let go of their inhibitions.
The same hold true for our title characters. They have a boldness at night
that doesn't always show up in the day; this is especially true for Romeo.
The night provides privacy and place away from the public's prying eyes,
where Romeo and Juliet's love can blossom.
3.Poison

14
Poison, both sleep inducing and lethal, is the instrument of Romeo and
Juliet's deaths. (Technically Juliet stabbed herself, but that never would
have happened if not for the sleeping potion.) While poison has a literal
purpose in the play, it's also a symbol. The poison symbolizes the Capulet
and Montague feud. Not only is the feud deadly in itself, recall
Mercutio's death it's also the catalyst for Romeo and Juliet's double
suicide.

THE PURITAN, RESTORATION AND AUGUSTAN AGE

1625 1776
During this period there were 3 religious groups :
1. The Church of England the official state Church established by
Henry VIII during the Reformation
2. The Roman Catholic Church ( Catholics)
3. Puritans, Presbyterians and Dissenters also known as
nonconformists; they had very strict moral principles and believed
that the way to salvation lay in a life of hard work and avoidance of
all forms of frivolous entertainment.
Charles I believed he had a divine right to rule and his acts were
answerable only to God. (the divine right of kings). In 1629 he
dissolved the Parliament. When the Parliament demanded control of
the army in 1642, Charles refused him, and this led to the Civil War
which ended with a Puritan victory. After that the Commonwealth was
founded by the Puritan Oliver Cromwell. After 20 years Charles II made
possible the Restoration = when the system of government returned to
what it had been before the Cromwellian revolution.
During this period took place two events that disturbed the life of the city:
The plague in 1665
The great Fire of 1666
As the 18th century dawned, two of Englands historic conflicts seemed to
have been resolved:
The Church of England established as the dominant Church
in the land
Parliament had gained power at the expense of the
monarchy.
The 17th century was a time of constant religious and political fighting
and feuding, an age that stabilized the relationships between Church and
state, and between Parliament and monarchy.

15
During 1702 1776 the power of the monarch was limited in favour of
the Parliament by the Glorious revolution and there were two political
parties:
1. The Tory party which was supported by the old aristocracy and the
Church of England
2. The Whigs party which was supported by the emerging middle
classes
THE LITERARY BACKGROUND
The greatest 17th century poet was JOHN MILTON, who belongs in spirit
to the Puritan age of Cromwells Commonwealth, which he supported
fervently. His masterpiece was PARADISE LOST.
ROBERT BURTON, SIR THOMAS BROWNE and JOHN BUNYAN are the
most representative prose writers of the period. JOHN BUNYAN and his
masterpiece THE PILGRIMS PROGRESS was the writer who most
successfully captured the Puritan spirit.
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION which took place after the Restoration,
also played an important part in creating a new and clear, concise prose
style. EMPIRICISM the idea that scientific assertions had to be tested
by experiment was becoming increasingly important.
The second half of the 17 th century saw the emergence of a new literary
form : THE DIARY.
AUGUSTAN LITERATURE
The 18th century brought with it a general desire for order, clarity and
stability. Writers of the period drew inspiration from the Latin poets Virgil,
Horace and Ovid who, under the patronage of Emperor Augustus, created
the golden age of classical literature. English writers tried to imitate the
Latin poets, and the early and mid-eighteenth century became known as
THE AUGUSTAN AGE. The greatest poet of the Augustan Age was
ALEXANDER POPE.
The 18th century is also best remembered for the development of prose-
writing. The early part of the century witnessed a dramatic rise in prose
output in the form of journalism, essay writing, political satire and
pamphleteering.
Five dominant literary figures DANIEL DEFOE, SAMUEL
RICHARDSON, HENRY FIELDING, JONATHAN SWIFT and LAURENCE
STERNE moulded fictional prose into a literary form that appealed to the
18th century reader. In doing so they created the dominant literary genre
of the next three centuries: THE MODERN NOVEL.
In the second half of the 18th century, the admiration for the classical
ideals which had characterized the Augustan Age began to wane (a fi in
declin):
The grandeur, rationalism and elevated sentiments of the early part
of the century gave way to a simpler, more genuine form of
expression
16
 There was a renewed interest in nature and the simple rural life.

ROBINSON CRUSOE
CONTEXT
Daniel Defoe was born in 1660, in London and witnessed two of the
greatest disasters of the seventeenth century: a recurrence of the plague
and the Great Fire of London in 1666. These events may have shaped his
fascination with catastrophes and survival in his writing. Defoe developed
a taste for travel that lasted throughout his life. His fiction reflects this
interest; his characters Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe both change
their lives by voyaging far from their native England. Defoe attended a
respected school in Dorking, where he was an excellent student, but as a
Presbyterian, he was forbidden to attend Oxford or Cambridge. He entered
a dissenting institution called Mortons Academy and considered
becoming a Presbyterian minister. Though he abandoned this plan, his
Protestant values endured throughout his life despite discrimination and
persecution, and these values are expressed in Robinson Crusoe.
Robinson Crusoe was based on the true story of a shipwrecked seaman
named Alexander Selkirk and was passed off as history. His focus on the
actual conditions of everyday life and avoidance of the courtly and the
heroic made Defoe a revolutionary in English literature and helped define
the new genre of the novel. Stylistically, Defoe was a great innovator.
Dispensing with the ornate style associated with the upper classes, Defoe
used the simple, direct, fact-based style of the middle classes, which
became the new standard for the English novel. With Robinson Crusoes
theme of solitary human existence, Defoe paved the way for the central
modern theme of alienation and isolation.
ANALYSIS OF MAJOR CHARACTERS
1.Robinson Crusoe
While he is no flashy hero or grand epic adventurer, Robinson Crusoe
displays character traits that have won him the approval of generations of
readers. His perseverance in spending months making a canoe, and in
practicing pottery making until he gets it right, is praiseworthy.
Additionally, his resourcefulness in building a home, dairy, grape arbor,
country house, and goat stable from practically nothing is clearly
remarkable. Crusoes business instincts are just as considerable as his
survival instincts: he manages to make a fortune in Brazil despite a
twenty-eight-year absence and even leaves his island with a nice
collection of gold. Moreover, Crusoe is never interested in portraying
himself as a hero in his own narration. He does not boast of his courage in
quelling the mutiny, and he is always ready to admit unheroic feelings of
fear or panic, as when he finds the footprint on the beach. Crusoe prefers
to depict himself as an ordinary sensible man, never as an exceptional
hero.
But Crusoes admirable qualities must be weighed against the flaws in his
character. Crusoe seems incapable of deep feelings, as shown by his cold

17
account of leaving his familyhe worries about the religious
consequences of disobeying his father, but never displays any emotion
about leaving. Though he is generous toward people, as when he gives
gifts to his sisters and the captain, Crusoe reveals very little tender or
sincere affection in his dealings with them.
His insistence on dating events makes sense to a point, but it ultimately
ends up seeming obsessive and irrelevant when he tells us the date on
which he grinds his tools but neglects to tell us the date of a very
important event like meeting Friday. Perhaps his impulse to record facts
carefully is not a survival skill, but an irritating sign of his neurosis.
Finally, while not boasting of heroism, Crusoe is nonetheless very
interested in possessions, power, and prestige. His teaching Friday to call
him Master, even before teaching him the words for yes or no,
seems obnoxious even under the racist standards of the day, as if Crusoe
needs to hear the ego-boosting word spoken as soon as possible. Overall,
Crusoes virtues tend to be private: his industry, resourcefulness, and
solitary courage make him an exemplary individual. But his vices are
social, and his urge to subjugate others is highly objectionable. In bringing
both sides together into one complex character, Defoe gives us a
fascinating glimpse into the successes, failures, and contradictions of
modern man.
2.Friday
Probably the first nonwhite character to be given a realistic, individualized,
and humane portrayal in the English novel, Friday has a huge literary and
cultural importance. If Crusoe represents the first colonial mind in fiction,
then Friday represents not just a Caribbean tribesman, but all the natives
of America, Asia, and Africa who would later be oppressed in the age of
European imperialism. At the moment when Crusoe teaches Friday to call
him Master Friday becomes an enduring political symbol of racial
injustice in a modern world critical of imperialist expansion.
Aside from his importance to our culture, Friday is a key figure within the
context of the novel. In many ways he is the most vibrant character
in Robinson Crusoe, much more charismatic and colorful than his master.
Indeed, Defoe at times underscores the contrast between Crusoes and
Fridays personalities, as when Friday, in his joyful reunion with his father,
exhibits far more emotion toward his family than Crusoe. Whereas Crusoe
never mentions missing his family or dreams about the happiness of
seeing them again, Friday jumps and sings for joy when he meets his
father, and this emotional display makes us see what is missing from
Crusoes stodgy heart. Fridays expression of loyalty in asking Crusoe to
kill him rather than leave him is more heartfelt than anything Crusoe ever
says or does. Crusoe does not seem to value intimacy with humans much,
but he does say that he loves Friday, which is a remarkable disclosure. It is
the only time Crusoe makes such an admission in the novel, since he
never expresses love for his parents, brothers, sisters, or even his wife.
The mere fact that an Englishman confesses more love for an illiterate
Caribbean ex-cannibal than for his own family suggests the appeal of
Fridays personality. Crusoe may bring Friday Christianity and clothing, but
18
Friday brings Crusoe emotional warmth and a vitality of spirit that
Crusoes own European heart lacks.
THEMES
1.The ambivalence of mastery
Crusoes success in mastering his situation, overcoming his obstacles, and
controlling his environment shows the condition of mastery in a positive
light, at least at the beginning of the novel. Crusoe lands in an
inhospitable environment and makes it his home. His taming and
domestication of wild goats and parrots with Crusoe as their master
illustrates his newfound control. Moreover, Crusoes mastery over nature
makes him a master of his fate and of himself. Early in the novel, he
frequently blames himself for disobeying his fathers advice or blames the
destiny that drove him to sea. But in the later part of the novel, Crusoe
stops viewing himself as a passive victim and strikes a new note of self-
determination. In building a home for himself on the island, he finds that
he is master of his lifehe suffers a hard fate and still finds prosperity.
But this theme of mastery becomes more complex and less positive after
Fridays arrival, when the idea of mastery comes to apply more to unfair
relationships between humans. In Chapter XXIII, Crusoe teaches Friday the
word [m]aster even before teaching him yes and no, and indeed he
lets him know that was to be [Crusoes] name. Crusoe never entertains
the idea of considering Friday a friend or equalfor some reason,
superiority comes instinctively to him. We further question Crusoes right
to be called [m]aster when he later refers to himself as king over the
natives and Europeans, who are his subjects. In short, while Crusoe
seems praiseworthy in mastering his fate, the praiseworthiness of his
mastery over his fellow humans is more doubtful. Defoe explores the link
between the two in his depiction of the colonial mind.
2.The necessity of repentance
Crusoes experiences constitute not simply an adventure story in which
thrilling things happen, but also a moral tale illustrating the right and
wrong ways to live ones life. This moral and religious dimension of the
tale is indicated in the Preface, which states that Crusoes story is being
published to instruct others in Gods wisdom, and one vital part of this
wisdom is the importance of repenting ones sins. While it is important to
be grateful for Gods miracles, as Crusoe is when his grain sprouts, it is
not enough simply to express gratitude or even to pray to God, as Crusoe
does several times with few results. Crusoe needs repentance most;
Crusoe believes that his major sin is his rebellious behavior toward his
father, which he refers to as his original sin, akin to Adam and Eves first
disobedience of God. This biblical reference also suggests that Crusoes
exile from civilization represents Adam and Eves expulsion from Eden.
For Crusoe, repentance consists of acknowledging his wretchedness and
his absolute dependence on the Lord. This admission marks a turning
point in Crusoes spiritual consciousness, and is almost a born-again
experience for him. After repentance, he complains much less about his
sad fate and views the island more positively. Later, when Crusoe is
19
rescued and his fortune restored, he compares himself to Job, who also
regained divine favor. Ironically, this view of the necessity of repentance
ends up justifying sin: Crusoe may never have learned to repent if he had
never sinfully disobeyed his father in the first place. Thus, as powerful as
the theme of repentance is in the novel, it is nevertheless complex and
ambiguous.
3.The importance of self-awareness
Crusoes arrival on the island does not make him revert to a brute
existence controlled by animal instincts, and, unlike animals, he remains
conscious of himself at all times. Indeed, his island existence actually
deepens his self-awareness as he withdraws from the external social world
and turns inward. The idea that the individual must keep a careful
reckoning of the state of his own soul is a key point in the Presbyterian
doctrine that Defoe took seriously all his life. We see that in his normal
day-to-day activities, Crusoe keeps accounts of himself enthusiastically
and in various ways.
Crusoe obsessively keeps a journal to record his daily activities, even
when they amount to nothing more than finding a few pieces of wood on
the beach or waiting inside while it rains. Crusoe feels the importance of
staying aware of his situation at all times. We can also sense Crusoes
impulse toward self-awareness in the fact that he teaches his parrot to say
the words, Poor Robin Crusoe. . . . Where have you been? This sort of
self-examining thought is natural for anyone alone on a desert island, but
it is given a strange intensity when we recall that Crusoe has spent
months teaching the bird to say it back to him. Crusoe teaches nature
itself to voice his own self-awareness.
MOTIFS
1.Counting and measuring
Crusoe is a careful note-taker whenever numbers and quantities are
involved. Counting and measuring underscore Crusoes practical,
businesslike character and his hands-on approach to life. But Defoe
sometimes hints at the futility of Crusoes measuringas when the
carefully measured canoe cannot reach water or when his obsessively
kept calendar is thrown off by a day of oversleeping. Defoe may be subtly
poking fun at the urge to quantify, showing us that, in the end, everything
Crusoe counts never really adds up to much and does not save him from
isolation.
2.Eating
One of Crusoes first concerns after his shipwreck is his food supply. Even
while he is still wet from the sea in Chapter V, he frets about not having
anything to eat or drink to comfort me. He soon provides himself with
food, and indeed each new edible item marks a new stage in his mastery
of the island, so that his food supply becomes a symbol of his survival. His
securing of goat meat staves off immediate starvation, and his discovery
of grain is viewed as a miracle, like manna from heaven. His cultivation of
raisins, almost a luxury food for Crusoe, marks a new comfortable period

20
in his island existence. In a way, these images of eating convey Crusoes
ability to integrate the island into his life, just as food is integrated into
the body to let the organism grow and prosper. But no sooner does Crusoe
master the art of eating than he begins to fear being eaten himself. The
cannibals transform Crusoe from the consumer into a potential object to
be consumed. Life for Crusoe always illustrates this eat or be
eaten philosophy, since even back in Europe he is threatened by man-
eating wolves. Eating is an image of existence itself, just as being eaten
signifies death for Crusoe.
3.Ordeals at sea
Crusoes encounters with water in the novel are often associated not
simply with hardship, but with a kind of symbolic ordeal, or test of
character. First, the storm off the coast of Yarmouth frightens Crusoes
friend away from a life at sea, but does not deter Crusoe. Then, in his first
trading voyage, he proves himself a capable merchant, and in his second
one, he shows he is able to survive enslavement. His escape from his
Moorish master and his successful encounter with the Africans both occur
at sea. Most significantly, Crusoe survives his shipwreck after a lengthy
immersion in water. But the sea remains a source of danger and fear even
later, when the cannibals arrive in canoes. The Spanish shipwreck reminds
Crusoe of the destructive power of water and of his own good fortune in
surviving it. All the life-testing water imagery in the novel has subtle
associations with the rite of baptism, by which Christians prove their faith
and enter a new life saved by Christ.
SYMBOLS
1.The footprint
Crusoes shocking discovery of a single footprint on the sand in Chapter
XVIII is one of the most famous moments in the novel, and it symbolizes
our heros conflicted feelings about human companionship. Crusoe has
earlier confessed how much he misses companionship, yet the evidence
of a man on his island sends him into a panic. Immediately he interprets
the footprint negatively, as the print of the devil or of an aggressor. He
never for a moment entertains hope that it could belong to an angel or
another European who could rescue or befriend him. This instinctively
negative and fearful attitude toward others makes us consider the
possibility that Crusoe may not want to return to human society after all,
and that the isolation he is experiencing may actually be his ideal state.
2.The cross
Concerned that he will lose [his] reckoning of time in Chapter VII, Crusoe
marks the passing of days with [his] knife upon a large post, in capital
letters, and making it into a great cross . . . set[s] it up on the shore where
[he] first landed. . . . The large size and capital letters show us how
important this cross is to Crusoe as a timekeeping device and thus also as
a way of relating himself to the larger social world where dates and
calendars still matter. But the cross is also a symbol of his own new
existence on the island, just as the Christian cross is a symbol of the
Christians new life in Christ after baptism, an immersion in water like
21
Crusoes shipwreck experience. Yet Crusoes large cross seems somewhat
blasphemous in making no reference to Christ. Instead, it is a memorial to
Crusoe himself, underscoring how completely he has become the center
of his own life.

3.Crusoes bower
On a scouting tour around the island, Crusoe discovers a delightful valley
in which he decides to build a country retreat or bower in Chapter XII.
This bower contrasts sharply with Crusoes first residence, since it is built
not for the practical purpose of shelter or storage, but simply for pleasure:
because I was so enamoured of the place. Crusoe is no longer focused
solely on survival, which by this point in the novel is more or less secure.
Now, for the first time since his arrival, he thinks in terms of
pleasantness. Thus, the bower symbolizes a radical improvement in
Crusoes attitude toward his time on the island. Island life is no longer
necessarily a disaster to suffer through, but may be an opportunity for
enjoymentjust as, for the Presbyterian, life may be enjoyed only after
hard work has been finished and repentance achieved.

GULLIVERS TRAVELS JONATHAN SWIFT

CONTEXT
Like almost all the literary men of his time J. Swift, was involved in the
struggle between the Whigs and the Tories. His literary work include:
Literary satire The battle of the books on the controversy
between modern and ancient writers
Religious satire A tale of a tub

Political satire A proposal for the Universal Use of Irish

Manufacture and The Drapiers letters
His masterpiece Gullievers travels

J. Swift was a pamphleteer of genius. He differs from the other great Tory
satirists by the transgressive nature of his satire. His writings are often
ferociously subversive, his satire is mingled with sarcasm, invective
vituperation and above all a crushing irony which is often extremely
destructive.
Swifts typical tactic is to disguise his satire from the reader behind a fable
or fiction of some kind. His style is a model of clarity and precision. Irony is
the most powerful instrument of satire and one of the most difficult to use.
Swift is a true master of irony and satire, as he is able to say the most
shocking things in the most natural possibly way.
GULLIVERS TRAVELS is an anatomy of human nature, a sardonic
looking-glass, often criticized for its apparent misanthropy; each of the 4
books recounting four voyages to mostly fictional exotic lands has a
different theme, but al are attempts to deflate human pride.
22
Swifts masterpiece can be read at various levels. It may be seen
as:
An account of imaginary adventures in utopian countries
A travel book
An allegorical story
A satirical essay on the political, social and religious conflicts of the
time, as well as on the problems caused by scientific and economic
progress
A tale for children.
ANALYSIS OF MAJOR CHARACTERS
LEMUEL GULLIVER
Although Gulliver is a bold adventurer who visits a multitude of strange
lands, it is difficult to regard him as truly heroic. Even well before his slide
into misanthropy at the end of the book, he simply does not show the stuff
of which grand heroes are made. He is not cowardlyon the contrary, he
undergoes the unnerving experiences of nearly being devoured by a giant
rat, taken captive by pirates, shipwrecked on faraway shores, sexually
assaulted by an eleven-year-old girl, and shot in the face with poison
arrows. Additionally, the isolation from humanity that he endures for
sixteen years must be hard to bear, though Gulliver rarely talks about
such matters. Yet despite the courage Gulliver shows throughout his
voyages, his character lacks basic greatness. This impression could be
due to the fact that he rarely shows his feelings, reveals his soul, or
experiences great passions of any sort.
What seems most lacking in Gulliver is not courage or feelings, but drive.
One modern critic has described Gulliver as possessing the smallest will in
all of Western literature: he is simply devoid of a sense of mission, a goal
that would make his wandering into a quest. He says that he needs to
make some money after the failure of his business, but he rarely mentions
finances throughout the work and indeed almost never even mentions
home. He has no awareness of any greatness in what he is doing or what
he is working toward. In short, he has no aspirations.
We may also note Gullivers lack of ingenuity and savvy. Other great
travelers, such as Odysseus, get themselves out of dangerous situations
by exercising their wit and ability to trick others. Gulliver seems too dull
for any battles of wit and too unimaginative to think up tricks, and thus he
ends up being passive in most of the situations in which he finds himself.
He is held captive several times throughout his voyages, but he is never
once released through his own stratagems, relying instead on chance
factors for his liberation. Once presented with a way out, he works hard to
escape, as when he repairs the boat he finds that delivers him from
Blefuscu, but he is never actively ingenious in attaining freedom. This
example summarizes quite well Gullivers intelligence, which is factual
and practical rather than imaginative or introspective.

23
Gulliver is gullible, as his name suggests. For example, he misses the
obvious ways in which the Lilliputians exploit him. While he is quite adept
at navigational calculations and the humdrum details of seafaring, he is
far less able to reflect on himself or his nation in any profoundly critical
way. Traveling to such different countries and returning to England in
between each voyage, he seems poised to make some great
anthropological speculations about cultural differences around the world,
about how societies are similar despite their variations or different despite
their similarities. But, frustratingly, Gulliver gives us nothing of the sort.
He provides us only with literal facts and narrative events, never with any
generalizing or philosophizing. He is a self-hating, self-proclaimed Yahoo at
the end, announcing his misanthropy quite loudly, but even this attitude is
difficult to accept as the moral of the story. Gulliver is not a figure with
whom we identify but, rather, part of the array of personalities and
behaviors about which we must make judgments.
THEMES
1.Might versus right
Gullivers Travels implicitly poses the question of whether physical power
or moral righteousness should be the governing factor in social life.
Gulliver experiences the advantages of physical might both as one who
has it, as a giant in Lilliput where he can defeat the Blefuscudian navy by
virtue of his immense size, and as one who does not have it, as a
miniature visitor to Brobdingnag where he is harassed by the hugeness of
everything from insects to household pets. But overall, the novel tends to
show that claims to rule on the basis of moral righteousness are often just
as arbitrary as, and sometimes simply disguises for, simple physical
subjugation.
2.The individual versus society
Like many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands, Gullivers
Travels explores the idea of utopiaan imaginary model of the ideal
community. The idea of a utopia is an ancient one, going back at least as
far as the description in Platos Republic of a city-state governed by the
wise and expressed most famously in English by Thomas
Mores Utopia. Swift nods to both works in his own narrative, though his
attitude toward utopia is much more skeptical, and one of the main
aspects he points out about famous historical utopias is the tendency to
privilege the collective group over the individual. The children of
Platos Republic are raised communally, with no knowledge of their
biological parents, in the understanding that this system enhances social
fairness. Swift has the Lilliputians similarly raise their offspring
collectively, but its results are not exactly utopian, since Lilliput is torn by
conspiracies, jealousies, and backstabbing.
Gullivers Travels could in fact be described as one of the first novels of
modern alienation, focusing on an individuals repeated failures to
integrate into societies to which he does not belong.
3.The limits of human understanding

24
The idea that humans are not meant to know everything and that all
understanding has a natural limit is important in Gullivers Travels. Swift
singles out theoretical knowledge in particular for attack: his portrait of
the disagreeable and self-centered Laputans, who show blatant contempt
for those who are not sunk in private theorizing, is a clear satire against
those who pride themselves on knowledge above all else. Practical
knowledge is also satirized when it does not produce results, as in the
academy of Balnibarbi, where the experiments for extracting sunbeams
from cucumbers amount to nothing. Swift insists that there is a realm of
understanding into which humans are simply not supposed to venture.
Thus his depictions of rational societies, like Brobdingnag and
Houyhnhnmland, emphasize not these peoples knowledge or
understanding of abstract ideas but their ability to live their lives in a wise
and steady way.
Swift also emphasizes the importance of self-understanding. Gulliver is
initially remarkably lacking in self-reflection and self-awareness. He makes
no mention of his emotions, passions, dreams, or aspirations, and he
shows no interest in describing his own psychology to us. Accordingly, he
may strike us as frustratingly hollow or empty, though it is likely that his
personal emptiness is part of the overall meaning of the novel. By the
end, he has come close to a kind of twisted self-knowledge in his
deranged belief that he is a Yahoo. Swift may thus be saying that self-
knowledge has its necessary limits just as theoretical knowledge does,
and that if we look too closely at ourselves we might not be able to carry
on living happily.
MOTIFS
1.Excrement
While it may seem a trivial or laughable motif, the recurrent mention of
excrement in Gullivers Travels actually has a serious philosophical
significance in the narrative. It symbolizes everything that is crass and
ignoble about the human body and about human existence in general,
and it obstructs any attempt to view humans as wholly spiritual or
mentally transcendent creatures. Swift suggests that the human condition
in general is dirtier and lowlier than we might like to believe it is.
2.Foreign languages
Gulliver appears to be a gifted linguist, knowing at least the basics of
several European languages and even a fair amount of ancient Greek. This
knowledge serves him well, as he is able to disguise himself as a
Dutchman in order to facilitate his entry into Japan, which at the time only
admitted the Dutch. But even more important, his linguistic gifts allow him
to learn the languages of the exotic lands he visits with a dazzling speed
and, thus, gain access to their culture quickly. He learns the languages of
the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnagians, and even the neighing tongue of the
Houyhnhnms.
3.Clothing

25
Critics have noted the extraordinary attention that Gulliver pays to clothes
throughout his journeys. Every time he gets a rip in his shirt or is forced to
adopt some native garment to replace one of his own, he recounts the
clothing details with great precision. These descriptions are obviously an
easy narrative device with which Swift can chart his protagonists
progression from one culture to another: the more ragged his clothes
become and the stranger his new wardrobe, the farther he is from the
comforts and conventions of England. But the motif of clothing carries a
deeper, more psychologically complex meaning as well. Gullivers intense
interest in the state of his clothes may signal a deep-seated anxiety about
his identity, or lack thereof.
SYMBOLS
1.Lilliputians
he Lilliputians symbolize humankinds wildly excessive pride in its own
puny existence. Swift fully intends the irony of representing the tiniest
race visited by Gulliver as by far the most vainglorious and smug, both
collectively and individually. There is more backbiting and conspiracy in
Lilliput than anywhere else, and more of the pettiness of small minds who
imagine themselves to be grand. All in all, the Lilliputians symbolize
misplaced human pride, and point out Gullivers inability to diagnose it
correctly.
2.Brobdingnagians
The Brobdingnagians symbolize the private, personal, and physical side of
humans when examined up close and in great detail. The philosophical
era of the Enlightenment tended to overlook the routines of everyday life
and the sordid or tedious little facts of existence, but in Brobdingnag such
facts become very important for Gulliver, sometimes matters of life and
death. The Brobdingnagians do not symbolize a solely negative human
characteristic, as the Laputans do. They are not merely ridiculoussome
aspects of them are disgusting, like their gigantic stench and the
excrement left by their insects, but others are noble, like the queens
goodwill toward Gulliver and the kings commonsense views of politics.
More than anything else, the Brobdingnagians symbolize a dimension of
human existence visible at close range, under close scrutiny.
3.Laputans
The Laputans represent the folly of theoretical knowledge that has no
relation to human life and no use in the actual world. Laputa symbolizes
the absurdity of knowledge that has never been tested or applied, the
ludicrous side of Enlightenment intellectualism. Even down below in
Balnibarbi, where the local academy is more inclined to practical
application, knowledge is not made socially useful as Swift demands.
Indeed, theoretical knowledge there has proven positively disastrous,
resulting in the ruin of agriculture and architecture and the
impoverishment of the population. Even up above, the pursuit of
theoretical understanding has not improved the lot of the Laputans. They
have few material worries, dependent as they are upon the Balnibarbians
below. But they are tormented by worries about the trajectories of comets
26
and other astronomical speculations: their theories have not made them
wise, but neurotic and disagreeable. The Laputans do not symbolize
reason itself but rather the pursuit of a form of knowledge that is not
directly related to the improvement of human life.
4.Houyhnhnms
The Houyhnhnms represent an ideal of rational existence, a life governed
by sense and moderation of which philosophers since Plato have long
dreamed. As in Platos ideal community, the Houyhnhnms have no need to
lie nor any word for lying. They do not use force but only strong
exhortation. Their subjugation of the Yahoos appears more necessary than
cruel and perhaps the best way to deal with an unfortunate blot on their
otherwise ideal society. In these ways and others, the Houyhnhnms seem
like model citizens, and Gullivers intense grief when he is forced to leave
them suggests that they have made an impact on him greater than that of
any other society he has visited. His derangement on Don Pedros ship, in
which he snubs the generous man as a Yahoo-like creature, implies that he
strongly identifies with the Houyhnhnms. They have no names in the
narrative nor any need for names, since they are virtually
interchangeable, with little individual identity. Their lives seem
harmonious and happy, although quite lacking in vigor, challenge, and
excitement. Indeed, this apparent ease may be why Swift chooses to
make them horses rather than human types like every other group in the
novel. He may be hinting, to those more insightful than Gulliver, that the
Houyhnhnms should not be considered human ideals at all. In any case,
they symbolize a standard of rational existence to be either espoused or
rejected by both Gulliver and us.
5.England
As the site of his fathers disappointingly small estate and Gullivers
failing business, England seems to symbolize deficiency or insufficiency,
at least in the financial sense that matters most to Gulliver. England is
where Gullivers wife and family live, but they too are hardly mentioned.
Yet Swift chooses to have Gulliver return home after each of his four
journeys instead of having him continue on one long trip to four different
places, so that England is kept constantly in the picture and given a
steady, unspoken importance. By the end of the fourth journey, England is
brought more explicitly into the fabric of Gullivers Travels when Gulliver,
in his neurotic state, starts confusing Houyhnhnmland with his homeland,
referring to Englishmen as Yahoos. The distinction between native and
foreign thus unravelsthe Houyhnhnms and Yahoos are not just races
populating a faraway land but rather types that Gulliver projects upon
those around him. The possibility thus arises that all the races Gulliver
encounters could be versions of the English and that his travels merely
allow him to see various aspects of human nature more clearly.

THE ROMANTIC AGE

BRITAIN 1776 1837

27
George III was king of Great Britain and Ireland from 1760 to 1820. During
this extremely long reign Britain continued to develop economically and
politically. The population was divided into three social classes:
1. The landowners and aristocracy
2. The businessmen and industrialists
3. The masses
All these social classes played their part in building a thriving economy. By
1800 Britain was the most industrialized country in the world.
The war with France lasted for 20 years; the 2 nations were fighting for
domination on the worlds markets trade and trade routes in Europe,
America, India and Africa. Victories in the Battle of the Nile (1798), the
Battle of Trafalgar (1805) and the decisive victory at Waterloo in 1815
eventually gave Britain the upper hand. As the Empire grew, Britain was
facing a new era, the Victorian Age.
THE LITERARY BACKGROUND
By the end of the century, many poets and artists had started reacting
against the dehumanization and regimentation of the new urban industrial
society. They believed in the importance of the individual and of personal
experience. These artists were called ROMANTICS. This word was used to
describe the expression of personal feelings and emotions.
In England, Romanticism found its greatest expression in the poetry of
WILLIAM BLAKE, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,
GEORGE GORDON BYRON, SHELLEY and JOHN KEATS.
IMAGINATION and NATURE had a special role for the Romantics. They
viewed the artist as a creator, who used his imagination to explore the
unfamiliar and the unseen and they considered nature to be morally
uplifting a kind of a spiritual experience. They expressed the idea that
the man had a deep relationship with the natural world, which was a living
mirror to the soul and believed that it could be a better teacher than the
scholarly learning.
Two important elements in Romanticism were THE CULT OF CHILDHOOD
the child was pure and uncorrupted; the children were close to God, had
powerful creative imagination and could be the father of the man and
THE PAST.
ROMANTIC FICTION
By the beginning of the 19th century the novel had become a major
literary form. Three types of novel flourished in the Romantic period:
1. The historical novel
2. The gothic novel
3. The novel of manners
SIR WALTER SCOTT is generally regarded as THE INVENTOR OF THE
HISTORICAL NOVEL.
28
The greatest Gothic novel of the Romantic period is MARRY SHELLEYS
FRANKENSTEIN, OR THE MODERN PROMETHEUS. GOTHIC ELEMENTS can
be found in the works of 19th century writers, such as DICKENS and the
BRONTE SISTERS, and WILLIAM FAULKNER and ANGELA CARTER in the
20th.
Although little influence by the Romantic trends of her period, JANE
AUSTEN stands out as the ONE OF THE ROMANTIC AGES GREATEST
WRITERS. She developed a type of fiction that is referred to as THE NOVEL
OF MANNERS, where characterization and plot are very important. In her
work hierarchies are reflected in manners and conversation described with
gentle irony and balance, while there is very little description of the wider
social, political or historical context. Her novels also contain penetrating
psychological insights into young female consciousness. The novel of
manners is basically a classical form and doesnt leave much room for
Romantic passion, imagination or sentimentalism.

Keats' Poems and Letters Study Guide

Though he could hardly have expected it during his lifetime, since his work was
roundly condemned by the conservative commentators of his day, John
Keats became one of the most revered English poets of the Romantic period
within a few decades of his death. At the time of his death itself, he had only
been writing poetry for about six years, and had only published three volumes of
poetry. In his work, however, he had taken on the challenge of using a wide
variety of poetic forms -- from the Miltonic epic to the sonnet to Spenserian
romance -- infusing them all with his signature striking sensitivity, verbal
adeptness, and impeccable lyricism. Some of his contemporaries, notably his
editor and friend Leigh Hunt and the famed poet Percy Bysshe Shelley,
championed his work, but they were in the minority. Influenced by
Hunt's Examiner, Keats sometimes declared himself part of a "new school" of
poetry; this radicalism may have alienated contemporaries.
His posthumous reputation grew steadily, however. The Cambridge Apostles, a
secret society of undergraduates which included Alfred Tennyson, a later Poet
Laureate of England, was supportive of his work. The first Keats biography was
published in 1848, situating Keats in the English poetic canon. The Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood of painters, an English group of moderately well-known
artists, also used his poems for inspiration. By the end of the century, his writing
was deemed to include some of the best specimens of English poetry. Today, he
is placed in the absolute top ranks of the major British Romantic poets, right
along with Williams Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, Lord
Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Commentary by his friend Shelley, who
declared that Keats was too finely-tuned and sensitive to survive in a world of
unduly harsh criticism, has always colored the public perception of Keats and the
reception of his writing.
Keats' letters, which were first published in installments 1848 and 1878, were
initially thought of as distractions from his poetry. In the twentieth century,
however, these documents became much more highly regarded. Modernist poet
and critic T.S. Eliot wrote, "There is hardly one statement of Keats' about poetry
which...will not be found to be true, and what is more, true for greater and more
mature poetry than anything Keats ever wrote." Keats used letter-writing as a
way of synthesizing his thoughts and philosophy, especially in the abundant
letters he wrote to his brother George and his sister-in-law Georgina, who had
moved to the United States. Some of his most noted philosophical concepts --

29
the chameleon poet, negative capability, and the Mansion of Many Apartments --
took form in his letters. The letters also appear to have influenced Keats's poetry;
for example, in an 1817 letter to Benjamin Bailey, he wrote, "I am certain of
nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination
What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth," thus presaging one of his
most famous lines in "Ode on a Grecian Urn". He also composed perhaps his
most well-regarded poem, "To Autumn", after noting the beauty of the season in
a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds.
Currently, Keats occupies a seat as one of the most famous poets of the English
language. Jorge Luis Borges even named Keats as his most significant "literary
encounter." The poetry of this versatile British author is now among the most
widely taught and analyzed in English literature, and both the quality of his
verse and his reputation as an emblem of the high Romantic era ensure his
continued popularity.

Keats' Poems and Letters Summary

"The Eve of St. Agnes", a 43-line poem written in Spenserian stanzas, describes a
young virgin, Madeline, who falls in love with a young suitor, Porphyro, who is an
enemy of her family. Traditionally, on the eve of St. Agnes (a Saint's day),
maidens believed that they could be joined in dreams by their future husbands.
Porphyro sneaks into Madeline's room and, after she has fallen asleep, sings her
awake. They run off together.
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a meditation on the perfect, timeless ideal versus the
imperfect, lived reality. Keats addresses the urn directly and wonders aloud what
real scenes the illustrations on it describe.
In "Ode to a Nightingale", Keats describes his dismay at not being able to live in
the ideal world of the nightingale. The nightingale's song, which has been heard
by people across millennia, is ageless and perfect; Keats concludes that the bird,
unlike the human race, "wast not born for death."
In "When I have fears that I may cease to be", Keats describes his apprehension
of dying without having achieved artistic and romantic success. When he
experiences this anxiety, he reminds himself that death erases all human
achievement anyway.
"Ode to Psyche" describes Keats' fictional encounter with Psyche and her lover,
Cupid/Eros, during a forest walk. Psyche, having been one of the last goddesses
to join the Greek Pantheon, does not have a temple. Keats promises to build her
one in his mind.
In "Ode on Melancholy", Keats advises those who experience melancholic states.
Rather than avoid melancholy, such individuals should embrace it as a means of
encountering "the Beautiful."
"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" describes the encounter of a knight-at-arms with a
mystical lady, who lulls him into sleep and then leaves him, cold and alone, on a
hillside. The knight sees many other men who have been subjected to the same
fate.
"Ode on Indolence" describes Keats' encounter with three mystical female
figures: Love, Ambition, and Poesy (Poetry). These three try to convince him to
abandon his summer indolence, but he wishes them away, convinced that he will
find more enjoyment in laziness than in any contentment they could give him.
"To Autumn" is an homage to the season named in its title. Keats personifies
autumn in various ways -- as a gleaner/sower, reaper, and cider-presser -- and

30
assures the season that, though, it may not possess the fresh songs of spring, it
does have its own music.
"On the Sonnet" expresses Keats' dissatisfaction with existing poetic norms, and
construes poetry as a means by which language is constrained. He wishes that
there were a better poetic form to suit the beauty of language.
In "Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art", Keats initially expresses a
desire to be "stedfast" like a star, hanging over the Earth and observing
the movements below (water flowing, snow falling, etc.). Yet he then changes his
mind. He would rather be unchanging while holding his lover in his arms.
In the Letter to J.H. Reynolds (3 May 1818), Keats describes his theory of
knowledge and of the human experience of the world. The intellect is a "Mansion
of Many Apartments." The first chamber (room) is Infant Thought, in which one
does not learn or analyze anything deeply. In the second chamber, one is
exposed to the suffering of the world. After the door opens to other hallways, one
is drenched in darkness and does not know where each hallway leads.
In the Letter to Richard Woodhouse (27 October 1818), Keats describes the
nature of a poet: a poetic artist is a "cameleon" (chameleon) who blends into any
environment in which he finds himself. The "poetical nature" is a lack of any
nature itself; poets are blank slates, pure speculation.
In the Letter to George and Tom Keats (21 December 1817), Keats describes
"negative capability," that is, the capacity of an artist to observe the beautiful
without trying to situate it in any philosophical or logical structure. The pursuit of
knowledge, rather than beauty, will detract from an artist's work.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE JANE AUSTEN

CONTEXT
Jane Austen was born in Steventon, England, in 1775, where she lived for
the first twenty-five years of her life.
The social milieu of Austens Regency England was particularly stratified,
and class divisions were rooted in family connections and wealth. In her
work, Austen is often critical of the assumptions and prejudices of upper-
class England. She distinguishes between internal merit (goodness of
person) and external merit (rank and possessions). Though she frequently
satirizes snobs, she also pokes fun at the poor breeding and misbehavior
of those lower on the social scale. Nevertheless, Austen was in many ways
a realist, and the England she depicts is one in which social mobility is
limited and class-consciousness is strong.
Socially regimented ideas of appropriate behavior for each gender
factored into Austens work as well. While social advancement for young
men lay in the military, church, or law, the chief method of self-
improvement for women was the acquisition of wealth. Women could only
accomplish this goal through successful marriage, which explains the
ubiquity of matrimony as a goal and topic of conversation in Austens
writing. Though young women of Austens day had more freedom to
choose their husbands than in the early eighteenth century, practical
considerations continued to limit their options.
31
The critiques she makes of class structure seem to include only the middle
class and upper class; the lower classes, if they appear at all, are
generally servants who seem perfectly pleased with their lot. This lack of
interest in the lives of the poor may be a failure on Austens part, but it
should be understood as a failure shared by almost all of English society
at the time.
In general, Austen occupies a curious position between the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. Austens novels also display an ambiguity about
emotion and an appreciation for intelligence and natural beauty that
aligns them with Romanticism. In their awareness of the conditions of
modernity and city life and the consequences for family structure and
individual characters, they prefigure much Victorian literature (as does her
usage of such elements as frequent formal social gatherings, sketchy
characters, and scandal).
Austen was the first novelist to portray realistic characters by using the
direct method of telling a story in which dialogue and comment take an
important place. She used the method to dissect the hypocrisy of
individuals and the society in which they played their games of love and
courtship.
From the beginning, Austens literature centered on character studies,
where a persons common sense (or lack of it ) was developed in detail.
The chosen setting was always limited to a small social group of the upper
classes and composed of a few families. Family life was always central to
her works. Her novels also portrayed traditional values and a belief in
rationality, responsibility and restraint. But she often viewed the human
condition with its many weaknesses, through humour, irony and sarcasm,
with her undesirable characters portrayed as ignorant, proud, or silly
human beings, not evil villains.
ANALYSIS OF MAJOR CHARACTERS
Elizabeth Bennet
The second daughter in the Bennet family, and the most intelligent and
quick-witted, Elizabeth is the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice and one of
the most well-known female characters in English literature. Her
admirable qualities are numerousshe is lovely, clever, and, in a novel
defined by dialogue, she converses as brilliantly as anyone. Her honesty,
virtue, and lively wit enable her to rise above the nonsense and bad
behavior that pervade her class-bound and often spiteful society.
Nevertheless, her sharp tongue and tendency to make hasty judgments
often lead her astray; Pride and Prejudice is essentially the story of how
she (and her true love, Darcy) overcome all obstaclesincluding their own
personal failingsto find romantic happiness. Elizabeth must not only
cope with a hopeless mother, a distant father, two badly behaved younger
siblings, and several snobbish, antagonizing females, she must also
overcome her own mistaken impressions of Darcy, which initially lead her
to reject his proposals of marriage. Her charms are sufficient to keep him
interested, fortunately, while she navigates familial and social turmoil. As
she gradually comes to recognize the nobility of Darcys character, she
realizes the error of her initial prejudice against him.
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Fitzwilliam Darcy
The son of a wealthy, well-established family and the master of the great
estate of Pemberley, Darcy is Elizabeths male counterpart. The narrator
relates Elizabeths point of view of events more often than Darcys, so
Elizabeth often seems a more sympathetic figure. The reader eventually
realizes, however, that Darcy is her ideal match. Intelligent and forthright,
he too has a tendency to judge too hastily and harshly, and his high birth
and wealth make him overly proud and overly conscious of his social
status. Indeed, his haughtiness makes him initially bungle his courtship.
When he proposes to her, for instance, he dwells more on how unsuitable
a match she is than on her charms, beauty, or anything else
complimentary. Her rejection of his advances builds a kind of humility in
him. Darcy demonstrates his continued devotion to Elizabeth, in spite of
his distaste for her low connections, when he rescues Lydia and the entire
Bennet family from disgrace, and when he goes against the wishes of his
haughty aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by continuing to pursue
Elizabeth. Darcy proves himself worthy of Elizabeth, and she ends up
repenting her earlier, overly harsh judgment of him.
Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley
Elizabeths beautiful elder sister and Darcys wealthy best friend, Jane and
Bingley engage in a courtship that occupies a central place in the novel.
They first meet at the ball in Meryton and enjoy an immediate mutual
attraction. They are spoken of as a potential couple throughout the book,
long before anyone imagines that Darcy and Elizabeth might marry.
Despite their centrality to the narrative, they are vague characters,
sketched by Austen rather than carefully drawn. Indeed, they are so
similar in nature and behavior that they can be described together: both
are cheerful, friendly, and good-natured, always ready to think the best of
others; they lack entirely the prickly egotism of Elizabeth and Darcy. Janes
gentle spirit serves as a foil for her sisters fiery, contentious nature, while
Bingleys eager friendliness contrasts with Darcys stiff pride. Their
principal characteristics are goodwill and compatibility, and the contrast of
their romance with that of Darcy and Elizabeth is remarkable. Jane and
Bingley exhibit to the reader true love unhampered by either pride or
prejudice, though in their simple goodness, they also demonstrate that
such a love is mildly dull.
Mr. Bennet
Mr. Bennet is the patriarch of the Bennet householdthe husband of Mrs.
Bennet and the father of Jane, Elizabeth, Lydia, Kitty, and Mary. He is a
man driven to exasperation by his ridiculous wife and difficult daughters.
He reacts by withdrawing from his family and assuming a detached
attitude punctuated by bursts of sarcastic humor. He is closest to
Elizabeth because they are the two most intelligent Bennets. Initially, his
dry wit and self-possession in the face of his wifes hysteria make him a
sympathetic figure, but, though he remains likable throughout, the reader
gradually loses respect for him as it becomes clear that the price of his
detachment is considerable. Detached from his family, he is a weak father
and, at critical moments, fails his family. In particular, his foolish
33
indulgence of Lydias immature behavior nearly leads to general disgrace
when she elopes with Wickham. Further, upon her disappearance, he
proves largely ineffective. It is left to Mr. Gardiner and Darcy to track Lydia
down and rectify the situation. Ultimately, Mr. Bennet would rather
withdraw from the world than cope with it.
Mrs. Bennet
Mrs. Bennet is a miraculously tiresome character. Noisy and foolish, she is
a woman consumed by the desire to see her daughters married and
seems to care for nothing else in the world. Ironically, her single-minded
pursuit of this goal tends to backfire, as her lack of social graces alienates
the very people (Darcy and Bingley) whom she tries desperately to
attract. Austen uses her continually to highlight the necessity of marriage
for young women. Mrs. Bennet also serves as a middle-class counterpoint
to such upper-class snobs as Lady Catherine and Miss Bingley,
demonstrating that foolishness can be found at every level of society. In
the end, however, Mrs. Bennet proves such an unattractive figure, lacking
redeeming characteristics of any kind, that some readers have accused
Austen of unfairness in portraying heras if Austen, like Mr. Bennet, took
perverse pleasure in poking fun at a woman already scorned as a result of
her ill breeding.
THEMES
1.Love
Pride and Prejudice contains one of the most cherished love stories in
English literature: the courtship between Darcy and Elizabeth. As in any
good love story, the lovers must elude and overcome numerous stumbling
blocks, beginning with the tensions caused by the lovers own personal
qualities. Elizabeths pride makes her misjudge Darcy on the basis of a
poor first impression, while Darcys prejudice against Elizabeths poor
social standing blinds him, for a time, to her many virtues.
Darcy and Elizabeths realization of a mutual and tender love seems to
imply that Austen views love as something independent of these social
forces, as something that can be captured if only an individual is able to
escape the warping effects of hierarchical society. Austen does sound
some more realist (or, one could say, cynical) notes about love, using the
character of Charlotte Lucas, who marries the buffoon Mr. Collins for his
money, to demonstrate that the heart does not always dictate marriage.
Yet with her central characters, Austen suggests that true love is a force
separate from society and one that can conquer even the most difficult of
circumstances.
2.Reputation
Pride and Prejudice depicts a society in which a womans reputation is of
the utmost importance. A woman is expected to behave in certain ways.
Stepping outside the social norms makes her vulnerable to ostracism. This
theme appears in the novel, when Elizabeth walks to Netherfield and
arrives with muddy skirts, to the shock of the reputation-conscious Miss
Bingley and her friends. The happy ending of Pride and Prejudice is

34
certainly emotionally satisfying, but in many ways it leaves the theme of
reputation, and the importance placed on reputation, unexplored. One can
ask ofPride and Prejudice, to what extent does it critique social structures,
and to what extent does it simply accept their inevitability?
3.Class
The theme of class is related to reputation, in that both reflect the strictly
regimented nature of life for the middle and upper classes in Regency
England. The lines of class are strictly drawn. While the Bennets, who are
middle class, may socialize with the upper-class Bingleys and Darcys, they
are clearly their social inferiors and are treated as such. Austen satirizes
this kind of class-consciousness, particularly in the character of Mr. Collins,
who spends most of his time toadying to his upper-class patron, Lady
Catherine de Bourgh.
Through the Darcy-Elizabeth and Bingley-Jane marriages, Austen shows
the power of love and happiness to overcome class boundaries and
prejudices, thereby implying that such prejudices are hollow, unfeeling,
and unproductive. Austen does criticize class structure but only a limited
slice of that structure.
MOTIFS
1.Courtship
In a sense, Pride and Prejudice is the story of two courtshipsthose
between Darcy and Elizabeth and between Bingley and Jane. Courtship
therefore takes on a profound, if often unspoken, importance in the novel.
Marriage is the ultimate goal, courtship constitutes the real working-out of love.
Courtship becomes a sort of forge of a persons personality, and each courtship
becomes a microcosm for different sorts of love (or different ways to abuse love
as a means to social advancement).

2.Journeys
Nearly every scene in Pride and Prejudice takes place indoors, and the
action centers around the Bennet home in the small village of Longbourn.
Nevertheless, journeyseven short onesfunction repeatedly as catalysts
for change in the novel. Elizabeths first journey, by which she intends
simply to visit Charlotte and Mr. Collins, brings her into contact with Mr.
Darcy, and leads to his first proposal. Her second journey takes her to
Derby and Pemberley, where she fans the growing flame of her affection
for Darcy. The third journey, meanwhile, sends various people in pursuit of
Wickham and Lydia, and the journey ends with Darcy tracking them down
and saving the Bennet family honor, in the process demonstrating his
continued devotion to Elizabeth.
SYMBOLS
1.Pemberley
Pride and Prejudice is remarkably free of explicit symbolism, which
perhaps has something to do with the novels reliance on dialogue over
description. Nevertheless, Pemberley, Darcys estate, sits at the center of
the novel, literally and figuratively, as a geographic symbol of the man

35
who owns it. Elizabeth visits it at a time when her feelings toward Darcy
are beginning to warm; she is enchanted by its beauty and charm, and by
the picturesque countryside, just as she will be charmed, increasingly, by
the gifts of its owner.
Pemberley even offers a symbol-within-a-symbol for their budding
romance: when Elizabeth encounters Darcy on the estate, she is crossing
a small bridge, suggesting the broad gulf of misunderstanding and class
prejudice that lies between themand the bridge that their love will build
across it.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 1837 1901

The early part of the 19th century had seen Britain consolidate its position
as a world power following the defeat of Napoleon. The rest of the 19 th
century was to see Britain reach heights of wealth, power and prestige
that were unmatched at any other time in its history. This golden age is
often referred to as the VICTORIAN ERA because it corresponded with
the reign of one of the countrys best-loved queens, Victoria.
One of the great achievements of the century was the gradual
construction of a system of parliamentary democracy that was backed up
by a permanent civil service which took care of the day-to-day running the
state. The system was much admired abroad because it provided stability
and social cohesion at a time of rapid economic expansion.
VICTORIAN LITERATURE
The Victorian period was an age of powerful contrasts and paradoxes.
Scientific and technological advances paved the way for a better future as
traditional religious beliefs began to crumble under the weight of new
scientific discovery.
THE VICTORIAN NOVEL
As the Renaissance is identified with drama and Romanticism with poetry,
the Victorian age is identified with the NOVEL.
SERIALISATION
The Victorian age also abounded in journals, periodicals and pamphlets.
Many early Victorian novels first appeared in serialized form in periodicals.
REALISM
Victorian realism observed and documented everyday life, drew its
characters from all social classes and explored areas of life usually ignored
by the arts. The writer who is most representative of the Victorian period
is CHARLES DICKENS. Although they were contemporaries of Dickens,
THE BRONTE SISTERS belong to an earlier literary tradition. Their works,
which contain Gothic elements and explores the extremes of passion and
violence, are distinctly Romantic in temperament.

LATER VICTORIANS
36
This term is used to refer to writers in the last two decades of Victorias
reign. A spirit of rebellion developed against Victorian materialism,
optimism and self-confidence. Unlike Dickens and other early Victorian
writers who criticized society, but believed in the possibility of finding
solutions, an air of gloomy pessimism pervaded the work of later Victorian
writers. Perhaps the writer who best represents the period is THOMAS
HARDY. His stories are so closely linked to this rural setting that they are
referred to as REGIONAL NOVELS.
AESTHETICISM
The crises of faith and morality which characterized the latter half of the
Victorian period gave rise in the 1880s and 1890s to an artistic movement
known as AESTHETICISM a term which comes from the Greek
word meaning to perceive or to feel. Aesthetes believed that
sensation should be the source of art, and that the role of the
artist was to make the public share his feelings.

It is now, in the 19th century, that we witness the manifestation of

industrialization, England being the first industrialized country in the
world. Basically, industrialization refers to the substitution of man by
the machine in the economic process and the mass production of
consumption goods.
Industrialization represents the engine of the capitalist society and the
premise of a long series of social, cultural, economic and psychological
transformations of the human community.
1.THE HISTORICAL EFFECT OF THE INDUSTRIALIZATION. The
traditional English society can be imagined in the form of a pyramid which
concentrates its absolute power at the top in the symbolic persona of the
king or queen. The dominant class is the aristocracy. Authority is
inherited and not conquered by personal merits and the king represents
God on earth and his unnatural, violent elimination from the top may push
the whole pyramid into chaos (this happens in Hamlet and Macbeth).
Industrialization brings competition among the rules of socio-economic
organization of the system. Authority is no more inherited by birth, bur
conquered through personal merits. The pyramid is transformed into
a circle where margins can have access to the center.
2.THE POLITICAL EFFECT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION. Politically, this
huge transformation in the life of the English society should be linked to
the beginnings of the modern democracy in Europe. The Parliament
becomes more democratic and opens its door to other social categories.
The monarchy is no longer absolute and authoritarian, but liberal and
subject to the Parliament.
3.THE ECONOMIC EFFECT OF THE INDUSTRIALIZATION. Economically
speaking, Great Britain develops tremendously as a result of the
industrialization. Colonialism expands and England gets supremacy in the
world.
4.THE SOCIAL EFFECT OF THE INDUSTRIALIZATION. Socially,
industrialization represents a turning point in the life of England and
37
Europe generally speaking. It marks the birth of a new and powerful class
the BURGEOISIE. The representatives of this social category are the
direct beneficiaries of the industrial progress and they use their financial
power to substitute the TRADITIONAL ARISTOCRACY from its positions
of authority. The STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE BURGEOISIE AND THE
ARISTOCRACY represents a favourite topic in the Victorian novel.
5.THE CULTURAL EFFECT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION. Many philosophers
are preoccupied now with the mental effects of the clash between THE
MARGIN and THE CENTER. HEGEL introduces two philosophical
categories in order to explain the tension between the margin and the
center THE SERVANT and THE MASTER. They are the margin of the
system and the center respectively. The Servant is dominated, never
dominates, recognizes the Master, is never recognized, and is defined by
work for the Master and fear of the Master. The Master is recognized and
never recognizes, dominates and is never dominated. The Servant
develops a SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS and this is the beginning of the
revolution, since he realizes his condition and will want to change it with
that of the Master. The Servant begins thus his migration from margin to
center. In Victorian terms, the Servant is the bourgeoisie and the Master is
the traditional aristocracy.
6.THE AESTHETIC EFFECT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION. The main effect
of industrialization in literature is MODERNIZATION. In a sense,
industrialization marks aesthetically the beginning of MODERNISM. The
traditional pyramid loses its authority and turns gradually into a circle
ruled by competition. In a way, this is generated by the ALIENATION OF
THE INDIVIDUAL inflicted on the community by industrialization. The
same alienation can be noted in the epic and should be translated not as
a loss of authority, but rather as a loss of authorship. In other words, THE
TRADITIONAL OMNISCIENT AUTHOR (the God-like creator who plays
with the destinies of his characters as if they were puppets, the one who
knows all about everything and whose will is wish in the novel) dies out
THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR and is substituted by NARRATORS,
actual characters, autonomous from the caprices of the writer.
NARRATORS have their own subjectivities, sensitivity, sensibility,
emotional structure and level of knowledge. They cannot be objective, and
frequently distort reality. So, Realism no longer consists of the IMITATION
OF A GIVEN WORLD, but the TRANSFORMATION OF A CERTAIN
UNIVERSE ACCORDING TO THE SUBJECTIVITY OF A NARRATOR.
The Victorian narrator (in Dickens, Brontes or in James) is an observer of a
metaphorical cube, being unable in spite of his efforts to give us the
overall picture of the reality he comes to be confronted with. This situation
also creates the premises of an IMPERSONALITY OF WRITING, in the
sense that the auctorial voice disappears.
The Victorian novel will confront us, too, with the BEGINNING OF
PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM, the BEGINNING OF FEMINISM and the
BEGINNING OF THE MODERN TRAGEDY. These can also be considered
the aesthetic consequences of industrialization.

38
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Charles Dickens
Context
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, and spent the first
nine years of his life living in the coastal regions of Kent, a county
in southeast England. Dickenss father, John, was a kind and
likable man, but he was incompetent with money and piled up
tremendous debts throughout his life. When Dickens was nine, his
family moved to London. When he was twelve, his father was
arrested and taken to debtors prison. Dickenss mother moved
his seven brothers and sisters into prison with their father, but
she arranged for the young Charles to live alone outside the
prison and work with other children pasting labels on bottles in a
blacking warehouse (blacking was a type of manufactured soot
used to make a black pigment for products such as matches or
fertilizer). Dickens found the three months he spent apart from his
family highly traumatic. Not only was the job itself miserable, but
he considered himself too good for it, earning the contempt of the
other children. After his father was released from prison, Dickens
returned to school. He eventually became a law clerk, then a
court reporter, and finally a novelist. His first novel, The Pickwick
Papers, became a huge popular success when Dickens was only
twenty-five. He published extensively and was considered a
literary celebrity until his death in 1870.

Many of the events from Dickenss early life are mirrored in Great
Expectations, which, apart from David Copperfield, is his most
autobiographical novel. Pip, the novels protagonist, lives in the
marsh country, works at a job he hates, considers himself too good
for his surroundings, and experiences material success in London at
a very early age, exactly as Dickens himself did. In addition, one of
the novels most appealing characters, Wemmick, is a law clerk, and
the law, justice, and the courts are all important components of the
story.

Great Expectations is set in early Victorian England, a time when

great social changes were sweeping the nation. The Industrial
Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had
transformed the social landscape, enabling capitalists and
manufacturers to amass huge fortunes. Although social class was no

39
longer entirely dependent on the circumstances of ones birth, the
divisions between rich and poor remained nearly as wide as ever.
London, a teeming mass of humanity, lit by gas lamps at night and
darkened by black clouds from smokestacks during the day, formed
a sharp contrast with the nations sparsely populated rural areas.
More and more people moved from the country to the city in search
of greater economic opportunity. Throughout England, the manners
of the upper class were very strict and conservative: gentlemen and
ladies were expected to have thorough classical educations and to
behave appropriately in innumerable social situations.

These conditions defined Dickenss time, and they make themselves

felt in almost every facet of Great Expectations. Pips sudden rise
from country laborer to city gentleman forces him to move from one
social extreme to another while dealing with the strict rules and
expectations that governed Victorian England. Ironically, this novel
about the desire for wealth and social advancement was written
partially out of economic necessity. Dickenss magazine, All the Year
Round, had become extremely popular based on the success of
works it had published in serial, such as his own A Tale of Two Cities
and Wilkie Collinss The Woman in White. But it had experienced a
decline in popularity after publishing a dull serial by Charles Lever
called A Days Ride. Dickens conceived of Great Expectations as a
means of restoring his publications fortunes. The book is still
immensely popular a century and a half later.

In form,Great Expectations fits a pattern popular in nineteenth-

century European fiction: the bildungsroman, or novel depicting
growth and personal development, generally a transition from
boyhood to manhood such as that experienced by Pip. The genre
was popularized by Goethe with his book Wilhelm Meister (1794
1796) and became prevalent in England with such books as Daniel
Defoes Robinson Crusoe, Charlotte Bronts Jane Eyre, and
Dickenss own David Copperfield. Each of these works, like Great
Expectations, depicts a process of maturation and self-discovery
through experience as a protagonist moves from childhood to
adulthood.
40
Plot Overview
Pip, a young orphan living with his sister and her husband in the
marshes of Kent, sits in a cemetery one evening looking at his
parents tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs up from
behind a tombstone, grabs Pip, and orders him to bring him food and
a file for his leg irons. Pip obeys, but the fearsome convict is soon
captured anyway. The convict protects Pip by claiming to have
stolen the items himself.

One day Pip is taken by his Uncle Pumblechook to play at Satis

House, the home of the wealthy dowager Miss Havisham, who is
extremely eccentric: she wears an old wedding dress everywhere
she goes and keeps all the clocks in her house stopped at the same
time. During his visit, he meets a beautiful young girl named Estella,
who treats him coldly and contemptuously. Nevertheless, he falls in
love with her and dreams of becoming a wealthy gentleman so that
he might be worthy of her. He even hopes that Miss Havisham
intends to make him a gentleman and marry him to Estella, but his
hopes are dashed when, after months of regular visits to Satis
House, Miss Havisham decides to help him become a common
laborer in his familys business.

With Miss Havishams guidance, Pip is apprenticed to his brother-in-

law, Joe, who is the village blacksmith. Pip works in the forge
unhappily, struggling to better his education with the help of the
plain, kind Biddy and encountering Joes malicious day laborer,
Orlick. One night, after an altercation with Orlick, Pips sister, known
as Mrs. Joe, is viciously attacked and becomes a mute invalid. From
her signals, Pip suspects that Orlick was responsible for the attack.

One day a lawyer named Jaggers appears with strange news: a

secret benefactor has given Pip a large fortune, and Pip must come
to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman. Pip
happily assumes that his previous hopes have come truethat Miss
Havisham is his secret benefactor and that the old woman intends
for him to marry Estella.

41
In London, Pip befriends a young gentleman named Herbert Pocket
and Jaggerss law clerk, Wemmick. He expresses disdain for his
former friends and loved ones, especially Joe, but he continues to
pine after Estella. He furthers his education by studying with the
tutor Matthew Pocket, Herberts father. Herbert himself helps Pip
learn how to act like a gentleman. When Pip turns twenty-one and
begins to receive an income from his fortune, he will secretly help
Herbert buy his way into the business he has chosen for himself. But
for now, Herbert and Pip lead a fairly undisciplined life in London,
enjoying themselves and running up debts. Orlick reappears in Pips
life, employed as Miss Havishams porter, but is promptly fired by
Jaggers after Pip reveals Orlicks unsavory past. Mrs. Joe dies, and
Pip goes home for the funeral, feeling tremendous grief and
remorse. Several years go by, until one night a familiar figure barges
into Pips roomthe convict, Magwitch, who stuns Pip by announcing
that he, not Miss Havisham, is the source of Pips fortune. He tells
Pip that he was so moved by Pips boyhood kindness that he
dedicated his life to making Pip a gentleman, and he made a fortune
in Australia for that very purpose.

Pip is appalled, but he feels morally bound to help Magwitch escape

London, as the convict is pursued both by the police and by
Compeyson, his former partner in crime. A complicated mystery
begins to fall into place when Pip discovers that Compeyson was the
man who abandoned Miss Havisham at the altar and that Estella is
Magwitchs daughter. Miss Havisham has raised her to break mens
hearts, as revenge for the pain her own broken heart caused her. Pip
was merely a boy for the young Estella to practice on; Miss
Havisham delighted in Estellas ability to toy with his affections.

As the weeks pass, Pip sees the good in Magwitch and begins to care
for him deeply. Before Magwitchs escape attempt, Estella marries
an upper-class lout named Bentley Drummle. Pip makes a visit to
Satis House, where Miss Havisham begs his forgiveness for the way
she has treated him in the past, and he forgives her. Later that day,
when she bends over the fireplace, her clothing catches fire and she
goes up in flames. She survives but becomes an invalid. In her final
42
days, she will continue to repent for her misdeeds and to plead for
Pips forgiveness.

The time comes for Pip and his friends to spirit Magwitch away from
London. Just before the escape attempt, Pip is called to a shadowy
meeting in the marshes, where he encounters the vengeful, evil
Orlick. Orlick is on the verge of killing Pip when Herbert arrives with
a group of friends and saves Pips life. Pip and Herbert hurry back to
effect Magwitchs escape. They try to sneak Magwitch down the
river on a rowboat, but they are discovered by the police, who
Compeyson tipped off. Magwitch and Compeyson fight in the river,
and Compeyson is drowned. Magwitch is sentenced to death, and
Pip loses his fortune. Magwitch feels that his sentence is Gods
forgiveness and dies at peace. Pip falls ill; Joe comes to London to
care for him, and they are reconciled. Joe gives him the news from
home: Orlick, after robbing Pumblechook, is now in jail; Miss
Havisham has died and left most of her fortune to the Pockets; Biddy
has taught Joe how to read and write. After Joe leaves, Pip decides to
rush home after him and marry Biddy, but when he arrives there he
discovers that she and Joe have already married.

Pip decides to go abroad with Herbert to work in the mercantile

trade. Returning many years later, he encounters Estella in the
ruined garden at Satis House. Drummle, her husband, treated her
badly, but he is now dead. Pip finds that Estellas coldness and
cruelty have been replaced by a sad kindness, and the two leave the
garden hand in hand, Pip believing that they will never part again.
(NOTE: Dickenss original ending to Great Expectations differed from
the one described in this summary. The final Summary and Analysis
section of this SparkNote provides a description of the first ending
and explains why Dickens rewrote it.)

Analysis of Major Characters

Pip

As a bildungsroman, Great Expectations presents the growth and

development of a single character, Philip Pirrip, better known to

43
himself and to the world as Pip. As the focus of the bildungsroman,
Pip is by far the most important character in Great Expectations: he
is both the protagonist, whose actions make up the main plot of the
novel, and the narrator, whose thoughts and attitudes shape the
readers perception of the story. As a result, developing an
understanding of Pips character is perhaps the most important step
in understanding Great Expectations.

Because Pip is narrating his story many years after the events of the
novel take place, there are really two Pips in Great Expectations: Pip
the narrator and Pip the characterthe voice telling the story and
the person acting it out. Dickens takes great care to distinguish the
two Pips, imbuing the voice of Pip the narrator with perspective and
maturity while also imparting how Pip the character feels about what
is happening to him as it actually happens. This skillfully executed
distinction is perhaps best observed early in the book, when Pip the
character is a child; here, Pip the narrator gently pokes fun at his
younger self, but also enables us to see and feel the story through
his eyes.

As a character, Pips two most important traits are his immature,

romantic idealism and his innately good conscience. On the one
hand, Pip has a deep desire to improve himself and attain any
possible advancement, whether educational, moral, or social. His
longing to marry Estella and join the upper classes stems from the
same idealistic desire as his longing to learn to read and his fear of
being punished for bad behavior: once he understands ideas like
poverty, ignorance, and immorality, Pip does not want to be poor,
ignorant, or immoral. Pip the narrator judges his own past actions
extremely harshly, rarely giving himself credit for good deeds but
angrily castigating himself for bad ones. As a character, however,
Pips idealism often leads him to perceive the world rather narrowly,
and his tendency to oversimplify situations based on superficial
values leads him to behave badly toward the people who care about
him. When Pip becomes a gentleman, for example, he immediately
begins to act as he thinks a gentleman is supposed to act, which
leads him to treat Joe and Biddy snobbishly and coldly.
44
On the other hand, Pip is at heart a very generous and sympathetic
young man, a fact that can be witnessed in his numerous acts of
kindness throughout the book (helping Magwitch, secretly buying
Herberts way into business, etc.) and his essential love for all those
who love him. Pips main line of development in the novel may be
seen as the process of learning to place his innate sense of kindness
and conscience above his immature idealism.

Not long after meeting Miss Havisham and Estella, Pips desire for
advancement largely overshadows his basic goodness. After
receiving his mysterious fortune, his idealistic wishes seem to have
been justified, and he gives himself over to a gentlemanly life of
idleness. But the discovery that the wretched Magwitch, not the
wealthy Miss Havisham, is his secret benefactor shatters Pips
oversimplified sense of his worlds hierarchy. The fact that he comes
to admire Magwitch while losing Estella to the brutish nobleman
Drummle ultimately forces him to realize that ones social position is
not the most important quality one possesses, and that his behavior
as a gentleman has caused him to hurt the people who care about
him most. Once he has learned these lessons, Pip matures into the
man who narrates the novel, completing the bildungsroman.
Estella

Often cited as Dickenss first convincing female character, Estella is

a supremely ironic creation, one who darkly undermines the notion
of romantic love and serves as a bitter criticism against the class
system in which she is mired. Raised from the age of three by Miss
Havisham to torment men and break their hearts, Estella wins
Pips deepest love by practicing deliberate cruelty. Unlike the warm,
winsome, kind heroine of a traditional love story, Estella is cold,
cynical, and manipulative. Though she represents Pips first longed-
for ideal of life among the upper classes, Estella is actually even
lower-born than Pip; as Pip learns near the end of the novel, she is
the daughter of Magwitch, the coarse convict, and thus springs from
the very lowest level of society.

45
Ironically, life among the upper classes does not represent salvation
for Estella. Instead, she is victimized twice by her adopted class.
Rather than being raised by Magwitch, a man of great inner nobility,
she is raised by Miss Havisham, who destroys her ability to express
emotion and interact normally with the world. And rather than
marrying the kindhearted commoner Pip, Estella marries the cruel
nobleman Drummle, who treats her harshly and makes her life
miserable for many years. In this way, Dickens uses Estellas life to
reinforce the idea that ones happiness and well-being are not
deeply connected to ones social position: had Estella been poor, she
might have been substantially better off.

Despite her cold behavior and the damaging influences in her life,
Dickens nevertheless ensures that Estella is still a sympathetic
character. By giving the reader a sense of her inner struggle to
discover and act on her own feelings rather than on the imposed
motives of her upbringing, Dickens gives the reader a glimpse of
Estellas inner life, which helps to explain what Pip might love about
her. Estella does not seem able to stop herself from hurting Pip, but
she also seems not to want to hurt him; she repeatedly warns him
that she has no heart and seems to urge him as strongly as she
can to find happiness by leaving her behind. Finally, Estellas long,
painful marriage to Drummle causes her to develop along the same
lines as Pipthat is, she learns, through experience, to rely on and
trust her inner feelings. In the final scene of the novel, she has
become her own woman for the first time in the book. As she says to
Pip, Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching. . . . I have
been bent and broken, butI hopeinto a better shape.
Miss Havisham

The mad, vengeful Miss Havisham, a wealthy dowager who lives in a

rotting mansion and wears an old wedding dress every day of her
life, is not exactly a believable character, but she is certainly one of
the most memorable creations in the book. Miss Havishams life is
defined by a single tragic event: her jilting by Compeyson on what
was to have been their wedding day. From that moment forth, Miss
Havisham is determined never to move beyond her heartbreak. She
46
stops all the clocks in Satis House at twenty minutes to nine, the
moment when she first learned that Compeyson was gone, and she
wears only one shoe, because when she learned of his betrayal, she
had not yet put on the other shoe. With a kind of manic, obsessive
cruelty, Miss Havisham adopts Estella and raises her as a weapon to
achieve her own revenge on men. Miss Havisham is an example of
single-minded vengeance pursued destructively: both Miss
Havisham and the people in her life suffer greatly because of her
quest for revenge. Miss Havisham is completely unable to see that
her actions are hurtful to Pip and Estella. She is redeemed at the end
of the novel when she realizes that she has caused Pips heart to be
broken in the same manner as her own; rather than achieving any
kind of personal revenge, she has only caused more pain. Miss
Havisham immediately begs Pip for forgiveness, reinforcing the
novels theme that bad behavior can be redeemed by contrition and
sympathy.

DAVID COPPERFIELD
Charles Dickens
Context

In 1849, Dickens began to write David Copperfield, a novel based on

his early life experiences. Like Dickens, David works as a child,
pasting labels onto bottles. David also becomes first a law clerk,
then a reporter, and finally a successful novelist. Mr. Micawber is a
satirical version of Dickenss father, a likable man who can never
scrape together the money he needs. Many of the secondary
characters spring from Dickenss experiences as a young man in
financial distress in London.

In later years, Dickens called David Copperfield his favourite child,

and many critics consider the novel to be one of his best depictions
of childhood. Dickenss other works include Oliver Twist (1837
1839),Nicholas Nickelby (18381839), and A Christmas Carol (1843).
47
Perhaps his best known novel, Great Expectations (18601861)
shares many thematic similarities with David Copperfield. Dickens
died in Kent on June 9, 1870, at the age of fifty-eight.

David Copperfield is set in early Victorian England against a

backdrop of great social change. The Industrial Revolution of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had transformed the
social landscape and enabled capitalists and manufacturers to
amass huge fortunes. Although the Industrial Revolution increased
social mobility, the gap between rich and poor remained wide.
London, a teeming mass of humanity lit by gas lamps at night and
darkened by sooty clouds from smokestacks during the day, rose in
dark contrast to Britains sparsely populated rural areas. More and
more people moved from the country to the city in search of the
opportunities that technological innovation promised. But this
migration overpopulated the already crowded cities, and poverty,
disease, hazardous factory conditions, and ramshackle housing
became widespread. Dickens acutely observed these phenomena of
the Industrial Revolution and used them as the canvas on which he
painted David Copperfield and his other urban novels.

Plot Overview
Now a grown man, David Copperfield tells the story of his youth. As
a young boy, he lives happily with his mother and his nurse,
Peggotty. His father died before he was born. During Davids early
childhood, his mother marries the violent Mr. Murdstone, who brings
his strict sister, Miss Murdstone, into the house. The Murdstones
treat David cruelly, and David bites Mr. Murdstones hand during one
beating. The Murdstones send David away to school.

Peggotty takes David to visit her family in Yarmouth, where David

meets Peggottys brother, Mr. Peggotty, and his two adopted
children, Ham and Little Emly. Mr. Peggottys family lives in a boat
turned upside downa space they share with Mrs. Gummidge, the
widowed wife of Mr. Peggottys brother. After this visit, David attends
school at Salem House, which is run by a man named Mr. Creakle.
David befriends and idolizes an egotistical young man named James

48
Steerforth. David also befriends Tommy Traddles, an unfortunate, fat
young boy who is beaten more than the others.

Davids mother dies, and David returns home, where the Murdstones
neglect him. He works at Mr. Murdstones wine-bottling business and
moves in with Mr. Micawber, who mismanages his finances. When
Mr. Micawber leaves London to escape his creditors, David decides
to search for his fathers sister, Miss Betsey Trotwoodhis only living
relative. He walks a long distance to Miss Betseys home, and she
takes him in on the advice of her mentally unstable friend, Mr. Dick.

Miss Betsey sends David to a school run by a man named Doctor

Strong. David moves in with Mr. Wickfield and his daughter, Agnes,
while he attends school. Agnes and David become best friends.
Among Wickfields boarders is Uriah Heep, a snakelike young man
who often involves himself in matters that are none of his business.
David graduates and goes to Yarmouth to visit Peggotty, who is now
married to Mr. Barkis, the carrier. David reflects on what profession
he should pursue.

On his way to Yarmouth, David encounters James Steerforth, and

they take a detour to visit Steerforths mother. They arrive in
Yarmouth, where Steerforth and the Peggottys become fond of one
another. When they return from Yarmouth, Miss Betsey persuades
David to pursue a career as a proctor, a kind of lawyer. David
apprentices himself at the London firm of Spenlow and Jorkins and
takes up lodgings with a woman named Mrs. Crupp. Mr. Spenlow
invites David to his house for a weekend. There, David meets
Spenlows daughter, Dora, and quickly falls in love with her.

49
In London, David is reunited with Tommy Traddles and Mr. Micawber.
Word reaches David, through Steerforth, that Mr. Barkis is terminally
ill. David journeys to Yarmouth to visit Peggotty in her hour of need.
Little Emly and Ham, now engaged, are to be married upon Mr.
Barkiss death. David, however, finds Little Emly upset over her
impending marriage. When Mr. Barkis dies, Little Emly runs off with
Steerforth, who she believes will make her a lady. Mr. Peggotty is
devastated but vows to find Little Emly and bring her home.

Miss Betsey visits London to inform David that her financial security
has been ruined because Mr. Wickfield has joined into a partnership
with Uriah Heep. David, who has become increasingly infatuated
with Dora, vows to work as hard as he can to make their life
together possible. Mr. Spenlow, however, forbids Dora from marrying
David. Mr. Spenlow dies in a carriage accident that night, and Dora
goes to live with her two aunts. Meanwhile, Uriah Heep informs
Doctor Strong that he suspects Doctor Strongs wife, Annie, of
having an affair with her young cousin, Jack Maldon.

Dora and David marry, and Dora proves a terrible housewife,

incompetent in her chores. David loves her anyway and is generally
happy. Mr. Dick facilitates a reconciliation between Doctor Strong
and Annie, who was not, in fact, cheating on her husband. Miss
Dartle, Mrs. Steerforths ward, summons David and informs him that
Steerforth has left Little Emly. Miss Dartle adds that Steerforths
servant, Littimer, has proposed to her and that Little Emly has run
away. David and Mr. Peggotty enlist the help of Little Emlys
childhood friend Martha, who locates Little Emly and brings Mr.
Peggotty to her. Little Emly and Mr. Peggotty decide to move to
Australia, as do the Micawbers, who first save the day for Agnes and
Miss Betsey by exposing Uriah Heeps fraud against Mr. Wickfield.

A powerful storm hits Yarmouth and kills Ham while he attempts to

rescue a shipwrecked sailor. The sailor turns out to be Steerforth.
Meanwhile, Dora falls ill and dies. David leaves the country to travel
abroad. His love for Agnes grows. When David returns, he and
Agnes, who has long harbored a secret love for him, get married and
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have several children. David pursues his writing career with
increasing commercial success.

Analysis of Major Characters

David Copperfield

Although David narrates his story as an adult, he relays the

impressions he had from a youthful point of view. We see how
Davids perception of the world deepens as he comes of age. We see
Davids initial innocence in the contrast between his interpretation
of events and our own understanding of them. Although David is
ignorant of Steerforths treachery, we are aware from the moment
we meet Steerforth that he doesnt deserve the adulation David
feels toward him. David doesnt understand why he hates Uriah or
why he trusts a boy with a donkey cart who steals his money and
leaves him in the road, but we can sense Uriahs devious nature and
the boys treacherous intentions. In Davids first-person narration,
Dickens conveys the wisdom of the older man implicitly, through the
eyes of a child.

Davids complex character allows for contradiction and development

over the course of the novel. Though David is trusting and kind, he
also has moments of cruelty, like the scene in which he intentionally
distresses Mr. Dick by explaining Miss Betseys dire situation to him.
David also displays great tenderness, as in the moment when he
realizes his love for Agnes for the first time. David, especially as a
young man in love, can be foolish and romantic. As he grows up,
however, he develops a more mature point of view and searches for
a lover who will challenge him and help him grow. David fully
matures as an adult when he expresses the sentiment that he
values Agness calm tranquility over all else in his life.
Uriah Heep

Uriah serves a foil to David and contrasts Davids qualities of

innocence and compassion with his own corruption. Though Uriah is
raised in a cruel environment similar to Davids, Uriahs upbringing
causes him to become bitter and vengeful rather than honest and

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hopeful. Dickenss physical description of Uriah marks Uriah as a
demonic character. He refers to Uriahs movements as snakelike and
gives Uriah red hair and red eyes. Uriah and David not only have
opposing characteristics but also operate at cross-purposes. For
example, whereas Uriah wishes to marry Agnes only in order to hurt
David, Davids marriages are both motivated by love. The frequent
contrast between Uriahs and Davids sentiments emphasizes
Davids kindness and moral integrity.

While Davids character development is a process of increased self-

understanding, Uriah grows in his desire to exercise control over
himself and other characters. As Uriah gains more power over Mr.
Wickfield, his sense of entitlement grows and he becomes more and
more power-hungry. The final scenes of the novel, in which Uriah
praises his jail cell because it helps him know what he should do,
show Uriahs need to exert control even when he is a helpless
prisoner. But imprisonment does not redeem his evilif anything, it
compounds his flaws. To the end, Uriah plots strategies to increase
his control. Because he deploys his strategies to selfish purposes
that bring harm to others, he stands out as the novels greatest
villain.
James Steerforth

Steerforth is a slick, egotistical, wealthy young man whose sense of

self-importance overwhelms all his opinions. Steerforth underscores
the difference between what we understand as readers and what
David seesand fails to seein his youthful navet. David takes
Steerforths kindness for granted without analyzing his motives or
detecting his duplicity. When Steerforth befriends David at Salem
House, David doesnt suspect that Steerforth is simply trying to use
David to make friends and gain status. Though Steerforth belittles
David from the moment they meet, David is incapable of conceiving
that his new friend might be taking advantage of him. Because
Steerforths duplicity is so clear to us, Davids lack of insight into
Steerforths true intentions emphasizes his youthful innocence.
Steerforth likes David only because David worships him, and his final
betrayal comes as a surprise to David but not to us.
52
 ALICESS ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND LEWIS CAROLL
CONTEXT
Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson,
a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, who lived from 1832 to
1898. Carrolls physical deformities, partial deafness, and irrepressible
stammer made him an unlikely candidate for producing one of the most
popular and enduring childrens fantasies in the English language.
Carrolls keen grasp of mathematics and logic inspired the linguistic
humor and witty wordplay in his stories. Additionally, his unique
understanding of childrens minds allowed him to compose imaginative
fiction that appealed to young people.

Alice in Wonderland Study Guide

The Alice books were written during the Victorian era, a time now remembered
for its stifling propriety and constrictive morals. Carroll had something of an
outsider's perspective on this world; he was painfully shy, and he often stuttered.
His fondness for little girls has raised more than a few eyebrows, although it is
unknown if Carroll ever acted on this obsession. At any rate, these feelings of his
served to accentuate his feelings of isolation.
But his position gave him tremendous perspective on his world. The creatures of
wonderland have many arbitrary customs. Their behaviors are all defensible with
strange logic, but the customs are still silly or even cruel. There are obvious
echoes of the Victorian world, as the animals are opinionated and have strong
ideas about what constitutes appropriate behavior. The creatures' preciousness
and their arbitrary sensitivities mock the fastidiousness of the Victorian era.
The Alice books also mock the children's literature of the day. In keeping with the
character of the time, children's literature was full of simplistic morals and
heavy-handed attempts to educate the young. Some of the books supposedly for
children were quite dry, and at the least suffered from a lack of imagination.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published in 1865, and it was an
immediate success. Carroll's sense of the absurd and his amazing gift for games
of logic and language have made the Alice books popular with both adults and
children, and they have remained some of the best-known children's books
written in English. The well-known Disney adaptation draws freely from both
books, while retaining the basic structure of the first book and remaining faithful
to the flavor and central themes of the story.
The Alice books deal with the sometimes precarious world of children; the reader
should keep in mind that at the time of their writing, the advent of
industrialization had raised people's consciousness of child labor and
exploitation. Carroll sees the world of children as a dangerous place, shadowed
by the threat of death and the presence of adults who are powerful but often
absurd.
The book is refreshingly complex, refusing to take patronize its young audience
with simplistic morals or perspectives. A point of comparison is Antoine de St.
Exupery's The Little Prince: while the The Little Prince sets up a rather simplistic
binary between children (who are good, wise and innocent) and "the big people"
(who are mean, shallow, and foolish), the Alice books satirize the absurdities of

53
adults while avoiding pat conclusions about the difference between adults and
children. Childhood is seen as a state of danger, and although Carroll has an
evident fondness for children he never idealizes them. Alice's challenge is to
grow into a strong and compassionate person despite the idiosyncrasies of the
creatures she meets (the creatures symbolizing the adult world). She has to learn
the rules of each new encounter, but in the end she must also retain a sense of
justice and develop a sense of herself. Rather than set childhood and adulthood
as simple opposites, valorizing the former and disparaging the latter, Carroll
shows the process by which a good child can become a strong adult. Alice is also
not without "adult" friends along the way: in the first book, for example, the
Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat are two enigmatic creatures who seem to
understand how Wonderland works. They help Alice at key points.
The books always retain a sense of mystery and a fondness for the sinister; even
the characters who aid Alice have a dark edge to them. The hints of mortality
and the sense of fear in the books have only contributed to their popularity. The
books stand as evidence that children's literature need not talk down to its
audience. In fact, it is the depth and sophistication of the Alice books that has
won them recognition as some of the best children's literature ever written.

Alice in Wonderland Summary

Alice is sitting with her sister outdoors when she spies a White Rabbit with a
pocket watch. Fascinated by the sight, she follows the rabbit down the hole. She
falls for a long time, and finds herself in a long hallway full of doors. There is also
a key on the table, which unlocks a tiny door; through this door, she spies a
beautiful garden. She longs to get there, but the door is too small. Soon, she
finds a drink with a note that asks her to drink it. There is later a cake with a note
that tells her to eat; Alice uses both, but she cannot seem to get a handle on
things, and is always either too large to get through the door or too small to
reach the key.
While she is tiny, she slips and falls into a pool of water. She realizes that this
little sea is made of tears she cried while a giant. She swims to shore with a
number of animals, most notably a sensitive mouse, but manages to offend
everyone by talking about her cat's ability to catch birds and mice. Left alone,
she goes on through the wood and runs into the White Rabbit. He mistakes her
for his maid and sends her to fetch some things from his house. While in the
White Rabbit's home, she drinks another potion and becomes too huge to get out
through the door. She eventually finds a little cake which, when eaten, makes her
small again.
In the wood again, she comes across a Caterpillar sitting on a mushroom. He
gives her some valuable advice, as well as a valuable tool: the two sides of the
mushroom, which can make Alice grow larger and smaller as she wishes. The
first time she uses them, she stretches her body out tremendously. While
stretched out, she pokes her head into the branches of a tree and meets a
Pigeon. The Pigeon is convinced that Alice is a serpent, and though Alice tries to
reason with her the Pigeon tells her to be off.
Alice gets herself down to normal proportions and continues her trek through the
woods. In a clearing she comes across a little house and shrinks herself down
enough to get inside. It is the house of the Duchess; the Duchess and the Cook
are battling fiercely, and they seem unconcerned about the safety of the baby
that the Duchess is nursing. Alice takes the baby with her, but the child turns
into a pig and trots off into the woods. Alice next meets the Cheshire cat (who
was sitting in the Duchess's house, but said nothing). The Cheshire cat helps her

54
to find her way through the woods, but he warns her that everyone she meets
will be mad.
Alice goes to then March Hare's house, where she is treated to a Mad Tea Party.
Present are the March Hare, the Hatter, and the Dormouse. Ever since Time
stopped working for the Hatter, it has always been six o'clock; it is therefore
always teatime. The creatures of the Mad Tea Party are some of the must
argumentative in all of Wonderland. Alice leaves them and finds a tree with a
door in it: when she looks through the door, she spies the door-lined hallway from
the beginning of her adventures. This time, she is prepared, and she manages to
get to the lovely garden that she saw earlier. She walks on through, and finds
herself in the garden of the Queen of Hearts. There, three gardeners (with bodies
shaped like playing cards) are painting the roses red. If the Queen finds out that
they planted white roses, she'll have them beheaded. The Queen herself soon
arrives, and she does order their execution; Alice helps to hide them in a large
flowerpot.
The Queen invites Alice to play croquet, which is a very difficult game in
Wonderland, as the balls and mallets are live animals. The game is interrupted
by the appearance of the Cheshire cat, whom the King of Hearts immediately
dislikes.
The Queen takes Alice to the Gryphon, who in turn takes Alice to the Mock Turtle.
The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle tell Alice bizarre stories about their school
under the sea. The Mock Turtles sings a melancholy song about turtle soup, and
soon afterward the Gryphon drags Alice off to see the trial of the Knave of
Hearts.
The Knave of Hearts has been accused of stealing the tarts of the Queen of
Hearts, but the evidence against him is very bad. Alice is appalled by the
ridiculous proceedings. She also begins to grow larger. She is soon called to the
witness stand; by this time she has grown to giant size. She refuses to be
intimidated by the bad logic of the court and the bluster of the King and Queen
of Hearts. Suddenly, the cards all rise up and attack her, at which point she
wakes up. Her adventures in Wonderland have all been a fantastic dream.

ANALYSIS OF MAJOR CHARACTERS

Alice
Alice is a sensible prepubescent girl from a wealthy English family who
finds herself in a strange world ruled by imagination and fantasy. Alice
feels comfortable with her identity and has a strong sense that her
environment is comprised of clear, logical, and consistent rules and
features. Alices familiarity with the world has led one critic to describe
her as a disembodied intellect. Alice displays great curiosity and
attempts to fit her diverse experiences into a clear understanding of the
world. Alice approaches Wonderland as an anthropologist, but maintains a
strong sense of noblesse oblige that comes with her class status. She has
confidence in her social position, education, and the Victorian virtue of
good manners.
The tension of Alices Adventures in Wonderland emerges when Alices
fixed perspective of the world comes into contact with the mad, illogical
world of Wonderland. Alices fixed sense of order clashes with the
madness she finds in Wonderland.

55
Most significantly, Wonderland challenges her perceptions of good
manners by constantly assaulting her with dismissive rudeness. Alices
fundamental beliefs face challenges at every turn, and as a result Alice
suffers an identity crisis. She persists in her way of life as she perceives
her sense of order collapsing all around her. Alice must choose between
retaining her notions of order and assimilating into Wonderlands
nonsensical rules.
THEMES
1.The tragic and inevitable loss of childhood innocence
Throughout the course of Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice goes
through a variety of absurd physical changes. The discomfort she feels at
never being the right size acts as a symbol for the changes that occur
during puberty. Alice finds these changes to be traumatic, and feels
discomfort, frustration, and sadness when she goes through them. She
struggles to maintain a comfortable physical size.
2.Life as a meaningless puzzle
In Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice encounters a series of puzzles
that seem to have no clear solutions, which imitates the ways that life
frustrates expectations. Alice expects that the situations she encounters
will make a certain kind of sense, but they repeatedly frustrate her ability
to figure out Wonderland.
In every instance, the riddles and challenges presented to Alice have no
purpose or answer. Even though Lewis Carroll was a logician, in Alices
Adventures in Wonderland he makes a farce out of jokes, riddles, and
games of logic. Alice learns that she cannot expect to find logic or
meaning in the situations that she encounters, even when they appear to
be problems, riddles, or games that would normally have solutions that
Alice would be able to figure out. Carroll makes a broader point about the
ways that life frustrates expectations and resists interpretation, even
when problems seem familiar or solvable.
3.Death as a constant and underlying menace
Alice continually finds herself in situations in which she risks death, and
while these threats never materialize, they suggest that death lurks just
behind the ridiculous events of Alices Adventures in Wonderland as a
present and possible outcome.
Alice takes risks that could possibly kill her, but she never considers death
as a possible outcome. Over time, she starts to realize that her
experiences in Wonderland are far more threatening than they appear to
be. As the Queen screams Off with its head! she understands that
Wonderland may not merely be a ridiculous realm where expectations are
repeatedly frustrated. Death may be a real threat, and Alice starts to
understand that the risks she faces may not be ridiculous and absurd after
all.
MOTIFS
1.Dream
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Alices Adventures in Wonderland takes place in Alices dream, so that the
characters and phenomena of the real world mix with elements of Alices
unconscious state. The dream motif explains the abundance of
nonsensical and disparate events in the story. As in a dream, the narrative
follows the dreamer as she encounters various episodes in which she
attempts to interpret her experiences in relationship to herself and her
world.
2.Subversion
Alice quickly discovers during her travels that the only reliable aspect of
Wonderland that she can count on is that it will frustrate her expectations
and challenge her understanding of the natural order of the world. In
Wonderland, Alice finds that her lessons no longer mean what she
thought, as she botches her multiplication tables and incorrectly recites
poems she had memorized while in Wonderland. Even Alices physical
dimensions become warped as she grows and shrinks erratically
throughout the story. Wonderland frustrates Alices desires to fit her
experiences in a logical framework where she can make sense of the
relationship between cause and effect.
3.Language
Carroll plays with linguistic conventions in Alices Adventures in
Wonderland, making use of puns and playing on multiple meanings of
words throughout the text. Carroll invents words and expressions and
develops new meanings for words. Alices exclamation Curious and
curiouser! suggests that both her surroundings and the language she
uses to describe them expand beyond expectation and convention.
Anything is possible in Wonderland, and Carrolls manipulation of
language reflects this sense of unlimited possibility.
4.Curious, nonsense and confusing
Alice uses these words throughout her journey to describe phenomena
she has trouble explaining. Though the words are generally
interchangeable, she usually assigns curious and confusing to experiences
or encounters that she tolerates. She endures the experiences that are
curious or confusing, hoping to gain a clearer picture of how that
individual or experience functions in the world. When Alice declares
something to be nonsense, as she does with the trial in Chapter 12, she
rejects or criticizes the experience or encounter.
SYMBOLS
1.The garden
Nearly every object in Alices Adventures in Wonderland functions as a
symbol, but nothing clearly represents one particular thing. The garden
may symbolize the Garden of Eden, an idyllic space of beauty and
innocence that Alice is not permitted to access. On a more abstract level,
the garden may simply represent the experience of desire, in that Alice
focuses her energy and emotion on trying to attain it. The two symbolic
meanings work together to underscore Alices desire to hold onto her
feelings of childlike innocence that she must relinquish as she matures.
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2.The Caterpillars mushroom
Like the garden, the Caterpillars mushroom also has multiple symbolic
meanings. Some readers and critics view the Caterpillar as a sexual
threat, its phallic shape a symbol of sexual virility. The Caterpillars
mushroom connects to this symbolic meaning. Alice must master the
properties of the mushroom to gain control over her fluctuating size,
which represents the bodily frustrations that accompany puberty. Others
view the mushroom as a psychedelic hallucinogen that compounds Alices
surreal and distorted perception of Wonderland.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS CHARLES DICKENS

Dickens is the first 19th century English writer who visibly moves from the
social phase, in the development of the novel, to the more sophisticated
psychological and phenomenological phases. His originality derives at
least from three major innovations of his epic:
1. The investigation of human nature he breaks up with the
classical prejudice according to which characters should embody
principles, and therefore be unidirectional (either good or evil). In
the traditional novel and drama, characters are either heroes or
villains, displaying constantly either virtues or vices. Life forces
us to accept the fact that the human nature is contradictory,
being impossible to fit in one unidirectional typology only. In reality,
people are morally ambiguous, psychologically unpredictable and
structurally dual, swinging between good and evil.
2. The perception of reality in the novel the author gives up
entirely the use of an omniscient perspective in favour of the
first person narrative (the use of a narrator who sees reality
through his own eyes, according to his subjectivity, degree of
knowledge, sensitivity, sensibility and strategies). This represents a
revolution in the English novel, marking the beginning of
Modernism. It is a new type of Realism which doesnt focus much on
the imitation of nature and society, but rather in being true-to-life
itself.
3. The ironic constructions of his dramatic plots irony can be
defined as a conflict between what is said and what is meant,
between appearance and reality. Dickenss major novels should
be regarded as essentially ironic constructs, since they illustrate a
permanent oscillation between appearance and realities. His
dramatic plots rely fundamentally on an ironic design.
Consequences of his irony are the humour, the satirical critique, the
grotesque charaacters.
Dickenss work has two phases:
1. A phase of formation
2. A phase of maturity

58
The distinction between these two moments of Dickenss artistic
evolution is stylistic and psychological. If, in the former period of
creation, the authors style is much indebted to his journalistic beginnings
and his heroes seem to be tributary to the tradition, in the latter, his
style is more elaborate, announcing one of the greatest prose writers in
the history of world literature. Both periods influence crucially the
development of Victorian culture.
The absolute masterpiece is Great Expectations. This is the novel in
which by means of a first person narrator Dickens announces the
beginning of a new form of epic that can be easily characterized as
modernist. The text is partly autobiographic and has the elements of a
Bildungsroman. Although similar to Dickens himself (he is an orphan),
Pip the only autobiographical suggestion of the novel should not be
mistaken, however, for the author. Pip behaves exactly like a narrator,
displaying an acute subjectivity. He filters reality through his own
consciousness and everything we see in the novel consists of what he
actually sees and interprets for us. Nothing is properly objective, since it is
adapted to Pips subjectivity. The narrative strategy becomes obvious at
the very outset of the story when the reader gets introduced to the
narrator of the text: Pip. Pip is just a five year old boy in this introductory
scene and he observes things according to his age. There are
moments when we the readers seem to know more than the
narrator, as our experience is, evidently, much wider. He
confesses he sees the church turning upside down. This remains a
highly metaphorical scene. It has a double significance. On the one hand,
it anticipates the evolution of facts in the novel (Magwitch will turn
Pips life at one point upside down). On the other hand and more
importantly, it suggests to us the Pip is the independent narrator of
the novel. We are going to see reality through his eyes only.
1.The first turning point is Pips experience in the house of Ms.
Havisham. Ms. Havisham wants to protect Estella from the mistakes she
committed as a young woman. So, she teaches her how to hate men. Pip
innocent and good-natured is a perfect victim. He becomes an
instrument of this weird educational process.
2.The second turning point in Pips formation is his meeting with
Jaggers, Ms. Havishams lawyer.
3.The third turning point in the novel is Pips encounter with his
real benefactor, Magwitch. The escaped convict wanted to pay back his
debt to Pip, he wanted to prove that his money is as good as anyone
elses money. Pip failed to observe the outside reality, becoming a
prisoner of his inner universe, the universe of his emotions and
aspirations.
4.The fourth turning point of the narrative is Pips ultimate
formation. Completely mature now, he renounces his dreams about
Estella ( who has been morally mutilated by Ms. Havisham) and gives up
Magwitchs money, starting a business of his own. The evil character,
Compeyson who deserted Ms. Havisham in their wedding day and

59
corrupted Magwitch, influenced directly or indirectly, in a negative way, all
the destinies of the novel.
This last part of the novel resembles more the traditional melodramas,
because of its highly emotional content. Great Expectations is an ironic
novel that deconstructs the idea of the traditional authorship.
Everything starts with Pips subjectivity and is shaped out according to his
wish, without the intervention of the author. Pips love for Estella is like an
axis of the epic. Ms. Havisham looks initially like a good mother and a
benefactor. Later on, Magwitch replaces her as the actual father and
benefactor. The whole text becomes thus a clash between appearance
and reality. In the middle we have Jaggers who knows all about
everything and everyone. He turns out to be the actual alter-ego of the
omniscient author. He is a deus otiosus who no longer interferes with the
lives of his creatures. This is one of the strongest pre-modernist
metaphors about the lost authorship in the English novel. Therefore, the
novel is in fact a pyramid articulated from bottom (text) to top
(author).
CONTEXT
Many of the events from Dickenss early life are mirrored in Great
Expectations, which, apart from David Copperfield, is his most
autobiographical novel. Pip, the novels protagonist, lives in the marsh
country, works at a job he hates, considers himself too good for his
surroundings, and experiences material success in London at a very early
age, exactly as Dickens himself did. In addition, one of the novels most
appealing characters, Wemmick, is a law clerk, and the law, justice, and
the courts are all important components of the story.
Great Expectations is set in early Victorian England, a time when great
social changes were sweeping the nation. The Industrial Revolution of the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had transformed the social
landscape, enabling capitalists and manufacturers to amass huge
fortunes. Although social class was no longer entirely dependent on the
circumstances of ones birth, the divisions between rich and poor
remained nearly as wide as ever. London, a teeming mass of humanity, lit
by gas lamps at night and darkened by black clouds from smokestacks
during the day, formed a sharp contrast with the nations sparsely
populated rural areas. More and more people moved from the country to
the city in search of greater economic opportunity. Throughout England,
the manners of the upper class were very strict and conservative:
gentlemen and ladies were expected to have thorough classical
educations and to behave appropriately in innumerable social situations.
These conditions defined Dickenss time, and they make themselves felt in
almost every facet of Great Expectations. Pips sudden rise from country
laborer to city gentleman forces him to move from one social extreme to
another while dealing with the strict rules and expectations that governed
Victorian England. Ironically, this novel about the desire for wealth and
social advancement was written partially out of economic necessity.

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In form, Great Expectations fits a pattern popular in nineteenth-century
European fiction: the bildungsroman, or novel depicting growth and
personal development, generally a transition from boyhood to manhood
such as that experienced by Pip. The genre was popularized by Goethe
with his book Wilhelm Meister (17941796) and became prevalent in
England with such books as Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe, Charlotte
Bronts Jane Eyre, and Dickenss own David Copperfield. Each of these
works, like Great Expectations, depicts a process of maturation and self-
discovery through experience as a protagonist moves from childhood to
adulthood.

Analysis of major characters

1.Pip
As a bildungsroman, Great Expectations presents the growth and
development of a single character, Philip Pirrip, better known to himself
and to the world as Pip. As the focus of the bildungsroman, Pip is by far
the most important character in Great Expectations: he is both the
protagonist, whose actions make up the main plot of the novel, and the
narrator, whose thoughts and attitudes shape the readers perception of
the story. As a result, developing an understanding of Pips character is
perhaps the most important step in understanding Great Expectations.
Because Pip is narrating his story many years after the events of the novel
take place, there are really two Pips in Great Expectations: Pip the narrator
and Pip the characterthe voice telling the story and the person acting it
out.
As a character, Pips two most important traits are his immature, romantic
idealism and his innately good conscience. On the one hand, Pip has a
deep desire to improve himself and attain any possible advancement,
whether educational, moral, or social. His longing to marry Estella and join
the upper classes stems from the same idealistic desire as his longing to
learn to read and his fear of being punished for bad behavior: once he
understands ideas like poverty, ignorance, and immorality, Pip does not
want to be poor, ignorant, or immoral. Pip the narrator judges his own
past actions extremely harshly, rarely giving himself credit for good deeds
but angrily castigating himself for bad ones.
On the other hand, Pip is at heart a very generous and sympathetic young
man, a fact that can be witnessed in his numerous acts of kindness
throughout the book (helping Magwitch, secretly buying Herberts way
into business, etc.) and his essential love for all those who love him. Pips
main line of development in the novel may be seen as the process of
learning to place his innate sense of kindness and conscience above his
immature idealism.
The fact that he comes to admire Magwitch while losing Estella to the
brutish nobleman Drummle ultimately forces him to realize that ones
social position is not the most important quality one possesses, and that
his behavior as a gentleman has caused him to hurt the people who care

61
about him most. Once he has learned these lessons, Pip matures into the
man who narrates the novel, completing the bildungsroman.
2.Estella
Estella is a supremely ironic creation, one who darkly undermines the
notion of romantic love and serves as a bitter criticism against the class
system in which she is mired. Raised from the age of three by Miss
Havisham to torment men and break their hearts, Estella wins Pips
deepest love by practicing deliberate cruelty. Unlike the warm, winsome,
kind heroine of a traditional love story, Estella is cold, cynical, and
manipulative.
Ironically, life among the upper classes does not represent salvation for
Estella. Instead, she is victimized twice by her adopted class. Rather than
being raised by Magwitch, a man of great inner nobility, she is raised by
Miss Havisham, who destroys her ability to express emotion and interact
normally with the world. And rather than marrying the kindhearted
commoner Pip, Estella marries the cruel nobleman Drummle, who treats
her harshly and makes her life miserable for many years. In this way,
Dickens uses Estellas life to reinforce the idea that ones happiness and
well-being are not deeply connected to ones social position: had Estella
been poor, she might have been substantially better off.
Despite her cold behavior and the damaging influences in her life, Dickens
nevertheless ensures that Estella is still a sympathetic character. By
giving the reader a sense of her inner struggle to discover and act on her
own feelings rather than on the imposed motives of her upbringing,
Dickens gives the reader a glimpse of Estellas inner life, which helps to
explain what Pip might love about her.
Finally, Estellas long, painful marriage to Drummle causes her to develop
along the same lines as Pipthat is, she learns, through experience, to
rely on and trust her inner feelings. In the final scene of the novel, she has
become her own woman for the first time in the book. As she says to Pip,
Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching. . . . I have been bent
and broken, butI hopeinto a better shape.

THEMES
1.Ambition and self-improvement
The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty,
and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and
class. Dickens establishes the theme and shows Pip learning this lesson,
largely by exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvementideas that
quickly become both the thematic center of the novel and the
psychological mechanism that encourages much of Pips development. At
heart, Pip is an idealist; whenever he can conceive of something that is
better than what he already has, he immediately desires to obtain the
improvement. When he sees Satis House, he longs to be a wealthy

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gentleman; when he thinks of his moral shortcomings, he longs to be
good; when he realizes that he cannot read, he longs to learn how. Pips
desire for self-improvement is the main source of the novels title:
because he believes in the possibility of advancement in life, he has
great expectations about his future.
Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectations
moral, social, and educational; these motivate Pips best and his worst
behavior throughout the novel. First, Pip desires moral self-improvement.
He is extremely hard on himself when he acts immorally and feels
powerful guilt that spurs him to act better in the future.
Second, Pip desires social self-improvement. He entertains fantasies of
becoming a gentleman. The working out of this fantasy forms the basic
plot of the novel; it provides Dickens the opportunity to gently satirize the
class system of his era and to make a point about its capricious nature.
Significantly, Pips life as a gentleman is no more satisfyingand certainly
no more moralthan his previous life as a blacksmiths apprentice. Third,
Pip desires educational improvement. This desire is deeply connected to
his social ambition and longing to marry Estella: a full education is a
requirement of being a gentleman. Pip learns that social and educational
improvement are irrelevant to ones real worth and that conscience and
affection are to be valued above erudition and social standing.
2.Social class
Dickens explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging from the
most wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of the marsh
country (Joe and Biddy) to the middle class (Pumblechook) to the very rich
(Miss Havisham). The theme of social class is central to the novels plot
and to the ultimate moral theme of the bookPips realization that wealth
and class are less important than affection, loyalty, and inner worth.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the novels
treatment of social class is that the class system it portrays is based on
the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England. Dickens
generally ignores the nobility and the hereditary aristocracy in favor of
characters whose fortunes have been earned through commerce.
3.Crime, guilt and innocence
The theme of crime, guilt, and innocence is explored throughout the novel
largely through the characters of the convicts and the criminal lawyer
Jaggers. The imagery of crime and criminal justice pervades the book,
becoming an important symbol of Pips inner struggle to reconcile his own
inner moral conscience with the institutional justice system. In general,
just as social class becomes a superficial standard of value that Pip must
learn to look beyond in finding a better way to live his life, the external
trappings of the criminal justice system (police, courts, jails, etc.) become
a superficial standard of morality that Pip must learn to look beyond to
trust his inner conscience.
MOTIFS
1.Doubles
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Dickenss plots involve complicated coincidences, extraordinarily tangled
webs of human relationships, and highly dramatic developments in which
setting, atmosphere, event, and character are all seamlessly fused.
From the earliest scenes of the novel to the last, nearly every element
of Great Expectations is mirrored or doubled at some other point in the
book. There are two convicts on the marsh (Magwitch and Compeyson),
two invalids (Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham), two young women who interest
Pip (Biddy and Estella), and so on. There are two secret benefactors:
Magwitch, who gives Pip his fortune, and Pip, who mirrors Magwitchs
action by secretly buying Herberts way into the mercantile business.
Finally, there are two adults who seek to mold children after their own
purposes: Magwitch, who wishes to own a gentleman and decides to
make Pip one, and Miss Havisham, who raises Estella to break mens
hearts in revenge for her own broken heart. Interestingly, both of these
actions are motivated by Compeyson: Magwitch resents but is
nonetheless covetous of Compeysons social status and education, which
motivates his desire to make Pip a gentleman, and Miss Havishams heart
was broken when Compeyson left her at the altar, which motivates her
desire to achieve revenge through Estella. The relationship between Miss
Havisham and Compeysona well-born woman and a common man
further mirrors the relationship between Estella and Pip. This doubling of
elements ads to the sense that everything in Pips world is connected.
2.Comparison of characters to inanimate objects
Throughout Great Expectations, the narrator uses images of inanimate
objects to describe the physical appearance of charactersparticularly
minor characters, or characters with whom the narrator is not intimate.
For example, Mrs. Joe looks as if she scrubs her face with a nutmeg grater,
while the inscrutable features of Mr. Wemmick are repeatedly compared to
a letter-box. This motif, which Dickens uses throughout his novels, may
suggest a failure of empathy on the narrators part, or it may suggest that
the characters position in life is pressuring them to resemble a thing more
than a human being. The latter interpretation would mean that the motif
in general is part of a social critique, in that it implies that an institution
such as the class system or the criminal justice system dehumanizes
certain people.
SYMBOLS
1.Satis house
In Satis House, Dickens creates a magnificent Gothic setting whose
various elements symbolize Pips romantic perception of the upper class
and many other themes of the book. On her decaying body, Miss
Havishams wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and
degeneration. The wedding dress and the wedding feast symbolize Miss
Havishams past, and the stopped clocks throughout the house symbolize
her determined attempt to freeze time by refusing to change anything
from the way it was when she was jilted on her wedding day. The brewery
next to the house symbolizes the connection between commerce and
wealth: Miss Havishams fortune is not the product of an aristocratic birth
but of a recent success in industrial capitalism. Finally, the crumbling,
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dilapidated stones of the house, as well as the darkness and dust that
pervade it, symbolize the general decadence of the lives of its inhabitants
and of the upper class as a whole.
2.The mists on the marshes
The setting almost always symbolizes a theme in Great Expectations and
always sets a tone that is perfectly matched to the novels dramatic
action. The misty marshes near Pips childhood home in Kent, one of the
most evocative of the books settings, are used several times to symbolize
danger and uncertainty. Whenever Pip goes into the mists, something
dangerous is likely to happen. Significantly, Pip must go through the mists
when he travels to London shortly after receiving his fortune, alerting the
reader that this apparently positive development in his life may have
dangerous consequences.
3.Bentely Drummle
Although he is a minor character in the novel, Bentley Drummle provides
an important contrast with Pip and represents the arbitrary nature of class
distinctions. In his mind, Pip has connected the ideas of moral, social, and
educational advancement so that each depends on the others. The coarse
and cruel Drummle, a member of the upper class, provides Pip with proof
that social advancement has no inherent connection to intelligence or
moral worth. Drummle is a lout who has inherited immense wealth, while
Pips friend and brother-in-law Joe is a good man who works hard for the
little he earns. Drummles negative example helps Pip to see the inner
worth of characters such as Magwitch and Joe, and eventually to discard
his immature fantasies about wealth and class in favor of a new
understanding that is both more compassionate and more realistic.

TESS OF THE DRBERVILLES THOMAS HARDY

Thomas Hardy an architect former is one of the outstanding Victorian
writers primarily because of his most important cultural experiment. He
reactivated the classical tragedy in a modern artistic context. The
main artistic intention in his epic is to create traditional tragedies
with classical heroes.
A tragedy is always a conflict whose forces cannot be reconciled;
the conflict always leads to the annihilation/termination/destruction of
the character who is caught at the core of the opposition; the tragic
represents the aesthetic object of tragedy. From a cultural and
historical viewpoint, we have several forms of tragedy:
1. The tragedy of destiny is the Greek ancient form of tragedy,
depicted by Aristotle in his Poetics. It is the tragedy of bad fate
(fatum malus) (= the overwhelming destiny which follows the hero
everywhere, finally destroying him). The character cant escape his
fate, wherever he may run or whatever he may do.
2. The tragedy of duality is the neo classical form of tragedy. It is
the tragedy of the split personality, referring to an inner conflict

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 between psychological forces linked to the nature/personality of the
hero. The traditional example of clash is the opposition between
passion and duty or instinct and reason. There are other
antinomies which can produce tragedies of psychological duality:
appearance/reality, innocence/guilt, love/hatred; this type of
tragedy is internal, focusing on the heros divided psychology.
3. The tragedy of hybris/hubris is a modern type of tragedy in
which the clash may be equally internal and external. Hybris is
connected with pride. The hero, in other words, is so proud, that he
provokes his given limits. These limits once broken turn against
the character and make him a tragic victim. The limit can be inner
(connected to the heros spiritual, cultural or moral possibilities) or
outer (linked to an obstacle of the exterior world, which the hero
wants, unsuccessfully, to pass).
Another extremely important tragic concept is the tragic flaw, which
represent a personal defect or shortcoming of the character. The tragic
flaw facilitates the manifestation of the tragedy, allowing it to
happen. One other important concept is the tragic situation, which
illustrates the conflictual position of a character in a tragedy. This
conflictual position is also called a tragically jeopardizing situation
by this, the philosopher means the fact that a tragic hero doesnt
have the possibility to choose, all his options being fatal.
Thomas Hardy combined all three forms of tragedy and elements of
tragedy, leaving behind one of the most original Victorian literary
construction. His novels insist much on character and environment,
being sometimes romances or fantasies or, other times,
melodramas and tragedies.
Tess of the DUrbervilles represents, similarly, a combination of the three
forms of tragedy: destiny, duality and hybris. In intention the novel is a
tragedy of duality (Tess is dual, like Jude; she is torn between her passion
that makes her surrender to Alec and her spirit which makes her appealing
to Angel; as the author says, she is simultaneously a child and a woman,
Mary and Magdalene; her tragic flaw is her uncontrolled instinct which
makes her resonate to Alecs advances and, finally, kill a man) and
hybris, too ( Tess provokes her social and moral limit when she accepts
Alec the second time, becoming a sort of urban mistress).
CONTEXT
Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton in
Dorset, a rural region of southwestern England that was to become the
focus of his fiction. Although he built a reputation as a successful novelist,
Hardy considered himself first and foremost a poet. To him, novels were
primarily a means of earning a living. But Hardy cannot solely be labeled a
Victorian novelist. Nor can he be categorized simply as a Modernist, in the
tradition of writers like Virginia Woolf or D. H. Lawrence, who were
determined to explode the conventions of nineteenth-century literature
and build a new kind of novel in its place. In many respects, Hardy was
trapped in the middle ground between the nineteenth and twentieth

66
centuries, between Victorian sensibilities and more modern ones, and
between tradition and innovation.
InTess of the dUrbervilles and other novels, Hardy demonstrates his deep
sense of moral sympathy for Englands lower classes, particularly for rural
women. He became famous for his compassionate, often controversial
portrayal of young women victimized by the self-righteous rigidity of
English social morality. Perhaps his most famous depiction of such a young
woman is in Tess of the dUrbervilles.
Hardy lived and wrote in a time of difficult social change, when England
was making its slow and painful transition from an old-fashioned,
agricultural nation to a modern, industrial one. Businessmen and
entrepreneurs, or new money, joined the ranks of the social elite, as
some families of the ancient aristocracy, or old money, faded into
obscurity. Tesss family in Tess of the dUrbervilles illustrates this change,
as Tesss parents, the Durbeyfields, lose themselves in the fantasy of
belonging to an ancient and aristocratic family, the dUrbervilles. Hardys
novel strongly suggests that such a family history is not only meaningless
but also utterly undesirable. Hardys views on the subject were appalling
to conservative and status-conscious British readers, and Tess of the
dUrbervilles was met in England with widespread controversy.
Analysis of major characters
1.Tess
Intelligent, strikingly attractive, and distinguished by her deep moral
sensitivity and passionate intensity, Tess is indisputably the central
character of the novel that bears her name. But she is also more than a
distinctive individual: Hardy makes her into somewhat of a mythic
heroine. Her name, formally Theresa, recalls St. Teresa of Avila, another
martyr whose vision of a higher reality cost her her life. Other characters
often refer to Tess in mythical terms, as when Angel calls her a Daughter
of Nature in Chapter XVIII, or refers to her by the Greek mythological
names Artemis and Demeter in Chapter XX. The narrator himself
sometimes describes Tess as more than an individual woman, but as
something closer to a mythical incarnation of womanhood.
In part, Tess represents the changing role of the agricultural workers in
England in the late nineteenth century.Tess is a symbol of unclear and
unstable notions of class in nineteenth-century Britain, where old family
lines retained their earlier glamour, but where cold economic realities
made sheer wealth more important than inner nobility.
Beyond her social symbolism, Tess represents fallen humanity in a
religious sense, as the frequent biblical allusions in the novel remind us.
Just as Tesss clan was once glorious and powerful but is now sadly
diminished, so too did the early glory of the first humans, Adam and Eve,
fade with their expulsion from Eden, making humans sad shadows of what
they once were. Tess thus represents what is known in Christian theology
as original sin, the degraded state in which all humans live, even when
like Tess herself after killing Prince or succumbing to Alecthey are not
wholly or directly responsible for the sins for which they are punished. This
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torment represents the most universal side of Tess: she is the myth of the
human who suffers for crimes that are not her own and lives a life more
degraded than she deserves.
2.Alec DUrberville
Alec is the nemesis and downfall of Tesss life. His first name, Alexander,
suggests the conqueroras in Alexander the Greatwho seizes what he
wants regardless of moral propriety. Yet he is more slippery than a grand
conqueror. His full last name, Stoke-dUrberville, symbolizes the split
character of his family, whose origins are simpler than their pretensions to
grandeur. After all, Stokes is a blunt and inelegant name. Indeed, the
divided and duplicitous character of Alec is evident to the very end of the
novel, when he quickly abandons his newfound Christian faith upon
remeeting Tess.
This duplicity of character is so intense in Alec, and its consequences for
Tess so severe, that he becomes diabolical. The first part of his surname
conjures associations with fiery energies, as in the stoking of a furnace or
the flames of hell. His devilish associations are evident when he wields a
pitchfork while addressing Tess early in the novel, and when he seduces
her as the serpent in Genesis seduced Eve. Additionally, like the famous
depiction of Satan in Miltons Paradise Lost, Alec does not try to hide his
bad qualities. In fact, like Satan, he revels in them. In Chapter XII, he
bluntly tells Tess, I suppose I am a bad fellowa damn bad fellow. I was
born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad, in all probability.
There is frank acceptance in this admission and no shame. Some readers
feel Alec is too wicked to be believable, but, like Tess herself, he
represents a larger moral principle rather than a real individual man. Like
Satan, Alec symbolizes the base forces of life that drive a person away
from moral perfection and greatness.

3.Angel Clare
Angel represents a rebellious striving toward a personal vision of
goodness. He is a secularist who yearns to work for the honor and glory
of man, as he tells his father in Chapter XVIII, rather than for the honor
and glory of God in a more distant world. A typical young nineteenth-
century progressive, Angel sees human society as a thing to be remolded
and improved, and he fervently believes in the nobility of man. He rejects
the values handed to him, and sets off in search of his own. His love for
Tess, a mere milkmaid and his social inferior, is one expression of his
disdain for tradition. This independent spirit contributes to his aura of
charisma and general attractiveness that makes him the love object of all
the milkmaids with whom he works at Talbothays.
As his namein French, close to Bright Angelsuggests, Angel is not
quite of this world, but floats above it in a transcendent sphere of his own.
The narrator says that Angel shines rather than burns and that he is closer
to the intellectually aloof poet Shelley than to the fleshly and passionate

68
poet Byron. His love for Tess may be abstract, as we guess when he calls
her Daughter of Nature or Demeter. Tess may be more an archetype
or ideal to him than a flesh and blood woman with a complicated life.
Angels ideals of human purity are too elevated to be applied to actual
people: Mrs. Durbeyfields easygoing moral beliefs are much more easily
accommodated to real lives such as Tesss. Angel awakens to the actual
complexities of real-world morality after his failure in Brazil, and only then
he realizes he has been unfair to Tess. His moral system is readjusted as
he is brought down to Earth. Ironically, it is not the angel who guides the
human in this novel, but the human who instructs the angel, although at
the cost of her own life.
THEMES
1.The injustice of existence
Unfairness dominates the lives of Tess and her family to such an extent
that it begins to seem like a general aspect of human existence in Tess of
the dUrbervilles.Tess does not mean to kill Prince, but she is punished
anyway, just as she is unfairly punished for her own rape by Alec. Nor is
there justice waiting in heaven. Christianity teaches that there is
compensation in the afterlife for unhappiness suffered in this life, but the
only devout Christian encountered in the novel may be the reverend, Mr.
Clare, who seems more or less content in his life anyway. For others in
their misery, Christianity offers little solace of heavenly justice. Mrs.
Durbeyfield never mentions otherworldly rewards. The converted Alec
preaches heavenly justice for earthly sinners, but his faith seems shallow
and insincere. Generally, the moral atmosphere of the novel is not
Christian justice at all, but pagan injustice. The forces that rule human life
are absolutely unpredictable and not necessarily well-disposed to us. The
pre-Christian rituals practiced by the farm workers at the opening of the
novel, and Tesss final rest at Stonehenge at the end, remind us of a world
where the gods are not just and fair, but whimsical and uncaring. When
the narrator concludes the novel with the statement that Justice was
done, and the President of the Immortals (in the Aeschylean phrase) had
ended his sport with Tess, we are reminded that justice must be put in
ironic quotation marks, since it is not really just at all. What passes for
Justice is in fact one of the pagan gods enjoying a bit of sport, or a
frivolous game.
2.Changing ideas of social class in Victorian England
Tess of the dUrbervilles presents complex pictures of both the importance
of social class in nineteenth-century England and the difficulty of defining
class in any simple way. Certainly the Durbeyfields are a powerful emblem
of the way in which class is no longer evaluated in Victorian times as it
would have been in the Middle Agesthat is, by blood alone, with no
attention paid to fortune or worldly success. Indubitably the Durbeyfields
have purity of blood, yet for the parson and nearly everyone else in the
novel, this fact amounts to nothing more than a piece of genealogical
trivia. In the Victorian context, cash matters more than lineage, which
explains how Simon Stokes, Alecs father, was smoothly able to use his
large fortune to purchase a lustrous family name and transform his clan
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into the Stoke-dUrbervilles. The dUrbervilles pass for what the
Durbeyfields truly areauthentic nobilitysimply because definitions of
class have changed. The issue of class confusion even affects the Clare
clan, whose most promising son, Angel, is intent on becoming a farmer
and marrying a milkmaid, thus bypassing the traditional privileges of a
Cambridge education and a parsonage. His willingness to work side by
side with the farm laborers helps endear him to Tess, and their
acquaintance would not have been possible if he were a more traditional
and elitist aristocrat. Thus, the three main characters in the Angel-Tess-
Alec triangle are all strongly marked by confusion regarding their
respective social classes, an issue that is one of the main concerns of the
novel.
3.Men dominating women
One of the recurrent themes of the novel is the way in which men can
dominate women, exerting a power over them linked primarily to their
maleness. Sometimes this command is purposeful, in the mans full
knowledge of his exploitation, as when Alec acknowledges how bad he is
for seducing Tess for his own momentary pleasure. Alecs act of abuse, the
most life-altering event that Tess experiences in the novel, is clearly the
most serious instance of male domination over a female. But there are
other, less blatant examples of womens passivity toward dominant men.
Even Angels love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it seems, dominates her
in an unhealthy way. Angel substitutes an idealized picture of Tesss
country purity for the real-life woman that he continually refuses to get to
know. When Angel calls Tess names like Daughter of Nature and
Artemis, we feel that he may be denying her true self in favor of a
mental image that he prefers. Thus, her identity and experiences are
suppressed, albeit unknowingly. This pattern of male domination is finally
reversed with Tesss murder of Alec, in which, for the first time in the
novel, a woman takes active steps against a man. Of course, this act only
leads to even greater suppression of a woman by men, when the crowd of
male police officers arrest Tess at Stonehenge. Nevertheless, for just a
moment, the accepted pattern of submissive women bowing to dominant
men is interrupted, and Tesss act seems heroic.
MOTIFS
1.Birds
Images of birds recur throughout the novel, evoking or contradicting their
traditional spiritual association with a higher realm of transcendence. Tess
occasionally hears birdcalls on her frequent hikes across the countryside;
their free expressiveness stands in stark contrast to Tesss silent and
constrained existence as a wronged and disgraced girl. These birds offer
images of hope and liberation. Yet there is irony attached to birds as well,
making us doubt whether these images of hope and freedom are illusory.
It may be that freedom for one creature entails hardship for another, just
as Alecs free enjoyment of Tesss body leads her to a lifetime of suffering.
In the end, when Tess encounters the pheasants maimed by hunters and
lying in agony, birds no longer seem free, but rather oppressed and
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submissive. These pheasants are no Romantic songbirds hovering far
above the Earththey are victims of earthly violence, condemned to
suffer down below and never fly again.
2.The book of genesis
The Genesis story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is evoked
repeatedly throughout Tess of the dUrbervilles, giving the novel a broader
metaphysical and philosophical dimension. The roles of Eve and the
serpent in paradise are clearly delineated: Angel is the noble Adam newly
born, while Tess is the indecisive and troubled Eve. When Tess gazes upon
Angel in Chapter XXVII, she regarded him as Eve at her second waking
might have regarded Adam. Alec, with his open avowal that he is bad to
the bone, is the conniving Satan. He seduces Tess under a tree, giving her
sexual knowledge in return for her lost innocence. The very name of the
forest where this seduction occurs, the Chase, suggests how Eve will be
chased from Eden for her sins. This guilt, which will never be erased, is
known in Christian theology as the original sin that all humans have
inherited. Just as John Durbeyfield is told in Chapter I that you dont live
anywhere, and his family is evicted after his death at the end of the
novel, their homelessness evokes the human exile from Eden. Original sin
suggests that humans have fallen from their once great status to a lower
station in life, just as the dUrbervilles have devolved into the modern
Durbeyfields. This Story of the Fallor of the Pure Drop, to recall the
name of a pub in Tesss home villageis much more than a social fall. It is
an explanation of how all of us humansnot only Tessnever quite seem
to live up to our expectations, and are never able to inhabit the places of
grandeur we feel we deserve.
3.Variant names
Names matter in this novel. Tess knows and accepts that she is a lowly
Durbeyfield, but part of her still believes, as her parents also believe, that
her aristocratic original name should be restored. Another character who
renames himself is Simon Stokes, Alecs father, who purchased a family
tree and made himself Simon Stoke-dUrberville. The question raised by
all these cases of name changing, whether successful or merely imagined,
is the extent to which an altered name brings with it an altered identity.
Alec acts notoriously ungentlemanly throughout the novel, but by the end,
when he appears at the dUrberville family vault, his lordly and
commanding bearing make him seem almost deserving of the name his
father has bought, like a spoiled medieval nobleman. Hardys interest in
name changes makes reality itself seem changeable according to whims
of human perspective.
SYMBOLS
1.Prince
Like the horse, Tess herself bears a high-class name, but is doomed to a
lowly life of physical labor. Interestingly, Princes death occurs right after
Tess dreams of ancient knights, having just heard the news that her family
is aristocratic. In an odd way, Tesss dream of medieval glory comes true,
and her horse dies a heroic death. The death of the horse symbolizes the
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sacrifice of real-world goods, such as a useful animal or even her own
honor, through excessive fantasizing about a better world.
2.The DUrberville family vault
A double-edged symbol of both the majestic grandeur and the lifeless
hollowness of the aristocratic family name that the Durbeyfields learn
they possess, the dUrberville family vault represents both the glory of life
and the end of life.
3.Brazil
Brazil is thus more than a geographical entity on the map in this novel: it
symbolizes a fantasyland, a place where dreams come true. As Angels
name suggests, he is a lofty visionary who lacks some experience with the
real world, despite all his mechanical know-how in farm management. His
fiasco teaches him that ideals do not exist in life, and this lesson helps
him reevaluate his disappointment with Tesss imperfections, her failure to
incarnate the ideal he expected her to be. For Angel, Brazil symbolizes the
impossibility of ideals, but also forgiveness and acceptance of life in spite
of those disappointed ideals.

WHITMANS POETRY

Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was born in 1819 on Long Island (the Paumanok of
many of his poems). During his early years he trained as a printer,
then became a teacher, and finally a journalist and editor. He was less
than successful; his stridently radical views made him unpopular with
readers. After an 1848 sojourn in the South, which introduced him to
some of the variety of his country, he returned to New York and began
to write poetry.

In 1855 he self-published the first edition of Leaves of

Grass, which at the time consisted of only twelve poems. The
volume was widely ignored, with one significant exception.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote him a congratulatory letter, in
which he offered his greet[ings]... at the beginning of a great
career. Whitman promptly published another edition of Leaves
of Grass, expanding it by some twenty poems and appending
the letter from Emerson, much to the latters discomfort. 1860
saw another edition of a now much larger Leavescontaining
some 156 poemswhich was issued by a trade publisher.

At the outset of the Civil War Whitman volunteered as a nurse in army

hospitals; he also wrote dispatches as a correspondent for the New
York Times. The war inspired a great deal of poetry, which was
72
published in 1865 as Drum Taps. Drum Taps was then incorporated
into an 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass, as was another volume of
wartime poetry, Sequel, which included the poems written on
Lincolns assassination.

Whitmans wartime work led to a job with the Department of the

Interior, but he was soon fired when his supervisor learned that he
had written the racy poems of Leaves of Grass. The failure of
Reconstruction led him to write the best known of his prose
works,Democratic Vistas, which, as its title implies, argues for the
maintenance of democratic ideals. This volume came out in 1871, as
did yet another edition of Leaves of Grass, expanded to include more
poems. The 1871 edition was reprinted in 1876 for the centennial.
Several other prose works followed, then a further expanded version
of Leaves of Grass, in 1881.

Whitmans health had been shaky since the mid-1870s, and by 1891
it was clear he was dying. He therefore prepared his so-called
Deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass, which contained two
appendices of old-age poems as well as a review essay in which he
tries to justify his life and work. The Deathbed Edition came out in
1892; Whitman died that year.

Context
Whitmans
lifetime saw both the Civil War and the rise of the United States as a
commercial and political power. He witnessed both the apex and the
abolition of slavery. His poetry is thus centered on ideas of
democracy, equality, and brotherhood. In response to Americas new
position in the world, Whitman also tried to develop a poetry that was
uniquely American, that both surpassed and broke the mold of its
predecessors. Leaves of Grass, with its multiple editions and public
controversies, set the pattern for the modern, public artist, and
Whitman, with his journalistic endeavors on the side, made the most
of his role as celebrity and artist.

Whitmans poetry is democratic in both its subject matter and its

language. As the great lists that make up a large part of Whitmans
73
In a poetry show, anythingand
way, though, Whitman is notanyoneis
so unique. fair game for a for
His preference poem.
the
Whitman
quotidian is concerned
links withDante,
him with both cataloguing
who wasthe the
newfirst
America he poetry
to write sees
in growing around
a vernacular him. Just
language, as with
and America is far different
Wordsworth, politicallystated
who famously and
practically
that from its
poetry should aimEuropean
to speak counterparts, so too
in the language must American
of ordinary men.
Unlike
poetryWordsworth,
distinguish itself
however,
from Whitman
previous models.
does notThus
romanticize
we see Whitman
the
proletariat or thenew
breaking peasant.
groundInstead
in bothhesubject
takes as his model
matter himself. The
and diction.
stated mission of his poetry was, in his words, to make [a]n attempt
to put a Person, a human being (myself, in the latter half of the 19th
century, in America) freely, fully, and truly on record. A truly
democratic poetry, for Whitman, is one that, using a common
language, is able to cross the gap between the self and another
individual, to effect a sympathetic exchange of experiences.

This leads to a distinct blurring of the boundaries between the self

and the world and between public and private. Whitman prefers
spaces and situationslike journeys, the out-of-doors, citiesthat
allow for ambiguity in these respects. Thus we see poems like Song
of the Open Road and Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, where the poet
claims to be able to enter into the heads of others. Exploration
becomes not just a trope but a mode of existence.

For Whitman, spiritual communion depends on physical contact, or at

least proximity. The body is the vessel that enables the soul to
experience the world. Therefore the body is something to be
worshipped and given a certain primacy. Eroticism, particularly
homoeroticism, figures significantly in Whitmans poetry. This is
something that got him in no small amount of trouble during his
lifetime. The erotic interchange of his poetry, though, is meant to
symbolize the intense but always incomplete connection between
individuals. Having sex is the closest two people can come to being
one merged individual, but the boundaries of the body always prevent
a complete union. The affection Whitman shows for the bodies of
others, both men and women, comes out of his appreciation for the
linkage between the body and the soul and the communion that can
come through physical contact. He also has great respect for the
reproductive and generative powers of the body, which mirror the
intellects generation of poetry.
74
The Civil War diminished Whitmans faith in democratic sympathy.
While the cause of the war nominally furthered brotherhood and
equality, the war itself was a quagmire of killing. Reconstruction,
which began to fail almost immediately after it was begun, further
disappointed Whitman. His later poetry, which displays a marked
insecurity about the place of poetry and the place of emotion in
general (see in particular When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
Bloomd), is darker and more isolated.
Analysis
Whitmans
style remains consistent throughout, however. The poetic structures
he employs are unconventional but reflect his democratic ideals. Lists
are a way for him to bring together a wide variety of items without
imposing a hierarchy on them. Perception, rather than analysis, is the
basis for this kind of poetry, which uses few metaphors or other kinds
of symbolic language. Anecdotes are another favored device. By
transmitting a story, often one he has gotten from another individual,
Whitman hopes to give his readers a sympathetic experience, which
will allow them to incorporate the anecdote into their own history. The
kind of language Whitman uses sometimes supports and sometimes
seems to contradict his philosophy. He often uses obscure, foreign, or
invented words. This, however, is not meant to be intellectually elitist
but is instead meant to signify Whitmans status as a unique
individual. Democracy does not necessarily mean sameness. The
difficulty of some of his language also mirrors the necessary
imperfection of connections between individuals: no matter how hard
we try, we can never completely understand each other. Whitman
largely avoids rhyme schemes and other traditional poetic devices.
He does, however, use meter in masterful and innovative ways, often
to mimic natural speech. In these ways, he is able to demonstrate
that he has mastered traditional poetry but is no longer subservient
to it, just as democracy has ended the subservience of the individual.

Themes

75
Democracy As a Way of Life

Whitman envisioned democracy not just as a political system but as a

way of experiencing the world. In the early nineteenth century,
people still harbored many doubts about whether the United States
could survive as a country and about whether democracy could thrive
as a political system. To allay those fears and to praise democracy,
Whitman tried to be democratic in both life and poetry. He imagined
democracy as a way of interpersonal interaction and as a way for
individuals to integrate their beliefs into their everyday lives. Song of
Myself notes that democracy must include all individuals equally, or
else it will fail.

Object 1

In his poetry, Whitman widened the possibilities

of poetic diction by including slang, colloquialisms, and
regional dialects, rather than employing the stiff, erudite
language so often found in nineteenth-century verse. Similarly,
he broadened the possibilities of subject matter by describing
myriad people and places. Like William Wordsworth, Whitman
believed that everyday life and everyday people were fit
subjects for poetry. Although much of Whitmans work does not
explicitly discuss politics, most of it implicitly deals with
democracy: it describes communities of people coming
together, and it imagines many voices pouring into a unified
whole. For Whitman, democracy was an idea that could and
should permeate the world beyond politics, making itself felt in
the ways we think, speak, work, fight, and even make art.
76
The Cycle of Growth and Death

Whitmans poetry reflects the vitality and growth of the early United
States. During the nineteenth century, America expanded at a
tremendous rate, and its growth and potential seemed limitless. But
sectionalism and the violence of the Civil War threatened to break
apart and destroy the boundless possibilities of the United States. As
a way of dealing with both the population growth and the massive
deaths during the Civil War, Whitman focused on the life cycles of
individuals: people are born, they age and reproduce, and they die.
Such poems as When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd imagine
death as an integral part of life. The speaker of When Lilacs Last in
the Dooryard Bloomd realizes that flowers die in the winter, but they
rebloom in the springtime, and he vows to mourn his fallen friends
every year just as new buds are appearing. Describing the life cycle of
nature helped Whitman contextualize the severe injuries and trauma
he witnessed during the Civil Warlinking death to life helped give
the deaths of so many soldiers meaning.

The Beauty of the Individual

Throughout his poetry, Whitman praised the individual. He imagined a

democratic nation as a unified whole composed of unique but equal
individuals. Song of Myself opens in a triumphant paean to the
individual: I celebrate myself, and sing myself (1). Elsewhere the
speaker of that exuberant poem identifies himself as Walt Whitman
and claims that, through him, the voices of many will speak. In this
way, many individuals make up the individual democracy, a single
entity composed of myriad parts. Every voice and every part will carry
the same weight within the single democracyand thus every voice
and every individual is equally beautiful. Despite this pluralist view,
Whitman still singled out specific individuals for praise in his poetry,
particularly Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, Lincoln was assassinated, and
Whitman began composing several elegies, including O Captain! My
Captain! Although all individuals were beautiful and worthy of praise,
some individuals merited their own poems because of their
contributions to society and democracy.

77
Motifs

Lists

Whitman filled his poetry with long lists. Often a sentence will be
broken into many clauses, separated by commas, and each clause will
describe some scene, person, or object. These lists create a sense of
expansiveness in the poem, as they mirror the growth of the United
States. Also, these lists layer images atop one another to reflect the
diversity of American landscapes and people. In Song of Myself, for
example, the speaker lists several adjectives to describe Walt
Whitman in section 24. The speaker uses multiple adjectives to
demonstrate the complexity of the individual: true individuals cannot
be described using just one or two words. Later in this section, the
speaker also lists the different types of voices who speak through
Whitman. Lists are another way of demonstrating democracy in
action: in lists, all items possess equal weight, and no item is more
important than another item in the list. In a democracy, all individuals
possess equal weight, and no individual is more important than
another.

The Human Body

Whitmans poetry revels in its depictions of the human body and the
bodys capacity for physical contact. The speaker of Song of Myself
claims that copulation is no more rank to me than death is (521) to
demonstrate the naturalness of taking pleasure in the bodys physical
possibilities. With physical contact comes spiritual communion: two
touching bodies form one individual unit of togetherness. Several
poems praise the bodies of both women and men, describing them at
work, at play, and interacting. The speaker of I Sing the Body
Electric (1855) boldly praises the perfection of the human form and
worships the body because the body houses the soul. This free
expression of sexuality horrified some of Whitmans early readers,
and Whitman was fired from his job at the Indian Bureau
in 1865 because the secretary of the interior found Leaves of
Grass offensive. Whitmans unabashed praise of the male form has
led many critics to argue that he was homosexual or bisexual, but the
78
repressive culture of the nineteenth century prevented him from truly
expressing those feelings in his work.

Rhythm and Incantation

Many of Whitmans poems rely on rhythm and repetition to create a

captivating, spellbinding quality of incantation. Often, Whitman
begins several lines in a row with the same word or phrase, a literary
device called anaphora. For example, the first four lines of When I
Heard the Learnd Astronomer (1865) each begin with the wordwhen.
The long lines of such poems as Song of Myself and When Lilacs
Last in the Dooryard Bloomd force readers to inhale several bits of
text without pausing for breath, and this breathlessness contributes
to the incantatory quality of the poems. Generally, the anaphora and
the rhythm transform the poems into celebratory chants, and the
joyous form and structure reflect the joyousness of the poetic content.
Elsewhere, however, the repetition and rhythm contribute to an
elegiac tone, as in O Captain! My Captain! This poem uses short
lines and words, such as heart and father, to mournfully incant an
elegy for the assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

Symbols

Plants

Throughout Whitmans poetry, plant life symbolizes both growth and

multiplicity. Rapid, regular plant growth also stands in for the rapid,
regular expansion of the population of the United States. In When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd, Whitman uses flowers, bushes,
wheat, trees, and other plant life to signify the possibilities of
regeneration and re-growth after death. As the speaker mourns the
loss of Lincoln, he drops a lilac spray onto the coffin; the act of laying
a flower on the coffin not only honors the person who has died but
lends death a measure of dignity and respect. The title Leaves of
Grass highlights another of Whitmans themes: the beauty of the
individual. Each leaf or blade of grass possesses its own distinct
beauty, and together the blades form a beautiful unified whole, an
79
idea Whitman explores in the sixth section of Song of Myself.
Multiple leaves of grass thus symbolize democracy, another instance
of a beautiful whole composed of individual parts. In 1860, Whitman
published an edition of Leaves of Grass that included a number of
poems celebrating love between men. He titled this section The
Calamus Poems, after the phallic calamus plant.

The Self Whitmans interest in the self ties into his praise of the
individual. Whitman links the self to the conception of poetry
throughout his work, envisioning the self as the birthplace of poetry.
Most of his poems are spoken from the first person, using the
pronoun I. The speaker of Whitmans most famous poem, Song of
Myself, even assumes the name Walt Whitman, but nevertheless the
speaker remains a fictional creation employed by the poet Whitman.
Although Whitman borrows from his own autobiography for some of
the speakers experiences, he also borrows many experiences from
popular works of art, music, and literature. Repeatedly the speaker of
this poem exclaims that he contains everything and everyone, which
is a way for Whitman to reimagine the boundary between the self and
the world. By imaging a person capable of carrying the entire world
within him, Whitman can create an elaborate analogy about the ideal
democracy, which would, like the self, be capable of containing the
whole world.

EMILY DICKINSON: POEMS

Emily Dickinson led one of the most prosaic lives of any great
poet. At a time when fellow poet Walt Whitman was ministering
to the Civil War wounded and traveling across Americaa time
when America itself was reeling in the chaos of war, the
tragedy of the Lincoln assassination, and the turmoil of
ReconstructionDickinson lived a relatively untroubled life in
her fathers house in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she was
born in 1830 and where she died in1886. Although popular myth
80
often depicts Dickinson as the solitary genius, she, in fact,
remained relatively active in Amherst social circles and often
entertained visitors throughout her life. However, she was
certainly more isolated than a poet such as Whitman: Her world
was bounded by her home and its surrounding countryside; the
great events of her day play little role in her poetry. Whitman
eulogized Lincoln and wrote about the war; Dickinson, one of
the great poets of inwardness ever to write in English, was no
social poetone could read through her Collected Poems
1,776 in alland emerge with almost no sense of the time in

which she lived. Of course, social and historical ideas and

values contributed in shaping her character, but Emily
Dickinsons ultimate context is herself, the milieu of her mind.

Dickinson is simply unlike any other poet; her compact, forceful

language, characterized formally by long disruptive dashes,
heavy iambic meters, and angular, imprecise rhymes, is one of
the singular literary achievements of the nineteenth century.
Her aphoristic style, whereby substantial meanings are
compressed into very few words, can be daunting, but many of
her best and most famous poems are comprehensible even on
the first reading. During her lifetime, Dickinson published
hardly any of her massive poetic output (fewer than ten of her
nearly 1,800 poems) and was utterly unknown as a writer. After
Dickinsons death, her sister discovered her notebooks and
published the contents, thus, presenting America with a
tremendous poetic legacy that appeared fully formed and
without any warning. As a result, Dickinson has tended to
occupy a rather uneasy place in the canon of American poetry;
writers and critics have not always known what to make of her.
Today, her place as one of the two finest American poets of the
nineteenth century is secure: Along with Whitman, she literally
defines the very era that had so little palpable impact on her
poetry.

Emily Dickinson is such a unique poet that it is very difficult to

place her in any single traditionshe seems to come from
81
everywhere and nowhere at once. Her poetic form, with her
customary four-line stanzas, ABCB rhyme schemes, and
alternations in iambic meter between tetrameter and trimeter,
is derived from Psalms and Protestant hymns, but Dickinson so
thoroughly appropriates the formsinterposing her own long,
rhythmic dashes designed to interrupt the meter and indicate
short pausesthat the resemblance seems quite faint. Her
subjects are often parts of the topography of her own psyche;
she explores her own feelings with painstaking and often
painful honesty but never loses sight of their universal poetic
application; one of her greatest techniques is to write about the
particulars of her own emotions in a kind of universal homiletic
or adage-like tone (After great pain, a formal feeling comes)
that seems to describe the readers mind as well as it does the
poets. Dickinson is not a philosophical poet; unlike
Wordsworth or Yeats, she makes no effort to organize her
thoughts and feelings into a coherent, unified worldview.
Rather, her poems simply record thoughts and feelings
experienced naturally over the course of a lifetime devoted to
reflection and creativity: the powerful mind represented in
these records is by turns astonishing, compelling, moving, and
thought-provoking, and emerges much more vividly than if
Dickinson had orchestrated her work according to a
preconceived philosophical system.

Of course, Dickinsons greatest achievement as a poet of inwardness

is her brilliant, diamond-hard language. Dickinson often writes
aphoristically, meaning that she compresses a great deal of meaning
into a very small number of words. This can make her poems hard to
understand on a first reading, but when their meaning does unveil
itself, it often explodes in the mind all at once, and lines that seemed
baffling can become intensely and unforgettably clear. Other poems
many of her most famous, in factare much less difficult to
understand, and they exhibit her extraordinary powers of observation
and description. Dickinsons imagination can lead her into very
peculiar territorysome of her most famous poems are bizarre death-

82
fantasies and astonishing metaphorical conceitsbut she is equally
deft in her navigation of the domestic, writing beautiful nature-lyrics
alongside her wild flights of imagination and often combining the two
with great facility.

Themes

The Individuals Struggle with God

Dickinson devoted a great amount of her work to exploring the

relationship between an individual and a Judeo-Christian God. Many
poems describe a protracted rebellion against the God whom she
deemed scornful and indifferent to human suffering, a divine being
perpetually committed to subjugating human identity. In a sense, she
was a religious poet. Unlike other religious poets, who inevitably saw
themselves as subordinate to God, Dickinson rejected this premise in
her poetry. She was dissatisfied with the notion that the poet can
engage with God only insofar as God ordains the poet as his
instrument, and she challenged Gods dominion throughout her life,
refusing to submit to his divine will at the cost of her self. Perhaps her
most fiery challenge comes in Mine by the Right of the White
Election! (528), in which the speaker roars in revolt against God,
claiming the earth and heavens for herself or himself.

Elsewhere, Dickinsons poetry criticizes God not by speaking

out directly against him, but by detailing the suffering he
causes and his various affronts to an individuals sense of self.
Though the speaker of Tell all the Truth but tell it slant ( 1129)
never mentions God, the poem refers obliquely to his
suppression of the apostle Paul in the last two lines. Here, the
speaker describes how unmitigated truth (in the form of light)
causes blindness. In the Bible (Acts 9:4), God decides to
enlighten Paul by making him blind and then healing him on the
condition that thenceforth Paul becomes a chosen vessel of
God, performing his will. The speaker recoils from this instance
of Gods juggernaut-like domination of Paul in this poem but
follows the poems advice and tells the truth slant, or

83
indirectly, rather than censuring God directly. In another
instance of implicit criticism, Dickinson portrays God as a
murderous hunter of man in My Life had stooda Loaded Gun
(754), in which Death goes about gleefully executing people for
his divine master. These poems are among the hundreds of
verses in which Dickinson portrays God as aloof, cruel, invasive,
insensitive, or vindictive.

The Assertion of the Self

In her work, Dickinson asserts the importance of the self,

a themeclosely related to Dickinsons censure of God. As Dickinson
understood it, the mere act of speaking or writing is an affirmation of
the will, and the call of the poet, in particular, is the call to explore
and express the self to others. For Dickinson, the self entails an
understanding of identity according to the way it systematizes its
perceptions of the world, forms its goals and values, and comes to
judgments regarding what it perceives.

Nearly all Dickinsons speakers behave according to the primacy of

the self, despite the efforts of others to intrude on them. Indeed, the
self is never more apparent in Dickinsons poetry than when the
speaker brandishes it against some potentially violating force. In
They shut me up in Prose (613), the speaker taunts her captives,
who have imprisoned her body but not her mind, which remains free
and roaming. Because God most often plays the role of culprit as an
omnipotent being, he can and does impose compromising conditions
upon individuals according to his whim in Dickinsons work. Against
this power, the self is essentially defined. The individual is subject to
any amount of suffering, but so long as he or she remains a sovereign
self, he or she still has that which separates him or her from other
animate and inanimate beings.

The Power of Words and Poetry

Though Dickinson sequestered herself in Amherst for most of her life,

she was quite attuned to the modern trends of thought that circulated
throughout Europe and North America. Perhaps the most important of
84
these was Charles Darwins theory of evolution, published in 1859.

Besides the tidal wave it unleashed in the scientific community,

evolution throttled the notion of a world created by Gods grand
design. For Dickinson, who renounced obedience to God through the
steps of her own mental evolution, this development only reinforced
the opposition to the belief in a transcendent and divine design in an
increasingly secularized world.

Dickinson began to see language and the word, which were formerly
part of Gods domain, as the province of the poet. The duty of the
poet was to re-create, through words, a sense of the world as a place
in which objects have an essential and almost mythic relationship to
each other. Dickinsons poems often link abstract entities to physical
things in an attempt to embrace or create an integral design in the
world. This act is most apparent in her poems of definition, such as
Hope is the thing with feathers (254) or Hope is a subtle Glutton
(1547). In these poems, Dickinson employs metaphors that assign
physical qualities to the abstract feeling of hope in order to flesh
out the nature of the word and what it means to human
consciousness.

Nature as a Haunted House

In a letter to a friend, Dickinson once wrote: Nature is a Haunted

Housebut Arta House that tries to be haunted. The first part of
the sentence implies that the natural world is replete with mystery
and false signs, which deceive humankind as to the purpose of things
in nature as well as to Gods purpose in the creation of nature. The
sentences second part reveals the poets role. The poet does not
exist merely to render aspects of nature, but rather to ascertain the
character of Gods power in the world.

For Dickinson, however, the characterizing of Gods power proved to

be complicated since she often abstained from using the established
religious symbols for things in nature. This abstention is most
evident in Dickinsons poem about a snake, A narrow Fellow in the

85
Grass (986), in which Dickinson refrains from the easy reference to
Satan in Eden. Indeed, in many of her nature poems, such as A Bird
came down the Walk (328), Dickinson ultimately insists on depicting
nature as unapologetically incomprehensible, and thus haunted.

Motifs

The Speakers Unique Poetic Voice

Dickinsons speakers are numerous and varied, but each exhibits a

similar voice, or distinctive tone and style. Poets create speakers to
literally speak their poems; while these speakers might share traits
with their creators or might be based on real historical figures,
ultimately they are fictional entities distinct from their writers.
Frequently, Dickinson employs the first person, which lends her
poems the immediacy of a dialogue between two people, the speaker
and the reader. She sometimes aligns multiple speakers in one poem
with the use of the plural personal pronoun we. The first-person
singular and plural allow Dickinson to write about specific experiences
in the world: her speakers convey distinct, subjective emotions and
individual thoughts rather than objective, concrete truths. Readers
are thus invited to compare their experiences, emotions, and
thoughts with those expressed in Dickinsons lyrics. By emphasizing
the subjectivity, or individuality, of experience, Dickinson rails against
those educational and religious institutions that attempt to limit
individual knowledge and experience.

The Connection Between Sight and Self

For Dickinson, seeing is a form of individual power. Sight requires that

the seer have the authority to associate with the world around her or
him in meaningful ways and the sovereignty to act based on what she
or he believes exists as opposed to what another entity dictates. In
this sense, sight becomes an important expression of the self, and
consequently the speakers in Dickinsons poems value it highly. The
horror that the speaker of I heard a Fly buzzwhen I died (465)
experiences is attributable to her loss of eyesight in the moments
leading up to her death. The final utterance, I could not see to see
86
(16), points to the fact that the last gasp of life, and thus of selfhood,
is concentrated on the desire to see more than anything else. In this
poem, sight and self are so synonymous that the end of one
(blindness) translates into the end of the other (death).

In other poems, sight and self seem literally fused, a connection that
Dickinson toys with by playing on the sonic similarity of the
words Iand eye. This wordplay abounds in Dickinsons body of work. It
is used especially effectively in the third stanza of The Soul selects
her own Society (303), in which the speaker declares that she
knows the soul, or the self. She commands the soul to choose one
person from a great number of people and then close the lids of
attention. In this poem, the I that is the soul has eyelike properties:
closing the lids, an act that would prevent seeing, is tantamount to
cutting off the I from the rest of society.

Symbols

Feet

Feet enter Dickinsons poems self-referentially, since the

words footand feet denote poetic terms as well as body parts. In
poetry, feet are the groups of syllables in a line that form a metrical
unit. Dickinsons mention of feet in her poems generally serves the
dual task of describing functioning body parts and commenting on
poetry itself. Thus, when the speaker of A narrow Fellow in the Grass
(986) remembers himself a Barefoot boy (11), he indirectly alludes to
a time when his sense of poetry was not fully formed. Likewise, when
the speaker of After great pain, a formal feeling comes (341) notes
that feet are going around in his head while he is going mad, he
points to the fact that his ability to make poetry is compromised.

Stone

In Dickinsons poems, stones represent immutability and finality:

unlike flowers or the light of day, stones remain essentially
unchanged. The speaker in Safe in their Alabaster Chambers (216)
imagines the dead lying unaffected by the breezes of natureand of

87
life. After the speaker chooses her soul in The Soul selects her own
Society (303), she shuts her eyes Like Stone (12), firmly closing
herself off from sensory perception or society. A stone becomes an
object of envy in How happy is the little Stone (1510), a poem in
which the speaker longs for the rootless independence of a stone
bumping along, free from human cares.

Birds

Dickinson uses the symbol of birds rather flexibly. In A Bird came

down the Walk (328), the bird becomes an emblem of the unyielding
mystery of nature, while in Hope is the thing with feathers (254),
the bird becomes a personification of hope. Elsewhere, Dickinson
links birds to poets, whose job is to sing whether or not people hear.
In Splitthe Larkand youll find the Music (861), Dickinson
compares the sounds of birds to the lyrical sounds of poetry; the
poem concludes by asking rhetorically whether its listeners now
understand the truths produced by both birds and poetry. Like nature,
symbolized by the bird, art produces soothing, truthful sounds.

THE PRE-POSTCOLONIALIST NOVEL - JOSEPH CONRAD

Even by his profession Conrad was a ship captain - , he was exposed to a
continuous cultural experience. Therefore, the clash of civilization
came to be one of his favourite fictional topics. At a subtler level, Conrads
aesthetic and psychological preoccupation is the individual identity
caught inside the collective mechanism.
On the other hand, Conrad, like James, is a representative of the transition
of the British novel from Victorianism to Modernism. He has a fundamental
interest in the development of the narrative strategies (especially of
the status of the narrator) and, also, shows concern for the structure of
epic (which becomes extremely complex in Conrads novels, announcing
the beginning of Modernism).
Conrad is interested in a more general mental confrontation that engages
the primitive world and the civilized universe. The protagonists of his
cultural conflict are the traditional archaic man and the modernized
Euro-American fellow.
Conrads major cultural point is that the modern man annihilates
the spirituality of the would-be primitive archaic individual and
transforms the traditional civilization otherwise sophisticated,
but in ways which are not evident to modern colonizers into an

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artificial, elementary society, good only for being exploited. In an
anticipatory manner, Conrad deals in his cultural novels with
Nietzsches notion of the death of God.
Some of Conrads novels can, therefore, be read as modern allegories
about the loss of the self. From a cultural viewpoint, one may divide
Conrads texts into two categories: novels of depersonalization and
novels of destruction.
The novels of depersonalization refer to those few cases in which the
colonist (the modern man, the exponent of the Euro-American universe)
loses his identity under the influence of the colonized (the primitive
man, the exponent of the traditional Asian or African universe) and
becomes a depersonalized tragic fellow. We witness such situations in
Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness.
The novels of destruction are Conrads traditional novels of anti-
colonialism in which the modern civilization annihilates and destroys the
primitive world and leads, symbolically, to the death of God (to the
termination of the archetypal spirit). Such cases of cultural clash appear,
again, in Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness. One may consider Conrad an
anticipator of the postcolonial concept of the double critique. This
notion refers to the double identity individuals and communities develop
as a result of colonialism.
Conrad uses 3 major narrative strategies:
1. The oblique point of view implies the transfer of narrative
authority from an omniscient author to a first person narrator or to a
group of narrators who, in their turn, may transfer the perspective to
other possible narrators.
2. The disseminated narrative perspective is a direct
consequences of the oblique point of view. It refers to the
multiplicity of narrative variants one witnesses in Conrads fiction.
3. The partial reflector links Conrad to the Victorian tradition and
especially to Jamess innovative epic techniques. His reflectors are
limitative, subjective and unreliable.
Conrads absolute masterpieces are Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness.
Lord Jim is a novel of introspection and identity in which the character
discovers during an initiation-like process that his adolescent heroic
dreams do not fit in the reality of adulthood.
In Heart of Darkness we deal again with an allegorical novel about the
intervention of the modern civilization in the archetypal spirituality and
the primitive world. Kurtz is a Nietzschean God avant la lettre, who dies
symbolically at the beginning of modernity. Heart of Darkness is an anti-
colonial novel concentrated on the idea of destruction.

LORD JIM JOSEPH CONRAD

CONTEXT

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Joseph Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857. Lord Jim is the first of his
major novels. It appeared in 1900, the year after Heart of Darkness, which
is perhaps his best-known work. Conrad was writing at the very moment
when the Victorian Age was disappearing and the modern era was
emerging. Victorian moral codes still influenced the plots of novels, but
such principles were no longer absolute. Novelists and poets were
beginning to experiment with form. The jumbled time sequence and
elaborate narrative frames of Lord Jim are part of this movement. Lord
Jim nevertheless situates itself in a world where national differences are
often reduced to the dichotomy of "us" and "them," where the term "us"
can encompass a surprisingly heterogeneous group. Both economic and
racial versions of the colonial dynamic come into play in this novel.
Analysis of major characters
1.Lord Jim
Also known as "Lord Jim," or "Tuan Jim." The hero of our story, Jim is a
young man who, inspired by popular literature, goes to sea dreaming of
becoming a hero. He gets his chance when the ship he is aboard gets
damaged, and fails utterly by abandoning ship with the rest of the crew.
Haunted by his failure and stripped of his officer's certificate, he wanders
from job to job, finally becoming the manager of a remote trading post. He
falls in love with Jewel, a beautiful, half-native girl, and, by defeating a
local bandit, becomes leader of the people. His dreams of heroism lead to
his failure to kill a marauding white pirate, Gentleman Brown, which in
turn leads to the death of Dain Waris, his best friend and son of Doramin,
the local chief. Jim allows Doramin to shoot him in retribution.
2.Marlow
The narrator of this story and a ship's captain. Marlow first encounters Jim
at the inquiry where Jim loses his certification. Feeling that Jim is "one of
us," he takes an interest in him, first helping him find employment as a
water clerk and as a trading post manager for Stein, then compulsively
piecing together Jim's story and perpetuating it through various retellings.
It is Marlow who filters and interprets most of the narrative for the reader.
SYMBOLISM, IMAGERY & ALLEGORY
Brierly's Pocketwatch
When Brierly commits suicide by jumping ship, he leaves his pocketwatch
hanging on the rail. Let's take a look at that scene:'There's a funny thing. I
don't like to touch it.' It was Captain Brierl...
Imagination
The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father
of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted
emotion. Jim saw nothing but the disorder of his tosse...
Butterflies

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Stein collects butterflies, which may seem like just a passing hobby. But
we think there just might be something more to it. Let's take a look at
Stein's description of his favorite pasttime: "When...
Water Imagery
We've got a novel about sailors in Lord Jim, which means that water and
the sea are like characters in and of themselves. Marlow spends a fair
amount of time pondering the sea and its moods, person...
Darkness Imagery
It seems like half this novel takes place at night. The Patna sinks at night,
Jim confesses his shameful actions to Marlow under the cover of darkness,
Marlow relates his story to an audience over...
ANALYSIS: SETTING
Where It All Goes Down
Patna, the Malabar Hotel, Patusan, Southeast Asia, Late 19th century
Lord Jim is technically a British novel, though almost none of the novel's
action takes place in Jolly Old England. This novel really belongs more to
the British empire, specifically Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. As a
former sailor, Conrad kept the action in places familiar to him on boats
at sea, at seaports, and on islands. This is a novel written by a sailor about
sailors, so it makes sense that the bulk of the action takes place at in the
more watery corners of the world.
Backdrops and Backgrounds
Unfortunately, Conrad doesn't seem all that interested in painting a vivid
picture of these environs. He's much more interested in Jim's story.
Perhaps that's why he doesn't go into much detail when it comes to the
locations where events go down.
The bulk of the novel takes place on board the Patna, at the anonymous
port where Jim's trial takes place, at Stein's house, and on Patusan. These
places are all tropical and filled with eclectic individuals, but ultimately
they are fairly forgettable. They're merely backdrops for the more exciting
human dramas going on. And even when Conrad does give us details
about the setting, it's often the human element that draws his attention.
At a description of Jim's trial, the characters seem to become part of the
setting itself. Conrad tends to define places by the people in them.
[T]he big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his
head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces,
out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as
if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been
enslaved by the fascination of his voice. [...] The light of a broad window
under the ceiling fell from above on the heads and shoulders of the three
men, and they were fiercely distinct in the half-light of the big court-room
where the audience seemed composed of staring shadows. (4.1)

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These nameless faces provide the backdrop against which the trial occurs.
Though these faces are, of course, people, who they are and what they
are saying isn't of huge importance. Conrad is more interested in the
image because it helps him set the scene
The setting for Jim's trial is relatively generic it could be taking place at
any number of locations in the South Pacific. What's important isn't so
much the location as the mood, the people involved, and the overall
atmosphere defined by people. The same is true for the other settings of
the novel, which are filled with tropical "stock footage."
Setting the Mood
The setting details we do get are often very atmospheric and mirror the
characters' moods and emotions. Take, for example, this description of
Stein's house:
We passed through empty dark rooms, escorted by gleams from the lights
Stein carried. They glided along the waxed floors, sweeping here and
there over the polished surface of a table, leaped upon a fragmentary
curve of a piece of furniture, or flashed perpendicularly in and out of
distant mirrors, while the forms of two men and the flicker of two flames
could be seen for a moment stealing silently across the depths of a
crystalline void. (20.37)
Dreamy, right? Swirls of light and darkness, empty rooms, a crystalline
void. That doesn't sound like any house Shmoop has been to. But it does
set an otherworldly tone for Marlow's encounter with Stein. And it
reemphasizes the fact that this entire story is made up of memories,
which are always a bit dreamlike and unstable.
That instability comes into play in Conrad's descriptions of the Patna as
well:
And all is still. No thunder, no wind, no sound; not a flicker of lighting.
Then in the tenebrous immensity a livid arch appears; a swell or two like
undulations of the very darkness run past, and, suddenly, wind and rain
strike together with a peculiar impetuosity as if they had burst through
something solid. Such a cloud had come up while they weren't
looking. (9.3)
Conrad's descriptions highlight what is happening more than where it's
happening here, which just goes to show that settings matter in the novel
only so much as they affect and reflect the characters.
The Sun Never Sets... On the British Empire.
Before you go thinking, okay, so the setting is no big deal, it's important to
stop for a second and think about the larger setting in which the novel
takes place. It's a little thing we like to call the British Empire, and it's not
so little at all. Conrad wrote his novels when British (and European)
imperialism was at its height, and European influence was felt in just
about every corner of the world.
With that imperialism comes a whole boatload of issues, all of which our
characters are grappling with. First and foremost, race relations between
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white imperialists and their local subjects were tense at the best of times,
and violent at the worst. We see this tension hinted at all over Lord Jim,
but the novel rarely puts race at center stage.
The Empire, though, is always in the spotlight, with its remote outposts
(like Patusan) and innumerable ships (like the Patna). So while we may
become totally engrossed with Jim's story, it's important to remember the
larger story of the British Empire. After all, Jim's story would never have
happened without it.
ANALYSIS: NARRATOR POINT OF VIEW
Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can
we trust her or him?
Third Person, Limited Omniscient/ Marlow. Or First Person.
We'll just level with you here: the narrative technique of Lord Jim is
confusing to say the least.
Third Person Sort of
First, we have Marlow, who is the main narrator of the novel. But as he
tells Jim's story, other voices creep into the mix as the characters he
meets share what they know of Jim. It's as if Marlow is channeling a story
with multiple voices into one narrative stream. Plus, there's the fact
Marlow is not actually the narrator of the novel at all.
Yep, that's right. There's a whole other, unidentified person who is sitting
on the verandah listening to Marlow, and interrupting every once in a
while to remind us that Marlow, too, is a character:
Marlow paused to put new life into his expiring cheroot, seemed to forget
all about the story, and abruptly began again. (8.10)
Weird, right? Plus, there's the anonymous narrator of the first five
chapters, which document Jim's early life. If your head is already spinning,
don't worry. Shmoop has your back.
First Person... Sort of
For the sake of sheer practicality, we're going to go ahead and call Lord
Jim a first person narrative, because the bulk of the novel is told in
Marlow's words. As Conrad's go-to narrator (Marlow also narrated Conrad's
first novel, Chance, and his most famous novel, Heart of Darkness),
Marlow has his work cut out for him. Lord Jim has a great many stories
woven together, and we need someone to tell them to us. That
gargantuan task falls to Marlow.
After the first four anonymously narrated chapters, we meet our
storyteller at the end of Chapter Four. Every chapter after that uses
quotation marks around the paragraphs to indicate that Marlow is
speaking. For much of the novel, it's a pretty straightforward narrative;
Marlow tells us Jim's story, and how he came to find out about it (through
his many, many sources, far and wide).

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The only wrench that ever gets thrown is that pesky third person we've
already mentioned. Why not have Marlow just narrate the whole darn
story?
Part of the reason might be thematic Lord Jim is largely about
storytelling, and Conrad uses multiple storytellers throughout the
narrative who all interpret one another and repeat one another. The novel
shows us how stories can get filtered and distorted through different
people's perspectives, including Marlow's.
Also, the outside narrator means that Marlow functions both as a narrator
and an independent character. Bonus, right? Instead of seeing the whole
world of Lord Jim through Marlow's eyes, we get one layer of removal that
gives us a good dose of perspective. Every time that other narrator rears
his anonymous head, we're reminded to take Marlow's words with a grain
of salt, because he's only human.
Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen
Marlow's voice glides in and out of the story, and we get frequent
instances where Marlow slips over to quoting Jim, or Stein, or the French
Lieutenant, or, well, you get the picture:
[W]hile his brain and his heart together were pierced as with daggers by
panic-stricken screams, "Let go! For God's sake, let go! Let go! She's
going." Following upon that the boat-falls ripped through the blocks, and a
lot of men began to talk in startled tones under the awnings. "When these
beggars did break out, their yelps were enough to wake the dead," he
said. (9.21)
Marlow is both paraphrasing Jim and quoting his young protege. How
could he possibly know that Jim's brain and heart were pierced with
dagger-like screams? Either Marlow is projecting feelings onto Jim, or Jim
has described his experience this way, and Marlow is merely restating
what he said (perhaps with a little color added). This back-and-forth
makes it difficult to suss out who is really saying what, and, more
important, who is feeling what.
As it turns out, another reason for not having Marlow be a first-person
narrator may be Conrad's interest in the way, by telling a story, we use
and reinterpret other peoples voices. Jim's story is complicated, and
Marlow has to wrangle it out of various people, put it into his own words,
then share it with an audience who may go on to retell it in their own way.
The narrative technique puts us in the same position as Marlow's audience
in the story, trying to sort out what he and others are saying, wondering
what's true. We're on shaky ground here, and we can't help but think
that's exactly where Conrad wants us.
ANALYSIS: GENRE
Adventure, Modernism, Psychological Thriller and Suspense
Adventure

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At first glance, Lord Jim might not seem like adventure material. Frankly,
the bulk of the novel involves people sitting around and talking. Of course
it's what they're talking about that matters, otherwise we might have to
write this one off as big ol' snooze. But at its heart, Lord Jim is an imperial
adventure tale, filled with swashbuckling, nautical hijinks, and even a little
romance. And in its day, it was published in serial form in Blackwood's
Magazine, alongside stories and articles on hunting in Africa, deep-sea
fishing, and exciting battles. (Check out the "In a Nutshell" section for
more on Blackwood's Magazine.)
The only snag we might hit in calling this one an adventure tale is the sad
fact that Jim doesn't get to sail off into the sunset with his girl in the end.
Oh well. You can't have everything.
Modernism
What do we talk about when we talk about Modernism? "Modernist
Literature" is a hefty phrase that pretty much refers to literature written
between 1899 and 1945, and involving experimentation with the
traditional novel format. Modernist literature plays all kinds of games with
time and order, perspective, and point of view. There was a lot of play with
form, and it was more common to see a fragmented plot than, say, a clear
beginning, middle, and end.
Modernism and adventure don't normally go together, but in Lord Jim,
they absolutely do. Conrad was a big fan of experimenting with style, and
many critics consider him a precursor to modernism. He used a lot of
modernist tricks in his narratives, including stream of consciousness;
unreliable, biased narrators; a focus on characters' inner lives; and a fairly
cynical view of the world all of which we see in Lord Jim at one time or
another. Plus, there is the whole fragmented nature of Jim's story, which is
told in snippets that are incomplete and out of order. We're left to do the
dirty work of piecing it all together.
Psychological Thriller and Suspense
In Lord Jim, Conrad has a tricky habit of witholding information from us
reders to build suspense. Consider, for example, the beginning of the
novel, where we get hint after hint of the Patna scandal and Jim's role in it,
but we don't find out what actually went down until several chapters in.
Add to that the novel's obsession with these characters' inner turmoil and
you've got all the ingredients for a psychological thriller. After all, Marlow
is always trying to analyze Jim to get inside his head, so to speak. And
we readers never quite know what Jim will do next, because we can see
that his torment drives him to make rash decisions. His actions haunt him
his whole life, just as many characters' pasts do in your typical thriller.

HEART OF DARKNESS JOSEPH CONRAD

Context
Heart of Darkness in particular, provide a bridge between Victorian values
and the ideals of modernism. Like their Victorian predecessors, these
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novels rely on traditional ideas of heroism, which are nevertheless under
constant attack in a changing world and in places far from England. Heart
of Darkness is as much about alienation, confusion, and profound doubt as
it is about imperialism. Imperialism is nevertheless at the center of Heart
of Darkness. Heart of Darkness suggests that this is the natural result
when men are allowed to operate outside a social system of checks and
balances: power, especially power over other human beings, inevitably
corrupts. Heart of Darkness, thus, at its most abstract level, is a narrative
about the difficulty of understanding the world beyond the self, about the
ability of one man to judge another. Heart of Darkness was one of the first
literary texts to provide a critical view of European imperial activities, it
was initially read by critics as anything but controversial.
Analysis of major characters
1.Marlow
Although Marlow appears in several of Conrads other works, it is
important not to view him as merely a surrogate for the author. Marlow is
a complicated man who anticipates the figures of high modernism while
also reflecting his Victorian predecessors. Marlow is in many ways a
traditional hero: tough, honest, an independent thinker, a capable man.
Yet he is also broken or damaged, like T. S. Eliots J. Alfred Prufrock or
William Faulkners Quentin Compson. The world has defeated him in some
fundamental way, and he is weary, skeptical, and cynical. Marlow also
mediates between the figure of the intellectual and that of the working
tough. While he is clearly intelligent, eloquent, and a natural philosopher,
he is not saddled with the angst of centuries worth of Western thought. At
the same time, while he is highly skilled at what he doeshe repairs and
then ably pilots his own shiphe is no mere manual laborer. Marlow can
also be read as an intermediary between the two extremes of Kurtz and
the Company. He is moderate enough to allow the reader to identify with
him, yet open-minded enough to identify at least partially with either
extreme. Thus, he acts as a guide for the reader.
2.Kurtz
Kurtz, like Marlow, can be situated within a larger tradition. Kurtz
resembles the archetypal evil genius: the highly gifted but ultimately
degenerate individual whose fall is the stuff of legend. Kurtz is related to
figures like Faustus, Satan in Miltons Paradise Lost, Moby-Dicks Ahab,
and Wuthering Heightss Heathcliff. Like these characters, he is significant
both for his style and eloquence and for his grandiose, almost
megalomaniacal scheming. In a world of mundanely malicious men and
flabby devils, attracting enough attention to be worthy of damnation is
indeed something. Kurtz can be criticized in the same terms that Heart of
Darknessis sometimes criticized: style entirely overrules substance,
providing a justification for amorality and evil.
Themes
1.The hypocrisy of imperialism

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Heart of Darkness explores the issues surrounding imperialism in
complicated ways. As Marlow travels from the Outer Station to the Central
Station and finally up the river to the Inner Station, he encounters scenes
of torture, cruelty, and near-slavery. At the very least, the incidental
scenery of the book offers a harsh picture of colonial enterprise. However,
for Marlow as much as for Kurtz or for the Company, Africans in this book
are mostly objects: Marlow refers to his helmsman as a piece of
machinery, and Kurtzs African mistress is at best a piece of statuary.
While Heart of Darkness offers a powerful condemnation of the
hypocritical operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues
surrounding race that is ultimately troubling.
2.Madness as a result of imperialism
Madness is closely linked to imperialism in this book. Africa is responsible
for mental disintegration as well as physical illness. Madness has two
primary functions. First, it serves as an ironic device to engage the
readers sympathies. Kurtz, Marlow is told from the beginning, is mad.
However, as Marlow, and the reader, begin to form a more complete
picture of Kurtz, it becomes apparent that his madness is only relative,
that in the context of the Company insanity is difficult to define. Thus,
both Marlow and the reader begin to sympathize with Kurtz and view the
Company with suspicion. Madness also functions to establish the necessity
of social fictions. Although social mores and explanatory justifications are
shown throughout Heart of Darkness to be utterly false and even leading
to evil, they are nevertheless necessary for both group harmony and
individual security. Madness, in Heart of Darkness, is the result of being
removed from ones social context and allowed to be the sole arbiter of
ones own actions. Madness is thus linked not only to absolute power and
a kind of moral genius but to mans fundamental fallibility: Kurtz has no
authority to whom he answers but himself, and this is more than any one
man can bear.
3.The absurdity of evil
This novella is, above all, an exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and
moral confusion. It explodes the idea of the proverbial choice between the
lesser of two evils. As the idealistic Marlow is forced to align himself with
either the hypocritical and malicious colonial bureaucracy or the openly
malevolent, rule-defying Kurtz, it becomes increasingly clear that to try to
judge either alternative is an act of folly.
Motifs
1.Observation and eavesdropping
Marlow gains a great deal of information by watching the world around
him and by overhearing others conversations, as when he listens from
the deck of the wrecked steamer to the manager of the Central Station
and his uncle discussing Kurtz and the Russian trader. This phenomenon
speaks to the impossibility of direct communication between individuals:
information must come as the result of chance observation and astute
interpretation. Words themselves fail to capture meaning adequately, and
thus they must be taken in the context of their utterance. Another good
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example of this is Marlows conversation with the brickmaker, during
which Marlow is able to figure out a good deal more than simply what the
man has to say.
2.Interiors and exteriors
Comparisons between interiors and exteriors pervade Heart of
Darkness. As the narrator states at the beginning of the text, Marlow is
more interested in surfaces, in the surrounding aura of a thing rather than
in any hidden nugget of meaning deep within the thing itself. This inverts
the usual hierarchy of meaning: normally one seeks the deep message or
hidden truth. The priority placed on observation demonstrates that
penetrating to the interior of an idea or a person is impossible in this
world. Thus, Marlow is confronted with a series of exteriors and surfaces
the rivers banks, the forest walls around the station, Kurtzs broad
foreheadthat he must interpret. These exteriors are all the material he is
given, and they provide him with perhaps a more profound source of
knowledge than any falsely constructed interior kernel.
3.Darkness
Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the books title.
However, it is difficult to discern exactly what it might mean, given that
absolutely everything in the book is cloaked in darkness. Africa, England,
and Brussels are all described as gloomy and somehow dark, even if the
sun is shining brightly. Darkness thus seems to operate metaphorically
and existentially rather than specifically. Darkness is the inability to see:
this may sound simple, but as a description of the human condition it has
profound implications. Failing to see another human being means failing
to understand that individual and failing to establish any sort of
sympathetic communion with him or her.
Symbols
1.Fog
Fog is a sort of corollary to darkness. Fog not only obscures but distorts: it
gives one just enough information to begin making decisions but no way
to judge the accuracy of that information, which often ends up being
wrong. Marlows steamer is caught in the fog, meaning that he has no
idea where hes going and no idea whether peril or open water lies ahead.
2.The Whited Sepulchre
The whited sepulchre is probably Brussels, where the Companys
headquarters are located. A sepulchre implies death and confinement,
and indeed Europe is the origin of the colonial enterprises that bring death
to white men and to their colonial subjects; it is also governed by a set of
reified social principles that both enable cruelty, dehumanization, and evil
and prohibit change. The phrase whited sepulchre comes from the
biblical Book of Matthew. In the passage, Matthew describes whited
sepulchres as something beautiful on the outside but containing horrors
within (the bodies of the dead); thus, the image is appropriate for
Brussels, given the hypocritical Belgian rhetoric about imperialisms

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civilizing mission. (Belgian colonies, particularly the Congo, were notorious
for the violence perpetuated against the natives.)
3.Women
Both Kurtzs Intended and his African mistress function as blank slates
upon which the values and the wealth of their respective societies can be
displayed. Marlow frequently claims that women are the keepers of nave
illusions; although this sounds condemnatory, such a role is in fact crucial,
as these nave illusions are at the root of the social fictions that justify
economic enterprise and colonial expansion. In return, the women are the
beneficiaries of much of the resulting wealth, and they become objects
upon which men can display their own success and status.
4.The river
The Congo River is the key to Africa for Europeans. It allows them access
to the center of the continent without having to physically cross it; in
other words, it allows the white man to remain always separate or outside.
Africa is thus reduced to a series of two-dimensional scenes that flash by
Marlows steamer as he travels upriver. The river also seems to want to
expel Europeans from Africa altogether: its current makes travel upriver
slow and difficult, but the flow of water makes travel downriver, back
toward civilization, rapid and seemingly inevitable. Marlows struggles
with the river as he travels upstream toward Kurtz reflect his struggles to
understand the situation in which he has found himself. The ease with
which he journeys back downstream, on the other hand, mirrors his
acquiescence to Kurtz and his choice of nightmares.

EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY AND MODERNISM

1901 1950
BRITAIN 1901 1950
Queen Victorias death corresponded with the start of the new century,
and Britain entered a new era in which its supremacy on the world stage
come to an end as the result of two ruinous global wars.
Despite the economic gloom that characterized the first fifty years of the
20th century, British society was by no means dormant, since both World
Wars acted as catalysts for profound cultural and social changes. The
most significant change was the new role of women in society. The
dutiful, housebound Victorian lady was being replaced by a young, fun-
loving and liberated woman.
The first fifty years of the 20th century saw the end of the British Empire
and of the Industrial Revolution. The two wars had meant that Britain
would play a less prominent role in a world dominated by the United
States and the Soviet Union.
British literature
Between 1910 and 1930 the impetus towards innovation and
experimentation gathered pace as Modernist writers published ground-
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breaking works that made this period one of the most memorable in the
history of English literature. They tried to find forms of expression that
reflected the complexity of 20th century life.
Although the Modernist revolution instigated by Joseph Conrad, D. H.
Lawrence, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was the most notable
development in the world of early 20 th century fiction, most writing during
the period respected more traditional stylistic and organizational norms.
The Bloomsbury Group, so called because it met in the Bloomsbury
area of London, included E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf. They
followed in the aesthetic tradition of the late 19 th century and
totally rejected the moral and artistic restrictions of the
Victorians. Forster, along with Rudyard Kipling and Joseph
Conrad, dealt with colonialism as the first breaches began to
appear in the defences of the Empire.
Born in the USA, Henry James became a British subject shortly before his
death and is perhaps the first writer to be equally claimed on both sides of
the Atlantic.
A contrasting view of the British in India is given by E. M. Forster in A
passage to India. His condemnation of the ruling British elite leaves little
room for any hope that the gap between governors and governed can be
closed.
Modernist writers believed that nothing could be taken for
granted in literary form and that no theme or subject matter was
unsuitable for fiction. Writers like Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence and
Conrad applied psychoanalytic theory to their work so that the inner
psychology of man became as important as the external world. Modernist
works are deliberately open to myriad of interpretation, and they
experiment with time shifts. Joseph Conrad was one of the earliest writers
to experiment with time shifts. Virginia Woolf applied her acute feminine
sensibility to the examination of the inner workings of the human mind,
and brilliantly exposed the spontaneous flow of her characters thoughts,
impressions and emotions. She uses the technique of the interior
monologue.
The writer who best symbolizes the Modernist revolution in fiction
is James Joyce, who experimented with the form, technique and subject
matter of the novel.
CONCLUSION
Rapid political and social change marked the period between the 2 world
wars:
The British Empire was in decline
Countries like India were beginning to question Britains colonial rule
The Labour Party was beginning to challenge the Conservative Party
Women were demanding equal rights, which leads to the new role of
women in society
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 The end of the Industrial Revolution
The forms of expression were trying to reflect the complexity of 20 th
century life.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY HENRY JAMES

Context
Henry James was born in New York City in 1843 and was raised in
Manhattan. By his mid- twenties James was considered one of the most
skilled writers in America. In novels such as The American, The
Europeans, and Daisy Miller, James perfected a unique brand of
psychological realism, taking as his primary subject the social
maneuverings of the upper classes, particularly the situation of Americans
living in Europe. For James, America represented optimism and innocence,
while Europe represented decadence and social sophistication; James
himself moved to Europe early on in his professional career and was
naturalized as a British citizen in 1915 to protest America's failure to enter
World War I.
Throughout his career, James earned criticism for the slow pacing and
uneventful plotting of his novels, as well as for his elliptical technique, in
which many of a work's important scenes are not narrated, but only
implied by later scenes.
First written in the 1880s and extensively revised in 1908, The Portrait of
a Lady is often considered to be James's greatest achievement. In it, he
explored many of his most characteristic themes, including the conflict
between American individualism and European social custom and the
situation of Americans in Europe. It also includes many of his most
memorable characters, including the lady of the novel's title, Isabel
Archer, the indomitable Mrs. Touchett, the wise and funny Ralph Touchett,
the fast-talking Henrietta Stackpole, and the sinister villains, Gilbert
Osmond and Madame Merle.
The Portrait of a Lady is recognized as one of the greatest of the many
great works of Henry James. Why? Well, there are the obvious answers:
the novel, which was released in installments in the Atlantic
Monthly magazine in 1880, was an instant hit; critics then and now praise
its attention to psychological detail and realistic situations. It is widely
acknowledged to be the masterpiece of Jamess early period.
Then, there are the more intimate reasons. The characters are, in a word,
unforgettable. Its easy to find yourself deeply involved in a personal
relationship with Isabel or Ralph, or to imagine yourself confronting
Madame Merle or Osmond. The novels characters so brim with life, they
seem like they can step off the page and into our lives. Jamess vibrant,
living, breathing microcosm of society still feels like an incredible
achievement, and its what keeps this novel feeling so contemporary and
compulsively readable.
Analysis of major characters

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1.Isabel
The novel's protagonist, the Lady of the title. Isabel is a young woman
from Albany, New York, who travels to Europe with her aunt, Mrs. Touchett.
Isabel's experiences in Europeshe is wooed by an English lord, inherits a
fortune, and falls prey to a villainous scheme to marry her to the sinister
Gilbert Osmondforce her to confront the conflict between her desire for
personal independence and her commitment to social propriety. Isabel is
the main focus of Portrait of a Lady, and most of the thematic exploration
of the novel occurs through her actions, thoughts, and experiences.
Ultimately, Isabel chooses to remain in her miserable marriage to Osmond
rather than to violate custom by leaving him and searching for a happier
life.
2.Gilbert Osmond
A cruel, narcissistic gentleman of no particular social standing or wealth,
who seduces Isabel and marries her for her money. An art collector,
Osmond poses as a disinterested aesthete, but in reality he is desperate
for the recognition and admiration of those around him. He treats
everyone who loves him as simply an object to be used to fulfill his
desires; he bases his daughter Pansy's upbringing on the idea that she
should be unswervingly subservient to him, and he even treats his long-
time lover Madame Merle as a mere tool. Isabel's marriage to Osmond
forces her to confront the conflict between her desire for independence
and the painful social proprieties that force her to remain in her marriage.
3.Ralph Touchett
Isabel's wise, funny cousin, who is ill with lung disease throughout the
entire novel, which ends shortly after his death. Ralph loves life, but he is
kept from participating in it vigorously by his ailment; as a result, he acts
as a dedicated spectator, resolving to live vicariously through his beloved
cousin Isabel. It is Ralph who convinces Mr. Touchett to leave Isabel her
fortune, and it is Ralph who is the staunchest advocate of Isabel remaining
independent. Ralph serves as the moral center of Portrait of a Lady: his
opinions about other characters are always accurate, and he serves as a
kind of moral barometer for the reader, who can tell immediately whether
a character is good or evil by Ralph's response to that character.
Themes

1. American versus European character

The contrast between the American character and the European character
is a theme that appears throughout James's work. This is not surprising,
since it is a contrast he observed throughout his life as an American who
spent most of his adulthood in Europe. According to James, Americans
tend to be naive, energetic, practical, sincere, direct, and spontaneous,
and they value the individual above society. Conversely, Europeans are
sophisticated, lethargic, formal, insincere, obtuse, and scheming, and they
value society above the individual.
This theme is especially interesting in The Portrait of a Lady because most
of its characters are Americans who have been living in Europe for varying
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periods of time. In general, the longer an American-born character has
been in Europe, the more European traits he or she has. Gilbert has lived
nearly his whole life on the Continent and is completely European in
character. James uses him to personify the worst manifestations of
European traits. At the other end of the spectrum is Isabel, who is just
arriving in Europe as the novel opens. The things that make her
distinctively American, such as her energy and independent attitude, are
fresh and interesting to the European characters. They are also, however,
the things that lead to her downfall. By refusing to take the counsel of
those who care about her, Isabel falls prey to the more sophisticated
Europeans who manipulate her for their own purposes.
James does make a moral judgment about which culture produces better
people; he clearly portrays the Americans as having more integrity. But he
also shows that, taken as individuals, most Americans and Europeans alike
have both good and bad qualities. While Isabel is almost wholly admirable
and Gilbert is almost wholly despicable, the other characters are drawn in
shades of grey. Henrietta is an example of an American whom James
portrays less positively. Her American qualities are exaggerated so that
her directness is actually rudeness. Her lack of regard for society and
convention is so extreme that she offends as routinely as Isabel enchants.
Lord Warburton, on the other hand, exemplifies European qualities in their
most positive form. He is sophisticated and conventional, but he is also
courteous, sensitive, and gracious even in defeat. Ralph is also a positive
European character, a physically weak man who is nevertheless morally
strong.
2.Social and Emotional Maturation
Isabel's social and emotional development is thrown into high relief by
James's contrast of American and European natures. Yet Isabel's
experiences and the wisdom she gains from them are certainly not unique
to American women coming of age in European society. Isabel's naivet is
common among young women in all cultures, which is one reason why the
novel remains popular. It is almost a rule that young women make poor
romantic choices. In fact, they often make exactly the mistake that Isabel
makes: they choose a man who is charming and seductive, yet self-
centered, over one who is less worldly but more substantial and caring.
This oft-repeated error of youth has been the subject of many works of
literature. Perhaps the best-known is Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility,
which contrasts the naive Marianne and her wiser sister, Elinor.
In The Portrait of a Lady, James uses one theme, the contrasts between
Americans and Europeans, to intensify another, more universal theme of a
woman's development from naive youth to mature wisdom as she suffers
the consequences of a poor romantic choice.
The Realism of Henry James
Henry James has had a tremendous influence on the development of the
novel. Part of this influence has been through the type of realism that he
employs. On the other hand, the most frequent criticism against James
has been that he is not realistic enough. Many critics have objected that
James does not write about life, that his novels are filled with people
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whom one would never meet in this world. One critic (H. L. Mencken)
suggested that James needed a good whiff of the Chicago stockyards so as
to get a little life into his novels. Others have suggested that James' world
is too narrow and incomplete to warrant classification as a realistic
depiction of life.
Actually, James' realism is of a special sort. By the early definitions, James
is not a realist. The early definitions stated that the novelist should
accurately depict life, and the novel should "hold up a mirror to life"; in
other words, the early realist was supposed to make an almost scientific
recording of life.
But James was not concerned with all aspects of life. There is nothing of
the ugly, the vulgar, the common, or the pornographic in James. He was
not concerned with poverty or with the middle class who had to struggle
for a living. Instead, he was interested in depicting a class of people who
could afford to devote themselves to the refinements of life.
What then is James special brand of realism? When we refer to James'
realism, we mean James' fidelity to his own material. To best appreciate
his novels and his realism, we must enter into James' special world. It is as
though we ascended a ladder and arrived at another world. Once we have
arrived at this special world and once we accept it, then we see that
James is very realistic. That is, in terms of his world, he never violates his
character's essence. Thus, James' realism, in the truest sense, means
being faithful to his characters. In other words, characters from other
novels often do things or commit acts that don't seem to blend in with
their essential nature. But the acts of the Jamesian character are always
understandable in terms of that character's true nature.
James explained his own realism in terms of its opposition to romanticism.
For James the realistic represents those things which, sooner or later, in
one way or another, everyone will encounter. But the romantic stands for
those things which, with all the efforts and all the wealth and facilities of
the world, we can never know directly. Thus, it is conceivable that one can
experience the same things that the characters are experiencing in a
James novel; but one can never actually encounter the events narrated in
the romantic novel.
When James, therefore, creates a certain type of character early in the
novel, this character will act in a consistent manner throughout the entire
book. This is being realistic. The character will never do anything that is
not logical and acceptable to his realistic nature, or to our conception of
what that character should do.
In later years, James, in writing about realism, maintained that he was
more interested in a faithful rendition of a character in any given situation
than in depicting all aspects of life. Therefore, when he has once drawn
Isabel Archer's character in one situation, the reader can anticipate how
she will act in any other given situation. Her actions are not
unexplainable. We are able to logically understand all of her actions. Thus
James' realism would never allow the characters to perform actions which
would be inconsistent with their true natures.

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 A PASSAGE TO INDIA E. M. FORSTER
Context
Edward Morgan Forster was born into a comfortable London family in
1879. His father, an architect, died when Forster was very young, leaving
the boy to be raised by his mother and great-aunt. Forster proved to be a
bright student, and he went on to attend Cambridge University,
graduating in 1901. He spent much of the next decade traveling and living
abroad, dividing his time between working as a journalist and writing short
stories and novels.
Long before Forster first visited India, he had already gained a vivid
picture of its people and places from a young Indian Muslim named Syed
Ross Masood, whom Forster began tutoring in England starting in 1906.
Forster and Masood became very close, and Masood introduced Forster to
several of his Indian friends. Echoes of the friendship between the two can
be seen in the characters of Fielding and Aziz in A Passage to India. By the
time Forster first visited India, in 1912, the Englishman was well prepared
for his travels throughout the country.
Forster began writing A Passage to India in 1913, just after his first visit to
India. The novel was not revised and completed, however, until well after
his second stay in India, in 1921, when he served as secretary to the
Maharajah of Dewas State Senior. Published in 1924, A Passage to
India examines the racial misunderstandings and cultural hypocrisies that
characterized the complex interactions between Indians and the English
toward the end of the British occupation of India.
Forsters style is marked by his sympathy for his characters, his ability to
see more than one side of an argument or story, and his fondness for
simple, symbolic tales that neatly encapsulate large-scale problems and
conditions. These tendencies are all evident in A Passage to India, which
was immediately acclaimed as Forsters masterpiece upon its publication.
It is a traditional social and political novel, unconcerned with the technical
innovation of some of Forsters modernist contemporaries such as
Gertrude Stein or T.S. Eliot. A Passage to India is concerned, however, with
representing the chaos of modern human experience through patterns of
imagery and form. In this regard, Forsters novel is similar to modernist
works of the same time period, such as James Joyces Ulysses (1922) and
Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway (1925).
A Passage to India was the last in a string of Forsters novels in which his
craft improved markedly with each new work. After the novels
publication, however, Forster never again attained the level of craft or the
depth of observation that characterized his early work. In his later life, he
contented himself primarily with writing critical essays and lectures, most
notably Aspects of the Novel (1927). In1946, Forster accepted a fellowship
at Cambridge, where he remained until his death in 1970.
Analysis of major characters
1.Dr. Aziz
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Aziz seems to be a mess of extremes and contradictions, an embodiment
of Forsters notion of the muddle of India. Aziz is impetuous and flighty,
changing opinions and preoccupations quickly and without warning, from
one moment to the next. His moods swing back and forth between
extremes, from childlike elation one minute to utter despair the next. Aziz
even seems capable of shifting careers and talents, serving as both
physician and poet during the course of A Passage to India. Azizs
somewhat youthful qualities, as evidenced by a sense of humor that leans
toward practical joking, are offset by his attitude of irony toward his
English superiors.
Forster, though not blatantly stereotyping, encourages us to see many of
Azizs characteristics as characteristics of Indians in general. Aziz, like
many of his friends, dislikes blunt honesty and directness, preferring to
communicate through confidences, feelings underlying words, and indirect
speech. Aziz has a sense that much of morality is really social code. He
therefore feels no moral compunction about visiting prostitutes or reading
Fieldings private mailboth because his intentions are good and because
he knows he will not be caught. Instead of living by merely social codes,
Aziz guides his action through a code that is nearly religious, such as we
see in his extreme hospitality. Moreover, Aziz, like many of the other
Indians, struggles with the problem of the English in India. On the one
hand, he appreciates some of the modernizing influences that the West
has brought to India; on the other, he feels that the presence of the
English degrades and oppresses his people.
2. Cyril Fielding
Of all the characters in the novel, Fielding is clearly the most associated
with Forster himself. Among the Englishmen in Chandrapore, Fielding is far
and away most the successful at developing and sustaining relationships
with native Indians. Though he is an educator, he is less comfortable in
teacher-student interaction than he is in one-on-one conversation with
another individual. This latter style serves as Forsters model of liberal
humanismForster and Fielding treat the world as a group of individuals
who can connect through mutual respect, courtesy, and intelligence.
Fielding, in these viewpoints, presents the main threat to the mentality of
the English in India. He educates Indians as individuals, engendering a
movement of free thought that has the potential to destabilize English
colonial power. Furthermore, Fielding has little patience for the racial
categorization that is so central to the English grip on India. He honors his
friendship with Aziz over any alliance with members of his own racea
reshuffling of allegiances that threatens the solidarity of the English.
Finally, Fielding travels light, as he puts it: he does not believe in
marriage, but favors friendship instead. As such, Fielding implicitly
questions the domestic conventions upon which the Englishmens sense
of Englishness is founded. Fielding refuses to sentimentalize domestic
England or to venerate the role of the wife or mothera far cry from the
other Englishmen, who put Adela on a pedestal after the incident at the
caves.
3.Adela Quested
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Adela arrives in India with Mrs. Moore, and, fittingly, her character
develops in parallel to Mrs. Moores. Adela, like the elder Englishwoman, is
an individualist and an educated free thinker. These tendencies lead her,
just as they lead Mrs. Moore, to question the standard behaviors of the
English toward the Indians. Adelas tendency to question standard
practices with frankness makes her resistant to being labeledand
therefore resistant to marrying Ronny and being labeled a typical colonial
English wife. Both Mrs. Moore and Adela hope to see the real India
rather than an arranged tourist version. However, whereas Mrs. Moores
desire is bolstered by a genuine interest in and affection for Indians, Adela
appears to want to see the real India simply on intellectual grounds. She
puts her mind to the task, but not her heartand therefore never
connects with Indians.
4.Mrs. Moore
As a character, Mrs. Moore serves a double function in A Passage to
India,operating on two different planes. She is initially a literal character,
but as the novel progresses she becomes more a symbolic presence. On
the literal level, Mrs. Moore is a good-hearted, religious, elderly woman
with mystical leanings. The initial days of her visit to India are successful,
as she connects with India and Indians on an intuitive level. Whereas
Adela is overly cerebral, Mrs. Moore relies successfully on her heart to
make connections during her visit. Furthermore, on the literal level, Mrs.
Moores character has human limitations: her experience at Marabar
renders her apathetic and even somewhat mean, to the degree that she
simply leaves India without bothering to testify to Azizs innocence or to
oversee Ronny and Adelas wedding.
After her departure, however, Mrs. Moore exists largely on a symbolic
level. Though she herself has human flaws, she comes to symbolize an
ideally spiritual and race-blind openness that Forster sees as a solution to
the problems in India. Mrs. Moores name becomes closely associated with
Hinduism, especially the Hindu tenet of the oneness and unity of all living
things. This symbolic side to Mrs. Moore might even make her the heroine
of the novel, the only English person able to closely connect with the
Hindu vision of unity. Nonetheless, Mrs. Moores literal actionsher
sudden abandonment of Indiamake her less than heroic.
Themes
1.The difficulty of English Indian friendship
A Passage to India begins and ends by posing the question of whether it is
possible for an Englishman and an Indian to ever be friends, at least within
the context of British colonialism. Forster uses this question as a
framework to explore the general issue of Britains political control of India
on a more personal level, through the friendship between Aziz and
Fielding. At the beginning of the novel, Aziz is scornful of the English,
wishing only to consider them comically or ignore them completely. Yet
the intuitive connection Aziz feels with Mrs. Moore in the mosque opens
him to the possibility of friendship with Fielding. Through the first half of
the novel, Fielding and Aziz represent a positive model of liberal
humanism: Forster suggests that British rule in India could be successful
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and respectful if only English and Indians treated each other as Fielding
and Aziz treat each otheras worthy individuals who connect through
frankness, intelligence, and good will.
Yet in the aftermath of the novels climaxAdelas accusation that Aziz
attempted to assault her and her subsequent disavowal of this accusation
at the trialAziz and Fieldings friendship falls apart. The strains on their
relationship are external in nature, as Aziz and Fielding both suffer from
the tendencies of their cultures. Aziz tends to let his imagination run away
with him and to let suspicion harden into a grudge. Fielding suffers from
an English literalism and rationalism that blind him to Azizs true feelings
and make Fielding too stilted to reach out to Aziz through conversations or
letters. Furthermore, their respective Indian and English communities pull
them apart through their mutual stereotyping. As we see at the end of the
novel, even the landscape of India seems to oppress their friendship.
Forsters final vision of the possibility of English-Indian friendship is a
pessimistic one, yet it is qualified by the possibility of friendship on
English soil, or after the liberation of India. As the landscape itself seems
to imply at the end of the novel, such a friendship may be possible
eventually, but not yet.
2.The Unity of All Living Things
Though the main characters of A Passage to India are generally Christian
or Muslim, Hinduism also plays a large thematic role in the novel. The
aspect of Hinduism with which Forster is particularly concerned is the
religions ideal of all living things, from the lowliest to the highest, united
in love as one. This vision of the universe appears to offer redemption to
India through mysticism, as individual differences disappear into a
peaceful collectivity that does not recognize hierarchies. Individual blame
and intrigue is forgone in favor of attention to higher, spiritual matters.
Professor Godbole, the most visible Hindu in the novel, is Forsters
mouthpiece for this idea of the unity of all living things. Godbole alone
remains aloof from the drama of the plot, refraining from taking sides by
recognizing that all are implicated in the evil of Marabar. Mrs. Moore, also,
shows openness to this aspect of Hinduism. Though she is a Christian, her
experience of India has made her dissatisfied with what she perceives as
the smallness of Christianity. Mrs. Moore appears to feel a great sense of
connection with all living creatures, as evidenced by her respect for the
wasp in her bedroom.
Yet, through Mrs. Moore, Forster also shows that the vision of the oneness
of all living things can be terrifying. As we see in Mrs. Moores experience
with the echo that negates everything into boum in Marabar, such
oneness provides unity but also makes all elements of the universe one
and the samea realization that, it is implied, ultimately kills Mrs. Moore.
3.The Muddle of India
Forster takes great care to strike a distinction between the ideas of
muddle and mystery in A Passage to India. Muddle has connotations
of dangerous and disorienting disorder, whereas mystery suggests a
mystical, orderly plan by a spiritual force that is greater than man.
Fielding, who acts as Forsters primary mouthpiece in the novel, admits
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that India is a muddle, while figures such as Mrs. Moore and Godbole
view India as a mystery. The muddle that is India in the novel appears to
work from the ground up: the very landscape and architecture of the
countryside is formless, and the natural life of plants and animals defies
identification. This muddled quality to the environment is mirrored in the
makeup of Indias native population, which is mixed into a muddle of
different religious, ethnic, linguistic, and regional groups.
4.The Negligence of British Colonial Government
Though A Passage to India is in many ways a highly symbolic, or even
mystical, text, it also aims to be a realistic documentation of the attitudes
of British colonial officials in India. Forster spends large sections of the
novel characterizing different typical attitudes the English hold toward the
Indians whom they control. Forsters satire is most harsh toward
Englishwomen, whom the author depicts as overwhelmingly racist, self-
righteous, and viciously condescending to the native population. Some of
the Englishmen in the novel are as nasty as the women, but Forster more
often identifies Englishmen as men who, though condescending and
unable to relate to Indians on an individual level, are largely well-meaning
and invested in their jobs. For all Forsters criticism of the British manner
of governing India, however, he does not appear to question the right of
the British Empire to rule India. He suggests that the British would be well
served by becoming kinder and more sympathetic to the Indians with
whom they live, but he does not suggest that the British should abandon
India outright. Even this lesser critique is never overtly stated in the novel,
but implied through biting satire.
Motifs
1.The Echo
The echo begins at the Marabar Caves: first Mrs. Moore and then Adela
hear the echo and are haunted by it in the weeks to come. The echos
sound is bouma sound it returns regardless of what noise or utterance
is originally made. This negation of difference embodies the frightening
flip side of the seemingly positive Hindu vision of the oneness and unity of
all living things. If all people and things become the same thing, then no
distinction can be made between good and evil. No value system can
exist. The echo plagues Mrs. Moore until her death, causing her to
abandon her beliefs and cease to care about human relationships. Adela,
however, ultimately escapes the echo by using its message of
impersonality to help her realize Azizs innocence.
2.Eastern and Western Architecture
Forster spends time detailing both Eastern and Western architecture in A
Passage to India. Three architectural structuresthough one is naturally
occurringprovide the outline for the books three sections, Mosque,
Caves, and Temple. Forster presents the aesthetics of Eastern and
Western structures as indicative of the differences of the respective
cultures as a whole. In India, architecture is confused and formless:
interiors blend into exterior gardens, earth and buildings compete with
each other, and structures appear unfinished or drab. As such, Indian
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architecture mirrors the muddle of India itself and what Forster sees as the
Indians characteristic inattention to form and logic. Occasionally,
however, Forster takes a positive view of Indian architecture. The mosque
in Part I and temple in Part III represent the promise of Indian openness,
mysticism, and friendship. Western architecture, meanwhile, is described
during Fieldings stop in Venice on his way to England. Venices structures,
which Fielding sees as representative of Western architecture in general,
honor form and proportion and complement the earth on which they are
built. Fielding reads in this architecture the self-evident correctness of
Western reasonan order that, he laments, his Indian friends would not
recognize or appreciate.
3.Godboles Song
At the end of Fieldings tea party, Godbole sings for the English visitors a
Hindu song, in which a milkmaid pleads for God to come to her or to her
people. The songs refrain of Come! come recurs throughout A Passage
to India, mirroring the appeal for the entire country of salvation from
something greater than itself. After the song, Godbole admits that God
never comes to the milkmaid. The song greatly disheartens Mrs. Moore,
setting the stage for her later spiritual apathy, her simultaneous
awareness of a spiritual presence and lack of confidence in spiritualism as
a redeeming force. Godbole seemingly intends his song as a message or
lesson that recognition of the potential existence of a God figure can bring
the world together and erode differencesafter all, Godbole himself sings
the part of a young milkmaid. Forster uses the refrain of Godboles song,
Come! come, to suggest that Indias redemption is yet to come.
Symbols
1.The Marabar Caves
The Marabar Caves represent all that is alien about nature. The caves are
older than anything else on the earth and embody nothingness and
emptinessa literal void in the earth. They defy both English and Indians
to act as guides to them, and their strange beauty and menace unsettles
visitors. The caves alien quality also has the power to make visitors such
as Mrs. Moore and Adela confront parts of themselves or the universe that
they have not previously recognized. The all-reducing echo of the caves
causes Mrs. Moore to see the darker side of her spiritualitya waning
commitment to the world of relationships and a growing ambivalence
about God. Adela confronts the shame and embarrassment of her
realization that she and Ronny are not actually attracted to each other,
and that she might be attracted to no one. In this sense, the caves both
destroy meaning, in reducing all utterances to the same sound, and
expose or narrate the unspeakable, the aspects of the universe that the
caves visitors have not yet considered.
2.The Green Bird
Just after Adela and Ronny agree for the first time, in Chapter VII, to break
off their engagement, they notice a green bird sitting in the tree above
them. Neither of them can positively identify the bird. For Adela, the bird
symbolizes the unidentifiable quality of all of India: just when she thinks
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she can understand any aspect of India, that aspect changes or
disappears. In this sense, the green bird symbolizes the muddle of India.
In another capacity, the bird points to a different tension between the
English and Indians. The English are obsessed with knowledge, literalness,
and naming, and they use these tools as a means of gaining and
maintaining power. The Indians, in contrast, are more attentive to nuance,
undertone, and the emotions behind words. While the English insist on
labeling things, the Indians recognize that labels can blind one to
important details and differences. The unidentifiable green bird suggests
the incompatibility of the English obsession with classification and order
with the shifting quality of India itselfthe land is, in fact, a hundred
Indias that defy labeling and understanding.
3.The Wasp
The wasp appears several times in A Passage to India, usually in
conjunction with the Hindu vision of the oneness of all living things. The
wasp is usually depicted as the lowest creature the Hindus incorporate
into their vision of universal unity. Mrs. Moore is closely associated with
the wasp, as she finds one in her room and is gently appreciative of it. Her
peaceful regard for the wasp signifies her own openness to the Hindu idea
of collectivity, and to the mysticism and indefinable quality of India in
general. However, as the wasp is the lowest creature that the Hindus
visualize, it also represents the limits of the Hindu vision. The vision is not
a panacea, but merely a possibility for unity and understanding in India.

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN JAMES JOYCE

Context
James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in the town of Rathgar, near
Dublin, Ireland, and is considered to be a champion of Modernism.
Published in serial form in 19141915, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man draws on many details from Joyce's early life. The novel's protagonist,
Stephen Dedalus, is in many ways Joyce's fictional doubleJoyce had
even published stories under the pseudonym "Stephen Daedalus" before
writing the novel. Like Joyce himself, Stephen is the son of an
impoverished father and a highly devout Catholic mother. Also like Joyce,
he attends Clongowes Wood, Belvedere, and University Colleges,
struggling with questions of faith and nationality before leaving Ireland to
make his own way as an artist. Many of the scenes in the novel are
fictional, but some of its most powerful moments are autobiographical:
both the Christmas dinner scene and Stephen's first sexual experience
with the Dublin prostitute closely resemble actual events in Joyce's life.
In addition to drawing heavily on Joyce's personal life, A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man also makes a number of references to the politics
and religion of early-twentieth-century Ireland. In addition to political
strife, there was considerable religious tension: the majority of Irish,
including the Joyces, were Catholics, and strongly favored Irish
independence. The Protestant minority, on the other hand, mostly wished
to remain united with Britain.
111
 In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the young Stephen's friends at
University College frequently confront him with political questions about
this struggle between Ireland and England.
Today, Joyce is celebrated as one of the great literary pioneers of the
twentieth century. He was one of the first writers to make extensive and
convincing use of stream of consciousness, a stylistic form in which
written prose seeks to represent the characters' stream of inner thoughts
and perceptions rather than render these characters from an objective,
external perspective.
Another stylistic technique for which Joyce is noted is the epiphany, a
moment in which a character makes a sudden, profound realization
whether prompted by an external object or a voice from withinthat
creates a change in his or her perception of the world. Joyce uses
epiphany most notably in Dubliners, but A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man is full of these sudden moments of spiritual revelation as well. Most
notable is a scene in which Stephen sees a young girl wading at the
beach, which strikes him with the sudden realization that an appreciation
for beauty can be truly good. This moment is a classic example of Joyce's
belief that an epiphany can dramatically alter the human spirit in a matter
of just a few seconds.
Analysis of major characters
1.Stephen Dedalus
Modeled after Joyce himself, Stephen is a sensitive, thoughtful boy who
reappears in Joyce's later masterpiece, Ulysses. In A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man, though Stephen's large family runs into deepening
financial difficulties, his parents manage to send him to prestigious
schools and eventually to a university. As he grows up, Stephen grapples
with his nationality, religion, family, and morality, and finally decides to
reject all socially imposed bonds and instead live freely as an artist.
Stephen undergoes several crucial transformations over the course of the
novel. The first, which occurs during his first years as Clongowes, is from a
sheltered little boy to a bright student who understands social interactions
and can begin to make sense of the world around him. The second, which
occurs when Stephen sleeps with the Dublin prostitute, is from innocence
to debauchery. The third, which occurs when Stephen hears Father Arnall's
speech on death and hell, is from an unrepentant sinner to a devout
Catholic. Finally, Stephen's greatest transformation is from near fanatical
religiousness to a new devotion to art and beauty. This transition takes
place in Chapter 4, when he is offered entry to the Jesuit order but refuses
it in order to attend university. Stephen's refusal and his subsequent
epiphany on the beach mark his transition from belief in God to belief in
aesthetic beauty. This transformation continues through his college years.
By the end of his time in college, Stephen has become a fully formed
artist, and his diary entries reflect the independent individual he has
become.
2.Simon Dedalus

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Simon Dedalus spends a great deal of his time reliving past experiences,
lost in his own sentimental nostalgia. Joyce often uses Simon to symbolize
the bonds and burdens that Stephen's family and nationality place upon
him as he grows up. Simon is a nostalgic, tragic figure: he has a deep
pride in tradition, but he is unable to keep his own affairs in order. To
Stephen, his father Simon represents the parts of family, nation, and
tradition that hold him back, and against which he feels he must rebel.
The closest look we get at Simon is on the visit to Cork with Stephen,
during which Simon gets drunk and sentimentalizes about his past. Joyce
paints a picture of a man who has ruined himself and, instead of facing his
problems, drowns them in alcohol and nostalgia.
Themes
1.The development of individual consciousness
Perhaps the most famous aspect of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man is Joyce's innovative use of stream of consciousness, a style in which
the author directly transcribes the thoughts and sensations that go
through a character's mind, rather than simply describing those
sensations from the external standpoint of an observer. Joyce's use of
stream of consciousness makes A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a
story of the development of Stephen's mind. In the first chapter, the very
young Stephen is only capable of describing his world in simple words and
phrases. The sensations that he experiences are all jumbled together with
a child's lack of attention to cause and effect. Later, when Stephen is a
teenager obsessed with religion, he is able to think in a clearer, more
adult manner. Paragraphs are more logically ordered than in the opening
sections of the novel, and thoughts progress logically. Stephen's mind is
more mature and he is now more coherently aware of his surroundings.
Nonetheless, he still trusts blindly in the church, and his passionate
emotions of guilt and religious ecstasy are so strong that they get in the
way of rational thought. It is only in the final chapter, when Stephen is in
the university, that he seems truly rational. By the end of the novel, Joyce
renders a portrait of a mind that has achieved emotional, intellectual, and
artistic adulthood.
The development of Stephen's consciousness in A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man is particularly interesting because, insofar as Stephen is a
portrait of Joyce himself, Stephen's development gives us insight into the
development of a literary genius. Stephen's experiences hint at the
influences that transformed Joyce himself into the great writer he is
considered today: Stephen's obsession with language; his strained
relations with religion, family, and culture; and his dedication to forging an
aesthetic of his own mirror the ways in which Joyce related to the various
tensions in his life during his formative years. In the last chapter of the
novel, we also learn that genius, though in many ways a calling, also
requires great work and considerable sacrifice. Watching Stephen's daily
struggle to puzzle out his aesthetic philosophy, we get a sense of the
great task that awaits him.
2.The pitfalls of religious extremism

113
Brought up in a devout Catholic family, Stephen initially ascribes to an
absolute belief in the morals of the church. As a teenager, this belief leads
him to two opposite extremes, both of which are harmful. At first, he falls
into the extreme of sin, repeatedly sleeping with prostitutes and
deliberately turning his back on religion. Though Stephen sins willfully, he
is always aware that he acts in violation of the church's rules. Then, when
Father Arnall's speech prompts him to return to Catholicism, he bounces to
the other extreme, becoming a perfect, near fanatical model of religious
devotion and obedience. Eventually, however, Stephen realizes that both
of these lifestylesthe completely sinful and the completely devoutare
extremes that have been false and harmful. He does not want to lead a
completely debauched life, but also rejects austere Catholicism because
he feels that it does not permit him the full experience of being human.
Stephen ultimately reaches a decision to embrace life and celebrate
humanity after seeing a young girl wading at a beach. To him, the girl is a
symbol of pure goodness and of life lived to the fullest.
3.The role of the artist
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explores what it means to become
an artist. Stephen's decision at the end of the novelto leave his family
and friends behind and go into exile in order to become an artist
suggests that Joyce sees the artist as a necessarily isolated figure. In his
decision, Stephen turns his back on his community, refusing to accept the
constraints of political involvement, religious devotion, and family
commitment that the community places on its members.
However, though the artist is an isolated figure, Stephen's ultimate goal is
to give a voice to the very community that he is leaving. In the last few
lines of the novel, Stephen expresses his desire to "forge in the smithy of
my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." He recognizes that his
community will always be a part of him, as it has created and shaped his
identity. When he creatively expresses his own ideas, he will also convey
the voice of his entire community. Even as Stephen turns his back on the
traditional forms of participation and membership in a community, he
envisions his writing as a service to the community.
4.The need for Irish autonomy

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Despite his desire to steer clear of politics, Stephen constantly ponders
Ireland's place in the world. He concludes that the Irish have always been
a subservient people, allowing outsiders to control them. In his
conversation with the dean of studies at the university, he realizes that
even the language of the Irish people really belongs to the English.
Stephen's perception of Ireland's subservience has two effects on his
development as an artist. First, it makes him determined to escape the
bonds that his Irish ancestors have accepted. As we see in his
conversation with Davin, Stephen feels an anxious need to emerge from
his Irish heritage as his own person, free from the shackles that have
traditionally confined his country: "Do you fancy I am going to pay in my
own life and person debts they made?" Second, Stephen's perception
makes him determined to use his art to reclaim autonomy for Ireland.
Using the borrowed language of English, he plans to write in a style that
will be both autonomous from England and true to the Irish people.
Motifs
1.Music
Music, especially singing, appears repeatedly throughout A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man. Stephen's appreciation of music is closely tied to
his love for the sounds of language. As a very young child, he turns
Dante's threats into a song, " [A]pologise, pull out his eyes, pull out his
eyes, apologise." Singing is more than just language, howeverit is
language transformed by vibrant humanity. Indeed, music appeals to the
part of Stephen that wants to live life to the fullest. We see this aspect of
music near the end of the novel, when Stephen suddenly feels at peace
upon hearing a woman singing. Her voice prompts him to recall his
resolution to leave Ireland and become a writer, reinforcing his
determination to celebrate life through writing.
2.Flight
Stephen Dedalus's very name embodies the idea of flight. Stephen's
namesake, Daedalus, is a figure from Greek mythology, a renowned
craftsman who designs the famed Labyrinth of Crete for King Minos. Minos
keeps Daedalus and his son Icarus imprisoned on Crete, but Daedalus
makes plans to escape by using feathers, twine, and wax to fashion a set
of wings for himself and his son. Daedalus escapes successfully, but Icarus
flies too high. The sun's heat melts the wax holding Icarus's wings
together, and he plummets to his death in the sea.
In the context of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we can see
Stephen as representative of both Daedalus and Icarus, as Stephen's
father also has the last name of Dedalus. With this mythological reference,
Joyce implies that Stephen must always balance his desire to flee Ireland
with the danger of overestimating his own abilitiesthe intellectual
equivalent of Icarus's flight too close to the sun. To diminish the dangers
of attempting too much too soon, Stephen bides his time at the university,
developing his aesthetic theory fully before attempting to leave Ireland
and write seriously. The birds that appear to Stephen in the third section
of Chapter 5 signal that it is finally time for Stephen, now fully formed as
an artist, to take flight himself.
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3.Prayers, secular songs and Latin phrases
We can often tell Stephen's state of mind by looking at the fragments of
prayers, songs, and Latin phrases that Joyce inserts into the text. When
Stephen is a schoolboy, Joyce includes childish, sincere prayers that mirror
the manner in which a child might devoutly believe in the church, even
without understanding the meaning of its religious doctrine. When
Stephen prays in church despite the fact that he has committed a mortal
sin, Joyce transcribes a long passage of the Latin prayer, but it is clear
that Stephen merely speaks the words without believing them. Then,
when Stephen is at the university, Latin is used as a jokehis friends
translate colloquial phrases like "peace over the whole bloody globe" into
Latin because they find the academic sound of the translation amusing.
This jocular use of Latin mocks both the young men's education and the
stern, serious manner in which Latin is used in the church. These linguistic
jokes demonstrate that Stephen is no longer serious about religion. Finally,
Joyce includes a few lines from the Irish folk song "Rosie O'Grady" near the
end of the novel. These simple lines reflect the peaceful feeling that the
song brings to Stephen and Cranly, as well as the traditional Irish culture
that Stephen plans to leave behind. Throughout the novel, such prayers,
songs, and phrases form the background of Stephen's life.
Symbols
1.Green and maroon
Stephen associates the colors green and maroon with his governess,
Dante, and with two leaders of the Irish resistance, Charles Parnell and
Michael Davitt. In a dream after Parnell's death, Stephen sees Dante
dressed in green and maroon as the Irish people mourn their fallen leader.
This vision indicates that Stephen associates the two colors with the way
Irish politics are played out among the members of his own family.
2.Emma
Emma appears only in glimpses throughout most of Stephen's young life,
and he never gets to know her as a person. Instead, she becomes a
symbol of pure love, untainted by sexuality or reality. Stephen worships
Emma as the ideal of feminine purity. When he goes through his devoutly
religious phase, he imagines his reward for his piety as a union with Emma
in heaven. It is only later, when he is at the university, that we finally see
a real conversation between Stephen and Emma. Stephen's diary entry
regarding this conversation portrays Emma as a real, friendly, and
somewhat ordinary girl, but certainly not the goddess Stephen earlier
makes her out to be. This more balanced view of Emma mirrors Stephen's
abandonment of the extremes of complete sin and complete devotion in
favor of a middle path, the devotion to the appreciation of beauty.

Ulysses Study Guide

Ulysses, a Modernist reconstruction of Homer's epic The Odyssey, was James
Joyce's first epic-length novel. The Irish writer had already published a collection
of short stories entitled Dubliners, as well as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, the semi-autobiographical novella, whose protagonist, Stephen Dedalus,
reappears in Ulysses. Immediately hailed as a work of genius, Ulysses is still
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considered to be the greatest of Joyce's literary accomplishments and his first
two works anticipated what was to come in Ulysses. The novel was written over
the span of several years, during which Joyce continued to live in self-imposed
exile from his native Ireland. Ulysses was published in Paris in the year of 1922--
the same year in which T. S. Eliot published his widely regarded poem, "The
Waste Land."
Within English literature, the "Modernist" tradition includes most of the British
and American literary figures writing between the two world wars, and James
Joyce is considered among the likes of T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf: standard-
bearers who initiated the Modernist "revolution" against the Victorian "excesses
of civilization." Even today, Ulysses is widely regarded as the most
"revolutionary" literary efforts of the twentieth century if only for Joyce's "stream
of consciousness" technique. In his efforts to create a modern hero, Joyce
returned to classical myth only to deconstruct a Greek warrior into a parody of
the "Wandering Jew." Joyce's hero, Leopold Bloom, must suffer the emotional
traumas of betrayal and loss, while combating the anti-Semitism of 1904 Dublin.
In place of Greek stoicism and power, Joyce set a flawed and endearing human
being. And while Homer's The Odyssey only touched upon "epic," dignified
themes, Joyce devoted considerably detailed passages to the most banal and
taboo human activities: gluttony, defecation, urination, dementia, masturbation,
voyeurism, alcoholism, sado-masochism and coprophilia-and most of these
depictions included the hero, Bloom.
Joyce saw Ulysses as the confluence of his two previous works. From Dubliners,
Joyce borrowed the fatalistic and naturalistic depictions of a gritty, urban center.
Ulysses is impressive for its geography alone, charting almost twenty hours of
Dublin's street wandering, "bar-hopping" and marine commerce. Even though
Joyce took alternate residences in Switzerland, Italy and France, he was able to
paint Dublin from his almost perfect memory. While Leopold Bloom is the major
character of the work, Joyce spends considerable time focusing on Stephen
Dedalus, the protagonist of his first work. It is through Stephen, that Joyce is able
to debate the contentious religious and political issues that dominated the
novella. Unsurprisingly, Joyce's portrays Dublin as the semi-complicit victim of
Britain's aggression and the Roman Catholic Church's oppression. Joyce
continues his argument as a non-conformist, that the Roman Catholic Church's
structure facilitated corruption and more generally contributed to the alienation
and rot of the human soul as opposed to its uplift.

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At the same time, the Irish population was governed by the British and kept
under close watch. The British occupying force humiliated Irish patriots, and this
permanent military presence was one of the principal obstacles on the path
towards Irish "Home Rule." Despite Joyce's resentment towards Britain's colonial
outlook, his most dramatic political evolution since Portrait, is his rejection of
Ireland's nascent nationalist fervor. The patriots and zealots of Ulysses are
invariably buffoons or villains. Frequently they are drunk, and their national
agendas usually feature misogynist and anti-Semitic corollaries. Most notably,
Joyce satirizes the campaigned "Renaissance" of the Irish language and we
should remember that Ulysses accomplished the double act of establishing Joyce
as the premier stylist of the English language while giving Ireland a national bard
and epic.
But Ulysses' ascension into the literary canon was not a simple one even though
the novel sold well in Paris. Critics heralded Joyce's genius and wit, though the
book's incredible opacity, numerous deceptions and tedious allusions were a
source of contention. In Ulysses, Joyce attempted to replicate the thoughts and
activities of genuine human beings, but Joyce's "outhouse humor" even drew
criticism from literary familiars like Virginia Woolf. The allegedly "pornographic"
novel was immediately banned in the United Kingdom as well as the United
States. The frank sexuality of the "Penelope" episode and Bloom's sado-
masochistic "hallucinations" in the "Circe" chapter elicited the strongest
reactions. Despite the moral indignation, Ulysses was a smuggled commodity
and Joyce's literary stature rose considerably among literary communities on
both sides of the Atlantic. Nonetheless, it was well over a decade before a
Random House court victory initiated the first American publications of the novel,
which became available in Britain two years later.

Ulysses Summary
Joyce's novel is set in Dublin on the day of June 16, 1904 and the protagonist,
Leopold Bloom, is a middle-aged Jew whose job as an advertisement canvasser
forces him to travel throughout the city on a daily basis. While Bloom is Joyce's
"Ulysses" character, the younger hero of the novel is Stephen Dedalus, the
autobiographical character from Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man. While Joyce develops the character of the young student, most of the
novel is focused on Bloom.
Bloom's wife Molly is a singer and she is having an affair with her co-worker,
Blazes Boylan, and early in the morning of June 16, Bloom learns that Molly
intends to bring Boylan into their bed later that afternoon. The Blooms have a
daughter named Milly (age 15) who is away, studying photography. Ten years
ago, Molly gave birth to a son, Rudy, but he died when he was eleven days old
and Bloom often thinks of the parallel between his dead son Rudy and his dead
father Rudolph, who killed himself several years before.
Stephen Dedalus is the central character of the novel's first three chapters,
which constitute Part I of Ulysses. Dedalus is an academic and a schoolteacher
and he has left Ireland for Paris but he was forced to return upon hearing news
that his mother was gravely ill. The initial depictions of Stephen indicate that he
is guilty because he has separated from the Catholic Church and refused to pray
at the side of his mother's deathbed despite her pleading. Stephen has literary
ambitions but his desire to write Ireland's first true epic is tempered by his fear
that the island is too stultifying for him to be a success. Stephen lives in Martello
Tower with Buck Mulligan and a British student, Haines, and Stephen's

118
introverted personality prevents him from asserting himself. Instead, his friends
patronize him and take advantage of him.

Object 3

The opening three chapters, "Telemachus," "Nestor" and "Proteus," track the
early morning hours of Stephen Dedalus who eats breakfast, teaches at a school
in Dalkey and wanders Sandymount Strand. The opening chapters of Part II
("Calypso" and "Lotus-Eaters") begin the day anew, charting the early morning
rituals of Leopold Bloom, who must later attend the funeral of his friend, Paddy
Dignam. In "Calypso" and "Lotus-Eaters," the reader learns that Bloom is a
servile husband who prepares breakfast and runs errands on behalf of his wife
Molly, who remains half-asleep. We also learn that Bloom is preoccupied with
food and sex. He relishes eating a slightly burned kidney and has a penchant for
voyeurism.
The "Hades" chapter of Ulysses recounts the burial of Paddy Dignam in Glasnevin
Cemetery and it is at this point that Joyce begins to develop his theme of Bloom
as a Jewish outsider in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic society. Bloom's
insecurities are only heightened by his foreknowledge of Molly's infidelity. Both
Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus are set on a long winding tour of Dublin that
occupies most of the afternoon and they continually cross paths before
eventually meeting later that night. The afternoon chapters begin with "Aeolus"
and conclude with Bloom's altercation with the Citizen in "The Cyclops."
After Dignam's funeral, we get a more detailed view of Bloom's routine day.
Bloom immediate heads for the downtown newspaper office-a building that is
shared by three companies. Considering the frenetic pace of the news building,
the employees' treatment of Bloom seems excessively rude and dismissive and
Bloom's attempt to secure an easy advertisement renewal requires a trip to the
National Library. Bloom's library visit in "Scylla and Charybdis" presents another
occasion for him to talk to Stephen as their paths cross again but they continue
on their separate paths, neither cognizant of the other. Bloom's suffers the
afternoon, dreading his wife's adulterous act, scheduled for 4:30 pm. Joyce uses
the "Wandering Rocks" chapter to mirror Bloom's desperation with the squalor of
the city's poorest families before contrasting Bloom's unhappy solitude with the
jovial and musical atmosphere of "The Sirens." Bloom simply shrugs off the
prejudice of his acquaintances, accepts his solitude as his fate and even at this
point, tries to ignore the serious problems in his marriage.
Upon entering Kiernan's pub, late in the afternoon, Bloom is confronted by the
Citizen, a half-blind patriot whose outspoken anti-Semitism forces Bloom to
assert his identity, arguing that he can be a Jew and an Irish citizen,
simultaneously. Citizen is quiet before resuming his offense. Having burdened the
entire pub as a menacing drunk, Citizen focuses the brunt of his attack on Bloom,
accusing him of "robbing widows and orphans," even as Bloom readies to leave,
in order to visit the widow of Paddy Dignam. Bloom coolly replies to Citizen who
becomes indignant when Bloom asserts that Christ, himself, was a Jew. This
altercation is the first of the novel's two dramatic climaxes. When Bloom exits
the pub, the raging drunk hurls a biscuit tin at his head, but Bloom escapes
unharmed. Even as the Citizen's depressed faculties hindered him, he was
blinded by the sun, guaranteeing Bloom's victory. The "Wandering Jew"
"ascends" into the heavens and the concluding prose of "The Cyclops" strongly
suggests that Joyce modeled Bloom after Elijah who ascended immediately after
completing his course. While Bloom's problems with Molly remain, his victory in

119
Kiernan's pub anticipates his final transformation into Stephen's temporary
paternal figure. As an Elijah, Bloom passes the "mantle" to Stephen Dedalus.
The earliest chapter of night is "Nausicaa," which depicts Bloom as an incredibly
solemn and tired man. As he walks the beach of Sandymount Strand we
understand that the eclipsing evening corresponds to his aging and depressing
loss of virility. Even though Bloom is only a middle-aged man with a fifteen-year
old daughter, he bears the image of an elderly wanderer. A young woman named
Gerty MacDowell is sitting within their range of mutual sight and as she is
overcome with emotional longing and maternal love, she notices that Bloom is
staring at her while he is conspicuously masturbating himself in his pocket.
MacDowell seeks to offer Bloom a "refuge" and she abets his deed by displaying
her undergarments in a coquettish manner. After masturbating, Bloom is
enervated, complaining that Gerty has sapped the youth out of him.
Joyce's deliberate narrative structure produces the interaction between Bloom
and Dedalus right as Bloom contemplates the diminution of his own masculinity
and youth. Bloom meets Dedalus in the National Maternity Hospital,
unexpectedly, having arrived to visit Mrs. Mina Purefoy, who had been in labor
for three days. Stephen had accompanied several friends to the Hospital,
including Mulligan who has corrupted his friends into a loud table of young
drunks. Bloom worries for Stephen's safety and he eventually accompanies the
young man to "Nighttown," the red-light district where the "Circe" chapter is set.
Undoubtedly, "Circe" is the most memorable chapter of the book: Bloom suffers
"hallucinations" while walking on the street and they continue inside the brothel
of Bella Cohen. Joyce's "Circe" employs Freudian theories of the subconscious, of
repression and sexual desire. Bloom's hallucinations conflate feelings of religious
guilt, acts of sado-masochism and the shame of being cuckolded by the popular
ladies' man, Blazes Boylan.

Object 4

When Bloom re-emerges from his hallucinations, he finds that Stephen is

completely vulnerable, having degenerated into a limp and intoxicated creature.
It is unclear what is causing Stephen to jump around the room and half-climb the
furniture until we see him smash his walking stick into the chandelier, resisting
the ghost of his dead mother who has returned from the grave to use guilt in
order to coerce Stephen into Catholicism. The scene becomes chaotic as Bloom
assists Stephen out of Cohen's brothel. Stephen is alone after his friend Vincent
Lynch forsakes him. It is Bloom who tends to Stephen when he passes out after a
pugnacious British soldier delivers a heavy blow, aware that Stephen is incapable
of defending himself. Bloom sees the development as an opportunity to forge a
relationship with Stephen. Bloom succeeds in transporting Dedalus to the
Cabman's Shelter for some coffee and they continue their conversations about
120
love and music in Bloom's home at 7 Eccles Street. Despite Bloom's insistence,
Stephen declines the offer to spend the night in his home and as the novel
concludes, it seems likely that Stephen, like Bloom, must embark upon his own
heroic quest. "Penelope," the final chapter of Ulysses, presents Molly's
assessment of Bloom. Just as we come to understand how Bloom's lack of
empathy largely motivated Molly's infidelity, we also come to understand that
Molly truly loves her husband, independent of the question of their marriage.

MRS. DALLOWAY VIRGINIA WOOLF

Context
Virginia Woolf, the English novelist, critic, and essayist, was born on
January 25, 1882, to Leslie Stephen, a literary critic, and Julia Duckworth
Stephen. Woolf grew up in an upper-middle-class, socially active, literary
family in Victorian London. She had three full siblings, two half-brothers,
and two half-sisters. She was educated at home, becoming a voracious
reader of the books in her fathers extensive library. Tragedy first afflicted
the family when Woolfs mother died in 1895, then hit again two years
later, when her half-sister, Stella, the caregiver in the Stephen family,
died. Woolf experienced her first bout of mental illness after her mothers
death, and she suffered from mania and severe depression for the rest of
her life.
The Bloomsbury group, as Woolf and her friends came to be called,
disregarded the constricting taboos of the Victorian era, and such topics
as religion, sex, and art fueled the talk at their weekly salons. They even
discussed homosexuality, a subject that shocked many of the groups
contemporaries. For Woolf, the group served as the undergraduate
education that society had denied her.
Before World War I, Woolf viewed the realistic Victorian novel, with its
neat and linear plots, as an inadequate form of expression. Her opinion
intensified after the war, and in the 1920s she began searching for the
form that would reflect the violent contrasts and disjointed impressions of
the world around her.
In Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925, Woolf discovered a new literary form
capable of expressing the new realities of postwar England. The novel
depicts the subjective experiences and memories of its central characters
over a single day in postWorld War I London. Divided into parts, rather
than chapters, the novel's structure highlights the finely interwoven
texture of the characters' thoughts. This book, which focuses on
commonplace tasks, such as shopping, throwing a party, and eating dinner,
showed that no act was too small or too ordinary for a writers attention.
Ultimately, Mrs. Dalloway transformed the novel as an art form.

Woolf develops the books protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, and myriad

other characters by chronicling their interior thoughts with little pause or
explanation, a style referred to as stream of consciousness. Several
central characters and more than one hundred minor characters appear in
the text, and their thoughts spin out like spider webs. Sometimes the
threads of thought crossand people succeed in communicating. More

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often, however, the threads do not cross, leaving the characters isolated
and alone.
Characters in Mrs. Dalloway occasionally perceive lifes pattern through a
sudden shock, or what Woolf called a moment of being.
While writing Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf reread the Greek classics along with
two new modernist writers, Marcel Proust and James Joyce. Woolf shared
these writers' interest in time and psychology, and she incorporated these
issues into her novel. She wanted to show characters in flux, rather than
static, characters who think and emote as they move through space, who
react to their surroundings in ways that mirrored actual human
experience. Rapid political and social change marked the period between
the two world wars: the British Empire, for which so many people had
sacrificed their lives to protect and preserve, was in decline. Countries like
India were beginning to question Britains colonial rule. At home, the
Labour Party, with its plans for economic reform, was beginning to
challenge the Conservative Party, with its emphasis on imperial business
interests. Women, who had flooded the workforce to replace the men who
had gone to war, were demanding equal rights.
Although Mrs. Dalloway portrays the shifting political atmosphere through
the characters Peter Walsh, Richard Dalloway, and Hugh Whitbread, it
focuses more deeply on the charged social mood through the characters
Septimus Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway. Woolf delves into the
consciousness of Clarissa, a woman who exists largely in the domestic
sphere, to ensure that readers take her character seriously, rather than
simply dismiss her as a vain and uneducated upper-class wife. In spite of
her heroic and imperfect effort in life, Clarissa, like every human being
and even the old social order itself, must face death.
Woolfs struggles with mental illness gave her an opportunity to witness
firsthand how insensitive medical professionals could be, and she critiques
their tactlessness in Mrs. Dalloway. One of Woolfs doctors suggested that
plenty of rest and rich food would lead to a full recovery, a cure prescribed
in the novel, and another removed several of her teeth. In the early
twentieth century, mental health problems were too often considered
imaginary, an embarrassment, or the product of moral weakness. During
one bout of illness, Woolf heard birds sing like Greek choruses and King
Edward use foul language among some azaleas.
Analysis of major characters
1.Clarissa Dalloway
Clarissa Dalloway, the heroine of the novel, struggles constantly to
balance her internal life with the external world. Her world consists of
glittering surfaces, such as fine fashion, parties, and high society, but as
she moves through that world she probes beneath those surfaces in
search of deeper meaning. Yearning for privacy, Clarissa has a tendency
toward introspection that gives her a profound capacity for emotion, which
many other characters lack. However, she is always concerned with
appearances and keeps herself tightly composed, seldom sharing her

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feelings with anyone. Constantly overlaying the past and the present,
Clarissa strives to reconcile herself to life despite her potent memories.
2.Septimus Warren Smith
Septimus, a veteran of World War I, suffers from shell shock and is lost
within his own mind. He feels guilty even as he despises himself for being
made numb by the war. His doctor has ordered Lucrezia, Septimuss wife,
to make Septimus notice things outside himself, but Septimus has
removed himself from the physical world. Instead, he lives in an internal
world, wherein he sees and hears things that arent really there and he
talks to his dead friend Evans. He is sometimes overcome with the beauty
in the world, but he also fears that the people in it have no capacity for
honesty or kindness. Woolf intended for Clarissa to speak the sane truth
and Septimus the insane truth.
On the surface, Septimus seems quite dissimilar to Clarissa, but he
embodies many characteristics that Clarissa shares and thinks in much
the same way she does. He could almost be her double in the novel.
Septimus and Clarissa both have beak-noses, love Shakespeare, and fear
oppression. More important, as Clarissas double, Septimus offers a
contrast between the conscious struggle of a working-class veteran and
the blind opulence of the upper class. His troubles call into question the
legitimacy of the English society he fought to preserve during the war.
Because his thoughts often run parallel to Clarissas and echo hers in
many ways, the thin line between what is considered sanity and insanity
gets thinner and thinner. Septimus chooses to escape his problems by
killing himself, a dramatic and tragic gesture that ultimately helps Clarissa
to accept her own choices, as well as the society in which she lives.
Themes
1.Communication vs privacy
Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa, Septimus, Peter, and others struggle
to find outlets for communication as well as adequate privacy, and the
balance between the two is difficult for all to attain. Clarissa in particular
struggles to open the pathway for communication and throws parties in an
attempt to draw people together. At the same time, she feels shrouded
within her own reflective soul and thinks the ultimate human mystery is
how she can exist in one room while the old woman in the house across
from hers exists in another. Even as Clarissa celebrates the old womans
independence, she knows it comes with an inevitable loneliness. Peter
tries to explain the contradictory human impulses toward privacy and
communication by comparing the soul to a fish that swims along in murky
water, then rises quickly to the surface to frolic on the waves. The war has
changed peoples ideas of what English society should be, and
understanding is difficult between those who support traditional English
society and those who hope for continued change. Meaningful connections
in this disjointed postwar world are not easy to make, no matter what
efforts the characters put forth. Ultimately, Clarissa sees Septimuss death
as a desperate, but legitimate, act of communication.
2.Disillusionment with the British Empire
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In 1923, when Mrs. Dalloway takes place, the old establishment and its
oppressive values are nearing their end. English citizens, including
Clarissa, Peter, and Septimus, feel the failure of the empire as strongly as
they feel their own personal failures. Those citizens who still champion
English tradition, such as Aunt Helena and Lady Bruton, are old. Aunt
Helena, with her glass eye (perhaps a symbol of her inability or
unwillingness to see the empire's disintegration), is turning into an
artifact. Anticipating the end of the Conservative Partys reign, Richard
plans to write the history of the great British military family, the Brutons,
who are already part of the past. The old empire faces an imminent
demise, and the loss of the traditional and familiar social order leaves the
English at loose ends.
3.The fear of death
Thoughts of death lurk constantly beneath the surface of everyday life
in Mrs. Dalloway, especially for Clarissa, Septimus, and Peter, and this
awareness makes even mundane events and interactions meaningful,
sometimes even threatening. At the very start of her day, when she goes
out to buy flowers for her party, Clarissa remembers a moment in her
youth when she suspected a terrible event would occur. Big Ben tolls out
the hour, and Clarissa repeats a line from Shakespeares Cymbeline over
and over as the day goes on: Fear no more the heat o the sun / Nor the
furious winters rages. The line is from a funeral song that celebrates
death as a comfort after a difficult life. Middle-aged Clarissa has
experienced the deaths of her father, mother, and sister and has lived
through the calamity of war, and she has grown to believe that living even
one day is dangerous. Death is very naturally in her thoughts, and the line
from Cymbeline, along with Septimuss suicidal embrace of death,
ultimately helps her to be at peace with her own mortality. Peter Walsh, so
insecure in his identity, grows frantic at the idea of death and follows an
anonymous young woman through London to forget about it. Septimus
faces death most directly. Though he fears it, he finally chooses it over
what seems to him a direr alternativeliving another day.

4.The threat of oppression

Oppression is a constant threat for Clarissa and Septimus in Mrs.
Dalloway, and Septimus dies in order to escape what he perceives to be
an oppressive social pressure to conform. It comes in many guises,
including religion, science, or social convention.
Motifs
1.Time
Time imparts order to the fluid thoughts, memories, and encounters that
make up Mrs. Dalloway. Big Ben, a symbol of England and its might,
sounds out the hour relentlessly, ensuring that the passage of time, and
the awareness of eventual death, is always palpable. Clarissa, in
particular, senses the passage of time, and the appearance of Sally and
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Peter, friends from the past, emphasizes how much time has gone by
since Clarissa was young. Once the hour chimes, however, the sound
disappearsits leaden circles dissolved in the air. This expression recurs
many times throughout the novel, indicating how ephemeral time is,
despite the pomp of Big Ben and despite peoples wary obsession with it.
It is time, Rezia says to Septimus as they sit in the park waiting for the
doctor's appointment on Harley Street. The ancient woman at the
Regents Park Tube station suggests that the human condition knows no
boundaries of time, since she continues to sing the same song for what
seems like eternity. She understands that life is circular, not merely linear,
which is the only sort of time that Big Ben tracks. Time is so important to
the themes, structure, and characters of this novel that Woolf almost
named her book The Hours.
2.Shakespeare
The many appearances of Shakespeare specifically and poetry in general
suggest hopefulness, the possibility of finding comfort in art, and the
survival of the soul in Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa quotes Shakespeares plays
many times throughout the day. When she shops for flowers at the
beginning of the novel, she reads a few lines from a Shakespeare
play, Cymbeline, in a book displayed in a shop window. The lines come
from a funeral hymn in the play that suggests death should be embraced
as a release from the constraints of life. Traditional English society
promotes a suppression of visible emotion, and since Shakespeare and
poetry promote a discussion of feeling and emotion, they belong to
sensitive people like Clarissa, who are in many ways antiestablishment.
3.Trees and flowers
Tree and flower images abound in Mrs. Dalloway. The color, variety, and
beauty of flowers suggest feeling and emotion, and those characters who
are comfortable with flowers, such as Clarissa, have distinctly different
personalities than those characters who are not, such as Richard and Lady
Bruton. Trees, with their extensive root systems, suggest the vast reach of
the human soul, and Clarissa and Septimus, who both struggle to protect
their souls, revere them. Clarissa believes souls survive in trees after
death, and Septimus, who has turned his back on patriarchal society, feels
that cutting down a tree is the equivalent of committing murder.
4.Waves and water
Waves and water regularly wash over events and thoughts in Mrs.
Dalloway and nearly always suggest the possibility of extinction or death.
The narrative structure of the novel itself also suggests fluidity. One
characters thoughts appear, intensify, then fade into anothers, much like
waves that collect then fall.
Traditional English society itself is a kind of tide, pulling under those
people not strong enough to stand on their own.
Symbols
1.The Prime Minister

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The prime minister in Mrs. Dalloway embodies Englands old values and
hierarchical social system, which are in decline. The prime minister is a
figure from the old establishment, which Clarissa and Septimus are
struggling against. Mrs. Dalloway takes place after World War I, a time
when the English looked desperately for meaning in the old symbols but
found the symbols hollow.
2.Peter Walshs pocketknife and other weapons
Peter Walsh plays constantly with his pocketknife, and the opening,
closing, and fiddling with the knife suggest his flightiness and inability to
make decisions. He cannot decide what he feels and doesnt know
whether he abhors English tradition and wants to fight it, or whether he
accepts English civilization just as it is. The pocketknife reveals Peters
defensiveness. He is armed with the knife, in a sense, when he pays an
unexpected visit to Clarissa, while she herself is armed with her sewing
scissors. Their weapons make them equal competitors. Knives and
weapons are also phallic symbols, hinting at sexuality and power. Peter
cannot define his own identity, and his constant fidgeting with the knife
suggests how uncomfortable he is with his masculinity. Characters fall into
two groups: those who are armed and those who are not. Ellie Henderson,
for example, is weaponless, because she is poor and has not been
trained for any career. Her ambiguous relationship with her friend Edith
also puts her at a disadvantage in society, leaving her even less able to
defend herself. Septimus, psychologically crippled by the literal weapons
of war, commits suicide by impaling himself on a metal fence, showing the
danger lurking behind man-made boundaries.
3.The old woman in the window
The old woman in the window across from Clarissas house represents the
privacy of the soul and the loneliness that goes with it, both of which will
increase as Clarissa grows older. Clarissa sees the future in the old
woman: She herself will grow old and become more and more alone, since
that is the nature of life. As Clarissa grows older, she reflects more but
communicates less. Instead, she keeps her feelings locked inside the
private rooms of her own soul, just as the old woman rattles alone around
the rooms of her house. Nevertheless, the old woman also represents
serenity and the purity of the soul. Clarissa respects the womans private
reflections and thinks beauty lies in this act of preserving ones interior life
and independence. Before Septimus jumps out the window, he sees an old
man descending the staircase outside, and this old man is a parallel figure
to the old woman. Though Clarissa and Septimus ultimately choose to
preserve their private lives in opposite ways, their view of loneliness,
privacy, and communication resonates within these similar images.
4.The old woman singing an ancient song
Opposite the Regents Park Tube station, an old woman sings an ancient
song that celebrates life, endurance, and continuity. She is oblivious to
everyone around her as she sings, beyond caring what the world thinks.
The narrator explains that no matter what happens in the world, the old
woman will still be there, even in ten million years, and that the song
has soaked through the knotted roots of infinite ages. Roots, intertwined
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and hidden beneath the earth, suggest the deepest parts of peoples
souls, and this womans song touches everyone who hears it in some way.
Peter hears the song first and compares the old woman to a rusty pump.
He doesnt catch her triumphant message and feels only pity for her,
giving her a coin before stepping into a taxi. Rezia, however, finds
strength in the old womans words, and the song makes her feel as though
all will be okay in her life. Women in the novel, who have to view
patriarchal English society from the outside, are generally more attuned to
nature and the messages of voices outside the mainstream. Rezia,
therefore, is able to see the old woman for the life force she is, instead of
simply a nuisance or a tragic figure to be dealt with, ignored, or pitied.

POSTMODERNISM
THE CONTEMPORARY AGE
BRITAIN 1950 THE PRESENT
Representative writers:
English writers:
William Golding Lord of the flies
J. Fowles
American writers:
K. Vonnegut
Th. Pynchon
Characteristics:
The second half of the 20th century was largely a period of peaceful
prosperity. Despite fractious political and industrial disputes and a
diminished role as a world power, the United Kingdom faced the
challenges of post-industrialism and globalization with the same spirit of
pragmatism that had seen it through earlier periods of historic change.

Other features are:

England had a diminished role as a world power; it had become a
high-powered consumer society, increased salaries and more free
time; it has a better quality of life; and there was a rise in the level
of education.

A more tolerant attitude to social, religious and ethnic diversity

The emergence of a distinctive youth culture; young people started

to reject the strict moral and social codes by which older
generations lived

A general economic development

Literature:
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 Postmodernism implies a movement away from and perhaps a
reaction against modernism

Breaks away from the idea that man can achieve understanding
through a reliance on reason and science
Playfulness with language

Experimentation in the form of novel: less reliance on traditional

narrative form, less reliance on traditional character development,
experimentation with point of view.
Experimentation with the way time is conveyed in the novel

Mixture of high art and popular culture

Interest in metafiction, that is, fiction about the nature of fiction.

THE FRENCH LIEUTENANTS WOMAN JOHN FOWLES

This novel is based on the nineteenth-century romantic or gothic novel, a
literary genre which can trace its origins back to the eighteenth century.
Although Fowles perfectly reproduces typical characters, situations, and
even dialogue, the reader should always be aware of the irony inherent in
Fowles' perception; for his perspective, however cleverly disguised, is that
of the twentieth century. We see this both in the authorial intrusions,
which comment on the mores of people in Victorian England, and in his
choice of opening quotations, which are drawn from the writings of people
whose observations belie the assumptions that most Victorians held about
their world.
Fowles is concerned in this novel with the effects of society on the
individual's awareness of himself or herself and how that awareness
dominates and distorts his or her entire life, including relationships with
other people. All the main characters in this novel are molded by what
they believe to be true about themselves and others. In this case, their
lives are governed by what the Victorian Age thought was true about the
nature of men and women and their relationships to each other. The
French Lieutenant's Woman of the title, for example, is the dark,
mysterious woman of the typical Victorian romantic novel.
Sometimes the villainess, sometimes the heroine, such a woman was a
symbol of what was forbidden. It is this aura of strangeness about Sarah
Woodruff that first attracts Charles Smithson's attention. The story that
develops around this pair echoes other romantic novels of a similar type,
wherein a man falls in love with a strange and sometimes evil woman.
Structure, style and technique
In The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles does not merely recreate
a Victorian novel; neither does he parody one. He does a little of both, but
also much more. The subject of this novel is essentially the same as that
of his other works: the relationship between life and art, the artist and his
creation, and the isolation resulting from an individual's struggle for
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selfhood. He works within the tradition of the Victorian novel and
consciously uses its conventions to serve his own design, all the while
carefully informing the reader exactly what he is doing. His style
purposely combines a flowing nineteenth-century prose style with an
anachronistic twentieth-century perspective.
Fowles is as concerned with the details of the setting as were his Victorian
counterparts. But he is also conscious that he is setting a scene and does
not hesitate to intrude into the narrative himself in order to show the
reader how he manipulates reality through his art. Like Dickens, Fowles
uses dialogue to reveal the personalities of his characters and often he
will satirize them as well.
Fowles does not recreate his Victorian world uncritically. He focuses on
those aspects of the Victorian era that would seem most alien to a modern
reader. In particular, he is concerned with Victorian attitudes towards
women, economics, science, and philosophy. In this romance, Fowles
examines the problems of two socially and economically oppressed groups
in nineteenth-century England: the poverty of the working and servant
classes, and the economic and social entrapment of women. While the
plot traces a love story, or what seems to be a love story, the reader
questions what sort of love existed in a society where many marriages
were based as much on economics as on love. This story is thus not really
a romance at all, for Fowles' objective is not to unite his two protagonists,
Sarah and Charles, but to show what each human being must face in life
in order to be able to grow.
Charles, it seems, is the actual protagonist of this novel, for he must travel
from ignorance to understanding, by following the woman whom he thinks
he is helping, but who in fact is his mentor. He must discard each layer of
the false Charles: Charles the naturalist, Charles the gentleman, Charles
the rake, and perhaps even Charles the lover, in order to find Charles the
human being. The knowledge he arrives at is bitter, for he has lost all his
illusions, as Sarah discarded hers sometime before. But the result itself is
not bitter. Although Charles and Sarah are not reunited, for life's answers
are never as simple and perfect as those of art, they both achieve a
maturity that enables them to control their lives as long as they
remember to look for answers nowhere but in themselves.
Fowles has taken two traditional romantic characters, a young hero and a
mysterious woman, and has transformed them into human beings.
The novel is therefore actually a psychological study of an individual
rather than a romance. It is a novel of individual growth and the
awareness of one's basic isolation which accompanies that growth.
Themes
Class Differences
The stringent demarcation between classes - and sexes - in Victorian
England is one of this novels central themes and is scrutinized and
deconstructed constantly. Charles, who is one of the main protagonists, is
cast as a gentleman and is deemed by society (and often by himself) to be

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superior to his servants, his bride-to-be, Ernestina, and Sarah. He is
ranked higher due to the chance of birth and just misses out on reaching
nobility when his uncle marries and produces an heir.
Each of the characters is shown to be aware of the rigid class distinctions
and the narrative uses this theme to undermine the naturalization of
these barriers. Charles, for example, is characteristically less intelligent
than his supposed inferiors Sam and Sarah. He blanches at the thought of
working in commerce for his future father-in-law as this is regarded as
being below him by consensus in this class-bound society.
Both the class system and patriarchy confine Sarah. Although her
education moves her up the social ladder away from her father who was a
farmer, this serves to leave her in the limbo world of being fit for the role
of only governess or companion. The society she is born into effectively
marginalizes her twice: for being a woman and for being born into the
working classes.

Convention
The French Lieutenants Woman uses an overtly twentieth-century
perspective to critique this representation of Victorian England where duty
and conformity take precedence over kindness and honesty.
The belief that one should adhere to convention is put into question by the
hypocrisy of many of the main characters. Apart from Sarah, who is
depicted as attempting to live by her own codes of behavior rather than
societys, others, such as Charles, Mrs Poulteney and Ernestina, are more
concerned about how they appear to the outside world than in acting on
their desires. The sense of duty, which in some measure is shown to be
admirable, has become twisted as duty becomes more valued than the
Christian ethos that informs it.

Loss of faith in authority

As though to undermine the strong thematic concern that exposes the
adherence to conformity in this described society, there is a parallel
theme that questions authority. This is brought about in a range of small
ways, from Sam disobeying his employer Charles, to the depiction of
Charless growing interest in Darwinism. The preference for evolutionary
theories over creationism implies a questioning of the authority of the
Bible. Sarahs decision to be an outcast, rather than another governess
who knows her place, also exemplifies this challenge to dominant thinking
as does the insertion of the author in what appeared to be a realist text.
PERSPECTIVES AND SENSIBILITIES
Although the novel is firmly set in the mid-Victorian period, it also contains
20th century sensibilities and perspectives. We can see the characters
both as Victorians in their attitudes and behaviour, and also as people who
occasionally glimpse a different perspective/time which gives them hope.
This applies especially to Sarah, who "sees through" people with a very un
Victorian directness, and to Charles who dimly perceives the shape of
things to come as he speaks to Freeman and when he is in America. In
FLW the characters are more important than the plot - a twentieth century
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literary device which enables us to understand events much more
because we see the characters interior motives and thoughts unfolded as
the novel progresses. Plot would have been the Victorian priority; the
characters secondary to the narrative. Fowles blends plot and
characterisation with a neat combination of Victorian and modern literary
style.
The plot is rather cleverly stereotyped in Victorian fashion - romance,
intrigue, misunderstanding, deceit, forbidden love, carnal desire, betrayal
and a classic "triangle" between two women attracted to the same man.
There are also villains, in the shapes of Mrs Poulteney and Mrs Fairley;
rogues like the scheming widow Mrs Tomkins and a brace of lower class
observers Sam and Mary, to comment and make mischief.
Sarah Woodruff - a poor, innocent (yes, she is) harshly treated woman,
spurned by those who are better off socially, if not morally and Charles,
the gentleman compromised by his chivalry are the "main" characters, but
we must not forget Tina (Ernestina - should she have been Ernest?) who is
wealthy and pampered. Does she really love Charles - or just the idea of
his position - his country house - her own status as the wife of a
gentleman, not the daughter of a tradesman? Should we pity her or
despise her? Is she a victim as the others are victims?
Conventionally the novel seldom proceeds as we would expect it to.
Charles is at first the pursuer and Sarah the pursued, but at the lowest
ebb of his fortunes he is entrapped by the pursued - Sarah, and once
compromised - deserted. The conventional ending is abandoned and
Fowles takes us on through a dislocated time structure to two different,
more twentieth century, outcomes. The seduction and consequent events
are described in vivid, very un Victorian detail and we are given the choice
of two alternative conclusions to the action (neither are "endings") - one
Victorian, the other more "modern".
One of the most impressive aspects of the novel is Fowles ability to shift
the characters and the reader back and forth between centuries. The
present impinges on the past and vice versa throughout the story. This
creates in us the "angst" of experiencing with Charles and Sarah the
agonies of their decisions and choices, for we are never allowed to
become detached from the events we see unfolding. Fowles himself at
times appears and forces us, with him to participate in the action, inviting
us to comment - to observe - to judge and to reflect on what happens.
NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
Again, Fowles cleverly uses a number of different "voices" throughout the
novel. There are several narrative presences and the identity of the story-
teller is always ambiguous. He appears (it is tempting to think of him as a
male, isn't it?) as a raconteur, an observer, and a "god" figure (or maybe a
devil?). Sometimes he is the author, dropping into a familiar style and
inviting us to share his creative illusory process, using the "I" pronoun.
The novel begins "in media res" (in the middle of things); and events are
unfolded in retrospect as we go along. This can be confusing, but is also a
technique which serves to increase the suspense and tension. Fowles
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keeps his reader guessing, as he himself is guessing, or so he tells us.
Time is played with - events are shown as though in sequence, when in
fact they are happening at the same time, in parallel; sometimes events
which have already happened are not revealed until later on. Most
strikingly, though, we are deliberately told by Fowles that he has
"cheated" by creating three different endings and he even appears in an
enigmatic disguise as an anonymous bearded character to turn back his
watch and give us the last, existential ending.
THE EPIGRAPHS
Each chapter has at least one epigraph, taken mainly, though not
exclusively, from Victorian literature (both fiction and non-fiction). The
purpose of an epigraph is to set the tone for the chapter which follows.
Many of them are from the works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and there are
also examples from Thomas Hardy, Matthew Arnold, Charles Darwin,
Charles Lyell, E. Royston Pike (1967) and the poet, Clough. He also alludes
to Dickens, Eliot (George), Thackeray and Jane Austen.
STYLE
The novel is written in a familiar style as though the narrator is conversing
with the reader. It contains a mixture of straightforward prose narrative
and dialogue and the dialogue does capture the tone of the Victorian
period.
The imagery is vivid and taken from nature, persistently including animals
and birds - preying and preyed upon. Mrs Poulteney is described as a
"bulldog" , a "plump vulture" with an "eagle eye", and Mrs Fairley as a
"weasel". Charles, visiting mrs P. is described as a "plump mouse dropping
between the claws of a hungry cat".
Throughout the novel we have allusions to judgement, punishment,
suffering and retribution.
On a more sensuous note, flower and plant imagery is included to
emphasise the gentler settings associated with Sarah, especially on the
common, where the two lovers further their doomed acquaintance. In fact
Ware Commons is a kind of Garden of Eden, embodying the twin
connotations of innocence and sin.
Parallel to the themes of nature we find colour strongly used, especially
with reference to Sarah. She buys a brilliant green shawl, for the seduction
scene, which contrasts with her red (Pre-Raphaelite) hair. When Charles
meets her in the Rosetti house she is wearing red and blue and is
flaunting bravely the colours of the "new" woman. This contrasts most
sharply with the black which is her common costume throughout her time
of ostracism in Lyme.
SEXUAL REPRESSION
The novel is described as a definitive study of the sexual repression of the
Victorian age. There is a strong sexual/sensual element in the story and
the characters react as they do largely because of the sexual mores of the
time. It is interesting to speculate as to how much Fowles exaggerates the
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reactions and attitudes of his main characters. I suspect that he is in fact
quite accurate, as we know that he researched the period quite
exhaustively.
Women of the middle and upper classes were sexually ignorant before
marriage - some indeed remained so afterwards, except for the processes
of childbirth, which can hardly be ignored! It was certainly not seemly for
a female to invite sexual activity, or intercourse either before, or, one
assumes, after marriage. There must have been exceptions, of course. It is
unlikely that ALL Victorian women hated intercourse, but very probable
than many of them found it at best distasteful and at worst terrifying. In
the novel, we learn from Grogan that at least one couple he knew thought
that the navel was the point of entry for sex!! Ernestina, who is typical of
the time, will not even allow herself to look at her own naked body, or
permit Charles to touch her except for the most chaste of kisses on the
cheek, forehead or hand. Paradoxically, she imagines herself very much in
love, preferring recitations of poetry and passionate entries (idealised) in
her journal to real intimacy with her fiancee.
Ordinarily, a respectable female would not be allowed any contact before
the engagement was announced with a man, without the presence of a
female chaperone. Aunt Tranter is always near at hand even after Tina and
Charles are engaged. There would not be any real education about what
to expect after marriage, either. Women would most likely be counselled
to "endure the inevitable" and regard it as their "duty" to submit to the
husband's carnal desires. In a society where a wife became, literally, a
chattel of the husband, her property becoming his automatically upon
marriage, we cannot expect any real assertive behaviour on the part of
the wife. Women were subordinate to their husbands - the marriage
service still contained the words "to obey". Sex was a means of fulfilling
the instructions at the beginning of the marriage service to procreate
(have children). Enjoyment of sex for its own sake was not a requirement
of marriage - indeed it was rather an indication of a loose moral character.
Look what happened to Sarah, who was presumed to have chased after a
man! Some women of course could indulge themselves in sexual sport,
but they could not aspire to be classed as ladies if they were too obvious
about it. The higher up the social scale, the more leeway a woman had to
break the rules, as long as she did not cross over the unwritten rule of
being indiscreet or unladylike. TOTAL hypocrisy, but true. Neither Tina nor
Sarah have the luxury, though; Tina because of her upbringing in trade
and her own naivety and Sarah because she is caught between classes.
The lower orders were much more fortunate. Mary the servant girl is basic,
aware and sexually active with Sam. The prostitute Sarah has no
inhibitions and few illusions about the realities of life. It is only the more
"refined" species of society who have to observe the taboos and keep to
the rules. Who has the most fun?
Gentlemen were in the fortunate (?) position of being able to indulge their
instincts with women of a certain sort. Prostitution was rife at the time the
novel is set. Clubs like the Terpsichore certainly existed, where gentlemen
(were they?) could be entertained with sexual shows and intercourse, if
they wished. Mistresses were common, although discretion was the
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watchword. (Women, too, especially those of the aristocracy could and did
have lovers, again discreetly. The hypocrisy of the age is legendary.) Men
were expected to be experienced, but they must never slip from their
position of "gentleman". The most humiliating experience Charles
undergoes is having to sign the breach of promise papers which describe
him as no longer having the right to be considered a gentleman. It is
probable that some men, though, were as ignorant as women about
sexual relationships. If the wife was frigid, and many of them, alas, were;
then a husband was not likely to find much pleasure in the marital bed -
off to the club, then!! Charles has had women (ironically of course he
"has" Sarah - he does not "make love" to her as we would understand it)
but he is not what we would consider an experienced lover. His
relationships with both the women in the novel are crippled - one by
inhibition, the other by guilt. We must feel compassion for him - the more
so as he considers himself to be rather advanced for the age, a "new
man" of the Darwinian period.

THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT- THE WASTE LAND

Mythological and religious allusions

Post-war wasteland

Physical and psychological damage

Fertility versus sterility- pagan creeds

Obiectivele temei:
Studenii trebuie s neleag felul n care T. S. Eliot a perceput lumea
dup primul rzboi mondial
Contrasteaz grandoarea trecutului cu prezentul corupt

Apar mituri legate de fertilitate i sterilitate

Stilul este bazat pe eseurile autorului

Timpul alocat temei: 2 ore

Bibliografie recomandat:
Eliot, T. S., The Waste Land, W.W. Norton & Co, 2000

Gordon, Lyndall, T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life, W.W. Norton & Co, 1999

Williamson, George, A Readers Guide to T. S. Eliot: A Poem-by-Poem

Analysis, 1998
Moody, David, The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot, Cambridge
University Press, 1995

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 Eliot was descended from a distinguish New England family that had
relocated to St. Louis, Mo. His family allowed him the widest education available
in his time, with no influence from his father to be practical and go into
business. From Smith Academy in St. Louis he went to Milton, in Massachusetts;
from Milton he entered Harvard in 1906; he was graduated B.A. in 1909, after
three instead of the usual four years. The men who influenced him at Harvard
were George Santayana, the philosopher and the poet, and the critic Irving
Babbitt. From Babbitt he derived an anti-Romantic attitude that amplified by his
later readings of British philosophers F.H. Bradley and T.E. Hulme, lasted through
his life. In the academic year 1909-10 he was an assistant in the philosophy at
Harvard.

In the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, appearing in the first critical
volume, The Sacred Wood (1920) , Eliot asserts that tradition, as used by the
poet, is not a mere repetition of the work of the immediate past (novelty is
better than repetition, he said); rather it comprises the whole of the European
literature from Homer to the present. This point of view is programmatic in the
sense that it disposes the reader to accept the revolutionary novelty of Eliots
polyglot quotations and serious parodies of other poets styles in the Waste
Land. For Eliot poetry is an indirect expression of the emotion or a series of
sensations. All these human feelings can become poetry only filtered through a
catalytic agent that is in fact the poets mind. The concept of pure poetry is
defined as the one that presents the most commonly shared feelings. This
concept is based on impersonality, that is depersonalization the poet does
not express his own individual personality but that of his own community.

This theory shows us that the interest is focus on the poem and not on the poet
and in this way the poem becomes autonomous; it can exist in itself, but is also
integrated in the literary tradition. History is therefore the link between the old
and the new on two senses: chronologically it represents a flow and forms a
simultaneous point of view, an accumulation of values from the continuous flow.
Yet, tradition is not motionless, it changes every moment. Thus the poets
historic feeling is like a mixture of past and present consciousness. He sees the
two concepts of past and present dialectically, there is no pure past and no pure
present.

In the essay The Music of Poetry Eliot states that technique is bearer of
signification. In a poem, music without meaning cannot exist. A poem implies
meaning and rhythm. Even an ugly word can be poetical because music implies
the capacity of the word to combine with other words in a giving context. Besides

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words the same system functions with themes and motifs. The critics main
occupation is to describe the individual style through two methods: analysis and
analogy. Analysis is connected with the problems of the way in which the poet
makes use of the vocabulary and syntax. Comparison refers to the reference of
the work to tradition. With Eliot the aim of the critique on the text is the
participative reading.

Eliots criticism and poetry are so interwoven that it is difficult to discuss them
separately. The Waste Land is Eliots most famous poem. It consists of five
sections and proceeds on a principle of rhetorical discontinuity. It expresses
the hopelessness and confusion of purpose of life in the secularized city. But The
Waste Land is not a simple contrast of the heroic past with the degraded
present; it is rather a timeless, simultaneous awareness of moral grandeur and
moral evil. The recurrence of the theme of the failed sexual love shows the same
despair, sustaining the burden of the poem: the couple in the hyacinth garden,
the chess-playing, middle-class couple, the conversation of Lil and her friend, the
nymphs and their friends (), Sweeney and Mrs. Porter, the typist and the
circle, the three women in London () the isolated consciousness who speaks to
my friend of a moments surrender and to an unnamed companion of how
your heart would have responded. Secondly, this idea is reinforced by a
common and recurring landscape, the dead land of April and the desert of
stony rubbish in The Burial of the Dead the stony places, rock, sand and
mountains, exhausted wells and arid plain of successive moment in What the
Thunder Said; and the urban equivalents in the brown fog of a winter dawn,
rats alley, the brown land of the Thamess winter banksThere are several
key words around which the whole is structured. For this poem the framework is
made up of the stories, myths (Christian and pre-Christian) grouped on the ideas
of fertility and sterility, death and rebirth.

TEST DE EVALUARE

1. Provide an example as to how T.S. Eliot contrasts past and present.

Rspuns:

In The Fire Sermon, T. S. Eliot shows how the Thames can be viewed both as a
symbol of the glorious past and decadent, corrupt present. The Thames
witnesses Glorianas great defeat over the Spanish fleet only to now become a
filthy river bearing cigarette ends and empty bottles.

2. What is the importance of prophets at the level of the poem as a whole?

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Rspuns:

ntrebri
1. Provide an example of an ancient fertility creed.
Rspuns:

The best known example is that of the Hyacinth girl. Wherever that girl sits, the
ground becomes extremely fertile. Similar instances occur with an upside down
meaning with the Fisher King who is wounded in the loins, thus as sterile as his
lands.

2. What is the religious output in the poem?

Rspuns:

REZUMATUL TEMEI

The Waste Land is a revolutionary, highly influential 434-line

modernist poem by T. S. Eliot. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem
its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced
changes of speaker, location and time, its elegiac but intimidating
summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures
the poem has nonetheless become a familiar touchstone of modern
literature. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruelest month" (its
first line); "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and the Sanskrit
"Shantih shantih shantih" (its last line).
The poem is divided into five parts: The
Burial of the Dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death by Water
and What the Thunder Said. The uniting theme for the entire poem lies in
the destruction left behind by the First World War, the inability to bring
forward reconstruction and the lack of hope.

LORD OF FLIES WILLIAM GOLDING

Context
William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Cornwall, England.
After graduating from Oxford, he worked briefly as a theater actor and
director, wrote poetry, and then became a schoolteacher. In 1940, a year
after England entered World War II, Golding joined the Royal Navy, where
he served in command of a rocket-launcher and participated in the
invasion of Normandy. Goldings experience in World War II had a profound
effect on his view of humanity and the evils of which it was capable. After
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the war, Golding resumed teaching and started to write novels. His first
and greatest success came with Lord of the Flies (1954).
Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of English schoolboys marooned
on a tropical island after their plane is shot down during a war. Though the
novel is fictional, its exploration of the idea of human evil is at least partly
based on Goldings experience with the real-life violence and brutality of
World War II. Free from the rules and structures of civilization and society,
the boys on the island inLord of the Flies descend into savagery. As the
boys splinter into factions, some behave peacefully and work together to
maintain order and achieve common goals, while others rebel and seek
only anarchy and violence. In his portrayal of the small world of the island,
Golding paints a broader portrait of the fundamental human struggle
between the civilizing instinctthe impulse to obey rules, behave morally,
and act lawfullyand the savage instinctthe impulse to seek brute
power over others, act selfishly, scorn moral rules, and indulge in
violence.
Golding employs a relatively straightforward writing style in Lord of the
Flies, one that avoids highly poetic language, lengthy description, and
philosophical interludes. Much of the novel is allegorical, meaning that the
characters and objects in the novel are infused with symbolic significance
that conveys the novels central themes and ideas.
During the 1950s and 1960s, many readings of the novel claimed
that Lord of the Flies dramatizes the history of civilization. Some believed
that the novel explores fundamental religious issues, such as original sin
and the nature of good and evil. Others approached Lord of the
Flies through the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who
taught that the human mind was the site of a constant battle among
different impulsesthe id (instinctual needs and desires), the ego (the
conscious, rational mind), and the superego (the sense of conscience and
morality). Still others maintained that Golding wrote the novel as a
criticism of the political and social institutions of the West. Ultimately,
there is some validity to each of these different readings and
interpretations of Lord of the Flies.

Analysis of major characters

1.Ralph
Ralph is the athletic, charismatic protagonist of Lord of the Flies. Elected
the leader of the boys at the beginning of the novel, Ralph is the primary
representative of order, civilization, and productive leadership in the
novel. While most of the other boys initially are concerned with playing,
having fun, and avoiding work, Ralph sets about building huts and
thinking of ways to maximize their chances of being rescued. For this
reason, Ralphs power and influence over the other boys are secure at the
beginning of the novel. However, as the group gradually succumbs to
savage instincts over the course of the novel, Ralphs position declines
precipitously while Jacks rises. Eventually, most of the boys except Piggy
leave Ralphs group for Jacks, and Ralph is left alone to be hunted by
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Jacks tribe. Ralphs commitment to civilization and morality is strong, and
his main wish is to be rescued and returned to the society of adults. In a
sense, this strength gives Ralph a moral victory at the end of the novel,
when he casts the Lord of the Flies to the ground and takes up the stake it
is impaled on to defend himself against Jacks hunters.
In the earlier parts of the novel, Ralph is unable to understand why the
other boys would give in to base instincts of bloodlust and barbarism. The
sight of the hunters chanting and dancing is baffling and distasteful to
him. As the novel progresses, however, Ralph, like Simon, comes to
understand that savagery exists within all the boys. Ralph remains
determined not to let this savagery -overwhelm him, and only briefly does
he consider joining Jacks tribe in order to save himself. When Ralph hunts
a boar for the first time, however, he experiences the exhilaration and
thrill of bloodlust and violence. When he attends Jacks feast, he is swept
away by the frenzy, dances on the edge of the group, and participates in
the killing of Simon. This firsthand knowledge of the evil that exists within
him, as within all human beings, is tragic for Ralph, and it plunges him
into listless despair for a time. But this knowledge also enables him to cast
down the Lord of the Flies at the end of the novel. Ralphs story ends
semi-tragically: although he is rescued and returned to civilization, when
he sees the naval officer, he weeps with the burden of his new knowledge
about the human capacity for evil.
2.Jack
The strong-willed, egomaniacal Jack is the novels primary representative
of the instinct of savagery, violence, and the desire for powerin short,
the antithesis of Ralph. From the beginning of the novel, Jack desires
power above all other things. He is furious when he loses the election to
Ralph and continually pushes the boundaries of his subordinate role in the
group. Early on, Jack retains the sense of moral propriety and behavior
that society instilled in himin fact, in school, he was the leader of the
choirboys. The first time he encounters a pig, he is unable to kill it. But
Jack soon becomes obsessed with hunting and devotes himself to the
task, painting his face like a barbarian and giving himself over to
bloodlust. The more savage Jack becomes, the more he is able to control
the rest of the group. Indeed, apart from Ralph, Simon, and Piggy, the
group largely follows Jack in casting off moral restraint and embracing
violence and savagery. Jacks love of authority and violence are intimately
connected, as both enable him to feel powerful and exalted. By the end of
the novel, Jack has learned to use the boys fear of the beast to control
their behaviora reminder of how religion and superstition can be
manipulated as instruments of power.
3.Simon
Whereas Ralph and Jack stand at opposite ends of the spectrum between
civilization and savagery, Simon stands on an entirely different plane from
all the other boys. Simon embodies a kind of innate, spiritual human
goodness that is deeply connected with nature and, in its own way, as
primal as Jacks evil. The other boys abandon moral behavior as soon as
civilization is no longer there to impose it upon them. They are
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not innately moral; rather, the adult worldthe threat of punishment for
misdeedshas conditioned them to act morally. To an extent, even the
seemingly civilized Ralph and Piggy are products of social conditioning, as
we see when they participate in the hunt-dance. In Goldings view, the
human impulse toward civilization is not as deeply rooted as the human
impulse toward savagery. Unlike all the other boys on the island, Simon
acts morally not out of guilt or shame but because he believes in the
inherent value of morality. He behaves kindly toward the younger children,
and he is the first to realize the problem posed by the beast and the Lord
of the Fliesthat is, that the monster on the island is not a real, physical
beast but rather a savagery that lurks within each human being. The
sows head on the stake symbolizes this idea, as we see in Simons vision
of the head speaking to him. Ultimately, this idea of the inherent evil
within each human being stands as the moral conclusion and central
problem of the novel. Against this idea of evil, Simon represents a
contrary idea of essential human goodness. However, his brutal murder at
the hands of the other boys indicates the scarcity of that good amid an
overwhelming abundance of evil.
Themes
1.Civilization vs savagery
The central concern of Lord of the Flies is the conflict between two
competing impulses that exist within all human beings: the instinct to live
by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and value the good of
the group against the instinct to gratify ones immediate desires, act
violently to obtain supremacy over others, and enforce ones will. This
conflict might be expressed in a number of ways: civilization vs. savagery,
order vs. chaos, reason vs. impulse, law vs. anarchy, or the broader
heading of good vs. evil. Throughout the novel, Golding associates the
instinct of civilization with good and the instinct of savagery with evil.
The conflict between the two instincts is the driving force of the novel,
explored through the dissolution of the young English boys civilized,
moral, disciplined behavior as they accustom themselves to a wild, brutal,
barbaric life in the jungle.Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, which
means that Golding conveys many of his main ideas and themes through
symbolic characters and objects. He represents the conflict between
civilization and savagery in the conflict between the novels two main
characters: Ralph, the protagonist, who represents order and leadership;
and Jack, the antagonist, who represents savagery and the desire for
power.
As the novel progresses, Golding shows how different people feel the
influences of the instincts of civilization and savagery to different degrees.
Piggy, for instance, has no savage feelings, while Roger seems barely
capable of comprehending the rules of civilization. Generally, however,
Golding implies that the instinct of savagery is far more primal and
fundamental to the human psyche than the instinct of civilization. Golding
sees moral behavior, in many cases, as something that civilization forces
upon the individual rather than a natural expression of human
individuality. When left to their own devices, Golding implies, people
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naturally revert to cruelty, savagery, and barbarism. This idea of innate
human evil is central to Lord of the Flies, and finds expression in several
important symbols, most notably the beast and the sows head on the
stake. Among all the characters, only Simon seems to possess anything
like a natural, innate goodness.
2.Loss of Innocence
As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved, orderly children
longing for rescue to cruel, bloodthirsty hunters who have no desire to
return to civilization, they naturally lose the sense of innocence that they
possessed at the beginning of the novel. The painted savages in Chapter
12 who have hunted, tortured, and killed animals and human beings are a
far cry from the guileless children swimming in the lagoon in Chapter 3.
But Golding does not portray this loss of innocence as something that is
done to the children; rather, it results naturally from their increasing
openness to the innate evil and savagery that has always existed within
them. Golding implies that civilization can mitigate but never wipe out the
innate evil that exists within all human beings. The forest glade in which
Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of innocence. At first, it is a
place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the
novel, he discovers the bloody sows head impaled upon a stake in the
middle of the clearing. The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted the
paradise that existed beforea powerful symbol of innate human evil
disrupting childhood innocence.
Motifs
1.Biblical Parallels
Many critics have characterized Lord of the Flies as a retelling of episodes
from the Bible. While that description may be an oversimplification, the
novel does echo certain Christian images and themes. Golding does not
make any explicit or direct connections to Christian symbolism in Lord of
the Flies; instead, these biblical parallels function as a kind of subtle motif
in the novel, adding thematic resonance to the main ideas of the story.
The island itself, particularly Simons glade in the forest, recalls the
Garden of Eden in its status as an originally pristine place that is corrupted
by the introduction of evil. Similarly, we may see the Lord of the Flies as a
representation of the devil, for it works to promote evil among humankind.
Furthermore, many critics have drawn strong parallels between Simon and
Jesus. Among the boys, Simon is the one who arrives at the moral truth of
the novel, and the other boys kill him sacrificially as a consequence of
having discovered this truth. Simons conversation with the Lord of the
Flies also parallels the confrontation between Jesus and the devil during
Jesus forty days in the wilderness, as told in the Christian Gospels.
However, it is important to remember that the parallels between Simon
and Christ are not complete, and that there are limits to reading Lord of
the Flies purely as a Christian allegory. Save for Simons two uncanny
predictions of the future, he lacks the supernatural connection to God that
Jesus has in Christian tradition. Although Simon is wise in many ways, his
death does not bring salvation to the island; rather, his death plunges the
island deeper into savagery and moral guilt. Moreover, Simon dies before
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he is able to tell the boys the truth he has discovered. Jesus, in contrast,
was killed while spreading his moral philosophy. In this way, Simon
and Lord of the Flies as a wholeechoes Christian ideas and themes
without developing explicit, precise parallels with them. The novels
biblical parallels enhance its moral themes but are not necessarily the
primary key to interpreting the story.
Symbols
1.The Conch Shell
Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start of the
novel and use it to summon the boys together after the crash separates
them. Used in this capacity, the conch shell becomes a powerful symbol of
civilization and order in the novel. The shell effectively governs the boys
meetings, for the boy who holds the shell holds the right to speak. In this
regard, the shell is more than a symbolit is an actual vessel of political
legitimacy and democratic power. As the island civilization erodes and the
boys descend into savagery, the conch shell loses its power and influence
among them. Ralph clutches the shell desperately when he talks about his
role in murdering Simon. Later, the other boys ignore Ralph and throw
stones at him when he attempts to blow the conch in Jacks camp. The
boulder that Roger rolls onto Piggy also crushes the conch shell, signifying
the demise of the civilized instinct among almost all the boys on the
island.

2.Piggys Glasses
Piggy is the most intelligent, rational boy in the group, and his glasses
represent the power of science and intellectual endeavor in society. This
symbolic significance is clear from the start of the novel, when the boys
use the lenses from Piggys glasses to focus the sunlight and start a fire.
When Jacks hunters raid Ralphs camp and steal the glasses, the savages
effectively take the power to make fire, leaving Ralphs group helpless.
3.The Signal Fire
The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to attract
the notice of passing ships that might be able to rescue the boys. As a
result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of the boys connection to
civilization. In the early parts of the novel, the fact that the boys maintain
the fire is a sign that they want to be rescued and return to society. When
the fire burns low or goes out, we realize that the boys have lost sight of
their desire to be rescued and have accepted their savage lives on the
island. The signal fire thus functions as a kind of measurement of the
strength of the civilized instinct remaining on the island. Ironically, at the
end of the novel, a fire finally summons a ship to the island, but not the
signal fire. Instead, it is the fire of savagerythe forest fire Jacks gang
starts as part of his quest to hunt and kill Ralph.
4.The Beast

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The imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stands for the primal
instinct of savagery that exists within all human beings. The boys are
afraid of the beast, but only Simon reaches the realization that they fear
the beast because it exists within each of them. As the boys grow more
savage, their belief in the beast grows stronger. By the end of the novel,
the boys are leaving it sacrifices and treating it as a totemic god. The
boys behavior is what brings the beast into existence, so the more
savagely the boys act, the more real the beast seems to become.
5.The Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Flies is the bloody, severed sows head that Jack impales
on a stake in the forest glade as an offering to the beast. This complicated
symbol becomes the most important image in the novel when Simon
confronts the sows head in the glade and it seems to speak to him, telling
him that evil lies within every human heart and promising to have some
fun with him. (This fun foreshadows Simons death in the following
chapter.) In this way, the Lord of the Flies becomes both a physical
manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of
Satan figure who evokes the beast within each human being. Looking at
the novel in the context of biblical parallels, the Lord of the Flies recalls
the devil, just as Simon recalls Jesus. In fact, the name Lord of the Flies
is a literal translation of the name of the biblical name Beelzebub, a
powerful demon in hell sometimes thought to be the devil himself.
6.Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and Roger
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, and many of its characters signify
important ideas or themes. Ralph represents order, leadership, and
civilization. Piggy represents the scientific and intellectual aspects of
civilization. Jack represents unbridled savagery and the desire for power.
Simon represents natural human goodness. Roger represents brutality and
bloodlust at their most extreme. To the extent that the boys society
resembles a political state, the littluns might be seen as the common
people, while the older boys represent the ruling classes and political
leaders. The relationships that develop between the older boys and the
younger ones emphasize the older boys connection to either the civilized
or the savage instinct: civilized boys like Ralph and Simon use their power
to protect the younger boys and advance the good of the group; savage
boys like Jack and Roger use their power to gratify their own desires,
treating the littler boys as objects for their own amusement.

NORTH AMERICAN HISTORY 1823 1900

While the economy did thrive in the 19th century, it proved much more
difficult to bring about national political unity. Rivalry between the north
and the south emerged as a burning issue which eventually led to a war
that threatened to split the United States in two. The two areas were
different in various ways. Firstly, the climates were very different and
consequently peoples lifestyles differed. Secondly, the north was more
industrialized and, thanks to greater access to public schools, had a higher
level of education. Thirdly, and most importantly, slavery was practiced in
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the south but had been abolished in the north. The issue of slavery was to
provide the spark that ignited the Civil War. War was declared in April
1861. A fierce and bloody conflict dragged on for four years until the
South surrender. The hero of the hour was the leader of the northern
states, Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated just as the war ended.
RECONSTRUCTION
The 14th and 15th Amendments to the constitution outlawed discrimination
of any kind and gave the vote to all races. Slavery was replaced by a form
of segregation which made it clear that blacks were second-class citizens.
NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE
The mid-nineteenth century was a period of astonishing literary creativity
in American literature. In the short space of six years, four monumental
works were published:
Nathaniel Hawthorne The scarlet letter
Herman Melville Moby Dick
Henry David Thoreau Walden
Walt Whitman Leaves of grass
This period witnessed the highest literary expression of the Puritan
tradition and the emergence of a new cultural and philosophical
movement, TRANSCENDENTALIMS influenced by English
Romanticism and German and Eastern philosophies, the
transcendentalism exalted feeling and intuition over reason; they
rebelled against the materialism of contemporary society and
rejected the established church. Unlike the Puritans they believed
that man was fundamentally good and should be allowed to
develop free from rules and restrictions.
PROSE
The Puritan heritage is clearly evident in the work of Nathaniel
Hawthorne, who wrote about the conflict between good and evil set in
the dark, Puritan, New England past. In his masterpiece, The Scarlet
Letter, he explores one of his constant themes: the relationship between
the individual and the society.
Herman Melville dedicated his work, Moby Dick, to Hawthorne. The
metaphysical and symbolic style, the juxtaposition of tones and the
innovative narrative technique make it a rich and complex work which
encompasses many themes, including the battle between man and
nature, the conflict between good and evil and mans quest to live in a
largely hostile world. The emergence of transcendentalist movement in
New England in the middle years of the century marked a significant
break from the Puritan tradition.
East coast dominance of the American literary scene was broken by
MARK TWAIN, who shows his deep distrust of respectable society and his
sympathy for social outcasts and the common man. His use of language is
strikingly original. The stories of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are told
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from the point of view of the young protagonists and contain slang,
regional dialect and illogical sentence constructions that make the
dialogue come to life. He created a distinctly American style.

THE SCARLET LETTER - NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Context
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in
1804. Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement of
the early nineteenth century that was dedicated to the belief that divinity
manifests itself everywhere, particularly in the natural world. It also
advocated a personalized, direct relationship with the divine in place of
formalized, structured religion. This second transcendental idea is
privileged in The Scarlet Letter.
Herman Melville, among others, hailed Hawthorne as the American
Shakespeare.
The majority of Hawthornes work takes Americas Puritan past as its
subject, but The Scarlet Letter uses the material to greatest effect. The
Puritans were a group of religious reformers who arrived in Massachusetts
in the 1630s under the leadership of John Winthrop (whose death is
recounted in the novel). The religious sect was known for its intolerance of
dissenting ideas and lifestyles. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses the
repressive, authoritarian Puritan society as an analogue for humankind in
general. The Puritan setting also enables him to portray the human soul
under extreme pressures. Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth, while
unquestionably part of the Puritan society in which they live, also reflect
universal experiences. Hawthorne speaks specifically to American issues,
but he circumvents the aesthetic and thematic limitations that might
accompany such a focus. His universality and his dramatic flair have
ensured his place in the literary canon.
Analysis of major characters
1.Hester Prynne
Although The Scarlet Letter is about Hester Prynne, the book is not so
much a consideration of her innate character as it is an examination of the
forces that shape her and the transformations those forces effect. We
know very little about Hester prior to her affair with Dimmesdale and her
resultant public shaming. We read that she married Chillingworth although
she did not love him, but we never fully understand why. The early
chapters of the book suggest that, prior to her marriage, Hester was a
strong-willed and impetuous young womanshe remembers her parents
as loving guides who frequently had to restrain her incautious behavior.
The fact that she has an affair also suggests that she once had a
passionate nature.
But it is what happens after Hesters affair that makes her into the woman
with whom the reader is familiar. Shamed and alienated from the rest of
the community, Hester becomes contemplative. She speculates on human

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nature, social organization, and larger moral questions. Hesters
tribulations also lead her to be stoic and a freethinker. Although the
narrator pretends to disapprove of Hesters independent philosophizing,
his tone indicates that he secretly admires her independence and her
ideas.
Hester also becomes a kind of compassionate maternal figure as a result
of her experiences. Hester moderates her tendency to be rash, for she
knows that such behavior could cause her to lose her daughter, Pearl.
Hester is also maternal with respect to society: she cares for the poor and
brings them food and clothing. By the novels end, Hester has become a
protofeminist mother figure to the women of the community. The shame
attached to her scarlet letter is long gone. Women recognize that her
punishment stemmed in part from the town fathers sexism, and they
come to Hester seeking shelter from the sexist forces under which they
themselves suffer. Throughout The Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as an
intelligent, capable, but not necessarily extraordinary woman. It is the
extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her such an important
figure.

2.Roger Chillingworth
As his name suggests, Roger Chillingworth is a man deficient in human
warmth. His twisted, stooped, deformed shoulders mirror his distorted
soul. From what the reader is told of his early years with Hester, he was a
difficult husband. He ignored his wife for much of the time, yet expected
her to nourish his soul with affection when he did condescend to spend
time with her. Chillingworths decision to assume the identity of a leech,
or doctor, is fitting. Unable to engage in equitable relationships with those
around him, he feeds on the vitality of others as a way of energizing his
own projects. Chillingworths death is a result of the nature of his
character. After Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth no longer has a victim.
Similarly, Dimmesdales revelation that he is Pearls father removes
Hester from the old mans clutches. Having lost the objects of his revenge,
the leech has no choice but to die.
Ultimately, Chillingworth represents true evil. He is associated with
secular and sometimes illicit forms of knowledge, as his chemical
experiments and medical practices occasionally verge on witchcraft and
murder. He is interested in revenge, not justice, and he seeks the
deliberate destruction of others rather than a redress of wrongs. His desire
to hurt others stands in contrast to Hester and Dimmesdales sin, which
had love, not hate, as its intent. Any harm that may have come from the
young lovers deed was unanticipated and inadvertent, whereas
Chillingworth reaps deliberate harm.
3.Arthur Dimmesdale
Arthur Dimmesdale, like Hester Prynne, is an individual whose identity
owes more to external circumstances than to his innate nature. The reader
is told that Dimmesdale was a scholar of some renown at Oxford
University. His past suggests that he is probably somewhat aloof, the kind
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of man who would not have much natural sympathy for ordinary men and
women. However, Dimmesdale has an unusually active conscience. The
fact that Hester takes all of the blame for their shared sin goads his
conscience, and his resultant mental anguish and physical weakness open
up his mind and allow him to empathize with others. Consequently, he
becomes an eloquent and emotionally powerful speaker and a
compassionate leader, and his congregation is able to receive meaningful
spiritual guidance from him.
Ironically, the townspeople do not believe Dimmesdales protestations of
sinfulness. Given his background and his penchant for rhetorical speech,
Dimmesdales congregation generally interprets his sermons allegorically
rather than as expressions of any personal guilt. This drives Dimmesdale
to further internalize his guilt and self-punishment and leads to still more
deterioration in his physical and spiritual condition. The towns idolization
of him reaches new heights after his Election Day sermon, which is his
last. In his death, Dimmesdale becomes even more of an icon than he was
in life. Many believe his confession was a symbolic act, while others
believe Dimmesdales fate was an example of divine judgment.
4.Pearl
Hesters daughter, Pearl, functions primarily as a symbol. She is quite
young during most of the events of this novelwhen Dimmesdale dies
she is only seven years oldand her real importance lies in her ability to
provoke the adult characters in the book. She asks them pointed
questions and draws their attention, and the readers, to the denied or
overlooked truths of the adult world. In general, children in The Scarlet
Letter are portrayed as more perceptive and more honest than adults, and
Pearl is the most perceptive of them all.
Pearl makes us constantly aware of her mothers scarlet letter and of the
society that produced it. From an early age, she fixates on the emblem.
Pearls innocent, or perhaps intuitive, comments about the letter raise
crucial questions about its meaning. Similarly, she inquires about the
relationships between those around hermost important, the relationship
between Hester and Dimmesdaleand offers perceptive critiques of them.
Pearl provides the texts harshest, and most penetrating, judgment of
Dimmesdales failure to admit to his adultery. Once her fathers identity is
revealed, Pearl is no longer needed in this symbolic capacity; at
Dimmesdales death she becomes fully human, leaving behind her
otherworldliness and her preternatural vision.
Themes
1.Sin, knowledge and the human condition
Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible
begins with the story of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the
Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. As
a result of their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of their
humanness, that which separates them from the divine and from other
creatures. Once expelled from the Garden of Eden, they are forced to toil
and to procreatetwo labors that seem to define the human condition.
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The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and
Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it
also results in knowledgespecifically, in knowledge of what it means to
be human. For Hester, the scarlet letter functions as her passport into
regions where other women dared not tread, leading her to speculate
about her society and herself more boldly than anyone else in New
England. As for Dimmesdale, the burden of his sin gives him
sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that
his heart vibrate[s] in unison with theirs. His eloquent and powerful
sermons derive from this sense of empathy. Hester and Dimmesdale
contemplate their own sinfulness on a daily basis and try to reconcile it
with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other hand, insist
on seeing earthly experience as merely an obstacle on the path to
heaven. Thus, they view sin as a threat to the community that should be
punished and suppressed. Their answer to Hesters sin is to ostracize her.
Yet, Puritan society is stagnant, while Hester and Dimmesdales
experience shows that a state of sinfulness can lead to personal growth,
sympathy, and understanding of others. Paradoxically, these qualities are
shown to be incompatible with a state of purity.
2.The nature of evil
The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the Black
Man, the embodiment of evil. Over the course of the novel, the Black
Man is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Mistress Hibbins,
and little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devils child. The characters
also try to root out the causes of evil: did Chillingworths selfishness in
marrying Hester force her to the evil she committed in Dimmesdales
arms? Is Hester and Dimmesdales deed responsible for Chillingworths
transformation into a malevolent being? This confusion over the nature
and causes of evil reveals the problems with the Puritan conception of sin.
The book argues that true evil arises from the close relationship between
hate and love. As the narrator points out in the novels concluding
chapter, both emotions depend upon a high degree of intimacy and
heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent . . . upon
another. Evil is not found in Hester and Dimmesdales lovemaking, nor
even in the cruel ignorance of the Puritan fathers. Evil, in its most
poisonous form, is found in the carefully plotted and precisely aimed
revenge of Chillingworth, whose love has been perverted. Perhaps Pearl is
not entirely wrong when she thinks Dimmesdale is the Black Man,
because her father, too, has perverted his love. Dimmesdale, who should
love Pearl, will not even publicly acknowledge her. His cruel denial of love
to his own child may be seen as further perpetrating evil.
3.Identity and society
After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by the people of Boston to
wear a badge of humiliation, her unwillingness to leave the town may
seem puzzling. She is not physically imprisoned, and leaving the
Massachusetts Bay Colony would allow her to remove the scarlet letter
and resume a normal life. Surprisingly, Hester reacts with dismay when
Chillingworth tells her that the town fathers are considering letting her
remove the letter. Hesters behavior is premised on her desire to
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determine her own identity rather than to allow others to determine it for
her. To her, running away or removing the letter would be an
acknowledgment of societys power over her: she would be admitting that
the letter is a mark of shame and something from which she desires to
escape. Instead, Hester stays, refiguring the scarlet letter as a symbol of
her own experiences and character. Her past sin is a part of who she is; to
pretend that it never happened would mean denying a part of herself.
Thus, Hester very determinedly integrates her sin into her life.
Dimmesdale also struggles against a socially determined identity. As the
communitys minister, he is more symbol than human being. Except for
Chillingworth, those around the minister willfully ignore his obvious
anguish, misinterpreting it as holiness. Unfortunately, Dimmesdale never
fully recognizes the truth of what Hester has learned: that individuality
and strength are gained by quiet self-assertion and by a reconfiguration,
not a rejection, of ones assigned identity.
Motifs
1.Civilization versus the wilderness
In The Scarlet Letter, the town and the surrounding forest represent
opposing behavioral systems. The town represents civilization, a rule-
bound space where everything one does is on display and where
transgressions are quickly punished. The forest, on the other hand, is a
space of natural rather than human authority. In the forest, societys rules
do not apply, and alternate identities can be assumed. While this allows
for misbehavior Mistress Hibbinss midnight rides, for exampleit also
permits greater honesty and an escape from the repression of Boston.
When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the woods, for a few moments,
they become happy young lovers once again. Hesters cottage, which,
significantly, is located on the outskirts of town and at the edge of the
forest, embodies both orders. It is her place of exile, which ties it to the
authoritarian town, but because it lies apart from the settlement, it is a
place where she can create for herself a life of relative peace.
2.Night versus day
By emphasizing the alternation between sunlight and darkness, the novel
organizes the plots events into two categories: those which are socially
acceptable, and those which must take place covertly. Daylight exposes
an individuals activities and makes him or her vulnerable to punishment.
Night, on the other hand, conceals and enables activities that would not
be possible or tolerated during the dayfor instance, Dimmesdales
encounter with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold. These notions of visibility
versus concealment are linked to two of the books larger themesthe
themes of inner versus socially assigned identity and of outer
appearances versus internal states. Night is the time when inner natures
can manifest themselves. During the day, interiority is once again hidden
from public view, and secrets remain secrets.
3.Evocative names

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The names in this novel often seem to beg to be interpreted allegorically.
Chillingworth is cold and inhuman and thus brings a chill to Hesters and
Dimmesdales lives. Prynne rhymes with sin, while Dimmesdale
suggests dimnessweakness, indeterminacy, lack of insight, and lack of
will, all of which characterize the young minister. The name Pearl evokes
a biblical allegorical devicethe pearl of great price that is salvation.
This system of naming lends a profundity to the story, linking it to other
allegorical works of literature such as The Pilgrims Progress and to
portions of the Bible. It also aligns the novel with popular forms of
narrative such as fairy tales.

Symbols
1.The scarlet letter
The scarlet letter is meant to be a symbol of shame, but instead it
becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester. The letters meaning
shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as an adulterer,
the A eventually comes to stand for Able. Finally, it becomes
indeterminate: the Native Americans who come to watch the Election Day
pageant think it marks her as a person of importance and status. Like
Pearl, the letter functions as a physical reminder of Hesters affair with
Dimmesdale. But, compared with a human child, the letter seems
insignificant, and thus helps to point out the ultimate meaninglessness of
the communitys system of judgment and punishment. The child has been
sent from God, or at least from nature, but the letter is merely a human
contrivance. Additionally, the instability of the letters apparent meaning
calls into question societys ability to use symbols for ideological
reinforcement. More often than not, a symbol becomes a focal point for
critical analysis and debate.
2.The Meteor
As Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl in Chapter
12, a meteor traces out an A in the night sky. To Dimmesdale, the meteor
implies that he should wear a mark of shame just as Hester does. The
meteor is interpreted differently by the rest of the community, which
thinks that it stands for Angel and marks Governor Winthrops entry into
heaven. But Angel is an awkward reading of the symbol. The Puritans
commonly looked to symbols to confirm divine sentiments. In this
narrative, however, symbols are taken to mean what the beholder wants
them to mean. The incident with the meteor obviously highlights and
exemplifies two different uses of symbols: Puritan and literary.
3.Pearl
Although Pearl is a complex character, her primary function within the
novel is as a symbol. Pearl is a sort of living version of her mothers scarlet
letter. She is the physical consequence of sexual sin and the indicator of a
transgression. Yet, even as a reminder of Hesters sin, Pearl is more than
a mere punishment to her mother: she is also a blessing. She represents
not only sin but also the vital spirit and passion that engendered that

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sin. Thus, Pearls existence gives her mother reason to live, bolstering her
spirits when she is tempted to give up. It is only after Dimmesdale is
revealed to be Pearls father that Pearl can become fully human. Until
then, she functions in a symbolic capacity as the reminder of an unsolved
mystery.
*****The scarlet letter is regarded as Americas first psychological novel.
Set in the 17th century, the novel displays a strikingly modern
psychological insight into the forces that drive human behaviour.
Hawthornes interest lies primarily in the exploration of the human soul
and in the processes that take place in a characters mind. The
development of the plot is secondary; what happens in society at large
and the events surrounding his main characters are of little consequence.
The novels main passions sin and guilt, punishment and redemption,
fear and shame, pride and selfishness, hatred and destructive revenge
are described in allegorical style and through rich suggestive symbolism.

MOBY DICK HERMAN MELVILLE

CONTEXT
Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819, the third of eight
children born to Maria Gansevoort Melville and Allan Melville, a prosperous
importer of foreign goods. When the family business failed at the end of
the 1820s, the Melvilles relocated to Albany in an attempt to revive their
fortunes. A string of further bad luck and overwork, however, drove his
father to an early grave, and the young Melville was forced to start
working in a bank at the age of thirteen.
Melvilles masterpiece, Moby-Dick or The Whale, is a tremendously
ambitious novel that functions at once as a documentary of life at sea and
a vast philosophical allegory of life in general. No sacred subject is spared
in this bleak and scathing critique of the known world, as Melville satirizes
by turns religious traditions, moral values, and the literary and political
figures of the day.
Melville was influenced in the writing of Moby-Dick by the work of
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Though the works of Shakespeare and Milton and
stories in the Bible (especially the Old Testament) influenced Moby-
Dick, Melville didnt look exclusively to celebrated cultural models. He
drew on sources from popular culture as well; whaling narratives, for
example, were popular in the nineteenth century.
Moby-Dick was both a seminal work elaborating on classic American
themes, such as religion, fate, and economic expansion, and a radically
experimental anachronism that anticipated Modernism in its outsized
scope and pastiche of forms. It stands alongside James
Joyces Ulysses and Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy as a novel that
appears bizarre to the point of being unreadable but proves to be infinitely
open to interpretation and discovery.
Analysis of major characters

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1.Ishmael
Despite his centrality to the story, Ishmael doesnt reveal much about
himself to the reader. We know that he has gone to sea out of some deep
spiritual malaise and that shipping aboard a whaler is his version of
committing suicidehe believes that men aboard a whaling ship are lost
to the world. It is apparent from Ishmaels frequent digressions on a wide
range of subjectsfrom art, geology, and anatomy to legal codes and
literaturethat he is intelligent and well educated, yet he claims that a
whaling ship has been [his] Yale College and [his] Harvard. He seems to
be a self-taught Renaissance man, good at everything but committed to
nothing. Given the mythic, romantic aspects of Moby-Dick, it is perhaps
fitting that its narrator should be an enigma: not everything in a story so
dependent on fate and the seemingly supernatural needs to make perfect
sense.
Additionally, Ishmael represents the fundamental contradiction between
the story of Moby-Dick and its setting. Melville has created a profound and
philosophically complicated tale and set it in a world of largely
uneducated working-class men; Ishmael, thus, seems less a real character
than an instrument of the author. No one else aboard
the Pequod possesses the proper combination of intellect and experience
to tell this story. Indeed, at times even Ishmael fails Melvilles purposes,
and he disappears from the story for long stretches, replaced by dramatic
dialogues and soliloquies from Ahab and other characters.

2.Ahab
Ahab, the Pequods obsessed captain, represents both an ancient and a
quintessentially modern type of hero. Like the heroes of Greek or
Shakespearean tragedy, Ahab suffers from a single fatal flaw, one he
shares with such legendary characters as Oedipus and Faust. His
tremendous overconfidence, or hubris, leads him to defy common sense
and believe that, like a god, he can enact his will and remain immune to
the forces of nature. He considers Moby Dick the embodiment of evil in
the world, and he pursues the White Whale monomaniacally because he
believes it his inescapable fate to destroy this evil. According to the critic
M. H. Abrams, such a tragic hero moves us to pity because, since he is
not an evil man, his misfortune is greater than he deserves; but he moves
us also to fear, because we recognize similar possibilities of error in our
own lesser and fallible selves.
Unlike the heroes of older tragic works, however, Ahab suffers from a fatal
flaw that is not necessarily inborn but instead stems from damage, in his
case both psychological and physical, inflicted by life in a harsh world. He
is as much a victim as he is an aggressor, and the symbolic opposition
that he constructs between himself and Moby Dick propels him toward
what he considers a destined end.
3.Moby Dick

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In a sense, Moby Dick is not a character, as the reader has no access to
the White Whales thoughts, feelings, or intentions. Instead, Moby Dick is
an impersonal force, one that many critics have interpreted as an
allegorical representation of God, an inscrutable and all-powerful being
that humankind can neither understand nor defy. Moby Dick thwarts free
will and cannot be defeated, only accommodated or avoided. Ishmael tries
a plethora of approaches to describe whales in general, but none proves
adequate. Indeed, as Ishmael points out, the majority of a whale is hidden
from view at all times. In this way, a whale mirrors its environment. Like
the whale, only the surface of the ocean is available for human
observation and interpretation, while its depths conceal unknown and
unknowable truths. Furthermore, even when Ishmael does get his hands
on a whole whale, he is unable to determine which partthe skeleton,
the head, the skinoffers the best understanding of the whole living,
breathing creature; he cannot localize the essence of the whale. This
conundrum can be read as a metaphor for the human relationship with
the Christian God (or any other god, for that matter): God is unknowable
and cannot be pinned down.
Themes
1.The limits of knowledge
As Ishmael tries, in the opening pages of Moby-Dick, to offer a simple
collection of literary excerpts mentioning whales, he discovers that,
throughout history, the whale has taken on an incredible multiplicity of
meanings. Over the course of the novel, he makes use of nearly every
discipline known to man in his attempts to understand the essential
nature of the whale. Each of these systems of knowledge, however,
including art, taxonomy, and phrenology, fails to give an adequate
account. The multiplicity of approaches that Ishmael takes, coupled with
his compulsive need to assert his authority as a narrator and the frequent
references to the limits of observation (men cannot see the depths of the
ocean, for example), suggest that human knowledge is always limited and
insufficient. When it comes to Moby Dick himself, this limitation takes on
allegorical significance. The ways of Moby Dick, like those of the Christian
God, are unknowable to man, and thus trying to interpret them, as Ahab
does, is inevitably futile and often fatal.
2.The Deceptiveness of Fate
In addition to highlighting many portentous or foreshadowing events,
Ishmaels narrative contains many references to fate, creating the
impression that thePequods doom is inevitable. Many of the sailors
believe in prophecies, and some even claim the ability to foretell the
future. A number of things suggest, however, that characters are actually
deluding themselves when they think that they see the work of fate and
that fate either doesnt exist or is one of the many forces about which
human beings can have no distinct knowledge. Ahab, for example, clearly
exploits the sailors belief in fate to manipulate them into thinking that the
quest for Moby Dick is their common destiny. Moreover, the prophesies of
Fedallah and others seem to be undercut in Chapter 99, when various
individuals interpret the doubloon in different ways, demonstrating that
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humans project what they want to see when they try to interpret signs
and portents.

3.The Exploitative Nature of Whaling

At first glance, the Pequod seems like an island of equality and fellowship
in the midst of a racist, hierarchically structured world. The ships crew
includes men from all corners of the globe and all races who seem to get
along harmoniously. Ishmael is initially uneasy upon meeting Queequeg,
but he quickly realizes that it is better to have a sober cannibal than a
drunken Christian for a shipmate. Additionally, the conditions of work
aboard the Pequod promote a certain kind of egalitarianism, since men
are promoted and paid according to their skill. However, the work of
whaling parallels the other exploitative activitiesbuffalo hunting, gold
mining, unfair trade with indigenous peoplesthat characterize American
and European territorial expansion. Each of the Pequods mates, who are
white, is entirely dependent on a nonwhite harpooner, and nonwhites
perform most of the dirty or dangerous jobs aboard the ship. Flask
actually stands on Daggoo, his African harpooner, in order to beat the
other mates to a prize whale. Ahab is depicted as walking over the black
youth Pip, who listens to Ahabs pacing from below deck, and is thus
reminded that his value as a slave is less than the value of a whale.
Motifs
1.Whiteness
Whiteness, to Ishmael, is horrible because it represents the unnatural and
threatening: albinos, creatures that live in extreme and inhospitable
environments, waves breaking against rocks. These examples reverse the
traditional association of whiteness with purity. Whiteness conveys both a
lack of meaning and an unreadable excess of meaning that confounds
individuals. Moby Dick is the pinnacle of whiteness, and Melvilles
characters cannot objectively understand the White Whale. Ahab, for
instance, believes that Moby Dick represents evil, while Ishmael fails in his
attempts to determine scientifically the whales fundamental nature.
2.Surfaces and Depths
Ishmael frequently bemoans the impossibility of examining anything in its
entirety, noting that only the surfaces of objects and environments are
available to the human observer. On a live whale, for example, only the
outer layer presents itself; on a dead whale, it is impossible to determine
what constitutes the whales skin, or which partskeleton, blubber, head
offers the best understanding of the entire animal. Moreover, as the
whale swims, it hides much of its body underwater, away from the human
gaze, and no one knows where it goes or what it does. The sea itself is the
greatest frustration in this regard: its depths are mysterious and
inaccessible to Ishmael. This motif represents the larger problem of the
limitations of human knowledge. Humankind is not all-seeing; we can only
observe, and thus only acquire knowledge about, that fraction of entities
both individuals and environmentsto which we have access: surfaces.

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Symbols
1.The Pequod
Named after a Native American tribe in Massachusetts that did not long
survive the arrival of white men and thus memorializing an extinction,
the Pequod is a symbol of doom. It is painted a gloomy black and covered
in whale teeth and bones, literally bristling with the mementos of violent
death. It is, in fact, marked for death. Adorned like a primitive coffin,
the Pequod becomes one.
2.Moby Dick
Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals. To
the Pequods crew, the legendary White Whale is a concept onto which
they can displace their anxieties about their dangerous and often very
frightening jobs. Because they have no delusions about Moby Dick acting
malevolently toward men or literally embodying evil, tales about the
whale allow them to confront their fear, manage it, and continue to
function. Ahab, on the other hand, believes that Moby Dick is a
manifestation of all that is wrong with the world, and he feels that it is his
destiny to eradicate this symbolic evil.
Moby Dick also bears out interpretations not tied down to specific
characters. In its inscrutable silence and mysterious habits, for example,
the White Whale can be read as an allegorical representation of an
unknowable God. As a profitable commodity, it fits into the scheme of
white economic expansion and exploitation in the nineteenth century. As a
part of the natural world, it represents the destruction of the environment
by such hubristic expansion.
3.Queequegs Coffin
Queequegs coffin alternately symbolizes life and death. Queequeg has it
built when he is seriously ill, but when he recovers, it becomes a chest to
hold his belongings and an emblem of his will to live. He perpetuates the
knowledge tattooed on his body by carving it onto the coffins lid. The
coffin further comes to symbolize life, in a morbid way, when it replaces
the Pequods life buoy. When thePequod sinks, the coffin becomes
Ishmaels buoy, saving not only his life but the life of the narrative that he
will pass on.
****** Moby Dick the obsessive, epic pursuit of the great white whale by
Captain Ahab. The central theme of the novel is the obsession of Captain
Ahab, master of the whaler Pequod, with a great white whale that had torn
off one of his legs. Ahabs life and journey are dedicated to hunting and
killing the whale, a vendetta that drives himself, his ship and crew to
destruction. Moby Dick is a complex, multi faceted novel. The narrative
is at times naturalistic, at times fantastic and it is interrupted by
metaphysical debates, soliloquies and long digressions on whales and the
art of whaling. It is written in an extraordinary variety of styles which
range from sailors slang to biblical parable to Shakespearean verse.
Several themes can be found in the narrative: madness and monomania,
the conflict between man and nature, the impossibility of escaping fate.

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Numerous symbolic associations have been made with the figure of the
whale itself. It has variously been interpreted as the personification of evil
in the world, the mirror image of Captain Ahabs soul and the
representation of the hidden and powerful forces of nature.

THE TELL-TALE HEART EDGAR ALLAN POE

Context
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, and died on October 7,
1849. He was a magazine editor, a poet, a short story writer, a critic, and
a lecturer. He introduced the British horror story, or the Gothic genre, to
American literature, along with the detective story, science fiction, and
literary criticism. Poe became a key figure in the nineteenth-century
flourishing of American letters and literature. Famed twentieth--century
literary critic F.O. Matthiessen named this period the American
Renaissance. He argued that nineteenth-century American writers Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman
Melville, and Walt Whitman crafted a distinctly American literature that
attempts to escape from the long shadow of the British literary tradition.
Matthiessen paid little attention to Edgar Allan Poe. Although he long had
a reputation in Europe as one of Americas most original writers, only in
the latter half of the -twentieth century has Poe been viewed as a crucial
contributor to the American Renaissance.
His name has since become synonymous with macabre tales like The Tell-
Tale Heart, but Poe assumed a variety of literary personas during his
career. The Messengeras well as Burtons Gentlemans
Magazine and Grahamsestablished Poe as one of Americas first popular
literary critics.
Poe also introduced of a new form of short fictionthe detective storyin
tales featuring the Parisian crime solver C. Auguste Dupin. The detective
story follows naturally from Poes interest in puzzles, word games, and
secret codes, which he loved to present and decode in the pages of
the Messenger to dazzle his readers. The word detective did not exist in
English at the time that Poe was writing, but the genre has become a
fundamental mode of twentieth-century literature and film. Dupin and his
techniques of psychological inquiry have informed countless sleuths,
including Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes and Raymond
Chandlers Philip Marlowe.
Gothic literature, a genre that rose with Romanticism in Britain in the late
eighteenth century, explores the dark side of human experiencedeath,
alienation, nightmares, ghosts, and haunted landscapes. Poe brought the
Gothic to America. American Gothic literature dramatizes a culture
plagued by poverty and slavery through characters afflicted with various
forms of insanity and melancholy. In the spectrum of American literature,
the Gothic remains in the shadow of the dominant genre of the American
Renaissancethe Romance. Popularized by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Romantic literature, like Gothic literature, relies on haunting and
mysterious narratives that blur the boundary between the real and the
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fantastic. In Romances like the novels of Hawthorne, conflicts occur
among characters within the context of society and are resolved in
accordance with societys rules. Poes Gothic tales are brief flashes of
chaos that flare up within lonely narrators living at the fringes of society.
Analysis of major characters
1.The narrator
Our narrator is such a wreck, it's hard not to feel sorry for him. He's
nervous ("very dreadfully nervous"), paranoid, and physically and
mentally ill. He doesn't know the difference between the "real" and the
"unreal," and seems to be completely alone and friendless in the world.
We suspect that he rarely sleeps. He's also a murderer.
Maybe this explains why he doesn't share his name, or any other
identifying characteristics. He wants us to know what he did, but not
where to find him. We actually have precious little to go on in discussing
his character. We have to do lots of investigation and reading between the
lines to come up with possibilities.
Before we explore some of those possibilities, we should clear up a fine
point. Poe doesn't explicitly tell us if the narrator is male or female. The
only reason we feel comfortable calling the narrator "he" is these lines:
"You fancy me mad. Mad men know nothing" (3) (our italics). This isn't one
hundred percent proof that the narrator is male, so it's important to
consider the possibility that the narrator is female. But, for now, we are
clinging to those lines to get out of having to use the awkward "he/she."
2.The old man
The old man is even more of a mystery than the narrator, partly because
we only see him through the narrator's skewed perspective. We know he
has money (the narrator shows the old man's "treasures" to the police).
We also know he has a blue eye that the narrator is afraid of, and which
fits the description of a corneal ulcer. We know he's old, and that he's a
fairly sound sleeper. According to the narrator, the old man suspects
nothing because the narrator was nice to him the week before he killed
him. We can't prove the old man wasn't suspicious, but because he leaves
his bedroom door unlocked we can assume it. We know the man isn't
naturally trusting he's afraid of robbers. But, it seems he does trust the
narrator enough to give him the run of the house while he sleeps. Nothing
the narrator tells us about the old man fits our idea of "madness" or
"insanity," but the old man does fit neatly into the narrator's definition of
madness: 1) "destroyed" or "dulled" senses; 2) "Madmen know nothing"
(2).
His senses are definitely dulled he only hears the narrator on the eighth
night. He doesn't seem to have the slightest idea what's going on around
him and is incapable of defending himself. Perhaps the narrator is slyly
hinting that he thinks the old man is "mad." This makes us wonder if the
old man was very senile, dependant on the narrator's care. Alienated - We
know that at least one neighbor is suspicious of the goings on in the house
of the old man and the narrator. Otherwise, he or she would not have
been so quick to call the cops after hearing a little scream, and wouldn't
have been able to convince the powers that be to send not one or two, but
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three policemen. We don't know if this suspicion is directed toward the old
man or toward the narrator or both. But, it's possible that the narrator
wasn't the only one afraid of the old man's eye. The old man could be an
alienated figure both in and out of the home, and thus the narrator's
murder of him could be symbolic of prejudices and abuses that stem from
physical "difference."
Themes
1. Love and Hate
Poe explores the similarity of love and hate in many stories, especially
The Tell-Tale Heart and William Wilson. Poe portrays the psychological
complexity of these two supposedly opposite emotions, emphasizing the
ways they enigmatically blend into each other. Poes psychological insight
anticipates the theories of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian founder of
psychoanalysis and one of the twentieth centurys most influential
thinkers. Poe, like Freud, interpreted love and hate as universal emotions,
thereby severed from the specific conditions of time and space.
The Gothic terror is the result of the narrators simultaneous love for
himself and hatred of his rival. The double shows that love and hate are
inseparable and suggests that they may simply be two forms of the most
intense form of human emotion. The narrator loves himself, but when
feelings of self-hatred arise in him, he projects that hatred onto an
imaginary copy of himself. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator confesses
a love for an old man whom he then violently murders and dismembers.
The narrator reveals his madness by attempting to separate the person of
the old man, whom he loves, from the old mans supposedly evil eye,
which triggers the narrators hatred. This delusional separation enables
the narrator to remain unaware of the paradox of claiming to have loved
his victim.

2.Self vs. Alter Ego

In many of Poes Gothic tales, characters wage internal conflicts by
creating imaginary alter egos or assuming alternate and opposite
personalities.
3.The Power of the Dead over the Living
Poe often gives memory the power to keep the dead alive. Poe distorts
this otherwise commonplace literary theme by bringing the dead literally
back to life, employing memory as the trigger that reawakens the dead,
who are usually women.
Motifs
1.The Masquerade
At masquerades Poes characters abandon social conventions and leave
themselves vulnerable to crime. In The Cask of Amontillado, for
-example, Montresor uses the carnivals masquerade to fool Fortunato into
his own demise. The masquerade carries the traditional meanings of joy

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and social liberation. Reality is suspended, and people can temporarily
assume another identity. Montresor exploits these sentiments to do
Fortunato real harm. In William Wilson, the masquerade is where the
narrator receives his doubles final insult. The masquerade is enchanting
because guests wear a variety of exotic and grotesque costumes, but the
narrator and his double don the same Spanish outfit. The double Wilson
haunts the narrator by denying him the thrill of unique transformation. In
a crowd full of guests in costumes, the narrator feels comfortably
anonymous enough to attempt to murder his double. Lastly, in The
Masque of the Red Death, the ultimate victory of the plague over the
selfish retreat of Prince Prospero and his guests occurs during the palaces
lavish masquerade ball. The mysterious guests gruesome costume, which
shows the bloody effects of the Red Death, mocks the larger horror of
Prosperos party in the midst of his suffering peasants. The pretense of
costume allows the guest to enter the ball, and bring the guests their
death in person.
2.Animals
In Poes murder stories, homicide requires animalistic element. Animals
kill, they die, and animal imagery provokes and informs crimes committed
between men. Animals signal the absence of human reason and morality,
but sometimes humans prove less rational than their beastly
counterparts. The joke behind The Murders in the Rue Morgue is that the
Ourang-Outang did it. The savage irrationality of the crime baffles the
police, who cannot conceive of a motiveless crime or fathom the brute
force involved. Dupin uses his superior analytical abilities to determine
that the crime couldnt have been committed by a human. In The Black
Cat, the murder of Pluto results from the narrators loss of reason and
plunge into perverseness, reasons inhuman antithesis. The storys
second cat behaves cunningly, leading the narrator into a more serious
crime in the murder of his wife, and then betraying him to the police. The
role reversalirrational humans vs. rational animalsindicates that Poe
considers murder a fundamentally animalistic, and therefore inhuman,
act. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the murderer dehumanize his victims by
likening him to animal. The narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart claims to hate
and murder the old mans vulture eye, which he describes as pale blue
with a film over it. He attempts to justify his actions by implicitly
comparing himself to a helpless creature threatened by a hideous
scavenger. In the Cask of Amontillado, Montresor does the reverse,
readying himself to commit the crime by equating himself with an animal.
In killing Fortunato, he cites his family arms, a serpent with its fangs in the
heel of a foot stepping on it, and motto, which is translated no one harms
me with impunity. Fortunato, whose insult has spurred Montresor to
revenge, becomes the man whose foot harms the snake Montresor and is
punished with a lethal bite.
Symbols
1.The Whirlpool
In MS. Found in a Bottle, the whirlpool symbolizes insanity. When the
whirlpool transports the narrator from the peaceful South Seas to the
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surreal waters of the South Pole, it also symbolically transports him out of
the space of scientific rationality to that of the imaginative fancy of the
German moralists. The whirlpool destroys the boat and removes the
narrator from a realistic realm, the second whirlpool kills him.
2.Eyes
In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator fixates on the idea that an old man is
looking at him with the Evil Eye and transmitting a curse on him. At the
same time that the narrator obsesses over the eye, he wants to separate
the old man from the Evil Eye in order to spare the old man from his
violent reaction to the eye. The narrator reveals his inability to recognize
that the eye is the I, or identity, of the old man. The eyes symbolize
the essence of human identity, which cannot be separated from the body.
The eye cannot be killed without causing the man to die. Similarly, in
Ligeia, the narrator is unable to see behind Ligeias dark and mysterious
eyes. Because the eyes symbolize her Gothic identity, they conceal
Ligeias mysterious knowledge, a knowledge that both guides and haunts
the narrator.
Analysis
Poe uses his words economically in the Tell-Tale Heartit is one of his
shortest storiesto provide a study of paranoia and mental deterioration.
Poe strips the story of excess detail as a way to heighten the murderers
obsession with specific and unadorned entities: the old mans eye, the
heartbeat, and his own claim to sanity. Poes economic style and pointed
language thus contribute to the narrative content, and perhaps this
association of form and content truly exemplifies paranoia. Even Poe
himself, like the beating heart, is complicit in the plot to catch the narrator
in his evil game.
As a study in paranoia, this story illuminates the psychological
contradictions that contribute to a murderous profile. For example, the
narrator admits, in the first sentence, to being dreadfully nervous, yet he
is unable to comprehend why he should be thought mad. He articulates
his self-defense against madness in terms of heightened sensory capacity.
Unlike the similarly nervous and hypersensitive Roderick Usher in The Fall
of the House of Usher, who admits that he feels mentally unwell, the
narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart views his hypersensitivity as proof of his
sanity, not a symptom of madness. This special knowledge enables the
narrator to tell this tale in a precise and complete manner, and he uses
the stylistic tools of narration for the purposes of his own sanity plea.
However, what makes this narrator madand most unlike Poeis that he
fails to comprehend the coupling of narrative form and content. He
masters precise form, but he unwittingly lays out a tale of murder that
betrays the madness he wants to deny.
Another contradiction central to the story involves the tension between
the narrators capacities for love and hate. Poe explores here a
psychological mysterythat people sometimes harm those whom they
love or need in their lives. Poe examines this paradox half a century
before Sigmund Freud made it a leading concept in his theories of the
mind. Poes narrator loves the old man. He is not greedy for the old mans
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wealth, nor vengeful because of any slight. The narrator thus eliminates
motives that might normally inspire such a violent murder. As he
proclaims his own sanity, the narrator fixates on the old mans vulture-
eye. He reduces the old man to the pale blue of his eye in obsessive
fashion. He wants to separate the man from his Evil Eye so he can spare
the man the burden of guilt that he attributes to the eye itself. The
narrator fails to see that the eye is the I of the old man, an inherent part
of his identity that cannot be isolated as the narrator perversely imagines.
The murder of the old man illustrates the extent to which the narrator
separates the old mans identity from his physical eye. The narrator sees
the eye as completely separate from the man, and as a result, he is
capable of murdering him while maintaining that he loves him. The
narrators desire to eradicate the mans eye motivates his murder, but the
narrator does not acknowledge that this act will end the mans life. By
dismembering his victim, the narrator further deprives the old man of his
humanity. The narrator confirms his conception of the old mans eye as
separate from the man by ending the man altogether and turning him into
so many parts. That strategy turns against him when his mind imagines
other parts of the old mans body working against him.
The narrators newly heightened sensitivity to sound ultimately overcomes
him, as he proves unwilling or unable to distinguish between real and
imagined sounds. Because of his warped sense of reality, he obsesses
over the low beats of the mans heart yet shows little concern about the
mans shrieks, which are loud enough both to attract a neighbors
attention and to draw the police to the scene of the crime. The police do
not perform a traditional, judgmental role in this story. Ironically, they
arent terrifying agents of authority or brutality. Poes interest is less in
external forms of power than in the power that pathologies of the mind
can hold over an individual. The narrators paranoia and guilt make it
inevitable that he will give himself away. The police arrive on the scene to
give him the opportunity to betray himself. The more the narrator
proclaims his own cool manner, the more he cannot escape the beating of
his own heart, which he mistakes for the beating of the old mans heart.
As he confesses to the crime in the final sentence, he addresses the
policemen as [v]illains, indicating his inability to distinguish between
their real identity and his own villainy.

EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY AND MODERNISM

1901 1950
NORTH AMERICAN HISTORY
1900 1950
As the 20th century dawned, the United States was poised to change
the relationship with the rest of the world. Up until then it had been
content to stay out of international disputes, but as its economic power
grew, it saw how the colonial influence over other countries had benefited
European powers and consequently began to end its historic isolationism.

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 The United States did not embark on a blatant (ostentativ) policy of
colonization. In 1898, the inhuman treatment of Cuban rebels at the
hands of the Spanish colonists had strongly affected public opinion in
America and led to a short war with Spain which saw the United States
victorious. The United States, therefore, had become, almost overnight, a
colonial power.
Following the Second World War, the United States officially took on
its role as leader of the western world.
THE ECONOMY
While foreign policy changed, the economy continued to expand.
Average incomes rose steadily, there was a fivefold (incincit) increase in
exports, and the world looked on admiringly at the economic miracle of
the age.
The 1920s, known as the Roaring Twenties, were years of excess
end enjoyment as people put the First World War firmly behind them. The
prosperity of those years, however, was to come to a sudden end in 1929
when the Stock Exchange in Wall Street collapsed. Public confidence in
financial institutions vanished, and America slipped into the Great
Depression during which millions lost their jobs while some farmers were
reduced to starvation.
SOCIETY
Despite the great hardship of the 1930s American society continued
to evolve and develop.
One of the major features of the Roaring Twenties was the freer role
allowed to women. In the jazz era young women, often preferring a
masculine to a feminine style of dress, danced and drank the night away
in illegal drinking clubs.
These clubs were illegal because between 1920 and 1933 the sale
and consumption of alcohol was prohibited, but the only lasting effect of
the measure was the increased power and influence of organized crime
gangs who trafficked in alcohol.
Money that could not be spent on alcohol was spent on other goods
as a consumer society was born. The consumer boom only really started
after 1945, but before that, the radio, telephone and fridge had become
features of most American homes.
Along with the improved status of women, the changing attitude
towards nonwhite Americans was a significant social development.
Although racism was still widespread in 1950, the participation of two
million blacks in the defence forces during the Second World War marked
their conditional acceptance into mainstream American life.
Race relation would remain a major issue right up the present day,
but the first tentative steps were being made towards the creation of a
multicultural nation.

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 In 1950 this nation, thanks to its economic power and military
might, had become a superpower that was ready to face and challenge
the worlds other superpower, the Soviet Union.
NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE
The 19th century had seen the beginnings of a Native American
literature with the publication of such classics as The adventures of
Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick and the emergence of a national
poet in the shape of Walt Whitman. In the first half of the 20 th century,
American writing was to move from being a peripheral adjunct to the
world of English letters to being a dynamic and fully accepted branch of
world literature. Writers like Hemingway and Faulkner were translated
into every major language and helped put an end to Americas literary
isolation at the same time as the United States was coming out of political
isolation.
FICTION
Perhaps the greatest contribution that American writers made to the
world literature was in the field of fiction. In the early years of the century,
the realism of European novelists like Emile Zola was much admired, as it
allowed novelists to describe graphically the dynamic, competitive and
often violent nature of American life. One of the most strikingly realistic
writers was Jack London.
When America emerged rich and strong from the First World War,
and as the world watched and envied the excesses of the Roaring
Twenties, a group of writers began to question the unswerving (fidel)
belief in limitless progress and fabulous wealth that the United States was
seen to represent. In so doing they brought to their writing a directness
and clarity that have become one of the hallmarks (marca, standard) of
American writing in English.
The first, in chronological order, of this group was F. Scott
Fitzgerald, whose work is inexorably linked with the 1920s. Fitzgerald
was a product of and an active participant in the carefree madness of his
age but in his book he reveals the darker side of the glamour. In The
Great Gatsby the veneer of youth, beauty, wealth and success fails to
cover up the moral black hole at the centre of American society.
The world of William Faulkner is very different from that of
Fitzgerald, but a similar sense of decadence pervades his work. His
decaying world is that of the Deep South, in which old established white
families fall into disrepute (a se compromite) and where traditional values
are slowly eroded. By using the stream of consciousness technique, he
builds up a comprehensive picture of the intense pride and passion of the
people who make up the racial cauldron of the South.
Like Faulkner and Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway dealt in his
work with the more primitive and elemental sides of human life. In a
deceptively simple direct style he presents an almost nihilistic vision of
reality in which man is constantly fighting against the forces of death. The
struggle against hostile nature is the main theme in Death in the

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afternoon and The old man and the sea, while the destructive folly
(absurditate) of war acts as a backdrop to personal tragedy in A farewell
to arms.
THE ADVENTURES OF KUCKLEBERRY FINN MARK TWAIN
Context
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in the town of Florida,
Missouri, in 1835. When he was four years old, his family moved to
Hannibal, a town on the Mississippi River much like the towns depicted in
his two most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).
The pen name Mark Twain, derived from the riverboat leadsmens signal
By the mark, twainthat the water was deep enough for safe
passage. Life on the river also gave Twain material for several of his
books, including the raft scenes of Huckleberry Finn and the material for
his autobiographical Life on the Mississippi (1883).
Clemens continued to work on the river until 1861, when the Civil War
exploded across America and shut down the Mississippi for travel and
shipping. Although Clemens joined a Confederate cavalry division, he was
no ardent Confederate, and when his division deserted en masse, he did
too. He then made his way west with his brother Orion, working first as a
silver miner in Nevada and then stumbling into his true calling,
journalism.
Throughout the late 1860s and 1870s, Twains articles, stories, memoirs,
and novels, characterized by an irrepressible wit and a deft ear for
language and dialect, garnered him immense celebrity. As the nation
prospered economically in the postCivil War periodan era that came to
be known as the Gilded Age, an epithet that Twain coinedso too did
Twain.
Twain began work on Huckleberry Finn, a sequel to Tom Sawyer, in an
effort to capitalize on the popularity of the earlier novel. This new novel
took on a more serious character, however, as Twain focused increasingly
on the institution of slavery and the South. In the early 1880s, however,
the hopefulness of the postCivil War years began to fade. Reconstruction,
the political program designed to reintegrate the defeated South into the
Union as a slavery-free region, began to fail. The harsh measures the
victorious North imposed only embittered the South. Concerned about
maintaining power, many Southern politicians began an effort to control
and oppress the black men and women whom the war had freed.
Ultimately, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has proved significant not
only as a novel that explores the racial and moral world of its time but
also, through the controversies that continue to surround it, as an artifact
of those same moral and racial tensions as they have evolved to the
present day.
Analysis of major characters
1.Huck Finn

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From the beginning of the novel, Twain makes it clear that Huck is a boy
who comes from the lowest levels of white society. His father is a drunk
and a ruffian who disappears for months on end. Huck himself is dirty and
frequently homeless. Although the Widow Douglas attempts to reform
Huck, he resists her attempts and maintains his independent ways. The
community has failed to protect him from his father, and though the
Widow finally gives Huck some of the schooling and religious training that
he had missed, he has not been indoctrinated with social values in the
same way a middle-class boy like Tom Sawyer has been. Hucks distance
from mainstream society makes him skeptical of the world around him and
the ideas it passes on to him.
Hucks instinctual distrust and his experiences as he travels down the
river force him to question the things society has taught him. According to
the law, Jim is Miss Watsons property, but according to Hucks sense of
logic and fairness, it seems right to help Jim. Hucks natural intelligence
and his willingness to think through a situation on its own merits lead him
to some conclusions that are correct in their context but that would shock
white society. For example, Huck discovers, when he and Jim meet a group
of slave-hunters, that telling a lie is sometimes the right course of action.
Because Huck is a child, the world seems new to him. Everything he
encounters is an occasion for thought. Because of his background,
however, he does more than just apply the rules that he has been taught
he creates his own rules. Yet Huck is not some kind of independent
moral genius. He must still struggle with some of the preconceptions
about blacks that society has ingrained in him, and at the end of the
novel, he shows himself all too willing to follow Tom Sawyers lead. But
even these failures are part of what makes Huck appealing and
sympathetic. He is only a boy, after all, and therefore fallible. Imperfect as
he is, Huck represents what anyone is capable of becoming: a thinking,
feeling human being rather than a mere cog in the machine of society.

2.Jim
Jim, Hucks companion as he travels down the river, is a man of
remarkable intelligence and compassion. At first glance, Jim seems to be
superstitious to the point of idiocy, but a careful reading of the time that
Huck and Jim spend on Jacksons Island reveals that Jims superstitions
conceal a deep knowledge of the natural world and represent an alternate
form of truth or intelligence. Moreover, Jim has one of the few healthy,
functioning families in the novel. Although he has been separated from his
wife and children, he misses them terribly, and it is only the thought of a
permanent separation from them that motivates his criminal act of
running away from Miss Watson. On the river, Jim becomes a surrogate
father, as well as a friend, to Huck, taking care of him without being
intrusive or smothering. He cooks for the boy and shelters him from some
of the worst horrors that they encounter, including the sight of Paps
corpse, and, for a time, the news of his fathers passing.
Some readers have criticized Jim as being too passive, but it is important
to remember that he remains at the mercy of every other character in this
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novel, including even the poor, thirteen-year-old Huck, as the letter that
Huck nearly sends to Miss Watson demonstrates. Like Huck, Jim is realistic
about his situation and must find ways of accomplishing his goals without
incurring the wrath of those who could turn him in. In this position, he is
seldom able to act boldly or speak his mind. Nonetheless, despite these
restrictions and constant fear, Jim consistently acts as a noble human
being and a loyal friend. In fact, Jim could be described as the only real
adult in the novel, and the only one who provides a positive, respectable
example for Huck to follow.
3.Tom Sawyer
Tom is the same age as Huck and his best friend. Whereas Hucks birth
and upbringing have left him in poverty and on the margins of society,
Tom has been raised in relative comfort. As a result, his beliefs are an
unfortunate combination of what he has learned from the adults around
him and the fanciful notions he has gleaned from reading romance and
adventure novels. Tom believes in sticking strictly to rules, most of
which have more to do with style than with morality or anyones welfare.
Tom is thus the perfect foil for Huck: his rigid adherence to rules and
precepts contrasts with Hucks tendency to question authority and think
for himself.
Although Toms escapades are often funny, they also show just how
disturbingly and unthinkingly cruel society can be. Tom knows all along
that Miss Watson has died and that Jim is now a free man, yet he is willing
to allow Jim to remain a captive while he entertains himself with fantastic
escape plans. Toms plotting tortures not only Jim, but Aunt Sally and
Uncle Silas as well. In the end, although he is just a boy like Huck and is
appealing in his zest for adventure and his unconscious wittiness, Tom
embodies what a young, well-to-do white man is raised to become in the
society of his time: self-centered with dominion over all.
Themes
1.Racism and Slavery
Although Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn two decades after the
Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War, Americaand
especially the Southwas still struggling with racism and the aftereffects
of slavery.
Although Twain wrote the novel after slavery was abolished, he set it
several decades earlier, when slavery was still a fact of life. But even by
Twains time, things had not necessarily gotten much better for blacks in
the South. In this light, we might read Twains depiction of slavery as an
allegorical representation of the condition of blacks in the United States
even after the abolition of slavery. Just as slavery places the noble and
moral Jim under the control of white society, no matter how degraded that
white society may be, so too did the insidious racism that arose near the
end of Reconstruction oppress black men for illogical and hypocritical
reasons. In Huckleberry Finn, Twain, by exposing the hypocrisy of slavery,
demonstrates how racism distorts the oppressors as much as it does those
who are oppressed. The result is a world of moral confusion, in which
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seemingly good white people such as Miss Watson and Sally Phelps
express no concern about the injustice of slavery or the cruelty of
separating Jim from his family.
2.Intellectual and Moral Education
By focusing on Hucks education, Huckleberry Finn fits into the tradition of
the bildungsroman: a novel depicting an individuals maturation and
development. As a poor, uneducated boy, for all intents and purposes an
orphan, Huck distrusts the morals and precepts of the society that treats
him as an outcast and fails to protect him from abuse. This apprehension
about society, and his growing relationship with Jim, lead Huck to question
many of the teachings that he has received, especially regarding race and
slavery. More than once, we see Huck choose to go to hell rather than
go along with the rules and follow what he has been taught. Huck bases
these decisions on his experiences, his own sense of logic, and what his
developing conscience tells him. On the raft, away from civilization, Huck
is especially free from societys rules, able to make his own decisions
without restriction. Through deep introspection, he comes to his own
conclusions, unaffected by the acceptedand often hypocriticalrules
and values of Southern culture. By the novels end, Huck has learned to
read the world around him, to distinguish good, bad, right, wrong,
menace, friend, and so on. His moral development is sharply contrasted to
the character of Tom Sawyer, who is influenced by a bizarre mix of
adventure novels and Sunday-school teachings, which he combines to
justify his outrageous and potentially harmful escapades.
3.The Hypocrisy of Civilized Society
When Huck plans to head west at the end of the novel in order to escape
further sivilizing, he is trying to avoid more than regular baths and
mandatory school attendance. Throughout the novel, Twain depicts the
society that surrounds Huck as little more than a collection of degraded
rules and precepts that defy logic. This faulty logic appears early in the
novel, when the new judge in town allows Pap to keep custody of Huck.
The judge privileges Paps rights to his son as his natural father over
Hucks welfare. At the same time, this decision comments on a system
that puts a white mans rights to his propertyhis slavesover the
welfare and freedom of a black man. In implicitly comparing the plight of
slaves to the plight of Huck at the hands of Pap, Twain implies that it is
impossible for a society that owns slaves to be just, no matter how
civilized that society believes and proclaims itself to be. Again and
again, Huck encounters individuals who seem goodSally Phelps, for
examplebut who Twain takes care to show are prejudiced slave-owners.
This shaky sense of justice that Huck repeatedly encounters lies at the
heart of societys problems: terrible acts go unpunished, yet frivolous
crimes, such as drunkenly shouting insults, lead to executions. Sherburns
speech to the mob that has come to lynch him accurately summarizes the
view of society Twain gives in Huckleberry Finn: rather than maintain
collective welfare, society instead is marked by cowardice, a lack of logic,
and profound selfishness.
Motifs
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1.Childhood
Hucks youth is an important factor in his moral education over the course
of the novel, for we sense that only a child is open-minded enough to
undergo the kind of development that Huck does. Since Huck and Tom are
young, their age lends a sense of play to their actions, which excuses
them in certain ways and also deepens the novels commentary on
slavery and society. Ironically, Huck often knows better than the adults
around him, even though he has lacked the guidance that a proper family
and community should have offered him. Twain also frequently draws links
between Hucks youth and Jims status as a black man: both are
vulnerable, yet Huck, because he is white, has power over Jim. And on a
different level, the silliness, pure joy, and navet of childhood
give Huckleberry Finn a sense of fun and humor. Though its themes are
quite weighty, the novel itself feels light in tone and is an enjoyable read
because of this rambunctious childhood excitement that enlivens the
story.
2.Lies and Cons
Huckleberry Finn is full of malicious lies and scams, many of them coming
from the duke and the dauphin. It is clear that these con mens lies are
bad, for they hurt a number of innocent people. Yet Huck himself tells a
number of lies and even cons a few people, most notably the slave-
hunters, to whom he makes up a story about a smallpox outbreak in order
to protect Jim. As Huck realizes, it seems that telling a lie can actually be a
good thing, depending on its purpose. This insight is part of Hucks
learning process, as he finds that some of the rules he has been taught
contradict what seems to be right. At other points, the lines between a
con, legitimate entertainment, and approved social structures like religion
are fine indeed. In this light, lies and cons provide an effective way for
Twain to highlight the moral ambiguity that runs through the novel.

3.Superstitions and Folk Beliefs

From the time Huck meets him on Jacksons Island until the end of the
novel, Jim spouts a wide range of superstitions and folktales. Whereas Jim
initially appears foolish to believe so unwaveringly in these kinds of signs
and omens, it turns out, curiously, that many of his beliefs do indeed have
some basis in reality or presage events to come. Much as we do, Huck at
first dismisses most of Jims superstitions as silly, but ultimately he comes
to appreciate Jims deep knowledge of the world. In this sense, Jims
superstition serves as an alternative to accepted social teachings and
assumptions and provides a reminder that mainstream conventions are
not always right.
4.Parodies of Popular Romance Novels
Huckleberry Finn is full of people who base their lives on romantic literary
models and stereotypes of various kinds. Tom Sawyer, the most obvious
example, bases his life and actions on adventure novels. The deceased
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Emmeline Grangerford painted weepy maidens and wrote poems about
dead children in the romantic style. The Shepherdson and Grangerford
families kill one another out of a bizarre, overexcited conception of family
honor. These characters proclivities toward the romantic allow Twain a
few opportunities to indulge in some fun, and indeed, the episodes that
deal with this subject are among the funniest in the novel. However, there
is a more substantive message beneath: that popular literature is highly
stylized and therefore rarely reflects the reality of a society. Twain shows
how a strict adherence to these romantic ideals is ultimately dangerous:
Tom is shot, Emmeline dies, and the Shepherdsons and Grangerfords end
up in a deadly clash.
Symbols
1.The Mississippi River
For Huck and Jim, the Mississippi River is the ultimate symbol of freedom.
Alone on their raft, they do not have to answer to anyone. The river
carries them toward freedom: for Jim, toward the free states; for Huck,
away from his abusive father and the restrictive sivilizing of St.
Petersburg. Much like the river itself, Huck and Jim are in flux, willing to
change their attitudes about each other with little prompting. Despite
their freedom, however, they soon find that they are not completely free
from the evils and influences of the towns on the rivers banks. Even early
on, the real world intrudes on the paradise of the raft: the river floods,
bringing Huck and Jim into contact with criminals, wrecks, and stolen
goods. Then, a thick fog causes them to miss the mouth of the Ohio River,
which was to be their route to freedom.
As the novel progresses, then, the river becomes something other than
the inherently benevolent place Huck originally thought it was. As Huck
and Jim move further south, the duke and the dauphin invade the raft, and
Huck and Jim must spend more time ashore. Though the river continues to
offer a refuge from trouble, it often merely effects the exchange of one
bad situation for another. Each escape exists in the larger context of a
continual drift southward, toward the Deep South and entrenched slavery.
In this transition from idyllic retreat to source of peril, the river mirrors the
complicated state of the South. As Huck and Jims journey progresses, the
river, which once seemed a paradise and a source of freedom, becomes
merely a short-term means of escape that nonetheless pushes Huck and
Jim ever further toward danger and destruction.

THE GREAT GATSBY FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD

Context
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896. Academic
troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he
never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I
neared its end.
Many of these events from Fitzgeralds early life appear in his most
famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick
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Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy
League school (in Nicks case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war.
Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes
wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman
while stationed at a military camp in the South.
Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of
parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing
to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a great deal of wealth at a
relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and
throwing parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisys love. As
the giddiness of the Roaring Twenties dissolved into the bleakness of the
Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and
Fitzgerald battled alcoholism, which hampered his writing.
Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that
he dubbed the Jazz Age. Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the
greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American
economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the
nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol
mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919),
made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of
revelry sprang up.
Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive
and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now
he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone
of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick,
Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness
and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral
center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgeralds attempt to
confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald
was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he
wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised.
Analysis of major characters
1.Jay Gatsby
The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty
years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota
to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by
participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and
trading in stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty
and longed for wealth and sophisticationhe dropped out of St. Olafs
College after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job
with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to
be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy
Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before
leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love
with Daisys aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about his
own background in order to convince her that he was good enough for her.
Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but married Tom
Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at Oxford after the war in
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an attempt to gain an education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated
himself to winning Daisy back, and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his
purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties
are all merely means to that end.
Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed character revelation to
emphasize the theatrical quality of Gatsbys approach to life, which is an
important part of his personality. Gatsby has literally created his own
character, even changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby to
represent his reinvention of himself. As his relentless quest for Daisy
demonstrates, Gatsby has an extraordinary ability to transform his hopes
and dreams into reality; at the beginning of the novel, he appears to the
reader just as he desires to appear to the world. This talent for self-
invention is what gives Gatsby his quality of greatness: indeed, the title
The Great Gatsby is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville magicians
as The Great Houdini and The Great Blackstone, suggesting that the
persona of Jay Gatsby is a masterful illusion.
As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsbys self-
presentation, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young
man who stakes everything on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams
are unworthy of him. Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection
that she cannot possibly attain in reality and pursues her with a
passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her
disintegrates, revealing the corruption that wealth causes and the
unworthiness of the goal, much in the way Fitzgerald sees the American
dream crumbling in the 1920s, as Americas powerful optimism, vitality,
and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.
2.Nick Carraway
If Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgeralds personality, the flashy
celebrity who pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the woman
he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective
Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. A young man (he turns thirty during
the course of the novel) from Minnesota, Nick travels to New York in 1922
to learn the bond business. He lives in the West Egg district of Long Island,
next door to Gatsby. Nick is also Daisys cousin, which enables him to
observe and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As
a result of his relationship to these two characters, Nick is the perfect
choice to narrate the novel, which functions as a personal memoir of his
experiences with Gatsby in the summer of 1922.
Nick is also well suited to narrating The Great Gatsby because of his
temperament. As he tells the reader in Chapter 1, he is tolerant, open-
minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to talk to
him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, comes to trust him
and treat him as a confidant. Nick generally assumes a secondary role
throughout the novel, preferring to describe and comment on events
rather than dominate the action. Often, however, he functions as
Fitzgeralds voice, as in his extended meditation on time and the American
dream at the end of Chapter 9.

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Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly
mixed reaction to life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful
internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the book. On the
one hand, Nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New
York. On the other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging.
This inner conflict is symbolized throughout the book by Nicks romantic
affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her
sophistication just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of
consideration for other people.
After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsbys dream and presiding over the
appalling spectacle of Gatsbys funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of
revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that
the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this
insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life
structured by more traditional moral values.
3.Daisy Buchanan
Partially based on Fitzgeralds wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young
woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nicks cousin and the object of
Gatsbys love. As a young debutante in Louisville, Daisy was extremely
popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay
Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a
wealthy family in order to convince her that he was worthy of her.
Eventually, Gatsby won Daisys heart, and they made love before Gatsby
left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she
chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid,
aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had
the support of her parents.
After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her
the single goal of all of his dreams and the main motivation behind his
acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy
represents the paragon of perfectionshe has the aura of charm, wealth,
sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he longed for as a child in North
Dakota and that first attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy falls
far short of Gatsbys ideals. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle,
shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person
who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves
her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter 7, then
allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she
herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than attend Gatsbys funeral,
Daisy and Tom move away, leaving no forwarding address.
Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material
luxury. She is capable of affection (she seems genuinely fond of Nick and
occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but not of sustained loyalty
or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never
discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced
in Chapter 7. In Fitzgeralds conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy
represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set.
Themes
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1.The decline of the American dream in the 1920s
On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between
a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however,
encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action
takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set
in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New
York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America
as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an
era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral
values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of
pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz
musicepitomized inThe Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby
throws every Saturday nightresulted ultimately in the corruption of the
American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure
surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the
generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely
disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the
Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like
stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the
aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national
wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and
consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social background
could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracyfamilies
with old wealthscorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators.
Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which
banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to
satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.
Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of
these social trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I,
exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from
the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend
Gatsbys parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash
between old money and new money manifests itself in the novels
symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy,
West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsbys fortune
symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.
As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter 9), the American
dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of
happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and
relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East
Coast. The main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsbys
dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective social
statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her,
and the rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally,
places and objects in The Great Gatsby have meaning only because
characters instill them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
best exemplify this idea. In Nicks mind, the ability to create meaningful

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symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early
Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and values.
Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the
green light at the end of Daisys dock. Just as Americans have given
America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instills
Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor
possesses. Gatsbys dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just
as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its
objectmoney and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly
seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-
create a vanished pasthis time in Louisville with Daisybut is incapable
of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is
die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American values
have not decayed.
2.The hollowness of the upper class
One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of
wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ
from and relate to the old aristocracy of the countrys richest families. In
the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East
Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old
aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy,
ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example,
lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-
Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the
insincerity of the Sloanes invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old
aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by
the Buchanans tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and
Jordan Baker.
What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in
heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies
who are so used to moneys ability to ease their minds that they never
worry about hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype
when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new house far away
rather than condescend to attend Gatsbys funeral. Gatsby, on the other
hand, whose recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere
and loyal heart, remaining outside Daisys window until four in the
morning in Chapter 7 simply to make sure that Tom does not hurt her.
Ironically, Gatsbys good qualities (loyalty and love) lead to his death, as
he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be punished,
and the Buchanans bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them
to remove themselves from the tragedy not only physically but
psychologically.
Motifs
1.Geography
Throughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects
of the 1920s American society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents
the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral
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and social decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited, amoral
quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the
moral decay and social cynicism of New York, while the West (including
Midwestern and northern areas such as Minnesota) is connected to more
traditional social values and ideals.
2.Weather
As in much of Shakespeares work, the weather in The Great
Gatsby unfailingly matches the emotional and narrative tone of the story.
Gatsby and Daisys reunion begins amid a pouring rain, proving awkward
and melancholy; their love reawakens just as the sun begins to come out.
Gatsbys climactic confrontation with Tom occurs on the hottest day of the
summer, under the scorching sun (like the fatal encounter between
Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet). Wilson kills Gatsby on the first
day of autumn, as Gatsby floats in his pool despite a palpable chill in the
aira symbolic attempt to stop time and restore his relationship with
Daisy to the way it was five years before, in 1917.
Symbols
1.The green light
Situated at the end of Daisys East Egg dock and barely visible from
Gatsbys West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsbys hopes and
dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter 1 he
reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal.
Because Gatsbys quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American
dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In
Chapter 9, Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the
ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.
2.The valley of ashes
First introduced in Chapter 2, the valley of ashes between West Egg and
New York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the
dumping of industrial ashes. It represents the moral and social decay that
results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge
themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of
ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live
among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.
3.The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes
painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may
represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral
wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly. Instead,
throughout the novel, Fitzgerald suggests that symbols only have meaning
because characters instill them with meaning. The connection between
the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilsons
grief-stricken mind. This lack of concrete significance contributes to the
unsettling nature of the image. Thus, the eyes also come to represent the
essential meaninglessness of the world and the arbitrariness of the mental
process by which people invest objects with meaning. Nick explores these
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ideas in Chapter 8, when he imagines Gatsbys final thoughts as a
depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and dreams.

The 1920s was the jazz era in the big cities of the USA. It was an era of
high living and all-night parties to the rhythm of the sax and trumpet. It
was an era of gangsters, of prohibition and of ostentatious new-found
wealth. Scott Fitzgerald was part of that world, and with his glamorous
wife, Zelda, he became a pin-up personality of the time. The main
character in his best-known novel, The Great Gatsby, is a man who, like
his creator, climbs the ladder of social success. The foundations on which
this success is built are fragile, and consequently his fall into obscurity is
almost as rapid as his rise to meteoric success.
Narrators
In The Great Gatsby the first person-narrator is a minor character, Nick;
the reader does not have direct access to the thoughts and feelings of the
main character of the story what he learns he must piece together from
the information that is provided. This narrative technique can be used to
create an air of mistery and tension, and to engage the readers attention
by slowly allowing him to put together the pieces of the puzzle.
Style
Fitzgeralds greatest talent as a writer was his ability to create
atmosphere and characters. His rich, elegant prose style is dense in
metaphors, similes and symbols, and often has the evocative beauty of
poetry.

THE SOUND AND THE FURY-WILLIAM FAULKNER

Context
William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, in September 1897;
he died in Mississippi in 1962. Faulkner achieved a reputation as one of
the greatest American novelists of the 20th century largely based on his
series of novels about a fictional region of Mississippi called
Yoknapatawpha County, centered on the fictional town of Jefferson. The
greatest of these novelsamong them The Sound and the Fury, Light in
August, and Absalom, Absalom!rank among the finest novels of world
literature.
Faulkner was especially interested in moral themes relating to the ruins of
the Deep South in the post-Civil War era. His prose stylewhich combines
long, uninterrupted sentences with long strings of adjectives, frequent
changes in narration, many recursive asides, and a frequent reliance on a
sort of objective stream-of- consciousness technique, whereby the inner
experience of a character in a scene is contrasted with the scene's
outward appearanceranks among his greatest achievements. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.

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Faulkner recognizes that race is the central problem for the South in the
post-Civil War period, and that without a healthy discussion of this topic,
the South will never move forward.

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA ERNEST HEMINGWAY

1.The old man and the sea
Context
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, the second of six
children, and spent his early years in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago.
Hemingway began to hone his now-famous literary style during his years
as a reporter. His editors instructed him to write short, factual sentences
without too many negatives to deliver the facts in his articles. He later
incorporated this writing style into his own fiction writing. Hemingway
soon grew restless and left the Star to serve in the Red Cross, where he
worked as an ambulance driver in Europe during World War I. While
recovering from a knee injury in a hospital in Milan, he fell in love with a
nurse named Agnes von Kurosky. Although their relationship didnt last, he
based his novel A Farewell To Arms (1929) on their romance.
The iceberg theory and Hemingways style
Many first-time readers read Hills Like White Elephants as nothing more
than a casual conversation between two people waiting for a train and
therefore miss the unstated dramatic tension lurking between each line.
As a result, many people dont realize that the two are actually talking
about having an abortion and going their separate ways, let alone why the
story was so revolutionary for its time. In accordance with his so-called
Iceberg Theory, Hemingway stripped everything but the bare essentials
from his stories and novels, leaving readers to sift through the remaining
dialogue and bits of narrative on their own. Just as the visible tip of an
iceberg hides a far greater mass of ice underneath the ocean surface, so
does Hemingways dialogue belie the unstated tension between his
characters. In fact, Hemingway firmly believed that perfect stories
conveyed far more through subtext than through the actual words written
on the page. The more a writer strips away, the more powerful the
iceberg, or story, becomes.
Hemingway stripped so much from his stories that many of his
contemporary critics complained that his fiction was little more than
snippets of dialogue strung together. Others have called his writing overly
masculinethere are no beautiful phrases or breathtaking passages, just
the sheer basics. In Hills Like White Elephants, for example, both the
American man and the girl speak in short sentences and rarely utter more
than a few words at a time. Hemingway also avoids using dialogue tags,
such as he said or she said, and skips any internal monologues. These
elements leave the characters thoughts and feelings completely up to the
readers own interpretations. Hemingways fans, however, have lauded his
style for its simplicity, believing that fewer misleading words paint a truer
picture of what lies beneath.

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Analysis of major characters
Santiago
Santiago suffers terribly throughout The Old Man and the Sea. In the
opening pages of the book, he has gone eighty-four days without catching
a fish and has become the laughingstock of his small village. He then
endures a long and gruelling struggle with the marlin only to see his
trophy catch destroyed by sharks. Yet, the destruction enables the old
man to undergo a remarkable transformation, and he wrests triumph and
renewed life from his seeming defeat. After all, Santiago is an old man
whose physical existence is almost over, but the reader is assured that
Santiago will persist through Manolin, who, like a disciple, awaits the old
mans teachings and will make use of those lessons long after his teacher
has died. Thus, Santiago manages, perhaps, the most miraculous feat of
all: he finds a way to prolong his life after death.
Santiagos commitment to sailing out farther than any fisherman has
before, to where the big fish promise to be, testifies to the depth of his
pride. Yet, it also shows his determination to change his luck. Later, after
the sharks have destroyed his prize marlin, Santiago chastises himself for
his hubris (exaggerated pride), claiming that it has ruined both the marlin
and himself. True as this might be, it is only half the picture, for Santiagos
pride also enables him to achieve his most true and complete self.
Furthermore, it helps him earn the deeper respect of the village fishermen
and secures him the prized companionship of the boyhe knows that he
will never have to endure such an epic struggle again.
Santiagos pride is what enables him to endure, and it is perhaps
endurance that matters most in Hemingways conception of the worlda
world in which death and destruction, as part of the natural order of
things, are unavoidable. Hemingway seems to believe that there are only
two options: defeat or endurance until destruction; Santiago clearly
chooses the latter. His stoic determination is mythic, nearly Christ-like in
proportion. For three days, he holds fast to the line that links him to the
fish, even though it cuts deeply into his palms, causes a crippling cramp in
his left hand, and ruins his back. This physical pain allows Santiago to
forge a connection with the marlin that goes beyond the literal link of the
line: his bodily aches attest to the fact that he is well matched, that the
fish is a worthy opponent, and that he himself, because he is able to fight
so hard, is a worthy fisherman. This connectedness to the world around
him eventually elevates Santiago beyond what would otherwise be his
defeat. Like Christ, to whom Santiago is unashamedly compared at the
end of the novella, the old mans physical suffering leads to a more
significant spiritual triumph.
Manolin
Manolin is present only in the beginning and at the end of The Old Man
and the Sea, but his presence is important because Manolins devotion to
Santiago highlights Santiagos value as a person and as a fisherman.
Manolin demonstrates his love for Santiago openly. He makes sure that
the old man has food, blankets, and can rest without being bothered.
Despite Hemingways insistence that his characters were a real old man
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and a real boy, Manolins purity and singleness of purpose elevate him to
the level of a symbolic character. Manolins actions are not tainted by the
confusion, ambivalence, or wilfulness that typify adolescence. Instead, he
is a companion who feels nothing but love and devotion.
Hemingway does hint at the boys resentment for his father, whose wishes
Manolin obeys by abandoning the old man after forty days without
catching a fish. This fact helps to establish the boy as a real human being
a person with conflicted loyalties who faces difficult decisions. By the
end of the book, however, the boy abandons his duty to his father,
swearing that he will sail with the old man regardless of the
consequences. He stands, in the novellas final pages, as a symbol of
uncompromised love and fidelity. As the old mans apprentice, he also
represents the life that will follow from death. His dedication to learning
from the old man ensures that Santiago will live on.
Themes
The Honor in Struggle, Defeat & Death
From the very first paragraph, Santiago is characterized as someone
struggling against defeat. He has gone eighty-four days without catching a
fishhe will soon pass his own record of eighty-seven days. Almost as a
reminder of Santiagos struggle, the sail of his skiff resembles the flag of
permanent defeat. But the old man refuses defeat at every turn: he
resolves to sail out beyond the other fishermen to where the biggest fish
promise to be. He lands the marlin, tying his record of eighty-seven days
after a brutal three-day fight, and he continues to ward off sharks from
stealing his prey, even though he knows the battle is useless.
Because Santiago is pitted against the creatures of the sea, some readers
choose to view the tale as a chronicle of mans battle against the natural
world, but the novella is, more accurately, the story of mans
place within nature. Both Santiago and the marlin display qualities of
pride, honor, and bravery, and both are subject to the same eternal law:
they must kill or be killed. As Santiago reflects when he watches the
weary warbler fly toward shore, where it will inevitably meet the hawk, the
world is filled with predators, and no living thing can escape the inevitable
struggle that will lead to its death. Santiago lives according to his own
observation: man is not made for defeat . . . [a] man can be destroyed
but not defeated. In Hemingways portrait of the world, death is
inevitable, but the best men (and animals) will nonetheless refuse to give
in to its power. Accordingly, man and fish will struggle to the death, just as
hungry sharks will lay waste to an old mans trophy catch.
The novel suggests that it is possible to transcend this natural law. In fact,
the very inevitability of destruction creates the terms that allow a worthy
man or beast to transcend it. It is precisely through the effort to battle the
inevitable that a man can prove himself. Indeed, a man can prove this
determination over and over through the worthiness of the opponents he
chooses to face. Santiago finds the marlin worthy of a fight, just as he
once found the great negro of Cienfuegos worthy. His admiration for
these opponents brings love and respect into an equation with death, as
their destruction becomes a point of honor and bravery that confirms
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Santiagos heroic qualities. One might characterize the equation as the
working out of the statement Because I love you, I have to kill you.
Alternately, one might draw a parallel to the poet John Keats and his
insistence that beauty can only be comprehended in the moment before
death, as beauty bows to destruction. Santiago, though destroyed at the
end of the novella, is never defeated. Instead, he emerges as a hero.
Santiagos struggle does not enable him to change mans place in the
world. Rather, it enables him to meet his most dignified destiny.
Pride as the Source of Greatness & Determination
Many parallels exist between Santiago and the classic heroes of the
ancient world. In addition to exhibiting terrific strength, bravery, and
moral certainty, those heroes usually possess a tragic flawa quality that,
though admirable, leads to their eventual downfall. If pride is Santiagos
fatal flaw, he is keenly aware of it. After sharks have destroyed the marlin,
the old man apologizes again and again to his worthy opponent. He has
ruined them both, he concedes, by sailing beyond the usual boundaries of
fishermen. Indeed, his last word on the subject comes when he asks
himself the reason for his undoing and decides, Nothing . . . I went out
too far.
While it is certainly true that Santiagos eighty-four-day run of bad luck is
an affront to his pride as a masterful fisherman, and that his attempt to
bear out his skills by sailing far into the gulf waters leads to disaster,
Hemingway does not condemn his protagonist for being full of pride. On
the contrary, Santiago stands as proof that pride motivates men to
greatness. Because the old man acknowledges that he killed the mighty
marlin largely out of pride, and because his capture of the marlin leads in
turn to his heroic transcendence of defeat, pride becomes the source of
Santiagos greatest strength. Without a ferocious sense of pride, that
battle would never have been fought, or more likely, it would have been
abandoned before the end.
Santiagos pride also motivates his desire to transcend the destructive
forces of nature. Throughout the novel, no matter how baleful his
circumstances become, the old man exhibits an unflagging determination
to catch the marlin and bring it to shore. When the first shark arrives,
Santiagos resolve is mentioned twice in the space of just a few
paragraphs. First we are told that the old man was full of resolution but
he had little hope. Then, sentences later, the narrator says, He hit [the
shark] without hope but with resolution. The old man meets every
challenge with the same unwavering determination: he is willing to die in
order to bring in the marlin, and he is willing to die in order to battle the
feeding sharks. It is this conscious decision to act, to fight, to never give
up that enables Santiago to avoid defeat. Although he returns to Havana
without the trophy of his long battle, he returns with the knowledge that
he has acquitted himself proudly and manfully. Hemingway seems to
suggest that victory is not a prerequisite for honor. Instead, glory depends
upon one having the pride to see a struggle through to its end, regardless
of the outcome. Even if the old man had returned with the marlin intact,
his moment of glory, like the marlins meat, would have been short-lived.

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The glory and honor Santiago accrues comes not from his battle itself but
from his pride and determination to fight.
Motifs
Crucifixion Imagery
In order to suggest the profundity of the old mans sacrifice and the glory
that derives from it, Hemingway purposefully likens Santiago to Christ,
who, according to Christian theology, gave his life for the greater glory of
humankind. Crucifixion imagery is the most noticeable way in which
Hemingway creates the symbolic parallel between Santiago and Christ.
When Santiagos palms are first cut by his fishing line, the reader cannot
help but think of Christ suffering his stigmata. Later, when the sharks
arrive, Hemingway portrays the old man as a crucified martyr, saying that
he makes a noise similar to that of a man having nails driven through his
hands. Furthermore, the image of the old man struggling up the hill with
his mast across his shoulders recalls Christs march toward Calvary. Even
the position in which Santiago collapses on his bedface down with his
arms out straight and the palms of his hands upbrings to mind the
image of Christ suffering on the cross. Hemingway employs these images
in the final pages of the novella in order to link Santiago to Christ, who
exemplified transcendence by turning loss into gain, defeat into triumph,
and even death into renewed life.
Life from Death
Death is the unavoidable force in the novella, the one fact that no living
creature can escape. But death, Hemingway suggests, is never an end in
itself: in death there is always the possibility of the most vigorous life. The
reader notes that as Santiago slays the marlin, not only is the old man
reinvigorated by the battle, but the fish also comes alive with his death in
him. Life, the possibility of renewal, necessarily follows on the heels of
death.
Whereas the marlins death hints at a type of physical reanimation, death
leads to life in less literal ways at other points in the novella. The books
crucifixion imagery emphasizes the cyclical connection between life and
death, as does Santiagos battle with the marlin. His success at bringing
the marlin in earns him the awed respect of the fishermen who once
mocked him, and secures him the companionship of Manolin, the
apprentice who will carry on Santiagos teachings long after the old man
has died.
The Lions on the Beach
Santiago dreams his pleasant dream of the lions at play on the beaches of
Africa three times. The first time is the night before he departs on his
three-day fishing expedition, the second occurs when he sleeps on the
boat for a few hours in the middle of his struggle with the marlin, and the
third takes place at the very end of the book. In fact, the sober promise of
the triumph and regeneration with which the novella closes is supported
by the final image of the lions. Because Santiago associates the lions with
his youth, the dream suggests the circular nature of life. Additionally,

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because Santiago imagines the lions, fierce predators, playing, his dream
suggests a harmony between the opposing forceslife and death, love
and hate, destruction and regenerationof nature.

Symbols
The Marlin
Magnificent and glorious, the marlin symbolizes the ideal opponent. In a
world in which everything kills everything else in some way, Santiago
feels genuinely lucky to find himself matched against a creature that
brings out the best in him: his strength, courage, love, and respect.
The Shovel-Nosed Sharks
The shovel-nosed sharks are little more than moving appetites that
thoughtlessly and gracelessly attack the marlin. As opponents of the old
man, they stand in bold contrast to the marlin, which is worthy of
Santiagos effort and strength. They symbolize and embody the
destructive laws of the universe and attest to the fact that those laws can
be transcended only when equals fight to the death. Because they are
base predators, Santiago wins no glory from battling them.

It is written on the principle of the iceberg seven- eighths of it is

underwater for every part that shows. Explores the inner consciousness of
a single man as he fights against natural forces.
Some of the motifs present in the book are :
Human courage

The search for dignity amidst the harshness of the world

The stoic hero who lives by his own code of values

The ability to function with grace under pressure

The images of the athlete, animals and Christ

The themes:

Nature as symbolized in one form by the fish, is not a malignant

force but one that is to be respected for its power
Santiagos noble battle can also be seen as an account of humans
search for meaning in a harsh world

Interconnectedness of all things in nature

The many biblical allusions underscore the novellas themes of

suffering, redemption, hope, faith, love and endurance; Santiago is
at once a sinner who has gone too far out and Christ- like figure
who bears the burden of trying to achieve the impossible and is
victorious even in defeat. Like Christ he is a fisherman, he lives on
charity; he lacerates his hands during his struggle; he carries his
mast across his shoulders like a cross and falls down five times; he
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 sleeps in cruciform position at the end of his ordeal. The boy
Manolin keeps his faith in the old man, and is an embodiment of
uncorrupted youth and hope, the figure to whom the fisherman
finally passes the marlins spear, a symbol of heroic vitality.

Hemingway, it is often noted, was enamored of a particular notion of

masculinity. Hemingways heroes are often outdoorsmen or hunters who
are stoic, taciturn, and averse to showing emotion. Real men, according to
Hemingway, are physically courageous and confident, and keep doubts
and insecurities to themselves. In addition, there is always an emphasis
on the necessity of proving ones manhood rather than taking it for
granted. According to the authors biographers and critics, Hemingway
was brought up with this notion of masculinity; it certainly pervades all of
his works of short fiction.

THE CONTEMPORARY AGE

NORTH AMERICAN HISTORY
1950 THE PRESENT
As it left the Second World War behind, the Unites States set its
sights on forgetting the misery and depression that had taken root for
over a decade following the economic collapse of 1929. While Europe was
slowly reconstructed in the late 1940s and 50s with the help of American
investments, the United States began to take on its role as leader of the
Western world. In foreign affairs it emerged as the main opponent of
Soviet and Chinese inspired communism and at home it became a
laboratory for new social and lifestyle trends that would be copied all over
the western world and beyond.
In the 1950s the United States saw a marked increase in the birth
rate and the children born during this baby grew into a generation that
profoundly changed the nature of American society.
The first winds of change were felt during the 1960s as young
people started to rebel against the values and traditions of previous
generations. Both the term teenager and generation gap were coined in
these years to describe the rebellion of youth which made its voice heard
in many fields.
Women won the right to control birth through the use of artificial
contraception and in 1973 abortion was legalised for the first time. The
feminist movement continued to promote womens welfare and made
great strides in obtaining equal opportunities for women in all walks of life,
Of similar if not even greater impact on American life was the Civil
Rights Movement which demanded equal rights for black Americans and
subsequently all non-whites.
The two major political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats,
regularly alternated periods in power without greatly upsetting or

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changing general social and economic trends. Meanwhile, the United
States consolidated its position as the most powerful economy in the
world and continues to dominate world trade.
As the United States enters the new millennium, it holds a pre-
eminent position in the world. The small cluster of north-eastern colonies,
that gave birth to a new state in the 18 th century, has grown and
expanded to become the most powerful country on earth both militarily
and economically. It has become a multiethnic nation in which people of
all races and religions live and to which the rest of the world looks as a
major partner in plotting the future of humanity.
NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE
On a general cultural level America has had and continues to have
enormous influence on Britain. America has also led the way in certain
artistic fields. Of undoubted significance was the emergence of Pop Art in
the 1960s as championed by Andy Warhol, who used the styles and
themes of popular culture to create a new form of visual expression.
FICTION
In the world of English letters America also continued to be a major
protagonist. This was particularly true in the field of fiction, as writers from
different ethnic and social backgrounds produced novel that reflected the
complex and varied structure of American society.
The late 1950s and 1960s witnessed a sociological revolution that
had profound repercussions in literary circles. The philosophy of make
love, not war, the acceptance of the use of recreational drugs and a
hostile attitude to any form of authority were the hallmarks of the Best
Generation.

THE CRYING OF LOT 49 THOMAS PYNCHON

Context
Thomas Pynchon was born on Long Island, New York, in 1937. He served in
the navy and graduated from Cornell, after which he worked as a technical
writer for Boeing Aircraft. During this time, he turned to fiction writing and
published his first novel, V., in 1963, to rave reviews. He followed up this
novel two years later with The Crying of Lot 49, a short but extremely
complex novel. In a sense, The Crying of Lot 49 was a type of dress
rehearsal for his long novel that succeeded it, Gravity's Rainbow, which
won the National Book Award and is perhaps the best-known long novel to
emerge after World War II. Pynchon's fourth major novel was
called Vineland, and two years ago, he published his historical
novel Mason and Dixon. Through all of these books, with his use of
surrealism and creation of vast, varied, and incredible conspiracy theories,
Pynchon has remained one of the most original and important of American
novelists.
Almost all works by Pynchon are deliberately complex. The plots are often
difficult to follow both because of their intricate twists and turns and their
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sometimes incredibly esoteric subject matter. Pynchon's characters,
furthermore, can be hard to relate to. Pynchon has a tendency to fill his
novels not with real characters but rather with facades or brief cameo
figures that exist in the novel only for some specific purpose, after which
they disappear. Indeed, Gravity's Rainbow has over 400 of these types of
characters. In The Crying of Lot 49, examples of such characters are
Manny di Presso and Jesus Arrabel.
The Crying of Lot 49 is thought by many to be Pynchon's best work.
Others surely disagree, arguing that The Crying of Lot 49 is simply
Pynchon's most accessible work, its short length and streamlined (for
Pynchon) plot allowing the reader to follow along with less work than his
longer novels require. But no matter where The Crying of Lot 49 stands
within Pynchon's body of work, there is no doubt that in its humor, story,
and deep insight into American culture and beyond, the book is an
American landmark.
Analysis
The Crying of Lot 49 was written in the 1960s, one of the most politically
and socially turbulent decades in U.S. history. The decade saw the rise of
the drug culture, the Vietnam War, the rock revolution, as well as the birth
of numerous social welfare programs after the Democrats swept Congress
in the 1964 elections. This was also the decade of John F. Kennedy's
assassination, Martin Luther King's assassination, Civil Rights, and, to
some extent, women's rights. The novel taps into this explosion of cultural
occurrences, depicting a dramatically fragmented society. The Crying of
Lot 49 contains a pervasive sense of cultural chaos; indeed, the book
draws on all areas of culture and society, including many of those
mentioned above. In the end, the novel's protagonist, Oedipa Maas, finds
herself alone and alienated from that society, having lost touch with the
life she used to lead before she began her attempt to uncover the mystery
of the Tristero. The drug culture plays a big part in this sense of isolation.
The world around Oedipa seems to be a world perpetually on drugs, manic
and full of conspiracies and illusions. And though that world is exciting and
new, it is also dangerous: drugs contribute to the destruction of Oedipa's
marriage, and drugs cause Hilarius to go insane. Oedipa hallucinates so
often that she seems to be constantly high, and ultimately, this brings her
nothing but a sense of chaotic alienation.
Many of the problems with chaos found in the novel are tied in to the idea
of communication. The major symbol of order in the novel, Maxwell's
Demon, cannot be operated because it requires a certain unattainable
level of communication. Letters in the novel, which should be clear and
direct forms of stable communication, are ultimately meaningless. The
novel also contains a mail-delivery group that requires its members to
mail a letter once a week even if they have nothing to say. Indeed, the
letter Oedipa receives in chapter one may itself be meaningless, since it is
the first step in what may be nothing more than a big joke played on
Oedipa. The religious moment Oedipa experiences in chapter two seems
for a moment to promise the possibility of some kind of communication
being communicated, but the process breaks down. Religion, language,
science, all of the purveyors of communication, and through that
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communication a sense of wholeness, do not correctly function in the
novel.
Related to the theme of the problem of communication is the novel's
representation of the way in which people impose interpretation on the
meaningless. It is very telling that Oedipa wants to turn the mystery of the
Tristero into a "constellation," which is not really an example of true order.
Solar systems are simply mankind's way of imposing an artificial but
pleasing order on the randomness of outer space. It is, furthermore, an
imposition of a two-dimensional structure onto a three-dimensional reality.
Oedipa's quest to construct a constellation seems to indicate that she is
only looking for a superficial system. Indeed, she never succeeds in
figuring out the meaning behind the Tristero, and, further, the novel ends
with the very strong likelihood that the mystery may hold no mystery at
all. And just as she is unable to piece together the puzzle of the Tristero,
she is similarly unable to refashion her life after it begins to fall apart.
Even the United States government, which tries to impose an order on the
world of mail delivery, cannot prevent side groups from springing up to
undermine its work.
There are two concepts underlying all this: puns and science. The novel is
full of puns and language games of all sorts. For instance, the odd names
of the novel's characters are a type of play on different words and their
symbolic baggage. Another example is the concept of the word "lot" in the
title, which actually occurs several times in the book but does not relate to
anything in the story until the last few pages. Also, we see that Mucho's
radio station spells "fuck" when read in reverse, forming another little
language game that does not have necessarily any inherent meaning but
does indicate an interest in manipulating language for intellectual
enjoyment. Language is the means through which the story is
communicated, and Pynchon has chosen to use a language full of jokes,
puns, and satires. Science seems to stand in opposition to the chaos of
language that all of Pynchon's manipulation suggests. Science is ordered
and coherent and offers a body of definite knowledge that all can study.
And yet, even the coherence of science is undermined in the existence of
Maxwell's Demon and the figure of Dr. Hilarius. Though pure science may
offer coherence, the uses to which that science is put, the interpretations
imposed on that science, can scatter that coherence to the wind.
More than anything else, The Crying of Lot 49 appears to be about cultural
chaos and communication as seen through the eyes of a young woman
who finds herself in a hallucinogenic world disintegrating around her.
Themes
Entropy
The process of entropy leads to the inevitable progression of a closed
system to patterned, chaotic sameness. In thematic terms, entropy
represents Pynchon's concern with our culture's movement toward
intellectual inertia. In Maxwell's Demon, Nefastis created a machine which
works directly with Pynchon's theme of entropy. The sorting inherent in
the machine would actually preserve a world able to remain
heterogeneous. By dividing the two types of molecules into different
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compartments so that heat is created and maintained, the molecules do
not have a chance to share properties until an equilibrium is reached. As
Grant comments, "Sorting,' therefore, becomes an absolutely central
metaphor, and the fact that Oedipa singles this concept out for objection
is an indication of her intuitive grasp of her own predicament." The closed
system will move toward entropy in the same manner that the entire
universal system will, both existentially and rationally. In tune with the
allusions to Narcissus, the world is contained within itself and has become
an egotistical system moving toward a chaotic sense of orderlessness.
Post-modernist examination of textual versus metaphorical
literary significance
The majority of recent critics, such as Tanner, seem to believe that
Pynchon's many allusions are partially red herrings. They are an attempt
by Pynchon to lead the reader into drawing the easy references and falling
into the traps readers so often do when they reach for allusions in order to
find significance. Pynchon is possibly leading the reader into assumptions
which they are all too likely to make so that they realize the error as they
proceed within the postmodern novel which espouses a theme of non-
categorization and structuralism. We are taken on her journey because the
search for self and meaning and connection is insatiable, even when it is
being parodied as is often the case with Pynchon. Is the search of
meaning and analysis then a fruitless attempt to grant significance to an
increasingly grey ash type of modern society or is the only escape in a
system which is decreasingly transmitting communication to forge new,
alternate means of informing and differentiating human beings?
Excluded middles: the grey ash / what has been thrown away as
valuable
The entire idea of waste is concurrent with Pynchon's theme of excluded
middles, in this sense, where the grey ash of life is often tossed away in
order to hold onto the overly extreme binaries. A consumer society
disposes and dispossesses more of life than it keeps. Often more
questions are raised then answered and for every binary presented, an
inversion of the duality is also usually suggested. One of the most
common terms thrown around in literary criticism concerning Crying is the
"excluded middle." The progression toward dichotomy is also a
progression toward the questioning of what lies between the two
extremes. The grey area is very significant, while also asking the reader if
it is significant only because the human being cannot be satisfied without
an attempt at pointing significance. Largely, though, it points to the
waste, the disinherited of society, as symbolized by the amount of
underground networks who have felt unrepresented by the official postal
system. These are the people, the lives, the core of humanity disregarded
and dispossessed. Mucho Maas is haunted by nightmares of these grey
ash leftovers of humanity and so, in its way, is the entire novel.
Man versus modernity/consumerism/consumption
At the start of the novel, Oedipa is not working. She attends a Tupperware
gathering, a clear symbol of mid-twentieth century American housewifery.
As some critics have noted, the fact that the host of the party had likely
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put too much kirsch in the fondue shows that the party signifies superficial
consumership in material America more than any type of sincere
communal bonding as the hostess felt the need to get her attendees
drunk in order to entertain them. Oedipa's search for information and
cohesion within the world at large is symbolized by her entrapment by
commercial society. Parallels have been constructed between the green
bubble glasses that Oedipa wears when crying as she views the painting
in Mexico City and the lone green eye that is a metaphor for the television
screen. Furthermore, expanding the theme of disillusioning modern
commercialism, Oedipa notes that in her vision, Pierce only reaches the
top of her tower when he uses a credit card to shimmy his way up. In the
mass consumer society in which Oedipa lives, the individual is in dire need
of revelation, another term which is used often by Pynchon.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE KURT VONNEGUT

Context
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in Indianapolis in 1922, a descendant of
prominent German-American families. His father was an architect and his
mother was a noted beauty. Both spoke German fluently but declined to
teach Kurt the language in light of widespread anti-German sentiment
following World War I. Family money helped send Vonneguts two siblings
to private schools. The Great Depression hit hard in the 1930s, though,
and the family placed Kurt in public school while it moved to more modest
accommodations. While in high school, Vonnegut edited the schools daily
newspaper. He attended college at Cornell for a little over two years, with
instructions from his father and brother to study chemistry, a subject at
which he did not excel. He also wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun. In 1943 he
enlisted in the U.S.Army. In 1944 his mother committed suicide, and
Vonnegut was taken prisoner following the Battle of the Bulge, in the
Ardennes Forest of Belgium.
After the war, Vonnegut married and entered a masters degree program
in anthropology at the University of Chicago. He also worked as a reporter
for the Chicago City News Bureau. His masters thesis, titled Fluctuations
Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales, was rejected. He departed for
Schenectady, New York, to take a job in public relations at a General
Electric research laboratory.
Vonnegut left GE in 1951 to devote himself full-time to writing. During the
1950s, Vonnegut published short stories in national magazines. Player
Piano, his first novel, appeared in 1952. Sirens of Titan was published in
1959, followed by Mother Night (1962), Cats Cradle (1963), God Bless
You, Mr. Rose-water (1965), and his most highly praised
work, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Vonnegut wrote prolifically until his
death in 2007.
Slaughterhouse-Five treats one of the most horrific massacres in European
historythe World War II firebombing of Dresden, a city in eastern
Germany, on February 13, 1945with mock-serious humor and clear
antiwar sentiment. More than 130,000 civilians died in Dresden, roughly
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the same number of deaths that resulted from the Allied bombing raids on
Tokyo and from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, both of which
also occurred in 1945. Inhabitants of Dresden were incinerated or
suffocated in a matter of hours as a firestorm sucked up and consumed
available oxygen. The scene on the ground was one of unimaginable
destruction.
The novel is based on Kurt Vonneguts own experience in World War II. In
the novel, a prisoner of war witnesses and survives the Allied forces
firebombing of Dresden. Vonnegut, like his protagonist Billy Pilgrim,
emerged from a meat locker beneath a slaughter-house into the
moonscape of burned-out Dresden. His surviving captors put him to work
finding, burying, and burning bodies. His task continued until the Russians
came and the war ended. Vonnegut survived by chance, confined as a
prisoner of war (POW) in a well-insulated meat locker, and so missed the
cataclysmic moment of attack, emerging the day after into the charred
ruins of a once-beautiful cityscape. Vonnegut has said that he always
intended to write about the experience but found himself incapable of
doing so for more than twenty years. Although he attempted to describe
in simple terms what happened and to create a linear narrative, this
strategy never worked for him. Billy Pilgrims unhinged timeshifting, a
mechanism for dealing with the unfathomable aggression and mass
destruction he witnesses, is Vonneguts solution to the problem of telling
an untellable tale.
Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five as a response to war. It is so short
and jumbled and jangled, he explains in Chapter 1, because there is
nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. The jumbled structure of the
novel and the long delay between its conception and completion serve as
testaments to a very personal struggle with heart-wrenching material. But
the timing of the novels publication also deserves notice: in 1969, the
United States was in the midst of the dismal Vietnam War. Vonnegut was
an outspoken pacifist and critic of the conflict. Slaughterhouse-
Five revolves around the wilful incineration of 100,000 civilians, in a city of
extremely dubious military significance, during an arguably just war.
Appearing when it did, then, Slaughterhouse-Five made a forceful
statement about the campaign in Vietnam, a war in which incendiary
technology was once more being employed against non-military targets in
the name of a dubious cause.
Analysis of major characters
Billy Pilgrim
Billy Pilgrim is the unlikeliest of antiwar heroes. An unpopular and
complacent weakling even before the war (he prefers sinking to
swimming), he becomes a joke as a soldier. He trains as a chaplains
assistant, a duty that earns him disgust from his peers. With scant
preparation for armed conflict, no weapons, and even an improper
uniform, he is thrust abruptly into duty at the Battle of the Bulge. The
farcical spectacle created by Billys inappropriate clothing accentuates the
absurdity of such a scrawny, mild-mannered soldier. His azure toga, a
leftover scrap of stage curtain, and his fur-lined overcoat, several sizes too
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small, throw his incongruity into relief. They underscore a central irony:
such a creature could walk through war, oblivious yet unscathed, while so
many others with more appropriate attire and provisions perish. It is in
this shocked and physically exhausted state that Billy first comes unstuck
in time and begins swinging to and fro through the events of his life, past
and future.
Billy lives a life full of indignity and so, perhaps, has no great fear of
death. He is oddly suited, therefore, to the Tralfamadorian philosophy of
accepting death. This fact may point to an interpretation of the
Tralfamadorians as a figment of Billys disturbed mind, an elaborate
coping mechanism to explain the meaningless slaughter Billy has
witnessed. By uttering So it goes after each death, the narrator, like
Billy, does not diminish the gravity of death but rather lends an equalizing
dignity to all death, no matter how random or ironic, how immediate or
removed. Billys father dies in a hunting accident just as Billy is about to
go off to war. So it goes. A former hobo dies in Billys railway car while
declaring the conditions not bad at all. So it goes. One hundred thirty
thousand innocent people die in Dresden. So it goes. Valencia Pilgrim
accidentally kills herself with carbon monoxide after turning bright blue.
So it goes. Billy Pilgrim is killed by an assassins bullet at exactly the time
he has predicted, in the realization of a thirty-some-year-old death threat.
So it goes. Billy awaits death calmly, without fear, knowing the exact hour
at which it will come. In so doing, he gains a degree of control over his
own dignity that he has lacked throughout most of his life.
The novel centers on Billy Pilgrim to a degree that excludes the
development of the supporting characters, who exist in the text only as
they relate to Billys experience of events.
Themes
The Destructiveness of War
Whether we read Slaughterhouse-Five as a science-fiction novel or a
quasi-autobiographical moral statement, we cannot ignore the destructive
properties of war, since the catastrophic firebombing of the German town
of Dresden during World War II situates all of the other seemingly random
events. From his swimming lessons at the YMCA to his speeches at the
Lions Club to his captivity in Tralfamadore, Billy Pilgrim shifts in and out of
the meat locker in Dresden, where he very narrowly survives asphyxiation
and incineration in a city where fire is raining from the sky.
However, the not-so-subtle destructiveness of the war is evoked in subtle
ways. For instance, Billy is quite successful in his postwar exploits from a
materialistic point of view: he is president of the Lions Club, works as a
prosperous optometrist, lives in a thoroughly comfortable modern home,
and has fathered two children. While Billy seems to have led a productive
postwar life, these seeming markers of success speak only to its surface.
He gets his job not because of any particular prowess but as a result of his
father-in-laws efforts. More important, at one point in the novel, Billy
walks in on his son and realizes that they are unfamiliar with each other.
Beneath the splendor of his success lies a man too war-torn to understand

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it. In fact, Billys name, a diminutive form of William, indicates that he is
more an immature boy than a man.
Vonnegut, then, injects the science-fiction thread, including the
Tralfamadorians, to indicate how greatly the war has disrupted Billys
existence. It seems that Billy may be hallucinating about his experiences
with the Tralfamadorians as a way to escape a world destroyed by wara
world that he cannot understand. Furthermore, the Tralfamadorian theory
of the fourth dimension seems too convenient a device to be more than
just a way for Billy to rationalize all the death with he has seen face-to-
face. Billy, then, is a traumatized man who cannot come to terms with the
destructiveness of war without invoking a far-fetched and impossible
theory to which he can shape the world.
The Illusion of Free Will
In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut utilizes the Tralfamadorians, with their
absurdly humorous toilet-plunger shape, to discuss the philosophical
question of whether free will exists. These aliens live with the knowledge
of the fourth dimension, which, they say, contains all moments of time
occurring and reoccurring endlessly and simultaneously. Because they
believe that all moments of time have already happened (since all
moments repeat themselves endlessly), they possess an attitude of
acceptance about their fates, figuring that they are powerless to change
them. Only on Earth, according to the Tralfamadorians, is there talk of free
will, since humans, they claim, mistakenly think of time as a linear
progression.
Throughout his life, Billy runs up against forces that counter his free will.
When Billy is a child, his father lets him sink into the deep end of a pool in
order to teach him how to swim. Much to his fathers dismay, however,
Billy prefers the bottom of the pool, but, against his free will to stay there,
he is rescued. Later, Billy is drafted into the war against his will. Even as a
soldier, Billy is a joke, lacking training, supplies, and proper clothing. He
bobs along like a puppet in Luxembourg, his civilian shoes flapping on his
feet, and marches through the streets of Dresden draped in the remains of
the scenery from a production of Cinderella.
Even while Vonnegut admits the inevitability of death, with or without war,
he also tells us that he has instructed his sons not to participate in
massacres or in the manufacture of machinery used to carry them out.
But acting as if free will exists does not mean that it actually does. As Billy
learns to accept the Tralfamadorian teachings, we see how his actions
indicate the futility of free will. Even if Billy were to train hard, wear the
proper uniform, and be a good soldier, he might still die like the others in
Dresden who are much better soldiers than he. That he survives the
incident as an improperly trained joke of a soldier is a testament to the
deterministic forces that render free will and human effort an illusion.

The Importance of Sight

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True sight is an important concept that is difficult to define
for Slaughterhouse-Five.As an optometrist in Ilium, Billy has the
professional duty of correcting the vision of his patients. If we extend the
idea of seeing beyond the literal scope of Billys profession, we can see
that Vonnegut sets Billy up with several different lenses with which to
correct the worlds nearsightedness. One of the ways Billy can contribute
to this true sight is through his knowledge of the fourth dimension, which
he gains from the aliens at Tralfamadore. He believes in the
Tralfamadorians view of timethat all moments of time exist
simultaneously and repeat themselves endlessly. He thus believes that he
knows what will happen in the future (because everything has already
happened and will continue to happen in the same way).
One can also argue, however, that Billy lacks sight completely. He goes to
war, witnesses horrific events, and becomes mentally unstable as a result.
He has a shaky grip on reality and at random moments experiences
overpowering flashbacks to other parts of his life. His sense that aliens
have captured him and kept him in a zoo before sending him back to Earth
may be the product of an overactive imagination. Given all that Billy has
been through, it is logical to believe that he has gone insane, and it makes
sense to interpret these bizarre alien encounters as hallucinatory incidents
triggered by mundane events that somehow create an association with
past traumas. Looking at Billy this way, we can see him as someone who
has lost true sight and lives in a cloud of hallucinations and self-doubt.
Such a view creates the irony that one employed to correct the myopic
view of others is actually himself quite blind.
Motifs
So It Goes
The phrase So it goes follows every mention of death in the novel,
equalizing all of them, whether they are natural, accidental, or intentional,
and whether they occur on a massive scale or on a very personal one. The
phrase reflects a kind of comfort in the Tralfamadorian idea that although
a person may be dead in a particular moment, he or she is alive in all the
other moments of his or her life, which coexist and can be visited over and
over through time travel. At the same time, though, the repetition of the
phrase keeps a tally of the cumulative force of death throughout the
novel, thus pointing out the tragic inevitability of death.
The Presence of the Narrator as a Character
Vonnegut frames his novel with chapters in which he speaks in his own
voice about his experience of war. This decision indicates that the fiction
has an intimate connection with Vonneguts life and convictions. Once that
connection is established, however, Vonnegut backs off and lets the story
of Billy Pilgrim take over. Throughout the book, Vonnegut briefly inserts
himself as a character in the action: in the latrine at the POW camp, in the
corpse mines of Dresden, on the phone when he mistakenly dials Billys
number. These appearances anchor Billys life to a larger reality and
highlight his struggle to fit into the human world.
Symbols
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The Bird Who Says Poo-tee-weet?
The jabbering bird symbolizes the lack of anything intelligent to say about
war. Birdsong rings out alone in the silence after a massacre, and Poo-
tee-weet? seems about as appropriate a thing to say as any, since no
words can really describe the horror of the Dresden firebombing. The bird
sings outside of Billys hospital window and again in the last line of the
book, asking a question for which we have no answer, just as we have no
answer for how such an atrocity as the firebombing could happen.
The Colors Blue and Ivory
On various occasions in Slaughterhouse-Five, Billys bare feet are
described as being blue and ivory, as when Billy writes a letter in his
basement in the cold and when he waits for the flying saucer to kidnap
him. These cold, corpselike hues suggest the fragility of the thin
membrane between life and death, between worldly and otherworldly
experience.

PYGMALION
George Bernard Shaw
Born in Dublin in 1856 to a middle-class Protestant family bearing
pretensions to nobility (Shaw's embarrassing alcoholic father claimed
to be descended from Macduff, the slayer of Macbeth), George
Bernard Shaw grew to become what some consider the second
greatest English playwright, behind only Shakespeare. Others most
certainly disagree with such an assessment, but few question Shaw's
immense talent or the play's that talent produced. Shaw died at the
age of 94, a hypochondriac, socialist, anti-vaccinationist, semi-
feminist vegetarian who believed in the Life Force and only wore wool.
He left behind him a truly massive corpus of work including about 60
plays, 5 novels, 3 volumes of music criticism, 4 volumes of dance and
theatrical criticism, and heaps of social commentary, political theory,
and voluminous correspondence. And this list does not include the
opinions that Shaw could always be counted on to hold about any
topic, and which this flamboyant public figure was always most willing
to share. Shaw's most lasting contribution is no doubt his plays, and it
has been said that "a day never passes without a performance of
some Shaw play being given somewhere in the world." One of Shaw's
greatest contributions as a modern dramatist is in establishing drama
as serious literature, negotiating publication deals for his highly
popular plays so as to convince the public that the play was no less
important than the novel. In that way, he created the conditions for
later playwrights to write seriously for the theater.
Of all of Shaw's plays,Pygmalion is without the doubt the most
beloved and popularly received, if not the most significant in
literary terms. Several film versions have been made of the
play, and it has even been adapted into a musical. In fact,
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writing the screenplay for the film version of 1938 helped Shaw
to become the first and only man ever to win the much coveted
Double: the Nobel Prize for literature and an Academy Award.
Shaw wrote the part of Eliza in Pygmalion for the famous
actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, with whom Shaw was having a
prominent affair at the time that had set all of London abuzz.
The aborted romance between Professor Higgins and Eliza
Doolittle reflects Shaw's own love life, which was always
peppered with enamored and beautiful women, with whom he
flirted outrageously but with whom he almost never had any
further relations. For example, he had a long marriage to
Charlotte Payne-Townsend in which it is well known that he
never touched her once. The fact that Shaw was quietly a
member of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology,
an organization whose core members were young men
agitating for homosexual liberation, might or might not inform
the way that Higgins would rather focus his passions on
literature or science than on women. That Higgins was a
representation of Pygmalion, the character from the famous
story of Ovid'sMetamorphoses who is the very embodiment of
male love for the female form, makes Higgins sexual disinterest
all the more compelling. Shaw is too consummate a performer
and too smooth in his self- presentation for us to neatly dissect
his sexual background; these lean biographical facts, however,
do support the belief that Shaw would have an interest in
exploding the typical structures of standard fairy tales.
SUMMARY
Two old gentlemen meet in the rain one night at Covent Garden.
Professor Higgins is a scientist of phonetics, and Colonel Pickering is a
linguist of Indian dialects. The first bets the other that he can, with his
knowledge of phonetics, convince high London society that, in a
matter of months, he will be able to transform the cockney speaking
Covent Garden flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a woman as poised and
well-spoken as a duchess. The next morning, the girl appears at his
laboratory on Wimpole Street to ask for speech lessons, offering to
pay a shilling, so that she may speak properly enough to work in a
flower shop. Higgins makes merciless fun of her, but is seduced by
the idea of working his magic on her. Pickering goads him on by
agreeing to cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins can pass Eliza
off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. The challenge is
taken, and Higgins starts by having his housekeeper bathe Eliza and
give her new clothes. Then Eliza's father Alfred Doolittle comes to
demand the return of his daughter, though his real intention is to hit
Higgins up for some money. The professor, amused by Doolittle's

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unusual rhetoric, gives him five pounds. On his way out, the dustman
fails to recognize the now clean, pretty flower girl as his daughter.

For a number of months, Higgins trains Eliza to speak properly.

Two trials for Eliza follow. The first occurs at Higgins' mother's
home, where Eliza is introduced to the Eynsford Hills, a trio of
mother, daughter, and son. The son Freddy is very attracted to
her, and further taken with what he thinks is her affected "small
talk" when she slips into cockney. Mrs. Higgins worries that the
experiment will lead to problems once it is ended, but Higgins
and Pickering are too absorbed in their game to take heed. A
second trial, which takes place some months later at an
ambassador's party (and which is not actually staged), is a
resounding success. The wager is definitely won, but Higgins
and Pickering are now bored with the project, which causes
Eliza to be hurt. She throws Higgins' slippers at him in a rage
because she does not know what is to become of her, thereby
bewildering him. He suggests she marry somebody. She returns
him the hired jewelry, and he accuses her of ingratitude.

The following morning, Higgins rushes to his mother, in a panic

because Eliza has run away. On his tail is Eliza's father, now unhappily
rich from the trust of a deceased millionaire who took to heart
Higgins' recommendation that Doolittle was England's "most original
moralist." Mrs. Higgins, who has been hiding Eliza upstairs all along,
chides the two of them for playing with the girl's affections. When she
enters, Eliza thanks Pickering for always treating her like a lady, but
threatens Higgins that she will go work with his rival phonetician,
Nepommuck. The outraged Higgins cannot help but start to admire
her. As Eliza leaves for her father's wedding, Higgins shouts out a few
errands for her to run, assuming that she will return to him at
Wimpole Street. Eliza, who has a lovelorn sweetheart in Freddy, and
the wherewithal to pass as a duchess, never makes it clear whether
she will or not.

Professor Henry Higgins - Henry Higgins is a professor of

phonetics who plays Pygmalion to Eliza Doolittle's Galatea. He is the
author of Higgins' Universal Alphabet, believes in concepts like visible
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speech, and uses all manner of recording and photographic material
to document his phonetic subjects, reducing people and their dialects
into what he sees as readily understandable units. He is an
unconventional man, who goes in the opposite direction from the rest
of society in most matters. Indeed, he is impatient with high society,
forgetful in his public graces, and poorly considerate of normal social
niceties--the only reason the world has not turned against him is
because he is at heart a good and harmless man. His biggest fault is
that he can be a bully.

ANALYSIS
Pygmalion derives its name from the famous story in
Ovid'sMetamorphoses, in which Pygmalion, disgusted by the loose
and shameful lives of the women of his era, decides to live alone
and unmarried. With wondrous art, he creates a beautiful statue
more perfect than any living woman. The more he looks upon her,
the more deeply he falls in love with her, until he wishes that she
were more than a statue. This statue is Galatea. Lovesick,
Pygmalion goes to the temple of the goddess Venus and prays that
she give him a lover like his statue; Venus is touched by his love and
brings Galatea to life. When Pygmalion returns from Venus' temple
and kisses his statue, he is delighted to find that she is warm and
soft to the touch--"The maiden felt the kisses, blushed and, lifting
her timid eyes up to the light, saw the sky and her lover at the same
time" (Frank Justus Miller, trans.).

Myths such as this are fine enough when studied through the
lens of centuries and the buffer of translations and editions, but
what happens when one tries to translate such an allegory into
Victorian England? That is just what George Bernard Shaw does
in his version of the Pygmalion myth. In doing so, he exposes
the inadequacy of myth and of romance in several ways. For
one, he deliberately twists the myth so that the play does not
conclude as euphorically or conveniently, hanging instead in
unconventional ambiguity. Next, he mires the story in the

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sordid and mundane whenever he gets a chance. Wherever he
can, the characters are seen to be belabored by the trivial
details of life like napkins and neckties, and of how one is going
to find a taxi on a rainy night. These noisome details keep the
story grounded and decidedly less romantic. Finally, and most
significantly, Shaw challenges the possibly insidious
assumptions that come with the Pygmalion myth, forcing us to
ask the following: Is the male artist the absolute and perfect
being who has the power to create woman in the image of his
desires? Is the woman necessarily the inferior subject who sees
her lover as her sky? Can there only ever be sexual/romantic
relations between a man and a woman? Does beauty reflect
virtue? Does the artist love his creation, or merely the art that
brought that creation into being?

Famous for writing "talky" plays in which barely anything other than
witty repartee takes center stage (plays that the most prominent
critics of his day called non-plays), Shaw finds in Pygmalion a way to
turn the talk into action, by hinging the fairy tale outcome of the
flower girl on precisely how she talks. In this way, he draws our
attention to his own art, and to his ability to create, through the
medium of speech, not only Pygmalion's Galatea, but Pygmalion
himself. More powerful than Pygmalion, on top of building up his
creations, Shaw can take them down as well by showing their faults
and foibles. In this way, it is the playwright alone, and not some
divine will, who breathes life into his characters. While Ovid's
Pygmalion may be said to have idolized his Galatea, Shaw's relentless
and humorous honesty humanizes these archetypes, and in the
process brings drama and art itself to a more contemporarily relevant
and human level.

Analysis

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 Object 5

Eliza Doolittle - "She is not at all a romantic figure." So is she

introduced in Act I. Everything about Eliza Doolittle seems to defy any
conventional notions we might have about the romantic heroine.
When she is transformed from a sassy, smart-mouthed kerbstone
flower girl with deplorable English, to a (still sassy) regal figure fit to
consort with nobility, it has less to do with her innate qualities as a
heroine than with the fairy-tale aspect of the transformation myth
itself. In other words, the character of Eliza Doolittle comes across as
being much more instrumental than fundamental. The real
(re-)making of Eliza Doolittle happens after the ambassador's party,
when she decides to make a statement for her own dignity against
Higgins' insensitive treatment. This is when she becomes, not a
duchess, but an independent woman; and this explains why Higgins
begins to see Eliza not as a mill around his neck but as a creature
worthy of his admiration.

Colonel Pickering - Colonel Pickering, the author of Spoken

Sanskrit, is a match for Higgins (although somewhat less obsessive) in
his passion for phonetics. But where Higgins is a boorish, careless
bully, Pickering is always considerate and a genuinely gentleman. He
says little of note in the play, and appears most of all to be a civilized
foil to Higgins' barefoot, absentminded crazy professor. He helps in
the Eliza Doolittle experiment by making a wager of it, saying he will
cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins does indeed make a
convincing duchess of her. However, while Higgins only manages to
teach Eliza pronunciations, it is Pickering's thoughtful treatment
towards Eliza that teaches her to respect herself.

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Alfred Doolittle - Alfred Doolittle is Eliza's father, an elderly but
vigorous dustman who has had at least six wives and who "seems
equally free from fear and conscience." When he learns that his
daughter has entered the home of Henry Higgins, he immediately
pursues to see if he can get some money out of the circumstance. His
unique brand of rhetoric, an unembarrassed, unhypocritical
advocation of drink and pleasure (at other people's expense), is
amusing to Higgins. Through Higgins' joking recommendation,
Doolittle becomes a richly endowed lecturer to a moral reform
society, transforming him from lowly dustman to a picture of middle
class morality--he becomes miserable. Throughout, Alfred is a
scoundrel who is willing to sell his daughter to make a few pounds,
but he is one of the few unaffected characters in the play, unmasked
by appearance or language. Though scandalous, his speeches are
honest. At points, it even seems that he might be Shaw's voice piece
of social criticism (Alfred's proletariat status, given Shaw's socialist
leanings, makes the prospect all the more likely).

Mrs. Higgins - Professor Higgins' mother, Mrs. Higgins is a stately

lady in her sixties who sees the Eliza Doolittle experiment as idiocy,
and Higgins and Pickering as senseless children. She is the first and
only character to have any qualms about the whole affair. When her
worries prove true, it is to her that all the characters turn. Because no
woman can match up to his mother, Higgins claims, he has no
interest in dallying with them. To observe the mother of Pygmalion
(Higgins), who completely understands all of his failings and
inadequacies, is a good contrast to the mythic proportions to which
Higgins builds himself in his self-estimations as a scientist of
phonetics and a creator of duchesses.

Freddy Eynsford Hill - Higgins' surmise that Freddy is a fool is

probably accurate. In the opening scene he is a spineless and
resourceless lackey to his mother and sister. Later, he is comically
bowled over by Eliza, the half-baked duchess who still speaks
cockney. He becomes lovesick for Eliza, and courts her with letters. At
the play's close, Freddy serves as a young, viable marriage option for
Eliza, making the possible path she will follow unclear to the reader.
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