Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature

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Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature

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AUTHOR NAME HERE

Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature

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Jennifer McClinton-Temple Editor

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Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer McClinton-Temple All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McClinton-Temple, Jennifer. Encyclopedia of themes in literature / Jennifer McClinton-Temple. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8160-7161-6 (hc : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4381-3268-6 (e-book) 1. English literature—Themes, motives—Encyclopedias. 2. American literature—Themes, motives—Encyclopedias. I. Title. PR19.M35 2010 820.9’303—dc22 2009047605 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Text design by Kerry Casey Composition by Hermitage Publishing Services Cover printed by Sheridan Books, Ann Arbor, Mich. Book printed and bound by Sheridan Books, Ann Arbor, Mich. Date printed: December 2010 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS ` List of Themes Included in This Book List of Authors and Works Included in This Book List of Works Included in This Book Introduction Part I: Themes A–Z Part II: Authors and Works A–E Part II: Authors and Works F–M Part II: Authors and Works N–Z Index

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LIST OF THEMES INCLUDED IN THIS BOOK ` abandonment alienation ambition American dream, the childhood coming of age commodification/commercialization community cruelty death education ethics family fate freedom futility gender

grief guilt heroism hope identity illness individual and society innocence and experience isolation justice love memory nationalism nature oppression parenthood pride

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race regret rejection religion responsibility science and technology sex and sexuality social class spirituality stages of life success suffering survival tradition violence work

LIST OF AUTHORS AND WORKS INCLUDED IN THIS BOOK ` Achebe, Chinua Adams, Henry Albee, Edward Alcott, Louisa May Alexie, Sherman Allende, Isabel Alvarez, Julia Amis, Kingsley Anaya, Rudolfo Anderson, Sherwood Angelou, Maya Anonymous Aristophanes Atwood, Margaret Augustine, Saint Austen, Jane Baldwin, James Bambara, Toni Cade Behn, Aphra Bellow, Saul Bierce, Ambrose Black Elk Blake, William Bradbury, Ray Bradford, William

Anthills of the Savannah Things Fall Apart Education of Henry Adams, The Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? Little Women Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, The House of the Spirits, The How the García Girls Lost Their Accents Lucky Jim Bless Me, Ultima Winesburg, Ohio I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Beowulf Frogs, The Lysistrata Handmaid’s Tale, The Surfacing Confessions of St. Augustine, The Emma Pride and Prejudice Sense and Sensibility Go Tell It on the Mountain Salt Eaters, The Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave Adventures of Augie March, The “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, An” Black Elk Speaks Songs of Innocence and of Experience Fahrenheit 451 Martian Chronicles, The Of Plymouth Plantation

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Brontë, Charlotte Jane Eyre Brontë, Emily Wuthering Heights Browning, Robert “My Last Duchess” Bunyan, John Pilgrim’s Progress, The Byron, George Gordon Byron, Don Juan Lord Camus, Albert Stranger, The Cao Xueqin Dream of the Red Chamber Capote, Truman In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences Carroll, Lewis Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Carver, Raymond “Cathedral” Cather, Willa My Ántonia O Pioneers! Chaucer, Geoffrey Canterbury Tales, The Chekhov, Anton Seagull, The Chesnutt, Charles W. “Goophered Grapevine, The” Chopin, Kate Awakening, The Cisneros, Sandra House on Mango Street, The Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories Coetzee, J. M. Waiting for the Barbarians Coleridge, Samuel Taylor “Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The” Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness Lord Jim Crane, Stephen Open Boat, The Red Badge of Courage, The Dante Alighieri Divine Comedy, The Davies, Robertson Fifth Business Davis, Rebecca Harding Life in the Iron Mills Defoe, Daniel Moll Flanders Robinson Crusoe DeLillo, Don White Noise Dickens, Charles Christmas Carol, A David Copperfield Great Expectations Oliver Twist Tale of Two Cities, A Dickinson, Emily poems Dinesen, Isak Out of Africa Dos Passos, John U.S.A. trilogy Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Hound of the Baskervilles, The Dreiser, Theodore American Tragedy, An Sister Carrie DuBois, W. E. B. Souls of Black Folk, The

List of Authors and Works Included in This Bookâ•…â•… xi Edwards, Jonathan “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Eliot, T. S. “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The” Waste Land, The Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man Emerson, Ralph Waldo “American Scholar, The” “Divinity School Address, The” “Self-Reliance” Equiano, Olaudah Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself, The Erdrich, Louise Bingo Palace, The Love Medicine Tracks Euripides Medea Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying Light in August “Rose for Emily, A” Sound and the Fury, The Fielding, Henry Tom Jones Fitzgerald, F. Scott Great Gatsby, The Tender Is the Night Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary Forster, E. M. Passage to India, A Room with a View, A Frank, Anne Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl Franklin, Benjamin Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Frost, Robert poems Gaines, Ernest J. Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Lesson Before Dying, A García Márquez. Gabriel One Hundred Years of Solitude Gaskell, Elizabeth North and South Gay, John Beggar’s Opera, The Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Yellow Wallpaper, The Glaspell, Susan Trifles Golding, William Lord of the Flies Gordimer, Nadine Burger’s Daughter Grass, Günter Tin Drum, The Greene, Graham Heart of the Matter, The Haley, Alex, and Malcolm X Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Hansberry, Lorraine Raisin in the Sun, A Hardy, Thomas Jude the Obscure Tess of the d’Urbervilles Harte, Bret “Luck of Roaring Camp, The” “Outcasts of Poker Flats, The” Hawthorne, Nathaniel “The Birth-mark” House of the Seven Gables, The “Rappaccini’s Daughter”

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Heller, Joseph Hemingway, Ernest Hersey, John Hesse, Herman Hinton, S. E. Homer Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki Hughes, Langston Hurston, Zora Neale Huxley, Aldous Ibsen, Henrik Irving, John Irving, Washington Ishiguro, Kazuo Jackson, Shirley Jacobs, Harriet James, Henry Jefferson, Thomas Joyce, James Kafka, Franz Keats, John Kerouac, Jack Kesey, Ken Kincaid, Jamaica Kingsolver, Barbara Kingston, Maxine Hong Kipling, Rudyard Knowles, John Kozinski, Jerzy Kundera, Milan Kureishi, Hanif Kushner, Tony Lawrence, D. H.

Scarlet Letter, The “Young Goodman Brown” Catch-22 Farewell to Arms, A Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises, The Hiroshima Siddhartha Steppenwolf Outsiders, The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Farewell to Manzanar poems Their Eyes Were Watching God Brave New World Doll’s House, A Hedda Gabler World According to Garp, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, The Remains of the Day, The “Lottery, The” Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself Daisy Miller Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw, The Notes on the State of Virginia Dubliners Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A Metamorphosis, The poems On the Road One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest Annie John Small Place, A Bean Trees, The Poisonwood Bible, The Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book Woman Warrior, The Kim Separate Peace, A Painted Bird, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Buddha of Suburbia, The Angels in America Rainbow, The Women in Love

List of Authors and Works Included in This Bookâ•…â•… xiii Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Lee Lee, Harper Lessing, Doris Lewis, C. S. Lewis, Sinclair London, Jack Lowry, Lois Machiavelli, Niccolò Malamud, Bernard Marlowe, Christopher Marshall, Paule McCarthy, Cormac McCullers, Carson McMurtry, Larry Melville, Herman Miller, Arthur Milton, John Mistry, Rohinton Molière Momaday, N. Scott Morrison, Toni Mukherjee, Bharati Nabokov, Vladimir Naipaul, V. S. Naylor, Gloria O’Brien, Tim O’Connor, Flannery O’Neill, Eugene Orwell, George

Inherit the Wind To Kill a Mockingbird Golden Notebook, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Main Street Call of the Wild, The White Fang Giver, The Prince, The Natural, The Doctor Faustus Brown Girl, Brownstones All the Pretty Horses Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding, The Lonesome Dove “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” Billy Budd, Sailor Moby-Dick Crucible, The Death of a Salesman Paradise Lost Fine Balance, A Misanthrope, The Tartuffe House Made of Dawn Way to Rainy Mountain, The Beloved Bluest Eye, The Song of Solomon Sula Tar Baby Middleman and Other Stories, The Lolita Bend in the River, A House for Mr. Biswas, A Women of Brewster Place, The Going after Cacciato Things They Carried, The “Good Man Is Hard to Find, A” Wise Blood Iceman Cometh, The Long Day’s Journey into Night Animal Farm Nineteen Eighty-Four

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Paine, Thomas “Age of Reason, The” Common Sense Paton, Alan Cry, the Beloved Country Pirandello, Luigi Six Characters in Search of an Author Plath, Sylvia Bell Jar, The Poe, Edgar Allan “Fall of the House of Usher, The” “Murders in the Rue Morgue, The” “Tell-Tale Heart, The” Pope, Alexander Rape of the Lock, The Potok, Chaim Chosen, The Proust, Marcel Remembrance of Things Past Rand, Ayn Anthem Reed, Ishmael Mumbo Jumbo Rhys, Jean Wide Sargasso Sea Roth, Philip American Pastoral Rowlandson, Mary Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson Roy, Arundhati God of Small Things, The Rushdie, Salman Midnight’s Children Salinger, J. D. Catcher in the Rye, The Shakespeare, William Hamlet Henry IV, Part I Henry V Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Merchant of Venice, The Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Much Ado about Nothing Othello Romeo and Juliet Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, The Twelfth Night Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion Shelley, Mary Frankenstein Shelley, Percy Bysshe poems Silko, Leslie Marmon Almanac of the Dead Ceremony Sinclair, Upton Jungle, The Smith, Betty Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Sophocles Antigone Oedipus the King Steinbeck, John Cannery Row Grapes of Wrath, The Of Mice and Men Pearl, The Red Pony, The

List of Authors and Works Included in This Bookâ•…â•… xv Stevenson, Robert Louis Stoker, Bram Stowe, Harriet Beecher Swift, Jonathan Synge, John Millington Tan, Amy Tennyson, Alfred, Lord Thoreau, Henry David Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolstoy, Leo Toomer, Jean Turgenev, Ivan Twain, Mark Updike, John Virgil Voltaire Vonnegut, Kurt Walker, Alice Washington, Booker T. Welty, Eudora Wharton, Edith Whitman, Walt Wiesel, Elie Wilde, Oscar Wilder, Thornton Williams, Tennessee Wilson, August Winterson, Jeanette Wollstonecraft, Mary Woolf, Virginia Wordsworth, William Wright, Richard Yeats, William Butler

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Treasure Island Dracula Uncle Tom’s Cabin Gulliver’s Travels Modest Proposal, A Playboy of the Western World, The Joy Luck Club, The In Memoriam A. H. H. “Resistance to Civil Government” Walden Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The War and Peace Cane Fathers and Sons Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A “A&P” Rabbit, Run Aeneid, The Candide Cat’s Cradle Slaughterhouse-Five Color Purple, The Up from Slavery Optimist’s Daughter, The Age of Innocence, The Ethan Frome House of Mirth, The Leaves of Grass Night Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Our Town Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Glass Menagerie, The Streetcar Named Desire, A Fences Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A Mrs Dalloway To the Lighthouse “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Black Boy Native Son poems

LIST OF WORKS INCLUDED IN THIS BOOK `

“A&P” Adventures of Augie March, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Aeneid, The Age of Innocence, The “Age of Reason, The” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland All the Pretty Horses Almanac of the Dead American Pastoral “American Scholar, The” American Tragedy, An Angels in America Animal Farm Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl Annie John Anthem Anthills of the Savannah Antigone As I Lay Dying Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Awakening, The “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” Bean Trees, The Beggar’s Opera, The Bell Jar, The Beloved Bend in the River, A Beowulf

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Updike, John Bellow, Saul Twain, Mark Twain, Mark Virgil Wharton, Edith Paine, Thomas Carroll, Lewis McCarthy, Cormac Silko, Leslie Marmon Roth, Philip Emerson, Ralph Waldo Dreiser, Theodore Kushner, Tony Orwell, George Frank, Anne Kincaid, Jamaica Rand, Ayn Achebe, Chinua Sophocles Faulkner, William Franklin, Benjamin Haley, Alex, and Malcolm X Gaines, Ernest J. Chopin, Kate Melville, Herman Kingsolver, Barbara Gay, John Plath, Sylvia Morrison, Toni Naipaul, V. S. Anonymous

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Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature Billy Budd, Sailor Bingo Palace, The “Birth-mark, The” Black Boy Black Elk Speaks Bless Me, Ultima Bluest Eye, The Brave New World Brown Girl, Brownstones Buddha of Suburbia, The Burger’s Daughter Call of the Wild, The Candide Cane Cannery Row Canterbury Tales, The Catcher in the Rye, The Catch-22 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Cat’s Cradle “Cathedral” Ceremony Chosen, The Christmas Carol, A Color Purple, The Common Sense Confessions of St. Augustine, The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A Crime and Punishment Crucible, The Cry, the Beloved Country Daisy Miller David Copperfield Death of a Salesman Divine Comedy, The “Divinity School Address, The” Doctor Faustus Doll’s House, A Don Juan Dracula Dream of the Red Chamber Dubliners Education of Henry Adams, The Emma Ethan Frome Fahrenheit 451 “Fall of the House of Usher, The”

Melville, Herman Erdrich, Louise Hawthorne, Nathaniel Wright, Richard Black Elk Anaya, Rudolfo Morrison, Toni Huxley, Aldous Marshall, Paule Kureishi, Hanif Gordimer, Nadine London, Jack Voltaire Toomer, Jean Steinbeck, John Chaucer, Geoffrey Salinger, J. D. Heller, Joseph Williams, Tennessee Vonnegut, Kurt Carver, Raymond Silko, Leslie Marmon Potok, Chaim Dickens, Charles Walker, Alice Paine, Thomas Augustine, Saint Twain, Mark Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Miller, Arthur Paton, Alan James, Henry Dickens, Charles Miller, Arthur Dante Alighieri Emerson, Ralph Waldo Marlowe, Christopher Ibsen, Henrik Byron, George Gordon Byron, Lord Stoker, Bram Cao Xueqin Joyce, James Adams, Henry Austen, Jane Wharton, Edith Bradbury, Ray Poe, Edgar Allan

List of Works Included in This Bookâ•…â•… xix Farewell to Arms, A Farewell to Manzanar Fathers and Sons Fences Fifth Business Fine Balance, A Frankenstein Frogs, The Giver, The Glass Menagerie, The Go Tell It on the Mountain God of Small Things, The Going after Cacciato Golden Notebook, The “Good Man Is Hard to Find, A” “Goophered Grapevine, The” Grapes of Wrath, The Great Expectations Great Gatsby, The Gulliver’s Travels Hamlet Handmaid’s Tale, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Heart of Darkness Heart of the Matter, The Hedda Gabler Henry IV, Part I Henry V Hiroshima Hobbit, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The House for Mr. Biswas, A House Made of Dawn House of Mirth, The House of the Seven Gables, The House of the Spirits, The House on Mango Street, The How the García Girls Lost Their Accents Iceman Cometh, The I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Iliad, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself In Cold Blood: A True Account of Multiple Murder and Its Consequences Inherit the Wind

Hemingway, Ernest Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki Turgenev, Ivan Wilson, August Davies, Robertson Mistry, Rohinton Shelley, Mary Aristophanes Lowry, Lois Williams, Tennessee Baldwin, James Roy, Arundhati O’Brien, Tim Lessing, Doris O’Connor, Flannery Chesnutt, Charles W. Steinbeck, John Dickens, Charles Fitzgerald, F. Scott Swift, Jonathan Shakespeare, William Atwood, Margaret McCullers, Carson Conrad, Joseph Greene, Graham Ibsen, Henrik Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, William Hersey, John Tolkien, J. R. R. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Naipaul, V. S. Momaday, N. Scott Wharton, Edith Hawthorne, Nathaniel Allende, Isabel Cisneros, Sandra Alvarez, Julia O’Neill, Eugene Angelou, Maya Homer Wilde, Oscar Jacobs, Harriet Capote, Truman Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Lee

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In Memoriam A. H. H. Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself, The Invisible Man Jane Eyre Joy Luck Club, The Jude the Obscure Julius Caesar Jungle, The Kim King Lear Leaves of Grass Lesson Before Dying, A Life in the Iron Mills Light in August “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Little Women Lolita Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, The Lonesome Dove Long Day’s Journey into Night Lord Jim Lord of the Flies Lord of the Rings, The “Lottery, The” Love Medicine “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The” “Luck of Roaring Camp, The” Lucky Jim Lysistrata Macbeth Madame Bovary Main Street Martian Chronicles, The Medea Member of the Wedding, The Merchant of Venice, The Metamorphosis, The Middleman and Other Stories, The Midnight’s Children Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Misanthrope, The Moby-Dick Modest Proposal, A

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord Equiano, Olaudah Ellison, Ralph Brontë, Charlotte Tan, Amy Hardy, Thomas Shakespeare, William Sinclair, Upton Kipling, Rudyard Shakespeare, William Whitman, Walt Gaines, Ernest J. Davis, Rebecca Harding Faulkner, William Wordsworth, William Lewis, C. S. Alcott, Louisa May Nabokov, Vladimir Alexie, Sherman McMurtry, Larry O’Neill, Eugene Conrad, Joseph Golding, William Tolkien, J. R. R. Jackson, Shirley Erdrich, Louise Eliot, T. S. Harte, Bret Amis, Kingsley Aristophanes Shakespeare, William Flaubert, Gustave Lewis, Sinclair Bradbury, Ray Euripides McCullers, Carson Shakespeare, William Kafka, Franz Mukherjee, Bharati Rushdie, Salman Shakespeare, William Molière Melville, Herman Swift, Jonathan

List of Works Included in This Bookâ•…â•… xxi Moll Flanders Mrs Dalloway Much Ado about Nothing Mumbo Jumbo “Murders in the Rue Morgue, The” My Ántonia “My Last Duchess” Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself Native Son Natural, The Night Nineteen Eighty-Four North and South Notes on the State of Virginia “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, An” Odyssey, The Oedipus the King Of Mice and Men Of Plymouth Plantation Old Man and the Sea, The Oliver Twist One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest One Hundred Years of Solitude On the Road Open Boat, The O Pioneers! Optimist’s Daughter, The Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave Othello Our Town “Outcasts of Poker Flats, The” Out of Africa Outsiders, The Painted Bird, The Paradise Lost Passage to India, A Pearl, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Playboy of the Western World, The poems poems

Defoe, Daniel Woolf, Virginia Shakespeare, William Reed, Ishmael Poe, Edgar Allan Cather, Willa Browning, Robert Rowlandson, Mary Douglass, Frederick Wright, Richard Malamud, Bernard Wiesel, Elie Orwell, George Gaskell, Elizabeth Jefferson, Thomas Bierce, Ambrose Homer Sophocles Steinbeck, John Bradford, William Hemingway, Ernest Dickens, Charles Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Kesey, Ken García Márquez, Gabriel Kerouac, Jack Crane, Stephen Cather, Willa Welty, Eudora Winterson, Jeanette Behn, Aphra Shakespeare, William Wilder, Thornton Harte, Bret Dinesen, Isak Hinton, S. E. Kozinski, Jerzy Milton, John Forster, E. M. Steinbeck, John Wilde, Oscar Bunyan, John Synge, John Millington Dickinson, Emily Frost, Robert

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Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature poems poems poems poems Poisonwood Bible, The Portrait of a Lady, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A Pride and Prejudice Prince, The Pygmalion Rabbit, Run Rainbow, The Raisin in the Sun, A Rape of the Lock, The “Rappaccini’s Daughter” Red Badge of Courage, The Red Pony, The Remains of the Day, The Remembrance of Things Past “Resistance to Civil Government” “Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The” Robinson Crusoe Romeo and Juliet Room with a View, A “Rose for Emily, A” Salt Eaters, The Scarlet Letter, The Seagull, The “Self-Reliance” Sense and Sensibility Separate Peace, A Siddhartha “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Sister Carrie Six Characters in Search of an Author Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, The Slaughterhouse-Five Small Place, A Song of Solomon Songs of Innocence and of Experience Souls of Black Folk, The Sound and the Fury, The Steppenwolf Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Stranger, The Streetcar Named Desire, A Sula Sun Also Rises, The

Hughes, Langston Keats, John Shelley, Percy Bysshe Yeats, William Butler Kingsolver, Barbara James, Henry Joyce, James Austen, Jane Machiavelli, Niccolò Shaw, George Bernard Updike, John Lawrence, D. H. Hansberry, Lorraine Pope, Alexander Hawthorne, Nathaniel Crane, Stephen Steinbeck, John Ishiguro, Kazuo Proust, Marcel Thoreau, Henry David Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Defoe, Daniel Shakespeare, William Forster, E. M. Faulkner, William Bambara, Toni Cade Hawthorne, Nathaniel Chekhov, Anton Emerson, Ralph Waldo Austen, Jane Knowles, John Hesse, Herman Edwards, Jonathan Dreiser, Theodore Pirandello, Luigi Irving, Washington Vonnegut, Kurt Kincaid, Jamaica Morrison, Toni Blake, William DuBois, W. E. B. Faulkner, William Hesse, Herman Stevenson, Robert Louis Camus, Albert Williams, Tennessee Morrison, Toni Hemingway, Ernest

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Surfacing Tale of Two Cities, A Taming of the Shrew, The Tar Baby Tartuffe “Tell-Tale Heart, The” Tempest, The Tender Is the Night Tess of the d’Urbervilles Their Eyes Were Watching God Things Fall Apart Things They Carried, The Tin Drum, The To Kill a Mockingbird Tom Jones To the Lighthouse Tracks Treasure Island Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Trifles Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book Turn of the Screw, The Twelfth Night Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Uncle Tom’s Cabin Up from Slavery U.S.A. trilogy Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A Waiting for the Barbarians Walden War and Peace Waste Land, The Way to Rainy Mountain, The White Fang White Noise Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? Wide Sargasso Sea Winesburg, Ohio Wise Blood Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories Woman Warrior, The Women in Love Women of Brewster Place, The World According to Garp, The Wuthering Heights Yellow Wallpaper, The “Young Goodman Brown”

Atwood, Margaret Dickens, Charles Shakespeare, William Morrison, Toni Molière Poe, Edgar Allan Shakespeare, William Fitzgerald, F. Scott Hardy, Thomas Hurston, Zora Neale Achebe, Chinua O’Brien, Tim Grass, Günter Lee, Harper Fielding, Henry Woolf, Virginia Erdrich, Louise Stevenson, Robert Louis Smith, Betty Glaspell, Susan Kingston, Maxine Hong James, Henry Shakespeare, William Kundera, Milan Stowe, Harriet Beecher Washington, Booker T. Dos Passos, John Wollstonecraft, Mary Coetzee, J. M. Thoreau, Henry David Tolstoy, Leo Eliot, T. S. Momaday, N. Scott London, Jack DeLillo, Don Albee, Edward Rhys, Jean Anderson, Sherwood O’Connor, Flannery Cisneros, Sandra Kingston, Maxine Hong Lawrence, D. H. Naylor, Gloria Irving, John Brontë, Emily Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Hawthorne, Nathaniel

INTRODUCTION ` cept, especially for less experienced students) seeks first to enumerate and explain the many different definitions of the word, and then to demonstrate how it might be used in various contexts, thus simplifying a complicated concept. The essay on success (a concept with which students will certainly be familiar) starts by providing a few alternative definitions of success, in order to complicate and enrich an ostensibly simple term. All the essays on themes endeavor to answer the central questions of how the theme has been used and why it has proven so appealing throughout literary history. The second part of the set contains essays on specific themes in more than 300 individual works of literature. Here, the essays are organized in alphabetical order, first by the author of the subject literary work, and then by the title of the work. (An appendix lists all the works covered in the book in alphabetical order.) Each section on a particular work contains a brief introduction to the work and then usually three essays, each on a different literary theme in the work. For instance, for the first work covered in the encyclopedia, Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah, we provide essays on the themes of gender, oppression, and social class in Anthills. This format allows students to examine the text from three of its most important vantage points, making connections and understanding details they might not have picked up by reading the text on their own. Each essay is relatively short (750 words) and is intended to provide not a comprehensive

Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature is unique among literature references in that it is general and specific. It offers both a survey of literary themes and a number of in-depth analyses of how these themes operate in individual literary works. The first part of this set contains essays on 50 literary themes. Each essay examines a specific theme in a general, accessible, interdisciplinary manner, usually describing how the theme has evolved over time, how it relates to other important themes, and most importantly, why the theme is powerful enough to recur so often in great literature. For example, the essay on abandonment begins with the origin of the word itself; goes on to explain how early literature, such as the Bible and various folktales, treated the theme; and finally discusses occurrences of the theme in more modern literature, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine. (Themes, authors, and titles are set in small capital letters the first time they appear in a particular entry to indicate a cross-reference to an entry on that subject in part 1 or part 2 of the set. Works cross-referenced in the text are discussed under the entries on the writers who wrote them; both the author and the work are set in small caps.) Along the way, the essay explains how various disciplines outside literature view the concept of abandonment and how those views relate to its portrayal in literature. Each essay is structured to fit its subject. For instance, the essay on nationalism (a difficult con-

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examination of the theme in the work but, rather, enough information and context to encourage the reader’s own thoughts on the subject. The essays are also designed to help students think about these works in ways that are both traditional and unexpected. For instance, one might expect a discussion of gender in Bram Stoker’s Dracula; certainly Dracula’s manipulations of Mina and Lucy, and the attempts by Van Helsing and his crew to save them, are fraught with issues of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality, and the essay on gender in Dracula does indeed examine these issues. However, there is also an essay on nationalism in Stoker’s novel, a topic perhaps not so obvious. This essay asks students to think about how the English characters’ assault on Dracula could be seen as an assertion of their “Englishness” and how banishing Dracula is, metaphorically, an imperial act. In selecting themes, we used the Modern Language Association (MLA) Bibliography Database to determine the frequency of common themes in literature. In selecting works entries, we consulted anthologies, study guides, standard reading lists, and available syllabi to determine the most commonly assigned literary works in high school and college classrooms. Most works included here are novels, plays, or longer poems, which are more suited to this type of approach, but we also decided to cover the works of six essential poets: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Butler Yeats. A few longer poems, such as Robert

Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” have also been included on their own. Students will be able to use the set in two different ways. Some will want to research a particular work, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and will therefore head directly to the three essays on that novel in the second part of the set. After reading each of the individual essays—on the American dream, identity, and social class—they may then turn to part 1 to read more about those three themes and find other examples of great literature that use the same theme, but perhaps in a different way. Other students might want to begin their investigations by reading first about a particular theme. Some might be interested in writing on broader subject, such as childhood, and might want to begin by examining the theme as a whole and then turning to a number of works of literature that features the theme. Or some might simply be searching for a work of literature that addresses a subject that interests them. As a whole, Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature provides an unprecedented amount of information on literary themes, written in language designed to be accessible and appealing to students, yet at the same time challenging enough to encourage them to formulate their own ideas about literature. —Jennifer McClinton-Temple, Editor

part i

Themes A–Z `

abandonment

The origins of the word abandon, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, demonstrate that it has not always had the wholly negative connotations it does today. In the Middle French, for instance, metre à bandon could have meant both “to proscribe” and “to release from proscription.” Thus, the term might apply equally to an outcast shunned from society and to the former outcast being welcomed back. Both are being “abandoned.” One may then abandon one’s child, one’s property, or one’s self. The common thread in these definitions in that there is an active choice being made and that the nature of this choice is absolute. Abandonment is never accidental, and it is never partial—it is deliberate and it is complete. It is, perhaps, these qualities that account for the recurrence of the theme in folklore and mythology, in social science, and in art and literature. In the Bible, Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden. In being left to their own devices, being forced to provide for themselves, they are, in their eyes at least, being abandoned by God. Abraham casts off his wife’s maidservant Hagar and their son Ishmael, abandoning them to the desert and denying them Ishmael’s birthright. Baby Moses, cast among the bulrushes for his own protection, is abandoned by his biological family into the care of another. Folklore and fairy tales abound with stories of abandonment: Snow White is left alone in

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the forest; Romulus and Remus, the mythological founders of Rome, are placed in their cradle in the Tiber River; and, of course, Hansel and Gretel are forced from their home and into the lair of a witch. In many foundational stories of abandonment, the abandoned child returns to his or her true family in triumph, either as a leader or having achieved great success in one way or another. This triumph seems to mitigate the trauma of the abandonment, implying that the abandonment resulted in some good and allowing for a happy, or at least a contented, ending. In the case of Moses, for instance, it is his abandonment that saves his life. As the pharaoh has ordered that all male babies born to Hebrews be drowned in the Nile, Moses’s mother hides him in a basket in the river where he would be found (and ultimately adopted) by the Pharoah’s daughter. In the story of Hansel and Gretel, the children return, having killed the witch, to find that their stepmother has died and they may live happily with their father. In other stories, however, the return from abandonment proves tragic. For instance, in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, perhaps one of the most famous stories of abandonment, Oedipus is abandoned as an infant because it has been prophesized that he will grow up to kill his father, the king of Thebes, and marry his mother, the queen. A servant is ordered to take the baby away and kill him, but the servant cannot carry out the order and leaves the baby at the

2â•…â•…˘2 abandonment 2â•…â•… gates of the royal family of a distant city, Corinth. As a young man, however, Oedipus hears the prophecy as well, thinks that it is in reference to his adoptive Corinthian parents, and flees. Ultimately, the prophecy comes true as he kills his real father, Laius, in self-defense and marries Laius’s widow, Jocasta, his real mother. Jocasta then hangs herself, and Oedipus blinds himself with the pins from her dress. Obviously, in this case, grave tragedy resulted from the child’s abandonment, implying that this fate might have been better avoided by keeping him close. Perhaps abandonment appears so frequently in art and literature because, as some philosophers and psychologists believe, the fear of abandonment begins at birth. Sigmund Freud, the Austrian psychiatrist regarded as the father of modern psychological thought, believed that when we are born, and thus physically separated from our mothers, this trauma becomes a central force in our lives. We must, according to Freud, spend a great deal of our lives coming to terms with this separation, which we internalize as an abandonment. Later psychologists would delve deeper than Freud into the fear of and effect of abandonment on our young psyches. In his highly influential three-volume work Attachment, Separation, and Loss (1973), the British psychologist John Bowlby discusses his decades-long studies of children and their attachment to their caregivers, specifically their mothers. Bowlby notes that infants seek to find their mother when she leaves the room as soon as they are able to crawl. Additionally, the child will follow any familiar adult in lieu of the mother if she is unavailable (200–202). Infants demonstrate distress upon their mother’s impending departure as soon as they are old enough to sense the signs that she is leaving, around six to nine months of age (204). For Bowlby, the infant is exhibiting the innate fear of abandonment, which produces anxiety. The psychologist Yi Fu Tuan calls fear of abandonment a “central childhood fear” and points to the frequent use of the motif in fairy tales as a method of playing on that fear and keeping control of children (Salerno 98). If this abandonment does happen and it is prolonged, the anxiety becomes a part of the infant’s, later the child’s, later the adult’s personality. Yi Fu claims that adult anxiety disorders can be attributed to

specific child-rearing practices; in particular, he says, frequent and regular separations, or even frequent and regular threats of abandonment have huge consequences later in life (Salerno 97). Modern philosophers have also considered the fear of abandonment as a central component to modern consciousness. Soren Kierkegaard, the 19thcentury Danish philosopher, defined modern angst or anxiety as a feeling of looming danger where the source of the threat is unknown. G. W. F. Hegel, a German philosopher of the same era, claimed that the true mark of becoming human is not to desire but to want to be the object of someone else’s desire. Combining these theories, then, and remembering as well Bowlby’s infants, can lead to the theory that humans innately fear being abandoned and that as we grow older, we are consumed by a feeling that we will lose our most prized object: another human being. In other words, we live as adults with a constant fear of being abandoned, and if we were indeed abandoned as children, either actually or metaphorically, this fear can be the source of debilitating anxiety. Twentieth-century philosophers have taken these ideas and demonstrated how the detached, impersonal modern world exacerbates the natural fear of abandonment. The Industrial Revolution— the 19th-century shift from rural, manual labor to automated, technologically advanced work in the Western world—took control of the future out of the hands of the family and placed it in the hands of a stranger. Philosophers such as Theodor Adorno have theorized that this led to the breakdown of the family, as the father figure, who perhaps felt abandoned himself, abandoned his own family in search of strong, authoritarian figures outside the family. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the primary figure in the school of philosophical thought known as existentialism, rejected the very idea that the world is ordered and that human beings can make sense of it. Thus, he argued, we realize that we are alone, abandoned in the world. In literature, we see this crisis of abandonment in the works of many different writers. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for instance, Victor Frankenstein, the doctor who creates the famous monster, wants only to intellectualize, to think, never to

alienationâ•…â•… ╅╅ 3 emote or to feel. He leaves his loved ones lonely and alone in search of individual, intellectual glory. In turn, he abandons the monster he has created and the creature spends the rest of the novel in search of a connection, resulting in tragic consequences. In Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, abandonment is explored on an individual level, as there are several characters who are left alone and helpless, but also on a community level, as the Indian tribes of North America were abandoned by the U.S. government, which had promised to protect and provide for them. This novel convincingly demonstrates why the theme of abandonment is so common in literature. On a personal level, all human beings feel a fear of abandonment stemming from our childhood separations from our parents. Additionally, however, in the modern world, whole communities might live in a general state of abandonment based on that world’s impersonal, disconnected nature. See also Alexie, Sherman: Lone R anger and Tonto Fistf ight in Heaven, The ; Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Euripides: Medea; Kingsolver, Barbara: Bean Trees, The; McCullers, Carson: Member of the Wedding, The ; Roy, Arundhati: God of Small Things, The; Silko, Leslie Marmon: Ceremony; Tan, Amy: Joy Luck Club, The. FURTHER READING Bowlby, John. Attachment and Loss. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Salerno, Roger A. Landscapes of Abandonment: Capitalism, Modernity, and Estrangement. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

alienation

Countless literary characters feel painfully alienated from the social institutions that surround them. Some, like Jake Barnes in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, feel alienated from their own communities. Others, like Caddy Compson in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, feel alienated from their closer connections, including family members and loved ones. Still others, like Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, feel alienated by the

religious institutions in which they have been raised; sometimes this type of alienation extends so far that the character or characters feel alienated from God himself. Perhaps the most extreme form of alienation lies in characters such as Meursault in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, who feels alienated from everything with which he comes into contact: his family, his society, and the whole of modern life. The proliferation of literary characters who struggle with alienation is a result of the real-life struggle many human beings have with feeling disconnected from, shunned by, and unrelated to other human beings and the societal institutions that shape and guide us. Alienation is a powerful force, one that moves humans toward the negative impulses of self-pity, vulnerability, and violence, but that can also result in the positive results of deep introspection and intellectual independence. Many would associate alienation primarily with the 20th century and beyond, and indeed, the modernist movement, dated roughly from 1890 to 1950, has as one of its central themes the idea that in the modern era, with its increased reliance on science and technology, and the gradual removal of the individual from rural community into urban isolation, the individual and society are at odds with one another. Modernism explores how our relationships with each other and with social institutions such as the church, school, work, and family have grown weaker, leading us to be increasingly individualistic in our thinking and thus, alienated. In fact, the works listed above are all works in the modernist tradition. In addition to those novels and their alienated characters, modernism produced works such as T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” both poems that explore at length human beings’ alienation from one another and from the world around them. For example, in “Prufrock,” even though the speaker begins by saying, “Let us go then, you and I” (l. 1), the poem never feels like it is telling the story of a couple, as though the speaker is pretending to be working under the misconception that he is part of a community but is actually quite alone. The “you” has been variously interpreted to refer to the reader, the author, or some missing part of the speaker himself. It is precisely this problem—that the speaker is not

4â•…â•…˘4 alienation 4â•…â•… alone but is clearly disconnected from his companion—that creates the feeling of alienation. Near the end of the poem, the speaker says, “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each / I do not think that they will sing to me” (ll. 124–125). Again, he is alive and moving through the world, but he is disconnected from it, hearing but not listening. Other 20th-century works explore the general condition of alienation by depicting characters who are cut off from one another despite familial connections or close daily proximity. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, for instance, the title character, Jay Gatsby, born Jay Gatz, has cut himself off from his past, thus alienating himself from what might be called his natural place in the world. He has done this so that he may infiltrate Daisy Buchanan’s world—a world of wealth, society, and superficiality. Yet despite making this transfer, he remains alienated, as Daisy’s circle see him as foreign and out of place. He yearns to be a part of her world, but he does so because he thinks that is the way to win her love. Because he moves along this route, which is unnatural to him, his attempt is doomed to fail. The modern world Fitzgerald depicts in The Great Gatsby—with its artificial distinctions between West Egg and East Egg; its social caste system that leads Myrtle Wilson to have no more value than an animal; and its monumental Valley of Ashes, an artificial barrier separating the rich and the poor, brought about by capitalism and industrialization—suggests a world that will eventually alienate us all from one another by replacing honesty and emotion with facade and ambition. Although the 20th century is the primary home of literature exploring alienation, the concept is much older. The biblical story of the golden calf, for instance, shows us a populace who are alienated from God and from themselves. In the story, Moses has left the Israelites for 40 days and 40 nights to climb Mount Sinai and receive the Ten Commandments. Because they are disconnected from Moses, they also disconnect from the idea of God and immediately fear that they are alone in the world and need an idol to worship to focus their beliefs. They therefore convince Moses’ brother Aaron to forge a golden calf for them. As Erich Fromm points out, this story shows us how “man is in touch with himself only through

the worship of the idols” (quoted in Khan 196). This story, of course, comes from the Old Testament, before the arrival of Christ. One way to read the New Testament is that the coming of the Messiah saves the world from its state of alienation from God. In fact, in his Epistle to the Ephesians, Paul writes, “Remember that ye were without Christ, beings alien from the Commonwealth of Israel” (Eph 2:12, KJV). This connection, then, is vital for Paul; for him, the alienated being naturally yearns for connection. The idea of alienation would remain chiefly theological for centuries. In Middle English, the word signified a kind of “transfer,” almost as though one owned oneself, and if “aliened” or “alienated,” one was transferring that ownership to someone or something else. This could be active and hostile, as if one was being forced into the transfer, or it could be passive and indifferent, as though one was giving up oneself voluntarily. Beyond transferring one’s will to God, the concept of alienation as we know it today did not exist. However, in the 18th century, the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau would postulate that alienation involves the giving of oneself freely, and that it benefits the individual by entering him or her into society, by freeing that person from the selfish state in which one serves only oneself. Although this might sound positive, for Rousseau it was the dependence on others whom society facilitates that created all vice. He believed that we must give up our rights and “transfer” them to the community. This creates in humans a state of alienation. In the 19th century, the German philosopher Georg Hegel took up Rousseau’s line of thinking, declaring that humans “live in a world shaped by his work and his knowledge, but it is a world in which man feels himself alien, a world whose laws prevent basic need satisfaction” (qtd. in Khan 26). Hegel is extending Rousseau’s ideas here, arguing that modern man will always feel the struggle between his own individual needs and participation in society, and that the result is a feeling of detachment or estrangement. Hegel centered in on work as a primary agent of this detachment, a move that was echoed in the writing of Karl Marx, who articulated ideas of alienation better than anyone had before and who is still considered one of the most important thinkers on the concept. Marx explained alien-

ambitionâ•…â•… 5 ation as the state that exists when things that should naturally go together are kept apart. Modern work, Marx argued, does this in many ways. The Industrial Revolution created workers who were alienated from their own essential humanity, because they were treated as “machines” as opposed to human beings. Further, they are alienated from one another because there is no social relationship involved in the production of a commodity. They are also alienated from the product they are producing, because it will be sold on the market with no relationship to the human that produced it, and from the act of work itself, because there is no satisfaction or meeting of desire involved. Preindustrial work did not have these attributes, as work was often performed in a family setting, with tangible results and, for many, a clear sense of pride and satisfaction. For Marx, and for many other philosophers of alienation, the farther society moves away from these more “natural” states, the more alienated we will become. See also Albee, Edward; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?; Bradbury, Ray: Martian Chronicles, The; Carver Raymond: “Cathedral”; Dos Passos, John: U.S.A. trilogy; Fitzgerald, F. Scott: Tender Is the Night; Gaines, Ernest J.: Lesson Before D ying, A; Hesse, Herman: Steppenwolf; Kushner, Tony: Angels in America; McCullers, Carson: Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The; Miller, Arthur: Crucible, The; Momaday, N. Scott: House Made of Dawn; O’Neill, Eugene: Iceman Cometh, The; Shakespeare, William: Tempest, The; Toumer, Jean: Cane. FURTHER READING Khan, Nasir. Development of the Concept and Theory of Alienation in Marx’s Writings. Oslo, Norway: Solum Forlag, 1995. King James Bible Online. Available online. URL: http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org. Accessed January 22, 2010. Schacht, Richard. Alienation. New York: Doubleday, 1970. Stearns, Peter. From Alienation to Addiction: Modern American Work in a Global Historical Perspective. Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm, 2008.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

ambition

“Ambition” is a difficult trait to pin down because it is so human: On the one hand, we want to reward ambition, yet on the other hand, we want to warn against it. Literature, especially, has taken the latter interesting approach to examining ambition; however, the term itself was originally relatively neutral, coming from the Latin ambito or ambitus, meaning “going around, circuit, edge, border.” Initially, this referred to a “going around” in the early Roman republic as a means of collecting votes or of canvassing for various political positions. Over time, however, the word ambition would take on other connotations, such as when the Roman poet Lucretius stated, “Angustum per iter luctantes ambitionis,” referring to ambitious men who were “struggling to press through the narrow way of ambition,” usually in a desire for honor, popularity, and power. It is perhaps because of these very human qualities—to desire love, honor, knowledge, and power—that the theme of ambition has been so prevalent in literature. Whether in Greek mythology or a 20th-century novel such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, literature often highlights the consequences of ambition gone awry. The dangers of ambition have been a popular theme not only in literature, but also through religious and mythological texts. In the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, for example, ambition is given much attention. The earliest consequence of ambition occurred when Adam and Eve decided to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, so that their “eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5), even though God had warned them that they would die if they ate of the tree. The result of such ambition? Adam and Eve were granted knowledge, but they were banished from the Garden of Eden. Later in Genesis, ambition is once again punished when the Tower of Babel is constructed, so that the people may “build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (11:4). The result of the Babylonians’ ambition was exactly what they had built the tower to defend against: God causes them to speak in different languages and to be scattered across the land, resulting in confusion.

6â•…â•… ambition Similarly, in Greek mythology we see the consequences of foolishly following ambition. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid tells the story of Phaethon, the son of the sun god Helios. Phaethon succumbs to his ambition for pride and reputation and brags to his friends that he is the son of Helios. Angered, Phaethon meets with his father and takes advantage of his father’s goodwill, securing permission to drive Helios’s chariot (the sun) for a day. Phaeton’s ambition exceeds his grasp, however, as he loses control of the horses, scorching the earth and turning Africa into a desert. The chariot is so out of control that Zeus is forced to intervene, striking down Phaethon with a lightning bolt. Phaethon was not the only character to “fall” due to his ambition, however. John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost tells the story of the fall of man, but also of the fall of Satan. Satan, filled with ambition and pride, wages war against God, thinking to supplant him. Satan is defeated and cast out of heaven; his ambition does not leave him, however, as he quickly decides to bring about “the fall of man” by introducing evil to the world. But beginning with the romantics in the 19th century, the character of Satan was not seen as an antagonist but as a protagonist, celebrated for his flawed but idealistic nature. In his 1932 essay on Dante, T. S. Eliot would refer to the character of Satan as a “Byronic Hero,” strengthening the image from 17th-century Britain to the romantic poets to the modern world. Since ambition is such a human struggle between making choices—and dealing with the consequences that result from these choices—philosophers, psychologists, and academics have been attempting to understand how and why we are driven by ambition. Perhaps one of the earliest examinations came when Plato presented his concept of the “tripartite soul” in Phaedrus (the concept of which he would later refine in The Republic). Plato’s analogy depicts the soul as a charioteer, noble horse, and base horse. Essentially, the charioteer (the individual) is always struggling to keep the two horses in control. In general, these three parts of the soul are taken to represent, respectively, reason, our noble desires (such as honor and courage), and our base or animal desires (such as ambition, lust, greed, avarice, and anger).

In many ways, this way of thinking about human desires and ambitions is quite similar to the model the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud proposed in his 1920 essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” in which he argues that the human psyche is divided into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id represents the human unconscious, amoral desire to be satisfied, whether it is by food, sex, drugs, or power. The ego strives to mediate between the id and the superego—sometimes having to satisfy one or the other; the ego is a conscious attempt to balance primitive desires with a rational need to negotiate the “real world.” The superego essentially functions as an individual’s conscience, reminding him or her what the “real world” views as acceptable and moral—and what it does not; the super-ego is at odds with the potentially ambitious id. Shortly after Freud presented his model for the psyche, human desires—of which ambition is one of the most powerful—found itself being examined through the lens of psychology yet again. If we consider ambition as essentially a form of motivation, a manifestation of desires, then it was the American psychologist Abraham Maslow who, in 1943, first helped contextualize ambition within his “hierarchy of needs.” Within this hierarchy, Maslow argues that humans have several types of needs, ranging from the most basic to the most complex; these needs address physical (hunger, sleep), safety (housing, jobs), social (love, friendship), esteem (achievements, power), and self-actualization (wisdom and enlightenment) desires. Ambition can easily be considered a “desire for esteem,” which nicely aligns with the Oxford English Dictionary’s primary definition of ambition as an “inordinate desire.” No examination of ambition would be complete without considering potentially the most famous literary example of “inordinate desire,” Macbeth. Within William Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth (the central, tragic figure) claims “I have no spur / To prick the side of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself / And falls on the other” (1.7.27–30). Macbeth faces an internal struggle between his noble, civilized desires (admirable ambition) and his more savage, primal desires (ambition as a tragic flaw). Perhaps Lady Macbeth

ambitionâ•…â•… 7 presents his struggle best when, pondering her husband’s character, she states: It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without, The illness that should accompany it. What thou wouldst highly That wouldst thou holily—wouldst not play false And yet would wrongly win. (1.5.17–22) Macbeth, in order to achieve his goals, gives in to his uncivilized desires and becomes a tragic figure: someone who made the wrong moral choice. Ultimately, this costs him not only the power that he desires but also his life. This trend of identifying ambition as a central character trait—sometimes a strength, sometimes a flaw—proceeded from the Byronic hero of the 19th century to the more modern antihero. Perhaps one of the best examples in modernism of an antihero is the character of Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Dedalus even goes so far as to compare himself to Satan when he claims “non serviam,” or “I will not serve.” Like the character of Satan, Dedalus desires to be free from accepted constraints—in his case, family, religion, and country. Dedalus desires to be more, to be great. Indeed, at the conclusion of Portrait he presents himself as his namesake (Daedalus). Other modern texts also highlight figures with conflicting desires. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Willie Loman struggles with his failure to achieve what he perceives as the modern, postWorld War II version of the American dream, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the ideal that every citizen of the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.” In short, Willie’s ambition was to achieve success through owning his own business and making as much money as possible. But it is Willie’s ambition—or lack thereof—that makes the play an intriguing look at how ambition can affect our lives.

An earlier text, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, revolves around the misunderstanding of the main character, Jay Gatsby, whose business success during the Roaring Twenties was probably caused by his ambition to achieve the American dream, to “do better” than his modest beginnings seemed to allow him to do. Gatsby’s rise in power and acquisition of wealth stand in stark contrast to Willie Loman’s failure to attain any of these things. Both characters, however, seem uncomfortable with their ambition and its consequences, remaining conflicted characters throughout the telling of their respective tales. In Achebe’s Things Fall Apart we are presented with yet another example of a conflicted character and how the consequences of ambition can lead to ruin. In this case, Okonkwo (the main character) struggles with the past and the present, old cultural norms and new cultural norms, as British colonialism introduces itself to his home village in Nigeria, Africa. Okonkwo’s misguided ambition proves to be his downfall, likening Things Fall Apart to some of the Greek tragedies. In modern society and literature, ambition is no longer presented as a human struggle with gods (at least not solely) but as a struggle within the individual. However, while ambition has always been an internal struggle between an “honorable” approach or a “dishonorable” approach to a situation, our modern, globalized world presents new layers to this theme. Individuals no longer struggle only within themselves: They also struggle to understand how their ambition can—and should—be acted upon in a society that has new means of waging warfare, merging cultures, free-market economies, and evolving forms of communication. In such a world, ambition does not always need to be a tragic flaw. After all, without ambition the United States would not have pushed westward, eventually spreading from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Without ambition, the world would not have achieved spaceflight, prompting new questions and new discoveries. Without ambition, we would not have the wealth of knowledge available to us through the Internet. Without ambition we would not have had the Civil Rights movement. However, without ambition we also would not have had the Holocaust, the Water-

8â•…â•… American dream, the gate scandal, or the stock market crashes of 1987 and 2008. Ambition itself is not a “good thing” or a “bad thing,” but it is a human thing. Ultimately, it is up to individuals, whether through literature, politics, or daily life, to determine how they will use their ambition. See also Aristophanes: Frogs, The; Dreiser, Theodore: American Tragedy, An; Hardy, Thomas: Jude the Obscure; Ishiguro, Kazuo: Remains of the Day, The; James, Henry: Portrait of a Lady, The; Marlowe, Christopher: Doctor Faustus; Plath, Sylvia: Bell Jar, The; Shakespeare, William: Julius Caesar; Shelley, Percy Bysshe: poems; Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row. FURTHER READING King James Bible Online. Available online. URL: http://www.kingjamesbible.org. Accessed January 22, 2010. Maslow, A. H. “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review 50, no. 4 (1943): 370–396.

Stephen Fonash

American dream, the

In his 1931 book The Epic of America, James Truslow Adams coined the phrase the American dream, which is “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is .╯.╯. a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position” (415). Within the whole of the American psyche, there lies an eternal hope that the nation’s citizens will be afforded the opportunity for both monetary growth and social advancement. Of course, hard work and industriousness are embedded within this concept: In the traditional American mindset, any man or woman can achieve whatever he or she wants as long as there is the drive and will to obtain it. Indeed, although “the American dream” was not used by Truslow until 1931, the concept has always been an integral part within the consciousness of Americans. In the 1776 Declaration of Indepen-

dence, Thomas Jefferson laid out what may be the most important and well-known reference to the American dream. The Declaration maintains that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Along with the other Founding Fathers, Jefferson believed that the United States could and should be a nation giving every opportunity to individual progress and achievement. In contrast to Great Britain and its strict class structure, the United States represented to Jefferson the chance for all Americans, even those with poor economic backgrounds, to become pillars of their communities. To much of the world, Benjamin Franklin, another Founding Father, has come to embody the American dream. In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1793), Franklin states that he arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as a nearpenniless youth. He describes walking down the streets with three bread rolls in his hands—those being all he could afford for dinner—and looking about him in order to gauge his opportunities. The remaining sections of the autobiography chronicle his emergence as one of the most influential men in the then-fledgling American nation. Through his diligence, Franklin transformed himself from a poor teenager into a successful businessman, inventor, and ambassador. He established the first library and first fire station, and he initiated the process of harnessing the power of electricity, so it could later be used for the public good. However, not all depictions of the American dream in literature have been quite so favorable. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby depicts the lure of the American dream as being a destructive force rather than a beneficial one. Jay Gatsby, the novel’s main character, believes that if he can move up in society by obtaining as much monetary wealth as possible, then he will be able to achieve the happiness he has always desired. Unlike Franklin, Gatsby is accused of having acquired his money through possibly disreputable means. He does not appear interested in working hard to achieve the luxuries of money; he is instead merely interested in obtaining the end results of actu-

American dream, theâ•…â•… 9 ally possessing it. These materialistic values, which he and the other characters in the novel uphold, serve to produce a general feeling of despondency throughout the text. By the end of the novel, this despondency leads to despair, and the greed that overruns the novel leads to Gatsby’s murder. In a similar vein, Arthur Miller’s 1949 play Death of a Salesman is also critical of the effects the American dream can produce in those who believe wholeheartedly in its monetary promise alone. Like Jay Gatsby, Willy Loman, the play’s protagonist, is obsessed with making money. Rather than finding a job as a physical laborer, which he enjoys, Willy devotes his life to selling. In other words, he devotes himself to the sole task of making money. Throughout the play, Willy experiences flashbacks in which he relives various incidents from his life. He is a constant daydreamer and therefore has a difficult time focusing on the reality of the moment he is currently experiencing. Ultimately, Willy’s obsession with the American dream makes him forget that he has a family who loves him and natural talents that he could employ. In the end, Miller’s depiction of the quest for the American dream is even more somber than is Fitzgerald’s: Willy kills himself, while his son Happy decides to follow along in his father’s footsteps, avenging what he sees as the wrongs society enacted against Willy. At his father’s funeral, Happy asserts: “Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have—to come out number-one man” (2049). This conclusion to the play indicates that Miller believes that what he views as the treacherous myth of the American dream will continually perpetuate itself, relentlessly casting its dark shadow on future generations of young Americans. Yet it can easily be argued that those who feel slighted by the promise of the American dream the most are minority groups—those who have been constantly disenfranchised by the American governmental system and who have been forced to view the hypocrisy they see as inherent within the Dream their entire lives. In his famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, the African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that his hope for the equality of all races in America was one “deeply rooted in the American dream.” King

believed that all Americans should be provided the opportunity to prosper to their fullest potential. Much like King, the Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes also lamented that minority groups were never given the opportunity to experience the hope the American dream supposedly provides to its nation’s citizens. In “Let America Be America Again,” Hughes juxtaposes the image of what privileged white Americans envision their country to be with his own experience in the country as an African-American citizen, remarking that “America never was America to me” (l. 5). Likewise, in his 1951 poem “Harlem,” Hughes asks the question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” (l. 1), ultimately suggesting that minority groups are denied the realization of their dreams in America. Deciding to mimic some of Hughes’s themes, Lorraine Hansberry adopted one of the lines from “Harlem” as the title to her 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun. Hansberry’s play follows the lives of the Youngers, an African-American family living in 1950s Chicago. In the drama, Lena Younger, the family matriarch, receives insurance money from the death of her husband. She puts a deposit down on a house and gives the rest of it to her son, Walter Lee. Almost predictably, Walter Lee quickly squanders the rest of the money on a “get rich quick” business scheme that fails. After all, as has been shown in many of the prior examples, a driving theme throughout much American literature is that the pursuit of monetary gain above all other factors almost inescapably leads to suffering. Because Lena does at least have the chance to put the money down for the house, the play actually concludes on a somewhat positive note. Though the family expects to experience racial oppression in the white neighborhood to which they are moving, they still decide to proceed with the move and to face that problem together. By the play’s end, then, the family is unified. They have all forgiven Walter, and they have come to realize that appreciating family relationships in the same way that Lena does should construct the basis of a “real” American dream. Further, in his 1993 short story collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistf ight in Heaven, the Native American writer Sherman Alexie shows that, like African Americans, Native Ameri-

10â•…â•… childhood cans experience the idea of the American dream in a unique way. Unlike other minority groups, Native Americans are left out of the American dream because the ideal of white prosperity and “industriousness” led to the destruction and seizing of what was once Indian property and land. Rather than simply being unattainable, the American dream in this case takes on an even more sinister connotation. Overall, whether they realize it or not, the American dream remains a fundamental factor in most Americans’ lives. Self-fulfillment through monetary satisfaction and whether or not that satisfaction was gained through sufficient hard work is constantly debated and discussed in the media, at neighbor’s houses, and over coffee with friends. Literature is just one venue Americans use to determine their own successes and the successes of those around them. Just as Willy Loman passed on his way of viewing the world to his son Happy, the lens that the idea of the American dream provides will continue to sustain itself for countless future generations of American citizens. See also Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women; Alvarez, Julia: How the García Girls Lost Their Accents; Cisneros, Sandra: House on Mango Street, The; Dreiser, Theodore: American Tragedy, An; Hinton, S. E.: Outsiders, The; Kerouac, Jack: On the Road; Naylor, Gloria: Women of Brewster Place, The; O’Neill, Eugene: Iceman Cometh, The; Sinclair, Upton: Jungle, The; Steinbeck, John: Of Mice and Men. FURTHER READING Adams, James Truslow. The Epic of America. Baltimore, Md.: Simon Publications, 2001. Brown, Lloyd W. “The American Dream and the Legacy of Revolution in the Poetry of Langston Hughes.” Studies in Black Literature 7 (Spring 1976): 16–18. Greenbie, Marjorie Barstow. American Saga: The History and Literature of the American Dream of a Better Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. In Norton Anthology of American Literature. 4th ed. Vol. 2, edited by Ronald Gottesman and Laurence B. Holland. New York: Norton, 1994, 1995, 2,048.

LuElla Putnam

childhood

In 1960, the French historian Philippe Ariès advanced the hypothesis that the idea of childhood was practically nonexistent before the early modern period. The controversy about the existence or absence of the idea prior to that time in history gave rise to a host of studies on childhood. But what does the word childhood mean? Our awareness that it refers to a distinct period of human life is natural, but how do we determine its duration? How long does childhood last? Many psychologists and specialists in children’s studies conclude that childhood is an endlessly complex term. All have agreed that it refers to a set of experiences and behaviors, characteristic for the earlier part of our lives, meant to prepare us for adulthood and active life. As to its duration, individual differences should be taken into account. In this sense, childhood is defined in opposition to adulthood: One is no longer a child when one becomes an adult. However, this theory has not sufficed, and the growth of research on the subject is telling. The common denominator of many studies on childhood is the attempt to grasp its essence, to define the experience of being a child and to explain the nature of children. One of the most important conclusions these studies have drawn is that our notions of childhood have changed. They have adapted themselves to society and to its conception of what a child should be. Thus, the ideas about childhood during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries evolved continually. Writing and literature tell us more about this evolution. Childhood has for long been one of the central themes of English literature. Children were the subject of a great number of Elizabethan lyrics, and we can find them in the works of Dryden and Pope. However, childhood as a truly substantial theme arose with the novel, and its importance gradually increased through the 18th century. Later on, the theme developed and matured, and we can easily find its numerous ramifications in the literature of the 19th century as well as the 20th. Today, it is seen as essential for the critical understanding of the literary production of the 19th century and the Victorian period. In addition, the 19th and 20th centuries saw the steady emergence of a real literature for children, either for their instruction or entertain-

childhoodâ•…â•… 11 ment. Thus, the child has been either the subject or the object of a plethora of writings since the 18th century. These writings reflect the dichotomy of childhood, which was seen as a symbol of growth and development on the one hand and as a symbol of regression and ignorance of the world on the other. Authors such as James Janeway (A Token for Children, 1671–72) spread the doctrine of original sin during the 17th century and constructed highly moralizing, religion-oriented visions of childhood. All of these were based on the theory of the Christian “fallen state” and looked upon children with pessimism. Childhood was seen as the most decisive period for the acquisition of the fundamentals of spirituality and for the construction of true faith. However, the thinkers of the 18th century promoted reason as one of the highest virtues. The century became a period of transition, of which childhood was the supreme symbol, celebrating the cult of nature, the purity of mind and soul, and the triumph of innate goodness. Contrary to what was professed in earlier centuries, childhood was perceived in an increasingly positive light. Soon it became a favorite theme of the sentimental novel, and the poverty and misfortunes of guiltless, insightful, and virtuous children were an object of considerable import and frequent discussion in the works of many women writers (for example, Elizabeth Bonhote’s Hortensia; or, The Distressed Wife, 1769). The period saw the emergence of the idea that in childhood, the concepts of imagination, sensibility, and nature were joined in one. The influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Émile (1762) on this representation of childhood in the literature of the times is undeniable. But sentimentality was not reserved to the 18th century only, and in her early novels, George Eliot molded childhood according to the same principles. Her children were portrayed as carefree and unencumbered with adult sorrow and the awareness of death. An interesting peculiarity of her work is the attention Eliot pays to baby-talk and children’s ways of talking. For William Blake (e.g., Songs of Innocence, 1789) and William Wordsworth (e.g., “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” 1807, or “We Are Seven,” 1798), the child became a theme of a certain weight. For

Blake, childhood signified innocence; for Wordsworth, the child had natural piety and wisdom, and his famous line “The Child is father of the Man” (“My Heart Leaps Up,” 1802) became an increasingly popular motif. The child and the process of growing up were common metaphors for the regeneration and renewal of society, while childhood was seen as the equivalent of humanity in its infancy. Gradually, children became symbols of hope and childhood synonymous to new beginnings. Such was the case in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860–61). The child in Dickens grew to be the incarnation of spontaneity, love, and innocence on the background of the ugliness, squalor and inhumanity of industrial London. Dickens offered his readers a view through the child’s eyes, creating a palpable experience of childhood. Indeed, many of his novels bear the names of children—Oliver Twist (1837–39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), Dombey and Son (1846–48), David Copperf ield (1849–50), Little Dorrit (1855–57). Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre (1847) explored the victimization, loneliness, and isolation of children within a hostile environment. Virtually deprived of childhood, the girls at the Lowood school for poor and orphaned children are vowed to a life of slavery and an early death. Jane Eyre fed on a strong heritage of gothic villainy and persecuted femininity to denounce the rigid education and brutal practices of the schooling system. While Brontë chose to give the reader an account of the negative effects a difficult childhood might have on an adult’s life, Henry James focused some of his writings on children exclusively. James was mostly concerned with the innocence of childhood and how this innocence can be corrupted if the family circle is unbalanced. The major themes of both What Maisie Knew (1897) and The Turn of the Screw (1898) are knowledge and ignorance, and they explore a number of problematic Freudian concepts, among which are children’s exposure to sexuality and early contact with death. During the second half of the 19th century, Lewis Carroll was one of the authors who wrote extensively for and about children. His Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Through the Looking-Glass (1871) and Sylvie and Bruno (1889–93)

12â•…â•… coming of age were specifically produced for an audience of children and even their cover art was conceived in such a way as to please children. Carroll’s correspondence with his editors is one of the numerous testimonials that a real concern about children and childhood had developed. Moreover, Carroll’s writings contain a great deal of information about what it meant to be a British child during the Victorian period. Laden with political implications and comments on the British Empire, Alice’s world places a heavy burden on the shoulders of its youngest subjects whose childhood is to prepare them for servitude. Almost at the same time in America, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) appear as stories of childhood escape, of willful isolation from society and a continual struggle against conformity. In line with the tradition of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s portrayal of children (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852), Twain’s works discuss freedom and liberty in a reaction against the limits and constraints of society. All of these are themes that echo William Blake’s natural, joyful, carefree, and enlightened romantic child. During the 20th century, childhood developed into a favorite theme for an ever-increasing number of genres. The examples vary extensively, from C. S. Lewis’s indirect portrayals of children at times of war to the poems, diaries, and writings by children (e.g., Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl, 1947) and children writing of the various experiences of their own childhood. While in earlier centuries childhood was a preparation and a period of growing up, the early 19th and 20th centuries saw the rise of the idea of holding on to childhood with authors such as J. M. Barrie (Peter Pan, 1902–06) and Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine, 1957; Farewell Summer, 2006). They represented the magic, wonders, and transience of childhood. The scope for the study of childhood in literature is wide indeed. Today, researchers are asking more questions. They are discussing problems that had never been looked into before, and their work has uncovered a remarkable variety in the portrayal of children and childhood in literature, beyond the fundamental polarities of the good and the bad child. Studies, among which are those of Jacqueline Banerjee, Andrea Immel, and Michael Witmore,

have shown that childhood stands at the heart of many works of literature from which it was initially thought absent. Thus, from the 20th century onwards, there has been a global and unprecedented interest in childhood. See also Augustine, Saint: Confessions of St. Augustine; Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird; Morrison, Toni: Beloved; Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace; Winterson, Jeanette: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. FURTHER READING Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York: Vintage Books, 1962. Banerjee, Jacqueline. Through the Northern Gate: Childhood and Growing Up in British Fiction, 1719–1901. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1996. Coveney, Peter. The Image of Childhood: The Individual and Society: a Study of the Theme in English Literature. London: Penguin Books, 1967. Cunningham, Hugh. Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500. London: Longman, 1995. Immel, Andrea, and Michael Witmore, eds. Childhood and Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550– 1800. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Margarita Georgieva

coming of age

Most scholars agree on a standard definition of the coming-of-age narrative: Simply put, it follows the development of a child or adolescent into adulthood. The roots of this narrative theme can be traced back to the bildungsroman, or “formation novel.” Late 18th-century German novels, such as Johann Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795), established a narrative pattern that would be followed by several other authors in the forthcoming centuries. This pattern typically features a young protagonist—either male or female—who undergoes a troubled search for an adult identity by process of trials, experiences, and revelations. This theme is prominent in several well-known European and American novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Charles Dickens’s David

coming of ageâ•…â•… 13 Copperf ield (1849–50) and Great Expectations (1860–61); Horatio Alger, Jr.’s Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks (1868); Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1869); Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884); James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916); and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951). The popularity of this narrative has continued into the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as shown in critically acclaimed books such as Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1993) and Jon Krakauer’s 1996 account of the life and death of Chris McCandless in Into the Wild, and through popular culture texts, such as J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. While there is agreement on a standard working definition of a coming-of-age narrative, there is little agreement among scholars on the constituent elements of these narratives. James Hardin, a theorist of genre studies, argues that there can be no agreement about the elements of a coming-ofage narrative because of the various meanings of the word Bildung in German. While most scholars interpret the word’s meaning as “formation,” Hardin contends that this interpretation is unique to a series of 18th- and 19th-century novels, and to use that term and its meaning for an examination of 20thand 21st-century novels is to take it out of its proper context. Other interpretations of the German word Bildung, such as initiation, education, and building, have served to further complicate understanding of the coming-of-age narrative. In addition to a debate over the origin of the term, other scholars argue over the age group of protagonists coming of age in these texts. Most 18th- and 19th-century protagonists featured in these novels came of age in their midto-late teenage years. Throughout the 20th century, however, the range in years for a coming-of-age narrative widened from this age group to include protagonists in their early to mid-20s. It is for this reason that the genre studies scholar Barbara White limits the definition of a coming-of-age narrative to focus on protagonists between the ages of 12 and 19. Additionally, in the latter part of the 20th century, the works of anthropologists, such as Arnold van Gennup and Margaret Mead, have added to the debate over the elements of a coming-of-age

narrative. Through their research in rites of passage and social development and structure, the works of anthropologists such as van Gennup and Mead allow scholars to examine the sociocultural implications of these narratives. It is the sociocultural implications that cause the most debate among scholars. Indeed, since a coming-of-age narrative is dependent on a quest for an adult identity, this narrative is closely linked to other areas of identity development, such as gender, race, social class, and national identity (see nationalism). As Kenneth Millard argues, a recurring element of the coming-of-age narrative is the way in which a protagonist’s adult identity is framed by historical events and points of origin and conditioned by social obligations and expectations. Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn serves as an example of this theory. In the novel, a young Huck accompanies Jim, a runaway slave, on a trip down the Mississippi River to reach the free North. The novel’s climax occurs when Jim is caught by slave catchers, and Huck must make a decision between informing Miss Watson, Jim’s owner, about Jim’s location or attempting to free Jim from his bondage. In his decision, Huck must balance the social obligation of returning “property” to its rightful owner and his own conscience—during his trip, Huck has come to see Jim not as a piece of property but as a human. Ironically, Huck makes the decision to “go to hell” by following his conscience, attempting to free Jim from his captivity. Twain’s novel, of course, was published after the institution of slavery was abolished, but it serves as a historical point of reference, as Finn would have grown up in pre-Civil War America. Huck Finn’s adult identity is framed within these racist confines; although African Americans were free, they still were considered as inferior to whites. Thus, the socially acceptable and expected thing for Huck to do would be to turn Jim in to Miss Watson, and it is the deviation from this expectation that Huck believes will condemn his soul. The Huck Finn example also serves as a way to highlight three additional features of the comingof-age narrative. One of these features is the loss of childhood innocence. In Twain’s novel, although Huck naïvely misunderstands the consequences of his decision, his naïveté speaks volumes to readers.

14â•…â•… coming of age The consequence of his decision marks his transition from childhood to adulthood. Prior to the novel’s climax, Huck has been witness to the darker side of the adult world—from his father’s racist diatribe about the voting rights of recently freed slaves to a long and bloody family feud to the con artistry of the Duke and Dauphin. Unbeknownst to Huck—but abundantly clear to the novel’s readers—is the influence that these events have on his decision to attempt to free Jim—the first adult decision of his life. Because of his experiences and this decision, Huck realizes that he may be outcast from his society, as he has deviated from its expected adult norms, and he will no longer be able to go back to live his previous lifestyle of barefooted, pipesmoking truancy. This deviation from expected norms highlights another feature of the coming-of-age narrative: the realization of social expectations and norms. To once again use the Huck Finn example, Huck fully realizes the implications of his decision: He considers himself damned and acknowledges that he will be unable to fully participate in the adult world because of this violation. As such, he is able to recognize the social, adult world now laid out before him. While this realization further distances Huck from his childhood innocence, it also presents him with a choice: Either accept this adult world and conform to its norms and standards or decide on self-exile. Huckleberry Finn, of course, chooses the latter, as he decides to light out for the territories of the American West rather than conform to the rigid social obligations demanded by pre–Civil War rural Missouri. Huck’s choice to light out for the territories highlights a third feature of the coming-of-age narrative. His decision to leave is rooted in another choice: to accept a socially constructed identity, or to construct a personal sense of identity for oneself. While this idea is one of the oldest and most common themes of literature, when examined through the lens of a coming-of-age narrative, it takes on additional weight. Not all coming-of-age protagonists are as fortunate as Huck Finn, though. For some, their gender, race, and class serve as impediments to a sense of freedom. As the feminist scholar Rachel

Blau DuPlessis observes, most 19th-century female protagonists have two options presented before them when coming of age: marriage, the socially acceptable option for young women; or death, the end result for those young women who deviate from socially expected norms. Indeed, constraining one’s identity to social norms and expectations is the choice for one of 19th-century America’s most wellknown female protagonists, Jo March. In Alcott’s Little Women, the creative and headstrong Jo winds up married by the novel’s end. Race and class also serve as factors in these narratives. The unnamed narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) comes to realize his situation very early on in the novel. After the narrator, a promising young African-American student, agrees to show a white benefactor the poor living conditions of sharecroppers living around the narrator’s college, he is expelled from school and is forced to decide between accepting society’s roles for an African-American man or developing his own identity. Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild features the real-life story of Chris McCandless, a college graduate from a well-to-do East Coast family. When McCandless realizes the limitations of the options set before him—continued graduate studies, a position in a well-paying job in the business world—he renounces his previous materialistic life and sets off on the roads of America in an attempt to discover who he truly is. National character is also an important factor in coming-of-age narratives. Some preeminent American literature scholars, such as Leslie Fiedler, Ihab Hassan, and R. W. B Lewis, have argued that the coming-of-age narrative is one of the most dominant narratives in American literature. For these scholars, a sense of history, or lack thereof, is key to their view of the importance of the coming-of-age narrative in American literature. At the heart of this contention is the argument that the American national identity shares several key characteristics with the coming-of-age narrative. The first of these characteristics is Lewis’s argument that the American national character is primarily based on renewal and innocence. His theory of the American Adam states that American culture is constantly going back to beginnings and new starts, an attempt to

commodification/commercializationâ•…â•… 15 revert to a lost childhood or return to a forgotten Eden. This theory, according to Lewis, is at the center of most American literature—a constant return to youth, with an emphasis on the experiences, revelations, and trials inherent in a coming-of-age narrative. Thus, in a sense, the focus on coming of age in American literature and in the national character can be argued as an unwillingness to acknowledge history: All events are subject to change and to reinterpretation, a kind of automatic “redo” where each generation must begin its task of the coming of age process. Like Lewis, Ihab Hassan sees the idea of innocence as a conscious denial of American history, but he contends that the denial is also firmly rooted in political ideology. The focus on a wide-eyed, naive innocence of each generation defining itself is not just a literary trope for Hassan; rather, it is deeply enmeshed in an ideology that offers no roots, no genealogies, and no sense of a permanent and static identity. For Leslie Fiedler, this focus on coming-ofage narratives underscores the preoccupation with youth found in American culture. Fiedler argues that this desire to return to a childlike, Edenic state is predicated on the idea that the American national character is constantly fluid and dynamic, youthful and energetic. To allow the national character to grow static and permanent would force American culture to grow old, and perhaps grow up. The coming-of-age narrative is quite simple to define; however, the implications of that definition are numerous and wide-ranging. What began as a way to fictionalize how a child became an adult became complicated throughout the centuries by other issues. Race, class, and gender all play a pivotal role in how a youth is expected to grow into an adult in various societies. Furthermore, the acceptance or rejection of social obligations and duties is another factor in how teens grow into adults. All of these factors expand a relatively benign textbook definition into a wide-ranging, thoroughly complex theme. See also Anaya, Rudolfo: Bless Me, Ultima; Anderson, Sherwood: Winesburg, Ohio; Austen, Jane: Emma; Chopin, Kate: Awakening, The; Crane, Stephen: Red Badge of Courage, The; Kincaid, Jamaica: Annie John; Knowles, John: Separate Peace, A; Marshall, Paule

Brown Girl, Brownstone; McCarthy, Cormac: All the Pretty Horses; McCullers, Carson: Member of the Wedding, The; Shakespeare, William: Henry IV, Part I; Steinbeck, John: Red Pony, The; Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island; Tolkien, J. R. R.: Hobbit, The; Updike, John: “A & P.” FURTHER READING Du Plessis, Rachel Blau. Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Fiedler, Leslie A. An End to Innocence: Essays and Culture and Politics. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. Hardin, James, ed. Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: South Carolina University Press, 1991. Hassan, Ihab. Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965. Lewis, R. W. B. The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1955. Millard, Kenneth. Coming of Age in Contemporary American Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. White, Barbara. Growing Up Female: Adolescent Girlhood in American Fiction. Westwood, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Daniel G. Jones

commodification/commercialization

Commodification is a multifaceted concept, having roots in political and economic theory as well as cultural and literary studies. Broadly defined, commodification is the transformation of immaterial, social relationships into commercial relationships that often utilize the language and ideological stances of a market driven economy and capitalist society (for example, terms and ideas surrounding “buying and selling,” “supply and demand”). In order to understand this important and complex idea, we need to understand the etymology of the word commodification. At the root of the word is commodity, which in modern language usage is defined as “a kind of thing for use of sale, an article of commerce, an object of

16â•…â•… commodification/commercialization trade” and “food or raw materials as objects of trade” (Oxford English Dictionary). The act of trading one good for another is an ancient one, and the act of using currency to purchase a grown or manufactured good is almost as ancient. The act of commodification (sometimes referred to as commoditization) is significant, then, because it is a modern metamorphosis of an ancient idea. Today, it is not only grown and manufactured goods that can be bought and sold: Ideas, social relationships, even individuals can now be viewed as commodities—goods available for trade or purchase. Commodification, in effect, turns people and ideas into goods and machines. The idea of commodification was first broadly explored when, in the Communist Manifesto (1848), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, noted that everything—not merely food, clothing, and other tangible goods—can become a commodity in a modern, industrial, capitalistic society. It is important to remember, however, that a commodity derives its value not from what it can do (use value) but from what it can be sold or traded for (exchange value), often in order to attain some sort of perceived cultural prestige or social status or identity. To Marx and Engels, people (more specifically, the modern working class), as well as the goods they produce, have become commodities themselves, since people “live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.” In other words, industrialization has increased the amount of commodities that can be produced (and often increased their exchange value as well), but the machine cannot run without the human being. However, the commodity costs money to produce, and so it must always be sold at a set minimum price. The human being, though, has no set minimum price, requiring only “the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race.” As a result, the laborer himself becomes a commodity in that his wage is tied to his use in producing the original good. In other words, the “worth” of the laborer is directly associated to the worth of the good (and the exchange value of the laborer is nearly always lower than the exchange value of the good).

However, more and more the workers are separated from the means of production: Workers in a capitalistic society often have no connection to the commodity they are producing; the commodity will often not be purchased or utilized by the laborer’s own community. Rather, they work for a company that is not connected to their community, producing commodities that have no relationship to them, by using machines that they merely operate. Eventually, this leads to the Marxist concept of alienation, in which laborers feels disconnected from their own work, from what they produce, and ultimately from other human beings in their community (since the product of their work is purchased by others and made by machines). The idea of alienation is important to understanding commodification because it deflects the focus of production from the human being, making him a minor part of the process. When this happens, goods can take on a life of their own, almost seeming to appear magically on the shelf of a store, where someone will purchase the good, often without having any idea where, how, or by whom it was made. The process of production (including the human factor) is hidden, and the commodity itself appears as a “natural object,” as if its existence is a matter of natural means, as opposed to manufactured means. When this occurs, it is often referred to as “commodity fetishism” (Marx, Capital) or “reification” (Lukács, History and Class Consciousness), within which the material world is viewed as objectified and out of society’s control; the primary human actions in a reified world are those of buying and selling. In recent years, the concepts of commodification and reification have been analyzed within the sphere of popular culture. For example, theorists such as Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1944) have identified the emergence of “the culture industry,” which views popular culture as a “factory,” mass-producing goods for society’s consumption. This easy consumption of goods—being a “good consumer” in a capitalistic society—results in satisfying a perceived need for “culture,” and that being able to purchase and thereby participate in this culture will therefore create happy citizens.

commodification/commercializationâ•…â•… 17 A criticism of such a relationship, however, is that the culture industry does not accurately reflect true human needs; instead, it creates false needs—to own certain goods in order to belong as a functioning member of society—as opposed to fulfilling “true” human needs such as liberty, creativity, and community. In other words, the culture industry creates a commodity that it sells to society as a “need” (often through the effects of advertising); society purchases the commodity, which minimizes identity and creates new, similar needs for newer, similar goods. Along the way, the human aspect of society’s consumption is weakened, and culture itself becomes commodified, creating a “culture industry.” The need and the way of belonging and having identity in a culture industry is through ownership and image. Anything, it seems, can be commodified: art, music, footwear, ideas, “beauty,” human relationships, even dreams and ideas. The use value of the good becomes obscured, and the culturally manufactured exchange value is what compels the consumer to buy a Degas painting, an original pressing of The Beatles’ White Album, copyright a new idea or way of doing something, sell cosmetic surgeries and “fad diets,” participate in human trafficking, and even corrupt (or change) the American dream. Literature has long been society’s way of taking a close look at itself, and many literary works have taken a long, hard look at commodification and its related process, commercialization. Perhaps the most significant work to examine how something immaterial and human can be changed into a commodity—something to be purchased, or something that has an exchange value greater than its use value—is Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. In Death of a Salesman, the Loman family is struggling to find its identity and place in mid20th-century America. This struggle, however, is compounded by modern society’s generally uncaring attitude, best exemplified by Willy Loman’s heartless and dramatic firing by Mr. Wagner, and its obsession with material possessions and social status. While each character in the play is complicit in the commodification of the American dream, none exhibits it better than Willy Loman, who commodifies his personal image, especially in his perpetual desire to be “well liked” and his valuing of labels. For

example, he believes a punching bag to be of good quality because “It’s got Gene Tunney’s signature on it!” (1.1). Willy’s willing participation in the culture industry will not allow him to separate real, human needs from the reified, manufactured image of the American dream—in Willy Loman’s case, to be a successful, well-liked, and influential salesman. In a similar vein, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s pursuit of an idealized, successful image of himself—in short, the commodified version of the American dream—led him to a lifelong pursuit of buying an image and a reputation. Yes, Gatsby is a “self-made man,” part of the American dream mythos, but he is a self-made man who places greater exchange value on things and ideas than he should, and conversely, he places little value upon human friendships. The “pursuit of happiness” in Gatsby devolves largely into a pursuit of quick, greedy, superficial moments of happiness. It is money, possessions, and reputation—as well as being part of a social group (being invited to one of Gatsby’s parties, for example) that stand in as “needs,” not the traditional American dream ideas of rugged individualism, human connection, or liberty. Jay Gatsby, however, was not the only character to buy into the commodified American dream being produced by the early culture industry. Daisy, in how she views herself and how she is viewed by others, also acts as a commodity within The Great Gatsby. Daisy, married to her husband, Tom, but in love with Jay Gatsby, is a bright and progressive woman. However, in the commodified world of the Roaring Twenties, within which Gatsby is set, it is easier for her to “buy into” the image of the woman upon whom society has placed value: simple, fun, and beautiful. Putting such an exchange value on the image and role of a woman in this society has the consequences of Daisy wishing the following for her baby girl: “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 12). Daisy hopes that her daughter will be “marketable,” and valued for her successful image within the society of Gatsby. But Daisy is not the only character commodifying women. Daisy’s husband, Tom, views her as a possession rather than as a human being—as he does many women in the novel, even having an affair, not out of love but out

18â•…â•… commodification/commercialization of exchange value. For Tom, women are merely something to be “owned.” In a different yet similar manner, Jay Gatsby also views Daisy as a commodity. While both Miller and Fitzgerald examined the commodification of ideas and ideals, Don DeLillo focuses not only on ideas, but also provides a strong critique of the culture industry in his postmodern novel White Noise. Within this novel, DeLillo examines modern suburban life. From the opening paragraph, the reader is bombarded with lists of goods being moved into college dormitories: “stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hair dryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags—onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints” (1). By presenting us with such an exhaustive list, we are immediately submerged into a materialist and image-conscious society—a society that has a department of Hitler Studies, taught by Jack Gladney, a professor who does not speak German and who is helping a friend establish a department of Elvis Studies; a society where the children are often more mature than the adults, where drugs are exchanged for sex, where the rearrangement of the supermarket is profoundly disorienting to the people of the community, and where the omnipresent television chatters in the background. Other literary works address commodification in different and interesting ways. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, for example, asks about the relationship between the use value and the exchange value of books and knowledge. In Catch-22, Joseph Heller presents an absurdist narrative of war within which soldiers and prostitutes alike are viewed as disposable commodities. In Beloved, Toni Morrison examines how human beings can be commodified, largely through the portrayal of characters who were born into slavery and who are not viewed as subjects but as objects or commodities. A good example of self-commodification can be seen in the character of Joshua, who changes his

name to Stamp Paid after he “handed his wife over to his master’s son” (124) in order to “buy” his life, and later his freedom. Stamp Paid spends the rest of the novel questioning notions of identity, obligation, and community. Commodification and the culture industry are part of modern-day society; they are built into our political, economic, and entertainment industries. While commodification can be difficult to identify, it is worthwhile to consider its role in everyday life. How does commodification change (for better or worse) how we see the world? How does it change how we view ideas and products? Most important, how does it change how we view each other? Literature, it seems, remains one of our best means of asking—and answering—these questions. See also Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders; Dinesen, Isak: Out of Africa; Erdrich, Louise: Bingo Palace, The; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: House of the Seven Gables, The; Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World; Kincaid, Jamaica Small Place, A; Kingston, Maxine Hong: Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book; Lawrence D. H.: Rainbow, The; Women in Love; Melville, Herman: “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”; O’Connor, Flannery: Wise Blood; Pope, Alexander: Rape of the Lock, The; Roy, Arundhati: God of Small Things, The; Steinbeck, John: Grapes of Wrath, The; Swift, Jonathan: Modest Proposal, A; Tolkien, J. R. R.: Hobbit, The; Twain, Mark: Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A; Updike, John: “A & P”; Wharton, Edith: House of Mirth. FURTHER READING DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 1984, 1985. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1999. Lukács, Georg. History and Class Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Center for Digital Discourse and Culture. Available online. URL: http://eprints. cddc.vt.edu/Marxists/archive/marx/works/1848/ communist-manifesto/ch01.htm. Accessed January 22, 2010. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.

communityâ•…â•… 19 Tyson, Louis. Psychological Politics of the American Dream: The Commodification of Subjectivity in Twentieth-Century American Literature. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1994.

Steven Fonash

community

Community is an oft-invoked, seemingly simple term that has widely varying historical and current meanings dependent on sociocultural and discipline-specific contexts. As such, its meanings differ between everyday discourse and the specialized terrain of scientific, technological, and sociological discourse. Today, the fundamental notions of community are undergoing a sea change because of the emergence of new communication technologies, access to the Internet, and the formation of different kinds of Web-based communities that have paradoxically both expanded as well as made more intimate the connections between people. Blogospheres, chat rooms, Web sites such as YouTube and MySpace, and other such new avenues of expression in cyberspace have democratized and made the world more intimate in ways never imagined before. Local communities have been revived even as cyber-technology has been accused of destroying traditional bonds of community life. In its most commonly understood sense, community implies networks of solidarity and connection that attest to a primary instinctual need of humans beings as social animals. Community is thus an important source of meaning and validation in human lives and is predicated on a set of commonly held beliefs, values, interests, knowledge and information, and interpretive frameworks deemed as good by those who belong to the community. A sense of belonging to a collective is an integral aspect of community, and this sense of belonging may be located in a series of things, whether it be a common cultural heritage, religion, language, rituals, race, ethnicity, nation, or geographical territory. Indeed, a nation is merely a larger political form of community. In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the young Stephen Dedalus inscribes his name in his geography book followed by a series of addresses that locate him in a chain of increasingly wider personal and community

networks: “Stephen Dedalus, Class of Elements, Clongowes College, Sallins, County Kildare, Ireland, Europe, the World, the Universe” (24). Here the widening circle of belonging extending from his class, college, county, country, and continent to the very universe itself traces Stephen’s expanding notion of self entrenched in a chain of being that ties the individual to the community. In 1887, German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies, in his book Community and Civil Society, developed the distinction between community—which he said is informal and ethically oriented, with mutual bonds of a traditional communal life—and civil society, which is impersonal, formal, and relatively more amoral, with merely administrative ties. The chief distinction in Tonnies’s view is that while the onus of pursuing the community’s goals of common well-being is on its members, in a civil society, the group itself becomes instrumental for its members’ individual goals and aims. Community may be exemplified by a family or neighborhood, while a modern state or industrial corporation arising out of an urban capitalist setting is an example of society. The former is romanticized as embodying more enduring, personal relationships while in the latter relationships are more impersonal, superficial, and motivated by professional and monetary connections. Tonnies’s theorization between the organic mutually sustaining holistic natures of a community as opposed to the individual-centered society has become central to debates on the sociological, moral, and political implications of community. The chief distinction between the two modes of organization or belonging can be seen as that between holistic communitarianism versus individual liberalism, and this has implications for citizenship, political participation, and notions of common good. However, communities, although they imply a largely positive social network based on collaborative ties and shared goals, can also be oppressive forces if they assume an identity that is oriented on exclusionary or supremacist principles in the guise of universal or community values. Nazi Germany under Hitler’s rule, guided by principles of Aryan supremacy, or Fascist Italy under Mussolini are examples of pathological community formations that pervert the generally benign and organic roots

20â•…â•… community of community. The relation between individual and community has to be one that is oriented toward the common good but still gives the individual space to exercise his or her own free will. The conflict between individual and the community is a common theme in literature and focuses on opposing forces, society, history, and the community at odds with individual subjectivity, desire, and will. In classical Greek drama, the community appears in the guise of the chorus of townspeople articulating the voice of common sense and reason. Whether it is the group of elders in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King who preach temperance and moderation to the hotheaded and arrogant Oedipus or the chorus of women in Euripides’ Medea who call upon her maternal instincts to subdue her desire for revenge against Jason, they both advocate the central principle of the golden mean which was such a cornerstone of Greek civilization. Literary theorists such as Northrop Frye have argued that tragedy as a form usually ends with the expulsion or death of the overweening tragic protagonist who threatens social norms and community well-being through his larger-than-life desires or hubris, while comedies end with community values being restored through communal celebrations, such as a wedding where the hero and heroine are finally united after a series of obstacles. These community values are affirmed in such works as William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Much Ado about Nothing. Twentieth-century literature has been marked by a critique of a postindustrial society that values efficiency and productivity over the more personal communal bonds. The themes of alienation and isolation amid the impersonality of the modern metropolis are recurrent in modernist literature and especially resonant in the poetry of T. S. Eliot in the figure of a much-misunderstood Alfred J. Prufrock, who yearns to communicate his spiritual insights but is spurned by the superficiality of society ladies who talk of Michelangelo (see “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The”). Similarly, W. H. Auden, in his poem “The Unknown Citizen,” bemoans the impersonal efficiency of the modern welfare state that is technologically advanced and has statistics on all its citizens but does not really know whether its individuals are free or happy. The poem implies that

for the modern state, even the question of freedom and happiness would be a quantifiable category, if it had thought of these as important variables on which statistics should be kept. While modernist literature’s innovations in narrative techniques, such as stream of consciousness, testify to the influence of Sigmund Freud and William James in shedding new light on human psychology and consciousness and hence the intense focus on subjectivity, they also function as a testament to the decline of a shared communal framework of values that underlines the decline of community. One could argue that the prevalence of the third-person narrative in the 18th- and 19thcentury novel that features an all-knowing, often judgmental narrator, who takes the reader by the hand and guides him or her through the world of the novel, underscores the existence of community with its assumption of shared moral values. As the world has become more fragmented, the narrative voice has also become more partial, personal, and prone to error. For instance, in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge from a miserly misanthrope to one who shares in the spirit of Christmas cheer and sharing is an assertion of the power of community over the individual. In more contemporary times, Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” traces the transformation of an insecure man, jealous of his wife’s blind friend who has come to visit them, from an alienated, somewhat misanthropic character to one who has an epiphany about the importance of human contact and shared community values shown in the building of ancient cathedrals. While overweening individualism threatening the stable social order and community well-being is a common theme, the obverse is equally true as well. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid ’s Tale, the dystopian community of Gilead, a totalitarian pseudo-Christian theocracy that subjugates women in the service of the state, is clearly an example of a community that can only exist by annihilating individual free will and agency, especially that of women. Community is thus a complex concept possessing varying ethical, political, social, psychological, and epistemological dimensions, which finds recurrent expression as a literary theme.

crueltyâ•…â•… 21 See also Anonymous: Beowulf; Austen, Jane: Emma; Baldwin, James: Go Tell It on the Mountain; Black Elk: Black Elk Speaks; Bradford, William: Of Plymouth Plantation; Coetzee, J. M.: Waiting for the Barbarians; Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness; Crane, Stephen: Open Boat, The; Forster, E. M.: Passage to India, A; Gaines, Ernest J.: Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The, and Lesson Before D ying, A; García Márquez, Gabriel: One Hundred Years of Solitude; Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the d ’Urbervilles; Harte, Bret: “Luck of Roaring Camp, The”; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: House of the Seven Gables, The; McCullers, Carson: Member of the Wedding, The; Miller, Arthur: Crucible, The; Mistry, Rohinton: Fine Balance, A; Naylor, Gloria: Women of Brewster Place, The; Orwell, George: Animal Farm; Paine, Thomas: “Age of Reason, The,” and Common Sense; Shakespeare, William: Twelfth Night; Silko, Leslie Marmon: Almanac of the Dead; Steinbeck, John: Pearl, The; Synge, John Millington: Playboy of the Western World, The; Twain, Mark: Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The; Wharton, Edith: Age of Innocence, and Ethan Frome. FURTHER READING Bauman, Zygmunt. Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. Hilde, Thomas C. “The Cosmopolitan Project: Does the Internet Have a Global Public Face?” In The Internet in Public Life, edited by Verna V. Gehring, Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. 121–130. Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Penguin, 1987. Tonnies, Ferdinand. Community and Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Rajender Kaur

cruelty

The idea of cruelty, for most readers, calls to mind actions or behaviors that inflict suffering in ways that are especially coldhearted, depraved, or indifferent. Acts or words considered cruel seem to go beyond what is merely unkind or simply violent

in a way that harms the victim irreparably. Cruelty can be physical or mental; it can be inflicted upon human beings or upon animals; it can take the form of large-scale horrors such as the Holocaust or the September 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center; or it can involve only two people, as in cases of domestic abuse. The binding factor in all of these cases is the intent of the perpetrator. To willfully hurt others and to feel indifferent at the suffering of one’s fellow human beings, to enjoy or delight in the infliction of pain—these are acts of cruelty. Acts of cruelty such as torture, domestic abuse, terrorism, and genocide profoundly alter the victims’ sense of the world, how it works, and their place in it. Perpetrators attempt to take away the victims’ humanity, to reduce them to an object in a way that simple violence does not. At first glance, the definition of cruelty might seem straightforward, but upon further consideration, determining what is cruel and what is not is not so easy. Seneca, a Roman philosopher from the first century, wrote that the factor that determines cruelty rests in the mind of the perpetrator in exacting punishment. Excessive punishment or torture was, for Seneca, the opposite of clemency, or mercy, and leaders should avoid it. Seneca wrote his treatise De Clementia to the Roman emperor Nero, to whom he was an adviser. He encouraged the cultivation of mercy in the emperor, in what was probably an attempt to move him away from the brutality of his predecessors. St. Augustine (354–430), one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity, went beyond Seneca’s theories and wrote of cruelty as a reflexive evil that destroys its inflicter and should be judged by its effect on him or her. What is important here is that Augustine explored the connection between the body and the soul, understanding that cruelty goes beyond the physical pain it causes and alters the way both victim and victimizer see the world. In Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) relied heavily on Seneca’s work when he discussed cruelty, believing that “harshness of mind” in the inflicter of cruelty was the determining factor. For Thomas Aquinas, intention was all-important; in other words, an excessive punishment was certainly unjust, but not necessarily

22â•…â•… cruelty cruel. For Michel Montaigne, the French philosopher and essayist writing in the 16th century, intent was important, but it was not the only determining factor. Actions could be cruel in and of themselves even when allowed by law. For instance, many societies have allowed slavery, but as Montaigne pointed out, the fact that the practice is legal does not make it merciful. Like St. Augustine, the 18th-century British philosopher John Locke focused on the effect cruelty has on the perpetrator. Even when the victims were animals and not human beings, Locke believed cruelty had a destructive effect on those who inflicted harm. If it seems that much philosophical thought on cruelty attempts to define it, perhaps that is because one of the central philosophical questions on the topic has to do with whether or not cruelty is ever justified. In order to justify (or to condemn) cruelty, it must first be defined. For instance, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in World War II was without question devastating and brutal, and many noncombatants, including children, were seriously injured and killed. Whether or not we are willing to call that action cruel, however, seems to have to do with whether or not it was justified. Psychologists, however, have argued that in the minds of many perpetrators of violence, any action may be justified. Roy Baumeister, for instance, argues that most acts of violence result from mutual, escalating provocations and grievances. This leads to a rationalization in the mind of the victimizer. For instance, people often feel victimized by other groups and convince themselves they are acting out of a justified need for a role reversal. Rapists, for instance, often claim to have been enacting a kind of revenge against all women (166). Incredibly, the Ku Klax Klan often claimed they were acting out of revenge when they burned down homes, raped black women, and lynched black men throughout the 20th century. These acts, they claimed, were in retaliation against freed slaves who had disrupted the system of white superiority and complacency (166–167). Ideology is often another justification for violence and cruelty. Even seemingly good, ordinary people who have convinced themselves they are “fighting for a good cause” have engaged in despicable acts of cruelty. The Crusades, for instance,

beginning in the 1100s, were led by soldiers who believed they were heeding the pope’s call to recapture the Holy Land. In general, these were ordinary men who believed they were serving their God, but they participated in the vast slaughter of innocent human beings and barbaric acts of brutality, such as burning people alive and mutilating and torturing noncombatants. In the Ukraine in the mid-20th century, soldiers under the orders of Joseph Stalin systematically confiscated the food of peasant farmers and their families all in the name of the “universal triumph of communism” (Baumeister 179). Ultimately, 11 million starved to death—a torturous, brutal way to die. But these soldiers, acting in the sway of an ideology, believed, or forced themselves to believe, that the ends justified the means. Indeed, many philosophers and psychologists would argue that driven by ideology, or in the pursuit of revenge, most human beings are capable of cruelty. In fact, two famous experiments seem to indicate that even being placed in a culture whereby such acts are acceptable and being given orders is enough for many ordinary people to cross the line. In 1963, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment that has come to be named for him. Participants were told to choose slips of paper from a hat, and they would be assigned either “teacher” or “learner.” The teacher would read word pairs out to the learner and then ask questions about what the learner remembered. When the learner made a mistake, the teacher was to administer an increasingly painful electric shock. In reality, there were no actual shocks; all the slips said “teacher,” and the “learner” was played by an actor. Even when the learner asked to stop the experiment, 65 percent of the subjects went on to administer the most powerful shock: 450 volts. In the 1972 Stanford Prison Experiment, the psychologist Philip Zimbardo staged an experiment in which undergraduate volunteers took on the roles of “prisoner” and “guard” in a mock prison. The “guards” became so sadistic and the “prisoners” so emotionally traumatized that the experiment, planned for two weeks, was halted after six days. In both of these experiments, the victimizers focused not on the human beings on the receiving end of the cruelty, but on the rationales they had been given. Cruelty must necessarily turn human

deathâ•…â•… 23 subjects into objects, and this transformation is the reason why the victims of cruelty experience such a disruption of their worldview. Victims of cruelty move from “life—to a kind of death” (Arnault 7). They feel they can never go back to the vision of life before. There can be no redemption, no happy ending. While life may go on, the meaning of life is forever changed for them. Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is an excellent example of how cruelty disrupts meaning. The family who are murdered in the story do not resist their deaths; the moments in which they are taken into the woods and shot seem surreal. The grandmother refuses to comprehend what is happening around her, exhorting The Misfit to “Pray!” and insisting, beyond reason, that he would not kill an old lady. In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff endures cruelty throughout his life. He is, almost like a stray dog, brought home to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw. Although he is fed and clothed, he is treated more as an animal than a human, with no one save Catherine encouraging him to have feelings. When Mr. Earnshaw dies, Heathcliff endures even greater cruelty at the hands of the sadistic Hindley. As he grows to adulthood, Heathcliff never establishes the human connections that would make it possible to be merciful. Instead, he learns that cruelty is the only way and turns that cruelty on Isabella, Hareton, Linton, and Cathy. Cruelty, and the evil that lurks behind it, has devastating consequences for both victims and victimizers. Victimizers tend to lose their humanity, even as they force themselves to view their victims as something less than human. Victims, on the other hand, tend to enter a new, incomprehensible world, one in which they have no rights, no agency, no dignity, no humanity. Ultimately, although they may move past the cruelty physically and emotionally, they are unable to see the world the same way ever again. See also Coetzee, J. M.: Waiting for the Barbarians; Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: Hound of the Baskervilles; Frank, Anne: Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl; Golding, William: Lord of the Flies; Hinton, S. E.: Outsiders, The; Orwell, George: Animal Farm;

Poe, Edgar Allan: “Tell-Tale Heart, The”: Salinger, J. D.: Catcher in the Rye, The; Virgil: Aeneid, The; Williams, Tennessee: Streetcar Named Desire, A. FURTHER READING Arnault, Lynne. “Cruelty, Horror, and the Will to Redemption.” Hypatia 18, no. 2 (2003): 155–188. Baumeister, Roy F. Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Violence. New York: Freeman, 1997. Edgerton, Robert B. The Balance of Human Kindness and Cruelty: Why We Are the Way We Are. Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Press, 2005 Waller, James. Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

death

In Poetics, Aristotle recognized literature’s value for humanity when he stated that “the object of art is an imitation of life.” Writers have always used the situations and events of everyday life in their writing, and since death is just as much a part of life as anything else, it is arguably one of the most recurring themes in all of literature. In poetry, fiction, and drama, death is seen as a central theme that gives way to other themes ranging from justice to rites of passage to grief. Death is a crucial fact of life, and from the emotional response to death to the various religious frameworks through which it is interpreted, it is obvious why death is used as a theme in literature so extensively. In ancient literature, the theme of death is seen regularly. In Gilgamesh, the ancient epic of Mesopotamia, death is clearly illustrated through relationships, responding to the deaths of loved ones, and war. Once Gilgamesh comes to love Enkidu, he dies, and the reader is left with Gilgamesh’s thoughts and response to his friend’s death. In ancient Greek mythology, the Trojan War provided a framework for a myriad of stories, including Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey; both stories recount numerous lengthy battles and gruesome scenes of death. Later, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, the three great Greek tragedians, created death-driven plays, such as Sophocles’ Oedipus The King and Antigone,

24â•…â•… death which includes patricide, suicide, and fratricide. In Poetics, Aristotle highlights the value of tragedy, which compels an audience to feel a catharsis, or cleansing of the soul, by witnessing tragic acts, typically deaths of highly regarded characters—deaths those characters may not totally deserve. Even in ancient literature, authors were utilizing death as a theme to elicit an emotional response in the reader or audience. Later, in the Roman myths told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, death is one of the underlying themes present, in which characters face transformation, which for them is often the same as death. In the Roman poet Virgil’s The Aeneid, Aeneas is to establish the city of Rome, but this is only after his home has been destroyed and his family killed. Throughout the story, the reader witnesses constant death in battle. In book 10, after Aeneas takes the life of Lausus, his father, Mezentius, comes to Aeneas to avenge his son’s death. Mezentius calls out to Aeneas, why do you ridicule me, threaten me with death? Killing is no crime. .╯.╯. Let me rest in the grave beside my son, in the comradeship of death. (Virgil, The Aeneid, book 10:1,067–1,077) Here it seems that death would be a comfort to this father whose son has been killed in combat. In this perspective, a reader can understand how death is seen in battle as valorous and can even be consoling. Especially throughout literature of battle and war, death is faced with bravery and moral courage. In the Middle Ages, the theme of death often underlies the literature as well. In a lot of the romance literature, such as Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, the idea of chivalry is a prominent theme, and one aspect of chivalry was that a knight was expected to fight valiantly to uphold his king’s or his lady’s honor, even forfeit his life in battle if need be. One of the major European events in the Middle Ages, the bubonic plague, certainly had an effect on literature, as in Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, in which 10 people flee the plague in

Florence, and each tells a different story over the course of 10 days in order to keep his or her mind off of the deaths of friends and loved ones left behind. One of the biggest literary figures of the Middle Ages, Dante Alighieri, wrote The Divine Comedy, a story in which the poet is given a guided tour of life after visiting the inferno, purgatory, and heaven. This work seems reminiscent of Aristotle’s catharsis idea in that the reader’s soul is cleansed by seeing what Dante sees. Geoffrey Chaucer uses death as a central theme in several of his Canterbury Tales. In “The Pardoner’s Tale,” three men actually set out to find and kill Death, who has taken the life of one of their friends. The Wife of Bath, one of the most critically examined female literary characters, tells a story of a knight who faces execution unless he can find out what women truly want. In these stories Chaucer uses death as a theme to demonstrate several ideas: Humans are afraid of death; they sometimes become at once saddened and angry when loved ones die; and finally, something demonstrated in nearly all of these works is the idea that humans fear death because they value life so dearly and they do not know what comes after death. Not knowing what comes after death is significantly portrayed in Renaissance literature as well, especially in the poetry of England, in which the theme of carpe diem (Latin for “seize the day”) is so common. From Robert Herrick’s iconic “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time” to John Donne, the idea of “seize the day” is not so much an inspiration to enjoy life as it is a warning to enjoy life quickly before it ends. On the other hand, in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the title character makes a deal, transferring his soul to the devil for immortality because he does not want to die. Later in the Renaissance, John Milton composed one of the greatest epics in the English language, Paradise Lost, in which he sets out to “justify the ways of God to men” (book 1, l. 26). In doing so, he must explain death as much as life. However, any discussion of Renaissance literature must highlight William Shakespeare, who used the theme of death in many of his works. In Sonnet 73, he uses the traditional symbolism of seasons, in which spring represents birth and youth

educationâ•…â•… 25 while winter represents death with the lines “That time of year thou mayst in me behold, / When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang, / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold” (ll. 1–3). The speaker is calling for the reader to see how he is getting close to death. The sonnet ends with the line “To love that well, which thou must leave ere long” (l. 14), which again alludes to the carpe diem theme. However, Shakespeare incorporates diverse ideas about death in his works, and one that is different is in Sonnet 71, “No longer mourn for me when I am dead,” in which the speaker recommends forgetting about him, “Lest the wide world should look into your moan / And mock you with me after I am gone” (ll. 13–14). Here, Shakespeare proposes a different idea about death, mainly to forgo grieving and simply get on with life. Of course, he employs the death theme in his plays in various ways as well, from the suicidal Ophelia in Hamlet to the pretended death of Hero in Much Ado about Nothing to the deaths brought on by the evil Iago in Othello. Characters avenge deaths of loved ones, face death in battle, and even plot the betrayal of other characters. Shakespeare is perhaps unparalleled in all of literature in his ability to invoke the whole range of human emotion regarding death. Through later periods of literature all over the world, authors have continued to use death as a major theme, symbolically, metaphorically, and physically. Evident in such novels as Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and Richard Wright’s Native Son, Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, death provides authors with the substance to create an emotional response in the reader like no other topic. Themes like betrayal, vengeance, greed, honor, justice, courage, and failure are almost always portrayed in conjunction with death. Some of the great novels have been born in a response to death, including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which Victor struggles to create life out of his response to his own mother’s death, but in the ensuing action, he loses those most dear to him. Looking at more contemporary novels, some of the most famous American writers—Stephen King, John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks—are noted for their

riveting stories that revolve around mystery and death. Authors have all the material of life around them from which to draw, but nevertheless, death has always been and will continue to be one of the most prominent themes in literature, and for many reasons: There is a pervading symbolism attached to death in different cultures and religions. Death signifies an end and a great mystery about what comes next, and the range of human emotions surrounding it is so vast that authors are able to combine it with many other themes. See also Allende, Isabel: House of Spirits, The; Bierce, Ambrose: “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, An”; Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights; Browning, Robert: “My Last Duchess”; Camus, Albert: Stranger, The; Capote, Truman: In Cold Blood; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The”: DeLillo, Don: White Noise; Dickens, Charles: Christmas Carol, A; Dickinson, Emily: poems; Eliot, T. S.: “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The”; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Rappaccini’s Daughter”; Keats, John: poetry; Miller, Arthur: Death of a Salesman; Poe, Edgar Allan: “Fall of the House of Usher, The”; Shakespeare, William: Romeo and Juliet; Welty, Eudora: Optimist ’s Daughter, The; Whitman, Walt; Leaves of Grass; Woolf, Virginia: Mrs Dalloway; To the Lighthouse. FURTHER READING Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Dalkey Archive Press, 1998.

Christopher Lessick

education

It is no surprise that education, which affects the relationship between the individual and society, should figure as a perennial theme in literature from the ancient classics of Greece and Rome to contemporary literature. The shadow of the Dark Ages is said to have lifted only after the ancient classics were rediscovered in the wake of the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the dispersal of its famous libraries that housed these books. Education is not always delivered through the same channels, nor does it always serve the same purposes, and it is not

26â•…â•… education always a positive force. However, its ability to shape society is undeniable. Plato’s The Republic offers two models of education, one for warrior rulers and the other a more philosophical approach for the philosopher ruler, given through the pedagogical example and allegory of the cave. In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have been imprisoned in a cave all their lives. They see shadows of things passing in front of them and believe the shadows to be reality. The philosopher is like a prisoner freed from the cave who understands now the true reality of things. The highest goal of this form of education is knowledge of the good, and it is only through this that Plato’s enlightened philosopher rulers can rule a utopian community. Similarly, Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince is focused on the education of the sovereign or political leader of a state in the art of good governance through a strategic deployment of force and guile. Machiavelli uses the metaphors of the lion and the fox to underscore the strength, nobility, slyness, and shrewdness needed to retain power and triumph over one’s rivals. During the Renaissance, education found literary expression in the form of conduct books. The Renaissance was a golden age for the proliferation of conduct and etiquette books, which were an important aspect in the achievement of a well-rounded individual, especially in a feudal world where manners reflected the person. Unlike practical books that taught the martial arts or educated one in the sciences and arts, these books had a strong moral dimension that sought to inculcate ethical virtues and produce the ideal gentleman or gentlewoman. Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier (1528) is a prescriptive treatise on the ideal courtier and outlines the essential virtues that he should embody. Narrated through an engaging series of imaginary conversations between the real-life courtiers to the duke of Urbino, Castiglione’s speakers discuss qualities of noble behavior—namely, discretion, decorum, nonchalance and gracefulness—as well as wider questions, such as the duties of a good government and the true nature of love. Castiglione’s literary skill and sharp psychological insights make this guide to manners both an entertaining

and a definitive glimpse into the ideals and debates of Renaissance life. Advice and conduct books targeted at women were an especially popular genre in 19th-century England and America. These guidebooks recommended a broad education for women that also included French, drawing, sewing, and the ability to sing or play a musical instrument. They emphasized the importance of a sweet demeanor and courteous tongue, of good humor and wit. Jane Austen’s heroines, for example, embody the lightness of spirit and wit that all women could aspire to if they wanted to snare a suitable man. In America, Emily Thornwell’s The Lady’s Guide to Perfect Gentility (New York, 1857) was aimed at white women, The College of Life, or Practical Self-Educator [sic], a Manual of Self-Improvement for the Colored Race, shows that rules for good wifehood were proposed for both white and African-American middle-class women. Writings on education such as John Milton’s Tract on Education and Free Expression (1644), and John Locke’s Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) reflect the intense debates on education in the 17th and 18th century. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1786), and her later A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is a radical political and educational treatise. She critiques Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s view on women’s education and argues that women are not naturally submissive and dependent creatures and that if they exercised their rationality through a good education, they could be equal partners of men. In emphasizing rationality in women, Wollstonecraft was extending the basic ideas of Enlightenment philosophy to women. Rousseau’s Émile, or On Education (1762) was the precursor of the education novel. In Émile, Rousseau advocates a system of education that would enable the natural man to survive corrupt society. Divided into five books, the novel traces Émile’s education from childhood to maturity. The first three books focus on childhood; the last two examine Émile’s youth and domestic and civil life as he falls in love with Sophie. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795–96) is a novel of upbringing and education and tells the story of Wilhelm’s disillusionment with bourgeois

educationâ•…â•… 27 life as he apprentices himself to the mysterious Tower Society comprising enlightened aristocrats who will guide him towards his true calling. In Plots of Enlightenment: Education and Novel in Eighteenth Century England (1999), Richard A. Barney argues that the conjunction of the early novel with theories of education reflects the cultural developments of the 18th century. He states that “educational theory during the late 17th and 18th century formed an indispensable source for the novel’s narrative form and its often contradictory representation of individual social identity” (2). Education is an important theme in Victorian fiction, not just through the bildungsroman, or coming of age novel, but also in the form of a critique of methods of education, of corporal punishment, and of inhumane boarding schools such as those portrayed in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). The harsh and inhumane conditions of Lowood, the boarding school that Jane is dispatched to after she rebels against Mrs. Reed, reflect the desperate conditions of many real schools in England at that time. The hypocrisy of Brocklehurst, who lives a life of luxury while preaching the values of a Spartan life for the girls at Lowood highlights the hypocrisy of the moneyed patrons of many of these so-called charitable educational institutions run for the poor. The bildungsroman, or “novel of formation,” is essentially a novel of education as it traces the journey of a character from childhood to adulthood through education and the life experiences that he or she has. Charles Dickens’s David Copperf ield (1849–50) Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), and Great Expectations (1860–61) are all novels that tell stories of rags to riches made possible through education and wealthy benefactors, but they also count the tragic toll in loss of friendships and self included in this process. In Dombey and Son (1846– 48), Dickens offers a critique of the emphasis on acquiring classical languages in schools as a passport to university admission and upward social mobility. The force-feeding of the boys is communicated through the aptly named Mr. Feeder’s method of instruction: “They knew no rest from the pursuit of strong-hearted verbs, savage noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of exercises that appeared to them in their dreams” (11).

Contemporary cultural theorists recognize the vital relationship between power, knowledge, and cultural development. Literature as an expression and constituent of culture plays an integral role in the perpetuation of certain power relations, whether they are of class, caste, or gender relations. In Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid unmasks this colonial mission through the examination of colonial institutions such as the convent schools of various missionary orders. In particular, she excoriates the soft propaganda of British colonial rule through the widespread teaching of William Wordsworth’s poem “Daffodils.” Generations of students from Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean have memorized “Daffodils” as the very epitome of romantic imagination and cultured sensibility, despite never having set sight on a daffodil. The daffodil only grows in temperate zones and is foreign to the tropical climes of these colonized places. If literature functions as a hegemonic tool to shape the sensibility of the colonized, it also functions as a counter-hegemonic tool by inspiring writings of resistance through the ideals of liberty, equality, and the brotherhood of man as set out in the works of Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. Much of postcolonial literature embodies this ambivalent function of education, as in Tsi Tsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988), in which the character Tambu aspires to wealth and status through education, but this very education becomes a culturally alienating force where she loses touch with her roots and family. Learning, knowledge, and culture are closely allied to literature, and consequently education and literature share a symbiotic relationship. By extension, adjectives such as literate, educated, cultured, and learned are synonyms of each other and reflect a conglomerate of desired attributes that are centered in and expressed through literature. Both education and literature work hand in hand as powerful transformative tools that can shape minds and hearts and in turn effect change for the better. See also Adams Henry: Education of Henry Adams, The; Amis, Kingsley: Lucky Jim; Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451; Byron, George Gordon Byron, Lord: Don Juan; Emerson, Ralph Waldo: “American Scholar, The”; Haley, Alex,

28â•…â•… ethics and Malcolm X: Autobiography of Malcolm X, The; Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World; Lawrence, D. H.: Rainbow, The; Plath, Sylvia: Bell Jar, The; Shaw, George Bernard: Pygmalion; Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein; Smith, Betty: Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A; Walker, Alice: Color Purple, The; Washington, Booker T.: Up from Slavery. FURTHER READING Barney, Richard A. Plots of Enlightenment: Education and the Novel in Eighteenth Century England. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 1999. Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. New York: Penguin Classics, 1980. Hickling-Hudson, Anne, Julie Matthews, and Annette Woods, eds. Disrupting Preconceptions: Postcolonialism and Education. Brisbane: Post-Pressed, 2004.

Rajender Kaur

ethics

Ethics, as a branch of philosophy, seeks to explore rational decision making, with the hope of establishing standards for ideal behavior. Although most people believe that they have an inherent sense of right and wrong, thus making the study of ethics unnecessary, when ethics is examined across time and across various cultures, we see significant differences in how people interpret these concepts. Complicating things further, ethics is often taught alongside or as an extension of religion. For many, the answer to moral questions can be found in holy books or by consulting clergy. However, the way that Scripture is translated and interpreted has changed over time and is susceptible to different interpretations from one person to another. The study of ethics, then, seeks to explore the standards people have adopted for themselves, whether unconsciously or as part of moral or religious instruction, and to recommend a rational basis for these standards through this process. Because ethical positions are human constructs and because humans are capable of changing their conceptions of right and wrong, ethics is hardly a stable field of study. Rather, these debates are ongoing both among individuals and within larger, even global, communities.

Ethics and literature are intimately connected, having emerged simultaneously as humans developed language and began to communicate through stories. Literature is a particularly rich source of ethical reflection in that characters in imagined worlds can make decisions without hurting real people. There is also a level of ethical engagement outside of the story, on the formal level. How writers represent the world has an impact on how the reader thinks of his or her own world. Although fictional characters run the ethical spectrum (some positively evil, others absolutely good, most somewhere in between) stories very often involve characters making choices with ethical implications. Similarly, many philosophical texts dealing with ethics make use of small fictions to illustrate a point. For example, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) tells a story to help develop his position on being untruthful. If someone runs into your house to escape a murderer, and the murderer knocks at the door to ask if you have seen his or her intended victim, you are forced to decide between lying or telling the truth (and thus helping the murderer). For reasons that will be examined here, Kant argues that even in this situation it would be unethical to lie. If every ethical decision was clear-cut, there would not be much need for or interest in ethics. However, because so many decisions are not as clear-cut as people would like, often involving a choice between two conflicting principles that we believe in, it helps to think through and articulate not only what we believe to be right, but also the relative importance of the principles behind these decisions. While many philosophers have commented on these issues, there are a number of important positions that help to orient the novice. It should be noted, however, that although the Western tradition has been emphasized in American and British education, there are writers on ethics and ethical traditions from all over the globe, many of whom are gaining prominence in literary study. The English word ethics is derived from the Greek ethike, and in keeping with this linguistic borrowing, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 b.c.) is often thought of as the first significant contributor to the Western tradition of ethics. In the Aristotelian view, everything has a reason for existence, or some end

ethicsâ•…â•… 29 that it is meant to achieve. For humans, this state is happiness and it is reached through the cultivation of virtues. In order to be happy, humans have to cultivate their potential, often by seeking what Aristotle called the golden mean, or, in other words, by seeking moderation in most things. People act ethically—for example, giving up some of their dinner to help feed a hungry child—not because it is in their self-interest (most probably their stomach wants the whole thing) but because it reflects the cultivation of the virtue of generosity. Put simply, in Aristotelian ethics, people act to demonstrate or work toward being better, more virtuous people. They show who they are, not what they want. Kant, one of the most influential writers on ethics, offered a different, though not unrelated, position. In the Kant view, every human is free insofar as he or she has the ability to exercise reason. Ethics, then, is something that each person imposes on him or herself freely. Kant developed what he called the categorical imperative to describe the basis for ethical action. Lying, according to Kant, is evil in that it deprives others of the ability to exercise their reason properly. Therefore, telling the truth is a categorical imperative—it is the right thing to do, no matter the circumstances. The other major 18th-century ethical philosophy is that of utilitarianism. Developed by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806– 73), utilitarianism can be described as a philosophy seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Unlike Kant’s philosophy, utilitarianism is concerned only with the results of actions, not the intentions of the people making the decisions. For these thinkers, lying could be justified if it did more good than harm. There are, however, objections to this philosophy; most people would have a hard time sacrificing a family member to try to save two strangers, for example. One important 20th-century ethical thinker was Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95). Unlike Aristotle, Bentham, or Kant, Levinas begins his ideas on ethics with an interaction with another human. For Levinas, each of us has an infinite responsibility to the other person, who will always remain a mystery to us. In fact, Levinas argues that it is precisely when we stop looking at one another as unique people

that ethical problems arise. As a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War, Levinas saw firsthand what people were capable of when they labeled others and thought of them as a group rather than as individuals. Precisely because his philosophy emphasizes the importance of language and labeling, Levinas’s thought demonstrates the importance of literature in either furthering bigotry or in exposing the workings of this procedure and warding against it. Few stories have remained in the popular imagination as long or as firmly as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and this, in large part, is because many of the ethical questions it raises are still being debated today. For example, is it right to take advantage of scientific advances to create new life forms? Is the genetic alteration of plants and animals safe? Is it right to clone humans? If we do, does the clone have the same rights as the original person? Relating to debates over abortion rights, when is a human a human? At what point do the rights of the child supersede the mother’s right to choose? Is it ethical to abort a pregnancy if the child has traits the parents consider to be undesirable? In the novel, Victor Frankenstein becomes obsessed with exploring the limits of his power as well as the limits of science and locks himself away from family and friends in order to create a being. Although he at first finds his creation to be beautiful, when the being finally awakes, Victor is horrified by his creation and runs away. Unlike his portrayal in many adaptations of the novel, Victor’s creation is hardly a monster at first; he begins his life by helping a poor family, learning their language, and reading John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Only after the monster, based solely on his appearance, is repeatedly rejected by those around him, including Victor, does he become evil and set out on a path of vengeance. The novel simultaneously taps into many ethical debates over the responsibility of parents to their children, the responsibility of society to those it superficially labels monstrous, the ethics governing experiments with science and technology, and many more. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) is another novel that resonates with many ethical debates. Clarissa Dalloway is an unlikely heroine according to traditional logic, in that the culmina-

30â•…â•… family tion of her day is a small party she is giving (rather than, say, an epic battle or journey). By conveying her thinking directly through stream-of-consciousness narration, Woolf exposes the complicated, nearly countless threads of Clarissa’s thought as she goes about her day. In this way, the novel challenges not only 19th-century novelistic conventions but a predominant sexist society that values the accomplishments of “great men” as well. The character who seems to most resemble Clarissa, the shell-shocked soldier Septimus Smith, commits suicide at the end of the novel. This grim conclusion brings up two debates: first, whether suicide is ever ethically permissible, and second, what responsibility society has to returning soldiers. Haunting the entire novel is World War I and questions about whether war is ever justified and what its relation is to sexism at home and imperialism abroad. One of the strengths of Woolf ’s writing is the way in which it subtly critiques misogynistic society, demonstrating, for example, how much of the thinking and writing deemed important (including the ethical philosophies discussed above) are written by men or assume a male agent and fail to account for the impact of emotions and the subconscious on reason. Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) extends the formal experimentation of Woolf and O’Brien’s fellow Irishman James Joyce, offering a much more humorous, though no less ethical stance on writing. One of the novel’s many plots centers on Dermot Trellis, a popular fiction writer who uses character types to create marketable fiction. When he sleeps, his characters come to life and, unhappy with the roles they have been given, work to keep the writer asleep while they put him on trial. In this sense, this highly self-conscious work dramatizes the argument forwarded by Levinas. Additionally, Trellis’s decision to write a moral tale that nonetheless includes enough smut and bad language to keep it interesting offers a satiric commentary on the genre of the novel, whose practitioners have time and again defended the inclusion of “unsavory” parts as necessary to the book’s overall moral purpose. While the decision in this instance can be ridiculed as self-serving, it does seem that works that are overly didactic lack the complexity and therefore the staying power of other stories. It is clear that ethics will

continue to play an important part in literature for some time to come. See also Chestnutt, Charles W.: “Goophered Grapevine, The;” Davis, Rebecca Harding: Life in the Iron Mills; Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders; Ibsen, Henrik: Doll ’s House, A; Hedda Gabler; Ishiguro, Kazuo: Remains of the Day, The; Kingsolver, Barbara: Poisonwood Bible, The; Machiavelli, Niccolò: P rince, The; Malamud, Bernard: Natural, The; McMurtry, Larry: Lonesome Dove; Molière; Misanthrope, The; Paine, Thomas: “Age of Reason, The”; Thoreau, Henry David: “Resistance to Civil Government”; Vonnegut, Kurt: Slaughterhouse-Five; Wollstonecraft, Mary: Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A. FURTHER READING Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2d ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002. Levinas, Emmanuel. Otherwise Than Being: or, Beyond Essence. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998.

Daniel Ryan Morse

family

Much has been written on the institution of family in the fields of sociology, psychology, and anthropology, but one of the most famous comments on the family comes from literature. Leo Tolstoy wrote, in Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This comment underscores the importance of family happiness in our lives as human beings. From our family, we get our beliefs and values—religious, political, social. From our family, we learn to function in the real world as adults. We spend an average of 18 years in this environment, and its atmosphere, positive and negative, cannot help but deeply affect us for life. Furthermore, it is not just the families in which we are raised that shape our worldview, but also the families in which we function as adults. As parents and spouses, we tend to prioritize our families over all other aspects of life, and also to see our families

familyâ•…â•… 31 as coherent units, united in solidarity against the outside world. These family ties can be a soothing, strengthening force, helping us to battle life’s trials. However, these ties, always complicated, can also work to destroy us, rob us of the emotional tools we need to survive, and provide us with no defenses when trouble sets in. The families into which we are born and the families we create as we get older hold such importance for us because they are our primary sources of identification. The answer to the question “Who am I?” lies, in large part, in who our families are. The sociologist Jerome Kagan notes that children identify most readily with their parents, and that before adolescence they believe they share the same basic qualities and values with their “parental models” (Kagan et al. 40). In Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, David struggles with his father’s identity as a rabbi and Reuven struggles with his father’s identity as an academic. Neither boy feels the chosen path is necessarily the right one for him, but because they identify so strongly with their fathers, they are confused about who they are and who they are supposed to be. Ultimately, although they will, in a sense, trade paths, with Reuven entering the rabbinate and David going to graduate school, the bonds they formed with their families in childhood will serve them well. Not all family identifications are positive, of course. In Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, the Tyrones all feel that they are doomed to never achieve their dreams and goals precisely because they are Tyrones. Brothers Edmund and Jamie, one a tubercular alcoholic and sometime merchant mariner and the other a failed alcoholic actor, are both trapped in a family system that will not allow them happiness, only dreams of happiness. Their father is a cheap, belittling alcoholic whose own dreams of vaudeville success died, and their mother is a morphine addict constantly in mourning for the son she lost as an infant and the “normal” life she gave up to marry Tyrone. For each of the Tyrones, “who they are” seems sadly predetermined. In addition to helping to identify us, family also provides us with a haven in times of adversity. Especially in the modern Western world, according to Edmund Shorter, there is a “special sense of soli-

darity that separates the domestic union from the surrounding community” (205). Families have a tendency to protect their own and to shut out the outside world if need be. Even families who participate heavily in the community, such as the March family in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, put family before others. For instance, when they receive a telegram that Mr. March is ill, Marmee goes off to Washington, D.C., to be with him, while Jo sells her hair to finance the trip. The entire family worries over Beth when she is ill and mourns her deeply when she dies, with Jo and Amy putting aside their differences for the sake of their beloved sister. In Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, the “safe” haven of family actually becomes a handicap to both Laura and Tom Wingfield. Because Laura has the security of knowing she can cocoon herself away from the outside world that terrifies her so much, she never overcomes her painful shyness and cannot function outside her family’s apartment. For Tom, because his mother expects him to take care of the two of them, the “haven” becomes a prison, and he can think of nothing but escape, first the metaphorical escape of alcohol and movies and finally the literal escape of a job that will take him far away. The Wingfield family are able to keep their troubles locked up in an apartment because that is how families work. If they so choose, they may stay behind closed doors. This domestic sphere, as it is sometimes called, is not subject to what society might want, but only what the family itself desires. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato spoke of this separation between the “public sphere” and the “private sphere,” saying that public people must be responsible and rational at all times because they participate wholly in both private life and the life of the community around them. Therefore, they must have the highest moral standards and the most exacting sense of justice (Elshtain 53). Private people, on the other hand, need not live up to high ideals; they need only possess a “limited goodness” as it applies to the sphere in which they dwell (54). The family, then, as the nexus of the “private sphere” is important, but only because it provides a sanctuary from public life. Those most closely associated with the family, women and children, need only aspire to this “limited goodness.” This view, unfortunately,

32â•…â•… family persisted well into the 20th century. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Nathan Price drags his wife and four daughters to Africa, bent on converting the Africans to Christianity but uncaring and unmindful of how his family will survive there. Reverend Price, as a public figure, believes that only he has the answers to how life should be lived. However, it becomes clear that it is the domestic sphere that will prove to be the most important prong of life in the Congo. Providing food and shelter and avoiding deadly animals is the immediate necessity for the Price family, and Price cannot do those things. In contrast to Nathan Price, the characters in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town celebrate the domestic sphere and the importance of family in our lives. The Stage Manager does not exalt the work of Dr. Gibbs, providing medical care to the town, over the cleaning, cooking, and child-care duties of Mrs. Gibbs, his wife. In fact, he explicitly points out how important these day-to-day tasks are in the life of a human being. Emily Webb’s final speech in the graveyard emphasizes the beauty of these mundane elements of life, demonstrating that when we underappreciate the private in favor of the more flashy public, we miss out on the wonder of life. Not all families provide sanctuary or comfort, however; many make life harder for their members. In fact, it is common in Western society to blame the problems of adults on unhappiness in their families when they were growing up, whether there is good evidence of this causal relationship or not (Kagan et al. 41). Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright’s Native Son, would like nothing more than to get away from his nagging mother and his annoying sister, who, he feels (with good reason), are unsupportive of him. Bigger’s frustration and anger, of course, have more to do with being poor and black in Chicago in the 1930s than they do with his mother, but it is significant that he would allow himself to blame her at all for the way he feels. Despite evidence to the contrary, many children look to their parents as the source of their travails. Bigger finds himself an alternative “family,” albeit not a very functional one, in the form of a small gang of friends. This impulse, too, is

common. When family, for whatever reason, disappoints us, we turn to others to provide identification, support, comfort, and sanctuary. While some social commentators might worry that this is a product of the modern era, history shows otherwise. Families have always had to compete with “others” and family members have always sought time with same-sex peers (Shorter, quoted 15). In fact, because the community no longer actively participates in private ceremonies surrounding birth, marriage, and death, it can be argued that families are more stable in the 21st century than they were before the industrial age. The family, far from being weakened by the changes and problems that come with the modern world, has instead adapted to it, remaining a source of inspiration in our lives and our literature. See also Albee, Edward: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?; Anaya, Rudolfo: Bless Me, Ultima; Anderson, Sherwood: W inesburg, Ohio; Baldwin, James: Go Tell It on the Mountain; Cao Xuequin: Dream of the Red Chamber; Erdrich, Louise; Tracks; Franklin, Benjamin: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The; Hansberry, Lorraine: R aisin in the Sun, A; Homer: Odyssey, The; Houston, Jean Wakatsuki: Farewell to Manzanar ; Joyce, James: Dubliners; Kafka, Franz: “Metamorphosis, The”; Lewis, Sinclair: Main Street; Lowry, Lois: Giver, The; Molière: Tartuffe; O’Connor, Flannery: “Good Man Is Hard to Find, A”; Paton, Alan: Cry, the Beloved Country; Sophocles: Antigone; Steinbeck, John: Grapes of Wrath, The; Red Pony, The; Stowe, Harriet Beecher: Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Welty, Eudora: Optimist ’s Daughter, The; Wordsworth, William: “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.” FURTHER READING Elshtain, Jean Bethke. The Family in Political Thought. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982. Kagan, Jerome, Alice Rossi, and Tamara Hareven. The Family. New York: Norton, 1978. Shorter, Edward. The Making of the American Family. New York: Basic Books, 1975.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

fateâ•…â•… 33

fate

Fate, according to modern usage, is an agency or power that orders and predetermines a future course of events. In the ancient world, the often inexplicable and unavoidable in the affairs of human beings were attributed to fate. In Greek mythology, the goddesses known as the Fates, or Moirae, spun out the destinies of men and women. With the resurgence of confidence in human agency in fifth-century Athens, the Greeks began to develop more subtle conceptions of the relationship between fate and free will, especially through the tragedies of their theater, which were grounded in religious ritual. Sophocles’s Oedipus the King presents the classical treatment of human action as determined by fate or free will, or a convergence of the two. Such a convergence is understandable through a thought of the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “Man’s character is his fate [daimōn]” (Fragment 119), or the more familiar “Character is destiny.” Since demon (Gr. daimōn) means both “supernatural being” and “ministering, or indwelling spirit” (Oxford English Dictionary), the statement allows a convergence of superhuman and human agency, fate and free will. In other words, the guidance of our actions derives from ourselves, our own character. Sophocles’ tragedy supremely illustrates this idea. Oedipus, a prince of Corinth who is led to doubts about his parentage by a stray comment from a drunken man, goes to Delphi, where he consults the oracle, which tells him that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Shocked by this prophecy, Oedipus immediately flees Corinth to evade the oracle, the illogic and inconsistency of his actions never occurring to him. Regarding the unresolved question of parentage, he is fleeing the king and queen of Corinth, who might not be his parents. Regarding his contradictory attitude toward the oracle, he believes in the oracle enough to react to its admonition but not enough to realize that he cannot evade his foreknown destiny. His destiny, however, is not necessarily predetermined by the powers above. Rather, his foreknowledge makes him act irrationally to fulfill his destiny. This irrational conduct is part and parcel of his hubris (the overstepping of the bounds of human conduct), as exhibited often in his killing of an older

man (his real father) in a fit of alpha male rage and his angry browbeating of both Creon, his trustworthy brother-in-law, and Teiresias, the revered seer, when they tell him that he himself is the murderer of the former king of Thebes—to him preposterous but, nonetheless, the truth. Ironically, Oedipus’s foreknowledge drove him to fulfill the very prophecy that he was trying so hard to evade. He broke the two cardinal rules of Greek ethics that would guide one toward good destiny: “Know thyself ” and “Nothing in excess.” In his version of Oedipus, Sophocles turns the standard story of the futility of trying to evade an inevitable fate dictated by the gods and transforms it into a veritable tragedy of a human agent through his own character flaws and actions. In a further exploration of fate and autonomy, human action, expanded to a wide sphere of civic enterprise in Virgil’s The Aeneid, translates itself into a founding myth, whereby personal good yields to the greater good of nation formation. It is Aeneas, fleeing to Italy after the fall of Troy, who, according to prophecy, will there found a noble and courageous race, which in time will surpass all other nations. At the same time, the fate of Aeneas and his descendants, the Romans, is influenced by the gods’ actions, particularly in the conflict between Venus and Juno, who respectively support and hinder the Roman enterprise for reasons that go back to Priam’s son Paris choosing Venus, goddess of love, as the most beautiful over Hera, goddess of marriage, and Athena, goddess of wisdom. Thus, in this nationalistic epic, divine agency and human aspiration—both personal and civic—constitute fate. Aeneas is the epitome of Roman piety—loyalty and devotion toward one’s homeland, family, and father—and his fate is synonymous with the future of Rome. In his wanderings, Aeneas finds shelter in Africa with the sympathetic Dido, the queen of Carthage. Later, the two fall in love and consummate their union. Aeneas is torn between his desire for a woman and his patriotic love: “hic amor, haec patria est” (“There is my love, there my country” [4.537]). Ultimately, both divine pressure and a sense of duty, as solemnized by prophecy, compel Aeneas to leave Dido, choosing Roma and its implicit amor (Roma spelled backwards) of patria—love of country—as his destiny.

34â•…â•… fate Virgil wrote his epic during a period of civil war and political and moral chaos in Rome after the fall of the Republic. Accordingly, The Aeneid reflects an attempt to revive Roman greatness by appealing to its mythic history and its basic moral values of piety, virtue, and constancy. At the same time, it sets out a political ideology that could be used beyond Virgil’s moral aims to justify imperialistic ambitions in the aggrandizement of the Roman Empire. In more modern times, the concept of manifest destiny, in the history of American expansion, worked in similar fashion to appropriate Native American land and to exploit indigenous people, in a “divinely ordained” mission to spread democracy. Both examples show how human beings have exploited “divine agency” and otherwise manipulated fate and destiny toward self-interest. As in the previously discussed works, the classical trope of superhuman prophecy figures importantly in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth to advance plot and human intention. Unlike Oedipus the King and The Aeneid, both of which revolve around a single, defining prophecy, Shakespeare’s tragedy operates with two, one propelling the rise and the other underwriting the fall. The prophecy of the three witches (a spin-off of the Fates) incites the protagonist into evil in the first half of the play; then, symmetrically in the second half, the suddenly unveiled prophecy regarding Macduff seals Macbeth’s defeat and death. In act 1, Macbeth, thane of Glamis, and his companion, Banquo, come upon three witches on the heath who respectively address Macbeth as thane of Glamis, thane of Cawdor, and “king hereafter” (1.3.50). To Banquo they enounce the following occult prophecy: “Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. / Not so happy, yet much happier. / Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none” (1.3.67–68). With the partial fulfillment of the prophecy, his becoming thane of Cawdor, Macbeth is tempted against his better reason by the further fruits of “vaulting ambition” (1.7.27): kingship. When the she-man, Lady Macbeth, accuses him of unmanly cowardice in her infamous speech (of how she’d “[pluck her] nipple from [her baby’s] boneless gums, /And dash’d the brains out” [1.7.57–58]), she gives Macbeth the courage to kill the king. Though Mac-

beth chidingly affirms the moral position “I dare do all that may become a man; / Who dares do more is none” (1.7.46–47), he goes along with the plan of regicide nonetheless, crossing from honor to villainy. After the murder of Duncan, Macbeth becomes king in his place, but the more he tries, like Oedipus, to adhere to the prophecy, the more it eludes him. Hence, one murder leads to further: He has Banquo killed to ensure the crown for his progeny rather than Banquo’s as the witches foretold. Again like Oedipus, Macbeth both acts upon and acts against the prophecy in ardent contradiction, incited by momentary megalomania, sealed by the murderous deed and, thereafter, the will never to submit in the downward spiral of violence and death. The fulfillment of the witches’ prophecy drives the events of further carnage fatefully and fatally with a peculiar vitality of their own—a concatenation of one violent act igniting the next. Ultimately, Macbeth’s final end comes in a showdown in act 5, scene 8 with Macduff, the man “of no woman born” (5.8.13), the only man whom, according to the witches’ prophecy, Macbeth must fear. Presenting itself as the fulfillment of fate, the duel between Macbeth and Macduff can also be seen, like the other preceding cases, as an example of self-fulfilling prophecy. The event materializes not so much through the agency of higher powers but more often through a human being’s reactions to his foreknowledge of the event. In Macbeth’s case, it is less a superhuman agency that controls the outcome and more a wearied Macbeth himself, who, finally facing his nemesis, is taunted by Macduff, who fights him with invincible fury to avenge the deaths of his wife and children. In Romeo and Juliet, fate again plays a defining role to induce tragedy, working as a force of fortuity to obstruct the best intentions of human beings. In Shakespeare’s early tragedy about star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet’s problems lie in that they have been born into two families engaged in an age-old feud. The deaths of the young lovers might have been prevented had there not been a plague, which kept Friar John from informing Romeo that Juliet was under a spell of faked death. They might have succeeded in living peacefully apart from their families, but such an outcome probably would not have effected an end to the feud that the chastening

freedomâ•…â•… 35 deaths of the two lovers apparently induced. Despite the role of fortuity in the tragic outcome, the more defining accountability rests in the human agents themselves. To this effect, the plague, seemingly fortuitous, precisely symbolizes the feud’s moral rottenness. In all these works, with the exception of The Aeneid, fate presents divine agency as muted, passively present, or altogether absent in the affairs of human beings. The emphasis, rather, is that events emerge through deliberate human action, not through chance. Such a conception prefigures the 20th-century philosophy of existentialism, which affirms a human being’s freedom to act and accountability for choices made, despite the nihilism to which random, meaningless, absurd events may lend themselves. Suzan-Lori Parks’s 21st-century Pulitzer Prize– winning play Topdog/Underdog further explores the themes of fate and free will through the experience of two African-American brothers struggling to get by and get ahead, the tragicomic absurdity of their underclass existence deftly balanced with the burdens placed by mythology and history on their autonomy. Their father, in a whim, named the brothers Lincoln and Booth, foreshadowing the antagonism that will plague their interactions within their instinctive alliance to assist each other in the plight of the African-American man: dearth of opportunity. Thus, they wrestle in the age-old struggle of Cain and Abel, representing the eternal clash between the topdog and underdog as both individuals and subgroups of society. Lincoln (Link) emancipates himself from his former lucrative but dangerous life as a three-card monte hustler and instead, ludicrously, becomes a black impersonator of Lincoln in an amusement park game, whereby he gets repeatedly “assassinated” by all the Booths in the world who have an “axe tuh grind” (46). Like President Lincoln, who single-handedly freed the slaves, Link tries to free his younger brother from the enthrallment of three-card monte—unsuccessfully because, like his namesake, he cannot offer Booth viable opportunities of gainful employment. His efforts to protect Booth only appear as actions of a rival and inexorably lead the two into a fatal face-off in the three-card monte. Again, as with all

the works previously discussed, in Topdog/Underdog it is individual action based on characteristic disposition, induced by the psychological, emotional, and economic urgencies of the dramatic moment, that bring Lincoln and Booth to the self-fulfilling prophecy presaged by fate, myth, and history. See also Bellow, Saul: Adventures of Augie March, The; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The”; Conrad, Joseph: Lord Jim; Dickens, Charles: Tale of Two Cities, A; Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: Hound of the Baskervilles, The; Dreiser, Theodore: American Tragedy, An; Edwards, Jonathan: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”; Erdrich, Louise: Bingo Palace, The; Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary; García Márquez, Gabriel: One Hundred Years of Solitude; Harte, Bret: “Outcasts of Poker Flats, The”; Homer: Iliad, The; Lowry, Lois: Giver, The; McCarthy, Cormac: All the P retty Horses; Naipaul, V. S.: Bend in the River, A; Shakespeare, William: Twelfth Night; Tolkien, J. R. R.: Lord of the Rings, The; Wilde, Oscar: Importance of Being Earnest, The. FURTHER READING May, Rollo. Freedom and Destiny. New York: Norton, 1981. Parks, Suzan-Lori. Topdog/Underdog. New York: Dramatist’s Play Service, 2004.

Unhae Langis

freedom

Close observers can see that, rather than standing still, the Statue of Liberty steps forward over broken shackles, representing how freedom progresses, its very definition changing over time. In the medieval worldview, freedom meant acting according to reason, and it focused on the discussion of free will. However, the modern definition of freedom primarily focuses on political and civil freedoms, having little to do with reason. This differentiation between medieval and modern conceptions of freedom follows the English philosopher John Locke’s 17thcentury divide between liberty and license. In his Second Treatise of Government (1690), Locke writes, “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it,

36â•…â•… freedom which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent .╯.╯. there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another” (4). Liberty, then, may be defined as actions that conform to reason, whereas license allows for acts of passion, which may subordinate or harm others or the self. The assumptions Locke makes concerning why humans should conform to reason adhere to the medieval notion of the universe—namely, that it has a Creator who endowed humans with reason. Locke writes that all humans are “the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise maker.” (4) Created by an omniscient, omnipotent being, humans struggle to understand how they also may maintain freedom. The tension between free will and predestination dominates the concerns of medieval writers from Saint Augustine to John Milton. In the middle of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, Dante the Pilgrim discusses the relationship between the freedom of human beings and the plans of the omnipotent creator. His dialoguing partner, Marco the Lombard, says that while “the heavens set your appetites in motion .╯.╯.╯, on greater power and a better nature you, who are free, depend; that Force engenders the mind in you, outside the heaven’s sway” (2.16.73, 79–81). In other words, God creates humans and provides them with reason, but he does not control them. As the “joyful Maker,” God gives the human soul motion, so “it turns willingly to things that bring delight” (2.16.89, 90). The will turns naturally to good objects. While the will should know the good objects by reason, the human souls, catering to their physical over their spiritual nature, often falter and choose earthly over heavenly goods. Thus, Dante the Pilgrim, representing “everyman,” has used his freedom for earthly delights and must learn instead to align his will with God’s. Describing the beginning of humanity’s fall from God’s will, John Milton writes about the first human beings in Paradise Lost. Adam and Eve, whom God labels as “sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (3.99), succumb to Satan’s temptation to eat of the tree of knowledge. Before Eve commits the sin, Adam reminds her that “God left free the will, for what obeys Reason is free, and reason he

made right” (9.350–351), echoing Milton’s notion that freedom depends on reason. Despite Adam’s warning, Eve subordinates her reason to her desire; Adam then follows. In this act, they both lose their freedom. In his essay “Freedom and Necessity in Paradise Lost,” J. B. Savage writes that Adam “by becoming absorbed in the things of the world, he becomes governed and determined by them .╯.╯.╯; by neglecting the motive of moral obligation, by which alone he is free, he must unavoidably surrender his freedom” (305). The example of Adam can be illustrated in an analogy: If a man freely walks off a cliff, he gives up his freedom and surrenders to the law of gravity. In the same way that physical actions must comply with the scientific laws of reality, so must moral actions observe the laws of reason. This definition of freedom reiterates the Lockean idea of liberty, while the actions of Satan and the first human beings illustrate license. Though Satan argues that it is “better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” (1.263), he does not realize that since God’s will dictates the laws of the universe, only slavery and determinism are possible when acting against God’s will. Locke refers to these laws as natural laws engrained in every human person, laws that respond to reason and protect the equal and independent nature of human beings. His Second Treatise is written to the government, so his main objective is to convince civil authorities of these innate human freedoms. While this definition of freedom is invoked in the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, it took almost two centuries to be properly enacted for all races, classes, and genders. African-American and feminist literature responds to this earlier oppression of the liberties of human beings, recognizing the need for what the 20th-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin categorizes as the two types of freedom—negative and positive freedom. While negative freedom is a freedom from oppression, coercion, or tyranny, positive freedom is a freedom for opportunity, ability, or privilege. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the author tells his own story of his search for freedom from slavery and for education. Slavery is, first, an impingement on Freder-

freedomâ•…â•… 37 ick Douglass’s personal freedom and, second, a restriction on the positive freedom for education. Since freedom must correspond with reason, those restricted from education have greater susceptibility to slavery. As the English philosopher Francis Bacon famously said, “Knowledge is power.” Thus, the contrary also proves true: Ignorance is slavery. The two work with each other and against Douglass: His slavery keeps him from learning, and his ignorance keeps him a slave. When his mistress, Mrs. Auld, attempts to teach him to read, Mr. Auld forbids it, saying, “↜‘Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,’ said he, ‘if you teach that nigger (speaking of [Douglass]) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave’↜” (Douglass 41). Mr. Auld realizes that learning frees human beings. Overhearing this dialogue, Douglass, too, understands that knowledge is the “path from slavery to freedom” (41). Thus, through education, he overcomes the subordination he has suffered. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, her protagonist. Mrs. Edna Pontellier, overcomes her subordination as a woman through education as well, though of a different kind, education of experience. Similar to Douglass’s transformation, Edna begins by desiring negative freedom—freedom from the dominance of her husband. In a moment of selfawareness, she perceives “that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant” when her husband Léonce demanded that she come to bed. She wonders whether “her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had .╯.╯. But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she did then” (37). Edna then begins to seek positive freedom for individual autonomy—to use her time as she desires, painting, swimming, and taking a lover. However, these choices do not accord with reason but with desire, and thus they are not free. By the end of the novel, Edna has lost the respect of society, left her husband and her children, and has been abandoned by her lover. Realizing her solitude, she commits suicide, though this ending remains ambiguous as to its triumph. The modern interpretation of freedom, which could be categorized as license, exalts actions such as

Edna’s. In the 19th century, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declares that modern society has murdered God. Without a conception of God, all freedom is dictated by the autonomous individual. As the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre writes, “Man is freedom.” Each person must determine his or her own freedom by acting as he or she chooses, apart from the constrictions of family, religion, time, or even reason. In his article “Existentialism and Human Freedom,” John Killinger writes, “Man’s nature is not ‘fixed’ as a stone’s or a tree’s is; he is a creature with the ability to choose, and decides what he shall become” (304). Humans have no created essence, but they must create their existence by free actions. Fyodor Dostoyevsky rightly foresaw the problem with this philosophy, namely that every action then becomes permissible. In Dostoyevsky’s masterful novel Crime and Punishment, the main character Raskolnikov believes that extraordinary human beings may act not only above the laws of morality or reason, but also above civil laws. His examples of extraordinary human beings include Isaac Newton and Napoleon Bonaparte—men who felt free to remove any persons who obstructed their noble purposes. Considering himself such an extraordinary person, Raskolnikov murders the local pawnshop owner because she belongs to the lower, ordinary kind of people. To comfort himself against the encroaching guilt that follows this act, he exclaims, “it wasn’t a human being I killed, it was a principle!” (274). The woman is no more than an object to him. This subordination and harm imposed on others is exactly what Locke thinks stems from not subjecting freedom to reason, what African Americans and women overcame in the 20th century, and what still must be fought against in contemporary societies around the world. See also Capote, Truman: In Cold Blood; Chestnutt, Charles W.: “Goophered Grapevine, The”; Equiano, Olaudah: Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary; Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: Yellow Wallpaper, The; Hughes, Langston: poems; James, Henry: Daisy Miller; Portrait of a Lady, The; Kafka, Franz: Metamorphosis, The; Kerouac, Jack: On the

38â•…â•… futility Road; London, Jack: Call of the Wild, The; Morrison, Toni: Beloved; Mukherjee, Bharati: Middleman and Other Stories, The; Paine, Thomas: “Common Sense”; Steinbeck, John: Of Mice and Men. FURTHER READING Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Norton, 1993. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Bantam, 1996. Killinger, John. “Existentialism and Human Freedom.” English Journal 50, no. 5 (May 1961): 303–313. Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004. Savage, J. B. “Freedom and Necessity in Paradise Lost. ELH 44, no. 2 (Summer 1977): 286–311.

Jessica Hooten

futility

The theme of futility or overriding hopelessness in literature has been driven by philosophical concepts regarding life and how we live it. The later decades of the 19th century saw rapid industrialization, which helped support Karl Marx’s theories of alienation and the consideration of all history as a battle between opposing economic forces—an eternal class struggle between the new industrialists and their workers. If Marx was right, then human history is robbed of any emotional or superlative value and God is unnecessary. Thus, human life becomes valueless and life after death just so much dust and myth. In 1859, Charles Darwin (1809–82) wrote On the Origin of Species, in which humans were shown as descending from primates. The long-held idea that man was simply made in the image of God was challenged by science. Thomas Huxley (1825–95), the grandfather of the novelist Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) was one of the eminent men who took upon himself to refute religion and establish this new Darwinian idea. Marx and Darwin, though perhaps not intentionally in the latter’s case, called the idea of God’s existence into question. This naturally had the effect of extinguishing any hope that people had of better lives after death. This sense of futility and utter hopelessness was expressed in

British literature by Matthew Arnold (1822–28) in Dover Beach (1851): The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. This is further reflected in Thomas Hardy’s pessimistic novels The Return of the Native (1878), Tess of the d ’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). This line of thinking was continued by the likes of the French author Albert Camus (1913–60), who had written on the monotonous absurdity of daily life in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). The novel is a retelling of the ancient myth of Sisyphus, who has to forever push a stone up a hill. Our lives are like Sisyphus’s: No matter what we do, we are bound to fail. Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1604) is a well-known study in futility. Faustus loses all hope in both the Renaissance and Christianity. He can only lament when he hears Satan answer about life: Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells In being deprived of everlasting bliss? (3.74–78) Even in the 17th century, Marlowe anticipated the intensity of futility’s pain that the modern era would explore in depth. The irony of the critiques of futility, both literary and philosophical, lies in their ultimately revealing the “charm” of despair and how futility almost always gives way to inner spiritual freedom. We see these kinds of Romantic meditations on futility in such diverse works as William Shakespeare’s Mac-

futilityâ•…â•… 39 (1603) and Carson McCullers’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940). Tragedy, according to Aristotle, is a journey by the audience into futility and then a rebirth from despair. Macbeth goes insane when accosted with the pointlessness of action: beth

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. (5.5.19–23) These famous lines are glossed as the essence of futility and how, being aware of the deceptive nature of time, we will surely be wary of actions similar to Macbeth’s. The underlying idea is that there still remain ways to make our lives less than futile, if only we can avoid imitating Macbeth. After all, according to Aristotle, tragedies purge us even of despair. When, by definition, the awareness of futility cannot conceive of anything beyond the limitations of the present moment, this leaves alone any soul whose freedom is worth attaining. Futility in literature is not an isolated concept. Rather, it is located firmly within the repressive process of Sigmund Freud’s pleasure principle, or the id. According to Freud, when our desires are thwarted, we start sinking into despair, which creates within us a sense of uselessness or futility. This is not to be confused with the ideas of existential philosophers such as Jean Paul Sartre (1905–80), who saw the world as a stage where every action is meaningless. Existentialism posits that while our actions may be meaningless, they are influenced by inner spiritual struggles. Much later, after the great surge of existentialist writings, we find the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) establishing futility as the end result of his forays into literature and texts. Derrida argued that it is futile to search for ultimate meanings in texts, including patterns in historical thought. Futility, then, has a long ideological history, from the laments of the preacher in Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?” (1:2–3); listless-

ness to St. Augustine of Hippo’s concept of acedia which had such a hold on the British romantics; to the agnosticism that we find in Friedrich Nietzsche, Émile Durkheim (Suicide, 1897), Freud, Sartre, and Ludwig Wittgenstein; and then through Michel Foucault, Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and their disciples to such present-day classics as the best-selling writers Stephen King (The Stand, 1978) and Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, 1985; The Road, 2006). We find deep despair in the heroic codes of old: The Babylonian Gilgamesh, the Scandinavian Beowulf (Anonymous), Widsith, The Wanderer, and The Ruin seamlessly spill over to the famous “Dance of Death” poems in the Middle Ages. In Europe we find the uselessness of trying to find meaning in life in the works of Franz Kafka (1883–1924; especially The Trial, 1925) and Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936). American literature, too, obsesses about the uselessness of life and its struggles. Famous examples are Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) and, to an extent, J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Salinger’s teenage protagonist, Holden Caulfield, even finds it futile to consider people as individuals. He just calls everyone he meets “phonies,” much in the same way as Antoin Roquentin, the main character of Sartre’s Nausea (1938), continually feels nauseous in his utter disgust at the futility of breathing to live on. Futility also figures as a theme in non-Western literature. Whereas the Christian concept of history is forward-looking with clear divides, the Eastern sense of history is circular. In the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions, events are considered as repeating themselves endlessly. As such, God is not thought of as a separate entity as in Christianity and Islam. Hinduism sees the world itself as an emanation of the godhead, or Brahma. Thus, all sorrow is momentary and born of ignorance of our final ends and our true natures. We indeed are “amritasya putra” (Shvetashvatara Upanishad, 2.5) or “sons of the Immortal.” While Buddhism is silent about the presence of God, Jainism denies it. But in both these systems of thought, what occurs now will repeat itself in some manner later, giving eternal scope for personal and social improvements. Thus, there is present a conscious negation of futility in Eastern ancient literatures, including those written

40â•…â•… gender in Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit. As a result, nothing is seen as futile in the end; there are salvation and hope that every single living and nonliving being will ultimately be set free from the bondage of repetitive historical processes or Karma. This is why Sanskrit poetics eschew tragic endings, and tragedy as a genre is nonexistent in ancient India. Abhijñānashākuntala’s tragic heroine Shakuntala is saved from ultimate despair right at the last moment by the fourth- or fifth-century playwright Kalidasa. This is the norm in ancient Indian literature. While the West has a rich tradition of meditating on futility, the East has struggled to show futility as a paralyzing emotion to be discarded by the individual at all costs. The Buddha sees futility as a disease to be disposed of. We know of an anecdotal story where the Buddha exhorts one not to analyze life in a morbid manner but rather to find out ways to come out of the resultant inertia brought about by depression. The Buddha draws an analogy between an arrow-struck man and the need to heal him rather than telling him of the arrow’s origins. This is the hallmark of Eastern ancient literatures. There is no scope for Dante Alighieri’s “All hope abandon, ye who enter here” (The Divine Comedy). Futility is thus seen as a luxury we can ill afford. See also Byron, George Gordon Byron, Lord: Don Juan; Camus, Albert: Stranger, The; Eliot, T. S.: Wasteland, The; Greene, Graham: Heart of the Matter, The; Hemingway, Ernest: Sun Also Rises, The; Vonnegut, Kurt: Slaughterhouse-Five; Williams, Tennessee: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Yeats, William Butler: poems. FURTHER READING King James Bible Online. Available online. URL: http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org. Accessed January 22, 2010.

Subhasis Chatterjee

gender

In common usage, the word gender most typically refers to the perceived and natural differences between men and women. In literary studies, the term more specifically refers to how individuals define themselves and how they are evaluated by

others on the basis of gender. Gender is often associated with feminism (women’s activism against gendered oppression), feminists (those who study and advocate women’s equality), and Women’s Studies (interdisciplinary academic programs dedicated to the study of gender and women’s gendered oppression) because one must understand how gender functions before one can examine the oppression or lack thereof that gendered behavior entails. The study of gender is then also the study of power relationships—of how one’s gender, typically the male gender, gives one a power advantage over the other gender. Thus, founders of Women’s Studies and feminist theory such as the French psychoanalytic feminist theorists Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray have helped to formulate our current understandings of gender. At the most basic level, the theories of these early psychoanalytic feminists assume that human behavior is learned and not innate. In other words, men are not necessarily more naturally aggressive. Instead, a critic applying gender theory would argue that if the majority of the men in a particular group are aggressive, this aggression is learned as part of their “gender identity” as a man. “Gender roles,” in turn, are the codes of behavior that a society expects for one gender or another. These codes are learned in childhood. According to this theory, children see adults model gender-appropriate behavior, and then their desire to be a member of that society impels them to accept the modeled behavior as the best and most appropriate for themselves and others. Adopting and practicing a “gender role” is therefore what helps an individual to construct a “gender identity” of who they are. The American philosopher Judith Butler builds on the work of these French theorists by arguing that gender is performative. Butler’s premise is that since gender entails a role, and roles are the culmination of actions, gender must also be a culmination of actions. In making this claim, Butler extends the idea that there is nothing intrinsic to gender identity by showing that an individual can vary his or her performance of gender from moment to moment. In other words, every action, every choice, be it the clothes we choose or the way in which we speak to

genderâ•…â•… 41 authority figures, is an act of choosing to perform a gender. One of her most controversial theories is that individuals only perceive themselves as having constant gender identities, when in reality every action and every choice they make is one that either confirms or violates the gender roles of a particular group. Because gender is basic to human behavior, the study of gender can be applied to any (or virtually any) social context or literary work. Thus, the focus on gender as a role has recently expanded to the social and cultural forces that shape men’s gendered behavior. Therefore, one could carry out a gender study on the masculinity of men in power, exploring how they enjoy and benefit from their performance of masculine-coded behavior. More typically, however, theorists look at male gendered behavior among oppressed groups, the ill-effects of the performance of masculinity among dominant groups, or how the male performance of gender roles has the potential to harm both men and women. Three examples of literary works—Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog (2002), David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly (1998), and William Shakespeare’s Othello—as well as selected criticism on these works provide examples of scholarly gender study. In Topdog/Underdog and M. Butterfly, the authors consciously incorporate a study of gender into their creative processes. Topdog/Underdog is a play that works to explain the ill-effects of contemporary lower-class African-American male gendered roles. Because the play’s two male characters, the brothers Booth and Lincoln, are poor and largely uneducated, they face restrictions in the performance of their masculinity that wealthier, and especially wealthy Caucasian, men do not. All the men in the larger American culture depicted in the play may display their masculinity through acts of sexual virility and by dominance over men lower in status themselves. Only middle- and upper-status men can demonstrate their masculinity by flaunting their high work incomes. Because the brothers are poor and extremely low-status, they are restricted to sexual prowess and the domination of one another as the means of defining their masculinity. The ill-effects of the encompassing cultural system are shown

when their mutual attempts at domination culminate in Booth shooting Lincoln to death. M. Butterfly also looks at the expression of masculinity within oppressed groups and, as in the case of Topdog/Underdog, explores the issues of gender in combination with those of race. Here the comparison is between a sexist and racist male French diplomat, René Gallimard, and a transsexual (a person of one gender who adopts the clothing and often the mannerisms of the opposite sex gender but retains their original sexual organs) Chinese male spy, Song Lilling. The two have an enduring love affair, during which time Lilling steals various diplomatic secrets and completely conceals his male sexual organs from his French lover, despite many occasions of sexual activity. The cause of Gallimard’s misreading of Lilling’s sex is shown to be the result of Lilling’s perfect performance of what Gallimard believes to be Asian femininity. For example, Lilling apologizes for her breastless chest and begs Gallimard to love her anyway. Gallimard is so attracted to this performance of self-denigration and subordination that he fails to explore the likely physical causes for Lilling’s lack of breasts. Similarly, Lilling claims to be so shy and ashamed of her body that she will not allow Gallimard to touch her genitals or to see her/him naked. Again, Gallimard is so attracted to what he perceives as the feminine performances of shame that he does not explore other likely explanations for Lilling’s behavior. The plot’s obvious twist is that the transsexual Lilling uses the performance of subordination and femininity to gain power over a heterosexual man who enjoys performing masculine dominance. Thus, while Lilling’s behavior is not traditionally masculine, and thus would be disempowering for many men, for the character of Lilling, such performances of gender are nonetheless his means of expressing power and dominance over another man, and thus they express his masculinity. In “Men and Women in Othello,” from her book Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare’s Plays, Carol Thomas Neely looks at the gendered behavior of the men in Othello and compares it to the women’s gendered behavior. Neely evaluates a 16th-century play in terms of seeming universal gender roles and finds the men of the play to be too concerned with male honor, their ability to dominate other men, and their

42â•…â•… gender control of women’s sexuality. For example, Othello believes Iago’s lies about his wife Desdemona’s chastity because Othello is too preoccupied with what other men think of him. This need to protect his honor leads him to first murder his wife and then to commit suicide. Similarly, the play’s women are too trusting of the men and refuse to see their faults clearly. For example, Neely implies that if either Desdemona or Emilia had been able to be honest with themselves about the limitations of their husbands, Othello and Iago respectively, before Othello murdered Desdemona, the play’s tragic ending would have been averted. Despite their shared interest in gender roles and issues of race and ethnicity, a key difference between Topdog/Underdog and M. Butterfly and Shakespeare’s Othello is that in the two former plays, the authors and today’s readers are responding to the same contemporary cultural issues and influences that help to shape gender. In the case of Othello, the distance in time between author and reader means that the modern reader will almost certainly not share the same assumptions regarding gender roles and gendered behavior as the author. Critics such as Ania Loomba, following the historicist theories of Stephan Greenblatt (a school of thought often referred to as New Historicism, which holds the premise that literary study has to be based on the historical beliefs of the author’s time period), has argued that the critic always needs to keep in mind the attitudes toward gender and race in the author’s time. Indeed, the historicist argument has so resonated within the academic community that today it is the dominant factor in studying gender. Future study is likely to continue these trends, balancing the need to assess what are common gender roles over time and geographic space and what roles are more specific to one time and one place. See also Achebe, Chinua: Anthills of the Savannah; Alvarez, Julia: How the García Girls Lost Their Accents; Aristophanes: Lysistrata; Atwood, Margaret: Handmaid ’s Tale, The; Surfacing; Austen, Jane: Pride and P rejudice; Sense and Sensibility; Behn, Aphra: Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave; Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre; Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights; Cao Xueqin: Dream of the Red Chamber; Chaucer,

Geoffrey: Canterbury Tales, The; Cisneros, Sandra: Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories; Dos Passos, John: U.S.A. trilogy; Douglass, Frederick: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; DuBois, W. E. B.: Souls of Black Folk, The; Euripides: Medea; Forster, E. M.: Passage to India, A; Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South; Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: Yellow Wallpaper, The; Glaspell, Susan: Trifles; Harte, Bret: “Luck of Roaring Camp, The”; Hemingway, Ernest: Sun Also Rises, The; Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ibsen, Henrik: Hedda Gabler; Irving, John: World According to Garp, The; Irving, Washington: Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, The; Jacobs, Harriet: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself; Kingsolver, Barbara: Bean Trees, The; Kingston, Maxine Hong: Woman Warrior, The; Lawrence, D. H.: Rainbow, The; Women in Love; Lessing, Doris: Golden Notebook, The; Malamud, Bernard: Natural, The; McMurtry, Larry: Lonesome Dove; Morrison, Toni: Sula; Naylor, Gloria: Women of Brewster Place; O’Brien, Tim: Things They Carried, The; Pope, Alexander: Rape of the Lock, The; Rhys, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea; Rowlandson, Mary: Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; Shakespeare, William: Much Ado about Nothing; Taming of the Shrew, The; Shaw, George Bernard: Pygmalion; Stoker, Bram: Dracula; Tan, Amy: Joy Luck Club, The; Woolf, Virginia: Mrs Dalloway; To the Lighthouse. FURTHER READING Abrahamson, Myka Tucker. “The Money Shot: Economies of Sex, Guns, and Language in Topdog/ Underdog.” Modern Drama 50, no. 1 (2007): 77–97. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated and edited by H. M. Parshley. New York: Knopf, 1953. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990. Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Translated by Paula Cohen. Signs 1, no. 4 (1976): 875–893. Greer, Germaine. The Female Eunuch. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971.

griefâ•…â•… 43 ———. Sex and Destiny. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Translated by Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. Neely, Carol Thomas. Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare’s Plays. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985. Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: Norton, 1976. Rossini, Jon D. “From M. Butterfly to Bondage: David Henry Hwang’s Fantasies of Sexuality, Ethnicity, and Gender.” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 18, no. 3 (2006): 54–76.

Silver Damsen

grief

Grief is arguably life’s greatest source of stress and turmoil. Our relationships with others play important roles in the development of our identities, and when those people are lost, we can feel as if we, too, are lost, unsure of who we are and how we will continue to function in a world that seems to have changed irrevocably. Grief, in short, is the mourning of a loss, usually the loss of a loved one but easily expanded to cover any loss that represents a core part of our lives. The loss of careers, mental or physical health, and pets can also trigger the difficult grieving process. This process is often disorderly and confusing, throwing the mourner into a whirlwind of emotion over which he or she has little control. Unlike other stressful emotions, grief carries such power because it calls into question how the mourner finds meaning in life. An important loss can induce us to feel that life has no meaning, because every facet of our lives—every memory, every sound, every gesture—reminds us of what we have lost. One of the difficult parts of the grieving process is putting what we are feeling into words, not just to explain our thoughts to others but also to understand what we are feeling ourselves. Literature, then, is an invaluable tool for expressing grief. Literature can employ figurative language to go deeper and to convey indescribable emotions in a way that plain language cannot. Art is one of our most valuable tools in life for expressing that which we cannot find the words to explain.

In fact, literature, especially poetry, has historically helped people to work through their grief. Elegies, poems written to commemorate a person’s death, can be great sources of solace and understanding to those in mourning. That we might need the help of poets in understanding our grief process has been long understood in the psychiatric community. Grief, by its very nature, disrupts us, places us at a loss for words. In fact, early on grief was thought of as a “psychiatric disorder,” and indeed there is evidence that grief can induce physical illness in mourners (Gilbert 255). The standard symptoms of grief are bodily distress, guilt, hostility, a preoccupation with the image of the deceased, and the alteration or loss of normal patterns of conduct (Kamerman 66). It is these last two that make grief so disruptive to the functioning mind. Because we are preoccupied with the image of the lost loved one, we find it very difficult to imagine life ever returning to normal. C. S. Lewis, in his chronicle of the loss of his wife, says, “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything” (13). Lewis points out here that there is not one time of day or one activity or one occasion that reminds him of his loss, but that the loss pervades his every waking moment. W. H. Auden, in his poem “Funeral Blues,” explains this well, saying of his lost loved one, “he was my North, my South, my East, and my West / my working week and my Sunday rest” (ll. 9–10). Moving through grief requires a great deal of hard work on the part of the mourner. The Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud noted in his influential 1917 essay “Mourning and Melancholia” that mourning takes time and mental labor to “revive, relive, and release” (quoted in MacKenzie 131). Although Freud himself did not propose the theory that the process of grief moves in stages, this essay laid the groundwork for that now commonly accepted theory. The most famous theory involving “stages of grief ” is that of the Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Her theory actually deals with terminally ill patients dealing with their own deaths, a process that might be called anticipatory grief, but she and others later realized it could apply to those mourning for others as well. Although different theorists have different ideas about the stages, in

44â•…â•… grief general, most agree that the opening stage is one of denial, followed by a period of anger, followed by some kind of depression or disorganization, with a final period of acceptance or reorganization. The stages do not necessarily occur in order, and they can and do overlap with one another. We can see these stages played out in works of literature. For instance, when Laurel must deal with her father’s death in Eudora Welty’s The Optimist ’s Daughter, she embarks on a journey that begins with her idealizing her childhood, includes misplaced anger at her stepmother, and ends with her acceptance of her life in the present. In one of the most famous literary expositions on grief, In Memoriam, A. H. H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, we see meditations on the denial of his friend’s death when he says he is having trouble accepting reality. He says, “By faith, and faith alone embrace, / Believing where we cannot prove” (ll. 3–4). By the end of the poem, however, he seems to have moved toward acceptance, saying, “Ring out the old, ring in the new / Ring happy bells, across the snow / The year is going, let him go” (ll. 103–105). Sometimes one stage or one phase of grief dominates the literature, as Homer’s The Iliad, when Achilles, in his grief over the death of Patroclus, vents his anger by cutting the throats of 12 Trojan youths, or when the soldiers in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried savagely kill the water buffalo and burn the village in a misguided attempt to avenge the deaths of their fellow soldiers. Denial, on the other hand, takes center stage in John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, when Rabbit refuses to fully acknowledge the horrific death of his infant daughter, and in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, when Macon finds Ruth alone and naked with the body of her dead father. Both Rabbit and Ruth may have a hard time dealing with these deaths because they live in a culture that finds grief, mourning, and their expression embarrassing. Grief has been defined by many as an “open wound”—and others want to look away from that wound, because to acknowledge it is invariably difficult and confusing. Sandra Gilbert says about this phenomenon that “even while it wounds the mourner, the embarrassment of the

comforter is a sign of a wound for which neither mourner nor comforter has the proper language” (254). Bertha Simos calls Western society a “deathdenying culture,” noting that the social psychologist Erich Fromm has gone so far as to “suggest that the increase in violence in society today is directly related to our inability to grieve” (5). We see death denial in literary characters such as the Tyrone family in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, who avoid the topic of their long-dead infant son and brother and ignore their mother’s obvious grief (and subsequent morphine addiction). We see it also in the reactions others have to Septimus Warren Smith, the disturbed war veteran in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Smith’s pain is an embarrassment, a fact that no one wants or knows how to deal with, and ultimately this denial kills him. The expression of grief is crucial to moving through its process, as Toni Morrison says in Sula, “The body must move and throw itself about, the eyes must roll, the hands should have no peace, and the throat should release all the yearning, despair and outrage that accompanies the stupidity of loss” (135). Occasionally, even when grief is acknowledged, mourners are unable regain a sense of normal, functioning life without their object of loss. Psychologists call this “exceptional” or “pathological” grief, and characters entrenched in this state make appearances in literature as well. Ophelia, for instance, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, cannot fathom the death of her father, Polonius, especially coupled with the emotional torment she is receiving from Hamlet, and, losing her grasp on reality, she drowns herself. Sethe, in Morrison’s Beloved, is so disturbed by her grief over having killed her daughter that she is haunted by the ghost of this loved one for most of her adult life. Perhaps most disturbing is when the adult ghost of Beloved returns to wreak havoc on Sethe’s life, to demand complete subservience to her at the expense of Sethe’s relationships with Paul D. and with Denver, her living child. Sethe should recognize this, that Denver, a child fully part of this world, should take precedence over the otherworldly Beloved; that she takes so long to do so demonstrates the depth of her grief. Of all the themes in literature, grief is perhaps the only one that can serve to illuminate the nature

guiltâ•…â•… 45 of the theme itself by acting, as a form of therapy to readers who might be in mourning themselves. See also Chaucer, Geoffrey: Canterbury Tales, The; Faulkner, William: Sound and the Fury, The; Shelley, Percy Bysshe: poems. FURTHER READING Gilbert, Sandra. Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve. New York: Norton, 2006. Kamerman, Jack B. Death in the Midst of Life: Social and Cultural Influences on Death, Grief, and Mourning. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988. Kirkby, Joan. “A Crescent Still Abides.” In Wider than the Sky: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily Dickinson, edited by Cindy MacKenzie and Barbara Dana, 129–141. Kent, Ohio: Kent University Press, 2007. Lewis, C. S. (as N. W. Clerk). A Grief Observed. London: Faber, 1961. Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Plume, 2002. Simos, Bertha G. A Time to Grieve. New York: Family Service Association of America, 1979.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

guilt

When we hurt someone, we usually feel guilty. If the hurt was committed deliberately, this is understandable. However, many of us can feel guilt even when the hurt is inadvertent. Human beings are also capable of feeling guilt merely for existing when others have died, or for being born wealthy when others live in poverty. Guilt, at its heart, reflects a transgression, a crossing of boundaries. Societies have rules, written and unwritten, and when we break those rules, we often feel guilty unless and until we can effect restitution or restore harmony. Guilt is so fundamental to human existence that it makes an appearance as early as the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. God tells Adam and Eve that they are free to do what they wish, as long as they keep his only rule: that they will not eat from the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden. Yet they do, thanks to the serpent’s temptations, and they are banished from the garden forever. Their lasting punishment, though, is that the “eyes of them both were opened” (Gen. 3:7). Further, they have generated what would come to be known

as original sin. The notion of original sin is that because of Adam’s and Eve’s transgression, we are all born as sinners, guilty from the start. Adam and Eve had only one rule to follow, and they broke it. For the rest of us, the rules we must follow in life are legion, as well as far more difficult to know and discern at all times throughout our lives. Because we cannot control when and if we might be transgressing, guilt pervades human existence. We can be under the thrall of collective guilt, as is the society depicted in Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum. Guilt over the Holocaust is so pervasive in Grass’s post–World War II Danzig that his protagonist, Oskar, refuses to grow up and enter the world of complicitous and duplicitous adults. We can also be following the “rules” of our society and still find ourselves feeling guilty. For instance, soldiers who kill in battle have, on the surface, done nothing for which to feel guilty; they are merely doing their jobs, following their orders. However, many of them can and do feel guilty about the killing they do, as exemplified by Paul Berlin in Tim O’Brien’s Going after Cacciato. Berlin is following the rules, and yet he feels guilty; Cacciato has broken the rules by going AWOL, and yet he is depicted as happy and free. We may also, like Dunstan Ramsey in Robertson Davies’s Fifth Business, feel guilty about events that we were involved in but were not our fault. Dunny feels guilt his whole life for ducking the snowball that hit Mrs. Dempster. That he is never able to fully make restitution to her is most likely a result of it not having been his fault in the first place. That guilt is a complicated concept, often felt irrationally, is clear. That it pervades Western culture is no less so. As recounted above, the concept of original sin makes us all “born guilty.” Christianity certainly bears a good deal of responsibility for making guilt so important in our lives. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argues that guilt has its origins in a creditor and debtor concept of human relationships. He argues that it is in these types of relationships that we break the rules for which we must make restitution. He further argues that Christianity is based on such a relationship, with Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross serving to put all humanity in “debt.” If Nietzsche is correct,

46â•…â•… guilt then the guilt we feel due to original sin is compounded by our need to repay Jesus for his sacrifice. Indeed, religion has historically played an important role in the development of the concept of guilt. Arthur Dimmesdale, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, is a good example of guilt driven by religious beliefs. The Puritan code under which Dimmesdale lives confines him so that he cannot admit his affair with Hester (who cannot hide the evidence that she has sinned). Although engaging in adultery would certainly break the rules of his society, he is so stifled that he further compounds his guilt by refusing to admit the truth and claim Pearl as his child. Hester, on the other hand, is not consumed with guilt, adhering to her own moral code, which appears more natural in comparison. For some, Christianity puts too much emphasis on the sinful (and thus guilty) nature of human beings. This is arguably a distortion of the message of Jesus Christ, which emphasizes love and goodwill toward other humans. One explanation for this distorted emphasis is that for Christian leaders, keeping their flocks “in line” is one of their most arduous tasks. Convincing the faithful that they must constantly atone in order to be admitted to the kingdom of Heaven keeps them from complacency. In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards elucidates the horrors of hell, invoking the wrathful Old Testament God rather than the New Testament Christ. This has the effect of scaring the listeners into prayer, which will help to balance their inherently guilty natures. This balance, which can also be described as a kind of repayment, is what differentiates guilt from its close counterpart, shame. The American philosopher John Rawls believed that in order to experience guilt, another must have been harmed in some way. Guilt, said Rawls, is also localized—that is, it is about our transgressions—whereas shame is about who we think we are as people. Thus, repayment and punishment are appropriate only to guilt, not shame. Hamlet, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, feels guilty that he cannot immediately avenge his father’s death. He says, Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing; no, not for a king, Upon whose property and most dear life A damn’d defeat was made. (2.2.566–571) He resolves to reveal Claudius’s guilt and kill him, thus ending his own guilt, repaying his father as it were. In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, Ethan spends his entire life unable to escape his loveless marriage. He feels guilty, first because he does not love Zeena and then because he has fallen in love with Mattie. He then spends his life punishing himself by staying married to Zeena. Ironically, when he tries to end his life (and Mattie’s) things go horribly wrong and he is further doomed, trapped as an invalid being taken care of by Zeena, consumed by guilt over what has happened both to her and to Mattie. Ethan ends his life unable to restore the balance created by his transgressions in love. Sethe, in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, is also unable to restore the balance. She murdered her child to keep her from slavery, and her guilt haunts her, literally, in the form of Beloved. Sethe tries to assuage this guilt by showering Beloved with attention, but her growing obsession with this manifestation of her dead daughter threatens to kill her. The horrors of slavery have wrought crimes so great no balance can be restored. The community comes together to exorcise the ghost and help Sethe to move on. The destructive behavior that Sethe exhibits is common for those suffering from guilt feelings. According to the psychologist E. Mark Stern, guilt that is long-lasting and preoccupying can interfere with our cognition and promote additional self-destructive behaviors. Stern demonstrates that this behavior contributes to a vicious cycle, stating that “the more a person blames himself or herself for unacceptable behavior, the more unacceptable behavior the person will perform” (260). The Scarlet Letter’s Dimmesdale is an example of this kind of self-destructive cycle. He tortures himself, carving his own scarlet letter into his breast and wasting away from the torments through which he puts himself. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester, too, hides himself away in lonely despair

heroismâ•…â•… 47 after he is blinded by the fire at Thornfeld Hall. His guilt stems from his locking away Bertha, as well as from his deception of Jane, and he compounds his guilt by hiding in his damaged mansion, doing nothing to restore the balance upset by his transgressions. While some literary characters are undone by guilt, others seem impervious to it, acting as if they are conscience-free. In fact, the sense of guilt is so fundamental to the human condition that one must assume something is wrong at the core of those who can commit evil and feel nothing. For instance, Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello and Chillingsworth in The Scarlet Letter wreak havoc on all those around them, bent only on achieving their own goals, which in Iago’s case is power and in Chillingsworth’s is revenge. Given Sigmund Freud’s theory of the id, the ego, and the superego, in which the id is our primitive impulses, the superego is morality tempering those impulses, and the ego is the mechanism that mediates between the two, these characters would seem to be missing an important part of their psyches. Characters such as these, as well as characters whose lives are spent controlled by guilt, can function as cautionary tales for the reader. Guilt is an important part of human personality, but when it takes over a life, that life may not be worth living. See also Bunyan, John: Pilgrim’s P rogress, The; Davis, Rebecca Harding: Life in the Iron Mills; Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment; Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the d ’Urbervilles; Irving, John: World According to Garp, The; Kingsolver, Barbara: Poisonwood Bible, The; Knowles, John: Separate Peace, A; O’Brien, Tim: Things They Carried, The; O’Neill, Eugene: Long Day’s Journey into Night; Poe, Edgar Allan: “Tell-Tale Heart, The”; Shakespeare, William: Julius Caesar; Macbeth; Turgenev, Ivan: Fathers and Sons. FURTHER READING Stern, E. Mark. Psychotherapy and the Remorseful Patient. New York: Haworth, 1988. Taylor, Gabrielle. Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

heroism

The word hero is commonly applied to many different types of people performing wildly varying acts. For instance, extraordinary acts of physical strength and courage, such as saving a stranger from a burning house or standing up to an armed assailant, are feats we would typically label heroic. Physical courage is not the only component of heroism, however. Those who exhibit moral courage, such as people who put their own lives or reputations at stake to do or say what is right, rather than what is merely popular, are also called heroes. Heroes can also be those close friends or loved ones whom we admire and treat as role models, calling such a person “my hero.” We routinely use the term for our popular and talented sports figures as well, whether or not their behavior off the playing field can be considered heroic. We even use it to refer to people who are inspirations to others, inspirations that do not necessarily hinge on physical strength or moral superiority. With all of these varied uses, clearly explaining the allure of heroism as a literary theme is difficult. Compounding that difficulty is the fact that in literary studies, the term hero is used to refer to the central character of a work. John Dryden first used the term this way in 1697, and it is still commonly accepted as a synonym for protagonist, even when the protagonist does nothing particularly heroic. We have long used the word heroic to refer to acts that are special or extraordinary. The exploits of professional athletes, the life-saving missions of soldiers and firefighters, the bravery of whistleblowers, and even the lives of fictional characters in our most cherished works of literature seem, in our minds, to certify them as “heroes.” Getting at the heart of what qualifies behavior as heroic may explain why Dryden’s arguable misuse of the term has had such staying power. The word hero is of Greek origin, and in Greek mythology it referred to those who were favored by the gods or had “godlike” qualities. The Oxford English Dictionary describes heroes as “men of super human strength, courage, or ability.” The emphasis here is on super, an adjective that suggests heroism goes beyond what human beings are expected to do. Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of the übermensch (sometimes translated as “superman”) speaks to this concept of going beyond

48â•…â•… heroism human ability. Nietzsche, a 19th-century German philosopher, wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) that in the modern world, God, or the concept of God, had ceased to give life meaning. This void, he wrote, could be filled by the übermensch, a superior, transcendent human being who would give new meaning to life. All could seek to reach this status, thus creating a world in which all were motivated by a love of the present world and the present time. The Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, writing in 1840, would agree that the heroism must be lifeaffirming, although he would not agree that religion had ceased to give life meaning. In fact, in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, he wrote that “all religions stand upon” the worship of heroes, and that Jesus Christ could be considered the “greatest of all heroes” (249). Carlyle goes on to set up criteria for what makes a hero or a heroic action: He says a hero must conquer fear, otherwise he is acting as but a “slave and coward” (268). Further, he must be earnest and sincere and have a vision that penetrates beyond what the average eye might see (281, 325). Finally, he must be an inspiration to others, someone who can “light the way” (347). As Carlyle was one of the first to write on the subject seriously, many of his criteria have lasted and are reinforced by theorists of the present day. Joseph Campbell, who has written some of the best-known works on mythology and heroism, echoes Carlyle when he says: “The hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his [or her] personal and local limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms” (30). In other words, heroes begin life as normal people, but through some extraordinary gift, they are able to begin on and succeed at the journey upon which they will prove their heroism. Carlyle and Campbell both stress that human beings need heroes—that our response to them satisfies a basic human impulse. We need, apparently, the inspiration and motivation derived from believing there are heroes in the world to whose example we may aspire. The psychologist Miriam F. Polster, writing in 1992 about female heroes, compiled a roster of qualities culled from qualities ascribed to heroes over time. Recalling Nietzsche’s übermensch, she notes that they are “motivated by a profound respect for

human life,” that their vision of what is possible goes beyond that of others, that they possess great courage, and that they are not motivated by public opinion (22). She cites as one of her examples Antigone, from Sophocles’ play Antigone, who at great personal risk to herself buries the body of her brother Polynices against the wishes of her uncle, the king. Antigone is a hero here because her driving motivation is respect for her brother’s life. She knows she must honor this life, even in death. Polster goes on to note that hero and heroism are words that have long been associated with men because of the popular focus on physical courage and strength. Indeed, the word first appeared in Homer’s The Iliad, when the name was given to all those who had participated in the Trojan Wars and about whom a story could be told. But, as Carlyle and Campbell both stress, possessing great moral courage is just as rare and should be honored with as much fervor. For example, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jane displays more moral courage than anyone in the novel, standing by her friend Charlotte Temple, standing up to her evil Aunt Reed, refusing to marry St. John Rivers because she is not in love with him, and returning to the injured Mr. Rochester. Jane’s efforts are consistently heroic because they affirm life, they are selfless, and they inspire others to good. In contrast, Henry Fleming’s actions in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage are not so consistent. Fleeing his first battle, Fleming acts only out of fear. However, when he returns to battle a changed man, Crane seems to suggest that he is still acting out of fear. He is now motivated by his desire not to be seen as a coward. Tim O’Brien, author of the Vietnam War novels Going after Cacciato and The Things They Carried, has asserted that men have killed and died “because they were afraid not to.” This is exactly the point of Crane’s treatment of heroism: that it is complicated, is hard to discern, and can carry with it a great deal of ambiguity. Henry Fleming is a soldier, and physical acts of courage such as those displayed in war have long been the province of heroism. But what of ordinary people, those whose daily lives do not place them in typically “heroic” situation? Can these people exhibit heroism as well? For example, in John Updike’s

hopeâ•…â•… 49 “A&P,” Sammy, the supermarket cashier who tells the story, abruptly quits his job when his manager is disrespectful to three teenaged girls who enter the store. In the grand scheme of things, this action might not seem noteworthy. But in the world of the A&P, it certainly is. To return to some of the criteria discussed above, Sammy has respect for life and respect for the present in that he does not want to simply carry on as though nothing has happened. He wants to acknowledge the girls’ worth as human beings and not simply see them as “sheep” like the other people in the store. Also, Sammy has vision. He does not want the A&P to be his life; he is thinking of the future and how he can contribute toward it in a more meaningful way than he would standing behind the cash register. Heroic behavior can also come from those whom we might not see as typically “good” people. Sometimes, the term antihero is used for these characters. In John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, Macheath is a thief and a murderer. He “marries” several women under false pretenses and exhibits little regard for the laws of the city. However, Macheath is arguably a hero because the system within which he operates is so corrupt and bereft of compassion itself that the audience actually roots for him to beat that system. He has his own moral code, and he sticks by it. Looked at from this perspective, one can easily see how Macheath’s daring actions might be seen as heroic. There is quite a leap from a character such as Macheath to a character such as Sammy the checker. And again, there is another great leap from Sammy to characters such as Jane Eyre and Antigone. However, all of these characters exhibit behavior that is inspirational, courageous, and extraordinary, and in doing so all of them exemplify the theme of heroism. See also Achebe, Chinua: Things Fall Apart; Allende, Isabel: House of the Spirits, The; Atwood, Margaret: Handmaid ’s Tale, The; Behn, Aphra: Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave; Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: Hound of the Baskervilles, The; Conrad, Joseph: Lord Jim; Dickens, Charles: Tale of Two Cities, A; Douglass, Frederick: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones; Heller, Joseph: Catch-22;

Hersey, John: Hiroshima; Homer: Odyssey, The; Hinton S. E.: Outsiders, The; Kesey, Ken: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Lewis, C. S.: Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The; Malamud, Bernard: Natural, The; McMurtry, Larry: Lonesome Dove; Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four; Rand, Ayn: Anthem; Sophocles: Oedipus the King; Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island; Synge, John Millington: Playboy of the Western World, The; Tolkien, J. R. R.: Hobbit, The; Lord of the Rings, The; Virgil: Aeneid, The. FURTHER READING Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1949, 1968. Carlyle, Thomas. On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History. 1908. Reprint, London and Toronto: J. M. Dent, 1924. Polster, Miriam F. Eve’s Daughters. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

hope

Hope is closely related to desire, faith, and possibility. Stories about hope are central not only to the study of literature but also to psychology, social movements, and religious studies. In literature, hope tends to center on the belief that positive change— either individual or societal change—can or will occur. Hope is an exceptionally common theme in literary works for several reasons. The theme of hope directly addresses one of the foremost characteristics of human experiences: anxiety about the uncertainty of the future. Furthermore, many literary works have plot events spurred on by characters that pursue something they want. Hope of attaining a goal is thus a central part of almost any traditionally structured novel or play. Holding onto hope when confronting seemingly impossible odds is another important theme in many texts; hope in these cases may be closely related to faith in human nature, faith in oneself, or religious or spiritual faith. Additionally, hope can be both an emotional state and also a perspective on reality; as the latter, hope is an example

50â•…â•… hope of how a worldview can shape one’s actions, often in profound and life-affirming ways. In Greek mythology, “Hope” is part of the story of Pandora’s box. After Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans, Zeus gave Pandora as a “gift” to Prometheus’s brother, but she was actually a punishment for Prometheus’s crime. Out of curiosity, Pandora opens a box (or jar) containing all the world’s evils—diseases, envy, vengeance, and more—and thereby lets them loose upon the human race. The evils spread throughout the world, but Pandora manages to close the lid before the last one—Hope—escapes. The myth provides an explanation of why hope remains even when all other ills seem to be insurmountable. Some versions also suggest that Hope was by far the most important to keep in the box; if Hope escaped from human possession, human beings would have no way to cope with all the other ills, because without hope human existence would be unbearable. Hope is also a central theme in the JudeoChristian tradition, and it is especially notable in the Bible in Exodus, Psalms, and the Gospels. Other hope-centered works include stories of the lives of saints as well as the larger body of religious-themed works in Western and related literatures. Often the emphasis is on the hope for salvation or deliverance; this may be the hope for eternal life, for the coming of the Messiah, for deliverance from sin, or for other forms of spiritual or religious salvation; these narratives are often connected to hope for earthly deliverance from persecution, one’s enemies, great hardships, or even the material world and the limitations and desires of the human body. Narratives of the miraculous often emphasize that hoping for the impossible, or for what merely seems impossible according to earthly knowledge, is a sign of one’s moral rectitude and spiritual faith. This emphasis can also be seen in genres that lean a little more toward the secular, such as medieval romances about the quests of Arthurian knights. In these stories, hope is an important part of moral character because it stands fast in times of great adversity, and because it allows courage to triumph over fear. Hope in the Western Christian tradition is also one of the three Christian virtues (or the three

theological virtues), which are faith, hope, and charity. These virtues are sometimes personified as three sisters whose mother is Wisdom. The personification of the virtues (of varying number) is also found in many medieval works of literature. For example, Hope is a character in Hildegard von Bingen’s Order of the Virtues (ca. 1151), which is sometimes called the first morality play as well as the first European opera. In it, a human woman must choose between the virtuous way of life and the temptations of the devil; Hope therefore is part of the victory of good over evil. St. Thomas Aquinas, who founded the discourse on the three theological virtues, similarly argues that hope is a virtue that keeps one tending toward the divine and spiritual rather than focusing on fear and despair. It is notable in these religious traditions that despite the importance of hope to individual believers, the fundamental or underlying hope is for the ultimate deliverance to or reconciliation with God of all of Creation. The use of light or fire as a symbol for hope is seen in both Judeo-Christian and other traditions. Light is used as a symbol not only for life but also for the hope of renewal or restoration of what has been lost or separated; it may be for this reason that winter celebrations often use light or fire to symbolize hope that the spring (and new life) is on its way. This imagery of light as a symbol for both hope and life may also be seen in the metaphorical use of the phrase “the light at the end of the tunnel,” as well as literary works such as Dylan Thomas’s villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” (1951). Many authors and scholars have considered the nature of hope. In his 1732 Essay on Man, Alexander Pope writes: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” (1.95) Emily Dickinson writes of the beauty, comfort, and constancy of hope in a poem usually identified by its first line, “↜‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.” More recently, the author Barbara Ehrenreich has argued that the constant pressure to demonstrate a hopeful attitude is part of the “cult of positivity” that places an undue psychological burden on those who must suffer silently and absolves those with the power to lessen suffering; she uses her experiences as a cancer patient to argue that “[t] o be hope-free is to acknowledge the lion in the tall

hopeâ•…â•… 51 grass, the tumor in the CAT scan, and to plan one’s moves accordingly” (11). The Czech playwright and essayist Václav Havel defines hope differently, however, describing it as “a dimension of the soul .╯.╯. not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.╯.╯.╯. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.╯.╯.╯. Hope .╯.╯. is not the same as joy that things are going well .╯.╯. but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed” (181). The American philosopher Cornel West cites Havel to expand on the distinction between hope and optimism, arguing that hope is far more profound and significant, and that it is acting in a belief even when there is no reasonable expectation of success. Clearly, the more dire the situation, the more important it is to maintain hope; wilderness survival experts often emphasize that keeping one’s hopes up is absolutely imperative. A literary example that shows the importance of hope to survival is Homer’s The Odyssey. Odysseus must maintain hope for his eventual return home, and for reunification with his wife and son, through 10 years of war followed by 10 years of hardship and danger while lost at sea. Even as gods and various supernatural beings conspire against his return, as disaster after disaster hits him, and even when every other member of his crew is killed, Odysseus keeps his eye set on his homecoming. His wife, Penelope, undergoes a similar story at their home in Ithaca as she holds on to hope that her presumed-dead husband will return, and she cleverly works to stall the aggressive suitors who conspire against her family. Again, hope is necessary for maintaining courage, dedication, and perseverance, which suggests that it is a fundamental survival skill. On the other hand, some works of literature critique or even mock those who cling to foolish or unrealistic hopes. Often, those who encourage false hope are portrayed as cruel, while those who refuse to let go of their futile hopes are portrayed as pompous or lacking in self-awareness. In William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, for instance, several characters play a prank on Malvolio, a self-

important steward, by fooling him into thinking he might reasonably hope to woo Olivia, a countess. Ironically, one of the pranksters, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, is also completely mistaken when he believes that he might succeed in wooing Olivia, and he is encouraged by his “friends” who hope to take advantage of his wealth. Olivia, after a long period of mourning and despair for a deceased family member, finally finds hope for a happy future in her infatuation with “Cesario”; she, of course, will never be able to marry “him” because “Cesario” is actually a woman disguised as a man, and such a marriage would have been impossible. Through these and other relationships, the play portrays love and romance as a series of false and foolish hopes followed by confusion, compromise, and often bitter disappointment. Closely related to false hope are the themes of hopelessness, futility, and despair. In literature, hopelessness may be portrayed as an internal obstacle a character must overcome (or be destroyed by). Alternately, literary works with a more cynical or even a nihilistic perspective may portray hope as a foolish or childlike trait with no basis in reality. For example, in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot (1953), Vladimir and Estragon wait, futilely, for the arrival of Godot. They are stuck in the same place, longing for meaning, movement, or answers, but their hopes and words are useless in altering their situation. The play suggests that existence itself is absurd and without meaning, like a game of language, and to hope otherwise is foolish. Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) which is heavily influenced by Beckett, portrays the futility of hope in a similar fashion. The title characters, which were originally very minor characters in Hamlet, are both sympathetic and absurd in their attempts to evade their fate, but their ending has already been written (literally). Hope for the future, however, is necessary for courage and perseverance, especially when one’s cause seems dangerous, unsustainable, or impossible. Social movements of all kinds therefore depend on the hope that their efforts and sacrifices have not been and will not be for nothing. Especially important is the hope that the actions of a person or group can make the leap to actions of historical import; a

52â•…â•… hope sense of hopelessness, on the other hand, makes it nearly impossible—and seemingly pointless—for groups or individuals to continue their efforts. It is no surprise, then, that hope is an important theme in many works of social or political commentary in literature. Readers often expect that books that critique the status quo will offer suggestions for change and encourage a sense of hope for the future. Some literary works do so, while some actively subvert this expectation. Utopian literature is often quite hopeful about the possibility of a far better world, whereas dystopian literature, such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, often portrays a future world that seems hopeless. The very premise of dystopian fiction may, however, imply hope for change; the books stand as calls to action to prevent such a dystopian future from ever coming about, which suggests that some degree of hope remains. One complication in the representation of hope in politically oriented books is that literary works are often intended less as conventional arguments and more as explorations, or experiments in imagining possibilities; in simpler terms, literary genres may be better suited for raising new questions than for arguing for a position without ambiguity or contradiction. Furthermore, socially engaged literature often reveals the inequalities, injustices, and power relations of everyday life, many of which go unnoticed or are thought irrelevant to larger historical factors. When showing the extent, degree, and pervasiveness of these injustices, books often must address how (or whether) one preserves hope in the face of such farreaching problems. Some authors who discuss social change end their books not with a stereotypical sense of upbeat hope but with a more complex discussion of hope and possibility. Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place discusses the lasting impact of British colonialism in Antigua and elsewhere, as well as issues such as globalization, class inequalities, racism, and government corruption. The book ends with a meditation on the ambiguity of hope; it suggests that the global changes and individual failings that make oppression harder to identify, harder to resist, and harder to escape may also allow for new possibilities for human (and humane) connections.

Clearly, many works of literature explore how hope relates to imagination; hope, after all, fundamentally depends on the ability to see beyond the present circumstances. Tony Kushner’s two-part play Angels in America is particularly concerned with this relationship as it depicts the character of Prior Walter, who faces AIDS, his ancestors, angelic visitors, and abandonment by his partner. Other characters also struggle for hope and restoration as the play deals with sexuality, politics, history, and religion, as well as the medical and institutional limitations of the 1980s that made treatments for AIDS largely ineffective. In addition to angels, there are ghosts, hallucinations, and a visit to heaven, all of which push characters into expanding their sense of what is possible. More down-to-earth confrontations among characters have this effect as well, often throwing characters’ worldviews into tumult. The spiritual and psychological value of imagination, and the ability to envision what others cannot or will not, relates directly to these characters’ experiences of hope or of despair and fear. Furthermore, in this play, hope often springs from the capacity to imagine and acknowledge surprising connections between vastly different individuals—and also the connections between heaven and earth, between sex and politics, and between the past, present, and future. By the end, many of the characters break into a new stage in their lives that they never imagined possible; most notably, Prior not only copes with the abandonment but also fulfills the prophesy that he would live years longer than anyone thought possible. Angels in America is thus part of a larger trend in which authors find hope in times of great upheaval by suggesting that chaos, in addition to its ill effects, offers many opportunities for transformation. The connection between hope and imagination is thus bound tightly to the relationship between hope and survival. For this reason, it may be possible to generalize that books that discuss the relationships among hope, imagination, perseverance, and the capacity to survive and thrive implicitly argue that works of the imagination (such as literature) are vital to the wellbeing of individuals and societies. See also Aristophanes: Lysistrata; Bierce, Ambrose: “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, An”; Chekhov, Anton: Seagull, The; Davis,

identityâ•…â•… 53 Rebecca Harding: Life in the Iron Mills; Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations; Frank, Anne: Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl; Hersey, John: Hiroshima; Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Lee: Inherit the Wind; Naipaul, V. S.: Bend in the River, A; O’Neill, Eugene: Iceman Cometh, The; Tolkien, J. R. R.: Lord of the Rings, The; Voltaire: Candide. FURTHER READING Cartwright, John. “From Aquinas to Zwelethemba: A Brief History of Hope.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 592, no. 1 (2004): 166–184. Ehrenreich, Barbara. “Pathologies of Hope.” Harper’s Magazine (February 2007): 9–12. Eliott, Jaklin. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Hope. Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers, 2005. Havel, Václav. Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížd’ala. Translated by Paul Wilson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. Keyes, Flo. The Literature of Hope in the Middle Ages and Today: Connections in Medieval Romance, Modern Fantasy, and Science Fiction. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 2006. West, Cornel. Commencement Address at Wesleyan University. Middletown, Conn., May 30, 1993.

Ellen Moll

identity

The nature of textual creation from a blank page— of all creation, really—is an exercise in identity politics: Each entity fashioned depends on inclusions and exclusions. Thus, literary texts achieve selfhood via the delicate balance of their various constituent parts; just as humans are products of their DNA, so are literary texts the result of the countless phenomena occurring between their covers. They are unique entities, themselves possessing a sort of identity to which we, as readers, bring our own experiences and resultant identities, therewith interacting to produce a distinct and original product: our individual, respective interpretations of a text. Hence, literature serves as a conduit not only to the world in which an author writes but also to our very selves. Naturally, this idea of self—of who we are—plays an important role in the dissection of literature as it is very

active during our consideration of texts. Examining this interaction further, literary theorists and critics add another wrinkle by advocating myriad different critical approaches by which to dissect a given document. Marxists focus on the manner in which societal institutions determine consciousness, and, therefore, identity: New Historicists view the text as a representative product of a certain time and place; psychoanalysts seek the unwritten text, interpreting the significance of absence; and many, many more urge their respective techniques for interrogating literature, which is, after all, a function of identity formulation. Regardless of approach, however, one thing is clear: English letters have, throughout the years, approached questions of identity in myriad different ways. The texts that constitute the genesis of Western literary studies pose questions of identity via their rootings in conflict. Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, Beowulf (Anonymous)—the cornerstone documents of the field wage war with nearly every word. And while bloodshed presents itself often in these seminal works, on a more abstract level, it is the struggle that has prime significance. The drawing of battle lines and national boundaries affords both the author and the reader the opportunity to choose sides—to ask: Where do I stand? With whom am I? And concurrent to consideration of these spatial and philosophical concerns is the broader question of, simply, who am I? Along with battle, another way humans attempt to define themselves is through religion, and this has certainly been demonstrated in literature. Of course, the significance of the Bible itself cannot be overstated, but neither can the subsequent works of fiction that sought to allegorize Christianity for the purpose of providing direction and, concurrently, identity to their readers. Texts such as William Langland’s Piers Plowman and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s P rogress feature “everyman” protagonists struggling against the pressures of temptation and sin in a post-Fall world, whereas religious ecstasy is sought in the poetry of George Herbert and Robert Herrick. Thus, whereas conflict for one’s selfhood can, as demonstrated by Homer and others, present itself externally, strife can nevertheless rage within as

54â•…â•… identity well, and religious commitment has played a major role in this issue. Identity as a product of one’s relationship with the Almighty aside, temporal matters persist nevertheless. As geography, racial identity, and religious fervor organized cultures into nation states that legitimized themselves across Europe, people began to focus on their immediate surroundings in order to establish a more stable sense of self. Enter William Shakespeare, whose examination of British (and greater European) court life in many of his plays closely inspects not merely how we have come to occupy our places in society, but the economic, political, cultural, and social repercussions of the manner in which we have arranged ourselves. That is, the army of Rome or God aside, identity can also be derived from one’s societal position. In the 17th century, however, the poet John Donne, called this entire social framework into question with his own metaphysical take on existence and identity. As the Renaissance, during which Shakespeare and Donne wrote, ushered in various scientific and technological innovations, the speed of life increased, and this acceleration eventually resulted in the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century. The romantic period, led by William Wordsworth, sought to counter this movement grounded in commercialism, doing so by harkening back to simpler times, places, and lifestyles. The rebellion against ever-expanding industrialization romanticized the simplicity of yesteryear, and in favoring the rustic cottage over urban bustle, reactionary romantics promoted an identity based on the pastoral and the past—an identity, they maintained, that was worth resurrecting. Romanticism in the United States prospered as well, as authors looked to the past to answer a fundamental question plaguing the new nation: Just what—who—is an American? Unlike Britons, whose country had demonstrated sovereignty for more than half the years since Christ, Americans had problematic issues with which to contend: They were, after all, a nation born of Great Britain but liberated with the help of France; a place rooted in equality, yet devoted to slavery and class divides; and a state inspired by a yearning for religious freedom that already sported a less-than-tolerant record on

tolerance. These early obstacles to a cohesive identity demanded consideration, and the country’s early literary endeavors did not disappoint. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s interest in history facilitated his own approach to this enigma, producing introspective tales such as The House of the Seven Gables, and Herman Melville’s fictive microcosms endeavored to inspect the American identity as well (Moby-Dick, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Billy Budd, Sailor, and Benito Cereno come readily to mind). The romantic mindset also fostered the American transcendentalist movement, which radically challenged contemporary religious thought by proclaiming that divinity presided in each and every person. But times change, and violent conflict and its pursuant debilitating recessions tend to alter the way a citizenry views itself. Therefore, transcendentalism, with all its hope and possibility, gave way to the prostitute- and drunkard-ridden slums of the realists Stephen Crane (The Open Boat and The Red Badge of Courage) and Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy and Sister Carrie) and the harsh reality of 19th-century London we find in Charles Dickens. In a few deft literary strokes, humans went from Gods to insignificant specks. War, however, need not always precipitate humility. Whereas the Civil War rattled America’s literary girders, the interwar period of the 20th century inspired the dynamism and innovation of the modern period. T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Langston Hughes, Robinson Jeffers, and others rewrote national myths, questioning the very notion of patriotic allegiance itself. Coping with a dramatically and rapidly changing world left them eager for new ways to artistically express an ever-morphing self they sought to articulate. Hence, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway seems lost in both his adopted home on the eastern seaboard and back in his native Midwest in The Great Gatsby, thereby anticipating J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, in which Holden Caulfield ambles, stupefied, through a New York City that, while geographically holding true to his home, nevertheless seems odd, off—different. In The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner’s Compsons and McCaslins even seem out of place in their own

illnessâ•…â•… 55 Mississippi homes, which have been in their respective families for generations. Modernists entertained new approaches to a newly emergent self, which, although complex (as in Ezra Pound’s epic, and fittingly, unfinished, Cantos), at least presupposed that definable identity could exist. For the postmodernists who followed, this was not necessarily a given. The postmodern age, in which most would agree we now live, takes nothing for granted, rejecting the notion that an underlying absolute truth inevitably exists. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, for instance, features a central character named Tim O’Brien who is not necessarily the author (but is not necessarily not the author, either); claims that the most far-fetched tales are “real,” whereas those that sound the most believable are pure invention; includes stories of soldiers in Vietnam that have nothing to do with war and accounts of men in Minnesota that have everything to do with conflict; and even defies simple generic classification as either a novel or a short-story collection. Toni Morrison’s Beloved deconstructs the objectivity of time, agency, and place. Burgeoning magical realism, as found in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude routinely presents seemingly supernatural events as quotidian, based on the idea that assumption—of fixity, of consistency, of identity—is ultimately quite dangerous. Attempting to capture something as ambiguous as identity via a literary medium is truly an exercise in frustration, for as words are committed to paper, and therefore rendered static, identity has consistently proven dynamic. Authors continually attempt to pin down the moment, to speak a word for the present; hence, as history unfolds and we continue to evolve as a species, works change over time—not only in the styles employed in their composition but also in the manner by which we approach them. That is, while a text’s words may never change, we do, and hence the interaction between text and reader is, like our identities, ever-evolving. Tomorrow, a breakthrough development in space exploration or biomedicine may change how we interpret a novel finished yesterday, thereby altering our estimation of just who we are and what our place or our role—our identity—is. Thus, as long as works of literature and humankind coexist, they will continu-

ally seek new ways to define themselves—and each other. See also Alvarez, Julia: How the García Girls Lost Their Accents; Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Aristophanes: Frogs, The; Bellow, Saul: Adventures of Augie March, The; Bradford, William: Of Plymouth Plantation; Cisneros, Sandra: House on Mango Street, The; DuBois, W. E. B.: Souls of Black Folk, The; Eliot, T. S.: “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The”; Ellison, Ralph: Invisible Man; Equiano, Olaudah: Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; Erdrich, Louise: Bingo Palace, The; Grass Günter: Tin Drum, The; Ibsen, Henrik: Doll ’s House, The; Kesey, Ken: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Kincaid, Jamaica: Annie John; Kingston, Maxine Hong: Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book; Kozinski, Jerzy: Painted Bird, The; Kundera, Milan: Unbearable Lightness of Being, The; Lessing, Doris: Golden Notebook, The; London, Jack: Call of the Wild, The; White Fang; Mistry, Rohinton: Fine Balance, A; Momaday, N. Scott: House Made of Dawn; Way to Rainy Mountain, The; Morrison, Toni: Bluest Eye, The; Pirandello, Luigi: Six Characters in Search of an Author; Poe, Edgar Allan: “Fall of the House of Usher, The”; Potok, Chaim: Chosen, The; Roth, Philip: American Pastoral; Rowlandson, Mary: Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; Rushdie, Salman: Midnight ’s Children; Shakespeare, William: King Lear; Stevenson, Robert Louis: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The, and Treasure Island; Wiesel, Elie: Night; Wilde, Oscar: Picture of Dorian Gray, The. David Visser

illness

In her well-known 1978 book Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag says, “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place” (3). Illness affects all human beings in some way, whether it is a simple

56â•…â•… illness bout of the flu, a chronic painful condition, a disability, or a life-threatening disease. Because all readers, even if we have not ourselves been severely ill, can relate to the idea of Sontag’s two kingdoms, illness is a frequent and powerful theme in literature. When we are sick, we have a feeling of not being part of the mainstream; we can concentrate only on the sickness, the pain, and the discomfort, and in doing so, we remove ourselves from life for a while. The sick, then, are deviant; they are not normal. Literature has a history of using illness to highlight deviations from what is normal, both positive deviations and negative ones. Sociologists and medical professionals have several different ways of explaining why illness has such a powerful hold over our imaginations. Echoing Sontag’s metaphor, the physician Michael Stein says in The Lonely Patient that illness is a kind of travel into a “foreign kingdom” or an “unrecognized neighborhood” (10). The sick person is confused and anxious, asking many unanswerable questions about how to act, what to say, and how long the stay in this “foreign kingdom” will be. Illness, then, can symbolize a journey, albeit a frightening, disorienting one. The writer and physician Oliver Sacks notes that the word we use to describe that journey—sickening—has no counterpart: There is no “healthening.” We usually use the word recovery, which indicates we are retrieving our lost health from somewhere, but it is the “sickening” that provides the powerful metaphor (quoted in Stein 96). This metaphor is so powerful, claims David B. Morris in Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age, that “almost every era seems marked by a distinctive illness that defines or deeply influences it” (50). In the Middle Ages, the bubonic plague changed the face of Europe, killing millions of people, approximately one fourth of the population. Not only did millions die, but millions more lived in constant fear of contracting the dreaded plague. In the Renaissance, what was known at the time as “melancholy,” but what today we would call depression, pervaded. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, sometimes referred to as the Enlightenment, gout, a kind of arthritis, and syphilis, a deadly venereal disease, held sway. Doctors attributed both of these diseases to the loosening morals of the upper classes, as gout

was mostly diagnosed among the wealthier citizens who could afford treatment, and syphilis was the product both of aristocratic promiscuity and the urban poverty of the prostitutes they frequented. In the 19th century, tuberculosis was the dominant illness. With its victims weak, pale, and bedridden, the disease seemed to indicate that the suffering it brought purified those whom it struck, or at least returned them to a natural state. Many artists and writers of the 19th century died from tuberculosis, including the writers John Keats, Emily Brontë, and Robert Louis Stevenson and the composer Frédéric Chopin, leading to the assumption that those of artistic temperament were especially susceptible. In the 20th century, cancer took over as the defining illness. Cancer is a brutal, seemingly indestructible enemy that can attack out of nowhere and that often must be fought by further brutalizing the body with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. It dehumanizes the patient. As such, it is an appropriate metaphor for the 20th century and the rise of technology. Many authors have harnessed the power of illness—its anxiety, its dread, its ability to drive people apart and to bring them closer together—to tell their stories. In Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, for instance, Beth, the sweetest of the March sisters, contracts scarlet fever while nursing a poor family. Although she recovers, she lives life in a weakened state and eventually succumbs. Her death reminds the March sisters, especially Jo and Amy, of the importance of family unity despite disagreement. In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Dickens uses the sickly, disabled figure of Tiny Tim to illuminate the joy of Christmas. If this poor creature can be happy, Dickens seems to say, then so should we all be. A 20th-century take on illness can be found in Don DeLillo’s White Noise. Jack and his family have come simultaneously to fear illness and to see it as inevitable. They take pills for reasons they do not understand and receive vague diagnoses that only serve to frighten them. In addition to serving as a useful vehicle around which to tell a powerful tale, illness has also functioned as a more specific metaphor. For example, illness can also represent failure. The noted American sociologist Talcott Parsons has described health as

illnessâ•…â•… 57 a “gatekeeper” to success. A healthy body and mind is the basic condition, he says, for functioning in a democracy and “too low a general level of health is dysfunctional” (quoted in Gerhardt 7). When illness stands as a metaphor for failure, it symbolizes deviancy. The sick person has failed to keep well, failed to keep personal commitments, and failed to adequately garner support and admiration from others (Gerhardt 22). The ill in this scenario are necessarily passive, helpless, and detached from reality. Therefore, they lack the characteristics to succeed in the modern world. In Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night, half of the Tyrone family suffers from chronic illness. At the play’s start, Edmund has just learned he suffers from tuberculosis. His many attempts to find his place in the world have failed and now, O’Neill seems to be suggesting, he will find his true calling in death. His mother, Mary, suffers from a debilitating morphine addiction; she has failed to face the problems in her real life, so she uses morphine to dull the emotional pain this gives her. The morphine, in effect, paralyzes her, highlighting the metaphorical paralysis in which the whole family is trapped. While the idea that illness represents a kind of failure is common in discussions of physical illness, in discussions of mental illness it is practically normative. Mental illness, as the literary historian Shoshana Felman has theorized, is like a kind of blindness, a literally inability to see what is actually happening. As such, those who are mentally ill are often shunned because they are incapable of acting in a way we consider reasonable. In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, loses her ability to function in the real world as the novel progresses. She cannot “see” who she really is—a young woman with talent and intelligence. She feels trapped, not only by her skewed view of the world but also by the assumptions of those around her that she could just “decide” to be all right. That those who, like Esther, are sick because they want to be or because they deserve it is another common portrayal of illness in literature. Disease has long been seen as a form of divine punishment—a curse well deserved by those who have fallen sick. Susan Sontag explains that the ancient Greeks believed illness sprung from super-

natural punishment or demonic possession and that the accursed must have done something to warrant this affliction. Early Christians, she writes, had more moralized notions of disease. Disease was still viewed as a divine punishment, but now the specific disease was thought to express the deviant character of the patient. This view of disease can be seen well into the 20th century. Tuberculosis, for instance, was long believed to result from too much passion, while cancer was thought to result from the suppression of passion (Sontag 21). AIDS, with its most common methods of transmission involving behavior considered deviant by most (homosexual intercourse, the use of intravenous drugs), has been referred to as a “punishment from God” by ignorant, fearful critics. In Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Roy Cohn, the closeted homosexual lawyer diagnosed with AIDS, certainly feels this way. He is ashamed of his disease and does everything he can to hide it. Prior Walter, on the other hand, also diagnosed with AIDS, gains confidence as he embraces his past and his present, being visited by an angel and dead relatives and being declared a prophet. In the end, perhaps Cohn is being punished—not for being gay, but for hiding his true identity. Although there are many different methods by which authors deal with illness in their texts, it is such an important, unavoidable part of real life that it always serves as a powerful device. Depictions of illness can carry hope, despair, and grief; they can illuminate difference and similarity; and they can most powerfully display the experience of being human. See also Capote, Truman: In Cold Blood; Cather, Willa: O Pioneers!; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: House of the Seven Gables, The; Ibsen, Henrik: Doll ’s House, A; Lessing, Doris: Golden Notebook, The; Poe, Edgar Allan: “Fall of the House of Usher, The”; “Tell-Tale Heart, The”; Fitzgerald, F. Scott: Tender Is the Night; Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: Yellow Wallpaper, The; Rhys, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea; Silko, Leslie Marmon: Ceremony; Sinclair, Upton: Jungle, The; Turgenev, Ivan: Fathers and Sons; Steinbeck, John: Of Mice and Men. FURTHER READING Felman, Shoshana. Writing and Madness (Literature/ Philosophy/Psychoanalysis). Translated by Martha

58â•…â•… individual and society Noel Evans and the author with the assistance of Brian Massumi. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. Gerhardt, Uta. Ideas about Illness: An Intellectual and Political History of Medical Sociology. New York: New York University Press, 1989. Morris, David B. Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978. Stein, Michael. The Lonely Patient: How We Experience Illness. New York: William Morrow, 2007.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

individual and society

Human beings have always tried to come together in groups, not only to live in a way that ensures an escape from pangs of solitude but also to attain a collective strength against a common enemy, be it animals, other humans, or the wrath of nature. Even so, the relationship between the individual and society has always been simultaneously rewarding and conflicting. An endless debate exists over whether an individual—the basic unit of the society—should be able to claim greater attention to his personal rights and privileges, or the society—the alliance of individuals strengthened by their mutual consent— should be empowered to overlook one for many. The tension inherent in such a puzzling relationship becomes apparent from the subtle contradiction in defining each. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (8th edition) defines an individual as a “single human being as distinct from a family or group,” whereas a society is the “sum of human conditions and activity regarded as a whole functioning interdependently” (emphases mine), and this “distinctness” of an individual struggles against the societal stipulation for a merging “interdependence.” The brightest minds have long endeavored to solve this conundrum. Every age has generated theories with clashing conclusions on this subject. The Greek philosopher Plato argued that an individual, not being self-sufficient, cannot live alone. Aristotle more considerately highlighted not just man’s “need of ” but also his “desire for” society. Nevertheless, for both the society was more important than the individual. The Stoics envisaged a brotherhood of

mankind; the Epicureans instead openly avowed an individual’s conscious self-interest, which was strikingly individualistic for its time. The Roman statesman Cicero rejected Epicureanism in favor of the Aristotelean view. The Middle Ages, under the banner of Christianity, revived the idea of a universal brotherhood and emphasized the society’s being a “natural product” since it arises out of an individual’s “natural” sociability. Even during the transition from the medieval to early modern times, society was prioritized over the individual. The early modern era promoted the social contract theory. The 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, believing the pre-social man to have been antisocial, averred that mutual fear produced society. For John Locke, who dismissed this theory, man merely executed the laws of nature in a pre-political rather than a pre-social situation. To the French philosopher Montesquieu, societal structure depended on a proper balance between such factors as climate, religion and customs. The 18thcentury philosopher David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau blamed property and social classes for creating inequality among individuals in a society. Immanuel Kant and George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, opposing the egotism of contemporary German romanticism, discouraged “pure” individuality. After the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the French philosopher Claude-Henri de Rouvroy Saint-Simon thought that the “industrial society” of the 19th century was “healthier” since it created partners, not subjects. Karl Marx, in contrast, famously prophesied the bourgeoisie’s downfall due to modern industry and the consequent rise of a classless society. Utilitarianism advocated “greater good for a greater number.” Yet individual rights had already started gaining priority over those of a group, and the term individualism was also coined. Moreover, with the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declaring the death of God, all binding factors that had kept social obligations alive so far seemed to crumble, and individuals were suddenly left with a dangerous kind of freedom encumbered with a responsibility for every decision taken. With the two devastating world wars of the 20th century, no wonder older traditions lost their worth for the trauma-ridden individual. Such despair of

individual and societyâ•…â•… 59 “isolation amid crowds” understandably gave rise to Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism and Albert Camus’s sense of the absurd. All age-old conflicting theories finally seem to endorse a paradox: An individual is both “the creature and the creator of society” (Hawthorn 27). The individual, the French sociologist Émile Durkheim declared in the latter part of the 19th century, is defined by his social relations. By playing his “social role,” he metamorphoses from an individual into a person (persona is a Latin word for the ancient theatrical mask). Since this “person” is a social being, his every act is invariably a social (because human) act. So is his literary venture. He writes in a language which, the 20th-century British sociologist Anthony Giddens would argue, he did not even create. Even in satirizing society, he may distance himself from the society he criticizes, but that again underscores the inseverable link between himself and his society. An individual can never be completely divorced from society. The society allocates roles for each individual and prescribes rules for each role. The violation of “formal” rules is punished by judiciary and police; that of the “informal” ones by shame and ostracism. Meursault, in Camus’s The Stranger, is condemned when he refuses to conform to the unwritten norm of showing grief at his mother’s death; his society is unwilling to condone a murder committed due to the glare of the sun. For his former offense, he reaps societal suspicion and dislike; for his latter crime, he gets capital punishment. In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov’s punishment for murder is more personal than judicial. The judiciary comes to know of it only when he confesses of his own accord, and that very confession is the outcome of a thorough internalization of his society’s morality. Conditioned by social expectations, Beowulf (Anonymous), as the hero of his people, must show extraordinary courage. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, for all her radical thoughts of emancipation, may still be redeemed by her ultimately not flouting the social dictates of feminine tenderness, faithful love, and Christian kindness. But in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, the title character’s violation of norms in the form of an extramarital

affair cannot be exonerated by her conservative society. Her husband forgives her, yet she must still die in the end to maintain the societal status quo. A society inevitably dooms an individual to a divided self. Various social positions and phases demand various social roles to be played. To do so, the anthropologist Margaret Mead argued, I (the real self ) must give in to Me (the social self )—willingly or otherwise. The uncoordinated instincts of the id (the dark, unconscious part of human psyche), to use Freudian terms, must be reined in by the rationality of the ego (the polished part modified by external influences) and the moralizing function of the superego (the critical conscientious part). A fantastical allegorical representation of this dichotomy of self is seen in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where Dr. Jekyll is the “social” face of the named individual and Mr. Hyde is the “real,” untailored part of him that defies social conventions and performs deadly acts contrary to a doctor’s healing duties. The healer by day horrifyingly transforms into the killer by night, symbolizing the hideous image of an individual when uncontrolled by society’s leashes. “Without a social environment no self can arise” (Aubert 58) because self-analysis is possible only by considering others’ perception of it. Hence, extended isolation may “threaten to disturb or destroy the perceptions of the self ” (58). Though Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is portrayed as the sole shipwreck survivor, rebuilding his world on a remote island with the morals and customs of his civilization indelibly etched in his nature, William Golding takes a more skeptical approach. His Lord of the Flies instead subverts Defoe’s world to illustrate how something goes very wrong with human “culture” when segregated from the civilizing influences of society by showing a swift degradation of morals in a band of boys left stranded on a deserted island. Not just total isolation but confrontation with other cultures may also challenge the stability of one’s own cultural values. In the absence of the restraining measures of his compatriots, Kurtz, in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “goes native.” Chinua Achebe, on the other hand, depicts the doomed struggle of an individual, Okonkwo, to hold together his dilapidating traditional society

60â•…â•… innocence and experience against the superior power of the white man in Things Fall Apart. Nonetheless, society is not an unmixed blessing. Pip, in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, loses his essential innocence and goodness in the urge to rise in an ambitious and mercenary society; while A Tale of Two Cities shows a Sidney Carton distraught with disappointments, although his innate capacity to love cannot be killed even amid the bloodthirsty fury of Paris in the grip of the French Revolution. George Eliot’s Silas Marner suffers wrongly in the hands of his fellow beings and becomes an embittered recluse but is later rescued from the unenviable fate of a misanthrope by the love of a castaway child. That man cannot live alone is depicted, consciously or unconsciously, even in texts where this theme is least expected. It is an utter lack of communication with his family and society who have forsaken him, terrified at his vermin form, that eventually kills Gregor Samsa in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Estragon and Vladimir, in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, decide not to even playfully attempt suicide to pass their time because if one dies accidentally, the other will be left alone. So, even amid existentialist angst and in an absurdist limbo, an individual’s minimal necessity for company cannot be disregarded. A society is a “natural” product, and an individual, in turn, is a “social” one. See also Anderson, Sherwood: Winesburg, Ohio; Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451; Bunyan, John: Pilgrim’s P rogress, The; Byron, George Gordon Byron, Lord: Don Juan; Dickens, Charles: Christmas Carol, A; Emerson, Ralph Waldo: “American Scholar, The”; “Self-Reliance”; Faulkner, William: Light in August; Gay, John: Beggar’s Opera, The; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: Scarlet Letter, The; “Young Goodman Brown”; Hesse, Herman: Siddhartha; Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World; Irving, Washington: Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, The; Jackson, Shirley: “Lottery, The”; Kerouac, Jack: On the Road; Kipling, Rudyard: Kim; Kozinski, Jerzy: Painted Bird, The; Lewis, Sinclair: Main Street; Melville, Herman: Billy Budd, Sailor; Molière: Misanthrope, The; Naipaul, V. S.: House for Mr. Biswas, A;

Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four; Poe, Edgar Allan: “Murders in the Rue Morgue, The”; Rand, Ayn: Anthem; Shakespeare, William: Romeo and Juliet; Taming of the Shrew, The; Solzhenitsyn, Alexander: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Sophocles: Antigone; Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver’s Travels; Thoreau, Henry David: “Resistance to Civil Government”; Walden; Vonnegut, Kurt: Cat ’s Cradle; Wharton, Edith: Ethan Frome; House of Mirth; Winterson, Jeanette: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. FURTHER READING Aubert, Vilhelm. Elements of Sociology. London: Heinemann, 1968. Hawthorn, Geoffrey. Enlightenment and Despair: A History of Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

Susmita Roye

innocence and experience

Perhaps because literature so often focuses on human experience, it frequently covers the themes of innocence and experience. Just as there are many stories, so too are there many forms of both innocence and experience. For many centuries, innocence and experience were interpreted primarily in terms of religion, with innocence denoting a state free from sin. As European civilization became increasingly secularized, however, these terms took on more general usage wherein innocence came to denote roughly a state of naïveté or simplicity without necessarily implying religious overtones (though these had not vanished). One of the most frequently depicted changes, and one that became a touchstone of romanticism, is that from the optimism of childhood to the realities of adulthood. William Blake’s popular set of poems Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) helps to illuminate the interdependence and relative value of both terms. At first, childhood may seem like a time of innocence and freedom from the responsibilities of maturity, whereas adulthood is a time when experience, education, and exposure to the world taint one’s sense of innocence. Even in this straightforward account, the two terms are interdependent, as a

innocence and experienceâ•…â•… 61 time of innocence can only be recognized retrospectively, from the vantage point of experience. Blake takes this tension between the two terms to new heights in his poems, however, demonstrating that people are capable of either state at various times in their lives. Furthermore, either state might take the form of the other. For example, in “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence, the young chimney sweep Tom Dacre has a dream wherein he and his friends are freed from their coffins by an angel, who leads them to play happily in the clouds. On the one hand, the dream epitomizes innocence in that it takes the form of a fantasy in which Tom gets to escape from work to play with his friends. This thought, that he would be rewarded at the end of his life, keeps him going: “Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm / So if all do their duty they need not fear harm” (ll. 23–24). On the other hand, this vision of innocence seems to simultaneously convey a darker point from the side of experience. In one sense, Tom’s vision suggests that the only way for these children to be released from their horrible working conditions is through death. Inverting the closing line, it is precisely by doing their duty (cleaning chimneys) that they need to fear harm (black lung, cancer, accident). This final line turns out to be ambiguous indeed, because it could equally serve as a kind of threat to the people who mistreat the children: If they do their duty to the children, then they need not fear harm. The companion poem (also named “The Chimney Sweeper”) from Songs of Experience reinforces this point. The speaker of this poem fully recognizes what might only be hinted at in the other. Of his parents, who put him to work, he says, “They think they have done me no injury: / And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King / Who make up a heaven of our misery” (ll. 10–12). These lines serve as a great example of how Blake’s poems complicate the narrative of growth, because here it is the adults who are innocent and naive whereas the child is burdened by the harsh realities of his experience. In another sense, however, the adults could be to blame for purposely trying to minimize their responsibility by inventing the idea of heaven to justify their exploitation of children. In other words, adults fully realize how horrible their actions are but seek to

cover up their knowledge with narratives of earthly suffering and heavenly reward. Like poetry, fiction often deals with issues of innocence and experience. In fact, one of the major genres of the novel, the bildungsroman, tells the story of a character’s education and growth. While these stories ostensibly focus on a single protagonist, the growth of the individual is often linked to and helps to illuminate larger societal changes or conflicts. In this sense, the bildungsroman often tells the story of a particular character in a way that also ties into the development of his or her community. Both Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man (1916) are examples of the genre, although Portrait resists the kind of closure typical of the genre. One novel that resonates on both personal and societal levels in terms of the relationship between innocence and experience is Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The story is initially narrated by a sailor who listens to the mysterious Marlow, who in turn recounts his experiences piloting a steamboat up the Congo River. Marlow begins as an idealistic youth, looking to a life at sea as a chance to explore new lands or, as he phrases it, the blank spaces on maps. Taking a job with a Dutch trading company, Marlow heads to Africa with high hopes. Through a series of events in which he witnesses firsthand the cruel and senseless behavior of the Europeans, culminating in his meeting with Kurtz, Marlow is forced to question many of the traditional narratives he started out with, including that of the moral and spiritual superiority of Europeans compared to the native African peoples. Marlow’s physical journey up the Congo, into the heart of Africa, can be said to correspond with his spiritual journey, in which he investigates the “heart” of humanity. Kurtz’s dying words, “the horror,” coupled with his barbaric behavior (note, for example, the skulls on the fence around his house) suggest that there are terrible passions in each of us waiting to be released. Marlow’s encounter with Kurtz is immensely disappointing in that Marlow had heard nothing but fantastic tales about how intelligent, cultivated, and efficient Kurtz was. Kurtz turns out to be a disappointing hero to say the least. In a much broader

62â•…â•… isolation sense, however, Marlow’s transition into experience can be seen to represent the larger experience of European colonialism. As he points out to his listeners, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much” (7). Marlow’s personal disillusionment signals a growing awareness of the violence and cruelty that underpinned the supposedly beneficial process of colonization. James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tells the story of the growth and development of Stephen Dedalus. Like Marlow, Stephen slowly gains knowledge about the effects of imperialism, though in his case he does so as a member of the colonized people. Portrait presents a more complex picture of the interrelationship of innocence and experience, as Stephen moves from one pole to another within each of the novel’s five sections. For example, at the end of the third section, Stephen has become convinced that he must repent his sins and dedicate his life to serve within the Catholic Church. In the next section, however, he begins to implement this plan only to abandon it in favor of his calling to become an artist. Each section presents a crisis that Stephen responds to by adopting a new goal, which is then replaced in the face of the next crisis or problem that he faces. In this sense, Stephen is constantly passing through stages of innocence and experience, but each version of experience is subsequently revealed to be yet another form of innocence. Accompanying each new goal or level of experience, Stephen employs an increasingly complex vocabulary and style. For example, the simple language of the children’s tale at the beginning, “Once upon a time and a very good time it was” gives way, in the final section, to Stephen’s elaborate arguments about aesthetics. In keeping with the restless mental development of its protagonist, Portrait is difficult to read as a straightforward national allegory for Ireland. While Stephen recognizes the power structures behind the use of the English language, for example, he also flatly rejects the calls of nationalism in favor of a European cosmopolitanism in the form of his pending trip to Paris. Stephen’s dedication to further his education and to escape

from the confines of his country demonstrates a commitment to continue the process of discovery that is at the heart of literature. Precisely by reading and thinking about literature, we are able to evaluate our own sense of experience and, hopefully, to enrich it as well. See also Adams, Henry: Education of Henry Adams, The; Austen, Jane: Sense and Sensibility; Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Cisneros, Sandra: House on Mango Street, The; Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders; Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie; Forster, E. M.: Room with a View, A; Harte, Bret: “Outcasts of Poker Flats, The”; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Young Goodman Brown”; James, Henry: Portrait of a Lady, The; Turn of the Screw, The; Kincaid, Jamaica: Annie John; Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita; O’Brien, Tim: Things They Carried, The; Poe, Edgar Allan: “Murders in the Rue Morgue, The”; Salinger, J. D.: Catcher in the Rye, The; Twain, Mark: Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The; Voltaire: Candide; Wharton, Edith: House of Mirth, The; Wiesel, Elie: Night; Wilde, Oscar: Importance of Being Earnest, The; Picture of Dorian Gray, The. FURTHER READING Brivic, Sheldon. Joyce between Freud and Jung. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1980. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Norton: 1988.

Daniel Ryan Morse

isolation

Isolation is a powerful force. Human beings live, work, and play in groups, and to be separate from the whole of humanity can disorient us, debilitate us, and even make us question our place in the world. Isolation is easily confused with other forms of aloneness such as loneliness and alienation, but the condition of being isolated requires that one be detached from others through reasons not in one’s control. Isolation produces devastating consequences for many people, leading to lifelong emotional problems and difficulty in relationships with others. Conversely, the condition can move

isolationâ•…â•… 63 others toward extraordinary creativity and innovation as a result of having been forced to rely solely on their own minds as a source for meaning. As one might suspect, these two sides of the coin are not mutually exclusive; many people experience both positive and negative effects of isolation, deriving inspiration from it while at the same time feeling hurt and disturbed. Obviously, not all who feel isolated are literally alone, and not all who are alone are isolated. In an essay on isolation in literature, Mark Conliff points out that the condition hinges on the individual having once been part of a whole. The isolated person is not really a “stranger” or an “outsider,” words that might come to mind when thinking of this solitary state. Isolation requires that one was part of the group (at least at one time) and that he or she continues “to be defined, however subtly, by his association with his usual world” (121). That identification is what makes isolation so powerful. The stranger might long to be part of the group but, having never been a member, will not derive meaning or shape her identity based on this association. The isolated soul, however, cannot escape the connection. Whether the isolation is voluntarily imposed on the self or forced by some other entity, it is a condition that is objective in that it is not merely a feeling, and that is created by an outside force, not by happenstance. When human beings are genuinely isolated from others, serious psychological consequences may result. This is due to the basic human need to belong, to depend on and be accompanied by others throughout life. When human beings lived in hunter-gatherer societies, survival required these affiliations. As humans have evolved from that period in their history, they have not lost that need. The English psychiatrist Anthony Storr noted that these connections need not be intimate ones, but that they must be there: “[W]hether or not they are enjoying intimate relationships, human beings need a sense of being part of a larger community than that constituted by the family” (13). Kipling D. Williams, in his study of ostracism and its effects, notes that the need to belong is fundamental, and that “an absence of affiliation .╯.╯. with others produces a host of negative psychological consequences, including depression, anxiety, stress, and physical and mental

illness” (60). Being isolated from others, Williams goes on to argue, can also effect other fundamental needs, such as the need for self-esteem, the need to feel in control of one’s own life, and the need for meaningful existence (59–60). Being apart from others in any kind of systematic way can, in fact, alter the way we derive meaning from our lives. Isolation, forced or voluntary, can be as a window into what life would be like if we did not exist. When there is no one to take notice of us, no one to see us, talk to us, or respond to us in any way, it is as though we are dead, for there is no one there to remind us that we are alive. William James, in his groundbreaking Principles of Psychology (1890) says, “No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof ” (quoted in Williams 2). To be cut off like this, or “cut dead” as James puts it, is one of the most powerful weapons humans wield against one another and the basis for one of our society’s most common punitive actions: incarceration. When isolation is forced, as in incarceration or ostracism, its victims can undergo enormous pain and stress. For example, in Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles, Minnie Wright has been isolated by her cruel husband for many years. She sees no one, talks to no one, and must live out her days in only his infrequent and reticent company. Thus, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters surmise that when John Wright kills her only source of comfort, and indeed her only source of identification, her parakeet, she snaps and turns to murder, a completely uncharacteristic move. This parakeet is the only way Minnie knows she is alive, because it responds to her by singing, which she herself used to do in church with other members of her community. Minnie’s isolation is created by her husband; many characters in literature suffer forced isolation at the hands of family members. In The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, Celie is isolated first by her father and then by her husband, Mister. She is given no access to those who love her and those who would give her life intimacy and connection. First her father takes away her babies moments after they are born, then he marries her off to Mister, separat-

64â•…â•… isolation ing her from her beloved sister, Nettie. After Celie goes to live at Mister’s house, he in turn isolates her, keeping her like a prisoner, forced to cook, clean, and have sex, but receiving no comfort or love from anyone. Briefly, when Nettie lives with them, Celie feels joy again, but Mister literally tears them apart from one another and forces Nettie out of the house. Significantly, Mister tries to keep Nettie from teaching Celie how to read—and once she is gone, he hides the letters Nettie sends. These letters, had they been delivered, would have given Celie the human connection she so desperately needed. Her isolation cultivates in her feelings of worthlessness—feelings that leave her to wonder if she is even human. Forced isolation such as Celie and Minnie experience may also be brought on by society or by the circumstances of one’s life. In William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Ariel and Caliban have been isolated for years, alone on an island, until a shipwreck brings others into their lives. Both of them react based on their previous isolation. Ariel, who has been imprisoned in a tree, is willing to do Prospero’s bidding because he is grateful to have the company of others once again. Caliban, on the other hand, is horrified to have to share “his” island. His years alone have made him rough and unable to communicate well—and thus he appears to the shipwreck survivors as a beast, unfit for human interaction. While isolation often produces effects that dehumanize people, positive changes may also result from extended solitude. As Anthony Storr argues, “The capacity to be alone is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required” (29). He relates stories of such isolated souls as the children’s author Beatrix Potter and the 17th-century explorer and nobleman Sir Walter Raleigh. Schooled at home by a nanny, Potter was isolated as a child, with no opportunity to mix with other children. She made “friends” with the animals she encountered—rabbits, mice, ducks—and spent hours drawing them. As an adult, she would go on to produce the famous and beautifully illustrated Peter Rabbit stories. Storr theorizes that the isolation she experienced as a child forced her to create companions, and that is what led to her ultimate creativity (111–112). Raleigh wrote the first volume of his Historie of the World, about ancient Greece and Rome, while

imprisoned in the Tower of London. Again, Storr theorizes that like Potter, Raleigh devised something for his mind to do while his body was physically isolated. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is confined to her room for what her husband and her doctors have declared a “nervous” depression. With nothing else to do, she becomes obsessed with the room’s wallpaper, eventually believing she is one of the women on the wallpaper. In the end, the narrator does reach psychosis—but one can read this ending as a kind of freedom from her husband’s control. Her isolation forces her to think in a new way, and ultimately he frees her from the room because of this. Isolation, while mostly a difficult, debilitating force for human beings, can also produce interesting, creative results in its victims. By and large, however, being isolated challenges our basic human needs and calls into question the meaning of our lives. Literature, with its windows into the thoughts and feelings of the characters it portrays, allows us a glimpse into the isolated mind. See also Bierce, Ambrose: “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, An”; Chopin, Kate: Awakening, The; Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness; Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe; Frost, Robert: poems; Harte, Bret: “Luck of Roaring Camp, The”; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Rappaccini’s Daughter”; Hemingway, Ernest: Old Man and the Sea, The; Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God; James, Henry: Turn of the Screw, The; Joyce, James: Dubliners; Molière: Misanthrope, The; Morrison, Toni: Bluest Eye, The; Salinger, J. D.: Catcher in the Rye, The; Steinbeck, John: Of Mice and Men; Twain, Mark: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Wharton, Edith: Frome, Ethan; Williams, Tennessee: Streetcar Named Desire, A. FURTHER READING Conliffe, Mark. “On Isolation.” Midwest Quarterly 47, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 115–130. Storr, Anthony. Solitude. New York: Free Press (1988). Williams, Kipling D. Ostracism. New York: Guilford, 2001.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

justiceâ•…â•… 65

justice

The desire to be treated fairly, and to see others treated fairly, is a fundamental human impulse. We seek justice in our own lives, and many of us promote it in the lives of others. Injustice strikes us as unnatural, an imbalance that should not be tolerated in moral, humane societies. Some would even argue that justice is the most important factor in making a moral society, saying that without justice, there can be no true moral authority. Philosophers do not agree, however, on virtually any aspect of justice. There are controversies involving whether or not actions can be considered just, what intellectual paths we must take to make those determinations, how justice should be carried out, and whether or not there can be such a thing as “natural” justice— that is, universal principles that all societies should follow. Justice is a complicated subject because what is “right” may not always be what is “just,” and what is “just” may not always be “right.” For instance, a culture that follows the Old Testament precept of “an eye for an eye” might call killing an innocent person to avenge the death of another innocent person “just.” Few of us, however, would call that the right course of action. Conversely, the institution of slavery might help a local economy function well, leading some to label it “good,” but it would be impossible to argue that slavery is ever “just.” Literature explores the complexities surrounding the concept of justice often. For instance, when the lion Aslan agrees to be sacrificed in place of the traitor Edmund in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he is conforming to the laws of Narnia, laws whose stated role is to deliver justice. Edmund, after all, did commit treason, and treason should be punished. For Edmund to die at the hands of the White Witch might be justice, but Aslan knows it would spell disaster for the future of Narnia, so he dies in Edmund’s place. Conversely, the women of Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles subvert justice, becoming criminals themselves in the process when they hide evidence that might convict Minnie Wright. What they do may not be just, but Glaspell definitely wants us to believe that what they do is right.

This question of what is “just” and what is “right” is one of the questions philosophers grapple with when they discuss justice. Serious explorations of the problem must examine first whether or not we can ever rationally justify these terms, which seem so very subjective. If we can justify them, then we are left asking the equally difficult questions of “How ought we to act in order to be just?” and “How ought social institutions be structured so as to achieve justice?” (Buchanan and Mathieu 12). Some theories of justice are retributive—that is, they are concerned with using punishment to restore the imbalance created by the injustice of crime. This type of justice is almost exclusively associated with criminal justice. When it is properly retributive, those who have taken “unfair advantage of the law abiding populace” are punished in proportion to their crime (12). The killers depicted in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, brutally murder a family of four. They performed this deed, as Capote notes through his title, “in cold blood.” What this phrase indicates is that there were no mitigating circumstances to explain why they committed this crime. In William Shakespeare’s Othello, the title character kills his wife, Desdemona, because he believes she has been unfaithful; it is a crime of passion that he commits in a fit of rage. But Hickock and Smith kill the Clutter family calmly and without remorse. When society seeks justice for this offense, then, it seeks the highest penalty. Because Hickock and Smith took lives so coldly, they must pay with their own. This is retributive justice. While we may not always agree on just how to make all punishments fit their crimes, the concept itself is relatively simple. Distributive justice, on the other hand, is a much more complicated concept. Theories of justice that are distributive seek to regulate social and economic inequalities. The distribution of goods in a society can never be perfectly equal: Some will always have more than others, due to differences in intelligence, skill, personality, or sheer luck. Distributive justice asks us to determine how this inevitable imbalance might be most fairly corrected. One of the foundational principles of distributive justice, sometimes called the “formal principle” and usually attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, is that

66â•…â•… justice “equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally—but in proportion to their relevant similarities and differences” (Buchanan and Mathieu 15). Applying that principle to real-life situations is complicated. Most philosophers of justice agree that we must focus on certain material principles in our consideration of whether or not inequality is just: need, ability, effort, productivity, public utility, and supply and demand. In other words, when we try to determine whether or not a particular state of inequality is just or unjust, we must consider the above categories. One system of distributive justice is known as utilitarianism. This system asks one question of actions and policies concerned with distribution: Does it maximize overall utility? For example, for utilitarians, “maximizing overall utility might permit or even require members of one segment of society to lead live of impoverished slaves, lacking even the most basic civil and political liberties” (26). In the system of apartheid depicted in Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, the black Africans live lives in just such a position. Dinesen is able to justify this situation because she sees them as childlike and unable to handle their own affairs. She truly sees this clearly unfair situation as being better for society as a whole; thus, she is adopting a utilitarian position. John Rawls, perhaps the best known philosopher of distributive justice, rejects this utilitarian mindset. His principles of justice, outlined in his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, are threefold. First, each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive system of equal basic liberties. For Rawls, these basic liberties are freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom from arbitrary arrest, the right to hold personal property, and freedom of political participation. Second, offices and position are to be open to all; people with similar abilities and skills should have equal access to positions of power and importance. Third, social and economic institutions are to be arranged in ways that maximize the benefits for the worst off. Rawls’s ideas are controversial, to be sure, as adhering to his principles almost guarantees a redistribution of wealth. Another school of thought, libertarianism, would declare that any redistribution of wealth is theft.

So how can we assure ourselves that our societies are just without becoming Robin Hoods, robbing the rich to give to the poor? Or maybe Robin Hood, despite his criminal ways, was acting in the name of justice. Criminal justice, of course, would punish Robin Hood for stealing from others, but it is social justice we discuss here. The basic question is whether or not those at the top of the social heap have a moral responsibility to share with those at the bottom. Samuel Clemens, writing as Mark Twain, seems to have felt that they did. In his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Clemens uses the story of a child, Huck, who has been forgotten by his society, to “argue for the ethical and moral treatment of children” (Kiskis 67). If it is incumbent upon us as Christians to physically and spiritually comfort the poor, how can we let a child like Huck forge his way alone? He is abused by his father, isolated by society, treated as an outcast, and finally left to fend for himself. The community sees this as Huck’s own choice, but Twain wants us to consider how we can let a child make such a choice. Twain’s Huck “reminds us of our complicity in a society that disposes of people” (71). If we accept that complicity, then we might also consider the possibility that our society should mandate reversing such injustice, and this would inevitably require some type of redistribution of wealth. We give up some rights, then, if we are willingly a part of such a society. If in order to right these wrongs, we have to give up some of our own basic liberties, or allow those liberties to be infringed upon, then perhaps that is the way we achieve justice as a society. See also Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Conrad, Joseph: Lord Jim; Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy, The; Edwards, Jonathan: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”; Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones; Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South; Gay, John: Beggar’s Opera, The; Gordimer, Nadine: Burger’s Daughter; Jacobs, Harriet: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself; Kincaid, Jamaica: Small Place, A; Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Lee: Inherit the Wind; Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird; McMurtry, Larry: Lonesome Dove; Molière:

loveâ•…â•… 67 Tartuffe; Paine, Thomas: Age of Reason, The; Pirandello, Luigi: Six Characters in Search of an Author; Shakespeare, William: Hamlet; Othello; Silko, Leslie Marmon: Almanac of the Dead; Sophocles: Antigone; Twain, Mark: Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The. FURTHER READING Buchanan, Allen, and Deborah Matthieu. “Philosophy and Justice.” In Justice: Views from the Social Sciences, edited by Ronald L. Cohen, 12–36. New York: Plenum Press, 1986. Kiskis, Michael J. “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Again!): Teaching for Social Justice or Samuel Clemens’ Children’s Crusade.” Mark Twain Annual 1 (2003): 63–77. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. 1971. Reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

love

There is perhaps no other theme in world literature as prevalent, provocative, diverse—and perennially compelling—as that of love or its absence. An integral part of the human experience in its various forms, love is also a key if highly complex component of what writers and critics have tried to express for their readers. Exploring different kinds and consequences of love in literary works can thus serve to define what it means as a theme within particular cultural contexts and genres as well as in our lives. But a distinction must first be made between the word love’s common usage (as in, “I loved lunch”) and its deeper, more intense and abstract meanings with which we are primarily concerned here. Among the most common kinds of love depicted in literature is that between family members. Marriage, a familiar ending of many comedic plays, tends either to be the culmination of romantic love (discussed below) or a matter of convenience, such as money and social status, often by parental, political, or economic arrangements. Jane Austen’s novels, such as Sense and Sensibility and P ride and P rejudice, are prime expositions of the theme of tensions that can arise between the two marriage motives, one love-based and the other not. Sustained lack of love in a marriage can lead to estrangement,

separation, divorce, or extramarital affairs (adultery, considered a sin in many religions), in which one spouse seeks out the love, affections, or opportunities denied by the other elsewhere, frequently tragically. The misadventures of Emma, the namesake character of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, are a case in point. A second kind of familial love, that between parents and their children, usually differs greatly depending on the genders, personalities, and cultural circumstances of the individuals in the relationship. Motherly love is generally described as being boundless, tender, and attentive, while paternal love, in contrast, is commonly depicted as unemotional and contingent, and it often has to be earned. In the psychologist Sigmund Freud’s analysis of Sophocles’ play Oedipus the King, such stereotypes of parental love lead boys to seek out women like their mothers and rebel against their fathers (or father figures) later in life, and girls to see their mothers as competing for their father’s love; by extension, this makes all women jealous of their lovers’ attentions. Many literary works follow these basic patterns, purposefully or not. Sibling love between brothers and sisters is not only used literally by writers and critics; it can also be a metaphor for specific kinds of relations between characters unrelated by blood. The relationships between the two twin hobbits Merry and Pippin and between Frodo and Sam in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings draw attention to the similarity between biological and nonbiological sibling love. Big Brother totalitarianism in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a satirical extension of brotherly love, often overly protective. Fraternal love, on the other hand, develops through bonding experiences among men of all ages, as with certain of the teenagers in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Sisterhood is likewise not limited to the love between biological sisters but is a thematic term also applied to close and affectionate relations between women friends—as, for example, between the sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women or the sisterly bond among the women of the older generation in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Another kind of love quite unlike familial love is that which characters and people can have for

68â•…â•… love the nonhuman, whether animals, things, or ideas. Pastoral works of poetry and fiction, for instance, celebrate the relationships between farmers and their animals or shepherds and their flocks, while other narratives focus on the love between pets and their owners, as in John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony. Some of the most cherished children’s stories, such as A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, use love and affection between animals to reflect on their human equivalents. Love of money, maybe more accurately described as an obsession, as well as of other tangible things—from cars and clothes to places—frequently plays pivotal thematic roles in life as in literary works. The main character in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is so enamored with the idea of his youth and beauty that he debauches his life in preserving them, as others have sacrificed theirs for ideas and ideals such as nation, freedom, and loyalty. Philosophy, it should be remembered, literally means a love (philo) for or friend of knowledge (sophia). As a primary thrust or secondary incidental occurrence in literature, however, it may be safe to say that no theme is as ubiquitous and variously treated as romantic love. For example, the theme of courtly love, or passion between two members of the nobility, began circulating in Europe as early as the 11th century, and by the 19th century, it was an object of ridicule in fiction in some circles. Still, certain elements within the theme of romantic love are constant and unchanging, as in its progressive stages. First comes the discovery of one lover by the other or both at once—hence the expression “lovestruck,” as when the war-injured Henry meets the nurse Catherine in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. The second stage is courtship, when one potential partner attempts to woo or seduce the other. Some of the best-known examples of this are contained in the large corpus of chivalric poetry, in which knights euphemistically persuade ladies to accept their overtures, ostensibly without losing their virginity or “virtue.” If the courtship is successful on both ends, then the third stage is consummation; if it is unsuccessful, then there is rejection by one or the other, or unrequited love. Thus, romantic love as an emotion must be distinguished from love

as activity, just as love as a biochemical process must be distinguished from love as thought. The thematic process of romantic love is everywhere circumscribed by the identities of its participants and the cultures in which their escapades take place. Forbidden love, sought after by participants but scorned by others or the culture, is epitomized by that between the title characters of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as their meeting, courtship, and tragic consummation take place against the backdrop of their feuding families. Racial, national, and class disparities between potential or actual lovers have proven to be considerable cultural obstacles that they can or cannot overcome. Pederasty, the love and mentorship of older men for younger, was commonplace in ancient Athens but would now be considered pedophilia. It is in this context that the notion of platonic love, so named after the philosopher Plato, came to be a spiritual and intellectual union rather than physical, considered base within this paradigm. Love between two people of the same sex, or homosexual love, is depicted without hesitation in the fragments of the ancient Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos, but its trials and tribulations in more contemporary times are made clear in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. A final kind of love to be mentioned here is that which is sometimes called “universal love,” an acknowledgment of the value of all life and commitment as being unconditionally benevolent. Religious texts such as the Torah, Bible, and Quran equate this kind of supreme love to that which the Deity holds for believers and vice versa, and which enables believers to love others in the same way. It is in these senses that love is sometimes said to be blind (that is, in overlooking the faults of others) or that individuals are instruments of an independent force of love, not the other way around. But thinkers and writers such as the Russian Leo Tolstoy and the American Ralph Waldo Emerson have also described equivalents to universal love that do not require religious foundations, although they are free to have them. In an allegorical sense, then, no matter which kind of love a character or person experiences, it ultimately brings him or her closer to, or makes them more a part of, this ultimate theme of universal love.

memoryâ•…â•… 69 See also Augustine, Saint: Confessions of St. Augustine, The; Bambara, Toni Cade: Salt Eaters, The; Bradbury, Ray: Martian Chronicles, The; Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre; Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights; Chekhov, Anton: Seagull, The; Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy, The; Faulkner, William: Sound and the Fury, The; Fitzgerald, F. Scott: Tender Is the Night; Gay, John: Beggar’s Opera, The; Hardy, Thomas: Jude the Obscure; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Birth-Mark, The”; Hesse, Herman: Siddhartha; Keats, John: poems; Kundera, Milan: Unbearable Lightness of Being, The; McCullers, Carson: Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The; Milton, John: Paradise Lost; Morrison, Toni: Tar Baby; Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita; parenthood; Proust, Marcel: Remembrance of Things Past; Shakespeare, William: Hamlet; Othello; Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace; Wharton, Edith: Age of Innocence, The; Yeats, William Butler: poems. FURTHER READING Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Dell, 1966. Hagestrum, Jean. Esteem Enlightened by Desire: The Couple from Homer to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Siddall, Stephen, ed. The Truth about Love: A Collection of Writing on Love through the Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Antony Adolf

memory

Memory in literature is the written form of that which has come before. Memories come from the historical past but are also formed by social, political, and religious events in the lives of literary characters. Memory is employed in three distinct fashions, which often exist concurrently in a text: first, to establish the validity and importance of a text based on the expertise and reputation of past writers; second, as a means of instilling a feeling of nostalgia in a text; and third, and most universally, as a method of constructing individual and cultural identity. The first construction is particularly prevalent in the literature of the English Middle Ages and the

romantic movement of the 19th century, while the second has been employed throughout the 20th century by writers of both British and American origin in the wake of the sociopolitical upheavals caused by World Wars I and II. The third construction is ubiquitous in all written works dealing with individual or cultural issues, and because of this, memory serves as a literary theme of profound importance. The earliest written epic works establish memory as a central literary theme. Homer’s The Iliad and Virgil’s The Aeneid serve to establish the character and ideology of the Greek and Roman nations, respectively, through the blending of fictional elements with the recording of great men, heroic battles, and important, long-past events. It is here that the use of the catalog, or list of important historical figures, is employed not only to give the work authenticity through the presence of verifiable historical names and places, but also to convey a sense of historical memory to works that are primarily fictional in nature. Through the heroic actions of Achilles and his comrades in arms on the battlefields of the Trojan War, Homer sets down his view of the national identity and character of ancient Greece, a view that prevails today. Deliberately crafting his work on the model of Homer’s by incorporating elements both from The Iliad and The Odyssey, Virgil constructs a national history of Rome, linking Augustus himself to the ancient world and thus reinforcing his provenance to rule through the tale of Aeneas’s journey from the ruins of Troy to found Rome. Virgil, however, takes memory further in the Aeneid: Making use of the catalog and of the presence of events from Homer’s work, he expands on the theme through the instance of Aeneas’s dalliance with Dido. Sworn to travel to the location of the future Rome and establish the foundations of that great city, Aeneas finds himself delayed by an affair with the queen of Carthage; he seemingly forgets his purpose and must be reminded of his destiny by Mercury, messenger to Jupiter, the king of the gods. In this manner, Virgil adds the importance of individual memory to his text, expanding the role of memory in his writing from a collective to an individual construction. Medieval writers, steeped in the Scholastic tradition of thought, which required proof based in

70â•…â•… memory Scripture or other foundational texts of each point or idea presented within a text, probably did more than any other group to construct memory as a literary theme of supreme importance in its own right. Through compendia, or collections of writings, religious authors sought to establish validity of thought in their writings; through catalogs based on ancient Greek and Roman models, religious and secular authors alike sought to establish textual authority and to craft a memory tradition of thinking and cultural identity. Geoffrey Chaucer provides an excellent example of this in The Canterbury Tales, in which assorted travelers on pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas à Beckett at Canterbury Cathedral stop at an inn and conduct a storytelling contest. In this work, Chaucer not only creates a fictional cross-section of British society in his time but does so by having each of his travelers tell his or her story in a literary genre suited to his or her station in life. For example, the Knight, a noble, tells a romance; the lower-class Miller tells a fabliau, or dirty tale; the middle-class Wife of Bath tells an Arthurian legend; the Nun’s Priest tells a beast fable, or story with personified animals as the main characters; and the Second Nun tells of a saint’s life. In this fashion, Chaucer creates a compendium of literary genres fashionable in his time, in addition to providing a glimpse of British attitudes toward social, political, and religious issues in his day, and his work therefore serves as an excellent example of the use of memory to construct collective identity. The British romantics transformed the use of memory in literature, often basing their writing on earlier forms and themes, upon which they embroidered a highly personal nostalgia and quest for identity. William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” is widely acknowledged as the work that ushered in the romantic movement. As the narrator returns to a spot he visited years earlier, he is swept away by the changes in the abbey and in himself, while simultaneously delighting in the eternal quality of the countryside surrounding him. The inclusion of personal memory in the form of nostalgia, married to collective memory in the public form of the abbey itself, demonstrates the power of memory to evoke strong emotion. John Keats similarly makes

use of the individual/collective dichotomy in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which he observes the eternal images painted on an ancient vase, constructs stories about them derived from his knowledge of ancient culture, and simultaneously considers his own ephemeral place in time. His recollection of history, fused with his own mortality, render the poem highly emotional. Rather than using memory to underscore textual legitimacy or to convey national ideology, the romantics employed it to evoke nostalgia and to highlight personal conflicts in the search for identity. Marcel Proust furthered the evolution of memory in his monumental autobiographical novel Remembrance of Things Past. In this work, Proust is plunged into memories of his childhood through the taste of a madeleine (small cake) dipped in tea. From the original flashback evoked by the taste of the cake, he maps an inner landscape of the mind through further mental associations with that first, sense-based moment, thus evolving the story from a single memory to a vast panorama of identity constructed through memory. This work more than any other has profoundly impacted the use of memory in modern literature; with it, Proust wrested memory entirely from its original use as a means of establishing textual authority and national character, recreating it as a means of personal exploration of self and the world. Twentieth-century writers have tended to follow Proust’s use of association in the construction of memory. Perhaps the single best example of this is T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” A modern poem about the collapse of tradition and history and the struggle for identity in the wake of World War I, “The Waste Land” is a masterwork of association, employing allusions to historical events, contemporary affairs, literature, music, art, the occult, science, astronomy, important centers of learning and culture, and various figures (both real and fictional) to underscore the impoverished state of postwar society. Eliot’s use of memory is a subversion of the traditional; his is a construction of memory as that which has been forgotten. He employs vast references to the past in order to underscore their absence in the present. Panoramas of ancient cities such as Alexandria and cultural centers such as

nationalismâ•…â•… 71 Vienna, the pageantry of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra on the barge, the splendor of Elizabeth I’s reign, the glory of King Arthur’s legend, and the foundational humanity of Ovid’s mythological figures are juxtaposed with the garbage of modern picnickers floating down the Thames River, with throngs of dejected workers filing down the streets of London and with an overall barrenness in the modern landscape, in order to highlight the national and personal crises of identity that for Eliot marked the modern era. His work, then, not only serves as a sort of compendium of European culture but also as a call to mindfulness in the reader; through the authority of the objects, events, and people incorporated in his allusions, the reader is free to indulge in nostalgia for the great moments of the past as well as to make associations with them, leading to highly personal questions of identity and nationalism. In the modern world, then, memory is as important as ever as a means of establishing authority, evoking nostalgia, and helping to forge personal and national identity. See also Bambara, Toni Cade: Salt Eaters, The; Cather, Willa: My Ántonia; Dickens, Charles: David Copperf ield; Ellison, Ralph: Invisible Man; García Márquez, Gabriel: One Hundred Years of Solitude; Joyce, James: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A; Momaday, N. Scott: Way to Rainy Mountain, The; O’Neill, Eugene: Long Day’s Journey into Night; Rhys, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea; Rushdie, Salman: Midnight ’s Children; Welty, Eudora: Optimist ’s Daughter, The; Wiesel, Elie: Night; Wilder, Thornton: Our Town; Williams, Tennessee: Glass Menagerie, The; Woolf, Virginia: To the Lighthouse. FURTHER READING Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Ender, Evelyne. Architexts of Memory: Literature, Science, and Autobiography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. McConky, James, ed. The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Oxford University Press, 1996. Middleton, Peter, and Tim Woods. Literature of Memory: History, Time and Space in Post-War Writing.

Manchester, Eng.: Manchester University Press, 2001. Nalbantian, Suzanne. Memory in Literature: From Rousseau to Neuroscience. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Melissa Ridley-Elmes

nationalism

Many scholars have struggled to define the term nationalism in a way that encompasses and makes sense of all the different situations in which it is employed. In general, it is an ideology in which nationality is a category by which humans define themselves. Nationalism necessarily categorizes people—one either is or is not a member of “my nation.” It thrives through the use of such elements as national folklore, symbols, heroes, sports, music, religion, and the idea that there is a national identity or character. Anthony D. Smith, a theorist of nationalism, has suggested that there are criteria that must be in place for nationalism to exist. His list includes a physical homeland, either current or ancient; a high degree of autonomy among the citizens, hostile surroundings, memories of glory or defeat in battle, special customs, historical records, common languages and scripts, and what he calls sacred centers or places (17). This sort of nationalism is highly dependent on the concept of the nation-state and probably represents the most common use of the term. It has been used to justify imperialism, to unite countries in times of war, and to describe the struggles for nationhood in colonized countries such as Ireland and India. However, nationalism has also been used to describe movements within sovereign nations, such as the black nationalist movement in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and the Hindu nationalism currently seen in India. American Indian activists have also called for American Indian nationalism, especially given that many of their tribes are sovereign nations themselves. One of the reasons nationalism is so difficult to define is that any discussion involving the subject necessarily spills over into cognate subjects such as race and racism, fascism and other ideologies, language development, international law, genocide, and immigration. In addition, nationalism can take

72â•…â•… nationalism many different forms, with the central factor upon which a movement is based being, for instance, religious, political, ethnic, or cultural. This further confuses the way the term is used and defined. In the latter half of the 18th century, for instance, the people of France had successfully united under such symbols as the tricolor flag, the sentimental power of the anthem “The Marseillaise,” and the ideals of liberté, egalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity). This type of patriotism allowed the nation to feel as one in a way that had not been possible before the French Revolution. For the French, at least in overthrowing the monarchy, the loyalty inspired by nationalism helped to create a “free” society, the goal of the Revolution. Throughout the 19th century, however, nationalism would be used to justify imperialism, jingoism, and xenophobia in countries such as Great Britain, the United States, Italy, and France itself. Some scholars also attribute the 20th-century rise of fascism to nationalism taken to its extreme. In the late 20th century, the term came to be used most often to describe indigenous movements seeking autonomy, equality, and recognition. Most broadly, the term has been used to describe the way the people of a country define themselves. The idea that a “nation” is an entity, an identifiable thing moving forward through time, is a relatively new one, having only been around since the 18th century or so. Although some historians believe that the “concept” of nationalism existed even in tribal communities and has probably been around since the beginning of humanity, modern theorists place its origins at the beginning of the 18th century. Before that period, they say, no one had more than local interests. Nationalism, for these theorists, was made possible by the Industrial Revolution, the widespread use of the printing press, and the rise of capitalism. All of these things relied on a large, literate, and culturally homogeneous population for their success. These theories, expounded by people such as Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, argue that nationalism is a “socially constructed” phenomenon. In other words, they believe that it is an artificial designation, imposed on the denizens of a country for social or political purposes. This belief does not reduce the power of the concept but merely suggests that it is not a real, organic phenomenon arising

from the true feelings and motives of the country’s people. As viable political entities, nations must concern themselves with defining what it means to be a nation. This is a challenge even for the most homogenous linguistically and historically bound people, but it is a concern that is crucial to their existence. Literature, as a vehicle, helps to express nationalist ideas particularly well. If nations or nationalist movements are indeed identifiable entities moving forward in time, they need to speak, and literature gives them a voice to do just that. Postrevolutionary America, for instance, needed to come to terms with its independence, as well as to establish and put forward a national character. Washington Irving’s The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon (1819) depicts characters struggling with these ideas. In one of Irving’s most famous stories, “Rip Van Winkle,” the main character goes to sleep for 20 years and wakes up in a world unfamiliar to him. What was once a pleasant, sleepy community now seems, to Rip, like a busy, contentious place, rife with disagreement. The American Revolution has taken place while he slept, but instead of focusing on political matters, Irving uses Rip to show the reader how daily life has changed in those lost years—daily life being more important than politics in the life of an ordinary man. This reading helped early Americans take a step toward defining the national character of the fledgling country; it also helped readers understand the pain of independence from the mother country. Similarly, in William Butler Yeats’s poetry, metaphors for national character and the struggle toward independence abound. In poems such as “The Stolen Child,” “Chuchulain’s Fight with the Sea,” “Who Goes with Fergus?,” and the long poem “The Wanderings of Oisin,” Yeats strives to invoke old Ireland, mystical and Celtic, in order to create for the modern country a precolonial image to which it might aspire. Ireland was the oldest of England’s colonies, held for nearly 800 years, and an obstacle for Irish nationalists was finding a way to clearly distinguish what was Irish from what was English. Yeats was such a nationalist poet, however, that he did not merely speak in metaphors. Much of his commentary on nationalism is not figurative at

natureâ•…â•… 73 all but is explored literally, in largely unambiguous language. In poems such as “Easter 1916,” “To Ireland in the Coming Times,” and “The Irish Airman Foresees his Death,” Yeats is explicit, mourning the loss of lives in the struggle for independence and noting the toll that years of oppression have taken on the Irish character. While both Irving and Yeats were working with countries struggling with defining their identities against the specter of English dominance, in 1897 Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula addressed the difficulty of nationalism and England itself. Count Dracula, whom Stoker portrays as everything that is foreign to England and the English characters, seeks to capture Mina, whose purity, intelligence, and kindness make her a perfect symbol of Victorian womanhood. In contrast, Dracula is mysterious, speaking in heavily accented English and living in a remote castle in Transylvania. He is Eastern as opposed to the very Western Mina, and worst of all, he is believed to be a vampire, the undead creature from eastern European folklore. In his quest, Dracula purchases various pieces of real estate around London so that he may have resting places to protect him should he be caught outside as the sun rises. He has transported native soil from his homeland to deposit in these locations. This represents a kind of reverse colonialism, with the foreigner imposing himself upon England during the heyday of Victorian imperialism. The “good” character—that is, the English—must unite to destroy the foreign menace and thus save the character of their nation. Other literary works, such as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight ’s Children (1983), are openly critical of nationalist movements, portraying them as dehumanizing groups that stress unity over humanity. In Midnight’s Children, both the Indian nationalist movement and the Indo-Pakistani War (a nationalist-driven war) come very close to destroying the future of India, all for the advancement of the idea of a strong, homogenous, modern nation. Just as nationalism itself is a term that is difficult to define, literary portrayals of nationalism take many different forms and approach the subject from many different angles. Minority groups, dominant religions and ethnicities, and political entities (both new and long-established) may all embrace the ide-

ology of nationalism. Literature, with its many layers of meaning, can express this ideology in support of all these different groups. See also Atwood, Margaret: Surfacing; Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones; Forster, E. M.: Passage to India, A; Hemingway, Ernest: Farewell to Arms, A; Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki: Farewell to Manzanar; Kipling, Rudyard: Kim; Machiavelli, Niccolò: P rince, The; Naipaul, V. S.: Bend in the River, A; Poe, Edgar Allan: “Murders in the Rue Morgue, The”; Shakespeare, William: Henry V; Merchant of Venice; The; Much Ado about Nothing. FURTHER READING Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London and New York: Verso, 2006. Corse, Patricia. Nationalism and Literature: The Politics of Culture in Canada and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Ignatieff, Michael. Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism. London: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995. Kohn, Hans, and Craig Calhoun. Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background. Edison, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2005. Smith, Anthony D. Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. London: Polity Press, 2001.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

nature

Nature, taken broadly as the earth’s physical phenomena, is omnipresent, in literature as in life. Just as we do not live and function in a vacuum, literary events cannot transpire without some type of space, some sort of environment, however basic or unconventional it might be. But other than this initial stipulation that nature pervades all literature, further universals are difficult to defend. Perhaps the only other truth ascribable to the role of nature in literature is that it has demonstrated near-constant fluidity, from the dawn of English letters to the contemporary era. Many early texts utilize nature to describe origin. North American Indian tribes such as the Iroquois and the Pima told nature-focused creation stories.

74â•…â•… nature Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey, Virgil in The Aeneid, and the early English poet Caedmon explain how a people came to inhabit the specific landscape they do. Beowulf (Anonymous) dramatizes the defense of one’s turf. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales lend further to the trope of journey as tale, tale as journey, thereby paralleling nature and the act of storytelling itself. John Milton’s Paradise Lost even details heaven and hell as determinants of human consciousness, thereby deeming the eternal and ethereal as influential spaces as well. But throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Restoration, nature was, for the most part, allocated the role of backdrop—a mere canvas upon which the acts of humans were transposed. Occasional personification aside, nature was rarely afforded the power of agency. The romantic period (1785–1830) saw nature utilized as more of a primary subject matter than previously. William Shakespeare’s comparisons of women to summer’s days yielded to the direct treatment of seasonal splendor by William Blake (Songs of Innocence and of Experience), William Wordsworth (“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”), and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who celebrated nature as an inspiration and thereby ascribed it the role of muse, a position previously allocated to the divine. But while nature certainly plays a part in writings of the “Old World,” it was truly the genesis and flourishing of American literature that eventually repositioned it as a central, rather than merely a peripheral, thematic element, replete even with agency. As opposed to the letters produced in the well-known, exhaustively mapped countryside of Great Britain and Europe, those of the Western Hemisphere were recorded by pioneers in the throes of attempting to explore—both physically and intellectually—the immensity of an unforgiving foreign wilderness. These prenational, or colonial, writings are most recognizable by the strong and overt religious sentiment they propound. Tracts drafted by Puritans emigrating from Europe to New England promulgated strict Calvinism, by which humankind was placed on a pedestal above the natural world due to the favor shown it in the Bible, particularly in

the creation of man as the pinnacle of God’s work. This anthropocentric worldview traveled across the Atlantic with emigrants who sought to civilize the “savage” wild into which they were moving: The wilderness was seen as being in need of the doctrine they promulgated, as salvation was to be found not in the forests but in civilization, a divergent absolute from the “trickster” tales of the Winnebago, Sioux, Navajo, and other Native American tribes, in which natural elements and creatures display, paradoxically, a certain consistent unpredictability when interacting with people. The Puritans frowned on this subjectivity, maintaining instead that wilderness was the realm of beasts, of evil—this was the scene of Christ’s temptation, after all, the post-Fall wasteland. The key, they believed, was to carve out their own space and to introduce the word of God to the deprived landscape that lay before them. If paradise could be regained, it was not in the trees themselves but in their felling. Churches were needed to subordinate the wickedness of the uncouth wilderness to Providence, illustrated efficiently by the shining “city upon a hill” envisioned by John Winthrop in his sermon A Model of Christian Charity, delivered as a mission statement of sorts while en route from England in 1630. The concrete physical situation of the suggestion conveys the goal of these refugees: The realm of humans, the organized city, will be, quite literally, constructed above nature. Following independence, a new challenge presented itself to the now “American” authors. As former British subjects became pioneering patriots, the question of their interaction with their surroundings followed logically—that is, we know how subjects of the Crown treat nature, but what of American citizens? Merely regurgitating the ideology of those against whom they had fought so hard and long for independence lacked ambition at best, and seemed dangerously cyclical at worst. Hence, the initial American literati focused primarily on this new man, this fresh being (whom the 20th-century literary critic R. W. B Lewis would deem “the American Adam” in his work of the same name) reborn on a still largely unknown continent. The French-American writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur explored this creature as a product of its space. Washington Irving’s fiction, especially

natureâ•…â•… 75 The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, depicted the ever-evolving Dutch settlements of New York. James Fenimore Cooper’s five-volume Leatherstocking Tales follow Natty Bumppo—a European emigrant who consistently becomes more native in his lifestyle and politics—from the East Coast into the wilderness, all the way to the Rocky Mountains. And while all three writers concern themselves with the overarching issue of what it means to be American, they do so by deliberating specifically on the individual’s position within his or her environment. Quite literally, they focus on the situation of the early American. Furthermore, tough questions regarding Puritan fervor began to intensify (as demonstrated, most prominently, in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne), leaving the door open for a new consideration of humankind’s relationship to nature, one which would be provided by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, a Unitarian minister living in Concord, Massachusetts, was notably affected by the romantic movement and desired, for his young country, a literature of its own. His consideration of European idealism—thoughts advanced by Immanuel Kant, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle, among others—led to his own brand of American transcendentalism, an ontological inspection in which nature factored centrally. Emerson believed that humankind had strayed from its course, thereby blurring the innate divinity by which all souls relate to each other and to God. The way to recover this lost relationship was present in nature, which, Emerson maintained, functioned as a sort of blueprint through which we could witness the mind of God. His ideas, though initially quite controversial when published in his long essay Nature (1836), gradually became more mainstream, particularly since they were advocated by the stable of talented writers with whom he surrounded himself in Concord. Margaret Fuller augmented her feminist societal critiques with natural observations. Henry David Thoreau lent Emerson’s abstractions practical examples in Walden, his account of two years spent living in the woods. Walt Whitman poeticized Emerson’s promotion of nature in his passionate tome Leaves of Grass. Emerson even sought to take the future outdoorsman and “wild man” John Muir under his

wing, but Muir preferred his California home. But just as the movement that sought to rewrite nature as sacred rather than subordinate began gaining momentum, the Civil War and the resultant economic slump, coupled with urbanization, instead led writers concerned with the natural world in a new, less hospitable direction. And so while nature was portrayed as an enlightening, esteemed realm for much of the mid-1800s, by the turn of the century this favorable depiction was replaced with caustic naturalist depictions that reflected the acerbic times. Literary naturalists refuted the pessimistic and optimistic natural views employed by the Puritans and transcendentalists, respectively, opting instead to allow nature to define itself. Previously popular natural personifications were eschewed in favor of more objective environmental renderings. These purportedly more realistic representations envisioned the outdoors as neither malevolent nor beneficent, but instead indifferent. Jack London’s tales, including The Call of the Wild and White Fang, depict an Alaskan interior unforgiving to both man and beast, whereas Stephen Crane’s works illustrate similar themes within the context of a gritty metropolis. Over the last century or so, the growth of the environmental movement has increased—and politicized—the role of nature in literature. John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892. The First World War inspired T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, an exposé of a once-promising landscape rendered dismal and hopeless at the hands of humankind. The ecologist Aldo Leopold, seeking to heal, at mid-century proposed his “land ethic,” asserting that decisions affecting nature should be considered neither economically nor commercially but morally. The environmentalist Edward Abbey scolded civilization’s convenience-based impingement on the wilderness. The writer and scientist Rachel Carson, in Silent Spring, warned against the lasting effects of chemical inundation. Transcending the strictly literary, the Wachowski brothers’ postmodern film The Matrix trilogy implores us to call into question the very validity of our perceived surrounding, and the politician Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth has proved a powerful ecocritical text. Thus, while the precise future of natural literature is uncer-

76â•…â•… oppression tain, it seems quite clear that as global warming, overpopulation, and general environmental degradation continue, themes of nature will play increasingly important roles not only in the literature we study but also for the planet on which we live. See also Atwood, Margaret: Surfacing; Bradbury, Ray: Martian Chronicles, The; Cather, Willa: My Ántonia; O Pioneers!; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The”; Crane, Stephen: Open Boat, The; Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy, The; Dickinson, Emily: poems; Dinesen, Isak: Out of Africa; Emerson, Ralph Waldo: “SelfReliance”; Forster, E. M.: Room with a View, A; Frost, Robert: poems; Harte, Bret: “Luck of Roaring Camp, The”; Hemingway, Ernest: Old Man and the Sea, The; Jefferson, Thomas: Notes on the State of Virginia; Keats, John: poems; Kingsolver, Barbara: Bean Trees, The; Lewis, C. S.: Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The; McCarthy, Cormac: All the P retty Horses; Shakespeare, William: Midsummer Night ’s Dream, A; Steinbeck, John: Pearl, The; Red Pony, The; Wilde, Oscar: Picture of Dorian Gray, The. FURTHER READING Anderson, Lorraine, Scott Slovic, and John P. O’Grady. Literature and the Environment: A Reader on Nature and Culture. New York: Longman, 1998. Keegan, Bridget, and James M. McKuzick, eds. Literature and Nature: Four Centuries of Nature Writing. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000.

David Visser

oppression

As a concept frequently found in historical and sociological texts, oppression is typically defined in terms of a dominant group subjugating another minority group. In Race and Ethnic Relations (1985), Martin N. Marger explains that a sociological minority and a mathematical minority are not the same. Mathematically, a group can be the majority and yet still be victims of an oppression imposed by a more powerful yet numerically smaller dominant group. He goes on to delineate the qualities of oppressed minorities by detailing how they receive differential treatment,

as they are not afforded the same rights and privileges as the dominant group. Additionally, Marger notes that minority groups are socially denied, have differential power, and are treated categorically (all members are defined by group status as opposed to individually) (37–38). Also, dominant groups can be distinguished culturally, economically, and politically (41). With this diversity in mind, the theme of oppression would include all of the “-isms” we have come to identify with prejudice. It can be based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political or national affiliation, age, physical or mental disability, religion, and other factors. In his authoritative The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Paulo Friere identifies several characteristics of oppressive societies. For example, oppressors often refer to the oppressed in nonhuman terms. Correspondingly, oppression is against the ideals of humanity because it prevents people within the oppressed group from being fully human (43). In her article “Oppression,” Marilyn Frye expands on this: “The experience of oppressed people is that the living of one’s life is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are systematically related to each other in such a way as to catch one between and among them and restrict or penalize motion in any direction” (40). This definition helps bring about a distinction between injustice and oppression. Whereas injustice can occur at any level, the more specific concept of oppression involves a systemic structure that shapes and restricts the life of an oppressed population. In Privilege, Power, and Difference, Allan G. Johnson describes the two sides of the oppressive society as the privileged and the oppressed. This terminology implies that the members who are receiving the benefits of the societal structure may not be actively oppressive toward others. Sometimes one is a member of a privileged group without feeling particularly dominant. However, membership in the majority group opens doors for members while membership in oppressed groups tends to shut doors. Interestingly, Friere asserts that the oppressed, rather than standing up against all tyranny, often become “sub-oppressors” against others within their minority group (45). This can be seen in Alice

oppressionâ•…â•… 77 Walker’s The Color Purple and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, where the oppressed black men further subjugate the black women. Thus, the black women in the novels are doubly oppressed in their rural southern societies. This is specifically addressed in Their Eyes Were Watching God when the protagonist Janie is told by her grandmother that black women are the mules of the world. While the black men are oppressed by white society, according to Nanny, the black women are oppressed by both the white power structure and black men. This is also seen in the experiences of Celie, who for much of The Color Purple is beaten and oppressed by her husband, Mr. ——. In this novel, even Celie, who is subjugated for most of her life, encourages her stepson Harpo to beat his strong-willed wife, Sofia. In Friere’s view, Celie has become so enmeshed in a culture of oppression that she does not see it as aberrant. Oppression, with all its diverse implications, has been apparent throughout much of time. For example, in the Bible, not only are the Jews oppressed by the Egyptians and the Syrians, but the women of the Old Testament are also faced with laws that are inequitable. In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest recorded use of the word oppression in the English language was in a 1382 version of the Bible. As an example of female oppression, in the book of Exodus, it is indicated that it is permissible to sell one’s daughters into slavery. Unlike sons who were sold into slavery, daughters were not released after a six-year period; they remained slaves. Similar to examining the religious text of the Bible, one needs only look at various historical periods to see countless examples of groups oppressed by others. Two modern examples of oppression are the apartheid of South Africa and Adolf Hitler’s oppression and persecution of the Jewish people. South African apartheid was a system of legalized racism and segregation enforced by the National Party government. In this society, marginalized populations, particularly “black” and “colored” (which was a mixed-race designation), were subjected to laws restricting where they resided, their right to voting, their ability to marry or engage in sexual relations with members of other races, where they

could work, and eventually their ability to be citizens. Similarly, the Jewish people of Hitler’s Germany were subjected to extremely differential treatment. The Nuremburg Laws prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans and stripped Jewish people of citizenship. Laws prohibiting where, and eventually if, Jewish people could work and be educated were part of the path that led to the Holocaust. The memoirs Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, and Night, by Elie Wiesel, document the oppressive experience of subjugated people living in Nazi Germany. Both of these periods are emblematic of the oppression that permeates history. Since the works written in each era can be seen to reflect the zeitgeist of that period, and since oppression is so prevalent in history, it makes sense that it can be identified in works from multiple eras, countries, and cultural/social groups. At times, the works have been written purposefully to demonstrate the evils of the oppression, as in Richard Wright’s Native Son, a novel in which the author presents the oppressive racism of America in the 1930s, as experienced by his protagonist, Bigger Thomas. Sometimes, the works studied will not intentionally describe the oppressive system; instead, through their illustration of the social structure and mores of their times, they depict oppressions that critics can analyze. For instance, literary scholars frequently examine William Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew and analyze the oppression of women. Whether or not Shakespeare intended to subvert or uphold the patriarchy of his time, his play can still be studied to analyze the oppression of women. In terms of literary theory, critics did not always address the oppression in works. It became most apparent with the emergence of fields of criticism that are sociologically and culturally based. Because of its diverse dimensions, the theme of oppression is evident in many of these fields of literary study. For example, analyses of oppression are explored in gender studies, cultural studies, Marxist criticism, feminist criticism, postcolonial criticism, queer theory, and other sociologically influenced branches of criticism. To illustrate, books addressing South African apartheid would be of particular interest

78â•…â•… parenthood to postcolonial critics, who examine the works produced in or written about countries that have been subject to European colonial powers in their history. Since apartheid was instituted in a colonial area, where the colonizer was oppressing the native residents, works addressing this area would fall within the scope of postcolonial studies. Similarly, in feminist criticism, works would be examined to see how the patriarchal society dominates women. Historically, an admonition of patriarchal oppression can be found as far back as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). In this manifesto, Wollstonecraft contends that familial tyranny is unjust, that women should be educated, and that the differentiation of the sexes should cease. Many feminist texts have emerged over the years. The works of Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin, Margaret Atwood, and Toni Morrison are often analyzed to demonstrate the oppression of women. Racial oppression is frequently treated in literature. While this includes much of postcolonial studies, it is not limited to them. In American literature, there are poignant examples of racial oppression. As a documentation of the slavery of blacks in America, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, authenticates the experience of living in a dominated minority during the 1800s. Poetically, Langston Hughes’s works arising out of the Harlem Renaissance illuminate the oppression of black Americans at that time. One of the best examples of this is seen in his poem “I, Too,” which is an answer to Walt Whitman’s famous “I Hear America Singing.” In this, as in many of his works, Hughes asserts black humanity, one of the major focuses of the Harlem Renaissance. Remembering Friere’s point that oppressors dehumanize the oppressed, the need for the dominated to assert their humanity is understandable. In the poem, Hughes uses the metaphor of being sent to eat in the kitchen when company comes to represent the differential treatment of this era. The poem clearly subverts the current social system, and Hughes writes that the oppressed will grow stronger, indicating that one day they will bring down the oppressors. However, although the poem indicates the oppressed will rise

up against the dominant, it ends with the hopeful wish that the oppressors will see their mistake and change the system themselves. These works present a small sampling of oppression evident throughout much of literature. See also Achebe, Chinua: Anthills of the Savannah; Things Fall Apart; Allende, Isabel: House of the Spirits, The; Atwood, Margaret: Handmaid ’s Tale, The; Black Elk: Black Elk Speaks; Kesey, Ken: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Kincaid, Jamaica: Small Place, A; Kundera, Milan: Unbearable Lightness of Being, The; London, Jack: White Fang; Mistry, Rohinton: Fine Balance, A; Paine Thomas: Common Sense; Rand, Ayn: Anthem; Reed, Ishmael: Mumbo Jumbo. FURTHER READING Awkward, Michael. Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Friere, Paulo. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1993. Frye, Marilyn. “Oppression.” In Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, edited by Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins, 37–41. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1992. Johnson, Allan G. Privilege, Power, and Difference. New York: McGraw Hill, 2001. Marger, Martin N. Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2006. Oppenheimer, Martin. The Hate Handbook: Oppressors, Victims, and Fighters. New York: Lexington Books, 2005. Smith, Barbara. “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism.” In All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies, edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1982, 157–175.

Tracey L. Marticek-Raimondo

parenthood

Parenthood has been defined as a process of rearing children. According to contemporary standards, “parenthood” involves a number of daily responsi-

parenthoodâ•…â•… 79 bilities and financial and affective obligations such as the education and instruction of one’s children. The notion of “parenthood” also presupposes an active concern for a child’s welfare and physical and intellectual development. Initially, parenthood was concerned with teaching the taboo—what is forbidden—and with inculcating basic rules and restrictions to the young. Later on, parenthood began to be seen as a longer process of nurturing that was increasingly centered on the concept of caring. Such was the case with certain utopian societies founded on the American continent (for example, the Owenite societies of the 19th century), which developed some of the first kindergartens. Children were raised and educated together, and society itself was engaged in a collective effort of parenting. The same concept was developed in Europe at almost the same time. In fact, defining parenthood is a recent preoccupation, but the concerns and worries of parenthood are as old as the world. As early as ca. 440 b.c., the Greek tragedian Sophocles produced a series of plays—Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. Without mentioning “parenthood” explicitly, the trilogy’s plots develop a familial tragedy, based on a hereditary curse, and discuss the problems of knowledge, ignorance, destiny, and personal choice as related to the denial/rejection of parenthood and abandonment. Oedipus is a victim, an abandoned child, threatened with death by his father, while Antigone is the daughter of the incestuous relationship between Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. Epitomizing the major family taboos, the figure of Oedipus is extensively referred to in child psychology since the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud explored the myth in the light of a father and mother’s unconscious feelings regarding the early stages of parenthood. Antigone, on the other hand, is in total opposition to the will of the king. She acts against the orders of the “parent” of the nation, obeying her instinct of filial duty. It has also been suggested that her name means “opposed to motherhood.” Her behavior engenders destruction, while the outcome of the tragedy implies that there are different levels of parental allegiance. In the same fashion, English literature of the 16th and 17th centuries was concerned with the

structure of the world as God’s supreme creation and introduced a complex, layered structure of parentchild relationships. The political and religious climate favoured biblical examples of parenthood; the attempted sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham is a case in point. It demonstrated that God was the father of humanity and that humanity was to obey. Humanity’s allegiance to God was likened to a child’s obedience to its parents. This reasoning was a part of what is known as “the great chain of being,” a conception of the world as a strictly hierarchical system composed of intricate links and interactions. It was frequently alluded to in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and it was also much utilized by William Shakespeare in his tragedies, including Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Both plays introduce us to strict, forbidding parents whose word is law. Every opposition to their wishes on the domestic or public level has diverse implications on the scale of the great chain of being. Hamlet’s revolt brings political change, while Romeo and Juliet’s deaths launch a reconciliation of the feuding families. The authority of parenthood in both plays is the highest authority conceivable. In Macbeth, on the other hand, the fear of disobedience to the king is essentially a fear of causing imbalance on a natural and divine level. The fragile balance of power is disturbed by the murder of the kingdom’s wise and just parent, and even the supernatural demonstrate their fury at the deed. The 18th century was the century of reason, and concepts of parenthood were significantly modified. The anxiety and fear of confrontation were transposed from the level of the state to that of the family cell, and the notion of exercising effective parental control on the child’s development gradually emerged. Conduct and advice books, written for both parents and children, were very common throughout the 18th century and well into the 19th. The correct methods for educating one’s children and the basics of good behavior in society were the main concerns of such works. Concurrently, a strong tradition of educational theory was founded with the publication of John Locke’s Thoughts Concerning Education (1692), and it spread to the writings of Daniel Defoe (e.g., The Family Instructor, 1715), Anna Laetitia Barbauld (Early Lessons, 1781), Maria

80â•…â•… parenthood Edgeworth (Parent’s Assistant, 1796, and Practical Education, 1798), and many minor authors of the late 1780s and the 1790s. An interesting but also extreme example is the moralizing of the notorious Thomas Day (Sandford and Merton, 1783–89) who adopted two sisters with the hope of raising one or the other as his wife. His purpose was to instill in their minds all the characteristics that made the perfect woman as he saw her. Rumors of mistreatment and even torture were circulated, and he abandoned the experiment. In 1719, Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe and suggested that a child’s flight from paternal authority and protection is not a solution. His economic man established a new paternalistic state, and the father-son relationship between Crusoe and Friday have been interpreted as economic, political, and social ideals, though they can actually be seen as a simulation of perfect, natural parenthood. Crusoe enlightens Friday on moral and religious matters, while Friday demonstrates submission to his spiritual parent. Twenty years later, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded presented a very interesting form of passive parenthood. This epistolary novel insists on the fact that even though outside the sphere of parental protection, the virtuous offspring should follow her parents’ moral principles in her quest for happiness. In a series of letters, Pamela complains of the treatment she receives, only to be rewarded by matrimonial happiness and parenthood herself. The later 18th and earlier 19th centuries saw the rise of new fears and quite a few revivals of the incest taboo, a widespread gothic theme. The gothic novel of the second half of the 18th century was very much concerned with parenthood; with issues of succession and usurpation of birthright; and with heritage and extended, increasingly complex family ties. It depicted the dissolution of the nuclear family and the psychological instability generated by guilty or adoptive parents. As a natural fin de siècle continuation of this literary current, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is about the monster made by man, reflecting Shelley’s own childbirth and parenting fears. It also introduces a new literary theme that would be explored throughout the 19th and 20th centuries: The creator is also a parent

to be held responsible for his creation. The period also saw some pre-Freudian, post-gothic musings by Edgar Allan Poe. In his “Ligeia” (1838), Poe reflects on the obsessive behavior of a father figure, linking eroticism and parenthood into a narrative of morbid incest. The 18th and 19th centuries were concerned with establishing models for the roles of parents of both sexes, consigning the women to the domestic sphere and the men to the public sphere. Such ideas of parenthood were driven by family narratives, autobiographies, and instruction booklets but also by many novels. The mothers would provide care to the younger children and girls, while fathers were considered responsible for the education of elder children—boys in particular. Parenthood became at once a duty and an obligation. Some of the paintings and drawings of J. E. Millais depict the ideal family and present the image of successful parenthood (e.g., The Young Mother, 1857; The Crawley Family, 1860; The Ruling Passion, 1885). Much in the same fashion, the beginning of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women announces the typical family structure with Beth’s famous “We’ve got Father and Mother, and each other.” Alcott’s book is said to represent the female revolt against 19th-century assumptions that a “female genius” cannot be a parent, but it also explores the cult of femininity, of childbearing and parenting—roles to be contested by some feminists but advocated by others. In this respect, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter displays a challenging plot based on an innovative theme. Beyond the most obvious problem of original sin lies a discussion of the hardships of single parenthood. It also develops the stereotype of the “Madonna with Child,” raising parenthood to a higher level. In The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne goes back to the theme of the heritage parents leave to their children, much in line with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). However, Hawthorne is more concerned with hereditary transmission of sin than with the practical problems of parenthood. Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) also goes back to an old theme, that of the abandoned child. Instead of focusing on the child itself, Hardy depicts the life of the parent, haunted by guilt and the painful souvenir of past parenthood.

prideâ•…â•… 81 In an attempt to expiate the sin of abandonment, the main character becomes mayor. The impulse to compensate for his wrongdoing makes him the parent of an entire town. Here we notice a change in perspectives: While the sentimental and gothic novel would focus on the life, adventures, and growing up of the abandoned child, later 19th-century authors chose a perspective that permitted them to explore the psychology of the abandoning parent. Another late 19th-century author who is frequently associated with the intricacies of the parental psyche is Henry James. His The Turn of the Screw is a story told by a governess, concerning dead parents, neglected children, an absent uncle, and disturbed guardians. The psychological frustration accumulates and causes the death of a child, a death that can be taken literally or as a metaphor of the premature death of childhood and innocence. The 20th century saw a number of literary developments and experiments. On the one hand, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World propose dystopian visions of parenthood. In the first novel, parental control is totally absent from an aggressive, deathly world. The second presents twisted political machinery, as a result of which children send their parents to their deaths. The third speculates about the implications of planned parenthood if carried too far. On the other hand, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid ’s Tale (1985) focuses on birth as a metaphor of writing and artistic creation. Atwood likens the conception of a story to the conception of a child, and the writing process to a painful delivery. As we have seen, the image of the parent in literature is far from immutable. The relationships and conflicts between parents and children have become recurrent themes in world literature. Some of them are not developed explicitly or intentionally, but they are present nevertheless, and through them we can try and imagine what parenthood was like throughout past centuries. Through diverse forms of literature, society gradually came to conceptualize parenthood, often without making direct reference to the word itself. However, the ramifications of the theme are numerous and provide a rich background for innovative academic research.

See also Hemingway, Ernest: Farewell to Arms, A; Irving, John: World According to Garp, The: Kureishi, Hanif: Buddhist of Suburbia, The; Morrison, Toni: Song of Solomon; Sula; Potok, Chaim: Chosen, The; Silko, Leslie Marmon: American Pastoral; Turgenev, Ivan: Fathers and Sons. FURTHER READING Backus, Margot Gayle. The Gothic Family Romance. Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order. Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 1999. Erickson, Robert A. Mother Midnight. Birth, Sex, and Fate in Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Defoe, Richardson, and Sterne). New York: AMS Press, 1986. Flint, Christopher. Family Fictions: Narrative and Domestic Relations in Britain, 1688–1798. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998. Hilton, Mary. Women and the Shaping of the Nation’s Young: Education and Public Doctrine in Britain 1750–1850. Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. McKeon, Michael. The Secret History of Domesticity— Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Rashkin, Esther. Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Narrative. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Margarita Georgieva

pride

Literature grapples with the question of how and where human beings fit in the scheme of things and how they should best live. Philosophers, religious thinkers, and writers in the Western tradition have seen the human being in an intermediary position between divine beings and lower animals. The ethical teachings of religion and philosophy and their offshoots of drama and literature have emphasized piety: conducting oneself within the proper sphere of human action and in proper relation with fellow human beings. Exceeding those bounds upward would be to aspire to be a god; exceeding those

82â•…â•… pride bounds downward would be to become a beast. In this ethical scheme, pride, understood negatively as an overly high opinion of oneself, figured as a principal human flaw in societies in which divine and human authority were well established. It kept human beings in their place and subjects in order. “Pride goes before a fall,” teaches one famous Hebrew proverb, representative of the cautionary warnings against human overreaching so richly documented in the tradition of the medieval De casibus, Giovanni Boccaccio’s chronicles of the fall of great men. Besides the Judeo-Christian tradition, other great religions of the world—Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism—seem to have their own variant against the sin of pride, suggesting a universal bias against any action that places self-love before universal love, the basis of most religious systems. At the same time, despite these constraints on mortal aspiration, early heroic societies worshipped human excellence, especially in the form of military prowess. Honor in these ancient and medieval warrior societies was achieved through physical strength, skill, and the courage to die in battle for one’s cause. Pride, as an excessive regard for honor, became a focal point in the great epic poems of Homer, who, in particular, was able to capture the psychological drama of heroes acting as human beings with virtues and flaws in situations of crisis. Because of his superior qualities, the Homeric hero was more easily prone to exhibit hubris, roughly translated as excessive pride—as though one is greater than the gods—often expressed through violent acts. A prime example is Achilles in The Iliad, the Greek warrior in the Trojan War, considered to be the first tragic hero in literature. This epic poem explores the consequences of its principal conflict of egos between the Greek commander Agamemnon and Achilles, his greatest warrior, in which both behave in hubristic ways, resulting ultimately in increased harm and death to many on their side. Flaunting his power, Agamemnon shames Achilles publicly by forcing Achilles to deliver to him Briseis, the maiden he has claimed for his own. Despite his righteous anger, Achilles’ decision to withdraw from battle cripples the Greek army and causes thousandfold pains on his comrades, notably his best friend, Patroclus, who, mistaken for Achilles, is killed by the Trojan

commander Hector. Despite his worthy qualities of military prowess, capacity for compassion, and understanding of the human condition, Achilles, in his wrath, commits what is to the Greeks an intolerable insult: the outrageous treatment of slain Hector of dragging the dead body behind his chariot for 12 days before returning it to the Trojans. As in the epic, pride figures importantly in Greek drama, which further explored the ambivalent qualities of the tragic hero in powerful ways. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King explores the religious and social function of myth by examining this Greek hero as an archetype of the scapegoat and the usurping son, centered on the theme of hubris. A close comparison of an oral version of the myth with Sophocles’ dramatic interpretation amplifies not only the tragic vision by which the culture grappled with the limitations of human life but also the playwright’s aesthetic achievement: to get the audience, in Aristotle’s words, both to pity and fear Oedipus’s tragic situation. After hearing the oracle predict that the plague upon his city will not lift until the murderer of his predecessor is punished, Oedipus, king of Thebes, initiates a methodical investigation of the death of the king, only to find out in his role as responsible ruler that he himself is culpable for the murder. This discovery reveals the key irony of Oedipus’s hubristic actions as a young man: his decision to evade a horrible prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother only leads him to fulfill it. This very human response reveals an irrational double-mindedness. If he believed the oracle to be true, he should have also believed that it was futile to evade it. Instead, Oedipus hubristically tries to evade the oracle but proceeds so carelessly—reflective of youth’s delusion of invincibility—that he does precisely what he should have forbidden to himself: kill an older man his father’s age, let alone kill anyone, and marry someone his mother’s age. Through his past and present actions, Oedipus gravely transgresses the Delphic oracle’s prescriptions for virtuous life: “Know thyself ” and “Nothing in excess.” Pride is further explored through the myth of Prometheus, the Titan advocate of man, who incurs eternal punishment for his act of bringing fire to humankind. Whether Prometheus is a heroic rebel, a savior, or a hubristic overreacher is a ques-

prideâ•…â•… 83 tion to ponder as one compares Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound with its later variants, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus. While Aeschylus presents a philanthropic Prometheus, disobeying the gods’ orders for the benefit of the helpless human race, Marlowe’s tragedy of Faustus plays on both the heroic and the comic tradition, turning the intellectual hero into a trickster, whose desire “to gain a deity” (1.1.65) inevitably shrinks to horseplay as, at the end of Mephistopheles’ indenture period, he himself dissolves into the void of death. Marlowe’s rebellion against God cannot succeed within the prescripted confines of a Christian morality play. In signing away his soul to Satan, Faustus reenacts Lucifer’s revolt against God, filled with “Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires/ Blown up with high conceits engendering pride” ( John Milton, Paradise Lost, 4.809), the queen of sins. Faustus’s victory is rather one of principle: opposing God to satisfy his desire for omnipotence and not backing down in the face of certain defeat. Despite the Christian lesson of the vanity of human pursuits, instructed through the increasing trivialization of his heroic endeavors, Faustus, through Marlowe’s rendering, retains his heroic status simply by undertaking the impossible. Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, however, is a self-deluded Prometheus who is as unsuccessful as Faustus without the latter’s attribution of heroic rebel. The scientist’s philanthropic endeavors to advance knowledge for humanity’s benefit—or more accurately, his solipsistic fantasies of fathering a new race—are belied by his foolish neglect of the loved ones around him, thus his inability to prevent their deaths, a direct result of his hubristic creation of a humanoid without assuming the consequent parental obligations toward him. As many of these literary examples indicate, pride entails not only transgressions against divine authority but also infractions against fellow human beings. Jane Austen insightfully dramatizes the woes that come when pride and prejudice rule in Pride and P rejudice. Fitzwilliam Darcy, a wealthy member of the landed gentry, acquires the reputation in Hertfordshire of being a proud aristocrat when he arrogantly refuses to dance at the Netherfield ball and slights Elizabeth Bennet as being only

“tolerable” (7). Her friend, Charlotte Lucas, defends Darcy’s pride by claiming that “so very fine a young man [as he], with family, fortune, every thing in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.” With her vanity wounded, Elizabeth replies, “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine” (13). After setting up this misunderstanding, Austen takes 59 chapters to bridge the gap between Darcy’s arrogance vis-à-vis Elizabeth and her prejudice against him toward reconciliation and marriage. According to Aristotle, pride is the proper mean between humility and vanity, for the rightly proud man “claims what is in accordance with his merits, while the others go to excess or fall short” (Nicomachean Ethics, book 4, 2.1123b12–14). The difficulty in this assessment lies in the numerous interpretations of merit: wealth, noble birth, and/ or personal virtue. While Charlotte believes that Darcy has a right to be proud simply because of his rank and money, the crux of the novel is that gentle birth does not always entail personal nobility. At one side of the amorous discord, though Darcy is born into the upper class, his demeanor is construed by the social circle of Hertfordshire as less than noble. At the other side, Elizabeth is born to lower gentry, but her superior “understanding” (Austen 43) in mental and moral capacities distinguishes her as a true gentlewoman above both her family of meaner understanding and haughty aristocrats like Lady Catherine. The pride and prejudice of both Darcy and Elizabeth abate when Darcy is irresistibly wooed by her personal merits and when Elizabeth comes to know Darcy as “perfectly amiable” (282), always acting in principled honor. In this manner, for both of them vanity becomes humbled and pride affirmed. As discussed above, pride, as hubris, can be a negative force disrupting social bonds and affronting the gods, fellow beings, and oneself. Pride is, nonetheless, also a positive force, affirming one’s achievements and promoting self-worth and self-contentment. According to Aristotle, pride, as opposed to hubris, is grounded in virtue (NE, book 4, 3.1124b30). “[W]here there is a real superiority of mind,” Darcy claims, “pride will be always under good regulation” (43), and that is Darcy and Eliza-

84â•…â•… race beth’s path to a deep-rooted happiness rather than the mere fairy-tale assurance of “happily ever after.” See also Browning, Robert: “My Last Duchess”; Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: Hound of the Baskervilles, The; Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Rappaccini’s Daughter”; Miller, Arthur: Death of a Salesman; Poe, Edgar Allan: “Murders in the Rue Morgue, The”; Roy, Arundhati: God of Small Things, The; Shakespeare, William: Henry IV, Part I; Julius Caesar; Much Ado about Nothing; Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver’s Travels; Williams, Tennessee: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. FURTHER READING Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by David Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Bantam, 1989. Lattimore, Richmond Alexander. Story Patterns in Greek Tragedy. London: Athione Press, 1964.

Unhae Langis

race

The theme of race has been and continues to be hotly debated in the modern world. Questions of whether race is a biologically determined grouping of characteristics or whether it is merely a socially constructed means of classifying and dividing people are still asked in every field imaginable, including science, legal studies, politics, and literature. Even defining the term race is a complicated and sensitive task, particularly since race has been a justification for suppressing and oppressing large groups of people across the globe and throughout history. Two main schools of thought exist regarding the definition of race, and importantly, both developed in the modern era. One belief asserts that race is a genetically determined factor that influences external and internal characteristics, such as skin color, features, and predispositions to illnesses. The other philosophy contends that race is a socially constructed characteristic, arbitrary and hurtful in its exclusionary application. Whichever school one believes, and many scholars and critics acknowledge some truth in both, the use of race as a characteristic to divide groups of people and to control or elimi-

nate them is the central problem bound up in the theme of race. The concept is instantly polarizing— whether or not one believes race is a significant biological issue, it is clear that as humans we tend to separate according to race. In some cases it is selfseparation, while in others it is forced separation. In their introduction to Theories of Race and Racism, John Solomos and Les Back suggest that while race is still a primary theme in our daily lives, it has shifted somewhat in focus all over the world. Throughout the years leading up to and including the 20th century, institutionalized racism—slavery, disenfranchisement, lynchings—was the primary way in which racism was expressed, but according to Solomos and Back, “in recent times questions about race and racism have been refashioned in ways that emphasize cultural difference” (4). This move toward seeing a larger, more globalized picture of race and racism coincided with the end of colonialism and the creation of postcolonial literary criticism. Scholars who focus on the theme of race and related issues in postcolonial studies analyze literature from the perspective of the underprivileged, the suppressed, and minority characters and people. Thus, race becomes an underlying—or, in many cases, overarching—theme in works that may not include minority characters or “colonial” locales. For example, race becomes an unsettling theme in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as the Eastern European “other” makes his way to England and engages in a process some have called “reverse colonization,” by taking victims and making them into vampires like himself. In countries that were former colonies of imperial powers, literature addressed the issues of race that surrounded independence movements and the winning of autonomy by nations such as India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, to name just a few. In literature, race often takes on characteristics of being divisive or oppositional. Frequently, stories involving themes of race involve “clashes” or struggles between white groups and minority, or “native” groups. Rudyard Kipling coined the phrase “the white man’s burden” in his poem of the same name, in 1899. The phrase, at the time a description of the stated motivations of colonial behavior, has come to also refer to white support for minority individuals

raceâ•…â•… 85 and the “civilizing” effect it is purported to have on native peoples. In addition to postcolonial politics, race has been a recurring theme in literature, most pointedly beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An early novel to deal with the issues and effects of race was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a story about slavery in the United States. While Stowe’s novel has endured its fair share of criticism and close study, the author always maintained that she wanted to engage readers’ sympathies and change their minds about slavery. Certainly, novels and other literary works that featured black characters or were written by black authors gained prominence before Stowe’s work—from the English writer Aphra Behn’s novel Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave to the former American slave Phyllis Wheatley’s poetry, both of which were written in the 18th century. Mark Twain’s famous novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn features an AfricanAmerican character named Jim who escapes slavery himself. From the 20th century onward, race moved to the forefront of politics, especially in the United States, where institutionalized racism was the law of the land until the late 1960s. In 1903, the AfricanAmerican writer W. E. B. DuBois suggested that the biggest problem of the 20th century would be the problem of race. As the 20th century progressed, race became a key theme for writers, especially writers of color. In 1940, the African-American author Richard Wright published Native Son, the story of Bigger Thomas, a young black man who, largely on the basis of his race, gets caught up in poverty, violence, and judicial mistreatment. All the actions Bigger takes are directly related to or motivated by race in some way. He comes into his first job because his employer wishes to help African Americans improve their lives. He accidentally smothers Mary Dalton to prevent her blind mother from noticing Bigger in Mary’s bedroom late at night. Fearful of the punishment he might receive as a black man who murdered a white woman, Bigger tries to dispose of the body in the family furnace, and his situation continues to worsen. Native Son graphically represents the deep divide between white America and black America while illustrating

how pervasive the theme of race is in our lives. For Bigger, it is inescapable in the mazes—literally and figuratively—of Chicago. Race and the divide we allow it to create are not merely an American invention, however. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, white missionaries arrive in Nigeria and begin to set up a new religion, law, and justice among the Umuofia clan. What results is a confusing and violent clash between cultures, with the white colonists taking power by force and manipulation in order to “civilize” the native Africans. Unlike Native Son, which portrays the youth of color as one against overwhelming forces beyond his control, Things Fall Apart is about invasion from without: An entire society crumbles in the face of the violent threat of colonialism. The race of the colonizers becomes important to the story because it is their version of law and order that ultimately controls the African village and forces the villagers to cooperate. Okonkwo is unable to reconcile the two clashing ideologies—he does not want to be punished for his crimes by white men from another continent. Thus, race becomes a basis for the threatening relationship between interloper and native. As the 20th century progressed, race pride and power became a dynamic facet in literature, building on progressive political movements around the world. In the United States in particular, the progressive movements of the 1960s and 1970s were key for a new wave of race pride. In the poetry and drama of Amiri Baraka, for example, the theme of race becomes a source of strength and power for African Americans. In Baraka’s play Dutchman, a white woman and a black man enter into a verbal sparring match over racial difference that ends with the woman’s murder of the man. Race is figured in Dutchman as an insurmountable barrier, a theme as old as time itself. While Dutchman examines race relations in the supposedly free and equal American society of the late 1960s, Athol Fugard’s play Master Harold .╯.╯. and the Boys takes apartheid-era South Africa for its setting for exploring the theme of race. The play centers on the young Master Harold, a white South African teenager who discusses life, love, literature, and history with his family’s two black

86â•…â•… regret servants, Sam and Willie. Sam and Harold have an equal footing—a long relationship that goes back to Harold’s childhood, in which Sam often stood in for Harold’s own father. The two are so familiar with one another that Sam calls Harold by the nickname “Hally.” However, the relationship sours over the course of the play, until Harold insults Sam and tells him to only address him as Master Harold from then on. The heretofore amicable relationship crumbles in the face of authority, represented by the return of Harold’s father, and the racial schism created through apartheid is reestablished—even though the characters had earlier proven it to be a false schism. Literary considerations of race continue to challenge, inform, and surprise, even as the Internet age continues to decrease the separation among people of all racial backgrounds. Race, whether as a source of pride, strength, pain, or sadness, will remain a dynamic element in literature. The debates over race as social construct versus race as biological feature may never be settled, but literary explorations can help readers understand their own place in the debate as well as others’ positions. Indeed, literature will undoubtedly provide entirely new perspectives as time goes on—perspectives that may change everything we understand about race today. See also Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Chestnutt, Charles W.: “Goophered Grapevine, The”; Coetzee, J. M.: Waiting for the Barbarians; Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness; Douglass, Frederick: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; DuBois: W. E. B.: Souls of Black Folk, The; Ellison, Ralph: Invisible Man; Faulkner, William: Light in August; Gaines, Ernest J.: Lesson Before D ying, A; Gordimer, Nadine: Burger’s Daughter; Hansberry, Lorraine: Raisin in the Sun, A; Hughes, Langston: poems; Jacobs, Harriet: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself; Jefferson, Thomas: Notes on the State of Virginia; Kingston, Maxine Hong: Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book; Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird; Melville, Herman: Moby-Dick; Morrison, Toni: Bluest Eye, The; Song of Solomon; Sula; Tar Baby; Marshall, Paule: Brown Girl,

Brownstones; Paton, Alan: Cry, the Beloved Country; Shakespeare, William: Merchant of Venice, The; Othello; Tempest, The; Toomer, Jean: Cane; Wright, Richard: Black Boy. FURTHER READING Carby, Hazel. Race Men. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. Hooks, Bell. Killing Rage: Ending Racism. New York: H. Holt and Co., 1995. Kipling, Rudyard. “The White Man’s Burden.” McClure’s Magazine 12 (February 1899). Solomos, John, and Les Black, eds. Theories of Race and Racism. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Sharyn Emery

regret

“I have no regrets.” Surely we have all heard this announcement made at one time or another, however implausible it might be. We may have even made it ourselves. Living a life with no regrets, however, seems impossible. Since regret is a feeling generated by looking back on our mistakes, omissions, lost opportunities, and bad behavior, and since one may feel regret over something as trivial as the purchase of a sweater, the person with no regrets is either flawless in every regard or has no conscience. Regret is a complicated emotion capable of leading to various consequences, both good and bad. Sometimes it can make us grow by helping us learn from our mistakes. For instance, in John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, Gene’s lifelong regret at having hurt his friend plagues him, keeping him from living his life freely. When the truth finally comes to the surface, Gene takes responsibility. Thus, when Finny tragically dies in surgery, Gene is at peace, knowing he did the right thing by being honest. On the other hand, regret can lead us to paralysis, when we are consumed by it, but can do nothing to rectify the past. In William Shakespeare’s King Lear, Lear regrets his ill-treatment of Cordelia, his only truly loyal child. However, he cannot reverse the events his bad decisions set in motion, and madness destroys him in the end. While there is some disagreement over the nature of “true regret,” most psychologists and philosophers agree that, first and foremost, it is

regretâ•…â•… 87 cognitive. That is, to feel regret requires that we think about what we have done (or failed to do). Regret, by its very nature, requires us to assess the past and our role in it. It is associated with what psychologists call “counterfactual” thought, or thinking about “what might have been” (Landman 37). This counterfactual thinking connects regret with the intellectual process of decision making, setting it apart from other emotions such as sadness, happiness, and love: These may all be safely rooted in the present and require only that we “feel” what is right in front of us. Pure emotions generally stem from a less cognitive impulse. Whether or not regret is an emotion at all is a source of disagreement among scholars. However, the psychologist Janet Landman argues persuasively that because regret is well known to have physiological effects (some refer to feelings of regret as a sharp “pang”) and because it entails making judgments about oneself, it undoubtedly qualifies as an emotion (37). Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Husted Medved echo Landman by calling regret a “cognitively determined emotion” (379). Regret is easily confused with other emotions and patterns of thinking, such as remorse and guilt. In general, scholars agree that these terms are related but different. Remorse is typically used when referring only to one’s own past acts or failures to act, and only when these acts were within one’s control. Regret is broader and refers to those types of situations, but also to situations over which we have no control, such as the passing of summer (Landman 52). In addition, we may feel regret for events or policies in which we personally were not involved, such as the segregationist Jim Crow laws that lasted in the United States from 1876 to 1965. Guilt, too, is closely associated with, although not identical to, regret. Guilt, like remorse, comes from thoughts and feelings resulting from one’s own actions. While there is a popular notion of “collective guilt” over tragic events such as the Holocaust or slavery, the philosopher Hannah Arendt has argued that collective guilt simply justifies the evil done: if everyone is guilty, then no one is (Landman 55). In addition, it is difficult to imagine guilt without regret. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth feels horrible guilt over his murder of Duncan; that he feels regret as well seems obvious. The opposite,

regret without guilt, is not so difficult to imagine. One may regret having turned down an opportunity to lunch with friends, but such a regret seems unlikely to produce guilt. Regret, then, is complicated. It has the qualities both of a cognitive process and an emotion. It can be felt for actions and events both within one’s control and beyond it, as well as over decisions ranging from quite serious to hopelessly trivial. The characters in Jane Austen’s novels and their varying degrees of regret help to illustrate this complicated theme. Emma Woodhouse, for instance, the title character of Emma, is a creature full of regrets. She regrets that her dear governess, Mrs. Weston, has married and so no longer lives with Emma, although she is very happy for Mrs. Weston. She regrets her friend Harriet Smith’s poor station in life, a station that has destined her to depend on the kindness of others and to marry someone no more important than a farmer, a state of affairs over which she has no control. She most deeply regrets her unkind treatment of Miss Bates, and for this she feels true remorse. Regret, for Emma, helps her to become a better person. It helps her understand her own actions and her role in society (of course, Mr. Knightley helps her come to that understanding) and thus to mature and grow. Emma’s case shows us that while regret is painful and often forces us to admit failure, it can be a constructive force in our lives. It requires us to reflect, to imagine how things might have gone differently, so that we do not repeat our mistakes in the future—or at least we hope so. As it can come both from wishing we had acted and wishing we had not, it helps us make life changes and identify silver linings, a process that can be a very positive force (Gilovich and Medved 379). Regret also helps others see us as moral people, capable of contributing positively to society. When F. W. de Klerk, president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994, issued an official apology from the National Party for the system of apartheid that had held sway in his country for decades, he said, “Apartheid caused misery and deprived people of their rights” (quoted in Lazare 105). He did not attempt to justify the policy or to mitigate the pain it caused. This regret, publicly acknowledged, along with the South African Truth and Reconciliation

88â•…â•… rejection Commission, helped to partially heal the country’s deep wounds and allow citizens to move forward together. In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, Pip regrets much. He regrets that which is beyond his control: his parents’ death, his difficult upbringing, his meeting Magwitch in the cemetery. This type of regret does nothing good for him; it makes him bitter, greedy, and distrustful of others. But more important, he feels regret for things that were of his own doing. He regrets abandoning Joe and Biddy; he regrets the way he acted after receiving the money from his mysterious benefactor; and most of all, he regrets the way he treated Magwitch upon the convict’s return from Australia. Pip learns from this regret, however; he reforms his ways and ends the novel treating Magwitch as only a son would. Even more important, the novel ends with hope, as Pip has developed a stronger moral compass than before and will undoubtedly make better decisions in the future. In general, Pip’s sense of regret helps him to grow. For many, however, regret is a destructive, paralyzing force to be avoided at all costs. Harry Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, said, “Never, never waste a minute on regret. It’s a waste of time” (quoted in Landman 9). Regret can keep us from looking forward and experiencing life to the fullest extent. It can also play a destructive role in decision making. As we are apt to worry about what effect the decisions we make now will have on us later, fear of future regret may keep us from acting as we know we should. Such is the case for both Clarissa Dalloway and Peter Walsh in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. As a girl, Clarissa loved both Peter and her free, wild friend Sally. Fear of bucking convention made her seek stability over lasting attachments with them. She regrets those decisions now but attempts to live her life as though she has no regrets. The result is that she is a person who moves through life without feeling much of anything. Avoiding the pain of regret is so paramount that she must block out all other feelings as well. Peter, on the other hand, feels the pain too much. After many years, his regrets over his failed relationship with Clarissa still sting as though it happened yesterday. This pain prevents Peter from

truly moving on in life; his obsession with what might have been has paralyzed him. Despite our admonitions to the contrary, few of us could truly live a life without regret. Indeed, since regret can function as a catalyst toward change, redemption, and reform, it would be unwise for human beings to avoid this emotion entirely. Healthy regret—that is, regret that does not consume us but allows us to move forward—is undoubtedly an integral part of life’s journey. See also Alexie, Sherman: Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistf ight in Heaven, The; Eliot, T. S.: “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The”; Ishiguro, Kazuo: Remains of the Day, The; Morrison, Toni: Song of Solomon; Tan, Amy: Joy Luck Club, The; Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace; Williams, Tennessee: Streetcar Named Desire, A. FURTHER READING Gilovich, Thomas, and Victoria Husted Medved. “The Experience of Regret: What, When, and Why.” Psychological Review 2, no. 2 (1995): 379–395. Landman, Janet. Regret. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Lazare, Aaron. On Apology. London: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

rejection

In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, Miss Havisham is rejected by her would-be groom before the novel’s action begins. For many years, she has sequestered herself in her mansion, surrounded by the aging relics of her doomed wedding ceremony. More important, though, is the effect this ancient rejection has had on Miss Havisham. She is bitter, to be sure, but the bitterness goes so far and runs so deep that she is eager to raise her ward, Estella, to exact a kind of revenge for her by hurting others, specifically men. Great Expectations is somewhat of a treatise of the effects of rejection on the human psyche. In addition to Miss Havisham, Pip, Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch all experience this deep pain. Pip is rejected by his sister and Estella, Joe, and Biddy by Pip, and Magwitch by his country. For these and other literary characters, rejection creates a void that is difficult to fill and that is capable of

rejectionâ•…â•… 89 distorting their personalities forever. This theme is powerful because of these far-reaching consequences. Rejection is a powerful force in works from a myriad of time periods and genres, including the Bible, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Jane Austen’s P ride and P rejudice, Richard Wright’s Native Son, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Social scientists have shown time and again that human beings need social connections. According to the psychologist Mark Leary, this need is an adaptation that evolved because it promoted survival and reproduction (3). In the early days of the human race, we needed each other with an intensity that industrialism and technology have taken away. Humans lived in small groups, far away from other groups. In order for our species to reproduce, we had to choose from the mates who were available. In addition, because we do not have the natural defenses possessed by other animals (such as claws, antlers, and sharp, powerful teeth), we had to work together to defend ourselves. This evolutionary adaptation has stayed with us. Research demonstrates that we still need human contact in order to thrive, with some studies even showing that social isolation can do damage to the immune system, threaten cardiovascular health, and even hasten death (Fiske and Yamamoto 185). Because this contact is a good thing, and because we are drawn to make connections, when a specific connection is refused, as is the case in acts of rejection, the result can devastate us. Those who are rejected feel worthless, have pronounced feelings of inferiority and inadequacy, and move through life never showing their “real selves” (Evoy 54, 57). In other words, rejection, to the human animal, does not make sense, and our bodies and minds do not know how to handle it. Knowing this about rejection helps to explain why it is such a powerful theme in literature and culture. Several stories in the Bible explore rejection in depth, and because the Bible is a foundational text of Western culture, these stories help to establish the larger context in which the concept of rejection may be considered. The story of Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, is a good example. Abraham and Sarah were,

for many years, unable to conceive children. Sarah presented her maid, Hagar, to Abraham in the hope that she could produce a son for him. The plan worked, and Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. However, God declared to Abraham that he and Sarah, despite their advanced age, would have a son as well. Isaac, son of Sarah and Abraham, soon followed. Ishmael and Hagar were eventually sent out into the desert, rejected by Abraham. This story is significant for many reasons, perhaps the most important of which is that Isaac is considered a patriarch of the Jewish religion, and Ishmael is considered the progenitor of Arabic peoples. Certainly the centuries-long conflict between these two groups is not caused by the biblical story, but the story does provide a foundation by which we may understand the lasting power of rejection. The rejected feel like outcasts, and in many cases they are literally outcasts, driven from others, just as Ishmael and Hagar were. The Bible is not the only early document that deals with rejection. Monica Melancthon explains that the motif, manifesting itself as a rejection by God or other divine beings, is found in other Semitic languages of the time. The lamentation, a vocalizing of the pain of rejection, is a commonly found form in ancient Semitic literature. For instance, in The Curse of Agade, composed around 2000 b.c., a rebellious act by King Naram-Sim kindles the fury of the deity and leads to the destruction of the city. Similarly, in Lamentations 3, the city of Jerusalem, the “nerve center of religious activity” in 587 b.c., lies in ruins. Lamentations 3 reads, in part, “He has driven me away and made me walk / in darkness rather than in light; indeed, he has turned his hand against me / again and again, all day long” (3:2–4). Its people, rejected by their God, are devastated. As Melancthon notes, this destruction showed their status as God’s chosen people and Jerusalem’s status as God’s chosen city were in question. They associated this perceived rejection with human guilt and disobedience. In other words, they felt they must have done something wrong to deserve God’s wrath. Much like the early citizens of Jerusalem, children who have been rejected by their parents often internalize feelings of guilt and wrongdoing. Parental rejection is so powerful, research shows, that its victims never completely get over it; it remains with

90â•…â•… rejection them in some form for life. These children, denied the love of one or both parents, carry “feelings of emptiness where that love should have been—often for the rest of their lives. The rejected live with an emotional hole in the center of their being” (Evoy 72). They experience guilt, depression, anger, hostility, and aggression, and they actively seek out, sometimes in dangerous ways, situations in which they are valued (66). In Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, for instance, June Morrisey is rejected by her mother as a young child. As she grows into a woman, she exhibits many of the signs listed above. She tries to hang herself during a game with her cousins, convinced she has no real worth. She cannot truly accept the genuine love Marie gives her, fearful as she is of yet another rejection. June lives her entire life aggressively and angrily hurting others, and she frequently puts herself in precarious situations, one of which ultimately kills her. In Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is rejected by his father and then again by the society at large. While he is a resilient, confident child, he believes himself to be, quite naturally, worth less than other children. He seems to be most comfortable when he is alone and acting independently. While this may be part of his perceived charm (and also why he is seen as so incorrigible by the townspeople), Twain’s characterization here highlights Huck’s state of rejection. Children should not seek to be independent; they should not have to. Childhood is naturally a state in which we should seek the help and guidance of our elders. When we are shown, as Huck was, that the help and guidance is either not forthcoming or will lead to more pain, we learn to stop asking for it. For Huck, rejection made him (rightly) suspicious of society at large. He simply did not trust people, even those who claimed to want to help him. A pattern of rejection can force victims into irrational states, where they see and feel rejected from all angles. Mark Leary points out that feelings of rejection can become so pervasive that even “slights or inconsiderate behavior” can be taking as wholesale rejection, further driving the rejected person away from society at large. In Native Son, we see this in Bigger Thomas. Society has rejected him because he is black; that is his reality. However, his mother

is angry with him because of what she sees as his laziness and lack of ambition. Bigger simply adds this to the mountain of rejection he already feels. In addition, when Mary and her boyfriend are kind to him, he does not know how to take that behavior. Rejection has inured him to real feelings. He, like many of the rejected, must close his “real self ” off. Of all the varieties of rejection, romantic rejection, such as the type felt by Miss Havisham, provides perhaps the most immediate, crushing blow. Romantic rejections are difficult to weather because if we are hard-wired to create connections, the connections we seek with potential mates are the most important connections of all. Being rejected on those occasions makes the least sense to us biologically. Indeed, when Marianne is rejected by Willoughby in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, her devastation sends her into a physical illness that almost kills her. Marianne’s whole sense of self and sense of purpose are shaken. Even though Willoughby is revealed to be a cad, Marianne’s grief is not generated by his obvious mistreatment of her, but rather by the loss of what she thought was a perfect love. As much as she later learns about him, she cannot bring herself to truly blame him. Being rejected by others is an experience that can change human beings at their core. It can call into questions what we think we know about our own intelligence, beauty, personality, and overall worth. Rejection can absolutely devastate us, causing us to hide our real selves and operate as mere shells of human beings. Because these experiences are so powerful, it is no wonder literature explores the subject again and again. See also Kureishi, Hanif: Buddha of Suburbia, The; Shakespeare, William: Twelfth Night. FURTHER READING Evoy, John Joseph. The Rejected. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981. Fiske, Susan T., and Mariko Yamamoto. “Coping with Rejection.” In Interpersonal Rejection, edited by Mark Leary, 185–198. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Holy Bible. New International Version. New York: Biblica, 1967.

religionâ•…â•… 91 Leary, Mark, ed. Interpersonal Rejection. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Melancthon, Monica J. Rejected by God: The History and Significance of the Rejection Motif in the Hebrew Bible. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

religion

Religion and literature are inextricably intertwined. Many of the world’s major religious texts, such as the Bible, the Quran, and the Bhagavad Gita, are studied not just for their philosophical and spiritual truths but for their literary aesthetics as well. Both religion and literature spring from a common impulse to explore and explain the fundamental mystery of human existence—of humankind’s place in the world and our relationship to the created universe, to the Divine, and to our fellow human beings. Religion, like literature, mirrors the ruling cultural paradigms of the day while also taking issue with them, interrogating and interpreting social and cultural mores and offering compelling new visions of being in the world. They offer both comfort to the troubled and the joys of quiet repose, and they are intimately personal and reassuringly or troublingly (as the case may be) public at the same time. Not surprisingly, religion is not only a key theme in literature but has functioned as the very fountainhead of much literature from antiquity to the present time. The ancient epics of the world, from Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana from the Indian subcontinent, give us a revealing glimpse into the cultural makeup of their peoples. They also feature an elaborate parallel universe of gods and goddesses who are intimately involved in the world of mortals and, indeed, mirror some of the same vanities and foibles of the human world. For example, Athena is Odysseus’s patron deity and assists his return home, helping him to, among other things, fight the houseful of suitors who are pursuing his wife Penelope and living the good life at his expense. Similarly, Krishna, an important deity in the Hindu pantheon of gods, helps the righteous Pandavas defeat their cousins, the immoral Kauravas, and regain their kingdom. In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Antigone risks Creon’s wrath and becomes a

tragic heroine by virtue of her determination to perform her brother Polynices’ burial rites. She acts not just out of filial duty but also because proper burial rites for the dead, whether they are foe or friend, are demanded by the gods. In more modern times, John Milton set out to accomplish the ambitious task of writing a contemporary epic for England in the 17th century by choosing to write a Christian depiction “of man’s disobedience of God” and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. The Bible is the inspiration for his great epic, Paradise Lost, and biblical themes of good, evil, the nature of sin, and the power of redemption with true repentance that is available through religion stem from the core of this text. Similarly, Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus, based on the Faust legend, explores the pitfalls of the arrogance of knowledge as Faustus signs away his soul to the devil in exchange for the fleeting pleasures of necromancy and magic for a brief 24 years. The play is notable in the way it explores Faustus’s battle with his conscience (imagined as his good and bad angels), and then sketches in moving detail the plight he faces with the prospect of eternal damnation. But more profound is its depiction of Mephistopheles, one of Satan’s chief emissaries, sent to interact with Faustus. The very origins of British drama can be located in religion in the shape of the medieval miracles and morality plays that featured stories from the Bible and were concerned with moral education. In fact, scholars have traced the origins of fool characters common in Shakespeare back to the portrayal of Satan as a bawdy and buffoonish character in the Morality plays. In the West, religion has been the inspiration for much of its most acclaimed art and architecture, as well as its literature. The work of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo Da Vinci, to name a few of the most acclaimed painters of Renaissance Europe, as well as the most exquisite churches and cathedrals in Europe, owe their origin to the religious impulse. In addition, the church has always been a major patron of the arts, commissioning some of the most profoundly important works, whether they be painting, religious manuscripts/treatises, or the buildings of western civilization. In the Dark Ages in medieval

92â•…â•… religion Europe, it was the monks who preserved some of the most valuable books of ancient Greece and Rome by diligently copying them on vellum by hand before the advent of the printing press. Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, and Saint Augustine’s Confessions and The City of God are all intensely religious in content. While Dante presents a complicated three-tier system of the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, an imaginative and allegorical imagining of the afterlife, Augustine’s autobiographical text presents a compelling view of the journey to religion and selfhood. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, written in the 14th century, is structured around the tales told by a group of 23 pilgrims on a pilgrimage from London to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury. Although Chaucer presents a fairly wide cross section of medieval English society from the noble Knight to the humble Yeoman, a majority of the pilgrims, such as the Monk, the Pardoner, the Friar, the Prioress, and the Summoner, among others, belong to the Christian orders. These characters are some of the most interesting in The Canterbury Tales, and Chaucer satirizes corruption among the church’s functionaries through them. Some of the most emotionally resonant wrestling with questions of faith can be found in the metaphysical poetry of 17th-century poets such as John Donne, Andrew Marvell, and George Herbert, in appeals such as Donne’s “Batter my heart, three personed God” or in Herbert’s poems “The Affliction” and “The Collar.” In 19th-century Victorian literature, the question of faith and doubt that afflicted people after Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species, which declared that man is not made in the image of God but is descended from apes, is a recurring theme. In different ways, Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam, A. H. H., Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d ’Urbervilles, all express the painful incomprehension and angst of a world suddenly deprived of the certitudes of religion expressed so well in Robert Browning’s “Pippa’s Song”: “God’s in His Heaven— / All’s right with the world” (ll. 7–8). Religion may seem to have been in slow retreat because of the onslaughts of industrialism, the coming of the railroads, the depopulation of the coun-

tryside, the findings of the geologist Charles Lyell and the psychiatrists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and Karl Marx’s declaration that “religion is the opiate of the masses,” but it nevertheless has continued to preoccupy writers, whether they be poets, novelists, or dramatists. T. S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece The Wasteland articulates a deep sense of the loneliness and alienation experienced by people lost in the facelessness of the modern metropolis, but it also closes with a heartfelt prayer of “Shantih, Shantih, Shantih,” invoking the ancient mantra of peace from Hindu religious traditions. In his later work “Burnt Norton,” and particularly in his poetic dramas, Eliot turned to religion in his quest for answers to the modern malaise of isolationism and loss of faith. Murder in the Cathedral, his best-known play, centers on the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket and explores with insightful nuances the nature of temptation for one even so deeply steeped in Christ as Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. Even the desire to martyrdom, as long as it springs from an earthly desire to garner spiritual capital, can be corrupt and compromised. Becket’s union with God can only come once he transcends this greed for spiritual acclaim and annihilates all egotism. Beyond spiritual and ethical explorations, literature also portrays religion as a great source of discord and dissension in the world and thus critiques the violence and fanaticism that results from a narrow-minded adherence to creed. Much of Salman Rushdie’s work, for instance, refers to the violence arising from the conflicts between the Hindu and Muslim communities in India, such as his Midnight ’s Children. But the power of religion to inflame passions is most aptly demonstrated through the controversy surrounding the publication of his The Satanic Verses in 1988. The Satanic Verses is a part-fantasy, part-realist novel in which Rushdie presents a fictionalized story related to some apocryphal verses from the Quran, and consequently makes references to the life of Muhammad, the Prophet. The creative liberties taken by the text upset some sections of the Islamic community, which widely condemned it, and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious decree, condemning Rushdie as an infidel. Rushdie went into hiding in fear following much violence involving the publication of this

responsibilityâ•…â•… 93 book around the world, and he suffered threats to his life. Countries such as Pakistan and India with large Muslim populations banned the book in the interest of public safety. Religion is a powerful source of both succor and conflict, emerging from the wellsprings of our most deeply human impulses and arousing our most passionate responses. It becomes a lens through which issues of race, ethnicity, and identity are parsed. Literature, in its extraordinary power to mirror and mediate these passions and conflicts, finds both its source and its substance in religion, in the shape of themes, images, symbols, and the very language it uses to appeal to us. See also Anonymous: Beowulf; Bunyan, John: Pilgrim’s Progress, The; Crane, Stephen: Red Badge of Courage, The; Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe; Emerson, Ralph Waldo: “Divinity School Address, The”; Faulkner, William: Light in August; Greene, Graham: Heart of the Matter, The; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: Scarlet Letter, The; Young Goodman Brown; Hemingway, Ernest: Farewell to Arms, A; Jefferson, Thomas: Notes on the States of Virginia; Joyce, James: D ubliners; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A; Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Lee: Inherit the Wind; Melville, Herman: “Bartleby the Scrivener”; Moby-Dick; Molière: Tartuffe; O’Connor, Flannery: “Good Man Is Hard to Find, A”; Wise Blood; Potok, Chaim: Chosen, The; Rowlandson, Mary: Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson; Steinbeck, John: Grapes of Wrath, The; Stowe, Harriet Beecher: Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Twain, Mark: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Winterson, Jeanette: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit; Wright, Richard: Black Boy. FURTHER READING Detweiler, Robert, and David Jasper, eds. Religion and Literature: A Reader. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000. Frye Northrup. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. Jasper, David. Images of Belief in Literature. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984.

Rajender Kaur

responsibility

The word responsibility has two connotations in modern English. We can be responsible for something, which means we are accountable and we will take the blame or reward should there be any. This connotation can apply to a person, as in the way that parents are responsible for their children or coaches are responsible for their players, or it can apply to a thing, as in the way someone might take responsibility for a car accident or an accounting mistake. We can also be responsible to people or organizations. This connotation implies that we “report” to someone, or more accurately that we must “respond” (the root of responsibility) to them. The parent who is responsible for her children, in that she will take responsibility should they break a neighbor’s window or skip school, is at the same time responsible to her children in that she must account for the decisions she makes that affect their lives, such as distinguishing right from wrong and providing a stable home life. These two connotations work well together in that they both derive from the same idea. As noted above, the root of responsibility is “reponse.” To “respond” is an action. In life, being “responsible for” or being “responsible to” both require responding to situations—in other words, acting in the best interests of those in our sphere, including ourselves. However, there are no clear-cut answers to questions regarding just what those best interests are and just how far we are required to widen that sphere. It is only in the 20th century and beyond that these questions about responsibility have become so difficult. Prior to this period, the emphasis was always soundly on being responsible to, and responsibility was not thought of as being particularly virtuous (Moran 35). Being responsible to people, or things, or God, simply meant that these were the entities to whom you would be held accountable. This simpler interpretation of the word may have made it easier for a society to know how to be accountable and what the implications of that were. But as the shift occurred in the 20th century toward responsibility for, and its accompanying blame and punishment, these questions became more complicated. For example, in Gilead, the dystopian society Margaret Atwood depicts in The Handmaid ’s Tale, the concept of responsibility has

94â•…â•… responsibility become grossly distorted. First, the ruling powers hold humanity (women in particular) responsible for the decline in fertility that has led to the population collapse. They then take all responsibility away from the Maids, making them of the men but having no relationships with them. No one is actually responsible to or for anyone, other than the state, which apparently takes no responsibility for its people, as evidenced by the killings in the stadium and the presence of the forbidden “clubs” to which the Commander takes Offred. It is an experiment that is doomed to fail because humans have no accountability to each other, they are only forced to take accountability for things that may or may not be their fault. As in Gilead, the characters in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor focus on blame, rather than on being responsible to one another, and Billy dies because of it. Captain Vere and the others should take responsibility for Billy both before and after the incident with Claggart, instead of simply forcing all the responsibility on him, as they do by revering the law over what they know to be the truth. The idea of being responsible to someone is analogous to having an obligation. Originally, obligation meant “something owed,” and a similar word, duty, meant a “debt.” Richard Swinburne, in Responsibility and Atonement, describes our responsibilities in life as obligations: “By our words and actions we undertake to do certain things” (20). If we become parents, we undertake the obligation of taking care of our children and teaching them right from wrong. We make other such obligations in our roles as members of communities and in our jobs. For instance, in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, Alexandra believes she is obligated to care for the family, especially Emil, as well as for the land on which the farm sits. It is her sense of responsibility that causes her father to choose her, rather than her brothers, to carry on his legacy. In William Shakespeare’s Henry V, King Henry is obligated to carry on the cause of his father, King Henry IV, and improve England’s fortunes on the world stage. He also feels a heavy sense of responsibility to the crown itself and, by extension, to the people of England. Thus, he turns his back on Falstaff, the mentor of his

reckless (and irresponsible) youth, and has Bardolph hung for stealing. He also feels a responsibility for the men who are killed by the French, as they were there in England’s—and thus his—service. King Henry feels responsible for his men in the same way a parent feels about his children. But unlike Henry, nonroyal parents are expected to take as much responsibility when their children err as when they do well. It is here and in other situations where there is blame to be assigned that the more common modern usage of responsibility looms large. Peter French, in Responsibility Matters, notes that we “spend a lot of time trying to avoid responsibility.” He also notes that this is as true for positives as it is for negatives, leading to the conclusion that responsibility is a burden in any situation (18). Perhaps, French argues, this is because we do not want the worry that comes along with membership in a morally responsible community. French says that we seek to obscure accountability, even when the consequence would be praise, not blame, because it signifies a loss of innocence merely to acknowledge that someone—anyone—is responsible. He says, “The practice of holding people responsible for things that happen, hence the concept of responsibility itself, depends for its sense on the purposes or ends to which we put it” (19). In other words, if there are no consequences, there is no point in assigning responsibility. And to be truly responsible, we must also be consistent, a burden in and of itself. Albert Jonsen, in Responsibility in Modern Religious Ethics, says “The responsible man is not merely the one who is able to perform good actions; he is, in fact, the good man. His goodness consists precisely in his responsibility” (5). In Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa is heavily burdened by the responsibility placed on him by his family. He accepts that responsibility, however, and goes to work every day to a job that he loathes. Gregor, unlike the rest of his family, who sit home, irresponsibly allowing Gregor to support them, cannot pretend innocence of the world and its workings. However, when one day he wakes up as a giant cockroach, he is gradually freed of this burden. He cannot work in this condition, so the responsibility is lifted from him. As his family slowly takes on the burdens of taking care of Gregor

science and technologyâ•…â•… 95 and supporting themselves, they grow more and more resentful, with Gregor’s father even resorting to violence. Gregor’s death sets them all free, and the family ends the story with thoughts of finding sister Grete a husband, who presumably will take responsibility for them all. Unlike Gregor, Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has lived a life of bliss and privilege. Sadly, he uses this privilege irresponsibly and becomes obsessed with creating life. The creature he creates kills everyone whom Victor loves, and when he comes to the realization that it is he, not the creature, who is truly responsible for their deaths, the pain is almost too much for him to bear. It is only at this point in the novel that Victor actually takes on the mantle of responsibility and hunts the creature until his death. Additionally, in his faithful telling of the story to Walton, Victor passes on his cautionary tale, another act that demonstrates his newfound accountability. Although Frankenstein was written in the 19th century, its themes regarding the responsible use of science and technology echo loudly here in the 21st century. Some philosophers have argued that in the contemporary era, everything has become our responsibility—nature, war, death, global poverty. As the range of human action is much broader than it ever was before—that is, what we can do is greater and more fantastic than what could have been imagined in the past—our responsibilities have widened to an almost limitless point. While the need to do the right thing by those to whom we are responsible has not changed, what that right thing might be has grown more confusing, and the number of those to whom we might be held responsible has increased exponentially. See also Davies, Robertson: Fifth Business; Dinesen, Isak: Out of Africa; James, Henry: Daisy Miller; Machiavelli, Niccolò: P rince, The; Shakespeare, William: King Lear; Virgil: Aeneid, The; Vonnegut, Kurt: Cat ’s Cradle; Thoreau, Henry David: “Resistance to Civil Government”; Wilder, Thornton: Our Town; Williams, Tennessee: Glass Menagerie, The. FURTHER READING French, Peter A. Responsibility Matters. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.

Jonsen, Albert R. Responsibility in Modern Religious Ethics. Washington, D.C.: Corpus Books, 1968. Swinburne, Richard. Responsibility and Atonement. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Moran, Gabriel. A Grammar of Responsibility. New York: Crossroad, 1996.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

science and technology

While science and technology play key roles in human affairs, they tend to recede into the background of daily life. We seldom think about the structures and practices of scientific institutions or about the social and environmental costs of our technologically textured lives. But as canonical literature from medieval times to the present makes abundantly clear, cultural responses to and attitudes about scientific developments and engineering breakthroughs have always been potent, complex, and multiple. Literary works by authors from Geoffrey Chaucer to Don DeLillo have variously reflected, reinforced, and (in some cases) destabilized these larger societal responses and attitudes. Studying this literature, therefore, occasions valuable opportunities to better understand the taken-for-granted background of science and technology. Many literary texts foreground the complex relations between science, technology, and society by calling attention to fundamental problems of definition and recognition. The term science, for instance, poses considerable problems precisely because of its privileged status in mainstream culture. We associate it with “reality,” “truth,” and “reason,” and when individuals or institutions speak on behalf of science, lay audiences often assume that what is being conveyed is factual, trustworthy, and authoritative. Unfortunately, distinguishing between “genuine” and “mock” science is no easy matter; scores of unscientific practices and products announce themselves as thoroughly scientific simply to gain acceptance or to influence consumers. Even in early modern times, when science referred generally to any systematic acquisition of knowledge, differentiating between real and fake science could be tricky. Geoffrey Chaucer dramatizes this problem in “The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale” of The Canterbury Tales by critiquing mutually reinforcing entities within medieval

96â•…â•… science and technology society: devious alchemists, armed with a bewildering scientific vocabulary and an arsenal of laboratory technologies, who promise to transform base metals into gold; and greedy clients whose materialistic desires perpetuate the existence of charlatan science. In so doing, this satiric tale foregrounds fundamental problems of “validity” and “misrecognition” that arise any time science is invoked. Significantly, Chaucer links these problems to cultural ideas about technology. Prior to the 19th century, this term could refer broadly either to material instruments or to any systematic technique. Chaucer’s text suggests that any technology—whether instrumental or methodological—should be understood as an extension of the culture that produces and employs it. The early laboratory implements of this tale—fire, crucibles, chemical elements—are not value-neutral: They establish and confer authority, and their use and abuse reflect and shape particular human interests and cultural values. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the term science gradually lost cultural and professional currency and gave way to natural science, a phrase denoting only those enterprises that advanced our understanding of the physical world. The circulation of this phrase was largely an attempt to distinguish “real science” from other forms of systematic inquiry (philosophy, history, theology, and so on) whose methods did not require observation, experimentation, and replication. Because this new emphasis on discovering nature’s secrets called into question long-standing theological explanations of the universe, many writers explored the ethical and philosophical implications of natural science’s goals. Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, for example, takes place in a theocentric universe, but it registers profound anxiety about scientific ambitions. Inquiries into the laws of nature, the play suggests, can give way to scientific hubris, to an immoral aspiration to attain godlike wisdom. For the play’s protagonist, seeking such knowledge comes at the expense of his moral decency. Thus, when Faustus bargains away his soul for ultimate knowledge, he sinks deeper and deeper into despair until his final dismemberment by the devil’s brutal agents. Of course, many other writers saw promise, nor corruption, in the natural sciences. Francis

Bacon’s The New Atlantis (1627) conjures a mythical island replete with a compassionate citizenry and an expansive scientific institute aimed at studying physical laws and taming an inhospitable natural world. Still, while proponents of Bacon’s ambitious scientific vision increased in number, many writers in the 18th century would nevertheless continue to examine the consequences of imperialistic science. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, for instance, depicts astronomers as a dark embodiment of humankind’s growing preoccupation with the physical world, suggesting, as Marlowe did, that such concerns come at the expense of moral and spiritual growth. Most 19th-century literary texts concerned with science and technology are probably best understood as responses to the so-called Age of Enlightenment of the previous century. Philosophical and scientific thinkers of the Enlightenment generally asserted that reason and science provided the means of overcoming superstition, controlling nature, and achieving social and political progress. Against such assertions stands Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, whose scientist embodies the Enlightenment faith that all laws of the physical universe can be known. While this novel condemns detached intellectualism, it also raises serious questions about the motives and consequences of scientific work. Lured less by “knowledge for its own sake” than by the promise of power that knowledge confers, Victor Frankenstein signifies the negative potential of science. He functions as a nightmarish counterexample to the idealized image of the Enlightenment scientist dedicated to cool, dispassionate observation and truth seeking. Victor’s success in animating an assemblage of dead body parts is undone by his subsequent inability to ease the torment endured by his monstrous creation; their entwined lives serve as a dramatic argument for responsible science that properly accounts for the social costs of so-called breakthroughs. Similar critiques of Enlightenment values can be found in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiction. In “The Birth-mark,” a chemist’s clinical obsession with his wife’s birthmark threatens her well-being and eventually leads to her death. Similarly, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” features an inhumane scientist whose isolated horticultural experiments leave him

science and technologyâ•…â•… 97 emaciated, sallow, and sickly looking. His work also transforms his daughter, who develops immunity to the poisonous flowers he cultivates but renders her toxic to anything or anyone in proximity of her breath. Collectively, these texts argue for a mode of science that critiques and limits its own ambitions and takes into account the social costs of scientific work once it leaves the laboratory. These literary arguments, however, did little to curtail the degree to which science and technology propelled larger processes of urbanization and industrialization. Many late 19th-century literary texts responded to this nagging realization by juxtaposing pastoral and industrial imagery. Huck’s desire to embark on a journey into unspoiled territory, near the end of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for instance, might reflect a growing ambivalence about the purported civilizing effects of an increasingly urbanized world. And in Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the protagonist’s failed attempts to industrialize Arthurian England offers a stark rejection of Enlightenment notions that time and scientific initiative result in progress. By the 20th century, science no longer needed the qualifying term natural to denote methodological research capable of generating certainty about aspects of the physical world. Nevertheless, the definitional instability of the term remains to this day as the intellectual writings of social scientists, historians, and philosophers have increasingly questioned the supposed boundaries dividing science from other forms of intellectual and cultural work. Such writings argue that scientists belong to a distinct culture with its own ethics, politics, languages, and rituals, and that their work is shaped, in direct and indirect ways, by larger national and international pressures. Much 20th-century literature reflects and informs these observations by questioning science’s autonomy and objectivity. In many texts, scientific research and its technologies become driving forces behind the growth of consumer culture, corporations, economic systems, and political entities. In his U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos employs a narrative technique that interweaves documentary sources, newspaper collages, fiction, montage techniques from film, and biographical sketches to depict the lives of working

Americans in an industrial culture. His rapid narrative transitions emphasize the role of communication, entertainment, and information technologies in shaping lived experience. A few decades after Dos Passos’s trilogy, Ray Bradbury’s fiction would consistently imagine future worlds in which consumer culture and entertainment technologies render the critical imagination obsolete and undesirable. His Fahrenheit 451, along with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, dramatize how computer and surveillance technologies disseminate and enforce values compatible with the dominant power structures. These nightmare worlds depict entire populations that come to see individual conformity as an acceptable price to pay for national security. Other texts reveal a growing ambivalence toward the seeming omnipresence of military and information technologies in our lives. An atomic war might be the cause of the airplane crash that strands a group of schoolboys on a deserted island at the beginning of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, but details of the cataclysm are mentioned only in passing. Later in the novel, the bestial violence that erupts on the island suggests that military technologies might be little more than extensions of an inherently violent and combative human nature. Published a few decades later, Don DeLillo’s White Noise employs an ironic and ambivalent narrative voice for a plot that juxtaposes consumer excess, unstable identities, omnipresent information technologies, and looming threats of ecological disaster. In complex ways, these texts contribute to the always unfinished work of historicizing and theorizing the relations between society, science, and technology. They reflect and contribute to larger cultural debates about how best to understand the impact of science on our present circumstances and how to approach an uncertain future in which technology and science will unquestionably play a role. See also Adams, Henry: Education of Henry Adams, The; Lowry, Lois: Giver, The; Poe, Edgar Allan: “Murders in the Rue Morgue, The”; Silko Leslie Marmon: Ceremony; Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row; Stevenson, Robert Louis: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

98â•…â•… sex and sexuality Hyde; Vonnegut, Kurt: Cat ’s Cradle; Whitman, Walt: Leaves of Grass. FURTHER READING Daly, Nicholas. Literature, Technology, and Modernity, 1860–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Scholnick, Robert, ed. American Literature and Science. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1982.

Neal Bukeavich

sex and sexuality

Many classic works of literature have been banned because of their treatment of sex or sexuality. School boards, parents, and governments have tried to stop children and adults from reading such works as Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, and a long list of others, because these books were felt to deal with issues involving sex in ways that were deemed inappropriate or obscene. Objections range from a “too frank” discussion of rape, as in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; to depictions of promiscuity thought to be too suggestive, as in Moll Flanders; to descriptions of consensual sexual intercourse labeled too “explicit,” as in Women in Love. Sex, both the physical act and the broad range of feelings involved in sexual desire, is an important part of human life. It is, of course, the way in which we procreate and thus the method by which our species survives, but outside of procreation, sex and sexual desire are vital components of what it means to be human. All healthy human beings have sexual impulses and sexual desires. Our sexual histories, fantasies, and relationships (or the lack thereof ) are a part of our identities. Literature, as a mirror on the human condition, therefore must address the subject of sex and sexuality, but there are great variations on how and to what extent.

The human need to procreate is one obvious reason why sex is so important to human beings, but it is by no means the only reason, or even the primary one. Sexual desire—even merely feeling it, not necessarily acting upon it—has been seen as inspiring as well as impure, as a generator of creativity but also as an initiator of debilitating guilt, as the source of life’s greatest pleasures, and as the cause of life’s greatest pain. From the beginnings of Western civilization, discussing and writing about sex has been controversial. In Desire: A History of European Sexuality, Ann Clark explains that Western thought regarding sex has traditionally been divided into two competing threads: one that sees sexual desire as “polluting and dangerous,” and one that sees it as “creative, transcendent, and transformative” (1). Some ancient Greeks worried that reason and sexual desire were incompatible, but in general the Greeks did “not see sex itself as shameful or honorable” and believed that “aggressive sexual energy could be a force for fertility, culture, and spirituality” (15). They even used “the language of erotic love to describe the ascent from earthly love to spiritual love” (1). In fact, sex for the ancient Greeks only became a “problem” when it transgressed the boundaries of the social order, as when a man had sex with another man’s wife (i.e., his property) or if a man of the upper class took a submissive role in sex with a man of the lower classes. The early church, however, had a largely negative attitude toward sex and sexual desire, seeing celibacy as a better, more pure way of life. In Jewish life, sexual desire was not seen as inherently evil, and sex within marriage was a definite good. However, early Christians, such as the apostle Paul in the first century, saw sex, even sex within marriage, as a dangerous corruption that would lead believers away from God (39). Saint Augustine, for example, writing in the fourth century, greatly admired celibates and felt much guilt about his early pagan life. This attitude, that sex is polluting, corrupting, and dirty, is present even today. In literature, we see this attitude in many works. In William Shakespeare’s King Lear, for instance, men who pursue their sexual desires are clearly painted as fools, doomed to eventual ruin. In Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Sue Bride-

sex and sexualityâ•…â•… 99 head sees the act of sex as the road to disaster, avoids it whenever she can, and blames her sexual relationship with Jude for their tragic end. Other works of literature hold the opposite view, however, treating sex as a positive force, even sometimes as a useful metaphor for things such as ambition, transcendence, and crossing difficult boundaries. In Lysistrata, for example, the women know that they can use sex as a weapon for peace. Thus, sex is seen as wholly positive. The men want sex because it delivers pleasure, and the women know that its power is so great that it can end the wars they so despise. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night ’s Dream shows the reader that while a surrender to lust can be destructive, as when Oberon tricks Titania into sleeping with Bottom, sexual union within marriage brings about great things: fertility, spirituality, and creativity. Similarly, the relationship between Rupert and Ursula in D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love is portrayed as an ideal sexual relationship, transcendent and mystical, that unites the two lovers while still leaving them as individual beings. Women in Love is only one of the many Lawrence novels that treat sex and sexuality so frankly. The Rainbow, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Sons and Lovers all contain plots that emphasize the important role of sex and sexuality in the lives of human beings. Lawrence was heavily influenced by the psychosexual development theories of the Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud. Freud’s theories on how we develop as sexual beings are so important to the way in which we think about sex and the brain that they cannot be ignored. He argues that all adult neurosis is borne from childhood sexuality. According to his theories, we have instinctive sexual appetites, even as infants, and these appetites mature in a series of changes, with the object of our affection being the primary change. Freud believed that getting “stuck” in one phase was the source of psychological problems in adults. He even used a work of literature, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, to name the complex in which an adult remains fixated on his mother as the object of affection. Freud’s theories on psychosexual development received an enormous amount of attention throughout most of the 20th century. However, other

scientists have criticized his theories for being focused on sex to the exclusion of other elements that influence our personalities, and feminists have pointed out that his theories focus heavily on male sexuality. Nevertheless, his attention to sexual desire as an important part of our personalities was an invaluable step in terms of transforming the ways in which we talk about sex and sexuality. The French theorist Michel Foucault points out this importance in his own influential work The History of Sexuality (1976–84). Foucault’s argument counteracts the generally accepted narrative that in Western society, talk of sex is repressed. Instead, he claims that since the 19th century, discourse about sex has exploded, in venues such as the doctor’s office and the church confessional. As in those two examples, however, this discourse has been controlled by those in power, keeping those not in power marginalized. Part of this control involves labeling certain sex acts, or even sexual urges, pathological. Foucault’s own identity as an open homosexual to his friends, but not open to the rest of the world, may have influenced his thinking here. In fact, briefly surveying the treatment of homosexuality in literature, one might be left with the mistaken impression that there were no open homosexuals well into the 20th century. Homosexual themes and story lines abound in this history, but they are almost always coded and indirect. One of the most famous examples is in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam, A. H. H, an elegiac poem written after the death of his dear friend Arthur Hallam. Tennyson speaks of his loss in intense terms, some of which have become famous for speaking of heterosexual love: “↜’Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all” (Canto 27, 15–16). That the object of his love and his loss was another man was not considered scandalous, precisely because Tennyson was indirect here, rather than explicit. In fact, describing close, intense friendships between same-sex pairs is one of the most common ways in which homosexuality has historically been expressed in literature. Writers as diverse as Edmund Spenser, Lord Byron, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Virginia Woolf have written of these devoted friendships in a way that allows the spirit of same-sex love to be expressed without

100â•…â•… social class explicitly naming the relationship as a sexual one. In addition, literary critics have long found homoerotic undertones in works that involve “male bonding,” even when that was not necessarily the author’s intention. The American critic Leslie Fiedler noted these undertones between Huck and Jim in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in his famous essay “Come Back A’gin to the Raft, Huck Honey” (1948). Fiedler and others have pointed out similar relationships between Ishmail and Queequeg in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, the vampire hunting crew in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Finny and Gene in John Knowles’s A Separate Peace. Openly homosexual characters in literature were rare until the late 20th century. Society’s prohibition against same-sex relationships, as well as the probable desire of some homosexual authors to keep their sexuality hidden, limited the direct display of any sexual orientation that was not heterosexual in all forms of art. In fact, when the lesbian author Radclyffe Hall published the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness in 1928, she was put on trial for obscenity. When homosexuality did make an open appearance in literature before this point, it was usually mocked, as in many English plays of the 18th century, or clearly considered a failing, as in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The end of the 20th century saw a somewhat more open attitude, with texts like James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain and Jeannette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit treating homosexuality as one important facet of a character’s identity. While sex and sexuality are clearly vital to human existence, their treatment in print has often been oblique, requiring the reader to read between the lines and tease out meanings from indirect references and suggestive metaphors. Obviously necessary for the continuation of the species, sex is also of paramount importance in terms of identity and can have a profound effect on our health and our emotions. Literature, therefore, has always addressed the issue and will continue to do so (perhaps more openly) as we move into the 21st century. See also Chopin, Kate: Awakening, The; Cisneros, Sandra: Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories; Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Car-

rie;

Erdrich, Louise: Love Medicine; Hesse, Herman: Steppenwolf; Jacobs, Harriet: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself; James, Henry: Turn of the Screw, The; Marshall, Paule: Brown Girl, Brownstones; Shakespeare, William: Taming of the Shrew, The; Silko, Leslie Marmon: Almanac of the Dead; Smith, Jean: Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A; Toomer, Jean: Cane; Walker, Alice: Color Purple, The. FURTHER READING Clark, Anna. Desire: A History of European Sexuality. New York and London: Routledge, 2008. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage, 1978.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

social class

Contemporary and historical studies of varied social structure systems suggest that stratification of wealth and status is inevitable. When people come together to form a community, one of the results is an intricate organization wherein we notice a continuum of wealth and status ranging from the most deprived street beggar to the most privileged administrator of that society. Currently there are many types of these stratified systems in existence, and a cursory understanding of a few of them will give a reader insight into his or her own society’s hierarchical structure. And with a closer look at many postindustrial societies’ class systems, we are better able to understand why and how writers find the inspection of this type of social hierarchy so valuable. Social stratification takes many forms, and the class system with which we are familiar in the United States is only one of many. While there are infinite other divisions that separate groups from one another, we might relate these divisions to three qualities that give a group more privilege than another: power, status, and wealth. A few categories of these stratifying structures are those of the caste, estate, and slavery systems (Schaefer 187–188). India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan have a long history of the caste system, wherein people’s occupations, earning capabilities, and life opportunities are determined by ancestral background. Once

social classâ•…â•… 101 born into a caste, a person will face many obstacles in attempting to maneuver beyond certain stigmas or narrowly defined possibilities dictated by caste membership. Alternatively, the estate system, or feudalism, is based on land ownership, as well as the power and wealth that come with such ownership. Under this system, a lowly serf might serve a life of physical labor with little hope of owning land, while a lordly landowner would pass down property through familial inheritance. Thus, families maintain powerful status in the feudal system. The slavery system also encourages the power of families in maintaining ownership of land and slaves. Until the mid-19th century in the United States, the slavery system enabled families in the Confederate States to exercise much economic and political power. This power did not wholly dissipate after the abolition of the slavery system. The caste, estate, and slavery systems are all examples of “closed systems” of social ranking (Schaefer 536). Alternatively, an “open system” is one that offers individuals opportunity for greater mobility between levels in the hierarchical social structure. The class system falls under this “open system” category. Max Weber, an influential German sociologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, proposed three distinctions for the purpose of analyzing and categorizing people and groups within this system: class, status, and wealth (Schaefer 191). People in this system are stratified into social classes that we normally subdivide based on families’ and individuals’ monetary income. Along with greater monetary income comes the capability to access certain luxuries and amenities that a lesser income may not allow. Accordingly, the stratified levels of this system are labeled along a continuum of wealth, which, as we have seen, is concomitant in most cases with continuums of power and status. W. Lloyd Warner, in his book Social Class in America, recommends a six-level ranking system of social class divided into the (1) upper-upper, (2) lower-upper, (3) uppermiddle, (4) lower-middle, (5) upper-lower, and (6) lower-lower classes (14). Along with these differing class levels and their respective access to wealth and earning power come capabilities and deprivations closely associated with

such rankings. Literature that deals with social class often comments on these capabilities and deprivations. According to Warner, authors who focus on class characteristically give their attention to the phenomena of social inequality—the tragic or comic, but always strained, relations between the members of different social strata, and the rise and fall of individuals and families, particularly emphasizing the strivings of people to climb into the class above and the efforts of those above to keep them out. (231) In conjunction with this type of commentary, an author might focus on divisive group characteristics that are necessarily linked to social class. Gender, race, genealogy, and locality are among some of the characteristics that might affect, at least in part, one’s social class. In their study Women and Social Class, Pamela Abbot and Roger Sapsford ask a question, specifically with regard to women: Are open systems really open? According to these scholars, current theoretical analyses of social class do not thoroughly explain “the subordinate position of women” or “adequately reflect the full range of stratification, social mobility and class awareness” of those living within class systems (1). We can easily expand Abbot and Sapsford’s viewpoint to apply to other groups that are similarly limited in their abilities to move from lower social strata to higher class status. Various authors, poets, and playwrights establish similar perspectives. In William Faulkner’s Light in August, we see the struggles of a young man with a multiethnic background. The protagonist, Joe Christmas, lives in early 20th-century Mississippi and falls victim to a local community’s rumors, prejudice, and violence. He meets one frustrating situation after another in his effort to evade the history of exploitation and hatred directed at him and others of African-American ancestry. Though coming, in part, from Anglo-European lineage, he cannot evade victimization and prejudice. As a result, he sees no prospects of rising out of the lower class, even though Joanna Burden, his clandestine lover and sympathizer, encourages him to pursue an

102â•…â•… social class education. Christmas internalizes the racial “glass ceiling” and sees it at each possible opportunity. Addressing issues of social class has been a pattern in literature for some time, yet facing the realities of the lower class’s plight has been a somewhat recent development in literature. Novels focusing on the lifestyles and scandals of those in the upper classes were common during the Victorian Age (1837–1901) in Europe and the United States. Members of the upper classes steeped in luxury appear in novels such as Henry James’s Daisy Miller and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. However, Dickens also focuses on the plight of the lower classes, a focus uncommon in the early 19th century. Dickens’s open-eyed awareness and experience of poverty motivated him to tell tales that depicted the struggles of the poor: a primary theme in many of his novels. The late 19th and early 20th century (sometimes known as the Gilded Age) saw an increase in literary attention on laborers and vagabonds of the lower class. Eric Shocket describes this focus as the “gaze over the divide at the Other” (2), suggesting that those who read these texts are more privileged than those under inspection. Stephen Crane, a popular and groundbreaking author of this period, created works that exposed the reading public to degraded images of the underprivileged. In his works, he paints grim pictures of those who endure many of the hardships associated with ghetto life. He and other writers of the naturalist movement likewise comment on the struggles of similarly deprived groups: those thought to be racially inferior and those from purportedly less-refined gene pools. During the Gilded Age, cultural views of gender, race, and ethnic equality were much less egalitarian than those of contemporary Europe and America, and these dated views are apparent in works of the period. Crane’s short novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) shows the heart-wrenching trials of a poverty-stricken adolescent and the abuse she endures at the hands of her family, and eventually at the hands of seducers. The lamentable qualities of the living conditions in the San Francisco slums compound our sorrow at her demise. Many works that deal with social class tend to take on a “rags to riches” theme by showing

characters striving to move from a lower to higher social stratum. The American media is particularly strewn with this trope. “[M]ass magazines and newspapers print and reprint the legendary story of rags to riches and tell over and over again the Ellis-island-to-Park-Avenue saga in the actual lives of contemporary successful immigrant men and women” (Warner 4). Some might question the degree to which this ideal is attainable, though we may quote multiple well-known examples. By way of challenging this trope, authors such as Theodore Dreiser have shown the damaging effects of such an ideology. Drieser’s novel An American Tragedy shows a young, intelligent, and energetic member of the lower class striving to reach the upper class by becoming a successful businessperson. Elitist ostracism, spite, and misfortune lead to Clyde Griffith’s eventual downfall after his attempt to climb the social class ladder. Inner turmoil, failed attempts at corporate climbing, and a confusing murder prosecution finally cause Griffith to regret his efforts. In depicting the protagonist’s ruin, Dreiser seems to suggest that one cannot easily abandon the learned tendencies of the lower class, nor climb easily upward in the social hierarchy. Today, fiction focusing on social climbing and plights of the lower and middle classes is very common. Much more than in literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries, we see novels combining issues of class with race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and locality. Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (2003) is a prime example of a novel which confronts these issues in a tale of a family’s struggle to survive in cold war–era Afghanistan. A Sunni Muslim father and son, after enduring unabated turmoil in Afghanistan, immigrate to California, where they must make a new start, emotionally and financially. Louise Erdrich’s Tracks confronts the desperate situation of a group of Native Americans in northern Minnesota. Her characters must come to terms with a new, dominant culture’s policies of land ownership and commerce. Nanapush, Fleur Pillager, and their immediate relatives must confront troubling changes to their local community; they face difficulty adapting to foreign concepts of property rights and class division. In the novel, the Indians are relegated to a remote area on the banks of a lake,

spiritualityâ•…â•… 103 where they attempt to sustain themselves. However, the local authorities confiscate their land because, by an unfortunate mishap, they have neglected to pay property taxes. They resist the foreign concepts of a highly organized class system. The local community subjugates them and eventually pushes them off the land they once inhabited. In the end, we see their way of life vanishing as a newer system takes its place. Partly as a result of these expanded and multitudinous considerations of societal inequality, some theorists question the efficacy of assessing social class as the primary source of stratification. The postmodernist movement encourages us to see aspects of culture as fragmented and uneasy to categorize or discern. Accordingly, some contemporary sociologists argue that social class is an “outmoded concept” and that we must consider the increasingly “fragmented” quality of social stratification (Devine 1). For these scholars, traditional class stratification concepts are changing and possibly no longer applicable to a postindustrialist society where the majority of people are preoccupied with lifestyle and amenity concerns. However, these theorists are currently on the margins of contemporary sociological study. They focus on a demographic that does not represent the myriad nations and communities characterized by highly varied stratification. Social class remains a prevalent reality for those living within its characteristic open system. Class greatly affects the way individuals, families, and communities prioritize particular ways of living. And where one falls within this stratified hierarchy is closely and irrevocably related to one’s intimate and outward identity. See also Achebe, Chinua: Anthills of the Savannah; Amis, Kingsley: Lucky Jim; Austen, Jane: Emma; Bellow, Saul: Adventures of Augie March, The; Cao Xueqin: Dream of the Red Chamber; Cather, Willa: My Ántonia; Dickens, Charles: G reat Expectations; Tale of Two Cities, A; Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie; Fitzgerald, F. Scott: Great Gatsby, The; Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the d ’Urbervilles; James, Henry: Daisy Miller; Lewis, Sinclair: Main Street; Naylor, Gloria: Women of Brewster Place, The; Proust, Marcel: Remembrance

of Things Past; Shakespeare, William: Henry V;

Merchant of Venice, The; Midsummer Night ’s Dream, A; Shaw, George Bernard: Pygmalion; Smith, Betty: Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A; Swift, Jonathan: Modest proposal, A; Updike, John: Rabbit Run; Wharton, Edith: Age of Innocence, The; Woolf, Virginia: Mrs Dalloway. FURTHER READING Abbot, Pamela, and Roger Sapsford. Women and Social Class. London: Tavistock Publications, 1987. Devine, Fiona. Social Class in America and Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. Schaefer, Richard T. Sociology. New York: McGrawHill, 1983. Shocket, Eric. Vanishing Moments: Class and American Literature. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2006. Warner, W. Lloyd. Social Class in America: A Manual of Procedure for the Measurement of Social Status. New York: Harper & Row, 1960.

Liam Conway Nesson

spirituality

The term spirituality has been used in a great variety of ways, both religious and secular. When associated with religion, the term is practically inextricable from “God” and the myriad concepts connected with a belief in a higher power that guides, directs, and rewards human beings for leading a life in accordance with religious principles. From a secular perspective, the term is aligned with the workings of the mind, the senses, and the perceived material and, in some cases, immaterial world. For instance, the American transcendentalists used spirituality as a special mark of those superior intellects able to perceive a reality beyond the material world, a world of the “spirit” which is not necessarily dependent on the physical senses to interpret. Evangelical Christianity reserves the term to describe tender religious emotions, while, in contrast, the French have appropriated it as the name for the finer perceptions of life, which implies a firm link with the material evidence of reality around us. Various derivatives of the term include spiritual, spiritualism, spiritualist, spiritism, and the spirit, all words implying slightly

104â•…â•… spirituality more nuanced interpretations of the disconnect between the perceived reality of the physical world and a conceived reality of a realm beyond it—one that is not relative to, nor dependent on, the senses reacting in conjunction with the mind. If all of this sounds rather mysterious, it is primarily because the conceptual nature of the term has its etymological roots in the Hebrew word ruach, which refers to the ethereal or elusive nature of spirit, breath, or wind, as that which gives life and animation to something. Further, the term gets its modern implications from the Latin definition of immaterial (immaterialis, late Latin, 14th century) which consists of an essence that cannot be seen, contained, or even proven in a validated manner (i.e., scientifically). Thus, spirituality is a quality that is associated with persons or things but is paradoxically distinct from material or worldly concerns. Indeed, as the Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond stated in Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883), “No spiritual man ever claims that his spirituality is his own” (89). This distinction between the material or natural world and the immaterial or spiritual world is central to the history of the debate regarding the nature of spirituality. By the 19th century, this debate assumed even greater proportions after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which posited man’s descent from apes through a process of natural selection, thereby calling into doubt the validity of man’s creation by God as depicted in the book of Genesis in the Bible. The struggle to define spirituality in terms that account for this ongoing debate has continued ever since. However, what can be stated with assurance is that the concept of spirituality relates directly to the conception of faith and arises from a creative and dynamic synthesis of faith and life. Broadly interpreted, fiction is about the human condition, and spirituality is that sense of our selves as linked in some relational way to the larger concept of the universe. As such, this theme permeates nearly all fiction in ways that can be either subtle or dramatically overt, depending on how we as readers react to the conceptual, and frequently nonmaterial, clues provided by the author. Concepts such as the divine (or divinity), the soul or spirit, the mystical, transcendence, suffering, love, ecstasy, and even

human egotism are linked in multiple complex ways to our understanding and practice of spirituality. Among the Christians (especially the mystics) and the Sufis (a Muslim sect), the main concern of spiritual life is with the human mind and its divine essence. As Saint Catherine of Genoa, a renowned Christian mystic, wrote, “My Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me” (quoted in Huxley 11, italics added). Within a religious context, there are myriad guides to understanding what constitutes the “spiritual” since religious history provides us with textual references that document, historicize, and instruct the individual’s understanding of the universe and their place in it. These guides include the Bible; the Torah; the Quran; and the writings of Buddha, the Hindu gods, and Confucius, to name but a few. Yet the spiritual cannot be confined to merely the religious and textual foundations of belief, since the spiritual also puts us in touch with that center of ourselves that is silent, mystical, and profoundly aware of the awesome beauty and power of what is clearly felt, yet beyond our control—the emotive force and energy of love; the symmetry and perfection of nature; and, not least of all, the passions and beliefs that ignite the soul. In more explicitly fictional terms, spirituality can be thematically reflected in texts through a number of literary devices that evoke specific spiritual responses from the reader. Readers may feel transformed in their consciousnesses or their lives, either vicariously through the fictive experience of one or more characters or more directly through a cathartic (energizing or healing) response to the work as a whole. Readers might also experience and know God through the creation of a fictional world; these works serve as allegories and are frequently imitative of previous works. Some works describe quest narratives that take one or more characters through the stages of a spiritual journey toward greater understanding of themselves; of the world around them; and of the nature of faith, hope, and love. Works that describe spirituality on this level may involve actual or imaginative travel to realms of otherworldliness, flights of fancy, or human physical/mental transport that defies the limitations of time and place. Other works infuse mystical feeling into their settings and natu-

stages of lifeâ•…â•… 105 ral worlds, such that a divine influence or presence is rendered as an aesthetic sensibility (an artistic, visual representation of beauty). Poetry, in particular, abounds with examples of natural imagery that is imbued with an ethereal quality reminiscent of spiritual perfection. Writers might also include symbols and motifs that emphasize aspects of faith particular to one or more sets of religious beliefs and values (the theology that can give rise to different spiritualities). Such references are usually universally identifiable by virtue of their iconic significance or historical prevalence, and they can include both occult as well as monotheistic images, such as angels, the all-seeing eye, butterflies, the cross of Christianity, the Celtic cross, the dove, the circle (or ring), the evil eye, the hexagram (or six-pointed star), the serpent or snake, the trident, and the triangle (or pyramid). For example, works such as Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s P rogress, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost address the theme of spirituality within an exclusively religious or ecclesiastical context, since each work is essentially an allegory or parable that posits a fictional account of the respective Catholic, Puritan, and Episcopal traditions of religious life and afterlife as described by believers. Indeed, the function of parable in religion is to exhibit “form by form”; thus, natural phenomena serve mainly an illustrative function in religion. Accordingly, within each of these works, the path to spiritual awareness is well documented and the lines between good and evil are clearly drawn; the individual’s experience in life and on earth is characterized as a precursor to the progress of their soul after death. Similarly, works such as Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor; Arthur Miller’s The Crucible; George Eliot’s Silas Marner; and William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience can also be considered parables in which the individual is subjected to external, natural, and social forces characterized as both good and evil in order to illustrate the power of the spirit over the materiality and grossness of the world, albeit at a price. See also Anaya, Rudolfo: Bless Me, Ultima; Black Elk: Black Elk Speaks; Carver, Raymond: “Cathedral”; Davis, Robertson: Fifth Busi-

ness;

Dickinson, Emily: poems; Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment; Emerson, Ralph Waldo: “American Scholar, The”; “Divinity School Address, The”; Equiano, Olaudah: Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, The; Hesse, Herman: Siddhartha; Ibsen, Henrik: Hedda Gabler; Kipling, Rudyard: Kim; Kureishi, Hanif: Buddha of Suburbbia, The; Reed, Ishmael: Mumbo Jumbo; Thoreau, Henry David: Walden. FURTHER READING Blythe, Ronald, et al. Ink and Spirit: Literature and Spirituality. Norwich, Eng.: Canterbury Press, 2000. Drummond, Henry. Natural Law in the Spiritual World. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1892. Huxley, Aldous. Perennial Philosophy. New York: HarperCollins, 1945.

Colleen Pauza

stages of life

If, as the American mythologist Joseph Campbell has suggested, a primary purpose of storytelling is “the reconciliation of consciousness with the preconditions of its existence” (180), then, given the undeniable precondition of mortality, it is to be expected that the journey a life makes in its arc from cradle to grave is a common concern of literature. Indeed, most of the world’s religions include in their respective mythologies ideas concerning life comprising segments or movements. For instance, Hinduism teaches that a life span consists of three primary stages: the student, the householder, and the retiree. The Talmud instructs that a man will find himself playing seven roles in his life: infant, child, boy, young man, married man, parent, and old man, each in regular succession. Cree Indian spiritualism holds that there are seven “times” that demarcate one’s existence, each characterized by a condition (e.g., confusion) or an action (e.g., planting). Similarly, when we look at traditional folktales, we find a persistent concern with stages of existence. From Aesop we have the story of the horse, the ox, and the dog who bestow upon man the gifts of their natures with which to divide up his life. Included in Grimm’s Fairy Tales is the narrative of God decid-

106â•…â•… stages of life ing the life span of each living thing, with man in his greed receiving the rejected remainder from the more humble donkey, dog, and monkey. Hence, working is burdensome, retirement is suspicious, and old age is foolish. The best description in a literary masterpiece of this tradition of inevitable progression through stages of life is the “All the world’s a stage” monologue of the cynical courtier Jaques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (act 2, scene 7): All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms: Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning-face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation, Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lin’d, With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. In Edgar Allan Poe’s masterful allegory “The Masque of the Red Death,” Prince Prospero vainly imagines he can first wall out and then defeat death. The arrangement of the abbey within which Prospero and his guests imagine themselves to be invulnerable is symbolic and also highly evocative of Jaques’s speech: seven rooms, each of a different hue and thus character, each imperceptible from the vantage point of the others. There is a sense in which the concept of life comprising stages is less a theme of literature than a precondition itself, an assumed norm, and many thematic concerns arise from the frustration, retardation, or inhibition of the process. That is, characters who fail to progress in a timely fashion experience considerable turmoil and anguish due to their unnatural state. This posits the notion that the stages are contingent on volition, the character’s capacity to make the proper choices or draw the correct conclusions from experience. Consider, for instance, the number of memorable characters who are, in essence, stuck as adolescents. Holden Caulfield in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is, though still young, unnaturally bent on dividing the world into “phonies” (nearly every adult) and those more like his sister Phoebe and late brother Allie, whom he imagines to be uncorrupted and static in a wholly unrealistic way. His inability to function at a level appropriate to his age (failure at a succession of preparatory schools, childish infatuation without any overt action with Jane Gallagher, impotent response to the prostitute Sunny) could all be seen as inevitable consequences of his untenable mental/emotional/spiritual stage/age (roughly 12, instead of 16). Similarly, though in many respects more egregiously, Harry Angstrom from John Updike’s Rabbit, Run cannot bring himself to accept the preconditions of life as a 26-year old husband and father-to-be. Just as his nickname implies, he runs, toward irresponsibility and what he imagines to be inconsequential hedonism with a prostitute. However, as the tragedy of his denials unfolds, we are

successâ•…â•… 107 made to understand that Harry’s flight from young adulthood is not only futile but also destructive. Interestingly, Updike’s three subsequent installments of Harry’s life all find him at least one step behind (and he dies where he essentially began—playing basketball). Just as striking are the sundry literary characters whose progress through the latter stages of existence is thwarted by magic, addiction, attachment to the past, or a simple lack of faith. In his poem “Tithonus,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson memorably depicted the story of Tithonus, Aurora’s beloved, doomed to “wither slowly” in her arms because he cannot die. His is the story of the dark side of immortality, of course, the realization that our fear of death often obscures its necessity. T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock, in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” offers the figure of one who seeks to arrest the progress of time by never choosing (“Do I dare?”). He grows old, but he cannot “force the moment to its crisis”—that is, he remains more observer than agent in his own life. Like Tithonus, he has come to realize that there are worse things than the surrender to the inevitable conclusion of life—namely, that one can live out a spiritual death of excruciating torture. Fiction writers subsequent to the advent of modernism at the turn of the 20th century seemed increasingly inclined to suggest that, far from inevitable, progress through life necessarily involves struggle and, ideally, a crucible or challenging ritual that forces graduation to the next stage. Later in the century, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony offered the compelling portrait of Tayo, whose alcoholism and inner turmoil keep him rooted in the crucible of his youth, World War II. Through the help of Betonie, the shaman, he is able to see a way forward by accepting the crucible of the moment. Tayo realizes “there were transitions that had to be made in order to become whole again” (170). Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is another example of this concept of conditional stages at work. Santiago’s crucible of more than 80 days of fishing without a catch becomes the ultimate test of faith in himself, his traditions, his beliefs, and his capacity for endurance. By implication, Santiago’s great struggle is the struggle we all must face as the time of our thriving inevitably

passes, when the world is unlikely to offer much in the way of affirmation. For Santiago, the passage through is not a form of surrender nor, certainly, a turning away from the moment toward fantasy. Rather, his essence is reaffirmed by the fact of his endurance, his ultimate landing of the great marlin. Although the marlin is stripped of its tangible value by sharks, Santiago’s victory is ensured by the enormity of the skeleton. In a sense, Santiago’s triumph unifies all the stages of a life lived in obedience to a code. Ironically, had he changed with the times, he would have negated his very existence. His ultimate test of faith in himself comes when he has the least reason for faith, which Hemingway strongly suggests is the nature of life when he has Santiago tell the young Manolin that September is the time of the great fish, and thus “anyone can be a fisherman in May” (18). See also Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Frost, Robert: poems; Gaines, Ernest J.: Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The; Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki: Farewell to Manzanar; Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God; Shakespeare, William: Tempest, The; Shelley, Percy Bysshe: poems; Wilder, Thornton: Our Town; Williams, Tennessee: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Wordsworth, William: “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”; Wright, Richard: Black Boy. FURTHER READING Campbell, Joseph. The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays 1959–1987. Edited by Antony Van Couvering. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997. Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner, 1975. Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. 1977. Reprint, New York: Penguin, 2006.

Daniel Ryan Morse

success

What does it mean to be successful in life? Many people would equate success with wealth, but some wealthy people are profoundly unhappy. Others would equate success with power or fame, which are equally problematic. If we assume that being successful is about attaining goals, few would pur-

108â•…â•… success sue goals that were geared toward making them unhappy. It seems, then, that success might best be equated with, or at least linked to, happiness. Indeed, when we look at differing accounts of the “successful” over time, we see that one thing they have in common, whether we are discussing a simple, yeoman farmer from the 18th century, or the 20thcentury steel baron Andrew Carnegie, is that they were pursuing their dreams in order that they might achieve excellence and be fulfilled. In other words, they were tying success to personal happiness, not to wealth, power, or fame. Those things might come as accessories to success, but they are not the primary motivators. Literature is full of characters for whom those empty dreams are the driving forces, and those characters usually meet bad ends. In order to see the truly “successful” among the pantheon of literary characters, we must first explore exactly what we mean by success. Although thoughts on success and its nature are quite common in literature, often the characters who embody it or seek it are deeply unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives. The philosopher Tom Morris might argue that this is because these characters are confusing true success with something else, something destructive in its emptiness. In his 1994 book True Success, Morris argues that we misconceive the meaning of success, confusing it with fame or with power or, most often, with wealth. But, he says, we can all think of wealthy people who are unhappy or who did nothing on their own to attain their wealth. Both of these qualifications seem to go against the basic definition of success: obtaining the object of one’s desire. In Silas Marner, by George Eliot, Silas hoards the gold he earns, becoming very wealthy but very unhappy. It is not until he has a fulfilling purpose in life, raising Eppie, that he can truly be called successful. The extreme unhappiness and dissatisfaction of the wealthy Sutpen family from William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! demonstrates how inherited wealth does not automatically bring success. Thomas Sutpen is a self-made man whose outward appearance might be the picture of success. But although he is wealthy and powerful, he not only guarantees his own unhappiness by denouncing his part-black son but also passes that unhappiness on to his chil-

dren. He ends his life an alcoholic, murdered by the grandfather of his 15-year-old mistress and largely forgotten by his community. Like wealth, fame and power do not guarantee success either. Both can be fleeting, and if our only end is to achieve them, not to find fulfillment in the pursuits that led to the fame and the power, then we are doomed to fail. In our tabloid rich society, it is not difficult to think of people whom power and fame had seemingly put on top of the world, but who quickly descended to the depths of failure. In lieu of the dubious pursuits of wealth, fame, and power, Morris posits a new conception of success, one requiring that we incorporate certain conditions into our daily lives. He says, “Our idea of success should be more closely related to our ideas of excellence and fulfillment. And to our idea of happiness” (32). He claims that to truly be successful, we must have a clear idea of what we are seeking; we must be confident and consistent, committed to the pursuit and the concentration it takes; and finally, and perhaps most interestingly in light of literature, we must have character of “high quality” and the capacity to enjoy our success. Morris contends here that if “success” is pursued for immoral means or if the spoils of success are the only motivator, then that is not “true success.” Morris is (understandably) working against the popular 20th-century concept of success. Interestingly, definitions of success prior to this period were more in line with Morris’s thinking. Rex Burns, in Success in America, explores older ideas of success, focusing on the yeoman farmer, the epitome of success in the 18th century. He explains that under this conception, there were three major elements in order to claim success: competence, independence, and morality. This farmer needed not wealth, and certainly not fame or power, to be considered successful. In fact, Jeffrey Decker explains in Made in America that in the 18th and 19th centuries, success was “character based.” There was an explicit link between productive enterprise and religious faith that came to be known as the “Protestant work ethic,” which informs the stories of Horatio Alger, popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These stories, sometimes called “rags to riches” or “luck and pluck” stories, usually involve a poor adolescent boy

successâ•…â•… 109 who manages to rise to prosperity on the strength of his character and determination. Decker believes that these stories allowed turn of the century readers “an outlet for reinforcing their belief in the residual concept of character based success” (2). American literature from this period and into the 20th century is full of examples of characters who, because they lack character, cannot be truly successful. Besides the aforementioned Thomas Sutpen, there is Jay Gatsby, the title character of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Gatsby earns his wealth through questionable associations with unscrupulous people, all so that he may win the love of Daisy Buchanan. Even were he to achieve this goal, he would not be truly successful. He would be unable to enjoy his achievement, because he showed poor character in its pursuit, and because he is denying his true identity in the entire enterprise. Like Sutpen, Gatsby ends up a victim of murder. Willy Loman, from Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman, is an excellent example of a character who strives his whole life for success, but because he does not really understand what success is, he is doomed to never achieve it. Willy wants only to be “well-liked” and takes no joy from the job he thinks will help him to achieve this end. He interacts with his family only in the context of how successful he is, and since this existence is a lie, his relationships with them are empty. Like Willy, Rabbit Angstrom in John Updike’s Rabbit, Run desperately bemoans the life he sees as mundane and stagnant, thinking that his only successes in life are behind him, with the glory of his high school basketball career. Because he puts no focus, concentration, or passion into his current life, he cannot feel, even to mourn the death of his baby daughter. On the other hand, a character such as Jo March, from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, despite a distinct lack of wealth, power, and social status, ends the narrative very happy and, because she achieves her aims, successful. Jo wants to be an intellectually independent woman, and in 19th-century New England, this was not a common or easily attained goal. She rejects the love of Laurie because, despite her affection for him, she knows he will want a traditional marriage. She moves to New York to pursue her love of writing and gain independence,

and there she meets her true mate, Professor Bhaer, who understands and respects her forthright, determined nature. She opens a school, marries Bhaer, and ends the novel the epitome of success. While success as a theme is common in all American literature, it is perhaps most common in African-American literature. This is perhaps because, as Audrey Edwards and Craig K. Polite argue, for black Americans, success is “a relative” phenomenon, “measured as much by what has been overcome as by what has been achieved” (3). Often systematically denied a level playing field, such as equal educations, equal access to certain careers, and equal opportunities to live and work in desirable places, African Americans have been forced to define success differently than whites. In addition, the specter of failure has been so internalized among African Americans that many may feel that they are inferior and cannot truly compete in the white world. Thus, success and its pursuit are frequently explored in texts by African-American writers. Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery presents one view of African-African success, albeit a controversial one. Washington believed blacks’ road to success was to be found in learning to work hard, have good manners, and participate in the rank and file of the working class. At the Tuskegee Institute, a school he founded, all students had to participate in menial chores as well as their studies. Although many students rebelled, Washington was resolute in his view that blacks had to build a modest foundation before they could reach for the heights of success. Ralph Kabnis, in Jean Toomer’s Cane, represents the rebellious students who did not agree with Washington’s plan. Educated in the North, he does not anticipate that despite his credentials and social standing, he will be forced to act deferential around all whites, even those who are less educated than he and who hold a less prestigious place in society. Like many African Americans both before him and after him, he finds that he must begin in a metaphorical hole and dig his way out just to get the respect any human being deserves. Characters like Ralph chafe against Washington’s idea that blacks should prove their worth to whites. Instead, they want that worth to be assumed from the beginning.

110â•…â•… suffering Feeling worthy of success in this way is, perhaps, a criterion for achieving it. The underlying reason why many literary characters who are focused on wealth, power, and fame fail spectacularly in these pursuits is because there is no intrinsic value in their quest. When we strive for wealth just for wealth’s sake, and not because what we are doing to achieve it fulfills us, we are doomed to fail. See also Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Dos Passos, John: U.S.A. trilogy; Franklin, Benjamin: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The; Morrison, Toni: Tar Baby; Mukherjee, Bharati: Middleman and Other Stories, The; Naipaul, V. S.: House for Mr. Biswas, A; Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row; Wilde, Oscar: Importance of Being Ernest; The. FURTHER READING Burns, Rex. Success in America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976. Decker, Jeffrey. Made in America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Edwards, Audrey, and Craig K. Polite. Children of the Dream. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Morris, Tom. True Success. New York: Putnam, 1994.

Jennifer McClinton-Temple

suffering

Human beings shrink from suffering. We avoid confronting the afflictions of others because it is unpleasant, and if we focus on suffering for too long, it could give us a pessimistic view of the world. Nevertheless, we remain avid fans of television dramas, intense and violent movies, and works of literature that speak to the truest of human experiences. We read stories of the tragedies of others, partly as a form of escapism from our own troubles but also to reinforce our conviction that suffering is meaningful, as the conflicts in literature are almost always resolved (though perhaps not always to our satisfaction). In this way, literature involving suffering often restores our faith in justice and aids us in grappling with the question of why we suffer at all. At times characters’ trials are a tool authors use to reveal truths about the human condition, address flaws in society, or identify ways in which suffer-

ing can function as a motivator for progress (either individual or large-scale). Portrayals of suffering in literature also add realism and drama to the work while involving, influencing, and at times even challenging the reader. The theme of arbitrary, undeserved suffering has been taken up by a number of writers, including Shirley Jackson. In her short story “The Lottery” (1948), a quaint town prepares for an annual tradition. All of the families are present, and everyone draws a piece of paper out of a box. Tessie Hutchinson picks the one with the mark on it. The story ends abruptly and morbidly, with Tessie being stoned to death by her family and other members of the town. Her death is not redemptive, not meaningful except insofar as it constitutes in itself the meaning or essence of life. It is merely the result of a backward, empty ritual that the characters refuse to challenge. The town can also be interpreted as a microcosm of the world, in which people are capable of inflicting harm on others for no apparent reason. “The Lottery” is thus a parable about the arbitrariness of suffering, many of the traditions we hold, and of life itself. The cruelty inflicted by people or institutions, like that in “The Lottery,” is addressed in many other literary works as well. In such cases, depictions of suffering are often used in the service of social critique. For example, in her novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison confronts the reader with the harsh realities of growing up in a dysfunctional African-American family during a time of lingering discrimination and racism. The novel tells the story of a young girl, Pecola, who is tortured by abusive parents and deeply rooted feelings of inadequacy. As a result of her being raped by her father and becoming pregnant with his child, Pecola’s childhood is cut short, and she eventually slips into madness. Her self-esteem is virtually nonexistent from having grown up with the notion that whiteness is inherent in the definition of beauty. Her suffering, however, is merely the latest in a chain of human suffering as a result of the cruelty of others. Her father was abandoned by his parents and tormented by white men from early on. He is apathetic toward his marriage and life in general, while his wife, Pecola’s mother, is physically disabled and endures her husband’s abuse

sufferingâ•…â•… 111 because she feels she is deserving of it. Like Pecola, she is vastly insecure and has adopted society’s limited standards for beauty. She refuses to believe Pecola’s account of the rape and beats her. Many of the characters in Morrison’s novel are both victims and perpetrators of suffering, which contributes to its realism. We learn behavior from figures of authority, and after being affected repeatedly by the cruelty of others or of society, it is hard not to react by mimicking that behavior for self-preservational reasons, thereby continuing the cycle. Accounts of suffering as a result of human cruelty are most powerful in stories that are based in truth. This is the case in Elie Wiesel’s account of the Holocaust, entitled Night. The atrocities described through Wiesel’s narrator are all the more poignant because we know them to be real. The novel, which is in part a memoir, also addresses how suffering can lead to a crisis of (or loss of ) faith. In Night, the main character, Eliezer, is a devout Jew who endures the horror of the Jewish concentration camps. As a youth, he learned about God’s goodness and omnipotence; however, after being separated from his mother and sister, seeing babies burned alive and children hanged, and being forced to work long days with little or no food, his faith in a compassionate God wavers, understandably. The cruelty of the Nazis and even of the other prisoners is at odds with his religious teachings. He doubts and questions the existence of God but still references biblical passages. Although his intense suffering causes a crisis of faith, he never abandons his faith, but he grapples with reevaluating it to better explain his experience. Suffering, then, can act as a catalyst for learning and for spiritual and mental renewal. Suffering can also result from social institutions and philosophies, rather than from direct physical cruelty or arbitrary, superhuman forces. Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun illustrates the suffering that is caused by class stratification and the illusions inherent in both class divisions and the striving to ascend to a higher class. The Youngers are trapped by their social class and unable to move up in the world. They hungrily look forward to a $10,000 insurance check from the deceased Mr. Younger’s life-insurance policy. Each member of the family has his or her own personal plan for where

the money should go, but they ultimately decide to spend it on a new house in a white neighborhood. They are soon approached by a man who is willing to pay them to keep them from moving in. The Youngers are limited not only economically but also as a result of latent discrimination. They are unable to attain the American dream: that with hard work and perseverance, one can achieve anything. Rather, they are only able to improve their situation when they collectively decide to put the well-being of the family as a whole before their individual wishes. By cooperating and working together, they can transcend those boundaries that limit them, if not materialistically then in their outlook on life. Portrayals of suffering also often serve as vehicles to redemption or moral growth. This is true in Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, in which the main character, Bigger, only realizes the motivation behind his violent crimes after he is caught and doomed to execution. Bigger’s whole life has been spent suffering under the thumb of a “superior” white society, limited in what he could achieve from the start because he was black. The anger and resentment against the forces oppressing him build up and manifest themselves in violence against his friends, his girlfriend, and the daughter of the white man who employs him. The murders he commits empower him and give his life meaning for the first time, and he feels little guilt as a result. Before the end of the novel, though, he realizes that his behavior is a direct result of the racism he has experienced, and that equality is something to be strived for. Rather than defying the status quo, Bigger’s actions contribute to the cycle of racism by reaffirming the fears whites have of blacks. It is only by acting on his frustration that Bigger comes to realize the cause for them, and he finally feels remorse. Suffering is a key theme in literature because it unlocks the ethical possibilities of almost any literary text. Literature nurtures the reader’s ethical awareness and compassionate faculty with characters who may be quite different from the reader but inspire affinity and sympathy nonetheless. The emotional and intellectual responses to these characters’ suffering help increase a reader’s awareness of what is possible, and inherent, in this world—that is, suffering caused by others or by institutions. Literature

112â•…â•… survival depicting suffering also inspires hope and confidence in the resilience of the human spirit. In most stories, suffering is temporary and usually resolved by the end, even if the resolution is simply death or justice served for those who have suffered. Literature involving suffering, then, is often true to life, in that it portrays suffering as inevitable and sometimes inexplicable, but often endured and overcome. See also Bradford, William: Of Plymouth Plantation; Cather, Willa: O Pioneers!; Cisneros, Sandra: Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories; Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment; Edward, Jonathan: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”; Faulkner, William: Light in August; Greene, Graham: Heart of the Matter, The; Haley, Alex, and Malcolm X: Autobiography of Malcolm X, The; Heller, Joseph: Catch-22; Hersey, John: Hiroshima; Kafka, Franz: Metamorphosis, The; O’Connor, Flannery: W ise Blood; Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four; Paton, Alan: Cry, the Beloved Country; Pirandello, Luigi: Six Characters in Search of an Author; Shakespeare, William: King Lear; Swift, Jonathan: Modest Proposal, A; Voltaire: Candide. FURTHER READING Bending, Lucy. The Representation of Bodily Pain in Late Nineteenth-Century English Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000. Noble, Marianne. The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. Nussbaum, Martha C. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Kristy Cerullo

survival

As with any thematic approach to literary study, consideration of the role of survival in literature requires an acknowledgement of the ever-evolving nature of the theme itself. Of primary importance, then, is recognizing that at different times, in differ-

ent places, and to different people, the word survival has taken on myriad different meanings. Our very understanding of the term fluctuates. Centuries before the printing press, when written texts were far less common, oral transmission was often utilized as a means of relaying a text, thus literally tying the survival of texts to the living, breathing carriers thereof. The fate of people and texts were parallel. Numerous works, including Beowulf (Anonymous), when eventually recorded, sustained damage or were lost or consumed by fire. Therefore, concomitant to examining survival in literature, we have also to acknowledge the necessary survival of literature, an issue which, even with the technological advances that have taken place over the epochs, is again presenting itself. Literature, of course, cannot be without language, and this basic concern is not lost when we consider the founding documents of the English language. Early Anglo-Saxon pieces such as Bede’s Caedmon’s Hymn (ca. seventh century) are, in and of themselves, testaments to a fledgling language struggling for its very existence. Works like Bede’s faced an uphill battle against the preeminence of Latin, a language to which most deferred due to its association with the church. Hence, the survival of any language is, in and of itself, the survival of familiar ideas and expressions, of connective provincialism. The early forms of English thus served as a sort of cultural conduit to crude patriotism. Correspondingly, the texts that utilize these forms concern themselves often with defense and survival, whether focusing on the tribe or on the nation-state. The Arthurian legend serves as an early example of literature concerned with survival beyond merely that of the individual, as does Sir Gawain and the Green Knight centuries later (although as Gawain’s head is literally at stake, individual survival is not entirely dismissed). Given the ties between the church and Western states, especially since the rise of Christianity, the intermingling of religion, the state, and the texts that carried their respective messages was of the utmost importance. The middle of the second millennium in particular saw monumental struggles between Catholics and the newly emergent Protestants for control of the hearts, minds, and truly the states

survivalâ•…â•… 113 and texts of Europe. The inception of the printing press in the 15th century facilitated the transmission of Martin Luther’s and John Calvin’s iconoclastic Protestant ideas and encouraged vernacular translations, sentiments that clashed with Catholicism’s insistence on Latin. Both biblical translations deemed unacceptable and those propounding them were subject to destruction via fire, and thus, the survival of both people and texts were again aligned. Dynamic both politically and textually, this era saw Henry VIII’s refutation of papal authority and his subsequent founding of the Anglican church; Elizabeth I’s rise, rule, and promulgation of Protestantism; and the ascension of King James I and creation of his conservative new Bible. The boundaries of these disputes, however, were continually expanding, as the dictums of the early modern age insisted that to be prosperous at home meant being prosperous abroad, and that meant the maintaining of colonial empires. As the struggle of the dominant ideologies in Europe quickly spilled over into its ever-expanding imperial holdings abroad, different views on survival presented themselves. John Milton’s Paradise Lost applied the Christian mythos as a means of examining survival in new worlds—Eden for Adam and Eve, and Hell for Lucifer. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels explored the notion that, sail where one may, survival—however one chooses to define it—is only ultimately possible through selfknowledge. Tales pouring back to Europe from the Western Hemisphere, including those of Cabeza de Vaca and John Smith, told harrowing tales of survival amid unfamiliar new environments. Captivity narratives such as Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson, further underscored the dangers incumbent upon usurpation-based foreign settlement. The attendant horrors of “progress” helped, over the course of time, to spawn the romantic movement. Writers such as William Wordsworth (see “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”), John Keats, and Sir Walter Scott sought survival in and pined for a departed day that favored bucolic simplicity in tried locales over the ever-advancing technology utilized to conquer alien landscapes, cultures, and people.

But neither colonial exploitation nor its attendant cultural emphases would survive in the New World. Shortly after gaining independence, the United States produced its own literary examinations of just what it meant to survive. Early American writers—not merely those reproducing British fiction, but those with whom others identified the young country—such as James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving (see Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, The), and Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crèvecoeur deductively chronicled the survival of the state by examining parcels thereof: ostensibly, the small villages and hamlets ranging across the frontier and the manner in which they were configured, governed, and threatened. From a spiritual perspective, Calvinist notions of predestination, which seem to take away our ability to act on our own, became the target of more and more disdain, as Americans inundated with notions of new horizons leveled mounting attacks on what they believed to be the domineering beliefs of their forbears, a system that essentially attributed the nature of one’s soul’s survival to luck. Such is the nature of Emily Dickinson’s probing, almost haunted poetry; hers is unsatisfied verse, work permeated by restlessness, want, and a need for a new savior. Her yearning for something new was largely representative of the mid-19th-century atmosphere that gave way to a more liberal unitarianism and, finally, transcendentalism. Spearheaded by the disheartened Unitarian preacher Ralph Waldo Emerson and his 1836 essay “Nature,” transcendentalists advanced the idea that surviving and flourishing were merely functions of recognizing one’s own innate divinity, an endeavor undertaken not via the intermediary of a preacher or priest in a church house, but alone. Hence, although the number of transcendentalists within the United States never exceeded that of an infinitesimal minority, their legacy survives and is celebrated as integrally American due to the manner in which emphasis on individuality and independence mirror the country’s stated goals. For example, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself ” (see Leaves of Grass) is an inductive celebration of the nation-state as construed by each and every one of its respective constituent citizens and environs. His

114â•…â•… survival is truly poetry of inclusion, stressing both his spirit and body; by commemorating, rather than debasing his physicality, Whitman marvels at the manner in which matter only changes form, thereby ensuring its survival, be it as human, grass, or dirt beneath one’s boot soles. Henry David Thoreau took Whitman’s ebullience even further, specifically positing the wilderness as savior by writing in his essay “Walking” (1862) that “in wildness is the preservation of the world,” a sentiment that would come to serve as a mantra for environmentalists. The idealism of transcendentalism, however, would last only until the time of the Civil War, as national survival quickly advanced to the forefront of public consciousness. Slave narratives penned by Harriet Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, Written by Herself ) and Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave), along with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, intensified the debate over slavery that threatened to destroy the country. Yet amid all the politics of division, the transcripts of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches reveal a president concerned, first and foremost, with the survival of the Union. In 1890, the American frontier was declared “closed,” thus effectively ending what had until then been the country’s most enduring myth: that of the West. Suddenly, the United States and her authors had to acknowledge the philosophical significance communicated by this spatial reality: There was, indeed, no more second chance. What remained was to turn back around and re examine the manner in which the continent had been settled. Furthermore, the Industrial Revolution and its attendant advances in transportation had shifted the American economy from agrarian to mechanized. This phenomenon, along with tough economic times following the war, facilitated the rise of naturalists like Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy) and Stephen Crane (The Open Boat), whose writing highlighted the manner in which survival now pertained more to getting along in bustling capitalist metropolises than on sun-drenched prairies. Modernists sought solace with this increasingly unrecognizable world. Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner all wrote eulogistically of a

country they were not certain they really knew. Jack Kerouac and Kurt Vonnegut followed suit. Postmodernism interrogated what surviving in the 20th century necessarily entailed. Most recently, however, the ecocritical movement, a critical literary approach aiming to treat nature, according to the scholar David Mazel, as if it were consequential has added further nuance to survival’s role in literature. Citing environmental degradation, including groundwater contamination, overuse of pesticides, deforestation, pollution, and global warming, authors (beginning ostensibly with Rachel Carson in Silent Spring [1962] and still gaining momentum from scholars like Glen Love) have stressed the seemingly rudimentary concept that the survival of literature—indeed, that of all art—is integrally dependent on the survival of an environment able to sustain humanity itself. This basic assumption refutes the postmodern maxim that there are no absolutes, and it emphasizes that the theme of survival in literature is a very fundamental one; indeed, as people and texts are paralleled, they share a similar fate. See also Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451; Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe; Dickens, Charles: Oliver Twist; Erdrich, Louise: Love Medicine; Tracks; Frank, Anne: Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl; Golding, William: Lord of the Flies; Gordimer, Nadine: Burger’s Daughter; Harte, Bret: “Outcasts of Poker Flats, The”; Hemingway, Ernest: Farewell to Arms, A; Kingston, Maxine Hong: Woman Warrior, The; Mukherjee, Bharati: Middleman and Other Stories, The; O’Brien, Tim: Going after Cacciato; Solzhenitsyn, Alexander: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Steinbeck, John: Pearl, The; Tennyson, Alfred, Lord: In Memoriam A. H. H.; Wright, Richard: Native Son. FURTHER READING Dailey, Kate. “Literature of Survival: A Literature Class as a Place of Healing.” Teaching English in the TwoYear College 34, no. 2 (December 2006): 196–201. Mazel, David, ed. A Century of Early Ecocriticism. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001.

David Visser

traditionâ•…â•… 115

tradition

Although most people today might think that the word tradition is a reference to things from the past that are fixed and therefore must be replicated, the English word tradition actually comes from the Latin infinitive tradere literally meaning “to hand across.” However, the same word frequently meant “to surrender.” The various meanings of the Latin tradere can also be found in Greek words that translate as “tradition.” In both languages, the idea of “tradition” is at once a handing on of customs, rituals, expectations, and methods of doing things outside of written documents and a rejection of such customs or even a betrayal of them. This doublesided meaning of the word, which gives a truer picture of what tradition actually is, can be traced throughout the Western literary canon. From the earliest examples of literary art, the issue of tradition can be seen. For example, in the Babylonian poem Gilgamesh, the goddess Ishtar is outraged that Gilgamesh dishonors her; to punish him, she sends a bull to destroy him. This early example of a god expecting “traditional” behavior from a human, and the human responding by breaking the tradition, sets the stage for conflict found in nearly all classical and biblical literature. Yet the idea of tradition implies an appeal to stability, an unchanging order of expectations and events that makes human life possible because tradition presumes that tomorrow will be more or less like today. If the breaking up of expectations is also part of the idea of tradition, then one may question when such rejection is warranted and when it will introduce chaos into ordinary life. This problem of tradition—knowing when to maintain it and when to reject it—is a subject for political philosophy. Plato’s dialogue The Republic is structured around an argument in three waves, each of which contradicts the argument presented up to that point. The establishment of a proposition that is then contradicted is very much like the idea of a word, custom, or ritual handed down and then rejected by another contradictory word, the basic meaning of tradition. According to Plato, the wise statesman is the one who knows when to maintain a political order and when to initiate a change that will cause the city to more closely resemble its ideal.

Thus, at the very beginnings of Western literature, in Gilgamesh and in The Republic, the idea of tradition contains both a thematic and a political meaning. A third meaning, of intertextuality, can also be seen in ancient literature: the relationship between an earlier writer and a later one. Intertextuality is the influence of a set of written signs on later literary productions; it is neither allusion, allegory, nor a collection of earlier sources but a transposition of elements found in earlier literature and “carried across” to later compositions to create something new. The best example of intertextuality is Virgil’s use of Homer in The Aeneid. Although The Aeneid is sometimes described as The Odyssey first and then The Iliad, with actions merely lifted from Homer, in fact Virgil’s transposition of elements found in Homer’s epics forces readers to reinterpret meanings and thereby imaginatively create new understandings from an epic poetic form that seems “traditional.” For example, the images on Achilles’ shield in The Iliad signify the meaning of the war from the Greek perspective: the city of war, governed by Apollo and Athena; the city of peace, centered on a human marriage, with no gods present; around them plowing, harvesting, dancing, and the ocean. In The Aeneid, the images on Aeneas’s shield also function as symbols of the meaning of the battle about to begin: Romulus and Remus; the Sabines; Manlius; Catiline; Julius Caesar; Augustus; and, in the center, the Battle of Actium, which ended the republic and established the Roman Empire. The implication is that these images represent the same civilizational values for the Romans as the cities of war and peace for the Greeks. Yet the changes in the images on Aeneas’s shield do more than merely fit a different plot; these changes affect the audience’s expectation of the meaning of symbol because the entire poem is meant to change their expectation of themselves and their situation after the civil war. Though both shields contain images important for each civilization, those on Aeneas’s shield have not happened yet as far as Aeneas himself is concerned, but the audience knows they have happened as they show the major events in Roman mythological history. The purpose of such double-sided representation is exactly what tradition, in the form

116â•…â•… tradition of intertextuality, does. The question Virgil raises for the characters within the story is whether their virtue will be enough to “spare the conquered and battle down the proud,” the rule of law given to Aeneas so that Rome may be founded. Will Aeneas be strong enough and wise enough to show the wisdom necessary for a true ruler of a great city, or will his desire for the past in Troy still affect his judgment? Because the images on the shield remind the audience of the glory of republican Rome, the question being asked of them is whether they have the strength and wisdom necessary to go forward into the imperial future in order to create, through their own practice of virtue, an even greater city than the one Aeneas founded. Can they go forward and not look back to the past, to “tradition”? Thus, in The Aeneid, Virgil combines the thematic and political meanings of tradition through intertextuality by changing the significance of an important literary symbol. In contrast to what has been handed down, these three actions—conflict, wisdom, and intertextuality—can be seen in later literature. In his book The Anxiety of Influence, the literary critic Harold Bloom attempts to describe the stages of change that take place as the ephebe (the younger artist) asserts his voice over the father (the precursor: the elder artist or the tradition). These are: clinamen, or poetic misreading; tessera, or antithetical completion—that is, finishing the misreading in a logical way; kenosis, a turn away or break from the logical implications of the precursor; demonization, an inspiration derived from the ephebe’s reaction to the precursor, but not contained in it; ascesis, the solitude derived from a movement toward a completed vision; and apophrades, the revisionary image held up to its precursor. Although Bloom’s language derives from Neoplatonism and gnosticism, his description follows the classical tradition as shown above. An earlier critic, T. S. Eliot, also describes the relationship between a new work of literary art and its predecessors in his essay “Tradition and the Literary Talent” (1919). Eliot shows the necessary interaction between a new work and the context in which it appears. For him, the new work is accepted as literary because it fits into the context of which it is a part; in turn, because it is a literary work of

art, the new work changes readers’ understanding of the entire tradition by its refiguring of the whole context. Unlike Bloom’s esoteric description, Eliot’s understanding of the literary tradition adds a new component to the term tradition by showing that tradition itself is constantly changing and unstable. In other words, the “tradition” of literary tradition is the constant production of new works added to the canon. The critic must develop the wisdom to decide which new works of art deserve to move the tradition forward and which do not rise to that level. One question that Eliot’s essay raises is, of course, what is meant by a literary tradition. As we have seen, authors read earlier authors and derive inspiration and innovations from them. The rejection of both subject matter and form creates new subject matter and form for new audiences. The texts that make up this development are called a “tradition” as well. Thus, every linguistic group has some sort of literary tradition, whether oral or written, by which stories give meaning to experience. The particular groupings for literary traditions can be national (English, German, Chinese), formal (epic, tragic, comic, lyric, narrative, poetic, dramatic), or periodic (ancient, medieval, modern.) Within each of these groupings are particularities of form, language, subject matter, worldview, and so on, which identify the work as part of its “tradition” even though, as discussed above, each work will also be unique because of its rejection of some aspect of its tradition. The example of Virgil’s changing Homer is part of the classical tradition, which in turn forms the basis of Western literary tradition, but there are many more. In our global environment, the dynamic meaning of tradition is perhaps more important than ever, for authors writing in their national “traditions” are now borrowing from each other at a very rapid pace, producing a literary environment that in time may change our understanding of literature itself. For example, postcolonial literature borrows from European models but adds native experience and forms into that tradition; Salman Rushdie is perhaps the best-known writer in this tradition. See also Alexie, Sherman: Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistf ight in Heaven, The; Alvarez, Julie: How the García Girls Lost Their Accents;

violenceâ•…â•… 117 Aristophanes: Frogs, The; Browning, Robert: “My Last Duchess”; Dickens, Charles: Christmas Carol, A; Dreiser, Theodore: American Tragedy, A; DuBois, W. E. B.: Souls of Black Folk, The; Eliot, T. S.: Waste Land, The; Emerson, Ralph Waldo: “Divinity School Address, The”; Erdrich, Louise: Tracks; Euripides: Medea; Faulkner, William: Light in August; Sound and the Fury, The; Forster, E. M.: Room with a View, A; Jackson, Shirley: “Lottery, The”; Kingston, Maxine Hong: Woman Warrior, The; Momaday, N. Scott: House Made of Dawn; Way to Rainy Mountain, The; Naipaul, V. S.: House for Mr. Biswas, A; Reed, Ishmael: Mumbo Jumbo. FURTHER READING Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Booth, Wayne C. Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Eliot, T. S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Edited by Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer. New York: Longman, 1994, 27–33. Maritain, Jacques. Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953. Perl, Jeffrey M. The Tradition of Return: The Implicit History of Modern Literature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Lylas Rommel

violence

The term violence originates from the Latin violentia, meaning vehemence, which in turn implies an intense force. Etymologically, “violence” is akin to “violate” and thus is suggestive of damage and destruction that would characterize a violent storm or a traumatic experience such as rape, terrorism, or war. In its primary sense, therefore, violence denotes injury and also violation involving people or property. Though the concept of violence has always intrigued philosophers, psychologists, and literary artists, it is only in the 20th century that it has

gained currency in most cultural discourses. Perhaps this is owing to the exponential increase in the incidence of violence in the modern era, to the unprecedented carnage the world has witnessed in the course of the century, and to the emergence of crusaders of nonviolence such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond defining what violence is, social thinkers have lately turned their attention to its moral and cultural justifiability as a means to achieve personal, social, or political ends. While the concept of violence itself has undergone considerable philosophical analyses since ancient times, thus far there has been no consensus about its precise character. Simply put, violence is the overt physical manifestation of force on individuals, groups, or nations. Its definition, however, has been continually evolving with an increasing philosophical interest that goes beyond its overtly physical manifestations to more covert psychological and institutional practices. Broadly speaking, racism, sexism, economic exploitation, and ethnic and religious persecution are all possible sources of violence involving constraints that abuse people psychologically, if not physically. Philosophers also disagree on the moral and political justifiability of employing violence to achieve personal or social ends. While some thinkers view violence to be inherently wrong (e.g., murder), others defend it. The philosophical positions rationalizing violence tend to focus on ends that outweigh the evils of injury or violation involved. Conversely, proponents of nonviolence challenge the claims of advocates of violence, citing the misery and mayhem it brings about. Significant philosophical debates on violence include the French philosopher Georges Sorel’s Reflections on Violence (1908). In this text, Sorel worked with Karl Marx’s ideas on the proletariat, or the working class, and their ability to overthrow the middle class. By advocating violent general strikes, Sorel sought to inaugurate a class warfare against the state and capitalistic industrialists. The political theorist Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970) is another landmark treatise on 20th-century apologists for violence from a New Left perspective. Arendt concedes that violence can be justified only in defense against perceived threats to life, when it does not exceed necessity and its ends are patently

118â•…â•… violence positive. Drawing on notions of power developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault, Newton Garver’s essay “What Violence Is” (1975) includes covert, psychological, and institutional forms of violence in declaring, “Any institution which systematically robs certain people of rightful options generally available to others does violence to those people” (420). Despite his sympathies with nonviolence as a stance, Garver does not advocate it as a viable social goal and posits that conflicts between nations may be minimized but not always eliminated. Obviously, thinkers differ in their approach to defining violence and continue to examine its apocalyptic manifestation in contemporary times. The problem of violence has also been of considerable interest to psychologists. Sigmund Freud was the first to diagnose the origins of neurosis, including violent behavior in human subjects. According to Freudian psychoanalysis, repression of the instinctual id leads to the “psychopathology of everyday life,” which in turn makes violent behavior commonplace. Likewise, Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization (1955) combines Freudian and Marxist theories to undercut the cultural codes that overdetermine and repress human psychology and sexuality, resulting in deviant tendencies. Following the psychoanalytic paradigms of repression, the complexity of human violence has been studied by modern psychiatrists such as James Gilligan in Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic (1996). Asserting that “violence, like charity begins at home” (5), he demonstrates how home as a microcosm reflects the cultural and historic macrocosm in which violence thrives. While he celebrates civilization as the greatest blessing of humanity, Gilligan condemns its “tragic flaw—the violence it stimulates” (267). He attributes violence in humans to a life bereft of love, either from without (resulting in feelings of rejection) or from within (resulting in shame). Thus, both these deficiencies are an outcome of the patriarchal structure of civilization that assigns codified and often repressive roles to each of the sexes, reinforcing traditional ideas of honor and dishonor, pride and shame. For psychoanalysts from Freud to Gilligan, violence remains a disturbing subject whose origin as well as cure lies within the complex cultural network that fashions human subjects.

Owing to its omnipresence and the human mind’s obsession with it, violence has had ubiquitous representation, from cave paintings to the contemporary television drama The Sopranos. Beginning with epic narratives like The Mahabharata, the Homeric verses, and Beowulf (Anonymous), among others, literature has always attempted to represent violence as a trope for relationships of power and domination. In many respects, Western literature, ranging from Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (429 b.c.), the biblical stories of Cain and Abel, Dante’s Inferno (14th century), William Shakespeare’s King Lear (1608), and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), seeks to define itself by the tragedy arising from human violence. For most 20th-century artists, violence, ranging from the destruction of large-scale warfare to individual crimes of murder, rape, and abuse, is an inevitable aspect of their visions. Unable to accept a fallen world, modernist writers often employ destructive violence as the central motif in their works. For instance, the poetry of Sylvia Plath and John Wain attempts to discern the sources and effects of modern violence culminating in anger, frustration, despair, and even suicide. For some modern poets, however, violence has provided an ironic source of creativity and change, a view articulated by William Butler Yeats in poems like “The Second Coming” and “Easter 1916.” Critics generally attribute the predominance of violence in modern literature to both its sensational appeal and its potential to shock readers, leading them to question their beliefs. Critics also emphasize the historical significance of violence in the period following World War II, when poets and novelists bemoaned a world mired in conflict, and in which aggression threatened to destroy all humane qualities. The Holocaust has been a common subject with American literary artists ranging from Sylvia Plath to Saul Bellow. Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl (1947) is a significant Holocaust document on the experiences of a war victim during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. Other postwar novels, such as George Orwell’s dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) condemn totalitarianism in an essentially meaningless world. Likewise, Kurt Vonnegut’s deeply pessimistic vision pervades his novels, including Player Piano

violenceâ•…â•… 119 (1952) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), which portray the violent decay of the modern world. Racial violence is apparent in novels like Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970). The universality of women’s experience of sexual violence has provided grounds for feminist contributions from writers such as Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates. With the close of the 20th century, imagistic representation of violence in all forms of media has become commonplace. Films, television, art, and print media are saturated with images of familial violence involving women and children; issues of community violence directed toward ethnic and minority groups; the practice of institutional violence in workplace, schools, hospitals, police and law enforcement agencies; and incidents of state violence, such as the repression and surveillance practices after the September 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center in the United States, the legitimation of violence through state support witnessed in the communal riots in Gujarat, and the Nandigram massacre in West Bengal, India. Though the media plays an active role in recording, portraying, disseminating, and reflecting on violence, its methods and intentions are often suspect because the politics influencing it may engender newer forms of violence. Plagued by violence, the contemporary era views nonviolence as a redeeming idea and the need of the hour. Though the history of nonviolence as a religious or philosophical doctrine has been traced as far back as the Chandogya Upanishad of ancient Hinduism, the Chinese Tao Te Ching, the Bible, and the early Christian prophets, the dramatic advent of nonviolence as a favored alternative position occurred in the recent past with Mohandas Gandhi’s “Satyagraha” campaigns for India’s independence in the 1920s, and the struggle for racial justice in the United States during the 1960s. Contemporary discourses on nonviolence not only advocate traditional ideals such as love and tolerance to protect both human and animal rights; they also focus, paradoxically, on the use of violence to achieve peace through enforcement and prosecution. Besides, the modern practitioners of nonviolence seek to strengthen the role of nongovernmental organizations that pro-

mote education to prevent violence. Significantly, pacifist propaganda, too, is embedded in the matrix of human civilization and continues to be a cause worth fighting for in a world with ever-escalating incidences of violence. See also Albee, Edward: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?; Bambara, Toni Cade: Salt Eaters, The; Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness; Dickens, Charles: Tale of Two Cities, A; Grass, Günter: Tim Drum, The; Hesse, Herman: Steppenwolf; Jackson, Shirley: “Lottery, The”; Jacobs, Harriet: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself; Knowles, John: Separate Peace, A; Kozinski, Jerzy: Painted Bird, The; Melville, Herman: Billy Budd, Sailor; Morrison, Toni: Song of Solomon; O’Connor, Flannery: “Good Man Is Hard to Find, A”; Pope, Alexander: Rape of the Lock, The; Roth, Philip: American Pastoral; Shakespeare, William: Hamlet; Henry IV, Part I; Twain, Mark: Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A; Walker, Alice: Color Purple, The; Williams, Tennessee: Streetcar Named Desire, A. FURTHER READING Arendt, Hannah. On Violence. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Freud, Sigmund. Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Classics in the History of Psychology. Available online. URL: http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Freud/ Psycho/. Accessed March 17, 2010. Garver, Newton. “What Violence Is.” In Today’s Moral Problems, edited by R. Wasserstrom, New York: Macmillan, 1975. Gilligan, James. Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. New York: Vintage Books, 1996. Marcuse, Herbert. Eros and Civilization. New York: Vintage Books, 1955. Miller, William Robert. Nonviolence: A Christian Interpretation. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964. Sorel, Georges. Reflections on Violence. Translated by T. E. Hulme and J. Roth. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950.

Srirupa Chatterjee

120â•…â•… work

work

The concept of work is notoriously difficult to define. The payment of wages cannot be the sole criterion in determining whether an action counts as work, since men and women throughout history have often labored without compensation. The physical efforts expended by a slave in ancient Greece, for example, or by a homemaker today certainly qualify as work even though neither worker would be paid. Additionally, an individual can undertake many demanding tasks with little or no hope of payment: A would-be writer might spend weekends working diligently on his novel, while a hobbyist could spend evenings in her workshop making furniture that only her family will use. These examples might suggest that physical or mental exertion in pursuit of a goal, whether paid or not, is sufficient to qualify an activity as work. But not all purposeful action—exercise and recreational sports, for example—is considered work. While it is true that we call vigorous exercise a “workout,” a sense of fairness suggests that there is an essential difference between lifting weights in a gym and loading boxes onto the back of a truck. Many people detest work and avoid it whenever possible, but these subjective attitudes are useless in forming a definition (such as “work is activity we find unpleasant”) since just as many people find pleasure in their work; “workaholics,” in fact, find labor more attractive than leisure. Keith Thomas, editor of The Oxford Book of Work, provides a definition that, while necessarily limited, covers many activities that we recognize as work: “Work has an end beyond itself, being designed to produce or achieve something; it involves a degree of obligation or necessity, being a task that others set us or that we set ourselves; and it is arduous, involving effort and persistence beyond the point at which the task ceases to be wholly pleasurable” (xiv). We might abbreviate this definition to say that work is productive, necessary, and difficult. Work, so broadly defined, has long been a theme in literature, but rarely is it the main theme of literature written before the 18th century. The work done by soldiers—who labor to achieve victory or exact revenge, engage their tasks under obligation, and persist under the most unpleasant conditions—is one of the subjects of both Homer’s The Iliad and Virgil’s The Aeneid. Mythical heroes frequently

endure difficult tasks: Hercules accomplishes 12 labors to atone for killing his children and later joins Jason in his arduous search for the golden fleece. These battles, punishments, and quests, however, differ from what we normally consider work, such as toiling in fields and households. Ancient writers, like their counterparts in philosophy, would have considered such manual laborers unworthy of serious attention. In fact, the negative attitude toward manual labor is echoed in Genesis 3:16–19, where hard work is depicted as punishment for humanity’s sinfulness in the Garden. Adam’s transgression earned men a lifetime of “painful toil,” while Eve’s earned women “pains in childbearing.” After the Fall, humanity would survive only through very hard labor. When laborers do show up in classical literature, they are often little more than stock characters, such as shepherds, used to idealize rural life, a literary custom continued in medieval literature, where workers serve primarily as allegorical symbols meant to encourage humility, patience and devotion to Christian principles. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Plowman, “a true worker .╯.╯. living in peace and perfect charity,” exemplifies that tradition, but unlike his predecessors and many of his contemporaries, Chaucer describes his working characters in highly realistic terms. His company of pilgrims, all of them identified by their occupations (even the Wife is a professional of sorts), are drawn in exquisite and differentiating detail. With Chaucer, workers in literature have faces and personalities. Although the tales’ prologue includes a number of themes regarding work (our words should be matched by our actions; the most honorable labor is done in the service of humanity), the poem is not about work. Work as a central subject in literature was still very rare at this time, and while writers after Chaucer were more inclined to portray workers as individuals rather than as symbols, the portraits were often dismissive and unflattering. Writers, who tended to come from the educated and moneyed classes, seldom looked with much empathy on manual laborers. In the 18th and 19th centuries, writers in England and America begin to devote more attention to the lives and experience of workers (maids, shep-

workâ•…â•… 121 herds, stable hands, miners, factory workers, and so on). One cause for the foregrounding of work is a change in attitude toward the nature and value of work, which came to be seen as both a blessing and a curse. For perhaps the most prominent philosopher on labor, Karl Marx, work could be a liberating activity. Freely chosen productive labor would lead to self-realization and fulfillment for both the individual worker and the laboring community. A farmer’s well-tended fields reflected his discipline and knowledge, and in working those fields, the farmer might feel a sense of connectedness to the land and a sense of purpose in providing food for his family and neighbors. People who worked the land collectively would also see their social cooperation mirrored in the results of their work. This concept of self-realization was important for Marx primarily in how it is violated in work that is not freely chosen, especially in work done under capitalism, in which self-realization and fulfillment are replaced by what Marx termed alienation. Alienation is especially evident when human beings are forced to sell the only thing they own— their labor—in a system imposed upon them by those who own the means of production (land, factories, machinery, etc.). A migrant worker on a huge corporate farm hardly sees her best qualities reflected in the backbreaking, miserable, monotonous work she does; she may be scorched by the sun, exhausted by the pace and physical movement, unable to talk to her fellow workers during her shift, and paid so little that even the crop she picks would be a luxury. In Marx’s terms, she is alienated from nature, her community, the product of her labor, and especially from herself. Her work satisfies no intrinsic need or desire; she works only to satisfy other needs. In contemporary terms, she might say of her work, “This is not who I am.” It is easy to see how a production-line worker or anyone toiling for low wages in a dangerous, tedious job may be considered alienated from himself, but even an office worker suffering through a dehumanizing job that strips him of his identity and makes him feel out of sorts can be considered a member of Marx’s exploited, alienated class. These two concepts—the blessings of work as a path toward self-realization and the curse of toiling

in an exploitative system—provide the themes for many works of literature written in the mid-19th century and later. Whether a work of literature includes only passing mention of workers and the laboring life or takes work as its central topic and theme, it might examine any number of specific concepts: the struggles of immigrant, African-American, and female workers; the dangers of manual labor and the effects of work on the bodies and psyches of laborers; the way in which work infiltrates and affects domestic life and leisure; the ethical and moral issues associated with slavery and with other forced labor; the camaraderie and interdependence in the working community; the struggle to unionize and the battle between collective and individual values; the personal and psychological rewards of freely chosen labor; and the degree to which a worker is alienated from himself, his work, his community, and the natural world. And while some popular literature, treating useful toil as empowering, preaches a gospel of self-improvement and celebrates the work ethic of committed laborers, much serious literature centers on the exploited worker and the miserable conditions endured by individual workers and by the working class. The so-called industrial novel, a genre that includes works by Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South) and Charles Dickens, depicts the harsh conditions endured by factory workers in Victorian England. Thomas Hardy reveals in Jude the Obscure the many forces that appear to be allied against members of the working class. Poverty and exploitation among workers has drawn the attention of numerous American writers, including Herman Melville; Walt Whitman; Rebecca Harding Davis (Life in the Iron Mills); and, perhaps most famously, Upton Sinclair, whose The Jungle exposed the poverty, injustice, and unsanitary conditions of life in the slaughterhouses of Chicago. The “proletarian novel” of the 1930s in America promoted Marx’s notion that only a socialist revolution could bring about a system conducive to selfactualizing labor, while John Dos Passos (U.S.A. trilogy) saw nothing to be gained under socialism, a system as destructive of individual identity as capitalism. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck strikes a few astounding notes of hopefulness

122â•…â•… work that result from collective values and individual resilience. And without overlooking the profound damage done by Willy Loman’s personal lapses in judgment and morals, readers of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman cannot help recognizing that his status as a lowly worker in a coldhearted alienating business has contributed greatly to his downfall. Although few writers today take work as the main setting or plot of their stories, the theme has by no means disappeared from literature. In addition, scholars interested in cultural studies, labor studies, and feminist theory have in the past few decades unearthed the literary accomplishments of many laborers whose poems, songs, stories, and essays provide an insider’s look at the world of work. And the plight of the struggling employee continues to be told, often very comically, in film and television. See also Amis, Kingsley: Lucky Jim; Chekhov, Anton: Seagull, The; Dickens, Charles: Oliver Twist; Emerson, Ralph Waldo: “SelfReliance”; Frost, Robert: poems; Gaines,

Ernest J.: Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The; Haley, Alex, and Malcolm X: Autobiography of Malcolm X, The; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Birth-mark, The”; McCullers, Carson: Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The; Melville, Herman: Billy Budd, Sailor; Orwell, George: Animal Farm; Solzhenitsyn, Alexander: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Thoreau, Henry David: Walden; Washington, Booker T.: Up from Slavery; Whitman, Walt: Leaves of Grass. FURTHER READING Hapke, Laura. Labor’s Text: The Worker in American Fiction. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Marx, Karl. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto. New York: Prometheus Books, 1988. Thomas, Keith, ed. The Oxford Book of Work. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

James Wallace

part ii

Authors and Works A–E `

ACHEBE, CHINUAâ•… Anthills of the Savannahâ•… (1987)

different forms, but he also holds out the possibility of an alternative, more inclusive and hopeful vision. Kerry Vincent

The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, is considered by many to be the prototype for modern African literature. In June 2007, his monumental standing in the world of African letters was recognized when he was awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction. Many of the themes introduced in that novel, such as colonialism, language, the clash between tradition and modernity, various forms of inequality and corruption, and the abuse of power are important issues that Achebe (b. 1930) has continued to develop and probe in his other novels, including his last to date, Anthills of the Savannah. His belief that the primary responsibility of the African writer should be to educate the people is clearly evident in the way in which he portrays social injustice in many of its manifestations. In Anthills of the Savannah, Achebe takes aim at a corrupt postcolonial African regime and shows how government self-interest and power politics isolate those who should be working on behalf of the people. This corruption, the novel demonstrates, spreads and repeats itself in various ways throughout society in forms such as the wide gulf between the rich and the poor or the educated and the illiterate, and between males and females. In the novel, Achebe scrutinizes unequal power relations as they are practiced in their

Gender in Anthills of the Savannah

The opening chapters of Anthills of the Savannah introduce readers to a country that is shaped and defined by male power politics. By the novel’s closing chapter, however, these aggressive and cynical male voices have given way to the inclusive and reconciliatory voices of female characters. This shift in emphasis reflects a key recognition in the novel of the need to reconfigure assumptions of male domination that are deeply embedded in this traditionally patriarchal society. Achebe conveys this need for more equitable gender relations particularly through the gradual development of Ikem, a key male character, and through the presence of Beatrice, an equally important female character. During a conversation with Chris, in which he is attempting to explain his relationship with Sam and Ikem, Beatrice interrupts him to exclaim, “Well, you fellows, all three of you, are incredibly conceited. The story of this country, as far as you are concerned, is the story of the three of you .╯.╯.” This “story,” of course, is exclusively male and singularly elitist, and it is one that Achebe examines during the course of the novel. The correlation of institutional power with male dominance is perhaps best articulated

123

124â•…â•… Achebe, Chinua through Sam’s derisive and indulgent quip, “African Chiefs are always polygamists.╯.╯.╯. Polygamy is for Africa what monotony is for Europe.” Sam’s remark reflects a complacent chauvinism. Other male figures besides the politically and morally corrupt character of Sam make equally patronizing and sexist remarks, and these are intensified by the more vicious physical violence toward women encountered with the attempted rape of a young woman by a police sergeant near the end of the novel and Beatrice’s remembering that when she was growing up, her mother was very often beaten by her father. Even the worldly Ikem is associated with various forms of female abuse, until he gradually gains insight into his biased assumptions. His detached interest in the violent beatings of a wife in a neighboring flat, or his own devaluation of women as only being useful as, in Beatrice’s words, “comforters,” mark Ikem as a product of a deeply embedded masculinist world view. With Beatrice’s guidance, however, he slowly comes to apprehend that women are “the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world .╯.╯. and the oldest,” who also have a potentially pivotal role to play in society. While Ikem’s girlfriend, Elewa, plays an important role in changing his attitude toward women, Beatrice acts as the catalyst for his dawning awareness. The tenuous status of females in this society is emphasized by one of the birth names she is given: Nwanyibuife, or, “A female is also something.” Despite growing up in a rigid patriarchal household where females were considered secondary (as her other name suggests), Beatrice manages to obtain a university education and fairly prominent social status with a mid-level government job, and throughout the novel her voice insists on the recognition of women as being equal to men. Through Beatrice, Achebe also draws a link between the traditional and the modern in order to suggest that the high esteem with which some females were held in the past has largely been forgotten in the present because of a male desire for power. Beatrice is repeatedly referred to as a prophetess and associated with Idemili, a powerful female goddess—if not displacing, then certainly disrupting the primacy of the male characters.

Beatrice’s ceremonial role carries into the present in the novel’s final chapter as she presides over the naming of Elewa’s new baby girl. In the absence of a male figure to conduct the ceremony, Beatrice improvises and leads a new ritual, and the female infant is given the name Amaechina, conventionally a boy’s name meaning “May-the-path-never-close,” and in direct contrast to the demeaning Nwanyibuife (“A female is also something”). This disregard for gender-specific names and for the customary forms of the ritual during the novel’s closing moments signals the possibility for a reshaping of traditional perceptions of gender roles that have ossified and been carried forward into the modern world. While it might be argued that Achebe idealizes the character of Beatrice, he does manage, nonetheless, to depict a female character who demands to be heard. As a result, the novel goes further than simply depicting gender conflict; it also attempts to offer a tentative alternative vision of a more equal society. Kerry Vincent

Oppression in Anthills of the Savannah

Almost midway through Anthills of the Savannah, Ikem Osiri exclaims that his friend Beatrice has forced him to think about “the nature of oppression—how flexible it must learn to be, how many faces it must learn to wear if it is to succeed again and again.” The many faces of oppression is a key theme in Achebe’s novel, which follows the rise and fall of a dictator in the fictional African country of Kangan, and references to separate coups (short for coup d’état, meaning the often violent overthrow of a government) near the novel’s opening and conclusion warn of its potential to resurface. Whereas the first coup brings His Excellency, Sam, to power, the second one brings about his death. In between, Sam’s two old friends, Ikem Osiri and Christopher Oriko, witness and become victims of Sam’s degeneration from a relatively well-meaning military officer to a dictator who will go to any lengths to realize his obsession with becoming president for life. Sam’s rebuke to Chris at the opening of the novel—“But me no buts, Mr Oriko!”—immediately reveals much about his character. While its unintentionally humorous clumsiness reflects something of Sam’s endearing lack of sophistication, its

Anthills of the Savannahâ•…â•… 125 impatient aggression marks someone who will allow no contradictions and tolerate no alternatives, nor accept any conditions that might seem to threaten his authority. His refusal to take counsel is further reinforced on the same page with his declaration, “Kabisa!,” a Swahili word that Achebe translates into English as “Finished.” As a result of Sam’s lack of political experience, the dubious means by which he has attained power, and the false adulation poured on him by sycophantic advisers, personal insecurities drive him to imagine subversive plots are being hatched against him. Sam’s paranoia leads him to curtail the freedom of the press by placing both the print and electronic media under government censorship and control, and to appoint a director of a secret police force (euphemistically called the Directorate of State Research) that restricts individual and community voices. For example, Sam forces Chris, his commissioner for information, to muzzle the dissenting views expressed by Ikem, the editor of the National Gazette. Following a speech that Ikem makes to students at the university, the government-controlled radio announces a series of manufactured charges against him and later describes his subsequent death while supposedly resisting arrest. After his own attempt to reason with Sam, Chris is perceived as a threat and is forced to go into hiding as the police hunt for him throughout the city. Eventually, he secretly flees the city, heading for the northern provinces by bus. Meanwhile, the legitimate concerns of a delegation from the drought-stricken northern Abazon Province are brushed aside as Sam refuses to meet with them, and he eventually has them placed in detention for supposedly plotting against the government. As the state-controlled oppression of individuals and groups accelerates, Sam’s physical presence recedes, suggesting just how out of touch he is and how much he has isolated himself from the people of Kangan. He last appears in chapter 11, the same chapter that concludes with a description of the arrest and, it is implied, torture, of the Abazon delegation. Sam’s physical absence from the scene reflects the need to speak out against oppression. Besides the dominant forms of oppression practiced by a dictatorial military government, Achebe

also introduces the equally destructive abuses of power caused by males against females, and by the privileged, educated classes against the less educated working classes. During the course of the novel, Chris and Ikem move from differing degrees of isolation—Chris has a “detached clinical interest” in the workings of the state, while Ikem confesses to finding a neighbor’s brutal beatings of his wife “satisfyingly cathartic”—to a greater awareness, sympathy, and even admiration for the oppressed. At one point in the novel, a creation myth is described in which Idemili, the daughter of the Almighty, is sent “to bear witness to the moral nature of authority by wrapping around Power’s rude waist a loincloth of peace and modesty.” In Anthills of the Savannah, Achebe not only presents a biting critique of power in its various forms and its capacity to abuse and oppress individuals, groups, and nations; he also reminds us of the urgent need to bear witness to its existence and act against it, if freedom from oppression is to be achieved. Kerry Vincent

Social Class in Anthills of the Savannah

In his first novel, Things Fall Apart, Achebe includes many proverbs, folktales, and rituals in order to reinforce his depiction of a rich and ancient traditional African society. He continues this practice in Anthills of the Savannah but incorporates a much wider variety of texts and registers, as a means of projecting his ideal vision of an inclusive and equitable postcolonial society that recognizes and acknowledges the legitimacy of diverse voices from different social classes, and not just those of a primarily male elite. As Chris, Ikem, and Beatrice are increasingly alienated from Sam’s manic exercise of power, they gradually become more attuned to the voices of the less privileged peasants and workers. The catalyst for the sequence of events that lead to Sam’s defeat and the deaths of Ikem and Chris is the visit by the delegation from Abazon, which very early in the novel highlights such oppositions as rural-urban, uneducated-educated, poor-rich, and traditional-modern. More than anyone, Ikem appreciates the integrity of this peasant class, even as he puzzles over how their values can be adapted to the modern world.

126â•…â•… Achebe, Chinua Ikem conveys his recognition of the disparity between social classes during a speech at the university that he entitles “↜‘The Tortoise and the Leopard—a political meditation on the imperative of struggle.’↜” This traditional story, first told to Ikem by the chief of the Abazon delegation, emphasizes the importance of resistance and of leaving a mark to act as inspiration for those who follow. Ikem, then, draws on and updates traditional folk wisdom to address an urban student body and challenge them to acknowledge his earlier insight that “It is the failure of our rulers to re-establish vital inner links with the poor and dispossessed of this country, with the bruised heart that throbs painfully at the core of the nation’s being.” Ikem’s challenge represents a culmination of his own recent awareness of the distance between the educated elite and the working poor and the peasants. His initial complacent belief in a kind of solidarity with the underclass is humorously enacted when he finds himself locked in a battle against a determined taxi driver during a traffic jam. Ikem wins the contest because he is not afraid to damage his already beaten-up car, but he subsequently comes to realize how petty his victory was when the taxi driver later finds him and apologizes for daring to challenge such an eminent figure. During their meeting, conducted in the largely working-class language of pidgin English, Ikem feels exhilaration over “this rare human contact across station and class,” but he wonders, nonetheless, about the huge divide between the privileged and the poor. A taxi driver also figures in Chris’s forced plunge into the world of the lower classes, a transformation that is realistically and figuratively conveyed by the worker’s clothing that he puts on as a disguise to help him negotiate roadblocks set up throughout the city. Chris also realizes that his own educated speech is now a liability, and his switch to pidgin reinforces his immersion in a class that he had previously taken for granted. He is only saved from detection by his taxi driver’s interventions, and once out of danger he announces, “To succeed as small man no be small thing.” Beatrice, too, learns some humility during the hunt for Chris, to the point where she is even able to recognize something of the unhappiness of Agatha,

her domestic worker, and to break down the rigid employer-employee relationship with the simple words, “I am sorry Agatha.” She is further humbled after recognizing the sacrifices made by a very poor family to shelter and protect Chris. Her concern for Chris and desire to be with him comes at the expense of the family’s own privacy, and her awareness of their generosity is partly what allows her to reassess her relationship with Agatha and recognize “the absurd raffle-draw that apportioned the destinies of post-colonial African societies.” In the novel’s final pages, Beatrice decodes Chris’s dying words, “The last green,” which alludes to just how tentative the assumed heights of the powerful elite really are, and she concludes, “This world belongs to the people of the world not to any little caucus, no matter how talented.” In light of Achebe’s scathing critique of the powerful, educated elite, it is certainly appropriate that he chooses to use pidgin English and give the novel’s final supportive and comforting words to the half-literate salesgirl, Elewa. Kerry Vincent

ACHEBE, CHINUAâ•… Things Fall Apartâ•… (1958)

In 1958, Chinua Achebe published Things Fall Apart, which depicts the tragic downfall of a strong African clansman faced with the budding presence of colonialism. Okonkwo, Achebe’s central character, represents a man tied to his clan’s culture; moreover, Okonkwo represents the essence of male vigor within the tribe as he strives to lead the clan with strength and stoicism, persistently avoiding the appearance of weakness. Yet Okonkwo’s strength falters under the weight of an ever-changing Africa when his family and his clan encounter a new way of living through the white man’s Christian religion. The first part of the novel centers on Okonkwo, his family, and the rituals of his tribe. Achebe depicts how Okonkwo’s relationships with his father, Unoka; his son, Nwoye; his daughter, Enzima; and Ikemefuna, a boy who calls Okonkwo father, all define Okonkwo’s identity. Despite his trials in the beginning of the novel, including his exile from the clan, the true test of Okonkwo’s strength comes

Things Fall Apartâ•…â•… 127 with the entrance of Mr. Brown, Reverend Smith, and the other white characters. As Christianity begins to spread through the clan, Okonkwo’s eldest son becomes a missionary, conflict arises between the clan and the government of the colonists, and Okonkwo’s desire to lead the clan results in violence as he kills a white man. Yet the tribe does not partake in his violence, and Okonkwo reacts by taking his own life. His tragic story probes into themes of heroism’s validity, the solidity of tradition, and the relationship between an individual and a society in flux. Lindsay Cobb

Heroism in Things Fall Apart

In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe immediately asserts the main character Okonkwo’s status as a heroic figure. Okonkwo’s position as a pillar of strength throughout nine villages and “even beyond” solidifies his laudable identity. However, it is Okonkwo, more than any other character, who aims for self-definition as a hero—a hero defined by personal triumphs and masculinity. This definition problematizes the theme of heroism because Okonkwo’s definition of a hero lacks the substance to prevail in Achebe’s work. In fact, Okonkwo’s pursuit to attain extraordinary status as the leader of a healthy tribe occurs alongside the tribe’s own attempt to retain its strength against the threat of the white man’s government and religion. Okonkwo, indeed, represents the human embodiment of the failing strength of his tribe, Umuofia. As tensions between Umuofia and the white man’s society test Okonkwo’s greatness, his fear of failure and desire to succeed supersede his ability to thrive as a hero. Moreover, Okonkwo’s need to prove his masculinity serves as a catalyst to his inability to understand not only the world of the white man but the needs of his own tribe, thus resulting in his loss of heroism. Okonkwo’s definition of heroism exists primarily as an exact opposite to his father, Unoka. During his childhood, Okonkwo felt shame over his father’s status as an agbala, a term meaning both “woman” and “man without titles.” Okonkwo, as a result of his father’s idleness and gentleness, did not enter the world with prosperity; he had neither a barn nor a wife to inherit. Thus, even at a young age, he

endeavored to build a prosperous future—to achieve a heroic life—by representing everything his father did not. He therefore valued emotional strength and physical strength above all else, and he ruled his lands, wives, and children with a heavy hand. Yet this strength overextends into brutality when Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna, a boy who calls him father—an action that begins to damage Okonkwo’s heroic identity. Ikemefuna came under Okonkwo’s care after Umuofia helped make a settlement with a neighboring tribe, and his presence brought a subtle shift in Okonkwo’s house. Despite the fact that Okonkwo did not show Ikemefuna any outward affection, for to him such affection would denote weakness, he develops great affection for the boy. Nevertheless, when the tribe decides that Ikemefuna must die after three years, Okonkwo’s hardness overshadows his ability to gently love a new son. In order to not seem weak in front of his peers, he kills the boy with his own hand. After Okonkwo’s decision to kill Ikemefuna, his status as the tribe’s hero seems to crumble. First, his close friend Obierika bemoans his action; then, at a tribal meeting, Okonkwo accidentally kills a 16-year-old boy, and for atonement he must leave the clan for seven years. This series of events eventually exposes the message Achebe folds into the relationships between fathers and sons—a message concerning heroism. Okonkwo’s great flaw, then, derives from his obdurate passion for strength and thus heroism. His zeal stems from his own disappointment in his father; moreover, this fervor damages his relationship with, first, his eldest son, Nyowe, and then his own clan. After Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna, Nyowe questions the clan’s practices, and his doubts fuel his decision to follow the new Christian religion. Nyowe’s departure from the clan marks an irrevocable gap between Nyowe and his father. When Okonkwo notices Nyowe’s growing interest in the Christian faith, he reprimands his son through violence and threatens to kill him. Though Okonkwo does not kill Nyowe, this exchange leads to Nwoye’s permanent departure and Okonkwo’s own perception of his son as degenerate and effeminate. He extends this perception to his own tribe when he feels that they will not stand up against the ever-growing presence

128â•…â•… Achebe, Chinua of the white man and his religion. This view eventually results in Okonkwo’s separation from the tribe when he kills a court messenger, thus choosing to act alone—to act with his definition of heroism, rather than the clan’s. Yet this act does not result in heroic triumph, and Okonkwo realizes that his reliance on strength and manliness has overreached the best of his intentions. Thus, as he chooses to kill himself, he dies a death which his clansmen cannot sanctify, alone and unheralded like his father, and he loses his potential to be remembered as a hero of Umuofia. Lindsay Cobb

Individual and Society in Things Fall Apart

From the initial pages of his novel Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe makes it clear that the main character, Okonkwo, represents an individual deeply aligned with his society. Okonkwo’s strength and presumed heroism within the novel derive from his ability to fully accept the clan’s culture and follow faithfully in its traditions. Yet as his society begins to change with the expansion of colonialism in Africa, Okonkwo’s relationship with his society begins to evolve—and eventually fall apart. Achebe’s novel investigates the complex relationship between an individual and his or her society; moreover, it reveals the damaging strains this relationship undergoes when faced with drastic and inevitable changes. Part 1 and part 2 of the novel define Okonkwo as a follower of his clan, Umuofia. Regardless of the painful actions the traditions of the clan require of him, he never wavers in his devotion. In spite of his high regard for Ikemefuna, a young boy sent to live with his family after a clan dispute, he accepts Umuofia’s declaration that Ikemefuna—who calls him father—must die. Later, after he accidentally murders a member of the clan, Okonkwo dutifully allows Umuofia to burn his home, and he leaves for a seven-year exile in his motherland. Nevertheless, signs of his fierce independence pepper the story. He does not dispute the clan’s decision to kill Ikemefuna, but he goes so far as to kill the boy himself to show his own strength as a clansman. Here, then, Okonkwo tries to set himself apart from the clan as an individual member. His endeavor to prove himself as Umuofia’s strongest member shows itself dis-

tinctly in this moment, and it is this endeavor that contributes to his tragic separation from the clan. As the violence mounts between the colonists and Umuofia in part 3, Okonkwo’s frustration with the clan’s lack of action increases. He does not understand why Umuofia does not act aggressively against the changes the colonists wish to impose on their society. Moreover, he wishes the clan to remain dedicated to its traditions and not bend to the potential of change. Thus, he comes to the novel’s final clan meeting with the goal of convincing Umuofia to fight back against the colonists. He declares to his friend Obierika that if the clan does not fight, he will fight alone—and he does. Yet after he kills one of the colonists and realizes that the clan will not follow his actions, Okonkwo forsakes his society and chooses to commit suicide. Though he had chosen to act alone, he cannot stand to live alone—apart from his clan. Umuofia, however, cannot honor his death because suicide represents an abomination and a sin against the gods. Thus, not only does Okonkwo choose to act independently of his society, his society—his clan—must spurn him as well. In this moment, Okonkwo represents an individual deeply disconnected from his society. Yet Achebe does not conclude the novel with Okonkwo’s death. In the closing paragraph, the narrator explains that the commissioner of the colonists plans to write a book entitled The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. He first considers writing a chapter concerning Okonkwo, but then he determines that a “reasonable” paragraph will suffice in order to tell Okonkwo’s story, which he witnessed firsthand. Achebe’s choice to end the novel with this information further complicates the relationship between an individual and society in a land beset with change, because this revelation starkly contrasts with Okonkwo’s decision to end his own life. Thus, the novel—which Achebe devotes primarily to the story of Okonkwo—may, in the hands of the colonizers, find itself reduced to one paragraph in the midst of many. Okonkwo loses his individuality and, despite his lifelong dedication to strength and thus fame, becomes a mere paragraph among others in his evolving society. While the commissioner decides to group Okonkwo deep within a community of stories, Okonkwo’s purely individual decisions lead

Things Fall Apartâ•…â•… 129 to his tragic death. The novel’s conclusion, therefore, represents an ironic truth concerning Okonkwo’s existence: Though he died putting his individual decisions above those of his community, the commissioner refuses to see his individuality as worthy of an entire novel or even a chapter—just a paragraph. Lindsay Cobb

Tradition in Things Fall Apart

In his novel Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe tragically illustrates the collision between tradition and change through the story of Okonkwo. Achebe’s main character represents a man devoted to his culture’s tradition. Yet his devotion does not yield to change, and he ultimately succumbs to his own unwillingness to accept the changes his clan faces with the arrival of the white man and Christianity. Achebe further complicates the novel’s perceptions of change and tradition by including characters that mirror and oppose Okonkwo’s attitude, such as Mr. Smith, whose own devotion to his culture exacerbates the hostile situation between the Christians and the clan leaders, including Mr. Brown and Akunna, who show the promise of respectfully discussing each culture’s varying traditions in a move toward peaceful change; and Obierika and Nwoye, who demonstrate the ability to question traditional customs. Achebe first asserts the dominance of tradition in the clan, Umuofia, by showing how steeped in convention Okonkwo and his family remain. The clan values strength; therefore, Okonkwo becomes the strongest. The clan values manliness; therefore, Okonkwo shuns all effeminate behavior. When the clan’s oracle declares that Ikemefuna, a boy who lived in Okonkwo’s home for years like a son, must die, Okonkwo follows dutifully and even uses his own hand to kill Ikemefuna in order to show his strength and dedication to the clan’s mores. Yet with the death of Ikemefuna also comes the first signs of doubt in Okonkwo’s eldest son, Nwoye. The narrator reveals Nyowe’s doubts following his realization that Ikemefuna—whom he thinks of as a brother— has died according to the traditions of the clan. Nwoye feels something snap within him and doubts the justice of this action. This revelation, then, marks the first example of a clansman questioning the long-held traditions of Umuofia.

Another example of questioning occurs after Okonkwo accidentally shoots a member of the clan and thus must leave the clan and go into exile for seven years; according to custom, after he leaves, other clansmen must destroy his homes, land, and animals. In this moment, Okonkwo follows dutifully without questioning the clan’s ways. However, Obierika, Okonkwo’s closest friend and a respected member of the clan, has a head full of questions as he completes these traditional duties. Obierika’s questions probe the logic and justice of the clan’s traditions; more important, his questions end the first section of Achebe’s novel. These are the final thoughts before the white man and Christianity enter both the novel and Umuofia’s culture. As stories of violence become more prominent in the region, and as Okonkwo’s own son, Nwoye, chooses to follow the Christian missionaries, tensions mount irrevocably between the ever-growing Christian population and the traditional clans. Nevertheless, though the Christians represent change to the clansmen, Achebe also illustrates their own devotion to tradition through the figure of Reverend Smith, the missionaries’ second leader. The narrator describes Smith as a man who only sees the world in black and white, and his actions reflect his unwavering belief in the ways of his own culture and religion. Mr. Smith, much like Okonkwo, refuses to see value in other cultures, other traditions. Both Okonkwo and Mr. Smith starkly contrast the actions of Mr. Brown, the missionaries’ first leader, and Akunna, a great man in one of Umuofia’s neighboring villages. Mr. Brown and Akunna spend hours respectfully discussing their respective religions, and though neither of them convert to a new religion, both men begin to develop a sense of understanding for the other’s beliefs. Okonkwo and Mr. Smith, however, never develop a sense of understanding, and neither man allows his traditional belief system to change. Moreover, both Mr. Smith and then Okonkwo react to the potential of change with violence. Okonkwo’s ultimate demise occurs when he is so overwrought with aggression and violence that he slays a court messenger in order to protect Umuofia’s sanctity. When he realizes that his clansmen will not follow in violence, Okonkwo decides to take his own life

130â•…â•… Adams, Henry rather than face the changes his clan will inevitably undergo. Therefore, his obstinate devotion to tradition leads to his shameful death. Perhaps, then, the best solution Achebe includes in the novel comes through the quiet discussions between Mr. Brown and Akunna—two men who do not act in violence or hatred in order to guard their respective traditions, but instead strive to understand. Lindsay Cobb

ADAMS, HENRYâ•… The Education of Henry Adamsâ•… (1907)

The Education of Henry Adams, first published privately in 1907, remains Henry Adams’s best-known work and one of the greatest autobiographies ever written. In it, Adams (1838–1918) tells of his own life in the third person, covering the period of his early childhood to his later life. The Education, richly filled with symbolism, contains his systematic view of history as a force of progress. The main character of the Education is Adams, narrated in the third person by the author, born into the great Adams family (the same family that produced the U.S. presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams) in the early 19th century. As a young boy, Adams grows up in luxury, and he encounters a number of famous Americans, beginning with those in his family, to whom he gives heroic status. He later attends Harvard and embarks upon a career. During this time, as he moves out of the comfort of New England, young Adams finds a number of new heroes, especially the English. Throughout his “education,” the young Adams explores such themes as education, science and technology, and innocence and experience. The Education tells the story of one man’s engagement with his culture and society. Henry’s experiences allow the author Adams to step back and evaluate his life in relation to the larger movement of history and the growth of America toward the turn of the century. Michael Modarelli

Education in The Education of Henry Adams

Education in Henry Adams’s autobiography is a quest for a specific doctrine—perhaps a specific

plan of action or worldview—by which he can live his life. In contrast to other famous autobiographies, such as the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Adams’s work does not end as a success story. In fact, the quest for education carries Adams through to the final chapters. Never culminating in a heroic apex, the work describes the protagonist’s attempt to reconcile ideas of past learning with the new technological and industrial world. Indeed, education serves to bring the author to the unfolding nature of learning and knowledge as it plays out in progressive civilizations. The Education of Henry Adams begins as Adams is born in Boston, Massachusetts, in privileged circumstances as a member of the illustrious Adams family; his father was the diplomat Charles Francis Adams I, and his grandfather was the former U.S. president John Quincy Adams. To distance himself from the narrative, however, he writes the story in the third person, calling himself Henry. From the outset, Adams notes that the “problem” of education began at a very early age. He traces his first rudimentary forays into education from the beginning when, as a child living in Quincy, just south of Boston, he learned color and taste. From here, he begins to notice divisions—marked separations in the world, starting with summer and winter—and these notions would permeate his more formal education. Isolated in his Quincy home, young Henry knew little of the exterior problems of the world. When his grandfather puts on his hat and walks young Henry to school, this marks the boy’s entry into formal education. Of his formal education he says little—he disliked the formalities of education and rote memorization. Of entering a symbolically American institution, Harvard, he notes only that his four years there left him with an autobiographical “blank.” Adams continues to remind the reader, however, that his narrative is a story of education. The places and people who figure in the narrative only have value insofar as they pertain to Henry’s education. His early heroes were John Quincy Adams and George Washington, as well as 18th-century historians. Soon he widens his horizons, geographically speaking, by moving out of Massachusetts, and he

The Education of Henry Adamsâ•…â•… 131 seeks out new heroes from whom he can learn. As secretary to his father, ambassador to Great Britain (1861–68), Adams finds little redeeming in Englishmen and British politicians. In England, he learns the Englishmen show more compassion for the American confederacy than he initially thought. And, upon returning to the United States, he finds little in the people that he can salvage for his education. Henry votes for Ulysses S. Grant after the war because he thinks a decorated military hero will lead well, but, in an entire chapter devoted to Grant, he ends up finding the president distasteful. All in all, Adams sees a decline in the United States from Washington to Grant. Once again, he returns to Harvard, this time to teach medieval history, but his educational idealism finds university life mediocre at best, and he considers this more education lost. The book jumps forward at this point 20 years because, as Adams reminds the reader, his is a story of education, and only matters pertinent to education are noted. This is a new educational starting point for Adams, he writes. At this time in his education, he wishes to drop studying what the world does not care for anymore and concentrate his education on what interests people. At the Chicago Exposition of 1893, he notices the dominance of wealth and science. Clearly, it seems to Adams, the country is moving in a path that favors capitalism and technological power. These are contrasts to what Adams calls his 18th-century education, and as symbols of power and wealth, they contradict his ideas of medieval art. At the Paris Exposition seven years later, Adams once again comments on the importance of these symbols, specifically in the demonstration of the dynamo, an electrical generator invented for producing power. In the famous chapter entitled “The Virgin and the Dynamo,” Adams compares the Virgin Mary’s power for stimulating human energies with the dynamo’s power. Believing the dynamo might somehow provide a specific world plan for him, much as writing about the Romans had stimulated the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon, Adams believes he has finally found a satisfactory way of looking at history. By placing the medieval expression of art into a system of history, he finds a way that he, and he hopes other people, might better cope with historical pattern and change.

Although much of the Education bases itself on Adams’s personal learning, the book is an attempt to come to grips with the larger ethos of education. What Adams sees in the Virgin, for example, is a symbol of force; in the dynamo, he envisions the same notion of force, as comprehended by modern man. The medieval mind symbolized its power of force in the Virgin, so this forms the connection to Adams’s idea of the dynamo—a symbol of the technology of the oncoming 20th century—and its effects on his life, which began in Quincy and Boston, symbols of the young America. Michael Modarelli

Innocence and Experience in The Education of Henry Adams

The symbolism in Henry Adams’s autobiography clearly marks his progression from innocence to experience. As Adams traces the paths of symbols from his childhood home in Boston, he essentially delineates his route from innocence to experience. Born in an upper-class home in Boston and raised in Quincy, where his grandfather, John Quincy Adams, walked him to school, young Henry becomes immediately influenced by his illustrious relative. For Henry, his grandfather represents the shaping of America, the glorious common sense of the 18th century, and he often thinks of John Quincy’s role in the formation of the country as well as his journeys to foreign lands as a diplomat. John Quincy Adams was not Henry’s only hero—in his youth he idolized George Washington, Edward Gibbon, his great-grandfather John Adams, and others. In these heroes Henry found men whose interests lay in wide realms; these were men of action and, most specifically, men whose values reflected conventional New England attitudes of self-discipline, character, and accomplishment. But Henry’s life, which means his education, forms the kernel of the Education, and it is John Quincy Adams who precipitates this journey, taking young Henry by the hand and walking him in silence to the school on a hot morning. Symbolically, then, his grandfather ushers Henry into the Adams fold and into education at a very young age, marking the gradual transition from innocence to experience.

132â•…â•… Adams, Henry In his youth, however, Adams hates the rote memorization and formalities of school. He would rather go to see Washington than read about it, which he does at age 12, and he seems to think application lies in actual experience and not formal schooling (although he does have a predilection for languages and mathematics). Eventually, like all upper-class New England boys, Adams enters Harvard, where he later concludes that he learned nothing, or all that he learned could have been done in four months’ time. Harvard, then, does nothing to improve Adams’s transition to experience—it seems it was still the beginning point. And teaching provides him with no relief. As a professor of medieval history at Harvard, he is successful, producing many respectable students; however, his upbringing in the Adams fold has taught him never to be satisfied with mediocrity, which he finds in his education. And although he has the experience of education behind him, Adams feels his journey is not done. In fact, all of Adams’s life as documented in the Autobiography is a progression from innocence to experience. Adams often reflects on his early heroes, not necessarily acquiring new ones but comparing the old ones to the heroic figures of his day. He compares Ulysses S. Grant to Washington, claiming a sad degeneration of mankind in the former from the latter. And although his life progresses throughout his education and he moves through a succession of careers with success, he constantly notes that his education has come, sadly, to some kind of end. Still, by the Chicago Exposition of 1893, Adams admits he is still innocent in a certain way. He knows how to look at art, he knows how to study history, and he has a storehouse of information and a wealth of 18th-century values. However, he has no way to assimilate the new technology at the exposition—he cannot reconcile these exhibits with any experience he has had. Adams is completely innocent in the ways of the changing world. This is especially evident when he encounters the dynamo, the newest power generator. What Adams finds he has to do is to somehow find a link from the past to the present—to, in this case, the powerful and awesome dynamo—so that he can understand the shift the world is making.

The narrative in the Autobiography leads up to this culminating point, where Adams must move from innocence to experience by coming to a historical understanding of mankind. From this understanding, he can then find the natural shifts in his own life, prompting him to write the Education. And he finds the answer in his use of symbols, which have played such an important part of his life. What Adams discovers is that although the dynamo is a relatively new force, forces have been around since the beginning of time. The dynamo is, in effect, the symbol for a new era. Past eras such as the Middle Ages, Adams concludes, found their symbols in religion, especially the Virgin Mary. In order to come to an awareness of some kind of force, he contends, man symbolized it, much like Adams had done in his youth with the forces around him. The concept of force, then, plays a fundamental role in his view of history and life—force becomes symbolized to represent its power on and within the lives of people. In a sense, Adams’s Education comes to represent the forces exterior to his own life, and the book becomes a symbol for his progression from innocence to experience. Michael Modarelli

Science and Technology in The Education of Henry Adams

As a child, young Henry grows up with what he describes as an 18th-century mind-set, but his view must soon change to accompany the introduction of new science and technology in the 19th century. The Adamses, a lineage tracing back to the United States’s foundation as a nation, were symbolic of America, and young Henry sees the connections between his family and American nationhood. The Massachusetts State House, New England, his grandfather John Quincy Adams, and the entire Adams family symbolize the educated mind and its entry into a new world. Adams reflects on this especially as his grandfather walks him to school, a symbolic entry into education. Adams links the mind and its application to changing epochs in symbols. As a historian, Adams has studied the Middle Ages, and he notices the power of the symbol in the Virgin Mary. Later, at the Chicago Exposition of 1893, he notes the grow-

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?â•…â•… 133 ing symbolism of money inherent in capitalism. However, the symbolism of science and technology remains the greatest influence for his theory of history. While at the Paris Exposition of 1900, Adams connects this power of symbolism to the science and technology of his day. He sees the power of the dynamo much as he suggests people of the Middle Ages saw the cross or the Virgin Mary: The power of both represent a symbol of infinity, or a great moral force. Adams sees the Virgin as her time’s dynamo; she was a power of force, a mysterious bundle of energy. Similarly, the burgeoning inventions in science and technology of the 20th century represent a phenomenon of new force, which the individual must learn to grasp. Since science and technology represent, for Adams, a large shift from his 18th-century upbringing, he feels he must understand the movement of history. His ideas of history are found in two chapters in which Adams becomes enamored with the complexity of the 20th century. The two chapters in the Education, “A Dynamic Theory of History” and “A Law of Acceleration,” are his solution to this complexity. Here, he argues that the solution is the mind. According to Adams, man has always conceptualized force into symbols. Since man can conceptualize force, he can control it. Adams sees the progress of great ancient civilizations, such as Rome, as a result of this conceptualization of force. However, the breakdown of cultures occurs when man can no longer symbolize force. The Roman Empire broke down because the symbols did not keep up with the technological progress. Similarly, the Middle Ages’ identification with the cross led to a breakdown, as man no longer conceptualized the force in the cross. So, Adams contends, the burst of scientific thinking that led to the Paris Exposition of 1900 was a direct result of man’s free thought away from any conceptualization of force. The age’s scientific and technological advances frighten Adams. He sees the scientific achievements and technological prowess of his day at Paris, and he envisions a chaotic future. What members of the 20th century must do, he thinks, is achieve some kind of symbolization which individuals might apply to the present. Adams’s search for symbols leads him from antiquity to his present day. All of

the progresses of civilization that culminated in the scientific and technological advancements of the 20th century require a symbol, because symbols are man’s way of apprehending the idea of these forces. Ultimately, Adams’s theory of history rests on the power of the mind to apprehend these symbols. Again and again, he acknowledges this fact throughout the Education. His symbolic entrance into education provided the point of entry for Adams. As Adams the boy recognized the force of his educational life in symbols, so must mankind harness the force of science and technology in some kind of symbol. At the end, Adams suggests the comet, a force that heads to the sun, accelerating its motion toward a new equilibrium. Like science and technology, the comet represents a force that has the power for its own destruction, yet it reverses itself and embarks on a new course before it collides with the sun. The journey of the Education is a journey to understand the power of change. Adams believed the power of change in civilization necessitated a balance between the individual and the innovations of the day. He thought science and technology needed a symbol to which man could ascribe this force of progress, and he thought this was the only possible route to harness this power. Michael Modarelli

ALBEE, EDWARDâ•… Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?â•… (1963)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? is Edward Albee’s most successful play, one which has enjoyed a healthy production history. The original 1963 Broadway production won the Tony Award and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for best new play, a 1966 film starred the acting legends Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and a recent production (2004–07) played successfully on Broadway and in London’s West End. While being a box office success (the original production ran 644 performances) and a popular vehicle for major performers, in the 1960s it was one of the most controversial of Albee’s plays. The nominating jury selected the play for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, but the Pulitzer Prize Board refused to give its approval, citing

134â•…â•… Albee, Edward Albee’s “filthy” use of sexual themes and profanity. Two of the jury’s members resigned in protest. In the 21st century, the play’s content no longer shocks, leading Albee (b. 1928) to create a 2002 update, which includes even more intense language. Language and sex and sexuality may have been the most unsettling qualities of the play in the 1960s, but it is the play’s unrelenting exposure of violence at the heart of marriage that continues to challenge its audiences. Family, specifically marriage, is treated as a destructive institution, built on lies. Violence is a constant of the relationships in the play. Indeed, the play is an act of violence: It is a “murder” of George and Martha’s imaginary son. George has told Martha that if she ever speaks of their “son” to others, he will “kill” him. In the midst of these brutal relationships, Albee employs alienation as a symptom of the violence at the heart of institutions, in this case marriages. Thus, he does what he has regularly claimed is the act of a good writer: understands the hopelessness of existence and yet struggles for a hopeful angle on it. In Woolf, the hopelessness centers on the brutal communications and manipulations at the heart of marriage. Ben Fisler

Alienation in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?

Were it not for the sacrificial psychic murder of the fictional child, Edward Albee’s play might read as true theater of the absurd, a style of theater popular in the mid-20th century that grew from the concept that life has no meaning. The play encapsulates the communication breakdowns, disconnected conversations, and identity confusions of the absurdists Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, or Samuel Beckett. The death of the boy, however, disrupts the existential despair as clearly as it disrupts the violence inherent in George and Martha’s verbal exchanges. By killing the boy, George destroys the most dominant lie at the core of their failed marriage. The ritual sacrifice of the child allows the dawn to rise on a new world. However, that new world is not necessarily one of simple hope. Martha is terrified to look on the new day, prophetically answering the question of the play, “who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf,” with her paralytic, fearful “I .╯.╯. am .╯.╯. George .╯.╯. I .╯.╯. am .╯.╯.” (Act 3). If Albee’s indictment were

merely against a dysfunctional marriage, or some dysfunctional marriages, the new world might come into clearer focus. But, as it is Albee’s view that the fundamental destructiveness of family discourse is itself the problem, he is no more certain than his characters what the new world will look like. He is sure that the destructive institutions need to be demolished if anything better is to be uncovered, but he cannot tell us what the alternative will look like, if indeed an alternative exists. Clearly, however, institutions are themselves the problem. As Albee focuses his sardonic wit on marriage, he incorporates attacks on the educational system, career, and fatherhood. Martha thinks Nick is a math professor, even arguing about it with Honey. George likewise questions Nick’s certainty about his profession, admonishing him; “Martha is seldom mistaken .╯.╯. maybe you should be in the math department, or something” (Act 1). George refers to his degrees, combining A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. to make the distorted acronym ABMAPHID, which he then reflects “has been variously described as a wasting disease of the frontal lobes and as a wonder drug. It is actually both” (Act 1). He then suggests that Nick might run the history department when he is 40 and looks 55, prompting Nick to remind George once more that Nick is a biologist. George tells of the time he briefly ran the history department while the other faculty fought in World War II. He is bitter that they returned: “Not one sonof-a-bitch got killed” (Act 1). He also states that a faculty member who died in the cafeteria line was buried in the bushes around the chapel, commenting that faculty members “make excellent fertilizer” (Act 1). It is only one of many lashes at Martha’s father, whom he variously calls a “god” and someone who “expects his .╯.╯. staff .╯.╯. to cling to the walls, of [the university] like ivy” (Act 1). Martha’s father, of course, appears to have always been cruel to George, mocking his novel about his own horrific childhood experience and threatening to fire him if he publishes it. Yet he has also exerted tyrannical control over Martha, forcing her to annul her marriage to the gardener who was her first real love. The combination of these secondary stories of abuse and humiliation, from George’s contempt for his own education to Martha’s overbearing father meddling

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?â•…â•… 135 in both their lives, suggests that all family, career, and social institutions are fundamentally destructive to the human beings engaged in them. The result of the many acts of violence is a painfully introspective, existentially detached series of dialogues that mix into the more brutal, direct exchanges. The specter of alienation first appears subtly when George asks Nick if he “like[s] it here,” meaning the university, and Nick replies that “it’s fine” in reference to the room. The men also repeatedly confuse each others’ wives in conversation. Nick: [S]he .╯.╯. gets sick quite easily George: .╯.╯. Martha hasn’t been sick a day in her life Nick: No, no; my wife .╯.╯. my wife gets sick quite easily. Your wife is Martha. George: Oh, yes .╯.╯. I know. (Act 2) At the top of act 2, the repeat of this miscommunication becomes a preamble for a lengthy discussion of each other’s personal pains in relation to their wives, in which neither really listens to the other, except to cause small hurts. Later, the alienation factor increases. At the end of act 2, Honey describes a fantasy about children and feeling exposed while George unsuccessfully tries to make her aware of her husband’s liaison with his wife. At the top of act 3, Martha has an entirely rhetorical conversation about her feeling abandoned and constantly crying, while violently searching for “the bastards” who are hiding from her, which eventually degrades into her mimicking the sound of the ice in her glass, with “clink.” The most terrifying of these moments occurs immediately before the boy’s death is made official. Martha rants about her attempts to protect the child from every “failure”; George counters by reciting the Libera Me, a responsory portion of the Roman Catholic funeral mass. Increasingly, Albee’s characters illustrate the alienation imposed upon human beings by the destructive institutions of their worlds, preparing the audience for the needed “exorcism” of the fictional child. George prepares to destroy the child by returning to his use of the Latin mass. When he tells Martha that Crazy Billy delivered a telegram that

their boy has been killed in a car crash, she screams, “YOU .╯.╯. CAN’T .╯.╯. DO .╯.╯. THAT.” He engages the others in the exorcism, first by fooling Nick into reinforcing the idea that the boy’s death is not within George’s “power,” then by looking to Honey to verify that he did indeed consume the telegram (the only evidence) before her eyes. Martha continues to explore the stages of grief—first denial, then anger, then bargaining (“you didn’t have to push it over the EDGE,” then depression as she sinks into a sudden awareness of her fatigue and lack of interest in drinking, and finally reaches acceptance (“You had to?” and “Just .╯.╯. us?”). The sacrifice and the aftermath are complete as George and Martha face the dawn of a new day alone. Albee’s delicately constructed murder, revelation, and mourning clearly attest to what the author sees as the need for destructive human institutions to be destroyed. But killing the lie on which George and Martha’s marriage has been built does not leave behind a nurturing marriage. Rather, it leaves behind a world of uncertainty and terror. Within that terror, however, is the hope for a better existence, one that leaves behind destructive institutions like marriage, with their violent, manipulative, and treasonous acts of communication and interaction and the deep psychic alienations experienced by their participants. In the dawn at the end of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? is the possibility, despite Albee’s inherently cynical and sardonic view of the world, that human beings may indeed be able to care for one another. But only by obliterating the institutions that compel them to control, alienate, and abuse each other will that possibility ever be realized. That is a Virginia Woolf of which to be afraid. Ben Fisler

Family in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?

Lies, misunderstandings, and betrayals are the backbone of relationships in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?. So unrelenting and broad are the assaults that neither Martha or George can be named the aggressor in their cruel games. Simultaneously, Nick and Honey reveal that while some couples might not attack each other publicly, they are still victimized by the fundamental destructiveness of relationships. All couples are destroying each other with lies, manipu-

136â•…â•… Albee, Edward lations, and betrayals. Those most visibly showcased in Woolf are referred to fancifully in the text as “the bit about the kid,” “the mouse [that] got all puffed up,” and “hump the hostess.” It is unclear whether Martha and George were unable or unwilling to conceive a child, but ultimately this is an irrelevant question. The creation of the fictional son is not a delusion meant to fill some maternal/paternal gap in their lives, as there is no evidence that either partner believes the child to be real. Rather, the son is a lie that they created to be the ultimate game. A son allows for limitless possibilities in their ongoing assaults on each other. Being a completely fictional human being, he can be anything they want him to be that is convenient to the current abuse. He can be disappointed in his father; be an estranged but successful student; be ashamed of his mother; or, as George finally, coldly, determines, he can be dead. Throughout the play, the couple manipulate the gamut of the boy’s potential. In the first act, subtitled “Fun and Games,” Martha decides their son’s birthday is coming soon and reveals this to Honey privately. Then the question of when the boy is coming home is raised, and Martha tries to change the subject. Suddenly, she turns the discussion to the problems that George has. He expresses confusion over who has the problems, himself or the child. Then Martha suggests that “the little bugger” might not be George’s before quickly putting that suspicion to bed: “I wouldn’t conceive with anyone but you.” Near the end of the second act, subtitled “Walpurgisnacht” (a reference to the pagan/Roman Catholic festival that has variously been a time of games and tricks, a time when demonic forces walk the earth, or the celebration of Walpurg is, one of the saints who brought salvation to Germany), George invents the telegram of their son’s death. In the third act, “The Exorcism,” they battle over the boy’s entire life story, from his birth to his adulthood. Each fiction about the boy is directed as an attack on the other’s spouse. George states that Martha had a difficult labor, questioning her health and suitability for motherhood. Martha claims that when the boy broke his arm, George cried and was of no help, while she fashioned a sling and carried him to safety. They argue whether the child was

ashamed of his father or his mother, trading blows over Martha’s drinking and George’s career failings. Even mentioning the child to a stranger is an act of violence, a breach of protocol, which George decries in his outburst “You goddamn destructive.” Albee uses these verbal acts of violence to reveal how individuals in marriages pit their careers, their communications, and even their children against one another. The choice to make Martha and George’s child fictional underlines the symbolic meaning of their marriage, already suggested in their names (an allusion to George and Martha Washington). Such is the cruelty at the heart of this marriage that the couple has invented a child simply to abuse each other. Albee is determined not to allow the play to describe only one disturbed couple. When George learns of the lies at the source of Nick and Honey’s marriage (the hysterical pregnancy and the wealthy missionary), he waits a mere 30 minutes of stage time (approximately) to play “Get the Guests.” Cruelly twisting Nick and Honey’s personal pains, he transforms their story into a tale of a “scientist and his mouse.” He turns the story into an exposure of those lies, calling her “money baggage amongst other things” and then revealing the lie that built their marriage initially: “The Mouse got all puffed up one day .╯.╯. and she said .╯.╯. look at me .╯.╯. and so they were married .╯.╯. and then the puff went away .╯.╯. like magic .╯.╯. poof.” While it is George who exposes the lies at the heart of their marriage, it is the institution of marriage that created them. The unsuccessful infidelity referred to by George as a game of “hump the hostess” begins as an expansion of Albee’s efforts to expose the betrayals in Nick and Honey’s marriage and then expands to indict all marriages at the university. After Nick fails to “perform,” Martha begins a long speech complaining about: Boozed-up .╯.╯. impotent lunk-heads .╯.╯. [who] roll their beautiful, beautiful eyes .╯.╯. and .╯.╯. bounce .╯.╯. over to old Martha .╯.╯. [and then] back to the soda fountain again where they fuel up some more, while Marthapoo sits there with her dress up over her head .╯.╯. suffocating .╯.╯. waiting for the lunk-heads;

Little Womenâ•…â•… 137 so, finally, they get their courage up .╯.╯. but that’s all baby. (Act 3) Nick is not an unfaithful husband who attempts, albeit without consummation, to cheat on his young wife. Rather, he is a reminder that there are not better husbands than George or better marriages than George and Martha’s. All husbands described in the play are unfaithful; the implication is that all marriages are built on infidelity, lies, and betrayal. For Albee, family, specifically marriage, is a destructive institution with violence at its core. Ben Fisler

V iolence in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?

In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?, violence is a constant, culminating in the murder of the fictional child. George’s murder of the child is an act of the most deadly violence, but contradictorily it becomes a kind of ritual sacrifice. Faced with the constant barrage of insults, humiliations, and occasional physical attacks, killing the imaginary child seems the only way to save George and Martha from the never-ending cruelties of marriage. As the sun rises, his death is left behind in the night, and the couple look to the obvious symbol of a new world about to dawn. From the moment they arrive home, Martha is calling George a cluck and their home a dump, while George is correcting her grammar as part of his own passive/aggressive strategy. Martha accuses George of never getting involved in the parties, while George mocks her behavior at the party as “braying.” They continue in the presence of Nick and Honey. George refers to an abstract painting as “a pictorial representation of the order of Martha’s mind”; Martha mocks him with the story of her besting him in a “boxing match.” Both spouses drag the guests into their abuses. Martha becomes increasingly aggressive in her flirtations with Nick to threaten George, while George attacks Nick’s profession on the basis of obscure fantasies of eugenics. When Martha and Nick’s liaison is imminent, George chooses to ignore her, claiming that it is four o’clock and time for him to read. This makes Martha even more furious. As she prepares to join Nick, she threatens to make George “sorry that

[he] made [her] want to marry [him]” and “sorry that [he] ever let [himself ] down” (Act 2). To ensure that the viewers do not think that violence is unique to George and Martha’s relationship, Albee gives Nick and Honey their moments of abuse as well. Nick claims to be ignorant of how his words could be hurtful, but he is unrelenting in calling George “sir” (which George takes as a comment on his age) and tells him he does not know much about science. Nick seems aware from the beginning that he is being pulled into their games: “Do you want me to say it’s funny, so you can contradict me and say it’s sad .╯.╯. [Y]ou can play that damn little game any way you want to, you know[?]” (Act 2). However, he continues to play the games even as he repudiates them. Honey is as close to being the victim in this tragedy as any of the four characters, being collateral damage at the end of the first two acts (she vomits and collapses in the bathroom). Yet even she has her cruel streaks. She explodes with delight during the acts of violence at the end of the second act, even though they include George’s attempted strangulation of Martha. Perhaps her worst moment in the play occurs when she decides to verify George’s murder of the imaginary son, attesting to the arrival of the telegram and even to George’s ludicrous claim that he ate the message. Violence is a constant in the play, but it is not the sickening behavior of an emotionally unstable, alcoholic wife or a passive/aggressive, crypto-misogynist husband. Albee does not allow the attentive viewer to merely dismiss George and Martha as a dysfunctional couple. In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?, all couples are victims and purveyors of the violence at the heart of marriage. This violence makes meaningful connections or a nurturing family unit impossible. The violence produces the alienation that we see revealed throughout the play. Ben Fisler

ALCOTT, LOUISA MAYâ•… Little Womenâ•… (1868–1869)

Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1832 and died in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1888. Little Women is semiautobiographical in nature, based

138â•…â•… Alcott, Louisa May primarily on Alcott’s happy childhood in a large, formerly upper-class family who have fallen on hard times. Alcott’s novel follows the sisters of the March family in their transition from adolescence to adulthood. She models Meg, Beth, and Amy on her sisters and endows the character of Jo with much of her own independent spirit, personal struggles, and love of writing. The novel is a window into Victorian life, especially in respect to the lives of women. The March sisters must learn to accept the expected, but often restrained, role for women as mothers and wives. Jo especially has to struggle with her desire for an independent life as a writer and the accepted role of women during her time. Yet even Jo finds comfort in the closeness and security family life creates for the March girls. The sickness and eventual death of beloved Beth, the European travels of Amy, and the marriage of Meg test, but cannot break, these close family bonds. Despite the tragic elements present in Little Women, the book remains an uplifting moral work, designed to both entertain and impart moral lessons to the reader. At the end of the novel, the characters are left leading fulfilled, upright lives as mothers in their own families. The domestic sphere that is romanticized in the Victorian period is also idealized in the novel, and Little Women is at its heart a celebration of family. Cheryl Blake Price

The American Dream in Little Women

The American dream has long symbolized a change of fortune and the hope that through hard work or luck, even the poorest person can prosper. Immigrants flooding into America in the 19th century came looking for new opportunities that would lift them out of the poverty they had experienced in their home countries; for them, the American dream was inseparably linked with material wealth. In Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the March family offers a different view of the American dream—a vision of prosperity based not on material gain but on moral and spiritual wealth. At first, the American dream seems to have failed for the March family. Mr. March has lost the family fortune in some unfortunate business invest-

ments. The four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—are caught between worlds; by birth, they are expected to associate with their wealthy neighbors. However, their poverty creates a distinct difference between them and their friends. Much of Little Women deals with the temptations and frustrations the March sisters feel as a result of their altered situation, and from their trials the sisters learn that “love, protection, peace, and health, the real blessings of life” are “things more precious than any luxuries money could buy.” While each of the family members strives to become a better person and overcome individual faults, their piety and charity does not protect the family from tragedy. Yet a silver lining exists behind every difficulty because bad experiences usually help teach the girls about the important things in life. In order to strengthen her moral argument, Alcott provides some foils to the March family in the form of the Gardiner and Moffat families. Both of these families represent the traditional American dream of social mobility gained through material wealth; however, when compared to the Marches, they are portrayed as lacking the happiness and blessings of the March family. The wealthy Moffats are described as “not particularly cultivated or intelligent people, and that all their gilding could not quite conceal the ordinary material of which they were made.” During a short visit to the Moffat home, Meg overhears some hurtful gossip about her family and gladly leaves the Moffats to return to the quiet sanctuary of her home. While this episode does not completely cure Meg of coveting items such as Sallie Gardiner’s fancy clothing and trinkets, by the end of the novel she realizes that her life with John in the “Dovecote” is far happier than the rich life Sallie and Ned Moffat lead in their mansion. The Marches’ poverty is often presented as having advantages, and the relative independence the girls receive from their situation is one of these advantages. As the family fortune has been lost, Meg and Jo offer to work to help support the family. These two sisters obtain jobs outside of the family, but Jo’s writing soon becomes a welcome source of extra income and allows a few luxuries. Eventually, Jo’s successes inspire her to leave her family and move to New York to pursue literary prospects, an

Little Womenâ•…â•… 139 opportunity that would not have been available at home. As time passes, she heeds the advice of Mr. Bhaer and writes a successful novel based on her life experiences. The opportunity that America symbolizes for so many, as well as the idea that hard work pays off, is illustrated here. Instead of restoring wealth to the March family, Louis May Alcott’s girls learn that true wealth cannot be purchased, but other blessings enhance life. Especially when Beth succumbs to heart damage caused by scarlet fever, the family comes together in the realization that love and family are more important than material objects. By the end of the novel, the surviving March girls are all happily placed with caring husbands, and while Meg and Jo cannot be considered wealthy, they lead rich and fulfilling lives. Through their hard work and devotion to family, the girls do realize their own form of the American dream: a good husband, a close family, and a comfortable, if not extravagant, lifestyle. Cheryl Blake Price

Illness in Little Women

Before antibiotics and immunization, health and illness were daily concerns for many people. Little Women reflects the preoccupation with wellness that was present in the Victorian age and illuminates the ways in which illness was perceived during this time. The threat of disease hovers over the March family, and the tragic illness and subsequent death of beloved Beth serves many purposes in the novel. It mirrors Louisa May Alcott’s own experience with death, sheds light on Victorian beliefs about health, and imparts a moral lesson on the nature of sacrifice and the importance of Christian faith. Even though Beth’s death is heart-wrenching, Alcott instills the misfortune with hope, providing an optimistic vision of the strength of family bonds. In the Victorian period, death from infectious diseases and other illnesses that are easily treatable today were frequent. Little Women reflects Victorian beliefs about illness and shows how disease was viewed and treated in this time. These concerns were real for Alcott, who saw injury and disease daily as a Civil War nurse and experienced loss through the sickness and death of her sister Elizabeth. In America, ill health was especially prevalent for immi-

grants, who often lived in poor conditions and had inadequate nutrition. In the novel, the plight of the immigrant family is represented by the Hummels; it is through tending the sick Hummel children that Beth contracts scarlet fever. However, even prior to her illness, Beth is represented as having a weak constitution, something the Victorians believed made people more susceptible to disease. Beth’s illness is doubly troubling for the March family because Mr. March has also become unwell during his service for the Union Army. Mrs. March is away nursing her husband in Washington, D.C., when Beth gets sick, leaving her caretaking to Jo and the servant Hannah. While Mr. March goes on to recover fully, Beth’s constitution is further weakened by the scarlet fever and the development of rheumatic fever. Jo’s earnings from writing allow Beth and Mrs. March to travel to the seaside; the Victorians commonly believed that ocean air had curative powers. Despite these attempts, Beth never regains her health and comes to the realization that she will die. She retires to a sickroom, and, leaning upon her parents for support and guidance, Beth looks to her Christian faith to die at peace. Naturally, Beth’s death has a profound impact on the family, but in the sadness there comes an emphasis on the joys of life along with the misfortune. Jo, who has always struggled with her temper, finds that nursing Beth provides “lessons in patience [that] were so sweetly taught her that she could not fail to learn them.” Beth’s own struggles with her impending death also provide lessons in faith. At first overcome with sorrow, Beth becomes serene in her final illness, giving herself over to God. Beth’s illness highlights the important place Christianity holds in the text; much of Little Women is devoted to imparting Christian beliefs and improving moral character. Beth’s passing is hard for the family, but it teaches them life lessons and brings new appreciation for the blessings that they do have. Beth’s reliance on her faith is another important feature in the novel, as it allows her to die peacefully and promises a relief from her worldly suffering; it reaffirms the Christian ideology that is present throughout the text. Beth’s illness, modeled on Alcott’s own sister’s death, also highlights the fragility of life and gives

140â•…â•… Alcott, Louisa May the reader a glimpse of the real dangers illness presented in the Victorian period. The idea that Beth’s death highlights the blessings of life is further reinforced by the final chapter of Little Women. The chapter, entitled “Harvest Time,” signifies the bounty and good fortune of the harvest, but it also inspires images of transition and death. It is here that Alcott reveals that Laurie and Amy’s only daughter, also named Beth, is a frail, sickly child. The similarity in the name “Beth” is not a coincidence; like her aunt, it seems that little Beth’s constitution is under constant threat. However, fear of Beth’s fragility is bringing her parents closer and even causing improvements to their characters. Amy is “growing sweeter, deeper, and more tender,” and Laurie is “more serious, strong, and firm.” The lesson that both parents learn is that “beauty, youth, good fortune, even love itself, cannot keep care and pain, loss and sorrow, from the most blessed.” Cheryl Blake Price

Parenting in Little Women

Unsurprisingly, parenting plays a large role in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a book that primarily chronicles the maturation of four sisters from young adolescence to adulthood. Just as Little Women can be seen as a guidebook for young adults (especially girls) on proper moral and social behavior, it can also serve as a primer for raising children. The parents of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy have a very specific task: to mold their girls into industrious, helpful, and cheerful Christian women. Through personal example, daily lessons, and Christian teachings, Marmee and Father succeed in this goal, but not without some difficulties. Despite the hard work that parenting entails, it is presented as the epitome of a woman’s— and, to a large part, a man’s—life. The second part of the book continues to follow the lives of the girls once they marry and begin to have children of their own, which affords the novel another opportunity to model appropriate child-rearing practices and to present parenting as a joyful, necessary, and fulfilling experience. At the novel’s opening, the March family is, in effect, a one-parent household, as Mr. March is away from home fighting in the Civil War. With her eldest daughters growing rapidly, Marmee must

balance preparing her girls for adulthood with household duties, charitable work, and money matters. However, she does have some help from her two oldest daughters, Meg and Jo, who each “adopt” one of the younger siblings to watch over and care for. Although the novel certainly promotes the traditional nuclear family, it also shows that caring, successful families can come in other forms as well. Mr. March’s absence in the early part of the novel proves this, as does the example of the neighboring Lawrence family. The elderly Mr. Lawrence has lived through the loss of his wife, son, daughterin-law, and granddaughter, and he is left only with his grandson, Laurie. While the Lawrence household appears to be more disharmonious than the Marches’ at times, it shows that a nontraditional family can also flourish if proper parenting exists in the home. The biggest key to the Marches’ child-rearing success is that they parent through example and gentle guidance. Marmee’s management of Jo’s temper is a good example of this parenting style. Jo’s temper is infamous in the house, and she often has a hard time controlling it. When Jo’s anger leads Amy to have a life-threatening accident, Marmee steps in and confides to Jo that she has a similar anger problem. Showing Jo how she has overcome her temper, Mrs. March prompts Jo to conquer her own faults. Through parenting by example, little punishment is called for; remonstrance, if given, is usually a gentle shaming rather than harsh words or criticism. For the Marches, corporal punishment is out of the question. When Amy receives “several tingling blows” on her palm as punishment for breaking a school rule, Mrs. March states, “I don’t approve of corporal punishment, especially for girls.” The novel makes clear that children are to be raised with love and kindness, not harsh words or spankings. Rather than be sent back to a school that endorses corporal punishment, Amy is immediately withdrawn and is home-instructed by her mother and older sisters. Much of the girls’ education has been received at home, with Mr. March initially overseeing instruction and the girls carrying on their learning once he leaves to serve in the Union Army. Yet there is another sort of education that Mr. and Mrs. March are responsible for, and that

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistf ight in Heavenâ•…â•… 141 is the religious education of their children. As the family patriarch and as a minister, Mr. March takes the condition of his daughters’ souls seriously and is primarily responsible for ensuring that his daughters become Christian women. This becomes most apparent during Beth’s last illness, in which her “Father and Mother guided her tenderly through the valley of shadow, and gave her up to God.” Faced with a family crisis, Mr. March looks to his faith to keep the family strong and together. Although Beth’s death casts a shadow over the family, the novel is firm in the idea that life goes on. The surviving girls go on to marry and have families of their own, and Meg, Jo, and Amy soon discover the challenges new parents face. Yet Marmee and Father remain important figures in their daughters’ lives, helping to shape the new mothers into successful parents. Particularly in the chapters dealing with Meg and the twins, the novel shows the girls adopting the techniques of their parents to become loving, responsible mothers. Family takes central importance in Little Women, and by detailing the parenting styles of Mr. and Mrs. March, the novel illustrates both the importance of parenting and how to parent well. Cheryl Blake Price

ALEXIE, SHERMANâ•… The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistf ight in Heavenâ•… (1993)

Sherman Alexie (b. 1966) describes The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven as “a thinly disguised memoir” in his introduction to the book’s 10th anniversary edition. It certainly is, though less selfconsciously so than more formal autobiographies. The book is a series of episodes: short, insightful explorations of contemporary Native American life. Set on a reservation in the Pacific Northwest, Lone Ranger and Tonto includes recurring characters such as Victor, the angry grown-up child of alcoholics whose life never seems to be on track; Thomas, a storyteller and outcast; and Junior, a kind, generous underachiever. These stories are never uplifting, though they are not without hope. They are never generous, though not without promise. They are never kind, though not without sympathy. Alexie’s tales are stories, in the best sense and in the classic

poetic tradition. They show us, always outsiders and after the fact, a world we cannot touch or even truly understand. And he speaks to us intentionally. He is a voice in our wilderness whose prophetic speech warns of our collective ignorance. We are introduced to his world through myths culled from life as he knows it: boys whose basketball days are over before they begin, men whose lives cannot reach beyond the boundaries imposed upon them, women who are alone even when they are with their companions. The stories comprise a totality, an impression of a life condemned and still struggling for a voice, one who can only find hope in the words that make it off the reservation. Aaron Drucker

Abandonment in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistf ight in Heaven

The narrator calls the mother of his child a year or so after he left. Or maybe he does not. It depends on which version of the story you believe. There are several: some in passing, others consuming the narrative. All are true; none are true. It does not really matter whether he picked up the phone, the leaving is real just the same. “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” is a story about leaving. The titular story of Sherman Alexie’s collection, it tells the story of the end of the narrator’s relationship with the outside world, his coming home after the failures of college and relationships, and the finality of indecision. Abandonment is not, as some might think, an act of will, the assertion made by a final choice. Abandonment is the slow disintegration of the connections through too many inactions, too many failures to choose, of not deciding, of not doing. Abandonment is the natural consequence of ambivalence. The memory the narrator shares is sparked by a Creamsicle, given to him by a 7-11 night manager: “[T]hose little demonstrations of power tickled him. All seventy-five cents of it. I knew how much everything cost.” Everything has a price. The narrator is torn between his life in the city, the desire to assimilate and succeed, and his history—the Indian off the reservation, lost in the oppressive, commercial white world. The desire to succeed in the city is palpable; the drive toward gentrification is tangible.

142â•…â•… Alexie, Sherman He moves in with a white girl, gets a clerk job at a 7-11, and runs the graveyard shift. When he and his girlfriend fight, he drives away, learning the streets of Seattle in midnight tours of empty hills. He can never decide what he wants more: a life in the city, capitulating to the commercial and capitalist processes of a gentrified life, or a life back on the reservation, a hero in remission, the most successful failure of his generation. He turns first to drinking, the oblivion of the alcoholic haze that dulls the need for a decision, but his girlfriend will not let him find the answer at the bottom of a tall glass. “You’re just like your brother,” she yells. “Drunk all the time and stupid.” He knows exactly how much everything costs: “And she was a genius, too. She knew exactly what to say to cause me the most pain.” So, unable to face the choice, a sober life of capitalist striving or the sequestered oblivion of the reservation, he leaves. This choice is not a choice (she tells him not to return as he leaves), but he leaves the city, his only solution to his twin desires of being Indian and being accepted in the larger world, and abandons the life he began to build. He will never go back. In the book’s 10th anniversary edition, a story called “Junior Polatkin’s Wild West Show” was added by the author, who claims in his introduction that “it contains themes more adroitly covered in other stories.” Like the previous stories, “Junior Polatkin” also addresses a theme of being abandoned. However, instead of abandoning tradition or self, Junior acts in a more traditional mise-en-scène of abandonment. He moves off the reservation to go to college in Spokane, “the only Indian at Gonzaga, a small Jesuit school originally founded to educate the local tribes.” By Christmas break, he has fallen in love with Lynn, rebellious and outspoken, blonde and white. He overcomes his own difficulty and defensiveness, courts her, and has an affair with her. Sean Casey, “with dark skin and blue eyes, webbed toes” is born nine months later. But instead of the movie romance Junior imagines, Lynn is sequestered by her parents, and though he has “minimal visitation rights,” by the time Sean is three, Junior no longer has contact with him. He attempts to recover his ardor for education and his desire to become more than squandered potential, but even with some success, he finally leaves the city and returns to the

reservation, returning to the absent dreams and failed promises he had sought to overcome through college, career, and a life beyond being “just” Indian. For Alexie, abandonment is the underlying state—the affective cause for the fragmentation of the individual from community, tradition, and family. It is the continuous state of the Indian in a society that cannot integrate its past and its present, and as such it cannot conceive its future. When faced with the possibility of tomorrow, the only choice is retreat: to run away from the city, the world, and the senses, and to remember only how it all left you behind at the bottom of a bottle on the reservation. Aaron Drucker

Regret in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistf ight in Heaven

Regret means that one wishes that something had not happened, that the result had been different. Regret expresses the desire that one’s action resulted in a different outcome. It is a deep longing for the alternative. For Sherman Alexie, regret is a poignant tool for reflection on the environment the contemporary reservation Indian inhabits. Junior, Alexie’s protagonist in “A Good Story,” writes stories about Indians. His mother reads his stories, but one day she asks, “Don’t you think your stories are too sad?” She makes a request: “You should write a story about something good, a real good story .╯.╯. Because people should know that good things always happen to Indians, too.” Junior obliges. The story is a simple one. Uncle Moses is a fixture of the reservation: old—very old—and like his ramshackle home, he seems to survive on determination and stubborn will. He is well known throughout the reservation, but few engage with him. Only Arnold, a chubby, pale boy, takes the time to really be with him. On this day, in this “good story,” Arnold skips a class field trip, instead meeting Uncle Moses for a sandwich and a story. Reflexively, Uncle Moses tells him the story of Arnold skipping a class field trip to share a sandwich and a story with Uncle Moses. Junior’s story is charming on its surface, but it is tinged with several layers of regret. First, and most apparently, is his mother’s initial request. While quilting, she ruminates on Junior’s stories of crying

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistf ight in Heavenâ•…â•… 143 and (sadly) laughing Indians, and she wants to hear a different kind of story, without loss and without failure. She needs to hear that things can be okay, that things are not the way Junior depicts them. She feels that Indians are not always on a downward spiral, that good things happen all the time, and so Junior picks a good thing. The events of the story are small, intimate, personal—a moment of joy in a life literally collapsing. Uncle Moses’s house represents a central emblem of the story. Hand-built and structurally unsound, it is a monument to Uncle Moses’s achievement and his limitations. The house is not held together by sound engineering, and it will not outlast the life of the tribe like the pyramids of Egypt or the Pueblo rock dwellings, but it will hold together as long as willpower and memory can graft its oddly aligned walls together. Like the figure of Uncle Moses or the mother who requests Junior’s story, the house exists on tenuous strings of hope, struggling against the apparent failure of its faulty edifice in order to survive in its own right. It takes little to prop these figures up, but they are not strong in and of themselves, and they are aware of their frail state. This knowledge leads to a sense of what should have been, what could be, and ultimately a struggle against regret: holding one’s head high in the face of impending collapse. “A Good Story” binds Alexie’s collection together by signifying the instinctive tribal resistance to the almost overwhelming sensibility of regret throughout the rest of the novel’s episodes. Significantly, “A Good Story” is presented as a story within a story, framed by Junior’s mother’s request while she is quilting. Quilting is a curious activity. It is expressly concerned with bringing disparate, yet complementary, elements together to form a cohesive, comforting whole. Junior’s story— and the story he tells—serves much the same literary action. Lone Ranger and Tonto is a series of difficult episodes which the mother accurately describes as sad and, alternately, Junior adds, hysterical. They are often both funny and terrible simultaneously, and while Alexie’s work can be sympathetic and interesting, it also relates tales of loss, failure, death, or (worst of all) hopelessness. Each separate story adds its distinct element to the whole of the work; each tells its story of Indian experience. “A Good Story”

is much like the central patch of a quilt, the linchpin patch that is the key to the quilt’s narrative. That moment of hopeful camaraderie between the elder generation and the youngest, between mother and Junior and Uncle Moses and Arnold (significantly named, as well), highlights the possibilities for hope in the Indian reservation. These hopes are small, limited, personal, and temporary: a sandwich, a story, an afternoon of dawdling time. The loss of hope apparent in this limitation is staggering. There is nothing left for the tribe, for the reservation, or for the future to create tradition, history, or reverence. All that remains is the passing of time. In producing such a moment in “A Good Story” as the “good things” that happen to Indians, too, Alexie poignantly highlights this central regret of the overall narrative. Like the grandmother, Alexie seems to desire more than the grim truths of his sad stories, but he can only satisfy this need with the smallest of stories, without tradition, without history, and without mythology. Only in the stolen moments are there good stories in a world permeated with the regret of what was, what could have been, and what will never be. Aaron Drucker

Tradition in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistf ight in Heaven

Tradition plays a central role in the stories of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. But tradition conceives a cultural identity that is both ever-present and perceptibly lost in Alexie’s vision of his people. While the iconic images of the Native American healer and dreamer appear, and images of the “fancydancer” and the storyteller are repeated throughout the novel, our conventional notion of tradition is usurped by the “new,” the present reality of the Indian nation. In the new tradition, a boy learns early that he has already failed, just by being born on the reservation. Like his ancestors, he will strive, he will dream, he will find his first drink, and he will settle into a life of restless failure. Tradition, often a source of a people’s pride, is instead called a “drug,” a placebo against the tide of injustice and despair inflicted upon (and buoyed by) Alexie’s picture of Native American life.

144â•…â•… Allende, Isabel Alexie deals with the misplaced assumptions of a positive tradition transparently in “A Drug Called Tradition.” His position is clearly stated: “Indians never need to wear a watch because your skeletons will always remind you about the time. See, it is always now.” There is no past, no future; there is only the present reality of circumstance. After a hallucinogenic round of storytelling (the “new drug” the protagonists take, while never named, may be the “traditional” Indian hallucinogen, peyote, but it could just as easily be mushrooms or LSD), Alexie’s narrator asserts that there is no real past for today’s Indians, nothing to reach back to but fictions created by deluded minds. The most potent stories come from a drug-induced haze, based on legends that are not theirs but have roots in Anglo mythology and iconography (as one boy says, “Van Gogh should’ve painted this one”), making ownership of an authentic past impossible. Without an authentic past, they cannot have real traditions, only fictions conglomerated from the pictures on television. They are reflected in Tonto, the loyal, semiliterate sidekick of the heroic Lone Ranger, spiritually bonding with the horses they steal; in Geronimo, sitting lonely in long-forgotten pictures; in the “young warrior,” an icon without name or resolution, archetypal but empty. But the story, as always, is more complex than the author’s apparent claim. While Alexie asserts that the conception of “Indian” has been usurped by the image of “the Indian,” the authentic replaced by the (Anglicized) image in the broader cultural identity, he identifies (purposefully) a more subtle, less idiographic but also more personal idea of the traditional at the very end of the story. Big Mom, the spiritual leader of the Spokane tribe, hands the narrator a small drum. “It looked like it was about a hundred years old, maybe older,” he writes. It is a small gift, a memento from the past that physically connects him to the spirit of his tribe. It is not an image, does not do great deeds of warriors, does not overthrow those who would oppress the tribe. The drum will not subvert the inexorable march of time and entropy, or so it seems. “I guess you could call it the only religion I have,” he says, “one drum that can fit in my hand, but I think if I played it a little, it might fill up the whole world.”

Tradition can be a drug, a destructive denial of reality. As Native Americans try to construct an identity culled from a tradition that is both theirs and not theirs, both Indian and media-imaged, “tradition” becomes meaningless. It is a present thing, a television presentation of an ancient myth that never was. Thus, the conventional role of tradition is fatally flawed for the Native American, as destructive as the hallucinogenic enterprise that initiates the story. But in the end, there remains a history that is real, and that is the narrator’s own. The old stories can no longer fulfill their function—they cannot inspire warriors to be great seekers of renown—but there remains a powerful history, a real past that can be held in the palm of the hand, from which the narrator derives the promise of a hopeful future where his stories, the drumming of his words, fill the world. In this sense, a personal tradition that rebuilds the stories one voice at a time resonates throughout Alexie’s book. His world of stories, the powerful rhythms of his narratives, reconstruct the potential of the promise the old traditions typified. Like the old stories, he weaves a world of possibility, illuminating the pitfalls of the present in the hopes of a future in which warriors can be proud to ride through the world outside the confining boundaries of the reservation. Aaron Drucker

ALLENDE, ISABELâ•… The House of the Spiritsâ•… (1982)

Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, published in 1982, tells the history of several generations of the Trueba family against the backdrop of Chile’s socialist government and the 1973 military coup that gave rise to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Clara, who regularly converses with the spirit world, marries Esteban Trueba, a wealthy landowner who regularly rapes peasant women working on his hacienda. Trueba becomes enraged when his daughter, Blanca, falls in love with one of the hacienda’s workers. Despite Trueba’s efforts, Blanca and her love are eventually united, but the circuitous path of their relationship is repeated in the lives and loves of other characters.

The House of the Spiritsâ•…â•… 145 Revenge parallels love. Trueba’s first illegitimate son, Esteban García, is directly responsible for the imprisonment, torture, and rape of Trueba’s granddaughter, Alba. At the end of the novel, Alba, uncertain as to whether the father of her unborn child is her true love, Miguel, or her archenemy, Esteban García, decides that she must break the violent cycle through forgiveness. Alba’s realization suggests that Latin America must break the trap of repetitive violence. Her name, which translates as “dawn,” implies that forgiveness is the necessary ingredient for a new era of Latin American history. Themes in the novel include love, oppression, heroism, death, violence, and hope. Alba’s forgiveness and implicit hope contrast sharply with the pessimism of other late 20th-century Latin American novels and place Allende’s work in a new literary movement known as the post boom. Anne Massey

Death in The House of the Spirits

Death in The House of the Spirits is a battle between despair and hope. It can be a fearful unknown at the end of mortal existence or an extension of life that parallels the mortal realm. It appears as fear and reassurance, associated both with the destruction of society by political and social ills and with the comfort of eternal connection to beloved friends and family. In the beginning, death equals suffering. At Easter Mass, the statues are deathly pale and covered with funeral shrouds. Rosa, whose green hair symbolizes life, dies early in the novel after drinking poisoned brandy. Trueba, Rosa’s beau, feels angry that death has stolen her away and begins to shrink as a physical representation of his disappointment and ire. Tres Marías smells like a tomb when Trueba first moves in. Trueba’s mother, Ester, is described as a living corpse, and in her last days, the odor of her decomposing flesh permeates the house. Later, secular and religious elements overlap. The plague and unemployment appear to be divine punishment for which pleas to God for mercy are to no avail. Severely ill peasants who die in the hospital are buried next to the church. Barrabás, Clara’s oversized stray dog that arrived on Holy Thursday, dies the night of her engagement party.

In contrast to the concept of death as brutal end is the perception that death is a welcome parallel to mortal existence. The Mora sisters have a photo proving that the souls of the deceased can take on a physical form. The appearance of Férula’s spirit, accepted matter-of-factly, forces Trueba and Clara to travel to her impoverished neighborhood in order to confirm her death. The Trueba family thinks nothing of eating at the table once used for wakes by Clara’s parents. After announcing her own death, Clara describes the process as similar to being born, feared only because people tend to be afraid of the unknown. Trueba sees Clara’s death as a natural transition and feels reconciled to her passing, realizing that she has completed her mission. He even makes plans to be with her in the hereafter, building a mausoleum to ensure this. Yet it is obvious that Clara, as her name meaning “clear” implies, was the window that allowed mortals a glimpse into the spirit world. After her death, the plants die and the cats run away. Only Clara’s room remains untouched by decay. And when Trueba opens Rosa’s casket as he transfers her to the mausoleum, her corpse, preserved in death as it had been in life, disintegrates into a fine powder. By contrast, life and death are viewed as parallel states but with a frightening, foreboding tone. As Pedro García lies dying, his grandson punches out the eyes of chickens and fantasizes about Trueba’s death. He would have punched out Pedro García’s eyes had Blanca not prevented it. Later, Blanca is disturbed by the artifacts her husband collects— mummies with necklaces of teeth. Blanca also worries that her daughter, Alba, does not play with dolls, but Alba sees the toys as miniature corpses. Nicolás tries to teach Alba not to fear death, having her imagine her mother lying in a coffin. His efforts fail; tortured by the military, Alba cannot quell her fears using her uncle’s methods. During the coup, Blanca and Alba rescue Pedro Tercero García, concealing him in a car resembling a hearse. Luisa Mora predicts that this moment in history will be marked by pain and innumerable dead. From the great beyond, Clara tries to protect Alba, but she, like all spirits, is useless in the face of cataclysmic events. The last chapter of the novel describes the destruction and death wrought by the

146â•…â•… Allende, Isabel military, a reality symbolized by the passing of the Poet, whose death represents the fall of freedom. In the end, however, Trueba’s death offers renewed hope, a return to the supportive intertwining of life and death. Clara appears at his bedside, and as he dies, relinquishing his anger, her spirit glows brighter. It is with Trueba’s death that Alba realizes she must forgive her father’s son, Esteban García, who raped her and whose child she may now be carrying. Death, then, seen through Clara’s eyes, is a comfort to the living and offers spiritual healing. For those wielding the weapons of destruction, it is punishment, a bitter finality without salvation. But, as the epilogue implies, the darkness of war cannot snuff out the light of hope. Anne Massey

Heroism in The House of the Spirits

The term heroism describes individuals who inspire others through physical, moral, or intellectual fortitude. In classical Greek and Roman literature, heroes not only possessed such strengths but also had a tragic flaw, some insurmountable internal element to remind them of their humanity and distinguish them from the omnipotent gods. The characters of The House of the Spirits are heroic in both the general and classical senses. Events in the opening chapter presage the heroic theme. Despite community disapproval, Clara speaks out against church oppression. Uncle Marcos’s behavior is reminiscent of Christ’s life. Marcos takes off in his flying contraption amid praise and the sprinkling of holy water, is forgotten after three days, and appears to die twice. Moreover, both he and Clara seem able to change fate. Esteban Trueba, Clara’s husband, sees himself as his family’s hero, lifting them out of poverty and rebuilding the family estate in what he declares to be a Herculean undertaking. Other characters demonstrate heroic traits. Clara’s mother is a suffragette. Férula, Trueba’s mother, caters to the poor and is described as sublimely heroic. The prostitute Tránsito Soto decides to overcome her fate as a streetwalker. The count de Satigny chivalrously rescues Blanca, who is pregnant with the child of her father’s enemy. Pedro Tercero

García is a hero of the socialist movement. Jaime, Clara’s son, gives away his clothes to the poor, while his brother, Nicolás, studies alternative medicine, eventually helping more people than his physician brother. Finally, Alba, Trueba’s granddaughter, opposes the military coup and is tortured for her efforts. However, among these characters, only Alba seems immune from the challenge of a tragic flaw. Clara’s clairvoyance is both a blessing and a shame. Marcos’s apparent double death is a case of mistaken identity rather than a resurrection and negates his godlike image. Esteban suffers from hubris, the Greek notion of excessive pride, which eventually destroys his work at Tres Marías and his relationships with those he loves the most. Nívea, Clara’s mother, is hypocritical, enjoying the comforts of the tearoom after charitable visits to the poor. Nívea also enjoys modern conveniences, such as cars that fly at a suicidal pace. Eventually, Nívea and her husband are killed in a car crash, dying from their attraction to modernity and wealth. Férula, despite her goodwill, lives in fear of her sexual fantasies, while Tránsito Soto, rather than escaping prostitution, turns the sex trade into a booming enterprise. Sex is also the count’s downfall. He loses everything when his wife discovers his pornographic photographs revealing his sexual obsession with his servants. Destruction arises out of other obsessions. Jaime’s charity is described as madness, a madness culminating in his death by a firing squad because of his socialist beliefs. More dramatic than Jaime’s death is his agreeing to perform an abortion on his brother’s girlfriend. He agrees out of his obsessive but unrequited love for the woman, even though the act contradicts his beliefs. In a separate series of events, Nicolás leaves home to find peace in Eastern spiritual practices, but he eventually sells his religion at the ironically named Institute for Union with Nothingness. The socialist fight is clearly a heroic effort, but Pedro Tercero García, despite his efforts, is plagued by human flaws. His love for Blanca outweighs his desire for justice. He allows her to hide him in the labyrinth of her home, even as he feels imprisoned there. Eventually, he allows his enemy, Trueba, to

The House of the Spiritsâ•…â•… 147 help him and Blanca flee into exile, away from the fight for human rights. Alba is the only character who manages to surmount her tragic nature. Raped and tortured for her part in the socialist rebellion, she survives because her grandfather intercedes on her behalf. She appears to reject her beliefs, succumbing to the temptation of wealth. But she is saved from tragic destruction by her decision to become an agent for change. Carrying a child whose father is either an extremist rebel or the man who tormented her in jail, Alba decides to break the chain of vengeance and to forgive her captor, ensuring a safe haven for her child no matter who the father is. As Alba observes, she is part of a grand design that determines her family’s fate. Because of fate, the heroes in The House of the Spirits are destined both to great and charitable acts and to their own destruction. Only Alba, whose name signifies dawn, is able to surmount her tragic flaw and offer hope. Anne Massey

Oppression in The House of the Spirits

It is no surprise that oppression is a major theme in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. Although no specific reference is made to the country or time frame in which the story is set, the reader can guess that the tale unfolds against the backdrop of Chile’s 1973 military coup, an event that established a regime known for torturing and eliminating those who opposed it. However, oppression in Allende’s work does not take place solely in the political realm; rather, it takes the form of religious, economic, sexual, and racial dominance. Political control is the novel’s most obvious form of oppression. In an effort to eradicate the socialist regime, the military tortures Alba. The Poet—a clear reference to Pablo Neruda, famous for both his political advocacy and his verses, many of which exemplified Marxist ideology—dies after political events, including the exile and assassination of his friends, exhaust his will to live. Jaime is interrogated before being killed by a firing squad. The novel opens with references to religious oppression. In church on Holy Thursday, the priest names the parishioners he believes to be sinners, and Clara and her family are ostracized after Clara,

during Mass, critiques the church’s take on hell. Even Father Restrepo feels the oppression of the church, observing that his wages appear to have been established by the Inquisition. Férula perceives her humble suffering in caring for her mother as a pathway to heaven, yet she blames her torturous existence and failure to marry on her mother. Férula, in turn, uses guilt and religion to control her brother, Esteban Trueba. When Trueba arrives home soaking wet after spilling a cup of Viennese coffee proudly purchased with his first paycheck, Férula warns him that God is punishing him for wasting their mother’s medicine money. And as a child, Trueba wore a rope of Saint Francis around his waist to symbolize the promises tying him to his mother and sister. Having grown up poor, Trueba feels the burden of economic oppression, but he overcomes this through his mining enterprise. He then proceeds to use his newfound power to dominate, through violence, the servants at Tres Marías. When two peasants are found dead, the community is certain that Trueba, the patrón, is culpable. In Trueba’s eyes, his workers are children, and he ignores pleas to offer them wages instead of shelter and vouchers for purchases at the company store. Trueba’s life at Tres Marías exemplifies sexual oppression. He rapes Pancha García and other women at both Tres Marías and neighboring haciendas. When Clara arrives at Tres Marías, she tries to spread her mother’s slogans of gender equality among the peasant women, but her ideas are met with laughter. The women tell Clara that men will always be in charge and that the men would beat them, and rightly so, for subscribing to Clara’s whims. The proof of the women’s words is seen in Trueba’s violence toward his wife. Angered, he attacks Clara. Ethnic dominance permeates life at Tres Marías. The servants and workers are perceived as children who would not survive without the landowner’s generosity. Pedro Segundo García, the hacienda’s foreman, knows that he will never confront the patrón, and Pancha García is merely seen as an instrument for Trueba’s physical relief at the end of the day. Blanca is forced to hide her relationship with Pedro Tercero García, a peasant, and is forced into an loveless marriage in order to hide her having become

148â•…â•… Alvarez, Julia pregnant with the offspring of such an unworthy suitor. Blanca’s husband, the count, oppresses the servants in his employ, forcing them to pose in lewd sexual acts for his photography. Of all the characters, only Clara avoids oppression, taking refuge in her magic and her aloofness. When her magical powers become the object of shame, she chooses not to speak. She endures her husband’s tirades and then responds with a ridiculous non sequitur that demonstrates her unflappable nature. When her husband hits her, she refuses to speak to him, an act that isolates her from his abuse. Finally, her labyrinth of a home and her ability to become part of the spirit world at will separates her from the oppressive reality surrounding her. She, unlike any other character in Allende’s work, avoids the political, sexual, religious, and economic dominance faced by the other characters by living in her own world—the house of the spirits. Anne Massey

ALVAREZ, JULIAâ•… How the García Girls Lost Their Accentsâ•… (1991)

Julia Alvarez (b. 1950) is best known for her first novel, How the García Girls Lost their Accents, which received the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. Told chronologically backwards, the 15 stories tell of how the four García sisters leave their home in the Dominican Republic to be challenged in the United States through language, cultural difference, education, race, ethnicity, and gender. Alvarez’s novel introduces the reader to the quandary that faces the four García girls: how to “fit in” in American society while retaining a sense of their identity as Dominican women. The narrator changes in the 15 stories, thus allowing all four women to render their versions of what has happened between the time they lived in the Dominican Republic and their maturation into women in New York. The women write of their Latino family, their American friends and significant others, and their own identities as something in between. The chronological order reflects going back to their “roots” on the island in order to understand the people they have become. In the first story, one of the older

sisters returns to the island with the intention of remaining there. How the García Girls Lost Their Accents tells a funny but difficult story that examines the difficult issue of identity in a foreign land. Because this process is never a solitary one, it is fitting that the four sisters tell their stories together rather than as lone individuals. Nancy Cardona

The American Dream in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Most people believe that attainment of the American dream involves the acquisition of material objects. Julia Alvarez’s novel questions this notion, having her immigrant García family attain the American dream in terms of objects, but the dream eludes the family in terms of their ability to see themselves as wholly American. The García family begins their story in the Dominican Republic where they live a fairly privileged life. Mr. García owns a factory, and the families live behind compound walls in order to protect them from the disadvantaged. They have servants to cater to their every need, and some of the men in the family maintain two families. Even though the family lives with great privilege, they do so under Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican Republic’s ruthless dictator who ruled the island for more than 30 years. To escape the country’s dangerous political situation, Mr. García participates in the underground resistance movement and is given an opportunity to leave the island with his family via a CIA contact known as “Uncle Vic.” When they arrive in the United States, the family is poor, and they struggle to make ends meet despite the fact that Mr. García has been a successful businessman and has training as a doctor. The four daughters are given a stereotypical American childhood, wearing braces to “straighten their teeth” and “smooth[ing] the accent out of their English in expensive schools.” If anything, Mr. García believes that his ability to provide this kind of childhood to his daughters has actually distanced them from him. One daughter elopes with a German man, two of them get divorces, while the last one suffers a nervous breakdown. The attainment of the American

How the García Girls Lost Their Accentsâ•…â•… 149 dream seems to have worked against the four García “girls,” rather than helped them. What the four García women have learned is that there are inconsistencies in the American dream. As Sandra learns early on, looking like an American does not mean that you are accepted as one. “Being pretty, she [Sandra] would not have to go back where she came from. Pretty spoke both languages. Pretty belonged in this country .╯.╯.” This is despite Sandra’s own experiences with children at school who shout at her, “Spics! Go back to where you came from!” The women’s ability to attain the American dream is not enough to make them feel “American.” Emphasizing just how foreign the girls feel, upon the family’s first anniversary in the United States, Carla wishes that they be allowed to return to the Dominican Republic. The one thing that gives Carla solace in this foreign land is her family, including those she left behind on the island. When she recalls those children who chase her, screaming that she “Go back! Go back!,” she recites to herself “the names of her own sisters, for all those she wanted God to especially care for, here and back home. The seemingly endless list of familiar names would coax her back to sleep with a feeling of safety, of a world still peopled by those who love her.” The attainment of the American dream, therefore, has nothing to do with material objects that can be photographed. Rather, the women must learn to own themselves and their culture, even as it might be rejected by “real Americans.” Nancy Cardona

Gender in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Julia Alvarez’s novel describes the lives of four Dominican daughters of a man who escaped the Trujillo regime to relocate in the United States. While they are all “strong” women in their own rights, each one struggles with how to be a “good” woman. Over the course of the novel, Alvarez describes two major obstacles that these women struggle with as they grow up: First, how do they become American women when they are foreigners, and second, how do they balance the values with

which they have been raised and their desires to be “American” women? One of the first major struggles that the García women must confront is their status as “outsiders” as they are born in the Dominican Republic and yet are raised in the United States. Sandra, the secondborn daughter, struggles with this while in graduate school. Shortly after the family arrives in the United States, they go out to dinner with another family that is helping them. She stops in the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror and observes that “she was surprised to find a pretty girl looking back at her. It was a girl who could pass as American, with soft blue eyes and fair skin .╯.╯.” (emphasis added). Here, Sandra begins to understand the importance of looking like an American. She believes that “looking” American is a key to being accepted as one. However, this initial understanding betrays her when she is in graduate school and innocently goes on a diet because she wants to “look like those twiggy models. She was a looker, that one.” Sandra’s desire to emulate the American epitome of beauty, in this case a physically thin woman, becomes a struggle for her mental stability. Instead of succeeding with the diet and becoming a confident, self-assured woman, Sandra has a nervous breakdown, believing that she is slowly devolving and will become a monkey. Her inability to truly embody this beauty ideal leads to her mental collapse. The second struggle is related to the first. Even as the four García women may consider themselves to be wholly American women, how do others perceive them? This theme is explored in Yolanda’s story. At several junctures in the novel, she must contend with others’ perceptions of her as a Latina in terms of her sexuality and the reality of how she sees herself. As her college boyfriend, Rudy Elmhurst, says, he expects her to “be all hot-blooded, being Spanish and all, and that.╯.╯.╯. [Y]ou’d be really free, instead of all hung up.╯.╯.╯. [Y]ou’re worse than a .╯.╯. Puritan.” Rudy’s expectations of Yolanda have more to do with his own stereotypes about Latinas than about who Yolanda is. Yolanda, like many college-age people, is torn between the woman she wishes to become (a liberated woman who makes decisions for herself ) versus the woman she has been

150â•…â•… Amis, Kingsley trained to be (a good Catholic girl who is deferential to her husband). Even as an adult, Yolanda continues to struggle with this stereotypical understanding of who she should be. Her partner at one point explains that he feels “caught between the women’s libber and the Catholic señorita.” This struggle between her “morals” of chastity before marriage and rejecting those values because they oppress women plagues Yolanda in her struggle to be her own woman. Indeed, as the novel opens, she has returned to the Dominican Republic in the hope of symbolically returning to the person she left behind. What she hopes for is to attain the same “authority in their voices” that her Dominican aunts and cousins have. But in order to do that, Yolanda knows that she must be able to “let the mighty wave of tradition roll on through her life and break on some other female shore.” If Yolanda were to be able to do that, she would have to make a choice between the two women that she is aspires to be rather than to find a way to combine these identities. Nancy Cardona

Tradition in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Julia Alvarez’s novel about four Dominican women who arrive in the United States as girls explores the clash of traditions as the girls grow up straddling two cultures. The novel begins with the third daughter, Yolanda, as she travels to the Dominican Republic in an effort to return to her “roots.” But this return is more about how the women have dealt with the traditions with which they were raised, as the novel shows how the women have strayed from these roots even as they believe they are held hostage to them. Yolanda’s return to the island illustrates her discomfort with the tradition that the island represents. Although she hopes to be able to return to the island permanently, she recognizes that this move will be difficult, as she thinks that she has learned “at last, to let the mighty wave of tradition roll on through her life and break on some other female shore.” In many ways, Yolanda idealizes the island and the life it represents, as she can only see the struggle that she and her sisters have waged in order to fit in in the United

States. Her parents, too, idealize the island, sending their daughters there for the summer to ensure they do not become too Americanized. Over the course of the novel, the reader sees that the four daughters struggle with sex and sexuality, ethnicity, and language. The first stems from a number of different sources, but other characters in the novel all seem to believe that it is a combination of ethnicity and religion that forbid them from being true to themselves sexually. As one of Yolanda’s lovers notes, he “[feels] caught between the woman’s libber and the Catholic señorita.” These two identities focus on the clash between the two traditions with which the women have been raised, an understanding of the status of women based on U.S. standards and those of the Dominican Republic. It is this ability to live up to these two standards that causes problems for Sandra. She can “pass” as a woman of European ancestry with her fair complexion and blue eyes, but even she cannot escape the feeling of being between two cultures. When she is in graduate school, Sandra suffers a nervous breakdown, eventually starving herself by feeding herself with books, believing that she is becoming a monkey. Her crisis is one of feeling fully human. Sandra’s breakdown symbolizes the women’s struggle with language as well. Language becomes a marker of inclusion that allows the women to be fully accepted as Americans. When Yolanda is dating a young man in college, his parents note that Yolanda does not have an accent, which would mark her as an outsider, a foreigner. As the narrator explains, their accents had been “ironed out.” At one point, language is seen as a comforter, a place of safety, where others cannot “catch” her. Nancy Cardona

AMIS, KINGSLEYâ•… Lucky Jimâ•… (1954)

Kingsley Amis’s first novel, Lucky Jim, remains one of his best-known works as well as a superb example of the comedic novel of manners. Published in 1954, Lucky Jim is often credited, along with Mary McCarthy’s Groves of Academe (1952) and Randall Jarrell’s Pictures of an Institution (1954), as crystallizing the form of the academic novel genre, particu-

Lucky Jimâ•…â•… 151 larly in its use of satire to critique and ridicule higher education. Equally, it is credited with instigating the “angry young man” movement in the 1950s that also included the writers John Osborne, Alan Sillitoe, and Colin Wilson. Amis’s protagonist, Jim Dixon, encapsulates the “angry young man” with his biting sarcastic attitude, especially in response to the overt class inequities and foibles lampooned by the novel. In his first year as a junior lecturer of history at a provincial, “red-brick” English university in the postwar period, Dixon is forced to pander to his absentminded, socially and culturally pretentious supervisor, Professor Welch. Much of the charm of Lucky Jim resides in following Dixon’s internal commentary and fantasies of revenge on those he encounters, especially Welch and his family. The novel follows Dixon’s comic exploits as he struggles with his job, his students, his would-be girlfriend, and the entire social fabric of postwar Britain. Set against the background of the university and Dixon’s attempt to secure a job he is not even sure he desires, Lucky Jim deals with such themes as work, social class, and education. Eric Leuschner

Education in Lucky Jim

As one of the first widely acknowledged academic novels, Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim features the exploits and misadventures of a university faculty member in an educational system that has become the target of satire and ridicule. The description of the unnamed university that serves as the novel’s setting demonstrates the changing views of academia: “An ill-kept lawn ran down in front of them to a row of amputated railings, beyond which was College Road and the town cemetery, a conjunction responsible for some popular local jokes.” But it is the characters that best serve the novel’s satirical purposes, particularly the contrasting figures of Jim Dixon and Professor Welch. The novel’s protagonist, Jim Dixon, is a newly hired junior history professor at a provincial British university. Unlike many of his older colleagues, Dixon hails from a working-class family and background and so feels he does not fit in with the other faculty, subscribing neither to the social nor the cultural values of the Oxford or Cambridge set. From

the beginning, Dixon challenges the traditional educational culture of the university, even choosing his specialization in medieval history because it was a “soft option in the Leicester course,” not because of any real interest. He admits to a policy of reading “as little as possible of any given book” and has violent fantasies of what he might do to his superior. He has little regard for even his own academic research, the title of which, “The Economic Influence of the Developments in Shipbuilding Techniques, 1450– 1485,” reflects what Dixon describes as the “niggling mindlessness” of such scholarship. Yet he places his future hopes in attempting to get it published and is elated when he receives a vague promise of a publication by a new journal, even though the letter is addressed to “J. Dickinson” instead of “Dixon.” Desiring some sense of stability and job security, Dixon plays the game with halfhearted teaching and research and continual attempts to socialize and to please Welch and his ilk as he participates in university politics. As the novel’s major antagonist, Professor Welch epitomizes the absent-minded, stodgy, overly pretentious academic. In the novel’s introductory scene, Dixon notes that “no other professor in Great Britain, he thought, set such store by being called Professor.” Dixon even questions Welch’s qualifications: “How had he become Professor of History, even at a place like this? By published work? No. By extra good teaching? No in italics.” Dixon leaves the question unanswered, recognizing the fact that Welch ultimately possesses the power to control his future. What Welch and his family, in particular his dilettante sons Bertrand the painter and Michel the writer, also possess, however, is a cultural affectation that consistently irks Dixon’s working-class sensibilities. Welch constantly talks about performing Renaissance music at his home with colleagues and friends and even attributes to his home “some sort of healing effect,” undoubtedly caused by the apparent cultured ethos. Even though Dixon attempts to endear himself to Welch in order to be retained on the faculty, the sincerity of Welch’s concern is often questioned, particularly as he, similar to the journal editor, mistakenly addresses Dixon as Faulkner, Dixon’s predecessor in the position, several times.

152â•…â•… Amis, Kingsley The novel’s climax, Dixon’s drunken lecture on “Merrie England,” encapsulates the contrast between the characters and the satire on education. Standing to deliver the lecture, Dixon begins with a “preludial blaring sound” imitative of one of Welch’s habitual mannerisms. Partly unconsciously, partly in an attempt to placate Welch, he further imitates Welch’s manner of speech: “He’d inserted an ‘of course’ here, a ‘you see’ there, an ‘as you might call it’ somewhere else; nothing so firmly recalled Welch as that sort of thing.” In a pointed jab at academic speech (as represented by Welch), Dixon also uses “a number of favourite Welch tags: ‘integration of the social consciousness,’ ‘identification of work with craft,’ and so on.” Trying to break the imitation of Welch, Dixon begins to sound like the university principal, then affects an “exaggerated northern accent,” followed in turn by someone sounding like “an unusually fanatical Nazi trooper in charge of a book-burning reading out to the crowd excerpts from a pamphlet written by a pacifist, Jewish, literate Communist,” and finally speaking in an “unnameable foreign accent╯.╯.╯.╯punctuating his discourse with smothered snorts of derision╯.╯.╯.╯spitting out the syllables like curses, leaving mispronunciations, omissions, spoonerisms uncorrected.” Dixon’s speech (in his description, “conjectural, nugatory, deluded, tedious rubbish”) critiques the nostalgia-infused, nonworldly nature of higher education and ensures his dismissal. However, in the end Dixon finds himself in better company outside the university, concluding the novel’s negative assessment of the world of higher education. Eric Leuschner

Social Class in Lucky Jim

Although Kingsley Amis, in a letter written in 1986, denied the suggestion that Lucky Jim was intended as a critique of the class conflict in postwar Britain and was never comfortable with his identification with the “angry young man” movement, it is difficult not to read the novel without seeing such characters as Professor Welch and his son Bertrand as being caricatures of a pretentious, class-conscious type or Jim Dixon as the reactionary working-class hero. As a comedy of manners, Lucky Jim’s humor

stems directly from its targeting of social foibles and behaviors. The novel opens with a conversation between Dixon and Professor Welch that encapsulates Welch’s characterization as someone obsessed with trivialities, testifying to a snobbish, pseudo-cultured person. Recalling a Post review of a recital, Welch notes that the “reporter chap” mistakenly stated that the concert was for “flute and piano,” not “recorder and piano.” Opening with Welch’s long-winded explanation of the difference between a flute and recorder immediately establishes Welch as knowledgeable, but it is evident that this type of knowledge is not useful. Later, after Welch goes on about the welfare state, “so-called freedom of education,” and retributive punishment to Dixon while driving, Dixon looks at the window and sees his barber, for whom he “felt a deep respect” because of “his impressive exterior, his rumbling bass voice, and his unsurpassable stock of information about the Royal Family.” For Dixon, the low-brow gossip trumps the niggling distinction between recorder and flute. Not only is Professor Welch, with his passion for amateur musicals, singled out for criticism, but his sons are as well, especially Bertrand. Tagged as elitist, Bertrand affects a cultured and cosmopolitan attitude, which consistently irritates Dixon. While the primary conflict between Dixon and Bertrand is over Christine Callaghan, the tension between the two results from the difference between appearance and reality. In one of their final confrontations, Dixon calls Bertrand on his behavior: You think that just because you’re tall and can put paint on canvas you’re a sort of demigod. It wouldn’t be so bad if you really were. But you’re not: you’re a twister and a snob and a bully and a fool. You think you’re sensitive, but you’re not: your sensitivity only works for things that people do to you. Touchy and vain, yes, but not sensitive.” Primarily, the criticism in store for Welch and his family lies in their pretentiousness, summed up most succinctly in their affected clothing choices. From the beginning, Professor Welch is seen wearing a fishing hat, despite the fact that he is never seen

Lucky Jimâ•…â•… 153 actually fishing or even discussing fishing. Just as he has a romanticized view of “Merrie Old England,” he has a certain condescending attitude toward the rural life. Likewise, Bertrand is never seen without his blue beret. Although Welch’s fishing hat suggests some practical purpose, Bertrand’s beret is simply faux artistic pretension. Upon seeing the beret, Dixon wonders, “If such headgear was a protection, what was it a protection against? If it wasn’t a protection, what was it? What was it for? What was it for?” Ultimately, the criticism of the class represented by the Welches falls to the pragmatic aspect, and the symbolism of the hats is reinforced by the concluding scene when Dixon and Christine spy the Welches on the street; they are wearing the hats, but now Bertrand is wearing the fishing hat and the professor is wearing the beret, as if they are interchangeable. Welch’s other son, the conspicuously absent Michel, who is usually denigrated as the “effeminate writing son,” is finally present and is wearing, in contrast, a pale corduroy cap. While the reader is never sure about Michel, this detail suggests that he somehow differs from his father and brother and is perhaps actually cultured and artistically sensible. In contrast to the Welches, who represent the worst of the aristocratic class, Christine suggests that there is not a simple opposition between the classes. When Dixon first meets Christine, he reacts ambivalently, put off by his own class consciousness: “The sight of her seemed an irresistible attack on his own habits, standards, and ambitions: something designed to put him in his place for good.” Yet she turns out to be the most earnest character in the novel. While Dixon assumes she’s associated with the ballet, in fact she works in a bookshop, and her dress is consistently plain and unostentatious. Like her uncle, Gore-Urquhart, she avoids the excesses of the upper-class society while maintaining the most genuine claim. Eric Leuschner

Work in Lucky Jim

Set in the period immediately following World War II, Lucky Jim witnesses the transformation of the concept of work in British society. Primarily, Kingsley Amis contrasts the ineffectual, elitist idea of academic work with the more real work of business and

industry. In the 1980s, David Lodge, one of Amis’s literary heirs with the academic novel, picks up the contrast between types of work with his aptly titled novel Nice Work (1988) as he describes the interactions between a university professor and an engineer. As Lucky Jim follows the exploits of Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer of history at a provincial British university, Dixon’s academic work is characterized as marginal and worthless. Dixon has little interest in the research he is engaged with, describing its “niggling mindlessness” and “its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts.” For Dixon, the problem is so far removed from any real concern that it is essentially a “non-problem.” Yet it is in line with all the other published research he is familiar with, all “convinced of its own usefulness and significance.” Even Dixon’s superior, Professor Welch, cannot judge the work on its own merits and must rely on its acceptance in an academic journal, no matter how obscure, for a sense of worth. One subplot of the novel concerns Dixon’s attempts to forestall the demands of one of his students, who repeatedly pesters him about an upcoming seminar. Dixon’s avoidance stems from his own uncertainty about his capabilities on the subject as well as his disdain for the work itself. The irony of his academic work is revealed when the research project on medieval shipbuilding techniques he submitted to a journal is plagiarized by the journal’s editor, who uses it to be hired as a department chair at another university. In a similar way, Professor Welch represents the elitist idea of the university and its work. Welch promotes himself as a cultural connoisseur, hosting weekends at his country home, where visitors participate in impromptu madrigal singing. Despite his bluster about traditional, ruralized England, Welch’s work habits are less than hardy. At the beginning, Dixon wonders how he achieved and maintains his position at the university, as he neither teaches well nor publishes. Even academic work is absent from Welch. Welch’s seeming hypocrisy runs the other way as well, as symbolized by the fishing hat that he wears even though he does not do the work of fishing, either. The characterization of Bertram, Welch’s eldest son, also suggests Amis’s critique of work. Asked by Dixon about his “work,” Bertram, the socially superior, cosmopolitan-styled artist,

154â•…â•… Anaya, Rudolfo answers that he is a painter, but he is quick to qualify his answer by distancing his painting from any sense of practicality: he does not paint houses, nor does he paint “pictures of trade unionists or town halls.” For Bertram, the goal of art should not be political or useful. His paintings range from an eight-foot nude whom he describes as a “real smasher” and a self-portrait set against a brick wall (“more wall than Welch”) to a small painting just started of three workman in a pub reading a newspaper. The trivialization of the latter subject reiterates the Welches’ disdain for actual work. On the other hand, Julius Gore-Urquhart appears to represent an opposing conception of work. Although the novel indicates that GoreUrquhart is a member of the upper class, there is the sense that there is something more substantial to him that the class snobbery of the Welches. While Gore-Urquhart possesses formal, refined manners (“quite the real thing,” according to Margaret), he is also marked by his accent and accepted demeanor of a Scottish lowlander. It is the job of personal assistant to Gore-Urquhart in London that appeals to Bertram throughout the novel, but it is clear that Bertram believes that the job would not entail much work. In the end, however, Dixon gets the job after he is fired from the university and freed from its odd conception of work. Discussing his position in the university earlier, Gore-Urquhart diagnoses Dixon’s unhappiness with the position: “Where’s the trouble? In you or in it?” His question suggests that there is a very real concern with a personal propensity for work, but at the same time, there is an understanding that some jobs are not worthwhile. Dixon’s reply encapsulates the attitude toward effectual and ineffectual work as he claims that it is both: “They waste my time and I waste theirs.” When Gore-Urquhart offers Dixon the job, he notes that many have the qualifications for a job, but few do not have the disqualifications, referring offhandedly to Bertram. The novel does not make clear that the job with Gore-Urquhart will be any more satisfactory for Dixon than his previous position, but GoreUrquhart’s lack of pretension contrasts completely with Welch and academia. Eric Leuschner

ANAYA, RUDOLFOâ•… Bless Me, Ultimaâ•… (1972)

Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima has been extremely popular—and controversial—since its publication at the inception of the Chicano arts movement. Celebrating a rich continuum of ancient indigenous Southwest/Mexican cultural inheritances, along with innovations in language, art, and spiritual expression, Chicano artists and writers like Anaya (b. 1937) rebelled against the previous erasure of Hispanic American history and culture in U.S. arts and education. Set in rural New Mexico during World War II, Bless Me, Ultima is reminiscent of Anaya’s own childhood. Six-year-old Antonio, confronted by identity conflict within his family and community, discovers his true self with the help of the curandera (midwife/spiritual healer) Ultima. Against the proscriptive Catholic Church, which controls the pious farmers (represented by Antonio’s mother’s family) and the equally limiting “cowboy” mentality of the vaqueros (represented by Antonio’s father’s kin), Anaya suggests through Antonio’s tale a new cultural frame of mind rooted in the spiritual “presence” of nature, a way of thinking and being that resists labels and restrictions on personal free will. Bless Me, Ultima received the prestigious Premio Quinto Sol literary award in 1972, but the novel has also been censored in several municipalities in the United States—burned or otherwise disposed of— as recently as 2005. It appeared on the American Library Association’s most commonly challenged books of 1990–2000. The young boys’ innocent use of certain curse words in Spanish and the discussion of witchcraft have been considered threatening by some community leaders, who may also object to Antonio’s ambiguous, independent spirituality in the novel. Elizabeth McNeil

Coming of Age in Bless Me, Ultima

Published during the final years of the Vietnam War, Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima is set during World War II in a New Mexico mestizo (SpanishIndian) community at odds with itself as well as with the greater Anglo society. The novel’s coming-

Bless Me, Ultimaâ•…â•… 155 of-age theme works on several levels. Through the six-year-old protagonist, Antonio, Anaya affirms a new Chicano literary, social, and spiritual identity for the individual and community. In addition, Anaya’s Chicano cultural assertion echoes the work of the multiple other counterculture movements during the civil rights era that similarly sought to draw out the widely various narratives comprising American experience. Antonio’s family has settled by the river, which serves as a liminal border between the llano (plain) and the town. Antonio is caught in a tug of war between the values and lifestyle of his vaquero (cowboy) father, a member of the Márez family (mar meaning the sea, which represents the bold seafaring Spanish conquistadores and the open life of the llano), and farmer mother, a Luna (luna, the moon, is indicative of peaceful indigenous farmers in tune with planting cycles dictated by the moon). His father wants Antonio to grow up to work livestock from horseback, free on the llano, while his pious mother, who cries every time she thinks Antonio might choose his father’s Márez ways, wants him to become a priest, to help the villagers. Mature for his age, Antonio clearly is not attracted to the macho life of the vaqueros and sees hypocrisies in the Catholic religion. Although he desires a life in relationship to family and community, Antonio does not seem destined to become a vaquero, farmer, or priest. In order to widen and complicate his protagonist’s (and reader’s) choices of identity, Anaya constructs an alternative in the person of the aged curandera Ultima, who has been invited to live out the end of her life with Antonio’s family. Ultima’s authority and wisdom come in large part from her knowledge of and relationship to nature. Townspeople who fear her power call her a bruja (witch), though they also turn to her when the evil actions of real brujas cannot be dispelled by the Catholic priest. As the midwife who helped Antonio into the world, Ultima is cognizant of the forces at play on the occasion of his birth and the identities afforded him, including what she offers. Living with the family, she helps Antonio to discern more than just the obvious choices of his dual competing lineages, and to reach deeper into the wisdom and

magic all around him in nature—especially via his observances of the mythic wisdom of the “Golden Carp” in the river. Antonio comes of age through various encounters with death, danger, nature, spirituality/the supernatural, sex and sexuality, and Catholicism. Ultima consistently reminds him that life cannot be reduced to dualistic good-bad/either-or Western/ Christian thinking; life is, instead, an interconnected cycle of existence that binds one and all. Under Ultima’s calm tutelage, Antonio will grow up to become a new kind of leader following a new religion rooted in nature, healing, and peacemaking. Anaya suggests that the only way the adult Antonio can care for the world is to be at peace in himself, and the only way to be at peace (which his parents and the other townspeople are clearly not) is to be aligned with the real authority of nature rather than with abstract Catholic dogma. Antonio’s coming of age is tied to various values of the Chicano movement: the love and support of family; the presence of and belief in the land; a sense of human dignity in all social strata; and a grace that is rooted in nature and the human body, neither any longer viewed as vile or uncontrolled and in need of conquering, as European Christian colonialism had insisted were intrinsically true of the “New World” and her indigenous inhabitants. At the time of Bless Me, Ultima’s publication, the United States was involved in yet another war (Vietnam), and the cold war’s threat of nuclear annihilation was still looming. Liberal members of society recognized nature as the ultimate authority that could bring humanity back to its senses. Bless Me, Ultima is set during World War II, which means Antonio’s vision would be mature by the time of the peace, environmental, and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. As an adult, then, Antonio’s leadership and cultural contributions—like that of Anaya and of Anaya’s readers—could help awaken others to a peaceful recognition and appreciation of the diverse American story. Elizabeth McNeil

Family in Bless Me, Ultima

In keeping with the primary importance of la familia in Hispanic American life, immediate and

156â•…â•… Anaya, Rudolfo extended family are the focus of Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima. The parents of the six-year-old protagonist, Antonio, are opposites in terms of their own upbringing, and both familial lines attempt to influence Antonio’s future. Antonio’s mother comes from pious Catholic peasant farmers who insist the boy must become a priest. On the other hand, Antonio’s father’s kin, restless vaqueros who claim descent from Spanish conquistadores, want him to be like them, macho, freedom-loving cowboys. In the novel, the Márez family is a microcosm representing conflicting pressures to conform to colonial European and modern Anglo influences, all of which threaten the centrality, solidarity, spiritual essence, and continuity of la familia, and so of the individual. Demonstrating a new (though ancient) way of being to readers, Anaya’s young protagonist rejects the opposing life paths presented to him in favor of the much more encompassing earth-oriented spirituality and healing practice of the ancient curandera Ultima, who was there at Antonio’s birth and who has now come to live out her remaining days with the family. Anaya’s suggestion of a place-based mystical connection unmitigated by colonial social institutions, like the Catholic Church, or modern-day Anglo capitalist influences is an important statement of identity politics that helped make Bless Me, Ultima a hallmark text of the burgeoning Chicano civil rights movement of 1970s America. The novel is set at the end of World War II, after the confrontation between (and new confluences resulting from the contact of ) American subcultures, as well as world populations and cultures, that occurred because of the war. Early in the novel, having survived the global slaughter intact, Antonio’s three older brothers arrive home. The war, they admit, has made them men too soon. After returning home, the promise of decadent pleasures to which they had become accustomed as soldiers (for example, alcohol and prostitution) make them reject the boredom of small-town living, along with their father’s dreams of establishing a family vineyard in California. For these young men, their family focus and perhaps, Anaya strongly suggests, even their spirits have been lost to the “war sickness.” Feeling hemmed in by their father’s expectations, they fragment the family by restlessly seeking fulfillment in

urban living, rather than in the hard work and unity of la familia and the land. Antonio’s sisters, like his older brothers, have learned English and Anglo culture in school and are thus, Anaya shows, at a remove from the language and heritage of their family and home. However, Antonio himself, who begins to attend school during the time span of the novel, resists the loss of identity he innocently observes in his beloved brothers and distanced sisters, instead finding a selfdefining rootedness in the “presence” of the river and land through Ultima’s clarifying guidance. The character of Ultima speaks to the importance of indigenous cultural heritage that predates brutal colonial influences, a sense of belonging to the land and, by extension, to one’s natural (as opposed to culturally constructed) self. The sense of personal autonomy creates a sense of peace in the novel that also equates to a supremely strong and effective resistance to evil, as demonstrated by Ultima’s protective actions on behalf of the family—especially Antonio—and greater community. Loyalty, respect, and an acknowledgement of human interdependence are the marks of the extended familial connections Anaya emphasizes through Ultima’s physical and spiritual work in the community. Every community needs its seers, its prognosticators who are so sensitive to occurrences and relationships in the present that they can foretell and therefore positively guide the people’s future. In Bless Me, Ultima, Antonio is already astonishingly insightful and emotionally strong for his six-plus years. His spiritual receptivity and the promise of his leadership abilities as he matures suggest a new mystic awareness of self powerfully connected to indigenous beliefs and the land itself. This earthly appreciation of Chicano identity and purpose in the new generation of leaders would, as Anaya and other visionaries of the Chicano movement emphatically suggested, allow Mexican Americans to confront the degrading influences of Anglo culture that threaten Chicanos’ daily survival and, even more important, cultural autonomy. Instead, Bless Me, Ultima, as a key text in the great range of literature, oral performance, visual and public art, and music produced by Chicanos during and since the civil rights era, has

Winesburg, Ohioâ•…â•… 157 offered a renewed sense of pride in la raza (the race) and its most intrinsic unit, la familia. Elizabeth McNeil

Spirituality in Bless Me, Ultima

The most intense theme in Bless Me, Ultima is the definition of one’s own spirituality. Although the protagonist, Antonio, is only six years old—which is extremely young for a coming-of-age novel— Rodolfo Anaya convincingly represents the tender, gifted psyche of the young protagonist and his spiritual awakening. The story is also convincing because Antonio does not undergo his transformation to independent spiritual selfhood alone. He is guided by the powerful curandera Ultima, who had helped bring Antonio into the world. Immediately following Antonio’s birth, the two factions of his family—the pious Catholic peasant farmers on his mother’s side, and on his father’s side the lusty, freedom-loving vaqueros—had begun warring over Antonio’s destiny. Ultima had stopped the fighting, firmly asserting that only she knew his destiny, a proclamation that plays out over the course of the novel. Representing the dual strands of Chicano identity, Antonio and his family live between two worlds in a number of ways, including the spiritual orientations of the parents’ disparate upbringings. The family’s home is situated near the river, set off on its own between the town and the llano. The children speak only Spanish before they begin their schooling, and in school will be forced to speak only English. Antonio’s mother hopes he will become a priest, and his father dreams this youngest son will travel west with him—as his older sons have refused to do—to make it big in the vineyards of California. As the novel opens, it is immediately clear that, although Antonio’s free, pure spirit is at imminent risk, his innocence and openness to the world are still intact. He is just beginning to attend school, where the language and culture of his upbringing will be replaced by English and by Anglo knowledge, and he has not yet been subsumed by the Catholic Church’s intense behavioral restrictions and attendant shame and guilt. When Ultima, who is reaching the end of her life, comes to live with the family, her renewed con-

nection to Antonio is something the still spiritually receptive young boy has been expecting. Ultima becomes Antonio’s guide as he learns the magic and peace of nature, a commonsensical knowledge base that also allows him to begin to understand the life-and-death struggles of the adults around him who are affected by war sickness (a spiritually nullifying stress that drives one man from the town to commit a random murder, thereby setting himself up to be killed as a result); the clash of indigenous and colonial ways of being, and conflicting Hispanic and Anglo cultural expectations; and, as represented especially by Antonio’s father, the people’s lack of access to the (Anglo) American dream of unlimited prosperity. Antonio is not pulled to either his mother’s or his father’s hopes for his future, nor does he feel the need to strike out on his own and abandon the family, as have his older brothers, who grew up too quickly through their involvement in the many ugly facets of World War II. With the gentle guidance of Ultima, six-year-old Antonio finds his identity and purpose in the powerful “presence” of the river and the mystic golden carp. Nature, Ultima, and Antonio’s strong sense of place all guide him to his destiny, which is to love life in spite of the tragic obstacles that are put in his path—to remain spiritually strong, in other words, no matter the circumstances. Antonio’s discovery of a spiritual identity that is rooted in nature and indigenous mysticism suggests an alternative to both the submissive Catholicism that rules the humble farmers’ lives and the spiritual void of the lustful vaqueros who revel in their descent from the brutal conquistadores. Through his protagonist’s spirituality, which is independent of Catholic dogma or the hypocrisy of some of its practitioners, Anaya emphasizes that metaphysical strength comes from an autonomous spirit that is connected to the land. Elizabeth McNeil

ANDERSON, SHERWOODâ•… Winesburg, Ohioâ•… (1919)

Winesburg, Ohio, is a cycle comprising 21 short stories plus one prefatory story, “The Book of the Grotesque.” That initial story introduces the concept that runs through the rest of the stories: People

158â•…â•… Anderson, Sherwood dominated by one idea become grotesque, even if that one idea is true. The stories, each focusing on a particular resident, comprise a mini-population or representation of the town itself. Because Winesburg, Ohio, is of the genre of a short-story cycle, the stories within it are bound to each other by many similarities, repetitions, and links. One link is the presence of writers among the characters. “The Book of the Grotesque” relates the dream an old writer had about the transformation of truths and people into grotesques. George Willard, a young man who figures in many of the stories, wants to be a writer. Other realizations by the characters include repeated instances of women being disappointed by men, by sex and sexuality, by romantic relationships, and by marriage. These women include George’s mother as well as Louise Bentley. However, two female characters without a male partner, Louise Trunnion and Kate Swift, are also disappointed. Finally, many male characters also express disappointment about their relationships with women. In a few instances, male and female characters achieve temporary communication: George’s mother with her male doctor; George with Helen Foster, the girl he loves. However, George’s mother fails to communicate her dying wish to George—that he make use of money she has hidden in the plaster wall at the foot of her bed—and Helen White fails to say goodbye to George at the railway station. Natalie Tarenko

Coming of Age in Winesburg, Ohio

In the next-to-last story in Winesburg, Ohio, coming of age is defined as “Sophistication,” in the story of that title. Within “Sophistication,” coming of age is further defined and refined as a young person’s epiphany or realization about the nature of time and self. Time, which brought the young person to this realization, will continue to pass, like leaves blown by the wind or like corn that will be cut down. So, also, will the life of the young person someday end; and so, too, have the lives ended of all the people who have ever lived. Specifically, the young person is George Willard. Winesburg, Ohio, largely tells the circumstances that brought George to this state of “sophistication.” In

many of Winesburg’s stories, other characters think back to their own epiphanies or realizations; usually, they feel compelled to tell George about it. Some characters try to wake him up: his father; Tom Foster; and his former teacher, Kate Swift. Each intends to wake George up to a different reality: his father to the sharpness required of a successful businessman, Kate Swift to a writer’s use of words. In addition, George’s mother seeks to save him from her own fate: not to be a failure by killing or allowing one’s youthful dreams to be killed. George dreams of being a writer and often boasts about how easy a life it will be. George’s naïveté is dangerous in that the narrative shows that words can be empty. One character who never has a coming of age, who never grows up, is Enoch Robinson (“Loneliness”). Even though old, he is childlike in preferring his made-up people to real ones, such as his wife and children, whom he had earlier abandoned. The danger of becoming mesmerized by one’s own words and ideas is underlined by the parallels between Enoch, who talks to himself, and George, who also often talks to himself and imagines himself in grandiose situations. George Willard is not the only character who gropes toward adulthood. Tom Foster also tries to learn things from and about life, which is another description of coming of age. Tom has fewer material resources than George, who has a satisfying job on the town newspaper and his father’s sometimes meddlesome conniving to help him. Tom sets out to get drunk, just once, so as to feel pain and grow from it; his language expands, and he is quite poetic in the metaphors he creates about Helen White, whom many of the young male characters love. In the last story of the book, “Departure,” George succeeds in leaving Winesburg; getting away from his hometown is another aspect of coming of age. Other young characters, such as Seth Richmond, also express interest in leaving town, possibly symbolizing leaving their childhood. Natalie Tarenko

Family in Winesburg, Ohio

In many of the stories in Winesburg, Ohio, an unhappy family can be the unfortunate result of the misunderstandings of coming of age. Women, in

Winesburg, Ohioâ•…â•… 159 particular, are led by society to believe that they can find what they long for by becoming involved with a man. However, male characters also feel misled or “tricked” (204), as Ray Pearson terms it in “The Untold Lie.” “Mother” is an early story in the sequence. “Mother” concerns Elizabeth Willard, the mother of the male protagonist, George Willard, who is the novice reporter to whom many of the characters relate their grotesquely obsessive ideas. In her girlhood, Elizabeth had been restless and longed to go on the stage, but because these longings were thwarted, she channeled them into encounters with men. One of these men, Tom Willard, became her husband in an unhappy marriage; together, they are the parents of George. In some of the stories in Winesburg, Ohio, the frustrated parent figure transfers his or her thwarted hopes onto another generation. In “Mother,” Elizabeth Willard hopes that her son George will achieve some of the transcendent longings she has failed to achieve. George’s father, too, has transferred some of his unrealized political ambitions onto George. However, George rejects his father’s more commonplace ambitions for power and status. The frustrated parent can transfer his or her thwarted hopes onto his or her offspring with such vehemence that the child is terrified by the parent figure. In “Godliness II,” David Hardy is the grandson of Jesse Bentley, a successful farmer who had longed for a son instead of his daughter, who became David’s mother. One of the ideas that dominates Jesse’s personality is a desire to be a biblical-style patriarch. When David was 12, his grandfather took him to the woods and begged God to show them a sign. David was so frightened by his grandfather’s demeanor that he ran off and fell, hitting his head. In “Godliness IV, Terror,” three years have passed. This time, it is the grandfather, Jesse Bentley, who falls. When Jesse tries to conduct a biblical-style sacrifice of a lamb, David becomes terrified; the situation has overtones of the intended sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. David hurls a stone at Jesse from his slingshot. David runs away and is never seen in Winesburg again; his grandfather is permanently disabled, physically and mentally, from the incident.

In Winesburg, Ohio, parents fail to communicate with their offspring. In “Mother,” Elizabeth Willard has a bond with her son, George, in that she longs for the hopes that have died in her life with her unhappy marriage to live on in her son. In spite of the bond between her and George, however, she fails to communicate with him, even on her deathbed. In a story placed next to last in the sequence (“Death, Concerning Doctor Reefy”), the death described is that of Elizabeth herself. She is one of the female characters who have been disappointed in marriage and family life. During the last six days of her life, she is unable to speak or communicate with anyone, and she anguishes over her not being able to tell George about the money she has hidden away behind the plaster in the wall at the foot of her bed. This money was a legacy from Elizabeth’s father years earlier. Near death, he mulled over his own regrets and urged Elizabeth not to marry the young man she was seeing. However, Elizabeth did marry that young man, Tom Willard, with whom she had her son, George. Thus, failed communication, like the walled-up money, is a legacy from generation to generation. Natalie Tarenko

Individual and Society in Winesburg, Ohio

The central character in Winesburg, Ohio, is young George Willard. George’s work in the newspaper office in town brings him into contact with many other people who long to achieve communication. Like them, George talks more to himself than with anyone else about his own dreams, ideas, and impressions. What is true of one of them is true of all of them: “He could master others but he could not master himself.” Individual characters feel walled off and long to make contact with others; this longing to communicate leads them to attempt to find something in romantic relationships, an attempt that largely fails. George’s parents are one of these failed couples; both women and men express bitterness that their loneliness was not only not assuaged by society in the institution of marriage but had actually increased. George’s mother, Elizabeth, hopes that she can save her son from her own unhappy fate: “Within him

160â•…â•… Maya Angelou there is a secret something that is striving to grow. It is the thing I let be killed in myself.” On rare occasions, the individual can succeed in reaching out and having a dialogue with someone else. George’s mother succeeds in communicating not with her husband but with Dr. Reefy, and he with her, during conversations. However, not only is this release temporary, but even Elizabeth’s doctor friend “did not listen” to her. Another instance of achieved communication occurs between two male friends; the one who is married and having difficulty feeding his family tries to warn the other against married life. The married one momentarily feels a blaze of kinship with nature. So, too, George sees the residents of Winesburg “must be brothers and sisters to him”—but only temporarily. When he succeeds in taking a walk with Helen White, the girl for whom he has the most feeling, atoms are a metaphor for the separateness of the individual characters; they cling together for a short time, but then go their separate ways. In addition to being main protagonist, George Willard is also associated with the different aspects of local society: the newspaper that seeks to mention as many residents in each edition as possible; the New Willard House, his parent’s shabby hotel, in which many characters stay; Winesburg; and the judgments passed by Winesburg’s residents. Individuals possessed by an idea are grotesque, as are all the residents in Winesburg. The book begins with a procession of grotesques in a section titled “The Book of the Grotesque.” This section is the frame story that gives rise to the rest of the stories. Winesburg, Ohio, is a short-story cycle. Each chapter can stand alone and has the features of a short story such as epiphany and one main character; on the other hand, the chapters are related by means of links and repeated characters and situations. Thus, the genre of Winesburg, Ohio, is itself a model of individual (story) and society (whole work). Both the most prominent individual (George Willard) and the most prominent descriptor of society (grotesques) function as links to tie the book together. Natalie Tarenko

MAYA ANGELOUâ•… I Know Why the Caged Bird Singsâ•… (1970)

In Maya Angelou’s autobiographical story I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, we follow the protagonist, Marguerite (whom her brother calls Maya), from the age of three until the birth of her son. The story starts when Maya and her brother Bailey are sent away to live with their paternal grandmother, Momma, and their crippled uncle, Willie. The siblings spend their early years helping out in their grandmother’s store, which is the heart of the poor black southern town in which she lives. Eventually they are sent back to their mother, who, they discover, is a striking beauty. The story provides detailed descriptions of what it was like for a black girl to grow up in a deeply racist society. The story conveys Maya’s sense of displacement and illustrates how she experiences her supposed ugliness—in comparison to her mother and brother—to be visible proof of her outsider status. Maya’s father, Daddy Bailey, appears on the outskirts of the story, but the big influences on her life are, according to her, her two mothers; her beloved brother; Mrs. Flowers, a sophisticated black friend of her grandmother’s, who draws her out of her self-inflicted muteness through the recitation of poems; and Miss Kerwin, a teacher who is particularly impartial in matters of race. Although indignation over injustices and harsh descriptions of a bleak and painful reality are inevitable parts of Maya’s story, it is also a tale about the possibility of keeping one’s dignity in the face of insults and of overcoming injustices through perseverance. Eva Lupin

Abandonment in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou’s autobiographical novel opens with three-year-old Maya and her four-year-old bother Bailey traveling alone across the United States wearing wrist tags that read “To Whom It May Concern.” The siblings are being sent away from their newly divorced parents to live with their paternal grandmother, and Maya reacts by pretending her parents are dead. “I couldn’t believe that our mother would laugh and eat oranges in the sunshine without

I Know Why the Caged Bird Singsâ•…â•… 161 her children,” she explains. When, one year, the siblings suddenly receive Christmas presents from their parents, it is a painful reminder that they have chosen a life without their children, rather than a cause for joy; and in a manner typical of children, Maya feels guilty and wonders what she has done wrong. The initial act of abandonment committed by her parents affects Maya’s sense of belonging and results in her not feeling at home anywhere. While living with her grandmother, she does not mind being taken for her uncle Willie’s child, since she does not “feel any loyalty” to her father and suspects she would have been better treated as Willie’s daughter, anyway. And when it is decided that the siblings are to live with their mother, after residing for a time with their maternal grandparents, Maya’s reaction shows how constant relocations give rise to feelings of detachment: “Moving from the house where the family was centered meant absolutely nothing to me. It was simply a small pattern in the grand design of our lives.” Never knowing how long she is to stay in one particular house, Maya avoids creating strong bonds with anyone but her brother. Maya’s reflection that her mother “was competent in providing for us. Even if that meant getting someone else to furnish the provisions” reveals her desire for parental care; and this need makes her especially vulnerable to the advances of Mr. Freeman, the man living with her mother. After a first incident of physical closeness with him, she is reassured by his embrace and convinced that he is her “real father”; and subsequently, Freeman takes advantage of this closeness and rapes Maya. Discovering what has happened to her daughter, Maya’s mother has her boyfriend killed; the traumatic incident and her feelings of guilt cause Maya to withdraw into complete silence. She refuses to speak to anyone but Bailey, and when she feels them growing apart, she retreats into the world of books, reflecting that “the long-lost children mistaken for waifs, became more real to me than our house, our mother, our school or Mr. Freeman.” A sense of loneliness, then, prevails in Maya’s life, and she is constantly aware of the possibility of abandonment. On a trip to New Mexico with her father, upon losing sight of him, she finds herself in a “fog of panic,” which, she says, “nearly suffocated

me.” She becomes convinced that he has sold her to a man and left her; her anxiety is relieved only upon finding his car parked in the yard. Back at home, she has an argument with his girlfriend, which results in a wound on her arm, and her father therefore decides to leave her with friends. Waking up in an empty house, Maya does not want to wait around for anyone, and, afraid to show her mother her arm, she spends a month on the street with a group of other abandoned children, who, she says, “set a tone of tolerance for my life.” Maya’s experience of abandonment makes her sensitive to the other children’s emotional limitations, and she is therefore not surprised that her friends are “undemonstrative” and receive the news with noticeable “detachment” when she decides to leave them. Although the theme of abandonment pervades the novel, the story concludes on a note of hope. As the story nears its end, Maya has just delivered her firstborn and is persuaded by her mother to let the baby sleep in her bed. Overcome by tiredness, she falls asleep, only to be awakened by her mother, who shows Maya that her baby lies fast asleep, touching her side in the secure space of her folded arm. The blanket covers him like a roof that completes the symbolic home Maya creates for her baby with her own body. In this way, convinced that Maya will not repeat the abandonment she herself suffered, readers are left confident of her little boy’s prospects of growing up with his mother. Eva Lupin

Identity in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou’s autobiographical story depicts the childhood and adolescence of Marguerite, or Maya, a black girl growing up in a deeply racist society. The novel opens with words that well illustrate Maya’s existence and that also come to influence her state of mind: “What you looking at me for? I didn’t come to stay .╯.╯.” When she is three years old, Maya’s parents decide to get divorced, and as a result she and her four-year-old brother, Bailey, are sent on a bus crossing several states to their paternal grandmother in the South. The porter who has been paid to accompany them deserts the children after a day, and they are forced to take care of themselves. This is the first time they are separated from their

162â•…â•… Maya Angelou mother, but before the novel ends, the siblings have moved back and forth a couple of times. The instability of her existence makes Maya feel a lack of control, which is further emphasized by her being raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she is only eight years old. Feeling guilty for having allowed the man to come near her, Maya does not dare to admit in court that he has touched her once before, and when she realizes that her mother (after finding out what has happened) has had her boyfriend killed, Maya is convinced that his death is the punishment for her lie. Her feelings of guilt become so unbearable that she withdraws into silence, refusing to speak to anyone but her brother. As a child, Maya fails to comprehend why the siblings are being moved around, and the adult Marguerite expresses her confusion: “There was an army of adults, whose motives and movements I just couldn’t understand and who made no effort to understand mine.” The experience makes her feel powerless, and the feeling of lacking control is emphasized by her race. On her graduation day, for example, Marguerite alternates between hope for her future and deep despair for the whole of her race, as well as for the lack of opportunity they are all facing. The ceremony in school, however, ends on a note of hope with the congregation singing the black national anthem. But the words that speak most clearly to Marguerite are those of a white man, Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty or give me death.” Marguerite feels a strong sense of powerlessness and displacement at home, as well as in society for reasons of race, and Henry’s words become symbolic of the determination she forms as a result of her experiences. On a trip to Mexico with her father, Marguerite overcomes circumstances for the first time, and she revels in the feeling of accomplishment and control this gives her. Although she has never driven a car before, she finds herself in the middle of the night, her father lying drunk in the backseat, maneuvering his vehicle from a small village in Mexico to the American border. Driving on winding paths dangerously close to the mountain edge, she finds the experience “exhilarating” and recalls how “[i]t was me, Marguerite, against the elemental opposition .╯.╯. I was controlling Mexico, and might and alone-

ness, and inexperienced youth and Bailey Johnson, Sr., and death and insecurity, and even gravity.” The experience empowers her to take charge in all parts of her life, and a few years later, after extreme perseverance, she becomes the first female Negro conductor on the San Francisco streetcars. Marguerite develops through the novel from a person unsure of her place—both in her family and in the greater society—to a person who is able to set goals for herself and fulfill them against all odds. Her first job is the result of an unrelenting insistence on her right to work where she pleases; and, similarly, she sets the time and place for her first voluntary sexual experience, thereby reclaiming ownership of her own body, and to the right to make her own decisions. The novel ends with the birth of her son and her mother’s assurance that there is no need to worry about doing the right thing: “If you’re for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.” Eva Lupin

Race in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

The title of Maya Angelou’s autobiographical story is a line from a poem called “Sympathy” by the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. By choosing a line from a poet who is considered representative of the black community, Angelou implies that her personal story has social implications. Furthermore, the author’s dedication, which appears on the opening page of the book, to her son “and all the strong black birds of promise who defy the odds and gods and sing their songs,” emphasizes the collective sense of her experience. The novel confronts the issue of race gradually, similar to the way a child discovers the powers that control his or her being. When Maya is young, she moves mainly in the black community, and her interaction with white people is scarce: “In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn’t really, absolutely know what whites looked like.” This does not mean, however, that white people’s power over the blacks’ existence went unnoticed. Maya painfully recalls how she and her brother were told to empty the vegetable bin one night, after the sheriff had warned them that the Klan was coming around. Once the bin was empty, Uncle Willie climbed in, and they covered him with

Beowulf â•…â•… 163 vegetables. All night they heard him mourn from his hiding place “as if he had, in fact, been guilty of some heinous crime.” Reflecting on the story, Maya concludes that she would have nothing to say in defense of the sheriff who, after having warned them, self-righteously believed “that things were as they should” and “that he was a gentle squire, saving those deserving serfs from the laws of the land, which he condoned.” Apart from the times that blacks and whites are forced to interact, there is a feeling in the novel that they live in parallel universes. The social organization that separates “powhitetrash” from respectable people is duplicated in Stamps, and Mrs. Flowers—who Maya says “made me proud to be a Negro, just by being herself ”—is described as “our side’s answer to the richest woman in town.” Maya reflects, however, that it is lucky she never encountered Mrs. Flowers near “powhitetrash,” because she would have heard her being addressed as “Bertha,” and Maya’s “image of her would have been shattered like the unmendable Humpty-Dumpty.” The clash between the black and the white societies culminates in the scene where Maya/Marguerite describes her graduation. She starts the day with a sense of great achievement, aware that she is graduating at the top of her class. But what begins as a gay celebration of an important event is symbolically interrupted by the appearance of a white man. The usual order of the ceremony, which is to begin with the American national anthem, followed by the pledge of allegiance and then what is known as the Negro national anthem, is interrupted by the white man, who gives a speech before the assembled congregation has had a chance to sing “their” song. The man is a high official who informs them that the central school—“(naturally, the white school was central)”—has been going through improvements, and that he intends their school to follow suit; he then leaves as if their graduation ceremony “had been a mere preliminary” and he now was “off to something really important.” The speech has reminded Marguerite and her friends of the limitations put on black people’s existence, and suddenly their festive mood is gone, and they are only aware of the lack of control that characterizes their lives.

Angelou’s tale exposes the great injustice with which blacks were treated. It also, however, induces in its reader the knowledge that even in the face of great injustice, individuals choose how to react. In one scene, for example, Maya witnesses Momma being abused by white girls, who call her by her first name and expose their genitals to her. Momma remains calm throughout the incident and politely addresses them as “Miz” when they leave. Maya bursts out crying, but when her grandmother patiently waits until she meets her eyes, Maya discovers that Momma is happy and comments: “Whatever the contest had been out front, I knew Momma had won.” Eva Lupin

ANONYMOUSâ•… Beowulf â•… (ca. 1000)

Beowulf is the longest and most complete surviving poem in Old English. The work probably circulated orally for centuries before being written down by scribes around the year 1000. It consists of 3,182 lines of alliterative verse. The poem’s plot, is straightforward and has the quality of a folktale, following recognizable patterns of myth: A young hero sets out on a sea journey to battle monsters. After dispatching two humanoid horrors in deadly combat, the victorious hero journeys back home to rule his own kingdom until he finally clashes with a dragon who kills him, though he wins glory and fame. But Beowulf also alludes to several battles and events in the past and future, at times digressing for several lines to narrate the action of a feud, battle, or heroic event; the poem’s allusive, interlacing quality makes it difficult and complex. But Beowulf is worth the struggle. For generations, teachers and students have enjoyed this tale of dragon slaying and troll combat set against the background of human feuding and warfare among the Danes, Frisians, Jutes, Swedes, and Geats. Legendary heroes like Beowulf and Wiglaf stand toe to toe with figures from history such as Hygelac, Hrothgar, and Ingeld. Though the poem cannot be considered historically accurate in a modern sense, Beowulf offers an uncannily familiar window into the alliances, truces, feuds, and political intrigues taking place in the Germanic heroic world. It continues to fascinate readers also because of its expression of

164â•…â•… Anonymous such prominent themes as community, religion, violence, and revenge. Tony Perrello

Community in Beowulf

The basic communal organization depicted in Beowulf and described by the first-century Roman historian Tacitus in his Germania (ca. 98) is the comitatus, or clan structure. Central to the function of the clan is the relationship between the lord and his retainers. Gift giving solemnizes the bond between lord and retainer, and in return for goods received, the retainer takes a solemn oath of fealty. Time and again, the poet refers to Hrothgar, Hygelac, and Beowulf—good kings—as “ring-giver,” “helmet of the Danes,” and “giver of treasure.” Hrothgar’s success is marked by the poet’s acknowledgment that he “doled out rings / and torques at the table” (ll. 80–81). This social contract solemnizes allegiance in the heroic world. The so-called Finn digression (ll. 1069–1158) shows the tragic and shameful consequences of a group of retainers who choose to follow their lord’s slayer rather than die trying to avenge him. Revenge is the most powerful bond that held Anglo-Saxon communities together. The members of a comitatus had a moral obligation to avenge the slaughter of kin. Compensation took the form of a wergild, or “man-price.” Each member of the comitatus had a precalculated worth. If someone was slain, the offending party had to pay the wergild, or life would be taken in return for life, even if the slaying was accidental. Though the onus for exacting revenge fell upon the victim’s family, it had the support of the lord and the force of law behind it (hence the modern legal term posse comitatus). Failure to gain retribution was the source of terrible grief and shame. Indeed, the most distressing aspect of Grendel’s depredations is, as the poet tells us, that “he would never / parley or make peace with any Dane / nor stop his death dealing nor pay the death-price. / No counselor could ever expect / fair reparation from those rabid hands” (ll. 154–158). On the Geatish side, King Hrethel’s son, Herebeald, is accidentally slain by his brother, Haethoyn, who fires an arrow at him. Hrethel pines away in despair because no reparation can be taken, and the king’s

death results in the first Swedish/Geatish war (ll. 2,435ff., 2,472ff.). Beowulf begins with the genealogy of the Danish royal house and highlights the ways successful communities were formed. Lines 67–83 recount Hrothgar’s rise to power and the building of Heorot, the mead hall of the Danes. Heorot is a large, centrally located hall in which the Danes gather to eat, drink beer or mead, hear the songs of the scop (a combination poet, musician, and historian), boast of their exploits, and receive gifts at the hands of their lord. In building a mead hall, a lord walls in his people and offers a sense of warmth and communal belonging. He also walls out the dark, chaotic, and uncontrollable forces of nature. The lavish descriptions of treasure and gifts that occur time and again in the poem—right down to Beowulf ’s dying wish to behold the dragon’s treasure hoard—always bring readers back to this early moment when Hrothgar builds a hall and blocks out nature and his enemies. The immediate threat to this sustainable community is Grendel. The monsters of Beowulf represent more than simply a threat to the safety of the Beowulfian community. These creatures and the horror they inspire represent the deep-seated anxieties of a warrior culture. Grendel represents, on one level, the monstrous principle of kin killing: He is the product of Cain’s murder of Abel. Fratricide runs counter to everything the comitatus stands for. Gerendel is a “lonewalker” who stands apart from the community. He does not use weapons, pay reparations, speak, boast, or enjoy hall noise. Grendel is the dark-side manifestation of everything a heroic warrior and model community member—like Beowulf—ought to be. Grendel’s mother represents a more vexing problem. Women in this community have certain limited functions: They are “peace-weavers” and “cup-bearers,” like Wealhtheow and Hygd, or mourners beside the funeral pyre, like the wailing woman at Beowulf ’s tomb. Grendel’s mother threatens the gender-specific revenge code of Anglo-Saxon society by leaving her home beneath the water to invade Heorot and avenge the death of her son. She may be a “natural” mother, but she represents the opposite of what that culture seems to have valued in women.

Beowulf â•…â•… 165 Grendel’s mother proves a tougher challenge for Beowulf than does her son, but the dragon costs him his life. The dragon is the opposite of the good king the poet takes such pains to construct for his audience. Instead of freely giving treasure, it hoards it. It is miserly and greedy, sitting alone atop its hoard in a cold and dark anti-hall. These monsters are both exterior threats to the community and projections of repressed evils within that community. Tony Perrello

Religion in Beowulf

Religion is a source of mystery in the poem Beowulf and a divisive issue among its readers. Christianity plays an ambiguous role in this poem about pagan heroes and monsters, but it is ultimately responsible for the poem’s preservation. As Roy Liuzza has noted in the preface to his 2000 translation, many scholars see the hero, Beowulf, as a Christ figure, one who gives his life for his people in a struggle with a serpent hostile to mankind. Others have argued that the poem—with its ultimate vision of doom and futility in the face of human greed and ongoing violence—is a condemnation of a pagan world that thrived on domination and conquest. Beowulf certainly offers a portrait of a world before Christ. In lines 175–188, the poet condemns the heathenish Danes, who turn to idol worship when plagued with Grendel. The burial rites depicted in the poem, usually involving a burning pyre, are markedly pagan. Christ is never mentioned. Fate is stern and implacable, and worldly glory seems to be the only lasting virtue, leaving the final words of the poem ambiguous—was Beowulf a humble Christ figure or one eager for earthly fame? There is only one historically datable event in the poem: the death of Hygelac, lord of the Geats, sometime between 521 and 526 (the Frankish historian Gregory of Tours recorded the death of “Chlochilaichus”—the Latin form of “Hygelac”—in 521). Although the Roman emperor Constantine had converted to Christianity in the fourth century, it was not until the year 597 that Saint Augustine of Canterbury undertook his mission of conversion in the southern reaches of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The Northern Anglo-Saxons had previously received the word of God from Irish missionaries,

and within less than a century after Saint Augustine set out, the entire island had been converted. The scribes who wrote down Beowulf sometime around the year 1000 were Christian. At the time of the poem’s composition, “writing” was done exclusively by monks working in monasteries. Since parchment (sheepskin) was expensive, only works deemed valuable were copied and preserved. The manuscript that contains Beowulf also contains a saint’s life (The Passion of Saint Christopher) and a versified story from the Bible (The book of Judith). Although references to the Bible are exclusively from the Old Testament, the “poet” (or is it the scribe?) expects his audience to be familiar with biblical stories, such as that of Cain in Genesis, whose fratricide gave rise to Grendel and thus makes Unferth sinister through association. When Hrothgar examines the sword hilt taken from the lair of Grendel’s mother, the poet alludes to the apocryphal Old Testament story of God’s destruction of the race of giants by flood (ll. 1,688ff.). For centuries Beowulf was sung, by memory, to the accompaniment of a harp. This oral formulaic poem of the sixth through 10th centuries, then, received its Christian coloration when recorded by monastic scribes around the year 1000. Sometime in the late seventh century, a monk known as the Venerable Bede recorded what is perhaps the first English poem—“Caedmon’s Hymn.” Caedmon, an illiterate cowherd who worked in a monastery in Whitby (northeast England), was, legend has it, visited by an angel in a dream and given the power of song, spontaneously singing a song of creation— “Caedmon’s Hymn.” Caedmon refers to God by such epithets as “Master Almighty,” “Mankind’s Guardian,” “Eternal Lord,” and “Measurer”—hardly the meek lamb of the New Testament. For the first time in history, heroic language and the meter of heroic battle poetry were applied to a religious text, a literary moment known as the Caedmonian Revolution. The Beowulf poet applies this strategy time and again, referring obliquely to God with heroic terms such as “Wielder of All” or “Father Almighty.” And for some readers of the poem, Beowulf is a type of Christ, and his actions sometimes parallel biblical or apocryphal events. For instance, Beowulf “harrows hell” to confront Grendel’s mother in a lair

166â•…â•… Anonymous described with language recalling hell in Old English homilies. More obvious is Beowulf ’s journey to seek out the dragon, an adversary of mankind who lives underground, smells of brimstone and fire, and exemplifies greed and hatred. Wyrm, the Old English word for dragon, also meant “snake,” so it is clear whom this king of men is fighting. Beowulf took 11 comrades on his journey, plus “the one who had started all this strife” (a thief who had awoken the dragon by stealing a cup from its hoard), which parallels Christ’s 12 apostles. Beowulf suffers before the battle, “sensing his death” (l. 2,420), and indeed, his men abandon him in his hour of need. He dies, sacrificially, for his people. The language of Beowulf is often the language of a distant past, “in days gone by” (l. 1). Perhaps the poem’s religious language and impressionism is meant to link its legends, and its great hero, to the Christian “present,” the world of the scribes who recorded it. Tony Perrello

Violence in Beowulf

The modern reader of Beowulf may be excused for mistranslating line 18b of the poem—blæd wide sprang—as “blood spread wide.” The correct translation is “glory spread wide,” but in this poem, both blood and glory spring from bodies. And Beowulf is a poem about bodies—crushed, cut, torn, dismembered, beheaded, burned, gulped down in gobbets, and tossed about on frosty seas, prey to voracious sea monsters. The main action of the poem circles around mortal and bloody combat between the hero, Beowulf, and three formidable monsters, and also around ongoing bloody conflict between nations. The poet interlaces these narratives with songs of past battles, monster fights, and reprisals of the primal murder. Beowulf warns that no act of violence occurs in a vacuum, but it is the consequence of some violent act and will cause future bloodshed. Peace is transitory and can only be established by those most adept at causing violence and spreading terror—like Beowulf, and Hrothgar before him. A nation’s survival in Beowulf requires a leader who can strike terror in his neighbors and subjugate outlying tribes. The poem begins with the genealogy of the Danish royal house, and we quickly learn that Hrothgar, like Scyld before him, enjoyed “the

fortunes of war,” finally assembling a “mighty army” (ll. 65–67). Only then could he construct a mead hall where he could dole out treasure and enjoy a respite from the ravages of warfare and slaughter. As a successful, violent warrior like his ancestors before him (Scyld was a “scourge of many tribes” and “a wrecker of mead benches”), Hrothgar has inspired fear in those around him and so is able to enjoy temporary peace. Hrothgar’s very name points to the lust and glory promised by battle (hroth = joy, benefit, glory; gar = spear). The benefit of war, in this case, is the building of Heorot, the mead hall of the Danes. Heorot means “hart,” or stag, probably a reference to the horns that adorned the doorway of the building. However, there is a haunting reference to the name after the attack by Grendel’s mother: the water burns. The mere bottom has never been sounded by the sons of men. On its bank, the heather-stepper halts: the hart in flight from pursuing hounds will turn to face them with firm-set horns and die in the wood rather than dive beneath its surface. That is no good place. (ll. 1,366–1,372) This passage offers one of the many descriptions of a hostile, brutal nature—a nature “red in tooth and claw”—precisely the kind of world walled-out by the construction of Heorot. But we also see the hart—symbol of the Danish nation—beleaguered by ravenous forces and driven to self-destruction. We are told that Heorot is doomed to suffer a “barbarous burning” in the Heathobard feud, despite the marriage of Freawaru and Ingeld. Such is the fate of a kingdom ruled by a king who does not use violence and terrorism as tools. One way to turn violence to political advantage in Beowulfian society is to use women as pawns to broker peace, but such an approach is invariably doomed to failure, as Beowulf indicates after his return to Geatland: “But generally the spear / Is prompt to retaliate when a prince is killed / No matter how admirable the bride may be” (ll. 2,029–2,031). Wergild—literally “man-price”—was another way the Anglo-Saxons capitalized on violence,

The Frogsâ•…â•… 167 substituting gold in its stead. The threat of revenge afforded some safety in Anglo-Saxon culture, a world where each member of a tribe had a precalibrated worth. If a clan member was killed, his particular man-price must be paid, or a blood feud would go into effect. The 12 winters of Grendel’s anarchic violence, of hall floors “slick with slaughter,” is terrible precisely because the monster does not pay reparations for those he kills. He is violence itself, all claw and mouth, and destroys the order represented by Heorot, grinding and consuming and reducing the human element to gore: “he grabbed a man and mauled him on his bench, / bit into his bone-lappings, bolted down his blood / and gorged on him in lumps, leaving the body / utterly lifeless, eaten up / hand and foot” (ll. 740–744). Grendel’s violence erases distinctions and individuality and threatens a system that sprung from violence in the first place. And Beowulf is strikingly like Grendel: He, too, has the strength of 30 in his handgrip; he fights Grendel (and Dayraven) without weapons, and in the death match with Grendel, he breaks bone lappings and dismembers his opponent. He is heroic because he out-monsters Grendel—outdoes him in doing violence. Like Grendel, the dragon is a force of seemingly unstoppable chaos that reduces great halls and human achievement to indistinguishable rubble and ash. However perverse this night-flying “wyrm” may be, though, it is not unlike the hero of the poem. It guards its treasure in a hall, peacefully, until a cup is stolen, at which time it ventures out for revenge, destroying outlying villages and deterring through terrorism. After Beowulf kills the dragon—this time with the help of Wiglaf—the dying hero predicts a new bout of violent incursions from the Swedes. Beowulf ’s ability to make violence is no longer at hand to help his nation. Like Hrothgar 50 years earlier, Beowulf ’s strength is no longer a match for the brutality of the Anglo-Saxon world. The audience of Beowulf is treated to particularly graphic battle scenes, such as Beowulf ’s description of the death of Ongentheow at the hands of Wulf and Eofor during the battle of Ravenswood (ll. 2,946–2,984). In fact, the human-on-human violence in the poem is as devastating as that wrought by monsters: We are told of Heremod’s and

Unferth’s Cain-like kin killing; the perverse Finn episode, where retainers are forced to join with their lord’s slayer, only to have violence reawakened by the laying of a famous sword in Hengest’s lap; the future strife to be visited upon Hrothgar’s children by his nephew, Hrothulf, and so on, on and on. The violent attack that inevitably comes from the Swedes makes for a somber ending to the poem. Humans are the worst monsters, war and hardship are a way of life, revenge holds groups together, and the only good king is a strong one willing to decimate his neighbors. The specter of wyrd, the Old English word for fate, overshadows Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon wyrd is stern and implacable: Life is transitory, and only the glory that springs from violence and battle can outlast the human bone-house. Tony Perrello

ARISTOPHANESâ•… The Frogsâ•… (405 b.c.)

The Frogs is a comedy by the ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes (ca. 450–ca. 388 b.c.), typically treated by modern translators as a play in two acts. In act 1, Dionysus—in whose honor drama festivals were held—journeys to the underworld to find the great poet Euripides, whose political wisdom he believes can save Athens, thereby ensuring the city’s drama festivals will continue. This was a pertinent search to represent at the time, with Athens suffering internal strife and extreme pressure from the adversarial Spartans. Act 2 is dominated by a contest between Aeschylus and Euripides for the honor of best poet, eventually decided on the merit of their political advice. The contemporary political backdrop to The Frogs is of central importance to its meaning. The play’s purpose presents striking alignment with its content, for Aristophanes used it to deliver his own political message. This message is the very same political strategy that Dionysus elicits from Hades’ wisest tragedian, whom the contest ultimately reveals to be Aeschylus: Recall from voluntary exile the figure Alcibiades. In Aristophanes’ view, to issue this kind of instruction to the audience is one of two critical

168â•…â•… Aristophanes functions served by poets; the other is to provide entertainment: “We chorus folk two privileges prize: / To amuse you, citizens, and to advise” (l. 2). Humor is integral to The Frogs’s entertainment value, which arises from antagonistic relationships between the rivals Aeschylus and Euripides and between Dionysus and his slave, Xanthias; from repeated switching of identities; and through the evocation of ancient Greece’s rich poetic tradition. These three thematic concerns—ambition, identity, and tradition, respectively—also condition the text for the fulfillment of its instructive function. With its humor and pointed political message, The Frogs is a lively and sharp work, the cleverness and sophistication of which is elevated by selfreflexive framing structures and devices. Kate Concannon

Ambition in The Frogs

The force that drives the action within The Frogs is ambition—namely, personal ambition. This force directs the plot’s course and functions as a dramatic catalyst, spurring contest and conflict as ambitions clash. There are two main conflicts of ambition within The Frogs: that between Dionysus and Xanthias and that between Aeschylus and Euripides. Both conflicts produce humor to satisfy the play’s entertainment function. But more important, the conflict between Aeschylus and Euripides produces the play’s final take-home message, achieved through reasoned argument revealed by dialogue, to satisfy its higher function of imparting wisdom—in this case political. Additionally, the play displays self-reflexive qualities, through which it appears conscious of itself as a literary text and creates frames of texts within texts. This heightens awareness of the existence of a further frame beyond the play itself and within which it was written—a frame shaped by Aristophanes’ own personal ambition. Xanthias and Dionysus’s relationship is characterized by the struggle for power that ensues as each pursues his personal ambition. To attain selfdetermination and autonomy, Xanthias must resist the instances of subordination by which Dionysus attempts to exert dominance over him. To secure the optimal position for himself throughout the shifting

circumstances of the play, Dionysus frequently relies on Xanthias to swap identities temporarily, often to Xanthias’s own disadvantage. Dionysus invokes his socially endorsed advantage as master in this master-slave relationship to procure Xanthias’s obedience; however, Xanthias’s own ambition means he is not always compliant, altruistic, and unquestioning. In fact, Dionysus’s formal authority as master—as well as god—is frequently undermined by Xanthias’s insubordination and by his opportunistic attempts to subvert this authority when the situation permits. This quick-witted opportunism is in precisely the same vein as his master’s self-interested maneuvering around situations and is neatly described by the chorus: If you want to be comfy just roll with the ship! Don’t stand like a fool with a stiff upper lip, But learn from Theramenes, that shrewd politician, To move with the times and improve your position. (1.2.522–588) Their struggle produces comical effects, such as where Xanthias, dressed as Heracles while Dionysus is dressed as his slave, invites Aeacus to torture Dionysus. The comedy escalates as Dionysus in turn manipulates the situation such that Xanthias is forced to defend the credibility of his assumed identity by enduring this torture, too; if he is the god he claims to be, Xanthias should feel nothing. The result is literal slapstick as they are repeatedly caned and struggle to conceal their pain. The turns each takes in dealing (nonphysical) blows to the other as they pursue their individual ambitions gives the struggle the quality of a game, enhancing the playfulness of their scenes and rendering amusing both the oppression of the master-slave inequality and the brutality of physical violence. For Aeschylus and Euripides, their shared ambition to hold the title of best poet naturally results in conflict, which is resolved through a witty, umpired contest. Dialogue provides the dramatic structure for exploring conflict through debate. This debate reveals the contesting arguments—literary and eventually political—and presents them for evalu-

The Frogsâ•…â•… 169 ation by Dionysus, whose concluding judgment is the vehicle for the author’s take-home political message. Dionysus’s decision to bring Aeschylus back from Hades is disinterested as far as the ambitions of Aeschylus and Euripides to return to the living realm are concerned, for his actions are determined solely in accordance with the furthering of his own ambitions: to return to life a great tragedian who, through sage political advice, can save the city and so enable the continuance of drama festivals in Dionysus’s honor: Euripides: What do you want a poet for? Dionysus: To save the City of course. If the city isn’t saved, there won’t be any more drama festivals, and then where shall I be? (l. 2.1) The implicit political role of the poet here is important and ties in with the play’s self-reflexivity, which is constituted in significant part by literary criticism—here the form’s content comments on what makes for good content within the very literary form—and by the framing of plays within the play. Extracts from canonical plays are quoted, and The Frogs even opens with characters devising a play opening. These devices create frames for the action and point the reader to consider the frame in which the play itself was written and how, by means of this work, Aristophanes pursues his own personal ambitions as a poet: to deliver a political message that promotes the poet’s position by protecting opportunities such as drama festivals and, more immediately, to win the drama competition for which The Frogs was his entry. Kate Concannon

Identity in The Frogs

Mistaken and switched identity is a major convention of ancient Greek theater, and its preponderance has continued throughout much of subsequent Western theater tradition. Often it functions as a fulcrum for dramatic confusion and conflict that propels plot; it also functions as a comedic device. Whereas act 2’s humor relies on the wit and satire that characterizes the dialogic argument between Aeschylus and Euripides, in act 1 the repeated switching of identity is the primary device by which

humor is achieved. Identity swapping is also used to reveal the characters’ “real” nature underlying the borrowed identities. Furthermore, plays on identity are exploited to produce self-reflexive effects. The visual humor of costuming, by which identity is marked, is rendered accessible to readers even without the benefit of a staged performance: Heracles laughs to behold Dionysus’s “yellow nightdress,” and his “feminine boots” also rate mention. Similarly, the physical humor played out in the frequent and hurried exchanges of costume between Xanthias and Dionysus is readily imaginable and does not rely on actual performance to be grasped. Structurally, these costumed identity exchanges are also significant, marking Xanthias’s and Dionysus’s challenges as they strive toward entry into Pluto’s palace, where Euripides is to be found. In this sense, identity swaps function to punctuate their negotiation of the journey through its constitutive encounters. The confusion and false belief arising from the identity games led by Dionysus in act 1 sweep the plot along, shifting the balance of advantage each identity presents from encounter to encounter. This creates the flow by which situations arise and develop. By way of example, the first exchange with Aeacus leads Dionysus to initiate an identity swap to evade pain, which is followed by an exchange with Persephone’s maid that prompts another swap to procure pleasure, which in turn leads to an encounter with two landladies that motivates a swap back to evade pain again. Dionysus is self-serving. The whole undertaking detailed in The Frogs is motivated by his personal ambition to protect the drama festivals held in his honor and so too are his moves to swap between the identities of Heracles, Xanthias, and Dionysus motivated by self-interest. The pattern of character these switches describe furnishes an incisive picture of Dionysus’s personality. At the prospect of Aeacus’s revenge on him for Heracles’ harm to Cerberus, Dionysus is shown to be cowardly, suffering a moment of incontinence before passing over the godly costume (and attendant threat of imminent violence) to Xanthias. Shortly thereafter, Dionysus’s quick enthusiasm for the opportunity to be hosted as Heracles in the amorous company of Persephone’s maids and dancing girls exposes

170â•…â•… Aristophanes the god’s sensuousness, while Xanthias’s slowness in picking up the maid’s meaning exposes his relative naïveté. Dionysus’s shameless self-interest as he swings with alacrity between costumed identities to ensure his own advantage at every point is in itself a comedic source, producing an extremity of conduct crafted for laughs. The assuming and discarding of identity throughout the play is also used as a self-reflecting device, contributing to the overall effect by which the play indicates it is conscious of itself as a text and a performance. Xanthias: There, how do I look? Reckon the part suits me better than it does you, you old coward! Dionysus: Hm! A very good imitation of a slave dressed up as Heracles. (l. 2.11460–11521) In this exchange, Dionysus draws attention to the very nature of performance and, implicitly, how this applies to the performance of The Frogs itself. Just as suspended disbelief supports the credibility of Xanthias as Heracles, so too does it support that of the play’s own actors as they don the identities of The Frogs’ characters. By this self-reflexivity, the play draws attention to what exists outside and beyond it and how this might relate to the play and its meanings. It also provides clues as to Aristophanes’ use of structure to guide the audience’s interpretation of those meanings. Specific instances of self-reflection such as Dionysus’s comment above do not just prompt the audience to see how those specific examples connect the play’s fictionally contained realm with the broader “reality” to which it points. They also promote an attitude of outward reading so that the play’s overall messages will be taken as intended for the real world. Dionysus’s belief that a poet can save the city mirrors Aristophanes. Moreover, the play’s internal reality legitimizes by its assumptions both the political aptitude of the poet and the consequent importance of heeding his political message, while also providing that message to be received and heeded by the audience in its own real world. Kate Concannon

Tradition in The Frogs

The Frogs engages with tradition at several key levels. Mythological and religious traditions underpin the play’s characters and immediate setting, as well as its wider cultural frame of reference. On another level, the ancient Greek poetic and dramatic tradition is evoked through reference to earlier poets’ works. Additionally, broader traditions of ancient Greek theater are reproduced and developed by Aristophanes’ own use of conventional types, tropes, and structure. Two primary purposes can be adduced from this emphasis on tradition: an orchestrated appeal to cultural patriotism to condition the audience for Aristophanes’ political message and an expounding of his own related poetic position. The journey to Hades (called katabasis) is a traditional act of heroism and as such is a beaten track in the mythology of ancient Greece. The play itself acknowledges this tradition, assuming the audience’s familiarity with previous katabatic journeys in its reference to Heracles’ recent visit to Hades and in its mention of the underworld presence of Persephone, whose adventures to Hades form their own significant mythology. The play’s settings, from the River Styx to Pluto’s palace, are thus locations rich with cultural significance readily identifiable to an ancient Athenian audience. Likewise, the rites played out by the chorus of devotees, who are initiates in religious mysteries, contribute to the dense tissue of cultural tradition around which The Frogs is cast. In act 2, Athenian poetic tradition is drawn forth with recitation from Aeschylus’s and Euripides’ plays as their poetry is laid out for critique. The presence of Aeschylus’s and Euripides’ work within The Frogs goes rather deeper than these dialogic references and extracts, however. Signature features incorporated within The Frogs create a double reflection of their particular contributions to stylistic and structural traditions of theater. Thus, these poets’ works, by influence, furnish the dramatic structure Aristophanes then uses to explore their poetic merits. In his time, Aeschylus expanded the number of characters in a play to facilitate conflict between them where, previously, characters interacted only with the chorus. The Frogs bears this legacy in the smaller role of the chorus and in the conflicts between

Lysistrataâ•…â•… 171 Xanthias and Dionysus and between Aeschylus and Euripides, which are empowered by direct dialogue. Euripides, on the other hand, is credited with introducing the convention of the intelligent slave, among other innovations, an influence that is also seen in The Frogs with the character Xanthias. Aristophanes exploits many conventions that constitute the ancient Greek theater tradition. Clues in the script point to the exploitation of costuming for comic effect, in accordance with the comedic tradition of exaggeration that involved such items as ultra-short robes designed to reveal phallic prostheses. Also featured is the traditional chorus, who in turn deliver the structural convention of the parabasis (address to the audience), which immediately follows Dionysus’s admission into Pluto’s palace. Aristophanes’ characterization of Dionysus as a lewd, pleasure-seeking god, whose predilections readily provide opportunities for the comedic trope of crude sexual innuendo, is also highly conventional. While such reproduction of traditional elements consolidates the conventions they form, Aristophanes also produces an innovation in The Frogs by combining two forms of comic motif, the journey and the contest (agon) structure, and giving them comparable weighting, with one act being reserved for each. Despite this deviation, however, the agon observes the structure’s own rules of tradition, whereby it is the second speaker in any contest who emerges victorious; likewise, the journey motif is sufficiently sympathetic to tradition to be clearly recognizable as such, even if the comic approach to it produces a twist on the more typically serious convention of the katabatic myth or myths in which characters travel to the underworld. Aristophanes was a stern advocate of tradition—poetic and political—for the superior moral rectitude and wisdom he considered it offered, though its old-fashioned ways may lack the slick appearance, novelty, or shock value of cleverness and glib expression, which Aristophanes equates with Euripides. The Frogs, with its unequivocal judgment on the respective merits of the two tragedians, presents a vehicle for expounding his aesthetic position, which is dramatized by Dionysus’s selection of Aeschylus and his poetic legacy over and above the flashier Euripides. Aristophanes also leverages the

power of cultural tradition in its poetic and dramatic forms to achieve his political purpose. By drawing on the audience’s knowledge of Athenian mythological and poetic traditions while further expanding them—that is, by referencing other plays and myths by means of a vehicle that, as a poetic artifact in itself, enriches the tradition it celebrates—The Frogs functions as an appeal to the Athenians’ rich cultural tradition, as accessed and expressed through theater. Moreover, The Frogs can be interpreted as a rallying instrument by which to motivate the Athenians to take the political action Aristophanes envisages will ensure the city’s viability, cultural and otherwise, beyond its present point of threat. Kate Concannon

ARISTOPHANESâ•… Lysistrataâ•… (411 b.c.)

The masterpieces of comedy produced by Aristophanes, the sharp and lewd wit of fifth-century Athens, may forever play supporting roles to their tragic counterparts. However, Lysistrata, a fantasy in which Greek women stage a sit-in/sex strike to end the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, maintains a special place in dramatic and literary history. Featuring a title character whose name loosely translates as “she who disbands armies,” its current popular recognition can be mostly credited to perennial productions that use its theme of “love not war” (or more precisely “no love until no war”) to stage public challenges to military conflict. The most significant recent example was the Lysistrata Project, which presented thousands of readings of the play as an action against the pending U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. While Lysistrata is not specifically an antiwar play (Lysistrata is no pacifist, as she cheers efforts to destroy the Hellenes, depicted in the play as barbarians), it is a play that depicts the possibility of peace, forged unexpectedly by the power of women’s chastity. Lysistrata is essentially an act of hope driven by a fundamental gender power reversal, which is fueled by the often underestimated forces of sex and sexuality, sensuality, and eroticism. It is for this reason that many audiences, critics, and scholars have reflected, to paraphrase, that it is a play that will be pertinent as long as men and

172â•…â•… Aristophanes women make love and as long as human beings try to kill one another, and thus, sex and war remain fundamental to human existence. Ben Fisler

Gender in Lysistrata

If sex is the fuel Lysistrata and her confederates use to transform the world, gender is the world that they set ablaze, by turning the Athenian status quo on its head. Aristophanes sets the scene by referencing Athenian gender standards, combining the Greek perception that women are driven by their appetites, particularly sexual desire, with the ancient reality of extreme patriarchy. In the text, Athenian women have no virtually no political power, and they acknowledge that; Athenian men perceive women as being controlled by their passions, and the women recognize that. Thus, the play creates a fantasy where women have the support of both Aphrodite (to drive the men into a sexual frenzy first) and Athena (the virgin goddess who contains the women’s needs as they stage their sex strike/sit-in at her sacred Acropolis). Within what the primarily male Greek audience would have seen as a fantasy, women achieve considerable power and restraint, allowing them to act with surprising agency. Calonice both bespeaks and personifies the idea that women are driven by their sexuality, when Lysistrata begins to suggest the plan. First, she doubts that women can help the war effort, given their inability to do anything “but sit at home looking pretty, wearing saffron gowns” (l. 47). Then, she becomes entirely distracted by her own fantasies of saffron gowns and slippers (ll. 51–53). Later, the entire gathering of women hears Lysistrata’s plan and proceeds to exit the stage. Myrrhine proclaims that she would be cut in half or “walk through fire, or anything else .╯.╯. but renounce sex, never” (ll. 133–135). It takes much convincing for the women to accept the strategy, given that “there’s nothing like [sex]” (l. 136). It is the shield oath that gives women the power to renounce their passions, drawing on the power of the virgin goddess, Athena, to control their normally uncontrollable sex drives. Lysistrata has a direct confrontation with the representative of Athenian law, the Magistrate, in which she recognizes the status quo.

Lysistrata: Always till now we have .╯.╯. uncomplainingly endured whatever you men did .╯.╯. And what did [our husbands] always say? “Shut up and mind your own business!” And I did. Magistrate: You’d have been for it if you hadn’t. Lysistrata: Exactly—so I kept quiet. (ll. 508–518) In the same argument, however, Lysistrata justifies the women’s power to affect the present revolt. Magistrate: You in charge of state money? Lysistrata: We’ve always been in charge of all your household finances. (ll. 494–496) Thus, even as Aristophanes allows his characters to articulate the imbalance between male and female power in Athens, he identifies the possibility that women might be trained to affect action. Though they are the most obvious examples, it is not the sex strike nor the occupation of the Acropolis that constitute the most aggressive reversal of patriarchy in Lysistrata. The conflict between the old women and old men of Athens, which occurs between lines 254 and 463, is a far more direct disruption of the status quo. The men approach with torches to burn out the feud and are met by women who use water to quench their flames. This incident is enhanced by references to the soaking as a “wedding bath” and to the discomforts of age: “[O]ur clothes are wringing wet as if we were incontinent” (ll. 403–404). These comments affirm the metaphor of the conflict; the sexual center of womanhood (characterized by liquidity) defeating the sexual center of manhood (characterized by a phallic-shaped flame). The metaphorical defeat gives way to an even more direct reversal of the power structure, as the women achieve victory in an unrestrained brawl. While the entire play is an example of the world turned upside down, this centerpiece scene crosses into the realm of civil unrest. The play reverses the ancient status quo to such an extent that it is often interpreted as protofeminist. There is no question that Aristophanes was progressive in his views of women, at least in so far

Lysistrataâ•…â•… 173 as a fifth-century Athenian male citizen could have been. It is probable that some of his literary and public attacks on Euripides stemmed from the tragedian’s popularly observed misogyny. However, the play is a comic fantasy, one that ends with a return to the status quo that the strike temporarily turns on its head. Lysistrata herself gives her comrades in arms back to their husbands. Clearly, Aristophanes is far less interested in female empowerment for women’s sake than for the political goal of bringing the long war to an end. This is his hope. Ben Fisler

Hope in Lysistrata

In sum, the play is an act of hope. Aristophanes suggests a peaceful solution to the Athenian/Spartan conflict in which Greek citizens choose love over war, and he proposes that women might be the source of this transformative power. He also suggests that all Greek nations share a certain basic humanity, even as he exploits national differences (actually presented as stereotypes) for comedic effect. The textual mix of Greek religious and historical references and the march of diverse regional types compel the spectators to remember that “we are all Greeks” within the context of comedy. Lysistrata proclaims the possibility that women might be the last best hope for peace during her debate with the Magistrate. Many a time we’d hear at home about some major political blunder of yours .╯.╯. [Do you think] we should not be allowed to make the least little suggestion to you, no matter how you mismanage your affairs? But now every time two men meet in the street, what do they say? Isn’t there a man in the country? And the answer comes, “Not one.” That’s why we women got together and decided to unite and save Greece .╯.╯. You listen to us—and it’ll be good advice we give—listen to us and keep quiet, like you made us do, and we’ll set you to rights. (ll. 511–528, original emphasis) This speech does not suggest that patriarchy will be demolished in favor of a government of women, nor one of gender equality. It suggests that out of

desperation for some wisdom and responsibility, any alternative to the madness of the current state of affairs is worth trying. To both sweeten the appeal of peace and maintain humor, Aristophanes uses references to regional differences among the Greeks. The Spartans speak with a rustic dialect, suggesting their roughneck contrast with Athenian sophistication, and Lampito herself salivates over the prospect of heavy drinking as they prepare wine for the oath (l. 197). The Athenian women comment on the odor of the citizens of Anagyrus and the body weight of Corinthian noblewomen. This provides humorous recognition of perceived cultural difference but reaffirms the variety of Greek peoples, in opposition to far more greatly feared Persians or hated barbarians. The subtle reminder of pan-Greek civilization provides a foundation for its shared history, affirmed during the official reconciliation at the finale. In a Spartan’s song and dance celebrating the peace, Aristophanes simultaneously recognizes panGreek history and maintains an ironic tone appropriate to comedy. The Spartan praises Athenian sea victories and the military prowess of Sparta, then references both the sacrifices of Leonidas and the Spartan force at Thermopylae and the sea battle at Artemisium. He sings of the bravery and resolve of both nations against the Persian threat, reminding the audience of the days of Greek unity. Ironically, Thermopylae ended with every Spartan soldier dead, and Artemisium failed to halt the Persian war machine. A tragic poet might have chosen more decisive victories, but Aristophanes maintains the satirical techniques of comedy, even as he celebrates a victory won by the hand of female soldiers wielding the powerful scepter of sex. Ben Fisler

Sex and Sexuality in Lysistrata

Lysistrata is a play about sex that, when translated honestly, is transparently pornographic. Efforts by post-1960s translators, such as Jeffrey Henderson and Alan H. Sommerstein, have embraced the blatant vulgarity and bawdiness central to the play specifically and, in many ways, to Greek comedy in general. However, references to male and female genitalia, the mechanics of sexual activity, and the

174â•…â•… Aristophanes lusty desires of men and women, both young and old, should not be taken as low-brow humor incorporated for mere shock value. The play’s bold sexual references give it much of its power. Sexuality is the source of much humor, but it is also the primary mechanism for hope. Lysistrata proposes that the lust for copulation is the only human desire that outmatches the lust for blood, and that sexual gratification withheld can transform the world. The play explores in depth the exploitative power sex holds over our species. Central to the women’s oath is a manipulation strategy; Lysistrata orders the women not merely to withhold sex but to simultaneously encourage the desire for it. “I will live at home in unsullied chastity .╯.╯. wearing my saffron gown and my sexiest make-up .╯.╯. to inflame my husband’s ardour .╯.╯. but I will never willingly yield myself to him” (ll. 217–24). Aristophanes foreshadows a world in which women will not ignore the men but deliberately use their charms to arouse them (audiences are made to assume that this will primarily be women like those of Sparta who have not barricaded themselves in the Acropolis, which is the second prong of the peace strategy). The playwright asks the spectator to imagine all Greek male citizens reduced to drooling, frustrated beasts as the Greek women tease them mercilessly but refuse to “put out.” This image of men reduced to docile sheep by unrequited sexual desire is solidified in the play’s final moments, when the military will of all Greece has been broken by the strike. A Spartan delegate, who has been reluctant to agree to the reconciliation (probably a reference to historical Spartan militancy) gives in when its representative proves to be a beautiful naked woman named Reconciliation. Given Sparta’s extreme warrior culture, the exhibition of one of their men tamed by being sex-starved implies that the rest of the Greek world has degraded perhaps to the level of zombie slaves, owing to their unsatisfied needs. While most of the play’s sexual content centers on humorous references and the global effects of chastity, one particularly famous scene provides a spectacle of sensuality that never fails to delight. Myrrhinne’s husband, Cinesias, comes looking for her, and what follows is a microcosm of the larger

conflict between the sexes, a struggle between lust and politics, with Cinesias using all the components of home and marriage against Myrrhine’s negotiation and resolve. Cinesias enters with the energy of a satyr (the half goat/half human attendants of Dionysus), made all the bolder by his enormous, fully erect phallus (a comic spin on the costume standard of Greek comedy, the usually flaccid phallus). He begs an audience with Myrrhine, using their infant son as bait: “Surely you can’t harden your heart against your baby! It’s five days now since he had a bath or a suck” (l. 880). He then reminds her that siding with the women is leaving their home unattended, but that more significantly, it leaves them both with “pain” resulting from secret rites of Aphrodite unperformed (l. 893). Cinesias makes a show of capitulating to the women’s demands. Though she will not agree to come home until the peace agreement is fulfilled, Myrrhine does agree to “lie down” with him in Pan’s Grotto. The repeatedly averted sex act that plays out in lines 915–957 would have similarly impacted audiences in Athens of the year 411 as it does today, continual building anticipation of a spectacle that is consistently aborted. Public sex was illegal at Athenian sanctuaries, as it is in most public places in the present day. Thus, for them to perform it in front of 14,000 spectators would have stretched the comic energy to the point of near scandal. Audiences are drawn into Cinesias’s frustration as Myrrhine first excuses herself to retrieve a bed and then, in sequence, a mattress, a pillow, a blanket, and two different bottles of perfume. When he accidentally reveals that he does not intend to push for peace as he promised, Myrrhine abandons her frustrated husband. The averted lovemaking stages Lysistrata’s challenge to the war and affirms the impact a sex strike would have on the men of Greece. The mastery of Aristophanes’ text is not that it is rife with dirty jokes, though it is, nor that some of those jokes are outright shocking, though he is a skilled author of bawdy lines and images. Rather, it is that those moments of lewdness amount to a hopeful suggestion that war might not be the true constant in human civilization. Sex might be even more essential to our needs, though we may only realize

The Handmaid’s Taleâ•…â•… 175 that when sex is taken away. By weaving bawdy references throughout the text, Aristophanes mandates sex as a more ubiquitous force than violence. Sexuality becomes the power that fuels the efforts of Greek women to forge a peace. Exploring themes of gender and hope more deeply, one finds that in Aristophanes’s fantasy world, sexuality gives women the ability to transform a reality in which they would otherwise have no influence on global affairs. Ben Fisler

ATWOOD, MARGARETâ•… The Handmaid’s Taleâ•… (1985)

Written at a time when strongly conservative elements (including antifeminist movements) were gaining power in the United States, The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel. It imagines a future in which contemporary utopian ideals for a better world have been erased and a very dark, nightmarish society has come to existence. In the novel, an environmental catastrophe has apparently rendered a large part of the country inaccessible due to radioactivity, and most men and women in the country have become sterile. The former American government has been replaced by a fascist system, called the Republic of Gilead, where women are deprived of their rights and basically enslaved so as to produce babies and bring the birth rate up. This system is set up and led by the “Commanders”—men who used to hold high positions in the old system—who receive the handmaids in their household and expect them to bear a child for their sterile wives. It is a highly hierarchical system in which every man and woman serves, in some way or another, the Commanders and their families. Oppression, gender, and heroism are the three thematic lenses through which we will critique a system which, though it is fictitious, addresses and speaks to very contemporary issues and concerns such as gender power and discrimination. Sophie Croisy

Gender in The Handmaid’s Tale

The Republic of Gilead is a complex and strict hierarchical system where gender separation is institutionalized and becomes the very root of oppression.

Men and women are subjected to the Law of Gilead, born out of a mix between the strictest biblical teachings and the certainties of a handful of Commanders. According to the Law, men and women have traditional heterosexual roles that cannot be jeopardized, so much so that nonnormative gender behaviors are eradicated. One time, the narrator, a Handmaid named Offred (her names comes from the Commander to whom she belongs, Fred), spots the dead bodies of two men with “purple placards hung around their necks: Gender Treachery. Their bodies still wear the Guardian uniforms. Caught together, they must have been.” There is no room for homosexuality in this society, which preaches the fulfillment of natural (meaning heterosexual) destinies. The women in Gilead, if not in charge of menial household tasks for the commanders, are either the commanders’ own wives, Econowives (the wives of the poorest men), Aunts, or Handmaids. The Aunts are the most visible representatives of the oppressive gendered system in place as they teach the last fertile women in Gilead how to become Handmaids. Though themselves oppressed by the system, their role is to perpetuate that oppression by promoting a fundamentalist Christian envisioning of women’s role in society. In the Center, and in Gilead, Handmaids-to-be learn that they cannot own anything anymore, not even an identity; they cannot read or write; they cannot want and are not allowed to complain. When Offred describes her time in the Center, she recalls the group sessions during which future Handmaids had to confess their sins and repent: One of them tells the story of her rape as a younger girl, and when one of the Aunts asks the question, “But whose fault was it?,” all the participants are expected to answer, “Her fault, her fault, her fault,” and they do so. The sexist argument that harm happens because the woman was looking for it becomes the starting point to a cruel redemptive therapy, at the end of which the women-turnedHandmaids surrender to “the ecstasy of abasement”: They admit their past worthlessness and guilt as “Unwomen” (free women) and accept that they will know redemption only if they “fulfill their biological destinies.” The active body as “instrument of pleasure” and “implement for the accomplishment of

176â•…â•… Atwood, Margaret [the owner’s] will” becomes shameful. However, the passive reproductive body is sanctified. It is a sacred vessel that can be used (and abused) by the leaders of the land to reach that higher collective biological purpose: the survival of the species. In the fundamentalist Gilead system, what is sanctified must be protected; thus, the female body remains hidden (all women wear veils when they go outside). The Handmaid’s body is only to be seen naked by her Commander, who, during an event called “the Ceremony,” has intercourse with the Handmaid in order to procreate the highly hoped-for child. The Gilead system of oppression, which is defined by Offred’s commander as an opportunity for women to be protected from any harm and play their natural roles “in peace. With all support and encouragement” is, in fact, a punitive system where torture, both mental and physical, or death comes to individuals who do not want to or cannot fulfill their duty for the community. In the Center, uncooperative women are physically abused: “It was the feet they’d do for a first offense. They used steel cables, frayed at the ends.” Moreover, if a Handmaid, after three trials in different households, fails to give birth to a child, she is taken away; nobody knows what happens to her—death is the guess. Never is the commander’s fertility questioned because “There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law.” The hypocrisy and cruelty of the oppressive gendered system and its perpetrators lie in their daily criminal actions and in the existence of an underground web of prostitution organized by the Commanders themselves. In underground clubs, Commanders find alcohol and women and do in the obscurity of a back bedroom what the very system they have imposed forbids everyone below them to do, men and women alike. Sophie Croisy

Heroism in The Handmaid’s Tale

In a tyrannical, hierarchical society where the freedom of a past life must be forgotten, every act of memory can be considered an act of heroism. Remembering the past implies suffering but prevents hope from vanishing. The main character in the text, the handmaid call Offred, commits these

acts of memory throughout her detention and thus infuses hope from the past into the present. The quaintest memory, the memory of “laundromats. What I wore to them: shorts, jeans, jogging pants. What I put into them: my own clothes, my own money, money I had earned myself ” comes back to counter the Gilead system of repression based on keeping women oblivious, separating the genders, and forcing blind submission to the rules. These moments of remembering help her participate in the struggle against institutionalized forgetting, against the lies scattered by the leaders of Gilead. What is more important is remembering her name, though in this new order, she is given the name of her owner. She is Offred, but she keeps the knowledge of her real name “like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day,” and she projects herself into the future—a time when she will be allowed again to wear her name, to recover her stolen identity. If remembering is a silent, individual form of heroism in a system that forces forgetting upon its human elements, acting against that system is certainly the most subversive heroic endeavor. Offred is witness to different types of rebellious actions, some individual, others organized by a countergovernmental underground organization called Mayday. When still in training to become a handmaid, Offred goes through a coercive brainwashing program meant to force young women into a life of inaction and servitude. Moira, one of these women “in training,” tries to escape any chance she gets despite the knowledge that harsh punishment will come if she gets caught. She goes so far as to threaten the life of one of the Aunts with a metal prod. She takes the Aunt’s clothes and her pass, and she leaves the gymnasium pretending to be an Aunt. After her successful escape, Moira becomes the handmaids’ “fantasy. We hugged her to us. She was with us in secret, a giggle; she was lava beneath the crust of daily life. In the light of Moira, the Aunts were less fearsome and more absurd. Their power had a flaw to it.” This act of heroism resonates throughout the gymnasium and becomes another symbol of hope, another successful, counter-traumatic action in the midst of global trauma.

The Handmaid’s Taleâ•…â•… 177 Even Offred, once in contact with Mayday, starts playing a spy game. Her relationship with the Commander evolves as time passes by. He invites her at night to play board games and offers her presents; she, in turn, starts asking questions about the Gilead system. This forbidden “friendly” relationship (though the power structure that rules their official relationship is never questioned) takes Offred to an underground nightclub set up by the Commanders where waitresses/prostitutes serve and please the dignitaries of Gilead. Little by little, she sees more and learns more, and knowledge becomes another weapon of resistance: the knowledge that the Gilead system is not as closed and flawless as she was once told it was. Offred knows that she would be punished, or even killed, if anyone knew (especially the Commander’s wife, Serena Joy) about this unusual relationship with the Commander, but she continues it in order to know and tell what she knows. Offred’s official position in the Commander’s household is that of a vessel. She must give the Commander and his wife a child. Not fulfilling this “sacred duty” means death for her. For that reason, she will be convinced by Serena Joy, who fears that her husband might be infertile, to have intercourse with Nick, the driver, to increase her chances of getting pregnant. However, she goes to Nick more in search of physical closeness and pleasure, which is forbidden in Gilead. Again, if anyone knew about this treasonous behavior, she would die. Her actions are heroic in the sense that she knows death awaits her whatever path she chooses, but she chooses the hardest path: She does not stand still waiting for the expected child or its alternative, death. She chooses the path that will remind her how to feel and show her the reality of a corrupt system regularly upset by Mayday and its web of undercover rebels. Her acts of heroism are acts of hope. Sophie Croisy

Oppression in The Handmaid’s Tale

Gilead’s Commanders as well as a punitive organization called “the Eyes” have full power. The Commanders have set up a strict hierarchical system of oppression (though they define that system as the only way toward a better, safer, peaceful society) based on strict rules of conduct. Everyone has a

specific role and position that is inescapable once attributed. If this role is not fulfilled, punishment is immediate. The Eyes, a sort of secret police, take the disobedient ones away in a black car or van. What happens to the prisoners is unclear but likely to be connected to the regular “prayvaganzas,” punitive ceremonies where the enemies of Gilead are sentenced to death. Only the top of the Republic of Gilead’s hierarchy seems to have real power. The rest is submissive to the oppressive system set up by the Commanders, who define themselves as Gilead’s leaders and its protectors from the war raging outside. They lead that war and seem to own other parts of the American territory as a result of deadly fights between the soldiers of Gilead and the soldiers of an America that still exists outside the wall that surrounds and limits Gilead. The soldiers of Gilead have a basic practical function: to fight and die for Gilead. The Guardians of the Faith, a kind of local police, is used for “routine policing and other menial functions, digging up the Commander’s Wife’s garden.” They are given the power to keep things in order, but they have very limited rights. They are only male servants in the Gilead system and are not allowed contact with women. The Aunts are an organization of women whose role is to form young and fertile women to become Handmaids. Their only power lies in their role as teachers, though they teach other women through oppression, and what they teach is the obligation to accept the oppressive system now in place. Their training in behavior and religion must transform “Unwomen”—that is, modern, free American women with the right to chose their lives—into Handmaids (that is, birthing machines). The Handmaids must learn to dismiss and despise their old life (that is, the modern life of today’s real America), take pills to keep quiet and docile, and learn the new rules of a system that has turned them into “worthy vessels.” As a result, they have become objects of procreation. Once properly disciplined, they will each be assigned to a Commander’s family and will be forced to produce a child through forced sex with the Commander in the presence of his wife. The goal is to repopulate the land after the great nuclear catastrophe that has killed so many. The other

178â•…â•… Atwood, Margaret women within that system have no power at all: the Marthas are the housekeepers who are in charge of the Commanders’ households. They cook and clean, and that is the limit of their action. This new society is not only based on oppressive laws of conduct and a politics of fear (of the secret police), but also on the rejection of “otherness”: Its propaganda targets and vilifies specific cultural and religious groups that once shaped the American nation. African Americans are captured and resettled in “National Homeland One,” a place where nobody really knows what becomes of them. Jews and other religious groups whose vision of religion departs from Gilead’s are also targeted alongside homosexuals and old, unfertile women who are worthless to the Gilead system based on the need to reproduce. Newspapers and the television are heavily controlled and censored, and only the Commanders and their wives have access to the news. Those who are not at the top of the hierarchy have very few or no privileges and are kept in a state of ignorance about what is really happening in the country. All words in the streets have been replaced by signs, and reading and writing are forbidden to those like the Handmaids who are only supposed to obey the rules. This fundamentalist society has taken away the rights of its members in order to create an ordered society where idleness, drugs, “immoral” behaviors, and more specifically violence have no place. However, what really defines the system is the escalation of hatred between the different castes of Gilead, the erasure of entire cultural groups, and an underground prostitution web brought into existence by the Commanders themselves. Sophie Croisy

ATWOOD, MARGARETâ•… Surfacingâ•… (1972)

The Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s second novel Surfacing, one of her most famous works, is considered a landmark text in terms of its exploration of the connections between gender and environmental oppression. Surfacing is the story of an unnamed female narrator’s journey into the wilderness of Quebec in search of her missing father. Accompanying her are her lover Joe and the couple’s

friends David and Anna, all of whom think of the trip as a vacation and a chance for David, with Joe’s help, to make Random Samples, a film of various oddities that they see along the way—a house made of soda bottles, for example. Initially, the narrator reveals to the reader that she is divorced and has a child, but after the four reach her family’s cabin located on an island, and the search for her father begins, the narrator’s story changes. We learn that prior to her involvement with Joe, the narrator aborted a fetus that resulted from an illicit affair with a married man. As these truths “surface” over the course of the novel, the narrator’s voice becomes increasingly fragmented; she dissociates from her peers and heads into the wilderness, where she spends five days in a state of either madness or epiphany, depending on the reader’s interpretation. Surfacing examines such issues as the degradation of the natural environment by corporate interests, the treatment of women by men, and the marginalization of Canadian culture as a result of Canada’s proximity to the United States. Laura Wright

Gender in Surfacing

Margaret Atwood wrote Surfacing at the height of the second wave of the feminist movement, which gained momentum—in Canada as well as in the United States—during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Atwood’s nameless narrator is a woman who ultimately refuses to be victimized by the socially enforced gender roles that define her as a secondclass citizen because of her status as female. As she states at the end of the novel, “this above all, to refuse to be a victim.” Surfacing provides a sustained analysis of the ways that gender roles are generated by culture, and throughout the text, the narrator seeks to break free from the civilized feminine role that is expected of her by not only the men in her life—Joe, David, and her former lover—but also by women, particularly Anna and the narrator’s mother. Furthermore, in Surfacing, Atwood presents male gender roles as similarly problematic, a hindrance to any real connection between men and women. Atwood’s narrator is perhaps most conflicted with regard to her relationship choices and repro-

Surfacingâ•…â•… 179 ductive freedom; initially, she refers to her former lover as her “husband” and tells the audience that their child is at home. But other comments underscore a different reality, one characterized by the narrator’s guilt over the fact that she was involved with a married man and aborted their unborn child at his request. Early in the novel, she claims that she feels as if her former lover “imposed it on me.” The narrator’s reference to her baby as “it” is an indication that she did not carry the child to term, but the lies that she tells herself and the audience indicate the ways that she feels trapped by gender expectations that demand her to be a “good girl.” Another way that the narrative illustrates the conflict that women feel with regard to the roles they are expected to play is evidenced when Anna, putting on her makeup, tells the narrator that David “↜‘doesn’t like to see me without it,’ and then, contradicting herself, ‘He doesn’t know I wear it.’↜” Throughout the text, David is presented as the enforcer of gender roles, a man who monitors his wife’s body, telling her at one point that she is “eating too much” and getting fat, while he flaunts his extramarital affairs before her; his comments about her body make her too insecure to leave him. At one point in the novel, David tells Anna to avoid participating in the women’s liberation movement: “None of that Women’s Lib .╯.╯. or you’ll be out on the street. I won’t have one in my house, they’re preaching random castration, they get off on that.” However, when the narrator begins to discard, bit by bit, the submissive and victimized female role that she had maintained at the beginning of the novel and that Anna maintains throughout, the consequences are telling. First, by refusing to marry Joe, the narrator reverses typical gender role expectations; she, not the man, is unwilling to give up her independence. In response, Joe behaves in a more typically feminine manner, claiming that “sometimes .╯.╯. I get the feeling you don’t give a shit about me.” Furthermore, when the narrator refuses David’s advances, he calls her a “tight-ass bitch” and accuses her of being a lesbian. These criticisms are attempts to show the narrator her gendered place, to force her to conform to male expectations of submissive female behavior. But men are not the only ones who police gender roles; Anna criticizes the narrator as

well, calling her “inhuman.” The narrator realizes that refusing to have sex with David causes Anna to resent her: “[B]ecause I hadn’t given in, it commented on her.” The narrator ultimately refuses to uphold the facade of wife and mother, admitting that she was never married and that she had had an abortion. At this point, she acknowledges that everyone wants to save the world in one way or another—“men think they can do it with guns, women with their bodies”—and then she turns her back on this way of thinking, destroying David and Joe’s film, smashing all of the mirrors in the cabin, taking off all her clothes, and heading out into the wilderness. She gives up her name and states, “I tried for all those years to be civilized but I’m not and I’m through pretending.” The novel ends with the narrator waiting for a new way to define herself, a way that is not dependent on female submission and male dominance. Laura Wright

Nationalism in Surfacing

When Margaret Atwood wrote Surfacing in 1972, Canada was characterized by a void in terms of its national conception of itself. Canada’s national identity has evolved over three main stages since its colonization in the 18th century. It was viewed, first, as a colonial or provincial outpost of empire; second, as a colonial nation; and finally, as a kind of country without a specific identity. Furthermore, Canada’s relationship with its imposing neighbor the United States has shaped its national identity. For example, prior to 1965, Canadian policy was one of cooperation with and emulation of the United States; however, with the Lyndon Johnson presidency, Canada’s desire to imitate was replaced by a sense of moral righteousness as it sought to distance itself from its neighbor’s escalating involvement in the Vietnam War. To some extent, it is this anti-U.S. sensibility that Atwood portrays in Surfacing. Atwood examines the complexities of the national conception of the “nice Canadian” in the late 1960s while she simultaneously critiques the artifice of niceness by tracing her unnamed narrator’s descent into madness in the wilderness of Quebec. Over the course of the

180â•…â•… Atwood, Margaret narrative, the protagonist is forced to examine her self-proclaimed victimization by both the American technological advances that encroach on the Canadian wilderness and by the men with whom she has been involved. The narrator ultimately learns that her father has drowned, and at this point, she literally disrobes and heads into the wilderness, where she lives for five days, hidden from her companions who, in exasperation, return to the mainland. The narrator’s sense of self, as a member of a national community, is obtained at least in part from her perception of her world through visual images that depict the nation. As an illustrator, she had been working on a book called Quebec Folk Tales at the time of her father’s disappearance. She creates the visual images that accompany her nation’s mythology, and despite the fact that she wants to vary her presentation, to include a loup-garou, or werewolf, story in the collection, the narrator realizes that her editor has taken it out because “it was too rough for him.” The national image that she is allowed to portray, therefore, is that of a nice, nonviolent Canadian. Furthermore, as a participant in the market, she is limited in her creativity as well as in her conception of a world beyond the fairy tales that her editor—and her nation—consider acceptable. She asks, “What’s the alternative to princesses? What else will parents buy for their children?” The narrator’s art is a commodity, an element in the consumer culture of Canada’s nationalist consciousness. Another visual narrative that shapes the narrator’s sense of her place in the Canadian nation is the photo album that she finds in the cabin. This album, with its chronologically arranged familial images, conflates time and space; photographs of the narrator appear alongside those of distant and longdead relatives. While she can look at the images of “grandmothers and grandfathers first, distant ancestors,” they are nonetheless “strangers, in face-front firing-squad poses.” The narrator is able to trace the “civilizing” process that occurs over the course of her life by examining the succession of these photographs, which culminate in school pictures from her teenage years. In these she sees herself as the acceptable nice Canadian in “stiff dresses, crinolines and tulle, layered like store birthday cakes,” and she claims, “I was civilized at last, the finished product.”

Similarly, David and Joe control the visual national narrative through their filming and then rearranging the “random samples” that they see on their journey. The film stems in part from David’s desire to capture images of the “real” Canadian nation, the “uncivilized border country” of the Quebec wilderness that Joe thinks of as “reality: a marginalized economy and grizzled elderly men.” At the end of Surfacing, the narrator destroys David’s film and heads into the wilderness to become a kind of werewolf, the loup-garou that she is not allowed to portray in her art. During these five days, the narrator is transformed from a woman into a wild animal, and over the course of her madness, she exists in opposition to the idea that the Canadian national consciousness must always be “nice,” must always exist in opposition to the “American.” By the end of the narrative, the protagonist is able to abandon labels that connote an appropriate national identity. Laura Wright

Nature in Surfacing

Margaret Atwood’s second novel, Surfacing, has been hailed as an ecofeminist classic because of the connections she makes in the narrative between the destruction of the environment as a result of capitalist interests and the domination of women by men. Atwood renders the natural world in Surfacing, particularly the remote island in northern Quebec where the novel is set, as a natural site compromised by the intrusion of people the nameless narrator assumes to be “American.” In the novel’s first two sentences, the narrator notes the way that the landscape has changed as a result of development and increased population since she last headed north: I can’t believe I’m on this road again, twisting along the lake where the white birches are dying, the disease is spreading up from the south.╯.╯.╯. But this is still near the city limits; we didn’t go through, it’s swelled enough to have a bypass, that’s success. This opening sequence establishes a dichotomy that Atwood’s narrator maintains throughout Surfac-

The Confessions of St. Augustineâ•…â•… 181 ing, the insidious and environmentally destructive attributes of “the south,” particularly citizens of the United States—whom all of the characters in the novel equate with environmental “disease”—as juxtaposed with the Canadians’ supposed innate environmentalism. The narrator, along with her lover Joe and married friends Anna and David, head to the island in search of the narrator’s missing father. As they move from the city further into the wilderness, the characters, particularly David, comment on the ways that the United States has encroached on the Canadian wilderness. At one point, he claims, “this is great .╯.╯. better than in the city. If we could only kick out the fascist pig Yanks and the capitalists this would be a neat country.” The term American is used throughout the text to designate anyone or any behavior that endangers the natural environment, and two American fishermen are central to the narrative’s examination of the destruction of nature. While they are out fishing on the lake, the narrator, Anna, Joe, and David encounter two men in a fishing boat with an “American flag on the front and another on the back.” One of the men asks if they have caught anything; “the other American throws his cigar butt over the side” and makes disparaging comments about the lake. The narrator notes that despite the fact that “we used to think they were harmless and funny and inept and faintly loveable,” “we”—Canadians—now see that “they”—Americans—pose a very real threat to the pristine wilderness of North Quebec. For example, when a man claiming to be a member of “the Detroit branch of the Wildlife Protection Association of America” appears and offers to buy the narrator’s father’s home, David warns that the man is a covert CIA agent out to procure water for the United States: ‘It’s obvious,’ he says. ‘They’re running out of water, clean water, they’re dirtying up all of theirs, right?’ As the four head back to the house after their encounter with the Americans, the narrator provides an amazing description of the lake: Loon voices in the distance; bats flitter past us, dipping over the water surface, flat calm now, the shore things, white-gray rocks and dead trees doubling themselves in the dark

mirror. Around us there is the illusion of infinite space or of no space.╯.╯.╯. It’s like moving on air, nothing beneath us holding us up. This passage, in that it describes the narrator’s illusory sensation of weightlessness and infinite space, alludes to the impermanence of boundaries, particularly those between the characters’ assumptions about Canadian and American environmental behavior. Later, when the foursome comes upon a dead heron, killed and “strung .╯.╯. up like a lynch victim,” the narrator questions why anyone would kill the bird. She asserts that “it must have been the Americans” who kill the bird just “to prove they could do it.” However, when the narrator encounters the “Americans” several pages later, she discovers that they are actually from Canada, just like her. The term American, then, becomes a kind of label that the narrator applies to any human being who causes environmental harm. She claims, “I realized it wasn’t the men I hated, it was the Americans, the human beings, men and women both. They’d had their chance but they had turned against the gods, and it was time for me to choose sides.” The side that she chooses is the side of nature: She sheds her clothes, leaves the house, and goes to live in the wilderness, determined not to disturb “anything else, that way there would be more room for the animals, they would be rescued.” Laura Wright

AUGUSTINE, SAINTâ•… The Confessions of St. Augustineâ•… (a.d. 397–398)

The Confessions of St. Augustine is probably the first book-length autobiography and certainly the most influential. Saint Augustine of Hippo (a.d. 353–430) pioneered the introspective study of one’s own life; for him, this effort would ultimately lead to knowledge of God, to whom Confessions is addressed. Confessions is divided into 13 books. The first nine contain a narrative of Augustine’s life up until age 33, focusing on his religious and moral development. Augustine’s life here is quite busy. In traveling to Carthage, Rome, and Milan to study and teach, he makes many friends and encounters various reli-

182â•…â•… Augustine, Saint gious and philosophical movements, most of which carry him further from God. Much of Confessions’s narrative is marked by Augustine’s regret over his youthful sinfulness. As a middle-aged Christian writing Confessions, he knows the moral standard he should have adhered to, and he laments that he had previously ignored God in favor of the fleeting pleasures of sex, vanity, and lawlessness. The climax of the narrative books is Augustine’s conversion to Christianity, which occurs dramatically in a Milan garden. The final four books are more directly philosophical and theological. In them, Augustine explores the nature of time and memory, and he interprets the biblical book of Genesis, which itself provided so much of the literary and theological inspiration for the Confessions. Augustine characterizes himself as a seeker, as expressed in Confessions’s first paragraph, where he says to God, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless till it rests in you.” To read Confessions is to enter a world of thought more complex and fascinating than nearly any other. Jonathan Malesic

Childhood in The Confessions of St. Augustine

A person’s memories are the richest source of material for an autobiography, and so we should expect an autobiographer to have the least to say about his or her birth and infancy. Not so for the exceedingly inquisitive Augustine. He devotes the first book of Confessions to searching for knowledge about his birth, infancy, and childhood, using his experiences in those stages to demonstrate to the reader the problem of human sin. Augustine even wants to know if he had a life prior to his birth. He finds no answer but trusts that God has one. In describing his character as an infant, Augustine relies partly on his observations of other infants. He sees that they greedily want milk all the time and cry when that desire is not immediately satisfied. Augustine assumes that he, too, must have been a greedy baby. Augustine is keen to the power of words throughout his life, and he devotes several pages of book 1 to his learning to speak. At first, he could only wail incoherently to indicate his desires. By

imitating adults and, later, with formal schooling, Augustine becomes more adept at using language, but he says that he mostly did so for immoral purposes. In his final assessment of these early years, Augustine describes himself as “so tiny a child, so great a sinner.” Augustine’s view of childhood is thus very different from our contemporary notion that children are innocent and naturally generous. Augustine sees himself as a sinful child because he believes that all human beings are inherently sinful at birth and need to be saved from that sin. This doctrine, known as original sin, has roots in the biblical story of Adam and Eve. According to Genesis 2 and 3, the first human beings were sinless, but they disobeyed God when they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil after Eve was tempted to do so by the serpent. This act of disobedience was the first sin. As a consequence, Adam and Eve must one day die, and so must all of their descendants, the entire human race, because the guilt from that first sin is passed down through generations. Thus, Augustine portrays his own infancy and childhood as reflecting the biblical account of the infancy and childhood of the human race. This theme carries through book 2, in which Augustine recounts a period in his adolescence, the cusp between childhood and adulthood. Perhaps the most famous episode in Confessions is the theft of pears that Augustine and his adolescent friends commit in book 2. The episode is cast as a reflection of the fall of Adam and Eve: Not only is taking from a fruit tree at the heart of the story, but like Adam, Augustine steals mainly for companionship’s sake. As he admits at the end of book 2, “alone I would not have done it.” He sees his yielding to peer pressure as not merely the action of a foolish youth but a malicious act against the will of God. He blames only himself for his spiritual immaturity. Augustine’s conversion to Christianity in the Milan garden (recounted in book 8) is followed in book 9 by his baptism, which makes him a member of the Catholic Church. This baptism is like a second birth to him. In Christian theology, the person who is baptized “dies to sin” and is born to new life. The newborn Christian Augustine loses his voice for much of book 9 because of a series of illnesses.

The Confessions of St. Augustineâ•…â•… 183 The only way he can communicate the joy he feels over his conversion is through crying, just as he communicated as a child. The crying, however, has been transformed from an expression of sinful greed to one of pure happiness with God. In Latin, the language in which Augustine wrote, the word infans literally means “unable to speak.” In his baptism, he gains a second infancy and childhood, but this time, the grace of God and the care of his new Christian “family” (the church) will help him to avoid the sinful selfishness that characterized his first infancy. Sin for Augustine is a problem as universal as infancy, but it has a solution in becoming a child of God via membership in the church. Jonathan Malesic

Love in The Confessions of St. Augustine

In Augustine’s outlook, love is most basically desire: desire to possess an object, desire to be with a particular person, desire for knowledge or goodness. But not all desires get to be called by the name love. It is possible to desire the wrong things, or to desire good things in the wrong way. Much of the plot of the Confessions is driven by the conflict between genuine love and the disordered form of desire known as lust. To Augustine, human beings are defined largely by their loves: They are good to the extent that they love the right things in the right way, and they are sinful when their desires are disordered. Augustine says that as an adolescent, his greatest desire “was simply to love and to be loved.” This desire in itself is good, but Augustine goes about fulfilling it the wrong way, causing him to sin and to be miserable. When Augustine goes away to Carthage to study, he has many friends and lovers. But these were no more than “illicit loves,” because rather than enjoying real friendship with these people, he sought carnal pleasures with them, casting himself into “the hell of lust.” Looking back on those times, Augustine determines that he was never truly in love with anyone. In fact he “was in love with love,” the feeling he got when he was falling in love. Because he did not yet know what real love was, the mistake was easy to make. Augustine continues to give lust a large role in his life, as he takes up with a woman and has a child with her out of wedlock. Their “love is a matter of physical sex,” not real partnership.

Even Augustine’s friendships at this stage exhibit improper love. In book 4, Augustine tells about a close friendship he shared with a childhood acquaintance. They shared many interests, and at the time Augustine “felt that my soul and his were ‘one soul in two bodies.’↜” But even this love was ultimately improper, because Augustine loved this friend disproportionately. This unnamed friend falls ill and eventually dies, causing Augustine no end of misery. The closeness of the relationship is exactly what makes the end of the relationship so painful. Looking back on this episode, Augustine realizes that he loved this friend “as a substitute for” God. Augustine’s lesson here is that someone should never treat another as “half [one’s] soul.” Human beings are mortal and finite and thus should not receive such strong devotion. God alone must be loved so strongly, and because God is infinite and immortal, loving him will never be a disappointment. In subsequent books, Augustine gains new friends and loves them more appropriately. In book 6, he writes much about Alypius and Nebridius, with whom Augustine lives and shares many intellectual interests. The love these friends show Augustine helps make him a better person. Alypius’s honesty, which he shows by refusing to take bribes while he held a government job, seems to rub off on the sinful Augustine, who says that these two “friends I loved indeed for their own sake; and I felt that in return they loved me for my sake.” The love among Augustine, Alypius, and Nebridius is good partly because it eventually leads beyond itself and toward love for God. Augustine does not convert to Christianity alone but with these two friends, as they continue to exert a positive moral influence on him. After Augustine’s conversion and baptism, his desire for God only grows. He asks himself “what I love when I love my God,” and he knows that in loving God, he does not love the physical beauty and the pleasure he loves in material things, because God is not a physical thing. Still, God grants Augustine spiritual pleasures beyond any physical ones, leading him to write what amounts to a love hymn to God, saying, “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new,” and extolling

184â•…â•… Augustine, Saint God’s accomplishments in Augustine’s life and how ardently he now desires God. All of the lesser loves Augustine has—for physical pleasure, for companionship, for knowledge— imitate to some degree the love he should properly have for God. And if Augustine’s loves help determine what he becomes, then loving God properly will make him more like God in goodness and wisdom. Jonathan Malesic

Religion in The Confessions of St. Augustine

As a religious autobiography, The Confessions is in one sense entirely about religion. Augustine is in search of God, but God can be found only through the doctrines and disciplines of true religion. The problem for Augustine is in discovering which religion is true. He finds the truth in Catholic Christianity, but he takes a circuitous path to it. Augustine lived in an era when several religions competed for adherents. Although Christianity was becoming the norm in the Roman Empire, many still honored the old Roman pantheon, and a sect called the Manicheans held some sway. Furthermore, the Christianity of this time was highly varied, as authority within the church was diffuse, and many points of doctrine were not yet settled. Augustine’s own family exhibits this religious diversity: His mother, Monica, is a Christian (later to be acknowledged as a saint in the Catholic Church), while his father, Patrick, is a longtime pagan. Monica’s practice of true religion leads her to live a life of prayer and moral rectitude. She, in turn, prays constantly for Augustine to become a full member of the church and actively encourages him to give up his premarital sexual relationships (which the church sees as sinful) and to marry a Catholic girl. Patrick, meanwhile, is portrayed as short-tempered and lustful, encouraging Augustine to commit sexual sin. He becomes a Christian late in his life, and Augustine remarks that this conversion ended Patrick’s bad behavior. As a young teacher of rhetoric at Carthage in North Africa, Augustine is drawn to the Manicheans, who see the world as a battleground between the equal and opposite forces of light and darkness. Augustine’s interest in the Manicheans reaches its

height in book 5 as he anticipates meeting Faustus, the great bishop of the sect. Faustus turns out to be a letdown, as his knowledge is slight and “conventional,” not the profound wisdom Augustine had expected. But by the end of book 5, Augustine has moved to Milan in Italy and met Ambrose, the Christian bishop there. Ambrose is the mirror image of Faustus. Both men are bishops, but Faustus is part of the false religion of Manichaeanism, while Ambrose is a leader in the true religion of Christianity. Though both are renowned for their good speaking styles, “in content there could be no comparison,” for Ambrose is expounding the truth and exposing the pretty lies of teachers like Faustus. Ambrose continues to influence Augustine, leading him to join the Catholic Church. The Manicheans’ failure to grasp the truth is illustrated in their inadequate account of the presence of evil in the world. They believe that both God and evil are physical substances in conflict with each other. This doctrine concerns Augustine because it implies that God is finite, something he knows cannot be true. Augustine discovers a Christian answer to this problem in book 7, after reading books of Platonist philosophers who espouse many semireligious teachings, including the idea that evil is not an existing substance but, rather, the absence of good. Although the Platonists lack the full religious truth, which can be found only in Christianity, they have elements of the truth (including this teaching on the nature of evil) and are at any rate far closer to true religious doctrine than the Manicheans. Because all that is genuinely true comes from God, true philosophical doctrines can lead a person a step closer to God. For example, the Platonists rightly recognize that the Word of God, the principle of order in the universe, is itself light, but they do not recognize, as Christians do, that this Word became a human being, Jesus Christ. Thus, Augustine’s intellectual encounter with Platonism helps confirm for him the truth of Christianity. He eventually converts fully to Christianity after an intense emotional experience that leads him to “pick up and read” the letters of the Christian apostle Paul, where Augustine reads an admonition to give up sin and to ally himself with Christ.

Emmaâ•…â•… 185 Augustine’s conversion becomes formal in book 9 when he, his friends, and his son are baptized in a joyous ceremony. At last, Augustine has found true religion, where he can know and love God fully and properly. Although orthodox (correct) beliefs are indispensable to true religion, for Augustine it is not only a matter of belief. True religion is also marked by true worship practices, good morals, healthy community life, and wise authority. All of these Augustine finds in Catholic Christianity, where he receives the antidote to the spiritual restlessness that plagued his young adulthood. Jonathan Malesic

AUSTEN, JANEâ•… Emmaâ•… (1816)

Emma Woodhouse, “handsome, clever, and rich,” lives near the village of Highbury with her father in the early 1800s. Although good friends with their neighbor, Mr. Knightley, Emma is lonely after her governess marries and moves out, so she decides to take Harriet Smith, a beautiful young girl of unknown parentage, under her wing. Against Mr. Knightley’s advice, Emma dissuades Harriet from marrying her farmer suitor, Robert Martin, and instead persuades her that the vicar, Mr. Elton, is in love with her. Unfortunately, however, it turns out Mr. Elton has designs not on Harriet but on Emma herself. Emma indignantly refuses his proposal and tries to heal Harriet’s disappointment. Emma’s governess’s new stepson, Frank Churchill, comes to visit Highbury and enlivens the village by initiating social events that include Jane Fairfax, who has recently returned to Highbury after a childhood spent elsewhere. Another arrival is Mr. Elton’s new bride, who attempts to upstage Emma by asserting herself as the “lady patroness” of Highbury. The town expects Frank and Emma to make a couple, but Emma has plans for Frank and Harriet. However, Harriet now fancies Mr. Knightley, which horrifies Emma as she realizes that she herself loves Mr. Knightley. When Frank’s adopted mother dies, he announces that he has been secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax for several months. While shocked at the subterfuge, Highbury welcomes the marriage. With Frank

out of the way, Mr. Knightley proclaims his love for Emma, and they, too, plan a wedding. Harriet returns to Robert Martin, and Emma vows never again to meddle in people’s lives. Sally Palmer

Coming of Age in Emma

Typically, a bildungsroman features a protagonist who, over the course of the novel, undergoes significant personal development in a spiritual, moral, psychological, or social sphere. Jarred by loss or discontentment into embarking on a literal or metaphorical journey out of her former milieu, the heroine encounters trials, obstacles, and clashes with other characters or with the existing social order that eventually bring about her maturation. Finally, the protagonist grows into womanhood and, adopting new values and spirit, reenters the social order as a changed being assuming a new role. Emma is such a novel. As it opens, Emma Woodhouse is a young woman newly bereft of her governess and companion, the soon-to-be-married Miss Taylor. No replacement is envisioned because of Emma’s age, so Emma is propelled from her role as a chaperoned daughter of the house into a new role as grown-up mistress of her widowed father’s household. While this would ordinarily signify a considerable change in status, Emma considers herself already entirely grown up. With the means and authority to manage and distribute goods and servants, she declares that she will never marry because she already has all the consequence, means, and power she could desire. At this presumed pinnacle of life, Emma decides likewise to manage the personal lives of her friends. This undertaking, resulting in unforeseen negative consequences and the subsequent humility they engender, represents Emma’s journey into maturity. At the journey’s end, she will have learned that each person must make his or her own decisions; no one else can know better about their lives than the principals. She will also know herself better—that she is not, in fact, independent, but relies on the companionship and advice of her friend Mr. Knightley for her growth and happiness. Emma’s initial foray into life management targets the bachelor vicar of her parish, Mr. Elton. Without taking much care for his own preference

186â•…â•… Austen, Jane or welfare, Emma decides to find him a wife, deeming that he should fall in love with Harriet Smith, a pretty young girl of unknown origins whom Emma is determined to elevate through improved social graces and marrying into the gentry. Emma sets about arranging this romance chiefly by persuading the gullible Harriet of Mr. Elton’s admiration and marital intentions. Likewise heedless of the feelings and hopes of Mr. Martin, Harriet’s farmer suitor, Emma directs Harriet to refuse him, to leave the way clear for building up Harriet’s hopes for Elton. When it transpires that Mr. Elton has no intention of marrying Harriet, Emma encounters her first setback as a manager of others’ lives. She is “concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more.” However, her repentance is based only on the failure of her scheme, rather than on any apprehension of damage to the feelings of those she has manipulated. Emma soon immerses herself in the village’s social life with such families as the Bateses, the Westons, and the Coxes, and decides to encourage Harriet to think romantically again, this time of Frank Churchill, the stepson of Emma’s former governess. Emma imagines Frank is in love with herself but decides he will get over it soon enough and attach himself to Harriet. But, as the novel progresses, Emma discovers Frank has been secretly engaged for many months to Jane Fairfax, a young woman living with the Bateses, and then she finds Harriet is not in love with Frank but with Mr. Knightley, the family friend whose love Emma has taken for granted as meant only for herself. At this point, having insulted Miss Bates, Emma is chastised by Mr. Knightley for her lack of charity and sensitivity. Realizing the folly of trying to arrange other people’s feelings and lives, she apologizes to the Bateses and tries to amend her image in the eyes of Mr. Knightley. From now on, as a genuinely mature lady patroness, Emma will allow those around her to suit themselves with their own choices without her advice and assistance, and she will ameliorate her own opinions by conferring with the always just and correct Mr. Knightley. Ironically, it is as Emma assumes a position of actual authority that she relinquishes her active pretensions to managing others’ lives. She has “learned her lesson” and is now

ready to be a real help to her neighbors rather than to manipulate their affairs to suit her own desires. Mr. Elton’s chosen bride, Augusta Elton, serves as a foil to Emma’s newly matured self, in demonstrating the folly of assuming to take charge of the “lesser” characters populating one’s neighborhood. Devoid of the manners and sense of decorum with which Emma has been raised, the upstart Mrs. Elton, heady with the improved status of her recent marriage, rushes to put herself forward in Highbury. Uninvited, she arranges Jane Fairfax’s social life and livelihood, proposes to form a musical club with Emma, and volunteers to hostess Mr. Knightley’s parties. Her officiousness is regarded as deplorably ill-bred by Emma, who only a few weeks previously was guilty of much the same behavior with regard to Harriet and Mr. Elton. Seeing Mrs. Elton as others might have seen Emma herself is an eye opener to Emma, who has also seen the result of her unwise encouragement of Harriet’s hopes, and this helps to raise her consciousness of the wisdom of knowing one’s place and not exceeding one’s proper authority. Mrs. Elton, unlike Emma, does not arrive at greater knowledge or maturity and remains as she is, a constant reminder of ill-bred behavior and immature egotism. As readers, we are not allowed to know of the previous journey that may have brought Mr. Knightley, the proprietor of Donwell Abbey, to his current sure-footed status as an infallible arbiter and example of proper, wise opinions and behavior. Sixteen years older than Emma, he has guided her along her journey with advice and criticism since her infancy. While we may find strange his declaration of love, “I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have,” we cannot quarrel with the results of his tutelage. Censuring Emma’s manipulation of Harriet and Robert Martin, warning her about Mr. Elton, finding fault with her flirtatious behavior with Frank and neglect of Jane Fairfax, and excoriating her for her insult to Miss Bates, Mr. Knightley has forced Emma to rethink and repent her foolish and wrongful behavior. Without such necessary correction, Emma would, like Mrs. Elton, her father, and Frank, still be wandering the paths of an endless

Emmaâ•…â•… 187 journey to maturity and self-knowledge, rather than having come of age at last. Sally Palmer

Community in Emma

In Jane Austen’s day, before steam engines increased mobility beyond the powers of natural human and animal locomotion, community was largely a geographical matter. Although relatives and friends kept in touch with letters and long visits, it was the neighbors to whom one turned for day-to-day sociality and protection. People such as the Woodhouses in Emma depended on rural neighborhood residents like Mr. Knightley and on those in the adjacent village of Highbury for mutual aid; emotional support; and sharing of resources, news, and social enjoyment. This geographical community also provided care for the sick and dying, as well as socialization and strengthening of local mores to be passed along from generation to generation. This community was organized according to class differences, yet every member had a role to play. In Austen’s ideal community, one of the mutual responsibilities is entertainment. Everyone must take a turn at giving dinners, card parties, or other social events. In the Highbury community, the Westons, the Coles, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightley provide opportunities for socialization as hosts. Those with talents for singing or playing are expected to contribute to the general entertainment, as when Emma and Jane are pressed into service at the pianoforte, with Frank joining in, and when Frank attempts to organize a game at the Box Hill picnic. Another important function of Austen’s community is the dissemination of news and updates about neighbors and friends, seen as an expression of social and emotional caring and support. Mr. Weston provides enthusiastic fulfillment of this function, as he lets everyone know as soon as he receives each letter from his son Frank and airs the contents of these letters as they pertain to mutual interests. Miss Bates, while tedious, is still trying to perform her duty to the community by talking about small matters and letting people know every piece of news about Jane Fairfax. Those who are negligent in this social duty are viewed with dissatisfaction, such as Frank, who deceives people about his affairs; and Jane, who is

too reserved, refusing to share her views or enter into the general interest in community relationships. One manifestation of community support is the general interest in the state of every member’s health. Thus, health is a common and important topic of conversation at every gathering. Mr. Woodhouse has developed his interest in this subject far beyond what is necessary for politeness, yet still he provides a measure of community caring when he inquires minutely about everyone’s health and prescribes measures for taking care of small ailments. Medical knowledge, so scarce in Austen’s time, was thus shared as people tried to discover how others had successfully overcome health problems and attempted to protect one another from illnesses that could strike at any time from any direction, with potentially catastrophic results. Because people living close to one another must be able to get along, good manners are very important to the Highbury community. Visitors and new members, therefore, are welcomed politely. Jane Fairfax, Frank Churchill, and Mrs. Elton are treated warmly upon their arrival, despite private reservations such as those entertained by Emma and Mrs. Weston about Mrs. Elton. Faults and foibles of community members—such as Miss Bates’s garrulousness, Mr. Woodhouse’s hypochondria, and Emma’s snobbery—are tolerated with kindness. The general civility of the community is considered so important that when Emma ruptures it with her ill-natured insult of Miss Bates at Box Hill, Mr. Knightley takes steps to reproach her for her gaffe, and she corrects it as soon as she can, aware of the necessity for courtesy and amity among neighbors. Mr. Knightley, the community watchdog, also points out to Emma that she is being insufficiently friendly to Jane Fairfax. Other members of the community ignore insults in order to maintain good feeling, such as when the Martins continue to be kind to Harriet even after her snub of them and her refusal of Robert. Austen considers community so important that in Emma she ridicules, punishes, and otherwise disparages characters who exercise obligations of neighborliness insufficiently, just as much as she castigates characters who display flaws of moral character. Frank Churchill, Jane Fairfax, and Mr. and Mrs. Elton all suffer from Austen’s characterization.

188â•…â•… Austen, Jane In an England faced with political threats from abroad and internal upheavals caused by incipient industrialization, Jane Austen clearly saw the community of country villages as a safe haven, perhaps the only haven, from frightening social changes. In Emma we see how a group of neighbors, only 25 miles from London, can preserve one another in relative peace, stasis, and tranquility from the depredations that threatened to tear the larger country apart in urban centers. While Emma is fiction, and the social structure on which the novel is based was an archaic institution, we can still learn from Austen’s vision that a concern for those around us, nourished by mutual respect, kindness, and generosity, can enhance life in any situation. Even—maybe especially—in a global world, it is important to get along with one’s neighbors. Sally Palmer

Social Class in Emma

So prevalent is the topic of social class in Emma that it is possible to read the novel as a manual on what it means to be truly upper-class, and on the proper observance of class distinctions and obligations. All the problems in the plot are caused by one or more characters’ faulty perceptions of rank and its obligations. When these erroneous ideas are corrected and the characters are sorted into their fit places in the social hierarchy, peace reigns. At the outset, we learn that Emma is “first in consequence” in her sphere. High social rank depends on owning property, having a large income independent of labor, and belonging to an old and distinguished family, known as having “connexions.” Further class distinctions include one’s education, appearance, and “breeding,” or manners. As a Woodhouse and the mistress of Hartfield, Emma is looked up to by everyone. The only other character on her social level is Mr. Knightley, proprietor of Donwell Abbey and the highest-ranking gentleman in the area. While Emma’s behavior and ideas about the meaning of rank are frequently erroneous, Mr. Knightley’s opinions and actions can always be taken as a model for proper upper-class behavior. Because Emma’s middle-class governess, Mrs. Weston, has recently risen into the upper class by marrying into a “respectable family,” albeit one which

has only recently made its fortune and acquired its “seat,” or house, Emma aspires to similarly raise her new friend Harriet, of unknown parentage, to a higher class. Emma, a social snob, feels that to elevate Harriet into the gentry would “detach her from bad acquaintance and introduce her into good society.” Mr. Knightley, however, opposes Emma’s friendship with, and plans for, Harriet. He feels nothing good can come from crossing class boundaries; that raising Harriet’s expectations will make her unhappy with the situation in which her birth and circumstances have placed her. And so it proves: Under Emma’s tutelage, Harriet loses her first suitor and raises her expectations for a husband beyond what is realistic. Emma rejects Harriet’s suitor, Robert Martin, as being “vulgar and illiterate” because he is a farmer, even though we see that he reads novels, writes a good letter, and is polite and respectful. Although Harriet fancies Robert, she takes Emma’s advice and refuses Martin, focusing her marriage hopes instead, with Emma’s encouragement, on Mr. Elton. But Mr. Elton, also hoping to advance himself socially by marriage, refuses to consider Harriet, deeming her beneath his level. This causes Harriet great unhappiness, until she begins to hope that Mr. Knightley himself might marry her. When Emma learns that Harriet has so far lost sight of her own intrinsic social level as to aspire to Mr. Knightley, she is horrified. She realizes the evil of raising expectations to beyond one’s class and considers that Harriet’s unequal marriage to Mr. Knightley, while an amazing elevation on her side, would be “debasement,” “evil,” and “horrible folly” for Mr. Knightley. Emma thus abandons Harriet as a confidante, whereupon Harriet returns to Robert Martin and achieves happiness in the associations belonging to her own class, from which she should never have tried to rise. Another illustration of the impropriety of trying to rise in class is the behavior of Mrs. Elton. Mr. Elton marries Augusta Hawkins because she has substantial wealth, yet this wealth was only recently earned through her father’s business, and her family is “nobody.” Mrs. Elton tries to correct this deficit by continually accentuating and flaunting her relationship with her sister’s husband, Mr. Suckling, a man with “extensive grounds” at Maple Grove. She also tries to assume equality with Mr. Knightley and

Pride and Prejudiceâ•…â•… 189 Emma by calling them by familiar names, proposing social gatherings with them, and otherwise ignoring the distinctions of class by failing to show the proper respect and humility to those above her on the social ladder. Making herself odious with her egotistical pretensions and her determination to insult lowerclass Harriet, Mrs. Elton shows her lack of refinement and manners, illustrating that true upper-class gentility cannot be acquired simply by having enough money. Mr. Elton’s attempt to rise socially himself by wedding Augusta is properly punished by his ending up married to a woman whose attitudes and behavior will always display ignorance of all but the material trappings of class. In contrast to the Eltons are the Bateses, who were born into upper-class gentility but who have since lost all their wealth. Truly high-class neighbors such as Mr. Knightley and the Woodhouses still associate with the Bateses, while trying to relieve their poverty with frequent gifts of goods and services. Mr. Knightley, the model of gentlemanly behavior, urges Emma to become friends with the Bateses’ niece, Jane Fairfax, rather than with Harriet, because Jane, while equally needy, still belongs to a higher class because of her birth, accomplishments, and refinement. Mr. Knightley also castigates Emma for insulting Miss Bates at the Box Hill picnic, because as one who was born and bred into the upper class but has lives in poverty, Miss Bates deserves Emma’s sympathy and kindness. Mr. Knightley also points out that as the highest-ranking young woman in the neighborhood, Emma has the obligation to set an example of courtesy and good manners, which she has lamentably failed to do. In Frank Churchill we see a young man who was adopted into wealth and educated with upper-class manners. Yet the family who adopted him, while rich and proud, has “no fair pretense of family or blood” but is an “upstart.” Therefore, while Frank can act like convincingly like a gentleman, he still has some character flaws that betray his inferiority to someone like Mr. Knightley. Although he has the good taste to fall in love with the refined Jane Fairfax, his willingness to form a secret engagement and deceive those around him show that Frank lacks the honesty and integrity of an ideal gentleman.

Throughout the novel, Emma learns, through her mistakes and through the tutelage of Mr. Knightley, the obligations of her class. Initially, she looks down upon everyone in a lower economic sphere than herself and respects those who pretend to gentility. She denigrates Robert Martin, for example, as a degrading inferior whose wife she could never visit, but then she finds him to be a respectable man worthy of being Harriet’s husband. She considers Mr. Elton “quite the gentleman” and credits him with elegance of mind, but later she learns he is petty, self-serving, and shallow. At first, Emma feels she should not accept the Coles’ invitation to dinner because “they ought to be taught that it was not for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit them.” But then, as they afford her all the courtesy and consequence she could wish, she finds that she enjoys the occasion and their company. She ridicules Miss Bates and Jane Fairfax but at last realizes they are kind and discerning friends. She criticizes Mr. Knightley for not sufficiently displaying his rank by riding around in his carriage and by associating with farmers like Robert Martin, but she finally learns that he has such true gentility of mind and heart that he does not need to flaunt his superiority with surface pretensions. What Austen is telling us in Emma about social class is that gradations in rank are necessary for the orderly workings of society, and that happiness and peace result from recognizing and accepting class boundaries. However, she also shows that there is more to gentility than simply money, birth, and connections. True gentility of mind includes respect and kindness for others no matter what their station, personal moral integrity, and wise judgment. At the novel’s close, readers rejoice that Emma has learned this lesson well enough to be the proper companion of the estimable Mr. Knightley, and that she is well on her way to developing the superior character necessary to her high position on the social ladder. Sally Palmer

AUSTEN, JANEâ•… Pride and Prejudiceâ•… (1813)

Pride and Prejudice, originally entitled First Impressions, tells the story of the five Bennet sisters—Jane,

190â•…â•… Austen, Jane Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia—focusing mainly on the experiences of the two eldest as they learn to cope with the trials of society and the perils of love with few familial connections and little fortune. Jane and Elizabeth (Lizzy), as even their father admits, are less silly than most girls their age and, therefore, a great deal of the family’s hopes for the future hang on them. With no son to whom the family estate may pass upon Mr. Bennet’s death, it will be transferred to the girls’ ridiculous cousin, Mr. Collins. Therefore, at least one daughter must marry a rich man so that she will be able to support the family upon their father’s death. The novel follows the lives and affections of Jane and Lizzy as they navigate both London and country society, fall in love with men of great wealth, and overcome the impediments associated with status and family in order to achieve happy marriages. Jane’s beau, Charles Bingley, must learn to grow up and shake off the control of his friend and sisters in order to pursue his feelings for the eldest Bennet daughter. However, the obstacles facing Lizzy and Fitzwilliam Darcy—his pride and her prejudice, or her pride and his prejudice—are much greater and more difficult to overcome, as first impressions often are. Laura L. Guggenheim

Gender in Pride and Prejudice

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Jane Bennet, the eldest daughter of a country gentleman, epitomizes the feminine ideal; she possesses all of the qualities early 19th-century English citizens believed a woman should. She is beautiful, mild, obedient, sensible though capable of deep feeling, slow to judge others, always socially amenable, and, most important, virtuous. Each of her younger sisters—Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia—and every significant female character in the novel strays further and further from this ideal, and the extent to which each deviates parallels the extent to which each achieves marital happiness. Mary is virtuous and obedient, but she is certainly not sensible or well-mannered. Her social gaffes embarrass her sisters more than once, and she never marries. Kitty and Lydia are described as “silly” and “vacant” and have no talents beyond their ability to discuss the latest fashions and admire redcoated militia officers.

Although Elizabeth and Jane’s influence improves Kitty’s disposition, she is still unmarried when the novel ends. Lydia, however, distinguishes herself by her total lack of virtue, a deficiency she publicizes when she elopes and nearly ruins her family’s reputation. Lizzy, the second daughter and heroine of the novel, embodies most of the feminine qualities Jane possesses, though she lacks her sister’s mildness and can be quick to criticize others. Once she receives the letter from Mr. Darcy that details his prior relationship with George Wickham, she begins to recognize her flaws, and, upon correcting them, she is able to make a very happy and prosperous match. None of her three younger sisters nor her mother has learned to fully perform their feminine role, and therefore, happy marriages are impossible for them. Mrs. Bennet makes herself ridiculous in her attempts to be overly feminine; she fancies herself a victim of others’ cruelty, constantly complaining that no one regards her “nerves.” She has little respect for decorum and embarrasses her eldest daughters with her public prattling about private matters. Her marriage, built on physical attraction, is now a loveless union. Charlotte Lucas, Lizzy’s best friend, also makes a loveless, though sensible, match when she marries Mr. Collins. Charlotte is almost an old maid, rather plain, poor, and eminently practical. After Lizzy refuses Mr. Collins’s marriage proposal, Charlotte schemes to catch the rejected rector for herself, an activity highly discouraged among virtuous women, because, as she says, marriage is the best way to guarantee her future security. Cunning women, however, are not virtuous women, as Mr. Darcy meaningfully reminds Miss Bingley, a woman who schemes so often and so overtly that she is unable to secure a marriage of any kind. She is, perhaps, the least feminine of all the female characters because of her deviousness. Male characters’ ability to perform their masculine gender role parallels their wives’ capacity to perform the feminine. Charles Bingley is an almost-perfect specimen of early 19th-century masculinity. He is charming, well-mannered, wealthy, sensible, and good-humored. It is no wonder that he and Jane fall in love; they each embody all of the gender characteristics thought appropriate to members of their sex. Fitzwilliam Darcy, on the other

Pride and Prejudiceâ•…â•… 191 hand, begins the novel lacking nearly all of these qualities. His behavior at the ball where Jane and Bingley become acquainted marks him as haughty and proud. Once Elizabeth accuses him of failing to behave in a “gentleman-like manner,” he realizes how pride has contaminated his disposition, and he is able to reflect on the ways in which he has failed to behave as a gentleman should. These reflections lead to his eventual transformation, and when he renews his marriage proposal to her in an honest, unaffected, and gentleman-like manner, his alteration is complete. George Wickham undergoes no such transformation. In fact, he seems, at first, to possess every desirable masculine quality until Darcy reveals his real, deceitful, character. Wickham’s duplicity fools everyone initially, but his inability to fulfill his proper role matches his wife’s deficiencies. Mr. Collins is as silly as his wife is rational, and his obsequiousness to all those of higher social standing than he makes him a toady—hardly masculine. Finally, Mr. Bennet, for all his wit, makes sport at his wife’s expense, fails to plan ahead for his family, and participates in the near-destruction of its reputation by refusing to discipline his unruly daughters. His failure to perform these masculine duties exposes him as incapable of performing his gender role, and though he is a father with responsibilities, he never really acts like one. Laura L. Guggenheim

Love in Pride and Prejudice

In Pride and Prejudice, whenever a character mentions love or marriage, concerns about money and security can never be far behind. Happiness is often a mere afterthought. This dynamic is immediately set up by the first, and most famous, sentence in the book: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Confirmation that an eligible bachelor with 5,000 pounds a year is moving into the neighborhood prompts Mrs. Bennet, without knowledge of this stranger’s disposition or character, to hope that he will marry one of her five daughters. Marriage and financial security, not necessarily happiness or love, must be a woman’s main goals when she has little fortune herself. Happiness and love are

to be desired in marriage, certainly, but they cannot come before financial independence. Such a rule is made clear when Elizabeth Bennet’s Aunt Gardiner hears of her niece’s growing attachment to the handsome, but penniless, George Wickham. She cautions Lizzy, “Do not involve yourself, or endeavor to involve him in an affection which the want of fortune would make so very imprudent.” Mrs. Gardiner knows that Lizzy is too sensible to pursue the attachment because their marriage would be catastrophically impoverished. Likewise, perhaps the most practical character in the novel, Charlotte Lucas, Lizzy’s friend, understands the value of a marriage that grants the lady financial stability, even over personal happiness. She recommends that Jane “secure” Charles Bingley’s affections by being forward with her own feelings, though those feelings have not yet fully developed, and Charlotte takes her own advice when she secures Mr. Collins’s affections before she can develop any real feeling for him. “Happiness in marriage,” she insists, “is entirely a matter of chance.” This is because one does not marry whom one loves, or for happiness, but for security, and it is precisely this kind of marriage that Charlotte obtains when she consents to marry Lizzy’s vapid but financially independent cousin. Once they are married, Lizzy visits her friend, and though she admits that the match was a prudent one for Charlotte, she hates to leave her friend alone again. “Poor Charlotte!” she thinks. “But she had chosen it with her eyes open.╯.╯.╯. Her home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.” In the end, contentment, not love, may be all a woman with little fortune can reasonably wish for in marriage. Even the wealthy cannot escape the fact that money and status are more intimately connected to marriage than love. When Fitzwilliam Darcy begins to fall in love with Elizabeth, very much against his will, “He really believed, that were it not for the inferiority of her connections, he should be in some danger.” Her low family status and lack of fortune prevent him, at first, from seriously considering her as a marriage partner. These obstacles, in addition, threaten the love growing between Jane and Bingley,

192â•…â•… Austen, Jane whose friends and family very much abhor a connection with the Bennet family. On the other hand, Austen seems to argue for the importance of a certain kind of love over even money. This kind of love, it seems, is visible to discerning observers. When Jane doubts the nature of Bingley’s regard for her, Lizzy insists, “No one who has ever seen [them] together, can doubt his affection.” Further, when Lady Catherine de Bourgh mentions her daughter, Anne, long expected to marry Mr. Darcy, in his presence, Elizabeth can discern no “symptom of love” in him. Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, when they direct their observation toward Lizzy and Darcy, see that Darcy does, indeed, love her, a fact that readers already know to be true. The sincere love that grows between Jane and Bingley, and between Lizzy and Darcy, cannot be hidden or suppressed, and it endures regardless of money, family, or other obstacles. When Bingley finally proposes to Jane, “Elizabeth really believed all his expectations of felicity, to be rationally founded.” This love is reasonable, in part because it grows gradually, and it is built on sturdier foundations than lust or infatuation, which, incidentally, forms the basis of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s largely unhappy and loveless marriage. Unlike silly, romantic, or erotic attachments, the rational love between the two eldest Bennet sisters and their husbands will last because of all it has endured; and in it, love, marriage, and happiness can all be had in one. Laura L. Guggenheim

Pride in Pride and Prejudice

In Pride and Prejudice, every character who abhors pride in others possesses it themselves in spades. For example, Mrs. Bennet despises Mr. Darcy for his pride, and yet she is one of the proudest characters in the novel. On the other hand, those who have little pride do not seem to mind its existence in others. The modest Charlotte Lucas, in fact, allows that Mr. Darcy has the right to be proud, young, handsome, and rich as he is, and she goes on to marry the ridiculously proud Mr. Collins. Charlotte recognizes her husband’s flaws, but her pride cannot be wounded by the knowledge that she has a silly husband because she is not proud. Pride blinds characters to the true natures of others, leading to

misplaced trust or, more often, prejudice. It is only when their own pride is removed that characters are able to judge others rightly. While Mr. Darcy offends all of Hertfordshire society, “Amongst the most violent against him was Mrs. Bennet, whose dislike of his general behaviour was sharpened into particular resentment, by his having slighted one of her daughters.” In other words, Mrs. Bennet does not care for Mr. Darcy, but because he offends her pride by rejecting her daughter, her dislike grows into something stronger. In regard to the same incident, Elizabeth tells Charlotte, “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine” (original emphasis). In other words, Elizabeth’s feelings began much like her mother’s, and likewise, her prejudice against Darcy begins when he wounds her pride by refusing her as a dance partner. In this way does Darcy’s pride wound Elizabeth’s, provoking her prejudice against him and beginning the central conflict of the novel. After this, nothing Darcy does can persuade Elizabeth that her impression of him is wrong; his meaningful looks, compliments, attentions, even his professions of love—none of it helps her to see that her prejudice is misplaced. When she notices him noticing her, she assumes it is because he thinks there is something wrong with her, and she is unconcerned: “She liked him too little to care for his approbation.” When Wickham tells his story of Darcy’s pride, it is all too easy for Elizabeth to believe him because her pride has already been wounded and her prejudice against Darcy has been established. Furthermore, it is Darcy’s pride that prevents Elizabeth from considering his feelings in her rejection of his marriage proposal, and it is Elizabeth’s wounded pride that prevents her from seriously considering the proposal at all. Darcy begins by telling her how he tried and failed to overcome his love for her because of the social inferiority of her family. In his mind, he believes it to be a compliment that his feelings for her overwhelm his family pride, but such expressions only wound her further. Even Darcy’s subsequent letter to her is “all pride and insolence” and expresses nothing of sorrow or regret for his behavior toward Jane, initially increasing Elizabeth’s prejudice against him. It is not until Elizabeth seri-

Sense and Sensibilityâ•…â•… 193 ously considers Darcy’s accusations against Wickham and finds support for them within her own memory that she comes to understand how her own wounded pride has blinded her to Wickham’s deceitfulness: “↜‘How despicably have I acted!’ she cried. ‘I, who have prided myself on my discernment!’↜” Realizing her error convinces Elizabeth that her pride was misplaced, and she knows that if she can now believe Wickham guilty of duplicity, then she must also believe Darcy capable of sincerity. Moreover, Elizabeth’s accusation that Darcy has behaved in an “ungentlemanlike manner” helps him eventually to realize that his social pride is misplaced as well. When he finds Elizabeth at his home with the Gardiners, he asks her for an introduction to her aunt and uncle, members of the very family with whom the possibility of a connection so offended his pride before. After Lydia’s elopement with Wickham, Elizabeth’s own recent experiences with Darcy lead to her full realization of Darcy’s goodness and her own error. Similarly, Darcy learns to see Elizabeth as his equal, regardless of her low social connections and small fortune. With both of their proud natures humbled, Elizabeth can join Darcy in experiencing other, more pleasant feelings and can properly discern Darcy’s as well: “Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude—for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed.” Laura L. Guggenheim

AUSTEN, JANEâ•… Sense and Sensibilityâ•… (1811)

Sense and Sensibility focuses on the lives and loves of the eldest Dashwood girls, Elinor and Marianne, two of three daughters born to a country gentleman’s second marriage. With only a witless half brother and selfish sister-in-law, John Dashwood and his wife, Fanny, to aid them financially after their father’s death, the Dashwood women drop into near social obscurity when they are obliged to move into a cottage owned by a relation of Mrs. Dashwood’s, Sir John Middleton. There, Elinor and Marianne must endure the somewhat vulgar but goodhearted gossiping of Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton’s mother. Such gossip is especially pain-

ful to Elinor since moving to Devonshire has taken her away from the man with whom she has begun to fall in love, Edward Ferrars, Fanny Dashwood’s eldest brother. On the other hand, the family’s relocation has brought Marianne nearer the first man with whom she will fall in love, John Willoughby, as well as the man she will eventually marry, Colonel Brandon, a friend of the Middletons. As Elinor grows more in love with Edward, and as Marianne experiences the pain of separation from and abandonment by Willoughby, the novel follows them to London and back again, as Elinor learns of Edward’s secret engagement to another woman and Marianne comes perilously close to death in her despair. In the end, both daughters learn to combine sense and sensibility, reason and romance, in order to achieve happiness in marriage and in life. Laura L. Guggenheim

Gender in Sense and Sensibility

In Jane Austen’s first published novel, the fortunes of female characters correspond to the extent to which they embody the early 19th-century feminine gender role. Marriage, it was believed, consisted of one representative of each gender, and masculine and feminine roles complemented each other. Elinor Dashwood, an exemplar of the feminine ideal, eventually marries Edward Ferrars, who, despite his shortcomings, is the happiest possible match for her. She is a sensible woman of good understanding, capable of great but governable emotion and incapable of manipulation. Edward’s character is marked by these same qualities, though he is rather less ambitious than his family would like. The love between Elinor and Edward has grown since their acquaintance was formed at Norland, and it is practical, founded on mutual respect and built slowly, over time. It did not begin as infatuation, and it was not “love at first sight,” but this love bespeaks the lovers’ ability to commit to each other for a lifetime rather than a season. Where Elinor’s disposition is marked by sense, her sister Marianne’s personality is characterized by extreme sensibility. Believing that there is nothing more virtuous and desirable than strong feeling, and, likewise, that such feeling can never be controlled, Marianne allows her sensibility to run away with

194â•…â•… Austen, Jane her, and she becomes infatuated with John Willoughby after a very romantic introduction. Novels of sensibility were popular a few decades prior to the publication of this novel, and Marianne represents a type of femininity that is no longer considered to be ideal. Even her features are more attractive than Elinor’s “regular” ones, as though Marianne’s immoderate beauty parallels her excessive feeling and Elinor’s reasonableness is mirrored by her more moderate beauty. Marianne’s relationship with Willoughby must end badly; their feelings develop too quickly, they are too rash, and he is a rake—the antithesis of proper masculinity. Only after her illness can she learn to be calm, to compose herself and control her emotion. She learns to desire further education, repents her selfishness, and expresses her wish that her behavior and conduct had been more like Elinor’s. Now that she embraces her feminine role, the attractions of an appropriately masculine gentleman like Colonel Brandon are not lost on her. They come to complement one another and marry, and, based on the optimism with which Austen speaks of their future happiness, we can assume that the union is harmonious. On the other hand, the colonel’s friends, Sir John and Lady Middleton, cannot make the same claim to propriety that he may. Sir John is boisterous and kindly, and his wife is elegant and polite, yet he is also a bit too intimate with guests, and she is actually indifferent to everyone but her children. He is far too warm in society, and she is much too cold. Neither performs the proper gender role, and they appear, consequently, incompatible and trapped in a mismatched marriage. Even further from the ideals of masculinity and femininity are John and Fanny Dashwood. John is controlled by his wife, coerced through her conniving selfishness into breaking the promise he made to his father on his deathbed. Fanny schemes, pursuing acquaintances who will further her social standing, ignoring inferior family members and manipulating others. Neither appears to be really happy: John must live with the suspicion of his own inefficacy, and Fanny nearly dies of disappointment when her brother Edward’s secret engagement to an unsuitable woman is revealed—and then her other brother Robert marries this very woman.

Perhaps furthest from performing their proper feminine role are the Misses Anne and Lucy Steele. Anne is unattractive in every way and developing into a spinster. She is socially inappropriate, verbally free with her acquaintances, and an embarrassment to her sister. Lucy is attractive and clever but also calculating and deceitful. She purposely hurts Elinor by forcing Elinor into her confidence with regard to her secret, and very improper, engagement to Edward. Lucy’s selfish intentions become clearer when she abandons Edward, once he has been made poor, and marries his brother Robert, newly rich. When one considers Lucy’s deficiencies, as well as the fact that she had once described her future husband as a coxcomb (a sentiment seconded by Elinor), we can conjecture that her marriage, though well-funded, will be neither a happy nor a loving one. In this novel, two people who are so unable to perform their appropriate gender roles are likewise unable to complement each other in the easy way these roles are meant to permit. Laura L. Guggenheim

Innocence and Experience in Sense and Sensibility

In Sense and Sensibility, Marianne, the middle Dashwood sister, and Elinor, the eldest, in many ways embody the qualities of innocence and experience, respectively. Innocence, in the context of this novel, really means the absence of a general knowledge of society, lacking an understanding of its rules as well as how to cope, both personally and publicly, with strong emotions like love, disappointment, and loss. Marianne, for example, is quick to form emotional attachments and sees no need to veil her feelings in public, no matter how improper they might seem. She believes, in fact, that true feelings run so deep that they cannot be disguised under any circumstances. To be “experienced,” on the other hand, means that one understands the ways of the world and accepts that adherence to social codes, at least to a certain degree, is necessary in order to maintain the good opinion of society and avoid shame, and, on another level, to protect oneself. Elinor has developed a certain level of experience, and she knows that to veil one’s emotions in public is to

Sense and Sensibilityâ•…â•… 195 protect oneself and one’s family from scrutiny and, perhaps, pain. As though hers were the yardstick by which others’ conduct might be measured, we are presented with Elinor’s example first. Though it is clear to all in the newly enlarged Norland household that Elinor and Edward Ferrars have formed a strong attachment, when Marianne presses Elinor for details, Elinor says, “I do not attempt to deny .╯.╯. that I think very highly of him—that I greatly esteem, that I like him.” Marianne is horrified. How could Elinor, who clearly loves Edward, speak of him in such bland terms? Elinor recognizes the significant obstacles that stand in the way of any romantic relationship with Edward—namely, his family and her lack of fortune. She is not unfeeling; she is discreet. Experience is not cold; it is only realistic. At least if Elinor keeps her feelings private, none may participate in her disappointment but herself. She protects herself, Edward, and her family with her prudence. When Marianne falls in love, however, her conduct is vastly different from Elinor’s. Believing that to hide her emotions is to admit some shame for them, trusting implicitly in Willoughby, and oblivious to the possibility of disappointment, Marianne has no scruples about putting herself and her feelings on display. The lovers’ conduct makes them the object of laughter, “but ridicule could not shame, and seemed hardly to provoke them.” Therefore, when Willoughby abandons Marianne, everyone participates in her loss, and on some level, the loss may be felt more deeply by her because she is so unpracticed at veiling her feelings and moving on. Discussions between Elinor and Colonel Brandon shed light on the happy aspects of a nature such as Marianne’s; she is all warmth, sincerity, and impulse because she does not reflect, and her own opinions have not yet given way to more general ones. There is something lovely about this innocence. However, Willoughby’s example reveals what can happen when such a nature is permitted to persist for too long: “The world had made him extravagant and vain; extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish.” Growing up can be sad, but one cannot remain a child forever,

and indulgence such as Willoughby has received makes for self-centered, unscrupulous adults. Marianne’s illness increases her sense of propriety, as though it finally enables her to see how her trials affect her loved ones as well as how unrestricted emotion can be deleterious to her own body and soul. When the family returns to Barton Cottage, Elinor “trace[s] the direction of a mind awakened to reasonable exertion” as Marianne attempts to accustom herself to the sight of objects associated with Willoughby. She notices the remnants of Marianne’s tears, shed discreetly rather than publicly. Finally, Marianne is able to admit that she has “nothing to regret—nothing but [her] own folly.” She is blameless, of course, for Willoughby’s behavior, but culpable for her own and the ways in which it has negatively affected her family. In the end, she forms a “second attachment,” a feeling she previously thought impossible, to Colonel Brandon, proving, once and for all, that she has acquired the level of experience necessary not only to survive but to be genuinely happy in the world. This happiness is possible because she sees the world now for what it is, and such a feeling permits her to feel gratitude, to recognize her mistakes, and to learn from them. Laura L. Guggenheim

Love in Sense and Sensibility

In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen champions rational rather than erotic love and insists that such love is absolutely necessary in order for a couple to achieve the most successful, and happiest, kind of marriage. Without this love, a couple can grow as cold and distant from each other as Sir John and Lady Middleton do, with nothing in common other than family. With it, a couple can hope to endure, to have their feelings grow stronger rather than stale as they grow old and as the more heated, obvious passion of youth passes. From the outset, Marianne Dashwood’s romantic sensibilities color her perceptions of love, both in her own life and in others’. She believes that only the young can aspire to feel or excite passion, that a woman of 27 years, for example, no longer has any hope or prospects of inciting another’s love. She does not believe in “second attachments,” presumably because real attachment can never be dupli-

196â•…â•… Baldwin, James cated, and she believes that the marks of true love are so obvious that they cannot be hidden or bidden. If a person can manage to disguise her feelings, as Lucy Steele does, then those feelings cannot be love. Likewise, real passion can never be counterfeited. That Marianne and Willoughby can fall in love so quickly, then, is only natural to her, and it corresponds that her feelings after her abandonment are so dramatic. She “would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it.” The loss of such passion, after all, can be survived with no fewer fireworks than the passion first produced. Every emotion is pushed to its extreme, be it affection or anguish, hope or despair, and love is the chief emotion of all. On the other hand, Elinor Dashwood’s moderate and reasonable feelings for Edward grow slowly over time; they ripen and mature into love rather than proclaiming to have begun immediately. This slowness, to Marianne, marks a less worthy emotion, a feeling that is not really love at all because of its pace and because of what it appears to lack. To her, Edward’s eyes have no spirit, no fire; his reading lacks feeling, so he must not, therefore, be acquainted with such emotion; and his taste does not, in every point, coincide with Elinor’s. These deficits, Marianne believes, prevent the depth of feeling that is part and parcel of real passion. If Edward lacks the capacity for such emotional compatibility, then he surely is not capable of the burning ardor Marianne believes necessary. Finally, when Elinor speaks of Edward with moderate warmth rather than effusions of affection and fervent vows, Marianne calls her sister “cold-hearted” and threatens to leave the room! Elinor, however, understands that there is more to marriage than love, especially once Lucy Steele reveals her secret engagement to Edward. Commitment and honor, loyalty and honesty, are just as important in marriage. Edward must once have felt something like Marianne’s quick passion, or else he would not have engaged himself surreptitiously as a youth, but in the end, it is the rational love between Elinor and

Edward that survives all of Lucy’s selfishness, Marianne’s judgment, and the coldness of his own family. In observing the success and enduring passion of this love between Edward and her sister, and from the failure of her own methods and sentiments, Marianne realizes her folly. Erotic passion can be controlled, though it claims it cannot, and this is evident when Willoughby throws Marianne over for Miss Grey and her 50,000 pounds. The endurance of rational love is harder to break. Marianne learns the qualities that are just as important as passion, qualities that may appear to temper it but must exist alongside it in order for that passion to endure; these are the qualities of which Elinor has been aware from the beginning. Colonel Brandon’s possession of these qualities, in addition to his constant affection for her, finally wins Marianne over, to the great joy of everyone save Willoughby. Laura L. Guggenheim

BALDWIN, JAMESâ•… Go Tell It on the Mountainâ•… (1952)

James Baldwin’s first novel is notable because it marks a break with the tradition of “protest’ literature that had long dominated African-American writing. Instead of focusing on dramatic instances of racial oppression and African-American suffering, Baldwin (1924–87) focuses on the life of a family whose relationships are, of course, embedded in the racist history of the nation, but whose fates are also shaped by personality. Elegantly structured and lyrically written, the novel is set in Harlem on its protagonist John Grimes’s 14th birthday. The novel follows his day, but it also explores the lives of the family members—his father, Gabriel; his mother, Elizabeth; and his aunt, Florence—whose histories impact John’s life. John’s father is an evangelical preacher whose personal history of youthful dissolution, betrayal, and duplicity is masked by the piety he uses as a weapon against his wife and children. John’s loving mother has borne a child—John—whose father died, a suicide, before they could marry. Having saved her from disgrace by marrying her, Gabriel holds her sexual sin over her head throughout their marriage. Florence, who has learned the deep emotional price of attempting

Go Tell It on the Mountainâ•…â•… 197 to control a spouse, accepts the price and uses her knowledge of Gabriel’s own sexually sinful past to protect Elizabeth and the children. John’s struggle with his father’s angry disapproval of his interest in “the world” (education, reading, movies) is interlaced with his growing realization that he is homosexual, for John feels love and physical attraction for Elisha, a member of the church community. His story climaxes with his experience of religious conversion, which will inevitably free him from his father’s condemnation. Go Tell It on the Mountain develops a variety of themes: family, sex and sexuality, community are prominent, but also identity, religion, guilt, and race. Joe Skerrett, Jr.

Community in Go Tell It on the Mountain

While James Baldwin’s novel focuses on the birthday experiences of John Grimes, its 14-year-old protagonist, it also develops John’s place in interrelated racial, economic, and religious communities. A community is any group of people with shared social conditions, ideals, beliefs, and practices, especially, but not exclusively, those who live in proximity to one another. John shares with the members of his family unit a community of racial identity as an African American that has more than a personal or individual meaning, because his country has made race a marker of value. In Baldwin’s novel, John experiences his racial identity and community almost only as a negative value. The overwhelming aspect of it in his developing consciousness is its imposition and definition by the white society that surrounds and contains him. He does not celebrate his blackness in song, story, humor, or music. He is mostly unconscious of race within the family and neighborhood, but very conscious of race and color when he ventures out of Harlem to Central Park or downtown to a movie (in which, of course, whites are exclusively featured). John is similarly unselfconscious about his economic condition. His localized community is composed not only of African Americans but specifically of poor African Americans. John knows that his family is poor. His individual expectations about

birthday celebrations or gifts are not high. The shared struggle to maintain dignity and economic control is figured in the novel in the form of John’s sweeping of the carpets as part of his Saturday chores. But the most important community in which John exists is his religious community. He shares— or is expected to share—with the other members of the Church of the Fire Baptized (“the saints”) a faith, a worldview, and a set of rituals and practices. The church in which his father, Gabriel, is a deacon is an evangelical African-American Protestant sect, not identified in the novel as part of any larger denomination. Such institutions, often referred to as “holiness” churches, stressed a theology of personal salvation that could be witnessed in the church community through the expression of ecstatic prayer and spiritual possession. Stylistically distant from Catholic and Orthodox liturgical worship, but also clearly distant from the quietism of Quaker Protestantism, the “holiness” churches incorporate aspects of African religious ritual into their practice of a Protestant Christianity heavily influenced by Methodist “enthusiasm.” Thus, John’s experience in “The Threshing Floor” section of the novel, where he falls into a faint brought on by his anxiety over the community’s expectations that he will be a minister of God like his father, is both a conversion experience in the Protestant tradition and a version of African spiritual ecstasy. The worldview of the church community denies the importance of the public sphere. The church community is organized to foster and nurture the spiritual salvation of its members, who are encouraged to “walk holy” in their daily lives. This means that they should have no interest in the temptations and distractions of “the world” such as sexual pleasure, education, entertainment, and worldly ambition. The church’s beliefs and practices make the attainments denied to African Americans by white society and the compensatory alternatives to them equally irrelevant or inappropriate. In the novel, John witnesses the disciplining of Elisha and his girlfriend for appearing to the “saints” to be flirting with sexual desire. In the face of this puritanical obsession, he realizes that his own homosexual orientation will never be acceptable within the church

198â•…â•… Baldwin, James community, which is why he tells Elisha, whom he loves, to remember “whatever happens, that I was there.” Knowing intuitively that he will not remain within the community, it is still important to John to prove that he was the spiritual equal of his father in his experience of conversion, acceptable to God if not to Gabriel. Baldwin may well have known Paul and Percival Goodman’s Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life (1947), a book published while he was working on the novel. The Goodmans’ book posits three types of social communities: one centered on materiality and consumption; one focused on art and creativity; and one that maximizes human liberty. Throughout his life’s work, Baldwin criticized American society for its materialism while presenting the protagonists of his fiction as artists attempting to bring into existence some new world order or community that would make people more spiritually free. John Grimes’s journey in Go Tell It on the Mountain is clearly the first of many. Joe Skerrett, Jr.

Family in Go Tell It on the Mountain

James Baldwin’s novel is richly inscribed with a variety of issues about family: family love, family social and sexual history, family psychological dynamics, and family secrets all are in play. The protagonist, John Grimes, is an African-American boy, just turning 14 on the day of the novel’s action, who is embedded in a nuclear family that consists of his mother, Elizabeth; his father, Gabriel; his brother Roy; and other younger siblings. But, as Baldwin makes clear, this nuclear family is embedded in an extended history of family relations that all come to bear on John’s life. For example, although John does not know it, Gabriel is only his stepfather. His biological father, Richard, died a suicide before he was born. Gabriel, influenced by his fundamentalist Christianity, rescued the pregnant Elizabeth from disgrace but holds her sexual sin and John’s illegitimacy over their heads, preferring and protecting his rebellious son Roy. Unaware of this history, John struggles to find ways to please the disapproving Gabriel, who is admired by the little religious community in which they move. On this, his 14th birthday, John is beginning to see the limitations of

following, as the community predicts he will, in his father’s footsteps into the church. Gabriel’s sister Florence tries to protect Elizabeth and John from the worst of Gabriel’s fundamentalist Puritanism. Florence knows him for what he really is. She knows that behind Gabriel’s professions of piety and his patriarchal posturing there is a history of human failure as a son, a husband, and a father. She witnessed Gabriel’s abandonment of their sick and dying mother in the South many years earlier, an abandonment that left her to bear the burden of caretaking alone. She also knows about Gabriel’s infidelity to Deborah, his first wife, and his adulterous liaison with Esther that produced an illegitimate child, Royal. She knows that Gabriel’s preferential love for the rebellious Roy is a guiltdriven effort to compensate for his failure to be a parent to Royal, now long since dead. Florence—who, like John’s father, Richard, is one of the few characters in the novel whose name does not have a biblical resonance—is a secular person, not one of the “saints” who attend Gabriel’s church. Like her name suggests, she is a natural force, not a religious one. Her insights into life are more psychological and intuitive than religious or dogmatic. She faces the realities of her life without the consolations of religion and has developed a tough exterior that enables her to stand up to the overbearing Gabriel, as Elizabeth, an altogether more gentle woman, can rarely do. Florence’s compassion for Elizabeth is in part a reflection of her memory of Deborah, the rape victim whose love Gabriel abused in his youth. Florence interferes in the family dynamics of Gabriel’s household in the hope of preventing Gabriel’s spiritual destruction of Elizabeth—in hope, that is, of preventing a repetition of the cycle of family devastation caused by Gabriel. Facing imminent death from cancer (which she conceals from the family), Florence now understands and regrets the way she destroyed her own marriage through an overemphasis on bourgeois proprieties that drove away her fun-loving husband, Frank. Of course, the novel does more than juxtapose Gabriel’s fundamentalism and Florence’s secularism. The dynamics of this family are driven by the secrets of their past lives. The exploration of Gabriel’s passionate affair with Esther and his failure to acknowl-

Go Tell It on the Mountainâ•…â•… 199 edge his son Royal humanizes him in the eyes of the reader. Gabriel’s effort to connect with Roy is clarified by our understanding of his secret, past failure as the father of a rebellious child. We also come to understand that Elizabeth is sustained in her strained marriage by her secret memory of the deep love she shared with Richard. Elizabeth’s tender affection for John reflects not Gabriel’s harsh view of the boy but, rather, Elizabeth’s idealized view of John as a reflection of Richard and his love for her. Joe Skerrett, Jr.

Sex and Sexuality in Go Tell It on the Mountain

Baldwin’s novel brings together issues of religion and issues of sexuality. The main character, John Grimes, is the illegitimate child of Elizabeth, who has married a Pentecostal preacher who thinks of John as the emblem of her sexual sin. John’s religious stepfather, however, has his own sexual sins, which he has never revealed to his wife. Unfaithful to his sexually unresponsive first wife, Deborah (herself a victim of rape), Gabriel, too, had an illegitimate child in his southern past, but he abandoned the boy and his mother, Esther, with whom he had had a volatile sexual relationship though he was a married man. Further, he denied Royal when Deborah, his childless wife, would have accepted the son of his mistress as her own. Gabriel’s sister, Florence, knows this history and threatens to reveal it if Gabriel does not treat John and Elizabeth more kindly. She has herself lost a husband to a secular puritanism of her own, an attitude that judged her fun-loving and careless husband for lacking drive and propriety. Outside the family circle, John witnesses how the church represses and stigmatizes the blossoming of sexuality among its younger members. When John’s buddy Elisha, an older teenager, is observed to be infatuated with a young girl in the congregation, they are hauled before the assembled “saints” and warned of the spiritual dangers of sexual expression. John is thus quite clear as to how the homosexuality that he realizes is his destiny will be received within the community. Baldwin is very cautious in asserting the specifics of John’s sexuality because of the rigid attitudes toward homosexuality that prevailed in the 1950s

when the novel was published. In a suppressed section of the original text—later published as the short story “The Outing”—John openly expresses his romantic attachment to another male. But careful reading of the novel will clearly demonstrate that John’s sexual imagination is homoerotic. He has a masturbatory fantasy about the boys at his school who engage in pissing contests in the toilet. His homosexuality is most forcefully manifested in his attraction to Elisha. John clearly has a crush on the slightly older boy: “John stared at Elisha all during the lesson, admiring the timbre of Elisha’s voice, much deeper and manlier than his own, admiring the leanness, and grace and strength and darkness of Elisha in his Sunday suit.” Further, later in the text, John wrestles with Elisha as they prepare the church space for the evening service, and John’s response to Elisha is one of sensual pleasure: “And so they turned, battling in the narrow room, and the odor of Elisha’s sweat was heavy in John’s nostrils. He saw the veins rise on Elisha’s forehead and his neck; his breath became jagged and harsh, and the grimace on his face became cruel; and John, watching these manifestations of his power, was filled with a wild delight.” Wrestling has often been used as a metaphor of spiritual struggle, as in the biblical narrative of Jacob wrestling with an angel, but it has also served as a symbol of suppressed homosexual feeling, as in D. H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love. Here the wrestling scene serves both those purposes, as John struggles with the nature of his burgeoning sexuality as well as with his realization that the world of the church community will not satisfy him. Caught, then, between the demands of his religious community and the demands of his psychosexual nature, John experiences an anguished “flood of fury and tears” as he tries to decide what he must do. If, as the family and community assume, he will follow Gabriel into the church and ministry, how will he handle his forbidden sexuality? If he accedes to the demands of his mind and body and aligns himself with the profane world of desire, how is he to be saved? At the end of the novel, he accepts the conversion experience that marks his adulthood in the church, even as he knows he cannot make the church his refuge from the wider world forever. Joe Skerrett, Jr.

200â•…â•… Bambara, Toni Cade

BAMBARA, TONI CADEâ•… The Salt Eatersâ•… (1980)

Toni Cade Bambara’s novel The Salt Eaters is a story about possible rebirth in the individual life of the protagonist Velma Henry, the predominantly black town of Claybourne, and the planet as a whole. Velma’s attempted suicide, the specter of armed conflict in Claybourne, and the environmental and economic effect of a nuclear plant nearby place the novel on a precipice between disaster and transformation during what Toni Cade Bambara (1939–95) calls the “Last Quarter” of the 20th century. The Seven Sisters, a traveling collective of healers and artists made up of women of color of different backgrounds, journey toward Claybourne for an annual festival hosted by the holistic community school, Academy of the 7 Arts. A literal and cosmic storm, which seems to come out of nowhere, disrupts the planned festivities, throws the bus carrying the Seven Sisters off course, and redirects everyone to the Southwest Community Infirmary, where Minnie Ransom is calling on spiritual and ancestral guidance to help Velma return to the land of the living. The process of healing suggested through Bambara’s exploration of memory, violence, trauma, and love teaches readers that the “storms” of life always have a source. The literal storm in the novel is a response to the environmental degradation of the nuclear era. The eruption of the community is a result of gendered tensions in community institutions. The personal storms in lives of the community members are a result of unhealed trauma. The healer Minnie Ransom’s first question to Velma Henry is “Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?”—and her inquiry applies to the whole community. If the interconnected characters in this novel “want to be well,” they will have to learn how to take care of each other, their community, and this planet. Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Love in The Salt Eaters

Velma Henry’s nervous breakdown cannot be alleviated by a knight in shining armor. The profound disconnection that Velma feels from both her husband and her lover show that romantic heterosexual love cannot provide the self-esteem or wholeness necessary for complete healing. The love between Velma

and her husband, Obie, is threatened by the sexist violence that Velma has experienced. It becomes clear early in the novel that Obie, who does not even know about Velma’s attempted suicide until she is already in the infirmary, has to journey through several encounters with male figures who are struggling with the same gender roles that have been oppressive to Velma. Even though he moves toward her physically and spiritually throughout the novel, he will not be able to save her. The Seven Sisters, including Velma’s real sister, Palma, model another form of love: that between women who are chosen sisters, connected by their shared vision to transform the world. The Seven Sisters, representing different communities of color from around the world, bridge their different cultural heritages into a wealth of resources, which they practice by healing each other, loving each other, doing each other’s hair, creating art together and talking about what is important to them. This form of sisterly love is an important counterexample against the male-dominated establishment that Velma remembers as a painful feature of the Civil Rights movement. Velma’s sister Palma has a dream that her sister needs help, and her first priority when they arrive in the town of Claybourne is to find her, but Palma cannot save Velma either. Mother love is another resource that has helped to sustain Velma throughout her life. However, neither Velma’s birth mother nor her godmother Sophie can save her from herself. In fact, Sophie is herself traumatized by Velma’s suicide attempt, as it reminds her of the police violence her son experienced, and she has to leave the room early in the novel. Velma and the readers learn that it is only Velma’s love for herself that will allow her to get off the stool in the infirmary at the last moment of the novel. Self-love is the power that makes romantic, sisterly, and community-wide love possible. Bambara reminds the community that only a deep love for self, enacted through community accountability, will allow healing to occur. Community is the context for a sustainable transformative love during the “Last Quarter” of the century, when everything is at stake. Alexis Pauline Gumbs

The Salt Eatersâ•…â•… 201

Memory in The Salt Eaters

Toni Cade Bambara uses memory in The Salt Eaters to create a cosmic sense of time. The events of one day are able to reflect on the entire second half of the 20th century and more. Traumatic memories play a significant role in the novel. Sophie Heywood experiences traumatic memory of police violence against her son. While Velma is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, her husband, Obie, insists that she is becoming bitter and losing a grasp on her mental health because she refuses to let go of the traumatic memories she has of being taken advantage of and belittled within the sexism of the civil rights and black liberation struggles. While Velma thinks back on the path that led her to attempt suicide, she has flashes of an ancient set of people called the “mud mothers” who continue to break into her consciousness, demanding healing. The timeless mud mothers place Velma’s life into a larger spiritual context by referencing the maternal energy of creating the earth itself. Minnie Ransom, the healer who attempts to guide Velma through her recovery, draws on the help of a spiritual guide, “Old Wife,” who mentors her across the divide between the living and the dead. Old Wife’s references to “dancing in the mud” suggest that she is also one of the mud mothers who appear in flashes of consciousness throughout the novel. Bambara’s spiritual time scale fills the single day of the novel with the impact of centuries. Bambara also opens up the characters’ memories in order to develop their personalities and tell the reader about the tense times they are navigating. The memory of the Civil Rights movement is key to the women and men seeking to enact a creative and educational black liberation struggle in the late 1970s, but since they have not processed the violence that people in the movement experienced from outside forces like the police and from one another within the sometimes oppressive power dynamics of the movement itself, traumatic memories can resurface at any moment and erupt in the lives of the community members. Bambara uses the legend of the salt eaters to contextualize the entire novel. According to the story, passed down through word of mouth, once the enslaved African people in the Americas ate salt,

they forgot the ability they had to fly back to Africa. In this way, The Salt Eaters is as much about forgetting as it is about memory. Toni Cade Bambara uses memory in the novel to explore how a group of people traumatized by their struggle can reconnect to ancestral resources and play their role in the planet’s necessary healing by healing each other and themselves. Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Violence in The Salt Eaters

In the opening scene of The Salt Eaters, Velma Henry is on a stool in the Southwest Community Infirmary, after attempting suicide. From the outset, Toni Bambara contextualizes Velma’s self-inflicted harm within a longer story. As Velma asks herself how she ended up on this recovery stool, the reader journeys backward into her memory to learn that her violence against herself is a delayed result of gendered violence within the black movement for liberation. While under Minnie Ransom’s care at the infirmary, Velma has a violent and vivid memory of sitting in a meeting where the voices and work of women in the black liberation movement are silenced by the charismatic power posturing of Jay Patterson, a so-called community leader. During this meeting, Velma is literally bleeding, because her menstrual cycle has started. Velma remembers hitchhiking and walking through the rain, her body sore and bruised in order to salvage an event that Jay Patterson is able to enjoy and take credit for without doing any work. The sexism in the Civil Rights and black liberation movements meant that while women were doing the majority of the physical and strategic labor, men were making the speeches, projecting their visions and garnering “fame” in the movement. Through Velma’s experience, Bambara describes the impact of this ongoing sexism as violence. The weight and bitterness of these memories of the exploited labor of women by their male comrades stays in Velma’s body. They tear apart her mental health, to the point that she eventually tries to take her own life. While Velma relives these painful memories, her godmother, Sophie Heywood, is so distressed that she leaves the room during Velma’s healing process.

202â•…â•… Behn, Aphra Watching Velma, Sophie is overcome by a traumatic image of the police brutality that her son Smitty experienced during a civil rights protest. Juxtaposing police brutality with sexism, Bambara makes the point that the violence of sexism within the Civil Rights and black liberation movements was as harmful as the violence of racist police officers who tried to suppress the movement from outside. Hurting and taking advantage of women in the struggle for justice hurt the whole movement and cost people their lives. The movement as a whole takes a toll on the lives of black people when they are not able to heal from the traumatic, oppressive violence they have experienced over the years as punishment for speaking out. Unlike her sister Palma, Velma never gave herself any artistic or social escape from the movement for social justice. She was working for the movement all day every day. Through her refusal to take care of herself, her urge to do only what seemed most productive and necessary for the movement, she threatened a crucial movement resource: her own life and well-being. Similarly, in the novel, the earth itself is suffering because human beings insist on doing what seems most profitable without taking into consideration the connection between the planet’s well-being and the lives of human beings. The bus driver Fred Holt reflects on the decreasing economic choices for workers in the area who see the nuclear power plant as their best option, despite the fact that the exposure to radiation threatens their physical health. Holt’s friends, other workingclass black men, are dying as a result of radiation exposure. Environmental racism is heaped on top of plans of redevelopers to push black communities out of cities. Holt ruminates on the predictability of economic violence in the so-called urban renewal process while driving past a recently demolished public housing unit: “Redevelopment. Progress. The master plan. Cut back on services, declare blight, run back from the suburbs and take over,” he thinks. A push for so-called progress in terms of both the black liberation struggle and capitalist economics results in violence against the women in the black liberation movement and against

working-class communities more generally. The novel points out that this violence erupts in conflict, represented by the storm taking over Claybourne, which impacts everyone, even though the most oppressed people feel it first. Bambara offers a depiction of violence that moves from the individual self-inflicted harm of attempted suicide to the structural violence of racism, sexism, and capitalism, demonstrating that when a society chooses selfish profits over the well-being of the group, it is suicidal. Alexis Pauline Gumbs

BEHN, APHRAâ•… Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slaveâ•… (1688)

Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave is a short novella by Aphra Behn (1640–89). It tells the story of an African prince, Oroonoko, who is separated from his lover, Imoinda, and is then captured and forced into slavery by an English sea captain. He is eventually reunited with Imoinda in Surinam (today called Suriname), an English colony based on sugarcane plantations and located on the northeast coast of South America. Oroonoko contains elements of three popular forms of Restoration literature: the New World travel story, the courtly romance, and the heroic tragedy. The novella’s author, an English novelist, poet, and dramatist, may have visited Surinam as a young woman. Although Behn’s biographers now agree that her story was probably based on her actual experiences in the New World, there is no historical record testifying to the existence of Oroonoko and Imoinda. Behn is often hailed as being one of the first English novelists. Oroonoko was written at a time when the narrative technique and the feature of the fictionalized author were underdeveloped. Characterized by the omnipresence of its female narrator, Oroonoko is an early prose narrative in which the narrator acts as the tale’s interpreter. In addition to its innovative narrative strategy, Behn’s novella is also one of the first pieces of English writing to present a hero who is black and enslaved, thereby contributing to the image of the “noble savage” in literature. Victoria E. Price

Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slaveâ•…â•… 203

Gender in Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave

As a woman who exists in a patriarchal culture that is hostile to female creativity, the narrator of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is conscious of her apparent gender transgression in putting pen to paper. Writing was typically viewed in 17th-century England as a masculine activity; thus, in foregrounding the female voice, the novella can be seen to undermine the accepted gender codes of the day. The narrator, an English settler at the slave colony of Surinam, continually offers apologies for the comparative weakness of her “female pen.” This is especially apparent in the closing lines of the novel, where she asserts that Oroonoko, the black prince who is captured and sold by a slave trader, is “worthy of a better Fate, and a more sublime Wit than mine to write his Praise.” Such assumptions of modesty are designed to distance the narrator from any perception of a female transgression. A further narrative technique that she employs as a means of legitimating her work can be found in the clear moral motivation the narrator identifies for her act of writing: She wants to ensure that Oroonoko’s “Glorious Name” survives “all ages.” Although the narrator’s character does not seem developed (she does not have a name, and the reader learns little about her appearance, her family, or her life in the colony), it is nevertheless a recognizably female narrative authority that is prioritized by the text. The novella is written in a mixture of first and third person as the narrator relates events in Africa. Claiming to record the adventures of an actual, as opposed to an imaginary, hero and setting herself up as an eyewitness to events in Surinam, she attempts to overcome gender bias concerning women’s writing. The narrator repeatedly highlights female spectatorship so that even at the scene of Oroonoko’s death, she informs her reader that, though she was absent, her mother and sister were present. In this way, the narrator places an emphasis on women’s powers of observation and invokes her own experience in order to grant the female voice authority. The novella’s concern with gender is further explored through the narrator’s relationship with Oroonoko. This is a relationship that initially appears to be based on traditional gender roles, in that Oroonoko heroically saves the narrator’s life in the text on several different occasions. And when-

ever his own life is in danger (two times), the narrator poignantly explains her absence and inability to save Oroonoko from physical harm in terms of her female gender. For example, when Oroonoko is captured after having led an uprising of slaves into the woods, the narrator asserts that she was not present when he was punished by whipping because “We were possess’d with extream Fear” and “This apprehension made all the Females of us fly down the Rover, to be secur’d.” The only actions open to her in the face of danger are flight and speech, indicative of both her powerlessness as a woman and her struggle with the constraints of the gender hierarchy. However, Oroonoko’s exploration of the gender dynamic between the narrator and Oroonoko is much more complicated than this. While they do occupy traditional roles, their relationship is not simply male-female, active-passive: Because she is white, she also occupies a position superior to Oroonoko’s in the social hierarchy. Indeed, Oroonoko is the story of the African prince from the point of view of the middle-class narrator colonial mistress: The black male protagonist can only speak through the white female narrator. The narrator, then, can be seen to enjoy a position of power in Surinam that does not correspond to the gender conventions of early modern England. This is reinforced by the way in which she claims intimate knowledge of Oroonoko. The verb to know is suggestive of sexual domination, and so the white colonial mistress can be seen to assert a sexual domination over Oroonoko and thereby to claim a power traditionally assumed to be male. Similarly, when Oroonoko is castrated during his death scene, femininity becomes inscribed onto his body, and at the same time, the female narrator who recounts the dismemberment can be seen to usurp the position typically defined as masculine. Gender inversions are thus enacted throughout the text, with traditional gender codes becoming confused and unhinged. Ultimately, then, Oroonoko argues for the necessity of abandoning the notion of women’s (and men’s) gender identity as stable and easily understood. Victoria E. Price

Heroism in Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave

As a virtuous African prince who is unjustly imprisoned and then executed by colonial profiteers, the

204â•…â•… Behn, Aphra titular character of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is an aristocratic hero trapped in a capitalist plot; at the same time, he is also the hero of a romance adventure. The novella describes the plight of Oroonoko when he is separated from Imoinda, the woman to whom he is betrothed and with whom his grandfather, the king of Coramantien, is also in love. The two are later reunited in the English slave colony of Surinam, Imoinda having been sold into slavery by the king and Oroonoko having been betrayed into slavery by an English sea captain. After he is transported to Surinam, Oroonoko unsuccessfully tries to disguise himself by begging the English gentleman who has purchased him, John Trefrey, to give him clothes more befitting a slave. Nevertheless, on arrival at Trefrey’s plantation, Oroonoko is unable to hide his nobility; he is greeted and worshipped by the other slaves, and his aristocratic magnanimity is physically visible in spite of the rags he wears. The subtitle of Behn’s novella (The Royal Slave) is a paradox which further alerts the reader to the fact that a change of place and outward circumstances cannot alter the fact of Oroonoko’s inherent honor and nobility. Because of his physical beauty, regal bearing, civilized manners, intellectual prowess, and ability to speak English, Oroonoko is treated with unusual distinction and respect by many of the English colonists. Notably, the reader never sees him engaged in slave labor. As befits an epic hero, much of his time is instead devoted to performing such gentlemanly activities as eel grabbing, tiger hunting, and saving the narrator’s life. Oroonoko can additionally be seen to take on many of the aristocratic values of Restoration England: gentility, physical prowess, and adherence to a strict code of love and honor. The narrator repeatedly speaks of his greatness of soul and proclaims him to be an expert captain. In the account of Oroonoko and Imoinda’s courtship in Africa, it is also made clear that the prince practices the old social forms of romance, where true love is preeminently valued and held up for veneration. Oroonoko’s court in Coramantien is a world in which noble virtues such as loyalty and honesty are heavily prized. Vows are especially important to Oroonoko; the reader is told he has never violated a word in his life. This is in complete contrast to the

sea captain who twice deceives Oroonoko: first by luring the prince onto his ship so that he can seize Oroonoko and his men, and later by breaking his promise to release the captured when they reach land if Oroonoko will agree to eat. Similarly, after leading an unsuccessful slave revolt, Oroonoko is betrayed and enslaved by the deputy governor of the Surinam plantation, William Byam, who appeals to his honor and drafts an article of peace before having the slave whipped and pepper rubbed into his wounds. The idea of heroism is most forcefully conveyed by Behn in the scene of Oroonoko’s brutal death. The narrator recalls how, during his execution, Oroonoko stoicly endures the pain of his dismemberment while smoking a pipe. Similarly, Imoinda’s death is romanticized earlier in the narrative. Concerned that his and Imoinda’s unborn child will be born into slavery and preferring his family to die rather than live as slaves, Oroonoko escapes to the jungle, where he kills the pregnant Imoinda by his own hand. Imoinda bravely and serenely accepts her fate, making clear her preference for death over living without her husband. Her murder is also a plot device engineered to facilitate the tale’s proper conclusion: the tragic downfall of the novella’s hero. While Oroonoko undoubtedly presents the prince as the hero of the story, Behn portrays Oroonoko’s heroism in a striking fashion. For Behn, the institution of slavery itself is not something that Oroonoko is fighting. Rather, he is protesting the slavery specifically of him and his wife. Indeed, it is made clear that in his past Oroonoko was a slave trader in Coramantien. Nevertheless, the novella is written in such a way as to invite the reader to juxtapose the prince against the Europeans—figures in whom the aristocratic values that Oroonoko symbolizes (honesty and loyalty) are sorely absent. The result of this juxtaposing is that Oroonoko firmly emerges as the tragic hero of the tale—one who functions ultimately to challenge Western notions of superiority prevalent in the culture of Behn’s time. Victoria E. Price

Race in Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave

Presenting the story of an African prince who is tricked into slavery, Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is intri-

Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slaveâ•…â•… 205 cately concerned with issues of race. The tale is told by an eyewitness narrator who both collaborates with and criticizes the colonial enterprise within which the titular hero finds himself trapped. To this end, the novella replicates and contests early modern notions of the racial “other.” The narrative opens with a description of Surinam (today Suriname), the English colony in the West Indies where the story is set. Behn’s narrator exhibits a fascination with the exotic objects of Surinam, portraying the Americas as rich in land and natural resources. The narrator’s experiences of meeting the indigenous peoples are intermixed with the main plot of the love story of Oroonoko and his betrothed, Imoinda. The natives of Surinam are depicted as innocent and free from sin, but also as racial “others,” primitive and in tune with nature. Similarly, when recounting what she has learned from Oroonoko about his home in Coramantien, the narrator portrays Africa as an exotic landscape where the inhabitants engage in unfamiliar cultural practices: They practice polygamy and seem to be continually fighting in order to win slaves in battle. In short, the novella appears to uphold English Renaissance and Restoration stereotypes about the black man—that he is strange, unfamiliar, inferior, savage, brutal, exotic, sexual, heathen, an ethnic “other.” And yet, at times the boundaries between the non-European and the European, between the black man and the white man, become blurred. For example, the narrator makes clear that what most distinguishes Oroonoko from the other slaves on the plantation is the European characteristics that he is seen to possess. With his straight hair and Roman nose, Oroonoko’s physical makeup accords in many ways to a Eurocentric vision of beauty. He is learned in European lore, having received the elements of a courtly education from a French tutor at his grandfather’s court. He also adopts many of the European aristocratic values that define courtly life in Restoration England. Oroonoko is presented by Behn as a hero of the European sort. In this way, Oroonoko can be seen to show a resistance to facile racial categories: Oroonoko is a heroic prince, but at the same time he is a black slave.

At other moments, however, Behn’s narrative can be seen to perpetuate the very categories that it elsewhere seems to reject. For example, when the narrator describes Oroonoko’s body and physical beauty, she commodifies the African prince as an exotic, luxurious, and appealing example of colonial bounty. She pauses over each feature of his body so that Oroonoko’s person comes to emblematize the alluring potential of colonial exploration. What Behn makes clear is that there are two competing models of value mapped onto Oroonoko’s body: one of commercial value, the other of political and moral value. Indeed, Oroonoko’s graceful kingship and natural nobility is continually emphasized to the reader. This is particularly apparent when he tries to disguise himself on entering the slave colony: In spite of his being dressed in rags, he instantly commands the respect of both his fellow slaves and his captors. The African prince encompasses the naturalized aristocratic values of authority such as moral virtue, mercy, equity, and gentility—qualities that appear to be absent in the colonial profiteers, who prize exchange value over virtue, commerce over justice, violence and barbarism over stability, and the rule of ignorant and uncivilized people over the rule of the educated and just. In this way, the narrative appears to reject contemporary racial stereotypes that at other moments it seems to replicate. It must nevertheless be noted that while Oroonoko’s greatness seems to challenge contemporary Western racist presumptions of superiority, it could be argued that his radical uniqueness and superiority could justify the continued use of slavery against Africans less great than he. Oroonoko strikingly constructs himself through English morality (choosing, for instance, to practice monogamy), which further sets him apart from the rest of his race. Indeed, while the novella protests the individual slavery of Oroonoko, it quite explicitly sanctions the trafficking in slaves. This is evident in the way that Oroonoko himself willingly trades slaves in Coramantien after winning them in war. The ideological contradictions concerning race and colonialism evident in Oroonoko suggest that for Behn the novel is as much about the nature of kingship as it is about

206â•…â•… Bellow, Saul the nature of race: Oroonoko is a prince, and he is a prince whether African or European. Victoria E. Price

BELLOW, SAULâ•… The Adventures of Augie Marchâ•… (1953)

When it was published in 1953, The Adventures of Augie March established Saul Bellow (1915–2005) as a leading American writer. Augie March announces in the first sentence that he is “an American, Chicago born .╯.╯. and will make the record in my own way.” Both a picaresque—an episodic tale that follows a young protagonist’s adventures—and a bildungsroman—a coming of age novel tracking the protagonist from youth to adulthood—the novel follows Augie’s life from the late 1920s to the years following World War II. After several odd jobs, Augie joins the neighborhood magnate William Einhorn, whose empire crumbles in the Great Depression, but who forms a reference point throughout the novel, not least because he gives Augie a set of fire-damaged classics to which he retreats occasionally. Augie then works for the Renlings, outdoor lifestyle purveyors, in nearby suburb Evanston, although that relationship fails when they insist on adopting him. Back in Chicago, Augie lives meagerly while his brother Simon marries into Charlotte Magnus’s wealthy family. Simon’s plans for Augie to follow suit are thwarted when Augie helps his neighbor Mimi obtain an abortion. Disowned by Simon, Augie joins Thea Fenchel, whom he met while with the Renlings, on a trip to Mexico. Their relationship dissolves after Augie helps a fellow expatriate, Stella, escape her lover. He then returns to Chicago, where the eccentric millionaire Robey employs him to research a grand project that never materializes. When World War II breaks out, Augie enlists in the Merchant Marine and locates Stella in New York, where the two marry. Torpedoed in the Atlantic, he drifts for days with an unbalanced fellow Chicagoan before their rescue. As the novel ends, Augie and Stella are living in Paris, where she pursues an acting career and he brokers shady deals in the disheveled atmosphere of postwar Europe. Richard Hancuff

Fate in The Adventures of Augie March

From Augie March’s early declaration that “a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitus,” Saul Bellow’s novel explores the ground between the passivity of fate and the active creation of existentialism. Fate is predetermined, an external force acting upon the individual, although Heraclitus muddies the waters by suggesting that one’s fate is not external but, rather, stems from character of the individual. By the novel’s end, Augie has added his own twist to Heraclitus, arguing that “it is obvious that this fate, or what he settles for, is also his character.” More than inverting Heraclitus’s maxim, Augie defines fate as “what he settles for,” perhaps best understood as one’s choice in life. Augie has spent the better part of the novel resisting what others have tried to make of him, rejecting fates that are not his own, and in those actions he essentially denies the notion of fate as passivity; for Augie, fate must be worked for. After a conversation with William Einhorn, Augie states, “I never had accepted determination and wouldn’t become what other people wanted to make of me.” While Augie maintains an ease in his relations with others that leads the Renlings to want to adopt him—“there was something adoptional about me,” he explains—and Thea Fenchel to tell him, “You’re so happy when somebody begs you to oblige. You can’t stand up under flattery,” Augie does not see his behavior as his fate, either leaving or sabotaging his relationships when they become too constricting. The best summary of his attitude arrives as advice from his friend Manny Padilla, who is financing his education by stealing textbooks: “I don’t have larceny in my heart; I’m not a real crook. I’m not interested in it, so nobody can make a fate of it for me. It’s not my fate.” Like Manny, Augie embarks on his experiences as means to an end or as experiments, but not as integral components of his character. Late in the novel and deeply in love with Stella Chesney, Augie shares deep conversations with Mintouchian, a man Augie describes as “another of those persons who persistently arise before me with life counsels and illuminations.” Among the parables Mintouchian relates is a meditation on change and fate: “You make your peace with change. Another city, another woman, a different bed, but you’re the same

The Adventures of Augie Marchâ•…â•… 207 and so you must be flexible. You kiss the woman and you show how you love your fate, and you worship and adore the changes in life. You obey this law.” For Mintouchian, fate is simply what happens: It is the journey through life. In response, Augie tells him, “I have always tried to become what I am. But it’s a frightening thing .╯.╯. I suppose I better, anyway, give in and be it. I will never force the hand of fate to create a better Augie March.” Although Augie suggests he is giving in to fate and accepting determination, he speaks of trying to become what he is, which is a far more active view of fate. It does not accept that one’s fate comes upon one naturally; rather, it must be earned through struggle. In the end, Augie rejects a traditional view of fate as an end, seeing it instead as a process: “Other preoccupations are my fate, or what fills life and thought. Among them, preoccupation with Stella, so that what happens to her happens, by necessity, to me too.” Augie chooses his fate by choosing his preoccupations, although he may quibble with the amount of choice he had in his falling in love. Yet even his earlier actions, while interpreted by others, including his brother Simon, as aimless drifting, Augie interprets as hard work leading you to your fate: “[A]ll the while you thought you were going around idly terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moling through tunnels, heaving, pushing .╯.╯. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It’s internally done.” Therefore, one’s fate is not only the end result of the pushing and heaving, but also the process itself; it is the becoming what one is, and the process of becoming is never finished. As Augie opines, “It’s only temporary. We’ll get out of it.” Richard Hancuff

Identity in The Adventures of Augie March

Augie March’s triumphant declaration that he is “an American, Chicago born .╯.╯. and will make the record in my own way” immediately announces to the reader the importance of identity, both personal and national, to the narrative. The point is further reinforced late in the novel, when Augie repeats this statement of origins while explaining how he has come to write the story of his life in a café in postwar Europe. Augie argues a connection between

nonconformity and being an American: that independence, the desire to “make the record in [his] own way,” is also exhibited in his personal life, as Augie fights against becoming what others expect. Throughout the text, Augie seems to have many admirers or acquaintances who want to thrust an identity onto him, and while he seems amenable enough to these plans at first, his mentor William Einhorn tells him, “You’ve got opposition in you. You don’t slide through everything. You just make it look so.” With that observation, Augie concludes that “I never had accepted determination and wouldn’t become what other people wanted to make of me.” Yet, while Augie realizes he does not want to be shaped by anyone else, it is not because he has a clear idea of his own identity: “I touched all sides, and nobody knew where I belonged. I had no good idea of that myself.” Augie’s lack of clear goals should not be taken as shiftlessness, which is exactly what his brother Simon mistakes it for, telling Augie, “since you won’t look out for your interests, I see I’m going to have to do it for you.” Simon creates one more role for Augie to play, but Augie is not seeking a role to play so much as he desires to understand his place in the universe: “I don’t want to be representative or exemplary or head of my generation or any model of manhood. All I want is something of my own, and bethink myself.” He seeks a connection with himself that he does not receive from any of the roles offered by others, either as employee, adopted son, or social-climbing husband, and in achieving that understanding, he seeks to locate himself among the received wisdom of the ages, frequently withdrawing to the classics of world literature that he has either received as damaged goods or come by dishonestly. These compromised modes of access are important, because they indicate not only the extent to which Augie has fought for this knowledge, but also the imperfection of the knowledge itself. As Augie notes, “I see I met those writers in the big book of utopias at a peculiar time. In those utopias, set up by hopes and art, how could you overlook the part of nature or be sure you could keep the feelings up?” In other words, Augie recognizes the delicate balance between theory and practice of life in achieving a satisfactory identity.

208â•…â•… Bellow, Saul While Augie’s personal journey is steeped in the classical tradition, he remains cognizant but suspicious of the larger national identity that promises a unifying community, a sameness of being. Of his short stint at the city college, he tells us that “the students were children of immigrants from all parts .╯.╯. put through the coarse sifters of curriculum, and also bringing wisdom of their own. They filled the factory-length corridors and giant classrooms with every human character and germ, to undergo consolidation and become, the idea was, American.” Augie’s eye remains not on the homogenized sum, though, but on the parts that comprise it, and the opposition in him celebrates the irreducible kernel of individuality: “I had opposed people in what they wanted to make of me, but now that I was in love with her I understood much better what I myself wanted.” Love crystallizes Augie’s sense of identity, because Augie recognizes his own desire. While the affair with Thea ends poorly, Augie from that point defines his future and feels confident in his choices, understanding his past as prelude to who he is. He reasons, “I want a place of my own .╯.╯. and I’d never loan myself again to any other guy’s scheme.” Having reached that point, he announces, “I have always tried to become what I am. But it’s a frightening thing. Because what if what I am by nature isn’t good enough?” The novel’s trajectory, then, arrives at an existentialist understanding of identity: One becomes who one is through an ongoing and difficult process, because rather than fit into anyone else’s preexisting schemes, Augie must determine his own way in the world. Richard Hancuff

Social Class in The Adventures of Augie March

Written during the great postwar expansion of the middle class, The Adventures of Augie March evinces a desire to remain outside class considerations, with the protagonist Augie March associating freely with heiresses, millionaires, waitresses, and thieves with little concern for climbing any sort of social ladder. However, as Augie wryly notes, “Everyone tries to create a world he can live in,╯.╯.╯. But the real world is already created.” Augie’s desire to escape class considerations do not negate those structures, and

while he rejects them as constructions, he remains subject to their power. Augie March’s family is poor, but the household’s matriarch, Grandma Lausch, remains “a snob about her Odessa luster and her servants and governesses,” which now exist only in her memories. Augie learns through her how to deceive the relief office, and she arranges jobs for Augie and his older brother Simon, with nearly all their income stretched to meet household expenses. While working for William Einhorn, a neighborhood real estate speculator and businessman with dreams of greater things, Augie experiences the subtle class distinction between being a trusted employee and an equal: “I wasn’t to think because we were intimately connected and because he liked me that I was going to get into the will╯.╯.╯.╯. It sometimes got my goat, he and Mrs. Einhorn made so sure I knew my place.” Interestingly, while annoyed, Augie is not resentful of this treatment. and Einhorn remains an adviser throughout the novel. Augie’s involvement with the Renlings, who run a suburban outdoor lifestyle store in the wealthy suburb of Evanston, broadens his horizons beyond the heavily immigrant and ethnic milieu of his youth. While agreeing to hire Augie, Mr. Renling tells him that “out there on the North Shore they don’t like Jews.╯.╯.╯. They like hardly anybody. Anyway, they’ll probably never know.” This introduction to exclusionary class distinction is reinforced later through Augie’s realization of—though not acceptance of—the fact that class behavior is closely tied to appearance, “because of the way I presented myself—due to Mrs. Renling—as if God had not left out a single one of His gifts, and I was advertising His liberality with me: good looks, excellent wardrobe, mighty fine manners, social ease .╯.╯. all in the freshest gold-leaf. And the trouble was that I had what you might call forged credentials.” Augie, obstinately concerned about being true to himself, knows how to pass across class lines, but it brings him discomfort. His brother Simon, on the other hand, has no such qualms, blithely announcing to Augie his plans to marry into the wealthy Magnus family and that Augie must follow suit, because he has “to have some family. I’ve been told they’re family-minded people. They wouldn’t understand or like it, the way

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”â•…â•… 209 we are, and we have to make it look better.” Like Augie, Simon realizes that much of class distinction lies in presentation, and he does his research in order to move upward. For his part, Augie “had a fit of hate for the fat person he [Simon] was becoming” and develops a “dawning thought about rudeness as the measure of achievement.” That dawning thought pervades the novel’s presentation of class division, as many of Augie’s encounters with the rich and powerful result in revelations of their single-minded self-importance. While with the Renlings, Thea and Esther Fenchel, whom Augie refers to as the Fenchel heiresses, mistakenly think that Augie is Mrs. Renling’s gigolo, with Thea telling him matter-of-factly that her sister believes “that you service the lady that you’re with.” This assumption repeats itself when Thea and Augie travel to Mexico, where Thea plans to divorce her husband and train an eagle to hunt lizards, a mission that Augie belatedly comes to realize springs from her pampered lifestyle. As their relationship sours, Augie soon realizes that others see him as Thea’s kept man. Stella, an acquaintance who’s also in Mexico at the expense of a companion, tells him, “[I]t’s her house, isn’t it, and all the things are hers? What have you got of your own?” While Augie has his reasons for being with Thea, he understands the interpretive power of class expectations to those outside the relationship, suspecting in turn the truth of their perception and prompting him to declare, “All I want is something of my own, and bethink myself.” Tired of living off others and for others, Augie wants to escape the social connections that he feels constrict him. Augie’s desire is the text’s desire to negate social class and retreat into a republic of the spirit, a utopia built on the classic texts of Western civilization, but as his friend Clem Tambow concludes, “I wish you luck .╯.╯. but I don’t think it can ever happen. Richard Hancuff

BIERCE, AMBROSEâ•… “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”â•… (1891)

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” the bestknown short story in Ambrose Bierce’s collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891), is a brief narra-

tive set in north Alabama during the American Civil War. Organized in three sections, the story dramatizes the military execution by federal troops of an Alabama planter, Peyton Farquhar. Part 1 shows the noncombatant Southerner being prepared for hanging on the bridge after having been caught trying to burn it down; part 2 flashes back to dramatize how a disguised Union spy gave Farquhar the idea of targeting this strategic railroad link; and part 3 follows the stages of an elaborate, delusional escape that Farquhar envisions during the instant he is dropping to his death. Though details in Farquhar’s mental flight seem implausible, Bierce’s closing sentence still delivers shock and surprise to first-time readers by reporting that Farquhar is dead, his neck broken and his corpse dangling over the creek. An example of naturalistic realism, Bierce’s narrative blends sharp external description with a vivid stream-of-consciousness monologue. The omniscient point of view focuses on Farquhar as the center of consciousness and protagonist while leaving the other characters, including his antagonists, flat and undeveloped. Though Bierce (1842–ca. 1914) himself was a Union veteran, his techniques here create empathy for Farquhar, a Southerner, thus enhancing the tragic effects of pity and fear as readers witness the dying man’s internal agonies and imaginative delusions. Concurrently, Bierce’s tone is detached, tinged with irony, sarcasm, and implicit cynicism. Contemporaries fittingly called the author “Bitter Bierce.” Roy Neil Graves

Death in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”

Set in northern Alabama during the American Civil War (1861–65), Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” dramatizes the hanging of Peyton Farquhar, a Southern planter whom Union troops have captured while he was trying to burn down the militarily strategic bridge named in the title. Part 1 of the story shows Farquhar on the bridge being readied for execution. Part 2, a flashback, tells how a Union spy visited Farquhar at his plantation, 30 miles away, and lured him into trying to sabotage the bridge. Part 3, a stream-ofconsciousness section except for the last sentence,

210â•…â•… Bierce, Ambrose follows Farquhar’s inner life during the split second it takes for him to drop from the bridge to his death: “[A]s one already dead,” Farquhar imagines an elaborate escape in psychedelic detail—falling into the water below as the rope snaps, eluding gunfire, and struggling for a day through dense woods to return to his home and his wife. Despite strong hints that this “escape” is all a delusion, Bierce’s brutal closing sentence can still shock and surprise a first-time reader: “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.” Bierce’s story dramatizes a ceremonial military execution by imagining both the outward trappings and inward details of such a death, allowing a reader to envision the action while following the thoughts of the dying person. The story is an example of a realistic subgenre that uses omniscience (and never a first-person narrator) to show the last thoughts of a dying character; Bierce’s variant of this narrative mode reveals a unique, nearly posthumous view of inner life that even postdates the thought process itself: The narrator reports that after “[t]he intellectual part of his nature was already effaced,” Farquhar nonetheless still “knew that the rope had broken” and, in defiance of logic, could fabricate his own escape in protracted detail. As Bierce’s closing sentence shows, these postmortem “thoughts” prove delusional—cruel, self-preserving hallucinations induced by terminal stress. It is commonplace to imagine that at the split second of death, one’s whole life may rerun itself in the mind, but Bierce turns the dying man’s last, instantaneous vision into an imagined escape from death itself, forward-looking rather than retrospective. Farquhar’s dying brain even weaves the horrible pains of hanging into the tapestry of its last fantasy. Though Bierce himself had been a Union soldier, the story stays politically neutral even while encouraging sympathy for the dying Rebel. As the protagonist and focal figure, Farquhar is fully human and three-dimensional; by contrast, his antagonists stay undifferentiated and mechanical, mere agents of military protocol. Further, Farquhar is a young, handsome, respectable gentleman who is loyal, heroic, and victimized. These aspects tend to make

readers care for him and empathize with the agony of his final moments. Bierce laces his rendering of Farquhar’s death with verbal and situational ironies that verge on dark wit. Verbal irony occurs, for example, when Bierce’s sarcastic narrator calls the military code of justice “liberal” for not excluding “gentlemen” from hanging—and also when the understated title calls Farquhar’s execution “an occurrence,” implying something ordinary. Meanwhile, complex situational ironies convey Bierce’s own cynical view of things: Military men act with punctilious decorum while committing a brutal act, executing a man who believes he is escaping death even during his dying moment. Such ironies are compelling enough that a first-time reader may believe Farquhar’s delusion to be the real thing. Farquhar is a symbol of the planter class, and his futile, self-deluding doom mirrors the larger outcomes of the war, which the South lost. Viewed somewhat differently, his death personalizes the hideous fraternal slaughter that killed thousands of valiant men on both sides, North and South. Layered under the veneer of military ceremony in the story lies the internal violence of a brutal death that only fiction can allow an outside witness to experience. As naturalistic realism, Bierce’s story shows no glory in such a death and registers no mitigating hope that an afterlife might ease or justify such terminal suffering. Bierce’s narrator resists moralizing but does remark that, according to military etiquette, death always evokes “silence and fixity,” quiet respect, even when one side inflicts it ritualistically on the other. Overall, the story treats death in war as brutally painful, its suffering compounded in this particular case by the victim’s futile efforts to wish it away and by the ceremonial indifference of those who carry it out. Roy Neil Graves

Hope in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”

A poem by Emily Dickinson starts, “↜‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—/ That perches in the soul—/ And sings the tune without the words—/ And never stops—at all—.” The ending section of Ambrose

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”â•…â•… 211 Bierce’s story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” allows access into the soul of the protagonist, Peyton Farquhar, and shows there an undiminished hope for survival and escape still fluttering away in his consciousness under the stress of certain death by hanging at the hands of Union troops during the American Civil War. Farquhar, a young Alabama planter and loyal Southerner, has tried to burn down a railroad bridge that is strategic to the campaign of federal troops as they subdue the rebellious South. Earlier, a Union soldier in disguise had visited the Farquhar plantation 30 miles away from the bridge and effectively tricked him into trying to burn it down. The visitor had explained that any civilians interfering with the invading Northern army would “be summarily hanged,” but Farquhar had taken the chance and been caught. As the story opens, he faces certain death, poised over Owl Creek with a noose around his neck while Federal soldiers proceed with the details of his hanging. Overall, the story shows that, in the face of certain death, the human instinct to hope for a miracle can push a man to elaborate lengths to keep him from confronting the end of selfhood. Perched in the soul, hope may “sing the tune” to the very end, a soaring flight of fancy. By means of an inner monologue, a tour de force passage that uses stream of consciousness, part 3 of Bierce’s brief tale allows access into a process that no one can follow in reality: It shows a man’s optimistic delusions during the second or so it takes him to fall to an instantaneous death that breaks his neck and leaves his body swaying in the breeze. The several pages of prose that elaborate Farquhar’s thoughts during this instant make his “escape” seem so real as to fool a first-time reader into believing that this “one already dead” is indeed managing to gain his freedom. The author’s capacity to trick the reader into suspending disbelief and following Farquhar on his hopeful mental journey involves a good bit of juggling, since the real time of Farquhar’s reverie, a second or so, does not mesh with the extended period a reader needs to scan what transpires in Farquhar’s mind: The instant Farquhar falls, he feels excruciating pain and suffocation in his throat but almost immediately activates a capacity for hopeful self-deception that causes him to believe the

rope has broken and he has dropped into the water, escaped a barrage of bullets, scrambled onto the bank, run for a whole day through tangled woods, and finally arrived back home to be greeted by his smiling wife. As this delusion unfolds, Bierce drops broad hints that this escape is unreal—psychedelic details, fantastic flora, and mystical details in the heavens. Nonetheless, a reader may still buy into the fantasy of the protagonist’s trip home, only to have all hopes dashed when the author reports Farquhar’s death in the last sentence. One effect of Bierce’s story is to call all foolish hopes into question—Farquhar’s, but also the reader’s. All humans will die, despite their own elaborate efforts to fool themselves into thinking they are invulnerable. Some, like Farquhar, will die cruel deaths sanctioned by military ceremony and protocol. The cynical tone of the story enforces a realistic view by making a reader participate in the fool’s journey of false hope. Though Farquhar’s death is individual, it symbolizes that of his homeland, the South, deluding itself into believing it can escape its inevitable doom. As an example of naturalism, a mode of pessimistic realism that pervaded prose fiction before 1900, this story holds out no false hope, either in this life or the next. Here, no heroism and no heaven assuage a lonely and torturous end. By downplaying Farquhar’s death as “an occurrence,” even Bierce’s title underscores the view that human actions look trivial in an uncaring cosmos, with death just an insignificant aspect of the universal routine. In the microcosm of the story, military guiles and ceremonies preempt humane considerations, and ironic outcomes leave no room for people of any social class to exercise positive thinking as a means of overcoming destiny. Still, futile hope may persist in the human mind until the bitter end. Roy Neil Graves

Isolation in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”

In the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” the theme of isolation pervades a situation that Ambrose Bierce brings to life through a combination of external description and internal monologue (or stream of consciousness) as the pro-

212â•…â•… Black Elk tagonist struggles in vain to evade his own death, the ultimately isolating event in the human life cycle. The plot shows circumstances evolving quickly to wall the main character off from his family, home, and peers. Alone in that condition, with only his inner resources at hand to draw on, he shows himself victimized even in the final seconds of his life by the false hope of escape. Only the reader keeps him company on his last, hallucinatory journey. Peyton Farquhar, Bierce’s protagonist and center of consciousness, and the only rounded character in the story, is a handsome young Alabama planter, a civilian gentleman whom Union forces single out, set up, capture, isolate, and hang as part of their attempt to subdue his homeland, the South, during the American Civil War. In a mental effort toward self-preservation, Farquhar envisions himself as the hero of his own narrative, escaping death by falling into the stream, scrambling out amid a spray of bullets, and making his way before nightfall back to the security of his home. Bierce’s last sentence depicts Farquhar in his real, and ultimate, isolation: “.╯.╯. dead; his body, with a broken neck, [swinging] gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.” Farquhar’s wife, his sole ally, is 30 miles away at home and unaware of her husband’s fate. (The story mentions their children but does not depict them.) The others who are present, enemy soldiers carrying out his execution with cold military precision, offer no human company during his last ordeal; in the course of his imagined escape, they spray him with bullets. Multiple factors contribute to Farquhar’s isolation. The story is vague about why this 35-year-old could not enlist to fight for the Confederacy, but we know he is “at heart a soldier” who has had to stay at home, while others of his age and class have gone off to war. He wants to help out and envisions himself heroic. His only peer or social connection is his wife, a flat character—passive, powerless, and absent when he dies. His homeland is occupied by the enemy, the Union Army, and the story insinuates that they have intentionally set him up as a kind of scapegoat just so they can have a military rationale for putting him to death. As a planter, he symbolizes to them the Southern social and economic system

they are fighting to overthrow. Farquhar is a man without allies who must act alone—and die alone. In demeanor, the enemy soldiers who preside over Farquhar’s execution are detached from and impassive toward their victim. As Bierce shows Farquhar’s consciousness during his last ordeal, dealing with the painful suffocation of the noose but even at that moment conjuring up an alternate reality to reunite himself with his dear wife, Farquhar’s only real companions in the world are the story’s readers, each a separate and helpless witness to the futile efforts of a dying man as he tries to make one last human contact by returning home. Bierce’s closing sentence shows Farquhar in absolute isolation, left without spouse or children, home, fellow soldiers, countrymen, or even the contact of the beloved land itself as he dangles in thin air above the creek. Farquhar’s lonely terminal struggle lets readers imagine the isolation of a cruel death. His alienated situation offers no hope for any kind of mitigating reunion in eternity. In Bierce’s bleak microcosm, each lonely human struggles, outnumbered, against an array of alien forces. Roy Neil Graves

BLACK ELKâ•… Black Elk Speaksâ•… (1932)

A seminal work that merges history, politics, and spirituality, Black Elk Speaks serves as a testimony to the collective experience of Native American nations across the continent who were the victims of genocide and disenfranchisement during the 19th century. The narrative, originally transcribed and published in 1932 by the poet and philosopher John G. Neihardt (1881–1973), records the life and visions of Black Elk (1863–1950), a holy man from the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) nation, a traveler in Wild Bill’s Wild West Show, and a relative of the famous Chief Crazy Horse. Historically, the book conveys the early encounters between the U.S. Army and the Lakota people as experienced through the eyes of young Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa). The transformation of ancestral lands into Americanized settlements serves as a backdrop for the decimation of the sacred bison, General Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn in 1876, and the butchering of Black Elk’s people at

Black Elk Speaksâ•…â•… 213 Wounded Knee in 1890. These pivotal events are told through the eyes and voice of a Lakota shaman, while recasting the history of the 19th-century North American continent in a new and critical light. Likewise, Black Elk Speaks underscores the political turmoil broiling between the American forces and the Lakota hierarchy. Treaties that are signed between leaders in Washington, D.C., and puppet chiefs are dissolved with ease by the U.S. Army when Lakota territories prove to be too rich with resources, such as gold, to remain in the hands of nonwhites. Making the Lakota tribal communities politically weak and dependent on government handouts further guarantees the passivity of Black Elk’s people. This is certainly the case concerning the “Hangs-Around-the-Fort” people who forfeit their lands, rights, and resources to become reliant on the U.S. Army for survival. More than just an elegiac chronicle of a people, Black Elk Speaks is a spiritual text that articulates the greater Native American consciousness while forging a path toward recovery and restoration from the crucible of abandonment and oppression. Michael Moreno

Community in Black Elk Speaks

Widespread colonization and the genocide of Native American tribes throughout the 19th century radically transformed the structure and power of indigenous communities, particularly the Lakota nation to which Black Elk belonged. Whereas ritual actions and customs throughout the community had served for countless centuries to articulate and define the identity of tribal members, Black Elk relates how his own community slowly begins to break down as the “Wasichus” (white Americans) annex ancestral territories and relocate tribal members to “small islands” (reservations) throughout his lifetime. Here in these small islands, remaining members of the Lakota community are disarmed, politically disenfranchised, and economically ruined to ensure their subservience to white American authority. An integral symbol Black Elk employs in his narrative to define his community is the “sacred hoop.” The circle, itself a universal image of ceaseless cycles of life and power, represents the entire

cosmological framework for Black Elk’s community. “You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle,” Black Elk relates, “and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles.╯.╯.╯. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.” This sacred hoop, in turn, represents the solidarity of the Lakota nation. As such, community virtues such as sharing and providing for each other is an integral component to the survival, success, and proliferation of Black Elk’s community. This posits the Lakotas in opposition to the white colonizers, whose goals are predicated on ceaseless consumption of the land and its resources and the primacy of individual happiness. With the decimation of the bison and white acquisition and seizure of native lands, many of the Lakota tribes watch their sacred hoops fracture and disintegrate under the heavy weight of the American republic’s westward expansion. Unable to compete with American military power or political doubletalk from Washington, many tribal communities base themselves near soldier camps in an effort to survive. Black Elk identifies Chief Red Cloud’s people as the “Hangs-Around-The-Fort” people, for they are one community who embrace the emerging hegemonic authority and think little of permitting ad hoc native chiefs and leaders to sell off remaining land claims sought after by the military and industrialists. As a respected visionary and mystic healer, Black Elk believes it is his duty to mend the broken sacred hoop of his community and restore his people’s dignity and power. However, major setbacks—such as the exodus of much of his tribe into “Grandmother’s Land” (Canada); the assassination of Crazy Horse, their brave leader; and the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee—discourage Black Elk and makes him realize the grave circumstances of his diminishing community. He says, “If a man or woman or child dies, it does not matter long, for the nation lives on. It was the nation that was dying, and the vision was for the nation; but I have done nothing with [this vision].” Despite the new protest dances, such as the Horse Dance and the Ghost Dance, rituals adapted from other indigenous tribes in an effort to reinvigorate the customs and culture of indigenous commu-

214â•…â•… Black Elk nities, Black Elk eventually realizes that the strength and survival of his community resided in the coming together of all Native American nations. In this way, the notion of community broadens to incorporate all the indigenous peoples of the North American continent. Thus, Black Elk Speaks serves as a testimony for a collective consciousness of Native Americans and, in many ways, as a sacred text that underscores the process of these communities coming together during their cultural crises. Michael Moreno

Oppression in Black Elk Speaks

As with most of the members of his community, Black Elk, a Lakota of the Oglala band, anticipated with dread the eventual arrival of the Wasichus (white men) to his lands. Fear of genocide and cultural erasure was associated with the U.S. invasion, and Black Elk Speaks underscores this collective concern through the narrative voice of Black Elk himself: “[E]very one was saying that the Wasichus were coming and that they were going to take our country and rub us all out and that we should all have to die fighting.” The expectation is widely met with feelings of helplessness and inevitability. This is the first wave of societal oppression levied against the Lakota communities in Black Elk’s time. Changes to the land through the wholesale slaughter of the bison, the feverish extraction of gold from Lakota territories such as the Black Hills, and the military occupation of ancestral lands are all features that contribute to the widespread oppression of Black Elk’s people. Indeed, Black Elk maintains that men like General George Armstrong Custer, whom he calls “Pahuska” (Long Hair), “had no right to go [to the Black Hills], because all that country was ours.” This disenfranchisement of land, customs, and loss of sustenance is further augmented by the battles and genocidal policies the U.S. government authorizes and carries out against many of the Native American nations throughout the 19th century. Through a calculated campaign of deception and military strength, the American government ensures that tribal nations, such as the Lakota, will no longer pose a threat to the country’s designs on expansion and settlement. Retelling a series of attacks aimed at

weakening the tribal community, Black Elk laments that the treatment of his people and the betrayal on the part of the Wasichus underscore the fact that U.S. forces will not rest without ultimate victory over the Lakota tribes. “Wherever we went,” Black Elk states, “the soldiers came to kill us, and it was all our own country.” Moreover, despite the treaties the Lakota have signed with emissaries from Washington, D.C.—legal promises that the tribal communities can keep their ancestral lands—the federal government often reneges on its agreements and later annexes the territories for their resources. “[T] hey were chasing us .╯.╯. because we remembered [the treaty] and they forgot,” according to Black Elk. To further oppress the Lakota, the Wasichus disarm the tribal members who bear guns and install political puppet chiefs such as Spotted Tail, who serves at the pleasure of the U.S. government. Deliberate acts of oppression like these not only demoralize individual tribal members but also break the very spirit of the Lakota people. Forcibly relocating the Lakota also aids the U.S. government in not only containing Black Elk’s people, but also in securing social and psychological domination over dissenting members such as Crazy Horse. Indeed, prophecies and ritual protests are manifest throughout Black Elk’s chronicle, thus emphasizing the deep impact the U.S. government has on the tribal communities. The prophecies of oppression are resonant narratives handed down by the Lakota elders, and Black Elk Speaks relates how Black Elk is aware of such messages. He recalls one of these visions from a holy man who stated, “When this happens [the arrival of the Wasichus], you shall live in square gray houses, in a barren land, and beside those square gray houses you shall starve.” From the onset, the Lakota believe that the Wasichus are the harbingers of death and destruction. However, the oppression that is in store is portrayed in Black Elk Speaks as something that cannot be prevented. Rituals like the Ghost Dance, which was widely adopted by many oppressed Native American nations during the 19th century, are thought to be an antidote in restoring traditional life. The importance of “bring[ing] [Black Elk’s] people back into the sacred hoop,” then, is an integral feature of the Ghost Dance for the Lakota.

Black Elk Speaksâ•…â•… 215 It would mean unifying a broken people and reempowering them by resurrecting the slaughtered bison and deceased ancestors. Unfortunately, such hope in the face of oppression is short-lived, for events such as the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 all but destroy the cultural or political visibility of the Lakota people. Michael Moreno

Spirituality in Black Elk Speaks

While Black Elk Speaks is a historical and political account of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Nation in the 19th century, it is also regarded by many as an important narrative of conviction and spirituality. Throughout this turbulent era of American expansionism and the Indian Wars, visions of otherworldly images and sacred rituals performed by his community call and guide Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa), a renowned holy man and healer. Charged with the task of bringing his broken people together and healing the “sacred hoop” of their unity, Black Elk learns through trial and error how lonely and yet empowering it is to be chosen for such an auspicious duty. Black Elk’s first vision comes to him when he is only nine years old. While traveling with his community, who are following the seasonal bison migrations, Black Elk suddenly falls ill and begins to envision a great landscape in the clouds with dancing horses and six sacred and ancient spirits. These spirits, whom he refers to as “the Grandfathers,” offer him words of wisdom and prophecy while imparting important gifts, which symbolize Black Elk’s role as a spiritual leader in his community. Holy items—such as a wooden cup whose liquid reflects the sky, a peace pipe adorned with the image of an outstretched eagle, and a flowering staff that serves as the symbolic “sacred tree” of the Lakota community—are imparted to Black Elk, thus anointing him as a shaman and spiritual guide for others. These visions and the mission of mending the sacred hoop of his fractured people are both awesome and daunting tasks for Black Elk as a young boy. For several years, he is reluctant to share this experience with others for fear that “the part of [him] that talks would try to make words for meaning” but would only come across “like fog and

get away from [him].” Nevertheless, as a witness to the suffering and genocide of his nation, Black Elk uses his spirituality and the mission with which he has been empowered as a vehicle for his own maturation into adulthood. The crimes and abuses committed by the U.S. Army only bolster his testimony against these atrocities recounted throughout Black Elk Speaks. Chief Crazy Horse, Black Elk’s famous relative, had a similar vision and mission when he was just a boy. Black Elk thus recognizes that power and confidence can come through using his ancestral gifts to strengthen his community. As such, an important part of his spiritual development occurs when he realizes that the world of spirits “is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world.” This new perspective gives Black Elk the ability to transform his vision into a ritual act that the community can perform. Making a direct connection between the mundane world and the spiritual realm, he believes, will heal his people and deliver them from further disenfranchisement by the Wasichus (white men). The first of these rituals that Black Elk and the elders orchestrate occurs when he is 15 years old. Using members of the community as stand-ins for the dancing horses and the grandfathers of the original vision, Black Elk inaugurates the Sacred Horse Dance as a way to bring the community together, to offer its members hope and comfort, and to draw “a shadow cast upon the earth” as a way to illustrate the Lakota’s direct association with the ancient and spiritual realm of their ancestors. As a simple conduit for this spiritual vision, Black Elk maintains that the ritual is necessary to generate a lasting power, and that performing this vision with his people is the only way to make the spirit of the ancestors come alive. In Black Elk Speaks, imitating this outer world of the spirits brings the Lakota community closer to a unifying source of energy and wisdom. Recreating sacred circles during the rituals performed is, thus, integral in mending the sacred hoop. Black Elk says, “Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle”; therefore, erasing the division between these worlds becomes a way to regenerate an identity for his people and make all things cyclical

216â•…â•… Blake, William and connected. Performing other rites, such as the imported Ghost Dance or the Heyoka Ceremony, which mimicks a later vision of Black Elk, serves equally to make the community not only happy but empowered at a time when battles waged against the Lakota nation and other Native American tribes are destroying the livelihood and voices of these indigenous peoples. Michael Moreno

BLAKE, WILLIAMâ•… Songs of Innocence and of Experienceâ•… (1789, 1794)

William Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1789) were included in Songs of Experience (1794), a book of lyrics engraved with illustrations and then handcolored. Blake’s Songs are known for their visual effects, enhanced by his illustrations and his graphic words and images. Not immediately popular when it appeared, Songs included lyrics that later became canonical texts, such as “The Chimney Sweeper” poems and “Tyger.” Songs of Innocence begins with a cheerful dialogue between the narrator’s persona, a piper, and a child. The lyrics that follow present a benevolent world with happy children and infants, tame animals and birds, and bountiful nature. Songs of Experience starts with a grim soliloquy by the narrator’s persona, the Bard, addressing the barren earth. The lyrics that follow present miserable children and infants, wild animals, and destroyed nature. These lyrics question faith by focusing on social and religious corruption. While the chimney sweepers and the children of Innocence patiently bear their hardships with promises of a rewarding afterlife, their counterparts in Experience expose the hypocrisy of their patriarchal protectors for perpetuating such abuses and failing to offer relief. Through his two sets of lyrics, Blake (1757– 1827) explores such themes as innocence and experience, spirituality, nature, parenthood, education, love, and suffering. It is important to note that he does not suggest a binary relationship between the songs of Innocence and those of Experience because they supposedly complement each other. The poems trace the growth of the poet/ speaker from innocence to experience, from the role

of a mere piper to that of the all-knowing Bard. Blake also does not offer a definite answer concerning his political and religious beliefs but, rather, presents disparate orthodox and unorthodox views to consider. Mariam Radhwi

Innocence and Experience in Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Blake uses the theme of innocence and experience to criticize institutionalized religion as a corruptive force, ruining children and grownups alike. In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, he demonstrates the different ways of perceiving the world. Innocence offers an innocent perspective of the world, namely that of children, who simply believe what they are told. Although difficult for adults to appreciate, these lyrics reveal children’s socially acquired, though unquestioning, attitude toward religious and social doctrines, an outlook accepting of any possible discrepancies or injustices. Experience depicts the same world from a different perspective, exposing the injustices and cruelty dominant in the world and pleading for immediate relief. For Blake, innocence is the outlook on life that stems from an uncomplicated, childish viewpoint. He values such a view because it lacks the bitterness accompanying experience and is all-accepting rather than questioning. The lyrics in Experience differ from those in Innocence in their pervading gloom and skepticism stemming from the experiences one gains from passing through life’s challenges and hardships. Although such experiences shape the necessary maturity accompanying adulthood, experience endows one with the critical outlook that reshapes formerly perceived beliefs, especially the unquestioned acceptance of suffering. However, such an experienced outlook is not limited to adults but is also experienced by the abused children of “The Chimney Sweeper” and “The School Boy” who resist their oppressed situations and expose their patriarchal protectors. The songs also have differing ways of treating childhood. In “A Cradle Song,” childhood raises holy thoughts of baby Jesus and a passion for the health of the sleeping baby. The poem presents a mother watching over her sleeping child and

Songs of Innocence and of Experienceâ•…â•… 217 grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice for the redemption of humanity, including her baby and herself. The same scene is differently presented in Experience, where adults perceive childhood jealously. For example, the children’s nurse in the “Nurse’s Song” is embittered while she watches her charges play freely in the valley. Rather than raising holy thoughts or emotions of gratitude and benevolence, the children only remind her of her declining youth. She therefore secretly mocks their joy and soothes her bitterness with thoughts of their own future decline. Innocence and experience also interact in such poems as the explicitly contrasted “The Lamb” of Innocence and “The Tyger” of Experience. The speaker’s innocent outlook causes him to view the lamb in the spiritual manner with which he was taught to perceive life. The speaker thus glorifies the Creator by commenting on the lamb’s simple and immediate physical needs, which the child shares, such as enjoying life, food, clothing, and a beautiful voice. The child excitedly concludes this list of blessings with the additional delight of sharing their names with Jesus, the lamb, and the child. The speaker in the second lyric perceives the tiger with a rather mature outlook, commenting on its complex nature in a series of rhetorical questions. Although the speaker dwells at length on each physical feature, the tiger appears to defy his conceptions and rather puzzles him with its pervasive strength. The speaker wonders about the tiger’s creator by listing the incredible powers required in creating such a creature, but he refrains from identifying this creator, unlike the speaker in “The Lamb,” who joyfully identifies the lamb’s creator and his as one. The creator of “The Tyger” is also paradoxically challenged by being materialized and humanized with his iron-working tools, though he is repeatedly glorified for his great abilities to create such a being, the tiger, and its weaker counterpart, the lamb. By juxtaposing the tiger and the lamb, the speaker explores creation from perspectives of innocence and of experience, the simple child’s eye and the complicated adult’s. From the previous examples, the realization the speaker achieves in Experience produces the skeptical tone of the second section. These lyrics criticize the state of humanity only after the children of Innocence

have led a happy and innocent life, abiding by the religious and social concepts that they have been taught to internalize. In the second section, Blake suggestively reveals the situation of those who have failed to internalize such concepts and the threat they pose to institutionalized religion with their questionings. The abused groups of the latter section thus reject the otherworldly beliefs by which the children of innocence were oppressed, instead demanding immediate relief. Mariam Radhwi

Nature in Songs of Innocence and of Experience

While reading William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, it is important to conceive of the poet’s nature in generic terms, as including all of creation. Throughout his Songs, Blake examines different aspects of “nature,” considering each according to prevalent beliefs. Besides the natural world, nature in Blake’s Songs includes human nature. Innocence focuses on innocent human nature and promotes a positive outlook of life, to the extent of accepting injustice and misery and emphasizing human love. Experience stresses humans’ darker side, such as jealousy, hatred, and their potential for destruction. Various natural elements appear in each section of Songs, including wild and tame animals, various plants and flowers, and a wide selection of birds and beasts. Nature in its disparate forms functions as a protective shield, especially for the children of Innocence, offering comfort and protecting them from unknown dangers. Nature also repeatedly changes color and consistency in both sections, taking various forms and roles. On the visual level, Blake published his Songs in illuminated printings that were hand-colored using a complicated process. Most of his lyrics were printed with colorful illustrations that further enriched the meaning he conveyed with his words. To examine the choice of colors would be a futile task because they inevitably changed with time while appearing in different manuscripts. However, one important aspect of Blake’s drawing efforts is that using such a costly method to print his poems visually and textually emphasizes the beauty and importance of nature.

218â•…â•… Blake, William Another aspect of the visual version of Songs is the way Blake’s nature encloses and surrounds the text in each section. In Innocence, the plants and shrubbery are thick and rich in leaves and fruits, heavily intermingling with the text by spreading on the pages and equally shielding the children and the lines and words of each lyric. But in Experience, the plants are visually less intense and carry fewer leaves and fruit than in the former section. Such differences in visual imagery suggest bleak surroundings that are enhanced by the woeful images of the elderly and children. The theme of nature appears on the textual level, coinciding with the visual one, and is comparably unique. Blake skillfully produces vivid natural images, starting from the introduction with its blooming surroundings, where a child commands a piper to compose happy songs out of natural or rural elements. Appearing in bright shades of color, the natural surroundings start as tame and protective of children, and human nature starts as loving. But nature becomes textually desolate in the introduction to Experience. In the second section, the initial blooming imagery and the celebration of human nature decline along with the decline of nature, as in “My Pretty Rose Tree,” and with the pervading corruption in human institutions, as in “The Garden of Love” and “London.” Such decline is introduced with the poet’s woeful words addressed to a fallen earth, which, however, justifies its fallen state as initiated by human corruption. Humans in turn blame the declining surroundings for their fall. Such images are repeatedly emphasized by the shabby and rundown buildings of “London” and the decline of life in poems such as “A Poison Tree” and “Holy Thursday,” where human nature and surrounding nature deteriorate equally. Nature is also continuously challenged in Experience through characters such as the puzzled speaker of “The Fly,” who muses on the ambiguity of life, questioning the difference between humans and nonhumans, animals and inanimate objects, and hence the living and the dead. The speaker concludes with the paradoxical view that the ability to think is the defining aspect between those pairings. But this conclusion contradicts the prevalent beliefs

that humans should submit to their superiors, patriarchal protectors, a view graphically emphasized in “The Little Boy Lost.” Blake repeatedly questions the reality of nature, which complicates his views, especially in instances where nature takes a life of its own, as in “The Tyger” and “The Sick Rose,” or where natural elements become agents of evil for humans, as in “The Poison Tree.” Blake therefore uses the theme of nature in various ways, leaving the question of the nature of “nature” open. Both human and nonhuman nature appear in different forms and function in different ways. Nature has a tame and positive side, but Blake continuously emphasizes that the other, darker side is comparably important and should be appreciated whether it is initiated by human corruption or not. Mariam Radhwi

Spirituality in Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Modern critics have focused on William Blake’s spirituality as it stems from the tension between his Protestant upbringing and his radicalism, both of which shape the profound, though ambiguous, symbolism in his Songs. This was perhaps fueled by his spiritual questionings and contemporary political upheavals, notably the French Revolution. Blake’s attitude toward spirituality and the world in general changed drastically into an increasingly skeptical, albeit extraordinary, view. The theme of spirituality in Songs functions separately from religion, though the two themes share basic principles. Blake believed in the fundamentals of Christianity, especially Jesus and his encompassing passion for humanity as displayed in his sacrifice. Despite his basic beliefs, Blake rejected orthodox religion and continually criticized the way belief was institutionalized and thus corrupted and abused. His radical religious stand produced a spiritual outlook that valued life and the individual, understanding God through the self and its surrounding creation rather than through religious institutions. God thus spiritually manifests himself to humans on an individual basis, without any mediators. In Songs, God the Creator and God the Savior appear in all surroundings—the innocent smiling infants and the wonderful creatures, such as the tiger of Experience

Fahrenheit 451â•…â•… 219 and its innocent counterpart, the lamb. Throughout Songs, Blake emphasizes God’s divine abilities and love for humans as favored over the popular image of God as a wrathful creator. Blake treats the theme of spirituality differently in both parts of Songs. The lyrics in Innocence sound like religious hymns, connecting each worldly experience, even the miserable ones, to elevating spiritual experiences, such as baby Jesus’ salvaging humans in “A Cradle Song.” The poems in this section also repeatedly promise afterlife rewards for the oppressed, a fact soothing the abused in poems such as “The Chimney Sweeper.” The readers, supposedly children, are repeatedly encouraged to shun worldly and material comfort and retain a spiritual outlook. The lyrics thus overemphasize spiritual benevolence and offer comfort through repeated images of Jesus aiding the needy, as in “The Chimney Sweeper,” and “The Little Black Boy.” Even parental negligence and abuse in poems such as “The Little Boy Lost” and its counterpart “The Little Boy Found” is excusable because of the pervading spiritual optimism, guarding and rewarding children. Five years after publishing Songs of Innocence, Blake offered a further radical view of spirituality, revealing great abhorrence of workplace abuses and skepticism of the optimism expressed in Innocence. In Songs of Experience, Blake questions the beliefs he had formerly offered by presenting the same incidents from a different viewpoint, that of experience. Childhood is no longer a happy and carefree stage, and spirituality fails to comfort the abused. The oppressed reject otherworldly rewards of spirituality, arguing for immediate relief and exposing the patriarchy, parents, and religious and national rulers for their failed roles. The lyrics in Experience repeatedly question the good of worldly and spiritual fulfillment in light of the existing corruption pervading churches, workplaces, and homes. Such questioning was seditious at that time because church and state were viewed as interchangeable and sacred concepts. Blake reveals the social reaction to such questioning toward the end of Experience in “The Little Boy Lost.” After poems on two lost children, he traces a boy’s being lost spiritually, which causes him to be burned. Blake questions institutionalized religion through

the young boy, who is doomed for merely wondering at the discrepancy between conventional teachings, theoretical beliefs, and their actual implementation, which tends to generate injustice and hatred rather than highlight God’s all-encompassing love and benevolence. By such criticism, Blake raises questions as to the nature of belief and promotes a subjective form of spirituality. With his young hero suffering condemnation and his helpless parents’ woe at losing their child, Blake further magnifies the evils of institutionalized religion and the need for spiritual freedom. In the previous examples, Blake’s innocents enjoy spiritual freedom because they are shielded from prevalent abuses, which they encounter once they gain experience. While Innocence celebrates Jesus’ benevolence, his relieving the needy and spreading happiness, Experience fails to relieve people, as exemplified in its abusive, tyrannical figures who initiate mistreatment of children and the marginalized. The spiritual tone of Innocence soon turns secular with Blake’s supplications in Experience to resist corruption and to revive the bleak surroundings. Songs thus revisualizes spirituality by questioning orthodox beliefs and experimenting with a radical form of spirituality that differs from organized religion and ensures spiritual freedom. Mariam Radhwi

BRADBURY, RAYâ•… Fahrenheit 451â•… (1953)

Ray Bradbury (b. 1920) is regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. More concerned with story and character than technology, Bradbury’s science fiction is best categorized as “humanist.” In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury imagines a world where books are illegal. Squadrons of “firemen” are employed to burn books, and anyone caught with a book is arrested. Published in 1953, just as television was becoming a popular medium, Fahrenheit 451 presents a world in which independent thought and the questioning of authority are subversive practices. For Bradbury, storytelling is among the noblest of human activities, and books, as transmitters of story, are sacred objects. By destroying books, the

220â•…â•… Bradbury, Ray state in Fahrenheit 451 limits human expression and restricts the human spirit. Books and the ideas they carry are threats to a society that does not want its citizens to exercise independent thought. The novel’s protagonist, Guy Montag, discovers that the power of storytelling lies in its ability to bind people into community. At the end of the novel, Montag finds himself part of an alienated society, the function of which is to remember the stories from books lost to fire. With the destruction of the printed word, humans and human communities become the protectors and medium for the old stories, stories that carry the history of humanity and its identity. Mark D. Dunn

Education in Fahrenheit 451

The education of the fireman Guy Montag begins with a question. Walking home after a long day at the station, Montag meets his 17-year-old neighbor, Clarisse McClellan, who asks, “Do you ever read any of the books you burn?” In Ray Bradbury’s nightmare world of censorship, historical revision, and thought control, reading books is illegal, and firemen like Montag are responsible for ensuring that the law is not broken. Books are confiscated. Books are burned. People caught possessing books are put on trial and jailed. But the protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 has a secret he does not share with his young neighbor: Guy Montag has been collecting books. Despite his profession, Montag cannot resist the allure of books and the knowledge they carry. From the beginning of the novel, Guy Montag is a willing student waiting for a teacher. At their second meeting, Clarisse teaches Montag about the joy of rainfall. Rain and the natural world outside the city are foreign elements to Montag. He has never tasted rainfall and must learn of this small participation in the cycle of nature from watching Clarisse. Dissatisfied with her teachers, Clarisse has moved her classroom to the outdoors. She learns from the world what she needs to know of it. Speaking of the drudgery of the school system, she says, “[W]e never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you.╯.╯.╯. It’s a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom.” The model of education Clarisse

describes is one that most students are familiar with, in which the teacher provides information that students are expected to consume. However, Clarisse knows that the important aspects of life are not taught in her school. The type of learning Clarisse longs for is not the kind imposed on students by a system, but rather an opportunity for students to find understanding of the mysteries of the universe within themselves. After all, the word education has its roots in the Latin educare: “to bring out.” Clarisse also knows that the process of learning begins with asking questions. Montag begins to question his job when a woman chooses to be burned alive rather than to abandon her books. Disturbed by the incident, Montag calls in sick to work and retreats into bed. There are no answers to the questions that trouble him, but he suspects that the books he burns might “get us halfway out of the cave.” Like Clarisse, he questions the effectiveness of the school system he has known. Education, in Montag’s world, is learning the robotic functions of “pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts.” Schools, says Montag, focus too much on obtaining a job and not enough on the pleasures of learning and the importance of curiosity. When Clarisse McClellan and her family disappear, Montag is left without a guide. His curiosity has been aroused by his reading and by conversations with Clarisse, but he has no one to share it with. He remembers Professor Faber, a man he met in a park some time before. Faber, a former English professor, tries to help Montag sift through the jumble of new ideas and insights that confuse him. Montag laments that “nobody listens anymore.” The ability to listen, Montag learns, is an important second step in the learning process, after the ability to ask difficult questions. Professor Faber teaches Montag that ignorance, and a willingness to display ignorance, is one of the most useful tools a student can possess. Without an ability to accept and recognize within oneself a need for learning, a student will never learn. As Guy Montag demonstrates, education and knowledge are dangerous things because the smallest taste of learning can ignite a desire for more. The education of Guy Montag begins when he questions

Fahrenheit 451â•…â•… 221 ideas he has always accepted. Although Montag finds no easy answers to his questions, he does develop a need to act upon his knowledge. He learns that with understanding comes responsibility. Montag decides the best way he can honor his teachers and the truths they have pointed him toward is to protect knowledge from being lost. His education leads him from the comfortable illusion of a fabricated society to the harsher reality of nature found in the wilds outside the city. No longer limited by assumptions, and admitting his own lack of knowledge, Guy Montag begins to see himself as part of a larger process beyond the nightmare politics of the only society he has ever known. Mark D. Dunn

Individual and Society in Fahrenheit 451

Individuality is dangerous in the world portrayed in Fahrenheit 451. A totalitarian society, a system wherein almost everything is controlled by the government, demands that individuals conform to the crowd. To stand out in this type of society is to be targeted by forces that seek to control and limit human potential. As Captain Beatty warns Montag, “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal.” Montag’s point (even though it is the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, that states all men are created equal) is that the idea of an individual within society eats away at the uniformity of the greater society. In Fahrenheit 451, one method of protecting society from the will of its individual members is book burning—one of the most extreme manifestations of censorship. A state determined to exist as a single political body must suppress divergent voices. If one member of the whole acts independently, the state will splinter into a society of individuals. Therefore, totalitarian governments suppress the qualities and ideas that make individuals unique. The irony for Bradbury is that society as a whole is made up of individuals, all pursuing their personal goals while contributing to the common interest. The ideal society will balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the collective. By placing his characters in such a stifling atmosphere, Bradbury shows the dangers of the potential imbalance.

Guy Montag finds himself at odds with his society. Riding the subway one afternoon, he is unable to remember the Sermon on the Mount, which he has read recently. The train car is filled with an advertisement for toothpaste. While the people on the train sing along and stamp their feet with the commercial, Montag explodes with rage. This scene shows the individual rebelling against the demands of a totalitarian society. Montag’s personality has been suppressed to the degree that he erupts in violent rebellion, shouting “Shut up, shut up, shut up” to the crowded train car. The other passengers think he has gone insane, but his action is only the natural response of an individual who has repressed his unique nature for too long a time. Perhaps the best explanation of the individual’s role in society comes to us from Reverend Padover, an outcast who welcomes Montag into the new society. The reverend was punished for writing a book entitled The Fingers in the Glove; the Proper Relationship between the Individual and Society. In this analogy, the individual is an active part of the whole. It is the individual who, ultimately, must take responsibility for the actions of his or her society by challenging the state should it go against the will of the people. Mark D. Dunn

Survival in Fahrenheit 451

The theme of survival dominates much of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The survival of Guy Montag as he is pursued by the state functions as the main plot and action in the novel. He runs from the only community he has known and turns to the world outside civilization for shelter. In the wilds beyond the city, Montag is befriended by Granger and his band of exiles. Granger greets Montag in a strange way, saying, “Welcome back from the dead.” Here we see the accepted reality of the technological world revealed as illusion. It is to the wasteland outside the city that Montag goes for survival and where he finds community at last. The journey of the novel’s protagonist points to a deeper sort of survival. It is the survival of culture— in the form of the written word—that concerns Bradbury the most. By memorizing lost texts, Montag and his new friends carry the cultural wealth of history into an uncertain future. Each survivor

222â•…â•… Bradbury, Ray embodies a work of literature and introduces himself not with a name but with the title of the work he or she has memorized. “I am Plato’s Republic,” says one. Bradbury’s point is that the reader, through the act of reading the text and committing it to memory, becomes the text. In the end, we are made of and defined by the stories we carry. Granger explains how the group proceeds quietly, making no overt acts of rebellion. As Granger says, “If we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good.” In this way, the survival of the cultural wealth of literature depends on the survival of its carriers. Literature survives in Fahrenheit 451 by changing its medium. Literature (from the Latin littera, or “letter”) in recent centuries has been transmitted primarily through the written word. In Bradbury’s novel, books are banned because the ideas they transmit threaten the state. It is thought that these ideas can be destroyed with the destruction of the physical text. Bradbury tells us that the essence of “the book” and the stories and thoughts contained within—the “knowledge,” as Granger would say— transcend the physical text. Literature changes in Fahrenheit 451 from a textual form into an oral form. Ripped from the page, the word survives. The advantage of the oral tradition over print is that it is infinitely portable and infinitely adaptable. A story written on a page is set. For as long as the text survives, the story or idea will go unchanged. But the oral tradition that Guy Montag enters toward the end of Fahrenheit 451 passes literature along like dna. The oral text will forever evolve, change, and adapt to the demands of its environment. The story survives for as long as there are people willing to speak and to listen. In this way, literature exists beyond the page and is no longer dependent on the printing press or computer for survival. Fire cannot stop it. Freed from the page, the knowledge transmitted in books returns to its place of origin within the mind and bodies of the people it represents. Mark D. Dunn

BRADBURY, RAYâ•… The Martian Chroniclesâ•… (1950)

Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles has enjoyed widespread popularity since its first printing in

1950. Its collection of interrelated short stories is set in the future, beginning in January 1999 and ending in October 2026. The stories are of varying length, ranging from a few paragraphs to approximately 14 pages. They are set both on Earth and on Mars. They detail the Earth settlers’ struggles as they leave home; colonize an unfamiliar land; meet strange beings; and, most of all, confront themselves. They cause the reader to both despair over the human condition and hope for its fragile future. The main subject matter of The Martian Chronicles is the human condition, and Bradbury explores that condition through a variety of themes. One theme deals with love: the dysfunction of a loveless marriage, the loss of a son, the hope of meeting a new love, and the heartrending grief of losing one’s family. In exploring the theme of nature, Bradbury describes the energy of a new planet. Its seasons are different; its growth spurts are odd; its rains, pools, cities, and ruins collect and reflect both the human spirit and the alien Martian past in ways that are familiar and strange. The natural world is inseparable from both the colonizer and the native, for both are encompassed by a planet that has its own rhythms and mysteries. Therefore, alienation, not only from one’s spouse, children, and culture but also from one’s planet, plays an important role in this book. The settlers have left Earth behind or are preparing to do so; they are trying to understand a land that is hostile and strange. How is one to understand oneself when the fissure between oneself and one’s land, or oneself and one’s spouse, is deep and seemingly permanent? Anna Minore

Alienation in The Martian Chronicles

The theme of alienation underlies almost every story in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. Alienation has something to do with being withdrawn, isolated, or indifferent; it indicates separation, and it can go so far as to include estrangement, unfriendliness, or even hostility. Statistically, it is a lack of correlation; psychologically, it can be manifested as insanity. Thus, Bradbury’s first action—placing his characters on another planet (Mars)—in and of itself places the characters in a state of alienation from the reader and from the character’s own natural

The Martian Chronicles â•…â•… 223 environment. Bradbury’s characters are cut off from their ecosystem and their wider system of social support. They do not know how the planet works; for example, they plant seeds only to see huge towering trees minutes after a harsh rain. They do not know how the Martians think: it is only in casting themselves off the cliff that they decipher the Martians’ pacifist intentions. Most horrifyingly, they do not understand each other. Husbands crush their wives’ dreams, astronauts kill each other at point-blank range, and a son looks speculatively at the alien presence, half known and half understood, of his father. They cannot ultimately trust their own perceptions of time, space, or even sanity. Finally, Bradbury’s characters, both Martian and human, face the alienation of living without their past (as time changes all things) and without those they love (as relatives and friends die). The Martian Chronicles is thus not really about Mars at all: it is about the human condition and our response to it. As the stories progress, it is clear that in this book, the human response to alienation is largely unhelpful. Bradbury’s characters deny, avoid, and repress their extreme loneliness and separation. They build huge cities, sprouting like evil fungi on an unknown planet, in order to reproduce Earth, the one Known Thing, and thus escape the great Loneliness. They cast aside all caution, all training, and all reason in order to enjoy the brief fiction that their loved ones have perhaps not died at all but still remain somewhere and will welcome them home. They kill in order to regain the sole attention of their spouse, and they crush the dreams of others in order to retain their own sense of superiority. They would destroy someone else’s child in order to have their own back again. They cover up loss, estrangement, and grief; they resist facing their own alienation and ironically increase it by seeking to destroy it. They vomit on foreign temples and dance on the dead bodies of alien beings. These examples of alienation culminate with the destruction of cultures and planets: the Martian culture is dying from within prior to the Earth invasion; the Earth invaders destroy the Martian culture and reproduce their own on Mars; the colonization of Mars fails; an atomic war destroys Earth, and the colonists see it explode before their eyes.

Yet Bradbury also gives us alternative pathways toward dealing with alienation. The answers lie in bits and pieces throughout some of the stories. They include respect and reverence for a culture other than one’s own, as exemplified by the rebel Spender and the missionary Father Peregrine. Even when the realities are so different as to defy connection, the Martian and Tomas keep to polite civilities. Some Martians manifest consistently nonviolent approaches to the colonizers, even against the multiple murders and widespread destruction committed by Sam Parkhill. One of the most positive yet horrifying stories is told through the eyes of a young teenage boy, who is made to look into the waters of an old canal and realize that he, indeed, is the Martian. Bradbury’s last chapter promises a new beginning for Mars and for the human race. It carries the seeds of its own conflict (father-son tension and too few females) as well as its own hope, as alienation is finally dealt with not in terms of denial, grasping fear, and a frenzy to duplicate the past, but rather with acceptance of loss and appreciation for what is new. Anna Minore

Love in The Martian Chronicles

Early in The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury gives us a description of failed love. In “Ylla,” Mr. and Mrs. K had once enjoyed one another’s company, in harmony with the colors of their planet and its slow movement of beauty, but they are “not happy now.” Mrs. K becomes trapped within her beautiful home. Mr. K is familiar with what she does and never does, and yet he does not truly know her. His sterile knowledge of her cannot abide secrets. Her emotions and interest come alive only in her dreams of a stranger who will come from the sky. When those dreams become reality, her husband kills that stranger. By the end of the chapter, Mrs. K doesn’t know her own feelings and is thus denied intimacy even with herself. She cries uncontrollably without knowing the reason why. Her response to her inner and outer isolation is to cry, tremble, and repeat her husband’s promise that she’ll “be all right tomorrow.” A second example of failed love occurs in “June 2001: And the Moon Be Still as Bright.” Real love

224â•…â•… Bradbury, Ray has something to do with knowledge, respect, and a deep belonging, as Spender had sensed intuitively during his first evening on Mars. Without that belonging, he explains, all naming is alien, and all touching will fall short of communion. He predicts, “No matter how we touch Mars, we’ll never touch it. And then we’ll get mad at it, and you know what we’ll do? We’ll rip it up, rip the skin off, and change it to fit ourselves.” Yet Spender’s actions illustrate his own description of failed love. He lacks a connection both to the Martian culture and to the coarse Earth culture represented by his fellow astronauts. The resultant lack of connection breeds his actions of anger, violence, and destruction. He shows us that with a failed love, violence can erupt between people and places and, as seen above with the Ks, between people and people. Bradbury also illustrates the loneliness generated by the loss of true love. It can create such a cavernous need that LaFarge in “The Martian” chooses to increase another’s loss in order to assuage his own. He stands at the balcony and consciously takes another man’s “daughter” in order to regain his “son.” This need traps the Martian Tom, tearing him apart and destroying his identity. The Martian cannot be the beloved for all people. His very responsiveness assures his destruction. And in “April 2026: The Long Years,” grief for his dead family leads Hathaway to create sophisticated substitutes to fill his loneliness. Love is a necessity. Lacking the reality of a family, he needs facsimiles in order to survive. Yet love is also powerful beyond measure. As Janice finds out in “The Wilderness,” love is all one needs to leave behind everything that one knows and take a risky one-way trip to another planet. Love can overthrow a crew of 16 men, all logical and highly trained, by immersing them in the relative nostalgia of their childhood and offering them the return of their lost loves. It overcomes training, logic, and habituation; it can destroy you or it can, as at the end of the book, seed a new world. Bradbury thus leaves us with a sense of hope. In the early part of the book, Spender stands in a ruined city, by moonlight, and pronounces that “Love itself must rest.” Throughout the book, Bradbury shows us the pause of love, both on a planetary and an interpersonal level. Yet by the end of the

book, we have come full circle. It is again nighttime, and we are in yet another ruined city. However, now the face of the boy becomes like an old Martian mask, and he is not in a dying marriage but part of a young, harmonious family, in touch with each other and the world around them. They have let go of the past (having burned their Earth maps and destroyed their rocket) and moved fully into the present with each other. They are not trying to change the planet into a replica of their past. They merge with it and allow themselves to be transformed by it, becoming the new Martians. Love is thus expanded from romantic to familial to planetary. Despite the warped foolishness, the loss, the stupidity, the violence, and the pain that characterize many human-human and human-planet interactions, Bradbury leaves us with the hope that love, like the survival of the human species, is still possible. Anna Minore

Nature in The Martian Chronicles

Nature plays a prominent role in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. It illustrates the vastness of the planet Mars, indicates the harmony and disharmony of the characters’ interactions with that planet, and gives the reader hints about the emotional state of the characters themselves. Bradbury thus uses his descriptions of nature as a literary technique: They are not random descriptions of a foreign planet but instead provide valuable information about the characters and their fates. For example, Bradbury’s descriptions of nature indicate the vastness of the planet. Humans are dwarfed in it. Sam Parkhill’s one lone hotdog stand is an outpost of commercialism within the dusty plains. Mr. Hathaway staves off madness by searching the huge night skies for a single red rocket flare. Jose drives along a dark country road until he feels like he is lost in time, as if time swallows him up whole along with the singing insects and the one (huge) insect he encounters bearing a Martian on its back. Time, space, and size are stretched to such huge proportions that human beings are literally lost within them. Benjamin cannot breathe properly, either because the air is too thin or because it almost drips with thick greenness. The seeds he plants grow a century’s worth of earthtime in just a few minutes.

Of Plymouth Plantationâ•…â•… 225 The miracle house of technology falls apart at the seams, like the disintegrating death of a body, as fire, wind, and heat sweep through it. Natural forces destroy the domesticated dog, the mechanical mice, and the African beasts cavorting on the walls of the children’s nursery. Tamed, artificial nature gives way to the uncontrollable forces of the planet. Bradbury’s characters cannot breathe, survive, keep track of time, or think clearly. They lose their identities; their lives; and momentarily, their sanity. They are at times completely overwhelmed by the planet itself. Yet Bradbury also uses nature in more subtle ways to indicate the emotional state of the characters in question. Flowers, often indicative of perfume, fragrance, sex and sexuality, and beauty, here contrast with the bare sterility of Mrs. K’s marriage. Sam Parkhill’s hotdog stand, located in the vastness of a dead seabed with a view of Earth on the horizon, shows his utter cultural and moral paucity. The Martians are different from us not only in their hair color and the color of their eyes, but by the fact that they are similar to forces of nature that cannot be humanized: They die like the snow, they shatter like ice, they ripple in the wind “like an image on cold water.” Thus, nature tells us something about the characters in the story: They are radically different from us, or they are hauntingly alone, or they lack richness of thought and imagination. Finally, Bradbury uses nature imagery to portray a state of harmony between the characters and the natural world. In his final chapter, a family enjoys a picnic boat ride. The children’s hands become like clams in the water, and the mother’s eyes mirror the deep pools. They are drawn toward fountains that still gush forth in the ancient cities. They see their own reflections in the water of the canal; their reflections now ripple like the bodies of the Martians in the previous chapter. They incorporate the natural world into their bodies and culture instead of defining themselves against it or destroying it. Humanity’s hope of survival lies not in importing Oregon pine from one planet to colonize another, not by making nature “better,” and not by seeking to destroy those whom we perceive as destructive, but rather by reintegrating ourselves with our environment. The Earth colonizers must become Martians if they hope to survive, and we human beings, as

evolutionary newcomers, must act as if we are a part of the planet Earth instead of colonizers of it. Anna Minore

BRADFORD, WILLIAMâ•… Of Plymouth Plantationâ•… (1630–1650; printed 1856)

Written over a period of 20 years, William Bradford’s journal has become one of the staple of American literature. The historical information alone counts for its value and place in Americana. Although Bradford (1590–1657) began writing in 1630, his account takes the reader back to the latter part of the first decade of the 1600s, when the small separatist congregation of which he was a member emigrated from England to the Netherlands. He ends his writing in 1650, when he append to his treatise a list of the people aboard the ship Mayflower. Of course, the work is more than just a collage of facts: It is Bradford’s meditative interpretation of his world. He often employs a retrospective analysis that allows him to see God’s hand in the events of the history. In this he was most influenced by the pietistic/meditative tradition in late medieval and early modern English religious experience, and by his belief that the events of history were a sort of drama replaying the master plots of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. In fact, some scholars see Of Plymouth Plantation as being styled in the form of a Lord’s Day sermon, a particular type of oratory with which Bradford would have been especially familiar. Bradford’s 270-page manuscript was bound in vellum (prepared skin from a young calf or lamb), its covers being almost the size of a modern-day sheet of writing paper. It was lost during the Revolutionary War (1775–83), was discovered in London in the 1850s, and was first printed in 1856. The manuscript is currently housed at the State Library in the State House in Boston. Matthew Horn

Community in Of Plymouth Plantation

From the beginning of William Bradford’s youthful acquaintance with the Scrooby congregation in Yorkshire to the end of his life as governor of Plymouth Colony, community played a central role in his worldview. His community was composed of

226â•…â•… Bradford, William Protestant believers who were like-minded in what they saw as right Christian doctrine (orthodoxy) and right practice (orthopraxy). The community’s existence was warranted by the New Testament teachings of Paul in his second letter to the church in Corinth: “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.╯.╯.╯. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Cor. 12:12–13, 27). Thus, every believer who took these words seriously—as Bradford certainly did—had an obligation to first look to the spiritual health of the overall body before looking to his or her own well-being. This mindset explains why the Scrooby congregation members were willing to make major decisions like leaving England and moving to the Netherlands and then to the New World. The issue was not that it was inconvenient for their individual members to live in England, but that if they moved together as a group, they could help themselves and thus have a convenient move to a convenient locale. Bradford makes clear at the beginning of his second chapter that there was nothing easy about the moves. He makes note of the pain of separation from their native land and the many uncertainties that await them. He says, though, that they gladly accept this challenge, because they are eager to do God’s will. This specific community moved from England to Amsterdam in order to be free to follow these ordinances as the members thought they should be followed. These same members moved from Amsterdam to Leyden so that their own community would not be corrupted by the infighting of the congregation that had been established in Amsterdam before they arrived (this is John Smith’s congregation, mentioned in chapter 3 of Bradford’s text). They moved from Leyden to the New World mainly in order to save their children from acquiring the worldly lifestyle of the Leyden inhabitants. Before this final move, the congregation had already lived in Leyden for more than a decade and had seen some of their younger members stray. The danger to

the whole group was such that they worried that all of their members could be corrupted. These incidents show that the driving passion for this group was their own unity and identity. Thus, one way for Bradford to highlight the difficulty of carrying out these moves is by emphasizing how the unity suffers during the process. For example, when the group prepares to move from England to Amsterdam, political difficulties cause a sudden rupture in the group when half of the group gets arrested on the shore while the other half sails away unwillingly under the orders of the desperate Dutch captain. And when the community begins to sail from Leyden to America, physical difficulties with the ship itself cause a good portion of the pilgrims to separate from the group and remain in Leyden, much to the distress of those who choose to remain aboard. At the end of chapter 8, Bradford seems hard put to make credible excuses for those who have decided to remain behind. In fact, by his reference to the Gideon story ( Judges 7:1–8 in the Old Testament), he implies that those who remained behind were not really part of God’s plan to populate New England in the first place. All this is not to say that the individual did not matter to Bradford. On the contrary, in Bradford’s theology, the decisions of the individual were paramount as far as an individual’s own particular spiritual condition was concerned. But once the individual made a decision toward biblical Christianity (once he or she was “in Christ”), the needs of the group—for unity, growth, edification, correction, and so on—took precedence. And Bradford the author exemplifies this stance perfectly: Throughout his narrative, he constantly refers to himself in the third person, thereby maintaining a posture that includes him as, in essence, just another part of the whole. He also overlooks personal matters that would themselves be justified in being part of the narrative—his wife’s death, for example—because he is writing the account not as a narrative of his own experience but as an account of the Community’s experiences. Matthew Horn

Identity in Of Plymouth Plantation

The fact that, in his work, William Bradford does not refer to himself in the first person but instead

Of Plymouth Plantationâ•…â•… 227 uses third-person pronouns (he, him, his, and so on) or the generic title “the Governor” says something about his notion of identity. Exactly what it says is not very clear, however. It is possible that his constant avoidance of his own name might point to his hesitancy to claim any good act as his alone, for he would hold it as an indisputable truth that God’s power and will were behind anything good happening in Plymouth. In short, this may be Bradford’s move to avoid any opportunity for pride. It is equally possible that his literary distancing from the figure of his own self signifies his desire to mirror a technique developed by some of the Old Testament and New Testament authors. Many Old Testament writers, such as Moses, Joshua, Solomon (referring to himself as “the teacher” in Ecclesiastes), and most of the major and minor prophets avoid direct reference to themselves. Similarly, the New Testament evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, when they do record their own presence, activity, or words involving incidents with Jesus, almost always refer to themselves in the third person. Of course, this is not the case with every biblical author. Paul in his weighty epistles and John in the book of Revelation constantly employ first-person pronouns. But there is enough of a precedent in the Bible to warrant the speculation that Bradford was thinking of it as his model as he wrote his manuscript over the years. The fact that he uses many biblical phrases in his writing (for instance, see his echo of Paul’s “I know whom I have believed” in the opening of his second chapter), along with purple patches of jubilant praises to God, supports this possibility. However, there is a third reason Bradford may have erased direct identification with himself and his group as completely as he did. The Protestant interpretation of Paul’s New Testament epistles to the first-century churches maintains that the individual Christian loses his own identity within the larger figures of the corporate Christian community and of Christ himself. Passages such as Paul’s 12th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, a chapter that establishes a fundamental likeness between the members of a Christian church and the members of a complete human body (that is to say, the members of the church all function together in order to form one organic whole, complete with

its own head, hands, feet) abound, and the phrase “in Christ,” which is often situated in phrases that place the believers themselves “in Christ,” are even more plentiful. In fact, the specific notion is that the Christian, even while still living on earth, is already occupying a place in heaven as a spectator to God’s glorious designs as they unfold in time: “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6–7). Bradford would have known this verse. This notion of being already seated in the heavens to watch God’s outworking of his own plan has a few ramifications pertinent to a proper reading of Of Plymouth Plantation. First, this introduces a radically passive stance that can be applied to even the supposed actors of the narrative themselves (and, ironically, to the linguistic structure of the writing— the passive voice is the predominant voice in the book). This is fully developed throughout the pages of Bradford’s story. Consider all the times Bradford describes an event in his clear, descriptive style, an event full of action and decision, only to eventually summarize the whole happening, a few paragraphs or pages later, in a way that reorients the energy and activity so that they are seen to be originating from God. A case in point is Bradford’s description in chapter 8 of how the pilgrims initially set out from Leyden to Virginia in a leaky ship. They have to turn back, cram the Mayflower with a double load of passengers, and prepare to set out again. This discourages some of the pilgrims, however, and these decide to give up the journey and stay in Leyden. Toward the very end of the chapter, Bradford says of this, “And thus, like Gedions armie [ Judges 7], this small number was devided, as if the Lord by this worke of his providence thought these few to many for the great worke he had to doe.” This is an example appearing early in Bradford’s work, and it sets the pattern for how much of the later successes and disasters (in Bradford’s term, “visitations”) are to be viewed. The act of viewing, in fact, is the major activity in which both the writer Bradford and the reader are engaged. Bradford’s story, by his own design, is

228â•…â•… Bradford, William viewed from afar, from a distance that turns the story into material for meditation. This, perhaps, hints to why Bradford first entered this information into his journal. Writing about the events distanced them from the writer and allowed him to assume the role not of a writer per se but of a meditative spectator. What was being watched in this history was the unveiling of the power of God, not the establishment of a community of pilgrims. It is fitting here to remember that the first promise the pilgrims made to themselves was that they would be a city on a hill, something the whole world could watch. Bradford’s book is his attempt to make sure that promise was fulfilled for posterity. Matthew Horn

Suffering in Of Plymouth Plantation

England during the late 1500s and early 1600s was in religious turmoil. The Church of England had separated from Roman Catholicism but still maintained many practices that looked very much like old Catholic rituals. Also, although the English no longer looked to the pope for ultimate religious authority, the English monarch and the archbishop of Canterbury claimed such an authority for themselves. People in England who did not approve of the direction the Church of England was taking began either to push for further reform while remaining in the church or to band together in small congregations or sects in order to move out from the church. William Bradford and his community belonged to this latter group. For them, the Bible was the ultimate and sole authority in religious matters, and it was to be read and interpreted by individuals for themselves. These people wanted to break with the official church, and they knew such a break would be difficult, for the Bible proclaimed that all who lived in a genuinely godly way in this world would be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12). However, it also told them that God would completely deliver them from the fire of persecution (Isaiah 43:2) and that those who are persecuted because of righteousness would inherit the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:10). It even said that God himself would bring suffering to the lives of his children to help them grow in grace (Hebrews 12:4–11).

Bradford and his group were therefore expecting persecution on all fronts. This is reflected in Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, which immediately develops as major themes the notions of suffering for faith and of successfully enduring that suffering. In the first chapter, Bradford’s narrative points out that Satan was attacking the work of the earlier reformers in England by diluting their work and that he (Satan) was now stirring the corrupt clergy against truth-seeking congregations like the one Bradford had joined. But corrupt clergy was only one of Satan’s tools: He could use anyone who was not fully endeavoring to imitate God’s holiness. This includes religiously indifferent law officials or merchants. Thus, in the second chapter, Bradford tells of how a treacherous sea captain betrays them to the magistrates as they seek passage to Holland and of how, a year later, the law officers arrest at least half of the group as the congregation seeks a second escape. Evil men will be described throughout the narrative to highlight this sort of persecution. Suffering also comes from a more subtle enemy: the circumstances caused by the pilgrims’ struggle to survive economically. This is seen in Plymouth Plantation’s experiences caused by intense pressures of its property management, its commitments to its financiers, and its trading with Native Americans, but it is first seen in the pilgrims’ stay at Holland and Leyden (as described in chapters 3 and 4). Here the world creeps into the life of the holy congregation, causing some to turn away after material gain, some to age prematurely through overwork, and some to lose their children to the city’s alluring heathenism. This convinces the pilgrims that although they are not in physical danger from the authorities, their faith is still in enough danger to justify a move to the Americas, where they can isolate themselves from the corroding influences of an unholy civilization. Underlying these accounts of persecution is the idea that for their own good, God is allowing his children to suffer. This is the view taken especially for horrific events such as the storms at sea that the pilgrims endure during their travels to Holland and to America, and the sickness and famine they experience in the New World. The operative phrases here are “It pleased the Lord” and “general visitation,” both alluding to God’s plans and doings.

Jane Eyreâ•…â•… 229 These phrases help remind the pilgrims that suffering is not meaningless. Instead, it is full of promise: God is close to his own and is giving them just the right amount of suffering to draw them closer to him. Because of this belief, Bradford could “make a pause” to look out at the New World for the first time and describe not only its ominous, hard, cold look but also God’s absolute goodness in protecting his own (chapter 9). Much later, after the plantation has been established, Bradford will reflect on the sufferings God has brought them through and will begin to view Plymouth Plantation as a place where migrating pilgrims can rest and become refreshed in order to gather strength for their own forthcoming sufferings. Matthew Horn

BRONTË, CHARLOTTEâ•… Jane Eyreâ•… (1847)

Charlotte Brontë’s story is of an orphan, Jane Eyre, who is ill-treated by her aunt, Mrs. Reed, and is sent to a boarding school, where her best friend, Helen Burns, dies of consumption. Jane grows up to be a governess for Adele Varens, ward of Edward Rochester of Thornfield Hall. During her sojourn at Thornfield Hall, there are attempts on Rochester’s and Richard Mason’s lives. While Jane suspects Grace Poole, a servant, the mystery is solved when Mason thwarts Rochester and Jane’s wedding: The culprit was Bertha, Rochester’s first wife and Mason’s sister, a madwoman hidden in the attic. To avoid becoming Rochester’s mistress, Jane flees and almost dies of extreme hunger and exhaustion. She is rescued by Mary, Diana, and St. John Rivers, only to discover that they are her cousins. Their mutual uncle, John Eyre, has left Jane a fortune, which she shares with her cousins. Independent, she returns to Rochester to learn that Bertha has set fire to Thornfield Hall and in an attempt to save Bertha, Rochester has lost a hand, an eye, and his eyesight. Ten years on, Jane tells the readers of her happy marriage to Rochester: She has given birth to a son, and Rochester has regained some of his sight. The novel is intricately complex: It borrows, alludes, and lends itself to many readings. Many motifs from the gothic genre, such as Bertha sucking Mason’s blood

like a vampire, are incorporated into the narrative, which includes allusions to the Bible, fairy tales, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), and John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). Jane Eyre has also inspired other writings, such as Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938) and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). Aaron Ho

Education in Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is a novel of education. After an altercation with her aunt, Mrs. Reed, Jane is sent to Lowood School, which was modeled after the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge where Charlotte Brontë had studied and lost two of her sisters, Marie and Elizabeth, to consumption. Like the Clergy Daughter’s School, Lowood is badly run by a clergyman, Mr. Brocklehurst. The students at Lowood are often starved, as the food is either burnt or scanty; they wear ill-fitting clothes because their cheap and scarce needles break easily; even in the coldest winter, they have to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church on Sundays. The austere living conditions stem from Mr. Brocklehurst’s convictions that a frugal existence would improve “the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under the temporary privation.” However, his misguided beliefs do not apply to his wife and daughters, who are splendidly decked out in ermine, silk, velvet, and beaver hats with ostrich plumes. Mr. Brocklehurst is not the only one who mistreats the children. Mrs. Scatcherd, a schoolteacher, is depicted as mean and unreasonable, especially to Helen Burns, Jane’s best friend. Although Helen is brilliant, Mrs. Scatcherd sends her to the bottom of the class. Even when Helen is seated in an obscure corner of the class, Mrs. Scatcherd constantly picks on her. When Helen answers the questions her classmates cannot, not only does Mrs. Scatcherd not praise Helen, she flogs her for being disagreeable and dirty. However, Helen does not suffer for long. The summer wind blows typhus into the poorly ventilated school, and more than half of the students fall ill. The virulent atmosphere, coupled with semistarvation and neglected colds, hasten Helen’s death from consumption. Fortunately, hers and

230â•…â•… Brontë, Charlotte other victims’ deaths are not in vain: Their demises bring the school to public scrutiny. Although Mr. Brocklehurst is not discharged, a few gentlemen are roped in to aid him in his duties, transforming the school into a better institution. In a nurturing environment, with the encouragement and cultivation of Miss Temple, the headmistress of Lowood, Jane blossoms: She excels in her studies and becomes a teacher in Lowood and, later, a governess for Adele Varens, ward of Edward Rochester. Not only is Jane able to earn her own living, she is also inwardly changed. Through education, she manages to control the hysteria she previously manifested to Mrs. Reed when she was 10. Such is Jane’s transformation that, as an adult, she readily forgives Mrs. Reed on her deathbed, even though the woman had mistreated Jane. In addition to Jane, other female characters are also improved by education. When Jane suspects that Rochester might tempt her to be his mistress, she leaves him without taking a penny. On the verge of collapsing from extreme exhaustion and starvation, she chances upon the Rivers’s cottage. When Jane sees Mary and Diana, her long-lost cousins, through a window poring over a book, she knows they will be willing to help her. It is not coincidental that Diana and Mary are kind and learned; education instills in one a sense of righteousness. The influence of an educated upbringing is so powerful that it can also overcome what nature gave to Adele. Adele has inherited the faults of her vain and materialistic French mother, but “a sound English education corrected in a great measure [Adele’s] French defects.” While the women in the novel undertake a secular education in embroidery, music, art, and languages, the men’s education is of a spiritual nature. St. John Rivers, Diana and Mary’s brother, learns Hindi for his missionary work in India. For Rochester, his spiritual education comes from his sufferings. Only after his estate is lost and he is maimed and blinded does he start praying. It is one of his prayers that brings Jane back to him: When Jane is deliberating over St. John’s marriage proposal, she hears Mr. Rochester’s prayer, even though they are miles apart. Education is an important theme in Jane Eyre. The novel criticizes the abominable way many

schools were run in the 1800s, but it also shows that if they were run properly, schools had the potential to develop students of intellectual and moral distinction like Jane and Adele. Aaron Ho

Gender in Jane Eyre

Although Jane Eyre is not the first feminist manifesto, it is provocative for the Victorian period as it advocates equality between the sexes. For instance, after Jane Eyre has moved into Thornfield as a governess, she is restless because she has no intellectual equal. Her two companions are Adele Varens, a child, and Mrs. Fairfax, a kind but dull housekeeper. Women of the time are generally regarded as calm and resigned to their fate, but Jane argues that “women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do.╯.╯.╯. It is narrow minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures [men] to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.” It is, however, not easy to achieve gender equality in the Victorian patriarchal society. Jane is constantly being put down by men—Mr. Brocklehurst, Edward Rochester, and St. John Rivers. Mr. Brocklehurst is the clergyman in charge of Lowood School, where Jane studies from ages 10 to 18. His philosophy in education is for the students to live a frugal and severe existence so that they can gain spiritual fortitude; the girls are therefore taught to deny and stifle their natural instincts, and as a result, they are often starved and cold. Because of semistarvation, neglected colds, and poor conditions of the school ground, many of the students fall ill and die. Mr. Brocklehurst’s dictatorial powers are greatly diminished when several gentlemen are roped in to ensure the school’s proper running. Like Mr. Brocklehurst, St. John advocates selfabnegation. Unlike the hypocritical Brocklehurst, however, St. John practices what he preaches. He proposes to Jane even though he does not love her; as a missionary, he chooses Jane because she has the right qualities to be a missionary’s wife. He expects Jane to deny her natural instincts—for she does not love him, either—in order to serve God. Even

Jane Eyreâ•…â•… 231 though Jane rejects his proposal at least three times, he refuses to take no for an answer. Partly to escape St. John’s harassing and oppression and partly to answer Rochester’s call, Jane furtively leaves Moor House, the Rivers’s cottage. While Mr. Brocklehurst oppresses Jane through bodily privation and St. John through emotional distress, Rochester oppresses her through material objects. He buys her clothes and jewelry in a symbolic attempt to “own” her, and he says to her, “I mean shortly to claim you—your thoughts, conversation and company—for life.” She detests the way he treats her as if he were a sultan bestowing gifts on a slave. She rebels against him, saying she will not wear the dresses he has bought and will go on being a governess and maintaining the habits of a governess before the marriage. However, the marriage plans fall apart after Rochester reveals that he is already married. Jane has to run away because she is afraid he might claim her as a mistress. When she returns, however, she is of an equal status with Rochester. They are compatible physically for he is blind and maimed and she is a woman (one has to bear in mind this novel was written in the 1800s), but she is also financially independent after receiving an inheritance from a long-lost uncle. Their eventual marriage is one between equals. Jane Eyre is also a novel of women oppressing women. As a child, Jane is abused by her aunt, Mrs. Reed, for no apparent reason, except perhaps that Mr. Reed appears to favor Jane. At Lowood, Mrs. Scatcherd constantly picks on Helen Burns, Jane’s friend, for being dirty even though it is impossible to wash up in the freezing water and that Helen is one of the more intelligent students. At Thornfield Hall, Grace Poole is employed as the caretaker and warden of Bertha, Rochester’s first wife; Grace keeps Bertha under lock and key. One of the reasons that Mrs. Fairfax disapproves of Jane and Rochester’s marriage is because Jane is of a lower class than Rochester. When Jane leaves Thornfield Hall to avoid becoming Rochester’s mistress, she is refused entry to the Moor House by the housekeeper, Hannah, even though she is on the brink of collapse from hunger and fatigue. Hence, not only do the men oppress women, women are oppressing each other.

Still, the main narrative revolves around the oppression of Jane by men. In order to escape from the oppression, she has to play by the rules in Lowood under Mr. Brocklehurst’s reign; reject and run away from St. John; and return to Rochester as an equal. The fact that Rochester has to be both blind and maimed for Jane to be treated as an equal attests to the lowly status of Victorian women. Aaron Ho

Love in Jane Eyre

Love is never simple in Jane Eyre. Despite knowing that his wife dislikes Jane Eyre, Mr. Reed, Jane’s uncle, on his deathbed, elicits a promise from Mrs. Reed that she will treat Jane as one of her own children. As a result of Mr. Reed’s love and kind intentions, however, Jane grows up in an abusive environment: The Reeds make Jane understand perfectly that she is living on their charity. Perhaps it is such a mentality—that love equates to suffering—that Jane brings with her to Lowood, a boarding school she is sent to after an altercation with Mrs. Reed. At Lowood, she meets two persons she will come to love: Helen Burns, a fellow student, and Miss Temple, the headmistress who will turn Jane into a schoolteacher. The association of love with suffering is again prominent in a conversation Jane has with Helen. Jane says, “To gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or an other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest.” Helen, however, disavows the great importance Jane puts on secular love; she believes in a religious love that acts as a philosophy for her immense tolerance. In school, Helen is constantly picked on by Mrs. Scatcherd. Even when she is able to answer questions her classmates cannot, Mrs. Scatcherd does not praise her; instead, she flogs Helen for being disagreeable and dirty. Helen’s love for a divine being makes her believe that she has to put up with her fate, for if God acknowledges her innocence, he will separate the “spirit from [the] flesh to crown us with a full reward” (59). While Helen is moderate in her religious love, St. John Rivers, Jane’s cousin, is a zealot. St. John

232â•…â•… Brontë, Emily believes that it is God’s bidding that he become a missionary in India. Because of his belief in his destiny, and because he places God’s love above all things, he lives in self-abnegation. He ignores Rosamond Oliver, a pretty but fragile girl whom he loves, and proposes to Jane, whom he does not love. While Jane is tempted to accept St. John’s proposal, she chooses a secular love in the end. Across many miles, she hears Edward Rochester’s cry, which stops her from accepting St. John’s proposal. When Jane returns to Rochester, the equilibrium of their relationship has shifted. Previously, Rochester had wielded the power as he was older, rich, experienced, and her employer. He withheld truths from her, and after she had accepted his proposal, he said to her, “I mean shortly to claim you—your thoughts, conversation and company—for life.” In a symbolic move to own Jane, he had bought her dresses and jewels. His “smile was such as a sultan might .╯.╯. bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriched.” However, in a fire, Rochester lost his limb and his eyesight, and it is while he is in such a broken and devastated state that Jane returns to him. Rochester has lost his cocksureness and superiority; he is now crippled and blind, and he needs to be guided. On the other hand, Jane has more experience in the world, and she has become financially independent due to an inheritance from an unknown uncle. Despite her plain looks, she is clearly capable of attracting handsome and upright men such as St. John. In the first proposal, Rochester was so confident that Jane would accept him that he taunted her mercilessly about a lady who showed interest in him till Jane cried. In the second proposal, after his accident, he is the one on the edge. Jane Eyre does not, however, advocate a love of tug-of-war. Jane returns to Rochester as an equal, not a superior. She guides him on his walks, but she also listens to his commands: she is equally his master and his slave. It is this equality in status that allows Jane and Rochester to be happily married. Unlike the religious love that requires one to suffer, and unlike the secular love Jane was enslaved by with Helen and Miss Temple, Jane and Rochester’s romantic love is now liberating, as Jane claims in the penultimate chapter: “There was no harassing

restraint, no pressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease.” Aaron Ho

BRONTË, EMILYâ•… Wuthering Heightsâ•… (1847)

Wuthering Heights—one of the best known love stories in English literature—has spawned an entire industry of films, television series, musicals, and songs over many decades, not to mention innumerable literary editions and criticism, seemingly able to attract generation after generation of new admirers. The story concerns the relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine: Their passion for each other is allconsuming, yet it remains unfulfilled, ultimately destroying them both and those nearest to them. The novel is not, however, “just” a romance but a serious essay, addressing a number of themes and issues via the presentation of two of the most famous characters in the canon of Victorian literature. The nature of love is discussed, together with male/ female relationships in general and gender roles in society; the notion of death and dying, the afterlife; social class divisions and their importance in society, incorporating poverty and wealth; the abuse of women and children; and revenge and reconciliation. “Wuthering Heights” refers to the name of the manor house set on the wild Yorkshire moors in England, the location for much of the plot. The story was written by Emily Brontë in 1847, age 29, only a year before she died. It was published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, since Victorian sensibilities could not countenance such a profoundly shocking novel (for the time) being written by a woman. Even today, readers may find the novel disturbing, and many of its themes remain relevant to a modern world. Gerri Kimber

Death in Wuthering Heights

Of the 13 characters introduced in the novel Wuthering Heights, excluding servants and the two narrators, 11 are dead by the end, nearly all prematurely. Emily Brontë’s own life was ravaged by the untimely death of loved ones, and this experience inevitably surfaced in her fiction. Her mother died when Emily

Wuthering Heightsâ•…â•… 233 was three, and two older sisters died when she was seven; she herself would die of tuberculosis by the age of 30. In the early 19th century, this was not uncommon—life expectancy was short—but for a modern reader, so many premature deaths are difficult to comprehend. Death as a theme in this novel is therefore of paramount importance. For the characters, it is frequently viewed as either a punishment for earthly wrongdoing or a merciful release from pain and suffering. The deaths of certain characters also aid the plot and provide narrative structure to a densely woven novel. Some of the dead even reappear as ghosts, both at the beginning and at the end of the novel, death seemingly bringing no release to the tortured souls in Wuthering Heights. The first death is that of Mrs. Earnshaw, mother to Catherine and her older brother, Hindley. Mr Earnshaw cares more for the foundling Heathcliff than for his own children, and this creates deepseated resentment in Hindley, who moves away. Mr Earnshaw then dies, leaving Catherine an orphan, alongside Heathcliff. Her brother returns to look after them, bringing a wife, Frances, who “felt so afraid of dying!” and who then proceeds to do just that a year later, after giving birth to a son, Hareton. The parents of Edgar and Isabella Linton, who live close by, both die from a fever also caught by Catherine. In their turbulent, passionate, yet unconsummated love affair, both Heathcliff and Catherine use the notion of death or dying continually within their lexicon of love. Catherine says, “I wish I could hold you .╯.╯. till we were both dead.” Heathcliff, in turn, cannot contemplate life without Catherine, thinking, “What kind of living will it be when you—oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?” Catherine dies two hours after giving birth to a daughter. Her husband Edgar’s sorrow and pain are overwhelming, yet dignified: “His young and fair features were almost as deathlike as those of the form beside him, and almost as fixed; but his was the hush of exhausted anguish, and hers of perfect peace.” Conversely, Heathcliff ’s reaction to the death of his soulmate is one of anger and bitterness: “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living!

You said I killed you—haunt me, then!” Her death leads him further down the path of self-destruction, transgressing the boundaries of acceptable behavior and leaving the reader unable to sympathize with his position. In direct contrast to Edgar’s restraint and dignity, Heathcliff opens Catherine’s coffin to look upon his lost love. Edgar’s sister, Isabella, who becomes Heathcliff ’s wife, dies 12 years after giving birth to their son, Linton, who in his turn dies at age 17, not long after his arranged marriage to Cathy, Catherine’s daughter. Hindley dies a mere six months after Catherine, drinking himself to death, unable to come to terms with the death of his wife. Edgar eventually dies when Cathy is 17, followed less than a year later by Heathcliff. On his deathbed, Edgar declares to Cathy: “↜‘I am going to [Catherine]; and you, darling child, shall come to us!’ .╯.╯. None could have noticed the exact minute of his death, it was so entirely without a struggle.” Heathcliff would rather Catherine was present as a ghost than not present at all. At the beginning of the novel, Catherine’s ghost appears at Wuthering Heights, begging to be allowed through the bedroom window. Heathcliff ’s dead body is found by the same window: “The lattice [window], flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill.” Heathcliff is buried next to Catherine as he had requested, his hope being that in death, their bodies will conjoin, as they never did while alive, with the body of Edgar on her other side—a macabre ménage à trois. Nelly makes the claim that people have seen the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy walking the moors. Thus, the theme of death underpins the passionate relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine—their union ultimately transcending death itself. Gerri Kimber

Gender in Wuthering Heights

The roles of men and women in Wuthering Heights frequently defy the social conventions of the day. While the men superficially appear to have power and authority over the women in their lives, the women are, nevertheless, frequently the strongest characters in any given situation, with the will and ability to alter the lives and fortunes of the male

234â•…â•… Brontë, Emily characters in their circle. Brontë uses the novel’s isolated setting to symbolically highlight the fact that most women at that time lived in a cultural “wasteland.” Brontë reveals several times in this novel that women tended to be self-educated, since it was not considered necessary—or even desirable—to spend money on their education: “[Heathcliff ] struggled long to keep up an equality with Catherine in her studies.” Catherine’s mentality is that of a girl superior to those around her: “She esteemed herself a woman, and our mistress.” She learns to play her love rivals, Edgar Linton and Heathcliff, off one another: “Though I humour both, I think a smart chastisement might improve them all the same.” The character traits that Brontë gives her are much more indicative of early 19th-century conventional masculinity than a typical female from the same era. Even Heathcliff, who believes himself to have been badly treated by Catherine, states, “I seek no revenge on you.╯.╯.╯. The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them.” This sentence explains much of Heathcliff ’s subsequent brutish behavior in the novel. Rather than taking revenge on Catherine for her perceived misdemeanors toward himself, he instead takes his revenge on others around her. Although her heart belongs to Heathcliff, Catherine understands that her place in society will only be assured if she marries someone with position and wealth, and Heathcliff has neither. Brontë is reminding us that at the time she was writing, a woman was only as socially prominent as her husband. A “good” marriage was therefore essential in order to be able to command respect in society and gain power. Heathcliff ’s treatment of his wife, Isabella (whom he married purely for revenge), is cruel in the extreme: “He seized, and thrust her from the room.╯.╯.╯. ‘I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails!’↜” Once she is dead, he calls her “a wicked slut.” Cathy, the daughter of Catherine and Edgar, is very much spoiled by her doting widower father (whose character is presented in direct contrast to Heathcliff ’s): “She who was always ‘love,’

and ‘darling,’ and ‘queen,’ and ‘angel,’ with everybody at the Grange.” A more comfortable relationship between the genders comes at the end of the novel between Cathy and Hareton, her rough, uneducated cousin: “He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments till she crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompters to higher pursuits.” Cathy takes the lead in this relationship, showing her cousin that they might have a future together. She teaches him to read: “His brightening mind brightened his features, and added spirit and nobility to their aspect.” Brontë dwells significantly on the importance of education for both men and women throughout the novel, with a particular focus on reading, since this was the main route to self-education in her day. Hope for the future, says Brontë, rests in egalitarian relationships as exemplified by Cathy and Hareton, with mutual understanding, respect, and trust; the blind passions of the previous generation of lovers in the novel lead only to unhappiness and destruction. Incorporated within the broad theme of gender are discussions on love and marriage, education, wealth, and the ownership of property. Brontë herself was a victim of this patriarchal society she describes. Wuthering Heights was first published under the male-sounding pseudonym Ellis Bell, since publication of such a dark and difficult novel by a woman would have been impossible in an overwhelmingly male-dominated literary culture. In addition, many of the novel’s themes, specifically those relating to the issues of gender, were not acceptable topics for a female writer, nor was it deemed appropriate for a woman to challenge the rules of the society in which she lived. This is, of course, a foreign concept for today’s reader. Gerri Kimber

Love in Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is renowned as one of the greatest love stories in English literature. The relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw— unconsummated and bizarrely unerotic—is difficult, dangerous, and illicit, wreaking havoc on both the protagonists’ lives and the lives of those around them. This is not a love for the fainthearted.

“My Last Duchess”â•…â•… 235 Early on in the novel, we learn that even as a child, “[Catherine] was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him.” An obsessive relationship develops between these two young people. one (Heathcliff ) an illegitimate foundling; the other (Catherine) motherless and neglected, both brought up in the same house (alongside Catherine’s brother, Hindley). The resulting passionate relationship between, in effect, two siblings, sits uneasily with 20th-century sensibilities. Heathcliff ’s love for Catherine is a never-ending obsession, down to the tiniest detail. In his growing jealousy at the amount of time Catherine is spending with his love rival, Edgar Linton, he remarks: “[L]ook at the almanack on that wall.╯.╯.╯. The crosses are for the evenings you have spent with the Lintons, the dots for those spent with me.” Catherine’s eventual marriage to Edgar, purely for financial and social reasons, destroys Heathcliff to the extent that he disappears for three years. This is the pivotal event in the novel—Catherine’s choice of Edgar over Heathcliff—and the rest of the novel’s tragic denouement hangs on this choice. Although Catherine has achieved her goal of marriage to Edgar, she nevertheless confides to her servant, Nelly: “Whatever our souls are made of, [Heathcliff ’s] and mine are the same.╯.╯.╯. Nelly, I am Heathcliff.” Edgar is, of course, completely infatuated with the exotic and beautiful Catherine, and he “believed himself the happiest man alive on the day he led her to Gimmerton chapel.” Heathcliff, however, cannot stay away for ever. His addiction to Catherine draws him back, and their obsessive love will ultimately lead to both their deaths. His meeting with Catherine (in the presence of Edgar) leads to the pair of them being “too much absorbed in their mutual joy to suffer embarrassment.” Even more disastrously, Edgar’s sister, Isabella, now develops “a sudden and irresistible attraction towards [Heathcliff ].” Heathcliff charms Isabella into marriage, to the horror of both Edgar and Catherine, and then abuses her both emotionally and physically, in revenge for Edgar having married Catherine. The emotional swings of Catherine’s love for Heathcliff result in her becoming desperately ill.

Heathcliff contrives one last meeting: “[He] gathered her to him with greedy jealousy .╯.╯. covering her with frantic caresses.” Catherine’s death, following the premature birth of her daughter by Edgar (also Catherine, known as Cathy), renders Heathcliff almost insane with sorrow: “He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death with knives and spears.” In his obsession, his refusal to let go, he has, in effect, murdered his love. His mania becomes even more entrenched, leading him at one point to have Catherine’s body exhumed in a disturbing scene bordering on necrophilia. His manic desire for revenge means he is never fully able to forgive Catherine for marrying Edgar, and this will ultimately lead him to attempt to ruin the life of her daughter, Cathy. Meanwhile, poor Isabella comes to the chilling understanding that Heathcliff married her only in revenge: “I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me.” Both Heathcliff and Edgar eventually die of broken hearts, unable to reconcile themselves to Catherine’s death. As if to bring the story full circle, Brontë presents us finally with the possibility of true love and happiness within a relationship—that between the two cousins, Cathy and Hareton (the son of Catherine’s dead brother, Hindley), “one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed.” There is no grand passion here, but no violence, either. The novel is a stark warning against the former, and, in Hareton and Cathy’s reasoned and gentle love, it promotes the latter as the only sane way to live. In this way, Wuthering Heights can be seen to be not so much a “love story” but, rather, an investigation into romantic love, comprising a discourse on social conventions, blind passion, violence, jealousy, and revenge, together with the notion of good versus evil. Gerri Kimber

BROWNING, ROBERTâ•… “My Last Duchess”â•… (1842)

First published as “I, Italy” in a collection called Dramatic Lyrics (1842), Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” was given its present title in 1849

236â•…â•… Browning, Robert when it was reprinted in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. Among his best-loved and most widely anthologized works, the poem exemplifies what modern critics have termed the dramatic monologue, a poetic genre in which a speaker, addressing a silent auditor, gradually discloses depths of his own character and psychology to which he himself may well be blind. Indeed, Browning (1812–89) worked extensively with this form and is typically recognized as having produced its finest examples. Set during the early modern period in Italy, the poem takes the shape of a courtly address by a highranking nobleman in dowry negotiations with the agent of his lesser-born prospective second fatherin-law. Standing on the staircase of the ducal palace, the two pause as the duke draws a curtain revealing a painting of his first, late wife. The highly measured and imperiously delivered monologue that unfolds systematically exposes the duke’s extreme jealousy and possessiveness and their role in his decision to have her killed. Only the duke appears unaware of the implications of his conduct. The reader—and presumably the reader’s surrogate, the emissary— grows increasingly uncomfortable as the duke elaborates his confession, a confession that doubles, of course, as a threatening declaration of expectations for his bride-to-be. It is the count’s “fair daughter’s self ” for which the duke is bargaining, and her complete servility that he demands. In its ironic self-elaboration and psychological disclosure, the duke’s address allows Browning to explore themes of excessive individual pride, gendered power and violence, and social class. Hilary Englert

Death in “My Last Duchess”

Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess” features an early modern Italian nobleman’s unapologetic (if tense) account of the death of his late wife by his own orders. The actual murder— the event one might have expected to produce the poem’s greatest dramatic effect—is recounted in so quiet and elliptical a way as to nearly elude a hasty reader. On the heels of a litany of petty complaints against his high-spirited, lower-born late wife, the duke confesses: “I gave commands / then all smiles stopped” (ll. 45–46). Convinced that her execution

was justified and that he has conducted himself in keeping with the prerogatives of his rank, the duke nonetheless emphasizes his distance from the material act itself. His physical remove from the killing is echoed by the euphemistic subtlety with which he recounts the event. As he implies later in the poem, to have committed murder with his own hands would have been too dirty and demeaning to himself, and he makes it clear from the outset that he “choose[s] / Never to stoop” (ll. 42–43). The duke’s conspicuous unwillingness to revisit the moment of the duchess’s death with any kind of clarity, directness, or detail further reflects his refusal to stoop. It is in the gaps left by this refusal that the drama of the duke’s psychology unfolds. The poem’s first couplet faintly registers the duchess’s death, as the duke and his interlocutor, an emissary representing to the duke’s lesser-ranking future father-in-law, gaze upon a painting of her, “Looking as if she were alive” (l.2). Toward the close of the monologue, as though haunted by the lifelike impression left by the painting, the duke retraces that impression in the very same words: “There she stands / As if alive” (ll. 46–47). In its verisimilitude, the image manages to create the effect of realness, the sense that a live woman “stands” stationary within its frame. Indeed, the duke repeats this formulation as well, declaring the “piece .╯.╯. a wonder, now .╯.╯. and there she stands” (ll. 2–5). Presumably, the work is a “wonder” because it is so lifelike. But the duke’s nervous repetition also, if unwittingly, points to the representational complexity of the scene: The image of the duchess in the painting stands in for the wife as well as standing for her, and in this sense, too, it signals a wonder, a strange and surprising power exercised from beyond the grave. In capturing “the depth and passion of [the duchess’s] earnest glance” (l.8), the painting on the wall serves to recall the live woman whom it represents. It also—in some cases apparently quite threateningly—reminds its beholder of the duke’s power and readiness to end life. Surely, in disrupting the dowry negotiations for his bride-to-be with an account of the violent end met by his former wife, the duke makes this threat pointedly. The portrait signifies both the life and death of the late duchess, as well as the duke’s megalomaniacal ambition

“My Last Duchess”â•…â•… 237 to control both. At the same time, it defies both death and the duke’s power. In jealously reserving the right to alternately obscure and reveal the image—”none puts by / The curtain I have drawn for you, but I” (ll. 9–10)—the duke simultaneously displays his power and betrays its limitations. As he seems painfully aware, the demonstration of his authority and command relies on the exhibition of the painting, however selective and guarded. And yet, it is precisely at the moment of its viewing that the painting strips the duke of this control. He may open and close the curtain, but he cannot define, guarantee, or alter the portrait’s visual effects. He cannot prevent the image from smiling or this smile from eliciting pleasure in even the lowliest of spectators. Even as he keeps and shows the portrait as a monument to his own dominion, it defies him in memorializing the duchess’s unruly affections; her pleasures, her autonomy, and will; and, most important, others’ responses to her, her smiles, and all they might represent. The portrait commemorates her death but also conditions the possibility for her to communicate as though from the grave, to smile behind the curtain, to defy his will, to subvert rather than reflecting or contributing to his command. If it is only in death that the duke manages to turn his duchess into a “piece” (l. 3), an “object” (l. 3), and a “wonder” (l. 3), so too is it in death that her power and will persist. Hilary Englert

Pride in “My Last Duchess”

The duke’s narrative, which features descriptions of his late wife’s shortcomings and his complicated and ultimately murderous response to them, reveals— however obliquely—more about his psychology than about her character. As he gradually exposes his own unreliability as a narrator, the duke demonstrates a coldheartedness, a capacity for cruelty, and an exceptionally jealous sensibility. These characteristics, however, merely serve the major element of his psychology: an imperious, authoritarian pride, which blinds him to the features of his own character that the reader is invited to find so chillingly compelling. It is to legitimate his own excessive pride that the duke shares the story of his former wife’s demise. Expecting sympathy from his future father-in-law’s

emissary (a silent surrogate for the reader), he elaborates the late duchess’s capital offense: While she was alive, she neglected to evince more joy and gratitude at the duke’s “favour” (l. 25) than in the presence of “The dropping of the daylight in the West” (l. 26) or in response to a servant’s offering of a “bough of cherries” (l. 27). He reexperiences the indignity as he exclaims in disbelief, “Sir, ’twas all one!” (l. 25). In casting the same “approving” “smile” on all (ll. 30, 43), in equating his “gift of a nine-hundredyears-old name” with “anybody’s gift” (ll. 33, 34), the duchess has committed the one transgression that the duke cannot address without exacerbating the injury to himself. The duchess’s leveling attentions embarrassed him and compromised his supremacy. Yet to have complained would have been whining; to have exhibited anger—or worse, negotiated for higher regard—would have been to acknowledge vulnerability to the smallest of insults. The duke is painfully conscious of the paradox as he struggles to articulate the dilemma he faced: Who’d stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will Quite clear to such an one .╯.╯. if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, —E’en then would be some stooping, and I choose Never to stoop. (ll. 34–43) The halting pauses and awkward, anxious breaks here dramatize the duke’s struggle to exert his will within the parameters of a mode of expression and a code of conduct both severely limited by aristocratic propriety and exorbitant self-regard. His parenthetical reminder that he is the only one authorized to remove the curtain and thereby reveal the duchess’s image—”(since none puts by / The curtain I have drawn for you, but I [ll. 9–10])”— serves as a metaphor for and privileged instance of this struggle. The duke must work tirelessly to demonstrate and reinforce his power but remain careful to conceal this labor behind a facade of confident

238â•…â•… Browning, Robert nonchalance. He must assert his prerogatives, but he must do so discreetly, indirectly, and above all gracefully. Accordingly, he is forced to reveal the painting in order to communicate his threats and expectations, but he must appear to do so as a simple gesture of courtly hospitality. Orders to sit down, stand up, look here and there, to listen silently and then retire are rendered as polite invitations: “Will’t please you sit and look at her?” (l. 5); “Will’t please you rise?” (l. 47). He refers to his control over the painting’s veil as an aside, but one that feels gratuitous and deliberate. In actuality, the duke’s dignified solicitousness in these moments rings false and increasingly undermines the point he seeks to make: that his authority is natural, inevitable, in no need of safeguarding or of self-conscious assertion. The occasion for the monologue is, as we know, a mediated dowry negotiation with a lesser nobleman whose family will be honored by the proposed match with the duke. While the duke—presumably correctly—takes for granted that the count will pay any price he deigns to exact, he assures the count’s agent that the monetary arrangement is a secondary consideration. Rather, he urges the emissary to understand that it is the count’s “fair daughter’s self ” he considers his “object” (ll. 52, 53). Of course, he uses the word advisedly—his objective in the negotiations is to secure a new wife, but he will not settle for anything less than complete servility and reverence from her. He intends her to function as an “object” of his will and slave to his pride, no different from any of his possessions—exemplified by the statue of “Neptune .╯.╯. Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, / Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for [him]!” (ll. 54–56)—the priceless works of art, in other words, that he has commissioned from the most celebrated artists of the age and which he proudly displays as monuments to his vanity and the absoluteness of his power. Hilary Englert

Tradition in “My Last Duchess”

In both form and content, “My Last Duchess” negotiates ideas about social, cultural, and political tradition. Its poetic form is one of the most traditional, celebrated, and rule-governed of the early modern Anglo tradition—that of heroic couplets (rhyming

couplets of iambic pentameter). In its metrical regularity and rhyme scheme, it establishes an unnerving steadiness and calm as the tonal backdrop to the narrative confession of a speaker who nonetheless gradually emerges as a megalomaniacal killer. As the speaker of this poem unconsciously reveals his character and psychology, he positions himself quite starkly in relation to the tradition of his ancient lineage, thematically echoing the poem’s form. It is in relation to the social forms associated with the titled aristocracy of early modern Europe that the duke comports himself. It is an anxious, all-consuming will to protect and preserve these traditions, coupled with an excessive self-regard— perhaps the logical extension of the aristocratic personality—that account for the duke’s conduct and attitude throughout the poem. The poem recalls the traditions of a feudal social order in which birth and ancestry fix one’s place and one’s relationship to political and cultural power. Indeed, the relationships in the poem—between the duke and his late and future duchesses, and between and among the duke, the count, the count’s agent, and even the artists who have been commissioned to carry out the duke’s will in executing his aesthetic vision—are defined by the residual feudal hierarchy of the early modern period and by the unwritten codes of conduct governing all of late feudal society. It is the traditions of courtesy and the social codes of the aristocracy that the duchess has transgressed in the prehistory of the poem. Unable or disinclined to receive small favors and gestures of flattery with regal composure, she instead has taken and evinced unself-conscious joy in them. They caused her to “blush,” to expose her own “heart .╯.╯. made glad” (ll. 31, 22). Her pleasures and gratitude were undignified in their transparency, leaving no room for greater or more profound shows of pleasure at the duke’s far more valuable favors. Indeed, her “smiles” were squandered on low objects, their value was diminished by their sheer numbers, and the value of the duke’s favors was likewise diminished in turn. The duke’s efforts to regain his superiority are complicated by his already much discussed refusal to “stoop” (ll. 34, 43), which frequently necessitates a remove from action and from the explicit issuing

The Pilgrim’s Progressâ•…â•… 239 of orders. Not only has he felt himself barred from directly intervening in his wife’s conduct, but now he must press the emissary into service so as to avoid direct negotiations with the count. Moreover, he must convey his expectations to this figure only obliquely, using the portrait of the late duchess as his medium. The emissary is charged with communicating warnings that the duke would never deign to bargain directly with the count, let alone his daughter. Of course, the scene of the monologue is not spontaneous; the interaction between the duke and the count’s agent is not unique. Rather, as the duke makes clear, he has repeatedly presented the image of his former wife to others, and it is suggested that he has delivered a version of this carefully crafted speech a number of times. The pretense to spontaneity is integral to this well-rehearsed act and to the early modern tradition of courtly grace or sprezzatura—the highly studied, highly labored effect of nonchalance or effortlessness. Indeed, this ceremony constitutes an exercise in the tradition of feudal hospitality for the duke, a tradition designed to celebrate the glory of his nobility. In it, he exercises superiority over the subordinate guest he hosts and mastery over the “wonders” in his gallery, thereby enacting and reiterating his social and cultural authority over all. Each instance of this traditional display must conform to its prototype and must be performed according to a set of rules and customs, some of which the duke inherits as a nobleman, some of which he has created. Part of the tradition entails pretending that it has been precipitated by another’s interest, the duke presents the painting as though in response to a curiosity he has sensed in the envoy, and he delivers the speech as though in reply to a question the envoy never actually poses. Consistent with the ceremonial ritual, the duke imposes silent inquiry on the envoy, the same inquiry he has elicited (or “seemed” to elicit [l. 11]) from all of the other “strangers” (l. 7) he has brought before his gallery: “How such a glance come there; so, not the first / Are you to turn and ask thus” (ll. 12–13), he disingenuously reassures the envoy, whom the poem offers no evidence of speaking at any point in the scene. This dynamic confirms both the feudal traditions invoked and dramatized by the

poem as well as the speaker’s psychologically complex relationship to them. Hilary Englert

BUNYAN, JOHNâ•… The Pilgrim’s Progressâ•… (1678)

John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which is to Come has been a perennial best seller. Even before Bunyan (1628–88) died, more than 11 editions had been printed in England, and the book’s popularity has continued. Since its first appearance, it has been translated into more than 200 languages, and it has never gone out of print. The only other book that has been continually sold in such quantities is the English Bible. Yet the affinities between the Bible and Bunyan’s allegory are such that the influence of the former has added much to the popularity of the latter. Its own literary influence has also been noted. The Pilgrim’s Progress is partially the model for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and is mentioned in such novels as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The book is an allegory—allegory literally meaning “other reading” or “other word.” That is to say, The Pilgrim’s Progress attempts to say at least two things at once. There is the literal, surface-level reading, wherein the character Christian travels to the Celestial City, meeting strange and colorful figures along the way, and then there is a deeper, figurative reading, wherein the reader should see Christian as a figure of the human soul under the call of grace traveling toward death and then an eternal dwelling with God in heaven, a journey made possible by the death of Christ on the cross. A clergyman, Bunyan knew that other clergymen would attack him for presenting the truths of Christianity under the veil of fiction. He addressed their concerns in his prefatory poem “The Author’s Apology for His Book,” in which he defends his method by showing that the Bible itself uses allegory to teach its truths. As has been apparent by the book’s success, the vast majority of Bunyan’s readers agreed with him and have enjoyed the allegory without theological scruple. Matthew Horn

240â•…â•… Bunyan, John

Guilt in The Pilgrim’s Progress

One of the most commanding images of the opening pages of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is the figure of Christian, the pilgrim, being bent almost double by the large sack he must carry on his back. This is the sack of his sins, and the weight that presses down on Christian is the guilt he has before the one against whom he has sinned (God). Two of the Bible references relating to the sack in the first paragraph of The Pilgrim’s Progress speak of the debilitating effect of this weight: Psalms 38:4 speaks of an overwhelming guilt that is too heavy to bear, while Isaiah 64:6 paints a picture of the guilty sinner shriveled like a leaf and being mercilessly blown by the wind. It is no surprise that Bunyan emphasizes the image of guilt at the beginning of his allegory, for in his eyes a growing sense of one’s guilt before a holy God is the first sign that the soul is being drawn toward God in a good way, a way that leads to forgiveness. Among other things, Bunyan’s interpretation of the Bible would lead him to say that God’s standard for a human’s way of living is absolute— that is, it reaches and obtains to all humanity—and that no one can meet this standard. Thus, all have fallen short of God’s standard, and all human acts of supposed righteousness are really like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). Bunyan would say that if people do not realize this, then it is because they are blinded to this truth by their own sinful nature—that they are dead to spiritual things and thus cannot respond to any sort of outside human admonition against their sins, just as a dead person lying in a casket cannot respond to someone’s call for him or her to get up. Bunyan’s theology holds that if someone does begin to sense the guilt and does begin to associate this guilt with his or her faulty standing before God, then this is evidence that God’s miraculous power has been at work in that person’s heart, bringing a new life to it and a new orientation toward the things of God. The conversion process is not complete with this, however. The awakening sinner must next come to a genuine knowledge of why the wrath of God is upon him. Bunyan signals this continual awakening by continually increasing the burden on Christian’s back as Christian endeavors to find the narrow gate and to stay on the right path. This

would be the reason Christian’s burden is still on his back even after he has read (and believed) the Bible about God’s coming judgment against the sins of this world, has met the Evangelist and by him has been put on the narrow path, and has received more biblical insight at the house of the Interpreter. It is only some way into The Pilgrim’s Progress that Bunyan releases the burden from Christian’s back by having him come face to face with the bare cross. The cross symbolizes Christian’s personal apprehension of what Christ did on the cross to appease God’s wrath against the sins of humanity. When he accepts Christ’s sacrifice, his pack of sins rolls off his back and into the empty tomb by the side of the hill on which the cross stands. It is important to remember, however, that this does not mean that Christian is not perfect, without the tendency to sin. This means only that the official judgment of God against Christian has been removed on account of Christ’s work. Thus, Christian is given a new object to carry, a roll, which is fashioned by Bunyan to closely resemble the legal charters of the day, sustaining and obliging the fulfillment of a legal promise or proclamation, in order to have proof that he has been “legally” freed from the consequences of his sin. This means that although Christian loses the legal consequence for his sins, he does not lose the ability to sin or the ability to feel the emotional result of sin—guilt. So, periodically throughout the allegory, Christian will be buffeted with this feeling, and he will reach for the roll or will engage his companion in godly talk of justification in order to comfort himself. This strange predicament (of being beyond sin’s legal reach but not beyond its emotional effects) is the story of every true pilgrim whom Christian meets, and the predicament remains in place even until the very gates of the Celestial City. For as Christian crosses the river to reach the heavenly shore, he has one last, profound encounter with his guilt, which is figured in this scene as overwhelming waves, and here he almost loses the whole journey by succumbing to the sense of his sin. Yet a way out for Christian is found, and, true to form, Bunyan has this way be Christ himself, coming to Christian in the river in the form of a vision mediated by Bunyan’s memory of the Psalms.

The Pilgrim’s Progressâ•…â•… 241 To the very end, it is Christian’s belief in God’s promises that enables him to finally turn his own back on his guilt. Matthew Horn

Individual and Society in The Pilgrim’s Progress

Protestantism, or at least John Bunyan’s version of it, places so much emphasis on the idea that the core truths of Christianity must be embraced individually by individuals that an outside observer might be tempted to say Protestantism has no real concern for the unity and well-being of human society as a whole. This view would be mistaken, for Protestantism does not reject human society—but it does not accept it wholesale, either. Rather, it divides human society into two groups and positions the individual believer in relation to these groups. One group is constituted of people who know and accept the biblical tenets of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection; the other of people who either do not know these beliefs or, if they do know them, do not accept them. The individual believer exists within the group of other like-minded believers and engages in edifying and encouraging the “family of God.” On the other hand, he or she exists outside of but up against the group of nonbelievers, and to this group the believer’s responsibility is one of evangelizing. In John Bunyan’s England, Protestantism’s tendency to divide society into smaller groups of the spiritual “haves” versus the “have-nots” was even more clearly felt and accepted, especially among those who had espoused some sort of Calvinism. There are various versions of this particular brand of Protestantism, but all of them, if they can be loosely labeled as Calvinistic, held that God had pre-chosen (“predestined”) all those who will eventually be converted to Christianity. According to this view, these people are the elect, and their numbers are few. They themselves do not even know whether they are elected until they have a salvation experience and begin to produce acts of righteousness. Even then, only God knows whether their conversion is genuine, for it is certainly possible for people to fake a conversion experience. Besides the elect, all others are the nonelect. These form the larger of the two groups by far, and they will eventually become

enemies of God. The only true test that reveals a person’s status is in how a person is accepted in the world to come: The elect will invariably be welcomed into heaven, and the nonelect will be punished eternally in hell. A corollary to this is that the current natural world is simply a proving ground, a place of incubation existing solely to help a person mature toward his or her genuine, permanent spiritual identity, be it for God or against God. The world exists as nothing more; in itself it is barren, temporary, fading. Bunyan, in the first nine words of his work, brings this point powerfully home: “As I walked through the wilderness of this world,╯.╯.╯.” There is no real doubt that Bunyan the preacher embraced a sort of mitigated Calvinism. This means that his character Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress would see his current society as necessarily comprising mostly the alien nonelect, even if this was not apparent from people’s outward behavior. Thus, Christian starts off realizing that his former place in his preconversion society has been closed off to him: he no longer feels a part of the City of Destruction, and his wife, children, and neighbors do not want his company. Moreover, as he moves away from his former society in search of his new one, the promised Celestial City, he remains suspicious of and aloof from all whom he meets on the way before he can ascertain whether or not he has enough grounds to consider them part of the elect—in other words, part of his new, and infinitely better, society. This is the reason he will separate himself from his cotravelers so often, either by remaining on the straight path as they deviate (such as the characters Obstinate and Pliable, who both give up the path and return to the doomed society of the city as Christian continues on) or by maintaining an unsociable distance between himself and them while they both travel on the same path (such as the characters Formalist and Hypocrisy, whom Christian meets after he leaves the Interpreter’s house). Of course, Christian does meet those whom he accepts as genuine friends; Faithful and Hopeful both enjoy his comfort, companionship, and encouragement. It is to be understood that Faithful would have stayed with Christian until their entrance into the Celestial City but for his martyrdom, and Hopeful, who almost immediately takes

242â•…â•… Bunyan, John Faithful’s place, does keep company with Christian till the end. Faithful is killed by the residents of Vanity Fair, which as a place provides a sharper picture than does the City of Destruction of the society at odds with and antagonistic toward Christian and his companions. Ironically, the persecution brought upon the pilgrims by Vanity Fair actually helps them to secure their place in their eternal society: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10). While they are on their journey, the pilgrims do receive tastes and glimpses of what the society of the elect will be like. At opportune times, the group lodged in Interpreter’s house and the one shepherding on the Delectable Mountains provide encouragement through community. But it is only at the end of the journey that the Pilgrims come into their own. Christian is aided by Hopeful in the perilous crossing of the river, and both are met at the banks by saints from the Celestial City who have come to escort the pilgrims in a heroes’ entry to the city to enjoy perpetual fellowship. For as they walk up the bank, the guides tell the pilgrims that in this city “you shall enjoy your friends again that are gone thither before you; and there you shall with joy receive even every one that follows into the holy place after you.” Matthew Horn

Religion in The Pilgrim’s Progress

When one thinks of religion in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, one should not think of an ambiguous attitude of spirituality or of a general belief in an afterlife. Instead, one should think of a very specific formulation of Christianity—Puritanism. The Puritans believed that the Bible alone held the answers to humanity’s trouble; that this trouble was sin, or one’s personal offenses against the standards of a holy God; and that the solution to sin was solely Christ’s sacrifice of himself on the cross. They also held that it was each individual’s duty to himself or herself to approach the Bible for one’s own personal acquisition of these truths. Only the Bible could genuinely educate about one’s sin against God and of the efficacy of the work of Jesus Christ. Finally, Puritans were convinced that this present world was

only a place that the saints, or the elect of God, were passing through on their way to heaven. Nothing from this world would transfer to the next, only one’s spiritual growth and spiritual reward gained from fighting the good fight (2 Tim. 4:7). This is why Bunyan’s story opens with the words “As I walked through the wilderness of this world,” and why the first picture he gives his reader is of the main character burdened with a bundle of sin, holding a book. The book is the Bible, and it has just convinced this man that he is a sinner (thus, the pressure of the bundle on his back) and that judgment by fire is coming upon him and his town (2 Pet. 3:7, 10). To escape this punishment, Christian, the pilgrim, must begin his journeys along the narrow way, a path that will first lead him to the Wicket Gate. This gate is a sign for Christian that he is indeed on the right path, for he can compare this Wicket Gate to the Bible’s teaching that all who are rightly called will enter through the narrow gate and all who jump the wall or enter by other ways are not true followers of Christ ( John 10:1). The true follower of the Puritan religion must not only pass through the narrow gate, he or she must also have a personal experience of spiritually embracing the remedy of the cross. Thus, shortly after this, Christian comes to a hill, upon which is the cross. He sees the cross; his burden rolls into an empty cave, a “sepulcher,” on the side of the hill (the empty tomb signifies the resurrected Christ); and he has a divine encounter with “three Shining Ones” who give him new clothes and a paper roll, his charter of salvation. This is a spiritual high point for Christian, and as long as he retains his roll, he is guaranteed a home in his final destination, the Celestial City; without the roll, however, he cannot get in. Thus, his journey from the cross to the gates of heaven is filled with moments of surety and of doubt—surety when he has the roll securely with him, doubt when he temporarily misplaces it out of carelessness. Christian is taught to completely exchange the values of this world for the values of the world that is to come, regardless of how exclusive this might make one seem to the citizens of this world. Thus, by constantly testing the words of those whom he meets, Christian eschews worldly friendship and

Don Juanâ•…â•… 243 counsel. His true companions are few but loyal. These are Faithful and Hopeful, the two virtues a pilgrim must have in order to stay the course to the Celestial City. And because of this rejection of the world on Christian’s part, the world rejects Christian. This is most clearly seen in the episode of Vanity Fair, which is a thinly disguised portrait of the whole ungodly system of secular society. When Christian and Faithful refuse to take part in the fair, they are imprisoned and tortured, and Faithful is killed. Christian’s opposition to the secular world is also seen when he is crossing the river flowing directly outside the Celestial City. The river, which stands for a believer’s death and passage from this world to the next, threatens to overwhelm Christian, who becomes convinced that all has been in vain and that he will be swallowed up by the waves. However, Christ himself appears to him in a vision and encourages him, enabling him to finish the crossing. This is the ideal capstone experience of a narrowly defined religion that helped many people like Christian and John Bunyan to make sense of this life’s trials and find hope in an expectation of eternal bliss. Matthew Horn

BYRON, GEORGE GORDON BYRON, LORDâ•… Don Juanâ•… (1817– 1824)

While the legend of Don Juan had circulated in several European countries, the Spanish play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (1630) by Tirso de Molina, is considered its first literary expression. Of the innumerable versions that the legend spawned, those by Molière (1665), Mozart (1787), and Lord Byron (written 1817–24) are well known. There are two film versions, which transform the cruel heartbreaker into a lovable rogue. George Bernard Shaw, expectedly, projects him as contemplating the meaning and purpose of life. Not unexpectedly, Byron (1788–1824) transforms the cheap and shameful womanizer of popular legend into one easily, even helplessly, seduced by libidinous women. The poem quickly moves on to describe the young Don Juan’s sexual misadventures and his mother’s decision to send him abroad. Shipwrecked

and washed ashore, Don Juan is rescued by a Greek pirate’s young daughter, with whom he falls in love. Her father, enraged, succeeds in putting an end to their relationship. Don Juan is sold as a slave to a Turkish princess who loves him passionately. Escaping, he joins the Russian army against the Turks and attracts the attention of the Russian empress, who sends him to England on a diplomatic mission. The English setting provides Byron the opportunity to satirize the English. There is wide-ranging social, political, and ideological criticism. The aristocracy is denounced for material greed, hypocrisy, and pervasive vulgarity. Passionless English marriages of convenience are criticized. The apparently pointless pastimes of the bored upper classes are ridiculed. The poem was unfinished at the time of Byron’s death in 1824. But there is little evidence that Don Juan would have ended in Hell as he does in the Spanish legend. Byron projects him more as a victim of social corruption; uses his character to hang his seriously intended and articulated criticism of the sociopolitical life of the time; and presents, as Goethe put it, “a sharp and penetrating view of the world.” Gulshan Taneja

Education in Don Juan

While Lord Byron’s Don Juan’s central preoccupation is with Juan’s romantic antics and the speaker’s myriad digressive comments on contemporary society, the issue of education takes a central role in the epic’s opening sequence, which frames the remainder of the tale. In addition, the care that Juan takes to educate his charge, Leila, suggests a different mode of approaching moral education. As most clearly demonstrated in the descriptions of Juan’s education and his selection of Leila’s governess, Byron’s epic questions the effects of a chaste education and strongly suggests that better balance is necessary to equip youths to face the world’s temptations. As the epic opens, the speaker introduces Juan’s mother and primary tutor, Donna Inez, as .╯.╯. a walking calculation, Miss Edgeworth’s novels stepping from their covers, Or Mrs. Trimmer’s books on education,

244â•…â•… Byron, George Gordon Byron, Lord Or Coelebs’ Wife set out in quest of lovers (1.16.1–4) The speaker characterizes Juan’s mother as the perfect woman, so perfect that she possesses no “female error.” By comparing her to literary or textbook models of female education, the speaker casts Donna Inez as a model of the fictional or theoretical world; her attention to her son’s education reinforces this equation. This bookish approach to instruction, later characterized as “strictly moral” (1.39.4), illprepares the young man for congress with the world. The failing of Juan’s education is related to the characterization of his mother; As the speaker later relates, Inez’s “perfection is / Insipid in this naughty world of ours” (1.18.1–2). That insipidity translates into a sheltered education for Juan, his studies governed by a refusal to admit “a page of any thing that’s loose / Or hints continuation of the species” (1.40.6–7). To illustrate this lack in the boy’s knowledge, the speaker describes the ways in which the lessons of mythology are cleansed to protect the young mind (1.42– 45). The lack of more practical, worldly instruction in morality leaves the teenaged Juan open to seduction at the hands of Donna Julia. As the pair begin their ill-fated affair, Juan cannot understand why their discourse has become strained for of love “he had no more notion / Than he who never saw the sea of ocean” (1.70.7–8). His lack of worldly knowledge, frequently offered as the rationale for his sexual escapades, leads him into a variety of scrapes and becomes a way of excusing what would be considered immoral and licentious behavior in a gentleman. The education afforded Juan by his mother, who takes great care to keep him pure, contrasts sharply with the education Juan arranges for his ward, Julia. Lady Pinchbeck, described as a woman who “had been talked about” in her youth (12.47.1), has had closer contact with the world, a trait which renders her better qualified, in the speaker’s eyes, to educate young ladies: I think you’ll find from many a family picture

That daughters of such mothers as may know The world by experience rather than by lecture Turn out much better for the Smithfield Show Of vestals brought into the marriage mart Than those bred up by prudes without a heart. (12.46.3–8) The speaker juxtaposes “experience” and “lecture,” drawing a clear distinction between the two modes of learning to underscore the importance of practical knowledge in preparing young people to meet the world. While the young ladies being educated are prepared for entrance into a constraining social “marriage mart,” the preference for broader education is clearly illustrated. The speaker’s subsequent description of Lady Pinchbeck suggests that more worldly experience in youth could still result in one being “an exemplary wife” (12.47.8). Juan’s decision to entrust Leila’s education to this woman demonstrates, in the speaker’s eyes, a more reasoned approach to moral upbringing; by guiding youth through the pitfalls of experience, adults can best prepare them for the choices that lie ahead. The speaker portrays Juan as a “wealthy orphan” who is disadvantaged by an overly protective mother and should be pitied because “too soon they are parents to themselves” (17.4.1). Education, a foundational topic for the text, should encompass more than abstract, chaste knowledge to better equip youth to enter the world. Without guidance in making life choices, they may end up, like Byron’s protagonist, learning difficult life lessons while being tossed on the sea of humanity. Anita DeRouen

Futility in Don Juan

Lord Byron still remains associated in the minds of a great majority of readers as one who lived life on his own terms and in defiance of social constraints in more ways than one. As an individual, his life was marked by numerous scandals and endless adventures. While poverty and deprivation defined his early life, later, at Cambridge University, he spent less time studying than enjoying himself. Wit and

Don Juanâ•…â•… 245 humor gradually took over the tenor of his life, and his youthful indiscretions led to outrage and disgrace. As an artist, he stood halfway between the Augustan and the romantic but appeared to favor neither. Byron had an incorrigible sense of fun, was capable of irrepressible laughter, and tried his best to turn life’s ups and downs—and he had many—into many a sort of comic opera. Facetious, humorous, droll, exuberant, spirited, and witty all at once, Byron had his own demons to deal with. He had ideals, hopes, and incorrigible faith in the ability of mankind to achieve those ideals. Augustan commitment to order, harmony, justice, and fair play motivated his thinking. In life, he moved from crisis to crisis, but nothing dimmed his faith in radical endeavors. While this account of Byron’s life and character is commonly known, there is another side to his personality that has not been paid adequate attention. Though he was certainly not a misanthrope, he certainly was disillusioned. “That all is vanity” represents a strong and noticeable current in Don Juan: “Must I restrain me, through the fear of strife, / From holding up the nothingness of life?” (7.6.7–8). He quotes Socrates: “To know that nothing could be known” (7.5.2) The hero here, Don Juan, is a precursor to modern existentialists, who argue that the feelings, thoughts, and emotions of the individual are where meaning is to be found. An existentialist worldview can lead to a nihilistic one—in other words, a worldview in which nothing has meaning. In Don Juan, for instance, Byron seems to believe that humans constantly live under the burdens of despair, emptiness, and futility. When he seeks in the poem to analyze, for instance, the horrors of war, he can come to no other conclusion than to lay the blame for this horror squarely on the shoulders of the men who create war. For Byron, it seems to be a circle: man creates war; only man can stop war. Thus, it is futile. Byron defends himself against the charge of misanthropy thus: “I say no more than hath been said in Dante’s / Verse, .╯.╯. / By Fenelon, by Luther, and by Plato; / By Tillotson, and Wesley, and Rousseau, / Who knew this life was not worth a potato” (7.3.7–8, 4.2–4).

One can see and draw connections to modernism through Byron’s disillusionment with existentialistic despair: He “voices insights of a disillusioned .╯.╯. man of the world with a zest and vitality,” which compares well with the arid and defeatist attitude of the generation “waiting for Godot.” Toward the end of canto 1, he writes: What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt’s King Cheops erected the first pyramid And largest, thinking it was just the thing To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid, But somebody or other rummaging, Burgalariously broke his coffin’s lid: Let not a monument give you or me hopes, Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops. (1.219.1–8) And: What is the end of fame? ’tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: .╯.╯. For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their “midnight taper,” To have when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust. (1.218.1–8) In viewing life as an embodiment of nothing but pointlessness and futility, Byron expresses himself with telling force. Gulshan Taneja

Individual and Society in Don Juan

Despite Byron’s epic ambitions, Don Juan remains a work uniquely individual in form and design. In its rambling, episodic structure, Don Juan and his life and adventures remain in many ways incidental to the poet’s endless digressions on innumerable subjects. Essentially and avowedly a satire as Don Juan is, chivalric traditions of romance are ridiculed. The satirical treatments of love, sex and sexuality,

246â•…â•… Camus, Albert wealth, power, war, religion, injustices heaped upon weaker members of the society, restraints on personal liberty and freedom of speech, and many more issues frequently monopolize the poet’s attention. England herself occupies center stage for a major share of Byron’s bitter tirades and provides a fertile ground for a satirical treatment of English society. After his Turkish adventures, Don Juan joins the Russian army. Empress Catherine is charmed with him. Sent to England for a change of climate, he is a handsome young man with fine, polished manners, who has impressive bearing and acts with appropriate decorum. With a hero who is intensely distracted by indifferent young maidens and madly swooned over by others, the poem’s social setting provides Byron with many delightful opportunities for satire. An innocent foreigner—that is, an observant bystander—becomes a stock device for the satirical treatment of social situations. Byron makes good use of Don Juan in this role. Juan comes to England full of enthusiasm, “lost in wonder for so great a nation, / .╯.╯. ‘And here,’ he cried, ‘is Freedom’s chosen station’↜” (11.9.3–5) when his idealistic reverie is interrupted by a highwayman: “Damn your eyes! Your money or your life!” (11.10.8). Byron goes on to satirize England of the years when the French Revolution was at its most idealistic high. Vulgar oligarchy is bitterly denounced, materialistic attitude and social hypocrisy are ruthlessly exposed. In comparison, England’s heroic defiance in the Napoleonic Wars of the early decades of the 19th century is recalled fondly. In English society, loveless, “cold” marriages of convenience are criticized. In fact, in Don Juan, marriage itself is treated ironically. Most marriages that Byron portrays in Don Juan are shown as unhappy. The pastimes of the bored rich—fox hunting, lounging, cards—are ridiculed. The high political ideals of the Whigs and the Tories are treated as indistinguishable, and political turncoats receive the bitterest scorn. The dedication to Don Juan focuses on Robert Southey; William Wordsworth receives a similar rebuff, while the self-indulgent, self-congratulatory narrow focus of the romantic poets receives a rap on the knuckles:

You—Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion From better company, have kept your own .╯.╯. There is narrowness in such a notion, Which makes me wish you’d change your lakes for Ocean. (Dedication. 5.1–8) The social fabric is found to be unfavorable to a citizen’s growth and development. The absence of a meaningful sociopolitical structure and the failure of a system to nourish the individual in the end leads to amorality, irresponsibility, and defiance of existing social values, as these values have been corrupted and degraded by the dominating social classes. Despite his resourcefulness and courage, Don Juan is shown as a passive character. He ends up symbolizing society’s helpless victim, debased and manipulated rather than sheltered and supported. Byron provides a new definition of evil in this context. Unlike what the legend of Don Juan projects, evil, Byron would have us believe, flourishes not through rogue individuals but through society gone awry. Gulshan Taneja

CAMUS, ALBERTâ•… The Stranger (The Outsider)â•… (1942, 1946)

The Stranger, Albert Camus’s first novel, was published in French in 1942 and in English in 1946. Told in first-person point of view by the main character, Meursault, it recounts the events leading up to his execution for committing murder. Meursault’s mother dies at the beginning of the book, but other characters include Marie, a girlfriend who wants to marry him; Raymond, a neighbor who wants his help in getting revenge on a girl; Salamano, another neighbor; and, later, other characters in court and in prison. The 123-page novella is told in a very simple style, in brief sentences with little description but a lot of movement. Characterization, symbolism, epiphany, and suspense are present. Although numerous themes are apparent, including death, race, futility, alienation, and justice, the novel is most often discussed in light of absurdism, a philosophy that Camus (1913–60) basically invented.

The Strangerâ•…â•… 247 Existentialism is often seen as going together with absurdism, but Camus held that The Stranger was not an existentialist novel; he was investigating what he called “the nakedness of man faced with the absurd.” The Stranger is told in two parts. In the first part, Meursault describes the death of his mother, his relationships, and the events that result in him murdering an Arab man on the beach. In the second part, Meursault is in prison, where he meets with attorneys and, later, a chaplain. The trial takes place in part 2, and after the verdict is read, Meursault reflects on his life and awaits the day he will be executed. Chris Lessick

Death in The Stranger

Albert Camus’s The Stranger highlights the theme of death in a unique way. Meursault first deals with the death of his mother, followed by his murdering an Arab man, and finally his own impending death by the guillotine. Near the end of the novel, he states, “Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter,” which clearly illustrates that he recognizes death as nothing more than what happens at the end of life, a perspective that differs greatly from the common response and reaction to death. Upon receiving the news of his mother’s death, Meursault’s thoughts indicate that it’s more of a hassle than a tragedy, as he must ask for time off from work to attend the funeral. When he tells his boss, “It’s not my fault,” it is easily seen how his response to death is different from most people’s. Later, he wants to have a cigarette, but he says, “I hesitated, because I didn’t know if I could do it with Maman right there. I thought about it; it didn’t matter.” Obviously, Meursault does not seem to think anything substantial about death, as he decides that it does not matter if he smokes while holding vigil over his mother’s dead body. The rest of the vigil goes much the same way, with Meursault unappreciative of death’s significance. As a woman who claimed his mother was her only friend finally stops crying, his words are, “Then she finally shut up,” which clearly illustrates his insensitivity. Even during the funeral service the

next morning, the only thing that has any impact at all on Meursault is the heat he continually mentions, but nothing about burying his mother. As chapter 2 ends, he simply says, “It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now .╯.╯. and that, really, nothing had changed,” showing that he hardly recognizes any meaning or importance in death. At the climax of the story, Meursault expresses his indifference to death again as he takes the life of an Arab. Though he is detached from any emotion toward death, it does not excuse his action, and he later blames the sun for why he does it. As he states that “it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness,” he seems to understand the implications of what he has done. Yet at the same time, firing four more shots indicates a total lack of feeling. Part 2 of the book revolves around the trial, and much of it illustrates Meursault’s perspective on death, in that only at brief moments does he understand or appreciate the fact that he is the one on trial. When he is first arrested, he does not even understand the intimidation he exercises when he is put into a cell with Arabs who laugh at him and ask what he is in for: “I said I’d killed an Arab and they were all silent.” Again, even here, death seems to matter so little to him that he is able to admit to other Arabs that he killed one. Right before the trial, a policeman asks if he has “jitters,” and he responds “that, in a way, [he] was interested in seeing a trial,” which underscores the fact that he has still made no meaningful connection between the murder that he has committed and his own life. Not until the very end of the novel does Meursault finally come to a generally acceptable conclusion regarding death. Once he is certain that he will die by the guillotine, he considers that “Since we’re all going to die .╯.╯. I had to accept the rejection of my appeal.” Here he is finally able to relate his true thoughts about death—its inevitability and therefore the futility of sorrow. In the novel’s final pages, he understands that when his mother was nearing death, she was “ready to live it all again,” and that he, too, “felt ready to live it all again.” The Meursault who may be set beneath the guillotine’s blade the very next morning has perhaps come to fear death,

248â•…â•… Camus, Albert wanting another chance at life. He reveals that “for the first time .╯.╯. I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself .╯.╯. I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.” Meursault, formerly apathetic, indifferent, and lacking any expression of sadness over death, ends his narrative with the realization that death is more than just the end of life. Chris Lessick

Futility in The Stranger

In The Stranger, a novel based on Albert Camus’s theory of the absurd, or the meaningless nature of life, futility—the idea that action is pointless or useless—is reflected in Meursault’s actions, thoughts, and words, which is particularly revealing since he is the narrator. At his mother’s funeral, in his relationships, the murder, and even while in prison, Meursault clearly conveys futility above anything else. It is shown, for examples, in how he approaches the vigil and the funeral. As it becomes dark, Meursault drinks coffee, then thinks, “I felt like having a smoke. But I hesitated, because I didn’t know if I could do it with Maman right there. I thought about it; it didn’t matter .╯.╯. we smoked.” Clearly, at such a somber moment in a person’s life—the night before his mother’s funeral—Meursault comes to the realization that something as trivial as smoking a cigarette—obviously in poor taste for the occasion— “didn’t matter.” In fact, at this time, nothing seems to matter much to him, as he focuses on sensory details—“the smell of flowers on the night air,” “huge stomachs old women can have,” and “[t]he woman [who] kept on crying.╯.╯.╯. I wished I didn’t have to listen to her anymore.” From the first-person point of view, only mundane observations are noted, nothing intuitive or meaningful. Again, Meursault’s behavior and thoughts signify that he does not feel any grief, that everything is futile. During the funeral procession the next day, the sun’s heat seems the only thing noteworthy to Meursault. The nurse tells him, “If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church,” to which Meursault agrees, saying, “She was right. There was no way out,” The reader does not learn which he chooses, only that he deems it futile to

do either. Finally, as he closes that part of the story, Meursault states, “Sunday was over .╯.╯. Maman was buried now .╯.╯. and .╯.╯. really, nothing had changed,” which clearly shows that to him, mourning is futile. Obviously, Meursault’s outlook on life is that any reflection is pointless, as he continues as if nothing happened. Several of Meursault’s relationships also demonstrate the theme of futility, beginning with the relationship he starts with Marie the very next day. After they have gone out for a while, she asks him if he wants to marry her. Again, like his mother’s death, a marriage would seem important, but Meursault’s life is governed by futility, and therefore he replies that “it didn’t make any difference to me,” obviously showing his detached attitude toward life. In the situations with his neighbor, Raymond, Meursault again demonstrates detachment. He agrees to write the letter and later agrees to be a witness for Raymond, saying, “It didn’t matter to me.” Here his indecisiveness is the only certainty about Meursault; it seems that not much matters to him at all—because he finds it all futile. Futility is also depicted when Meursault shoots the Arab. He waits at the bungalow after the initial fight, debating whether to climb the stairs and face the women or stay on the beach. He calls the heat “intense” and then thinks, “To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing.” The futility he perceives in the decision leads him to walk back toward the Arab. After he shoots, he admits, “I knew that I had shattered the silence of a beach where I’d been happy,” but he fires four more shots into the fallen man anyway. At this point, he realizes that he has basically ruined his life, saying, “It was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.” Undoubtedly, Meursault’s outlook on his actions— and on life in general—is one of futility. In the second part of the novel, Meursault’s time in prison and at trial signifies futility not only in its events but also in how Meursault perceives them. While the prosecutor and defense attorney seem to battle, Meursault wants to interject something, feeling as though his “fate was being decided without anyone so much as asking [his] opinion,” but a moment later, he thinks, “I didn’t have anything to say. Besides, I have to admit that whatever interest

The Strangerâ•…â•… 249 you can get people to take in you doesn’t last very long.” Once more, he falls back on the uselessness and pointlessness of things rather than having any hope at all, even for himself. Once the verdict is read, he recounts the moment “the presiding judge asked me if I had anything to say. I thought about it. I said, ‘No.’↜” At the reading of his own death sentence, he views any response as futile and therefore says nothing. Overall, The Stranger presents an apathetic, unfeeling, and detached main character whose thoughts and actions seem governed by futility. Meursault chooses one thing over another for no apparent reason, failing to consider anything in weighing his decisions. Camus’s theory of absurdism—that life’s events and decisions may ultimately be meaningless or pointless—is emphasized in Meursault’s personality, actions, and thoughts. Chris Lessick

Individual and Society in The Stranger

Many works of literature employ themes revolving around the individual and society. Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger contains an excellent demonstration of this theme with its main character, Meursault. Different philosophical theories as well as theories in other disciplines—psychology, sociology, anthropology, history—may have varying perspectives regarding the individual’s place in society. Also, different cultures have different frameworks for individuals in their societies. Nevertheless, there are general expectations, and common sense often governs those expectations. Meursault is an individual who thinks and acts differently from others, and it is almost exclusively these differences—not the matter of guilt in murder—that help the jury side with the prosecution and deliver his death sentence. The first event of the book is the death of Meursault’s mother. Since the story is told in first person, the reader gets Meursault’s thoughts as well as the narrative of his actions, and both deviate from what society would expect. To Meursault, going to the home is an annoyance, as are most of the events that follow, including the funeral procession. During the nightlong vigil over his mother’s body, he states, “I remember opening my eyes at one point.╯.╯.╯. Then I dozed off again.” In the last hours he spends with his

mother, he sleeps, rather than doing what might be expected of a person in that position—crying, thinking, remembering. The whole event is a bother to Meursault, having to ask for time off from work and using up a weekend, but common sense indicates an only son would deeply mourn his mother’s death. The death of a person’s mother would typically be upsetting, but in Meursault’s subsequent thoughts and actions the whole way through the funeral procession, the reader comes to realize that he is quite different rather than the typical. In Meursault’s reaction to his mother’s death, he seems slightly annoyed that he must ask his boss for time off work and then use up part of his weekend to make funeral arrangements. However, his attitude is expressed when he admits “that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.” His easygoing attitude is best expressed here. Though a relaxed attitude is not a negative thing in general, the fact that he buried his mother and felt nothing at all about it is what makes him stand out from the crowd. Furthermore, the day after the funeral, Meursault begins a relationship with a girl, Marie, with whom he used to work. This is later used in the trial by the prosecution to show that he is different from “normal” people, stating, “the day after his mother’s death, this man was out swimming, starting up a dubious liaison, and going to the movies, a comedy, for laughs.” The shocked silence of the courtroom indicates society understands that Meursault is not a typical individual. In fact, the prosecution’s case is based almost exclusively on the discrepancies between Meursault’s actions and what society would expect from a person in his situation. The prosecutor announces how he will prove Meursault was guilty, ending it with “the dim light cast by the mind of this criminal soul.” After explaining all of the events that led up to the murder, highlighting the relationship with Marie and other points that paint Meursault as a remorseless person, Meursault says, “I couldn’t help admitting that he was right. I didn’t feel much remorse for what I’d done.” He wants to explain how he “had never been able to truly feel remorse for anything.” It

250â•…â•… Cao Xueqin is in those sad statements that the reader fully comes to understand how he is different. Immediately after that, the prosecutor begins to explain Meursault’s criminal soul. Meursault recounts the prosecutor’s words: “He said that he had peered into [my soul] and that he had found nothing .╯.╯. [and] the truth was that I didn’t have a soul and that nothing human .╯.╯. was within my reach.” The verdict of guilty and sentence of execution fully explains how society—represented by the jury—views Meursault. It is as if nothing can explain or excuse what he has done, simply because he is so different from anyone else. Meursault is a man whose life has been ruled by chance and whim. He does not actively try to be different but simply ignores society’s expectations, doing what he wants. The French title, L’Étranger, is often translated as The Stranger but just as often as The Outsider, and through his thoughts and behavior, Meursault is easily regarded as both a stranger and an outsider. Chris Lessick

of clear jade in his mouth. In his youth, Bao-yu often seeks and is intoxicated by the company of his female cousins and maids. His consequent lack of interest in scholarly pursuit incites displeasure in his father, Jia Zheng, a strict Confucian scholar. This causes much tension in the Jia household. Meanwhile, a celestial plant, which the stone had daily watered and revived in heaven, is incarnated in the earthly realm as Bao-yu’s female cousin, Lin Dai-yu (Black Jade), who is destined to repay the stone’s kindness with a legacy of tears. A triangular romance ensues, involving Bao-yu, Lin Dai-yu, and Bao-yu’s other female cousin, Xue Bao-chai (Precious Clasp), whom the elders trick Bao-yu into marrying. The brokenhearted Dai-yu dies as a result of this deception. Bao-yu eventually wins ancestral glory for his family and rescues them from their decline into poverty when he is placed seventh in the civil service examination. Yet, instead of returning home, a newly enlightened Bao-yu renounces the mortal world and is transported back to heaven by the Buddhist monk and Taoist priest. Edwina Quek

CAO XUEQINâ•… Dream of the Red Chamberâ•… (1791)

Family in Dream of the Red Chamber

Also known as The Story of the Stone, this 120-chapter work by Cao Xueqin (ca. 1715–ca. 1763) is widely hailed as China’s greatest novel. Its comprehensive narrative depicts 18th-century Chinese aristocratic life and features approximately 20 major and 400 minor characters. The novel portrays the colorful domestic life of the extended Jia family, including their concubines and maids. It explores themes of love, education, family, parenthood, gender, social class, Chinese traditions and customs, and the clash between worldly Confucian values and more esoteric Buddhist and Taoist beliefs. Dream of the Red Chamber opens with the mythic story of a stone that is deemed unsuitable and rejected by the goddess Nü-wa for the purpose of mending the firmament of heaven. Depressed and ashamed, this magical stone is taken to the earthly realm by a Buddhist monk and a Taoist priest to induce growth upon its consciousness. It enters the mortal world as a boy, Jia Bao-yu (Precious Jade), so named because he is born with an inscribed piece

The aristocratic Jia clan living in Jinling enjoys a history of relations with the imperial family. Baoyu’s elder sister, Yuan-chun, is the emperor’s imperial concubine. Bao-yu’s great-grandfather and greatgranduncle were also bestowed with inheritable princely titles for services rendered to the emperor. Both these noble branches of the Jia family reside in adjoining mansions called Rong-guo and Ning-guo. The novel traces the declining prosperity of the Jia clan caused by extravagant living and a gross mismanagement of household finances. With each succeeding generation, increasing moral degradation in its male members accelerates the family’s downfall. With the exception of Bao-yu and his upright father, Jia Zheng, Bao-yu’s uncle, Jia She; male cousins Jia Lian, Jia Zhen, and Xue Pan; and younger half brother, Jia Huan, have all fallen into vice. Bao-yu’s uncle, Jia Jing, who resides in a mountain, devotes his life to alchemy and a delusive search for immortality. The Jias’ female members manage the family’s domestic affairs. Grandmother Jia, the widow of

Dream of the Red Chamber â•…â•… 251 Bao-yu’s paternal grandfather, is the matriarch of Rong-guo mansion. She commands major domestic decisions such as the arranged marriage between Bao-yu and Bao-chai. Grandmother Jia’s seniority allows her to protect her favorite, Bao-yu, from Jia Zheng’s constant displeasure with him. Jia Zheng’s repeated deference to Grandmother Jia exemplifies respect for one’s elders, an important code of conduct in Confucian ethics. Grandmother Jia entrusts her capable daughter-in-law, Wang Xi-feng, with the day-to-day running of her 300-strong household. Xi-feng’s successful enforcement of discipline among numerous maids and servants particularly attests to her supreme management skills. Relations hoping to solicit monetary aid, political support, and education waivers vie for influence with the affluent Jias. The countrywoman, Grannie Liu, visits Rong-guo mansion on the pretext of paying her respects to Lady Wang but leaves with a gift of 20 silver taels that allows her family to tide over their impoverished circumstances. Poor relations who cannot afford private tuition for their children enroll them in a charitable private school run by the Jias. When the lawless Xue Pan is found guilty of manslaughter on two separate occasions, family connections and bribery allow him to turn the law in his favor. Law enforcers in the province know better than to offend the powerful Jia family and the Wang, Xue, and Shi households they are connected to by marriage. Although family solidarity is important to the Jias, occasional bouts of disharmony inevitably erupt in the household. A famous episode involves Xi-feng’s harsh treatment of her cousin, Jia Rui, who develops an illicit attraction toward her. When Jia Rui falls seriously ill as a result of unfulfilled longing, Xi-feng’s cruel refusal to provide him with sufficient tonics from her stores partially contributes to his death. Her maltreatment of her husband’s kind concubine, You Er-jie, also leads to the latter’s suicide. Another memorable episode sees Jia Huan’s maliciousness toward his half brother culminate in his deliberate framing of Bao-yu. Believing that Bao-yu attempted to rape the maid Golden and caused her suicide, Jia Zheng gives him a sound thrashing until blood soaks his clothes. Chaos

ensues in the household when a greatly distressed Grandmother Jia arrives on the scene. For the Jias, practical considerations take precedence over matters of love where marriage is concerned. Despite being aware of Bao-yu and Daiyu’s mutual affection for each other, Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang choose the healthy and capable Bao-chai over the sickly and ethereal Dai-yu to be Bao-yu’s bride. Bao-chai’s practical nature marks her as the more suitable wife to manage Bao-yu’s household. Moreover, being an orphan, Dai-yu has no parent to speak on behalf of her matrimonial interests. Servants form an important part of the novel’s familial landscape. When Bao-yu and his best friend, Qin Zhong, are insulted by Jokey Jin in the clan school, Bao-yu’s rash but loyal page, Tealeaf, wastes no time in admonishing the wrongdoer and challenging him to a fight to save Bao-yu’s honor. Grandmother Jia’s devoted maid, Faithful, hangs herself upon her mistress’s death so she can continue to serve her in the afterlife. In turn, masters and mistresses tend to treat their maids benevolently. Bao-yu’s touching goodbye to his maid, Skybright, sees them exchanging undershirts as tokens of affection for each other. Husbands are found for Xi-chun’s maids when she decides to become a nun, thus ensuring that they are well taken care of after their period of service. Cao Xueqin’s use of the Jias’ family life as a backdrop in Dream of the Red Chamber provides much cohesion to his highly episodic narrative. Characters that live and interact with one another in the mansions unravel their earthly fates based on the web of familial relationships they have been born into. This is also true for their maids, whose individual fates are closely tied to the master or mistress they serve. Edwina Quek

Gender in Dream of the Red Chamber

Bao-yu’s famous likening of girls to water and boys to mud underscores Dream of the Red Chamber’s disparate treatment of gender. Young girls are systematically elevated above their male counterparts in the spheres of literary talent and morality. While the boys of the clan school are easily distracted

252â•…â•… Cao Xueqin from their studies, poetry composed by the girls in Prospect Garden during the imperial concubine’s visit epitomizes the best of Chinese literary culture. An erudite Yuan-chun even improves on Chinese names given to places in the garden that have previously been chosen by a group of literary gentlemen. When Bao-yu falters in verse construction, Dai-yu and Bao-chai exercise their scholarship by rendering him valuable poetic assistance. Later, Xue Pan’s delinquent ways are sharply contrasted against his sister Bao-chai’s dutiful and sensible nature. She becomes her mother’s source of emotional support during Xue Pan’s extended stay in jail and competently manages her household in a time of chaos. Although the girls are obviously superior to the Jia males, including Bao-yu, gender inequality in Qing society keeps free expression of the girls’ talents within the walls of the Jia mansions. The exquisite poems crafted by Dai-yu and Bao-chai during the Crab-flower Club’s meetings, for example, may have been lost to posterity if not for Bao-yu’s promotion of them outside the mansions. While the Jia men enter and leave the mansions at will, the aristocratic girls are prohibited from such movements and any career pursuits of their own. Eventually, only Baoyu and his nephew, Jia Lan, sit for the civil service examination to win prestige for the Jia clan. Instead, the aristocratic girls are presented with very few life options as they come of age. Their destinies are, by default, to marry and leave their homes. Thereafter, their lives are entirely subject to the station and kindness of their husbands. An unfortunate Ying-chun suffers in the hands of her vile husband, Sun Shao-zu, to whom she was married on her father’s insistence. She soon dies of neglect as a result of her husband’s penny-pinching ways. Tanchun procures a good match through her father but cannot visit her family for a long time after moving to her bridal home on the coast. A reluctant Baochai acquiesces to be Bao-yu’s wife in accordance with the arrangement of the elders even though she knows his heart lies with Dai-yu. Her suppression of her feelings for filial obedience comes at the expense of true marital happiness. Barring death, the other viable life option for aristocratic girls is nunhood. After much negotiation with her family, Xi-chun

takes up the nun’s habit as a preferable alternative to marriage. Given these rigid gender prescriptions, chastity becomes the main means by which Chinese society judges a woman. Society’s inegalitarian treatment of women is especially pronounced when ruination and death ensue the moment a woman’s chastity is called into question. Rumors circulated by Xi-feng on You Er-jie’s dubious virtue before marriage cause the family and servants to lose respect for her, resulting in her suicide. When Liu Xiang-lian breaks off his engagement to You San-jie, the latter slits her throat before him as dramatic proof of her purity. Chess’s adherence to the chastity rule dictating that a woman may only engage in sexual relations with one man in her lifetime and her mother’s adamant refusal to release her to her lover instigates her dismay and suicide. Indeed, Dream of the Red Chamber shows many female characters with great potential to succeed in life becoming disempowered by the society they live in due to modest and unobtrusive behaviors that are expected of their gender. Even the old matriarch, Grandmother Jia, is not immune to this. The extent of her power never reaches beyond governing internal family matters. Toward the end of the novel, she laments to having the wool pulled over her eyes by the males of the clan, Jia She and Jia Zhen, whose wayward behavior outside precipitates the family’s downfall. While Xi-feng wins accolades for her powerful managerial skills and seems to be a counterexample to female disempowerment, one is reminded that she pays for her unconventional success with her spectacular fall from power and increasingly ill health at the end of the novel. To be fair, although Chinese society grants more freedom to men, some men are by no means exempt from a certain degree of suffering attendant to their gender. Considerable pressure is placed on Bao-yu as the male heir of the clan to accomplish honors in the civil service examination. He finally sublimates his desires, studies hard, and submits to this fate. Similarly, Jia Zheng eschews irresponsible enjoyment in favor of walking the rock-strewn path of righteousness, unlike other male family members. While the novel portrays suffering of the female gender in a more sympathetic light, it would be

Dream of the Red Chamber â•…â•… 253 better to conclude that forms of suffering in the novel are, to a large extent, gender-linked. Gender mediates each character’s individual experience, ultimately determining their quality of life. Edwina Quek

Social Class in Dream of the Red Chamber

With more than 400 characters from different walks of life filling its pages, Dream of the Red Chamber offers a panoramic view of the Chinese social class system during the Qing dynasty. Aristocratic families like the Jias who have been decorated by the emperor hail from the upper class. The lower classes are occupied by the family’s maids, pages, and poorer relations. While socioeconomic status and kinship relations are both important determinants of social class, the former plays a more important role than the latter. Despite being from the same clan register as the aristocratic Jias, the recent palace graduate, Jia Yu-cun, is reluctant to claim this familial connection as the Jias rank far above him on the social ladder. Poorer relations like Grannie Liu and Qin Zhong, who depend on the goodwill of the Jias, are also careful to defer to them, kinship ties notwithstanding. Grannie Liu makes several kowtows to the young Xi-feng on their first meeting to demonstrate respect for the latter’s higher social station. An unassuming Qin Zhong expresses discomfiture at Bao-yu’s suggestion that they address each other as equals since he comes from a poor family. Lowerclass members are more conscientious about following proper codes of conduct in the presence of their upper-class relations. Conversely, the upper class tends to abuse its power and influence. When a destitute Stony refuses to part with his beloved set of antique fans, a greedy Jia She takes advantage of his political connections in the government to seize Stony’s fans for himself. The rich and bad-tempered Xue Pan is another example of one who abuses his privileged social station. He gathers his henchmen to severely beat a poor country squire’s son, Feng Yuan, when both men enter into an ownership dispute over the pretty Caltrop. Leaving Feng Yuan to die from his wounds, Xue Pan whisks Caltrop away, only to abuse her when he grows tired of her later. In another incident,

an impatient Xue Pan hits a poor waiter on the head with a wine bowl, killing him. When the force of the law bears down on him, he avoids exile by bribing a magistrate to pass him a lighter sentence. Evidence of Xi-feng’s usury is also discovered during the imperial raid. Illegal promissory notes bearing exorbitant rates of interest to the poor are found in her apartments, and her husband, Jia Lian, is eventually punished for them. By including many incidents of lower-class oppression in his narrative, Cao’s novel exposes upper-class corruption of that era and may be read as a scathing indictment of this aspect of Chinese society. Social hierarchies also exist within the microcosm of the aristocratic Jia household. Elder siblings rank above younger ones in the Chinese family structure. Bao-yu’s father, Jia Zheng, continues to pay Jia She the respect due to an older brother even after the latter is disgraced and sent to exile. An exception occurs in the case of Yuan-chun, who is deemed royalty through her marriage to the emperor. Grandmother Jia, the older ladies, her father, and uncles arrive to pay their respects to her when she takes ill in the palace. Although legitimately married into the family, concubines and their children occupy a lower social station than first wives and their children. Jia Zheng’s concubine, Aunt Zhao, and her son, Jia Huan, do not have as much clout in the family as his wife, Lady Wang, and her son, Bao-yu. As such, Jia Huan’s conniving acts against Bao-yu often arise from jealousy of his better fortune. Hierarchies exist among the Jias’ servants as well. Maids are differentiated into senior and junior maids and wealthier servants have servants of their own. The genius of Cao Xueqin’s novel lies not so much in his complex portrayal of Chinese social structures as in his ability to show how these structures were reinforced and perpetuated in that era. Power is kept in the hands of the powerful through oppression and reward. When the maid Chess’s sexual indiscretions are discovered, she is immediately banished from the mansions as a negative example to keep the rest of the maids in line. The same goes for the maids Golden and Skybright, who do not actually deserve their employers’ harsh treatment of them. Thus oppressed, the lower classes are less

254â•…â•… Capote, Truman inclined to rebel and more willing to subordinate themselves to the upper class. Acts of reward by the upper class also allow them to reinforce their dominant place in the hierarchy. When Qin-shi’s little maid, Gem, takes her own life on learning of the death of her mistress, she is admired by the rest of the Jia clan for her rare devotion. Her posthumous ascension in rank is a message of reinforcement for the other maids to be loyal and obedient. Edwina Quek

CAPOTE, TRUMANâ•… In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequencesâ•… (1965)

Truman Capote (1924–84) claimed that with his book In Cold Blood, first published in The New Yorker in 1965 and in book form in 1966, he invented the genre of true crime. The book has been immensely popular, evidenced by two film adaptations and two films about Capote’s writing process. Literary scholars, critics, and students are particularly interested in it because, although the material in it is factually accurate, the text can be read like a work of fiction. Readers can identify common literary themes such as illness, justice, and freedom. The catalyst for In Cold Blood is “four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.” This sentence, early in the book, informs the reader simultaneously that the Clutters—Herb, Bonnie, and their children Nancy and Kenyon—are murdered, and that the murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, die as well. Dick and Perry, with their checkered pasts and tattooed bodies, stand in stark contrast to the clean, wholesome American image upheld by the Clutters and the citizens of their small hometown, Holcomb, Kansas. That the reader learns early on about their deaths centers the book on the consequences of the murder rather than on the murder itself. In Cold Blood involves a host of characters: the Clutter family; the investigators from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation—Al Dewey, Harold Nye, Roy Church and Clarence Duntz; the murderers Dick and Perry; their families and acquaintances; and the townspeople of Holcomb. It concurrently follows the murder investigation and Dick and Per-

ry’s road trip to Mexico and back, culminating with their apprehension in Las Vegas; their confession to the crime; the trial; and, ultimately, their execution. Ethan Meyers

Freedom in In Cold Blood

Dick Hickock and Perry Smith’s plan to rob the Clutter family was to be their last job and should have provided enough money for Dick and Perry to have the free lives they had only imagined. But the crime is botched and becomes brutal: The money they expect to find does not exist, and they inexplicably kill four members of the family, providing the title event for Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Rather than simply vilify the murderers, Capote presents Dick and Perry’s histories, dreams, and hopes to suggest, in part, that the multiple murder and the trail of crime that follows are Dick and Perry’s flailing stabs at unrealistic conceptions of freedom. Perry defines freedom in terms of escapist, boyish fantasies of buried treasure, and Dick can only conceive of an individualistic freedom. Both men are unable to reconcile their fantasies of freedom with the social responsibilities that Perry’s sister says are necessary in order to live in a free society. According to his father, freedom means more to Perry than anything. This value is understandable in light of his long history of confinement: As a child, he lived at the whims of rodeo parents and was orphaned and abused in a convent; as an adult, he became confined by his maimed legs and served time in jail. In response to the realities of confinement, Perry develops a concept of freedom symbolized by an imaginary parrot that saves him and savages his enemies, and by boyish dreams of sunken ships and buried treasure. The parrot visits Perry throughout his life, first during an especially abusive episode at the convent, and later when he is on death row. His parrot visions are matched by dreams of a carefree tropical life that belie his existence as an ex-convict and an inmate on death row. His life is anything but the carefree tourist life he imagines. Vacation advertisements for the Caribbean island of Cozumel in a men’s magazine naturally appeal to Perry as they unite his dreams of freedom in a single image of parrots flying from the mainland every year to lay their eggs. For a brief moment,

In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequencesâ•…â•… 255 Perry’s fantasies meet reality when he catches a large fish in Mexico. Capote invokes the parrot when he describes Perry looking “as though at last, and as in one of his dreams, a tall yellow bird had hauled him to heaven.” But, ultimately, real, tangible freedom eludes Perry, and he remains confined to a fantasy world. Whether due to his life history, his possible mental illness, or some other force, Perry ignores social responsibility, trying instead to seize freedom by murder or theft. Writing about a cold-blooded murderer, Capote paradoxically communicates the deep sadness of a man whose dreams are dominated by freedom and happiness, but whose reality is dominated by imprisonment and violence. Like Perry, Dick is physically and mentally confined. As the result of a severe car accident in which he sustained a head injury, Dick suffers crippling migraines and is unable to act according to his moral values. Although Dick teases Perry for his boyish fantasies, his sense of freedom is informed by fantasies, too. Instead of dreaming of sunken treasure, Dick enacts a fantasy-based outlaw existence. He plots a murder, steals cars, writes bad checks, spends money on alcohol and prostitutes, and siphons gas to drive across the country. One of his favorite memories is when he was stranded as an 18-year-old in the Colorado Rockies with only a gun, a radio, a little food, and some whiskey. It is a memory on which he bases a jailbreak scheme while he sits on death row. Dick’s fantasies of rugged individualism are rooted in a popular American fantasy of the lone, independent male hero who is responsible only to himself and his own survival. This brand of individualism comes at the cost of alienation from society. Dick and Perry’s freedom is antisocial. It is contingent on murder, theft, and escape rather than on responsibility to society. Like the poem Perry pretends to have written about “a race of men that don’t fit in,” Dick and Perry have the “curse of gypsy blood, / And they don’t know how to rest.” Because the curse leads not to Dick and Perry’s freedom but to their imprisonment, In Cold Blood raises questions about the responsibilities and costs of individual freedom. Capote complicates these questions by exploring Dick and Perry’s histories and psyches, considering not just two criminals who must pay for

their crimes, but two men struggling to make their realities conform to their fantasies of freedom. Ethan Myers

Illness in In Cold Blood

Dick Hickock, the accomplice to the murder that supplies the driving action for Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, insists throughout the text that he is “a normal,” but his psychiatric evaluation prior to the murder trial reveals characteristics typical of a “severe character disorder.” Unable to deal with frustration except through antisocial behavior, he overcompensates for low self-esteem by lying, bragging, and fantasizing about being rich and powerful, and he has a “pathological inability” to sustain positive relationships. Although not indicative of mental illness, Dick’s pedophiliac tendencies are a source of great shame: He is more fearful of people discovering his deviant sexual fantasies than he is of hanging. What is, however, partially indicative of mental illness according to Dick and Perry’s psychiatrist, Dr. Jones, is that Dick’s moral convictions appear to have little impact on his actions. In reference to his impulses for theft and pedophilia, Dick says, “I know it is wrong. But at the time I never give any thought to whether it is right or wrong.” Dr. Jones notes that the majority of Dick’s antisocial behavior has occurred since his car accident in 1950, when he received severe head trauma. He experiences crippling migraines, hemorrhages from his nose and ear, and he once removed a piece of glass that had worked its way out of his head via the corner of his eye. Despite evidence that Dick suffers from mental illness due to a possible brain injury, the court is uninterested in gradations of mental health and bypasses Dr. Jones’s psychiatric evaluation. In his confession to the Clutter murder, Perry Smith says that he never meant to harm Herb Clutter; he thought Herb was a nice, soft-spoken man—“I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” The emotional detachment of this statement is not only cold-blooded but is also evidence of “mental abnormality,” according to Dr. Jones. Perry outlived an alcoholic and absentee mother, an alcoholic sister who fell out a window to her death, and a brother who shot himself after driving his wife to suicide. In an orphanage run by nuns, Perry

256â•…â•… Capote, Truman received severe beatings for wetting the bed. As an adult, he still wets the bed, sucks his thumb, and fantasizes about buried treasure, but he has acquired an “ever-present, poorly controlled rage.” His friend Willie-Jay calls attention early in the novel to Perry’s propensity for “explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion.” Like Dick and Perry, Bonnie Clutter exhibits symptoms of mental illness; however, her symptoms are reflected inward. She becomes hopeful shortly before her death that her anxiety, sadness, and social withdrawal are the results of misaligned vertebrae rather than postnatal depression. Her preference for a physical rather than mental or emotional ailment reveals the social and personal shame that she associates with mental illness. The townspeople in Holcomb use words like nervous or spell to describe Bonnie’s illness; they refer to her retirement at the mental hospital as “time away,” as though she were vacationing. The pain of seclusion becomes as debilitating as the depression itself. Although she worries that she is “missing out on everything. The best years, the children—everything,” she remains quarantined in her bedroom, unable to escape the crippling cycle of her depression. While the Kansas courthouse is uninterested in any gradations of sanity, preferring instead a blackand-white definition, Capote shows that mental illness is hard to define. Its causes span physical brain injury to a history of abuse and abandonment to the stress and anxiety associated with childbirth and child care. In Cold Blood resists a narrow definition of mental illness; instead, it expands and humanizes it, compelling the reader to question the differences between sanity and insanity or health and illness. Ethan Myers

Justice in In Cold Blood

Citizens of Holcomb, Kansas, the main setting in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, disregard class hierarchies when they claim that the town exists as an egalitarian utopia: “All equal, regardless of wealth, color, or creed. Everything the way it ought to be in a democracy; that’s us.” When the happy democracy of this small American town is disrupted by the murder of the Clutter family, the town must bring the murderers to justice in order to reestablish Hol-

comb’s harmony. In Cold Blood challenges popular conceptions of justice such as rehabilitation, retribution, or punishment; instead, it presents justice as a restoration of Holcomb’s ideals. The Clutters embody the way everything “ought to be in a democracy.” Herb Clutter, the father, is an educated, professionally successful church leader who rejects displays of class hierarchies by snubbing the local country club in favor of chairing the Finney County 4-H club, a national organization that serves children’s moral development. His daughter, Nancy, is a member of the club. In addition to practically running the Clutter house, she is an A student and president of her class; she plays piano and clarinet and wins awards every year at the county fair for her preserves, pastries, needlework, and flower arrangements. Despite Herb and Nancy’s embodiment of American values, the Clutter family’s perfection is clouded by mother Bonnie’s depression; likewise, Holcomb’s perfection is clouded by the Clutter murder. As the murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith descend on the apple-pie democracy of Holcomb, their criminal histories, possible mental illnesses, and poor educations stand in stark contrast to Nancy and Herb’s American values. They disrupt Holcomb’s utopia. Dick and Perry’s execution is part of a national identity in which hangings are as American as Nancy’s award-winning pie. Execution is the most severe punishment for violating society’s rules; it is the ultimate removal from society. Dick and Perry effectively remove themselves from Holcomb’s society by a road-trip flight to Mexico, but the execution serves as a public and permanent removal. The Kansas justice system delivers the decision, but the identities of the beneficiaries remain ambiguous. The convicts are executed, so justice serves no rehabilitative benefit for them. The victims have been murdered; justice is not for them. As the only survivors, the townspeople and a few family members are the only potential beneficiaries of justice. Instead of serving the criminals or the victims, justice serves the greater society: By permanently removing imperfect, criminal actors from society, Holcomb can return to a purer, more innocent time. Dick and Perry hang in order to restore Holcomb’s democratic harmony. In

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandâ•…â•… 257 this equation, as Capote states, execution is a “ritual of vengeance.” Executions uphold a vision of justice while acting out vengeance. Likewise, prisons are sites where convicts are supposedly brought to justice, but Capote shows that they are also sites of criminal intensification where prisoners meet each other and learn about potential criminal acts. In prison, Dick and Perry first meet, Perry invents a past murder, and Dick learns of the Clutters and plots their burglary. In the book, prison preserves images of successful democracy by removing criminals from the society that they have interrupted; simultaneously, prison encourages and intensifies criminal behavior. Dick and Perry do not fit into the exemplary American image that Holcomb and its citizenry desire. Both men exhibit symptoms of mental illness. They have criminal backgrounds. Perry has a history of abuse. Their antisocial behavior places them in sharp contrast to the American ideals of Holcomb and the Clutter family. The Kansas justice system remains aloof when it comes to considering the justice of Dick and Perry’s past. Perry’s abuse by nuns is no more just than his murder of the Clutters, but the justice system ignores psychosocial complexities and histories in favor of black-and-white definitions of right and wrong. It does not matter whether it is “just” that Perry was abused as a child, that his mother was an alcoholic, that two of his siblings committed suicide, or that he exhibits symptoms of mental illness. It does not matter that a psychiatrist states that Dick is unable to base his actions on what he knows is right or wrong. What matters is that Dick and Perry killed the Clutters, that they interrupted Holcomb’s ideal, and that they are executed as an act of vengeance. Prior to Dick and Perry’s descent on Holcomb, the townspeople did not think even to lock their doors, but “those somber explosions .╯.╯. stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers.” The town’s primary interest is to use justice to reestablish Holcomb’s democratic harmony. Ethan Myers

CARROLL, LEWISâ•… Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandâ•… (1865)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, generally regarded as a children’s literature classic, was written in 1865 by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–98), better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll. The book relates the account of seven-year-old Alice, a curious and precocious little girl who, intrigued by a glimpse of a well-dressed rabbit, proceeds to follow him and plunges down a rabbit hole. What Alice finds at the bottom of her fall is another dimension where nonsense and irrationality are the norm, a place where the world as Alice has come to know it no longer makes sense—a place called “Wonderland.” Alice learns to navigate the strange ways of Wonderland, although she does not exactly understand them. And in the end, she even shows the fairy tale–like kingdom’s inhabitants the ways in which their society is hypocritical, a deed that arguably gives her the confidence to return home. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is generally heralded for its fantastic elements. However, the book is also a satire in the strictest sense: It is about manners; societal institutions; language; culture; and, perhaps most significantly, growing up. The reader witnesses Alice’s memorable encounters with the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, a smoking caterpillar, and the Queen of Hearts, among other colorful characters, and watches her grow from innocence to experience, while growing along with her. In this regard, due to the plot’s imaginative nature and the book’s magical realm, talking animals, and dream sequence near its conclusion, it can be considered analogous to a fairy tale. As fairy tales allow audiences to place themselves within the story because of their agelessness and undefined location, any child—or any adult for that matter—has the ability to travel to Wonderland. No wonder Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been a beloved classic for more than a century. Trudi Van Dyke

Innocence and Experience in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

As the title proposes, Lewis Carroll’s Victorian-era fantasy Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland relates the escapades of a bored, curious, and innocent young

258â•…â•… Carroll, Lewis girl named Alice as she ventures into Wonderland, a realm where madness and rudeness—an ironic exaggeration of Alice’s own sophisticated Victorian society—govern the kingdom. The catalyst for the commencement of Alice’s journey to Wonderland is generally considered to be the character of a wellmannered dapper white rabbit, who, like the creatures in most fairy tales, has the peculiar ability to speak. Yet as Alice is “burning with curiosity” to follow the rabbit down his hole, her intense inquisitiveness, coupled with her naive willingness to indulge her curiosity no matter where it leads may be the genuine reason for her entrance into Wonderland. In this regard, analogous to Eve’s temptation by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, which causes her to partake from the tree of knowledge and leads to her metaphorical fall from innocence, Alice is similarly enticed by the rabbit. Therefore, like Eve, Alice’s curiosity leads to her literal fall, a fall in which “she fell very slowly.” For Alice, that her fall is gradual seems intentional as it only signifies the initial phase—not the completion—of her journey from innocence to experience. Upon Alice’s arrival in Wonderland, it is evident that despite the knowledge that theoretically should have been gained in the fall, Alice is still not entirely certain about how to handle the complex predicament in which she has found herself, suggesting a lack of experience in such matters; after all, she is only a child. Nevertheless, while she may not have experience, it is evident that Alice has lost some of her innocence, as she has become too big to enter a beautiful garden she finds, once again aligning Alice with Eve. Alice also has some knowledge that would suggest experience. For example, she is cautious enough to check whether labels on bottles are marked “poison,” but this privileged knowledge is just a clever trick she has gleaned from “several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them.” Therefore, these “rules” acquired from fairy tales and adult influence, though vital to her survival, are not wisdom she has gained from personal learning experiences, a clue that she still has much to learn on her own.

Alice’s struggle with obtaining a greater maturity about herself and society is also evidenced in her insecurity about her identity, which is a recurring motif throughout the novel. Alice’s identity is questioned with logic that appears to be nonsense to her (and to most readers), uttered by each of the different characters whom she meets along the way, including the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the hookah-smoking caterpillar. These characters continually question Alice about who or what she is, and at first she can only stammer unconvincing replies. However, the Wonderland characters’ rude and often illogical challenging of who and what she is allows Alice to grow and understand precisely who she is, thus becoming confident in her personal identity. In the end, it is Alice’s unwavering conviction of who she is that grants her enough courage to challenge the Queen of Hearts. This is where the evolution of Alice’s maturation becomes most apparent. Near the end of Alice’s excursion to Wonderland, she is finally able to enter the very garden that she desired to enter at the beginning of the novel, as she is no longer fluctuating in size. However, as she has become more stable, both physically and mentally, the garden no longer holds the same captivating allure for Alice. She now realizes that Wonderland’s garden is not a paradise; it is not as beautiful as she dreamed from afar. Many of the flowers are not real, only painted, and no one plays by the rules—something Alice respects and learned from children’s stories. As a result of these harsh truths, Alice proceeds to contest what she is now absolutely certain are the illogical rules of Wonderland—a feat that essentially causes her to be banished from that kingdom and to wake on the shore of a lake, wondering if the whole incident was just a dream. Such an ambiguous ending implies that the struggle between wanting to stay innocent and gaining experience is fierce. However, perhaps the final scene before Alice leaves Wonderland suggests that the value of experience and playing by the rules is much greater than that of naïveté, and the only way to achieve that is, like Alice, to gain confidence in one’s identity and all experience to gain supremacy. Trudi Van Dyke

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandâ•…â•… 259

Justice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Although Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland satirically yet comically critiques logic and societal institutions such as education throughout its entirety, the nature of justice is harshly evaluated in the book’s final chapters. In the concluding segment, Alice attends the trial of the Knave of Hearts, who is accused of stealing the Queen of Heart’s tarts. In keeping with the lopsided logic and the inherent absurdity of Wonderland, Carroll fashions a tongue-twister–like parchment scroll pronouncement, which is recited by the White Rabbit at the outset of the trial: The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, All on a summer day: The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts And took them quite away! This brief description of the trial is evidence of the mockery of justice and the penal system that is to follow in the last two chapters of the book. The witnesses and attendees at the trial include many of the characters that Alice encountered earlier in the book, including the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, the March Hare, and the Duchess’s cook, to name a few. The first witness is the Mad Hatter. In his testimony, which he apparently cannot give without having a cup of tea and buttered bread— after all, “it’s always teatime” in Wonderland—the Mad Hatter cannot get his dates right. After being informed that if he did not remember, he would be executed, the Hatter is finally excused to go finish his tea. During this scene, it is not only the fact that the Mad Hatter has food and drink in the court that ridicules the sanctity of justice, it is also because throughout his testimony, several other members of the court audience chime in when the Mad Hatter is unable to remember his dates precisely. The King of Hearts, who serves as both judge and all-too-willing would-be executioner, does nothing to control the chaos in the court. In fact, the king, despite his position of lofty power, has to be told the procedures he should be following by the White Rabbit. With this turn of events, Carroll seems to be criticizing the notion that many officials held in high standing are often just figureheads who do not really know

anything about the requirements and dignity that are expected of that position and are often just gifted with that status because of birth, nepotism, and the other arbitrary practices. The next witness after the Mad Hatter is the Duchess’s cook, who disappears after admitting that the tarts are made with pepper. Meanwhile, Alice, who has been growing once again—this time without the aid of any drink or cake—disrupts the court with her expanding size. Spying her physical growth, the King of Hearts invents a new rule on the spot, that “All persons more than a mile high [must] leave the court.” Alice stands up to the king and informs him both that she is not a mile high and that this rule was just invented because of the circumstances, illustrating her mental growth as well. Furthermore, as the White Rabbit introduces the next piece of evidence, Alice once again demonstrates how the king’s logic is faulty. The king wants to condemn the Knave of Hearts for not signing his name to a set of verses that the king claims is evidence that he stole the tarts. Alice, however, contends that as no one can explain the meaning between the lines of the verse, as she herself cannot see “an atom of meaning in it,” then there is no way that the knave could be guilty of the crime of which he is accused. This episode also suggests that if the knave cannot be found guilty of stealing the tarts, the court will try to find him guilty of something else, lest the king and queen’s reputation be damaged. Yet Alice once again shows how she has grown; she proudly points out that the set of verse ends with “they all returned from him to you,” and the allegedly stolen tarts have been right there on the table all along. Despite Alice showing the jury that the knave is innocent, the Queen of Hearts insists, “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.” Exasperated with the “[s]tuff and nonsense” of Wonderland, Alice logically contends that it is crazy to sentence someone who should be deemed innocent. Although the Queen of Hearts tells her to hold her tongue, Alice, now grown to her full size, defies the orders and lashes out in a fury. In the next scene, Alice, back in the real world, wakes from a dream, but her character nevertheless suggests that justice is perhaps the most worthy cause for which to fight. Trudi Van Dyke

260â•…â•… Carroll, Lewis

Stages of Life in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Although a Victorian-era fantasy, Lewis Carroll’s children’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland illustrates—albeit rather covertly—the stages of life, especially in relation to childhood and adolescence. The novel opens with what has become an iconic set of circumstances: Seven-year-old prepubescent Alice’s inquisitiveness leads her to follow a white rabbit down a hole into a magical realm permeated by nonsense and irrationality, Wonderland. While the act of jumping down a rabbit hole into another dimension certainly signifies the onset of change, even more significant are the personal changes that Alice undergoes during her stay in Wonderland. Early on her journey, Alice spies a beautiful, enchanting garden through a small doorway, which she cannot enter due to her size. Alice cries, lamenting being denied access to the garden because she is too big. However, this denial also functions as a deeper type of refusal, signifying that Alice is no longer permitted access to the bastion of edenic innocence, the garden. Struggling to maintain her connection to her childhood innocence, Alice uses the only available resources to try to adjust her size: a bottle labeled “drink me” and a cake marked “eat me.” Proving that while she may be curious, she is at least endowed with a modicum of common sense that places her on the verge of adulthood, Alice is initially cautious about drinking from the bottle. According to the novel: It was all very well to say to say “Drink me,” but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. “No, I’ll look first,” she said, “and see whether it is marked ‘poison’ or not.” .╯.╯. However, this bottle was not marked “poison,” so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast), she very soon finished it off. Yet, despite Alice’s rather courageous efforts—drinking an atrocious-sounding concoction and consuming a cake made with mysterious ingredients—she is still unable to access the garden. Her fluctuations

in size suggest that while she cannot enter the realm of paradisiacal innocence, she is also not yet ready to enter adulthood. Therefore, although Alice is only a precocious seven-year-old, Wonderland (and her adventures while there) apparently function as the catalyst for the onset of Alice’s adolescence. Throughout the rest of the novel, Alice uses food and drink to try to manage her uncontrollable size, but she begins to understand just how to regulate the fluctuations from a hookah-smoking caterpillar who offers Alice a tidbit of wisdom about mushrooms: “One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.” It seems rather significant that Alice gets such advice from a type of creature who will undergo a metamorphosis, similar to the one that Alice is experiencing, when the caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. When the caterpillar leaves Alice alone, however, she consumes part of the mushroom, and her neck stretches so long that a pigeon attacks her, assuming that she is after its eggs. These episodes in Alice’s adventures are noteworthy, as both the caterpillar and the eggs could be representative of the burgeoning fertility and sense of new life that accompanies adolescence. And it does not seem to be coincidence that all of these incidents related to Alice’s changing size coincide with her continual questioning of her identity, another motif within the novel. From the very beginning of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, she starts to question who and what she is, as do each of the Wonderland denizens that she encounters. When Alice meets the caterpillar, the one who shows her how to boldly yet shrewdly control her size, she still has to figure out how to alter her person appropriately, according to occasion and circumstance, on her own. However, once she starts learning, she also becomes more confident in her identity and abilities: How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another! However, I’ve got to get back to my right size: the next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden—how is that to be done, I wonder?

“Cathedral”â•…â•… 261 With her newfound knowledge, Alice does figure out how to get into the garden, but it is not the paradise that it looked like from afar; it is disenchanting. Alice’s reaction to the garden proves that once adolescent experience has altered us, we cannot return to a purely innocent childhood state. Nevertheless, as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland illustrates, we may gain something even better in the exchange that most, if not all, children do not possess: confidence and self-knowledge. Trudi Van Dyke

CARVER, RAYMONDâ•… “Cathedral”â•… (1981)

First published in 1981 in the Atlantic Monthly, “Cathedral” became the title story of Raymond Carver’s sixth collection of short fiction, which was published in 1983. Although Carver (1938–88), a prolific writer, had published numerous collections of fiction and poetry before Cathedral, the short story and the collection that bears its name signal a turning point in the author’s career. “Cathedral” was included in the 1982 volume of The Best American Short Stories, and the book Cathedral was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1984. But more important than the accolades the short story earned was the new imaginative space it opened up in Carver’s world of fiction. Carver had already been credited with recreating and reviving interest in the American short story, but he had also been criticized for writing minimalist fiction that left its characters just where they started: inarticulate figures wandering through a world of dull despair and disillusion. In “Cathedral,” Carver grants his main character an epiphany (although one that is perhaps limited and imperfect) and simultaneously opens up his characters’ lives and his own writing to the dimensions of a deeper understanding. Though written in Carver’s spare, unadorned idiom, “Cathedral” eloquently explores the themes of alienation, community, and spirituality in the modern world. The main characters of “Cathedral” are Robert, the narrator, and the narrator’s wife. Robert, a blind man who is a longtime friend of the narrator’s wife, is coming to visit the narrator and his wife after the death of his own wife, Beulah. The narrator, who

has no interest in meeting Robert, despite Robert’s important role in his wife’s life, lives in a small, selfcontained world in which he smokes pot, drinks heavily, watches television, and does precious little else. Yet by the end of the evening, after the narrator’s wife has fallen asleep, the narrator and Robert experience a profound moment of connection when, in a real attempt to communicate with Robert, the narrator and Robert draw a cathedral together. Cara McClintock-Walsh

Alienation in “Cathedral”

The story arc of “Cathedral” traces the narrator’s movement from alienation to intimacy, or from isolation to a sense of community. The unnamed first-person narrator opens the story by recounting scenes from his wife’s friendship with Robert, a blind man who is about to visit them. These scenes, and Robert’s appearance in the couple’s life, delineate a sharp contrast between his wife’s capacity for intimate relationships and the narrator’s own arid, lonely existence. The wife’s relationship with Robert, initially that of employee and employer, deepens into a meaningful friendship and culminates in an act of physical intimacy between the two: “On her last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to this. She told me he touched his finger to every part of her face, her nose—even her neck! She never forgot it.” Here Robert physically touches the contours of the wife’s face; in other ways, he touches the contours of the wife’s life, and acts as her trusted and valued confidante. Over the years, the wife and Robert have been recording and sending audiotapes to one another that act as revelatory personal missives between the two. In the wife’s life, Robert symbolizes intimacy and emotional connection. Compare these moments of communion between Robert and the wife to the narrator’s inability (and refusal) to relate to or forge a bond with anyone in his life. When looking at other people’s meaningful relationships, the narrator either disparages them or denies them significance. When telling the story of his wife’s life, the narrator elides any discussion of love with a blithe “etc.” Of his wife’s first husband, the narrator says: “But she was in love with the guy, and he was in love with her, etc.╯.╯.╯. [A]t

262â•…â•… Carver, Raymond the end of the summer she .╯.╯. married her childhood etc.” Similarly, the narrator reduces his wife’s friendship with Robert to either a point of annoyance or an insensitive joke. He admits that “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me,” and at one point he jokes that perhaps he will take the blind man bowling. The narrator even stoops to making fun of Robert’s recently deceased wife and callously calls their marriage “[p]athetic.” At first, it seems that the narrator rejects Robert because Robert is blind, but after revealing his own misanthropic tendencies throughout the story, it seems that he rejects Robert simply because the narrator is emotionally barren and almost entirely incapable of relating to others. The narrator’s sense of alienation is so pervasive that he feels estranged not only from Robert but also from his wife and the world in general. When his wife offers to let the narrator listen to a tape that Robert made about him, he reluctantly agrees. But just as Robert is about reveal his opinion of the narrator, “we were interrupted, a knock at the door, something, and we didn’t ever get back to the tape. Maybe it was just as well. I’d heard all I wanted to.” Similarly, when given the opportunity to understand his wife through her poetry, which is about “really important [things that] had happened to her,” the narrator only remarks that “I didn’t think much of the poem.╯.╯.╯. Maybe I just don’t understand poetry.” Not only does the narrator fail to understand poetry, he fails to understand his wife, and he shows little desire to do so. The undelivered message and the barely read poem signal the narrator’s desire to insulate himself from others, even from messages his wife is trying to communicate to him. Even though his wife, in her first marriage, tried to kill herself because she felt so “lonely and cut off from people,” the narrator of “Cathedral” seems unaware that he is recreating for her a life of loneliness and isolation. Although the narrator resents Robert throughout most of the story, and although he resists a meaningful connection with Robert by erecting barriers between them in the form of television, alcohol, and marijuana (all further symbols of the narrator’s alienation), by the end of “Cathedral,” Robert brings the narrator in touch, physically and emotionally, with the world. When the narrator asks Robert if

he knows what a cathedral looks like, he expresses his first moment of empathy, an empathy he builds upon when he closes his eyes in an attempt to “see” from Robert’s point of view. In his attempt to define a cathedral for Robert, the narrator breaks through the surface of life and delves into “the interior stuff.” The verbal connection—the narrator describing cathedrals to Robert—precedes the physical connection between the two men. When the narrator draws a cathedral at Robert’s behest and lets Robert close “his hand over my hand,” he experiences a connection with another human being that is more than physical: It is profound and spiritual. We understand that this connection with Robert heralds a connection with the world in general when Robert makes the narrator draw “some people” in the cathedral because “What’s a cathedral without people?” Through this encounter, the narrator moves from isolation to intimacy, from nothing to something, from total alienation to a newly populated emotional world. Cara McClintock-Walsh

Community in “Cathedral”

All three of the major characters in “Cathedral” find themselves isolated from others and, to differing degrees, express a longing to connect with or belong to a larger community. Robert’s cross-country trip, which ends with his visit to the narrator and the narrator’s wife, illustrates his attempt to find comfort in the community of his in-laws and his friends after his wife’s death leaves him in a state of sudden isolation. Beulah, whose very name means “married,” had been a partner to Robert in all ways: She was his wife, his interpreter (she worked for Robert immediately after the narrator’s wife did), and his business partner; in short, she was his world. When Robert and Beulah married, it was “just the two of them,” and throughout their marriage “they had been inseparable for eight years—my wife’s word, inseparable.” When Robert loses the woman who in all ways appeared to be the other half of him, he reaches out to and travels toward two living embodiments of his wife: Beulah’s family and the narrator’s wife, whom Robert had met in the same way he met Beulah. In his journey from the West Coast to the East Coast, from solitude to solace, Robert embarks

“Cathedral”â•…â•… 263 on a quest that will bestow a greater sense of community on all of the characters in “Cathedral.” Raymond Carver expresses perhaps the most poignant and moving expression of a need for community through the figure of the narrator’s wife. Throughout her life, the wife has experienced a profound feeling of disconnection and a strong desire to find a larger community to join. In her first marriage to an air force officer, the narrator’s wife felt so overwhelmingly dislocated and remote that she attempted to kill herself. We know her suicide attempt is directly tied to her longing for community: “[O]ne night she got to feeling lonely and cut off from people she kept losing in that moving-around life. She got to feeling she couldn’t go another step. She went in and swallowed all the pills and capsules in the medicine chest and washed them down with a bottle of gin.” The narrator’s wife survives her suicide attempt and a subsequent divorce only to find herself married to a man, the narrator, who seems completely committed to isolating himself from the rest of the world. For the narrator’s wife, Robert represents, and has represented, a lifeline to the larger world. During her dark days of dislocation as an officer’s wife, one of the few constants in her life was her communication with Robert (in the form of audiotapes). Although physically distant, Robert remains emotionally close to the narrator’s wife and offers her counsel on her first marriage as well as her second. In her second marriage (to the narrator) the wife feels a similar sense of isolation within the bounds of her marriage: Her husband, the narrator, has no friends, and therefore does not enlarge their social circle; he shows only grudging interest in her poetry; the husband and wife no longer go to bed at the same time; and, most tellingly, the narrator feels relieved when a mundane interruption saves him from listening to the tape on which Robert delivers his opinion of their marriage. In the life of the narrator’s wife, her second marriage is simply another lonely episode in an existence bereft of a loving larger community. Robert’s appearance in the couple’s life not only connects the wife to another person and to the outside world but also forces open the narrator’s barren world and peoples it. Almost immediately upon

Robert’s appearance, the narrator stops thinking of the three of them as separate beings and instead describes them moving through the house as a “little group.” Furthermore, Robert’s presence sparks the first stirrings of empathy in the narrator. Although the narrator retains a cruel edge (he demeans Robert’s marriage and silently refers to his loss of Beulah as “pathetic”), when he imagines Robert’s life and love, he identifies with another person as he seldom has before. The most profound yearning for and discovery of a community comes at the end of the story, when Robert and the narrator draw a cathedral together. After trying to insulate himself from Robert by drinking scotch, smoking pot, and watching television, the narrator connects with Robert physically, emotionally, and imaginatively in this act of creation. In this moment, the narrator makes contact not only with Robert but also with a larger imagined community, and the theme of community is most compellingly expressed in the titular symbol of the cathedral. A cathedral is a place where the devout congregate and pray together, and therefore it stands as a powerful symbol of community and belief, two things the narrator lacks. Indeed, after drawing the cathedral with Robert, the narrator feels as if he has been liberated; the walls of his insulated dwelling have been knocked down, and the narrator confesses that “I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.” This imaginative exercise, then, has transformed the narrator’s isolated, nuclear home into a new space without barriers. The symbol of the cathedral becomes doubly potent when we realize that, “[t]he building of a cathedral, especially in the Middle Ages, was a project in which the entire town took part.” A community is necessary to forge the physical structure that will then, in turn, strengthen that community and bind it to a wider world, just as Robert, in attempting to heal his own loneliness, draws the two separate members of this marriage into communion with himself, each other, and the world. Cara McClintock-Walsh

Spirituality in “Cathedral”

Throughout his career, Raymond Carver was often accused of denying his fictional characters contact with a spiritual dimension that might offer them

264â•…â•… Carver, Raymond some relief from their otherwise stultifying and stale lives. Carver himself, whose fiction was viewed as the near-perfect embodiment of minimalism, disliked the term minimalist because to him it suggested a smallness of vision, a diminishment of his characters’ experiences. But both the critics and Carver recognized “Cathedral” as a breakthrough; in this story, the otherwise typical Carver narrator makes contact with a spiritual dimension that enlarges his world and his vision, if only for a moment. The narrator is the only character in this story who, until the very last moments of “Cathedral,” shows no interest whatsoever in transcending his everyday life. Robert, the blind man who will lead the narrator to his epiphany, is characterized by his devotion to others: he works in “the county socialservice department”; in his hobby as a ham radio operator, he cultivates connections among others; and through his taped correspondences, Robert acts as the narrator’s wife’s lifeline to a larger, emotionally receptive world. In her first marriage, the narrator’s wife had experienced a spiritual crisis that reached its explosive expression in her unsuccessful suicide attempt. In her second marriage, the narrator’s wife attempts to find deeper meaning in her life through her poetry, which she composes “after something really important [has] happened to her.” Both Robert and the narrator’s wife express and enact a longing for contact with the greater world, and their search for deeper meaning in their lives could be read as evidence of a spiritual quest. The narrator, on the other hand, shows only a desire to escape his life by retreating further into his own deeply entrenched alienation. He soaks himself in Scotch (drinking is, he admits, one of his hobbies) and shrouds himself in a haze of marijuana smoke in order to insulate himself from contact with his wife, Robert, or anyone else who might bump up against his life. While it may seem that the substances in the narrator’s life could act as social lubricants, instead they serve to reinforce a wall between himself and the larger world. If alcohol and pot facilitate conversation rather than impede it, the narrator turns on the television as a way to erect a second barrier between himself and others. Although the narrator evinces no clear desire to experience anything other than his life as it is,

Carver does subtly suggest that the narrator occasionally recognizes, or at least feels, his own spiritual emptiness. When the three characters sit down to eat dinner, the narrator, to his wife’s shock, delivers a mock prayer over the food: “Now let us pray.╯.╯.╯. Pray the phone won’t ring and the food doesn’t get cold.” But immediately after this glib moment, the narrator and his companions eat so voraciously as to suggest that their hunger is not just physical but perhaps indicative of a deeper, spiritual hunger. The hunger reveals itself as specifically spiritual when the narrator and Robert find themselves alone after dinner. When the narrator’s usual barriers (alcohol, television) fail him, he is able for the first time in the story to make physical, emotional, and spiritual contact with another person. Right before his epiphanic moment, the narrator reaches for his drink, only to find it empty; when he turns on the television, the only program on (one about cathedrals) does not distract the two men but instead draws them into a conversation that delves into the spiritual realm they have so far avoided. The narrator briefly but significantly confesses his loneliness to Robert and reveals to the reader that he is terrified by the emptiness that confronts him at night. Later, when the television program inspires Robert to pointedly ask the narrator if he is religious, the narrator does not embrace his unbelief but instead expresses sorrow and uncertainty: “I guess I don’t believe in it. In anything. Sometimes it’s hard. You know what I’m saying?” The television program introduces the spiritual into the conversation and ushers into the narrative an event that grants the narrator a profound moment of transcendence. In the closing moments of the story, the narrator is no longer disgusted by Robert’s blindness; he instead reacts to Robert with empathy, and Robert and the narrator attempt to occupy the same world in a moment of spiritual enlargement when they draw a cathedral together. We must pay attention to the subject of the television show and to the drawing. Carver could have had the men draw anything together (a dog, a lamp, a skyscraper); in choosing a cathedral, a site of worship that is built by and for a community, he deliberately draws attention to the spiritual aspect of communion that the men experience. In the process

My Ántoniaâ•…â•… 265 of helping Robert “see” what a cathedral is, the narrator opens himself up to a different view of humanity and the world. Indeed, the blind man helps the narrator experience first empathy and then profound insight when, after allowing the narrator to draw a cathedral for/with him, he instructs the narrator to close his eyes. This act, one of empathetic blindness, helps the narrator transcend his own small vision of life and instead experience a vision that recognizes and embraces a common humanity. Indeed, in the last moments of the story, when the liquor supply is dry and the television has gone to snow, the narrator moves from blindness to insight, from the individual to the collective, from nothing to the last spoken word in the story: “something.” Ultimately, we cannot know if the narrator’s epiphany is the result of real human connection or copious amounts of alcohol; we cannot know if the narrator’s vision will be a temporary one or a lasting, meaningful one. But in the final moments of the story, we can see that the geography of the narrator’s life now includes a spiritual terrain. Cara McClintock-Walsh

CATHER, WILLAâ•… My Ántoniaâ•… (1918)

Published in 1918, My Ántonia was one of two novels that established Willa Cather (1873–1947) as a major American novelist of the 20th century; the other was O Pioneers! Set in southern Nebraska, the novel draws on the author’s memories of an ideal life on the prairie. The novel’s protagonist, Ántonia, is an immigrant from Bohemia; she represents the values of innocence, hard work, integrity, and generosity. Ántonia Shimerda Cusak and Jim Burden, the narrator, become friends because Ántonia’s parents and Jim’s grandparents are neighbors. As a 14-yearold, Ántonia emigrates from Bohemia with her family; Jim, a 10-year-old, comes from Virginia to live with his grandparents after his parents die. One family is striving while the other is well-established. Jim becomes a successful lawyer and moves to New York, yet he keeps his childhood memories of Ántonia alive. Indeed, their friendship thrives even though their backgrounds are different, and when they see each other again after 20 years, their feel-

ings of love and mutual admiration are stronger than ever. My Ántonia depicts the day-to-day life of the early pioneers—their hardships, traditions, successes, and social assumptions. Narrated as a succession of stories within stories, tied by the universal theme of children coming of age and discovering themselves as they experience the joys and sorrows of life, the novel celebrates friendship as the most noble of human qualities. My Ántonia, among its other themes, is about the healing powers of past memories and the awesome sense of freedom and beauty created by the forces of nature. This pastoral novel successfully combines realistic vignettes of prairie life, the connection between nature and human struggle, and the romantic idealism of a young man. Maria Ornella Treglia

Memory in My Ántonia

The power of memory to keep relationships alive and to make up for the disappointments of life is a central theme in My Ántonia. Willa Cather, the author, supposedly runs into an old friend, Jim Burden, on a train crossing Iowa. Jim recounts to her his memories of a Bohemian immigrant girl, Ántonia, with whom Jim and Cather grew up on the Nebraskan prairie. Jim is an accomplished lawyer who is apparently unhappily married, and he enjoys writing down what he remembers of Ántonia. Cather expresses interest in reading his recollections, and a few months later, Jim brings his portfolio of memories to the author’s apartment in New York. The title on the portfolio is Ántonia, but he is not satisfied with it and makes it My Ántonia. This introduction prepares the reader for Jim’s subjective recollection of growing up on the prairie and of his encounter with Ántonia 20 years later. The novel is divided into five books, and each one could stand by itself. The connecting thread is the narrator’s nostalgic tone. Although the love between Ántonia and Jim does not develop beyond that of a platonic friendship, it is nevertheless a profoundly loving relationship that enriches their childhood and adult lives. Jim cherishes the memories of a childhood spent on the prairie with Ántonia as his playmate. He is

266â•…â•… Cather, Willa very much affected by the way she treats him. For example, he is hurt when she regards him as a young boy (he was four years younger), and he is extremely proud when he kills a big rattlesnake, not so much because he receives the admiration of friends and neighbors but because he gets Ántonia’s approval. She now sees him as her equal. Even the tragic event of the suicide of Ántonia’s father and his funeral conjure up for Jim memories of a mystical sense of connectedness with the dead man’s soul. Ántonia was her father’s favorite child, and Jim had developed a special closeness with him because they both shared a genuine love for Ántonia. That memories are meant to keep the feelings Ántonia and Jim have for each other alive is made most explicit in chapter 4 of book 4 when Jim and Ántonia meet for the last time before a 20-year hiatus. Jim vows to himself that he will always carry with him “the closest, realest face, under all the shadows of women’s faces, at the very bottom of [his] memory,” and Ántonia reassures him that even if he does not come back to visit, “[he’s] here, like [her] father. So [she] won’t be lonesome.” Their shared memories accompany Jim during his long trips across the country as a railways legal counsel. In the ensuing 20 years, Ántonia marries a fellow Bohemian and has 10 children with him. Her life is hard, and she is not wealthy, but she and her husband manage to keep a flourishing farm and a lively family. Jim seems to avoid going to see Ántonia because he is afraid that reality will mar his memories of her. However, when he finally meets her again, he notes that although she has lost her youth and most of her teeth, she has not lost her “inner glow.” Jim, therefore, is able to reconcile the past and the present and is reassured that Ántonia, like himself, cherishes their childhood memories so much that her children seem to already know him. Another interesting aspect of how Cather treats the theme of memory is that the past and the present are intertwined: While memories bring solace to the disappointments of life, they, in turn, are colored by the present. In fact, Jim’s recollections are at times exaggerated and romanticized, as in this poetic description of Ántonia’s eyes: “They were big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood.” He idealizes Ántonia

as a figure out of a fairy tale, the “fairest of them all,” embodying the qualities of a pioneer woman, strong and hardworking, spontaneous, generous, and caring. Jim is aware that his writing is made up of memories tinged with his feelings and reflections; thus, he titles the manuscript My Ántonia, instead of simply Ántonia. The nostalgic tone in My Ántonia is a reminder that the past can never be truly recaptured, yet it is so much part of a person’s life that it cannot be forgotten. Only by reconciling the past with the present can the characters in Cather’s novel find the peace of mind and happiness that they yearn for. Maria Ornella Treglia

Nature in My Ántonia

In this pastoral novel, nature—the landscape and the changing of the seasons—serves not only as a setting but also as an expression of human feelings and as a foreshadowing of future events. When Jim Burden arrives at his grandparents’ farm, his sense of identity is reflected in the vast, impersonal landscape. He has never seen land without mountain ridges, hills, creeks, or trees, and as he notes, “there was nothing but land.” He is absorbed by it: “I felt erased, blotted out.” Its vastness is overwhelming to this 10-year-old boy whose mother and father had both died within the past year. Jim’s identification with the barren, winter landscape is a way to grieve for the loss of his parents and portrays his lack of hope, “If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter.” The life he had known is over; he is starting a new one and has no idea of what is to come. He feels small and insignificant against the vastness of nature. Jim is welcomed by his grandparents, and as he gets settled at the farm, the landscape takes on the meaning of freedom and contentment that life on the prairie represents. On the second day at the farm, Jim goes to the garden with his grandmother and decides to stay there a little longer. He sits down in the middle of the garden, leans his back against a pumpkin, and observes that happiness is “to be dissolved into something complete and great.” These words, which were later carved on Willa Cather’s tombstone, reveal how important the author thought it was to be in harmony with nature.

My Ántoniaâ•…â•… 267 Indeed, Jim seems to find peace, happiness, and freedom by identifying with nature and feeling as if he is one with it. The sunflower-bordered roads that surrounded the prairie are another symbol of the freedom inspired by nature. Fuchs, a handyman on the farm owned by Jim’s grandparents, tells Jim that when the Mormon men left Missouri to escape religious persecution, they scattered sunflower seeds so that the next summer, when the children and women followed, they had the sunflower trail to guide them to their freedom. As an adult writing about his childhood, Jim is aware that Fuchs’s story is a legend, but he still prefers to remember the sunflowers as “the road to freedom.” After three years, Jim and his grandparents move to the town of Black Hawk, and here it is the river, which runs about two miles south of their house, that takes on the meaning of freedom. “That river was to be my compensation for the lost freedom of the farming country,” he writes. Nature—especially changes in the weather—is also employed by Cather to foretell events. For example, the suicide of Mr. Shimerda, Ántonia’s father, is foreshadowed in book 1, chapter 6, when Jim and Ántonia are outdoors on a splendid autumn afternoon, “a day of amber sunlight, but there was a shiver of coming winter in the air.” The land is magnificent and imbued with spiritual qualities, “like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed,” but the arrival of winter is foreboding, “two long black shadows flitted before us or after us.” Ántonia is shivering in her thin cotton dress, and so they nestle together on the sun-warmed ground, where they find an insect that is struggling to survive the first cold. Then they see Ántonia’s father, who gives Ántonia, his favorite child, “a wintry flicker of a smile.” She shows her father the dying insect, and Jim notices how full of sadness and “pity for things” his smile is, an image he will never forget. Mr. Shimerda kills himself a few months later on the second day of the worst blizzard in 10 years. The funeral arrangements are delayed because of the snow, another example of the weather reinforcing the main characters’ feelings. In this case, it expresses Ántonia’s grief and foreshadows her hard work on the farm that lies ahead.

In My Ántonia, detailed descriptions of nature, including the landscape, the changing of seasons, and the unpredictable winter storms, portray the main characters’ psychological states of mind and foreshadow major events. The natural environment, which is part of Jim’s life on the prairie, represents “the edge of the world,” the last frontier, and the values of freedom and happiness that are traditionally associated with it. Maria Ornella Treglia

Social Class in My Ántonia

Social class distinction is a subtle yet pervasive theme in My Ántonia. It is embedded in the friendship and tension between the newly arrived European immigrants and their American neighbors. Although Jim’s grandparents are welcoming and generous toward their new neighbors, they maintain a certain distance from the Shimerdas. The Burdens feel socially superior to the newcomers. Jim describes Ántonia’s father as a gentle, noble-looking man, with a dignified manner and not used to the hard work of the farm. In his own country, he was a skilled artisan and enjoyed playing music with his friends. Yet Mr. Shimerda, sensing that he is being socially ranked by the Burdens, feels the need to explain that in the old country, “he made good wages, and his family were respected.” While the Burdens ask Mr. Shimerda to stay for Christmas dinner and enjoy his company, they do not extend an invitation to the rest of his family. Mrs. Shimerda is obviously not as refined as her husband and is greedy and envious, which gives the Burdens an excuse to keep a distance from their neighbors. For example, when Mrs. Shimerda gives Jim’s grandmother the most valuable thing she has, dried mushroom chips, it is meant as a gesture of deep appreciation. However, when Jim’s grandmother gets home, she throws away the chips without giving it much thought. She does not trust the foreign substance, and she does not recognize Mrs. Shimerda’s gesture. In spite of her religious piety and kindness, Jim’s grandmother looks down in the immigrant woman and does not accept her as her equal. Jim highlights social class differences between first-generation immigrant girls who work for families in Black Hawk and the girls from the town. He

268â•…â•… Cather, Willa describes the country girls as lively and engaging, having “a positive carriage and freedom of movement,” while the Black Hawk girls lead more sedentary lives and are “listless and dull, cut off below the shoulders.” Jim enjoys the company of the “early awakened,” vibrant country girls and does not agree with the townspeople who regard them as “a menace to the social order.” He predicts that these girls will be successful in life and someday will become the mistresses of Black Hawk, but it will take a while for the conventional values of Black Hawk to change. Even Frances Harling, a woman ahead of her times who, on various occasions, has expressed sympathy for the country girls, criticizes Jim for putting a kind of glamor over them. The Vanni tent, a temporary dancing pavilion for the summer months, is one of a few events to threaten the town’s social stability. As Jim puts it, at the tent the country girls and the town boys are on “neutral ground.” However, much to his disappointment, the affections that start on the dancing floor do not develop because the town boys will ultimately abide by their parents’ expectations and social codes. Although Jim’s grandparents come across as more open-minded than most townspeople, they are conformists, as discussed above, when it comes to social class. The grandfather does not approve of dancing, but if Jim wants to dance, he can go to the Masonic Hall, “among the people we knew.” Ironically, these are the people Jim avoids socializing with. When the grandmother discovers that Jim is sneaking out of the house to go dancing with the country girls, she is evidently troubled, and when Jim asks her about it, she says tearfully that people are criticizing Jim and that it is not fair to his grandparents. Thus, Jim’s socializing with the working class is perceived as an embarrassment to his folks. Ultimately, Jim, in spite of his criticism of Black Hawk social conservatism and his strong bond with Ántonia, Lena, and the other country girls, is not able to set himself free from those mores. Otherwise, why does he not ask Ántonia to marry him? When he sees Ántonia after Larry Donovan has deserted her, Jim declares his love to her: “I’d have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife .╯.╯. you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times. You really are a part of me.” However, he

moves on with his life and does not see Ántonia again for 20 years. Cather must have been well aware of the rigidity surrounding social structure among the prairie dwellers. She wrote an exceptional novel, full of nature images and romantic ideas, yet she felt she could not romanticize the issue of social class. Maria Ornella Treglia

CATHER, WILLAâ•… O Pioneers!â•… (1913)

Alexandra Bergson is the central character of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, a portrait of early 20th-century life on the Nebraska prairie. Despite being the only girl in a family of four children, her strength of will coupled with her keen feeling for the land and its potential lead her father to name her as his successor. Alexandra makes a success of the land and purchases the surrounding acreage, including the farm once owned by her childhood friend Carl Linstrum and his family, portioning out lots for lease. Frank and Marie Shabata, a young Bohemian couple, lease the Linstrum farm. Once married, Alexandra’s older brothers, Lou and Oscar, are each allotted a tract of land. Alexandra has plans for her younger brother, Emil, outside of a career in farming. Emil is the first in the family to attend college and goes on to study law. He returns during academic breaks to help Alexandra tend the land, and it is in doing this that a fatal attraction forms between Emil and Marie. Frank discovers the mutual attraction between Emil and his wife, and in a fit of blind jealousy, he shoots and kills the couple as they lie in the grass. Alexandra blames herself for not noticing the attraction between Emil and Marie. Her devotion to the land stemmed from wanting a better life for Emil, but with his death she finds it not only pointless but painful to remain on the land. She leaves everything behind in an attempt to make a new life with Carl in Alaska. Elizabeth K. Haller

Nature in O Pioneers!

Alexandra Bergson, the central and matriarchal figure of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! is most closely associated with nature throughout the novel. In her early 20s she is chosen by her dying father over her

O Pioneers!â•…â•… 269 two older brothers, Lou and Oscar, to take over the family’s ailing Nebraska farm upon his death. Alexandra’s strong will and intelligence in matters dealing with the land is evident to her father, for she had always followed the current market and learned from both the errors and the successes of the neighboring farmers. She wholeheartedly accepts the task out of respect for her father’s wishes but also as a means of ensuring a better life for her younger brother, Emil. She is adamant that Emil be given the opportunity that she and her older brothers did not have—the opportunity to better himself through a college education. Alexandra knows that making a success of their farm will ensure a future for Emil that does not involve working the land. After the death of their father and the subsequent death of their mother, the Bergsons face hardships on the farm as a severe drought sets in. Alexandra feels herself drawn to the land more than ever at this time as she recognizes the beauty it holds under its hardened exterior. She regards the land as a living element that needs devotion and understanding to flourish, and she thinks of its history as beginning in the heart of a man or a woman. Those whose land had not prospered, she thinks, simply lacked the desire or the capacity to regard the land as anything more than something that could or could not be controlled. Alexandra refuses to give up on the land as those around her are doing and instead decides to put her trust in its capabilities. Ever perseverant, rather than selling off the farm as Lou and Oscar advise, she borrows the funds to purchase the foreclosed and abandoned farms that surround her property. This decision proves fruitful as the drought comes to an end and the land prospers. As a result of her inherent attachment to the land, she is attuned to what is best for it and ultimately finds success as a female head of a farming community. With this accomplishment, however, comes the loss of that for which she pursued success in the first place—Emil’s future. It is not only nature as it pertains to land that dominates in the novel but nature as it pertains to humans as well. For all her foresight in making a success of the family farm, Alexandra is so deeply involved with what is best for the land that she is oblivious to the acts of human nature that surround

her, most notably that of a deep and requited attraction between Emil and Marie, a childhood friend of the Bergsons who is now the wife of the neighboring farmer, Frank Shabata. It is Emil’s and Marie’s attraction borne out in a painfully silent desire for one another that Alexandra only recognizes in retrospect as a natural development of their time together. On Emil’s breaks from college, Alexandra asks that he tend the areas surrounding the Shabata farm, as she has leased the farm to Frank, and perform simple chores for Marie. As a result, Emil and Marie interact on an almost daily basis. Alexandra does not presume impropriety since Marie is a married woman, and she does not suspect that Marie or Emil would violate that marital bond. But human nature takes over as the temptation of their desire proves unbearable, and they give in to their love for one another. It is human nature as well that brings on the overpowering feelings of betrayal, jealousy, and anger that lead Frank to blindly kill Marie and Emil when he finds them embracing in the field. Alexandra partially blames herself in not recognizing the human nature of a budding love between these two young people, and she discovers that she has devoted her life to the land at the expense of this recognition, even to the extent of denying herself a personal life. Although she is attuned to the needs of the land, it is human nature that wins out in the end as Alexandra leaves behind all that she has strived for to marry Carl Linstrum, her childhood friend and lifelong confidant, and travel with him to Alaska. She realizes, however, that she can never truly leave the farm behind, for her heart is entwined in its beauty and will always remain with the land. Elizabeth K. Haller

Responsibility in O Pioneers!

The theme of responsibility in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! is exemplified by two female characters in the novel—Alexandra Bergson and Marie Shabata. Alexandra’s responsibility revolves around making a success of the family homestead, whereas Marie’s responsibility revolves around the guilt she associates with marriage. The degree of responsibility felt by each woman, however, has devastating effects on their own lives as well as on the lives of others.

270â•…â•… Cather, Willa Alexandra, Cather’s central character, is allotted the responsibility early in life of maintaining the family farmstead. She strives to make a success of the farm in order to provide her family—herself and her three brothers—with a sense of security, including ensuring that her elder brothers, Lou and Oscar, are given enough land to provide for their own families. While providing security is imperative, Alexandra primarily strives to make a success of the land to ensure that her younger brother, Emil, is granted a life where he will never have to resort to making a career out of working the land. Since childhood, Alexandra has assumed responsibility for Emil’s future, looking on him as the hope for the future—the Bergson with a true opportunity of succeeding off the farm. She had witnessed the repercussions that working the land had on the life of her father, her mother, and her two elder brothers, and she fully intends to save Emil from such physical and emotional hardship. Once she makes a success of the land, Alexandra’s efforts serve to provide for Emil’s education and give him a chance at a prestigious career in law. Emil shows his appreciation toward Alexandra by returning to the farm during breaks from his studies, assisting in maintaining portions of their land that she has leased to the public—including the land leased to Frank and Marie Shabata. Whereas Alexandra’s responsibility pertains to making a success of the land, Marie’s responsibility pertains to a sense of guilt over the type of man her husband, Frank, has become since their initial meeting. Marie feels responsible for Frank’s change in attitude and physical appearance. Prior to their marriage—during their courtship—Frank held his head high and walked with a light step, but his head now hangs low, and his walk has become heavy; the harshness of life now weighs on him. He spends a majority of his time away from home in an attempt to make a success of the leased land apportioned to them by Alexandra. Just as Alexandra’s motivation in making a success of the land lies outside of herself, Frank’s motivation rests in his desire to provide a brighter future for Marie. Frank’s selfless motivation, however, weighs heavy on Marie; she does not wish to be responsible for the demise of Frank’s lighthearted nature, but she is fully aware that his devo-

tion to her is destroying the man he once was. As a result, she is diligent in her manner toward Frank in an effort to lift his spirits and transform him back into the man he was during their courtship. Because she knows of Frank’s frequent absences, Alexandra often asks Emil to assist Marie at the Shabata homestead through tending the grass and the plants or performing general carpentry work around the home. His recurrent presence at the Shabata farm eventually leads to an attraction between Emil and Marie that has tragic consequences. Alexandra maintains a sense of responsibility for the murder of Emil and Marie in that she threw the two of them together by assigning Emil the task of assisting Marie in her husband’s absence. Alexandra’s focus has been on the land for so long that she is ignorant of human nature. As such, she also maintains a sense of responsibility for Frank’s murder of Emil and Marie, believing that she provided the reason for his blind, jealous rage when she ignorantly placed the two lovers in a position that invoked intimacy. Alexandra’s sense of responsibility toward Emil led to her fixation on the land, a passion that ultimately destroyed the person whose future it was meant to sustain. Likewise, although Marie’s sense of responsibility rests in her guilt over the alteration in Frank’s lighthearted nature, her adulterous actions ultimately lead to the destruction of his life altogether through incarceration and the knowledge that he caused the death of the wife whom he adored and whose future he had striven to enrich. Elizabeth K. Haller

Suffering in O Pioneers!

Suffering is prevalent in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! The Bergsons and the Shabatas—the novel’s two primary families—are at times both overwhelmed by and indebted to the land, which ultimately leads to the demise of all that they have striven to maintain. John Bergson, the patriarch of the family central to the novel, strove for 11 years to make a success of his land on the Nebraska prairie of the early 20th century. A series of hardships befell his land and his family—natural disasters, droughts, deaths. The emotional toll of his inability to succeed despite

The Canterbury Talesâ•…â•… 271 his best efforts, coupled with the physical exertion involved in working what he has come to view as hopeless land are contributing factors in his early death. Alexandra, Bergson’s sole daughter, witnesses her father’s suffering and is determined to make a success of the land that her father died attempting to master. This determination is strengthened by her desire to offer her youngest brother, Emil, the opportunity of a university education, resulting in a better life off the farm. Her determination in making a success of the land results in the exclusion of all else—including suffering the loss of love and companionship. It is evident that there is a mutual respect and attraction between Alexandra and Carl Linstrum. Childhood friends, Alexandra and Carl look to one another for support throughout the hardships felt by both of their families in working the land. Seeking a better life, Carl’s family leaves the prairie, separating Alexandra from the only person she has come to rely on for friendship and companionship. Sixteen years pass before Carl’s return, both of them still suffering from the loneliness brought on by their separation. Carl proposes marriage to Alexandra and a new life off the farm. Although she is tempted to accept his offer and put an end to her intense loneliness, she is aware that she has lived too long for the land to turn her back on it now. Additionally, she does not wish to suffer the imminent separation from Emil that would result from her marriage to Carl, so once again, she loses him as he sets forth alone in search of a better life. Alexandra’s devotion to the land causes her to turn her back on a chance at happiness with Carl and choose instead to continue in loneliness. Additionally, her devotion blinds her to human nature as she fails to see the suffering felt by both Emil and Marie Shabata in their burgeoning and forbidden attraction. Emil and Marie suffer in their love for one another. Because Marie is a married woman, Emil is aware that he must contain his feelings for her and behave as though her attraction toward him is unrequited. Just as Emil suffers in his inability to express his true feelings, Marie suffers in her inability to act on her attraction to Emil—held back by the fact that she is married. Although her love for Emil is

genuine, she feels an intense shame in being a married woman who pines for another man. Marie does not wish to cause her husband, Frank, a moment’s suffering, yet she also does not wish to suffer in her love for Emil by remaining silent. Emil and Marie ultimately decide to act on their attraction, leading to their deaths and to the demise of what their families had worked so hard to maintain. Initially, Frank suffers in his jealousy regarding his suspicion over Marie’s betrayal. Once that suspicion is confirmed, however, his jealousy turns to blind rage as he shoots and kills the lovers while they lie in the grass. Their deaths result in the end of life as Frank and Alexandra had known it. Once he acts upon his rage, Frank immediately suffers in his guilt over killing Marie and Emil, realizing that if he could relive that moment, he would walk away and end their silent suffering, leaving them to their happiness. Though incarcerated, Frank vows that if he were set free, he would leave Nebraska and never work the land again. Like Frank, Alexandra suffers in her guilt. She blames herself in not noticing and putting an end to the attraction between Marie and Emil. Once the cause of Alexandra’s devotion to the land is destroyed, she takes Carl up on his earlier offer of marriage, leaving the land she has worked so diligently to maintain. Elizabeth K. Haller

CHAUCER, GEOFFREYâ•… The Canterbury Talesâ•… (ca. 1380s–1400)

The Canterbury Tales, composed sometime between the late 1380s and Geoffrey Chaucer’s death in 1400, is arguably one of the most innovative narrative works in English literary history. Drawing on, and elaborately reworking, a wide range of sources as diverse as classical myths, saints’ lives, romances and beast fables, The Canterbury Tales has, in turn, influenced and inspired countless works in different media, from Shakespeare’s plays to postmodern films. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories held together by the narrative frame of a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury in the course of which the pilgrims, a cross section of medieval society, engage in a storytelling

272â•…â•… Chaucer, Geoffrey contest. This framing device allows Chaucer (ca. 1342–1400) to bring together storytellers from all walks of life and thereby to explore different points of view and various forms of cultural expression. Among the storytellers, who are introduced by vivid and detailed sketches in what has become known as the “General Prologue,” are representatives of the emerging middle classes and of the three traditional medieval “estates” (nobility, clergy, and peasantry), and the text has been related to the popular medieval genre of the estates satire (wherein society is examined according to its hierarchies). Significantly, however, it differs from this in that the various storytellers are not only types but also individuals. In fact, the dramatic tension between the storytellers, acted out in the prologue as well as in the dialogues that link the individual tales, contributes as much to the enthralling overall effect of the Canterbury Tales as the structural tension between the various genres Chaucer experiments with, among them romance, fabliau, sermon, and moral treatise. Annette Kern-Stähler

Gender in The Canterbury Tales

Over the past two decades, gender issues have become increasingly central to literary criticism on Chaucer. Among the reasons why The Canterbury Tales has proven fertile ground for gender approaches is the diversity of the storytellers, a situation that offers multiple constructions of masculinity and femininity. As the narrator acutely observes, “[d] iverse folk diversely they seyde” (1.3,857). Significantly, the voices of women (albeit doubly filtered by the male narrator and the male poet), who in the dominant medieval discourse were encouraged to be silent, are included in the storytelling. With its numerous, often conflicting, voices, The Canterbury Tales lays open the tensions within medieval gender discourse. Thus, the reciprocity in malefemale relationships posited in “The Franklin’s Tale” (“Wommen, of kynde, desiren libertee, / And nat to been constreyned as a thral; / And so doon men, if I sooth seyen shal” [5.768–770]) offers an alternative to the wifely obedience propagated in “The Clerk’s Tale,” in which Griselidis patiently submits to her husband’s will (“Ye been oure lord; dooth with youre owene thyng / Right as yow list; axeth no reed at

me” [4.652–653]). Chaucer’s gender constructions have been shown to be closely connected with genre. Thus, the desirable woman in the fabliau told by the Miller, the animal-like Alisoun with her flirtatious eye (“likerous ye” [1.3,244]), is an antithesis to the desirable woman in “The Knight’s Tale,” who, in line with the courtly love tradition of romance, is worshipped from a distance (1.1,074ff.). Arguably the greatest challenge to the dominant discourse surrounding femininity is “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” in which antifeminist and antimatrimonial arguments and commonplaces that circulated widely in the Middle Ages are put into the mouth of a woman who pits her own “experience” against the bookish “auctoritee” of the clerks (3.1) and who twists the misogynous texts read to her by her fifth husband, the Oxford clerk Jenkyn, to serve her own purposes. It cannot be denied, however, that the Wife of Bath, boasting of the female powers to deceive and to lie (“half so boldely kan ther no man / Swere and lyen, as a womman kan” [3.227–228]), endorses the antifeminist stereotypes assembled in Jenkyn’s “Book of wikked wyves” (3.685) In fact, inflicting “peyne” and “wo” on her husband (3.384), she embodies what this book warns against. While this has dented the image of Chaucer as “women’s friend,” “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” is widely praised for revealing the ways in which gender is a social construction, not a fixed, inborn trait. Referring to the Aesopian fable of the painting of the lion, in which a lion suggests to a painter that his picture of a man killing a lion would look different if painted by the lion, the Wife of Bath draws attention to the point of view from which gender is constructed: “Who peyntede the leon, tel me who? / By God, if women hadde writen stories, / As clerkes han withinne hire oratories, / They wolde han writen of men moore wikkednesse / Than al the mark of Adam may redresse” (3.692–696). The category of masculinity in The Canterbury Tales shows that the notion prevalent in our day— that gender and gender identity are flexible and negotiable and that gender positions may be taken up by someone of either sex—is part of Chaucer’s construction of gender. While women are sometimes masculinized in The Canterbury Tales, as when Donegild in “The Man of Law’s Tale” is said to

The Canterbury Talesâ•…â•… 273 exhibit “mannish” treachery (2.781–782), it is more often men who exhibit traits that are considered feminine. The Host likens the Clerk to a newlywed “mayde” in his riding behaviour (4.2–3), and in “The Knight’s Tale,” Theseus’s masculinity incorporates pity (1.954–955), a trait normally assigned by medieval gender discourse to women. Assumptions of a clear-cut gender division are challenged most forcefully by the portrait of the Pardoner, a figure hotly debated in gender and queer studies. The Pardoner’s high voice (1.688) and effeminate looks (“No berde hadde he / ne nevere sholde have” [1.689]) make the narrator indecisive as to whether he was “a geldyng or a mare” (1.691), the first of which has been glossed as “eunuch,” the second as “effeminate male” or “effeminate homosexual.” And it is not least the complexity, ambiguity, and fluctuation of gender constructs in The Canterbury Tales that make this work so appealing to us today. Annette Kern-Stähler

Grief in The Canterbury Tales

In the past two decades, emotions have been increasingly approached from a perspective that acknowledges cultures vary about which emotions are appropriate to particular situations and social roles. As cultural practices, literature and art have the potential of both disseminating dominant constructions of emotions and of challenging them. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales emphasizes both the imposition of standards of decorum for the expression of emotion and the transgression of these limitations. The exposition of different occasions for and types of grief and of different ways of grieving and mourning are explored by Chaucer in the very first of the Canterbury Tales. “The Knight’s Tale,” in accordance with the social standing of its narrator, is concerned with highly ritualized court culture, but it is in some respects also an exposition of various types of grief which resurface in different genres and narrative contexts in other stories in the Tales—frequently from another, often contrasting, perspective. With repeated reference to Fortune “and hire false wheel” (1.925), grief intrudes in many ways in “The Knight’s Tale”: the grief of the Theban widows whose husbands have been left unburied; the empa-

thetic grief of the knightly Theseus, who then sets out to redress the iniquitous injustice (and whose susceptibility to grief tends to feminize him, in contrast to the Amazon queen he marries); the grief of the captive; the ritualistic grief in the coded system of courtly love, which produces symptoms of illness; the grief of those who feel betrayed by a friend and relative; the grief at the death of a friend; and, finally, the grief for the hero who, contrasting the beginning of the tale, is buried in full state and mourned by the whole populace. Changes of perspective occur, for instance, when, in “The Franklin’s Tale,” Arveragus’s grief over the unattainability of Dorigen moves her to pity him and to accept him as her husband. Within the same tale, this form of empathy is questioned when the now married Dorigen once again succumbs to pity toward another man, which makes her set him a seemingly impossible task. But grief and despair multiply when Aurelius succeeds against all odds, and the ideals of courtly love are subverted when Arveragus urges her to make good on her word, and when Aurelius, subject to all the well-known symptoms of suffering for his love, finally releases Dorigen from her vow. While Arveragus is away, Dorigen mourns his absence as if he were dead: “she moorneth, waketh, wayleth, fasteth, pleyneth” (5.819). She thus conforms to the model of wifely behavior as prescribed in the dominant medieval discourse, which considered grief for an absent husband a wifely virtue. Another model of wifely virtue, as the Host understands it, is provided by “The Clerk’s Tale.” Dorigen’s excessive grief may be contrasted with the suppression of grief and the patient suffering of Griselidis in the face of the ordeals set her by her husband. He tests her by pretending to have their children killed and apparently getting married to another woman. Throughout her ordeal, Griselidis acquiesces, surrendering herself completely to the authority of her husband, and does not show any outward signs of grief. “The Clerk’s Tale” is not, however, uncritical of these social constraints, and in the concluding envoy it proposes a role reversal: “Be ay of chiere as light as leef on lynde, / And lat hym care, and wepe, and wrynge, and waille!” (4.1,211–12).

274â•…â•… Chaucer, Geoffrey In contrast to Griselidis’s suppressed grief, the potential emptiness of ritualized mourning is revealed in “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” with the Wife of Bath following the outward expressions of grief and ritualized mourning (“As wyves mooten, for it is usage” [3.589]) but privately rejoicing in her recovered freedom after having laid to rest her fourth husband whose “purgatorie” (3.489) on earth she was. She lusts after one of the pall bearers, who will become her fifth husband. As the Wife of Bath is shown to be insincere in her mourning, in “The Nun’s Priests’s Tale,” Chaucer challenges literary conventions of stylized and ritualized expressions of grief (7.3,331–3,354) with much bathos. His parody of Geoffrey de Vinsauf ’s lamentation on the death of Richard I in his handbook on the art of writing poetry (Poetria nova) is a critical comment on the use of the lofty subject for didactic purposes. Going one step further, Chaucer uses the high style of his source to elaborate on a farmyard incident, which, in the end, does not even lead to the death of its protagonist. Here, as well as in the examples cited above and, less conspicuously, in other instances, Chaucer challenges socially and culturally constructed customs of grieving and mourning. Annette Kern-Stähler

Religion in The Canterbury Tales

Religion was an integral part of daily life in 14thcentury England. While it may be difficult nowadays to gauge precisely the relationship between the sacred and the secular in this period of a highly varied religious culture, it may safely be claimed that a religious consciousness suffused all aspects of everyday life. It was shaped and further disseminated by ecclesiastical institutions and various forms of both public and private devotion; by prayers, sermons, religious plays, devotional treatises, meditations, and images; and equally by widespread controversy and debate. References to religion and to religious practices pervade Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Although in this unfinished work we may look in vain for the exposition of a sustained and coherent religious vision, the narrative frame of the “General Prologue” and most of the individual tales

engage in various ways and on different levels with contemporary religious issues and problems. The situation envisaged by the text of the “General Prologue” is the pilgrimage to the shrine of the martyred Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The portrayal of the pilgrims, however, raises doubts as to whether they have set out on their pilgrimage “with ful devout corage” (1.22). For their detailed description, Chaucer used and transformed the conventions of the estates satire, the object of which was to expose the shortcomings of each of the estates (professions or ranks). With the notable exception of the idealized Parson (1.477–528), the ecclesiastics among the pilgrims are praised for attributes and characteristics that are generally deemed inappropriate for their estate. Thus, it would have seemed appropriate for the Prioress to feel compassion with Jesus and his mother rather than, as her portrait in the “General Prologue” emphasizes, with mice and lapdogs (1.143–150), and for the Monk to be keen on praying and studying rather than, as the prologue has it, on hunting and eating (1.166–205). Many of the tales and their prologues directly or indirectly address contemporary religious issues and problems, such as the question about the relative value of “feith” and “werkis” in the “Second Nun’s Prologue” (8.64), and many of them are, in fact, examples of, or variations on, religious genres, adapted by Chaucer to his own purposes within the framework of the tales. Thus, “The Man of Law’s Tale,” for instance, is a hagiographic romance; “The Prioress’s Tale” a “miracle of the Virgin,” a story in which the Virgin Mary miraculously intercedes for someone who has shown devotion to her; “The Pardoner’s Tale” is a sermon, the moral lesson of which is illustrated by an exemplum (short anecdote); “The Parson’s Tale” is a penitential treatise, including an account of the Seven Deadly Sins; and “The Second Nun’s Tale” is a saint’s life—“the lyf of Seinte Cecile,” one of the virgin martyrs venerated in medieval England. The saintly virtues of meekness and patient suffering are also displayed by Custance in “The Man of Law’s Tale,” Virginia in the Physician’s Tale and Griselidis in “The Clerk’s Tale.” Even tales which, like the fabliaux, seem to have nothing to do with religion engage directly or indirectly with religious issues. Thus, the Reeve and the

The Seagullâ•…â•… 275 Shipman talk about church corruption, and “The Miller’s Tale” contains allusions to monastic worship (“And thus lith Alison and Nicholas / In bisynesse of myrthe and of solas, / Til that the belle of laudes gan to rynge, / And freres in the chauncel gonne synge” [1.3,653–3,656) and to lay religious practice (“[Absolon] pleyeth Herodes upon a scaffold hye” [1.3,384). “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” too, is replete with scriptural references, and the impact of the church on everyday life is felt in various well-observed details: Her life is structured around “vigilies,” “processiouns,” “pleyes of myracles,” and other religious rituals and observations (3.555–558). In what has become known as Chaucer’s “Retraction,” Chaucer the poet seems to respond to the Parson’s call for penitence. Referring to St Paul’s second letter to Timothy (3:16)—“For oure book seith, ‘Al that is writen is writen for oure doctrine,’ and that is myn entente” (10.1,082)—he ostentatiously revokes and requests God’s forgiveness for “the tales of Caunterbury, thilke that sownen into synne,” along with other works of “worldly vanitees” (10.1,085–1,086), which he juxtaposes to his “bookes of legendes of seintes, and omelies, and moralitee, and devocioun” (10.1,088). Students of The Canterbury Tales, however, are well advised not to divide the tales easily into “good” religious tales and “bad” worldly ones. Since religion was a fabric of everyday life, it is tightly woven into the fabric of Chaucer’s tales—including those that “sownen into synne.” Annette Kern-Stähler

CHEKHOV, ANTONâ•… The Seagullâ•… (1895)

The Seagull, a play in four acts originally produced in St. Petersburg in 1896, bears several hallmarks of Anton Chekhov’s dramatic works. Set on a country estate that is merely a shadow of its former self, populated by a large ensemble of characters struggling to adapt to the changes in Russian society, the action centers on Konstantin Gavrilovich (Treplev), a would-be writer and the son of a famous actress, Irina Nikolayevna (Arkadina). Treplev’s beloved, Nina, an aspiring actress, falls in love with Arkadina’s lover, the famous writer Boris Alekseyevich

(Trigorin), resulting in a short-lived affair that has destructive consequences for both Nina and Treplev. Filling out the cast are Arkadina’s brother, Sorin, the owner of the estate; the charming doctor Dorn; Sorin’s steward, Shamrayev, and his wife, Polina; and their lovelorn daughter, Masha, who attempts to suppress her unrequited desire for Treplev by marrying the unassuming schoolmaster, Medvedenko. Love and loss, avocation and labor, hope and desperation mingle as years pass over the course of the play, and the characters’ efforts to achieve their dreams, both personal and professional, are fraught with complication and disappointment. Even when some achieve their goals—Nina becomes an actress, Treplev a published writer—they do not find happiness, making their “successes” somewhat hollow. Subtitled “A Comedy in Four Acts,” The Seagull challenges established notions of tragedy and comedy: Although it offers no promise of the new beginnings traditionally celebrated at the end of comedies, the stark ending, marked by Treplev’s suicide, lacks the deep gravitas of tragedy. Margaret Savilonis

Hope in The Seagull

The action of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull begins with a conversation between Masha and her suitor Medvedenko, who asks, “Why do you always wear black?”; Masha’s response, “I am in mourning for my life” (Act 1), serves as a microcosmic embodiment of the human condition as Chekhov explores it in the play. Dissatisfied with life, the characters invest their energy in their hopes for a better future, resulting in a paradox that is central to their struggles: Hope enables people to forge ahead in the face of disappointment, even when they realize that their hopes will not come to fruition, but it simultaneously keeps them trapped because they are so caught up in dreaming about what might someday be that they cannot enjoy what they actually have. Yet for all the sorrow that unfulfilled desires create, the loss of hope is far more debilitating. For some, the longing for love that will never be realized causes sorrow and frustration. At the root of Masha’s unhappiness is her unrequited love for Treplev, the aspiring writer whose own hopes are shaped by his intense love for Nina. Early in the

276â•…â•… Chekhov, Anton play, Masha articulates her plans for abandoning her fantasies and moving forward in a new direction. Yet even after she has married Medvedenko and become a mother, she still longs to be with Treplev. Frustrated by her mother’s attempts to console her, Masha declares, “It’s simply nonsense. Hopeless love—there’s no such thing except in novels. The only thing is you mustn’t let yourself go, and always be expecting something, waiting for the tide to turn.╯.╯.╯. When love plants itself in your heart, you have to clear it out” (Act 4). Yet her actions contradict her pronouncements, as she spends her days and nights at the estate to be near Treplev instead of at her own home with her husband and child, indicating that she retains some small semblance of hope that her deepest desires may yet be achieved. For others, hope provides the courage to take risks. Nina leaves home to pursue her dream of becoming an actress and achieving “resounding fame,” even if it means enduring “poverty, disillusionment, [and] the hatred of [her] family.” In some ways, Nina’s hopes are realized: She does embark on a career on the stage, and she has a love affair with the writer Trigorin. Yet these dreams turn out to be chimeras. She finds not fame or glory as an actress but hard work. Her relationship with Trigorin produces a child, who dies, and Trigorin eventually leaves her, returning to his life with the famous actress, Treplev’s mother, Arkadina. Her hopes dashed, Nina refuses to give up, but she does not simply hold on to old hopes. Rather, she finds new hope, declaring, “I know now, I understand, that in our work .╯.╯. what’s important is not fame, not glory, not the things I used to dream of, but the ability to endure” (Act 4). For Nina, hope is fluid, and it must be so, or she will not be able to go on. Treplev, on the other hand, is unable to adapt, clinging relentlessly to his expectations, which end up destroying him. He, too, achieves his professional goal, becoming a published writer by the end of the play. Yet the work is empty, and the realization of his hopes is not quite as beautiful as the dream. Because he cannot let go of his desire to share his life with Nina, he loses hope, and that proves to be the most detrimental thing of all. When he fails to find a new path, a new hope to pursue, he simply gives up, tearing up all of his manuscripts in a sym-

bolic destruction of his dreams. Despair sets in, and Treplev ends his life. Hope is, in some ways, a panacea for the characters in The Seagull because it allows them to go on even in the face of constant disappointment. Yet hope cannot truly cure all ills; one must come to terms with the inevitable disconnect between expectation and realization in order to move forward. That is not to say that one should give up hoping; indeed, the play suggests that hope is something everyone needs in order to survive, and the loss of hope has profoundly devastating consequences. People need something to dream of, but they also need to be able to go on if the dreams fail. Margaret Savilonis

Love in The Seagull

Love is a driving force in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. Early in the play, the revelation of various love triangles generates mild, comic conflict. Yet what is amusing in the beginning of the play is crushing by the end. The heightened emotions of the first act become increasingly intense as the play’s action progresses, and, by the fourth act, the characters’ inability to move forward, hampered by unrealistic expectations and the oppressive yoke of unrequited love, is emotionally, socially, and physically destructive. Set during the summertime on a country estate, the play begins with a light tone, and love takes center stage early on. The pursuit of romance is emphasized by the environment, the sultry weather mirroring the simmering passions of the ensemble cast. The primary focus is the relationship between Treplev, an aspiring writer, and his beloved Nina, an aspiring actress. Treplev’s joyful exclamation, “I can’t live without her;╯.╯.╯. Even the sound of her footsteps is beautiful.╯.╯.╯. My enchantress—my dream!” (Act 1) is emblematic of the intensity with which the characters devote themselves to a gloriously idealized notion of love. This passion generates anguish, as well, particularly for those who feel that such love is beyond their reach. The schoolmaster Medvedenko laments to Masha, “I love you, I’m so miserable I can’t stay at home, every day I walk six versts here and six versts back, but I get nothing but indifference from

The Seagullâ•…â•… 277 you,” to which she replies, “Nonsense .╯.╯. Your love touches me, but I can’t return it, that’s all” (Act 1). By the end of the act, Masha reveals the cause of her inability to return Medvedenko’s affection: She is in love with Treplev. As she pours out her confession to the country doctor, Dorn, he tries to comfort her, marveling at the intensity of the younger generation’s emotions, saying, “How nervous you all are! How nervous! And so much love! Oh, that bewitching lake!” (Act 1)—linking the romantic fervor with the environment. Passions flare, and the comic tone begins to wane as the summer progresses over acts 2 and 3 as Treplev’s and Nina’s mutual affection is disrupted by the presence of Trigorin, a well-known writer and the lover of Treplev’s mother, Arkadina. Though physical violence is kept offstage, the results are shown, and emotional violence plays out in the language through which the characters express their disenchantment with love. Disconsolate over the loss of Nina’s affection and jealous of her burgeoning affair with Trigorin, Treplev shoots a seagull and lays it at Nina’s feet, announcing, “Soon, in the same way, I shall kill myself.” Displaying a similarly impassioned fury over her unfulfilled desires, Masha tells Trigorin, “I’ve made up my mind to tear this love out of my heart—tear it out by the roots,” and she reveals that she intends to marry Medvedenko so that “new cares will stifle the old,” an impractical solution that seems doomed to failure. In act 4, set in the autumn two years later, an emotional chill has set in, reinforced by the howling winds that rattle the estate. Stuck in the same patterns they were in at the beginning of the play, the characters seem emotionally stagnant. Married to Medvedenko, Masha has found no distraction from her desires, yet she clings to the belief that she will be able to “forget it all” if her husband is transferred to another district, enabling her to tear her love for Treplev out of her heart “by the roots.” Medvedenko is still walking six versts (approximately four miles) to and from the estate to spend time with his beloved, though Masha’s indifference has turned to bitterness. Similarly, Treplev, though he has not seen Nina for two years, cannot let go of his love for her. When she returns to the estate unannounced, he says, “Nina, I cursed you, I hated you .╯.╯. but every

minute I was conscious that my soul was bound to yours forever. I can never stop loving you.” Yet there is no comfort in his declaration for either of them, as Nina still loves Trigorin “passionately, desperately,” despite being abandoned by him after a tumultuous affair. In the end, the characters’ inability to express their love in realistic terms has devastating consequences. The pursuit of how life is “in dreams” provides an escape from the mundane realities of life, but the characters’ commitment to a romanticized ideal results in discontent, and love becomes a burden rather than a source of happiness. Margaret Savilonis

Work in The Seagull

As in many of Anton Chekhov’s plays, questions about the value of work frame the experience of the characters in The Seagull. On the one hand, work provides direction and structure, as well as the means necessary to survive by earning an income, however small. Yet although they are compelled to work, few of the characters find pleasure in their occupations, as the desire to find deeper meaning in life is hindered by the commitment work demands of their minds, bodies, and souls. As a result of the dissatisfaction engendered by a life of labor that offers no opportunity for “living,” the creative work of artists becomes romanticized as a path to enlightenment. This privileging of the role of the artist is summed up by Doctor Dorn’s observation, “If society loves artists and treats them differently from .╯.╯. merchants, let us say, that is in the nature of things. That’s—idealism” (Act 1). Yet the experiences of the writers Trigorin and Treplev and the actress Nina show the cracks in that ideal, as even creative work imposes burdens. Most of the characters in the play are disheartened by the lack of financial and emotional reward they get from their occupations. Though Masha asserts that “even a beggar can be happy,” the schoolmaster Medvedenko argues that his job, which pays only 23 rubles a month, makes it difficult for him “to make ends meet” as he tries to support himself, his mother, and his three siblings. Sorin, the retired owner of the country estate on which the play’s action takes place, laments, “I served in the Depart-

278â•…â•… Chesnutt, Charles W. ment of Justice for twenty-eight years, but I’ve never lived, never experienced anything.” Even Dorn, a successful doctor, is dissatisfied with the ways in which work has consumed his life, as he tells Medvedenko, “After thirty years of practice, an onerous practice .╯.╯. when day and night I couldn’t call my soul my own, I managed to save only two thousand rubles” (Act 3). Devoting their lives to their jobs has afforded them little financial security and limited time to pursue other interests. Thus, the work of the artist, and its attendant fame and fortune, seems enviable. Sorin notes that all his life he longed to become a writer, believing it “must be pleasant”; Nina professes that she would give up everything for the “happiness of being a writer or an actress.” Furthermore, creative work is venerated because it offers spiritual liberation that ordinary jobs do not. Dorn tells the aspiring writer Treplev, “[I]f it had ever been my lot to experience the exaltation that comes to artists in their moments of creation, I believe I should have despised this material shell of mine and all that pertains to it, and I’d have soared to the heights, leaving all earthly things behind me” (Act 2). Even for artists, however, work proves to be a distraction from living. Fawning over the writer Trigorin, Nina declares, “How I envy you!╯.╯.╯. Some can barely drag out their dull, obscure existences, all very much alike, and all miserable, while others, like you .╯.╯. are given a life that is brilliant, interesting, full of meaning” (Act 3). Trigorin’s response—“Oh what a preposterous life! Here I am talking to you, I’m excited, yet not for a moment do I forget that my unfinished novel is waiting for me.╯.╯.╯. I have no rest from myself, and I feel that I am consuming my own life”—challenges this idealization of the artist’s life. Similarly, Treplev, a published writer by the end of the play, struggles with his calling and finds the creative process “agonizing,” suggesting that creative labor is not as glamorous as it seems; it is, in the end, still work. By the end of the play, Nina is no longer enchanted by romantic notions about the artist’s work, having “been drawn into the whirlpool” and finding that the demands of her career as an actress, traveling third class on a train to work in the provinces, make for a “coarse life.” Nevertheless, she has found value in

the sacrifices she makes. For her, fame is no longer important; rather, she finds strength in committing herself to her work, noting, “[W]hen I think of my vocation, I’m not afraid of life” (Act 4). Nina has come to recognize that meaning is not something one merely finds, but something one produces, and work is a fundamental component of that process. Margaret Savilonis

CHESNUTT, CHARLES W.â•… “The Goophered Grapevine”â•… (1887)

Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932) published the short story “The Goophered Grapevine,” in the Atlantic Monthly in 1887. It was the first of many stories about the nature of slavery as reflected in the stories eventually collected into The Conjure Woman (1899). His protagonist, Uncle Julius, is a very cagy former slave still living on the plantation to which he had belonged. Chesnutt’s careful and brilliant characterizations illustrate the dignity of the former slaves and the ignorance of the slave owners and carpetbaggers. Uncle Julius tells largely fictitious stories about supernatural goings-on in his world. Chesnutt’s stories are humorous and full of dialect, local folklore, and colorful characters. In the story, a northerner relocates to North Carolina and shortly thereafter visits a plantation. There, he learns that the grapevines on the plantation have been “goophered,” or bewitched. The teller of this tale, a former slave named Uncle Julius, is actually trying to scare off the northerner, a potential buyer of the plantation, with his supernatural story. The Uncle Julius stories were well received as they appeared. Chesnutt was successful so long as he wrote to this formula. He wrote several novels that moved beyond local color and humor, but topics such as miscegenation and mixed races were unpopular. Due to poor sales, Chesnutt was unable to make a living from his writing. He finally abandoned his writing career but remained a tireless activist for interracial understanding. Elizabeth Malia

Ethics in “The Goophered Grapevine”

There are at least three variations in ethics displayed in “The Goophered Grapevine,” none of which

“The Goophered Grapevine”â•…â•… 279 would be recognized by Socrates, the great ancient Greek philosopher of ethics. The story as told by Uncle Julius illustrates clearly the conundrum that was slavery in the antebellum South and the confusion between the races after the Civil War. Certainly slavery was an ethical quagmire in American history, and these characters reflect that. The narrator, a vintner from Ohio, comes across Uncle Julius, a former slave, still living on the old McAdoo plantation. His first reaction is that the former slave is not fully negro but has some white blood; his hair “suggested a slight strain of other than negro blood.” Based on his preconceptions, the narrator also believes that Uncle Julius is not very bright, but he learns differently through experience: There was “shrewdness in his character.” The northerner is condescending, and he is aware that Uncle Julius’s tale is suspicious. “I have not noticed any developments of the goopher in the vineyard,” he says, but he knows the locals are eating the grapes. He listens to Julius’s wild tale of cursed grapevines patiently but is not fooled by it. The narrator buys the vineyard and makes a success of it. He resolves his one twitch of conscience by reporting that he hired Uncle Julius and paid him as much as he could have made from illegally selling the scuppernong grapes. It seems as if the northerner is proud of his magnanimity. He says that the wages paid to Julius for his services as coachman “were more than equivalent for anything he lost by the sale of the vineyard.” He never considers Uncle Julius an equal. The story of Ole Mars Dugal McAdoo as told by Uncle Julius reveals how slaves looked at and humored their masters. McAdoo’s motivation was twofold: to profit from the grapes and his slaves and to control through fear. First, he told his slaves not to eat the grapes because it would cut into his profits. When that did not work, he bought a curse from a “conjure woman.” “Dey wuz a cunjuh ’oman .╯.╯. [who] could wuk the mos’ powerfulles’ kin’ er goopher” to place upon his grapevines—if a slave ate a grape he would die. And so they stopped eating the grapes out of fear. When a new slave such as Henry unknowingly ate a grape, the conjure woman provided a temporary solution to Henry’s dilemma that ebbed and flowed with the growing season. McAdoo turned this to his advantage. When the spring sap

rose, Henry’s strength greatly increased, so each year he was sold to another plantation. As the growing season waned, Henry’s strength and value declined, and McAdoo took him back. He made a good profit on Henry every year. McAdoo was greedy and never took into account what this might do to Henry or his family. He destroyed lives without a thought, secure in his legal rights of ownership. Uncle Julius has crafted a comfortable existence on the plantation since Ole Mars Dugal McAdoo left. He sells the scuppernong grapes, lives where he chooses, and comes and goes without a “by-yourleave.” He has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. He is unimpressed with both his former owner and the vineyard’s new owner. His way of life is firmly built on the practice of lying to the master. It is Julius’s way of avoiding punishment, banishment, and hard work. Julius’s dependence on dialect, which gets thicker as his story proceeds, is part of that lie: He hopes to disguise his native intelligence. So if the northerner condescends to him, Uncle Julius returns the favor by thinking the northerner will believe in the curse and the story he tells. Julius is not above stealing, either. Are these men unethical? By their own lights, they are not. Ethics do not exist out of context but, rather, are the underpinning of social structure. They are rules or standards of how people live harmoniously in society together. Julius feels lying is ethical for slaves who have no other advantage, while McAdoo saw no reason to exercise ethics on his slaves. Chesnutt’s interest was in better interracial relations, and he believed that could be accomplished through knowledge and experience. Uncle Julius represents his earliest vehicle toward that goal. The story of the northerner, McAdoo the slave owner, and the former slave is not about violence or evil but about human nature under very specific circumstances. While humanity can strive for ideals, the realities are more often than not determined by context. Slavery is gone, lamented or not, but its ripples through human nature take time to dissipate. Elizabeth Malia

Freedom in “The Goophered Grapevine”

What does freedom mean to an American? Charles W. Chesnutt indirectly comes to the conclusion that

280â•…â•… Chesnutt, Charles W. there is a “color line” that separates the meaning of freedom to Uncle Julius, a former slave, and to his soon-to-be new employer, the northern gentleman who has come to look at the McAdoo grapevine and plantation. The modern, colloquial meaning of freedom 100 years after “The Goophered Grapevine” means that Americans have the right to determine their own path, to make their own choices, to move at will without a by-your-leave. For Uncle Julius, freedom is a complex term. He knows that he has the ability to come and go as he pleases, but he has not chosen to leave the land where he was born. He knows that he does not have the economic resources to do so, and as long as the vineyard grapes are unclaimed and abandoned without an owner, he is free to pick all he wants and even sell them to his neighbors: “Uncle Julius had occupied a cabin on the place for many years and derived a respectable revenue from the product of the neglected vines.” But Julius knows he does not have the freedom to create a commercial business out of the grapes. Once a buyer for the land appears, Uncle Julius does not even have the freedom to eat the grapes with enjoyment and abandon: “He went on eating the grapes, but did not seem to enjoy himself quite so well.” The former slave can choose his own path, but to maintain the status quo he must manipulate circumstances while at the same time covering himself in the role of the “good darky” in order to survive. For the northerner looking at the property, his freedoms are many, and he focuses to some extent on the commercial ones that are possible in the purchase of the vineyard. He can use his resources to improve the land: “Labor was cheap and land could be bought for a mere song.” He will live a comfortable and congenial life: He merely takes what he sees around him and uses it to his own ends. He is not worried about survival but, rather, about acquiring cash and the comforts it provides. The blacks who will work for him are not real people but instead are two-dimensional “children” who still need the white man’s direction and guidance. The main action of this story takes place in a flashback, related by Uncle Julius, which is heavy with dialect and overt statements of the stupidity of his own race as well as that of his late master,

Marse McAdoo. McAdoo begrudged the grapes his slaves ate and resorted to a curse from the “cunjuh ’oman [conjure woman].” This woman reputedly could “wuk de mos’ powerfulles’ kin’ er goopher,” and McAdoo paid her $10 to curse any slave that ate the grapes. Inevitably, a valuable slave partook of the grapes and became ill, but McAdoo had the “cunjuh ’oman” create an exception to the curse and save the slave. This eventually led to a fraud being worked by McAdoo using the slave, whose strength waxed and waned because of the altered curse. The white narrator expresses some skepticism at the end of the story. Uncle Julius’s efforts to fool him have failed, and he buys the vineyard. Rather offhandedly, he remarks that “it has been for a long time in a thriving condition.” Chesnutt’s brilliance here is that the context of freedom is completely sub rosa. Neither Uncle Julius nor the northerner ever speaks of the concept of freedom or of advantages or disadvantages. They never mention the color line between them. It is only because the northerner is the narrator that we get small flashes of indulgence and smugness on his part to imply the color line exists. And it is only his condescending observations of Uncle Julius that provide even the smallest acknowledgement that the former slave walks that line every day of his life. Uncle Julius has carved out a comfortable life after slavery and does not want anyone to disturb it, but he is also well aware that the northerner looking at the vineyard as an investment can and will do that very thing. Still, he tries through his story to change the obvious outcome. The fact that Uncle Julius accepts defeat on this point is evidence how far his freedom to have the life he wants is compromised. It also shows that Uncle Julius has learned that a stereotypical facade is his best option to effect his options. He will lose points, but perhaps not the game. Elizabeth Malia

Race in “The Goophered Grapevine”

“The Goophered Grapevine,” by Charles W. Chesnutt, is all about race, or, perhaps more accurately, about races. Chesnutt portrays the foibles of the 19th-century white population in relation to the African-American population. He is adept at taking

The Awakeningâ•…â•… 281 the post–Civil War stereotype of the freed slave and turning it on its ear. The happy-go-lucky, childlike blacks portrayed in other period novels are here shown to be wily and manipulative. Meanwhile, the victorious yet greedy whites from the North are shown to be comfortable with the stereotype and to some degree disingenuous about social conditions in the region. Uncle Julius is a freed slave who has chosen not to leave the South. He does not necessarily like whites, and he surely does not trust them. He uses the stereotypical “Yas, suh” and “Lawd bless you, suh” to cover up a natural shrewdness. The white narrator decides that shrewdness is “not altogether African,” thus preserving in his own mind the stereotype of the blacks in general. But Uncle Julius is shrewd and attempts to manipulate the white man by launching into a story about a cursed—or, as he calls it, “goophered”—grapevine. A story within the story explains the curse, which was initiated in antebellum times. McAdoo, the previous owner of the grapevine, did not like his slaves to eat his grapes, so he cursed the grapevine in such a way that if a slave ate of that vine, he would dwindle away and die. Of course, the grapes would not impact the whites in any way. A prize slave, Henry, ate of the vine anyway and started to decline, so McAdoo sought out the conjure woman who made the curse and found a way to save the ill slave, at least temporarily. Uncle Julius makes clear his dislike for McAdoo and whites in general by telling the narrator how Henry would be sold for a high price in the early spring when he was in the best of condition. In the fall, as Henry’s stamina and vigor collapsed, McAdoo would buy him back for a song. This continued for several years until the vine and Henry both died. Chesnutt describes the white narrator in economic terms. He is a man looking to bring intelligence, attention, and money to the South in order to develop it and make more money. He knows grape culture, and so he looks at the grapevine in question. He sees the African Americans in the area as potential workers, sources of entertainment, and background. They are of no real importance to him and therefore no competition. “I was enough of a pioneer to start a new industry,” he says of his

search for a vineyard. Further, he says that “labor was cheap and land could be bought for a mere song.” The northerner is indulgent of Uncle Julius’s story and clearly humors the former slave with his questions. He does not believe the tale of the goophered grapevine. At the end of Uncle Julius’s story, he reiterates his advice to the northerner not to buy the land. The motivation behind the story and the recommendation is not hard to determine. Uncle Julius sees the coming of the northerners as another influx of those who would seek to exploit the land and the local population, especially the blacks. He knows he cannot truly fight such a situation, but he tries within his means. The northerner assigns Uncle Julius an economic motive because he makes a small income from other blacks by harvesting what grapes survive. The narrator only sees the potential profits and not the costs. He is quite proud to say that he later hired the former slave as a coachman. He soothes whatever conscience he might have by deciding that Julius’s wage is the equivalent of his takings from the grapevine. Thus, the northerner does away with Julius’s ability to take care of himself through his own efforts and ingenuity, trapping him with mere wages that allow for no advancement. The conflict of the races in “The Goophered Grapevine” is one of superiority and hypocrisy. A white person can be progressive and succeed only by severing the ability of a black person to do the same. The whites like the status quo, which includes the blacks in the role of servants with a docile, grateful, and trusting manner. The black man can only use subterfuge to try to survive that condescension and economic exploitation. Elizabeth Malia

CHOPIN, KATEâ•… The Awakeningâ•… (1899)

Very simply put, The Awakening is the story of a housewife who grows dissatisfied with her life and commits suicide. But The Awakening is a complex narrative, and that simple summary does not begin to do justice to these complexities. In order to really understand the novel, one must understand something about the culture that

282â•…â•… Chopin, Kate produced it. The laws in Louisiana at the time and the role of women in Creole society are important to understanding the character of Edna Pontellier. Kate Chopin (1850–1904), the author of The Awakening, was extremely interested in the role of women and critical of the institution of marriage in American society at the turn of the 20th century. Almost all of Chopin’s fiction deals with these issues, and The Awakening is no exception. The novel explores the deepest psychology of a woman as she begins to understand that her marriage is not satisfying her. Chopin’s novel is also extremely literary. Her use of language to express her character’s psychological development is rich and nuanced, and her narrative experiments with unconventional points of view. Audience reception of The Awakening was not altogether positive. The idea of a married woman taking lovers was too much for the American audience of the time, and the book was taken out of circulation. It was rediscovered decades later at a time when audiences were better prepared to study and appreciate the novel’s richness. Kathryn Kleypas

Coming of Age in The Awakening

The core of The Awakening by Kate Chopin is the coming of age of its protagonist, Edna Pontellier, making it a key text in the genre of coming-of-age novel’s. While Edna is technically an adult at the beginning of the novel, the action centers on her development into a more psychologically mature individual. The Awakening deals heavily with issues of women in society. Kate Chopin is also very interested in the role of marriage, and we can see throughout The Awakening the interesting ways that she explores this and other issues through Edna’s coming-of-age process. Chopin seems to have very strong opinions about the role of women in society and we can read Edna’s story as a strong criticism about the ways that women were supposed to behave at the time the novel was written. When we first meet Edna, she is spending her summer holiday away from the city (New Orleans), surrounded by what the narrator calls “mother women.” These women, such as her friend Madame Ratignolle, care very deeply for their children and

focus on doing things that are socially acceptable for women to be doing. Edna is always a little confused when she is around such women. She sees that her own behavior is different from the behavior of the “mother women,” but she does not completely understand why. Edna’s husband is also critical of how she treats their children, believing she is too detached from them. During Edna’s summer holiday, she cultivates a friendship with a man for whom she begins to have romantic feelings, but he leaves for a job in Mexico and she returns to New Orleans to resume her normal life. It is as she resumes her normal daily life back home that we begin to see Edna having minor epiphanies—a common experience in coming-ofage narratives. In many works by Chopin, her characters frequently experience epiphanies, and the very title of this novel, The Awakening, suggests that Edna’s epiphany is central to the story. Edna begins to understand, at first only very simply and then later in more complex ways, that she is unhappy in her marriage. She does not dislike her husband personally, but she resists the expectations that society has placed on her in her role as a woman, wife, and mother. As Edna has more minor epiphanies, she begins to explore ways that she can resist society’s expectations of her. The first thing she does is to spend more time with Mademoiselle Reisz, a woman who fully resists society’s expectations of womanly behavior. She is intelligent, sticks to her own opinions, lives alone in a small apartment, is unmarried, supports herself, and is not particularly pleasant in her behavior to others. It is very common in women’s coming-of-age novels to have the main character learn from another woman who is more evolved. Edna finally moves out of her husband’s house and takes control of her own finances, supporting herself with a small inheritance and her work as an artist. Even though the house she moves into is extremely small compared to the home her husband had provided, she pays all of its expenses herself. She allows her children to be cared for by their grandmother, and she experiences a brief time completely free of the marital and maternal restrictions she had known. She takes a lover, which completes her “awakening.”

The Awakeningâ•…â•… 283 The ending of The Awakening is a very famous and contested passage in which Edna kills herself by swimming out into the sea. It seems Edna’s epiphany came a century too soon: While she had a personal “awakening,” it was of no practical use to her in her time. Though she was aware that she did not want to live within the confines that society placed on her, society did not change along with her, and her awakening to this fact made it impossible for her to continue to live at all. Kathryn Kleypas

Isolation in The Awakening

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening deals intimately with the theme of isolation. The working title of the novel used by the author before changing it to The Awakening was A Solitary Soul. The primary theme of “awakening,” or coming of age, comes into play when Edna Pontellier, the main character, feels alienated from other people. It is precisely when Edna feels the most isolated from those around her that she begins to experience the deep moments of growth that lead to her “awakening.” From the novel’s first pages, Edna is described as feeling detached from Creole society and perplexed by the behavior of the Creoles with whom she associates. She therefore chooses to be alone rather than try to accommodate her own behavior to their expectations. In several extended passages, the theme of isolation is developed. While Edna splashes in the Gulf waters during the last days of summer at Grand Isle, she ponders her life. The narrator tells us that Edna is going to be the recipient of more wisdom than most people experience in their lives. We then see Edna floating on the ocean’s seductive waves, her soul being invited to “abysses of solitude.” Once again, isolation and solitude are linked to moments of growth, development, and wisdom for Edna. A few pages later, she again chooses to be alone in the ocean. Her alienation is associated with power: She swims out by herself, away from the group of bathers, so that she can experience the intoxicating feeling of being able to swim alone. Here solitude is linked with growth, power, and choice for Edna. These early passages in the novel link Edna’s isolation with the beginnings of dissatisfaction with

her life. In later passages, she chooses much longer periods of withdrawal from her family and friends. Upon her return from summer vacation on the Gulf, she resumes her normal life at her home in New Orleans but also begins to detach herself from her normal circle of friends when she stops receiving visitors in her home. As the novel progresses, Edna’s periods of selfisolation become linked to depression. At one point, she describes the whole “alien world” as antagonistic, and she starts to isolate herself in a much more determined manner. Her husband is so worried by her behavior that he consults the family doctor, who advises him to let her continue in her self-inflicted solitude. Finally, when her husband leaves for an extended business trip to New York and she allows her sons to be taken by their grandmother, Edna begins to view her isolation as a positive thing. She revels in the quiet afforded her in the absence of her family. She goes from room to room, experiencing her home in new ways now that she is not trying to accommodate her behavior to anyone else’s expectations. It is after this experience of living alone that Edna’s real “awakening” begins. The act of retreating from everyone around her has opened a space for her to experience her own development and growth. Away from the limitations imposed on her by Creole society and by her husband, family, father, and intimate friends, she is able to explore alternative ways to live her life and to make her own choices. While Edna’s important moments of growth happen in moments of self-inflicted isolation, and these moments are often positive for her, ultimately she cannot shake off a more negative sense of loneliness. She loves other men but ultimately finds no lasting satisfaction in these affairs. In the end, the narrator describes a sense of isolation for Edna that is similar to that vague feeling signaled at the beginning of the novel. Back at Grand Isle for another summer holiday, Edna swims out into the Gulf waters while thinking about her life. She realizes that there is no human being that she wants near her except her lover and that one day she will no longer desire him. In a voice reminiscent of that of the novel’s opening passages, Edna enters the sea, which

284â•…â•… Cisneros, Sandra invites her soul to “wander in abysses of solitude.” She enters the ocean naked and “absolutely alone.” Kathryn Kleypas

Sex and Sexuality in The Awakening

The Awakening by Kate Chopin deals so explicitly with the theme of sexuality and eroticism that it was taken out of circulation soon after its publication. The themes of isolation and coming of age are integral to this novel as well, but without a discussion of her awakening sense of herself as a sexual person, no study of the character of Edna Pontellier would be complete. Indeed, the theme of awakening sexuality is at the very heart of the novel and of Edna’s coming of age. The novel describes Edna’s marriage to Leonce Pontellier in ways that make us see it as predictable and rather dull. Like most of the husbands in Chopin’s fiction, Leonce Pontellier is kind and loving but also somewhat controlling. What becomes difficult for Edna, although it takes her much of the novel to discover it, is that the marriage does not fulfill her. She is dutiful and does what she needs to do to be in keeping with the societal expectations of her time. However, living within the confines of marriage makes her feel bored and alienated from her society. In this way, Chopin can be seen to be making judgments, not against Edna’s sexual behavior but against the institution of marriage. In the process of vacationing during her first summer at Grand Isle, Edna comes into daily contact with Robert, a Creole man who performs the role of her suitor more out boredom than for any other reason. Edna is not aware enough of Creole traditions and mistakes the man’s attentions for something more serious. This relationship sparks the beginning of an epiphany, or “awakening”—an awakening to a sexuality that she never before realized she had. Edna’s growing awareness of her own sexuality is shown to the reader through several extended passages. Very soon after leaving Grand Isle and returning to her New Orleans life, Edna visits the pianist Mademoiselle Reisz, who allows her to read letters from Robert while she plays for her on the piano. While listening to the piano music and read-

ing Robert’s letters about her, Edna experiences an erotic sensuality. As time goes on, though, it seems as if Robert himself becomes less important to Edna than her own increasing interest in understanding and experiencing her sensual and sexual nature. In the absence of Robert and then her own family, and in a growing sense of isolation from her society, Edna begins to spend time with Alcée Arobin, a local playboy. Her interactions with him, which appeal to her new feelings of sensuality, come at a time when Edna is obviously primed for this sort of sexual experience. The passages of the novel that describe her feelings surrounding her encounters with Alcée are some of the most sexually charged in the novel. Because of the way the novel is narrated, the main character’s experiences are filtered through those of the narrator, and judgment is therefore suspended. There are no moral judgments made on Edna’s behavior. A married woman taking a lover was unacceptable behavior to most of Chopin’s reading audience of the time, and many of her readers were looking for the author to make moral judgment on Edna’s behavior, which might have made the book acceptable to them. Lacking that moral judgment, however, audiences and critics attacked what they took to be Chopin’s assault on propriety and the chastity of southern women. Edna’s death at the end of the novel was taken in the context of a sort of cautionary tale, meaning that it was seen as a punishment for her sinful and unbecoming behavior. Contemporary critics read the ending of the novel as an inevitability of a different sort: Edna must die because her awakening came too soon. Today, many see Edna as behaving appropriately, and her death is viewed as a tragedy in that her higher level of consciousness came at a time when her society was unable to accommodate her “awakening.” Kathryn L. Kleypas

CISNEROS, SANDRAâ•… The House on Mango Streetâ•… (1983)

Since The House on Mango Street was published in 1983, it has become a standard in literature classes across the country. This is the story of Esperanza

The House on Mango Streetâ•…â•… 285 Cordero through her own eyes as she comes to maturity in the slums of Chicago. She is the daughter of a Hispanic family during the 1960s and struggles to find her own identity and place in the world. Sandra Cisneros (b. 1954) uses a vignette style to illustrate themes and to highlight Esperanza’s journey through childhood. The vignettes are made up of conversations and poetry and are evocative of the author’s memories of a similar childhood. Cisneros shows the growing mind of a child as she struggles between the world of a traditional Hispanic family and that of popular culture. Esperanza learns early that the differences between men and women are profound and will never be completely understood, but she also determines that the traditional role of a Hispanic woman is of no interest to her. She wants to write, and the encouragement she receives makes all the difference as she steps away from the role models of her family and friends. While there are autobiographical elements to this story, Esperanza is also a complete person in her own right. She inspires readers to see beyond the walls and expectations of their culture, their family, and the assumptions of society to a level of self-realization seldom achieved. Elizabeth Malia

T he American Dream in The House on Mango Street

The 20th-century American dream features particular elements, the most important being the ability to own a home and acquire whatever material goods you desire. In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros grants that wish to the young protagonist, Esperanza. Somehow (it is never explained now) her father has managed to make and save enough money to finance the purchase of a home for his family. Moving to a house is a big change for the family because they are moving away from a totally Hispanic neighborhood to one that is undergoing a cultural shift. Esperanza is just a small girl when the move begins. She has a dream of a particular house, with a very one-dimensional look to it: “Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard, and grass growing without a fence.” Faced with economic reality and probable prejudice on the part of realtors,

the family hurriedly moves into the house on Mango Street, which was “[n]ot the house we’d thought we’d get.” Esperanza had hoped to have a room to herself, but “[e]verybody has to share a room.” Having a house, even on Mango Street, is not the American dream for Esperanza, but it is the beginning of her own struggle to define what such a dream might become and who she might be in that place. The neighborhood surrounding the house on Mango Street serves as an extension for Esperanza. She has no yard to play in, so she must play on the sidewalks and street with the neighborhood kids. She hopes for her own “best friend” and right off meets Cathy, the “queen of cats.” Cathy can be her best friend, “but only until next Tuesday.” For Cathy and her family, presumably white, are moving because “the neighborhood is getting bad.” Esperanza knows that it is because “people like us keep moving in.” The little girl who did not like the house to begin with is now the girl all too aware that the house is ugly. Now she also knows that there is something about her family owning a house that is bad. As Esperanza matures, her desire for a different house is still strong. She even goes to see a fortune teller, Elenita, to determine whether that part of the dream will come true, saying, “What about a house .╯.╯. because that’s what I came for.” Elenita says, “Ah, yes, a home in the heart. I see a home in the heart.” This is a true prediction, but Esperanza is still too young to grasp its wisdom. Sally is one of Esperanza’s neighborhood friends. Unlike the more naive Esperanza, Sally sits at home all day, married before eighth grade to get away from her mama. Esperanza is envious, thinking, “She has her husband and her house now, her pillowcases and her plates.” Esperanza doubts that Sally is any happier than Rafaela, though, because Sally’s husband “won’t let her talk on the telephone. And he doesn’t let her look out the window. And he doesn’t like her friends, so nobody gets to visit unless he is working.” Esperanza learns from this situation that Sally has traded her freedom for things, including a house. Esperanza will not sit at home, afraid to go outside. She is learning that the American dream must be different for her. She still wants a house, but does

286â•…â•… Cisneros, Sandra she want to be trapped into motherhood in order to have one? Does she want to be afraid of her own shadow? She knows she does not want the Mango Street that she grew up on, but she cannot discard who and what it has made of her. The house she wants is clear and detailed in her mind. Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody’s garbage to pick up after. Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem. Esperanza wants a house of her own, a place of serenity and order, one that will be for her a “home in the heart.” She wants only a small part of the American dream, and then only as a support for her freedom. Elizabeth Malia

Identity in The House on Mango Street

All children form their characters within the world of family and social concepts. Esperanza is a young girl growing first into a teenager and then a woman having to cope with more than the usual problems. She is a poor Hispanic child who lives in the slums of Chicago amid several cultures mixing together. She wants to know who she is and who she will become. Sandra Cisneros’s vignette format allows the reader to travel through Esperanza’s developing life and personality as she finds her identity. As a girl, Esperanza learns that there are cultural expectations, religious expectations, peer expectations, and a paradigm shift from a traditional female role to a new concept of women as equals. She is Hispanic, but not all of her neighbors are. She is poor but not bad. She also decides to seek personal freedom when most of her contemporaries make choices that limit their freedom and maintain the status quo, and she explores her own sexuality. “Those who do not know any better come into our neighborhood scared,” Esperanza says as she first articulates her experiences of racism. She con-

tinues, “All brown, all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight.” Familiar as the Hispanic neighborhood is, Esperanza knows that courtship rituals are not always happy. She wonders if her namesake great-grandmother ever forgave her great-grandfather for essentially kidnapping her. She thinks, “My great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That’s the way he did it.” She envisions her great-grandmother looking “out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.” Esperanza vows this will not be her own fate. Seeing this through Esperanza’s eyes is the secret to this novel, as she is aware that she does not want to fit any mold. The most prominent issue Esperanza faces has to do with sex and sexuality. At first she has little sense of such things. Marin, her older friend, wears short skirts and spends the evenings leaning on the fence waiting for boys to walk by: “What matters, Marin says, is for the boys to see us and for us to see them.” Esperanza begins to understand that boys are not all noisy little brothers, and she knows that she is drawing boys’ attention, thinking, “I don’t remember when I first noticed him looking at me—Sire. But I knew he was looking.” She is intrigued but also frightened, and her family disapproves. “He is a punk,” says her father. Esperanza feels that “Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and shiny.” As she matures, Esperanza begins to recognize that her fate is all but predestined. Aunt Lupe, crippled by probable polio, has told her, “You just remember to keep writing, Esperanza. You must keep writing. It will keep you free.” A few years later, she decides to begin “my own quiet war,” meaning that she “will not grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.” She wants no children, no husband, and no ties that will keep her down. She wants to escape the tragedy of her great-grandmother and her own mother, who waxes nostalgic for her own youth—“I could’ve been somebody, you know?”—but she quit

The House on Mango Streetâ•…â•… 287 school “[b]ecause I didn’t have nice clothes.” Finally, Esperanza is aware that she does not wish to be trapped like her friend Sally, whose much-older husband is okay, “Except he won’t let her talk on the telephone. And he doesn’t like her to look out the window. And he doesn’t like her friends, so nobody gets to visit her unless he’s working.” Sally sits at home because she “is afraid to go outside without his permission.” Cisneros makes a simple statement in the last vignette that sums up the entire story of Esperanza on Mango Street. Esperanza is planning to leave home, planning to have a house of her own, and planning to write. She says, “I like to tell stories. I am going to tell you a story about a girl who didn’t want to belong.” Esperanza wants to create her own life, her own world, and she breaks free of Mango Street. She is Hispanic, but not just Hispanic; she is a woman, but not just a woman. Elizabeth Malia

Innocence and Experience in The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros writes powerfully of a young girl’s coming of age in the modern era in her debut work, The House on Mango Street. She eschews any romantic or flowery prose as she tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Hispanic girl who moves to Mango Street, grows up there, loses her innocence, and finds herself. Esperanza’s family is intact and whole, and they are living in their own house in an inner-city neighborhood evolving from lower middle class to almost poverty ridden. As a small girl, she is protected and safe, naive and trusting. Esperanza displays her innocence when describing her mama’s hair as “sweet when you put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe.” Despite this feeling of safety, she is aware that not everyone wants Hispanics in the neighborhood. Her friend Cathy tells her they are friends only “until next Tuesday,” and then Cathy’s family will be moving because of families like Esperanza’s arriving. Later, Esperanza will describe how outsiders show fear when entering the neighborhood in their cars. She says, “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They

think we’re dangerous.” The residents feel safe in a nearly homogenous area: “All brown all around, we are safe.” Already Esperanza’s innocence has been damaged by prejudice and ignorance. Playing dress-up with her friends, Esperanza learns that actions can be misinterpreted. Walking to the store in her mother’s high heels, she is told those shoes are “dangerous,” which she disregards in her naïveté. They come across a derelict they christen “Mr. Bum.” He tries to convince Rachel to give him a kiss and promises her a dollar. Frightened, the girls run away; they do not know what the danger is, but they feel it. At home, safe, they decide they are “tired of being beautiful,” and the shoes are forsaken. The natural urge to grow up too fast is dealt a blow, but it is not permanent. When Esperanza begins to develop physically and discovers she has hips, Lucy says that besides holding babies while cooking, hips are needed “to dance. If you don’t get them you may turn into a man.” Esperanza, already enlightened by Alicia, adds, “It’s the bones that let you know which skeleton was a man’s when it was a man and which a woman’s.” And, “One day you might decide to have kids, and then where are you going to put them? Got to have room. Bones got to give.” On her first job, Esperanza is accosted by an Asian man she hardly knows. “He grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn’t let go.” She is bothered by this, but does not understand it. In the neighborhood and at school, she realizes that a certain boy is looking at her, all the time. Ironically, his name is Sire. She is frightened but also excited. She feels, “Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and shiny. I want to sit out bad at night, a boy around my neck.” She is envious of the bad girls, “the ones that go into alleys,” like Sire’s girlfriend. Esperanza wants “to love and to love and to love and to love, and no one could call that crazy.” Sally shows Esperanza how boys treat her. She lets the boys tease her and steal her keys. Sally has to kiss them to get the keys back, but she does not seem to mind. “It was just a kiss, that’s all. A kiss for each one. So what, she said.” Eventually, the kisses lead to further sexual exploitations.

288â•…â•… Cisneros, Sandra Hanging around with boys proves very painful for Esperanza, and she blames Sally, saying “Sally, you lied. It wasn’t what you said at all. What he did. Where he touched me. I didn’t want it, Sally. The way they said it, the way it’s supposed to be, all the storybooks and movies, why did you lie to me?” A forced initiation into sex is the definition of rape and produces shame in the girl. She knows that her innocence is lost, physically and emotionally and that her trust in people is gone. She remembers, “He said I love you Spanish girl, I love you.” Esperanza Cordero learns quite early in life that sex and desire can be a trap underneath the cover of love. She decides not to choose the model of life around her. She is no longer naive, trusting, or innocent. Her life decisions are made against her new frame of reference. The wondrous joy of the little girl is permanently tempered by knowledge and experience. Elizabeth Malia

CISNEROS, SANDRAâ•… Woman Hollering Creek and Other Storiesâ•… (1991)

Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek is a collection of vignettes and short stories that focus on contemporary Chicana and Chicano experiences. Although each story features plots that are self-contained, all the stories are interconnected by common themes of patriarchy, betrayal, poverty, and racism, as well as hope, love, endurance, humor, and faith. The book is divided into three sections that focus on particular motifs. The seven stories in “Part I: My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn,” recount different childhood experiences. Cisneros captures the sentiments of a young girl who remembers spending time in Mexico City with her grandfather in “Tepeyac” and a child’s excitement of going to the movie theater with her family in “Mexican Movies.” In stories about mundane events, Cisneros reveals the rich and complex experiences of bicultural children. In “Part II: One Holy Night,” the collection shifts from childhood stories to teenage protagonists. The two stories in this section examine how young Chicanas negotiate restrictive cultural and religious notions of female sex and sexuality. The last section, “Part III: There Was a Man, There

Was a Woman,” contains 13 stories that focus on the complexities of love, marriage, and desire. Many of the stories examine women’s struggles to leave violent and unsatisfying relationships including the collection’s most-discussed story, “Woman Hollering Creek.” While “Eyes of Zapata” depicts a woman who questions cultural double standards, “Bien Pretty” shows how women find self-empowerment by challenging limiting gender norms. Belinda Linn Rincon

Gender in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories

In “Barbie-Q,” a story in the opening section of Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, Sandra Cisneros describes a young narrator who plays dress-up with her Barbie doll, Cisneros reveals how a seemingly innocent toy for girls actually instructs them on how to accept socially constructed notions of femininity represented by Barbie’s blonde hair, tanned skin, and impossible bodily proportions. Although the narrator’s race is not explicitly described, we can assume that she is Chicana like the book’s other Chicana and Chicano characters. By portraying how a Latina girl cherishes her Barbie, Cisneros uses irony to critique Barbie as an icon of idealized Anglo-American feminine beauty and its influence on the way girls of color view womanhood. Barbie’s standard of beauty is physically impossible for the narrator to emulate, just as the cost of a new Barbie and her accompanying outfits are impossible for the narrator’s parents to afford. Cisneros emphasizes the narrator’s racial and class status to show how Barbie, with her slightly melted foot, is not the perfect representation of universal beauty after all. In “Marlboro Man,” Cisneros focuses on a gender icon of masculinity. The Marlboro Man portrays the image of a cowboy who is master of the range and whose physicality and cigarette smoking make him irresistible to women. Cisneros debunks this image of heterosexual masculinity as the story’s two narrators gossip about the man who was the original model for the Marlboro ads. They describe how he was supposedly a gay man who died of AIDS. Through their conversation, Cisneros reveals how gender icons can be destabilized.

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories â•…â•… 289 Chicanas are influenced by bicultural and binational gender icons as well. In “Eyes of Zapata,” Cisneros describes the life of the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata through his lover, Inés Alfaro. Although Zapata is often regarded as a national hero and defender of land rights, Cisneros complicates his image by revealing the society’s sexual double standards and the patriarchy that condones Zapata’s extramarital affairs while killing women (like Inés’s mother) who behave the same way. Most of Cisneros’s stories focus on Mexican motherhood and usually feature one or more of the following three figures: La Llorona, La Malinche, and La Virgen de Guadalupe (the Virgin of Guadalupe). The first two are bad mothers and the third one is good only because she is passive and selfless. These figures compose the whore/virgin dichotomy that the culture uses to influence women’s behavior. Yet Cisneros’s characters challenge and revise each figure’s attributes to construct more empowering feminist interpretations. La Llorona, or the Weeping Woman, is based on a Mexican folktale about a mother who drowns her children out of vengeance for her cheating husband. In “Woman Hollering Creek,” Cleófilas does not drown her children in the creek; rather, she leaves her abusive husband. The story transforms women like Cleófilas from weeping mothers into hollering women who find the power to escape. La Malinche was an indigenous woman who was enslaved by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés in 1519 and eventually bore his children. Because of her role as translator and guide for the Spanish, she is often blamed for the downfall of the Aztec Empire. She is vilified by Mexican and Chicano culture as a traitor because of her relationship with Cortés. In “Never Marry a Mexican,” La Malinche is alluded to when Clemencia’s Chicana mother tells her not to marry a Mexican because of the difficulties she had with Clemencia’s Mexican father. This first act of betrayal is compounded later by the affair she has with a white man while Clemencia’s father is on his deathbed. Clemencia will follow her mother’s example by also having an affair with a white married man named Drew, who calls Clemencia “Malinalli” (Malinche’s indigenous name). Clemencia’s behavior hurts her when Drew refuses to leave his wife for her because he could never marry a Mexican.

Any woman who rejects patriarchy is considered to be a traitor and is called “Malinche”—such as Rosario in “Little Miracles, Kept Promises,” who refuses to be a submissive wife and mother. She stops praying to the Mexican patron saint, La Virgen de Guadalupe, because the Virgin represents self-abnegation and passivity—the idealized qualities of Mexican womanhood. Rosario resumes her worship of the Virgin only after she learns about the connection between the Virgin and the powerful Aztec goddesses who preceded her. Belinda Linn Rincon

Sex and Sexuality in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories

Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories explores the power and danger of female sexuality and how institutions like family, marriage, and the Catholic Church attempt to control it. Part 2 of the book focuses on stories of adolescence and shows how a lack of knowledge about sex can lead to tragedy. In “One Holy Night,” a girl’s curiosity about sex and her family’s refusal to talk about it lead to serious consequences when she is raped by a 37-year-old serial killer named Chato. He tells her that he is the descendant of Mayan kings lamenting the loss of cultural traditions. When the narrator falls for his story and his tears, he takes advantage of her naïveté. After he rapes her, she feels like a Mayan queen and skips home, feeling content that she has learned what sex is. Her reaction minimizes the rape, but Chato’s extensive gun collection and the extreme age disparity remind us that force and violence have shaped the encounter. Her sense of empowerment ends when her family learns that she is pregnant. They take her out of the eighth grade and send her to live in Mexico before her pregnancy starts to show and can lead to family shame. Ironically, her own mother had been sent from Mexico to the United States when she, too, became pregnant from premarital sex. The story emphasizes how families are invested in controlling female sexuality and view it as a threat to their moral standards and social status. The narrator’s family uses shame and exile to penalize her. In this case, the punishment may have helped save her life as Chato, who previously murdered 11 women, later returns to find her.

290â•…â•… Cisneros, Sandra In “My Tocaya,” a Catholic high school tries to control the contact between boys and girls by limiting interaction and promoting abstinence. The 13-year-old Patricia, who uses a British accent to sound sexy, rebels against this backdrop and an abusive home by running away. Many fear the worst after the body of a young girl is found in a ditch. Again, Cisneros shows how sex is treated as a mystery and social taboo and how girls deal with social restrictions and street violence. In part 3, Cisneros focuses on stories about adults where violence and female sexuality remain dominant themes. “The Eyes of Zapata” tells the story of Inés, a mistress of the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata who contemplates the difference between love and sex in a time of war. During the Mexican Revolution, women become war booty as many are raped by soldiers from both sides and men like Zapata exercise the socially condoned male prerogative of having multiple lovers (and children) outside of marriage. Zapata is a “mujeriego,” or womanizer, and although Inés is one of his lovers, she questions why society condones male infidelity yet condemns it among women. Her own mother serves as the ultimate example of this violent double standard. Years earlier, she was gang-raped, mutilated, and killed by a group of men (and former lovers) as punishment for having extramarital sex. The attack’s brutality emphasizes the community’s anxiety over an unrestrained female sexuality that dares to challenge male privilege and control. Cisneros’s stories also examine eroticism in male characters. For example, Zapata may be a “mujeriego,” but he is also eroticized through Inés’s detailed descriptions of his body. Through such intimate details, Cisneros transforms Zapata from a national legend to a sexualized, vulnerable man. The title of the story “Bien Pretty” refers to a man—not a woman—named Flavio. He poses for Lupe, a Chicana artist who uses him as a model for a painting of a popular Mexican myth which, in her version, exploits the male anatomy. The most erotic male character is Rudy in “Remember the Alamo.” Onstage, Rudy is known as “Tristán,” a dancer in a drag show who mesmerizes audiences with sensual dances that combine desire and death, longing and loneliness. When he

becomes “Tristán” (a play on the word triste, which means “sad”), Rudy wields power over adoring fans. He also dances metaphorically with Death, suggesting that the transgressive sensuality of a gay man’s performance can lead to potential violence in an unforgiving straight society. This power he has over the audience and Death compensates for the powerlessness he feels over a life of poverty, rejection, childhood memories of sexual abuse, and potential homophobic violence. The stage is a safe place for Tristán’s display of sensuality, and it is Rudy’s emotional refuge from a brutal reality. Belinda Linn Rincon

Suffering in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, by Sandra Cisneros, opens with a series of vignettes that portray children who suffer the hardships of poverty. In “Salvador Late or Early,” Salvador is a young boy who dutifully takes care of his younger brothers, yet his own childhood is cut short by the weight of his responsibilities. While he plays the role of a caring older brother admirably, the narrator subtly reveals the difficulties Salvador faces as his childhood is marked by poverty and isolation. He holds within him a history of pain and scars whose causes remain unknown to us, yet we can guess that they involve his experience as a Latino boy whose economic and ethnic background account for why his teacher does not recall his name, why he feels or is made to feel inferior every time he speaks, and why he has no friends. In other stories, the effects of poverty are obscured by Cisneros’s use of child narrators who describe economic hardships in naive ways. For example, the narrator in “My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn” is envious of the fun Lucy must have sleeping with her eight sisters in one bed, but she does not realize the arrangement is by necessity and not by choice. Cisneros also shows how suffering has a cultural and gendered dimension within Mexican and Chicano communities. Mexican telenovelas, which are similar to soap operas, often feature female characters who suffer for love. In “Woman Hollering Creek,” Cleófilas watches a telenovela called Tú o Nadie, You or No One, whose female protagonist

Waiting for the Barbarians â•…â•… 291 endures the pain of betrayal but continues to love the man in her life in spite of everything. Cleófilas longs for the kind of romance depicted in telenovelas while she absorbs the message they teach female viewers: Women must suffer for love. Cleófilas’s life begins to mimic the telenovela as her husband becomes abusive and unfaithful. Not only does she become the suffering woman she sees on television, but she also starts to mirror the suffering figure of La Llorona, or the Weeping Woman. Based on a Mexican folktale, La Llorona is a story about a woman who has drowned her children in a river and spends eternity haunting bodies of water where she can be heard weeping over their deaths. In many versions of the tale, she is said to have killed her children as an act of revenge against her unfaithful husband. The creek outside Cleófilas’s house is called “Woman Hollering Creek,” an allusion to La Llorona, and as Cleófilas sits beside it with her son, she hears La Llorona’s voice calling to her. By incorporating Mexican telenovelas and La Llorona into the story, Cisneros emphasizes the cultural practices and traditions that condone the suffering of women like Cleófilas. Suffering also has a religious meaning and is embodied in one of Mexico’s most important feminine archetypes: the Virgin of Guadalupe. In Mexico, the Virgin appeared to the Indian Juan Diego in 1531 at the temple where the Aztec goddess Tonantzín was worshipped. This coincidence made the Catholic conversion of the indigenous population easier, but it also endeared the Virgin to Mexican believers who saw her as both the suffering Virgin Mary and as a symbol of hope that people pray to in time of need. In “Little Miracles, Kept Promises,” Cisneros shows how Mexican Catholics often leave messages on church walls for the Virgin that contain prayers or promises made to the Virgin. Through these ex-votos, we learn of the community’s ailments, which range from the trivial (a boy prays for his acne to clear up) to the heartbreaking (a husband prays for his dying wife). The story ends as Rosario leaves her own ex-voto and describes how she refused to pray to the Virgin for years because she rejected the image of the suffering, self-sacrificing woman that the Virgin represented. It was only when Rosario realized that the Virgin

also embodied the strength of Tonantzín that she accepted the Virgin and understood that suffering can lead to empathizing with others, which can then lead to healing. Belinda Linn Rincon

COETZEE, J. M.â•… Waiting for the Barbariansâ•… (1980)

Waiting for the Barbarians, first published in 1980, is the South African author J. M. Coetzee’s third novel. Coetzee (b. 1940) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1980 for Waiting for the Barbarians, and most scholars and critics now recognize this work as one of his best. The novel is set on the frontier of an unidentified country currently occupied by a nameless empire. There are three main characters: the Magistrate, Colonel Joll, and the barbarian girl. The Magistrate lives a peaceful existence, managing a small town and commanding a garrison of soldiers within the walls of his frontier fort, until Colonel Joll arrives from the empire’s headquarters. Colonel Joll disrupts the quiet frontier by sending out raiding parties to capture any “barbarians” found on the land. One of the prisoners, the barbarian girl, occupies a soft place in the heart of the Magistrate after she is tortured by Colonel Joll and his men, and the Magistrate takes it upon himself to care for her. A series of decisions by the Magistrate concerning her welfare results in Colonel Joll imprisoning and torturing the Magistrate as a traitor. Many themes, including cruelty, race, ethics, freedom, identity, isolation, and suffering, are discussed within the context of Waiting for the Barbarians. Although Coetzee is notorious for never directly addressing an issue, a discerning reader will identify many conflicts within the text that are comparable to modern-day issues. Colin Christopher

Cruelty in Waiting for the Barbarians

Before the arrival of Colonel Joll, the Magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians seems utterly unaware of the presence of cruelty. In the early pages of the novel, he describes for Colonel Joll an idyllic scene of fishing with native villagers, and when it is time

292â•…â•… Coetzee, J. M. for bed, the reader is treated to a nighttime of silence and beauty as the Magistrate takes his mat to the rooftop to sleep. The Magistrate reflects on the scene, adding that he has been here for a while, and it seems he has grown complacent in this comfortable situation. However, the arrival of Colonel Joll changes everything, and the Magistrate soon realizes that Joll will impose both physical and psychological cruelty in order to get the “truth.” Two prisoners (an old man and a boy, “barbarians” captured from a frontier raid) are interrogated by Colonel Joll even though they have a plausible excuse for their whereabouts. People within the barracks report hearing screaming in the night, and in the morning, when the Magistrate goes to check on the prisoners, he finds that the old man is dead. The idea that “pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt” from his earlier conversation with Colonel Joll is still fresh in his mind, and the Magistrate begins to feel uneasy about the situation happening in his fort. The Magistrate’s apprehension is not unfounded, as Colonel Joll enlists most of the soldiers at the barracks to go with him on a raid of the countryside. Colonel Joll bases his decision for the raid on information given to him by the boy, who, while enduring extreme physical torture, has told Colonel Joll that barbarian tribes are joining together to fight against the empire. However, as the Magistrate discovers, the boy has become very ill due to an untreated wound, and the torture he has suffered during interrogation has left him so weak that it seems he would say almost anything to end the pain. Nevertheless, Colonel Joll insists the boy come on the raid as a guide, and to the Magistrate’s horror, prisoners from the raids begin arriving back at the barracks only four days after Colonel Joll leaves. When Colonel Joll himself returns from the raids, his interrogations continue. Five days go by, and Colonel Joll tells the Magistrate he will leave. Once Colonel Joll has gone, the Magistrate orders the release of all prisoners and is appalled at the conditions in which he finds the natives he knows as simple “fishing people.” One girl in particular stirs something in the Magistrate, and he offers her work in order to keep her from being a vagrant or, perhaps, in order to keep her from being seen as a reminder of what Colonel Joll had done. It turns out that

during her interrogation, the girl’s torturers blinded her in both eyes by forcing her to stare at the glowing hot tines of a fork, and they broke both of her ankles. The torture took place while the girl’s father was forced to watch. The pain inflicted on the man’s daughter would force the truth from him, in the mind of Colonel Joll, but now the Magistrate realizes that mental cruelty can be worse even than physical cruelty because the girl’s father, powerless to help his daughter, commits actions that lead to his death. The worst is yet to come. A crisis of conscience leads the Magistrate to undertake an arduous journey in which he returns the girl to her people. Upon his return, he finds army troops waiting for him. They remove him from his post and take him prisoner, charging him with treason. Through isolation and misinformation, the Magistrate’s reputation among the people at the barracks is seriously damaged. He is imprisoned, beaten, and not allowed to defend himself against any of the charges that are leveled against him. At one point, he is even taken outside and made to believe that he is about to be hung. He is held aloft until the brink of death, then released, crashing roughly to the ground. The combination of physical and emotional torture suffered by the Magistrate in front of the very people he used to govern is the height of the empire’s cruelty, and he no longer feels part of the empire. Colin Christopher

Isolation in Waiting for the Barbarians

J. M. Coetzee has long been regarded as a solitary, reclusive person. Many of his novels contain characters dealing with isolation of some sort: In Dusklands, Jacobus Coetzee travels only with servants whom he sees as little more than faithful animals; in The Life & Times of Michael K, Michael K travels alone and hardly ever speaks; and in Disgrace, David Lurie refuses to see his own actions in the same light that he sees the actions of others. The main characters in Waiting for the Barbarians—the Magistrate, the barbarian girl, and Colonel Joll—hold true to this pattern of characters who are isolated from something. However, it is the Magistrate, more than any of the others, who is isolated from almost everything around him.

Waiting for the Barbarians â•…â•… 293 The Magistrate sets himself apart from Colonel Joll, the outsider who has come to his settlement, in the very first sentence of the novel: “I have never seen anything like it” (1). Of course, the Magistrate is only talking about Colonel Joll’s sunglasses, but the tone is set. He soon finds himself at odds with Joll’s interrogation techniques as well as his intentions to raid the frontier. Joll hopes to capture more prisoners so he can gain information about the barbarians’ plans; meanwhile, the Magistrate wishes Joll would leave well enough alone so that the frontier settlement could go back to its quiet, idyllic existence. Throughout most of the interrogations, Joll has the willing assistance of the Magistrate’s men. The Magistrate questions these men about what happens during the interrogations, and they usually give him an account that sounds very much like something Joll told them to say. Sometimes the Magistrate gets them to admit to something else that happened through indirect questioning, but it is clear that Joll has specifically provided a story for the men to tell because he sees the Magistrate as little more than a hindrance to the job he must perform. The true vastness of the Magistrate’s isolation from all he has known is apparent during one of his visits to the ruins he has been excavating in the desert. He has heard children’s stories about the ghosts who inhabit the ruins during a certain hour of each night, and he wishes to see or hear the ghosts for himself. He notices everything as the sky grows darker and listens for every sound that might signal the arrival of the spirits, but the only sign he recognizes is “the patter of sand driving from nowhere to nowhere across the wastes,” and soon he falls asleep. The Magistrate, as he leaves the desert to go back to the settlement, thinks to himself, “How fortunate that no one sees me!,” realizing how foolish he has been, sitting out in the desert and listening for ghosts, based solely on the stories of children. After all, no adults would tell him about ghosts in the desert. Indeed, throughout the novel, most adults avoid contact with the Magistrate, unless they are servants responding to direct orders. Even the barbarian girl, whom the Magistrate thinks he is becoming very close to, rebuffs him in the end. He realizes that he cannot know what is going on in her mind but deludes himself into

thinking that she cares for and has grown dependent on him. Even the reader does not know why the girl allows him to wash her each night, yet she does. She accepts the job he has given her and stays under the roof he has offered to her. However, at the first opportunity she is given to return to her home, she jumps at the chance. The Magistrate asks her to return with him of her own free will, and she responds bluntly: “Why? No. I do not want to go back to that place.” On the trip back to the settlement, and throughout the rest of the novel, the Magistrate can only put together bits and pieces of what the barbarian girl looks like until, at the end, another woman tells him that both she and the barbarian girl always felt he was “somewhere else” when he was with them. Finally, a reader of Waiting for the Barbarians must consider the isolation imposed by the story’s setting. Not only is the settlement in the desert, but the inhabitants seem unaware of the outside world. (Consider how foreign a pair of sunglasses seemed to the Magistrate at the beginning.) In addition, the empire is given no name or geographical location. Coetzee does very few things by accident in his writing, and here he isolates the story in place and time. Much is left open to the reader’s interpretation in Coetzee’s novels, but the isolation of both the story and the Magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians is unquestionable. Colin Christopher

Race in Waiting for the Barbarians

Although race seems to be an overriding factor in most of J. M. Coetzee’s works, it is hardly, if ever, mentioned. It is almost as if Coetzee makes a conscious decision not to talk about race, and Waiting for the Barbarians is no exception to this pattern. For a long time, Coetzee lived and worked in his native South Africa, and so it is easy for a reader of his novels to assume that his settings are African. Given what is known of South Africa’s recent history, a reader may also assume that Coetzee’s themes specifically refer to race. In Waiting for the Barbarians, however, race can only be assumed by the reader. In the beginning of the story, the Magistrate is talking to a prisoner in front of Colonel Joll, and the prisoner’s face is

294â•…â•… Coleridge, Samuel Taylor described as “grey,” but taken in context, this is only because the prisoner is dirty from making a long trek on foot. All other descriptions of the two prisoners show them only as human and do not describe any racial characteristics. One of the only words in Waiting for the Barbarians that could possibly be construed as describing a difference in races is dark. The narrator relates that “there is no woman living along the frontier who has not dreamed of a dark barbarian hand coming from under the bed to grip her ankle.” How is the reader supposed to interpret this statement? Many times the word dark is used as a synonym for the words evil or bad, and it is entirely possible that the narrator is using it in this way. After all, monsters coming from under the bed are bad, or evil, and they only try to grab us when we have turned out the lights—when it is “dark.” Even when the Magistrate describes children playing in the snow as “square, dark figures,” he contrasts them against the “whiteness” of the snow. Compared to freshly fallen snow, almost anything could be described as “dark.” And then there is the question of the girl. So much of what the reader is led to assume about the girl brings up the question of her race. The Magistrate describes her as having “straight black eyebrows and the glossy black hair of the barbarians,” as well as a “broad mouth, [and] the black eyes.” Yet nowhere in the physical description of the woman is her specific race mentioned. The reader knows only that the Magistrate considers her one of the former barbarian prisoners, and that he finds a soft spot in his heart for her as winter approaches. But just because the girl is from a barbarian tribe, the reader cannot necessarily assume anything about her race. In fact, as the story progresses, the Magistrate describes the girl more and more with terms that are less “dark.” For instance, when he describes what sex with her would be like in his mind, she is the “milk .╯.╯. honey .╯.╯. bread” while he is the “acid .╯.╯. ashes .╯.╯. chalk.” The Magistrate sees her body in front of the fire as “glowing a vegetal gold.” Through the rest of the story, even after the girl has been returned to her tribe by the Magistrate, the barbarians are simply described as barbarians. The Magistrate explores no physical features of anyone other than himself, and he describes him-

self as growing more and more like an animal. He hears that the barbarians are responsible for recent atrocities against the community, but he has no tangible proof other than descriptions of a barbarian suspected of rape. The children who describe the barbarian “recognized him as a barbarian by his ugliness” (123). It is ironic that a reader will assume something that is never mentioned. By putting together the fact that Coetzee is from South Africa, and that Waiting for the Barbarians is about an empire trying to colonize lands currently controlled by “barbarian” tribes, a reader may dangerously misperceive what is happening within the story. Ultimately, by not specifically introducing the race of any character in Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee forces readers to confront their own views of race. Colin Christopher

COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLORâ•… “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”â•… (1798)

Perpetually haunting and evocative, and a seminal romanticist work, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was first published in 1798, when it opened Lyrical Ballads, the collected poems of Coleridge (1772–1834) and William Wordsworth. Central to romantic interests were exploring the role of the imagination and looking to nature and ancient literary forms for inspiration and expression of human thought, emotion, and curiosity. The poem’s original title, “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” reflects its mode as a medieval ballad. Although the spelling was soon modernized, the style generally retains the ballad stanza. The frame narrative depicts two characters on the threshold of a church, the Ancient Mariner telling the tale of his journey to a Wedding-Guest anxious to get to the ceremony. But it is the mariner’s tale of a torturous sea voyage, his shooting of the albatross, and his search for redemption that is unforgettable. This internal narrative works on many closely entwined levels, creating thematic webs of nature, fate, and death as it treats allegorical, metaphorical, and metaphysical forms of storytelling.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”â•…â•… 295 Coleridge revised the poem numerous times; the version in his 1817 collection Sibylline Leaves included the marginal glosses and the scene of Death and Life-in-Death. Like the Ancient Mariner’s story, the poem continues to enthrall modern readers, taking them on its journey of awe, horror, and wonder. All the essays here refer to the 1817 version of the poem. Jennie MacDonald

Death in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Readers are alerted to the looming presence of death in the first line of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Because the mariner is not merely old but ancient, he is very near to death, nearer than the young man he detains who is on his way to a wedding. Not merely a ceremony, a wedding celebrates the couple’s new life together and the births of the children they presumably will have. Juxtaposing the appearance of the Ancient Mariner to the happy bride entering the chapel signals the conflict between death and life and man’s position in relation to both, throughout the poem. The image of water as life-affirming, enabling the ship on its voyage at the beginning of the mariner’s tale, soon becomes an image of death. Driven southward by a storm, the ship leaves behind the beneficent Atlantic seas above the equator to become hemmed in by Antarctic ice and fog that threaten to destroy both men and ship. Later, freed from the ice and aided by a “good south wind” (l. 87), they pass into the Pacific Ocean, where things initially seem promising, as “The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew” (l. 103). Immediately, however, “Down dropt the breeze” (l. 107), and the ship is becalmed. Not only is the ship immobile, the men suffer in the heat and from the maddening proximity of “Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink” (l. 122). Now, the sea is figured as filled with death and rotting, and a skeletal ship bearing Death itself sails with no wind across the ocean. Although Death has until this point been alluded to in other forms, here he is actually personified and associated with the sea. Death is also associated with “The Night-Mair Life-in-Death .╯.╯.╯/ Who thicks man’s blood with cold” (ll. 193–194). Figured as a female to partner

Death, Life-in-Death wins the mariner in a game of dice, and he looks on in horror as the rest of his shipmates drop dead, each cursing him “with his eye” (l. 215). One of those sailors is his own nephew, whose death most probably ends the mariner’s family line. Even worse is Life-in-Death’s curse, which preserves the mariner from Death only to make him suffer alone, to witness the reanimation of the dead to operate the ship and later the death of the ship itself. During his solitary vigil, he recognizes that even the horrid creatures of the sea are God’s creatures and blesses them, transforming evil into good. His own perception changes as well, and this begins the mariner’s process of redemption. In the end, the sea, influenced by heavenly beings, will finally return the mariner northward, where he will be rescued and eternally compelled to tell the story of his sin and its expiation. The mariner’s great sin is his shooting of the albatross, the seabird who accompanied the ship through the ice and away from certain destruction. The death of the bird is reflected in the becalming of the ship, the ceasing of the wind and of the movement of the water, as well as the death of hope among the men. The albatross is aligned with the rest of God’s creatures. More important, it is aligned with God himself when it blesses the mariner in God’s name. Later, the spirits affirm, God “loved the bird that loved the man / Who shot him with his bow” (ll. 404–405). As Christ was hung on the cross and his blood flowed for the absolution of mankind, so the albatross is hung upon the mariner’s neck until the man is absolved through suffering and penance. The blood that signifies the death of the albatross also signifies life, just as water embodies both. Life and death are then coexistent. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” creates life from death, a story of redemption from a story of senseless murder that is the sin of mankind. Beginning with the death of the albatross through the metaphorical rendering of death in natural forms, particularly the sea, through to the actual representation of the entity of Death and his actions, the poem offers images and concepts of life in its metaphorical and spiritual forms. But this redemption is not complete, as the Ancient Mariner must continue

296â•…â•… Coleridge, Samuel Taylor to tell his story to keep it alive for his listeners, who themselves will reiterate his tale. Jennie MacDonald

Fate in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the mariner’s shooting of the albatross stands as the pivotal image around which revolve both the internal narrative of the Ancient Mariner’s journey and the frame narrative of his telling the tale to the Wedding-Guest. The bird’s appearance heralds the salvation of the ship from the ice, befriending the mariner, but without warning or apparent motivation, the mariner shoots the albatross. The remainder of his narrative recounts his ultimately solitary journey toward redemption for committing an action that can be interpreted not only as murder and a sin against nature but also as a refiguring of the death of Christ. But why did the mariner kill the albatross? The question of motivation surrounding this action of the internal narrative has a parallel in the frame narrative. Both involve the role of fate and are interdependent. The mariner’s shooting of the albatross was meant to happen; his choice of the Wedding-Guest for listener was meant to be. Fate decrees an action and is irresistible. At the beginning, the frame narrative appears to simply relate the event of an old man telling a story to a younger one. As the wedding guests arrive, the Ancient Mariner “stoppeth one of three” (l. 2). The young man asks, “Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?” (l. 4). He means to go on by, but he is also asking a question with deeper implications— “Why do you choose me for your attention?” This question, though, will not be answered until the end of the Ancient Mariner’s story, when the old sailor details the nature of his penance: “Since then, at an uncertain hour, / That agony returns: / And till my ghastly tale is told, / This heart within me burns” (ll. 582–585). But he cannot tell the tale to just anyone. He must wander until “That moment that his face I see, / I know the man that must hear me: / To him my tale I teach” (ll. 588–590). The Wedding-Guest on this occasion is that particular man, that particular listener. He is fated to hear the mariner’s tale, to learn its lesson of unthinking crime and painful

repentance, so that he, too, is alerted to the magnitude of love and God’s grace. This story has such magnitude because of the bird’s significance. The sailors’ response to the appearance of the albatross signals this is no ordinary bird: “As if it had been a Christian soul, / We hailed it in God’s name” (ll. 65–66). Linguistically aligned with God, the albatross resembles Christ, the friend of humankind whom humankind crucifies. It is thus significant that the mariner shoots the bird with a crossbow rather than an ordinary bow. Shortly after, the image of the cross becomes conflated with not only the albatross—which, “Instead of the cross .╯.╯. About my neck was hung” (ll. 141–142)—but also with the mariner himself. The albatross takes the place of the cross around the mariner’s neck, and the mariner takes the place of the cross on which Christ was hung. The appearance of Christ on earth is necessary to make flesh God’s friendship to mankind. His crucifixion also must occur—is fated to occur—to teach mankind of the possibility of salvation, of life after death, which makes living rightly on earth imperative. In teaching others through telling his tale, the Ancient Mariner is fulfilling his fate. The shooting of the albatross and the events that follow provide him with a story to tell and suggest the circular nature of fate. The mariner must tell his story, and the Wedding-Guest must listen to it. But without the mariner’s fateful action of killing the albatross, there would be no story to tell. He has no choice in this action, only the committing of it. It seems a random action, but it brings about the rest of the events, including the fact that he is fated to tell it. The idea of randomness literally appears in the scene in which Death and Life-in-Death are casting dice for the ship’s crew. All drop down dead except for the mariner, whom Life-in-Death wins apparently by luck of the dice. But even this random event appears governed by fate, for none but the mariner could tell the whole of the story from the perspective of the individual who set the horrifying and later mystical events in motion. None but he is in a position to relay that story in all its terror and awe and thereby effectively impress its meaning upon the Wedding-Guest and the reader. Jennie MacDonald

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”â•…â•… 297

Nature in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

The “rime” of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner denotes not only the “rhyme” that is the mariner’s story of his voyage, but also the “rime” that is a condensation of saltwater, mist, or fog and that collects on objects exposed to it for some time. Like the rime that collects on a ship, the mariner is coated with the rime of his experience. The Wedding-Guest acquires a veneer of it as he is exposed to the mariner’s story and the presence of the old salt himself. The first object identified in the title of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “rime” serves to underline the nature of the work itself as a poem, points to the ancient spelling of the word rime in medieval ballads, and suggests a link between nature and humanity. “Rime” asserts a literary relationship between “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and medieval ballads. Coleridge’s poem generally consists of fourline stanzas (quatrains) of balladic meter in which the second and fourth lines rhyme. The poem also invokes medieval imagery, including “The merry minstrelsy” at the wedding (l. 36), which alludes to the ballad-poet or minstrel. The Sun “flecked with bars .╯.╯. As if through a dungeon-grate he peer’d” (ll. 177–179), “The water, like a witch’s oils” (l. 129), and “the elfish light” (l. 275) of the water snakes all present images of nature—cosmos, sea, and animal—through medieval images of imprisonment, heresy, and superstition. All can be associated with the unnatural: A dungeon is built by man and deprives man of his naturally free state, witches convert nature to unnatural uses, and elves were viewed in medieval times as demonic spirits. Another discernible medieval idea is the great chain of being. This is a hierarchical construct that extends from God at the top to the lowliest creatures of the earth at the bottom and human beings above animals but below, for example, saints and angels. In the poem, images of the highest and lowliest creatures mingle, from the albatross that inhabits the heights of the sky to the water snake coiling in the depths of the sea. Rather than occupying a position above all the animals, however, the Ancient Mariner seems figuratively located between these two creatures. By shooting the albatross (literally bring-

ing it down to the earth’s surface) and blessing the water snake (endowing it with a spiritual nature and thus raising it figuratively), he brings both creatures toward this central position. The concern with descent and elevation can also be traced in the ship’s journey. Upon leaving his home shore, the mariner notes, “The Sun came up on the left” (l. 25), indicating a departure point in the north, and journey toward the equator with the sun rising “Higher and higher every day, / Till over the mast at noon” (ll. 29–30). Driven by a storm, “southward aye we fled” (l. 50) until “ice, mast-high, came floating by” (l. 53), and the ship becomes trapped in the southernmost ocean of the earth. The albatross leads the ship back north but westward, for “The Sun now rose upon the right” (l. 83). After the mariner shoots the albatross, the ship will continue to drift until, after his blessing of the water snakes, he is absolved by the Hermit. At length, he returns to “his own countree” (l. 570), completing a geographical journey of descent and elevation, although he will be forced to wander, telling his tale. Finally, Coleridge employs the sea, the weather, and the cosmos to parallel the condition of the mariner’s soul and the human condition in general, suggesting the imminent peril in which humankind lives at all moments. The journey begins under a fair wind, but man can become incautious and, more dangerous still, complacent, his soul frozen until some beacon awakens it. Inexplicably, the mariner shoots the albatross, dooming his own soul to the hellish parching torment of the southwestern seas, until he recognizes the beauty of the water snakes and blesses them. That night “it rained” (l. 300), and the sky is filled with meteors, as though even the heavens are celebrating the mariner’s learned lesson that mankind must love “all things both great and small” to mirror God’s own nature. Concepts of nature echo throughout the poem, reflecting the nature of the poem itself and the imagery of nature representing the development of the mariner’s soul. Together, they deposit a new layer of rime not only on the Wedding-Guest but also on the reader. Jennie MacDonald

298â•…â•… Conrad, Joseph

CONRAD, JOSEPHâ•… Heart of Darknessâ•… (1899, 1902)

Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, a seminal work in the history of modernist literature as well as a scathing attack on European imperialism, was first published in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1899; it was published in book form in 1902. Heart of Darkness tells the story of a young, adventurous English seaman, Marlow, and his encounter with the far reaches of empire as he travels up the Congo River. At the same time, it is an internal journey of self-discovery to the heart of darkness that lies within. Like most of Joseph Conrad’s early stories, Heart of Darkness is based on his personal experiences as a merchant seaman. Arriving in the Congo in 1890 to take command of a small steamship, Conrad (1857–1924) witnessed firsthand the devastating human impact of European colonialism on an uprooted native population. Yet Heart of Darkness is far more than an anti-imperialist political tract or an anthropological study of detribalization. It is also a masterpiece of modernist fiction. Conrad’s personal experiences are those of a homeless exile, a loner and linguistic outsider, a Pole sailing on French and British ships, a European in Asia or Africa, a nonnative speaker writing in English. He was, in short, a man who lived in the borderlands of culture at the crossroads of tradition and modernity. Conrad’s narrative techniques in Heart of Darkness capture this fragmented alienation and thus prefigure in many ways the multiple perspectives, impressionistic representations, linguistic sophistication, mythic archetypes, and psychological subjectivity we have come to associate with modernist literature. Within the framework of Marlow’s journey upriver to find Kurtz is another voyage, an inner journey where Conrad’s narrative confronts such themes as alienation, ambition, community, freedom, identity, isolation, oppression, race, and work. Michael Zeitler

Community in Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a novel about community and the effects of European colonization—its disastrous consequences for the stability of traditional native cultures and its potential moral

and psychological consequences for the European colonists themselves. The theme of community, in its diverse possible meanings, emerges in the framing story on board the Nellie, as Conrad’s unnamed narrator credits the “bond of the sea” for uniting the five on board through common work, professional experiences, and underlying purpose. They are moored at Gravesend on the Thames, and the river connects them to London, the “Great City,” and to the sea and the far reaches of the British Empire, just as their work connects them to Sir John Franklin, Sir Francis Drake, and the larger historical community of British exploration and colonization. Marlow, as he prefaces his own narrative, suggests a comparison between themselves and the Roman conquerors of ancient Britain, who also were “men enough to face the darkness,” held together only by their “devotion to efficiency” and “an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to,” as Marlow and the others aboard the Nellie have done. Throughout his narrative, Marlow emphasizes the potential for both individual and communal degeneration, for losing sight of that “bond,” that “idea” which ties individuals to a larger community of meanings, associations, and values. Even before his arrival in Africa, as Marlow prepares to leave the Company offices in Brussels, the examining doctor warns him of the “mental changes of individuals” that take place on the “inside” of those returning from the Congo. Marlow’s descriptions convey his sense of the horrors of the Belgian exploitation of the Congo. The chain gangs of African native work conscripts, the whippings and mutilations, the forced marches, the “grove of death,” the indiscriminate cannon shots into the bush, and the Europeans’ treatment of the steamboat crew all speak to the colonizers’ alienation from the moral values of the larger world community. Marlow, the practical British seaman with his deeply felt allegiance to work, efficiency, and productivity, sees in the absence of these values yet another sign of moral degeneracy replacing community-based responsibility. Buildings burn because the fire brigade is helpless and inefficient; they do not get rebuilt because there is no straw to make the bricks. Ships are not repaired because replacement rivets have not been sent. Mar-

Heart of Darknessâ•…â•… 299 low labors to bring order into the chaotic operations of the El Dorado Exploring Expedition. Later, upriver, a well-used book on seamanship he finds in an abandoned trading post represents for him “an honest concern for the right way of going to work” in contrast to the slipshod efforts of the Company. The Belgian colonialist enterprise in Africa not only takes its toll on the communal stability of the Europeans, it even more profoundly uproots and destabilizes the traditional indigenous African cultures. For Marlow, this “detribalized” population is now doubly alienated, a people without any sustaining connection to a larger community, as in his description of the ship’s native fireman: “He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler.╯.╯.╯. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft.” Marlow’s ironic juxtaposition of the fireman’s technical training and primitive thought (“witchcraft”) suggests the colonized subject as a grotesque, a man alienated from both worlds. Yet it is in the figures of Kurtz and his native “adorers” that Conrad most graphically illustrates the “horror” inherent in the disconnection of self and community. Kurtz, the object of Marlow’s journey into the very “heart of darkness,” is, in many ways, the ideal representation of European civilization: educated, intelligent, artistic, idealistic, and hardworking. He is a “gifted creature,” Marlow informs his listeners, no “ordinary man.” In the jungle, however, elevated to a semideity, with no laws or customs to restrain him, Kurtz sits, surrounded by the skulls of his enemies, at the heart of a demonic parody of community combining the worst aspects of European and African cultures. He has provoked and organized the local chiefs into mercenary, even genocidal warfare for the procurement of ivory. Godlike, Kurtz is a law unto himself. “He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory,” a witness tells Marlow, “.╯.╯. because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased.” In Kurtz’s isolation, temptation, and fall; in his final warning, “The horror! The horror!” (75); and in Marlow’s adherence to the ethical codes of the larger community and his narrating the caution-

ary tale to his compatriots, Heart of Darkness vividly demonstrates the community roots of our social identities and values. Michael Zeitler

Isolation in Heart of Darkness

Early in his narration, Marlow tries to put into the minds of his listeners aboard the Nellie some comprehension of the significance Kurtz has come to hold for him. He needs them to understand “how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap.” “Do you see him? Do you see the story?” he asks his audience. His urgent questions are not simply rhetorical; this encounter, after all, was no small matter to Marlow but, rather, “the furthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience.” In the silence that follows, he answers his own question: “It is impossible. We live as we dream—alone.” Marlow’s anxieties about isolation as the true human condition haunt Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, even as he struggles to communicate this knowledge to others. To be sure, Marlow strikes us from the start as a solitary and isolated figure, one who, like Conrad himself, is always an outsider. In temperament and interests, he is not like other seamen whose “minds are of the stay-at-home order,” the novel’s unnamed narrator observes. Even on the Nellie, among friends, he sits “apart, indistinct, and silent in the pose of a meditating Buddha.” In his own narrative, it is clear that Marlow, although a thoughtful and sensitive observer, never appears at home among other people. In Brussels, he feels as though he is in a “whited sepulcher”; the Company employees uniformly annoy or irritate him, and he feels himself an “imposter.” His passage to Africa is spent in “isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact.” Avoiding his fellow travelers, he only connects with the sea: “The voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning.” On his arrival in the Congo, Marlow’s isolation deepens as he finds himself morally outraged at the laziness, greed, cruelty, and utter indifference to human suffering displayed by his European coworkers. Yet he also fails to make any

300â•…â•… Conrad, Joseph meaningful contact with native Africans, who are rarely granted human status in his narrative and variously referred to as “savages,” “niggers,” “cannibals,” and “rudimentary souls.” Rather than define himself through social interaction, Marlow attempts to create his identity individually, through technological expertise—his work. “I like what is in the work,” he declares, “the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no man can ever know.” Upriver, as the familiar dissolves into the darkness of the unknown, a well-used book on seamanship left in an abandoned trading post represents the highest values of civilization, “an honest concern for the right way of going to work.” As Marlow progresses upriver toward Kurtz and the Inner Station, he leaves the familiar signifiers of European civilization and instead finds himself isolated in another way, at the heart of darkness, “cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings.” Kurtz, the object of Marlow’s quest, is himself the novel’s supreme symbol of isolation and its destructive power. Cut off from all societal restraints, Kurtz is free to gratify, without limit, his lusts and passions. Ruling in “utter solitude without a policeman,” he is a law unto himself, with “nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased.” Yet Kurtz had been, in many ways, a representative of the best in European civilization: educated, intelligent, idealistic, artistic, and hardworking. His descent into savagery suggests to Marlow how thin the veneer of culture might be and the temptations to which he, himself, is subject in his isolation. In this sense, the quest for Kurtz is also a quest of self-discovery. Ironically, Marlow’s increased self-knowledge only furthers his sense of separation from others. On his return to Europe from Africa, the crowded streets of Brussels, the “sepulchral city,” are filled with people who “trespassed upon my thoughts” and “intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense.” In his alienation, Marlow feels much like a combat veteran reentering civilian life, isolated by his experiences of life on the edge: “[T] he bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend.”

Although he doubts that such knowledge can be verbally communicated, Marlow’s telling his story in Heart of Darkness is an act of faith. Whether it is a faith in the possibility of human connection or simply a faith in truth telling as a condition of individual meaning by one who detests lies is left ambiguous in the text. Marlow’s last narrative act is to tell how he chose not to tell the truth. In refusing to narrate Kurtz’s story to the “Intended,” he admits, “I could not tell her. It would have been too dark— too dark altogether.” Michael Zeitler

Race in Heart of Darkness

Written largely from his own personal experience and exposing the worst horrors of Europe’s colonial exploitation of Africa at the end of the 19th century, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is both a classic novel of liberal social protest and an exploration of the ambiguous and conflicting assumptions about race and culture through which Europeans viewed (and perhaps still view) the world. Because these assumptions simultaneously justify and condemn the colonial experience, the question of race is never far from the moral heart of The Heart of Darkness. Indeed, Marlow’s prefatory remarks on the Nellie, spoken to an audience whose professional lives join in the service of imperial Britain, reveal just such as ambivalence. On the one hand, he cynically admits that “the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” Yet, he continues, what Europe has claimed by force is redeemed “by an idea .╯.╯. an unselfish belief in the idea.” By implication, this redeeming idea—the justification for the theft, the something Europe has that Africa lacks—is not about complexion or noses but about some higher value, whether it is progress, science and technology, ambition, religion, or profit. What Marlow’s narrative revels about the European presence in the Congo is harsh and condemning; what it reveals about European racial assumptions is equally disturbing. Even before his arrival in the Congo, Marlow reacts with cynicism to the homilies justifying Europe’s colonial ventures. When his aunt men-

Lord Jimâ•…â•… 301 tions “weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,” he suggests that “the Company was run for profit.” Nevertheless, Marlow’s first reaction to the Congo goes beyond moral outrage: It is horrified shock. He describes the conditions under which native tribesmen labor to build rail lines and roads necessary for the exporting of ivory and rubber as an “Inferno” of disease and starvation, a place where the native people are considered criminals and enemies, where forced conscripts are whipped and chained together in iron neck collars to carry on the “work” of civilization: “The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.” Describing the operations of the El Dorado Trading Company, he tells his companions that “To tear the treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.” Ironically, the one character whose words claim the highest moral purpose is Kurtz, whose atrocities suggest a connection between the expressed desire for “humanizing, improving, instructing” and his ultimate response to racial difference: “Exterminate all the brutes.” Yet although Marlow sees the native population as victims of European greed, he scarcely sees them as human. In Darwinian terms, Africans are an evolutionary primitive, a “prehistoric man.” “Going up that river,” he informs his listeners, “was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world.” Native people are never humanized; they are always “black shapes crouched” between trees, “black shadows of disease and starvation,” “black figures,” “bundles of acute angles,” “phantoms,” “creatures,” one of whom is described as crawling, animal-like, “on all fours toward the river to drink.” They are referred to by Marlow variously throughout his narrative as “ugly,” “savages,” “niggers,” “cannibals,” “specimens,” and “rudimentary souls.” They have no names, are given no language beyond looks and guttural cries. They are mere background to the intertwined stories of Marlow and Kurtz, stereotyped as savages on the riverbank—“a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling .╯.╯. a black and incomprehensible frenzy” to whose behavior Europeans can

only react “as sane men would before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse.” Even the one African with whom Marlow significantly interacts, the ship’s fireman, is portrayed in ironic rather than human terms. As a detribalized native in European employment, the fireman is “an improved specimen” and “full of improved knowledge.” Yet his understanding of the ship’s boiler is not knowledge in the Western sense but described as a “thrall to strange witchcraft.” “To look at him,” Marlow says, “was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on hind legs.” But it is the fireman’s death that forces on Marlow a momentary awareness of our common humanity. Although they had worked side by side for months, the paternalistic relationship was never between equals; Marlow describes the fireman as an “instrument” and their “subtle bond” as a partnership. “I had to look after him,” he confesses. Marlow cannot see that an instrument is not a partner; to see a servant is not to acknowledge a fellow human. As the fireman dies, he looks at Marlow with an “intimate profundity .╯.╯. like a claim of a distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.” For this moment in the text, Africa looks at Europe and finds it wanting. Michael Zeitler

CONRAD, JOSEPHâ•… Lord Jimâ•… (1900)

Written at around the same time as one of Joseph Conrad’s other masterpieces, Heart of Darkness (1899), Lord Jim was first published in Blackwood’s Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900. In Lord Jim, the narrator, Marlow, tells the story of the life and death of the sailor Jim. Jim is first mate on the Patna, and in a moment of inexplicable bad judgment, abandons the ship, along with the captain and crew. Jim becomes the scapegoat of the group and is stripped of his naval credentials. The novel is divided into two parts, the first narrating Jim’s involvement in the Patna episode and the following humiliating trial, while the second part tells the epic story of Jim’s subsequent success in the exotic settlement Patusan and his tragic death. Lord Jim was generally greeted with admiration when it came out, but while critics have subsequently agreed that the first part of the novel con-

302â•…â•… Conrad, Joseph tains some of Conrad’s best writing, opinions have been divided on the novel’s second part. Some see it as a flawed attempt to round off the complex narrative threads laid out in the first part, while other critics view the two parts as intimately connected. Among the things that make this novel fascinating and intriguing is undoubtedly its mixture of heterogeneous styles—that is, its production of parallel structures, repetitions, and echoing figures, which together form a subtle image of modernity. Despite being one of Conrad’s most autobiographically revealing texts, the novel’s main plot is partly based on the true story of an Englishman (Augustine Podmore Williams) who, like Jim, abandoned a ship carrying pilgrims to Mecca. In Conrad’s fertile imagination, the story of a fate-haunted sailor becomes a potent allegory of heroism and failure in a world on the verge of a new century. Eli Sorensen

Fate in Lord Jim

Fate is a mystifying concept, a nonhuman force that conjures up a series of other concepts, such as chance and fatalism. The latter involves the idea that events, as they unfold in the present, are already decided, whatever one does. Though related to fatalism, the concept of fate is more uncertain. Ultimately, fate is an explanatory category, which retrospectively bestows a particular sequence of events with meaning. Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards, says the philosopher Kierkegaard, and this is one way of understanding the concept of fate. To believe in fate is to be actively involved in shaping one’s fate, which nonetheless remains uncertain until one’s death. If fate is beyond human control in reality, the literary text (as a text that places human lives and events within a given time frame) constitutes a particularly apt medium to portray the dynamics of fate. The eponymous character of Lord Jim is a man who actively attempts to shape his own fate, having identified himself as a hero of the adventure stories he eagerly reads. The sea is where Jim hopes to realize his romantic fate, but the reality turns out to be rather different. In Lord Jim, there is a disjunction between dreams and reality. On the Patna, Jim dreams of heroism, but when an unknown object

hits the Patna and a squall threatens on the horizon (which means almost certain death for everyone staying onboard), Jim pitifully loses control of the situation. As he later insists, he suddenly finds himself in a rescue boat, as if pushed by some demonic force; in reality, it appears that Jim simply fled like a coward, leaving 800 pilgrims to their merciless fate. Thereafter, Jim runs away every time someone reminds him about his humiliating past. Suspended in a void between his failed heroic ideal and the reality of his life, Jim is helplessly unable to take his fate into his own hands. Fascinated by Jim’s paradoxical character—his unwavering faithfulness to an ideal of heroism that blinds him from seeing reality (as well as a deeper understanding of himself )—the narrator, Marlow, pieces together the story of the fate-obsessed sailor’s story from chance meetings, dubious witnesses, and secondhand information, as well as from Jim himself. Marlow creates a complex narrative full of gaps, digressions, and suspensions, and it is ultimately through Marlow that the meaning and shape of Jim’s fate is constructed retrospectively (rather than simply “reconstructed”). While Marlow is the teller of Jim’s story, he also takes an active part in reinstating the disgraced sailor, which may restore Jim’s heroic fate. Through Marlow’s friend Stein, Jim is given a position in the settlement of Patusan, a place having little contact with the outside world (and the memory of the Patna episode). However, the resemblance between the words Patna and Patusan suggests that a fateful repetition of events awaits Jim in this new world; Patusan will also become a place where he fails to live up to his ideal fate. In Patusan, Jim—or “Lord Jim” as he is called by the locals who admire him for his courage and heroism—fulfills his dreams, and yet there is something unreal about this idyllic place. He may have escaped the fate given to him in reality, but the price is the irreconcilability between the exotic (and exoticized) Patusan and the harsh realities of the outside world. In Patusan, Jim may start another life only insofar as knowledge of his past life remains repressed. But with Gentleman Brown’s arrival, Jim is yet again confronted by his repressed past. The irony is that insofar as Jim wants to maintain his heroic and noble identity, he must let Brown go; to kill him (because Brown has guessed Jim’s troubled

Lord Jimâ•…â•… 303 past) would be yet another act of cowardice and self-delusion. And yet, letting Brown go is, of course, ironically the ultimate act of self-delusion in that he convinces himself Brown will leave peacefully. Fate will not allow this to pass unpunished, and Jim dies as a result. A novel about dreams, delusions and the prosaic reality of the modern world, Lord Jim offers an intriguing exploration of the snares and uncertainties of the concept of fate. Eli Park Sorensen

Heroism in Lord Jim

Romantic sea stories of heroism draw Lord Jim’s main character, Jim, toward the sea at an early age. However, during his first meeting with the forces of the sea, Jim is injured. Failing to show his courage and heroism on this occasion, he is given another chance on his next ship, the Patna, which is carrying 800 Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. During the journey, he watches the vast ocean while dreaming of heroism. Suddenly, the Patna is hit by something, and while checking the damage, Jim realizes that the Patna may sink at any minute. Watching the crew struggling to loosen a lifeboat, he is paralyzed. One of the crew members suddenly dies of a heart attack, and after some confusing moments, Jim finds himself in the lifeboat. In the dark night, the other crew members have confused the identities of Jim and the dead officer, and they mock Jim for having stayed on the Patna. The sudden death of the officer seems to create an empty slot which Jim has filled by jumping into the lifeboat, but the slot was not originally meant for him, and in a symbolic sense, Jim, or rather his heroic identity, dies or is suspended in that fateful jump. The Patna does not sink but is saved by another ship. The ship’s crew are guilty of appalling dereliction of duty, and they are summoned by the naval court on charges of cowardice. Only Jim, however, courageously stands up to the charges in court and accepts punishment (being stripped of his officer’s certificate). But his real punishment is the shame of being associated with cowardice. During the trial, Jim meets Captain Marlow, who becomes the narrator of his story. Marlow constructs an image of Jim as a decent young man except for some fundamental, existential flaw of

judgment. Jim dreams of becoming a hero but fails when he gets the chance; subsequently, he insists on acting as a fallen hero, attempting to atone in a tragic-heroic way for his previous errors. Jim acts heroically when he should not and does not when he should have. Besides Jim’s ambiguous identity as a hero, Lord Jim presents other kinds of heroic characters. There is the heroic figure of Captain Brierly, a highly respected and successful officer, who mysteriously commits suicide shortly after Jim has been tried, because of a shameful secret. Another figure is the French lieutenant who helps save the abandoned Patna, but only out of professional duty. Like the lieutenant, the two Malay steersmen similar do what Jim ought to have done—namely, stay onboard the damaged ship, but only because they were told to do so. Heroism in these cases seems to be diminished by a prosaic, contradictory factor. Even more subtly, there is the heroism of the narrator, Marlow, whose altruistic attempt to “rescue” Jim, like a wrecked ship, exposes the gulf between ideals and real life. Marlow eventually persuades the wealthy trader Stein to hire Jim as manager of a place called Patusan, where Jim becomes renowned for his courage and heroism. All is bliss in this unreal, romanticized world until the pirate Gentleman Brown arrives. Jim is aware of Brown’s evil character, but because the latter appeals to Jim’s heroic ideals, Jim lets him go. Before the pirate runs away, however, he kills Dain Waris, the son of a local chief and Jim’s best friend. Burdened with guilt, Jim courageously visits Doramin, Dain Waris’s father, who kills him. It seems as if Jim finally, at this stage, is ready to accept the heroic death for which he had been destined ever since that fateful jump from the Patna. And yet the novel’s ending, as told by Marlow years later, is shrouded in ambiguity: The narrator reflects on the meaning of Jim’s fate and whether he has redeemed himself through his tragic death, but he never quite reaches a conclusion. In the end, inconclusiveness gets the last word in Lord Jim’s heroic exploration of the abyss dividing words from actions, ideals from reality. Eli Sorensen

304â•…â•… Crane, Stephen

Justice in Lord Jim

The notion of “justice” implies a sense of balance in relation to which a perceived “disorder” or “imbalance” is measured. The critic Georg Lukács points out that art is a search for a kind of formal balance in a prosaic world, but he continues that an epic world, on the other hand, “is the perfect theodicy in which crime and punishment lie in the scales of the world justice as equal, mutually homogenous weights.” Lord Jim consists of two largely imbalanced narrative halves, one situated in a troubled, modern world, and one situated within an epic, romantic setting. In each narrative, Jim is the main character facing punishment, having been found guilty of an act of misjudgement (abandoning the Patna; letting Gentleman Brown slip away). During the first half of the novel, we hear the story of Jim’s misfortune aboard the Patna when he fatally misjudges the situation and leaves the ship after it has collided with an unknown object, abandoning 800 Moslem pilgrims to their tragic fate. When the subsequent inquiry disgraces him by declaring him guilty of cowardice, Marlow—the story’s narrator—becomes interested in the “justice” of the process, less because he disagrees with the verdict, and more ambiguously because he identifies Jim as “one of us.” The ambiguity of Marlow’s interest in Jim’s fate tells us something important about the way in which justice represents a problem in the novel. To Marlow, human judgments and laws are always haunted by chance, luck, and imperfection. At one point, he nihilistically muses: “Truth shall prevail.╯.╯.╯. Yes, when it gets a chance. There is a law, no doubt—and likewise a law regulates your luck in the throwing of dice. It is not Justice the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune—the ally of patient Time— that holds an even and scrupulous balance.” On one level, the naval court’s verdict may be fair and just, but it also fails to take into account a deeper aspect of Jim’s character that fascinates Marlow, because it reveals a perversity, a contradiction, hidden within the relationship between the concept of justice and individual judgment—a tension between ideal and action. Jim may be convicted by the court on the basis of his flawed judgment as a sailor aboard the Patna, but his integrity, his sense of justice, remains intact throughout the trial (while

the rest of the crew members, realizing they will not receive a fair hearing, run away). Marlow’s narrative, itself an amalgam of coincidental information, gossip, and rumors, can be seen as an attempt to construct an alternative to the public image of Jim’s character, not so much in order to undermine the court’s verdict but, rather, to explore the complex reasons underneath Jim’s flawed judgment and, hence, do justice to Jim’s character, as “one of us.” On the distant island Patusan, Jim restores his damaged heroic identity. But after his encounter with Gentleman Brown and ill-judged decision to let him go, Jim yet again finds himself facing a verdict, this time fatally when Doramin shoots him. While Jim accepted his verdict by the naval court for failing to live up to his responsibilities as a sailor (as well as his own heroic ideals), this time around he ironically accepts Doramin’s verdict as a consequence of his attempt to live up to his noble ideal as a hero: the price of acting heroically (by letting the crooked pirate go instead of killing him). Lord Jim explores the ambiguities surrounding the concept of “justice” in the modern world. Jim had failed to live up to his heroic ideals when he should have done (on the Patna), and he ends up being killed when he should have taken a more sensible course. Throughout the novel, we are given numerous examples of a disharmonic world, fundamentally out of balance, a world in which Jim’s ideal of heroism clashes and sinks when confronting the random forces of reality. “We want a belief in its necessity and its justice,” Marlow muses, “to make a worthy and conscious sacrifice of our lives. Without it the sacrifice is only forgetfulness, the way of offering is no better than the way to perdition.” Eli Park Sorensen

CRANE, STEPHENâ•… “The Open Boat”â•… (1898)

On the last day of 1896, in Jacksonville, Florida, Stephen Crane (1871–1900) boarded the Commodore for Cuba, part of a filibustering expedition to supply Cuban revolutionaries. Before the ship could get far underway, however, it ran aground, had trouble for two days, and was then sabotaged and began to sink.

“The Open Boat”â•…â•… 305 Crane found himself in a small dinghy with three other men; they were adrift for 30 hours. Crane wrote a newspaper account of this event, but more important, he crafted one of his finest short stories, chronicling the hope and despair of the captain, the cook, the oiler, and the correspondent (the fictional counterpart of Crane himself ). The men struggle valiantly to keep the small boat afloat until they can be rescued, and they vacillate between hope of survival and fear of death throughout the harrowing adventure. The captain is a calm, able leader. The cook provides hope when there is little, and the oiler and the correspondent take turns rowing. The story is told from the point of view of the correspondent, who is initially hopeful of being rescued but finally is so tired and hopeless that death seems almost welcome. The themes of nature’s indifference, the importance of community, and the mystery of survival permeate the story as the men valiantly try to reach shore. Nature is completely indifferent, even threatening in the form of turbulent waves and a predatory shark. Only a sense of community keeps the four men from total despair as they take care of each other, but their survival is threatened over and over. Joyce Smith

Community in “The Open Boat”

When the men in Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” find themselves together in a dinghy after their ship has sunk, they have little in common. One man is the ship’s captain; one the cook; one the oiler; and the last a correspondent, or newspaper reporter, who has managed to secure passage on the ship. In spite of not really knowing his new mates, the correspondent soon views them as his community, joining them in looking out for each other and working together. Later, he develops empathy for the larger society that encompasses even a dying soldier in Algiers who is remembered through a poem. This concern for the community of humankind eventually supersedes the correspondent’s earlier question of “why he was there.” The four men work as a team to try to get to safety. The injured captain gives directions and voices assurances that they will get to shore all right, the cook bails water out of the boat, and the oiler

and the correspondent each take an oar to row the craft. Together they use their individual strengths to keep the boat afloat and moving toward safety. The narrator states, “It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas.” In the cold January landscape, each of the men fell warmed by the companionship of the others, and the correspondent, who has learned to be cynical about men, thinks at the time that it is “the best experience of his life.” The four do not discuss their companionship, but after the correspondent discovers he still has four dry cigars among the eight in the top pocket of his coat, they seal the relationship with a smoking ritual. After someone manages to find three dry matches to light the cigars, each puffs contentedly, assures himself of an impending rescue, and takes a drink of water. When rescue starts to become doubtful, they begin to consider alternatives, and they exchange “addresses and admonitions.” The implication is that even if their little community is broken up by the sea, they will try to contact each other or each other’s families. As night falls, the community becomes more physically entwined. The oiler and the correspondent take turns rowing as they each try to manage some sleep. The feet of the men touch each other as three lie in the boat under the correspondent’s feet, and the cook has his arm around the oiler’s shoulders, evoking an image of “babes of the sea.” This literal touching of bodies is reassuring until the correspondent thinks himself the only one awake. It is then that he sees a shark ominously circling the small boat, and he wishes not to be alone in his fear. The lack of waking companionship seems to reach deeply into the correspondent’s psyche and to dredge up a long-forgotten verse in school. The poem tells of a “soldier of the Legion” dying in Algiers, far from his own country, with only a comrade at his side. The correspondent had long ago forgotten the poem and had never seriously considered the dying soldier’s plight. For the first time, he finds himself greatly concerned for that soldier, feeling sympathy for him. Later when the captain affirms that he too had seen the shark, the correspondent says he wishes he had known someone was awake to share the danger.

306â•…â•… Crane, Stephen The sense of community continues the next day when the captain realizes that they are not likely to be rescued and they must make a try for the shore. He maintains his role as leader, telling the men to jump when the boat swamps and to get clear of the boat so that it does not injure them. As they make their way inland, he continues to give calm directions, calling to the hefty cook to turn over on his back and use the oar to move his body forward and to the correspondent to come to the overturned boat to cling beside him. The shipwrecked men are soon joined by the greater community in the form of a man from shore who strips off his clothing to rescue them. As he begins to pull the correspondent ashore, the man points to the oiler lying face-down in the shallows and asks, “What’s that?” The correspondent tells him, “Go”—but the oiler has not survived. Instead of questioning why he has been placed at risk, the correspondent has learned empathy for his fellow humans through the danger that brought the four men together. Joyce Smith

Nature in “The Open Boat”

Shipwrecked off the Florida coast, the four men in Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” must fight against the natural forces of the sea in their attempt to get to shore. At the beginning of the story, nature is completely hostile to the captain, the cook, the oiler, and the correspondent. To these four men in a small dinghy, nature is limited to the treacherous sea and its inhabitants, such as the shark, the gulls, and the seaweed. These elements of nature all seem to conspire to keep the men from safety. After a long and harrowing experience, however, the correspondent comes to a broader view. He learns that nature can be serene, but that it is “flatly indifferent” to the struggles of individuals. Having abandoned their wrecked ship, the men in the small open boat have a limited view of nature: They do not even know the color of the sky because all their efforts are focused on rowing the dinghy, avoiding life-threatening waves, and keeping water out of the craft. The sea itself seems intent on their destruction. The ever-present waves, changing in color from slate gray to emerald green to black,

are characterized as “barbarously abrupt and tall,” “snarling,” “formidable,” and “sinister” as they bombard the boat and intimidate the men. Not only is the sea itself threatening, but so is the shark that swishes around the boat like a “blue flame,” a “monstrous knife,” or a “gigantic and keen projectile,” cutting through the waters while three of the men attempt to sleep. The correspondent feels completely alone as the other men seem to be sleeping; only later does he learn that the captain, too, was awake and aware of the shark. The correspondent states that he wishes he had known the captain was awake, indicating that company might have allayed some of his fear. Less threatening but perhaps more irritating are the Canton flannel gulls, who in their comfort present a stark contrast to the men. The gulls sit effortlessly on the sea, while the men have difficulty even changing positions in their small vessel. The only comfort for the men is the “sea-water couch in the bottom of the boat,” which is miserable in the January cold. Occasionally a gull nears the boat, at one point threatening to sit on the captain’s head and inspiring anger and resentment from the men. Not only the animals but the plants seem hostile to the shipwrecked men in their desolation, as the “islands” of seaweed seem to mock them in their enforced separation from the land. Crane uses active verbs for the elements of nature, as it exhibits more power than the men can. Eventually the men’s viewpoint includes the land, which begins to “loom” on the horizon and to “grow” in size as the boat gets nearer to the shore. The men see the yellow tone of the sky, but the land soon vanishes, and the correspondent wishes to strike back when he learns that “nature does not regard him as important.” When dawn arrives, the correspondent then notes the “carmine and gold .╯.╯. painted upon the waters,” and he comes to a new understanding that nature is indifferent—not cruel, but “flatly indifferent.” As the boat capsizes and the four men struggle to reach shore, even drowning seems to offer a comfortable alternative, and a wave throws the correspondent over the boat, not against it, in a “true miracle of the sea.” Instead of being smashed against the vessel, he is able to make his way safely to shore.

“The Open Boat”â•…â•… 307 Although the oiler, who seems the most physically fit of the crew, is unfortunately drowned, the other three men reach shore, with the land’s welcome “warm and generous.” The oiler is left to the “sinister hospitality of the grave.” The survivors, however, are left to be interpreters of “the great sea’s voice.” As an interpreter, the correspondent can now say more than he felt nature had said to him earlier when he was contemplating being drowned: “A high cold star on a winter’s night is the word he feels that she says to him.” The high, cold star had given him little comfort, and the oiler’s death had seemed to confirm nature’s hostility, but the miracle of the wave’s catapulting him over the upturned boat presents the other side of nature, the miraculous occurrence of his life having been spared. It is the story of “The Open Boat” that the correspondent can pass on to others who may see only one side of nature. Joyce Smith

Survival in “The Open Boat”

As Stephen Crane remarks, “Shipwrecks are apropos of nothing.” In other words, one does not prepare for such a happening because one never expects it. With their very survival dependent on their physical ability, the four men in the open boat are soon at their weakest. For two days before the wreck, none of them has either slept or eaten much; the cook is out of shape and overweight, and the captain has been injured. Only the correspondent and the oiler can row, and they have become increasingly weary. The waves work continuously against the small boat, whose seats are “not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho.” When it becomes necessary to trade places so that the correspondent can spell the oiler at rowing, the exchange itself is precarious: “[I]t is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to change seats in the dingey.” As soon as one wave is successfully traversed, another takes its place, and the closer the men get to land, the more severe the pounding of the breaking waves and the greater the possibility of the boat being swamped. The only hope for survival, then, seems to be rescue from shore, from someone who can send out a larger boat to get them. They work to keep hope alive as the cook remembers a “house of refuge just north of the Mosquito Inlet.” After they discuss the

fact that such houses do not have staff, only supplies, the cook decides that perhaps it is not a house of refuge. Ethics will not allow “any open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.” Their survival is an issue that does not allow negativity. The captain continues to reassure the men, calmly coaching them to save their strength and to keep their hope alive. When a lighthouse looms on the horizon, the men become quietly cheerful, but their hope dims when no signs of life are visible at the structure, and the lighthouse itself is described as “slim” and “little.” The loss of hope is punctuated by the mournful line “Funny they don’t see us,” spoken three different times as any lightheartedness completely vanishes. Physical pain and discomfort finally reaches a point where the correspondent welcomes the idea of death as a relief: “It is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great soft mattress.” But when death seems most inviting, they spot a man on the shore, and they improvise a flag to wave at him. The man then waves his coat in meaningless gyrations interpreted by the men to indicate that help is on its way. It soon becomes apparent, however, that he is just part of a group boarding an omnibus after a beach outing. When hope of survival is at its lowest point, the correspondent gives way to despair: “If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?” The shark encircling the boat heightens the threat to survival. Again the correspondent asks himself why he has been allowed to see sand and trees if he is to be drowned anyway. Later, when the men decide no help is coming, the correspondent intellectualizes the possibility of not surviving, and he simply wishes that death not be painful. He is so tired that he merely thinks it would be a shame to drown. He considers his own mortality and considers that “his own death [might] be the final phenomenon of nature.” The great mystery of survival then plays itself out as the men must abandon the boat and struggle to keep it from hitting them. The injured captain uses

308â•…â•… Crane, Stephen the overturned dinghy as a float, but the boat, caught by a strong wave, soon batters the correspondent. Despite tremendous odds, the captain, the cook, and the young correspondent make it safely to shore. But the oiler, the physically strongest of the crew, the one most capable of swimming the distance, is found in the shallows, face downward. Those allowed to live, according to the correspondent, can “then be interpreters.” The implication is that they can interpret the mystery of survival. But the text itself suggests that no such interpretation is possible since the one who had seemed most capable of survival is the one who has died. Joyce Smith

CRANE, STEPHENâ•… The Red Badge of Courageâ•… (1895)

In 1895, some three decades after the end of the American Civil War, Stephen Crane published The Red Badge of Courage, a novel set during that war, with the specific battle probably the Battle of Chancellorsville, although the locale is never named. The novel follows young Henry Fleming into the Union Army and through the battle. The youth must confront the reality of war as opposed to the romantic notions he has gained through reading heroic epics. Henry soon finds war anything but romantic. At first it is downright boring, with absolutely nothing happening and with the young recruits eager for action. When that action finally comes, Henry is afraid that he will be a coward. He encounters other young recruits, the tall soldier and the loud soldier, who also do not know what to expect. Jim Conklin, the tall soldier, seems self-assured and eager to fight, and the loud soldier gives Henry a packet of letters to be sent to his mother in the event of his death. All three are uncertain about the nature of battle. Eventually Henry does incur a wound, his own red badge of courage, but that badge is ironic, for he has not earned it for bravery. Major themes include Henry’s coming of age, his questions about heroism and cowardice, and the role of religion in the process. Although the novel’s action takes place in only a few days, Henry learns much about himself. The book ends, however, with

doubt that he has yet firmly grasped the concept of heroism. Joyce Smith

Coming of Age in The Red Badge of Courage

At the beginning of The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane refers to Henry Fleming most often as “the youth,” reminding us of his immaturity. Henry, a schoolboy, has signed up with the military because he has visions of greatness, and his motive is not to fight for an important cause but to achieve fame. Dressed in his newly issued uniform, he goes to his school to show it off, and he revels in the applause given the troops as they move from train station to train station. He is disappointed that his mother says nothing of “returning with his shield or on it,” the admonition given to warriors in the Greek heroic literature he has read in school. Henry has no idea of what real war is like, but he quickly learns that boredom is a large part of each day. Instead of the glory he had expected, he finds the tedium of waiting. He is eager to prove his manhood: “The youth had been taught that a man became another thing in a battle.” When his first battle ends, he is ecstatic that he has passed the test of masculine maturity: “So it was all over at last! The supreme trial had been passed.” What the stillimmature youth does not realize is that during this battle, he has simply reacted in the same way those around him have reacted; he has been, in effect, a part of a vast machine moving mechanically. In the next battle, the second, when those around him are running, he retreats as well. Henry’s only apparent gain in maturity comes in the third battle, after he has overheard an officer telling the general that his unit is expendable: “They fight like a lot ’a mule drivers. I can spare them best of any.” When the general replies that he does not believe many of the men will survive, the youth feels that “he had been made aged.” In spite of the fact that the leaders believe he will be killed, this time Henry goes forward bravely, eager to prove that he is not a coward. Both he and his friend Wilson exhibit their courage, Henry by carrying the flag and Wilson by charging ahead with him. At the end of the battle, their pride is evident: “And they were men.”

The Red Badge of Courageâ•…â•… 309 The two youths then face two responses to their actions in this battle, the first negative and the next positive. The general is overheard telling the lieutenant that the unit did not go far enough, quickly deflating the pride that both Henry and his friend Wilson are feeling. Not too much later, however, one of the other young soldiers reports hearing the general specifically single out the heroic actions of these two in carrying the war emblem and leading the group. Their pride again swells. The events of this book take place over a few days, and at the end Henry Fleming thinks himself a man. He replays all his feats in his head, dwelling on those that make him heroic and “viewing the gilded images of memory.” He reaches the conclusion that he has come of age: “He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.” Some critics argue that this youth truly grew into manhood during the few battles, and others argue that at the end of the book he is still immature, that he is only building his heroism in his mind and is still guided by the opinions of others. While Henry has experienced war and he bursts with pride at the reports of his courage under fire, he pushes aside the nagging thoughts of his earlier cowardice as he basks in his accomplishments. The question of Henry’s maturity hinges not so much on how he has performed in this battle as how he will perform in the next and the next and how he will treat his fellow soldiers who need his help. He had deemed Jim Conklin heroic from the beginning, and he wondered about Wilson, who gave him a letter to send home if he did not survive. What Henry does not understand is that all the young soldiers were probably as unsure as he himself had been. Although he now seems secure in his own idea of manhood, Henry may simply be using the same immature reasoning that he has displayed all along, since he still judges himself more by what is said of him by others than by what he thinks himself. A truly mature soldier, a real man, would probably be concerned with more important issues, such as the cause for which he is fighting and the well-being of his fellow soldiers. Joyce Smith

Heroism in The Red Badge of Courage

When Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage, he had never experienced war. Today, however, veterans of war testify to the truth of the novel’s psychological realism. The reason, perhaps, is the struggle any soldier must face when he is thrust into battle: He must confront his own fear. Henry Fleming, the protagonist, does just that, but his fear is complicated, a question of which he fears most: dying or being judged a coward. Henry’s ideas of war are based on reading classics about Greek and Roman battles or hearing stories from current veterans, sources that seem to have emphasized heroism. Even as he is leaving home, Henry is disappointed that his mother says “nothing whatever about returning with his shield or on it.” Her more practical advice of always doing what is right is soon forgotten, and the regimental members on the train to Washington are hailed as heroes: “The regiment was fed and caressed at station after station until the youth had believed that he must be a hero.” When the young recruits hear rumor after rumor of impending battle, Henry longs to prove himself even as he tries to quiet his own doubts about his courage: “He tried to mathematically prove to himself that he would not run from a battle.” Once in battle, he functions merely as a member of the group. In the crush of humanity, he sees that flight is not possible, and he congratulates himself on fighting bravely. He believes that he has passed a “supreme trial” and that any “difficulties of war had been vanquished.” This glamour of war and heroism is soon undercut, however, by the grisly sight in the woods of a corpse with unseeing eyes staring at him as ants run over the dead man’s head. Shortly afterward comes the dramatic death of the tall soldier, Jim Conklin, who had seemed the calmest, most heroic of the young recruits. Soon Henry despairs of ever being heroic himself: “He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero.” Then, as others are frantically retreating, Henry joins the flight. A wounded “tattered soldier” tries to help him, but Henry angrily refuses aid, afraid of being found out as a coward. As he flees from the wounded soldier

310â•…â•… Crane, Stephen and joins another stream of fleeing men, he is hit on the head by a fellow soldier’s rifle. He stumbles on, struggling to deal with his cowardice, and a “cheery soldier” leads him back to his regiment. There his friend, the “loud soldier,” ministers to him, thinking that Henry has been shot in battle and admiring his bloody wound as a badge of courage: “Yer a good un, Henry. Most’ a men would a’ been in th’ hospital long ago. A shot in th’ head ain’t foolin’ business.” Henry, of course, knows that he is not a hero, but he does not reveal how he actually received the wound. As he is lauded, he soon begins to feel capable of great valor, though his conscience is bothered by the memory of the tattered soldier who had helped both him and the dying tall soldier. Later, Henry and his friend overhear the general and another officer plan to send the 304th, their regiment, into a battle they feel is not winnable: “They fight like a lot ’a mule-drivers. I can spare them best of any.” Resenting this lack of confidence in their ability, the two young men fight valiantly, seizing the regimental flag from a dead soldier and keeping it high to spur the group on in battle. When they hear the colonel and the lieutenant complimenting them, the two youths are jubilant, forgetting all the previous pain and disillusionment. The book ends on that note, and the question of heroism is never solved. Was Henry a hero in the last battle? Was he a coward for running earlier? Is the position of hero dependent on what others think? Henry feels that “at last he was enabled to more closely comprehend himself and circumstance,” but he does not acknowledge that even greater threats may loom. The implication is that Henry has grown through these few days of battle; the irony is that he has been tried only briefly and that he still does not know what he will do in the next battle. He has fought valiantly to prove that he is not expendable, but he will undoubtedly face even more dangerous situations later. His thoughts of heroism are still punctuated by shameful feelings about deceiving the tattered man, one who did what is right, much as Henry’s mother had advised him to do. Joyce Smith

Religion in The Red Badge of Courage

Although there is no overt religion in The Red Badge of Courage, critics have debated Stephen Crane’s use of religious imagery in the novel. The son of a Methodist minister and a mother who worked vigorously for the church and the temperance movement, Crane rebelled against the rules and regulations that his parents advocated. He was, however, quite familiar with the Bible and he often used religious allusions in his writing. In this novel, he not only includes such references, he also incorporates other images that have been construed to refer to religion or religious rites. Soon after Henry has fled from his second battle, he tries to justify his action by equating it with the laws of nature. He looks to the landscape for assurance, and he finds a “fair field holding life.” That field represents for him the opposite of what he has witnessed in battle: “It was the religion of peace.” He tests his theory of nature by throwing a pine cone at a squirrel, which runs from such assault much as Henry and the other men had run from battle. Henry seems to feel a moral, perhaps religious, justification for his retreat from battle, supported by the laws of nature itself. Leaving this peaceful field, Henry soon encounters what appears to be a natural chapel, formed by arching boughs of the trees and having “a religious half light.” As he contemplates nature’s tranquility, his peace turns to horror on encountering a soldier’s corpse propped against a tree. The corpse’s staring eyes and open mouth are accompanied by ants moving along its upper lip. What began as religious peace, or the peace of nature, becomes just the opposite for the young recruit. The most controversial of the images that may or may not be religious is that of the sun in the last sentence of chapter 9: “The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.” Some critics have equated this wafer with a communion wafer, symbolically covered with the red of communion wine and representing the body and blood of Christ’s sacrifice. These same critics point out that Jim Conklin has sacrificed himself in battle, that his initials echo those of Jesus Christ, and that his moral stance has been superior to that of Henry, who has succumbed to cowardice

The Divine Comedyâ•…â•… 311 and, more important, has abandoned the “tattered man,” whom he should have helped. Although other images reinforce the possibility that Conklin is a Christ figure, with his movements called “ritelike,” Crane undercuts this possibility by declaring that “there was a resemblance in him to a devotee of a mad religion, blood-sucking, musclewrenching, bone-crushing.” Crane’s ironic stance indicates that perhaps Henry and the other troops have elevated this levelheaded but doomed young soldier to the status of a deity, but that he, too, has fallen in battle. Jim, the leader of his small group from the beginning of the story, is after all only mortal, his quiet authority stilled forever. During the course of the book, Henry goes from victory to defeat to victory again in his various battles, and at the end he seems to have overcome his fear of failure. He cannot, however, dispel the nagging of his conscience over his abandonment of the tattered soldier. Henry knows that he should have stayed with the badly wounded man, who would almost surely die without help. At that point, however, Henry was too concerned with himself, with the fear that he would reveal his cowardice to the tattered man, so he had hurried away from him. Henry now sees this abandonment as a “sin,” and at the end of the last chapter, he is still trying to deal with his action: “Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance.” The young recruit must come to terms with a moral precept that his mother had given him when he left for the war: to do what is right. What is right for Henry is to treat others as he would want to be treated, and he finally sees that cowardice is not nearly as important as brotherly love, an important component of most religions. Joyce Smith

DANTE ALIGHIERIâ•… The Divine Comedyâ•… (1308–1321)

The Divine Comedy is one of the best-known works in all of literary history. Penned by Dante Alighieri sometime between 1308 and his death in 1321, it is an intricately detailed and beautifully crafted 14,000-line epic poem considered the masterpiece of Italian literature. The poem is written in terza rima, or three-line stanzas with a particular rhym-

ing pattern, and is divided into three books of 33 cantos each. Written in the first person, it tells of Dante’s journey through the Christian afterlife: hell in Inferno, purgatory in Purgatorio, and heaven in Paradiso. The Divine Comedy is a complex allegory about life, religion, and love—both the love of a human woman and the love of God. The work is filled with historical, biblical, and literary references, and it is rife with symbolic language, leaving it open to a wide variety of interpretations. The poem both asks and answers questions about the justice of God and the nature of man by making parallels between the spiritual world and the natural world. Not much is known about Dante’s background and education, but one of the most important events of his life is documented in his work La Vita Nuova—his encounter with Beatrice Portinari. Dante writes that he first saw her when she was eight and he was nine, and then again when he was 18. She was deeply devoted to God, and her love of religion is actually what influenced Dante to become a Christian. Beatrice died suddenly at the young age of 24, leaving Dante heartbroken. She would become to him a mix of a human woman and a perfect fantasy, idolized within the pages of history forever through The Divine Comedy. In 1302, Dante was exiled from Florence for supporting an anti-papal regime. The Divine Comedy is a result of his sorrow for losing the only woman he cared about and for being forbidden to return to the city he loved, and his anger with the politics of the time. The poem, which has been translated numerous times, is a classic tale of passion, sacrifice, religious devotion, and spiritual discovery. It has been quoted and studied by students and scholars around the globe, and it will certainly continue to be examined and appreciated in the years to come. After six centuries, The Divine Comedy is still a brilliant work that represents the core of every human experience: the search for love and spiritual understanding. Sara Tomedi

Justice in The Divine Comedy

When Dante had his first glimpse of Beatrice, she was young and radiant. Kneeling in her garden, luminescent with sunshine and the adoration of prayer, she could easily have been mistaken for a

312â•…â•… Dante Alighieri saint. Her beauty and devotion to God brought Dante to religion and developed in him an almost unshakable faith. However, human life is full of both incredible joys and deep sorrows. Beatrice died suddenly, still in mid-bloom, taken from the world and from Dante just as she was entering adulthood. Dante, like every other human being who has experienced loss, must have questioned the justice of God. It is the question of why bad things happen to good people that allows most human beings to wonder about the nature of God. Clearly, there is no ultimate justice on earth; the only hope of mere humans is the possibility of finding recompense in the afterlife. Nevertheless, while the average person must rely on faith, Dante is fortunate enough to experience the truth firsthand on his arduous journey to discover God. He does not have to travel far. The question of God’s justice is answered almost immediately in Inferno, with Dante’s descent into hell. Though it is more fully expanded in the rest of The Divine Comedy, the idea of justice is most prevalent in Inferno. Not only is Dante’s God a just God, but the afterlife is a finite and perfectly balanced system of punishments and rewards. Before he enters hell, Dante pauses to read the inscription carved into the gate which bars all of the immoral souls in hell from escaping: “SACRED JUSTICE MOVED MY ARCHITECT. / I WAS RAISED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE, / PRIMORDIAL LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT” (3.4–6). Truly the “sacred justice” of God is apparent in every aspect of the punishments in hell. The sinners who were gluttons in life, devouring anything they could without regard to themselves or others, are left to wallow waist-deep in garbage and putrid “slush,” probably their own feces (6.38). In the fifth Circle of Hell, the wrathful—who always violently expressed their anger in life—beat, harass, and attempt to rip each other apart in hell, while nearby, the sullen, who stifled their anger in life, sink miserably and silently into a swamp (7.1–30). Though Inferno is the most vivid representation of God’s justice because Dante goes into great detail about horrific punishments, other instances of God’s justice are found throughout The Divine Comedy. The same sins from hell return again in purgatory

because Dante’s God is fair enough to recognize that, though many men may be convicted of the same crime, some do it more often or more intensely than others. For example, the Hoarders and Wasters in hell are forced to move great boulders back and forth on the edge of a precipice while spewing curses at each other. However, in Purgatorio, the hoarders and wasters are bound hand and foot and forced to be stationary, face down in the dirt. Dante finds that all of the sinners in hell and in purgatory are well aware of their sins and their fitting punishments, so he asks one of the damned why he is prostrate, to which he replies: “We would not raise our eyes to the shining spheres / but kept them turned to mundane things: so Justice / bends them to earth here in this place of tears” (19.121–123). Because they spent their lives focused on material objects that crumble to dust, instead of God, they are forced to spend their afterlives focused on dust. It is within Purgatorio that Dante, having thus far seen only the punishments of God, begins to see the just rewards of heaven. In canto 30, he is reunited with his love, Beatrice, who becomes his guide for his journey through heaven just as she was his guide to a religious life on earth. Together with Beatrice, Dante confesses his sins and is washed clean in the river Lethe in order to continue, sinless, to Heaven. In Paradiso, Dante encounters levels of believers and worshippers of God just as he met levels of sinners in hell. From members of the church who kept their vows, to saints, to angels, to the Virgin Mary herself, every aspect of heaven is addressed according to God’s divine justice. Dante eventually comes to God himself, although the revelation disappears from his memory when he returns to humanity. Fortunately, the memory of Beatrice and the power and justice of the Almighty remain with him and cause him to begin writing the experiences that will become The Divine Comedy. It is through the fairness of God that Dante is permitted to return to earth and write a work that will possibly save others from future sins and punishments. Sara Tomedi

Love in The Divine Comedy

In The Divine Comedy, love is not just a theme, it is the basis for the entire work. For Dante, God and

The Divine Comedyâ•…â•… 313 love are inseparable, and every human action can be categorized as performed either out of love or out of a lack of love: “Thus you may understand that love alone / is the true seed of every merit in you, / and all acts for which you must atone” (Purgatorio 17.103–105). Dante’s journey through the afterlife begins in hell with his guide, the poet Virgil. Together, they travel from level to level until they ultimately reach the core of hell, where Satan resides. The sinners in hell have been completely deprived of God, so there is little mention of love there. One of the only instances is in canto 5, when Dante comes to the Carnal, those who have followed their animal instincts instead of reason and religion. There he meets Paolo and Francesca Maletesta, and he swoons with compassion when he hears their story. In 1275, Francesca came to Rimini to make a political marriage with Giovanni Malatesta, but she fell in love with her new brother-in-law, Paolo, instead. When Giovanni caught them both in the act, he killed them. Their situation raises questions about the lines between love and sin because, unfortunately, their punishment is to be bound together forever in hell. The idea may sound romantic, but it is not. Rather, seeing each other is a constant reminder of their sin and an added punishment or, as Francesca says, “The double grief of a lost bliss / is to recall that happy hour in pain” (Inferno 5.118–120). As Dante rises through hell into purgatory, heading toward the earthly paradise, he finds that purgatory is composed of different levels of infractions involving love. There is the inappropriate love that leads to self-love, covetousness, or anger with the proud, the envious, and the wrathful. Then there are the slothful, who are guilty of loving too little, followed by the immoderate love of the avaricious and the gluttons, who loved objects such as money and food more than God. The group at the very top of purgatory, closest to heaven, are the lustful. Although their sin is an immoderate love, it is an excessive love of other humans and is therefore closest to what is asked of us by God, because “the soul, being created prone to Love, / is drawn at once to all that pleases it, / as soon as pleasure summons it to move” (Purgatorio 18.19–21).

When Dante reaches the banks of the river Lethe, he comes to the end of his time with Virgil, who is bound to hell and cannot continue to paradise. The most important symbol of divine love in the entire Comedy, Beatrice, enters at this moment. For Dante, second only to his love of God is his love of Beatrice, the girl with whom he was smitten before she died at a young age. Through Beatrice’s “power and excellence alone / [Dante] recognized the goodness and grace” of God (Paradiso 31.82–83). Beatrice descended into hell for her concern and love of Dante in the same way that Jesus did for Christians, and through the character of Beatrice, Dante shows that the love between humans is directly proportional to the love between humans and God. Beatrice is also often compared to the church because, at times, she loves Dante in the way that a mother loves a child with a “mother’s sternness,” and the church is considered the mother of all Christians, guiding them to God (Purgatorio 30.80). Dante enters paradise with the aid of Beatrice and realizes that heaven itself, because it houses God, is “the infinite and inexpressible Grace” which “gives itself to Love / as a sunbeam gives itself to a bright surface” (Purgatorio 15.67–69). Beatrice explains to him that, since he is cleansed and has seen God, “should some other thing seduce [his] love,” it is not because Dante desires to sin, but because he sees the light of God in other things and is drawn to them (Paradiso 5.10). He is no longer capable of experiencing any corrupt forms of love. Finally, Dante meets the “hosts”—the angels and the blessed beings—and experiences the “Light of the intellect, which is love unending” when he confronts the ultimate love of God (Paradiso 30.40). Sara Tomedi

Nature in The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy is a work absolutely overflowing with symbols and motifs, but in the midst of this attentively detailed poem, one theme is far more prevalent than the others—Dante’s use of nature. Nature is the setting of the poem itself, which becomes more alive and beautiful as Dante moves from the harsh rocks and boulders of hell to the lush greenery of heaven. In the poem, nature symbolizes human life and the way in which people

314â•…â•… Davies, Robertson can advance their connection with God through religious growth. Dante also constantly uses nature in a descriptive way to show the physical splendor of those who are close to God on the spiritual level. In The Inferno, Dante begins his discovery of the afterlife by saying, “Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray / from the straight road and woke to find myself / alone in a dark wood” (1.1–3). His remark is the first use of nature as a symbol for the soul of humanity. The “dark wood” is a place away from the love of God. Dante’s soul is lost in the trap of worldly desires, and so, in order to find his way out of the woods and into the light, he must begin his quest. Just as there are good and bad people, nature, too, represents both aspects. Though the woods represent the world and its evils, the sun is almost always representative of God, holiness, and divine revelation. The setting of The Divine Comedy grows steadily more stunning as Dante rises toward heaven, as can be seen by following one canto through each of the three books. For example, in canto 3 of Inferno, Dante is in the vestibule of hell with the opportunists. It is a place filled with screams, chaos, filthy air, and “a swarm of wasps and hornets” (3.62). In canto 3 of Purgatorio Dante finds himself at the base of what seems to be an ever-rising cliff. As the “red blaze” of sun begins to rise behind him, the land is not as treacherous as hell, but it has an ominous feeling about it (3.16). Finally, canto 3 of the Paradiso finds Dante on the shiny and incredibly beautiful moon “as dense and smoothly polished as a diamond” (2.32). Nature is also a symbol for God himself, and sinning against God is equivalent to sinning against nature. In canto 11 of Inferno, Dante meets the circle of the heretics, and Virgil proves that almost every sin can be linked back to a sin against nature, even usury: “Near the beginning of Genesis, you will see / that in the will of Providence, man was meant / to labor and to prosper. But usurers, / by seeking their increase in other ways, / scorn Nature in herself and her followers” (11.107–111). It is the job of the descendants of Adam to replenish the earth and to be imitations of God. People who find pleasure in reaping money alone, and not soil, are sinning by producing nothing. They are not produc-

ing art, which is the child of nature, nor are they aiding nature, which is the child of God because, as Virgil states, “All of Nature,—her laws, her fruits, her seasons,—/ springs from the Ultimate Intellect and Its Art” (11.99–100). Man was born to take care of nature, and if he does not do that to some extent, like “any seed / out of its proper climate .╯.╯. he will not flourish” (Paradiso 8.139–141). In fact, man is meant to “heed the plan / of nature’s firm foundation” (Paradiso, 8.142–143). This does not mean that every man is meant to be a farmer by occupation, but that every man’s soul has a calling as given to him by God, and he should follow it in order to be content. Just as he uses them to represent God, Dante uses nature metaphors to render images of the magnificent members of heaven. For example, the Angelic Host appear to him “like living flame their faces seemed to glow. / Their wings were gold.╯.╯.╯. more dazzling white than any earthly snow” (Paradiso 31.13–15). This idea is best exemplified in Beatrice, whom Dante actually describes as being something even more beautiful than nature: “If nature or art ever contrived a lure / to catch the eye and thus possess the mind .╯.╯. all charms united could not move a pace / toward the divine delight with which I glowed / when I looked once more on her smiling face” (Purgatorio, 27.91–96). Dante uses nature imagery almost exclusively in heaven, proving that he believed there is no other aspect of life on earth that can better represent the spiritual life than nature. Sara Tomedi

DAVIES, ROBERTSONâ•… Fifth Businessâ•… (1970)

Fifth Business is a 1970 novel by the Canadian novelist Robertson Davies (1913–95) and the first installment of the Deptford trilogy, which traces the lives of three characters from the small town of Deptford, Ontario, who are bound to each other inextricably by a tragic event in their childhood. “Fifth business” is a term for an opera character who is essential to the plot and yet is neither hero nor villain. It applies to Dunstan Ramsay, the narrator, who dedicates his life to caring for the victims of the pivotal snowball incident that opens the book,

Fifth Businessâ•…â•… 315 even though he was the intended victim, not the one who threw the snowball. Ramsay becomes a schoolteacher and also an expert on hagiology (the study of saints), publishing 10 books in this area. It is through his work on saints and his friendship with a female con artist that he finally comes to an understanding of his own nature. The novel’s form is a letter, written by Ramsay after he retires, that serves as his autobiography. In it, he tells his own story and those of Mary Dempster, the woman who was injured by the snowball; her son, to whom she gave premature birth because of the injury; and Percy Staunton, the town bully who threw the snowball and becomes one of the most wealthy and influential men in Canada. Fifth Business is 40th on the American Modern Library list of the 20th century’s 100 best novels. It is Davies’s best-known novel. Susan R. Bowers

Guilt in Fifth Business

Guilt shapes the entire life of Dunstan Ramsay. He is plagued by it from the moment the snowball aimed at him by the town bully instead hits the pregnant Mary Dempster, precipitating the premature birth of her son and her descent into mental illness. Dunstan blames himself because he had dodged in front of Mrs. Dempster and her husband to escape being hit himself. No one else knows who threw the snowball, which had a rock, which Dunstan uses as a paperweight throughout his life, inside. The bully, Percy Staunton, refuses to acknowledge culpability and threatens Dunstan with dire consequences if he tells. Thus, Dunstan at age 10 is left alone with his guilt to conjure horrific images of being tortured in hell as one of the damned. He believes so fervently that some dreadful fate will overtake him if his role in the incident should become known that the truth does not surface for 50 years. Dunstan’s efforts to expiate his guilt by helping the Dempsters invite mockery from his peers and isolate him from his own world. When he teaches magic to Paul, the Dempster child, Paul’s Baptist minister father banishes him from their home. But when Mrs. Dempster’s habit of wandering culminates in her disappearance, Dunstan is with the

search party who find her in the town gravel pit, having sex with a hobo because, she says, “He was very civil” and “wanted it so badly.” Her act so horrifies the townsfolk that Dunstan’s mother forbids him from ever seeing Mrs. Dempster. The Reverend Dempster ties his wife with a rope to keep her from wandering away. Dunstan secretly visits, however, and comes to see their relationship as “the tap root that fed [his] life.” Dunstan’s obsession with Mrs. Dempster never ceases: he ultimately takes over her care (her husband has long since abandoned her) and visits her every week after he becomes a teacher in a private boys’ school. He also maintains a relationship with Percy “Boy” Staunton, who makes a fortune in sugar and rises to prominence in Canadian politics. But Dunstan’s guilt is refreshed periodically. He feels new guilt, for instance, when Paul runs away at an early age to join a traveling circus as a magician since Dunstan had initiated Paul’s fascination with magic. Fifty years later, he convinces himself that something he has told Mrs. Dempster leads to her death. Even after she is dead, the guilt continues: He begs God’s forgiveness because “I had not been loving enough, or wise enough, or generous enough in my dealings with her.” Guilt causes Dunstan to live a life on the sidelines, although he teaches for 45 years and writes 10 books. His isolation is occasioned partly by the secrecy that guilt fosters, as well as by the time and energy required to take care of Mrs. Dempster. The psychological damage is so significant that he cannot engage fully in relationships until forced as a 60-year-old man to confess his guilty secret. Thus, Fifth Business raises important questions about Dunstan’s guilt as well as guilt in general. Most important is the question of whether Dunstan should have felt guilt at all. After all, it is instinctual to get out of the way of danger; moreover, a 10-yearold boy could not have foreseen that he would put someone else in harm’s way. Finally, a simple snowball is not usually deadly; Dunstan could not have known that Percy had packed the snow around a piece of granite. Another question is whether the town’s repressive atmosphere concerning sexual matters, including childbirth, combined with young

316â•…â•… Davies, Robertson Dunstan’s natural curiosity about sex, contributed to his guilt. Other issues stem from how the other parties reacted. Percy Staunton never acknowledges guilt, although we learn that he feels a spiritual emptiness in later life, despite his financial, political, and personal success. Late in the novel, Paul, known in later life as the famous magician Magnus Eisengrim, tells Dunstan that his father had tried to make him feel guilty because it had been his birth that had robbed his mother of her sanity. But, he says, “I was too young for the kind of guilt my father wanted me to feel; he had an extraordinary belief in guilt as an educative force.” Paul’s statement so near the end of Fifth Business forces us to question seriously whether guilt is indeed an educative force. It obviously did not teach Dunstan anything about himself or others but functioned instead as an obstacle to his living a full life. In fact, as we have seen, Dunstan’s guilt probably was unnecessary in the first place. Susan Bowers

Responsibility in Fifth Business

A snowball encasing granite, a pregnant woman, a 10-year-old boy, and a village dedicated to repressing emotion make up the recipe for personal disaster in Fifth Business. The snowball is thrown by the town bully, Percy Staunton, intended for his rival, Dunstan Ramsay. But when Dunstan dodges it, the pregnant Mary Dempster is struck on the head, causing permanent brain damage and the premature birth of her son. Although it takes him 50 years to reveal who threw the snowball, Dunstan assumes moral responsibility for Mrs. Dempster’s injury and all that ensues from it, including the woman’s mental illness and amoral behavior, the family’s eventual isolation, her son’s running away at an early age, her husband’s desertion, and her eventual need for institutionalization. Dunstan makes Mrs. Dempster and her child the focus of his life. He does chores in the Dempster home, teaches the child magic tricks, befriends Mrs. Dempster, and as an adult becomes her guardian after her husband deserts her and her sister dies. His every major decision—to go to war, to become a teacher, to research and write 10 books about

saints—grows out of his deep sense of responsibility for her. However, Robertson Davies’s novel asks whether it is always appropriate to assume moral responsibility and concludes that its exercise even can become pathological. Dunstan’s acceptance of responsibility for Mrs. Dempster’s injury can be traced to four causes: the power structure of the village, the child’s perception of damnation, his culture’s repressive attitude toward sex, and Dunstan’s understanding that the adults in his life cannot be trusted in this “strange world that showed little of itself on the surface.” First, even at the age of 10, Dunstan correctly perceives that because Percy Staunton belongs to the richest family in the village, it would be almost impossible to accuse him of throwing the snowball without dire consequences for Dunstan. (Ironically, Percy will go on to become one of the richest and most powerful men in the country, and he and Dunstan will perpetuate their dominant-subordinate relationship for life). Second, Dunstan’s childish understanding of the punishments of sin, which he gleans from his church and from his father’s copy of Dante’s Inferno, is so charged with lurid details of eternal damnation that he terrifies himself with the thought that he is one of the damned because if he had not dodged the snowball, Mrs. Dempster would not have been injured. Third, because the snowball incident occurs just as Dunstan is entering puberty in a culture in which the attitude toward sex is “enough to make a hell of adolescence,” Dunstan reasons that because it led to a premature birth, he is “directly responsible for a grossly sexual act—the birth of a child.” Finally, Dunstan realizes that adults cannot be trusted enough to be told the truth about the incident because such a revelation could unleash the powerful chaos of their repressed emotions. The telling episode for him involves his mother, who cries hysterically while she punishes him fiercely for a minor transgression. The act of assuming genuine moral responsibility requires that the individual be capable of reflecting on a situation and deciding how to act. To be morally responsible for something is to be worthy of praise or blame. Dunstan is not old enough to

Fifth Businessâ•…â•… 317 reflect rationally on this incident; he cannot dismiss the irrational fears, nor can he know how to cope with the power differential in the village. As we see later in the novel, his taking on this responsibility is viewed not as praiseworthy but as pathological. Not only can Dunstan not differentiate between the culpability of the agent—the person who threw the snowball—and that of himself as intended victim, who dodged it out of an instinct for his own personal safety, but he also does not consider the fact that he could not have known of the rock in its center. After all, an ordinary snowball most probably would not have injured anyone. Dunstan’s lonely and ill-advised assumption of the entire burden of responsibility at such a young age leads to a pattern of taking on other people’s burdens for the rest of his life and to a life of pathetic isolation until a female con artist to whom he tells his life story challenges his early decision. Percy eventually pays for his act, but Davies’s novel makes it clear that Mrs. Dempster and Dunstan are not simply the bully’s victims but victims of a culture that stood more for self-righteousness than for virtue. Susan R. Bowers

Spirituality in Fifth Business

For Dunstan Ramsay, the protagonist of Fifth Business, spirituality must wage war with religion, a battle that consumes most of his life, from the moment when, as a 10-year-old, he assumes responsibility for a woman’s debilitating head injury from a snowball intended for him until an unlikely teacher helps him to see the truth of who he is. For the residents of Dunstan’s tiny rural Canadian village, religion is marked more by rules, prohibitions, and the fear of damnation than by anything else. As Dunstan observes,”I was a Presbyterian child, and I knew a good deal about damnation.” In particular, Christian grace is in short supply, as Dunstan discovers when Mary Dempster, the woman he befriends because he feels responsible for her injury, violates the town’s rigid moral codes. Her husband, the local Baptist minister, ties her to a chair to keep her indoors, and the townspeople, including Dunstan’s mother, shun her.

Dunstan’s mother forbids him from visiting Mary Dempster, but even as a child, he understands that to comply with her order “would be the end of anything that was good in me.” The truth is that although Dunstan becomes Mary’s self-appointed guardian out of a mistaken sense of culpability, the kindnesses he extends to her initiate a lifelong practice of the compassion that is at the heart of genuine spirituality. Nor is his kindness unrewarded: He discovers early on that, unlike his supposed friendship with Percy Staunton (who had thrown the calamitous snowball), a genuine friendship yields mutual benefit. Even though his befriending of the Dempster family isolates him from his peers and alienates him from his family, Dunstan is able to find comfort in his relationship with Mary, whom he “regarded .╯.╯. as my greatest friend, and the secret league between us as the tap-root that fed my life.” Not unlike the Bible’s Mary Magdalene, the disgraced Mary Dempster displays a powerful, clarifying spirituality evident to Dunstan even as a young boy. He comes to see that even though she is imprisoned in her house and despised by the village, she feels neither disgraced nor humiliated, but lives “in a world of trust that had nothing of the stricken, lifeless, unreal quality of religion about it.” He senses that she “lived by a light that arose from within.” Unlike her husband—of whom Dunstan realizes many years later, “He was a parson, of course, but at root he was a frightened farmer lad”—Mary has no fear. Dunstan even accords her supernatural powers. He believes that Mrs. Dempster brings his brother back from death, and when he is wounded in World War I, he sees her face in a statue of the Virgin. Dunstan’s relationship with Mary Dempster— which continues until her death when he himself is in late middle age—affords him a deep appreciation of beauty and courage of singularity, which he learns from her example. At the very beginning of the novel, we learn that his village lacked “an aesthetic sense.” Thus, Mary’s sense of wonder at the natural world and delight in just being alive contribute to Dunstan’s emerging spirituality. However, it is her ability to be comfortable in herself even while estranged from others—what Dunstan calls her “breadth of outlook and a clarity of vision that were strange and wonderful”—that may be her greatest

318â•…â•… Davis, Rebecca Harding spiritual gift to him. This dedication to her own path of truth is what inspires Dunstan’s lifelong scholarly passion for the lives of saints (about whom he writes 10 books). His saints, like Mary Dempster, are singular figures who fearlessly walk their own paths. In the end, it should not be surprising that another iconoclastic character—a female con artist—should be the one who rescues Dunstan from his lifelong guilt, thus helping him to forgive himself. In this novel, it is the outsiders who are able to defy the inhibitions and sterile religious practices of the crowd and embrace the visionary lessons of Christian grace. Fifth Business is a complex text. On the one hand, the fact that 50 years of Dunstan’s life are warped by a childish and false assumption of responsibility for another’s act is tragic. But on the other hand, what he learns from Mary Dempster gives him access to a world of spirituality forbidden to the blind and intolerant religious examples of his youth. Susan R. Bowers

DAVIS, REBECCA HARDINGâ•… Life in the Iron Millsâ•… (1861)

Life in the Iron Mills is Rebecca Harding Davis’s best-known work. Although Davis (1831–1910) worked as a writer for many years, none of her other work is recognized to have the power and strength of this early novella. The story depicts the struggles of Hugh and his cousin Deborah, workers in the local iron mill. A talented sculptor, Hugh is led to believe that his talent will allow him to transcend his circumstances, but his hopes are dashed when he steals some money from a wealthy man and is sent to prison. At the time that Davis wrote the story, slavery and the incipient Civil War were the center of most people’s attention, as opposed to the difficulties faced by workers in the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. The novella’s publication in the Atlantic Monthly provided Davis (although she was still Rebecca Harding at this point) an entrée into the literary society of Boston. After its publication, she was recognized as an important new writer. However, her later work often did not fulfill these expectations.

Now, almost 100 years after her death in 1910 at the age of 79, Davis’s importance is being recognized again. Although she may never be known as a purely literary writer, her work draws attention not only to the political issues of her time—slavery, the plight of the working class—but also, as the literary scholar Janice Lasseter points out, to the question of the female artist and the way in which she must resolve any conflict she might encounter between the expectations placed upon her as a wife and mother and those she might try to fulfill professionally. Davis herself did not always resolve those conflicts as well as she might have; regardless, the power of this one story is a testament to the power of literature to raise awareness of important issues, whether they happen to be foremost in the news or not. Helen Lynne Schicketanz

Ethics in Life in the Iron Mills

The question of ethics seems to be a relative one in Rebecca Harding Davis’s novella Life in the Iron Mills. Any expectation of ethical behavior seems ultimately to be governed by economics. This is a story in which the poor are expected to behave ethically, regardless of the cost to themselves, while the wealthy are encouraged to act with impunity, taking only their own interests into account. Set against the backdrop of an unnamed industrial town in the early years of the Industrial Revolution, the story depicts a conflict between the poor and deprived mill workers and members of the wealthy class who control their lives not only financially but, indirectly, in nearly all other ways. One night, wealthy men, including the mill owner, visit the mill and watch the work being done. During the course of the evening, the men become aware of the artistic talent manifested by Hugh Wolfe, who works as a puddler (one who purifies pig iron to produce wrought iron). Although they recognize both his talent and his desire to better himself, they mock him, choosing instead to engage in philosophical discussions about who should take responsibility for helping the workers improve their lot. They encourage Hugh—almost willfully, it seems—to believe that, in spite of the debilitating economic and social circumstances in which he is forced to live, there might be a realistic possibility

Life in the Iron Millsâ•…â•… 319 of overcoming his situation. Dr. May tells Hugh, “A man may make himself anything he chooses. God has given you stronger power than many men—me, for instance.” Yet when Hugh asks him to help him achieve exactly this, he refuses, saying that he does not have the money. “Money?” Hugh asks. “That is it? Money?” Deborah, Hugh’s cousin, takes Dr. May at his word and robs Mr. Mitchell, one of the other visitors. She does not entirely understand what Hugh wants, but she is willing to do anything to help him attain his desires, so she steals the money. Although she understands that what she has done is wrong, her lack of ethics does not bother her. What devastates her, however, is the realization that Hugh has decided to kill himself in prison. Hugh’s ethical deliberations, on the other hand, are more complex. His immediate reaction upon receiving the money is to go look for Mitchell, planning to return the money. However, during the course of the night, he reflects again on his situation. Although he is honest, he is tempted by what he believes the money can do for him—to give him the ability to change his life; to change the lives around him; and, most important, to fundamentally change the way he perceives his own worth. He realizes the world’s willingness to label him a thief is negligible in comparison to what he believes the money can achieve. Still, however, he is not entirely convinced that he truly has a right to the money, so he enters a church hoping to find justification for his actions. He perceives that the church as an institution, in spite of its preaching of empathy toward the poor and the meek, treats the sins of people like himself as abstractions. He is the only person who can change his life, even though doing so goes against all the ethical behavior he knows. Consequently, his resolve to keep the money becomes even stronger. The guilt he feels, however, is still not totally assuaged. Later, after he has been imprisoned, he reflects again: “[W]as there right or wrong for such as he? What was right? And who had ever taught him?” To act ethically in the circumstances in which he finds himself seems impossible. Those in power have the ability to act ethically but refuse to do so. In spite of his professed belief in

reform, Mitchell reports the theft to the police, thus ensuring Hugh’s imprisonment. Doctor May, on reading of Hugh’s arrest in the paper, is appalled at what he perceives as Hugh’s ingratitude, an ingratitude that he believes comes from the type of person he is, rather than the fact that he has been cruelly duped with the prospect of a better life. His refusal to understand Hugh allows him to placidly continue to uphold a system whose injustice ensures Hugh’s death. Like so many things in Life in the Iron Mills, ethical behavior seems to be governed solely by social position rather than inherent honesty. Helen Lynne Schicketanz

Guilt in Life in the Iron Mills

One of the ironies in Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills is that everyone who should feel guilty about Hugh’s situation does not. In the story, which is set in an unnamed industrial town at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Deborah’s theft of Mitchell’s money raises questions for all involved. There seems to be no doubt in Deborah’s mind that what she has done is wrong. She says, “I shall be burnt in hell if anyone knows I took it,” but the question of justice clearly is more important to Deborah than the question of honesty. Consequently, she does not seem to feel guilty for what she has done, but merely worried about what might happen should she be caught. Her cousin Hugh works as a puddler (one who purifies molten pig iron to produce wrought iron) in the iron mill and is a very talented sculptor. The mill has, just this night, been visited not only by its owner but by wealthy members of the outside community and the press who seem to have an interest in its success. After nearly running into a piece of Hugh’s sculpture, the men comment on his talent but refuse to help him, even though they clearly have the resources to do so. Even worse, they acknowledge that he has the right to better himself, but rather than help him act on that right, they mock his yearning. Mr. Mitchell comments, “Let them [mill workers] have a clear idea of the rights of the soul, and I’ll venture next week they’ll strike for higher wages. That’ll be the end of it.” Significantly, although Hugh initially does feel guilty about keeping the money that Deborah has

320â•…â•… Davis, Rebecca Harding stolen, for him, too, the question of justice—or, as he might phrase it, his right to better himself, to change the way he perceives himself in the world— eventually asserts itself. He decides that he is also entitled to live the sort of life he believes the wealthy live, “a good, true-hearted life, full of beauty and kind words. He only wanted to know how to use the strength within him.” This plan fails, not only because he does not understand how to carry it out, but because he is caught with the stolen money and sent to prison. It is Deborah, however, whom guilt seems to affect the most strongly. Although she believes in Hugh’s right to the money, she is devastated by what prison has done to him. She breaks down when she sees him in jail, his spirit broken, believing that his state is her fault. The circumstances in which she has been forced to live do not allow her to perceive that Hugh’s downfall should be blamed on the system that put them both where they are. Deborah did take the money, but it was the only possible way out for Hugh, Davis seems to want the reader to believe. His death, which she knows is imminent, must be laid at the feet of this system. Narrative intrusion in Life in the Iron Mills is very pronounced, and it is not difficult to interpret Davis’s opinions on the issues raised. During the course of the night, Hugh enters a church, and Davis’s narrator makes the point that the reason that Christ’s ministry does not fail is that he came directly from the class he was trying to help. In spite of Mitchell’s thoughts that the rich cannot ultimately help someone like Hugh, it is not implied that those in a position to help are absolved of any obligation to do so. Rather, the implication is that even though power does not impart the power to reform, it does carry with it the responsibility for compassion. It is only compassion, Davis states indirectly, that can catalyze reform. The rest is up to those involved. Guilt in this story seems to only affect those who are victims of the system, not those who uphold it. Even though some of the wealthy men understand—at least hypothetically—that they bear some responsibility for Hugh’s inability to better himself, Kirby, the mill owner, flatly rejects this idea, stating that his responsibility toward his workers is financial, nothing more. However, he at least is honest

about his beliefs. The other men, Doctor May and Mitchell, cannot claim such an excuse. Mitchell, in particular, freely quotes the Bible: “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me,” and yet he reports the theft to the police. In spite of his implied comparison between Hugh and Jesus, Mitchell seems to recuse himself from any possibility of truly helping when he comments that reform must come from the workers themselves rather than the outside. Consequently, he also isolates himself from any possibility of feeling guilt at his need to believe that he cannot help. His actions, unfortunately, typify those who control the system. Helen Lynne Schicketanz

Hope in Life in the Iron Mills

There are many types of false hope dangled before the characters in Rebecca Harding Davis’ bestknown work, Life in the Iron Mills. Set in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, the story takes place in a time and place in which hope would seem an unattainable ideal, particularly for the lowest class of workers at the center of Davis’s story. Hugh Wolfe and his hunchbacked cousin Deborah, the story’s central characters, work in an unnamed industrial town where Hugh feeds the furnace in the iron mill and Deborah works in the nearby cotton mill. Although their lives are filled with unremitting work and dire poverty, Hugh’s “groping passion for whatever was beautiful and pure” and Deborah’s unrequited love for Hugh set the two of them apart from the other workers, most of whom turn to alcohol and fighting to alleviate the utter hopelessness of their lives. Hugh tries to explain this necessity for hope to a wealthy visitor who has found a figure of a woman he has carved from korl, a waste product created in the iron processing. The woman is reaching out her hand in supplication, looking for something “to make her live—like you,” as Hugh tells the visitors. Hope is kindled in his soul when the men visiting the mill tell him that money is all that necessary to make him a great sculptor, so Deborah steals money from one of them. Even though she does not truly understand their discussion or the magnitude of the change Hugh seeks, she wants to make Hugh happy in the hope that he will finally truly love her.

Moll Flandersâ•…â•… 321 Hugh’s dilemma now is that his newly awakened belief in his own right to happiness conflicts with his sense of honesty, so he looks to religion for help. With the money in his pocket, he listens to a sermon in a well-appointed church attended by the rich, and he realizes that his experience of Christianity has almost nothing to do with Christ’s original mission of ministering to the poor, the outcast, and the meek. It is not, therefore, surprising that Hugh ends up in jail, although it is ironic that jail is where he finds his final hope in suicide. There is a strong intimation in the story that Hugh has been sacrificed to redeem his society from the sins it has committed against his class, and the hope for a changed future is realized when, after serving her sentence for her role as Hugh’s accomplice, Deborah is taken in by the nearby Quaker community. Significantly, while Hugh and Deborah attempt to achieve their hopes, the men who visit the mill consciously reject their ability to provide hope to their oppressed workers. It appears that they have at least some sympathy for the downtrodden workers when they conduct a philosophical discussion about who is responsible for lifting the mill hands up, acknowledging their theoretical obligation to those less fortunate than they. Although Dr. May in particular believes that by praising Hugh’s talent he is showing Hugh the hope for a different and much better life, his almost willful misunderstanding of the difficulty of Hugh’s circumstances only serves to confuse Hugh. When Dr. May tells Hugh that he has the talent to be a great sculptor but then refuses to help him become so, citing a lack of money, he has opened a window of hope yet cruelly closed it again. The reader’s hope for change is also dashed by the disconnect between Dr. May’s apparent sympathy for Hugh’s plight and his reaction to the news of Hugh’s sentence of 19 years in prison for grand larceny. It seems that Dr. May is incapable of any sort of compassion, even given the circumstances under which the theft occurred: “Scoundrel! Serves him right! After all our kindness that night! Picking Mitchell’s pocket at the very time!” While Dr. May’s refusal of hope seems almost crafted, the attitude of Kirby (the son of the mill owner) is much less conscious. He would prefer that the men and women of Hugh’s class be machines. That way, they could

feel no pain and would be unable to understand the important things in life they are missing. This attitude is especially telling because it absolves him of any further responsibility. Although Life in the Iron Mills is fiction, the hopelessness felt by Hugh and Deborah is reflective of the experience of so many of the workers who made their way to the iron mills, the cotton mills, and the other factories of early industrial America. So, too, is the continuing sense of optimism implied by Deborah’s joining the Quaker community. Helen Lynne Schicketanz

DEFOE, DANIELâ•… Moll Flandersâ•… (1722)

Published in 1722, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders is one of the earliest novels written in English. Its structure makes it difficult to read, understand, or analyze with any confidence. It has no chapter breaks, and each of Moll’s stories leads to the next almost without transition. Often, Moll weaves back and forth between stories, returning to one when she seems to be in the middle of another. Moll Flanders tells her story in the first person, in a carefree and conversational tone, but the hardto-follow narrative is confounded by the number of important characters. In the course of her life, Moll has five husbands, three lovers, and at least 11 children. In possibly the most infamous incident of the novel, she is horrified to discover that her third husband is also her half brother. The fact that Moll can experience the loss of a husband or lover and abandon or put out to foster care each of her children in barely a sentence or two makes it easy for a reader to confuse the characters with each other or to forget a character’s involvement in an episode altogether. Despite these problems, Moll Flanders is an entertaining story, primarily because of Moll’s indefatigable energy, wit, and resourcefulness. The novel’s structure reconciles the seemingly insolvable problem presented by a very simple question: Is it wrong to steal if you are starving, or even just afraid of starving? The moral of Moll’s story, when taken as a whole, would seem to be: No. Carman Curton

322â•…â•… Defoe, Daniel

Commodification/Commercialization in Moll Flanders

Moll Flanders is so clearly a novel of commerce and commodification that it may be hard to see any other motives for its characters. Moll sees everything as a commercial transaction. Whether or not the reader is appalled by this, Daniel Defoe means it to be clear that Moll is no more and no less than a product of her environment. Moll herself was born merely to benefit her mother. Though Moll did not produce money, her mother’s pregnancy spared her from hanging in prison. In England during the 17th and 18th centuries, a woman sentenced to death could “plead her belly,” and her sentence would be delayed long enough for the child to be born. Early in her adult life, Moll continues to see other lessons in the commodification of all personal relationships. Having no home of her own, she lives with the mayor’s family and is part of a conversation between the mayor’s son and daughter in which the daughter declares that marriage is nothing more than a marketplace and that a woman without money has no value. Moll learns this lesson and applies it during her many marriages and affairs throughout her lifetime. Soon after the marriage marketplace conversation, Moll begins an affair with the mayor’s elder son and is very willing to accept the money he offers her to keep the affair secret. He promises to marry her later, but she confesses to the reader that she was not concerned about marriage but, rather, was persuaded by her pride in being found attractive and by the gold coins he had given her. Moll later marries the family’s younger son and is widowed about five years after. When she goes back out into the world, Moll declares that she will marry a wealthy man or none at all. The reader may be shocked at the bald greed of this statement, yet Defoe constructs a world for Moll in which seemingly every person is motivated by profit—even during the most personal of family relationships. Again and again, Moll encounters men who are more interested in the wealth of their future wives than in their appearances or personalities. Moll marries her second husband for love but soon realizes he is as interested in spending her money as he is in spending time with her. He leaves her without much ado when he flees to France to escape being

jailed for debt. Her third husband also marries her because he believes Moll has a fortune. When he is disappointed in that expectation, he convinces her to travel to Virginia to manage his plantations there more profitably. It is in Virginia that Moll learns her husband is also her brother, and while she tries to persuade her husband/brother to let her leave the marriage and return to England, he objects to her plan with the argument that it would harm his “prosperity.” Moll eventually does leave Virginia and her brother/husband but again finds when she is in the marriage market that every man she would find suitable is only looking for a woman who will bring a substantial amount of money to the marriage. Moll chooses to “deceive the deceiver” and again allows her friends and neighbors to believe she is quite wealthy when she is courted and married by her “Lancashire husband,” a man she also calls Jemmy and whom she believes to have a very large estate. Shortly after their marriage (Moll’s fourth), they discover that each has tricked the other into a nearly destitute union, and so they part, though on good terms, a few days later. The pair are reunited years after and end up living together in America, very comfortably, because of the inheritance left Moll by her mother—who was also the mother of her brother/husband. Here, Jemmy, who turns out to have been a rake and a highwayman, becomes genuinely repentant, primarily because of the wealth he and Moll now enjoy. Whether Defoe approves or laments Moll’s overriding characteristic—that she reduces every human relationship to a financial transaction—is difficult to say. Yet he clearly wanted his audience to understand that Moll Flanders was a perfect reflection of her—and by extension Defoe’s—England. A greedy, selfish, uncaring woman who will only continue any family relationship or personal friendship as long as it produces some benefit—usually, but not always, financial—is the only possible product of the society whose values she reflects. Carman Curton

Ethics in Moll Flanders

It is not until the middle of Moll Flanders that Moll’s ethics, her personal code of moral behavior, become

Moll Flandersâ•…â•… 323 perfectly clear to the reader. During the episode in which Moll marries her fifth husband, whom she calls the “grave gentleman,” she reflects sadly on her life up to this point. She regrets that in order to marry, she must deceive her future husband by keeping the truth of her previous nine assorted lovers and four marriages, including one to her own half brother, secret. Moll reconciles her self-disgust with her deception by saying to herself that she will make up for her past by being a good wife to him—if God will give her the grace to do so. And Moll is as good as her word until this husband dies and leaves her with two children and no income, although she does live on what he leaves her for two years. However, at the beginning of her long period as a thief, just after the death of this husband, she mentions her fear of poverty again and again. Clearly, to Moll, that fear is as terrifying as actual deprivation. As she begins her criminal career, she asserts that “Poverty .╯.╯. is the sure Bane of Virtue,” “Poverty is, I believe, the worst of all Snares,” and the wise man’s prayer is, “Give me not Poverty lest I Steal.” Up to this point in the novel, just a little beyond halfway through the story and up to the last of her marriages, Moll has merely played a series of performances to entice various men into marrying and supporting her. However, after the death of the “grave gentleman,” Moll turns to a straightforward life of crime as a thief and a prostitute, although her adventures in both fields are primarily crimes of opportunity. Moll’s second criminal act, however, appears to demonstrate that even she has scruples. Spotting a young girl who is expensively dressed, Moll pretends to lead her home safely and steals her gold necklace. While they are alone together, she says, the Devil tells her to kill the girl. Even Moll is horrified at the thought, however, and sends the child away safely. This event marks the third time in the novel that she balks at doing something she believes is morally repugnant. Earlier, she refuses to have an abortion to hide a previous affair from the “grave gentleman.” She prefers, instead, to pretend she is wealthy, have the child, and send him out to be fostered in another family, as readers must assume she has for at least a few of her previous seven children. Previously, and most famously, Moll is also so repulsed by her acci-

dental marriage to her own brother that she sticks to her scruples and continues to look for escape from it even when her brother/husband threatens to have her committed to an asylum, and even as she realizes that she would have no legal claim to any of the family’s wealth if her marriage were to be found invalid. As much as Moll protests the occasional pang of conscience, however, her narrative does not offer very many clues as to the limits of her behavior. Her actions do make clear, though, that Moll does what is necessary—necessary not just to survive, but to survive happily and comfortably. Defoe’s novel offers no evidence that would lead the reader to believe that Moll would not kill the girl with the gold necklace, abort the baby she conceives before marrying the “grave gentleman,” or even remain with her husband/brother if she had not been able to find a way out of those difficult situations. Indeed, Moll keeps the secret of her incestuous marriage to herself for three years before confiding it to her mother. Even then the two of them scheme together for months before finally revealing the truth of their relationship to her husband/brother. Moll further remains in the marriage and the house until she secures not only his permission to leave but also enough money and goods to return to England satisfied with her prospects. Daniel Defoe’s narrative in Moll Flanders expounds on typical punishments for the types of crimes Moll commits, such as being exiled overseas (called “being transported”) or hanging for many crimes. Combined with Moll’s ethics, which her actions reveal are perfectly malleable, even disposable, whenever she sees poverty looming, these harsh punishments demonstrate to the reader that the poor, and especially poor women, are disposable in the England of Defoe’s time. Carman Curton

Innocence and Experience in Moll Flanders

The difference between innocence and experience is all the difference in the world for Moll Flanders, narrator and main character in the novel of the same name. She learns quickly from experience, and almost always profits from it. The few regrets she

324â•…â•… Defoe, Daniel has in her life are nearly always the result of her lack of experience—in other words, her innocence. The daughter of a transported convict, Moll enters a kind of orphanage at about three years old. She is mocked when, as a girl, she innocently expresses her wish not to become a servant but to support herself as a “gentlewoman.” In England during Moll’s century, a gentlewoman earned her keep by marrying a gentleman, and there was virtually no work available through which a single woman could legally support herself. As a young woman, Moll lives with a mayor and his family and is innocent enough to believe the mayor’s oldest son loves her and will marry her when he inherits, so Moll becomes his lover. The affair ends painfully, though, when the younger brother falls in love with her, and the elder brother not only insists that she marry the younger brother but also breaks off the affair, says he will never marry her, and manipulates people and events to make the other marriage go smoothly. After her husband’s death, Moll leaves his family behind, including her two children, and uses these experiences with men and money to lie and cheat her way through the rest of her life. Though Moll makes another mistake in her next marriage by choosing a man who lives far beyond his income and spends all her money, still she continues to move around England using what she knows of human nature to try to arrange profitable marriages and sometimes profitable affairs as well. She continues to make mistakes—her third husband is comfortably well-off but turns out to be her half brother—and she and her fourth husband (whom she calls her Lancashire husband) each trick the other into believing they are wealthy. However, Moll sees her mistakes as little more than short-term setbacks and is always willing to start over again and to make use of her experience in her next scam. After the death of her fifth husband and her quick abandonment of her seventh child, Moll’s readiness to take advantage of the innocence of others moves into a whole new realm as she becomes a skilled pickpocket and a clever thief. Twice Moll steals jewelry from very young girls, and each time she blames the theft on the parents, saying the experience will teach them to take better care of their

daughters. Moll gives precise details about a particular attempt at stealing a lady’s gold watch, and again she calls the other woman a “fool” for being too inexperienced at being robbed to catch Moll in the act. Moll, though, learns from each experience, thinks up new ways of stealing, and is always willing to be more careful and to change her strategy, her name, her locale, or her costume if experience tells her she will be a better thief for it. When Moll is finally caught, taken to Newgate Prison, sentenced to hang, and then manages to have her sentence reduced to a term of exile to the American colonies, her experience shows her that enough money, kind words, and good appearance can lighten even that sentence. Almost immediately after arriving in the New World, she and her Lancashire husband (with whom she has been reunited in Newgate) set up as plantation owners and begin profiting from their new situation. It is impossible to assign a consistent meaning to Moll Flanders as a whole or in part. Daniel Defoe’s preface says that Moll’s “autobiography” is a morality tale and that the story demonstrates that every bad deed is punished, every criminal pays for his or her crime. Yet, Defoe clearly does not mean his words to be taken seriously, for Moll is a sinner who is not very good and yet has done very well. Moll and her husband end up happy, healthy, living well into old age in their beloved England. What is more, they profit, not in spite of all of their crimes but because of them. Thus, in the context of the novel, innocence is always painful and expensive. Experience, on the other hand, is always good when Moll is able and— more important, willing—to use her experience to take advantage of another’s innocence. Carman Curton

DEFOE, DANIELâ•… Robinson Crusoe (The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Who lived eight and twenty years all alone in an uninhabited Island on the Coast of America near the Mouth of the great river Oroonoque. Having been cast in shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the men perished but

Robinson Crusoeâ•…â•… 325

Himself. With an account how he was at last as strangely delivered by Pyrates. Written by Himself )â•… (1719)

Robinson Crusoe is one of English literature’s first and best-known novels. Since 1719, when it was first published in England, the adventurous story has continued to find readers. Numerous translations, adaptations, and editions for children have contributed to the success. The narrator of the story is the major character, Robinson Crusoe himself, who looks back on previous experiences. He tells how, as a young sailor in the middle 1600s, he experienced many hardships, such as storms, mutiny, and captivity. But the true trial came in 1659 when a vicious storm wrecked the ship. Being the sole survivor of the crew, he found himself at the shore of an unknown tropical island. In this desolate place he had to find means to survive until, after 28 years on the island, he could return to England. The second central character is Friday, a man whom Crusoe captured on the island; Friday became his servant and companion for many years. The moral of the narrative is that an individual can defeat hardships through skills, persistence, and personal faith. Defoe’s primary aim was probably to teach young readers the virtues of religion and culture, but the novel’s long-lasting success is more due to its adventurous aspects. The most explicit themes are survival, isolation, and religion, but it also deals with such topics as the individual and society, gender (masculinity), and race. Tilda Maria Forselius

Isolation in Robinson Crusoe

After a storm, the seafarer Robinson Crusoe—the central character and narrator of Daniel Defoe’s novel—is washed ashore on an unknown island. He realizes that he is the only survivor of the ship’s crew and that the island is uninhabited. Of the 28 years he spends on the island before he is rescued, he lacks human company for 24 years, and his effort to handle this isolation is a significant theme of the novel. An important aspect of this loneliness is that Crusoe has to solve problems by himself and use his own rationality in all actions. He has had very little practical schooling during his upbringing, and now, in the unknown land, there is no one to ask or

with whom he might deliberate or cooperate. The narrative describes how he solves his problems—for example, the immediate problem of sheltering himself from the potential attacks of wild beasts during the first night. He brings with him “a short Stick, like a Truncheon, for my Defence,” climbs up in “a thick bushy Tree like a Firr, but thorny,” and places himself so that he will not fall if he goes to sleep. During the years he spends in solitude on the island, he is constantly facing new problems to solve, and “learning by doing” is the general method. In spite of many setbacks, his persistence is successful in the long run. Here, Defoe is using Crusoe’s isolation to depict the philosophy of empiricism, according to which humans should learn things based only on experience and, on the grounds of such experience, construct sensible theories upon which to act. Crusoe regards his isolation both as a punishment and as deliverance. In the moral logic of his story, the situation is a consequence of his sinful life at sea and the disappointments that he caused his father. It seems his father’s warning—that if he should leave home without blessings, there would be no one to assist in his recovery—have come true. He thinks, “I am divided from Mankind, a Solitaire, one banish’d from humane Society.” On the other hand, he also underscores his gratitude to be spared from death. In time, he finds that his separateness from society gives him many new insights, and he realizes that the isolation in itself can be regarded as a kind of recovery: “In the first Place, I was remov’d from all the Wickedness of the World here. I had neither the Lust of the Flesh, the Lust of the Eye, or the Pride of Life. I had nothing to covet; for I had all that I was now capable of enjoying.” By resigning to God’s will, he learns that his life is “better than sociable” because he can either converse “mutually with my own Thoughts” or with God himself through prayers. Even if he manages to solve the survival problems all by himself, and even if he can praise the spiritual aspects of the solitude, Crusoe’s want for a “Soul to speak to” does not vanish. One dog, two cats, and a talking parrot form the “little Family” that keeps him company, but they do not compensate for his desire for human comrades. Paradoxical as it may seem, when he discovers a human footprint

326â•…â•… Defoe, Daniel in the sand and understands that he is not alone at the island, his isolation is extended. Realizing that it is made by a potential enemy, he does not move around on the island as before. For the coming two years, he works on improving his shelters “in the constant Snare of the Fear of Man.” The seclusion that he thus creates for himself plays a significant part in his survival. In Robinson Crusoe’s 24th year on the island, he sees a shipwreck offshore, and this causes new eruptions of his longing for company. He is surprised by his strong feelings. “O that it had been but One! I believe I repeated the Words, O that it had been but One!” But no living man, just a corpse, is washed ashore from the ship. Not long after this event, Crusoe manages to help a man escape from the cannibals who sometimes come to the island. This man, whom he calls Friday, becomes Robinson’s servant, pupil and friend for the remaining four years on the island and thus, his isolation is over. Tilda Maria Forselius

Religion in Robinson Crusoe

As a young man, Robinson Crusoe had a rather shallow relationship with religion. According to his narrative, the Christian God that was conceptually conveyed by his English upbringing appeared as a well-meaning father who expected dutiful submission. When Crusoe defies his father’s wishes by going to sea, this is described as an immature denial of his obligations to God. He leaves home without blessings but with his father’s warning that there would “be none to assist in my Recovery,” words that follow him as a bad omen. The vicious storms that he experiences as a young seafarer are understood as “the Judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my Father’s House, and abandoning my Duty.” In fear for his survival, he makes promises to God but easily breaks them when the danger is over. It is during his many years as a castaway on a desolate island, far from authorities and social conventions, that Crusoe gradually develops a deep personal belief. The first really divine moment that he experiences occurs after the disastrous storm that wrecks his and his shipmates’ boat. When he alone finds himself saved on the shore of an island and realizes that he is safe from the waves, while all his

comrades are drowned, he is deeply overwhelmed by feelings of gratitude: “I walk’d about on the Shore, lifting up my Hands, and my whole Being, as I may say, wrapt up in the Contemplation of my Deliverance, making a Thousand Gestures and Motions which I cannot describe.” A parallel situation appears after about 10 months on the island when Crusoe discovers by chance “some few Stalks of something green, shooting out of the Ground” and recognizes that it is barley “of the same Kind as our European, nay, as our English Barley.” This discovery leads to his first serious religious considerations. Up till this moment, he “had very few Notions of Religion in my Head” but now he “began to suggest, that God had miraculously caus’d this Grain to grow without any Help of Seed sown, and that it was so directed purely for my Sustenance, on that wild miserable Place.” Even if he finds out that there is a natural explanation to the barley—he had unknowingly scattered the seed himself when emptying a bag—the episode is significant as the opening to a part of the novel that closely depicts his religious turning point. When he falls badly ill in a fever attack and has a strange and frightening nightmare, Crusoe’s “Conscience that had slept so long, begun to awake.” He deeply blames himself for his rejections and shortcomings earlier in life, prepares to die, and says his first prayer for many years, asking God for help. Recovering from the lengthy fever, Crusoe develops into a humble and devoted Scripture disciple. The Bible that he has brought from the shipwreck becomes an object of regular study, and because his thoughts are being directed “to things of a higher Nature,” he finds “a great deal of Comfort within, which till now I knew nothing of.” In the narrative, this new state of mind is associated with an improved self-confidence. Crusoe explores the island more thoroughly, finds fertile areas, and starts to think of the advantages of being at this place, and he thanks God for all that he has been given. The novel also portrays Crusoe’s views on other religions and rituals. When he first sees the traces of the cannibals’ feasts, his reaction is to go to war against them in God’s name, but after some time he realizes that he has no right to judge their way of living. They are not murderers, he reflects, “any

Robinson Crusoeâ•…â•… 327 more than those Christians were Murtherers, who often put to Death the Prisoners taken in Battle; or more frequently, upon many Occasions, put whole Troops of Men to the Sword.” Later, when Crusoe has company by “three subjects” to which he appears as a king, he reflects about their “three different Religions. My Man Friday was a Protestant, his Father was a Pagan and a Cannibal, and the Spaniard was a Papist.” He interjects that he allows “Liberty of Conscience throughout my Dominions.” In spite of this tolerance, there is no question of which belief that Crusoe—and Defoe—rank as the highest. Multiple allusions to parts of the Bible and to hymns remind us of the fact that the novel was meant at least partly as a teaching book. In fact, Crusoe teaches his conviction to his servant Friday so effectively that the former pagan and cannibal declares himself a Protestant. Seen from the perspective of the history of ideas, Robinson Crusoe’s journey from shallowly felt religious obligations to a humble and heartfelt personal faith is associated with a more general turning point in religious practices of the Western world during the 1700s. The established Anglican church at this time was moribund, and new offshoots arose that enabled individuals to practice their Christian faith in different and more personal ways. Tilda Maria Forselius

Survival in Robinson Crusoe

Since its publication in 1719, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe has been a powerful story of survival for innumerable readers. Most prominent in the novel’s survival theme is the everyday struggle for subsistence that the main character, the castaway Robinson Crusoe, has to fight on a desolate tropical island, but the narrative also depicts other threats to his existence, such as storms at sea, an earthquake, fever, and human enemies such as pirates and cannibals. Crusoe, who tells the story retrospectively in first person, initially relates that as a young man he could not drop the idea of going to sea. In spite of his parents’ warnings of the risks and misfortunes that might strike him, he chooses to leave home to go on his first sea voyage. From that moment throughout the narrative, his life is repeatedly at stake. The sea storms are the most apparent threats of the first

part of the story. Facing his first tempests as a sailor, Crusoe in death agony promises to go straight back home “if it would please God here to spare my Life,” but this resolution fades away once the sea has become calm again. The third vicious storm that he experiences proves to be disastrous. During a journey to bring slaves to Brazil, the ship is stranded, and all the men are swallowed by the waves. However, Crusoe finds himself “sav’d, as I may say, out of the very Grave” as he alone is carried by the waves ashore onto an apparently uninhabited island. Whereas surviving the storms has to do with providence, according to Robinson’s story, his 28-year-long existence on the island mainly owes to strategic thinking and skills that he develops over time. Just after being rescued from the storm, he does not expect to stay alive more than one night and decides to “consider the next Day what Death I should dye.” But with the equipment and goods that he manages to fetch from the stranded ship before it breaks into pieces and vanishes, he finds means to improve his situation step by step and hence to nourish and protect himself. He collects food from what nature offers, including wild grapes, melons, cocoa, and turtles. He builds shelters—first a tent, then a fortress, a house, a storehouse, and so on. He captures wild goat kids that he tames to keep as cattle; develops some agriculture; and manufactures things such as clay pots, furniture, a lamp, and a canoe. By cutting a notch with his knife every day in a wooden cross, he keeps track of the time he spends on “the Island of Despair,” as he calls it. The narrative conveys that even in a desperate situation, man can survive and make a life for himself by using his mind and hands. This is not only a matter of physical survival; very significant is the associated mental process through which Crusoe matures to become a capable man. The journal that he writes with some ink and paper from the shipwreck appears as a tool for this moral growth. Instead of falling into self-pity, the diary writing makes him reflect more impartially on his situation. A record where he states “like Debtor and Creditor, the Comforts I enjoy’d, against the Miseries I suffer’d” helps him accommodate his way of living “to make things as easy to me as I could.” In time, the psychological strategy to improve things by

328â•…â•… DeLillo, Don focusing on the options, even if they are limited, makes him appear more of a sovereign of the island than a victim. Crusoe’s survival skills include his repeated escapes from and defeats of human enemies, as well as his rescues of others. On the island, he hides from the cannibals that occasionally come there to make feasts of the human prey they bring with them. One of the cannibals’ captives escapes and survives with Crusoe’s assistance. The man, whom Crusoe calls Friday as they meet on a Friday, becomes his helper and friend. Eventually, an English ship aboard which there has been a mutiny comes to the island. By helping the captain and his loyal men to escape from the mutineers and reclaim the ship, Crusoe is at last rescued from the island where he has survived for 28 years and returns to England, where new life challenges wait for him. The story of the castaway who survives in the wilderness can be regarded a salute to values that are characteristic of the Enlightenment period of the 18th century, such as faith in the individual’s ability to reason and in the virtues of self-reliance. Moreover, the inner development that the hero makes from despair to constructive thinking and behavior provides an aspect of the survival theme that can be applied to many life situations and times. Tilda Maria Forselius

DELILLO, DONâ•… White Noiseâ•… (1985)

White Noise won the National Book Award for 1985 and is the first of Don DeLillo’s novels to achieve widespread critical and popular acclaim. The novel portrays American culture as fragmented, spiritually adrift, and filled with the noise of entertainment, technology, information, and commercialism. Above all, it depicts the individual uncertainty and fear that comes from trying to make sense of the culture’s pervasive “white noise.” At the center of the novel are Jack Gladney; his wife, Babette; and their children from various marriages, four of whom live with them. Gladney holds the chair of Hitler studies at College-on-theHill; one of his low-level anxieties emerges from his inability to speak German, and he is taking private German lessons in advance of an interna-

tional Hitler conference. His high-level anxiety is a distracting and despairing fear of death, a fear that he shares with his wife. One of the novel’s plot lines involves Gladney’s discovery that Babette is taking Dylar, an experimental drug that supposedly suppresses the fear of death. She has had an affair with the drug’s creator, Willie Mink, and Gladney tracks him with the mixed motives of seeking revenge and getting the drug for himself. Another plot involves a chemical spill that threatens the town and forces an evacuation, during which Gladney is exposed. This heightens his fear of death and spurs his interest in finding Mink, whom he shoots but then takes to a hospital. The novel ends with little resolution of the anxieties that plague its characters. Themes that inform the novel include ambition, commodification/commercialization, death, futility, individual and society, parenthood, science and technology, and spirituality. Michael Little

Commodification/Commercialization in White Noise

The opening pages of White Noise recount Jack Gladney’s observations as students move into their dorms at College-on-the-Hill. Gladney begins by telling us, in the first sentence, that the “station wagons arrived at noon.” He mentions people—the students—only a single time in the opening paragraph; the bulk of his narration is dedicated to listing the possessions that are unloaded, several identified by their brand names. Much later in the novel, he listens to his daughter Steffie mumble in her sleep one night, knowing that he recognizes what she is saying but is unable to figure it out. After several minutes, he recognizes the words to be the name of a car: Toyota Celica. Before he is able to identify her words and what they mean, he is transfixed by her mumbling. Once he places the words and makes the connection, he is even more in awe. Trying to figure out why he should be so moved to hear his daughter mumble the name of a car, he decides that there is something transcendent in her repetition of a phrase that is universally known and embedded so deeply in her consciousness that she chants it in her sleep, while at the same time it is embedded in his consciousness so deeply that he cannot even make

White Noiseâ•…â•… 329 sense of it at first. This level of subconscious product placement pervades the novel and the cultural “white noise” of the novel’s title: Even Gladney, the novel’s narrator, will at times interject lists of product names, often with no apparent connection to the narration’s other material. Gladney himself is a commodity, having invented the academic field of Hitler studies and having sold the field and his value in it to College-on-the-Hill, where he is chair of the Hitler studies department. His colleague Murray Jay Siskind admires his creation in terms of ownership (“He is now your Hitler, Gladney’s Hitler”) that imply Gladney has commodified Hitler and made himself the sole retailer. Gladney sells Hitler, and he sells himself by wearing dark glasses and academic robes in order to create an image that is easy to compare to product packaging. Commodification in White Noise extends beyond the traditional concept of branding, though, to include not just the products we think about but the way our fears are created and then sold back to us. A real estate office, for example, displays pictures of Victorian homes that are not available because they are no longer for sale or because they are not even in that town: A way of life is commodified, sold to prospective home buyers and even local citizens, who simply see the images by first generating a desire for that way of life—or, put another way, by generating fear of not having that way of life. Fear of bodily danger is commodified as well: After a family discussion of all of the ways electrical and magnetic fields emanating from television and radio and power lines can harm us, Gladney observes, “Terrifying data is now an industry in itself. Different firms compete to see how badly they can scare us.” And throughout the novel, he makes references to all of the ways commodified products fail to calm our commodified fears: “This is a town of tag sales and yard sales, the failed possessions arrayed in driveways.╯.╯.╯.” A powerful example of the way commodification pacifies us occurs in one of the more famous scenes, the story of “the most photographed barn in America.” Gladney and Murray Jay Siskind drive to view the barn and the tourists who have come to take pictures of it (or buy postcards). Siskind makes several observations about the barn, arguing

that people cannot see the barn once they have seen the signs announcing it as the most photographed in America, that they are all there to reinforce the barn’s status and to participate in something communal and larger than themselves. The barn is no longer a barn but a commodity that sells comfort in group participation. People are reassured because their actions are sanctioned by all of the people who have come before, who are there now, and who will follow. Later, Siskind will point out that we are reassured by knowing that we are the targets of marketing, and that there is special fear in realizing that we are no longer of interest to marketers when we become “consumers who have lost their group identity.” Michael Little

Death in White Noise

One of the minor characters in White Noise is 19-year-old Orest Mercator, who wants to set a world record for consecutive hours sitting enclosed with 27 poisonous snakes. Jack Gladney, the novel’s narrator, argues at length with Orest about the danger involved (and the pointlessness of courting that danger): Jack repeatedly tells him that he will die if the snakes bite him, and Orest repeatedly counters that the snakes will not bite him. When Orest finally begins his experiment, nothing goes as planned: He is in a hotel room rather than a glass box, there are only three snakes instead of 27, the snakes are not venomous, and he is bitten within four minutes. The Orest/snake story line is a small part of the novel, but it helps to bracket the various responses to the idea of death with which the novel is so deeply concerned. For example, the contrast in tone from the seriousness and intractableness of the original conversation to the absurdity of the final event help to construct the novel’s ambivalence about how serious death is but how misguided we may be to take it too seriously. These extremes are manifested as well in the conversation that Orest and Jack have: At one extreme, Orest is unable to acknowledge the possibility, much less the certainty, of death in general (although he does have antivenom with him during his snake experiment), while Jack is obsessed by death in concrete terms. Jack and his wife, Babette,

330â•…â•… DeLillo, Don discuss at length how they each hope to be the first to die and argue at length about which of them will suffer more as the survivor (although we learn that Jack does not really want to die first, simply because he does not want to die at all). Babette’s anxieties are more pronounced than she will admit to Jack; she is, in fact, secretly taking Dylar, an experimental drug that purportedly suppresses the fear of death. Her daughter Denise finds the medication and turns it over to Jack, who spends much of the novel trying to find out what the drug is, what it is for, and how Babette gets it. He finds that Babette is cheating on him—the maker of Dylar, Willie Mink, demands sex as payment for the drug. This affair provides Jack with an excuse for tracking down and even shooting Mink, but his quest has been as much about revenge as it has been about getting the drug for himself. One of the novel’s concerns is the way we define ourselves according to how we respond to death. Babette’s fear of death is abstract; Jack’s is more concrete. Jack is exposed to Neodene D when a train derails and releases the chemical in a toxic cloud; he steps out of his car during the ensuing evacuation, and the brief exposure is enough to raise concerns for the technicians at the evacuation site. They are unable to tell Jack anything certain, though. The most informative one can be is to tell him that Neopryne D has a life span of 30 years, that they will know more about it in 15 years, and if Jack is still alive then, he can take comfort in knowing that he is halfway there. At the same time, the technician offers the standard reassurances that Jack’s situation is really no different from anyone else’s, telling him that he should proceed with his life plans as if nothing has changed. Jack cannot take these words to heart, though, and begins to obsess about death as much as Babette does. Events throughout the novel serve to counter the dire and grim anxieties that Babette and Jack share. Jack thinks death has come to claim him early one morning when he sees his father-in-law, Vernon, sitting in the backyard without recognizing him; when Vernon leaves a few days later, he lists all of his physical ailments but insists they are nothing to worry about. Jack’s six-year-old, Wilder, rides his tricycle across a busy highway without incident. After Jack shoots Willie Mink, he immediately begins

working to save his life and is surprised to learn that the nuns at the hospital he goes to have no belief in an afterlife; one says that the comfort of the afterlife is a fiction they maintain to comfort everyone else. When all the novel’s conversations and discussions and examinations of the topic are over, we are left with a complexly structured and uneasy acceptance of death’s omnipresence and inevitability, an exploration of contemporary spiritual malaise and the resulting cultural obsession with death. Michael Little

Science and Technology in White Noise

Jack Gladney’s 14-year-old son, Heinrich, has a receding hairline, and Gladney wonders if he has ignorantly or irresponsibly allowed his son to be exposed to something dangerous in the air. Technology in White Noise is mysterious, pervasive, and only seemingly under control. It is transparent enough that characters tend not to think about how they use it, what it does, how it works, or even its dangers, and it is complex enough that characters do not know what to do about it when the dangers become real. Often, the technological source of the danger is unknowable. When the local grade school is evacuated because of something that gives the kids headaches (and will even kill an investigator), the cause is indeterminate: “.╯.╯. it could be the ventilating system, the paint or varnish, the foam insulation, the electrical insulation, the cafeteria food, the rays emitted by microcomputers .╯.╯.” and the list continues from there, including the protective suits the investigators wear. The novel’s characters are seen to live with an almost reckless relationship to technology, using it but not understanding anything about it. Heinrich lectures his family about the hidden dangers of radiation coming from power lines, police radar, microwaves, radio, and television, while Gladney’s wife Babette is taking an experimental drug, Dylar, that promises to inhibit the fear of death. She knows nothing about how it works or what it might be doing to her, and Gladney enlists the help of a neuroscientist to investigate the drug and determine what effects it has. Before she can identify the drug’s purpose or effects, she is able to identify the mechanics of how it works, how

A Christmas Carolâ•…â•… 331 it dissolves in a slow and controlled fashion to deliver its chemicals at a precise rate—she calls it “a wonderful little system.” Throughout the novel, characters demonstrate this mix of ignorance and awe in the face of technology. Local sunsets have been spectacular, for example, yet no one knows why: One theory is that a toxic chemical spill has left residue in the atmosphere; another is that the microorganisms released to eat the original chemical cloud are themselves the residue affecting the sunsets. No one knows. The toxic chemical spill that may or may not be affecting the sunsets is one of the novel’s primary events. The chemical, Nyodene D, is a byproduct of pesticides; Heinrich has been taught about it in school, and the sum of knowledge about the chemical is that it is “very dangerous, except no one seem to know exactly what it causes in humans or in the offspring of humans. They tested for years and either they don’t know for sure or they know and aren’t saying.” The entire incident displays the degree to which we depend on technology as well as the tenuous control we have over it, from the train derailment that causes the spill to the failure of responders to contain it, even to the failure of Nyodene D’s creators to understand just what effects their product has. When Gladney is exposed briefly during the evacuation, technicians can tell him only that his situation is vaguely serious, and if he lives long enough, they will be able to tell him more about it. Characters in White Noise live a fragile existence alongside the technology they have created and use but barely comprehend. Nyodene D is an extreme example of the degree to which we do not understand our technological creations, but DeLillo argues that it is not just the creators who are to blame. In the midst of the evacuation, Heinrich again lectures about humans’ reliance on technology, observing that conditions are suddenly like returning to the Stone Ages, where “we can’t even tell people the basic principles much less actually make something that would improve conditions.” He mentions refrigerators and matches, mocks his father’s explanation of radio waves moving through the air because it sounds like magic, and ultimately suggests that our shameful ignorance about the

nature of our technology makes us entirely dependent on it. In the final analysis, technology in White Noise is that which enables and enriches our lives but threatens at the same time to destroy us; or, as one character puts it, technology “creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other.” Michael Little

DICKENS, CHARLESâ•… A Christmas Carolâ•… (1843)

A Christmas Carol is one of Charles Dickens’s most popular works. It has been read, loved, and collected by generations. More than 167 years since its publication, it still remains in fashion and is part of the English-speaking world’s Christmas imagination. Dickens (1812–70), the best-known novelist of the Victorian age, wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 and published it with illustrations by John Leech. It was the first and most popular of five stories on Christmas time: A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man (1848). These five stories were published together in 1852 in Christmas Books. A Christmas Carol takes place in London, in a very typical English atmosphere of cold and fog. The main character is Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly businessman who prefers money to everything else and lives alone, detesting all feelings and relationships with others. He does not appreciate the Christmas season at all, with its attendant feelings of joy and love of family. The story begins on Christmas Eve, the seventh anniversary of the death of Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s former business partner. During the night, Scrooge receives the visit of Marley’s ghost and the visits of three other spirits, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Marley—who represents Scrooge’s conscience and the conscience of humankind—wants to give to his partner what he did not have at the hour of his death, the possibility of redemption. By the end of Scrooge’s long night, he will come to learn the value of the holiday—and indeed, the value of life itself. Raffaella Cavalieri

332â•…â•… Dickens, Charles

Death in A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol begins with these simple words: “Marley was dead: to begin with.” This is a strange beginning for a story about Christmas, but understanding death, or the threat of death, is vital to understanding Dickens’s ideas about life. The theme of death is first represented by the presence of Jacob Marley’s ghost, and later by the presence of three spirits. The impending death of the young and wholly innocent Tiny Tim and the fear Scrooge has of his own death also figure importantly in what will ultimately be Scrooge’s transformation. His encounters with death and the dead cause him to understand and respect the responsibility human beings have for one another. The complete title of Dickens’s story is A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Ghost stories were particularly popular in Victorian times and became part of the culture of the period. They developed from the gothic tale of terror but used more familiar settings and everyday situations to make the terror more credible. In the case of A Christmas Carol, Dickens sets an eerie scene with his descriptions of darkness, fog, and frost, in the weather and in Scrooge’s heart. It seems as if nothing lives in Scrooge; he is alone and he has left every kind of relationship to die. The weather will change only in the last chapter, after Scrooge’s redemption. Ghosts are used to help the main character understand that every man is the same, that there should be no class barriers and that the poor are people, too. The first one is Marley’s Ghost, who carries the story’s main message and represents humankind’s conscience: He speaks to Scrooge, but he refers to everybody. The second is the Ghost of Christmas Past, who shows how experiences make us who and what we are. The Ghost of Christmas Present demonstrates how many opportunities there are to care for the less fortunate, while the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows our fear of the future. The feared death of Tiny Tim is the one that touches the heart more than any other, and it is the one that makes Scrooge change definitively. In the 19th century, the child mortality rate was very high, and many of the original readers of this story might have suffered firsthand the loss of a child. Tiny

Tim’s possible death is in contrast with Scrooge’s. The boy’s short life will be mourned; he has brought much joy to those around him and he will be missed intensely. The man, on the other hand, will be missed by no one. In fact, the only people who will feel emotion at all upon his passing are his debtors, happy of the event that makes them free from their debt. He can’t believe that “he lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child, to say he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him.” He asks the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come to show him tenderness connected with a death. The spirit brings him to Bob Cratchit’s house and lets him understand that the young and good Tim could die and that that occasion will be a tragedy for all. This prediction is the catalyst by which Scrooge changes. He fears the death of Tiny Tim and his own solitary death. He decides to honor Christmas and be a good man every day of the year, thinking about his less fortunate fellow men, helping Bob Cratchit’s family by giving a good wage to Bob and becoming a second father to Tiny Tim. Raffaella Cavalieri

Individual and Society in A Christmas Carol

An important theme in A Christmas Carol is the exploitation of the poor and children. The Victorian age was an era of technological progress but also one of extreme poverty and exploitation of factory workers. Men, women, and children worked in factories sometimes up to 16 hours a day, while the factory owners paid them very low wages. The gulf separating the rich from the poor was so deep that many contemporary novelists criticized the desperate situation of the working classes in their novels. Charles Dickens was perhaps the best-known example. At the age of 12, he was withdrawn from school and sent to work in a blacking factory in London to help his father, who had been imprisoned for debt. This experience lasted only a few months, but it influenced Dickens’s whole life, establishing his identification with the poor and oppressed and making him a consistent critic of these kinds of injustices. In A Christmas Carol in particular, Dickens wrote about economic disparity, love for fellow humans,

A Christmas Carolâ•…â•… 333 and charity. The central theme is that money does not make happiness, and that those who have it should give to the less fortunate. These were themes Dickens believed in very much, and he decided to write about them in a Christmas setting, because Christmas is a time during which people are more sensitive to generosity. Fred, Scrooge’s nephew (and also the character in whom we can find Dickens’s own feelings about Christmas), says: “I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round .╯.╯. as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” This sentiment highlights the conflict between individuals and the societies in which they live and demonstrates that, for Dickens, the collective is more important. The same theme can be found in the episode of the gentlemen who enters the countinghouse to ask Scrooge if he would like to offer something toward provisions for the poor and destitute. He reminds Scrooge of the poor who surround them, often without basic necessities. Scrooge simply replies by saying that there are prisons and workhouses for them, and he claims to help the poor by supporting this kind of establishment. When the gentleman says that many of them would rather die than live in such establishments, Scrooge responds that such deaths would eliminate the problem of the poor. As the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge his own experience when apprenticed to Fezziwig and the happiness the master was able to give him in those times, he understands his mistake. Previously, coming back home on Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge receives the visit of Jacob Marley’s ghost, who drags a long and heavy chain with symbolic objects such as cashboxes, keys, and padlocks: It symbolizes how the acts of our life come back to haunt us. Marley wears the chain he forged in his life. He represents not only Scrooge’s conscience but also the conscience of all humankind. Indeed, he brings this universal message: “It is required of every man, that the spirits within him

should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.” With this message, Marley reminds Scrooge that he is part of the human race and that experiencing that connection while a living, breathing soul is preferable to the hellish existence of Marley himself. Raffaella Cavalieri

Tradition in A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol is what Charles Dickens described as his “little Christmas Book.” The story was immediately successful and became one of the most popular and best-known Christmas stories of all time. Dickens wished his tale could be heard and shared by everybody, and by calling it a carol, he meant that it should spread joy and bring people together. He divided the story in five parts, and each part has a particular message for the reader and a general moral. In A Christmas Carol, we can find two main concepts about Christmas: the one held by Scrooge and that held by his nephew Fred, Bob Cratchit, and all the other good and poor people. As Fred enters the countinghouse to wish his uncle a Merry Christmas, Scrooge replies that Fred is poor and has no right to be merry at Christmas or any other time of the year. He goes on to complain about the season in general and to criticize the “idiots” who spread their cheer. Following the tradition of the family gathered round the fire, Fred invites his uncle for Christmas dinner, but Scrooge refuses. The gathering of family is one of the most important traditions of Christmas. When Scrooge meets the Ghost of Christmas Past, the spirit brings him back to a time in which he was a young boy and was at school. He was alone, while the other boys had already gone home for holidays. A door opens, and a little girl, Scrooge’s sister, comes in very happy, announcing to her brother that she is there to bring him home forever. This is clearly a very happy memory for Scrooge. The next past Christmas he sees is again an experience of his adolescence, when he was apprenticed to Fezziwig. His master was very good and made him feel happy. On this Christmas Eve, Fezziwig says to him, “No more work tonight. Christmas Eve,” and there is a party with dances, cake, cold roast, cold boiled, mince pies,

334â•…â•… Dickens, Charles and beer. Talking to the ghost, Scrooge admits he has been very bad with his poor clerk, Bob Cratchit. The most touching example of this Christmas tradition is Bob Cratchit and his family, poor but very happy to share what they have and to stay together even if their goose or their pudding is too small, even if their dresses are twice-turned and renewed with cheap ribbons. After dinner, they all draw around the fire and wish themselves a Merry Christmas. Dickens works to create the real traditions of Christmas time: all the children running along the streets into the snow to greet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, people going to church and chapel, and people carrying their dinners to the baker’s shop (because the houses of the poor were equipped with open fireplaces but not with ovens). The shops’ windows are radiant and full of things in their “Christmas dress.” The modern tradition of Christmas, its symbols and characteristics, were “invented” in the 19th century, so in reading Dickens’s descriptions, we can feel the real and universal Christmas atmosphere. At the end of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge achieves his redemption and makes this promise: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year”—so that nobody knew better than Scrooge how to keep Christmas well. Raffaella Cavalieri

DICKENS, CHARLESâ•… David Copperf ieldâ•… (1849–1850)

David Copperfield can be considered the central work of Charles Dickens’s career as a novelist in several ways. It was written at the midpoint of his life as an author, and it soon became one of the best-loved texts of his repertoire and of Victorian culture. Into this semiautobiographical novel, Dickens incorporated many of the memories of his own unhappy boyhood. The story of David Copperfield’s passage from youth to maturity is narrated by the middleaged David, who is a professional writer. The book opens with details of David’s very early years with his widowed mother, who creates for him an idyllic childhood that is soon spoiled by her unfortunate second marriage to Mr. Murdstone. The boy is abused by his stepfather, who first sends

him to a school run by a sadistic master, Creakle, and then employs him as a child laborer in his London factory, an incident that reflects the major trauma of Dickens’s own childhood. Escaping London, David takes refuge at Dover with his Aunt Betsey, who gives him a stable upbringing and a good education. After a brief legal career in the employ of Mr. Wickfield, his aunt’s lawyer, David becomes a novelist. The novel largely focuses on David’s memories and reflections about traumas and deeply felt experiences in his life that teach him how to discipline his heart. Two tragedies that affect him deeply are his failed marriage to his first wife, Dora Spenlow, and the criminal behavior of his school chum, James Steerforth, who elopes with Emily, the niece of Mr. Peggotty, brother to David’s beloved nurse. David is also enlightened by triumphs in his life, such as the defeat of the villainous Uriah Heep. He finally achieves happiness with his second marriage to Agnes Wickfield, whose wisdom and goodness have inspired him since childhood. David Copperfield is groundbreaking both as fictional autobiography and as one of the first novels to trace in psychological detail the development of the child into an adult. It is a seminal work in the canon of 19th-century British and world literature. Diana Chlebek

Childhood in David Copperf ield

The portrayal of childhood that Charles Dickens presents in David Copperfield is striking for the accuracy and sympathy with which it renders the thoughts and emotions of a young boy as he grows into maturity. The work is one of the first in English literature in which a child’s perspective of his infancy and very early years of life is recaptured in autobiographical form, albeit through the retrospective narrative of his adult self. The book’s opening chapters are remarkable for the way they depict David’s child’s-eye view of his immediate environment, especially through the eccentricities of a toddler’s thought processes. The adult narrator also vividly recalls the emotional abandon that his childself shares with his young mother, who assumes the role of a delightful playmate rather than that of a dependable parent. Although David’s early years appear idyllic, the narrator emphasizes the insecure

David Copperf ield â•…â•… 335 foundation of his childhood by describing his anxieties about his dead father and his uncanny child’s observations about his mother’s frail and unstable nature. When David’s mother marries Mr. Murdstone, who becomes a cruel stepfather, the boy’s joyous early years turn into nightmares. The narrator’s description of Murdstone’s use of religious dogma as a pretext for abusing David emotionally and physically as part of the process of educating him reverberates with Dickens’s protest about society’s hypocrisy in its treatment of children. The destruction of David’s childhood continues when Murdstone sends him to a wretched school run by a sadistic master, Creakle, who teaches his students only bullying and fear of authority. At this point in the novel, when David’s mother dies and the boy is sent by Murdstone to work at his London factory, Dickens introduces autobiographical elements of his own life through the detailed description of David’s despair over his descent into working-class life and his lost opportunity to become an educated and accomplished man. David’s intense reaction to this darkest period of his childhood is portrayed with an accuracy that reflects Dickens’s deep insight about the special nature of children and their emotional needs. This episode also highlights a prominent social theme of Dickens’s novels that became the basis of a lifelong crusade—his vehement critique of Victorian society’s exploitation of juveniles as cheap labor. David’s helplessness and isolation are exacerbated in this miserable situation when he loses the support of his surrogate family, the Micawbers, who have provided him with companionship and love in addition to room and board during his factory labors in London. The narrator’s portrayal of the father, Wilkins Macawber, who drags his family with him into debtors’ prison, is based on another autobiographical aspect from Dickens’s life. Like the author’s own father, John Dickens, Micawber is an example of the immature and weak adult whose weaknesses and inadequate parenting prove to be so disruptive to family life and to the social order. David’s responses to the vicissitudes in this abysmal point of his childhood foretells the kind of determined and resourceful adult he will become.

When he resolves to make the arduous journey by foot from London to Dover to seek out his Aunt Betsey for her support and shelter, he makes great strides in the growth of his character. Once his aunt adopts him, changes his name, and provides him with good schooling and moral guidance, David’s childhood closes behind him. The rest of the novel focuses on his successful progress toward adulthood. Several of the children with whom David’s life is intertwined provide examples of characters who are destroyed by their broken childhoods, mainly because they lack proper parental guidance. Thus, little Emily, an orphan adopted by the Peggotty family, grows up to be an impulsive, weak-willed woman who is easily seduced by James Steerforth, David’s schoolboy hero. Steerforth, who is fatherless and has been indulged by an autocratic mother, becomes an egotistical and heedless adult who destroys both himself and the well-being of the Peggotty family through his uncontrolled passions. Dora Spenlow, David’s first wife, is also an orphan who has been raised and spoiled by two aunts. She enters marriage with David in a state of immature emotional development, ill-prepared to cope with the responsibilities of adulthood. Ultimately, it is David’s astute observations about the tribulations of his childhood and its depiction as a perilous journey to self-knowledge that make David Copperfield such a masterpiece. Among Dickens’s works, this novel contemplates at the deepest levels the place of the child in adult society, especially as it was conceived by Victorian culture. Diana Chlebek

Education in David Copperf ield

Charles Dickens approaches the theme of education in David Copperfield on several levels. He deals with the virtues and vices of methods of formal instruction that David undergoes in his early years. He also treats the theme more broadly through his portrayal of David’s maturity into a responsible adult who has learned from his life experiences. The early chapters focus on David’s childhood, especially on autobiographical events that mirror Dickens’s own experiences with schools and teachers. The author effectively criticizes the inhumane

336â•…â•… Dickens, Charles practices of the Victorian educational system, which he regarded as abusive of children and adolescents. David’s early years are idyllic, spent with a charming and indulgent mother who acts more like a playmate than a parent with him. After his mother remarries, his childhood freedom ends when he begins formal lessons with his cruel stepfather. Mr. Murdstone’s ideas about the innate evil of children, based on religious dogma, and his pedagogical method of beating knowledge into David mirrors practices of the time. The boy finds solace from his stepfather’s tyranny in the library left by his dead father. Here he finds refuge in absorbing works of escapist fiction and magical tales from previous centuries. He also discovers models of fantasy that educate his imagination and will help him become a successful writer. After David rebels against Murdstone’s abuse, he is sent to Salem House, a bleak academy run by Mr. Creakle, a sadistic schoolmaster with neither the knowledge nor temperament to teach. Instead, he applies the Murdstone philosophy and practical approach to educating his students—that of physical violence. David’s reminiscences about this academy stress that fear rather than knowledge was the basis of its instruction. He also underscores Creakle’s hypocrisy in managing the school, whereby he toadied to wealthy patrons and pupils and bullied his underpaid teachers and more impoverished students. Dickens had attended an institution like Salem House, and as an influential writer he supported social activists in Britain who sought to reform such schools and to extend access to education across all social classes. When David feels the greatest despair working in Murdstone’s London factory, he is most troubled by his lost educational opportunities, which he needs to better his social status. The desire to improve his situation compels him to escape factory life and seek shelter with his Aunt Betsey. The security he finds in his life with her is embodied in the excellent education she provides by sending him to Dr. Strong’s model school. David recalls it as an enlightened institution where students feel freedom rather than fear and where they sense their involvement in the school’s success. Strong’s progressive academy is the antithesis of Creakle’s outdated, prison-like institution. The contrast between these two schools corresponds to the

vast difference in the moral and emotional atmospheres of the two periods that comprise David’s early life—his servile, regressive existence under his tyrannous stepfather as opposed to his free, futuredirected life with his benevolent aunt. When David’s years of his formal education are over, the autobiographical narrative reflects on the life experiences that have given him self-knowledge and taught him to discipline his heart. David’s most important lesson in this regard is his impetuous, failed marriage to Dora, the spoiled wife who is unschooled in the practicalities of life. David learns a sense of responsibility from this experience, especially after her death. The despair and guilt he suffers as a consequence teach him the true value of his constant guide in life and his model of fortitude and understanding, Alice, who becomes his future wife. The tragedies of those closest to him are also lessons in the consequences of unbridled or wayward emotions. His schoolfriend Steerforth, who has always been indulged and never given moral guidance, lets his passions destroy himself and ruin others dear to David, such as Emily and the Peggotty family. When Agnes’s father, Mr. Wickfield, becomes absorbed in regrets over his past life, especially the loss of his wife, and succumbs to alcoholism and to the machinations of his evil clerk, Uriah Heep, he brings ruin upon himself and David’s aunt. Even Heep’s villainy is portrayed as a lust for power that stems from his education in the system of charitable schools that Dickens abhorred as a Victorian social evil. David Copperfield aligns many of Dickens’s ideas about education and views about childhood, especially his crusade for the rights of children. In this regard he played a pioneering role in English literature by incorporating this theme into his fiction. Diana Chlebek

Memory in David Copperf ield

David Copperfield illustrates the most distinctive features of Charles Dickens’s literary genius: his rendering of the forms and language of memory through its play with time, places, and persons. The work presents a remarkable literary exploration of issues surrounding the persistence of painful early memories in adult life and how these can be used constructively.

Great Expectations â•…â•… 337 Through its autobiographical form, the novel depicts a world initially perceived by the child through the filter of his adult memories. The representation of David’s earliest experiences illustrates the expressive nature connected with spontaneous remembering. Dickens presents an exploration of the operation of memory as it relates to the psychology of a growing boy who discovers how his values and life-defining choices have been shaped by his past. The beginning years of his life are recalled through direct sensory perception such as touch, smell, and taste. David recalls the texture of his nurse Peggotty’s skin; the rank odors associated with the school run by sadistic teachers that he is forced to endure; and, during the nightmare of his boyhood, the food choices he makes to survive his poverty as a child laborer in the London factory owned by Murdstone, his stepfather. Throughout his childhood tribulations, it is the idealized image of his young mother that sustains David, especially during his arduous journey from London to Dover to seek shelter with his Aunt Betsey. Once he settles into this new, secure life, he tries to discard all remembrances of his miserable youth. The later chapters of the novel present David’s recollection of his life as a story that focuses on characters he knows. Although the form of memory in this portion of the work is predominantly presented through these representational tales, the straightforward portrayal of autobiographical events is punctuated by crucial episodes in which the narrator revisits places or encounters characters who force him to reassess his present by reflecting on his past. His remembrances about the losses in his life, such as the deaths of his mother and companions, are closely linked to his desire to discover the source of what he describes as an old, strange discontent within himself. The persistence of painful recollections of his early life becomes an essential condition of David’s inner development as he seeks to understand the dilemmas of his adulthood. When he recalls his unsatisfactory marriage to his first spouse, Dora, her premature death, and his friend Steerforth’s elopement with Emily and ruination of the Peggotty family, David also ponders his guilt in these tragedies of his past and how they affect an understanding of his present life. Thus memory

becomes a moral faculty contributing to David’s self-understanding and self-determination, and it advances the development of his maturation. Memory acts as a crucial agent in the structure of the novel in other ways. While the direct retelling of the events of David’s life advances the story in a linear fashion, there is a circular pattern of thematic development signaled in his return to places that evoke recollections of the most strongly felt currents in his life. He returns to Blunderstone, his boyhood home, to recall the joy and the oppression he experienced there and how these deeply felt emotions still reside in his adult psyche. During visits to Yarmouth, David contemplates his memories of it both as a source of childhood happiness and as the tragic site of the deaths of his friends Steerforth and Ham Peggotty. The guilt, regret, and sorrow dividing these two recollections push David to measure changes in himself and in his present circumstances. Finally, his visits to Canterbury, the home of his future (second) wife, Agnes Wickfield, remind him of the constant inspiration and guidance she has provided throughout his life. Recent tragic events that befall his friends, especially Uriah Heep’s villainy toward the Wickfields, spark David to change his image of Agnes as a sister figure; instead he perceives her as his true and predestined soulmate. At the end of the novel, David is able to confront his memories and integrate them into his present life. He achieves a balance whereby he neither indulges in their oppressive and debilitating effects, as Agnes’s father does, nor distances and hardens himself against their humanizing evocations, as his Aunt Betsey does. David Copperfield demonstrates David’s ability, as novelist and autobiographer, to transform painful memories into art and to achieve a method of recovery from the self-doubt engendered by an anguished childhood. His creative use of lessons derived from his past becomes the basis of self-respect and integrated identity. Diana Chlebek

DICKENS, CHARLESâ•… Great Expectationsâ•… (1860–1861)

The narrator of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations is the orphan Pip, who lives with his sister,

338â•…â•… Dickens, Charles Mrs. Joe, and her husband, Joe. Early in the story, Pip’s “expectations” of life are quite low. Mrs. Joe thinks little of him, and he can hope for no more in life than to be apprenticed to his brother-in-law. However, during the opening scene of the novel, Pip has an encounter that will change those expectations more than once during the course of his life. He meets the fearsome convict Magwitch, who is hiding in the graveyard, cold and hungry. Magwitch is a wanted man, bound for transport to Australia. Pip steals food for Magwitch, and the doomed man is forever grateful for this kindness. Shortly after this encounter, Pip begins to visit the home of the wealthy Miss Havisham to act as a playmate for her ward, Estella. Miss Havisham is a bitter woman, having been jilted at the altar many years before. She is raising Estella, quite literally, to break men’s hearts. Although Pip falls in love with Estella and thinks himself on the road to becoming a gentleman, he is eventually sent away. Pip’s expectations are then raised by a lawyer who arrives to tell him that he has a secret benefactor who wants to send him to London to be educated. Pip, of course, believes the benefactor is Miss Havisham, who has finally seen him for the raw gentleman material he thinks he is. During his time in London, he develops into a snobbish elitist who will have little to do with his former life. He then finds out, however, that his benefactor is none other than the criminal Magwitch, and he must eventually learn that status and wealth are not what are most important in life, but rather strength of character. All the characters in this novel, but especially Pip, learn the pain of rejection, face the cruelty life can dole out, and experience the power of hope. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Hope in Great Expectations

In many ways, this novel is about hope and its power to sustain us in bleak times. Its title focuses our attention on what we as humans might expect from life. Our expectations, Dickens seems to be saying here, should be great; that they should also be realistic does not change that. The opening of the novel is a scene seemingly without hope. Set in a graveyard on a dreary Christmas Eve, the poor orphan Pip is crying by

the graves of his parents, whom he never knew. The scene is decidedly bleak, with a “dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard” and the “distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing” that was the sea beyond that. However, Pip’s fateful graveyard meeting with the convict Magwitch breaks up this scene, and although Pip will not know it for many years to come, their encounter will give hope to them both. For Magwitch, hope is what drives him after he is transported to Australia. His having been sent there in the first place is a situation that might rob all hopeful thoughts from even the most optimistic soul. England, the only home he has ever known, has determined him unworthy to ever live there again, to ever call himself an Englishman, all for a crime he did not commit. During his time in Australia, however, Magwitch sustains himself with thoughts of Pip, whom he thinks of as his good Samaritan. When others mocked him, he would remind himself that while he might not be a gentleman himself, he was raising one across the sea. He later says to Pip, “This way I kep myself a going. And this way I held steady afore my mind that would for certain come one day and see my boy, and make myself known to him, on his own ground.” This hope is so strong in Magwitch that he defies the law in the end, returning to forbidden England so that he may fulfill his wish and reunite with Pip. In direct contrast to Magwitch’s life-sustaining hope, Miss Havisham has lost all hope. After being jilted at the altar, she spends her life mourning this loss, wearing her wedding clothes, stopping the clocks at the time of her abandonment, and watching her wedding cake harden and decay. She is a figure entirely without joy and without hope that life can and will change for the better. She was, as Pip’s friend Herbert explains, quite a desirable “catch” as a young woman, but her pain is so great and her pride so wounded that she cannot see beyond the past in order to hope for the future. Pip, too, is fixated, but his fixation is bound up entirely in hope. He loves Estella almost from the moment that he meets her, and despite her consistently poor treatment of him, he holds out hope that she will return his affection. After their first meeting, when he is left alone to explore the estate, he thinks “Estella was walking away from me

Great Expectations â•…â•… 339 even then,” and he notes the oppressive gloom of the nearby old brewery. But at the end of the same passage, he sees her “pass among the extinguished fires, and ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as if she were going out into the sky.” Pip believes that Miss Havisham is his secret benefactor and that he is being groomed to be the eventual husband of her ward Estella. Miss Havisham feeds this false hope, knowing that Pip has probably jumped to this conclusion. Estella, however, actually warns Pip against thinking this way, telling him, “You ridiculous boy, will you never take warning? Or do you kiss my hand in the same spirit in which I once let you kiss my cheek?” Even Pip himself knows that his pursuit defies logic, saying, “I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope.” Despite this knowledge, his hope lives on—Until, that is, Estella is betrothed to Bentley Drummle, and Magwitch returns to confirm he is the benefactor. It is at this point in the novel that Dickens champions the pure hope of Magwitch over the false hope of Pip. Pip realizes that he is a grown man who has responsibilities, to Magwitch and to himself, and in the end, he does the right thing by trying to help Magwitch escape. Magwitch dies in the attempt, but he dies with the lifelong object of his hope attained. Pip has become a gentleman, and Pip treats him as only a son would. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Rejection in Great Expectations

The story of the orphaned Pip, Great Expectations is peopled with characters who are rejected by their country, by society, and by those they love. These painful rejections have a variety of effects on the characters, however, with some of them learning and growing because of these experiences and others remaining in a state of rejection their entire lives. Pip begins the story as a rejected child. He never knew his parents and has been brought up “by hand” by his sister, Mrs. Joe, and her husband, Joe Gargery, the blacksmith. Mrs. Joe is a hard woman, almost comically so. Pip and Joe live their lives in a constant state of fear that they might incur her

considerable wrath. Mrs. Joe makes sure Pip knows how she feels about fate having delivered him to her doorstep, telling him that with hindsight, she would never have agreed to raise him. Feeling largely unwanted as a child and rarely knowing what he has done to engender his sister’s bad feelings have an effect on Pip’s character. Not only does he become quite sensitive to the rejection of others, but he is also convinced, at a very young age, that the world is inherently unfair. He says, “Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me.” Thus, when Pip is rejected by Estella and Miss Havisham, a part of him feels the need to fight this injustice, to prove that he is worthy of love and admiration. It is this early rejection at such a young age from these three women, two of whom might have acted as surrogate mothers to Pip, which causes him, in turn, to reject those who actually do love him: Joe, Biddy, and later Magwitch. Pervasive rejection has left Pip feeling as though he must constantly prove his worthiness. Since Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch already think him very worthy, their affection does not seem worth his time. When Joe visits him in London, he thinks of the visit with nothing but embarrassment, saying, “If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money.” His greatest fear is that Joe will cross paths with Bentley Drummle, because he fears Drummle’s scorn. Pip is conscious of the fact that he is being “weak” and “mean” in his rejection of Joe, but his fear of Drummle discovering his humble background overpowers him. Magwitch, especially, is a horror to Pip. When he discovers that Magwitch has been his benefactor all along, he does everything he can to hide from that truth, even asking the lawyer Jaggers whether or not there might be another benefactor in addition to the convict. Discovering that Miss Havisham has never been his supporter and that he was never intended for Estella’s hand takes him back to his childish state of rejection all over again. He has spent years believing that despite their outward signs to him, Miss Havisham and Estella secretly admired him.

340â•…â•… Dickens, Charles To learn that that was only in his imagination is a serious blow. Magwitch, too, has been gravely wounded by rejection. Sent away by his country for a crime he did not commit, told he must never return to England in his lifetime, Magwitch has experienced what might be considered a mass rejection—the rejection of his fellow English. He does well in Australia, however, and uses his newfound wealth to create an English gentleman, Pip, who will be accepted, not rejected, by the society that has limited them both so severely. It is Miss Havisham, though, who experiences that greatest rejection of all. Left at the altar by a man she thought loved her, she spends her life in mourning, literally surrounded by the symbols of her rejection. She hardens her heart and passes this on to Estella, her living instrument of revenge. When she realizes, however, what she has done, and that Estella is not just hard and cold to others but hard and cold to her as well, she repents. For her, it is too late, as she is at the end of her life. But for Pip the lesson comes just in time. He realizes that he has spent his life yearning for affection from those who cannot give it while ignoring those who offer it freely. He returns to Magwitch to help him escape, and although Magwitch dies in the attempt, he dies knowing that he is accepted and loved by his “second son.” Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Social Class in Great Expectations

Charles Dickens, more than any other writer of the 19th century, is known for his close attention to social concerns, especially the welfare of children. Many of his novels address issues of social inequality, child labor, and the living and working conditions of the poor. In Great Expectations, Dickens’s treatment of social class is more subtle than it is in, for instance, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, or Bleak House. Here he gives us Pip, an orphan who is not poor but whose options are limited by his place and station in life. Pip is granted unexpected wealth by one of the lowest of the low in English society, Magwitch, a criminal virtually born into a criminal state. While Pip’s character goes downhill as his fortunes go up, Magwitch’s behavior is contrasted

with the behavior of the upper-class Miss Havisham and her despicable relatives. Dickens seems to be saying here that class does not determine character and that, in fact, the social inequalities inherent in English society serve no one well, not the poor and not the rich. The most honorable characters in the novel— Joe, Herbert and Matthew Pocket, and Biddy—care nothing for their own status and wealth. Joe and Biddy may have been born into relatively low stations in life and therefore have little chance of rising higher. But they are both extraordinarily kindhearted people, focused outward, helping others, rather than focused inward, helping themselves. The Pockets are another matter entirely. Matthew Pocket, born on the periphery of a wealthy family, chooses not to compromise himself by kowtowing to his rich cousin, Miss Havisham, as the rest of his family does. The expectations that Joe, Biddy, and the Pockets have from life are determined not by the class in which they were born but, rather, by where they find contentment and happiness. The least honorable characters in the novel— Miss Havisham and her relatives, Mr. Pumblechook, and Bentley Drummle—demonstrate that wealth and status do not make people kind or happy or worthy of praise. They have been given opportunities in life, to be sure, and from life they have very great expectations, but because they do not feel they must contribute anything of their own to achieve those expectations, they are empty shells, incapable of true feeling. It is the “in-between” characters in the novel, those whose honor and expectations fluctuate, that Dickens uses to make his strongest statements about social class. Magwitch is born into what might be called a criminal class. Pip asks him what he was “brought up to be,” and Magwitch answers “a warmint, dear boy” as though that were a profession. He remembers little of his early life but says his first memory was of “a thieving turnips for my living.” He remembers no parents, no home, no kindness or warmth. He says of those who jailed him early on in life, “They always went on agen me about the Devil. But what the Devil was I to do? I must put something into my stomach, mustn’t I?” This is Dickens’s point: English society gave no chance to

Oliver Twistâ•…â•… 341 young Magwitch; he was born to have no expectations at all. When Pip shows him kindness in the churchyard, he responds by devoting his life to its repayment. The degradation that was Magwitch’s life has not destroyed his character, while the high privilege that was Miss Havisham’s life did nothing to build hers. She spends her life bent on revenge for one act of cruelty done to her. Pip and Estella are perhaps the most interesting characters in the novel in terms of how social class forms their respective characters. Both are rescued from the limitations into which they have been born. Estella, presumably, would have spent her life as a thief and a criminal, much as her father did. Mr. Jaggers places her with Miss Havisham in the hope that she will have a better life, but Miss Havisham raises her without values, demonstrating that class and character do not go hand in hand. Pip is raised from a working-class life into the life of a London gentleman. But this idle, responsibility-free life hurts him, damping the goodness inherent in him. When Magwitch says, “I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, so that you should be above work,” he does not realize that this removal from all responsibility, from all obligation, has been bad for Pip. Ironically, when he realizes that Magwitch is his responsibility, he comes back to himself, to the good person that he is, and he does the right thing. For Dickens, the prevailing notion in 19th-century England of virtue and good character depending on social class was inherently wrong. The class one is born into does not determine character, and to suggest that it does is morally wrong. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

DICKENS, CHARLESâ•… Oliver Twistâ•… (1837–1839)

Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist stands out as a superb exploration of the effects of institutions upon people, especially the working-class children who were among the most vulnerable groups in early 19th-century British society. It was published serially in 1837–39 when the tragic effects of Britain’s Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 were calling forth the loudest protests from the poor and their supporters.

The novel’s plot is based on the story of Oliver Twist, a child of unknown parentage, born in a workhouse and brought up under cruel conditions of deprivation. After an unhappy apprenticeship, Oliver escapes to London and falls in with a gang of child thieves headed by Fagin, a devious old criminal who tries to convert Oliver into a thief. Other notorious members of the group are the Artful Dodger; Bill Sykes; and Bill’s mistress, Nancy. Temporarily rescued by the kindly Mr. Brownlow, Oliver is snatched by the gang at the orders of Fagin. Forced to go on a burglary heist with Sykes, Oliver is wounded and nursed by the benevolent Mrs. Maylie and her ward, Rose. Nancy tells Rose about Monks’s scheme to obliterate Oliver’s parentage, and Sykes murders Nancy for her betrayal. Sykes accidentally hangs himself when a mob pursues him. Fagin is executed and the gang rounded up. Monks is pursued and confesses that he is half brother to Oliver, whom he has tried to ruin in order to inherit their father’s entire property; he eventually dies abroad in prison. Rose is revealed as the sister of Oliver’s mother, and Oliver himself is adopted by Mr. Brownlow. Dickens’s treatment of the themes of childhood, survival, and work are among his greatest accomplishments in this work. Oliver Twist was the first British novel to focus on the character of a child and to give the English pauper child a voice. It thus has a special status in the history of British literature and culture. Diana Chlebek

Childhood in Oliver Twist

In Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens offers a particularly sympathetic insight into the condition of childhood by focusing his story on the tribulations of a young pauper boy struggling to survive in early Victorian England. The novel’s melodramatic opening, with its shocking description of Oliver’s traumatic birth in a workhouse where his mother has taken refuge and where she dies after bearing her illegitimate son, begins the nightmare of abandonment, exploitation, and terror that constitute the orphan’s early life. Even the hero’s name, “Oliver Twist,” becomes a symbol of his anonymity and isolation from society since it is randomly assigned to this orphan of unknown origins by inhumane workhouse

342â•…â•… Dickens, Charles authorities who regard the pauper children under their protection as mere sources of labor, at best, and as expendable burdens on the state, at worst. Victorian culture is often noted for nurturing childhood as a special stage of human development, particularly through its depictions of angelic children in works of literature and art that were aimed to accommodate the tastes of the English middle and upper classes. Dickens shocked these same audiences when Oliver Twist portrayed the grim realities of how poverty-stricken and abandoned children from the lower orders of society were victimized and abused by government institutions, such as the workhouse, that were supposed to care for them or, at the least, give them a livelihood. An early incident in Oliver’s life that illustrates such brutal treatment by his caretakers has become one of the most famous scenes in the novel. When he is chosen by the other children at dinnertime to be their representative to ask for more rations from the workhouse authorities, the master responds to the orphan’s piteous request, “Please, sir, I want some more,” by viciously beating Oliver and throwing him into solitary confinement. As further punishment for his audacity in pleading for more food on behalf of himself and his equally starving companions, Oliver is ejected from the workhouse and farmed out as a laborer through a process that handles him like a felon. Dickens deliberately uses such an exaggerated scenario to underscore the harmful roles played by adults who oversee the upbringing of vulnerable children left to the care of the state. For it is through abuse from figures of authority such as Bumble the beadle, who assists at Oliver’s workhouse “trial,” and the undertaker Sowerberry, who exploits him as a laborer, that the orphan flees to London, where he ends up in a gang of child thieves headed by the evil criminal Fagin. The depictions of corrupted childhoods played out against a grim urban setting that Dickens presents at this stage of Oliver’s story were based on the real-life experiences of young felons whom the author had observed during his early career as a reporter at trials in the London courts. When the orphan is introduced into Fagin’s gang, the young members who are presented as models to follow are the Artful Dodger, a streetwise urchin of Oliver’s

age, and Nancy, a teenage prostitute whom Fagin has given as a mistress to Bill Sikes, a brutal thief and colleague of Fagin’s. Having been transformed into hardened criminals at an early age by evil adults who have lured them off the city streets, these two young characters come to represent a whole class of children who have been robbed of their young innocence. Dickens presents them both as prematurely adult, especially the Dodger, who, with his pipe and outsized man’s clothes, appears almost grotesque. By contrast, Oliver’s childish purity is portrayed as a mantle of security that ultimately protects him from this tragic childhood of corruption and crime on the London streets that traps the Dodger, Nancy, and other young paupers. Oliver’s young innocence ultimately helps to save him, for it is this aspect of his character that attracts the sympathies of Mr. Brownlow and of the Maylie family, all of whom he is forced to rob by Fagin’s orders. Nancy is also moved by the orphan’s vulnerability so that, at the cost of her own life, she reveals to these benefactors that the child is being forced into a criminal life under the orders of his evil stepbrother Monks, who wants to him disinherited. By a series of coincidences, Oliver is revealed to be related and connected with these families, and thus the solution to the mystery of his birth and origins becomes the critical factor that works to bring him both the care of his true, “good” family and the material well-being afforded through the recovery of his inheritance. Ultimately, it was Dickens’s memories of his own deprived childhood as well as his keen observations of Victorian culture that fueled Oliver Twist’s artistry and its passionate call for reform in the treatment of that most neglected sector of 19th-century British society—the child pauper. Diana Chlebek

Survival in Oliver Twist

Charles Dickens approaches the theme of survival in Oliver Twist from several perspectives. In his portrayal of pauperism in Victorian England and its brutalizing effects, he strives to expose a shocking reality to his middle-class readers. He reveals that dire social conditions in Britain have forced its population of laboring poor, particularly children, to

Oliver Twistâ•…â•… 343 seek refuge from starvation and physical abuse by escaping into an underworld of crime and violence. Oliver’s flight from the horrors of the workhouse and the corruption of Fagin’s gang, and his eventual ascension to his rightful social role and inheritance is presented as an uplifting story of reclamation and progress. However, even as Dickens underscores the exceptional nature of Oliver’s happy fate, he emphasizes to his middle-class audience the necessity of saving the vast majority of orphans who, like Nancy, the Artful Dodger or Bill Sykes, must resort to a criminal life in order to survive. In the first section of the novel, which describes the wretched world of the workhouse, Dickens focuses on Oliver’s physical endurance of the institution’s brutalities. The boy’s passage from infancy to childhood is portrayed as a miracle of withstanding the harsh ministrations of adult caretakers. The author attacks the hypocrisy of British society’s institutionalized charity through his ironic description of the workhouse and its officials, who, instead of providing succor to the poor, impose on them a vicious test of survival of the fittest. Oliver’s reactions to deprivation and abuse, such as his request for more food on behalf of the orphans and his confrontation of those who insult his parentage, reveal an inner core of moral courage that help him escape an existence that drives others to despair and death. Dickens does emphasize that aspects of Oliver’s inherited gentility, manifested in his attractive appearance and gentle manners, help to save him since others take pity upon him. Nonetheless, it is the boy’s resolve to defy his oppressors and seek another life that demonstrates he is not ground down by the economic philosophers who have engineered the workhouse system as a means of subduing the pauper class. It is in the novel’s portrayal of London’s underworld that the theme of survival is most thoroughly explored. Oliver encounters young characters who represent alternative corrupted childhoods that may also entrap the young hero’s body and soul. The Artful Dodger, who exploits the boy’s trust and entices him into Fagin’s gang, has himself survived the dangers of London’s street life by assuming the airs, appearance, and craftiness of an adult criminal. Dodger thus foregoes the innocence of childhood

and also the possibility of spiritual growth and moral development. Nancy, another gang member, has survived poverty and abuse as a child by succumbing to adult corruptors who train her in theft and prostitution. She therefore seems to be irrevocably entrapped within their criminal caste. However, she is inspired by Oliver’s innocent vulnerability and goodness to eventually challenge the processes of corruption driven by evildoers like Fagin and Monks, Oliver’s half brother, who seek to obliterate the child’s true identity and steal his rightful inheritance. Nancy foregoes her own physical survival when she decides to save the orphan after discovering that he is being forced to assist in the gang’s house robberies. When she reveals to Oliver’s benefactors that Fagin and Monks intend to make the boy a criminal, her betrayal of the gang’s plans becomes a death sentence, but by sacrificing her life to rescue Oliver from corruption, she ensures her spiritual salvation. Nonetheless, the fact that Nancy is not allowed to survive, despite her noble deed, lends force to Dickens’s message to his audience that women like her and victimized youths like those of Fagin’s gangs must be saved from a criminal culture spawned by social forces based on irresponsible and vicious materialism. Ultimately, Dickens presents Oliver’s story not only as an adventure of survival but also as a journey of progress that leads the boy to the reclamation of his true heritage and takes the form of genteel class identity and material inheritance. Thus, Oliver Twist is not merely a narrative of human endurance whereby the author uses the figure of the pauper orphan as a touchstone for society’s lack of charity and neglect for its weakest members. The novel offers hope that the power of innocence and purity, as embodied in the child hero, can survive intact and may even act as an agent of resistance against the morally bankrupt forces that threaten to erode Victorian society. Diana Chlebek

Work in Oliver Twist

By focusing on the lives of the working poor in Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens grapples with a theme that represents the introduction of a controversial contemporary issue into Victorian fiction. Through

344â•…â•… Dickens, Charles the novel’s realistic portrayal of pauperism and especially the exploitation of abandoned orphans by state authorities and criminals, Dickens explores the brutal effects of England’s industrialization and harsh economic policies on its most vulnerable members. By making such a topic the focal point of the social commentary in his fiction, he sought to pique the public’s interest in reforming the conditions that bred poverty and crime in Victorian society. The specific target of the work’s satirical critique was the Poor Law of 1834, which isolated paupers from the rest of English society by forcing them to labor and eke out a bare existence in a workhouse. This institutionalization of the working poor was intended to remedy problems caused by an exploding population of unemployed and unemployable citizens. Instead, it became one of the most abusive social measures of 19th-century Britain. The workhouse in Oliver Twist becomes a symbol of industrial society’s worst evils, particularly its destruction of the bonds of human relationships and sympathies. Dickens depicts how the process of workhousing paupers breaks up families and isolates an entire stratum of society whose members are exploited for their labor and treated as expendable commodities. Oliver Twist’s status as an orphan and illegitimate child makes him especially vulnerable to abuse within the workhouse and in society at large. Born just as his mother dies, he is unprotected and anonymous, a laboring ward of the state, whose representative Bumble, the warehouse beadle, gives him a name picked at random. Like other workhouse inmates, Oliver loses ties to family and community, and he becomes the innocent victim of a government solution to the problem of a so-called surplus underclass. Children become especially vulnerable to those aspects of the workhouse system that Dickens considered the most reprehensible—lack of charity and corrupt operation. Such evils are personified in Bumble, who starves the wards for his own gain when he withholds and pockets part of their rations. In a crucial episode, Oliver becomes the voice for his fellow inmates when he is chosen by them to ask Bumble for more food. The beadle’s reaction to Oliver’s begging mirrors society’s attitude toward its destitute working class. The boy’s request for sustenance, like his poverty, is regarded as

criminal; as punishment, he is thrown into another form of oppressive labor—bonded apprenticeship to the local undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. Dickens stresses that it is the innate innocence projected by Oliver’s gentle manners and appearance that induces Sowerberry to employ him as a funeral attendant. These qualities save the boy from being forced into the dreaded work of chimney sweeping, a brutal occupation that maimed and killed thousands of child laborers in England during this period. When Oliver escapes from his abusive employment and heads for London, he becomes vulnerable to a worse form of labor bondage that ensnared many paupers in the Victorian period, especially children and women. He is lured into an urban gang of thieves by the Artful Dodger, a youth who has been hardened in appearance and character by his corrupt life and work as a criminal. The values of honest labor and its rewards, which were already horribly subverted by the workhouse system, are completely turned upside-down in the training school for juvenile thieves operated by Fagin, who is a fence and pimp. Oliver is presented with a charade in which the theft of another’s possessions is enacted as a useful and skillful occupation. Fagin deceives his juvenile gang into believing that, by profiting him, their thievery will help them all. Thus, in a twisted sense, their criminal work seems justifiable. His exploitation of these destitute boys is as heinous as Beadle Bumble’s abusive and corrupted management of the workhouse, which has been spawned by the twisted economic logic of the Poor Law. Fagin’s evil scheme to entrap Oliver into a lifelong occupation as a criminal is eventually thwarted by those who are moved by the boy’s innocence. Once his true identity is revealed, Oliver regains his rightful status and occupation in society as a gentleman’s son. Dickens’s narrative of Oliver’s salvation from a life of miserable servitude as an impoverished laborer or as a criminal had a powerful effect on a reading public who identified with this hero from a genteel background. Oliver Twist became the first in a succession of Dickens’s novels that influenced the shaping of social reforms to improve life for the British working class. Diana Chlebek

A Tale of Two Citiesâ•…â•… 345

DICKENS, CHARLESâ•… A Tale of Two Citiesâ•… (1859)

A Tale of Two Cities was first published in 1859, 70 years after the eruption of the French Revolution with the storming of the Bastille. The story is set during the years leading up to the Revolution and the ensuing Reign of Terror. It follows the Revolution’s progression as the downtrodden peasants unite to overthrow their oppressors, only to become tyrants themselves. It is possible to see the story as cautionary, since for years after the Revolution, many feared the same could happen in Britain. The tale is indeed one of two cities, as the chapters alternate between Paris and London. At the center of the narrative are Lucie Manette, a beautiful and virtuous young woman; her father, who has been wrongfully imprisoned in the Bastille; and her two suitors, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, who happen to be nearly physically identical though antithetical in character. Also crucial to the story are Miss Pross, Lucie’s loyal housekeeper; Madame Defarge, a ruthless revolutionary; and the marquis Evrémonde, who represents the brutality of the ancien régime. Throughout the novel, Dickens explores themes such as fate, violence, and oppression. A Tale of Two Cities is one of Dickens’s two historical novels (Barnaby Rudge is the other). It combines the interest of the explosive political setting with a typical Dickensian strength of characterization that makes the story, though historically removed, seem relevant to the reader. Dickens’s ability to produce foul villains is only matched by his capacity to bring to life characters whose integrity and goodness raise them above their difficult circumstances. Maria Gonzalez-Posse

Fate in A Tale of Two Cities

The inevitability of the French Revolution is suggested from the very first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities. The moral corruption of the aristocracy is evidenced in acts of ludicrous tyranny, such as “sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed

within his view.” With such injustices occurring routinely, France seems irrevocably set on a course toward revolt as if fate itself had designed it. France’s fate is even imprinted on the landscape, whose trees are “marked by the Woodman, Fate,” merely waiting to be resurrected as guillotines. Every character seems trapped in a fated course of action, unable or unwilling to modify it. The marquis Evrémonde, cruel and ruthless, scoffs at his nephew’s attempt to change his fate by leaving the life of wealth he has inherited. “My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have lived,” he tells him, further counseling him to “accept [his] natural destiny.” Disregarding his uncle’s advice, Charles leaves France for England to work as a teacher and lead a simple and blameless life. Despite all his efforts, fate catches up with Charles Darnay. Accused of treason against the English Crown, he meets and falls in love with Lucie Mannette. Lucie, as it turns out, is the daughter of Dr. Mannette, who was imprisoned by Charles’s father and uncle when they suspected he might report the murder and rape that he was called to treat. Charles is forced to face his past as he becomes engaged to the daughter of the man whom his ancestors have so seriously injured. Fate’s games with Darnay do not end there, however, as he is finally compelled to return to France when Gabelle, the man who had been in charge of his estate in France, is imprisoned for his association with the Evrémonde estate and begs him to come to his rescue. Fate proves stronger than Darnay’s attempts to escape his past, and he is forced to return to France to face the consequences of the sins of his fathers. The Revolutionaries in France are also moved by fate. This is particularly the case with Madame Defarge, whose bloodthirsty desire for revenge is motivated by the rape of her sister and murder of her brother at the hands of the brothers Evrémonde. The terrible acts of violence that she witnessed as a child determine her course of action as a woman. In order to complete her revenge, Madame Defarge acquires the power to control the destinies of others. Her knitting, a seemingly benevolent and harmless activity that raises images of domestic warmth and

346â•…â•… Dickens, Charles feminine propriety, is actually her way of keeping a record of antirevolutionary targets. She performs this activity “with the steadfastness of Fate,” sealing the tragic fates of those whose names she weaves into her pattern. In typical Dickensian style, A Tale of Two Cities is full of fateful coincidences. Even as we are reminded of the scale of London and Paris, the world becomes small when characters continuously reunite. Characters from different social classes, occupations, and geographical locations all come together in the end to affect each other’s destinies. Such is the case with Sydney Carton, for instance, who twice appears to save Charles Darnay from death, first in England and then in France. Incidentally, the physical similarity that allows Carton to save Darnay on both occasions seems to him like a mockery of fate, a reminder of what he might have been were he born under different circumstances. By rescuing Darnay for the second time, however, Carton does not allow himself to become a victim of fate. Unable to resign himself to a meaningless life, he sacrifices himself for the sake of Lucie and her lover, telling himself, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.” Fate is an intractable force in A Tale of Two Cities. It works in mysterious ways to reveal the interconnectedness of people’s destinies and shows that no man has complete control over his destiny. At the same time, however, indiscriminately submitting to fate is presented as a dangerous choice, one that in this case leads to the continuation of a terrible cycle of violence. The most admirable characters in A Tale of Two Cities are those who know when it is best to face their fate and when to do something to change its course. Marie Gonzales-Posse

Heroism in A Tale of Two Cities

Almost every character with whom we are encouraged to sympathize in A Tale of Two Cities performs, throughout the course of the novel, some act of heroism. Dr. Manette is drawn into heroism when he is picked up by the Evrémonde brothers to give medical assistance to the brother and sister they have seriously injured. The doctor further acquits himself honorably in his staunch refusal to accept payment

from them, raising the Evrémondes’ suspicions against him and resulting in his incarceration in the Bastille in order to guarantee his silence. Charles Darnay makes the heroic decision to renounce the life of comfort and luxury he would enjoy as part of the corrupt French nobility to live a simple life as a tutor in England. He demonstrates the same integrity in returning to France to help free Gabelle when he is imprisoned by French Revolutionaries. The men are not the only heroic characters in the novel. There is heroism in Lucie’s quiet stoicism as she stands before her husband’s prison every day in the hope of allowing him to catch a glimpse of her so he can retain his sanity. More dramatically, perhaps, Miss Pross is ultimately responsible for eliminating the villainous Madame Defarge, not through mindless violence but in a courageous demonstration of her love and loyalty for the Manette family. The novel’s most outstanding act of heroism, however, is Sydney Carton’s final sacrifice when he decides to take Darnay’s place at the guillotine at the end of the novel. Even though the conclusion may be surprising, in retrospect we can see that it has been foreshadowed. Not only has Carton declared to Lucie that he would be willing to sacrifice anything for her, but he more explicitly declares that she should think of him as “a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!” Furthermore, Carton’s rescue of Darnay in France in many ways resembles his first intervention in England. In both instances, Carton comes to the aid of Darnay (who is being wrongfully accused) and uses their physical resemblance to bring about his liberation. Sydney Carton is an unlikely hero by any definition. If anything, we might be tempted to think of him as an antihero. He drinks himself to stupor on a regular basis, and he is generally depressive, apathetic, and irresponsible. Some readers have even seen him as a tragic hero in the sense that he is a brooding individual, socially outcast and both driven and tormented by an impossible love. His existence has no meaning outside of his love for Lucie Manette. The conclusion of the novel, however, allows his lack of commitment to himself to become a virtue when it is used in service of protecting Lucie’s happiness and the unity of the Manette circle.

A Tale of Two Citiesâ•…â•… 347 Unlike the other characters in the novel who are left behind to enjoy the rewards of their heroic actions, Carton must paradoxically find the meaning of his life in his death. Not only does he sacrifice himself for Lucie, but he finally experiences a profound connection with another human being when he is able to bring comfort to the final moments of the seamstress who is sent to the guillotine before him. The heroism of the English protagonists of the story stands in clear contrast to the dog-eat-dog world of the French Revolution. While both can arguably be said to be moved by laudable motives, such as a desire to overturn oppression and avenge or protect their loved ones, their actions take entirely different shapes. Where the French heroism is expressed in a too-ready willingness to sacrifice others, the English are heroic in that they sacrifice only themselves. Where the French engage in savage slaughter, the English are represented as being moved by a civilized sense of chivalry. The point is not that the English are morally superior to the French, but that violence and oppression only lead to more of the same. Indeed, contemporary English readers may have read A Tale of Two Cities as a cautionary tale that exposes the dangers to be found in the violence of lawlessness and finds heroism instead in restraint, duty, and honor. Marie Gonzalez-Posse

V iolence in A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities spares no detail when it comes to the horrors of the French Revolution and the vile abuses leading up to them. The novel presents two sources of violence, the heartless and reckless disdain of the nobility and the base savagery of the rebelling masses responding to it. While a great part of the novel is spent detailing the violence surrounding the storming of the Bastille and the beginnings of the Reign of Terror, the narrative is punctuated by reminders of the kind of violent abuses that instigated this anger in the first place. Wine functions as a symbol for the shedding of blood throughout the novel. One of the very first scenes we see set in France is the breaking of a cask of wine and the peoples’ response to it. As the contents of the cask spill onto the ground, people scurry to quench their thirst with the red fluid. What starts

as a game, however, soon turns into grim omen when a man uses the wine to write “BLOOD” on a wall with his finger, and the narrator comments on how other streets will soon be stained. The wine, we discover, has stained not only the ground but also “many hands.” Some leave the street with winesmeared mouths, a mark clearly symbolic of their willingness to regress to savage, animalistic impulse. When the executions begin, the guillotine is presented as a thirsty machine that has been used so many times that it, as well as the ground beneath it, has become, a disturbing red. Like a vampire, it feeds on the inmates of the prisons who are sacrificed to “slake her devouring thirst.” The same tendencies toward violence in the mob are displayed in their dance of the Carmagnole, which Lucie witnesses one day when she goes to stand in front of the prison to be seen by Darnay. There she sees hundreds of people “dancing like five thousand demons” and “keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison.” In the mob, people seem to lose their individuality, becoming part of a large, unstoppable, whirling motion. “No fight could have been as terrible as this dance,” the narrator comments, because it is a “fallen sport”—“a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry.” What is so very frightening about the dance, it seems, is its transformative and dehumanizing power. Although Dickens is clearly critical of this violence, he also allows us to understand the history from which it springs. The novel actually begins and ends with a description of the nobility’s abuses of the poor. The violence of the ancien régime is symbolically represented in the character of the Marquis Evrémonde. Early in the novel, we witness him heartlessly running over an innocent child with his carriage and killing him, only to respond “with the air of a gentleman who has accidentally broken some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it.” Toward the end of the novel, we also learn the reason behind Madame Defarge’s thirst for revenge as it turns out that she was the peasant girl whose family had been grievously mistreated (including rape and murder) by the brothers Evrémonde.

348â•…â•… Dickinson, Emily Revealing the identity of Madame Defarge may help us understand her impulse for revenge, but it does not go as far as inspiring sympathy. It is impossible to feel for her as she plots her final attack on Lucie and her child and she listens to Jacques Three gloating at the notion of presenting the child to the guillotine. But the novel restores the moral right through Madame Defarge’s encounter with Miss Pross. The two women seem to represent competing ideas of feminine strength: Both are fighting for loved ones, but they use different weapons. Madame Defarge has put away her knitting and arrives with a pistol in her bosom and a sharpened dagger at her waist, while Miss Pross’s only weapon is her courage and her love. She prevents Madame Defarge from storming into Lucie’s room, and in the struggle, Madame Defarge is shot with her own pistol, the final “crash” leaving Miss Pross permanently deaf. Madame Defarge dies as a result of her own violence. Miss Pross’s valiant effort, along with Carton’s sacrifice as he trades places with Darnay at the guillotine, are presented as the only acts that are capable of interrupting the cycle of violence. As the narrator concludes, “Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.” Maria Gonzalez-Posse

DICKINSON, EMILYâ•… poemsâ•… (1830– 1886)

Despite not achieving fame in her lifetime, the discovery and release of more than 1,500 poems since her death in 1886 has meant that Emily Dickinson is now considered one of the greatest American poets. Unlike her contemporaries, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, Dickinson was not overtly concerned with the making of a specifically American literature. Upon first glance, her poems have the same kind of universal appeal as Shakespeare’s plays; they are concerned with life, death, nature, spirituality, and, perhaps surprisingly to some readers, love and hope. So key are these themes that they are often directly named in her poems, suitably capitalized, and frequently personified.

Yet Dickinson’s poems also tell a personal story. In them we find a response to the solemn Calvinist upbringing she had had in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she was born in 1830. Her poems are austere and restrained in their condensation, but they are also rebellious against such restraint in their content. Just as Dickinson resisted the radical Puritan revivals that swept the New England states in the 19th century, so too do her poems favor human experience over religious testimony, with nature providing signs and metaphors by which to interpret behavior and emotions. Though her poems are almost always introspective and illustrative of the long periods of reclusion and despair that Dickinson experienced, their continual appeal to observable nature over an invisible God for enlightenment makes her poetry transcendental in character, compelling the modern reader to consider her in relation to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Sarah Barnsley

Death in the Poems of Emily Dickinson

Death imagery permeates so many of Emily Dickinson’s poems that it seems as if she is making a statement that it is never too far from human consciousness. Death is inevitable and close to all—so close that one poem’s speaker claims to feel a funeral in her brain and mourners treading through her mind, with the beating drum of the service and the creaking of a coffin being carried off for burial (“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”). A review of the contents of first lines confirms the extent of this striking readiness to confront and interrogate death, yielding an unsettling array of voices that seem to be speaking from both inside and beyond the grave itself with startling familiarity with the afterlife: “I died for Beauty” utters one voice; “I heard a Fly buzz— when I died” testifies another; “I went to Heaven” says another voice, as if likening the passage of death with all the banality of an account of making a routine journey. In “Because I could not stop for Death,” Death is personified as a kindly gentleman passing by the living in a carriage, stopping to pick up the passenger, who narrates the poem with all the civility of a friendly neighbor.

poemsâ•…â•… 349 The theme of death informs the highly individual structure of Dickinson’s poems. Their often stark brevity and heavily condensed lines make them reminiscent of epitaphs from a headstone, particularly acute in poems that convey a sense of tribute and memorial (“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers,” “The Butterfly in honored Dust,” “Departed—to the Judgement”). Dickinson’s idiosyncratic dashed lines stage endless verbal deaths as ideas and statements come quickly and then expire, each like a last gasp of breath, leaving tenuous connections between lines at times. Dashes inside the line halt other progressions, such as the separation of subjects from verbs evocative of the body departing from the activity of life, as in “And Firmaments—row / Diadems—drop—and Doges—surrender” (“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers,” 1861 version). Regardless of religious belief, Dickinson posits that death ultimately leads to oblivion. Calvinists may consider themselves as meek members of the Resurrection, she contends in “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers,” but grand events on earth and grand expectations of heaven (punned on in the line “Grand go the years”) eventually dissipate as human existence timidly evaporates like soundless dots in snow. Often, death is announced by a rush of cacophonic sound followed by silence, or a rush of quick activity followed by stillness, as life gives way to nothingness. So the heavens, or “firmaments,” are said to “row” like thunderclaps before the erasure of life into soundlessness, signaled in the poem by the strong use of sound plays involving s and d in the last two lines, as if all other sounds had been drained from the poem, mimicking the extinction of life. In “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” the funeral in the brain is accompanied by the beat of a drum, the creaking of the coffin and boots of lead, and a terrific tolling as if a bell is being rung out from heaven, before a great silence that triggers first an experience of utter loneliness and then the end of consciousness. At times, Death is personified as a musician, fumbling at the piano-like keys of the soul like a clumsy pianist, stunning the subject with a hammering music before dealing a knockout blow like a thunderbolt, which results in a stillness that sweeps the universe (“He fumbles at your Soul”).

It is this oblivion where terror resides, not the process of dying itself, according to Dickinson. By contrast, death is almost a comfortable passage; the gentlemanly Death passing by in a carriage offers a slow, peaceful journey toward the grave, treating the speaker to the sights of children playing at the local school, the grain-rich fields, and a sunset (metaphors for birth, growth, and death, respectively) as if on a day out. When Death and the speaker arrive at the newly dug grave, it welcomes them like a house, the swollen earth resembling a roof, the headstone like a cornice. The speaker who died for beauty quickly finds companionship in the grave—also characterized as a house, with rooms in which corpses are laid like guests assigned to bedrooms—meeting “One who died for Truth”; they determine that beauty and truth are one and the same, declare themselves family, and converse as intimately as kinsmen between the rooms until oblivion comes in the form of moss, which fills their lips and obscures their names on the gravestone. Sarah Barnsley

Nature in the Poems of Emily Dickinson

Nature is as recurrent a theme as death in Emily Dickinson’s poetry, characterized as an insistent force which cannot be ignored. Its elements are frequently personified, often as members of a tightly knit community known to the speaker (“A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”) who impose themselves regardless of their welcome. The wind is a tired man who stops by to visit a speaker’s “Residence within,” or consciousness (“The Wind—tapped like a tired man”). The comings and goings of days, months, and seasons are presented as visitors to the homestead of the human mind, where November announces its arrival by hanging its hat on a mossy nail in the garden (“The Day grew small, surrounded tight”). At other times, nature sends “sentinels” to seek out the most determined of hermits (“To my quick ear the Leaves—conferred”). Like death, Nature’s grip is tight and inescapable. Nature is a fertile subject for a poet preoccupied with mental experience, as much an external dramatization of the relentless activity and vacillations of the mind as it is a force in its own right. Extremes of geography and weather convey the intensity and

350â•…â•… Dickinson, Emily range of mental suffering through images of deserts, ice caps, earthquakes, storms, and whirlpools, as well as landscapes populated by predatory animals, such as leopards, tigers, and snakes, figures for the disturbing thoughts of consciousness that menace one’s being. The volcano is a favored metaphor for Dickinson’s own experience as an anguished member of a predominantly Calvinist community advocating emotional self-control. Her speakers conceal emotional suffering that smoulders like ash just beneath the surface (“I have never seen ‘Volcanoes’↜”; “The reticent volcano keeps”). In “A still—Volcano—Life,” the mouth of a volcano is likened to a human mouth, with coral-colored (and fleshlike) lips that hiss as if unable to restrain expression of the intense pent-up pain within, a pain that consumes the body like volcanic fire on rock (“There is a pain—so utter”); alternatively, the smoking mouth may belong to a chastising fellow citizen (“The Solemn—Torrid—Symbol”) threatening to erupt in disapproval of the speaker’s lack of emotional restraint, emotions that leak out in magma-like flickering when ruminating restlessly alone at night when it is dark, and so safe, enough to be discreet. Storms, however, predominate as a metaphor for human suffering. Like earthquakes and erupting volcanoes, storms provide analogies for anguish that can arrive suddenly and inflict severe damage; yet their comparatively higher frequency makes them a more appropriate metaphor for a suffering that is regular; constant; and, though painful, not ultimately life-threatening. Nevertheless, such emotional tempests are extremely harrowing, as marked by the personification of storms as supernatural beings—a monster wearing a specter’s black coat (“An awful tempest mashed the air”) or an emerald-colored ghost (“There came a wind like a bugle”). The disjointed form of Dickinson’s poetry resembles storm-damaged debris, where the abrupt, incomplete phrases and utterances are like street planks torn up by the winds of mental torment. In “To pile like Thunder at its close,” poetry is likened to a thunderstorm, a process that releases intense pilings of emotion within the quick beat of thunderclaps. This focus on the rhythmical sounds in nature is found in other poems: The wind plays a bugle, makes bell sounds from bushes, or tears through

forests as if frenetically playing a piano (“I dreaded that first Robin so”); the attention to rhythm evokes the powerful, melodic beat of Dickinson’s verse. The loneliness of Dickinson’s speakers finds correlation in the isolated natural subjects that haunt her poems, from the wind, timid like a man, who disappears from his host’s house, to the wind whose rising goes unnoticed by even the delicate leaves in a forest (“A Wind that Rose”), to the buzzing of a solitary fly that provides unexpected relief at the end of one’s life (“I heard a fly buzz when I died”). But if nature provides analogies for human suffering, it also illustrates human contentment—and occasionally ecstasy. Thus, a speaker finds resonance in a small stone “that rambles in the Road alone,” for in its independence from others it is comparable to the magnificence of another sphere that “glows alone,” the sun (“How happy is the little stone”). In this kind of self-absorption comes identity and even transcendence, Dickinson suggests: The little stone may be small, but its fixity on its spot on the earth has given it its color, or individuality, just as Dickinson’s fixity to Amherst furnished her highly individual poems. Sarah Barnsley

Spirituality in the Poems of Emily Dickinson

Spiritual matters take a central place in Emily Dickinson’s highly introspective poems, which are more concerned with the internal world of the human spirit than they are with the external world of commerce, politics, and social interactions. The “soul” is a recurrent theme in Dickinson’s verse, frequently personified, from the aloof, goddess-like figure dismissive of the external world (“The Soul Selects Her Own Society”) to the excitable creature that fizzes with energy like a bee or a bomb (“The Soul Has Bandaged Moments”) as Dickinson charts the vacillations of the human spirit between despair and ecstasy. Humans are shown to contain vast internal mental geographies that dwarf and triumph over the external world and tempt the self to explore the hidden expanse within. “The Brain—is wider than the sky” begins one poem, continuing that it is also deeper than the sea; “Exultation is the

Out of Africaâ•…â•… 351 going” champions the exhilaration to be had when the soul makes a journey from the “headlands” (a pun on the mind, meaning “the land of the mind”), deep into the intoxicating uncertainties of the sea further within. In the soul’s depths, this poem suggests, one might find “deep Eternity”; spiritual progression, Dickinson hypothesizes, comes from intense exploration of the inner world. In “I saw no Way—the Heavens were stitched,” it is the internal world, as opposed to the external religious sphere, that ensures transcendence. At the point when the observable “Heavens” (a pun on the church) offer no route through to the enquiring subject, closing their columns to her (a metaphor for the columns of a church building), the subject experiences a remarkable change of fortune: The earth defies logic and reverses its hemispheres, enabling the subject to touch the universe; the world within (the earth of the poem) contains tremendous force. Dickinson’s explorations of the spirit are often metaphysical rather than religious in tone, and they tend to emphasize a rational, scientific approach. Many of her first lines are grandly assertive, articulating definitions and conclusions about the nature of humanity and one’s place in the universe as if presenting scientific theory (“After great pain, a formal feeling comes”; “This World is not a conclusion”; “It was not Death, for I stood up”). At times, Dickinson draws on Darwinian theory to comprehend what happens to the spirit after death, positing in “This World is not a conclusion” that in death we evolve into a new kind of “species.” Matters of the human spirit and the universe are often discussed in measurable terms drawn from geometry, particularly their “circumference” and “diameter,” suggesting a desire to chart the spirit with exacting precision, but also the sense that spirituality is perhaps best conceived as essentially circular in quality—the metaphoric message being that the beginnings and the ends of the spirit are elusive and perhaps can never be found. Scientific assessment of the width, depth, and weight of psychological processes is undertaken in “The Brain—is wider than the sky,” but again there is a mystical quality to such speculation: Although the brain is said to be wider and deeper than the sky and sea in its capacities, it is, after all, “just the weight of God”—in other words, the brain

(or spirit) is in perfect balance with God (religious or otherwise) and equally as boundless. Hesitation to commit to a specific spiritual path is palpable in Dickinson’s idiosyncratic indecisive use of the line; the heavy use of dashes and incomplete phrasings suggests that the thoughts and assertions conveyed are provisional and open to revision, mimicking the processes of endless rumination made by Dickinson’s speakers. Her Calvinist heritage is satirized in poems such as “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers,” which criticizes the apparent hypocrisy of the Puritan elite who preach the virtues of austerity and restraint while requiring their tombs to be luxuriously crafted from satin and marble. God’s existence and the idea of a Christian afterlife are treated with some skepticism in this poem, where the only life that continues is that of the sweeping march of earthly events. In “Those—dying then,” the place for Christian souls on the right hand side of God is said to have vanished; God’s right hand has been amputated, declares the speaker. But though skeptical of Christian belief, there is an emphasis on the importance of spiritual belief, however flawed—better to follow the deceptive light of a will o’ the wisp (ignis fatuus, which literally translates as “foolish fire”), counsels the poem, than no light (illume) at all. Sarah Barnsley

DINESEN, ISAKâ•… (Karen Blixen)â•… Out of Africaâ•… (1937)

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen, 1885– 1962) has three major themes—nature, commodification/commercialization, and responsibility—and the presence of these three themes inform Dinesen’s memoir of her time as a coffee-farm owner in British East Africa (now Kenya). In Out of Africa, Dinesen examines the impact of nature on the author and her use of the land, commercialism on the land and the people, and the responsibility of the colonial immigrants to the native Africans. Throughout her memoir, she describes the difficulties she encounters in trying to keep a coffee farm going in a country where she is an immigrant. Yet she balances these descriptions with depictions of the country and its people. It is in these descriptions

352â•…â•… Dinesen, Isak that she provides the reader with a true portrait of Africa and its people. The memoir is not written in chronological order, but its chapters are divided into Dinesen’s reflections on major incidents that took place on her farm during her time in Africa. She portrays the Africans not as savages but as a unique culture that has openly embraced the colonial immigrants in a relationship. Unfortunately, as she comments in her memoir, this relationship is not mutually beneficial, and in fact the native Africans have been pushed from their land by European and English settlers. As she states, “[I]t is more than their land you take, it is their past as well, their roots and their identity.” With this in mind, she fights for the rights of the African natives, the Kikuyu tribe, who live and work on her farm. By the end of her time in Africa, she is able to help the Kikuyu acquire new land to live and work on. Dinesen’s memoir is a tribute to her time in Africa and to its native people. Sumeeta Patnaik

Commodification/Commercialization in Out of Africa

Commercialization is a major theme in Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, and it plays a major part in her memoir on her time in British East Africa. During the 19th century, coexisting with nature was a dominant theme in literature and was used by writers to uncover truths about themselves and their relationship to nature. Dinesen uses this theme in her memoir, which allows her to also reflect on the impact of commercialization on Africa and its people and her personal impact as a coffee-farm owner. Commercialization of the land brought industrialization to Africa and its native peoples, and while Out of Africa does not describe the impact in detail, Dinesen’s reflections of her time on the farm demonstrate how much colonialism and the industrialism that resulted from it changed the way of life for African tribes. Commercialization first presents itself as a major theme in Out of Africa when Dinesen begins describing the work on her farm. Coffee farming, according to the author, is a difficult job often requiring 24 hours of labor seven days a week. She asserts that coffee growing is not going to make her rich since

the altitude of her farm is too high to properly grow coffee beans. Nonetheless, she describes coffee farming as an addictive process, noting that “a coffee-plantation is a thing that gets hold of you and does not let you go, and there is always something to do on it: you are generally just a little behind with your work.” Coffee growing is hard work, despite the assistance of the Kikuyu tribespeople whom Dinesen pays to work on the farm, and who live on and farm uncultivated areas of the plantation. Blixen comments in her book that she often thinks of writing as an “attempt to save her farm during hard times.” Yet the difficult times on the farm teach Dinesen a great deal about her relationship to the natives who live and work on her farm. The natives trust her and often come to her with the problems they face in dealing with the colonial government. Commercialization has produced an interdependent relationship between Dinesen and the natives, and for the author, it leads to a greater understanding of Africa and her relationship to it. For that reason alone, she finds it difficult to sell the farm when she is no longer able to make enough money to pay her debts. She explains that Africa has become the core of her existence and to perceive a future where she does not live on the continent is unthinkable. Out of Africa uses commercialization to reveal truths about the impact of colonialism on both the native Africans and European and English settlers. Native Africans often have to fight with the colonial governments for the right to use their own land, while Dinesen, as European settler, has to balance the needs of running her farm with the needs of the natives who occupy the land. Ultimately, her farm fails, and leaving Africa becomes the only option available to her. Her forced departure from the land she loves so much is a metaphor for the inevitable exodus that European and English settlers will make from the African continent. Sumeeta Patnaik

Nature in Out of Africa

Nature is a major factor in Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, and it pervades her memoir. From lush descriptions of Blixen’s coffee farm to the gradual infertility of her land due to the high, dry altitude,

Out of Africaâ•…â•… 353 nature is both a friend and foe to the narrator. Dinesen fundamentally views Africans as living closer to nature and thereby living a more pure existence, yet she realizes the dangers that industrialism will bring to Africa and its native people. With her time on the farm ending as colonialism is waning in Africa, Out of Africa shows the importance of coexisting with nature and the danger of underestimating its power. In her memoir, Dinesen uncovers truths about herself and her relationship with the natives of Africa, with the European and English settlers, and with nature. Nature’s importance as a “character” in Out of Africa becomes evident at once as Dinesen’s description of her coffee farm opens the book, thus providing a setting that will be used throughout her narrative. The farm is set in the Ngong Hills in Kenya (then part of British East Africa). Because it is set at such a high altitude, Dinesen can only grow coffee on a portion of her ranch; the rest of the land is used to house the Kikuyu tribespeople, who work the farm as payment for their use of the land, in addition to being paid a small wage. Dinesen experiences both happy and difficult times on her farm. For her, it is a refuge from the stresses of urban living in a city like Nairobi, which she describes as a “motley little place.” She reiterates this feeling throughout her book, despite the hardships she faces on the farm, where she admits that her “work is never done.” The farm is also a refuge for the African native tribes who are able to live in harmony with nature and avoid the colonizing forces of the European settlers. For her, to live with the natives on her farm is to live closer to the utopian ideal. Nature is not only found on the farm; it borders all sides of the farm, and its unsuitability for coffee growing leads to Dinesen’s eventual departure from Africa. Nature makes it clear to Dinesen that her utopian dream cannot overcome the forces of development. Throughout her memoir, she worries that the African natives will be unable to adopt modern technology on their land. She notes that the African natives and the European settlers do not share the same culture or history, making it difficult to reconcile how to use the land. In addition, she fears that the native Africans will be pushed from their lands by the colonizing Europeans. At one point, she says,

“it is more than their land you take, it is their past as well, their roots and their identity.” When her coffee farm fails, she delays her departure as much as possible, leasing her farm from its new owners and selling off her furniture. She does so in order to find a way to secure from the government a portion of her land for the Kikuyu tribe, who have lived and worked on her land since her arrival in Africa. Although she has had to give away most of her material possessions, her greatest reward comes in finding and restoring land to its original inhabitants. By doing so, Dinesen finds a revealing truth about herself and is heartened by the experience. Out of Africa uses nature to offer revealing truths about colonialism and the roles native Africans and European and English settlers play in the eventual destruction of the African landscape. Nature does provide a refuge to those who honor the land by supporting its original inhabitants; however, it is also destructive, as Dinesen witnesses in the eventual failure of her coffee farm and the devastation from development to the forests that surround her land. Like her fellow colonists, she is eventually driven from Africa, and her memoir Out of Africa is a reflection on the costs of striving to achieve a utopian ideal in a harsh environment. Sumeeta Patnaik

Responsibility in Out of Africa

Responsibility toward the African natives and toward the land of Africa itself is an important theme in Out of Africa. Isak Dinesen’s memoir details how she manages to negotiate that responsibility through her management of the coffee farm and through her mediation of disputes over land ownership between the natives and the colonial government. Dinesen uses the concept of responsibility to examine the impact of African colonialism—which began in the 19th century—on the continent’s natives. Dinesen’s recollections of her time in Africa show that the Kikuyu tribespeople on her farm relied on her leadership and advice. However, readers must also remember that the Kikuyu, living on their native soil, only need her advice because they have been colonized. Dinesen begins her memoir by describing her coffee farm and its day-to-day responsibilities. The

354â•…â•… Dos Passos, John Kikuyu, who live on the coffee farm, work as payment for their use of the unwanted land. Dinesen refers to these workers as “squatters” in her memoir while referring to herself as an “immigrant.” These designations are ironic in that they and their ancestors have been on African soil far longer than Dinesen. Because of this, much of what Dinesen learns about Africa and the native Africans’ way of life comes from this tribe. As a result, she feels a great deal of responsibility and obligation to treat the tribe ethically, both during and after her time in Africa. Dinesen’s descriptions of the African natives show the responsibility she feels to show them in a positive light. Her memoir contrasts greatly with other literature published during this time period, which often referred to Africans as uncivilized savages. Dinesen, on the other hand, specifically describes these natives as hardworking people who lack prejudice toward other races and often embrace Christianity of their own volition. Because the culture that the colonials have brought to Africa is new to Africans, the tribe often look to Dinesen to provide them with answers to the problems represented by the colonial settlers. She comments that she is often uncomfortable with the responsibility of representing the English and European culture and often finds the experience to be “alarming.” Nevertheless, she is grateful for the experience of sharing her culture with the African natives while learning about their culture from them. It is during the difficult times on the farm that Dinesen learns a great deal from the Kikuyu about the codependent nature of colonialism and the responsibility that whites have to native Africans. The relationship between the colonists and the Africans, according to Dinesen, is a codependent one, with Africans believing that the colonial whites, being out of their natural environment, are completely dependent on them. On the other hand, most British and European settlers tend to view the Africans as completely helpless, almost childlike. As Dinesen struggles to keep her farm, both during the war and when the farm becomes inoperable, the Africans are a major preoccupation for her as she prepares to leave Africa. The new farm owners do not want the responsibility of taking care of the Kikuyu, and she takes it upon herself to find them

a new home. During this time, she fights to have the tribe given land in another location. This is her last act of responsibility to the Kikuyu, and in doing so, she is able to leave Africa, content that the tribe has a place to live. Despite her work for the Kikuyu, Dinesen never states that she felt it was a responsibility, but a privilege as they had taught her so much about Africa. Her memoir is a record of the responsibility she felt toward Africa and its native peoples. Sumeeta Patnaik

DOS PASSOS, JOHNâ•… U.S.A. trilogyâ•… (1930–1936)

John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy, which includes The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936), functions as a prime example of American satire. Frustrated by what he perceived as a class division in the early 20th-century United States, Dos Passos (1896–1970) wrote the novels to illustrate the need for political and social change. His experimental style, which includes four distinct narrative components, embodies the modernist aesthetic. The reader follows each of his 12 major characters through their experiences via fictional realism, but the narrative is broken by “Newsreel” passages, which include song lyrics and real newspaper clippings; “Camera Eye” stream-of-consciousness sections, which some critics have suggested may be largely autobiographical; and short biographies of famous figures in popular culture, ranging from Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to the scientist Albert Einstein and the dancer Isadora Duncan. All of this combines to create what Dos Passos had hoped would be an expression of modernism viewed through a political lens. According to E. L. Doctorow’s foreword to the trilogy (published by Mariner Books in 2000), Dos Passos “saw literature as reportage” and thought of himself as a historian as much as an author. Indeed, his texts reflect this; there is something magical in the way Dos Passos describes these important moments in American history, and the books race along with what Doctorow calls “no plot, only the movement forward of its multiple narratives under the presiding circumstances of history.” Read as equal part historical fact and carefully constructed

U.S.A. trilogyâ•…â•… 355 fiction, the trilogy was a significant contribution to American literature. Unlike Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dos Passos strove to provide readers with the equivalent of a cinematic experience, and his words create a dazzling portrait of a changing country, what Dos Passos himself called a “slice of a continent.” K. E. Birdsall

Alienation in the U.S.A. trilogy

Even before knowing himself that his 1930 novel The 42nd Parallel would be followed by two further novels that together form the U.S.A. trilogy—his epic examination of U.S. society, culture, and politics in the first three decades of the 20th century—John Roderigo Dos Passos composed a novel he hoped would illustrate to Americans the potentially devastating effects of industrialization and industrial capitalism on U.S. social relations and politics. Especially in light of the radical shift in how people began to view capitalism’s influence on the individual and society as a result of the stark contrast between the Great Depression of the 1930s and the affluence of the “roaring” 1920s, Dos Passos felt compelled to describe these changes in all their complexity. The two following novels—1919, published in 1932, and The Big Money, published in 1936—therefore extend the scope of the often bleak picture he paints of American social relations, a picture that is centrally motivated by what he found to be one of the fundamental effects of capitalism on society: alienation. What exactly is alienation? In the context of U.S.A., we need to take into account Dos Passos’s leftist politics, within which alienation is one of the central factors in the social effects of capitalism. Specifically, the form of alienation U.S.A. is centrally concerned with is capitalism’s tendency to transform the relationship between people into one of commodities. In a capitalistic society, people become “alienated” from others (whom they begin to treat not as human beings but as competitors, or objects) and eventually from themselves, as they have to view themselves primarily not as human beings but as objects of exchange on the labor market. U.S.A. demonstrates this form of alienation in part via its arrangement. The reader is presented

with a multitude of characters whose narratives frequently intersect. However, Dos Passos presents these intersections not as indicative of community but instead as the absence of community, since the encounters between characters are often coincidental, superficial, and generally meaningless. Not one of the characters in the novels seems to be able to sustain a permanent relationship with friends, partners, or family members. In fact, characters (such as Eleanor Stoddard or Margo Dowling) who do, in fact, survive the struggle with capitalism and its social consequences, are only able to do so at the price of submitting to the alienating logic of capitalism by sacrificing human relationships. In this way, Dos Passos represents a fragmented assortment of individuals who, as a consequence of the influence of capitalism, are never able to come together as a community of human beings and hence remain forever in a state of alienation. The consequences of capitalism’s alienating effect on social relationships as represented by Dos Passos are often tragic, which further underscores the necessity to situate his perspective, on industrialization in general and on the 1920s in particular, firmly within the historical context of the 1930s. A prominent example of such tragic characters is Charley Anderson. A firm supporter of worker’s rights in his early life, Charley quickly becomes attracted to the possibility of making money from his talent for mechanical engineering. In his relentless pursuit for money, Charley increasingly abandons his previous interest in social issues and the treatment of others for an interest in profit. Ultimately, his sole focus on profit leads to the tragic death of Charley’s closest friend and business partner, an event that forces Charley to reflect upon his change. As a result of this process of self-reflection, Charley becomes an alcoholic and eventually dies of peritonitis. The most despicable characters in U.S.A., however, are those who have come to accept alienation as a social logic. It is those characters who represent the nucleus of U.S.A.’s view of alienation. While characters such as John Ward Moorehouse, who marries exclusively for money and judges people primarily based on their material “value,” are certainly represented negatively, his assistant Janey, for whom Moorehouse is a hero and an idol, represents

356â•…â•… Dos Passos, John the truly tragic effect of capitalism on society. Only within such an inherently alienating context can Janey regard Moorehouse as an idol, not in spite of but precisely because of Moorehouse’s “ability” to regard World War I not as a horrific historical event but as a potential for creating profit out of the destruction of Europe. In this way, Janey stands for a problem that for Dos Passos characterizes U.S. society as a whole, a society that has traded in the ideal of caring for others for the ideal of making a profit. Mathias Nilges

Gender in the U.S.A. trilogy

The so-called 1920s modern woman, with her bobbed hair, loose clothing, low necklines, desire to work, and newfound sexual freedom, embodies the cultural shifts explicit in John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy, which effectively describes what life was like in a time of burgeoning capitalism. Exploring the modern woman as a metaphor for this great cultural shift illuminates Dos Passos’s political concerns. Broadly speaking, the modern woman of the 1920s was less interested in the traditional role of wife and mother than she was in her own intellectual, financial, emotional, and sexual pursuits, and her behavior frequently reflected a challenge to the status quo. The drastic political change that accompanied women’s right to vote made many of them want social change as well: They craved their own style, their own money, their own jobs. Modern men, many of whom had just returned from World War I, were both perplexed by and attracted to this new brand of femininity. Early in The Big Money, the last volume of the trilogy, Dos Passos makes this clear in the voice of Charley Anderson’s friend Ollie Taylor, who “made a speech. ‘Look at them, lovely, intelligent, lively American women.╯.╯.╯. There was nothing like that on the other side, was there, Charley? Three things you can’t get anywhere else in the world, a good cocktail, a decent breakfast, and an American girl, God bless ’em.’╋↜”â•⁄ The modern woman dances, drinks, and wears (comparatively) comfortable clothes. She flirts, she woos, and, because she knows about contraception, she has sex. She often resists marriage but enjoys platonic friendships with men. She craves autonomy.

Examples of modern women, while present throughout the trilogy, are most clear in The Big Money. Not all women engage in previously taboo behaviors, and the texts reflect this. Like the men in the volume, none of the women are perfect; even their most independent behavior does not always produce spiritual wholeness or emotional satisfaction. Mary French represents the political activist, but she has a penchant for being too dependent on her relationships with others; Margo Dowling is Dos Passos’s screen-struck actress who embodies the idea of woman-as-object-for-the-male-gaze; Gladys is the unhappy wife and mother who lashes out at her greedy husband out of discontent; Eveline is sexually free but trapped in an endless, miserable cycle of cocktail parties. Charley Anderson, in his naïveté, figures prominently in the lives of many of these women. He represents the man who is powerfully attracted to the modern woman but, like other male characters such as Dick Savage, J. Ward Moorehouse, and Joe Williams, he has trouble being the modern man. After sampling different kinds of women, alcohol, and the quest for the big money, Charley Anderson ends up dead in middle age after a life of sheer excess. He is the satiric fool, and his interactions with the women he meets prove it. Throughout the trilogy, sexual encounters are abbreviated. There exists little romance in the texts, and sex often seems disappointing to the characters. A prime example is the relationship between Charley Anderson and Doris Humphries in The Big Money: after pursuing Doris for months, Charley finally has the opportunity for intimacy with her, but the act itself is monosyllabic: After he “fumbles for a condom,” she gets “dressed in a hurry” and then rejects him in a letter. This is representative of romantic relationships throughout trilogy. These characters yearn for intimacy but cannot seem to find it with one another. The modern woman of the 1920s was everything that her mother was not: She was unafraid of showing her intellect, was educated, and was often able to work outside the home. Many of the main female characters in the trilogy illustrate this: Eleanor Stoddard starts her own successful stage-design business; Janey Williams takes career risks and becomes a stenographer; Margo Dowling creates her

U.S.A. trilogyâ•…â•… 357 own cinematic destiny; and Mary French, arguably the heroine of the trilogy, is the only one of the main characters that Dos Passos keeps alive and healthy at the end. She embodies the social-activist-turnedfeminist, and an astute reader may find that, though hope is lost for most of the other characters—male and female—she provides a glimmer. While some critics have asserted that the literature of this historical period is inherently misogynistic, it would seem that Dos Passos was careful to construct his trilogy with women in mind. Most of the characters in the trilogy feel alienated—from one another and from society—and it would be a mistake to equate this sense with gender bias. In fact, Dos Passos’s women generally seem more able to handle the rigors of 20th-century life than his men, and this leaves the trilogy open to feminist interpretation. Dos Passos’s main concern was sociopolitical, and his men and women are equally guilty of following the pursuit of big money, much to the peril of their personal relationships. K. E. Birdsall

Success in the U.S.A. trilogy

Throughout the U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos describes the early 20th-century American dream via his 12 major characters; “Newsreel” passages; and biographies of prominent figures in American history, such as Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, Henry Ford, Rudolph Valentino, and J. P. Morgan, all Americans who achieved fame and fortune. Interestingly, however, these biographies invariably end in the death of the subject or the decline of his or her success. Dos Passos was illustrating that “success,” loosely defined, usually meant “corruption” or “unhappiness,” especially for the rich and/or famous. The three volumes encompass three distinct periods in American history. The 42nd Parallel takes place before World War I, when women are beginning to carve careers and independence for themselves and the country is abuzz with headlines depicting the “ignoring of [the] lower classes,” warnings to traitors, and anti-German sentiments. 1919 is a stunning description of the Great War, and the “Newsreel” passages in this volume range from advertisements for Liberty Bonds to “Bankers of this country, Britain, and France to safeguard foreign

investors.” The Big Money, which takes place during the time immediately following World War I and leads up to the beginning of the Great Depression, features “Newsreel” passages that show the growing labor force in the United States in the form of job advertisements and automobile ads. The last “Newsreel” of the trilogy, Newsreel LXVIII, begins with the headline “Wall Street Stunned,” indicating the stock market crash of 1929. The Big Money depicts “success” as opportunity and growth but ends with the idea that major social change must occur for the betterment of American culture. Dos Passos’s glimmering satire depicts the idea of success (at least in the traditional sense of financial gain and power in business) as detrimental to society as a whole, causing everything from personal disappointment to war and a national financial crisis. Via his fictional characters—who frequently do well in business but remain empty in their personal lives, often succumbing to addictions and other excesses before dying young—he paints a portrait of a society so overcome by the desire for riches that it neglects its people. Indeed, throughout the trilogy, Dos Passos presents characters that often become victims of their own shortsighted pursuits. Excellent examples of this are J. Ward Moorehouse in The 42nd Parallel, whose first wife leaves him because of the neglect she suffers due to his desire for success; Dick Savage in 1919, whose personal life unravels just as he meets with business rewards; and, perhaps most obviously, Charley Anderson in The Big Money, whose blind and alcoholic quest for business success causes him to leave behind loving relationships, family, friends, and personal growth. Charley Anderson ends alone and unhappy, and he is dead by middle age, after getting and flaunting the big money. Through the eyes of these troubled characters, Dos Passos shows that humankind cannot have it all. Society, it would seem, must choose between financial and personal success, and the texts depict the latter with characters such as Mary French, who defines herself not by how much money she has—in fact, she often wears tattered clothing to identify with exploited workers and lacks a warm coat for winter—but by how much she has to contribute to society. Through her, Dos Passos illustrates what

358â•…â•… Dostoyevsky, Fyodor can be gained by a true humanitarian enterprise. A political activist, Mary explains late in The Big Money what is at the root of unhappiness: “↜‘It’s the waste,’ she cries as she leaves a cocktail party, ‘the food they waste and the money they waste while our people starve in tarpaper barracks.’↜” Success in the trilogy coexists with gender issues: While most of the men seem to feel successful if they have money in their pockets, the women (while still happy to have money, in many cases) define success as achieving independence. For Mary French, whose last act is to leave New York to organize a labor protest, success is something more than just money, more than just independence. Success, for Mary French, means helping humankind reach some semblance of equality. In Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy, she is the last hope for the success of American society and an example of a woman motivated by her awareness of poverty and inequality. K. E. Birdsall

DOSTOYEVSKY, FYODORâ•… Crime and Punishmentâ•… (1866)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) wrote Crime and Punishment in 1866; it was published in the Russian Messenger in monthly installments that year. The novel is set in St. Petersburg, Russia, at a time when Alexander II was seeking to modernize Russia following the examples of Western Europe. Dostoyevsky explores the problems that come with rapid urbanization: poverty, alcoholism, crime, and disease. The main character of the novel, Rodion Raskolnikov, is a student who has recently dropped out of college and is unemployed. The novel is aptly titled: It begins with a crime and ends with a punishment. Early in the narrative, Raskolnikov murders a pawnbroker and her pregnant assistant, Lizaveta. As the police investigation develops, Raskolnikov falls under suspicion. As he tries to convince himself that he has committed no crime—he did not commit a murder because he killed unimportant people—he befriends a prostitute named Sonia. She was friends with the pawnbroker’s assistant, which makes it difficult for Raskolnikov to rationalize his crime away.

Although Raskolnikov attempts to deny his guilt, he undergoes suffering nevertheless. He cannot sleep, he lapses into fugue states, and he even returns to the scene of the crime. He and the lead investigator, Porfiry Petrovich, play a game of cat and mouse as Raskolnikov seeks to stay one step ahead of the police. Although he confesses the crime at the end, he is not fully discharged from his guilt. He must learn that there are not just legal consequences but spiritual ones as well. Dutton Kearney

Guilt in Crime and Punishment

Like many great works of literature, the main themes of Crime and Punishment are found in its title. At the beginning of the novel, Rodion Raskolnikov commits an armed robbery that escalates into a double murder, and for the remainder of the book, he suffers various modes of punishment for his crimes. Because he thinks of himself as being above the law, he believes that he has done nothing wrong. However, his guilt follows him throughout the novel, and his failed attempts to escape both the police and his conscience lead to his confession of the murders at the end. When he was a college student, Raskolnikov wrote a journal article that distinguishes between two classes of people in history—the ordinary and the extraordinary. On the one hand, the ordinary class is made up of those who “must live in submission and have no right to transgress the laws.” The extraordinary class, on the other hand, has the right to commit any crime, provided there is a greater benefit to humanity in general for having committed it. Raskolnikov imagines himself to be a member of the latter class, which is why he believes he has done nothing wrong. As his guilt gradually overwhelms him, he realizes that he is not a member of the extraordinary class of human beings after all, and further, he realizes that such a class does not even exist. No one can escape the guilt of his or her crimes when those crimes directly affect another individual. Culturally, Russians often do not think of themselves as individuals but as participants in a brotherhood and sisterhood born from a common source—Mother Russia. The Russian word for this

Crime and Punishmentâ•…â•… 359 understanding of society is sobornost. Because everyone is related, a crime against one person is a crime against all. One of the major threats to Russia’s cultural identity came from Peter the Great and his wife Catherine, who were interested in importing the cultural values of Europe into Russia. Although Peter reigned many years prior to the setting of the novel, his influence is still keenly felt, most notably in the areas of language and religion. Fyodor Dostoyevsky was firmly against Russia losing its cultural heritage and becoming exactly like the rest of Europe. In setting the novel in St. Petersburg (which was swampland before construction began), Dostoyevsky takes care to note that it harbors poverty, drunkenness, disease, hopelessness, and crime rather than European prosperity. Just as Europe cannot transcend Russian sobornost, Raskolnikov cannot transcend the moral order. When he murders the pawnbroker and her assistant, he commits a crime against Mother Russia and sobornost. Consequently, he now stands outside of the Russian people. Guilt is the response of the conscience against murder, but it is also the response of cultural forces. Raskolnikov’s guilt manifests itself in various ways. The immediate psychological effects (which have been insightful in the development of modern psychology) involve nightmares, fevers, and hallucinations. While in a fugue state, he returns to the scene of the crime and arouses the suspicions of the police. He remains very sick until he confesses his crime to Sonia, a prostitute who was a close friend of the pawnbroker’s assistant, Lizaveta. Raskolnikov begins to see the effects of what happens when sobornost is violated—the many unintended consequences of his crime contribute to his guilt. Sonia tells Raskolnikov that he must go to the crossroads of the public square, kneel, and confess his crime aloud. For most readers, this scene is very puzzling, but if we take into account the Russian idea of sobornost, we can easily see that Sonia’s request will reintegrate Raskolnikov back into Russian society, first with Mother Russia on the dirt road, then with his fellow citizens. Unfortunately, Raskolnikov becomes self-conscious and stops short of fully confessing at the crossroads, but his feelings of guilt diminish. However, he does confess to Porfiry Petrovich, the chief

investigator for the police. Raskolnikov is exiled to Siberia, and although Sonia visits him regularly, he does not feel connected to the other people around him. Just as there are legal ramifications for his crime, there are also spiritual ramifications, which are symbolized by Dostoyevsky’s reliance on sobornost to explain Raskolnikov’s plight. One day during his exile, Raskolnikov sees Russian nomads in the distance. He is immediately reminded of the nomads in the Bible, and especially of Abraham. He suddenly realizes that he, too, is a son of Abraham. Raskolnikov finally understands that he has a role to play within the entire recorded history of humanity—his ineffective attempts to transcend that role have led to his current exile—and he falls to his knees and weeps in front of Sonia. His guilt has been discharged. Dutton Kearney

Spirituality in Crime and Punishment

Spirituality features prominently in all of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s major novels. He was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, a subdivision of the Eastern Orthodox Church. When he was a young writer, Dostoyevsky was arrested for participating in a socialist political group. His sentence was execution by firing squad. As all of the men lined up to be shot, a messenger suddenly arrived on horseback with a reprieve from the czar: Rather than be shot, the men were to be exiled to Siberia. Such a punishment was doubly cruel: The men were never intended to be killed, only to believe that they were going to be. Dostoyevsky was so traumatized by the event that he developed epilepsy, a condition that plagued him for the rest of his life. On their way to Siberia, criminals traveled by horse carriage through the countryside. They were often greeted by citizens who presented them with items such as clothes and books—the citizens believed strongly that the suffering of the criminals was beneficial to everyone. As St. Paul wrote, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24). Because Russians think of themselves collectively rather than individually, not only is a crime against one person a crime against

360â•…â•… Dostoyevsky, Fyodor all, but the redemptive suffering of one person is the redemptive suffering of all. This concept, combined with spirituality, makes for a very closeknit community. One of the gifts that Dostoyevsky was given was a New Testament, which he read many times. Crime and Punishment contains many allusions to the story of Lazarus in the Gospel of John. Lazarus is a man from Bethany who is sick and then dies. His sister Martha and her friend Mary are friends of Jesus, who comes to Bethany with them. He goes to Lazarus’s tomb, prays, then says, “Lazarus, come out”—and the dead man is alive again. The story serves as a metaphor for Rodion Raskolnikov’s life. Raskolnikov, when he murders the pawnbroker and Lizaveta, metaphorically dies in the eyes of Russian society. In other words, he is not a fellow citizen—he has set himself apart and cannot be reintegrated until he makes amends for what he has done. He enjoys the story of Lazarus—at one point he asks Sonia to read it aloud to him— because he identifies with the dead man in the tomb. Sonia, of course, wants him to identify himself with the resurrected Lazarus. Unfortunately, this cannot occur as long as Raskolnikov lacks the capacity for compassion. In the epilogue, he dreams about a plague of microbes, which cause everyone to believe that his or her way is the only way. No one is able to see anyone else’s point of view, and therefore everyone is incapable of being compassionate. The dream torments him; he becomes ill and spends Lent and Easter in the infirmary. Lent is the 40 days preceding Easter, which is the day of Jesus’ resurrection. When Raskolnikov’s fever breaks, he has paralleled the life of Lazarus. He does not die physically, but his understanding of spirituality changes drastically—his old way of life has died, just as Lazarus died. When he comes to, Raskolnikov realizes that he has taken the sacrifices of Sonia for granted. She had willingly come to Siberia with him for his eight-year sentence, but he still felt no remorse for the murders because he felt no compassion for his victims. When Sonia becomes ill, and Raskolnikov is faced with the prospect of not having her to help him, he begins to think of others besides himself.

At this moment, he sees nomads in the distance— nomads who live the same life that the biblical Abraham must have lived. Raskolnikov realizes that not only is he a descendant of Abraham, but Sonia is as well. In fact, everyone is. When he fully understands this, he falls at Sonia’s feet and weeps. He is compassionate once again, and just like Lazarus, the man who was dead is now alive. Dutton Kearney

Suffering in Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky—like his contemporary 19thcentury Russians—viewed suffering as an important aspect of life. Such a thought may seem strange to our ears in the 21st century, especially considering that so much effort has been devoted to eliminating suffering rather than accepting it. More than any of his novels, Crime and Punishment explores the restorative nature of suffering. Criminals who served sentences in jail had a special status in Dostoyevsky’s time. Everyone was presumed to be guilty; the only difference between a criminal and a citizen was that the criminal happened to have been caught. Thus, when a criminal was sent to Siberia (the Russian equivalent of our penitentiaries), the criminal suffered on behalf of everyone in society. When criminals traveled by horse carriage through the countryside, they were often greeted by citizens who presented the criminals with items such as clothes and books. Dostoyevsky himself spent some time in Siberia as a criminal, and one of the gifts that he was given was a New Testament. Undoubtedly, aspects of his understanding of the redemptive nature of suffering can be traced back to that text. Rodion Raskolnikov suffers in two distinctive ways: physically and metaphysically. Physical suffering is the suffering of the body, and because of poverty, St. Petersburg is rife with such suffering. Raskolnikov does not have sufficient clothing nor food. Some, like Marmeladov, turn to drinking to escape their problems (Dostoyevsky is one of the first writers to examine the consequences of alcoholism). Sonia feels that she must turn to prostitution in order to support her younger siblings. Far more important to Dostoyevsky, however, is metaphysical suffering, which is the suffering of

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himselfâ•…â•… 361 the soul. For example, Marmeladov’s heavy drinking not only causes his body to deteriorate; it causes the relationships in his household to deteriorate as well. Thus, his alcoholism is both a physical and a metaphysical form of suffering. Similarly, Sonia’s suffering is exacerbated by the intense shame she feels. Sonia has lost her good friend Lizaveta, and her loneliness makes her suffering worse. To the extent that Raskolnikov can acknowledge the different sources of suffering, he can overcome them. Unfortunately, because he thinks that he has done nothing wrong in murdering both the pawnbroker and the pregnant Lizaveta, his guilt prevents him from overcoming his suffering. The interesting dynamic that Dostoyevsky creates is the claim that metaphysical suffering leads to physical suffering and vice versa. In order for one to be truly whole, there must be health in both body and soul. Rather than exclude one at the expense of the other, there must be a balance between the two. No one in the novel suffers alone. The communal participation in suffering is an important aspect of the novel, even if Raskolnikov is too selfish to acknowledge that his actions affect the lives of others. Although he confesses his crime, he still refuses to fully suffer the consequences of having committed the murders because he feels no remorse for what he has done. Many readers of the book have difficulty in understanding the epilogue’s place in the novel. Sonia moves to Siberia to be with Raskolnikov, suffering for him in order to teach him how to suffer redemptively. Unfortunately, her presence does not have much effect on Raskolnikov; he is merely waiting out his prison sentence rather than learning what his role in society should have been in the past and what it should be in the future. However, he has a dream that changes his life. In this dream, a plague of microbes sweeps across the world, infecting everyone. This plague is unique in that it has intellect and will. Further, whenever people are infected with it, the microbes make them think that their opinions and judgments are the only possible and correct ones. Because no two people can agree on anything, the world descends into chaos and famine. Political leaders can not agree on policies, soldiers can not agree with their

commanders, and not even farmers can agree on the best way to plant and harvest crops. This dream is an analogy to Raskolnikov’s theory that some people are not subject to laws against murder; he finally understands that he is subject to the same laws and restrictions as everyone else. He throws himself at Sonia’s feet, his metaphysical suffering ends (he still has seven years of physical suffering as he serves his prison sentence), and he is reintegrated into the community. Dutton Kearney

DOUGLASS, FREDERICKâ•… Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himselfâ•… (1845)

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, by Frederick Douglass (ca. 1818–95) is a monumental narrative within the African-American literary tradition. Douglass’s narrative describes his experiences as a southern slave brilliantly and inspiringly. He moves his readers to sympathy as he recollects having experienced a childhood without knowing his mother or father (who was rumored to be his slave master). He witnesses the brutal effects of slavery on his fellow slaves and is even forced to watch in horror as his Aunt Hester receives a severe flogging and verbal degradation for disobeying her master. Affected greatly by his fellow slaves’ suffering and oppression, Douglass sees literacy as an important tool with which to combat the insidious pain slavery inflicted. While he can do nothing to stop the physical abuse, he works to teach his fellow slaves to read, a first step in learning to reject their supposed inferiority. Douglass’s text made his reputation as an influential and authentic writer. It presents Douglass as an educated black man able to articulate both his autobiography and his antislavery sentiments. His success as a writer was also aided by the prominent white male abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, who wrote his prefaces, attesting to the originality and truth behind Douglass’s narrative and calling for the eradication of slavery. Douglass’s Narrative became one of the most studied, revered, and widely read slave narratives, and it

362â•…â•… Douglass, Frederick remains so today. The work includes such themes as freedom, identity, race, and gender. Patrice Natalie Delevante

Freedom in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself

In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, Frederick Douglass equates freedom with resistance and literacy and presents a case for nothing less than a complete end to American slavery. Douglass describes how white masters are free to whip, defile, and control black slaves through physical punishment, oppression, and shame. They quickly silenced any form of slave resistance. For instance, upon his refusal to return to his master Mr. Gore, Demby, a slave, is shot and killed. Douglass’s owner, Colonel Lloyd, claims that Demby’s defiance will inspire other slaves to resist punishment and escape to freedom, saying “the result of which would be, the freedom of slaves, and the enslavement of whites.” Clearly, as Colonel Lloyd’s paranoia shows, white slave masters greatly feared slaves contemplating freedom. Slaves learning how to read also struck fear into white slaveholders, so much so that it was forbidden by law. One of Douglass’s former masters, Mr. Auld, scolds Mrs. Auld for teaching Douglass the alphabet, rationalizing, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.╯.╯.╯.” White masters believed wholeheartedly that literacy was the “inch” slaves would take to seek their freedom. A literate slave would be an “unfit slave,” desiring freedom from physical labor, possibly resisting his master’s orders until he became “unmanageable,” ultimately seeking physical separation from his master. Just as society connected literacy with freedom, Douglass does here as well. To read is to have some measure of control, to be able to see the world on one’s own terms. After Mr. Auld scolds Mrs. Auld, Douglass realizes that literacy is forbidden because of a power relationship. A master has power over a slave because he is a slave, his property. Once this power relationship is unstable and removed, a slave-

holder’s powers and, ultimately, slavery would also cease to exist. A slave would realize he no longer belongs to his master but that he is free. After experiencing such a “grand achievement” in thus analyzing the slave system, Douglass describes literacy as “the pathway from slavery to freedom.” Because he has no regular teacher, Douglass must improvise in his efforts toward literacy. He strategically uses his conversations with poor white children to improve literacy skills that began with Mrs. Auld’s lessons. He brings the children bread from the Auld house and from them he gains a lesson. He also learns to read by talking with friendly white ship carpenters and from copying letters from books belonging to his master’s son. He reads books about the Catholic emancipation, abolitionists, human rights, and slaves being granted freedom by their masters, books such as The Columbian Orator. The more he reads about rights and emancipation, the more he becomes disgusted with and intolerant of slavery, the very feelings foreseen by Mr. Auld. He shares his feelings with fellow slaves and begins to teach them how to read in secret during Sunday school. He pities their “mental darkness” and inability to desire freedom. He explains that in drinking whisky “artfully labeled with the name liberty” during Christmas, slaves are fooled into thinking that they are experiencing liberty and that it is better to be “slaves to man as to rum.” Drinking makes them drunk, something that they cannot comprehend doing on any day other than a holiday. Thus, Douglass believes Christmas and other holiday celebrations become strategic moves on the part of the whites; he views these rewards as safety valves to keep the slaves from rebelling. Douglass also sees freedom in religion. He questions the existence of God, yet he sees that God can help him secure freedom. During his service to Mr. Covey, Douglass realizes mental freedom. He states a famous chiasmus: “You have seen how a man was made a slave; now you shall see how a slave was made a man,” before leading the reader through a sequence of events that prove this statement. Mr. Covey attempts to strike him, only to see Douglass resist and strike back. Mr. Covey “tremble[s],” a reaction more expected of slaves than masters. Douglass’s resistance prevents Mr. Covey from punishing

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himselfâ•…â•… 363 him for the next six months. Douglass states, “This battle .╯.╯. rekindled the expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free.” By this point in the narrative, Douglass has become a man, and dreams of freedom are foremost in his mind. He attempts to make these dreams a reality with his first escape attempt in 1835. Douglass’s plot to escape with fellow slaves fails when it is discovered by his master. When Master Hugh once again denies Douglass the privilege to decide his hours, employment, and contracts, Douglass attempts escape again. On this occasion, September 3, 1838, he succeeds. He does not provide the reader with explicit details of his escape in order to protect those who protected him. He reaches New York and describes feelings of “great insecurity and loneliness.” Freedom to Douglass becomes an endless feeling of seeing every white and black man as a potential betrayer of his freedom. He receives help from friends and from his wife, Anna. Ultimately, he exercises an important symbolic act of freedom; he chooses his own name. Patrice Natalie Delevante

Gender in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself

In his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass depicts white southern identity during the period of American slavery and throughout the Civil War as a social construct, created by white masters and mistresses for the sole purpose of projecting themselves as the superior race. In order for white slaveholders to sustain their self-created identity, they must constantly reinforce their supposed superiority to their slaves. For both white men and white women, gender roles complicate this construct. Because in traditional southern society, men are superior to women, and whites are superior to blacks, relationships between the races complicate this system. Two episodes in Douglass’s narrative illustrate this complication. Captain Anthony and Mrs. Hicks, both slaveholders, “privilege” their slaves Aunt Hester and Douglass’s wife’s

cousin, respectively, until those slaves challenge the established gender roles. Douglass introduces Captain Anthony as the compulsive protector of his slave Aunt Hester. Although Hester is a domestic slave to a white southerner who “was not considered a rich slaveholder” from the perspectives of both white and black communities, Douglass describes her as possessing a “noble form, and of graceful proportions, having very few equals and fewer superiors, in personal appearance, among the colored or white women of [their] neighborhood.” White southern manhood prided itself on the ability to protect, nurture, and gain entitlements and access to white southern women; however, black women, being seen as literal property, were certainly not thought of as having their own sexual or romantic thoughts or desires. Captain Anthony strictly polices Aunt Hester’s whereabouts, limiting her tasks to those not requiring travel from the plantation in the evenings. Most important, Aunt Hester is forbidden from ever visiting or being seen with a local black male slave, Ned. The reader is not given the reasons for the prohibition but it can be inferred that Anthony does not want Aunt Hester to engage sexually with another man. She breaks this rule, however, and for her transgression, Aunt Hester is stripped to the waist and brutally whipped, a scene the young Douglass witnesses and later recalls vividly. Another episode illustrating gender roles involves Douglass’s white neighbor Mrs. Hicks. Mrs. Hicks shares her maternal space and bedroom with Douglass’ wife’s cousin, a girl of 15 or 16 at the time. Mrs. Hicks sleeps in her bed at night while Douglass’s wife’s cousin cares for her baby. Mrs. Hicks, Douglass relates, finds her baby “crying” and Douglass’ wife’s cousin “slow to move,” as a result of her “having lost rest for several nights,” from having had to tend to the Hicks baby. For this, Mrs. Hicks viciously attacks the teenager with a stick from the fireplace, breaking her “nose and breastbone” and ultimately killing her. The reader can conclude from Douglass’s description of that tragic night that white womanhood, disquieted by maternal rage precipitated by accidental neglect, ended the life of a young girl. White southern manhood is also called

364â•…â•… Douglass, Frederick into question as a result of this incident as well, for Douglass does not comment on Mr. Giles Hicks’s response to his baby being neglected on that night or allude to his subsequent prevention of or response to his wife’s act of murder. The white community does hear about the crime, and there is a “warrant issued for her arrest,” Douglass notes, however “it was never served.” In Douglass’s text, then, we can see how the dual cancers of slavery and sexism create a society in which no one but the white male has control over his own identity, and very human desires and needs of both whites and blacks often result in tragedy. Patrice Natalie Delevante

Race in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself

Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, illustrates how the idea of race is created and maintained by white southerners on plantations worked by slaves. Southern whites regard Africans as subhumans. Blacks are treated as “mere chattel,” nothing more and nothing less, because there is nothing less at the time. According to the rationalization for slavery, the thousands of blacks taken from Africa were best used as slaves, toiling as domestic and field labor on plantations. They were treated as animals and were physically, spiritually, socially, and psychologically “broken,” as Douglass describes, witnesses, and experiences for himself. Ideas about race within southern plantations limited Douglass’s and his fellow slaves’ ability to become fully realized human beings with authentic family heritages, individual liberty, and choices and responsibilities. Douglass experiences the effects of being born and raised black in a racist environment. He knows he was born about 1835, in Tuckahoe, Maryland, but because he is black he does not, as white children do, know the date of his birth. Douglass resents having “no accurate knowledge of his age” or the ability to obtain such knowledge because of his slave status. Such (forbidden) knowledge or the lack thereof becomes a major source of frustration and “unhappiness” for Douglass the slave. Douglass’s status as a slave also prevents him from knowing his biological

father. He suspects that his father is also his childhood master, but by law he is not allowed to investigate his suspicion. Furthermore, it is important to note that because Douglass suspects that he might be a mulatto (i.e., born of mixed racial parentage), he understands that public knowledge of his biracial status would undermine how race was viewed on southern plantations. People of mixed race were most threatening to a slave system so firmly based on factors meant to sharply divide blacks and whites. Race during slavery, then, is predicated on white purity and superiority in general; anything less is black. Douglass’s race, or, worse, his possible mixed race, does not allow him to claim to his patrilineage. He is simply black. Douglass’s race also prevents him from staying with his mother. He is separated from her as an infant when he is sold to another planter, as was not uncommon. Douglass is put under the supervision of an elder female house slave. He deduces that separating black families is necessary to maintain existing race relations. Preventing slaves from building familial connections made them less likely to revolt. Douglass states: “For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.” However, Douglass’s mother circumnavigates the system to some degree, sometimes walking for hours at night so that she may spend a few minutes putting him to bed or sleeping beside him. Race relations during slavery also prevent blacks from entering into other long-term familial relationships. Mothers and grandmothers die alone and miserable from a lifetime cut short by slavery. Slaves were prevented from returning to their families after being sold, even if only to visit. And escape carried with it the pain of never seeing family again. Race relations also granted whites rights to break up local black community gatherings and events such as the communal reading of the Bible on Sundays. It is under the guise of such reading that Douglass attempts to teach his fellow slaves to read. Instead, whites wish for blacks to engage in demoralizing activities, such as wrestling, boxing, and drunkenness, because racial codes classified them as inferiors.

The Hound of the Baskervillesâ•…â•… 365 Such activities, it is thought, affirm their inferiority and powerlessness. Racial codes imposed by whites also create racial distinctions within the slave community. Special privileges, such as being sent to work in the “big house,” create hierarchies among slaves, for those working indoors are considered to be “the smartest and most trustworthy,” because they had obtained the trust of the master. Slaves longed to be house attendants and worked diligently, wholeheartedly, and subserviently, competing among themselves to obtain this privilege. Douglass also notes that slaves ranked themselves based on the class background of their owners. A slave belonging to a poor white slaveholder is considered a disgrace by fellow slaves. Race relations heavily influence conversations and interactions between slave and slave master. The slave is required to enter a slave master’s presence with fear and reverence; they must “stand, listen, and tremble.” Douglass gets whipped by his former slaveholder, Mr. Covey, for refusing to behave in this manner while performing outside duties. Because of his physical resistance, he receives a lashing. Later, Douglass refuses again to “stand, listen, and tremble” when Mr. Covey demands that he do so after he has collapsed from exhaustion. After continuous threats, Douglass “stands” but fights, causing Mr. Covey to “tremble.” In the end, Douglass ends up winning; Mr. Covey refrains from physically harming Douglass for six months afterward. Douglass’s defiant behavior has turned race relations upside down. Slaveholders treat slaves as chattel because their race gives them the power to do so; blacks endure their whippings because of their powerlessness and belief that suffering was their fate. Established race relations kept whites slaveholders and blacks slaves for life. Whites remain white and blacks black. It was their identity and the norm, and understood as the standard way of living. Patrice Natalie Delevante

and April 1902 and marked the return of Sherlock Holmes after his presumed death in “The Final Problem.” Doyle had intended to end Holmes’s career and return to his more “serious” historical novels, but financial and public pressures forced him to revive his hero and return to the detective story. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes is consulted by James Mortimer, who believes the new owner of Baskerville Hall, Sir Henry, to be in grave danger due to the mysterious circumstances behind the death of the previous owner, Sir Charles Baskerville, and the family legend of a great fiery hound, brought about by the evil deeds of an ancestor, Hugo Baskerville. As Holmes’s representative, Watson is sent to Baskerville Hall to watch over Sir Henry. There he meets the Barrymores, an older couple who work at Baskerville Hall; Stapleton, the naturalist, and his sister; and Frankland, an elderly neighbor and lawsuit enthusiast. Watson also discovers that Selden, the Notting Hill murderer, who has escaped from prison to the moors around Baskerville Hall, is Mrs. Barrymore’s brother. Holmes discovers that Stapleton is actually Rodger Baskerville, a previously unknown heir to the Baskerville estate. Stapleton has forced his wife to masquerade as his sister and has created a “hell hound” through the use of a giant, starving mastiff, painted with phosphorus. Stapleton’s deeds are revealed when Holmes, Watson, and police detective Lestrade shoot and kill the hound, saving Sir Henry. Stapleton escapes into Grimpen Mire, where he is presumed to fall victim to its quicksand. The Hound of the Baskervilles follows Arthur Conan Doyle’s well-established format for the detective story: A crime is committed, no clues are found by local authorities, and through a process of logical deduction and investigation, Holmes reveals the truth behind the crime and saves the day. However, within this otherwise traditional detective story, Doyle explores complex themes such as cruelty, fate, social class, death, guilt, and heroism. Kelly Connelly

DOYLE, SIR ARTHUR CONANâ•… The Hound of the Baskervillesâ•… (1901–02)

Cruelty in The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles was published serially in the Strand Magazine between August 1901

In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle examines the contagious nature of cruelty and its wide-ranging impact. The cycle of cruelty begun

366â•…â•… Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan by Hugo Baskerville continues to affect the lives of the current generations, reaching far beyond its original victims. The story of the hound’s origins reveals the contagious nature of man’s cruelty. Hugo Baskerville, well known for his “wanton and cruel humor,” had convinced five or six of his compatriots to join him in the abduction of a young maiden who had spurned his advances. When the maiden escaped from her prison, a drunken guest at Hugo’s depraved party suggested releasing the hounds on her. Confused by wine and a mob mentality, the dinner guests stood idly by while the hounds were released, and the maiden’s fate was sealed. Although some of the guests eventually sobered up enough to realize the horror of their complicity and set out in pursuit of the maiden, it was too late: Both she and Hugo were dead by the jaws of the Hound of the Baskervilles, born of the cruelty not just of Hugo but of his willing accomplices. The infectious nature of cruelty can also be seen in Miss Stapleton’s inevitable collapse under the strain of her husband Rodger Baskerville’s evil deeds. In the guise of the naturalist Jack Stapleton, Baskerville has forced his wife to pretend to be his sister, in order to better use her in his cruel scheme. Although Mrs. Baskerville “had some inkling of his plans,” she can take only minimal steps to warn Sir Henry because of her great fear of her husband. Even more tragically, Mrs. Baskerville has become immune to the abuse she has suffered. When she is discovered bound to a beam and lashed by her husband, Mrs. Baskerville cries that her husband’s abuse is insignificant; it is only the loss of his love that matters to her: “But this is nothing—nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the hope that I had his love.” Mrs. Baskerville’s response to Stapleton’s cruelty has been a need to cling more tightly to him and to turn a blind eye to his evil deeds against others. Mrs. Baskerville’s corruption does not end with her admission of her continued love for her husband. When he is lost and presumed dead in the Grimpen Mire, Mrs. Baskerville “laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with fierce mer-

riment.” Her only regret is that she has not been more involved in the events leading to his death. The “eagerness and joy” Mrs. Baskerville displays as she, Sherlock Holmes, and Dr. Watson follow Stapleton’s trail to its dead end makes clear to Watson “the horror” and infectious nature of Stapleton’s cruelty. In Watson’s reaction to Selden, the Notting Hill murderer, the reader sees an alternate response to cruelty. Selden’s murders were marked by their “peculiar ferocity,” which resulted in the commutation of his death sentence due to doubts about his sanity. Mrs. Barrymore, Selden’s brother, remembers another side to Selden; she sees him not as the criminal he became but as “the little curly-headed boy” of her childhood. Mrs. Barrymore’s memory is hard to reconcile with the “terrible animal face” with which Watson is confronted, but it suggests that humanity lies behind the face of even the cruelest of criminals. When Selden is mistaken for Sir Henry and chased to his death by the hound, Watson and Holmes initially respond with a glee similar to that of Mrs. Baskerville upon realizing her husband was dead. Holmes dances and laughs upon discovering that the body he has assumed to be Sir Henry’s has the “beetling forehead, the sunken animal eyes” of the criminal Selden, and Watson’s immediate response is “thankfulness and joy.” However, Holmes refuses to leave “the poor wretch’s body” to the elements, and Watson recognizes that the death is still tragic. In breaking the news of Selden’s death to his sister, Watson again demonstrates that despite his cruelty and violence, Selden’s death is worthy of pity. Cruelty is rampant in the cursed moors of Devonshire, from Stapleton’s treatment of Laura Lyons to his savage abuse of the hound. Doyle demonstrates that such cruelty has the ability to contaminate all those in its path, but his sympathetic treatment of Selden also suggests that even the most cruel of humans is ultimately worthy of human compassion. Kelly Connelly

Fate in The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles, like most traditional detective stories, explores man’s ability to control his fate through the use of scientific investigation and reasoned analysis. The detective, in this case Sher-

The Hound of the Baskervillesâ•…â•… 367 lock Holmes, uses reason and deduction to demonstrate that what appears to be fate, to be destined and beyond the control of man, can be understood and controlled. As the novel opens, Sherlock Holmes speaks of “the dramatic moment of fate” as he and Watson await the arrival of Dr. Mortimer, who has come seeking their assistance in a mysterious affair. Despite his reference to fate, Holmes is a nonbeliever in the supernatural and in the ability of powers beyond our understanding to intervene in human affairs. Because of his scientific nature, he is inclined to disbelieve the tale of a hellhound bringing terrifying deaths to the Baskerville heirs as punishment for the sins of their forefather. Sir Charles, the most recent victim of the Baskerville curse, had accepted his lot and was certain that the “dreadful fate” arising from Hugo’s devilish deeds would be his end. His death, caused by fright upon seeing the hellhound in the flesh, leaves the only remaining heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, to face his fate. Dr. Mortimer has sought the assistance of Sherlock Holmes reluctantly, as he believes the realm of fate and the supernatural to be beyond the reach of even the most experienced of detectives. Holmes at first pretends to acknowledge this limitation. However, like most traditional detectives, he cannot accept that there are mysteries the human mind cannot understand. He knows that behind this fate, this curse, lies a human agent who can be found and punished. Sir Henry is less confident than Holmes that a human agent lies at the bottom of his ancestors’ tragic deaths. He is aware at all times of the past and the history that accompanies his inheritance of the Baskerville estate. For Sir Henry, the weight of the past continues into the present, guiding his actions and forcing him to confront his fate directly. Even Watson cannot help but feel the presence of the past as he walks along the mysterious moors. The neolithic homes of prehistoric men remind the current inhabitants that they were not the first to settle on the desolate moor. The presence of a civilization long since disappeared hangs over the moors and the Baskerville estate, reminding its inhabitants of the power of the past and of the temporary and fragile state of man.

Given the tale’s setting, it is not hard to understand why so many otherwise intelligent characters are willing to accept the fiendish existence of a fiery hellhound bringing the past of the Baskervilles to bear upon the family’s survivors. Holmes’s investigation, analysis, and deduction soon bring an end to this fear, proving that what has plagued the Baskerville family is not fate but “one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times.” Holmes and Watson expose Jack Stapleton— actually the son and namesake of Rodger Baskerville, who had fled to South America with a “sinister reputation”—as the earthly villain behind the mysterious events upon the moor. It has been not fate but human intervention that has caused the fear and violence experienced by the Baskervilles. Stapleton had used the family legend of a violent hellhound to scare Sir Charles to death and to attempt to do the same to Sir Henry. Holmes’s investigation has revealed a natural and human explanation for all events, bringing the question of a dreadful fate to rest. Before he is revealed as the villain, Stapleton, a local naturalist and butterfly enthusiast, bemoans “the fates” that brought ruin to a school he had founded in the north country. “The fates” brought an epidemic to the school, which was closed after the deaths of three students. Holmes reveals the truth, that the school “sank from disrepute into infamy” due to Stapleton’s inexperience. Again, the notion of fate is raised only to be rejected; Stapleton’s failure can be ascribed solely to human failings, and his condemnation of “the fates” only serves to underscore his very human role in his own downfall. The Hound of the Baskervilles demonstrates that a powerful belief in fate and providence remained in England in the early 20th century. Holmes’s ability to break the chain of “fated” events by solving the mystery, naming the criminal, and bringing an end to the curse of the Baskervilles suggests a strong opposing belief in the power of the human mind to understand and control destiny. Kelly Connelly

Heroism in The Hound of the Baskervilles

In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle both reinforces and challenges the Victorian view of heroism. Sherlock Holmes, with his process

368â•…â•… Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan of rational deduction and strict adherence to class standards, remains an ideal Victorian hero. However, Doyle adds the more complicated figures of Sir Henry Baskerville and Miss Stapleton, proving that heroism may not be as static a concept as his protagonist suggests. Sherlock Holmes’s reliance on scientific reason, or deduction, to solve even the most puzzling of mysteries reinforces the Victorian belief in the power of science and technology. Holmes represents, as James Mortimer explains, the “precisely scientific mind” of Alphonse Bertillon, a French criminologist responsible for developing a method of identifying criminals through body measurements, combined with a “practical” understanding of man’s affairs. Through “scientific use of the imagination,” observation of details no one else would observe, and a careful consideration of all possible hypotheses, Holmes demonstrates the power of reason to explain even the most seemingly inexplicable mysteries and to restore order to the community. In this sense, he represents a traditional Victorian view of heroism. Doyle’s emphasis on the restoration of order suggests a second ideal of the Victorian hero exemplified by Sherlock Holmes. For the Victorians, social order and class values were believed necessary to the peaceful maintenance of society. Holmes is in many respects the ideal representative of a system based on such solid class values. Even after glimpsing Holmes only from a distance, Barrymore recognizes his class status, describing the unknown figure of Holmes as “a kind of gentleman.” Although Holmes has become more active than usual in his pursuit of the criminal and has taken to living at times in an abandoned stone hut, “his chin [was] as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.” Holmes’ inescapable class status marks him as a traditional Victorian hero, maintaining social order not just through his pursuit of justice but through his adherence to class structure, as well. Sir Henry Baskerville similarly represents the Victorian ideal of class as an inherent and unchanging characteristic. Despite his adventures in America and his “appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air,” Sir Henry retains “something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his

bearing which indicated the gentleman.” However, he emerges as a more modern hero than his class background might initially suggest—for instance, he rejects the traditions of his ancestors in promising to install electric lamps around Baskerville Hall, with “a thousand candlepower Swan and Edison.” In his depiction of Sir Henry, Doyle suggests a hero who functions as a counterpoint to the staid Victorianism of Sherlock Holmes. While Sherlock Holmes’s trademark confidence, if not arrogance, never fails him, Sir Henry is depicted as a more realistic hero, one whose fears and uncertainties are on clear display. Watson initially views Sir Henry as one of a long line of “highblooded, fiery, and masterful men,” a man who possesses the bravery necessary to face his possible fate at the hands of the Hound of the Baskervilles. It is in Sir Henry’s nature, Watson suggests, to live in precisely the place of greatest danger to him. In fact, it is Sir Henry who leads Watson after the violent Notting Hill criminal, with no concern for his personal safety. Sir Henry’s courage is soon tested when he first hears the cry of the hound on the moor. His confidence is now shaken as he recognizes the difference between contemplating his fate in the safety of the city and facing it in the darkness of the moor. He continues on in his pursuit despite his fear, but his admission of his terror marks him as a more conflicted hero than Sherlock Holmes. Sir Henry will suffer for his bravery, needing a long journey to recover from his shattered nerves. His flawed but heroic nature suggests a new type of hero for a new age. Doyle moves even further beyond the traditional image of Victorian heroism in depicting the small but brave acts of Beryl Garcia, known to the residents of Dartmoor as Miss Stapleton, the sister of Jack Stapleton—but in reality his wife. Despite her long-standing fear of her husband’s brutal treatment, Miss Stapleton repeatedly engages in small acts designed to save the Baskerville heir, first warning him in writing and then attempting to warn him in person to leave Baskerville Hall. However, like Sir Henry, Miss Stapleton is not a purely heroic figure. She fails to report her husband’s murderous actions to the authorities, and her final act of rebellion

An American Tragedyâ•…â•… 369 against his evil plan is engendered not by a sense of justice but by fury at her husband’s infidelity. Beryl Stapleton’s small acts of unselfish heroism are complicated by her complicity with her husband, thus rendering her an unusual hero for the Victorian era. In his depiction of Miss Stapleton and Sir Henry, with their fears and complicated motivations, Arthur Conan Doyle renders a modern depiction of flawed heroism. While Sherlock Holmes may rarely stray from the Victorian ideal of a confident, intelligent, and firmly upper-class hero, Doyle’s minor characters indicate that heroism may come in many forms. Kelly Connelly

DREISER, THEODOREâ•… An American Tragedyâ•… (1925)

Theodore Dreiser’s sprawling best seller An American Tragedy is based on Chester Gillette’s 1906 murder of a poor, young, and unsophisticated factory girl at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. Popular almost immediately after publication, the novel spawned an adaptation and, subsequently, the 1951 movie A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift as George Eastman, Gillette’s fictional proxy (named Clyde Griffiths in Dreiser’s novel), Shelley Winters as the innocent Alice Tripp (Roberta Alden), Elizabeth Taylor as the socialite Angela Vickers (Sondra Finchley), and Raymond Burr as an opportunistic prosecuting attorney. Both novel and film have attained the status of classics in their respective genres. But the film’s purview is necessarily limited to the latter half of the novel dealing with George’s desperation when he learns of Alice’s unwanted pregnancy, his attempts to court the irrepressibly sensual Angela while placating the increasingly petulant Alice, his maniacal plotting to dispatch her at Big Bittern Lake, his subsequent flight to Angela at a lake resort, his pursuit and apprehension on the charge of murder, and his trial and execution. What the film omits, except by extrapolation, are the protagonist’s childhood, youth, and adolescence, all of which help to explain, if not justify, how a young man from a devout Christian family could contemplate, much less execute, so heinous an act

as to bring about the death of a poor girl dependent on him. Dreiser (1871–1945) does not give this background short shrift but examines it in minute detail. Book 1 and part of book 2 up to chapter 34 probe and analyze the causes of Clyde Griffith’s aberrant behavior. Dreiser uses corresponding episodes in books 1 and 2 to drive home the reality of Clyde’s neurosis and paranoia. Examples of corresponding episodes are his romantic attachments to the egocentric femme fatales Hortense Briggs in book 1 and Sondra in books 2 and 3 and his flight from responsibility and justice after the fatal accident in book 1 and after the death of Roberta in book 2. Among others, the themes of ambition, the American dream, and fate permeate this engrossing fiction. Jerome L. Wyant

Ambition in An American Tragedy

From the opening chapter of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, in which 12-year-old Clyde Griffiths accompanies his evangelical parents and siblings on one of their proselytizing missions, to his arrest (book 3, chapter 8) for the murder of his secret girlfriend, Clyde is driven by an inordinate and misdirected ambition. While ambition is not in itself a negative motivation when directed toward such laudable ends as self-improvement or happiness, it is morally corruptive when it leads one to seek personal success and self-aggrandizement by any means and at the expense of others. Regrettably, the ambition that motivates Clyde is, almost from the first, perverse and self-destructive. In his case, ambition becomes allied to wickedness. In Kansas City, even as a young boy and then an adolescent, Clyde becomes disaffected from his parents, who can barely provide for their family. Because they are poor and shabbily dressed, he sees them as “foolish and less than normal—cheap,” and he regards their efforts at “praying their way out” of their difficulties as ineffectual. Rather, Clyde’s ambition is to be as successful as his uncle Samuel, who owns a collar factory in upstate New York, where he reputedly resides with his family in wealth, opulence, and splendor. Accordingly, for Clyde, success is centered on possessing and enjoying material

370â•…â•… Dreiser, Theodore commodities, which were becoming more and more available for those with the means to afford them in postbellum American society—a society that was increasingly self-indulgent and narcissistic. Without an education, Clyde’s prospects are limited; nevertheless, he resolves to make his way by dint of an amiable personality and good looks, and he advances from being an assistant soda jerk to becoming a bellboy at the Green-Davidson, a landmark hotel in Kansas City. However, his ambition is tainted as it leads him to conceal his actual earnings from his needy family, including his pregnant and unmarried sister, Esta, so that he can engage in selfindulgent spending sprees: buying expensive clothes, carousing with his friends, visiting a prostitute, and courting the vapid and self-absorbed Hortense Briggs. The first book of the novel ends climactically with a hit-and-run accident, which results in a fatality. This exciting episode establishes the utter inadequacy of Clyde’s ability to cope when confronted with obstacles to his overambitious goals. Clyde’s ambition is intensified and focused in the society of Lycurgus, New York, where he is given a supervisory position at his uncle’s collar manufacturing plant. His uncle is a “King Croesus” whose lifestyle Clyde aspires to. But Clyde’s ambition is thwarted as his wealthy relatives, ashamed of his plebeian background and lack of education, distance themselves from him socially. Even more galling to Clyde’s self-esteem and sense of enterprise is the disdain his look-alike cousin, the smug and condescending Gilbert Griffiths shows him. Clyde’s experiences with women during his adolescent years mirror a troubled, psychopathic personality that distorts reality as well as augurs the causes and consequences of his subsequent relationships with Roberta, a pretty working girl at his uncle’s factory, and the exceedingly beautiful debutante and socialite Sondra Finchley. To satisfy his ambition and overcome his profound sense of alienation, Clyde resorts to using women as the most efficacious and expedient way to achieve his personal needs and social aspirations; therefore, he all but coerces the sincere Roberta, who loves him, into a more intimate relationship than she, on account of her moral upbringing, can feel comfortable with or

society condone—this, even while he fawns on the vain beauty Sondra, who also finds him attractive. At the risk of being exposed by Roberta, whom he has impregnated and, thereby, ostracized by the polite society to which he has finally gained access because of Sondra’s sponsorship, Clyde resolves to act. He then resorts to desperate measures in an attempt to achieve his ambitions. The third and final book of the novel, insofar as the ambition theme is concerned, deals with the district attorney Orville Mason’s dogged pursuit and prosecution of Clyde for Roberta’s murder. Mason is motivated, at least in part, by political considerations. Dreiser’s portrayal of the pugnacious Mason, while fair and nuanced, is, when all is said and done, that of an arch opportunist and, in that respect at least, not altogether unlike Clyde. Jerome L. Wyant

The American Dream in An American Tragedy

For Theodore Dreiser, the American dream was, except for a fortunate few, a chimera, an Eldorado to be quested after, a grail to seek and covet but never to grasp. Ignoring the law of the land therefore becomes for Clyde Griffiths, Dreiser’s hapless hero in An American Tragedy, the only viable way of achieving the dream, and in that quest, murder will be countenanced and justified. Achieving the dream by whatever means becomes paramount for Clyde; it is his only guiding principle. There can be little doubt that Dreiser himself is the prototype for his protagonist, Clyde Griffiths. The son of immigrant parents, his father a religious fanatic who lacked a scintilla of backbone, and bereft of practicality, the young Dreiser felt alienated from the American dream, a mythical construct built on the premise that the United States is “a land of plenty, of opportunity and of destiny.” Implicit in this formulation is the belief that with the exercise of talent and industry, one can amass fabulous wealth and live virtually as a king or potentate, surfeited in material possessions. While exceptional life stories of business tycoons like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller gave credence to the myth, Dreiser’s fiction gives the lie to such grandiose expectations as far as the masses are concerned. However hard they

An American Tragedyâ•…â•… 371 labor, Dreiser opines, they are consigned to aspire but never achieve and to live bleak lives of quiet desperation. In the first of the three books comprising the novel, Dreiser focuses on his youthful hero’s yearning for a better and different life and destiny than the one apparently meted out to him by chance or an improvident fate or God. Clyde is described as disaffected from his family, who subsist on the margins of poverty. While his parents are inured to poverty by long association and see their deprivation as the road to salvation, Clyde, even at 12, is unconvinced and mostly mortified; he is perceived by bystanders as disaffiliated from his parents’ proselytizing mission. He has a sense that life has something more to offer. Clyde is emotional and passionate, which triggers in him thoughts of self-improvement. He is clearly captivated by the promise of the American dream, an oasis in the desert of daily existence, and for evidence of his inherent hereditary right to its emoluments, he has the example of his uncle Samuel, his father’s entrepreneurial and successful brother, a “kind of Croesus” living in Lycurgus, a city modeled after upstate Cortland, New York. Dreiser offers the reader an inverse gender example of the pursuit of the American dream gone awry in his depiction of Clyde’s sister, Esta. While her passion is to possess pretty things, which is more venial and less consuming than Clyde’s, it has nearly as disastrous an outcome. In running away with a rogue who plies her with baubles, gets her pregnant, and then deserts her, she prefigures Roberta Alden, whom Clyde similarly seduces. In his desire to secure the American dream, the adolescent Clyde secures work, first as a soda jerk and then as a bellboy, and he is nothing if not ambitious and eager to please the patrons of the prestigious Green-Davidson Hotel. From the start, however, Clyde’s pursuit of the American dream is flawed by a false belief in his exceptionality and by his subterfuge in concealing from his dutiful and self-sacrificing mother the extent of his earnings. Clyde’s problems begin when he comes to realize that the American dream, while it may exist for the privileged few, is not accessible to him on the scale he has envisioned. While individuals are allowed to achieve and to have the opportunity to achieve in

the United States, one would be naive to think that there is not a social class hierarchy based on birth and station in life. While it is declining to some extent, this class hierarchy is still very important in wealth, in education, and in business. Clyde is dissuaded by experience that hard work will receive its just reward. He comes to understand that the accretion of wealth will take more years than he has to give to the experiment. Desiring gratification sooner than later, he looks increasingly for a more direct route to becoming wealthy and affluent. The incarnation of the American dream for Clyde is the young Lycurgus debutante Sondra Finchley, who embodies wealth, affluence, and a provocative but cool sensuality in one tidy bundle. His achieving the American dream would be, he thinks, accomplished if he could only marry Sondra. It is, however, one of the grotesque ironies of the novel that Clyde might have been able to realize his conception of the American dream if he had been more assiduous in his work, more careful in his choice of companions, and more candid with those acquired. Unable to defer his self-gratification and curb his rampant sexual appetite, he callously exploits the affections of poor Roberta Alden, whom he subsequently abandons to drown in a lake. Clyde’s rapacious pursuit of the American dream culminates in his execution for Roberta’s murder, for which he is morally culpable if legally not guilty. Perhaps Dreiser is intimating that a monomaniacal pursuit of the American dream is self-destructive and death-inducing. Jerome L. Wyant

Fate in An American Tragedy

The writer Theodore Dreiser most emulated was the 19th-century British author Thomas Hardy, in whose work fate was a major element. Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy is reminiscent of much of Hardy’s fiction, reflecting, as it does, the latter’s pessimistic and nihilistic philosophy. Both Hardy’s and Dreiser’s characters are buffeted by the tempestuous winds of chance. Dreiser was as cynical as Hardy, and his view of life scoffed at the possibility of securing selffulfillment and happiness in a world naturally indifferent at best and inimical at worst to one’s

372â•…â•… Dreiser, Theodore dreams and hopes. More so than Hardy, though, Dreiser, taking his cues from the philosopher Herbert Spencer, emphasized genetics and heredity, together with family and social environment, as influencing character and, therefore, as determiners of an individual’s fate. According to Spencer, traits of character were inherited; consequently, “Character determined fate and a bad fate meant a bad character.” Clyde Griffiths is one of Dreiser’s most fated characters. The reader of An American Tragedy attributes many of the determining and sometimes conflictive elements in him to genetics and heredity, as represented in Clyde by his improvident, feckless father and rigidly religious mother. In Dreiser’s fiction in general and in An American Tragedy in particular, there is less emphasis on the role of chance in an objective world and more on combinations of genetic and hormonal elements and their myriad interactions in the psychic life of the inner man. Clyde’s grandiose aspirations to achieve a gentrified status, comparable to his uncle’s, are squarely at odds with his concomitant cravings for instant sexual gratification from the girls and women with whom he comes in contact and, especially with the collar factory sirens whom he supervises at work: “His was a disposition easily and often intensely inflamed by the chemistry of sex and the formula of beauty. He could not easily withstand the appeal, let alone the call of sex.” Herbert Spencer, upon whom Dreiser depended for the philosophical underpinnings of his fiction, believed that desires were what drove human beings to move forward. As Spencer did, Dreiser dismissed free will, arguing that one’s fate was determined by the alignment of certain inner chemical reactions with others experienced as a result of his or her environment. Clyde’s Achilles’ heel is his sexual voracity. His repression of his libido in his quest for superior social station results in his being so sexually famished by the time he meets the pert Roberta Alden that he finds this plain country girl irresistible: “Day after day and because so much alone and, furthermore, because of so strong a chemic or temperamental pull╯.╯.╯.╯, he could no longer keep his eyes off her or she hers from him.” As the first part of the novel depicting Clyde’s childhood and adolescence makes clear, the social

environment of big-city life—fast-paced, teeming with strangers, and rife with competition—adversely impacts Clyde and his direction in life. He adapts, perforce, in order to survive (and thrive) in a Darwinian universe in which he feels alien, largely owing to his parents’ abjuration of its commoditybased, laissez-faire system. At first, he seems naturally ambitious and without guile, but he becomes increasingly opportunistic. At the Green-Davidson Hotel, he learns from peers how to manipulate others for his own personal aggrandizement, and he adopts the pack psychology of the group of pleasureseeking youths with whom he works: He parties with sexually permissive young women, and he has his first-ever sexual experience with a seasoned prostitute. Clearly, he sees women only as objects of self-gratification and not as bona fide human beings with dreams and aspirations. If one does not see others as being of equal value, it is difficult, if not impossible, to have empathy for them, and Clyde’s lack of empathy is conspicuous throughout. He conceals the amount of his wages from his mother, who is hard-pressed to make ends meet, and he ignores the plight of his pregnant sister, Esta, choosing instead to purchase an expensive coat for the minx Hortense Briggs, with whom he is infatuated. Confronted with a crisis, Clyde lacks responsibility. He cannot feel responsibility for others because he lacks any sense of personal identification with them. In the climactic car accident episode at the end of book 1, Dreiser focuses more on the panicked reactions of the other occupants of the car to take the spotlight off Clyde, who is less responsive to the effects of the crash than his friend Ratterer. Clyde’s response is more akin to that of Hortense Briggs, who is concerned only with the desecration of her vaunted beauty. Clyde is self-consumed: “Think of what would happen to him if he were caught.” This episode nicely foreshadows Clyde’s more culpable (because it was more planned) reaction after Roberta falls out of the boat and drowns in Big Bittern Lake at the end of book 2. Over all these tragic characters looms a dark cloud of destiny. There is the gathering sense for the reader that, no matter what the protagonists do, their fate is sealed. They are caught in a predica-

Sister Carrieâ•…â•… 373 ment, much like a conundrum. Whatever alternative they choose will bring horrific consequences in its wake. However, the protagonists of ancient Greek legend either accept or resign themselves to the inevitable suffering and, by dint of their perseverance, resolve, and dignity, transcend it. This is not the case with Clyde, who cannot accept the consequences of his actions because he has no sense of his perfidy in plotting the murder of Roberta Alden. He is far more pathetic than tragic. While exciting, the last book of the novel is actually anticlimactic as far as Clyde is concerned, in that it focuses exclusively on the machinations of the law to find Roberta’s murderer and then to convict and punish him. Orville Mason, the zealous prosecutor, and his agents pursue Clyde with the fervor and relentlessness of the Greek Erinyes (Furies), albeit more out of personal motives than for reasons of justice. There is, regrettably, no record or commentary on any moral improvement in Clyde. Jerome L. Wyant

DREISER, THEODOREâ•… Sister Carrieâ•… (1900)

Theodore Dreiser’s debut novel, Sister Carrie (1900), relates the story of Caroline (Carrie) Meeber, who leaves her modest small town at the age of 18 to search for happiness in the big city. In Chicago, she initially steps up from poverty after meeting a salesman, Charles Drouet, who introduces her to the world of urban wealth and comfort. Through Drouet, she also meets George Hurstwood, a bar manager with some social standing and an unhappy marriage. The second half of the narrative is set in New York City, where Carrie elopes with Hurstwood after leaving Drouet. For Carrie, each of her significant male acquaintances—including the last of them, Mr. Ames—represents another promise of a better life. Eventually, her dreams are partially fulfilled on the Broadway stage, while the abandoned Hurstwood gradually falls to the very bottom of the social ladder. In keeping with the naturalist tradition, Dreiser places primary emphasis in Sister Carrie on the daunting side of life in the metropolis and individuals’ limited ability to determine their own

fate. Daily life comes across as a tragedy in which the characters are repeatedly driven into action by pain, lust, greed, and vanity. Strong human emotion creates a counterforce to this sordidness in the novel. The discomforting contrast between poverty and luxury is most conspicuously visible in the plot through the intertwined strands of Carrie’s ascent to fame and Hurstwood’s dramatic downfall. The novel’s disturbing content, including Carrie’s illicit relationships with both Drouet and Hurstwood, created controversy at the time of publication and considerably delayed the book’s success. Markku Samela

Innocence and Experience in Sister Carrie

The first and last scenes of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900) illustrate the novel’s consistent theme of disappearing innocence. As the first chapter opens, the hopeful protagonist, nervously anticipating her arrival in the great city of Chicago, is described as “full of the illusions of ignorance and youth.” After reaching the brink of adulthood in a small town, 18-year-old Carrie feels the magnetism of the city in her very bones. In the ensuing narrative, Carrie moves through various stages of maturity, only to realize that experience comes at a severe price. In the last scene, sitting in her rocking chair and gazing down to New York’s Fifth Avenue, she feels “often disillusioned” despite having achieved a social position of relative fame and material wealth. Her disillusionment is increasingly apparent toward the end of the novel. Besides having lost some of her previous fascination with the metropolis and its inhabitants in general, she has seen the hollowness of people and ideas she used to hold in high regard. The whole story implies that innocence can be both a valuable resource and a serious liability. Carrie’s early attempts at finding employment in the factories of Chicago repeatedly fail because she lacks relevant experience; she encounters the same problem again while trying to launch her stage career. Beauty is the decisive asset that ultimately allows her to clear these hurdles. Similarly, in her private life she benefits from men who are attracted to her innocent beauty, suggestive of virginity. Both of her male companions, Charles Drouet and George Hurstwood, are initially motivated not only by

374â•…â•… Dreiser, Theodore sexual desire but also by an apparently genuine urge to protect her from the dog-eat-dog spirit of newly industrialized society. Nevertheless, both men also break their promises of marriage to her, thus speeding up the loss of her alluring innocence. For Carrie, experience translates into the freedom to make independent choices, even if experience itself sometimes requires immoral acts. This is evident when, while still in Chicago, her infidelity to Drouet causes him to lose his dominance over her: Unlike before, she “did not study him with eyes expressive of dependence.” Where experience is acquired, purity is lost. After moving to New York with Hurstwood, Carrie gradually gains the ability to assess her own situation realistically and to set standards for herself. The character of Mr. Ames, albeit only a passing acquaintance for her, contributes significantly to her intellectual maturity by offering an example in cultural and social awareness. Still in her 20s, the heroine adapts some of her value judgments and preferences directly from Ames. Dreiser’s novel does not, however, depict Carrie’s journey as a straightforward one from innocence to experience. Despite being exposed to cynicism, she preserves her dream of happiness, guided—as the narrator states in the end—by emotion rather than reason. This relative innocence of the protagonist places Sister Carrie firmly within American literary tradition and enables the story to illustrate powerfully the effects that various social forces have on the individual. On the level of social and personal growth, the novel contrasts experience with the dynamism of youth. While experience can become valuable in a competitive society, Dreiser makes clear that the economic system primarily feeds on youthful energy. More important, experience cannot substitute for youth. Despite Carrie’s talent as an actress, she has her pretty face to thank for her success on Broadway. In contrast, Hurstwood proves incapable of maintaining his social status and, ultimately, his livelihood, partly due to his “handicap of age,” which renders his prior success and work experience irrelevant, even undesirable. For employers, he discovers, inexperienced workers are also inexpensive, whereas Hurstwood’s own knowledge and skills have lost their marketable value. Carrie sees the deepening

wrinkles on his face and eventually abandons him to poverty, intuitively understanding that he has become an impediment to her personal progress. At the end of the novel, Carrie decisively leaves behind both of the men who introduced her to the metropolis when she was an innocent girl. At the age of 27, she is perhaps at the height of her career, while Hurstwood, once a shining example of social competence, has lost everything and been driven to suicide. Dreiser’s novel seems to point to the pessimistic conclusion that neither innocence nor experience has permanent value: Sooner or later society will consume the former and ignore the latter. Markku Salmela

Sex and Sexuality in Sister Carrie

When Theodore Dreiser wrote Sister Carrie (1900), explicit representation of sexuality was just beginning to appear in popular fiction. Much of the suggestive description in Dreiser’s original manuscript was removed during the editorial process. Although sex is a motivating force behind many of the main events in the story, it remains mostly between the lines. However, numerous details in the text hint at the untold. From the very first scene, Caroline (Carrie) Meeber’s attractiveness in the eyes of men seems her chief asset. After meeting Charles Drouet, she realizes “that she was of interest to him from the one standpoint which a woman both delights in and fears.” Subsequently, it is this male desire—embodied, above all, in Drouet and her other lover, George Hurstwood—that facilitates Carrie’s progress both professionally and in social circles. Eventually, it opens doors to high society and the theater stage. Male characters in the novel seem powerfully driven by their animal instinct: Drouet is practically controlled by his “inborn desire” for women, and Hurstwood craves excitement after his marriage has grown stale. Having traveled to Philadelphia— ostensibly on business—and “enjoyed himself thoroughly” there, he meets Carrie and falls wildly in love. To illustrate both men’s lust, Dreiser titles both chapters 20 and 21 “The Lure of the Spirit: The Flesh in Pursuit.” Carrie gradually learns to feed this desire and to see social opportunity in it. The heroine spends almost a year living with Drouet in Chicago and another several years with

Sister Carrieâ•…â•… 375 Hurstwood in New York City. Her relationships with both of her male protectors resemble marriage in all practical respects. After Drouet’s original conquest of Carrie, she thinks “with mournful misgivings” about something she has lost, apparently her virginity, but considers desire itself her excuse: “The voice of want made answer for her.” Yet, given that she benefits financially from the arrangement, one could interpret this desire of hers as primarily aimed at material things. Likewise, during her period of cohabitation with Hurstwood, she seems mainly concerned with matters of domestic economy. Despite the illicit nature of the relationships and both men’s obvious craving for her, from Carrie’s own point of view, all interaction is peculiarly asexual. She is only vaguely conscious of her own desirability, which merely adds to her innocent appeal from the male perspective. Female sexual desire, however, remains a mystery: Carrie’s own passions are consistently directed at social and material achievement. At the time of the novel’s publication, the taboo of female sexuality was being unraveled by other American texts such as Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), but in Sister Carrie lust is still largely a property of the male brain. Significantly, while initially living with her sister’s family in Chicago, Carrie has an unfortunate habit of standing at the doorway of the building, as if on display. Throughout the story, there are implications of the value of sexuality as a type of practical currency; in effect, Carrie sells herself to Drouet for nice clothes and a place to live. This arrangement, just like her later union with Hurstwood, suggests a simple exchange in which she receives a livelihood and he intimacy. Her prolonged attempts to find an acting role on Broadway also subtly hint at prostitution: Hurstwood is “dead to the horror of ” her plan to “try some of the managers” of theater companies directly. Carrie’s good looks finally win her a job through a man “who judged women as another would horseflesh.” Thus, sexual desirability is shown to serve as raw material for society’s inherent economies, a significant factor in the equations of survival in the urban jungle. In time, Carrie’s ascent suggests, sex appeal is likely to transform into wealth, fame, and social standing.

Although Hurstwood’s desire for Carrie wanes after financial hardship sets in, the shared bed remains an important symbol. Her decision to start sleeping alone in a separate room represents the beginning of the end, “a grim blow” to him, marking the final loss of his power and influence over her. Here and elsewhere, focusing on sexuality as one of the determining factors of human existence, Dreiser’s novel emphasizes that people are animals of flesh and blood, conditioned by biology as much as by social demands. Markku Samela

Social Class in Sister Carrie

Carrie Meeber, the title character of Theodore Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie (1900), has a natural instinct for observing the outward signs of social class. She decides to ignore the lower-class boys and girls at the Chicago factory where she starts working after her arrival in the city, for “there was something hard and low about it all.” Subsequently, she largely chooses her male companions—first Charles Drouet, then George Hurstwood—by the promise of personal advance that they represent. The story barely distinguishes between wealth and class; in the long run, money brings about high social standing. Conversely, status also functions as a type of capital: something that ensures one’s ability to bargain. Throughout the novel, outward material clues are used to indicate someone’s class status. This is also why characters pay so much attention to surface appearances. The urban individuals portrayed in the text seem to assume that the right choices as a consumer—the right clothes, jewelry, shoes, interior furnishings, linen, and so forth—eventually have a positive effect on one’s position in society’s hierarchies. Drouet, for example, also dreaming of social ascent, “only craved the best, as his mind conceived it.” Similarly, Hurstwood elevates his own reputation and social rank by emphasizing his cultivated taste in cigars and alcohol. His smoothness of manner has helped to raise him to “our great American upper class—the first grade below the luxuriously rich.” For Carrie, who has instinctively realized how materialistic society works, seeing expensive merchandise is a life-altering experience. She admires Drouet, whose “rings almost spoke” to her; the feel

376â•…â•… DuBois, W. E. B. of $10 bills; hats, dresses, and little accessories; and the “shine and rustle of new things.” Pieces of clothing speak to her as well, and a significant symbol of the upper class is “the roll of cushioned carriages.” While problems relating to personal finances bother her throughout the story, it is through these material things that consciousness of social class takes hold of Carrie. A pertinent example of a class distinction coded in personal apparel is Carrie’s observation of Hurstwood’s shoes, made of soft leather and elegantly “polished only to a dull shine.” This proves his superiority over Drouet, whose common leather shoes are always polished to the extreme, betraying the immaturity or vanity of an upstart. Drouet, however, is the only one among the three main characters whose status in society remains fairly constant throughout the story. Owing to her looks, Carrie’s social standing improves dramatically both in Chicago and in New York, while Hurstwood’s eventually collapses to the very bottom. In Sister Carrie, the permanence of one’s social standing has few guarantees. Hurstwood’s history illustrates how easily social status can be lost in the face of adversity. With luck and ruthless determination, upward mobility is also possible, but Dreiser’s skeptical vision makes it clear that for every success there are several failures. In contrast to high society, extreme poverty is constantly present in the city. People at the foot of the social ladder, nearly invisible to the well-to-do, beg in the streets and stand in line for a bed. When a desperate man asks for a dime, Hurstwood, still in his social and economic prime, “scarcely noticed the incident. Carrie quickly forgot.” Ironically, at the end of the story, it is Hurstwood himself who has to beg for alms. Yesterday’s achievements can turn dramatically into tomorrow’s failure. Like many American writers at turn of the century, Dreiser was influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and related social philosophies. Given the complexity of urban society as represented in the book, the idea of “survival of the fittest” may not explain any dramatic turns of plot, but it does lurk persistently behind many characters’ words and actions. The need to elevate oneself, or to maintain the image of high social standing, seems a vital instinct as success is largely based on appear-

ances, reputations, and personal connections. After Carrie’s ascent to stardom, Hurstwood, having lost his money and comfortable life, swears at a scornful theater attendant who prevents him from seeing her: “I—I hired such people as you once.” This line points at a central element of Dreiser’s commentary on society. Social hierarchies may occasionally be turned upside down and relations of power reversed, but the immense effect of such hierarchies on people’s lives remains. Markku Samela

DUBOIS, W. E. B.â•… The Souls of Black Folkâ•… (1903)

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. DuBois (1868– 1963) is a foundational text in the study of American and African-American struggles, successes, and limitations during the post–Civil War era. After slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in January of 1865, African Americans began to develop in the fields of business, education, and politics. However, discrimination based on race continued to plague many African Americans as they sought these social, political, and economic advancements. DuBois compares the challenges facing blacks to these of the biblical Israelites as they sought a “Promised Land” through fruitful labor and spiritual growth. Unbeknownst to the Israelites they would have to wait another 40 years to enter this “Promised Land.” Comparably, American blacks were forced to wait in a kind of limbo, where their paths overtook their former lives as southern slaves and future lives as free and successful citizens. They experienced “double consciousness,” seeing the now free world through the eyes of both formerly enslaved and free people. DuBois’s text is filled with commandments of sorts—personal advice for blacks to live by in order to advance, while never forgetting their sorrowful past. He encourages educated blacks to teach uneducated members of their community. He coins the term “Talented Tenth,” to refer to educated blacks, whom he encourages to liberate the race through mentoring and leadership. The “Talented Tenth,” DuBois believed, would lead blacks into public influence as a respected and visible voting

The Souls of Black Folkâ•…â•… 377 population and help turn them away from black leaders such as Booker T. Washington, who promoted industrial education. For DuBois, a new soul of black folk was emerging during post-slavery that could and would help first to alleviate black social ills and ultimately elevate and transform black life from the top down. Patrice Natalie Delevante

Gender in The Souls of Black Folk

Many works of contemporary African-American literature, such as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, and Toni Morrison’s Sula and The Bluest Eye, elucidate the specific difficulties black women have in their struggle to overcome the legacies of slavery. Not only are they doubly oppressed, because of their race and their gender, but many black women must shoulder the matriarchal burden alone, their men having succumbed to the pain of emasculation and frustration. In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. DuBois describes the suffering experienced by and the strength found in black southern women living as slaves through the Civil War, attempting to rebuild their communities during the Reconstruction era, and now gaining access to American progress and liberties. DuBois shares some of their emotional and subsequent physical responses due to war and its aftermath: Black mothers are “frightened” and unable to provide food and shelter for their children, a state that results in their now homeless husbands and children appearing “stalwart” in stature. DuBois observes black women dreaming and striving to overcome the many limitations placed on them because of southern racist attitudes. He narrates his everyday sightings and conversations with local black mothers, referring to one as a “magnificent Amazon” and praising her children as “beautiful” and “strong.” He also depicts young black women such as Josie, who uses determination to carry out maternal and domestic duties at home, labor for financial gain, and study rigorously to excel in DuBois’s classroom. DuBois, a student at Fisk University looking to practice teaching during “break,” meets Josie, a prospective student enthusiastic about learning, on his trip to find a teaching job in one of the southern

cities. Fisk’s black male students, including DuBois, regard themselves as “beyond the Veil,” a statement describing how they view themselves after securing educational advancement at Fisk to eliminate the characteristics of generations of black southerners: the “slave mentality,” or apathy, ignorance, and subservience. DuBois specifically refers to the “Veil” as a symbolic representation of the black slave mentality in force as white racist codes label blacks as being “born with a veil”; following emancipation, black slaves were further suppressed within the “veil” due to discriminatory practices in employment and higher education as well as in black voter turnout despite the sanction of the Fifteenth Amendment (1870), allowing blacks the right to vote. DuBois calls for young black America to pursue educational advancements and develop American dreams “beyond the Veil,” all the while applying forms of critical consciousness when dealing with social prejudices—“self-consciousness, self-realization [and] self-respect.” Ironically, a weary DuBois (“rest[ing]” after “cross[ing] the stream at Watertown”), has a conversation with a black woman born without the “veil,” or living as if her “veil” does not exist, for Josie “talk[s] fast and loud, with much earnestness and energy” about attending school after the war. Josie is a 20-something, brown-skinned, “thin,” and “homely” black woman, “longing” for an education and “learn[ing],” possibly at the school in the process of being built “over the hill.” DuBois not only enters into discussion with Josie about the school; he also visits her family. While meeting her mother, father, and siblings, he observes Josie’s distinct position within the family, referring to her as its “center” but also as an embodiment of both her maternal and paternal figures. Josie is prone to scold her brothers John and Jim, similar to her mother; she remains “faithful” like her father, but most important, she showcases “a certain fineness, the shadow of an unconscious moral heroism that would willingly give all of life to make life broader, deeper, and fuller for her and hers.” Josie is also a “child woman” at home, for she plays with her siblings but also sews and handles domestic duties with diligence. DuBois describes Josie as displaying similar marks of heroism within her studies, for once

378â•…â•… DuBois, W. E. B. the school opens and he begins teaching her along with her many classmates, Josie studies “doggedly,” displaying herself (first in DuBois’s eyes) as “child woman amid work and worry.” Josie already lives and studies “beyond the Veil” of both genders in black America, and she now receives instructions in the classroom from an American black who is himself “beyond the Veil.” But her family problems become “the Veil that [hangs] between [her] and Opportunity.” Josie’s financial duties to her family prevent her from attending school, especially with recent “crop fail[ures]” and local racism. Moreover, Josie suffers distress from seeing her “angry” brother, Jim, imprisoned in a Lebanon jail due to accusations of “stealing wheat,” only to witness Jim and another brother, John, steal money from her purse. DuBois links Josie’s now “thin” appearance and “silence” with her family situation, but he continues to remind the reader of Josie’s determination to persevere through her family veil, for she labors in Nashville and helps her brother, Dennis, “the carpenter,” and builder of “six” additional rooms in the family home, to further furnish and maintain the family home. Nonetheless, family woes, such as the announcement of her sister Lizzie’s pregnancy, diminish her prospects and “vision of schooldays,” and her physical appearance becomes what DuBois describes earlier as “homely.” Josie’s attempts to live, work, and learn “beyond the Veil” crumble due to the limited vision and life choices made within her family. She becomes a failed heroic figure in the end, for although she challenges and constructs new roles as a daughter, sister, worker, and student by becoming a mother, father, and primary financial provider for the family, all the while trying to maintain her work and school status, she cannot retain social and educational mobility within such complex and challenging familial roles and social responsibilities. In a later chapter in Souls, “Of the Wings of Atlanta,” DuBois calls for the black community to become cultural bearers of “knowledge” in the world so as to eliminate ignorance and encourage students such as Josie to remain students, committed to their own roles as cultural bearers. For Josie, additional support from the community may have given her the chance to remain in school; however, and perhaps nonetheless, she teaches DuBois and his readers “an unconscious

moral heroism” that remains intact throughout a most positive yet difficult life (74). Patrice Natalie Delevante

Identity in The Souls of Black Folks

In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. DuBois first investigates why black identity is normally summed up by nonblacks with the question: “How does it feel to be a problem?” DuBois rarely answers this question when asked personally; rather, he sees being “a problem” as something that is “peculiar” to African Americans. He uses the metaphor of the “veil” to describe black America’s inherent peculiarity: the inability to gain access to opportunities available to nonblacks within the United States. The veil is both a blessing, because it grants blacks multiple ways of looking at the world, and a curse, because nonblacks use the veil to oppress blacks and render them invisible. DuBois refers to the ability to see the world as a Negro and a nonblack as “double sight,” a “double consciousness.” For example, the interaction between blacks and whites during slavery allowed blacks to see how whites discern and justify their “contempt and pity” of blacks. DuBois longs for blacks to overcome “the veil,” become truer Negroes and Americans, without being regarded with disdain by white America. Throughout the text, DuBois makes comparisons between black America and the biblical Jews. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years before reaching their destination. DuBois sees a similar parallel with ex-slaves postemancipation. Blacks were granted freedom from whites—liberty, to be more exact—but in the coming years, they bore the weight of freedom with the problems caused by prejudice, harassment, poverty, homelessness, and rape, among others. DuBois refers to this as a “waste of double aims,” which causes the black artists to seek alternative ways to gain worth and purpose. Though the Freedmen’s Aid societies pushed for the legalization of black marriages, payment of black soldiers, free black education, and increased labor opportunities, as well as land ownership, they failed to make blacks permanent productive freemen due to strong outside opposition and internal poor choices.

The Souls of Black Folkâ•…â•… 379 To give readers an example of what he sees as a problematic way of thinking, DuBois critically examines the rhetoric of the black educator Booker T. Washington (1856–1915). Washington gained prominence with his founding of the Tuskegee Institute and with lectures and speeches about black life. During his speech known as the “Atlanta Address”—which DuBois contemptuously called the “Atlanta Compromise”—Washington called for blacks to postpone ambitious educational and political aspirations and the fight for civil rights and instead seek an industrial education. In other words, Washington felt that blacks had to work from the “bottom up” to secure material and industrial wealth. DuBois explains that blacks are too impatient for such gradual advancement, and he sees current social attitudes as inhibiting black intellectual and political capabilities. He calls Washington’s plan “a gospel of Work and Money” that reaffirms white America’s assumptions of blacks as simple and inferior laborers. Though many in the world deem blacks to be subhuman, fraudulent, and inferior, DuBois rejoices that black graduates of higher education are creating new black identities as teachers, principals, and presidents of colleges. He refers to them as the “Talented Tenth” and calls for black colleges to sustain popular education and the ambitions and training of the Talented Tenth. In other words, black higher education should seek to create and sustain the new Negro identity with leadership potential. Interracial dialogue and cooperation between blacks and whites are also necessary factors to salvaging the negative perceptions of African Americans and embracing the New Negro. However, though places such as the Black Belt of Georgia—once filled with slaves—contain elements of a promising new black identity, they are also filled with the realities of nihilism, ignorance, and ghetto culture, “full of untold story, of tragedy and laughter, and the rich legacy of human life; shadowed with a tragic past, and big with future promise!” Black farm labor here is tied to southern cotton production. Despite the cotton crisis within Dougherty County, for example, and though black farmers and their families live in congested and horrendous living conditions, their identities overall remained unaffected.

They are honorable persons, DuBois concludes, respecting codes such as female chastity, modesty, and marriage. He notes that in order for black laborers’ conditions to improve, there needs to be communal help and accountability such as “careful personal guidance, group leadership of men .╯.╯. to train them to foresight, carefulness and honesty.” Black laborers’ identity can this be part of the New Negro identity. DuBois also equates African-American religion as synonymous with Negro identity: “In the South, at least, practically every American Negro is a church member.” Patrice Natalie Delevante

Tradition in The Souls of Black Folks

In The Souls of Black Folks, W. E. B. DuBois refers to central, distinctive, and endearing features of African-American life during the eras of slavery and postemancipation as traditions. Traditions, such as Negro spirituals, became everyday and celebratory rituals, while other more personal actions, such as overcoming oppression through educational advancement, opened up new traditions for black progress. Blacks sang sorrow songs to reveal their despair as slaves. DuBois refers to such sorrowfully intense yet exhilarating and rhythmic “song[s] and exhortation[s]” as very telling of slaves’ longing for freedom. Sorrow songs also revealed their pleas (and even “curses”) to their Christian faith to free them from oppression. DuBois notes that slaves’ sorrow songs are essentially American: “There is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave.” Blacks celebrated their freedom after the Civil War with joyous songs proclaiming liberty “shouts” because “God has brought [their] liberty” (from the Negro spiritual song “Shout for Freedom”). However, within joyous songs of freedom also came sad songs of despair, precisely because freedom came without knowledge or understanding of what to do with it once it was achieved. Southern blacks, now mostly sharecroppers, faced discrimination when seeking land ownership or schooling for their children. More educated blacks faced racism while trying to secure voting rights or seeking higher education. Once again, sorrow songs explored their anxieties with freedom and their desire to overcome such anxiety.

380â•…â•… Edwards, Jonathan DuBois disagreed strongly with leaders such as Booker T. Washington, who started a new tradition of black leadership. Washington gained prominence with a “gospel of Work and Money.” He encouraged blacks to seek industrial progress and advancements while forgoing higher education or political gains and aspirations. Overall, Washington wanted blacks to achieve in the future, but not now. DuBois, however, advocated a new black leadership that sought socioeconomic and political mobility and equal civil rights. He wanted African Americans to gain influence in higher education as trainers of black teachers and even as philanthropists. New black leadership for DuBois entailed blacks helping blacks develop and maintain healthy minds and moral personalities. In The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois praises emerging traditions of successful black leadership within businesses and the arts. He admires their moral makeup: They disprove characteristics attached to blacks during slavery, including being unfairly labeled complacent, clownish, lazy, and ignorant. However, DuBois carefully warns blacks of the pitfalls of this newly created African American, including complacency from existing progress or distractions from future progress due to the love and abuses of money. Instead, he encourages such blacks to pursue “patience, humility, manners, and taste,” but from the top of the socioeconomic ladder. Essentially, he wants them to develop successful characteristics for successful blacks. He calls this group of highly successful and educated blacks the “Talented Tenth,” and in his eyes, they are necessary for black progress and political influence. DuBois considers black religious traditions that existed during slavery as central for blacks to remember and commemorate within their newly successful lives. Such religious experiences connected slaves inextricably and “visibly” to each other, both socially and spiritually, and to God. The black church is the center for black religious connections. DuBois refers to the preacher as “the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil,” primarily because he is a very influential and revered person within the community, awed for his eloquence and swagger. He leads not only religious cries and mourning but also the “stamping, shrieking, and shouting” (known as “the Frenzy”) that

characterizes Negro revivals (yearly large religious gatherings within the “backwoods of the South”). The preacher possesses social and political influence, and black bishops are prominent members of the community: DuBois calls them “the most powerful Negro rulers of the world.” DuBois also mentions characteristics peculiar to African Americans outside the black church. Local priests and medicine men are also important parts of the Negro religious experience: They heal, comfort, and prophesy. Blacks also connect with other religions outside the black church, such as voodooism. These connections were originally an attempt to seek refuge and freedom from the oppression of slavery. Furthermore, some slaves deviated from their religious connections due to their lack of hope in being free. Radical blacks subsequently abandoned the church for alternative ways to cope with their fight with racism and oppression. According to DuBois, other blacks turned to crimes and other forms of violent behavior. Black traditions, as articulated in The Souls of Black Folks, are soulful expressions that continue to bring soul and black(ness) to American history and experience. Patrice Natalie Delevante

EDWARDS, JONATHANâ•… “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”â•… (1741)

A sermon delivered by the theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) on July 8, 1741, in Enfield, Connecticut, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” endures as a classic of oratory and rhetoric. It provides insights into the feelings and ideologies that swept through the colonies during the First Great Awakening, a period of religious revival from about 1730 to 1755. Edwards builds his sermon from Deuteronomy 32:35—“Their foot shall slide in due time”—in an attempt to “awaken” his congregation to ideas about God’s mercy, grace, and wrath, and about the duties of Christian life. Edwards aims his message at the “unregenerate” Christian—someone who has accepted church doctrine but not yet accepted the necessity of God’s grace—and the sermon relies on an abundance of figurative language to prove that God’s grace is not

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”â•…â•… 381 obligatory and the path to hell is easily found. At one point, Edwards likens humankind’s wickedness to “lead” which drags one down “with great weight and pressure towards hell.” Held over the “pit of Hell,” a person has no refuge save for the grace of God—“all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.” Edwards’s sermon is often characterized as one of “fire and brimstone” due to its vivid imagery and frequent appeals to fear as a motivating tool. However, the sermon is also a carefully constructed piece of rhetoric, moving from theory to application and ending with a call to action—“now awake and fly from the wrath to come.” Jeff Pettineo

Fate in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

Fate figures prominently in Jonathan Edwards’s sermon, for the passage on which the sermon is constructed deals with the idea of fate implicitly—a movement, or “sliding” toward hell. One of the main tenets of Calvinism is the idea of “unconditional election”: God chooses who will be saved based on grace and mercy. God has “worked out,” in a sense, the fates of individuals. If a person is predestined, however, what is the merit of faith or grace or deeds? The Calvinist response is that God is capable of bringing all to him in time, and human deeds and works are part of his deterministic plan. With this context in mind, Edwards demonstrates, primarily through an exposition and extension of the passage from Deuteronomy cited in the introduction, how God’s grace and mercy are able to suspend one above the “fiery pit of hell” toward which the unregenerate man is always falling. The fated nature of the unregenerate man is described as always tending toward corruption, sin, or destruction, and Edwards uses a series of metaphors to show how God is able to preserve one from falling into such a state. One of the inferences Edwards makes regarding the verse from Deuteronomy is that “They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell.” Edwards is referring to the “unregenerate” men of his congregation, whom he likens to the “wicked

unbelieving Israelites.” He explains that although the Israelites were “God’s visible people” and “lived under the means of grace,” they decided, rather, to remain “void of counsel.” Thus, the wicked, or unregenerate, are already fated, or predestined, for hell, to the extent that God’s mercy has no obligation to save them. Edwards points to John 3:18 to support his point—“He that believeth not is condemned already”; therefore, every unconverted man is destined for hell, or as Edwards puts it, “every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is .╯.╯. it is the place that justice, and God’s word, and the sentence of his unchangeable law, assign to him.” Thus, he uses the first section of his sermon to provide warrants for the ideas of fate and predestination, a theoretical groundwork that he uses in turn to persuade the “unregenerate” of the necessity for accepting God’s mercy. When attempting to come to terms with the ideas of fate, it is worth considering how Edwards conceives of will, or human agency. In one line of argument, he anticipates the counterclaims against the ideas of fate, particularly entertaining the idea of ignoring the doctrine. If one attempts to reject the “knowledge” of hell, or basically the “idea” of hell, as a way of escaping the “reality” of hell, the “solution” is merely a delusion, and he hypothesizes that if one were able to talk to a person who had been damned, one might discover, according to Edwards, that the damned would confess, “No, I never intended to come here: I had laid out matters otherwise in my mind.” Thus, despite human will or agency in intent, the reality is that it is God’s will that determines an individual’s fate, though the action of accepting God’s grace is a necessary piece of the deterministic puzzle. Edwards provides the metaphor of God’s hand, constantly holding aloft the rebellious: “And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose this morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell .╯.╯.” In the last section of his sermon, Edwards appeals to the “youth” of the congregation to consider the consequences of neglect—“hardness of heart.” That is, the unregenerate will be left to bear the “fierceness and wrath of an infinite God.” How-

382â•…â•… Edwards, Jonathan ever, if a member of the church decides to accept Christ, he or she will be “born again,” as Edwards implores the unconverted to “awake and fly from the wrath to come.” With almost abusive use of “fire-and-brimstone” imagery and the constant reminders of humankind’s depravity, Edwards’s sermon provides insights into how oratory and rhetoric were used to elaborate theological concepts such as fate and will. Although the Calvinist ideas of predestination, or “unconditional election,” were not without its inherent logical entanglements and ideological challengers, Edwards’s sermon demonstrates an attempt to explain, in highly figurative language, a complex theological principle, revealing his skill as an orator, theologian, preacher, and rhetorician. Jeff Pettineo

Justice in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

One point Jonathan Edwards stresses in his sermon is that God’s grace keeps the “unregenerate” man out of hell. Edwards tries to show that this grace is not obligatory but part of “God’s mere pleasure”—God’s “sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty.” This “attitude” is what Edwards connects to God’s sense of justice. At the time Edwards gave his sermon, the North American colonies were experiencing a religious revival, and the “unregenerate man” he speaks of is the man who had not yet accepted the necessity of the grace of God as a means of salvation. Thus, Edwards’s extensive use of “fire-and-brimstone” imagery is intended to “awaken” the unregenerate to this phenomenon of grace, largely through an appeal to fear but also by attempting to demonstrate that spirituality is a duty, and God’s justice is in no way obligatory but, rather, merited. Relying on the books of Ezekiel and Proverbs, Edwards seeks to show that pity, grace, punishment are commensurate with spiritual awakening: Consider this, you that are here present, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fierceness of his anger, implies, that he will inflict wrath without

any pity. When God beholds the ineffable extremity of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed, and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom; he will have no compassion upon you .╯.╯. Although Edwards characterizes God as wrathful, it is a wrath borne out of a sense of right and wrong, and the faithful adherent must understand God’s sense of justice in order to avoid falling into the “fiery pit” of hell. One passage to keep in mind when studying Edwards or Calvinism is Romans 9:14–16, which discusses justice in terms of God’s mercy: “What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? God forbid! For he saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. And I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.” Edwards describes human depravity in terms of the sliding metaphor from Deuteronomy 32:35. From this metaphor, Edwards makes several inferences about the innate depravity of humankind. One of these conclusions is that humankind is always near destruction, always “exposed” to slippery ground; another inference is that humans are capable of falling “of themselves,” meaning human will is capable of error of its own accord, not needing another’s influence to fail. Edwards’s main conclusion based on this initial series of observations is that “the mere pleasure of God” is the only thing that keeps humankind out of hell—the “irresistible grace” of God. Since God’s grace is a facet of his will, Edwards proceeds to show that God indeed has the power and authority to punish the wicked, and God is not bound in any way to display his wrath. Among other ideas, Edwards points out that “divine justice” necessitates the punishment of sin, and that lack of faith is already a condition for condemnation. Edwards relies on John 3:18 to support his claim about faith—“He that believeth not is condemned already”—and asserts that “the immutable rule of righteousness” strikes out against the wicked. Edwards makes it clear that even human will and agency cannot “protect” one from hell, for “God

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”â•…â•… 383 has so many different unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell, that that there is nothing to make it appear, that God had need be at the expence of a miracle .╯.╯. to destroy any wicked man, at any moment.” In addition, the “care” humankind might take to escape hell does not provide securities or guarantees as “men’s own wisdom is no security to them from death.” It should be kept in mind that “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” though widely anthologized, is only one selection from Edwards’s oeuvre, and therefore the reader should not expect to glean the entirety of Puritan cosmology and theology from one piece aimed at the “unregenerate.” However, if the piece is read in context, one may come to appreciate Edwards’s skill in delineating ideas concerning the interrelationship of grace, human behavior, and “divine justice.” Jeff Pettineo

Suffering in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards attempts to persuade his congregation of the importance of following a pious path due to the suffering incurred by “slipping” into sinfulness. The only thing keeping a person from slipping into hell due to sin is God’s grace—that is, according to Edwards, people are always “exposed to sudden unexpected destruction.” He relates ideas of suffering in highly figurative language, so “suffering” for the purposes of this essay will be considered from a largely psychological, emotional, and spiritual point of view, with particular attention to the kinds of images Edwards uses to illustrate his idea of God’s wrath as it is levied against the “wicked.” Edwards claims that divine justice warrants someone being cast into hell, and “justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins.” Hell is essentially a state of envelopment in God’s wrath, for Edwards asserts that the “pit of hell is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them.” Another image Edwards uses is that of consumption: Hell is populated with devils who are like

hungry lions, ready to devour their prey. For the purposes of persuasion, suffering is hyperbolized through these grisly images, as Edwards wants to demonstrate what the costs of not converting would be—an extreme form of spiritual suffering. “Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul,” he says. “It is destructive in its nature; and if God should leave it without restraint, there would need nothing else to make the soul perfectly miserable.” Humankind has no recourse but to accept God’s grace in order to avoid suffering, for God holds the key to redemption. Similarly, according to Edwards, God has the power to torment the wicked man in various ways: “God has so many different unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell, that there is nothing to make it appear, that God had need to be at the expence of a miracle, or go out of the ordinary course of his providence, to destroy any wicked man, at any moment.” Edwards also discusses suffering in terms of apprehension, the knowledge that God’s wrath is pent up, and that at any moment the tremendous power of such wrath could pour over the wicked man. Edwards uses three images to paint this picture: great waters that are dammed; a drawn bow; and the “hand of God,” which holds something loathsome like an insect or spider “over the pit of hell.” Edwards relates that the waters “increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given, and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty its course, when once it is let loose.” Edwards describes the bow as being bent by justice and the arrow “aimed at your heart,” for only “the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God” is what keeps the arrow from “being made drunk with your blood.” Again, he talks of God’s “pleasure” as that which prevents the parishioner from “being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction.” God has no mercy on one who demands pity; instead, he “will only tread you under foot.” The type of suffering one will experience, then, is born out of God’s sense of justice, for if any one of the parishioners, says Edwards, remains in an “unregenerate state,” God will not show pity or compassion, nor will he have any “regard to your welfare.”

384â•…â•… Eliot, T. S. Although the imagery and number of examples may seem excessive to modern readers, part of the persuasive power of the piece rests on Edwards’s ability to combine theoretical ideas with practical applications, all the while employing extremely vivid images to convey ideas of spiritual suffering. While it might appear that the excessive nature of such images of suffering and wrath could turn away possible converts, Edwards uses the images, in part, to make a case for the urgency of conversion, insofar as the price of not converting is an extreme form of spiritual suffering. Jeff Pettineo

ELIOT, T. S.â•… The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrockâ•… (1915)

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was T. S. Eliot’s first published poem. An early example of the modernist long poem in free verse, the poem anticipates many of the themes of The Waste Land (1922); however, its use of a clearly identified protagonist narrating a monologue to a hypnotic rhythm makes “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” a far more accessible, coherent text. Originally entitled “Prufrock Among the Women,” the poem charts the mental life—and implied psychological breakdown—of a socially awkward persona given the odd name “Prufrock.” Though the poem can be read on one level as an exploration of Prufrock’s failure to connect with women, it is perhaps more productive to perceive the poem as a wider study of the fragility and futility of human existence—that this is not just Prufrock’s “song” but society’s “song.” Perhaps this is why singing and music feature so heavily in the poem, from the musical “voices dying with a dying fall” to the mermaids “singing, each to each”: Everyone is involved in trying to communicate and make sense of the world; very few can hear or comprehend each other properly, and alienation and crises of identity ensue. Whereas The Waste Land traces such anxieties across multiple spaces and temporal periods, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” predominantly focuses on an unspecified city (probably London) in the modern period, though it is no less intense in its

treatment of the nightmare of Western civilization at a time of unprecedented worldwide conflict. Sarah Barnsley

Alienation in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is concerned with the personal and social alienation of the poem’s protagonist. Estranged from his nerves, which take leave of the body to show up like photo negatives on a magic lantern’s screen, Prufrock is unable to indulge in sensual pleasures. Like the image of the evening, which is compared to an anesthetized patient, he is numb to external reality. His auditory senses are dulled in a world where music plays in a distant room and voices are heard “dying.” Fog and smoke meanders insidiously throughout the landscape, hampering the visual senses. Eating has little pleasure for him and is associated with anxiety. A plate holds a question that Prufrock continually struggles to ask; he visualizes his own head “on a platter” (l. 82) like the head of John the Baptist; having tea is preceded by “a hundred indecisions” (l. 32) or followed by the fear that he may be called to “force the moment to its crisis” (l. 80). Eventually Prufrock is unsure whether he has the ability, or will, to eat a simple peach. He sees himself as a powerless, dehumanized creature, identifying with a cat, “muzzled” and locked out of the house like fog against closed windows, or an insect mounted on a pin, “wriggling” helplessly. As his psychological disintegration unfolds, he longs to be a pair of severed crab claws “scuttling across the floors of silent seas” (l. 74), as far removed from the human world as possible. This desire to be cut off is a result of the intense social alienation Prufrock recounts as he wanders through streets that are “half-deserted” as if in retreat from his very presence. His separation from women is articulated through a refrain set apart from the main body of the poem, mirroring Prufrock’s exclusion (“In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” [ll. 13–14]). The reference to women moving in a group is no accident: Not only do they prefigure the group of mermaids Prufrock later encounters (who he expects will also exclude him), they contrast with

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrockâ•…â•… 385 the men of the poem, who are referred to in the singular (Michelangelo, “the eternal Footman,” Lazarus, Hamlet, an attendant lord). Unlike the women flowing freely through the room, men are “lonely” and uncomfortable in interiors, seen “leaning out of windows” (72). The female-dominated room (a metaphor for the vagina) is a site of danger and fierce scrutiny, a room Prufrock would prefer not to enter, hoping to “descend the stair” of sexual foreplay that leads there. It is not surprising that his female companion turns away from him in the bedroom, settling a pillow down to sleep or moving from the bed to the window as Prufrock fails to understand or satisfy her. Prufrock’s alienation is intensified by the disorientating landscapes he occupies, from the dreamlike “sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells” (l. 7), which blurs the restaurant with the hospital (sawdust was spread on the floor of 19th-century operating theaters to soak up blood), to menacing scenes of hotels that offer no assurance of sleep and claustrophobic “narrow” streets that sap his energy like a “tedious argument” while threatening to turn on him with “insidious intent.” Spaces are marked by a disconcerting inertia reflecting Prufrock’s emotional and spiritual paralysis, such as the floor, which is a space for passivity and futility where the afternoon “sleeps” and “malingers” or where bodiless claws “scuttle” aimlessly, mirroring Prufrock’s experience of tea parlors as he ruminates endlessly. Prufrock’s alienation is extended to the poem’s form, which estranges the reader. A modernist reworking of the dramatic monologue, the title of the poem bears little connection to its content—this is hardly a passionate love song. The strong, hypnotic rhythm and heavy use of full and partial rhyme draws the reader in only to encounter images of disconnection, severances that are enacted in the freeverse structure of the poem where lines and stanzas of variable lengths forge short-lived connections through repeated phrases. In the persistent repetitions and frequent use of parallelisms, the poem cuts itself off from the richness and variety of language, favoring a limited pool of words and phrases evocative of Prufrock’s limited sensibility. Such alienation is typical of modernist texts, which are often concerned with the effects of rapid

social and technological change on the individual and his/her consequent estrangement from the natural world, as well such effects on the modernist artist struggling to find new artistic forms amid increasing sociopolitical fragmentations. Sarah Barnsley

Death in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

A meditation on life and death, T. S. Eliot’s dramatic monologue charts J. Alfred Prufrock’s social death as he wrestles with the modern world, climaxing with his physical death by drowning. The poem is replete with death imagery and famous dead figures ( John the Baptist, Lazarus) as Prufrock continually postpones asking an unspecified question (possibly “Is there an afterlife?” or “Will I be damned?”) that threatens to overwhelm and destroy him. Though he claims that there is time to “murder and create”— to live as well as to die—death haunts Prufrock’s mental landscape so relentlessly that he envisions a variety of punitive, violent ends such as decapitation and impalement. The idea that Prufrock is actually already dead is hinted at in the Latin epigraph, which presents the words of the Count Guido da Montefeltro, a damned schemer who is found in the Eighth Circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. The reader is left to guess whether Prufrock is another Guido, dead and continuing his confessional lines from the “hell” of the modern world, or another Dante, descending into the “underworld” of his dreams and nightmares in search of spiritual guidance. Eliot’s opening line, with its entreaty to the plural us, furthers this confusion, as does the poem’s emphasis on the past and future—Prufrock makes comparably fewer assertions in the present tense, causing the reader to doubt that he is alive in the present world. The menacing atmosphere of endless narrow, winding streets and the various oppressive parlors, stairways, and bedrooms suggest that Prufrock’s urban cityscape is a modern Inferno, each street, building, and room representing a different circle of hell as he makes his journey, or “visit,” to the depths of himself. It is no accident that the poem begins with an image of the sky and closes with an image of a funereal seabed decorated with wreathed creatures in hellish hues of red and brown. The geographical descent parallels

386â•…â•… Eliot, T. S. various descents down the “the stair” of life throughout the poem as Prufrock ruminates to the point of mental collapse and rapidly ages (as recalled by his ever-receding, greying hair) to the point of physical death. The inner circle of Prufrock’s hell is characterized not by flame but by water: He has visions of being a pair of ragged crab claws scuttling across the seabed, and it is in the chambers of the sea where he becomes entombed after being drawn (or exiled) to the margins of the beach from the city. The sea’s watery tomb was a popular romantic fantasy, seen as a portal to the lost world of classical antiquity with its promise of an ideal order. It holds similar appeal for Prufrock, who gains no pleasure from the banality of earthly living and instead seeks an elevated existence where his efforts would be “worth it,” despite his fear of death, which he personifies as a footman holding his coat as if ushering him out of a party. Prufrock is wracked with indecision, the stasis of death becoming a metaphor for his social ineptitude. His mind is pervaded by disturbing images of deathly figures as he struggles, like the lonely men in shirtsleeves, to connect with others. He associates with the anesthetized patient, with a live insect impaled on a pin, and with the ghostly movement of the city fog. Inanimate objects—particularly crockery, clothes, and food—are given unusual prominence in an increasingly inert world dominated by the image of sleep (a euphemism for death), where images of soot, smoke, and cigarette butts suggest the petering-out of life’s fire. Images of a cat licking up pools around drains (like milk from a saucer) and hollowed-out oyster shells evoke a sense of the world being sucked dry of life, mirroring Prufrock’s experience of his life being drunk and eaten up through the endless rounds of trivial tea parties. “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” Prufrock laments (l. 51), suggesting that his life can be measured by the number of coffee spoons he has stirred, or that his life has been ground to pieces like coffee grains. The agency implied by the active verb measured is reflective of a wider tension that runs through the poem, that of one’s control over life and death. As much as he is a modernist antihero at odds with capitalist society, Prufrock’s obsession with this

control also makes him a universal human type worthy of the public attention he so nervously shirks. Sarah Barnsley

Identity in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” reveals little about who the protagonist J. Alfred Prufrock is or to whom his supposed “love song” is addressed, just as we can never be sure what, exactly, is the “overwhelming question” that vexes him. We know the protagonist’s surname (itself uncommon and strange) and middle name, yet we are only offered the initial of his first name. Indeed “J” may be read as a distorted “I,” suggestive of the many estranged “I”s haunting the poem, unable to settle on a satisfactory sense of self. Prufrock visualizes himself in a variety of guises, none of them adequate to describe him. There is the “yellow fog” journeying through the streets like Prufrock, its gaseous state corresponding to Prufrock’s insubstantiality. This image is inflected with other images, suggesting the instability of identity. The fog behaves like a cat, but it also resembles a snake that “slides” through the streets, which, with his sense of thinning arms and legs, Prufrock fears he may become. Like fog, the self is transient, located in impermanent locations like “one-night cheap hotels” and rooms where people do not settle but “come and go” or lean out of windows. This transience of identity is marked by the poem’s tone and register, which continually vacillates between confidence and doubt. It is difficult to trust the poem’s voice. Prufrock contradicts himself, asserting that there is time for “a hundred visions” (l. 33), envisioning his own decapitation, but later denying prophetic ability. Though a “love song,” the only emotion Prufrock nominates is fear (“in short, I was afraid” [l. 86]). Such contradictions extend to the identity of the poem itself. Supposedly a dramatic monologue, it is not that dramatic at all. Assertive statements are quickly followed by bathetic, self-mocking phrases as Prufrock rejects the dramatic mantle, identifying instead with a marginal “attendant lord” in a Shakespearean play. It is unclear whether the poem is really a monologue, either. Prufrock seems alone, yet he refers to an

The Waste Landâ•…â•… 387 unspecified other (“you”) who may be a real companion (possibly the “one” who appears in the bedroom scenes), or another part of his own self. The poem sounds more like a dialogue between Prufrock and parts of himself, all struggling to communicate: “It is impossible to say just what I mean!” Prufrock exclaims (l. 104); “That is not what I meant, at all,” answers an anonymous voice (l. 110). The opening line may not be a request at all but a plea for release from psychic torment—“Let us go” and be at peace, the voice begs. Prufrock’s continual questions convey an anxiety about how to be and what to say and do. He is unable to fix his identity. He sees himself as insignificant as an insect, but also as an omnipotent being, capable of squeezing the universe into a ball, or able to come back, like Lazarus, from the dead, a strong identity he undermines by worrying whether, after consultation with his companion, it would really “have been worth it” to act in such ways. Prufrock agonizes about his outward appearance, how to part his hair, or how to roll the bottoms of his trousers. His preoccupation with his clothes and his rehearsal of the lives of others suggest that he has lost his own mind. Even so, his clothes threaten to quash any identity he may find in them, as he visualizes himself impaled on his necktie pin or his coat held by “the eternal Footman” of death. People appear as fragments, not as knowable entities, in a social world where one is expected to “prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” (l. 27)—everyone hides behind a mask. Images of body parts and clothes prevail. Women are skirts trailing across the floor or pairs of eyes and arms, accompanied by the social debris of teacups, porcelain, cakes, ices, toast, and marmalade; we come to know the pieces that surround people rather than the people themselves. Impersonal pronouns pervade the poem, particularly they and them. Such fragmented, distant identities reflect Prufrock’s internal collapse. Like fog, he eventually disintegrates, drowned by unspecified human voices, in closing lines that break up and break loose from the main body of the poem. This collapse of Prufrock’s identity can be read as a metaphor for the breakdown in social cohesion as Eliot may have experienced it, writing during the First World War,

a theme at the core of his epic work The Waste Land (1922). Sarah Barnsley

ELIOT, T. S.â•… The Waste Landâ•… (1922)

The Waste Land is divided into five sections. In the first, “Burial of the Dead,” T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) examines the fragmentation of Western European culture after World War I. Through the use of the fortune teller Madame Sosostris, he sets the poem as a blending of both past references and future prophecy. In the second section, “A Game of Chess,” Eliot looks at the social fragmentation of English society and particularly at the impact the war has had on women. In the third section, “The Fire Sermon,” Eliot continues his examination and joins the disparate parts of the poem together in the figure of Tiresias, the blind Greek prophet who is both male and female. This use of the ancient prophet further enforces the blurring between past reference and future prophecy. In the fourth section, “Death by Water,” Eliot uses the figure of the drowned Phoenician sailor to demonstrate the cyclical nature of the events of early 20th-century history. These are mainly the social decay accelerated by the war and the war brought on by the social decay of the European nations. Finally, in the last section, “What the Thunder Said,” Eliot attempts to find a solution within the Grail quest and the Fisher King, but he is left with only the fragments of the poem, which must be interpreted differently by each reader, just as the thunder of the Hindu parable is interpreted differently by the different factions who hear it. The poem closes with a truncated blessing or benediction and ends in the same way in which it began—as a heap of broken images. Jeremy Brown

Alienation in The Waste Land

Alienation can be described as a form of isolation in which the alienated person feels that all the world has become strange. T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land demonstrates this feeling admirably and is one of the best examples of this experience in 20thcentury literature. The poem’s structure (consisting of five widely differing sections), its use of allusions,

388â•…â•… Eliot, T. S. and its fragmentary nature all help to promote a feeling of alienation. Much of The Waste Land is composed of allusory passages that make use of historical and literary references to weave a narrative. These passages were difficult even for readers of Eliot’s time, and Eliot himself provided footnotes. By incorporating so many sources, he guaranteed that his poem would be comprehensible to only a few dedicated readers who must be willing to engage actively with the poem. These allusions provide a link from the past to the poem’s present. However, Eliot suggests in several places in the poem that these old ideas and stories are no longer relevant. In fragmented, postwar Europe, where traditions and old alliances contributed to conflict, the past is a hindrance as much as an aid. The poem’s structure consists of five sections. Each has its own title to set it off from the others, and each takes up a different set of characters for its themes. In “The Burial of the Dead,” which depicts a vision of a shattered Europe after World War I, spring is inverted. What is traditionally a time of birth and new growth is here presented as a time of dying. “A Game of Chess” looks at the personal consequences of the war and its effect on the psyche of people not directly involved by depicting a couple plagued by memories of the dead and the loss of confidence brought by war and the modern era. “The Fire Sermon” explores the passing away of the old London and the rise of the new (as shown by the holiday-makers gone and the rendezvous with the bored typist). “Death by Water” shows a metaphorical passing of 19th-century materialism through the passing of Phlebas the Phoenician. Metaphorically, Phlebas represents the increasingly alienation of modern Britons after the war, an alienation from which they would not be saved. Finally, “What the Thunder Said” shows the painful attempt to build a new Europe in the face of the old Europe’s ruins. The use of the Hindu parable of the thunder’s speaking shows how different factions interpreted this rise from the ruins of war. By addressing different issues in the five sections, Eliot shows the disjunctions present in the postwar condition. These disjunctions are also shown in the allusions in the poem.

The poem’s fragmentary nature reflects this truth as well. The poem is a jumble of images, references, and conversations. The Fisher King of the fifth section wishes to fit the fragments together into a comprehensible whole but cannot (as shown by the shantih invocation, which is not preceded by its traditional “om,” the symbol of unity). Eliot says in his footnotes that Tiresias, the blind prophet from Greek mythology, joins all the characters together in one personage, but Tiresias is impotent to affect the situation and can only watch and suffer the pains and agonies of the others. This lack of agency is characteristic in an alienated condition as characters feel isolated and unable to affect the strange new world that confronts them. The fragments, too, by their juxtaposition, often show the dislocation felt by Europe after the war. Glories of the past are set against sordid affairs of the present, and neither benefits by this linking. Eliot’s fragmented and allusive style, which requires footnotes to understand fully, forces the reader to struggle to read the poem. This struggle—coupled with the juxtaposition of old and new, allusion and poetic depiction—demonstrates both the isolation of the modern individual in the postwar culture and the strangeness of that postwar culture, which rejects old traditions and models for behavior. Jeremy Brown

Futility in The Waste Land

Futility is an important theme throughout T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The struggle to accept the incomprehensible loss of life in World War I is inherent in the poem’s fragmentary nature. The multiple allusions to works that require footnotes to understand them and the continual breaking in mid-narrative all point to futility as a major thought in the work. “The Burial of the Dead” aptly reflects this fragmentation. There are only a few connected bits of narrative: the Hyacinth Girl’s story, the Lithuanian’s story, the trip to Madame Sosostris, and the encounter with Stetson. None are given a satisfactory end, and all show how the modern world, especially World War I, has smashed lives. However, even more disturbing than these microstories are

The Waste Landâ•…â•… 389 the fragments that serve to connect them. The story of Tristan and Isolde, which is referred to as a story of thwarted love, continues this theme. Also, in this section the readers are given the promises of seeing something greater than their shadows, but nothing is ever produced. The reader is told in the section’s final lines that the narrator is the double of the reader, but this suggestion is never brought into play again, leaving the reader to question this proposition. “The Game of Chess,” which follows part 1, sustains two major narratives. The first is the discussion of what to do. The conclusion is: nothing. The narrator finally suggests several distractions, ending with a game of chess. How will this cure the nerves of the woman who asks what to do? The answer is: probably not much. In the same way, the discussion between the narrator of the pub story and Lil ends before we truly find out the ending. Before we can find out whether the narrator is a well-meaning friend or someone who schemes for the attention of Lil’s man Albert, the bartender calls for last drinks. In “Fire Sermon,” Eliot introduces the figure of the blind prophet Tiresias, whom he claims joins all the characters of the poem into one consciousness. Tiresias sees and suffers the fates of the various characters but can do nothing to prevent them. The tryst between the typist and her lover is a good example. The man comes and moves immediately to a sexual encounter while the typist is merely glad that he is done and gone away. Tiresias suggests in the section’s final lines that history repeats itself through the comparison of Carthage with London. This idea is continued in “Death by Water.” The maelstrom of “Death by Water” that passes Phlebas through the stages of his life and back shows the utter futility and desperation of the modern condition. The whirlpool passes Phlebas from stage to stage and acts upon him from outside, forcing him into various positions. The new truth of modernism, as demonstrated by World War I, is that men and women are controlled by the society around them to a greater extent than even before. In “What the Thunder Said,” we see the theme of futility most clearly. The trek into the waterless mountains and the search for a grail that cannot be

found offers a clear sense of futility. The Fisher King cannot be healed, cannot fit all of the fragments together and, like Coriolanus, struggles in a prison of his own making. In the end, the poet closes with a blessing that is stripped of meaning by its partial utterance. Traditionally, “om” would have preceded shantih in the benediction. Without “om,” the word of completeness, the shantih becomes an empty form that has lost its meaning. Throughout The Waste Land, Eliot develops the theme of futility through the medium of outside pressure. The whirlpool in “Death by Water” is the most obvious, but the crowds moving over London bridge and the public opinion represented by Lil’s friend all point to peer pressure and societal forces that push and pull the individual. There is nothing to be done unless this societal ill, this need for the grail, is solved, and Eliot suggests that it cannot be solved. The end of the poem leaves little doubt that in a godless, materialistic world, there is no way out unless we, the prisoners, reject the prison we have been born into. Jeremy Brown

Tradition in The Waste Land

The Waste Land is a poem that both embraces and shrinks from tradition. The poem eschews traditional verse forms and structures, but at the same time it is built of allusions to traditional works. Some of this ambiguity can be explained through T. S. Eliot’s later views of the poetic tradition. Eliot believed that each poet must make his or her own place in the poetic tradition, which he explains in the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” The poet, according to Eliot, must be aware of his tradition and must attempt to bring something new into it. The poet should be conscious of the past but not let any youthful infatuations guide his vision of how to create: The poet should create something new and adjust the tradition to accept this new item. This process can clearly be seen in The Waste Land. The poem is extremely conscious of the past but radically breaks with it. There are no rhymes (except in a few sections), and the vast majority of the poem is in no uniform meter. In this way it rejects the traditions of 19th-century poetry and attempts to develop something new.

390â•…â•… Ellison, Ralph However, each of these novel techniques has a basis in the canon. For example, Walt Whitman used long nonrhyming lines, and William Blake created his own mythology, which he used in allusory fashion in his poetry. Eliot draws on the work of older poets in his work: Homer, William Shakespeare, and Charles Baudelaire. Further, he incorporates popular song material in the form of Richard Wagner’s treatment of the Tristan and Isolde story. By means of the allusions, Eliot reminds the reader of the tradition he is breaking and reshaping. In addition to Wagner, Eliot incorporates many other traditional sources throughout the poem. His use of the Grail story in part 5, “What the Thunder Said,” evokes the legend of King Arthur. In World War I, the British had depicted themselves as noble warriors going to save a corrupted continent from itself, but they had not proven to be as noble as they wished. As the war drew on, the British were engaged in deadly trench warfare that destroyed the countryside of the people they were “saving.” Heroes usually came home dead or disabled, and the trenches killed the land. The use of the Fisher King, the wounded lord of a dying land who can only be healed by the Grail, captures this state of affairs nicely. The British after the war are wounded in spirit if not in body (see the discussion between the two women at the end of “A Game of Chess”). The Grail was not found—cannot be found—and so society is locked in the self-perpetuating prison of its own shattered past. This use of legendary material is not the only one in the poem. Eliot also uses the real figures of Elizabethan politics to demonstrate London’s current poverty (in “Fire Sermon”). All of these references, just as with the poetic and musical references, serve to demonstrate the fragmentation of society after the war and the breakdown of tradition. This fragmentation also supports the themes of alienation and futility in the poem. The use of allusions reminds the reader of “old times” which are now gone forever due to World War I. The nontraditional presentation demonstrates the ruptured state of society and the need to create new patterns from the chaos of the Great War. Eliot’s poem creates a novel approach to poetry through the destruction and reshaping of the poetic tradition. Jeremy Brown

ELLISON, RALPHâ•… Invisible Manâ•… (1952)

In 1953, Ralph Ellison (1914–94) was awarded the National Book Award for Invisible Man, his only novel published during his lifetime. (Juneteenth was published in 1999) Invisible Man uses first-person narration to present the experiences and reflections of the unnamed black protagonist. Set in the 1950s, it begins in the narrator’s current home underground and moves backward to his childhood in the rural South and his years at a black state college. Expelled from the school, his dream of becoming an educator is shattered, and the narrator moves north, to Harlem. Here he works for Liberty Paints before joining the Brotherhood, a communist-styled group that works for equality. Continuously engaged in a process of self-discovery, he struggles to find an identity for himself outside the expectations and desires of powerful and hierarchical social structures. As he journeys from south to north, the Invisible Man interacts with a number of significant characters, including Mr. Norton, a white trustee of the college; Mr. Bledsoe, the college’s black president; Jim Trueblood, a black sharecropper who has fathered children by his wife and daughter; Mary, a Harlem woman who rents rooms to those down on their luck; Brother Jack, a leader of the Brotherhood; Tod Clifton, a fellow Brother; Ras the Exhorter, the leader of a black nationalist group; Rinehart, a man whose identities arise completely from the projections of others; and the narrator’s deceased grandfather. Through the interactions between these characters, Ellison explores such themes as race, violence, the American dream, innocence and experience, oppression, and memory. Ideas and music from figures such as Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith form some of the novel’s historical references. Invisible Man is a visceral novel attuned to the complex histories of the African-American freedom movements. Megan Kuster

Identity in Invisible Man

The narrator’s search for identity is one of the most important themes in Invisible Man. In the novel, identity is connected to the narrator’s self-percep-

Invisible Manâ•…â•… 391 tion, his ambition, and his view of society. Identity is also related to race and social class, and by the end of the novel it is clear that the narrator’s blackness and poverty facilitate his choice of invisibility. The mutability of identity is one feature of this theme that is explored throughout the novel. In his youth, the narrator aspires to become an educator at the black college, a position of power that would raise his social status. He is ready to do anything in order to achieve his ambition. When the dream is shattered while the narrator is looking for work in Harlem, he begins to view his earlier self as naive. At this early stage in his self-awareness, the narrator still desires to be a leader and believes he can outrun those who would destroy his hopes. When he is given a new name by the Brotherhood, he begins to see himself as a leader within his Harlem community. As he becomes more deeply involved with the Brotherhood, he discovers that community goals are as important as individual ambition. His own ambition for power is subsumed by his commitment to the Brotherhood. This sense of self, rooted in a group identity, is shaken when the Brotherhood decides to investigate claims of opportunism being made against the narrator. After witnessing the death of Clifton, the Invisible Man delivers a rousing eulogy for his friend, believing still in the ideals of the Brotherhood and confident about his place within it. When he takes on the disguise of Rinehart and tricks people into believing he is someone he is not, he realizes that perception of reality is imperfect. Gradually, amid all these changes in selfperception, the Invisible Man comes to conclude that others have used him as a material object, as a disposable resource, to achieve their own ambition of becoming more powerful. By the end of the novel, the narrator wants an identity that can protect him from those who would oppress him. The choice of invisibility is a subversive one because it claims the same space, the space of the unnoticed and unimportant, that others had previously consigned him to in order to accomplish their own gain. He can claim this identity as a liberating one because his expectations and ambitions have changed from the desire to become individually powerful to experiencing the absurdity of reality that is observable from his position of invisibility. The

idea that identity is changeable is linked at various points in the novel to changes in the narrator’s self-perception. Identity, as it is explored in Invisible Man, is a relational concept. Who a person is and what a person imagines he is depends on his relationships, experiences, and interactions with others. The identity of invisibility that the narrator chooses by the end of the book has both benefits and drawbacks. The biggest advantage associated with the narrator’s invisibility is the freedom he feels from not participating in the oppressive hierarchical systems of value determined by economic standing and skin color. Yet for the narrator, invisibility is also an isolating condition. By the end of the novel, he states that writing down his experiences has led him to see patterns in the chaos and absurdity that order society’s certainties. This realization leads him to declare that he will live above ground again. He will come out of hibernation and cast off his invisibility. The Invisible Man does choose to live outside the established and conventional social boundaries, and his ability to achieve this freedom is related to society’s willingness to conspire in his invisibility based on his skin color and economic standing. Identity is thus both an individual statement of claim and a relational agreement according to social expectations. It is appropriate that in this novel where identity is a fundamental concern, the narrator’s name, one of the most obvious markers of identity, remains unknown. Megan Kuster

Memory Invisible Man

From dreams and amnesia to a collective past invoked through symbolic objects and oratory, the relationship between memory and history is an important theme in Invisible Man. Often, the narrator’s experiences with memory provoke him to a new understanding of himself in the present. For example, the Invisible Man remembers his dead grandfather through dreams and visions at various points in the novel. The narrator’s memory of his grandfather’s last words, when he declared his view that one should use subversion and resistance strategies to confront systems of oppression, surfaces at several points in the novel. Another recurrent memory associated with the grandfather initially

392â•…â•… Ellison, Ralph comes to the narrator in a dream-vision following the Battle Royal and his subsequent speech. In this vision, the grandfather presents the narrator with a gift. It is a briefcase containing many envelopes representing years and an engraved memo containing the narrator’s inheritance. The memo is a letter that authorizes the recipient to use hope and delay to run the narrator ragged. Initially, the narrator is unable to interpret the deathbed memory and his dream. These two memories involving the grandfather appear at various points throughout the narrative as the Invisible Man becomes increasingly aware of his own individual confinement as the result of racial expectations and the power of social grouping. The memory of the grandfather comes to represent an important example of how to survive with selfawareness, integrity, and dignity in a segregated culture. The relationship between memory and identity appears again in scenes in the factory hospital where the narrator is recovering after a work-related accident he suffered while employed by Liberty Paints. Neither the reader nor the narrator know how long he has been a patient, but it is clear that he has been subjected to electroshock therapy, which has destroyed his sense of self. Initially, he cannot remember anything about himself: not who he is, not his name, not his mother. He begins to recover his identity only when a lab technician questions him about Buckeye the rabbit. For the narrator, this name triggers memories of childhood rhymes and stories that link him with a folkloric past and with an African-American oral history. Significantly, it is at this point of memory that the Invisible Man begins to associate his confinement with the inability to articulate who he is, and thus to associate his freedom with the ability to remember, name, and remake his identity. There are many images and objects in the novel that arouse the collective memory of slavery in the mind of the narrator. His observation of an elderly couple’s free papers and a photograph of Abraham Lincoln during the eviction scene is one instance. Another instance is when Brother Tarp presents the Invisible Man with the broken shackle that had bound his ankle when he worked on a chain gang. To the narrator, the severed shackle represents a link

between Brother Tarp and his ancestors, many of whom lived in slavery. Linking history and memory, the narrator compares the shackle to a wristwatch. Communal memory, past and present, is also invoked through language, speeches, and song. The scene of Brother Clifton’s funeral procession is an example of communal memory. Initially, it is the music of a slave spiritual, sung by an old man, that moves the funeral attendants and prompts the narrator to recall memories of the college and of home. Primed by the song, the Invisible Man delivers a eulogy for Brother Clifton that connects the violence and injustice of this one death with the violent and unjust deaths of many others. He is telling an old story, he says, and in each repetition of the eulogy, the narrator challenges his audience to forget the story, thereby making it impossible to forget. In Invisible Man, communal and individual memory overlap, converge, and separate in complex ways. Ellison’s representation of how history and the past inform present identities and collective memory is a central feature of the narrator’s ability to become self-aware. Megan Kuster

Race in Invisible Man

Stereotypes, the complex relationship between skin color and identity, and ideas about racial equality are some of the many ways in which race becomes an important theme throughout Invisible Man. Ellison dramatizes racial stereotyping when the narrator first meets the members of the Brotherhood. One of the Brothers antagonistically asks him to sing, arguing that all black people sing. The Brother himself attempts a song. Before the Invisible Man can respond to this, other Brothers respond that the narrator will not sing. Tensions escalate, and the man who made the original request for a song is escorted out of the party. One of the members approaches the narrator on her way out and says she understands that he is there to join the struggle, not to entertain the Brothers. The narrator reflects that while he does resent that others believe that all black people are gifted singers, he also wonders if there might be a way that the Brothers could have asked him to sing that would not have been interpreted as being malevolently motivated.

“The American Scholar”â•…â•… 393 Other examples of racial stereotyping in the novel cause more anger and are related to more dire consequences. On the street one day, the narrator comes across Tod Clifton, a friend who has left the Brotherhood and is now selling sambos, dolls modeled on an offensive stereotype, to a sizable crowd on the sidewalk. The narrator is both angry and confused about why Clifton would choose to make money by selling caricatures of blackness. The sambos were representations of servile and “happy” slaves, and they were sometimes invoked to rationalize slavery. To the narrator, the sambos that Clifton is selling represented the erasure of the violent historical experience and legacy of slavery. The narrator is angered by this kind of stereotyping, which ignores and makes light of the experiences of black Americans who were dehumanized by the more powerful. He has a similar reaction to Mary’s black-boy bank. The Invisible Man’s changing identity takes place alongside societal ideas about race, although it is not only these notions that shape his identity. The way he is treated by other characters and the employment options that are available to him in the novel are conditioned by social conceptions of race. He is treated as a disposable commodity by Dr. Bledsoe, Liberty Paints, and even members of the Brotherhood, both because he is black and because of individuals’ greed for power and the factory’s greed for wealth. However, the narrator also chooses to see blackness as an agent of possibility. He is able to maintain his invisibility, a position that he perceives to offer him infinite possibilities, at least partially because he is black. The differences between race and cultural identity are also important in the novel. For example, while Harlem represents a relatively defined community, it is not a completely unified neighborhood as there are tensions between southern and local blacks. In this fictionalized representation of Harlem, there are also different methods of working toward racial equality. Brother Tarp hangs a portrait of Frederick Douglass in his office. Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself was one of the most influential and widely circulated among abolitionists. In the early Battle Royal scene,

the speech that the narrator delivers is taken from Booker T. Washington, a historical figure whom some in the Brotherhood would have the narrator aspire to become. In the speech, it is argued that racial equality can be achieved through self-help, by pulling up oneself by the bootstraps, and did not demand that blacks gain equal political rights immediately. Ras the Exhorter represents a more militant view of gaining equality, arguing that violence is necessary, as is limiting group membership to include only those from the black community. Ellison treats race as a complex theme in Invisible Man. This is an appropriate approach, considering that the novel was set in a time when multiple and shifting ideas about race were part of the social reality. Megan Kuster

EMERSON, RALPH WALDOâ•… “The American Scholar”â•… (1837)

“The American Scholar” was one of the early addresses Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) delivered at Harvard University. At this time, Emerson was establishing himself as a lecturer, and he delivered this address to Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society on August 31, 1837. “The American Scholar” includes many ideas that would become more prominent throughout Emerson’s middle and later works. The main idea behind “The American Scholar” lies in Emerson’s symbolic notion of “Man Thinking.” Emerson sets out first to delineate “Man Thinking” because the common notions of an education and scholars have moved away from this idea. Since he is addressing a university society, it is important that Emerson make this distinction in this particular environment. Much of what distinguishes “Man Thinking” from a thinking man centers on Emerson’s ideas of past and present, both of which remain fundamental concerns in the address. Emerson argues that the role of the intellectual consists of a break from past ideas and an education in nature, books, and action. Richly filled with images of education, the individual and society, and spirituality, “The American Scholar” addresses a need for Emerson’s America to promote and embrace the freedom

394â•…â•… Emerson, Ralph Waldo of reason. The address lays out a path of American thought that he sees as emancipation from old ideas and institutional forms, and he argues for a provocative new form of American intellectual experience. The fundamental issue “The American Scholar” sets forth is the creativity of originality and the scholar’s duty to pursue this freely. Michael Modarelli

Education in “The American Scholar”

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard in August 1837 positions the “scholar,” in an abstract sense, as the character who receives education, which Emerson considers of the highest import to truly live in the world. The archetypal scholar serves as a model for members of the society. Emerson begins with a comparison of the commencement of a new school year to a club, a type of education that merely passes around “letters” of old. In other words, he calls for new letters to come from an American education. From the start, Emerson’s speech looks toward a new day when the sluggish intellect of America will stop depending on books and knowledge from past civilizations and “foreign harvests.” The American scholar, then, will move forward in his own right, apart from other countries and civilizations, to promote a new brand of American thought and education. This theme of education must, according to Emerson, remain in the present, which is an idea that serves as the foundation for what follows in the speech. The American Scholar must educate himself in the lands, nature, writings, and thoughts of America. Instead of learning from books of the past, the true scholar must become an active “Man Thinking.” As in other professions, Emerson warns, there lies a danger in becoming the thing that one does; so it is with “Man Thinking.” Like “Man on the Farm,” who, without active participation and enthusiasm, becomes simply the farmer, “Man Thinking” can often degenerate into a mere thinker. Emerson warns that education must always propel one forward, away from the past. Essentially, the active life in all respects is far better than the passive life. Since “Man Thinking” exists only in action, thought must direct action. And here is where Emerson claims his idea of education connects the

two. He argues that all humans have the power to achieve the highest state of intellect because every man is a student for the world’s education, and Nature and the world’s writings are available to all. For Emerson, education comes from three main sources: nature, books, and action. Nature exists as a mystery to the scholar—it is boundless, circular, and exciting. Even more, nature resembles human spirit; it is the soul imprinted. America serves as a perfect model for nature since it is yet undiscovered and free from the history of past civilizations. Books are records of man’s thoughts in these past civilizations and are useful; however, when ill used, they are poor instruments of education. Books should be used simply as part of a system of education, which means as a stepping-stone, not as an end themselves. Books always look backward, while “Man Thinking” should look forward in action. Action, says Emerson, has value as a resource of the mind—the mind thinks and the body replicates thought into action. Emerson states that thinking is the “function,” but living is the “functionary.” To live is to be strong to think and act. Once educated thus, according to Emerson, the scholar has duties to keep his education moving forward through dissemination. Similar to notions in the actual education of the scholar, past and present play a great part in his duties. Emerson again asserts that the scholar only use the past for reflection; the focus should be on the present. His abstraction of the scholar then begins to shift to individuals. Emerson claims that the “universal mind took through the eyes of one scribe” and can pass that on to future generations. In other words, the duty to educate continues the progress of every person, and there exists a oneness or singularity of mind in all individuals. To that end, proper education—acquired in nature, books, and action—must flow from each person like an electrical charge, sending currents to every individual. Emerson wants this to especially happen in the United States, as the young country struggles to shape its own independent identity. In essence, this serves as Emerson’s vision for a greater and more intellectual society. Often called the American “Intellectual Declaration of Independence,” “The American Scholar”

“The American Scholar”â•…â•… 395 points the way to a new horizon for the United States, where the prototype American scholar must stake out an education from all that has come before him and from the presence of nature to form a new, intellectual nation. The American Scholar becomes, in a sense, the prototypical Emersonian man—independent, patient, freethinking, and in tune with nature. Complacency and decorum are evils that pervade the education of Americans, primarily because they value the old and shun the new. Emerson wants to free America from the binds of European education and begin a new American education with the students born in the land—an education born in the United States, for its people, and by the young scholars of the new country. Michael Modarelli

Individual and Society in “The American Scholar”

The individual and society play a fundamental role in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar.” The main themes consist of the past and present, the individual’s engagement with a past society that has been handed to her or him, and the relation of the individual to her or his society. Throughout the address, Emerson constantly refers back to these main ideas, emphasizing the struggle the individual must undertake to break free from societal pressures and expectations. Emerson first addresses the link between the individual and society. For Emerson, individuals who are not connected in an organic way to society, meaning they perform for themselves, are “amputated” from the body of society. In a society where this happens, individuals exist only as placeholders, such as “farmer” or “priest.” When individuals strive to become more than a vocation, Emerson argues, they become attached to the great intellect within each of us; then the individual becomes “Man Thinking.” “Man Thinking” steps outside of his vocative placeholder and into society to intermesh with others and past societies, to learn from everything, to become more aware of his place in the link in history. This idea blends easily into Emerson’s notions about nature as an entity. For Emerson, nature is

circular: There is no beginning or end—much like patterns of history. When we are very young, we see individual patterns in things; we notice separate entities. “Man Thinking,” however, understands the links between the individual and society, between the leaf and the tree, between the past and the present. Given this idea, then, the individual should not strive to become a mere scholar, separate from the society within which he lives; he should become more a part of the whole, engaging with the people and culture around him. Living is the most important aspect for the individual, living within and interacting with her or his society. In fact, Emerson claims it is the job of the individual scholar to show men the real truths amid the world of appearances—in this case, the individual “parts” of the organic whole—and to help elucidate how the many parts fit into the whole. Moreover, the scholar should show how the tangible goals for which people strive, such as fame and money, are but elements of the organic unity of all things. Again, this unity appears most evident in nature, but, Emerson argues, we are a part of nature—our past and present—so this translates to society. Under the great pressures of history, the individual scholar must veer toward a new future, always moving, never static. This is a problem Emerson has with books, which contain the stagnant written history, not the malleable future or the active present. Although books are good to a certain degree—for they are, as Emerson says, written records of past societies—they should not be used to guide the focus of the individual or society. As “Man Thinking,” the individual must create his own society, free from the chains of the past and linked in an organic unity with his fellow citizens. For Emerson, the individual and society exist as a tension, or interplay, between the smallest part of a unit and its greater mass. In a democracy, these are two inseparable things; an individual must represent, to a larger degree, her or his society. Furthermore, it is because the individual stands for the society that Emerson takes great pains to enumerate these ideas. A society full of individuals who embrace the notion of “Man Thinking” would, in his mind, become a vastly superior growing and organic unity to societies of the past. In fact, nature, too, would

396â•…â•… Emerson, Ralph Waldo become incorporated into the mix, thus continuing to provide a wellspring of eternal truths to those for whom these lofty goals are open. Emerson’s vision of “Man Thinking” as it is pronounced in “The American Scholar” is a picture of a vibrant and growing democratic society, fraught with active and connected individuals. The venue for the address is important, as Emerson wants the Harvard students to be indoctrinated into this line of thought, thus propagating it throughout the rest of a young and vibrant America. Michael Modarelli

Spirituality in “The American Scholar”

In “The American Scholar,” Ralph Waldo Emerson’s spirituality comes through his notions of transcendentalism. For Emerson, nature, as an entity, exists as one of the three educators of the scholar, the other two being action and books. The past is a tyrant; the scholar must study the present in order to be free from the chains of the past. In nature, Emerson argues, we can see the shadow of our own existence; it is the raw material within which patterns of our own spiritual lives exist, and the scholar is one who most engages nature and mines it for these ideas. Boundless nature, argues Emerson, has no beginning or end; instead, it is a circular spiritual power always existing for itself. In this way, nature resembles the spirit, or soul, of man. Each soul exists individually and collectively, part of the larger web of nature. Emerson begins his address by including the audience in his speech. The gathering consists of would-be scholars, members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and Emerson quickly debunks the notion that the scholar’s job is merely to become the romantic intellectual. Instead, scholars should remain open to new possibilities and spiritually and intellectually receptive to others. Indeed, Emerson patterns his scholar after God’s pattern of nature: The role of the scholar is to create. But first the scholar must create himself, which is the basis for “Man Thinking.” Yet the scholar begins to classify. Emerson claims that this classifying leads “Man Thinking” back to the past, where he becomes subordinated once again. Hence, books—the literature,

histories, and ideas of the past—can only serve one to an extent. Perhaps the most important idea Emerson wants to get across to his audience lies in his idea of spirituality, which underlies everything else in the address. He seeks to explain that when man can “read” God correctly, he needs no other readings or teachings. And God, for Emerson, can be found within nature. Given this idea, then, events and substances in nature are symbols of spiritual facts. In fact, man exists at the spiritual center of the universe, and ultimately, the keys to this universe already exist within in man. This idea forms the heart of Emerson’s transcendentalism. The structure of nature, the universe, and everything existing within, structures itself on man, and vice versa. So when Emerson discusses “Man Thinking” as man in action, he means that “Man Thinking” is in touch with his very nature. “Man Thinking” realizes the ultimate doctrine of himself and therefore the fundamental structure of nature and God’s pattern. “The American Scholar” is one of the first instances in which Emerson’s transcendentalism comes to the fore. Written for scholars, the address serves two distinct purposes: to promote a shift away from the burgeoning mercantile and capitalistic trends of the day toward a more spiritual view, and to illustrate this spiritual shift in the nature and duties of the scholar. Emerson acknowledges the draw of money, fortune, and fame, but he argues against this worldview. Instead, he says, the outward world exists as an appearance; the inner world, as seen by the web of nature, is divine. Any man who finds the connection of the soul with God will be an American scholar. He will be “Man Thinking,” and he will see the patterns of God in himself and in nature. But the scholar has certain duties, Emerson is quick to point out. The scholar must, with this spiritual connection, study nature and books. Most important, the scholar must remain active, an active, living divinity of reason existing within the soul. Emerson’s “The American Scholar” addresses a fundamental spiritual crisis arising in a United States on the brink of industrial explosion. In order to get back to reality—for Emerson, reality exists as spirituality in connection with its divine

“The Divinity School Address”â•…â•… 397 source—the American scholar must lead the way. The American scholar, in this sense, needs first to develop an American spirituality, so the American spirit can drive “Man Thinking” on his way. And, Emerson, hopes, this American spirit will continue in the minds and hearts of men and be passed along, so a truly unique, and new, generation of Americans will flourish. Michael Modarelli

EMERSON, RALPH WALDOâ•… “The Divinity School Address”â•… (1838)

Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered the “Divinity School Address” to the faculty, graduating class, and guests at Harvard Divinity College on July 15, 1838. In this talk, later published as an essay, Emerson described the problems he saw in Christianity at the time and urged his listeners toward an understanding of spirituality that he hoped would restore to religion the life it had lost. He referred to two specific problems with Christianity. First, he said that Christianity had done what religion historically has tended to do: It had replaced the personal connection to spiritual law with words and forms and rituals. This had sapped the vitality out of preaching and therefore sapped the religious and spiritual vitality of the American people. The result was a lack of commitment to the kinds of spirituality that generate and nurture a meaningful religious practice. Emerson’s proposal for revitalizing religion can be summed up with a quote from paragraph 34 of “The Divinity School Address”: “The remedy” for religion’s problems, he says, “is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul.” Emerson is not specific about how his listeners might attain greatness of soul; such specificity would have been counter to his belief in the individual’s ability to connect directly to spiritual law. This belief—that people can transcend the constraints of physical and social context and access the divine for themselves—was the heart of transcendentalism, a philosophical movement in which Emerson was a leading figure, and the heart of his spirituality as well. Sarah Perrault

Religion in “The Divinity School Address”

“The Divinity School Address” reflects Ralph Waldo Emerson’s desire to rescue religion from dogma by infusing religious practice—in particular, Christian practice—with spirituality. Emerson located the source of all religions, and the basis for human civilization, in a common spiritual impulse that “lies at the foundation of society, and successively creates all forms of worship,” but he believed that the Christianity of his time had lost touch with that impulse. Emerson was well schooled in Christian theology, having graduated from the Harvard Divinity College and been ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1829. He served in the ministry for three years in the Second Church in Boston but resigned in 1832 because of theological differences with the church’s leaders. These differences included his “doctrine of the soul,” which said that people can access spiritual law, or “Reason,” on their own: “There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding.” In “The Divinity School Address,” which expresses this doctrine, Emerson critiques the church on two specific points. The first point is that Christianity has deified Jesus, denying his humanity, and therefore has lost contact with the living presence of God in the world. The second point results from the first: The deification of Jesus has led to a belief that truth comes only from his words, not from one’s own experience and life. To understand why Emerson thought these were problems, and why some people found “The Divinity School Address” radical, it helps to know something about Unitarian theology, and how it was understood in early 19th-century Boston. The name Unitarian comes from the practitioners’ belief in a unified (or unitary) God rather than in the three-in-one God that makes up the Holy Trinity in many other forms of Christianity (for example, in the Catholic Church and the Church of England). One consequence of a Unitarian view of God is that Christ is not seen as divine but as a divinely inspired man. Even within Unitarianism, however, there are differences about how human Jesus was. Some believers claim that although Jesus was not God, he was a more-than-human spirit

398â•…â•… Emerson, Ralph Waldo that appeared on earth in human form for a while Others, including Emerson, saw Jesus as having been a divinely inspired person, no more and no less. This belief was (and still is) a staple of Unitarian thought, but at the time Emerson gave his talk, the more conservative Unitarian leaders were attempting to downplay the tenet that Jesus was human lest their church be accused of not being Christian at all. Emerson’s stance, while technically in keeping with Unitarian theology, was thus somewhat upsetting to certain members of his faith (including, for example, one of his former teachers at the Divinity School). In his address, Emerson characterizes the theology of these more conservative church leaders as telling followers that “you must subordinate your nature to Christ’s nature; you must accept our interpretations; and take his portrait as the vulgar draw it.” In contrast with this dogmatism, he insists that Jesus was a human being, divinely inspired but not himself divine, and that Jesus therefore is simply what all people have the potential to become. He rails against the church’s denial of this point and the fact that, in church teachings, “the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury. The doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base doctrine of the majority of voices, usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul.” Although the combination of Emerson’s spirituality with his critique of the church could be interpreted to mean that Emerson opposed organized religion generally, in fact the reverse is true. His goal in the “Divinity School Address” is to stir his listeners to revive Christianity, not to replace it. This point is made especially clear in his statement that he does not want the newly ordained preachers to “establish a Cultus with new rites and forms,” but instead to “let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing.” In other words, the goal is to bring life back to the church’s existing practices. He repeatedly stresses the importance, both to the spiritual and to the social, of the preacher’s role. Regarding society, he asks: “And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation, than the loss of worship?” Through “The Divinity School Address,” he hopes to reinvigorate

the church, its followers’ spiritual lives, and so the nation as a whole. Sarah Perrault

Spirituality in “The Divinity School Address.”

“The Divinity School Address” is, first and foremost, about spirituality. Although Emerson delivered the talk at Harvard Divinity School, and although he couched the talk in terms of religious reform, the underlying motivation for that reform was a perceived lack of spirituality, and the ultimate goal was to bring individual spirituality back into religion. The core belief in Emerson’s spirituality was that the world was infused with divinity. This also was a central tenet of transcendentalism, a philosophical movement of which he was a leader, which said that people could access the divine through their own efforts, especially by heightening their awareness of the natural world. This belief in the pervasiveness of the divine shows up throughout “The Divinity School Address,” starting with the first paragraph. Emerson begins the talk by describing three kinds of virtue, each more meaningful than the last. The first, rooted in the material world, is the virtue associated with human creativity, for example in industry and agriculture. The second, also rooted in physical reality, is the virtue associated with a scientific appreciation of the laws of nature. The third, which transcends the material world, is the virtue associated with a human connection to spiritual law, also referred to in the address as “Reason.” According to Emerson, spiritual law is a positive force, meaning not only that it is good but that it exerts an influence on the world. Unlike some traditional Christian philosophies, Emerson did not juxtapose battling forces of good and evil. Instead, he compared goodness to heat—something present in varying degrees, but with no opposite. Spiritual laws “execute themselves,” meaning they manifest in people’s lives constantly, reacting instantly to any action. They are everywhere because “the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind,” and therefore everything in the world reflects the presence of that will. Emerson expresses the same idea of how spirituality permeates the world when he says that “all things proceed out of

“The Divinity School Address”â•…â•… 399 this same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes.” Emerson reminds his listeners to look for the divine in nature, for example in “the light of rising and of setting suns, with the flying cloud, the singing bird, and the breath of flowers,” and also in other people. He explains that virtue manifests in a person who, when hearing bad preaching, still “draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment,” and that although there are good preachers, it is even more important to realize that all people have at least a spark of goodness in them. As he says in paragraph 26, “the exceptions are not so much to be found in a few eminent preachers, as in the better hours, the truer inspirations of all,—nay, in the sincere moments of every man.” The divine, because of its ubiquity, is accessible to anyone. Emerson argues that people learn about the spiritual laws at the same time that they learn about the natural laws, as they experience these laws’ effects in their lives. At the same time, they are not able to perceive spiritual laws as easily as they do natural laws, because people perceive the divine through intuition, not through the senses. The all-encompassing nature of spirituality, combined with its elusiveness, produces a paradox within “The Divinity School Address.” On the one hand, Emerson says that because spiritual laws can only be known through experience and intuition, they cannot be understood and articulated as easily as natural laws. On the other hand, he argues that communicating about spirituality is immensely important because true preaching can help point its listeners toward the divine. Words point toward a truth, but can only point; the truth “cannot be received at second hand.” In other words, the way to inspire others to be in touch with spiritual law is by being in touch with it oneself and speaking and acting from that connection. Emerson urges the Divinity School graduates to make this connection and to bring the church back to life, not through new rituals but through making their own connections to the divine and letting that inspire their preaching. Sarah Perrault

Tradition in “The Divinity School Address.”

At first read, “The Divinity School Address” seems to be wholeheartedly antitradition, at least with regard to religion. Ralph Waldo Emerson claims “that tradition characterizes the preaching of this country; that it comes out of the memory, and not out of the soul” and that, therefore, “historical Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man, where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power.” Regarding people who preach in this tradition, he says, “Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate.” Emerson’s rejection of empty forms in religious practice parallels his rejection in another famous speech, “The American Scholar,” of too close an adherence to the European scholarly tradition. In “The Divinity School Address,” he specifically looks at how excessive emphasis on religious tradition impedes spiritual development. This is evident in his second critique of Christianity, which begins with an allusion to “the traditionary and limited way of using the mind of Christ” in which preachers repeat Christ’s words instead of following his example of allowing “greatness—yea, God himself, into the open soul” and letting what is learned through that spiritual openness be “the fountain of the established teaching in society.” Emerson goes so far as to characterize the church of his day as an “eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have built” and in which descriptions of Christ are no longer “sallies of admiration and love” but instead have been “petrified into official titles.” The result of this ossification was that the church’s practice, instead of fostering spiritual growth, “kills all generous sympathy and liking.” The problem goes beyond a rigid adherence to the words of Christianity, and into a general tendency to seek spirituality by copying others. Emerson describes this tendency as “the capital mistake of the infant man, who seeks to be great by following the great, and hopes to derive advantages from another” (original emphasis). In Emerson’s view, to imitate others is more than a mistake; it is a violence toward oneself, given that each person is equal to all others

400â•…â•… Emerson, Ralph Waldo in being “an inlet into the deeps of Reason.” This is so significant that he compares the unquestioning followers of tradition to slaves. “Wherever a man comes,” he writes, “there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.” He also refers to the “soul-destroying slavery to habit.” In contrast, he says, people must all find their own paths to God. Despite these condemnatory phrases, Emerson actually sees much value in tradition and history, but with the caveat that “all the expressions of this sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion to their purity.” In other words, language endures and has value to the extent that it comes sincerely from the speaker’s soul. In fact, Emerson speaks of how much the European tradition “has always owed to oriental genius” as expressed by its “holy bards,” the greatest of whom was Jesus. Emerson points out how thoroughly the present is rooted in and nurtured by the past when he explains that “the unique impression of Jesus upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion.” Jesus himself is Emerson’s model for not giving undue attention to models. Jesus “felt respect for Moses and the prophets; but no unfit tenderness at postponing their initial revelations, to the hour and the man that now is; to the eternal revelation in the heart. Thus was he a true man” and, in fact, “the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of a man.” In other words, Jesus knew the value of the prophets’ words, but he also knew that those words must not stand between the self and the divine. Similarly, Emerson does not oppose the rituals of the church but, rather, objects to how they are being performed. He says of the Sunday service: “If no heart warm this rite, the hollow, dry, creaking formality is too plain” to reach the listeners, and thus what listeners receive is “not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual.” Emerson is quite explicit about the distinction between Christ’s teachings and the lifeless use to which they have been put. Christ’s teachings, he says, are what give us all “our birth and nurture” and are the what the Divinity School graduates

“are now setting forth to teach.” Indeed, he refers to the church’s teachings as “its blessed words, which have been the consolation of humanity.” But that consolation must be approached as a guide, not as a gift of premade truth: “It is a low benefit to give me something; it is a high benefit to enable me to do somewhat of myself.” Thus, tradition is good to the extent that it provides signposts. Sarah Perrault

EMERSON, RALPH WALDOâ•… “SelfReliance”â•… (1841)

“Self-Reliance” is one of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s most widely read essays because it easily and optimistically connects the solitary individual to the natural world through simple truths. Emerson’s message of hope comes from the transcendental philosophy that by looking up at the stars or at a blade of grass, by smelling pines or listening to insects, one learns the truth of him or herself. Through solitude comes self-knowledge. It is one’s inner truth that creates wisdom and understanding. Emerson says that everyone can be a genius just by making the connection of the natural world to one’s own soul. The most quoted line from the essay, “To be great is to be misunderstood,” has been repeated by generations of readers, though many secretly hope the opposite is also true! Emerson connects the natural world to religious and philosophical beliefs. Through example, he relates man’s soul to the divine soul, to the voice of God and the legends of the Greeks. He continually connects the truth of human beings to the indisputable truth of simple natural occurrences. By offering such an accessible method for truth, Emerson offers a positive message as well: Look around, and if you truly see, you will understand. The rewards of “Self-Reliance” are not overtly stated but gradually offered throughout the essay. No matter the age or time, the basics of the natural world remain true and easy to gain. Emerson offers simple rewards such as truth, freedom, respect, and understanding—rewards that any earnest reader can easily attain. Patricia Brugman

“Self-Reliance”â•…â•… 401

Individual and Society in “Self-Reliance”

Ralph Waldo Emerson begins his essay “SelfReliance” with the Latin quotation: “Ne te quaesiveris extra”—“Do not seek for things outside yourself.” With this, he makes his point quickly: The individual is the supreme strength of group thinking, not the other way around. While every person is a product of society, the man or woman who listens to his or her own soul can be called a thinker, a voice of ideas, or a genius. Emerson calls on the individual to be a believer in him or herself, to trust his or her deepest thoughts, as did the great thinkers of the past—“Moses, Plato and Milton.” Emerson unites all individuals into the fabric of society by saying, “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts,” as if to say that brilliant thoughts are inherent in every solitary thinker—they only need a voice to become part of the body of human understanding. He implies here that while ideas of genius come from the individual, they migrate to all people and fuel society: “A stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time.” A single thought can be so true and honest that it will seem to another person like something from the depth of his or her own soul. Emerson’s concept of the relationship between society and the individual is best summed up in his dictum “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” By tapping into his or her inner strength, the individual becomes powerful. The vibration of this metaphorical string is truth, a truth that we can all hear, all respond to, and even seek for motivation. To Emerson, a person’s inner voice is God-given, and one only need look to the simplest of humankind, a baby, to see the truth: “Infancy conforms to no one: all conform to it, so that one baby commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.” Adults relate to babies as if remembering when they themselves were once pure and honest. There is no conscious joining of society and youth. Society joins the youth on the floor in baby-speak because the youth cries out for attention. True, the infant is dependent on others for care, but not for truth. For truth, the infant taps into his or her inner beings and prattles as a way of communicating with adults. Granted, it is not the ideas that

might exist in the infant mind that Emerson seeks, it is the model of honest communication. An infant can do nothing more than communicate honestly. The focus, though, is on the mature individual as a person who has created individual work. Emerson says, “[D]o your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall re-enforce yourself.” If a person can find the freedom to be a truly honest individual, he or she will be a truly honest thinker, one who increases the knowledge of society. The infant represents the individual, while prattling adults represent society. Under this model, who now controls the common stream of thought? Emerson states that the strong individual is the result of strong, personal truths, and that strong individuals are necessary for a strong society. The danger, he warns, is in conformity because through conformity, the individual is lost: “For non-conformity, the world whips you with its displeasure.” Then, one paragraph later: “The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency.” These two quotations reveal the irony of the individual and society. While a strong individual is necessary for a strong society, a strong society crushes the individual who stands out as different. Rather than rejoice at the genius of a new, individual idea, the group is often blinded to that which does not already exist in the common body of ideas. Emerson lists examples of great ideas that were the result of “pure and wise spirit” but which were summarily crushed by the thick thinking of a slow-moving society. Of Socrates, Jesus, Luther, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, he writes his most quoted line: “To be great is to be misunderstood.” To be great is to think beyond all previous boundaries of thought and so to add terror to the minds of contemporary thinkers. Emerson goes on to give hope to the otherwise voiceless individual through a modern fable. In this story, a drunkard is taken from the street to the palace where he is washed and dressed and given the duke’s identity, only to wake up to begin an important life. The drunkard is, perhaps, a metaphor for the nonconformist and the palace and title metaphors for respect and honor. All a great thinker needs is a way to get from the street to the palace, to move from the ordinary to the honored. Only by

402â•…â•… Emerson, Ralph Waldo truth and honesty can ordinary thoughts become the ideals of society. Later in the essay, Emerson creates another metaphor, this time joining the individual and society in a way that makes them forever intertwined. Using a transcendental image, he says: “All men have my blood, and I have all men’s.” Each individual, whether a genius or a sot, combines into the greater whole of society, which is then mixed, as if chemically, and separated out into individuals who think honestly. Emerson asserts that every society is dependent on geniuses like Galileo and his “opera-glass” or Columbus and his “undecked boat.” The inventions of humankind serve to increase the discoveries that men make and therefore their ideas. It is the strong individual who must navigate the push and pull of resistance and acceptance in order to make society great. Emerson ends his essay with his most powerful plea to the reader. After making a case for the importance of pure, honest and individual thought, he says, “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” With “peace” he infuses a degree of selfrespect and self-satisfaction that can only come from self-reliance. In the end, the title of the essay says it all. Each person is responsible for his or her own thoughts and thinking. Only through the notion of being a self-reliant individual can all people join together in a self-reliant society. Patricia Brugman

Nature in “Self-Reliance”

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s reflections in his essay “Self-Reliance” extend beyond men and women’s obvious relationship with the natural world. Emerson considers what is natural in the world as well as what is inspirational within the human soul. While he does not define nature in this essay, he does indicate that he means all interpretations of nature, even those associated with God. From his transcendental perspective, there are no limiting parameters. The human connection to nature is open to the sensibility of every reader and every generation of readers. To all, he offers an ever-optimistic reflection on the human experience.

Emerson begins his essay with quotations from classic and contemporary literature that show the ways in which man has always looked to the natural world for a source of truth about life: “Man is his own star; and the soul that can / Render an honest and a perfect man / Commands all light, all influence, all fate.” Here, the connection between the star-filled heavens and the honest man becomes the thesis for what Emerson means in his essay. The perfect star is a model for what the honest man can be. To this end, he does not see man as separate from nature, but part of it. He says, “The power which resides in [men and women] is new in nature and none but he knows what that is which he can do nor does he know until he has tried.” The human experience is connected to the natural experience and is full of hope. The notion that one never knows one’s ability until one has tried is a message that both flows from nature and leads to a source of endless potential. Referring back to the notion of a “perfect star,” the sky is the limit. The title of the essay, “Self-Reliance,” directs the reader to the purpose of the human connection to nature. To be self-reliant is to be strong from within, to have found the secret to one’s own soul. To this end, Emerson says that men and women must be individuals that retreat into the solitude of nature: “[T]he great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” The result of solitude is a connection beyond understanding: “To be great is to be misunderstood.” The person who truly learns the lessons of nature often thinks a truth that is incomprehensible to the common person. Nature, in the sense of man’s nature, cannot be changed. If men and women are true learners and true to what they learn, they become honest and true to the world. Emerson says, “I suppose no man can violate his nature.╯.╯.╯. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.” Here, he connects the sensual reality of smell and sound to the truth on the very page he is writing. He not only propounds a great theory, he proves it in the very writing he produces. The pursuit of this honest and natural work requires an acceptance of the world’s mysteries. By comparing the human experience to the natural

“Self-Reliance”â•…â•… 403 world, Emerson sets up a correlation that elevates the importance of the mysteries of nature that refers back to the earlier quotation of the perfect star: “We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause.╯.╯.╯. [H]ere are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom.” Emerson plainly states here that through nature and natural appearances, men and women are given the perfect model for their own thinking and understanding. Through nature comes the lesson for human genius. By observing the natural world and how it works, men and women breathe life into their own lives. Rather than relying on individual thought, men and women often quote “some saint or sage.” Emerson would rather have the thinker rely on his or her own inner truth and inner voice, which is an individual voice of truth. He instructs the reader with an empowering message: “I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you.” He thus gives his ultimate in inspiration and encouragement. He gives readers of all generations hope for themselves and a goal that is attainable to everyone. Emerson has not given the reader a guide for some worthless purpose but has provided uplifting examples of plain learning that anyone can achieve. This is the optimistic legacy that reaches all earnest readers of this essay. By simply gazing to the heavens or beholding the scent and sounds of nature, men and women can attain the truth that resides within their own hearts. Through simple practices, Emerson offers hope for a more meaningful human experience, one of hope and truth. Patricia Brugman

Work in Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s focus in his essay “SelfReliance” is on the importance of work as essential to a full human experience. Work is more than a means to an end, in Emerson’s mind. His message is very simple: Through human effort, all people are rewarded. While this seems to lead to a business relationship between work and payment, the payment that Emerson offers is not monetary but,

rather, spiritual. In this essay and every interpretation of “Self-Reliance,” the self-reliant individual is the one who gains as much as he or she seeks. Emerson does not offer a definition of work but leaves the meaning open to the reader’s interpretation. In a general way, Emerson’s idea of “work” is the conveyance of truth from the natural world to the human conscience for the purpose of improving society. If there were no work, society and the individual would remain disconnected and misunderstood. By contrast, human understanding of the natural world (through work) communicates the truth of nature to society, for the betterment of all people. In basic terms, men and women must work in order to reap; an individual must work in order to live. These are obvious truths made self-evident by both economics and history. Emerson goes further by identifying work as necessary—as a way for people to know their world and therefore themselves. The truth of the world is not a given; it must be sought after. He says that “though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.” This harvesting metaphor makes it plain that work creates results that are not only productive but necessary for the human soul. By seeking knowledge, men and women will gain truth. Emerson follows this sentiment with the obvious: Though work is hard, it is also rewarding in more than monetary terms: “God will not have his works made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.” As God works, so shall men and women. Not working does not deliver men and women to their state of full awareness or genius, but leaves them bereft of genius, invention, and hope. In his own life, Emerson lives the message he teaches. He says that work must be the response to the call of life to the point of denying all else to get the job done: “I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the doorpost.” His passion is to do his work, which in turn calls others to work for their passions. Through the collective effort of people

404â•…â•… Equiano, Olaudah at work, the collective mind of society grows to an understanding that helps us all. Nowhere in “Self-Reliance” does Emerson offer an easy life as a viable pursuit. A fulfilled life is a struggle, he says. Work benefits both the individual and society as a whole since it comes from nature, but it is also difficult. He writes: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adorned by little statesmen and philosophers and diviners. With consistency, a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.” Emerson is not in favor of shadows or an incomplete life. The full experience of life can only be achieved by true work, inspired by nature as a means of improving the minds of all mankind. The payment, in the truest sense, is spiritual, and that elevated sense of individual spirit is what makes us all truly self-reliant. Patricia Brugman

EQUIANO, OLAUDAHâ•… The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himselfâ•… (1789)

Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative of his life, one of the first widely read slave narratives, was first published in 1789. Equiano (ca. 1745–97) was well-known to his audience of American and European abolitionists at the time his narrative was first published. By 1794, the Interesting Narrative was so popular that it had gone through nine editions. Unique because it is the only slave narrative that gives a detailed first-person account of a slave’s life in Africa before being taken to America, the Interesting Narrative became a prototype for works used by abolitionists in the fight against slavery. Equiano successfully used his Narrative to influence British politicians debating the slave trade in Parliament. His involvement in the British debate helped persuade lawmakers to abolish the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Equiano’s narrative gives an account of his enslavement, escape, and eventual freedom. By his own account, he was born in 1745 in the village of Essaka (now in modern-day Nigeria, West Africa).

Kidnapped at age 11 along with his sister, Equiano was sold into slavery during the mid-1750s. He was enslaved in Africa for a short time but was then sold to British traders who shipped him to the West Indies. Shortly thereafter, he was transported to a plantation in Virginia, only to be resold to a British naval officer, Michael Pascal. Pascal brought Equiano to London and renamed him Gustavus Vassa. Equiano served in the Royal Navy during the Seven Years’ War. Dishonoring his promise to free Equiano at the end of the war, Pascal resold him into West Indian slavery. In 1766, Equiano purchased his freedom and became independent. From being a slave, he became the wealthiest African-descended man in Britain. In 1792, he married an English woman by the name of Susannah Cullen, with whom he had two daughters named Anna Maria and Joanna. On her 21st birthday in the year 1816, Joanna inherited Equiano’s estate, the equivalent of $120,000 today. Olaudah Equiano’s publications catapulted him into a life of wealth and prestige. He acquired more fame and fortune than any of his African contemporaries during the 18th century. Kelli Randall

Freedom in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself

Olaudah Equiano opens his Interesting Narrative by describing the freedom he enjoyed as a young boy in Africa. Equiano was born free. His opening narration illustrates that freedom was a natural and innate state of being for him as a boy, but unfortunately, he was captured and enslaved in Africa at age 11. Thus, his status throughout the Narrative goes from free to enslaved to free. There are two primary variations of freedom throughout the Narrative: physical and spiritual. The two are inextricably connected, and as a result, these two forms of freedom cannot be separated. In the Interesting Narrative, Equiano serves in the navy during the Seven Years’ War under his master, the British navy officer Michael Pascal. Though Pascal has promised to free Equiano at the conclusion of the war in 1762, he goes back on his word. He does not free Equiano, but instead sells him back

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the Africanâ•‹.â•‹.â•‹.â•…â•… 405 into the horrifying system of West Indian slavery. Working in the sugar islands of the West Indies, Equiano manages to save his money and purchase his freedom in 1766. Equiano’s freedom to write is yet another form of freedom central to the Interesting Narrative. The freedom that comes from writing his autobiography is important when examining Equiano, demonstrating the close connection between his freedom and his identity. When he was a slave, a specific identity was forced upon him: Pascal renamed him Gustavus Vassa to demonstrate his control over his property. When Equiano becomes free, part of his task is to carve out a new identity and place for himself in society. He does this, in part, by writing his own story and portraying himself as he wants to be seen. Earlier in the Narrative, as a slave, Equiano possesses an unusual freedom of movement. One of his many owners, Robert King, is aware that if Equiano is given too much freedom, he could escape. However, he earns King’s trust, takes advantage of the freedom being at sea gave him, and becomes a shrewd businessman, earning and saving enough money to eventually buy his own freedom. In addition, he feels that honesty is the best policy, and he strives to treat others the way he wants to be treated—with respect. He does not feel that it would be right to escape from slavery by running away, preferring to be freed legally. He ultimately chooses to purchase his own freedom, and he returns to England to pursue the abolitionist cause. Equiano’s enslavement is atypical and not representative of the suffering most slaves experience. He is literate and has several good masters who allow him to learn various trades, skills, and information he otherwise would not have been privy to. Unlike Michael Pascal, Robert King keeps his promise of freedom: He authorizes Equiano’s free papers to be drawn up, and he signs them, endorsing Equiano’s freedom. Equiano keeps these legally binding freedom papers on his person at all times, for he knows many would challenge and question the legitimacy of his freedom. Notably, he includes his freedom papers in his autobiography as proof for any doubting readers.

Once free, Equiano’s relationship with Robert King goes from slave-master to employeeemployer status. There is difficulty in this for both parties, for when Equiano becomes free, King can no longer protect his former slave as his property. Equiano, a freed black man, is now in danger of abuse and reenslavement by those seeking to undermine his freedom. There is no one to physically protect or defend him. The institution of slavery has thus placed limitations on the extent to which he is actually free. If he travels to places where slavery still exists, his freedom is very much threatened. He has to act and defend his rights as a free man as he faces many dangerous and precarious situations. Equiano becomes truly free once he leaves North America and the West Indies and heads for England. American and Caribbean slavery had placed great restrictions on Equiano’s freedom. At sea, he had earned respect because of his skills and expertise in seafaring; at sea, he was able to overcome racial barriers, and even whites, who judged him on the basis of his skin color, had to recognize his seafaring expertise. What his narrative demonstrates is that though physically and spiritually enslaved, his mental toughness and persistence is what ultimately granted him his freedom. Equiano’s Interesting Narrative demonstrates how thoughtful, perceptive, and intelligent an individual he was. He used his mind to work through situations; even though his slave masters owned his body, they did not own his mind and his soul. The innate freedom Equiano ultimately possessed over his mind and soul allowed him to transcend the fact that he was in bondage. Notably, Equiano’s physical freedom came after his spiritual conversion to Christianity. Kelli Randall

Identity in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself

The question of Olaudah Equiano’s sense of identity is complicated, and critics have hotly debated the culture to which Equiano and his Interesting Narrative belong. The noted biographer, critic, and scholar Vincent Carretta describes Equiano as “an indisputably African body in European dress.”

406â•…â•… Equiano, Olaudah Equiano includes an elegant frontispiece of himself as a preface to his Interesting Narrative. Though the portrait presents Equiano as a European gentleman, the title page of the book reads, “Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African.” Equiano refers to himself as “the African” because he knows that skin color is the standard by which he will be identified by others. The portrait’s portrayal of Equiano as both African and European underscores his dual identity as Olaudah Equiano and Gustavus Vassa. Gustavus Vassa, the name given to him by his master, is the name that Equiano ultimately identifies with for most of his life. Yet toward the end of his life, he reclaims his African identity and goes by the name Equiano. Equiano repeatedly conveys his loyalty to Britain, and he praises the good of the British imperial system throughout his Interesting Narrative. He considers himself British and does all he can to deny any difference between himself and others of British culture. His adoption of British culture is so convincing that at one pivotal point in the narrative, a white slave owner tells Equiano that he “talks too much English.” Despite the accusation, Equiano does not turn his back on his African heritage. Instead, he possesses an acute awareness of “race” as the equivalent of what we would refer to as “culture.” Equiano considers himself to be British even though he is of African descent. He chooses to take on the customs, politics, and religious practices of the British. Throughout the narrative, he is careful not to seem too radical, and he proposes the adoption of British customs in African society. Nonetheless, Equiano is keenly aware of his dual identity and the boundaries between his African identity and British acculturation. He realizes that he will be judged on the basis of his skin color and not on the basis of the culture he subscribes to. In a pivotal moment in the Interesting Narrative, he describes an encounter with a young black boy, who runs to him and embraces him as if “he had been his brother” though “they had never seen each other before.” Though Equiano chooses to live his life as a British man, he becomes frustrated by the fact that he continues to be identified by others as an African. He speaks as both an insider and an outsider of Brit-

ish culture, demonstrating his double consciousness and discomfort with his marginal identity. Though Equiano spends a great portion of the first part of his Interesting Narrative talking about his African roots, at key moments in the narrative he considers himself white. He even expresses embarrassment about his skin color. As a result, his complicated perception of himself both helps and hinders his abolitionist politics. While he does not initially condemn slavery altogether, he is critical of the physical cruelty it engenders. His experiences of slavery in America and the West Indies are far worse than the periods when he is enslaved in Africa or Britain. Equiano has a different attitude toward slavery than most abolitionists of the time, in fact, because he opposed the cruelty more than slavery itself, he might be better called an ameliorationist. Equiano’s viewpoint of slavery from an economic perspective conflicts with other popular antislavery messages. Surprisingly, after becoming free, Equiano works as an overseer in Central America. Deeply affected by the immoral behavior associated with the institution of slavery, however, he eventually quits and returns to England to promote the antislavery cause passionately. He becomes actively involved in a “Back to Africa” movement, the Sierra Leone project, in order to relocate Britain’s population of poor black people. A distinctly African-descended voice sharing experiences of life in Africa and speaking out against the slave trade proves to be most credible in persuading an abolitionist audience in the case of Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative. Yet the credibility of Equiano’s account of his origins in Africa is in question. The scholar Vincent Carretta’s research for Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (2005) indicates that it is highly probable that Equiano fabricated his African identity and dramatic account of surviving the Middle Passage. Carretta’s research found baptismal and naval records suggesting South Carolina to be Equiano’s probable birthplace. If this is true, then Equiano manufactured the story of his African identity from books he must have read about Africa, and his account of the Middle Passage probably comes from oral accounts of slaves. If Equiano invented his African identity, it nevertheless became an important factor in the suc-

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the Africanâ•‹.â•‹.â•‹.â•…â•… 407 cess of his autobiography. He portrayed himself in a favorable light for the reading public and influenced that audience to denounce the inhumane practice of slavery. Kelli Randall

Spirituality in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself

In the opening chapter of his Interesting Narrative, Olaudah Equiano boldly announces, “I regard myself as a particular favourite of Heaven, and acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life.” Equiano feels that God’s providence, or plan for his life, justifies everything that has happened to him, both good and the bad. This heartfelt Christian conviction is quite different from Equiano’s account of “Eboe” religious cultural practices in Africa. The Eboes believe in one Creator. Equiano never uses the word God or Lord when he describes the Eboe supreme being. The Creator lives in the sun and wears a belt so “he may never eat or drink.” The Creator also smokes a pipe, a luxury in Eboe culture. The Eboes believe that the Creator controls people’s lives, especially their deaths and forms of captivity such as slavery. Their religion, however, does not include a doctrine of eternity. Instead, Equiano refers to their specific belief practice as the “transmigration of souls.” These souls of friends and family members guard and protect their living loved ones from bad or evil spirits, foes, and enemies. Equiano describes how ritualistic reverence for those souls is demonstrated by setting aside a portion of food or pouring drink onto the floor to both acknowledge and appease the spirits. Equiano’s Interesting Narrative demonstrates the influence that autobiography as a genre and style had on slave narratives. The genre of spiritual autobiography is particularly important in understanding the structure and style of the Interesting Narrative. The slave narrative plot generally focuses on the protagonist’s enslavement, escape, and eventual freedom. The structure of Equiano’s story parallels nicely the spiritual autobiography’s three-part emphasis on the protagonist’s life of sin, conversion, and spiritual rebirth. Slavery is akin to a

life of sin, while escape from slavery parallels spiritual conversion, and freedom is symbolic of spiritual rebirth. In the spiritual autobiography, the narrator is retrospective. Equiano speaks about the past to give an account of things as they were experienced in the past while at the same time interpreting past events from a present, informed, and wise perspective. As a spiritual autobiographer, Equiano initially talks about sin, then his repentance of sin, inevitable backsliding, and rebirth by professing his faith. He parallels physical enslavement to sin. It is not until he accepts Christ that he becomes both physically and spiritually free. Equiano is only able to come to terms with his identity and develop his religious character after he obtains his physical freedom by purchasing it. In terms of Christian theology, Equiano redeems himself. With a number of his contemporaries, such as Phillis Wheatley, James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, and John Marrant, he shared Selina Hastings, countess of Huntingdon, and the Reverend George Whitefield as patrons and spiritual advisers. Like his fellow African-descended writers, he embraces Methodism. Equiano’s audience probably consisted primarily of Christians. In his narrative, he seeks to appeal to the Christian consciences of his readers to persuade them toward the cause of abolishing slavery. He hopes that Christians will empathize with his experiences as a slave. If they are indeed true Christians, then they will not want to take part in the human suffering of their fellow enslaved African brethren. Equiano’s abolitionist rhetoric focuses primarily on Christian morals, and he often indicts his audience of white Christians for their hypocrisy. He challenged them to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. He specifically refers to these individuals as “nominal Christians” and demonstrates the incompatibility of slavery and Christianity. Like many of his African-descended contemporaries, Equiano feels that his fall into slavery was meant to be. God’s plan for Equiano was to experience physical slavery as a path toward becoming spiritually free. Kelli Randall

408â•…â•… Erdrich, Louise

ERDRICH, LOUISEâ•… The Bingo Palaceâ•… (1994)

Published in 1994, The Bingo Palace was Louise Erdrich’s fourth novel set on the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota. Like the other installments of what is known as the Little No Horse Saga, The Bingo Palace portrays the tensions between reservation life in the 1980s and Native American tradition through the intersecting lives of the Kashpaw, Nanapush, and Lamartine families. The novel moves chronologically but weaves in the past of each character through story and reminiscence. The main character of The Bingo Palace is Lipsha Morrissey, who returns to the reservation from Fargo, North Dakota. When he goes back to the place of his upbringing, Lipsha struggles to reconcile his past with his present and future. On his personal journey, he feuds with his entrepreneurial uncle, Lyman Lamartine; falls in love with Lyman’s girlfriend, Shawnee Ray Toose; feels manipulated by his aunt, Zelda Kashpaw; sees the ghost of his mother, June Morrissey; and becomes enlightened by the elusive Fleur Pillager. Through these encounters, Lipsha seeks spiritual awakening, but at the same time he is blinded by money, possessions, and sex. His quest includes themes such as fate, commodification/commercialization, identity, family, love, and tradition. The Bingo Palace is a novel that is both universal and specific. Erdrich (b. 1954) centers on the universal discovery of oneself, a complex intersection of family, memory, culture, and personality, but she also focuses on the specific experiences of Native Americans struggling to maintain tradition in the modern world. Erica D. Galioto

Commodification/Commercialization in The Bingo Palace

On the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation, the residents featured in Louise Erdrich’s The Bingo Palace experience the conflict of living in two worlds: the world of Native American tradition and the world of modern American culture. They want to preserve history, but the families also need to survive financially, and real want quickly

supplants fiscal desires. The circus-like appearance of the Bingo hall represents the difficult balance between the traditional and modern worlds. While the structure is erected on tribal land, it stands for commercialism, greed, and excess. Run by Lyman Lamartine, the reservation’s most noted businessman, the Bingo Palace emphasizes winning money to pay for worldly goods as opposed to deepening spirituality. Lyman’s determination to build an even more elaborate casino on ancestral land shows that desecrating his history means little in relation to financial gain. By emphasizing commercialization as a theme, Erdrich illustrates how the desire for money not only drives the characters away from tradition but also leaves them unsatisfied and empty, financially and spiritually. Though Lyman and Lipsha share many differences, they are similarly focused on material gain. Lyman, as the Bingo Palace owner, and Lipsha, as a maintenance worker/bartender, are equally influenced by money. For Lyman, enough is never enough, and he willingly trades tradition for access to funds. His salary and bingo games leave him unsatisfied, and so he gambles everything away in Reno after the Indian Gaming Conference. His exchange of his father Nector’s sacred pipe for $100 at a pawn shop permits him to lose a few more rounds of blackjack, but the ease with which he sells his history is difficult for readers to accept. Blind to his own shallowness, Lyman plans to erect a casino on ancestral Pillager land, but it will undoubtedly fail to satisfy his greed. Similar to Lyman, Lipsha is also driven by material gain. His fixation with the bingo van as his ultimate prize signifies his emphasis on worldly goods. While he does, in fact, win the van with the assistance of his dead mother’s intervention, his satisfaction is short-lived. An idiotic fight with some white teenagers results in the van’s destruction and represents the eventual deterioration of all commercial goods. Lipsha, however, continues to play his lucky cards and racks up winnings. When he fails to spend every cent on booze, food, and nonessentials, he uses his mattress as a bank. He eventually trusts his uncle to open a joint account for them but is fleeced by Lyman and again finds himself penniless. Through Lyman and Lipsha, the negative effects

The Bingo Palaceâ•…â•… 409 of commercialism are emphasized. Money turns them against tradition and family, greed leaves them powerless to their own will, and material objects separate them from inner spirituality. They are each left wanting more when the money is gone. Not permanent but transitory, money is only a temporary “insulation” from true connection to the self, others, and land. Though Lyman instructs Lipsha to “go after something real,” neither escapes money’s powerful sway. The emphasis on money and exchange also has a disturbing effect on their relationships with others, specifically with Shawnee Ray Toose, their joint love interest. Rather than treating her as a complex individual with feelings, both Lyman and Lipsha commodify her as a possession to be had. Shawnee is a desired object of belonging, like the bingo van or dollar bills. Erdrich potently describes their commodification of Shawnee through their proposed deal and its execution: Lipsha suggests that he will give his uncle Nector’s tribal pipe if Lyman turns away from Shawnee. Sadly, Shawnee’s objectification continues throughout the novel. Lipsha elevates her to a cherished prize, and Lyman grooms her to be his future casino manager. Others see Shawnee merely as a vessel, as to be filled with their own vision of her. Ironically, she appreciates money for what it is worth as a means to an end: She seeks money to start her own design business or relocate with her son, Redford, off the reservation. Her fiscal acuity surpasses those around her. Like Shawnee, the mysterious Fleur Pillager also understands the truth of money. Her repeated refrain in Lipsha’s mind that Matchimanito Lake, the proposed site of the new casino, is “not real estate” reminds his conscience that some things should be sacred from commercialization. While he and Lyman are constantly reminded of money’s impermanence, Fleur, with her intense spirituality, illustrates that land lasts. Money separates modern people from the things that traditional land connects them to: family, history, and spirituality. Any balance between the traditional and the modern is necessarily difficult when money is involved. Erica D. Galioto

Fate in The Bingo Palace

The Bingo Palace explores the presence of fate, design, and luck in everyday life. While fate—attributing events to outside forces—and design—manipulating events through personal will—can easily be used to explain much of the novel’s action, it is luck, happening by chance, that is most emphasized. Appearing in the titles of nine chapters, “luck” is consistently believed to determine certain events. Similar to fate, luck finds its source outside people; however, it is attributed to everyday occurrences, while fate is decidedly more otherworldly. In both cases, fate and luck allow their believers to deny personal responsibility for their actions, and it is this philosophy that pervades The Bingo Palace. The Bingo Palace itself symbolizes belief in luck on the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation. The local gambling spot, which looks more like a circus tent, depends on people who place their fate in these outside sources. Whether the reservation residents play the daily bingo games, pull the levers of the slot machines, or drink to inebriation, they willingly give over their lives to something outside themselves— an announcer, a machine, or a bottle. Whether they call it everyday luck or spiritual fate, it is the same: a constructed explanation of life’s events. “Lipsha’s Luck” stands as the centerpiece chapter that echoes throughout the other characters’ chapters. Lipsha returns to the reservation a thoroughly modern young man in dress, speech, and attitude and is stunned when Marie Kashpaw, his foster grandmother, presents him with Nector’s pipe housed in a decorative bag. During this exchange, both Lipsha and Marie recede to the past and see Nector with his cherished object, hear his long prayers, and recall his requested favors. Speechless, Lipsha holds the sacred pipe and reconnects with both his recent and ancestral past. That night, buoyed with courage, he attempts to take Shawnee Ray Toose, mother of his uncle’s son, for Chinese food in Canada, but they never make it across the border. They are stopped by an eager agent who searches their vehicle and mistakes Nector’s tribal pipe and natural seed for marijuana and its smoking implement. The agent opens the ornate bag and performs an action only meant for sacred ritual: he joins the bowl of the pipe to the narrow, carved stem. As the only “non-

410â•…â•… Erdrich, Louise Indian” to ever lock these pieces in place, the agent turns Lipsha’s luck to bad. Henceforth in the novel, all of Lipsha’s trials are attributed to this action. Everything from his destroyed bingo van and his failed love affair to his skunk spray and food fight is blamed on turned luck. While it is convenient for Lipsha to blame all of his negative experiences on a source outside himself, he also attributes positive events to good luck. For instance, his very survival is considered lucky because his mother, June, abandoned him when he was an infant. His rescue and subsequent upbringing by Marie Kashpaw hinged on good luck, positive happenstance that he never converted into personal will. Characterized by potential and high ACT scores, Lipsha underperforms and fails to direct his own course. Instead, he searches for signs of chance that foretell his next move. His grandmother’s mailing of his father’s wanted poster is a sign to come home, while a visitation from his mother’s ghost predicts future material gain. After he sees June’s apparition, Lipsha wins the bingo van and countless cash winnings as he plays the cards she leaves with him. He feels more connected to the inner powers of his spirituality and becomes a reservation healer. Like Nector’s pipe, June’s visit makes things happen; only these events are positive due to their source. June, Lyman, Shawnee, Fleur, Redford, Albertine, Gerry, and Zelda, similarly, have chapters devoted to their experiences of luck. Through these characters, Erdrich complicates Lipsha’s simplistic view of fate by presenting situations where luck comes to those who do or do not deserve it or by showing how luck may be consciously crafted. Finally, luck appears to be a matter of perspective. The plane crash that grants Gerry his most recent freedom is good luck, while June’s rape is bad luck. Lyman gambles away significant winnings and Nector’s pipe because he is manipulated by a belief in luck, but Fleur wins her ancestral land back through luck that she manipulates. Shawnee and Zelda exemplify pure personal determination masquerading as luck. Through these myriad examples, Erdrich complicates the distinctions among fate, luck, and design and forces readers to consider the result of denying personal responsibility for one’s choices. Erica D. Galioto

Identity in The Bingo Palace

The characters that populate The Bingo Palace all struggle with the universal complexity of personal identity, and Louise Erdrich shows how it is impossible to fully account for how a person comes to be. Nonetheless, she uses the Little No Horse Saga in part to illustrate the powerful hold memory has on personal identity. The pasts of Lipsha, Zelda, and Lyman determine who they have become, but by reconciling their memories, they can change. Lipsha lives to early adulthood believing the story that his guardians Marie and Nector Kashpaw tell him: His mother, June Morrissey, was wellintended but wild, and she understandably turned him over to the Kashpaw family. Having lived with this explanation through childhood, Lipsha makes his peace with it and forgives his mother for the decision that separated them. As part of his personal history, this fiction dominates his identity; however, his lack of direction and feeling of being lost point to a deeper uncertainty within his being. His persistent emptiness suggests his own ignorance about his past. Upon his return to the reservation, his aunt Zelda, in a drunken state, tells him the truth. Lipsha always feels that Zelda knows him on a deeper level than others, and as the keeper of his unknown secret, now he learns why. Her admission removes Lipsha’s comfort with his own waywardness and pushes him to complete a quest for a more spiritual identity. Zelda reveals to Lipsha that he was not presented to the Kashpaws by a reluctant June but, rather, saved from intentional drowning by Zelda herself. She describes with great detail how June had secured a bundle before throwing it into the slough and leaving. Zelda then recalls wading into where the gunnysack was thrown and using physical exertion to drag it out of the water and to the land. Weighed down by rocks, the bundle concealed baby Lipsha. Throughout this painful revelation and immediately following, Lipsha tries to hold onto his identity even as he feels it shattering. Disbelief pervades him as he repeats “No mother” over and over. Lipsha denies that it was him, denies that it was June, and fearfully grips the fiction he has believed for so long. As it slips away, he fades into a visit from June’s ghost and begins a spiritual journey. He searches for answers and embarks on

Love Medicineâ•…â•… 411 a vision quest that returns him to that experience of pain. Unbeknownst to him, Lipsha carried this pain inside him throughout his childhood to now. By reliving it, he better understands himself and his mother’s actions. As a result, his feeling of emptiness lessens. Lipsha is not free from internal or external conflict, but he can more easily define his own identity once he deals with this difficult history. While Lipsha must confront a past he did not even know he had, Zelda Kashpaw’s personal identity is a conscious reaction to her past. As a young child, Zelda watches her father burn down the house of Lulu Lamartine, the woman with whom he had an adulterous affair. As the flames grow and she contemplates her father’s powerlessness, young Zelda decides never to be controlled by love as an emotion. Years later, she does, in fact, fall in love with Xavier Toose, but she uses personal and spiritual power to resist him. Hardening herself again him and his entreaties, Zelda controls her natural feeling. Though she marries and has children, she never relinquishes her iciness; her harsh personality keeps her distant from others, but her desire to rescue Shawnee Ray, Xavier’s niece, shows that she still harbors feelings for her first love. After 30 years, she finally goes to him. Ready to give up her past and the dependence of her personal identity on hardness, Zelda, like Lipsha, starts a new life. Even Lyman confronts a difficult past experience to forge a new identity. During his vision quest, Lyman recalls his most painful moment, when he watched his brother Henry walk into the water and drown himself after returning from Vietnam. Holding onto this memory has left Lyman with regret and loneliness, and it certainly has contributed to his gambling, a mindnumbing pastime. As he dances in Henry’s clothes to connect with his brother, Lyman hears Henry tell him to put away his ratty garments. Dancing for himself for the first time since Henry’s suicide, Lyman feels Henry to be in a place where it is “calm.” Some of this peace will strengthen Lyman as he reconfigures his relationship to that painful memory and develops his own personal identity. Erica D. Galioto

LOUISE ERDRICHâ•… Love Medicineâ•… (1984, 1993)

Love Medicine, one of the most widely read and often studied works of American Indian literature, was first published in 1984; it was republished with an added chapter in 1993. A collection of interrelated short stories, it is the first installment in the series that would eventually come to be informally known as the Little No Horse Saga. In its pages we are introduced to the families we will meet again and again in the course of the six works that are set in and around the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota. The main characters of Love Medicine are from the generation of Indians who were born in the early part of the 20th century. They are too young to know what life was like for the Chippewa before the American government allotted their land, but they are old enough to have learned many of the traditional ways from their elders. They are perpetually caught between the traditional and the modern: less seduced by the modern than their children, but more adapted to it than their parents. The three most prominent characters are Marie Lazarre Kashpaw; her husband, Nector Kashpaw; and her rival and his lover, Lulu Nanapush Lamartine. Through these three characters and their various offspring, Erdrich explores such themes as love, tradition, abandonment, guilt, death, sex and sexuality, commodification/commercialization, religion, parenthood, and survival. Love Medicine is a delightful, complex, and moving story. Its interwoven tales can be sometimes confusing, sometimes ambiguous, and sometimes hard to read. But because it tells the story of a generation of Indians whose lives were almost always confusing, ambiguous, and hard, this approach seems quite appropriate. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Abandonment in Love Medicine

As a child, June Morrissey Kashpaw, the character whose death scene opens Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, was abandoned by her alcoholic mother, Lucille. She lives alone in the woods, no one knows for how long, surviving off pine sap, grass, and the buds from trees. Eventually, she is brought to

412â•…â•… Louise Erdrich Lucille’s sister Marie, who takes her in and cares for her as if she were her own child; indeed, June becomes so special to Marie that “It wasn’t long before I would want to hold her against me tighter than any of the others.” However tight she holds her, though, Marie cannot erase the wound of June’s abandonment. Even as a young child, June seems to have a death wish, exhorting her young cousins to hang her in the woods during their pretend game of “horse thief ” and cursing Marie when she puts an end to the game just in time. June goes on to abandon others throughout her life, almost pathologically. She abandons Marie by going into the woods to live with Eli, her uncle. She abandons both her children, King and Lipsha, even going so far as to attempt to drown Lipsha in the slough before giving him to Marie, as she herself had been given so long ago. She abandons her husband Gordie, who then descends into an alcoholic madness in which he is visited by her ghost, just as many other characters will be throughout the Little No Horse series. It is as though June, by continuing to leave those who love her in increasingly dramatic fashion, is making sure she will be missed, as she was decidedly not as a nine-year-old child foraging in the woods. While June might be the most dramatic case of abandonment in the novel, other characters are motivated by this theme as well. Marie feels abandonment throughout life. She is neither Indian nor white, and she must face the stigma of her family, the Lazarres, hated by all on the reservation. In an attempt to find belonging, she goes to live at the convent, where she is subsequently abused by the sadistic Sister Leopolda. As Marie battles Leopolda, she feels abandoned by God as the devil, or the “dark fish” tries to take her soul. She escapes this horror and literally runs into Nector, her future husband, on her run from the convent. Nector and Marie marry and have many children, but they can never really be said to have made a life together. Marie props up the worthless Nector, running the household, getting him involved in tribal leadership, and generally creating a situation whereby he need do nothing— only to be abandoned by him in favor of Lulu, her longtime rival. Lulu herself has been scarred by her mother’s abandonment of her. However, unlike June and

Marie, Lulu was abandoned by Fleur “for her own good.” As the U.S. government’s policies increasingly impoverished the tribe, Fleur sent Lulu to boarding school. After her return, it becomes clear that no good came from that move. Lulu spends the rest of her life using her considerable charms to move from man to man, forcing herself into a position in which she will only be the abandoner and never the abandonee. Moses, Beverly, Nector, and other unnamed men who are the fathers of her children are left in succession as Lulu cuts a swath through life. Her children, however, remain with her always, indicating that Lulu prizes above all the mother-child bond that she feels Fleur had broken. Finally, in what is possibly the most widely anthologized section of Love Medicine, the chapter entitled “The Red Convertible,” both Henry Jr. and Lyman must deal with intense feelings of abandonment—feelings that drive one of them to suicide. Henry has returned from the Vietnam War traumatized by what he has seen and done. Like many Vietnam veterans, he feels as though the country for which he risked his life abandoned him when the war became so unpopular. Lyman, for his part, worships his older brother and feels that the loss of that vital connection, which is damaged when Henry returns and severed when he drowns himself in the river, has left him alone in the world. However, Lyman turns his feelings of abandonment into work, becoming a driven, workaholic businessman in the process. So many of the characters in this novel feel the effects of abandonment, just as American Indians as a whole were abandoned by the U.S. government. Some, like Marie, are just written off as unworthy; others, like Lulu, are abandoned for “their own good.” In Erdrich’s narrative, abandonment and the different effects it has on human beings illustrate well the depths of pain generated by those betrayals. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Sex and Sexuality in Love Medicine

In Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich uses the theme of sex and sexuality to give her characters hope and to bind them to their traditions. She also uses this powerful and controversial theme to dramatize the negative aspects of life on the Turtle Mountain

Love Medicineâ•…â•… 413 reservation, specifically hopelessness and the feeling of worthlessness. In the first chapter of the text, “The World’s Greatest Fishermen,” we meet June, who is hopeless, alone, and defiantly out of touch with her family and community. She picks up a stranger in a bar, leaves with him, and has uncomfortable sex with him in his truck. When she meets this man, June is living in a hotel room that has no lock on the door, has not eaten for days, and is wearing torn clothes because she has nothing else. She leaves her room with the intent of taking a bus home to the reservation, but she sees this man as potentially “different.” June sees herself very much like the Easter eggs she and the man peel and eat as they sit at the bar—brightly colored on the outside, if a bit cracked and faded, but easily consumed on the inside. In fact, during the encounter in the truck, June sees herself as nothing more than a commodity. She feels the truck’s heater on her shoulder, opening like a “pair of jaws,” and has the sensation of lying vulnerable “before a great wide mouth.” When his slick down vest presses against her body, she feels as though she is being “rubbed by an enormous tongue.” After the man falls asleep, June quietly exits the truck, falling out into the snow in a “shock like being born.” Then, feeling herself pure and new, she sets out to walk home to the reservation and is never seen again. June sees herself as a commodity, and a shabby one at that. In this scene, by giving herself up one last time, freely and of her own accord, she feels she is reborn. Erdrich leaves this rebirth ambiguous, though; although June commits suicide by walking off into the snow, she is also able to come back as a spirit, in this book and in others, to help those people in her life whom she left behind. Another instance in the text where sex is simultaneously a tragedy and a new beginning is Marie and Nector’s first encounter, which occurs in the chapter “Wild Geese.” Marie, having just run from the convent and the tortures of Sister Leopolda, literally runs into Nector coming up the hill. Nector has been strolling along thinking of Lulu—thinking of her, much as June thought of herself, as an object to be consumed. He thinks: “She is a tart berry full of juice, and I know she is mine.” When he slams into Marie, he is led unwittingly into a

sexual encounter that ultimately leaves him badly “weakened.” He says, “I am caught. I give way. I cannot help myself, because, to my everlasting wonder, Marie is all tight plush acceptance.” Like June’s encounter described above, this incident illuminates the reservation women’s general lack of self-worth and the men’s tendency to take advantage of that lack. However, it also serves to bind Nector and Marie—forever, it turns out—in a bond that is both loving and reflective of traditional reservation values. While Nector and Marie are definitely bound, he cannot forget the memory of Lulu, who remains for him that illusive “berry.” The idea of women as food, both nourishing and necessary, yet at the same time a consumable object, reaches its zenith when Lulu and Nector finally consummate their longheld attraction. Smearing Lulu with the melting butter they are supposed to delivering around the reservation, Nector gives in to his desire, betrays Marie, and winds up being used himself in the process. For Lulu, unlike all the other women in the text, has learned to take advantage of sex. Lulu uses men, beginning with Moses Pillager, the most traditional man around, instead of letting men use her. Lulu goes to Moses when she is young in order to challenge every rule that surrounds her upbringing. Moses is “too old” for her, and “too close a relation.” He is also “bent” in the mind, but he is living as traditional a life as anyone on the reservation. Lulu begins her sexual conquests with Moses, going to his island, seducing him, getting pregnant, and then leaving the island to have the baby. She will go on to have a string of boys with different fathers, each binding her to a different family on the reservation. Lulu knows her worth; she values her place in the world as a mother of sons and takes advantage of the men she encounters, before they can take advantage of her. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Survival in Love Medicine

In much of American Indian literature, survival is a major theme. The concept of staying alive, staying viable against the odds, drives many aspects of Indian culture in the contemporary era. In Love Medicine we see the spirit of survival in several different guises: We see it in traditions, in families, and

414â•…â•… Erdrich, Louise in individual people, and we also see how the novel makes a larger statement about the survival of Indians and Indian culture in the 20th century. Tradition survives among the Indians on the Little No Horse reservation. We see this perhaps most clearly in the title chapter. Lipsha, determined to win the heart of his grandfather back for his grandmother, attempts to make a love medicine, an ancient bundle of magic that will shift Nector’s allegiance away from Lulu and back to Marie. Lipsha says, in reference to the old native religion, “Our Gods aren’t perfect, is what I’m saying, but at least they come around. They’ll do a favor if you ask them right.” Because the native Gods are, in a sense, still around, Lipsha is able to imagine himself a medicine man and devise his own love medicine for Nector. However, because survival is survival, not necessarily domination, his plan goes a bit awry. He tries to take a short cut, buys two frozen turkey hearts instead of the hearts of live Canada Geese he originally sought to procure, and tells Marie to eat one herself and feed the other to Nector, who promptly chokes and dies. What is so important about this chapter in terms of survival, however, is that even though Nector passes away, due in part to Lipsha’s botched attempt at traditional medicine, the Kashpaw family and the larger tribe around them survive this death. In fact, Nector himself survives the death, as he comes back to his family as a ghost. Erdrich provides an excellent metaphor here for Indian survival. Even if the visible signs of life have gone, the spirit still lingers, and lingers palpably, enabling the survival of the culture as a whole. In the chapter entitled “The Tomahawk Factory,” we see another story of survival, both individual and collective. Lyman, deep in the depths of depression following his brother Henry’s suicide, about which he is experiencing the guilt of a survivor, says he has sunk to a place so low that he is unable to move from it. But, like the many survivors before him, he pulls himself up from the depths and soon finds himself in charge of a large Bureau of Indian Affairs–run factory on the reservation. Ironically, the Indians make plastic facsimiles of their traditions—tomahawks, cradleboards, purses, moccasins, and so forth. It would be easy to read this state of affairs as a fail-

ure to survive—sacred traditions reduced to plastic, people with once vast lands crowded onto a reservation. However, Erdrich wants the reader to look deeper here: What has survived, without question, are the Ojibwe (Chippewa) people and their spirit. For instance, Lulu tells Lyman before the factory opens, “I’ve got your job applicants broken down to clans and families. Hire ten from each column and you’ll be all right.” That the clans and families have survived through years of relocation, disease, and poverty is far more important than the actual goods they will be making in that factory. Just as important as the stories of group survival in Love Medicine are the stories of individual survival, the most dramatic of which is the story of Marie. In the chapter entitled “Saint Marie,” Marie’s story is told in graphic detail. She has escaped from the squalor of the Lazarre home, only to enter the depraved world of Sister Leopolda. Leopolda has convinced a vulnerable Marie that she and the devil are in a fight for Marie’s soul. She beats Marie with a poker, pours boiling water in her ear, and eventually stabs her in the hand and knocks her unconscious. Marie not only survives this beating but comes to see that she can have strength even after having been brought so low. She says, “Rise up!╯.╯.╯. Rise up and walk! There is no limit to this dust!” And Marie will survive this having been brought to dust; she will survive to create a family and be counted the strongest among them. Like the rest of her tribe, and the rest of the community in Love Medicine, she will embody both the kind of survival that is just barely alive and the kind of survival that is thriving in the face of oppression. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

ERDRICH, LOUISEâ•… Tracksâ•… (1988)

Tracks is Louise Erdrich’s second in a series of interrelated novels that depict a fictional Ojibwe (Chippewa) reservation in North Dakota. The novel’s action takes place between 1912 and 1924, the years preceding the action in Erdrich’s first novel, Love Medicine, and details key events of the preceding generation. Tracks depicts a time of social and geographic upheaval as the federal land policies set forth in the Dawes and Burke Acts provide

Tracksâ•…â•… 415 incentives for some tribal members to sell their land allotments to timber companies. The resulting economic and bureaucratic transformation attacks traditional ways of life on the reservation. Against the backdrop of these challenges, the novel details the complicated relationship between Fleur Pillager and Eli Kashpaw as well as that between Nanapush and Margaret Kashpaw, and it traces Pauline Puyat’s path to becoming the nun Sister Leopolda. Unlike Love Medicine, Tracks proceeds chronologically, but the plot structure is complicated by alternating narrators. Pauline’s idiosyncratic Catholicism and self-righteous nature result in an unreliable narration that contrasts with Nanapush’s traditional, wise, and compassionate perspective. Their competing narratives create a plot that is, at times, contradictory and that reflects the ambiguity of oral storytelling. Ultimately, the novel centers on themes including survival, family, tradition, commodification/commercialization, parenthood, and suffering. Readers meet characters who lose land, health, loved ones, and a personal sense of security. However, despite the bleak world shaped by winter, famine, illness, and cruelty, Erdrich’s novel is resolute in depicting characters who find ways to adapt and survive. David Allred

Family in Tracks

Family interactions provide people with security and fulfillment as well as conflict and sorrow, and this conflicted inheritance forms one of the themes in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks. As in many of Erdrich’s interconnected novels, the world of Tracks is inhabited by members of a handful of families: the Pillagers, the Morrisseys, the Lazarres, the Kashpaws, and others. These family identities serve as a key mode of characterization so that a character’s personality is often influenced by his or her family ties. For example, the Pillagers are practitioners of traditional healing and knowledge and because of this are respected and feared by others. This family identity informs Fleur’s seemingly supernatural power to evade death, to bargain for the life of her children, and to harm men who wrong her. In contrast to the respect afforded the Pillagers, the Morrisseys

and Lazarres are more dubious families, and given his family identity, Napoleon Morrissey’s lechery is hardly a surprise to informed readers. However, at the same time that Tracks suggests fixed family identities, the novel also shows dynamic elements of family formation in the fused clan of Nanapush, Margaret, Fleur, Eli, and Lulu. Nanapush adopts Fleur as a kind of daughter after her family dies of disease at the beginning of the novel. Later, Margaret comes to live with Nanapush along with her son, Eli, who has children with Fleur. Pauline observes (from the outside) that “[the group] formed a kind of clan, the new made up of bits of the old.” Together, this fused family earns money to pay taxes on the land, supports one another in sickness, and struggles for survival during cold, grim winters. Given such descriptions of family interaction, Tracks clearly shows the nurturing power of family and the pathos of broken family bonds. As part of this theme, both Fleur and Pauline search for a place to belong, and both become mothers during the course of the book’s events; however, their experiences contrast sharply. Both are essentially homeless early in the novel, but after living with the Morrisseys, Pauline eventually becomes Sister Leopolda and finds a home in the convent. Fleur loses her family at the novel’s outset but finds a home with Nanapush, Eli, and Margaret. On these quests to find a home, both women also have children. However, their responses to motherhood are very different: Fleur struggles for her children, while Pauline abandons her child. Fleur gives Lulu her own food and is highly protective of Lulu by not allowing her out of her sight. She also shows a mother’s tender regard: After losing a baby in childbirth, Fleur and Eli bury the child in the traditional Ojibwe way, by wrapping the body and tying it high in a tree. In anguish over her loss, “Fleur [hears] her vanished child in every breath of wind, every tick of dried leaves, every scratch of blowing snow,” and when a fierce storm comes, Fleur disappears into the woods to place an umbrella over the body. In contrast to Fleur’s deep and fierce love, Pauline heartlessly abandons her child. When she is pregnant with Marie, Pauline tries to force a miscarriage and asks for an abortion. During childbirth, she refuses to push, being willing to die and take

416â•…â•… Erdrich, Louise the baby with her, and after giving birth, she abandons the child to Bernadette. Pauline’s refusal to be touched by human connections is made all the more tragic in light of Fleur’s struggle for those she loves and loses. In fact, the backdrop of the entire novel is formed from Fleur’s familial losses, specifically Lulu’s estrangement from her mother. Nanapush’s narration is in the second person and is addressed to an older Lulu in an attempt to help her understand her mother’s choices. In other Erdrich novels, readers learn that in her quest to regain her land, Fleur is forced to send Lulu to an Indian boarding school, and Lulu’s suffering there eventually causes deep resentment. In explaining Fleur’s actions, Nanapush conveys the tragedy of their estrangement: “I have seen each one of you since then, in your separate lives, never together, never the way it should be.” Tracks shows the bonds of sacrifice and love that connect Fleur, the mother, with Lulu, the child, and in showing those bonds being severed, Erdrich underscores the novel with the tragedy of family loss. David Allred

Survival in Tracks

Survival is a central theme in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks; in fact, the novel opens with a dramatic scene of survival by one of its most resilient characters, Fleur Pillager. Amid an epidemic of consumption (tuberculosis), Fleur is discovered barely alive in the cold home of her family, all of whom have died of the disease. Nursed back to health, Fleur is believed to be the last of the Pillagers, and she exhibits her ability to endure many times as she grows older. In Argus, a nearby town, she is assaulted by three men after she repeatedly beats them at poker; however, despite the emotional and physical trauma of the attack, she shows no weakness: “[S]he was not beaten, there was no sign of trouble.” Fleur also survives life-threatening childbirth and a winter-long famine. Not one to suffer passively, Fleur also resists one of the most serious attacks against her identity. When her land around Lake Matchimanito, which has strong spiritual and familial significance, is sold to a timber company, she sabotages the trees so that they fall on the workers clear-cutting the land. She

then leaves to take revenge on the man responsible. Ultimately, her survival has its roots in her fierceness and her connection to Ojibwe traditions. Another main character in the novel, Pauline, is a survivor in a different sense. The voyeuristic Pauline takes pleasure in watching others’ struggles for survival. She witnesses, without helping, Fleur during both her assault in Argus and her premature labor. She also becomes an undertaker, thrilled by the power of witnessing the moment of death as one living. She confides, “I alone, watching, filled with breath, knew death as a form of grace.” At the same time, Pauline possesses an instinct for selfpreservation. In the novel, she narrates her battle with the lake monster, who in reality is Napoleon, the lecherous father of her child. She also survives her own religious mortification, resists Nanapush’s mockery, and in the end is reborn in her life as a nun, including taking on new name: Sister Leopolda. Erdrich’s novel presents the idea of survival in other characters as well. For example, Dutch James is a tragic survivor. One of Fleur’s attackers, he is the lone survivor of being locked in a freezer for days, although, the frostbite is so severe that he endures amputation after amputation. On the other hand, after her son’s sexual indiscretion with Sophie Morrissey, Margaret is kidnapped by Clarence Morrissey and Boy Lazarre, who shave her head to shame her. Rather than accepting the shame, she retains her dignity and is buoyed by Fleur, who shaves her own hair in solidarity. Dutch and Margaret both represent survival in the face of great suffering and the endurance required to live through such pain. Finally, in addition to portraying individual characters who survive hardships in their lives, Tracks also presents the resilience, efficacy, and continued relevance of tribal traditions. For example, Nanapush uses traditional songs to guide Eli on his moose hunt during a famine, and Fleur finds strength from the sacred land on Lake Matchimanito. This tribal survival occurs in the face of exploitation by timber companies, damaging governmental oversight of tribal affairs, and intertribal conflict. The novel’s ending strikingly articulates this central conflict of tradition’s survival in the face of outside influences. The novel opens with Fleur’s

Tracksâ•…â•… 417 survival from disease. It ends with her daughter Lulu’s unyielding resistance to the cultural oppression of Indian boarding schools that would strip Native Americans of their language and traditions. Nanapush remembers how Lulu showed the signs of the harsh discipline as she returned from boarding school. At same time, her fierceness, inherited from her mother, was still apparent: Her “grin was bold as [her] mother’s.” Seeing this symbol of survival, Nanapush speaks for the Ojibwe and uses the symbolism of timber exploitation to affirm tribal tradition’s resolution to persevere: “We gave against your rush like creaking oaks, held on, braced ourselves together in the fierce dry wind.” Despite the challenges both individuals and a people face, Tracks affirms the possibility of survival—in fact, the novel argues for its inevitability. David Allred

Tradition in Tracks

The fictional North Dakota reservation Louise Erdrich has created in her novels is a place where Ojibwe religion, customs, and practices hold great significance. References to Ojibwe mythological figures as well as healing and hunting practices are extensive and appear alongside the Catholicism and other traditions of Euro-American settlers. Although the authenticity of the traditions Erdrich depicts have a complicated relationship to actual traditions of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) people, these traditions—within the context of the book—form the plot’s emotional core, enliven the text and provide readers clues to understanding characters. Tracks is filled with examples of Ojibwe traditions contributing to its plot and character development. For example, the area surrounding Lake Matchimanito is sacred to Fleur’s family, and, indicative of this significance, Fleur has Eli place the body of her deceased infant not in the ground but in a tree, according to Ojibwe custom. Thereafter, “Fleur heard her vanished child in every breath of wind, every tick of dried leaves, every scratch of blowing snow.” The child is symbolic of Fleur’s familial and traditional connection to the land and trees, and this fact clarifies why Fleur does all in her power to save them from being taken by tax collectors and timber companies, including sabotaging the

trees so they fall on the timber company’s workers. In this case, a character’s traditions are the motivation for her actions as the plot unfolds. The two narrators can also be understood in reference to tradition as both are associated with mythological figures in Ojibwe worldviews. Over the course of the novel, Pauline takes on the qualities of the windigo, a mythical figure associated with winter, ice, hunger (even cannibalism), and skeletons. In one of her narrated chapters, she reveals these characteristics: “All winter, my blood never thawed. My stomach never filled. My hands were chafed raw. And yet I grew strong.” Later, she calls herself “a coarse hulk of bones.” When she witnesses an assault on Fleur and when she acts as an undertaker, she is also empty and voyeuristic, symbolically filling herself with the experiences of others—a sort of experiential cannibalism. Nanapush also can be understood in reference to Ojibwe mythology. Both his name and actions are reminiscent of Nanabozho, the heroic and articulate Ojibwe trickster figure who is hopelessly controlled by his appetites at the same time as he preserves cultural knowledge and possessions. The similarities become apparent with Nanapush’s explanation of his name: “It’s got to do with trickery and living in the bush.╯.╯.╯. It’s got to do with something a girl can’t resist. The first Nanapush stole fire. [I] steal hearts.” Elsewhere, Nanapush employs his vast traditional knowledge to cure and to ensure successful hunting, and he directs his entire narration to Fleur’s daughter in the hope she will understand her mother’s actions in terms of Ojibwe culture. Like other tricksters, however, Nanapush also cannot resist sex, food, and verbal play. This final attribute is evident as he mocks Pauline’s brutal and remarkably creative selfmortification. Thus, in the case of both Pauline and Nanapush, knowing the novel’s basis in tradition adds to one’s understanding of the characters. However, it is incorrect to assume that all the traditions in the novel are Ojibwe. The customs and beliefs of Tracks’s characters are evolving, and they reflect the cultural complexity resulting from EuroAmerican migration into the Great Lakes region. For characters like Pauline and Margaret, Catholic traditions have as at least as much relevance as Ojibwe traditions, and the two exist side by side.

418â•…â•… Euripides For example, Pauline hangs a dreamcatcher made by Moses Pillager, a guardian of Ojibwe traditional healing and religious practices, alongside a crucifix in her room. And while crossing Lake Matchimanito in a leaky canoe, Margaret prays to both Ojibwe and Catholic figures: “She alternated .╯.╯. addressing different Manitous along with the Blessed Virgin and Her heart, the sacred bloody lump that the bluerobed women held in the awful picture Margaret kept nailed to the wall.” Thus, the setting of Tracks is one where traditions overlap. Furthermore, at times these complicated cultural scenes lead to conflict. When Nanapush is attempting to heal Fleur, Pauline disrupts the traditional ceremony, explaining, “I’m sent to prove Christ’s ways.” It is Margaret who uses a stick to try to rid the group of Pauline’s unwanted presence and worldview. The conflict of traditions is evident and complicated in this scene as well as in the novel itself. David Allred

EURIPIDESâ•… Medeaâ•… (431 b.c.)

There have been several versions of the myth of Medea. Medea’s character, motivation and many actions associated with her continuously evolved and took many forms. In the lean economy of a Greek tragedy, Medea acquires a sharper profile, a rigorous motivation, and an intenser response to the events of the play. Euripides thus transforms her into a figure of tragic proportions. While Jason’s rejection destroys her social and personal identity and leaves her floundering for breath, she successfully wrests charge of the context of her life and from then on controls every event and action of the play. The legendary Medea is a woman scorned. She is determined to wreak vengeance for the wrong done to her by her husband, Jason. She holds center stage for the justness of her cause when she speaks to “[w]omen of Corinth.” She had loved Jason, become an instrument of his success, saved his life, and betrayed her father and her home to help him gain the golden fleece even at the cost of rendering herself a traitor to her country. She claims to have been wronged, insulted, and betrayed, “her bed dishonoured.” She curses the “evil power love has in people’s lives” and regrets her “folly committed long

ago, when I / was ready to desert my father’s house, won over / by eloquence from a Greek.” She blames gods, her infatuation with Jason, and her own evilhearted machinations for her ruination. But her anger is unappeasable, and her desire for revenge is ultimately her undoing. The playwright, Euripides (ca. 484–406 b.c.), denounces Medea’s unnatural actions. The chorus calls her “Bloody handed fiend of vengeance,” and Jason equates her with “hatred and murder”—“no woman, but a tiger; a Tuscan Scylla,—but more savage.” Yet Euripides imposes on the character of Medea a degree of coherence and credibility. He considers her anguish human, even when he considers her actions unnatural. His primary interest in the play is to focus on evil in humans. He perceives an inescapable conflict between claims of the fragile high Grecian ideals of control, order, and moderation on the one hand and uncontrollable human passions on the other. Euripides’ interest in Medea’s status as woman in an essentially patriarchal society and her status as an alien in Greek society have led to Medea being read as a proto-feminist as well as postcolonial text. Gulshan Taneja

Abandonment in Medea

Euripides is widely regarded as a realist in that, though he deals with mythological characters, some of whom have familial ties to the gods (Medea herself is the granddaughter of Helius), his plays revolve around human conflict and a virtuous representation of emotional response. So it is with the tragedian’s treatment of the theme of abandonment, which drives the plot of Medea. The play’s original Athenian audience would have already known the back story and would thus have understood that, long before the action of Euripides’ work, Medea and her husband, Jason, abandoned their homelands before arriving in Corinth, the play’s setting. Each has been displaced following Medea’s acts of familial murder. Each murder was motivated by the deep love Medea felt for Jason. Far from being a given circumstance of the tragedy, loss of one’s homeland is a woe actively lamented by the Chorus of Corinthian Women. Medea has willingly abandoned her homeland and her sense of familial loyalty. She reminds Jason of

Medeaâ•…â•… 419 this sacrifice and how she “willingly betrayed [her] father and [her] home.” This act of abandonment was no small matter, and Medea herself admits that it demonstrated “more willingness to help than wisdom.” Now, after committing these crimes in Colchis and Iolcus, Medea has landed in Corinth with her beloved, only to see her husband take another wife— the daughter of Corinth’s king, Creon. Though Jason argues that he has taken a royal wife in order to provide financial security for his family and to secure good faith with the royal house of Corinth, Medea sees the marriage as an act of selfish abandonment; hence, she “call[s] down wicked curses on the king’s family” and thus dooms herself and her children to exile, setting in motion the play’s tragic events. It is worth noting that, in the discussion of Jason’s abandonment of Medea in favor of a new wife, Euripides attaches a comment on gender roles and the discrepancy between acts of abandonment considered acceptable for men as opposed to those of women. Medea laments, “We women are the most unfortunate creatures .╯.╯. she arrives among new modes of behavior and manners,” ostensibly abandoning her customs in favor of her husband’s, while “[a] man, when he’s tired of the company in his home, goes out of the house and puts an end to his boredom.” She adds, “[W]e are forced to keep our eyes on one alone.” The sympathetic chorus echoes her outrage, saying, “You sailed away from your father’s home.╯.╯.╯. And now in a foreign country .╯.╯. another queen has disposed you and is mistress of your home.” Jason is certainly culpable, for in Euripides’ account, Jason seems unaffected by the news that his children are to be exiled along with Medea. Thus, his rationalization for the new marriage breaks down. Even Medea’s servants feel the sting of abandonment. The children’s tutor points out the fickle nature of loyalty when he says, “Old ties give way to new ones. As for Jason, he no longer has a feeling for this house of ours.” Giving in to her sense of rejection and her feelings of abandonment, Medea then plots to repay Jason many times over. She announces that she will murder his new bride and her own children in order to leave Jason without a family and home. Here,

the theme of abandonment transcends the realm of interpersonal relationships, giving audiences insight into Medea’s relationship with herself. She abandons rational thought and behavior, and the chorus, though still sympathetic to her plight, begs Medea to take a more rational course of action as her chosen course does not represent “the normal ways of mankind.” Euripides makes it clear that Medea has moments of lucidity but quickly dismisses them in favor of rage (an unfortunate but completely human response). What is superhuman is Medea’s ability to use her sorcerer’s powers to manufacture the poisoned dress and diadem she sends to Jason’s new bride. She sends the gifts via her children under the guise of a peace offering, a plea to let her children remain in Corinth. This sets in motion the death of Creon’s daughter and Creon himself. After making the children accessories to murder, Medea rationalizes their murder, arguing that they, like her, will find no safety in Corinth, thus abandoning her maternal nature. The flaw with this excuse is that Medea has planned her escape, having made a deal with Aegeus to seek refuge in his house in Athens. She could have taken the children with her. In fact, she does leave with their bodies so that Jason may not even give them a burial or mourn them properly. Her goal is to leave Jason completely and utterly abandoned. Her plan succeeds, for in the end, Jason feels the pangs of loss as Medea abandons him in Corinth, flying away in a dragon-drawn chariot (the only true element of fantasy to invade the narrative). Appropriate to his status as a classic realist, Euripides focuses not on the relationship between gods and mortals but on the tragic potential inherent within human relationships gone awry. Medea abandons her homeland for love, and when that love is betrayed by Jason, she plots to repay his abandonment by leaving him completely and utterly alone. Adrian L. Cook

Gender in Medea

Set in an Athenian society that does not treat women equally, Euripides’ Medea provides a classic account of one woman’s struggle (Medea) to engage in subversive actions to defy the oppressive

420â•…â•… Euripides impact of patriarchal rule. In Medea, gender serves as a dominant and significant source of conflict. A truly subversive character, Medea makes a dramatic effort to redefine gender and expose double standards associated with it. In her first speech to the women of Corinth about her sorrow after her husband ( Jason) leaves her for another woman, she laments the plight of women by emphasizing that men fail to understand that women do not “lead an easy life, safe at home while they risk all at the point of a spear,” but she contends that she would “rather stand three times in battle with shield and spear than give birth once.” Medea complicates the traditional notion of the role of a woman by arguing that she would much rather replace her “easy life” with the dangers men experience in battle. Therefore, she provides a subversive view of what the female gender is capable of and questions men’s traditional notion of the natural desire of women to reproduce. In essence, she posits that men are the individuals who really live the “easy life.” Medea’s argument is so subversive and shocking because Athenian women were expected to refrain from anything that would be perceived as “masculine.” Her argument highlights the capability of women to participate in war—undermining this capability as an inherently masculine attribute. In her first speech to the women of Corinth, Medea also exposes the double standard that exists in the expectations of married women by noting that married men have the liberty to engage in sexual relations with other women, but married women, are constrained by the expectation that “on one man we’re forced to fix our gaze.” Thus, Medea’s argument emphasizes one inherent inequality in the social construction of gender: Men have unrestricted freedom to leave a marriage without any repercussions, but “divorce discredits women utterly.” Although Medea makes a salient effort to challenge the inferior status of women and fight against the oppression of women, the support of the female chorus for Medea’s plan of revenge demonstrates that there is a strong desire for women to subvert the patriarchal ideology that subjugates their lives. The Chorus in Medea plays an instrumental role in helping the reader to understand the desire of a significant number of women to challenge

the oppressive social conditions under which they live. After Medea makes her first speech to the women of Corinth and solicits their support for her aspirations to seek revenge on Jason (Medea’s husband) for abandoning her for another woman, she asks the chorus not to disclose her plan of revenge. The chorus leader indicates her strong approval of Medea’s plan of revenge by contending that Medea’s “cause is just, for you are wronged. Your husband must be punished. I understand your grief, and that it seeks relief.” With such support, Medea’s plan of revenge becomes more than just a simple plan of revenge but a tangible expression of all women’s dissatisfaction with male dominance and the patriarchal ideology responsible for women’s oppression. When the chorus leader says that she “understands” Medea’s “grief,” the reader can perceive that one of the fundamental reasons for this understanding stems from the influence of gender relations. While the chorus understands the complexity and consequences of Medea’s plan of revenge, they also understand female solidarity is essential if her plan of attacking patriarchal ideology is to be effective. Gender plays an instrumental role in Medea in illuminating the inequalities that have historically existed in the power relations between men and women. While Medea’s plan of revenge involves the unbearable act of murdering her children, this act evinces the importance of attacking the bondage of gender inequalities in this historical setting. Medea underscores the importance of female solidarity in overcoming gender inequalities and demonstrates that one individual can bring about meaningful change. Antonio Maurice Daniels

Suffering in Medea

Greek tragedy always examines human suffering, and Euripides found an excellent vehicle in the story of Medea. The play opens with the Nurse’s description of Medea’s condition as one of perpetual agony: “She lies without food and gives herself up to suffering, wasting away every moment of the day in tears. So it has gone since she knew herself slighted by [her husband].” This opening speech continues, painting a vivid picture of the given circumstances

Medeaâ•…â•… 421 of the drama. Medea finds herself in mourning for love lost (since her husband Jason has chosen a new royal bride) and for the country she left and the kin she has murdered to assist Jason in his ascent to greatness. Jason begins the cycle of suffering within the play proper by betraying his marital loyalty to Medea. The Nurse, the Tutor, and all of the servants and slaves are “distressed by [the] wrongs” done to Medea. However, Medea herself magnifies that suffering. The fact that she is described as having “given herself up to suffering” is telling. Euripides’ dialogue leads the reader to the conclusion that, though she has undoubtedly been wronged by Jason’s betrayal, Medea chooses to be consumed by her grief. This consumption causes Medea to be a conduit and perpetuator of suffering rather than a passive victim of fate like other tragic heroes, such as Sophocles’ Oedipus. From her first appearance, Medea’s suffering is explosive, foreshadowing the full venom of her wrath. She says, “Ah, I have suffered. What should be wept for bitterly. I hate you, children of a hateful mother. I curse you and your father. Let the whole house crash.” Both Medea’s reputation for inflicting suffering in her former homelands and her present rants earn her and her children banishment from Corinth. Creon is rightly afraid that Medea will cause suffering in his kingdom. Throughout the play, Medea is cautioned not to let her anger and suffering overtake her sense of reason, but neither Jason’s pleas nor those of the chorus prove effective. Jason admonishes Medea, noting how “hopeless it is to deal with [her] stubborn temper.” He informs her, “You might have lived in this land and kept your home” had it not been for “your loose speaking.” It is true that Jason is not blameless. Whether or not the marriage to Creon’s daughter would have given Medea and her children financial security and protection, Jason has broken his vows of loyalty to her. However, by reacting as she does, Medea has, in essence, escalated her own suffering by begging for exile. To extrapolate, her pride (ego) is so wounded that she blinds herself to the possibility of acceptance.

Even the chorus, a sympathetic body of Corinthian women, advises Medea against exacting revenge by perpetuating suffering. When speaking with the chorus, Medea makes no bones about her desire to murder Jason’s bride, but she does try to rationalize her decision to murder her children. She announces her intention, declaring, “[T]hose children he had from me he will never see again, nor will he on his new bride beget another child, for she is to be forced to die a most terrible death,” and she argues that such a plan is “the best way to wound my husband.” Later, however, she changes her rationalization for killing her children. She argues that, since she sent the children to unwittingly poison Creon’s daughter, they will be punished, too. (It should be noted here that if Medea had chosen to send true gifts with the children in lieu of poisoned ones, her children would have been allowed to stay in Corinth and thus escape their share of suffering.) In the end, as Medea prepares to fly from Corinth with the children’s dead bodies, she reverts to her original claim that by murdering Jason’s seed, she makes him suffer most gravely. Therefore, the reader can see that Medea’s rationalizations are tactical. Such cunning clearly indicates that Medea does choose both to succumb to and to inflict intense suffering. Euripides’ tragedy is an honest if shocking examination of the destructive power of human suffering and the ego’s response to personal slights, for Medea constructs and perpetuates suffering throughout the drama. In fact, the only character who does not directly suffer is Aegeus, the Athenian king with whom Medea seeks asylum after the play’s conclusion. Having brought suffering upon her father’s family in pursuit of love before the curtain rises, she begins the play wounded by Jason and repays those who collectively break her heart with a wholly disproportionate response. Medea’s infliction of suffering is ultimately driven by pride and egoistic response. Thus, Euripides expands the theme of suffering to demonstrate that suffering begets suffering in an all-consuming cycle unless one makes the conscious choice to break it. Adrian L. Cook

part ii

Authors and Works F–M `

FAULKNER, WILLIAMâ•… As I Lay Dyingâ•… (1930)

As I Lay Dying, one of the finest examples of William Faulkner’s distinctive writing style, was first published in 1930. The novel is the first to introduce Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, which serves as the setting for many of his novels and short stories. As in his other works, As I Lay Dying showcases Faulkner’s ability to reveal the intricacy of the human psyche. Told from multiple perspectives, the novel has 59 sections written mostly in stream-of-consciousness—a literary style marked by a character’s uninterrupted flow of thoughts. Also, Faulkner uniquely employs symbols throughout his work. For example, he substitutes a coffin symbol in place of the actual word and uses a blank space when one of his characters is unable to express her thoughts. As I Lay Dying tells the story of the Bundrens—a poor family from the Deep South—that faces trials and tragedy on their journey to bury their dead wife and mother in the town of Jefferson. Throughout the story, the reader is introduced to the family members and discovers that each has his or her own reason for traveling to Jefferson. For instance, Anse Bundren, husband and father, sets off for Jefferson to buy a new set of teeth and to remarry, while his daughter, Dewey Dell, goes to town to get an abortion. Each character shares his or her perspective on

the journey, with the exception of Jewel Bundren, the only character who does not have his own section. Through the Bundrens’ expedition, Faulkner discusses such themes as family, death, individual and society, religion, and suffering. As I Lay Dying is a complex story that causes the reader to question the characters’ motives in their actions and interpretations of events. Most of all, it is a story that explores the complexities of human nature. HanaRae Dudek

Family in As I Lay Dying

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William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying centers on the Bundrens—a poor southern family that embarks on a journey to the town of Jefferson to bury the dead wife and mother. Throughout the novel, the Bundrens exhibit their dysfunctional relationships with one another as each family member offers his or her own perspective on the other characters and their actions. In As I Lay Dying, Faulkner demonstrates how a group of people can band together in times of adversity and tragedy yet can criticize and even abandon each other in pursuit of their own selfish exploits—all in the name of “family.” From the beginning of the novel, members of the Bundren family display their complex relationships with one another. While Addie Bundren lies dying, her son Cash builds a coffin outside of her window.

424â•…â•… Faulkner, William He insists on finishing the coffin because he values his carpentry work more than spending time with his ailing mother. However, Cash also believes that he is helping her more by building her coffin than he could if he were sitting with her inside of the house. Surprisingly, Addie does not seem offended by her son building the coffin right in front of her. When Addie dies, her husband, Anse, insists upon the family traveling to Jefferson to bury his wife, at any cost. He maintains that she must be buried in Jefferson because that had been Addie’s only request. Seemingly, all of the children agree to travel to Jefferson in order to fulfill their mother’s wish. However, each family member—with the exception of Jewel—reveals his or her own reasons for going into town. For example, Anse admits that he wants a new set of teeth. Cash wants to display his carpentry work and look for a gramophone. Although not directly, Dewey Dell reveals that she is pregnant and wants an abortion, and the youngest, Vardaman, wants a toy train. While he does not have a materialistic desire, Darl travels to Jefferson in order to keep track of his family’s actions and to make sure his mother gets her burial. Throughout their journey, the Bundrens face multiple obstacles. For example, Vardaman, who does not fully comprehend his mother’s death, drills into Addie’s face while trying to create air holes in the coffin so that the corpse can “breathe.” Also, when the family discovers that a bridge has collapsed, they ford a river, dragging Addie’s coffin under water. Cash breaks his leg while trying to rescue the coffin. Then, when the family stops at Gillespie’s, a local farm, the barn burns down—almost destroying the coffin. Although the family seems to work together in its struggle to get Addie to Jefferson, each family member works to fulfill his or her own desires. For instance, the Bundrens could have spent the evening at a neighbor’s home instead of dragging Addie’s coffin through the river. Also, Cash reveals that he jumps into the river not only to rescue the coffin, but also to retrieve his carpentry tools. Later, Anse sells Jewel’s beloved horse in order to buy a new team of mules. Even Addie speaks from the coffin to reveal her selfishness. She admits to having an extramarital affair with the local preacher, who is Jewel’s biologi-

cal father. Further, Addie admits that she wants to be buried in Jefferson because she wants to spend eternity as far away from the Bundrens as possible. Throughout the expedition, Darl—the son whom most people refer to as “queer” because of his alleged telepathic ability—is the only Bundren who questions the family’s motives. After eight days, Darl tires of the spectacle of dragging his mother’s corpse through the county and sets fire to Gillespie’s barn in an attempt to burn the coffin and Addie’s putrefied body. Out of respect for his mother and a belief that she should have been buried earlier, Darl tries to burn the coffin in one of the most selfless acts in the novel. Ironically, the rest of the Bundren family deems Darl insane and has workers from a sanitarium take him away from the middle of town shortly after Addie’s burial. After facing the difficulties of the journey to Jefferson, the Bundrens remain unified at the end of the novel. When Anse gets his new teeth, he immediately remarries and introduces his children to the new Mrs. Bundren. Perhaps from their own understanding of selfishness, the children are able to accept their father’s actions. Through the Bundrens in As I Lay Dying, Faulkner explores the complexities of human beings and their relationships with one another and demonstrates that each member of a family is, after all, only human. HanaRae Dudek

Grief in As I Lay Dying

Within the confines of the narrative in As I Lay Dying, grief clouds the day to day existence at the Bundren household. While Addie Bundren lies on her deathbed, her children and husband negotiate their way through her imminent but uncertain death, the urgency to prepare a coffin for her, arranging for her burial far away in another town, as Addie so desires, and the need for the family to not let go of the opportunity to earn a few more dollars. Life among the southern American poor must be lived on a daily basis. Faulkner accords grief a palpable presence in the novella. We share the burden of grief that envelops the Bundrens as well as those it touches incidentally, such as the neighbors. Faulkner also allows us a glimpse into the minds of characters through a

Light in Augustâ•…â•… 425 series of monologues, which is the narrative strategy of the novella. The Bundrens articulate their anguish, which arises from a death in the family as much as from life’s larger context in which death is only one of life’s many preoccupations. Faulkner’s remarkable plotting lets us discover their secret sorrows—as opposed to their public distress couched in the death of a mother and wife—after we have fully absorbed their settled grief resulting from Addie’s death and the family’s struggle to reach Jefferson for her burial in extremely inclement weather that thwarts their intentions in more ways than one. As seen in Cash’s painful injuries, his father’s thoughtless handling of his son’s predicament, Dewey Dell’s unwanted pregnancy, her seduction, her struggle to secure an abortion and Jewel’s sense of betrayal when his father deprives him of his beloved horse he had bought with money earned through hard labor, Darl’s descent into insanity and his incarceration for arson, the local minister Whitfield’s battle with his conscience to confess his adulterous relationship with Addie and the fact of Jewel being their bastard son—grief is a factor in their lives, generally and individually. As they confront their grief and deal with their grief-stricken lives, the Bundrens may appear passive and helpless. But they establish an inescapable truth of the human condition when they accept that life must go on. If their grief appears to have no sting, that is how it appears on the surface. Their sorrows are, much like uninvited guests, both a distressing burden as well as an unavoidable component of existence. However sharply and richly drawn they strike the readers, the characters in As I Lay Dying draw their vivid fashioning from belonging to a group. Even though Anse and his children form a family, they act more like Thomas Hardy’s rustics, motivated by common desires and a common code of life and living. Often reminiscent of the humorous dimensions in Hardy’s rustics, the Bundrens’ tragic drama is played out in comic terms. Addie had been laid in her coffin “head to foot so it won’t crush her dress. It was her wedding dress and it had a flare-out bottom, and they had laid her head to foot in it so the dress could be spread out, . . .” No conflicts mar their homogeneity as a family and a group. They

seem bound to stay committed to each other. The neighbors and others who are close to them must participate, as members of the community, in such common occurrences of life as Addie’s death and Sunday rituals. Such being the case, Faulkner’s treatment of grief takes the form of a living rendering of the fate of a community rather than a scrutiny of the griefstricken heart of an individual. “Doom” and “defeat” are words often used to describe Faulkner’s characters. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said in another context, “There are people who have an appetite for grief.” But the Bundrens counter grief with strategies of survival as well as their ability to withstand pressure. Above all, they endure. Addie’s monologue points to deeper meanings in human existence and suggests a pragmatic view of life. Life is important. Living is important. Whether one lives in joy or in sorrow is of little consequence. Addie breaks open the cocoon of inherited familiarities when she says: “One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because to people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is words too.” She thus offers testimony to the truth of her father’s words—“. . . the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead for a long time” —as well as to the inevitability of grief and anguish as the defining values of human existence. Gulshan Taneja

Faulkner, Williamâ•… Light in Augustâ•… (1932) At the center of William Faulkner’s novel Light in August is the story of Joe Christmas. He is a loner who knows he is part-black and part-white, but cannot identify with either of the racially divided communities. The novel traces Christmas’s life, from his time as a young child in an orphanage to when he is adopted by a cold, Christian man and his feebleminded wife, to his arrival in Jefferson, Mississippi. He works in a sawmill there before quitting to sell moonshine. Eventually he is accused by the town of murdering a white woman, Joanna Burden. Intertwined with Christmas’s story is Lena Grove’s story. The two characters never meet, but are

426â•…â•… Faulkner, William connected by their relationship with other characters in the book, including Byron Bunch, Joe Brown, and the Reverend Gail Hightower. Lena is a poor young girl who is pregnant and intent on finding the father of her child—a man whom she calls Lucas Burch but everyone else knows as Joe Brown. Lena, who has nothing but her baby, serves as a foil to Christmas’s repudiation of the community. She is repudiated by some members in the community for being an unwed mother, but embraced by others because of her needy situation. Faulkner explains that Lena represents “the basic possibility for happiness and goodness.” Light in August can be read as a powerful commentary on race and racial matters in the United States, particularly in the Deep South in the 1930s. Religion functions in the book as an elitist set of principles, meant to exclude people like Christmas. Christmas and Lena are each examples of the individual who moves through a society that judges and spurns them. Society, in Light in August, functions as a gossiping mob, rejecting those who do not conform to its standards of propriety or respectability. Elizabeth Cornell

Individual and Society in Light in August

“Man knows so little about his fellows” observes the unnamed narrator in William Faulkner’s Light in August. This line seems to summarize what is true throughout the novel: Neither the community of Jefferson nor the book’s major characters who move on the community’s margins know much about each other. Everyone depends upon gossip to speculate why anyone acts or speaks in a particular way. Unless individuals conform to certain norms and values, they may be judged or condemned by society, rather than supported and empowered by it. The lack of open, honest communication between the individual and society often has negative results. Perhaps the character in the book most condemned by society is Joe Christmas. His mother dies in childbirth and from that point he moves through the world as an individual without home, family, or community, living on the fringes of society. Faulkner describes Joe as “a phantom, a spirit, straight out of its own world, and lost.” Although

Christmas passes as a white man, his mixed racial background causes him to feel disconnected from society. He lives on the outskirts of Jefferson and rarely interacts with the community; the townspeople can only speculate about his private life. His repudiation of society works against him most clearly when Joanna Burden is murdered. Although they have no concrete evidence, the townspeople conjecture that only a black person could commit such a grisly crime. When Joe Brown comes forward and accuses Christmas of the murder and supports his accusation by revealing that Christmas is part-black, the town quickly convinces itself of Christmas’s guilt: “↜‘He don’t look any more like a nigger than I do,’↜” says one townsperson. “↜‘But it must have been the nigger blood in him’↜” that made him commit such an awful crime. No one knows for sure if Christmas murdered Joanna, but they need a murderer. Christmas—a man who has shunned their society—perfectly fits their profile. Like Christmas, Joanna Burden lives on the outskirts of Jefferson. She associates not with the respectable white folks in town, but with black families who live nearby. The town regards her with “astonishment and outrage,” and will never “forgive her and let her be dead in peace and quiet.” Further, her death provides the townspeople with “an emotional barbecue, a Roman holiday” in which they can gossip about her private life and speculate about the “Negro” they believe ravished her before killing her. The town thinks she deserved to die this way because of her sympathetic dealings with black people. Nonetheless, because she is a white woman, her murder must be avenged. It is an excuse for the town to form a posse and find a suitable black suspect. The Reverend Gail Hightower is also shunned and gossiped about by Jefferson society. He is burdened and obsessed by his family’s Confederate past, which contributes to his alienation from society. Hightower’s single friend, Byron Bunch, manages to glean from the townspeople details about the minister’s complex past. Hightower arrived in Jefferson with his wife years ago, but his wife started acting strangely and later killed herself at a Memphis hotel. The town blames Hightower for these events, even though no one knows the true story. The town believes he caused his wife to “go bad” and that he

Light in Augustâ•…â•… 427 “was not a natural husband, a natural man.” Byron recognizes the insidiousness of this small-town gossip, where an “idea, a single idle word blown from mind to mind” can be driven out of proportion. Hightower refuses to leave Jefferson after his wife’s death because the family ghosts reside in Jefferson; the burden of the past is too strong. He lives alone, spurning the town just as the town spurns him. It is only when he delivers Lena Grove’s baby, and tries to protect Joe Christmas from the angry mob, that he can heal his troubled relationship with the past and, in effect, feel comfortable about his place in society. Lena Grove seems to be a counterbalance to all the loners who populate this novel. Lena is unwed, poor, pregnant, without family or permanent home. Gossip about her situation follows in her wake wherever she goes. But Lena carries tremendous faith that everything will work out. She accepts her situation without struggling against it, and can journey through southern towns thanks to the “folks taking good care of her.” Society, as this novel shows, can be cruel and heartless, particularly toward individuals who do not conform. But, as seen with Lena, that is not entirely true. Ultimately, the human heart has enough compassion so that society will not destroy itself. Faulkner puts it best in his 1951 Nobel Prize speech: “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal . . . because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” Elizabeth Cornell

Race in Light in August

Perhaps no subject in American culture is more controversial than race. Throughout his work, William Faulkner examines how race divides individuals, families, and entire communities. Light in August is no exception. At the center of this story is the shadowy figure of Joe Christmas, whose mother was white and father most likely black. The dietitian at the orphanage where he lives until he is five years old makes him aware of how being part-black can be used against him by people in power. It is there that he learns the importance of concealing this part of himself. As an adult, Joe shifts between white and black worlds, failing to find comfort in either

one. When he briefly lives in a black community in Chicago, he shuns whites and attempts to become fully “Negro,” “trying to breathe into himself ” their essence, “the dark and inscrutable thinking and being” of black people, but fails. One of the tragedies about Joe Christmas is that it is impossible for him to be either all black or all white; he is both, in a society that refuses to accept someone who is not “pure.” Prejudice and racism against those who are different prevent people from accepting Joe. Part of the problem are the negative and untruthful stereotypes that white people perpetuate against blacks, such as laziness and dishonesty. Joe Brown insists that the only black people who work hard must be slaves. But Christmas disproves the stereotype: He works hard and solidly, first on his adoptive father’s farm, then at the mill in Jefferson. Later, he develops a successful business selling moonshine. He is no more dishonest for selling the illegal liquor than the upright white fathers and brothers who buy it from him. In fact, Brown, who is white, more clearly fulfills the negative stereotypes about blacks than Christmas. When Brown quits the job at the mill for the easier and more lucrative job of selling moonshine for Christmas, he is seen around town “idle, destinationless, and constant .  .  . lolling behind the wheel” of a new car. Faulkner’s intent here, which can be found throughout his body of work, is to confront the white hypocrisy embedded in negative stereotypes of blacks. Joe Brown’s repeated assertion of his whiteness after the murder of Joanna Burden is a good example of how important it is to be white in this southern community. The townspeople believe only a black man is capable of such a grisly murder; their sense of community is linked in part by this accusation and their shared racism and prejudice. Hightower puts the situation best when he learns Joe Christmas has “negro blood” and is accused of the crime: “Think Byron; what it will mean when the people—if they catch .  .  . Poor man. Poor mankind.” Hightower knows that, if given the chance, some people would lynch Christmas. Hightower’s statement no doubt refers to white supremacists like Percy Grimm. Grimm, under the pretense of protecting America and the white race,

428â•…â•… Faulkner, William organizes a group of men to be ready for action should such an opportunity occur to lynch Christmas. The opportunity does arise when Christmas escapes from prison and Grimm chases after him on a bicycle. Grimm tracks him to Hightower’s house where Christmas takes refuge. In this grisly scene, Grimm castrates and then murders Christmas. Faulkner’s liberal use of the words “Negro” and “nigger” in his work has caused some readers to label him a racist, or at least consider the possibility. Most Faulkner scholars disagree with this assessment. These words were commonly used in the United States in the early 20th century. “Nigger” was used pejoratively by some whites to refer to blacks, and “Negro” was commonly used by blacks and whites. If Faulkner had written Light in August without using these words, some of the book’s power might have been diminished. Moreover, it is important to separate the author from his work. In the 1950s, when the Civil Rights movement began, Faulkner was outspoken in his support of a move away from segregation and supported equal rights for black people. Although he received much criticism in the South for this position, even from his own family and friends, he maintained this position until his death in 1962. Works such as Light in August are a testament to his belief that racism and prejudice are not only wrong but also a detriment to society. Elizabeth Cornell

Religion in Light in August

In William Faulkner’s novel, Light in August, the use and abuse of the Christian religion is a significant theme. Simon McEachern and Joanna Burden are two characters who rely on biblical texts and Christian orthodoxy to justify their hypocritical views and destructive behavior. In various ways, they believe a God-given knowledge exists “out there,” independent of human thought or invention. Only certain, chosen people are privy to this knowledge, a knowledge that often gives them the sense they are superior to everyone else. Joe Christmas is one whom the chosen consider to be among the unchosen. Simon McEachern uses religion as an excuse for abusing another human being. When he adopts Christmas, he vows to raise him to “grow up to fear God and abhor idleness and vanity despite his ori-

gin.” McEachern’s disdain for Christmas’s origin— that is, a child likely conceived in sin rather than in a marriage bed (he does not know about Christmas’s racial background)—indicates his view that Christmas is not, unlike himself, among God’s chosen. It is because of McEachern that Christmas’s distaste for religion develops early on, and he refuses to learn the Presbyterian catechism that McEachern forces upon him. In response, McEachern whips Christmas and deprives him of food, using religion as justification for this abuse. Later, McEachern uses religion as his justification to condemn Christmas’s act of dating the waitress, Bobbie. When McEachern discovers them together at a dance, he perceives himself as “just and rocklike” and as an “actual representative of the wrathful and retributive Throne” before he attacks Christmas. But Christmas sees only the “face of Satan” and kills McEachern with a chair. Like McEachern, Joanna Burden believes she is among the chosen to interpret God’s word and share it with others such as Joe Christmas. But long before the crucial moment when Joanna asks Christmas to kneel and pray with her, the two have carried on a passionate, animal-like love affair. Christmas has awakened the sexual appetite of a starved woman described as a “New England glacier exposed suddenly to the fire of the New England biblical hell.” The pleasure she experiences with Christmas seems to be as much derived from her knowledge that he is a black man (miscegenation is taboo) as the idea of her living “not alone in sin but in filth” too. Joanna’s gleeful rejection of religion exposes how deeply repressive religious beliefs can be on basic human desires. The relationship, however, quickly becomes one in which Christmas feels Joanna is attempting to dominate him. She offers to send him to law school for blacks and insists on bearing his child; Christmas refuses to comply. He does not want her to determine the course of his life. Her sense of superiority over him is most concretely exposed when, after the passion in the relationship is nearly extinct, she asks Christmas to kneel with her and pray: “↜‘It is not I who ask it. Kneel with me.’↜” Her statement implies her belief that she has a direct connection with God and he does not. Christmas does not believe in this bond, and refuses to pray with her, even when she

“A Rose for Emily”â•…â•… 429 points an old revolver at him. Once again, because of an individual acting upon an elitist interpretation of Christian belief, Christmas believes he has no choice but to kill. Joe Christmas has no use for the so-called Godgiven spiritual knowledge possessed by many characters in this book, in part because this is the religion of white people, and he does not feel a part of this group. The serious and troubled conflict about who he is and what he is aligns him with Christian martyrs, ascetics, and Christ himself. Indeed, contrary to what McEachern and Burden believe, understanding God and being a spiritual being is no easy task. The path to enlightenment is difficult and treacherous and the journey itself may be as important as the goal. This difficult journey makes us human. Christmas’s struggle in a world bent on destroying him humanizes him in a way that Christ’s struggles in a hostile world put a human face on Christianity. McEachern and Burden’s elitist, inhuman brand of Christianity is the kind that hurts and destroys others as well as themselves—precisely not the kind taught by Christ. Elizabeth Cornell

Faulkner, Williamâ•… “A Rose for Emily”â•… (1930, 1931)

“A Rose for Emily,” first published in the April 1930 issue of Forum magazine, may be William Faulkner’s most widely read short story. A slightly amended version was published in These 13 (1931) and later in Collected Stories (1950). The story has received critical attention because of the ways in which it highlights several recurrent themes that appear in Faulkner’s longer works (such as repressed sexuality, loss and grief, and commentary on social class). Faulkner presents the story in five non-linear sections and employs an unnamed, first-person plural narrator to relay the details of Miss Emily GrierÂ� son’s life. The short story contrasts Miss Emily’s early life of social privilege against her later life of alienation and financial struggles following the death of her repressive father and the sudden loss of her romantic partner. Faulkner explores the standards of social customs through the telling of several different scenes, such as the town leaders’ attempts

to save Miss Emily embarrassment over unpaid taxes or the stench of her property. Most important, the narration explores the consequences of Miss Emily’s unorthodox relationship with the lowerclass Homer Barron and the subsequent town gossip it incites. Despite the foreshadowing of a gothic ending, it is not until Miss Emily’s death and the townspeople’s exploration of her previously shut-up home that the gruesome facts of Miss Emily’s life become apparent. Miss Emily poisoned Homer Barron years earlier and had since been sleeping next to the disintegrating corpse in what would have been their marriage bed. The narrative makes important comments about the literary themes of death, alienation, community, social class, and gender. Jennifer Smith

Death in “A Rose for Emily”

Within this short work, Faulkner presents compelling, but occasionally contradictory, views of death. In this tale, death functions as a process that not only can provide moments of clarity and revelation but also can yield more unresolved questions than answers. Faulkner bookends the tale of Miss Emily’s life with a narration surrounding the scene of her death and, in doing so, suggests the very important role that this phenomenon plays in how we come to know and understand this character. The tale starts with the narrative of the moments following Miss Emily’s death. The town has remained fascinated by Miss Emily throughout her life, and only upon her death are the townspeople able to begin to satisfy some of their curiosity about the woman who held such a respected place in Jefferson County for the better half of a century. Miss Emily’s death breaks the societal spell that she held over the town in her life, and permits the townspeople to begin to illuminate the puzzle of her later years. Death becomes a moment of revelation. Indeed, it is only upon Miss Emily’s death and the subsequent exploration of her previously unseen living quarters that the townspeople are able to understand fully the truly grotesque nature of her later life. Yet despite this level of exposure that her passing engenders, Miss Emily’s death also brings forth even greater questions about her life.

430â•…â•… Faulkner, William Faulkner marks the major milestones in Miss Emily’s life by the death of men important to her—first the death of her father and then the death of Homer Barron. Many might herald the death of Miss Emily’s father, a man who repressed Miss Emily for most of her childhood and young adult life, as a welcome relief from the tyranny of her father’s house. Yet this is not the case for Miss Emily. Miss Emily is instead in a perpetual state of delusion regarding the very real instances of death that surround her. The day after her father’s death, Miss Emily does not register any signs of grief on her face, and, upon the arrival of townswomen bringing condolences to the house, Miss Emily denies the fact that her father has died at all. She continues this denial for three days until she finally allows the burial of the body—under the threat of legal actions. Miss Emily’s actions upon this first major death in her life suggest the danger of remaining stuck in this first stage of grief for an extended period, and foreshadow the irrational approach that Miss Emily takes toward her later relationship with Homer Barron. Miss Emily, denied so many of the human connections that life offers, is unwilling or unable to function in terms of everyday society. Of course, the scene that most memorably preÂ� sents the phenomenon of death and our varied reactions to it is the one centered on Homer Barron’s gruesome disappearance. The moment of revelation comes when we find, along with the townspeople, the long-deceased body of Homer Barron that lies in Miss Emily’s wedding bed, assembled in a posture of affection. The plot of the text finally comes together as we realize that Miss Emily likely poisoned Homer and has since lain with the dead body as though every night was their wedding night. Yet this instance of death brings forth so many more questions than it answers, not least of which is the question of why Miss Emily decided to kill Homer Barron at all. Why would Miss Emily, so unwilling to accept the death of her father, the only man previously in her life, prematurely take the life of a man she loved? Death functions within this tale in several different ways. It iterates the human preoccupation we have with denying death at all costs, even in the face of inescapable evidence. The assembled scenes also

highlight the many questions that we have about death, life, and the inner workings of an individual mind. Many readers find the gothic scene Faulkner creates here to be incomprehensible in several ways, especially concerning what it might suggest about human life and death. Yet Faulkner’s tale also reveals much about the ways in which we are fascinated by the cycle of life and our responses to it, and makes interesting commentary about the complex role that death plays in how we understand life and each other. Jennifer Smith

Social Class in “A Rose for Emily”

“A Rose for Emily” highlights the ways in which human beings function in socially stratified communities, commenting on the social mores that class depends upon as well as the psychological and sociological consequences such hierarchies inspire. Though many highlight the individual psychological dementia of Miss Emily as the generative force behind Faulkner’s dismal ending, failure to consider the social implications of this ending leads only to a very flat understanding of the tale. The plural narrator establishes Miss Emily at the outset of the tale to be a figure of social esteem within the community of Jefferson. Indeed, in the first line, the narrator refers to the late Miss Emily as a “fallen monument”—a term that well describes the role that she fulfilled in this stratified society. Yet Faulkner does not just rest in establishing the different social classes that exist in Jefferson; he also makes artful commentary on the ways that such societal standards come into play through the hopes and feelings that inhabitants of a given community might have toward one another. Miss Emily is one of the last holdouts of a gentrified society—and the narrator constantly remarks upon this fact through his characterizations of her. Upon Miss Emily’s entrance into a room, men rise. The town leaders hold special tax meetings in order to discuss Miss Emily’s unique case, and, ultimately, make an exception to customarily rigid tax laws for the sake of Miss Emily’s honor. Honorable men of the town prowl about like burglars outside of her house, sprinkling lime rather than risking the embarrassment of having to suggest to Miss Emily that her property stinks. It is clear that Miss Emily

The Sound and the Furyâ•…â•… 431 holds a special standard in the town of Jefferson. Yet what responses does this situation invoke? Social class comes into play frequently in the reactions that Miss Emily’s misfortunes inspire in the community. As Miss Emily continues to age and does not settle down with a husband in her early adult life, the townsfolk express a general feeling of vindication; while they are not exactly happy, they are comforted in their belief that Miss Emily and her family had tried to hold themselves too far above the average man. One can imagine that, had Miss Emily been a poverty-stricken unfortunate when her father died, and had since remained unmarried, the town’s general reaction to her situation might have included more empathetic responses. As the narrative progresses, the townspeople come to regard Miss Emily with a seemingly deeper pity, and though they worry over her, they seem resigned to Miss Emily’s fate as a lonely, unmarried woman. It may be a shock, for the reader to comprehend that when Miss Emily does seem to find happiness in her relationship with Homer Barron, the class differences between the two incite even more gossip among the townspeople. Because of the place that Miss Emily’s family once held in the socially divided society, she seems forever relegated to the outskirts of that community, and purposefully excluded from the general society of her fellow townspeople. Another aspect that one must consider when thinking about social class in this tale is that of the context in which Faulkner was writing. Faulkner comments on the ideals of a deeply stratified southern society throughout the tale, and points the reader to the potentially negative effects this degree of stratification inspires. The close of the tale reveals Miss Emily’s necrophilia, and, at the same time, points an accusing finger at the townspeople for committing the same metaphorical crime. Unable to live in the present moment, the town, like Miss Emily, continually dallies with a past that is long over but still haunts the communal mind-set. Miss Emily’s family dates back to a prior generation of community members who upheld much different standards about power structures in society—a generation well versed in the expectations of antebellum America. The community members of Jefferson

County who remain fascinated with Miss Emily are also transfixed by an image of a society divided. Jefferson County may have long ago abolished slavery, but the habits and mentality that such a divisive practice instilled in its inhabitants remain very well entrenched. To attempt to understand “A Rose for Emily” without accounting for the varied and significant ways in which social matters influence the text is to take an overly simplistic approach to the work. In this tale, Faulkner makes some not-so-subtle comments on the dangerously pervasive ways in which social roles can divide communities. Exploring representations of social standards in Jefferson County helps us to understand better Miss Emily’s character, the reasons behind her questionable actions, and the responses that these events provoke. Jennifer Smith

Faulkner, Williamâ•… The Sound and the Furyâ•… (1929)

William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury began as a short story centered around some children who are sent away from their grandmother’s funeral to protect them from the sight of grieving adults. After Faulkner wrote the story, he became interested in the relationship of a “truly innocent” child to the world. That child became Benjy Compson, a mentally handicapped 33-year-old man who narrates the first section of the book. Faulkner recognized, however, that the erratic time shifts in Benjy’s section made the story difficult to understand, so he wrote three more sections, each time retelling the story in an attempt to make it clearer. What emerged was a novel about the sibling love and lost innocence within the relationships between Caddy Compson and her three brothers, Quentin, Jason, and Benjy. The book is also about the slow decline of the Compsons, a family that has seen its reputation and finances fall upon hard times amid the dying traditions of the old South. Each of the three sections is narrated by a different brother, who provides his perspective of this story. In the last section, the story is told by an unidentified narrator and features a detailed portrait of the family’s loyal black servant, Dilsey Gibson.

432â•…â•… Faulkner, William Faulkner, who won the 1949 Nobel Prize for his literary achievements, considered his masterpiece a “splendid failure” because he felt he never got the story right. Readers, however, know otherwise. Although The Sound and the Fury can be challenging, especially to first-time readers, its themes and style are quintessentially American and modern. The book’s influence on writers has been far-reaching since it was first published in 1929. Elizabeth Cornell

Grief in The Sound and the Fury

After Caddy Compson is exiled from the Compson household, the doomed family of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury must cope with the loss of their only daughter. The mentally handicapped Benjy has essentially lost the one family member (besides their servant, Dilsey) who expresses love for him. Although his vivid memories of his sister Caddy give him the impression that her loving presence still exists, whenever he is thrust back into the present his grief over her absence is painfully rehabilitated. His brother Jason’s grief takes the form of bitterness and vengeance. Caddy’s divorce prevented Jason from getting a job with her husband in a bank, and he is now responsible for her daughter. Jason’s theft of the money she sends to support her daughter is a form of revenge against Caddy, but the money he takes may also be seen as compensation for the loss of his sister. Although Jason’s pilfering may be partly to blame for the unruly behavior exhibited by Caddy’s daughter, Quentin, her rebellion is also an angry response of grief over her mother’s absence from her childhood. Finally, since Caddy never presents her side of the story, readers experience a kind of loss of her as well. Like Miss Quentin, we are mainly left to speculate about her, gathering what little we can from the subjective viewpoints of others. One such viewpoint belongs to Caddy’s brother, Quentin. He cannot believe that he will one day recover from the hurt he feels. That hurt is caused by Caddy’s lost virginity and marriage, and Quentin knows the passage of time will make this pain fade. Thus, he is obsessed with time from the moment he awakens each day. Quentin breaks his pocket watch in an attempt to stop time, as if to prevent

his cherished memories of Caddy from fading and thus leading to the diminishment of his grief and hurt. But Quentin’s handless watch keeps ticking; the changing sunlight, his persistent shadow, and the hourly church bells are other reminders of passing time. He realizes time cannot be escaped, prevented from passing, or reversed. Quentin’s loss is such that he cannot visualize a future in which he might be reunited with his sister or even transcend his deep grief. Taking his life is the only way Quentin can imagine stopping time and keeping his grief intact. Although Caddy is certainly his greatest loss, Benjy undergoes other significant experiences of loss. He loses his field next door when the Compsons sell it to developers for a golf course so Quentin can go to Harvard. One consequence is that he must suffer the experience of hearing the word caddy throughout the day, reminding him anew of his grief over Caddy’s absence. His testicles are another loss—removed after he chased a neighbor girl, who he believed was Caddy. Mrs. Compson changes his name from Maury to Benjamin, a name that means “son of my sorrow,” because she considers his condition “a judgment” on her. Benjy’s bellowing, which disturbs every character in the book, is a potent expression of grief for everything he and each Compson has lost. No one feels more persecuted by those losses than Mrs. Compson. She wonders what she has done to deserve a mentally challenged son, a selfish daughter, a son who kills himself, an unruly granddaughter, and a husband who drinks himself to death. Only Jason, she claims, has never given her “one moment’s sorrow,” although Jason has done many things behind her back that would give her grief. When Miss Quentin disappears, Mrs. Compson leaps to the conclusion that her granddaughter has also committed suicide. She seems to thrive on these occurrences of loss, and blames them for her sickly, confined life. Rather than grieve for her losses and set an example of strength by moving forward in spite of everything, Mrs. Compson takes to her bed as if nothing more can be done but wait for the next round of loss and grief. With such an oppressive atmosphere of loss and unresolved grief surrounding the Compson household, there seems little hope of anyone thriv-

The Sound and the Furyâ•…â•… 433 ing there. No wonder Caddy and her daughter must each seek their escape, and as far from Jefferson as possible. No wonder Quentin must take his own life. Of all the characters, only Dilsey, the family’s servant, seems to have coping tools. When she cries during the Easter service, her tears feel like a natural and much needed release. When Dilsey says “I seed de first and de last,” she indicates her ability to hope, to have courage and love, and endure in a world filled with constant and pervasive loss. Elizabeth Cornell

Love in The Sound and the Fury

Love is a powerful and destructive force that threads through William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. One focus of love in the novel is Caddy Compson. Her brother, Benjy, is frequently flooded with memories of his exiled sister. He remembers that, of all the Compsons, Caddy conveyed the most compassion, understanding, and love for him during his childhood. He depended on her gentle care and words: “You’ve got your Caddy” she often reassured him. Unlike the rest of the family, Caddy enjoyed playing with him and taking care of him. For example, she made sure he wore gloves on a cold day. Yet even with his limited mental faculties, Benjy could sense when Caddy’s love for him was threatened. He cried at the sight of her muddy drawers, which may be read as representing her developing sexuality. Later, he became upset at the smell of her perfume, which can be understood as representing the loss of her virginity. At Caddy’s wedding, he bellowed at the sight of her veil. In each instance, Caddy was there to comfort him. Following her exile, however, in the present time of the book, Benjy is left only with memories of her. Thus, whenever he hears the word “caddy” echoing from the golf course next door, it reminds him of her and causes him to bellow. Since Caddy is no longer there to soothe him, his consolation comes in substitute love objects, such as a slipper or a flower. Benjy’s obsession over his absent sister’s love becomes a destructive force in his life because he is unable to accept solace or love from anyone else, even from the family’s compassionate and loving servant, Dilsey. Quentin’s love for his sister is no less deep than Benjy’s, but more conflicted and complex. Quentin

cannot bear that his sister might love anyone but him, and his chivalric attempts to defend her honor fail. Thus, the loss of her virginity, and her later marriage to Herbert, whom Quentin knows she marries only because she is pregnant by another man, affect him deeply. He loves Caddy so much that he wishes the “world would roar away” and leave them alone together. At one point, Quentin pretends he has committed incest with her, but his father knows he is lying. Quentin cannot bear, as his father points out, to think that someday his memories of Caddy will fade and that his love for her might ebb. The keen pain Quentin feels about his sister’s circumstances keeps his love and memories fresh. But Quentin knows his father’s words bear truth. Suicide is the only way Quentin can stop time and prevent his love for her from diminishing, as well as escape the guilt from his incestuous feelings toward her. Jason, whom Faulkner considered his most evil character, is clearly not Caddy’s most loving brother. Jason’s bitterness over Caddy’s absence is taken out on her teen-aged daughter, Quentin, for whom he is responsible. Each month, Jason brings his mother a fake copy of the check Caddy sends to support Quentin, which Mrs. Compson burns. Jason secretly cashes the check and keeps the money. Caddy’s money functions as a substitute for the love she has withheld from him. Jason’s actions also attempt to deprive Caddy of her daughter’s love, just as Caddy deprived him. By leading his niece, Quentin, to think she is supported by him, Jason believes he is entitled to her loyalty and obedience, if not her love. But Jason’s selfish, vindictive behavior ultimately backfires, causing Quentin to despise him and run away with the stolen money. However, love is not an entirely destructive force in the novel. Dilsey, the Compson family’s loving and tireless servant, offers unconditional love that functions like a glue that holds the fragmented family together. She makes sure Benjy receives a cake on his birthday. She defends Quentin from her Uncle Jason’s anger. Although Dilsey is old, she runs up and down the stairs at Mrs. Compson’s every whim. But even Dilsey’s love has not prevented Caddy’s downfall or exile, nor will it save the rest of the Compsons. In the book’s final section, when Dilsey says she has seen the “beginnin” and that now she sees the

434â•…â•… Faulkner, William “endin,” she indicates, in part, that love, including the love she bears for her family as well as the Compsons, cannot keep things from growing worse. Love is a word rarely mentioned in Faulkner’s novel, perhaps because, like Caddy, it is often absent. Dilsey seems to be one of the few characters in the novel who knows how to give compassion and love. But eventually she will die, and mainly people like Jason, who are selfish and self-serving, will remain to carry on in a modern world that seems emptied of people who truly care for others. Elizabeth Cornell

Tradition in The Sound and the Fury

In William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the Compsons have embodied genteel southern traditions since before the American Civil War. Yet these traditions are eroding in the early 20th century, and Quentin Compson is particularly sensitive to this. Like many southern families, the Compsons follow the tradition of sending their eldest son north to Harvard University. His mother’s proud words, “Harvard my Harvard boy Harvard,” echo in Quentin’s head, but he knows he will never feel like one of the “old sons of Harvard.” In part because he understands that Harvard’s reputation for cultivating moral young men is nearly a thing of the past. For example, Quentin knows that Herbert Head, who marries Caddy, cheated on examinations while at Harvard. Quentin is also invested in the traditional male role of defending female honor. When he encounters a lost little girl, Maria, during his ramble in Boston, he feels responsible for helping her find the way home. They eventually stumble upon her brother, but the man assumes Quentin means to harm Maria, so he punches Quentin in the face. This scene reinforces Quentin’s larger failure in chivalry to defend the honor of his sister. He loves Caddy so much, he cannot stand to think of her being with any man. Quentin’s love, however, cannot prevent her from shirking the tradition that she save her virginity until marriage. Nor can he prevent her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, which threatens her family’s respected reputation as well as her own. Quentin commits suicide partly because he knows the standards for the traditions he values can no longer be upheld.

Jason, Quentin’s brother, has a conflicted relationship with tradition. As the eldest male Compson, Jason feels entitled to the traditional role of household head but shows little sympathy for his family. He is offended by the tradition-bucking behavior of his niece and resents having to be responsible for her and his “slobbering” retarded brother. Money, not family, seems most important to Jason. He adheres to the New South’s mentality that money “just belongs to the man that can get it and keep it.” Yet Jason’s embrace of the New South’s values over traditional ones is his downfall. He no longer owns part of the hardware store where he works, and he gambles on cotton futures rather than following the tradition of saving or reinvesting in his business. Having spurned the traditional support network of family, Jason is impoverished both socially and financially. Also possessing a strong sense of dying traditions is Luster, the young black man who takes care of Benjy. Southern society was traditionally composed of a patriarchal ruling class and a class of people who were ruled, such as slaves and later servants. Luster’s grandfather, Roskus, was a servant (and possibly born a slave) for his entire life. Unlike his grandfather, Luster appears to have no interest in continuing his family’s tradition of servitude. He desires his independence, and knows he can achieve this with money, which traditionally was rarely available to blacks. His ardent quest for his lost quarter represents an obsession with money that seems equaled only by Jason’s. Luster’s attempt to sell golf balls back to golfers suggests the industriousness he will need to move ahead in society and leave the old servant tradition behind. The “stiff new straw hat” Luster wears to church indicates his upwardly mobile aspirations in a world where old traditions no longer apply. The novel’s structure and style must also be considered in this discussion of tradition. The book’s fractured plot and frequent time shifts, which make it difficult to understand during initial readings, distinguish the novel as modernist. Faulkner’s narrative style represents a break with the traditional novel form: There is little linear story progression or even a clear beginning and ending. The novel is not told by a traditional, omniscient narrator or from

Tom Jonesâ•…â•… 435 the perspective of one or two characters. Rather, the reader must untangle a narrative presented by four narrators, each with a unique, limited viewpoint. Quentin’s interior monologue, with its stream-ofconsciousness ramblings and time shifts, reflects the chaos and uncertainty he encounters in a world where order and tradition, which gave life meaning and significance, seem to have evaporated. The theme of the demise of tradition in the Old South undergirds Faulkner’s novel. For Quentin and Jason, this loss means a disappearance of traditional family and community values. For Luster, it means the chance to lead a better life than his forebears, and perhaps the opportunity to establish new traditions. The Sound and the Fury illustrates, in plot and in its narrative style, that old practices are inevitably replaced—whether those changes are welcome or not. Elizabeth Cornell

Fielding, Henryâ•… Tom Jonesâ•… (1749)

Tom Jones, seldom called by its full name, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, is one of the earliest examples of the English novel. Its realistic style and foregrounding of specific times and places sets it, as well as contemporaneous novels such as Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, Behn’s Oroonoko, and Richardson’s Clarissa, apart from the romances and prose poems that came before them. The novel was a new way of looking at the world that emphasized realism and experience in an unprecedented way. Divided into 18 smaller books, Tom Jones begins with the discovery of the orphaned infant Tom on the property of the wealthy and compassionate Squire Allworthy. Allworthy raises Tom as his ward, alongside the squire’s nephew Blifil. Tom is a handsome, passionate, impulsive young man, who, although he is kind and means well toward those for whom he cares, has a hard time keeping his passions in check. He loves Sophia Western, the daughter of his neighbor, but they cannot marry because of his inauspicious birth. Ultimately, a marriage is planned between Sophia and Blifil, and as a result of Blifil’s trickery, Tom is banished from the squire’s home. He wanders around, attempting to make his own way in

the world, but frequently falls prey to those less honest and kind than he is. In the end, it is discovered that Tom is actually the son of the squire’s sister, and thus his rightful heir, so he and Sophia can, and do, marry after all. The novel highlights themes of social class, justice, and heroism. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Heroism in Tom Jones

In the early chapters of Tom Jones, we are introduced to Tom as a child and we see all of his good and bad qualities. The narrator’s description does not prepare the reader for a typical hero. He describes the boy as “having from his earliest years discovered a propensity to many vices.” Also, “he was indeed a thoughtless, giddy youth, with little sobriety in his manners and less in his countenance.” The narrator’s view of Tom influences our own, of course, and we are prepared for Tom’s mistakes and follies throughout the novel. The narrator continues reminding the readers that Tom is not someone from whom we should expect great things: “it was the universal opinion of all Mr. Allworthy’s family, that he was certainly born to be hanged.” This hero’s story has an inauspicious start. But Tom is a traditional hero in many ways. He is tall, well dressed, “one of the handsomest young fellows in the world.” In action, he is strong, ablebodied, and brave, while also polite and gentle. As a child, he saves Sophia’s bird, protects the gamekeeper from being fired, and does everything he can—even robbery—to support Black George’s family. As an adult, he fights highwaymen and protects women. Tom has several exceptional qualities. What makes Tom an interesting and contradictory hero is that his good qualities are offset by bad ones. Tom is reckless, impulsive, naïve, and lustful. He often acts without thinking, and sometimes his actions cause others harm. At 14, he sells his own possessions to help the Seagrims, though he hurts Squire Allworthy in doing so. In addition, he lacks a full respect for his masters, is careless with money, and is almost executed for murdering Mr. Fitzpatrick. But his most pronounced weakness is his fondness for women. Even though it is clear he truly loves Sophia, he has sex with three other women. Tom’s questionable relations with women

436â•…â•… Fielding, Henry seem unsuitable to a hero, but it is interesting to note that the women are the aggressors in each of these scenarios. Molly Seagrim and Mrs. Waters very deliberately seduce him, and Mrs. Bellaston hounds him unmercifully. Tom’s passionate, sentimental nature allows him to fall for these women, but he also feels sorry for each of them and is afraid to offend or hurt them. These faults, while substantial, appear less so when presented in contrast to other characters’ more serious faults. Tom comes by his impulsiveness and recklessness naturally. He almost cannot help himself, most often acting without thinking. This naturalness contrasts with characters like Blifil, whose faults are more studied. Blifil is cruelly ambitious. He sees opportunities to thwart Tom’s efforts and purposely takes them. When Tom sells his Bible to Blifil to raise money for Black George’s family, Blifil makes sure to stroll frequently through the house reading the Bible, showing it to his masters, pointing out passages in it. Naturally, people notice Tom’s name in the book, and Tom is punished. Blifil’s lowest act, keeping Tom’s parentage secret, negatively affects everyone’s lives around him. Blifil is a hypocrite and a dissembler. Another character who is contrasted with Tom is the companion on his travels, Partridge. Partridge, though a good man at heart and not a hypocrite, is fearful, suspicious, and he has an agenda: He hopes to benefit monetarily from reuniting Tom with Squire Allworthy. Though he often acts as a true friend to Tom, he also acts selfishly at times, keeping his hoped-for prize in sight. The constant scrapes the two get into show the contrast between the easy-going and courageous Tom versus the fretful and weak Partridge. One example is when a highwayman jumps them and demands their money. Tom wrestles him to the ground, while Partridge scrambles from his horse and cowers in the bushes, all the while crying out that he is dying. Heroism, in Tom’s case, is relative. Ultimately, Fielding suggests that a hero does not need to be perfect, that he can in fact be fallible. While never excused, Tom’s weaknesses appear unimportant compared to the weaknesses of others and to his own virtues. He seems worthy of love because his heart is open and loving. The two most admirable and charitable characters, Squire Allwor-

thy and Sophia, end up accepting Tom’s faults and embracing him. Here, the hero is not entirely exceptional, only relatively so. Cynthia Henderson

Justice in Tom Jones

The plot of Tom Jones is set in motion by an injustice. Tom Jones’s housemate, Blifil, lies to Squire Allworthy about Tom’s actions, causing Allworthy to reject his ward and banish him from his presence forever. Tom must therefore go out into the world and make his way with nothing. The injustice of his situation is clear to the reader during all Tom’s adventures, and the question of how or when Allworthy will discover this injustice is felt throughout. The parallel situation of Sophia running away from her father because of his unjust treatment of her sets up the two lovers for the many challenges they must face before they can be reconciled. One way the idea of justice is explored is through the character of Squire Allworthy. As a squire, he has the responsibility of determining how his dependents must be punished for their crimes. His word, literally, is law. We see early in the story how he punishes Jenny Jones for abandoning her child. Many around him tell him Jenny should be judged harshly; however, Allworthy decides to be kind to her. Indeed, he is grateful to have Tom in his life, and he lets that emotion guide his treatment. Therefore, he sends her away rather than putting her in prison. He deals similarly with the child’s father, as well as showing mercy in his dealings with Tom, Blifil, Black George, and Dowling. What constitutes justice is openly debated several times in the novel: When an offense or crime occurs, two characters debate what would be a just punishment. We see this when Square and Thwackum repeatedly quarrel about how to discipline Tom when he is a child: Thwackum always argues men should answer to religious law, and Square argues for guidance from the ancient philosophers. Another instance is when Tom and Partridge take positions on how to deal with the highwayman who jumps them near London. Partridge wants him executed, but Jones ultimately lets him go free because he sympathizes with the highwayman’s sad circumstances. Finally, there is the ongoing debate

Tom Jonesâ•…â•… 437 over how to punish Sophia for refusing to marry Blifil. Her father believes he has the right to lock his daughter up, but her aunt thinks no woman deserves such harsh treatment. At times during the narrator’s frequent addresses to the readers he discusses how confusing justice may be to them. When Tom lets the highwayman go and gives him money to help his family, the narrator tell us, “Our readers will probably be divided in their opinions concerning this action; some may applaud it perhaps as an act of extraordinary humanity, while those of a more saturnine temper will consider it as a want of regard to that justice which every man owes his country.” The narrator’s occasional appeals make the readers question their own assumptions about justice. Overall, however, it becomes clear that the world of Tom Jones is one where a merciful and personal justice is the best choice, one that considers the circumstances and the humanity of the wrongdoer over what religion, philosophy, or the law may say. Several characters who commit a crime are shown mercy, and as a direct result, they improve themselves. George’s crime of keeping the £500 he finds is forgiven, and he ends up trying to return the money. Though Allworthy tries to argue with Tom for being too sympathetic with George, saying “↜‘[s]uch mistaken mercy is not only weakness, but borders on injustice,’↜” Tom still releases him. Another man who receives merciful justice, the highwayman, reforms himself and starts providing for his family. When Tom is told how well the highwayman’s family is doing he can’t help thinking of the “dreadful consequences which must have attended them, had he listened rather to the voice of strict justice than to that of mercy.” Finally, Tom’s own crimes of imprudence and acting impulsively are completely excused by the two most noble and charitable characters, Allworthy and Sophia. Allworthy ultimately forgives Tom everything and bequeaths all his fortune to him. Similarly, Sophia, though upset at Tom’s past indiscretions with other women, forgives him everything and marries him. Instead of concentrating on Tom’s weaknesses and punishing him for his mistakes, both treat him with love and charity. The happiness all three experience in the end—living together

in peace and comfort—reinforces this notion of a merciful justice. Ultimately, Fielding suggests that justice requires weighing the whole of a man’s circumstances, character, and motives, not merely adhering to a prescribed system of justice. Cynthia Henderson

Nationalism in Tom Jones

Henry Fielding’s writing of The History of Tom Jones was interrupted by the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, which pitted the supporters of the ruling Hanoverian royal family against supporters of the ousted Stuart family. The Jacobites, as they were known, were marshaled by Charles Edward Stuart, the grandson of James II, also called the “Young Pretender,” who had been deposed in 1688 in the Glorious Revolution, which was as much about James’s Catholicism as about the role of Parliament and hereditary right. The two major political parties fell within similar lines: the Whigs, who believed in the contractual role of Parliament with the Hanoverian throne, and the Tories, who supported the monarchial view and the Stuart claim. Following an aborted French invasion of England in 1744, Charles Edward landed in Scotland, raised an army of mostly Scottish Highlanders, and marched toward London, hoping to meet up with another French force coming from the south. The rebels achieved some military success and reached as far south as Derby before being routed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, which ended the rebellion and any real hope for the return of a Stuart king. Although Jacobite influence declined precipitously following Culloden, their popularity remained in parts of the country and their questioning of the legitimacy of the Hanover family marked a significant moment in conflicting notions of nationalism in 18th-century England, asking who was the rightful ruler. Most accounts characterize Fielding as a Whig, citing the anti-Stuart sentiments expressed in his political journalism, including The True Patriot and the satiric Jacobite’s Journal. However, his novel Tom Jones, which is set during the ‘45 Rebellion, suggests a more complex engagement with the issue. Fielding populates his novel with both Tories and Whigs, Hanoverians and Jacobites. A Tory Jacobite

438â•…â•… Fitzgerald, F. Scott supporter, Squire Western, for instance, toasts the “King over the water” and names his favorite horse Chevalier, the honorific given to Charles Edward’s father, but his urban sister contemptuously cites the Tory London Evening Post to her brother, indicating her Hanoverian leanings. Likewise, the novel’s cast of characters features a secret Jacobite sympathizer in Partridge, an avowed anti-Jacobite in the Man of the Hill, as well as a company of soldiers on their way to fight the rebels in the north, all of which combine to provide a panoramic vision of mid-18thcentury politics. Tom himself has been viewed in parallel terms with Charles Edward. Although in book 7, Tom, as “a hearty Well-wisher to the glorious Cause of Liberty, and of the Protestant Religion,” decides to join the company of soldiers marching to meet the rebels, he shares with “Bonnie Prince Charlie” a reckless, romantic nature. Both are disinherited (as we later discover about Tom) and both are exiled, Charles Edward to France and Rome, Tom from Allworthy’s estate. While Charles Edward never regains the throne, Tom finds himself restored as the heir to Squire Allworthy in the end. Whether or not this is some sort of wish fulfillment is unclear, but to simplify Fielding in conservative terms is unfair. Similarly, in book 11, the innkeeper mistakes Sophia Western for Jenny Cameron, a fictionalized version of the real Jean Cameron, who reportedly raised and led 300 men in support of the Young Pretender. While there is no record of any type of intimate relationship between Jean Cameron and Prince Charles, Whig pamphleteers depicted her as his mistress and often pictured her armed and in highland attire. The romantic connection to Charles Edward ironically informs Mrs. Honour’s defense of Sophia: Would you imagine that this impudent villain, the master of this house, hath had the impudence to tell me, nay, to stand it out to my face, that your ladyship is that nasty, stinking wh—re ( Jenny Cameron they call her), that runs about the country with the Pretender? Nay, the lying, saucy villain had the assurance to tell me, that your ladyship had owned yourself to be so; but I have

clawed the rascal; I have left the marks of my nails in his impudent face. My lady! says I, you saucy scoundrel; my lady is meat for no pretenders. [. . .] My lady to be called a nasty Scotch wh—re by such a varlet!—To be sure I wish I had knocked his brains out with the punch-bowl. More concerned with her true identity being discovered as she has escaped from home, but finally understanding the landlord’s behavior, Sophia do aught but smile at the accusation, which earns yet another reproof from Mrs. Honour. Sophia’s reaction to the appellation, especially in contrast to that of the histrionic Mrs. Honour, is intriguing in terms of questions of nationalism. While she does not expressly follow her father’s political inclinations, she is also not a secret Jacobite, like Partridge. Even more than the parallel between Tom and Charles Edward, conflating Jenny and Sophia conflates nation and home, and the political tensions in the air are partially allayed as Sophia, fearing her father has discovered her, is relieved that it is only “several hundred thousand” French supporters of Charles Edward come to murder and ravish, as feared by the innkeeper. By poking fun at the exaggerated fears, Fielding contributes to the political discourse of the day focused on nationalist questions. Eric Leuschner

Fitzgerald, F. Scottâ•… The Great Gatsbyâ•… (1925)

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece of American literature, The Great Gatsby, holds a prominent place in both the secondary and the college classroom. While offering a portrait of the Roaring Twenties in America, Fitzgerald gives readers a story of love and intrigue and demonstrates the possibility of social class movement within the United States. Jay Gatsby, the story’s central character, exemplifies the economic rise of a poor midwesterner to the heights of financial success. His life’s goal is to recapture the love interest from his youth, Daisy Fay, a Kentucky native and former debutante, who is wealthy in her own right—and now married to Tom Buchanan. The novel concerns itself with the struggles of rein-

The Great Gatsbyâ•…â•… 439 venting oneself to attain the dreams and pleasures of one’s youth. In Gatsby’s case, the effort goes terribly awry. Readers learn not only about the shaky prosperity of 1920s America, which ended in the economic devastation of the stock market crash and Great Depression of the 1930s, but also about the manner in which one man can similarly teeter on a fragile dream that shatters easily. In addition to the main plot about Jay Gatsby’s remaking himself, there are episodes that highlight racism, gender oppression, and the struggle of certain groups to achieve wealth and prosperity in the United States during the 1920s. Readers will gain an understanding of this fascinating decade of the 20th century while meeting characters who represent both its possibilities and limitations. Carla Verderame

The American dream in The Great Gatsby

Educators and lay readers alike often describe The Great Gatsby as a novel about the American dream—the opportunity for individuals to achieve economic independence and succeed in areas that are most important to them. Does the American dream exist in the 21st century? While opinions may vary as to whether America continues to offer those from beyond its shores the possibility of prosperity and a comfortable homeland, this novel, with its emphasis on reinventing oneself and its celebration of the Roaring Twenties, clearly focuses on themes of opportunity and possibility. While the story’s end is a tragic one that gives readers pause about the American dream and alludes not only to its possibilities but also to its limitations, the title character, Jay Gatsby, embraces the American dream on his terms and throughout his life. Born into a humble midwestern family, Jay Gatsby longs for all the material comforts given to a person of means. He works at various occupations— some of questionable integrity—to amass substantial wealth. Believing that money is necessary to attract the object of his desire, Daisy Fay Buchanan, he remakes himself into a corporate magnate who acquires a great fortune. He relives the years when he and Daisy dated, thinking that his new money will return him to the happiness of his youth and to the woman of his dreams.

Gatsby’s ability to reinvent himself comes from his belief in the American dream: He embraces the economic opportunities afforded to him by a nation based on a free-enterprise system. Further, he welcomes the idea of a fluid society—one in which individuals enjoy the opportunity to succeed financially. However, the novel itself poses interesting questions about the American dream. It celebrates the American dream by emphasizing Gatsby’s financial prowess, which he hopes will impress Daisy enough for her to return to him. He knows one of the reasons they were unable to marry years ago was that Daisy’s family and social class frowned on an engagement between a wealthy woman and a young man of modest means. However, the novel portrays the great financial disparity between the upper and lower classes of New York City and its environs—a setting that serves as a microcosm of the socioeconomic class distinctions that can be found throughout the United States. For example, George Wilson, who owns a service station, represents America’s working class. While George works diligently for his piece of the American dream, he will never achieve the status of Tom Buchanan (Daisy’s husband) or the wealth of the title character, Jay Gatsby. George Wilson was not born into a prominent family, such as the Buchanans of Chicago, Illinois—nor did he follow the way of Jay Gatsby by remaking himself into someone else. While F. Scott Fitzgerald draws on characters of various backgrounds who interact with one another in an attempt to show the spectrum of class dynamics in America, the author also uses various settings in the novel to highlight the complexity of the American dream. While some of the scenes are set in New York City, much of the novel takes place either in East Egg or West Egg, New York; the distinction between the two towns on the north shore of Long Island is made clear to readers early in the story. Nick Carraway, the novel’s narrator, points out that his rented summer cottage is located next door to Gatsby’s mansion, but is still located in less fashionable West Egg. Those with “old money,” such as the Buchanans, live in East Egg. This not-so-subtle reminder of class distinction underscores Gatsby’s humble background and suggests the challenges of moving beyond one’s origins. Regardless of Gatsby’s

440â•…â•… Fitzgerald, F. Scott financial success, he is still considered “new money” and, therefore, not quite up-to-par by the established families in the area. Another setting that calls the American dream into question is the Valley of Ashes. This is a desolate and abandoned strip of land that people travel through on their way to New York City. It functions to remind readers of the disparity between not only those with old and new money, but also those who enjoy a comfortable living in America and those who struggle to attain one. The Valley of Ashes juxtaposes the magnificence of Gatsby’s lavish parties and the comfort of the Buchanans’ lifestyle. The Great Gatsby gives readers an opportunity to reconsider the American dream and whether it serves, or indeed could ever fulfill, its supposed purpose. Also, the novel investigates themes of social class and social justice through the prism of a single man who longs for the happiness of his youth. Carla Verderame

Identity in The Great Gatsby

At the end of The Great Gatsby the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway, suggests that the story of Jay Gatsby is a story of the West and that those who figure prominently in the book—Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, Jay Gatsby, and Nick himself—are all westerners. The theme of identity looms large in Fitzgerald’s text and the characters’ birth places are not insignificant to their sense of self or to their role in the story. That is, one of the themes of the novel is that identity, for Fitzgerald’s characters, is very closely linked with native region and that while New York City and its environs are central to the action of the novel, the characters’ identities are drawn from and sustained by the area of their birth, although they are not literally “westerners.” At the beginning of the story, readers learn the social distinction between Tom Buchanan, a man of considerable means from Chicago, Illinois, his wife Daisy (Fay) Buchanan from Louisville, Kentucky, also of considerable means, and Jay Gatsby, a self-made man who hails from a small town in Minnesota. Newcomers to New York City and its surroundings, Tom and Daisy settle in fashionable East Egg, while Jay Gatsby, a millionaire in his own right but whose money has been earned under

suspicious circumstances, owns a mansion in the less fashionable West Egg, where Nick Carraway rents a small cottage for the summer. Nick, Daisy’s second cousin and an acquaintance of Tom’s in college, observes and relates the goings-on of the Buchanans and Jay Gatsby during the summer and early fall of 1922. He retells their story in the form of a flashback. Jay Gatsby’s determination to establish a new identity for himself sets him apart from the other characters in the text. Gatsby’s focus on acquiring wealth is unnecessary for the rest of the ensemble who come from comfortable economic backgrounds. Gatsby’s belief that wealth is an important aspect of his new identity and an equally important attribute to obtain Daisy’s love turns out to be wrong-headed in the end. In fact, Gatsby’s wealth gains him only superficial acquaintances who take advantage of his lavish parties and notable generosity. The love story between Daisy Fay and James Gatz reinforces the great lengths to which the title character will go in order to change his identity. James Gatz renames himself Jay Gatsby and works hard to build, through questionable activities, a lifestyle to which Daisy is accustomed. Thinking that he can return to the past when he and Daisy dated, and marry her now despite her current marriage to Tom, Gatsby arranges a meeting with Daisy through Nick. The reunion is an emotional one; it demonstrates the “rags to riches” story of the protagonist who is temporarily attractive to the well-to-do Mrs. Buchanan. The two reminisce about their early life together when Daisy was a popular debutante and Gatsby a soldier in World War I. Gatsby and Daisy have a short affair while Tom Buchanan carries on an extramarital affair of his own with Myrtle Wilson. The story ends badly for Gatsby. Mr. Wilson shoots Gatsby because he mistakenly believes that Gatsby was responsible for the car accident that killed his wife, Myrtle. Mr. Wilson was suspicious of his wife’s recent behavior but he was unaware of the true identity of his wife’s lover—Tom Buchanan. The case of mistaken identity turns out to be significant at the end of the novel. While the role of Jordan Baker is a small one in the story compared to that of her friend, Daisy Buchanan, Jordan’s character also focuses on the

The Great Gatsbyâ•…â•… 441 theme of identity in that she is a professional golfer who has gained a reputation for cheating—and is presented as somewhat careless and self-absorbed. A brief love interest of Nick’s, he comes to see Jordan for who she really is, which reinforces not only the carelessness of the upper classes in the story but also the importance they assign to a specific identity. That is, Jordan admits to her carelessness and self-centeredness but enjoys both the status and the material possessions that wealth makes available. Finally, as Nick concludes, the midwesterners in the novel who travel East find that they can neither abandon who they are, nor remake themselves into something new. Jay Gatsby, in particular, attempts to reinvent himself in order to return to a past that offered promise, only to pay the highest price, his life, for his discomfort with his humble beginnings and for attempting to manipulate his original identity. Carla Verderame

Social Class in The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, provides a useful commentary on social class in America during the 1920s. The title character, Jay Gatsby, moves to a higher class from that into which he was born by amassing great wealth. He represents “new money” and is, therefore, looked upon with skepticism by Tom Buchanan, one of the most prominent and well-to-do characters in the novel. Tom’s wife, Daisy (Fay) Buchanan, and her distant relative, Nick Carraway, have enjoyed a high social standing throughout their lives. While they acknowledge the inequities of class in America— Nick’s opening narrative recalls his father’s advice not to judge others who did not benefit from the same advantages as he—they begin a summer of splendor on the outskirts of New York City. But the summer ends tragically: Both Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson die in the prime of their lives, suggesting not only the fragility of life but also the complexity of social class and the problems that occur when desperate people hold fast to a social role that does not fit them. That is, straddling the divide among the classes comes at a great cost for both Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson. Gatsby is killed by Myrtle’s husband, George Wilson, who

mistakenly thinks Gatsby was driving the car that ran over his wife. In fact, Daisy drove the car that killed Myrtle after a complicated series of events in New York City. While America promises economic opportunities for everyone, the characters in the novel demonstrate the difficulty in moving among classes by doing so recklessly and without regard for people who may be hurt along the way. For example, Myrtle Wilson focuses on material possessions available to her from her lover, Tom Buchanan, but shows little regard for the lives disrupted by her extramarital affair with Tom. Myrtle’s husband, George, is so devastated by the loss of his wife that he is driven to shoot Jay Gatsby in cold blood. Conversely, Jay Gatsby strives to recapture his days as a young soldier who dated Daisy Faye with the hope of marriage and a life together. Gatsby’s determination to achieve great wealth and to shift from lower to upper class is all done in an attempt to reclaim Daisy. He believes that wealth will impress her and she will divorce Tom and marry him. Gatsby wants to relive the time when he and Daisy dated, which he feels was the best time of their lives. Class status figures prominently in the episodes with Tom and Myrtle and Gatsby and Daisy because Myrtle and Gatsby believe that they are “moving up.” That is, they take the idea of class status and what it can offer seriously. However, Tom and Daisy, comfortable with wealth and accustomed to getting what they want, act in a frivolous manner. While Tom may care for Myrtle on some level, and Daisy may feel some tenderness toward Gatsby, Tom and Daisy enter their affairs mostly for fun and as a distraction from their daily lives. Nick Carraway, a faithful friend of Gatsby to the end, is disgusted at Tom and Daisy’s behavior. He says, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy— they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . .” Nick learns that Tom, Daisy, and others in their circle are not the least bit interested in the consequences of their actions. Fitzgerald’s text takes a hard look at the subject of social class in America not only through the

442â•…â•… Fitzgerald, F. Scott exploits of the Buchanans and their friends but also through the story’s various settings. The Valley of Ashes, in its state of decay, juxtaposes the lavish environs of East Egg and West Egg, New York. Readers are made aware of the idea of place in the novel and the manner in which it contributes to the author’s commentary on social class. Further, Tom Buchanan’s racist musings will also demonstrate the complicated link between race and social class and the way these categories of analysis play out in the novel. Finally, Fitzgerald suggests through the Buchanans’ (and other characters’) actions, that social class is not insignificant and the boundaries that distinguish social class categories are not easily overcome. Carla Verderame

Fitzgerald, F. Scottâ•… Tender Is the Nightâ•… (1934, 1951)

First published in four installments of Scribner’s Magazine in early 1934, Tender Is the Night contains many autobiographical similarities to Fitzgerald’s life. It follows the 1925 publication of The Great Gatsby as his final completed novel. In 1951, a second version was published posthumously; these two versions differ in terms of the novel’s chronology. The more frequently studied 1934 version, which was revised 12 times by Fitzgerald without an altered time scheme, opens in the present and uses flashbacks, while the 1951 version begins with background information and proceeds chronologically. Both versions tell the story of a young psychiatrist who marries one of his patients and later experiences another relationship that pushes him to drunkenness, disillusion, infidelity, and violence. The main characters of Tender Is the Night are Dr. Dick Diver, his wife and former patient Nicole, and Rosemary Hoyt, an idealistic young woman who marks a turning point in the doctor’s life while vacationing on the French Riviera. Through this triangle, Fitzgerald presents complicated relationships and the effects of their blurred boundaries: relationships like those between doctor and patient, husband and wife, parent and child, and lover and beloved. Alienation, ethics, illness, love, and sex and sexuality are important themes explored

through these three individuals and their unique bonds. Tender Is the Night shows how relationships with others may inspire stagnation or change. With Nicole, Dr. Diver stays unfulfilled and lonely, while with Rosemary, he becomes desirous and restless. Alone, he is his own man, albeit a bit lost. Erica D. Galioto

Alienation in Tender Is the Night

The theme of alienation most potently summarizes Tender Is the Night in its entirety. Indeed, Fitzgerald’s novel revolves around Dr. Dick Diver and his experience of alienation, or separation from himself and from others. This alienation can be divided into two main sections: before Dick meets Rosemary Hoyt and after he meets her. Before Dick meets Rosemary, he is certainly alienated from himself and from others, but he seems largely ignorant of this fact. After marrying his former psychiatric patient Nicole and for the six years of their marriage prior to his meeting Rosemary, Dick appears alienated from others and from his own personal and professional desires. This alienation stems from his unethical union with Nicole. When Dick and Nicole marry, their relationship continues to resemble the relationship between doctor and patient. As such, Dick concerns himself primarily with Nicole and her thoughts and emotions, rather than his own. Because psychiatrists are supposed to remain neutral in their professional relationships, Dick maintains this neutrality with his wife. He purposely alienates himself from his own emotions to heal her, so there is a separation in their romantic relationship. Dick must always hold back his own emotions to protect his wife from unpredictability, and he must react to her behavior rather than initiating his own. Unable to be completely truthful, relaxed, and intimate, they are alienated from each other as husband and wife and know each other only as doctor and patient. This separation not only works a wedge in their marital relationship, but it also separates Dick from his own identity. By withholding his own emotions for the good of Nicole’s continued treatment, he also sacrifices himself. Nicole, as wife and patient, is at the center of Dick’s world, and so he sidelines his own pro-

Tender Is the Nightâ•…â•… 443 fessional work to focus on her. While he once held promise as a young psychiatrist with several well-received publications, he abandons his treatise entitled A Psychology for Psychiatrists. As predicted in Zurich, his personal and professional life revolve around one person, and he finds himself alienated from her, himself, and his professional interests. Sadly, Dick does not even seem to realize his own alienation until he meets Rosemary six years into his marriage with Nicole. Punctuated by Nicole’s occasional breakdowns and mindless conversations with other Americans abroad, Dick’s life moves weakly in mindless repetition. After meeting Rosemary, however, Dick appears to realize his own alienation. When Rosemary inserts herself into the reality of Dick and Nicole, she arouses Dick’s desire but leaves it unfulfilled. Left with this unfulfilled desire, Dick, for the first time in six years, begins to acknowledge his own alienation from himself and others. “The turning point in his life” inspires him to feel his emotions, and, more important to change. When Rosemary abandons Dick, he is left wanting as he returns to his humdrum life. There he finds Nicole the same as before, but he feels different; he feels their disconnection, their alienation from one another. Once he acknowledges this separation, he turns away from her; he refuses his role of psychiatrist at home, turns his back on his domestic duties, and symbolically turns away from Nicole at night in bed. Confronting his own alienation and letting go of his past is a painful process; indeed, Dick engages in many negative and destructive behaviors during this time. He turns to alcohol, verbal and physical violence, and extreme disillusion. Perhaps his lowest point occurs after a night of debauchery when he is mistaken for the rapist of a five-year-old girl and becomes the object of public hatred. Those acquainted with the positive “Lucky Dick” find his transformation painful as well; the “Black Death,” his term for himself, destroys others as he metaphorically destroys himself. Through this painful destruction, Dick’s metamorphosis strips him of everything, so he may experience a rebirth. His father dies, he loses his job, and he loses the respect of others. He loses himself, but he also loses his wife and his intense alienation. For Dick, hitting rock bottom moves him in new directions—but

not Nicole. She quickly replaces Dick with another authoritarian male figure, Tommy Barban, with whom she is likely to continue yet another repetitive, alienated love in sickness and health. Dick, on the other hand, returns to private practice and moves deep into western New York after his painful transformation. Dick’s life is now simple, quiet, solitary, and wandering, but more connected to his own desires. Erica D. Galioto

Illness in Tender Is the Night

Psychological illness, rather than physical illness, pervades F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. Dick Diver is studying psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University during 1917 when America enters World War I. Grateful to escape actual combat after joining the army, he is instead sent to the Dohmler psychiatric clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, to finish his medical degree. While there, he makes a strong impression on a teenage patient, Nicole Warren, during a brief meeting when she is captivated by his uniform and he is unaware of her condition. When the army assigns Dick an executive director position at a neurological unit in France, Nicole writes him roughly 50 letters over the course of eight months. Through this emotional correspondence, Nicole’s symptoms improve, and when Dick returns to the clinic in Zurich, he seeks her out immediately. Upon his return, Dick learns the truth about Nicole’s mental illness through case files recounted by his friend and colleague Dr. Franz Gregorovius. Nicole’s early symptoms were characterized by paranoia, fear, and anxiety: all in relation to an illogical hysteria surrounding men who she feared would attack her. Her older sister, Baby, and father, Devereux, noted that these fantastical fits were first directed toward male figures she knew, but as time passed, her tantrums were more intense and included men who were strangers. Diagnosed with the divided personality of schizophrenia, Nicole leaves Chicago for the Zurich clinic, but the doctors insist on receiving more information from her father. He reveals, after much pushing and resistance, that he and Nicole developed a very close relationship when she was 11 after her mother died. On one occasion, their relationship turned physical and Devereux had

444â•…â•… Fitzgerald, F. Scott sex with his young daughter. Both ignored the incest immediately following and it never happened again, but five years later, Nicole’s bizarre symptoms point to her private mental torture. Once the source of her mental illness is uncovered, the doctors in Zurich agree to treat Nicole provided Devereux cuts off his contact with her. Though her fear of men is understandable when viewed through the lens of her disturbing rape by her father, Nicole is still considered sick because she cannot control her emotions. Her doctors diagnose her mental illness as a self-defense against men; due to her perverted sexual experience, she comes to view all men as evil, which manifests in extreme fright toward males. Her cure, the doctors think, would come when she learns to trust men again, and, ultimately, when she falls in love. To this end, the doctors seek to encourage a healthy transference between Nicole and a psychiatrist; through this psychological relationship, Nicole would transfer, or direct, her negative emotions toward men onto her doctor, and he would simultaneously receive them and inspire her to trust men again with his comforting responses. This transference does occur for Nicole, not within the walls of the clinic, but within her letters to Dick. Not until her epistolary communication with Captain Diver, as she calls him, does Nicole’s condition show any signs of improvement. Through the arc of these personal letters, Nicole’s hatred of men lessens and her symptoms dissipate. She once again begins to desire life outside the clinic and away from her past emotions. After learning of Nicole’s background and recent improvement, Dick meets her in person in Zurich, where her transference and improvement continue though they see each other only sporadically. Soon he is instructed by the other doctors at the clinic to break off the transference because they have located a cure in her recent emotions; Nicole is sufficiently in love with Dick and ready to be redirected. In clinical practice, this would be the point in analysis when the doctor removes support and encourages the patient to experience real life with these newfound desires. As both a psychiatrist and love interest, Dick has made Nicole’s transference strong, but their emotional tie works on him as well. Unable to maintain the professional and ethical neutrality

necessary for such a practitioner, Dick falls in love himself. While he knows that continuing the transference outside the clinic would mean devoting his personal and professional life to one person, he fails to end it. He gives in to Nicole and to his romantic feelings for her, and she replaces her authoritarian father with him. Unwilling to stave off his own desire, Dick marries Nicole and concedes to a life of stagnation: He is the healer, and she is the sick. Erica D. Galioto

Love in Tender Is the Night

Dr. Dick Diver has two relationships in Tender Is the Night that reflect love in different ways. First, he experiences a repetitive love with his wife, Nicole, and second, he experiences a transformative love with a young woman named Rosemary Hoyt. Before Nicole becomes Dick’s wife, she is his psychiatric patient, and due to this prior relationship, their marriage mirrors that arrangement. They claim to love each other, but their love is one that depends on each playing a certain role. Despite six years of marriage and two young children, Dick and Nicole are stuck in a repetitive pattern: Nicole is the patient and Dick is the doctor, Nicole breaks down and Dick repairs, Dick wants to heal and Nicole is sick. In short, Dick has a savior-complex, and Nicole needs to be saved. Their love exists only when each plays the appointed part, and those specific roles insist upon a denial of other personal characteristics. In their marriage, Dick and Nicole are not two people coming together with their unique differences, but they form a separate entity based on their relationship of dependence. The other vacationers on the French Riviera notice this coalescence as well and rarely refer to them individually, but rather as “the Divers” or even “Dicole.” Both Dick and Nicole sacrifice individuality to participate in this fusion. Without individual identities and with only endless repetition, Dick and Nicole’s love begins to wane. Nicole constantly feels as if Dick views her as the ignorant, tormented, weak girl of 16 she once was, and he knows how to relate to her only through the methods and practices of the psychiatrist he is. Governed by her moods and his diagnosis and cure, their love suffocates them both. In her own right, Nicole yearns for an emotional privacy she has never had,

Madame Bovaryâ•…â•… 445 while Dick wants to put himself first. Once Dick and Nicole are named doctor and patient respectively, they cannot end their repetitive love until Rosemary Hoyt comes between them. While Dick and Nicole’s love is characterized by repetition and fusion, Dick and Rosemary’s love can only be termed transformative. Through the six years of the Divers’ marriage there have been other young women who needed saving and Dick’s rescue mind-set certainly obliged. His relationship with Rosemary begins much the same way as it had with Nicole and with the others who succeeded her. Like his initial transference with Nicole, Rosemary quickly falls in love with Dick as she watches him on the beach. She idealizes him instantly and, unaware of his marital displeasure, sees him as perfect, omniscient, and perceptive. When she announces that she is in love with both him and Nicole, Dick dully mumbles that he has heard this admission many times before. Rosemary shares many similarities with Nicole. She is roughly the same age Nicole was when she met Dick, both of their fathers are doctors, and both seek men from whom to garner their own strength. Compelled by her idealization of him and similarity to Nicole, Dick begins to fall in love with Rosemary. Superficially, their relationship resembles his early bond with Nicole, but it soon becomes a transformative love instead. While Dick and Nicole find themselves in a repetitive love dependent on the adherence to old roles, Rosemary represents something new altogether. Nicole allows herself to be saved by Dick over and over, but Rosemary does not and refuses Dick’s plea to rescue her. This refusal represents a turning point in Dick’s life because for once he does not have to doctor a romantic interest. Paradoxically, young Rosemary decides to “give up” Dick, despite her feelings of love. Sensing the impossibility of a sustained relationship, Rosemary pulls back and relinquishes her claims on him. When she pulls back, she pulls back with love, but she pulls back at a time when Dick has opened himself to love her back. This movement leaves him with his own pulsing desire. For once, it has no obvious outlet, either with Nicole and her sporadic moods or with another young female desperate for his rescue. The passionless solitary kiss between Dick and Rosemary is emblematic of this strong renunciation.

Rosemary walks away, despite Dick’s desire, and in so doing, she opens his life to its greatest transformation. The metamorphosis first pulls him away from Nicole and then toward himself and his desires: personal, professional, and romantic. Erica D. Galioto

Flaubert, Gustaveâ•… Madame Bovaryâ•… (1857) Madame Bovary was controversial from the moment it was serialized in 1856. First published in book form in 1857 (and only after its author, Gustave Flaubert, was tried for obscenity), it remains one of the most important novels of all time. It is the story of a young French woman who quickly regrets her marriage to a provincial doctor and engages in two unsatisfying affairs before taking her own life. The novel begins by depicting Charles Bovary, but shifts its focus to Emma once the two are married. Emma quickly decides he is hopelessly dull. Her first words in the novel are striking: “Oh, why, dear God, did I marry him?” Longing for the romantic fantasies that she has read of in literature, Emma Bovary dreads her daily life and fills her time buying various luxuries. She finds a kindred spirit in Léon Dupuis, a handsome young clerk. They flirt and fall in love, but they do not realize each other’s feelings. Emma is seduced by Rodolphe Boulanger, a man who has had a number of affairs. When Rodolphe begins to tire of the affair, he dumps Emma in a contrived letter. She is heartbroken and nearly commits suicide; afterward she collapses into illness. After her recovery, a chance meeting with Léon leads to a second affair. When her debts overwhelm her and none of her lovers can save her, she commits suicide. The novel ends with the death of Charles, and their child Berthe consigned to labor in a cotton-mill. Through these depressing (but often comic) twists, Flaubert explores a number of important themes, particularly love, fate, freedom, gender, and commerce. James Ford

Fate in Madame Bovary

Fate plays a curious role in Madame Bovary. The characters often speak of fate and bemoan the role

446â•…â•… Flaubert, Gustave of destiny, but ultimately the events of the novel are driven more by the characters’ free choices than by any fate or destiny. Emma blames fate for her unhappiness, consistently refusing to see the role her own choices have played in determining the course of her life. Early in her marriage she feels destined for a blank, empty life. She contrasts the “endless twists of fate” that chance might bring in everyone else’s lives with her life, in which it is “the will of God” that “nothing was going to happen.” Of course, a great many things will happen in Emma’s life as the result of the choices she makes, but she is unable to see her freedom. Instead “she cursed God for his injustice,” for dooming her to a life of boring domesticity instead of the exciting romances she imagines. Soon she realizes that Léon loves her, and she wishes fate would allow her happiness—“If only heaven had willed it!” Thrilled at the possibility, Emma becomes consumed with love for Léon, but fails to act on it. Those around her see her suffering and dedication as “the pale mark of a sublime destiny,” and praise her devotion to her familial duties, while the reader knows that her devotion just masks her real passion for Léon. Completely oblivious to her unspoken feelings, Léon grows tired of waiting in vain and leaves for Paris. Emma is left even more depressed than before, until Rodolphe Boulanger arrives to exploit her ennui. Rodolphe uses the idea of fate to seduce Emma, playing on her romantic naïveté. He tells her that society is organized to prevent true happiness, but that ultimately two souls “will be together, will be lovers, because Fate ordains it, because they were born for each other.” He says that some “decree of Fate” has caused him and Emma to meet, that their “unique inclinations have been pushing us toward one another.” All of this talk of fate appeals directly to her literary ideas of love and destiny, not to mention her vanity. She is soon swept off her feet. He clinches his “scheme” when he tells her how futile it is to resist her destiny: “why struggle against Fate . . . why resist the angels smiling!” Unfortunately he soon grows tired of their affair, and when she urges him to rescue her from her life, he turns to fate for his escape. In his farewell letter, he explains that their love would have quickly faded, “for such is the fate of things human,” and tells her to “blame only

fate!” for their meeting. Rodolphe’s self-conscious use of fate as a cover for his desires only highlights the emptiness of grand ideas in the novel. As he says to himself while composing the letter, fate is “a word that always makes an impression.” Upon reading the letter, Emma is crushed. She decides she is “free” to commit suicide, but at the last minute she is called back from the edge. When she recovers from the illness that follows, she still blames fate (rather than Rodolphe or herself ) for her troubles. She dreams of “the life that could have been hers, if only fate had willed it so.” Charles Bovary rarely considers grand ideas, but when he does, he too blames his suffering on fate. When his operation on the clubfooted Hippolyte fails miserably, Charles decides that “Fate must have had something to do with it.” What Charles sees as fate, other characters consider “the will of the Lord”; the end result is the same. In the end Charles speaks once more of fate, but the encounter only highlights how empty the idea of fate is in the novel. After Emma’s death, finally confronted with the overwhelming evidence of her infidelity and having just sold the last of his possessions to pay her debts, Charles runs into Rodolphe, who invites him to have a beer. The narrator notes that Charles says the only “grand phrase” of his life: “Fate is to blame!” (209). Rodolphe knows that he “controlled this particular fate,” and he realizes how hollow Charles’s words truly are. In the world of Madame Bovary, fate is just another rationalization for the choices individuals make. James Ford

Freedom in Madame Bovary

The idea of freedom is bound up with considerations of wealth, gender, and power in Madame Bovary. Emma complains that only men are free, while she sees herself constrained by a variety of forces—fate, lack of wealth, her marriage, her sex, and even her child. Emma’s attitude is clearest during her pregnancy, when she longs for a son. A man, she thinks, is free, free to “explore each passion and every kingdom, conquer obstacles, feast upon the most exotic pleasures.” In her mind a man is free to act upon his desires, to follow his will wherever it leads, while a woman’s desire is always bound by

Madame Bovaryâ•…â•… 447 “the convention restraining.” At other times, she equates freedom with wealth, as when she says to Rodolphe that he cannot be “wretched,” because he is free, he is rich. Long after their affair fades, she still describes Rodolphe as “rich and happy and free.” In Emma’s imagination, these are synonymous. Men are rich, happy, and free, while women are poor, miserable, and subservient to the men around them. Emma is not deluded in seeing the world this way—her possibilities are limited in comparison to the men of the novel. Rodolphe is free to seduce whomever he wishes and to end the affair at a time of his choosing. But Emma herself freely embraces the affair, fulfilling her own desires despite the weight of convention. Léon is free to leave Yonville for Paris when he tires of provincial life (and his unfulfilled longing for Emma), a choice that she lacks. But Emma and Léon seem to be relative equals at the beginning of their affair, and ultimately he becomes her mistress as she comes to dominate their relationship. She has more freedom than she realizes, although not as much as her male companions. But even they are less free than she imagines. For Charles as a young man, playing dominoes is “a precious act of liberty,” an entrée into a forbidden adult world. He begins to enjoy life, memorizing poetry and hanging out in taverns; all of which leads him to fail his medical exams the first time out. Successful the second time, he begins his practice and his mother finds him a wife. Foolishly, Charles thinks this will be his chance to escape his mother’s rule, to be truly free; he “had pictured marriage as the advent of a better life, thinking he would be more free, and able to dispose of his own person and his own money.” But just as his mother dominated his youth, Charles’s first wife is master during their marriage. Freedom comes with her death, and Charles is briefly happy living alone, until he begins to long for Emma. After their marriage, Charles is happy and free again, because he is “the master of this lovely woman whom he adored.” Given that she feels trapped and miserable in the marriage, his own freedom is short-lived. After Rodolphe breaks off his affair with Emma, she recognizes a different kind of freedom, the freedom to end her life. “Why not have done

with it? Who was to stop her? She was free.” At the last minute Charles’s shouts of “Wife! Wife!” call her back, and she does not commit suicide— yet. Later she pursues an affair with Léon, and throughout it all she continues to spend more than she can afford on an endless supply of material goods. When her debts overcome her, and her lovers refuse to help her, she sees no other way out; she swallows arsenic. The novel’s last word on the complex relations among freedom, gender, and wealth is the plight of Berthe, Emma’s daughter. When Charles dies not long after Emma, poor Berthe is sent from relative to relative until she is taken in by a poor aunt, who sends young Berthe “to earn her living in a cotton-mill.” James Ford

Love in Madame Bovary

Love is a fickle sentiment in Madame Bovary, flaring brightly, dying quickly, and rarely producing any happiness. The first hint of this is the account of Charles Bovary’s parents. The narrator explains that Charles’s mother was initially “mad about” his father, but the “servility” of her love only turned him against her. Her affection for her husband quickly turns to rage at his carousing. She focuses her attention on her son Charles, who will himself be doomed to unhappy marriages. Madame Bovary chooses a wife for her son, an ugly, older widow, desired by many for her money. Charles expects to be free and happy in marriage, but is soon disappointed. His wife is his master, and his life is a boring routine until he falls in love with Emma, the daughter of one of his patients. Meanwhile, the manager of his wife’s money runs away with it all, much to the chagrin of Charles’s parents. Only a week after a confrontation in which Charles tries to defend his wife from his parents, she dies. He mourns her briefly (“she had loved him, after all”), but then is free to pursue a new life. He is happy for a time, living alone, until he begins to think again of Emma. Soon they marry, and all seems well. Charles loves his wife, but it is a one-sided love; he is blissfully happy to be “master of this lovely woman whom he adored.” For Emma, love is a “lightning flash” and a “tempest.” She longs for the kind of passionate love

448â•…â•… Forster, E. M. found in “the pages of the books.” She thought that she was in love with Charles before the wedding, but she decides she was mistaken when she does not feel “the happiness of which she used to dream.” Crushed by the gap between the happiness of her imagination and the plain dullness of her married life, Emma’s first words highlight her anguish: “↜‘Oh, why, dear God, did I marry him?’↜” She spends the rest of the novel (and her life) searching for the passion of which she dreams. Emma’s second chance at love comes when she realizes Monsieur Léon loves her. Outwardly she becomes the perfect wife, but inside she is “in turmoil.” The more she realizes her love for Léon, the more she hides it. She blames Charles for her unhappiness, while Léon becomes convinced that she is unattainable. Once again the ideal of love is detached from the reality of love, and Emma becomes an angel in Léon’s mind. He grows “tired of loving for nothing,” and so leaves Yonville for Paris. Emma’s regret at failing to act only intensifies her desires and her depression, though her love for Léon soon fades. She is easy prey for Rodolphe Boulanger, an expert with women, who takes advantage of Emma’s unhappiness. Rodolphe tells her their love is destined, and appeals to all her fantasies about love. She rejoices at the thought of “a lover,” and she is certain that at last she will know the passion of her “own imaginings.” Rodolphe, the great seducer, marvels at the newness of “undebauched love,” but he soon falls into his old habits. The more affectionate Emma is to him, the more indifferent he becomes. She longs for the happiness of her youth, and tries even to love Charles, repenting of her affair, but she is unable to follow through. She looks to Rodolphe to save her, to free her from her life; but he also longs to be free. Ultimately he agrees to take her away, only to stand her up on the appointed day. She nearly commits suicide, collapsing into illness. During her illness Emma has a vision of “a further love above all loves .  .  . a love that would blossom eternally.” She wants to be a saint, but her passion for God cools as quickly as her earlier loves. If only she could have loved purely, she thinks, “before the blight of marriage and the disillusion of adultery,” she would have been perfectly happy.

Meeting Léon again, she begins an affair with him. At first he is enraptured, because his imagination is fulfilled: “she was the lover in every novel.” But their love for each other fades, as she wonders again why reality falls short of her books. Emma is “immersed in her passions,” completely neglecting her increasing debts. When none of her lovers can pay her bills, she commits suicide, professing real love for her husband with her dying breath. James Ford

Forster, E. M.â•… A Passage to Indiaâ•… (1924)

Forster began A Passage to India (1924) before World War I and completed it after travel to India; it illustrates his belief that British imperialism devastated colonized countries, their people, and the relationship between the colonized and the imperial power. The novel is divided into three parts: “Mosque” and “Caves” are set near Chandrapore, India, and the final section, “Temple,” is set two years after the events of the first two sections, at the temple of Mau. The story follows Mrs. Moore, Adela Quested, Ronny Heaslop, Cyril Fielding, and Dr. Aziz. The first two sections detail the complicated relationships formed between the British and the Indians. Mrs. Moore and Adela journey to India so Adela can meet English barrister Ronny Heaslop, her potential fiancé, son of Mrs. Moore. Mrs. Moore and Adela do not comprehend the Britons’ hatred of the Indians and often meet with Dr. Aziz. The climax, a trip to the Marabar Caves organized by Dr. Aziz for Adela and Mrs. Moore, outlines Adela’s attack in the caves. The novel is not explicit as to whether it is physical; the attack can also be understood as psychological panic. Adela, however, testifies that Dr. Aziz did not attack her and leaves India. The novel ends after Fielding and Aziz have reunited in a Hindu community with the declaration that the two cannot cultivate a friendship as long as India remains colonized. Danielle Nielsen

Community in A Passage to India

In A Passage to India, E. M. Forster draws a complicated picture of India and Britain’s colonial

A Passage to Indiaâ•…â•… 449 relationship through the depiction of their religious and ethnic communities and the borders they transcend. The communities’ desires to maintain autonomy emphasize the colonial repression suffered by the Indians. To highlight the struggles, Forster illustrates failed interpersonal relationships and inter-community relationships, and through the narrative, readers see that while members of each community strive to keep others out, seclusion is not only impossible but also may not be desirable. Three communities make up the core of the novel: the Anglo-Indians like Ronny Heaslop, Cyril Fielding, the Turtons and Burtons, and Adela Quested; Muslims, such as Dr. Aziz, Mahmoud Ali, and Hamadullah; and the Hindus, Professor Godbole and his followers at Mau. While the Indian community is culturally and religiously diverse, many of the same struggles for freedom from colonialism are fought by the myriad Indian communities. This camaraderie is vital during the trial scene when the Hindu sweepers strike, Muslim women go on hunger strikes, the streets fill with riots, and little distinction is made between the religious groups and the desire for judicial fairness. The novel is fraught with failed interpersonal relationships between members of disparate communities, and Forster shows the distance between the diverse Indian community and the Anglo-Indian rulers at a “bridge party.” At the party, Adela meets some “real Indians” that she desires to see; it also facilitates political maneuvering between the AngloIndians and the upper-class Hindu, Muslim, and Parsee leaders. Though the men talk to one another, the interactions between Adela and the Indian wives highlight the differences between the British and Indian communities and the strain that colonialism places on interpersonal communications. Miss Quested attempts to talk to the “friendly Indians,” but they are too polite to cross this social boundary. Adela sees the bridge party as an opportunity to close the gap between the Britons and the Indians, and she wants to befriend the Indian women. Even though many of these upper-class women have traveled to England, Paris, and Italy, and speak English, Adela cannot make them speak to her because she is English. The Indian women’s civility, their colonial oppression, and their regard for colonial rulers

prevent them from seeing Adela as one who understands and relates to their community. The Indian women see themselves in a much different social and cultural community than the British women, and they treat the cultural and social differences as boundaries to communication and sympathy. They see Adela as a woman who must be esteemed as a ruler, even though she does not see herself that way. Adela’s inability to communicate with the Indian women as a friend strengthens Forster’s assertion at the end of the novel that “No, not yet   .  . No, not there” could Aziz and Fielding become friends. The strain that colonialism places on friendships and the inequality between communities prohibits friendship between Adela and the Indian women, between Aziz and Fielding, and ultimately between the Anglo-Indian and Indian communities. The community boundaries are rarely crossed for friendship but often for necessity. Forster demonstrates that colonial communities work against one another through dichotomies such as ruler/ ruled, outsider/native, and dominant/subordinate. The court scene in which Aziz is tried and released for the assault on Adela demonstrates an overlapping of the communities. When Mahmoud Ali defends Aziz, he wishes to call upon Mrs. Moore; he tells the court that Mrs. Moore is a friend to the Indians. Her name is immediately Indianized; she is deemed “Esmiss Esmoor,” a “Hindu goddess.” The groups in the street chant her name; Adela draws strength from her dead friend and the chanting around her, and she renounces the charges. When the Indians make Mrs. Moore a deity, they draw from the colonial culture to challenge it, for they saw in Mrs. Moore a freedom and stubbornness that few other Britons displayed. The Indians embrace Mrs. Moore and Adela as allies. Without these British women, Aziz may have been found guilty. The Indians learn that seclusion from other communities is impossible; within colonialism, the oppressed must use all of the tools available to them, even if they are shared with the colonizers. Danielle Nielsen

Gender in A Passage to India

Gender plays a significant role in A Passage to India, for it allows us to consider the novel’s purpose and

450â•…â•… Forster, E. M. the racial interactions from a different perspective than the normal anti-colonial stance. Forster portrays two types of gender relations between the Britons and the Indians: a stereotypical fear of Indian men and their sexual advances toward British women and a moderate view that demonstrates Indian men’s attempts to befriend British women without threatening them. In the novel, many British women maintain Victorian standards of femininity and gender roles, specifically the “angel in the house” attitude that asserted women were the moral exemplar of the British home. Auxiliary activities like acting, however, permitted women to portray different roles, yet the women required protection from the peering eyes of the Indians. Early in the narrative, the narrator alerts the reader to the social and racial “propriety” of the memsahibs (the British women in India) when he explains that the “windows [of the playhouse] were barred, lest the servants should see their mem-sahibs acting.” Women like Mrs. Callendar, Mrs. Burton, and Mrs. Turton (all wives of longstanding civil servants in the colony) demonstrate a stereotypical fear of and repulsion from the Indian people. The attitudes and actions of the AngloIndians promote a strict separation between the colonized and the colonizers, and they go to great lengths to protect their women from being seen by the servants. To remain hidden from servants while acting allows the women to act “improperly” without losing status in the colonial hierarchy, for the women are of a “superior” race (British) but not of a “superior” gender (female). It is obvious that gender identity is not as simple as being male or female, for the narrator indicates that the gender of the British actors (female) is just as important as the racial status of the performer and the potential viewer. This intricate and delicate relationship between “superior” race and “inferior” gender drives many of the interactions in Forster’s novel. Moreover, gender relations are rarely separated from other aspects of the novel like social class or race, and in A Passage to India it is often impossible to separate gender from other attributes that determine the characters’ social status in the colony. Not only are the memsahibs afraid that their servants (who are Indian) may watch them act, but

they also maintain that their husbands should avoid befriending any Indian man. The British schoolmaster, Cyril Fielding, “had discovered that it is possible to keep in with Indians and Englishmen, but that he who would also keep in with Englishwomen must drop the Indians.” While the husbands attempt to maintain that status quo of Victorian gender relations in the colony, the women in the novel, specifically those like Mrs. Callendar, Mrs. Burton, and Mrs. Turton, dictate the relationships that they will have, or more fairly, will not have with the Indian men. These women’s insistence that Indian men are troublesome and dangerous determines much of the colonial strife between the colonizers and the colonized and leads to the panic after Adela’s experiences in the caves. Forster portrays the memsahibs as stereotypical Anglo-Indians who are afraid of Indian men and believe that they must be protected. Forster, however, demonstrates that women need not fear Indians because, during much of the novel, Adela Quested attempts to befriend the Indians. Instead of treating the Indians as inferior people, she disregards the gender roles placed on her. Soon after her arrival in the colony, Miss Quested visits the college with Professor Godbole, Dr. Aziz, Cyril Fielding, and Mrs. Moore. As Fielding shows Mrs. Moore around the college, Adela remains with Godbole and Aziz. Adela does not show any discomfort with the two Indian men. It is only when Ronny Heaslop, Adela’s fiancé, confronts Fielding, explaining that he “oughtn’t to have left Miss Quested alone” because he doesn’t “like to see an English girl left smoking with two Indians,” that Adela’s actions cause concern. While Adela demonstrates that Indians and British women can try to befriend one another, Ronny the bureaucrat attempts to maintain the strict gender boundaries devised by the memsahibs. The relationship Adela forges with the Indians cannot withstand the pressure of the other British women. She experiences discrimination from them, and her challenge to the stereotype eventually debilitates her and forces her to return to England. Thus, not only are relationships between different genders challenged and challenging, but the expectations held by those of the same gender generate stress. Danielle Nielsen

A Passage to Indiaâ•…â•… 451

Nationalism in A Passage to India

An understanding of nationalism allows us to analyze the relationship between the Indian residents and the British rulers in Chandrapore, gain a better understanding of the Indian desire for freedom, and see who the proponents for freedom are in the novel. The complicated relationships expose the complicated sense of nationalism in a country yearning for freedom. Forster’s portrayal of nationalism illuminates the relationships and ideologies between two opposing groups and their concepts of political control in India. For much of the novel, the British espouse the most nationalistic beliefs to avoid the Indian subjects who surround them, while the Indians quietly go along. After Adela Quested and Mrs. Moore intimate the desire to meet some Indian subjects, the memsahibs reluctantly throw a bridge party and invite some of the middle-class Indians. This gathering, however, is not successful. As Mrs. Moore and Adela observe the uncomfortable tension between the Indians and the British, Ronny Heaslop explains to them that “The educated Indians will be no good to us if there’s a row, it’s simply not worth while conciliating them, that’s why they don’t matter. Most of the people you see are seditious at heart. Ronny’s remarks illustrate both the Indians’ and the Britons’ nationalist beliefs. Few of the Indians invited “mattered,” and many were not of the highest caste in Chandrapore. Rather, those invited dressed in a manner similar to the Britons, and they were more likely to be loyal to the British than other Indians. The Indians who would “be no good” to the British are instead loyal to the Indian cause as Indian nationalists. As with the bridge party, the British exert their control over the middle-class Pathans in India by inviting them to gatherings and by placating them to increase the possibility that these Pathans will relinquish any nationalist tendencies and support the British regardless of the Indian nationalism surrounding them. Furthermore, Ronny’s anxiety regarding a “row” relates to the growing tensions between the Indians and their British colonizers and exposes the different ways that nationalism plays a role in the Britons’ use of the Indians. Because so many of the educated, high-caste Hindus favor freedom, they are perceived

not only as nationalist but also as dangerous to the empire. In essence, Ronny’s sense of nationalism— his pride in Britain, his pride in colonialism’s role, and his pride in his job—encourage him to see the real Indians as only those people who would support the Britons. Furthermore, Ronny’s pride indicates a British nationalism that bolsters the imperial power and prestige of Britain. While Ronny’s comments at the bridge party demonstrate his beliefs about nationalism—or lack of nationalism—in the Indian mind, the atmosphere at Aziz’s trial reveals the power of Indian passion and Cyril Fielding’s sedition. Aziz’s imprisonment causes Chandrapore workers to strike, specifically the sweepers, and even Muslim women declare a hunger strike. These actions demonstrate both support of Aziz and antiBritish sentiments. Though the women’s hunger strike has no effect because they are concealed in harems, the sweepers’ strike is detrimental to the health of the city. By striking, the Indians demonstrate their desire to control the atmosphere and the judicial system—in essence, the desire to control their country. The Indians, who “did not matter” at the bridge party, suddenly do. The narrator describes the Britons’ anger at Fielding: “he [Fielding] encouraged the Boy Scout movement for seditious reasons; he received letters with foreign stamps on them, and was probably a Japanese spy. This morning’s verdict would break the renegade, but he had done his country and the Empire incalculable disservice” (238). Just as Ronny suspects the Indians’ ability to be “seditious” to the Indian cause, the Britons feel that Fielding shows the same sedition to the Empire. Forster illuminates the different ways in which nationalism can play out between different ethnic and social hierarchies. For Forster, the nationalism lies either with the British Empire or with free India, and it is revealed not only by those who ethnically belong to the group, but also by those who support it. Thus, middle-class Indians who thrive under the raj support the British, while Britons who oppose the raj can align themselves with the Indian populace. Nationalism, however, is not simply between the Indians and Britons, as indicated by the role that

452â•…â•… Forster, E. M. middle-class Indians and Fielding play, but also between the Hindu and Muslim populations, and this relationship is played out more extensively in the novel’s final section. Danielle Nielsen

Forster, E. M.â•… A Room with a Viewâ•… (1908)

A Room with a View follows Lucy Honeychurch and her cousin, Charlotte Bartlett, to a small English-run hotel in Florence, Italy. Lucy, who was used to having more freedom, finds her every step watched and protected by her cousin. Themes of nature, innocence and experience, and tradition emerge through the novel’s many conflicts. Lucy and Charlotte meet a father and son, Mr. Emerson and the younger George Emerson, when they trade rooms to get a better view. The radical, open-minded Emersons invite scorn from other travelers who disapprove of their outspoken manner. Lucy becomes very bored in Italy until suddenly she witnesses a stabbing. After she faints from shock, George comforts her and admits to an interest in her. Shortly after an unexpected kiss from George on a day outing, Lucy and her cousin return to England. Lucy finally accepts the third marriage proposal of Cecil Vyse, an uptight, snobbish suitor. But scandal keeps threatening her placid life. Lucy largely remains submissive to her relatives and fiancé. She finds her confidence shaken when the Emersons move into a nearby neighborhood. After much personal turmoil and some counseling from the elder Emerson, Lucy breaks off her engagement with Cecil and turns to George instead. She embraces a more passionate life free from many of the senseless expectations her family and society have of her. The exaggerated characterization adds a comical approach to A Room with a View, and mocks the grave importance the characters attach to ordinary social situations. Elizabeth Walpole

Innocence and Experience in A Room with a View

A Room with a View follows several young characters whose actions reveal their innocence. Lacking expe-

rience in their social circles, they try following older adults or rebelling against them to test the limits of their actions. While the story focuses on the theme of finding one’s own view of the world, it also shows the obstacles and mistakes the young characters must face as they mature. Lucy and George romanticize the idea of being young. In their relationship, any contact they have holds monumental importance for each of them. Although Charlotte suggests that George is using Lucy, George’s eagerness to be with Lucy is actually a sort of innocent first love. He takes life very gravely and struggles with youthful questions about the purpose of his existence, as when he leaves “an enormous note of interrogation” scrawled on paper in his room. He sees Lucy not just as an attractive girl but as a savior. Before he is able to comprehend or recognize his love for her, he remarks, “I shall want to live.” In his youthful inexperience with love, he swings quickly from one drastic emotion to another. Lucy fears adulthood because she thinks it is completely stifling. She much prefers playing tennis with 19-year-old Freddy and 13-year-old Minnie. Enjoying the exercise, she concludes, “how much better to run about in comfortable clothes than to sit at the piano.” She believes that to grow up is to step into society’s mold for her. Her fatalistic attitude blinds her from seeing her ability to make her adult life enjoyable. Lucy sees marrying Cecil as her only option. She dreads living with Cecil, who refuses even to join a game of tennis. From a city upbringing and a good education, Cecil despises “the physical violence of the young,” even in sports. Lucy does not realize other types of men might be more compatible with her personality. Her lively spirit delights in more rowdy, imaginative games such as “bumble-puppy” in which each tennis ball has a name, and one hits “tennis-balls high into the air, so that they  . . immoderately bounce.” She willingly makes up her own rules for tennis, but her fear of failure prevents her from taking such charge of her own life. Many of the “ridiculous child” characters find opportunities to rebel. Although Charlotte’s attempts to shelter Lucy are often exaggerated, Charlotte understands how easily Lucy might tar-

A Room with a Viewâ•…â•… 453 nish her reputation. Lucy does not see the scandal in switching to George’s room or exploring Italy on her own. Charlotte, while not being a very loyal friend, certainly has more experience with matters of gossip than Lucy does. As Charlotte predicted, the story of George kissing Lucy finds its way into Miss Lavish’s novel. Lucy is horrified when she realizes the romance in the novel mimics her own encounter in the Italian field of violets. The scene, filled with language such as, “he simply enfolded her in his manly arms,” sounds even more risqué than Lucy’s actual experience. Suddenly, Charlotte’s warnings seem more meaningful. Other characters are less thoughtful than Lucy when it comes to rebellion. Their brutal honesty reveals innocent ambivalence to etiquette. When Cecil asks Freddy if he is happy about Lucy’s engagement, Freddy admits, “I had to say no. He ought never to have asked me.” Minnie, the rector’s niece, likewise blatantly refuses to attend church. In her “church protesting” Minnie questions, “why shouldn’t she sit in the sun with young men?” The nature of Minnie’s protest is not on religious grounds, but instead shows her opposition to following the rest of the women in a dull activity. By asking the reason for going to church, she points out how it is more of a social than religious obligation. She also inadvertently reveals that there is a wider range of freedoms allowed for men than women. Although George asserts that “love and youth matter intellectually,” the end of the novel raises doubts as to whether these virtues will flourish for long. Lucy and George try to escape English society to avoid conflict. The novel’s end treats the situation as though the couple has found a haven away from social connections. They act as though in a foreign country social codes are nonexistent. While Lucy and George have found freedom to grow up as they please, they remain largely inexperienced and their idyllic views show a lot of naiveté. Elizabeth Walpole

Nature in A Room with a View

Many of the most significant events in A Room with a View occur outdoors. Forster seems to suggest that when the characters are in nature, they can behave more naturally. In a novel where manners and social

standing carry great importance, being in nature gives characters moments away from judgmental eyes. Nature affords them privacy and extended space for expression. For example, the characters enjoy Italy’s countryside by planning a group picnic. While Charlotte fusses about catching a draft from the damp ground, Lucy treks through the woods. She follows the Italian driver through dense undergrowth and brush to see George. During this walk, Lucy feels that “for the first time she felt the influence of Spring.” When she sees George it is as though nature has set him up as a suitor, since he is surrounded by “violets [that] ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue.” The overwhelming beauty of her surroundings heightens her surprise and intensifies her reaction to George’s presence. George and his father express a special appreciation for nature. Their last name, “Emerson,” refers to Ralph Waldo Emerson, a 19th-century American author. He was part of the Transcendentalist movement, which valued nature and individualism. His writings, similar to the Emerson characters’ behavior, rebelled against society’s usual philosophical and spiritual beliefs. The Emersons in A Room with a View display their love of nature when they “picked violets and filled all the vases in the room of . . . the Miss Alans.” The Miss Alans react to the gesture by calling it, “so ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful.” The Emersons appreciate the flowers’ potential to bring great happiness. In a very natural way, they behave according to their instinct of goodwill and do not pause to consider the strangeness of such a gift. Cecil, in contrast, pretends to be an expert on nature, which he calls the “simplest of topics.” His confidence, however, is unfounded and seems even more false in the presence of Lucy, who grew up in the country. Cecil points out to Lucy, “I had got an idea—I dare say wrongly—that you feel more at home with me in a room .  .  . Never in the real country like this.” Cecil’s comment is accurate, as it relates to Lucy demanding to leave Florence immediately after George kissed her at the field of violets. The discomfort that Cecil recognizes applies to his own feelings as well. He feels equally nervous being

454â•…â•… Forster, E. M. alone with Lucy on the path through the woods. Before kissing Lucy, Cecil “became self conscious and kept glancing round to see if they were being observed.” Cecil seems unable to act naturally, even if it means growing closer to Lucy. Lucy suddenly realizes that she is not content with Cecil, who loves only the part of her personality he feels is secure and predictable, instead of admiring the Lucy who “dreamily” recalls bathing in the Sacred Lake. Although religion is often mocked in this novel, the hidden pond in the woods is called “holy.” It has a sense of magic that harkens back to Lucy and Freddie’s childhoods. When Freddie feels uncomfortable meeting the Emersons, his immediate reaction is to ask them to “have a bathe.” Although his suggestion sounds like a joke, Mr. Beebe, Freddie, and George jump in the tiny pond for a swim. When Cecil, Lucy, and her mother accidentally stumble across this rowdy gathering, they are shocked and speechless. George and Cecil each use the opportunity to make an impression on Lucy. George, a complete mess and without clothes, walks up to the crowd and says hello. Cecil, who felt uncomfortable knowing that Lucy herself used to play in this pond, tries to usher her aside to prevent her from becoming upset. These telling moments help Lucy realize that she does not want to be sheltered by others, especially when she is not even frightened or in danger. A Room with a View reveals two important elements of nature. Nature is the outdoors, where fickle weather and inviting landscapes disrupt the characters’ carefully made plans. But nature is also human nature, and characters must learn to rely on their instincts when their emotions are stirred for better or worse. For Lucy, the time spent outdoors provides her with an opportunity for private and honest communication. She feels free to act “naturally.” From learning to interpret and appreciate nature, the characters form closer connections with each other. Elizabeth Walpole

Tradition in A Room with a View

Mr. Emerson’s first words in the novel are “I have a view!” Although he is speaking about good scenery outside his window, his words also introduce the prevalence of traditions in the novel. Each charac-

ter’s view, or perspective on life, has been shaped by the habits of his or her society. Either by seeing their cultural and familial traditions as essential or tossing them aside for more radical behavior, the characters are all affected by the framework of tradition. In Italy, the English characters’ mix of confusion, fascination, and disgust toward native Italians begins the novel with a great clash of cultural tradition. When led by the young Italian driver to George Emerson, Lucy swings back and forth in her generalizations about Italians, from “Italians are born knowing the way” to “an Italian’s ignorance is sometimes more remarkable than his knowledge.” Even being unable to speak Italian, Lucy is eager to observe a different culture and assess it in relation to her own. Aspects of Italy’s ancient traditions appear when Forster refers to Roman gods and goddesses or great painters. The superhuman nature of the myths contrasts with the English characters’ trivial worries. Specifically, after the carriage ride, the characters feel as though the god Pan has played tricks on them. Their idea of Pan has already lost some of this god’s grandeur, as he only “presides over . . . unsuccessful picnics.” Instead of recalling epic battles and love affairs described in Roman mythology, the English tourists are preoccupied with their guidebooks and the rain ruining a drive. The English obsession with mundane drawing-room chatter obscures the excitement of Italy’s rich, imaginative heritage surrounding them. Back in England, Lucy and her family have strong social ties to the neighborhood based on the false presupposition that they are part of the aristocracy. In fact, Lucy’s father was a lawyer who bought the country home to fix it up and then ended up moving into it. Their family is not old nobility at all. Lucy’s mother finds this mistake “extremely fortunate for the children” and accepts the opportunities it presents for her to easily make friends. Even the illusion of representing a traditional, well-off country family is enough to grant success in Lucy’s neighborhood. Cecil, Lucy’s fiancé, is as confused as the neighbors concerning what to expect from Lucy’s neighborhood. His intensely proper behavior comes from his lack of understanding of country traditions.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girlâ•…â•… 455 Cecil grew up in London with more cosmopolitan traditions and so becomes very impatient and frustrated when he has to make trips to all the country homes to meet many friends of the family. He cannot abide how his “engagement is rendered as public property.” Cecil and Lucy cannot decide whether country or city traditions are superior. Lucy finds herself bored with her neighbors’ “kindly affluence, their inexplosive religion, their dislike of paper bags, orange-peel, and broken bottles.” At the same time, Cecil doubts his own environment and instead wants to “bring [his children] up among honest country folks for freshness, send them to Italy for subtlety, and then—not till then—let them come to London.” Regardless of any final decision on the matter, Lucy and Cecil are curious about each other’s traditions and use their different backgrounds to explain why they have trouble understanding one another. Mr. Emerson and his son, George, represent a rejection of typical English traditions and ways of thinking. Mr. Emerson brags that he gave his son a childhood “free from all superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one another in the name of God.” He startles fellow tourists in Italy when he complains loudly in a church about unfair treatment for laborers and the ugliness of religious art. Whereas Lucy comments on her admiration for Giotto’s paintings because she remembers reading about them, Mr. Emerson ignores traditional opinions. Mr. Emerson teaches Lucy to care less about other opinions and instead encourages her to continue on her tour even after she loses her guidebook and her chaperone. By the end of the novel, Lucy becomes more open-minded and realizes that a break from tradition is sometimes necessary for personal happiness. At first, Lucy had thought that “life  . . was a circle of rich, pleasant people, with identical interests and identical foes.” Her experience in Italy opens her mind, as when she observes, “social barriers were irremovable, doubtless, but not particularly high.” She takes a risk and breaks off her engagement with Cecil. Lucy causes her mother great shock when she moves to Italy with George. A letter from home reminds Lucy that “she had alienated Windy Corner, perhaps for ever.” By abandoning her fam-

ily traditions and defying their expectations, Lucy learns to trust her own conscience and explore more unconventional views as well. Elizabeth Walpole

Frank, Anneâ•… Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girlâ•… (1950)

Like many girls before and after her, Anne Frank began to write her deepest secrets, greatest fears, and strongest desires in the confines of her adolescent diary. Unlike most girls, Anne’s diary became known throughout the world. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is one of our most profound insights into the lives of Jews in hiding during World War II. Anne’s initial revelations of schoolyard crushes and birthday party plans change drastically when she is forced to go into hiding in 1942, following the 1940 Nazi occupation of Holland and the institution of strict policies against Jews in that country. Although cloistered in the annex of her father’s warehouse, Anne’s life is a rich one as she navigates the throes of adolescence. Although often in despair over the atrocities committed against Jews outside of her little world, the constant battle of identities with her mother, and the sheer dreariness of a life spent entirely indoors, Anne manages to take comfort in her writing, a crush on her roommate, Peter Van Daan, the warm relationship she shares with her father, and her tireless studies. Although Anne died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony in March 1945, her words and thoughts have lived on. Following Anne’s removal from the annex, Miep Gies, one of the Dutch women who helped care for the Franks and their companions, collected the scattered pages of Anne’s diary and saw them published in 1947 with the help of Anne’s father, Otto Frank. Since then Anne’s diary has become one of the most widely read and widely published books in history. Jeana Hrepich

Cruelty in Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Although readers know nothing of Anne Frank’s life in Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp

456â•…â•… Frank, Anne where her life was taken, they can assume that her story would have been one laden with the cruel existence of such a treacherous place. Before Anne, along with her family and friends, was found in the secret annex that concealed them from Nazi forces for just over two years, she speculated about the lives of Jews who were not as lucky as she perceived herself to be. Anne’s frequent reveries about the atrocities being committed outside of her cloistered world and the extreme deprivations that she and her companions in the annex faced make Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl one of the most important chronicles of the cruelty committed against Jews during World War II. Even before Anne made her home in the annex of her father’s warehouse she experienced some of the restrictions imposed on Jews. In 1940 Germany occupied Holland, where Anne made her home, and like all Jews she was forced to wear the yellow Star of David, which came to symbolize captive Judaism. Jews were also commanded to yield to a curfew, deliver up their bicycles, and shop within a limited frame of time in designated Jewish shops. Jews were forbidden to drive, ride in trams, partake in public sports, go to the cinema and other arts arenas, and visit Christians. Anne’s friend from school, Jopie, said to her, “You’re scared to do anything, because it may be forbidden.” Yet Anne felt that “things were still bearable” in spite of the ever-increasing restraints against Jews. Like so many Jews at the time, Anne did not appreciate the fact that these restraints were incremental nails in the proverbial coffin. Circumstances were no longer bearable for the Franks when Anne’s sister, Margot, was “called-up” by German forces. Intending to escape one cruel fate, Margot and her family trade in their lives for another. On one hand the Franks are lucky to have an alternative life available to them. On the other hand the isolation and destitution they would endure for just over two years was a hardship deeply felt by all. Anne explains that “silence fell on the house; not one of us felt like eating anything” the night before they were to begin their new life. On their arrival at the annex Margot and Mrs. Frank are too miserable to help unpack their belongings. Yet their lives in the annex develop into a state of

sustainability, though misery abounds. After about a year in hiding Anne writes: “We miss so much here, so very much and for so long now.” She goes on to say, “I long for freedom and fresh air.” Anne’s suffering pales in comparison to the suffering of others in the annex, though. Perhaps because she retains steadfast hope, or maybe because of her youth, Anne is able to rebound more easily than her mother, who seems to feel the cruelty of her situation more acutely than anyone in the annex. Anne says of her mother, “Her counsel when one feels melancholy is: ‘Think of all the misery in the world and be thankful that you are not sharing in it.’↜” Anne rarely depicts her mother out of her usual malaise. Readers might assume she habitually follows her own advice. As Anne very astutely notices, however, Mrs. Frank’s means of surviving her own cruel fate is flawed. If Mrs. Frank should ever “experience the misery herself,” how is she supposed to live? Like all of the women in the annex, Mrs. Frank died in a concentration camp after being discovered by the Gestapo. Anne, too, cannot stop herself from comparing her life to the lives of other Jews. “If I just think of how we live here,” Anne writes, “I usually come to the conclusion that it is a paradise compared with how other Jews who are not in hiding must be living.” Indeed, Anne’s perception of the barbarism committed against Jews outside of her walls was on point. Anne saw other people face the same cruelties she would endure later. “Day and night more of those poor miserable people are being dragged off, with nothing but a rucksack and a little money. On the way they are deprived even of these possessions. Families are torn apart, the men, women, and children all being separated.” Like so many before her, Anne was stripped of all of her belongings, including her diary. She had to endure being separated from her father, her mother, and eventually her sister. Families were sent to concentration camps where many faced a certain death. Anne Frank, who felt the suffering of others, died of typhoid disease just a few months before she would have been liberated. Her voice carries the resounding story of the cruel fate of the 6 million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazi regime. Jeana Hrepich

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girlâ•…â•… 457

Hope in Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

In the classic picture of Anne Frank, a set of dark, penetrating eyes peer out of a radiant face. Across her lips lurks a contented smile, a sign of a happier time than her famous record, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, chronicles. Yet despite the tragedies and grave ordeals Anne confided in her diary, she still maintained a sense of hope that her photographs often exude. Perhaps not surprisingly, Anne’s first entry, written on her birthday, is permeated with the kind of hope familiar to most 13-year-old girls. She is eager about birthday gifts: books, flowers, and food. What puzzles the mind is that the later entries, written in Anne’s second and third years in hiding in a secret annex, are still hopeful, still seeking light amid so much darkness. Anne acknowledges that while most people can find happiness while surrounded by nature, she can no longer afford that luxury. Once she could ride her bike down Amsterdam streets. Later her only access to nature is a view of it out of a window in the secret annex, in the attic of her father’s business. Sitting in front of that window Anne contemplates the freedom she once had, and her desire to breath fresh air again. Rather than bemoan her fate, Anne concludes that what she does have, a pureness of heart and happiness that can only be temporarily smote, is plenty of restitution for what she has suffered, and she hopes that God will bring her comfort. “As long as this exists,” Anne says, “I cannot be unhappy.” At the same time, Anne believes that God is to blame for the torment she and other Jews have suffered, but she also believes that he will redeem the many fallen at the hands of Hitler and the Nazi Party. Like most adolescents, she wavers between extremes, at times preoccupied by an impassioned frustration and later dominated by a zealous faith in God and mankind. In comparing herself to her mother, Anne cannot comprehend how Mrs. Frank can focus on the misery that exists in the world when Anne is so preoccupied by the love and beauty that persists around her. “On the contrary, I’ve found that there is always some beauty left,” confides Anne. While Mrs. Frank would cheer one

up by comparing their plight with those who are worse off, Anne prefers to revel in the existence of a benevolent God, the beauty and sunshine in nature, and the loveliness that abides within every human spirit. In effect, Anne’s position is one that she must take in order to survive: Losing hope would be capitulation to misery. Anne’s ability to hope amid despair, to see beauty and love in one of the darkest periods of history, has much to do with her budding relationship with Peter Van Daan, the teenage son of the family that shares the annex with the Franks. Her tender relationship with Peter, which includes the first throes of romance and physical titillation, marks a new phase for her sexually and developmentally. Anne’s emotional attachment to Peter and her burgeoning sexuality are fresh and exciting in an environment where all else is stagnant. Anne blooms with hope and breathless anticipation as the intimacy of her encounters with Peter deepen. Even when Anne ponders more sober matters, such as the crisis of the Jewish people, she hopes against all odds that when the war is over, her suffering and the suffering of those worse off than she will precipitate a universal education about the atrocities committed against them. She hopes that the people of the world will learn goodness by this vulgar scar on history. Instead of forsaking her religion, Anne reminds Kitty, the name she gives her diary’s persona, that God has never deserted her people, and that “a solution will come.” Although her faith and history were all that she had to encourage such beliefs at the time, she insists that the strong will not only survive but prevail. Anne is not irrationally hopeful throughout the whole of her diary, however. In fact, she frequently writes in despair. Nevertheless, given the loneliness, the isolation, and the privations Anne endured, one might expect her diary would be a tome of anguish. In the true spirit of her character, Anne was hopeful despite tremendous adversity. Anne assures Kitty, “we still hope, hope about everything.” The soulful eyes that stare back from her photos reflect her withstanding spirit and a reservoir of something essential to her constitution: hope. Jeana Hrepich

458â•…â•… Frank, Anne

Survival in Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Few readers who pick up a copy of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl are unaware of the demise of its titular heroine. Like 6 million other Jews, Anne Frank died in a concentration camp during World War II at the hands of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. It may seem strange, then, to identify survival as a guiding theme in her work. However, Anne Frank’s diary chronicles a succession of days in which the only task at hand for the eight people living in the annex of Otto Frank’s warehouse was to survive. The fact that Anne’s diary also survived extinction is a happy miracle. The greatest stress for the denizens of the secret hiding place was the constant fear of being found. Burglars nearly found their way to the annex on more than one occasion, causing great trepidation among its inhabitants. In fact, any unusual noise or unexpected visitor below was cause for alarm. When the bell rings one evening without reason Anne “turned white at once, got a tummy-ache and heart palpitations, all from fear.” Anne suffers terrible dreams on the heels of such events. In one recurring dream, she says, “they come and take us away at night.” Anne sees the annex as an island in the midst of so much chaos, but her dreams foreshadow a darker time when danger will engulf their safe refuge. For over two years Anne and her seven companions survive the perils of exposure, but the fate Anne believed was inevitable came to pass when they were finally discovered, arrested, and sent to concentration camps. Those two years spent in hiding were filled with hardship and suffering. Anne and her family endured deprivations from food to light to fresh air. Frequent illnesses made captivity even more stifling. Food especially preoccupied their minds since faltering rations and decaying stores of fruit, meat, and vegetables confronted them three times a day. Anne and her cohort obtain food through coupons and ration cards, and purchases made on the black market. The economic effects of the war on the Dutch trickle down to affect the secret annex, too. What may seem like small losses such as diseased potatoes or days without butter are enough to turn the whole annex into a “tedious existence.” Light was used at a

bare minimum. When Anne begs her father to light the candle during a particularly treacherous air raid, the usually doting father refuses until Anne’s mother intervenes. Coal runs out quickly, leaving the annex colder than before. Illness, too, plagues Anne, as she must contort herself uncomfortably to avoid being heard. “It’s wretched to be ill here,” she said, “When I wanted to cough—one, two, three—I crawled under the blankets and tried to stifle the noise.” Yet everyone did survive the lack of proper food, lack of light and heat, and sickness. Perhaps for Anne, especially, the deprivation of fresh air and sunlight was almost insurmountable. The youngest member of the annex, Anne had to survive the same fears and privations as her roommates while also going through puberty under their watchful eyes. Had Anne not been required to escape into anonymity with her family, her tense relationship with her mother, which brought out in Anne a caustic, sometimes cruel reaction, may not have been so severe. While Anne felt spring blooming inside of her, she was captive to the endless winter of the secret annex. Anne writes in her diary that she can hardly remember the girl she once was before she met her fate in the secret annex. The girl she was would not have survived what Anne endures in hiding. Anne says, “I hear nothing but this sort of talk the whole day long, invasion and nothing but invasion, arguments about suffering from hunger, dying, bombs, fire extinguishers, sleeping bags, Jewish vouchers, poisonous gases, etc. etc.” The constant chatter in the annex revolves around these issues of life and death. Gone are the days of schoolboy crushes and bantering with teachers. In hiding, Anne grapples with the serious business of survival on a daily basis. Anne’s diary is one of the most widely read firstperson accounts of the Holocaust. For decades her voice has been a resounding reminder of the cruelties inflicted on Jewish people during World War II. Miep Gies, one of Otto Frank’s devoted employees who aided their survival while they hid, collected Anne’s diary after she and her family were removed to concentration camps. Anne’s voice has endured even her own death, and the millions of people who continue to read her words are a testament to her survival. Jeana Hrepich

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklinâ•…â•… 459

Franklin, Benjaminâ•… The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklinâ•… (1791, 1818, 1868)

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, one of the most famous autobiographies in literature, was first published in French in 1791, the year after Franklin’s death. This version was incomplete. Franklin’s grandson published a more complete version in 1818. In 1868 John Bigelow purchased the original manuscript and published the entire work. Bigelow’s edition is the one usually used for later reprints. The Autobiography is divided into four parts. The first part, which was written for Franklin’s son William, was composed in 1771. The second part is introduced by a memo from Franklin and was written in the early 1780s. Here he says that the first section contained family stories and that the second was written for public consumption. In this section Franklin details his plan to achieve moral perfection. The third part begins with a note from Franklin saying that he has lost many of his papers in the Revolutionary War, but some were saved. Among these are his observations on history and yearly comments on his life. This section was written in 1778. The 1818 edition ends here. Franklin wrote part 4 the year of his death and it describes his efforts in England on behalf of the colonies in 1757. While Franklin’s autobiography does not cover the Revolutionary War period, it does provide perspectives that have survived Franklin himself and are just as relevant today as they were when he wrote them. The book, with its development of Franklin’s thoughts on work, family, success, education, religion, and other themes, is a delightful read. Suanna H. Davis

Family in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin begins with a clear emphasis on family; the first words in the book are “Dear Son.” In the letter, Benjamin Franklin proposes to acquaint his son William with the particulars of his life, offering it as an example for others to emulate. He begins by detailing anecdotes of his ancestors, thus establishing the theme of family in the work.

Franklin reminds his son of the search made for their remaining family in Ecton, Northamptonshire. Here the Franklin family had lived since at least 1555, according to the church registers, which began then. In his readings, Franklin, who was the youngest son of 17 children, discovered that he was the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations. Franklin continues, examining other common family traits. He writes that Josiah, his father, apprenticed under his brother John, just as Franklin later apprenticed under his brother. Thomas, the eldest uncle, becoming a scrivener and a political power in the county; Franklin notes the similarities between Thomas’s life and his own. The family tie-ins continue. Franklin was named after his uncle Benjamin, who was “an ingenious man” (8) and when Franklin was young his uncle lived in their home in Boston for several years. Franklin shows his regard for his uncle by mentioning that when pamphlets Benjamin had purchased and subsequently sold were brought to his notice after his uncle’s death, Franklin bought them. Franklin develops his discussion of family with his father who married young and had three children when he moved to New England. There Josiah had another four children. After his first wife died, Josiah married Franklin’s mother, Abiah Folger, who Franklin introduces as the daughter of one of New England’s first settlers. His parents had another 10 children together. While family is a positive theme in the book, Franklin does not attempt to minimize problems within his family. Franklin recounts that he was sent to work for his brother James, a printer. This did not work out well and Franklin is blunt in saying that his brother often beat him. When Franklin was able to leave his apprenticeship, he did so. After several years he came home and showed off, which made his brother angry. Despite their mother’s pleadings, the two did not reconcile. But 10 years later they re-established relations as James was dying, and he requested that Franklin raise his son and establish him in printing, which Franklin did. As part of his development of the theme of family within his autobiography, Franklin writes of his courtship of Miss Read, who later became his wife.

460â•…â•… Franklin, Benjamin When Franklin first arrived in Philadelphia he met and stayed with the Read family. He and Miss Read courted, but Franklin left on a business trip. Gone for months he wrote only one letter, telling her he did not know when he would return. In response to this, and at the urging of her mother, Miss Read married someone else. Franklin makes it clear that Miss Read was right to not wait for him, mentioning among other things that he made advances to another woman while in England. Upon the death of Miss Read’s husband, Franklin and Miss Read were married. Franklin says she was cheerful, industrious, and frugal and that they were happy together. Even though Franklin begins the autobiography with a letter to his son and it is purportedly written to him, Franklin discusses William’s experiences throughout the book, describing his trip with Franklin researching ancestors, replacing Franklin as a clerk for the assembly, serving in the war against Canada, procuring for Braddock’s army, and touring England with Franklin. This is part of the development of the family theme, incorporating his son’s history into that of the rest of the relations. Franklin ends the third section of his autobiography by describing his tour of London with his son. Thus the theme of family, focused as it is on his son, comes full circle. In the 1818 version, published by his grandson, this is the end of the book. Franklin offered his autobiography as an example for others to follow, and his emphasis on family within the book says that family should be valued. Suanna H. Davis

Success in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

On the very first page of his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin begins to develop the theme of success when he writes that, since he has gone from being poor and unknown to being well off and famous, since he has had a happy life, he can offer himself as an example of success for others to imitate. Franklin does not limit his discussion of success to business, but also develops the theme of success through a description of his marriage, civic projects, and political career. Franklin was successful in his career. Though he was originally slated to enter the church and

then worked with his father as a tallow-chandler, he was eventually apprenticed to his brother to be a printer. Franklin worked hard and learned the trade of printer well. He also used his time with the educated men of Boston to learn to discuss and to write persuasively. This served him well later in life when he wanted to make changes and found that he could make them happen through his writing. Franklin makes clear that his success as an apprentice was not limited simply to his learning a trade. When Franklin left his brother, he ended up in Philadelphia working for another printer. Franklin left the printer’s employ and worked in England for a while as a printer. He then returned to Philadelphia as a store clerk. He was happy in the work and had financial success until the death of the owner, at which time he went back to work for the printer as a manager in his printing shop, teaching the trade to the workers who had been hired. It was clear that he would soon work himself out of a job, and Franklin determined once again to set up his own printing house. Eventually Franklin was able to start his business through the generosity of two friends. He was so successful in his business that he was able to form partnerships in which junior partners took his printing apparatus and set up shops in other cities throughout the colonies and then bought out his majority interest from their earnings. The theme of success in the work is clearly developed through Franklin’s success in business. Franklin also describes his success in marriage. He courted Miss Read of Philadelphia successfully, but when he left for England and did not return soon, she married someone else. Her first marriage was unhappy, and when her husband died, she married Franklin. She was, he writes, a “good and faithful helpmate,” who helped him in the business and ran the household. They worked to make each other happy and succeeded in that, too. Franklin then discusses his successes in civic projects. He helped create a subscription library that was so successful it eventually became Philadelphia’s first public library. Also he helped form the Union Fire Company, Philadelphia’s first fire company. He used his persuasive skills as a writer to bring about a change in the constabulary and helped obtain public and private funding for a hospital. He made

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklinâ•…â•… 461 Philadelphia more livable by persuading the government to pave and light the streets. In all these civic projects he was a success, and his success was a boon to his adopted city as well. Another success that Franklin mentions is as a political figure. He became a clerk of the General Assembly, writing a paper arguing for the creation of a militia, making him a key figure in its establishment. Then he decided an academy was needed and encouraged his friends and the public to participate and set one up. He became so financially successful that he thought to retire, but the public “laid hold” of him and he was immersed in the civil government. He became an alderman and a burgess and tried being a justice of the peace. He was chosen to be a member of the Royal Society on account of his scientific experiments. By that time, Franklin says, he no longer had need of governors’ favors because he was a success on his own. Franklin wrote The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin partially because friends recommended that he share his story in order to influence youth so that they might be as successful as he was. Thus the impetus behind the presentation of the autobiography makes clear the theme of success that Franklin developed throughout the book. Suanna H. Davis

Work in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

One of the main themes in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is work, which can be evidenced by the fact that Franklin uses the words “work” and “business” more than 100 times each within the text. In introducing people in his narrative, Franklin focuses often on their occupation. Of his own family, Franklin says that a smith’s business was their source of sustenance. He mentions that his grandfather and his three younger sons were all dyers and that the older one was a smith who became a scrivener. Franklin presents these men to posterity by the business each was engaged in. The theme of work is also apparent when Franklin discusses his own evolving work situation in great detail. While his family initially expected him to serve in the church, Franklin was soon at home

working with his father. Since Franklin did not wish to follow in his father’s occupational footsteps, he was introduced to various trades. Franklin says that he found his trade through his love for reading and he was then apprenticed to his brother as a printer. He became a printer, worked as a store clerk for a time, returned to printing, and eventually became a business owner of a printing house and a stationer’s store. Franklin develops his theme of work through discussion of its difficulties and rewards. His apprenticeship was unpleasant because James was a harsh master. It was also pleasant, because Franklin liked the work, met other readers, and was able to advance his education. His work in Watt’s printing house in England brought difficulties, when the composers insisted that he contribute to their alcohol purchases. He resisted and all his work was undone whenever he was not looking. When he gave in and paid, his experience and his clear head—he did not indulge in drinking—brought him a better position in the company. In developing the positive and negative aspects of work, Franklin describes some of his employers. Franklin spends a few paragraphs on the character of one whom he admired as a good businessman. Denham was a store owner and Franklin worked as his clerk. They roomed together and, until Denham died, he served as Franklin’s adviser. Franklin enjoyed his work with Denham and it was financially renumerative, even after Denham’s death, because Denham included Franklin in his will. Franklin then gives a negative example of an employer in his next boss, Keimer. Keimer had hired several people, promising to teach them the trade of printer, but Keimer did not know the printing trade. Eventually he hired Franklin to manage his printing house. Franklin quickly realized that if he taught Keimer’s employees how to do their work, he would be out of a job, but he taught them and further straightened out the business. Keimer forced a public quarrel with Franklin, and Franklin’s work for him ended after little more than six months. The positive and negative aspects of work continue to be detailed through Franklin’s discussions of partners. At one point, a man Franklin had taught proposed that they go into business together. This

462â•…â•… Frost, Robert turned out to be a bad idea, because the man drank and Franklin was the only one caring for the business. Franklin eventually bought him out. Another potential partner rejected Franklin’s proposal with scorn, which was good, because he lived above his means and soon ran his business into the ground. Another example of the negative aspects of work is developed through Franklin’s descriptions of other printers. He described his former boss Keimer as a compositor, not a pressman. Eventually Keimer sold his printing house to pay his debtors. Franklin labels Bradford, another printer, illiterate and not bred to the work. Bradford, who was also the postmaster for a time, refused to send Franklin’s papers by the post and Franklin had to resort to bribing the carriers. Franklin details the positive aspects of work by describing his own experience as an employer. Franklin was not only industrious, but he rewarded his employees who showed industry as well. He promoted these workers, sending them throughout the colonies in joint ventures. Due to their own diligence, they were often able to buy Franklin out, thus becoming the sole proprietors of their own printing houses. In a clear development of the theme of work, Franklin says that not only was he a hard worker, but he also made this obvious to those around him by not engaging in leisure pursuits other than reading, which was a part of his business. He states that since industry, together with frugality, enabled him to pay off his debts and acquire his fortune, anyone who wants to be a businessman should follow his model. Suanna H. Davis

Frost, Robertâ•… poemsâ•… (1874–1963)

Robert Frost is one of the most important American poets of the 20th century. His poems, many of which chronicle the day-to-day tasks related to country living, are reminiscent of a quieter, simpler time in history. Though he wrote poetry the average man could relate to and understand, Frost’s work cannot be considered simplistic. In fact, many readers have discovered profound, symbolic meanings deep within his words. Portraying both the joys and hardships of rural life, Frost paid careful attention to rhyming pat-

terns and diction. Not only could the average reader understand his works, but also they were especially appreciated when read aloud. His poems are full of imagery, as he paints vivid pictures of stages of life, nature, isolation, and work. Frost was no stranger to hardship. Born in 1874, he studied at Harvard and Dartmouth but never earned a degree, and worked a number of odd jobs before becoming an unsuccessful farmer and eventually a teacher. His later years were marked by tragedy. Three of his children passed away, including one son who committed suicide. Additionally, one of his daughters suffered from mental illness. In spite or perhaps because of these tragedies, he remained a productive poet, receiving honorary degrees and accolades during his lifetime, including the honor of reading one of his poems at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. He died in 1963. Though he composed poems throughout his adult life, it is his earlier works which are most familiar. Ultimately, it is the accessibility of Frost’s poetry—that he wrote with the common man in mind—that will continue to keep him one of the best-loved poets of his generation. Erin Brescia

Isolation in the poetry of Robert Frost

Isolation is frequently alluded to in many of Robert Frost’s poems. In some, it is something to be enjoyed, or even savored, while in others it is considered unnatural and unnecessary. In his poem, “Mending Wall,” two neighbors make their yearly trip to the wall that joins their property in order to make improvements. Between the elements and hunters, the wall becomes damaged over each year. The narrator gives no indication that he and his neighbor spend time together aside from this project, but every year they “meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again” (l. 13–14). The narrator is not entirely sure that this wall is necessary. They have no animals between them to wander in each other’s yards; however, his neighbor merely replies: “good fences make good neighbors” (l. 27). The message he sends here is that as long as each individual keeps to himself, they will remain friends. The narrator questions his neighbor’s phi-

poemsâ•…â•… 463 losophy. As long as no harm will come to their property, why would they want to keep the other out? He goes so far as to suggest that this theory is antiquated, calling it “his father’s saying.” Because the narrator’s neighbor was raised on the idea that fences are important, he will never stray from his father’s counsel. The narrator notes that even nature does not promote fences—that the “frozen ground” adjusts the boulders so that they shift from one another and are no longer effective. Symbolically, Frost is saying that men are not always meant to be isolated from one another; interaction with others is a vital part of living. The irony is that they will continue to keep the wall between them as they work together to mend it. In another poem, however, Frost praises the idea of isolation as it relates to hard work. In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” he speaks of a man on an assignment. He is traveling alone in the woods with his horse. In this case, the owner of the property is not nearby but lives in town. The man pauses for a moment to enjoy his surroundings as the woods around him fill with snow. Again, nature asserts the idea that isolation is unnatural when the horse shakes his harness “to ask if there is some mistake” (l. 10). The horse realizes it is more customary to stop when they reach a farmhouse and other people, rather than in the middle of the forest while it is snowing. The man, however, enjoys this moment of solitude. He refers to the woods as “lovely, dark and deep” (l. 13). They seem an eternal abyss; a place he is content to stay awhile if not for his impending task. Despite the fact that he enjoys the isolation and the quiet forest, he has “promises to keep” (l. 14). These promises will undoubtedly return him to civilization. His surroundings could also reflect that he is in the “winter,” or the final stages, of his life and that he is ready to rest and enjoy the isolation. “The Road Not Taken,” full of symbolism concerning the choices one must make in life, also quietly alludes to one key idea concerning isolation: One must make these choices alone. The narrator is in the forest with two paths before him. He knows he must choose one road to take, and that this choice will alter the course of his life. There is no one avail-

able to offer an opinion; no one to ask. The decision is entirely his own. Nature may not promote the idea of isolation, but when faced with important choices, Frost suggests, it is absolutely necessary. It is the individual who is responsible for his decisions; he should never rely on those around him to choose the path he is to take, as this could potentially lead to disaster. Isolation might be unnatural, but it is required by thinking people so that they may think for themselves. The idea of isolation in Frost’s poems has a threefold purpose: to remind readers to savor the quiet moments, to find solace in the company of others, and to remember that, in the end, one is entirely responsible for making his own existence worthwhile. Erin Brescia

Stages of Life in the poetry of Robert Frost

Robert Frost’s most famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,” has been used as the theme of many commencement addresses. It is most relevant for graduation exercises because of the idea of “choices.” Like the subject of the poem, students are often faced with important decisions after completing their degree. Frost eloquently notes these decisions by comparing them to paths in the wood. First, in making this decision, the subject is sorry that he “could not travel both” paths. Knowing what lay at the end of each road would undoubtedly help him make his choice, but this is impossible, just as it is impossible to predict the future. The narrator understands that the choice he is about to make regarding which path he travels will alter the course of his life. There are two roads: two paths that will lead to two entirely different outcomes. According to the narrator, the paths are “equal.” One path is not good and the other evil, one is not treacherous and the other easy; they are simply paths. Each path has been chosen by someone before him—someone with a choice to make. Though both paths are worn “about the same,” the narrator notices that one is less worn, and this becomes the “road less traveled.” As he looks back on his life, the narrator realizes that when it was time to make the choice, the path he chose “made all the difference.”

464â•…â•… Frost, Robert This poem is about decisions and the passage of time. A true “coming of age” poem, “The Road Not Taken” symbolically highlights the freedom one has to create his own destiny. Given the narrator’s “sigh,” the reader is unsure if the narrator is pleased with the road he traveled, or if he has made a mistake. While some take the right path, not everyone makes the appropriate choice. When reminiscing, there are those who wish their life had taken a different course. By then, however, it is too late. The choices made early in life have permanent outcomes, which is why symbolically, readers are encouraged to “choose wisely.” Like “The Road Not Taken,” Frost’s “Birches” presents an older narrator looking back on life. Here, the focus is on life’s hardships and their effects. The narrator is looking at the bent branches of a birch tree. He wishes to believe that they are bent because young boys have been swinging on them, but knows that this does not bend the branches “down to stay.” It is more probable that the branches are bent because of the ice storms they have weathered. Frost describes the icy winter morning and its picturesque beauty, though it is destroying the shape of the branches. When the storm is over, the sunlight causes the ice to melt and break. He describes their shattering as “such heaps of broken glass to sweep away” (l. 12). This is reminiscent of the pieces that are left to be picked up after a tragedy has occurred: the aftermath. What is important to note is that, though the branches are altered, they are not broken. What the narrator would prefer, however, is that the boy—left to his own entertaining devices—bent the branches by swinging on them. Frost describes how perfectly the boy would swing, learning the technique so as not to break them, until “not one was left for him to conquer” (l. 33). The narrator confesses that he, too, was once a swinger of birches, “and so I dream of going back to be” (l. 43). By admitting this, there seems to be a correlation between the ice storms that affect the branches and the hardships he has seen. Ultimately, he would like to return to a simpler time in life where he had the freedom to play in the woods as a boy. Even now, he wishes to climb the trunk and have the branches set him down again. He con-

cludes that there are worse things in life than being “a swinger of birches” (l. 70). In each of these poems, Frost discusses the various stages of life and the challenges they bring. First, there is the young boy without a care, one who can spend his days climbing trunks and swinging from trees. As he grows, he becomes the young man who must choose his course in life—knowing that his decision will alter him forever. Then, looking back, there is the old man who has endured the trials and hardships of living—who may or may not regret the path he has traveled, but would rather be a young boy with the freedom to swing on the branches from heaven and back to earth again. Erin Brescia

Work in the poetry of Robert Frost

One of the reasons Robert Frost’s poetry is enjoyed is his ability to capture the reality of everyday living in language that is accessible to the average reader. In essence, the subjects of Frost’s poems are everyday men and women doing ordinary, common things. The idea of work is mentioned in many ways throughout his various poems. Many times he speaks of specific chores and tools, while elsewhere he alludes to the effect work has on the common man. For instance, in his poem “Putting in the Seed,” he writes of the narrator’s passion for planting apple seeds in the spring. Though he knows that someone will stop by soon to fetch him for dinner, he almost dares them to try to pull him away from his work. In fact, he realizes that more than likely he who comes to fetch him will become caught up in his work as well: the “slave to a springtime passion for the earth” (l. 9). In this case, the work is pleasurable; the narrator enjoys planting seeds and watching them grow. Frost also refers to the satisfaction of work. In “The Pasture,” the narrator has a list of chores that must be accomplished. He plans to rake the leaves out of the pasture spring and check on a young calf. He encourages others to come with him because once the work is done, there are benefits to reap. For instance, after cleaning the pasture spring he may stay for a while “and wait to watch the water clear” (l. 3). In “The Tuft of Flowers,” Frost writes of how well it is that men work together. Whether or not

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittmanâ•…â•… 465 it makes the job easier, or allows them to finish faster, the narrator has found a “spirit kindred” in the man who works alongside him. They work hard together, and, when they become weary, rest in the shade together. In the final stanza, the narrator tells his comrade that “men work together .  .  . whether they work together or apart” (l. 10). This alludes to the idea that everyone works together for the common good of man. Though they may not work on the same task, people who work are connected to one another, laboring toward a tangible goal. This satisfaction is what makes work bearable. In other poems, however, work is merely to be tolerated, something that must be done. In these poems, men are tired and overworked. Many times they find solace in nature and their surroundings. In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the narrator is a weary traveler, working his way toward his destination. Frost never mentions the purpose for this man’s journey, only that he has made a promise he must keep. At this point, he still has miles to go before he is able to rest, so he stops for a moment to enjoy the woods around him as they fill with snow. Here, the narrator knows that the task must be accomplished no matter his physical or mental state. The idea here is that there is time to rest when the job is finished. In Frost’s poetry, work is seen as having a profound effect on the common man. For many, work becomes a death sentence. Others are physically and mentally altered by the work they have done over the years. In “Birches” the narrator describes life as a “pathless wood” (l. 44), where one is required to make his own way through the cobwebs and the trees. The way is long and difficult and painful, and he is altered by it in the same way the birch trees are altered by the ice storm. In the winter, the branches are heavy with ice that bend the tree down to stay, just as the narrator, in the winter of his life, is bent from the work and hardships he endured. Because of this, he dreams of a simpler time and the ability to again be a “swinger of birches” (l. 41); a young man who, while he is out tending to the cows, still has the time and energy to play in the trees. Work is a complicated theme throughout Frost’s poetry, and his attitude toward it may never be fully understood. His poems, though, speak of the

realities of work: that sometimes it can be enjoyed, sometimes it is meant to be tolerated, that the physical proof of the accomplished task is something of which to be proud, and finally, if one is not careful, work can lead to an early grave. Erin Brescia

Gaines, Ernest J.â•… The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittmanâ•… (1971)

Ernest J. Gaines, a powerful contemporary AfricanAmerican writer from Louisiana, is best known for exploring the theme of heroism among disenfranchised and emasculated African-American men. His work has been compared to the work of William Faulkner, like Faulkner; Gaines created a mythical town, Bayonne, set in his birth state of Louisiana, where his characters face the trials and tribulations of being black. In their heroic quest for dignity and meaning, strong black women teach them the importance of small acts of heroism. In this fictional autobiography, Gaines represents the profound struggles of just such an indomitable black woman. This novel, remarkable for its innovations in form, established Gaines as a brilliant writer whose apparently simple, folk style of writing holds profound messages. In The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Gaines, without abandoning his mission of exploring African-American male heroism, creates a remarkable female protagonist who transcends the traditional representations of black womanhood. Additionally, he explores the difficult and mine-ridden task of negotiating the contradictions inherent in the tensions between progress and regress that every person encounters as she charts out new paths in unfamiliar territories. A fictional autobiography narrated by the reclusive and reluctant 110-year-old Miss Jane Pittman, the autobiographical material is gleaned and edited by a persistent history teacher who does so in order to compile a folk history of black Americans between the years of emancipation and civil rights. The different voices of the community that Gaines heard, growing up on the porch of his paraplegic great aunt, Augusteen Jefferson, are brilliantly captured in a communal voice. This communal voice is perfect for telling

466â•…â•… Gaines, Ernest J. the individual story that is the life of the brave and ethical Miss Jane Pittman who, at the tender age of 10, has the profound insight that we cannot “let what happened yesterday stop us today.” Renamed Jane by a Union soldier from Ohio, after his own daughter Jane Brown, Miss Jane searches for the meaning of freedom as she carves out a life for herself as a free individual, a difficult task given the soul-depleting ideology of slavery that continues to enslave people’s minds. However, forced to rely at a very young age on only herself, Miss Jane constructs a belief system that grows out of her 110 years of life experience. Su Senapati

Community in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Ernest P. Gaines in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman reveals the strong communal bond of fellow responsibility that exists in the black community as he explores the problems of engendering AfricanAmerican leaders and the need for understanding between blacks and whites during important junctures in time. After the Emancipation Proclamation, the newly freed slaves charted out new paths and constructed new paradigms to improve their lives. However, the deep divide between blacks and whites and traditional and progressive ideas unleashed uncertainty and violence, making the reconstruction of the South a harrowing process. Progress was slow since racist ideology first had to be erased from both white and black consciousness for equitable laws to be created and transformed into social reality. To achieve this end, Gaines deems education, time, and community to be essential. Furthermore, Gaines’s unwavering belief in the black community’s ability to rise like the proverbial phoenix is revealed through the creation of his protagonist, Miss Jane Pittman, who from the age of 10 willingly abandons the security of the familiar to courageously tread uncharted territories. When Jimmy the chosen “One” is frustrated by his failure to inspire ex-slaves to join the Civil Rights movement, Miss Pittman reminds him that downtrodden and enslaved people need time to develop fortitude to recognize and fight their wretchedness and that it is not the individual leader that fails but rather the

community that succeeds. She tells Jimmy, “People and time bring forth leaders . . . leaders don’t bring forth people.” Moreover, so strong is Gaines’s faith in the community that he narrates the autobiography of the remarkable Miss Jane Pittman through the communal voice of African Americans. Miss Pittman’s belief that leaders evolve naturally from within the community over a period of time is validated by the examples of Big Laura, Ned Douglas, Jimmy Aaron, and finally Miss Jane Pittman herself. However, since community leaders seek radical change by teaching the disenfranchised to think for themselves, they are perceived as threats and killed by the powerful, only to be replaced by others who take on their roles or continue their progressive work. Big Laura, because of her size, strength, and quiet fortitude, innocuously slips into the role of leading two dozen freed slaves away from servitude, but while she succeeds in maintaining order within the traveling group she fails to stave off attacks by Confederate soldiers. Her orphaned, infant son, Ned, also grows up to be a leader, but he too is assassinated for daring to educate poor blacks. Nonetheless, when Ned is killed the work of educating blacks is continued: A school is built and children educated through the collective effort of the community. Yet his death creates such a vacuum and the community is so in need of a leader that when Jimmy is born, he is nominated as the “One.” But instead of spiritually leading the people, he leads them politically. But he too is assassinated and the 110–year-old Miss Pittman, who has shied away from leadership roles, openly defies Robert Samson and leads the protest march Jimmy had planned, becoming the wise icon of AfricanAmerican solidarity that Jimmy had envisioned. Thus the 10-year-old child Jane, who without any qualms took on the responsibility of protecting the infant Ned, bringing him to safety and mothering and raising him to be a leader, embodies not only the solidarity of the black community but also the heroic qualities of a new kind of leader for the community. However, while the bonds within the black community are strong and people nonchalantly and without fanfare take on responsibilities of caring for and nurturing those in need, the bonds with whites

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittmanâ•…â•… 467 are nonexistent. The powerful white community is not only ignorant of the need to establish human bonds with former slaves but is also oblivious to the suffering it incurs for adopting and participating in racist ideology. For example, Robert Samson uses Verda sexually and denies the existence of his “half-nigger” son Timmy, even though Timmy is more like Robert than Robert’s legitimate son Tee Bob is. Although Tee Bob adores Timmy and the two are inseparable, Robert has no qualms about sending Timmy off the plantation even after the overseer Tom Joe has beaten Timmy cruelly and unjustly. The contradictions inherent in this ideology finally unravel in the fractured consciousness of Tee Bob who, unable to reconcile the apparent acceptability of being allowed to have a sexual relationship with the mulatto Mary Agnes LeFebre but not to love her or marry her, commits suicide. After Tee Bob’s suicide, all Robert is concerned about is taking revenge on the equally innocent Mary Agnes. Only Jules Reynard’s calm control and threat of exposure prevents Robert from taking vengeance. As Reynard and Miss Jane Pittman discuss the tragedy of Tee Bob’s suicide they realize that “he was bound to kill himself one day for our sins.” When Miss Pittman feels sorry for Tee Bob and says “Poor Tee Bob,” Reynard reminds her, “No, poor us,” exposing how everyone is a loser in a divided community. The fact that bonds of friendship do exist and can exist among people divided artificially along color lines is brought home by the hit man Albert Cluveau’s feeble attempts to protect Ned. Lacking the courage, wherewithal, and initiative needed to defy the orders of his powerful white employers, he feels compelled to reveal to Jane his orders to kill Ned. That communal bonds of friendship do exist among blacks and whites who live together and that such bonds are short-circuited by racist ideology that reduces communal bonds to the lowest common denominator of survival is also revealed by Cluveau’s clinical execution of unethical orders. Finally, the fact that economic wealth is not what determines the strength and health of an individual and her/his community is revealed when, at the end of the novel, the reader realizes that the childless, penniless orphan Miss Jane Pittman has more fam-

ily, love, and respect than the powerful plantation owner, Robert Samson, with all his wealth, progeny, and financially dependent ex-slaves. Su Senapati

Stages of Life in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is divided into four discrete sections, War Years, Reconstruction, Plantation, and Quarter. These correspond with the stages of African-American history. Miss Jane Pittman’s life can be divided into five sections that may be explained using psychologist Abraham Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs and ethical development, a movement from a preoccupation with the self to the community. These stages of Miss Jane Pittman’s life are (1) Freedom March, (2) Raising Ned and Losing Ned, (3) Finding Love and Losing Love, (4) Recovery, (5) Community. During all the stages of her life, Miss Jane is preoccupied with responsibilities of survival and safety, but her self-respect, tenacity, ethical acumen, pragmatism, and ability to overcome challenges and solve problems, even linked to her sworn enemies, make her an unparalleled leader. During the first stage of her life, Miss Jane has no name, lineage, or history that defines her as a person, but she has a commodity value that translates into endless work. Once emancipated, her service value is removed and the market economy tries to destroy and dump the devalued commodity that was once a slave. Hunting and killing of freed slaves traveling north thus becomes a common phenomenon during Reconstruction. While the older slaves on the Bryant plantation prefer the familiarity of known hardships, and choose to stay behind, the younger ones, including Miss Jane, choose to leave and venture into unknown geographies. But every one of them, even the strong leader, Big Laura, is hunted down and brutally murdered; only child Jane and baby Ned survive. However, Jane’s recognizable life as a human begins before she is freed, when a Yankee soldier, Colonel Brown, names her Jane after his own daughter. Colonel Brown may be seen as an adoptive parent; although he does not provide any of the necessities an adoptive parent provides, he gives Jane

468â•…â•… Gaines, Ernest J. her name, thereby giving her social legitimacy. Her goal in journeying to Ohio is to locate her adoptive father, but when she does find him he does not recognize her, just as at birth the parent who has abandoned a child would not. Unfazed by the disappointment, she sets up a life where she is a parent and not a child and gives to Ned what she has never received, love, care, and respect. So the second stage of Miss Jane’s life as a freed slave is one of creating an instant family for the vulnerable, which includes herself. Miss Jane’s role as a mother to Ned gives her life immediate meaning and agency until Ned becomes an adult and carves out his life’s mission to empower his people and improve their living conditions. But he is forced to abandon his mission. After a brief sojourn to escape being killed, Ned returns, having transformed himself from Ned Brown to Ned Douglass after Frederick Douglass. Because of Jane’s nurturing Ned is able to quickly move to Maslow’s highest stage of ethical development, giving service to his community. But his empowering mission threatens the white-black social hierarchy in the South; like most noble leaders who initiate ethical change, he is brutally murdered. When hired killer Albert Cluveau kills Ned, Jane is furious and curses Cluveau, but soon after, she helps Cluveau’s daughters, refusing to withhold compassion even from her enemies. Having quelled her childhood and erotic stages of life to raise Ned, Jane has an opportunity to participate in the stage of erotic love after Ned’s departure. She falls in love with Joe Pittman, a highly independent, spirited horse breaker, who through sheer hard work has earned his release from economic bondage and taken to breaking wild horses, never to be beholden to another master because during slavery, while slaves were kept in literal and metaphorical chains, after slavery they were kept in social and economic chains. During this stage of finding love and losing love, which spans a decade, Jane is happy and content, but she has to surrender to the gender hierarchy of marriage. Joe Pittman’s age and wildness further exacerbate this hierarchy. When Joe meets Jane, he already has a family of two girls and is interested in Jane to some extent to find a surrogate mother for

his children. Insecure in her role as a spouse, Jane is afraid, a fear that manifests itself as an unexplainable paranoia of losing Joe. What she fears at this stage is separation anxiety, a fear felt by children and associated with the first stage of life. Being loved and being in love makes Jane vulnerable, much more so because she has not gone through the traditional first stage of life development, so her vulnerability leads her to bizarre acts that culminate in Joe’s death. Devastated though she is by Joe and Ned’s deaths, she keeps faith by keeping her hands busy as she enters the recovery stage of her life. She travels from one work establishment to another, preferring to work outside in the fields doing heavy labor rather than domestic chores, forming a philosophy that steady work, not too much work, and eating fish does a body good. She does not take sides, but works and rests and consoles those in need; but she can trust no one and nothing. Though old and wise and most suited to give the young direction, she does not lead, refusing even to speak of her long and eventful life to the history teacher who reconstructs her autobiography. A leader imposes a larger collective will on others and Jane is dead set against it, having chaffed under the heavy authority of slavery. She shies away from such a role, afraid it brings in the same master-slave paradigm of willful domination. When the young workers talk about the Civil Rights movement Dr. King has started she is skeptical, but when news of Jimmy’s death arrives she cannot stay uninvolved. Miss Jane’s biggest challenge has been finding out what to believe in, since familiarity and ubiquity make even the wrong appear right. So for Miss Pittman whose life is steeped in and shaped by injustices, believing in any kind of ideological movement is difficult. Experience has taught her to trust only the individual and make no generalizations about either race. Having lost so many black pioneers and potential leaders in her community, she cannot bear losing any more. She decides to lead. Because the people so badly want a messiah she becomes the messiah, but an earthly one, not a heavenly one. Her wisdom comes when she believes and relies on the validity of something outside of herself, something she has

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittmanâ•…â•… 469 not learned to trust, for all she could ever trust or rely on was herself. Though frail and old, she leads the freedom march, although she knows the social rules and consequences: death. A former illiterate slave girl who has managed to live for 110 years by the sweat of her brow is not afraid of death, for she has not been afraid of life. Though she has not gone through the traditional stages of life development, she has lived her life through principles of work, ethics, courage, and compassion, which have made her life meaningful and important. Her journey from self to community is complete. Su Senapati

Work in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Since identity is intricately tied to the work a person does and since slaves had historically been separated from the product of their labor, Gaines pays particular attention to the theme of work. The protagonist of this story, Miss Jane Pittman, starts her work life at the age of 10 as a caretaker of children and later in life works as a field hand, a cook, and a laundress, but no matter what she does and no matter how menial the task, she does it well and this gives her the strength and courage to face all challenges in life. Born into slavery, all Jane knows is work; however, although her masters appropriate the product of her labor, they cannot appropriate the sense of self that she derives from her work. Ironically, when she is a child slave at the Bryant plantation, the added work of supplying water to exhausted soldiers passing by brings her in contact with Colonel Brown and the outside world, which in turn propels her on a journey of growth and enlightenment. A child herself, she without hesitation shoulders the responsibility of protecting, nurturing, and educating baby Ned, working endlessly to give what has been denied to her, an education. Her hard work pays off, for Ned grows up to be a marvelous human being who works to uplift the lives of the poor and the persecuted. Jane takes pride in her ability to work hard and earn adult wages on the Boone plantation. The foolishness of such pride, though excusable in a child, has disastrous consequences in adults as is revealed

by the Katie Nelson and Black Harriet incident on the Colonel Dye plantation. Such events where pride and competition at work cause havoc shape Jane’s work mantra for life, for as a former slave she must define the parameters of work, since excessive work has been the cause of injury and death for many a slave. She concludes, “Hard work can kill you, but plain, steady work killed nobody. Steady work and eating plenty of fish killed nobody.” Although work is empowering to the individual, not all work is empowering. Albert Cluveau, the hit man who kills Ned, spends the last 10 years of his life cowering in bed with his daughters, frightened of the “Chariots of Hell” that he is convinced are pursuing him. He has killed over a dozen men and for him killing is work, a way of making a living; but it is dirty work where the exercise of free will and ethical choice are willingly suspended, reducing the worker to subhuman levels and denying her/him any sense of self-worth. Furthermore, work is a concrete manifestation of the African-American contribution to the building of America; so, when newly freed slaves are riddled with confusion and have no place to go and rumblings of “go back to Africa” slogans are heard, Ned urges ex-slaves to question the validity of such statements, reminding them of the back-breaking work they have rendered: “This earth is yours .  .  . your people’s bones lays in it; it’s yours because their sweat and their blood done drenched this earth.” However, just physical labor is not enough as Ned reminds his students: “Working with your hands while the white man writes all the rules and laws will not better your lot,” for until the products of African–American labor are appropriated by AfricanAmerican laborers, they will be exploited and their sense of self-worth crippled. But Joe Pittman’s work ideology best summarizes the reason and importance of work. When Jane, frightened by dreams of Joe’s death, asks him to quit breaking horses for a living, he says that man is contracted to die but until he does, “he should do what he is good at doing” so that when he dies people can say, “He did good as he could.” Joe and Ned and Jimmy and many others like them know and recognize their calling in life, but for many Â�others such callings in life are closed because of

470â•…â•… Gaines, Ernest J. mind-numbing work that disallows their participation in the full spectrum of meaningful work. Thus Gaines in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, while showing the importance of work in the formation of identity, also advocates the need for better correspondence between the work one does and the product of that work for more holistic and human identities. Su Senapati

Gaines, Ernest J.â•… A Lesson before Dyingâ•… (1993)

A Lesson before Dying depicts rural Louisiana in the 1940s. A young African American named Jefferson has been accused of killing a shop owner during a robbery and is confined in prison. In fact, he was in the shop, accompanying two of his friends, when a violent argument between the two and the proprietor erupted, as a result of which the three fighting men shot each other to death. Jefferson’s courtappointed attorney compares him to an animal and calls him a “hog,” indicating that the defendant’s racial inferiority incapacitates him from acting with premeditation. These words do not influence the jury’s verdict, which is a death sentence, but they have a powerful effect on the black people in Jefferson’s community. The convict’s elderly godmother, Miss Emma, asks the teacher from the plantation school, Grant Wiggins, to talk to Jefferson and help him recover his sense of dignity. Initially, Grant’s visits to the prison are fruitless; he is reluctant to carry out his task, while Jefferson reacts to him with anger, impatience, or indifference. However, in the course of time, the young convict begins to appreciate the gestures of goodwill from the teacher and finds reassurance in the “lessons.” He discovers the meaning of his suffering. One of the central concerns in Gaines’s novel is the attachment to place and the extent to which the place and the time of a person’s birth determine the entire course of his or her later life. The narrator is Grant Wiggins; from his point of view, the necessity to live on the plantation where he had grown up and where he returned after his studies is literally a curse. In his native region, racism is the overwhelming historical legacy that underlies the existing

social relations. Racial segregation is a law, therefore it sustains, if not aggravates, the inequalities between white and black people. It is not surprising that Wiggins’s narrative is permeated by a sense of hopelessness mixed with anxiety. He is acutely aware there is no force that would change the present state of things. However, even if the external conditions cannot be improved, people’s consciousness can still be transformed. The death sentence for Jefferson provides an impetus for the entire community to acknowledge the value of sacrifice for the sake of others. It is not only Jefferson who learns an essential lesson, but also his kinsfolk from the plantation. This is primarily a lesson in dignity. On the one hand, A Lesson is a story of disillusionment and desperation, on the other, a tale of endurance and transformation. The narrative and thematic aspects of the novel combine the issues of alienation and community. The historical context highlights the problems of race and identity. Marek Paryz

Alienation in A Lesson before Dying

Grant Wiggins is a very ambivalent narrator because, on the one hand, he has been virtually forced by his aunt to become involved with Jefferson as a distinguished member of the black community, but on the other, he feels alienated from his kinfolk and even tries his best to minimize his affinity with them. His alienation is primarily caused by the determination to remain loyal to himself rather than to the group; furthermore, he considers his commitment to the community to be a possible threat to his personal integrity. He is an educated man, has been to other places, and has a chance to go to California; however, his unusual education and unique prospects make him even more vulnerable to the misery and hopelessness of the local existence. Unlike Wiggins, most community members do not think about alternatives for their lives for the simple reason that they do not have any. Grant’s alienation seems to be inseparable from his sense of entrapment. The fact that he returned to the plantation after his studies makes him feel as if he were caught in a vicious circle. The prospect of leaving Louisiana is delayed until Vivian has received a formal divorce. With the passing days,

A Lesson before Dyingâ•…â•… 471 Wiggins experiences his estrangement more and more painfully. He tends to think rather than act and, paradoxically, his incessant musings about a better life elsewhere possibly attest to his strong attachment to the native region, much stronger than he would wish to admit. The more actively he engages in the “lessons” with Jefferson, the more visibly he follows the community’s imperatives, but this does not alleviate his alienation. The point is that his acceptance of a responsibility imposed on him by the community is accompanied by a further separation from the community through a close acquaintance with another man on strictly personal terms. An important aspect of Grant’s alienation is his break with the church. He abandoned religious practice much earlier than the novel’s time of action, and his aunt has held a grudge against him because of that ever since. His detachment from religion is so severe that he gets irritated at the sound of songs and prayers reverberating in the church. His religious indifference is not only an expression of his personal choice, but also a manifestation of his distinction from others. He refuses to identify with the people who delude themselves that God will save them and that better times will come after death. A crucial episode in A Lesson is Wiggins’s confrontation with Reverend Ambrose. Grant suspects that the preacher, whom Tante Lou and Miss Emma trust unconditionally, wants to use him instrumentally. Indeed, Ambrose wants to persuade him that Jefferson should express his religious feelings before the execution so as to give his godmother a final consolation and to convince the community that his sacrifice will not be made in vain. Grant, who cares about Jefferson’s personal transformation and ignores the collective wishes or expectations, challenges Ambrose on the grounds that he does not respect the convict’s individual feelings and talks only about empty gestures. Whereas the theme of alienation evidently revolves around the dilemmas faced by Grant Wiggins, it is further developed in the presentation of Matthew Antoine, the local schoolteacher from the time of Grant’s youth. In the portrayal of this character, Gaines directly points to race as a factor behind individual alienation. Basically, Antoine is a Creole and as such he does not belong to the black

community, even though he devoted most of his life to African Americans. Antoine feels that he wasted his life, and now that he is an old man it is much too late to improve his situation. When he looks at Grant, he recognizes himself from his younger years, recognizes his own dreams and illusions. However, despite the odds, Grant still has a chance for a radical change in his life, which makes Antoine even more bitter and hateful. The theme of alienation plays a central role in Gaines’s novel as it facilitates the exploration of the problems arising at the intersections of individual and collective experience. Individual alienation results from, as much as it leads to, a variety of tensions between a person and a group. The analysis of such tensions provides a key to the understanding of social phenomena and historical circumstances. Marek Paryz

Community in A Lesson before Dying

In A Lesson before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines portrays two communities, black and white, and while he looks closely at the life of the former, he also explores the relations between both racial groups and pays special attention to important contrasts between them. The presentation of any community usually has a double focus: the place and the people. In Gaines’s novel, the people in the black community live in a special quarter of the plantation that has been allocated to them. Such an organization of the plantation area suggests that the situation of African Americans in the rural South has not changed visibly since the time of slavery, when black people occupied run-down buildings located at a distance from the plantation house. Although the black Americans described in the novel are obviously free, the place where they live imposes drastic limitations on them and reduces their possibilities to the minimum. They live with the awareness that they belong to an inferior social category. The central building in the quarter used by the black community is the church, which on weekdays houses a school. The school exists thanks to the dubious generosity of whites and possesses little means. There is only one qualified teacher, and the children of different ages have classes at the same time; therefore Wiggins, the teacher, relies on the

472â•…â•… Gaines, Ernest J. assistance of older students when he organizes the teaching of the youngest. The miserable school conditions make the children realize their low personal value to their society and deprive them of their aspirations. Despite this, the children at school not only acquire the basic skills, but they also learn to help one another and to act collectively. An important episode that shows the strengthening of bonds between the youngest members of the African-American community is their preparation of a nativity play for Christmas festivities. The centrality of the church in the black quarter points to the significance of religion in the community’s life. African Americans are poor people who bear humiliation on a daily basis; that is why they need spiritual support and religious consolation so much. The hope that there is a loving God makes their lives tolerable and saves them from utter resignation. Thus it is understandable that Reverend Ambrose, who is in charge of the church, is a figure of authority in the black people’s eyes and a natural leader of their community. He allows them to believe that the salvation of souls will be a compensation for the privations and humiliations of earthly life. Although he has doubts about his methods, and even about his calling, he realizes that he would fail his people completely if they knew about his incertitude; therefore he remains firm in his public role. It is important to notice that women play a crucial role in the African-American community. The main female characters in A Lesson are Miss Emma, Jefferson’s godmother, Tante Lou, Wiggins’s aunt, and Vivian, his beloved. Miss Emma and Tante Lou are both women of faith; in particular, they believe that Jefferson will regain his dignity and religious consciousness before the execution. The two women cooperate closely with Reverend Ambrose, who not only confirms them in their faith, but also suggests to them ways of influencing Grant and Jefferson. Although Miss Emma and Tante Lou are elderly and therefore delicate women, they know how to exert pressure on men and they instigate actions undertaken by men. This is particularly true of Grant who unwillingly yields to his aunt’s persuasion after she has blackmailed him. Miss Emma and Tante Lou function as mother figures for Jefferson and Grant, respectively. Even Vivian, though she is

Grant’s lover, offers him almost motherly support. It can be said that the black community in Gaines’s novel has certain matriarchal features. The significance of women in the black community accounts for the contrast with the strictly patriarchal white community. In general, in patriarchal societies all power resides in the hands of men. In A Lesson the white community is represented almost exclusively by male characters. Moreover, the white men portrayed by Gaines belong to the local elite, as they are landowners and entrepreneurs, or they hold various public offices. For example, Henri Pichot owns the plantation, Louis Rougnon runs a bank in a nearby town, and Sam Guidry is the sheriff. They stand for economic privilege and institutional power. Marek Paryz

Race in A Lesson before Dying

The relations between the communities of whites and blacks are determined by the difference in race and the resulting prejudices. The context evoked in the novel is characterized by a long history of racism, which has become a social norm. Even though A Lesson’s racism does not portray brutal or violent forms of racism, it inevitably highlights a variety of situations where white people have been involved with blacks. The best illustration of how whites assert their superiority and remind African Americans that they are seen as an inferior category of human is the episode when Grant comes to Mr. Pichot’s house and has to wait in the kitchen for more than two hours before the host kindly meets him. In general, when a black person wants to be treated favorably by whites, he should speak humbly and avoid looking white people straight in the eyes. White people control African Americans by means of certain oppressive measures, sanctioned by the law; indeed, Jefferson’s punishment for a crime he did not commit is the most striking example of racial oppression. Gaines presents the young convict as a scapegoat, in other words, a man who is punished mercilessly, even though he does not bear any guilt. The mechanism of scapegoating manifests itself in relations between individuals as well as between groups, such as national or ethnic communities; Gaines is interested in the latter case.

One Hundred Years of Solitudeâ•…â•… 473 The identification and punishment of a scapegoat is a symbolic reminder of who exercises power and who yields to it. The sentence for Jefferson serves as a warning for his kinfolk that it is white people who make the laws and that anyone who tries to undermine such an order will be punished most relentlessly. The sacrifice of a scapegoat has symbolic significance for the oppressed group. It not only forces them to admit their powerlessness, but also strengthens their solidarity in the face of external hostility. The inability to think outside racial stereotypes has a dehumanizing effect on both blacks and whites. African Americans tend to look at themselves through the prism of white people’s contemptuous view of them; this is why Jefferson begins to think of himself as an animal-like being after he has been called a “hog.” When Grant resumes the “lessons” with Jefferson, the young prisoner, in the beginning, keeps saying that he behaves in certain ways because this is how animals behave. In a sense, albeit profoundly disturbed by having been compared to an animal, Jefferson apparently tries to confirm that the white man in court was right. While the dehumanization of blacks is caused by the overwhelming impact of white people’s negative perceptions of them, the whites also become dehumanized as a consequence of their inability to renounce racial prejudices. Essentially, they cease to experience certain human emotions, most of all empathy. They become inconsiderate and heartless; for instance, several prominent white men, who talk to Wiggins at Pichot’s place, make bets whether the teacher will manage to elicit any positive change in Jefferson. The fact that African Americans assess their personal value and collective potential in the light of white people’s prejudices accounts for the psychological mechanism of self-hatred. Individual selfhatred is inseparable from the hatred a person feels for his ethnic group. In A Lesson, Jefferson experiences powerful negative emotions toward himself, because he has been deprived of his personal dignity. With Wiggins’s support, he eventually recovers his sense of selfhood and accepts his ethnic identity. However, Wiggins himself is not completely free from the feeling of self-hatred, as he lives with a

painful awareness of how little he will ever achieve as a black man in spite of his education. There is also Matthew Antoine, Grant’s former Creole teacher, a very embittered man, for whom the very sight of black people on the plantation exacerbates his sense of downright failure. White people and black people are neighbors, but in fact they inhabit separate worlds. However, although the racial divide runs deep, goodwill helps to overcome it. During his visits to the prison, Wiggins becomes acquainted with a young deputy named Paul, who supports the African-American cause. Paul sympathizes with Jefferson and offers assistance to Grant. Individuals may discover in themselves the power to remove racial barriers, but in the universe of Gaines’s novel it is a rather uncommon gift. Marek Paryz

García Márquez, Gabrielâ•… One Hundred Years of Solitudeâ•… (1967)

One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in Spanish in 1967 and written by Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, recounts the history of the Buendías who establish an imaginary Latin American community, Macondo. While Macondo is initially a utopia, it devolves until its annihilation, just as the last of the Buendía line is discovering the true nature of his origins. In between, generations of Buendías experience challenges that offer a pessimistic critique of Latin American civilization. The plot’s circular structure is complicated by the recycling of characters’ names, the confusion of incestuous relationships, and the blending of magic and reality, which portray Latin America as self-destructive and insular. The tale also references historical events affecting the region. From the questionable influence of technology, seen in the inventions introduced by Melquíades and the Gypsies, to the arrival of the banana company, which mimics the scandal of the United Fruit Company, it is clear that contact with the outside world contributes to Macondo’s problems and, by extension, those of Latin America. This masterpiece shares themes of other boom novels, avant-garde works written during Latin

474â•…â•… García Márquez, Gabriel America’s 20th-century literary explosion. Among these themes are family and community, memory and history, reality and magic. Its complex structure parallels the complexity of Latin American civilization. Its many layers—family, community, nation, region—provide insight into a culture colored by contrasts and conflicts and one that seems eternally doomed to repeat its mistakes. Anne Massey

Community in One Hundred Years of Solitude

Communities define themselves through shared interests, goals, or values and by the manner in which the group distinguishes itself from outside influences. Macondo, although a fictional village, serves as a model for examining the processes whereby Latin American communities define themselves. To accomplish this, the narrative traces Macondo’s history from its founding by the Buendías to its destruction by the apparently unavoidable winds of eternal return, a concept in which events, although appearing to move forward, destructively revert to their origins. Macondo represents a community sharing an interest in progress but ultimately doomed to fail in the face of internal and external forces. At first, Macondo’s progress appears to be deterred primarily by outside influences. The village begins as an apparent utopia with founder José Arcadio Buendía arranging the homes so that all have equal sun and river access, but this spirit of social initiative ends with the fever of invention. The fever, spawned by interactions with the Gypsies, outsiders who thrill to technological marvels—such as magnets and ice—instills in José Arcadio a desire to move Macondo to a place more accessible to science. Only intervention by his wife, Ursula, prevents the move. Another outside threat seems linked with the arrivals of Visitación and Rebecca. Shortly after their appearance in the community, Macondo begins to suffer from a plague of insomnia, an illness in which its sleepless victims forget everything, including the memories of their own identities. Unable to fall asleep, the villagers tell stories and plan strategies to compensate for their failing memories. This threat would have destroyed the community

except for a magical potion provided by the wise Melquíades. Two final outside entities influence Macondo: the federal government and the banana exporters. Government interference includes tampering with ballot boxes and involvement in the war between Liberals and Conservatives. The corruption and the futility of the violence threaten Macondo. Even Colonel Aureliano Buendía, an active military leader, eventually becomes “weary of the uncertainty of the vicious cycle of the eternal war that always found him in the same place but always older, wearier, even more in the position of not knowing why, or how, or even when.” The banana company brings its own changes of order, entering Macondo in a “tumultuous and intemperate invasion.” Eventually, the government and the banana company conspire against the village, massacring thousands when the banana company workers strike. However, outside influences are not entirely to blame for Macondo’s demise; issues within the community create havoc as well. Key among these is the incestuous relationship of its founding family, symbolized by the confusing and repetitious use of proper names for the Buendía offspring and predicted from Macondo’s inception as the cause of future problems. Throughout, various characters fear that such relationships will produce children with pigs’ tails, an indication of the inappropriate nature of these unions. Jealousy and disputes over behavior divide the community as well. For instance, when both Amaranta and Rebecca fall in love with Pietro Crespi, the girls enter a complex cat-and-mouse game that ends only when Rebecca marries the son of Macondo’s founder and his wife Ursula. However, Ursula, considering the marriage disrespectful, as the adopted Rebecca and her new husband have been raised as siblings, forbids the couple from entering her home again. Fernanda, who has married into the Buendía family, considers Macondo’s citizens beneath her social standing and separates herself and her family from the community at large. Representative of this posture are the closed windows of her home and the gold chamber pots bearing her family crest. Despite Macondo’s auspicious beginnings, in the end both community and outside influences erode

One Hundred Years of Solitudeâ•…â•… 475 the utopia envisioned by the founders. The community is abandoned by its inhabitants; following the banana company massacre Macondo decays under the persistent, drenching rains; the last of the Buendía line is born with a pig’s tail, suggesting a return to more primitive beginnings; and finally the annihilating winds begin to blow and the alpha and omega of Macondo’s existence collide. To the extent that Macondo mimics 20th-century Latin American communities, the novel describes internal and external forces that create or exacerbate a myriad of problems in the region, including: failure to understand and to utilize technology effectively, a regional identity crisis, government-sponsored violence, corruption in international business dealings, an inability to cope with social issues and class disparities, and an isolationist perspective that prevents Latin America from proactively seeking and engaging in solutions. Anne Massey

Fate in One Hundred Years of Solitude

Eternal return is a view of events in which history and time are perceived as repetitious processes that doom society to revert back to its origins without ever progressing. This concept is pervasive throughout One Hundred Years of Solitude as the novel recounts the history of Macondo from its founding to its annihilation, a destruction that coincides with a potential rebirth as the last of the Buendías seeks to uncover the secrets of his personal and communal past. However, at the exact moment that these origins are to be revealed, destructive forces prevail, the town is swept away in a windstorm, and the opportunity to revitalize the community through a new beginning is lost. Instead, Macondo, and by implication Latin America, is fated to repeat its past, unaware that it is merely participating in a new destructive cycle. With the recollection of past mistakes erased by the storm, the missteps of history will inevitably lead yet again to the community’s complete eradication. Specific details and scenes support this pessimistic view. The repetition of identical or similar names—Aureliano, Arcadio, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, José Arcadio Segundo, etc.—over the course of generations reflects the repetition of

eternal return. Moreover, such repetition creates confusion as characters and events overlap. This repetition and confusion, a destruction of logical order, are microcosms of the larger pattern; each generation, a cycle unto itself, mirrors the creation, decay, and destruction seen in the history of Macondo as a whole. Melquíades’s character undergoes a similar cycle. The Gypsy initially appears able to evade aging and death. In fact, José Arcadio Buendía believes that Melquíades has brought eternal life to the entire community with the daguerreotype. The community’s patriarch observes that the people of Macondo begin to wear away, but their images are forever preserved. Although Melquíades may symbolize eternal life and even declares that he has discovered immortality, shortly after this declaration, he is discovered drowned. José Arcadio Buendía resists burying his friend but is forced to do so as the body begins to decompose in the inevitable cycle of creation-decay-death. Macondo’s founder, José Arcadio Buendía, has numerous experiences related to the cyclical nature of time. He believes Monday continuously repeats itself and grows violent trying to escape the cycle. He laments the breaking of the time machine, a mechanism that might have permitted escape from the eternal repetition and spends time trying to find concrete evidence of the passage of time. His family, overwhelmed by his violent behavior, decides to tie him to a tree, where he is all but forgotten. The life of this community patriarch, a would-be inventor himself, mimics the process of eternal return. At the start of his imprisonment, Colonel Aureliano Buendía has a moment of déjà vu, and later he expresses his weariness over the eternal war in which nothing changes except his own aging. He even creates his own symbolic cycle, molding golden fishes only to melt them down again. When Ursula, the community matriarch, sees that the Gypsies no longer bring their inventions to Macondo, she fears the end of the world. Later, she observes that time seems to be working in reverse, and when she goes blind, she realizes that every day the family repeats the same words and actions. Finally, she dies after devolving into fetal form. Fernanda, who takes over the family’s care in the midst of Ursula’s

476â•…â•… García Márquez, Gabriel decline, imposes her parents’ norms on the household, returning to the past. And, despite her efforts at cleanliness and order, the house is overtaken by lizards, rodents, ants, and moss; the structure itself begins to revert back to a primeval state. When Amaranta Ursula, great-great-granddaughter of Macondo’s founders, herself attempts to reorganize the house, her efforts fail. The destructive circle of time continues as she and her nephew make love amid the sounds of Macondo’s ghosts trying to stave off creation’s inevitable entropy. Indeed, their love ends when Amaranta dies, having repeated family history by giving birth to a child with a pig’s tail. Shortly after Amaranta’s death, Macondo is blown away by the winds of fate. This ending, foretold by the history of prior Buendía generations, depicts both the futility and fatality faced by an insular Latin America. Any community unable to recognize and to break the constraints of its own historical cycle and intrinsic patterns of behavior is doomed not only to repeat the past but also to be eternally destroyed by it. Anne Massey

Memory in One Hundred Years of Solitude

Memory in One Hundred Years of Solitude functions, or malfunctions, simultaneously on two planes— individual and collective recall. From beginning to end, recollection and its opposition, forgetting, point to the insufficiency of familial ties and societal connection in the face of Latin American political corruption and the economic reality of poverty. The novel’s opening—Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s standing before a firing squad and remembering his father’s taking him to discover ice—segues into a description of the idyllic beginnings of Macondo and the Buendía family. This connection between pleasant memory and death demonstrates the inadequacy of familial and societal bonds in the face of unjust political manipulations. The utopia of the colonel’s youth will not withstand the decay brought about by political contamination. Indeed, early in the novel all efforts to manipulate memory for individual or community benefit fail. The Gypsies, who introduce a machine to make people forget bad memories, so confuse the community that the citizens of Macondo become lost

in their own streets. When faced with the illness of insomnia that destroys memory, both José Arcadio Buendía and his son unsuccessfully attempt to fend off complete erasure of past events with various inventions, including a machine designed to aid in recall. In the end, only through the magic of Melquíades is the community rescued and memory restored. Eventually, memory fades, dominated by the slow invasion of forgetting. Perhaps the most extreme example of forgetting is the massacre engineered by the government and the banana company during a strike by the company’s workers. Three thousand people are gunned down in the town square, but afterward no one recalls the event except José Aureliano Segundo and the boy he rescued from the mob. In fact, José Aureliano Segundo can find no evidence of the massacre, and when the boy attempts to force the people of Macondo to recall the gruesome day, he is written off as insane. Here, the failure of collective memory serves as a metaphor for the community’s inability to confront the political abuse found in much of Latin American history as well as its failure to address economic manipulation by nations outside of Latin America, in particular the United States. Over time, memory in the novel evolves into nostalgia, recollection colored by a longing for the unattainable. Nostalgia heightens the sense that Latin America’s societal bonds are insufficient mechanisms for resolving conflicts. For instance, upon returning from the war, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, feeling trapped by nostalgia, destroys all evidence of his past and attempts suicide. Afterward, lauded as a martyr for his suicide attempt by fickle followers who accuse him of selling out the war effort for personal gain while honoring him for rejecting the Presidential Order of Merit, the colonel considers starting a new war simply to please his supporters. This is an odd position for a man who once advocated working with the opposition to bring an end to conflict. Seen through the lens of nostalgia, societal bonds are not only insufficient buffers against political corruption, but also have become destructive forces in and of themselves. The novel’s conclusion joins memory and forgetting as final proof that societal structures fail to

North and Southâ•…â•… 477 meet the challenges posed by political and economic realities. Aureliano, the last survivor in Macondo, opens Melquíades’s papers, which magically relate the history of Macondo 100 years before it occurred. Aureliano begins to read, turning each page, advancing toward the past, seeking his origin. As he finds his beginning, and that of Macondo, a strong wind begins to blow, sweeping away the town. Such destruction implies that memory, presented here as a memoir of a people written before the fact, cannot offer salvation from the fatalistic forces that have consistently eaten away at the fabric of Latin American community. Moreover, it is in the exact moment before Aureliano discovers the answer he has been seeking—the true nature of his origins— that the destructive winds prevail. That is to say, just as Aureliano, society’s sole survivor, is about to have revealed to him not only his beginning but also the origin of his community as a whole, this moment of revelation and its power to rescue an entire people from a repetitious cycle of destruction are ripped away. Memory fails to rescue a society from its inevitable fate. In broader terms, Latin American history, doomed to repeat itself, cannot save a people who fail to remember the pitfalls of the past. Anne Massey

Gaskell, Elizabethâ•… North and Southâ•… (1854)

Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South contrasts life in the agrarian south of England with the livelier, more energetic way of life afforded in the manufacturing center of Milton-Northern, undoubtedly a pseudonym for Manchester, the industrial capital of 19th-century England. With this backdrop of regional and cultural transition Gaskell introduces questions about society and authority. She contrasts the typical “marriage of convenience”—matches made for economic advantage—with Margaret Hale’s dismissal of two successful prospects without consulting her parents. The Hales also question “justice” when hearing from their son Frederick of the horrid treatment of fellow sailors at the hands of their captain. Because of Frederick’s intervening for the men, the captain places Frederick adrift. Authorities label the incident

a “mutiny”; Frederick would be hanged if he were to return to English soil. How can justice prevail when loyal subjects cannot receive a fair hearing? Similarly, Gaskell raises questions about the justice of the factory system and its operation under the principles of “supply and demand.” Wages are kept low, and workers can barely survive. Again, Margaret Hale raises difficult questions about what owners owe workers and how the two groups might cooperate for the benefit of all. Gaskell advocates a greater sense of community between these groups, which had traditionally been economically and socially separated. A revolutionary look at the elements of society, North and South demonstrates the need for mutual understanding to break the barriers of class and economic disparity. Through the presence of a strong female protagonist, Gaskell ultimately seeks to prevent the kind of systemic abuses with which most people of her day were all too familiar. Anthony Grasso

Gender in North and South

Readers first encounter Margaret Hale in London at the Hawley Street home of her Aunt Shaw and cousin Edith as the family is preparing for the latter’s marriage to Captain Lennox. One is led to assume that only the traditional Victorian plot complications will arise. However, once back home in Helstone, a small agricultural community in the south, Margaret is wooed by Henry Lennox, brother of the captain and a successful attorney who has come expressly to propose. She rejects him politely but abruptly. Margaret’s action is surprising on at least two counts: First, a young woman of 18 rejects an excellent proposal; and, second, she does so without parental consent or involvement and this notion is anything but Victorian. Later the Hale family is required to move to the industrial city of MiltonNorthern when Mr. Hale, a minister, struggles with conscience over the autonomy of the church and gives up his living. Once settled there Margaret is placed in a similar situation when John Thornton, a successful mill owner, proposes. Although she and the Hales are considered economic and social inferiors, and this offer would have been prized by Victorian standards as an excellent match for her,

478â•…â•… Gaskell, Elizabeth Margaret rejects him outright, again without the knowledge or consent of her parents. Elizabeth Gaskell, the daughter and wife of Unitarian ministers, really shares the fundamental belief of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, that women must be treated as rational and responsible because subordination is contrary to Christianity and because only rational beings can be capable mothers. Throughout the course of the novel, one senses Margaret—and Gaskell—bristling at any sense of power or entitlement over women that men may have been taught or raised to think was their right by social position. Margaret will not be stereotyped, even to the point of engaging the businessmen and mill owners, factory workers and others in a debate about their lives and responsibilities. Women in the novel are strong, except for those who represent typical domestic types: Margaret’s cousin, Edith, and Fanny Thornton, the mill owner’s sister, seen also preparing to wed a much older husband who is wealthy and successful. Both of these women are portrayed as dependent and concerned with frivolous matters, such as purchasing clothing and having dinner parties, knowing French, embroidery, piano, and social customs, but not having much purpose in life. Mrs. Hale, in contrast, feels she has made a bad marriage since her husband has not amounted to much, but she is a strong figure who stands by his decisions, survives the loss through exile of her son Frederick owing to his role in the mutiny against an unjust naval captain, and becomes ill with cancer, dealing stoically with her painful illness. Mrs. Thornton, John’s mother, lost her husband to suicide because he had made bad investments and lost his fortune. She stood behind her son’s climb back to becoming a mill owner and restoring the family fortune. She also spent time on the mill floor, helping her son to supervise workers—not the common role for a middle-class woman of means. Ironically, both women have been strengthened by the hardships in their lives, benefiting from adversity rather than being shielded from it as middle-class Victorian domestic hierarchy would have tended to do. Part of the gender theme surrounds and is intertwined with the working world of the industrial north, which offers few roles and opportunities,

changing customs and behaviors for women and also for both genders. Early in the novel, as Margaret wanders the streets of her new urban home, she is taken by what she perceives as the “forwardness” of men and women who actually touch her garments as they pass, commenting on their quality and on her fresh, natural beauty, which they admire without being lewd or untoward. One would never encounter such behavior in the strict social setting of London, or the more traditional and deferential agrarian south where Margaret was raised. Margaret is open to the change and discusses it with Betsy Higgins, the factory girl whom she befriends, and her father Nicholas, the union organizer and factory hand whom she tries to get John Thornton to hire after the strike. In fact, Margaret has been raised and educated by her father on a par with her brother Frederick. She is versed in the classics, in biblical themes, and in political economy as is seen in discussions at the Thorntons’ dinner party, where her opinions about the need for mill owners to care more for the welfare of their workers is quite controversial. Again, Gaskell departs from traditional gender roles by showing Margaret as a woman who is able to hold intelligent conversation about that matter of industry and the national economy, not restricted to conversations about trends in fashion or who is available for marriage. Through the death of her parents and the unfortunate turn of events of John Thornton’s mill, Margaret ends up as owner (from the behest of Mr. Bell, her guardian after her father’s sudden death). She is ready to assume not only legal ownership, but also a rightful place as an enlightened owner who knows the workers, their situation, and the realities of the industrial world at Milton-Northern. Only then, as an equal, can she and Thornton consider feelings for one another. Gaskell’s North and South offers an expanded and enlightened view of gender that serves as a model by which other 19th-century heroines and readers can judge women as rational, capable, and strong individuals with minds and lives of their own. Anthony Grasso

Justice in North and South

Gaskell’s concerns over law and justice are squarely placed within a context of practice: How are laws

North and Southâ•…â•… 479 and judgments made, and how ethical or moral are they really? Questions are raised on all social and religious fronts about how prejudice, custom, and erroneous human judgments affect the interpretation of laws and the carriage of justice throughout society. Early in the novel we are faced with Mr. Hale’s scrupulous examination of “The Thirty-Nine Articles” doctrine, stating tenets of faith to which all followers in the Church of England must adhere. When he has difficulty accepting some points of church authority, recently reinterpreted, Mr. Hale questions his own integrity and the justice of continuing in the ministry. Conscious of the great changes and possible hardships such a choice will mean for his family, he concludes as a matter of conscience that, since he can’t obey all the beliefs, he cannot remain as a practicing minister. This decision sets in motion the Hales’ move from Helstone in the south of England to Milton-Northern, a large industrial city in the north. While it may seem a small matter by today’s standards, Mr. Hale’s principle and adherence to the justice of earning a living falsely leads him to sacrifice a livelihood no one would have questioned. Frederick, whom readers discover only when Mrs. Hale becomes terminally ill, has been forced to live in Spain owing to his role in a professed mutiny aboard an English naval vessel on which he had served. The captain, obviously unbalanced, took beatings and punishments of the men and boys aboard to awful degrees. When the pleading of Frederick and other officers was not heard, they arranged a boat and decided to remove the captain with provisions, so as not to cause him harm but to correct what was a horrible situation. For that action, since the captain was eventually rescued, Frederick would return to England under pain of death if caught, because this action was treated as a “mutiny.” Gaskell questions the justice of laws in the naval code that clearly protect an incompetent leader who continually abuses power, over those who seek to redress the wrong and ensure the protection of lives essential to the safety of the entire vessel and crew. Frederick’s clandestine return to visit his dying mother, precipitated by Margaret’s letter to him, causes another crisis and issue. Needing to spirit

Fred out of the country after he spends some time with his mother, Margaret is seen with him at night at the railway station by John Thornton, whom she had earlier rejected as a suitor, complicating the social stigma. Fred is also recognized there by a former acquaintance, Leonards; in the ensuing struggle to escape and board the awaiting train, Fred inadvertently causes the drunken Leonards to fall, causing his ultimate death. Margaret, questioned by the police as a witness in the hearing, must lie to protect her brother’s life until she is certain that he is safely out of England. Two issues emerge: (1) the justice of the law that condemned Frederick for doing what was right to protect younger men and those under his care; and (2) the right of people to judge Margaret to be a “loose” woman, which John Thornton and his mother did, because she was seen walking at night in public with a man who was not her husband. Again, Gaskell questions how our flawed and often prejudicial human judgment affects the way in which laws are carried out, the role of conscience, and the importance of civil disobedience in opposing unjust laws. Throughout this interesting novel, Gaskell examines how people live and how society’s institutions function through a lens of justice, pointing out how fragile even the law is, let alone the weight of “tradition” that many social customs have accumulated, owing to the limitations of human knowledge and judgment. Ultimately, Gaskell promotes mutual human respect and interaction between and among all groups, rather than reliance upon hastily formed judgments, to ensure the understanding of the other as the way to realize the ideal of just treatment for every member of the society. One key example occurs after the strike. One of the main organizers, Nicholas Higgins, who has two daughters to support, also assumes responsibility for a widow and her five children, orphaned by their father who died by his own hand, despairing of being able to support his family. When no one will hire Higgins, because of his union connections, Margaret encourages John Thornton to overcome his lofty principles, to sacrifice “face” or honor, as Higgins himself had done by waiting for five hours in the damp, cold weather to ask Thornton for the job. There is real justice in sacrificing abstract “principles” to help the pressing

480â•…â•… Gaskell, Elizabeth needs of those around you in society, for whom a person of some authority or means may have or can accept increased responsibility. Gaskell reviews “authority” and its uses at every level of society to tackle the increasingly complicated question of “law and order” in her time and culture, a relevant question for us today as well. As the upward mobility of social groups was growing and the basic foundations of a strict society began to undergo rapid change during the Industrial Revolution, Gaskell is thinking about the implications for the betterment of community and of all people so that they will be treated fairly under the law and daily practices of the society. Throughout North and South she asks her readers to do the same. Anthony Grasso

Pride in North and South

As in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, characters in North and South suffer from and create problems for others owing to extreme pride. Early in the novel Margaret Hale, coming from modest means, is contrasted with her cousin Edith Shaw, with whom her parents have sent her to live so that she might gain the social advantages of meeting well-to-do young men. After Edith’s marriage to Captain Lennox, Margaret returns to rural Helstone and Henry Lennox, the captain’s brother and a lawyer, proposes to her. Her response—“I have never thought of you, but as a friend—I am sure I could never think of you as anything else”—is abrupt and stings Lennox’s pride. Lennox disappears from Helstone immediately, leaving the Hale family in a quandary as to his abrupt departure. With the family’s removal to Milton-Northern, Margaret meets John Thornton, the new mill owner whose mother is fiercely proud and overly protective of her son who has single-handedly brought the family back from financial ruin. Their pride comes from fierce determination and hard work, but the struggle to be regarded well in society’s eyes comes at a cost: Both are stern and suspicious of others’ intentions. As he was leaving for his lesson at the Hales’ house, Mrs. Thornton says to John “Take care you don’t get caught by a penniless girl, John.” Pride that comes from the attempt to “cover” perceived economic or social wants and setbacks

leads to mistaken judgments of others’ actions and motives. When John eventually proposes to Margaret, smitten as he is with her difference in background and demeanor, as well as her fiery spirit, she rejects him even more strongly than she had done to Henry Lennox, saying “Your way of speaking shocks me. It is blasphemous.” She’d disagreed with him on matters of political economy about the responsibilities of mill owners toward workers. Major misunderstanding comes when Margaret is caught at the Thorntons’ during a riot, since a strike is on at the mills. She has gone to the house to borrow a water bed, offered by Mrs. Thornton for her ailing mother to use. John Thornton has brought in Irish workers to keep his mill going, and has housed them on the premises. When the striking laborers hear about it and congregate outside, Margaret urges him to go down to talk with them, then runs outside herself, eventually taking a stone to the head thrown by a rabble-rouser, which was meant for Thornton. While being cared for in the Thornton household, she hears servant gossip indicating that she had “thrown herself ” at him. Concern over her own reputation and behavior prevents Margaret from seeing that the normally stoic John has been so affected by her strength, forwardness, and independence, that he drops his normal fierceness of demeanor to reveal his true heart. Her abrupt dismissal is more a defensive maneuver out of pride, yet causes greater pain to him than she had meant or even understood. Margaret also is the recipient of similar treatment at the hands of the Higgins family, fiercely proud workers whom she encounters on a walk. Set in her southern ways Margaret assumes, as the minister’s daughter and the economic superior of the workers, that she can “call” on them anytime for a visit as she did in the rural parish at Helstone. When she asks where they live and what their names are, Nicholas responds: “Whatter yo’ asking for?” Higgins is defensive of having his “betters” visit his home, not wanting to be dependent on anyone’s charity. Interestingly, Higgins the “uneducated” laborer provides the key to overcoming natural pride and shattering the accepted boundaries of social class. When he assumes financial responsibility for a

The Beggar’s Operaâ•…â•… 481 family whose father died during the strike, he seeks employment from Thornton’s mill. As a union organizer, he is “persona non grata” at any of the mills, and he knows that Thornton is a hard man to bargain with. After some prompting, Thornton hears about Higgins’s situation, follows him to where he lives in order to verify the story, and calls him to his office to apologize for misjudging his character. Higgins’s ability to place others first overcomes any reticence or aloofness that pride sets up. Once Higgins begins employment, he and Thornton devise a “lunchroom” scheme to provide workers and their families with employment and a means to have healthy food. The willingness to see beyond one’s prejudgments, and Higgins’s ability to act out of humility and concern for others’ needs, leads to deeper understanding of shared humanity, and levels of cooperation and friendship that bring social and economic barriers down. Anthony Grasso

Gay, Johnâ•… The Beggar’s Operaâ•… (1712)

John Gay’s operatic play dramatizes the story of Peachum and his partners in crime, whose lives become complicated when Macheath falls in love with Polly, Peachum’s daughter. The play begins with the Peachums extolling the virtues of single women to Polly, who responds that she has already married Macheath. Distraught over Polly’s marriage, Peachum laments the loss of his daughter’s contributions to his gang’s coffers, then seeks retaliation against Macheath. Peachum attempts to ruin Macheath by having him imprisoned, but intercessions by Polly and Lucy (Macheath’s other wife) ensure that Macheath escapes hanging. The play then concludes with the Player and Beggar determining that Macheath may avoid the gallows “to comply with the taste of the town.” Gay satirizes the exploits of the aristocracy through the shenanigans of Macheath and the other criminals in The Beggar’s Opera much as he satirizes foreign opera via the play’s numerous ballads: by sarcasm juxtaposed with action. Lockit the jailor, for instance, demands a cash bribe before granting Macheath light manacles, and Macheath while in prison sings an aria that blames women—not his

life of crime—for his incarceration. Polly, likewise, sings an aria that accuses Lucy of “ruining” their marriage to Macheath, but Polly’s tone—like that of the other characters—is serious, though her words jest. The satiric action coupled with the humorous depiction of married life in the early 18th century leaves modern audiences with little wonder as to why The Beggar’s Opera has maintained its popularity over the years. James N. Ortego II

Individual and Society in The Beggar’s Opera

The one character who emerges as a solitary figure in Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera is known simply as “Macheath,” a degenerate gambler and polygamist who escapes punishment from the law at the play’s end. Macheath is a part of the criminal element satirized by Gay, but is constantly at odds with his fellow law-breakers. In a society filled with prostitutes, thieves, and all sorts of other criminals, Macheath manages to excel at the art of law-breaking, yet the society that suffers from his crimes refuses to punish him. Gay’s dramatic satire consequently laments not London’s criminal types such as Macheath, but the society that allows the Macheaths of the world to prey on its citizens. Macheath is introduced early in the play as a “gamester and highwayman,” which interestingly enough is acceptable to the Peachums, until Mr. Peachum learns that his daughter Polly thinks Macheath “a very pretty man.” But Mr. Peachum’s subsequent denunciation of Macheath centers on married couples and spousal abuse; Peachum is not concerned with Macheath’s harsh character, his gambling problem, or his life as a thief, but with Polly’s regulation to secondary status once she marries Macheath. As the play’s primary representative of the criminal underworld, Peachum holds much influence over those around him; when he approves of Macheath’s lifestyle but denounces Polly’s desire to marry, spectators typically laugh, but the joke is centered squarely on a society that allows criminals such as Macheath to prosper, not necessarily on Peachum’s marital views. The opening scenes that feature the Peachums discussing Polly and Macheath’s future as a married couple establish Macheath as an outsider who breaks

482â•…â•… Gay, John an unspoken code of conduct when he attempts to marry and abandon his criminal lifestyle. Now that Macheath has considered marriage, he has become a terrible criminal whom his fellow thieves do not tolerate. By isolating Macheath via a proposed marriage with Polly, Gay cleverly establishes Macheath for his audience as an example of one whose faults lie not in willingly breaking the law, but in consorting with young women in the hopes of marrying them. Macheath emerges as a lone individual looking into a society that rejects his marital views but not his criminal lifestyle. Gay’s view, however, is consistently tempered with satire, as Macheath exclaims, “What a fool is a fond wench!” (3.3.71); and Polly may be thought of as “foolish” for pursuing Macheath, who is certainly not an exemplary suitor, but this is Gay’s satirical point. As punishment for his “crime” of consorting with Polly and hindering Peachum’s criminal efforts, Macheath is soon imprisoned at Newgate during a scene that isolates him as an exemplary criminal of the heart. As Lockit chains Macheath, the guard takes notice of Macheath’s crimes, and then marvels as the prisoner blames his misfortune on women. But Gay’s construction of the jail scene distinguishes Macheath from a society of criminals who seek to punish him for crimes against marriage instead of crimes against humanity. Macheath is guilty of stealing, gambling, beating and robbing travelers, and cheating at cards and dice, but these offenses are seldom mentioned as faults of Macheath. The focus appears to be on marriage, especially when Lucy visits Macheath to scold him, then accepts his promise because she wants to be made an “honest” woman. The audience, however, cannot help but remember that Macheath’s crimes against society go unpunished, which for Gay’s satire seems to be the real crime. For the duration of the play, Macheath remains in jail, subject to harsh verbal reproaches from Polly and Lucy (two of his six wives) for his deceitful marital practices, but at the end of the play, Macheath faces execution for a crime against society: “having broke prison.” The execution does not happen, however, due to the interference by the Player and Beggar, long thought by scholars to represent the voice of English society and John Gay the playwright,

respectively. Once the Beggar orders the guards to release Macheath, the Player concedes that “All this must we do, to comply with the taste of the town” (3.16.15). And thus Macheath escapes punishment for his crimes against society, but not for his crimes against marriage, for he is forced to live with his six wives. The play’s conclusion suggests that Macheath’s most terrible crimes involve marriage, not society, yet the subtle change to force an “opera to end happily” implies that Gay was not laughing at Macheath’s womanizing, but at those who allow criminals such as Macheath to escape justice for crimes against society. James N. Ortego II

Justice in The Beggar’s Opera

The Beggar’s Opera begins with an aria that imposes a moral judgment on the play to follow, yet from beginning to end, none of the main characters serves justice for their crimes. The Peachum gang regularly escapes punishment from the laws they break (although Macheath is incarcerated for a short time), but with good reason: to satirize the ineffectualness of 18th-century law enforcement and the penetration of crime throughout English society. Gay’s satire suggests not only that 18th-century laws were widely broken and seldom enforced, but also that the criminal element included persons from all social classes, any of whom might easily escape the law simply by bribing officials. Justice in The Beggar’s Opera is essentially nonexistent, and this is part of the play’s thematic concern with crime and justice. Soon after the play’s introductory aria, Peachum and Filch discuss the forthcoming trial of Black Moll, a common thief, who sardonically does not suffer for her crimes but instead receives a pardon via Peachum’s friendship with the prison officials at Newgate. After Peachum instructs Filch to hasten to Newgate to “let my friends know what I intend,” Filch responds that “↜‘tis a pleasure to be the messenger of comfort to friends in affliction” (l. 2). This early dialogue between Peachum and Filch establishes Peachum as a manipulator who easily evades the law and justice. Black Moll is by all accounts a drain upon society; her crimes cost the citizens their money and peace of mind, yet she, like every other

The Beggar’s Operaâ•…â•… 483 criminal in the play, escapes punishment. The world of the Peachums and the Black Molls is corrupt and unjust, but their corruption permeates all of society. Peachum’s ability to free Black Moll derives from his symbiotic relationship with the guards at Newgate, for as long as criminals such as Peachum and his gang control the prison officials, society will not see justice served. The Beggar’s Opera satirizes the ineffectiveness of justice, which is a thematic concern that seems ironic when spectators remember that a criminal during Gay’s time could face hanging for more than 500 offenses. Not even the threat of hanging can deter Peachum’s gang, who in act 2 discuss their various misdeeds, but in a manner that satirizes 18th-century English society and its inability to dole out justice to the criminal element. Beginning with the rhetorical question, “Why are the laws levelled at us?” Crookfingered Jack and his companions satirically validate their crimes by comparing themselves to the nobility, who, according to the gang, are no better than common criminals. After reaffirming that each gang member would die for his friends and keep their secrets safe, Matt of the Mint says, “Show me a gang of courtiers that can say as much,” a response that suggests that the nobility of Gay’s England does not have the same “decency” as the common criminal. Gay implies through Matt of the Mint’s sarcasm that class is the only distinction among thieves; while theft was certainly forbidden by 18th-century laws, the play’s thematic concern with justice suggests that only the poor suffer from the laws, yet the play punishes no one. When Jemmy Twitcher wonders, “Are we more dishonest than the rest of mankind?” spectators must silently answer “no” and muse about a society that attempts to punish its lower-class criminals but ignores similar offenses among the nobility. While the play features characters who consistently worry about escaping the law, no one except Macheath suffers any punishment that may be considered “just,” and that for only a short period of time. Once Peachum realizes that Macheath’s marriage threatens the Peachum gang, Peachum frames Macheath and has him imprisoned, but Polly manages to help Macheath escape from prison in much the same manner that her father helps Black Moll

escape the law. Ironically, Peachum has trained his daughter too well, for she thwarts his attempts to ruin Macheath and “aid[s] him in his escape,” yet neither Polly, Peachum, nor Macheath suffer justice for their crimes. Before Macheath is led away to be hung, the Beggar and the Player interrupt and free Macheath “to comply with the taste of the town.” This final allusion to an inadequate justice system marks for Gay a concluding commentary that demonstrates that not only do criminals mock the courts and their officials, but such instances also are commonplace among all members of society. The upper, middle, and lower classes all suffer the pangs of injustice, and in the end, only the audience is laughing. James N. Ortego II

Love in The Beggar’s Opera

The Beggar’s Opera owes its resounding success in part to the play’s thematic concerns with love and marriage. Polly, the oft-simplistic daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peachum, finds herself at the center of a love triangle involving herself, Macheath, and Lucy, a prostitute. Additional problems arise for the young lovers when Polly’s parents decidedly forbid her to marry Macheath. Polly’s conflict stems from her filial duty to her parents and her love for Macheath, but her arguments that dismiss “honor or money” in favor of “love for him” fall on the deaf ears of her father, Peachum. Polly wants simply to become like the “gentle town ladies” she admires, but her marriage would cause her parents great financial loss. Early 18th-century women who married became literally the property of their husbands, which is what the Peachums fear might happen to Polly. Her entreaties to her parents (often expressed in song) for a union with Macheath frequently elicit from her father threats of violence and misery, which in turn prompt Polly to pursue Macheath in secret. Polly and Macheath determine that—for his own safety—“we must part” until she can devise some way to convince Peachum that marriage would best suit her interests. The two lovers then part with a kiss and a song as the play’s focus then shifts to the criminal lifestyle of the Peachums. Macheath, upon his departure from Polly, visits a group of his fellow criminals to discuss the hazards

484â•…â•… Gilman, Charlotte Perkins of criminal activity while he ponders his “foolish wench,” Polly. Macheath confesses that Polly’s affections sway him to consider marriage seriously, but his thoughts are soon interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Coaxer and her stable of prostitutes. After much banter concerning the “kind service” provided by Mrs. Coaxer’s women, Macheath is shortly arrested by Peachum, the culmination of his plot to remove Macheath from Polly’s life. Macheath then curses women as “decoy ducks” who seek only to destroy men, a sentiment that soon sours his attitude toward Polly. Macheath is first visited in Newgate Prison by Lucy, a former lover, who immediately rebukes him for his relationship to Polly. Macheath has a way with words, however, and he is soon able to calm Lucy’s trepidations. Peachum, meanwhile, has presented his case against Macheath to Lockit the prison guard, who confirms Macheath’s guilt and threatens him with execution. Polly then visits Macheath as he broods in prison, and she meets Lucy for the first time, and the two women learn of Macheath’s polygamy. The rival women first focus their anger toward Macheath, then turn their rage upon each other. Each jilted women takes little comfort in Macheath’s assurance of love as a “joke.” Soon Lucy begins to soften her stance toward Macheath, but Polly remains in turmoil. Lockit meanwhile finds himself trying to keep track not only of Macheath, Polly, and Lucy, but also of Peachum’s plot to have Macheath executed for his crimes. The multiple subplots prove too much for Lockit, however, and Macheath manages to escape with Lucy’s aid, only “to go to her” (Polly), as Lucy fears. To calm her worries, Lucy then decides to confront Polly and settle the argument between them once and for all, and the two women carry on numerous arguments and discussions about love, men, marriage, and women. Neither woman reaches a satisfactory conclusion regarding themselves and Macheath, and the play then hastens to a conclusion that leaves the love triangle involving Lucy, Polly, and Macheath unresolved. After finally being confronted by both women in prison near the end of the play, the Jailor introduces “four women more,” each one “bearing a child” to Macheath. Six women now appear on stage and

each claims an amorous association with Macheath, but rather than pick one of the six, the Beggar and Player suddenly appear and release Macheath from prison to appease the audience, and there the play ends. The audience never knows which woman Macheath ultimately chooses, if he chooses any woman at all, nor whether or not he is legally married to Polly, Lucy, or both. Instead, The Beggar’s Opera ends on a humorous note that leaves the spectators to draw their own conclusions regarding love. James N. Ortego II

Gilman, Charlotte Perkinsâ•… The Yellow Wallpaperâ•… (1892)

The Yellow Wallpaper was first published in New England Magazine as “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in 1892. Although now seen as Gilman’s most important work, during her lifetime she was most known for Women and Economics (1898), a nonfiction work that explored the place of women in late-19thcentury America. The Yellow Wallpaper was largely critically ignored until it was reissued by the Feminist Press in 1973. The Yellow Wallpaper is the first-person account of a woman undergoing a “rest cure.” She has been diagnosed with a “hysterical tendency” by her physician husband because she has been unable to care for her newborn baby. As part of her “rest cure,” she has been confined to an attic room and forbidden to have any physical, emotional, or intellectual stimulation. This includes the instruction that she is not to write. The story, her journal account of her experience, becomes evidence of her disagreement and defiance of this prescription. Shortly after being confined, the narrator decides that there is something strange about the wallpaper that covers the walls of this attic room. As the story progresses, she becomes convinced that there are women trapped inside the strange pattern of the wallpaper. The story ends with the narrator’s attempt at freeing the women in the wallpaper. Three major themes explored by Gilman in The Yellow Wallpaper are illness, gender, and freedom. Since its republication, The Yellow Wallpaper has been considered an important work, not only of feminist literature but also of American literature.

The Yellow Wallpaperâ•…â•… 485 Almost all major anthologies of American literature include The Yellow Wallpaper. Carmine Esposito

Freedom in The Yellow Wallpaper

The main character’s fight for freedom is a major theme of The Yellow Wallpaper. At the start of The Yellow Wallpaper, we are told that the narrator is being treated by her physician husband for a nervous condition. As part of her treatment, the narrator is confined to an attic room and “absolutely forbidden to ‘work.’↜” Even though the narrator disagrees with this treatment, she is powerless to fight it, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” The narrator finds herself at the start of the story both physically and psychologically confined. As the story progresses, we witness the narrator free herself from the psychological strictures that bind her. Undergoing the “rest cure,” the narrator is not free to make decisions about her life as even trips and visitors are carefully regulated by her husband, “I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia. But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there.” Unable to communicate with her husband, the narrator finds strength in writing her thoughts in her journal, “And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way—it is such a relief !” Writing becomes the vehicle through which the narrator begins the process of freeing herself. In the first half of the story, the room in which the narrator is confined becomes, for her, a symbol of her lack of freedom, “I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza.” The garden that she can see from the windows of her attic room becomes a symbol of freedom, “There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden—large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.” As the story progresses she begins to see a woman in the wallpaper that covers the walls of her attic room, “Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same

shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern.” The narrator realizes that the woman in the wallpaper is trapped by the pattern of the wallpaper much in the same way as she is trapped in the attic room: “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.” In the second half of The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator struggles to free the woman in the wallpaper as she fights to free herself from her life of servility as a mother and wife. She begins by tearing down the wallpaper that confines the woman; “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.” As the narrator fights for her freedom, her attitude toward the room changes; “I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.” What earlier was a symbol of her servility, the room, becomes a source for her freedom. In the attic room, she is free to act as she chooses; “It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please.” The garden, which had earlier represented freedom for her, now promises only confinement. In the garden, the narrator would not be free to act as she chooses, “I don’t want to go outside. I won’t, even if Jennie asks me to. For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.” In this way, The Yellow Wallpaper can be read as a story of liberation. At the end, the narrator is able to free herself from the life of servility that patriarchal culture would have her accept as normal. But what is also clear is that this liberation is limited and her freedom comes with a price. Ironically, the narrator can be free only when she decides to confine herself to her attic room. Through this, The Yellow Wallpaper shows us that all struggles for liberation and freedom are limited by the culture that surrounds them. Carmine Esposito

Gender in The Yellow Wallpaper

One way to read The Yellow Wallpaper is as a story that explores the relationship between gender and power in the United States in the 19th century. At the start of the story the narrator tells us about the nature of her relationship with her husband: “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in

486â•…â•… Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Â� marriage.” The attitude John has toward the narrator reflects the general attitude of men toward women at this time. More important, at the beginning of the story, the narrator agrees with and accepts this attitude as “natural.” At the start of the story, we see that this attitude leads the narrator to be treated as if she were a child. She is put in an attic room even though she wanted a room that opened onto the garden. She believes that this attic room was used as a nursery in the past, which reflects her suspicion that she is being treated as a child. In addition, the narrator is never named by the author. The story is written in the first person, being made up of her journal entries. However, her husband never refers to her by her name, always referring to her by a pet name, such as “blessed goose” or “little girl,” which reduces her to a child. Throughout the first half of the story, the narrator compares herself to her sister-in-law Jenny and the housekeeper Mary. She feels very badly that she cannot perform her “duties” as a wife and mother: “It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way!” We find out that the reason they have hired Mary and that the narrator is considered “sick” is that the narrator is unable to take care of her child: “It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.” For the narrator, her sister-in-law comes to represent the ideal wife and mother, the woman who finds fulfillment in putting her husband and children’s well-being and desires above her own: “She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession.” Part of the narrator’s “problem” is that she doesn’t want to put her “duties” as a mother and wife above her own desire to write, a choice her husband is not forced to make. When she tells her husband that she feels better when he is at home and asks him to stay with her, he answers, “Why, how can I, dear?” meaning his responsibility to his profession and patients comes before his wife’s needs. As a woman, the narrator could never put her professional responsibilities above the needs of her husband or child. In the second half of the story, the narrator begins to see women trapped behind the wallpaper that covers the walls of her attic room. These women

can be read as psychological projections of the narrator’s predicament: As they are trapped behind the wallpaper, she is trapped in this attic room. They can also be read as a metaphor for the position of women in the United States in the 19th century. The women trapped behind the wallpaper represent the lack of power and freedom women had at this time. After encountering these women, the narrator notices that they “creep,” saying “And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern.” Creeping becomes a metaphor for any unacceptable behavior by women, “It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! I always lock the door when I creep by daylight.” It is at this point that the narrator decides to free the women by tearing down all the wallpaper in the room. In tearing down the wallpaper, the narrator not only frees the women in the wallpaper but also starts the process of her own questioning of the “naturalness” of gender roles. This questioning leads to the reversals in gender roles that signal the shift in power at the end of the story. While in the first half of the story, the narrator was treated as a child, silenced by her husband, and locked in her attic room, at the end of the story, she turns her husband into a child by calling him “young man,” she locks everyone out of her room by tossing the key out the window, and silences her husband when she informs him, “↜‘the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf !’↜” The final reversal of power takes place in the last two lines of the story, “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”At the time this story was written, melodrama was very popular, and in traditional melodrama, women faint. John’s fainting at the end of the story signals to us a reversal in gender roles. And the narrator’s continuing to “creep,” even after her husband has “blocked” her path, signals to us a reversal of power. The narrator is no longer “under” her husband, but “over him.” Carmine Esposito

Illness in The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper is an autobiographical short story based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own

Triflesâ•…â•… 487 experience with illness and the “rest cure.” At the beginning of The Yellow Wallpaper, we learn that the narrator, like Gilman, has been diagnosed as suffering from a “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency,” following the birth of her child. The narrator’s husband, John is a physician. The treatment they have prescribed for the narrator is the “rest cure.” At the end of the 19th century, the “rest cure” was a common treatment for upper-class women deemed to be suffering from “women’s diseases” such as “hysteria.” The “rest cure” required that patients have no physical or intellectual stimulation. Part of what this means for the narrator is that she has been forbidden to write. The narrator does not agree with this prescription, and The Yellow Wallpaper itself becomes evidence of her resistance to her treatment, since it is made up of the journal entries she has been secretly recording. The narrator is threatened that if she doesn’t get well and follow her husband’s instructions, she will be sent to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, whom the narrator describes as, “like John and my brother, only more so.” Mitchell was the physician who treated Gilman for “hysteria” and who was famous for his “rest cure” for “hysterics.” In the late 19th century, “women’s diseases” such as “hysteria” were often associated with actions or emotional responses that were seen as inappropriate for women. In the narrator’s case, she is diagnosed with “hysteria” because she has not “properly” bonded with her baby—“It is fortunate Mary is good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous”—and because of her heightened imagination, “He says that with my imaginative power and habit of storymaking, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency.” It is important to note that in the late 19th century neither of these traits would be seen as an illness in men. The narrator’s imaginative tendency is contrasted to John’s scientific approach to life: “John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not being felt and seen and put down in figures.” Even in judging if his wife’s con-

dition is improving, John uses quantifiable criteria: “You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you.” When the narrator suggests that her “problem” may be other than physical, she is quickly silenced, “Better in body perhaps—.” In the world the narrator lives in, reason equals health and imagination equals illness. But ironically, it is only when the narrator indulges her imagination in contemplating the mystery of the wallpaper that she begins to feel better. “John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wall-paper. I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wallpaper—he would make fun of me.” Illness can be read in two ways in The Yellow Wallpaper, one literal and one metaphorical. On one level, the story can be read as a protest against the treatment that Gilman herself received under Dr. Weir Mitchell’s care. Gilman believed that her condition worsened while undergoing the “rest cure” and that she improved only when she took control of her own treatment and indulged her creative impulses. Gilman’s experience with the “rest cure” is reflected in the experience of the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper. In fact, Weir Mitchell acknowledged the role the The Yellow Wallpaper played in his abandoning the “rest cure” as a treatment. Metaphorically, illness can be read as a device used by patriarchal culture to control the behavior of women. When the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper behaves in ways that are seen as inappropriate for a woman to act, she is deemed ill and is locked in a room until the inappropriate behavior can be controlled. In this way, the story employs illness as a metaphor for the control patriarchal culture has over the lives of women. Carmine Esposito

Glaspell, Susanâ•… Triflesâ•… (1916)

In Trifles, Susan Glaspell depicts the murder case of John Wright. Based on a trial that Glaspell covered as a journalist, the play takes place in the Wright home on the morning after John’s wife, Minnie, was arrested for strangling her husband. Men enter the house on official business: The county attorney, the sheriff, and Mr. Hale are there to secure evidence

488â•…â•… Glaspell, Susan and find clues that might aid them in solving the crime. In their search, they concentrate on the bedroom, where the body was found, and the entrance ways to the house to see if an intruder might have killed John Wright. On the other hand, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, while packing some things together for the incarcerated Minnie, find evidence among Minnie’s things that not only prove Minnie’s guilt, but also bear witness to her lonely and isolated life with a husband who did not care much about her. Minnie’s quilt, a nice and carefully done piece for the most part, was sewn together haphazardly in other places—a sign to the women that told them of Minnie’s distress and preoccupation. Furthermore, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters stumble over the body of a dead canary. They conclude that it must have been John Wright who had wrung its neck, and Minnie put it away lovingly in a box because the bird had been the only thing to ever bring some joy into her life. Full of sympathy and understanding for Minnie, the women conceal the evidence from the returning men who consider the kitchen as too unimportant to contain anything of value for their investigation. Elke Brown

Gender in Trifles

Gender is probably the central theme of Trifles. Indeed, it pervades all other aspects and themes of the play, such as isolation and justice. In Trifles, we are confronted with very clear gender definitions: Men and women have their own spheres, and they each follow their own ethical and moral standards. In the setting of the play, men stand for the rational, objective, professional world. Thus, the men’s idea of justice follows the interpretation of the law without much consideration of emotional or psychological circumstances. For example, the attorney is looking for a suspect, but he does not stop to consider the question of motive for John Wright’s murder. Consequently, in his complete dismissal of the female sphere, he fails to recognize clues as such. This male arrogance, born of century-old feelings of superiority over women, precludes any success in his investigation. The same kind of arrogance also led to John Wright’s death. Admittedly, being a man who loves

his quiet and dislikes singing may just be a personality issue. However, nothing gave Wright the right to dominate and terrorize his wife, Minnie. According to Mrs. Hale, the Wrights’ neighbor, Wright was a harsh man, and his moods and possible violence caused Minnie’s spirit to be subdued. Finally, when Wright killed Minnie’s canary in an outburst of rage, he also destroyed the last bit of beauty that had been in her life. This act seals his fate: Without anything to care for other than a husband who does not seem to care much for her, Minnie strangles her husband. The clues that might explain her motive are all found in and around the kitchen—traditionally, the very symbol of the woman’s place. In fact, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are the ones who find these clues and interpret them correctly. As women, they know about life as a farmer’s wife. They share the experience of living a fairly isolated life of hard work. Even if their marriages are happier than Minnie’s was, life in this midwestern community for women is similar enough to draw the correct conclusions about Minnie’s motive. While women and men clearly have different attitudes and their spheres seem separate enough, they are not entirely separate from each other. The play clearly demonstrates how, whenever a relationship exists between men and women, the women are supposed to convert to the male point of view. When the attorney addresses Mrs. Peters, he fully expects her to act in the spirit of her husband’s official orders. As a sheriff ’s wife, she is married not only to Mr. Peters, the person, but also to his profession. Hence, her idea of justice is supposed to be submission to the official (male) interpretation of the law. Mrs. Peters is governed by this dogma, until she remembers the silence in her own house after the death of one of her children. This memory produces a powerful bond between her and Minnie’s experience of isolation and loneliness, so powerful, indeed, that Mrs. Peters herself attempts to hide the box with the dead canary in it—fully aware that this action goes against everything society and her husband expect her to do, not only on legal grounds but also because, as a wife, Mrs. Peters is not supposed to act against her husband. Both Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale consciously defy the laws laid down by

Triflesâ•…â•… 489 the patriarchal order and thus declare their rights as individuals and women. In our so-called enlightened time, we occasionally overlook the truth that, even today, inequalities between men and women exist—be they employment opportunities or the question of equal pay. When Trifles was written, the woman as the “angel in the house” was an idea as popular as it had been in the late 19th century. However, it would be wrong to assume that Trifles has no significance beyond the 1920s. What the drama depicts, most of all, is a psychological study of power structures in a patriarchy where men and women are on opposing sides and what can happen if the angel in the house is married to a devil. Elke Brown

Isolation in Trifles

In her play Trifles, Susan Glaspell alerts us to the harsh life of the midwestern farmer’s wife. Through the sheer vastness of the land, people in a farming community live relatively far apart, but spatial isolation does not necessarily lead to murder. Minnie Wright’s case illustrates that it is her social and emotional isolation from the community that drive her to her desperate act. Certainly, the logistical and geographical conditions of a farming community preclude proximity. Yet communal activities exist: Mrs. Hale laments the fact that Minnie stopped singing in the church choir and being a member of the Ladies Aid. She assumes that Minnie felt she could not attend anymore because she could not contribute enough. Thus, her financial circumstances preclude Minnie from perceiving herself as being on equal social footing with the other women. She feels uncomfortable in their company and gives up on joint projects. While it is not clear from the play whether John Wright had anything to do with Minnie’s decision to stop any of these activities, Mrs. Hale’s description of him makes it seem very likely that he did. According to her, Wright was a harsh man, who liked to have his quiet and disapproved of conversation and singing. For that reason, he wrung the canary’s neck. Likewise, he killed his wife’s creative and musical spirit, turning a happy, cheerful Minnie Foster into a lonely, desperate Minnie Wright.

This lack of cheerfulness in the Wright household isolated Minnie only further. While all farmers’ wives lead a busy life with everything there is to do around a farm and to keep up a household, Mrs. Hale admits that this had not been the reason why she stopped visiting her neighbor Minnie. Indeed, it was the lack of cheerfulness, the tangible coldness of the place that kept her away. Now that Minnie is in jail and John Wright dead, Mrs. Hale feels guilty about not coming more often, thinking that, if Minnie had had one thing to look forward to—the visit of a friend—she might not have killed her husband. Minnie’s loneliness and isolation are symbolized in the quilt that she had been working on. Ironically, it is this quilt that “speaks” to Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters in Minnie’s stead. The quilt she had been working on is a log cabin pattern and, as the women explain to the men, Minnie was going to knot it. The first clue about Minnie’s real state of mind lies in the fact that parts of the quilt have been sewn together haphazardly—Mrs. Hale at once sets to correcting the stitches, probably fully aware of the fact that she is destroying evidence. Apparently, Minnie was too distracted and preoccupied after her husband killed the canary to pay attention to her sewing. Traditionally, quilting is a communal activity. That Minnie was working on this quilt by herself is another indication of her isolated state. Yet, quilting provided her with a creative outlet that would also produce something useful. It would, thus, have been an acceptable activity to her husband. The fact that Minnie was going to knot the quilt—a method of joining the layers of a quilt—illustrates the fact that her emphasis was on getting the job done quickly rather than producing a fine piece of art, certainly reflective of John Wright’s attitude toward household items. Furthermore, the quilt is a log cabin pattern. In this pattern, each square begins with a small middle square around which rectangular strips are sewn until the block is complete. The quilt and its overall pattern are revealed only when all the blocks are joined. The single block contributes to the pattern but has no significance on its own. Minnie’s position equals that of the innermost, smallest square that, although the center of the block, is the tiniest and least remarkable one.

490â•…â•… Glaspell, Susan This position is supported by Minnie’s sleeping arrangements. As she tells the sheriff, she did not notice John Wright’s death because she was lying on the inside of the bed. Thus, she was boxed in by walls and her husband. To break free, she had to break one or the other. Trifles shows us that, while spatial conditions can contribute to isolation, they are not the deciding factor. In fact, Minnie’s unbearable isolation was caused by her husband’s complete lack of understanding or tolerance of her personality. These gender relations, the complete dominance of the patriarchal authority that does not leave Minnie any space to be herself in a place and time that does not allow for divorce without making Minnie a complete outcast, force her to the desperate final act of killing her husband. Elke Brown

Justice in Trifles

Although we like to think of justice as a completely objective, impartial force, Trifles nicely demonstrates that this is not the case. In fact, we are confronted with various interpretations of what justice entails. At first glance, there appears to be only the kind of justice illustrated by its official representatives, namely Sheriff Peters and the county attorney. These two represent the law and have to make sure that the investigation of the crime scene, John Wright’s house, follows due procedure. They are there to secure evidence and discourage any tampering with the crime scene. However, as the play progresses, the simple, clear-cut definition of justice becomes increasingly complicated. It soon becomes evident that there is a distinction between insiders and outsiders of the community. The county attorney, as outsider, demands the following of protocol. He knew neither John nor Minnie Wright or anything about their history, and he cuts off the others every time they begin to explain the nature of their neighbors’ relationships. What he is looking for is hard, tangible evidence; he is not interested in any psychological implications. The people who knew the Wrights, however, place some importance on their knowledge of the couple. Repeatedly, they attempt to inform the county attorney of little facts that reveal the fabric

of the community. While both the men and women try to interest the attorney in the Wrights as people and not just as murder victim and suspect, it is the women who have the clearest insight into their relationship. Although they are constantly dismissed by the lawyer, they ironically uncover all the evidence that points to Minnie as her husband’s murderer. In the exchange between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, the complicated nature of justice becomes evident. Mrs. Hale has known Minnie for a long time but stopped visiting her because the joyless atmosphere in the Wright house made her feel uncomfortable. Now she feels guilty for having abandoned Minnie and partially responsible for Wright’s murder. Her idea of justice is guided by the knowledge of what life is like for a farmer’s wife and her acquaintance with the Wrights. Knowing that John Wright was a hard man who did not allow for singing or even much talking around him, she senses that he destroyed Minnie’s happy spirit. After their marriage, Minnie stopped attending any social functions and did not sing anymore, although she had always enjoyed being in the church choir. When Mrs. Hale finds the canary with its broken neck, she immediately realizes that this bird symbolizes Minnie’s spirit broken by her husband just as he broke the canary’s neck. Mrs. Hale understands that the bird provided Minnie with song and joy in her lonely, childless marriage. Mrs. Hale surmises that, after Wright killed the bird, his wife’s despair over the loss of the one thing that brightened her life drove her to strangle her husband with a rope. Mrs. Hale questions the institution of justice as it is pursued by its officials; to her, Minnie’s crime—though gruesome—is justified and the people who should be on trial are John Wright and her as a representative of the community that abandoned Minnie. On the other hand, Mrs. Peters at first tries to share the official stance of her husband and attempts to keep any personal knowledge from interfering with the investigation. However, as a fellow woman and insider of the community, she is well aware of the harshness and isolation of the midwestern farmer’s wife. She eventually completely connects with Minnie’s plight when Mrs. Hale tells her about the oppressing stillness of the house. Having lost a child and reflecting on how quiet it got after

Lord of the Fliesâ•…â•… 491 its death, Mrs. Peters fully comprehends Minnie’s loneliness. It is this shared experience that convinces her of the righteousness of Mrs. Hale’s manipulation of the evidence. At first shocked when Mrs. Hale sits down to undo a piece of Minnie’s quilt that the latter had been working on but that had been sewn badly and haphazardly due to Minnie’s state of mind, Mrs. Peters tries to stuff the box that contains the dead bird into her bag. Since she cannot fit it in there, Mrs. Hale hides it in her coat pocket, so that the men will not be able to find it and use it against Minnie. The women thus decide that their humanistic idea of justice outweighs the men’s dogmatic reading of the law. Elke Brown

Golding, Williamâ•… Lord of the Fliesâ•… (1954)

William Golding’s first novel, Lord of the Flies, was originally published in 1954, and it has been required reading in most schools and colleges since the early 1960s. The novel centers around a group of English schoolboys whose plane crashes onto a deserted island during World War II. They subsequently try to form a mini-civilization only to reach a horrific outcome. The book’s views on human nature and its relationship to civilization, illustrated through the boys’ behavior, has caused it to be one of the most challenged books of the late 20th century. The main characters consist of Ralph, Piggy, and Jack. Ralph, one of the older boys, becomes the impromptu leader of the group. He, with the help of the socially inept Piggy, sets about creating a society on the island through building shelters, constructing a signal fire, and organizing the collection of food. Jack is the leader of the hunters and Ralph’s rival for power over the group. Eventually most of the boys follow Jack’s example and become swept up in the thrill of the hunt, leaving Ralph and the island society behind, with disastrous results. Golding uses these children to explore themes such as individual and society, cruelty, survival, community, ethics, isolation, and spirituality. Lord of the Flies is meant to be an allegory. Its characters represent abstract principles such as reason, societal rules, spirituality, and savagery. Golding

seems to think that all of these influence human behavior and have a part in human nature. However, he appears to view savagery as the core of human nature, based on the behavior of most of the boys by the end of the book. Ryan Neighbors

Cruelty in Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies by William Golding centers on a group of schoolboys who are marooned on a deserted island after their plane crashes. Initially, the boys try to set up life on the island much as it was in civilization—they create an island democracy, choose a “biggun,” Ralph, as their leader, and set about building shelter and finding food. However, as the boys spend more time on the island, they become increasingly cruel. This tendency toward cruelty can be seen very early in the novel. For instance, in one scene, Henry, one of the “littluns,” plays with plankton on the beach, trapping them in his footprint when the tide comes in. He enjoys this cruel control over other living things. Little does he know that one of the bigguns, Roger, is exerting the same control over him. As Henry plays, Roger watches from the jungle, throwing rocks in a circle around the little boy. The implication is that Roger not only longs for that control but also actually wishes to do harm to Henry. All that stops him are cultural values he has learned from his parents and from his society. The cruelty in the novel continues through the boys’ desire to hunt. This hunting begins innocently enough—Jack, one of the older children, dubs the choirboys the hunters and himself their leader, intending to help provide food for all of the boys. However, hunting soon becomes an obsession. In fact, the hunters eventually shun all of their other responsibilities in favor of the hunt. This even causes the group to miss a chance at rescue, because the hunters fail to keep the signal fire lit as a ship passes by the island. Their obsession with hunting eventually leads them to bloodlust, frenzy, and murder. This descent begins when the hunters kill a sow. They stick its head on a pike and begin to dance in a ritualistic, tribal celebration. In the midst of this commotion, Simon, one of the older boys, wanders into the group,

492â•…â•… Golding, William and the other boys kill him, thinking him a monster. Ralph and his friend Piggy feel remorse over Simon’s death and try to get Jack and his hunters to see reason. However, Jack will not listen. Roger rolls a boulder over Piggy, killing him, and the hunters chase Ralph into the jungle. He hides for nearly a day as he is hunted like an animal. The only thing that saves him is the boys’ rescue by the British navy. The main symbol for cruelty in the novel is the beast. From the beginning, the “littluns” have nightmares, and many believe a monster lurks on the island. One night when a dead pilot drops from the sky in a parachute, the boys believe they have actually seen the monster. As they become more enthralled in the hunt and its bloodlust, they even begin to worship this beast, leaving it sacrifices, such as the sow’s head on a pike, as if it were a tribal god. Only Simon is able to realize the truth. He sees the dead pilot for what he really is and also realizes the truth of the beast through a vision in which the sow’s head talks to him as “Lord of the Flies.” Simon realizes there is no external beast. There is only the cruelty that exists in each of the boys. They fear it because it is in them. It is this knowledge and Simon’s innate morality that necessitates his death. In a sense, he is too good for the island, and the world. This seems to be the central point of the story— cruelty is a basic aspect of human nature. The island does not make the boys barbaric. They are naturally that way. The island only provides an environment, away from societal norms and values, for their true nature to manifest itself. That is why the descent into cruelty progresses as it does in the novel. It takes time for the societal values to wear away, leaving behind the boys’ true selves, ending with terrible consequences. Ryan Neighbors

Individual and Society in Lord of the Flies

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of English schoolboys are stranded on a deserted island when their plane is shot down as they flee Britain. In the beginning of the novel, the boys have a meeting and form a mini-civilization, electing an older boy named Ralph as their leader. As the novel progresses, however, more and more of the boys begin to live as hunters, led by self-proclaimed warrior-

dictator Jack, turning their backs on the society they have created on the island. This tug-of-war between individual impulses and the rules and welfare of their society is apparent in nearly all of the schoolboys and through several symbols in the novel. This struggle is seen most clearly in the novel’s protagonist Ralph. Ralph represents society and order in Golding’s narrative. He uses the conch shell to call the meeting and is named as the boys’ leader, initiating their island democracy. He immediately urges the boys to construct huts on the beach and build a signal fire on the mountain, so they will hopefully be returned to the society of the adults. During the course of the novel, however, Ralph, like the other boys, begins to feel the bloodlust within himself. On his first hunt, he experiences the thrill of violence and even gets swept up in the dancing frenzy after the killing of a sow. It is the murder of Simon at this celebration, though, that returns Ralph to his senses. He again becomes a civilizing influence to the boys, even though most of them have already turned their backs on society to indulge their individual urges. This indulgence of impulses centers around the character of Jack. He is the boy who suggests the children hunt in the beginning of the novel. In fact, he becomes obsessed with the activity, and his enthusiasm spreads to many of the other boys. He leads the group in the killing of the sow, the resulting tribe-like celebration, and the murder of Simon. Later in the novel, he even breaks away from Ralph’s newly formed society, forming his own tribe of hunters. Jack comes to represent the barbaric, self-indulgent turning from society that most of the boys embrace. Perhaps the most disturbing example of the conflict between the individual and society in the novel is Jack’s friend, Roger. In the early pages of the novel, Roger seems like a perfectly normal boy. In the book’s fourth chapter, however, a scene foreshadows the character’s turn from society. It is in this chapter that we see Henry, one of the “littluns,” playing with plankton on the beach. As the tide comes in, the plankton become trapped in the depression of Henry’s footprint. The little boy feels exhilarated at being in control of other living things. Unbeknownst to him, Roger watches from the jungle. The older

Lord of the Fliesâ•…â•… 493 boy begins to throw rocks at the younger, intentionally missing and forming a circle of rocks around him. Roger is, in essence, exerting the same control over Henry that Henry exerts over the plankton. He does not injure the smaller boy because his arm has been conditioned by the society they have been separated from. These societal rules soon fade from Roger’s mind, though. Toward the end of the novel, the earlier scene is mirrored when Roger murders Piggy with a boulder. Society’s rules no longer hinder his individual nature. Finally, a few symbols represent this interplay between the individual and society. The conch shell that first appears in the opening chapter symbolizes civilization. The boys use it to conduct their meetings, and only the boy holding the conch can speak. As the novel progresses, the boys’ journey away from society is shown in their disregard for the conch and its rules. This culminates in the destruction of the shell at Piggy’s death. Likewise, the signal fire points to the boys’ desire for the society they have left behind. As the hunters become more engrossed in killing, they forget to keep the fire ablaze and actually miss a chance at rescue. By this point, their desire for violence outweighs their desire for rules and peaceful coexistence. It appears that Golding is making the statement that humans are not innately moral beings; they naturally hunger for barbarism, violence, and power. In Golding’s novel, morality is imposed on the children by their society, and when the society is no longer there to police them, they revert to a more primitive state. It is only at the end of the novel, when faced with the prospect of returning to civilization, that they see where disregarding societal rules has taken them. Ryan Neighbors

Survival in Lord of the Flies

In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of schoolboys of various ages must survive on a deserted island after their plane is shot down as they try to escape Britain during World War II. The book centers around the attempts they make to survive, beginning with forming an island democracy and including the eventual turning from that democracy and its rules. In all, the boys take several steps to

guarantee their survival. These steps are taken to ensure their safety and to meet their basic needs. They include creating an island society, building shelter, starting a signal fire, and hunting. The boys create an island society to establish order on the island and to mirror the society they have left where they felt secure. They elect a leader, Ralph, and define the rules of their society, such as allowing only the person holding the conch shell to speak at meetings. Eventually, however, the boys turn their backs on the societal rules they have created, instead relying on their barbaric natures to ensure their survival. This turning from society begins with their disregarding the rule of the conch shell. It reaches its symbolic peak in the destruction of the conch shell toward the end of the novel. The first task the boys set about after creating their island society is to build shelters and gather food. Though all of the boys seem excited about the plan to build huts, only Ralph and Simon work to build them while the others play in the lagoon. This implies that while all of the boys want their basic needs met, only a couple of the older ones are willing to do what it takes to ensure their survival. Likewise, the boys set about gathering fruit to eat, though it is mainly just a few of the older ones who are willing to do this, as well. In addition to gathering fruit, many of the boys, led by Jack, opt to hunt for their food. This desire to hunt arises after Jack sees a sow, though it is several days before the sow will provide sustenance for them. Nevertheless, the hunt soon consumes many of the boys, leading to the fall of the island society. Early in the novel, Piggy, the voice of reason in the group, brings it to the others’ attention that it will likely be some time before they are rescued. This revelation frightens many of the children but eventually prompts them to create a signal fire on the mountain. In their first attempt at building the fire, the boys spend more time playing than actually attending to it. The fire begins to burn out of control, burning a large path through the forest and presumably killing one of the “littluns.” Eventually, the group, led by the hunters, is able to safely control the fire and let it continue to burn. However, much like their turning from their island society, the boys become so focused on hunting that they ultimately

494â•…â•… Gordimer, Nadine quit keeping up the signal fire, causing them to actually miss a chance at rescue. Once again, the boys turn their backs on all other aspects of survival in favor of the hunt. It is this avenue of survival—the hunt—that eventually engrosses most of the boys. The thrill they get from hunting intoxicates them, leading to a sort of bloodlust. It is exemplified in the frenzied, tribal dance that occurs after the killing of the sow. However, the bloodlust and barbarism they feel becomes generalized, not being focused solely on the island wildlife. The irony is that this method of surviving actually leads to the death of several boys, including Simon and Piggy. The savage nature of the hunters even makes Ralph run for his life as they try to kill him. This leads to the central point that Golding is trying to make: Human nature is inherently corrupt. In essence, he is saying that our natures are so corrupt that even the boys’ attempts at survival become twisted and lead to death, particularly in the case of hunting. What at one time was used for the benefit of all of the group actually results in the death of some of its members and forces the group’s former leader Ralph to escape his former followers. Because of this corrupt nature, no one is safe, and it is every man for himself. Ryan Neighbors

Gordimer, Nadineâ•… Burger’s Daughterâ•… (1979)

South African-born Nadine Gordimer’s 1979 novel, Burger’s Daughter, deals with the three themes of justice, race, and survival cyclically and extensively. Taking place within the sociopolitical climate of the massacres at Sharpeville in 1960 and Soweto in 1976, the dramatic events of Burger’s Daughter are recounted through the perspective of young Rosa Burger, daughter of Lionel and Cathy Burger. Descendants of white Dutch settlers who came to be known as Afrikaners, the Burgers become martyrs for the cause of racial equality and social justice for all South Africans. Lionel, a medical doctor, sees in communism what he believes is the solution to the problems plaguing South Africa, and he becomes an active member of the South African Communist

Party. Rosa’s parents are imprisoned and eventually die for their cause, and the young girl is left to carry on their legacy while crafting some semblance of a life for herself. Because of her family’s history of radical involvement in activist causes, she remains “Burger’s daughter” long after Lionel’s death and is placed under government surveillance for the rest of her life. The novel challenges readers with its stream of consciousness narrative threads, which simultaneously reflect the horrifying realities of time and place while representing Rosa’s innermost thoughts and perspectives. Walter Collins III

Justice in Burger’s Daughter

Tied closely to the issue of race, the notion of justice, or lack thereof, permeates Burger’s Daughter. Through the mind and eyes of Rosa Burger, readers learn of the ubiquitous injustices black South Africans confront due to lives lived in a prejudiced society. Rosa’s parents, Lionel and Cathy, are the agents through whom many of the issues of justice are exposed in the novel and their stances against inequality and discrimination based on race and economic situation leave them subject to recrimination by fellow Afrikaners who fail to view certain sociopolitical practices in South Africa as problematic. Early on, Rosa recalls her father’s speech, given in defense of fighting for black South Africans, during the course of one of his trials. For more than an hour, Lionel testifies to the injustices that abound in society. During his lifetime, he has witnessed bigotry in the schools, in religious organizations that proclaim to “worship the God of Justice [yet] practice discrimination on the grounds of the colour of skin,” and later, as a doctor, he observed unfair treatment of blacks in hospitals where he practiced. It is because of these situations that Lionel subscribes to Marxism. At one point in his speech, he asserts: “This contradiction that split the very foundation of my life,  .  .  . in Marxism I found it analysed in another way: as forces in conflict through economic laws. I saw that white Marxists worked side by side with blacks in an equality that meant taking on the meanest of tasks .  .  . I saw whites prepared to work under blacks. Here was a possible solution to injustice to be sought outside the awful fallibility

Burger’s Daughterâ•…â•… 495 in any self-professed morality I knew.” Lionel risks everything, including his own life, as he holds to his personal convictions and his conception of justice while fighting against ever-present injustice. Gordimer’s story suggests that nothing short of a sweeping change of the ways in which things have always been handled will cause a change in Afrikaners’ minds concerning notions of societal justice and injustice. Marxism, with its attendant shift in personal viewpoints of perceived racial and social hierarchies, clearly evokes the idea of revolution. And while the Burger family stands strongly for such radical change to help the down and out of any race, Rosa is dubious that well-off whites will ever willingly espouse any such transformation. She realizes that “children the white couple would make in their whites’ suburb would [no longer] inherit the house bought on the municipal loan available only to whites, or slot safely into jobs reserved for whites against black competition.” Likewise, Rosa continues to be haunted by the sight of a white man dead on a park bench, seen one day during her lunch break, and she wants to believe that “when we had changed the world, . . . the ‘elimination of private conflicts set up by the competitive nature of capitalist society’ would help people to live, even people like this [dead man], who, although white and privileged under the law of the country, couldn’t make a place for himself.” The oppositions of life and death, privilege and disadvantage, justice and injustice cause Rosa to reflect on life’s inherent challenges, which seem to be overly magnified in the society she knows. Rosa even wrestles with the seeming meaninglessness of a life—a universal preoccupation—as depicted in the scene of the dead man in the park. She reckons: “Justice, equality, the brotherhood of man, human dignity—but [death] will still be there . . . .” Any semblance of justice— simply having a few things, working hard, or living life according to one’s desires—remains elusive in Burger’s Daughter. The Burgers’ collective fight for justice becomes all-consuming as details of their personal lives are slowly and almost completely erased by deeds done on behalf of those who are less fortunate. Even traditional celebrations hardly take place in their home as they fete instead “the occasions . . . when some-

body got off, not guilty, in a political trial. Leaders came out of prison. A bunch of blacks made a success of a boycott or defied a law. There was a mass protest or a march, a strike. . . .” Such “celebrations of justice” dot their lives as they continue to work toward comprehensive social change, understanding that complete justice lies somewhere in the days ahead: “There is nothing but failure, until the day the Future is achieved. It is the only success. Others—in specific campaigns with specific objectives, against the pass laws, against forced dispossession of land—would lead to piecemeal reforms . . . Failure is the accumulated heritage of resistance without which there is no revolution.” By the end of the text, it is clear that “No one knows where the end of suffering will begin.” While small victories are celebrated along the way, the novel’s concluding pages suggest that real South African justice remains uncertain. Walter Collins III

Race in Burger’s Daughter

Burger’s Daughter is a story of racial struggle. Because of their belief in racial equality, Lionel and Cathy Burger and daughter Rosa stand in stark contrast to the majority of whites, the Afrikaners, who populate South Africa. Their activism is the cause of frequent encounters with government officials. Indeed, as the novel opens, readers join Rosa in line, arms full of clothing and other provisions, outside a prison where detainees, including her mother, are held. The Burgers constantly expect prison detention, unfair court proceedings, and eventual martyrdom. Traitors, by most Afrikaners’ assessments, the family members reject what for them would be easy “[positive] reputation, success and personal liberty.” Instead they live and die for a revolution that “would change the lives of the blacks who left their hovels and compounds at four in the morning to swing picks, hold down jack-hammers and chant under the weight of girders, building shopping malls and office towers in which whites  . . moved in an ‘environment’ without sweat or dust.” Filtered through Rosa’s stream-of-consciousness reflections, the novel illustrates the hardships of blacks during apartheid. In stores, blacks are routinely treated as secondclass citizens. In one scene, Dhladhla recounts his

496â•…â•… Gordimer, Nadine experience: “When I go into the café to buy bread they give the kaffir yesterday’s stale. When he goes for fruit, the kaffir gets the half-rotten stuff the white won’t buy. That is black.” Additionally, unlike whites, blacks are required to carry passbooks when in public. One of Lionel’s early realizations regarding the passbooks catalyzes his enduring mission for racial equality. Rosa recounts this moment of her father’s recognition: “Lionel once told me how when he was about fourteen and had just come to boarding-school in Johannesburg he saw torn-up passbooks in the street .  .  . and curiosity led him to realize for the first time that the ‘natives’ were people who had to carry these things while white people like himself didn’t.” Later, when a black father, Fats, contends that his son should be allowed to participate in sports and be seen as the equal to any big name international boxer, he receives this response: “Your boy can negotiate to go to Germany and America and hell. He’s still a ‘boy’ that’s been let out like a monkey on a string.  .  .  . You’ll make a lot of money and he can show his medal with his pass when he gets back.” Not only does the future look bleak for this player, but also Gordimer demonstrates that South African blacks know that sports cannot solve national issues of racial inequality: “And if next year or the year after white soccer clubs play blacks, and take in black members, the soccer players will shout there’s no more racism in sport. But everywhere else in this country the black will still be a black. Whatever else he does he’ll still get black jobs, black education, black houses—.” Ubiquitous racism never deters the Burger family from attempts to mollify its effects. Their involvement with Baasie exemplifies the extent to which theirs is a personal cause. In a place where segregation and inequality rule, the Burgers take Baasie in and treat him like family. Baasie and Rosa fall asleep together in her bed at night, Baasie is educated illegally in Rosa’s private school and he is taught to swim and more. Baasie “fought for the anchorage of wet hair on Lionel Burger’s warm breast in the cold swimming-pool” as he is taught not only to swim but to claim freedom from what would be incapacitating fears even if his was a desegregated society. In adulthood, when Rosa again meets Baasie, she becomes aware of his bit-

terness over treatment of blacks by whites. With his own perspectives concerning South African racism and without gratitude to Rosa for her family’s earlier concerns, he rejects any white aid, sincere or otherwise: “I’m not your Baasie, just don’t go on thinking about that little kid who lived with you, don’t think of that black ‘brother’, that’s all—.” Baasie’s attitude reflects the attitudes of other blacks who feel that whites, no matter how pure their motives, can never really help blacks. Instead, for truly untainted lives, blacks must establish their own equality. In the end, readers realize that “All collaboration with whites has always ended in exploitation of blacks.” In Dhladhla’s words: “We must liberate ourselves as blacks, what has a white got to do with that?” Implicit in this notion is that South Africa’s hope and future lie with black citizens. Ancient black spirits interweave with contemporary black spirits working for freedoms today to convey that “Through blackness is revealed the way to the future.” And once blacks and whites escape wholly the oppression of apartheid everyone will find the way “to the only rendezvous that matters, the victory where there will be room for all.” Racially speaking, Burger’s Daughter ends on a guardedly hopeful note. Walter Collins III

Survival in Burger’s Daughter

Along with issues of race and justice, the issue of survival permeates Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter. Lionel Burger dies in prison of nephritis in the third year of his life sentence for fighting for the equality of black South Africans. Cathy and Tony, Rosa’s mother and brother, face untimely deaths. But the complex notion of survival is embodied in Rosa’s life. The text makes it clear throughout that in her personal and professional dealings she will always be Burger’s daughter—eternally connected to her father’s ideals, principles, and controversial ideological stances. Rosa continues her father’s work, and in that very real existence she ensures the survival of the family’s cause. Considered from another angle, actual human survival becomes complicated as well, due to the promotion of divisive racial equality and social justice causes.

Burger’s Daughterâ•…â•… 497 At the beginning of the novel, Rosa is waiting in line in front of a prison to visit her mother. Within the first few pages, readers also learn that Rosa’s father is serving a life sentence in prison. The stability of the family might easily be compromised given the activist roles that Lionel and Cathy play. However, security and protection of their family are important to the Burgers even as fighting for racial and social equality is highly valued. Rosa recollects the strategies her parents purposely employed to ensure the survival of their family. She recalls: I think that while my mother was alive and my brother was a baby my parents arranged their activities so that one of them was in the clear, always, one would always have a good chance of being left behind to carry on the household if the other were arrested  . . Then when my brother and mother were gone, there was me. If my father were to be arrested, there would always be me. Lionel and Cathy negotiated their activist roles in order to ensure the survival of their family members and the survival of their message. A card Rosa receives from her Auntie Velma and Uncle Coen Nels crystallizes the degree to which the influence of Lionel’s work to bring about equality will survive within the family. Velma and Coen, who had been strictly against Lionel’s efforts, offer for Rosa to come and stay at their farm whenever she would like or whenever she needs rest. Rosa states that [Velma] does not ask from what activity [I might seek rest,] she does not want to know in case it is, as her brother’s always was, something she fears and disapproves to the point of inconceivability .  .  . The Nels have never had any difficulty in reconciling pride in belonging to a remarkable family with the certainty that the member who made it so followed wicked and horrifying ideals . . . Whatever my father was to them, it still stalks their consciousness. In very apparent ways, the work of the Burger family survives and affects lives. In the end, one only

hopes that the Burgers’ struggle for equality will be realized for all. Survival in Burger’s Daughter encompasses the complexities of both race and social class. When Rosa observes a dead man in a park one day during her lunch break, she ponders the depths of inequality and divisiveness in South Africa. Rosa is astonished to learn in the newspaper the identity of this man who is “white and privileged under the law of the country.” Out of work, on hard times, and with no hope of securing gainful employment, this man finds it difficult to survive even as a white person: The paper said the man’s name was Ronald Ferguson, 46, an ex-miner, no fixed abode. He drank methylated spirits and slept in bus shelters. There is an element of human wastage in all societies. But—in [the Burgers’] house—it was believed that when we had changed the world . . .—the ‘elimination of private conflicts set up by the competitive nature of capitalist society’ would help people to live, even people like this one, who .  .  . couldn’t make a place for himself. If survival is difficult for this white, middle-aged man, then it becomes all the more difficult for black South Africans. Perhaps the incident in Burger’s Daughter that most distinctly demonstrates the difficulty of survival is the Soweto Uprising of June 1976. Near the end of the text, the narrator tells of the loss of life and the struggle to survive that many youth in Soweto faced following the riots: “The school riots filled the hospital; the police who answered stones with machine-guns and patrolled Soweto firing revolvers at any street-corner group of people encountered, who raided high schools and picked off the targets of youngsters escaping in the stampede, also wounded anyone else who happened to be within the random of their fire.” After a long catalogue of gruesome images of destruction, Burger’s Daughter closes on a note of measured hope that the noble objectives of the Burger family will live on to ensure not only the physical survival of the disenfranchised but also the betterment of life for all South Africans. Walter Collins III

498â•…â•… Grass, Gunter

Grass, Gunterâ•… The Tin Drumâ•… (1959)

Oskar Matzerath is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable characters in modern fiction. Both firstperson narrator and main character of The Tin Drum (1959), Oskar, a 30-year-old inmate of an asylum, relates his life story. Born, he claims, with fully developed intellectual abilities, he decides at the age of three, the age at which he acquires his first tin drum, to reject the adult world and to stop growing. In order to provide an explanation for his stunted growth, he says, he throws himself down the cellar stairs. Thus able to view the world from the perspective of a perpetual three-year-old, Oskar witnesses the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and the brutal events of World War II. As the war draws to a close, Oskar begins to grow again. In the final chapters of the book, Oskar recounts his family’s move from Danzig to West Germany and his experience from the postwar years up until his confinement in the mental institution. Grass employs a complex narrative structure for the novel, moving between first- and third-person narration. Oskar refers to himself as “I” but also as “Oskar,” as if he is speaking about another person. Oskar’s self-alienation, his status as a mental patient, and his often contradictory accounts of the past, make Oskar a very unreliable narrator. The reader must therefore question the truthfulness of his account, an autobiography that links the events of Oskar’s life to the catastrophes of the first half of 20th-century German history. Christina Kraenzle

Guilt in The Tin Drum

One of the novel’s central themes is the question of guilt. Oskar begins his account from the confines of a mental institution, where he has been incarcerated for the murder of Sister Dorothea Köngetter. Oskar denies the charge, but admits to an obsession with the nurse, giving considerable support to the case against him. However, on his 30th birthday there is a new development in the case. Oskar reports that fresh evidence suggests the murder was committed by a jealous, fellow nurse; the courts have recognized his innocence and he will soon be released. But as the reader by this point is keenly aware, Oskar is

an unreliable narrator, often changing his story to either admit or deny his complicity in past events. We cannot take this final claim of innocence at face value. Moreover, this is not the first death in which Oskar has been involved. Throughout the novel, Oskar claims responsibility for the deaths of his mother and his two “presumptive” fathers, Alfred Matzerath and Jan Bronski. The first to die is Oskar’s mother Agnes, who gorges herself on fish after discovering the pregnancy that may well be the result of her affair with Jan Bronski. While Oskar initially displays no signs of guilt, he later tells Roswitha Raguna that others hold him responsible. Later, Oskar suggests that he was exaggerating his account in an attempt to impress Roswitha. Still later, however, Oskar reports that he indeed overheard his grandmother blaming him, claiming that Agnes died because she could no longer stand Oskar’s drumming. Several chapters later, Oskar claims responsibility for both his mother’s and Jan Bronski’s death. Oskar offers a similarly contradictory account of Jan Bronski’s death. In the first version of the story, Oskar describes how Jan is driven away by the Germans and waves a last goodbye to Oskar. In the next chapter, however, Oskar declares that he must correct an omission, namely that when the Germans arrived, Oskar pretended to the soldiers that Jan Bronski had forced him into the post office in order to use him as a human shield. Subsequently, Bronski is beaten, taken away, and later executed. Oskar allegedly commits the act of treachery out of concern for his own comfort and safety and to protect his precious tin drums. In the case of Alfred Matzerath’s death, Oskar initially maintains that he takes the Nazi Party pin, which Matzerath has discarded, only to protect young Kurt. He ostensibly hands it back to Matzerath because he wishes to pick a louse from a Russian soldier’s collar. Matzerath panics, attempts to swallow the incriminating object, and chokes, prompting one of the soldiers to kill him. In the next chapter, however, Oskar changes his story and claims he deliberately exposed Matzerath’s party membership, and even opened the pin so that his father might choke on it.

The Tin Drumâ•…â•… 499 The amount of incriminating evidence that Oskar discloses at the very least suggests a guilty conscience. However, in each case, it is impossible to determine unequivocally the degree of Oskar’s guilt. Oskar changes his stories repeatedly; moreover, it is his version of events, and therefore subjective and possibly entirely of his own invention. He also freely admits to being a liar, as in the case of the Dusters’ trial, where he plays the role of innocent victim to avoid punishment. Furthermore, as a mental patient, all of Oskar’s recollections become highly questionable. Less compelling perhaps than Oskar’s individual guilt is the greater and more complex issue of collective guilt for the crimes of National Socialism. Oskar connects the two in his account of Jan Bronski’s death when he describes how he tries to assuage his guilty conscience. Here Oskar equates his personal feelings of guilt with the collective guilt of the nation. Like everyone else, he says, he soothes his guilty conscience by making excuses for past misdeeds. Later, he describes how he participates in discussions at the British Centre, where individuals talk about collective guilt so that later their consciences will be clear. Here, the novel casts doubt on the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (a German term meaning “coming to terms with the past”), suggesting that national debates about collective guilt have not effectively tackled questions of complicity, but simply help individuals to distance themselves from the past. Oskar’s autobiography, which oscillates between confession and denial of guilt, must be seen in this broader context. It thus offers a reflection on the complicated process of dealing with national responsibility for the crimes of Nazi Germany. Christina Kraenzle

Identity in The Tin Drum

One of the most striking features of The Tin Drum is the complexity of its main character, Oskar, a highly ambivalent figure who portrays himself alternately as naïve child and knowing adult, unwitting participant in events and active shaper of his own destiny, innocent bystander and complicit villain. He is also quite likely a madman, a possibility supported by a narrative structure that moves between first- and third-person narration. Oskar’s tendency

to refer to himself not as “I” but as “Oskar” suggests self-alienation and identity crisis. But the challenge of The Tin Drum is not to try to determine what constitutes the “real” Oskar, but rather to consider how these multiple identities coexist. The multiplicity of identities is introduced at the beginning of the novel when Oskar recalls his many outings to the cinema with Klepp, after which they have their passport photos taken. Oskar describes how he and Klepp manipulate the photos, folding or cutting them to combine old and new photographs or to merge the features of both men into new images of themselves. As a metaphor for identity, the montages that Oskar and Klepp create point to the multifaceted influences and self-identifications that make up Oskar’s character. They also suggest the constructedness of the images Oskar offers: Just as Oskar and Klepp fashion their own photographic images, Oskar, the autobiographer, creates multiple, and often conflicting, self-images in his written account. Oskar’s identity crisis is reflected in his obsessions about his parentage, in particular his uncertainty about which of his two “presumptive fathers” is in fact the biological one. While he at first suggests that Jan Bronski is his true father, he later suggests that it is most likely Alfred Matzerath. This uncertainty leads Oskar to refer to himself both as Oskar Matzerath and Oskar Bronski. He also takes the name Koljaiczek, after his maternal grandfather, with whom he also identifies. Oskar’s education under the tutelage of Gretchen Scheffler, who introduces him to both Goethe and Rasputin, also shapes his self-image. Oskar takes pages from the two books and shuffles them randomly to create a new volume that he reads throughout his life. Oskar alternately identifies with Goethe, who represents enlightenment and rationality, and with Rasputin, who represents darkness and irrationality. Oskar later asks Bruno to fashion a string figure that will combine the features of Oskar, Goethe, and Rasputin, symbolizing the two poles that constitute Oskar’s identity. His mother’s frequent visits to church introduce Oskar to religion, and he subsequently identifies with both Jesus and Satan. Oskar believes he resembles the figure of Jesus in the Church of the Sacred

500â•…â•… Grass, Gunter Heart; he later introduces himself to the Dusters as Jesus and becomes their leader. When the Dusters break into the church, Oskar has the Jesus figure removed and takes its place while mass is read. Later, the painter Raskolnikov will depict Oskar as Jesus. In his alleged sexual encounter with Sister Dorothea, however, Oskar claims to be Satan. Questions of identity are important also for a number of minor characters. Oskar’s maternal grandfather, Joe Koljaiczek, assumes the identity of Joe Wranka in order to escape the authorities. Haunted by his memories of Lucy Rennwand, Oskar believes he recognizes her in the person of Regina Raeck, a fellow refugee from Danzig. He continues to confuse their identities throughout the trip. He also confuses Leo Schugger and Willem Slobber, believing them to be the same person. Oskar’s neighbor, Mr. Münzer, calls himself Klepp because, like Oskar, he does not want to take his father’s last name. Oskar’s landlord exhibits a split personality, violently breaking liquor glasses and then carefully sweeping up the shards. In one passage, Oskar refers to these sides of his landlord’s personality with two different names: Oskar uses the nickname Hedgehog to refer to the landlord’s violent personality and his real name, Zeidler, to refer to his more orderly side. The theme of identity is also significant on a larger, national scale. As many commentators have noted, Oskar can be seen as an embodiment of the German nation. At one point Oskar notes that the two poles of his identity, represented by Goethe and Rasputin, always exist in tandem. This idea can also be applied to Germany, a nation that spawned numerous intellectuals and artists, but also Hitler and the Nazis. With its complicated main character and its depiction of how ordinary citizens support the rise of National Socialism, Grass’s The Tin Drum insists that polar opposites such as good and evil or rational and irrational cannot be easily separated. Instead, the potential for both enlightenment and brutality coexist in unsettling ways. Christina Kraenzle

Violence in The Tin Drum

Throughout his life, Oskar witnesses countless acts of violence and brutality. Oskar encounters many

violent individuals, and also observes the organized violence of the Nazi regime and the war. Grass’s novel thus connects the personal and the political, showing how ordinary citizens commit acts of brutality, both in the private and public sphere. As a child, Oskar is subjected to the cruelty of the neighborhood children who force him to eat a noxious soup made with live frogs, saliva, and urine. At his kindergarten, Stephan Bronski is viciously beaten by a boy named Lothar who refers to Stephan as “Polack,” thus alluding to the Polish-German tensions leading up to the war. After the war, Oskar encounters Zeidler, the rooming house landlord who flies into violent and seemingly unprovoked rages and shatters liquor glasses to vent his anger. Oskar also recounts how Meyn, irritated by the smell from his four tomcats, brutally attacks the animals with a fire poker and stuffs them, mortally wounded but still alive, into a garbage can. Meyn is later expelled from the SA for inhumane cruelty to animals, despite his involvement, Oskar says, in the events of Kristallnacht. Oskar then goes on to describe, in the final chapter of Book One, the Kristallnacht—known in English as Crystal Night or The Night of Broken Glass—the organized and systematic terrorizing of Jews that occurred throughout Germany and parts of Austria on November 9 and 10, 1938. Oskar recounts how his father, Alfred Matzerath, watches the events with approval, how men in uniform and civilian clothes participate in the destruction, and how firemen look on while the local synagogue burns. Oskar further describes how businesses, including Sigismund Markus’s toyshop, are vandalized, and recounts how Markus commits suicide before SA officers descend on his store. Oskar’s comment that Meyn is condemned for the violence against the cats, but celebrated for his participation in the violence against the Jewish population, illustrates the extent to which Nazis devalued and dehumanized the Jewish people. The participation of ordinary citizens in the events of Kristallnacht also show how anti-Semitic Nazi violence was condoned and even, in many cases, supported. As Oskar notes early in the novel, “where there is politics, there is violence.” As political tensions turn to war, Oskar witnesses countless acts of brutality. He is present during the bloody battle at the

The Heart of the Matterâ•…â•… 501 Polish post office; he stands by as Russian soldiers kill Alfred Matzerath; he watches Corporal Lankes senselessly murder a group of nuns, and he looks on as Roswitha Raguna is hit by a stray shell during an Allied attack. Oskar also relates numerous cases of violence against women. Herbert Truczinski is killed in his attempt to sexually assault the figure of Niobe in the Danzig Maritime Museum. Oskar witnesses the rape of Lina Greff by Russian soldiers, attesting to the prevalence of sexual violence in situations of war. In the postwar years, Lankes repeatedly beats his girlfriend, Ulla, and later, on his trip with Oskar to Normandy, sexually assaults a nun. Oskar’s alleged sexual encounter with Sister Dorothea, who is later found murdered, can also be interpreted as an assault. While Oskar is often a witness to violent events, he is more than simply an innocent bystander. Although he insists on his innocence in the case of Sister Dorothea, he may well be her murderer. Spurned by Maria, he physically assaults her after he learns of her affair with Alfred Matzerath and subsequently tries to abort her pregnancy by causing her to fall from a ladder. Later, he plans to stab her in the belly with a pair of scissors, but is prevented when Maria notices his intentions. During the war, Oskar becomes the leader of the Dusters and although he claims not to participate in their attacks on their rivals, he accepts their activities. As a child, Oskar exhibits a violent temper, especially when anyone threatens to take away his tin drum. He responds by shattering glass with his voice, an act that is reminiscent of landlord Zeidler’s violent fits of rage or the violence and destruction of Kristallnacht. Toward the end of the novel, Oskar witnesses an attack on Victor Weluhn, carried out by three men who claim to be fulfilling an execution order issued in 1939 for Victor’s involvement in the defense of the Polish post office. Although the war is long over, the men insist on carrying out this former obligation. Here Grass satirizes misplaced notions of duty and order. Throughout the novel, countless acts of private and public violence attest to the potential for savagery that underlies apparently well-ordered society. Christina Kraenzle

Greene, Grahamâ•… The Heart of the Matterâ•… (1948)

The Heart of the Matter is one of 20th-century British Catholic writer Graham Greene’s most widely considered to be masterpieces. It concerns the efforts of police officer Henry Scobie to lead a just life amid suffering, corruption, and temptation at an unidentified British colony in Africa during World War II. Over the course of the novel, Scobie suffers a gradual descent from justice, a descent motivated by pity and pride. Because he pities a Portuguese ship captain, Scobie destroys a letter that he should have reported to the commissioner; because he pities his emotionally crippled wife, Louise, he sends her to South Africa with the proceeds of a compromising loan from a black marketeer named Yusef; and because he pities shipwreck survivor Helen Rolt, he begins an affair with her. In an effort to maintain the reputation his devotion to justice has earned him, he hides his affair and his connection with Yusef, to the point that he allows the murder of possibly the only person he truly loves, his young servant Ali. Unable to bear his fall from grace, he commits suicide by overdosing on a heart medicine. Though Greene himself considered it a failure, the novel has been admired for its rich evocation of the self-defeating conflicts that attend the human search for a code to live by. Scott Daniel

Futility in The Heart of the Matter

The sense of the futility of all human endeavor pervades Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter. The novel’s closing implies a static future as effectively as its opening conveys the sense of an unchanging past, so that the story itself, chronicling Scobie’s misguidedly heroic efforts to help others, is the story of change imploding, collapsing upon itself, quashed by the very forces it sets in motion. The stability of Henry Scobie’s situation—epitomized by his being passed over for a position that he is, by all appearances, eminently qualified for: commissioner—rests upon a distorted stoicism that is in a sense inaction or indifference disguised as justice. While faultlessly performing his duties as public servant, Scobie wallows in futility, gluttonously savoring his lack of advancement, Louise’s

502â•…â•… Greene, Graham desperation, and the moral, human squalor of his environment. It is not until the incident on a ship called the Esperança—that is, hope—that Scobie becomes unmoored from this stability. Hiding the captain’s infraction of the maritime code gives him the opportunity to act on his frozen grief for his daughter, who died at school in England several years before the novel begins, and this sets in motion his hopeless battle with fate. He borrows money to send his wife to South Africa; he begins an affair with shipwreck survivor Helen Rolt. Through these actions Scobie puts himself at the mercy of the Syrian trader Yusef. Like Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello, Yusef has an almost preternatural knowledge of Scobie’s personality and his actions, so that every attempt Scobie makes to improve his life or that of those around him—most particularly, his wife Louise and mistress Helen Rolt, but even that of the Esperança’s captain—further enmeshes him in a trap. Yusef ’s blackmailing and double dealing is but a visible correlative of the psychological and spiritual futility of Scobie’s actions, most tellingly revealed in how quickly his relationship with Helen becomes a carbon copy of his relationship with Louise. A criminal by profession, Yusef is a sort of guarantor of permanent stasis, and just so, he becomes more powerful the more Scobie attempts change. Until he is moved to act, Scobie has a certain empty acceptance, if not contentment, that belies the term futility, which carries a heavy psychic burden. That burden is upon Louise, whose exasperation with their lack of advancement borders on the hysterical. In some sense, Louise is Scobie’s pain, is where Scobie hurts, and his sending her away is a logical means of freeing them both of that burden. The boy Ali is where Scobie feels peace, and Scobie dreams of happy calm times with him in the future. It is a measure of the futility of human affairs that instead of settling into the peace of a narrowed life with his loyal and innocent servant, Scobie immediately falls in love with Helen Rolt, who has already become the new locus of his pain, and begins an affair that will result in Ali’s death. From the novel’s perspective, it is futility and not justice that governs human events. Indeed, this point is made early in the novel. Approaching first

the courts and then the police station, Scobie sees this system as being full of grandiloquence but ultimately lacking strength. Justice, then, is futility. Henry Scobie governs his life with a rigorous Stoic philosophy, but he leaves one of the central tenets of that philosophy unexamined. The Stoic does his duty, but he also accepts that it is only his justice, and not the justice of the universe, that is within his control. Once moved to action, Scobie cannot accept his lack of power. In the end, human futility is but a foil for the glacial but certain movement of the church toward the fulfillment of God’s promise, and Greene’s intent, as we see with other themes the novel addresses, is to create a picture of a Christianity that is meaningful and convincing, if not compelling, to his existentialist contemporaries. In The Heart of the Matter, the only efficacious action is sacramental, and its power is love, such that, having avoided it for as long as he could in life, Henry Scobie may not even be able to escape it in death, as the priest suggests to Louise that even a suicide may not be beyond God’s mercy and grace. Scott Daniel

Religion in The Heart of the Matter

The Heart of the Matter is, of course, a novel about religion. Graham Greene foregrounds Catholic concerns; indeed, much of the dramatic tension of the plot depends on the characters’ belief in the Catholic vision of human life. Scobie believes his immortal soul is imperiled in that he will not repent his affair with Helen Rolt; Louise returns from her rest in South Africa because she believes her husband’s immortal soul is at risk; the tension is to a degree resolved, the tragedy of the protagonist’s suicide diffused, by the priest’s closing words to Louise about the unfathomable mystery of God’s grace. The novel’s closing scene is an informal theological dialogue between the confused and grieving widow and Father Rank. The conversation seems to match legalistic against mysterious Catholicism. Louise, fearing to hope for a man who has taken his own life, finds the comfort of despair in calling her husband a “bad Catholic” who must have known that he was sinning. Consistently, Rank removes religion from the institution of the church and

The Heart of the Matterâ•…â•… 503 from the doctrines and toward matters of the heart. He claims that both the human heart and God’s mercy are unknowable. This scene illustrates the importance of religion in the novel, as our sense of a resolved plot depends upon our accepting the terms of the debate. Thus, the Catholic faith exerts its influence not merely on the characters’ minds but also on the text of the narrative. Greene artfully conveys a Christian view of evil in the scene in which Scobie and Helen first kiss. It is not a matter so much of him seducing her or her seducing him but of the two of them being seduced by a moment. As is so often true, the narrator’s comment on this turn of events gives it a Catholic pall; he says that the apparent “safety” of their relationship was actually “the camouflage of an enemy.” Here, temptation is revealed to be demonic and malevolent. It is one thing to say that Yusef and Wilson are devil figures in the novel, but Greene goes further, with a vision of a sentient, supernatural evil that works through seduction and deception. In a similar vein, it is one thing to say that Ali is a Christ figure, but Greene’s character assumes a divine grace attendant upon the crucifixion and resurrection of the actual Christ. The same Christian perspective is evident in Scobie’s character flaw. In many respects, he is a typical tragic hero and can be read profitably as such: He is a man of high rank who is not entirely good or bad; he has a character flaw that leads him to an act of hubris, or excessive pride that precipitates his downfall and has consequences that extend beyond the individual. Scobie lacks a clear moment of selfrecognition, though a Christian recasting of such a moment might be implied by Father Rank’s closing remarks. If self-recognition is the grace note of the Greek tragic hero, then the priest holds out the possibility that in God’s grace Scobie will after death see his sin clearly enough to finally be able to repent it. Like his self-recognition, Scobie’s hubris is colored by faith. What he seems most to be guilty of is a pride that masquerades as compassion and virtue. The text observes: “Virtue, the good life, tempted him in the dark like a sin.” He believes that he is important, that he can make a sacrifice that in its way exceeds that of Christ, for he is risking eternal death to provide a little solace to others. Even worse,

Scobie understands the consequences of his actions, he even recognizes his own self-destructiveness, but he never seems to see the pride that taints his perspective. The pride of good works is a uniquely Christian vice, a moral trap that one finds along the path of virtue. The reader sees by the end of the novel that Scobie’s heroic virtue is also his undoing, that his humility is partial and blind and does not prevent the inflation of ego that makes tragedy possible. The very tenor of the novel’s emotions, then, would not be possible without the Catholic faith of the author and his characters. In Greene it is always evident that, ultimately, it is only with defective vision that one sees a universe where, as for the existential hero, the absurd fact of our existence precludes any possible meaning. Scobie suffers because life does have a meaning, a religious dimension, that he can neither reject nor embrace. Scott Daniel

Suffering in The Heart of the Matter

Suffering is a palpable atmospheric effect in Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter. It is as geographic and meteorological as it is psychological. His title, perhaps a play on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, points to an understanding of this setting as a metaphor for a universal human condition. Indeed, if one thinks of the title as an implied riddle, and asks what lies at the heart of the matter, suffering might well be the answer. Every character copes with suffering differently and, indeed, suffering treats each character differently, taking the measure of his or her soul. Harris’s relatively shallow suffering is a function of idleness, and the solution is to turn killing cockroaches into a sport, a sort of poor man’s lacrosse. While his suffering is all but alleviated by this game, his neighbor Wilson has a surplus of suffering that a mere pastime, however violent and competitive, will not assuage. His suffering has a shallowness of its own, though, as he pursues an emotional affair with Louise for largely egotistical reasons. For him, besting Scobie in a romantic rivalry is sufficient succor. His fulfillment hinges, then, on one person, on Louise. Not so Louise: Her loneliness is of epic proportions. Though in many ways crippled by her suffering, she

504â•…â•… Haley, Alex, and Malcolm X is a remarkable judge of character, viscerally perceiving her husband’s emotional dryness and intellectually unraveling Wilson’s fundamental dishonesty. She imagines that only a whole nation can satisfy her want, and thus goads her husband to send her to South Africa. Louise’s case highlights the fact that, ultimately, each character’s response to suffering is inadequate. Each seeks a superficial remedy, whereas suffering is a condition of existence. This discrepancy between the scope of the problem and the manner of coping is nowhere more evident than in the novel’s protagonist, Henry Scobie. His stoic devotion to duty and justice above all else empowers him to repress his own hurt, but then his wife, Louise (and later, his mistress, Helen Rolt) becomes for him nothing more than the voice of his own inner pain. For this reason, he thinks he can get rid of his suffering by getting rid of her. His actions and his daydreams are both reflective of this mentality. In contrast to Louise, Scobie views emotional isolation as a solution to suffering. For him, the problem is larger than even a country. It is the world, before which he stands isolated and weary. Since the heart that is the heart of the matter is geographical as well as psychological, the West African natives are also native to suffering. For them, suffering is just the medium in which they operate. It is not something to be coped with or striven against. Scobie sees this fundamental difference between the colonists and the natives, and for him it is the principal appeal of his assignment. He reflects: “Nobody here could talk about a heaven on earth . . . on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst.” Succinctly and concisely, Greene’s prose accomplishes a devastating critique of Western civilization, for here it appears to be nothing more than an accretion of inadequate and essentially self-deceptive coping mechanisms. The suffering abides, only in disguised form. Western man, then, is alienated from his own condition in a way that the native is not. Ironically, it is this alienation that enables his image of himself as a savior of the native, or even, more modestly, as a counselor. Though a detective, Scobie seems engaged in some-

thing more like social work, and it is telling in this regard that he is often slow to realize how shrewdly the natives deceive the colonial authorities. However ideal the natives might appear to Scobie, the novel ultimately does not endorse their casual acceptance of suffering. Instead, it is Louise Scobie who finds the right balance. There is a world of difference between the Louise who returns from South Africa and the Louise who left, perhaps because upon learning of Henry’s infidelity, she reorients herself from reliance on her husband to reliance on the Catholic Church. She returns, then, not as Scobie’s savior but as his ally, encouraging him to attend mass and confession and showing a merciful tolerance of his human failings. Louise seems especially forgiving as contrasted to Scobie’s self-damnation or to the lovesick accusations of the diabolical Wilson. Their loathing is part and parcel of their suffering, which comes from seeking to be God (as savior on Scobie’s hand, and as judge on Wilson’s) rather than submitting to Him. Scott Daniel

Haley, Alex, and Malcolm Xâ•… The Autobiography of Malcolm Xâ•… (1965)

Malcolm X’s autobiography describes a life of multiple transformations, figurative deaths, and rebirths, which give his story a mythic quality. Born Malcolm Little in Nebraska, Malcolm and his family moved to Michigan after his birth. The murder of his father led to the dissolution of his family. After time in a detention home, Malcolm moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts with his half-sister, Ella, where the evolution of his identity was set in motion. With Shorty as his mentor, Malcolm conked his hair, donned a zoot suit, and metamorphosed into Red. In Harlem, under the tutelage of West Indian Archie, Malcolm developed into Detroit Red, a prominent member of a criminal syndicate. His stint in prison led him to Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, within which he became Minister Malcolm X. After his fallout with the Nation, Malcolm made his pilgrimage to Mecca and returned El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. These name-changes represent fundamental shifts in Malcolm’s worldview. Much of his story’s

The Autobiography of Malcolm Xâ•…â•… 505 power comes from the fact that he wrote it while internalizing facts about Elijah Muhammad and the Nation that he had been unable to let himself see. His pilgrimage solidified other suspicions he had harbored about Elijah Muhammad, and undermined sweeping indictments of whites that he had previously made. Thus, in addition to a testimony to the impact of racism, the power of education, and the way an individual’s life is defined by meaningful work, The Autobiography of Malcolm X documents an evolving consciousness and offers authenticity to the notion of “self-discovery.” Jeffrey Bickerstaff

Education in The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X hoped his autobiography would be read as a testimony to how ghetto conditions shape the minds and lives of millions of black Americans. Malcolm refers to his life as “the life of only one ghetto-created Negro.” Although Malcolm X was in many ways exceptional, readers should recognize how his early educational experiences mirror those of many blacks throughout America. Malcolm describes how during junior high in Michigan his history textbook contained exactly one paragraph on Negro history. The paragraph told the story of slavery and emancipation while perpetuating such cruel stereotypes as shiftlessness and stupidity. His history teacher, Mr. Williams, laughed through the reading before adding his own note about the enormity of Negro feet. Another teacher integral to Malcolm’s educational experience was Mr. Ostrowski, a teacher Malcolm describes as a self-appointed adviser. Mr. Ostrowski advises seventh-grade class president Malcolm Little, whose grades are among the highest in the school, that it is unrealistic for him to aspire to be a lawyer. Mr. Ostrowski patronizingly encourages Malcolm to work with his hands and become a carpenter. He assures Malcolm that his popularity would garner him plenty of work. Malcolm X describes this interaction as the first major turning point in his life, and notes that afterward he drew away from white people, his job, and school. As a teenager Malcolm moves to Boston and befriends a studious girl named Laura. Laura’s inter-

est in science elicits in Malcolm regret over turning away from the books he had enjoyed in Michigan. Laura insists that Malcolm could pick up where he was and become a lawyer. Instead, Malcolm embraces the life of a “hustler” and finds himself taking that path to Harlem. In Harlem, Malcolm, now known as Red, runs numbers for the West Indian mobster, Archie. Remembering Archie’s mathematical genius, Malcolm X asserts that Archie’s talents were wasted by society because he was black. Malcolm describes his criminal friends as victims of the American social system. Crammed into ghettos, blacks could aspire to nothing beyond survival. Malcolm recalls his friends as individuals who might have cured cancer, built industries, or explored space (93). Malcolm’s account of how his ambitions were dismissed invites the reader to speculate that Archie and the other so-called criminals each had a “Mr. Ostrowski” in their life stories. Malcolm X describes this criminal version of himself as “mentally dead.” He estimates that his working vocabulary then was less than 200 words, and after arriving in prison he begins to confront how street life had erased all he had learned in school. In prison, Malcolm admires a prisoner named Bimbi, the first man he had ever seen command total respect solely on the merits of his words. Bimbi encouraged Malcolm to take advantage of the library and correspondence courses, and influenced Malcolm to study word derivations. Malcolm chronicles his transformation within the walls of the Norfolk Prison Colony. His sister, Ella, had worked to secure his transfer to the progressive jail with no bars and a library donated by a millionaire named Parkhurst, whose particular interests were history and religions. Malcolm X describes this phase of his reading as an attempt to obtain “some kind of homemade education.” He transcribes the dictionary to build a foundation of knowledge and can soon read a book and understand its meaning. Malcolm X describes the new world then opening for him, and reflects that the ability to read stirred in him “some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.” His careful study of religion and history facilitates Malcolm’s rebirth. Malcolm would draw on, as

506â•…â•… Haley, Alex, and Malcolm X he would say, his “stock of knowledge” in his work as a human rights advocate. At the end of the story, Malcolm mourns his lack of a formal education. And here, at the end of his life, after several transformations, Malcolm knows he would have been a good lawyer. With his “homemade education,” though, Malcolm X creates a model for young scholars to follow in order to realize the historical basis of social injustice and realistically confront it. Had Malcolm taken Mr. Ostrowski’s advice, or had he taken Mr. Williams’s mockery of Negro history to heart, he would never have undertaken his life’s work. These two teachers worked to keep Malcolm ignorant and in his place. When Malcolm recognized the connection between knowledge and power and how it had been wielded against him and other “ghetto-created Negroes,” his education began. Jeffrey Bickerstaff

Suffering in The Autobiography of Malcolm X

In his autobiography, Malcolm X describes how periods of great suffering yielded personal transformations in his life. His world was first shattered at the age of six when his father’s skull was crushed and his body nearly cut in half. Blacks in town whispered that Earl Little had been attacked and laid over streetcar tracks. The insurance company, however, claimed that he committed suicide and refused to pay on his policy. Malcolm’s mother, Louise, devastated and alone with eight children and no money, struggled to maintain her family. Her condition deteriorated over the next six years, and she was eventually committed to the state mental hospital. Malcolm recounts how even after their mother was gone, his family tried desperately to stay together, but the state prevailed and Malcolm and his siblings were separated from one another. They became “state children” under the authority of a judge in Lansing: “a white man in charge of a black man’s children! Nothing but legal, modern slavery.” Malcolm uses this comparison to emphasize the history of black families being controlled and undermined by the white power structure. Readers should recognize the similarity of his situation to the agony wrought by the practice of selling members of slave families to different masters throughout the country.

Malcolm’s story shows that breaking up black families continued after emancipation, and he notes that “ours was not the only case of this kind.” With his foundation gone, Malcolm slid into a world of drugs and crime until, just shy of his 21st birthday, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in a burglary ring. In prison, Malcolm became a serious reader and devoured books dealing with the history of slavery. He began to contextualize his personal suffering within the greater struggle of his people, and stresses in his autobiography that the factors leading to his incarceration were typical for many black Americans. Reflecting on his time in prison, Malcolm explains why he and other prisoners embraced Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam with such fervor. Malcolm describes the typical convert as a man put into a cage by a white judge. He says, “Usually the convict comes from among those bottom-of-thepile Negroes, the Negroes who through their entire lives have been kicked about, treated like children.” Years of oppression through institutional racism make them “the most perfectly preconditioned to hear the words, ‘the white man is the devil.’↜” The intensity with which Malcolm believed this doctrine is reflected by the turmoil he feels later when his faith in Elijah Muhammad is shattered. Malcolm describes the myths that comprise Elijah Muhammad’s racial cosmology. Years after he had first heard them in prison, he learns that these “tales” had infuriated eastern Muslims. Malcolm countered that their own failure to make “real Islam known in the West” created “a vacuum into which any religious faker could step and mislead our people.” Malcolm’s word choice, “faker,” indicates how intensely he feels betrayed by Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm’s faith was destroyed not by Mr. Muhammad’s adultery, but his willingness “to hide, to cover up what he had done.” Malcolm asserts that the Nation diverted members’ attention from the scandal toward him. “Hating me was going to become the cause for people of shattered faith to rally around.” Malcolm’s break with the Nation caused him torments beyond description. He wandered “in a state of emotional shock” until he began to recognize that he “had believed in Mr. Muhammad more than

The Autobiography of Malcolm Xâ•…â•… 507 he believed in himself.” This realization provided Malcolm with the strength to face the facts of his life and think autonomously. In Mecca, he grasped the danger of considering anyone “divinely guided” and “protected” and declared himself finished with “someone else’s propaganda.” The suffering that preceded this intellectual emancipation exemplifies Malcolm’s dictum that “it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.” His anguish also indicates that revolution “means the destroying of an old system, and its replacement with a new system.” Malcolm recognizes that both the destruction that precedes creation, and the suffering that comes before renewal, are two distinct phases of the same process, which comprises life. Jeffrey Bickerstaff

Work in The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm describes his father as a Baptist minister committed to organizing for Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. Although Malcolm rejected Christianity and embraced Islam, the winding path of his life led him back to his father’s footsteps. After experiencing firsthand the limited range of choices available to young blacks, Malcolm’s life came to be defined by his work as a minister dedicated to improving the lives of black people. For Malcolm, honesty, dignity, and work were inextricably linked. As a youth in Roxbury, he scorned blacks who affected impressive job titles. Neighbors described a bank janitor as being “in banking” and a bond-house messenger as “in securities.” Cooks and maids assumed a haughty tone when describing themselves as being “with an old family.” Annoyed by such dishonesty, Malcolm would later work to puncture “the indignity of that kind of self-delusion.” However, Malcolm’s early experiences with work necessarily involved affectation. Hooked up with a shoe-shining “slave” (a hipster term that meant job), Malcolm soon learned that whites tipped generously when he would “Uncle Tom a little,” which included making the shine rag “pop like a

firecracker.” This sound was part of his hustle, “a jive noise” that gave the impression he was exerting more effort than he was. Malcolm also applied this practice to his railroad waiter job. He quickly surmised that white people would buy anything if he gave them a show. Malcolm describes himself and his coworkers as “servants and psychologists.” Cognizant of white people’s delusions of self-importance, their work required them to compromise their dignity and “Uncle Tom” for whites eager to pay for a show of black inferiority. Malcolm’s route between Boston and New York led to his involvement with Harlem’s underworld. Malcolm ran numbers, peddled drugs, and steered clients toward prostitutes. These clients, wealthy white men, used Harlem as “their sin-den, their fleshpot.” Malcolm describes how they took off the “dignified masks they wore in their white world” to indulge their sexual perversities. Consequently, white talk about the Negro’s “low morals” angered Malcolm. Malcolm came to see how America’s racial system created Harlem, where, instead of finding meaningful work that benefited the community, almost everyone “needed some kind of hustle to survive.” These hustles catered to whites’ illicit appetites, which perpetuated the residents’ need to “stay high” to forget all they had to do to survive. Thus, the racial structure created a cycle that coerced blacks into ghettoes and forced them to do whatever was necessary to endure. The white beneficiaries of this system could then indulge their appetites for drugs and flesh by exploiting blacks desperate to sustain themselves, while deriding them for having low morals. Malcolm’s criminal career culminated in his burglary conviction. He converted to Islam in prison, and upon his release he worked to spread a doctrine of black self-reliance. Malcolm saw firsthand how white merchants in ghettos drained money out of the black community. As a minister in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm recognized that Muslim-owned grocery stores exemplified how blacks could break their dependence on white money by hiring and trading among themselves. Malcolm stresses that the key to black self-respect is the building of their own businesses and decent homes.

508â•…â•… Hansberry, Lorraine After leaving the Nation, Malcolm still adhered to the philosophy of economic self-determination: “It’s because black men don’t own and control their own community’s retail establishments that they can’t stabilize their own community.” He established the Muslim Mosque, Inc., to combine his economic outlook with the goal of ridding his community of the vices that undermine its moral fiber. Malcolm never forgot that economic subservience fosters a desperation that leaves people prone to lascivious exploitation. In his last chapter, Malcolm reminds us that he was raised with Marcus Garvey’s Black Nationalist teachings. Like his father before him, Malcolm worked to instill in his community racial dignity and the confidence to stand for itself. The concept of work permeates The Autobiography of Malcolm X. His dedication page acknowledges that the sacrifices and understanding of his wife and children made his work possible. His father’s murder, his time as a criminal, and the enmity caused by his split with the Nation of Islam convinced Malcolm that he would die young and violently. Thus, he regarded his mission as urgent, and lived every day with the knowledge that “no man is given but so much time to accomplish whatever is his life’s work.” Jeffrey Bickerstaff

Hansberry, Lorraineâ•… A Raisin in the Sunâ•… (1959)

Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun debuted on Broadway on March 11, 1959. The title comes from the opening lines of “Harlem,” a poem by Langston Hughes that catalogs what happens when dreams are deferred. Dreams figure largely in the play, as the Younger family struggles to achieve its dream of economic and social freedom. The play takes place in Chicago’s South Side sometime between World War II and 1959, and is staged completely within a small, dilapidated apartment over the course of a couple of weeks. The play centers on the Younger family: Lena, a widow, her children, Walter, an ambitious chauffeur, Beneatha, a college student who wants to be a doctor, Walter’s wife Ruth, and their son Travis.

When the play opens, the family is waiting for a $10,000 insurance check, and each family member has a different plan for the money. Walter dreams of investing the money in a liquor store. Lena wants to buy a house for the family. After Walter hounds his mother and tells her that he wants to be the man of the house, Lena gives him $6,500: $3,000 to put away for Beneatha’s studies and $3,500 to start his business. However, on the day that the family is set to move into their new house, Walter learns that he was scammed out of $6,500. Their troubles increase when Karl Lindner, a representative of their new neighborhood, tells them that they are not wanted in all-white Clybourne Park. The play ends with the family deciding to move into their new home. Courtney Marshall

The American dream in A Raisin in the Sun

The Younger family, Ruth, Walter Lee, Travis, Beneatha, and Lena, are like any other American family: They want success, respect, and a home. Simply stated, they are in pursuit of the American dream. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, written in 1958, the Younger family struggles to realize the American dream by escaping from ghetto life on the South Side of Chicago. Every member of the Younger family has a separate, unfulfilled dream—Ruth, a home for her family; Beneatha to become a doctor; and Walter Lee simply wants enough money to provide for his wife and children. These dreams mostly involve money. In the 1950s when A Raisin in the Sun takes place, the stereotypical American dream was to have a house with a yard, a big car, and a happy family. The Youngers aspire to this dream, but their struggles are different from the struggles a non-AfricanAmerican family living at the same time might have had, simply because being middle class for the Youngers is also a dream. Symbolic of the American dream is the plant Mama lovingly cares for throughout the play. For Mama this plant symbolizes the garden she will tend after moving into her dream house. The last thing that happens on stage is that Mama opens the door, comes back in, grabs her plant, and goes out for the last time. This small potted plant is a temporary stand-in for Mama’s much larger dream

A Raisin in the Sunâ•…â•… 509 and her care for the plant represents not only her protection of her dream but also her care and protection of her family. She cares for the plant just as she cares for her family: just enough light and water to grow. The plant remains feeble and spindly in spite of Mama’s love and care, simply because there is so little light. Likewise, Mama’s dream of a house and better life for her family is tenuous simply because it is difficult for her to see beyond her family’s day to day situation. Beneatha’s dream, to become a doctor, is different from Mama’s in that it is more self-serving, more indulgent. Her desire to express herself sets Beneatha apart from the other women in A Raisin in the Sun. She is the least traditional of the women not only because she is the youngest, but also because she is more independent, career oriented, and does not want to rely entirely on George Murchison to provide for her. Beneatha believes in education as a means to success and understanding, and her version of the American dream is centered on this philosophy. It is her attitude toward her boyfriend, George Murchison, in contrast to her attitude toward Joseph Asagai, an African friend, where Beneatha’s search for the American dream can be most clearly seen. Mama and Ruth are confused by her dislike of George Murchison, and Beneatha even indicates to them that she might not get married, something that runs counter to the more traditional, stay-at-home roles that most women fulfilled in the 1950s. Beneatha’s version of the American dream is solitary, less traditional, and not as concerned with family; hers is a less conservative version of the American dream. While the theme of the American dream is found throughout Hansberry’s play, the central conflict of the play is found in Walter’s idea of what the American dream entails. The concept of the “self-made man,” who starts with nothing, works hard, and achieves great wealth, seems innocuous enough. However, the idea becomes destructive when it evolves into an idolization of wealth and power. A life insurance check from his father, Walter Sr., means Walter Jr. can buy his way into a business and out of a servile job. In the beginning of A Raisin in the Sun Hansberry shows how Walter Jr. envies Charlie Atkins’s dry-cleaning business because it

grosses $100,000 a year. Desperate to achieve success, Walter ignores his mother’s moral objection to achieving his goals by running a liquor store. However, the liquor store is merely a means to an end for Walter. Walter’s dream, like his mother’s, is to escape the South Side ghetto, and to provide a better life for his wife and child. The Younger family’s dreams and aspirations for a better life are not confined to their race, but are identified with by people of all backgrounds. Although the definition of the American dream is different for each character, the underlying motivation is universal: the opportunity for a better life. Sharon Brubaker

Family in A Raisin in the Sun

The Younger family is under a great deal of emotional and financial stress in the play. Hansberry highlights the claustrophobic nature of their lives by staging the play completely within their small, rundown apartment. In the play, family roles break down along gender lines. The female characters in the play argue over the best ways to care for the male family members. Lena and Ruth bump heads about the best way to take care of Travis. Lena makes his bed for him and questions Ruth about what she’s feeding him for breakfast. Early in the play, Ruth tells Walter to eat the eggs she’s prepared, and he uses the phrase “eat your eggs” to symbolize the ways that he feels disrespected in the family. Walter imagines whenever a man gets excited about an opportunity that will change his and his family’s life, the women in his life come along and tell him to settle down. They think they are nourishing him by feeding him, but what he really wants is an understanding ear. For him, family limits him and keeps him from fulfilling his individualistic dream to own a liquor store. This individual dream is in stark contrast to the women’s communal dream of owning a home. The most important symbol in the play, Lena’s houseplant, also represents the resilience of family and the difficulties of caring for and nurturing living things. At the beginning of the play, Lena moves directly toward the plant to take care of it. Though the plant never gets enough light in their dark apartment, she is impressed with its tenacity. This quality

510â•…â•… Hansberry, Lorraine runs through her family. Though she and her late husband, Big Walter, had to flee southern violence and racism, she still manages to care for her children and grandson. The plant also symbolizes the dream she has to own a home. She wants to plant her family in richer soil in order to give them, especially Travis, the opportunities that she never had. Lena becomes upset because she thinks that her children, particularly Walter, have lost the family values that she and her husband tried to give them. She doesn’t want the insurance money to tear the family apart, and Ruth’s desire for an abortion represents, to her, the destruction of the family. After Walter loses the money, Beneatha tells her mother that he is no longer her brother. Lena tells her that she was taught to love her brother and that she should mourn for him. This speech makes the play end on a complicated note. Walter, in telling Karl Lindner that he and his family will move into their new house, had been allowed to be the patriarch. However, the fact remains that he has lost Beneatha’s tuition money, a move that demonstrates his naïveté and self-centeredness. We are not sure whether Walter has truly understood the gender relations within his family. In addition, the family’s breaking of the color line and moving to Clybourne Park poses a whole new set of challenges. However, Hansberry portrays a family that has its internal problems, but still strives and works together. Courtney Marshall

Race in A Raisin in the Sun

A Raisin in the Sun lies at the intersection of the integrationist Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and the emergent hostility of the Black Power movement of the 1960s. As such, it presents a complicated view of American race relations and a relatively new exploration of black culture. In the play, the Younger family decides to move from its run-down Chicago tenement into a home in an allwhite neighborhood, Clybourne Park. The governing body of the Youngers’ new neighborhood, the Clybourne Park Improvement Association, sends Karl Lindner to persuade them not to move into the neighborhood. Lindner says that the whites are not racist, but that everyone gets along better when they are segregated. He questions the family’s insistence

on moving into a place where they are not wanted. Though he tries to bribe the family in order to keep them out, Walter tells him that they will move because his father would want them to. The speech’s central claim is that black Americans should have right to enjoy the American dream just like white Americans. Mr. Lindner and the people he represents can see only the color of the Younger family’s skin, and Walter wants him to see them as just another family. He holds his son Travis and tells Lindner that he makes the sixth generation of the Younger family in America. Walter asserts their right to the American dream by portraying them as contributors, not strangers in the country. In addition, the play explores issues of blackness, namely the relationships between black Americans and black Africans. The only picture of Africa that Lena gets is the one she receives from Christian missionaries. Her daughter, Beneatha, has a deeper appreciation for the continent. Beneatha is torn between two men, George Murchison, the son of a wealthy businessman, and Joseph Asagai, a Nigerian student. Her relationship with these two men symbolizes her struggle to understand her identity as an African-American woman. Beneatha explores her black identity through her hair. At the beginning of the play, Beneatha has chemically straightened hair. After Joseph Asagai visits her home and questions her choice, she decides to cut her hair in order to be more “black.” To her, wearing an Afro means that she is in touch with her blackness and connection to Africa. When Walter and Fred see her Afro, they immediately tease her political views. The play is not completely sympathetic to Beneatha’s transformation. At the beginning of act 2, when she wears the Nigerian clothes Asagai brought her, she models them in a way that Hansberry describes as being “more like Butterfly than any Nigerian.” Beneatha mimics Oriental mannerisms and thinks they are African. This demonstrates her ignorance of Nigerian culture. To her, Africa is an idea, and though she is more interested in African culture, she is as ignorant as her mother on certain issues. However, her final decision to practice medicine in Africa promises a more informed view of the continent. Courtney Marshall

Jude the Obscureâ•…â•… 511

Hardy, Thomasâ•… Jude the Obscureâ•… (1895)

The love and life story of Jude Fawley is Hardy’s last novelistic achievement. Rural orphan boy Jude dreams of an academic career encouraged by his teacher and role model Phillotson. After a rash and failed marriage to Arabella, Jude pursues his career plans in Christminster (modeled on Oxford) where he meets and falls for his free-minded cousin Sue Bridehead. Instead of being accepted into college Jude becomes a stonemason, while Sue attends a training school to become a teacher and then (forced by social pressure) marries Phillotson. Jude tries to take up a clerical pathway. These plans become obsolete when Sue leaves Phillotson to live with Jude. They have several children, while a boy from Jude’s first marriage to Arabella goes to live with them. Their libertine life is overshadowed by material hardships and anguish caused by public rejection. Social ostracism leads to homelessness, nomadic life, unemployment, poverty, and finally to catastrophe: Jude and Arabella’s boy kills the other children and himself: “Done because we are to menny.” Sue is thrown into existential crisis and has a miscarriage; convalescing, she returns to Phillotson, convinced of her own and Jude’s guiltiness: She believes now that they have caused the disaster by living together in sin. Jude, existentially defeated and becoming seriously ill, is lured into remarrying Arabella. He pays a final visit to Sue, then on the voyage home completely loses his health. While Arabella is out with another man, he dies alone. Thomas Schares

Ambition in Jude the Obscure

Not all is love in Hardy’s love story of Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead. As a young boy, Jude decides to follow the example of his schoolmaster Phillotson and go to the city and to the university to become a scholar. This will be his lifelong obsession and ambition. As with many of his time’s rural working class, Jude is attracted to the city. The city stands for the chance of social ascent. He pursues his destiny monomaniacally by teaching himself classical works in his childhood and youth, until his hasty marriage to Arabella ends his efforts prematurely. After the failure of this (forced) marriage, however, Jude leaves

for Christminster (Oxford) and becomes a part of the rural migration to urban areas. He picks up the profession of stonemasonry in order to earn his living before admission to the university. Again, his plans are postponed, because he meets and falls in love with his cousin Sue. The assumed path to wisdom for Jude turns out to be stony; the answer to his letter of inquiry from one of the heads of a university college is a signpost of class barriers and social rank haughtiness in Victorian England: “.  .  . judging from your description of yourself as a working man, I venture to think that you will have a much better chance of success in life by remaining in your own sphere and sticking to your trade. . . .” The blow of this rejection letter does not cause Jude to refrain from his ambitions. That Jude’s ambitions are more than infatuation becomes unmistakably clear when, the same evening, he embarrasses students in a pub by quoting the latin Credo flawlessly from memory. This phase of his life being molded by the struggle for Sue, he reshapes his original plans for an academic career: He starts to consider applying for a position with the church (the only traditional alternative for the poor in which to pursue university studies). These plans also become obsolete when his life with Sue begins. They live together “in sin,” which, of course, is not suitable for a post in the church. Like Jude, the whole ensemble of Jude the Obscure reveals ambition as an elementary human impetus, aiming at varying objectives: Jude’s first wife, Arabella, mainly represents the struggle for wealth and the urge to marry (materially) well; hers is the life-policy of immediate personal advantage. She leaves Jude the moment she finds out that he is not so promising after all in these terms. Sue, on the other hand, lives more for ideas than for aspirations. She is prone to compromise (marriage to Phillotson, religious turn in the end), since her ideals and ideas of new womanhood find little grounding in life as it is in Victorian England and to some extent cause her to act inconsistently. She is able and ambitious to become a teacher, but her lack of conformity renders this impossible. Jude’s teacher and the later husband of Sue, Phillotson, is the model of young Jude’s ambitions: The nobility of his character becomes apparent when he risks his career to consent to Sue’s

512â•…â•… Hardy, Thomas leaving him; this noble trait is revoked, however, when he takes back devastated Sue in the end. This, as a side-effect, amplifies his career again. Like all the other characters of the novel, he is a contradictory person. Jude, in the end, will never see the interior of a college. For him, ambition has resulted in restless wandering. Consequently, Jude and Sue have the happiest time of their lives when they have given up their ambitions and live together as an unmarried couple with their children. Sue says “We gave up all ambition, and were never so happy in our lives. . . .” This kind of happiness is terminal; this time the reason is not social immobility as determined by class structure but Sue and Jude’s offense against the rigidity of Victorian morality. A fascinating aspect of these two social factors is that class structure and moral code are not solely affecting the protagonists from without, but they are rather a part of the collective subconscious within the individual. Sue’s regression into devoutness, after the catastrophe has befallen her and Jude’s shared life, demonstrates this. The pessimism of the novel pivots around the two issues apparent here. The longing for love is constrained by a repressive contemporary moral code, and the longing for cultural education (which equals social ascent) is blocked by impenetrable social barriers. Thus, the repressive Victorian society prevents individuals from achieving happiness. Thomas Schares

Love in Jude the Obscure

Jude the Obscure is the tragic love story of Jude Fawley and his cousin Sue Bridehead. The whole plot of the novel is focused on and determined by their love, which is outlined as an elective affinity: Irrefutably, both are drawn to each other. Jude pursues Sue in Christminster, he even changes his plans and residence when she moves. Sue flees from the training school to Jude, and they always meet again in spite of all vows not to. The notion that the two are meant for each other is maintained throughout the novel, and even by antagonist characters: “They seem to be one person split in two!” This recurrent image of “two in one” alludes to the story of the separation of the two sexes by Aristophanes as given in Plato’s

Symposium: As a punishment, the gods cut the original whole human creature in half. They then went about separated and in unquenchable longing for their lost other half—a primeval desire for fusion through love. But the love of Sue and Jude in the whole course of events is not much more than a promise—a promise, maybe an ideal, never to be fulfilled, a tragic love that will end in catastrophe. They share only a brief period of living together happily. But during most of the novel’s events, they have to bear being apart, and Jude also has to cope with the experience of being abandoned repeatedly. Although there seems to be nothing more desirable to both of them than being together, there are always events preventing this—up to the tragic ending. Why this has to be, the novel refuses a definite answer, but there is far more to it than foreshadowings of dark hereditary family pathology. The novel reaches deeply into the psychology of its protagonists and offers various explanations and hints. But one social fact in the novel is a prominent obstacle and a concept most contradictory to Sue and Jude’s love: marriage. Discussed widely and repeatedly within the text and by the protagonists, Sue and Jude both believe it is the institution of marriage that destroys them. In fact, each marries another person: In his younger years, Jude is lured into marriage by the voluptuous Arabella, but she is disappointed and leaves him soon. Jude comes to consider this marriage “a permanent contract on a temporary feeling.” Sue, while ambitious to become a teacher, marries her patron and Jude’s former teacher Phillotson, because she feels like “a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, . . .” although she certainly loves Jude. The strange magnetism between Jude and Sue soon brings this marriage to an end, too. Phillotson consents to divorce and Sue and Jude start living together. But their brief period of physical union, the joys of two children and a third on the way are marred by their different attitudes toward sexuality, as well as the reappearance of Arabella and miserable material circumstances. After their respective divorces, Jude and Sue attempt a couple of times to marry “to make their natural marriage a legal one” but always resolve “to go home without killing their dream.”

Jude the Obscureâ•…â•… 513 The catastrophic death of their children marks the end of their union. It throws Sue’s mental balance, causing her—once a New Woman with a free and bright intellect—to turn religious, thereby finally adopting the rules of late Victorian society she used to oppose so vehemently. She believes now that Jude and she living together in sin has caused the misery to the family and, repenting, returns to the detested Phillotson, having convinced herself that she is attached to him indissolubly by religious law. Arabella, by now widowed, also manages to trick Jude back to her. He subsequently falls ill with desperation and dies. Sue conforms and Jude gives in. It may be the bitterest irony of the novel that both protagonists conclude their lives by remarrying their unloved partners. There has been no hope for the love of Sue and Jude, the disappointments and delusions the situation has caused are too numerous. Jude sums up: “Perhaps the world is not illuminated enough for such experiments as ours.” Thomas Schares

Sex/Sensuality/Eroticism in Jude the Obscure

When the novel appeared in 1895 it caused a scandal among its cleric critics, one of whom renamed it Jude the Obscene. These agitations are hardly comprehensible nowadays, as the reader will not find any openly described sexuality in the book. Contemporary critical rejection of the novel is understandable because marriage as well as religion are attacked heavily. The only (sexually) gross event depicted involves a butchered pig’s “pizzle” (penis), which Arabella, Jude’s first wife-to-be, throws playfully at Jude on the occasion of their first acquaintance. While sexual performance is banished behind the scenery (we know it is happening frequently because of the children emerging), the characters do not refrain from discussing their sexuality; this also was probably unsettling for the Victorian reader. Mainly through her conversations with Jude it becomes apparent that Sue, Jude’s great love, is not a sensual creature: Rejection of sexual intercourse (with men) is a stable disposition of her character. She tells Jude of a former relationship, a “friendly intimacy with an undergraduate at Christminster” . . . “he wanted me as a mistress, in fact, but I wasn’t

in love with him.” Sue admits: “I have mixed with [men]—one or two of them particularly—almost as one of their own sex.” Her attitude toward men is unconventional, as is her sexual nature. She has a hysterical breakdown when she assumes that her then-husband Phillotson is trying to persuade her into her matrimonial duties. In fact, as Sue believes toward the end, from the moment she gave in to Jude, their lives began to worsen and, in this later interpretation of events, to lead to catastrophe. But the constant rejective posture of Sue is a symptom of her whole disposition: She feels “that before a thing was done it might be right to do, but that being done it became wrong; or, in other words, that things which are right in theory became wrong in practice.” Consequently, Sue prefers the mere possibility of a (sexual) relationship with Jude to its fulfillment. Her attitude toward sexuality reveals a very complex and much-debated character, which cannot be unfolded extensively here (gender perspective is be left out of this brief account). Many times, a kiss is the most intense token of love Jude can obtain from Sue, and it takes them a while of living together before their sexual relationship commences—in a moment of crisis when Sue feels threatened by Arabella’s return. The fairy-like, asexual constitution of Sue marks a sharp contrast to Jude’s less refined inclinations to “savage” sexuality (as with Arabella) and drinking. Jude’s (occasionally fulfilled) desire to fully love Sue is an urge to possess the unpossessable (she being his cousin). The contrast is evident when Jude compares her to Arabella: In observing Sue’s bosom, “the small, tight, apple-like convexities of her bodice, so different from Arabella’s amplitudes.” To Jude Sue is “the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness.” Jude’s attachment to his first wife, Arabella, is of a completely different nature. They attract each other mutually, but this attraction is purely sexual. In all other aspects of matrimonial life and in terms of affection for each other, they fail; after a short while, Arabella flees from Jude to immigrate to Australia. To Jude, this marriage was “buying a month’s pleasure with a life’s discomfort.” After her second husband has died, Arabella turns to Jude again, taking advantage of his miserable state. Two times Arabella

514â•…â•… Hardy, Thomas lures Jude into marriage by employing sexual desire and alcohol as bait. The overall impact of sexuality and eroticism is ambivalent in Jude the Obscure, the gender question being obscured by observations on society. There is no purely satisfying and blissful sexuality (neither sexual identity) to be found throughout the novel; in the end it always has sad consequences. It forces Jude into his first marriage, it keeps him from the city and his ambitions awhile, it kills his ambitions again when he has to feed the hungry mouths of his and Sue’s family, he even betrays Sue with Arabella on one occasion. Concerning Jude, sexuality is one of the factors that have formed the tragedy of his life. “For each ecstatic instant / We must an anguish pay” as Emily Dickinson puts it. Yet Jude refrains from a clerical path to be no longer “the soldier and servant of a religion in which sexual love was regarded as at its best a frailty, and at its worst damnation.” The negative powers are not inherent in sexuality itself but in what society makes of it. And maybe here lies one purely fatalistic strain of Hardy’s thinking, as, at this point, his pessimism is projected onto society. For example, characters who behave progressively are punished by society; as Jude says, “I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas,” and Phillotson loses his teaching position as a consequence of letting his wife, Sue, go to live with Jude (“She is not [my wife]; she is another man’s except in name and law.” To sum up: A repressive society prevents both pure love and a satisfying sexuality by the instruments of religion and, indeed, marriage. Thomas Schares

Hardy, Thomasâ•… Tess of the d’Urbervillesâ•… (1891)

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, set in rural southwestern England, was published serially in a periodical before appearing in book form in 1891. Hardy faced a great deal of criticism from his audience and from publishers who disapproved of the “infidelity” and the “obscenity” of this novel that narrates Tess’s hardships following her unwilling loss of innocence. Hardy resented the changes editors expected him to make; after a similarly nega-

tive reaction to his next novel, Jude the Obscure, he announced that he would never write fiction again. However, the last novel sold well and was a financial success, though many readers found it depressing and shocking. Tess of the d’Urbervilles takes place during a time of dramatic social and economic change in England, and, like many of Hardy’s novels, illustrates a great awareness of the trials and hardships faced by the rural poor, especially the women. Here, Hardy preÂ�sents a compassionate depiction of a young woman victimized by a morally rigid and often hypocritical society. Moreover, Hardy examines the nature and implications of the slow transition from an old-fashioned, community-centered agricultural society to a modern, industrial economy driven by money and in which individuals often must fend for themselves. Erica Artiles

Community in Tess of the d’Urbervilles

The first image readers get of Tess Durbeyfield is that of a young woman dressed, like her peers, in white, participating in a May Day dance. Despite her simple, natural beauty, Tess does not stand out, but rather fits well into this safe, comfortable community that she has known for her entire life. Following a series of events that jeopardize her family’s livelihood, Tess leaves her native Blackmoor and its familiar community. While away, she encounters a new, rougher community and is sexually violated by her employer, Alec d’Urberville. As a result of her loss of virginity, Tess finds herself cut off from her native society and begins a futile search for a new community and a sense of belonging. As a girl, Tess was popular. She had two particularly close friends with whom she spent a great deal of time. Moreover, she played a very important role in the community of her family, caring for and loving her younger siblings when her mother failed to do so. Despite her safe and comfortable position, Tess leaves her home behind in order to cultivate relations with the d’Urberville family in Tantridge, hoping to help out her family that has suffered the loss of their horse, their primary means for income. In Tantridge, Tess meets a rough, harddrinking community of men and women. Though

Tess of the d’Urbervillesâ•…â•… 515 they are willing to accept Tess, she feels threatened and remains distant from them. Consequently, she leaves their company while on the way home from a dance late one night and finds herself alone with Alec d’Urberville, who seduces her against her will and leaves her pregnant. Tess briefly returns home following the loss of her innocence, but no longer fits neatly into the community from which she came. Despite the fact that her friends come to see her, Tess can no longer take part in their chatter, laughter, and good-humored teasing of her. She feels lonely, guilt-ridden, and unable to relate either to her peers or to her family. Although she leaves her house periodically to work in the village, Tess spends most of her time hiding in her family’s house and avoiding all company. Eventually, Tess leaves her native Blackmoor again, this time to seek employment at Talbothay’s Dairy. There, no one knows anything of her past. Farmer Crick and his wife, the milkmaids, and the apprentice Angel Clare eagerly welcome her into their warm and happy community. Tess revives during her time there, thrives in the natural environment, and strikes up a romance with Angel Clare. Tess initially resists engaging in a relationship with Clare because of her past actions, but eventually she succumbs to love and accepts his offer of marriage. Following their wedding ceremony, the couple leaves the dairy community behind. Though Tess tries repeatedly to tell Angel of her past, she does not succeed until their wedding night when they both reveal indiscretions. Furious with Tess, Angel rejects her, leaving the girl entirely alone and ashamed to return to Talbothay’s dairy. She briefly returns home once more, but finds her bedroom occupied by siblings and her father questioning the validity of her marriage. Feeling more isolated and alone than ever, Tess again leaves. Needing work, Tess accepts a series of temporary jobs that demand more and more from her physically. She suffers extreme poverty and has no real connections to anyone. While at FlintcombAsh, she reconnects with Marion, whom she knew at the dairy. Here, brutally hard field work and dire conditions prevent the development of any real community and Tess struggles alone, testing the limits of her physical ability. During a chance

encounter, Tess meets Alec d’Urberville who has reformed his ways and become a traveling preacher. Tess rejects his advances initially, but familial hardship again leads her to accept his assistance. In exchange for helping her family, she agrees to live as his mistress. They take up residence in a fine house in a resort town on the English Channel. Despite her elegant lodging and her fine dress, Tess continues to feel isolated and disconnected from any larger community. When Angel returns, she abandons this life with Alec, whom she murders, and retreats to an abandoned mansion with her husband, forming a small but relatively happy community of just the two of them. Their happiness is short-lived, however. Pursued by the law, Tess leaves the mansion and heads for Stonehenge completely alone to await her fate. Erica Artiles

Guilt in Tess of the d’Urbervilles

In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy explores both the origins and consequences of guilt through the story of the title character’s fall from grace. Throughout the novel, Tess finds herself in difficult and complex situations that lead to her victimization and her inability to act in her own best interest. Only by overcoming the overwhelming sense of guilt that plagues her can Tess finally take responsibility for her own fate. Tess’s guilt arises from two primary sources: her overwhelming sense of responsibility to her family and her acceptance of the traditional Christian equation of virtue and purity with chastity. As the daughter of an alcoholic father and an incompetent mother, Tess takes responsibility for her younger siblings and helping to run the household. When she spends an afternoon dancing and reveling with other girls her age, Tess feels guilty for getting grass stains on the white dress that her mother washed and ironed. Later, when her father drinks too much and cannot take the family’s beehives to the market, Tess offers to drive them despite the fact that she is exhausted and inexperienced. During the journey, Tess dozes off briefly, leading to the death of the family’s horse. Guilt and responsibility lead Tess to submit, against her better judgment, to her mother’s plan for her to make connections with the very

516â•…â•… Hardy, Thomas wealthy d’Urberville family to whom, her mother and father believe, they are distantly related. In an effort to aid her family, Tess accepts employment caring for Mrs. d’Urberville’s pet fowl and encounters Alec d’Urberville, who is attracted to Tess and repeatedly tries to seduce her. Though dependent upon Alec for her livelihood and socially inferior to him, Tess stands her ground and repeatedly rejects his advances. One night, though, Tess impulsively accepts his offer for a ride home from a village dance in order to avoid a confrontation with some members of the Tantridge community. During the dark and foggy night, Alec loses his way, leaving him and Tess alone in the woods together. Alec again entreats her as a lover and informs her of the many gifts he has given her family, including a new horse for her father. In response to his request, perhaps motivated by a sense of guilt, Tess is indecisive when answering his request. Though she never explicitly agrees, Tess helplessly succumbs to his advances. Shortly after losing her virginity, Tess returns to her family pregnant and riddled with guilt and shame. On the way home, she encounters a man painting religious messages about damnation and sin throughout the countryside. When she asks him about sin that one does not commit willingly, he ignores her question and instead talks about the ability of such messages to incite guilt. Though Tess says that she does not believe the validity of such messages, she leaves the company of the painter profoundly affected. Tess returns home only long enough to bear and bury her sickly child. Following her sexual experience, Tess senses a chasm that divides her from her former self as well as from her former companions. This social chasm reflects society’s linking of chastity with virtue, and Tess accepts the fact that her sin has made her an immoral woman and an outcast. She becomes overwhelmed with guilt at defying both social conventions and religious prohibitions. Consequently, she resists Angel Clare’s love at Talbothay’s dairy, despite her powerful feelings. Later, her guilt prompts her to accept Angel’s unreasonably harsh rejection of her as a lover and a wife, despite his own past indiscretions. Later, following the unexpected death of her father, Tess returns home and again, out of a sense of guilt and

responsibility, defies her own judgment to help her family. Having recently encountered Alec again, Tess refuses his continuing advances until he offers assistance to her homeless and desperate family. She agrees to live as his mistress, taking on even greater guilt, in order to have her mother and siblings provided for. Once Angel returns, however, Tess regrets conceding to Alec, kills her lover, and follows her husband to an abandoned mansion where, apart from society, they consummate their marriage and live as husband and wife until they are discovered. Though her action here is complex, one could argue that she has rejected her sense of responsibility to her family and her guilt over her past actions. About to be captured, Tess heads for Stonehenge by herself and sleeps on an altar, where victims were sacrificed to the gods, before being taken by the authorities. Erica Artiles

Social Class in Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, presents a cast of male characters that represent various social classes of late-19th-century England. Tess’s involvement with each of the men illustrates some of the problems and inconsistencies inherent in each class. The story opens with Tess’s father, John Durbeyfield, learning that he is the sole remaining member of the ancient d’Urberville line. He is lazy and poor, scraping together a living by doing odd jobs and peddling various wares. Once he learns of his lineage, Durbeyfield becomes proud and arrogant, taking on some of the worst traits of the aristocracy without the money or social standing that define the class. The meager living he does make becomes jeopardized when he is too intoxicated to take his beehives to the market in Casterbridge. Tess offers to go instead and inadvertently kills their horse, the primary means of the family’s livelihood. Hoping to establish a connection with and to profit from what he assumes to be another, wealthier branch of the d’Urberville family, John sends Tess to Tantridge where she encounters Alec d’Urberville. He is the son of a successful merchant, Simon Stokes, who changed his name to d’Urberville after he found records of what he believed to be an extinct family line in the British Museum. Following his

“The Luck of Roaring Camp”â•…â•… 517 father’s death, Alec takes control of the fortune and makes the most of the new money and the new family name. Although Alec does assist the Durbeyfield family and offers Tess a job tending his invalid mother’s fowl, his primary motives for hiring her are personal. He is attracted to Tess and relentlessly pursues her. Tess, however, has no feelings for Alec, firmly resisting his many advances until he takes advantage of her one night when they are traveling alone together on an abandoned road. After learning she is pregnant, Tess returns home and gives birth to a son, Sorrow, who represents the merging of an old name with new money. The child lives for only a short time. After burying the child, Tess accepts employment as a dairy maid and encounters many honorable, hard-working country folk, including Farmer Crick. He is a master of his trade, treats his employees well, and works hard for his living. While there, Tess meets and falls in love with Angel Clare, a member of the ambitious middle class. He is the son of a minister, yet he has rejected the clergy, choosing instead to seek his fortune in agriculture. Angel has grand ambitions, which include buying a large plot of land and establishing a farm, but no genuine aptitude for farming or clear sense of direction. On their wedding night, he and Tess both confess their past indiscretions. Though Tess immediately forgives him for an affair he once had in London, he cannot accept her past. After giving her some money, he leaves Tess behind and boards a boat to Brazil. Following her rejection by her husband, Tess sets out in search of a place in this stratified society. As one born into a poor country family, seduced by a member of the newly rich, and married to an ambitious middle-class gentleman, Tess does not fit anywhere. She tries returning to the fields, but nearly collapses under the cruel conditions and the strain of the labor. When she learns that her mother is ill, Tess returns home. Within a few weeks, her mother recovers and her father passes away, causing the family to be evicted from their cottage. In an effort to keep her mother and siblings fed and sheltered, Tess reluctantly agrees to live with a still smitten Alec, whom she meets during a chance encounter. Alec provides for the family, and for a brief time Tess lives the life of a wealthy lady, dressing in fancy

clothes and residing in a luxurious boardinghouse. Seeing the error of his ways, Angel returns from Brazil to reclaim his wife and finds Tess in her new life. He tells her that he has forgiven her and begs her to return to him, but Tess refuses, saying that he has come too late. Angel leaves heartbroken and Tess regrets her decision to stay with her lover. After stabbing Alec to death, she flees with Angel to an abandoned country mansion where they live in relative luxury for a week until they are discovered. Tess is captured at Stonehenge and put to death, bringing an end to her search for a place and social identity. Erica Artiles

Harte, Bretâ•… “The Luck of Roaring Camp”â•… (1868)

Bret Harte’s 1868 short story “The Luck of Roaring Camp” depicts a fictional western community in the Sierra foothills of California, known as Roaring Camp. The small, male-dominated community of rowdy and at times uncivilized characters are faced with the challenges of accepting and raising a newborn child while at the same time upholding their belief in not welcoming newcomers into their community. When Cherokee Sal, the only female at Roaring Camp, dies during childbirth, the inhabitants of Roaring Camp find themselves taking care of a newborn baby, whom they later name Tommy Luck or “The Luck.” Stumpy, who helps deliver the child, is elected to take the lead in raising the child with the only other female entity in the camp, a mule named Jinny. As the camp comes together to help raise the child, the men find themselves indulging in their “softer” sides, often exchanging their rowdy behavior for a quieter, more civilized way of life. The men at Roaring Camp, including Kentuck, a rough individual without much attention to his outward appearance who takes a particular liking to Tommy Luck, nurture the child in their own way by bringing flowers and gifts from nature to the young child. The birth of Tommy Luck introduces a range of unfamiliar concepts to the residents of Roaring Camp—the innocence of a newborn child and the realization of their own flaws.

518â•…â•… Harte, Bret Several months after the birth of the child a great flood washes Roaring Camp away, sending buildings and the camp’s inhabitants into the river. Stumpy is the first known victim of the flood as his body is found washed on the shore. “The Luck” is found, barely alive, as is Kentuck. The story concludes with Kentuck and “The Luck” being washed into the river to meet their deaths. Andrew Andermatt

Community in “The Luck of Roaring Camp”

Bret Harte’s short story, “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868), depicts a fictional western community in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains of California. Roaring Camp is a small, maledominated community that seems, on the surface, to reject civilized behavior in favor of a rugged, violent society. The community that makes up this fictional setting is best analyzed through a reading of the camp’s gender, sense of identity, and the way these elements, in conjunction with the characters’ actions, lead to the overall changing of the community in which they find themselves. Early in the story Harte gives his readers a glimpse at the community life that exists within the boundaries of Roaring Camp. First, we see the residents of Roaring Camp congregated at a cabin in the clearing where “Cherokee Sal,” the only female in Roaring Camp, is ready to deliver a baby. With this detail, the reader assumes the “novelty” of the event that is ready to commence. While residents of the camp are regularly exposed to violence and death, a birth is fairly unknown. Here, Harte begins to paint this community as a stereotypical, anti-female, male entity. Roaring Camp itself is referred to as a malegendered individual, rather than a group of people. After the residents elect one of their own residents, Stumpy, to help deliver the baby, the narrator states that “Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue.” What continues to develop this community’s stereotypical “maleness” is the camp’s strict opposition to female inclusion, as illustrated by Harte’s decision to “kill off ” Cherokee Sal shortly after the delivery of her baby. Once “Tom Luck” or “The Luck” is born and in the care of the male camp, the narrator states that “The introduction of a female

nurse in the camp also met with objection,” and that the camp “didn’t want any more of the other kind,” a clear reference to the community’s view of male superiority and female subordination. To be fair to the residents of Roaring Camp, it is important to consider that the narrator makes a point of telling readers that the camp, in general, “looks suspiciously on all strangers,” which suggests that while the members of the camp may not welcome women, they equally shut out anyone who is not part of their community. “They’re mighty rough on strangers,” the narrator asserts while reminding readers that encouragement to immigration of any kind was not given. Another characteristic of the inhabitants’ identity that leads to their overall sense of community is the descriptions of the men themselves. The narrator tells us that some of the men gathered around are fugitives from justice, criminals, and reckless individuals. Even though the term “roughs” is applied to them, the narrator makes a point to let us know that the term is one of “distinction” rather than definition, as the men hardly look the part of their reputation, with their soft voices, diminutive stature, and “Hamlet-like” appearance. The barbaric picture painted of these characters is more or less the way these characters want their community to be viewed rather than what really is the case. Harte continues to explore this true identity of the community within Roaring Camp by showing how the arrival of “The Luck” brings out the sensitivity of the men. The mere gathering around Cherokee Sal invokes a “maternal” instinct within the men, who are anxious to see the orphan and bring gifts to the baby. Moreover, the men are enthusiastic about keeping the baby and raising it themselves and, with the baby’s safety at heart, are concerned about what may happen if he were to be taken from the camp. The true sense of the nurturing community of the men at Roaring Camp is seen when everyone comes together for the child’s christening and naming; and, while Stumpy takes charge of the baby’s care, Roaring Camp as a community serves as both the baby’s mother and father. The arrival of “The Luck” clearly shifts the identity of this community from the stereotypical, rugged male-dominated society to one that clearly

“The Luck of Roaring Camp”â•…â•… 519 is capable of civilized behavior. The camp undergoes a complete transformation, illustrated through the characterization of Kentuck, one of the residents of the camp whose clothing changes only when “sloughed off through decay.” During the transformation, or “subtle influence of innovation,” as the narrator puts it, Kentuck appears regularly in a clean shirt and washed face. The camp’s once boisterous and violent ways have subsided so as not to disturb the baby, and cursing becomes a thing of the past. Andrew Andermatt

Gender in “The Luck of Roaring Camp”

Bret Harte’s short story, “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” depicts a fictional western community in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains of California. Roaring Camp is a small, male-dominated community that seems, on the surface, to reject civilized behavior in favor of a rugged, violent society. The community that makes up this fictional setting is best analyzed through a reading of the camp’s gender, sense of identity, and the way these elements, in conjunction with the characters’ actions, lead to the overall changing community in which they find themselves. Early in the story Harte gives his readers a glimpse at the community life that exists within the boundaries of Roaring Camp. First, we see the residents of Roaring Camp congregated at a cabin in the clearing where “Cherokee Sal,” the only female in Roaring Camp, is ready to deliver a baby. With this detail, the reader assumes the “novelty” of this event. While residents of the camp are regularly exposed to violence and death, a birth is fairly unknown. Here, Harte begins to paint this community as a stereotypical, anti-female, male entity. Roaring Camp itself is referred to as a malegendered individual, rather than a group of people. After the residents elect one of their own, Stumpy, to help deliver the baby, the narrator states that “Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue.” What continues to develop this community’s stereotypical “Maleness” is the camp’s strict opposition to female inclusion, as illustrated by Harte’s decision to “kill off ” Cherokee Sal shortly after the delivery of her baby. Once “Tom Luck” or “The

Luck” is born and in the care of the male camp, the narrator states that “The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection,” and that the camp “didn’t want any more of the other kind,” a clear reference to the community’s view of male superiority and female subordination. To be fair to the residents of Roaring Camp, it is important to consider that the narrator makes a point of telling readers that the camp, in general, is suspicious of all outsiders, which suggests that while the members of the camp may not welcome women, they equally shut out anyone who is not part of their community. The narrator asserts that they are rough on strangers while reminding readers that encouragement was not given to immigration of any kind. Another characteristic of the inhabitants’ identity that leads to their overall sense of community is the descriptions of the men themselves. The narrator tells us that some of the men gathered around are fugitives from justice, criminals, and reckless individuals. Even though the term “roughs” is applied to them, the narrator makes a point of letting us know that the term is one of “distinction” rather than definition, as the men hardly look the part of their reputation, with their soft voices, diminutive stature, and “Hamlet-like” appearance. The barbaric picture painted of these characters is more or less the way these characters want their community to be viewed rather than what really is the case. Harte continues to explore this true identity of the community within Roaring Camp by showing how the arrival of “The Luck” brings out the sensitivity of the men. The mere gathering around Cherokee Sal invokes a “maternal” instinct within the men, who are anxious to see the orphan and bring gifts to the baby. Moreover, the men are enthusiastic about keeping the baby and raising it themselves and, with the baby’s safety at heart, are concerned about what may happen if he were to be taken from the camp. The true sense of the nurturing community of the men at Roaring Camp is seen when everyone comes together for the child’s christening and naming, and the fact that, while Stumpy takes charge of the baby’s care, Roaring Camp as a community serves as both the baby’s mother and father. The arrival of “The Luck” clearly shifts the identity of this community from the stereotypical,

520â•…â•… Harte, Bret rugged male-dominated society to one that clearly is capable of civilized behavior. The camp undergoes a complete transformation, illustrated through the characterization of Kentuck, one of the residents of the camp whose clothing changes only when “sloughed off through decay.” During the transformation, or “subtle influence of innovation,” as the narrator puts it, Kentuck appears regularly in a clean shirt and washed face. The camp’s once boisterous and violent ways subside so as to not disturb the baby, and cursing becomes a thing of the past. Andrew Andermatt

Isolation in “The Luck of Roaring Camp”

Isolation as a literary theme may appear in a variety of forms. In some cases, isolation may present itself through a story’s protagonist or antagonist—most commonly when the main character(s) experience loneliness because of a physical separation. Isolation may also occur much more figuratively—perhaps emotionally or psychologically as a symbol for a larger idea such as a generation gap between characters or inequality between the sexes. In Bret Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” Harte presents the concept of isolation in three ways—as an entity that is in constant contrast with or perpetuated by the notion of “togetherness,” as a commentary on the separation of the sexes, and as a voluntary act to avoid shortcomings. The opening paragraph sets the story’s tone and introduces the reader to two competing themes, loneliness and togetherness. First, readers are presented with the notion that the camp is a lonely and desolate place. The narrator describes not only the ditches and claims, but also “Tuttle’s Grocery,” as being deserted. The vacancy of the grocery, which seems to regularly entertain gamblers, suggests that the camp is unusually and eerily abandoned. The camp must be quite desolate, as the narrator reflects that not even a shootout between French Pete and Kanaka Joe could stop the patrons from playing a game. While the camp seems abandoned in some areas, there is a sense of camaraderie and togetherness as we learn that all residents are collected at a cabin at the outer edge of the clearing. The theme of isolation is in constant competition with togetherness, most

obviously with the descriptions the narrator offers in the opening paragraph and later with Cherokee Sal, the only female character, and the male community that makes up Roaring Camp. Harte seems to want readers to understand that the community that constitutes the camp also engenders the camp’s primary isolation. The most obvious case of isolation in the story centers on the only female member of Roaring Camp, Cherokee Sal. When readers meet Cherokee Sal, she is ready to give birth, with the community of males surrounding her cabin waiting to hear news of what is taking place. The narrator tells us that Cherokee Sal feels loneliness particularly because she lacks the compassion of her own sex. She is the only one at the camp who can experience the pain of childbirth, and her rough and tough male counterparts are the only people who can comfort her. In this case, Cherokee Sal is obviously an outsider at Roaring Camp—as unable to relate to the male population as the males are to her giving birth and nurturing a child. While Harte may be commenting on the isolation of females in male-dominated 19th-century communities, he seems to view the males of Roaring Camp as equally isolated as females. The men are first and foremost isolated from their former lives. Readers do not get insight from the narrator as to what these previous lives were, but the narrator makes it clear that the men have left behind some part of their identities. The narrator states that only two of the roughly 100 men are fugitives, but all are reckless. With the exception of Stumpy and Kentuck, whom readers get to know only through their interaction with Tommy Luck, the residents of Roaring Camp all seem to take on one identity. There really is no individualization at the camp. The camp itself is also isolated, secluded from the world and even its own shortcomings. Roaring Camp is unwelcoming to strangers. The narrator explains that the camp is not only physically isolated by the mountains, but also that it does not encourage visitors who stumble upon it to stay. It seems that the camp has somehow willfully secluded itself, striving to make its isolation from the rest of the world “perfect.” Andrew Andermatt

“The Outcasts of Poker Flat”â•…â•… 521

Harte, Bretâ•… “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”â•… (1869)

“The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” one of Bret Harte’s most successful and anthologized western frontier tales, was first published in the January 1869 issue of Overland Monthly, a magazine Harte edited. The story of individuals exiled from a hypocritical society who form a community of love and compassion in the face of impending death, it shows the goodness that exists in all humanity. Four outcasts, shunned by the town of Poker Flat in a fit of moral cleansing, are being sent to Sandy Bar. They are led by the philosophical gambler, Mr. John Oakhurst, who appears in several other Harte stories, notably “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868). It is Oakhurst who prompts the town’s outrage by winning several thousand dollars of their money in a card game. The other three—“The Duchess,” a prostitute; “Mother Shipton,” presumably her madam; and “Uncle Billy,” a drunkard and thief—represent all the moral ills that Poker Flat deems worthy of exile. Before the four can reach Sandy Bar, however, they must take shelter at the foot of the Sierra Nevada of northern California. By fate or chance, they are met by Tom Simson, an “Innocent” from Sandy Bar, and his 15-year-old fiancée Piney Woods. They all struggle to accept their individual and collective fates. After Uncle Billy steals a horse and their mules, and a snowstorm leaves them no way out, we see illustrations of themes common to Harte’s work, such as community, fate, heroism, innocence and experience, nature, social class, and survival. Though the story ends in tragedy (of the six, only the Innocent survives), its true message is that appearances are deceiving. The “outcasts,” by their selfless love and sacrifice for one another, are shown to be morally superior to those who shunned them. Gary Kerley

Fate in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”

Because the events of the story revolve around the actions of Mr. John Oakhurst, a professional gambler from Roaring Camp, fate, chance, and circumstance play a major role. At the beginning of the narrative, Oakhurst senses an ominous change in the air of Poker Flat. On the morning of November

23, 1850, he is aware that the citizens of the town are experiencing a virtuous reaction to his winning several thousand dollars. He accepts the sentence because, as a gambler, he knows not to tempt Fate. His gambler’s experience tells him that the odds are always in favor of the house, in this case the town of Poker Flat. Though some in the town want to hang Oakhurst, he is escorted out of town at gunpoint, accompanied by three other undesirables: “The Duchess,” a prostitute; “Mother Shipton,” presumably her madam; and “Uncle Billy,” a gold thief and drunkard. Because he accepts his fate, Oakhurst does not grumble or curse as do the others. In fact, he remains cheerful and philosophically calm; he even gives his best horse to the Duchess. Halfway between Poker Flat and Sandy Bar, the next town, the outcasts camp in a wooded area in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Oakhurst believes that they do not have time to stop; he senses something fateful in the air, much as he did the morning of their exile. The sky is ominously clouded and, in his gambler’s vernacular, they are throwing up their hands before the game is played out. Fate again enters the story when the outcasts are joined by Tom Simson, the “Innocent” of Sandy Bar, and his 15-year-old fiancée, Piney Woods. Tom is on his way to Poker Flat to marry Piney and seek his fortune. Tom and Oakhurst had met a few months before when Oakhurst won all of Tom’s fortune, $40, in a game of cards. Oakhurst, knowing Tom’s naiveté and inexperience, returned the money and told Tom never to gamble again. Whether the meeting is coincidental or fated, the addition of Tom and Piney further complicates matters. There are now two more mouths to feed, and Oakhurst cannot persuade Tom and Piney to travel on toward Poker Flat. As snow begins to fall, Oakhurst discovers that Uncle Billy has stolen a horse and the mules and deserted his fellow outcasts. Though none of the others are surprised, Oakhurst alone is truly aware of their predicament: They are too far away from either Poker Flat or Sandy Bar to make it on what provisions are left. They have food enough for only 10 days. As the others in the party amuse themselves with music and stories around a campfire, Oakhurst is more and more aware of their impending, dire circumstances. Always the gambler, Oakhurst likens

522â•…â•… Harte, Bret the situation to a streak of bad luck. Their luck has changed since they left Poker Flat, he announces to the others. Their fate is sealed, but only he seems aware of how bad things are likely to get. A week goes by, and the party becomes imprisoned by the snow in a small cabin; their provisions are running out. Oakhurst calls it a losing hand, though the others try to make the best of it. Ironically, Mother Shipton, the strongest of the party, is the first to die because she starved herself to give her food to the young Piney so she can live longer. Eventually, all of them realize that their situation is hopeless, but Oakhurst, in a last attempt to cheat fate, sends Tom back to Poker Flat on a pair of snowshoes fashioned out of an old horse saddle. It is a two-day journey on foot, but it is his only chance to save Piney. Though Oakhurst could save himself, he never once thinks of deserting the others. The next morning, both Piney and the Duchess accept their fate, and when they are found by the men from Poker Flat, they are covered in snow, locked in each other’s arms. It is Oakhurst’s fate to be the last of the outcasts to die. His body is found under the snow beneath a tree on which he has left his own epitaph, written on a deuce of clubs, the lowest card in the deck. Oakhurst lived as a gambler and dies the same way. At the end he writes that he has “struck a streak of bad luck” and “cashed in his checks.” His fate has finally caught up to him. The ominous sense he felt the morning of the exile has been realized. Gary Kerley

Innocence and Experience in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”

Mr. John Oakhurst, an experienced gambler, the central character of the story and the impetus for the casting out of undesired elements in Poker Flat, is a natural foil for a young Tom Simson, the “Innocent” from Sandy Bar, another camp one day’s journey away. The two characters represent opposites in both life experience and understanding. Oakhurst is described at the beginning of the story as a professional gambler who is not at all surprised by the townspeople’s sudden moral indignation. He has been in situations like this before, and he takes

the sentence of exile with calmness and a bemused acceptance of Fate. Tom Simson’s inexperience and naiveté are evident when he is first introduced to the outcasts. He and Oakhurst had met a few months before when Oakhurst won Tom’s entire fortune of $40. Because of Oakhurst’s knowledge of human nature, he returns the youth’s money and urges him never to gamble again. Though Tom is excited to see his old friend, he again shows his inexperience by telling Oakhurst that he is going to Poker Flat to make his fortune and to elope with Piney Woods, a waitress. Piney, on meeting the others, hides behind a tree, blushes, and acts even younger than her 15 years. Oakhurst’s fellow outcasts have diverse experiences in the ways of the world. The narrative clearly implies that both the Duchess and Mother Shipton are ladies of questionable character, and Uncle Billy is a gold thief and a drunkard. When they are exiled from Poker Flat, they are not surprised, only indignant. When Tom assumes the Duchess is Mrs. Oakhurst simply because she is traveling with him, Uncle Billy has to be restrained from laughing out loud. Oakhurst also has to keep Uncle Billy in check when he starts to tell Tom and Piney that their situation is getting desperate. Even before a snowstorm traps the outcasts and their new acquaintances, it is Oakhurst who correctly sizes up the situation. When Uncle Billy leaves them stranded by taking off with a horse and mules, Oakhurst’s years of gambling experience help him remain calm. He chooses not to tell Tom and Piney the truth about the defection, telling them that Uncle Billy accidentally stampeded the animals. Oakhurst remains cheerful and merely says they have had a run of bad luck. He even likens their situation to a week-long camping trip. As the storm worsens and their provisions dwindle, Oakhurst continues to keep himself calm and to keep Tom and Piney in the dark, thereby leaving them content, even happy. The group builds a big fire, and Tom plays his accordion and regales the others by acting out stories from a copy of the Iliad. Both the Duchess and Mother Shipton are aware of their predicament. They are not surprised to learn that Uncle Billy stole the mules, but neither dares to upset Tom or especially the young Piney.

“The Outcasts of Poker Flat”â•…â•… 523 Mother Shipton, in an act of selflessness that belies the town’s moral judgment of her, starves herself in order to keep Piney alive. In the end, however, even Piney loses her innocence by accepting her dark fate and realizing there is no escape from death. When the townspeople of Poker Flat find her, she and the Duchess are both in the cabin, covered in snow, locked in each other’s arms. Oakhurst’s experience and philosophical calm finally play themselves out. He gives his companions a few days’ worth of fuel before he leaves the cabin in order to keep them alive a little longer. He could have saved himself earlier, but he sacrificed his own life, hoping that Tom could save Piney by returning to Poker Flat for help. Oakhurst read his own fate. At the end of the story, the townspeople find his cold dead body under a tree. On the tree is pinned a deuce of clubs, and written on it in his own hand is Oakhurst’s epitaph: “Beneath this tree lies the body of John Oakhurst, who struck a streak of bad luck on the 23rd of November, 1850 and handed in his checks on the 7th of December, 1850.” It is ironic that, in the end, both innocence and experience are brought together by the characters’ fateful exile from Poker Flat. The snow, pure but deadly, covers the morally questionable Duchess and the virginal Piney. Even the law of Poker Flat recognizes that sense of merged innocence and experience, and they turn away, not disturbing the bodies. Oakhurst, experienced in getting out of previous scrapes, cannot win this time, so he takes his own life in the face of certain death. Gary Kerley

Survival in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”

Reading “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” when it was first published in 1869, contemporaries of Bret Harte were familiar with the struggle to survive in the rugged Sierra Nevada of northern California. They would have known of the tragedy of the Donner Party during the winter between November 1846 and February 1847. Of 87 migrants, 40 died and many of the survivors resorted to cannibalism. Survival challenges would continue to plague many immigrants on their westward rush to California in the years following the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.

On the morning of November 23, 1850, Mr. John Oakhurst, a professional gambler, is the center of controversy in the town of Poker Flat. Because he won several thousand dollars, he senses that he is in danger of being hanged or, at best, run out of town. His knack for survival is hard-won. A gambler from Roaring Camp, Oakhurst has been through similar scrapes before. He knows what to expect when the men of Poker Flat get a sudden urge to rid their town of him and three other undesirables: “The Duchess,” a prostitute; “Mother Shipton,” presumably a madam traveling with her; and “Uncle Billy,” a gold thief and drunkard. All of these outcasts are experienced in the ways of the world and not surprised to be scapegoats of Poker Flat’s need to rid itself of bad elements. The story centers around Oakhurst’s reactions, and it is mostly his ability to predict the outcome of any situation by weighing the odds that best illustrates the theme of survival. The outcasts are sent out of town at gunpoint and head toward the camp of Sandy Bar, one day’s ride away. The road to Sandy Bar lies over the beautiful but precipitous mountain range. Because the road is both narrow and difficult, the Duchess refuses to go on, and the party halts in a wooded amphitheater surrounded on three sides by steep granite cliffs. Oakhurst’s gambler sense tells him that the outcasts are not equipped to stop; they lack the provisions to delay their journey. As he surveys the steep cliffs a thousand feet above them, he can also see that the sky is becoming overcast. However, he keeps his fears to himself and reacts as if nothing is wrong. In the past, survival has meant keeping his cards close to the vest and maintaining a poker face. A new twist in their predicament comes in the form of Tom Simson, the “Innocent,” who happens to be coming from Sandy Bar to seek his fortune. He is eloping with 15-year-old Piney Woods, a waitress from the Temperance House. Tom calls it a lucky break when he runs into Oakhurst, even though the gambler won all of Tom’s fortune in a poker game a few months before. Oakhurst, however, sees the arrival of young Tom and Piney as two more mouths to feed while the weather grows more and more ominous. He cannot persuade Tom to keep moving to Poker Flat, but he does not tell him or the others about his ever-increasing feeling of dread.

524â•…â•… Hawthorne, Nathaniel After 10 days of dwindling provisions and 20-foot snow drifts making a prison of their small cabin, escape is no longer possible. Tom and Piney ignore the inevitable by turning to one another. Mother Shipton, the strongest of the party, is the first to die. She tells Oakhurst that she has starved herself to give her week’s worth of food to Piney so she can live a little longer. The only chance for survival is for someone to get back to Poker Flat. Oakhurst, though he could have survived earlier by deserting his fellow outcasts, tells Tom that Piney can be saved if Tom uses the snowshoes Oakhurst has fashioned from an old saddle. He sends him off to make the two-day walk back to Poker Flat. As night falls, Oakhurst gathers enough fuel to heat the cabin for several more days before leaving himself. By the next morning, both the Duchess and Piney realize their fate. The storm is at its worst, and the snow has started to invade the cabin. The fire they had built dies way, and the two huddle together, dying in each other’s arms. Tom does return with help, but it is too late. Not only are the Duchess, Piney Woods, and Mother Shipton dead, but also the men of Poker Flat find the body of John Oakhurst buried beneath the snow under a tree. On the tree he pinned the two of clubs with his epitaph. He chose to end his life rather than freeze to death or starve. His gambler philosophy and instincts for survival finally catch up with him. Gary Kerley

Hawthorne, Nathanielâ•… “The Birth-mark”â•… (1846)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-mark” tells the story of a scientist named Aylmer and his inability to see past a birthmark on his wife’s face. The story charts the progress of Aylmer’s obsession and its repercussions on his life. Aylmer is married to a beautiful woman, yet he is unable to look past a singular hand-shaped blemish on her cheek. Throughout the story he focuses on the mark until both he and his wife become miserable, she even more so than he. A man of science, Aylmer wishes to experiment on the mark in an effort to remove it, to which his heartbroken wife agrees. When the

day arrives on which the experiment is to take place, Hawthorne introduces Aylmer’s assistant, the roughlooking Aminadab. Despite his haggard appearance, Aminadab does not share Aylmer’s crude obsession with the mark and suggests another plan of action, which is quickly ignored. At this point Hawthorne shows the difference between husband and wife, when Georgiana finds a record of Aylmer’s past, failed experiments and comes to love him more for his flaws. As Aylmer is incapable of the same type of love, the experiment finally takes place. The mark is removed, but Georgiana dies in the process. The story ends with Hawthorne offering up a moral lesson to his readers: Blemishes and imperfections are what make us human, and to try to remove them is a sin in itself. Aylmer’s flaws make him unable to understand, or even hear, this message. Ronald Davis

Love in “The Birth-mark”

In “The Birth-mark,” Nathaniel Hawthorne offers two contrasting views of love. The story centers around Aylmer, a renowned scientist, and his wife, Georgiana. Aylmer has based his life on experimentation, devoting himself primarily to the study of science. The only way Aylmer’s love for his wife can exceed his love for science is “by intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to its own.” Georgiana, on the other hand, loves Aylmer unconditionally. Her happiness is dependent upon his. For this reason, when he begins to take issue with a birthmark on her cheek, her perception of the mark quickly changes. To this point she has looked at the mark as a charm, but when Aylmer tells her that it “shocks” him, she is irrevocably hurt. Aylmer’s discontent with the mark, and therefore his wife, grows by leaps and bounds until he becomes obsessive about the blemish. He begins to dream about it and verbalizes his discontent in his sleep, which Georgiana hears. This pains her even more. She finally asks if he is capable of removing the mark from her face, and Aylmer, in love not only with science but also with his belief in his own ability, tells Georgiana that he is capable. Georgiana insists that he try to remove it, stating that as long as her mark upsets her husband, she is willing to

“The Birth-mark”â•…â•… 525 give up her life. Georgiana’s love for him is so great that she is willing to give up her life in an attempt to make him content with her; further, her own hatred for the birthmark has now surpassed her husband’s because of her love for him. Aylmer’s behavior, on the other hand, indicates that his love for his wife is now even more secondary to his love for science, as he has already put a great deal of thought into the surgery that would remove the mark. Aylmer’s love/obsession with science causes the tale to build toward its climax—the attempted removal of the birthmark. Aylmer takes Georgiana into his laboratory and, with the help of Aminadab, his rough and dirty assistant, begins preparations for the experiment. As the two men prepare, Aminadab offers up a view of love much closer to that of Georgiana’s, saying that if he were married to her, he’d never part with the mark. This comment is quickly forgotten, as Aylmer focuses on making Georgiana more comfortable. This suggests a certain degree of caring for his wife, although at this point it seems that Aylmer looks at her more as the subject of his experiment than his love. While Georgiana waits for Aylmer, she begins to browse his collection of journals. One contains all of her husband’s experiments; as she reads through it, she realizes that the majority of his successes were by-products of failed experiments. His failures make him more human, and cause her to “love him more profoundly than ever.” His imperfections have made him more human and caused her love for him to grow. Aylmer, on the other hand, loves Georgiana less as a person and more as a potential experiment, because of her “imperfection.” If he succeeds, his love for her will grow, but only because she will represent his own ability to change nature, to play God. By tale’s end, Aylmer succeeds in removing the mark. He gives Georgiana a liquid-filled goblet to drink, and she falls into a deep sleep. As she rests, the mark disappears, and Aylmer begins to rejoice. As Georgiana wakes, he praises both the success of his experiment as well as her perfection but still fails to mention his love for her. Georgiana, however, continues to put Aylmer’s interests ahead of hers; the liquid given to her has poisoned her body and she is dying, yet her first words upon waking are of

concern for her husband. His happiness now supersedes even her own desire to live. Hawthorne aptly distinguishes between two opposing versions of love in “The Birth-mark.” Aylmer’s love of science and his own intellectual pursuits run just as deep as Georgiana’s love for him, and both characters become obsessive in their love. Also, because Georgiana’s love centers on a desire for the complete happiness of her beloved, she is in love with an entity that can never be satisfied. Aylmer’s hubris can never be sated; there will always be more to learn and more experiments to attempt. Ronald Davis

Science and Technology in “The Birthmark”

An unnatural obsession with science and technology is the catalyst for the major events within “The Birth-mark.” One of the main characters, Aylmer, is a renowned scientist and recluse, having dedicated so much time to scientific pursuits that he has little time for anything else. Even Aylmer’s love for his wife, Georgiana, is second to his love of science. Through Aylmer and Georgiana’s relationship, Hawthorne offers a warning against Aylmer’s reckless experimentation, showing as he does in other works how things can go horribly awry when a desire for intellectual pursuits supersedes a desire for emotional sustenance. Through this relationship, he also explores the nature of obsession and objectification. Early in the story, Aylmer begins to focus on a small blemish marking Georgiana’s cheek. Georgiana is hurt by Aylmer’s comment that he finds the mark shocking, and because she doesn’t wish to cause her husband any distress, she asks him to rid her of the mark. Oblivious to his wife’s sensitivity, Aylmer leaps at the opportunity to perfect her. Having already thought a great deal, and even dreamed, about the process of removing the mark, Aylmer immediately sets into motion a series of experiments designed to destroy it. The next day, the process begins. Aylmer takes Georgiana to his lab and shows her his various experiments. He is invigorated by her presence in his laboratory, most particularly by her attention to and admiration of his tales of scientific discoveries. Thoroughly

526â•…â•… Hawthorne, Nathaniel obsessed with his own knowledge, he can enjoy her presence only when she reflects his love for science. As he explains the history of alchemy, he becomes more animated and lively than we have seen him before. Displaying his intellect for his wife reaffirms his priorities, as his pleasure is not derived from the interaction with her but from the opportunity to have his intellect admired. This is, in part, an effort to reassure her of his abilities. However, while Georgiana waits for him to be ready, she discovers a record of Aylmer’s experiments and comes to find that the grand majority of his successes were actually the unexpected outcomes of failed experiments. Here, Hawthorne comments on the unstable nature of scientific progress: One cannot always predict accurately the outcome of one’s experiments. He is also foreshadowing the tragic outcome of the tale; if Aylmer’s experiments rarely work out the way he wants them to, Georgiana might be in more danger than she thinks. However, rather than grow concerned about Aylmer’s ability and obsession with science, Georgiana grows to love her husband even more for his imperfections. Shortly before conducting his final experiment with Georgiana, Aylmer shows her a container of elixir, which represents the power of science to destroy. It is at this point that Aylmer’s obsession is revealed to be a god complex, and when Georgiana professes her worship of him, he tells her she may admire him more fully after he rids her of the birthmark. While it was clear before that Aylmer’s concern with the mark was selfish, this comment shows that he wants to remove it not just for the pleasure he’d derive from seeing his wife as “flawless,” but also for the twisted sense of importance he would gain from altering nature to please him. As the tale comes to an end, Aylmer’s last experiment completes his pattern of failure, and while the mark does disappear, Georgiana dies in the process. Aylmer’s obsession with science made him dissatisfied with what he had, made him think he could improve it, and the story ends sadly. This tale brings up a number of issues, including the nature of love as well as the morality, or lack thereof, behind human experimentation. Aylmer’s ego has twisted his sense of his own scientific prowess to the point that his wife becomes a test subject

and he becomes a god. Technology is no help to Aylmer and does nothing more than help him to kill his wife. In the end he is left with nothing to show for this latest experiment but another failure, not because he failed to remove the birthmark but because he failed to recognize the value of love over the value of science. Ronald Davis

Work in “The Birth-mark”

Work has the potential to become an all-consuming force in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-mark.” Two of the three main characters, Aylmer and Aminadab, both work in a laboratory. Aylmer is a scientist, and Aminadab is his assistant. While both men focus on furthering scientific knowledge, they do not share the same dedication to their work. Aylmer will risk anything for the sake of discovery, whereas Aminadab tempers his dedication to his work with common sense and human compassion. The final main character, Aylmer’s wife Georgiana, does not hold a traditional job. Instead, her work is to love and care for her husband unconditionally. In this way she is very similar to Aylmer; both characters hold their “work” above all else and cannot be persuaded to deviate from it for any reason. Throughout the story, the work of the two characters intertwines. Aylmer takes it upon himself to attempt to remove a birthmark from Georgiana’s face via scientific means; Georgiana’s attempts to be an ideal wife allow for this experimentation to happen, with no argument as to the safety, or the sanity, of the pursuit. As the story progresses, Aylmer focuses more and more on the removal of the birthmark, sacrificing all other pursuits and allowing his job to invade even his dreams at night. He becomes haunted by the mark, which causes Georgiana to feel bad. In her mind, her birthmark has changed from a mark of her character to a symbol of how she displeases her husband and, in turn, how she is failing at her job. One night Georgiana hears Aylmer speaking of the mark in his sleep, and this provokes a conversation between husband and wife in which they both determine the best course of action to fulfill their respective duties. Aylmer must have the mark out; Georgiana must please her husband, therefore the

The House of the Seven Gablesâ•…â•… 527 two come to the conclusion that work must be done to get rid of it. It is clear at this point in the story that duty has blinded both of them to common sense. Neither will accept the mark for what it is; rather, they have both turned it into something hideous, something hindering their happiness, something it is their duty, as workers, to fix. In preparation to remove the mark, Aylmer takes Georgiana into his laboratory. It is at this time that the reader is finally introduced to Aminadab. Hawthorne describes Aylmer’s assistant in a rough manner, with a ragged appearance and low intelligence, yet it is Aminadab who expresses disapproval of Aylmer’s pursuit. It is ironic that the man who appears so scruffy has the keener understanding. Aminadab is able to see Aylmer’s overzealous dedication to his work, but as is often the case in Hawthorne’s fiction, the wisest person is the one most easily ignored. As Georgiana awaits the removal of the mark, she explores Aylmer’s laboratory and happens upon a record of his prior experiments. In perusing them, she discovers that all of his successes were unexpected outcomes of larger failures. Rather than looking upon this revelation as a blemish on Aylmer’s character, this knowledge compels Georgiana to love him even more, thus further fulfilling her duty as a good wife. The realization of her husband as imperfect allows her to better complete her own work, just as Aylmer’s creation of an imperfection within his wife has provided him with a way in which to further experiment and, if successful, to be a better worker as well. Throughout the story, Aylmer has moved from seeing Georgiana as his wife to seeing her as his latest experiment. Ultimately, Aylmer’s obsession with his work causes Georgiana’s death. The mark disappears, but so does Georgiana’s life force. In typical fashion, Hawthorne ends the story before his characters have any sort of revelation or experience any closure regarding their actions, but it is safe to assume that Aylmer looks upon the experience as an occupational failure rather than the loss of his beloved. Work and work-obsession take on two forms in this story, the most obvious being Aylmer’s blind focus on his experiments, although Georgiana’s

dedication to and love for Aylmer come across as blind pursuits as well. Both are unable to separate existence from work, and this leads to their respective downfalls. In “The Birth-mark,” Hawthorne juxtaposes two very different types of work, scientific and emotional, but shows that, in either one, obsession is capable of transcending boundaries, obliterating rational thought, and destroying happiness. Ronald Davis

Hawthorne, Nathanielâ•… The House of the Seven Gablesâ•… (1851)

Published in 1851, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The House of the Seven Gables mixes elements of the gothic tale, romance, and realism, while telling the story of the descendants of Matthew Maule, the original proprietor of the land on which the titular house would be built, and Colonel Pyncheon, the man who “asserted plausible claims” to the land. Colonel Pyncheon sees to it that Matthew Maule is tried and hanged for witchcraft, and on the scaffold, Maule points to the colonel and utters, “God will give him blood to drink!” The moral, as Hawthorne phrases it in the preface, is that “the wrongdoing of one generation lives into successive ones,” but the novel also examines the tension between public and private, between community and social stratification, and between different perceptions of the past. The main plot threads revolve around the descendants of Colonel Pyncheon: Hepzibah, Phoebe, Clifford, and Judge Jaffrey, as well as Mr. Holgrave, the photographer whom we later learn is a descendant of Matthew Maule. Judge Jaffrey believes his cousin Clifford knows where the deed to lands in the east is located and threatens to have him sent to a mental asylum if he does not cooperate in the search for the deed. Hepzibah later finds Clifford and the deceased judge in the house, and we learn later that Judge Jaffrey died due to medical problems. The remaining Pyncheons inherit the judge’s country house and decide to move there, leaving behind the House of the Seven Gables. Phoebe and Holgrave pledge to marry. Jeffrey Pettineo

528â•…â•… Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Commerce in The House of the Seven Gables

Hawthorne’s descriptions and characterizations provide a lens through which to examine 19th-century Americans’ attitudes toward wealth and material possessions. The main points of concern are the greed of Colonel Pyncheon and Judge Jaffrey, the episodes related to Hepzibah’s cent-shop, and the mystery surrounding the deed to the lands in the east. Colonel Pyncheon’s greed for Matthew Maule’s land initiates the conflict—“.  .  . after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by this rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a prominent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible claims to the proprietorship of this, and a large adjacent tract of land. . . .” The land is the eventual site of the House of the Seven Gables, designed by one of Matthew’s descendants, Thomas. Hawthorne describes the house—and possessions like it—as so impressive that it becomes its own excuse for existence. “There is something so massive, stable, and almost irresistibly imposing, in the exterior presentment of established rank and great possessions, that their very existence seems to give them a right to exist.” Once a seamstress, Hepzibah in her old age is forced to open a “cent-shop” in the house due to her nearsightedness and her “tremulous fingers.” Hepzibah had imagined herself to have been part of the “aristocracy,” but “after sixty years of narrowing means,” she has to “step down from her pedestal of imaginary rank.” This is the point at which Hepzibah is transformed from the “patrician lady” to the “plebian woman.” At first, Hepzibah is reluctant to appear to society in a business capacity, having once considered becoming a teacher. After her first day at the shop, Hepzibah feels that “the shop would prove her ruin, in a moral and religious point of view, without contributing very essentially towards even her temporal welfare.” Hepzibah’s customers include Uncle Venner, who doles out advice such as “Give no credit!” and “Never take paper money!” One of the townspeople, Dixey, comments on Hepzibah’s scowl as something that prevents her from retaining customers—“Why, her face—I’ve seen it   .  . her face is enough to frighten the Old Nick himself .  .  . People can’t

stand it, I tell you! She scowls dreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness of temper!” Another townsperson indicates that such shops are doomed to failure due to all the competition. “This business of keeping cent-shops is overdone, like all kinds of trade, handicraft and bodily labor,” to which Dixey responds, “Poor business!” When Phoebe arrives at the house, she brings a new energy and spirit to the environment, even influencing the operations of the shop, exclaiming at one point, “We must renew our stock, Cousin Hepzibah!” The townsperson and Dixey once again consider the Pyncheons’ good fortune at the end of the novel as Dixey reflects, in a reversal of her earlier sentiment, “Pretty good business!” The setting of the cent-shop provides Hawthorne with a vehicle through which to examine the personality of Hepzibah as well as the tension between social classes and Americans’ attitudes toward wealth and commodities. In contrast to the cent-shop are settings such as the garden, which are described in more metaphysical terms. Another commercial concern is the deed to a “vast, and as yet unexplored and unmeasured tract of eastern lands.” The lands in Maine are “more extensive than many a dukedom, or even a reigning prince’s territory, on European soil.” The territory was eventually given over to “more favored individuals” and “partly cleared and occupied by actual settlers.” Hawthorne describes the claim as something almost laughable and unsubstantial: “This impalpable claim, therefore resulted in nothing more solid than to cherish, from generation to generation, an absurd delusion of family importance, which all along characterized the Pyncheons.” However, the claim turns out to be nothing more than a piece of worthless parchment for which Judge Jaffrey forces Clifford to suffer. Holgrave later discovers the deed hidden in the recess of a wall, covered by a portrait of Colonel Pyncheon. Thus, Judge Jaffrey’s desire for the deed resulted in the false imprisonment of Clifford and the alienation of Hepzibah. Commerce, therefore, operates on one hand as something necessary and even laudable, as it requires tremendous effort and a willingness to take risks. On the other hand, commercialism can become

The House of the Seven Gablesâ•…â•… 529 something destructive if pursued with unmitigated greed and avarice, as in the case of the colonel and Judge Jaffrey. Jeffrey Pettineo

Community in The House of the Seven Gables

How the Pyncheons deal with their declining social status despite generations of “aristocracy” is a major concern for Hawthorne. Hepzibah, in particular, becomes the “new plebian woman” and is forced to deal with the larger community after she establishes her cent-shop. Clifford must also learn to reintegrate into society after the debilitating effects, both mental and physical, of almost 30 years in prison. Phoebe helps both Hepzibah and Clifford recover some sense of each character’s respective place as part of humankind in broader terms, rather than simply as part of a particular social class. Hepzibah’s initial contact with the larger community is manifest through her cent-shop business, with initial visits from Holgrave, the little boy (whom the narrator describes as an “urchin”), and townsfolk identified as Dixey and Dixey’s friend. The townsfolk are initially skeptical about Hepzibah as well as the potential success of her shop, noticing her dreadful scowl born out of “ugliness of temper.” Hepzibah worries about the disregard of the townsfolk: “She was absurdly hurt, moreover, by the slight and idle effect that her setting up shop—an event of such breathless interest to herself—appeared to have upon the public . . . they cared nothing for her dignity, and just as little for her degradation.” Like Hepzibah, Clifford also has a difficult time attempting to deal with society. The “Arched Window” chapter gives us glimpses into the longing of Clifford to “dive” into the “river of life” as he witnesses an entertainer stopping under an elm to play music on his organ. Clifford is at once scared and delighted by the sight: “With a shivering repugnance at the idea of personal contact with the world, a powerful impulse still seized on Clifford, whenever the rush and roar of the human tide grew strongly audible on him.” Hawthorne describes the fascination as generating a human longing for connection: “It might so fascinate him, that he would

hardly be restrained from plunging into the surging stream of human sympathies.” Clifford’s desire manifests in an attempt to jump down from the window frame, but Hepzibah and Phoebe interpret this action as a possible suicide attempt. Clifford, however, believes that if he had survived the jump, he would have been a better man for it: “Fear nothing—it is over now—but had I taken that plunge, and survived it, methinks I would have made me another man!” Clifford sees this as an attempt not only to rejoin the community, but also to regain a sense of what it means to be human, to experience connections of filial love, what the narrator refers to as “the broken links of brotherhood.” Moreover, as Clifford watches Phoebe walk to church, he muses to Hepzibah that he could possibly see himself in prayer once again, if he was surrounded by other people praying in a communal church setting: “↜‘Were I to be there,’ he rejoined, ‘it seems to me that I could pray once more, when so many human souls were praying all around me!’↜” Later in the novel, when Clifford and Hepzibah are traveling in the railroad car, Hepzibah feels herself “apart from humankind,” but Clifford is elated at the thought of being among other human beings: “Here we are, in the world, Hepzibah!—in the midst of life!—in the throng of our fellow beings!” Compared to Clifford and Hepzibah, Phoebe is a much more personable and integrated member of the community, as she never has to face the hardships Clifford underwent, nor the shame that Hepzibah feels about her new status. “Phoebe, it must be understood, was that one little offshoot of the Pyncheon race to whom we have already referred, as a native of a rural part of New England, where the old fashions and feelings of relationship are still partially kept up.” Moreover, Phoebe’s experiences regarding the mingling of classes were not considered “improper”: “In her own circle, it was regarded as by no means improper for kinsfolk to visit one another, without invitation, or preliminary and ceremonious warning.” Phoebe, therefore, becomes an exemplar for social integration. Hawthorne’s own experiences in helping establish the utopian community at Brook Farm were probably responsible, at least in part, for his concern with community and brotherhood, themes

530╅╅ Hawthorne, Nathaniel � represented most concretely by the thoughts, feelings, actions, and relationships of Hepzibah, Clifford, and Phoebe. Jeffrey Pettineo

Illness in The House of the Seven Gables

Many of the Pyncheons in The House of the Seven Gables appear to be suffering from mental illness or, as Holgrave calls it, “lunacy.” Clifford, Hepzibah’s brother, is initially described as suffering from a sort of psychosomatic illness as a result of having been incarcerated. Moreover, before Phoebe arrives, the House of the Seven Gables is personified as a diseased entity, beset by corruption and decay. The primary sufferer from illness is Clifford, who was falsely tried and convicted of murdering Colonel Pyncheon, the patriarch of the Pyncheon family. He has been incarcerated for 27 years, an event that Hawthorne likens to a burial: “.  .  . this long-buried man was likely, for some reason or another, to be summoned forth from his living tomb.” Hepzibah, Clifford’s sister, and Phoebe, cousin of Hepzibah, Clifford, and Judge Jaffrey, first meet Clifford as he walks in halting fashion down a staircase, much like an old man. The narrator notes that “. . . there were no tokens that his physical strength might not have suffered for a free and determined gait. It was the spirit of the man, that could not walk.” Clifford longs for happiness, but keeps reinforcing in his own mind the mental illness others have projected on him. “Alas, poor Clifford! You are old, and worn with troubles that ought never have befallen you. You are partly crazy. . . .” Judge Jaffrey even threatens at one point to send Clifford away to an asylum if he does not cooperate in helping Jaffrey find the deed to lands “in the east,” but this reveals only Jaffrey’s outward cruelty toward Clifford and his using of Clifford for the sake of material gain. Hawthorne vividly describes the psychological effect that others may have on a sick person. “The sick in mind, and perhaps in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so, by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters, in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own health, in infinite repetition.” In “The Flight

of Two Owls” chapter, Clifford begins to reclaim some of his youthful spirit and happiness as he gets a chance to converse with an intellectual traveling on the same train. It is partly Phoebe’s concern for Clifford, though, that helps him regain some of his “spiritual health” by novel’s end. Phoebe is careful to always maintain a cheery demeanor around Clifford for fear that the opposite will exacerbate Clifford’s ill health. Hawthorne frequently contrasts Phoebe with Clifford, associating Phoebe with growth, vibrancy, and youth, and Clifford with darkness, shadows and old age. The other main “character” that is afflicted with disease is the House of the Seven Gables itself. The spring that feeds the house’s well begins to lose some of its nourishing qualities after Colonel Pyncheon occupies the mansion: “. . . it is certain that the water of Maule’s Well, as it continued to be called, grew hard and brackish. Even such we find it now; and any old woman of the neighborhood will certify, that it is productive of intestinal mischief to those who quench their thirst there.” Just as Phoebe’s youth, spirit, and beauty help Clifford return to health, so too do these characteristics aid in the “rejuvenation” of the house. Phoebe’s “genial spirit” and work ethic help to erase the “grime and sordidness” of the house. Holgrave, the daguerreotypist, descendant of Matthew Maule and later husband of Phoebe, also notes the impoverished state of the house, but refers to its purification as more a metaphorical destruction of all things old, including institutions. He claims the grime and sordidness of the house is the result of the “crystallization on its walls” of the breath of those who have lived there in “discontent and anguish.” Thus, his attraction to Phoebe is also a metaphorical attraction to the regenerative power of youth and idealism. Holgrave also believes that the youth of Phoebe has shielded her from the effects of the “lunacy” that has infected the bloodlines of the Pyncheons. The most common antidotes for the illnesses witnessed in the novel are brotherhood, companionship, and compassion, and these elements conspire to return both the house and Clifford to their former states. Hawthorne also employs health and illness metaphors in order to comment on and develop other themes. For example, Clifford’s “ill-

“Rappaccini’s Daughter”â•…â•… 531 ness of spirit” and the decay of the titular house are a direct result of the effects of greed, treachery, and corruption. Jeffrey Pettineo

Hawthorne, Nathanielâ•… “Rappaccini’s Daughter”â•… (1844)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is one of his most widely read short stories. It was published in 1846 as part of the collection Mosses from an Old Manse in which other well-known stories such as “The Birth-mark” and “The Artist of the Beautiful” were also included. The tale is set in medieval Padua, in Italy. A young medical student, Giovanni Guasconti, arrives in the town and finds lodging in a building kept by Lisabetta, an elderly housekeeper. Giovanni’s room directly oversees a beautiful garden that displays all kinds of strange plants. As he is gazing into the garden he sees an old man, Giacomo Rappaccini, and his young, beautiful daughter, Beatrice, who lives confined within the walls that surround the garden. Giovanni falls in love with Beatrice and trespasses the door of the garden in order to talk with her. He ignores the advice of Professor Pietro Baglioni, who warns him against the deathly nature of Rappaccini’s experiments with plants. As the story progresses we learn that the plants that grow in the garden have a poisonous nature and only Beatrice is able to touch them without protection because her father has rendered her, like the plants he cultivates, poisonous to whoever touches her. Eventually, Beatrice dies after drinking an antidote that Giovanni has obtained from Baglioni in an effort to both free Beatrice from her poisonous nature and save himself from the same effects, since Rappaccini, in his desire to find a suitable companion for Beatrice, has rendered Giovanni poisonous. “Rappaccini’s Daughter” provides an insightful criticism of the dangers of scientific pride, which ultimately leads to isolation and death. The scientist’s obsession to outwit nature and the consequences this obsession brings onto those that surround him is a theme that Hawthorne explored in other texts, such as “The Birth-mark.” Teresa Requena

Death in “Rappaccini’s Daughter”

In “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne chooses a garden as the main setting for the action of the story. It apparently echoes the Garden of Eden in its bountiful presence of plants and herbs. Hawthorne, however, distorts the idyllic image to turn the garden into a walled space, separated from the outside world, whose inhabitants, Beatrice and Giacomo Rappaccini, also live isolated lives. Hawthorne’s depiction of the mysterious garden in gothic terms—a ruined marble fountain, a wreathed plant around a statue—soon discloses the deathly trap it represents. Only the water that flows from the fountain seems to be an “immortal spirit” amongst deathly creatures. Such an impression begins to take hold when Giovanni first sees Rappaccini, whose sickly look quickly puts him in clear opposition to the exuberance of the garden, in which plants seem to grow with no limit. Like the marble fountain or the marble vases, we are told that the scientist’s heart is equally dead, with “a face singularly marked with intellect and cultivation, but which could never, even in his more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart.” The garden’s malignant secret is revealed to Giovanni little by little. When he observes Rappaccini moving among the plants, he sees that the scientist is careful not to allow any portion of his skin to be in direct contact with them, not knowing that the plants’ poisonous nature makes their touching impossible without protection. Such carefulness raises suspicions in Giovanni, who imagines a deadly malice of the garden. However, it is not only the scientist who seems to hide a secret. As he observes Beatrice from his window, Giovanni notices the easiness with which she moves among the plants, without any protection. Later, he observes the killing power of Beatrice’s breath on lizards and insects, and the withering effect that Beatrice has on the bouquet that Giovanni gives her. Giovanni’s perception finds confirmation when he learns from his friend Professor Baglioni about Rappaccini’s experiments. In his desire to outwit nature, the isolated scientist has been experimenting with plants and he has transformed them into extremely beautiful poisonous creatures that are also

532â•…â•… Hawthorne, Nathaniel bringers of death. Thus, Rappaccini is presented as an egotistical character whose only design in life is to advance in his knowledge of science by what the scientific community considers to be unethical means. It is such forbidden procedures that have earned Rappaccini a bad reputation among the scientific community. Hawthorne’s tale condemns that attitude when he describes the scientist as being willing to “sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge.” That Rappaccini’s efforts result in the addition of something as small as a grain of mustard clearly poses a criticism of the man’s immoderate ambition, which brings not only isolation but also death to what he seems to love most, his daughter. Although now aware that Beatrice’s touch or breath is deadly to anything raised outside the garden, Giovanni falls in love with Beatrice. Soon he realizes that he, too, has become as poisonous as Beatrice. Like her, he can kill insects with his breath. When he realizes what has happened, Giovanni accuses Beatrice of infecting him despite Beatrice’s claim that her father is the one to blame. In an effort to save them both, Giovanni produces an antidote that Professor Baglioni has given him with the hope that their deathly nature can be purified. Beatrice takes the drink first so that Giovanni can see the effects of the drink before he takes it. The effect of the antidote is contrary to that expected, and Beatrice dies. Thus, she becomes the final victim of Rappaccini’s experiments and his desire to alter the natural course of nature through scientific means. Beatrice’s death at the end of the tale coincides with a tradition of female characters in Hawthorne’s short fiction who suffer in their own flesh the effects of the male’s obsessions and his actions taken in order to achieve a desired aim. As the writer explored in other tales such as “The Birth-mark,” the death of the female character also symbolizes the negative consequences of pursuing an egotistical endeavor, in which the male character is unable to realize that his experiments or desires are incompatible with a social life. Teresa Requena

Isolation in “Rappaccini’s Daughter”

Many of Hawthorne’s short stories are populated by isolated characters that, for different reasons, live their lives apart from the social world. “Rappaccini’s Daughter” provides a neat example of such a theme in the characters of Rappaccini and, most poignantly, Beatrice. The story opens when Giovanni travels north to study at the University of Padua. Once there, he rents a small, gloomy, and dark room in an old building. His initial sadness is somehow relieved when he peers through the window and discovers a beautiful and bountiful garden that holds a variety of strange and mysterious plants and herbs that grow all around. In the middle, there is a decayed fountain that supplies water to an exceedingly beautiful and fragrant flower. As Giovanni continues to observe the garden, the housekeeper explains that it belongs to Doctor Giacomo Rappaccini, a reputed scientist in Italy who grows these plants to make medicines. A few minutes later, he spots Rappaccini walking around the garden wearing thick gloves and a mask so that he does not touch the poisonous plants and herbs nor inhale the fragrance they shed. As the story progresses we learn that Rappaccini has always been guided by an irrational passion for experimentation beyond what is seen as reasonable. His scientific ambition and experimentation with poisonous plants has led to his isolation from the scientific community, which questions his scientific methods and goals. Rappaccini’s loneliness in what seems to be his outdoor laboratory is apparently eased by the presence of his daughter Beatrice, who is described as a beautiful and lively girl. Mysteriously, she is the only one who is able to touch and approach the plants without any protective means. Upon seeing her, however, Giovanni affirms that Beatrice seems another of the plants that Rappaccini has in his garden and, like them, she has to be touched with gloves or approached with a mask. Giovanni’s curiosity toward the garden and the plants it nourishes soon leads to observation of the beautiful Beatrice; little by little, he feels deeply attracted toward her. His interest in the scientist’s daughter impels him to trespass in the garden, and

“Rappaccini’s Daughter”â•…â•… 533 once inside, he meets Beatrice and talks with her. It is in the conversations between the two youngsters inside the garden that Giovanni, and the reader, realize the extent and pain of Beatrice’s isolation in a life severed from any contact with other human beings. Her questions to Giovanni about the world outside the garden wall reveal her lifelong seclusion with the plants and herbs her father has grown. Actually, Giovanni is right in his appreciation that Beatrice cannot be approached without danger since there is a secret behind Beatrice and Rappaccini. As Giovanni learns, the old scientist has fed his daughter on poison since the day she was born as part of an experiment to make her invulnerable to any danger. Later, Beatrice further explains to Giovanni that the very same day of her birth, Rappaccini also created a poisonous plant to grow up alongside Beatrice as a sister. The result is that everything that Beatrice touches inevitably dies, and therefore she has not been able to lead a life among human beings. Her peculiar poisonous nature discloses Beatrice as the most dramatic case of isolation in the story, which is the direct result of her father’s scientific experiments. Rappaccini’s desire to outwit nature led him to experiment with his own daughter regardless of the possible effects on Beatrice’s life. Like other characters such as Aylmer in “The Birth-mark,” Rappaccini’s obsessive pursuit of scientific achievements inevitably leads him and those around him to live a life apart from the social world and human warmth. Thus, Beatrice is the dramatic outcome of the father’s pursuits, and after a life of seclusion in the garden she confesses her unhappiness and misery to Giovanni. The story ends with still another turn of the screw on the theme of isolation when Giovanni realizes that he has also been turned into a poisonous creature. Initially blaming Beatrice, the last paragraphs reveal that it has been Rappaccini who, once more, has defied nature to create another being equal to his lonely daughter, and thus they both stand apart from common men and women. The scientist deems his deed a great victory over nature, while Beatrice and Giovanni realize the doomed future awaiting them. Eventually, Beatrice’s death ends dramatically her lifelong isolation.

The story thus portrays isolation from the social world and human warmth in negative terms by clearly showing the effects it has on the characters and by arguing that isolation is the price to be paid for any obsession. Teresa Requena

Pride in “Rappaccini’s Daughter”

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s texts the examination of pride figures as a prominent theme. Stories such as “Young Goodman Brown” or “The Minister’s Black Veil” explore the consequences of male characters’ religious pride when these characters assume that their actions will have no effects on their religious principles. In “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Hawthorne investigates intellectual pride in relation to scientific advancements. The text focuses on Rappaccini and Giovanni’s friend, the professor of medicine Pietro Baglioni. In the case of Rappaccini, his scientific pride leads him to the firm belief that he can outwit nature with his scientific discoveries. In the same way, Professor Baglioni represents another angle of scientific pride in his desire to prove Rappaccini’s experiments wrong. For instance, upon Giovanni’s first meeting with the professor, the sense of old rivalry between Rappaccini and Baglioni is made evident when Giovanni takes the opportunity to mention the scientist’s name. It is then that Baglioni changes his attitude and does not “respond with so much cordiality as he had anticipated.” The reasons for Baglioni’s reluctance seem to be grounded on moral qualms, since he recognizes Rappaccini’s contribution to scientific progress but disapproves of his unethical scientific goals. In this line, Baglioni assures young Giovanni that the main objection to Rappaccini’s practices is that “he cares infinitely more for science than for mankind.” As the conversation progresses, the rivalry between the two scientists surfaces again when Baglioni speculates that Beatrice, with all the instruction she has received from her father, may strip him of his professor’s chair at the university. Baglioni’s thoughts also betray his own scientific pride and ambition when at the end of his conversation with Giovanni he affirms that “it is too insufferable an impertinence in Rappaccini, thus to snatch the lad

534â•…â•… Hawthorne, Nathaniel out of my own hands, as I may say, and make use of him for his infernal experiments” (988). The consequences of the scientific pride that both characters exhibit become clear at the end of the story. It is then that both men see their opportunity to outwit each other. In the case of Baglioni, he discloses Beatrice’s true poisonous nature to Giovanni when he visits the young student in his lodgings and deems Beatrice “the victim of his [Rappaccini’s] zeal for science.” Wishing to amend Rappaccini’s deed, Baglioni offers Giovanni the chance to bring Beatrice back to social life by showing him a little silver vase that contains an effective antidote to the most devastating poison. It is this antidote that, according to the professor, will effectively cure Beatrice from her poisonous nature. However, rather than wishing to save Beatrice from an alienated existence, Baglioni secretly enjoys the opportunity to defeat Rappaccini. To that effect, Baglioni gives Giovanni the vase and the young student goes to meet Beatrice. Baglioni’s revelation has already had a profound effect on Giovanni by inspiring wrath, despair, and doubt about Beatrice and her monstrous nature at the same time that he discovers his own poisonous condition. Upon that realization, Giovanni understands that the only option for him and Beatrice to live their love among society is to resort to Professor Baglioni’s antidote, which Giovanni deems “almost divine in its efficacy.” Thus, Giovanni proposes that both of them shall drink it in order to be purified from their monstrous condition. Beatrice, playing a traditional self-sacrificing female role, offers to drink it first so that Giovanni can examine the effects. The final scene brings all the characters together and again reveals the two scientists’ pride. When Beatrice openly blames her father for having brought the pain of rejection upon her, Rappacini’s answer betrays his pride in his science and in its capacity to surpass the natural laws of life. He calls his daughter “foolish” for not being able to understand the supposed benefits of his experiments, among which he lists the possibility to transcend weakness and defeat by being powerful enough to inflict evil upon anybody. Equally, Beatrice’s death leads the proud professor Baglioni triumphantly to ask Rappaccini

whether Beatrice’s death was really the planned result of his experiment. Teresa Requena

Hawthorne, Nathanielâ•… The Scarlet Letterâ•… (1850)

Set in Puritan Boston, The Scarlet Letter chronicles the life of Hester Prynne. The novel opens as Hester, with her infant Pearl in her arms, is led from the town prison to a scaffold that stands in the marketplace. Hester stands on the scaffold as part of her punishment for adultery; on her chest is a scarlet letter A that the magistrates decree that she must wear. Hester and Pearl live an isolated life on the outskirts of Boston, and Hester makes her living through her needlework skills. She has used these skills to embellish her “A” with flourishes of gold thread, and she dresses Pearl in red and gold as if to emphasize that both are symbols of her adultery. Throughout the novel, Hester keeps two secrets. The first is that her husband, who was to follow her from Europe to the new world, arrived in Boston as she stood upon the scaffold. Remaining anonymous, he lives under the name of Roger Chillingworth. Hester’s second secret is the identity of her lover, the respected young minister Arthur Dimmesdale. Though Hester refuses to publicly name Dimmesdale as Pearl’s father, Chillingworth suspects him. Acting as the minister’s physician, Chillingworth takes up residence with Dimmesdale, all the while trying to ferret out his secret. In his dying moments, Dimmesdale publicly confesses that he is Pearl’s father. Hester and Pearl later leave Boston, but at the novel’s end Hester returns to her seaside cottage and again takes up her scarlet “A.” Hawthorne uses Hester’s story to explore the nature of symbolism and the themes of religion, parenthood, and the individual and society, among others. Laurie A. Sterling

Individual and Society in The Scarlet Letter

The second paragraph of The Scarlet Letter introduces the notion of the social contract when the narrator says, “The founders of a new colony .  .  . have invariably recognized it among their earli-

The Scarlet Letterâ•…â•… 535 est practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil . . . as the site of a prison.” Once Hester Prynne is ushered through the prison door in the next chapter, the scarlet “A” upon her chest provides a symbolic focus for the novel’s exploration of the relationship between the individual and society. The magistrates clearly intend for the scarlet letter to embody their judgment; they clearly mean to mark Hester as an adulteress through this “A.” And yet Hester silently challenges their laws and their evaluation of her. Using her imagination and her skill with the needle, she embellishes the “A” with “flourishes of gold thread. . . . greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.” Like Pearl, the living reflection of the scarlet letter, the luxuriously decorated “A” expresses the “warfare of Hester’s spirit.” Through its exploration of the effects and the efficacy of the scarlet “A,” The Scarlet Letter comments upon the rigid and inflexible social codes of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The most obvious effect of Hester’s punishment is isolation. While she makes a living with her needle, she “inhabited another sphere.  .  .  . like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt.” As a result of the magistrates’ punishment, Hester is transformed. She is robbed of her femininity and her passion, and in her isolation she recognizes that “the world’s law was no law for her.” Similarly, Pearl, who functions both as a character and a symbol in the novel, also suffers. Born an “outcast of the infantile world,” Pearl instinctively knows that she has no place within Puritan society. Without playmates, she occupies herself through imaginary play but tellingly, “she never created a friend.” Always outside of a social structure, Pearl cannot “be made amenable to rules” or to discipline. Contemplating Hester’s profound isolation and the transformation that it evokes, the narrator seems to challenge the efficacy of the “dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law” in a solitary sentence that forms a paragraph: “The scarlet letter had not done its office.” Yet even before this, the novel hints at the shortcomings of Hester’s punishment, for the community at large does not completely accept the rulings of the magistrates. As

Hester continues her life on the outskirts of Boston, the community’s interpretation of her and her letter varies greatly from the magistrates’ original meaning. Hester’s “A,” they claim, stands for “Able” or for “Angel.” By the novel’s end, “the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too.” While Hester undergoes public punishment, Dimmesdale grapples with his sin privately. He longs to confess his sin publicly but cannot manage to do so until the novel’s end. His relationship to society and social codes best explains his inability. The narrator describes the minister saying, “it would always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework.” Hester’s experience has forced her outside of her community, but Dimmesdale’s experience has not afforded him this latitude of speculation. He is a prisoner of societal codes: “At the head of the social system . . . he was only the more trammeled by its regulations, its principles, and even its prejudices.” Thus, even when he and Hester resolve to flee Boston, Dimmesdale finds it impossible to leave his socially constructed identity. He is anxious to stay until he preaches the Election Sermon, and he thinks to himself, “At least, they shall say of me . . . that I leave no public duty unperformed, nor ill performed!” While Dimmesdale finally manages confession but not escape, Hester eventually leaves Boston with Pearl. But Hawthorne complicates the relationship between Hester and her Puritan society further at the novel’s end. Despite the freedom of her earlier views, Hester returns to Boston and takes up the scarlet “A” of her own accord, perhaps affirming society’s role in shaping an individual’s identity. Laurie A. Sterling

Parenthood in The Scarlet Letter

Hawthorne modeled the character of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter after his own first born, Una, and while the novel is clearly about sin and retribution, it is also a family drama that emphasizes the import and the power of familial ties. While

536â•…â•… Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hester and Dimmesdale must grapple with their sin, Pearl reminds readers that both Hester and Dimmesdale are parents who bear an obligation to their child. From the second chapter, the novel links Pearl and the scarlet “A” that Hester wears; both are “token[s] of [Hester’s] shame.” Hester emphasizes this connection by dressing Pearl in scarlet and gold, and the novel frequently reminds readers that Pearl is the scarlet letter in human form. Like her dress, Pearl’s behavior also sets her apart. Pearl is impish and capricious; she is the “wild infant,” the “elf-child.” Many in Puritan Boston attribute Pearl’s wild and uncivil behavior to her parentage. Hester remembered “talk of the neighbouring townspeople; who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child’s paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring.” Because of such fears, the Puritan magistrates of Boston propose to take the child from Hester. In the face of this challenge to “a mother’s rights,” Hester mounts an argument to maintain custody of her child. She claims that her punishment has made her a better mother: “This badge hath taught me . . . lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself.” Perhaps a stronger argument for Hester’s custody of Pearl can be found in the benefits that motherhood holds for Hester. Pearl becomes a kind of savior for her mother. Pearl’s name tells something of Hester’s feelings for her daughter and her thoughts about motherhood: “she had named the infant ‘Pearl,’ as being of great price,—purchased with all she had,—her mother’s only treasure!” As she grows, Pearl is Hester’s “sole treasure” and “all her world.” As Hester faces the magistrates, she emphasizes the connection between Pearl and the scarlet letter, arguing that while humanity had marked her with the scarlet “A” as a result of her sin, God had given Pearl to her. Pearl, she argues, is her salvation: God gave me the child! . . . He gave her, in requital of all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!—she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me too! See ye not, she is

the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for my sin? Hester’s “unquiet elements” were “soothed away by the softening influences of maternity,” and Pearl keeps Hester connected to the world around her. As Hester leaves Governor Bellingham’s mansion, his sister, a reputed witch, asks Hester to travel with her to the forest to meet with the devil. Hester replies, “I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest,” to which the narrator replies, “Even thus early had the child saved her from Satan’s snare.” Once the magistrates decide that Pearl should remain with Hester, Mr. Wilson asserts that “every good Christian man hath a title to show a father’s kindness to the poor, deserted babe.” It seems, though, that the elf-child cannot be made fully human without paternal influence. In her meetings with Reverend Dimmesdale, Pearl seems instinctively to understand their familial ties, and she challenges the minister to acknowledge their relationship publicly. As Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl stand together on the scaffold under the cover of night, Pearl asks, “Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?” It is not until the novel’s second-to-last chapter that Dimmesdale publicly acknowledges his relationship with Hester and Pearl. As he once again stands on the scaffold, the minister asks Pearl to kiss him, and with that kiss, the narrator says, “A spell was broken.  .  .  . and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it.” The novel’s conclusion gives evidence that Pearl marries, becomes a mother herself, and remains mindful of her mother even after Hester returns to her seaside cottage in Boston. Laurie A. Sterling

Religion in The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter examines and critiques the theocratic society of Puritan Boston, in which “religion and law were almost identical.” Hawthorne begins

The Scarlet Letterâ•…â•… 537 this examination with the novel’s first chapter, “The Prison Door,” which opens with a “throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and steeplecrowned hats .  .  . assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.” Both the prison and the people tell readers a great deal about the Puritans and their laws—both are hard, stern, and unyielding. The imagery Hawthorne uses in this opening chapter remains consistent throughout the novel. He repeatedly describes the Puritans and their society though imagery of darkness and hardness. The novel’s first sentence also links the Puritans of Boston with Hawthorne’s own Puritan ancestors, whom he describes in the novel’s introductory sketch, “The Custom-House.” Like his heroine, Hester Prynne, Hawthorne also feels the disapproval and the “scorn” of the “stern and blackbrowed Puritans,” and like Hester, Hawthorne uses his Scarlet Letter to challenge the Puritan beliefs, attitudes, and laws. Early in the novel the narrator emphasizes that in this period when “the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of divine institutions,” these Puritan leaders, though “doubtless good men,” were incapable of “sitting in judgment on an erring woman’s heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil.” Not only are these men stern and unsympathetic, the novel soon reveals their hypocrisy. Puritan hypocrisy is a theme that surfaces frequently in Hawthorne’s work, and it is particularly apparent in the community’s use of Hester’s needlework. The narrator says that “Deep ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves . . . were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian order.” It is hypocrisy that finally dooms Dimmesdale. The minister recognizes the value of publicly confessing his sin. When they meet in the forest, he tells Hester, “Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret!” and he later exclaims, “We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world.” Chillingworth, he realizes, has “violated .  .  . the sanctity of a human heart,” a transgression that Hawthorne believed

was an unpardonable sin. Despite this revelation, the minister remains unable to publicly confess his own sin until the end of the novel. Earlier, when Dimmesdale tells his congregants that he is “utterly pollution and a lie,” the narrator says, “The minister well knew—subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was!—the light in which his vague confession would be viewed.  .  .  . He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood.” Weakness dooms Dimmesdale to hypocrisy; he finds it impossible to live outside of the “iron framework” of Puritan society, and he confesses only in his dying moments. In contrast to Dimmesdale, Hester’s sin is clearly manifest in both the “A” and in her daughter Pearl. As the beadle leads Hester from the prison to the scaffold in chapter 2, he calls Massachusetts Bay Colony a place “where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine.” Another townsman describes it as “a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people.” The magistrates, in placing the “A” on Hester’s chest, mean to make her “a living sermon against sin.” Despite this, Hester remains a constant challenge to Puritan laws and beliefs, as Hawthorne’s numerous comparisons between Hester and Anne Hutchinson emphasize. A Puritan woman, Hutchinson gained a following when she began to hold weekly meetings to discuss sermons in her home. In defiance of Puritan beliefs, she began to preach salvation through faith and God’s revelation to the individual through inner experience. Her popularity and her perceived heresy brought about a political crisis, and she was eventually banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony for antinomianism (being opposed to religious authority). If it were not for Pearl, the narrator says, Hester “might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Anne Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect.” Like Hutchinson, Hester finds that “the world’s law was no law for her.” While Hester and her beliefs do not bring about the political upheaval that Hutchinson did, even at the novel’s end she comforts other outcasts with “her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be revealed.” And by the novel’s end she seems to have brought about some change

538â•…â•… Hawthorne, Nathaniel in Puritan attitudes and beliefs, for the townspeople, and even the magistrates themselves read the “A” as representing “able” and “angel.” Laurie A. Sterling

Hawthorne, Nathanielâ•… “Young Goodman Brown”â•… (1835, 1851)

Nathaniel Hawthorne first published the short story “Young Goodman Brown” in 1835 and it was later collected in The Snow Image and Other TwiceTold Tales (1852). In this story Hawthorne reveals his preoccupation with history, particularly that of Puritan New England, and issues of guilt, sin, individual conscience, and social morality. Many of these themes resurface in Hawthorne’s best-known work, The Scarlet Letter, which is also set in Puritan New England. In the story, the young Puritan, Goodman Brown, takes leave of his wife Faith one evening for a solitary expedition into the forest. As he ventures deeper into the wilderness, Brown encounters many of his neighbors, including the religious and political leaders of his community. All seem eager to participate in a sinister ritual in the dark woods. At an altar in the midst of the congregation, Brown sees his young wife. At the last moment, he calls upon Faith to resist temptation. Suddenly, the whole scene vanishes and the young man is left alone. But forever after that night, Brown is gloomy and distrustful, even of members of his own family. Human nature is put to the test in this disturbing story, as Brown’s perception of his experience challenges the notion that people are basically good. The story raises issues concerning innocence and experience, individual and society, religion, alienation, and the American dream. The cost of following one’s conscience is also a prominent theme here, as it is in many important works of American literature in the 19th century. Mary Goodwin

Individual and Society in “Young Goodman Brown”

A complex and problematic relationship unfolds between the individual and his society in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” (1835,

1851). The young Puritan Brown is confronted with troubling issues concerning his place in society. As his faith in human nature is tested in the course of an evening, Brown must decide if he is better off alone or in company. Does society offer solace and support to the individual, or only mutual guilt and fatal temptation? The story begins as Brown embarks on what seems a solitary journey of self-discovery, taking leave of his wife Faith one night to venture into the woods on a mysterious errand. Brown soon encounters other townspeople in the forest, but the company they offer is not comforting. Brown meets a sinister older man who carries a walking stick shaped like a snake. Amiable at first, the man later tells Brown his ancestors were guilty of injustice and cruel persecution. Brown then sees Goody Cloyse, a townswoman who had taught him his catechism. In the woods, however, the old woman expresses great enthusiasm for witchcraft and dark rituals. As Brown reaches a clearing, he sees many other townspeople gathered for a mysterious ceremony. Standing at the altar, Brown discovers his young wife is also beside him. At the last minute, he calls out to Faith to resist the temptation of evil. Suddenly everything vanishes and he is left alone. The narrator raises the possibility that Brown has dreamed it all; nevertheless, ever after this night, the young man holds himself apart from other townspeople, suspecting all of secret sin. He is a stranger even to his wife, and maintains a gloomy solitude for the rest of his life. The effect of his experience is to make society hateful to him. The plot seems to follow a typical rite of passage, in which a young person leaves his community and undergoes experiences that help him mature. Upon his return, he takes his place as an adult in the community. But in Hawthorne’s tale, society seems to offer the individual not comfort, stability, or salvation but rather guilt, complicity, and moral ruin. Early in his journey Brown expresses fears of the “Indians” in the forest. Soon, however, he learns that the real threat is from his own townspeople, even the most apparently respectable among them. Brown’s experience may help him to “grow up,” but it makes him unsuited for his community. Issues of religion and social interaction intersect in the story. As the Puritan church is based on the

“Young Goodman Brown”â•…â•… 539 Calvinist conviction of the total depravity of humankind, so Brown, after witnessing the secret evil of the townspeople, ends convinced that “evil is the nature of mankind.” In this story, the good and the wicked are mixed together in an abased version of democracy, and the wicked inevitably corrupt the good, as seems the case with Brown’s wife Faith. The community is prone to violence and mass hysteria, as demonstrated in the witch-hunts in which Brown’s ancestors participated. These themes are also central to Hawthorne’s most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter. The story seems to mock American political ideals as well. Community bonds in early America were described in terms like “covenant,” “communion,” and “congregation,” but this lexicon is perverted in Hawthorne’s story, and “congregation” becomes coven or den of evil. The challenge of American civil life has always been in how to balance the needs of the individual against the good of the group. The new democracy had to be forged by common consent, by people working together. But it is very difficult to achieve social cohesion if, as Hawthorne’s story suggests, you cannot trust your neighbor. The story seems to offer the possibility of individual salvation, even in the face of a corrupt society. Brown’s ability to resist the ominous ritual seems to save him; the dark vision disappears and he is left alone. Brown makes his own decision regarding his fate in rejecting what he perceives as evil in society. However, the result is that Brown becomes estranged from the townspeople, even from his own family. This suggests that the cost of the individual’s decision to follow his or her conscience is social ostracism. Much American literature, especially in the 19th century, is concerned with the issue of individual conscience and its cost. In essays and fiction, writers like Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain exhorted readers to follow their own sense of right, even if it meant acting counter to the interests and wishes of the majority. Mary Goodwin

Innocence and Experience in “Young Goodman Brown”

As Hawthorne’s tale begins, young Goodman Brown sets off on a solitary expedition into a dark, forbid-

ding forest. Brown is a Puritan “everyman,” and his journey can be seen as an initiation into knowledge and experience of the world along the road of life. In tracing the chronological progress of Brown’s life from young adulthood to old age and the grave, the story charts the effects of his experience on his character and convictions. But Brown’s journey does not proceed as the reader might expect. In the first place, the young man sets forth at sunset, a time of day associated with the onset of old age and death rather than new beginnings. It is also strange that the newlywed Brown leaves his young wife, Faith, behind, rebuffing her when she tries to persuade him to stay the night with her. And although he seems willing to make the trip, Brown at times expresses reluctance to proceed on what he refers to as his “evil” mission. His journey is thus a solitary and troubling undertaking in which he moves further and further away from “faith.” As Brown travels deeper into the forest, he encounters other travelers who unsettle rather than comfort him with their company. His first companion is an older man who carries a staff in the shape of a snake. This sinister person says that he had known Brown’s ancestors, shocking the young man by revealing that his forebears had not been good Christians at all but oppressive and cruel. The man also claims that he is on intimate terms with many others in Brown’s community who are respected for their high position and apparently unimpeachable character. An old woman who had taught Brown his catechism appears in the forest, and the young man is disturbed by her eagerness to join the sinister occasion of the night. The stranger with the staff warns Brown that everyone, no matter how pure or venerable in appearance, harbors secrets of evil deeds. The final blow to Brown’s innocent, naïve faith in the goodness of human nature comes with the evidence that his wife is among the nighttime congregation. Spying a pink ribbon of the sort that Faith wears on her cap, Brown declares that the world is an evil place and belongs to the devil. He rushes into what appears to be a witches’ mass in the forest, and sees his wife there. They stand together to be joined in an unholy marriage attended by those townsfolk he had once respected.

540â•…â•… Hawthorne, Nathaniel Brown loses the innocence of his youthful convictions at this altar. Later, after he returns to the village, he suspects everyone he meets of secret vice, coldly rejecting even the tender touch of his young wife. His mood darkens over the course of his life and he dies a gloomy old man. In the span of a night, Brown learns that youth is not necessarily innocent, nor age venerable and wise. He goes to his grave convinced that human nature is evil and human beings are easy prey to temptation, even those whose hearts are as pure as his wife’s. Hawthorne’s tale thus seems to accord with the Puritan view of human nature as corrupt and innately depraved, stained by the original sin of Adam and Eve. With Brown the reader may suspect that “sin is but a name” and innocence merely an illusion. However, this interpretation is twisted by hints in the last paragraphs that Goodman Brown has dreamed the whole episode. Beside Faith at the fateful altar, Brown had exhorted her to look to heaven. At that moment, the entire sinister congregation had vanished and Brown was left alone in the forest. In suggesting that Brown dreamed it all, the narrator implies that the young man made up his own mind to distrust others, possibly projecting his own sense of guilt onto those around him. The ambiguous ending thus allows a variety of interpretations of the tale. Perhaps we are meant to understand that the world is not an innocent place, a somber lesson taught through hard experience of evil. Or the tale may teach that the experience of life is what one makes of it, with innocence and guilt only matters of perspective shaped by temperament and circumstance. Another possibility is that the loss of faith leads to a loss of innocence. Hawthorne seems to entertain all of these possibilities in this and other important works. Mary Goodwin

Religion in “Young Goodman Brown”

A major theme in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown” is the place of religion in American life. Although it was written in the 19th century, the story is set 200 years earlier, in a Puritan community in colonial Massachusetts. The Puritans’ Massachusetts Bay Colony was a theocracy, meaning a community in which the state is dominated by

a church, and civil law has its basis in religious law (in the Puritans’ case, biblical law). In such a place, religion naturally plays a dominant role in many aspects of life. “Young Goodman Brown” reflects the importance of matters of faith in daily life in that period, with key plot events stressing in particular the social aspects of religion. Goodman Brown, a young member of a Puritan community, leaves his wife Faith one night to embark on a mysterious mission into the forest near his village. On his way out of town he passes the meetinghouse, which is the Puritan place of worship and the center of social life for the community. This landmark serves to remind the reader of the deeply communal nature of the Puritan religion. The matter of social interaction in church activities takes on deeper meaning as Brown travels into the woods: He starts out alone but soon encounters other townspeople, all of whom he identifies as members of his church. There is Goody Cloyse, an old woman who had taught Brown his catechism. The young man also spies the town’s minister and deacon in the woods. Brown has always thought of his neighbors as pious, upstanding members of the community. Now he is shocked to find them all in the woods on the same dark mission, apparently bound for a witches’ mass. The social aspects of religion in the story encompass history, including that of Brown’s family. On his way into the forest, Brown is met by a sinister old man, a devil-like figure holding a staff that resembles a snake. The man tells Brown that he knew his ancestors to be cruel persecutors, not the good Christians Brown had thought them to be. He also tells Brown that many pious-seeming townspeople are stained with secret sin. Brown’s conversation with the old man points to the hypocrisy at the heart of Puritan religious practice. Hawthorne’s story explores the deeply personal as well as social aspects of religion. Although shocked to discover that his townspeople are hypocritical sinners, Brown is himself in the forest bent on some dark purpose, which raises questions about his own moral credibility. Brown’s mission is a kind of religious parody: In order to pursue his “quest,” he must leave behind Faith—his wife—and, apparently, his beliefs and moral convictions. His destination is a sinister

Catch-22â•…â•… 541 altar, a parody of a church gathering. For Brown the experience in the woods has a pernicious influence on his own spiritual development; after that night, his faith in religion and in other people, including his wife, is destroyed. Concluding that the world is evil, Brown goes to his grave a bitter old man. Personal choice in matters of faith seems an important issue in the story, with the individual urged to follow his conscience even if it means standing in opposition to his community. Brown has a choice of whether or not to enter the forest and take part in the ritual. At the dark altar, when he thinks he sees the shade of his mother urging him to resist evil, he cries out to his wife. At that moment, the scene vanishes and Brown is left to wonder whether he only dreamed it. However, following his conscience and making the “right” decision doesn’t guarantee Brown a happy life; rather, the experience causes him to lose faith in humanity. Saved from one evil, he is, as a consequence, poisoned to life and human society. The story hints at the insufficiency of moral religious life, either as a means to root evil out of the human heart, or as a comfort to the righteous individual who turns away from corrupt human society. In “Young Goodman Brown,” issues of religion and faith touch all aspects of a person’s life, as an individual, in the family, and as a member of society. In this story religion is trailed by its shadow, the sinister secret desires of the heart. As in Hawthorne’s famous novel The Scarlet Letter, which is also set in Puritan New England, the quest for meaning in life is woven into issues of religion and faith, with the individual faced with the difficult decision of standing alone against his community. Mary Goodwin

HELLER, JOSEPHâ•… Catch-22â•… (1961)

Catch-22 is a brilliant satire of the military that illustrates the darkly humorous side of the insanity that is warfare. No organization or institution is safe from the ire of Heller’s pen. He sends up the military bureaucracy, free-market enterprise, organized religion, and social class. Catch-22 is the story of John Yossarian and his quest to survive World War II. He has only

one problem: Catch-22. Catch-22 is the military bureaucratic rule that states that any soldier must be removed from combat duty if he is deemed insane; however, removing oneself from an endless continuation of suicidal missions is an act that proves a soldier is sane enough to continue to fly and fight. This institutional catch traps Yossarian on the island of Pianosa in perpetual danger, as the war rages on and thousands of people whom he has never met are trying to kill him. Catch-22 is a landmark of American fiction, one of the rare works of literature that defined a century and introduced a new term into the lexicon of the English language. Heller’s masterful and humorous condemnation of warfare continues to entertain, inspire, and educate readers from the high school senior to the retiree. Heller’s comedic portrayal of men seeking only to survive and those who seek only to profit from the iniquities of humanity destroys the fallacy that war is romantic and for all time defines survival as the one true heroic act of war. Drew McLaughlin

Heroism in Catch-22

Catch-22 is a story of heroes and cowards. The island of Pianosa, the fictional setting of the novel, is populated by a motley crew of cowardly heroes and heroic cowards. Such is the maddening, paradoxical world of Catch-22. John Yossarian is an unlikely protagonist, a bombardier by trade, a coward by nature. He is heroic through his cowardice. Yossarian is driven by one thing: survival. He is described as having given up his soldierly mission in favor of saving himself. “Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not. He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive” (29). Yossarian lies and schemes his way out of combat duty and into the hospital, always searching and exhausting every opportunity to escape the clutches of Catch22. He thinks, There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for

542â•…â•… Heller, Joseph one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions . . . Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22. Catch-22 imprisons Yossarian through his own rationality. Yossarian’s recognition of the insanity of his predicament proves his sanity. Yossarian battles not only Catch-22, but also Colonel Cathcart, his commanding officer. Cathcart is a cowardly hero. An officer devoted to duty, country, and winning the war would not normally invite admonition; however, whereas Yossarian is driven by self-preservation, Cathcart is driven by self-promotion. He wants to receive a promotion to general. He is unconcerned with the mental or physical welfare of his men, and seeks only fame and glory in his petulant drive for career advancement. To achieve his goal, he volunteers his squadron for only the most dangerous missions, increasing the unit’s medals and citations; he cares little about completing a successful mission and more about collecting great aerial photographs of bombing runs, and continually raises the number of missions required of the squadron before any member is permitted an honorable discharge. Whenever Yossarian nears the magic number, Cathcart raises the mission total and Yossarian’s subsequent refusal to fly into danger in perpetuity keeps him in the air. Every mission Yossarian flies increases the likelihood of his death, and he soon realizes Cathcart will never allow him to achieve his discharge through the bureaucratic system, which forces Yossarian to become inventive in order to skirt the letter of Catch-22 in order to survive. Yossarian’s refusal to fly any more missions affects the unit’s morale: “Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and democracy by daring to exercise them.” Cathcart attempts to bribe Yossarian, promising to send him home if he agrees to “like” the colonel and not tell the squadron that he is being sent home

as a result of his defiance. Also, Yossarian will be promoted, given another medal for valor, and hailed as a “hero” back in the States. Cathcart hopes that Yossarian’s “heroics” will inspire the men to fly more missions, amplifying the colonel’s chances for promotion. Yossarian flirts with the idea, but ultimately rejects the colonel’s offer. To surrender his beliefs would be a capitulation to Cathcart, and a victory for the proprietors of the army bureaucracy and the creators and enforcers of Catch-22. He says, I’ve flown over seventy goddam combat missions. Don’t talk to me about fighting to save my country. I’ve been fighting all along to save my country. Now I’m going to fight a little to save myself. The country’s not in danger anymore, but I am, . . . .  .  . The Germans will be beaten in a few months. And Japan will be beaten a few months after that. If I were to give up my life now, it wouldn’t be for my country. It would be for Cathcart. So I’m turning my bombsight in for the duration. Cornered, unable to outwit the system, Yossarian comes to understand that his only true option is to run away. Yossarian displays the courage necessary to defy his commander, his army, and his country in order to save his own life. Yossarian flees Pianosa to Sweden. His most heroic action is this desertion. Catch-22 finds heroism in cowardice. The insanity of war compels men and women to act to achieve contradictory ends and relinquish individuality to preserve independence. They must kill in order to save. Yossarian’s desertion is justified because in the end there are no heroes or cowards, nor saints or sinners, there are only men, fighting for the most fundamental of human values, not for any idealistic notions of independence and patriotism, but for life itself. After all, survival is the one true heroic act of war. Drew McLaughlin

Religion in Catch-22

In times of war, soldiers may turn to their faith to cope with the horrors they see and the deaths of their closest brothers-in-arms. Catch-22 examines

Catch-22â•…â•… 543 this source of solace and also explores its limits. Not only do combat soldiers question their own faith, but they also doubt the proprietors of the faith sent to minister to the men. There’s an old saying, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Atheists and the devout populate the island of Pianosa equally in Catch-22. Catch-22’s treatment of religion and faith is both comical and tragic. Yossarian is a devout atheist who believes in an incompetent creator. He attacks an entity he does not believe exists for allowing such cruelty and inhumanity in His finest creation, which is supposed to be reflective of Himself. Yossarian says to Lieutenant Scheisskopf ’s wife, an unbeliever as well, “What a colossal immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead. His sheer incompetence is almost staggering.” She retorts that the God that she doesn’t believe in is merciful and kind. Faith and God provide no consolation to Yossarian, but rather an outlet to vent his frustration at the war, Cathcart, and Catch-22. He views God as part of the problem, not the solution, and his atheistic views are not altered by the end of the novel. The chaplain, of course, begins the novel as a believer. His spiritual decline begins as he sees the military bureaucracy led by Colonel Cathcart corrupt faith and exploit it for their personal advancement. At one point, Cathcart summons the chaplain and tells him he wants to start a prayer session before every mission not for any altruistic goal of consoling the men before they fly off to fight and perhaps die, but so they will bomb more effectively. Now, I want you to give a lot of thought to the kind of prayers we’re going to say. I don’t want anything heavy or sad. I’d like you to keep it light and snappy, something that will send the boys out feeling pretty good . . . Your job is to lead us in prayer, and from now on you’re going to lead us in prayer for a tighter bomb pattern before every mission. Is that clear? Cathcart seizes religion and faith as a weapon of war and manipulates the chaplain, a man of God

and peace, to support and direct the killing of men and women with divine consent. The chaplain’s faith begins to unravel as he sees how even pure faith can be corrupted, and he struggles to understand the inverted values of war, where killing is considered a virtue. The chaplain begins to questions if there is even a God, as Yossarian does, and if so, how could he ever be sure of His existence. He thinks, “Was there a true faith, or a life after death? With what matters did God occupy Himself in all the infinite aeons before the Creation.” The chaplain resents the alienation that accompanies his calling and his commission. The soldiers act and speak differently around him because he is the “chaplain,” and that isolation furthers his doubts. He begins to wonder if he wouldn’t have been better off enlisting in the infantry and taking his chances. He begins to doubt the foundations of the Christian faith, thinking, There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome, and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it indeed seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? There were no miracles; prayers went unanswered, and misfortune tramped with equal brutality on the virtuous and the corrupt. The joy with which people like Milo and Cathcart inflict suffering with impunity and the way they exploit the war for profit and career ascent, pushes the chaplain to question everything he has come to believe and to serve. The destructive nature of war knows no boundaries. Human life, human sanity, a foundational faith in the kindness of humanity, and even institutionalized religion are not beyond the domain of the carnage—they are just casualties of war. Drew McLaughlin

Suffering in Catch-22

Death and suffering are constant and inescapable realities of war. Their specters haunt all soldiers and

544â•…â•… Heller, Joseph break many psychologically. It is common to all theaters of war in all times, from the jungles of Vietnam, the sands of Iraq, the mountains of Afghanistan, or 30,000 feet above Earth where John Yossarian, the hero of Catch-22, encounters death and suffering on a daily basis as a bombardier on a B-24. Yossarian and his squadron are stationed and imprisoned on the island of Pianosa, off the coast of Greece, by their certifiable commander and the simplistic lunacy of Catch-22. The catch is that any person who continues to fly bombing missions in the face of certain death is insane and as such entitled to be relieved of duty; however, any person who recognizes the truth of the situation and requests to be removed from flight status for that reason must be sane enough to fly. Catch-22 traps Yossarian and his squadron on interminable flight duty, unable to go home until they fly the requisite number of missions or they die trying. Yossarian comes to realize that the only avenue of escape is death because the squadron commander, Colonel Cathcart, always raises the total number of missions one has to fly as soon as someone nears the mark. Throughout the novel, Yossarian hatches a series of schemes to escape the brutal realities of war, but the suffering and death surround him, whether he is in the air, in the hospital, or in his bunk. Mudd, referred to throughout the novel as “the dead guy in Yossarian’s tent,” is killed on a mission before the military bureaucracy actually processed him as a member of the squadron, and he is never listed as having arrived. Mudd becomes an invisible man who is dead, but not declared dead, and no one in the unit retains the authority to remove his personal belongings from Yossarian’s tent. This is one of the constant reminders of death that Yossarian deals with in Catch-22. Yossarian constantly evades active duty by claiming to be ill. He spends days on end in the hospital with mysterious illnesses that the doctors cannot diagnose or treat. While lying in the hospital, Yossarian encounters the soldier in white, a man with no name and bandaged from head to toe. “The soldier in white was encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze. He had two useless legs and two useless arms.” The soldier in white dies and is replaced by another, although everyone in the hospital assumes

it is the same person, which signifies the perpetual, anonymous casualties that war inflicts. Yossarian witnesses other tragic events more directly in Catch-22. McWatt, a daredevil pilot who seldom follows orders, buzzes the beach as a stunt but accidentally flies too close and slices Kid Sampson in half with the propeller of his B-24. McWatt, consumed by guilt and regret, crashes his plane into the side of a mountain. Nately is a patriotic 19-yearold in love with a prostitute in Rome. He completes his required 70 missions but will not return home until he can bring his lover with him. Yossarian pleads with him in vain, but Nately volunteers to fly Milo Minderbender’s missions for him. Nately is killed on a bombing mission along with 12 other men. These tragic deaths contribute to Yossarian’s suffering, but Snowden’s death, by far, makes a more devastating imprint. Snowden’s death is a marker in the novel. Unable to forget and incapable of moving on, Yossarian recalls his death continually. The gory circumstances of Snowden’s death are gradually revealed as the story progresses. On a bombing raid against Avignon, Snowden is wounded by artillery flak, and Yossarian crawls into the tail of the plane to tend to his wounds. Yossarian consoles Snowden, who repeatedly cries out that he’s cold, as Yossarian dresses the gaping wound in Snowden’s leg. Yossarian assures Snowden that he will live until he notices blood trickling out from under Snowden’s bomber jacket. The narrator describes Snowden’s death: Yossarian ripped open the snaps of Snowden’s flak suit and heard himself scream wildly as Snowden’s insides slithered down to the floor in a soggy pile and just kept dripping out. A chunk of flak more than three inches big had shot into the other side just underneath the arm and blasted all the way through, drawing whole mottled quarts of Snowden along with it through the gigantic hole in his ribs it made as it blasted out. Yossarian screamed a second time and squeezed both hands over his eyes. His teeth were chattering in horror . . . Here was God’s plenty, all right, he thought bitterly as he stared—liver, lungs, kidneys, ribs,

A Farewell to Armsâ•…â•… 545 stomach, and bits of the stewed tomatoes Snowden had eaten that day for lunch. Snowden dies in Yossarian’s arms as he helplessly consoles Snowden in his final moments with the words, “there, there,” because that is all he can think to say. This grisly scene robs Yossarian of his courage, nearly captures his sanity, and finally forces him to see the fragility of life and the utter insanity of war. Snowden’s death propels Yossarian on his crusade of self-preservation at all costs. He ultimately escapes the clutches of Catch-22 by essentially quitting the war. He flees to neutral Sweden, because he will not sponsor Colonels Cathcart and Corn’s plan to saddle the squadron with 80 missions in exchange for his discharge. To save his life, his honor, and the respect of the squadron, he deserts. Suffering and death in war is often meaningless despite its great consequences; however, sometimes death can be redemptive. Snowden’s death galvanizes Yossarian and empowers him to save his own life. Drew McLaughlin

Hemingway, Ernestâ•… A Farewell to Armsâ•… (1929)

Written in 1929, A Farewell to Arms is the semiautobiographical story of an American, Lieutenant Frederic Henry, and his love affair with his British nurse, Catherine Barkley. Lieutenant Henry (often referred to in the novel as tenente, Italian for “lieutenant”) is an ambulance driver near the Italian-Austrian Front in World War I. He is injured in an Austrian mortar attack, and during his convalescence in Milan, he woos and becomes lovers with Catherine, a nurse transferred to Milan from the previous town where the two met. He returns to the front, where a retreat is sounded; due to a series of missteps and dangerous double-crossings, he deserts the Italian army. Surreptitiously collecting Catherine from her new post, they go to Switzerland together. Escaping the war, they wait out Catherine’s pregnancy; in childbirth, both she and the baby die. But the book is far more than just the elements of this plot.

Hemingway took his real-life experience as a 19-year-old ambulance driver in World War I, the injuries he sustained in a mortar attack, along with the extended hospitalization and physical therapy that followed, and a brief love affair with an older nurse, and turned these events into one of the great novels of the 20th century. A Farewell to Arms is, in part, about the adventures of Lieutenant Henry and his affairs in war-torn Europe, but it is also a personal exploration of the soldier, wanting to see action, adventure, and life but stuck in the violent, depressing, immoral, unanticipated realities of wartime. Hemingway captures the relationship between the man and the war in intimate, and often profound, ways as he risks the rejection of the glories of war for the more human, and possibly more tragic, intimacies of husband and father. Aaron Drucker

Nationalism in A Farewell to Arms

In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway evokes a running commentary on nationalism through ridicule and omission. This may best be described as an antinationalistic impulse in the book, but one that never quite reaches the sense that nationalism is negative so much as it is not held in particularly high esteem. Lieutenant Henry represents, almost by definition, a problematic position. He is an American in the Italian army. Rather than defending his country, the rights of his men, the land of his birth, he is saving strangers as a kind of adventure and romance. His compatriots are Italian, and they fight to hold the line against Austrian incursion. Of one fellow soldier, Lieutenant Henry notes, “Gino was born a patriot, so he said things that separated us sometimes, but he was also a fine boy and I understood his being a patriot. He was born one.” Neither adhering to Americanism nor evolving an expatriate’s sense of Eurocentrism, Lieutenant Henry’s presence in the Italian army explicitly questions the value and ethics of nationalism. There is no compelling explanation for why Lieutenant Henry is in Italy fighting for the Allies. At the outset of the novel, the Americans have yet to enter World War I. It is not that Lieutenant Henry feels particularly obliged by conscience to fight against the Austrians and Germans. To be

546â•…â•… Hemingway, Ernest sure, he chose the side that opposed military expansion, but it all seems a grand adventure. Catherine Barkley asks him, “Why did you do it?” He claims not to know. Ms. Barkley, like his readers, should be skeptical. Nonetheless, his response is notable for its lack of rationale. He places himself in mortal danger, driving from the front lines of active battle back to hospitals and stations, through difficult (and sometimes impassible) terrain, under fire and exposed to the constant threat of injury or death. And yet he offers no reason for it. There is no history to dictate his dedication to this cause. His family is not recently immigrated. His home is neither affected nor in danger due to the war. There is no apparent need for his presence at the front. Yet he comes to Italy to seek out a position in the Italian army. Although nationalism can be hard to define, some would call it the (often) extreme dedication to patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts. Putting one’s life on the line for a national cause is the textbook instance. Austria and Germany are invading Italy, and Gino, Rinaldi, the priest, and the other officers are fighting for their homes. Their cause is personal and patriotic. They are passionate in their nationalism. Even nurse Barkley joined the war effort because her life and home are threatened (Britain is also at war with Germany). In the end, however, it is Lieutenant Henry’s story, and Hemingway’s choice of narrator dictates the polemic of the novel’s perspective. While Lieutenant Henry never explicitly takes a position on nationalism, it is clear from his attitude that he is not nationalistic but believes himself motivated by a higher calling. For Lieutenant Henry, nationalism, and its personal counterpoint of “patriotism,” is at best an excuse and at worst a compulsion. He finds the label useful only to withdraw funds against his grandfather’s goodwill. He poses the rhetorical question of whether or not his grandfather can morally send him to jail rather than give him the money. Clearly, however, such “sight drafts” are a manipulation of the nationalistic impulse of his grandfather. Though Lieutenant Henry may be doing the right thing in engaging in the war, his motive for using the patriotic sympathies of his family and friends is manipulative. Beyond the simple utility of nationalistic rhetoric, it holds little value for the lieutenant.

If nationalism is not used to better his own situation, it is the force by which otherwise peaceful men are conscripted and condemned. In a short conversation with an orderly at the convalescent hospital, Lieutenant Henry offers a compelling rationale for those who would make war versus those who would otherwise be peaceful: “But [those who make war] make them do it . . . And the ones who would not make war? Can they stop it?” The orderly responds, “They are not organized to stop things and when they get organized their leaders sell them out.” Nationalism leads to conscription, then. Perhaps there are better reasons than nationalism to fight and defend one’s home (family, heroism, masculinity to name a few), but invoking love of the land upon which you happen to be born is only rhetoric and propaganda. Aaron Drucker

Parenthood in A Farewell to Arms

At its end, World War I was the deadliest international conflict in history. It was called “The War to End All Wars.” The second half of the novel A Farewell to Arms chronicles the romance of Lieutenant Frederic Henry and nurse Catherine Barkley. The affair begins as such wartime romances do: a friendly meeting, growing closer, an injury, the recovery, and finally the passionate exchange. Catherine becomes pregnant with Lieutenant Henry’s child; after a series of unfortunate events, they decide to desert their posts in Italy, have their child, and move to America. Their son, the product of their passion in a time of fear and violence, is meant to grow and thrive in the aftermath of the decimation of Europe. But in the face of destruction, desertion, and isolation, life proves too difficult to sustain. In war, all life is stillborn. Joking as they make their escape, Lieutenant Henry assures Catherine, “Rowing in moderation is very good for the pregnant lady.” They cross into Switzerland to escape the war and begin their life as a family. At the onset of book 5, the reader rejoins the couple settling into a routine of lazy ease near Montreux. They have thwarted the deadly insanity of war. “We had a fine life,” Lieutenant Henry extols. “We lived through the months of January and February and the winter was very fine and we were very happy.” Throughout the last few chapters

A Farewell to Armsâ•…â•… 547 of the novel, however, there is an insistent insecurity about the promise of new life. Once labor begins, Lieutenant Henry is gripped by foreboding. “People don’t die in childbirth nowadays. That was what all husbands thought. Yes, but what if she should die? She won’t die. She’s just having a bad time.” Birth is the beginning, the first moment of life; the world is new and full of wonder. But for Lieutenant Henry, it is “the byproduct of good nights in Milan,” the last vestiges of a life marked by violence and pain. The nights themselves were aberrances, punctuated notes of joy and pleasure breaking the monotony, agony, and omnipresent fear. What was meant to be harmless fun becomes a lifetime commitment, no matter how much of a blessing it might be, and Lieutenant Henry is left powerless. Birth, for Lieutenant Henry, represents all that is outside of his control: Catherine, marriage, children, the future, life, and death. The relentless back and forth in his mind, the agitation that cannot be satisfied by simple satiation, and the separation between self and situation each manifest as a commentary on Lieutenant Henry’s inability to cope with a future that is entirely beyond his control. The story happens around him, is described by him, but never happens to him. Unlike the war, this is Catherine’s story as much as Lieutenant Henry’s, and this frustrates him. His anxiety is relieved after certain tragedy: The baby is stillborn, Catherine dies, and only Lieutenant Frederic Henry remains. Birth is the tragic reminder that happiness is beyond control. It is outside the self, coming from loved ones and bright futures and goodly promises. In the stillborn birth of his son, Lieutenant Henry recaptures his own life, his own days, and his own, solitary destiny. The reader should be reminded that the novel itself is a fictionalized account of Hemingway’s wartime adventures, including a romance with a mysterious nurse. The real-life drama ended rather prosaically, but in the reimagined world of the heroic Lieutenant Henry, Hemingway builds to a climax both tragic and philosophical. Both his son and Catherine die in childbirth, victims of circumstance (and possibly medical malpractice). But there is a definite ambivalence in Hemingway’s portrayal of birth. The closer to reality it comes, the further the prose seems to separate from the characters. Lieu-

tenant Henry’s descriptions become more abstracted from the moment. There is a palpable sense of distance between the narrator and his story. The first three-quarters of the novel show a very present Lieutenant Henry: aware, engaged, sporting. He is always in the moment. But as the lieutenant and his consort escape the wartime drama, it becomes a tale of minutiae. He spends a full chapter on the quality of his beard. The pacing is uneven. Time snaps forward in fits and starts, until the protracted birth sequence, during which Hemingway attempts to capture the anxiety of being in the other room. Life goes on behind closed doors. Drama and tragedy occur off-stage, as the reader waits with the audience for the action to unfold. This gives the anticipation of birth a quality of distance and paranoia that produces the sense of relief when Lieutenant Henry is informed that his child is stillborn and his lover will soon die. Instead of the shock of tragedy, Lieutenant Henry’s narration is saddened but distant; he is a victim unburdened of responsibility. He leaves the war with nothing but a gentle limp. The war promised him heroism, valor, machismo, a wife, and a child but delivered nothing. Its promise is stillborn. Aaron Drucker

Survival in A Farewell to Arms

“Survival” is the only word in a time of war. Hollywood has spent the past century glamorizing war: the challenges, the heroism, the victories. While recent renditions of war have made the effort to make the terror, demoralization, and violence more visceral to the modern audience, the narrative of the war hero-protagonist victorious against overwhelming obstacles is still the standard. A Farewell to Arms makes a different claim. For Lieutenant Henry and his fellow soldiers in the Italian army, World War I is neither heroic nor valorous. Men sit together and try to pass the time, with their world punctuated by violent, senseless attacks and counterattacks in order to gain, and then lose, a few hundred meters of hillside. These men might be fighting for country, honor, duty, or idealism, but ultimately they simply strive to survive the experience. Hemingway understands that survival requires a vision of the future and the confidence and desire that there will be a tomorrow.

548â•…â•… Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway casts survival in two basic frames: “life and death” and “day-to-day.” The story begins in a relatively pleasant village (Gorizia) close to the front lines, where active fighting is common. Henry, being an ambulance driver, needs to be near the front but far enough away that the field hospital to which he ferries the wounded will not be shelled. The town is usually quiet and days largely consist of idle conversation and some relatively innocent trash talk. Lieutenant Henry reports on conversations where the priest is often teased, his purity is set against a ribald desire for the good humor of the other men. Such idle back-and-forth allows the soldiers and civilian support to build a rapport, and it passes the time and becomes ritual in a world turned upside down. Ritual helps the men order the world, recast the day-to-day experiences and expectations from the mundane life of tailoring or farming into the mess hall as they come from the battlefield. Rituals like the mocking of the priest give order to the chaotic experience of the battlefield. When such rituals break down, so do the men. When Henry returns from his injuries, he quickly discovers that his compatriots are deeply demoralized. Upon his return, he is greeted with friendly conversations, but they tend toward the serious and philosophical. The men talk in quieter tones, one-on-one. Henry meets with the priest, then passes Rinaldi, then Gino jokes with him, but the puns fall flat. The officers have given up on their rituals and fallen despondent during Lieutenant Henry’s absence. Their desire to survive has almost completely eroded in the absence of sustaining routines. “There isn’t anything more,” the priest says. “Except victory. It may be worse.” Henry responds, “I don’t believe in victory anymore.” And the priest rejoins, “I don’t. But I don’t believe in defeat either. Though it may be better.” Defeat brings an end to the suffering, the doldrums of the day-to-day horror of war. Defeat brings death; victory means survival and more fighting. When survival is the object of dread, even the shepherd of the soul is lost to the nihilism of war. While Hemingway writes about the fragility of the social and religious coping mechanisms for survival, he does offer one consistent possibility for his protagonist (and thus his reader). Lieutenant Henry

is seriously injured in a mortar attack at the front. He is shuttled to the local hospital, then to a better hospital in Milan. It is not until Catherine joins him there that his survival is ensured. “God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with anyone. But God knows I had and I lay on the bed in the room of the hospital in Milan and all sorts of things went through my head but I felt wonderful and finally Miss Gage came in.” The doctor who would perform the successful surgery on his leg had arrived. Love, intentional or not, proffers the hope for survival. But Hemingway’s alternative to society, religion, and ritual is a bright, hot, and all-too-brief flame. All one can do is survive a war. There is no safety. No one leaves unscathed. The action of the novel breaks away from the fighting during a temporary retreat. Lieutenant Henry and Catherine diverge from the road their comrades follow only to discover that there is no safety in escape. They survive the war only to be confronted with the simple reality that everyone who is born dies. Ultimately the survival rate for all men is zero. Lieutenant Henry leaves the field alive. He is a survivor, but at the cost of everything, most especially hope in the promise of tomorrow. Hemingway leaves his protagonist and his reader without a future, merely alive. Survival: It may be worse. Aaron Drucker

Hemingway, Ernestâ•… The Old Man and the Seaâ•… (1952)

The Old Man and the Sea was first published in the September 1 issue of Life magazine in 1952. Two years later it was the only novel to receive explicit mention by the Swedish Academy when they awarded Hemingway the Nobel Prize for literature. Set in a Cuban fishing town, the short novel tells the story of an old man, Santiago, and his four-day-long, perilous, solo pursuit of a great fish. Santiago’s past is full of hardships, yet his bad luck has not made him weary of life. His body shows the traces of years of strenuous work, but his friendship with the boy, Manolin, and their talk of baseball, the lottery, and fishing reveal a persevering vibrancy in the old man. It is their close friendship

The Old Man and the Seaâ•…â•… 549 that seems to keep Santiago alive throughout the novel, even when he is alone in his skiff. The old man’s life also depends on the sea. This deep connection becomes literal when he hooks his great fish. If the old man shares a tempered optimism with the boy, he shares a wild desperation with the fish, as they pull each other through the Gulf Stream and toward death. When he returns to the island, both man and marlin have been torn to pieces. Still, Santiago, with the support of Manolin, has triumphed over the sea, loneliness, and even death. The Old Man and the Sea presents themes such as nature, isolation, and stages of life, in multifaceted and complex ways, making the simplicity of the novel’s plot and language as deceptive as the tranquil surface of the sea. Japhet Johnstone

Isolation in The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea paints an ominous picture of isolation. The old man, Santiago, lives a solitary life in a shack, with a dilapidated skiff for his livelihood and one friend, the boy Manolin, to keep him company. His journey at sea isolates him even more, as he goes “beyond all people” in search of a great fish. Far out in his boat isolation also creeps into the old man’s dreams. However, The Old Man and the Sea does not create an image of total isolation. The old man is never completely alone, and the bleak images of isolation make his bonds of kinship with the world stand out all the brighter. The old man’s life on the island is isolated both socially and economically from the other fishermen and villagers. Foremost, he has no family. A photograph of his deceased wife serves as a reminder of this loss, but he keeps it under a clean shirt because the sight of the photograph makes him too lonely. Without a family the old man seems all the more lonesome in contrast to Manolin. The boy’s family dictates his behavior and influences his opinions. His family is a living part of his world, not something he can hide away. There is no such influence over the old man’s decision-making, except maybe a desire for economic ease. As a fisherman, he must catch fish to make a living. Since at the beginning of the story he has not caught a fish in 84 days, his

financial resources are lower than ever. He lights no fire at night. He would have little to eat if the boy did not bring him stew and rice. Moreover, his “bad luck” makes him an object of ridicule and pity in the village. In these abject conditions the old man has nobody except for the boy, and he even leaves him behind when he sets out to test his luck on his 85th day at sea. The old man isolates himself both physically and geographically on his three-day fishing expedition. He refuses to take the boy with him in his skiff. All alone, even with his strong but old body, he suffers from thirst, hunger, and fatigue. He regrets not having the boy with him multiple times during his voyage. Without the boy, drinking, eating, or recuperating lost fishing-line all become Herculean tasks for an old fisherman. With nobody by his side, the old man finds himself in a dangerous position, made more dangerous by his geographic isolation. On his first day he sails out to where only the tops of the island hills are visible; then when he hooks his big catch he is dragged out to where no land is visible at all. The old man reaches his most remote point when he kills the marlin and stops the fish from towing his boat farther out to sea. Without his only friend and far from help, the old man’s isolation nearly kills him. Isolation also haunts the old man’s dreams. When the old man finally allows himself to sleep during his second night at sea, he has three dreams. Between two dreams of companionship and pleasure is a dream of discomfort and cold. This harsh dream resembles the old man’s life on the island: a chilly, unpleasant night in a shack. The severity of this image contrasts with the two other dreams. The first dream is of a school of porpoises playing in the ocean during mating season. The other dream is of a lion that arrives on a beach alone and is then joined by others. In this dream sequence, the old man’s life of solitude appears all the more arduous juxtaposed with these pleasant visions of animal communities. Though for the old man community and belonging seem but a dream, he is never completely isolated. His poor outsider status on the island does not mean that no one cares for him. Certainly, this is most obvious in his relationship to the boy. But upon his return to the island, it is clear that the vil-

550â•…â•… Hemingway, Ernest lagers do worry about the old man. They sent the coast guard to search for him, and Manolin must tell the proprietor of the Terrace to prohibit any curious parties from disturbing the convalescent old man. Even far out at sea, the old man knows that he is not utterly alone. The kinship he feels toward the turtles, porpoises, wind, and stars is accompanied by his thought, “no man was ever alone on the sea.” From the old man’s point of view he is surrounded by his “brothers” of the air and of the water. Isolation thus becomes merely a question of perspective. Japhet Johnstone

Nature in The Old Man and the Sea

The central conflict in The Old Man and the Sea is between man and nature. The old man, Santiago, challenges nature when he sets out alone in his skiff to catch a great fish. At sea, he overcomes many trials thanks to his determination and sharp mind. These assets are quintessentially human and are the old man’s best weapons against the unpredictable and wild sea. The sea, and all of nature, can grant both good luck and bad. It is a source of fortune and beauty, and also a formidable enemy. But nature is not just the sea, the stars, the marlin, and the sharks; the old man is also a part of nature. His connection to nature is most evident in his own body and his relationship to the marlin. In the end, however, it is the old man, and not the marlin, who makes it back to shore alive. Even with no luck at all, Santiago’s resolution is strong enough to bring him back home alive, exhausted, and a hero. Nature has not been kind to the old man. His work as a fisherman has exposed him to nature’s cruelty. The sun has marked his skin with cancer. He knows firsthand the burning poison of jellyfish. When the novel begins Santiago has gone 84 days without catching a fish. On the 85th day he catches a 1,500-pound marlin. Nature rewards the old man with its bounty, but the size of its bounty is almost too much for a single fisherman. When the old man has finally lashed the marlin to his skiff, nature sends its minions: sharks, who devour most of the fish. Santiago meets all of nature’s trials with determination. His years at sea have taught him many “tricks” to counter nature’s whims. After almost

three months of bad luck, he still goes out to fish daily. While the taut, heavy lines cut across his back as Santiago waits for the marlin to surface, he reminds himself that his advantage over the fish is his intelligence and his unrelenting resolution. Indeed, Santiago does not cut the line. Even when black spots appear before his eyes and sharks attack through the night, he commands himself to keep a clear mind and does not relinquish his catch. Though nature is often cruel to the old man, he still loves it, especially the sea. Unlike some of the young, brash fishermen, who think of the sea as “el mar,” a hostile, masculine opponent, Santiago thinks of the sea as “la mar.” The sea is a woman, and Santiago feels that, like a woman, the sea is naturally wild. These things do not make him love the sea any less. He also has an affinity for nature’s creatures. He feels compassion for the fragile terns whose voices are so delicate. He reveres turtles and hawksbills for their elegance and porpoises for their playfulness. Even the sharks are beautiful to Santiago, though he hates them. Nothing in nature is without some quality that the old man can admire. The old man himself is one of nature’s creatures. If the mind is human, then the body is natural. The opening description of the old man compares his scars to erosion in a desert, and it is as if nature had written itself into the old man’s skin. The ebb and flow of luck, which is nature’s domain, influences his whole body. Bad luck strikes when his left hand cramps. Suddenly, he has no power over it. In the same way that the old man waits for the marlin to surface, so too must he wait for his hand to uncramp. But the old man’s link to nature is more than just his own physical body. Santiago’s most notable connection to nature is the marlin caught on his hook. At each end of the fishing line there is a figure who will not let go of its life. As the old man shortens the line, the spiritual distance between the two also shortens. The old man wonders about the marlin and feels sorry for him. He even wishes to be the fish at one point. Both fish and man parallel each other in endurance and strength. The marlin’s determination drags the old man far out to sea. The old man’s brings them back. And though the old man lives on, the parallel between the two is not broken by the marlin’s death

The Old Man and the Seaâ•…â•… 551 and mutilation. As the townspeople examine and measure the fish’s skeleton on the beach, they are also measuring the old man’s greatness. This greatness resides in his will power, which can face the sea and all of nature’s tricks, with or without luck. Japhet Johnstone

Stages of Life in The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea does not detail the stages of life in a progressive development from youth to adulthood to old age. Instead, the old man stands at the final stage of life, where death is a real threat, but also where experience has given him a wealth of knowledge. His friend, the boy, is just at the end of the first stage of life, yet he is already wise beyond his years. He lacks only experience and instruction, both of which he hopes to gain from the old man. The years between the old man and the boy do not distance them from one another. The long span of time is full of dreams and fantasies that the two share. The old man feels the effects of aging. Except for his eyes, which retain a cheerfulness and triumphant shine, everything about Santiago is old. When his eyes are closed he looks lifeless. His conversation with the boy turns frequently to the retelling of stories, but the old man is not senile. His awareness of aging is sharp. He recognizes that age is his alarm clock and wonders why old men wake up so early. Age has also provided him with experience, which in turn has taught the old man many tricks. In spite of his age and his fatigue, the old man battles the sharks that assault his skiff. The old man has a small armament to kill the sharks, but more than these material weapons, he is armed with his mind. And it is not old age that threatens his mind at sea, but starvation, dehydration, and exhaustion. Manolin represents youth and its benefits. He is capable and lucky. He can procure food for his old friend and help him with his fishing gear. The boy also works on a good fishing boat and regularly catches fish. These qualities contrast with Santiago’s stage of life. He often regrets not having the boy with him on his lonely skiff. If the boy were with Santiago, the fisherman would not only have an extra set of hands, but also, symbolically, have his youth to give him added vitality and endurance.

Still, youth alone would not be enough to subdue the giant fish. Even if the old man fondly thinks of the boy and nostalgically remembers his youth, it is the experience that has come with old age that helps him most. Between youth and old age lies the stage of life during which we gather experience. The old man has this period behind him, and yet keeps it fresh in his memories and dreams. It was a time of love, conquest, and travels for the old man. Some of these memories he returns to fondly, like his sailing to Africa and his arm wrestling triumphs. Other memories he does not welcome, like the memory of his wife. The clearest figure of adulthood however, is not in the old man’s past but in the newspapers. Joe DiMaggio is young and strong, and Santiago thinks about him as frequently as he thinks about the boy. The old man wonders how long DiMaggio would stay with a giant fish, and if his bone-spur would cause him much pain. But the old man does not wish DiMaggio, an adult, were accompanying him. He longs for Manolin and youth. Similarly, the boy does not wish to learn from anyone else but the old man. None of the other characters in the novel, real or imagined, can provide the boy with the instruction and companionship of the old man. Nor can they provide the old man with the devotion and admiration of the boy. By the end of the novel both Santiago and Manolin are on the verge of passing into their next stage of life. For Santiago the next stage of life is death. Though he does not die, his body is wrecked by his expedition. Death seems very near. For Manolin the next stage of life is adulthood. Indeed, the pains that the boy takes to care for the old man show responsibility and maturity. The boy casts off the last remnant of childhood, his obedience to his parents, when he decides to fish with the old man in spite of their orders not to. But more than his renunciation of his parents, the boy’s passage into adulthood is marked by his first hard lesson—the lesson of loss. More than the old man himself sees, the boy sees how close to death the old man came. The boy’s tears prematurely mourn the loss of Santiago, from whom the boy still wishes to learn “everything.” Japhet Johnstone

552â•…â•… Hemingway, Ernest

Hemingway, Ernestâ•… The Sun Also Risesâ•… (1926)

Ernest Hemingway’s first great novel, The Sun Also Rises, was published in 1926. It is the story of a group of American and British expatriates living in Paris after World War I, who struggle to find some meaning in their lives. It begins with a brief description of Robert Cohn, a Jewish writer who worries that he is “not really living.” It is narrated by Jake Barnes, an American whose war wounds have left him impotent. Jake is in love with the Lady Brett Ashley, a beautiful, charming, and promiscuous woman. Brett loves Jake as well, but his wound has left them unable to pursue their relationship. She is engaged to Mike Campbell, a bankrupt Scottish veteran. Brett has a brief affair with Robert, who is unable to let her go. The veteran Bill Gorton is, like the others, a heavy drinker. Book 1 of the novel introduces the characters, and highlights Jake and Brett’s unhappiness in their frustrated relationship. Book 2 details the group’s trip to Spain, beginning with Jake and Bill’s fishing trip. They meet Brett, Mike, and Robert in Pamplona for the bullfights. Brett falls in love with the bullfighter Pedro Romero. They enjoy the fiesta for a time, until Robert’s jealousy for Brett leads him to punch Jake and Mike, and to severely beat Pedro. Brett and Pedro go away together, but their relationship soon breaks down, and Brett sends for Jake to rescue her. The novel ends with the two lamenting their condition. It is a beautiful expression of alienation, futility, gender, love, and spirituality. James Ford

Alienation in The Sun Also Rises

A sense of alienation and estrangement is pervasive throughout The Sun Also Rises. Jake Barnes is alienated from himself and the world around him. He is alienated from his own body, particularly by the war wound that has left him impotent, unable to consummate his love for Lady Brett Ashley. He tries to explain to his friend Robert Cohn that “you can’t get away from yourself.” He says that people want only what they cannot have, a sign of the futility of human life and desire. Jake wants Brett to be with him, to run away with him, to live with him despite his wound. Neither can have what they

really want. There is a distance between Jake and everyone else, particularly his friends. He is aware of the emptiness around him, but he struggles to live with it. He says that he does not care what life is all about; “All I wanted to know was how to live in it.” His passion for fishing and for the bullfights gives a sense of meaning to his life, but they do not make it any easier for him to live with his separation from Brett. Cohn is also alienated from everyone around him. He talks about his sense that he’s “not really living,” but his attempts at really living ultimately cost him his only friend. He falls in love with Lady Brett Ashley, who after a brief affair wants nothing to do with him. Cohn is certain of his love for Brett and follows her constantly. First he surprises Brett and her fiancé, Mike, at San Sebastian, where Brett and Cohn had their affair. After being cast off by Brett, Cohn continues to follow her around “like a poor bloody steer.” Cohn refuses to believe that his love for Brett does not matter, even as Mike and Brett insist that they do not want him around. Cohn is alienated from those around him by the fact that he is Jewish, by his failure to have fought in the war, and by his naïve insistence that Brett must love him. When Brett turns her affections to the bullfighter Pedro Romero, Cohn finally faces the truth that she does not love him. He punches out Jake, Mike, and finally Romero, before deciding that everything is useless and leaving it all behind. Brett is perhaps the most alienated character in the novel. She loves Jake, but has a series of affairs with other men and is engaged to Mike. She says it is “hell on earth” to be in love. As Mike says, she “enjoys things” but is not happy. She sees a momentary happiness with Romero, but it quickly fades. She says she wanted Romero but decided that she “was bad for him.” Having sent Romero away, she calls on Jake to rescue her so that she can return to Mike. Brett and Jake are also both alienated from religion and from God. At one point Jake goes into the cathedral to pray, regretting that he’s such “a rotten Catholic.” His religion does not seem to make much difference to his life. Later he and Brett go to the chapel to pray, but it only makes her “damned nervous,” since it never does her any good. Jake says

The Sun Also Risesâ•…â•… 553 that he is “pretty religious,” but that hardly seems sincere given his own difficulties with church and prayer. After Brett’s rejection of Romero, it is her sense that she has done the right thing for Romero that is her consolation. It is, she says to Jake, “sort of what we have instead of God.” In the most explicit statement about their lack of religious and spiritual beliefs, Jake says that “some people have God,” to which Brett responds “He never worked very well with me.” The novel concludes with them drinking more wine, eating more food, and talking around their problems, until Brett finally voices her frustration that “we could have had such a damned good time together.” Jake’s answer—“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”—is the last word in the novel. It suggests that he knows that many of their problems would remain, even if they were together. It shows that he feels estranged even from the idea of their union, that perhaps he doubts whether anything could resolve their feelings of alienation. It seems unlikely that any of the major characters will ever feel at home in the world. James Ford

Futility in The Sun Also Rises

The theme of futility is present from the first words of The Sun Also Rises. The two epigraphs that open the novel speak to this sense of the uselessness of human life. Gertrude Stein’s comment that “You are a lost generation” is directed at those who suffered through World War I and its aftermath, but the feeling of being “lost” is one that recurs in every generation. The epigraph from Ecclesiastes (which is the source of the book’s title) makes this plain: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh.” In Ecclesiastes, human concerns are a “vanity,” a chasing after wind, and this is true throughout the novel as well. The first line introduces Robert Cohn as a Princeton boxing champion, but the narrator ( Jake) explains that such things do not impress him. This is an early indication of the larger insignificance of human accomplishments. This focus on Cohn is a curious beginning, for other characters (particularly Jake and Brett Ashley) will be as important in the novel, but early on the focus is on Cohn and Jake’s

relationship to him. Cohn is determined to travel, in part because of a novel that he takes too seriously. Jake is world-weary and tries to convince Cohn how futile traveling the world actually is: “All countries look just like the moving pictures.” In truth, what Cohn wants is a new life. “Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it?” Cohn asks, and Jake replies that he is “through worrying” about life, death, or anything else. Jake has decided that such worrying is futile. Cohn is searching for some larger significance in his life, but for Jake life is the same all over; “Why don’t you start living your life in Paris?” is his sensible response. The major characters in the novel are discontent whether in Paris or anywhere else. Bill says later that Vienna “seemed better than it was.” Brett says that “one’s an ass to leave Paris.” Yet they all leave Paris for the fiesta in Spain. Many of the things that might make life more enjoyable seem tired for Jake and his friends. Drinks, dancing, parties, and in general the night-life all get boring. Even love seems futile, in part because of Jake’s condition. Brett says “There isn’t any use my telling you I love you” because “talking’s all bilge.” Jake and Brett long to be together, but his warwound and her wanderings make a future together impossible. When asked why they don’t get married, Jake jokes that “We want to lead our own lives” and Brett explains that “We have our careers,” echoing and mocking common explanations for not settling down. Mike’s comment later is typical: “This is all awfully amusing, but it’s not too pleasant.” Jake and his friends enjoy many things, but they rarely are happy. Even their arguments (between Jake and Cohn first, then Cohn and Jake’s friend Harvey) amount to nothing. Most of all, human wisdom is futile in the novel. Jake realizes how pointless his own philosophy of life is, thinking that “in five years .  .  . it will seem just as silly as all the other philosophies I’ve had.” All things pass away, even as the world endures. This sense that human pursuits are ultimately futile receives fullest expression during the fiesta, where “it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences.” There are real consequences, though; for instance, the consequences of love affairs—Jake’s emptiness, Mike’s loneliness, Brett’s

554â•…â•… Hemingway, Ernest unhappiness, and Cohn’s violence. Brett knows that Cohn’s problem is that “he can’t believe it didn’t mean anything” when they were lovers, but to her it is meaningless. After Cohn knocks out his friends and beats Romero to a bloody pulp, he finally agrees that “everything” is pointless, saying “I guess it isn’t any use.” When a bystander is killed during the running of the bulls, a man who had a wife and two children, a waiter is left to express how senseless the death is. “All for sport, all for pleasure,” he says. Ironically, the only truly worthwhile activities are casual pursuits, like fishing with friends. Jake is happiest trout-fishing with his friend Bill, and enjoying a bottle of wine (or two) afterward. They find a kind of peace in friendship that is otherwise elusive. For Jake, traditional pursuits like prayer and religion seem empty in comparison. The novel ends with his rescue of Brett, but their relationship is another exercise in human futility. They are right back where they started, lost. James Ford

Gender in The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises raises many questions about what it means to be a man. The novel is narrated by Jake Barnes, a man left impotent by his war wounds. Most of the major characters are men, but they spend their time fighting and arguing over one woman, Brett Ashley (the novel’s only major female character). When Brett is first introduced in the novel, what is most prominent is how she differs from other women. She has a crowd of men around her and she is quite beautiful, with her “hair brushed back like a boy’s.” In fact, Jake explains, “she started all that.” Another fact that makes her different is her tendency to drink like a man. Count Mippipopolous, one of the many men smitten with Brett, says that she is “the only lady I have ever known who was as charming when she was drunk as when she was sober.” Her refusal to follow the rules of polite society often excludes her, such as when she cannot enter the church because she has no hat. Much has been made of Lady Ashley, and the significance of her character. Is she a liberating force, since she is in many ways the center of the novel and refuses to follow societal conventions? Or does she reinforce common prejudices, in that she

seems to be the cause of many of the problems in the novel and often is dependent on men? As Jake says of her, “she can’t go anywhere alone.” What is clear is that Brett Ashley is a compelling character, and the men of the novel orbit around her. For instance, at the fiesta she wants to dance with a crowd of men, but they keep her in the center of the circle: “they wanted her as an image to dance around.” This is symbolic of Brett’s relationships throughout the novel. She has a series of affairs, all the while loving Jake. Her final affair is with Pedro Romero, the young bullfighter who in many ways is a symbol of young, powerful manliness. That relationship fails (just as all her others do), in part because Pedro wants her to grow her hair out, to be “more womanly.” He insists on marriage, but Brett Ashley refuses to be bound by society’s expectations of a woman. Jake is far removed from the smooth confidence of Pedro Romero. His war wound shadows him throughout the novel, “the old grievance.” He is generally good-natured about his condition, but it prevents him from pursuing his relationship with Brett. They genuinely love each other. Whether or not Brett’s affairs are the result of his impotence is unclear, but it is certainly an important factor. As she says, “I couldn’t live quietly in the country. Not with my own true love.” Jake is patient with her, but his situation leaves him decidedly bitter about women in general, and Brett Ashley in particular. He muses that a man has “to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship,” before concluding “to hell with women, anyway.” That conclusion is half-hearted; the one thing Jake can never do is forget about Brett, or the wound that keeps them apart. One quality that seems indicative of manliness in the novel is aficion, the passion that some men (and only men) have for bullfighting. Jake has it, and it is his link to a secret world of men. The hotelkeeper Montoya is an aficionado, as is Pedro Romero. In fact, all the great bullfighters and lovers of the bullfights are aficionados, with a sort of spiritual bond linking them. When Brett’s affair with Pedro threatens to weaken his aficion, it is the one thing Montoya cannot forgive of Jake and his friends.

Hiroshimaâ•…â•… 555 Robert Cohn is a man who lacks that passion. In fact, the other men compare him to a steer, which is a young, castrated bull—the symbol of a lack of manliness. They laugh at him for the way in which he follows Brett, just as the steers hang around the bulls waiting for their attention. Ironically, Cohn is the most violent man in the novel, decking his friends and nearly killing Pedro Romero in his frustration at Brett’s rejection. Cohn’s traditional sense of pride and honor alienate him from the world around him, just as Jake’s impotence and Brett’s independence alienate them. Gender roles are another way that Hemingway’s characters are not at home in the world. James Ford

Hersey, Johnâ•… Hiroshimaâ•… (1946)

In the spring of 1946, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey flew to Japan to interview six survivors of the atom bomb that devastated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The New Yorker magazine published Hersey’s long article in August 1946; the article was later issued as a book, entitled Hiroshima. In 1985, Hersey returned to Japan to write a follow-up article on the six survivors. The New Yorker also published this piece, entitled “The Aftermath,” which was soon added to a revised edition of the book. Following World War II, many Americans felt intense hatred toward Japan. Hiroshima can be read, in part, as a response to that hatred. For example, some of Hersey’s readers were Christian, and his inclusion of a Japanese United Methodist minister and a German Jesuit priest among the profiled survivors allowed his readers to see that some differences between American and Japanese cultures, such as religion, were not as vast as believed at the time. The book also sympathetically details the plight of families. One example is a mother suffering from radiation sickness and poverty, who must provide for her three young children. Hersey’s journalism made it difficult for the American public to justify prejudice against its former enemies of war because the two cultures, although different, share basic human values and emotions. The atomic bomb dropped by the U.S. Army Air Force on Hiroshima killed approximately 100,000

Japanese plus foreign civilians and military personnel. Out of this tragedy, the book makes clear, arose tremendous suffering. But selfless acts of heroism kept the community together. People also survived by giving friends and strangers hope that Hiroshimans would heal and rebuild their lives. Elizabeth Cornell

Heroism in Hiroshima

Heroism is a bold act of courage. A hero often acts at the risk of his or her own life or well-being. Generally, a person is not conscious of acting heroically, nor does someone perform a heroic deed only to be recognized as a hero. John Hersey’s Hiroshima is filled with heroes and acts of heroism, large and small. For example, minutes after the bomb explodes over Hiroshima, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura digs her children out of the rubble that was once their house. Her act of heroism is motivated by desperation, love, and maternal instinct. Mrs. Nakamura is a heroine because her effort to save the lives of her children is a selfless one. Hersey details other remarkable instances of selfless heroism like Mrs. Nakamura’s. Father Kleinsorge, who is “apathetic and dazed in the presence of the cumulative distress” caused by the destruction of Hiroshima, learns that the secretary of the diocese is trapped in the second floor window of the burning mission. Kleinsorge shakes himself out of his dazed state and runs into the flaming building. Mr. Fukai wants to remain in the house to die, but Kleinsorge refuses to honor his wish. With the help of a student, he drags Fukai downstairs and outdoors. Since Fukai refuses to walk, Kleinsorge hoists him on his back and they escape from the fire that soon devours everything in the neighborhood. But when Kleinsorge sits down to rest, Fukai runs away, back into the fire. He is never seen again. Sometimes heroic acts are unappreciated or even unwanted by the recipient. Rescuing people from life or death situations, as Kleinsorge did at the risk of his own life, are clear acts of heroism. But, as Hersey’s book shows, heroism is not always associated with high-risk situations. Moreover, heroic deeds do not necessarily have clear-cut beginnings and ends, and often continue for long periods of time. Mrs. Nakamura is

556â•…â•… Hersey, John a case in point. Widowed by the war, she is sole caretaker for her three children. She has few marketable skills. On top of that, Mrs. Nakamura suffers from serious radiation sickness. She manages to take in some sewing, as well as cleaning and laundering for neighbors, but “she got so tired that she had to take two days’ rest for every three days she worked. . . . She earned barely enough for food.” She struggles for many years. Her heroism lies in never giving up on herself and her family, despite lingering illness and the bleak conditions that plague her daily existence. Her tireless, selfless efforts pay off: Her children eventually become successful adults. When Mrs. Nakamura retires, she finally takes pleasure in living. Father Kleinsorge also selflessly gives to others, and does so for the rest of his life. We might say his life is one long, heroic act. Despite the radiation sickness that afflicts him, Kleinsorge serves his church faithfully and tirelessly. He conducts Mass, hears confession, teaches Bible classes, runs eightday retreats, visits survivors, and even babysits on occasion. Hersey explains that Kleinsorge takes “on himself the Japanese spirit of enryo—setting the self apart, putting the wishes of others first.” Kleinsorge’s colleagues think “he might literally kill himself with kindness to others.” Sometimes heroes receive medals for their courageous acts. Kleinsorge receives nothing but deep gratitude from everyone he touches until his final days, when some of his selfless service to others is paid back. When Kleinsorge is unable to take care of even his most basic needs, he receives loving and round-the-clock care from his helper, Yoshiki-san. Their relationship demonstrates a view of heroism described by Thomas Carlyle, a 19th-century Scottish philosopher. Carlyle wrote that heroes are “leaders of men”; they are “the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense, creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or attain.” One implication of this passage is that common people admire heroism and may wish to emulate heroes. Kleinsorge, “a leader” of people, can be seen as a “modeller” who creates “patterns” of behavior for others to copy. Yoshiki-san’s selfless service to the dying Kleinsorge is an emulation of the selfless heroism the priest modeled throughout his life.

The bombing of Hiroshima was a terrible act against humans; but the outcome was not entirely negative. As the feats of heroism described above show, it takes more than a bomb—even a nuclear bomb—to break the human spirit, heroic or otherwise. Elizabeth Cornell

Hope in Hiroshima

A curtain of flames reflects in the night sky over bombed-out Hiroshima, and a girl rescued from a toxic river shivers. Father Kleinsorge, one of the six survivors profiled by John Hersey in Hiroshima, brings her a blanket. But she continues to shiver uncontrollably. The priest brings her another blanket. “I am so cold,” she says, “and then she suddenly stopped shivering and was dead.” The blanket offers the girl a hope of warmth and life, but her death makes the post-bomb scene feel hopeless indeed. The thousands of slimy, swollen, and discolored human bodies only add to the sense of hopelessness. Reverend Tanimoto, one of the uninjured few, keeps reminding himself that these people “↜‘are human beings.’↜” In the initial days after the American bombing of Hiroshima, hope feels like a luxury to the sick and dying crowds of people. One doctor is only willing to take care of the slightly wounded. He explains, “There is no hope for the heavily wounded. They will die. We can’t bother with them.” But glimmers of hope cut through the nightmare. A Japanese naval launch traverses the seven rivers of Hiroshima to announce the imminent arrival of a naval hospital ship. This gives the people cheer and hope. However, no ship arrives. False hope is common in the desperate days after the bombing, but sometimes even that kind of hope is useful. For example, at the Catholic International Hospital in Tokyo, a doctor presents an optimistic face to Father Kleinsorge, who is very sick. The doctor promises to send Kleinsorge home in two weeks; but privately, to the Mother Superior, he predicts that the priest—and all the “↜‘bomb people’↜”—will die. He holds little hope, but understands that giving this kind of false hope is the best medicine he can offer. Kleinsorge does survive, however, as do many “bomb people.” Perhaps Kleinsorge’s deep faith in God gives him hope for survival. Later, he

Hiroshimaâ•…â•… 557 shares this faith with Miss Sasaki, whose long stay at the Red Cross Hospital depresses her. Kleinsorge’s words give her hope that all is not lost. After his visit, Dr. Sasaki notices that “she seemed quickly to draw to physical strength” from Kleinsorge’s words; soon after she is discharged from the hospital. Since Miss Sasaki is not a Christian, Father Kleinsorge’s religion may seem, to her, like an unlikely resource for hope. But hope often comes from unexpected channels. An unlikely source for all the Hiroshimans comes from Japan’s now powerless leader, Emperor Showa. When he announces on the radio that Japan has surrendered to the Allies, thus ending the war, Mrs. Nakamura, like most Japanese citizens, is stunned. The common people have never heard his voice before. They consider their emperor to be more than human: He is a sacred symbol and the embodiment of Japan. The emperor’s message uplifts the disheartened Japanese and gives them hope for their country’s future. Tanimoto later explains in a letter to an American friend that people believe that to surrender is to make a “whole-hearted sacrifice for the everlasting peace of the world”: hope, in other words, for a better future. With this hope for a better world, the Hiroshimans almost immediately begin to rebuild their city. Dr. Fujii, whose entire medical clinic fell into a river during the bombing, builds a new clinic. It becomes more successful than his original one. Kleinsorge rebuilds his mission and Tanimoto rebuilds his church. Rebuilding is an important way for the survivors to maintain the hope that all was not lost on August 6, 1945. Medical clinics and churches are among the institutions that provide some of the necessary infrastructure and hope the community needs to move on from the tragedy. By rebuilding their city, the Hiroshimans show faith in their future. They also hope for a future in which peace reigns. Many survivors want to use their experiences to promote peace. But peace is more easily visualized than achieved. Tanimoto works toward establishing a center for world peace. He receives support from organizations in the United States, but encounters resistance in Hiroshima. Moreover, although the destruction caused by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be enough impetus for countries to stop manufactur-

ing bombs, such is not the case, as Hersey makes clear. Scattered throughout “The Aftermath” are italicized sentences indicating when another country acquires the knowledge to develop a bomb. The resistance Tanimoto encounters for his peace center and against the continued development of bombs is not an indication that the peace movement is failing, however. They are indications that the struggle for world peace is complex and difficult. Hope and activity for peace must not be abandoned but constantly renewed with increased vigor and awareness. Elizabeth Cornell

Suffering in Hiroshima

John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima, describes the human suffering caused by the atomic bomb, through details that may otherwise have been lost to history. The six survivors profiled in the book all have suffering in common but, as Hersey movingly shows, each experience of suffering is unique. For example, most who survive the bombing suffer immediate and severe injuries. But the Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto is not injured; his suffering stems from the guilt of not being injured and seeing the deep suffering that surrounds him. “Excuse me for having no burden like yours” he pleads to the burned and lacerated people he passes as he makes his way into the recently shocked and bomb-blasted city. The human suffering is on a scale unlike anything he has ever encountered. Tanimoto sees people whose burnt skin bears the shapes of the flowers printed on their kimonos. When he assists a woman onto a rescue boat, the skin falls off her hand in “glovelike pieces.” The wounded and dying grieve him so much that when, by pure chance, he finally encounters his missing wife and son, “Tanimoto was now so emotionally worn out that nothing could surprise him” and he does not even embrace them. Miss Toshinki Sasaki, an office clerk, does suffer physical injury. In the attack, a ceiling beam and a heavy shelf of books land on her. Her left leg is twisted and broken. After being rescued many hours later, she is taken outside and given shelter from the rain underneath a large sheet of corrugated iron. She suffers in this bare space for over two days with a “woman with a whole breast sheared off and

558â•…â•… Hesse, Hermann a man whose face was all raw from a burn.” After a while, these people start to smell, but Sasaki—whose leg becomes “swollen and putrid”—is too injured to move away from them. She is at last rescued by friends, who bring news that Sasaki’s parents and baby brother are dead, adding more emotional suffering to her ordeal. Doctors at the Red Cross Hospital manage to save her leg, but she is permanently disabled. Outside medical assistance is slow to arrive in Hiroshima. Only six doctors at the Red Cross Hospital can work, including Dr. Terfumi Sasaki (unrelated to Miss Sasaki). Nurses and medical supplies are scarce. In the dreadful days that follow the bombing, 10,000 injured people make their way to the 600-bed hospital. Confronted with so much suffering, Dr. Sasaki becomes robot-like, “mechanically wiping, daubing, winding, wiping, daubing, winding” the bomb victims. He secretly rests after 19 hours of treating raw flesh and dangling limbs. But an hour later, the wounded find him and chide him for not doing his job. In total, Sasaki works three straight days with one hour of rest. The suffering—his own and everyone else’s—is a nightmare he will long remember. In the years following the attack, the immediate suffering subsides. But the survivors continue to encounter new forms of suffering they never imagined possible. Miss Sasaki’s fiancé, who was not in Hiroshima during the bombing, abandons her because she is crippled. Like most survivors, Sasaki also suffers from radiation sickness as well as social and economic ostracism. These people are called hibakusha, meaning “explosion-affected person.” Non-hibakusha often scorn hibakusha and believe hibakusha can cause disease and bear deformed offspring. On a bright note, the hibakusha receive special health services and monthly allowances if they are unable to work. Moreover, thanks to Reverend Tanimoto, some female hibakusha with facial deformities (keloids) are selected to travel to the United States for plastic surgery. One hibakusha dies from the procedure, but the rest— now dubbed Maidens—are remarkably improved. Unfortunately, when they return to Japan, they become “not only objects of public curiosity but also of envy and spite.”

Despite this negative response to the Maidens, what is remarkable are the relatively few instances in the book when people complain about their suffering or condemn the Americans for causing it. The Reverend Tanimoto comments in a letter to an American friend that he “never heard anyone cried [sic] in the disorder, even though they suffered in great agony. They died in silence, with no grudge, setting their teeth to bear it. All for the country.” His observation does not mean that no one in Hiroshima complained or condemned the Americans for destroying a beautiful city. It may, however, cause readers to question their preconceived notions of what suffering is and their public and private responses to it. Elizabeth Cornell

Hesse, Hermannâ•… Siddharthaâ•… (1922)

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) began writing Siddhartha in 1919 and it was first published in 1922. His life and numerous works, including this novel, were influenced by his parents, who both lived in India before meeting in Germany, as well as by a trip he took to Southeast Asia in 1911. Based on the dates that the Buddha is thought to have lived, this story takes place from approximately 540 to 480 b.c. Siddhartha leaves his family as a young man with his childhood friend, Govinda, because they are in search of enlightenment. Both decide to become samanas (wandering ascetic monks), and during this time they hear about Gotama, who is said to be the Buddha. Govinda decides to follow Gotama’s teachings, while Siddhartha continues his journey and reenters the world. He subsequently meets Kamala, a courtesan, and through her Kamaswami, a wealthy merchant, both of whom teach Siddhartha their trades. Feeling unhappy and unfulfilled after becoming a gambler, Siddhartha employs the ferryman Vasudeva, with whom he remains. After many years he sees Kamala, who dies from a snake bite shortly thereafter, and he discovers that she has given him a son. Siddhartha tries to raise his son, but quickly realizes that the son too must leave his father and go out on his own. In the final chapter Siddhartha once again sees Govinda; through a kiss on Siddhartha’s

Siddharthaâ•…â•… 559 forehead, Govinda is able to find the oneness and peace that Siddhartha has already achieved, within himself and with his surroundings. Christine Rinne

Individual and Society in Siddhartha

Siddhartha grows up with his family, in a Brahman community, and he must venture out of its confines in order to obtain the wisdom he seeks. He initially believes that withdrawal and social seclusion will offer the solution, then tries living in a large, diverse society, but he comes to learn that moderation leads to his happiness. Siddhartha encounters many types of people throughout his lengthy journey for peace, and he uses these experiences and interactions to decide how and where to spend the remainder of his life. It is only later in life, while living with Vasudeva, that he is able to achieve a balance between these two communal extremes, to understand himself and his environs better, and successfully to conclude his quest. As a young man Siddhartha decides that he must leave his parents and friends to be happy, and he thinks that he can best achieve this in isolation. He and Govinda renounce material possessions and live secludedly as monks for three years. However, Siddhartha concludes that he must actively experience what he is being taught in order to truly learn and attain wisdom. After seeing Kamala, he decides to reenter society so that she can teach him about the art of love. Though he does well as a merchant, which allows him to meet Kamala’s material demands, he does not always follow his mentor Kamaswami’s advice; Siddhartha is concerned about more than simply making a profit. Instead, he uses these opportunities to get to know the people whom he encounters, to learn about their motivations, values, and beliefs. Through this process he identifies qualities that he finds both helpful and harmful, in others and himself. After becoming a gambler Siddhartha has what he labels an empty life, until he has a dream about a dead caged bird. It inspires him to abandon this lifestyle as well and once more seek meaning. He briefly considers committing suicide because he cannot find solace or enticement anywhere or in anything or anyone, but he is halted by the sacred om, which again evokes tranquillity and serenity in him.

Once Siddhartha experiences both extremes, full withdrawal from as well as complete submersion in society, he is able to find a medium, a place where he interacts with those around him, yet also has the solitude he enjoys. After sleeping by the river Siddhartha sees Govinda, by whom he is reminded that his inability to love has made him ill. Thus when Siddhartha encounters Vasudeva, he accepts his friend’s offer and stays with him. He lives and works with the wise man, and it is here that Siddhartha is able to achieve some balance. He learns a new trade and has contact with those who employ his services, but he is not diverted by the negative aspects that had temporarily amused, yet also distracted him previously. It is also during this period that Siddhartha discovers he is a father and tries to establish his own family. His son, however, is unwilling to adapt to a simpler lifestyle, and Siddhartha, like his own father, must learn to let the boy go. Because of Vasudeva’s beneficial influence, Siddhartha learns to listen to the river as Vasudeva does and heed its guidance. Once while looking into the water he sees the faces of all who are dear to him: his father, himself, his son, Govinda, and Kamala. Their images and voices unite and he finally achieves oneness. He is also able to pass on this treasure, which he is able to achieve largely because of the lessons he learns from Vasudeva, to Govinda. Although Siddhartha loses many people who are important in his life and development, including Vasudeva, Kamala, and his son, their influence permits him to achieve contentment after decades of longing and searching. The story concludes with Siddhartha aiding Govinda to also obtain oneness, and the reader is not explicitly told what comes of these two friends, whose paths have yet again crossed. However, they have both finally achieved what they spent their lives in search of: peace with themselves and their surroundings. Siddhartha’s path was long and diverse, and included numerous types of societies. It is because of what he learns from each experience that he is finally able to achieve wisdom and happiness. Siddhartha has to find a balance between himself and his surroundings, and learn moderation and acceptance. Christine Rinne

560â•…â•… Hesse, Hermann

Love in Siddhartha

Siddhartha experiences and learns to recognize the value and necessity of love from three groups of people in this novel: his family, his friends, and his lover. To achieve his goal of oneness, Siddhartha lives according to different sets of values and beliefs, and he comes to realize that many people play an important role in his life and are essential to his ultimate happiness. Without loving and being loved he feels alone and dissatisfied, but when he loves, admires, and respects the things and people around him, he is able to achieve peace. When the story begins Siddhartha is a child and everyone loves him. Though he gives joy and pleasure to others, he is not content. Thus when he is a young man, he fears that his parents’ love and that of his friend Govinda will not be enough to satisfy him. Because Siddhartha’s father loves him and recognizes that he truly desires to become a monk, he permits Siddhartha to leave the family and join the samanas. Years later, when Siddhartha has a son of his own, he better understands his own father’s reluctance. Kamala spoiled their son and the son does not adjust well to his father’s simple lifestyle. Siddhartha consequently struggles with his son’s choices and must learn to grant him independence. Vasudeva helps Siddhartha realize that he is smothering his son with love, through his kindness and patience, and that he too must permit him to experience the world firsthand. After Siddhartha and Govinda part, they remain friends and their paths cross twice again. Both times Govinda does not recognize him, but Siddhartha immediately knows that the man is his childhood companion. The first occasion is after he has stopped gambling and is contemplating how to proceed. Govinda sees him and is worried about a man sleeping in the dangerous forest by himself. While they talk Siddhartha realizes how much he loves Govinda and that it was his own inability to love that had made him so ill. Their second encounter takes place at the end of the story, while he is working with Vasudeva. Govinda hears about the ferryman, who is rumored to be a sage, and he goes to see him with the hope that Vasudeva will be able to still his restlessness. When Siddhartha reveals who he is, Govinda asks him to share any realiza-

tions he has had. Siddhartha tells him that it is most important to love the world, and though Govinda is skeptical, he obeys Siddhartha’s final command to kiss his forehead. Through this act, which was driven by love, Govinda is also able to achieve the oneness for which he had been searching. Vasudeva becomes an important friend to Siddhartha while on his quest. Their first encounter is brief and takes place after he has left the samanas. He crosses the river but is unable to pay, because these monks do not have material possessions, so Vasudeva asks for his friendship as compensation. After leaving Kamala, more than 20 years later he again crosses the river there. Siddhartha stays with Vasudeva and also takes up his occupation. Here he is finally able to achieve oneness, by learning to listen from Vasudeva and the river. Vasudeva has a successful method to teach Siddhartha what he has been searching for, including how to love others. When Siddhartha sees Kamala for the first time, he decides that he wants to learn the art of love from her. Though numerous women are attracted to Siddhartha and he is attracted to many, Siddhartha had not yet been in love or had a sexual experience. This changes when he observes Kamala and consequently asks her to be his lover. Through his time with her, he learns that though love can be won, bought, received, or found, it cannot be stolen as he initially threatens; love must be reciprocated if it is to be enjoyed. Although Siddhartha is not aware of it when he departs, Kamala is pregnant and their child will later permit him to experience the joys and pains of a different kind of love. Siddhartha spends much of his life on a pursuit for wisdom and peace. Though he is loved as a child, he must learn to recognize, value, and reciprocate these feelings. Through his family, his friends, and his lover, many of whom he repeatedly encounters as he grows, Siddhartha comes to acknowledge the importance of each in his life, and their contribution to his wholeness. Christine Rinne

Spirituality in Siddhartha

The novel follows the main character, Siddhartha, on his quest to achieve peace and oneness. During this process he discovers that he must experience

Steppenwolfâ•…â•… 561 life for himself, instead of following someone else’s experiences and teachings, in order to develop and define his own values and ultimately obtain happiness. Over the course of this journey he learns the ways of priests, monks, merchants, and gamblers, but only with Vasudeva does he finally realize his goal. Though Siddhartha does not formally dedicate his life to religion, he is able to find a place and method for practicing his spiritual beliefs that are appropriate and gratifying for him. During each phase of Siddhartha’s journey he learns something about himself and his surroundings that allows him to eventually define his own spirituality. Siddhartha is the son of a Brahman, a Hindu priest and scholar, and while growing up he takes part in the priests’ conversations and religious observations. For example uttering the om, which begins and ends every Brahman prayer, is a practice that remains central throughout his life. However, he becomes frustrated when the priests do not teach him how to reach his innermost self and soul (atman). This dissatisfaction leads him to join the samanas, from whom he hopes to learn how to be empty of all desires, because the passion of these solitary outsiders left an impression on him as a child. Siddhartha and Govinda fast, renounce material belongings, and practice self-denial as monks, but Siddhartha again grows disenchanted after mastering these practices. He feels that many types of people, even alcoholics, could have taught him how to leave his body. He is certain that samanas will never achieve the ultimate goal of nirvana (death without rebirth) through this method. After listening to Gotama, who is said to be the Buddha, Govinda decides to follow his teachings. Siddhartha, however, finds a flaw in his doctrine, namely that he does not tell others how he has achieved salvation. Siddhartha concludes that true knowledge and salvation can never be taught by a teacher, but can be achieved only through personal experience. Siddhartha consequently decides to reenter society with the goal of experiencing what he has heard about firsthand. While wandering he sees the courtesan Kamala, and he is immediately drawn to her. Though he has been attracted to other women, he decides that he would like to learn the art of love from her. In order to meet her material demands

Siddhartha learns about commerce from Kamaswami. Siddhartha masters these skills and also learns from his customers, who help him define what attributes he finds positive and negative. After attaining monetary wealth he becomes a gambler, but he still does not feel satisfied. Siddhartha again withdraws from society and briefly considers suicide, but he realizes that it would not aid him in achieving his goal either. When he sees Govinda, he is reminded that he needs to love and be loved again, thus Siddhartha accepts Vasudeva’s offer and stays with him. Vasudeva is a wonderful listener, and through this practice he has been able to attain enlightenment, an achievement he is able eventually to pass on to Siddhartha. It is during this time that Siddhartha sees Kamala again and meets his son. After her death he tries to rear his son, but the boy does not adjust well to his father’s simple lifestyle and runs away. Vasudeva counsels Siddhartha and eventually he is able to let him go. Consequently Siddhartha realizes that what he has been searching for is the wisdom of how to feel and absorb oneness. One day while Siddhartha is in the woods he hears the river laughing, his final step toward peace. When he comes closer he begins to see many faces and hear many voices, but they blend together and he is enlightened. In the final scene Siddhartha imparts his realization to Govinda, something he had hoped many would do for him. Siddhartha must undertake a lengthy journey to find the spiritual oneness he desires. By living according to different sets of rules he is able ultimately to reach his goal and find a method that is suitable for him to practice his beliefs. Combining the lessons he learns at each stage in his quest, he discovers how much he can learn from his surroundings, and accept and appreciate those around him. Though he is not formally a religious leader, he is able to take what he learns as a student and convey it to Govinda. Christine Rinne

Hesse, Hermannâ•… Steppenwolfâ•… (1927)

Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, which has been called his most popular, most innovative, most influential,

562â•…â•… Hesse, Hermann and most controversial work, grew out of a personal and artistic crisis. Just before Hesse started composing the novel, his short-lived second marriage to mentally unbalanced Ruth Wenger collapsed, his health deteriorated, and, approaching his 50th birthday, he suffered a severe midlife crisis. In addition, a writer’s block that had been precipitated by the revelation of his nom de plume, “Emil Sinclair,” kept Hesse from completing his Indian novel, Siddhartha (1922). In order to overcome this crisis Hesse underwent psychoanalysis, meeting with Dr. Josef B. Lang, one of Carl Gustav Jung’s disciples, numerous times. Hesse also wrote a cycle of poems, entitled Krisis (1928), which served as a palliative and which is closely linked with Steppenwolf. One of the poems, entitled “Steppenwolf,” eventually became part of the novel, with Harry Haller as its fictional author. Considering the novel’s genesis, it is not surprising that it is Hesse’s most autobiographical work. The book’s protagonist shares his initials with the author and many of the locations and characters are based on those known by Hesse. Harry Haller’s existential crisis and his attempts at anesthetizing his pain by drowning it in alcohol, drugs, and sex mirror Hesse’s life between 1924 and 1926. It was the use of drugs depicted in the novel that caused Timothy Leary in the 1960s to recommend Steppenwolf to his followers as preparation for an LSD trip. Moreover, the riveting depiction of the protagonist as an outsider who despises war and technology and who rejects middle-class values, struck a chord with large parts of the American youth in the 1960s and the book became a best seller in the United States. Karl Stegner

Alienation in Steppenwolf

The title of Hesse’s novel alludes to the protagonist’s role as outsider, his alienation from middleclass society. Before we learn his real name, Harry Haller, he is introduced by the (fictional) editor of his writings as “a real wolf of the Steppes, as strange, wild, shy-very shy-being from another world” who is extremely unsociable and who gives off a foreign and hostile air. To the editor, whose aunt takes the stranger in as a lodger and who is a representative of bourgeois values, proud of leading “a narrow, middle-class life, but a solid one, filled with duties”

(20), the Steppenwolf ’s slovenly, irregular, and irresponsible way of life, which does not seem to serve a practical purpose, is an affront. The editor, an avowed abstainer from alcohol and a nonsmoker, is especially displeased by the Steppenwolf ’s numerous wine bottles and the ever-present stumps and ash of cigars, which he discovers while spying on the lodger. A stickler for rules and regulations, the editor balks at the Steppenwolf ’s request not to inform the police of his residence, as stipulated by law. Even though Haller gives poor health as a pretext for his request, his alienation from society, in particular from the bureaucratic constraints of the state, is the true reason for his breach of existing law. Although the Steppenwolf leads a bohemian life which stands in stark contrast to the editor’s sense of duty and purpose, the outsider is attracted to middle-class orderliness to a certain degree. When the editor returns home one evening, he finds the Steppenwolf admiring two plants at the entrance of a flat. For Haller the spotlessly clean plants are “the very essence of bourgeois cleanliness, of neatness and meticulousness, of duty and devotion shown in little things.” While he declares that he does not laugh at bourgeois life, because it reminds him of his childhood, the Steppenwolf is painfully aware that he is estranged from that world and that it is lost to him forever: “I live a bit to one side, on the edge of things.” After an initially negative view of the lone wolf, the editor eventually feels sympathy “for one who had suffered so long and deeply.” When the Steppenwolf suddenly disappears, he leaves only a manuscript behind along with the statement that the editor may do with it as he pleases. Because the editor regards the manuscript as a document of “the sickness of the times themselves,” he decides to publish it with a caveat to the reader that he considers it for the most part fictitious: He believes that the Steppenwolf has attempted to give deeply lived spiritual events the form of tangible experiences. Having experienced the Steppenwolf from a primarily exterior perspective, the reader is next confronted with a firsthand, interior view of the outsider’s sufferings in “Harry Haller’s Records,” which bear the caution “For Madmen Only.” It is significant that Verrückte, the German word for

Steppenwolfâ•…â•… 563 madman, implies displacement and derangement, stressing yet again the Steppenwolf ’s outsider position. Haller’s alienation from middle-class values becomes only too evident when he is invited to the home of a conservative professor. The evening turns into a disaster when the professor unwittingly calls Haller a “bad fellow and a rotten patriot” and when the Steppenwolf insults his hostess by criticizing her favorite portrait of the classical writer Goethe for its sentimentality. For Haller the disagreeable soirée represents his ultimate break with the bourgeois world: “It was my leave-taking from the respectable, moral and learned world, and a complete triumph for the Steppenwolf.” The image of the Steppenwolf gains another dimension in Haller’s writings. It signifies not only his outsider role but also his untamed, animalistic nature, which is in constant conflict with his intellectual, civilized side. This strife between nature and spirit, which frequently brings Haller to the brink of suicide, is expanded upon in the “Treatise on the Steppenwolf,” a detached analysis of his dilemma, which he receives from a mysterious stranger. It not only stresses that Harry consists of a hundred or a thousand selves, not merely two, it also offers humor as the solution. As recommended by the treatise, Haller now commences the “wild zigzag trail” of exploring those elements of his psyche that he has suppressed. This quest, during which he is assisted by several characters from the margins of society, culminates in the Magic Theater, in which he explores such suppressed facets as sexuality and violence. Thus, even though Haller’s alienation from the middle class is exacerbated, the alienation within him is slightly ameliorated. Karl Stegner

Sex/Sensuality/Eroticism in Steppenwolf

One sign of Harry Haller’s alienation is his lack of an intimate relationship and his suppression of sexual feelings. The collapse of his marriage to a mentally unbalanced woman, along with Harry’s loss of profession and livelihood, constitutes the reason for his withdrawal from society: “Love and confidence had changed of a sudden to hate and deadly enmity.  .  .  . It was then that my solitude had its beginning.” The subsequent relationship with his lover Erika is fraught with conflict and is

based on desperation rather than love. They see each other only intermittently and each meeting leads to quarrels. Harry concedes that “since both of us were lonely, difficult people related somehow to one another in soul, and sickness of soul, there was a link between us that held in spite of all.” One evening, when Harry is close to committing suicide, he meets Hermine, “a pale and pretty girl” who wears a withered camellia in her hair and who reminds him of his former sweetheart, Rosa Kreisler, and of Hermann, a boyhood friend. The flower is symbolic for Hermine’s being a courtesan who is financially supported by several men in exchange for sexual favors. Hermine, however, does not see Harry as a prospective customer but rather as a lost soul who needs to be taught the pleasures of life. She takes on the role of a mother by calling Harry a silly baby who needs someone to look after him. In order to loosen Harry up and to free him from his inhibitions, Hermine teaches him to dance the fox-trot. Soon Harry’s feelings of depression lift and he glimpses a ray of hope: “She was the one window, the one tiny crack of light in my black hole of dread. She was my release and my way to freedom. She had to teach me to live or teach me to die.” Hermine introduces Harry to Maria, another courtesan, and to Pablo, an exotic, bisexual musician who talks him into experimenting with drugs. Since Hermine represents the female component of Harry’s personality, or, in Jungian terms, his anima, he cannot be intimate with her. Hermine states: “I am a kind of looking glass for you, because there’s something in me that answers you and understands you” and Harry concedes: “You’re my opposite. You have all that I lack.” When he finds Maria in his bed as a gift from Hermine, Harry is at first hampered by bourgeois hang-ups: he worries about what his landlady might think. Eventually, however, he learns to enjoy the sensual pleasures the experienced courtesan has to offer: “She taught me the charming play and delight of the senses, but she gave me, also, new understanding, new insight, new love.” Harry enters into a sexual liaison with Maria, renting a room specifically for their frequent assignations. Surprisingly, he is not bothered by the fact that he has to share Maria with other men who are paying for her favors. A further indication that Harry is shedding

564â•…â•… Hesse, Hermann his middle-class inhibitions and prejudices is the fact that his uptight view of bisexuality and homosexuality gradually loosens. Even though he initially rejects Pablo’s offer of a threesome with Maria, Harry is not repulsed when Pablo kisses him on the eyelids: “I took the kiss as though I believed it came from Maria, but I knew very well it came from him.” Eventually Harry accepts his bisexual tendencies when in the Magic Theater a young, elegant fellow, who represents one facet of Harry’s personality, leaps laughing into Pablo’s arms, embraces him, and goes off with him. When Harry enters a room, which promises “all girls are yours,” he not only relives all the love affairs of his youth, rectifying all the mistakes and omissions he made as a young man, he also accepts Pablo’s invitation to “fantastic games for three and four.” This experimentation does not leave him conflicted, but rather calm, wise, and expert. In the Magic Theater Harry also encounters Hermine dressed up as his boyhood friend Hermann and falls under her hermaphroditic spell. Even though Harry has come far, he still has far to go. This is revealed when he finds Hermine and Pablo in deep sleep after a bout of lovemaking and stabs her with an imaginary knife in a fit of jealousy. When Mozart, one of the Immortals, stresses that Harry must learn not to take life too seriously, Harry agrees that he still has much to learn: “One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh.” Karl Stegner

Violence in Steppenwolf

Harry Haller’s exploration of his violent impulses follows a similar trajectory as that of his sexual and erotic urges. At the beginning of the novel he is strongly opposed to any form of violence and aggression. He is a pacifist who is vilified in newspaper editorials as “a noxious insect and a man who disowned his native land” because he opposes preparations for an impending war, which he predicts will be a good deal more horrible than the last. Harry’s violent impulses are turned against himself, and he frequently considers suicide to escape a world that he despises. At the beginning of his manuscript, for example, Harry considers cutting his throat with a straight razor. When Harry is called “a bad fellow,

rotten patriot, and traitor to his country” by a young professor who has invited him to dinner, he suppresses his rage against the ignorant colleague and instead turns it inward, coming close to ending his own life. It is revealed in the “Treatise on the Steppenwolf ” that Harry has set his 50th birthday as the day upon which he is permitted “to employ the emergency exit” and that this knowledge makes it bearable for him to keep on living. After he meets Hermine, however, Harry realizes that it is unhealthy to suppress his violent impulses and he starts exploring them. In the Magic Theater he first enters a door inscribed “Jolly Hunting. Great Hunt in Automobiles.” In a darkly comic scene Harry joins the war between men and machines and, together with his school friend Gustav, proceeds to shoot the drivers and passengers of cars. At first, the friends kill and destroy out of a sense of displeasure and despair of the world, but gradually they enjoy the feeling of power and revenge. Ultimately, though, Harry comes to regret that he has unleashed the violence within him: When he is confronted with a harmless, peaceable, and childlike man, “who was still in a state of innocence,” Harry is ashamed of his actions. The theme of violence is explored further in the scene entitled “Marvelous Taming of the Steppenwolf.” Harry encounters an animal tamer, who appears to be his “diabolically distorted double” and who forces a wolf to perform circus tricks that run counter to his wild nature: When presented with a rabbit and a sheep, the wolf lies between them and touches them with his paws, forming “a touching family group.” A sudden role reversal, however, puts the wolf in charge and lets him recover his wild nature. The animal tamer then turns into a wild animal, tearing the rabbit and sheep limb from limb and chewing the living flesh rapturously. The fact that Harry flees the scene in horror is an indication that he is still unable to accept the aggressive, wild animal within. Further proof of Harry’s continuing inability to come to terms with the various facets of his personality is his act of smashing a gigantic mirror that shows the reflection of a beautiful wolf, who is transformed into Harry himself. In the final scene of the Magic Theater, entitled “How One Kills for Love,”

The Outsidersâ•…â•… 565 Harry finds the naked figures of Hermine and Pablo asleep after a bout of lovemaking. He notices a bruise beneath Hermine’s left breast that shows the imprint of Pablo’s “beautiful, gleaming teeth” and he plunges a knife to the hilt into the bruise in a fit of jealousy: “Before she had ever been mine, I had killed my love.” Harry clearly has not yet learned how to channel his aggressive and violent impulses properly. Whereas some critics have interpreted the novel’s ending as pessimistic and considered Harry Haller’s attempts to explore the sexual as well as violent urges of his personality ultimately a failure, Hermann Hesse himself stressed that he conceived Steppenwolf not as the portrait of a man who is in despair but rather as that of a believer. He stated that the story does not lead to death and destruction but rather to healing. Perhaps one can take a clue from the fictional editor of the book who asserts that, even though Harry Haller’s experiences greatly upset the outsider and caused him to leave town precipitously, he is convinced that the Steppenwolf did not commit suicide. Karl Stegner

Hinton, S. E.â•… The Outsidersâ•… (1967)

The Outsiders introduces a group of friends in the 1950s who live on the poor side of town and have to deal with all of the prejudices and realities of poverty. Ponyboy Curtis is the 14-year-old narrator of this story. While he is the youngest of his brothers, as well as the youngest of all of the friends with whom they associate, he is also the storyteller, both literally and figuratively, and he sees what happens around him more clearly than most of the other characters are able to do. At the beginning of the story, Ponyboy can see the world only from his own perspective. He believes his oldest brother doesn’t like him, and is mean to him as a result. He believes that the Socs, the rich kids, have no problems because they have money. Over the course of the novel, he realizes that his oldest brother is strict with him because he cares so much about Ponyboy and couldn’t bear to lose him. Also, he befriends Cherry, a Soc girl, and begins to understand that “things are tough all over.” Money doesn’t buy happiness, love, or a sense of personal

security. Unfortunately his journey to these realizations (one could say his journey toward maturity or adulthood) includes violence and heartbreak. Two of his good friends are killed during the story, and he watches several other characters deal with less tragic, but still painful, changes. This is a narrative of growth, with the focus on the growing pains. Kathleen McDonald

The American dream in The Outsiders

The debate over whether anyone can achieve his or her American dream has raged since long before the term was coined in 1913, and continues in full force today. Hinton’s The Outsiders shows how a group of people whose birth was not fortuitous, who had to fight for every scrap that they had. Their biggest fight comes when they have to face people who can not believe that these greasers have the ability to achieve anything worthwhile, much less the respect to appreciate it if they did. The two groups in this novel seem to divide on lines of socioeconomic status. The Socs have every material advantage that money and status can provide; the greasers are constantly struggling simply to make ends meet. However, our narrator realizes that this line is porous and allows for movement back and forth. Ponyboy notes that “the only thing that keeps Darry from bein’ a Soc is us.” When Cherry and Ponyboy discuss their mutual appreciation of watching sunsets, it leads Ponyboy to a realization: “Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren’t so different.” Yet for these characters, this division is very real. Darry, the oldest brother, can not afford to go to college, even with an athletic scholarship. Sodapop, the middle brother, has dropped out of high school to work and help keep the family together after their parents died. It is easy to see how the lack of money and goods has contributed to the problems of the greasers; however, Hinton shows how the exact opposite situation contributed to the destruction of the Socs. Cherry spells out this situation in her first conversation with Ponyboy: You greasers have a different set of values. . . . We’re sophisticated—cool to the point of not feeling anything. Nothing is real to

566â•…â•… Hinton, S. E. us.  .  .  . Did you ever hear of having more than you wanted? So that you couldn’t want anything else and then started looking for something else to want? It seems like we’re always searching for something to satisfy us, and never finding it. Later that evening, Ponyboy realizes: “the Socs had so much spare time and money that they jumped us and each other for kicks.” Ponyboy eventually realizes that this freedom from want or the need to work was what led to the death of Bob, a Soc. In a final encounter between Ponyboy and Bob’s best friend, Randy, Randy notes: “most parents would be proud of a kid like that—good lookin’ and smart and everything, but they gave in to him all the time. He kept trying to make someone say ‘No’ and they never did.  .  .  . If the old man had just belted him—just once, he might still be alive.” The ability to achieve individual dreams is implied, especially as characters age. Just before the big rumble at the end of the story, Ponyboy evaluates the greasers assembled for the fight. He recognizes that some actually seem to enjoy being hoods and would likely be hoods for the entirety of their lives. However, when he looks at his brothers and himself, he sees something different: I looked at Darry. He wasn’t going to be any hood when he got old. He was going to get somewhere. Living the way we do would only make him more determined to get somewhere. That’s why he’s better than the rest of us, I thought. He’s going somewhere. And I was going to be like him. I wasn’t going to live in a lousy neighborhood all my life. Although Ponyboy uses a concrete, material example of what achieving his American dream would mean (living in a better neighborhood), the emphasis is not on things but on not being a hood, not simply accepting the life that one started with, but being determined and making changes to acquire a better life. At the end of the novel, Ponyboy has reached the point where he is making sense of what happened. A letter that his friend Johnny had written before he died sums up the belief that the American dream

does exist, even for greasers: “And don’t be so bugged over being a greaser. You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want.” Hinton’s novel points out how strong the obstacles to achieving the American dream can be, but ultimately supports the premise that innate talents combined with hard work make it achievable for all. Kathleen McDonald

Cruelty in The Outsiders

Violence pervades The Outsiders. If it is not actively taking place in a particular scene, the threat of it constantly exists just under the surface. Physical fights occur, both between individuals and between groups. Characters are beaten, some badly, and several even lose their lives from violent encounters. Most of the characters carry knives or guns in anticipation of meeting violence. Yet cruelty and violence are not synonyms. Violence is often a manifestation of cruelty, but each can occur in the absence of the other. Some of the cruelest moments in The Outsiders occur without physical violence, yet these moments still disturb deeply. In the first encounter with Cherry and her friend at the Drive-In, Ponyboy notes the cruel taunting that Dally subjects the girls to, and his discomfort with this treatment. He says: I had a sick feeling that Dally was up to his usual tricks, and I was right. He started talking, loud enough for the two girls to hear. He started out bad and got worse. Dallas could talk awful dirty if he wanted to and I guess he wanted to then. I felt my ears get hot. TwoBit or Steve or even Soda would have gone right along with him, just to see if they could embarrass the girls, but that kind of kicks just doesn’t appeal to me. Ponyboy rightly interprets Dally’s motive to be to make the girls in front of them suffer. He notes that Dally “was up to his usual tricks” and is not pleased. His discomfort shows through his ears getting hot and his unwillingness to participate with the much stronger, both physically and in personality, Dally, in teasing these girls, depicting his awareness of how cruel Dally is being.

The Outsidersâ•…â•… 567 The girls themselves show their consciousness of Dally’s cruelty: “The girls got mad. ‘You’d better leave us alone,’ the redhead said in a biting voice, ‘or I’ll call the cops.’↜” Dally is not impressed with this threat and continues his cruelty by mocking this very legitimate claim for social authority to protect them from unwanted and inappropriate behavior: “↜‘Oh, my, my’—Dally looked bored—‘you’ve got me scared to death. You ought to see my record sometime, baby.’ He grinned slyly. ‘Guess what I’ve been in for?’↜” When Cherry realizes that threatening legal ramifications is unlikely to work, she switches from a threat to a plea: “↜‘Please leave us alone,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you just be nice and leave us alone?’↜” This tactic actually works as Dally saunters away to get drinks for everyone, but this is only because his cruelty was the mask he was using to begin a conversation with the girls. His actual objective was about getting attention from girls who are in a higher socioeconomic class, so the unwritten rules of their teenage society told him they were out of his league. If Dally had approached them directly in a friendly manner and was shot down, he risked being laughed at, both by the girls and by his own friends. For many boys, but especially those concerned about having a tough-guy reputation, being laughed at is the cruelest response of all. Therefore, his outward cruelty to these girls hides his own fear of being the object of cruelty and derision. This is confirmed by the fact that he brings back Cokes for everyone, including both girls, and sits down beside Cherry when he returns. This psychological understanding in no way makes Dally’s behavior acceptable, as Cherry shows in the story by throwing the Coke in his face. But knowing a character’s motives permits a deeper insight into both the character and the story. In a later scene, Johnny notes how the absence of violence can be the cruelest treatment of all: “‘I think I like it better when the old man’s hittin’ me!’ Johnny sighed. ‘At least then I know he knows who I am. I walk in that house, and nobody says anything. I walk out, and nobody says anything. I stay away all night, and nobody notices.’↜” For Johnny, the only notice his parents ever pay to him is to be abusive. As bad as that physical abuse is, he realizes that the pain of their pretending he doesn’t exist is just as bad, if not worse.

In The Outsiders, cruelty is a main theme that runs throughout the entire novel. Sometimes it is linked directly to violence; other times it is not. But with or without physical violence attached, the cruelty these characters all have to contend with throughout the novel is frightening in its scope. Great literature makes us think and feel. When we consider how pervasive is the cruelty in this novel, we should do both. Kathleen McDonald

Heroism in The Outsiders

There is one clear-cut example of heroism in this story: The abandoned church where Ponyboy and Johnny are hiding out from the police catches fire and they rush into the burning building to save several little kids caught inside. While Ponyboy and Johnny are still inside, the building falls apart and a burning beam falls on Johnny, breaking his back. This dangerous choice to save children that they don’t even know is an act that results in everyone labeling them heroes. There are newspaper articles written about them, and even when strangers find out that they were only in the church because they were running from murder charges, that is not enough to make people think them less heroic. However, while this is publicly labeled heroism, there are several other acts in the story that are, perhaps, even more heroic, due to their premeditated and less public nature. When Dally comes to find Ponyboy and Johnny in the church, he tells them that Cherry has agreed to come forward and testify that Ponyboy acted in self defense. Cherry risks her physical safety in order to try to make things right. Although they don’t jump her, with tensions running so high after a greaser killed a Soc, she couldn’t have been sure that this would be the case, regardless of her motives. Beyond the courage that this physical encounter required, Cherry shows her heroism in a much stronger way. She knows that the rules of this society require her to ignore greasers, as she tells Ponyboy the night they meet: “if I see you in the hall at school or someplace and don’t say hi, well, it’s not personal or anything.” However, that rule is trumped by her feelings of responsibility. She believes that the entire situation is, at least partially, her fault. As the

568â•…â•… Homer Â� girlfriend of the dead boy, no one would ever expect her to do anything to help the people who killed him. Yet she does. She is willing to testify against her dead boyfriend and her entire social group, to help two boys she barely knows, one of whom killed her boyfriend, just because it is the right thing to do: unheralded heroism. There is another powerful example of unheralded heroism in this story. Ponyboy’s oldest brother, Darry, had the grades for college, but when the boys’ parents died, Darry had to make a choice between college for himself and keeping a home together for his younger brothers. Even with Ponyboy’s inability to understand Darry in the beginning of the story, he can see that Darry has sacrificed a lot, so that he and Sodapop didn’t have to go to foster care. Darry worked hard, sacrificing his own dreams and ambitions, so that Ponyboy and his younger brothers could fulfill theirs. The story has a major act of publicly declared heroism, yet it is not any more important than any of the other less-heralded heroic acts. It creates a pivotal plot twist that is essential to the conclusion of the story but is equal thematically to the heroism displayed by Cherry or Darry or many of the other characters. In this novel, heroism symbolizes the changes associated with growing up. As you mature, you must take responsibility. You must do this regardless of personal desires or peer pressure. Through this story, Ponyboy (and hopefully the reader) realizes that heroism, recognized or not, requires the maturity to sacrifice. Kathleen McDonald

Homerâ•… The Iliadâ•… (800–650 b.c.e.)

The Iliad is one of two great epic poems attributed to Homer. Little is known about Homer or the composition of the two works, but The Iliad was probably written between 800 and 650 b.c.e. It is the tale of a brief period in the 10th (and final) year of the Trojan War, as the Greeks are besieging the city of Troy. The war began when Helen, the world’s most beautiful woman, ran away with a Trojan prince named Paris. Helen’s husband Menelaus, together with his brother, King Agamemnon, gathers the Greek armies and sails after Helen. The

Greeks’ greatest warrior is Achilles, who is joined by his close friend Patroclus. Other major Achaeans (another name for the Greeks) include Odysseus, the cleverest man alive, and Diomedes, a fearless warrior. The Trojans are led by their greatest warrior, Hector, one of Paris’s brothers. Aeneas (who it is said will later found Rome), Glaucus, and Sarpedon are all key Trojan allies. Hector’s wife Andromache and his father, King Priam, dread the war’s outcome. The Iliad is the story of “the rage of Achilles” (77). Agamemnon has taken Chryses, the daughter of Apollo’s priest, as a prize. When Agamemnon refuses the priest’s request for her return, the god Apollo ravages the Greeks with a plague. Agamemnon returns Chryses, but seizes Briseis instead (who was Achilles’ prize). Achilles is enraged at this insult and refuses to fight for the Greeks. Without him, the Greeks are unable to win and both sides suffer terrible losses. Eventually, Patroclus fights in Achilles’ place and is slain, leading Achilles to seek vengeance on Hector. Achilles slays Hector, even though he knows that he is fated to die soon after. Throughout the story, gods like Zeus, Athena, and Apollo take sides in the fighting and scheme to help their favorite mortals. The Iliad is a classic epic of war, exploring a range of themes that include death, fate, heroism, pride, and violence. James Ford

Death in The Iliad

The main subject of The Iliad is Achilles’ rage, and the first few lines show that the cost of that rage is death—“hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds” (77). It begins with the plague sent by the god Apollo, “and the corpse-fires burned on, night and day, no end in sight” (79). Achilles’ mother Thetis wails that he is “doomed to a short life,” but the poem also demonstrates that all human beings ultimately “have so little time” (91). The gods play with human life in The Iliad. Zeus sends a “murderous dream” to tell Agamemnon that Troy is now his for the taking, when in reality his army will be devastated (99). The armies gather for a titanic battle, but instead Paris challenges Menelaus to single combat. Both sides pray for victory,

The Iliadâ•…â•… 569 but even more for an end to the war. Instead, the goddess Aphrodite rescues Paris before Menelaus can kill him. The great clash of armies resumes, with “screams of men and cries of triumph breaking in one breath, fighters killing, fighters killed, and the ground streamed blood” (160). Slain heroes are named, while countless others suffer nameless deaths. Antilochus kills the Trojan captain Echepolus, and the slaughter is on. Elephenor tries to strip the dead man’s gear and is himself stabbed in the ribs. “His life spirit left him and over his dead body now the savage work went on” (160–161). Meanwhile, Apollo cheers the Trojans on with a cry of “Stab them, slash their flesh!” (162). When not encouraging the slaughter, the gods often save their favorite heroes. Aphrodite saves the wounded Aeneas from Diomedes, who stabs her in the wrist as punishment. Athena saves Diomedes from Ares, and together they spear the god in the belt. Ultimately, death is beyond even the gods’ control. The goddess Hera says it best: “Men—let one of them die, another live, however their luck may run. Let Zeus decide .  .  .” (245). While Zeus is tempted to intervene for his favorites, first Sarpedon and then Hector, both times Hera rebukes him. Zeus concludes, with pity, that “there is nothing alive more agonized than man of all that breathe and crawl across the earth” (457). Homer’s account of death is often brutal and graphic, as when Ajax slashes a man at the nipple “clean through the shoulder” (161). Leucus is gouged in the groin, while Diomedes spears Pandarus right between the eyes. At other times deaths are merely listed. Hector and Ares slaughter seven men in succession, with little detail. But the horrible cost of death—both for the fallen and for their loved ones—is always clear. Diomedes kills the two sons of Eurydamas, and “left their father tears and wrenching grief . . . distant kin would carve apart their birthright” (169). Andromache pleads with her husband Hector “before you orphan your son and make your wife a widow” (210). Both realize that slavery awaits her when Troy falls. The battle is often halted so that the dead can be gathered, the bodies burned. Both sides build their funeral pyres, “their hearts breaking” (228). While souls are said to travel to the House of Death, no details are given, and that

hint of afterlife is no consolation. Patroclus’s soul goes down, “wailing his fate” (440), as does Hector’s a short while later. Men are ashamed to fail in the defense of fallen heroes, and some of the most vicious fighting is for the bodies of the dead. Most heroes struggle for an honorable death. Agamemnon calls for retreat as one battle goes poorly, saying it is “better to flee from death than feel its grip,” but Odysseus rebukes him for this “nonsense” (372). Similarly, Hector says of a fallen comrade that “he dies fighting for fatherland—no dishonor there!” (403). Great warriors on both sides question the value of war. Sarpedon once calls to Glaucus, if only the two could escape and live forever, he would never fight again; but alas, “the fates of death await us” (335). Achilles refuses a king’s ransom to reenter the war, since “a man’s life breath cannot come back again” (265). Of course, all his reservations fade with the death of his friend Patroclus. Achilles goes to meet his death, as long as he can kill Hector. The final word on death is Priam’s. Hector’s father tells Achilles that “all looks fine and noble” for a young man killed in war, but an old man dead is “the cruelest sight in all our wretched lives!” (543–544). Achilles grants Priam 11 days for mourning and Hector’s funeral. The poem ends as it began, with the cost of death abundantly clear. James Ford

Fate in The Iliad

Fate is a pervasive theme in The Iliad, as all of the mortal characters are conscious of the grim fate— death—that ultimately awaits them. Fate is most often described as driving the characters on to their deaths. This is particularly true for minor characters on both sides of the battle: “destiny guided Amphius on,” straight into Ajax’s spear (184); similarly for Tlepolemus: “his strong fate was driving him now against Sarpedon,” who promptly kills Tlepolemus. Death and fate are closely linked for great heroes as well. Seeing his brother Menelaus seriously wounded, Agamemnon wonders what will happen to the Greeks “if you die now, if you fill out your destiny now.” At times the fate of death narrowly misses one hero only to strike another. Ajax hurls his spear at Polydamas, “but the Trojan dodged black fate himself with a quick spring to the side”; the

570â•…â•… Homer spear strikes Archelochus instead, “for the gods had doomed that fighting man to death” (384). While The Iliad sometimes equates fate with the will of Zeus, at other times fate stands above even the gods themselves. Helen wishes to Hector that she had died as a child, to prevent the destruction of the Trojan War, but the gods dictated otherwise. “Zeus planted a killing doom within us both” (207). As wise Nestor notes, “not a man alive can fight the will of Zeus.” The gods also see fate as the will of Zeus. Hera is anguished to see so many Greeks die, “filling out their fates to the last gasp,” but it is for Zeus to “decide the fates” (245). Ares, too, is tempted to intervene (for the Trojans), “[e]ven if fate will crush me, striking me down with the thunderbolt of Zeus” (391). Poseidon complains that he should not have to listen to his brother, Zeus, but that the other gods’ “fate” is to obey Zeus (394). Even mighty Zeus complains of his “cruel fate” when faced with the death of his son Sarpedon (427). In Greek mythology, the Fates were three goddesses who spun the destinies of mortals in thread. As Hera notes of Achilles, “he must suffer what the Fates spun out.” But the nature of fate is rarely clear in The Iliad; the gods frequently intervene lest something happen “against the will of fate” (514). At several points in the battle, Zeus weighs “two fates of death” in his “sacred golden scales” (233). In Book 8, the Achaeans’ fate goes down, and Zeus intervenes against them; in Book 22, the fate of the two great champions is weighed, and it is Hector whose fate it is to fall to Achilles. It is Zeus who makes the ultimate prophecy that overshadows The Iliad, that Patroclus’s death will bring Achilles back into battle, to slay Hector. The fullest statement on fate is Hector’s, who is resigned to fate and death. He states that no one can slay him, against his fate; “And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward . . . it’s born with us the day that we are born” (212). Later, though, Hector flees a battle when he senses “that Zeus had tipped the scales against him” (434). At that point, Patroclus might have escaped his fate, had he obeyed Achilles’ command to stay near the ships, but “the will of Zeus will always overpower the will of men” (435). Zeus drives Patroclus on, and only Apollo prevents him from taking Troy. Hector slays Patroclus, who

rightly sees that “deadly fate in league with Apollo killed me” (440). He prophesies that soon “death and the strong force of fate” will bring Hector down, in the form of Achilles (440). Achilles’ situation is more complex. Achilles clearly has a choice. His mother (the goddess Thetis) has revealed to him the possibilities, that “two fates bear me on to the day of death” (265). Either he can stay to besiege Troy, in which case he will die soon, and his glory will live forever; or he can head home, to a long life without pride or glory. With the death of Patroclus, Achilles embraces the fate that brings him glory and death. Interestingly, Achilles is not the only mortal aware of his choice. The minor character Euchenor was told by his father (a prophet) that sailing to Troy meant certain death in battle, while staying behind meant a slow death from plague. Like Achilles, Euchenor chose death in battle as his fate. It may be that all mortals have a choice of fates, but only a few realize it. James Ford

Heroism in The Iliad

As the Greeks’ greatest fighter, Achilles is the primary model of heroism in The Iliad. His tremendous courage and power distinguish him, leading Agamemnon to describe him as “the most violent man alive” (82). Heroism in The Iliad is a matter of honor, won especially through glory in battle. The “godlike Achilles” lives entirely for honor, withdrawing from the fighting when he is slighted by Agamemnon (81). His longing for glory is so complete that he prays for the slaughter of the Greek armies, until he receives the honor he deserves. Heroism requires courage, and no one is more courageous than Achilles. Diomedes (another great hero) argues that “courage, the greatest power of all,” stands above honor, ruling, or anything else (252). Both the Greeks and the Trojans are taught courage from birth. Hippolochus tells his son Glaucus, “Always be the best, my boy, the bravest, and hold your head up high above the others” (202), words echoed in Peleus’s own advice to his son Achilles (322). In The Iliad, to be the bravest often is to be the best. Heroism is not only about courage, however. While he is not a fighter like Achilles, Agamem-

The Odysseyâ•…â•… 571 non also expects to be recognized as the best of men (this longing for recognition is the source of their dispute). Achilles calls him “the most grasping man alive” (81), but Nestor explains simply that Agamemnon “has more power because he rules more men” (86). This question of whether greatness consists primarily of prowess in battle or of ruling other men hangs over The Iliad. Wisdom in council is another important aspect of heroism in the poem. Nestor is too old to be of much use in fighting, but is still regarded for his wisdom. Odysseus, in particular, “that mastermind like Zeus” (120), manages to combine greatness on the battlefield with the power of persuasion and skill in tactics. Helen calls him “the man of twists and turns” (135), and in some ways he represents the best of both models of heroism. Hector, the greatest of the Trojans, also represents a balance between the courage of a great warrior and the wisdom of a great ruler. Unlike Achilles, Hector’s longing for personal glory is usually tempered by his love for Troy and his fellow countrymen. Hector is heroic in his resignation, knowing the long odds that face his people and their dim prospects for survival. “But I would die of shame to face the men of Troy and the Trojan women trailing their long robes if I shrank from battle now, a coward” (210). His prayer for his son—that he be “first in glory among the Trojans, strong and brave like me, and rule all Troy in power . . .”—is a powerful summation of that heroic code (211). He knows that he is weaker than Achilles but fights nonetheless. His parents beg him not to go forth, but he replies that it is better “to stand up to Achilles, kill him, come home alive or die at his hands in glory .  .  .” (545). Still, great as he is, even Hector will run from Achilles, until Athena tricks him into fighting. Heroism is partly men’s own and partly a gift from the gods. For instance, Athena grants Diomedes “strength and daring” to “win himself great glory” (164). But this only accentuates Diomedes’ usual courage and power. Warriors are often heroic alone, but at times two together are heroic, as when Diomedes and Odysseus embark on their night mission. The fear of shame is an important impetus for heroism on both sides, as Agamemnon rallies the Greeks to “dread what comrades say of you here in bloody combat!” (181). Heroism often involves

defending the fallen, although at times that means forgoing the heroic lust for glory. Ajax urges his countrymen to stand fast in defense of Patroclus’s body, saying “no heroes either, bolting out of the Argive pack for single combat” (454). Achilles himself raises doubts about the heroic life, complaining that “the same honor waits for the coward and the brave” (262). But those doubts are washed away with the death of Patroclus, when all that matters to Achilles is vengeance, and “great glory” (471). Priam, the Trojan king, displays his own heroism at the close of The Iliad. Achilles refuses Hector’s offer to return the loser’s body home, with the crushing dismissal, “there are no binding oaths between men and lions” (550). Priam goes to Achilles alone, to ask for Hector’s body. Reminded of his own father, Achilles complies, and marvels at Priam’s “daring,” his “heart of iron” (605). Although too old for battle, Priam’s courage is still heroic. James Ford

Homerâ•… The Odyssey

The Odyssey is the second of the two great epic poems attributed to Homer. Little is known about Homer or the composition of the two works, but The Odyssey was almost certainly written after The Iliad. Unlike The Iliad, which focuses on a particular event (the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon) and its immediate aftermath, The Odyssey is simply the story of Odysseus—the man, his travels, and his family. The first four books provide the background for his tale by focusing on his son, Telemachus, who travels in search of news of his father, who has not returned from the war in Troy. Odysseus, “the man of twists and turns,” has been gone from his home in Ithaca for 20 years (77). Telemachus struggles against a crowd of suitors who constantly feast at his home, pestering Odysseus’s wife Penelope to choose one as her new husband. The goddess Athena aids Telemachus in his search, just as she often advises Odysseus. Eventually the poet turns to Odysseus himself, who is held captive by the goddess Calypso (who loves him). The rest of the poem tells the story of his journey home, and of his many adventures—including his visits to the Cyclops, the goddess Circe, and the land of the dead.

572â•…â•… Homer Ultimately, Odysseus reaches home, unites with his family, and slays the suitors who have plagued his household. Through it all Odysseus is noted for his cunning as well as his courage, his wisdom as well as his might. The Odyssey is a grand adventure story, full of themes like death, family, fate, heroism, identity, and pride. James Ford

Family in The Odyssey

While The Iliad is a tale of violence and war, The Odyssey is a tale of family and home. Odysseus, “his heart set on his wife and his return,” does everything he can to make it home from the war (78). The poem begins by focusing on Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, his “heart obsessed with grief ” at his father’s absence (84). A crowd of suitors for his mother, Penelope, are draining his household dry with their constant feasting. The goddess Athena counsels him “like a father to a son,” advising Telemachus to leave home in search of news of his father’s fate. “Few sons are the equals of their fathers,” Athena tells him, but she assures him that he has Odysseus’s courage and cunning (102). Telemachus travels to see Nestor, wisest of the Greeks, who recognizes that Telemachus has Odysseus’s tremendous eloquence. Nestor sends his son Psistratus with Telemachus to see Menelaus, and one observer says the two young men “look like kin of mighty Zeus himself ” (125). The importance of family is highlighted by the joy that Menelaus and his wife, Helen, share. Helen abandoned her child, her husband, and her home when she went with Paris to Troy. Now she realizes her “madness,” all the suffering and death that resulted (132). Their reunited family is a model of domestic bliss. Odysseus himself is certain of the value of family. Although he did sleep with Calypso while on her island, he was an “unwilling lover alongside lover all too willing” (157). Odysseus perseveres through a series of trials and adventures to reach his home. He tells the Phaeacian princess that there is no greater gift than a home and marriage in harmony, with “two minds, two hearts that work as one” (174). His homeland of Ithaca is almost as important as his wife and son. As he says, “I know no sweeter sight on earth than a man’s own native country” (212). The family is mirrored in the country, particularly

for King Odysseus, who ruled Ithaca “kindly as a father to his children” (94). But his greatest goal is to be reunited with his wife and son. Penelope is just as devoted as Odysseus to their family, if not more so. She longs for her husband’s return, delaying her suitors for years. In a scheme worthy of Odysseus (and suggested to her by a god), Penelope says she will choose a new husband once she finishes weaving a shroud for Laertes (Odysseus’s father). Each night she unravels whatever she wove during the day. The trick works for a full three years before the suitors discover the ruse. Despite Odysseus’s charge to choose a new husband when Telemachus’s beard begins to grow, Penelope holds out for her husband’s return. She is “the soul of loyalty” (409). Her final test for the suitors—stringing Odysseus’s mighty bow—is another sign of that loyalty. She longs for the days when her family was whole, when her household was “so filled with the best that life can offer” (409). In The Odyssey, family and a happy home are clearly the best that life has to offer. The importance of a loving family is underscored by the tragedy of Agamemnon, who is killed at his return home from Troy. Aegisthus has conspired with Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra to murder Agamemnon, and the Greeks regard this as the ultimate betrayal. Agamemnon’s only solace is that his son Orestes avenges his death, a sign of how crucial the father-son relationship is to the Greeks. When Odysseus travels to the kingdom of the dead, Agamemnon’s ghost begs for knowledge of his son’s life. Similarly, Achilles’ ghost no longer cares about the glory he won during life. Instead he asks about his father Peleus and his son Neoptolemus. Achilles is thrilled to learn that Neoptolemus is gifted in battle and in counsel. Similarly, Odysseus’s parents suffer greatly at his absence. His mother, Anticleia, died of grief and longing while Odysseus was away. His father is also bereft, but he rejoices at his son’s return. When he sees his son and grandson “vying over courage,” it is the ultimate triumph for the man and a fitting end to the poem (484). Finally, the emphasis on hospitality reinforces the importance of home and family. Nestor welcomes Telemachus, as does Menelaus—“Just think of all the hospitality we enjoyed” (125). The Phaea-

The Odysseyâ•…â•… 573 cians welcome Odysseus and provide him with the means to return home, while the Cyclops violates all the customs of hospitality. Nestor provides essential wisdom: “Don’t rove from home too long” (117). James Ford

Heroism in The Odyssey

The distinctive feature of Odysseus’s heroism is the way he combines cunning and wisdom with boldness and power. While many facets of heroism are on display in The Odyssey, more than anyone Odysseus balances courage with sense. It is this combination of wisdom and power that enables Odysseus to return home after 20 years at sea. The poem begins with four books telling of a future hero, Odysseus’s son Telemachus. Telemachus has his father’s gift of speech and some of his courage, but needs Athena’s encouragement before he ventures forth. Athena makes explicit Odysseus’s excellence. Posing as Mentor, she marvels “now there was a man, I’d say, in words and actions both!” (102). Many Greek heroes are men of action, a few others skilled in counsel, but few combine the two like Odysseus. As Telemachus relates it, people say that Odysseus pledged his word and “made it good in action” on the battlefield (110). Telemachus wishes that his father could have had a good death in battle, or in old age at home, either of which would mean great fame for the Greek hero. Instead, he worries that Odysseus will be forever lost at sea, a death without glory. Despite his eagerness to defend his house, Telemachus himself lacks glory until his father returns to lead him in battle against the suitors. Meanwhile, Odysseus is “fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home” (77). Zeus himself says that Odysseus “excels all men in wisdom, excels in offerings too” (79). Despite his wisdom, Odysseus runs afoul of the god Poseidon when he blinds the Cyclops Polyphemus. Odysseus’s return home is cursed, and he spends 10 years wandering the seas in his ongoing voyage home. Odysseus’s heroism is marked by “a hundred feat of arms,” as Menelaus says (129), feats marked by his cunning as well as his courage. Helen tells Telemachus of the time Odysseus snuck into Troy disguised as a beggar, while Menelaus cites the idea of the Trojan horse as

evidence of Odysseus’s heroism. This combination of cleverness and courage is on full display in Odysseus’s retelling of his encounter with the Cyclops. Trapped inside a cave with the giant, Odysseus defeats the Cyclops with clever planning followed by bold action. He gets the Cyclops drunk on powerful wine, works with his men to poke the giant’s eye out, and then escapes from the cave by strapping himself and his men to the underside of the Cyclops’s massive sheep. In one of his great tricks, Odysseus tells the Cyclops his name is “Nobody,” so that when Polyphemus turns to his fellow giants for help his cries make little sense: “Nobody’s killing me now by fraud and not by force!” (224). As Odysseus reminds his men later, “my courage, my presence of mind and tactics saved us all” (277). The same qualities eventually enable him to return in triumph, avenging himself against the suitors and reclaiming his wife and home. While death is not quite as constant or as graphic in The Odyssey as it was in The Iliad, the dark side of Greek heroism is still apparent. When Odysseus travels to the House of Death to learn his fate, he sees his mother Anticleia, dead from grief over Odysseus’s long absence. He longs to embrace her, but is unable. He sees a variety of heroes long dead, before meeting Agamemnon, murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus on his return home. Finally he sees great Achilles, hero of The Iliad. Odysseus praises Achilles for his greatness in life, and now his power over the dead. Achilles rebukes him, saying “By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man . . . than rule down here over all the breathless dead” (265). If Achilles himself has rejected the glory of death in battle for the possibility of a long life enslaved, this would call into question the entire ideal of Greek heroism in war. But the reality is that Achilles has little patience for Odysseus’s flattery. His adherence to the heroic ideal is shown by the rest of his speech, in which he questions Odysseus about the fate of Achilles’s son, Neoptolemus. When Odysseus tells him that his son displayed excellent tactics and great courage in battle, Achilles rejoices, “triumphant” in the knowledge that his “gallant, glorious son” has followed in his footsteps (267). The magnificence of Homer’s epic is to recognize and highlight the consequences

574â•…â•… Homer of heroism while still displaying the glory of those who embrace it. The Odyssey proves that heroism is not only a matter of courage, but also the result of wisdom and cunning, particularly in the case of Odysseus. James Ford

Identity in The Odyssey

The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus, “the man of twists and turns” (77). His identity—who Odysseus is—is a central theme in the poem. He is at once a “raider of cities” (192), “the man of many struggles” (184), and “the great teller of tales” (211). While Aeolus calls him “most cursed” and his dead mother says he is the “unluckiest man alive,” he is also a great hero who uses his cunning to escape from a series of dangers (232, 256). Although The Odyssey is the tale of Odysseus and his wanderings after the Trojan War, it is not until the fifth book that Odysseus himself appears. The first four books focus instead on his son, Telemachus, who was only a month old when Odysseus sailed for Troy. Now 20 years old, it is his identity that is at issue at the beginning of the poem. Is he ready to become a man, worthy of great Odysseus? After a meeting of the gods, Athena comes down from Mount Olympus to inspire Telemachus to action. The poem is filled with numerous disguises and attempts to hide one’s true identity. Athena disguises herself as a stranger, a man named Mentes. Telemachus welcomes the man warmly, questioning who he is, where he is from, and who his parents are. Asked about his own identity, Telemachus is doubtful. He names Odysseus as his father, but then wonders, “Who, on his own, has ever really known who gave him life?” (84). But later when he tells the suitors about Mentes, he has an insight worthy of his father—“deep in his mind he knew the immortal goddess” (91). Athena disguises herself as Telemachus, gathering a crew and securing a ship so that the young prince can seek news of his father’s fate. Telemachus travels to Menelaus and Helen, key figures from Homer’s Iliad, both of whom recognize Telemachus as Odysseus’s son before he reveals himself. Helen tells the story of how Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, infiltrated Troy, and she alone recognized him.

Odysseus himself is often slow to reveal his identity. When questioned by Queen Arete, he spins his tale slowly, not revealing his identity until a muse sings the story of the Trojan horse (another of Odysseus’s cunning exploits). Finally he makes himself plain, saying “I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, known to the world for every kind of craft—my fame has reached the skies” (212). He recounts to Arete the tale of his encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus. When the Cyclops first asks who they are, Odysseus wisely answers “Men of Achaea” (219). Polyphemus asks again as he drinks Odysseus’s wine and devours his men, and this time Odysseus replies “Nobody” (223). After Odysseus blinds the Cyclops, Polyphemus calls for help and says “Nobody’s killing me now” (224). The other giants refuse to help him, and Odysseus’s ruse leads to his triumphant escape. But in his hubris Odysseus taunts the Cyclops as they sail away, revealing his true identity. Polyphemus’s curse on Odysseus causes years more of wandering and suffering. Odysseus’s return to Ithaca is a series of disguises, ploys, and careful tests of identity. He pretends to be a foreigner, but he meets Athena, who knows the truth. She counsels him not to reveal himself to anyone (advice that hardly seems necessary, given how cautious Odysseus is). Odysseus meets his swineherd, and says he is from Crete. He talks with Telemachus, at which point Athena tells him to reveal himself. Telemachus refuses to believe at first, but finally recognizes his father. Odysseus urges Telemachus to say nothing, “if you are my own true son, born of my blood” (348). Faithful servants recognize him, though. His old hound Argos leaps with joy—and drops dead on the spot. His old maid recognizes his scar when bathing him. Odysseus tests his father when he meets him, then embraces him. Even Laertes asks for “some proof ” that Odysseus is who he claims, so Odysseus reveals his scar (478). Odysseus is revealed to the suitors through the test of the great bow. None can string it, let alone fire an arrow through the axes. Odysseus strings it, fires it true, and he and Telemachus slay the suitors. The most significant drama of recognition is between Odysseus and Penelope. He tests her, she tests him, both sounding out the other’s true feelings. She says that they have “secret signs” known only to each

Farewell to Manzanarâ•…â•… 575 other, particularly the secret of their marital bed (459). His knowledge of it proves his true identity, and at last husband and wife are reunited. James Ford

Houston, Jeanne Wakatsukiâ•… Farewell to Manzanarâ•… (1972)

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston begins her autobiographical text, Farewell to Manzanar, after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The stable, family-oriented life she has known as a child is altered irreparably as her family is interned at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California. The text recounts the family’s life at Manzanar through the perspective of a seven-year-old Wakatsuki who spends three years of her childhood at the prison. Because of the text’s young narrator, life at the camp is occasionally portrayed as a new adventure where Wakatsuki meets new people and easily adapts to her imprisonment. However, as she ages, the narrator reveals the more sobering side of internment by focusing on her father’s emotional and physical decline in the camp and her family’s disintegration. Wakatsuki also discusses the key concerns that preoccupied internees, including loyalty oaths, the abrogation of citizenship rights, the dispossession of private property, and the predicament of having emotional ties to two warring nations: Japan and the United States. The book then shifts from the devastating consequences of wartime hysteria to post– World War II society as Manzanar is closed and the Wakatsukis reluctantly leave the camp to return to a hostile society. We follow the narrator’s struggles to reacclimate herself into a postwar culture marked by continuing racial discrimination against Japanese Americans as she enters high school and tries to lead a normal teenage life. The book is ultimately a bildungsroman that narrates the trauma of internment and the dissolution of family. Belinda Linn Rincon

Family in Farewell to Manzanar

Farewell to Manzanar is a co-authored firsthand account of how the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II affected Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s family. Houston’s girlhood memory

of watching her father and brothers sail off to work as independent commercial fishermen comes to an end as news of the Pearl Harbor bombing spreads. Her father is suspected of delivering oil to Japanese submarines and is interned at Fort Lincoln, North Dakota. It will be one year before she sees him again. This initial separation foreshadows the many struggles that the Wakatsuki family will face to stay physically and emotionally connected. Weeks after her father is interned, the rest of Houston’s family is sent to a camp called Manzanar. Although they manage to remain in the same camp, the stress and indignity of imprisonment begin to change family dynamics as certain traditions erode. For example, the camp system is designed to serve meals to thousands of internees, making it nearly impossible for families to eat together. Camp authorities realize the negative impact this change has on family unity and community morale when sociologists who study camp life propose an edict that orders families to start eating together again. Houston describes how internment also affected her parents’ relationship. Before her father was reunited with the rest of the family at Manzanar, her mother struggled to adjust to the deprivations of camp life as the family was crammed into poorly built wood shacks that failed to protect them against the cold and the dust storms of the desert. The open latrines, inedible food, and lack of schools fill her mother with worry and distraction, which causes Houston to seek attention elsewhere. Her mother eventually adapts and works as a dietitian, but the family’s fragile sense of stability ends when Houston’s father returns. Papa becomes a brooding presence who stays in the barracks all day, makes his own liquor, and gets drunk. His depression relates to his time at Fort Lincoln. While he was there, he worked as a translator, which raised suspicions among other internees when he was released from Fort Lincoln before the other men were. Many saw his early release as a reward for collaborating somehow with camp authorities. Papa deals with the shame he feels over these false accusations by drinking. His misery is compounded by his lack of control over his surroundings, his family, and his future. Papa had always been the patriarch who maintained his wife and their nine children. The loss

576â•…â•… Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki of all their possessions and the stress of internment lead to the further deterioration of the family as Papa takes out his anger and powerlessness by beating his wife. In one pivotal scene, he comes close to killing her when Houston’s brother Kiyo intervenes and punches Papa in the face. The confrontation ends abruptly, but not before Houston senses that she has just witnessed her father’s downfall from the controlling yet stable authority figure he had once been. The family faces even more turmoil when brother Woody decides to volunteer for the armed forces, against Papa’s wishes. Woody believes that his service will prove to Americans that Japanese Americans can be trusted. However, the issue of loyalty is complicated for families like the Wakatsukis who still have relatives in Japan. Fighting for the United States places some Japanese-American soldiers in the position of possibly fighting against their Japanese relatives. Woody eventually goes off to war, and his trip to Papa’s village near Hiroshima ironically reestablishes lost family ties. Papa had left Japan when he was 17 years old and had never returned, leaving his family to believe that he was dead. Woody meets Papa’s family and reaches a greater understanding of his father’s life. Houston ends with a description of her return to Manzanar 30 years after its closing. Her family, like many other interned families, tried to forget about Manzanar by never talking about it. However, Houston refuses to bury those crucial yet difficult years in her family’s life, taking her own children to visit the site. As she watches her three children look among the scattered traces of Manzanar, she hears the voices of the thousands of internees who endured the injustice of internment. By refusing to silence those voices that include her own family’s, Houston ensures that her children will remain connected to their family heritage and will recognize the courage their family displayed in the face of one of the most painful moments in U.S. history. Belinda Linn Rincon

Nationalism in Farewell to Manzanar

Ko Wakatsuki’s experience as an issei, or Japanese immigrant, is the most poignant examination of nationalism in Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s Farewell

to Manzanar. Before the Japanese attack on Hawaii, Ko had lived in the United States for 38 years, raised a family of nine children, and given up all intentions of returning to Japan. Despite these indelible ties to his new country, he is legally barred from officially joining the nation and is not allowed to apply for citizenship, which makes him vulnerable to other forms of discrimination. For example, while living in Oregon, he is prevented from owning property because of the Alien Land Law. The racial discrimination that he and others experience is exacerbated by wartime hysteria after the Japanese attack. The Wakatsuki family is forced to sell their belongings and move to a prison camp because of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which allowed the government to label certain groups as threats to national security and to exclude them from military areas. This order eventually leads to the imprisonment of Japanese Americans in internment camps like Manzanar. As Japan and the United States went to war, issei like Ko are caught in the middle as they are separated from their nation of birth and denied access to full citizenship rights in their nation of residence. Although Ko is, in some sense, stateless, he feels a deep bond to both nations. Japan holds important family connections and ties to his cultural heritage while the United States, despite its racial discrimination, holds certain financial and social opportunities. Also, with every birth in his family, Ko is bound closer to the United States. During an interrogation at Fort Lincoln, an official asks Ko which country should win the war. Ko responds with a telling analogy: When a child is caught between bickering parents, he doesn’t want either parent to die; rather, he wants them to stop fighting. Ko’s response shows his emotional attachment to both nations and makes it clear why choosing between them is no simple matter. However, in the wake of the Pearl Harbor bombing, the United States does demand a choice from Japanese Americans because nationalism depends on loyalty. The United States attempts to confirm Japanese-American loyalty through interrogations and oaths, which have moral and physical consequences. Manzanar internees over the age of 17 are forced to fill out the Application for Leave

Farewell to Manzanarâ•…â•… 577 Clearance, which contains two questions that are meant to determine the internee’s national loyalty. Question 27 asks respondents if they are willing to serve in the U.S. military, and question 28 asks if they would not only swear allegiance to America, but also forswear allegiance to Japan. To answer “No No” suggests that the respondent is disloyal to the United States and would face possible repatriation to Japan as a result—a difficult fate for those Japanese Americans who have lived all their lives in the United States. Many internees fiercely debate the loyalty oath and consider answering “No,” not necessarily out of disloyalty to the United States but out of principle. They react to the oath’s hypocrisy and protest the idea of pledging allegiance to a nation that demands loyalty but is disloyal to its own people because it condones racial discrimination, inequality, and internment. To answer “Yes Yes” would most likely make male respondents eligible for combat duty. Houston’s brother, Woody, answers “Yes” and is sent to the battlefront. Woody, along with other nisei, or Japanese Americans born in the United States, believes that military service is the best way to prove that Japanese Americans can be trusted. Unfortunately, nisei soldiers would prove their national loyalty through blood and sacrifice. Houston notes that nisei soldiers received the highest number of military decorations for their valor and suffered the highest number of casualties and deaths. Government officials thought the oath would help identify Japanese spies, but Manzanar internees thought it was ridiculous. A real spy, they argued, would not truthfully answer the oath in the first place. Nevertheless, the oath demonstrates how nationalism can sometimes make impossible demands on individuals such as Japanese Americans who are asked to be loyal to a nation that rejects them and that would accept them only if they voluntarily faced death on its behalf. Sadly, the deaths of nisei soldiers did not eliminate the discrimination that Houston and other Japanese Americans experienced after the war ended. Despite being born and raised in the United States, Houston and others in her community continued to encounter the ways in which racism often prevents full national unity. Belinda Linn Rincon

Stages of Life in Farewell to Manzanar

Farewell to Manzanar describes what it was like to grow up and grow old during the Japanese internment and post–World War II eras. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston presents her childhood and young adult years in three different phases: preinternment (age 7), internment (ages 7–10), and post-internment (teen years and adulthood). After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and before her family was interned at Manzanar, Houston moved from town to town in the midst of prewar hysteria. She recalls attending different schools. In one school, Japanese students pick on her because she can not speak Japanese. In another school, she remembers feeling racial hostility from her white teacher. When the government relocates her family, Houston is too young to be insulted by the racism and violation of her and her community’s civil rights. In the camp, she enjoys sleeping with her mother in the crowded shack and does not fully appreciate the worry and fear that burden Mama. Mama finds work to earn money and grows distant from Houston, whom she cannot supervise within the chaotic camp. Houston seeks attention from others and soon befriends two nuns. She nearly converts to Catholicism before her father returns from North Dakota. With no school and no parental supervision, Houston’s childhood is spent in exploring the camp and meeting new people. As she grows older in the camp, she has certain experiences that will become important to her personal development. For example, when Papa is reunited with the family, she is affected by his physical and emotional changes. His loss of control and dignity during internment take a heavy toll; he begins to drink and abuse Mama. In one scene, he nearly kills her. Houston witnesses the violent confrontation and feels the pain of her family’s disintegration. Her carefree childhood has come to an end. In the later years of internment, a school is built and life becomes somewhat normalized within the camp as people wait for the war to end. Houston attends school, where children join the band, put on plays, or sing in the glee club. During this time, Houston searches for her own hidden talents and interests as she grows in independence. However,

578â•…â•… Hughes, Langston she experiences her most profound moment of independence when she witnesses her parents grow closer after the news of their grandson’s birth. Houston describes how she felt oddly separated from her parents and recognized them as not just her parents but as human beings. By 1945, when the camp closes its gates, Houston is 10 years old and is afraid of the hatred she anticipates from the outside world. She fears that people will humiliate her because of her ethnicity. Her family moves to a housing project in Los Angeles and she attends public school. She goes through the normal stages of adolescence—making friends, fitting in, dating—but with the added pressure of racial discrimination. She is barred from joining the Girl Scouts, her friends never invite her to their homes, and teachers almost prevent her from being carnival queen even though the students vote for her. Her father disapproves of the American styles and values that she adopts in order to be accepted by her peers. However, when she turns 17, she becomes mature enough to know that social acceptance is not as fulfilling as it seems. She enters college and eventually has a family of her own. Houston’s childhood experience of camp life with its emphasis on exploration is tempered by her description of Papa’s bitterness and depression. At least two times in the book, Houston states that the camp was her “birthplace” and was his deathbed. We learn about his years as a young man in Japan and his immigration to the United States. He and Mama struggled to raise nine children through the Great Depression and despite laws that prevented them from owning land. Houston recalls how internment accelerated Papa’s demise as he went through the stages of his life, moving from a self-sufficient family patriarch to a dependent and emotionally and physically damaged man. He had aged 10 years in the nine months he spent in North Dakota. When internment ended, his attempts to start a business and resume his role as breadwinner fail. He now depends on Woody whose citizenship status allows him to get a fishing license. The roles are reversed: The father must now rely on the son for financial support. Belinda Linn Rincon

Hughes, Langstonâ•… poemsâ•… (1902–1967)

Following the Civil War (1861–65), African Americans began migrating to large, industrialized cities in the North (such as Chicago, Detroit, and New York), with the hope that life would improve not only for them, but also for their children. Unfortunately, what they found was the same sort of racism, discrimination, and marginalization that they had experienced in the South. While they were no longer slaves in the physical sense, African Americans continued to be oppressed, as Jim Crow laws (which reinforced black/white segregation) cast a shadow on their initial constitutional victories of freedom, suffrage, and citizenship. Starting in the 1920s, African-American writers, musicians, and scholars began an active backlash against white domination, especially in the realm of culture. Dispensing with the influences of white America, a group of visionaries from Harlem in New York City—including Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Billie Holliday, and Louis Armstrong—began to create artistic and literary expressions that chronicled the black experience. Langston Hughes (1902–67) was, arguably, the most influential of all the Harlem Renaissance literati. The author of countless novels, including Not Without Laughter (1930), plays (e.g., Mule Bone, coauthored with Zora Neale Hurston in 1931), and short stories (many of them featured in the 1934 anthology The Ways of White Folks), he is best known for his poems, which explore themes such as the meaning of the American dream for African Americans, the role of race in America and the definition of freedom, especially for the disenfranchised. Tanfer Emin Tunc

The American Dream in the poetry of Langston Hughes

Hughes lived in an America that was torn apart by racism and segregation. Despite the so-called “opportunities” for blacks in the North of the 1920s and 1930s, African Americans lived in a differential relationship to the nation. Their experiences with the myth of the American dream did not escape Hughes’s perspicacious gaze, and is thus a constant thread in his literary work.

poemsâ•…â•… 579 Arguably, Hughes’s most biting criticism of the limitations of the American dream is conveyed through “Let America Be America Again” (1938). In this poem, Hughes describes the American values that have come to comprise the “dream”—freedom, liberty, democracy, and equality—all the while interjecting that the dream never actually existed for poor Americans, peoples of color, and “undesirable” immigrants. During enslavement, African Americans were excluded from participating in the American dream (also a theme in the 1931 poem “The Negro Mother”). Forced into a cycle of poverty after emancipation, which included the sharecropping system and a rigid caste system that prevented anyone who was not a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant from advancing, African Americans became the forgotten pioneers whose American dream amounted to nothing more than a nightmare. Despite the pessimism that runs throughout most of the poem (after all, it was published at the height of the Great Depression when the United States was experiencing record homelessness, unemployment, and general civil unrest, all of it described), Hughes is optimistic for a brighter future: “O, let America be America again—The land that never has been yet—And yet must be—the land where every man is free.” Hughes echoes the same sentiments in “I, Too, Sing America” (1925), in which he describes two Americas, one for affluent whites, the other for their “darker brothers” who, as maids and butlers, are sent to “eat in the kitchen when company comes.” However, Hughes predicts that one day the tables will turn, and those who are at the bottom of society today, will grow strong and rise to the top (in “Cultural Exchange” [1967] Hughes even dreams of a day when Martin Luther King, Jr., is governor of Georgia). Hughes also addresses the limitations of the American dream in “Harlem” (1951). This poem, which is framed around “dreams deferred,” discusses what happens when dreams are delayed or postponed. According to Hughes, there are two options: They either die from within—or they explode. Many African Americans of his generation were forced to surrender their dreams, and were left with nothing but “crusted” and “sugared-over” syrupy sweet memories of what might have been. In “Har-

lem,” Hughes maintains that African Americans can no longer afford to allow their dreams to “sag like a heavy load,” or else their dreams will eventually “explode.” Although this poem was written before the Civil Rights movement became an organized social force, it is clear that Hughes believes that African Americans are on the cusp of a revolution. Hughes uses the same metaphor—this time of a dream exploding through prison walls—in his poem “Oppression” (1947). In “Sea Calm” (1932), Hughes metaphorically states that the dreams of African Americans will one day be realized, and that all they were experiencing was the “calm before the storm”: “it is not good for water to be so still that way.” “Theme for English B” (1951), which was written the same year as “Harlem,” also grapples with the nature of the American dream. “Theme for EnÂ�glish B” is structured around a writing assignment given to a 22-year-old African-American college student by his white composition instructor. During the writing process, the student realizes that he is the only black student in his all-white class (which is probably at Columbia University, given its proximity to Harlem): at school, he is a token representative of his minority race, but at home in Harlem, he is in the majority. He realizes that because of his race, his page will not remain “white” but will be “colored” by his experiences and identity as an African American. His composition allows him to come to terms with the reality that, in the United States, there are multiple definitions of “American” and the “American dream.” Despite the tension between blacks and whites—“Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me . . . Nor do I often want to be a part of you”—according to Hughes, they should learn to live together in harmony: “You are white—yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.” Hughes’s message is that as “Americans,” people of all races can learn from each other and draw unity from shared experiences. This, in his opinion, is the true meaning of the American dream. Tanfer Emin Tunc

Freedom in the poetry of Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes’s poetry provides a theoretical space in which minorities, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised can negotiate freedom despite

580â•…â•… Hughes, Langston racial prejudice and their systematic exclusion from the American dream. In “Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1920), Hughes transcends the burdens of slavery and racism, harkening back to a time when his ancestors lived in Africa and were free to bathe “in the Euphrates when dawns were young . . . build[ing their] huts near the Congo . . . [and] look[ing] upon the Nile and the raised pyramids above it” (5–7). While in the United States, the so-called “land of opportunities,” they are oppressed and enslaved, back home in Africa they, and not whites, are the masters, possessing ultimate knowledge about their land and its history: “I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human rivers . . . My soul has grown deep like the rivers” (11–13). However, despite the physical and spiritual enslavement of blacks in America, Hughes optimistically believes that the freedom his people experienced in the “old world” of Africa can be recreated in the “new world” of the United States: “I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset” (8–10). Hughes also uses land as a metaphor for freedom in “Freedom’s Plow” (1943). In this poem, Hughes asserts that freedom can be derived from working the land, even though the United States— or the “land of the free”—was established on the enforced labor of slaves. Regardless of the fact that African Americans have been systematically deceived by the freedom calls of leaders such as Jefferson, Lincoln, and John Brown, Hughes still maintains that freedom can be achieved through an unwavering belief in the American dream of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”: “Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on! If the house is not yet finished . . . Don’t be discouraged, builder!” (160–162). As Hughes conveys, “the plan and pattern” of unity, freedom, and democracy are “here”; the seeds of these institutions merely need some nurturing (165). In his poem “Democracy” (1949), Hughes also compares freedom to a seed that needs to be planted and carefully cultivated. However, in this poem, Hughes is more pro-active in his message to African Americans: “Democracy will not come . . . Through compromise and fear” (1, 4). No longer willing to “let things take their course” (11),

Hughes urges his fellow citizens (especially people of color) to end their passivity and “stand on [their own] two feet and own the land” (7–9). In “Children’s Rhymes” (1921), Hughes reveals his thoughts on race and the limits of freedom. While white children can aspire to be president, Hughes claims that this is not an attainable goal for black children. Moreover, “liberty and justice for all” are merely “lies written down for white folks” (11, 12, 14). In reality, “we know everybody ain’t free” (9–10). Hughes reiterates this pessimism in “Justice” (1923) when he admits that although African Americans have, for decades, been promised freedom, equality under the law, and democracy, they know that Lady Justice is not “a blind goddess” (1). Once upon a time, she did have eyes to see the injustices inflicted upon the disenfranchised; however, after centuries of abuse, all that remains under “her bandages [are] . . . two festering sores . . . that once perhaps were eyes” (3–4). Like “Cross” (1959), “Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria” (1931) links freedom to race and class. In this case, the freedom to dine at the expensive Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is a “right” bestowed only upon wealthy whites who “got rich” from the labor of the working class (33). While the poor “clip coupons,” the rich are “draw[ing] dividends and liv[ing] easy” (34, 36–37). The closest the unemployed will ever get to living this lifestyle is walking by the hotel and stealing a glance inside. After all, looking is free and “democratic,” and impoverished people of color—i.e., those most severely impacted by the Great Depression (the time period in which this poem was written)—can not afford much more than that anyway: “Walk through Peacock Alley tonight before dinner, and get warm . . . You’ve got nothing else to do” (40–41). “Dinner Guest: Me” (1951) also uses the metaphor of food to express the connection between race, class, and freedom. This poem narrates the tale of a “token negro” who somehow finds his way into an all-white, elite dinner party. A spectacle on display, he is “wined and dined” by his hosts who attempt to assuage their white guilt by being “kind” to an African American (3). However, as Hughes conveys, while being a “problem on Park Avenue at eight . . . is not so bad” (19–21), when the party is over and the hosts return

poemsâ•…â•… 581 to their affluent neighborhoods, “solutions to the problem, of course, [have to] wait” (22–23). To those who are already free, securing the freedom of others is merely “charity work”—a trivial hobby that can always wait for another day. Tanfer Emin Tunc

Race in the poetry of Langston Hughes

One of Langston Hughes’s most profound statements on race can be found in “Will V-Day Be MeDay Too?” (1944). This poem, which is essentially a letter written by a black World War II soldier, “GI Joe,” chronicles the racial injustices faced by African-American veterans who helped liberate white Europeans, but face death and destruction in their own country. As Hughes illustrates, AfricanAmerican soldiers freed the Jewish prisoners from concentration camps, and eradicated fascism from Germany and France, but for them, V-Day (Victory Day) will never come, for “Here in my own, my native land, . . . the Jim Crow laws still stand” (42– 43). The soldier wonders: “Will Dixie lynch me still, When I return?” Although he believes that “Tanskinned Yanks, Driving a tank” still have a long way to go to achieve racial equality, in his perpetual tone of optimism, Hughes encourages his fellow brothers, both black and white, to “stand up like a man, At home and take your stand, For Democracy.” In “Minstrel Man” (1954) and “Merry-GoRound” (1959), Hughes employs the metaphor of the carnival to express the absurdity, and danger, of racial discrimination. “Minstrel Man” conveys the pain and anguish felt by a black minstrel performer who, because of his race, is assumed to be sub-human—a mere spectacle for the entertainment of white people. In this case, the minstrel’s black identity is dangerously trivialized by his clownish makeup, wide grin, gay songs, and dancing feet. While on the outside he may seem like a stereotypically content “coon,” in reality, he is struggling with an “inner cry” of desperation brought on by his socially constructed inferiority. Those who only see his “feet . . . gay with dancing,” would never be able to guess that every day “he dies.” Like “Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?,” “MerryGo-Round” also presents a biting critique of the Jim Crow system which, for most of the 19th and 20th

centuries, kept blacks and whites entrapped in a vicious cycle of race-based segregation. “Merry-GoRound” conveys the inner turmoil of an AfricanAmerican child who wishes to ride the carousel. However, because of years of racist conditioning— “Down South where I come from .  .  . White and colored   .  . Can’t sit side by side”(4–6)—he automatically seeks the “Jim Crow” section of the merrygo-round. As Hughes illustrates, not only has the child internalized the racist attitudes and practices imposed on him by whites, but also, as a result, he has lost his childhood innocence. Because the merry-go-round is a circular ride, and “there ain’t no back,” the displaced child asks “Where’s the horse . . . For a kid that’s black?” In a perfect world, such a question would never be asked, for a black child would be able to sit on any horse he or she desires. “Cross” (1959) and “Ku Klux” (1935) also deal with the burdens of American racism, especially with respect to miscegenation and white supremacy. “Cross,” like Hughes’s 1935 play Mulatto (he also wrote a poem with the same title), interrogates the “no-man’s-land” of race that is often occupied by individuals who, as Hughes expresses, are “neither white nor black.” Ultimately, as Hughes conveys, race and class are mutually defining; in “Cross,” the narrator’s black mother “died in a shack,” while his white “old man died in a fine big house.” As someone who is “in-between,” and unclaimed by both communities, the narrator is left wondering where he will die. Thus we are left to conclude that racial hybridity is incompatible with both social acceptance and personal fulfillment. Hughes wrote “Ku Klux” as a reaction to the second KKK peak, which occurred between World War I and World War II. The poem chronicles an encounter between a black man and a white KKK member who uses violence to force his victim to “Look me in the face—And tell me you believe in .  .  . The great white race” (18–20). When the black man tries to resist—“Mister . . . I’d believe in anything . . . If you’d just turn me loose” (5–8)—he is accused of “sassin’” the Klansman, who viciously beats him. By portraying the white supremacist as an irrational and sadistic bigot, and the unrelenting black man as a brave and non-violent individual who arbitrarily becomes the target of racist aggression,

582â•…â•… Hurston, Zora Neale Hughes succeeds in redeeming African Americans as heroes who, even in the face of death, refuse to subordinate their race to the will of the oppressors. It is this lesson of survival against all odds that Hughes ultimately believes will allow the black race to achieve equality. Tanfer Emin Tunc

Hurston, Zora Nealeâ•… Their Eyes Were Watching Godâ•… (1937)

Although contemporary critics consider Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God to be one of the literary masterpieces of the Harlem Renaissance, critics did not like Hurston’s novel when it was first published. Known for its use of African-American vernacular, Hurston’s novel captures the sound and rhythms of African-American life at the beginning of the 20th century. Readers of the novel generally remark on the main character’s journey from young, innocent womanhood to maturity. The novel begins with Janie’s return to Eatonville, the only all-black town in the United States. While her neighbors are curious about what has happened to her, they refuse to ask her and she refuses to tell. Instead, Janie tells her story to her friend Phoebe saying, “mah tongue is in mah friend’s mouf,” giving Phoebe permission to retell the story if she so chooses. Janie’s story is one of growth through the relationships she experiences with men. She “marries” three times, each of which teaches her something about her own identity and what she wants in life. Henry Louis Gates argues that Their Eyes is a “speakerly text” because it requires the reader to “hear” the voices of the characters in the characters’ speech. Some readers find the book challenging because of this, but many find it easier if they read aloud. In this way, the reader has a sense of the characters’ voices beyond the page. Nancy Cardona

Gender in Their Eyes Were Watching God

In counseling her granddaughter about the realities of the world, Nanny tells Janie “[D]e white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t

tote it. He hand it to his women folks. De nigger woman is de mule of de world so fur as Ah can see.” Although the language that Nanny uses is no longer considered “politically correct,” the observation that she makes guides Janie in her journey in the novel. Janie goes from a girl who lives her life according to how others around her tell her to do so, to becoming a woman who makes her own decisions on her own terms. Janie begins her journey with a decision that has been made for her; after Nanny sees Janie kissing a young man, Nanny decides that Janie needs to be a married woman who will be provided for. She chooses Logan Killicks, a local farmer who owns his farm, house, and organ. Janie chooses to go along with her grandmother’s choice, deciding that she will learn to love Killicks. And for the first year, Killicks treats her well. But soon he begins to treat her as just another person who works on his farm. Janie is disappointed that she hasn’t learned to love him and tells Nanny this. Nanny responds that Janie should be happy with the stability that Killicks provides, making the best of the life that she has. Janie refuses to settle for less than her ideal notion of romantic love, so when Joe “Jody” Starks arrives, speaking of an all-black town, Janie’s hopes for romantic love are reignited and she leaves Killicks to go with Starks. Janie believes that she will be an equal partner in this second marriage, as Joe seems to be a man of ambition. What she does not know is that he is a man who is interested in his own ambition and is willing to sacrifice Janie’s dreams for his own. He becomes mayor and a store owner. He treats Janie as one of his possessions, making her wear her hair in a head scarf and forbidding her to talk with the people who congregate on the store porch. Janie soon learns that Jody’s idea of a better life is centered on making his own life better, not theirs as a couple. Janie lives out the marriage, doing as Jody dictates. When Jody dies, she takes control of her life again. She removes her head scarves and burns them after Jody’s funeral, symbolizing her refusal to live according to Jody’s dictates. She soon begins to interact with the people on the porch, playing checkers and telling jokes. When she is asked when she will marry again (because certainly she needs someone to take care of her), Janie just laughs

Their Eyes Were Watching Godâ•…â•… 583 because “This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn’t represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them through Logan and Joe.” The next time Janie goes with a man, it is on her own terms. Even though Tea Cake is 15 years her junior and she fears what the townsfolk will say, she chooses to make herself feel happy. Tea Cake treats her as an equal, taking her fishing and to a baseball game. What’s most important is that Tea Cake seems to know exactly what Janie needs: to live her life on her own terms and he offers her just that. They go to the Everglades where they work together, side by side, in the fields. Janie’s final choice of herself comes near the end of the novel, when she must shoot Tea Cake in order to save herself. Even though the townsfolk are talking about her, Janie recognizes that the choices that she has made have been in her best interest. In the end, Janie “pulled in her horizon. . . . Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulders.  .  .  . She called in her soul to come and see” (184). Janie is able to live her life in the way that she chooses. Nancy Cardona

Isolation in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Hurston begins her novel with the tension between the individual and the collective. Janie returns from her “adventures” with Tea Cake a different woman, now able to exercise and enjoy her individuality even as the rest of her community seeks to hold her at arm’s length. Despite their rejection of her, the community wishes to know what happened to Janie in her absence. Uninterested in satiating their curiosity, Janie chooses to tell her story to her friend Phoebe, to whom she gives permission to retell her story by saying “. . . mah tongue is in mah friend’s mouf.” Janie’s story can be seen as a series of moments of isolation from her community, beginning with her marriage to Logan Killicks. Concerned with providing for Janie’s needs, her grandmother arranges this marriage to a husband who can provide for Janie’s needs. Soon frustrated with her loveless marriage, Janie seeks to make connections through Jody Starks, a man who woos Janie with the promise of living in an all-black community.

Janie’s hopes for a better life that is connected to other people does not come to fruition, as Jody insists that Janie hold herself apart from the community. He forbids her from joining in the storytelling and checker-playing that takes place on the porch of the store that he owns. Instead, Janie must remain isolated from the group, symbolizing the superiority of Jody’s possessions. This isolation proves frustrating for Janie, but she waits out the marriage and “celebrates” Jody’s death by wearing her hair down and participating in the community that congregates on the store’s porch. Janie vows to live life on her own terms, never again sacrificing her own happiness for another’s. Soon, she meets Tea Cake, a young man who shares Janie’s philosophy of living life for the moment. Janie is finally able to join a community in her marriage to Tea Cake. He teaches her to play checkers and allows her to work alongside him when they go to work in the “muck.” In this place, Janie finally is able to bridge her isolation and be accepted by others on her own terms. She makes friends among the women in the community and entertains friends in their modest home. This ideal moment, however, comes to a close when Tea Cake dies in a hurricane. Janie again must assume her position of isolation as she goes on trial for Tea Cake’s death. In her return to the town where she lived with Jody, Janie remains isolated from the community. But at this stage, Janie no longer has as great a need to join a community, as her life with Tea Cake has shown her how to live life on her own terms, regardless of what others think. As Janie tells Phoebe, the townspeople have only to do two things, “They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.” Nancy Cardona

Stages of Life in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Hurston’s novel follows the development of Janie Crawford, who begins as an idealistic 16-year-old girl. Over the course of the novel, Janie attempts to define herself as a woman, first marrying for stability, then adventure, and finally for happiness within herself. At the beginning of the novel, Janie’s grandmother catches her sharing her first kiss with a boy.

584â•…â•… Huxley, Aldous This kiss is the culmination of Janie’s discovery of her sexuality, symbolized by the pear tree in which she sees a bee darting in and out of the tree’s buds. “This is love,” thinks Janie and so her romantic notions of love and fulfillment are rooted in this first witnessing of nature’s cycle. From this experience, Janie believes that she is ready to go out into the world to make her own life. But Nanny changes Janie’s future by choosing stability for Janie, instead of romantic love. Logan Killicks, Janie’s first husband, is highly desirable as a husband to the local women. He owns property and can therefore offer Janie a kind of stability that to Nanny is the ultimate sign of freedom. So Janie marries him, hoping that later she will grow to love him. Although he begins the marriage as an attentive husband, Killicks changes and becomes interested only in Janie’s ability to help him in the fields. The narrator observes that Janie “knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.” In this instance, Janie’s understanding of love indicates that fanciful notions about love have to do with young adulthood; women, on the other hand, cannot expect such frivolities and thus must make do with the marriage that they have. Even though Janie comes to terms with her marriage, it does not mean that she has abandoned her idea of romantic love. When Killicks leaves her to go and see a second mule, Janie meets Jody Starks, the man she believes will help her find the love she dreams of. Although she recognizes that Jody does not share her ideas of love in that “he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees,” she also knows that he offers her more because Jody “spoke of far horizon.” Janie is intrigued and goes with him to Florida, in hopes of finding a place for herself. After they arrive, Jody becomes mayor and he buys a store in order to build his wealth. Janie helps him much as she did Killicks, but she soon learns that Jody only wants to show her off as his possession. On the day that he opens his store, he tells her to dress up because “he didn’t mean for nobody else’s wife to rank with her. She must look on herself as the bell-cow, the other women were the gang.” He even requires her to wear a headscarf because “[s]he was there in the store for him to look at, not those

others.” He sees Janie as his possession that he can lord over the rest of the community. After a fight with Jody, which culminates in Jody hitting Janie, Janie’s ideal of love and marriage shatters, leaving her in a loveless relationship until his death some 15 years later when she is almost 40. When Jody dies, Janie changes back to the women who left Logan Killicks. She looks at herself in the mirror and finds a woman: “She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there. She took careful stock of herself, then combed her hair and tied it back up again.” Janie’s letting down of her hair symbolically allows her to claim herself again. She will no longer live by the rules that Jody, much less anyone else, places before her. Rather, she will live as she chooses, sitting on the porch with her neighbors and playing checkers. Soon thereafter, Tea Cake, a man of about 25, arrives in Eatonville and begins courting Janie. He plays checkers with her, takes her to a baseball game, and shows her that he appreciates her for who she is. Rather than trying to make her work, or use her to show off his wealth, Tea Cake treats Janie as an equal, something she has never experienced before. Although this “marriage” ends tragically, Janie has not had to sacrifice herself for Tea Cake’s image of her. If anything, Janie’s choice of herself over Tea Cake when he attacks her signifies a true understanding of her value. As she tells Phoebe at the end of the novel, “Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got to go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.” This is Janie’s true accomplishment: Her experience of three marriages has taught her how to live for herself rather than for others. Nancy Cardona

Huxley, Aldousâ•… Brave New Worldâ•… (1932)

In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley depicts the dystopian vision of a technocratic society. The World State, as it is called, subscribes to the motto of Community, Identity, and Stability. To maintain stability, the World State controls its citizens with the help of the drug Soma, which

Brave New Worldâ•…â•… 585 ensures everybody’s happiness. The idea of “families” has been abandoned; instead, human beings are produced like cars on an assembly line. From the moment of fertilization on, each citizen has a predetermined fate and abilities according to the caste to which it will belong. Through its rigorous caste system, the World State prevents dissatisfaction in its citizens and guarantees stability. Nonetheless, such a state also needs leaders. These are members of the Alpha-Plus caste, the only caste whose members are supposed to be able to think freely and experience themselves as individuals, although they cannot give in to their abilities for stability’s sake. This circumstance creates a dilemma that traps Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson alike. During a visit to a Savage reservation with Lenina Crowne, Marx meets John Savage, illegitimate son of a World State Beta and the Director of Hatcheries. Having been an outcast on the reservation all his life, John is eager to see the World State. Having fallen in love with Lenina, John goes with them when they return to London. However, the principles of the World State and the way in which they are enforced disgust him. After his mother Linda’s death, he tries to stir hospital workers into rebellion by throwing their Soma-rations out of the window. This action leads to the banishment of Watson and Marx. John, on the other hand, is told to stay and finds refuge in a remote lighthouse. When journalists observe John whipping himself—he tries to cleanse himself of the World State—the ensuing stream of tourists drives John into a frenzy. When Lenina appears at the lighthouse, he is so outside of himself that he attacks and beats her. Ashamed and guiltridden, he hangs himself that night. Elke Brown

Commercialism in Brave New World

Instant gratification is a buzzword that characterizes our modern society. However, it also best describes the attitude of the citizens of the Brave New World and their government toward commercialism. In the World State, citizens are being conditioned to enjoy only things and activities that need to be purchased. When the Director of Hatcheries shows a group of students how conditioning works,

he shows them a group of toddlers who—through electroshocks and sirens—are taught to hate flowers and books. The purpose of this lesson, he explains, is that children will not grow up to spend time reading (an unsocial behavior) or to love nature for nature’s sake. Instead, they shall love nature for the opportunities of leisure activities it offers that make them actually consume something. Outdoor sports, for example, such as Obstacle Golf and Tennis, are highly approved of. In fact, each caste has its own facilities that allow its members to participate in these activities. Naturally, according to the philosophy of the World State, those facilities are severely segregated from each other, but, the focus on consumption, in a way, blurs class boundaries in that respect. In compliance with the World State’s motto “Community, Identity, Stability,” commercialism provides yet another means to ensure stability in the Brave New World. In their free time, citizens of the Brave New World engage in some social activity, be it sports, dancing, the feelies, or their Solidarity meetings. In case they do not feel up to any of these activities, they take Soma, to again be able to act in accordance with the World State’s prescribed universal happiness. However, no matter what activity they choose, it will force them to consume something and spend money. This behavior ensures not only a stable and thriving economy, but also provides the World State’s citizens with numerous distractions that keep them from actually thinking—a dangerous activity, as the examples of Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson illustrate. Both men are aware of their individuality and experience difficulties with the demanded obedience to the World State’s dogmas until they both are exiled from the Brave New World. While Watson rejects commercialism, Marx succumbs to it after gaining a certain amount of popularity when he brings John Savage from the reservation into the Brave New World. When Marx takes Lenina Crowne out on their first date, he gets lost in contemplating the night sky above the English Channel. Lenina, on the other hand, is unable to appreciate the view. It does not mean anything to her because it is free—it cannot be purchased, worn, or consumed in any other way. To appreciate nature

586â•…â•… Huxley, Aldous that way goes against her conditioning and is, thus, impossible for her. On their second date, Marx takes Lenina out on the reservation. He indulges in the luxuries of the hotel room and later worries about the bill because he has left the tap of perfumed water running. This instance is, interestingly enough, the only time in the novel that Huxley makes a direct reference to money. It seems that every citizen in the World State, independent of caste, earns sufficient funds to afford a kind of lifestyle that keeps the people in the Brave New World happily consuming. Naturally, this makes sense, for dissatisfied citizens might become rebellious, and that is the last thing any government could wish for. With its emphasis on consumerism, the World State creates a nation of shopaholics. People who shop are happy—a message that sounds disturbingly familiar if we take a comparing look at our present consumer ideology. The fact that in the Brave New World this consumerism serves the stability of the state and is achieved through questionable methods and at a high price is highly unsettling and intended as a warning sign by Huxley for future generations. However, it cannot be overlooked that Huxley— influenced by communist and socialist ideas—also implies that in order to have a flourishing economy, citizens need to have sufficient money to spend on consumer goods—all citizens, that is, not only the middle and upper classes. Elke Brown

Education in Brave New World

While we like to think of education as giving people the means and information they need to be able to think for themselves, in Brave New World education has become a strict and cruel way of conditioning people from early childhood on. The educational system in Huxley’s novel is determined by the World State’s focus on productivity and efficiency. Since human beings are predestined from the moment of fertilization to belong to a specific caste, their skills and abilities depend on the caste to which they have been designated. After decanting, the process that replaces natural birth, each citizen enters a castespecific educational program that hinges on two main methods: actual instruction and hypnopedia.

The World State’s focus on productivity and its regard for human beings as a technological resource results in the conviction that each citizen ought to be instructed only as much as he or she needs to know to be able to perform his or her duties as a productive member of society. Thus, for example, children are discouraged from reading books and from loving nature. To the end of producing useful members of society, the World State uses drastic and cruel methods: During a tour the Director of Hatcheries gives to Alpha students, he shows them toddlers who are taught to shy away from books and flowers through the use of shrill sirens and electroshocks that leave them twitching on the floor. This education through traumatization is extremely effective in furthering the goals of the World State: Without knowing why, those children, as adults, will not waste any valuable time with reading (a very solitary, and thus forbidden, pleasure) or on loving nature for nature’s sake, that is, without consuming anything. In matters of life and death, the World State’s educational approach is as honest and blunt as it is unorthodox. Because adults do not procreate, sexual activity has become another pastime and, basically, the unavoidable end of a pleasurable evening between a man and a woman in the Brave New World. Promiscuity, indeed, is a virtue, not a vice. Therefore, the children in the World State are encouraged to play erotic games and explore their sexuality, only to leave such childish behavior behind as adults. Similarly, children in the World State are being death-conditioned. In the Brave New World, death has been planned for just like everything else. At the age of 60, the system of a person simply shuts down: Worn out from youth-enhancing medications and the use of Soma, the person dies in the Hospital for the Dying. This passing away is considered merely the natural end of the process of living. Even after death, a citizen of the World State can still be useful to society because his or her cremated body produces phosphorus, which can be used as fertilizer. To understand death as another contribution to society and as a natural process, the hospital hosts field trips for children to view those who are dying. In addition to this way of instructing children, the World State relies heavily on hypnopedia: a

Brave New Worldâ•…â•… 587 way of indoctrinating people in their sleep. Having recognized that this method works most efficiently when relaying moral messages, the hypnopedic system, indeed, takes care of “instructing” the citizens from the beginning of their lives. Due to the fact that the messages are absorbed by the person’s subconscious, the citizen accepts them as absolute truth. Naturally, all hypnopedic lessons intend to promote and further the World State’s aims and principles. Thus, Beta-members, for instance, learn to love being Beta. They feel superior to Deltas and Gammas, but do not aspire to attain Alpha-level. Hence, people are content with their lives and perfectly willing to focus on fulfilling their assigned tasks. Other lessons instill the desire to consume certain goods, have fun, and, if all fails, take Soma. The most important lesson, however, is that “everybody belongs to everybody else.” This not only supports a high level of promiscuity, it also implies that people are not individuals; they do not have selves. Education in the Brave New World, hence, serves only one purpose: the propagation of the World State’s goals. This authoritative, totalitarian approach stands as a warning against a governmentcontrolled educational system in which citizens are indoctrinated, manipulated, and conditioned without the ability or chance to pursue any other paths. Whereas education ideally serves to open doors in people’s minds to give them a myriad of choices, the World State closes those doors one by one. Elke Brown

Individual and Society in Brave New World

The World State’s motto “Community, Identity, Stability” already reveals that identity and community are linked. In the course of the novel this fact becomes evident. We meet five characters who struggle or have struggled at one point with the tension that arises from the awareness of one’s individuality and the demands of the World State to integrate into society to an extent that might require complete denial of an individual self. Admittedly the one whose individuality is the least tangible, Lenina Crowne often is not included among the characters who have problems with completely rendering their personalities to the World State’s demands. However, her case is one of the

more interesting ones for, as a Beta, she should not have the same urge to individuality as Alphas do. However, Lenina refuses to obey the rules of sexual promiscuity and develops feelings for John. Despite his violent rejection of her “love” for him (which, in reality, is not romantic love but sex), Lenina appears at the lighthouse to speak to him. The fact that she makes that effort proves a kind of loyalty and devotion that is deemed inappropriate individualism in the Brave New World. Examples such as this one illustrate her struggle with the dogmas of the World State. Because Lenina otherwise behaves impeccably and her struggles are private, not political ones, she does not present a threat and does not have to be removed. John Savage is usually deemed the most individualistic character in the novel. However, his actions are not so much prompted by the desire to confirm his individuality but, rather, to integrate into society. Not a citizen of the World State, John’s denial of the Brave New World at the end of the novel appears to be a rebellious act when, instead, it illustrates his allegiance to the culture of the reservation, which is supposed to cleanse him from contact with the World State. Similar to John, Bernard Marx wishes for nothing more than social acceptance. At the beginning of the novel, Marx appears as a fundamental rebel against the rules of the Brave New World: He refuses to take Soma, prefers to be alone, does not enjoy the customary pastimes, such as Obstacle Golf, and wonders what it would like to be free without the conditioning that ensures the state’s stability. Marx increasingly reveals his rebelliousness as hypocrisy— a pretense to make himself interesting. Although he genuinely feels his individuality, Marx, like John, wishes only to blend in with everybody else. In contrast to Marx, his friend Helmholtz Watson honestly tries to become a separate entity: He wants to create a new kind of poetry that would shake the World State and gladly accepts exile. Watson too does not realize that his conditioning will prevent him from realizing his goal. As Alphas, both Watson and Marx run into the problem that they have the mental capacity to discover their individuality while being forced by their state to fight the need to feel as an individual, which results

588â•…â•… Ibsen, Henrik in their eventual removal from the World State by Mustafa Mond. Mond is the only character in the novel who not only is acutely aware of his individuality but who also has the opportunity to act as an individual. A highly intelligent and ambitious scientist, Mond is given the choice of banishment or becoming one of the Top World Controllers. Mond also is the one single character who has freedom of choice in the Brave New World: As the person who is in charge, he can decide which rules to obey and which ones to bend. However, his case shows the dark side of this freedom. Following his scientific curiosity, Mond misjudges John’s mental fragility. He denies John the chance to join Watson and Marx on an island and thus becomes ultimately responsible for the young man’s death. All of these characters serve as constant reminders that the perfect stability the World State thinks to have achieved is only an illusion. Huxley’s satiric novel illustrates that even in the most rigidly controlled environment it is impossible to suppress the need to be, act, and express oneself as an individual. It is this outlook on a world dominated by technology and dehumanized by it, that makes Huxley’s work relevant to this day. Elke Brown

Ibsen, Henrikâ•… A Doll’s Houseâ•… (1879)

Nora Helmer is the central character in Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House. She is considered childish and dim-witted and is treated as if she were a doll—an object of beauty lacking substance—by both her husband and her father. As the play opens, Nora’s husband, Torvald, has been promoted to bank manager. Nora is elated, for this means a higher income and less frugality. As the play unfolds, we learn that Nora previously entered into a loan agreement in secret with Nils Krogstad, a morally reprehensible man (according to Torvald) who now works under him at the bank. Nora believes that in taking out this loan and paying it back without her husband’s knowledge or assistance, she can prove that she is able to provide financially for her family and should no longer be considered little more than a human doll. Krogstad, however, fears he will lose

his position once Torvald begins his official duties as manager, so he blackmails Nora with the loan documents, threatening to reveal all to her husband, including the fact that she forged her father’s signature as co-signer of the loan, unless Nora uses her womanly influence on her husband to ensure that he keeps his job at the bank. Nora fails in her attempts, and after her husband discovers her criminal act and subsequently debases her position as wife and mother, she sees that she has been wronged by his treatment of her throughout their marriage and that she has led an insignificant existence. Nora leaves Torvald to seek a true identity in a life of her own. Elizabeth K. Haller

Ethics in A Doll’s House

The ethics of Henrik Ibsen’s central male character perpetuate the chain of events pivotal to the plot of A Doll’s House. Torvald Helmer passes judgment freely, and he expects his strict moral principles to be upheld by his wife, his friends, and his employees. Torvald’s primary concern is with appearances and remaining above suspicion; therefore, it becomes clear to all who know him that deviating from Torvald’s rules of conduct would certainly lead him to discontinue any semblance of an acquaintance. This is illustrated most clearly in his relationship with Nora but also in his relationship with Krogstad. Torvald worries that others will declare him unethical if he continues to retain Krogstad as an employee at the bank once he has taken his post as manager. That they knew each other as children causes Krogstad to take a familiar tone with Torvald, who fears that this familiarity in his new and high-ranking position at the bank will be a cause for ridicule by others in his employ. Anything or anyone that deviates from Torvald’s maintaining of the most respectable of appearances is quickly expelled. Additionally, rather than consider the circumstances behind Krogstad’s illegal actions, Torvald looks upon Krogstad’s forgery as an act of treachery signifying a lack of moral character. He passes judgment on Krogstad’s home, stating that he is poisoning his children by his mere presence, instilling in his home an atmosphere of lies and evildoing. A firm believer that a parent’s indiscretions are passed down to the children, Torvald criticizes Krogstad for failing to

A Doll’s Houseâ•…â•… 589 confess openly to his crime and take his punishment, a more morally defensible act than that of perpetuating a lie. Nora fares no better than Krogstad in her husband’s eyes. Torvald’s demeaning view of and reference to Nora as a witless and feeble animal throughout enforces his view that it is right for a woman to be beautiful and dependent. That Nora could devise such a scheme involving the forging of her father’s signature, the undertaking of a loan, and the procuring of funds to pay the loan indicates that she used her brain rather than her beauty, which undermines Torvald’s belief system. As such, he is both threatened by her independence and appalled at Nora’s breach of his set code of moral conduct. One has only to look at his reaction toward Nora’s financial impropriety to see his willingness to uphold his rules of conduct and all appearances of propriety at all costs, including abandoning his wife. Torvald is ever one to set forth the propriety of a situation, especially when it comes to matters of money. He is vehemently against borrowing money, believing it to be a form of dependency on outside forces that detracts from the beauty of home life. Nora is unfamiliar with legal matters, including the intricacies involved in her borrowing of money from Krogstad and the resulting bond. She looks only toward how the ends justify the means; therefore, she cannot understand why the law would not and does not consider the circumstances surrounding a crime (such as forgery) that may justify the crime being committed. When she forged her father’s signature on the bond, Nora’s only concern was in providing Torvald with the retreat to Italy that he needed to restore his health. That she was simply looking to save Torvald’s life is of no consequence to him, however, as Torvald sees only the impropriety of his wife’s legal and financial indiscretions. Torvald’s primary concern, though, remains with appearances and remaining above suspicion, for he knows that the perfect appearance of his home and his moral propriety would be forever tarnished if others became aware of the situation. Additionally, he is convinced that keeping Nora in the home would be a danger to their children, raising them in a poisoned atmosphere of deception. As such, Tor-

vald sees fit to sever all ties with Nora in an attempt to save his children and uphold appearances. Once he discovers that word will not leak of Nora’s impropriety, however, Torvald is quick to revoke his earlier claims of dissolving their marriage, but it is too late for Nora. She points out that though a man will not compromise his honor for a woman, a woman will sacrifice hers for a man. She questions the ethics behind this behavior. It is clear to Nora that, rather than recognizing her forthrightness in seeking financial assistance as an act of desperation to keep him alive, Torvald views it as an act of moral reprehension that could spell the downfall of his position in society. Elizabeth K. Haller

Identity in A Doll’s House

In Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, Nora is characterized by others as childish, irresponsible, and dim witted. Her identity is formed by and around these characterizations. Her husband, Torvald Helmer, refers to her often as a squirrel, a chirping skylark, and a little spendthrift. Rarely is she considered to possess a solid thought, and at one point she states that everything she thinks seems silly and insignificant; her husband is pleased that she has acknowledged this fact. She states that her father treated her as a doll-child, and her husband treats her as a doll-wife. Nora, however, possesses a secret that she is certain will transform her identity from that of a brainless object to that of a caring and clever business-minded woman. She is confident that once it is revealed that it was not money left by her father that saved Torvald’s health by allowing them to move to Italy for a year but rather it was money gained through her own devices, that her husband will then look upon her in a new light, and she will be seen by him and others as a competent woman. Nils Krogstad, the man she entered into the loan agreement with, ends her hopes as he reveals to her his knowledge that she forged a signature on the loan document. He threatens to reveal Nora’s identity as a criminal if she does not ensure that Torvald, as bank manager, allows him to maintain his current lower-level position at the bank. Krogstad is described as a morally corrupt individual who cares little for others and is primarily

590â•…â•… Ibsen, Henrik concerned with his own well-being. He too forged a document in his past, causing him to lose not only his job but his standing in society as well. He has spent the years since that time attempting to regain his reputation, and he is dependent upon his blackmail of Nora to guarantee his standing through retaining his position at the bank. He intends to further rely on this blackmail by revealing the truth of Nora’s position to her husband and ultimately usurping Torvald as bank manager. Krogstad claims that his moral corruption arose due to his being a victim of circumstance. Had he not been jilted by Christine Linde, a school friend of Nora’s, years before he would have been a different man. His plans to further blackmail Nora and her husband are altered as he encounters Linde at the Torvald residence. Up to the time she arrives at Nora’s home, Linde’s identity was made up of being a caretaker to her mother and a provider for her two younger brothers as well as a wife to a man whom she did not love but married for the sake of financial assistance in caring for her family. She was soon widowed and left penniless, leaving her to take any position she could find to continue to care for her family. Once her mother died and her brothers were set in situations in which they could care for themselves, Linde was left alone and empty. She decides to forge a new identity as an office worker to keep her mind busy. It is to this purpose that she comes to Nora asking for assistance in obtaining a position at Torvald’s bank, to which Nora complies. It is here that she runs unexpectedly into Krogstad, the man she jilted in order to ensure what she thought would be financial security in marrying another. She states that dire circumstances led her to end their relationship. Linde reveals to him that her life since they parted has not been dissimilar to his—described as a shipwreck. Linde professes a need to reclaim her identity through once again having someone to care for and suggests that she and Krogstad renew their relationship and join forces to once again stand on solid ground. Although Linde has it within her power to prevent Torvald from learning of Nora’s loan agreement, she believes it best to have Torvald read the letter in which Krogstad sets forth the circumstances

surrounding Nora’s criminal activity. Upon reading the letter, Torvald is immediately struck with how the situation will affect his reputation. It is at this point that Nora realizes Torvald’s true identity and his complete disregard for her thoughts and emotions, for he does not express any concern for how the situation may affect her. She once thought of him as a loving and concerned husband, but now she sees that he loves only the thought of being with her, and he is concerned only with his own affairs. Nora decides to leave Torvald, hoping that by doing so she will learn more of the world in which she has been sheltered and transform her identity from that of a dim-witted, overly trusting doll to that of a prudent and sensible human being. Elizabeth K. Haller

Illness in A Doll’s House

Henrik Ibsen’s main characters in his play A Doll’s House are all affected by illness, either physical or moral, as it plays a fundamental role in altering each of their lives. Doctor Rank, once Torvald Helmer’s personal physician but now considered the dearest friend of both Torvald and Nora, suffers from a physical illness alluded to as a form of syphilis. Rank’s illness is a blatant case of his being physically affected by, or as he believes punished for, his father’s moral discrepancies in his philandering and otherwise irresponsible sexual behavior prior to Rank’s being conceived. His father’s moral illness is passed down to his son in the form of a physical illness. As a result, Rank has not had the opportunity to live a full life and dies at a relatively young age. Rank’s life, then, is forever altered through the actions of another. Such is also the case with Christine Linde, Nils Krogstad, Nora, and Torvald. As a result of her widowed mother’s physical illness, Christine Linde, once a school friend of Nora’s, finds herself responsible, as the eldest of three children, for the care and well-being of her two younger brothers and her ill mother. To assist her in providing for her family, Linde must choose between marrying Nils Krogstad, the man whom she loves but who is not financially stable, or the man whom she does not love but who could provide financially for her family. She chooses to marry for

Hedda Gablerâ•…â•… 591 money, rather than love, and this decision proves a bad one when she discovers her new husband’s business ventures are not as sound as she believed. She is soon left widowed and penniless and must take on various menial jobs to support her brothers. If not for her mother’s illness, Linde would have been free of the burden of marrying for financial stability instead of love, a choice that ultimately alters her life as she becomes a haggard woman in search of a better position. However, this search ultimately leads her to Nora’s door, in hopes of finding employment through Torvald at his bank. It is in coming to Nora’s home that Linde reencounters Krogstad, an encounter that leads to their joyous reconciliation by the end of the play. It was not only Linde’s life that was altered by her mother’s illness and the resulting ultimatum of marriage, but Krogstad’s life as well. Krogstad blames Linde’s jilting of him for his resulting moral corruption. After Linde left him for another man, Krogstad entered into an unhappy marriage and was left a widower with several children. He does whatever he can to support them, including blackmail. It is as a result of Krogstad’s moral corruption that he enters into a loan agreement with Nora, who then forges her dying father’s signature on the loan documents so as not to trouble him with her situation. Krogstad makes it clear that it is not only money he is after but winning a position of respect in the town as well, for his sons are growing and it is imperative that they be given a fair chance to succeed. Krogstad sees maintaining his position at the bank as a necessary step in obtaining and upholding society’s good opinion. Krogstad’s loan agreement with Nora is seen by Torvald as her moral demise. He is shamed by her actions and fears what society will think of a man in his position once word is leaked that his wife entered into secret negotiations with a morally reprehensible man behind her husband’s back. Torvald chastises her as an unfit mother and a disappointment as a wife. If Krogstad had been a man of high moral character, he would not have entered into such an agreement with Nora without her husband’s knowledge. His diseased moral character, then, led to the moral corruption of Nora. Torvald is initially unwilling to forgive his wife for her actions, but he changes

his mind once he discovers that the loan agreement has been made null and void. His response to her situation, however, causes Nora to realize that Torvald will always maintain a tainted moral view of her character, and she decides to leave him. A chain reaction of events stemming from a physical illness alters the lives of each character— some for the worse, as in the case of Dr. Rank, whose father’s philandering led to Rank’s early demise, as well as in the case of Torvald, who loses his wife as a result of his reaction to her questionable behavior. But some lives are altered for the better. Although the illness of Linde’s mother caused her to choose between love and money, with Krogstad’s life also adversely affected in the bargain, it was her coming to Nora for assistance that led to a reunion with the man she originally loved. Consequently, Nora’s entering into a loan agreement with Krogstad eventually opened her eyes to her husband’s selfish and unforgiving manner, causing her to choose a new and anticipated better life without him. Elizabeth K. Haller

Ibsen, Henrikâ•… Hedda Gablerâ•… (1890)

Hedda Gabler is a work of major significance in world drama. It has been continuously performed, adapted, interpreted, and repeatedly translated ever since it was first published in 1890. The play’s woman-centered narrative offers uniquely challenging opportunities for a female actor to portray a psychologically charged character. Its female protagonist’s attempt to free herself from the constraints of paternalistic society, a pointless marriage, and her complete disregard for conventional values has always fascinated audiences. Despite her constant manipulation of the lives of others and her narcissistic clash with the demons of her mind and soul, Hedda comes across both as a victimizer as well as a victim of life’s ruthless logic. Ibsen focuses on Hedda Tesman, who has married a promising young scholar for economic security. Her husband’s hopes of advancement are in danger from another maverick scholar, Eilert Løvborg. Løvborg loses an invaluable manuscript, which George, Hedda’s husband, finds on the wayside and brings home. Hedda quietly destroys Løvborg’s

592â•…â•… Ibsen, Henrik manuscript and encourages a frantic Løvborg to commit suicide. Her husband and Mrs. Elvstd dedicate themselves to recovering the lost manuscript through reconstruction and rewriting from notes that Mrs. Elvstd still possesses. Hedda foresees a scandalous involvement in Løvborg’s death as he is accidentally killed with the gun that Hedda had given him. Distraught, she commits suicide. The play’s apparent simplicity of design and form and its relatively plain dialogue hides many layers of meaning. It has been valued as an important feminist document for its perceptive social criticism and psychological insights. It continues to grow in public estimation and remains one of the most frequently performed plays with the possible exception of one or two of Shakespeare’s plays. Gulshan Taneja

Ethics in Hedda Gabler

Addressing the audience at the Festival of the Women’s Rights League, Ibsen remarked that My task has been the description of humanity. To be sure whenever such a description is felt to be reasonably true, the reader will read his own thoughts and sentiments into the work of the poet. They are then attributed to the poet; but incorrectly so. . . . (1880) Despite an artist’s urge to create characters objectively conceived as organic wholes who would, much like real humanity, represent a myriad of hues, works of art often restrict themselves to a limited aspect of human existence to illustrate major principles and eternal truths. Even though there are multiple levels of complexity in the character of Hedda, Ibsen, expectedly, tips the balance to highlight a specific, limited trajectory of his thought on an issue of major importance. Depending on how one wants to look at it, the character of Hedda can come across as a victim at the hands of patriarchal society, a totally amoral and self-centered human being, a manipulative individual, or a victim of circumstance. Yet there is no doubt that Ibsen’s one major thrust in Hedda Gabler is the narrow question of the sense of right and wrong in the context of human affairs. In the character of

Hedda, he projects an individual marked by a total absence of any notion of ethical interest. No ethical consideration governs her life, nor does she suspect any in the lives of people she interacts with. In his notes on the play Ibsen described her character as one who makes “Great demands upon life and upon the joy of life” (1889–90). Hedda’s choice of George as a husband is motivated by her growing years—she is already 29—a diminishing flock of admirers, and George’s possession of a villa once owned by the widow of a cabinet minister. Even though beyond his means, George secures the villa and goes on a six-monthlong honeymoon to please his bride. Hedda is bored with George’s academic preoccupations. She loathes him when it appears that he might not get the much coveted professorship at the university, as then she may not have the means to live in style and affluence. She is convulsed with disgust and hatred when she discovers that Løvborg, her former lover whom she had rejected, might secure the much sought after university position. That a mousy Thea, her husband’s former sweetheart, Hedda’s one-time classmate and friend, had inspired Løvborg with her love and devotion to complete his new book, which would ensure his superseding George, fires her anger even more. She herself had rejected Løvborg’s suit, believing he lacked potential for social and financial upward mobility. This for her is now a matter of great gnawing regret. For this she loathes herself even more. Hedda’s Machiavellian manipulations result in the destruction of the manuscript and she convinces a traumatized Løvborg to commit suicide. Løvborg dies in a brawl. Hedda finds herself trapped in a likely social scandal, as it in her pistol that Løvborg uses in the scuffle in which he dies. Her only option appears to be to accept Judge Brack’s offer and become his mistress to escape the scandal that could erupt at any moment. Both the possibility of a scandal as well as personal humiliation at the hands of Judge Brack, whom she finds repulsive, shatter her completely and she kills herself. Ibsen has no illusion that ethical considerations must forever remain supreme. He believes that, to a degree, these are matters of mutually agreed upon beliefs in a community of people. He makes a per-

Hedda Gablerâ•…â•… 593 ceptive remark in a letter to George Brandes, Ibsen’s lifelong friend and an academic: Greater things than [state] will fall; all religion will fall. Neither the conceptions of morality nor those of art are eternal. To how much are we really obliged to pin pour faith? Who will vouch for it that two and two do not make five up in Jupiter? (1871) Yet a human being as social animal is a site for an examination of major values that are considered humanity’s social and spiritual bulwark. As an artist Ibsen creates a specific situation that shows humanity at work in a sociocultural context. Hedda refers to the manuscript as the intellectual equivalent of a baby and is in fact pregnant when she kills herself. Hedda’s actions destroy both babies. Her Lady Macbeth-like ruthlessness lends the play an unusual intensity and determines the contours of her character. It would appear from the architectural design of Hedda Gabler that Ibsen’s intention is as much to show how self-seeking, egotistical, and heartless human beings can be, as to point to the inescapable fact that self-centeredness can exist only in a context in which altruistic impulse exists, too. Thus, by implication, Ibsen assures us that the finer human urges do exist even though they are forever threatened by their baser counterparts. Thea is moved by love and devotion. George is keen to reconstruct the manuscript that has been destroyed because it will bring honor to a worthy scholar. Yet the strong voices that Ibsen lends to his protagonists, including Hedda, discourage readers from indulging in moral judgments. Gulshan Taneja

Gender in Hedda Gabler

Contemporary thinkers in Ibsen’s time believed that the issue of equality of the sexes was closely bound up with major social reforms and structural changes in society, a view that Ibsen appears to have shared, believing that feminist causes were part of the larger canvas. In a speech delivered before the Norwegian Women’s Rights League, Ibsen had said that he must “disclaim the honour of having consciously worked for the women’s rights movement.  .  .  . To

me it has seemed a problem of humanity in general” (1898). Much earlier, in his notes for A Doll’s House, Ibsen expressed a similar feeling: “A woman cannot be herself in contemporary society, it is an exclusively male society with laws drafted by men, and with counsel and judges who judge feminine conduct from the male point of view” (1878). There is, of course, no doubt that the question of feminist reform was never far from Ibsen’s thoughts. His wife, Suzannah, was an independent-minded woman. Her mother, Magdalene Thoresen, a playwright and novelist, was her role model. Ibsen himself considered Mrs. Thoresen much ahead of her times. Ibsen’s interaction with Camilla Collett, who voiced Norway’s most important feminist concerns, and his great admiration for her achievements, led to a deep impact on his own thinking as well as his writings. He, for instance, lent support to the 1884 petition in favor of property rights for married women in Norway. Despite his humanist liberal attitude to social issues and his concern for larger questions, Ibsen’s focus on the female characters in his plays was a major achievement. Ibsen projects the figure of the emancipated woman in almost all his plays. Many of his characters value independence and sexual fulfillment rather than marriage. Often, his female characters are better educated, taking up jobs rather than acting as self-sacrificing cogs in the everlasting domestic wheel of life. They ignore traditional female attire, wear boots and men’s clothing, and deglamorize themselves. Some of them are shown using words and expressions traditionally associated with men. They can be blunt and aggressive in their behavior and disregard what people might think of their actions. Ibsen projects powerful and dramatic female characters who do not consider motherhood as their inescapable destiny. By her upbringing, Hedda is more of man than a woman. She is brought up by her father, a general: “She has to be regarded,” Ibsen wrote, “rather as her father’s daughter than her husband’s wife” (1890). She plays with a pistol, loves horses, and in moments of anxiety, paces up and down as a stereotypical man would do. Her desire for freedom from domination and personal independence are viewed as masculine ambitions. In the play, Hedda reacts angrily to Judge

594â•…â•… Irving, John Brack’s reference to her pregnancy. Her extreme sense of vulnerability and aggression that arises out of her sense of being trapped beyond hope, is what projects her beyond the mere victim in a feminist text. There is little doubt that in Hedda Gabler, as much as in all of Ibsen’s plays, a woman must not be offered the choice of independence at the cost of alienation from and rejection by society. Ibsen’s firm commitment is to the view that women must be allowed to make up their own minds and must have the last word on their bodies. Ibsen’s contemporaries and early feminists considered his creations nothing short of miracles. His plays shaped the feminist movement in Scandinavia and had deep and lasting impact. The universe that Ibsen created for his characters to inhabit furthers many ends. One of them certainly is his historic contribution to the feminist movement in the 20th century. Gulshan Taneja

Spirituality in Hedda Gabler

Even though Ibsen’s plays are commonly associated with naturalistic theater and material issues of his times, Ibsen had a profound understanding of the human enigma. In his plays he reveals insights into the heart and soul of his characters even when he portrays his characters embroiled against the backdrop of sociopolitical issues of his day. Hedda Gabler’s neurotic personality is accorded an inner logic of its own even as her actions do not accord with conventional expectations. Hedda lives in a secret world of her own, buried deep in her unconscious and observing a code of values that is independent and her own. One can argue that Ibsen’s one major interest in creating the character of Hedda Gabler was to delve deep into the depths of the spiritual dimension of humanity. Despite the day-to-day material web in which Hedda is shown entangled, Ibsen sought to look deeper into her soul. Several readers and scholars have described Hedda as spiritually empty. She makes demands upon life and demands too much. But her focus in life is on the petty and the insignificant. Her demands reveal a mind and heart narrowly confined to the most constricted yearning of which a human being is capable. No finer sentiments inspire

her heart, no deeper philosophical notions fire her mind. Neither religion nor faith nor love motivate her in her yearnings. Her desires are the shallowest for a human being and her sensations are the sensations of the lowliest of animals. Ibsen shows remarkable artistic judgment in giving her actions and judgments the hues of apparently common and widely noticeable actions and judgments. It is easy to miss that the essential purpose of the dramatist in creating such a character was not to show us an unredeemed villain but rather to illuminate the fact that each and every human being is in danger of degenerating into such a soulless being when devoid of spiritual health. It is in this sense that Hedda Gabler, as also other plays of Ibsen, must be understood. Elizabeth Robbins, the actress who played Hedda Gabler to great acclaim and had great influence on the way Hedda was perceived in the 20th century, had rightly said: “How should men understand Hedda on the stage when they did not understand her in the persons of their wives, their daughters, their women friends?” And when she goes on to say, “Hedda is all of us,” she is pointing to general decay and a widespread spiritual malady that had overtaken the Europe of Ibsen’s day and to which Hedda Gabler provides a major testimony. Gulshan Taneja

Irving, Johnâ•… The World According to Garpâ•… (1976)

Constructed as a biography, John Irving’s fourth novel, The World According to Garp, traces its titular character literally from conception to memory, following him through the ordinary and extraordinary events of his life. Son of fictional feminist icon Jenny Fields, T. S. Garp (named after his biological father, Technical Sergeant Garp) grows up in the privileged environs of the Steering School, surrounded by the excesses of wealth but enclosed by his mother’s protective and constant gaze. As he grows into adulthood, the novel allows us to enter Garp’s world more intimately, reading the work of the nascent author during the process of composition in a war-ruined Vienna. Understanding Garp’s purview by glimpsing the writer’s writing recurs as a motif several times throughout the novel, allow-

The World According to Garpâ•…â•… 595 ing the reader the unusual insight of exploring the somewhat causal, always tenuous relationships between a writer’s life and his writing. Irving leads his readers steadily through Garp’s eccentric life: chasing down side-street speeders, cooking in the afternoon, fretting fruitlessly about his children, running anxiously and continuously through streets littered with the detritus of suburban angst and frustration. In the most explored relationship in the novel, Garp and Helen’s marriage suffers from complications of their own making, from the difficult yearnings of unrealized expectations to infidelity and, ultimately, mortality. When in doubt, Irving’s characters do something, and inevitably— occasionally tragically—it is the wrong thing. The World According to Garp is a comedy in the bleakest sense. Its humor and warmth are punctuated by the human suffering of its title character and his immediate family, but the book never loses its strange brand of optimism. Aaron Drucker

Gender in The World According to Garp

In Garp’s world, women are victims and men lust. In The World According to Garp sexual identity is a prescribed role even as gender is constantly transgressed. Much of the novel serves to differentiate between gender and sexual identity. Sexuality, in all its forms, is generated from Jenny Fields’s peculiar perspective. Garp’s mother is an unlikely feminist, but in the novel, she is the preeminent figure of feminism, the woman who is emblematic of the contemporary, second-wave feminism. She begins her book, A Sexual Suspect, with the pronouncement: “In this dirty minded world . . . you are either somebody’s wife or somebody’s whore—or fast on your way to becoming one or the other.” Gender is a state of being, a power position, either owner or owned. Women are told they are owned; men do the telling. It is not an equal relationship, and it has nothing to do with sexual identification, per se. Her appearance is embodied by the nurse’s uniform she unceasingly wears. In that symbol of antiseptic femininity, the social and professional embodiment of the caretaker for the sick and injured, she fulfills the gender role of female without, in fact, identifying herself with the feminine. She is essentially asexual

(the act of procreation, for her, was an affair engaged in with a phallus and little else—certainly not a father, in more than the biological sense), and thus she denies and transcends the owner/owned (male/ female) binary she actively protests. She engages almost exclusively in homosocial relationships, and though she is not lesbian, she has no interest in men, whom she largely views as victimizers, abusers, or fools. Jenny Fields sets the stage for the curious and often contradictory portraits of gender in The World According to Garp. Garp is the product of Jenny Fields’s stern and clinical indifference to social sexuality. In her pronouncement, “Men lust,” Garp is no exception. In some ways, his maleness is less complex than Jenny Fields’ femininity. Throughout the novel, he carries out several sexual escapades, both licit and illicit. From his first détente with Cushie Percy to his unsympathetic lust for Mrs. Ralph, Garp engages the sexuality of his gender with Jenny Fields’s practical simplicity. He identifies himself with the male who cannot (or will not) curtail his sexual desire. His maleness is defined by his sexual needs and conquests. Such an identity is not without limits, however. Encountering the radical, bastardized version of lust—a rapist of prepubescent girls—Garp actively pursues the criminal, catching him (forcibly), and turns him in to the authorities. There is a point, for any man, at which more lust becomes too much lust and desire becomes violation, even in Garp’s more open interpretation of sexual propriety. While his inability to keep his zipper shut causes any number of complexities in his life, it is only in regard to sex itself that Garp holds on to gender circumscriptions. In his home life with Helen and the kids, he explicitly disregards traditional gender roles, staying at home to write and care for his children and household while Helen carries on a professional position. He is a loving father and caretaker, even to the point of being ostentatious. While he expresses an awareness of the social reversal—he is embarrassed, for example, when he explains that he is a “writer” and no, you haven’t read anything he’s written—he is also happy in this role: the active and encouraging parent who protects and pushes his children into their promising future. Though Garp represents a “stay-at-home-Dad” as well as

596â•…â•… Irving, John “more lust,” he Â�presents only the most straightforward of Irving’s male complexities and inversions. At first, Roberta Muldoon seems the iconic type of Irving’s subversive gender politics, with his asexualizing of the feminist and his hypersexualizing of Garp; Roberta Muldoon used to be Robert Muldoon, quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles and now a transsexual. “He” has become a “she” through the miracles of modern surgery. A six-anda-half-foot, broad shouldered woman who knows who she is, she is both the theoretical feminist ideal and the ultimate sexual suspect. She also transcends any identifiable—and thus limiting—category. It would not be too grand a pronouncement to say that Roberta Muldoon is the most sympathetic character in The World According to Garp. He is the one unfailing, loyal, engaging, protective, giving, generous, and honest person in the novel. Ultimately, being able to dispense with strictures of gender and discovering a self-defined sexual identity is the most successful way to become a good—which is to say, self-aware and fully realized—person, at least according to Garp. Aaron Drucker

Guilt in The World According to Garp

In The World According to Bensenhaver, the novel character T. S. Garp is working on in John Irving’s The World According to Garp, guilt abounds. “In Garp’s work, guilt always abounds,” as it does in Garp’s world. This world is shaped and defined by guilt. Characters act to avoid it, to relieve it, and to heal from it. Reeling from Helen’s critical reaction to a short story he wrote, Garp’s anger and frustration and desire for approval force him to sleep. The narrator explains, “But, actually, he’d had so much on his mind, he’d been confused; he had fallen asleep because he was bewildered. If he’d been able to focus his feelings on any one thing, he’d still have been awake when she came upstairs. They might have saved a lot of things, then.” Helen wakes him gently, but in his dreams, he is thinking of Mrs. Ralph, his son’s friend’s mother. He feels the guilt of his virtual infidelity only as a reflection on how it would affect his wife to know that while she was engaging him, he was thinking of another woman. It is impossible to consider guilt sufficiently in Garp

without first acknowledging the novel’s distinctly adult subject matter. Sex and adultery permeate the matter of the novel, and each major conflict circles around some aspect of sexual transgression. Guilt is a pervasive sensibility in Irving’s novel, from the haunting of each character by his or her personal indiscretions or violations to the radical group-guilt of the Ellen Jamesians. There is no one untouched by the undertow of sex and guilt. Surviving the “undertoad” of life’s errants and errors, learning to cope, to resolve, and to grow, that is what presses the novel forward. Guilt gives purpose to The World According to Garp. T. S. Garp carries on several extramarital affairs throughout the novel, and Helen engages in only one. She commits to stray with Michael Milton, one of her graduate students, and when they are exposed, she tells Garp that she can break it off cleanly and decently. She explains that, “She felt she had never lost sight of Garp and the children during this indulgence; she felt justified in handling it her way, now.” Garp takes the kids out to a movie in order to allow Helen the space to handle it her way. But circumstances conspire in the tragic ironies of the characters’ lives. Michael Milton insists upon seeing her one last time, and he drives to the Garps’ home. She meets him in the front seat of his 1951 Buick Dynaflow, where they engage in a last sexual act—the last gasp of a foolish recreation. Garp calls home, and Helen does not answer. Furious and impulsive, Garp gathers Duncan and Walt and drives them home early. To entertain the kids, Garp is in the habit of shutting off the motor and the lights of his car, coasting into the driveway in the black and the silence, a suburban roller-coaster thrill. In the darkness, he never sees the massive, parked station wagon in the driveway, and his children—thrilling to the rush, unbuckled in the back seat of the family car—are caught completely unaware by the collision. There is a clear moral for the cuckolding lover, Michael Milton, as the clench of Helen’s jaw during the accident proceeds to limit all future indiscretions. In Garp’s words, “Three quarters is not enough.” One would think Milton would disagree. And yet such a literal emblem for the loss of masculinity that cuckolding represents is typical of Irving’s novel.

The World According to Garpâ•…â•… 597 Milton feels no guilt for his dalliance with a married woman: It is a conquest and a desire that he refuses to relinquish. His lack of guilt is punished in the most disabling, permanent way. His transgression is not participation in adultery but the insistence that, when made public, he refuses to let it go. He feels no guilt; he is not grown up (and now, lacking full sexual identity, he never will be). For Irving, guilt is a maker of maturity, a sign of adulthood. Helen and Garp cannot fully accept their adulthoods, cannot be a mature couple, until they feel and resolve the guilt caused by their indiscretions. The price of their straying is terrible. Walt is killed instantly. Helen and Garp survive the crash physically intact, injured but alive. Duncan loses an eye. It takes the tragic death of one son and the blinding of another for them to tackle the depth of their guilt, the denials and evasions that sprout from it, when they can finally resolve the failures of their relationship and learn to grow up together. In the relentless pessimism of Irving’s novel, of course, this would not be the last terror or tragedy, but it is the central event of the book, and the impetus for denouement of the novel. The resolution of guilt— physical, emotional, sexual, and personal—is the movement of the last third of The World According to Garp. Aaron Drucker

Parenthood in The World According to Garp

Garp spends most of his adult life tending to his children’s needs and keeping the house in order (not too neat, though) while awaiting his next surge of inspiration. While Helen teaches at a local women’s college, Garp writes his first novel “between diaper changes and feedings” and his second in much the same way, though with less success. Garp considers himself a good father (privately, perhaps, better than “good”), and he frequently judges other parents by his own unusually devoted standards. But, in The World According to Garp, you can’t be too careful. In the beginning of the novel, there is Jenny Fields, Garp’s mother. Meticulous, methodical, and distant, she does not want the burdens of a “normal” relationship, so she impregnates herself by way of an extraordinary affair with the mortally wounded technical sergeant Garp. Fatherless, Garp grows

up at the Steering School comparing his caring and cautious but practical and efficient mother to the families of other students, most notably the campus-ensconced Percys. Jenny Fields teaches Garp to disdain relationships like those exemplified by the Percy clan: wealthy, privileged, unfocused, and (thus) valueless. Though the Percy household displays all the trappings of child-rearing, “carpeted and spacious and full of generations of tasteful toys,” the parents of the Percy children do not have “the brains to worry about their children as much as they should.” Carelessness, the mortal sin of Garp’s conception of parenthood, is a prevalent part of the Percys’ parenting strategy, and while under the inattentive eyes of the Percy parents, it quite literally ends up biting Garp when Bonkers, the Percys’ dog, chews off the better part of his left ear. The Percy children are raised with a casual carelessness that allows, in better minds, the flowering of success, the type expected of wealthy legacy children. On the other hand, this same casual regard for caution allows a freedom in the children that leads to pain, tragedy, and finally to madness. Parenthood, for Jenny Fields, is about being careful. Only when the watchful eye of the parent is missing do children get into trouble. The lesson is not lost on Garp. Garp and Helen have three children: Duncan, Walt, and later, Jenny. For the narrator, the subjective perspective of Garp’s fatherhood is continually explored in the first half of the novel through the protagonist’s unceasing cacophony of opinion on other parents’ apparent failures. “Mrs. Ralph,” the mother of Duncan’s friend Ralph, is the epitome of Garp’s failed parent. As painted by Garp, Mrs. Ralph is a nasty portrait of single motherhood. Garp’s encounters leave him with the impression she is slovenly, drunk, promiscuous, and unmotivated. In an extended episode, Garp concludes that Mrs. Ralph is unfit as a parent, and he will watch his son’s sleep-over at Ralph’s. While the results are comic, her inaction is innocuous. For all of Mrs. Ralph’s faults, even in her unmindful way, Ralph and Duncan remain safe, if not indulging in the quality of cuisine Garp would serve. However much Garp’s theory of parenthood rests on his being careful, The World According to Garp inexorably drifts into irony. Protecting his

598â•…â•… Irving, Washington children from a terrible emotional scene when Garp discovers Helen’s infidelity, Garp takes his children to see a movie. Intoxicated by the weeknight splurge, the children fumble for “the best view” of their father’s daredevil return home—what should be a harmless thrill as the car floats silently down the driveway and into the garage. Except there is a car blocking the safe entrance of Garp’s returning vehicle. The results are horrific. For all of Garp’s caution, for all his will to safety, for all his plans and initiative, Garp cannot be careful enough to avoid the unknowable, the inevitable position of all parents. Even while his children remain in arm’s reach, they can suffer terribly. In the world according to Garp, parenthood is an impossible contradiction: the setting forth of a new life and the responsibility for its safety. Inextricably bound with terror and fragility, Jenny Fields, the Percys, Garp, Mrs. Ralph, and the panoply of characters try to compensate for their incomplete control of their children’s lives. But like all adults with children, parenthood is formed by the character of the parent, and in turn, the children are cast in the image of father and mother. Duncan, the monocular result of the ever-watchful eye, does not have children. He survives his family ( Jenny Fields, Garp, Helen, and Roberta) in order to start a family of his own, but with a transsexual woman. Parenthood is not an option for Duncan Garp. Garp was too aggressively careful with his children, as he was too aggressive with all things, and in the end, his desire for a perfect world left it sterile. Aaron Drucker

Irving, Washingtonâ•… The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayonâ•… (1819–1820)

Washington Irving’s The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, first published serially between 1819 and 1820, made the author the first American to earn a successful living through his writing. Indeed, Irving is considered the inventor of the short story in America, largely because of this text; however, The Sketchbook also demonstrates Irving’s mastery of the travelogue, satire, essay, and folktale. The best-known stories from Irving—“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”—are

included in this collection, but its other selections are equally important. In “The Spectre Bridegroom,” Irving proves his ability to work with and meld the genres of the fairy tale and the gothic, while in essays such as “English Writers on America,” Irving takes aim at contemporary concerns over English critiques of American culture. In addition, Irving includes sketches of events and people that could easily pass as the field notes of an anthropologist. Adopting the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon, as well as Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving explores such themes as nationalism (and a national identity), gender, responsibility, and the individual and society. Employing various genres allows the text to appeal to a variety of readers and engage them in the debate surrounding issues of the period and today. Robin Gray Nicks

Gender in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon

In Irving’s The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, he explores the issue of gender and often ties it to responsibility. In Irving’s text, men and women have not only different traits, but also different responsibilities. Stories that illustrate these ideas include “The Wife” and “Rip Van Winkle.” One of the earliest stories in the text, “The Wife,” follows stereotyped roles for men and women, creating in the heroine a domestic goddess who perseveres in encouraging her husband even in the worst economic circumstances. The beginning paragraph of the text exalts women who maintain the behaviors of the stereotype: “Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence .  .  . suddenly rising in mental force, to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding .  .  . the bitterest blasts of adversity.” In other words, the story sets up the perfect wife as dependent upon her husband, while also able to comfort and support him in the face of “the bitterest blasts of adversity.” From their physical characteristics to their internal dispositions, the wife and husband possess opposing characteristics that, at the same time, complement each other. The title character has “sprightly powers” and a “slender form” in contrast

The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayonâ•…â•… 599 to her husband’s “tall, manly person.” At first, the husband of the piece refuses to share his financial troubles with his wife. Finally, the narrator explains to him that he is “depriving [him] self of the comforts of her sympathy” rather than addressing it as knowledge to which the wife has a right. Neither man discusses the wife as anything more than someone who wants only to comfort her husband, and as someone who will relish the opportunity to do so. The narrator’s understanding of woman’s true nature includes that “she will rejoice to prove that she loves you for yourself.” He continues his argument by pointing to the “spark of heavenly fire” in woman’s heart and to her nature as a “ministering angel” that can appear only when her husband “has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.” Throughout his discussion with the husband about the reasons why the latter should share the truth about his financial situation with his wife, the narrator addresses the wife’s role as nurturer and supporter and her responsibility only to “prove” her love for her husband through the “fiery trials” they encounter. Not once does the narrator address the responsibility of the husband to share important life information with his wife and life partner. Clearly, responsibility for the success of the marriage lies with the wife. This pattern of wifely responsibility is also addressed in “Rip Van Winkle,” though the story uses the opposite situation to show what happens when one’s wife does not play the role of nurturer and supporter to her husband. Instead, “all the good wives of the village .  .  . took his part in all family squabbles, and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle.” Of course, the opposite was actually true because “Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour.” In fact, it is only because “his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family” that Rip does anything of use. The responsibility of supporting his family financially is his. Dame Van Winkle’s responsibility is to buoy his spirits and joyfully support him. Because she instead chooses to “din,” the other women cast her as the one at fault in family squabbles.

Rip’s first thoughts when he awakens from his long slumber include “dread” at the thought of his wife’s reaction. When he learns that his wife has died, “there was a drop of comfort at least in this intelligence.” Neither he nor the narrator casts this as a blight on Rip’s character, though the narrator does appear to denigrate Rip’s laziness. In truth, the only compliment paid to Dame Van Winkle doing her duty as a wife is the recognition that she “had always kept [the house] in neat order.” According to the text, the only responsibility she fulfilled as a wife was keeping the house neat and tidy. Otherwise, she failed in her responsibilities. Rip too fails, but his failures are recounted with comic overtones, whereas his wife’s are recounted with disdain. These two tales exemplify the collection’s attitude toward gender and responsibility. Men and women have different responsibilities based solely on their genders. When women fail to fulfill these responsibilities, the text disdains them, whereas it looks at men’s failures in their responsibilities with humor or sympathy. Robin Gray Nicks

Individual and Society in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon

The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving demonstrates the importance of the struggle between the individual and society in early America. Several stories in the collection, including “Rural Life in England” and “Traits of Indian Character,” deal with this theme. In “Rural Life in England,” the narrator, Geoffrey Crayon, looks at the differences between one’s character and behavior in the city and in the country. According to the story, people “who see the Englishman only in town are apt to form an unfavourable opinion of his social character.” His relation to others and his need to be formal and civil require him to behave in this negative way. Because he is engaged with others constantly, the Englishman in the city is “absorbed” and “distracted by the thousand engagements . . . in this huge metropolis.” He has so many people to see and engage with that he is always “on the point of going somewhere else . . . [and] while paying a friendly visit, he is calculating how he shall economize time so as to pay the other visits allotted

600â•…â•… Irving, Washington in the morning,” which makes him appear “selfish and uninteresting,” something the narrator blames solely on the city. On the other hand, in the country, the Englishman reverts to his “natural” state, unencumbered by the strictures and mores of city life. In the country, he “breaks loose gladly from the cold formalities and negative civilities of town” and “he puts no constraint either upon his guests or himself, but in the true spirit of hospitality, provides the means of enjoyment, and leaves everyone to partake to his inclination.” In the country, the Englishman can be an individual, whereas in the city, he must be a member of a society with a multitude of “restraints.” In the country, different classes move together “more freely [and are] more disposed to blend and operate favourably upon each other.” In the city, the social codes forbid the blending of classes, or even the association of one with another. In the country, no such codes limit people’s movements and relationships. In “Traits of Indian Character,” Crayon addresses common complaints that whites level against Native Americans as reasons to destroy or “civilize” them. The piece is laden with sarcasm, such as when he praises the American government for “wisely and humanely exert[ing] itself to inculcate a friendly and forbearing spirit towards them, and to protect them from fraud and injustice,” and follows it with a footnote explaining that what this really means is that the government removed their power to purchase or sell land “without the express sanction of government.” This introduction to society has diminished the character of the Native Americans so that they are “mere wrecks and remnants of once powerful tribes.” According to Crayon, white society bears responsibility for the “repining and hopeless poverty, a canker of the mind unknown in savage life,” which now pervades Native Americans. They are “drunken, indolent, feeble, thievish, and pusillanimous” because of the influences of society. In other words, these individuals lived a purer and more majestic life prior to their introduction to polite society. Indeed, Native Americans’ lives prior to their introduction to white society were vastly different. The sketch explains, “Their wants were few, and

the means of gratification within their reach. They saw every one around them sharing the same lot . . . No roof then rose, but was open to the homeless stranger.” Each individual or “every one” was treated as an equal, regardless of his or her status. Once they began to associate with society, they experienced “vulgar prejudice and passionate exaggeration.” The sketch even attributes their “cruelty . . . towards their prisoners” to the white society’s “burning their villages and laying waste their slender means of subsistence.” Crayon instead lauds the individual character of the Native American as possessing “stern resolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit, that seemed to nerve the hearts of these self taught heroes.” In using the term “heroes,” the text sets the societal outsider, the Native American, above those who adhere to the tenets of white society and those who persecute him. Irving’s exploration of the individual and society looks at the individual not necessarily as a single individual but as that which stands outside of the limitations placed upon people within the dominant society. In the country, the Englishman can revert to his true nature. In the past, prior to contact with “society,” the Native American was powerful and honorable. According to these two pieces, as well as other texts within The Sketchbook, the responsibility for selfishness, greed, hurried relationships, poverty, and a host of other social ills rests squarely at the feet of society. Robin Gray Nicks

Nationalism in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon

Washington Irving’s The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon contains several sketches and stories that promote a national mythology and literature, building upon the traditions of the folktale and the history of the American Revolution. Two in particular—“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”—promote this nationalistic impulse. A prefatory note to the story explains that “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was “found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker,” the pseudonym Irving used when writing his 1809 A History of New York. A ghostly tale, “Sleepy Hollow”

The Remains of the Dayâ•…â•… 601 references the Revolution and the Puritans and uses these allusions to create a sense of place and history. We learn that villagers think the headless horseman “to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head had been carried away by a cannon ball, in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war.” Haunted by the specter of history, the villagers and visitors see the ghost no matter their state of consciousness. It is a constant reminder of the nation’s fight for independence, and it helps Irving establish some of the first truly American literature dealing with American settings, history, and issues. Another constant reminder of the nation’s history is the collection of books and stories with which Ichabod Crane regales his community. One of Crane’s favorite texts, and one in which he fervently believes, is Cotton Mather’s History of New England Witchcraft, a clear allusion to the witch trials in New England’s past. Crane also enjoys entertaining the “old Dutch wives” with tales from Mather’s text and other “anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut.” Though Knickerbocker’s description of the scene works to set the tone for the later mysterious events surrounding Crane’s disappearance, it also works to establish the text as firmly American. American literature must wrangle with not only the geographic peculiarities of a region, but also the contradictions and blemishes within the history of the nation. By alluding to the problematic history of America, Irving situates his text as one of the first to promote and embody the sort of national literature called for by the editors and writers of his day. Another of Irving’s stories supposedly found among Knickerbocker’s papers is “Rip Van Winkle.” In this tale, the reader encounters a myth or folktale of the Hudson River Valley, a folktale that the narrator urges the reader to take as “true history” over the “scanty” research found in books on the region. Again, Irving works the Revolutionary War into the fabric of the tale. Having slept through the revolution, Van Winkle encounters a world vastly different from the one he left. Seeing a portrait of General George Washington where a portrait of

King George once hung startles Van Winkle, while flyers about rights, elections, congress, and “heroes of seventy-six” simply “bewilder” him. Most frightening and shocking to Van Winkle are people’s inquiries about his voting record, “whether he was a Federal or Democrat?” When he responds that he is a “loyal subject of the King,” Van Winkle is unprepared for the violent reactions of the tavern politicians and customers. That a region, much less an entire country, could change so dramatically in 20 years not only shocks Van Winkle, for whom it’s been only a day, but also shocks the reader, who may not have fully understood the extraordinary transformation that occurred during and immediately following the Revolution. Through Van Winkle’s nap and jarred awakening, Irving’s story symbolizes the awakening of America into its freedom, as well as American authors’ reliance upon folklore in conjunction with historical fact to develop an “American” literature. The nationalism promoted in Irving’s Sketchbook is not a nationalism that declares America the best country, but a nationalism that begs for and works to develop a mythos, literature, and attitude all its own. Other stories work to juxtapose America with Â�England or to disparage English criticisms of America. “English Writers on America” questions the English propensity to condemn Americans for what the English view as lowliness. Instead, Irving praises the American spirit and hospitality toward the English who “under rate a society, where there are no artificial distinctions, and where, by any chance, such individuals as themselves can rise to consequence.” Praising America as the proverbial land of opportunity, Irving seizes the opportunity to himself “rise to consequence” as the father of the American short story. Robin Gray Nicks

Ishiguro, Kazuoâ•… The Remains of the Dayâ•… (1989)

The Remains of the Day tells of Mr. Stevens, head butler of Darlington Hall, who takes a six-day motor trip to the West Country (Devon and Cornwall) of

602â•…â•… Ishiguro, Kazuo England in 1956. Stevens recounts various strands of stories during the six days: unreliable memories of his working and personal life entwined with his present trip to visit Miss Kenton, a former head housekeeper who left Darlington Hall 20 years ago to get married. Lord Darlington, his previous employer—Darlington Hall was sold to Mr. Farraday, an American, when Lord Darlington passed away—held secret conferences to reconcile the differences between the British and German heads of state after the Great War. However, unknown to Lord Darlington, the Nazis made use of his kind and gentlemanly intentions to propagate their war ambitions. In the first of the secret conferences, Stevens remained at his butler duties even though his father was dying; Stevens thought that this act could be considered as dignified. As the narrative unfolds, it is gradually revealed that Stevens loved Miss Kenton. However, he did nothing to stop her marriage because he was, again, working to prove his dignity. The novel ends with Stevens resolving to make best use of the remains of his days. Ironically, he has not learn from his mistakes and returns to Darlington Hall, determined to please Mr. Farraday. The Remains of the Day, winner of 1989’s Booker Prize, uses an unreliable narrator to talk of themes like dignity, loss, and nationalism. It was adapted into a film in 1993 that received eight Oscar nominations. Aaron Ho

Ambition in The Remains of the Day

Ambitions are often unfulfilled and thwarted in The Remains of the Day: The characters are unsatisfied and disappointed and their lives empty. Lord Darlington, a rich aristocrat, desires neither occupational fame nor financial success. Although he dabbles in politics, it is perhaps inaccurate to say that he is ambitious politically since he has no interest in holding a governmental office. Whatever political meetings he arranges, he does so in his capacity as an aristocrat. If he has an ambition, it is that he aspires to be a gentleman. After the Great War and despite fighting the Germans, he remains a great friend to Herr Bremann because Lord Darlington believes that they are both serving their respective countries—something a gentleman would never fail to do. Being forgiving and sympathetic, virtues

a gentleman should possess, Lord Darlington agonizes over the way Germans were mistreated in the Treaty of Versailles. When Herr Bremann can no longer endure the hardships and commits suicide, Lord Darlington bring about a series of meetings in attempts to end the suffering of the Germans— against his godson Mr. Cardinal’s advice. Unknown to Lord Darlington, he has been manipulated by the Nazis; he is Hitler’s most valuable pawn in England. In the end, Lord Darlington’s friends shun him and he dies a lonely death. Like Lord Darlington, William Stevens, the father of Mr. Stevens who was the head butler of Darlington Hall, came to a tragic end because of his ambition. Although it is not immediately clear (because the narration is mediated through Stevens), William, by neglecting his family and investing his energy in his career, proved that he was ambitious. William’s ambition was so ingrained into his way of thinking that even when he was 72, he still put his work before his family. For example, when Stevens inquired about William’s health, William avoided Stevens’s inquiries and diverted the subject to work. Because of his ambition, William was estranged from his son. On his deathbed, William said to Stevens twice: “I hope I’ve been a good father to you.” Stevens’s silence on the topic implies that he has not been a good father. Inculcated with William’s work ethics, Stevens was on duty and did not stay by his father’s deathbed. William’s ending is as tragic as Lord Darlington: Both die alone. Stevens, like his father, aspires to be at the top of his profession. For Stevens to achieve his dream of becoming an excellent butler, he has to have “dignity,” a term Stevens discusses throughout the novel. Stevens’s idea of “dignity” is that a butler should always put his work before his personal life and never lose control over his emotions. He believes he has achieved the acme of the butler profession, especially in two instances, his father’s death and Miss Kenton’s acceptance of Mr. Benn’s marriage proposal. On both occasions, because he had to see to the smooth running of important conferences, he ignored his inner life and sacrificed his happiness for his ambition to be a dignified butler. He did not accompany his father as William was dying. He did not stop Miss Kenton from accepting Mr. Benn’s

The Remains of the Dayâ•…â•… 603 proposal although he was deeply in love with her. (His love for her was so deep that even after 20 years of her marriage, he hoped to reconcile with her.) Ironically, at the end of the novel, after he has regretted his actions, his ambitious ways are so ingrained in him that all he can think of is how to please his new employer, Mr. Farraday. Like Stevens, Miss Kenton believed that marriage was the death of one’s career. When Lisa, a favorite maid of Miss Kenton’s, eloped with the footman, Miss Kenton confided in Stevens: “[Lisa’s] so foolish. She might have had a real career in front of her .  .  . So many young women like her throw away their chances, all for what?” Later, however, Miss Kenton, realizes that it is worth sacrificing one’s ambitions for love and marriage, a realization Stevens, blinded by his pursuit of ambition, can not reach. Hence, even when Miss Kenton taunts Stevens with Mr. Benn’s marriage proposal, Stevens does not stop her from accepting it. All four of the characters—Lord Darlington, William, Stevens, and Miss Kenton—believe that familial ties are antagonistic to the fulfillment of ambitions. (Even Lord Darlington had fallen out with his godson because the former persisted in helping the Nazis.) They choose to put their ambitions as their first priority but come to regret their decisions: They realize love and kinship are more important than their ambitions but can no longer salvage the situation. Aaron Ho

Ethics in The Remains of the Day

Kind deeds never go unpunished in The Remains of the Day. After the Great War, Lord Darlington becomes acquainted with a German friend, Herr Bremann. Despite being enemies during the war, neither Lord Darlington nor Herr Bremann bear each other any grudge because they know they were doing their duty. Due to the Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1949 after the armistice that stopped the war, Germany suffered economically. With each passing visit, Herr Bremann gets thinner. His eyes have a haunted look. Eventually, he shoots himself and his family is dispersed. Lord Darlington, a gentleman who takes badly to Herr Bremann’s suicide, desires to put an end to the injustice Germany has

suffered. He pulls several heads of state together to sympathize with the Germans. Unknown to him, he is being manipulated by the Nazis in bringing about another war. Although Lord Darlington is morally upright, he dies lonely and broken. Like Lord Darlington, William Stevens, Mr. Stevens’s father, was punished for trying to do the right thing. When three gentlemen he was driving were gossiping about his employer, he stopped the car and opened the door. Instead of threatening the trio, he kept silent. Only when they, on their own accord, promised not to badmouth William’s employer did he resume his chauffeuring duty. This incident demonstrates William’s loyalty but also his reticence and ineloquence. Yet, like Stevens, William was so responsible and loyal that he always put his duties before his personal life. Since William was Stevens’s subordinate, whenever Stevens tried to show concern for William, William would often be businesslike and cut Stevens off. However, on William’s deathbed, he regrets the moral propriety with which he has conducted his life. He says to Stevens, “I hope I’ve been a good father to you. I suppose I haven’t.” Like Lord Darlington, William led a life guided by strong moral values but died with regret. Like his father, Stevens’s ethical code of conduct does not allow him to indulge his personal feelings while he is on duty; Stevens aspires to be known for his dignity. Even though he attempts to define the word “dignity” throughout the novel, for him the meaning is ultimately tied to work alone. For him, “dignity” is the ability of a butler to be composed in trying situations. For example, Stevens did not stay by his father while he was dying because Stevens was on butler duty. Or when Miss Kenton, the housekeeper whom Stevens loved, announced that she was going to accept a marriage proposal, he did not stop her partly because he was, again, on duty. Perhaps it could have been predicted that—since he had neither family nor friends—he was likely to follow in the footsteps of Lord Darlington and his father: They had abided by a set of moral principles but ended in despair and regret. It is, however, difficult to call Stevens entirely ethical. He schemes, prevaricates, lies, and eavesdrops on private conversations. He is petty, proud, spineless, vain, and megalomaniacal. For instance,

604â•…â•… Ishiguro, Kazuo the readers are informed that the purpose of his motor trip is partly business: He wants to recruit Miss Kenton as he had made several mistakes and claimed he was short-staffed. As the novel progresses, the readers discover his aim is to see, or even to woo, Miss Kenton. His mistakes were made because he was getting old. On the trip, he meets with several naïve country people who mistake him for an aristocrat. He does not correct them. He even denies that he worked for Lord Darlington. During the trip, he reminisces about his 35 years of working for Lord Darlington. He firmly believes that the management of the household would have immense repercussions on the secret conferences Lord Darlington held. He compared his preparations the way “a general might prepare for a battle.” In one of these preparations before an important conference, he continuously checked on and tried to find fault with Miss Kenton’s work because he had a row with her previously. At this particular conference, he eavesdropped on a conversation: “I paused for a second to listen at the door  . . it is common practice amongst many professionals. That is to say, there is no subterfuge in such an action, and I for one had no intention of overhearing.” Whether the readers should trust Stevens’s explanation or not is an impossible matter to decide since he prevaricates. What Ishiguro does in the novel is refuse to moralize: Even though Stevens lied, the readers sympathize with him; and even though Stevens, William, and Lord Darlington abided by a set of moral rules, they ended up badly. Aaron Ho

Regret in The Remains of the Day

Although only one character explicitly expresses regret, most of them wish they could have done things differently. The novel starts with Mr. Stevens, the head butler of Darlington Hall, who goes on a six-day motor trip along the West Country in 1956. His aim is to recruit Miss Kenton, a former head housekeeper for Darlington Hall. Throughout the six days, he reminisces about his life from before to after World War II, culminating in a tearful confession: “[Lord Darlington] chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for

myself, I cannot even claim that .  .  . I can’t even say I made my own mistakes.” Since Stevens is a guarded narrator, this confession is especially poignant in expressing his regret: He rues his personal and working life. For instance, when Miss Kenton told Stevens of her marriage proposal, he did not stop her, even though he loved her, because of his work ethic. He refused to leave his butler duties to resolve his emotional entanglement because Lord Darlington was holding a conference of paramount consequences. In this conference, Lord Darlington was committing a grave mistake. He was being used by the Nazis to bring the British prime minister and German ambassador together for talks to advance German war plans. Stevens put such great unquestioning trust in Lord Darlington that he did nothing (within his limited powers) to warn his employer. In the end, he regrets his decisions over his love life and career. He goes on the trip to recruit Miss Kenton because he thinks her marriage is over. He lies, denying that he ever worked for Lord Darlington. However, Miss Kenton is only having a tiff with her husband and his lies about his work are exposed. What is most unfortunate about Stevens’s life is that he does not learn from his mistakes. At the end of the novel, Stevens decides that he ought to have a positive attitude and make best use of the remains of the day. Ironically, he returns to his new employer, Mr. Farraday, determined to please him. Stevens learned his work ethic from his father, William Stevens, who was also a butler. Like Stevens, his father sacrificed his personal life for his work. William was cool and unaffectionate to Stevens. They seldom talked to each other. On William’s deathbed, he said to Stevens, “I hope I’ve been a good father to you. I suppose I haven’t.” Stevens did not comfort or even reply to his father directly. By circumventing the issue entirely, Stevens tacitly agreed with his father. The sense of regret isn’t restricted to the Stevenses. Miss Kenton, too, regretted. The relationship between Stevens and Miss Kenton was like a tug-of-war: Although both parties clearly had feelings for each other, neither wanted to be the first to admit to them. In an attempt to evoke a reaction from Stevens, Miss Kenton started to go on regular

“The Lottery”â•…â•… 605 dates with Mr. Benn. When Stevens asked her about these dates, instead of getting angry for invading her privacy, she was relieved “as though she had been long awaiting an opportunity to raise the very topic.” Stevens then discontinued the informal “meetings” they had after work. Miss Kenton, in another bid to win this tug-of-war, announced that her suitor had proposed to her and she intended to agree. Stevens did not stop her. Twenty years later, when Stevens meets her on his motor trip, she explains to him the reason she left (but eventually returned to) her husband thrice: “I get to thinking about a life I might have had with you, Mr. Stevens. And I supposed that’s when I get angry over some trivial little thing [with her husband] and leave.” But she goes on to explicate that “one can’t be forever dwelling on what might have been” and returns to her husband in the end. However resolved she is to bear her past mistakes, she sometimes regrets the past so much her restraints breakdown. For example, she writes to Stevens: “The rest of my life stretches out like an emptiness before me.” The wistful and nostalgic tone of the novel reflects the regret that is felt by the characters. While Stevens, Stevens senior, and Miss Kenton are regretful, they deal with the emotion differently. Stevens senior died with regrets. Miss Kenton bravely admitted that she had regretted her decision in marriage but lived on with her decision, while Stevens continued to delude himself, to live a lie. Aaron Ho

Jackson, Shirleyâ•… “The Lottery”â•… (1948)

“The Lottery” tells of a small, nameless town’s annual summer ritual. On every June 27, the father of every family draws a slip of paper from a black box. One slip has a mark on it. When one family is selected, every member of that family then draws another slip of paper, one of which, again, is marked. When it is determined who has selected the marked paper, that individual is immediately, inexplicably, and unemotionally stoned—presumably to death— by the entire village, including their own family members. The individual stoned this particular year is Tessie Hutchinson, wife to Bill Hutchinson,

mother to Bill Jr., Nancy, and little Davy, to “whom someone gave .  .  . a few pebbles.” The story concludes with the haunting line: “↜‘It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,’ Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.” We identify with Tessie Hutchinson prior to her death because she arrives late to the ritual and then jokes with the crowd that she didn’t want to leave dishes in the sink. The oldest man in the village, aptly named Old Man Warner, admonishes those who would do away with “The Lottery.” This shows us that some of the villagers dislike the practice but continue anyhow. Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves ceremoniously lead the tradition, and there are a dozen or so other minor characters that comprise those present during the ritual. As one of the most famous American short stories of the 20th century, “The Lottery” is brief, sparsely detailed, and relies less on character development than on its shocking finale for its emotional power and unsettling insights into human behavior. David Michelson

Individual and Society in “The Lottery”

A central conflict represented in “The Lottery” is between an individual, Tessie Hutchinson, and her society—the small, nameless village. Although the village is made up of individuals, once the rationale for the lottery is shared by a large number of people, an individual like Tessie becomes helpless to protest against a practice that the collective has deemed “right” and “necessary.” However, Tessie is not simply a victim of collective cruelty; the story shows quite clearly that Tessie—even as a victim—has the same potential to do to another what is done to her. On the one hand, Tessie is clearly an individual who becomes the victim of an outdated social practice. The purpose of the lottery is to select an individual to be sacrificed, but readers are never told why this is necessary. One presumes that this ritual performed a function in the past—that is, that the society benefited from an individual’s sacrifice. Yet in the story’s modern setting of factories and post offices, it seems the functionality has vanished while only the selected individual’s burden remains. The ritual’s apparent non-functionality supports our feeling that Tessie is a victim of a practice that

606â•…â•… Jackson, Shirley should have been changed long ago. Our sympathy for Tessie as the victim is furthered by the fact that she is the only character who is individualized by the author. Tessie shows up late to the ritual, setting herself apart physically from her society and drawing our attention to her, and then jokes with the crowd about leaving dishes in the sink, which as a moment of light comedy, allows greater identification with her than with any other character. The fact that Tessie’s final words are, “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right!” serves to underscore her role as an individual victim of her society. On the other hand, Tessie’s behavior—this year and in the past—is not that of an innocent victim. “The Lottery” is an engaging story, in part because it shockingly demonstrates the power society can exert over an individual’s morality. Although we see her as a victim, it is tragically true that Tessie Hutchinson would have unthinkingly stoned any other member of her village were they to have drawn the marked slip of paper. In fact, one has to assume that she has participated willingly in the stoning of another individual each and every year. Although we feel sorry for her having been selected this year, her victimhood is complicated by the reality that, until today, she was part of the society that was enacting a cruel fate on another individual. Part of the terrible power a society can wield over an individual resides in how quickly it can make a single person do something in the name of selfpreservation that they would never do otherwise. Tessie shows this after her husband, Bill, is found holding the marked paper. Tessie exclaims “There’s Don and Eva  . . make them take their chance!” Eva is Tessie’s eldest, married daughter, and in a frantic effort to save her own life, Tessie suggests that Don and Eva should be included in her family’s drawing of lots. Even though she knows this would be against the rules of the lottery, she offers it up in a last-ditch effort to increase her own chance of survival. Thus, we see that, despite garnering our sympathy as a victim of a cruel social practice, Tessie is not without fault. Whereas, generally, being part of a society bestows benefits on individuals, “The Lottery” reverses this expected dynamic and shows how viciously selfish even a mother can become toward her own children when her life depends on it.

Whether we are to blame Tessie’s society for forcing her to protect herself in this seemingly selfish manner, or whether we are to look to Tessie as the locus of her own moral control, is the core of the moral quandary that the story asks us to engage. That Tessie embodies aspects of both victim and victimizer—in varying degrees depending on the context—demonstrates the complex potentialities of humans’ moral nature, and shows that such issues are not easily resolved even though they are recurrent problems we all face as individual agents living in a social world. David Michelson

Tradition in “The Lottery”

In many respects, the central theme of “The Lottery” is tradition. While tradition is commonly thought of positively as social glue that holds families and communities together, Shirley Jackson’s story offers a dark reminder of the dangers of following traditional practices uncritically. The opening paragraph informs us that the lottery occurs in many towns. Although “in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th” the shared time of year suggests that a popular, recurring tradition is about to unfold. To normalize the lottery as a stable convention of village life, Jackson tells us that the early summer ritual is conducted by the same man every year—Mr. Summers—who also oversees other aspects of traditional life such as “the square dances, the teen-age club, the Halloween program.” The conventional nature of the lottery is underscored further by the author’s detailed description of the items involved in the ritual, and the villagers’ specific reactions to changing them. Even though the “original paraphernalia for the lottery has been lost long ago,” the townspeople still use an old, rickety box for drawing slips of paper. The box is older than the oldest man in the village, and any discussion of making a new box is met with disapproval, as “no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.” Affinity for what the box represents is motivated, in part, by a traditional “story” that recounts how the current box contains pieces of the original box used by the founders who “settled down to make a village here.” One might

“The Lottery”â•…â•… 607 say that the box symbolizes tradition: It is based on a story, is passed down from generation to generation, changes very slowly over time, but nevertheless is believed to serve an important function within the community. Jackson conveys her cautionary message on tradition by establishing a tension between the brutality of the ritual practice and the fact that it has lost much of its specificity and functionality over the years. Indeed, “the people had done it so many times they only half-listened to directions,” and over the years certain parts of the tradition “had been allowed to lapse” and “had changed with time.” At one point, a villager named Mr. Adams mentions that “over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.” Mr. Adams’s mere mention of another town abolishing the tradition is met with howls of disapproval by the aptly named “Old Man Warner”: “Pack of crazy fools .  .  . listening to the young folks, nothing’ good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves.” Old Man Warner’s dictum—“Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon”—suggests that the ritual might once have held a functional, agricultural purpose that now seems outdated, given the modern setting of the story, complete with coal plant, bank, and post office. Like the tattered box, Old Man Warner may also represent tradition, which is continually threatened by and hostile to new ideas and attitudes, here represented by “the young folks.” At the end of the day, it seems that tradition itself is reason enough to continue the lottery; Old Man Warner reminds us: “There’s always been a lottery,” and to think of changing it, well, “Nothing but trouble in that.” Rereading the story, one cannot help but read Old Man Warner’s words ironically. We know that the lottery is “nothing but trouble,” and as there is no convincing explanation for why one villager has to die a horrific death each year, the fact that “people ain’t the way they used to be,” might actually be a positive step away from blindly following a tragic tradition. Nevertheless, the arbitrary violence that punctuates the end of the story serves to reinforce the author’s highly negative opinion of some traditions and human beings’ willingness to uphold them—even to murderous ends.

The author further expresses her condemnation of unthinking tradition with sarcasm “although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.” The troubling, ironic cruelty attributed to the followers of the tradition is Jackson’s way of condemning the violence potential latent in those who too gullibly accept custom. In so thematizing convention, the author encourages us to discuss and debate traditions in our own towns and cultures, and to imagine ways in which they might benefit from some collective rethinking. David Michelson

Violence in “The Lottery”

If we examine the literal language used to describe the events that transpire in “The Lottery,” the only act of violence—if we can even call it that—occurs at the very end of the story, when, after Tessie is selected in the annual lottery ritual, “a stone hit her on the side of the head.” Despite this simple description of violence, the story’s implied violence—a continued, brutal stoning-to-death suggested by the final line, “and then they were upon her”—has a tremendous power to unsettle even the most hardened of readers. After all, “The Lottery” concludes with the assumption that the community stones Tessie Hutchinson to death. However, it is not evident that this is in fact the case. Might they simply want to scare Tessie? Is she to be stoned until she is hurt, perhaps to teach her a lesson? Or will the stones fly until she dies? Most readers of “The Lottery” assume the worst case scenario because of a series of textual clues that slowly add up to, but in no way solidify, the conclusion that Tessie is executed. Such inferences drawn from the text, fueled by our imaginations, have made “The Lottery” one of the most enduring nonviolent representations of violence in American short fiction. The implied violence at the end of the story is made all the more terrible by two factors: first, our growing realization of having been duped by the story’s tone; and second, the means of killing Tessie is purposefully brutal. In its effect on readers, “The Lottery” sneaks up on us like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The opening pages paint a commonplace setting and the tone of the story is initially one of happy anticipation.

608â•…â•… Jacobs, Harriet Indeed, the weather is pleasant, everyone is chitchatting, and even the subtle foreshadowing of events to come—the fact that the boys are picking smooth, flat rocks and putting them in their pockets—is easily dismissed as an innocent activity that one can expect in such a town. By the middle of the story, however, it becomes clear that beneath the veneer of happy small-town life resides a discontent in the village. It is curious that Old Man Warner admonishes those who would give up “The Lottery” and Tessie becomes increasingly adamant that the lottery is not fair. Significantly, we are not told why some villages want to give up the lottery ritual, and we struggle to determine just why someone would not want to win a lottery, which usually results in something good. The possibility of violence at this point in the story is remote if not incredible; but, drawn this far into the tale, we have been at least initially primed for a modestly incongruous ending. When we learn that Tessie is to be stoned to death, and that all of the village—including her husband and children—will participate, everything we have assumed thus far is thrown into confusion. The initially happy tone, which has slowly been weakening to worry, finally erupts into horror. Our presuppositions about family life, small-town living, and good-neighborliness must struggle to reconcile how we went from sunny day to vicious stoning. This sneaky, gradual shift is accomplished, fundamentally, through a clever manipulation of tone by the author. The form of violence suggested by the end of the story serves to punctuate this tonal inconsistency with a giant exclamation point. Stoning is a cultural practice that most Americans read about only in books. It is exotic, terrible, and a brutal way to die. Jackson could have just as easily ended the story with Tessie drinking a painless, fast-acting poison. Alternatively, she could have exiled Tessie from the village or had her work for somebody else as a servant for a year. The potential conclusions were many, but the author decided upon a form of extreme violence. Critically, this is not violence for violence’s sake; Jackson is not simply trying to shock us. While the strong suggestion of stoning is literally violent, the figurative meaning of this violence gestures beyond itself in ways that literary symbolism

typically does. The violence serves to draw attention to the author’s deeper concerns about the possibly deadly costs that follow from blindly following tradition, and the impact of unfair social practices on the individual. For a story that represents no actual violence, “The Lottery” has the power to make us imagine extreme harm enacted upon an individual, thus serving to unsettle our common assumptions about the contexts in which people harm others. If we can get past the jolt of the violence that punctuates the end of the story, we can begin to examine the origins of our revulsion, and the power of fiction to elicit such feelings. David Michelson

Jacobs, Harrietâ•… Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herselfâ•… (1861)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was written in 1861 by Harriet Jacobs and is the only novel-length slave narrative by an African-American woman. Unlike other slave narrators, Harriet Jacobs did not publish the book under her own name, instead used the pseudonym Linda Brent. It details the particular brutalities faced by female slaves, particularly sexual abuse, and is unique in that it addresses a specific audience, white women in the North. As a young girl, Linda is unaware of her status as a slave; her father, Uncle William, and grandmother, Martha, protect her. As she reaches adolescence, she is constantly harassed by Dr. Flint, her owner, and Mrs. Flint, his wife. The narrative describes Dr. Flint whispering sexually explicit remarks to Linda and accosting her sexually; Mrs. Flint recognizes her husband’s sexual pursuit of Linda and becomes increasingly more abusive toward her. The only person Linda can turn to is her grandmother. When Linda wants to marry another slave, Dr. Flint denies her request; in a final attempt to be free of his torments, she decides to have two children, Ellen and Benny, with Mr. Sands, a white politician. Dr. Flint attempts to use her children to get her to submit to him; rather than run away and leave her children, Brent spends seven years hiding in the garret over her grandmother’s house. During that time, her grandmother takes care of her, and she and her fam-

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herselfâ•…â•… 609 ily write false letters to Dr. Flint in order to make him think that she is free in the North. At the end of the narrative, Linda escapes to the North with her children, and Mrs. Bruce, her employer, ultimately buys her freedom for $300. The narrative was published with a foreword by Lydia Maria Child, and it implores its imagined audience, white northern women, to use their moral influence to assist the abolitionist cause. Courtney D. Marshall

Gender in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs, an escaped slave, documents the sexual abuse she underwent while enslaved and her dramatic escape in which she spent seven years imprisoned in a garret above her grandmother’s house. Though the book is autobiographical and by definition self-affirming, Jacobs chooses to hide her identity behind the name Linda Brent, because she believes that making her story public, while imperative, is not a usual activity for a woman. Jacobs’s narrative is different from other slave narratives because it takes as its focus the issues of female enslavement and the particular trials that women face. Her story focuses on the rights of women to protect their bodies and families and to keep their children. Throughout her narrative, she describe struggles for freedom in which women play major roles. Incidents is also unique in that it addresses a specific audience—white female readers in the North—and speaks for black women still held in bondage. In the opening of Incidents, Harriet Jacobs makes it clear that she is writing her book to an audience of white northern women. At this time, women could not vote, but, according to the gender ideology of the time, they could effect moral change in their male relatives who could. Jacobs attempts to bridge the gap between free white northern women and herself by making a series of critical comparisons. She compares her experiences with first love with that of her readers, asserting the futility of the slave woman ever finding love with someone who respects her. Later, she asks her northern reader to compare her New Year’s Day with that of the slave woman who sits in her cold cabin with her children waiting to see if any or all of them will be sold away from

her the next day. According to 19th-century gender standards, motherhood was very important. Slave women were not allowed to have control over their bodies or their children, and in this example, Jacobs hopes that by appealing to her readers as mothers they will find further commonalities with her and want to effect change. Jacobs realizes that because she is a slave, she cannot experience girlish innocence, motherhood, or romantic love without being worried about the slave system taking them away; her circumstances lead her to make choices that put her at odds with gender conventions. Enslaved women and their children could be separated at any time; even if they belonged to the same owner, strict labor policies and plantation regulations severely limited the development of the mother-child relationship. In an era when women were not supposed to talk about sex, she says she was prematurely aware because of the foul words Dr. Flint begins to whisper in her ear. She prays to die in order to escape Dr. Flint’s advances, particularly after he builds a house for her in the woods and orders her to live there. The most controversial decision she makes in order to escape Dr. Flint is to become involved with Mr. Sands, a visiting white politician, and to have two children with him. She believes that Dr. Flint will be jealous of her love and finally stop harassing her; however, this is not the case. Dr. Flint threatens Linda by promising harm to her children; because she wants to protect her children from Flint, she decides to escape. Throughout the narrative, Jacobs holds herself out for judgment by her readers, but repeatedly argues that enslaved women should be held to a different moral standard. At the same time, she argues that the slave system is inherently criminal because it keeps her from fulfilling her ideas of true womanhood. Because she is a slave, she cannot have a stable marriage with a man who supports her, a home protected by law, or literacy that would allow her to read the Bible and share its teachings with her children. The institution of slavery also distorts standards of masculinity. Dr. Flint, Linda’s master, is depicted as a lascivious, godless man who pursues her for decades, and Mr. Sands reneges on his promise to free them. At the same time, her uncle and brother are punished and imprisoned for asserting their

610â•…â•… Jacobs, Harriet masculinity. After Linda gives birth to her daughter, she feels great pain because she believes that, though slavery is terrible for men and women, it is worse for women because they have their particular hardships to undergo. Today, Jacobs’s story is the most famous femaleauthored slave narrative. Its attention to the ways in which slavery corrupted gender roles and standards in the antebellum South makes it key for understanding slavery’s effects on southern society. Courtney D. Marshall

Justice in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Where can a slave find justice? According to Harriet Jacobs, not in the American legal system because this system relies upon injustice and deception. In “The Trials of Girlhood,” she asserts that women of the North can advocate for slaves even though they themselves do not live on southern soil. Laws protect the free woman from insult, violence, and even death. She writes that fiends “bear the shape of men,” differentiating her imagined audience for the callous male audience who would seek to keep her enslaved. She imagines a loving female audience that would see itself as diametrically opposite of this group. In this passage, she positions herself as a witness to slavery’s wrongs—and the female audience as a jury who must condemn slave practices. As Jacobs well knew, various laws worked to deny slaves legal justice. Though slave laws varied, basic restrictions included the inability to vote, run for office, or petition the government. Her grandmother lent $300 to her mistress, but when the mistress died and she came for repayment, the mistress’s son-in-law, Dr. Flint, tells her that the law forbids the recognition of a contract involving a black person. Jacobs notes that the Flint family did keep a candelabrum bought with the loaned money and that she is sure that a fiction has already been concocted as to its whereabouts. The beauty of the candelabrum is juxtaposed with the ugliness of the lie on which it was gained. The incident in the book strengthens Jacobs’s argument about the way that slaves are cheated. Dr. Flint also cheats Jacobs’s grandmother when he decides to sell her instead of granting her the freedom her mistress had promised her.

There is also no justice when it comes to Dr. Flint’s harassment and her eventual freedom. Jacobs appeals to divine justice as a stand-in for that of humans, while making repeated references to American ideals of law. When Dr. Flint abuses her, she says that slavery is like jail, but worse because, unlike a jail sentence, it does not end. Though his wife knows that he is abusing the narrator, the wife does not help her. Jacobs repeatedly holds her own experience out for judgment by her readers so that abolition and justice will become a reality for all enslaved people. She juxtaposes herself with her white female northern readers whose purity is protected by the home and the law. For her, womanhood is linked to questions of justice, and the differences between white and black women derive less from nature than from circumstances and legal status. Jacobs’s focus on the law and justice helps her to motivate northern women to see slavery as a national problem. By staging a literary reaction to legal realities, Jacobs’s text expands our understanding of the cultural and historical moment.

Sex in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs deploys a slave girl’s testimony along with the stories of several other women and men in order to generate multiple pictures of slavery’s treatment of sexuality. As an enslaved African-American woman, Linda and other slaves were confronted with stereotypes about their hypersexuality. At the time she lived, white slaveholders invented the mythology of Jezebel to rationalize the rampant rape and sexual abuse of slave women. In addition, southern law did not consider the rape of slave women a crime. Because of her awareness of this stereotype, she is reluctant to discuss her sexuality in the narrative. When Linda is 15, her master Dr. Flint begins to make sexual advances toward her. She uses biblical imagery and compares her awakening to sexual matters to the serpent’s tempting of Eve. Jacobs describes him as “[peopling her] mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster can think of.” Because he is her master, he has power over all areas of her life, including her sexual identity. Later in the narrative, he refuses to let her marry a fellow

Daisy Millerâ•…â•… 611 slave and hatches a plan to build a small, secluded house for her. While he tells her that moving into the house will help make her a lady, she knows that he wants to have here there so that he can have unchecked sexual access to her. It is at this point that she decides to have sex with another man in order to show him that she is not interested in him. It is interesting that their relationship in this section of the narrative is more like a romance novel, with Linda painted as the object of desire between two romantic rivals. Even though the slaveholding culture does not respect her right to sexual autonomy, the women in the narrative hold convictions about sexual propriety. As a result, Linda’s narrative oscillates between dealing with the realities of sexual abuse and the pull to be a proper 19th-century woman, chaste and pious. Linda is afraid to tell her grandmother about becoming pregnant by a white man because she feels that she will be ostracized for rejecting the values her grandmother instilled in her. These are the same values that she claims Dr. Flint tried to destroy when she was younger. At this point in the narrative, Jacobs also begs her readers not to judge her too harshly. She does not go into details about the sexual relationship she has, but she says that slave women should not be held to the same sexual standards as white women because their sexual propriety is not respected by the culture. They are taught to be duplicitous and secretive. Jacobs’s text reminds us that enslaved men are also subject to sexual abuse. In the chapter on the Fugitive Slave Law, Luke is chained to his master’s bed and partially clad (only a shirt). When his master becomes sick and too weak to beat him, he sends for the constable. The abuse Luke suffers is tinged with sexual impropriety. He thinks “Some of these freaks were of a nature too filthy to be repeated.” By including his story, Jacobs demonstrates the ways in which slave laws regulated sex and used it as a weapon. Courtney D. Marshall

James, Henryâ•… Daisy Millerâ•… (1878)

When Daisy Miller appeared in 1878, it became Henry James’s most popular story, and it still ranks

among the most-often read of his works today. In this novella, James explores the international theme, studying ways that Americans act toward each other in communities abroad. At the end of his career, between 1907 and 1909, James revised Daisy Miller and included the new version in his collected works, known as the New York Edition. This story follows Annie P. “Daisy” Miller, a young woman from New York, as she travels with her mother and her brother, Randolph, on her first European tour. Although the Millers are wealthy, other Americans in Europe consider them inferior because they do not understand the social rules of the upper class. In Vevey, a resort town in Switzerland, Daisy meets Winterbourne, a fellow American, who is surprised that she acts so independently. Studying her actions, he first labels her an innocent, uneducated girl but later considers her a calculating flirt. Winterbourne’s aunt, Mrs. Costello, refuses to meet the Millers, and his friend in Rome, Mrs. Walker, also rejects Daisy, because she will not follow social conventions. For instance, Daisy ignores Mrs. Walker’s warning by choosing to walk in public with Mr. Giovanelli, a lower-class Italian man. After the two visit the Colosseum, a site rich in symbolism, one evening, Daisy will die of malaria; Winterbourne learns of her innocence—too late. Through Daisy’s tragic story, James explores themes of community, freedom, identity, independence, individual and society, innocence and experience, rejection, responsibility, sacrifice, and social class. Melanie Brown

Freedom in Daisy Miller

Freedom emerges as a significant theme in James’s novella when Daisy, flirtatious but naïve, chafes against the social expectations of American expatriates she meets in Vevey and Rome. There, Daisy finds that middle-aged socialites and seemingly eligible bachelors conduct themselves according to social rules that she does not understand. The rules governing young women’s behavior prove more restrictive than those she grew up with in New York, where Daisy was free to move about in public and to choose with whom she spent her time. Although valued in America, her nouveau-riche

612â•…â•… James, Henry liberties offend the wealthy expatriates’ European sensibilities and result in Daisy’s downfall. In Vevey, the Millers act as freely as they did at home. Randolph, Daisy’s younger brother, traverses the first-class hotel’s grounds with a pointed walking stick that he thrusts indiscriminately into landscaping and ladies’ dresses. Mrs. Miller, having met all of Daisy’s many gentlemen callers in New York, does not realize that she should curtail her daughter’s plans to visit the castle of Chillon alone with Frederick Winterbourne, an expatriate visiting from Geneva. Daisy ignores the implication of Eugenio, her European courtier, that to do so would be improper and enjoys the attention she attracts as she leaves the hotel with Winterbourne and without a chaperone. The Millers’ actions sit better with some guests of the hotel than with others. Winterbourne struggles to be cautious when he realizes that Daisy will accompany him alone on their tryst. Having lived so long in Switzerland, he is taken by Daisy’s insistence on her freedom to do as she wishes. Mrs. Costello, Winterbourne’s aunt, however, pronounces the Millers uneducated and “horribly common.” Upon learning that the young woman intends to visit Chillon unchaperoned, Mrs. Costello declares herself “honestly shocked” at Daisy’s behavior. When she realizes that Mrs. Costello will not receive her, Daisy masks her disappointment not by conforming to the older woman’s restrictive social rules but by acting even more freely in ways that she considers “natural.” This tension between the expatriates’ expectations of social modesty and Daisy’s American sense of social freedom emerges again in Rome. There, Daisy finds a vibrant atmosphere, with gentlemen callers, dinners, and dances. Although she enjoys this scene, the socialites around her, including Mrs. Costello and Mrs. Walker, are appalled by her interactions with “third-rate Italians” and “regular Roman fortune-hunters.” One afternoon at Mrs. Walker’s apartment, Daisy announces her intention to walk to the Pincio, a public park with views of the city, to meet her most energetic suitor, Giovanelli. Winterbourne, stunned by Daisy’s willingness “to exhibit herself unattended to [the crowd’s] appreciation,” hastily agrees to accompany her. When, upon spying Giovanelli,

Winterbourne warns her to beware of him, Daisy replies coolly, “↜‘I’ve never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me or to interfere with anything I do.’↜” This credo reveals the value Daisy places on her freedom, but Mrs. Walker seeks to curtail that independence. She pursues Daisy in her carriage, but the latter refuses her invitation to drive about the Pincio: when warned that her behavior is not customary in Rome, the young American replies, “↜‘If I didn’t walk, I’d expire.’” Thus, James’s naming of Mrs. Walker proves ironic, as she attempts to control Daisy’s freedom of movement—“↜‘You should walk with your mother, dear’↜”—from the vantage point of her carriage. As Daisy increasingly alienates herself from Rome’s expatriate social set by persisting with Giovanelli, Winterbourne attempts to negotiate her shifting status among his peers. When he encounters the couple late in the evening inside the Colosseum, he feels Daisy has gone too far, both scandalizing and endangering herself by appearing unchaperoned and by courting the “Roman fever,” or malaria, of the city’s swampy lowlands. When he turns away, Daisy cries, “‘Why it was Mr. Winterbourne! He saw me and he cuts me dead!” Her observation proves prophetic. The Colosseum becomes a symbol of her death at the hands of a Roman society that seeks to inhibit her freedom, even as Daisy cannot see the dangers of a land with customs different from her own. She explains, “↜‘I was bound to see the Colosseum by moonlight—I wouldn’t have wanted to go home without that.’↜” In the end, she does not go home at all. Felled by malaria, Daisy is buried near the city wall; at her funeral, Winterbourne and Giovanelli remember her as a young woman “↜‘who did what she liked.’” Throughout the story, the names Daisy and Winterbourne evoke a struggle between vibrant innocence and frozen custom. Although Daisy dies at the end of the story, as an ironic symbol of the freedom she treasured, her grave rests among “the April daisies” that grow wild by the city wall—after the winter born. Melanie Brown

Responsibility in Daisy Miller

In Europe, Daisy Miller seeks the adventure and company of society, but she does not understand (or,

Daisy Millerâ•…â•… 613 in some cases, chooses not to follow) social conventions, finding them too constricting. Given her ignorance of how and why to follow social expectations, who is responsible for educating her about them? Is her mother, also unaware of these rules, responsible for her daughter? Does that responsibility fall to the men and women—Mrs. Costello and Mrs. Walker, Winterbourne and Mr. Giovanelli—around her in Vevey and Rome? Or, is Daisy finally responsible for herself, for her education, and, in the end, for her own death? The women in Daisy’s community, older, married, and long-time residents of Europe, cultivate society’s exacting regulations, and they shun Daisy for not conforming to them. Mrs. Costello feels responsibility and allegiance not to Daisy but to her social set. When Winterbourne realizes that his aunt will ignore the Millers, Mrs. Costello explains, “↜‘I wouldn’t if I hadn’t to, but I have to.’↜” She also feels responsible for her family, refuting Winterbourne’s generalization that all American girls—including Mrs. Costello’s granddaughters—act as innocently and as ignorantly as Daisy Miller. Conversely, Mrs. Walker feels personal responsibility, at least temporarily, for Daisy. She warns the girl that walking in public with Mr. Giovanelli is socially dangerous, but Daisy takes her walk anyhow. Mrs. Walker even follows the couple in her carriage in an “attempt to save” the girl but to no avail (46). When Daisy not only rejects her advice but also arrives with Mr. Giovanelli hours late at Mrs. Walker’s next party, the woman relinquishes any responsibility to Daisy and vows never to invite the girl to her home again. Mrs. Miller, the only other woman who might help Daisy, is as ignorant of social conventions as her daughter and thus proves helpless to guide her into society or, in the end, even to save her life. Although men offer Daisy more companionship in the novella, they do not accept responsibility for her social education. To the contrary, both Winterbourne and Mr. Giovanelli seem to enjoy Daisy’s breaking of restrictive social rules. The latter enjoys strolling about the Pincio in Rome with the girl, while Winterbourne acknowledges that he is able to take liberties with Daisy Miller that are unavailable to him when he socializes with young, single women in Geneva. A student of sorts during his months in

Geneva, he makes a study of Daisy, drawing on his and others’ observations of the girl in vain to classify her as either innocent and uncivilized or as flirtatious and even immoral. Accordingly, he is, in turn, thrilled and repelled by Daisy’s insistence on acting independently, and he wavers between defending and deriding her. But when he spies her with Mr. Giovanelli at the Colosseum late at night, he feels relieved to settle on one definition—immoral—and offers her a final piece of advice: to take medication to avoid contracting malaria. His advice comes too late; after Daisy’s funeral, Winterbourne momentarily feels some responsibility for her loss. He tells his aunt that, having lived so long in Europe, he “was booked to make a mistake” in his dealings with a young American girl. His return to Geneva suggests that knowing Daisy has left no impact on him and that his sense of responsibility is fleeting. Despite the responsibility those around her might bear, Daisy Miller is responsible, at least in part, for her actions. Even when told of social conventions, Daisy often ignores them. She seeks to shock Winterbourne by proposing to visit the castle of Chillon with him at night. “↜‘That’s all I want,’↜” she tells him, “↜‘a little fuss!’↜” She ignites more than a little fuss, however, when she rejects all advice given her. She chooses to meet Winterbourne in a crowded hotel lobby for their daytime trip to the castle, and she persists in spending time with Mr. Giovanelli, declaring herself improper for declining Mrs. Walker’s offer of a ride home from the Pincio (48). When Winterbourne offers her the last of his advice, Daisy rejects this suggestion as well, telling him she does not care if she falls ill. In the end, Daisy’s death results from her initial ignorance and eventual forthright rejection of social rules as defined by ex-patriate Americans in Europe. Given her nouveau riche status, however, Daisy could not know the rules of this rarefied society, and so responsibility falls, as well, on those characters who refused to take upon themselves her cultural education. Melanie Brown

Social Class in Daisy Miller

Daisy visits Geneva expecting to find people and social events similar to those she has experienced

614â•…â•… James, Henry back home in New York, but she discovers that her understanding of appropriate social behavior clashes with the expectations of expatriate American high society. Upon meeting Winterbourne in her first-class hotel in Vevey, she tells of dinners hosted in her honor, some of them by men, in Manhattan. Vevey offers little, in contrast to the lively landscape of New York, and Daisy expresses her disappointment in the town’s wholly absent social scene. Indeed, her compatriots in the hotel have avoided making the Millers’ acquaintance, a rejection best represented in the character of Mrs. Costello, Winterbourne’s aunt. During their first meeting, Daisy confides in Winterbourne that she hopes to know his aunt, a wealthy woman who, as Daisy learns from conversations with one of the hotel’s maids, is “very exclusive.” Mrs. Costello, however, has no intention of crossing Daisy’s path; as she tells Winterbourne, the Millers are “the sort of Americans that one does one’s duty by just ignoring.” Indeed, the Millers hail from a rising class of newly rich Americans, their wealth so newfound that Daisy’s father must forego travelling to Europe in order to continue making money to finance his family’s tour. The Millers’ nouveau riche status contrasts sharply with the wealth of the socialites they meet abroad, all of whom experience the freedom of leisure bought by fortunes inherited rather than earned. Later in the novella, Mrs. Costello makes a condescending reference to the source of the Millers’ income when, in speaking to Winterbourne, she pretends to forget Daisy’s name, calling her instead Miss Baker and Miss Chandler before finally settling on Miss Miller. Emphasizing the labor-intensive jobs of baker, candlestick maker, and mill operator, Mrs. Costello here delivers a veiled critique of the Millers’ reliance on business. Winterbourne acknowledges his aunt’s dismissal of Daisy in Vevey, where he “at once recognised [sic] from her tone that Miss Daisy Miller’s place in the social scale was low.” Daisy seems to confirm her status on her trip to the castle of Chillon. Visiting the castle with Winterbourne and without a chaperone, Daisy does not practice discretion, choosing to meet her companion in the crowded hotel lobby where sundry guests and

servants watch her come down the stairs and leave unattended with a man. During their trip, Winterbourne feels both anxious and exhilarated about breaking the social code, but Daisy’s straightforward demeanor and lack of self-consciousness surprises him. For Daisy, this excursion provides a delightful diversion from the otherwise dull social atmosphere of the hotel, where her desire for society goes unmet due to inexplicable—from her perspective—class boundaries. In Rome, Daisy spends much time with Giovanelli, an Italian with a reputation among elitists, such as Mrs. Costello and Winterbourne’s friend, Mrs. Walker, for courting American heiresses in search of fortune. Daisy, however, enjoys the lively company of Giovanelli and his social circle, especially after her relatively quiet weeks at Vevey. When Daisy asks Winterbourne to accompany her to the Pincio to meet Giovanelli, the American sees him for the first time and characterizes him in class terms as “a music-master or a penny-a-liner or a third-rate artist,” all denigrating descriptions of the artist of no account who works for pay. More astounding to Winterbourne and to his social set is Daisy’s persistent interest in Giovanelli; Winterbourne is appalled that Daisy does not realize the man’s low status. Mrs. Walker expresses similar indignation when Daisy rejects an effort to salvage the girl’s reputation. In an effort to clarify for Daisy the upper-class view of her behavior, Mrs. Walker travels to the Pincio in her carriage to warn the girl against being reckless and unreasonable, but Daisy waves off the carriage to continue her walk with Giovanelli. She pays dearly, twice, for rejecting the tenets of high society. First, a few days later, at Mrs. Walker’s party, the hostess turns her back on Daisy, a public and humiliating sign that the girl is no longer welcome in Mrs. Walker’s company. Second, a few weeks later, Daisy again spurns the advice of those around her in favor of visiting the Colosseum by moonlight, only to contract a fatal bout of malaria. At her graveside, Giovanelli tells Winterbourne that, despite appearances and upper-class assumptions, Daisy would never have married him, leaving Winterbourne to feel that he had misjudged her. Melanie Brown

The Portrait of a Ladyâ•…â•… 615

James, Henryâ•… The Portrait of a Ladyâ•… (1882)

The Portrait of a Lady is the story of Isabel Archer, a girl from Albany who visits her uncle’s family in Europe and eventually marries a wealthy compatriot. After her arrival in 1871, Isabel soon receives two marriage proposals: one from Lord Warburton, a neighboring estate-owner, the other from Caspar Goodwood, a businessman she has met in America. Isabel turns down both suitors because she does not want to commit herself yet. Some time later, in Italy, her friend Madame Merle introduces her to Gilbert Osmond, who is generally regarded as a cold-blooded loafer, and to everyone’s surprise she accepts his marriage proposal. The last part of the novel opens in 1876, three years after their marriage. In the meantime, Isabel has found out that Osmond was interested only in her money; he is treating her coldly and tyrannically. The turning point of the novel occurs when Isabel learns that Osmond’s daughter, Pansy, is actually Madame Merle’s child, and that the former lovers plotted her marriage to provide financially for Pansy’s future. Against her husband’s will, Isabel goes to England, where the novel ends on an equivocal note: Isabel turns down Goodwood once more and seems to have decided on returning to her husband, but her exact plans remain unclear. Written in an elegant, realistic style, The Portrait is an initiation story with the “international theme” typical for James: a likable but naïve American is confronted with the complicated world of upper-class Europe. Timo Müller

Ambition in The Portrait of a Lady

Ambition is mostly considered a bad quality in the James universe. It is often associated with narrowmindedness, egotism, and intrigue. In many of James’s works, but especially in The Portrait of a Lady and in his later novels The Wings of the Dove (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904), the plot is driven forward by the ambitious scheming of one of the main characters. This character always has villainous traits, and none more so than Gilbert Osmond, who is one of the greatest villains in 19th-century fiction. His ambition is powerful and all-encompassing. Of rather obscure origins himself, he wants to rise in

the social hierarchy of expatriate Italy by connecting himself with wealthy and/or respected people. He has forced his sister into an unhappy marriage with a useless and disloyal Italian count just to associate his family with the aristocracy. He marries Isabel for her money alone, and in the last part of the novel is bent on pandering his daughter to Warburton (who is both wealthy and an aristocrat) even though Warburton is still interested in Isabel, not in Pansy. The scheme is revealing in several respects: Osmond not only encourages a former suitor’s interest in his wife, but also is willing to have this suitor around on a permanent basis and to pander his own daughter to a man who clearly doesn’t love her. Osmond treats people like he treats his artifacts and pictures, as objects to be acquired and showcased in pursuit of his societal ambition. He expects his entire family to behave perfectly at all times in order to maintain an aristocratic appearance. His ruthless demands transform both Pansy and Isabel into subdued, anxious, and altogether unhappy servants to Osmond’s ambition. Osmond does not shy away from using the people closest to him in his intrigues. He knows that Madame Merle is anxious for her daughter’s future, so he has her befriend wealthy girls like Isabel and introduce them to him. Later on, he tries the same trick with Isabel herself when he orders her to encourage Warburton’s interest in Pansy. Unlike Madame Merle, Isabel refuses to make other people pay for her mistakes. Instead of propagating the determinism typical of naturalist fiction, James here indicates that the individual can overcome his or her limitations and weaknesses. The same principle is at work at the very end of the novel, when Isabel refuses Goodwood’s offer of an easy way out and returns to Italy to help Pansy struggle against Osmond’s crushing ambition. This is not to say that Isabel’s own ambitions, which she voices early in the novel, are regarded altogether uncritically. When Isabel comes to Europe to be “as happy as possible,” she comes across as rather selfish and superficial herself. She refuses to listen to her friends’ advice when she sees her pursuit of happiness endangered, and it is this obtuse ambitiousness that helps Osmond entrap her in his marriage scheme. The other two contestants for Isabel’s hand are also ambitious in a questionable way.

616â•…â•… James, Henry If Goodwood was less focused on his business, for instance, he might have a better chance of winning Isabel’s hand. But as it is, his overpowering ambition prevents him from truly understanding Isabel and her motives. Warburton, on the other hand, is really not ambitious at all but pretends to be in order to make himself more interesting and to relieve the boredom of his aristocratic lifestyle. He advocates radical socialist views but never follows them up in practice, which makes him appear insincere and discourages Isabel—and us, the readers—from taking him seriously. However critically they are regarded, the ambitions of Isabel, Goodwood, and Warburton are still depicted in a much more sympathetic way than the ambitions of Osmond. All the other characters are ambitious up to a certain point; when they realize that they are hurting others they always put their ambitions in second place. In contrast, Osmond is never willing to put his ambitions in second place; for him, his ambition is always more important than the happiness of those around him. Timo Müller

Freedom in The Portrait of a Lady

Isabel’s loss of her freedom is one of the central themes of The Portrait of a Lady. Having been raised by an independent-minded father, she comes to Europe to move freely and have new experiences. Her attitude is expressed in a key passage early in the novel, when Isabel tells her aunt that she wants “to know the things one shouldn’t do” because she wants to have the choice to do them or not. She turns down two suitors so that she can enjoy her freedom and travel. Ultimately, she makes the wrong choice. She marries Osmond and loses not only the ability to go where she wishes but her freedom of mind as well. Osmond is a master psychologist and manipulator. In his world there is no freedom for anyone. Everything—his wife and daughter, just as his house, garden, furniture, clothes, and so on— must conform to social expectations and be supervised at all times to keep up a perfect appearance. Osmond has perfect control even over his speech and can mimic anyone and he expects the same of everyone around him. Madame Merle has already become very good at it, and when we encounter Isabel some years into her marriage, she has lost her

refreshing, cheerful manner because she is afraid to displease her husband. Pansy, too, is unusually quiet and self-controlled: Osmond sent her to a convent for years in order to train her. This environment is the exact opposite of Isabel’s untroubled childhood. Instead of preserving her freedom, she has become imprisoned in body and mind. Obviously, Isabel’s notion of freedom has been a mistaken one. James suggests that there can be no such thing as complete freedom: We cannot just do what we want but have to be considerate of those around us. This sensitivity is the only way to find out who wishes us well and who doesn’t. Freedom must always be a reflected freedom. It presupposes a knowledge of the limits society sets us, otherwise it is just naiveté. Isabel is a naïve person when she comes to Europe. She has been brought up on stories and abstract ideas. While she has read a lot of books, she has not learned how to read people, as she herself puts it in retrospect. Her judgment is severely limited, so that she is much less free in her choices than she thinks she is. Even at the beginning of the novel, Isabel is less self-reliant than she appears. She is influenced by a number of people, many of whom have one-sided or naïve ideas of freedom. Her father left her to herself for most of her childhood, which certainly gave her a lot of freedom but equipped her with little knowledge of the adult world. In England, she encounters Lord Warburton, whose freedom is an irresponsible one: He claims to support reforms for the benefit of the working class, but really he is content to enjoy his wealth and keep out of politics. The most momentous mistake is Ralph Touchett’s. For Ralph, freedom requires financial independence. He persuades his dying father to leave Isabel a fortune so that she can try out everything that interests her. It turns out, however, that her wealth makes Isabel above all a target for fortune-hunters like Osmond; since she has never learned to judge people she is easy prey. Basically, Ralph’s notion of freedom rests on the same error as Isabel’s: He thinks that once you have enough money, you can do what you want, regardless of other people. But one of the things we learn from the novel is that there is no such thing as absolute independence. Human beings are “social animals,” and in modern society there are too many

The Portrait of a Ladyâ•…â•… 617 social ties and unspoken expectations for anyone to enjoy complete freedom. However, James is no bleak pessimist. At the end of the novel, Isabel has acquired the kind of knowledge and experience that she needs to assert herself. She rises above her husband’s control when she decides to visit Ralph in England, and she takes another step forward when she decides to go back to Italy instead of escaping to America with Goodwood. Under her guidance, Pansy will be able to learn all the things that Isabel learned too late. If Isabel has lost her freedom, she will at least secure a better fate for her stepdaughter. Timo Müller

Innocence and Experience in The Portrait of a Lady

For Isabel Archer, the journey from America to Europe is a journey from innocence to experience. Back in Albany, she spent most of her time in her cozy, protected home reading novels and philosophy books. In Europe, on the other hand, she has to manage her own life, and it turns out that her innocent youth has hardly prepared her for that task. She goes to Europe because she finds it “picturesque”— one of her favorite words—and expects to see some castles with real ghosts in them. When she has to deal with European high society, its unspoken codes and its complicated structure, she is completely off her guard. Over and over again, she forms wrong opinions of people she meets and cannot distinguish false friends from real friends. She turns down the advice of her experienced, well-meaning aunt but accepts the advice of Serena Merle, who is dishonest and interested only in her own gain. Instead of judging people by what they say and do, she tends to project her own naïve ideas on them: She is fascinated by Madame Merle, who plays the piano and talks about interesting things, whereas the sound advice of her aunt and cousin sounds slightly boring to her. Calculating and experienced, Osmond knows how to make use of Isabel’s lack of judgment. He has no personality of his own but plays along with Isabel’s romantic ideas, so that he appears to her as an ideal guide and companion: She “waited, with a certain unuttered contentedness, to have her movements directed; she liked Mr. Osmond’s talk, his

company; she felt that she was being entertained.” Isabel’s naïve innocence leads her to make the great mistake of her life. It is only after her marriage to Osmond that she realizes how dull, dishonest, and incapable he really is. When she finds out about the love affair between Osmond and Madame Merle, Isabel turns away from her husband and begins to judge her situation more objectively. She sheds all the innocent, romantic ideas of her childhood and begins to behave as an adult rather than as Osmond’s immature childwife. This can best be seen in her relation to Pansy: Up to this point, Isabel has been Pansy’s playmate rather than her stepmother, but now she assumes responsibility for the child. When Osmond wants to marry Pansy to Lord Warburton, Isabel’s former suitor who still cares more for her than for Pansy, Isabel prevents the scheme through her passive resistance; when Osmond reacts by sending Pansy to a convent, Isabel visits her and promises to protect her as best she can. This might be one reason why Isabel decides to go back to Italy in the end: She wants to protect her innocent stepdaughter from the selfish scheming of Osmond and Madame Merle, just as she would have needed protection herself some years earlier, when she fell for their plot and married Osmond. The opposition of innocence and experience is related throughout the novel to the opposition of America and Europe. The Americans who come to Europe (Isabel and her friend Henrietta) are portrayed as somewhat naïve but innocent in a positive sense: They are honest, outspoken, friendly, and sociable. The Europeans appear more experienced in comparison. They are more careful and selfcontrolled, which in some cases means that they can deceive, manipulate, and take advantage of others, but also that they are more agreeable and better at judging people. Basically, there are three types of Europeans in the novel: native Europeans who embody the rich culture and history of the continent (Lord Warburton), Americans who have moved to Europe and have preserved their innocence to some extent (the Touchett family), and Americans who have assimilated to Europe and become corrupted and false as a result (Osmond, Madame Merle). Instead of presenting a one-sided, stereotypical

618â•…â•… James, Henry Â� picture of Americans and Europeans, James shows that there are different ways of dealing with innocence and experience, and that one needs to develop one’s own way in order to lead a successful life. Isabel’s mysterious decision to go back to her husband at the end of the novel also illustrates this assumption: Instead of dodging responsibility once again, she decides to face the consequences of her mistake and thus finally grows into mature dignity. Timo Müller

James, Henryâ•… The Turn of the Screwâ•… (1898)

On January 5, 1895, Henry James entered the St. James Theatre in London as the final curtain came down on the opening night of his play Guy Domville. Already depressed because he was having trouble successfully publishing his fiction, he moved to the stage in answer to the audience’s call for the author; he was jeered. Despite James’s humiliation, the play ran for several weeks. In the psychological crucible of the following months, James wrote the first notes for The Turn of the Screw. In contrast to the complete vulnerability James experienced on the stage of Guy Domville, James creates a web of ambiguity in this terrifying tale that is anchored in three realities: the actual, the psychological, and the supernatural. In The Turn of the Screw, the narrator’s acquaintance, Douglas, shares the manuscript of a friend of his sister. The text recounts the young woman’s travails after she is interviewed and hired as governess to an orphaned brother and sister who live in an isolated country house with Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper. The governess comes to learn that her predecessor, Miss Jessel, and groundskeeper, Peter Quint, died under mysterious circumstances. Mrs. Grose appears to insinuate that the couple had had a tryst, and that they were corrupting influences on the children. The crux of the plot is the governess’s attempt to save the children from these “ghosts.” In the end, she fails. The simplest way to read the tale is as a ghost story, a fiction type to which James was no stranger. The early “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes” (1867) and the late “The Jolly Corner” (1908) are

examples of his mastery of this genre. The Turn of the Screw, however, is different in that it may be read as a psychological thriller filled with Freudian subtext and sexual innuendo, heightened by the characters’ circumstances of isolation. A classic struggle between good and evil or innocence and experience, critics agree that James’s story is among the first “modern” tales in English. Ellen Rosenberg

Innocence and Experience in The Turn of the Screw

Henry James regularly wrote fiction driven by the themes of innocence and experience. A New Yorker, born in 1843, he frequently traveled to Europe with his wealthy family, attending a variety of European schools, being tutored at home, and visiting the monuments of the Old World. In between trips, James was schooled in America. The differences that he observed between the two worlds developed into a view that Americans were essentially naïve, unsophisticated, and inexperienced, while Europeans were cultured, knowledgeable, and experienced, though sometimes to the point of dissipation. As a young man, James returned to Europe and eventually chose to live in England for the rest of his life. His life as an American abroad influenced his writing, and the question of innocence and experience often takes place on the societal level. In The Turn of the Screw, we have characters whose passage into knowledge may be viewed as a maturational necessity: Sooner or later, we all grow up. The book takes place in America, but it is allied to James’s transatlantic novels in which individuals of narrow experience come to know a wider world that operates under exacting social laws. This thematic tie comes to us through the governess, who is herself naïve at the beginning of the story and parallels American innocents in James’s other works. She comes from a poor, religious, but educated background and is too young to have been initiated into love. She finds herself in the resplendent setting of Bly, in the employ of the wealthy, decadent, and impatient bachelor who sparks her passions. This emotional ember marks the beginning of her passage out of innocence. Similarly, Mrs. Grose comes

The Turn of the Screwâ•…â•… 619 from a plainer background, but she is the salt of the earth and knows her place in society. She also passes from innocence to experience. Though the guardian and children of Bly are Americans of privilege, they parallel James’s ‘civilized’ Europeans. Thus, they have a taint of corruption due to their class, and it is not surprising that the children may be acquainted with wickedness. Flora and Miles are different from James’s typical innocents. They are not strangers to a culture who might commit a social error; instead, they are so “beautiful,” “lovely,” “angelic,” “with charming little ‘table manners’↜” that even Miles’s unnamed actions at school are minimized by the governess and Mrs. Grose as the healthy “naughtiness” of a little boy. What, then, is the wickedness or corruption of which they are accused? If the story is read as supernatural, then Quint and Miss Jessel are ghosts who were evildoers in their lives. The governess believes the children see the apparitions, although they never say they do. She thinks they have been initiated into dangerous, probably sexual, knowledge. In chapter 6, Flora and the governess are sitting at the lakeside. Suddenly, the governess sees on the opposite bank, “a figure of . . . horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful.” Flora’s back is to the figure, and she is sticking a twig into a piece of wood with a hole in it, perhaps to make a toy boat. The governess watches her “attempting to tighten” the twig into place. The governess says she “apprehended” what Flora was doing, but does not specify. Is Flora simply a child at play, or is she making a boat as a sign that she wants to join Miss Jessel in death? Perhaps her actions illustrate sexual intercourse. In the latter two choices, the child is damaged if not damned, which is why the governess believes she must save Flora from crossing over to the other side. Later, after a second appearance of Miss Jessel, Flora denies ever having seen her, turns in terror of the present governess, holds onto Mrs. Grose for protection, and soon falls ill. When the housekeeper reports to the governess the next day, she says, “From that child—horrors! . . . she says things—!” The governess feels justified in her suspicions. Flora must be taken away from Bly. Perhaps Flora will recover, but she will not be innocent of the events that have

transpired. The governess is now alone in the house with Miles. In the final scene, the governess confronts Miles about stealing her letter to the guardian about Miles’s dismissal and Flora’s derangement. Quint appears at the window, as if he has come to draw Miles to his death. The governess blocks Miles’s view of the window, forces him to admit stealing the letter, and then presses him to reveal what he did at school. He tells her he has said things to other children that he liked. He realizes that she is preventing him from seeing the window. He asks if Miss Jessel is there. The governess tells him it is Quint. Miles struggles to see the valet, seems to fall, and the governess grabs him, as if to protect his soul from being taken by Quint. When she rises, Miles is dead, “his little heart dispossessed.” The last word is ambiguous: Either the governess has won Miles’s soul and he is no longer possessed by a demon or, literally, his heart has simply stopped and she has scared an innocent to death. If the story is read as a psychological tale, then the children are innocent from beginning to end. Obsessed with the tryst between Miss Jessel and Quint, stimulated by her infatuation for the guardian, the mad governess is the source of evil who sees sexual meaning in all the acts of the children. In the end, she destroys the two to keep them from becoming normal, sexualized adults. Ellen Rosenberg

Isolation in The Turn of the Screw

The theme of isolation manifests itself throughout The Turn of the Screw. The setting of the story is a lonely countryside house, far from neighboring homes. While the governess’s first impression of Bly is of an open, fresh-looking estate with lawns, bright flowers, and twittering birds, within a day she feels fearful of its remoteness and size. By the end of the first chapter, she thinks that the little household is “as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship.” She senses something ominous stirring in the breath of the house, and is soon keeping a written account of “what was hideous at Bly,” which she now experiences as a great emptiness. If the house is physically isolated, it is also cut off from civilization in time as well; the books in the library are a century old.

620â•…â•… James, Henry The characters, too, are marked by varying degrees of isolation. The governess comes into a position of authority at this family home, but it is not her home and there is almost no family intimacy. The children are orphaned and consigned as wards to a man who has no patience to take care of them. Her employment as the children’s governess puts her into a position like that of a mother, but without the ties and tender bond of maternity. She is a hired worker, a fact that forever isolates her from the children. While the governess has suppressed feelings of attraction for the children’s young, handsome bachelor guardian who hired her, she is, in fact, nothing to him. A condition of her employment is that she never have contact with him, that she relieve him entirely of the unwanted burden of caring for his orphaned niece and nephew. So while James tempts us by dangling an eligible bachelor, a loner, who could ostensibly be the children’s new father and the governess’s helpmeet, he sets narrative restrictions that prohibit those attachments and relationships from being formed. The other characters are isolated in different ways. At the moment the governess arrives, Flora has been alone with Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper. Miles has been separated from Flora and placed at a private school, although he has just been expelled. When he returns to Bly, the children pair off, and we learn by mid-tale that the governess suspects that they are not engaging merely in childish activities, such as reading to one another, but are talking of the apparitions and conniving somehow to position themselves to be corrupted by the two evil spirits. The governess, struggling with a rising sense of alarm at dangers unnamed, compensates for her conditions of near-total estrangement from real connections by throwing herself into a too-adoring care for Flora and Miles. From the children’s perspective, this clutching and sobbing young stranger must have been a frightening and smothering presence. The theme of isolation works on the level of language and image as well. James is careful to word Mrs. Grose’s—and the children’s—responses to the governess in such a way that the reader can perceive that the governess is imagining their thoughts. Speaking of the children, the governess says to Mrs. Grose,

“They’re not mine—they’re not ours. They’re his and they’re hers.” “Quint’s and that woman’s?” “Quint’s and that woman’s. They want to get them . . . .” “But for what?” “For the love of all the evil. . . . to keep up the work of demons. . . .” “Laws!” said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was homely, but it revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, in the bad time—for there had been worse even than this!—must have occurred.” The governess reads agreement into Mrs. Grose’s response; but “Laws!” (meaning “Lordy”) could just as easily be Mrs. Grose’s shock at the governess’s madness. This disconnection of language reinforces the isolation underlying the characters’ experiences. The governess’s state of isolation plays upon her mind, feeding her anxieties and desire for connection. The governess’s visions are solely hers. Of course, James’s point is to pose the question of whether the ghosts are real or specters that arise from the governess’s agitated psyche. Trapped in her own nightmare, seeking reassurance where none exists, the governess manages to alienate—and frighten—both Flora and Mrs. Grose. As they prepare to abandon Bly under the governess’s belief that they are under siege by demons seeking to control the children, the ultimate state of isolation is achieved. To cut Quint off from possessing Miles, the governess cuts Miles off from life and cuts off the vestiges of connection to the household and her position. We have learned from Douglas in the frame story that, although the governess continued to find other similar work arrangements, she will finally die without ever really belonging anywhere or to anyone. Ellen Rosenberg

Sexuality in The Turn of the Screw

Henry James’s works embody the Victorian perspective, even while The Turn of the Screw is clearly modern in its psychological approach. This tale especially reflects contradictory sets of ideas about sexuality, sensuality, and eroticism that shaped social attitudes

The Turn of the Screwâ•…â•… 621 while Victoria was queen of England (1837–1901). The Victorians insisted upon public morality, modest dress, and restrained social behavior guided by strict etiquette, while also valuing physical appearance and beauty. This prim code drove normal impulses underground and intensified curiosity, sometimes infusing the commonplace with unconscious desires. The sexuality that is never explicitly addressed in the tale actually works to increase its presence in the unconscious minds of the characters. It creates a wild emotional underground that pulses with love, sexual awakening, sexual desire, sensuality, eroticism and the dangers that these impulses represent. The first hint of these themes comes in the little story that frames the governess’s tale. The author guesses that the governess was in love, and Douglas affirms it, but tells the author that neither he nor the governess ever spoke of it. The theme of unspoken love gets top billing with the theme of horror: Douglas was in love with the governess; the governess was in love with the handsome guardian of the children. She experienced a sexual awakening in her two limited interviews with the guardian, much as Miles probably experienced a sexual awakening at school. The guardian employs the governess to go to Bly, his country estate, but insists that she must never contact him. She promises to follow that instruction, and when he takes her hand at the end of the interview, she feels “rewarded.” Off she goes to Bly, vibrating with an awakening sensuality that is doomed never to be spoken of, no less fulfilled. The unnamed governess redirects the sexual interest aroused by her employer by focusing on loving and, in her word, “possessing the children.” A byproduct of her erotic arousal, however, is that, shortly after arriving at Bly, she begins to see “apparitions.” Often these sightings occur just when the governess is dreaming of the gentleman who had hired her. The “ghosts” of the story, then, can be understood as representations of the governess’s own guilty conscience. In a prim Victorian world, sex must be repressed, but the energy has to go somewhere. At Bly, the governess’s only adult companion is the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, who is taking care of the guardian’s little niece, Flora. The child, whose name means “flower,” is described as being pure, and

she represents a pre-sexual openness to the world around her. Ominously, we learn that there had been a previous young and beautiful governess, Miss Jessel, whom the governess believes had tried to corrupt Flora. Jessel had gone away, ostensibly for a holiday, and then she died. So, too, the valet, Peter Quint (whose two names suggest masculine and feminine sexual parts) has died mysteriously. Mrs. Grose insinuates that the two had been lovers. Flora’s brother Miles is about to return home permanently because he has been expelled from school for reasons unknown. The housekeeper and the governess speculate that he did or said something that posed a threat to the other students. What could a “lovely” 10-year-old boy, on the brink of adolescence, have done? The implication is that something unclean transpired between Quint and Miles, and Miles has carried this corruption into his behavior at school. Mrs. Grose, moreover, later confirms that Miles had gone off with Quint alone for many hours at a time, and when questioned about it, he denied having been with Quint. The governess concludes that Miles was engaged in an “intercourse” that he was concealing. While intercourse can mean something as simple as communication, the double entendre (a word that can be understood in at least two ways, one of which is sexual) feeds the governess’s imagination. She never says, but seems to believe, that Miles has said or done something of a sexual nature. In her sexualized maternal role, the governess feels it is her charge to save the children from these “ghosts,” which are actually the governess’s own sexually “wound up” thinking. She surmises that Jessel became pregnant by Quint and probably died in childbirth. Later, Quint died from a fall (with the suggestion that he might have been murdered), but not before Miss Jessel tried to initiate Flora or Quint had corrupted Miles. The children never admit to “seeing” the ghosts. In one instance, Flora stares off into the distance. The governess decides that she must be seeing Miss Jessel, come back to get or sexualize Flora. The governess’s hysteria can be tracked by a literal reading of her sentences. She projects her own sensual and sexual fears onto the household, finishing their sentences with her own erotic conclusions.

622â•…â•… Jefferson, Thomas Close examination of the language shows that none of the governess’s suppositions about what is happening are ever confirmed by another character; nothing sexual has happened, except in the governess’s mind. We can imagine Miles’s terror at the end of the tale as the governess (believing herself to be saving Miles from Quint), hurls herself onto him. No wonder his heart stopped. Ellen Rosenberg

Jefferson, Thomasâ•… Notes on the State of Virginiaâ•… (1784)

Thomas Jefferson composed his Notes as a way of explaining to Europe that America is a vibrant new country and introducing the facts about the state of Virginia. He uses copious figures, illustrations, and listings to show that he does not present information based on pure observation; rather, he is a man of science and supports his statements with evidence. Eventually, his Notes will help demystify some false accounts about this side of the Atlantic. This trait of relying on facts becomes the benchmark of the Notes. In fact, to make his descriptions convincing, Jefferson begins with particularly detailed records about Virginia. He is interested in defining boundaries, revealing minute details of natural objects, and eventually classifying things. For example, he relies on facts to refute notions rumored in Europe that animals on this side of the Atlantic are usually smaller and lighter. The Notes also serves as an ethnographical account. Jefferson is conscious of the race issue of the time, and he tries to give a vivid, though somewhat prejudiced, depiction of the Native Americans and the African slaves. At the same time, he also tries to present a slightly balanced view about them, since the American people are also regarded as “primitive” by European standards. The Notes, therefore, exceeds its original purpose of mere question and answer. In fact, it becomes a fascinating record of natural history in the 18th century. Huang-hua Chen

Nature in Notes on the State of Virginia

For Jefferson, nature has many aspects. He begins the Notes with descriptions of Virginia, ranging

from her natural resources to various geographical features and records. In part to answer Mr. Marbois’s 22 queries about the present state of America, Jefferson emphasizes America’s spectacular scenes and enormous amount of natural treasures throughout the Notes in order to denounce the common notion that the colonies are just an extension of European culture and that nothing here is particularly different from, or may be inferior to, Europe. One can quickly catch a glimpse of how Jefferson sets out to demystify false impressions of America. Virginia, according to him, is “one third larger than the islands of Great Britain and Ireland.” Even her natural resources are far greater than that of Europe. In query six, he denies count de Buffon’s idea that animals in the new world are “smaller,” of “few species,” and have often “degenerated” due to the hotter and more humid weather. Jefferson counters Buffon’s argument by including various tables that compare the differences between the old world and the new world. As it turns out, almost all the animals in the new world are heavier and of more varieties. He suggests that nature has a way of balance with every living being, and that “below these limits they cannot fall, nor rise above them.” He goes on to say that “what intermediate station they shall take” may depend on some external factors, but “the manna of heaven would never raise the Mouse to the bulk of the Mammoth.” Such is the view on nature that Jefferson generally adopts. For him, nature is almost comparable to a kind of deity, and it will follow the rules of reason and balance. That is why, when asked of the extinction of the mammoth, he vehemently denies such a possibility. He states, “such is the economy of nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct.” In other words, nature is like a perfect equation behind every living being, always operating in harmony, and it is impossible to suppose an unreasonable nature that is subject to any weakness. Yet, nature is not always as predictable as he would like. Jefferson admits that “nature has hidden from us” her works. All one can do is resort to “experience” if necessary. This therefore results in two different kinds of attitude toward nature. The shell fossils found in the mountains of Virginia, for

Notes on the State of Virginiaâ•…â•… 623 example, can be explained by his careful scientific explanations, his “experiences,” so to speak. In other words, nature is still well within the boundary of reason and harmony. At the same time, in the possibility of a “great convulsion of nature” that heaves the bed of the ocean to the heights of the Andes, Jefferson hesitates to make such an inference. For him, nature is harmonious and well-balanced, and for such radical change to take place is utterly unthinkable. Perhaps a good example of the contradictory attitudes toward nature can be seen from his experience on a natural bridge, an incident he mentions in query five. He describes the bridge as “the most sublime of Nature’s works.” The sublime is an interesting concept that is brought up in the 18th century. “Sublime” usually indicates fear and horror, a feeling or a phenomenon too great to be named. Jefferson tells us that “you involuntarily fall on your hands and feet, creep to the parapet and peep over it. Looking down from this height, gave me a violent head ache.” Yet, when he is below it, he changes his tone: “so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and spring as it were up to heaven.” As much as he wants to acknowledge the mystery of nature’s many faces, he balances them with a reserved picture of elegance and beauty. Jefferson seems to urge us to step away from the violent side of nature and focus more on its “reasonable” and “pleasant” side. He seems to warn us that what rushes into our senses—nature’s sublime—is not necessarily the essence of nature; and if we are able to look further and pay more attention, we might just find the true nature of nature. Huang-hua Chen

Race in Notes on the State of Virginia

In a response to Buffon’s claim that the aboriginal people of North America are generally inferior to the people living in Europe, both in mind and body, Thomas Jefferson defends the Indians with scientific proofs. To Buffon, because of the warmer climate on this side of the Atlantic, Native Americans are feeble, of small stature, and lack character. After commenting on their physical attributes, he goes on to suggest that they have no community, no morality, no love, and only harsh rule. Buffon’s opinion is not uncommon to an 18th-century European, but

it is also fabrication at best. Jefferson refutes these opinions, and he backs himself by using his own experiences with Native Americans. In query six, he continues to present evidence where Native Americans are not that different from the white settlers of the time. He mentions that their affections are genuine, and they are honorable and brave in battle. He even wonders at his neighboring Indian monuments and produces a detailed account of them in query 11. What may be of curiosity to us, though, is the way in which Jefferson ends that particular section of the query. Having established his argument, he then diverges to talk about how it is incorrect to assume that the Indians lack intelligence. Given enough time and the use of letters, the Indians might be able to produce great works of literature as well. He refutes Buffon’s idea that the western side of the Atlantic can produce only inferior products, because, with only a little time, America has produced Washington and Franklin and the like. It is here that one starts to detect the hidden agenda of Jefferson’s seeming racial equality, because both Native Americans and white settlers are susceptible to the constant scrutiny and doubt of the Europeans. In other words, by identifying with Native Americans, Jefferson is also making a case for the capability of the emergent American culture. Jefferson is not alone in the 18th century. Rousseau, for example, has a similar idea of “noble savages,” which suggests that because of the lack of a contaminating civilization, they are without pretense and corruption. Using this notion, Jefferson tries to counter the prejudices of the old monarchial Europe. However, Jefferson also has prejudices of his own, and again they partially derive from the 18thcentury world view. While he talks of the emancipation of African-American slaves, he would also suggest that the best way to achieve it is through re-allotting them elsewhere instead of incorporating them in the colonies. Jefferson worries that an American society with both races will result only in more conflict because of racial tensions. Other than political reasons, however, Jefferson brings up other aspects, which he calls physical and moral. In query 14, he mentions that the difference between blacks and whites is “fixed” and goes to explain what he sees

624â•…â•… Jefferson, Thomas as the disparity in physical beauty between the two races. Unlike his treatment of Native Americans, he now spends several pages listing the physical differences of black slaves and how these physical attributes somehow affect their abilities and morality. He suggests, for example, they require less sleep and are more ardent in desire. Because of their more primitive nature, he says, they are more feeling than they are thinking. He talks of famous black literati of the time, but they are always inferior according to his standards. In other words, the racial difference becomes the ground on which Jefferson judges their mental and moral capacity. This view of racial difference as set in nature hinders Jefferson from realizing true equality. It also echoes Alexander Pope’s idea of a “Great Chain of Beings,” meaning the world is a hierarchical structure created by God. It would then be unwise for the two races to mingle together. For Jefferson, there is a definite racial hierarchy among the white settlers, Native Americans, and African Americans. But despite his historical limitations, Jefferson does recognize the injustice of racial oppressions, and as an Enlightenment thinker, he at least takes the first step toward eliminating the racial barriers and turning them into mutual understandings. Huang-hua Chen

Religion in Notes on the State of Virginia

Thomas Jefferson’s Notes is not a religious piece per se, but it is definitely filled with religious sentiments and views. While the Notes is mostly concerned with the miscellaneous affairs of Virginia, there is usually a religious subtext that the reader can detect. Whether or not it is specific to a Christian world view is another matter. One can start to sense this religious undertone when Jefferson describes his experience of the sublime in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This idea is important in the 18th century because, while this is the age of reason, the sublime represents that which is beyond the reasonable boundary, religious experience being something that does cross this boundary. The 18th century produced several philosophical works on the sublime, and Jefferson seems to be preoccupied as well. While remarking on the dynamic pictures of the Shenandoah Valley, Jefferson states

that “the piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the impression.” That the world we live in changes over time is not something Jefferson is willing to give up, according to his religious belief. But how do you reconcile the obvious contradiction between the sublime and the harmonious world? He proposes to look at the “small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country” because here “the eye ultimately composes itself.” Through this experience of the sublime, Jefferson seems to say that while religion or religious experience is sometimes said to be incomprehensible to finite beings such as us, it is only because of our limited capacity. When we look at the big picture, not the mere “impression,” we will be able to find the reasonableness of the world we live in. This world view is reminiscent of Alexander Pope’s famous dictum, “Whatever is, is Right.” Both are influenced by Christianity and try to grapple with a world filled with obvious contradictions. This subtext can be seen when Jefferson observes the fossil bones of mammoths. He asks his readers whether he should omit references to the extinction of mammoths, saying. “Such is the economy of nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken.” For Jefferson, nature is very much the work of God, and to some extent, an equivalent of God, and for nature to be broken down is utterly unthinkable. This idea that religious truth can be found in nature is not uncommon, but in the context of Christianity, nature often represents the work of God and thus indicates a sense of harmonious order or hierarchy. This parallel between a natural order and religion can be found in Jefferson’s attitude toward slaves. It is important to know that Jefferson adopts an abolitionist attitude. But again, the religious subtext plays into the decision as well. While he supports the emancipation of the slaves, he does it because he learns from religion and history that the world is constantly in cyclical movement. Here we find the perfect example where nature and religion

Dutchmanâ•…â•… 625 come together. Just like the natural world where things like the four seasons and day and night often remind us how harmony reigns, so Jefferson invokes the will of God as the constant in history. He states that we need to free slaves in order not to incur the wrath of God for taking away the liberties of these people; otherwise “a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation” is possible as willed by God. In other words, Jefferson’s religious truth is deeply rooted in the observation of nature. Too often religion plays an important role in dictating how Jefferson perceives the world. As the Notes reveals, Jefferson, as an 18th-century man of science, still struggles between religion and empirical truths. At the same time, the religious subtext within the Notes remains a positive one that depicts a balanced and harmonious world. Huang-hua Chen

Jones, LeRoi (Amiri Baraka [from 1968])â•… Dutchmanâ•… (1964)

Dutchman is a fierce, angry, sometimes shocking punch to the gut of American values, still as raw and provocative as it was the year it was published. It is a one-act play about difference and deception. Can racial tensions in this country ever be healed when both the conflict and the attempts at resolution are based on lies? The play focuses on two individuals—a black man and a white woman—who spar, dance, and ultimately crush the possibility of racial harmony or understanding in a claustrophobic society, symbolized by the subway car in which they ride for the duration of the play. Lula chats up Clay as they ride to an unknown destination. While they talk, the upper hand rests with Lula, as she invites herself along with Clay, tells him how to address her, and (literally) tells him what to say. Clay plays along, excited by her language games, until she turns especially vulgar and violent. She begins to insult him and speak racial epithets—she accuses him of being a buck and an Uncle Tom, and, briefly, the power shifts to Clay. He erupts, accusing her of a foolish self-deception and an anger that has no intellectual foundation. He threatens Lula, stating his desire to kill her and other smug whites who think they

understand race. Lula then stabs Clay and gets other passengers to help throw him off the subway at the next stop. Soon, another young black man walks by her, and so the trauma and the violence promise to be repeated. Sharyn Emery

Identity in Dutchman

Is identity inextricably linked to race? Can we separate racial identity from a person’s personality, or would that create an inaccurate picture of who a person is? In Dutchman, LeRoi Jones plays with the notion of identity as we watch Clay and Lula dance around each other—lying, seducing, insulting, but not revealing their true selves until the end of their doomed subway ride. Authentic identities ultimately clash then, and so society continues wearing a mask, afraid of the violence the truth might cause. Clay presents himself as a mild-mannered, young African-American man. He is educated, curious, and polite, but intrigued by Lula’s games. He pretends both innocence and concern as their interaction warms up, caught between genuine desire for Lula and disbelief in the things coming out of her mouth. As the play progresses, he cannot keep up his white-bread façade, as Lula’s insults (which grow more racist each moment) elicit an angry, murderous response. It is only in the final moments of Dutchman that Clay presents his true identity—he lays into Lula for her phony understanding of black life and culture, claiming he wishes he could kill her for her vile ignorance. In this last monologue, Clay reasserts his own black authenticity and finally, forcefully, tells the truth. As he speaks, he claims African-American artists played music as a way of shielding their own angry identities from white audiences and crowds. Clay, as the voice of Jones, argues that these white patrons do not understand identity—that of the singer or themselves. The musicians cannot possibly spend their time murdering white people, so they play jazz instead. The play sets up those patrons as believing themselves to be hip and understanding, but instead they are self-deluded fools, or like Lula, murderous liars. Lula participates in this game of shifting identities, as well. Ironically, Lula loosely takes on the form of the trickster, a figure from African-

626â•…â•… Jones, Leroi American (and African) folklore. She transforms herself over the course of the play, covering up and revealing very little about her true self until she murders Clay at the end. She fools him for a while, causing him to think they might have a chance at a romantic relationship, but he eventually catches on to her underhanded motives. Lula wants to bait Clay into admitting desire, or anger, or some other emotion that can justify her bloodlust, and so she tries on different identities, trying to draw out of him the response she wants. Clay appears to be so good natured and straightforward that this proves hard; it is only after she calls him an Uncle Tom that he explodes and that both characters reveal their true selves. Clay reacts violently to the racist insult, restraining an increasingly excited Lula and shoving another passenger who tries to become involved. The show of violence is precisely what Lula had been waiting for. When Clay stands up for himself, and finally tries on the full mantle of black manhood, Lula stabs him. The two authentic identities cannot survive together; the subway car was fine when both individuals were lying about themselves, but when the truth was exposed, the tinderbox of racism was ignited, leaving Clay dead and another young black man vulnerable to Lula’s next game. Jones asks us to think about our authentic identities, and what role deception plays in racial contexts. Can there be racial harmony and truthful utterances about the state of race relations at the same time? Dutchman seems to indicate that it is not possible, that if we face each other honestly, the truth about the African-American experience will prove angering and difficult for white America, which will lead to the destruction of black men. It is a bleak outlook, one that seems about to be repeated at the end of the play. Lula strolls over to another young AfricanAmerican man on the subway, greeting him in her deceptive first guise, waiting for him to give himself away so she can enact another crime. Perhaps it need not be seen as automatically bleak, however. The black conductor greets this new young man as a friend, as a comrade, as an African-American brother. This exchange could be interpreted as a moment of truth, a moment when two AfricanAmerican men honestly exchange a greeting and

show their true selves to the world, regardless of who may see. If we can focus on their interaction, the outlook is less painful and violent—for everyone. Sharyn Emery

Individual and Society in Dutchman

LeRoi Jones’s Dutchman takes place on a subway car that is a symbolic representation of society. The specific urban location of the subway is not revealed, for it is meant to take on a somewhat mythical quality, a place both real and unreal at the same time. Thus, the theme of the individual’s relationship to society comes to the fore, made evident by the use of just two major characters, Clay and Lula. An individual’s actions reverberate within society, just as society affects individuals every day. Because the two individuals cannot reconcile the tension and anger between them, the play rather darkly suggests that the race problem in America will not be solved on an individual level. Larger societal changes are necessary, as evidenced by the continuation of Lula’s seductive destruction after Clay’s death. She gets ready for another victim and another crime, and the subway conductor’s minstrel shuffle indicates a continuation of societal expectations. Thus, it is clear that the individual characters are also actors playing up those expectations (at least for the first half of the play), since Lula correctly reads Clay’s personality and background from the start, and they begin a sort of stereotypical dance until Clay’s righteous anger overwhelms the situation. Lula paints Clay as an upright, dull, educated African American, who she surmises “acts white” most of the time. For various reasons, Clay plays along, partly because it’s somewhat true and partly because he’s interested in Lula and wants to continue the conversation. It is this sublimation of his fuller, more complex individual identity that Clay practices on a daily basis to get by in a racially charged society. At least, that is, until Lula’s racial invectives become stronger and louder. The buildup of anger allows Clay to step out of what society expects and speak the truth, no matter how painful it sounds. Clay’s outburst of personal expression illustrates how difficult it is for the individual, particularly the individual of color, to be heard in society. The conversation up to that point had virtually been scripted

Dutchmanâ•…â•… 627 by Lula—she was determining what Clay said and when he said it. Clay, as a young African-American man, doesn’t have a strong individual voice—not one that society is willing to listen to, at least. Clay ultimately has to make a choice as to whether to remain a faceless member of society or to step up and claim his individuality in the face of majority oppression. He attempts to choose the latter, which leads to his death. Clay’s cruel fate seems to be a bleak harbinger for the ability of individuals to be heard and to be able to express themselves. Society is against him, as shown by the willingness of the other subway passengers to help Lula throw Clay’s body off the train. No one stands up for themselves, or for Clay. They move en masse, with no regard for the individual victim. Of course, the irony in the play is that Clay has to speak for the entire community of African Americans in his dealings with Lula. He cannot ever achieve a truly individual personality—whether he is acting the part for Lula, or speaking up for Bessie Smith and black artists, Clay is a collective representation. Whether for good or ill, Clay must stand up with a collective, rather than an individual, message. This is a double-edged sword; there is unity in the collective identity, but no individual strength within the racist society, a situation borne out when Lula sets her sights on the next young African-American man in the subway car. The men are helpless against Lula, who exercises the power of life and death over them; society ends up winning, but at least one individual puts up a fight. Sharyn Emery

Race in Dutchman

Like the arrival of the rumbling subway car in which it is set, racial violence is inevitable in LeRoi Jones’s (now known as Amiri Baraka) play Dutchman. As Clay and Lula spar, flirt, talk, and dance, their interplay slides from a sexualized male-female dynamic to one grounded in white-black racial conflict. The work is, most simply, a play about race. Clay struggles to maintain several racialized guises against the barbs hurled by the temptress Lula. At the start, Clay is somewhat naïve about the role race plays (and will play) in his interactions with the apple-eating white woman, but as the play advances

and he dons various guises, Clay becomes more hip to the game, more aware of his “true” race, and of the true black man at his core. Unfortunately, that awareness comes at a price, and Clay pays for his earlier naiveté with his life. When he first steps onto the subway car he is a Booker T. Washington-type intellectual, buttoned up and focused on the future. Lula reads these qualities in him right away, stereotyping his neat clothes and polite demeanor, and proclaiming him dull and familiar—a young college man on his way to a party. Clay falls for this reading, confirming Lula’s attempts to “read” his racial identity. She chides him for looking foolish and “inauthentic,” skinny and pasty-faced. By challenging his racial “authenticity,” Lula is able draw Clay into her game. She eventually bores of this racial persona, and expertly maneuvers Clay into his next guise, by playing to his desires for sex as well as his desire to be seen as an authentic black man. At Lula’s prompting, Clay becomes a sexualized black “buck” figure, tempting the white woman while being tempted by her. This is reflected in the rapid back-and-forth Lula traps Clay into, as she virtually scripts him into desiring her—thus creating the image of the sex-crazed Negro hunting the white woman. She demands that he invite her to the party he’s attending, and imaginatively playacts their entrance into that event. She entices Clay with the phony script of their date, then turns the tables when Clay expresses genuine interest—she claims to be too wild for him and forces him to prove that he can handle her. This forces Clay into playing the “wild buck,” a highly destructive, yet long-standing racial stereotype. The very thought of a black man with a white woman is at the core of America’s lynching history, and the image of the sexually aggressive black man will come back at the end of the play, when Lula uses it to her murderous advantage. Lula eventually works herself into a frenzy, baiting Clay with harsher language until he has to physically restrain her and silence her insults. Thus, Clay ends the play as a proud African American, rejecting Lula outright and taking a political stance for black culture and against white supremacy. He (re)claims the blues, sex, and poetry for black culture,

628â•…â•… Joyce, James spewing invectives against Lula’s (white) ignorance. It is at this juncture in the play that the worst racial epithets are spoken. Lula calls Clay “Uncle Tom Big Lip” and “Uncle Tom Woolly Head,” while charging him to ignore the first racial guise (buttoned up middle-class intellectual) and act the black part—to act like the “nigger” she screams he is. Clay refuses further advances on Lula and declares her foolish and undesirable; he thus rejects the racial role she tried to force him to play, and this results in his murder. Lula, humiliated and defeated in her twisted racial game, stabs Clay and enlists the help of others to dispose of his body. She asks the other passengers to get Clay off of her, thereby linking racism to a supposed sexual attack. Sadly, his death is neither martyrdom nor wakeup call—his body is dumped off the subway car and Lula immediately sets her sights on the next black man she sees. Thus, Dutchman can be read as a cautionary tale for young black men to resist the temptation to wallow in racial stereotypes to attract women, or to refuse to allow white America to determine their racial identity; young AfricanAmerican men must know who they are before taking on the world. It also showcases the need for black men to remain on guard against white seduction, regardless of what form it takes. Sharyn Emery

Joyce, Jamesâ•… Dublinersâ•… ( 1914)

Dubliners is a collection of short stories about the people who live in the city of Dublin. When questioned about the stark nature of his stories, James Joyce replied, giving us an insight to authorial intention: It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished lookingglass. (xv) Most of the stories have no plot, in the traditional sense of the term, and have as their central focus the

people in them. The stories touch on a myriad of issues, such as identity, both personal and national, religion as it affects the average Irishman, personal relationships in their various forms, and the struggle to come to terms with one’s place in the world. Through magnificent storytelling and characterization, Joyce takes the reader on a journey, not only through the city, but also through the psyches and emotional labyrinths of his various characters. Despite being a collection of individual short stories, persons and places move seamlessly across stories. Not only are people interconnected and bound to society, they also cannot seem to escape their circumstances. Such is the fate of the Dubliners that Joyce portrays in this collection, adding to the poignancy that pervades the text. Throughout Joyce’s literary career, national identity remained a prime concern, and all stories deal with this issue in one form or another. More important, the concept of “nation” is explored from the perspective of the common person affected by its political and cultural anxieties. In some stories, this is dealt with directly, such as “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” which gives the reader an insight into the politics of Ireland. In “The Dead,” national identity is explored through the cultures, literatures, and languages one adopts. In other stories, such as “Araby,” nation is explored in a more subtle manner. Related to nation is the issue of religion, explored in the stories “The Sisters” and “Grace.” As with issues of nation, Joyce is concerned with religion as it affects the common person. More important, Joyce explores the emptiness of religion in the modern world, and how humans seem to have drifted further and further away from meaningful fellowship with God. Family is another concern that runs through all of Joyce’s work. In this collection, family is seen, more often than not, as a source of oppression. In “A Mother,” the mother figure is portrayed as an overbearing, authoritarian, and unreasonable person, and the daughter a meek young girl who allows her mother to make decisions on her behalf. In “Eveline,” a young lady makes a promise to her dying mother to look after the family, a promise which later makes it impossible for the young lady to leave Ireland. In “Counterparts,” one is given an insight into domestic violence, and in “A Little Cloud,”

Dublinersâ•…â•… 629 individual hopes and dreams are unfulfilled due to the pressures of marriage and family. As a result of the tensions mentioned above, Joyce’s characters often find themselves alienated and isolated from others around them. Joyce neither resolves these conflicts, nor provides a solution to the solitude felt by his characters, but leaves readers to contemplate the universality of these conditions. Wern Mei Yong

Family in Dubliners

Family in Dubliners is more often than not portrayed as a source of oppression. In “Araby,” a young boy, in love with a young lady, wants to go to the night bazaar to buy her a gift. He is unable to do so because he has to wait for his uncle to return home, and give him some money. By the time the boy goes to the bazaar, it is almost closing and most of the stalls have closed. The night bazaar, with its exotic connotations, presents an escape for the boy, just as his infatuation for the lady is a means of escaping the drudgeries of everyday life. His uncle does not seem to take the boy’s desire to go to the bazaar seriously, and Joyce reveals at one point, very curtly and simply, that “He had forgotten.” The brief sentence adds a sense of finality and poignancy to the lack of control the boy seems to have over his own desires, as their fulfillment is tied to the whims of others. Family, in this sense, stands in the way of the fulfillment of the boy’s desires, and at the end of the story, the boy finds himself alone in darkness, a “creature driven and derided by vanity,” and his “eyes burned with anguish and anger.” In “Eveline,” Joyce continues to explore the idea of family. The story begins with a description of Eveline: She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired. Here, Joyce portrays an image of a young girl trapped; just as the evening is seen to invade the avenue, we get a sense of the young girl being overwhelmed by her surroundings. The pervasive odor of the curtains that fills her nostrils suggests the immense pressure

domestic life seems to have on her. This pressure is reinforced by the brevity and finality of the closing sentence of the paragraph. We learn that Eveline, on the last night of her mother’s illness, had made a “promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could.” Having had enough, she decides “to go away, to leave her home” and to “explore another life with Frank” in Buenos Aires. Life in Dublin consists of constant “squabble for money,” “hard work to keep the house together,” and domestic violence. Buenos Aires, at the time a thriving and wealthy city, offers a means of escape for Eveline; but, apart from being Frank’s wife, we are not told what she will do in Buenos Aires. At the very moment the ship is about to leave the pier, she finds herself unable to leave with Frank: “She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.” Comparing her to a “helpless animal” suggests her powerlessness and paralysis. Eveline is indeed trapped, since whether in Ireland or Buenos Aires, she will continue to live a life of subjection to the will of others, with little autonomy or freedom of her own. Eveline does not leave Ireland because of the guilt she would bear were she to break her promise to her mother to look after the family. A similar force of oppression symbolized by the family is seen in the story “A Little Cloud.” The story begins with Chandler’s meeting with his friend in a public space, and ends with tension and conflict within himself in the private, domestic space of the home. At the beginning of the story, we see Chandler getting ready to meet his friend, Gallaher, after an eight-year absence. As the story progresses, Chandler finds himself and his life to be inadequate, small and impoverished in comparison to the life of Gallaher, who has left Dublin. That he is referred to as “Little Chandler” further enhances how limited and small his life and personality are in comparison to Gallaher, who is described as a man of presence who has achieved a certain degree of success in life. As with other stories in the collection, the main protagonist understands that “if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.” He expresses envy at his friend’s newfound life in London, and is resentful of the factors that hold him back from what might have

630â•…â•… Joyce, James been a Â�lucrative literary career. This is symbolized by the “books of poetry upon his shelves” that he had bought in his bachelor days, before he was committed to family life. After his meeting, he returns home and begins to examine with a different eye his surroundings. He looks at a photograph of his wife Annie: “He looked coldly into the eyes of the photograph and they answered coldly. Certainly they were pretty and the face itself was pretty. But he found something mean in it.” Glancing around the room, he sees the same meanness in the furniture around the room, all “too prim and pretty.” The meanness again recalls the limitedness and smallness that characterize Little Chandler’s life. At this moment he experiences a detachment from the woman he married, unable to form a human connection with her or the home they now share. As he falls deeper into contemplation, his eyes fall on a volume of Byron’s poems and he begins to read. He realizes in despair that any dream of a literary career is merely an illusion, at which point his child awakens and begins to cry. Chandler tries to silence the child without success. The realization of the illusion, together with his inability to silence the child, a symbol of that which has held him back, is too much for Chandler to bear. The child begins to scream, and Chandler tries as hard as he can to soothe the child, with no success. He gets a fright imagining the child dead, and the possibility of him being the cause of its death fills him with terror. Annie returns to the room. She takes the baby back and, with an accusatory tone, asks him what he did to provoke the child. Chandler is reduced to a stuttering mess of guilt, for having made the child cry in a fit of anger and frustration. Annie departs the room with the child, leaving Chandler alone. Like “Araby” and “Eveline,” this story ends with Little Chandler left alone to contemplate the frustrations of being tied down by family. By opening the final paragraph with “Little Chandler,” the reader is reminded of the smallness and insignificance of Chandler and his individual hopes and desires. As in the other two stories, there is an apparent conflict, of having to look to the demands of family duty, which seem to trump the fulfillment of one’s own hopes and dreams. Wern Mei Yong

Isolation in Dubliners

Many of the characters in Joyce’s Dubliners experience one form of isolation or another. In the story “A Painful Case,” James Duffy is introduced as someone who “lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen.” There is a clear juxtaposition between being a citizen of Dublin and his deliberate selfexile from Dublin. Furthermore, he lives in a room that is “uncarpeted,” suggesting a lack of warmth, and whose walls “were free from pictures,” pointing once again to a deliberate attempt to keep his world separate from any intrusion by the outside world. His room is described as being sparse and lacking personality, and he had “neither companions nor friends, church nor creed.” He lived a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful sideglances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense. Duffy eventually meets Mrs. Sinico, with whom he forms a relationship. Mrs Sinico is married, and their relationship is kept in confidence from society, which again reinforces the notion of isolation. Their meetings often take place in “a little cottage outside Dublin,” where they “spent their evenings alone.” They would speak late into the evening, till darkness enveloped them in the “dark discreet room,” and they were united in “their isolation.” In their last meeting before Duffy puts an end to the relationship, Mrs. Sinico had “caught up his hand passionately and pressed it to her cheek,” which took Duffy by surprise. Mrs. Sinico’s yearning for companionship counters Duffy’s belief in the “incurable loneliness” of humankind, a way of life he has come to accept. One suspects that it is the only way of life familiar to him and therefore desirous to him. Because of their incompatible attitudes, Duffy puts an end to the relationship. Four years go by and Duffy one day reads in the paper that Mrs. Sinico has been killed by a train. Instead of expressing sympathy, he expresses revulsion:

Dublinersâ•…â•… 631 What an end! The whole narrative of her death revolted him and it revolted him to think that he had ever spoken to her of what he held sacred. . . . Not merely had she degraded herself; she had degraded him. . . . Just God, what an end! The lack of sympathy Duffy expresses is shocking, and his criticisms of Mrs. Sinico are ironic. While it seems evident to him that Mrs. Sinico was “unfit to live,” it is not evident to him that his own life resembles more a kind of death sentence in its isolation and monotony. Furthermore, it is not Mrs. Sinico who lacks “strength of purpose,” since her apparent suicide is an act of free will. Duffy, on the other hand, for fear of having his familiar world interrupted by the passion displayed by Mrs. Sinico, puts a stop to their meetings. In “The Dead,” Gabriel Conroy ends the story feeling utterly alone and isolated from everyone around him. The story begins with a sense of fellowship and community, with a party thrown by Gabriel’s two aunts, Miss Kate and Miss Julia. It is attended by friends and family, and throughout we are presented with life, warmth, laughter, and fellowship. Gabriel, however, seems not to fit in with the company he is among. This is due to his sense of himself as being better educated than those around him. His fondness for Miss Kate and Miss Julia may be described as slightly condescending and patronizing: “What did he care that his aunts were only two ignorant old women?” When thinking about what to include in his speech, he is undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they could recognize from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. . . . He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. In this arrogant manner, Gabriel sets himself apart from everyone else. His isolation, in a sense like Duffy’s, is a kind of self-exile. After the party, Gabriel and his wife Gretta are walking through the snow back to their hotel, and

watching her in front of him, he feels a sudden desire rising within him for her. When they arrive home, Gabriel tries to express his affection for her, in hopes that she will respond in a manner matching his own desire. She does not, and after much prompting she finally reveals to him that she is upset because the snow outside has reminded her of a lover in the past who had died of ill health. Gretta reveals that the boy had come to see her the night before she was due to leave Galway, exposing himself to the rain, which eventually caused his death. Gabriel is humiliated by the revelation, and the events of the evening leading up to this moment compound themselves into driving him into further isolation. He “saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealizing his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror.” Like Duffy in “A Painful Case,” the extent of his isolation is so great that he experiences a kind of alienation even from himself, as he indulges in a moment of self-loathing. Like Duffy, his isolation is also guided by selfishness, and is to a certain extent self-imposed as a result of pride and arrogance. Like Duffy, it prevents him from being sympathetic toward his wife. At the end of the story, Gretta finally falls asleep, and Gabriel quietly contemplates the inevitable loneliness of humanity. He imagines the death of Aunt Julia, and compares death to a “shade,” a kind of darkness that creeps over us all, and how “one by one they were all becoming shades.” Gabriel’s own isolation becomes a meditation on universal isolation: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” The snow descends upon the universe, forming a blanket of isolation under which humanity is buried. Wern Mei Yong

Religion in Dubliners

The collection Dubliners opens with the story “The Sisters,” and with the introduction of three terms that characterize the collection as whole. These terms, italicized to draw attention, are paralysis, gnomon, and simony. The final term, “simony,” refers

632â•…â•… Joyce, James to putting religion to non-religious, profitable ends. Religion therefore becomes empty of anything meaningful. In “The Sisters,” the narrator recalls his relationship with the late Father Flynn. We are told that Father Flynn had taught the narrator a great deal about history and various aspects of religion. More important, Father Flynn used to pose challenging questions to the boy: Sometimes he had amused himself by putting difficult questions to me, asking me what one should do in certain circumstances or whether such and such sins were mortal or venial or only imperfections. His questions showed me how complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as the simplest acts. Although the narrator goes on to list various ritual acts performed by priests as “the simplest acts” he used to take for granted, Joyce is also trying to tell us that one should never take anything we see or hear for granted, especially where it concerns religion. Faith and belief must be accompanied by rigorous examination and assessment of the dogmas presented to us, so that we are not merely following them blindly. Toward the end of the story, one of the sisters, Eliza, informs us that Father Flynn died because “the duties of the priesthood was too much for him.” Father Flynn was a “disappointed man”; but what initiated Father Flynn’s spiritual and physical deterioration was “that chalice he broke . . .” which fortunately “contained nothing.” The chalice, in the Catholic faith, contains the consecrated wine, believed to be the blood of Christ, and breaking it is a sign of disrespect. Whereas the sisters believe this to have been the cause of Father Flynn’s guilt, leading to mental instability and eventually death, the narrator and reader understand otherwise. The chalice may be read as a symbol of the Church and religion. Its emptiness symbolizes that Church and religion are empty of meaning, that there is nothing beyond the words and symbols of the Church. When a man drinks the consecrated wine from the chalice, his fellowship with God is sealed. The lack of wine seems, therefore, to symbolize the severance

of the bond between man and God. This is the cause of Father Flynn’s disappointment, and perhaps a cause for his gradual spiritual and mental deterioration. When the narrator looks into the coffin, he sees Father Flynn clutching the chalice loosely, possibly suggesting Father Flynn’s own loss of faith in the relationship between man and God. That no one seems to have any clue as to why Father Flynn died is all the more significant and ironic. They think that “there was something gone wrong with him. . . .” This illustrates how little the sisters, and those around him, were aware of his concerns, and by implication how little they were aware of their own spiritual poverty. Ironically, it is not Father Flynn but themselves who had “gone wrong” spiritually. Another story that deals with the emptiness of religion is “Grace.” Briefly, the story is an account of the efforts of a group of businessmen to convince one of their acquaintances to give up his damaging habit of excessive drinking. Their intention is to convince Tom Kernan to attend a religious retreat for businessmen, during which he might regain God’s grace. The word grace itself takes on several meanings in the story. First, it refers to the freely given, unconditional favor and love of God. Second, it refers to an allowance of time after a debt is due to be paid, before any charges or further penalty are brought against the debtor. Third, it refers to the moral strength one has to perform one’s duty. Last, but not least, grace refers to the elegance of one’s manners. The several meanings come together in Joyce’s tale. At the beginning, Kernan is shown to be very drunk, behaving in a manner lacking in physical grace, as well is in social grace. In his excessive debauchery, he has certainly fallen out of God’s grace. His businessmen friends, in their visit to try to convince him to attend the retreat, display a degree of moral strength in their concern for their friend. As the story progresses, we begin to see how the material aspects of the term grace begin to enter into the picture, with the steady introduction of gossip of members of the business community. It becomes quite clear that asking the stubborn Kernan to attend the retreat directly is bound to be met with failure, and the only way is to broach

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Manâ•…â•… 633 the subject indirectly, via his interest in the business community. This builds up to the end of the story, when the men are gathered together for the retreat. Among those who attend the retreat are Mr. Harford, the moneylender, Mr. Fanning, the registration agent and mayor of the city, and Michael Grimes, the owner of three pawnbroker shops. These businessmen are here at the retreat to address their spiritual poverty, a price paid for the increase in their worldly riches. The priest, Father Purdon, cites Luke 16: 8–9, in which Jesus tells men to befriend “the mammon of iniquity.” After reading the text, Father Purdon begins by validating his appropriation of the text: “It was one of the most difficult texts in all the Scriptures, he said, to interpret properly.” He then goes on to explain that this command was made to men like those sitting before him, called to serve God through their material, business means. What he leaves out, however, is the latter part of the verse, where Jesus says that one cannot serve two masters at the same time: money and God. Father Purdon chooses to interpret only the section of the verse that he thinks the men of the business community would appreciate, instead of reproaching them outright, as he should do as a responsible religious leader. His selectiveness is an example of the “simony” Joyce mentions in “The Sisters,” where a religious text is interpreted and used to suit one’s ends. Father Purdon also uses the metaphor of accounting to describe the relationship between these men and God: “He came to speak to business men and he would speak to them in a business-like way. If he might use the metaphor, he said, he was their spiritual accountant.” This has the effect of reducing the relationship to a mere transaction, a balancing of records. Ironically, God’s grace, being freely given, is a unilateral gift and not a matter of “set[ting] right my accounts.” These men cannot earn God’s grace, and certainly not through befriending “the mammon of iniquity.” By the end of the story, we come to understand the superficial nature of the retreat, and see it for what it really is: It is less about receiving God’s grace than it is about justifying their material and business concerns in the eyes of God. Wern Mei Yong

Joyce, Jamesâ•… A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Manâ•… (1916)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, one of the most celebrated novels of the 20th century, is the coming-of-age story of Stephen Dedalus. It deals with issues of alienation, religion, and memory. As a very young boy in Ireland, Dedalus witnesses the adults in his life clash over politics and religion, two subjects forever intertwined in the life of that country. Shortly after the novel begins, he is sent away to Clongowes College, a boarding school run by the Christian Brothers religious order. Here Stephen experiences both camaraderie and brutality, creating internal contradictions that will color his entire life. Stephen feels both drawn to and separate from his family, his church, his school, and his country, and he will spend the majority of the novel trying to resolve these contradictions and discern his purpose in life. As a teenager, Stephen seriously considers the priesthood. He is deeply affected by the teachings of the priests who surround him during his schooling. He alternates between extreme self-loathing for his weakness and a desire to live what he sees as the spartan life of a priest. As he grows older, he begins to understand that what he is drawn to is not religion, but the intellectual life. He ends the novel having broken free of the constraints of his country and his religion, and determined to understand his place in the world. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Alienation in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Stephen Dedalus may well be one of the most alienated characters in modern literature. From the early part of his life, he thinks of himself as being different from all the others who surround him—his family and the other boys at school. He is constantly looking in from the outside, but rarely is the reader given the impression that he wants to join in the action. More often, he just wants to be left alone; however, being left alone is not a happy state for Stephen, either. Isolation does not offer him solace. He feels that he is inexplicably and torturously different, and thus feels alienated from all around him.

634â•…â•… Joyce, James For the reader, Stephen’s account of his alienation starts at school. The other boys often seem to be in on a joke he has missed. His school friend Athy points out that his family name, which is Latin, is “queer” and sets him apart, as does his first name, derived from St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Church. Stephen martyrs himself throughout the novel, but always for the sake of being different, being unlike the rest of the crowd, as though he is willing to suffer as long as it will bring him distinction. When he falls ill at Clongowes, he thinks of himself as Charles Stewart Parnell, the “uncrowned King of Ireland,” who was ultimately alienated from his beloved Irish people when the Catholic Church condemned his relationship with Kitty O’Shea. Parnell’s fate is memorably argued about by Stephen’s family in the Christmas dinner scene near the beginning of the novel. As Stephen grows older, he slowly comes to recognize, if not understand, his alienation. He thinks, even while he is still a child himself, “the noise of children at play annoyed him and their silly voices made him feel .  .  . that he was different from the others.” So different in fact, that he sees himself, on more than one occasion, as less than human. He feels as if he is turning into a beast, with his soul “fattening and congealing into a gross grease.” Later, struck by nightmares and paralyzing guilt, he feels as if he might be an “inhuman thing” moved by “bestial” desires. It is the indoctrination by Catholicism that leads Stephen to such depths of despair, but even after he has moved beyond his fears of eternal damnation, he remains alienated from others. He realizes, at the moment one of the priests at his college suggests to him that he consider the priesthood, that, although this is an invitation he has long awaited, he could never be part of such a community. He thinks, “His destiny was to be elusive of social or religious orders . . . He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdom of others himself wandering among the snares of the world.” Stephen’s status as an alien only strengthens as he grows to adulthood. Even as he makes friends as a young man, he continues to feel he is set apart from them. Just as the country of Ireland is set apart from the rest of the English-speaking world,

Stephen senses that, although he may look like the others, he is clearly and undeniably not one of them. He connects this alienation to his Irishness on several occasions. He realizes, all at once, how foreign to the Irish is the English tongue, when Stephen refers to a funnel as a tundish and the dean of the college exclaims that he has never heard such a word. Stephen thinks, “The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine .  .  . I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit.” However, unlike many of his fellow Irishmen, Stephen does not allow this alienation from the English to unite him in solidarity with his countrypeople. On the contrary, it only makes him feel further alienated. When his friend Davin is trying to convince him to join with the nationalist cause, he fights even that connection, saying “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.” Stephen, like Joyce himself, sees the connection between himself and his country, but refuses it in favor of the all-consuming need to think things through for himself. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Memory in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Much of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man uses a narrative style known as stream-of-consciousness. In this style, the narrative reads as though the reader were hearing the main character’s thoughts as they occur. Not all of the text is written in this unique style, but even when the narrator is writing in third person (that is, using a narrator who is not a character in the text, but who is privy to the action) the reader still feels as though main character Stephen Dedalus’s name is an open book laid before us. With such a narrative, memory, with its inaccuracies, eccentricities, and emotional power, emerges as an important theme. The text begins with Stephen’s first memory. He says, “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo . . . .” Stephen’s father had told him that story, and

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Manâ•…â•… 635 clearly the comfort and safety Stephen associates with his infancy resonates as he begins the first part of this story, in which he will leave that safety and encounter the world of boarding school. Much of the first part of the text takes place at Clongowes Wood College, a boarding school run by Jesuit priests. Stephen’s recollections are brought forth in a way that is often difficult to understand. Seemingly unrelated thoughts run into one another, dialogue (always without quotation marks) abruptly abuts passages of description, and references to people and places in Stephen’s past are made with no explanation or identification. However, while this technique can be difficult to follow and provides for a challenging text, it is far more evocative of childhood and the past than would be a more traditional narrative. For instance, when Stephen gets ill from having been pushed into a ditch at school, he continues to remember one particular detail: that another student once saw a rat jump into that same ditch. Stephen repeats the detail of the rat twice, even though he did not see it himself. He also reminds himself later, as he is starting to feel ill and the prefect checks his head for a fever, “that was the way a rat felt, slimy and damp and cold.” Stephen returns again and again to the rat that he never even saw because, when he fell into the ditch, that thought, the thought of the big, slimy rat swimming in the same water as him, was the first thought that entered his head, and it would stick with him for days after. Although instances like this in the text might be difficult to understand because they run counter to how narrative usually works, they actually enhance the reader’s understanding of Stephen’s memories, because that is how memory usually works. It is this complex system, the way in which memory works, that Joyce explores so deeply in Portrait. Images from Stephen’s past come to him throughout his life, in times of crisis, in times of reflection, and the narrative gives one the sense that these images are ever changing. Frequently, Stephen “reminds” himself who he is, saying, for instance: “I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my father whose name is Simon Dedalus. We are in Cork, in Ireland” (92). That he must tell himself who he is reflects the unreliability of his memory. As he ages,

the memories of his childhood grow less vivid and less recognizable. He thinks of himself as a child, “a little boy in a grey belted suit,” and is unsure what relationship he bears to that little figure. This confusion forces Stephen into the present, and as the narrative progresses, he lives less and less in his memories and more in his actions and thoughts as they are happening. He continues to attend school, and his studies become increasingly sophisticated. He spends most of his time with his friends or alone, as he gradually pulls away from his family and the attendant memories they might evoke. He thinks of himself as a different person, saying of his childhood, “I was someone else then.” As the novel ends, Stephen has moved beyond living in the present and is now concentrating on the future. However, the narrative gives us the sense that this is artificial—that one cannot leave the past behind entirely. In the last few pages, Stephen’s diary entries as he prepares to leave home are littered with images from the past, some arguably trivial. Such as, “I go now to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience.” It is clear that he will be unable to do that without recognizing his past. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Religion in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Much of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man deals with Stephen Dedalus’s struggle to understand Catholicism, its hold on him, and its proper place in his life. For Stephen, every facet of his life is permeated by religion. The indoctrination he receives at Clongowes Wood College and later, with the Christian Brothers and the Jesuits in Dublin, leaves him successively in fear for his mortal soul, determined to become a priest himself, and, finally, indifferent to the Church. As a young boy, Stephen is taught, as are his classmates, that he is a “lazy, idle little loafer” like all boys. He is beaten by Father Dolan, the prefect of studies at Clongowes, for breaking his glasses. Father Dolan claims that Stephen must have broken them on purpose to avoid work. Stephen knows that this punishment is “unfair and cruel,” but because Father Dolan is a priest, he feels conflicted. This scene, early in the text, sets up the conflicting role

636â•…â•… Kafka, Franz priests will have in Stephen’s life. He fears them, and instinctively knows that many of the teachings to which he is subjected in his life run counter to what he knows about himself; however, at the same time, he admires the commitment and the sacrifice of the priesthood, and even considers that this role in life might be his some day. Joyce makes clear that Stephen’s admiration of sacrifice is misplaced, and perhaps driven by his own self-loathing. This self-loathing is not necessarily caused by the Catholicism that surrounds him, but it certainly is exacerbated by it. Joyce implies in the text that it is the dual condition of being Irish and being Catholic that keeps Stephen from breaking free. When he is very young, he is present as the adults in his family argue about Ireland, politics, and religion. Charles Stewart Parnell, the most important political leader in Ireland, has married a divorced woman, Kitty O’Shea—and indeed been the cause of her divorce—and the priests and bishops of Ireland have declared that the Catholic faithful must disavow allegiance to him. Stephen’s father and family friend Mr. Casey believe that the priests should stay out of politics, but Mrs. Riordan, whom Stephen calls Dante, believes the opposite. She says, “A priest would not be a priest if he did not tell his flock what is right and what is wrong.” She follows this with “The bishops and priests of Ireland have spoken, and they must be obeyed.” It matters not, to her, what the best course is politically; it matters only what the priests say. The men at the table do not agree with her, but they too are conflicted, as they continue to call themselves Catholics despite being unable to follow the priests’ edict. The Irish, it seems, are governed by two masters—the English and the Roman Catholic Church—and in this case, at least, the two are in collusion to keep the people oppressed. This position of inferiority confuses Stephen, for he rightly believes himself to be of extraordinary disposition (thus, the “artist” in the title). At a religious retreat, he begins to sink to what is perhaps his most confused state. The speaker tells the boys they should be in fear for their immortal souls and gives an extended and quite graphic description of hell. He speaks to them of the “boundless, shoreless, bottomless” torments: the darkness, the foul,

unbreathable stench, the fire, and ultimately, the demon tormentors themselves. Stephen leaves the retreat devastated, incredulous, yet convinced that he could be one of the sinning, damned creatures bound for this hell. He begins a life of self-denial, constantly atoning for his worldly nature. He forces himself to never consciously shift position in bed, so as to cause himself pain; he purposefully seeks out bad smells; he walks with his eyes downcast, so as never to see beauty or meet the eyes of women. Stephen believes he may one day be a candidate for the priesthood, but as soon as a priest inquires about this interest, he realizes that such a life repulses him. He says, “He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdom of others himself wandering among the snares of the world.” Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Kafka, Franzâ•… The Metamorphosisâ•… (1915)

The Metamorphosis begins with the transformation of Gregor Samsa into a giant insect. Samsa is an ordinary man with family and work responsibilities who dreams of a different life. His transformation into an insect provides Samsa with the life-changing opportunity that he desires. This transformation also changes Gregor’s family by forcing them to accept financial responsibility for themselves. This change in the family dynamic makes Gregor an outsider in his own family, and the subsequent abuse he suffers leads to his death. It is only after his death that Gregor and his family achieve peace. Kafka’s story is a critique on the sacrifices that an individual must make to keep the family unit going. The Metamorphosis addresses the dehumanization of work and family life through Gregor’s transformation. As a normal man, he is confined to his job and his family responsibilities. As an insect, he is allowed to forego these responsibilities and live a life free from work. Gregor’s metamorphosis provides him with the opportunity to become a master of his own fate. Subsequently, Gregor’s family are also transformed, from their financial dependence on Gregor to financial independence from him. The Metamorphosis allows Gregor a measure of liberation from

The Metamorphosisâ•…â•… 637 the confines of his previous life and allows Gregor to achieve salvation in death. Sumeeta Patnaik

Family in The Metamorphosis

The transformation of Gregor Samsa into a monstrous vermin is the catalyst that opens and closes Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Gregor awakens from unsettling dreams to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. This nightmare transformation condemns him to be forsaken by his family. Gregor is his family’s main breadwinner and his transformation makes him unable to work, forcing his family to pick up the financial slack. Gregor’s family, his father, mother, and sister, come to resent him and see Gregor as a burden. It is through their neglect that Gregor eventually dies, unable to free himself from the burden of his familial responsibility. Upon his death, the Samsa family is ironically freed from the same burden that condemned Gregor to his nightmare existence. Family is a central theme in The Metamorphosis, with each family member contributing to the eventual demise of their central caregiver, Gregor; it is his sister, Grete, who gets a chance to have the life that Gregor was not allowed to lead. Awakening to his newly transformed state, Gregor’s devotion to his family is shown immediately as he attempts to get ready for work despite his changed appearance. Gregor works as a traveling salesman, a job he despises but maintains, to save his family the embarrassment of having to deal with the financial burden brought on by his father’s failed business. During his attempts to go to work, Gregor muses upon his dislike for his job and working for a boss whose paranoia over his employees’ performance causes him to send his head clerk to Gregor’s home with veiled threats of being fired. This occurs, despite the fact that Gregor has never missed a day of work and was not late even on the day of his transformation. Gregor does not want his family, particularly his younger sister, Grete, to be subjected to this kind of work environment. Despite his best efforts, his transformation forces them to enter the workplace. In doing so, his family members are transformed from their dependence on Gregor to the financial

independence they had previously been resistant to obtaining. As his family works toward financial independence, their feelings toward Gregor change from sadness to outright hostility to relief at his death. Family members deal with Gregor’s transformation differently, thus highlighting their true feelings toward Gregor prior to his metamorphosis. Gregor’s father, Herr Samsa, claimed to be an invalid after his business failed, and relied on his son to step in and become the family provider. After his transmutation, Gregor recalls his father’s previous attitude toward his son as loving, with his father embracing him each time he returned from a business trip. Yet, Gregor realized that his altered appearance immediately changed his father’s attitude toward him and that Herr Samsa regarded Gregor as a burden that was only to be tolerated. Gregor’s delicate mother, Frau Samsa, is initially horrified by her son’s changed appearance, yet she attempts several times to care for him, even fighting with her daughter to keep Gregor’s room the same in case he should return to his former self. However, Frau Samsa yields to her husband and daughter’s wishes that Gregor disappear and the family be rid of the burden of caring for him. Finally, Gregor’s sister, Grete, is his greatest champion, until she wants to be rid of the burden of caring for him. After Gregor’s initial metamorphosis, Grete is the family member who takes care of him. She brings him food, cleans his room, and shelters him from their angry parents. Yet her devotion extends only to a certain point; like Gregor, she desires a life free from burden. In the end, she betrays him by demanding his removal from the apartment and their lives. Upon hearing his sister’s words, Gregor’s resentment toward his family fades and he dies peacefully, thus freeing his family of their great burden. Gregor’s desire for a new life is quelled by his family’s financial debt. In an effort to pay off these debts, Gregor works for his father’s creditor as a traveling salesman, but he is, in effect, an indentured servant to his family’s debts and their needs. After Gregor’s metamorphosis, his family assumes the financial burden and surprisingly discovers that they are not only capable of contributing to the family’s

638â•…â•… Kafka, Franz financial situation, but they also actually had a small savings from Herr Samsa’s failed business. Nevertheless, when Gregor is unable to contribute financially to his family’s care, he is no longer considered a viable member of the family; therefore, his previous contributions do not count when his family is in such financial crisis. In The Metamorphosis, financial debt transforms the Samsa family from a close, loving family to a family that betrays their son when he is no longer able to care for them. Gregor’s transformation actually brings him freedom from his familial obligations, but his loyalty to his family leads to his death. Kafka’s story is a critique on family dynamics and the sacrifices that must be made to keep the family unit going. Sumeeta Patnaik

Freedom in The Metamorphosis

Gregor Samsa’s transformation from human being into monstrous insect is the event that opens and closes Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Gregor awakens from terrible nightmares to find himself transformed into a grotesque insect. This shocking transformation allows Gregor the freedom that he was never allowed to have as a human being. Gregor provides his family’s primary financial support and his transformation does not allow him to work, thereby forcing his family to become financially responsible. Once Gregor’s transformation condemns his family to the same burden of providing, it is then that the family realizes the depth of the responsibility Gregor has shouldered. Ironically, Gregor’s family comes to resent him for not sustaining his financial responsibility, thereby ensuring them freedom from work. Freedom is a central theme in The Metamorphosis, with Gregor’s transformation into an insect providing him with the freedom that he was unable to find as a human being. Furthermore, Gregor’s transformation also provides his family with the freedom to pursue new lives after Gregor’s death. Upon awakening to his newly transformed state, Gregor’s first thought is his anger at having to work at a job that he so despises. As a traveling salesman, he works long hours and rarely finds time away from work. Indeed, Gregor fantasizes about quitting his job and telling his boss exactly how he feels about

his position. Nevertheless, he does not admit how much he dislikes his job, as he fears being unable to financially provide for his parents and sister. Gregor’s dislike of his job deepens when the head clerk from his firm arrives and proceeds to make veiled threats of having Gregor fired from his job despite the fact that Gregor has never missed a day of work in five years and was not late even on the day that he was transformed. Even with his best efforts to retain his position, Gregor ultimately loses his job due to his transformation, and the financial burden falls back on his family. Yet, Gregor finds the freedom that his familial and financial responsibility did not previously allow. Gregor’s transformation from a human being into an insect allows him to gain a personal appreciation of himself. Prior to his change, Gregor rarely did anything for himself. Even his father admitted to the head clerk that he encouraged Gregor to take some time out for himself, but that Gregor often spent evenings at home either with his family or planning his work schedule for the next day. Gregor’s transmutation allowed him time to gain an appreciation for himself. Physically, Gregor discovers that he is much stronger than before and does not tire as he did in his human form. As Gregor discovers that he has become physically stronger, he also learns that his parents are physically stronger than he previously knew. Gregor’s transformation forces his parents into the workplace. Before Gregor’s transmutation, his father claimed to have been an invalid and his mother that her asthma prevented her from engaging in work. His sister, although physically strong, is spoiled by the family. Now that Gregor’s parents and sister are forced into the workplace, they discover, along with Gregor, that they are physically capable of work and are able to contribute to the family income. This allows Gregor the freedom to spend his days resting, sleeping, and watching the world from his window. Furthermore, Gregor’s transformation allowed him to learn more about his family, particularly his father. Before Gregor’s transmutation, Gregor was the primary breadwinner in the house as his father had lost the family business. After Gregor’s change, he learns that his father had a small savings left from the business that could help provide for the family for

The Metamorphosisâ•…â•… 639 about a year. While Gregor is relieved to learn that his family will not starve, he is also hurt to learn that his father had the means to make Gregor’s life easier and chose not to do so. Gregor’s transformation allows him to learn more about his family, thus freeing him from the burden of caring for them. Gregor dies peacefully. His transmuted state allows him to finally escape from familial and financial responsibilities. Gregor finds freedom through a physical change that allows him to become a stronger individual. In finding his personal strength, Gregor also discovers a great deal about his family, including that they are capable of providing financially for themselves. Gregor’s transformation allows him freedom from working as an indentured servant to his family’s debt and needs. Although his transmutation keeps him a prisoner in his room, he has obtained a new kind of freedom where he is finally allowed time for himself. In The Metamorphosis, freedom transforms Gregor from workaholic in debt to his family’s financial needs into a being that has time for contemplation and relaxation. Kafka’s story is a critique on family responsibility and the individual cost that must be paid in order to keep the family unit going. Sumeeta Patnaik

Suffering in The Metamorphosis

Gregor Samsa’s hideous transformation from a human being to an insect is the action that opens and closes The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Gregor awakens from terrible nightmares to find himself transformed, and this shocking transformation allows Samsa to alleviate his suffering and escape from his humdrum existence. Prior to his transformation, Gregor worked at a job that he disliked in order to support his family financially. Once he is transformed, Gregor’s family must take on Gregor’s responsibility and provide an income for the entire household. Freed from his financial responsibility, Gregor’s suffering is relieved and he learns a great deal about himself and his family. Still, Gregor experiences a different kind of suffering through his transformation, and his death is the catalyst for change in his family. Awaking from his terrible dreams, Gregor’s first thought is to carry on as normal. He tries to get

ready for work and does not allow his mother to come into the room. Even after the head clerk comes to find out why Gregor is late for work, Gregor attempts to convince the head clerk that he is ready to work, so he will not lose his job. Unfortunately, once his situation becomes known, it becomes clear that things will have to change. Having worked for several years at a job that he dislikes, Gregor finds his newly changed physique allows him the freedom to sleep, daydream, and watch his family experience the suffering that Gregor experienced in the workplace. Despite his freedom, Gregor worries about his family’s ability to provide financially for themselves. He discovers, as his family does, that each member of the Samsa family is capable of working. This discovery changes the family’s view of each other and of Gregor. Now that he is no longer financially viable, Gregor is viewed as the cause of his family’s suffering. Previously, Gregor bore the burden of the entire family’s existence. As the family breadwinner, Gregor was under enormous pressure to provide for each of his family’s needs. Five years prior to his transformation, Gregor’s father lost his business and became an invalid. At that time, Gregor’s mother was ill with asthma and his sister, Grete, was too young to work. Therefore, Gregor took on the role of providing financially for his family. In spite of his love for his family, Gregor was miserable in his position and often fantasized about finding ways out of work. Gregor’s transformation provides him with that freedom at the expense of his family’s needs. Ironically, Gregor’s family experiences the same type of suffering at work that Gregor experienced prior to his change. However, instead of feeling sympathy for Gregor’s suffering, his family comes to resent the burden of having to care for Gregor. As a result, Gregor is subjected to abuse from his family. He is isolated and his father often threatens Gregor when he tries to interact with the rest of the family. Even Gregor’s sister, Grete, who initially cares for him, also comes to resent this care and asks their father to help her rid them of the monstrosity Gregor has become. Sadly, Gregor comes to agree with his family’s sentiments and decides to end his own life. Gregor’s death allows him to find peace and allows his family

640â•…â•… Keats, John to become financially independent and move on. Gregor’s sister, Grete, achieves what her brother was unable to achieve in life: independence from family needs. Gregor’s suffering both as a human and as an insect allows him to become stronger. Although Gregor physically suffers before his untimely death, his transformation into an insect allows him to gain personal satisfaction. For a time, Gregor emerges from his transmutation physically and emotionally strong and self-confident while his family suffers through financial hardships. This change in the family dynamics creates resentment toward Gregor that leads to his death. Gregor’s death, like his transformation, serves to provide change for the entire Samsa family. Kafka’s story is a critique on family responsibility and the cost an individual must pay in order to keep the family unit going. Sumeeta Patnaik

Keats, Johnâ•… poemsâ•… (1795–1821)

Easily one of the most talented of the romantic poets, John Keats’s career is all the more remarkable for having ended so soon. His first notable poem, “On Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816), was published when he was only 21 years old. In the space of four years he went on to compose some of the most memorable poems in the English language, including “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (1820) and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820). Keats’s remarkable career was cut short by tuberculosis; he died in 1821 at age 25. At his request, his gravestone bore only the inscription “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” a last poetic nod to the transience of art and life. Keats’s poetry is distinguished by its melodic lines and sensual, concrete imagery. Highly conscious of both the importance of art and the fragility of life, Keats’s poems focus on the contradictions of lived experience—the connection between pain and pleasure, for example, in “Ode to a Nightingale” (1820), or the relationship between love and death in “The Eve of St. Agnes” (1820). Like other romantic poets, Keats was interested in the themes of nature, art, love and death, but his treatment of

these themes is characterized by a celebration of the physical world and thoughtful acceptance of the limitations of human existence. Siobhan Carroll

Death in the poetry of John Keats

John Keats was no stranger to death. By the time he was 15, he had lost a brother, his grandmother, and both his parents. Having witnessed so much death, Keats looked to art as a means of achieving immortality on Earth. In “Endymion” (1818), Keats retells the Greek legend about a man put into an eternal sleep of youth. “Endymion” begins with a famous rejection of death and transience: “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its Loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness; but still will keep . . . a sleep / Full of sweet dreams” (l.1–4). These lines summon up the image of a sleeping Endymion, but also extend that idea to beauty itself. Keats insists that death can be transcended through the creation of beautiful objects. For example, he describes a group of dancing Greeks as being “not yet dead, / But in old marbles ever beautiful” (l.71–72). On the one hand, Keats’s description brings death into the poem, reminding us that the people we are reading about are going to die. On the other hand, the next line reminds us that the ancient Greeks continue to “live” in the form of marble sculptures that preserve their beauty. Keats returns to the idea of art transcending death in his famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820). The speaker is captivated by the way the artwork on an ancient urn captures an ideal moment of life. The trees depicted on the urn will never shed their leaves (l.21) and the musician will never grow old or die. At the same time, the speaker is also aware that the people who knew the stories behind the pictures are dead (l.39–40). The ode concludes with the poet reflecting that the art he is looking at will also probably outlive him and his generation (l.46–7). “Ode to a Nightingale” (1820) begins with the speaker sinking into sleep while listening to the song of the nightingale. Caught up in the pleasure of the experience, he feels himself losing touch with his body, as though he has been poisoned or drugged

poemsâ•…â•… 641 (l.1–3). He wishes he could follow the nightingale’s song out of the world, leaving behind his misery and pain. He doesn’t want to live in a world of transience, where joy and beauty fade and “youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies” (l.36). The poet wonders what it would be like to die at this moment, when he is peaceful and happy: “Now more than ever seems it rich to die, / To cease upon the midnight with no pain” (l.54–55). He reflects on the irony that the birdsong will continue after his death, becoming a requiem he can no longer hear. This in turn leads the poet to think about the immortality of the nightingale. Although the bird is not literally immortal, its song has remained the same across centuries. Like the Grecian urn, it is an example of beauty that will survive the poet, just as it has survived listeners before him. Keats’s poems published after his death reveal a bleaker perspective. In “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” (1848), the speaker discusses his fear that he will die without achieving his life’s ambitions and without seeing his lover again. Whereas in other poems, art offered the speaker comfort in the face of death, here the poem concludes with the isolated speaker unable to do anything but “stand alone, and think / Till love and fame to nothingness do sink” (l.13–14). The final line implies that either the poet’s fears will fade or that he will die and his dreams will cease to matter. “This living hand, now warm and capable” (1848) is one of Keats’s most chilling poems about death. The poet asks the reader to reflect on the hand that is composing the poem. If it could, that hand, once dead, would “haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights” (l.4) until the reader would wish himself or herself dead and the poet alive again. The final lines of the poem—“see here it is—/ I hold it towards you” (l.7–8)—are a powerful acknowledgment of the failure of art, because we cannot, of course, see the hand of the desperate poet pleading for life, nor can we save him. In “Sleep and Poetry” (1817), Keats asks to be spared death for 10 years so that he can study poetry and fulfill his dreams (l.96–97). Sadly, Keats was dead in four years, consumed by tuberculosis by the age of 25. Siobhan Carroll

Love in the poetry of John Keats

Keats’s poems demonstrate that the poet held varying attitudes toward love during his short life. Some of his poems idealize love, portraying it as a power that can elevate the lover into a state approaching divinity. Other poems bypass idealism in favor of bawdiness and celebrate sex and sexuality rather than transcendent love. Finally, in the poems Keats wrote toward the end of his life, we can see the poet questioning his early idealization of love and sometimes expressing frustration with the way his new relationship competes with his long-held poetic ambitions. Keats’s idealization of love can be seen in poems like “The Eve of St. Agnes” (1820). In this poem, the sexual encounter and then escape of the two young lovers is described in very romantic terms: “Into her dream he melted, as the rose / Blendeth its odour with the violet” (l.320–321). At the end of the poem, the lovers flee into the night, leaving the dreary world of religious and parental control behind them. Keats also wrote several poems that celebrate sex and sexuality more overtly. “Over the hill and over the dale” begins innocently enough, describing a journey “over the bourn to Dawlish” (l.1–2). In the second verse, however, we meet “Rantipole Betty” who “Kicked up her petticoats fairly” (l.5–6). The poem’s sexual innuendo becomes clearer when the speaker suggests to Betty that “I’ll be Jack if you will be Jill” (l.7). Betty, agreeing, sits “on the grass debonairly” (l.8). Comedy ensues when Betty panics several times about being interrupted by passersby, but the frustrated speaker is finally able to persuade her to “lay on the grass” (l.12) like a “Venus” (prostitute). The poem concludes by asking who would not want to go to Dawlish and “rumple the daisies there” (l.19). The poem is characteristic of Keats’s writing about sex: It is bawdy in its innuendos and the sexual encounter itself is implied rather than described. In 1818, Keats fell in love with Fanny Brawne. His poems from this point onward show both excitement over his romance with Fanny and an increased consciousness of the less-than-ideal aspects of relationships. Keats’s poems written to Fanny celebrate her beauty and his love for her, but also express concern over the toll their relationship may take on his poetic career. In “To Fanny” (1848), Keats

642â•…â•… Keats, John praises “One-thoughted, never wand’ring, guileless love, / Unmask’d, and being seen—without a blot!” (l. 2–3). Keats adopts the excessive tone of courtly romance, claiming that if his lover remains cold and distant he will die, or worse, continue to live on as his lover’s “wretched thrall” (l. 11) and “Forget, in the mist of idle misery, / Life’s purposes” (l. 12–13). The last lines of the poem dwell on the way the speaker’s lovesick suffering has impacted his life, leading “the palate of my mind” to lose its sense of taste and leaving “my ambition blind” (l. 12–14). The last line is significantly Keatsian: The worst thing that love threatens to do to the speaker is to rob him of his poetic ambition. Cynical poems like “Modern Love” (1848) are quick to criticize what Keats perceives as the shallowness and commerciality of romantic relationships: “And what is love? It is a doll dressed up / For idleness to cosset, nurse and dandle” (l. 1–2). The poem seems to mock Keats’s earlier idealism—“silly youth doth think to make itself / Divine by loving” (l. 3–4)—and expresses anger over lovers’ tendency to read high drama into their shallow relationships. Fools! If passions high have warmed the world, If queens and soldiers have played deep for hearts, It is no reason why such agonies Should be more common than the growth of weeds. (l.11–14) However, having sneered at those who want to believe that “Cleopatra lives at Number Seven” (l.9), the speaker concludes by seeming to wish his idealism back intact, as symbolized by his demand that lovers “make me whole again that weighty pearl” (l.12) which their excesses have presumably destroyed. In that respect, Keats’s poems seem never to stray far from Keats’s early, idealistic celebration of love as a state approaching divinity. Siobhan Carroll

Nature in the poetry of John Keats

Romantic poets are generally characterized as being interested in the relationship between human beings and nature. John Keats is no exception to this rule.

One of his earliest poems, “On the Grasshopper and the Cricket” (1817), begins with the line “The poetry of earth is never dead” (1). Keats likens insects to the singing poets of the earth and claims that their song never truly ceases, for when the grasshopper’s voice is silenced by winter’s frosts the cricket’s voice takes over: “from the stove there shrills / The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, / And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, / The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills” (12–14). Although natural life involves the passing of seasons and, eventually, death, nature has built-in mechanisms that ensure the continuity of beauty from season to season and year to year. Keats returns to the relationship between nature and mortality in his famous poem “To Autumn” (1820). Although autumn, as the forerunner of winter, might seem like a gloomy season, Keats hails it as the “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” (1). In wording that echoes that of “On the Grasshopper and the Cricket,” the poet first asks “Where are the songs of spring?” (23) before concluding that, although the sounds of new life are beautiful, those of autumn also have their charms: “Think not of them, thou hast thy music too” (23–24). However, a potentially negative note appears elsewhere in the poem, when Keats reflects on autumn’s production of “later flowers for the bees / Until they think warm days will never cease” (9–10). Unlike humans, bees and other forms of natural life are both blessed and cursed by ignorance of their mortality. In “Ode to a Nightingale,” Keats expounds further on the natural world’s ignorance of present and future woes. As a human, the speaker in the poem cannot help but be aware of the misery of others, and as a result feels that “to think is to be full of sorrow” (27). By listening to a nightingale, which is ignorant of the cares and troubles of the world, the speaker is temporarily able to forget his human perspective: “fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget / What thou among the leaves hast never known / The weariness, the fever, and the fret / Here, where men sit and hear each other groan” (21–24). Nature, however, cannot provide a lasting refuge for the poet. The speaker is eventually awakened from his trance and enters back into consciousness of human pain and mortality.

On the Roadâ•…â•… 643 In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Keats contrasts the world of nature with the world of art. Examining the illustrations on an ancient piece of pottery, the speaker is struck by the way in which art has frozen a beautiful moment in time, arresting both the progress of seasons and the advance of death. Unlike the trees in “To Autumn,” the painted trees on the urn will never feel the touch of winter: “Ah, happy, happy boughs! That cannot shed / your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu” (21–22). Likewise, the humans depicted on the urn will never grow old and die, but will remain “for ever panting and for ever young” (27). Ultimately, however, the poem expresses ambivalence toward art’s interruption of the natural cycle. The human figures on the urn seem trapped rather than liberated by immortality—“Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss” (17)—and the poet dubs the urn a “Cold Pastoral” (45), acknowledging that the frozen trees and figures lack the vivacity and warmth of real life. Keats’s poems, like the work of other romantic poets, express admiration for the natural world and portray nature as a means of escaping the troubles of modern life. Unlike other romantics, however, Keats emphasizes the mortality rather than the regenerative aspects of nature. Rather than reminding the poet of his individuality, nature in Keats’s poetry reminds the poet that he is part of the natural world and thus is bound to die. Siobhan Carroll

Kerouac, Jackâ•… On the Roadâ•… (1957)

On the Road is the quintessential American travel novel. It has inspired countless readers to drop everything and hit the road in search of themselves, enlightenment, or just a cheap buzz. Its (now somewhat dated) romanticized version of life on the road is irresistibly tempting for anyone with even the faintest hint of a travel bug. It is also a love letter of sorts to America, highlighting the adventure and fascination inherent in her vast landscapes. The late 1940s and 1950s saw the beginning of the interstate road system in America, which eventually connected all major cities through a series of linked roads. Although not an interstate, Route 66, which provided a direct route between Chicago and

California, was part of the U.S. Highway System. Published in 1957, On the Road was a major factor in the romanticization and mythologizing of these new roads, as it showed how the roads connected people from all social and economic classes. Sal Paradise and his friends have the country opened up for them in a way unavailable to previous generations. The novel has never been out of print, and is a staple of the American high school reading list. It is particularly popular with young people at a crossroads in their life: They identify with the choices Dean Moriarty and his friends must make as they mature. Dean keenly observes that his travels are directly related to his maturity: “I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future. . . .” On the Road presents several different themes throughout the various strands of the story line. Most evident is the idea of freedom—freedom from responsibility and perhaps from “adulthood.” The novel also questions and redefines the notion of the “American dream,” which took on a completely new meaning in postwar society. The relationship between the individual and society is also examined: To what extent should we follow what is expected of us by society? The examination of these considerable notions helps make the novel an intensely personal read. Georgina Willms

The American dream in On the Road

The year 1945 saw the end of the fighting of World War II. Soldiers returning to America had witnessed some of the harshest combat the world had ever known. The sheer amount of casualties is a testament to the extreme horror and brutality witnessed by these men. Returning home, they sought the quiet and normalcy that they had left behind—regardless of whether that had been their reality before they had left for war. This quest for normalcy, combined with the advent of the suburbs and a zeal for material possessions, led to a new lifestyle ideal—a new “American dream.” The idea of an “American dream” was by no means new; versions of it had been around since Europeans first settled the New World. In general, it involves some degree of “success,” usually material

644â•…â•… Kerouac, Jack success. In the 19th century it became associated with immigrants coming to America, looking for “the land of opportunity” and its “streets paved with gold.” (This is still a common image of the United States.) But in the aftermath of World War II, the “American dream” took on a new look: the returning soldier, leading a nice, uneventful life with a submissive wife and the newest and best material possessions (kitchen appliances, televisions, and automobiles being some examples of the technological advances that became “must-haves” for the suburban life. However, not all returning soldiers felt this need for material wealth and success. Some aimed for a more aesthetic, pleasure-driven lifestyle. Very little mention is made of Sal Paradise’s military career in On the Road, but we are told that he was in the war, in the navy. (Paradise was Jack Kerouac’s alter ego; Kerouac himself received an honorable discharge for medical reasons from the U.S. Navy in 1943, after serving a minimal amount of time.) The attitudes and experiences described in On the Road are a reaction to the sense of normalcy craved by the middle classes. Sal and his friends are also searching for contentment, but in a very different way. This anti-middle-class stance is manifested most clearly in the character of Dean Moriarty (based on Kerouac’s friend Neal Cassady). By having Dean be the son of a bum, and having him live the life of a tramp, Kerouac is making a clear statement about the unimportance of material things. Dean rarely has his own place to live, his car is the only thing of value he has ever owned, and he does not seem to make any concentrated effort to make a living. Yet he is viewed by Sal as a symbol of freedom and happiness; Sal aspires to be like Dean, to be thrilled by life without material concerns. If the American dream is a quest to find happiness through the acquisition of material goods, then Neal is the antiAmerican dream—happiness through the denial of materialism. If this is the case, then it must be noted that as the novel wears on Sal becomes increasingly disillusioned with Dean’s lifestyle. He begins to see it as immature, self-centered, and indifferent to the needs, wants, and comforts of others. It can be read as Sal maturing, wanting more out of life than what

the road can offer him. It is on the final big trip, to Mexico, that Sal comes to terms with this dissatisfaction. On this trip the friends come face to face with real poverty, meeting people who live without even the possibility of the material comforts that Sal, and even Dean, take for granted. Sal realizes that Dean has made the choice to live the way he does. So what does this say about the American dream? Sal and Dean have to leave America to realize what they have (at least Sal does—left alone in Mexico by Dean while ill, he gradually turns his back on the road lifestyle). Their last meeting in New York City is sad and disjointed; they can no longer understand each other, no longer communicate. Sal has become more settled, more “acceptable” by society’s standards, although he has learned a lot from his time on the road. Dean is still the same, manically looking for the next thrill, unconcerned with material matters. Instead of offering a judgment on this, Kerouac presents both sides equally, suggesting that one can learn from both. The “American dream” is, was, and always will be to some extent unattainable, as evidenced by the inclusion of the word “dream.” What Kerouac suggests is that this dream is fluid, not static, and that everyone can make it work for themselves, because we all define our own dreams. Georgina Willms

Freedom in On the Road

In the late 1940s and 1950s Americans were busy redivising their definition of “freedom.” Years of depression, war rationing, and austerity had taken their toll on the populace, and the economic upturn the country experienced in the early 1950s led to previously incomprehensible levels of economic comfort. As often happens, people soon began to feel “trapped” by their belongings. People spent their new money on appliances, cars, and fancy homes, and then found they must work hard to maintain them. Soon a backlash began against this economic complacency. The promise of freedom is an essential part of the appeal of On the Road. Since its publication, people have been inspired by the book to take off on their own trips, leaving their lives and the consequent responsibilities behind. It is, of course, to some extent a fantasy—your problems will follow you

On the Roadâ•…â•… 645 wherever you go (as our heroes find out numerous times). But the vast landmass that is America holds the promise of autonomy, independence, and a (possibly hedonistic) escape from daily life. Contemporary readers who embark on extended road trips are looking for an escape from their mundane daily lives. Economic freedom is one of the essential freedoms enjoyed by the protagonists of On the Road. At a time when the economy was booming, thanks to postwar industry, an increasing emphasis was being placed on personal economic success. Capitalism and materialism were at an all-time high. By turning their backs on this phenomenon, and not joining the so-called “rat-race,” Dean and his friends freed themselves from this tyranny of wealth. This economic freedom is personified in the character of “Old” Dean Moriarty, Dean’s father, a character who never actually appears but is discussed, searched for, and virtually deified by Sal and Dean. A tramp, he is thought to wander the roads, with no money, no prospects, and, most important, no ties. While he may seem a somewhat sad character for this, the reverent tones used while speaking of him imply that his life represents the pinnacle of economic freedom for which the characters are striving. Sal and his cohort also exemplify a kind of political freedom. In postwar America things were changing rapidly, and one of the prominent changes was the relationship between the races. While the Civil Rights movement in America would not become a national concern until the 1960s, by the late 1940s there were already developments in these relations. The culture of segregation that had been prevalent since the late 19th century was beginning to collapse. Sal, Dean, and the others seem, to some extent, oblivious to any tensions between the races, as they befriend African-American characters in several cities, and display an appreciation for black culture that was rare at the time. Sal’s escapade in California with the Mexican workers also gives him insight into the many problems faced by other races and cultures. On the Road succeeds not only in highlighting positive aspects of other cultures, but also in presenting a more relaxed relationship between the races. Of course, the pursuit of personal freedom is at the core of On the Road. All of the characters are try-

ing to free themselves from the constraints placed on them by society, family, and by themselves. While it may seem that the characters are repeatedly running away from their problems, they are also running to an imaginary, nirvana-like existence where they are free to live as they please. To some, this may sound immature. To others, it is at the heart of any spiritual journey. In the end, the novel both propagates and destroys the hope of tremendous freedom from daily life. Mexico is the most ambitious trip the friends embark upon, and Sal’s illness combined with Dean’s eventual abandonment of him does not make for a happy conclusion. However, the night that Sal, Dean, and Stan spend outside becomes a sticky, hot, insect-ridden dreamscape in which Sal comes as close as he can to pure freedom. After this moment of awareness in the desert, Sal returns to New York and begins to lead a considerably more “proper” life—but a life forever changed by his experiences on the road. Georgina Willms

Individual and Society in On the Road

On the Road is an intensely personal story told as a first-person narrative through the point of view of Sal Paradise (a pseudonym for author Jack Kerouac). All of the action is seen through Sal’s eyes, and we are privy only to his version of events. Because of this, it is possible to align oneself with Sal, as many readers do. A main theme threaded throughout the book is that of society: What constitutes a “society,” and how does one determine one’s place in it? All of the characters in the novel struggle with these questions to some extent, but none more than Sal. The novel is, in a sense, the story of Sal’s struggle with where he feels he belongs. Sal’s struggle becomes synonymous with that of the country itself: “This is the story of America. Everybody’s doing what they think they’re supposed to do.” Sal’s domestic situation in the beginning of the novel seems to indicate that he has already spent a fair part of his life contemplating his role in a larger society. We are told that he has been married and is only just recovered from an illness relating to the break-up of the marriage (no doubt a nod to Kerouac’s own experience with mental illness). He is at a crossroads

646â•…â•… Kesey, Ken in his personal growth, and happens to meet Dean Moriarty at a time when he is looking for something “more” out of life. Sal recognizes the lifestyle that Dean leads is outside the norm and free from the normal responsibilities and trappings of adulthood. He is tempted by the promise of an almost child-like existence. By joining Dean on the road Sal succeeds in temporarily postponing the moment when he has to decide how he fits into society. When contemplating one’s place in society it is always tempting to revolt against the laws and norms dictated by that society. Deciding to place oneself in opposition to the prevailing society is an easy way out. A cursory glance at Dean’s life may give the impression that he has chosen this path; however, we eventually realize that he is outside of society as a whole, so he has no need to consciously fight against it. Sal is also tempted by this battle against society, most conspicuously when he is living in San Francisco with Remi Boncoeur. Remi habitually steals from the barracks they are meant to be guarding, and Sal eventually joins him. As Sal states: “I suddenly began to realize that everybody in America is a natural-born thief. I was getting the bug myself.” We also see the effects of taking this path when Sal visits Old Bull Lee (a fictionalized William S. Burroughs) in New Orleans. Bull Lee is a drug addict, and this section of the book contains the most references to drug-taking. Taking illegal drugs is a most obvious and time-honored way to place oneself in direct opposition to society. Sal is tempted by this path but, again, does not take it. Sometimes instead of trying to find one’s place in society, or consciously railing against it, a character is firmly entrenched outside of society. This is the case with Dean, who has never conformed and never will conform to the norms of society. He marries, but has no intention of honoring his vows. He pays no mind to the kind of ties that would usually hold a person down, instead preferring to follow his own lead traveling across the country and back whenever the fancy strikes him. For the most part, Sal and the others seem to understand that this is how Dean is, and bear him no ill will for it. In fact, it is exactly this remove from society and its rules that attracted Sal to Dean. In Dean, Sal sees an escape from society.

What Sal eventually realizes, is that this is in Dean’s nature; he was raised by a transient father and had no roots growing up. He has had no role models and never learned about personal responsibility. While this life outside of society may seem appealing for a while, Dean is eventually shown to be an intensely unhappy character, whom Sal comes to pity, rather than adore. Georgina Willms

Kesey, Kenâ•… One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestâ•… (1962)

Written during the 1960s and tapping into many of the concerns of the contemporary counterculture Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores themes such as identity, heroism, and the corrupt nature of authority. The novel is set in a mental institution ruled over by the authoritarian Big Nurse, a tyrannical figure who controls every aspect of her male patients’ lives through fear and intimidation. Big Nurse allows her orderlies to abuse the patients and uses electro-shock therapy as a means to punish them when they disobey her. Among those in the hospital is the paranoid half-white, half–Native American, Chief Bromden. Bromden narrates the novel, which centers on the appearance of a new patient, Randle P. McMurphy, who will come to challenge Big Nurse’s iron grip. McMurphy’s subversive nature leads him to rebel against the rule of Big Nurse, the Chief ’s name for Nurse Rached. He does this by restoring a sense of self-worth and dignity in the other patients. While McMurphy is ultimately lobotomized for his disruptive actions, his rebellion is still a triumph as it causes Big Nurse to lose control over the men. McMurphy’s success is most obvious in Chief Bromden’s escape from the hospital. At the end of the novel Bromden is able to lift a cast-iron work unit off the ground and throw it through a window, something he would not have been able to do before McMurphy had rebuilt his confidence. David Simmons

Heroism in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The idea of heroism is an important element in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The novel contains a

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestâ•…â•… 647 subtle but in-depth exploration of how we construct our heroes, what it means to be “heroic,” and the results of this process on those who are singled out for such adulation. Right from McMurphy’s initial appearance we are told how the other characters conceive of him in a heroic mold. Chief Bromden thinks that McMurphy is a giant sent to rescue them from Big Nurse and notes that the rest of the patients “get a big kick out of going along with him.”As the story progresses McMurphy takes on the appearance of a religious or spiritual hero, analogous to the figure of Jesus Christ. Harding, a patient leader, suggests that McMurphy could “work subconscious miracles.” McMurphy organizes a fishing trip for 12 of the other men, “his dozen people,” and upon being given electroshock therapy on a cross-shaped table he jokingly asks the attendant whether he gets “a crown of thorns.” In addition to these religious allusions, the plot of the novel, in which McMurphy sacrifices his own life for the good of the other men, has obvious echoes of the biblical story of Jesus. While the traditional hero is often a superhuman individual marked out by his superior strength or physical prowess, the novel frequently highlights how normal McMurphy is. Perhaps most significantly, at one point in the early part of the novel McMurphy is unable to lift a heavy control panel off the ground. While we are never convinced that he will be able to achieve such a Herculean feat, his declaration to the other patients that he “tried though” has its own heroic significance, given the manner in which McMurphy encourages the men to stand up for themselves to Big Nurse. McMurphy’s subversive actions and anti-establishment attitudes mark him out as an antihero, a common figure in American novels of the 1960s. Indeed, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores America’s relationship with the antiheroic. Once Big Nurse learns of the patients’ adoration of McMurphy she attempts to discredit him. She tries to downplay McMurphy’s heroism by ridiculing the idea that he is savior-like: “And yet,” she went on, “he seems to do things without thinking of himself at all, as if he were a martyr or a saint. Would anyone venture that McMurphy is a saint?” However, such is the patients’ love of McMurphy that when Big Nurse

tries to suggest McMurphy is manipulating them for the worse the patients refuse her suggestions: “I feel compelled to defend my friend’s honor as a good old red, white, and blue hundred-per-cent American con man.” Harding’s comments imply that the patients both realize and embrace McMurphy’s supposed moral failings. Though the hero conventionally embodies the values of the establishment that he belongs to, the novel’s depiction of the hospital ward as a corrupt, abusive, and dehumanizing place means that we, like the patients, have little problem in siding with McMurphy over Big Nurse and her staff. Interestingly, the novel also suggests that the patient’s worshiping of McMurphy has negative effects for him. As the story reaches its conclusion Chief Bromden realizes that the role of hero might have more drawbacks for McMurphy than he and the other patients initially thought: “I wondered how McMurphy slept, plagued by a hundred faces like that, or two hundred, or a thousand.” The sense that McMurphy is trapped by the needs the patients have of him is also made apparent. When McMurphy has a chance to escape from the ward but refuses, the Chief suggests: “It was like he’d signed on for the whole game and there wasn’t any way of him breaking his contract.” Ultimately McMurphy is successful as a hero, saving the other patients from Big Nurse. Though in one sense he “loses” his battle against Big Nurse and is lobotomized at her command, by the end of the novel he has managed to pass on his life-affirming sense of self-belief and self-worth to the other men. This positive message enables the patients to overcome their fear of Big Nurse and face the prospect of leaving the hospital for good. David Simmons

Identity in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

As the novel begins we are introduced to the narrator, Chief Bromden, as the orderlies on the mental ward are mocking him. The staff thinks of him as a child and treats him like an object, calling him “Chief Broom,” this introduction is indicative of the novel’s preoccupation with identity and the various ways in which society attempts to control us by denigrating certain peoples and lifestyles. For the Chief suggests that those who work on the ward are only

648â•…â•… Kesey, Ken a small part of a much larger organization called “The Combine” that is trying to make everyone and everything in American society the same: “like, for example—a train .  .  . laying a string of full-grown men in mirrored suits and machined hats, laying them like a hatch of identical insects.” As the story progresses we learn that the Chief ’s conflicted sense of identity is due not only to being undermined by those in authority but also to an internal crisis concerning his mixed race ethnicity. As a half-white, half-Native American, the Chief seems torn between two ways of being. Unable to find an identity that he feels comfortable with, the Chief instead acts as he thinks others expect him to: “I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don’t seem like I ever have been me.” The Chief ’s identity crisis also represents a larger issue concerning the destruction of American Indian identity. We are told that the removal of the Chief ’s father from his land was partially instigated by his white mother who became the dominant force in the relationship. This led the Chief to take his mother’s surname instead of his father’s, an act that is symptomatic of white assimilation of indigenous cultures. The other patients, oppressed by Big Nurse, share the Chief ’s confused sense of identity. Nurse Ratched controls the patients, instilling in them a belief that they are abnormal and need to adjust in order to fit into “normal” society, as one of the patients sarcastically states “Not talk me into it, no. I was born a rabbit. Just look at me. I simply need the nurse to make me happy with my role.” Harding, in particular, is important here, the novel implying that he is a closet homosexual unable to declare his homosexuality for fear of ridicule by the wider society. While Big Nurse manipulates any sense of identity the other patients have, she is largely unable to control McMurphy in a similar manner. The appearance of McMurphy is markedly different from our introduction to the Chief. While Chief Bromden is presented as a repressed and downtrodden character, McMurphy’s individuality lends him a strength of personality and belief in himself that the other patients initially lack. The Chief says that McMurphy “sounds like he’s way above them, talk-

ing down, like he’s sailing fifty yards overhead, hollering at those below on the ground. He sounds big” and suggests that he is this way because “He hadn’t let what he looked like run his life one way or the other, any more than he’d let the Combine mill him into fitting where they wanted him to fit.” In opposition to the harmful practices of Big Nurse, McMurphy tries to restore the other patients’ confidence, turning them from “rabbits” back into men. He does this by encouraging the men to believe in their own self-worth and by teaching them that it is Nurse Ratched who is in the wrong. McMurphy’s independent actions and the positive effects they have on the other patients suggest that a strong sense of “who we are” is important to our personal well–being. Indeed, the novel ends with two events that demonstrate this belief. First, the Chief smothers the lobotomized McMurphy in order to prevent Big Nurse from using McMurphy as a tool to control future patients, and, second, the newly restored Chief is able to escape from the mental institution by hurling a cast-iron control panel through a window. Both actions represent a desire to state the importance of the individual maintaining control over his or her own identity in the face of society’s attempts to change it. As the Chief notes at the end of the novel “I been away a long time.” David Simmons

Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Reflecting the anti-authoritarian ethos of the 1960s, the novel suggests that society tries to control our actions through oppressive practices. In the book we are presented with numerous examples of those with power attempting to tell characters with less power how to behave. Most obviously this occurs through the characters of Big Nurse and her orderlies, who are effectively employed with the sole purpose of controlling the patients. While the structure of the hospital system means that the staff must tell those under their care what to do, the novel suggests that Nurse Ratched goes beyond mere supervision and instead seeks to rule over all elements of the patients’ lives. At the start of the novel we are introduced to the narrator, Chief Bromden, as the hospital orderlies

Annie Johnâ•…â•… 649 are mocking him. We soon learn that this abuse is not particular to the Chief and that the staff at one time or another have mistreated all of the patients on the ward. There is institutionally sanctioned rape, with the orderlies habitually inducting new patients onto the ward by abusing them. The Chief tells us about Ellis and Ruckly, two patients that have been irreparably damaged by electroshock therapy, and about Mr. Taber, a former patient whose refusal to endure the abuse dealt out by the staff led to his being given a frontal lobotomy. While the majority of the oppression in the novel takes place on the ward as a direct result of Big Nurse’s practices we are also presented with examples outside of the hospital where oppression has taken place; Billy Bibbit’s emotional development as a young man has been repressed by an overprotective mother while Harding has repressed his homosexuality for fear of the negative repercussions of “coming out” in a society that still frowns upon being gay. The novel repeatedly provides us with examples of minorities being criticized or treated poorly by the majority within society, as Harding notes: “the great voice of millions chanting ‘Shame. Shame. Shame.’ It’s society’s way of dealing with someone different.” Chief Bromden is a pertinent example of this. The Chief recollects his childhood and the manner in which white society (including his own mother) tried to oppress his father and the tribe to which they belonged. Such is the effect of white oppression that the Chief chooses to withdraw from the world by pretending that he is deaf and dumb. Indeed, whether or not we choose to read the hospital ward as a representative microcosm of wider society, the novel seems to be heavily criticizing what it believes is the repressive nature of postwar America. This sentiment is made overt by Chief Bromden’s belief in “The Combine,” a secret statesanctioned organization that is trying to engineer society so that everyone looks the same, lives the same lifestyle, and behaves in the same way. McMurphy, the (anti-) hero of the story, comes onto the ward to free the other patients from Big Nurse’s oppressive regime. McMurphy, it seems, has escaped the oppression of society if only due to his refusal to be a part of it. The Chief notes: “logging,

gambling, running carnival wheels, travelling lightfooted and fast, keeping on the move so much that the Combine never had a chance to get anything installed.” However, as the novel progresses we learn that McMurphy has also suffered from oppression. Growing up, McMurphy was in and out of prison and work farms for not conforming to society’s rules. Furthermore, the novel implies that the total reliance the other patients have in McMurphy’s saving them becomes an oppressive force, leaving the character trapped into a course of action that will eventually lead to his death. McMurphy has been able to retain his “sanity” only through the realization that it is those in authority who are in the wrong rather than him, and he subsequently leads the other patients to freedom by getting them to realize this too. Indeed, it is an irony that by the end of the story we view many, if not all, of the patients on the ward as being less “sick” than those who have oppressed them for so long. David Simmons

Kincaid, Jamaicaâ•… Annie Johnâ•… (1985)

Kincaid’s text tells the coming-of-age story of Annie John, whom we meet as a 10-year-old Antiguan girl at the beginning of the novel. She will grow up to become a strong-minded 17-year-old whom we leave, at the end of the novel, as she is about to move from her island to the “motherland” (England) to get an education. Annie John is, from early on, a successful student. She does very well in the colonial school system and, as a young girl, strives to meet the expectations of her surroundings, especially her mother with whom she has a strong, loving relationship. However, this relationship will erode as Annie grows older and slowly separates from her mother, who grows strange, even foreign, to Annie. The new experiences Annie lives through outside the home and her school, the freedom she finds away from her mother and often without her knowing, the unsettling emotions Annie begins to feel for young girls around her—all these events combine to further wear away the mother-daughter relationship and to unveil and confirm Annie’s strong desire for change and difference, her longing for an “elsewhere.”

650â•…â•… Kincaid, Jamaica The following themes—coming of age, identity, innocence and experience—all offer perspectives from which to reflect upon Annie’s journey toward adulthood, a journey paved with many obstacles that acquaint or reacquaint the reader with the difficulties a smart and unconventional young girl encounters when confronted with the high expectations of a traditional family and community. Sophie Croisy

Coming of Age in Annie John

The term coming of age implies a series of changes in the life of a child or adolescent. Generally, these changes are synonymous with upheaval. Annie John goes through a series of transitional moments (she grows from child to young adult) that greatly modify her self-image and destabilize her relationship with her surroundings. The text takes her through a series of realizations that come to deconstruct the truths she had relied on as a child and leave much room for uncertainty in her life. Her first real intrusion from the world of adulthood happens through death. The death of a schoolmate—Nalda, 10 years old—forces Annie to depart from her childhood world of carelessness and ignorance when she realizes that “until then, I had not known that children died.” Even if it is a consciousness-raising event, her attitude toward that death is rather detached as she turns drama into a subject of gossip: “At school, I told my friends about this death. I would take them aside individually, so I could repeat the details over and over again.” Though she is confronted with death, she does not express any real sensitivity to it and intellectualizes the experience without feeling for the dead and the mourners. It is only when death gets close, and when her father tells her the story of his grandmother’s death that she merges knowing and feeling in her reaction to death. Her slowly developing ability to know and feel at the same time shows maturity in Annie John, though this union of logos and pathos in dealing with life events will remain, throughout her growing up, a difficult process for Annie. On an anatomical level, Annie’s growing up implies bodily changes that lead to a mis-recognition of her own self in the mirror: at 12, “small tufts of hair had appeared under my arms, and when I

perspired the smell was strange, as if I had turned into a strange animal.” Anatomical disturbances highly perturb Annie, who often comes to feel “too big and too small at once” as if the constant changes that come with growing up leave her in a middle place between childhood and adulthood where nothing is familiar, recognizable. This liminal position gets so disturbing and damaging that Annie falls sick. While bedridden and feverish, Annie looks at the pictures around her room: “none of the people in the wedding picture, except for me, had any face left. In the picture of my mother and father, I had erased them from the waist down. In the picture of me wearing my confirmation dress, I had erased all of myself except for the shoes.” Her sickness is without a name, but it is a symptom of a transition that involves a mis-recognition of her body and surroundings. The erasure of parts of the people from the pictures she looks at symbolizes this mis-recognition: Annie is not as she used to be, nor is her life, nor are her parents’ attitudes toward her. This new state of things materializes in her mother’s change of attitude toward Annie from the moment she turns 12 onward: no more dressing in a fabric similar to her mother’s, and no more “childish” ritual of looking through an old trunk full of things from the past. Thus, Annie experiences the end of a harmonious relationship with her mother and reads her mother’s change of attitude as a complete rejection, which plays a role in Annie’s developing her “transition sickness.” Annie’s unclear position between childhood and adulthood is exemplified through her constant change of attitude toward life: She goes back and forth between feelings. She is a child when she hates her mother for breaking their strong bond and thus betraying Annie’s love, but she is an adult when she begins to see her mother as a woman with a life of her own—not just as the object of Annie’s affection. She can reject the present and the unavoidable march into adulthood by sometimes wishing that “everything would fall away .  .  . no future full of ridiculous demands,” but she can also welcome the future as she dreams of leaving her family and friends behind and traveling to Belgium. She will eventually accomplish her goal of going abroad though she remains, when she departs at 17, torn

Annie Johnâ•…â•… 651 between a childish attachment to the past and the prospect of an independent life on the old continent, the life of a young adult. Sophie Croisy

Identity in Annie John

Annie John, from the very start of the story, does not show a personality that would compare with the image her mother (and main caretaker) has of her as a child. Neither, as she grows up, does she become the young lady her mother wants her to become. Through a series of trials, Annie John constructs her own identity outside the frames of reference her mother would like to impose on her (so that she can become a proper young Antiguan lady with a good education and a good husband to boot). As a girl of 10, her attraction to beautiful things and beautiful people and her desire to control them leads her to show both kindness (mainly the type of kindness that brings forth her intellectual superiority) and violence (she hurts the thing she loves in an attempt to control it). This behavior is made visible by her relationship with Sonia, a school friend: “I loved very much—and so used to torment until she cried—a girl named Sonia . . . I would try to get to school early and give her my homework so that she could copy it . . . I thought her beautiful and I would say so . . . At recess, I would buy her a sweet . . . Then I would pull at hair on her arms and legs—gently at first, and then awfully hard, holding it up tight with the tips of my fingers until she cried.” This lovehate relationship with beautiful girls her age is a running motif throughout the novel (her schoolmate Gwen and a wild girl she names “the Red Girl” will be Annie’s adolescent crushes), as are the cruelty, lies, and disobedient behavior resulting from an unquenchable curiosity, an attraction to the forbidden, and a desire for independence and freedom fed by an intelligence way above average. For instance, still at the age of 10, she lies to her mother about her whereabouts in order to go to a funeral and see a dead body after having been forbidden to go. Later on, she will “go to the lighthouse behind my mother’s back” and experience the height, the danger, the dizziness when at the top accompanied by her love, the Red Girl, of whom her mother knows nothing. In order to keep her mother and father happy, how-

ever, she lies and cheats so they will not know what she thinks, who she is, what she really wants. She constructs her true identity away from and outside of her parents’ ring of control. She puts her intelligence to good use as she always performs wonderfully in the English school system of Antigua, which makes her family really proud. However, even though she takes in the education received through that system and uses the system for advancement, she has a mind of her own and is critical of this system and its colonial context: She knows quite well what England, the motherland, did to her African ancestors, though she keeps her critiques to herself. Among other things, she secretly loves looking at the “Columbus in Chains” picture in her history book “to see the usually triumphant Columbus, brought so low, seated at the bottom of a boat just watching things go by.” Her intelligence also helps her become a respected and feared leader among her girl friends outside the classroom. She is the strong and bold mind upon which the group relies, a group infused with Annie’s love for independence, misbehavior, and her dismissal of the rules, regulations, and expectations of the adult world: “We were sure that the much-talked-about future that everybody was preparing for us would never come, for we had such a powerful feeling against it, and why shouldn’t our will prevail?” As she grows up, Annie continues to refuse the intrusion of the inconvenient rules of the adult world, but as always, in front of her mother and family, she tries to “pass” as a proper young lady. Nonetheless, she feels a secret love for other girls and is happy with her secret wanderings and her manipulative ways, so much so that even as she grows into a young adult, she manages to preserve and further develop this self-constructed identity based on self-trust and the rejection of traditional notions about life and expectations for women. When Annie is 17 and about to leave for England, she can hardly hide her feeling of repulsion when her mother tells her, “↜‘you are a young lady now, and we won’t be surprised if in due time you write to say that one day soon you are to be married.’↜” “↜‘How absurd!’↜” are the words of Annie in response to her mother’s commentary, a response that further emphasizes Annie’s clear departure from her

652â•…â•… Kincaid, Jamaica Â� family’s envisioning of her future, of her identity— her sexual identity, among other things. Sophie Croisy

Innocence and Experience in Annie John

The young Annie John’s innocence loses ground little by little as important life experiences become crucial sites of knowledge for Annie, who is becoming a young adult. The first noteworthy moment of knowledge is Annie’s first encounter with death, the death of one of her schoolmates: “until then, [she] had not known that children died.” Not only does she find access to knowledge about this universal and omnipresent concern for humankind, and thus slowly departs from the self-centered and careless world of childhood, but she also comes to know death on a more physical level: She goes to funerals to witness death and try to understand its implications for the dead and the living School is also the place where her own knowledge of life gets expanded and exacerbated through sharing knowledge with others. It is with her classmates that Annie regularly goes to the churchyard after a week of school: “we would sit and sing songs, use forbidden words, and, of course, show each other various parts of our bodies. While some of us watched, the others would walk up and down on the large tombstones showing off their legs.” Socializing with schoolmates is the occasion for breaking the rules of language and behavior, which implies a loss of innocence: no more blind acceptance of the rules of life at home and life in school when these rules limit the acquisition of new knowledge. School is the place where knowledge is produced, where experience happens. There, Annie learns about pleasing others, specifically teachers, in order to have what she wants. She learns about playing “the good student” and she performs her misdeeds knowing that this protective veil of quasi-perfection will take her out of many uncomfortable situations. She thus learns hypocrisy, but whatever she does, her actions get redeemed by the fame she manages to acquire through excellence in school: “I was soon given responsibility for overseeing the class in the teacher’s absence  . . I would never dillydally with a decision, always making up my mind right away about the thing in front of me. Sometimes, seeing my old frail

self in a girl, I would defend her; sometimes, seeing my old frail self in a girl, I would be heartless and cruel. It all went over quite well, and I became very popular.” Starting to listen to and observe her close surroundings is also an important aspect of knowledge production for Annie. The people closest to her are her parents, and her growing up leads to her questioning the validity of her parents’ teachings: “Often I had been told by my mother not to feel proud of anything I had done and in the next breath that I couldn’t feel enough pride about something I had done.” The rejection of her parents’ many double standards and their hypocrisy leads to Annie dismissing their authority, disobeying them on every occasion she gets, manipulating them, and even stealing from them. Her realization that her father had other women and other children before her mother and herself came into the picture, her witnessing her parents having sexual intercourse, her listening to her father’s stories about his harsh childhood, all these elements render mother and father less perfect and more human, and Annie’s observations give birth to an emotional distance between parents and daughter. This witnessing of their imperfections marks the end of Annie’s innocence and the beginning of her involvement in the complications proper to the world of adults, a world she learns to know and live in, and at the same time rejects because of its falsehood. It is a world that focuses on appearances, on the way you look and behave in public (Annie both uses this knowledge for her own good and rejects it when she sees it in others); hence her mother’s rough reaction when Annie, then 15, only briefly talks to a boy she used to know when she meets him in the street on her way back from school. Their innocent conversation is interpreted by her mother, who saw the scene, as improper behavior: “it had pained her to see me behave in the manner of a slut (only she used the French patois word for it) in the street and that just to see me had caused her to feel shame.” Annie, when old enough to do so, will decide to leave her island and its strict rules in order to live a less static, less restricted life and not have to play the hypocritical game of perfection anymore. Sophie Croisy

A Small Placeâ•…â•… 653

Kincaid, Jamaicaâ•… A Small Placeâ•… (1988)

Kincaid was born and raised in Antigua while it was still a British colony. She received a British education and learned the British view of history. Leaving Antigua at 16 to become an au-pair (live-in babysitter) in New York, she did not return to Antigua for 20 years. By that time, Antigua was no longer a British colony but had become an independent nation, with a freely elected black government. However, the average Antiguan was worse off than before, buildings were in disrepair, the government was corrupt, and the people seemed unable to believe that anything could change for the better. A tiny minority of well-to-do white people still exerted a tremendous negative influence on the island’s native inhabitants, the descendants of slaves who had begun to arrive shortly after Columbus discovered the island in 1493. Kincaid begins her essay from the point of view of a white male tourist from North America or Europe. She shows how the tourist commodifies Antigua and Antiguans in the same way the British colonizers did—the island and its inhabitants become things to be consumed, to be experienced for a price. Because the tourist feels so superior to the poor ignorant native, tourism to third-world nations is a form of imperialism, very similar to the attitude of innate superiority adopted by white British colonial officials. The corrupt black government, which is now impoverishing Antiguans even more, learned its methods from the colonizers. The very poor Antiguans who continue to freely elect the same corrupt government are, after six centuries of degradation by slavery and colonialism, passive, ignorant of any world history or political theory that could change their lot, and unable to imagine that they have the power to change anything. Barbara Z. Thaden

Commodification/Commercialization in A Small Place

Jamaica Kincaid begins her acerbic commentary on the life of the inhabitants of a tiny island by looking at it through the eyes of a tourist. Antigua is an island of breathtaking beauty, a popular tourist destination because the constant drought, a bane to

the poor islanders who must conserve every drop of water, almost guarantees sunny weather for the tourists fleeing their cloudy and cold climates. The tourist sees the beauty of the island commodified for his consumption, but does not see the government corruption responsible for this commodification, and does not notice the poverty and ignorance in which the inhabitants live because their government (the post-colonial, post-British government) has robbed them of their wealth and land. The government is all too ready to allow the commodification of the island’s only natural resource—its beauty—to enrich itself. It sells large pieces of land to foreign investors, who build ugly condominium communities designed for foreigners on Antigua’s “commodity,” the land itself. The tourist thinks he is eating fresh, locally grown vegetables and locally caught seafood, while in reality this food, a commodity like any other, has first been shipped to Miami for “processing,” then sent back to Antigua, at a hugely inflated price, to sell for a profit, a profit that finds its way into American and not Antiguan hands. To the tourist, Antigua itself is a commodity, something to be purchased and enjoyed for a week or two. The native Antiguans also are, for the tourist, commodities to be enjoyed, as he watches them creating small souvenirs from scraps of cloth, observes their quaint and, to him, primitive customs, and their colorful (but incorrect) use of the English language. But the Antiguans know they are being commodified, being sold along with the tourist package as local scenery and culture. They know that the tourist can never imagine them as people like himself. He cannot imagine that the native Antiguan hates and despises him, because she is too poor to leave Antigua and tour other places where she could feel superior. Antigua is not only a home but also a prison. “Every native of every place is a potential tourist,” writes Kincaid: Every native would like to escape the monotony and boredom of his or her own life. But almost every native everywhere is not able to do this; capitalism, the creator of commodities, has not left the native with the resources necessary to live comfortably in his homeland, much less to travel as a tourist to another country and be diverted by the natives there. The tourist, who makes of the

654â•…â•… Kincaid, Jamaica natives a “commodity,” is an ugly human being to those being commodified. Poor people, people like the native Antiguans (the descendants of slaves), distrust capitalism, commodification, and the wealth that both can bring, because the rise of capitalism in the Western world is a direct result of the slave trade, a fact that is omitted from history books. As slaves, the natives of Antigua were not the capitalists, but quite literally the capital, the commodity that was traded and made the white capitalists wealthy. Nothing the author can imagine can ever make up for this centuries-long commerce in human flesh that is her only heritage. Commerce has robbed her of her country, her language, and her culture. She can never know from what part of Africa her ancestors came, what language they spoke, what customs they had. She can write only in the capitalist’s language, study the capitalist’s version of history, and try to express her great grief and rage that wealthy whites still do not recognize the magnitude of their crimes and still see and treat black inhabitants of third-world nations as intellectual and cultural inferiors. Barbara Z. Thaden

Justice in A Small Place

There is no justice in a small place for those who live there permanently, at least for the vast majority of those who are the descendants of slaves. The essay begins with the injustice of the natives having to endure, still, the wealth and arrogance and ignorance of their former enslavers and colonizers, whose descendants are now visiting as “tourists.” For the white, wealthy tourist Antigua is an island paradise, while for its natives it is an island prison. There is injustice in the fact that the former oppressors still own all the profits of their cruelty and ruthlessness. The white nations still possess the wealth created by enslaving Africans and using their free labor to enrich themselves. There is certainly no justice in seeing that, even in post-colonial Antigua, the wealthiest inhabitants are still white or foreign or both, while the “natives” to whom the country now supposedly belongs still live in the most humble poverty. There is no justice in the main source of legal income being tourism, white tourism, where the role of the black Antiguan is to

be the perfect servant and where the perfect education is being a graduate of the celebrated Hotel Training School. Living under a freely elected, inefficient, corrupt black government and knowing that the former white rulers are saying, “We told you so,” is a bitter injustice, as is the fact that the only way to become rich in Antigua is to be a corrupt government official, one whose wealth comes from being bribed by those who have money. Drug dealers and white foreigners buy up the land and build things only tourists and foreigners can enjoy, like condominiums, gambling casinos, and private clubs. There is no justice in the descendants of slaves being robbed of their native language and their native culture and religion so that they have only the oppressor’s language in which to complain, the oppressor’s God to pray to, and the oppressor’s history (in which they play no discernible part) by which to understand their place in the world. There is no justice in being forced to memorize a history in which all the heroes are really your greatest enemies—those who discovered lands to conquer, their Indian populations to eliminate and replace with African slaves, to create empires and enrich themselves at the expense of everything you and your ancestors ever had. And nothing imaginable can ever make up for this greatest of all injustices, the enslaving of an entire race and the erasing of their entire history and culture, creating a commodity out of people who once had a language and a culture of their own but for centuries were not allowed even to own their children, much less speak their own language or practice their own religion. “Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees,” writes Kincaid, “it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you.” Injustice is apparent everywhere in Antigua—in the identities of those who own the grand mansions (corrupt government officials, drug lords, whites) and in the way the average black Antiguan is forced to live. Roads are in disrepair, schools are so illkept that they look like a row of latrines covered in dust, sewage is dumped directly into the Caribbean because the island has no sewage system, and the only hospital on the island is in such a state of filth

A Small Placeâ•…â•… 655 and collapse that wealthy Antiguans fly to New York for medical care and poor Antiguans consider it a death sentence to be taken to such a place. This state of injustice has existed for centuries. First, the black Antiguans were slaves, then they were the colonized, forced to maintain a very low position in society, and now they are the victims of a corrupt black government. Kincaid is dismayed that what at first seems like progress—the slaves are emancipated, the colony becomes a free, selfgoverning nation—is not progress at all. Instead of being miseducated, the population now seems uneducated, and their will to effect positive changes seems paralyzed. Barbara Z. Thaden

Oppression in A Small Place

The history of Antigua is a history of oppression. Discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493, the tiny, surreally beautiful island in the Leeward Islands was colonized by “human rubbish from Europe,” those unhappy, unsuccessful-at-home white people who, to satisfy their avarice, immediately brought African slaves to Antigua to toil on sugar plantations. The author writes as a descendant of those African slaves, whose history and culture and language and religion is nothing but the history and culture and language and religion of slavery and oppression. When England outlawed the slave trade and then slavery itself in its colonies, those who had become wealthy through the slave trade continued to become even wealthier through oppressing and exploiting the formerly enslaved Africans. The Barclay brothers, for example, who had become wealthy through slave-trading, became even wealthier as bankers by investing the savings of the former slaves and lending it back to them with interest. The white, colonial government, which ruled until 1947, educated all former slaves using the British curriculum, which emphasized the grand history of Britain and the benighted condition of the Africans who were rescued from savagery and transported to this British colony to become Christians and to become civilized (eventually) but to always be so much less than, so far below, any white British subject precisely because they had needed to be rescued from savagery in the first place.

Allowed only the most menial positions (laundress, waiter, servant), these black Antiguans lived in grinding poverty while white Antiguans lived in luxury. Even emigrants from the Middle East and Jewish refugees from Hitler’s racist extermination policy of World War II in Europe came to Antigua and oppressed those black Antiguans whose ancestors had been there since the time of Columbus. What really infuriates Kincaid is that after Antiguans gained their independence from Britain and became a self-governing country, the average Antiguan was even worse off under the newly elected black government than he had been under the British. She asks, “Have you ever wondered that all we ever learned from you is how to corrupt our societies and how to be tyrants?” The reason, to her, is obvious. To the natives, the British government had always seemed to be only a tyrant and kidnapper and thief, who took what was not its own and made laws to enrich itself and oppress its former slaves. The average black Antiguan was educated to know his inferiority, his inability to really fight off this white capitalism, which impoverished most of the islanders, so that when a black government did come to power, it knew only how to sell itself to the highest (white or foreign) bidder and enrich itself through corruption. The people of such a small place have no history with which to compare this, no cultural or national identity with which to counter such a government, not even a self-imposed morality by which to judge themselves. Because they live in a small place, they are not aware of much that is going on in the world, and because they are the descendants of slaves, they have either been denied an education entirely or educated and indoctrinated into the belief that they are inferior while the white race is naturally superior and magnanimous enough to allow the black inhabitants to live in the shadow of their superiority and benefit from the greatness of their culture. Thus, while Kincaid mourns the wreck of the once magnificent library where she used to read as a girl, and blames the corrupt black government and the uncooperative wealthy white citizens for allowing it to remain in disrepair, she at the same time acknowledges that everything she read there reinforced the greatness of British culture, British history, British government, the English language,

656â•…â•… Kingsolver, Barbara and Britain itself, while completely leaving out any history of her own ancestors, how they arrived in Antigua, how they were treated, and how the British Empire grew wealthy through slavery in its colonies. This great mental as well as social and physical oppression has left her people with a profound feeling of powerlessness, an incomplete understanding of cause and effect, and a belief that they can only be victims of circumstances that they cannot control. Antiguans must learn to understand that they are capable of taking control of their destiny, and whites must acknowledge the atrociousness of their crimes and their responsibility for the misrule that is affecting so many freed British colonies, so that both peoples can become fully human, neither victim nor victimizer. Barbara Z. Thaden

Kingsolver, Barbaraâ•… The Bean Treesâ•… (1988)

Barbara Kingsolver’s debut novel, The Bean Trees, first published in 1988, has since become a landmark text in environmental and ecofeminist literature. The narrative follows the life of Marietta Greer, a teenager living in Pittman County, Kentucky, who works at the local hospital until she saves up enough money to buy herself a Volkswagen bug so she can leave town and avoid getting pregnant. On her trip west she passes through Taylorville and renames herself Taylor. She continues westward, driving through Oklahoma, where a Cherokee woman abandons a baby girl in Taylor’s car. Taylor names the baby Turtle and discovers that the baby has been physically and sexually abused. Taylor’s car malfunctions when she arrives in Arizona where she meets Mattie, the owner of a tire repair shop. Mattie gives shelter to illegal immigrants above her shop, among them Estevan and Esperanza, a couple fleeing from Guatemala where they had to abandon their daughter Ismene when guerrillas kidnapped the child to force them to betray their colleagues. In Arizona, Taylor finds work with Mattie and room and board with Lou Ann Ruiz, another single mother whose husband has abandoned her and her child, Dwayne Ray. As the story progresses Turtle develops a fondness for anything related to nature and is able to

identify fauna and flora easily. Edna Poppy, a blind neighbor babysits Turtle often, and one night a prowler attacks the little girl. Though Edna saves Turtle from harm, a social worker threatens to take Turtle away when she discovers Taylor has no legal papers of guardianship. Taylor travels to Oklahoma to find Turtle’s parents, together with Estevan and Esperanza, who are in danger of being discovered in Arizona and are hoping to find asylum elsewhere. When Turtle’s parents cannot be found, Estevan and Esperanza pose as her parents before a judge, once again being forced to metaphorically give up their daughter. The couple remains in Oklahoma finding sanctuary in a church and among the Native Americans. Taylor obtains legal guardianship of Turtle, returning with her to Arizona to start a new life. This quest narrative explores themes of abandonment, gender conflicts, nature, immigration, ecofeminism, ecocriticism, and alienation. Lourdes Arciniega

Abandonment in The Bean Trees

The theme of abandonment permeates Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, propelling the narrative forward and becoming a strong motivator for several characters’ emotional growth. Abandonment surfaces from the start of the novel when the reader meets the protagonist, Marietta Greer, and learns that Marietta’s father abandoned her mother when she became pregnant. Marietta refuses to conform to the fate of other teenage girls of the town who become pregnant, drop out of school, and lead fruitless lives. Marietta gets a job, buys a used car, and abandons her mother to travel and carve an alternate life for herself. Abandonment plays an important role in her social development because when she travels she not only breaks all social ties with her past, but also her first action upon leaving Pittman County, Kentucky, the town where she grew up, is to discard her given name and rename herself Taylor. As Taylor continues to travel through Oklahoma and Cherokee territory, she meets an Indian woman at a bar who abandons her niece in Taylor’s car. Taylor, who is running away from the risk of becoming pregnant, now finds herself a surrogate mother to a girl whom she names Turtle.

The Bean Treesâ•…â•… 657 Taylor drives farther west until she reaches Arizona, where she is forced to stop when her car breaks down. There she finds work with Mattie who runs a tire shop and befriends Estevan and Esperanza, illegal emigrants from Guatemala who seek shelter in Mattie’s home after guerrillas kidnapped their daughter in their home country. These guerrillas blackmailed Estevan and Esperanza, asking them to give up their friends if they wanted to see their daughter alive. Unwilling to lead their friends to certain death, and willing to sacrifice the life of one to save 17 others, the couple was forced to make an unbearable choice, to abandon their daughter and flee to the United States. In Arizona, Taylor also befriends Lou Ann Ruiz, another single parent who was abandoned by her husband Angel when their son Dwayne Ray was born. Lou Ann and Taylor become an unusual family unit as two single mothers who struggle to raise their children on their own. A few months later, Angel asks Lou Ann to move with him to Montana and live with him in a yurt or to allow him to return. Lou Ann, who has by now found a job, refuses to leave Arizona or to take Angel back. Turtle, who was sexually and physically abused before being abandoned with Taylor, personifies the strongest and most poignant example of abandonment in the novel. This early abandonment proves to be lifesaving for the little girl as she clings like her namesake mud turtle to Taylor, who struggles to bring some normalcy into her life. However, just as Turtle is emerging from her emotional shell, she is once again attacked while in the care of a blind woman. Although Turtle comes to no physical harm, she is emotionally scarred and withdraws once more. As a result of this incident, Social Services questions Taylor’s guardianship of Turtle and the agency threatens to remove the little girl from the only stable home environment she has known. To legally adopt Turtle, Taylor has to show proof of abandonment. In the meantime, Estevan and Esperanza face legal problems of their own as they cannot stay in Arizona unless they can produce documented proof that their life was in danger in Guatemala, but as Mattie says “when people run for their lives they frequently neglect to bring along their file cabinets of evidence” (159). For these refugees, abandoning

their homeland and their daughter was not a choice but a cruel twist of fate. Taylor is able to use the immigrant’s lack of documentation to save Turtle by convincing Estevan and Esperanza to pretend they are Turtle’s parents before a judge, so that they can fool him into believing that they are giving up Turtle’s guardianship to Taylor. This second “abandonment” of Turtle, a child whom the couple had grown to love as their daughter proves to be both cathartic and heartbreaking for them, as this time they find power in the right to make a decision without being blackmailed. The characters in The Bean Trees face familiar, social, governmental, and even spiritual abandonment. They are able to overcome their hopeless situations by cultivating emotional and social relationships that ensure they will not face an uncertain future on their own. Lourdes Arciniega

Gender in The Bean Trees

Women have traditionally remained within the domestic sphere, taking care of family and home, feeling marginalized and unable to access jobs in the public arena. Barbara Kingsolver challenges this conventional depiction of women by creating a fictional world that foregrounds strong, independent female characters who epitomize women’s conflicting and conflicted roles within a patriarchal society. Marietta Greer, the protagonist of The Bean Trees, comes from a strong-willed female lineage, descendants of Cherokee. Alice Greer is raising her daughter Marietta Greer as a single parent after her partner abandoned her. Alice supports Marietta’s desire to leave the hopeless Pittman County in which they live, and encourages her to get a job and buy a car. Marietta refuses to become an unwed teenage mother like many of her schoolfriends and instead leaves town, asserting her independence and authority by renaming herself Taylor. The fact that Taylor is a gender-free name represents Taylor’s unwillingness to be defined and confined by a name. The Greer women’s strong will, stubbornness, and non-conformity foreshadow Taylor’s unusual naming of her own daughter Turtle. When Taylor arrives in Arizona she befriends Mattie, another unconventional female who runs a

658â•…â•… Kingsolver, Barbara tire shop and a shelter for illegal immigrants. Mattie becomes a mother figure for Taylor and Turtle, combining an earth-mother image with a strong sense of social activism. In spite of her fear of exploding tires, Taylor works for Mattie as an apprentice mechanic to support Turtle and herself, once again working in a job that would traditionally be reserved for men. Taylor also shares a house with Lou Ann Ruiz, another single mother who has been abandoned by her husband. These two women create a family where the only male is Lou Ann’s infant son. Taylor adopts the male role in this functional unit by working outside the home while Lou Ann takes care of domestic matters. As the novel progresses, though, Lou Ann becomes increasingly aware of her female strength by recalling her pregnancy and by being outraged at the doorknob in a strip joint representing a female body part which has to be pushed in to make it work: “like a woman is something you shove on and walk right through.” Lou Ann eventually finds a job in a salsa factory as a line worker and is later promoted to manager. When her husband asks her to move and live with him in a yurt, she refuses to give up her newly found independence. Although Lou Ann dates other men, she is not interested in living with them and by the end of the novel she and Taylor have solidified their matriarchal family unit with Taylor’s legal adoption of Turtle. There are very few men given prominent mention in the novel. Most, like Turtle’s unnamed attackers, are portrayed as violent predators. Angel Ruiz, Lou Ann’s husband, is a selfish, lazy drunkard, so much so that even his own mother doesn’t like him. The men Taylor meets during her trip west patronize her by criticizing her outspoken manner and try to scare her in an attempt to redress the gender balance. “I never could figure out why men thought they could impress a woman by making the world out to be such a big dangerous deal” says Taylor, logically pointing out that “we’ve got to live in the exact same world every damn day of the week, don’t we?” Estevan, Esperanza’s husband, is the only man portrayed sympathetically. He is ironically lauded for his non-masculine qualities, such as sensibility and a willingness to express his love for his wife. Taylor becomes attracted to him precisely because

he doesn’t exhibit any of the stereotypical male attributes she has come across. Unlike Angel Ruiz, Estevan prioritizes family, friendship, and loyalty. His career itself is teaching English as a second language, which places him as a service provider, one who can be both empathetic and patient. Estevan also shatters myths about illegal immigrants by demonstrating through his flawless English that he is industrious, willing to embrace a foreign language, and to integrate himself within the community. Illegal immigrants, American Indians, and the women in the novel are marginalized members of the society they inhabit. Taylor takes pride in her Cherokee blood and derives strength from this tribe’s history of physical endurance and cultural survival. The novel highlights the strong association between the Native Americans’ tradition of nurturing and protecting nature and women’s roles as homemakers and caregivers. Taylor and Lou Ann Ruiz survive and succeed by creating strong bonds with their children and other women, and by nurturing themselves and those around them, instilling in them a love and respect of nature and all its creatures. Lourdes Arciniega

Nature in The Bean Trees

In The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver depicts nature as an omnipresent character symbolizing the emotional turmoil faced by the main female protagonists. On the one hand, Mother Nature cradles and nurtures Turtle, Taylor, Estevan, Esperanza, and Lou Ann, giving each of them hope through her neverending cycle of rebirth, and yet this cycle also entails facing death. The women in the novel have a fierce, protective love for their children, greater even than their love of men. These women as single parents or single females have symbiotic relationships representative of nature’s interdependence. The blind Edna depends on Virgie Mae to be her eyes and she in turn counteracts Virgie Mae’s abrasive manner. Lou Ann helps Taylor embrace her natural abilities while Taylor instills self-confidence in Lou Ann. When Mattie Greer renames herself Taylor, at the beginning of the novel, she experiences a rebirth as she takes command of her identity and the way

The Poisonwood Bibleâ•…â•… 659 she wants society to view her. As she travels west, Taylor also reacquaints herself with her Indian heritage by mailing a postcard of two Indian women to her mother, foreshadowing her own adoption of Turtle. Taylor also names the baby “April Turtle,” giving her a first name signifying springtime and natural birth. When her aunt abandons her with Taylor, Turtle finds a second chance at life. Turtle herself repeats this cycle of reproduction and rebirth with her first word “bean,” signifying her faith in the eventual appearance of a tree from the dried up bean in her hand. The tree will itself reproduce the natural cycle of life and represents the interdependence that its parts have with the whole. The wisteria tree, for example, which grows on almost barren soil, represents endurance and stubbornness, whereas the cereus flower, which blooms only once a year and can be smelled by Edna, represents the fragility of existence. This flower blooms only in the dark and needs to be left alone because, if it is plucked, it loses its fragrance, highlighting the precariousness of its roots. This ecologically themed novel also foregrounds the idea of place and establishing roots. Most of the women who come to Arizona were born elsewhere. When Lou Ann’s grandmother visits, she brings water from Tug Fork to baptize Dwayne Ray. Water symbolizes continuity and life, and yet Angel pours the water down the drain before it can be used, depicting him in opposition to natural life. Esperanza and Estevan had to uproot themselves from Guatemala and can find only temporary shelter in Arizona before fleeing to another land with a body of water, the Lake of the Cherokees. Taylor leaves Kentucky to find Turtle outside a bar and needs to return to Cherokee land to legally claim her before she can live in Arizona with her. Turtle delights in learning the names of all the plants, and cares faithfully for the vegetables in her garden. Yet she also brings death into her cycle of life when she buries her dolls. At first Taylor thinks Turtle is burying the dolls and hoping more dolls will spring up, but later on she realizes that the baby is repeating her mother’s burial at a cemetery. Turtle depends on all the women she meets whom she calls by their name with “ma” added to it, thereby acknowledging their mothering role in her life.

When Esperanza bonds with Turtle during their trip to Cherokee land, Esperanza finds in Turtle a surrogate for her daughter. For Esperanza however, this rebirth is accompanied by death, as she must come to terms with her permanent separation from her daughter Ismene by symbolically giving Turtle to Taylor at the end of the novel. Kingsolver associates Turtle with nature (particularly birds) throughout the novel, as when Estevan tells an Indian story of how people survived in heaven with awkwardly shaped spoons by feeding each other. Estevan feeds Turtle and she takes the food “like a newborn bird.” When Taylor takes Turtle to see a doctor and he tells her of the terrible abuse the girl suffered, Taylor sees a bird outside the doctor’s window where it has made a nest inside a cactus, surviving amidst painful surroundings. Turtle utters her first word after seeing how Taylor and Lou Ann stop on the road to let a mother quail and her chicks pass by. Finally, after Turtle is attacked, a sparrow finds itself trapped inside the house but the women manage to set it free so that it becomes a harbinger of Turtle’s own resilience and survival. Nature is featured in the novel as an entity to be feared and respected. The protagonists are in awe of the flowers that bloom once a year, the vegetables that spring from dried up seeds, the wonders of a summer rainstorm in the desert. Because of their affinity with the Indian heritage and their interest in ecological conservation, Taylor, Turtle, and Lou Ann learn to nurture and respect their environment and its inhabitants. Lourdes Arciniega

Kingsolver, Barbaraâ•… The Poisonwood Bibleâ•… (1998)

The Price family moves from Georgia to the Congo on the eve of Congo’s independence from Belgium. Baptist preacher Nathan Price has a Christianizing mission to fulfill in Kilanga. This mission, eventually jeopardized by the Kilanga community’s unwillingness to accept Price’s Christian authority and by the political turmoil raging in the country, turns into a life-changing experience for Orleanna, Nathan, and their four daughters. They will have to survive a brutal cultural shock as well as diseases, natural

660â•…â•… Kingsolver, Barbara catastrophes, hunger, political instability, and other upheavals. This experience will turn into a test of faith. The members of the Price family will face this test not as a family kept together by a deeply suffocating patriarchal figure, but as separate individuals growing and gradually freeing themselves from the grasp of that absolute ruler. As the Congo sees its hope for democracy vanish after independence, the Price family disintegrates into nothingness: The fallen father is left behind somewhere in the Congolese jungle, and the girls-turning-into-women construct their lives away from each other and beyond the limits once imposed upon them by a conservative Christian father. This text can be further analyzed through three main themes: ethics, family, and guilt. The notion of ethics plays out in the roles played by the text’s Christian figures in the Christianizing/colonizing process. Family is evoked by the disintegration of the traditional Christian family outside the Christian world. Finally, the theme of guilt is the focus of the life choices of the members of the disbanded Price family who, years after the fall of their family and the democratic Congo, reflect (or not) upon their responsibility in the demise of both. Sophie Croisy

Ethics in The Poisonwood Bible

In The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver conducts a thorough critique of Christian ethics through the intervention of multiple characters with a different vision of Christianity, of its potential salvaging role, and of Christians’ ethical responsibility in the world. Baptist preacher and missionary Nathan Price’s strict ethics, constructed upon traditional Christian beliefs and teachings, are quite ascetic. Price is a tyrannical, self-proclaimed messianic figure who carries the word of God and thus must be respected and obeyed. He won’t hesitate to force upon the Kilanga community the idea of a baptism day in the Kilanga River even though he knows that the river is infested with crocodiles and thus deadly to the children. His attachment to Christian ritual is obsessive, and when Kilanga children start dying fast from an epidemic of Kakakaka (dysentery), his daughter Adah cannot help noticing that “he doesn’t seem to mind the corpses so much as the

soul unsaved” since none of the dead children had yet been baptized. His behavior here exemplifies his daughter Rachel’s description of him as being a man carrying “numerous deadly weapons” inside him, these weapons being a patriarchal and colonialist frame of mind. There are, however, Christian characters in the text whose idea of Christianity’s role in the colonial and postcolonial Congo evolves through the relationship they build with this country. These Christian characters offer a positive and modern image of Christianity, participate in a critical analysis of Christian beliefs and ethics, and question the intrinsic goodness and worthiness of traditional Christian values and some of the people practicing them. As Brother Fowles once tells Orleanna Price, “For certain Mrs. Price, there are Christians, and then there are Christians.” Orleanna Price was raised a Christian and believed in the goodness of the evangelizing task before coming to the Congo, but she comes to distrust her husband’s ambition because of his incapacity to reconcile faith and life, to communicate and build a relationship with the leaders of the Kilanga community toward which he shows no respect. Unlike Reverend Price, Brother Fowles, a missionary who had come to the Kilanga community to preach the gospel before Nathan Price, was able to build a relationship with the chief of the Kilanga village, Tata Ndu. His role as a missionary was not to impose an ethics of life based on Christian teachings, but to engage in conversations with Tata Ndu about ethics and share Christian values with him, hoping that some would be adopted by the community. Although Brother Fowles never managed to convince Tata Ndu that there were great benefits in monogamy, “each of those wives [in the community] has profited from the teachings of Jesus. In my six years here I saw the practice of wife beating fall into great disfavor. Secret little altars to Tata Jesus appeared in most every kitchen, as a result.” Brother Fowles has a very pedagogical approach to missionary work, a communicative approach always respectful of his interlocutor’s opinion. Leah Price marries a Congolese man and discards, little by little, all of her father’s Christian

The Poisonwood Bibleâ•…â•… 661 values. She comes to see these values as entirely unethical because they are attached to her home country, the United States. She learns to her horror that the leader of her country, President Eisenhower, has been actively engaged in arranging the murder of Congolese politician Patrice Lumumba. She says, “What sort of man would wish to murder the president of another land? None but a Barbarian. A man with a bone in his hair.” Leah also points to the inhumanity of white Christians who, despite their supposed attachment to Christian principles, lose their credibility as Christians by supporting racial hatred: “It’s dawning on me that I live among men and women who’ve simply always understood their whole existence is worth less than a banana to most white people.” Kingsolver shows in her text the sometimes dubious ethical goal of Christian representatives who turn Christian teachings into deadly dogma, who hold onto a vision of Christianity that does not take into account the need to adapt in an environment where traditional Christian rituals and values just cannot fit. The novel’s leitmotiv, “Tata Jesus is bangala” (Mister Jesus is poisonous), summarizes well the impact of Christian “ethics” upon the Congo: Christian nations organized the murder of Patrice Lumumba who was elected prime minister after the Congo’s independence from Belgium, and was killed because he wanted political and economic independence for the Congo against their will. Sophie Croisy

Family in The Poisonwood Bible

The Price family is a traditional 1960s Baptist family from the South of the United States. The father and preacher Nathan Price is a patriarchal figure, only breadwinner and master of the household, who makes all the important decisions and expects obedience from wife and daughters. He is obsessed with “the education of his family’s souls” and “views himself as the captain of a sinking mess of female minds” who, though unfit for education in his opinion, must at least learn the ways of the Bible in order to stay away from sin. He is a strong, masculine, patronizing, self-proclaimed messianic figure whose purpose in life is to spread the word of God and enlighten his congregation as well as his family.

When the family moves to Kilanga, Congo, in order for the Reverend Price to conduct a Christianizing mission and teach the ways of the Western world to the Congolese, the reluctance Nathan Price encounters exacerbates his desire to convert and submit the inhabitants of that region of Congo, as well as his daughters, to the law of the Almighty. His mission turns into an obsession and he becomes “a potter with clay to be molded” who now ignores the feelings and difficulties of his children and wife in adapting to a foreign environment. As Orleanna Price notices, “He was hardly a father .  .  . Their individual laughter he coudn’t recognize, nor their anguish.” Nathan Price’s lack of interest in his family on the one hand and his growing cruelty toward them on the other (a cruelty born out of his failure to Christianize the Kilanga people, to own them through conversion as he owns or wants to own his own family) lead to a progressive dissolution of the Price family. The father’s gradual abandonment of his family (when he was once its cement) leaves the daughters very much free to discover the new world in which they now live. They are free to redefine the concept of family outside the framework offered to them by their upbringing in the American South. Leah, for example, notices that the children of a Kilanga family, especially the girls, work and are concerned with issues that in an American family are adult issues, such as finding food and building houses. Thus, the Price daughters become the household food gatherers. They take up the traditional role of the father who, absent most of the time, cannot be the breadwinner anymore. More important, they prove themselves quick to learn and apply themselves as they manage to find ways to survive in a deadly environment. Moreover, as the situation becomes more and more dire for the Price family after the devastating aftermath of independence, as Europeans are chased down and killed and internal wars are raging after the death of real-life leader Patrice Lumumba. Orleanna Price, usually an obedient and passive wife, takes on a new, active position as decision-maker in the family, daring to speak her mind in front of her husband and getting ready to take her daughters outside the Congo. Once the sole commander of his family, Nathan’s estrangement from its members and their gradual

662â•…â•… Kingsolver, Barbara rejection of his teachings in an environment that requires other frames of thinking and looking at the world than those imposed by this Baptist preacher, make him and his patriarchal and colonizing attitude obsolete. Not only does the concept of the traditional Christian family collapse in this novel, as it finds no room in an environment that cannot sustain it, but we also witness the crumbling of the “nation as family” ideal. The Price daughters are betrayed by their American Christian education, which does not apply in the Congo, and by their own nation and its government, a government that becomes the root of all evils in the Congo (which becomes known as Zaire) since it actively participates in the demise of the Congolese democratic process with the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the rise to power of a dictator. As Leah notices after independence, “The United States has now become the husband of Zaire’s economy, and not a very nice one: exploitative and condescending, in the name of steering her clear of the moral decline inevitable to her nature” (543). In the same way as the Price daughters were subdued and devalued by a father who embodied American Christian values, Zaire after independence is subdued and devalued through a violent (though silenced), economic and political colonizing intervention of the United States. Sophie Croisy

Guilt in The Poisonwood Bible

For Orleanna and Leah Price, guilt is the result of introspection—a kind of critical inquiry into one’s past and present behavior that brings to consciousness the errors committed in dealing with one’s surroundings. Guilt is thus the consequence of a moral and political awakening, an awakening that takes place for them in 1960 in the Congo. Adah, who does not need to feel guilt, embodies moral consciousness: She is never complicit with her father’s sadistic Christian enterprise and always lays a critical eye on the world and its cruelties. For Rachel and Nathan Price, however, their lack of guilt toward others is evidence of mental stasis and of the absence of moral and political consciousness. Neither Nathan Price nor his daughter Rachel ever seem to wake up to the horrifying events happening

in the lives of the people who are closest to them: their family and the Kilanga people. When she first arrived in the Congo, Orleanna Price did her best to fit in a foreign environment, focusing on the day-to-day needs of her family without learning from the Congolese people living around her. Her lack of participation in the outside world is one of the main aspects of her guilt when, years later and back in the United States, she recollects her time in the Congo: She was only “a captive witness” (10) then. She recollects this forced detachment from the Congolese world and its rules, intricacies, dangers—a detachment that she sees as the reason for her younger daughter’s death: Ruth May was bitten by a snake placed in their garden by Tata Ndu, an important figure in the Kilanga community, and the nemesis of Nathan Price. If she had had the strength to rise against her husband’s Christian fanaticism, the Kilanga community might not have turned against him, and the snake might never have been put in their garden. Her daughter Leah’s guilt draws from a childish, blind belief in her father’s words and teachings. Her childhood actions were essentially centered around one goal: to be the best Christian daughter she could ever be. However, the months spent in the Congo give birth to a desire to know and learn what lies beyond the patriarch’s ethnocentric envisioning of the world, hence her being torn for a long time between her daughterly duty and her need to understand the Congo, its inhabitants, their customs, and their pains. She eventually chooses the path of knowledge and consciousness, marries a Congolese man, and dismisses her father’s monolithic Christian education as well as her cultural inheritance as an American. Her guilt also lies in her belonging to a culture that promotes values and a way of life that it does not always uphold when economic interests are at stake. The United States government indeed participates in the demise of the democratic Congo (and other African nations) under the eyes of Leah who remains in Africa all her life to see, among other things, the United States “trying to bring down Angola’s sovereignty” in the 1980s to gain control over its oil and diamond industries. There is no room for guilt in Adah Price’s frame of thinking, only room for thinking and trying to

Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Bookâ•…â•… 663 point out “the sacred ignorance” (212) of Christian Americans who want to impose their ways of believing in a foreign land. The workings of her mind are never limited by the cultural prison in which Nathan (and to a certain extent Rachel) is content to dwell throughout his life, a prison filled with prejudices and ready-made answers to the problems of the world. His self-proclaimed messianic mission cannot suffer to stray from the Christian path he has envisioned and imposed upon his surroundings since his return from World War II: There, he was the only soldier in his regiment to survive the Bataan Death March. To redeem himself, he dedicates his life to saving the souls of his family and congregations in order to please God, which takes him to the brink of madness, drives him to endanger his congregation, and makes him lose his humanity. He feels guilty toward God, but never toward the human beings he hurts in his quest to please God. His older daughter Rachel follows the path of inhumanity as she spends her life, after leaving the Congo, trying to make a profit in Africa by using and abusing Africa’s economic opportunities and people. She will, among other things, acknowledge and participate in the South African apartheid system. Sophie Croisy

Kingston, Maxine Hongâ•… Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Bookâ•… (1987)

The central character in Tripmaster Monkey is Witt� man Ah Sing, a recent college graduate and fifthgeneration Chinese American living in 1960s San Francisco. Like his namesake, poet Walt Whitman, he is a creative and free thinker. He also embodies the title character, the Monkey King, from traditional Chinese myth, as both are rebellious and mischievous and both bring truths to the people. The Monkey King aids in bringing the Buddhist sutras to China from India, and Wittman brings the truth about Caucasian perceptions of Chinese Americans and the necessary actions Chinese Americans need to take. Wittman finds himself disillusioned with the modern world: capitalism, the Vietnam War, and especially contemporary views of Chinese Americans. The bulk of the novel follows Wittman as he tries to come to terms with the opposition

between what he wants out of life and what is expected and/or available to him. Wanting more than anything to be a poet and playwright, he feels trapped in his dead end job. Wittman comes to realize that he must push forward with his play if he ever wants to escape the rote business world. Securing a location to stage the play, he calls upon his friends and family, who swarm together to help flesh it out over the next several months and to enact the characters. The end production is a seven-night event, each night a continuation of the previous, wherein his cast enacts traditional Chinese and Chinese-American myths, stories, and history. Wittman’s play also creates and enlarges these stories and histories, commenting on Caucasian perceptions of Chinese Americans. Following the play’s conclusion, Wittman speaks to the crowd about perceptions and stereotypes of Asian Americans, challenging his audience to make changes. Through his play and speech, he encourages Asian Americans to claim their place in American society and whites to reevaluate their views. Lisa Wenger

Commodification/Commercialization in Tripmaster Monkey

There is nothing Wittman Ah Sing likes about commercialism. In fact, Wittman sees the entire corporate world as a complete waste of his time. He is miserable in his job as a sales clerk in the toy department, despite the fact that it earns him a living and that he has to work only three days a week. The work is rote and mundane, which is captured in his wife Taña’s diatribe about her own job, where at 8 a.m. “↜‘this chime goes off.  .  .  . We have to be at our desks. It goes off again at ten-fifteen, coffee break, and ten-twenty-five, end of coffee break, and at twelve noon and twelve-forty, and at two-fifteen, second coffee break, and two-twenty, end of coffee break, and five o’clock—commute hour.” The corporate/commercial world turns them into unthinking machines, performing repetitive actions that leave no room for creative or intelligent thought. Taña’s only salvation during the day is the short unpaid coffee and lunch breaks she receives. For Wittman, the customers, mothers who continually dump their children on him while they run other errands, also

664â•…â•… Kingston, Maxine Hong are unbearable. Unlike most of his fellow AsianAmerican classmates, Wittman graduated from college with a degree in liberal arts. If anything, this education has taught him to question everything about capitalism, and the only thing he can think is “[w]hich way out? Which way out?” Blaming his “malcontentedness” on his education, Wittman knows this world offers him no creative outlet, but rather more of the same for the rest of his life. Having failed managerial training, there isn’t even any hope for a promotion, which would at least change his job duties. Wittman tries to make the best of his situation. Believing he can at least educate customers, he lectures a grandmother about the evil of toy guns. In the end, the woman is extremely irritated and still buys the gun. Accompanying his manager, Louise, to a toy convention, Wittman views commercialism’s pointlessness firsthand. The first half of the convention is wasted with idle chitchat and eating; as far as Wittman can tell, nothing productive occurs. The conference also is solely about upcoming releases in the Mattel toy line. The second half of the convention is full of self-important business people spouting statistics and reading from pie charts. All these charts offer nothing, for they are purely guesses as to who will buy what and how much. Furthermore, the conference is not even promoting a necessary product, but rather something that is purely for children’s entertainment. While he tries to pay attention to the speakers at first, Wittman soon finds that “his mind died . . . [and] the next thing he knew, he was aware of not having listened for some time.” Trying to inject some meaning into the trivial proceedings, he asks the speakers if Mattel donated anything to the needy. His question is ignored, and instead another business person leads the crowd in chanting the Mattel slogan. Wittman is depressed when he is fired after returning to the store. Placing Barbie Bride in a sexual position, he winds up a toy monkey and places it on top, horrifying the mothers. He is not so miserable over the loss of the job itself but of the income, especially since most of his friends have successfully navigated the corporate world. Wittman cannot even escape this world through his social life. Attending his friend Lance’s party later that night,

Wittman realizes the theme itself is business, with most partygoers wearing suits. While Lance expects Wittman to network and easily come away from the party with a new job, Wittman has absolutely no desire to do so. In fact, he realizes that “he didn’t want to do business whatsoever. There has got to be a way to live and never do business.” He is delighted when he learns that he can apply for and subsist on unemployment. Suddenly, his dream of writing and producing his own play seems attainable, and he actually finds that he respects himself more for not crawling back to the capitalistic “monster” that has consumed all his friends. Throughout Tripmaster Monkey, the artistic and creative is celebrated, particularly for the way it can challenge thoughts and ideas. The commercial, on the other hand, is critiqued for offering little of value to the world, other than a steady paycheck. Knowing he must find a job to support Taña and himself, his derision for the corporate world still shows at the end. As he tells his audience, when asked during job interviews why he wants to join a corporation, he thinks, “↜‘[t]hey don’t understand, I don’t want to. I have to.’↜” Understanding that he must join the corporate ranks to survive, he also uses this as motivation for creative works, works through which he knows he can ultimately escape. Lisa Wenger

Identity in Tripmaster Monkey

Wittman Ah Sing is secure in and proud of his identity, a fifth-generation Chinese American. The problem lies in the way whites view him and other Asian Americans. Whites automatically assume all Asian Americans are “F.O.B.s” The acronym, for Fresh off the Boat, is a slang term often applied to newly arrived Asian immigrants, indicating that they have not assimilated into American culture. In this way, the whites differentiate between what it means to be American and Asian, while completely overlooking the Asian-American identity. Wittman knows there is nothing “Eastern” about him or other Asian Americans, yet they must continually reinforce and defend their identities. Continually lumped in with new Asian immigrants, Wittman’s frustration grows, for he is so far removed from that culture. As he relates,

Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Bookâ•…â•… 665 “[i]mmigrants. Fresh Off the Boats out in public. Didn’t know how to walk together. Spitting seeds. So uncool. You wouldn’t mislike them on sight if their pants weren’t so highwater, gym socks white and noticeable  . . Uncool. Uncool.” Wittman hates the way their ignorance of American ways and customs makes them stand out. Furthermore, they do nothing individually, which Wittman also mocks, taking pride in his “American independence.” Given the F.O.B.s’ conspicuousness, Wittman and other Asian Americans are frustrated when whites group them in this category, stripping away their identities. That the Asian Americans of Whittman’s generation, born and raised in the country, are fully Americanized is evidenced through the older generations. When he visits his mother, all his aunts are gathered at the home for mah-jongg (a traditional Chinese game where participants build suits from a set of tiles). While they talk in Chinese among themselves, “[t]hey spoke English to him and to the dog. American animals.” They recognize that he is not Chinese but Chinese American, and as such, that some Chinese customs and language are lost to him. Consequently, they firmly identify Wittman as Chinese American, thereby validating his identity in a way the whites do not. This Americanization is illustrated further when Wittman approaches an uncle about using the Benevolent Association’s building to stage his play. Communicating in Chinese, the trouble arises when Wittman wants to tell the man he is writing a Chinese-American play. He suddenly thinks, “[i] s there a Chinese word for Chinese American? They say ‘jook tsing.’ They say ‘ho chi gwai.’ Like ‘mestizo.’ Like ‘pachuco.’↜” Chinese indicates China, a place where there would be no Chinese Americans, hence no need for such a word. The generic terms signifying the mixing of cultures, though, do not rob Wittman of his identity. Instead, they allow him to talk about and define it. He first does so when he switches to English, a language more his own. Next, he begins giving the uncle examples of the stories his play will tell, stories that combine the two cultures. Accordingly, the missing Chinese word gives him a way to provide deeper insight into his identity.

Through his play and its staging, Wittman demands recognition of his Chinese-American identity, of all Asian-American identities. Drawing on and embellishing myths and stories from both Chinese and Chinese-American culture, he draws attention to the way culture, and in conjunction identity, is reinvented and reshaped. In fact, when friends and family come to rehearse the play, they bring costumes and props, things collected from both Asian and American homelands. The story he tells of his family’s name also is a striking example of this. Wittman relates to his audience that he is an American Ah Sing, and “↜‘[p]robably there are no Ah Sings in China. You may laugh behind my family’s back, that we keep the Ah and think it means something. I know it’s just a sound. A vocative that goes in front of everyone’s names.  .  .  . Everyone has an ah, only our family writes ours down.” This change in the family name, the switch from the ah as verbal only to both written and verbal, shows the modification in culture and identity upon arriving in America. While the ah is an important reminder of Chinese identity, it also is a shift away from it toward a new Chinese-American identity. As Wittman emphasizes throughout the novel, he is not Chinese but American. His features alone do not make him Chinese, something many whites assume. This is something he reinforces to his audience at the end of his play, saying, “↜‘[t]ake a good look at these eyes. Check them out in profile too. And the other profile. Dig the three-quarter view. So it’s not Mount Rushmore, but it’s an American face.’↜” Wittman rallies his audience to celebrate and vocalize their identities, challenging the preconceptions that surround them. Lisa Wenger

Race in Tripmaster Monkey

Race preoccupies many of the Asian-American characters in Tripmaster Monkey, including WittÂ� man Ah Sing. Despite being born and raised in America, Wittman is constantly asked questions about how long he has been in America and whether or not he speaks English. As many Asian Americans find, whites view Asian Americans as “foreign,” “exotic,” and “oriental.” They play on and perpetuate stereotypes of Asian Americans, seen most strikingly

666â•…â•… Kingston, Maxine Hong in the racial joke Wittman overhears from a table of whites at a restaurant. Because of their appearance and skin color, Asian Americans also do not fit the “standard” image of an American. As Wittman comments to his audience after his play, “↜‘[t]hey think that Americans are either white or Black. I can’t wear that civil-rights button with the Black hand and the white hand shaking each other. . . . I’m the little yellow man beneath the bridge of their hands and overlooked’↜” (307–308). Consequently, Asian Americans remain the perpetual outsiders, never quite American no matter how many generations their families have been in the country. What disgusts them even more is the stereotypical portrayal of their race in literature and film. Wittman admires the poet Jack Kerouac, but derides a reference Kerouac makes to “twinkling little Chinese.” Even worse are the depictions of Asian Americans in film, especially the bucktoothed, facepainted Chinese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s played by the white Mickey Rooney. Other than “comic” roles, as Wittman points out, “↜‘[o]ur actors have careers of getting killed and playing dead bodies.’↜” The roles for Asian-American actresses are not any better, playing off the idea of the submissive Asian woman. After a recent audition, Wittman’s actress friend Nanci Lee remarks, “↜‘I know what my part will be—an oriental peasant. You only need high heels for the part of the oriental prostitute. . . . And the director says, ‘Can’t you act more oriental? Act oriental.’↜” Roles for Asian Americans are limited, minor roles, never leading characters. Furthermore, these Western actors are criticized for not acting Eastern enough, something the white directors believe should come naturally based on their looks. What further annoys Wittman is that so many leading fictional characters have no race associated with them, meaning Asian Americans could easily play their film adaptations, yet such roles are never offered to them. Taking what small steps he can to counteract this, Wittman decides that, in his imagination, all such characters will be Chinese. These white perceptions and stereotypes carry over to the way Asian Americans view themselves. This is particularly evident through the women. Most, as Wittman drily comments, are unavailable,

searching for the perfect, successful white husband. What he abhors even more is that they hold themselves up to a white standard of beauty, particularly when it comes to their eyes. When a former classmate, Yoshi Ogasawara, is told her eyes are beautiful, she replies “↜‘[n]o. Oh, no, they’re not. . . . I’m going to have them operated on for double lids. I have single lids. These are single lids.’↜” What she is talking of is the fold in Caucasian eyelids that is missing in her own. The whites listening to Yoshi have no idea what she is talking about, but Wittman is disgusted and walks away. Later he chastises AsianAmerican women for these alterations, alterations that often only leave a scar, rather than the desired fold. Wittman knows that the “slanty” eyes are one of the big factors leading to the white view of Asian Americans as exotic and foreign; however, he also knows they need to celebrate their features as well as loudly proclaim their own American identity. Even though Wittman embraces his features, he still worries over white views. He purposefully wears green after being told it reflects harshly on “yellow” skin. Rather than deflect his color, he instead wants to call attention to it. Yet he tenses when Taña begins talking about his body and features, positive she is going to say something derogatory. Surprised when she does not, he thinks, “[g]ood. She did not tell him that she liked ‘yellow’ skin or ‘slanty’ eyes. She did not say he was ‘mysterious.’↜” Wittman still keeps his guard up, expecting the worst. Later, he further betrays the influence Caucasian perceptions have on him. After having his picture taken with Taña in a photo booth, he thinks that she “looked like a blonde movie star; Wittman looked like a wanted bandito. El Immigrante, his wetback passport picture i.d.” Despite his bravado, Wittman, at times, cannot help but make comparisons to himself, finding himself lacking. In the end, Wittman rants against white racial assumptions. Understanding how race and identity are connected, he commands his audience, both white and Asian American, to set aside and call out racial stereotypes, to challenge modern ideas of what is and isn’t American, for Asian Americans to abandon white standards of beauty, and for the theater to challenge Hollywood typecasting. Lisa Wenger

The Woman Warriorâ•…â•… 667

Kingston, Maxine Hongâ•… The Woman Warriorâ•… (1975)

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts is Maxine Hong Kingston’s first published book. Usually considered a memoir or an autobiographical novel, it received the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and has been extremely popular as a textbook for high school and college classrooms. The first three chapters are based on the stories the unnamed narrator heard from her mother, Brave Orchid, about what happened in China before her mother left for the United States in 1939. The first chapter, “No Name Woman,” is about the narrator’s forgotten aunt who transgressed through an extramarital affair and pregnancy and killed herself and her child to eschew a life as the rural community’s outcast. The second chapter, “White Tigers,” chronicles the career of a legendary Chinese woman warrior, Fa Mu Lan, whom the narrator is expected to emulate even as a young woman living in the United States. The third chapter, “Shaman,” recollects the narrator’s mother’s life in China as medical student and then successful doctor. The last two chapters of the book, “At the Northern Palace” and “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” show processes of successful or failed adaptations by Chinese immigrants to American ways of life, with the last chapter suggesting ways in which Chinese traditions can be modified to inform and enrich the lives of young Chinese Americans as well as better their relationships to their immigrant parents. The major themes highlighted in the novel include race/ ethnicity, gender, tradition, survival, identity, alienation, coming of age, and family. Tomoko Kuribayashi

Gender in The Woman Warrior

The gender issues in The Woman Warrior almost exclusively concern women and reflect the novel’s focus on intercultural conflicts experienced by Chinese immigrants to the United States and their American-born children. Kingston’s five chapters present two possible exemplary social roles for women as defined by mainstream pre-communist Chinese culture: Women should be slaves and/or good wives (note that the two can be synonymous) or they can be women warriors, trained in traditional

martial arts for the specific purpose of avenging their families. The patriarchal belief that women are to be subservient because they are innately inferior is often articulated in Kingston’s narrative in the form of traditional sayings such as “Girls are maggots in the rice” and “It is more profitable to raise geese than daughters.” The first chapter of the book, “No Name Woman,” informs the reader of the punishment meted out to a woman in a Chinese village, actually the narrator’s paternal aunt, who got pregnant through an extramarital affair: Her family’s house was raided by villagers and she killed herself and her child to avoid a lifetime of ostracism while her lover or possible rapist got away scot-free. The narrator’s mother, Brave Orchid, narrates this story as a warning about what can happen to the young daughter if she fails to follow the strict rules set up for women’s social and sexual conduct. At the same time, Kingston’s narrative proffers multiple stories featuring women warriors who far surpassed men in their bravery, intellect, and strength. One important example is Fa Mu Lan, the legendary warrior, who went through rigorous training in martial arts in order to avenge her family and village against oppressive rulers. Another major example of a heroic woman is the narrator’s own mother who, after the deaths of her first two children, acquired medical knowledge by attending a school of midwifery in China. Brave Orchid also proved to be a woman warrior as an immigrant to the United States where she had six children well into her forties and worked extremely hard to support her family. One possible way these two opposite models for women’s lives—slave and warrior—can be reconciled is how Fa Mu Lan is said to have done it: After avenging her family and village against the evil emperor and baron, the woman warrior willingly became an obedient wife and daughter-in-law, pledging to work hard in the field and the house and to give birth to many sons. It must also be noted that Fa Mu Lan had to hide her gender while in battle since women soldiers were totally forbidden in Chinese culture. Traditional Chinese culture also dictates that sexuality or individual sexual desires, both male and female, be suppressed to protect the harmony and well-being of the entire community; men and

668â•…â•… Kingston, Maxine Hong women are to be like brothers and sisters to each other. That goes against the message Kingston’s narrator and other daughters of Chinese immigrants in northern California receive at school. If they are to be considered socially appropriate and get dates in the United States, they need to cultivate a more overt, yet still respectable kind of sexuality, or what they call “American-feminine,” which includes speaking less loud than Chinese, both women and men, traditionally do. Further confusion as to what Chinese culture regards as truly desirable in a woman is generated by the explicit contrast of Brave Orchid and her sister, Moon Orchid. While Brave Orchid is hardworking and intelligent and is thus valuable as a man’s helpmate, she is not gentle or soft, the way her useless and timid younger sister is. One can also assume their other sister, Lovely Orchid, who owns a shoe business in Hong Kong, is the pretty one, representing yet another ideal type of woman. The American-born narrator, presumably Kingston’s double, suffers both from Chinese culture’s contradictory expectations for women—to be slaves as well as warriors—and the different standards of ideal femininity endorsed by Chinese and American cultures. Her confusion and resultant self-hatred erupt in the most startling way in the scene where the young narrator torments another Chinese girl at school who is “Chinese-feminine” like Moon Orchid: totally silent and always neat but entirely helpless. After many years of frustration, the narrator is able at least in part to resolve the intercultural gender confusion by seeing herself as a woman warrior who wages battles against oppressors of her family through the words she writes. Tomoko Kuribayashi

Survival in The Woman Warrior

The theme of survival has several major applications in Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir/autobiographical novel. The first three chapters of the novel, “No Name Woman,” “White Tigers,” and “Shaman,” depict what is required for survival in Chinese society. The first chapter concerns the narrator’s paternal aunt, whose existence has been forgotten. Her own family wipes her from memory as punishment for the trespasses of adultery and ensuing pregnancy for

which she killed herself after her family’s house was raided by angry villagers. The lesson to be learned from this story, at least as the narrator’s mother, Brave Orchid, intended it to be, is that the wellbeing of the entire community comes before the happiness or desires of an individual, especially in times of hardship like a poor harvest or political unrest. The value placed on roundness by Chinese culture is expressed in round moon cakes and round doorways, symbolizing the importance of communal harmony and family wholeness for which individuals’ rights and freedoms must be sacrificed. In “White Tigers,” the main character, whom the American-born narrator imagines herself to be, is a young Chinese girl who is trained by an old couple in the mountains to become a woman warrior, skilled in martial arts, so that she can avenge her family and fellow villagers against the neglectful emperor and the wicked baron. She starts her training by learning to be utterly quiet so that every creature in the world of nature will let her learn its hiding and fighting skills. At the mid-point of her 15-year stint with the elderly teachers she endures a solitary survival test in which she must subsist on meager provisions and withstand extreme cold for many days. Later, even as an accomplished woman warrior, successful in her campaign against the evil governors and fulfilled in marriage and motherhood, she must survive on the battlefield by hiding her gender, as she would be executed if found to be female. In the third chapter “Shaman,” the narrator’s mother in her younger days shows extreme resourcefulness and bravery, which helps her confront the resident ghost at a Chinese school for midwives and earn fellow students’ respect. One major way that somebody can show courage and strength is the ability and willingness to eat anything, including wild animals and perhaps even monkey brain. Even in her later days as an immigrant to the United States, the narrator’s mother cooks such unusual creatures as skunks and turtles for her Americanborn children. It is equally important to be able to “not eat,” when fasting is the appropriate choice. In addition to her mother’s detailed example, Kingston’s narrator lists a number of fantastic eaters from China whose abilities were thought to bring rain during a draught or conquer evil ghosts.

The Woman Warriorâ•…â•… 669 The theme of survival in the United States as immigrants and as immigrants’ children is foregrounded in the last two chapters of The Woman Warrior. The narrator’s mother, once a successful midwife/doctor in China, must now make a living running a family laundry business; in her old age she works as a tomato picker even though she does not need the pay. Those who are not able to adjust and to work hard like Brave Orchid literally lose their minds. For example, Brave Orchid’s younger and less practical sister, Moon Orchid, who is brought to California from Hong Kong by her determined sister, becomes delusional and has to be committed to a state mental asylum. Kingston’s narrator also describes other “crazy” women of which the immigrant community seems to have had plenty. One of them, Pee-A-Nah, was an angry witchwoman who chased children as they picked berries in a slough. There was also Crazy Mary who, left as a toddler in China when her parents emigrated, was later brought over as a disturbed 20-year-old; she was not able to learn English and help her parents out as had been hoped for. On the other hand, one could risk overadjusting and losing one’s Chinese roots completely as is seen in the case of Moon Orchid’s husband, who has become extremely Americanized, married to a young Chinese-American woman, and practicing dentistry in a sleek office in downtown Los Angeles. He sounds, looks, and even smells like an American-born and proclaims his Chinese wife is like a character in a story he read long ago. Immigrants’ children, including the narrator, must find ways to survive without losing their connections to their families’ past, to straddle two widely different cultures and languages and their often conflicting values. Tomoko Kuribayashi

Tradition in The Woman Warrior

Tradition is one of the main concerns of Kingston’s memoir or autobiographical novel, which is narrated from the viewpoint of a Chinese immigrant daughter growing up in northern California in the 1950s and ’60s. The many first-generation immigrants that surround the narrator, especially her mother, hope to instill traditional Chinese values in the younger generation, but are often disappointed at the rude-

ness and lack of formality found in the youth. When the mother, Brave Orchid, laments that her teenaged children are not “traditional” toward their long-lost aunt, Moon Orchid, she means that they are not polite, especially to their elders, since being respectful to one’s social superiors is an essential part of traditional Chinese culture. The Americanborn children are also audacious in that they look at people’s eyes directly whereas the correct way in China is to have an unfocused gaze. Since the older generation plans and hopes to return to China one day, they think it important for the children not to lose the traditional ways. One major tool that the older generation uses to communicate their beliefs and customs to their offspring is “talk-story,” that is, telling stories like the one about a legendary female warrior, Fa Mu Lan, or the more private one about an ill-starred aunt, both of which the narrator hears from her mother. Ghosts and food—both important Chinese traditions—are also featured frequently in the stories. Even Chinese opera and songs may be considered a kind of “talk-story,” a communal and musical way of handing down traditional values and history. Yet the American-born children are often confused as to what is socially and culturally expected of them. For one, the parents, who by Chinese custom tend to be oblique in their statements or to state the exact opposite of what they mean, do not clearly delineate the guidelines for maintaining Chinese tradition. To make matters worse, the younger generation is often less than fluent in Chinese and does not know the meaning of words their parents use in their “talk-story,” and the parents do not bother to explain each and every word, even when asked. The first-generation immigrants also withhold some information because they fear deportation and other retaliation if their “secrets” are to be leaked through their “American” children who do not know when to remain silent. Gender issues highlight the theme of tradition. The young narrator suffers from much confusion and fear because she is told that in China a woman should be a slave and also be a woman warrior—two seemingly contradictory roles. The narrator does not want to be a slave or to accept the often vocalized Chinese belief that women are innately inferior, and

670â•…â•… Kipling, Rudyard is afraid that she will be sold off as a slave or a wife as soon as her family returns to China. Nor can she figure out how to become a woman warrior in a land where there are no obvious evil rulers as in Chinese stories of female heroism. In the end Kingston’s novel suggests that traditions need to be handed down as well as modified as the times change and as people settle in new places. The reader is informed that even in China old traditions are being destroyed by the Communist government, depriving the first-generation immigrants of any hope that they might return to their homeland. The narrative also suggests that secondgeneration Chinese Americans need to explore new options, including more formal education, in the absence of arranged marriages and close-knit rural communities. The last chapter of the novel, “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” artfully expresses the cultural and generational reconciliation the narrator and her mother reach, through its final episode about a Chinese female poet and warrior, Ts’ai Yung, who was kidnapped by a barbarian and bore him two children. Her children, who spoke no Chinese, initially laughed at her when she spoke her native tongue. One day, however, she sang a song about her family in China, the emotional significance of which the barbarians understood without comprehending the words. Later, freed from her 12-year captivity and returned to her family, Ts’ai Yung translated the barbarians’ songs, one of which becomes part of Chinese culture. Kingston’s narrator concludes the narrative with the comment, “It translated well.” This ending suggests that Kingston’s narrator and her mother, or the older and younger generations of the Chinese-American community, are finally able to understand what each other values despite the linguistic and cultural barriers. Tomoko Kuribayashi

Kipling, Rudyardâ•… Kimâ•… (1900–1901)

In one sense, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim is a simple adventure story told against the backdrop of the British Raj. From quite a different perspective, it is the most ancient story of all—the quest for enlightenment and escape from the Wheel of Life. Kim is torn between these two extremes in the story, as he

strives to become a faithful chela (servant in Hindi) to a Tibetan lama, as well as a cunning spy of the British empire. This crisis of identity reflects the uncertain destiny of India herself, perched between the ancient and modern worlds: For however indifferent Kipling himself was to India’s independence, Kim ends his story with the possibility (if not realization) of becoming a free agent. Having helped the lama find his river, he is still a number in the imperial system, charting the unknown peripheries of the British empire. Yet he remains an “Indian” in the truest sense, as no language or caste is unknown to him; the staggering diversity of this ancient world is a story he can recite at will. How he tells this story—and for whose benefit—is the true subject of Kim, with its emphasis on timeless waters and wheels that spin beyond the reach of history and the maps of empire. Joshua Grasso

Individual and Society in Kim

Halfway through the novel, when Kim is being initiated into the rules of the Great Game by the “horse-dealer,” Mahbub Ali, he is told: Among Sahibs, never [forget] thou art a Sahib, among the folk of Hind, always [remember] thou art— “What am I? Mussulman, Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist? That is a hard knot.” Like the novel itself, Mahbub Ali refuses to answer this question, simply confiding to Kim that he is “my Little Friend of all the World.” Perhaps what makes this work so compelling, and Kim such a rich figure in English literature, is his ability to become everyone, both Sahib, Hindu, and Muslim, in one of the most racially divided corners of the British empire. As the opening of the novel explains, Kim is the illegitimate child of an Irish soldier and an English nursemaid; however, like the young Kipling himself, Kim is thrust into the culturally diverse world of India, where he quickly learns to speak dozens of “languages,” which he can use to adopt any caste or religion. Yet where does this leave Kim? Initially, he seems clearly marked for the “Indian” world, as he cavorts with servants and street urchins and has

Kimâ•…â•… 671 little interest in tracing his roots—though he speaks vaguely of a “Red Bull and a Colonel,” along with “nine hundred devils” who will whisk him off to his destiny. This confusion of his racial identity (the Red Bull was the emblem of his father’s regiment, and the 900 devils his brothers in arms) is the first time we realize that our native guide is playing an even greater game than he realizes. If we read Kim as the story of a boy’s adolescence, then Kim comes of age under the tutelage of two mentors: the Teshoo lama, a Buddhist pilgrim seeking a fabled river, and Mahbub Ali, a horse-dealer who is secretly an agent of the British empire. While the lama believes that Kim is his chela, or spiritual aide, Mahbub marks him out as the prize “colt” to be broken into the subterfuge of the Great Game. Throughout the novel, Kim teeters between these wildly disparate worlds, in awe of the lama’s devotion but longing for the “dignity of a letter and a number—and a price upon his head!” which Mahbub’s profession could bring him. His confusion is compounded when he is discovered by his father’s regiment, which sends him to a mission school to become a proper Sahib. As a boy of English pedigree—however dubious—he has a racial imperative to become English in language, manners, and thought. Yet the great irony is that he is cultivated by Mahbub, Lurgan Sahib, and other functionaries because of his ability to be other than English; in essence, his ability to be “the Friend of all the World,” blending in everywhere, and going where no Englishman can travel. When the lama learns the truth of his heritage, he exclaims: “A Sahib and the son of a Sahib . . . But no white man knows the land and the customs of the land as thou knowest. How comes it this is true?” In other words, can a “Sahib” truly see India as an Indian? Can a man live in both worlds, being a proper Englishman even while he salaams among Muslims on a secret mission? Kim’s crisis of identity is expressed in one of the most remarked upon passages in the novel. When he becomes a free agent of the Game, able to live or die by its fortunes, Kim reflects: “Now am I alone— all alone . . . In all India is no one so alone as I! . . . Who is Kim—Kim—Kim?” The repetition of his name is telling: The name is not familiar to him,

nor is his identity as a secret agent, using India as a disguise (something artificial) when the “disguise” simply comes naturally to him. Kim constantly has to remind himself: “One must never forget that one is a Sahib, and that some day . . . one will command natives.” Yet these Peter Pan-like dreams of adventure and entitlement are shattered when he views India not as a thing to be mapped and collected (the Game), but as a timeless, sentient world. Though the novel closes with Kim’s career still uncertain, we cannot forget the passages when Kim “sees” himself in its diversity and abundance: “This was seeing the world in real truth; this was life as he would have it—bustling and shouting, the buckling of belts, and beating of bullocks and creaking of wheels, lighting of fires and cooking of food, and new sights at every turn of the approving eye . . . India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more awake and more excited than anyone.” Joshua Grasso

Nationalism in Kim

Kipling once said that “India will never stand alone,” suggesting that an India without Britain could never exist. In many ways, Kim is the literary expression of this statement, as Kipling’s India is a British India, whose hero, for all his native insight, is racially English. Throughout Kim, the idea of nationalism works in several ways, defining the British against the so-called “Oriental” character, as well as Britain’s rival, Russia, which seeks to invade India in the “Great Game” of empire. We see this early in the novel, when Mahbub Ali reflects that “Kim could lie like an Oriental.” The narrator also delivers winking asides about the customs of Indians, to whom “All hours of the twenty four are alike,” suggesting how the punctual English traveler is frustrated at every turn. The effect of these passages is curious; while they can easily be read as racist, it is important to separate the rhetoric from the narrator and his technique. Kipling’s strategy is an uneasy way of maintaining his national ethos while writing of worlds and people that only a native could know; he keeps them at arm’s length, drawing from a fund of Oriental lore that allows him to remain safely “English” in his exotic narrative.

672â•…â•… Kipling, Rudyard For whatever fears England had about “going native” in India, it was undeniably part of the British landscape, a landscape that was darkened by the threatening shadow of Russia. Behind the scenes of Kim’s coming-of-age story is the Great Game, the struggle for a central Asian empire that involved Britain and Russia for much of the 19th century. In the novel, Kim intercepts Russian spies surveying the northern boundaries of British India. When one of them encounters Kim’s fellow spy, Hurree Babu, the Russian reflects: “He represents little India in transition—the monstrous hybridism of East and West   .  . It is we who can deal with Orientals.” This “hybridism” reveals the Russians’ contempt for India and Indians, who should be racially and culturally segregated from the ruling class. Hurree Babu—as well as Kim—is a man of two worlds, able to speak and act English as readily as any number of languages and dialects. Our Russian speaker finds this “monstrous,” as he sees the Oriental character as a fixed, exotic specimen—thus echoing a famous Kipling poem: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” However, his ignorance of the Eastern character is revealed when he tries to barter for—and then seize—the lama’s sacred drawing of the Wheel of Life. A comic melee ensues, with Kim soundly drubbing the buffoonish Russian, a scene that is rendered as vividly as a modern political cartoon. However, in Kipling’s novel only the British rulers can truly understand and value Indian culture. From the very first chapter, Kipling introduces us to the curator of the Lahore museum (supposedly based on Kipling’s father), who has painstakingly collected the artifacts of Indian history. His knowledge is shown to be equal to that of a true native, the Teshoo Lama, who gratefully accepts his gift of spectacles. This gift is telling, as the association of glasses with sight suggests that the curator—an Englishman—must help the native “see” his path to enlightenment. Likewise, Kim’s English mentors, such as the mysterious Lurghan Sahib, are virtual encyclopedias of Indian culture, with impressive collections of art and weaponry. This idea of knowing India is reflected in the Great Game itself, where British agents must methodically map every square inch of Indian soil. To truly rule a country, the Game

suggests, it must be collected, classified, and labeled on future maps. Thus, Kim’s work in the Great Game is the truest expression of his nationality as a British subject. Of course, India’s “hybrid” subjects are exactly that—hybrids, setting foot in both worlds, though of questionable cultural/racial origin. Kipling is not oblivious to this dark undercurrent of colonialism, as seen in Hurree Babu’s attempts to publish scholarly papers in England and join the Royal Society. Not surprisingly, he is rejected for the same reason Kim is sent to school to become a proper Sahib: Kim belongs by birth to a world that Hurree Babu can never aspire to, despite his learning and experience. He must serve the Empire tirelessly and, ultimately anonymously, offering colonial information that will be published under an Englishman’s name. As something of a hybrid himself, Kipling was keenly aware of the impossibility of being both Indian and British, particularly in a world that wanted a stable, English subject. Kim’s destiny seems to follow a similar path of anonymity, fading into the background of the Great Game as the one person who can truly experience the diversity of Indian life. Joshua Grasso

Spirituality in Kim

In a book that has long been interpreted as a colonial adventure tale, spirituality plays a major role, particularly as it shapes the dichotomy between Kim’s Indian and English identities. Though Kim seems aloof from religion, he is drawn to the most spiritual figure in the book—the Teshoo Lama, who recruits Kim for his sacred quest. However, many critics have found it upsetting that the voice of Indian spirituality in the novel is Buddhist. After all, the dominant religious philosophy of India is Hinduism, Buddhism being a relatively late import from China. Yet what would seem an embarrassing lapse on Kipling’s part has surprising relevance in the novel. In the opening pages, the lama seems to emerge from the mists of time, prompting even Kim (otherwise a shrewd judge of nationality) to remark: “but he is no man of India that I have ever seen” (6). As a figure who cannot be named with a specific race or class, he assumes an almost mythic dimension, a “type” whose memory lingers in the collective

A Separate Peaceâ•…â•… 673 unconscious. This type is less a stock colonial figure than a living embodiment of the wisdom of the Ramayana, the Dhamapada, and other Indian epics that symbolize the Eastern quest for enlightenment. His very presence in the novel evokes a tradition outside of history (and certainly the British Raj), speaking in a language ridiculous to some, incomprehensible to others, but utterly transformative to a select few—including Kim. His outsider status as a Buddhist also complements Kim, whose quest is complicated by his own racial and national uncertainty. Not surprisingly, the lama recognizes this “otherness” and immediately dubs him his chela, a spiritual aide on his quest to enlightenment. This becomes clear in chapter 9, when the lama tells Kim a jataka, or fable, concerning one of the Buddha’s previous incarnations. The fable concerns an elephant captured by a king and fitted with a tremendous leg iron. None of his brother elephants can remove the leg iron, so the elephant abandons himself to rage and despair. Yet one day he discovers an abandoned calf in danger of being trampled by the herd; the elephant protects and nurses the foundling for 35 years, all the while enduring the pain of the leg iron. When the calf is grown, it notices the leg iron and asks what it is. When the elephant explains, the foundling dashes the iron in a single blow of his trunk. The lama moralizes this tale by explaining: “the elephant was Ananda, and the Calf that broke the ring was none other than The Lord himself.” On its most immediate level, the fable explains the relationship between the lama and Kim. The lama, who lives in the world of epics, sees Kim as yet another incarnation of The Lord, and himself, Ananda. By rescuing this poor calf, in danger of being crushed by the Wheel of Existence, he will reveal Kim’s true nature as chela and guardian. Of course, the fable functions on a more symbolic level as well: India can be seen as the elephant, held fast by the empire’s chains. To free herself (the fable suggests), India must not look to the kings, or the children of kings, but to her orphans—children like Kim, born of two worlds, without clear distinctions of race or caste. Though Kim does not “convert” to the lama’s creed, their travels together test Kim’s faith as a Sahib and an agent of the Game. Increasingly, he

sees India not as a world of maps and boundaries, but as a timeless, mythic landscape. Embarking on his second journey with the lama, Kim observes [t]he clamour of Benares, oldest of all the earth’s cities awake before the Gods, day and night, [beating] round the walls as the sea’s roar round a breakwater . . . Kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in the still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar. That night he dreamed in Hindustanee, with never an English word . . . Coming soon after his education at St. Xavier’s, this passage reaffirms Kim’s spiritual ties with India, which does not speak his adopted language. Perhaps realizing this, the lama ends the novel with the following prediction for Kim: “Let him be a teacher; let him be a scribe—what matter? He will have attained Freedom and the end. The rest is illusion.” The implication is that Kim has found his inevitable path on the Way, which will lead to a spiritual awakening for himself—and quite possibly, an entire nation of pupils. Kipling may have been unable to write this ending, but he does give the last word to the lama, echoing the eternal procession of sages, seekers, and stories that color the Indian landscape. Joshua Grasso

Knowles, Johnâ•… A Separate Peaceâ•… (1959)

John Knowles first published his award-winning novel A Separate Peace in 1959. The novel takes place in New Hampshire during World War II at the fictional Devon School. The work is set up as a frame story; an adult Gene Forrester returns to Devon, which he attended in his youth. He reminisces while wandering around the campus and recounts the events of one particular summer session and the following semesters, which make up the bulk of the book. The main characters in the story are the teenaged Gene and Phineas. The teenage Gene is uptight and academic, while “Finny” is charismatic and athletic. Though polar opposites in temperament, they become best friends and even form a “secret society”

674â•…â•… Knowles, John whose initiation ritual involves jumping from a tree branch into a river. Early in the story, Gene begins to resent Finny’s charm, thinks the latter intends to sabotage his studies, and, subsequently, causes Finny to fall from the aforementioned tree limb and break his leg. The remainder of the story involves the students’ dealing with the emotional fallout from this incident. From these events, Knowles explores the themes of innocence and experience, coming of age, guilt, violence, and identity. The struggles faced by Gene and his friends resonate still today with those who are going through or have gone through the transition from child to adult. The novel’s timeless themes will likely continue to do so with future readers. Ryan Neighbors

Coming of Age in A Separate Peace

The journey to adulthood is often filled with struggles, suffering, and lessons learned. John Knowles’s A Separate Peace is largely about this coming of age, the journey from adolescence to adulthood. The novel follows several boys at a New England private school in the 1940s as they study and prepare to go to war. This journey is most clearly seen in the protagonist Gene. The novel begins with an adult Gene revisiting the school where he spent his adolescent years. He recounts for the reader his time spent at the school, centering around one particular summer and a friendship that changed his life. That friendship with a boy known as Finny helped him discern certain undesirable characteristics about himself and grow as a person. In the beginning of the novel, the adolescent Gene is a smart, disciplined boy, focused on his studies. Since he is not the most brilliant student in the school, he has to work hard to succeed and hopes to be head of the class. He dislikes breaking the rules and feels nervous when he does, such as when he rides to the beach with Finny and jumps with him from the tree into the river. In short, Gene wants to conform. His conformity is not the sole aspect of his personality, however; he also is consumed with envy of Finny. Finny, on the other hand, stands out among the other boys because of his charismatic and mischievous nature. He is a superb athlete, though he does

not seek athletic glory for himself. He is also a natural leader, forming a secret club with the other boys. Finny leads what seems like an effortless life and is the epitome of a non-conforming individual. Gene, at the same time, admires and loathes him for this. At times early in the novel, we see Gene apparently wanting to be Finny. He even tries on Finny’s clothes at one point while the latter is away. At other times, Gene believes that he and Finny are in a contest to see who is the best boy at Devon—Finny with his athletics or Gene with his grades. After Gene flunks a math test following a trip to the beach, he begins to think Finny is not really his friend at all and is intentionally trying to hurt his studies. Gene fluctuates from wanting to be like Finny to despising him for the very thing he admires, his individuality. When Finny comments sincerely on how he wants Gene to succeed, Gene realizes that the hatred he has held for Finny is unfounded. Apparently, Finny is above hateful competition. The revelation angers Gene even more. This anger leads Gene to jostle the limb when Finny is preparing to jump in the river, causing him to fall and shatter his leg. This incident is the first turning point in the story for Gene. The secret hatred he has felt for Finny melts away and is replaced with guilt, even though he will not admit it to himself. Through the rest of the novel, Gene seemingly becomes more like his friend. With Finny’s help, he trains to become a star athlete at Devon, in effect taking the athlete’s place at the school. However, Gene’s denial of the part he played in Finny’s accident, as well as his inability to acknowledge and cope with his guilt, prevents him from growing into maturity. It is not until Gene is confronted about the accident that he truly begins the process of change. After Gene is recognized as the cause of Finny’s fall, the two friends are able to talk openly and honestly in the infirmary before the latter’s surgery, perhaps for the first time in over a year. Gene apologizes to his friend, finally freeing himself from his denial and guilt. Finny forgives him, and Gene is able to accept his friendship. When Finny dies during the surgery on his leg, Gene reacts stoically, realizing that his own old self has died with his friend.

A Separate Peaceâ•…â•… 675 Gene has suffered and caused suffering. The hatred, jealousy, guilt, and self-denial have left him. For the first time in his life, he can grow into adulthood, symbolized by the war that all of the boys face after graduation. He can now live his life without fear or resentment. Ryan Neighbors

Guilt in A Separate Peace

John Knowles’s A Separate Peace focuses on schoolboys at fictional Devon School in New Hampshire. It plays out as a flashback when the adult Gene reminisces about his time spent at the school, particularly his relationship with a boy named Phineas, or Finny. The pair become fast friends. Despite their contrasting personalities, they spend most of their free time together, break the school rules together, and even form a secret society, centered on jumping from a tree branch into the river. However, most of their relationship, particularly in the last half of the book, revolves around the guilt Gene feels toward Finny. Their relationship changes at the end of the summer session where the adult Gene begins his flashback. This change is what leads to Gene’s guilt. After becoming friends with Finny, Gene begins to feel jealousy and resentment toward him because of his charismatic and non-conforming nature. He also begins to think that he is in a competition with Finny to be the best boy in the school and that the latter is intentionally trying to sabotage Gene’s studies to win the competition. Eventually, Gene realizes that Finny is above his petty jealousy, which makes him angry. The next time the pair perform the ceremony of their secret society by jumping from the tree into the river, Gene jostles the limb, causing Finny to fall and break his leg. Gene immediately feels guilty about his action, particularly after hearing that Finny will never play sports again. He tries to confess his guilt to Finny at the infirmary and later at Finny’s house, but Finny won’t believe it. He has absolute faith in his friend. Gene has to rescind the confession. Gene, however, continues to feel guilty when he returns to Devon for the winter session. When Finny returns weeks later, he pressures Gene into taking his place as the star athlete since Finny can

no longer play. It is implied that Gene’s guilt plays into his consent to train. They even plan for Gene to compete in the 1944 Olympics. Gene’s guilt returns to the forefront of his mind, however, after a friend, Leper, enlists in the military. He leaves the military shortly after enlisting, having gone slightly mad. When Gene goes to visit him in Vermont, Leper says that he knows what really happened to Finny. This accusation causes the schoolboys to have a mock trial to decide if Gene is really guilty. Finny says that his memory of the event is blurry; Gene says that he does not remember. Leper, however, accuses Gene of causing the accident. Finny says that he does not care, leaves angrily, and falls down the stairs, re-breaking his leg. It is only after Finny and Gene talk in the hospital that they are able to reconcile. Gene assures Finny that there was no hatred in his action; he acted blindly on impulse. Finny forgives him, and they are able to resolve the situation. Even though Finny dies during his surgery, Gene finds peace and forgiveness, freeing himself of the guilt that he felt for so long. As has been shown, guilt is central to the conflict of the novel. Gene’s guilt stems from the first major incident that occurs in the story, Finny’s breaking his leg. From then on, that guilt determines how the pair relates to one another. This focus on guilt culminates in the mock trial, Finny’s reinjuring his leg, and Gene eventually gaining forgiveness from Finny. Not only is Gene’s guilt central to the conflict, but it also serves as the central catalyst for Gene’s change in the novel. It promotes his coming-ofage. Gene begins the novel as an immature and self-centered person. However, he grows from his early vindictiveness, experiences guilt about hurting Finny, and finally gains redemption and feels better about himself. By the end of the novel, he is a more mature, well-rounded person because of the guilt that has plagued him and his ordeal with Finny. Ryan Neighbors

Violence in A Separate Peace

John Knowles’s A Separate Peace deals with the relationships between two boys at a fictional school in New England during World War II. These two

676â•…â•… Kosinski, Jerzy boys begin the novel as very different people. Gene is immature and competitive. Finny is carefree and charismatic. Knowles illuminates many themes through the relationship between the two boys, including the theme of violence. Violence mainly appears in the text in two aspects, through the incident at the tree and through the war that the boys are preparing to face after graduation. The incident at the tree is perhaps the most important scene in the book, and it is the sole location of actual physical violence taking place. In the beginning of the book, Gene and Finny become friends, despite their differences. Through the next several chapters, Gene begins to be jealous of Finny. Finny is a natural athlete, and everyone likes and admires him. Gene also starts to believe that Finny is acting like his friend only to keep Gene from his studies. Because of this, he becomes more competitive toward Finny. This jealous competition comes to a head one evening while the pair are performing their ritualistic jump from a tree branch into the river. Finny makes a sincere and kind remark to Gene, and the latter realizes that their competition has been only in his imagination. This realization makes Gene angry. When Finny reaches the end of the branch, Gene bends his knees, causing Finny to fall and break his leg. Admittedly, this is a minor act of violence. Physical contact is not even made between the two boys involved. However, the ramifications of this act propel the novel forward. It leads to Finny’s inability to play sports and Gene’s subsequent guilt. It also leads to Finny’s death and Gene’s maturation. In addition, the act itself is very telling of Gene’s character at the time it occurs. In the beginning of the book, Gene often is competitive, jealous, and petty. When he realizes that Finny does not share those qualities, he lashes out. Instead of discussing the issue with Finny, he causes him to break his leg. Gene responds as a child, showing his immaturity. Interestingly, though, it is the repercussions of this act that enable him to grow as a person. Through Finny’s forgiveness, Gene becomes more mature and comfortable with himself. Though Gene’s violence shows his immaturity, it becomes a vehicle for his growing up.

The second example of violence in the novel is the war that the boys face after graduation. During the time frame in which the story takes place, both the Pacific and European theaters of World War II are in full swing. However, the novel only alludes to the war. In the story, no soldiers die and no guns are fired. The war is present solely in how it affects the boys at the school. Many of the boys respond to the war with fear and hatred, but others have more specialized reactions. For example, Brinker boasts about the prospect of going to war, while Leper, who chooses to enlist before graduation, eventually goes AWOL and becomes insane, pointing to the possible consequences of violence. The implications of these two examples of violence in the novel seem to contradict each other. Gene’s act of violence in breaking Finny’s leg shows his immaturity, and he grows up only after his remorse and Finny’s ensuing forgiveness. In a sense, he matures only after moving past violence. On the other hand, what awaits the boys in the adult world is violence. What is supposed to represent maturity to them, i.e., being an adult, carries with it some of the greatest death and destruction the world has ever seen. Perhaps the idea is that life is a war, and the key to maturity is picking your battles and dealing with them responsibly. Or perhaps Knowles is suggesting that humanity has some growing up to do. Either way, the violence in the story has a lasting effect on all the characters involved and on us as readers. Ryan Neighbors

Kosinski, Jerzyâ•… The Painted Birdâ•… (1965, 1976)

Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird brutally portrays a child’s struggle for survival during wartime. Set in German-occupied eastern Europe during World War II, the novel tells the story of a young boy sent by his parents from his home in the city to the countryside, where they hope he will be kept safe. The boy, whose name we never learn, is instead forced to wander from village to village seeking shelter. Because of his dark complexion, he is in danger not only from the occupying Nazi army but also from villagers who often torment him. The boy is six at

The Painted Birdâ•…â•… 677 the start of war, 12 at its end. Although he survives the war, he leaves the novel a much-changed character, one warped and damaged by his experiences. Kosinski’s novel is episodic in its structure, organized around the boy’s encounters with new people, new places, and new trials that he must face. Important characters in these episodes include Olga, a village healer, Lekh, a bird catcher, Garbos, a farmer, Gavrila and Mitka, soldiers in the Soviet army, and the Silent One, a war orphan who befriends the boy. Much like a folktale, the novel pits a young and helpless protagonist against a cruel world. Although Jerzy Kosinski was Polish by birth, The Painted Bird was written in English after his immigration to the United States. Because Kosinski was born to Jewish parents and survived the war in hiding, many people have assumed the novel to be semi-autobiographical. However, Kosinski insisted in his preface to the second edition that the book was entirely a work of fiction, arguing that “Facts about my life and my origins  . . should not be used to test the book’s authenticity.” James Wyatt

Identity in The Painted Bird

As the nameless narrator of Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird seeks shelter in different villages, the peasants that the boy meets speculate about his ethnic identity. They consider the dark-haired and olive-skinned boy “a Gypsy or Jewish stray.” The novel is set in eastern Europe during World War II, when the occupying Nazi army made sheltering a Jew or a Gypsy a crime punishable by death, and the villagers worry about the consequences of taking the boy into their communities. In addition, the villagers often identify the boy according to superstitious traditions: They fear and despise him because they believe that he possesses dark powers. Marta, his first protector, believes him to have “Gypsy or witches’ eyes,” which “could bring crippling illness, plague or death.” Olga the Wise calls him “the Black One” and says that his eyes have the power to cast and remove spells. In this way, the boy’s identity is determined not by his inner self but by his outward appearance, which differs both from that of the villagers and from the Aryan ideal of the Nazis. The book’s cen-

tral metaphor makes clear this relationship between one’s appearance and one’s identity within society: when Lekh, the bird catcher, enraged by Ludmila’s absence, paints a bird in bright colors and releases it, the bird tries to return to a flock of its own species; however, the flock regards the rainbow-colored bird as an intruder and viciously attacks it. Likewise, the boy is tortured and tormented by the villagers because they believe him to be different from themselves. The importance of this metaphor is stressed as we learn of the trains that pass through the forests near the villages carrying prisoners destined for concentration camps—prisoners who have been deemed subhuman due to their race or religious background. The boy himself, separated from his family and removed from his previous society, becomes unsure of his identity. As he wanders throughout the war from village to village, he comes to believe in the view that the villagers have of him. Taken to an encampment of German soldiers, the boy stares directly into the eyes of one of them, believing that this might cast an evil spell. Later, when the boy witnesses the Kalmuks’ horrific attack on a village, he believes that the villagers must be right about his evil nature: “I realized why God would not listen to my prayers, why I was hung from hooks, why Garbos beat me, why I lost my speech. I was black. My hair and eyes were as black as these Kalmuks’. Evidently I belonged with them in another world.” As an outsider at the mercy of others, the boy tries on various identities, attempting to find the key to power and control in society. He adopts variously a belief in evil, in the power of prayers of indulgence, and even in the power that the Germans possess. He identifies himself most strongly, however, with members of the Soviet army, the troops that move in from the east and push the Germans westward. From them he adopts Gavrila’s Stalinist view of humanity and Mitka’s philosophy of revenge. Forced to leave the regiment and to join an orphanage, the boy clings to this identity, refusing to part with his Soviet army uniform. He tells the teachers at the orphanage that his language is Russian and refuses to learn to read and write in his mother tongue. Kosinski’s novel suggests that our identities are malleable, formed by our experiences and by

678â•…â•… Kosinski, Jerzy the images that others have of us. So strongly has the boy been shaped by the war that, when he is reunited with his parents, he is ambivalent toward them and unable to adapt again to the family life he once knew. In this regard, it’s interesting that Kosinski never specifies the boy’s name, his home country, or his ethnic background. Although many readers have identified the setting as Poland, Kosinski’s home country, and the boy as Jewish, as was Kosinski, the book is ambiguous on these points. Much like a fairy tale or a fable, the boy is cast into a hostile landscape, but not one that is readily identifiable. Perhaps Kosinski’s novel challenges us to see something of ourselves through this device. Perhaps by trying specifically to identify the boy and his country, we repeat the mistakes of the villagers, that is, we risk seeing the boy as a member of a group rather than seeing his inner humanity. James Wyatt

Individual and Society in The Painted Bird

The Painted Bird is the story of an individual’s struggle against a society that perceives him as different. The boy, dark-haired and dark-complexioned, is constantly threatened and abused by the villagers he meets, who are blond and light-skinned. Because of the boy’s appearance, the villagers fear and despise him. Garbos worries that the boy is casting Gypsy spells. The carpenter is afraid that the boy’s black hair will attract lightning. Others make the sign of the cross when they see him in order to ward off evil. As a result of the villagers’ fears, the boy is pelted with stones, thrown into a manure pit, whipped, and nearly drowned. It is this relationship between the individual and society that is illustrated in the novel’s central metaphor: Lekh, the bird-catcher, enraged by Ludmila’s absence, paints bird after bird “in still gaudier colors, and release[s] them into the air to be killed by their kin.” The relationship between the painted bird and its flock is a metaphor for the way that society treats those that it perceives as different. Just as the birds tear apart the individual that they fail to recognize as one of their own, so too do humans. Ludmila, whom Lekh imagines as a “strange-colored bird,” lives apart from society

and does not obey its conventions, taking countless lovers. As a consequence, the women of the village set upon her and brutally kick and beat her to death. In much the same way, because the Nazis perceive them as different, Jews and Gypsies are sent to concentration camps. In Kosinski’s novel, society demands conformity. The boy realizes this fact and dreams of inventing tools to change people so that they conform to the norms. Reflecting upon the trains leading to the death camps, the boy asks, “Wouldn’t it be easier to change people’s eyes and hair than to build big furnaces and then catch Jews and Gypsies to burn in them?” Even when he is rescued by the Russian army, the boy worries that the Soviet system will demand a similar kind of conformity. He notes that “Only the group, which they called ‘the collective,’ was qualified to determine a man’s worth and importance” (192), and he therefore worries that “just as my black hair and eyes were held against me by the peasants, my social origin could handicap my new life with the Soviets.” And yet the metaphor of the painted bird also describes the desire of the bird to return to its flock. Even as the boy faces danger in the villages, he needs and desires companionship. He relies upon others for protection and for food, and he longs to be accepted and loved. At the novel’s end, although the boy’s experiences throughout the war have led him to desire isolation, he still feels compelled to return to his parents when they at last find him in an orphanage. Upon seeing his mother and father for the first time in many years, he realizes that he “suddenly felt like Lekh’s painted bird, which some unknown force was pulling to its kind.” However, the boy soon decides he “would much prefer to be on [his] own again, wandering from one village to the next.” The boy’s experiences throughout the novel lead him to believe that life within society is impossible. After he is thrown into the manure pit, the boy becomes mute, a condition that seems emblematic of his inability to communicate with others. Near the end of the novel, the boy makes clear his feelings about society: “Every one of us stood alone . . . It mattered little if one was mute; people did not understand one another anyway.” And yet despite

The Painted Birdâ•…â•… 679 this pessimistic view of society’s relationship to the individual, the book does end on a small note of optimism. The boy, living in the mountains apart from his parents, answers a ringing telephone and feels that “somewhere at the other end of the wire there was someone who wanted to talk with me . . . I felt an overpowering desire to speak.” Although the boy has clearly been altered by his experiences during the war, perhaps we can find hope in the fact that he regains his voice, hope that the boy may yet be able to communicate with and participate in society. James Wyatt

V iolence in The Painted Bird

Even the most jaded reader of The Painted Bird must be shocked by some of the novel’s depictions of violence. The images are gruesome: Garbos tortures the boy by suspending him just above the jaws of a vicious dog; the miller blinds a rival by plucking out his eyes with a spoon; the Kalmuks (Soviet deserters who fought with the Germans) rape the women and children of a village. That a young boy, alone and unprotected, is witness to—or often subjected to—such violence makes these depictions even more shocking. Some readers may feel that the novel’s violence is overstated, perhaps even obscene, so perhaps we should consider the problem Kosinski faced in writing about World War II: How does one begin to convey the magnitude of the Holocaust? Surprisingly, the violence that the novel depicts is generally not that of concentration camps and of the occupying German army. In fact, the boy is met with relative kindness by one of the German soldiers, who, when ordered to kill the boy, instead sets him free. Although we are made aware of the trains carrying Jews and Gypsies to the camps, the violence we witness is largely associated with the villagers that the boy encounters. Those whom we might expect to shelter the boy instead despise and violently abuse him. The pattern is set early in the novel when the boy, seeking help, enters a new village: He is kicked by one peasant and whipped by another. In response, the crowd “howl[s] with laughter.” In each new episode of the novel, the boy encounters new forms of abuse and violence.

The novel therefore describes not simply the violence of war, but also the violence of human nature. Kosinski presents us with a world in which people are intrinsically harsh, cruel, and animalistic. In fact, we are often shown that there is little or no difference between human and animal behavior. Garbos, who wants to kill the boy, is closely linked to his dog Judas, who attacks the boy. The murder of Ludmila by the village women reminds us of how Lekh’s painted bird is torn to pieces by the flock. In such a world, where individuals are despised for being different and where only the strong can survive, the boy necessarily learns to be violent. To save his own life, he is forced to kill, escaping from the carpenter by pulling him into a bunker filled with rats. From Mitka, the Russian sniper, the boy learns a philosophy of revenge when several soldiers from Mitka’s regiment are killed at a party by drunken peasants. Mitka in response takes up his sniper rifle and kills a number of the villagers: “Only the conviction that one was as strong as the enemy and that one could pay him back double, enabled him to survive, Mitka said. . . . If someone slapped you and it felt like a thousand blows, take revenge for a thousand blows.” The boy and the Silent One seem to follow this philosophy when they plot the murder of a farmer who beat the boy. In their attempt to kill the farmer, they derail a passenger train, killing perhaps hundreds of others. At the novel’s end, when the boy is at last reunited with his family, his parents are shocked by his violent behavior. They look at him with wordless incomprehension after he breaks the arm of his adopted brother. The novel is in this way a strange coming of age story: The boy matures and loses his innocence; however, his experiences during the six years of the war leave him violent and vengeful. Likewise, the other children in the orphanage, who have also lived through the horrors of war, have been badly damaged by their experiences. Violence, it seems, begets violence. A boy nicknamed Cannon kills a girl by throwing a heavy boot at her. Other boys gang-rape a nurse. The Painted Bird suggests to us that violence is a tool we use to gain power over others. Before the boy and the Silent One derail the passenger train, the boy considers the power at his disposal. He

680â•…â•… Kundera, Milan says, “I recalled the trains carrying people to the gas chambers and crematories. The men who had ordered and organized all that probably enjoyed a similar feeling of complete power over their uncomprehending victims.” Moreover, by juxtaposing the violence of the villagers with the violence of the German army, Kosinski cautions us that the Holocaust was not simply a product of Nazism. Violence and cruelty were not simply the result of the war. Rather, they are a part of nature, and our distrust of those who are different can too easily lead to atrocities. James Wyatt

Kundera, Milanâ•… The Unbearable Lightness of Beingâ•… (1984)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a masterpiece of European literature, written by Milan Kundera, a Franco-Czech novelist born in Brno but living in France since 1975. The novel was written in 1982 (Czech title: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) but first published in 1984 in France; Czech censorship had prevented the author from publishing it in his homeland. The novel is set in 1968 Prague, and aims to be a fresco of the situation of artists, intellectuals, and leading figures in communist Czechoslovakia after the tragic events of the Prague Spring and the subsequent invasion by the USSR. The novel’s main character is Tomas, a renowned surgeon who loses his position for writing an insignificant article, published in an unknown journal, that is accused of criticizing Czech communists. The other most prominent characters are Tomas’s wife Tereza (a photographer and, later, a barmaid), his lover Sabina (a painter), and Sabina’s lover Franz (a college professor). The novel portrays a passionate love affair, entangled with crucial historical issues and some philosophical adagios—such as the reflection on Parmenides’s concepts of “lightness” and “heaviness”; or the considerations on “Einmal ist keinmal” (“what happened once might as well have never happened at all”). Analyzing the relationships between Tomas and Tereza, Tomas and Sabina, Sabina and Franz, set against the misery and tragedy of an oppressive political regime, the narrator

offers a masterful exploration of such themes as love, identity, and oppression, in which all nuances are given voice. Tania Collani

Identity in The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, readers are faced with a sophisticated reflection on identity. On the one hand, characters do everything not to identify themselves with their parents and their own homeland; on the other hand, when they are away from their own country, their feeling of self-dispossession becomes “unbearable,” and they feel a natural need to go back to their origins, to their original identity. This feeling is particularly evident in the stories of the two female characters of the novel, the unconfident Tereza and the crackling Sabina. From the beginning of the novel, Tereza looks at herself in the mirror, trying to find out as many differences as possible between her mother and her. She hates her mother, and all her choices are influenced by the comparison. Tereza’s revulsion toward her heritage has a parallel with her hate toward the weakness of her own country, which resigned itself to the invasion of the Soviet Union. After the Prague Spring of 1968, the equilibrium of the whole country changed radically in August 1968. Since Tereza identifies herself neither with her personal roots (her mother), nor with her social roots, she decides to fly to Switzerland: “one thing was clear: the country would have to bow to the conqueror . . . The carnival was over. Workaday humiliation had begun.” During her short Swiss exile, Tereza feels the sensation of losing her roots: It is one thing to “hate” her country and her mother, it is another thing to be “indifferent” to both. She cannot bring herself to become a fashion photographer, after having reported the horrible events of Prague, even though everyone seems indifferent to what happened in Czechoslovakia: “Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.”

The Unbearable Lightness of Beingâ•…â•… 681 Little by little, her radical feelings change, becoming more mature and more complex. The sense of hate toward the humiliation of President Dubcek’s speech to the nation, diminishes as time goes by: “Thinking in Zurich of those days, she no longer felt any aversion to the man The word ‘weak’ no longer sounded like a verdict.” Through deep introspection, she manages to understand that she has nothing to share with Switzerland, with its valuation of success at all costs, and that she cannot resign herself to being a fashion photographer: “She realized that she belonged among the weak, in the camp of the weak, in the country of the weak, and that she had to be faithful to them precisely because they were weak.” That’s why she decides to go back to her country, even if she is aware that her decision will affect her and her husband’s future. Once back, she is confronted by another huge loss of identity: All the leading figures before 1968 have been replaced by people who consented to the invasion. Tomas, once a famous surgeon, becomes a window washer; Tereza becomes a barmaid and she works with a former diplomat, who keeps on his desk a photograph of his meeting with a smiling Kennedy. Everything is different from what it was before; but her suffering is more bearable than her lack of identity. On the contrary, the painter Sabina worships her feeling of unfaithfulness toward both her father and communism. Her identity is not formed by moralist lessons, but by beautiful ideas: “Betrayal means breaking ranks and going off into the unknown.” She doesn’t feel any particular sense of loss connected to the political situation. Once she “allowed herself to be taken along to a gathering of fellow émigrés,” and she loathed their meaningless speeches: “she asked herself why she should bother to maintain contact with Czechs. What bound her to them? The landscape? If each of them were asked to say what the name of his native country evoked in him, the images that came to mind would be so different as to rule out all possibility of unity.” Sabina’s aesthetic perspective prevents her from feeling a sense of belonging to a nation due to shared political views. Since only personal values count for her, her only link to her country is the image of the “cemetery” and her friends, Tomas and Tereza.

When she finally learns that Tereza and Tomas died in an accident, she feels that “the last link to her past had been broken.” Tania Collani

Love in The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being the reader is faced with two main types of love: on the one hand, the main love affair between Tomas and Tereza, ending with their marriage and a life together; on the other hand, the love affair between Tomas and the painter Sabina, which is primarily based on sex and on the thrill of eccentricity and instability. In both cases, it is interesting to see how all characters are (metaphorically) sterile, and content to be involved in sterile love stories: Only Tomas has a son “by mistake” from his first wife, but at no moment does he feel compassion for him or regret at having left him with his mother. Halfway through the novel, when Tereza and Tomas are already fallen into misery because of the communist regime, she tells him, relieved: “I’m beginning to be grateful to you for not wanting to have children.” However, seen through Sabina’s eyes, the fact of not having children is also a way to escape the holy decree “Be fruitful and multiply.” The main love affair between Tomas and Tereza is characterized by a huge tension between Tomas’s infidelity and Tereza’s will to change his nature. Nonetheless, however unfaithful, Tomas is truthfully in love with Tereza, and he feels all the frightening “symptoms” of love: “But was it love? The feeling of wanting to die beside her.” Tomas’s spur to infidelity responds to a philosophical issue he is confronted with from the beginning of the novel: “What happens but once . . . might as well not have happened at all.” A consequence of this assumption is the fact that people live only one life, which means that they can make mistakes, but have no chance to do better in another life. That’s why Tomas cannot avoid going to bed with a large number of women: He wants to test all possibilities of material love, even though he doesn’t debate his love and relationship with Tereza. As a matter of fact, Tereza is the first woman, after Tomas’s divorce, to spend a whole night with

682â•…â•… Kundera, Milan him: “He fell asleep by her side. When he woke up the next morning, he found Tereza who was still asleep, holding his hand.” And Tomas is perfectly aware that “spending the night together was the corpus delicti of love.” This awareness marks a real transformation in Tomas’s life of inveterate bachelor and Casanova; he has never felt the same “compassion” he now feels for Tereza. As the text itself suggests, “metaphors are dangerous,” and “a single metaphor can give birth to love”: The association between Tereza knocking on Tomas’s door carrying two heavy suitcases, and the biblical “child put in a pitch-daubed bulrush and sent downstream,” is the main cause of his love for her. In Tomas’s philosophy, making love with a woman is not linked with the passion of sleeping with her: “love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).” The love affair with Sabina is very deep as well, even if they both decide to leave their relationship to the status of infrequent meetings. Tomas loves Sabina because she accepts him as he is, without being jealous for his other dealings. She is a thorough individualist but, at the same time, she is capable of great abnegation. Her love and esteem for Tomas stretch to the point of helping Tereza to find a good job as a photographer, even if she is inexperienced: “When Sabina herself introduced Tereza to everyone on the weekly, Tomas knew he had never had a better friend as a mistress than Sabina.” When Tomas meets Sabina in Zurich, while on voluntary exile from Czechoslovakia, he thinks that his life with Sabina and Tereza is marvelous: “he thought happily that he carried his way of living with him as a snail carries his house. Tereza and Sabina represented the two poles of his life, separate and irreconcilable, yet equally appealing.” He is eventually forced to choose, for Tereza goes back to Prague and he can either be completely free in Zurich, or join Tereza and be oppressed by the communist regime. He chooses the second option, bidding farewell to Sabina and Zurich’s “unbearable lightness” to go back to his “heavy” roots, Prague and Tereza, even though his choice is irreversible. Tania Collani

Oppression in The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Kundera’s novel covers the whole spectrum of human oppression: from oppression caused by intricate love relationships, down to the sense of subjugation induced by a peculiar political situation (both of them seen through Tomas and Tereza’s eyes), and the aesthetic oppression caused by the standardization of ugliness (shown from the painter Sabina’s perspective). The theory that opposites attract is undoubtedly true for Tomas and Tereza. Tomas is in fact a modern Casanova who is really in love with his wife, Tereza, but cannot avoid having sexual relationships with other women. Loving women’s bodies is seen by him as a natural impulse, and he manages not to confuse physical attraction with real love. On the contrary, Tereza is faithful to him and thinks that real love shows itself through monogamous relationships. She is perfectly aware of Tomas’s unfaithfulness, and she spends all her life trying to stop her husband from seeing other women. That is to say, she is oppressed by this situation, because she knows that Tomas loves her, even though he makes love to other women. As a result, she oppresses Tomas by intervening in both their lives, trying to change this state of things. Tereza is haunted by her own jealousy, especially at night: Her recurrent dreams bring out all her anxieties about her relationship with Tomas. In one case, Tereza dreams of being ordered by Tomas to stand in a corner while he makes love to Sabina: “the sight caused Tereza intolerable suffering” and, in order to alleviate “the pain in her heart by pains of the flesh, she jabbed needles under her fingernails.” In another case, she dreams of being sent to death by Tomas himself, who ordered her and another group of naked women to march around a pool; as Tereza tells Tomas, “you never took your eyes off us, and the minute we did something wrong, you would shoot.” Tereza’s lack of quiet sleep is of course due to his husband’s inconsistency: “first he disavowed his infidelities, then he tried to justify them.” Tereza’s accounts of her restless nights induce a strong sense of subjugation in Tomas. First of all, he understands that since Tereza lives with him, he has no more private life, as proved by the fact

The Buddha of Suburbiaâ•…â•… 683 that she reads his secret lovers’ letters. When Tomas accuses her—“So you’ve been rummaging in my letters!”—not only does she not deny it, but also she lays it on thicker: “Throw me out, then!” The sense of oppression felt by Tomas emerges quite clearly in the following sentences: “He was in a bind: in his mistresses’ eyes, he bore the stigma of his love for Tereza; in Tereza’s eyes, the stigma of his exploits with the mistresses.” Burdened with that same sense of oppression, Tomas comes back from Zurich to Prague in order to join Tereza, after his fleeing from the communist regime. He is perfectly aware that he cannot live without her, but as soon as he enters his apartment in Prague and meets Tereza, with the consciousness that he can never go back, he “felt no compassion. All he felt was the pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned.” The oppression provoked by the communist regime interferes not only with Tomas’s private life, but also, and above all, with his social life. While before 1968 he was a renowned surgeon, when he decides to go back to his homeland to join Tereza, his professional career deteriorates until he has descended all the way down the social scale to window washer. This descent to the lowest social classes is due to a critical article that Tomas wrote shortly before the arrival of Soviet tanks in Prague. Asked to retract his statement, he refuses because he feels a deep sense of oppression: “he was annoyed with himself and at his clumsiness, and desired to avoid further contact with the police and the concomitant feeling of helplessness.” This widespread sense of oppression is sublimated in the point of view of the painter Sabina, who translates the idea of dominant ugliness in aesthetic terms—the kitsch. This ugliness starts in music and touches all fields of visual life: “she discovered that the transformation of music into noise was a planetary process by which mankind was entering the historical phase of total ugliness .  .  . The omnipresence of visual ugliness would soon follow.” The concept of kitsch contains also the political and social feeling of mass oppression: It implies that bad taste and arrogance inexorably penetrate all levels of life, subjugating the individual’s inclinations to a general sense of conformed beauty. Tania Collani

Kureishi, Hanifâ•… The Buddha of Suburbiaâ•… (1990)

The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) is Hanif Kureishi’s first novel and established his reputation as a fiction writer. It won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel and in 1993 was adapted into an acclaimed BBC television series, following the success of Kureishi’s screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). The novel describes and investigates the experiences of first- and second-generation immigrants in the society of 1970s suburban England. Through the characters of its chief protagonists, it also becomes an examination of the psychology of mixed race. The narrator of the novel, Karim, struggles to find acceptance in British society as a racial hybrid, born of an Indian Muslim father, Haroon, and a British Christian mother, Margaret. He intertwines his tale with that of Jamila, the daughter of Haroon’s neoconservative friend, Anwar, and his Pakistani wife, Jeeta. Karim’s journey toward self-identification involves a new understanding of being “English” and of the transitions from adolescence to adulthood to maturity. The novel’s opening depicts how Karim’s natural teenage anxieties are reinforced by the gradual dissolution of his parents’ marriage and interracial tensions in the suburbs. In his new existence as Oriental philosopher and spiritual guide to upper-middleclass suburbanites, Karim’s petty bureaucrat father, Haroon, becomes involved with the dilettantish Eva. As this adulterous liaison develops, Margaret’s sister, Jean, and brother-in-law, Ted, support her decision to divorce Haroon, because it endorses their essential race-based snobbery. Their inflexible attitudes, like Anwar’s patriarchal behavior, are the target of Kureishi’s satire. Karim’s relationships with Jamila, her child-like husband Changez, and Eva’s rock-star son Charlie stabilize his own ideas about life, but the true realization of his individuality comes from within him. Through these characters and their interactions, Kureishi explores themes like parenthood, rejection, and spirituality. The Buddha of Suburbia at times comes close to being stream-of-consciousness, but its inherent confusions are always negotiated by the quasi-authoritative voice of its narrator. Divya Saksena

684â•…â•… Kureishi, Hanif

Parenthood in The Buddha of Suburbia

Hanif Kureishi’s novel, set in suburban England of the 1970s, becomes an exploration of the role of parenthood in forming the characters of its chief protagonists, as well as an examination of the parents themselves. The narrator of the novel, Karim or “Creamy,” tells of struggling to find acceptance in British society as a hybrid, born of an Indian Muslim father, Haroon (“Harry”), and a British Christian mother, Margaret. He intertwines his tale with that of Jamila or “Jammie,” the daughter of his father’s old childhood friend, Anwar, and his Pakistani wife, “Princess” Jeeta. As a teenager, Karim becomes aware that Haroon, by day a petty bureaucrat, is in the evenings and weekends establishing a parallel identity as an Oriental philosopher and spiritual guide to suburbanites. In this secretive, subterranean existence, Haroon becomes involved with Eva who, seeking spiritual comfort as she recovers from breast cancer, ends up providing sexual solace to Haroon. When Karim accompanies his father to one of his group meetings, he witnesses Haroon and Eva’s passionate sexual activity, and for the first time begins to realize the extended nature of parenthood in his life. He has himself a sexually loaded relationship with Eva’s son Charlie, slightly older than him and an aspiring punk rocker. When Haroon moves in with Eva, Margaret decides to live temporarily with her sister Jean and brother-in-law Ted. Although his younger brother Allie sides with their mother, Karim prefers to divide his time between Haroon and Eva, Margaret and her relatives, and Jamila’s parents, Anwar and Jeeta. Hence, his adolescence is defined by at least three sets of parents, biological, surrogate, and adopted. As he puts it, “It comforted me that there was always somewhere less intense, and warmer, where I could go when my own family had me thinking of running away.” More than comfort, Karim derives practical advantages from revolving among these different avatars of parenthood as he enters his adult years. Influenced by Charlie, he decides to drop out of college, frustrating his father’s vicarious dreams of studying medicine. His participation in Eva’s scramble up the suburban social ladder and her indirect entry into the London social scene is rewarded when Eva introduces him to Shadwell, who needs a new

actor to play Mowgli in an avant-garde production of The Jungle Book. While Karim enjoys the sensation of being the center of attention, he also struggles with ambiguous feelings toward Shadwell, who becomes his surrogate father for a while, supplying him the adult perspectives and practical guidance that Haroon has always been incapable of providing. Visiting his mother, Karim shares her helplessness in her divorce, trying to understand her desire to resume the humdrum but secure middle-class existence that Ted and Jean still maintain. As a parent, Margaret initially exhibits all the traits of traditional, self-sacrificing mother. While Karim resents her surrendering Haroon to Eva without fighting for her rights as wife, he sometimes despises her for being too accommodating of her husband’s demands. Deriving his essential selfishness from her as much as from Haroon, Karim fears that Margaret’s “weakness and unhappiness” will infect him; he does not realize that his own youth, his “life and spirit could stimulate her.” Hence when she moves back into the home she shared with Haroon, she immediately begins to claim it as her own space. She leaves her job at a shoe store and becomes a doctor’s receptionist. Celebrating the preview of his debut as an actor, Karim is surprised to see his mother dance barefoot to the Jackson Five in a nightclub in London’s West End: “I’d forgotten how happy she could be . . . I’d never seen Mum dance before.” He has to accept that parenthood for Margaret is now only one aspect of her life. With Anwar and Jeeta, his substitute parents, Karim can enjoy the benefits of a traditional Indian cultural background. Jeeta evolves from being a subservient wife to becoming the dominant business partner. However, she cannot prevent Anwar from emotionally blackmailing Jamila into an arranged marriage with Changez, a stranger from India. Anwar regards parenthood as a means to achieve his own desires. His hunger-strike, “self-inflicted frailty” is a deliberate manipulation of his daughter into providing him with a son-in-law and grandchildren to help expand his Indian grocery store. Trapped in his concepts of traditional male parenthood, he terribly underestimates Jamila, taking her obedience for granted: “It was as if, in some strange way, it was beneath his dignity to take an interest in her.”

The Buddha of Suburbiaâ•…â•… 685 Changez turns out to be a gross, balding, congenitally lazy man with only one good arm. Symbolically, his atrophied arm represents the withering of Anwar’s paternal dreams, since Jamila will be a wife in name only. Returning from America to Eva and Haroon, Karim realizes that “you never stop feeling like an eight-year-old in front of your parents.” He takes a perverse pleasure in revealing his mother’s new love-life to his father in front of Eva, in revenge for their betrayal of parenthood. He wants Haroon to experience the despair he has felt at the inevitability of change. At his party to celebrate his new part in a soap opera, when Eva and Haroon announce their forthcoming marriage, Karim feels happy and miserable at the same time. Eva will be his official new mother at last, and a semblance of parenthood, upgraded from suburban anonymity to urban celebrity, will be restored to him. But sadly, his obsession with parents has now changed to a realization of his own power as an individual. Divya Saksena

Rejection in The Buddha of Suburbia

In Hanif Kureishi’s novel The Buddha of Suburbia the racially hybrid narrator Karim, or “Creamy,” born of an Indian Muslim father, Haroon (“Harry”), and a British Christian mother, Margaret, struggles with issues of acceptance and rejection in British society. Similarly, Jamila, the daughter of Haroon’s old childhood friend Anwar and his Pakistani wife “Princess” Jeeta; Jamila’s husband Changez; and Charlie, the punk-rock star son of Haroon’s girlfriend Eva, all go through rejection of traditional attitudes and ideals while trying to establish their own identities in an adult world. When the novel opens, Karim discovers that Haroon, by day a petty bureaucrat, has in the evenings and on weekends established a parallel existence as an Oriental philosopher and spiritual guide to upper-middle-class dilettantes; this becomes the initiation point for a series of rejections that establish an important theme in the novel. Haroon has begun to image himself as a reincarnation of the original Buddha, becoming the Buddha of the suburbia, a spiritual god-man who promises upper-middle-class Britishers relief from

all the ills and pressures of modern life. As such, he feels he must renounce his wife and family. Unlike the original Buddha, he creates a parallel family with Eva and Charlie. His wife rejects his idea of connected parallel homes and turns back to her own culture, where she can trade on sympathy from her peers and relatives as the rejected wife of a foreign immigrant. Although her sister Jean and brotherin-law Ted lament her original rejection of her own white society to marry Haroon, they are supportive of her rejection of Haroon’s foray into spiritualism. Jean’s negative attitude to Haroon transmits itself to Karim’s younger brother Allie, so that when the family breaks up, Allie goes with his mother “crying and yelling, ‘Bugger off, you Buddhist bastard!’ as he left with Mum and Jean.” Allie’s desire to be a ballet dancer and attend an expensive school also signifies his rejecting both the working-class norms of his mother and the “aristocratic” quasi-intellectual aspirations of his father. Allie ends up working for a clothes designer, and tries to convince Karim that “no one put people like you and me in camps and no one will. . . . Let’s just make the best of ourselves.” His rejection of both his cultural polarities has led him to a new acceptance of his hybridity, an acceptance that Karim seeks but finds elusive. As Karim says, after their childhood rivalry, he is strangely attracted to the adult Allie: “I liked him now; I wanted to know him; but the things he was saying were strange.” Instead, Karim prefers the relatively straightforward rejection of all ideals that Jamila undertakes in her journey through adolescence into adulthood. Jamila imbibes a quantity of radical ideas from her old teacher Miss Cutmore, then “started to hate Miss Cutmore for forgetting that she was Indian.” She shares with Karim the essential alienation of second-generation immigrants from the mainstream society. Both surreptitiously explore alternative identities while experimenting with ways of rejecting their ethnicity: “Yeah, sometimes we were French, Jammie and I, and other times we went black American. The thing was we were supposed to be English, but to the English we were always wogs and nigs and Pakis and the rest of it.” Jammie is certain of at least one fact: While she cannot physically prevent her parents from running her life, she can devote

686â•…â•… Kureishi, Hanif her energy to finding as many ways as possible to reject and subvert parental authority and eventually get her own way. While Karim admires her militant attitudes, he is often fearful of her extreme radicalism. Hence, when she rejects the arranged marriage with Changez, an unseen groom from India, Karim is torn between understanding her turbulent emotions and sympathizing with Anwar. Jamila rejects outright her conjugal relationship with Changez. Her rejection stems not from his external repulsiveness or the physical deformity of his polio-withered arm, but rather she rejects him largely due to her commitment to her radical ideology. At the end of the novel, when she is living in a commune and allowing Changez to serve as a domestic help and unpaid nanny to her baby daughter, she also forces him to reject the traditional patriarchal norms he has cherished all his life. When Karim puts it to him, “I am asking how you, Changez, you with your background of prejudice against practically the whole world, are coping with being married to a lesbian.” Changez is stupefied by the realization that he has indeed unwittingly rejected all the ideals of his Indian upbringing. Eva’s son, Charlie, is one of the few characters in the novel who succeeds in his ambition. At the height of his success as a rock star, he turns his back on his London fans and moves to a faster, drugoriented life in New York. He rescues Karim from a failing dramatic career and offers him a permanent place in his home as his assistant. However, after a while, Karim finds himself rejecting all that Charlie and his wild lifestyle have to offer. When they argue, Charlie claims that by embracing New York he is rejecting the narrow-minded prejudices of life in England: “So shocked, so self-righteous, and moral, so loveless and incapable of dancing. They are narrow, the English. It is a Kingdom of Prejudice over there. Don’t be like it!” Ironically, when Charlie and Karim go out together in New York, they become “two British boys in America,” identifying themselves by the culture they claim to have rejected. Karim also rejects the excesses of sexual experimentation he observes Charlie undertaking. He gradually realizes that his time in New York has helped heal his emotional wounds of being rejected by the mainstream theater in England because of his

mixed race. He also realizes he shares with his father the experience of being a social outsider, a minority, which paradoxically gives them both the strength to survive against social odds. Thus, he comes to understand that Dad had always felt superior to the British: this was the legacy of his Indian childhood—political anger turning into scorn and contempt . . . and he’d made me feel that we couldn’t allow ourselves the shame of failure in front of these people. You couldn’t let the ex-colonialists see you on your knees, for that was where they expected you to be. The realization that his father has not rejected his essential Indian identity even after more than 20 years in England makes Karim understand that he has “inherited from Dad a strong survival instinct” (250). It gives him a deeper insight into his father’s and his own characters and provides him the resolution to reject all the material advantages of being Charlie’s sidekick. It also completes his emotional healing. Therefore, he can take the risk of returning to England with only the faint possibility of a television career ahead of him. Finally rejecting the idea of a career in theater, he can pursue and achieve success in the new medium of television, playing a racially relevant part in a sitcom. He can also reenter the world he had once turned away from, and accept not only that his mother has a white English boyfriend, but also that Eva and his father are about to be married. In rejecting the shallowness of materialistic living, Karim feels he has discovered greater depths for true emotional life within himself. Divya Saksena

Spirituality in The Buddha of Suburbia

By its very title, Hanif Kureishi’s novel The Buddha of Suburbia becomes an investigation of the working of spirituality in suburban England of the 1970s. The narrator of the novel, Karim or “Creamy,” describes his struggle to find acceptance in British society as a hybrid, born of an Indian Muslim father, Haroon (“Harry”), and a British Christian mother, Margaret. Their lives are inextricably linked

The Buddha of Suburbiaâ•…â•… 687 with Jamila or “Jammie,” the daughter of his father’s old childhood friend Anwar and Anwar’s Pakistani wife “Princess” Jeeta, Jamila’s husband Changez, and Charlie, the punk-rock star son of Haroon’s girlfriend Eva. Early in the novel, Karim discovers that Haroon, by day a petty bureaucrat, has in the evenings and on weekends established a parallel existence as an Eastern philosopher and spiritual guide to upper-middle-class suburbanites. He has begun to image himself as a reincarnation of the original Buddha, becoming the Buddha of suburbia, a spiritual god-man who promises relief from all the ills and pressures of modern life. Hence, almost from the beginning, Kureishi takes up the theme of spirituality in his novel, juxtaposing different social and religious positions and showing how the essential pacifism of Buddhism transcends differences in its appeal to modernity’s pursuit of the higher life. Spirituality, in a narrow sense, concerns itself with matters of the spirit, and involves not only non-physical or abstract concepts (or even abilities) but also contrasts these with humankind’s fundamentally earthly (or material and worldly) nature. Herein lies the attraction of Haroon, otherwise a nondescript, insignificant man, to the troubled upper-middle-class socialites like Eva. Tiring of what they perceive to be their worldly ambitions and excitements, they seek a new form of stimulation and they find it in Haroon’s partly obscure utterances. Coming from his more pragmatic view of his father as an incompetent homemaker and ineffectual disciplinarian, Karim is astonished to see these socially influential people surrender themselves before Haroon and acclaim him as their spiritual master. An important defining characteristic of spirituality is a perceived sense of connection of oneself to a greater metaphysical reality, of the individual soul to a greater entity through the medium of a master or guide. This connection creates an emotional experience of awe and reverence, leading to a sense of release into a perfect state such as Nirvana. Hence, spirituality relates to matters of mental sanity and psychological health, sometimes focusing on mystic personal experiences through collective activities like prayer and listening to a spiritual discourse. This is how Haroon conducts the com-

munal meetings organized for him by Eva. To be fair to Haroon, however, Karim acknowledges that his father has always wished to be valued: “Beneath all the Chinese bluster was Dad’s loneliness and desire for internal advancement.” Marginalized in his daytime world of British bureaucracy, and in his cross-racial home life, spirituality is an escape as much for Haroon as it is for his worshipful audience. However, among many definitions spirituality can mean perceiving or wishing to perceive life as “higher,” as more complex than a merely sensual worldview. Many spiritual traditions, accordingly, share a common concept: the “path,” “work,” or method of subjugating one’s physical, animal nature to the rest of existence or the cosmos to become free from the lower ego and more fully one’s “true” self. However much Haroon exhorts his followers to this “Path or Way,” he does not adhere to it himself, for Karim sees him making passionate and illicit love with Eva in the garden away from his invited audience. This sensual relationship leads to his divorce from Margaret and moving in with Eva. As he leaves home, his younger son Allie shouts tearfully at Haroon, “Bugger off, you Buddhist bastard!” The phrase reveals not only the deeply rooted suspicion of Haroon’s philosophy in his English wife and her relatives, but also their feeling of betrayal by him under the guise of his spiritual activities. Earlier, Margaret’s brother-in-law Ted has experienced Haroon’s alleged powers when he tries to dissuade him from continuing his “Buddhist” spiritualism: “Buddhism isn’t the kind of thing she’s used to. It’s got to stop.” Haroon responds by putting Ted through a spiritual experience of his own, forcing him to confront his own workaholic nature and his fear that his wife, Jean, will leave him. Ted collapses, almost weeping from the force of the emotions he encounters in himself, and Haroon is able to tell his wife happily: “I’ve released him.” The incident reinforces Haroon’s belief in his own spiritual abilities and is another step in his reinvention of himself as a suburban guru, embarking on an exploration into the meaning of becoming fully human. Once Eva and Haroon move to London, they proceed to establish him more firmly as spiritual

688â•…â•… Kushner, Tony adviser. Now their targets are not the middleaged suburbanites of Beckenham, but the much more influential and financially rewarding urban socialites. Haroon has learned by now to distinguish between the transformational spirituality he attempted in Beckenham, where he tried truly to transform his disciples’ approach to life, and the “feel good” spiritualism he can practice in London on jaded sophisticates who merely want someone to listen to them, support them, and receive a reward for doing so. Divya Saksena

Kushner, Tonyâ•… Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themesâ•… (1992)

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes comprises two full-length dramas: Part One: Millennium Approaches and Part Two: Perestroika. Though separate works, Perestroika joined productions of Millennium Approaches already running in London and New York in November 1993. It is a historical drama and a work of magical realism that follows individuals through personal struggles and despair caused by an America teetering on the edge of a new millennium. As a historical drama, Angels in America illustrates the past and present of an American landscape in the late 1980s for viewing by an audience through a critical lens. The past is shown as a literal passing, through the funeral of a Jewish woman from the “old country.” The present is captured through a hypocritical, fictionalized politician. And finally, it is a small group of lonely people who navigate the difficulties of their lives, coming together to remember the past in order to make the choices that can lead to progress and life over stasis and death at the work’s conclusion. Magical realism (a literary technique that fuses the supernatural with the real), on the other hand, is employed to show forces beyond the material and real through characters speaking with the dead and the interaction of Prior Walter and the Angels. The drama follows the characters of Prior Walter; Louis Ironson; Belize; Roy Cohn; and Joe, Hannah, and Harper Pitt and illustrates complex and difficult relationships that develop from the

individual struggles each faces. Through these characters, Kushner explores themes such as hope, illness, and alienation. Brian Stiles

Alienation in Angels in America

Tony Kushner illustrates the theme of alienation throughout Angels in America to make a social and political statement about the state of America in the 1980s. In this manner, alienation is used on two levels, through the alienation of the audience and the alienation of the characters within and among themselves. The form of the play is envisioned as Epic Theater, or Theater of Alienation, in which the audience engages with the play, aware that the work is making a social and political statement and that theatergoers should examine it critically. It accomplishes this by staging the play in such a way as to make the audience aware of the issues the work addresses. It pointedly avoids presenting the story as escapist entertainment. Angels in America strives to demonstrate the social, political, and economic isolation of marginalized communities, particularly the gay community. The characters of Prior, Louis, and Belize are denied a substantive voice in society because of their sexual orientation. The community they represent is further ostracized because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Economic and political alienation is best illustrated through the availability of azidothymidine (AZT) and the fictionalized Roy Cohn. In the play, he is a powerful voice for a socially conservative movement who hides his homosexual desires and activities. Ultimately contracting AIDS, he is in a position to acquire the medication for treatment because of his position of power and influence. As Cohn is in the hospital dying, Belize, a nurse, takes some of Cohn’s large supply of the rare AZT. This is the only realistic way to get the drug to those who need it but are unable to get it, like Prior Walter, an openly gay man with AIDS. For many of the characters, such as Prior, Louis Ironson, and Belize, being gay places them outside of mainstream society. Other characters, Joe, Harper, and Hannah Pitt, are Mormons who are not fully prepared for “modern” American life as they travel

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themesâ•…â•… 689 to and try to live in New York City. And as stated before, Roy Cohn is a closeted and hypocritical homosexual who embraces and works toward policy that furthers the alienation of communities that do not conform to generally accepted behavior. Eventually, each character has to reconcile his or her role in American society, and this ends with Prior, Louis, Hannah, and Belize coming together to work toward a “new” community of memory and acceptance. The play is further complicated with the appearance of the Angel who announces to Prior that God is gone from Heaven. This adds a sense of the spiritual alienation of a modern America. In addition to the social and political issues, the characters of the drama are individuals who serve to represent people in various stages of alienation, or estrangement, from themselves and others, emotionally and physically. The two characters that have the most difficult time navigating through life for the extent of the play are Prior and Joe Pitt, who is a Mormon married to Harper and struggling with his sexual identity. For all the characters, though, relationships are tenuous and are broken while new relationships are formed. The relationships are severed due to the different characters’ emotional and physical barriers that are the cause of estrangement with each other and in some cases with themselves. Louis plays a major role when looking closely at the characters of Prior and Joe. Louis leaves Prior because of his inability to handle the emotional and physical issues of having a partner sick with AIDS. Joe struggles with his sexuality as it goes against his religious beliefs, and the struggle to repress his homosexual desires harms his marriage. Eventually, Louis forms a purely physical relationship with Joe after abruptly leaving Prior, and for Harper, her already fragile mental and emotional state are further harmed as she learns of Joe’s actions. The cycle continues as each character’s personal struggles affect the next. Prior, as a man who is separated from his former life, his former partner, and society because of his sexuality and illness, finally realizes that he cannot simply exist, he must do something. As he rejects his role as prophet and in turn chooses life over death, he reveals, “I’m thirty years old . . . I haven’t done anything yet . . .” (131). As a prophet, he has

no opportunity to do anything—he would exist as a memory. But he is part of a marginalized community that is politically impotent and in desperate need of a voice that merges memory and progress. And in the end, it is Hannah, Joe’s mother, joining Louis, Belize, and Prior at Bethesda Fountain, who articulates the social and political statement of the drama that the characters embody. She says, “You can’t live in the world without an idea of the world, but it’s living that makes the ideas” (144). This is the essential issue—action without thought or thought without action—that Prior reconciles with the words, “The Great Work Begins” (146). Alienation, or estrangement, whether personal or political, takes many forms and in all cases is destructive for the individual as well as the community. Brian Stiles

Hope in Angels in America

Tony Kushner presents his audience with an American landscape that is, at best, socially and politically ambivalent, and at worst hostile to its citizens who lack a recognized social identity. Set primarily in the second half of the 1980s, the prevailing conservative climate offers little hope to the play’s characters who are either gay and dealing with the HIV plague or dealing with moral conundrums of identity. Despite the personal problems and bleak reality of these characters’ lives, the work concludes with the words, “The Great Work Begins” (146). For the characters gathered with Prior Walter at Bethesda Fountain, the sense of working, or progressing, toward a better future offers hope of a benign future, one that is more accepting socially and politically for people that have long been pushed to the outer fringes of social consciousness. The play loosely centers on the character Prior Walter, a 30-year-old homosexual man whose health is rapidly deteriorating due to the effects of HIV. Of any of the characters, he has reason to despair; he knows he is going to die as he has seen many of his friends suffer that fate. Furthermore, when he tells Louis, his partner of four years, Louis quickly abandons him. As Millennium Approaches ends, the first of the two plays that make up Angels in America, an Angel arrives in Prior’s bedroom and announces her presence. And as Perestroika, the

690â•…â•… Kushner, Tony second play, begins he is anointed a prophet, one who is to “lead” America to stasis. This angel is not a messenger from God—God has, in fact, abandoned both the heavens and earth— but from the Permanent Emergency Council of the Continental Principalities, Heaven. Prior’s problem arises because that current society is an uncaring, oppressive, and alienating force, so stasis is not an option. In fact, it is impossible. With the Angel imploring Prior to lead people to stand still, which for him would be death, it seeks the halt of progress. But in this explanation she reveals the very nature of why there is cause for hope. She says to Prior, “YOU Think. And You IMAGINE!” (Perestroika 42). This is revealed to be uniquely human. Prior initially rejects the role of prophet and in doing so makes his claim for life despite the terrible condition of his deteriorating health and of the ambivalence of society. He says to the council, “We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that’s it, that’s the best I can do” (133). In other words, life is hope; life is change, and Prior wants to live. Beyond Prior, the many characters in Angels in America are in situations where hope seems lost to them. Louis and Belize are openly gay and are outcasts in American society. They are at risk and sensitive to the HIV plague that provides a constant atmosphere of fear, illness, and death for their community; Joe Pitt is a conservative lawyer, a Mormon, and a man struggling with his sexual identity; Harper and Hannah, Joe’s wife and mother respectively, are Mormons in various stages of disillusionment with their personal lives and roles in society; and finally, Roy Cohn represents American hypocrisy. At different points in the plays, the characters are left alone in their confusion and suffering. Each individual moves through crises of physical, emotional, and spiritual nature. The status quo offers only a lonely and hopeless situation. But as the title of the second play, Perestroika, or “restructuring,” suggests, it doesn’t have to be that way. As different characters meet and interact, they find ways to comfort and help each other. This is often awkward and difficult, but the results are seen at the conclusion of Perestroika, and not without the casualties that mark any struggle.

The concluding scene begins with Prior, Louis, Belize, and Hannah. The initial discussion shows the progress of political movements across Europe, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, but in Russia in particular. The changing of a whole political structure is “. . . a leap into the unknown.” This in many ways embodies the notion of progress in that you hope to change for the better, but ultimately it is the unknown we work toward, hopefully bearing in mind the past while moving forward. Angels in America is not a work that illustrates hope in any simple, uplifting way. Instead, it engenders the hope of merging history (memory), theory (ideas), and action. It is the hope for “more life” that Prior embodies. Brian Stiles

Illness in Angels in America

Angels in America begins in 1985 at a time when the HIV/AIDS virus is reaching epidemic proportions within the gay community in America. The work traces the lives of four of the five primary male characters, Prior, Louis, Belize, and Roy Cohn, who are directly affected by the disease. The play is unapologetically straightforward and graphic about how HIV/AIDS manifests itself physically, emotionally, and politically. The play is anchored around the life of Prior Walter, who has contracted AIDS. The first sign of infection for him appears as “K.S.” or Kaposi’s sarcoma. His illness is further brought to life through the graphic portrayal of additional lesions, loss of weight, and bloody bowel movements. While dealing with the physical manifestations of the disease, he must also cope with being abandoned by his longtime boyfriend, Louis. Through the character of Louis, Kushner illustrates the difficulty relationships encounter when faced with a frightening and mostly fatal situation. At this time, the outcome of Prior contracting AIDS would be a painful and humiliating death. Louis leaves because he cannot deal with what the future holds for Prior. Belize is another openly gay character. He is a nurse and has a firsthand knowledge of what the gay community faces when dealing with HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. He is Prior’s friend and announces his

The Rainbowâ•…â•… 691 intention to stick with him no matter what. Belize is better equipped than Louis to deal with Prior’s deteriorating physical condition, as he has witnessed it “lots” of times before (Millennium 25). Because of his experience as a nurse dealing with AIDS patients, he knows the common treatments such as radiation for the lesions and the experimental drug azidothymidine (AZT), and how they are harmful in and of themselves. In addition to his insight and knowledge, he provides emotional support and care and ultimately a link between Prior, Roy Cohn, and the only viable form of treatment, AZT. The stigma attached to HIV/AIDS in the mid- and late eighties is manifested through the fictionalized account of Roy Cohn. This character is a powerful and politically connected man who is a closeted homosexual who has AIDS. He is adamant to his doctor that his symptoms are related to liver cancer, as he says, “AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer” (Perestroika 46). He dies during the course of the play from the effects of AIDS but not before he secures a large quantity of the extremely rare AZT. Because of his secrecy about his prognosis, nobody knows he has the AZT except his nurse, Belize. Roy Cohn’s portrayal helps to establish the outsider status of gay men during the time period of the play through his words and inferred actions as well as the difficulty in obtaining fair treatment. Belize is amazed at his ability to obtain AZT as he witnesses the hospital giving a placebo to patients. As Roy dies, Belize liberates the secret stash to help Prior, his friend, but more significantly one who is not connected, powerful, and privy to this type of treatment. In focusing on the illness of HIV/AIDS, Angels in America provides an all-encompassing view of the plague that ravaged a largely ignored and marginal community. The graphic description of the physical effects endured by those infected and the references to the many gay men who had died already are reminders of the pain and suffering this illness brings. The additional portrayal of the emotional struggles of the men, both those infected and those knowing the infected, adds another level of depth and understanding to the struggle through this illness.

Though the personal stories are important to recognize and explore in Angels in America, the disease during this time was also a political issue, illustrated through Roy Cohn. Roy embodies the hypocrisy of the medical and political communities. Those individuals who are most in need are denied the type of care that can be secured by the powerful. Those most in need at this time, the homosexual community, are considered second-class citizens, as demonstrated through court cases referenced in the play as well as Roy’s emphasis on labels and how they affect status. As Prior struggles for his life, it is a struggle that encompasses his physical existence as well as the political future of himself and others like him. HIV/AIDS is not a personal illness; it is an illness of society as well. Brian Stiles

Lawrence, D. H.â•… The Rainbowâ•… (1915)

The Rainbow is a major modern novel distinguished by an innovative departure from the realism of its author’s earlier fiction. Although it is concerned with the traditional subjects of courtship and marriage, Lawrence eschews traditional modes of characterization, delving into the psychology of his characters, stressing instinct, sexuality, and, above all, the unconscious. His psychological approach is informed by a religious sensibility, often relying on biblical imagery and an incantatory style of writing. The results are striking, hypnotic scenes whose dream-like effects reveal the unconscious drives of Lawrence’s characters. The Rainbow tells the story of three generations of the Brangwen family in the English Midlands, concluding at the turn of the 20th century. The novel begins with the famous prologue, a poetic overview of the Brangwens, portraying their farm life and, in the case of the women, their aspirations. In each generation the principal characters struggle with relationships: first, Tom Brangwen and his Polish wife Lydia Lensky; next, Will Brangwen and Lydia’s daughter from a previous marriage, Anna Lensky; and finally the daughter of Will and Anna, Ursula Brangwen, and her two lovers, Winifred

692â•…â•… Lawrence, D. H. Inger and Anton Skrebensky. The novel is devoted mostly to Ursula, whose story continues in Lawrence’s Women in Love (1920). The Rainbow was banned as obscene soon after publication, but it is now generally recognized as a significant novel because of its innovative form and its bold thematic treatment not only of marriage, sexuality, and the unconscious, but also of education, gender and industrialism. Mitchell R. Lewis

Commodification/Commercialization in The Rainbow

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, commerce in England was dominated by industrialism. Lawrence introduces the theme of industrialism after the prologue, beginning with the description of a canal constructed across the Brangwen farm that connects “the newly-opened collieries of the Erewash Valley.” The Brangwens receive financial compensation for this trespass on their property, but Lawrence indicates that this canal serving the collieries is the beginning of an “invasion” into what is described as a pastoral paradise for the Brangwen men. Soon, a colliery is built on the other side of the canal, followed by a railway line. With this development come “red, crude houses plastered on the valley in masses, and beyond all, the dim smoking hill of the town.” The Brangwens are “astonished” by the commotion, becoming “strangers in their own place,” always aware of the sound of “the rhythmic run of the winding engines.” Driving home, they see “the blackened colliers trooping from the pit-mouth,” and during the harvest they endure the “faint, sulphurous smell of pit-refuse burning.” The industrial invasion contaminates the countryside, disrupting the vital interchange between the Brangwens and their farm. Lawrence suggests a fall from paradise, contrasting industrialism with nature as he reveals its deadening influence. The subject of industrialism comes up again when Ursula introduces Winifred Inger to her Uncle Tom. A manager of a new colliery, Tom lives in Wiggiston, a former hamlet in agricultural country that has been transformed into an industrial town, much like the towns in the vicinity of the Brangwen farm. Colliers hang out in gangs, looking

like “spectres,” while the town itself is characterized by a “homogeneous amorphous sterility.” The buildings and roads are uniform and regimented, yet for all this order there is “no organic formation.” The order is mechanical, not vital. It is imposed, not growing out of the life of its inhabitants. The same is true of the “great, mathematical colliery on the other side of town.” It also imposes itself on the workers, who have come to believe that “they must alter themselves to fit the pits and the place, rather than alter the pits and the place to fit themselves.” Tom and Winifred derive a perverse pleasure from “serving the machine,” worshiping it, feeling “free from the clog and degradation of human feeling.” Ursula, on the other hand, rejects “the great machine which has taken us all captives.” She would see the colliery destroyed and the men out of work, “rather than serve such a Moloch as this.” She is equally appalled with Tom and Winifred and “their strange, soft, half-corrupt element.” As Ursula’s reactions suggest, Lawrence’s portrayal of industrialism emphasizes the sacrifice of the individual to the machine. In this regard, it is linked to the novel’s general concern with the modern world’s attempt to subordinate the individual to society. The novel repeatedly uses terms associated with the colliery to describe society’s negative influence. Anton Skrebensky, for instance, views London as an “ashen-dry, cold world of rigidity, dead walls and mechanical traffic, and creeping, spectre-like people,” and he himself becomes a person in whom “only the mechanism of his life continued.” Ursula’s school is also described in similar terms, the teachers “compelling many children into one disciplined, mechanical set, reducing the whole set to an automatic state of obedience and attention.” The industrialism theme takes on its full value in Ursula’s concluding vision of the rainbow. First, she sees “the stiffened bodies of the colliers, which seemed already enclosed in a coffin,” and the houses of a colliery town, “which seemed to spread over the hillside in their insentient triumph, a triumph of horrible, amorphous angles and straight lines.” Then she imagines that the colliers have a “rainbow arched in their blood,” and it is this rainbow that is prompting a new germination that will cast aside the

The Rainbowâ•…â•… 693 old world. The industrialism imagery thus serves as a contrast to the rainbow imagery. The old world to be swept away and replaced by a “new creation” takes the form of industrialism. In fact, it can be said that the system against which all of Lawrence’s characters are fighting, whether they know it or not, is industrialism. It is linked to the education system, as well as to the personal frustrations of Lawrence’s characters. It is a system opposed to individual fulfillment, and Lawrence attempts to counter it with a religious sense of the instincts of humanity. Mitchell R. Lewis

Education in The Rainbow

The prologue to The Rainbow introduces the subject of education, stressing differences of gender and class. The Brangwen men are satisfied with farm life and the rhythms of nature, but Mrs. Brangwen desires more for herself and particularly for her offspring. She notices that the local vicar’s children take precedence over her own because of “education and experience.” It is “this higher form of being” that she wants for her children, who face a life of anonymous toil among the working classes of the English Midlands. In spite of this noble aspiration, later linked to the suffragette movement, the Brangwen family’s educational experiences tend to be negative ones. In fact, Lawrence suggests that instinct, intuition, and experience are more important than formal education. In grammar school, for instance, Tom Brangwen is “more refined in instinct” than his peers, but “he could not learn deliberately.” Tom does emotionally respond to literature when read to by his teacher, but he is ashamed and angered by his inability to read books, regarding them as hateful “enemies.” Rage and humiliation are also the results of his experiences with composition and mathematics, in spite of his “instinct” for the latter. Tom is even “bullied” by his Latin master, resulting in a “horrid scene” in which Tom “laid open the master’s head with a slate.” The grammar school labels Tom a “hopeless duffer at learning,” but clearly it fails to take into consideration Tom’s sensitive nature and class background. Like Tom, Anna Brangwen also resists her formal education. She is “intelligent enough” and

proud, but when she is at a young ladies’ school, she feels that “she ought to be slinking in disgrace.” Anna questions her schoolmistresses, who act like “representatives of some mystic Right,” and she does not see “why a woman should bully and insult her because she [does] not know thirty lines of ‘As You Like It.’↜” As a result, her teachers almost make her believe in “her own intrinsic inferiority.” As in Tom’s case, Anna is singled out and humiliated for being different. Lawrence touches briefly on how Will Brangwen enjoys teaching woodwork in night school, but his most extensive treatment of education comes in the case of Ursula Brangwen, the principal character of the last half of the novel. As a child, she imagines herself “on the hill of learning, looking down on the smoke and confusion and the manufacturing, engrossed activity of the town.” In this regard Ursula clearly embodies the aspiration of Mrs. Brangwen, but her “instinctive” intelligence and her “bitter contempt of all teachers and schoolmistresses” combine the family traits of Tom and Anna, respectively. Seeking her independence like many suffragettes of the time, Ursula becomes a teacher at a working-class elementary school. She strives to be personal with her students, but she finds that they are rebellious and that she herself is simply a tool of a disciplinary institution, its focus on authority and regimentation resembling a “prison.” Ursula reluctantly subordinates herself to her institutionalized role, becoming “nothing but Standard Five teacher.” The unruliness of her students and the goading of her authoritarian headmaster, Mr. Harby, prompt Ursula to seize control of her class by making an example of Vernon Williams, a student whom she viciously canes. The scene recalls the episode between Tom and his Latin master, the novel once again portraying the combative relationship between teacher and student. Lawrence suggests that the educational system coerces students and teachers alike into obedience, creating resentment, frustration, and anger all around. A professional woman educated out of the working class, Ursula finds herself in “the ignominious position of an upper servant hated by the master above and the class beneath.”

694â•…â•… Lawrence, D. H. While her sister Gudrun enjoys a measure of success at art school, Ursula finally attends university for the sake of “pure education, not for mere professional training.” She thinks of her studies in religious terms, viewing the professors as “blackgowned priests of knowledge,” but she soon becomes disillusioned. In the end, Ursula sees college as a “sham workshop” in which “the religious virtue of knowledge [has] become a flunkey to the god of material success.” Ursula fails to get her degree, but she embraces the changing times around her, finding hope for tomorrow symbolized in a rainbow. Her education, Lawrence suggests, will come through the experience of living her life, not through school. Mitchell R. Lewis

Gender in The Rainbow

Lawrence’s novel addresses the subject of gender in its portrayal of Ursula Brangwen’s attempt to win her independence in the “man’s world.” She fights the social constraints against her, resisting the “limited life of herded domesticity” and insisting on “the right of women to take equal place with men in the field of action and work.” In effect, Ursula criticizes the way in which society defines women. With her education she hopes to break through society’s barriers to become a financially independent, modern girl. Her friends help her to learn about the women’s movement and its effort to reform society, but she eventually grows discontented with the movement, believing that allowing women to participate in society is not sufficient social reform for women or even for men. Lawrence’s essentially religious view of gender allows little room for social accommodation in any form. Unable to practically discuss gender and society, Lawrence depicts an apocalyptic vision of the future in which women and men are liberated from the present into an unspecified utopian world. It is an image of fulfillment to come for men and women as men and women. Lawrence’s reservations about the women’s movement can be seen in his portrayals of Winifred Inger and Maggie Schofield. A teacher, Winifred is proud and free and she is “interested in the Women’s Movement,” but she is also a “modern girl whose very independence betrays her to sorrow.” Similarly,

as a teacher, Maggie is “free,” but there is “something like subjection in Maggie’s very freedom.” She is a “great suffragette, trusting in the vote,” but she suffers from “a heavy, brooding sadness that was almost meat to her.” Maggie and Winifred have achieved a measure of success, breaking into the professional class, but they remain fundamentally unhappy because of the inevitable compromises they must make with society. Winifred even goes so far as to marry a manager of a colliery, taking a “perverse satisfaction” in serving “the machine” of industrialism. In contrast, Ursula does not compromise with society, having a “strange, passionate knowledge of religion and living far transcending the limits of the automatic system that contained the vote.” For her “the liberty of woman meant something real and deep,” but the present form of society does not allow for it, even if women were fully emancipated. The implication is that Lawrence wants radical social reform, not social accommodation for women. The scope of that reform is suggested by the novel’s persistent use of apocalyptic imagery derived from the biblical story of Noah. Images of flooding, arks, and rainbows abound in The Rainbow. In fact, the novel concludes with Ursula’s apocalyptic vision of a “new creation” in which the rainbow becomes a symbol of a desire for fulfillment and freedom that is hard to define in material terms. It involves the complete destruction of the old world and a transformation of personal relationships and the body. As this imagery suggests, Lawrence’s view of men and women is essentially religious in nature. Going beyond personality and society, Lawrence delves into the unconscious desires of his characters, portraying them as caught up in a religious ritual beyond time and space. This use of ritual is especially noticeable when Anna and Will Brangwen stack sheaves of corn at night, the scene and formal language suggesting a fertility ritual. The two arched sheaves leaning together also recall the religious rainbow imagery, which Lawrence uses to describe the proper relationship between men and women. Lawrence’s religious view of gender can also be seen in Tom Brangwen’s assertion that “an angel is the soul of man and woman in one: they rise united at the Judgement Day, as one angel.” It is

Women in Loveâ•…â•… 695 also apparent in the novel’s peroration on the “risen body” in which the narrator becomes a resurrected Christ embracing and kissing Mary Magdalene. This need for the resurrection of the flesh echoes the apocalyptic imagery of the novel, reinforcing the kind of radical social transformation that Lawrence envisions. Lawrence suggests that if the women’s movement amounts only to jobs, money, and the vote, unhappiness will remain until the distinctive religious natures of women and men are fulfilled. Lawrence also suggests that men and women are fulfilled as men and women through their personal relationships with each other, not through social accommodation. Mitchell R. Lewis

Lawrence, D. H.â•… Women in Loveâ•… (1920)

D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love continues the story line of The Rainbow (1915), but it abandons the latter’s historical form to focus on Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen and their lovers, Rupert Birken and Gerald Crich, respectively. The novel contrasts the two relationships, the first leading to marriage, the second to assault and suicide. Women in Love also explores the friendship between Rupert and Gerald, with homoerotic overtones. Conceiving of personal relationships as combative, Women in Love is a disturbing meditation on the psychology of love. Its characters are largely unconscious, driven by the need for power, control, and authority. Eschewing the linear narrative associated with realism, Women in Love is episodic. Its chapters usually focus on symbolic incidents that develop its thematic concern with love. Among the famous incidents are Rupert throwing stones into a pond in “Moony,” Gerald’s cruelty to a horse in “Coal-Dust,” and Rupert and Gerald wrestling in the nude in “Gladiatorial.” In each case, the incident is vividly described, but it resonates with a meaning beyond the literal, like a dream. Because The Rainbow was banned, Lawrence had problems getting Women in Love published, but many now regard it as Lawrence’s greatest novel. It

is also considered an important work of modernism because of its episodic form, its use of symbolism, and its concern with the unconscious. Women in Love’s thematic exploration of love leads inevitably to the discussion of gender and sexuality, but it also touches on industrialism. Mitchell R. Lewis

Commodification/Commercialization in Women in Love

Lawrence takes on the subject of commerce, in the form of industrialism, in his treatment of the Crich family. The dying patriarch of the family, Thomas Crich, is a great coal-mine owner in Beldover, a small Midlands town surrounded by mining villages and pits. Feeling responsible for his colliers, Thomas tries to enact the Christian principles of love and charity. He treats the miners as if they are closer to God than he is, making them “his idol, his God made manifest.” While he makes an enormous profit from the mines, Thomas views the welfare of the minors as more important than profit, the mines being “primarily great fields to produce bread and plenty for all the hundreds of human beings gathered about them.” His sense of duty, moreover, leads him to institute an open-door policy for the poor, whose requests for charity he never denies. Although all their basic needs are satisfied, the miners eventually become discontented with their meager share of the profit. Similar situations arise in other mining communities. Meanwhile, the mines are not producing as well as they had, and thus not paying as well. As a result, the Masters’ Federation to which Thomas belongs forces him to close his mines in order to compel the workers to accept a reduction in wages. Resisting the lock-out, the workers organize, animated by egalitarianism, the idea that “All men are equal on earth.” Riots break out, and a “war” ensues between the masters and workers. After the workers set fire to a pit, soldiers suppress the riots, restoring order and breaking the will of the miners. During the course of the riots, Thomas sympathizes with the workers, reluctantly closing the mines. He can see that the “disequality” between master and worker is wrong, but “he could not give

696â•…â•… Lawrence, D. H. up his goods, which [are] the stuff of disequality.” The conflict breaks his heart, destroying his illusions about his relationship with the colliers. The riots and their aftermath reveal Thomas Crich to be good natured, idealistic, and charitable, but also sentimental, deluded, and, finally, more materialistic than he had thought. As much as he values Christianity, Thomas also values property, profit, and his class status. When Thomas becomes ill, retreating into a solipsistic religiosity, his son Gerald takes over as director of the firm, at a time when the mine is more run down than ever. Like his mother Christianna, Gerald despises his father’s charitable disposition, having no sympathy for the workers. In fact, during the riots he longs to go out with the soldiers to shoot the miners. Educated in the science of mining at a German university, Gerald successfully modernizes the coal mines, increasing their efficiency and output. Where his father was sentimental, Gerald is coldly rational but also darkly sadistic. He accomplishes his “great reform” not for the money but for the satisfaction of dominating nature. He envisions himself in a “fight with Matter,” in a struggle to “reduce it to his will.” Gerald extends this domination to his employees. Conceiving of the miners as mere “instruments,”Gerald takes pride in “the stream of miners flowing along the causeways from the mines at the end of the afternoon, thousands of blackened, slightly distorted human beings with red mouths, all moving subjugate to his will.” Subordinating nature and humanity to his designs, Gerald sees himself as the “controlling, central part” of a smoothly running machine. He becomes the “God of the Machine,” completing the contrast with his father, who saw the miners as a manifestation of God. In this brief family history Lawrence captures his sense of the problems of industrialism. He portrays the class conflict and exploitation endemic to industrialism, along with the masters’ failures of understanding and empathy. He reveals the dehumanizing of the working classes, as well as the sentimentalism and megalomania of the ruling classes, who are also dehumanized by their lust for power. He shows how the scientific method can be a tool for ruthlessly dominating humanity as well as the

environment. He also links the desire for control and power to sexual politics. As Women in Love shows, Gerald takes the same approach to Gudrun as he does to his mines. He tries to dominate and control her. He also tries to dominate and control himself, exhibiting a strange combination of nihilism and repression. Ironically, after Gerald commits suicide, freezing to death in the Alps, he becomes simply “cold, mute Matter.” Mitchell R. Lewis

Gender in Women in Love

In Women in Love Lawrence portrays men and women as “perfectly polarized,” each sex having “a single, separate being, with its own laws.” According to this essentialist view of gender, men and women recognize in the other a fundamentally “different nature.” It is a nature, moreover, that is unknowable, beyond conscious understanding. The result, in the case of heterosexual relationships, is a mutual recognition of “the immemorial magnificence of mystic, palpable, real otherness.” A vitalist who scorned scientific knowledge, Lawrence suggests that even in their sexual relationships, men and women never really know each other. Drawing on religious and metaphysical language, Lawrence typically portrays relationships as ineffable experiences in which human beings encounter each other’s absolute but impersonal natures. Lawrence insists on the possibility of mutual fulfillment, but his emphasis on gender-difference complicates the issue. In fact, Lawrence finally depicts heterosexual relationships as violent power struggles over who has authority and control. Thus Lawrence’s emphasis on gender difference is linked inseparably to a focus on gender hierarchy. His characters battle for dominance over the other, driven by a largely unconscious will to power. The battle between the sexes is repeatedly thematized in the novel. For instance, Ursula thinks that Rupert is “a bully like all males,” while he considers her an arrogant “queen bee,” a mother who desires “to have, to own, to control, and to be dominant”. Rupert also reflects on the “female tyranny” of Hermione. Similarly, while watching Gerald dance, Gudrun resolves “to combat him” until one triumphs

Women in Loveâ•…â•… 697 over the other. Considering himself dominated by Gudrun, Gerald thinks, “If only I could kill her—I should be free.” The artist’s model, the Pussum, finally, intends “to capture Halliday, to have complete power over him.” Complementing the thematic discussion of the will to power in relationships are numerous instances of hostility between men and women. Gudrun strikes Gerald, feeling “in her soul an unconquerable desire for deep violence against him,” while Gerald himself assaults her at the end of the book, taking “the throat of Gudrun between his hands” and “watching the unconsciousness coming in her swollen face, watching her eyes roll back.” Gudrun lives, but she drops to her knees, “like one executed.” Earlier, two lovers are found drowned in a lake, the woman’s “arms tight around the neck of the young man, choking him.” Filled with hatred, the rejected Hermione hits Rupert over the head with a “ball of lapis lazuli,” an act from which she derives “unutterable satisfaction.” The cruel Loerke has to slap his female model to make her docile enough to pose in the correct way for his sculpture. Even the men fight with each other, as attested by the homoerotic wrestling match between a nude Gerald and Rupert in the “Gladiatorial” chapter. In each case there is a disturbing mingling of aggressive and sexual instincts. Symbolic instances of violence are also in Women in Love. The fight between the domestic cat Mino and a wild female cat symbolizes the relationship between Rupert and Ursula, as the latter realizes. Bismarck, a rabbit, becomes a symbol for the mindless cruelty in men, as he scores the wrists of Gudrun with Gerald watching. Rupert’s throwing rocks at the reflection of the moon in a pond is a symbol of his aggression toward Ursula, who secretly witnesses the event, “dazed” as if she were Rupert’s target. Before throwing the stones, Rupert curses goddesses like “Cybele” and “Syria Dea,” strong maternal images he associates with Ursula. Perhaps the most striking symbolic act of violence is Gerald’s mastering a female horse in the chapter entitled “Coal Dust.” His amusement at controlling, terrifying, and torturing the horse is indicative of the sadism seen in his relationship with Gudrun. It also expresses

his repressions and self-destructive masochism. As Lawrence makes clear, Gerald is driven by a kind of nihilism that the author associates with reason, science, and industrialism. Underwriting Lawrence’s portrayal of gender is a persistent concern with the primitive, as seen, for instance, in the African “negro statues,” particularly the one of the woman giving birth, “conveying the suggestion of the extreme of physical sensation, beyond the limits of mental consciousness.” If gender is absolute and impersonal, Lawrence suggests, it is also primitive, consisting of largely erotic but violent instincts that lead to combative relationships. Mitchell R. Lewis

Sexuality in Women in Love

Lawrence’s Women in Love presents a complex picture of human sexuality. Typically Lawrence portrays sexuality as a mystical experience, a timeless ritual linked to mythology and the unconscious. He also links sexuality to primitivism, a theme developed in relationship to African art. Lawrence’s main assertion is that sexuality is impersonal and even “inhuman.” It transcends personality and knowledge, allowing for a fulfilling mystical communion in which each participant is still decidedly other. The ideal experience appears to be represented in the relationship between Rupert and Ursula. Lawrence describes their sexual relationship in religious terms, characterizing it as “ineffable” and as “mysticallyphysically satisfying.” He portrays Rupert as one of the “Sons of God” and as a potent “Egyptian Pharaoh,” and he also describes Rupert’s embrace of Ursula as “the fingers of silence upon silence, the body of mysterious night upon the body of mysterious night, the night masculine and feminine.” It is a sensual communion, described in the archetypal language of religion and mythology. This mystical, heterosexual experience, however, is complicated by Rupert’s unfulfilled need “to love a man purely and fully.” The “problem of love and eternal conjunction between two men” undermines Rupert’s relationship with Ursula. He believes that his relationship with her will not be complete until he has an “eternal union with a man too,” and he desires such a union with Gerald. Ursula Â�considers

698â•…â•… Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Lee this need a “perversity” and cannot understand why she is not enough for him. While Rupert often indicates that his desire for men is simply a need for male friendship, Lawrence clearly suggests that it is homoerotic. An early if indirect indication of this homoeroticism occurs after Hermione assaults Rupert with a ball of lapis lazuli. Disgusted with Hermione and women in general, Rupert wanders through a valley, removes his clothes, and proceeds to walk “to a clump of young fir-trees, that were no higher than a man.” What follows is a symbolic homoerotic experience with the fir-trees: the “soft sharp boughs beat upon him, as he moved in keen pangs against them, threw little cold showers of drops on his belly, and beat his loins with their clusters of soft-sharp needles.” In addition, “a thistle . . . pricked him vividly.” Rupert also clasps “the silvery birch-trunk” to feel “its smoothness, its hardness, its vital knots and ridges.” The experience leaves him feeling that he “did not want a woman—not in the least.” A more direct representation of homoeroticism is evident later when Rupert and Gerald wrestle in the nude. As the two fuse into a “tense white knot of flesh,” Rupert’s “great subtle energy” attempts to “penetrate” Gerald’s body, to fuse them into “oneness.” The insistent repetition of the word “penetrate” carries obvious homoerotic overtones, and the reiteration of the word “knot” echoes the earlier scene with the fir-trees. In the end, Rupert and Gerald clasp hands, each thinking that the “wrestling had some deep meaning to them—an unfinished meaning.” The novel concludes with Rupert mourning the death of Gerald, as he argues again with Ursula about his need to love a man. Ending the novel in this way, Lawrence suggests that the relationship between Rupert and Gerald may be the real focus of the novel, not their relationships to Ursula and Gudrun. Reinforcing this position is Lawrence’s suggestion that the heterosexual relationships are Oedipal in some way. Rupert thinks of Ursula as an oppressive “queen bee” or “Great Mother,” while Gerald seeks solace from Gudrun like “an infant . . . at its mother’s breast.” Perhaps the aggressive behavior toward women seen in both Gerald and Rupert is simply a function of their repressed homosexuality.

What is clear, in any case, is that Lawrence perceives himself to be exploring the topic of sexuality at a time when traditional Western sexual mores are no longer acceptable. Rupert, in particular, is trying to negotiate relationships with Ursula and Gerald for which he has no precedents. He is trying to take the “love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal,” to do away with “the exclusiveness of married love,” and “to admit the unadmitted love of man for man,” to create “a greater freedom for everybody, a greater power of individuality both in men and women.” The novel’s conclusion leaves these complex issues unresolved. Mitchell R. Lewis

Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Leeâ•… Inherit the Windâ•… (1955)

Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s play Inherit the Wind has become a standard of American drama. Inspired by the trial of Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes, who was charged under a Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of evolutionary theory in schools, the play chronicles a titanic struggle for free speech and free thought as lawyers Henry Drummond and Matthew Harrison Brady argue over Scopes’s fate. Though Scopes is in the middle of the plot, Drummond occupies its moral and thematic center. Drummond is the play’s model for tolerance, healthy skepticism, and reasoned faith. He is at once a crusader against bigotry while at the same time finding the compassion to understand, and even admire, what is noble in the bigots he fights against. In his most powerful speech Drummond declares that an “idea is a greater monument than a cathedral,” a notion that summarizes the play as a whole. The greatness of humanity, Lawrence and Lee suggest, is in its ability to fashion transcendent concepts, enduring ways of understanding the world. The physical things of the world are transitory and fleeting by comparison. But though ideas may be monuments, they should not, the authors imply, be monolithic and unchanging. Instead, the play calls on us to cherish our ideas even as we critique them. When Drum-

Inherit the Windâ•…â•… 699 mond’s questions about the Bible lead Brady to feckless mumbling (“I do not think about things that . . . I do not think about”), Drummond has a devastatingly witty rejoinder: “Do you ever think about things that you do think about?” (emphasis in original). Here again, the line emblematizes the play: It is not enough to think. We must, collectively, challenge ourselves to be critical of our own views and those of others, no matter how treasured they may be—to think about, in short, the things we think about. Todd Pettigrew

Hope in Inherit the Wind

In a crucial exchange near the end of Lawrence and Lee’s Inherit the Wind, attorney Henry Drummond muses that it might be nice to have cases that were sure things, prompting Cates (the character who represents Scopes) to joke that Drummond “sure picked a long shot this time.” Cates’s status as a long shot, in turn, leads Drummond to a dreamy recollection of his “first long shot,” a childhood rocking horse called “Golden Dancer.” As Drummond relates, Golden Dancer was a beautiful toy that the young Drummond coveted and when his workingclass parents managed to scrape together the money to buy it for the child’s birthday, the horse turned out to be worthless: “It split in two! The wood was rotten, the whole thing was put together with spit and sealing wax!” In a drama played out in the shadow of the Bible, the Golden Dancer story functions as a parable of false hope. Like the inheritance of the prodigal son, the rocking horse is too beautiful to resist but ultimately worthless. At the same time, the gold in Golden Dancer and the fact that it is an animal, recall the Golden Calf made by the Israelites in the wilderness, a false idol that tempts the true believers away from the path of righteousness. Drummond draws out the moral for Cates explicitly: “whenever you see something bright, shining, perfect-seeming . . . look behind the paint!” At the same time, Golden Dancer is Drummond’s “first long shot,” and though Drummond admits that it is tempting to get rich by taking only easy cases, the fact that he comes to Hillsborough to help Cates, his most recent long shot, implies that,

while Drummond has learned the lesson of Golden Dancer—do not be misled by false hopes—he has not been embittered by his childhood disappointment either. One can still retain hope in truth and in progress, according to the attorney; against the childish infatuation with a shiny toy, the play juxtaposes Drummond’s fervent belief “In a child’s power to master the multiplication table,” which he claims contains “more sanctity” than the empty prayers of the Hillsboro faithful. Inherit the Wind ultimately suggests that there is a reason for hope in the world, even in a world replete with false idols and false prophets. At the same time, hope is always a risk, always a long shot where one may, as Drummond says, “ride like fury, just to end up back where I started.” Todd Pettigrew

Justice in Inherit the Wind

In a play that seems to be centered on justice—it begins with an accusation, dramatizes a trial, and ends with a verdict—what is most striking is the drama’s suggestion that justice in any real sense is largely impossible or, at the very least, always deferred. From the outset, it is clear that much of the support for the case against the play’s central, if not main, character, Bertram Cates, arises not from a desire to see a legally fair outcome, but from the fact that the case brings notoriety and that, as a shopkeeper says in the first scene, “means business!” Similarly, Matthew Harrison Brady’s decision to prosecute the case seems to be as much about reviving his reputation as a defender of traditional values as it is about justice. His status as a three-time presidential candidate in days gone by is pointed out early on by Meeker, and reporter E. K. Hornbeck assesses Brady as a “Yesterday-Messiah” who has come to Hillsboro merely “To find himself a stump to shout from.” When others fear the arrival of Henry Drummond, Brady welcomes him, because he knows where a Goliath like Drummond fights, “headlines follow.” Even those on Cates’s side are not always interested in justice, per se. Hornbeck uses the trial to showcase his acerbic wit and to indulge his own narcissism, calling himself the “most brilliant

700â•…â•… Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Lee reporter in America today” and describing his article on Cates as a “Brilliant little symphony of words.” While other characters in this play speak prose, Hornbeck speaks in verse. If there is a hope for real justice dramatized in Inherit the Wind, it is embodied in Drummond himself. The play’s most moving speeches about truth and civil liberties come from Drummond—“an idea is a greater monument than a cathedral”—and Drummond’s devastating examination of Brady and his religious views unravels Brady’s case, his standing, and ultimately his life. Though Brady has described Drummond as a Goliath, it is Brady himself who is exposed as an overvalued Philistine mindlessly reciting the names of the books of the Old Testament and whining about being laughed at. Still, for all Drummond’s arguments and legal agility, the verdict comes down against his client. And while the sentence is so small as to be practically nominal, even that decision is not reached through a thorough consideration of the legal issues. Drummond himself knows that “A lot of people’s shoes are getting hot” as the trial goes on, and the judge’s sentence is clearly influenced by the mayor’s reminder that “November ain’t too far off ” and that it “wouldn’t do no harm to let things simmer down.” The fine of $100, then, is not so much a meting out of justice as a politically motivated compromise. Cates is guilty but goes unpunished, and his murky status is made all the murkier by Drummond’s determination to appeal the decision, an appeal we never see. Even Cates himself is left questioning, “Did I win or did I lose?” And while Drummond insists they have won in the court of public opinion, the great lawyer still admits that there really is no final justice: “You don’t suppose this kind of thing is ever finished, do you?” Todd Pettigrew

Religion in Inherit the Wind

Religion wafts through nearly every line of Inherit the Wind, from little Melinda’s denunciation of Howard’s account of evolution—“You was a worm, once” he taunts; “that’s sinful talk,” she scolds in return—to Henry Drummond’s lyrical eulogy of his former adversary: “Matt Brady got lost. Because he

was looking for God too high up and too far away.” In between, the entire plot turns on a law that privileges religion to the exclusion of science, and every major character is described in religious terms one way or another. E. K. Hornbeck wryly confesses to be the worst kind of infidel, since he writes for a newspaper, and where Bert Cates is vilified throughout the play as a sinner, Drummond is denounced as being “perhaps even the Devil himself !” The locus of traditional religion in Hillsborough is the Reverend Jeremiah Brown. Brown’s religion is fundamental and punitive, and his Old Testament zeal is as intoxicating to his congregation as it is appalling to the audience. At the prayer meeting he calls on the “Lord of Righteousness and Wrath” to “Strike down this sinner, as Thou didst Thine enemies of old, in the days of the Pharaohs!” Brown’s faith of violence and vengeance is too extreme even for Brady who reminds the Hillsborough congregation that “God forgives His children. And we, as Children of God, should forgive each other.” Brady’s gospel of forgiveness has limits, though, for the next day finds him decrying “the teachings of Godless science” and demanding that the “full penalty of the law is meted out to Bertram Cates” with nearly as much exuberance as the local minister. Brown’s opposite for much of the play seems to be Drummond himself, who, though he is introduced by Hornbeck as “the most agile legal mind” of the century, can be understood by the stunned townspeople only in religious terms: “agnostic,” “Godless,” “an agent of darkness” are the preacher’s words, and that account goes uncontradicted early on. When he arrives, the real Drummond turns out to be just as horrifying to the Hillsborough faithful as the bogey-man that Brown sketches. Drummond calls the Tennessee lawmakers “clockstoppers” who want to dump “a load of medieval nonsense” into American law. He calls Brown’s religion a mere commercial “product,” and stuns the court by claiming that “Right” has no meaning for him at all. But during the climactic cross-examination of Brady, Drummond makes it increasingly clear that his supposed agnosticism is really a misunderstood ecumenicalism. His problem with Brady is not that

To Kill a Mockingbirdâ•…â•… 701 Brady thinks he hears the voice of God, but that Brady seems to think it impossible that anyone else—including Cates and Darwin himself—can hear God speak too. “The Bible is a book. A good book. But it’s not the only book,” Drummond insists (emphasis in original). And though Hornbeck calls him a fraud for sustaining faith alongside his skepticism, Drummond shows his satisfaction with his many-booked view of the world by placing the Bible next to his volume of Darwin in his briefcase as the curtain falls. Todd Pettigrew

Lee, Harperâ•… To Kill a Mockingbirdâ•… (1960)

A classic since its publication in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird is now considered an essential part of the American literature curriculum. Harper Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her portrayal of the American South and the effects of intolerance. Drawing upon autobiographical elements of her life for her only novel, Lee tells the story of a young Alabama girl who learns her world is far more complex than she ever imagined. Jean Louise “Scout” Finch is the main character of To Kill a Mockingbird, a preteen tomboy whose education in the world comes from Atticus, her father, Jem, her older brother, and Charles Baker Harris, her friend known affectionately as Dill. Atticus, with the help of Calpurnia, his cook, does his best to raise his children. A lawyer by trade, Atticus often helps Scout with her understanding of the world, though his lessons do not always agree with Scout’s reality. Observing the lives of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, and Boo Radley, the town of Maycomb’s mysterious recluse, leads Scout to the bitter understanding that terrible injustices exist despite the efforts of truly good people such as Atticus. In her novel Lee examines such themes as race, childhood, justice, parenthood, social class, and prejudice. To Kill a Mockingbird challenges readers to see the world from the perspective of the less fortunate. Scout exchanges her naïveté for wisdom, using both

tragedy and triumph to help her transition. Accordingly, Lee’s novel is a poignant yet uplifting depiction of the journey from innocence to experience. Chris Gonzalez

Childhood in To Kill a Mockingbird

It is fitting that a novel that depicts so many facets of childhood should be narrated from a child’s perspective. To Kill a Mockingbird is the recounting of several formative childhood events by an adult woman named Jean Louise Finch, who was known as “Scout” during those years. Child figures dominate the list of characters, each of them with their own set of circumstances through which they must navigate. Scout and her brother, Jem, differ from the other children in Macomb in that they are fortunate to have a parent who truly has their best interests at heart. The rest of the children in the novel all have parents (or parental figures) who overlord or, at worst, endanger their charges. Scout slowly begins to recognize that not all children have a parent like her father Atticus, and that this key ingredient dictates not only a childhood but also an entire lifetime, as the tragic lives of Boo Radley and Mayella Ewell exemplify. Scout’s first perception that her childhood is not the norm comes when Walter Cunningham is a guest in her home. A boy whom Scout has fought with on the school playground, Walter cannot help but pour syrup on every bit of his food while at the Finch house. Displaying her innocence, Scout cannot fathom why Walter does this to his food, ridiculing him to the point of shame. And although Calpurnia scolds Scout for this, telling her if Walter “wants to eat up the tablecloth you let him,” there is more to this moment than mere gentility and etiquette. Scout cannot perceive that Walter is a child who does not have the luxury of syrup as a regular part of his dinner table, that he is less fortunate than she. This episode initiates a series of lessons for Scout on the subject of childhood. Scout discovers, for example, that Dill’s childhood is not what it seems. Though he insists he comes from a loving home, his reality is exposed when Scout and Jem find him hiding under a bed in their room, starved and wild-eyed, having run away from home. Dill’s

702â•…â•… Lee, Harper situation is all the more tenuous in light of Boo Radley, or worse, Mayella Ewell, for they are adults whose lives went horribly awry due to thwarted childhoods. Boo Radley and Mayella Ewell serve as the two main plot points of To Kill a Mockingbird; Boo’s story is the overarching narrative that frames Scout’s story, with Mayella’s tragic encounter with Tom Robinson—and Atticus’s heroic defense of Tom—nestled within this larger story. Mayella Ewell is a teenager on the verge of womanhood, the daughter of Bob Ewell, an angry man who lives near the city garbage dump and does not value education. His children have a history of attending only the first day of class, lice-ridden and surly. Scout does not know much else about the Ewell children, but during the trial recognizes that Mayella is starved for attention. Her desperate need for human contact pushes her to clumsily seduce Tom Robinson, a handicapped black man who is later accused of raping Mayella. She is but one example in To Kill a Mockingbird of the consequences of a childhood gone wrong. Likewise, Boo Radley suffers from overzealous parents. Derogatorily called “foot-washers” (those of the Baptist faith who interpret the Bible literally) by some members of the Maycomb community, the Radley parents have overprotected Boo his entire life, effectively isolating him from the rest of the community. As a result of not knowing (or seeing) him, the Finch children and Dill believe Boo is more monster than human, letting their imagination get the better of them. The truth of the matter, as Scout later discovers, is that Boo lives vicariously through the Finch children. He begins by leaving small tokens of affection, such as chewing gum and a broken pocket watch, within the hollow of an oak tree for the children to find. Later, Boo places a blanket on Scout’s shoulders on one of the coldest nights in Maycomb’s history. Boo’s affection and protection of the children culminates when he stabs Bob Ewell, who attempts to enact revenge against Atticus, who he believes has humiliated him beyond repair during Tom Robinson’s trial. Boo, who did not have a childhood in which he had loving parents to care for him, cannot help but lovingly watch over Scout and Jem.

Ultimately, it takes the death of Bob Ewell at the hands of Boo Radley for Scout to understand that terrible things may befall children even when they have loving parents. Even Atticus, the stalwart representation of reason and justice in To Kill a Mockingbird, is astonished at Bob Ewell’s brazen attempt to kill two innocent children. Lee’s novel takes the nostalgic idea of a carefree childhood and razes it with carefully crafted representations of characters whose childhoods withered on the vine, affording Scout the opportunity to cherish and appreciate her own. Chris Gonzalez

Justice in To Kill a Mockingbird

There are few characters in literature that embody moral uprightness and human kindness as much as Atticus Finch, attorney and father of the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout Finch often turns to her father for an explanation of the confusing ways of the world, and Atticus unhesitatingly does so with patience. He is a character who represents fairness and an unwillingness to compromise his ethics no matter how difficult the situation may be. As a child, Scout’s sense of justice seems to favor a physical imposition upon those who offend her. Indeed, Scout’s outspokenness is fueled by her ability to back it up with her fists, something she later resists because it disappoints Atticus. The concept of justice is difficult for anyone to grapple with, let alone a child. Yet Atticus has a penchant for explaining complex ideas in a manner his children can comprehend, as in his dictum for shooting birds. “Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em,” he tells his children, “but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” Thus, Atticus gives Scout her most important lesson on justice, as the title of the novel indicates. The mockingbird represents a creature whose sole existence is to bring some goodness to the world through the songs it sings. To kill a mockingbird is an injustice of the worst kind. Additionally, the two characters analogous to the mockingbird are Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. Handicapped due to an accident with a cotton gin, Tom also has the misfortune of having to pass by the Ewell house twice daily on his way to and from the cotton fields where he works. Mayella

To Kill a Mockingbirdâ•…â•… 703 often calls Tom to perform various odds and ends as a pretense so she can talk to him, until one night she convinces him to come into the house. Mayella is desperate for the attention of a man, any man, so long as it is not her father, who has an incestuous relationship with his daughter. Though incredibly selfish, Mayella’s action is laden with pathos. She has been robbed of the opportunity for a normal life with normal relationships, and in her desperation she reaches out for a black man, knowing the consequence for Tom should he be caught alone with her. There is no justice for Tom, who is caught in an untenable circumstance. If he angers Mayella by denying her what she wants, she can claim anything to get him in trouble. If he obeys her, as he does, he is still accused of violating a white woman. Atticus tells Scout that he will be unable to win Tom’s case. When Scout begins to ask how this can be, Atticus answers, “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.” Despite already knowing the outcome is predetermined—an injustice that strikes against the very purpose of the legal system—Atticus would be doing Tom an injustice himself if he does not attempt to win his case with every effort he can possibly muster. As he later tells Jem, “The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.” Tom is later found guilty and is shot attempting an escape, paralleling the image of killing a mockingbird. Even the manner of Tom’s death seems an injustice, for he is shot 17 times. There is no justice for Mayella’s crime of falsely accusing Tom, unless, of course, the manner of her existence is justice itself. The Ewell place has only one beautiful feature amongst its filth, the six red geraniums that most of Maycomb believes to be Mayella’s work. The geranium is often cited as a flower that symbolizes stupidity or folly and is therefore apropos for such a character as Mayella. Her father, Bob Ewell, who is ostensibly responsible for Tom’s death, is stabbed by Boo Radley, the unseen protector of the Finch children. Ewell receives justice at the hands of Boo, and Atticus breaks from legal protocol this once in deciding not to turn Boo in to the authorities. In fact, it is Sheriff

Heck Tate who delineates the justice of the situation: “There’s a black boy dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it’s dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr. Finch. Let the dead bury the dead.” Scout learns for herself the complex nature of justice when Atticus labors with how he chooses to interpret Bob Ewell’s death. Atticus cares less for how his decision will affect him than how it will impact Scout and Jem. Morally, he knows leaving Boo Radley out of the events is the right course of action. It is only when Scout expresses her understanding of what it means to kill a mockingbird that Atticus is at peace with his decision. Chris Gonzalez

Race in To Kill a Mockingbird

Scout Finch, the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird, recounts the experiences of several summers of her youth in Maycomb, Alabama, at the height of the racially segregated South. As a young, preteen girl, Scout’s upbringing does not reflect the racist attitudes of her community, thanks to her father, Atticus. His training as a lawyer and his uncompromising integrity help Atticus instill this same approach to race in his children, but it is his employment of Calpurnia as the family cook that truly allows Scout to appreciate all human beings regardless of skin color. Calpurnia, whose name alludes to Julius Caesar’s loyal wife, serves as the mother figure for the Finch family. While Atticus deals his lessons to Scout in the erudite manner of an attorney, Calpurnia often explains things to Scout in a folksier way. Thus, Scout receives her true education not from school but from the best representatives of each community—Atticus, one of the most highly respected attorneys in Alabama, and Calpurnia, whom Atticus describes as having “more education that most colored folks.” When she speaks of the family, Calpurnia does not segregate herself from the Finches, using pronouns such as “we” and “us.” And although there is tension between Scout and Calpurnia, it is never race-based, but merely the typical resistance a child might have to a parent or authority figure. Atticus empowers Calpurnia with the respect and dignity afforded any person, and consequently his children do not treat

704â•…â•… Lessing, Doris her with the same disdain Mayella Ewell shows Tom Robinson, for example. Rather, Scout has an appreciation for Calpurnia’s authority, confessing, “On my part, I went to much trouble, sometimes, not to provoke her.” Racist attitudes are not found solely within the white community of Maycomb. One Sunday morning while Atticus is away, Calpurnia brings the Finch children with her to church, the First Purchase African M.E. Church, so called “because it was paid for from the first earnings of freed slaves.” It is at First Purchase that Scout feels the sting of racism herself when a woman named Lula chastises Calpurnia for toting white children into a black church. Scout agrees with Jem’s suggestion that they leave a place where they are not wanted, but Calpurnia’s invocation of hospitality prevails, proclaiming, “They’s my comp’ny.” Calpurnia’s adherence to the law of hospitality is a great equalizer of sorts, for it is the exact rationale she uses to excoriate Scout after she ridicules Walter Cunningham at the dinner table earlier in the novel. Scout is stunned to realize that Calpurnia resides in two worlds and must be essentially two different people depending on where she is. During her visit to First Purchase, Scout learns not only about Calpurnia’s duality but of the unfortunate Tom Robinson, who stands accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white girl. Atticus is given the task of defending Tom, knowing full well the chances of winning are almost nonexistent. The Finch children see firsthand the malignity of the community when a lynch mob (which Atticus calmly diffuses) attempts to murder Tom. During the trial, Scout, Jem, and Dill sit in the balcony with members of the black community, a physical manifestation of their ability to transcend race. Despite clearly demonstrating that Tom was incapable of raping Mayella with only one arm—the left one having been obliterated in a cotton gin years before—Tom is found guilty and sentenced to death. Scout discovers that in her world it is not fact that matters within a situation but the color of one’s skin; truth is on Tom’s side, but the inexorable power of racism is on Mayella’s. The Ewells, a disgrace irrespective of their skin color, who live near the city garbage dump and literally exist off of its trash, still

wield more power than the likes of a hardworking black man such as Tom Robinson. During the cross-examination of Tom, Dill can no longer stand how Tom is degraded and must be escorted out of the courthouse by Scout. It is Dill who intuits the perverseness of the situation, the debasement of a man because of the color of his skin. Additionally, Dolphus Raymond, a white man whom all of Maycomb believes to be a drunk, explains to Dill and Scout that he puts on an act in order to give people a rationale that explains why he prefers to spend his time in the black community. Racism is so pervasive in Maycomb that people cannot believe a white man would carry on as Dolphus does through his own volition. He, like Calpurnia, must lead a dual existence. So much of To Kill a Mockingbird is about Scout’s education in a world riddled with flaws. Scout, as her name indicates, is someone who gathers information and examines it diligently. She represents the potential of the South, if it only has the courage to face its shameful legacy of slavery and racism, the type of courage people such as Atticus and Tom display in Lee’s novel. Chris Gonzalez

Lessing, Dorisâ•… The Golden Notebookâ•… (1962)

The underlying plot of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook is the story of Anna Wulf ’s life, which is told in the five different parts of the novel called Free Women. Anna is a writer who lives with her young daughter, Janet, and her best friend Molly who, like Anna, is divorced and has a child, but Tommy lives with his father. Anna suffers from a writer’s block, but undertakes to document different areas of her life in five different diaries: “a black notebook which is to do with Anna Wulf the writer; a red notebook, concerned with politics; a yellow notebook, in which [she makes] stories out of [her] experience; and a blue notebook which tries to be a diary.” The novel alternates among these different narratives, and we do not get to know about events in a chronological order but need to put together different pieces of information to get a fuller view of Anna’s life.

The Golden Notebookâ•…â•… 705 Lessing has noted that, although she thought the name of her novel clearly indicated what she intended to be the main theme, it has been overlooked in most of the critical writings on the novel. When Anna is unable to keep the different parts of her life clearly separated—which is her intention with the different diaries—she, on the verge of becoming insane, brings them all together in the writings of the golden notebook. Eva Lupin

Gender in The Golden Notebook

The Golden Notebook contains five parts called “Free Women,” and the novel opens with the sentence, “The two women were alone in the London flat.” These references to gender, which are echoed throughout the plot, have produced innumerable readings of the novel as a feminist text despite Lessing’s assurance that her intentions were completely different. In any case, gender is clearly a theme in the novel. The two women referred to in the opening sentence are Anna Wulf and her best friend Molly who are both “bringing up children without men.” Together with Anna’s daughter Janet they live in an apartment where they occasionally let one of the rooms to male tenants. Although Molly also has a child, Tommy, the two women’s roles as mothers are strongly marginalized, and the narrative seems to emphasize their lives as “free women.” Their world is a female realm where men come to visit, but where the more traditional fate of women, that of marriage, is avoided. And while marriage in the early sixties— when the novel was first published—was even more of a norm than it is today, Anna and Molly meet different men throughout the novel. That Anna is torn between her role as a free woman and her role as a mother is especially clear in one of the scenes where she wakes up next to her present boyfriend Michael. As she wakes up she becomes aware of the need to get Janet off to school before Michael will wake up and ask for breakfast. For a moment she is jealous of the fact that while she is worrying about details, such as getting Janet going and buying the tea that is missing from the cupboard, Michael “will spend his day, served by secretaries, nurses, women in all

kinds of capacities, who will take this weight off him.” Her double roles become even more obvious when they start to make love, aware that Janet is moving around in the other side of the apartment. After they’ve finished Michael remarks: “And now, Anna, I guess you are going to desert me for Janet?” Anna fights the resentment she feels by reminding herself that his remark is impersonal, and a sign of “the disease of women in our time.” Clenching her teeth she tells herself: “If I were a man I’d be the same.” The two women’s living arrangement and their close friendship appears to offer a way of living without men; yet they both seem to fear complete autonomy and the men they have relationships with are often the dominating type. Saul, one of the men to whom Anna is drawn and who she calls a “real man,” is in truth misogynistic and oppressive; and Anna is not the only female character in the book who is drawn to such men. Anna’s husband, for example, has met a new woman whom he treats badly by cheating on her; and one of the main plots in the novel that Anna is writing is about another man having a mistress. Overall, women are depicted as rather weak and dependent on men, while the novel’s men are powerful and dominant; it seems that women’s attraction for these men helps to select the kind of men who will continue to oppress them. The novel also deals with homosexuality, but Anna expresses her preference for heterosexuality when she lets the room to a gay couple and worries about Janet’s well-being. A “real man” would “spark tensions, set a balance,” she muses, thinking that Janet would be better off with a heterosexual tenant than she is with the “charming, friendly perceptive young man Ivor.” Her thoughts, however, are ambiguous and she wonders at herself feeling uneasy “when [she sees] Ivor with Janet because he’s like a big friendly dog, or a sort of harmless elder brother.” All men, however, assume superiority over women, and the two gay men’s exaggerated use of female attributes mocks women and becomes a way to show their domination over them. After having overheard their mocking ways one night, Anna finds herself devastated and asks herself: “And when had this new frightened

706â•…â•… Lessing, Doris vulnerable Anna been born?” The question is soon answered by herself. “She knew: it was when Michael had abandoned her”; she then “[smiles] at the knowledge that she, the independent woman, was independent  . . just so long as she was loved by a man.” In the end Anna is so hurt by the ways of the homosexual couple that she feels forced to make them leave her house. What this passage illustrates is not so much the novel’s stance toward gender, but the centrality of this issue in the plot. The novel offers many different ways to think about and approach gender issues; and it focuses the reader’s attention on areas in women’s lives that before this novel was written had not been so openly described in literature. Eva Lupin

Identity in The Golden Notebook

Identity is a central issue in The Golden Notebook, and Anna Wulf, the protagonist, often refers to the question of who she is in her writings. Quite early in the book she discusses the characters in the novel she is writing and reflects on how once again she is touching upon a subject that often occupies her mind to the verge of obsession: “I mean, of course, this question of ‘personality.’↜” One thing that astonishes her about the characters she is creating for her story is their complexity. No matter what adjective I use for a character, she thinks to herself, I could just as well use the opposite. But how can a person be both kind and ruthless, both cold and warm? Anna’s conclusion is that she knows nothing about the characters she is describing and that words become irrelevant. This leads her to the acknowledgment that she accepts amorality as a stance because she does not care. All she does care about, she says, is to describe her characters so that the readers feel that they are real. Just as Anna struggles with the complexity of her characters, so is she struggling with the difficulty of combining the different sides of her own personality. And structurally this thick novel mirrors her struggle by consisting of the four different notebooks she keeps. Being a writer, a political activist, a single woman, and a mother, she struggles to map out her own personality in writing, by keeping “a black

notebook which is to do with Anna Wulf the writer; a red notebook, concerned with politics; a yellow notebook, in which [she makes] stories out of [her] experience; and a blue notebook which tries to be a diary.” Through her writings she tries to structure and categorize different sides of herself, and these notebooks combine into the novel we keep in our hands. In this way the novel suggests that identity is a matter of story telling. In the beginning Anna manages pretty well to keep order by keeping the content of her different notebooks apart; the further into the novel we get, however, the more the stories in the notebooks blend and blur together. Writing about Ella, one of the characters in the novel she is writing, for example, Anna notes: “I, Anna, see Ella. Who is, of course, Anna. But that is the point, for she is not.” The confusion of characters interests Anna, and she continues her musings: “The moment I, Anna, write: Ella rings up Julia to announce, etc., then Ella floats away from me and becomes someone else. I don’t understand what happens at the moment Ella separates herself from me and becomes Ella. No one does. It’s enough to call her Ella, instead of Anna.” When the novel starts Anna is suffering from a writer’s block, which makes it hard for her to continue writing the novel she is working on, but as Anna realizes the connection between herself and her characters, her writer’s block starts to give way. The entries in Anna’s notebooks are fragmentary, presented to the readers who sometimes need to provide missing pieces of information themselves. Readers sometimes realize the context of scenes, or the impact of them on other incidents, only in retrospect, and consequently we do not get a clear picture of who Anna is, but we, like Anna herself, end up searching for clues about her identity. Similarly, Anna, by reviewing her different life situations and her responses to different situations, slowly gets a more comprehensive picture of who she is. Toward the end, the only way for Anna to keep her sanity is to acknowledge and allow for a blurring of the different narratives, and she does so by making it all the same story in what she names The Golden Notebook. Together then, Anna and the reader are presented in this last notebook with a writer who has come one

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe â•…â•… 707 step further in the effort to make all the sides of her personality into a more integrated version of herself. Eva Lupin

Illness in The Golden Notebook

In The Golden Notebook writing and mental illness seem to be connected. The narrator, Anna Wulf, is keeping four different notebooks where she compartmentalizes different areas of her life. The novel has nine sections, these different notebooks and five different parts called Free Women, which can be read as a novel on their own. This fragmented way of telling the story seems to offer a way into the consciousness of the narrator, who struggles at times to keep the different parts of her life separated from each other. Each notebook contains things related to a certain area of her life; and the way she is dividing her life into compartments illustrates the feeling she has of herself cracking up, while her effort to try and keep the different stories separated in effect also keeps her from falling apart. In the beginning of the novel, Anna seems to have little trouble deciding what kind of experiences belong in which notebook; but further into the novel we discover that Anna is beginning to confuse her stories, and is having big difficulties keeping them apart. The blurring of lines is a phenomenon Anna notices in so many different areas that it becomes symptomatic to the novel. At one point she identifies with the situation of fellow women to the point that she is having difficulties separating herself from the history of other women; at another time she gets her different stories mixed up; and sometimes she has a problem separating her own person from the characters in the novel she is writing. In addition, she remarks that the “normal” person in the family is the sickest one; only his/her strong personality causes the other members to act out the illness for him/her. Immediately after noticing this, she comments that she is recording her observation in the wrong notebook. As the story becomes more and more fragmented, Anna’s consciousness appears to be affected in the same direction. As long as her writings are clearly divided into separate stories she experiences a sense of well-being; but as the stories begin to spill over into each other Anna is becoming more confused. One of

her notebooks, her blue diary, is supposed to simply record reality, but Anna realizes that her intention is harder to achieve than she anticipated. Words, she discovers, are not neutral and do not allow for a simple straightforward reporting of events; she says that she most have been mad to think that she would succeed. Once she starts fighting her impulse to keep her writings separated, and instead allows for them to blend by dissolving all boundaries between them, she starts to feel as a whole person again. Toward the end of the book, the man she is living with is watching as she spreads out her notebooks on her bed, and he asks her why she keeps four of them. Anna answers that, apparently, it has been necessary for her to split herself up but that from now on she will be using only one. And talking to her lover at the end of the novel, she comments on how they both have personalities that include everything: art, politics, literature, and so on. Madness, she says, is when she is unable to keep all of these in view at the same time but goes on to concentrate on only one thing. The last parts of the novel become more and more dreamlike, and Anna remembers and experiences events from all the stories that were previously separated from each other but are now all coming to life at the same time. Stories and characters become difficult to distinguish from each other until Anna’s consciousness collects itself in something that resembles peace. But although we might sense that the story goes from chaos to order, from disintegration to wholeness, from illness to well-being or ultimately from madness to sanity, the novel more than anything else refuses to make these distinctions and toward the very end Anna concludes: “I was, in other words, sane again. But the word sane meant nothing, as the word mad meant nothing.” When words lose their meaning, opposites dissolve into each other and, ultimately, become the same thing. Thereby no one can decide anymore who is ill and who is not. Eva Lupin

Lewis, C. S.â•… The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobeâ•… (1950)

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the first and best known book of The Chronicles of Narnia.

708â•…â•… Lewis, C. S. Though second in the chronological order of the series after The Magician’s Nephew, it was published first, in 1950. Set in the early ’40s, it is the story of four siblings: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie, who are sent to the English countryside to escape the London bombing during World War II. While playing hide and seek, Lucy discovers, inside an old wardrobe, the enchanted realm of Narnia, ruled by the evil White Witch who has cast a spell on the whole country to keep it in an eternal winter with no Christmas. The other children do not believe Lucy’s story until they all hide in the wardrobe and find themselves in Narnia. The kids, who (according to an ancient prophecy) can save Narnia, begin a troubled journey, helped by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver and Father Christmas, to meet the lion Aslan, the true king. Edmund, tragically, leaves them to join the White Witch. Aslan offers himself to the Witch in Edmund’s place but, because Aslan is an innocent victim, he may return to life. In the final battle, the children defeat the White Witch, with the help of Aslan and other magical creatures, and become kings and queens of Narnia. They rule for a long time, but when they go back to England through the wardrobe only five minutes have passed since they hid in the wardrobe. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a delightful fairy tale for both children and adults in which C. S. Lewis explores such themes as justice, heroism, guilt, time, and nature in a light, yet significant way. Chiara Sgro

Heroism in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Heroism is one of the most important themes in The Chronicles of Narnia and, in particular, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Though the words “hero” and “heroism” are never mentioned in the book, the story of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy follows the main steps of the classic hero’s quest typical of the tradition of epics and medieval romance. Moreover, although they are not directly referred to as heroes the children, as well as Aslan, have all the characteristics of the hero: loyalty, courage, and complete self-sacrifice in service of the mission. For

this reason, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, heroism is strictly linked to self-sacrifice and the story is full of great and small acts of heroism until the mission—to defeat the White Witch and restore peace in Narnia—is completed. The characters, just as the heroes of ancient poems, are called to acts of self-sacrifice for a greater good and regardless of the consequences to their own lives. Lucy’s adventures in Narnia and the rebellion against the White Witch begin with a small act of heroism done by Mr. Tumnus. Indeed, he decides not to hand Lucy over to the Witch though he perfectly well knows that this disobedience will lead him to imprisonment and maybe death. It is when Lucy goes back to Narnia with her brothers and sister and discovers that Mr. Tumnus has been captured by the Witch that they begin their adventure through Narnia to meet Aslan and help him defeat the false queen. Their travel—like the voyage in a hero’s quest—will be characterized by challenges and trials necessary to reach the final goal. As in the tradition of epic and romance, they will be helped in their tasks by magical or special helpers. Indeed, they begin their actual travel to the Stone Table— which recalls the Round Table of the stories of King Arthur and his Knights—with the help of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. The help and support the two little creatures offer the children, leaving their home and challenging the Witch’s power, is yet another act of heroism. This act highlights the novel’s revolutionary idea that everyone can be a hero by doing something, small though it may be, for the greater good. The story also calls attention to the novel detail of children as heroes and saviors of a nation. For this reason, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are treated and presented as the heroes of epic poems. In particular, the encounter with Father Christmas is crucial to the identification of the children as heroes and to the understanding of the particular kind of heroism being expressed by C. S. Lewis. Father Christmas gives Peter, Susan, and Lucy precious gifts that will help them complete their mission. These gifts are not only weapons but also special objects that will have a particular significance and use later in the story. The gifts belong to the tradition of heroic poems and make the children become real heroes. Peter receives a sword and a shield, as did ancient

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe â•…â•… 709 knights; Aslan uses this sword, which recalls other famous swords such as Excalibur and Durendal, to knight him after Peter kills the wolf. Susan is given a bow with arrows, another typical weapon of epic and romance stories, and a horn. The horn in such a story is usually given to valiant warriors to call the army to battle or to ask for help, and indeed, Susan uses her horn to call Peter to his first battle. Lucy receives a dagger for self-defense and a bottle full of a magic cordial that can heal all kinds of wound; in receiving this magic object Lucy becomes the healer, another typical figure in the heroic poems. She will heal all the creatures wounded in the final battle and end the series of deaths caused by the White Witch and her evil deeds. Father Christmas’s advice on how and when to use the precious gifts introduces another important idea: The children will have to do their best to complete their mission no matter how difficult it will be and how much it will cost them. This is a recurrent idea in the story. Aslan himself, during his first meeting with Peter, Susan, and Lucy, when they ask him to save Edmund, underlines that “all shall be done” but it will probably be harder than the children think. Aslan’s words are the perfect expression of Lewis’s idea of heroism as sacrifice and responsibility. This idea culminates with Aslan’s extreme self-sacrifice to save Edmund and satisfy the Deep Magic demanded by the White Witch. The heroism of the lion recalls Jesus’s heroism and makes Aslan a Christ figure. The lion must suffer humiliation and death in order to save Edmund as Jesus faced agony and gave his life to save the human race. In the epic poems written in the Middle Ages, pure and brave knights such as Gawain, Perceval, or Galahad are often compared to Christ. Lewis, however, goes one step further and rewards his literary hero with an actual resurrection. Apart from the theological significance of this innovative conception of heroism, the main idea is that personal suffering and sickness cannot be a deterrent for the heroism/sacrifice required by the situation. When Peter has to kill the wolf who has attacked Susan, he declares that though he is about to be sick it makes no difference to what he has to do. Thus, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, heroism cannot be detached from sacrifice and responsibility.

Edmund himself, after being rescued by Aslan, understands that acting only to satisfy one’s own pleasure is not right. For this reason, in the final battle he is the one who fights with the greatest enthusiasm and until the battle is over, regardless of the serious wound that threatens his life. At the end of the voyage and when the battle between the good and the evil forces is won, as in the typical hero’s quest, the children are rewarded and crowned kings and queens of Narnia. Chiara Sgro

Justice in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Justice is often pictured symbolically, as a blindfolded liberty-figure holding a scale to depict the balance of righteousness. C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe develops the major theme of justice through the depiction of the consequences and sacrifices required to save Edmund from his own faults and choices. Righteousness requires an honest, moral, and ethical personality, which Lewis shows is lacking in all human characters. Edmund, the prime example, is a traitor on so many levels: He lies about the time Lucy found him in Narnia, betraying her and leaving her open to Peter and Susan’s ridicule; he sides with the White Witch even though he knows she is the evil ruler about whom Lucy’s friend Tumnus has warned her; and, because he is not the center of attention when all four children are at Beaver’s, he abandons them to go tell the White Witch where they can be found, placing his own siblings’ lives at risk. Therefore, when the White Witch demands justice, according to the Deep Magic or the Laws written on the Stone Table, Edmund stands condemned by his own actions. Peter, Susan, and Lucy are frantic for Edmund’s safety and ask Aslan if something can be done to save him. Because Aslan is the King of Narnia, as a parallel Jesus Christ, he can reveal the Deeper Magic from “before the dawn of time,” implying he existed, like Christ, “before the beginning.” While justice says the consequence or cost of Edmund’s treachery is sacrifice upon the Stone Table (and since the White Witch is not willing to give up her supposed victory over the Old Sayings—that two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve would

710â•…â•… Lewis, C. S. sit enthroned over Narnia—which are parallels to prophecies of the Old Testament of the Bible), it seems that Edmund must die for justice to be served. But Lewis shows that there is another way. If someone else would lay down his life for Edmund to pay the price or consequences of the law, then justice would be satisfied, but the person (or beast in this case) has to be suitable—a perfect person, not someone who already owes a price to justice for himself. Since Aslan is the son of the Emperor of the Sea, like Jesus is the son of God, he makes a perfect substitute. He more than satisfies the demands of justice and the law. The justice theme requires consequences to be paid in other character’s lives in the story as well: Tumnus, the faun Lucy met in her first encounter with Narnia, must spend time frozen in stone in the White Witch’s castle—not because he betrayed the Witch, but because he intended to betray the Lion and the Old Sayings by helping the White Witch, telling her when he saw human children. Just because he changes his mind and regrets luring Lucy into his tree hovel, Tumnus is not exempt from the consequences of his actions. This is another way in which Lewis shows that wickedness, even when only contemplated, as Tumnus did, has severe consequences. However, justice is not necessarily negative as it works out for the Beavers. Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are rewarded for their actions—supporting the Lion by helping the children safely meet Aslan on the hill that holds the Stone Table. First they receive a new sluice gate for their dam from Father Christmas, who all children know gives gifts only to “good little girls and boys”—showing that even mythological and legendary characters must follow the logic of justice. Then the Lion commends them in the same way that Jesus says those who do right will be told: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21). The scales are balanced when wrong is punished and right is rewarded. Edmund’s consequences are paid upon Aslan’s death as a perfect substitution sacrifice; Tumnus must bear his consequences in a death-like frozen state until he’s forgiven and saved by Aslan overcoming the White Witch’s power

by rising from the dead; and the Beavers receive their positive consequences for remaining true to what is right. Justice and balance are restored, and righteousness reigns at Cair Parieval at the end of the novel. Susan K. Jaeger

Nature in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is set in Narnia, an imaginary world created by C. S. Lewis as the background for his Chronicles of Narnia. As opposed to the ordinary world, where Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy come from, Narnia is a mythical world in which nature, in its widest meaning, functions as one of the protagonists of the story rather than as a mere background for the plot. Throughout the book the four main characters have to deal with the natural elements and the magical creatures living in this secondary world, in order to fulfil their mission and save Narnia from the White Witch. From the very beginning of the Pevensie siblings’ adventures in Narnia, nature is one of the prominent features of the story, functioning both as the contact point between the primary and the secondary world and the complication that puts in motion the whole plot. Indeed, before the children realize that they are in a different and magical world, Narnia’s natural environment is the first thing they get in touch with, a natural environment that is seemingly the same as that of the primary world, that is, 20th-century England. The wardrobe leads to a wood covered in snow. The apparent ordinariness of the snow-covered trees makes the entrance of the characters into the secondary world soft and the suspension of disbelief in the reader easier, in spite of the awkwardness of finding a wood in a wardrobe. The seasonal difference—in Narnia it is evidently winter while in England it is summer—and the presence of a lamppost in the middle of the wood beyond the back of the wardrobe are elements that give both the characters and the readers a hint of the very special nature of the place. But the Narnian winter is also the complication that sets the whole plot in motion: The White Witch has cast a spell that makes the winter perennial and Christmas forbidden. A deadly and endless

Main Streetâ•…â•… 711 winter is the form evil has taken in Narnia. The White Witch controls the country through nature: The natural environment is at her complete mercy until the four Pevensie children arrive to fulfil the prophecy and Aslan comes back to Narnia. Their mission acquires a new significance if one reads the story by paying attention to the role of nature: The final goal of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy is not merely to destroy the White Witch and her evil magic but also to renew the whole country, to give Narnia a new birth, a new beginning. The children must set nature in motion again, giving Narnia and its magical creatures the safe course of the seasons and take nature back to normal. Of course, what is normal in Narnia is a mythical scenario in which flora and fauna are alive in the widest meaning of the word: Animals talk, trees are spies in the pay of the White Witch, and the dryads, nymphs, and fauns of the primary world’s mythology are real. Therefore, nature in all her forms takes part in the story. Natural elements and magical creatures fight on both sides, either supporting the evil power of the Witch or resisting it. The rebels gather around Aslan, the true king of Narnia but also a lion, king of the animals. Nature changes as Aslan approaches and spring wins over winter. The natural environment rejoices in the return of the true king and life starts to blossom again in Narnia, to the utmost disappointment of the White Witch. It is not by mere chance that, after the nocturnal sacrifice, Aslan comes back to life at dawn. While Lucy and Susan weep over the lion’s death, nature stops for a second: a moment of silence and mourning before the new dawn. This image is powerful and can be considered the climax of the nature images in the book and of the story itself. The birds start to sing in the wood and a pale light appears on the horizon. Soon the red light of dawn changes into gold and the sun peeps out. The moment of Aslan’s resurrection coincides with sunrise. It is more than just a new day: It is the new beginning for Narnia and the Narnians, the final goal to which the children and the good creatures have struggled throughout the story and the necessary step toward the final victory and the resolution of the conflict between good and evil. Chiara Sgro

Lewis, Sinclairâ•… Main Streetâ•… (1920)

Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street is important because of its depiction of Carol Kennicott of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, one of American literature’s few truly individualistic female characters. Carol is independent and self-reliant, intelligent and creative, a thinker and a planner. She sincerely wants to do something in her life; she wants to maintain her individuality and also be of service to the community around her, even if this service places her in conflict with the community she wants to improve. Carol is akin in a number of ways to such selfassertive literary heroines as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter and Henry James’s Daisy Miller. But Carol manages to maintain her individualism more than many independent heroines, who find they must submit to societal constraints or who, perhaps, even perish by the time their stories are concluded. The second reason for Main Street’s permanence is its depiction of the “revolt against the village” theme, an early-20th-century theme that perfectly complements the theme of the independent woman. This motif—which is also seen in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesberg, Ohio and Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology, as well as in Main Street— underlies depictions of small-town life as narrowminded, intolerant, and stultifying, and as requiring conformity. Carol’s husband, Dr. Will Kennicott, gives Carol the wherewithal to try to achieve a modicum of independence from the constrictions of small-town life. But at the same time, since he is deeply fond of Gopher Prairie, he is part of the problem. And thus, finally, the novel expands into additional themes, such as marriage and the family. In short, Main Street is, thematically, a wide-ranging piece of literature. Gerard M. Sweeney

Family in Main Street

In much of classic, pre-Civil War American literature, especially the literature of the romantic period, family is a subject of relatively slight importance. In the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, for example, there are very few references to family; and in those tales where family members are mentioned—characters

712â•…â•… Lewis, Sinclair such as Madeline Usher, the sister of Roderick Usher in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and the unnamed wife of the narrator of “The Black Cat”—the family member appears only briefly and then dies before the tale concludes. In James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, the author’s most widely known character, Natty Bumppo, substitutes for the family he lacks a type of wilderness brotherhood with Native Americans such as Chingachgook and Uncas. In these relationships, there is both comradeship and loyalty; but what Cooper is depicting is male bonding, not family. Family becomes much more important in realistic, post-Civil War American literature, in the fiction of writers such as William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. Parents, children, husbands, and wives are all central in most of the major and minor fictions of the period. It is in this tradition that Main Street is to be found; but at the same time the novel reveals strong romantic currents in its depiction of the heroine as an orphan. In short, family in Main Street is simultaneously a realistically drawn social phenomenon and, more abstractly, a force that powerfully affects an individual’s life. Like the major—and mostly male—characters of classic American literature, Carol Milford Kennicott begins her career as “an orphan; her only near relative was a vanilla-flavored sister married to an optician in St. Paul.” Her mother died when Carol was nine, and her father passed away four years later. These biographical facts, summarized briefly in the first few pages of the novel, come to have an enormous impact on the character, and thus the destiny, of the heroine. Carol’s “independence from relatives” is a major factor underlying her rejection of her first marriage proposal, an offer proffered by Stewart Snyder, a fellow student at Blodgett College. In rejecting him, Carol says, “No! No! You’re a dear, but I want to do things. I don’t understand myself but I want—everything in the world!  .  .  . Stewart dear, I can’t settle down to nothing but dish washing!” Doing “nothing,” or being “vanilla flavored” like her married sister, is what the independent Carol ardently wants to avoid. Ironically, the opposite— doing something—becomes connected for Carol with her acceptance of the marriage proposal of Dr.

Will Kennicott of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. Will clearly realizes the importance Carol places on doing things, and so he strikes this note as part of his proposal: “Come on. Come to Gopher Prairie. Show us. Make the town—well—make it artistic.  .  .  . Make us change!” Thus for Carol, in becoming engaged to Will, marriage is not so much a matter of family as it is an opportunity to be an urban planner, to do something for, to help to improve, the small town of Gopher Prairie. But Gopher Prairie resists the improvements Carol envisions; and Carol resists—we are not certain whether by choice or by her nature—the benefits of family life. When she first contemplates the possibility of pregnancy, she reacts with revulsion: “I’d hate it! I’d be scared to death! Some day but—Please, dear nebulous Lord, not now!” Carol’s original love of Will, such as it was, transmutes into fondness. This she admits to herself one day while she walks home from a visit to Guy Pollock, a bachelor to whom Carol is attracted: “I am, I am fond of Will, and—Can’t I ever find another word than ‘fond’?” Shortly after this soliloquy, Carol asks Will for a monthly allowance, stating her request in quasi-legalistic language: “Either I’m your partner, in charge of the household department of our business, with a regular budget for it, or else I’m nothing.” Fondness and a partnership: both terms suggest that the family in Main Street is decidedly less than ideal. And it remains less than ideal, as is characteristic of a family in a realistic novel. Will engages in an essentially meaningless affair with one of the Gopher Prairie women. And as for Carol, the birth of a son, Hugh, does strengthen her familial feelings; and therefore, for a time, she feels “no apparent desire for escape.” But eventually she does escape, with Hugh, and with Will’s acquiescence, to Washington, D.C., where she remains for two years. But this arrangement, a type of compromise, is ultimately not satisfactory, in large measure because it amounts to only half a family. Even as she leaves Gopher Prairie for Washington, Carol realizes that she “had her freedom, and it was empty.” And so she returns to Gopher Prairie, pregnant with a daughter who will, Carol hopes, go to Vassar and “become a feminist leader or marry a scientist or both.” Thus the novel ends with not

Main Streetâ•…â•… 713 the ambiguity of romantic literature, but with a great deal of ambivalence. In short, Lewis presents family life as positive, as productive, and as moderately fulfilling; but at the same time he portrays it as frustrating, as limiting, and perhaps even as a bit unnatural. Gerard M. Sweeney

Individual and Society in Main Street

In 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of America’s greatest advocates of individualism and self-reliance, wrote the following: “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. . . . The virtue in most request is conformity. . . . Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.” These words, written roughly six decades before the publication of Main Street, could be said to summarize one of the novel’s major themes: the conflict between the individual and the society of which he or she is a part. This conflict can be seen in the novel’s depiction of three important characters, each of whom finds a different way to deal with the individual-versussociety conflict. First, there is Miles Bjornstam, the town handyman and jack-of-all-trades. When the novel’s main character, Carol Kennicott, first meets Miles, he is living in a one-room shanty that can easily remind the reader of Henry Thoreau’s cabin in Walden. Miles soon becomes a friend of Carol; and Carol quickly comes to admire—and, indeed, feel exhilarated by—Miles’s independence of spirit, an independence that is frequently at odds with the narrowness of Gopher Prairie society. Miles sums up his brand of classless and free-thinking individualism as follows: “Yeh, I’m probably a yahoo, but by gum I do keep my independence by doing odd jobs, and that’s more ‘n these polite cusses like the clerks in the bank do.” Miles eventually marries Bea Sorenson, a country girl who is both Carol’s friend and her housemaid. This marriage is a happy one, resulting in the birth of a son, Olaf; and thus it serves to help anchor the independent Miles in the social world. But Bea and Olaf suddenly die of typhoid fever; and Miles, his anchors gone, leaves Gopher Prairie for Canada. In short, Miles Bjornstam, having become even more isolated by his tragic losses, asserts his indi-

vidualism by escaping from the society he has come to dislike intensely. Another way of dealing with the individual-versus-society conflict represents the exact opposite of Miles’s way: succumbing to society, allowing society to defeat—even to obliterate—one’s sense of individualism. Guy Pollock, another friend and confidante of Carol, chooses this path. A bachelor, Guy is one of Gopher Prairie’s lawyers, and this very fact serves to hinder any conspicuous manifestations of individualism, since Guy’s profession involves a commitment to the rules and regulations of the society of which he is a part. A handyman such as Miles Bjornstam can live on the outskirts, both literally and figuratively; but a lawyer is far less able to do so. But it is not exactly Guy’s profession that saps the man’s individualism. Rather, it is something more insidious, a phenomenon he refers to as the “Village Virus.” This, as he describes it to Carol, “is a germ which—it’s extraordinarily like the hookworm—it infects ambitious people who stay too long in the provinces. You’ll find it epidemic among lawyers and doctors and ministers and collegebred merchants—all these people who have had a glimpse of the world that thinks and laughs, but have returned to their swamp.” Several years before Carol’s arrival in town, Guy realized that his life in Gopher Prairie was becoming more and more an empty husk. So he decided to leave. But, unlike Miles Bjornstam, Guy Pollock found that he could not leave; he discovered that “the Village Virus had me, absolute.” And so he concludes his brief history by describing himself as “a living dead man.” It is, finally, the novel’s main character, Carol Kennicott, who manages to avoid the Village Virus of Guy. Here we should note that Lewis cannot have his heroine escape from society in the manner of Miles—because she is a woman and also, more significantly, because she is a wife and a mother. After all, Lewis wants to present Carol as a realistically flawed character, but at the same time maintain the reader’s empathy for her. But Carol does “escape” for a time; to Washington, D.C., where she works for about two years for the federal government. As a result of this temporary “escape,” as a result of her realizing from a distance that Gopher Prairie is, after all, not such a reprehensible society,

714â•…â•… Lewis, Sinclair and also as a result of the gentle encouragement of her husband, Carol finally returns to Gopher Prairie. And there she manages to achieve what Miles Bjornstam and Guy Pollock could not achieve: a type of compromise between being an individual and being a member of a larger social unit. In the novel’s conclusion, Carol’s “active hatred of Gopher Prairie had run out,” and “she again saw Gopher Prairie as her home.” Gerard M. Sweeney

Social Class in Main Street

Perhaps the most interesting—and certainly the most original—of the many minor characters in Main Street is Erik Valborg. Erik comes to Gopher Prairie after leaving—really, escaping from—farm life and the stern management of his father. In Gopher Prairie, Erik becomes a tailor; he expresses bookish and artistic interests he could not express on the farm; and finally he leaves the stultifying Gopher Prairie for Hollywood and the motion picture industry, there changing his name to the softer “Erik Valour.” The most striking and original characteristic of Erik lies in his gender identity. Erik has a pronounced feminine nature. He is described by one of Gopher Prairie’s matrons as “the most awful mollycoddle—looks just like a girl”; and he is jokingly referred to as “Elizabeth.” He describes himself as being “crazy about fabrics—textures and colors and design” (364); and his original goal is to work as a designer of women’s dresses. But for the town of Gopher Prairie, Erik’s most defining characteristic is that he is “nothing but a Swede tailor.” In other words, Erik is defined not by his uniqueness; rather, he is defined—and dismissed—by his social class. In miniature, the town’s labeling of Erik Valborg illustrates much about the novel’s depiction of Americans of the early 20th century. In Gopher Prairie, residents’ opinions about others and also their relationships with others are rigidly controlled by conceptions of social class. The social class we see the most is the town’s upper class. This is to be expected because the novel’s main characters, Carol and Dr. Will Kennicott, are members of this class, as are most of the people with whom they associate. This class is

composed of the town’s professionals (chiefly the doctors) and the entrepreneurs (chiefly the business owners) and, of course, their wives. Indeed, it is the wives who voice most of the upper-class comments. This is the case because the wives are the characters most in contact with Carol, and most of the novel is presented through her perspective. Carol converses with the upper-class wives at meetings of the Jolly Seventeen, the women’s social group, and the Thanatopsis Club, the women’s cultural society. These meetings illustrate that Sinclair Lewis can be alternately light-hearted and severe in his social criticism. The more light-hearted side of Lewis can be seen in his depictions of the intellectual pretentiousness of Gopher Prairie’s upper-class women. These women think of themselves as the guardians of culture. So they have meetings to discuss literature, but the discussions never rise above the simplistic. All of the English poets, for example, are discussed in a single meeting, although there are no references to or quotations from actual poetry. Similarly, one single meeting is scheduled for a discussion of “English Fiction and Essays,” thus suggesting that, for these women, a topic so enormous in scope and cultural importance can be adequately treated in a matter of minutes. All of this is humorous, but there is also an acerbic side to Lewis’s social satire. This we can see in the discussions Carol hears about the immigrant and working-class members of Gopher Prairie society. On this subject, the upper-class women are brutally mean-spirited. One woman reports her husband’s assertion that the Scandinavian mill-workers “are perfectly terrible—so silent and cranky, and so selfish, the way they keep demanding raises” (99). And then another woman adds this about the Scandinavian house servants: “They’re ungrateful, all that class of people. . . . I don’t know what the country’s coming to, with these Scandahoofian clodhoppers demanding every cent you can save, and so ignorant and impertinent. . . .” What we see here is not merely class differences, but real class animosity. And the animosity flows not only from the upper class toward the lower class, but also from the lower class toward the upper class. We see this late in the novel when Adolph Valborg,

The Call of the Wildâ•…â•… 715 Erik’s father, unjustly accuses Carol of seductively luring Erik away from life on the farm: “Women like you—you’re worse dan street-walkers! Rich women like you, wit’ fine husbands and no decent work to do—and me  . . look how I work, look at those hands! But you, oh God no, you mustn’t work, you’re too fine to do decent work.” Main Street depicts class tension, animosity, and even class hatred. We should remind ourselves that Main Street is Sinclair Lewis’s depiction not merely of a single small town, but of all American towns, and so of America itself. And thus the ultimate questions about the text are these: Is Main Street an accurate historical depiction of the way America was in the early 1900s? To this, the answer is Yes. Is Main Street also a predictive depiction of America as it is now? The answer to this is one the reader must decide. Gerard M. Sweeney

London, Jackâ•… The Call of the Wildâ•… (1903)

The Call of the Wild is the story of a dog’s transformation from domesticated creature into wild animal. Raised on a California estate, Buck loses his freedom when a gardener’s helper captures him and sells him to Klondike gold hunters. The kidnapping throws Buck into basic training as a sled dog, where he has to learn how to deal not only with humans and their cruel, punishing ways, but also with an awakening sense of his innate natural instincts as a wolf descendant. The novel explores themes of freedom and nature and their impact on identity. Buck’s loss of freedom inspires a fast learning curve during his forced tutelage in the Klondike, if only so he can survive. Nature demands efficiency and requires a way of being that is devoid of morality. These external influences set Buck on a breathtaking pace and conflicted path to recover who he is. Indeed, Buck’s identity struggles come from the very fact that he was forceably removed from his California estate— he did not seek out the wilderness—where he would never have heeded any “call,” no matter how innate his ancient wild identity. Because his freedom was taken from him, Buck never has control over his

life—he can only adapt. Raw nature triumphantly wins out, for Buck chooses to return to the wild. His natural and domesticated identities are reconciled, in that he transforms into a near-mythical superwolf, embodying the best of both his former dog self and his more recent wild self. Lori Vermaas

Freedom in The Call of the Wild

For the first four years of his life, Buck enjoys a comfortable existence in a prosperous home, one where his master grants him the freedom to roam around the grounds at his pleasure. Unlike the other dogs, he is “neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm is his” and “he stalked [it] imperiously,” like a “country gentlem[a]n.” However, one day a gardener’s helper, Manuel, kidnaps Buck in a gambling scheme that eventually leads to his relocation in Alaska. He puts a rope around Buck’s neck, an act signifying his enslavement. Buck has enjoyed so much freedom, however, that he does not understand the meaning of a rope, and initially accepts it “with quiet dignity.” Soon after, he realizes its oppressive power, particularly when the rope is given to a stranger, who ignores Buck’s growling protest, or “command” of “displeasure,” by “tighten[ing]” the rope even more. So begins Buck’s loss of freedom and his subjugation to a system of power relations between man and dog out in the wild where men—especially those who carry tools—are masters and dogs are their slaves. Indeed, various tools regulate the system, including restraints like the rope and a cage. For the next two days Buck endures caged train travel, wherein he snarls and throws himself against the cage while human guards make fun of him and act like animals themselves, “growl[ing] and bark[ing] like detestable dogs.” After the two-day trip, when a man in a red sweater frees Buck from the cage, Buck tries to attack him. But the man deftly beats him with a club at each charge, effectively training Buck not to attack men who carry these particular tools. Having “never been struck by a club in his life,” Buck “did not understand” the training regimen at first, but after going a couple of rounds, he learns the lesson. When Buck’s bloodied body finally acquiesces,

716â•…â•… London, Jack the man tells him “you’ve learned your place, and I know mine. . . . fearlessly pat[ting]” Buck on the head. The club is “a revelation” to Buck, for it teaches him a “lesson . . . [that] in all his after life he never forgot.  .  .  . It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law.  .  .  . [that] a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated.” This particular tool, above all the others, effectively signifies his loss of freedom and its replacement with obedience to humans. After being assigned to a sled dog team, Buck notices that another tool, the harness, has a regulatory effect on all the dogs, “utterly transform[ing]” the pack into “new dogs” and focused beings, “the toil of the traces [becoming] . . . all that they lived for.” These tools of oppression and degradation, but especially the club, thus collectively teach Buck to accept his new station and lack of freedom. As a sled dog member, he is locked “in the struggle for mastery” against all men with tools. Throughout the novel, London consistently stresses the importance of who is mastering whom, a hierarchy that involves even the dog pack. Feeling that leadership “was his by right,” and desiring it more than escaping a clubbing, Buck ascends to pack leadership. And he excels at it, in that he excels “in giving the law and making his mates live up to it”—in essence, constraining their freedom. Buck thus recovers some of his freedom by circumscribing or controlling others. He has indeed learned the lesson well. Nature also limits Buck’s freedom. It constantly calls to him, a hypnotic lure that constricts his loving friendship with John Thornton. Nature’s unrelenting siren call traps him in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between Thornton and a life in the wild. His decision not to choose until Thornton dies—to let fate decide—reinforces his dependent condition. Furthermore, nature’s primary lesson, that a being “must master or be mastered” to survive, only reinscribes an unequal system of power relations. Thus when Buck gains his freedom after Thornton’s death, his escape into nature requires him both to heed the “call” of the wild and its tenet to “kill or be killed”—leaving him subject to another law, if not the law of the club anymore. Lori Vermaas

Identity in The Call of the Wild

Before his capture, Buck was confident in his identity as “king,—king over all . . . humans included” at Judge Miller’s place, “a sated aristocrat” and “country gentleman” who “stalked imperiously.” After being kidnapped in California and sold as a working dog in Alaska, however, he is thrown into a whirlwind of experiences, all of which convolute his sense of who he is and even who he thought he was. Caged, he turns into a “raging fiend,” “so changed . . . that the Judge himself would not have recognized him.” His enslavement precipitates his devolution into a primordial animal, one who eats much more quickly, never shows weakness, and steals. As a result, his body changes: “his muscles . . . hard as iron.” Buck’s gradual change into a more primitive being sets him on a path of self-discovery, for it connects him to an entirely new, yet eerily familiar part of his self-identity. It stimulates responses that feel frightening to him “without effort or discovery,” particularly the desire to kill. While helping his pack to track and kill a snowshoe hare, he realizes that the urge came to him “with a sense of familiarity. He seemed to remember it all,” the “old instincts  . . to kill things . . . the blood lust, the joy to kill. . . . was nothing new or strange, this scene of old time. It was as though it had always been, the wonted way of things.” Buck’s close connection to these dormant, “long dead” ancestral memories of primitive existence soon manifest spiritually, especially when he sits near the campfire, where he is able to meditate and sleep and dream back in time to “memories of his heredity.” He time travels in these slumbers, visiting past lives and primitive companions who are all unrecognizable, yet nevertheless possess “a seeming familiarity.” Regardless of Buck’s embrace of the primitive in himself, he struggles with these changes, particularly when he meets John Thornton. Although by now Buck is a significantly transformed dog, whose physical prowess and instinctual shrewdness intimidate Thornton’s men, under Thornton’s guardianship he enters a more emotional existence or identity, in that he discovers love for the first time. Thornton had saved his life, so Buck is very much devoted to him. The time he spends in his camp reawakens memories of his former life as a domesticated dog, which

The Call of the Wildâ•…â•… 717 places him in conflict—he’s caught in the middle between his two identities. Buck well understands that “there [is] no middle course. He must master or be mastered; . . . to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law.” His is an either/or existence and love its complicator. Confronted with these realizations, Buck tries to find some kind of compromise by going out on a series of reconnaissance missions to find himself. He travels back and forth between the domesticated and wild worlds for days at a time, transforming back to a more docile version when he returns to camp, and undergoing an “instant and terrible transformation . . . as soon as he [is] within the secrecy of the forest. . . . a thing of the wild, stealing along softly, cat-footed, a passing shadow,” patient and stealthy in his pursuit of prey. He straddles spirit worlds as well, London referring to him as “the Evil Spirit” and “The Fiend incarnate”; a Native American tribe later mythologizes him as “Ghost Dog.” But the precariousness of his dual identity haunts him. When he hears the call of the wild—a wolf howling—for the first time clearly, the sound is irresistible. It “impels him to do things, and ultimately masters him, but only after Thornton is murdered.” No longer fettered with a tie to his beloved friend, Buck capitulates to the call. He becomes a super-sized wild version, “a gigantic wolf ” with a “long wolf muzzle . . . larger than the muzzle of any wolf,” his head “the wolf head on a massive scale.” Having inherited the best traits of his St. Bernard father and shepherd mother, his amalgamation improves on them and makes him a superior version of wild animal, more than a perfect compromise between his past and present identities. Lori Vermaas

Nature in The Call of the Wild

London describes and discusses two versions of nature, domesticated and primordial. The former exists on Judge Miller’s estate in Santa Clara Valley, California, a manicured and expansive landscape that induces laziness and sleepiness. Buck’s home

for his first four years, the estate is relaxed and leisurely, a spread whimsically “half hidden among the trees” whose “gravelled [sic] driveways .  .  . wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars.” It is a picturesque place where man lives comfortably and in harmony with nature, with architecture well integrated into the natural surroundings. The servant’s cottages are “vine-clad,” part of a larger complex of “an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches”— descriptive of a pastoral scene of fecundity and growth. In these brief, opening scenes nature is a playground for Buck—he swims when he wants and goes on “rambles” with the judge’s children and grandchildren. He is nature’s master. His upbringing in the warm and inviting Southland, however, strongly contrasts with the cold, harsh Northland on which London focuses for the novel’s remainder. The wild is nature’s raw and thus truer form, a cruel environment that dominates its subjects. The difference is evident during Buck’s first encounter. Stepping onto the Narwhal’s deck after sensing the “change,” he steps into snow, a mushy, muddy substance he has never experienced before. While sampling it with his tongue, it “bit like fire.” Buck discovers that nature is a brutal, immoral place that privileges the strong and runs on suspicion and ruthless competition. In the wild, morality is irrelevant, even pointless, because “flung into the heart of things primordial .  .  .  , all was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert .  .  . dogs and men  .  .  . were savages .  .  . who knew no law but the law of club and fang.” The law is thus one of survival, kill or be killed, eat when you can, take care of yourself only, trust no one—and it is all marked by speed. Fights occur suddenly, once weakness is sensed. The docile Curly goes down in a heap of mauling dogs, whose vicious lesson Buck learns early on. After Curly’s death, Buck realizes that out here “the way” is “no fair play. Once down, that was the end of you. Well, he would see to it that he never went down.” Given that nature is a harsh taskmaster, only the fittest survive, which creates incredibly efficient

718â•…â•… London, Jack creatures. Along with becoming sleeker and stronger—with feet that had grown “hard to the trail”— Buck’s digestion improves immensely: “He could eat anything, . . . and [after a meal], . . . the juices of his stomach extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and stoutest of tissues.” Other physical processes improve: “sight and scent became remarkably keen, while his hearing developed . . . acuteness,” such that he could hear “the faintest sound and knew whether it heralded peace or peril”; and he developed “an ability to scent the wind and forecast it a night in advance”—“no matter how breathless the air.” Indeed, living things waste nothing in the wild. Buck realizes this one evening when he notices that other dogs bury themselves in snow at night to keep warm. They carefully plan and carry out work and action, an economical approach inbred by nature that demands the development of a cunning “patience that was nothing less than primitive,” the kind that enables an animal to wait out a prey’s actions in order to find a moment of weakness. An ancient way of being, patience does not waste effort, because wasted energy is deadly. Patience also pairs with a “blood lust, the joy to kill,” a prime ingredient of primordial nature, which drives Buck to kill a bear and then later a moose. As described by London, nature is a nonhuman place, and Buck enters it fully only after Indians kill his beloved master, John Thornton. It is a stern, eternal urge or way of being, whose “call” is inevitable and “irresistible”—the ultimate master, patient, stealthy, and “cat-footed”—its apotheosis the form of “a long, lean, timber wolf ” whose howls ultimately secure Buck’s return. Lori Vermaas

London, Jackâ•… White Fangâ•… (1906)

White Fang is the companion to The Call of the Wild, in that its plot reverses the protagonist’s journey—this time humans capture a wolf and transform him into a domesticated animal. Such a setup enables Jack London to again examine behavioral adaptation via principles of Darwinian evolution. He shows how chance, nature, and external

influences function as forces that shape all animals’ evolution in the struggle for existence. Born in the Alaskan wilderness to a wild shedog and a pure-bred wolf, White Fang soon loses his freedom when Indians capture his mother and him. Having just begun to recognize his natural instincts as a wolf, he starts a new training—that of obedience to humans, not nature. Using three different owners, Gray Beaver, Beauty Smith, and Weedon Scott, London details White Fang’s evolution from wolf to domesticated wolf, making White Fang an explication of behavioral development. The novel explores themes of oppression, identity, and nature and their effect on behavior. Although nature is a force that controls one’s destiny and sense of life purpose and identity, other oppressors, particularly humans, exert equal influence. With each new owner, White Fang learns to distrust many of his instincts, ultimately becoming an example of how nurture trumps nature. With such an approach, the novel also tracks White Fang’s search for himself and how he fits in the world. Civilization wins out, not triumphantly, but reassuringly, for White Fang ultimately settles rather comfortably well into his new identity as a California estate watchdog. Lori Vermaas

Identity in White Fang

With White Fang as a case study, London posits that identity is contingent on outside influences. He argues that with heredity as one’s “clay,” “environment serve[s] to model the clay, to give it a particular form.” Thus external forces, particularly situations and relationships, alter identity. White Fang’s sense of himself shifts constantly as he encounters all manner of stimuli, particularly obedience training by humans. The first event that initiates White Fang’s identity struggle as either a wolf or domesticated dog is his and his mother’s capture by Indians. By impressing him with their “mastery and power,” the Indians eventually mold White Fang “into a dog that was rather wolfish, but that [also] was a dog and not a wolf.” The collision of wolf and dog in him soon transforms him from an inquisitive and loyal wolf cub into a conflicted and vengeful wolf-dog. “The clay

White Fangâ•…â•… 719 of White Fang had been molded until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious, the enemy of all his kind,” because life in a dogsled camp had influenced him to live this way. For instance, “had Lip-lip,” a particularly aggressive sled dog, “not existed, he would have passed his puppyhood with the other puppies and grown up more doglike and with more liking for dogs.” His attack style does not betray his wolf heritage, however, for it retains a silent and stealthy strategy: he “never barked  .  .  . [but] dr[o]ve straight at the intruder.” Eventually, he even learns to reject his roots, thus more fully accepting his identity as a domesticated animal. After a couple of ill-fated attempts to reconnect with his mother in the wild, he finally ignores her cold snarls—having outgrown even her. Character develops only through fateful circumstance (nurture over nature), creating an irresponsible world—a place where only results, not accountability, exist. After Beauty Smith (whose very birth name misidentifies his character) deviously arranges White Fang’s purchase, London elaborates on how one is not culpable for identity or behavior. He comments that “Beauty Smith had not created himself, and no blame was to be attached to him. He had come into the world with a twisted body and a brute intelligence. This had constituted the clay of him, and it had not been kindly molded by the world.” Similarly, because White Fang knows only that he must obey and be with his master, regardless if he is, like Smith, “a veritable, if terrible, god,” he transforms into a fight dog. Faithfulness is the strongest quality in White Fang’s clay, but with Smith he becomes hateful, molded “into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature.” His fights are put on exhibition, and he is christened “The Fighting Wolf.” Thus nurture is stronger than nature, with individuals the victims of their environment, devoid as they are of free will. Then two miners, Weedon Scott and Matt, forcefully purchase and thus save White Fang from Smith. They begin the slow and painful process of remolding his behavior, almost giving up and shooting him until they recognize his intelligence. The new stimuli for his behavior modification are “kindness,” freedom, and physical petting. However, White Fang’s final transformation, which London

claims was “nothing less than a revolution,” is possible only because of his childhood experiences with men: “The seal of his dependence on man had been set upon him .  .  . Early .  .  . when he turned his back on the Wild and crawled to Gray Beaver’s feet.” During this period, “White Fang was in the process of finding himself . . . [and] his nature was undergoing an expansion . . . His old code of conduct was changing . . . [and] oft-times [he] elected discomfort and pain for the sake of his god” (pining for Scott when he left home to travel; submitting himself to Scott’s hand during petting, although he regarded hands as something to avoid and distrust because they usually wielded a club). “Now, with the love-master, his snuggling was the deliberate act of putting himself into a position of hopeless helplessness . . . an expression of perfect confidence, of absolute self-surrender.” In this final incarnation, White Fang comes to be known as the “Blessed Wolf.” Lori Vermaas

Nature in White Fang

The novel opens with a stark description of nature, saying that its “dark spruce forest frown[s]” and leans, “black and ominous.” It is a mute landscape out in the wild, “the land itself .  .  . a desolation, lifeless,” suffocating under “a vast silence,” “lone and cold.” If there is any spirit or levity, there’s only a hint of it in a sinister laughter—“a laughter more terrible than any sadness”—evidence of its devilish sense of humor, one unimpressed with its subjects’ struggle to survive, for it “laugh[s] at the futility of life and the effort of life.” Such is “the Wild, the savage, frozenhearted Northland Wild.” This kind of nature is a killer, a combatant who always wins, is puffed up with winning, and who “conquer[s].” Indeed, wild nature goes so far as to abhor action, because that shows signs of life: “it is not the way of the wild to like movement. Life is an offense to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water [and] . . . drives the sap out of the trees.” Man is a particular nemesis, since man “is the most restless of life.” Nature is unrelentingly cruel, its ruthlessness embodied in the wolf pack, which in the first three chapters patiently and inexorably stalks Henry and

720â•…â•… London, Jack Bill’s sled and their dogs, tormenting them with the inevitability of being killed, one by one. It is ominous and judgmental, a “land of desolation and mockery and silence” that “crushe[s]” the men on the sled “with the weight of [its] unending vastness.” Such power and immensity reinforces humans’ insignificance. Henry and Bill soon recognize their irrelevance when they begin perceiving “themselves [as] finite and small” and deathlike, their frozen faces seeming like “ghostly masques.” After the wolves attack and eat Bill, Henry begins to notice his own body, and momentarily is bemused at the wonder of its workings. But then he realizes that out in nature “this living flesh  . . was no more than so much meat, a quest of ravenous animals, to be torn and slashed by their hungry fangs, to be sustenance.” Man is nature’s servant, and nature the ultimate master. Since nature is in control, it predestines all living things—it has plans. One Eye’s “urge of an impulse” to find a lair is an instinct passed down from his forbears. “He did not question it, nor puzzle over it,” he simply obeys it. Such is also the case when his gray cub kills and eats the ptarmigan’s young and fights off the devastated mother. During the attack, he recognizes his destiny: With “the fighting blood of his breed . . . up in him and surging through him,” he realized “his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made—killing meat and battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence.” Nature had “equipped” him for this. It also equips other instincts and urges, even those that devastate the closest of relationships. After the gray cub matures, as White Fang, he comes upon his mother. Having been separated from her, he bounds toward her “joyously.” But she snarls at him and rushes him three times, laying “his cheek open to the bone.” Such behavior is not the mother’s fault, for “a wolf-mother was not made to remember her cubs of a year or so before. So she did not remember White Fang. He was a strange animal, an intruder; and her present litter of puppies gave her the right to resent such intrusion.” Along with plans, nature also has laws: “the law that forbade [the cub to] . . . approach . . . the [cave’s] entrance”; “the law of meat” (“the aim of

life,”) “eat or be eaten”; “oppress the weak and obey the strong”; and “the law of forage,” which deemed that all wasted meat “belonged to the dog that found it.” Nature’s rule is so complete that each living thing accepts these laws and each of their own motivations without question. London elaborates on this blind acceptance as “a method,” an “act of classification.” As a cub, White Fang “was not in the least disturbed by desire to find out . . . reason[s] . . . . Logic and physics were no part of his mental makeup.” “Singlepurposed” and cruel, nature is a lonely and treacherous place for its inhabitants. Lori Vermaas

Oppression in White Fang

Soon after a male gray cub (White Fang) and his mother come upon an Indian camp, one of the Indians, Gray Beaver, recognizes the mother as a wild dog he recently lost. He calls out her given name, Kiche, whereupon she immediately crouches, whimpers, and wags her tail. Her submissive reaction impresses upon the cub man’s more powerful, magical, even godlike presence, one whose “mastery and power” instills in him “an overwhelming sense of his own weakness and littleness.” The Indians claim the cub and capture his mother, thus initiating the cub’s oppression and, significantly, his acceptance of it. Gray Beaver names the cub White Fang, another example of oppression, in that naming is an act of ownership. The newly christened wolf slowly adjusts to the camp’s hierarchy. With his mother tied up, White Fang learns to defer to humans, such that whenever “they walked, he got out of their way. When they called, he came. When they threatened, he cowered down.” “Such was the lesson” of his oppression, to learn to “plac[e]  .  .  . his destiny in another’s hands, a shifting of the responsibilities of existence.” His training continues after the Indians untie Kiche. Although submissive to humans, White Fang is still in the early stages of accepting his subordination, and so he tries to lure his mother out into the woods and to freedom. But so complete is her conditioning that she stops at its edge, imparting on her son another significant lesson. A different call has transfixed her, an “other and louder

The Giverâ•…â•… 721 call, the call of the fire and of man.” She returns to camp, leaving White Fang whimpering softly with confusion and mournful nostalgia, so fragrant is the air filled with the familiar scents “of his old life of freedom before the days of his bondage.” After this incident, Gray Beaver presently sells Kiche, and uses the moment of her transfer as a way to imprint more strongly White Fang’s subordination. When the cub follows Kiche into the canoe and ignores Gray Beaver’s calls to return, the Indian recaptures and beats him mercilessly to instill permanently the “lesson of . . . bondage,” that man is the “lord and master over him.” No longer free, “obedience, rigid, undeviating obedience” becomes the law. Thus “insidiously, and by remote ways, as well as by the power of the stick and stone and clout of hand, were the shackles of White Fang’s bondage being riveted on him.” Even when given the opportunity to escape, White Fang’s participation is so complete that, much like his mother, he chooses to return, the Indians now his adopted pack. Indeed, he’s changed too much to live free in the wild. Out in the wilderness, he feels overwhelmed with loneliness and scared of danger lurking. Ruined by living in the camp, by accepting bondage, he has “softened” and “weakened”—even as he has evolved in the interim into a savage, vicious wolf. He is a deaf and dumb mute in the wild, for “there was nothing to do, nothing to see nor hear”—except the call of man, which rises within, “an overpowering desire for the protection and companionship of man.” London phrases it so innocently, yet it is bondage, plain and simple. His dependence and despondency are so great that he relocates the former site of Gray Beaver’s tepee, the Indian camp having moved on elsewhere. Sitting in its center, White Fang lets out a howl—but unlike his mournful cry for the loss of freedom when his mother would not follow, this cry grieves over the loss of man and his bondage. When he finally finds Gray Beaver, much like his mother before him he grovels toward him, “surrender[ing] himself, voluntarily, body and soul. . . . his own choice.” “He had given himself ” to these gods. In all of these situations, White Fang is complicit in his oppression, because he learns to accept

his role unquestioningly in the hierarchy, even finding meaning, purpose, and, later, love as justification. He exhibits obedience, “faithfulness and willingness.” He establishes a “covenant” with humans, whose “terms were simple. For the possession of a flesh-and-blood god, he exchanged his own liberty. . . . a service of duty and awe,” an “allegiance . . . greater than . . . love” until his pairing with Weedon Scott. Lori Vermaas

Lowry, Loisâ•… The Giverâ•… (1993)

Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver is the story of Jonas, an adolescent boy growing up in a seemingly perfect society. As the story opens, Jonas is nervously awaiting the Ceremony of Twelve, where he will learn the assignment that will determine his adult occupation. At the ceremony, Jonas discovers that he has been selected for an important but mysterious job. He is to be the Receiver of Memory, a human receptacle for the past memories of the world. The old Receiver of Memory has now become the Giver, transmitting memories to Jonas. Through these memories, Jonas’s positive vision of his contented, monotonous life begins to disintegrate. The society Jonas lives in practices “Sameness,” a condition that leaves people comfortable and safe, but leaves no room for choice. The people of Jonas’s community follow a strict, voluminous set of “Rules,” which dictates every aspect of life. As a result of Sameness, people have lost the ability to see color, hear music, and even feel deep emotions, such as love. Through his training as the new Receiver, Jonas begins to see past Sameness. He sees color, and feels the joys of variety and love. Even though Jonas also experiences some of the things his society protects him from, such as pain, starvation, and war, he decides that Sameness makes life meaningless. In an attempt to eradicate Sameness and restore memories to all the people, Jonas flees the community. Lowry does not tell us if Jonas lives and frees his people from Sameness, but instead leaves the ending ambiguous. Cheryl Blake Price

722â•…â•… Lowry, Lois

Family in The Giver

In the futuristic world that Lois Lowry creates for her novel, The Giver, the family is a very specifically defined unit consisting of a father, mother, one daughter, and one son. The family structure is carefully governed by the community, which allows no exceptions to be made to the standard family unit. While this type of nuclear family may be familiar, and even attractive, to an American audience, it also takes choice and variety out of society. As the novel progresses, it becomes revealed that the family in Jonas’s community is a fabricated, and rather meaningless, construction. Families in Jonas’s world are not created by mutual choice; instead, all the decisions regarding the family are made by a group of Elders. When members of the community come of age, they are permitted to apply for a spouse; however, they are not allowed to choose one based on feelings of love or affection. A committee of Elders makes the decision for the couple, weighing their individual strengths and weaknesses for an optimal combination. After three years of observation, the couple is allowed to apply for the first of their two children. Again, the infant is chosen by the Elders and delivered into the family unit in a special annual ceremony. When the family is ready, another child (always the opposite gender of its sibling) is applied for and placed. Older adults who have completed their family raising go and live in the House of Childless Adults. Even the day to day aspects of family life are highly structured and uniform throughout the entire community. Many of the activities are ritualized, such as the sharing of feelings and dreams. Disturbingly, these activities are also a way in which to monitor behavior and ensure that the community rules are followed. After sharing a dream that hints at his emerging sexuality, Jonas is promptly given a pill that suppresses these feelings. Here, the family unit is acting as the enforcer of the larger community standards, illuminating that the family is, indeed, just a smaller version of the outer community and that there is no safe haven from rules and regulations. As Jonas begins to receive memories from the Giver that offer a different view of family life, he

realizes that one important element is missing from this type of family: love. Love is not a driving force for the joining of spouses and the rearing of children. Rather, joining together to raise children is portrayed as a duty to the community. Even the process of birth is mechanized, with the result that parents and siblings do not have a biological link to each other. Children are genetically engineered and created anonymously through Birthmothers, which creates an absence of blood kinship ties. Yet it is not the artificial creation of the family that bothers Jonas, but the lack of feeling that he finds in the family unit. As Jonas’s mother tells him, the word “love” has become “a very generalized word, so meaningless that it’s become almost obsolete.” As she goes on to explain, parents feel pride and enjoyment, but not love, for their children. The hollowness of this structure, and the insubstantial bonds it creates, can be illustrated by the lack of extended family in the community. Once children are grown, they move away from their parents and rarely, if ever, interact with them again. There are no family celebrations where aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents join together and share their lives; in short, there is no depth of emotion tying people together. Beyond childrearing and rule indoctrination, the family seems to offer no other benefit to the people. Jonas decides to leave the community because, without love, he finds no meaning in life. He undergoes a painful realization that his family and peers can never feel the same way he can because they do not experience deep emotion. The uniform and cautious way the community has chosen to create families leaves them cold and empty. Even though in American culture, the combination of father, mother, son, and daughter is often idealized, it is not compulsory—people can choose the ways in which they create their families. When Jonas flees the community, he takes Gabriel, a toddler his family has temporarily been caring for, with him. With this action, Jonas is symbolically creating his own family; he rebels against the control and uniformity of his past life. What this seems to suggest is that families can combine in many different ways, as long as there is the bond of love. Cheryl Blake Price

The Giverâ•…â•… 723

Fate in The Giver

In the opening of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, the protagonist Jonas is worrying about his future. Shortly, a group of Elders from his community will announce their decisions regarding the job placement of Jonas and his 12-year-old peers. As Jonas so precisely states, he is not frightened but apprehensive about the choice they will make for him. Jonas’s apprehension arises because he has no input in this process; someone else will be making one of the most important decisions of his life. In fact, someone else will make every major decision in Jonas’s life; the Elders have already chosen his parents and sibling, they will select his future job, and when he comes of age they will provide him with a pre-determined wife and children. Choice, even in everyday life, has been mostly eliminated for the majority of people in Jonas’s community. The idea of choice is ultimately bound up in how the theme of fate operates in The Giver. Broadly, there are two traditional ways of thinking about fate. The first is that fate is pre-destined; people cannot alter or change their destinies. The Elders of Jonas’s community are a personification of this type of fate. Since the Elders make everyone’s major life-decisions, this gives the impression that fate is unchangeable and that people have to submit to the choices made for them. The people in the community are conditioned not to desire choice; as a product of his upbringing, Jonas also feels this way at first. He believes that “we don’t dare to let people make choices of their own” because “we really have to protect people from the wrong choices.” As a future Elder, Jonas can see some good in taking away choice from the people. However, there is another way of thinking about fate that challenges Jonas’s previously held beliefs, which is the view that fate is changeable and can be influenced by personal decisions. Jonas realizes this as a possibility only after he begins his training as the new Receiver of Memory. When the Giver begins transmitting memories from the past, Jonas comprehends that another way of life is possible. This causes some confusion for Jonas, because he both perceives positive reasons to let people have control over their fates, and also recognizes that it could be dangerous. Yet, when Jonas discovers the community’s dark secret of mandatory Release (killing) of twins, abnormal children, and the elderly, he

decides that people should have a right to make their own choices. Together with the Giver, he makes a plan to bring memories, and therefore choice, back to the people. In effect, Jonas wants people to have control over their own fates. Although he and the Giver had carefully constructed a plan to return memories to the whole community, Jonas takes emergency action when he finds out that Gabriel, a baby that had been living with his family, has been scheduled for Release. Hastily, Jonas takes Gabriel in the middle of the night and leaves the community. In an attempt to change his own fate, as well as that of the community, Jonas hopes that once he is gone his memories will go back to the people. However, alone and with no support, limited supplies, and a young child to care for, Jonas ironically begins questioning if he made the right choice: “Once he had yearned for choice. Then, when he had had a choice, he had made the wrong one: the choice to leave. And now he was starving.” Yet, even as he longs for the comfort of Sameness, Jonas continues to believe in the redemptive power of choice. The ending of the novel, in which Jonas suffers from forces outside of his control (such as treacherous weather and starvation) again calls into question how much power a person can have over his or her own fate. The ambiguous ending does not reveal if Jonas reaches Elsewhere and safety; in other words, the reader never knows if Jonas’s real fate is the one that he wanted. Lowry never discloses if people can really have control over their fates or if our destinies are all pre-determined. However, what remains clear throughout the novel is that the artificial fate created by the Elders for the people in the community should never be tolerated. While people may have control over their own fate, these decisions should not be left up to other people. Cheryl Blake Price

Science and Technology in The Giver

In the futuristic society that Lois Lowry creates in The Giver, science and technology play a subtle but important role in shaping the story. Although there have been many scientific advances, Jonas lives in a community that is not dependent on science. Much of the technology in this society—computers,

724â•…â•… Machiavelli, Niccolò televisions, cars—is rare or absent in the wider community; instead, the emphasis is on simple, communal living without the advantages of technology. However, as the novel progresses, the community emerges as actually quite advanced because references are made to jet planes, genetic engineering, and climate control. In fact, science and technology are important in creating a constant state of conformity, referred to as “Sameness.” Everything in the community is under strict regulation to promote Sameness and create an environment of uniformity. Jonas lives in a house identical to that of his friends; he wears standard-issue clothing and rides a mass-produced bicycle. Family life is regulated, and there are no exceptions to the rule that each family includes a mother, a father, and one sister and brother. Identical meals are delivered daily and cleaned up by Laborers. A book of rules is kept in every home, and small rule infractions are announced over the community speaker, drawing attention to and causing embarrassment for the offender. More grievous transgressions are tolerated only twice before the guilty citizen is Released, or executed by lethal injection. Yet not only criminals are Released; anyone who does not conform to standards or is too sick or elderly to contribute to society is also Released. Everything and everyone in the community has a useful purpose, and technology helps to create a perfectly ordered society. This monotony encompasses not only material things but also the landscape and the people. Anything natural, which could cause discomfort or inconvenience, has been eradicated. Technology has been used to level hills, regulate climate, and control sunshine. Except for a fish hatchery, the community is also devoid of animal life, suggesting that humans have excluded or driven native wildlife to extinction. The stuffed animals such as bears and elephants that children receive as “comfort objects” are considered to be mythological creatures. The people have manipulated science to completely control nature, and the Giver’s memories make Jonas realize that the world was once very different. The humans of the community are also tightly regulated by technology. The use of genetic engineering has eradicated different racial or ethnic groups; therefore, most people are similar looking.

The standardization of haircuts and clothing supports this similarity because this community does not accept individualization. In addition, social harmony is established by the numbing of emotions, particularly romantic feelings such as love and desire. All adults are required to take a special pill that effectively controls their sexuality. Spouses are chosen by a committee of Elders, and children are born only to specifically designated “Birthmothers.” As a reaction to these changes, people have lost creative abilities and can no longer see colors or hear music. While the technologies make the community an extraordinarily safe place to live, life can be dull and repetitive. Individuality is never celebrated because everyone is expected to conform to community standards; in fact, talking about personal accomplishments is discouraged. When Jonas begins receiving memories and seeing colors, he feels sad that his family and his peers cannot enjoy the beauty that has been revealed to him. Soon, he realizes that the lack of variety in his world is a true loss to the enjoyment of life. The Giver explains to Jonas that long ago the community chose to give up uniqueness in order to take the dangers of unpredictability and chance out of life. While it appears that this community may have many advantages over our contemporary society, such as low crime, Jonas’s world is ultimately presented as a dystopia, a society that has gone too much to one extreme. Since science has a role in creating this society, The Giver can be seen as a cautionary tale about the misuse of technology. Humans in the book have learned how to control nature, but they have destroyed the animals and natural landscape that once existed. Art, books, and music do not exist, and Jonas sees that the people’s lives are without meaning or true enjoyment. As our society makes huge advancements in technology, Lowry’s book warns about the results of scientific exploitation. Cheryl Blake Price

Machiavelli, Niccolòâ•… The Princeâ•… (1513, 1532)

The Prince is one of the most widely known works in the “primer for princes” tradition, which provides advice to rulers on domestic and foreign policy. It

The Princeâ•…â•… 725 was written in 1513 during a year of forced exile for its author but was not published until 1532, five years after his death. The Prince is a brief treatise on statecraft in the form of loosely organized essays. It was written at a time when the Italian states were devastated by wars and the machinations of foreign powers. Machiavelli’s objective was to exhort Italian rulers to restore Italy’s lost glory and establish a unified, stable, and peaceful state. Unlike medieval literature in this genre, Machiavelli does not invoke the concept of an ideal ruler or notions such as the divine right of kings. He was an acute observer of the contemporary political scene. He believed that lessons of the past and the current situation demanded that a ruthless ruler wrest political power, eliminate his rivals, put an end to factions, throw out foreign political powers, avoid mass discontent, and strengthen national religion to bind people together. What counted in politics was success and not virtue. He recommends the use of harsh measures to register the impact of authority as most men, he believes, are simple, greedy and wicked. The state, he insists, must subordinate moral principles to its survival and the welfare of its citizens. For him the ultimate good of the people justifies unethical conduct on the part of a ruler. Machiavelli’s blatant dismissal of the virtuous, the idealistic, and the moral from the world of politics earned him much opprobrium even though his pragmatism paved the way for a “scientific” attitude to politics. Gulshan Taneja

Ethics in The Prince

Even though The Prince was written in 1513, it was initially read in manuscript form and was published only in 1532, five years after the death of its author. Yet, by the time an English translation appeared more than a hundred years later, in 1640, The Prince had already earned great notoriety for its advocacy of an amoral attitude to gaining and retaining political power, so much so that the name of the author of The Prince, Machiavelli, came to be used as a synonym for diabolical scheming. Elizabethan and Jacobean drama are full of “Machiavellian” politicians, villains, and murderers. Machiavelli himself earns specific mention in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Marlowe’s The

Jew of Malta, and Webster’s The White Devil, among others. Macaulay remarked: “We doubt whether any name in literary history be so generally odious” as that of the author of The Prince. The image of Machiavelli as a wily and evil adviser to cruel, scheming princes refuses to go away. Yet a careful reading of The Prince would convince the reader otherwise. Machiavelli did not wish to compose a primer for an ideal prince to create an ideal state for a morally upright and virtuous and law-abiding citizenry. His understanding of historical precedence, as well as his experience as a diplomat and a statesman, convinced him that living realities and practical politics are different from ideal constructs. A utopia was certainly far from his mind. He makes no mention of such notions as the divine rights of a king or the belief that a king must be like a father to his children. His was an impassioned response to a 16th-century Florentine political situation (no different from the other Italian city-states) marked by chaos and anarchy and the maneuverings of foreign powers. The situation had been made worse by the weak and ineffective rulers of Italian city-states. Machiavelli was an acute observer of the political scene. He sought a solution to revive the Italian nation that then lay in fragments, bereft of the glory that he believed was her due. He believed that for the creation and maintenance of a unified nation-state, a ruthless ruler must rise and wrest political power by hook or by crook, eliminate his rivals through fraud or, if necessary, violence. He firmly repudiated the primacy of morality as the basis of an enduring state and advocated that moral principles must be subordinated to the survival of the state and the welfare of its citizens. As most men are self-centered and greedy, a prince must therefore be ready to lie, cheat, or treat his subjects with force and cruelty in the interest of a stable society and lasting peace. He believed that moral behavior was necessary only if it benefited the prince’s people and that rulers must only appear to be virtuous, as men are prone to obey leaders who appear to be so. The attitude that marks Machiavelli’s maxims and the sheer clarity and simplicity with which he puts forth his ideas about the rejuvenation of a sick state through force, fraud, and dissimulation were enough to shock the readers of his work. One can

726â•…â•… Machiavelli, Niccolò argue that a subversion of values was far from the mind of this much maligned yet celebrated Florentine statesman and diplomat. The Prince is not a detached academic exercise in political philosophy, motivated solely by negation. It does not, therefore, set out to undermine the significance of wellentrenched humanistic values. In advocating immorality, Machiavelli merely recognized the world as it was, and men as they were, and merely sought to achieve a specific end. In the giddy world of politics, what counted was success, not virtue. Moreover, virtue did not lead to success. Thus, even though he exhorts the prince to be ruthless to the masses, he insists that the prince must build his state on the goodwill of the people, be sensitive to their susceptibilities, and bind the citizens together and achieve stability by nourishing a national religion. A prince “will be despised if he has a reputation for being fickle, frivolous, effeminate, cowardly, irresolute. . . .” He should “strive to demonstrate in his actions grandeur, courage, sobriety, strength.” Machiavelli’s objective was not idealistic, but practical and earthly. In his appreciation of life, here rather than hereafter, and an essentially secular, realistic, and modern outlook, he was much ahead of his time and showed remarkable courage of conviction. His intention was not to subvert ethical values but to ignore them as they appeared to serve no practical purpose in the context of the anarchic political developments of his time. There is thus much in The Prince to suggest that subversion of humanistic values is not central to it. The gap that had existed between the medieval, scholastic interpretation of ethics and the world of reality drew attention to itself as it impinged upon the minds of thinkers in post-medieval times. Ethics—the moral principles that must guide and govern man’s actions—in the context in which Machiavelli places them, receive a new definition as they are subjected to the challenge of the changing times. Gulshan Taneja

Nationalism in The Prince

There is some truth in scholarly assertions that, as Machiavelli was as a citizen of Florence, all his concerns for the state as well as the welfare of the citizen

in The Prince are focused on the city where he was born and where he spent most of his adult life. The nation, thus, for him was Florence. Yet Machiavelli drew a line between the Italians and the barbari, the foreigners. He looked upon all Italians and Italian city-states as bound together culturally and racially as one people. A strong current of nationalistic sentiment suffuses The Prince and gives it its fundamental motivation. Machiavelli witnessed destructive factional feuds within Florence as well as other Italian city-states. Commerce forced Naples, Milan, Venice, and Florence to fight for control over Italy. Repeated French and Spanish inroads into the Italian territories over the centuries had destroyed Italian sovereignty. Weak rulers, an indifferent populace, and inadequate military resources had further debilitated a once glorious civilization. The Italian nation was not only marked by conflicts and dissension in the 16th century, it was also fated to remain a nation in bedlam, commotion, and disarray until the end of the 19th century. The decline and fall of this civilization from its great Roman past to a state bereft of all glory, stability, and peace was a sorry spectacle to behold. Machiavelli was saddened by the murky politics of his day. Fired by his admiration of Rome and Roman institutions, and thus inspired, he goes on to call upon a brave prince to “introduce a new order bringing honour to himself and prosperity to one and every Italian.” “.  .  . leaderless, lawless, crushed, despoiled, torn, over-run, . . . Italy is waiting to see who can be the one to heal her wounds .  .  . and cleanse those sores that have now been festering for so long.” When Machiavelli says in a letter to Guicciardini that he loves his country more than his soul, he speaks from his heart. Only a unified nation, politically independent and intellectually free, can lead to a stable and peaceful society working for the welfare of its citizenry. Only then does it become possible for citizens to live harmoniously. But before its people can so benefit, a nation has to define itself as an independent political entity, able and powerful to withstand the assault of its natural enemies, both from within and without. Hence Machiavelli’s insistent call for a savior whose political objectives he defines with ruthless clarity and much attention to detail.

The Princeâ•…â•… 727 He also developed a deep-rooted belief in the inability of the common man to rise above his immediate interests—his own safety and comfort. He therefore advises the prince to discipline masses into obedience through ruthless control. The larger interest of the nation-state condoned resorting to suppression and cruelty. A prince must project himself as determined to achieve his objectives. A compelling self alone can lead to public triumph. Rule of law, authority, and discipline are indispensable to a ruler who would be feared and obeyed. Machiavelli viewed history as a constantly moving cycle. If nations decayed and declined, the princes had a patriotic obligation to be defiant, take charge, and rejuvenate a sick society. He observed the current realities of political life and concluded that nothing short of extreme measures would suffice for extreme situations. He firmly understood that people do not live in utopias but in the harsh realities of time and space. He abandoned the inherited medieval thinking that glorified ideals and values for their own sake, and sought a context for people to live in the present and live in peace. It is interesting to note that Machiavelli, in the context of the politics of his day, did not see an inescapable connection between moral goodness and legitimate authority; but, contrary to popular belief, he did not support political amorality for its own sake. Machiavelli had a larger purpose before him. Much ahead of his time as he was, he brought to bear a sense of political realism and secular thinking upon his mission. Unlike the earlier medieval writers on statecraft, Machiavelli maintained that common morality and high ideals must be pursued only to attain preconceived objectives. A nation survives and flourishes through leadership, military power, and disciplined masses. A prince must appear to be “compassionate, faithful to his word, kind, guileless, and devout.” But he must subject higher ideals to sordid political realities and political strategy: “ . . . one who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise .  .  . the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not,” Machiavelli maintained. Thus Machiavelli abandons the medieval predilection for political idealism and its emphasis on religion as an integral part of political thinking. Machiavelli’s

views had a great influence on the early modern debate surrounding “reasons of state”—the doctrine that the good of the state itself takes precedence over all other considerations. Machiavelli has aroused much disagreement over the justness of his remedies. He was a passionate patriot, a democrat, and a believer in liberty. As a visionary, he argued for the emergence of the modern, centralized, political state. What is beyond doubt is his passionate desire to make it possible for a nation to sustain itself politically for the welfare of its citizens. Gulshan Taneja

Responsibility in The Prince

Machiavelli, in The Prince, is not detached or cynical or irresponsible. In fact, he shows a great sense of responsibility both as an author and as an individual in his role in the larger socio-human context in which he existed. He was a politically concerned citizen with much experience in matters of statecraft. He believed that a citizen lived within the compass of a family, community, and state. He, therefore, had an obligation to help sustain the structures that sustained him. He, it could be argued, fulfilled his obligations as a citizen. He reflected upon the state of affairs in Florence and offered counsel, which, in his view, it was the responsibility of every informed citizen who benefited from organized social and political institutions, to provide. Despite Machiavelli’s putative moral predilections, the essential import of his counsel is positive: “Well organized states and wise princes,” he maintains, “always take great pains not to make the nobles despair, and to satisfy the people and keep them content; this is one of the most important tasks the prince must undertake.” The question of responsibility presented itself to Machiavelli as a complex issue. He felt that it was the responsibility of a prince, by virtue of being a prince, to secure, defend, and maintain the state. Even though Machiavelli never says that a prince’s actions are above ethical considerations, he understands that being a prince requires that the ruler fulfill his responsibility as a prince even at the cost of subverting traditional values. A prince is nothing if not responsible for the welfare of

728â•…â•… Malamud, Bernard his citizens. Such a clear delimitation of the role of a prince in a society requires that he meet his obligations even if his personal values go against his beliefs. It has been rightly pointed out that our choices are determined, on the one hand, by a desired course of action, and, on the other, in the light of desired ends. While preferences are spontaneous, choices are deliberate and, far from being free, are determined by facts of history as perceived in the present. The Prince clearly registers the authorial preoccupation with certain specific ends in this context. If the ends require dismissal of moral and ethical considerations, the course of action would thus be determined in the light of the ultimate goal a citizen sets for himself and for which advice is proffered, even if the advice is uncommon, controversial, or even unethical. Machiavelli asserts in his Discourses: “When the very safety of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no considerations of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, not of glory or of infamy, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all other considerations aside, the only question should be ‘What course will save the life and liberty of the country?’↜” The Prince focuses much on the failure of the citizen to understand, accept, and fulfill his responsibility to the state. A citizen prioritizes his personal or familial needs over those of the state and acts against the larger interest of the community. The citizen’s failure to understand the significance of his choices can lead to the collapse of the systemic structure. A prince must work against these tendencies, and thus act cruelly only to be kind. Confronted with a choice, it would be assumed, and rightly so, that the questions of metaphysical and ethical responsibility weighed less with Machiavelli than those involving sociopolitical and legal obligations. Machiavelli emerges here as an example of how a responsible citizen must act. What he preaches to the prince, he exemplifies with his own practice. He projects himself in The Prince as a model of a concerned citizen, an individual whose concern for the state is not influenced by preconceived notions of religion and church and natural predilection to put himself and his family first.

The Prince was written at a time when Italy was devastated by wars and the machinations of foreign powers. Its author’s objective was to exhort the Italian rulers to restore Italy’s lost glory and create and maintain a unified state. An expression, clear and effective, of his intention and objectives in no uncertain terms, an unabashed and ruthlessly mechanical attitude with which he endorses means, fair or foul, to attain one’s political objective—has lent the seminal work and its author a diabolical image. Yet that image does not explain its author’s profound understanding of the needs of the times and the remarkable sense of responsibility with which Machiavelli addresses the problems facing his fragmented nation-state. Gulshan Taneja

Malamud, Bernardâ•… The Naturalâ•… (1952)

Bernard Malamud’s 1952 baseball novel The Natural tells the story of Roy Hobbs, whose only desire is to be known as the greatest ballplayer who ever lived. Set in the pre–World War II era, it invokes the Golden Age of American sports and images of iconic players such as Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Shoeless Joe Jackson. What makes Roy Hobbs’s story unique is the interruption in his career. As a young man, he is on his way to a tryout with the fictional New York Knights. After an encounter with a fictional version of the then-greatest player, Babe Ruth, Hobbs is shot by a psychotic female fan. Flash forward and a 34-year-old Roy Hobbs finally arrives in New York, contract in hand. However, the owner has brought him there to sabotage the team for financial reasons, not to save the ailing franchise. Hobbs’s skills are undiminished and, using the Wonderboy bat he made from a lightning-struck tree, he leads the struggling Knights into contention. Tempted by the lure of money and a beautiful woman, Hobbs goes into a slump at the plate and agrees to take part in the sabotage of the team. In the championship playoff game, Hobbs finally realizes he cannot compromise the game he loves and strives to win. Unfortunately, the flawed hero, like poetry’s mighty Casey, strikes out.

The Naturalâ•…â•… 729 The film version has Hobbs coming through with a prodigious home run to win, but the novel has a beaten Hobbs walking away, his reputation ruined by the rumors of his throwing the game, even though he tried his best in the end. Ronald C. Thomas, Jr.

Ethics in The Natural

Ethical behavior can be described as a balancing act performed on a sliding scale between two fixed values, the ethics of aspiration and the ethics of obligation. Aspiration is the higher point, the striving to be the best a person can be, to do the right thing, regardless of cost. Obligation is the lower, the meeting of the minimum requirement for proper behavior. Anything falling short of obligation lies in the area of unethical behavior. In Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, baseball player Roy Hobbs inhabits a world where many of the characters fall short of ethical behavior, and Hobbs learns what that can cost him as a player and as a man. Hobbs is one of the most gifted baseball players of all time, coming up as a young man in the pre–World War II Golden Era of American sports, crossing paths with a character who is a clear homage to Babe Ruth. Hobbs is himself a combination of Ted Williams and Bob Feller, a pure hitter who can also throw a blazing fastball. Just as he is about to get a shot at the Major Leagues, Hobbs is shot by a deranged female fan. The bulk of the novel tells the story of his attempt to return to the game he loves as a middle-aged, unknown rookie. The first ethical problem presented is the very idea of whether an older player should even get a shot at playing pro ball. When 34-year-old Hobbs arrives at the fictional New York Knights practice, the manager, Pop Fisher, says Hobbs belongs in an old folks’ home, not a big league ball park. However, Hobbs has a contract signed by the team owner and chief scout so he has to get a chance to play. This addresses the issue of age in pro sports, where older players with proven track records are sent away to make more salary cap room for younger and less expensive players. When economics and demographics outweigh on-the-field ability, the system is no longer based on merit and becomes unethical.

A second ethical problem surrounds the profit motive in pro sports when compared to the will to win. The year before Hobbs joined the Knights, Pop Fisher was forced to sell part of his shares in the team to the new majority shareholder, Judge Banner. In an effort to bring down the value of the team and force Pop to give up the rest of his shares, the Judge has forced a variety of profitable but uncompetitive transactions on the Knights. A 34-year-old left fielder may have been one more way to turn the Knights into a cellar-dweller in the standings, but Banner has not reckoned on Hobbs’s undiminished skills as a player. Again, this parallels modern pro baseball, where the Florida Marlins twice dismantled their roster after winning World Series in 1997 and 2003; and a generation before, the Oakland Athletics did the same thing in 1975, after winning three straight World Series. Those were both decisions of making money rather than fielding a contending team. The New York Yankees under George Steinbrenner look like an aberration because they’ll pay what it costs to put the best possible team on the field. The third and largest ethical problem in the novel is players on the take, accepting payoffs to throw games—hearkening to real-life and the infamous Chicago “Black Sox” scandal of 1919, when several White Sox players conspired to lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. To keep the Knights down, Banner has made deals with several key players such as outfielder Bump Bailey and pitcher Al Fowler to make errors or strike out at key moments to assure the team will not win a championship. Prior to a deciding game against the Pirates, the judge offers Hobbs $25,000 to throw the game. Hobbs negotiates a deal for guaranteed future money, too, as he needs wealth to keep one of his love interests in the style to which she has become accustomed. However, in the course of the game, Hobbs realizes he must do the right thing and comes up at a key point late in the game. Unfortunately, like Mighty Casey, he strikes out. The next day, the newspapers print the rumor that Hobbs was throwing the game, never knowing that he did try to redeem himself but failed. In real life, a child is said to have come up to Shoeless Joe Jackson, the greatest player on the

730â•…â•… Malamud, Bernard scandalous Sox, banned from baseball and the Hall of Fame, and asked the player “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” At the end of “The Natural,” a child echoes that, asking Hobbs, “Say it ain’t true, Roy.” In a modern era when sports are rocked by continuing scandals, the ethical questions raised by this novel are still relevant. Ronald C. Thomas, Jr.

Gender in The Natural

It might seem that a baseball novel should draw its influences from masculinity, replete with images of horsehide balls, bats hewn from tall trees, and muscled men striving on fields of grass and clay. However, the drama in Bernard Malamud’s classic The Natural is driven by the central character Roy Hobbs’s relationships with women, much more so than by his actions on the diamond. At age 19, Hobbs is a baseball prodigy on his way to a tryout with the Chicago Cubs in the golden era of American sports, the 1920s. On the train, a lovely but mysterious woman named Harriet Bird strikes up a conversation with Hobbs. She probes to find out more about him; flattered by the attention, Hobbs announces his intention to be recognized as the greatest ballplayer who ever lived. Later, Bird contacts Hobbs and lets him know that she is staying in the same hotel. Bird invites Hobbs to come up for a rendezvous and he is eager to collect on the first of many such assignations that he feels his athletic ability and fame should bring him. However, she pulls out a pistol and shoots him. Unbeknownst to him, she is a serial killer who is “collecting” top athletes by luring them sexually and then shooting them. Here, Malamud presents Roy’s career as having been destroyed by a woman, a sexual predator. The novel fast-forwards to 16 years later when a middle-aged Roy Hobbs appears with a contract in hand to play for the fictitious New York Knights. Hobbs is successful with the Knights, until he becomes involved with the treacherous Memo Paris, girlfriend to his teammate, Bump Bailey. When Bailey dies in a collision with the outfield wall, she becomes available. Placing his sexual needs ahead of his game, Hobbs finally achieves his goal of cashing in on his talent and begins a torrid affair with Memo Paris. However, the long nights and high living take a toll on his performance in the batters’

box. Benched for his poor performance, Hobbs finds Memo has turned cold on him, too. An opportunity for salvation appears in the bottom of the ninth against the Chicago Cubs. The Knights are losing and the manager turns to Hobbs as a pinch hitter. Taking two quick strikes, Hobbs notices that, out of all the fans in the stands, one woman in a red dress stands when he is at the plate. He wonders if that one woman could be doing that because she believes in him. Strengthened by that thought, he lashes out for the game winning hit. The lady in red, Iris Lemon, meets Hobbs outside the ball park, and he opens up to her about his bad luck with bad women, even telling about how Harriet Bird shot him. In this intimacy, she reveals that she has also had rough luck in life, as an unwed mother, now a grandmother. Taken aback momentarily, he still makes love to her by Lake Michigan, thinking that if he captures her “sexual magic” he will also recapture his “baseball magic.” However, the idea of dating someone’s grandmother forces Iris out of his mind and he seeks to resume his pursuit of Memo, whose devotion to wealth and the “good life” is becoming increasingly apparent. When Hobbs is offered money to “fix” future games, he takes it, thinking that this will solidify his relationship with Memo. Memo covers him with kisses and gratitude for selling out and Hobbs is racked with guilt. In the playoff game, Hobbs makes good on his agreement not to help the Knights win. In his first times at bat, he strikes out weakly. However, late in the game, he is heckled by a fan and the stinging remarks get under his skin. Not without his skills, Hobbs figures there’s nothing wrong with trying to line a foul ball off the heckler’s head. After missing with one attempt, Hobbs drills another powerful shot at the heckler, who ducks, and the sizzling baseball strikes a woman in the head. It is Iris, who has come to support Hobbs at this crucial time. The game is suspended long enough for Hobbs to rush to Iris’s side. As she is taken away to be x-rayed, she exhorts Hobbs to win, not just for her but for the baby she is carrying, their child, conceived the night she broke him out of his slump. In the at bat, he strikes out but still has one more chance left in the ninth inning. He is determined

The Naturalâ•…â•… 731 now to get three good swings, to give his best. However, his best is not good enough and he goes down on strikes to lose the game. As he was leaving the ballpark, the first rumors of his having been in on throwing the game (just like the real Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Chicago White Sox had done) were coming out. Even though he had tried to win in the end, he could never overcome the truth. Ronald C. Thomas, Jr.

Heroism in The Natural

If we think of heroes as those who sacrifice themselves for some greater good, Bernard Malamud’s classic novel The Natural is not a very heroic tale. Although there are heroic allusions and undertones, it is the tale of a middle-aged baseball player trying to recapture the lost glory of an interrupted career. The protagonist of the piece, Roy Hobbs, is no heroic righter-of-wrongs; he is a gifted athlete who wants to make his mark as the greatest baseball player of all time. The term “sports hero” is really a non sequitur and sports star or idol is a more appropriate usage. Still, Hobbs’s story is set in the Golden Era of American sports, the pre–World War II period that produced iconic figures such as Jack Dempsey, Red Grange, and Babe Ruth. The Babe even makes a fictionalized cameo appearance in The Natural under the nickname of the Whammer. As a young man, Hobbs is on his way from Oregon to New York for a big league baseball tryout and is riding on the same train as the Whammer. At a train stop, there is a spontaneous event where Hobbs pitches to the Whammer before a crowd of onlookers in a field by the train tracks. Just like Casey batting in the classic poem, the Whammer strikes out. Once back aboard the train, Hobbs is approached by a beautiful woman, Harriet Bird, who observed the impromptu confrontation. She speaks to him of Homer’s epics and Lancelot, with an extra irony being that Hobbs is headed for the fictional New York “Knights” baseball club. This imagery will return later in the novel. Hobbs is unfamiliar with literature but he proclaims his intention to surpass the Whammer and be known as the greatest ballplayer who ever

lived. This remark also connotes the real-life sports legend, Hall of Famer Ted Williams, who wanted people to say when he passed “there goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.” Williams attained many records in baseball and likely would have earned more if he had not done tours of duty as a Marine Corps fighter pilot in both World War II and Korea. Williams’s biographers often stated that he was the real-life version of movie hero John Wayne. Halfway across the country, Hobbs’s train stops in Chicago, and Bird invites him up to her hotel room. Instead of the tryst he is expecting, Hobbs is cut down by a silver bullet fired from Bird’s .22 pistol. The silver bullet has ties to heroic legend, as well, through the Lone Ranger and its use against werewolves. In Hobbs’s case, the stomach wound ends his hopes of a baseball tryout. Elsewhere in the novel, it is established that Bird has been gunning down other great athletes, such as an Olympian and an All-American football player. As an obsessive fan, her psychosis leads her to attempt to “possess” these great athletes for all time through her shootings. An additional heroic theme employed in The Natural is found in Roy Hobbs’s trombone case. Inside this piece of luggage is “Wonderboy,” the baseball bat he fashioned himself from a tree struck by lightning. Just like King Arthur’s sword Excalibur or Thor’s hammer Mjolnir, Wonderboy is an undefeatable weapon in Hobbs’s hands. Mythic heroes are often identified with their weapons, such as David’s sling, Wyatt Earp’s Buntline special, or Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber. For Roy Hobbs to have the same iconic status, he must also have such a weapon, and his bat fits the bill. After years away from the game due to his injuries, Hobbs finally arrives at the New York Knights with bat in hand, as well as a contract. However, his arrival is not like Aragorn’s return of the king in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Hobbs is not here to rescue the struggling team; in fact, he is there because the team’s owner wants to sabotage the club for financial reasons. Saddling the team with an over-the-hill rookie is one of many underhanded tactics employed. So, Hobbs is no savior and is not readily accepted until he finally gets into the lineup and shows what he can do. As he becomes a recognized star, the team even adopts the lightning bolt

732â•…â•… Marlowe, Christopher logo from Hobbs’s bat into a patch they wear on their sleeves. Baseball players can be a superstitious lot and the bolt symbol becomes a good luck charm. At the peak of his abilities, Hobbs begins an affair with Memo Paris, a noted gambler’s girlfriend. Even the name Paris evokes the Trojan War hero and rival of Achilles. As Hobbs enjoys the romance, his playing skills suffer, and he enters a protracted batting slump. Just as Samson was laid low by Delilah (and Hobbs himself was done in earlier by Harriet Bird), a woman proves his undoing. In Hobbs’s myth, he also endures temptation. The club’s owner, the gambler, and Paris, all pressure him to throw a championship game for money. The lure of easy money and lust for a woman turn him from his heart’s desire to be known as the greatest player ever. At the end of the novel, he has a chance for redemption in the climactic game. In his final at bat, he realizes that he cannot compromise himself any further. Unlike the spectacular home run so wellknown from the film version, Hobbs strikes out in the novel. The rumors of his having been involved in a potential fix of the game leak to the papers. Just as the real-life Shoeless Joe Jackson was immortalized in infamy by the child’s phrase, “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” Hobbs is also made into a tragic antihero with the remark “Say it ain’t true, Roy.” Ronald C. Thomas, Jr.

Marlowe, Christopherâ•… Doctor Faustusâ•… (1592)

Doctor Faustus, undoubtedly Marlowe’s best-known play, is the story of a brilliant man who sells his soul to the devil. In return for an eternity in hell, Mephistopheles, the devil’s right-hand man, agrees to serve him for 24 years. Although the story was already familiar from European folklore and a recently translated German work, Marlowe’s version is the earliest known dramatization. Written in 1591 and performed the following year, Doctor Faustus was not published until 1604, 11 years after Marlowe’s untimely death. Full of devils, fools, and magic tricks, the play demonstrates Marlowe’s mastery of stage spectacle as well as the powerful verse and imagery that made him a rival to Shakespeare.

The success of Marlowe’s version may have been due in part to the fact that England had been undergoing religious turmoil for more than 50 years, and Faustus questions many of the same religious doctrines that had been under attack since the start of the Reformation. In addition, the expanding middle class in England was experiencing a period of great prosperity and opportunity in which a talented man like Faustus—or like Marlowe himself—could realistically hope to move up in the world. Additionally, the playwright’s reputation intrigued the public; he was under investigation for atheism when he was stabbed in a tavern quarrel, and speculation continues that his work as a government spy or counterspy led to his murder. Doctor Faustus addresses the themes of ambition, religion, pride, and education, themes as relevant today as they were in late 16th-century London. Deborah Montouri

Ambition in Doctor Faustus

In the prologue to Doctor Faustus, Marlowe clearly announces ambition as a major theme. The chorus tells us that the play will focus on Faustus’s fortunes and, using a familiar allusion, likens him to Icarus, a mythological youth who stole the wax wings his father devised but made the mistake of flying too close to the sun; the wings melted and Icarus fell to his death. The figure of Icarus has long been used to represent overreaching ambition, a fault revealed in Faustus’s first soliloquy. Considering his occupational choices, he reviews and rejects medicine, the law, and divinity because none can bring him the power and lasting fame that he desires. While a physician may earn wealth and fame for his cures, ultimately, Faustus argues, he cannot make men live forever. He reduces a lawyer’s work to mere drudgery and finds divinity useless, as all men must sin, die, and be eternally damned. It is not surprising that Faustus, believing that “A sound magician is a mighty god,” settles on black magic, for who but a god has the ultimate power over life and death? Before Faustus sells his soul to the devil and secures the services of Mephistopheles, his ambitions—aside from pleasing his own craving for wealth, exotic foods, and beautiful women—are relatively noble. He expresses nationalism and a

Doctor Faustusâ•…â•… 733 desire to share his good fortune in plans to build a protective brass wall around Germany, drive the invading prince of Parma from the provinces, pay the soldiers fairly, and provide the scholars with silk garments. But his ambitions soon become even more godlike as he imagines reshaping the physical world itself, pulling the continent of Africa to meet with Spain. Additionally, Faustus would restructure the hierarchy of power by making all the earth’s rulers subservient to his will. Once he has signed over his soul to the devil, Faustus’s fine ambitions rapidly decline into parlor tricks and vengeful pranks: making Alexander the Great and Helen of Troy appear, fetching out-of season grapes for the duke of Vanholt’s pregnant wife, tossing about platters and goblets at the pope’s feast and boxing him on the ear, setting antlers on a disdainful knight’s forehead, selling a horse that will turn into a bale of hay when ridden into water, and sending devils to torment an old man whose only offense was begging Faustus to repent and ask for God’s mercy. In the end, none of these acts will benefit mankind or bring Faustus the eternal fame he craves. Through the characters of Wagner, Robin, and Rafe, Marlowe subtly mocks Faustus’s lofty ambitions. Wagner, Faustus’s servant, observes the results of Faustus’s study of magic and determines to gain a measure of power for himself. As Faustus binds Mephistopheles to serve him for 24 years, Wagner proposes that Robin serve him for seven; when money cannot persuade him, Wagner calls up two devils. Although frightened, Robin proposes that he will accept the position if Wagner will teach him, too, how to raise up devils. Instead, he is offered the ability to turn himself into any creature—a parallel to Faustus’s request that he may be invisible at will. Immediately, he imagines turning himself into a flea that can crawl into women’s most private places. Later, Robin steals one of the conjuring books for the purposes of setting the parish maidens to dance naked before him and getting his master’s wife to sleep with him. Like Wagner, Robin desires a servant, and he persuades young Rafe to serve him by promising him sex with the kitchen maid. Robin and Rafe’s ambitions seem comical in comparison to Faustus’s; however, Faustus’s objectives, though

stated in loftier language, are similar. One of the first requests he makes of Mephistopheles is for a wife, but he is content with a devil in the shape of a “hot whore,” and his last request is to have Helen of Troy for his mistress. By drawing parallels between these fools’ fleshly ambitions and those of Faustus, Marlowe demonstrates that, despite his supposed superiority, he is driven by the appetites and sins common to all men. Marlowe may have intended Doctor Faustus to be a warning to the ambitious self-made man so prominent in early-modern London society—a contradiction, perhaps, considering the playwright’s own ambitions and his reputation as a scoundrel, blasphemer, and man of questionable appetites. Ironically, Marlowe is best remembered for this creation of a character whose excessive ambition led him onto the path of self-destruction. Deborah Montouri

Pride in Doctor Faustus

As the prologue tells us, Faustus is a man of exceptional talents and intellect. Coming from humble beginnings, he earned a place in the university, where he excelled in argument and was awarded a doctorate in theology. He has learned that any theory, true or false, can be defended using the principles of logic and the power of language. His skill in debate, however, combined with his confidence in his own mind, results in an exaggerated pride, or hubris, that brings about his fall. We first encounter Faustus as he considers the various professions that he might pursue. But what appears to be an exploration is really a one-sided debate in defense of the path he has already chosen: magic and the occult. While Faustus admits that doctors can earn gold and fame, he rejects the occupation because the dead cannot be brought back to life, ignoring the satisfaction to be gained through lessening others’ suffering. Similarly, he scratches the legal profession off his list because he views lawyers as mere servants hired to make money for others through loopholes and technicalities. Finally, he casts off divinity because it cannot prevent men from sin, death, and damnation, but it is his deliberate partial reading of the Scriptures that allows him to ignore the possibility of salvation and eternal life.

734â•…â•… Marlowe, Christopher To put it simply, because of his pride, Faustus seeks only a profession that will make him “a mighty god,” not a useful human being, and that profession, he believes, is sorcery. When Faustus tells Valdes and Cornelius that he will follow their profession, he claims that, rather than their words, it was his own imagination that persuaded him—yet another example of his pride. He believes that his superior skill in magic has conjured up Mephistopheles, but the devil tells him that he comes whenever anyone abuses the Scriptures, God, or Christ. This point is reinforced when Wagner, Faustus’s servant, and Robin, a foolish stable boy, also conjure up devils, proving that the intellect of which Faustus is so proud has nothing to do with his success. There is little doubt that Faustus’s pride in his own mind leads to his damnation. In his first conversation with Mephistopheles, Faustus asks how Lucifer, once God’s favorite angel, became the prince of devils. The answer should serve as a warning: “O, by aspiring pride and insolence, / For which God threw him from the face of heaven” (1.4). Yet Faustus scoffs at this and other warnings throughout the play, which his reason cannot accept. When contemplating the power he will gain through his bargain with the devil, Faustus devises a plan to improve upon God’s creation by moving the continents and oceans. Believing that he can correct God’s “mistake” is a demonstration of extreme but wrongheaded pride in his own brilliance. Ironically, despite this pride in the superiority of his mind, the play depicts Faustus as a man strongly tied to his body and easily seduced by his physical senses. His language is infused with words suggesting sensuality, and in one insightful moment he observes of himself, “The god thou servest is thine own appetite” (2.1). Lucifer and Mephistopheles soon learn that, whenever Faustus considers calling on God to forgive him, he can be easily diverted with threats of physical pain or offers of sensual pleasure. In one such scene, Lucifer first threatens to command a team of devils to tear him limb from limb and then calls up an amusing pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins—significantly led by Pride. Faustus’s greatest displays of pride occur in his moments of doubt, when he contemplates the seri-

ousness of damnation and the possibility of gaining God’s pardon. Inevitably, he concludes that his sins are so great that they are unforgivable. He brushes aside the Good Angel’s advice and repays an old man who encourages him to repent by sending devils to torment his body. At his last supper, his scholarly friends also beg him to ask forgiveness, but he replies that his sin can never be pardoned. In his last soliloquy, he seems about to repent, but instead of simply asking pardon, Faustus attempts to strike a bargain with God similar to that he made with Lucifer: to serve a term in hell if he will be promised heaven in the end. Ultimately, he is damned because his pride will not allow him to believe that the promise of Christ’s sacrifice—forgiveness of sins and eternal life for those who believe—is his for the asking. Deborah Montouri

Religion in Doctor Faustus

When Christopher Marlowe wrote Doctor Faustus, England was still reeling from decades of religious turmoil, and intolerance for those whose beliefs diverged from the Church of England was still the rule. Henry VIII had broken with the Roman Catholic Church in 1533, declaring himself the head of the new state religion, closing abbeys and monasteries and confiscating church property. His son, Edward VI, continued these reforms, but when Mary I became queen in 1553, she forcibly returned England to the Catholic fold, making Protestant martyrs of nearly 300 subjects who refused to abandon their faith. When Elizabeth I, who ruled when the play was written, reinstated the Anglican Church in 1557, she promised tolerance for dissenters, but all subjects were expected to outwardly conform. Repeated Catholic plots to overthrow or assassinate her led to greater restrictions. Quakers, Methodists, Lutherans, and those of other Protestant sects were also expected to conform, and anyone who spread dissenting doctrines was liable to be charged with heresy. Blasphemy and atheism, for which Marlowe himself was being investigated at the time of his death, were also considered crimes against both church and state. In this context, Doctor Faustus can be read as propaganda for the Anglican Church—a warning

Brown Girl, Brownstonesâ•…â•… 735 against false doctrines and independent thought. In the opening scene, when Faustus ponders his choice of occupations, he casts aside divinity, using Scripture as evidence for its ineffectiveness. The problem, however, is that he takes verses out of context and therefore misinterprets the text. “The reward of sin is death,” he reads, ignoring the conclusion, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (1.1). By determining first his own beliefs and then interpreting the Bible to fit them, Faustus represents the official view of the new Protestant sects and the danger in allowing ordinary persons to interpret the Scriptures independently. Although Faustus believes that his conjuring has called up Mephistopheles, he is informed that the devil always comes of his own accord whenever he hears the Scriptures, God, or Christ abused. The play is blatantly anti-Catholic as well. Faustus commands Mephistopheles to exchange his devil’s appearance for that of a Franciscan friar, for “that holy shape becomes a devil best” (1.3). In the third act, Faustus and Mephistopheles create havoc at the pope’s banquet, tossing about platters of food, boxing the pope on the ear, and beating the friars who curse him. This not only mocks the gluttony of the cardinals but suggests that the rituals of the church—the pope crossing himself for protection, the friars’ chanted curse—are ineffectual. Faustus relies on his intellect to convince himself to sell his soul to the devil, even when the most obvious evidence should warn him against it. Mephistopheles tells him directly not to proceed, warning from his own experience that once one is separated from God, hell is everywhere. But Faustus insists that hell is a fable. In a mockery of Christ’s “contract” with God the Father (dying for the sins of mankind), Faustus is required to sign the devil’s contract with his own blood. The blood, however, congeals; although Faustus rightly interprets this as a warning, he completes his signature and blasphemously declares, “Consummatum est”—“It is finished,” the last words of Christ on the cross. Immediately, he sees an inscription on his arm warning him to flee, but Mephistopheles distracts him with gold coins and dancing devils. At several points throughout the play, Faustus doubts the wisdom of his decision and struggles

with his conscience. His Good Angel advises him to cast off the devil and call upon God for mercy, but his Bad Angel easily convinces him that the power he has gained is worth any price and that his sins are too great for God to forgive. As the end of the contract nears, an old man attempts to persuade Faustus to repent but, instead of praying for mercy, he asks for time to think. When Mephistopheles arrives, threatening to tear him to pieces for his disobedience, Faustus asks Lucifer’s pardon and bids the devils to torment the old man. Mephistopheles replies that although his faith will protect his soul, they will inflict what pain they can upon his body, “which is worth but little.” Again, Faustus misses the point: that physical pain is temporary but the soul is eternal. In a final soliloquy, Faustus seems to understand what lies ahead. He wavers between calling on Christ and begging Lucifer’s forgiveness, but the play ends as he is carried away by devils. Deborah Montouri

Marshall, Pauleâ•… Brown Girl, Brownstonesâ•… (1959)

Like Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn published 16 years earlier, Brown Girl, Brownstones is an autobiographical künstlerroman, focusing on a girl growing up in Brooklyn, New York. Paule Marshall’s heroine, Selina Boyce, is a black daughter of Barbadian immigrants. By adding the dimension of race, Marshall expands the scope of the conventional coming-of-age narrative; by focusing on West Indians, she complicates the exploration of the American dream; and by examining a girl’s efforts to negotiate gender and sexuality, she contributes to the growing canon of feminist literary texts. Brown Girl, Brownstones is written in lush, highly figurative prose. Marshall freely uses dialect to capture the accents and idioms of her Baja (the colloquial name for Barbadians) characters. Set just before, during, and immediately after World War II, the novel uses the war as a backdrop to intensify its exploration of numerous conflicts: black versus white, rich versus poor, immigrant versus native, male versus female, realist versus idealist. Within Selina’s family, a war rages between her mother and father—the mother grounded in a pragmatic effort

736â•…â•… Marshall, Paule to thrive in Brooklyn, the father lost in a dream of Caribbean grandeur. The mother triumphs, but only at the cost of being called “Hitler” by her daughter. At the conclusion of Brown Girl, Brownstones, Selina embarks for the West Indies. Unlike Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, who goes off to the Midwest to claim an education, Selina, unable to find herself reflected in “America,” chooses to embrace her Afro-Caribbean roots in order to establish a firm foundation for her own future and resolve the conflicts that have marked her childhood. Joyce Zonana

Coming of Age in Brown Girl, Brownstones

At the beginning of Paule Marshall’s debut novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones, its heroine Selina Boyce is a lonely, awkward, bookish girl of 10; at its conclusion, she is a poised young woman of 20, a dancer and a writer, choosing to pursue her vague yet pressing dream of “love, a clearer vision, a place.” Selina, like so many characters in coming-of-age novels, leaves family and friends and familiar territory to chart an unknown path in her quest for an authentic life. Selina’s coming-of-age is fraught with difficulty: She must find her way as a female, as an immigrant, as a person of African descent, and—most acutely— as someone who has grown up in a household ripped apart by conflict. As she matures, she must find a way to integrate her identities and come to terms with the competing claims on her allegiance. What kind of woman will she be? What kind of Bajan? What kind of black? What kind, ultimately, of an adult? In the book’s opening scene, Selina, on the verge of adolescence, is a “neuter” figure with no clear gender identity and little self-esteem. Possessed by a sudden desire to “declare herself ” to the world, she bursts into her sister’s room, only to be rebuked by the older girl who is ostentatiously “sick” with her menstrual period. Not much later, Selina becomes aware of her best friend’s small breasts and the fact that she bleeds every month “from below.” Feeling trapped in her “hard flat body,” Selina becomes jealous of the other girls, seemingly “joined against her in their cult of blood and breasts.” But soon enough she herself matures physically; by 15 she has breasts of her own and—after a homoerotic interlude with

her best friend—has begun to long for intimacy with a boy. Yet physical maturation is not the same as “coming of age.” Many more things must happen before Selina can claim her womanhood. Even choosing to have a passionate illicit affair with a young Bajan artist does not confer that status on her; it is, in the end, her decision to leave her lover and to articulate her own moral vision that marks her initiation into adulthood. One of the central difficulties Selina faces as she matures is the question of which parent with whom to identify: “the mother,” Silla, or her father, Deighton. Silla is a hard-working, bitterly pragmatic woman, “the collective voice of all the Bajan women, the vehicle through which their former suffering found utterance.” To Selina, she represents winter in the midst of summer; she imagines that the mother’s dark presence causes even the sun to give way. Deighton, Selina’s apparently more cheerful father, is ever the optimistic dreamer. Building sunlit castles in the air, he enchants Selina with visions of the white house with “tall white columns .  .  . like some temple or other” he plans to build on land he has inherited in Barbados. When Silla determines to wrest this land from Deighton, so that the family might “buy house” in Brooklyn, she does so at the cost of alienating her daughter, who clings fiercely to her doomed father. Selina identifies with her father in part because all the models of black womanhood available to her are flawed: the bitter mother, the carefree but ineffectual Suggie, the wounded Miss Thompson, the self-satisfied ‘Gatha Steed. Selina wants a life that will take her outside the realm of unremitting work, careless sensuality, long-suffering victimization, or bourgeois respectability; she does not see how she can have the freedom and authenticity she seeks without entirely rejecting the older women in her community. It is not until her devastating experience of humiliation by a wealthy white woman that she recognizes that she is “one with . . . the mother and the Bajan women, who had lived each day what she had come to know.” In this shattering moment, Selina embraces her blackness, her immigrantness, and her femaleness, realizing that she can integrate, rather

Brown Girl, Brownstonesâ•…â•… 737 than bifurcate, the ways of “the mother” and the father. Although she will not choose the path of her mother, she now has compassion for her. And with this compassion she is freed to shape an authentic adult identity that integrates masculine and feminine, dream and reality, vision and fact. No longer “neuter,” Selina is now an androgynous whole, an adult who will work to create a world in which the black, female, immigrant self can embrace—and be embraced by—all of life. Joyce Zonana

Race in Brown Girl, Brownstones

Race—or, more precisely, skin color—is an inescapable social marker in Brown Girl, Brownstones, profoundly affecting the lives of the novel’s Bajan protagonists. Having left Barbados to escape the ravages of colonialism, these descendants of African slaves are treated as “dark intruder[s],” or, even worse, “nonexistent” beings in the United States, where they hoped to find equal opportunity. Silla Boyce argues that “power is a thing that don really have nothing to do with color,” but her daughter Selina comes to believe that whites abuse blacks because they confuse dark skin “with what they feared most . . . the heart of darkness within them and all its horror and fascination.” The novel suggests that until all people learn to embrace the “darkness within,” even as they fight the “illusion” of surface racial difference, the ideology of white supremacy will “intrude” into “every corner” of black life, “tainting .  .  . small triumphs” and “exulting at . . . defeats.” Told almost entirely from the point of view of its central black characters, Brown Girl, Brownstones offers only occasional glimpses of what lies behind the inaccessible white faces that surround the Bajan immigrants. Early in the novel we hear from Maritze, a poor white woman who lives in the same brownstone as the Boyces: “foreign black scum,” she calls them, and we understand what the Bajans are up against. Later, a rich white woman condescends to Selina: “↜‘Oh, please say something in that delightful West Indian accent for us!’↜” she demands, and Selina recognizes that, to people like this, her “real face”—neither black nor white but human—can never emerge.

Both of Selina’s parents, Silla and Deighton Boyce, grew up in Barbados, where “the white man own everything.” Silla’s memories center around her people’s inability to make headway “no matter how hard you work.” For Deighton, the most devastating effect of white racism is his psychological humiliation: “utterly unmanned . . . before he was yet a man,” he cannot forget the white faces “that had always refused his request for a clerk’s job.” In New York, Silla, focused on “buying house,” can brush aside the insults of white children; but Deighton, still dreaming of “something big,” continues to be wounded by the demeaning treatment he receives. In the end a shattered man, he finds consolation only in the cult promises of “Father Peace,” a black preacher who claims to be “God Incarnate.” Selina, born in the United States, escapes colonial brutality, but she must still come to terms with racism. As a child, she watches whites flee the “dark sea” of West Indians moving into the neighborhood. She fantasizes about acquiring the “beauty and gentility” of the white family that had occupied her brownstone. But when she glimpses herself in a mirror, she sees that she is “a dark girl alone”; sure that she does not “belong here,” she imagines that she is “something vulgar in a holy place.” Thus we see that by the age of 10, she has internalized the white supremacist ideology that identifies white as good and black as bad, white as beautiful and black as ugly, white as genteel and black as vulgar. As she grows older, Selina maintains this internalized racism. She goes to college, becomes a bohemian artist, and tries to distance herself from what she sees as the vulgarity of the Bajan immigrants. Several incidents force her to reevaluate her stance. When she learns how Miss Thompson received the festering “life-sore” on her foot, Selina wants to “avenge the wrong.” As a young woman, Miss Thompson had been attacked by a “big red cracker with a shovel” who saw her as an “uppity nigger.” Miss Thompson urges Selina to join her “people” in the Association of Barbadian Homeowners and Businessmen, but Selina resists. She joins the association, but only to assert her superiority to it. Not until she is utterly humiliated by a white woman who reminds her that she is “only

738â•…â•… Marshall, Paule a nigger after all,” does Selina realize her oneness with Miss Thompson, with “the whores” and the “flashy men” on Fulton Street, and with “the mother and the Bajan women.” Selina at last embraces her blackness even as she pursues her dream of self-expression and fulfillment, working to undo— rather than internalize or deny—the ideology of white supremacy that has shaped her life and the lives of her people. Joyce Zonana

Sexuality/Sensuality/Eroticism in Brown Girl, Brownstones

Sexuality, sensuality, and eroticism play a central role in Brown Girl, Brownstones. In the third paragraph, the narrator invites readers to envision, behind the forbidding façades of the Brooklyn brownstones, “bodies crouched in the posture of love.” At the conclusion, when the central character, Selina Boyce, chooses to seek “the center of life,” we see her nipples growing hard as she walks down Fulton Street. Along the way, we encounter numerous scenes of sexual desire and its fulfillment or frustration, we witness at close hand Selina’s sexual initiation, and we are offered vivid descriptions of the lush Caribbean landscape that stirs the senses and opens its inhabitants to a full and free participation in life. Sexuality in Brown Girl, Brownstones is quite explicit. Most of the characters unabashedly embrace and act on their desires, and the narrator describes their action in graphic language: A woman’s body is “warm and impatient” as she she pulls her lover down “between her insistent thighs”; a man, after caressing a woman’s breasts, “burrow[s] his face into the warm oblivion of her stomach.” The action of the novel begins on a Saturday night, a time for “love in dark rooms.” Those who, like Selina’s mother Silla, are excluded from that “circle of love” feel “old and barren.” Yet the narrator shows that such exclusion stems from a choice: Silla, consumed by grief, resentment, and a hard determination to triumph over life, has closed herself to her own “burst[s] of passion.” The intense sexuality of the Bajan immigrants grows out of the sensuality associated with the sun, the landscape, the food, and the music of their island

life in Barbados. This life in and of nature is erotic as well; even in New York the natural world embodies a bursting energy identified with life itself. Thus, on a spring morning, the adolescent Selina senses the earth swollen with life and heaving in its blind act; she smelled the sad, sweet, fecund musk of birth. All over the ruined yard green tufts nudged toward the sun and their own brief life. New leaves craned in the wind. Aching, she thought of the lovers tonight in the pavilion and the silence that would seem loud with the sound of their mouths and hands. Earlier, in Prospect Park, she associates the sun, the growing grass, a woman’s menstrual blood, and the passion of young lovers. The strong sexual emphasis of the novel is embodied most fully in Suggie, a woman whose “domain” is “love, its rituals and its passions.” “↜‘You’re a summer woman,’↜” 10-year-old Selina tells her neighbor. Suggie spends each Saturday night carousing in her creaky bed; she has no steady man, yet she is defiantly indifferent to the gossip of her neighbors. Suggie’s voluptuousness is “so natural that it was innocent.” Her passion emerges directly from her continued identification with the Caribbean landscape. Even in Brooklyn, as she prepares a traditional meal of cuckoo—cornmeal, okra, and codfish—“she could see the yam patch . . . and the mango tree with its long leaves weighted down by the dusk, and beyond, all down the soft-sloping hills, a susurrant sea of sugar cane.” Suggie’s sexuality also emerges from music and dancing. She recalls her youth in Barbados: “Dancing—the music licking sweet—and sea-bathing” and “loving-up,” and she encourages Selina to follow her example. We will not be surprised or judgmental (like her mother) when Selina enters into a passionate affair at the age of 17 and becomes a dancer. Paule Marshall portrays sexuality as a redeeming, essential force, associated with freedom and full participation in life. Yet for the novel’s Bajan characters in Brooklyn it is also compensatory. The characters use sex as a means of escape from their difficult lives as disenfranchised, black-skinned,

All the Pretty Horsesâ•…â•… 739 poor immigrants in a hostile white world. Suggie’s passion-filled Saturday nights “nullify” her week of alienating housework; Deighton turns to his “concubine” to prove his manhood and forget his humiliations; even Selina’s young lover Clive seeks “to rid himself of his pain in her,” and Selina herself finds life “tolerable” because of him. The gloomy brownstones, and the racist society they embody, contain and inhibit a fully joyous, positive, free expression of eroticism. Thus at the conclusion of the novel, Selina turns her back on Brooklyn and is headed toward the sunlit landscape of Barbados, toward “love, a clearer vision,” and “the center of life,” choosing a sexuality that will not be so much an escape as a full embrace of life. Joyce Zonana

McCarthy, Cormacâ•… All the Pretty Horsesâ•… (1992)

The first novel in his Border trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is Cormac McCarthy’s tale of two Texan boys and their journey into Mexico. A National Book Award winner, the novel introduces readers to John Grady Cole, one of the main characters of the Border trilogy, and his quest to live a life of ardentheartedness in an age of increasing modernization and urban communities. Accompanying him on this quest is his friend Lacey Rawlins and a young boy they meet in Mexico named Jimmy Blevins. Primarily a coming of age story, All the Pretty Horses explores the experience of facing the world as it is rather than what you would have it to be. When John Grady’s mother inherits the family ranch and decides to sell it, John Grady leaves the Texas ranch with Rawlins to head to Mexico in search of a more rustic lifestyle and work as ranch hands. During their time in Mexico they witness the execution of a friend, spend time in prison, nearly die from prison fights, flee from Mexican authorities, fall in love, and abandon love. At its conclusion, the novel leaves John Grady disillusioned about his journey and the actions he took, and Rawlins content to live a new life in Texas. Cole’s story is completed in the final book of the trilogy, Cities of the Plain (1998). All the Pretty Horses explores the roles of nature, coming of age, and the power of

fate through the journey of John Grady Cole and Lacey Rawlins into a wilderness. Alan Noble

Coming of Age in All the Pretty Horses

When John Grady Cole and Lacey Rawlins head out to Mexico as young men, they leave to fulfill their desire for adventure and for a lifestyle generally forgotten in the United States. Their ideal life would be spent roaming the countryside and raising horses. As they pursue this romantic longing for a bygone era, they are confronted with forces that challenge their view of the world and people; through adapting to these challenges they mature. John Grady’s love for and inability to be with Alejandra, the murder of Blevins, and his own killing of the Mexican prisoner while in the penitentiary contribute to his maturing into manhood. Throughout the first hundred pages of All the Pretty Horses John Grady’s preoccupation is with horses, male companionship, and a rustic lifestyle. When Alejandra rides by him on her black horse, we are told that his world is altered forever in the space of a heartbeat. His world is altered in three senses. First, Alejandra becomes the first woman he truly loves. While John Grady had experienced infatuation before, it is not until he sees this beautiful young girl in Mexico that his desire for romance drives his actions. No longer can he be content merely with roaming through empty deserts or raising and training horses; he has experienced sexual attraction and his priorities must be changed. Second, his world is altered because until that point he had desired only things that could be obtained. Before this, his world was filled with things that were fundamentally controllable and uncomplicated: horses, cattle, and young men. But his love for Alejandra forces him to confront a world of pride, tradition, and culture, personified in Alejandra’s grand-aunt the Duena Alfonsa. In this world, his wishes are not enough to secure his desires. Although John Grady tries desperately to remain with Alejandra, he is ultimately unable to overcome her grand-aunt and father. When he is forced to acknowledge that he cannot be with her, he understands that “all his life led only to this moment and all after led nowhere at all.” Just as his idealistic

740â•…â•… McCarthy, Cormac view of love is challenged, Blevins’s execution alters his conception of human morality. When Blevins is unjustly executed by a corrupt Mexican police captain, John Grady and Rawlins are both deeply affected. The captain justifies his action by explaining that violence is the only way for a man to establish respect. The willingness of the captain to kill another person in order to retain his status as a feared man calls into question the boys’ naïve view of honor and justice. As Rawlins leaves Mexico to return home, he recalls Blevins’s execution. John Grady attempts to assure Rawlins that he will feel better when he returns home, but Rawlins disagrees, saying “I don’t think so.” The senselessness of Blevins’s death forces the boys to alter their view of human morality; both John Grady and Rawlins come to understand the horrible brutality of which humans are capable. In the penitentiary, John Grady’s courage and manliness are tested when he is forced to kill in self-defense. This event marks his final movement from an uninitiated, naïve boy, to a man willing to shed blood. Once imprisoned, Rawlins is badly hurt in a fight and is taken away by the prison guards. Alone in the penitentiary, John Grady goes to visit an influential convict named Perez in order to get information about his injured friend. Perez tells John Grady that the world wants to know if he is “brave.” Soon after this exchange, he is attacked by an assassin. Barely managing to survive, John Grady is forced to kill the assassin in self-defense. This test of skill and strength proves that he is a man, but at the cost of his conscience. Near the end of the novel he visits a judge and relates to him his feelings on having killed a person. Although he knows that he acted in self-defense, he continues to be bothered by the event. He proves to the world that he is brave, but the cost is too great. Although John Grady is awakened to the beauty of love and sex, he learns that no matter how ardent he is in his desire, there are some forces too great to overcome. The profound senselessness of Blevins’s execution alters both John Grady and Rawlins’s belief in the relative honor and morality of people. But perhaps the most drastic change in John Grady is his realization that courage is necessary to life, and yet often requires regrettable actions. John Grady’s

movement into adulthood is a painful process as he learns the futility of passion, the brutality of humans, and the tremendous cost of bravery. Alan Noble

Fate in All the Pretty Horses

One of the central issues McCarthy engages in All the Pretty Horses is whether or not humans have free will to act in the world. These issues are primarily worked out through the character Jimmy Blevins. Early in the novel, Jimmy Blevins is convinced that it is his fate to be killed by lightning if he is exposed to a storm. In the process of fleeing from the lightning, Blevins loses his horse and gun, setting in motion a series of events that culminate in his execution. Blevins fulfills the prophecy of his death in trying to circumvent it. Ultimately, however, McCarthy seems to imply that the person who actually controls the boy’s destiny is the Mexican captain who kills him. Blevins’s story focuses on the question of whether or not a person can escape his fate, and while Blevins manages to avoid being struck by lightning, the events that unfold as a result of the storm lead to his execution, suggesting that humans are incapable of freely choosing their fate. Soon after John Grady Cole and Lacey Rawlins meet the young Blevins, a storm brews. Blevins informs his companions that he must find shelter from the storm or else he’ll “be struck sure as the world.” He explains to Cole and Rawlins that his family has a long history of being struck by lightning, and thus it is his fate to suffer the same consequences if he remains exposed to the storm. Blevins hides from the lightning under the cover of a dead cottonwood. In the ensuing storm Blevins escapes without being struck by lightning, but his horse runs off, taking his gun with him. Because Blevins believed that it was his fate to be struck, he loses his horse and gun; in the process of regaining his possessions from the man who found them, he kills in self-defense. Although Mexico does not have the death penalty, a family member of the man Blevins killed makes arrangements with the police captain to execute him in order to protect his family’s honor. This family member cannot bring himself to kill the boy, so the police captain is compelled to execute Blevins to protect his own honor.

All the Pretty Horsesâ•…â•… 741 Blevins’s prophecy that he would be struck “sure as the world” is fulfilled in the novel in the sense that it is the lightning that causes him to make choices that lead to his death. Honor, family history, and a desire for justice confine Blevins’s actions to the choices that lead to his execution. He even tells us that he, “aint done nothin that nobody else wouldn’t of.” In this sense, Blevins’s life seems to have been controlled by some sort of fate; although he made decisions, he didn’t seem to have any real options. However, in a description of the police captain, we learn that it is he who actually has free will in the novel: “the captain inhabited another space and it was a space of his own election and outside the common world of men.” The space of his election is the position he holds as a police captain who can choose who lives and who dies. Cole and Rawlins come to view the police captain as a man whose life is outside of the control of fate because he is willing and able to take the lives of other people according to his own judgments; thus, he is outside the world of men, like Blevins, who are obligated to factors like family honor, justice, and ethics. From the story of Blevins it seems that the only person who is really free in the world is the person who is willing and able to kill others outside of any governance of justice, ethics, or morality. Blevins acts in accordance with his sense of justice, pursuing the items that belong to him and killing only in self-defense. The result of his actions is that his fate is controlled by others, like the police captain, who are willing to kill mercilessly. In All the Pretty Horses humans can have free will, but only if they are willing to take the lives of others into their own hands; otherwise their fates will be controlled by those who are willing to kill. Alan Noble

Nature in All the Pretty Horses

Since the novel is set primarily in the desert lands of Texas and Mexico, nature is central to both the plot and themes of All the Pretty Horses. When John Grady Cole and his friend Lacey Rawlins leave their homes in Texas to recover a more traditional lifestyle in Mexico, the natural landscape of the desert becomes the setting of their maturity. Before leaving, the boys are forced to recognize that a new

era is beginning in Texas, symbolized by the death of John Grady’s grandfather, owner of the family ranch where ranching and working closely with horses and cattle is no longer profitable. The desert and the people who dwell in it demand a vibrant will to survive from the boys, unlike the safe and settled lives they left in Texas. During their journey, they are forced to carry guns both to shoot game and to protect themselves, they are forced to ration their food and water, survive the elements, and they learn to discern between people who are friendly and those who might cause them harm. Nature, as symbolized by the desert, is a place where a person can test his or her will, a place where the desire to survive is tried against the powerful forces of the environment and man. There is a sense that the boys would be unable to mature into men if they remained in Texas where their courage would not be challenged. The desert landscape provides a place of testing that draws an essential passion to live from John Grady and Rawlins. This passion is also symbolized in the horses that populate the novel. Early in All the Pretty Horses, we are told that what John Grady “loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and heat of the blood that ran them.” Here, as throughout the novel, horses are used to symbolize unquenchable passion and natural beauty. The heat of a passionate and ardent life is reflected in the blood of both the horses and the men that ride them. John Grady believes that what defines a horse is its ability to live an untamed life in the wild. Several times John Grady dreams of beautiful, wild horses running through fields and mountains, unrestrained by man, given only to their own passion to run. This ardent lifestyle, which is symbolized in the horses, is shown to have negative effects as well. When John Grady and Rawlins go to work at Don Hector’s ranch in Mexico, John Grady’s greatest pleasure comes not from watching Don Hector’s horses roam wild on the mountains, but from breaking them so that they can be ridden. John Grady gains pleasure out of conforming the will of the horses to his own. At one point, John Grady whispers into a horse’s ear that he alone is the commander of the mares. While he is attracted to the unbridled spirit of nature he finds in wild horses, he also takes great pleasure in

742â•…â•… McCullers, Carson Â� taking Â�command of that wild spirit. Another way this ardent lifestyle is challenged in the text is when an older Mexican ranch hand tells John Grady and Rawlins that horses innately love war, just like men. The boys came to Mexico pursuing a romantic life of passion, something they believed existed in nature and the older traditions, which drew them to horses and ranching; however, they discover that such a lifestyle leads both to an exciting life and to violence and warfare. While the rest of Texas and America slips into settled lives and more modernized occupations, John Grady and Rawlins seek to return to a time where the wills of men were tested against nature. Their journey through the desert into Mexico tests their resolve and allows them to mature as men. The desert symbolizes the brutal forces of nature, which demand greatness from men. In addition, horses function as the primary symbol of nature in All the Pretty Horses, and their defining characteristic is their passionate wills. For John Grady, the beauty of a horse is found in its desire for freedom and its courage, qualities that he also admires in men. While he loves horses and admires their freedom, John Grady seems to be happiest when he is taming them. Thus, the wild passion of nature that both boys seek is something to be controlled and not admired from a distance. The boys also learn that the passionate will they attribute to a horse’s beauty is the same will that causes them to love war. In this sense, nature and the ardent will that defines it are not shown to be inherently good or peaceful, but rather are capable of producing violence and bloodshed as well as beauty and passion. Alan Noble

McCullers, Carsonâ•… The Heart Is a Lonely Hunterâ•… (1940)

In the years preceding the United States entry into World War II, the lonely residents of a small southern town attempt to understand each other despite social differences. Bereft of a close friend, who falls ill and goes to a hospital, the deaf mute John Singer becomes a customer at the local café, where several townspeople seek him out. The quiet owner of the all-night café, Biff Brannon, finds in Singer an

ideal listener to his philosophical observations of life, even as his own life seems to pass him by. Roy Blount, an itinerant labor organizer and alcoholic, finds sanctuary for a time at the café and comes to believe that Singer sympathizes with his obsession for socialist reform when the local workers fail to do so. Similarly estranged from his family and the black community by his beliefs in Marxist revolution, the aging doctor Copeland finds solace in Singer’s company. The young and artistic Mick Kelly believes that she has found in Singer a kindred soul with whom to share her passion for music, which she seeks out on solitary walks around town. While characters’ separate quests illustrate themes of American business, communism, socialism, and artistic expression, they do not find lasting fulfillment in Singer or in their failed attempts to understand each other. Singer himself silently mourns the absence of his sick friend while his visitors see him as a source of comfort. McCullers’s novel thus explores universal themes of community and individualism while grounding them in specific economic, political, and artistic movements of late1930s America. Tim Bryant

Alienation in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The friendship of the two mutes, Spiros Antonapoulos and John Singer, introduced in the opening pages of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, demonstrates the alienation one can experience even when not alone. Although very different, the two men are always together. The self-indulgent Antonapoulos steals food from his cousin’s shop and generally spends his days seeking his own physical comforts. In contrast, the attentive Singer is more aware of others’ needs, including those of his friend, whom he accompanies around their nameless southern town after leaving work at the silversmith. While Singer is more aware of others’ feelings and feels a great need to communicate his thoughts to his friend, Antonapoulos is uncommunicative in word and deed, never committing a selfless act on behalf of his friend or anyone else. Despite Singer’s deep need to communicate, it is doubtful that his friend understands him completely or even cares to do so. Thus, the psychological nature of their alienation from each other

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunterâ•…â•… 743 displays itself as the paradox of physical closeness but emotional distance. The repeated juxtaposition of physical proximity with emotional detachment highlights the novel’s theme of alienation as a consequence of one-sided communication and unequal relationships throughout the novel. After Antonapoulos’s cousin has him taken away to a sanitarium, Singer makes two changes in his life that cause him to become physically, if not emotionally, closer to several other people in town. Moving into the Kelly household as a boarder, he attracts the attention of the young girl Mick Kelly, who believes that he knows about music, her own passion, even though Singer is deaf. Second, Singer starts taking his three daily meals at the New York Café, where he attracts the attention of the owner, Biff Brannon, and one of his customers, Jake Blount. The two men separately visit Singer in his room at the Kellys’, where Brannon asks Singer philosophical questions and Blount drunkenly rails about political inequalities that consume his life. Each of these visitors is alienated from any sense of community and so seeks out Singer, who is also an outsider. Yet, alienation persists in these unequal relationships based on onesided communication. Singer listens, but gives little response to his visitors’ communications, ironically filling the role that Antonapoulos had filled for him. That is, while his visitors speak of their innermost thoughts and assume that he understands them perfectly, they do not really know what Singer is thinking. The act of communicating deeply personal thoughts leads to alienation, rather than relationship, in these similarly one-sided examples. The difficulty of resolving the problem of alienation is demonstrated by the scene in which several of Singer’s visitors arrive at his lodging all at the same time. Although they know each other from town, Mick, Biff, and Jake have nothing to say to each other and so leave Singer’s room when it is clear they cannot speak to him alone. Another of Singer’s visitors, Dr. Copeland, demonstrates this persistent alienation from society, where the individual finds himself unable to communicate personal beliefs and feelings to a wider group. As a father, Junius Copeland attempted early in life to teach his four children to be leaders of the African-American people. Instead, his passion for political and social

uplift has alienated him from his children, who fear his passionate outbursts about politics so much that they seldom visit him in his old age. As is the case with Singer’s other visitors, Copeland’s very passion about life is, paradoxically, what alienates him from others and prevents him from sharing that passion in a meaningful way. As indicated by the fact that Dr. Copeland names one of his children Karl Marx, there is a political dimension of alienation at play in the novel. As the historical Karl Marx argued, workers are alienated from a meaningful existence because they do not have control over their working lives. Mick’s passion for music subsides after she acquires a full-time job to support her family. Biff spends his days at the café, his life dominated by the cycle of his business, which never closes. Blount tries to rally local workers to unionize, but they laugh at him as an outsider. Copeland himself decides to leave town and spend his remaining days on the family farm, having exhausted himself in service to a people from whom his political consciousness has alienated him. In these various ways, characters come to be alienated from their communities, their aspirations, and their beliefs. Consequently, Singer does not become a figure around which the variously alienated characters overcome their loneliness, but rather the means by which the terms of isolation are defined. Although Biff cares for Mick, she avoids him, believing that he hates her. Blount and Copeland both obsess over political injustices and revolution, but they fail to discuss their ideas productively and part in anger. The ultimate consequence of this incurable alienation is Singer’s suicide near the novel’s end. McCullers’s novel affirms the strength of the human spirit, which can feel most passionately, but reminds the reader that the cost of such passionate insight is often loneliness and alienation. Tim Bryant

Love in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

As suggested by the title of McCullers’s novel, love is a solitary, difficult search for fulfillment. The cause of this difficulty is not that characters do not love, but that they feel love too strongly for objects they cannot obtain. Consequently, lonely characters suf-

744â•…â•… McCullers, Carson fer unrequited love for others who do not love them in return, incomprehensible love whose reasons cannot be grasped, and frustrated love for goals that cannot be accomplished alone. In their own ways, all are lovers and hunters for love. Examples of unrequited love begin with the two friends John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulos. As deaf mutes, the two men are prevented from communicating with a wider society, but find comfort in a loving friendship. However, the two do not really love the same things or on the same terms. Antonapoulos’s primary love is for physical comforts, such as rich food and drink, where Singer take his greatest joy in speaking to his friend after work. Antonapoulos often appears to care and understand little about what his friend tells him; nevertheless, Singer seeks his happiness in his friend. Thus, one friend’s love is almost inconsequential to the desires of the other. The owner of the New York Café, Biff Brannon, shares a less understandable love with his wife, Alice. Running the café 24 hours a day, the couple split 12-hour shifts and thus never see or talk with each other for more than a few minutes per day. Yet, Biff feels a deep love, which he cannot express in words, for the wife he never sees. When Alice dies, Biff feels that he is done with love and lacks a clear idea of what else is left for him to do with his life. He does not know what he seeks, but only that he is still searching for something to give his life meaning. Biff thus demonstrates the extreme example of a lover for whom the search is far stronger than the chance of finding a satisfying object to love. The young Bubber Kelly suffers from a similarly inexpressible and tragic love. Fascinated at the sight of the beautifully dolled-up Baby, Bubber pleads for the little girl to cross the street so that he can touch her hair. When she refuses, Bubber shoots her with his gun without understanding what he does. His desire to touch something beautiful, which causes him unconsciously to pull the trigger, thus ends in tragedy. He harms the object of his love as well as the innocence of his own life. Captured when he attempts to flee town, Bubber returns home lonely and mean, even less able than before to seek love or give it to others. The flawed attempt to express his

desires thus causes the young boy to be even more greatly set apart from finding love. The third kind of lonely love is that which sets an individual on a quest to improve the lot of others. The deeply flawed Roy Blount demonstrates this kind of love in his zeal to organize the workers and make socialist reforms for their benefit. When the local tradesmen reject Blount’s political activism, he continues to pursue his political theories in discussion with others. Chief among his desired audience is Dr. Copeland, whose own beliefs in Marxist revolution demonstrate his love for his family and the black community, at the same time distancing him from them because they do not agree with his politics. While the men’s love for social justice and reform give the two a reason to work together, they go their separate ways after disagreeing about particulars on how to proceed with real reforms. The search for the ideal, just world thus seems more important to these lovers of justice than accepting anything less. McCullers’s novel demonstrates that the lonely business of love can be unrequited, inexpressible, and frustrating. One of the few instances of reciprocated love is Mick’s love for her father. Mr. Kelly is himself a lonely man, the head of a poor family struggling to stay ahead financially and together emotionally. Yet, the love shared by father and daughter is one of the novel’s few instances of two lonely characters loving each other and recognizing in each other both love and loneliness. It is this mutual recognition of the nature of love that affirms the reasons why the lonely heart continues its hunt. Tim Bryant

Work in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Work can give purpose to life or stand as an obstacle to pursuing one’s true desires. The characters of McCullers’s novel face work’s dual potential for selfexpression and frustration. Workers’ lives are defined in part by their jobs, even as individuals try in a variety of ways to find purpose beyond their working lives. Work thus shapes identity both as a means of self-expression and as a limitation to what an individual can accomplish. The work that characters do expresses both their hidden desires as well as the circumstances that prevent them from fully realizing their hearts’ desires in life.

The Member of the Weddingâ•…â•… 745 The regularity of work shapes several characters’ lives for good and ill. Perhaps the most obvious example of lives dominated by work are those of Biff and Alice Brannon, who run the New York Café. Since their business stays open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the Brannons never see each other except for a few minutes each day when one goes to bed and the other awakens to start a 12-hour shift. Although the two share a life of constant work, the actual organization of that work keeps them apart. Ironically, their permanent state of living close but separate lives gives the rest of the town a place to go at any hour and not be alone. The Brannons’ shared work ethic to keep their business open all hours defines their married life as one of separation, in which only a few passing moments are not governed by the demands of work. Difference in work ethics can also demonstrate a distance between characters who might otherwise seem close. John Singer and his friend Antonapoulos demonstrate a profound difference in work ethics. Singer’s job as a silver-engraver requires delicacy and concentration, while Antonapoulos, who helps at his brother’s grocery, is an unreliable worker who is known to steal from the store more often than doing any real work. Antonapoulos shows a similar laziness in his friendship with Singer, barely paying attention to his friends’ stories, but Singer still derives great satisfaction from the friendship. The friends’ behaviors on and off work are thus consistent in themselves, but unequal to each other. Nevertheless, this pair of workers makes a working, if not healthy, friendship for a time. Dr. Copeland is extremely self-conscious about his work, including his position as a doctor in the black community and, what he considers his true work, leading his people to greater freedom through political self-awareness. However, Copeland’s self-appointed mission to preach Marxist revolution, and so expand his work to include curing social and economic ills, is unsuccessful because his beliefs distance him from his community, even his own family. His grown children spend their money, earned at work, on commercial products and dances, which Copeland considers wasteful and detrimental to true freedom of the mind. The doctor’s own definition of meaningful work as political and serious

thus conflicts with the ideas of the community he wishes to lead. Because Copeland’s definition of meaningful work goes beyond what his community will accept from him as a doctor, he considers himself a failure in his true life’s work. More than any other character, Roy Blount desires to change society’s definition of meaningful work and reorganize the relationship of work in the lives of the people. As an itinerant worker and socialist, Blount travels from town to town, working odd jobs, as he attempts to organize workers into labor unions. However, Blount’s altruistic goal to improve the lives of his fellow workers fails because his political views, like Copeland’s, differ greatly from the community of workers, who grow hostile to him and his ideas. Blount loses both his ability to work, when he is fired for being a trouble-maker, and his ability to help workers because their ideas about work are too different from his own. His drunken talk about workers’ rights is an attempt to work out his vision of just working conditions, which never come to fruition. Mick Kelly’s father represents a more modest worker who holds few hopes of changing the circumstances of, or future prospects for, better work. As the head of a poor family that survives more from rent paid by boarders than from wages, the figure of Mr. Kelly is a small but effective reminder that work was and is, for many Americans, more often about economic survival than self-expression. The fact that Mick eventually goes to work to support the family, trading her dreams of a musical education for a meager paycheck, shows the less fulfilling reality of working life, which places individuals’ deepest desires against social and economic realities beyond their control. Tim Bryant

McCULLERS, CARSONâ•… The Member of the Weddingâ•… (1946)

Carson McCullers’s third novel, a small book with an unimposing title, mixes a commonplace event, a brother’s wedding, with a young girl’s journey into adolescence. It is the summer of 1944, the middle of World War II, in a small southern town, and the novel introduces and develops only three characters:

746â•…â•… McCullers, Carson Frances Addams, a gangly, androgynous, and motherless 12-year-old tomboy; her bespectacled and ethereal six-year-old cousin, John Henry West; and Berenice Sadie Brown, the Addams’s black cook, housekeeper, and caretaker. The novel is divided into three parts, each depicting a different day and a different leg in Frankie’s journey. Frankie’s father, a widower whose wife died giving birth to Frankie, appears only briefly. He is a jeweler, a shadow father preoccupied with his business and his own gray thoughts, who only absentmindedly engages with his child. This coming-of-age novel weaves itself around the wedding of Frankie’s older brother, Jarvis, a soldier who returns from duty in Alaska to marry Janice Evans from nearby Winter Hill. During the three days encompassed by the novel, McCullers presents us with the grander themes of abandonment, love, death, identity, sexuality, and innocence as seen, experienced, and interpreted through the eyes of Frankie Addams. While the effects of war and racial bigotry are never far from the surface of this novel, what concerns McCullers most is Frankie’s internal emotional struggle as she wrestles with her fantasies and fears, and grapples with who she is and what place she holds in the world. Connor Trebra

Abandonment in The Member of the Wedding

“It looks to me like everything has just walked off and left me.” These words, spoken by Frankie Addams, punctuate the repetitive conversations she has each evening with Berenice Sadie Brown, the Addams’s cook and caretaker, as they discuss the disappearance of Frankie’s tomcat Charles. Of all the complex themes found in McCullers’s novel, that of abandonment permeates the work, even to its ending. Frankie, her father, Berenice, and John Henry each undergo profound levels of loss that deeply affect their lives and drive their actions. Berenice Sadie Smith has lost four husbands. The first, Ludie Smith, whom she loved the deepest, died early in their marriage, and since that time she has searched for him in men who appear in her life trailing physical reminders of him—his coat, his hands. These subsequent marriages have ended badly, with men who break their vows, commit vio-

lence, and lose themselves to alcohol. In addition, as a black woman, she has been abandoned by the dominant white society within which she lives. And she will leave the Addams family to marry yet again. However, when she does, the Addams family will themselves have left their home, and John Henry, too, will be gone. Royal Quincy Addams, Frankie’s father, is a widower who lost his wife during the birth of his daughter. As she watches him in the morning, Frankie notes that he appears as one who “has lost something, but forgotten what it is that he has lost.” He is a man who “deserved a little peace and quiet before he put his nose down to the grindstone.” A man who has “ears to hear with” but “[does] not listen.” Late in the evenings, Frankie hears him as he stumbles about his room, appearing the next morning with a face “pale as cheese” and eyes “pink and ragged,” who hates the sound of his own cup rattling against its saucer. This physical description suggests a man whose sleep is often disturbed and who may drink in order to medicate his feelings. He is a man whose “saggy-kneed grey trousers” and distracted air reflect an inner sadness and numbing confusion. In his struggle to dampen his own emotional pain by focusing intently on his work as a watchmaker, he has closed the door to the deeper needs of his daughter, and leaves her alone to struggle with her emotional challenges. John Henry is only six, yet there is something that suggests a lonely maturity, and there is a strange pensiveness, even aloofness, that hints at a sense of sorrow beyond his six years. His mother and father are never mentioned, and there is a sense that he has been forsaken. He depends on the love found in the Addams’s hot summer kitchen, in the caring of Berenice, and in the sometimes begrudging affection shown by his cousin Frankie. Frankie often comments on a sense of loneliness and fear that emanate from John Henry, and it is this perhaps more than blood relations that connects the cousins. Both are children whose place in the world seems tenuous; despite their age difference, they are drawn together in mutual support and commiseration. Frankie has been unintentionally abandoned, first by her mother and then by her father, who, while continuing to provide for her, seems to have

The Member of the Weddingâ•…â•… 747 emotionally left his only daughter. Similarly, the summer has intensified a sense of isolation and separateness for Frankie. Rejected by her female friends for her awkward tomboyish ways, and no longer completely content with the companionship she once found in John Henry and Berenice, her sense of loss is compounded by the abandonment of her brother who, through his engagement and impending marriage, chooses another woman over the sister who idolizes him. It is the sense of connectedness that drives Frankie throughout the book. Frankie becomes acutely aware of the loss associated with death; in addition to the death of Ludie Smith, she enumerates a formidable list of those who have passed on: her mother, her grandmother, the son of a family friend killed in Italy, a neighbor, Lon Baker, who is murdered in an alley, a shopkeeper, and a telephone company repairman. Conner Trebra

Coming of Age in The Member of the Wedding

It is early Friday evening, the endless dog-days of August 1944. In a summer suspended by waiting and uneventfulness, the revelations of the next three days will alter Frankie Addams’s life significantly. Frankie sits in her kitchen with Berenice Sadie Brown and John Henry West. She is bare-footed, wearing a BVD undervest and blue gym shorts, with brown, crusted elbows and wild hair grown out from an early summer crew-cut. She has become restless and discontent since the spring, noting an unnamable shift in her world. She is distressed by her significant physical growth. No longer able to pass comfortably through the shaded scuppernong grape vines, under which she and John Henry once sat escaping the oppressive heat, she fearfully calculates that by age 18 she will become a nine-foot-tall freak. Indulging in childish pastimes holds no interest for her; she rejects her role as the leader of the swimming pool diggers and no longer writes plays while sitting in the arbor. While too old to continue sleeping with her father, she is “too young and mean” to be included as a member of a club composed of slightly older girls. One moment she is lashing out at Berenice and John Henry, the next she is sitting in the black cook’s lap seeking comfort. Frankie is nearly 12

and five-sixths years old, teetering on the brink of maturity, and the maelstrom of feelings she experiences embody the space found between childhood and adolescence. Earlier, her brother Jarvis and his fiancée Janice stopped by on their way to Winter Hill where they are to be married that Sunday. Their visit invokes a nameless, squeezing feeling in her heart, and Frankie remarks aloud that the “world is a sudden place” and thinks of how it is always “fast, loose, and turning.” The wedding becomes an escape from the unpleasant endless monotony of her life, as well as a vehicle for her completion. She has found the “we of me.” By the end of the evening her desire and plans to join the couple in their marriage consolidate. Awakening Saturday morning, Frankie has changed her name to F. Jasmine; this reflects a decidedly more feminine and mature character and mirrors the “JA” of the engaged couple. Dressed in “her most grown and best,” F. Jasmine spends much of the day wandering the streets downtown, impulsively telling strangers about the wedding and her plans. On seedy Front Street, while chasing after the elusive organ music of the monkey-man, she meets a red-headed soldier, on leave and drunk. In his stupor, he mistakes Frankie for an older girl, which both titillates and frightens her, and asks her to meet him at the Blue Moon Hotel later that evening. During her last supper with Berenice and John Henry—she will not be returning after the wedding—she shares cigarettes and talk of love and philosophy with the black cook. It is as F. Jasmine that she commits what she fears is murder by hitting the red-headed soldier on the side of the head with a pitcher as he makes unwanted sexual advances toward her. On the day of the wedding F. Jasmine’s plans, to join the newly married couple in their life together, fail miserably. Dressed in an orange satin “grown woman’s evening dress” and silver shoes, F. Jasmine wishes only to be “known and recognized for her true self.” Yet the adults at the wedding continually refuse to see her as grown and insist upon calling her Frankie. However much passion she feels, in the final moments, F. Jasmine is unable to express her love and yearning to either her brother or his bride. As the couple makes their way to the car that

748â•…â•… McCullers, Carson will carry them to their honeymoon, and away from her forever, the child Frankie throws herself to the dusty ground begging them to “Take me, Take me.” Once back home, the grief-stricken Frankie steals her father’s pistol and wallet and runs away from home only to discover that she knows not where to go or how to get there. She is found by the Law at the Blue Moon where, by chance, she learns that the red-headed soldier is alive and well. As the novel closes, Berenice is moving on, John Henry is dead from meningitis, the Addamses are moving to the suburbs, and Frances emerges—“a child no longer,” mad about Michelangelo, her newest friend Mary Littlejohn, and perhaps her own unknown future. Connor Trebra

Community in The Member of the Wedding

Although the community in which Frances Addams lives remains unnamed, Carson McCullers’s novel teems with the names of places both near and distant. Frankie’s immediate world remains small, inhabited by the family’s cook and children’s companion Berenice Sadie Brown, her young cousin John Henry West, her father Royal, and a handful of Berenice’s friends and family. However, time and place foster a growing awareness of the world outside Frankie’s hometown. The omnipresent radio broadcasts heard in the Addams kitchen detailing the events of World War II thrust exotic places into the forefront of Frankie’s mind: “China, Peachville, New Zealand, Paris, Cincinnati, [and] Rome.” In addition, the impending marriage of brother Jarvis, previously stationed with the army in Alaska, to Janice Evans contributes to Frankie’s growing restlessness. The desire “to leave the town and go to some place far away” from the smells, sounds, places, and people Frankie knows so very well becomes irresistible. In The Member of the Wedding, Frankie Addams is at war with her feelings about the primacy of the familiar and the promise of the unknown. She feels both apart and separate from all around her: Yet, it is this small community and the people in it who support her in her greatest moment of crisis as she crosses the threshold between innocence and experience. To escape, Frankie constructs a fantasy: She will join her brother Jarvis and his bride Janice; the three

will “go into the world and . . . always be together” where she will be freed from familiar bonds and free to forge new ones. On the morning before the wedding, as the new F. Jasmine takes a final stroll through the familiar streets, we witness the bittersweet and complex relationship she has with her community. Yet, despite Berenice’s admonitions to the contrary, Frankie feels safe enough to walk these streets alone. Perhaps it is the influx of soldiers from the nearby army base, who fill the sidewalks with “glad, loud gangs” as they walk hand in hand with “grown girls,” which adds a flavor of adventure and danger. F. Jasmine knows the town intimately, from the glittering sidewalks and neatly striped awnings of the main street, to Front Street with its glaring cobbled brick surface, its pawnshop and “secondhand clothing store,” and warehouses, to the “grasslawned houses and the sad mill sections and colored Sugarville.” These landmarks are crushingly familiar with “the same brick stores, about four blocks of them, the big white bank, and in the distance the many-windowed cotton mill,” and Frankie feels as “free as a traveler who had never seen the town before.” Although the people Frankie meets are “mostly strangers to her,” they are also recognizable. With each passer-by, “[a]n old colored man, stiff and proud on his rattling wagon seat,  .  .  . a lady going into MacDougal’s store,  .  .  . a small man waiting for the bus  .  .  . a friend of her father’s called Tut Ryan,” Frankie feels “a new unnamable connection, as though they were known to each other.” She realizes that she wants these familiar faces “to know her,” and because it is easier to “convince strangers of the coming to pass of dearest wants,” she begins to compulsively reveal her plans to escape. It is this “thrill of speaking certain words—Jarvis and Janice, wedding and Winter Hill”—that compels her to enter the “neon glow” and darkness of the Blue Moon tavern and hotel catering to the soldiers from the nearby base. Although the people and sights Frankie encounters throughout the novel introduce an element of familiarity, it is not an entirely comfortable familiarity; there is always an element of distance in McCullers’s writing. Frankie recognizes houses, streets, shops, and individuals, nearly all of which afford

Lonesome Doveâ•…â•… 749 her an opportunity to reminisce about how the “old Frankie” interacted with them; still the members of the community, outside her family, remain nameless. There is the “street preacher, a known town character” (84), the “little crown of [Mexican] children” (73), the woman sweeping the front porch of a “lace-curtained boarding house” (74), the Portuguese bartender, the Law, and the redheaded soldier. Both the “old Frankie” and the new F. Jasmine desire visibility and connectedness to her community: to be known and embraced for who she is and who she will become. In order to do so she feels she must reject the known and look to the unfamiliar, the exotic, and the dangerous in order to establish a presence. Community is both a blessing and a curse. Connor Trebra

McMurtry, Larryâ•… Lonesome Doveâ•… (1985)

Originally published in 1985, Lonesome Dove won the Pulitzer Prize for author Larry McMurtry. The sprawling western also spawned additional books in the saga, Comanche Moon, Dead Man’s Walk, and Streets of Laredo, as well as a television mini-series and a syndicated spin-off series. It tells the story of the first great cattle drive from Texas to Montana, led by two former Texas Ranger captains, Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae. Call is taciturn, slow to speak, and unrevealing of his feelings. McCrae is the more gregarious and rambunctious of the two partners. Much of the conflict of the story comes from the supporting characters. Former Texas Ranger Jake Spoon, an old comrade of Call and McCrae, suggests the cattle drive as a moneymaking adventure. However, it is also his accidental shooting of a dentist in Arkansas that brings the sheriff from Fort Smith, July Johnson, into the story. Spoon ultimately leaves the cattle drive and joins an outlaw gang. Once Call and McCrae catch up with the gang, they are forced to hang the outlaws, including their old friend. The climactic sequence in the book tells of McCrae being mortally wounded by Indians near the end of the cattle drive and Call taking his partner’s body back home to Texas for burial.

While not based on historic events, it captures the spirit of that time in the West, presenting an authentic picture of the historic cattle drives by figures such as Charles Goodnight. Ronald C. Thomas, Jr.

Ethics in Lonesome Dove

The ethical themes in Lonesome Dove are more authentic in their portrayal of the actual time period of the American westward expansion than in the western movies of the 1940s or the television westerns of the 1950s. There are no Hollywood cowboys like Gene Autry or Roy Rogers in this book; the characters created by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry inhabit a territory closer to where real people like Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickock walked. While the female characters in the book fulfill some of the literary archetypes of the shrewish wife, cheating spouse, whore with heart of gold, and sturdy frontier widow, it is the cowboys who present the ethical conflicts that were a part of everyday life in the real Wild West. There are no true white hats or black hats but different shades of gray, just as the gunslingers of the past sometimes plied their trade as outlaws or lawmen as they drifted from town to town. The central characters, retired Texas Ranger captains Woodrow Call and Augustus “Gus” McCrae, clearly stood for the side of right in their former careers and do so throughout the cattle drive adventure in this novel. However, each has an unspoken ethical code they exemplify in their actions and the way they interact with other characters. For the reserved Call, work provides value and meaning to life and a man is known by what he does. For the cantankerous Gus, plain talk is valued, even if his sharp tongue bites a bit into those he cares about. These character traits provide a way of viewing all of the other characters in the book against one of these two standards, Call’s work ethic and Gus’s rough honesty. The ways in which they express these values, Call’s stoicism and Gus’s gregariousness, provide verbal examples of the ethical frames through which each man sees the world. The journey for Gus and Call comes in the form of another Ranger comrade, Jake Spoon, who suggests that there is money to be made in assembling

750â•…â•… McMurtry, Larry a herd of cattle and driving it up to new territory in Montana. For two former lawmen attempting to scratch a living out of the dusty south Texas land near the town of Lonesome Dove, there is no money to buy a herd. An ethical irony occurs when Call, Gus, Spoon, and some hired cowboys cross the border into Mexico essentially to rustle a herd from the Mexican Pedro Flores. The justification is that the cattle and horses were probably already stolen from Texas and Call and Gus’s outfit was just stealing them back. Two wrongs do not really make a right, but it is close enough in this world of ethical equivalency. Spoon provides another ethical example in contrast to Call and Gus. Even though Spoon had the idea of the cattle drive, he was drawn more toward gambling and living on the edge of the law than the hard work of the drive. As he drifts further away from his former comrades, he falls in with an outlaw gang led by the sadistic Dan Suggs. Spoon had thought he was throwing in with a gang of bank robbers, but Suggs leads them into horse theft. Suggs next commits a brutal killing of two farmers, including hanging and burning the bodies. When Call and Gus eventually cross paths with the Suggs gang, they administer rough frontier justice, hanging the four members of the gang, including their old comrade Spoon. In the West, horse stealing generally was met with summary hanging; stranding a man on the frontier without a horse was a virtual death sentence and horse thievery was considered a capital offense (the cross-border rustling by Call and Gus’s outfit notwithstanding). Even though Spoon had committed no killings himself, he is in for the same sentence as the rest of the Suggs gang and he knows it, even though he pleads his case to Call and Gus. Guilt by association might be considered a logical fallacy, a legal defense, and an ethical failing by 21st-century standards, but in the late 19th century, if you threw in with the gang, you were in for the same fate. The four outlaws are lined up on horseback, nooses around their necks, waiting for the end under a stout hanging tree. Gus takes the task of whipping the horses out from under the outlaws. Spoon, in that final moment of clarity, knows his life has come to no good and spurs his own horse out from under

himself. Gus understands that Jake has balanced his own scales. Toward the end of the cattle drive, Gus is attacked by Indians while scouting ahead. Ultimately, arrow wounds force a doctor in Montana to amputate his right leg while Gus is unconscious from the infection. Had the doctor not been a drunkard, he would have taken both legs to save Gus from the spreading gangrene. By the time Call locates Gus, the infection has become irreversible. Gus says that he would never have allowed the doctor to take both legs. In this scene, Gus acts out a problem of medical ethics that persists to this day. At what point does someone have the right to forgo treatment and die in what he determines to be dignity? The final part of the novel deals with Call’s epic trip from Montana to bring Gus’s body back home to Lonesome Dove, Texas, to be buried. For Call’s sense of ethics through silent action, he has to endure any hardship to honor his friend’s deathbed request. In the arduous, 2,500-mile journey, Call comes close to dying himself. The act of burying his friend sorely taxes Call and provokes him to say, once the task is done, that he will be more careful about what he promises in the future. Still, with Call’s ethic of work and loyalty, the reader is left with no doubt that he would do it again. Ronald C. Thomas, Jr.

Gender in Lonesome Dove

Given only a cursory look, McMurtry’s 1985 novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize the next year, would certainly be characterized a “men’s book,” obviously in the western genre. McMurtry’s saga draws much of its human drama from its cast of interesting female supporting characters. It is the interaction of the women with the male leads that spurs much of the interpersonal conflict, the plot twists and turns, and, by these devices, reveals more about the men than the reader could ever glean from their taciturn cowboy ways. The female characters in Lonesome Dove run the spectrum of archetypes from the shrew to the whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, from the long-suffering-but-loyal-wife to the attracted-tobad-men to the long-lost-love. However, McMurtry does not turn these recognizable character types into clichés or cardboard stand-ups for his male leads to

Lonesome Doveâ•…â•… 751 read lines with. His women actually seem to talk and act and react like real women would, a great accomplishment for a male writer, let alone one working in a traditionally male-oriented genre. While McMurtry has said that he got the idea for the fictitious name of the south Texas town of Lonesome Dove off of a church bus, the term “soiled dove” was Old West slang for the prostitutes of the day. This is a convenient connection, as one of the most important female characters in the story is Lorena “Lorie” Wood, a prostitute in Lonesome Dove. She turned to that profession after being abandoned there by a previous lover. With a firm will and optimistic nature, Gus McCrae takes a liking to her company. Jake Spoon takes a liking to her physical pleasures. Once Spoon convinces the Rangers that there is big money to be made in taking a herd of cattle and horses up to Montana, Lorie sees that going along with Jake is her way out. However, Jake is rough to her emotionally and physically, and it is Gus who keeps a kindly eye out for Lorie along the way on the cattle drive. Eventually, Jake leaves the cattle drive completely, never having been much for hard work, and falls in with an outlaw gang. On the way to Montana, Lorie is abducted by the renegade Blue Duck, an old nemesis of Gus and Call from their Texas Ranger days. It is Gus who rescues her and Lorie stays with the drive all the way. She never does go on to her eventual goal of San Francisco, which represents respectability and stability, but she finds that in the company of these cowboys and, in the end, a home. Another of Jake’s indiscretions spurs a couple of other female characters to bring Sheriff July Johnson into the main plot. In Fort Smith, Arkansas, Jake gets into a gunfight and accidentally shoots the sheriff ’s brother, Ben. Ben’s widow, the shrewish Peach, demands that July bring Jake Spoon back to Fort Smith to face justice. Even though July Johnson knows it was an accidental shooting and no judge would convict the ex-Ranger on such a charge, July goes on the manhunt just to escape from his sisterin-law’s nagging. However, as soon as he leaves, his pregnant wife, Elmira, uses this opportunity to run away from home and seek out her old lover, an outlaw named Dee Boot. In a weakened state from her

harrowing travels, Elmira arrives at a farm run by a woman who is caring for her comatose husband and two daughters. The woman, Clara Allen, takes her in and sees to the delivery of July Johnson’s son. Elmira abandons the inconvenient offspring of the man she never loved and finds Dee Boot just in time to see him hanged for his crimes. Shortly afterward, she and one of the hunters she is traveling with are killed by Sioux and the reader never quite understands what made her such a hard woman. Along the trail of Jake Spoon, July Johnson learns that his wife has gone off in search of Dee Boot so he abandons the manhunt to go after his wife and he, too, winds up at the Allen farm. As the cattle drive works its way north, the plotlines that had been twisting independently finally intersect. Call and Gus bring the cattle drive through at the Allen farm and it is here that the reader learns that the long-lost love that Gus has often mentioned is Clara. He had proposed to her 30 times back in Texas, but she preferred the stable, if unremarkable, life of a farmer’s wife in Nebraska. Now, however, her husband is comatose from having been kicked in the head by a horse and she is running a farm with only two teenage daughters to help. Clara is representative of the strong pioneer women that settled the American frontier, who traveled westward in Conestoga wagons and raised their families in sod houses and log cabins. The various story lines find a strong nexus here, just as the historical western families found their strong center in the character of the women that held them together. After a tender and melancholy reunion with Gus, Clara constructs a new family out of the various elements that have come through her place. July Johnson stays on as the man of the house, as Bob Allen has passed away, and awkwardly tries to court Clara as they raise his baby. Lorie stays on, too, as Clara sees only her character of the present and not her deeds of the past. One of the trail hands, Dish Boggett, takes a job as a farmhand to stay close to Lorie because of his long-standing crush on her. As Captain Call takes his epic trip back to Lonesome Dove with the body of Gus McCrae to bury him back in Texas, he plays out the finale in what most readers would see as one of the ultimate Â�man-to-man bonding legends. However, a closer

752â•…â•… McMurtry, Larry reading of Lonesome Dove reveals that while the men might have started on a straight path, it was the women whose characters gave the book many of its interesting twists and turns. Ronald C. Thomas, Jr.

Justice in Lonesome Dove

Justice, the blind balancer of right and wrong, is put to the test in Larry McMurtry’s sprawling epic of the West, Lonesome Dove. This is far more than a classic white-hat, black-hat story about good guys and bad guys. The characters inhabit a world that features lots of gray areas and concepts of justice are malleable things. The two central characters, Captains Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae, are retired Texas Rangers. One of the most respected law enforcement agencies in the world, the Rangers have had, from their frontier beginnings to the present day, a nearly free hand to travel the length and breadth of the state to investigate, pursue, and arrest any criminal. Only a very few men, those with a finely honed sense of right and wrong, can be entrusted with that circular badge. Throughout the novel Call and McCrae’s sense of justice is needed to resolve various conflicts on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. It is another former Ranger, Jake Spoon, who presents the idea of a cattle drive to his former comrades, a money-making adventure. Spoon is already on the wrong side of justice, having just left Arkansas after the accidental shooting of a dentist. Spoon has been drifting since leaving the Rangers, gambling his way from one town to another. In a showdown with a mule skinner, Spoon’s shot had accidentally hit a resting rifle and that rifle’s shot killed the dentist who was walking on the other side of the street. His current reputation as a gambler and gunfighter would outweigh any benefit-of-doubt Spoon might have enjoyed as an ex-Ranger. Spoon’s character and actions provide much of the tension in the novel about the nature of justice. As Call and McCrae mount the cattle drive, the hard work involved doesn’t suit Jake Spoon. He’d rather be drinking, gambling, and womanizing so he abandons the drive that he suggested. In the course of this, he joins a gang headed by the sadistic Dan Suggs. Suggs is clearly an evil character who not

only shoots down a farm family whose only offense was being farmers but also sets their bodies on fire and burns down the farm. When Call and McCrae’s cattle drive brings them into the same area, they discover the charred remains. Even though they are no longer active Rangers, their duty is clear and they track down the Suggs gang. Once the gang is subdued, rough justice is summarily dispensed via strong rope and a tall tree. Spoon was not an active participant in the atrocities and initially tries to plead his case. However, Call and McCrae do not waiver, as Spoon has cast his lot in with the Suggs outfit and will have to share in their punishment. Justice is also represented through the character of July Johnson, the Fort Smith, Arkansas, sheriff. The dentist was his brother but it was the dentist’s widow who pressures July into going into Texas after Spoon. Even though it appears to be an accidental shooting, July reluctantly agrees to go after Spoon. In this instance, justice becomes a matter of personal vendetta. July’s mission is diverted from Spoon when he learns that his wife, Ellie, has seized this opportunity to run back to her former man, the outlaw Dee Boots. Again, justice becomes personal as July abandons the pursuit of Spoon to track down his runaway wife. After traveling with buffalo hunters upriver and becoming mortally ill, Ellie finally finds Boots in a jail cell charged with killing a boy. The man she thought would hold the key to her freedom from domestic life is himself a prisoner, truly a case of poetic justice. Another character who represents the cyclical nature of justice is the half-Comanche, half-Mexican outlaw Blue Duck. A long-time adversary of Captain Call, this renegade kidnapped Jake Spoon’s girlfriend (who had been traveling along with the cattle drive). McCrae leads a party to rescue her, but Blue Duck escapes. At the end of the novel, McCrae has died and Call is transporting the body back to Texas when he learns that Blue Duck is in custody in New Mexico, sentenced to hang. As long as it is on his way to Texas, Call decides to stop over and see the hanging. This intended moment of closure does not take place as Call had hoped. Blue Duck escapes from custody on the way to the gallows but

“Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”â•…â•… 753 breaks his neck in a suicidal leap to cheat the hangman. Despite already being dead, Blue Duck’s body is hanged by the local sheriff because that was the sentence. Call witnesses perverted justice served twice as Blue Duck kills himself and then his body is hanged anyway. In the world of Lonesome Dove, while the scales swing wildly back and forth between instances of terrible injustice and righteous rewards for the just, the principle of justice wins out in the end. Ronald C. Thomas, Jr.

Melville, Hermanâ•… “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”â•… (1853)

In the summer of 1853, his writing career at low ebb following the critical and popular failure of MobyDick and Pierre, Herman Melville began writing short stories. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” was immensely successful among readers and critics when it was published in 1853 in Putnam’s Magazine; today it remains a prime object of Melville scholarship. “Bartleby,” like most of Melville’s fiction, is told in the first person. The narrator, a character in the story, defines the action of the tale, sets out its parameters, and provides his own interpretation of events. Besides Bartleby and the lawyer, the other characters are Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut, scriveners and workers who are part of the factorylike office and perform tedious work for little pay. Through these characters Melville explores such themes as religion, commerce, identity, isolation, work, and the individual and society. The tyranny of the marketplace had a personal relevance for Melville, and many critics have observed that Bartleby’s behavior as a scrivener closely parallels Melville’s own writing career or, by extension, the position of any artist in a commercial world. Other people mentioned as a model for the character of Bartleby include Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Melville’s brother, Alan. The number and variety of parallels show how open “Bartleby” is to multiple interpretations. “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is a many faceted tale, and the reader can thrill to the spookiness of the

cadaverous Bartleby, match wits with the lawyer in trying to decide how to deal with the problem, or challenge the narrator’s version of events, for the lawyer reveals much that he does not acknowledge. Susan Amper

Commerce in “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

The title character of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is representative of alienated workers in the 19thcentury commercial marketplace, damned by dollars and deadened to life, and the lawyer, who serves as the tale’s narrator, is revealed as a materialist and capitalist. The story can be read as an attack on the excesses of industrialization and commerce. The tale announces itself in its very subtitle as “A Story of Wall Street,” the financial center of American capitalism. The lawyer, too, identifies himself first in terms of his vocation. He is a financial attorney, who does “a snug business among rich men’s bond, and mortgages, and title-deeds,” and who boasts acquaintance with, and admiration for, that quintessential capitalist, John Jacob Astor. Besides working for capitalists, the lawyer is one himself. The Wall Street business he owns is the image of 19th-century industrialism: a dim and dismal workplace in which underpaid workers labor at dull, repetitive jobs. The office is not literally a factory, yet the building, in the lawyer’s words, “hums with industry.” The scriveners might be regarded as white-collar workers, yet they are paid piecework—four cents per 100 words—like factory workers. They earn, the lawyer himself admits, “so small an income” that a man could “not afford to eat, drink, and own a decent coat at the same time.” The lawyer’s focus on money is further revealed in his many references to it. He tells the reader how much his office boy, Ginger Nut, earns, how much the scriveners, Turkey and Nippers, are paid, the price of ginger cakes and how many of them Ginger Nut receives for purchasing them for Bartleby. After Bartleby’s continued refusal to work, the lawyer attempts to induce Bartleby to vacate the premises by offering him $20, and at the Tombs prison, the lawyer pays the grub-man to give Bartleby the “best dinner” he can. The socioeconomic dimension of “Bartleby,” established before the title character’s arrival, is

754â•…â•… Melville, Herman developed in the subsequent relationship between him and the lawyer. It is a development in which the demands of the marketplace triumph over all other human concerns. Bartleby, however, eventually refuses to do any work at all, repeating the phrase, “I would prefer not to,” making him economically useless and causing his employer to give him notice. But Bartleby refuses to leave, and the scrivener becomes a permanent, non-paying lodger in the lawyer’s office. However, business considerations, in the form of negative opinions expressed by business associates, intercede. Fearing for his professional reputation, the lawyer moves to new offices, leaving Bartleby behind. This action leads inexorably to Bartleby’s removal to the Tombs, followed by his death. The connection between Bartleby’s refusal to copy and a similar reluctance on the part of the other scriveners is particularly significant. In order to make the social point, Melville attempts to extend Bartleby’s story from the individual to the more general. The difficulty faced by the other lawyer who moves into the narrator’s vacated law offices and then by the building landlord helps widen the social frame. So does the narrator’s allusion to the murder case of Colt and Adams, to which he compares his troubles with Bartleby. Melville here makes the socioeconomic nature of his story explicit through the narrator’s opinion that the murder could have occurred only in a business setting, never in a private residence or public street: “It was the circumstance of being alone in a solitary office . . . entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic association” that “greatly helped to enhance the irritable desperation of the hapless Colt.” Commerce, then, leads to death. The lawyer consistently refers to Bartleby using death images. Describing their first encounter, the lawyer characterizes Bartleby as “pallidly neat”; thereafter the lawyer applies the terms “ghost,” “cadaverous,” “morbid moodiness,” and others. Bartleby’s desk faces a wall and the view, according to the lawyer, is deficient in what landscape painters call “life.” And later he speaks of Bartleby’s habitual staring out of the window as his “dead-wall revery.” Long after Bartleby is dead and the lawyer has discovered that he worked in the Dead Letter Office he returns to the money and death images, “a bank note sent in swiftest char-

ity—he who it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more. . . . On errands of life, these letters speed to death.” Such sentiments reveal that the lawyer is still reducing life to materialist terms. Bartleby’s life and death express the widespread existence of a mechanistic, life-deadening, freedom-denying set of values emphasized in America by increasing industrialization and commerce. Susan Amper

Identity in “Bartleby, the Scrivener ”

An essay on identity in “Bartleby, the Scrivener” would seem to point to a discussion of the title character; however, the unnamed lawyer, who also serves as the tale’s narrator, writes that “Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable”; Ultimately, the story proves to be not about Bartleby at all, so much as it is about the lawyer. He wants the reader to identify him as a good Christian, employer, and friend, yet he comes off in the end as a selfserving Everyman. Instead of discussing Bartleby, the lawyer promptly turns to discussing “myself, my employees, my business, my chambers, and general surroundings.” Before Bartleby appears, the reader is introduced to the lawyer’s other employees, Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut. That the relationship between these clerks and their employer establishes a baseline against which to interpret the lawyer’s subsequent behavior toward Bartleby is indisputable. A careful reading of the story reveals that the lawyer’s acceptance of his clerks’ imperfections is less a matter of God-like beneficence than of complacency. For their part, the clerks do not seem at all content to “bear the yoke.” Turkey’s lunchtime drinking and his afternoon excesses, which include splitting his pens and throwing them on the floor suggest a powerful impulse to escape from his duties. With Nippers this impulse is made explicit, as the lawyer himself concludes that the clerk’s real object in constantly readjusting his writing table is “to be rid of a scrivener’s table altogether.” The two scriveners’ reluctance to write obviously prefigures Bartleby’s refusal. The introductory section of the story, then, quickly establishes a reality that lies beneath and largely contradicts the narrator’s pleasant represen-

“Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”â•…â•… 755 tations. These contradictions touch particularly on the character and behavior of the narrator himself. Specifically, the identity that the lawyer reveals in this introductory section appears in several facets, and each facet establishes a dimension or level of meaning on which the rest of the story plays. Thus the lawyer is revealed as a materialist, and the story develops the clash between his materialism and the spirituality represented by Bartleby. The lawyer is shown for a hypocritical Christian, and this theme is developed in the rest of the story. The lawyer is also identified as a capitalist, and the story plays with perfect consistency as an attack on the excess of industrialization. And beneath all these levels is the question of just what these different identities reveal about the lawyer. The narrator, after much soul-searching, suggests that he and Bartleby share “the bond of a common humanity.” Such feelings induce the lawyer to accept Bartleby, when the latter refuses the order to leave, as a permanent, non-paying lodger in the lawyer’s office. This is the first time the lawyer has acted from personal rather than business motives. He considers this favor to Bartleby as his special religious “mission in this world.” The lawyer’s initial indulgence of Bartleby seems motivated by kindness, and his subsequent actions, such as his offer of money and his offer to take Bartleby home with him, appear to go beyond selfinterest, although these are open to question. The money may simply make it easier for the lawyer to fire Bartleby; taking him home may seem the easiest way out of the embarrassing situation in which the lawyer finds himself. He has already told the reader of his “profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.” We can hardly credit him with Christian charity if he is acting only so as to minimize his own discomfort. The lawyer’s position toward Bartleby, however, is not without sympathy. As readers we can see that Bartleby is impossible, and we feel that Bartleby is odd, but we are convinced that he is honest. And we know that when Bartleby says “No,” he is telling us the truth. The narrator, however, cannot face this truth. He is one of those who says “Yes”: to the discipline of the marketplace; to the good opinion of the well-todo; to the pieties and proprieties of a casual Chris-

tianity. For Melville, this means the lawyer lies, and it is this deception about his true identity that is the focus of the story. For it becomes clear that the narrator rather than Bartleby is the real representative of humanity. It is not his failure to live up to Christ’s teaching that makes him so human, but his evasion of the truth about himself and the nature of life. In creating this lying narrator, Melville has found a true Everyman. Susan Amper

Religion in “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

A Christian reading of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is invited by the overwhelming number of religious allusions in the story, which include the lawyer’s repeated explicit references to Christian principles as the guide for his behavior toward Bartleby. These begin as more humanistic than strictly religious, with the lawyer’s recognition that “both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam.” They become more expressly Christian with his recollection of the divine injunction: “A new commandment give I unto you that ye love one another.” Subsequently the view becomes downright Calvinistic with the lawyer’s suggestion that his situation has been “predestinated from eternity. And [that] Bartleby was billeted upon [him] for some mysterious purpose of an all wise Providence.” Another reference linking the lawyer with organized religion is the lawyer’s “indulgence.” The reference lies in the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church, a practice that precipitated the Reformation. The connection between these two concepts becomes more explicit in a passage in which the lawyer in effect attempts to purchase his own indulgence of Bartleby as future investment for his soul: “To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience.” The Christian themes in the story become more interesting, and more complex, when readers consider the imagery that identities the character of Bartleby with Christ himself. Bartleby’s general demeanor, including his “wonderful mildness,” is reminiscent of Christ’s. His association with a source of natural light coming into the office from

756â•…â•… Melville, Herman above suggests Christ as “the true Light” ( John 1:9). The ginger nuts that are his only food are described as “wafers,” a reference to the Eucharist. The lawyer also refers to the “advent of Bartleby” and to the fact that he is “always there.” Bartleby is further associated with Christ by the number three, which recurs frequently in the New Testament. Christ is tempted three times, rises on the third day, and is part of the Trinity. Bartleby’s first refusal to proofread occurs the third day after his arrival, and on that earlier arrival —and again later—he repeats the phrase, “I would prefer not to” three times. When the lawyer tells Bartleby he must leave, the scrivener spends three days before refusing. Another suggestion of Christianity is the parallel between the lawyer and the apostle Peter. This identification rests chiefly on the passage in which the new tenant and the landlord of the lawyer’s vacated offices attempt to make the lawyer assume responsibility for Bartleby. In reply, the lawyer denies Bartleby three times, as Peter did Christ. The phrasing of the denials reinforces the comparison: “I do not know the man,” said Peter (Matt. 26:72). “I know nothing about him” the lawyer declares. If the lawyer represents Peter, then his office and his profession can be viewed as the church that Peter founded. Numerous allusions link law documents with religious documents and law ritual with church ritual. The layout of the lawyer’s chamber suggests a church. The end of the office that faces a white wall and is illuminated by “a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom” resembles a church altar. The screen between the lawyer and Bartleby, through which they can converse without seeing each other, resembles a confessional. The lawyer’s failure to recognize Bartleby as Christ, even while describing him in explicitly Christian terms, is ironic. The image of Peter enhances this then, for Peter represents recognition as well as denial. He appears in the Gospel not only as the apostle who denies Christ but also as the first one to recognize Him as the Messiah. That Melville deliberately intended this association is suggested by another reference to Peter in “Bartleby.” This is the office key that the lawyer attempts to get from Bartleby. A common Petrine symbol in church iconography, the key ref-

erences Christ’s promise to give Peter “the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 16:19). Significantly, this promise was made as a direct response to Peter’s first recognition of Christ as the Messiah. The fact that Bartleby never does give the lawyer his key points to the fact that the lawyer, unlike Peter, fails to recognize Bartleby for who he really is. Susan Amper

Melville, Hermanâ•… “Billy Budd, Sailor”â•… (1886, 1924)

“Billy Budd, Sailor,” written in 1886 but not published until 1924, tells the unfortunate tale of a shining young sailor and the tragedy that befalls him. The protagonist, Billy Budd, is well-liked by the overwhelming majority of his crewmen and captains. Early in the tale he is transferred from his position aboard the Rights of Man and moved to HMS Bellipotent. On this ship he feels scrutinized much more than on the former, and the sight of a disciplining causes him to be even more meticulous in his duties. While he gains the love of the majority of his fellows, the master-at-arms John Claggart seems to bear him ill will. Billy finds out about Claggart’s dislike from an older sailor named Dansker, but Billy, always seeing the good in people rather than evil, believes the suspicions to be false. An accident in which Billy spills food on Claggart appears to reinforce this, as Claggart reacts in a friendly manner. But an incident with a mysterious stranger leads Claggart to accuse Billy of treason. Billy, unable to verbally defend himself against the accusations and establish his innocence, lashes out and kills Claggart, which leads to Billy’s own hanging. Neither the captain nor the crew wishes to punish Billy in this way, but the captain feels the need to adhere to the law for fear of mutiny. Papers pick up on the story and talk of Billy as treasonous, but the captain and the crew, aware of Billy’s innocence, tell a different story and the sailor becomes a legend of sorts. Ronald Davis

Individual and Society in “Billy Budd, Sailor”

Billy Budd epitomizes the individual removed from greater society. Initially, Billy’s blackness separates

“Billy Budd, Sailor”â•…â•… 757 him from the majority of the society around him, but rather than portray Billy as the victim of deliberate racism, Melville describes Billy’s skin tone as part of the sailor’s beauty. His dark ebony skin distinguishes him in much the same way that his height and his jovial nature do. Another aspect of Billy’s character that sets him apart is the overwhelming approval and fondness that other characters have for him. They seem to understand their distance from the perfection that they believe exists in Billy Budd. Everyone looks up to him, from fellow sailors to sea captains, but they also seem to see him as a better version of themselves, as something to strive toward. Billy’s position at the center of his crew is short-lived, however, as he is taken from his ship, Rights of Man, and is ordered to serve aboard HMS Bellipotent. Immediately, Billy is removed from a society of which he was the center and thrown into a society in which he is the outsider. Throughout the story, his actions reveal his uneasiness in his new position, and seeing another crew member being disciplined strikes fear into Billy’s heart. The lashing causes him to put even more effort into fulfilling his duties; while he does well, he still feels as if he is being watched more than other crew members. Despite his uneasiness with his new crew, Billy attains a level of popularity similar to that which he enjoyed upon Rights of Man. Yet his displacement causes his behavior to change; when he is thrown into situations that make him nervous, his feelings of isolation cause him to lose the power of speech. At these times Billy seems to view his difference in a negative way. His anxieties about his isolation, and the physical effects of them, eventually lead to tragedy. When Billy confesses his feelings of anxiety to another crew member named Dansker, the older sailor reveals that the ship’s master-at-arms, John Claggart, bears ill will toward Billy. Initially Billy’s innocence prevents him from believing that Claggart would dislike him, as he has never given Claggart any reason for doing so. Billy’s innocence, and his lack of familiarity with a meaner, rougher society, causes him to continue on with his duties and fall victim to a fiendish plot. When isolated from the crew and asked to “cooperate” by a mysterious stranger one night, Billy’s

naiveté causes him not only to threaten uncharacteristic violence, but also to lie to others about the meeting itself. His feelings of separation, both from the plot developing aboard the ship as well as from the rest of the crew, cause his anxieties to heighten once again. He feels a sense of isolation when the stranger attempts to gain his help and again later when Claggart goes to Captain Vere with accusations of Billy’s treason. When confronted with these accusations, Billy begins to stutter, and rather than defend himself logically and calmly, he lashes out, killing Claggart with one blow. His individuality, once a source of happiness for him, has now made him feel and act as an outsider. His rash actions separate him from society once and for all, as he is immediately sequestered and put on trial. During his trial, Billy remains unable to speak for the most part, but maintains his innocence and his sorrow at the death of Claggart. He also speaks to his anxiety, explaining that his inability to communicate at the time of the initial accusation was what caused him to lash out. Despite inner conflict, Captain Vere decides that Billy must be punished for the act and he is hung the next morning at dawn. Unlike many who face execution, Billy approaches it with calmness, and he utters praise, rather than a condemnation, of his captain just before he drops. These actions reinforce his goodness and individuality, even in the face of tragedy. While papers tell of his death as punishment for mutiny, word spreads of Billy’s inherent goodness and his story becomes a sort of legend. Throughout the story, Melville depicts many different versions of individuality. While many are drawn to Billy’s individuality for its difference, Claggart is put off by it, thus making the master-at-arms an individual in a different sense. Nevertheless, Melville displays the differences in individual personalities and shows the many dimensions and forms that individuality can take. Ron Davis

Violence in “Billy Budd, Sailor”

In “Billy Budd, Sailor,” Melville situates his discussion of violence in the context of HMS Bellipotent, a late-18th-century British warship. Fear of mutiny runs high on this ship, as well as many others, due

758â•…â•… Melville, Herman to tales of recent uprisings, and this fear leads to stricter punishments for mutineers. While captains feared their crews because of their potential for violence, the crews also feared captains because of the violence that captains could practice against them. These two aspects of mutiny play into the central plotline of this tale. Melville describes Billy Budd, the main character, as a beautiful, loyal, powerful sailor. His looks and manner are in stark contrast with the taxing, violent life of a naval warship. Yet Billy proves on more than one occasion that he is quite capable of thriving. Billy’s strength and innocence represent the two sometimes conflicting sides of his personality. Captain Graveling of Rights of Man is sad to let Billy go when the sailor joins Bellipotent. Before parting, Graveling shares a story in which Billy’s two sides are aptly shown. Once before, another sailor attempted to push Billy around. At first, Billy tried to reason with the other man, “Red Whiskers,” but he hit Billy, and Billy retaliated with similar violence and gave the man a sound beating. Afterward, the man came to “love” Billy Budd, just as all the other crewmembers did. Most often, Billy leans toward violence when he cannot articulate his thoughts and feelings; when he grows flustered, he suffers from awkward and intense bouts of stuttering. This quality is partially responsible for Billy’s downfall. After Billy transfers to Bellipotent, he is accepted by the majority of the crew. However, violence surfaces again in the form of a punishment given to another crew member. The man fails to show up for his post and is lashed for it. Billy is “horrified” by the punishment, and he resolves to never do anything that would cause him to earn the same fate. Afterward, though, Billy continually finds himself getting in minor trouble for light offenses, so the fear of a violent lashing constantly hangs over his head. Violence eventually comes to Billy due in part to the workings of John Claggart, the ship’s master-at-arms. Claggart has not taken to Billy and, for some reason, bears malice toward him. Melville suggests that Claggart’s jealousy of Billy’s innate heroism is the cause of bad will, and Claggart shows intelligence through the way in which he deals with Billy. He is not overtly violent toward Billy, but treats Billy kindly, to the point that the newer crew

member is surprised to find that Claggart bears him any ill will at all. For example, one day at lunch, Billy accidentally spills his soup on the deck, and the mess runs right at Claggart’s feet. Claggart refers to the accident as “handsome,” playing on the generally accepted view of Billy; the crew laughs and the incident passes, but Claggart does not forget it. Claggart concocts a plan to use the fear of mutiny to enact violence toward Billy. One night on the ship, Billy is clandestinely summoned to a remote area, where he is asked by an anonymous figure to “cooperate” and is offered money to do so. Although Billy doesn’t understand what is happening, he does know that something is wrong and he threatens the figure with violence. Soon after, Claggart goes to Captain Vere with warnings of a mutiny, citing Billy as ringleader. When Billy is told of the accusations against him, he immediately begins to stutter. Unable to find words to defend himself, he turns and hits Claggart in the forehead, killing him almost instantly. This forces Vere to take action against Billy, and a drumhead court is appointed. Fear of mutiny is used to invoke a quick judgment against him; even though the lieutenants think the trial is a sham, they refuse to speak out against Vere because this too would be seen as mutinous. Billy is found guilty not of the attempt to mutiny but of the act of killing Claggart and is hung the next morning at dawn. Violence is a central theme in “Billy Budd, Sailor.” It provides the basis for the major turning points of the story; the fear of violence and the manipulation of that fear move the story toward its climax. Billy’s inability to avoid violence when words fail him leads to tragedy, though Melville also shows that Claggart’s manipulation of fear is a form of violence as well. Ronald Davis

Work in “Billy Budd, Sailor”

The majority of the narrative of “Billy Budd, Sailor” takes place within the confines of “work.” When the story begins, Billy, the main character, works aboard Rights of Man, a merchant vessel, and he is somewhat of a legend for his work ethic. Melville compares his working silhouette to that of Greek warriors because Billy is extraordinary in both appearance and output. Soon, he is drafted

Moby-Dickâ•…â•… 759 into the service of the Royal Navy. At both jobs, with the merchants and the Royal Navy, Billy puts forth a decent effort at becoming a “good worker,” although he is much more the darling of the former ship. In fact, when he is on the merchant ship, he is responsible for all normal duties, but his presence brings with it a calming effect. With Billy around, the other sailors feud much less, and the threat of mutiny decreases. His mere presence eases tensions between other sailors, and because of this he has an unofficial job as “peacekeeper.” During his time on Rights of Man, Billy fulfills both of his jobs very well and is well respected by the crew. All are sad to see the good worker go. Billy does not fare nearly as well on his second ship, HMS Bellipotent. From the very moment the two ships part, he finds himself in some trouble. As his former crew sails away, he shouts a farewell, which is against the rules of the navy. Having never been bound by such strict rules before, Billy is immediately seen as less of an ideal worker. As the story progresses, he often finds himself getting rebuked for minor infringements of the rules. After witnessing a lashing given to another crewmember who broke the rules, Billy does his best to take on the role of “good worker” among his new crew, although something, or someone, always prevents him from attaining the same high position he held on the more lenient Rights of Man. Work takes another form for the captain and his lieutenants, as the fear of mutiny runs high throughout this tale. The story is set at a time, Melville tells us, when mutiny was common, and part of each captain’s job was not only to quell actual mutinies, but also to dissuade any activity that could potentially lead to a mutiny. This is part of the reason for the strict nature of things on board Bellipotent and also for Billy’s inability to be the good worker he was before. On his former ship, his presence helped to ease the fear of mutiny, making his old captain’s work less demanding. Captain Vere, however, has to be on the lookout constantly, and as Billy hasn’t been able to ease the tension aboard this ship, Vere’s work is much more stressful. Billy’s work and Vere’s work come into direct conflict via Claggart, the ship’s master-at-arms. One of Claggart’s jobs is to keep order on the lower

decks, which suggests that he would appreciate Billy’s peacekeeping abilities. However, he develops a dislike for Billy, and because of this, Claggart makes it his mission to try and harm the young sailor. After an incident involving a mysterious figure, Claggart lies to Vere and claims that Billy is planning to take part in a mutiny. Vere’s job compels him to investigate this rumor. When accused, the innocent Billy grows angry and, unable to express himself with words, lashes out and kills Claggart with a single blow. Vere now has no choice but to reprimand Billy; not doing so would put him in direct conflict with his designated duties and would show weakness to the rest of the crew. Vere forms a jury aboard the ship, a trial takes place, and Vere is forced to sentence Billy to be hung. Still a good worker, good sailor, and good spirit, Billy respects the decision and sings the praises of his captain just before he dies. To Billy, work is the key to good behavior and good citizenship. Aboard his first ship he is the ideal worker in more ways than one. However, when the ethics of work become twisted by Claggart’s jealousy and deceitfulness aboard Billy’s second ship, Billy is doomed to die. Because one man distorts the concept of work, two other hard-working men are put into difficult positions. Billy’s severe emotional response, while perhaps warranted, leads to severe retribution, all in the name of duty. Ronald Davis

Melville, Hermanâ•… Moby-Dickâ•… (1851)

Published in England and America in 1851, MobyDick is a masterpiece of American literature. It is the first-person narrative of a figure known to the reader only as Ishmael, who in a highly indirect fashion tells of his tragic adventures on board the whaling vessel, Pequod. After informing the reader what drove him to go to sea and how he came to Nantucket in search of joining a whaling vessel, Ishmael introduces Pequod’s captain, Ahab. A lifelong whaleman, Ahab has recently encountered and fought the famous white whale, Moby Dick, losing his leg in the process. When Ahab recovers and sets back out to sea, he becomes obsessed with destroying the white whale,

760â•…â•… Melville, Herman and through the power of his magnetic personality enlists Pequod’s crew to join in his vengeful hunt for Moby Dick. Prominent figures in the novel’s drama include Starbuck, Ahab’s first mate (who futilely tries to oppose his captain’s mad plan for revenge); Stubb, the second mate; Flask, the third mate; and the ambiguously sinister Fedallah. Moby-Dick’s structure is complex and can be difficult to follow. The novel’s early chapters focus on Ishmael’s motives for going whaling, yet Ishmael quickly recedes from the novel’s action once he and Queequeg board the Pequod. The narrative begins to focus primarily on the drama of Ahab’s hunt for Moby Dick, and the development of Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, Fedallah, Queequg, Tashtego, Daggoo, and Pip as characters. Yet Ishmael does not disappear altogether from the text. The many seemingly tangential chapters devoted to educating the reader about matters related to whales and whaling are provided by Ishmael, who punctuates the story of Ahab’s tragedy with his occasional reflections and meditations. Though difficult to perceive, the novel’s structure has a deep unity: It weaves together the varied “cetological” speculations of Ishmael (which often have a deeply philosophical character) with the compelling story of Ahab and his quest to destroy Moby Dick. Essentially, Moby-Dick is the story of two people on two different quests. It is the story of Ahab in his mad quest to destroy his nemesis, the white whale; and it is also the story of Ishmael the survivor, who continues to seek in the whale a symbolic clue that would help him comprehend the mysteries of life and the universe. Aaron Urbanczyk

Race in Moby-Dick

The mid-19th-century whaling industry was literally global; consequently it was multicultural as a matter of practical necessity. Thus, Melville does not exaggerate in populating Moby-Dick with figures from many and diverse continents, countries, and cultures. The economic dynamic of race relations, as Ishmael unabashedly observes, places white Americans at the pinnacle of economic privilege, while all other racial groups are essentially exploited as cheap labor: “not one in two of the many thousand men before the

mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. . . . [The] American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles” (chapter 27). The fascinating racial pairing in Moby-Dick gives evidence of this socioeconomic racial dynamic. Most of the significant powerful white characters are explicitly coupled with at least one racially diverse counterpart: Starbuck with Queequeg; Stubb with Tashtego; Flask with Daggoo; and Ahab with Fedallah and Pip. Indeed, the comic pairing of Ishmael with Â�QueeÂ�queg as fellow bedmates who become best friends and shipmates early in the novel offers a scathing critique of Western society’s cultural and religiously imperialistic presumptions and hypocrisies vis-à-vis non-Western cultures and religions. While Ishmael maintains the superiority of his “infallible” Presbyterianism (chapter 10), he comes to admire the nobility and humanity of his pagan (and cannibal) friend, even to the point of joining Queequeg in worshiping his idol, Yojo (chapter 10). Yet Melville’s representation of racial difference does not reside merely at the level of highlighting cultural imperialism and economic exploitation. Racial difference becomes a favorite trope for Melville to delve into the complex topics of human psychology, ethics, metaphysics, and religion in Moby-Dick. Non-white ethnicity becomes, in certain sequences in the novel, the equivalent of pagan infidelism and moral evil. For instance, in chapter 96, “The Try-Works,” the pagan harpooners gathered by night around the flaming try-works appear particularly demonic to Ishmael’s imagination, and Ahab deliberately calls upon his non-white, nonChristian harpooners (Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo) when he blasphemously baptizes his harpoon “in the name of the devil,” using their blood (chapter 113). Further, Fedallah and his crew, Asian in ethnicity, are described as “tiger-yellow” in complexion, “like the aboriginal natives of the Manillas—a race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtlety” (chapter 48). Once Fedallah surfaces from his hiding place below deck, he is ever described in the novel as a demonic shadow to Ahab, leading Pequod’s captain to his doom with perverse council and evil intent.

Moby-Dickâ•…â•… 761 Yet in crafting Moby-Dick, Melville doesn’t content himself with easy and predictable racial binaries. As already evidenced in the humorous and humane friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg, racial whiteness is not always clearly good, and nonwhite ethnicity is not always clearly evil or inferior. In particular, blackness and whiteness become fluid and often paradoxical tropes for psychological, metaphysical, and religious realities of enormous complexity. Blackness appears early in the novel as a theological trope for sin and damnation; Ishmael comically wanders into an African-American church where a preacher discourses on the “blackness of darkness” (a reference to the darkness of damnation in Matthew 8:12). Yet blackness serves also as a metaphorical curative for Ahab’s monomaniacal hatred of Moby Dick. Pip, the disenfranchised young black cabin-boy on Pequod, goes crazy when abandoned in the ocean during a whale hunt, and his very insanity and vulnerability, which Ahab calls a “holiness,” endear the boy to Ahab. When Pip catches Ahab by the hand shortly before Ahab’s final confrontation with Moby Dick, Ahab proclaims “There is that in thee . . . which I feel too curing to my malady” (chapter 129). Whiteness itself is also an unstable and complex category in the novel. While whiteness often signifies socioeconomic power, privilege, and advantage, it also signifies psychological horror, nihilism, and even atheism. In chapter 42, the “Whiteness of the Whale,” Ishmael initially affirms the conventional significances that his era associated with whiteness (e.g., racial superiority, feminine purity, kingly royalty, the power of God); yet he proceeds to undercut such affirmations by turning the significance of whiteness completely on its head in his attempt to explain why Moby Dick’s whiteness terrifies and appalls him. Whiteness, to Ishmael in certain moods, represents “by its indefiniteness .  .  . the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation” (chapter 42). Ishmael goes on to call it the “all-color of atheism,” and, asserting that whiteness is “the visible absence of color” and that all color is merely an optic effect produced by light in the human eye, he shudders to think that reality is actually a blank white by which “the palsied universe lies before us a leper.”

In summary, Melville’s use of race in Moby-Dick is masterfully complex, ranging from commentary upon societal injustices to plumbing the depths of the human soul. Aaron Urbanczyk

Religion in Moby-Dick

The religious dimension of Moby-Dick should be obvious to even the casual reader. Many characters have biblical names; the novel is populated with references to Christian and non-Christian religions; and even whales themselves, particularly Moby Dick, are frequently described using religious imagery. This religious context gives Ishmael’s narrative of Ahab’s quest for vengeance an epic and cosmic dimension. Ishmael’s search for meaning and truth becomes theological (a search for God and ultimate truths), and Ahab’s obsessive hatred for Moby Dick becomes akin to blasphemous impiety (a perverse rejection of the divine order). In naming his characters, Melville drew from the religious richness of the Bible. Ishmael is named after the spurned son of Abraham and Hagar. This allusion gives Ishmael’s character a rich depth; he is the universal seeker and survivor who like his biblical namesake is both excluded from God’s covenant (through Abraham) and sustained by God in the wilderness of exile. On the other hand, Melville’s use of biblical allusion places Ahab in the tradition of defiant, blasphemous, and idolatrous authority figures (the kings Ahab and Jeroboam) who were prophetically warned by God to amend their wicked ways. Captain Ahab’s namesake is King Ahab, a wicked and idolatrous Hebrew king; and Elijah, the crazed prophet who utters cryptic warnings to Ishmael and Queequeg before they board Pequod, is named after the famous Hebrew prophet who rebuked King Ahab for his idolatry. Melville also makes use of sacred worship space and preaching in the novel to lend its tragic action a religious dimension. In chapter 2, Ishmael (still in New Bedford) accidentally stumbles into an African-American church where “a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit” and preaching “about the blackness of darkness.” Ishmael visits a second worship space, the famous “Whaleman’s Chapel” in New Bedford, where he hears Father

762â•…â•… Melville, Herman Mapple preach on the story of the prophet Jonah and the whale (chapters 7–9). This visit is a strange paradox for Ishmael: The chapel is filled with marble tablets memorializing the dead lost at sea, which Ishmael finds almost an invitation to despair; yet Father Mapple’s sermon concludes with a meditation upon redemption for those who, like Jonah (and unlike Ahab), accept God’s punishment and repent of their sins. Preaching becomes a darkly ironic farce out at sea as dramatized in Stubb’s insistence that the black cook, Fleece, preach to the sharks who are feasting upon the carcass of a recently killed whale (chapter 64). The whale itself is placed at the center of sacred space and religious worship in the novel. In chapter 102, Ishmael records visiting a third sacred temple. The pagan temple is both worship space and object of worship, for it is the skeletal remains of a whale itself. Ishmael’s visit to a pagan temple suggests another important religious dimension of Moby-Dick. The novel incorporates numerous Christian denominations and pagan religions into its fabric, sometimes for comic and satirical ends, but ultimately to emphasize the vastness and primordial significance of humanity’s striving to know the divine. Ishmael was “born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church,” though he has no qualms in joining Queequeg in worshiping his idol, Yojo (chapter 10). Bildad, Peleg, and Starbuck are all Quakers, and Ishmael lampoons the doctrinal rigidity of their religion by humorously telling Bildad that Queequeg is a born member and deacon of “the First Congregational Church” (by which Ishmael intends all of humanity and not a religious communion). The crazed prophet Gabriel is a Shaker (an English Christian sect that came to America in the late 18th century). Pequod is also populated with pagans, including Queequeg and Fedallah (who is referred to as the “Parsee,” indicating his alignment with an Indian strain of Zoroastrianism). In processing the complex religious framework of his experiences, Ishmael distances himself from his doctrinaire Presbyterian roots. While at times feeling the draw of nihilism and atheism (see chapters 42 and 49), Ishmael does not reject the religious quest altogether. He tends to remain a seeking skeptic who does not claim absolute religious knowledge.

He remains one who ever strives to understand the inscrutable workings of God in his creation. Perhaps the whale himself best represents the complexity of religious representation in MobyDick. The whale is the phantom in Ishmael’s soul (see the end of chapter 1) who represents the divine, the mysterious, and the unknowable; and the whale remains the object of Ishmael’s lifelong quest for knowledge and wisdom. Father Mapple describes the whale as the agent of God’s wrath and justice (chapter 9). Ishmael asserts that the whale is immortal (chapter 106) and in his imagination compares the whale to both Satan and Yahweh (chapter 86). Moby Dick himself is referred to by Gabriel as the Shaker God incarnate (chapter 71), and Ishmael calls the white whale a “grand god” (chapter 133). The paradox of seeking religious knowledge is best expressed by Ishmael’s musings upon the whale: He states emphatically of the whale “I know him not, and never will” (chapter 86), yet he also avers “unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth” (chapter 7). Aaron Urbanczyk

Violence in Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick is a novel permeated with violence and the trauma existing in the wake of great violence. Ahab, captain of the whaling vessel Pequod, was wounded body and soul by Moby Dick. Prior to the beginning of the novel, Ahab had fought with Moby Dick, losing his leg in combat with the famous white whale. During the long return home following this incident, Ahab became obsessed with exacting revenge upon Moby Dick. Ahab was so traumatized by this event that he began to see the white whale as a symbol for all that is evil and inexplicable in the world. In chapter 41, Ishmael observes: “all evil, to crazy Ahab, [was] made visibly personified, and made practicably assailable in Moby Dick.” Ahab was mentally and physically scarred by his encounter with Moby Dick, and obsessive violence is Ahab’s overwhelming response to this traumatic event. Thus, after the Pequod again sets sail and is safely out at sea, Ahab dramatically reveals that he has now devoted his life to hunting down and brutally annihilating Moby Dick, and that he will use any means available to usurp the will of his crew mem-

The Crucibleâ•…â•… 763 bers into sharing his quest. Though obsessed with violent revenge, Ahab does have moments, such as in chapter 132 (“The Symphony”), when he meditates upon the futility of his many years hunting whales. Yet Ahab cannot avert his mind and soul from his obsession with destroying Moby Dick. When Ahab finally tracks down his nemesis and does battle with Moby Dick for three consecutive days, the white whale not only destroys Ahab, but also sinks Pequod. With the exception of Ishmael, everyone on board the ship dies because of Ahab’s insistent desire to continue the cycle of retributive violence by doing battle with Moby Dick. When the narrative begins (an indeterminate number of years after his adventures with Ahab), Ishmael is a veteran of the whale fishery and has clearly seen his share of fighting and bloodshed. Yet Ishmael, unlike Ahab, is not defined by an obsessive impulse to destroy. Rather, Ishmael is a survivor, who remains curious not only about whales in particular (which explains the many chapters on whales and whaling), but also about the mystic and symbolic significance of the leviathan, the ocean, and nature in general. Ishmael finds that all created nature is a deep paradox: It seems to alternate between violence and peace; chaos and tranquillity; and kindness and vicious cruelty. As Ishmael observes in chapter 119, “Warmest climes but nurse the cruelest fangs”; all within nature alternates between nourishing life and destroying it. Referring to the “horrible vulturism of earth!” (chapter 69) and the “universal cannibalism of the sea” (chapter 58), Ishmael frequently meditates upon how nature exists in a cycle of predatory violence, where the weak become the prey of the strong. Yet Ishmael also observes that in the midst of violence and chaos, nature affords life-affirming nourishment, what Ishmael calls an “eternal mildness of joy” (chapter 87). Indeed, Ishmael finds that he has been returned to a primitive, even savage, state by his many years of violent whale-hunting: “Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores man to .  .  . savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage, owing no allegiance but to the King of Cannibals” (chapter 57). He comes to realize that the human person, like nature, is divided between the desire for peace and the urge

for violence, and Ishmael ultimately longs for peace. In chapter 58, he proclaims “as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. . . . Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!” In the end, the enigmatic Ishmael is driven by the desire for knowledge and a peaceful life, and his constant wandering is geared toward attaining these goals. He is the foil for Ahab, who is overwhelmingly motivated by physical, psychological, and spiritual violence. Ultimately, Ishmael’s tale of Ahab’s mad hunt for Moby Dick concludes in nearly complete destruction. Ishmael himself becomes infected with Ahab’s magnetic hatred for Moby Dick, but Ishmael survives the violent hunt. He is the sole survivor picked up by another whaling vessel after Moby Dick destroys Pequod and its crew. The first and last chapters of the narrative (“Loomings” and “Epilogue”) clearly indicate that Ishmael is still trying to process the trauma of his violent experiences. Perhaps in telling the tale, and remaining for so many years in the whaling industry after his experiences on Pequod, Ishmael is seeking the understanding that will bring a level of peace to a life riddled with traumatic violence. Aaron Urbanczyk

Miller, Arthurâ•… The Crucibleâ•… (1953)

Based on the historical Salem Witch Trials, Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible highlights the effects of juvenile hysteria on one Puritan town. At the onset, the town minister’s daughter, Betty Parris, is suffering from a mysterious illness that overcame her after dancing in the forest with her friends and a slave known as Tituba. Betty’s friend Abigail arrives at her sickbed and is questioned about the events in the forest. Abigail claims the girls are innocent, and Tituba is ultimately accused of witchcraft. Pressured into confessing that she works for the devil, Tituba turns back to God and names other women in the town who cavort with the devil. Encouraged by her confession, the young girls do likewise, including Abigail and

764â•…â•… Miller, Arthur Betty, who is mysteriously cured of her affliction. Several women are accused of witchcraft and hearings are set to begin. The accusations are fueled by Abigail’s jealousy of Elizabeth Proctor, a woman in the community for whom she used to work. When she was in the employ of the Proctors, Abigail had an affair with John Proctor. Now she wants nothing more than to take the place of Elizabeth as John’s wife. Though Elizabeth knew of the relationship and ultimately fired the young girl, the town knows nothing of their adultery. As predicted, Elizabeth is accused of possessing a “poppet” (a symbol of devil-worship) and is arrested. Upon the arrest of his wife, John Proctor realizes he must confess and expose Abigail as a fraud and sinner. John convinces Mary (the Proctors’ current servant) to confess to the court that Abigail and her friends are lying. Abigail, however, accuses Mary of witchcraft, and Mary in turn accuses Proctor of witchcraft. More are arrested, several are hanged for not confessing, and Abigail eventually runs away. Soon John Proctor, along with several godly women, is set to be hanged. The minister pleads with him to confess. Proctor, however, refuses to comply with the court’s orders in naming other devil-worshipers. Ultimately, those who are hanged die with honor; though accused, they refuse to confess they are witches or charge others with the crime. Erin Brescia

Alienation in The Crucible

In Puritan society, a good name was of the utmost importance. Without it, one could expect hostility and isolation from his or her peers. This harsh, rigid way of Puritan life kept the townspeople of Salem aware of the presence of good and evil, which they believed could not coexist. There was no middle ground of which to be spoken; one was either a sinner or a saint, and the two were not compatible. Therefore, obedience to God was a must for survival. The Ten Commandments were central to life in Salem. If a townsperson were to disobey one of the commandments, he or she would be ostracized until a confession was made. Not being able to name the

commandments was itself a cause for concern. In fact, Reverend Hale, unimpressed when John Proctor can name only nine of the 10, reminds Proctor, “Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small” (65). Being a Christian in this society meant attending church regularly and never breaking the commandments. It meant maintaining a blameless life and avoiding even the suspicion of sin. These rigid Puritan values are what kept John Proctor from originally confessing his adultery with Abigail. His wife was aware of the relationship, resulting in Abigail’s dismissal as their servant, but Proctor never came forward and admitted their affair. As a result, the townspeople can only guess why Abigail was fired. To Proctor, sin is something that must be dealt with internally. Sin is personal— and no one’s concern but the sinner. Society, however, feels differently; an individual’s sin is everyone’s business. The Proctors are keeping secrets and the rumors surfacing from Abigail’s inappropriate behavior alone are enough to encourage the other women to avoid her. John Proctor has also frequently missed church services in the past, and has even worked on the Sabbath. This is enough to bring the court to his doorstep, concerned that he is involved in devilworship. When Proctor explains that his wife has been ill and that, when he is not in church, he is at home praying, Hale tells him, “Mr. Proctor, your house is not a church; your theology must tell you that” (65). According to Hale’s Puritan values, one cannot consider himself a God-fearing Christian and not attend church. Abigail, who has been alienated by the townspeople because of rumors of impurity, sets the stage for the trials by accusing Tituba of witchcraft. Tituba is forced by the ministers to confess her sins and turn her sights back to God. To prove her faithfulness, Tituba is asked to name others she knows who practice devil-worship. This leads her to name Goody Good. When Abigail sees that Tituba is not punished, she realizes that a confession will be the perfect opportunity for her to clear her name among the townspeople and bring those who had ostracized her to shame. She realizes that under the Puritan

The Crucibleâ•…â•… 765 code, as long as one is condemning others, her name is safe. If she confesses, it will appear that she has taken responsibility for her actions. Accusing her neighbors of sinful behavior serves to highlight Abigail’s innocence. As a result of this, the girls begin to pass their blame on to others, including some of the most upstanding, spiritual women in the community. No one is safe from their accusations. Even those with the most solid reputations are now considered out of favor with God and ostracized among the townspeople. These sinners are alienated from the spiritual society simply because their good names are tainted. If one is seen with a sinner, he imposes the opportunity for others to speculate about his own good nature. In this society, one is guilty by association. No one wants to be involved with a sinner, for fear they will be accused of sinning as well. When Proctor finally comes forward to confess his adultery, it is too late. The court believes that Abigail and her friends have been chosen by God to cleanse the town of evil and reestablish order in society. Abigail’s plan to become John Proctor’s wife backfires, however, when he is sentenced to be hanged for witchcraft. Unable to confess her wicked deeds, she steals her uncle’s money and runs away. With no husband or means of support, it is rumored she becomes a prostitute, thus continuing her estrangement from society. John Proctor is condemned for not confessing his sin of devil-worship—which would have been a lie—or accusing others of the crime. Therefore, along with those desperate to keep their good names, he is hanged. The trials are meant to purge evil from society, but the ultimate result is the unnecessary deaths of innocent people. Erin Brescia

Community in The Crucible

Salem, Massachusetts, a theocracy, was a rigid, Puritan community. Because church and state were connected and God was the ruler, sinners were condemned in the eyes of the law. Since everyone was expected to adhere to this moral, religious code, one would think that life in Salem would be nearutopian; however, this was far from the truth.

Before the witch trials are even set to begin, problems abound in this small community, the setting of The Crucible. First, there is resentment among the townspeople. Mr. Putnam has witnessed the deterioration of his family’s good name, and his wife is angry because she believes supernatural forces have murdered seven of her children before they lived a day. She ultimately blames their deaths on a midwife who served her during several of the births. Abigail, a former servant of John and Elizabeth Proctor, is angry because Proctor had an affair with her, but refuses to leave his wife and marry Abigail. Elizabeth Proctor is resentful toward her husband, who cheated on her. Because he sees he cannot make her happy, Proctor tells her in anger, “I see now your spirit twists around the single error of my life, and I will never tear it free!” (62). No matter what he tries to do or how very careful he is, Elizabeth will refuse to believe or trust him, even though he is sorry for what he has done. Second, there is a plethora of personal disputes among the citizens of the town. Because the church and state are one, more often than not these disputes are taken directly to court for a judge with religious authority to resolve. Giles Corey, who comes before the court in defense of his wife during the trials, attests that he has previously been in court 33 times and never once needed a lawyer to defend him. It is his belief that Mr. Putnam has accused another of witchcraft so that Putnam can buy the defendant’s land. Reverend Parris is also at odds with members of his congregation, and he is afraid of losing his post as minister. Several prominent members have left his church, and there are rumors that many are not pleased with Parris. When his daughter “falls ill” after dancing in the forest he is fearful that his good name will be called into question. He does not necessarily want to cry “witch,” but it would be easier for him if the events could be attributed to supernatural forces rather than to his lack of control over his daughter. When the witch trials begin, the town is pushed into further ruin. Reverend Parris is afraid to leave his house, and Hale confesses, “Excellency, there are orphans wandering from house to house; abandoned cattle bellow on the highroads, the stink of rotting

766â•…â•… Miller, Arthur crops hangs everywhere, and no man knows when the harlots’ cry will end his life” (130). The typical, day-to-day operations of the town are no longer a concern—not when anyone can cry “devil-worship” and send another to jail. The community itself has fallen apart, and Abigail and her friends are in control. They are responsible in the court for determining who is involved in witchcraft, and their dramatic antics serve to condemn the innocent. Unless those accused confess to witchcraft, repent, and name other devil-worshipers, they will be hanged. Fearing for their reputations and their lives, they lie to the court. The vicious cycle continues as new men and women are blamed. No one in the town of Salem is safe. When Mary Warren comes forward and tries to tell the court that Abigail and her friends are lying, Abigail accuses Mary of witchcraft. Abigail controls her friends, the court, and ultimately the town. The trial becomes a power struggle. If the magistrates choose to believe John Proctor’s confession of adultery and Abigail’s motive to condemn his wife, it means admitting they have made an error—an error that will eventually cost townspeople their lives. Salem is a town in distress. The problems plaguing the citizens are magnified when they find an outlet for their personal disagreements in the form of witch trials. When the dust settles on these disputes, innocent men and women are dead and trust and unity no longer exist. Erin Brescia

Spirituality in The Crucible

One of the most pervasive themes in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is the idea of spirituality. Based on the historical Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible is set in Puritan Massachusetts. Puritans were known for their strict interpretation of the Bible. At the time, Salem was a theocracy, meaning the church and the state were one and God was the ruler. Puritans lived by a harsh moral code; anyone who broke the Ten Commandments or sinned in the eyes of the church could expect severe punishment. The stage for the trials is set by young girls who are caught dancing in the woods. One of the girls removes her clothes, and the slave who joins them, Tituba, is seen chanting over a fire and boiling pot.

Rumors of witchcraft spread through the town. Because of her disobedience, the reverend’s daughter is now pretending to be ill in bed, hoping to avoid punishment for her sins. When John and Elizabeth Proctor are questioned in act 2, the chief concern is that John Proctor has not attended church regularly. There is a rumor he has plowed on Sunday as well, directly disobeying the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. He is told that one cannot attend church in his home; to please God he must attend church regularly. This is the least of Proctor’s concerns, however, for he previously had an affair with the family servant, Abigail, which resulted in her dismissal by Elizabeth Proctor. Abigail wants to marry John Proctor, which means eliminating his wife. Ultimately, her sins become the foundation for her accusations of “devil-worship.” Abigail sees the accusations and trials as a way to quell some of the rumors around town stemming from her dismissal. She ultimately confesses that she saw the devil when she and the other girls were with Tituba. She cries: “I want to open myself ! I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him; I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kissed his hand” (48). The other girls join in, and, having been forgiven, begin to name others in the town they have witnessed worshiping the devil. By making her “sins” known, Abigail can, according to Puritan doctrine, set her conscience free. In Puritan society, a confession clears one of all guilt. If you are not with God, you are with the devil. Because Abigail has forsaken the devil, she can turn to Jesus and all will be well. As soon as her name is cleared, she is free to pass her blame onto others. At the trials, Abigail and her friends are put in charge of determining who among the townsfolk are involved in witchcraft. Their irrational antics— screaming, crying, and their chills—are led by Abigail and are seen as proof before the court that dark forces live among the people of Salem. Uneducated and superstitious, the men and women of Salem often attribute the death of a child, or a farm animal, or a poor harvest to the supernatural. Mrs. Putnam believes someone murdered seven

Death of a Salesmanâ•…â•… 767 of her children, because each one died before they were one day old. When Goody Osburn is accused of witchcraft, Mrs. Putnam knows it must be true because three of her children died with Goody Osburn acting as her midwife: “I begged him not to call Osburn because I feared her. My babies always shriveled in her hands!” (47). In addition, activities that are not considered “normal” by society were also cause for concern. This leads Mr. Giles to mention his wife, who enjoys reading books. He is unsure of what she’s reading, but he knows it’s not the Bible; therefore, he wonders if she could be involved in witchcraft. Many personal problems are considered related to supernatural forces, as well. In this way, there is no individual responsibility. One can admit “the devil made me do it” and be forgiven as long as they set their sights back on God. The trials become a battle of personal sin. The men and women accused of witchcraft who confess are given a reprieve as long as they name other witches before the court. Those mentioned are brought in to confess, and the cycle continues. The irony is that those who do not confess devil-worship are the ones who are hanged for their sins. The repentant “devil-worshippers” (who are lying) are saved, and the honest condemned. In the end, John Proctor refuses to give a false confession so that he can keep his personal integrity. In Salem, there is no such thing as hidden, or personal, sin. Every disobedience is noted and many times a confession is posted on the church door. The problem is that, while town members are hanging the innocent, they are blind to the accuser’s true sin in that she is guilty of an affair. Erin Brescia

Miller, Arthurâ•… Death of a Salesmanâ•… (1949)

Willy Loman is the tragic hero of today. Overworked, underpaid, and nearing the brink of insanity, the final days of this unsuccessful salesman are chronicled in Arthur Miller’s classic play, Death of a Salesman. Through the Loman family, Miller portrays the idea of family, success, death, and, most prominently, the American dream.

As the play opens, Willy’s behavior has become increasingly unsteady, and his wife, Linda, informs her sons, Biff and Happy, of his recurring suicide attempts. With the return of his sons, Willy again finds hope in their future successes. At Hap’s urging, the boys decide to open their own business, and while Biff attempts to secure their loan through an old boss, Willy visits his own employer, requesting a weekly salary and a local position that would not require him to travel. Both meetings are unsuccessful: Biff realizes that his previous successes were delusions created by his father, and Willy finds himself unemployed. With nowhere to turn, Willy determines that he is worth more dead than alive, and that his life insurance policy will ensure a bright future for his two boys. He desperately wants their respect and assumes that, when they see everyone who knew him attending his funeral, they will realize their father was “well liked.” In reality, his family members are the only attendees. At the conclusion, Biff notes that his father had the wrong dreams and should have chosen a career he loved. Hap, however, vows to carry on the legacy of Willy Loman—proving to the world that one can succeed—so that his father will not have died in vain. Erin Brescia

The American Dream in Death of a Salesman

One of the most pervasive themes in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman is the American dream, and the happiness and success that it brings. The issue in this work is not the dream itself; the problem lies in the fact that Willy Loman’s vision of the dream is skewed. To Willy, the dream is not achieved by hard work and determination, but by being “well liked.” In a flashback, Willy and his sons are conversing when a neighbor, Bernard, arrives to tutor Biff in math. Bernard reminds Biff that failing math will keep him from graduating. Biff is more concerned about football than academics, however, and Willy does nothing to deter the behavior. When Bernard leaves, Happy and Biff tell their father that Bernard is “liked” but not “well liked.” Of course, according to Willy’s vision of the American dream, his sons have a better chance to succeed in life than Bernard

768â•…â•… Miller, Arthur because they are both well liked. This is refuted toward the end of the play, when Willy discovers that Bernard has become a very successful attorney, while his own sons’ lives are mediocre at best. The chief problem in the Loman household is that Willy’s ideas and fantasies have distorted family reality. Biff is a petty thief who cannot hold a steady job, and as an assistant to an assistant manager, Happy believes he is invaluable to the company for which he works. When the boys decide to start their own company, Biff agrees to contact a former employer for a loan. Willy assures him that the loan is guaranteed, because the boss liked Biff. The truth, however, is that his former boss does not even recognize Biff when he arrives. Biff had never worked as a salesman like his father said. In fact, he later remembers he was only a shipping clerk. Biff lets his father’s delusions affect his personal reality—leading him to believe that because he was “well liked” he was successful in all of his endeavors, which was far from the truth. It seems that everyone surrounding Willy has achieved the American dream. His older brother Ben discovered a diamond mine in Alaska; Willy had the opportunity to join him, but he refused on account of his pride. At this stage in his life, Willy is borrowing money from his neighbor and passing it off as his salary. The irony is that Willy was certain this particular man would never be successful because he was liked, but not well liked. Willy is basing his idea of the American dream and personal success on one specific salesman’s story. Of course, this man was well liked. He had connections in many states and was able to work from his hotel room. When he died, his funeral was attended by hundreds of buyers and sellers. He was respected and adored. “And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want,” Willy says (81). At this stage in his life Willy is hardly successful. His salary has been cut to commission only, and when he is fired, his quest to gain the American dream is over. His only hope lies in his sons. Unfortunately, the only money Willy has to give them is in a life insurance fund. If he dies, his sons will get the money. This will guarantee their success, he realizes, because they are already well liked.

Willy has an ulterior motive in dying. Not only does his family need the money, but also he knows that when they arrive at his funeral and see all the men he worked with in New England, they will realize that Willy was an important person. The number of attendees at his funeral is guaranteed to certify his status as someone well liked. As a result, his family will remember him fondly and respect his legacy as a salesman and a person. In reality, Willy’s suicide will more than likely negate the insurance policy and the family will receive nothing. Even more staggering is the day of the funeral, when only his immediate family and his next-door neighbor are present. Surprised, Linda asks, “But where are all the people he knew?” (137). Willy Loman is not entirely successful as a salesman, yet during his lifetime he has secured a home in the city that is almost paid for and has raised two sons. For many, this is the American dream. Unfortunately, Willy is never able to realign his idea of success with reality. Because of this, he suffers psychologically and dies needlessly. Erin Brescia

Death in Death of a Salesman

In order to fully understand Death of a Salesman, it is important to consider the idea of death and suicide within the framework of the play. The title itself hints at what is in store for Willy Loman, not only the physical act of taking his life, but also how he has been dying inside all along. Willy had grand illusions and many misconceptions regarding death. Because he was a salesman, and a “New England man,” he has come into contact with many buyers over the years. He considers himself “well-known” in the area and, depending on his frame of mind, “well liked.” Willy wants to die the “death of a salesman.” He bases this idea on the death of another great salesman, who was so well liked that the buyers came to him. He was wealthy, died in his hotel room, and hundreds of men and women came out to pay their respects at his funeral. Willy imagines this kind of procession for himself, and, in his own way, looks forward to the day he will die, when his sons will finally learn that he was liked by everyone who knew him.

Death of a Salesmanâ•…â•… 769 Willy’s chief desire is to be well liked. This alone is his American dream. If he is well liked, then he considers himself worthy. But this is not his reality, and from early in the play it is mentioned that he has reached a point where he has become suicidal. When he is at his highest, he feels he is loved and can accomplish anything. During his low points, however, he is aware that he is not as well liked as he hoped he would be; he travels around the New Â�England area selling his wares, and yet still not making enough money to survive without his salary. Forced to borrow money from a friend, he pretends that this weekly loan is his paycheck. His delusions include the idea that he is “indispensable” to his company, and yet his manager still insists on letting him go. At the beginning of the play, his family is worried that Willy has had another automobile accident. There is the idea that these “accidents” are reoccurring and are not accidents at all, but suicide attempts. “The insurance inspector came,” Linda tells her sons. “He said that they have evidence. That all these accidents in the last year—weren’t— weren’t—accidents” (58). His wife has also discovered another one of Willy’s secrets: a rubber hose attached to a gas pipe, which proves her suspicion that Willy is trying to kill himself. Why are there so many failed attempts? One could wonder if Willy has the strength within himself to go through with the task. Perhaps, in some way, he still feels that there is hope, that he can make something great of himself. When his sons tell them of their plan to start their own business, Willy feels that there might be something to live for after all. When their plans fail, Willy’s hope is dashed. His only chance to provide anything for his family is to commit suicide and allow his sons to use his life insurance policy to become successful. In this way, Willy wants to leave a legacy. His opinion is that he is worth more dead than alive, yet through his mental ramblings with his brother Ben, he becomes aware of the possibility that the life insurance company might not honor his policy if they discover he has taken his own life. Still, there is the added hope that when his family attends his funeral and sees all of his friends and the buyers he has made contact with over the years, they will realize that their father

was a great, “well-liked” man. “Ben, that funeral will be massive! They’ll come from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire! All the old timers with the strange license plates—that boy will be thunderstruck, Ben, because he never realized— I am known!” (126). These conditions finally give Willy the courage to go through with his suicide, which is disguised as another one of his “automobile accidents.” Willy’s delusions ultimately lead to his destruction. His faith in his personal American dream (to be well liked) has skewed his idea of success, and his willingness to pursue this dream at any cost is what has caused him to choose a career that does not coincide with his interests and who he is as a person. It is because he cannot live up to his own expectations that he continually falls short. Had Willy altered his perception of the dream and found contentment in the life he created for himself, his needless death could have been avoided. Erin Brescia

Pride in Death of a Salesman

The idea of “pride” in Death of a Salesman is a complex one. It cannot be said that Willy Loman was continually full of pride, but at the same time some of the biggest mistakes he makes center around the fact that he was too prideful to adjust his vision of success. This is most evident in his career choice. More than anything, Willy wants to prove to the world that he can achieve “the American dream” by working as a salesman. Unfortunately, this goes against his true calling—working with his hands. This skewed vision also leads him to turn down two other, very important career opportunities. The truth is that Willy Loman was not meant to be a salesman. At his funeral, his family comments on how much he enjoyed working outside and using his hands. Biff confesses to their neighbor, Charley, that “there is more of him in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made” (138). His family remembers how skilled Willy was at construction, adding a bathroom to their house and building a garage. As his hobby, it is likely that Willy found more pleasure in his projects around the house than as a traveling salesman. Unfortunately, Willy’s belief that there was no future for him in construction led him to

770â•…â•… Milton, John work as a salesman. Even though planting, building, and working with his hands makes him happy, he goes against these natural inclinations and chooses a career that he believes will help him achieve success and notoriety. Another example of Willy’s pride is evidenced in his not going to work for his brother, a wealthy mine owner. Ben had prospects in Alaska, and, in a flashback, asks Willy why he does not want to help him. The offer is on the table, and it will make him rich. Willy, however, with his skewed vision of success, believes that he and his boys are on the precipice of something great. He chooses to stay in the city and continues to live out his miserable existence, hoping that a better future is just on the horizon. When Willy is nearing his lowest point, he is offered a job working for Charley, his neighbor. Instead of accepting it, Willy assures him that he already has a job, and that he likes being a salesman. The truth is that Willy has just been fired. Charley does not understand why Willy will not work for him because it is a guaranteed salary. Willy never explains his reasoning, and refuses to work for Charley, even though he is no longer employed. This is where Willy’s pride problem becomes complicated. He will not take a job from Charley, but he has no problem taking his money. After refusing to work for him, Willy admits to his neighbor that he needs to pay his insurance bill, and that he does not have the money. “I’m keeping strict accounts,” Willy tells Charley (98). It is learned through this encounter that Willy has sought Charley out every week for money. Charley does not know what Willy is doing with the money he gives him, or how Willy will survive without employment, but lends him the money just the same and urges him to take care of himself (98). There is also nothing prideful in Willy’s suicide at the end of the play. There have been many failed attempts, as Linda mentions to her sons that Willy’s car accidents were not accidents at all, and that she found a rubber hose in the basement where Willy tried to asphyxiate himself. His final attempt, which is a success, comes with the realization that his sons will be better off if he is dead. He dreams of the

wonderful things they will be able to do with the insurance money. His suicide, in fact, is a very selfless act, one of the few Willy manages during the course of his life. Willy Loman is a very simple yet complicated character. He is unwilling to accept anything other than the life he has chosen for himself, even as it drives his family to ruin. He is, however, willing to throw his entire life away on the prospect that his death will bring success and a good name for his two sons. Willy should have chosen a different career, one he was more equipped for, and adjusted his perception of success. Ultimately, Willy’s pride keeps him believing that his future depends on his being “well liked” as a salesman. Erin Brescia

Milton, Johnâ•… Paradise Lostâ•… (1667)

Amid the volumes of Milton’s poetry and prose, where can the average, modern reader begin to understand Paradise Lost? In a likely place: the beginning (1:1–26). John Milton establishes the poem’s rhetorical situation by first identifying at least two characters who participate in the narration: the “Muse” and the “I” (Milton’s poetic persona). The fall of humanity, or the story told in the Book of Genesis, is the subject of the poem, established by the opening line: “Of Man’s First Disobedience” (1: 1). He further establishes the epic form that his poem is to follow, by echoing Homer’s formal petition to the Muse, with the command to “Sing Heav’nly Muse” (1: 6). Fourth, when Milton’s poet calls on the “Spirit” for illumination and support, we see the poet’s audience and primary purpose: “That to the highth of this great Argument / I may assert Eternal Providence, / And justify the ways of God to men” (1:24–26). In other words, the poem will attempt to explain why and how man and woman “fell” in the Garden of Eden. But Paradise Lost seems to show the impossibility of such a justification; here we see that Milton’s ends may differ from the speaker’s in the poem. Similar to Milton’s poem “Lycidas” (1638), Paradise Lost is an outstanding imitation of a poem written by a “hireling” (or bad) poet, who does not share the same perspective of the Fall as the author. Although designed to confront

Paradise Lostâ•…â•… 771 the tragedy of the fall (Gen. 3), the poem broaches its subject, as “Lycidas,” often to satirically critique the fallacious view of its poet. Jereme Wade Skinner

Freedom in Paradise Lost

John Milton exposes the tragic nature of Paradise Lost in part through freedom, a theme containing three distinct, yet interlocking, aspects: the spiritual, the domestic, and the political. The Archangel Michael provides a paradigm for understanding the entire poem’s presentation of liberty, by juxtaposing these facets in his dialogue with Adam in book 12, using the concept of free will to emphasize the tragic nature of the Fall. For Michael, the Fall marks the moment at which humans lose the liberty of free will enjoyed in a world without sin. When he speaks of Adam’s descendant, who builds the tower of Babel (Gen. 11:4–9), Michael says that this action “subdue[s] / Rational libertie” (12:81–82). But, in order to distinguish this kind of freedom from pre-Fall liberty, Michael explains that, “Since thy original lapse, true Libertie / Is lost” (12:83–84). Thus, “true Libertie” is pre-Fall liberty, and subdued “rational libertie” pertains to post-Fall humanity. According to Michael, pre-Fall freedom is always interconnected with “right Reason” (12:84–85). Adam echoes Michael’s description of “true Libertie” in his dialogue with Eve, where he says that “God left free the Will, for what obeyes / Reason, is free, and Reason he made right” (9:351–352). But, according to Adam, although “right,” “Reason,” if deceived, can “misinforme the Will / To do what God expresly hath forbid” (9:354–356). In book 5, the Angel Raphael warns Adam that “God made thee perfet, not immutable; / And good he made thee, but to persevere / He left it in thy power” (5:524–526). Thus, the power God gives Adam and Eve to persevere involves a right reason, but not a reason incapable of misdirecting the will. For Raphael, choosing rightly in the face of deception involves more than just reason; it also necessitates obedience. Michael’s phrase “thy original lapse” refers to what many theologians of Milton’s era and beyond call “original sin” or “the Fall.” This “lapse” is the moment Adam and Eve disobey God’s command-

ment by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (see book 9 and Genesis 3). According to Paul in the New Testament (KJV, 1611), “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). English Reformers of the 17th century, however, emphasized the allpervasiveness of sin and death in humanity after the Fall, in the Calvinistic doctrine called “total depravity.” According to this doctrine, sin affects even the human will and the ability to reason. Thus, the sinful will inclines toward disobedience rather than obedience. Michael reflects this perspective when he says that “Reason” in a sinful person is often “obscur’d, or not obeyd” (12:86). When this happens, he says desires and passions subsume reason. When sinful desires and passions govern the will, humans are reduced to what Michael calls “servitude” (12:89). Human servitude involves permitting “Within himself unworthie Powers to reign / Over free Reason” (12:91–92). Michael melds together the internal and external elements of freedom with a discussion of the political aspect of liberty. For Michael, the person who allows “unworthie Powers to reign / Over free Reason, God in Judgement just / Subjects him from without to violent Lords” (12:91–93). These “Tyrant[s]” often, according to Michael, deprive the person of his/her “outward freedom” (12:95) through enslavement. Hence, the poet’s previous reference to the “Government” controlled by sinful desires and passions and void of Reason also subtly refers to the political form of “Tyrannie.” Tyranny, however, can manifest itself in the domestic sphere. Adam does not restrict Eve’s movement in the face of Satan’s “lurking” presence, because “force upon free Will hath here [in Paradise] no place” (9:11–74). External force can exist only in an imperfect environment, because it necessitates internal imprisonment. For Michael, as well as Adam, internal servitude leads to external enslavement. But internal servitude is not merely a moral problem. Michael’s references to “desires” and “Passions” also allude to Paul’s description of spiritual enslavement in the New Testament book of Ephesians. For Paul, all Christians, including himself, prior to experiencing the mercy and love of God, fulfilled sinful lusts and desires, because they

772â•…â•… Milton, John walked “according to the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:1–2)—a reference to Satan and an echo of Michael’s phrase, the “unworthie Powers.” Thus, for Milton, the loss of Paradise is the loss of “true Libertie.” Although Satan and his “crew” of fallen angels do not possess any hope of real freedom, Adam and Eve, as well as their descendants, hope to possess what Michael calls “a Paradise within thee, happier farr” (12:586). Jereme Wade Skinner

Love in Paradise Lost

For the poet of Paradise Lost, the fall profoundly impacts all subsequent human relationships, especially the most intimate of them—marriage. Although Adam and Eve’s marriage suffers before God judges them, after this judgment they contemplate seriously the uncertainty of their future together. Ultimately, they agree to repent of their sin, rather than commit suicide. Eve wants to bear all of the punishment, but Adam quickly dismisses this option as impossible, since prayers, he says, cannot “alter high Decrees” (see 10:952–957). Alternatively, Adam proposes that the couple cease their contention and “strive / In offices of Love,” (10:959–960). Thus, through Adam and Eve’s marriage, the poet demonstrates that human love in all relationships after the Fall is not the same as before, because the love between Adam and Eve now requires work and obligation, whereas before it unfolded naturally and voluntarily. The voluntary performance of love in Eden before the Fall is represented in part by the semantic duality of the term “offices.” To the Eve who “at his feet / Fell humble, and imbracing them, besought / His peace” (10:911–913), Adam commands, But rise, let us no more contend, nor blame Each other, blam’d enough elsewhere, but strive In offices of Love, how we may light’n Each other’s burden in our share of woe. (10:958–961) The conjunction “But” marks a turn from Adam’s hypothetical consideration of Eve’s offer to bear his entire punishment to a threefold command: “rise,”

“let us no more contend, nor blame / Each other,” and “strive / In offices of Love” (10:958–960). Adam’s use of the term “offices” invokes the semantic range of the Latin term from which it derives, officium. According to Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary, officium includes at least two primary meanings: It can be a “service” performed either willingly or “of necessity.” That is, an officium may be a “voluntary service” performed on the basis of some “kindness” or “favor,” or it may be an “obligatory service” rendered from a sense of “duty.” Before the Fall, Adam and Eve’s love reflects only the former connotation of officium: They love one another because they want to, not because they have to. The entrance of sin and death into the world, however, disrupts this perfect love relationship. That Eve’s relationship to Adam will no longer consist of “Unargu’d” obedience (4:636) manifests itself in the abundance of qualifying terms Adam uses in concert with the phrase “offices of Love,” words that have negative connotations: “contend,” “blame,” “strive,” “burden,” and “woe.” These qualities characterize in part the fallen marital relationship. Thus love, which was performed in a perfect world only from voluntary service, must now be enacted also out of an unwilling heart. Therefore, even spousal love in a fallen world necessitates a divine command. The fallen narrator foreshadows the necessity of commanding even the most intimate part of a human love relationship— sex—when he refers to Adam and Eve’s pre-Fall “wedded Love” as something “God declares / Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all” (4:746–747, emphasis added). Sex between marriage partners must be commanded in a fallen world, because it follows from loving conversation and intimacy with God in prayer—things unnatural to sinful humans. The poet draws a clear connection between conversation, prayer, and sex in Adam and Eve’s pre-Fall marriage relationship. Immediately prior to the poet’s chaste portrait of their pre-Fall sexual act, the poet says that Adam and Eve “Both turn’d, and under op’n Sky ador’d / The God that made both Sky, Air, Earth and Heav’n” (4:721–722). But this evening adoration occurs after they walk through the Garden “talking hand in hand alone” (4:689). In fact, Eve emphasizes the delight she takes in

Paradise Lostâ•…â•… 773 this “talking,” whenever she says to Adam: “With thee conversing I forget all time, / All seasons and thir change, all please alike” (4:640). Thus, in the sequence from conversation to adoration to sex a progression of intimacy emerges through three types of human intercourse: verbal, spiritual, and physical. Adam and Eve’s pre-Fall sex is a physical expression of the bond they share both verbally and spiritually. But in an imperfect world, such intimacy necessitates commands, because love cannot be assumed. The tripartite division—verbal, spiritual, and physical—corresponds for the poet to the three most intimate levels of human relationships: friendship, Christian brotherhood, and marriage. The concept of love after the Fall in Paradise Lost calls all humans to “strive” against the selfish impulse of bearing one’s own burden, and strive for lightening “Each other’s burden in our share of woe” (10:959–961)—“offices” that require loving intercourse in varying degrees. Jereme Wade Skinner

Religion in Paradise Lost

Although the term “religion” appears only three times in Paradise Lost (1:372; 11:667; 12:535), the theme of faithful devotion to an object or person is central to the entire poem. The poet uses the terms “faith,” “devotion,” “worship,” “belief,” and “adoration” in various forms to indicate a character’s religious orientation. All characters in Paradise Lost, whether demonic, angelic, or human, have a religion, because they demonstrate varying levels of faithful devotion to something or someone. Religion in Paradise Lost is not exclusive to the pious; even the demons share adoration for and faith in Satan. Satan laments his own internal “torments,” while recognizing that the devils “adore me on the Throne of Hell, / With Diadem and Sceptre high advanc’d” (4:89–90). The words “adore,” “Throne,” “Diadem,” and “Sceptre” suggest that Satan and his followers see him as a king or ruler. In one of his addresses as ruler of Hell, by addressing the demons as “our faithful friends / Th’ associates and copartners of our loss” (1:264–265), Satan unknowingly highlights the fact that he and his “friends” are forever entrapped in the very thing they abandoned Heaven to escape—religion. Yet now their adoration

and faith are directed at a false “king,” instead of the true King appointed by the Father in Heaven—the Son. Although there is a sense in which the demons willfully acknowledge Satan as their ruler in Hell, their confinement to and suffering in the Lake of Fire is a constant reminder that God, not Satan, is the ultimate ruler. Satan represents this truth when he calls God “our Conquerour” and in a parenthesis admits that God is the one “whom I now / Of force believe Almighty” (1:143–144). Similar to the demons, the angels in Heaven express their religious devotion through acts and words of faithfulness and worship. But, unlike demonic religion, angelic religion lacks the chaos of the kingdom of Pandemonium and aims only at God. After the Father commands all the “Gods” in Heaven to “Adore the Son, and honour him as mee” (3: 343), the poet says that lowly reverent Towards either Throne they bow, and to the ground With Solemn adoration down they cast Thir Crowns inwove with Amarant and Gold. (3:349–352) Unlike Satan’s portrait of demonic adoration, the narrator’s description here indicates that the angels interpret the Father’s command to “honour” the Son “as mee,” by responding with a “bow” that expresses their “lowly” or humble reverence. But their interpretation also elicits a debasing action of “Solemn adoration” that goes further than their bow: “down they cast / Thir Crowns inwove with Amarant and Gold” (3: 351–352). For the angels, properly adoring and honoring God means removing any symbol of their God-like stature. That the angels “cast” these “Crowns inwove with Amarant and Gold . . . to the ground” suggests one very important detail about their worship practice: It includes an immediate, unquestioning, and “Solemn” or sincere imitation of God the Son’s voluntary offering of himself for the punishment of sinful humanity: “Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life / I offer, on mee let thine anger fall” (3:236–237). Thus, the angelic denial of place in Heaven reflects the Son’s “offer” to bear the “anger” of the Father by casting off his full divinity

774â•…â•… Mistry, Rohinton and taking on the “lowly” identity of a human—even a reviled and a murdered one. Before the Fall, human religion shares many similarities with angelic religion, because it is unencumbered by sin. The narrator’s glimpse of unblemished human worship includes language reminiscent of the description of the angel’s adoration of God in Heaven. Before Adam and Eve hasten to work in the “field,” the poet observes that “Lowly they bow’d adoring, and began / Thir Orisons, each Morning duly paid / In various style” (5:144–146). Unlike the angels, Adam and Eve are not in the immediate presence of God’s throne, so they must adore God through prayer. But the couple’s posture is identical to the angels: It is both humble (“Lowly”) and characterized by a bow. Further, the poet connects the types of worship offered to God by the angels and prelapsarian humanity with the term “adoration.” But after the Fall, human religion shares the divided nature of demonic religion, because it is encumbered by depravity. The Fall marks the point at which Satan redirects Adam and Eve’s religious devotions away from God and toward himself. In a dream, God warns Adam not to eat “of the Tree whose operation brings / Knowledg of good and ill, which I have set / The Pledge of thy Obedience and thy Faith” (8:323–325). Thus, when he eats of this tree, Adam destroys the “Pledge” between himself and God, joining the ranks of the disobedient and the faithless. In the destruction of one “Pledge,” however, Adam unknowingly sets up another, characterized by obedience and faith in a new “God”: Satan. And though he learne[s], that to obey is best, And love with feare the onely God, to walk As in his presence, ever to observe His providence, and on him sole depend, (12:561–564) Adam and his progeny do not always do what “is best.” Adam’s loss of Paradise, his “fall” into sin, leads humanity, for the poet, into a struggle between doing what is “best” (obeying God) and doing what is worst (obeying Satan). Jereme Wade Skinner

Mistry, Rohintonâ•… A Fine Balanceâ•… (1995)

Rohinton Mistry’s third novel, A Fine Balance, surveys India’s social landscape during the mid-1970s when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi instituted a state of emergency. In particular, Mistry illustrates how Gandhi’s sweeping policies of discipline, forced sterilization, and beautification impacted the lives of ordinary Indians. Throughout the novel, Mistry weaves together the life stories of four main characters: Dina Shroff Dalal, Maneck Kohlah, and Ishvar and Omprakesh Darji. Mistry portrays how, due to a combination of economic circumstances and fate, these four characters come together serendipitously to form an impromptu family. Dina, a widow of 42, needs money to pay rent, and so leases her room to Maneck, a young college student from the mountains. Because Dina’s eyesight has grown poor, she can no longer sew and so decides to hire the two tailors, Ishvar and Omprakesh Darji. Following a straight narrative over the course of a year, Mistry spins a tale that develops relationships among these characters and delves sporadically into the past to develop their individual histories, blending in along the way a colorful cast of minor characters: Ashraf Chacha, Ibrahim, Monkey Man, Rajaram, Shankar, and Beggarmaster, among others. A panoply of themes emerges as the novel progresses; foremost among these are identity, community, and oppression. As bleak as their circumstances are, Mistry depicts “a fine balance between hope and despair” (228–229) as his characters face social and economic vulnerabilities with personal fortitude and dignity. A Fine Balance won the Giller Prize (1995), was short-listed for the Booker Prize (1996), and was an Oprah’s Book Club (2001) title. H. Elizabeth Smith

Community in A Fine Balance

Mistry creates and sustains multiple communities throughout the novel: the community of slum dwellers, the community of Chamaars in the rural villages, the community in the northern Indian mountain village where Maneck is from, the jhopadpatti (slum) communities in the City by the Sea, and the aca-

A Fine Balanceâ•…â•… 775 demic community at the college Maneck attends. In addition to communities defined by socioeconomic circumstances, Mistry also portrays a variety of religious communities: The Parsis, the Hindus, and the Muslims are key among communities in the novel. The people within each of the communities interact with each other, sometimes becoming friends and even family. Regardless of the borders between and among the myriad communities, there is a sense that they are constantly operating in tandem with each other. In spite of the strict ethnic, caste, and socioeconomic boundaries in Mistry’s portrayal of society in the City by the Sea, characters traverse multiple communities, creating unusual but nevertheless lasting personal relationships. Community, a prevailing theme throughout A Fine Balance, also presents a paradox: Mistry’s characters’ sense of community allegiance is juxtaposed with characters’ desire to transcend and challenge the strict limits of the community boundaries that determine their socioeconomic lot. In addition, while the communities Mistry creates are distinct, they are also superimposed upon each other: Dina’s household alone represents a variety of different religions, economic circumstances, and generational communities. The most integral and closely examined community in the novel is the non-biological “family” that emerges from dire economic circumstance and, perhaps, fate; Dina, Maneck, Ishvar, and Omprakesh come together serendipitously for one year to forge an interdependent group of individuals from vastly diverse communities. Living together under one cramped apartment roof, Mistry brings together people from a variety of competing sectors in Indian society: Parsis and Hindus, well-off and very poor, educated and unschooled, young and middle-aged. Initially, these characters are wary of each other: Dina, a harsh taskmaster at first, watches over the tailors’ every move, and she bosses Maneck around; the tailors, Ishvar and Omprakesh Darji, while desperate to find employment, worry that Dina is taking advantage of them, and Maneck often serves as a compassionate intermediary between Dina and the tailors. Ultimately, as the characters get to know each other, they appreciate, learn from, and depend upon one another. In fact, the family they forge

cannot exist without each other. The boundaries of caste, religion, and social class are eroded and a new, if unorthodox, community emerges and new, mutually sustaining relationships are formed. The happiness and fulfillment each character finds in this situation is short-lived, however, due to the usual terrible circumstances that force abrupt and often dramatic change in the lives of Mistry’s characters. In addition to the novel’s seminal family, which brings together individuals from diverse communities, Mistry creates a variety of other communities in order to explore issues that emerge in the novel. In the rural villages, Mistry describes the “untouchable” Chamaar community and the senseless caste violence against them. Mistry examines three generations of men in Dukhi Mochi, Ishvar, and Omprakesh, who transcend traditional community boundaries. In the urban areas, Mistry brings to life a community of squatters who live in the slums at the edges of the City by the Sea. In spite of the material poverty, the characters Mistry develops are three-dimensional and rich in humanity. They are generous of spirit, helping each other with finding food, employment, and housing and to adjust to life in the slums. Maneck’s college community is yet another kind of community Mistry develops in order to broaden his landscape. The hazing Maneck experiences at the hands of his peers and the cruel loss of his friend, Avinash, at the hands of government goondas (thugs) illustrate how Maneck is unwittingly caught up in a web of violence. A Fine Balance is a compelling novel because Mistry challenges the perimeters of these various communities and forces their participants to meet each other, to interact, and even to get to know each other. Characters move fluidly from one community to the next, yet Mistry is unrelenting in illustrating how the hands of fate can sweep a character from one community to the next with relative ease. Ishvar, for example, goes from being a hardworking tailor with good job prospects and aspirations for his nephew at the beginning of the novel, to being a legless beggar on wheels by the end. Similarly, Dina goes from being an insouciant, independent, selfreliant young woman with a wonderful husband, to being a widow struggling desperately to make ends meet, and finally, to moving back in with her brother

776â•…â•… Mistry, Rohinton and his family at the end of the novel. All characters seem to transcend ethnic and religious allegiances in favor of personal loyalties that they come to depend upon. H. Elizabeth Smith

Identity in A Fine Balance

The four main protagonists in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance—Dina Shroff Dalal, Maneck Kohlah, Ishvar Darji and Omprakesh Darji—provide useful lenses to explore both how society identifies them and how characters identify themselves according to ethnicity, caste, gender, economic status, and generation. Issues of identity also determine the social and financial limits placed on each character’s life; moreover, each character’s survival depends upon confronting these limits. Dina Shroff Dalal, a Parsi, is a middle-aged widow who is attempting to preserve her independence; Maneck Kohlah, also a Parsi, is a young student attending college in the “City by the Sea”; and Ishvar and Omprakesh Darji, both Hindus of the Chamaar caste (the tanning and leather working caste, considered by other Hindus to be “untouchable”). The tailors, uncle and nephew, have recently arrived from the countryside to search for employment and to escape the caste-related violence in their rural village. Throughout the novel, Mistry explores how these four protagonists identify themselves beyond how they are constructed by society, especially as they have been identified by their religion, which almost always determines their economic status. None of Mistry’s characters are satisfied with the lot assigned to them by their highly stratified society, and yet they each possess the ambition to be more than they have been “destined” to be. They desire economic independence and opportunities, and they have the will to pursue their professional ambitions. Mistry develops his characters’ identities by illuminating their responses to particular situations. For example, Dina’s position within her immediate family reflects the status of women in her middleclass Parsi culture, and she is constantly battling her older brother’s hold on her desire for independence. Dina’s happy but brief marriage was cut short by a traffic accident; as a widow, however, she refuses to move back in with her brother and instead chooses

to struggle on her own to make ends meet. Dina’s strong sense of self-reliance is always complicated by her ever-precarious economic situation; still, she resists succumbing to her brother’s desire (with her extended family’s support) that she move back with them. Maneck, the only child of solidly middle-class Parsi parents, has been raised in the foothills of northern India. His sense of identity emerges in contrast to his family: First, as Maneck comes of age, he struggles against the decisions his father makes for him; and second, he struggles against his identity as a college student at a time when students are involved in demonstrations against the government over an immense crackdown against civil liberties. Over the course of the novel, for a brief time, Maneck also develops an identity as Dina’s “son” and Omprakesh’s “brother”—identities that cross the social boundaries of the caste system. The two tailors, Ishvar and Omprakesh Darji, are originally from the “untouchable” Chamaar caste; their ancestors were cobblers, which is considered to be an “unclean” trade. Ishvar’s father and Omprakesh’s grandfather, Dukhi Mochi, made a bold and unorthodox decision to have his sons serve as apprentices to a tailor, a decision that had wide reaching consequences. Mistry’s representation of Ishvar and Omprakesh’s struggle for social mobility is not hopeful. Throughout the novel, the tension escalates between who the characters have been born to be and who they want to become. In addition to the main characters, Mistry vividly portrays the lives of the poorest in India’s society, both in the rural villages and in the city slums. While Mistry does not typecast his characters, the myriad of minor characters we meet throughout the novel give the reader a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Indians during the state of emergency, people underrepresented in literature. Dina’s brother, Nusswan Shroff, and her best friend, Zenobia, exemplify the comfortable lives of an emerging middle-class; Shankar, nicknamed “Worm,” illustrates the cruelty of daily life for urban beggars; Beggarmaster symbolizes an endemic corruption within the system as he simultaneously controls, manipulates, and protects the beggars for whom he is responsible; Monkey Man’s deep attach-

A Fine Balanceâ•…â•… 777 ments to his monkeys and later to his niece and nephew cause him to take revenge upon those who took away all the family he possessed. While Mistry identifies characters by their socioeconomic status and ethnicity or caste affiliation, it is the way in which they choose to deal with their circumstances that identifies them as individuals with an innately human desire not only to survive but also to contribute to their community and to enrich each other’s lives. Keenly aware of the daily injustices against them and perpetually at the edge of disaster, characters rely upon each other to face the inevitable struggles of their quotidian lives. Ultimately, Mistry’s characters emerge as individuals with strong individual identities and ambitions of their own. H. Elizabeth Smith

Oppression in A Fine Balance

Characters contend with a prevailing sense of oppression throughout A Fine Balance: Dina is oppressed both by her family and by her society’s lack of economic opportunities for women; Maneck is oppressed by his parents, especially his father and later by classmates at college, and he is oppressed by witnessing his friends’ desperate struggle for economic autonomy; Ishvar and Omprakesh are oppressed by their Chamaar (untouchable) caste, by their economic condition and lack of education, and by their family history. Other characters in the novel are more or less oppressed—and in myriad ways—than these central four. Indeed, oppression is a theme that resonates throughout A Fine Balance, as are related sub-themes: cruelty, fate, futility, oppression versus justice, violence, work. Within the larger sociopolitical context—India and the City by the Sea, in particular, under Indira Gandhi’s state of emergency during the mid-1970s—that Mistry creates his numerous characters victimized by constant oppression: the poor, women, children, the public. And oppressors include the economy, the rich, fate, the government, the “goondas” (thugs), family members, middle-men, religion, and emergency policies. Oppression because of religion is rampant in the novel; it has a psychological impact on the characters and especially upon the decisions they make and

their sense of themselves. Mistry focuses on portraying caste violence, but he also illuminates how other minorities, including Muslims and Sikhs, become targets of violence at various points. Mistry’s poignant discussion of Ishvar and Omprakesh’s family history exemplifies the injustice of caste oppression in prior generations and at the time. For example, Mistry demonstrates the violent conflicts between Hindus and Muslims in Indian communities. What would have happened to Ashraf Chacha’s family had he not taken in Dukhi Mochi’s sons, Ishvara and Narayan? Surely they would all have been murdered. In addition, Mistry critiques the government’s oppression of the poor in countless situations where minor cruelties continue to add up to monumental disasters in individual lives: by wiping out the slums, by forcing young men to get vasectomies (sometimes more than once), by forcing beggars to work without pay, and by stealing and mutilating young children to serve as beggars who will generate a more lucrative yield because they are more pitiful. The government violently, and sometimes ridiculously, enforces a sterilization and birth control program that robs the poor of their dignity and their ability to reproduce. Corruption is rampant. The beggars are economically and socially oppressed, and their lives spiral into despair. In the stories Mistry tells of minor characters such as Monkey Man, Avinash, Shankar, Worm, Rajaram, Vasantrao, and Ibrahim, he illustrates the myriad ways ordinary Indians are oppressed, by the government, by their economic circumstances, by the choices they make. As the Sikh taxi driver informs Maneck when he returns to India after working in the Gulf for eight years, “↜‘Of course, for ordinary people, nothing has changed. . . . Living each day is to face one emergency or another’↜” : The government continues to raze poor people’s homes and slums in the cities, and in the countryside the officials promise much needed wells and fertilizer only if their sterilization quotas are met. Finally, while the government overtly oppresses its subjects, the social conditions of the times also serve as oppressors in the novel: the lack of adequate housing, food, water—let alone education and employment—destroys the lives of multitudes of the City by the Sea’s poorest urban dwellers. Mistry does not refer directly to Indira Gandhi by name; instead

778â•…â•… Molière his characters refer to the unnamed “Prime Minister.” Dina yearns for independence but understands, especially later in the novel, that she also needs protection and that she is part of a larger political web that demands her allegiance. Dina’s decision to remain independent costs her both financially and emotionally because she does not have the support and protection of her immediate family. While Dina struggles to maintain an income so she can be independent of her well-intentioned but nevertheless oppressive brother, the tailors, Ishvar and Omprakesh Darji, are often homeless and they succumb numerous times to circumstance. Ultimately, they pay enormous prices for attempting to move beyond the confines of what society allows them as Chamaars: Ishvar loses his legs and Omprakesh is castrated, a cruel and unjust punishment for standing up for his rights. By the end of the novel, Dina is reduced to living with her brother again, and the tailors have been reduced, physically as well as psychologically, to begging, and Maneck gives up completely, swallowed by the relentless oppression he witnesses—and lives vicariously through Dina, Ishvar, and Omprakesh. H. Elizabeth Smith

Molièreâ•… The Misanthropeâ•… (1666)

The Misanthrope is a play by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin—better known as Molière—and was first staged in Paris in 1666. Molière’s masterpiece is often defined as a comedy of manners, because of its deep social critique; but it could be also seen as a comedy of character, because of the preeminence of the main character based on moral issues—the Misanthrope—Alceste. The reader will also find some farcical elements, borrowed from the Italian players of the commedia dell’arte, who at the time were working in the same theater in Paris as Molière. The play aims to be a critical fresco of the 17thcentury Sun King’s court, with its hypocrisy, false appearances, and well-mannered aristocrats wholly dedicated to attending insignificant social events. Indeed, three main themes stand out in the play: a critique of contemporary ethics, the troubled relationship between the individual and society,

and the Misanthrope’s isolation. Alceste is both a tragic and a comic character, since his statements on society and on the human condition can be really penetrating, while his excesses make him a comic masque or, as his confidant Philinte tells him, a ridiculous person, at least as compared to the rest of the aristocratic milieu to which he belongs. On several occasions, the play shows some autobiographical features. Molière often uses Alceste’s words to express his own doubts on humankind: The critique of the worthless poet Oronte reading his empty verses on love, and the seclusion caused by Alceste’s non-conformation to conventional models, mark the isolation of the man and the intellectual—incapable of negotiating his frank feelings. Tania Collani

Ethics in The Misanthrope

Molière’s Misanthrope is above all a play based on criticism of contemporary society. Through the words and the behavior of its cynical and choleric hero, Alceste, readers can appreciate an ironic caricature of 17th-century aristocratic and Parisian habits and morality. One can find two main complementary ethics within this play: the austere ideal Alceste pursues and the frivolous customs of the Sun King’s court. Both are analyzed with humor and sharpness, with a special focus on their bad sides. Of course, since The Misanthrope is meant to be a comedy, exaggerations in both ideals occupy a larger space within the play than “normal.” In this perspective, Alceste is the excessive champion of sobriety and sincerity: He rallys against hypocrisy and empty accommodations of society’s rituals, such as making “vows and promises” (4), or speaking with a “tone sweet and gentle as a maid’s” (4). And from the beginning of the play, he stands up against the manners of his time: “No, all such modern manners I despise—Sheer affectation, sir, and downright lies” (4). Nonetheless, among all the Parisian salons’ bows and vows, Alceste’s morality is described with a tone of admiration by the author: his sincerity and his immunity to the blandishments of power make Alceste a modern hero. Unfortunately for him, all these virtues are only a source

The Misanthropeâ•…â•… 779 of misunderstanding for the other members of his upper class. Alceste’s ethics is fast described: A man has to be sincere, “in every single word” (4). But this is rather incompatible with a society based exclusively on appearances. The pompous lords and ladies’ ethics showed in the play are even more caricatured than Alceste’s austerity. The major representatives of this kind of morality are the two marquises, Acaste and Clitandre. The first thing Clitandre says, for example, as he enters the stage in act 2, is: “Goodness me! I’ve just come from His Majesty’s levee” (30). And, at the very beginning of act 3, while speaking with Clitandre, Acaste confesses that the secret of his happiness is a life based on futile occupations. Acaste is in fact “graced with youth and fortune, and a family name of some distinction” (41). And he goes as far as saying: “intelligence and taste I have to spare; I need no erudition” (41); “I dress well, in the fashion of the times . . . my carriage is erect and manly; for my teeth—well, sir, neglect them at your peril! And my waist is trim” (42). What makes the courtesan ethics of appearance incompatible with Alceste’s ethics is ultimately esteem. Alceste often deals with the subject of esteem as crucial, because if all the social system lies on formalities, how can one recognize whether someone’s esteem is true or false? The court ceremonial does not allow someone to say the truth to others, all the less so when a bad judgment is involved: “no man of principle would dream of falling for such cheaplywon esteem” (5), says Alceste about this milieu where everyone seems to love each other. There are no good opinions expressed toward the marquis’s attitude, even though the wise Philinte tries to soothe the conflict between the two contrasting ethics of excessive austerity and excessive frivolity. We could say that exaggeration is what prevents this play from turning into a tragedy. In this regard, Alceste’s idea of ethics is both utopian and dictatorial, because he would like people to be true and talk beyond all appearance (“Let no disguise mask what you feel with flattery and lies!” (5); but, at the same time, he is not a democrat of feelings, since he wants everyone to behave like him. His wise confidant, Philinte, knows that the disproportion of Alceste’s

rage makes him a comic character, not a tragic hero: “Your black moods simply make me want to laugh” (7). Alceste is a caricature of a man: He is a misanthrope and he hates the human race, “every man on earth” (7). This hate leaves him with little lucid judgment, and he doesn’t understand that he cannot change the world with his bursts of anger. In the end, Molière is trying to say to his spectators that it is really difficult to be “normal,” and that excesses characterize everyone’s position, from the wisest to the silliest. Tania Collani

Individual and Society in The Misanthrope

The title of Molière’s play speaks volumes about the relationship between individual and society: A “misanthrope” is a person who dislikes and avoids other people. Indeed, the main character of the play, Alceste, hates both the appearance and substance of the society he lives in, based as it is on empty and false ceremonies. Since Alceste’s values are sincerity and austerity, he cannot integrate himself properly into 17thcentury Parisian and aristocratic society. Its salons full of women in pompous wigs and dresses chatting about fashion make him furious and willing to be alone—indeed, as he often says, he’d rather be in a desert. The individual’s repulsion against society is made clear in act 1, when, speaking with his confidant and friend Philinte, Alceste cries: “For two pins I’d forsake the wretched human race entirely, make some wilderness my home” (8). Philinte tries uselessly to soothe Alceste’s bad temper: “Good Lord, forget the modes and manners of the age and let frail human nature take its share of blame!” (8). If Alceste hates society, the play makes clear that society returns the feeling, by isolating him and giving him the misfortunes he experiences in love (he will lose his beloved Célimène) as well as in everyday life (he will lose a case and have to pay a fine). Alceste is treated like a malcontent, incapable of enjoying life, although he is born into a wealthy environment. Philinte, a sincere and self-controlled man, repeatedly tells him not to waste his energy on such things, for the world cannot be changed: “It’s utterly folly for one man to wage war on the world”

780â•…â•… Molière (9). From a dialogue among aristocrats in act 2, we also learn that two things cannot be forgiven within the microcosm of 17th-century mundane society: boredom and ridiculousness. For example, speaking of absent people, they say: “That stupid creature— she is such a bore!   .  .  . She has no conversation, not a word” (32), and “His self-conceit exceeds all measure” (32). Although they are not referring to him—for he is present there—Alceste feels personally concerned, because he knows he is both boring and ridiculous to these people. This difficult relation between individual and society is condensed in the complicated relationship of love and hate existing between Alceste, the cantankerous hermit, and Célimène, the obliging society woman. It is very difficult to explain why Alceste falls so helplessly in love with a woman whose behavior is so different from his. Moreover, he has an alternative to Célimène, the chaste Arsinoé, who openly shows her feelings for Alceste. Not even his wise friend Philinte can understand Alceste’s love for Célimène, for he asks him: “This rigid moral stance you have taken up—have you by any chance observed the same in her whom you adore?” (11). Although the reader can perceive the mutual love between the two characters from their dialogues, Alceste hates that society so much that his own love is overshadowed. For example, he goes as far as telling Célimène: “You’re constantly besieged by men, and really, that’s too much for me” (24). The perfect example of the falseness of society and the truth of the individual human being, almost tragic in his isolation, is the fact that everybody is described through indirect portraits. Human beings cannot entertain sincere relationships among themselves; Alceste is the only one who makes an effort at being sincere, but his uncompromising soul denies any constructive dialogue. For example, when asked to give a judgment on a very bad poem written by a lord, at first he tries not to say what he really thinks, but in the end he expresses his opinion so ardently, that he will eventually be sued. In any case, there are no chances for constructive dialogues between Célimène and Arsinoé. As Arsinoé says—“a free and frank exchange of views should be more common. We might disabuse ourselves, in that event, of such a wealth of self-deception,

bad for moral health” (50)—the dialogue becomes a fervent quarrel. The society described by Molière needs blind individuals, entertaining no real dialogue among them. That’s probably the main reason why Alceste refuses Arsinoé’s invitation to enter the court, that is to say, “the” society: “what would I do at court, Madame? You know I haven’t got that sort of temperament” (55). Alceste’s bad temper is indeed his greatest problem: He is a misanthrope from the beginning to the end of the play: “twenty thousand francs assure . . . my might to fulminate against human race, and nurse my hatred of its ugly face” (79). Tania Collani

Isolation in The Misanthrope

A misanthrope is defined as a person who avoids other people and feels an intense desire for isolation. The play strongly confirms this meaning, since Alceste, the main character, does his best to be isolated from society, in particular from the friends and women around him. From the beginning of the play, Alceste wants to be left alone and refuses a constructive dialogue with his confident, Philinte: “Let me be! . . . Leave me, sir, I beg you—go away!” (3), he haughtily tells him. Alceste has a bad temper and he is aware of it. Nonetheless, he is unwilling to negotiate it: From his point of view, people have to accept him as is or leave him alone. All or nothing: This is the basic rule of Alceste’s character, which is applied to every field of his life, above all to relationships with other people. Either a sincere relationship based on esteem and mutual confidence exists, or any exchange becomes impossible. “I wish no further part / In friendship with a man so base at heart” (3), he says to the poor Philinte, who tries to make him understand the good side of being benevolent to the rest of mankind. Alceste’s desperate search for transparency clashes with the aristocratic and well-mannered society of the Sun King’s court: Not only does Alceste want to be left alone, but also others are not particularly fond of sharing their time with him. He has a peculiar power of embarrassing people, making them feel guilty. Even with his closest friends, he acts like a censor. Philinte is the first to feel guilty: “So then, Alceste, you think that I’m to blame?” (3). And then

Tartuffeâ•…â•… 781 it is his beloved Célimène’s turn: “Am I to blame because, it seems, I set some hearts aflame?” (24). In both cases Alceste’s answer is categorical and doesn’t leave any room for reply, nor negotiation of feelings and perspectives: “you should die of shame!” (3). Alceste’s nonnegotiable ideas bring him not only to a social isolation, but also to an intellectual seclusion. The episode of Oronte reading his sonnet to Alceste and Philinte (act 1) is quite illuminating: Considering the poem from an objective point of view, the reader as well would agree on its mediocrity. Philinte, who is very polite, makes Oronte immediately feel comfortable and pretends to like his composition; he also compliments him, as is customary among well-mannered people. On the contrary, Alceste first tries not to express his opinion on Oronte’s literary skills but finally bursts and says what he actually thinks: “Frankly, I’d waste no more time upon it” (20). The fact of being “frank” makes Alceste feel released, and he states that pretending is “a skill I’m pleased to say I lack” (21). Needless to say, Oronte is deeply upset by that comment and cuts all relations with the unpleasant Alceste: “You think you’re clever, sir, you’re damn self-assured . . . ” (22). Alceste does everything he can to be disappointing also in his love affair with Célimène. She is a young widow and a frivolous courtesan, but Alceste’s love is just as blind as his intolerance, and he would like to bring her within his isolation. Not even for a moment does he think of finding a compromise, an equilibrium that could possibly conciliate their different positions. He just expresses his hate for her choices and would like to convert her to his misanthropy: “Despite the passion Célimène arouses in me, I see and condemn [her faults] frankly” (12). The reader will notice that it is always his “frankness” that comes to be underlined when Alceste criticizes the others. But Célimène is not the kind of woman willing to abandon her freedom for a tyrant: “The way you show [your love] is some new creation, then, since you so ardently engage in quarrels. Passion, sir, with you means rage—I’ve never known a lover so irate!” (27) Alceste, the misanthrope, seeks loneliness, and his bad temper and his bursts of rage help him to acquire it. The wise Philinte is aware of it from the beginning: “Your rage at everything and everyone

exposes you to ridicule” (7). But, once more, Alceste’s answer is categorical. He says, “So much, the better! Frankly, sir, to me that’s such a comfort” (7). Alceste’s choice to be alone discourages all faithful Philinte’s attempts at making him aware of his condition. He is proud of his intolerance toward the entire “human race” (6), from the beginning to the end of the play, announcing, “Now leave me, sir, and climb the stairs alone. My sorrows at this time demand just a somber place as this” (80). Alceste proves undoubtedly to be the champion of misanthropy and isolation. Tania Collani

Molièreâ•… Tartuffeâ•… (1664, 1667, 1669)

Actor and playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who used the pseudonym Molière, wrote several drafts of Tartuffe. An early version was performed for Louis XIV at Versailles in 1664 but was banned due to the influence of a powerful religious group. Finally allowed an extended run in 1669, Tartuffe became one of the most profitable plays produced by Molière’s troupe. Tartuffe is a comedy in five acts, in rhyming alexandrine (12-syllable) verse. The bestknown English translation is probably Richard Wilbur’s version of 1963, in rhyming iambic pentameter. Tartuffe is a con artist who has infiltrated the home of Orgon by pretending to be a devout Christian. As in many of Molière’s plays, a comically flawed father (Orgon) arranges a marriage between his daughter (Mariane) and an inappropriate husband (Tartuffe). In their efforts to dissuade Orgon from this marriage, Mariane’s saucy maid Dorine and Orgon’s stoic brother-in-law Cléante use ridicule and logic, respectively. When Orgon’s hot-headed son Damis denounces Tartuffe, Orgon disinherits Damis, taking Tartuffe as his heir. Orgon’s wife, Elmire, finally unmasks Tartuffe by allowing him to flirt with her while Orgon hides under a table. After Tartuffe leaves with incriminating documents, the ironically named Monsieur Loyal arrives to evict the family. In the end, the king saves the day; Tartuffe is arrested because the king has seen through his fraudulent piety. Themes developed in Tartuffe include family, religion, justice, ambition, sex, love, parenthood, and responsibility. Because Molière’s plays

782â•…â•… Molière often include strong female characters, men behaving badly, and servants who outwit their masters, the themes of gender and social class are also relevant. Dan Smith

Family in Tartuffe

The importance of family in Tartuffe is apparent from a glance at the list of characters, for they are identified primarily in terms of their familial relationships. Household patriarch Orgon presides over his immediate family: his two children, Damis and Mariane, and his second wife, Elmire. Also living with the family are Orgon’s mother, Madame Pernelle, and servants, including the outspoken Dorine. Orgon’s brother-in-law Cléante is a regular visitor. As in many of Molière’s plays, the flaws of the father figure cause a family crisis. In this case, Orgon’s inability to distinguish between honest religious faith and the false performances of piety by the hypocritical Tartuffe have led him to invite Tartuffe into his home, upsetting the balance of his family’s comfortable bourgeois life. Once installed as a guest, Tartuffe imposes his will on the family, gradually usurping Damis’s place as Orgon’s heir, with the ultimate goal of replacing Orgon as the property owner and head of household. As the play begins, Madame Pernelle dramatically mobilizes the family crisis by moving out of the house. Like her gullible son, Madame Pernelle has been taken in by Tartuffe. She rails against the inhospitality the other family members have shown to Tartuffe, and against what she views as their lax morals. Her departure allows for much exposition, including important details about Tartuffe’s character and about the future of the family. In act 1, scene 3, Damis explains his suspicion that Tartuffe wants to break off Mariane’s marriage to Valère. Such an event would imperil his chances for a match with Valère’s sister, because Orgon had already agreed to a marriage contract. Breaking the contract would be dishonorable, and would certainly cause a rift between the two families. Orgon, however, demonstrates his skewed priorities from his first appearance on stage. When he asks for news of the household upon his return from a trip, Dorine informs him that his wife has been ill.

Orgon is unconcerned about Elmire’s condition, and instead repeatedly asks about Tartuffe. This lack of concern for his wife is emblematic of Orgon’s failure as a husband and father. An unhealthy obsession with Tartuffe has supplanted the protective instincts he should feel for his family. As Damis feared, Orgon goes back on his word about Mariane’s marriage to Valère. Upon hearing her father announce his intention of fully joining Tartuffe to his family by giving him his daughter’s hand in marriage, Mariane is speechless. In the scene that follows, Dorine chides Mariane for not speaking up to her father. When Mariane explains that her father has absolute power over her, Dorine insinuates that Orgon’s absurd proposition nullifies Mariane’s duty to obey him. Dorine enlists Elmire to save the family from this disastrous marriage by speaking with Tartuffe, who has displayed evidence of desire for Orgon’s wife. After Tartuffe speaks frankly of his lust for Elmire, she rebuffs him and offers her silence on this delicate matter in exchange for his allowing Mariane to marry Valère. But Damis, who has overheard the incident, tries to use this information to turn his father against Tartuffe. Underestimating Orgon’s devotion to Tartuffe at the expense of his family, Damis appeals to his father’s sense of honor. Tartuffe saves himself with a discourse of repentance, and an enraged Orgon banishes Damis from the house. At the end of act 3, Orgon declares his intention to name Tartuffe his sole heir. In effect, Tartuffe would become both son-in-law and son, marrying Mariane and replacing the now-disgraced Damis. Elmire, Mariane, Cléante, and Dorine make one last futile attempt to use reason to dissuade Orgon from marrying Mariane to Tartuffe. Finally, Elmire offers to show Orgon that Tartuffe is false. In perhaps the best-known scene of the play, Orgon hides under a table while Tartuffe tries to seduce his wife. Elmire’s stratagem works, and Orgon finally sees Tartuffe for the hypocrite he really is. His family can throw out the interloper and begin to heal. But Orgon has already signed over his property to Tartuffe! After Tartuffe leaves to set the legal proceedings into play, Madame Pernelle returns. Even she finally realizes Tartuffe’s deceitful nature, thus uniting

Tartuffeâ•…â•… 783 the entire family against the threat, albeit too late. His family unit repaired, Orgon must wait to see whether the family can be reintegrated into society. Fortunately for Orgon, his country is governed by a wise monarch who sees through Tartuffe’s scheme. The family does not exist in isolation; state structures lend support even to flawed families. Dan Smith

Justice in Tartuffe

In Tartuffe, Molière presents a vision of justice that is connected to truth and regulated by the political system of an absolutist monarchy. The theme of justice becomes most prominent near the end of the play, when legal and political representatives arrive to sort out the conflict between Tartuffe and Orgon’s family. While Tartuffe technically owns Orgon’s house according to the letter of the law, the king’s representative overrules him in favor of the spirit of the law because of Tartuffe’s fraudulent manipulation of Orgon. Justice in the world of this play requires trust in the clemency of the king, who is able to see beyond the surface to a deeper level of truth in order to make effective judgments. Early in the play, justice is closely tied to the theme of family, with Orgon functioning as an unjust father. Blinded by his loyalty to Tartuffe, Orgon behaves unjustly toward his daughter and son, ordering Mariane to marry Tartuffe and disowning Damis when he speaks against Tartuffe. When Orgon’s wife, Elmire, finally manages to confront Orgon with the truth of Tartuffe’s scheming ways, Orgon restores himself to the place of a just husband and father. Unfortunately, Tartuffe has already managed to secure a deed of gift from Orgon. Based on this document, Tartuffe has become the rightful owner of Orgon’s home. In act 5, scene 4, a bailiff named Monsieur Loyal comes on Tartuffe’s behalf. He announces that his intentions toward the family are good and that his message from Tartuffe will make Orgon happy. But he actually wants to serve Orgon with a document that calls for the family’s eviction from the house. Over the protestations of Damis, Monsieur Loyal argues that Orgon must accept this turn of events because of his belief in the rule of law. He appeals to Orgon as an upstanding man who

submits to the authority of the state. Other characters deride Monsieur Loyal’s call for justice as perverse, due to his initial misrepresentation of himself. Dorine makes a joke about the irony of the bailiff ’s name: Monsieur Loyal is loyal to no one, except perhaps himself. Loyal’s jovial farewell underscores his hypocrisy and lack of commitment to true justice. During the next scene Orgon’s wife and brotherin-law urge him to seek justice by building a legal case against Tartuffe. They are interrupted by Mariane’s faithful suitor Valère, who informs Orgon that Tartuffe has accused Orgon of treason before the king, based on the evidence of a strongbox containing documents belonging to a friend of Orgon who did conspire against the king. Valère offers to help Orgon escape, but Tartuffe arrives with a royal officer before Orgon can leave. Tartuffe claims that his sole purpose is to serve the king, but Cléante casts aspersions on his stated intentions by pointing out that Tartuffe’s concern for the king began when he was caught trying to seduce Elmire. Cléante additionally suggests that Tartuffe should refuse to be Orgon’s heir if he considers Orgon to be a traitor. Tartuffe cuts off the discussion, demanding that the officer arrest Orgon. In Tartuffe’s twisted thinking, justice is constituted by the outcome that most benefits him personally. The officer turns the tables on him, announcing that it is Tartuffe and not Orgon who will be going to prison. In a lengthy speech, the officer explains this surprising and fortuitous decision. First, he describes the king’s sharp perception and measured judgment, in particular his ability to see through the charades of hypocrites. The king sees the malice in Tartuffe’s soul, and his judgment stands in for the judgment of Heaven. The officer thus explicitly links royal justice to divine justice. He goes on to state that the king identified Tartuffe as a career criminal using an assumed name to flee from punishment. Finally, the officer nullifies Tartuffe’s deed of gift and returns Orgon’s documents to him. The king has pardoned Orgon for having subversive papers, thanks to Orgon’s loyalty and devotion to the king in other matters. In the king’s view, justice depends on a person’s overall virtue. Minor transgressions can be forgiven; the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law.

784â•…â•… Molière When Orgon turns to chastise Tartuffe, Cléante cautions him not to gloat and urges him to go and thank the king for his mercy. With royal justice and divine justice having been dispensed by the monarch, the last lines of the play turn again to fatherly justice as Orgon announces that Mariane will marry Valère. Dan Smith

Religion in Tartuffe

While it is impossible to discuss Tartuffe without considering religion, the play’s primary engagement with this theme has to do with exposing religious hypocrisy. Tartuffe’s phony performance of piety fools Orgon and his mother, Madame Pernelle, but most other characters see through him. The play sets up a conflict between excessive external displays of religiosity and true internal spiritual feeling. Indeed, the first scene sees Madame Pernelle praising Tartuffe’s religious austerity in terms of how it will improve the family’s reputation among the neighbors, while the outspoken maid Dorine and Orgon’s rational brother-in-law Cléante argue that they should worry about their own consciences, not gossip. Dorine voices her suspicion that those who are most enthusiastic to condemn sin in others are secretly greater sinners themselves. In act 1, scene 5, Orgon describes his relationship with Tartuffe. Having made a good first impression through his zealous prayers at church, Tartuffe went on to find favor with Orgon by fetching holy water for him and sharing gifts from Orgon with the poor. Orgon speaks with awe of Tartuffe’s outward demonstration of piety. But Orgon’s brother-in-law Cléante urges him to be skeptical. Cléante compares those who brag about their holiness with those who would brag about their courage; just as the truly courageous allow their actions on the battlefield to speak for them, so the truly pious do good works quietly, without boasting or proselytizing. When Orgon attempts to mock Cléante for claiming to be wise, Cléante replies with a lengthy speech that praises true faith and condemns hypocrisy. He defines hypocrites as those who use their religious reputation to make money or to curry social and political favor. Cléante goes on to offer several examples of model Christians, men who incorporate

their religious faith into their everyday actions without showing off or judging others. Upon Tartuffe’s first entrance in act 3, scene 2, he immediately speaks of two external symbols of worship involving self-abnegation: a hair-shirt and a whip. He then announces that he is going on an errand to give money to the poor. After Dorine comments directly to the audience on Tartuffe’s hypocrisy, Tartuffe provides another striking example of it by asking her to cover her cleavage with a handkerchief so that her flesh will not tempt him. The conflict between Tartuffe’s sexual appetite and his pious reputation is further developed in act 3, scene 3, when he attempts to seduce Orgon’s wife, Elmire. In an effort to address this incompatibility, Tartuffe incorporates religious rhetoric to flatter Elmire. He argues, without much success, that it is natural for him to desire her because she was created in the image of God. When Elmire counters that such passion is unbecoming a man of his piety, Tartuffe says that his reputation can serve as a shield that allows them to engage in an affair without risk of scandal. He thus exposes himself as the fraud that Cléante and Dorine have accused him of being. Act 4, scene 1, sees a confrontation between Cléante and Tartuffe. Cléante attempts to convince Tartuffe that Christian values of forgiveness and compassion should compel him to repair the rift between Orgon and his son Damis. Tartuffe cuts the conversation short, citing the need to perform some unspecified religious duty. Later, in a second scene with Elmire, Tartuffe elaborates on his prior discussion of how to maintain an outward appearance of piety while pursuing an adulterous affair. Hiding under the table, Orgon finally learns of Tartuffe’s hypocrisy. Orgon sends Tartuffe away, with Tartuffe vowing that he will take over the house. In act 5, scene 1, Orgon enumerates his woes, concluding that he will have no more dealings with religious men. Cléante criticizes Orgon’s lack of moderation in drawing such a conclusion. The fact that Orgon was taken in by one charlatan whose piety was fake does not mean that the world is devoid of true Christians. According to Cléante, Orgon’s new position is worse than his excessive trust of Tartuffe. Rather than rejecting everyone who appears pious, Orgon should attempt to learn

House Made of Dawnâ•…â•… 785 how to distinguish between true Christians and those who are abusing a heavenly pose for earthly gain. In effect, Orgon should emulate the king, who immediately sees through Tartuffe’s posturing and restores order via a representative. Orgon’s instinct is to berate Tartuffe, but Cléante interrupts and once again preaches forgiveness and tolerance. Cléante hopes that Tartuffe will experience a religious conversion, replacing his false performance of piety with a true interior spirituality. Dan Smith

Momaday, N. Scottâ•… House Made of Dawnâ•… (1966)

N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn follows Abel as he tries to readjust to life in his Pueblo community and also tries to find his place in American society after World War II. Ill-equipped for war, when Abel returns he is alienated, detached from his community and tradition. Through the prologue and each of the novel’s four sections, we follow only a few days in his life. However, these days stretch over a period of seven years as Abel struggles to find himself through a series of devastatingly wrong turns. His misdirection is revealed through his own thoughts as well as through flashbacks and other narrators. These narrative techniques provide insight into Native American identity and the importance of tradition, while also revealing the history of loss and displacement Native Americans have endured. The short prologue that introduces the novel shows Abel running. While there is no date or scenario for this section, the tone and language indicate a transformation is occurring. The importance of this becomes apparent later. It is not until the first section, “The Longhair,” that the reader is given a time and setting: the Jemez Pueblo in 1945. Arriving home from the war, Abel drunkenly stumbles off the bus into his grandfather Francisco’s arms. His arrival portends the disaster that follows. Out of place, Abel finds he cannot reenter reservation life. Even when he does participate, entering a traditional rooster pull, his awkwardness on horseback is juxtaposed against the other participants’ ease. The section culminates when he drunkenly murders an

albino Native American, believing him to be an evil shapeshifter. The last three sections are set in 1952 following Abel’s release from prison. Relocated to Los Angeles, the sections entitled “The Priest of the Sun” and “The Night Chanter” show Abel’s quick downward spiral as he tries to fit into the white world around him. The last section of the novel, “The Dawn Runner,” comes full circle, picking up right before and shedding light on the prologue. He returns to the village to find his grandfather near death. After Francisco dies, Abel commemorates his grandfather, beginning a ceremonial, early morning run. Lisa Wenger

Alienation in House Made of Dawn

From an early age, Abel feels alienated. This begins when his mother returns to her Pueblo village, bringing Abel and his brother. Since his father is not Pueblo, Abel thinks of him, and by extension himself, as an outsider. The deaths of his mother and brother while he is still a child make him feel even lonelier; suddenly Francisco is the only family he has. His sense of alienation deepens during his teenage years. Reaching an age where he can actively participate in important tribal ceremonies, Abel is allowed to aid the Eagle Watcher Society’s eagle capture, an important ceremonial organization and tradition. Once the eagle is captured, though, Abel kills the bird rather than allowing his people to ceremonially cage it. No one, including his grandfather, understands his actions. Believing he has no place in the community, Abel enlists, leaving everything behind. His alienation intensifies through his war experiences. Calling him “chief,” his fellow soldiers’ reactions to his weaponless and whooping charge at an enemy tank denote their stereotypical views of Native Americans. That is the sort of action they expect from an “Indian”—insane and idiotic. It is obvious, however, that the violence and destruction surrounding Abel has chipped away at him. Everything is foreign: the war, the violence, the battle-scarred countryside, the white soldiers around him. His charge at the tank represents his complete break, for he no longer understands or feels a part of anything. By the time he returns to his Pueblo

786â•…â•… Momaday, N. Scott community, he is numb, disconnected even from his own people, traditions, and way of life. Abel finds he “could not say the things he wanted; he tried to pray, to sing, to enter into the old rhythm of the tongue, but he was no longer attuned to it” (58), and he turns to alcohol as an escape. Later, his estrangement results in murder. Viewing an albino Pueblo man as an evil being capable of transforming into a snake, an intoxicated Abel kills the man, viciously disemboweling him. Abel’s alienation is heightened further by the fact that other Native Americans deride his reasoning for the murder, while the white jury simply views him as insane. After his release from prison, Abel’s disconnection only worsens. As part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs relocation program, a program intent on moving and assimilating Native Americans into urban areas, he is sent to live in Los Angeles. It is soon apparent that this move further distances Abel. Once again an outsider, Abel has no understanding of modern urban life. He does befriend Ben Benally and acquires a job, but he cannot find his place in this society. Despite Milly’s help and optimism that he can make it in Los Angeles, Abel quickly spirals into depression and alcoholism. He cannot resolve the new ways of this world with the traditions and ideas with which he was raised. Many of the Native Americans who have assimilated also ridicule Abel to his face for his ignorance, believing he is stuck in a past that offers nothing and is unable to take advantage of the opportunities, such as education, that he is offered. As Benally says of Abel, he “was unlucky. . . . He was a longhair. . . . You know, you have to change. That’s the only way you can live in a place like this. You have to forget about the way it was, how you grew up and all. . . . Well, he didn’t want to change, I guess, or he didn’t know how.” (148). As his anger over the ridicule heaped on him and his powerlessness grows, so does his use of alcohol. In a drunken rage, Abel confronts the corrupt police officer who had beaten him over the hands with his nightstick. He is severely beaten, his face a bloody pulp, hands broken and skin yellow from the loss of blood. Left vulnerable on the beach, Abel becomes one of the silversided fish whose depiction opens the section, a fish that helplessly hurls itself ashore during spawning season.

This sense of alienation also is echoed throughout the Los Angeles Native American population. Many, such as Benally and Tosamah, see themselves as outsiders. This stems from the realization that Native American culture and traditions do not belong to the modern world in which they live. Tosamah knows that to assimilate fully means abandoning these things, something he is not willing to do. For Benally, who unlike Tosamah comes from a reservation, this is compounded with the loss of place. While Benally longs to return, he knows that there is nothing left, “just empty land and a lot of old people, going nowhere and dying off.” Their place is literally and figuratively eroded away, but what remains is history and heritage. Momaday illustrates that alienation is a part of the Native American dilemma. Assimilation into the modern white world comes at a heavy price, the loss of culture, tradition, and even place. Estrangement also indicates the importance of place, as is seen through both Abel and Benally. Both men are displaced from their community and homeland. This displacement intensifies each character’s sense of disconnection and loss, something for which Los Angeles offers no help. It is only by returning to his Pueblo home and embracing the people and culture that Abel finally finds himself again. Lisa Wenger

Identity in House Made of Dawn

Native Americans are caught between the white world and their own in House Made of Dawn. The white world has no understanding of Native American beliefs, traditions, history, of that which constitutes Native American identity. It also has no place for these things, viewing them as antiquated. As the modern world tries to strip away everything of importance to Native Americans, the search for and maintenance of identity become imperative. Abel’s search for identity begins at an early age. Not knowing his father’s heritage, Abel feels “somehow foreign and strange” when his family returns to the Pueblo community. Given this, most of his youth is spent searching for identity and place, a search that culminates in his killing of the eagle and departure from the village. At first excited about leaving, Abel soon realizes his

House Made of Dawnâ•…â•… 787 mistake. On the battlefield, he feels more out of place and lost than ever, the horror and violence a complete reversal of all he has ever known. In fact, “everything in advance of his going—he could remember whole and in detail. It was the recent past, the intervention of days and years without meaning, of awful calm and collision, time always immediate and confused, that he could not put together in his mind.” His memory completely erased, Abel has even less of a sense of self than he did in the Pueblo community. Finding neither himself nor his place in the white world, Abel returns home silenced. When he tries to sing or even speak, nothing comes out, and he realizes “[h]ad he been able to say it, anything of his own language—even the commonplace formula of greeting ‘Where are you going’—which had no being beyond sound, no visible substance, would once again have shown him whole to himself.” His experiences have stripped away what little sense of identity he had, disconnecting him from his own culture and traditions. Isolated, he transfers his anger onto the Native American albino. Representing the white world that has undermined Abel’s sense of self, the albino is the “enemy” that must be eradicated. His relocation to Los Angeles after his release from prison does little to rectify his identity problems. To make matters worse, the relocation department sends a barrage of useless questionnaires probing generalized, surface-level identity markers, such as age, sex, and even whether he prefers watching tennis or bullfighting. Abel quickly finds that he “had lost his place. He had been long ago at the center, had known where he was, had lost his way, had wandered to the end of the earth, was even now reeling on the edge of the void.” This sense of loss is compounded with the way white words and language continue to silence him, as if he has no identity or existence whatsoever. Even at his trial, he is unable to speak, and “[w]ord by word by word these men [white] were disposing of him in language, their language, and they were making a bad job of it.” Viewing the albino as an evil entity, Abel is stripped of words; what he can communicate in his own defense is something the white courtroom can never understand. Silencing Abel, their language

transforms him into a passive object rather than an active human being. Words and language play a significant role in all Native American identity. First, there are the white words, words that silence, barring Native Americans from communicating. As Benally says, “[t]hey [whites] have a lot of words, and you know they mean something, but you don’t know what, and your own words are no good because they’re not the same; they’re different, and they’re the only words you’ve got.” As the dominant culture, the whites do not understand the words and stories Native Americans speak and tell. Instead, as with Abel’s trial, they see Native Americans as “primitive” peoples who have nothing relevant to say, which also diminishes their sense of self. Furthermore, Native Americans cannot understand the spiritually denuded words of the whites. Speaking of the Gospel of John, Tosamah preaches that “the white man deals in words, and he deals easily, with grace and sleight of hand. . . . He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and.  .  .  . his regard for language—for the Word itself—as an instrument of creation has diminished nearly to the point of no return.” White words are not creative but destructive and deceitful. They strip away at truths, denouncing those, such as Native Americans, who use them to find truth. In this way, they belittle and discredit the very words that constitutes Native American identity. However, words become a powerful way of reclaiming identity. As many of the characters note, Native American words, language, and stories bring about a wholeness and understanding, something so easily lost in the modern world. In fact, words, in conjunction with tradition, help Abel reestablish his own sense of self. Unsure and lost, it is only when he begins the dawn run that his voice finally returns. The song that bursts out confirms that he finally knows and is happy with who he is. Lisa Wenger

Tradition in House Made of Dawn

Tradition as a way of retaining history and heritage as well as reaffirming Native American identity is crucial in House Made of Dawn. As the old ways of life die, ceremonial and oral tradition preserve Native American history and heritage. In turn, these

788â•…â•… Momaday, N. Scott aspects not only establish a basis for identity, but also provide a connection among the people. However, there is also a juxtaposition of the old and modern ways, as seen through Abel. Modern life has little use for tradition, often leading to tradition’s abandonment. This often leads to a sense of loss and despair. Thus, a return to tradition also brings about healing and understanding. Tradition’s importance is illustrated through the Pueblo story of the Bahkyula people, a people whom murder and disease nearly eradicated. Less than 20 survived, joining the Pueblo community, yet they brought with them both ceremonial (it is from them the Eagle Watcher Society comes) and oral traditions. The survival of these traditions means the survival of the people. As Momaday writes, “after the intervening years and generations, the ancient blood of this forgotten tribe still ran in the veins of men.” Without tradition, the people, their history and heritage would have disappeared long ago into the Pueblo community with whom they joined. Through the oral tradition that permeates the novel, we also see the significance and fragility of history and heritage. As Native Americans are forced off the reservation and scattered, oral tradition becomes one of the few ways of retaining heritage. Describing his grandmother’s stories, Tosamah says, “[s]he was asking me to go with her to the confrontation of something that was sacred and eternal. . . . her words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold.” The stories, such as that of Tai-me, the Big Dipper’s formation, and the Bear are permanent reminders of history, providing connection to the past. While words also cannot be taken away from the people, they are vulnerable, always on the verge of extinction, as both Tosamah and Francisco note. Therefore, the transmission of stories from generation to generation signifies the unbreakable bonds among the people. On the other hand, disconnection from tradition leads to loss and despair, as Abel reveals. His participation in the Eagle Watcher Society’s ceremonial hunt first shows his discomfort with the old ways. According to tradition, a sacred eagle is captured and kept in the village. While Abel willingly and

gladly participates in the hunt for a new eagle, he soon finds that the thought of the captured bird, a creature so beautiful and graceful in the sky, yet ugly and ungainly caged, revolts him. Unable to understand the tradition, he kills the bird. This not only severs his ties to the community, but also initiates his self-destructive downward spiral; it is after this that Abel leaves, experiencing atrocities during war for which he is completely unprepared. Upon his return to Walatowa, he is lost, estranged from his people and heritage. This is displayed through his awkward participation in the rooster ceremony during the Feast of Santiago. The other riders throw themselves into the event. They tumble from their horses, to the crowd’s delight, as they reach for the rooster buried in the ground. Abel, on the other hand “made a poor showing, full of caution and gesture.” Sitting clumsily in his saddle, the albino who grabs the rooster makes a mockery of Abel, beating him with it. Abel, incapable of escaping, is left cornered, hanging onto his horse until the rooster is dead and dismembered. From this point forward, violence, alcohol, and despair consume his life. He murders the albino, is sent to prison, then relocated after his release to Los Angeles. Even more ill-fitted for life in Los Angeles and detached from the old ways, Abel has nowhere to go. His inability to adapt leads to more drinking and violence, until he is beaten and left unconscious on the beach. It is tradition, then, that also brings about healing. Understanding this, Benally sings a song of healing and recovery for Abel. Knowing that Abel cannot help himself, Benally invokes the prayer song’s power. Returning home, it is only after his grandfather’s death that Abel embraces tradition. In his sorrow, he ceremonially prepares his grandfather’s body. It is at this point he undertakes the traditional dawn running. Emphasized throughout the novel, running reaffirms the connection between the people and the land, a spiritual connection that embodies their heritage. In fact, running shapes the novel, both the opening prologue and end showing Abel running and reconnecting with tradition and history. As exhaustion sets in, Abel finally “could see at last without having to think. He could see the canyon and the mountains and the sky. He could

The Way to Rainy Mountainâ•…â•… 789 see the rain and the river and the fields beyond. He could see the dark hills at dawn” (21). Running not only opens Abel’s eyes, but also helps him reclaim his voice. Unable to sing traditional songs and completely silent during his trial, Abel previously was voiceless. Turning to tradition, Abel begins singing as he runs. He also reconnects with all he had lost— his history, nature, his people, and even his voice. As the novel exemplifies, losing touch with tradition leads to feelings of loss and confusion. Tradition keeps history and heritage alive, helping confirm identity and connection despite change and relocation. In this respect, it also is healing. Without tradition, Abel was adrift, living from one drink to the next with no real sense of self or purpose. Once he begins the dawn running, everything changes, and he finally becomes whole again. Lisa Wenger

Momaday, N. Scottâ•… The Way to Rainy Mountainâ•… (1969)

An assortment of personal memories, stories, and legends of the Kiowa tribe taken from the very words of the author’s grandmother, The Way to Rainy Mountain explores themes such as memory, tradition, family, and identity. After Momaday’s grandmother, Aho, died in the spring, he decides to venture to Rainy Mountain that July to spend some time at her grave. An ancient and important landmark to the Kiowa, Rainy Mountain is described as merely a “single knoll” by Momaday. The knoll holds, however, a sacred position in his mind and heart. Not just a familiar and beautiful landscape, Rainy Mountain is full of myths and experiences that will last forever as they are passed from generation to generation. After telling the history of the Kiowa people, Momaday introduces Aho with a great deal of admiration and respect. Possessing a great deal of Kiowa knowledge, Aho had maintained the ability to proudly tell stories from the very beginning of her heritage. From learning of Tai-me, the sacred Sun Dance doll, to the importance of dogs, horses, and buffalo, The Way to Rainy Mountain also recounts how the Kiowa still wear war paint, beadwork, and bright

colors in order to keep the special traditions of their ancestors alive. Momaday received a tremendous amount of information from his grandmother, which in turn he presents to the reader in written form. Lauren Wasilewski

Identity in The Way to Rainy Mountain

Aho, N. Scott Momaday’s grandmother, was born into the very last stage of the North American Kiowa nation. In search of the background and identity of his ancestors that were once reflected from the stories of Aho, Momaday begins his journey to the setting of so many legendary Kiowa myths: Rainy Mountain. Just northwest of the Wichita Range, Momaday swears imagination comes to life upon viewing this single mound in Oklahoma. The members of the Kiowa tribe were warriors. Surprisingly, the specific language used by the tribe has never been classified into any language group; however, there is a symbol in sign language for Kiowa. Aside from ruling the whole of the southern Great Plains in partnership with the Comanche for a long period of time, something the Kiowa will always be remembered for is their remarkable horsemanship. Legends say they were the finest horsemen the world has ever known. In fact, the Kiowa had more horses per man than any other tribe. Momaday recognizes and feels that his people are visibly superior to those of the Comanche and Wichita. Tall, straight, relaxed, and graceful in appearance, the Kiowa looked more like tribes of the north than the south. In 1834, artist George Catlin recognized these dominant features in one of his classic portraits. By making friends with the Crow during their migration to the south and east in the 17th century, the Kiowa learned of Tai-me, the Sun Dance doll, and gained a great deal of knowledge and respect for such sacredness. Aho participated in the last of the Sun Dances as a young girl, and after she had passed and Momaday had grown up, there were not many alive who still remembered those days. After their association with the Crow endowed the Kiowa with such a strong sense of religion, courage, and pride, the Kiowa advanced to the forefront of North American tribes.

790â•…â•… Momaday, N. Scott Tracing back to the very beginning, the tribe was first named Kwuda, which means “coming out.” Coming one by one through a hollow log into the world, one woman was pregnant and became stuck. No one after her made it to the other side of the log, which explains the small number of people in the tribe. Before the tribe owned horses, dogs and sleds were the necessities; to the Kiowa, the dog is an extremely primitive animal. Momaday is able to identify with this by recalling how dogs were always roaming about his grandmother’s house. Although the dogs were not named and were paid little attention by the old people, Momaday still felt they were sad to see the dogs pass away. The term “ownership” did not apply to the arrangement at Aho’s house. In a sense, it seemed the dogs lived a life of their own. The Kiowa have never been farmers or taken any part in agriculture. Hunting was what the tribe was passionate about. Momaday states that even to this day they are meat eaters. He states that his grandfather, Mammedaty, always worked hard to make wheat and cotton grow on his land, but to no avail. Momaday even remembers seeing a young boy holding a freshly slaughtered calf ’s liver in the palm of his hand, eating it ravenously. That particular memory of Momaday’s identifies with the myth of how old hunters of the Plains placed the raw liver and tongue of the buffalo above anything else as a delicacy. The policy of the Kiowa people is to never repeat a man’s name after he dies. He takes his name out of the world with him when he goes, and to repeat it is a sign of disrespect. According to Momaday, Aho always chose to use the word zei-dl-bei, which means “frightful.” During his stay at Rainy Mountain, Momaday identifies spiritually with the 1872–73 burning of the once significant heraldic tipi, Do-giagya guat (tipi with battle pictures). This identification occurs when Momaday is walking around the Rainy Mountain Cemetery. For a few moments, there is a deep silence where nothing moves and there seems to be a subconscious rule to stay completely still. Only the jolting call of a bobwhite brings the world back to reality.

The Way to Rainy Mountain is written straightforwardly, with Momaday telling the reader the myths of the Kiowa, and then telling of his own personal identification with the past of his people. The pride Momaday possesses for the history of his family is not hard to see, and the stories of his grandmother’s life have guided Momaday to identify that history with himself as well. Lauren Wasilewski

Memory in The Way to Rainy Mountain

The theme of memory is crucial to The Way to Rainy Mountain, as the story is based on the stories told to Momaday by his grandmother, Aho. These stories help Momaday reminisce about growing up with a grandmother born into the last true generation of the Kiowa. The stories passed down to Momaday from Aho are memories from Aho’s childhood. The very beginning of the prologue talks about how there are so many things upon which to reminisce and dwell. Momaday speaks of his grandmother living in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, and how the specific landscape of the mountain was forever laid like memory in her blood. Most of the legends that Aho passed on to Momaday were from the very beginning of the Kiowa tribe’s existence, although Aho would not be born for several more years. What impressed Momaday was how Aho had the ability to tell of the Crow whom she had never laid eyes upon and of the Black Hills where she had never set foot. This is precisely the motive for Momaday’s traveling to Rainy Mountain, to experience in person what Aho had experienced in the mind’s eye. When Momaday seeks the Great Plains in late spring, he remembers the meadows full of blue and yellow wildflowers, and that moment will forever be planted in his memory, for that is when he realizes he will never see the world as he did the day before. As a young boy, Momaday remembers a great deal of sound in Aho’s house. From coming and going to eating and talking, Kiowa were always frequenting his grandmother’s house. Since the Kiowa are known as being “summer people,” summertime at Aho’s was especially fun and made for plenty of reunions. Momaday remembers these visitors right down to their big black hats, and bright shirts that shook when the wind hit.

The Way to Rainy Mountainâ•…â•… 791 These particular visitors were using their memories as well. By rubbing fat on their hair and winding the braids in their hair with strips of cloth, the late Kiowa were reminding themselves of who they were and where they came from. Always viewing his grandmother with admiration, Momaday talks of her usage of the word, zei-dl-bei (frightful). He liked her use of this word because her face would become distorted in an amusing look of displeasure, and she would click her tongue in disgust. Keahdinekeah, Momaday’s great-grandmother, had impressed Momaday’s father, Al, just as Aho affected Momaday. As a boy, his father accompanied Keahdinekeah to the shrine of the talyi-da-i (a special tipi with holy medicine inside). Momaday’s father was filled with wonder at the mere sight of this medicine, which would forever be a part of his human spirit. Touched by the remembrance of this experience, Al felt the need to pass this story from his youth on to his son. Upon meeting Keahdinekeah, Momaday clearly remembers the white hair and blind eyes of his great-grandmother. He recalls the touch of her skin as soft as that of a baby, and the sound of her happy tears. As a young boy, Al Momaday recognized an older man in braids named Cheney coming to his house to pay his respects. An arrow maker, Cheney painted his face and would pray out loud into the rising sun. The Kiowa held their stories and memories in such a high regard that once the stories were passed on, recipients can see and feel the story as if they were there when it was taking place. The earliest times Momaday can remember are the summers on Rainy Mountain Creek. He was living in the arbor with his family on the north side of his grandmother’s house. The light, air, and sounds of the land are what he loved, and when the seasons changed and the time came to move back into the house, everyone felt depressed and confined. Only once did Momaday come into contact with Tai-me, the holy Sun Dance doll. After making an offering of bright red cloth, Aho prayed out loud. This was such a sacred experience for Momaday that he remembers the very feeling of the room; he said it felt as if an old person had just died or a baby had been born.

After Aho died, all Momaday had left for comfort was the memory of his grandmother. He remembers her cooking meat in an iron skillet at the wood stove on a winter morning, but he especially remembers her praying. Although he never learned the Kiowa language, Momaday sensed a great deal of sorrow in her prayers. A Christian in her later years, Aho never forgot her heritage, and after his pilgrimage to Rainy Mountain, neither will Momaday. Lauren Wasilewski

Tradition in The Way to Rainy Mountain

Without tradition, the Kiowa people would never have been able to succeed in creating a legacy. In the tribe’s heyday, their world revolved around Tai-me, the doll of the Sun Dance. The very reason for their existence and prayer, Tai-me would be stolen by the Osage. Even though Tai-me was later returned, the Kiowa were sent into a frenzy of devastation and panic, practically forcing the tribe to sign their first treaty with the United States in 1837. Unfortunately, the passing down of verbal traditions from generation to generation has weakened over time. Although the myths and legends are no longer intact, the basic theory of Rainy Mountain is the history of man’s idea of himself. Each and every Kiowa member partakes in his or her own historical, personal, and cultural journey toward their heritage. Because this is a time that is gone from the world forever, each reality must rely on imagination and the traditions of the Kiowa people, which may now have become blurry. One tradition that stretched from the very beginning until the very end was the buffalo as animal representation of the sun. When the time came to sacrifice a victim for the Sun Dance, the buffalo was crucial. Spirits fell within the tribe when a herd of buffalo was destroyed, thus proving their importance. Aho, N. Scott Momaday’s grandmother, took part in the well known tradition of the sacred Sun Dance as a child. Performed annually by the Kiowa tribe, the tradition and rite was firmly planted in Aho’s mind and soul. During a Sun Dance in 1861, held near the Arkansas River in Kansas, a spotted horse was left tied to a pole in the medicine lodge

792â•…â•… Morrison, Toni to starve to death as a sacrifice to Tai-me. When an epidemic of smallpox broke out within the tribe later that year, an old man sacrificed one of his best horses in order to save the lives of his family. Only seven when the last Sun Dance was held by the Kiowa in 1887 on the Washita River above Rainy Mountain Creek, Aho clearly remembers the absent buffalo. Trying to keep tradition alive, the Kiowa skewered the head of a buffalo bull upon the medicine tree and journeyed to Texas to beg for an animal from the Goodnight herd. Aho was only 10 years old when the Kiowa joined for the very last time as the Sun Dance culture. Buffalo was nowhere to be found, and an old hide from the sacred tree was forced to suffice as an offering. Appearance too was crucial to the continuation of Kiowa tradition. Rubbing fat in one’s hair, wearing fringed and flowered shawls, bright beads, winding braids with strips of colored cloth, and carrying the scars of old and respected enmities helped the late Kiowa members keep their ancestors close at heart. Mammedaty, Momaday’s grandfather, visibly characterized himself as a peyote man by wearing a necklace of beans and a beaded staff of feathers from a water bird. At one time taking the name Gaigwu, which indicates how one-half will differ from the other in appearance, the Kiowa warriors used the custom of cutting their hair only on the right side of the head; on a line level with the lobe of the ear, their hair was kept long on the left side and braided in otter skin. Based solely on ancient custom, after antelope medicine was made, the men, women, and children of the Kiowa tribe would set out on foot and horseback after meat. Forming a large circle around the game and moving in on the center, antelope and other animals were trapped and killed with clubs and often times bare hands. This is yet another expression of how the Kiowa were reminded of the helpful ways of their ancestors. The pomme blanche, a plant eaten by most Indians and in some cases tried as a substitute for the potato, was never consumed by the Kiowa. Going against the tradition of agriculture, the Kiowa strictly stuck to hunting game. The Kiowa owned the largest number of horses per person, far more than any other tribe, and Mammedaty kept this tradition alive by owning

several. For Mammedaty, it was hard to be without horses; he felt it was essentially good to own them. One personal and traditional opinion of this tribe regarding death was not speaking the name of any dead man. To speak the name of the deceased was downright disrespectful and dishonest. The Kiowa believed that when someone died, their name was to leave the world with their body. Although the Kiowa thrived as an independent tribe only from 1740 to 1875, and there is very little material evidence to prove their customs, the spirit and traditions of the Kiowa people will be embedded in their memories forever. Lauren Wasilewski

Morrison, Toniâ•… Belovedâ•… (1987)

Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel is now regarded as one of the most important works of fiction of the late 20th century. The novel’s plot is based loosely on the life of Margaret Garner, a woman who escaped from slavery with her children across the Ohio River and, when recaptured, killed her own daughter rather than allow her to be returned to slavery. Written in an experimental narrative style, Beloved explores the deep historical scars of slavery on American identity, motherhood, and the family; it also offers a promise of healing and a future beyond these traumas. The main characters of Beloved are Sethe and her daughter Denver, who are living in Ohio after escaping Sweet Home, the plantation owned by Schoolmaster where they were slaves. Their new home, set apart and unvisited by neighbors, is haunted by the memory and physical presence of the unnamed two-year-old child—called only “Beloved” on her grave marker—whom Sethe killed under threat of recapture. Paul D., who has also escaped from Sweet Home, joins the pair, but when a strange young woman who calls herself Beloved appears at the home he is soon driven out by supernatural events. The character of Beloved may be interpreted as the embodiment of Sethe’s guilt and pain over the loss of her murdered child. Though she is physically mature, Beloved’s emotional state is that of an insatiable two-year-old whose desires are coupled with uncontrollable anger and tantrums. Beloved’s

Belovedâ•…â•… 793 demands eventually overwhelm Sethe, who increasingly sacrifices herself to the girl’s bottomless hungers. The novel’s hopeful ending finds Denver, Sethe’s shy daughter, leaving the home to ask her larger community for help. This healthful turn toward communal healing is powerful and effective; when people arrive at the home to exorcise Beloved, she disappears. Denver, we learn in the final pages of the work, will thrive and blossom into adulthood. Noreen O’Connor

Childhood in Beloved

As many readers know, Sethe, the protagonist of Beloved, is based on Margaret Garner, who in 1856 murdered one of her children and tried to kill the others to keep them from being taken into slavery. The fact that in the true story and in the novel it is mothers who commit these murders is significant; because maternity is idealized in American culture, we are especially appalled to learn that a mother could kill her children. However, this is precisely Morrison’s point: Slavery is so heinous that it can drive a mother to sacrifice her own children to escape it. As Morrison explains in her foreword to Beloved, thoughts led me to the different history of black women in this country—a history in which marriage was discouraged, impossible, or illegal; in which birthing children was required, but “having” them, being responsible for them—being, in other words, their parent—was as out of the question as freedom. Assertions of parenthood under conditions peculiar to the logic of institutional enslavement were criminal. When Beloved opens, the reader is thrown into the center of Sethe’s guilt. We don’t know yet what her crime is, but we do know that Sethe, her daughter Denver, and her two sons, Howard and Buglar, are paying for it. Morrison purposefully delays the revelation of Sethe’s murder of her baby girl, revealing only bits of Sethe’s memory of the event and interweaving them with other memories of Sethe’s own horrific sufferings as a slave, in order to secure the readers’ sympathy for Sethe. Once

we hear Sethe’s story, we cannot dismiss her as an unfeeling monster (“You got two feet, Sethe, not four,” Paul D. tells her), as we may otherwise be inclined to do. In fact, prior to the murder of “crawling-already?” baby, Sethe is foremost a mother. Consistently, the injustices that she laments the most are those intended to deny her the right to mother her children. For example, when Schoolteacher’s nephews assault Sethe in the barn, she does not dwell on her own degradation but rather on the fact that they have taken her milk for “crawling-already?” baby. Similarly, when delivering Denver, Sethe is willing to die to escape her excruciating pain and exhaustion, except to do so would jeopardize the life of her child. The significance of this extraordinary act of love and selflessness is reflected in Denver’s return to it again and again, a memory that reassures Denver of her mother’s love for her. Unfortunately, Sethe’s love for her children is no match against the immorality of slavery. Indeed, one of the more insidious truths of slavery revealed in Beloved is that love is not only useless in a slave’s world, it is also dangerous, a particularly perverse irony. As Paul D. notes, “For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love” (54). Although at this point Paul D. does not know of Sethe’s murder, his words explain well how the impotence of love and the rage that Sethe feels in light of that fact drive her to make her tragic decision. Not only does Sethe take her child’s life, the maternal love that once sustained Sethe now becomes grotesque. This is shown in Sethe’s decision to remain at the house referred to only as 124 in order not to abandon “crawling-already? ” baby’s ghost (the missing “3” in the address). However, Sethe’s choice exposes her other three children to constant fear and isolation. Ultimately Sethe’s guilt is so great that she allows Beloved (and thus her guilt) nearly to consume her. Sethe, the mother, has lost her center; being a mother and loving her children has not been enough. That is the insidious power of slavery. In the end, Sethe does survive, as does Paul D., but it is Denver, the baby whose miraculous birth

794â•…â•… Morrison, Toni sustains the hopes of so many of the characters— Sethe, Stamp Paid, Denver—whose future we’re banking on. In contrast to her mother, who at the close of the novel has no plans, “no plans at all,” and whose eyes have become “expressionless,” Denver is working, learning “book stuff ” from Miss Bodwin and Denver’s face looks “like someone had turned up the gas jet.” Christ-like, Denver has been sacrificed, but in the end she is resurrected, and her story of triumph becomes a promise of freedom for African Americans. It is a story to pass on. Nancy Wilson

Freedom in Beloved

In slave narratives such as Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, the authors bear witness to the sacrifices they endured in order to secure their freedom. In Beloved, too, we learn of the incredible lengths to which slaves had to go in their quest for freedom, such as Halle, who works “five years of Sundays” in order to purchase his mother’s freedom, and Sethe, who chooses death over slavery. As W. E. B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) notes, “few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. . . . Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites.” However, DuBois questioned the naïveté of romanticizing freedom, asserting that freedom alone could not liberate the African-American people; they would need political power and education, as well. Similarly, in Beloved Toni Morrison de-romanticizes Emancipation. She notes her intentions when creating the character of Sethe: “The heroine would represent the unapologetic acceptance of shame and terror; assume the consequences of choosing infanticide; claim her own freedom.” One might wonder why Sethe has to “claim” her freedom. Wasn’t freedom given? And why would Morrison list “shame,” “terror,” and “infanticide” alongside such a positive concept as “freedom?” The answer to both of these questions can be found in a recasting of what freedom really meant—it was an opportunity, not a gift,

an opportunity with a host of complications, coming too late for some, or with memories that could not be erased, or with new problems that would prove almost as insidious as slavery. Thus, Beloved is Morrison’s attempt, as an African American, to recover her people’s post-slavery history, the good and the bad, in order to help us understand and honor freed slaves’ real-life experiences. One of the ways in which Morrison de-romanticizes freedom is to show that, despite Emancipation, the damage slavery caused lasted well beyond 1863. For example, Paul D. tells of “a Negro about fourteen years old who lived by himself in the woods and said he couldn’t remember living anywhere else. He saw a witless colored woman jailed and hanged for stealing ducks she believed were her own babies.” Similarly, Paul D.’s rusted, tobacco box heart and Sethe’s recurring flashbacks to her abuse by Schoolteacher’s nephews exemplify the way that their slave days bled into their “free” lives. In fact, although free, Baby Suggs becomes so depressed by the continuing reminders of slavery, she comes to believe that God “gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn’t mean a thing.” Although this comment is difficult for a modern audience to hear, especially because Emancipation in particular and freedom in general is so exalted in the United States, Morrison’s depiction of an old woman’s bitterness at a life lost to slavery enhances our understanding of how individuals might have felt that there was nothing left in them to free. The ways in which slavery continued to infiltrate freed slaves’ lives is also evidenced in the haunting, literally, of not only the freed slaves but the AfricanAmerican community at large. As Baby Suggs tells Sethe, “Not a house in the country ain’t packed to its rafters with some dead Negro’s GRIEF. We lucky this ghost is a baby.” Similarly, Beloved relives her grandmother’s experiences in the Middle Passage, recalling, “if I had the teeth of the man who died on my face I would bite the circle around her neck.” This “circle,” earlier referred to as a “circle of iron,” is a slave collar in use during the time of the Middle Passage. The suggestion here is that slavery entered the racial memory of the African-American people, shaping African-American culture. Thus, although Emancipation is often taught as a date in a history

Belovedâ•…â•… 795 book that demarcates the end of slavery, the legacy of slavery remains with us even now. Although freedom is typically idealized and over-simplified, Morrison shows that freedom is instead contextual. For those freed slaves without resources, especially those unprepared due to a lack of education and experience to survive in the “free” world, Emancipation led to their own set of problems. Paul D. recalls the freed slaves he encountered on his travels who are “so stunned, or hungry, or tired or bereft it was a wonder they recalled or said anything.” However, for Denver, who has never been enslaved, freedom is a given, and she cannot understand why her mother cannot let the past go. This range of experiences is Morrison’s gift to us, helping us see slavery and freedom as individuals experienced it rather than as historians have retold it. Nancy Wilson

Grief in Beloved

When Paul D. enters Sethe’s house, “a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry.  .  .  . [He] looked back at the spot where the grief had soaked him. The red was gone but a kind of weeping clung to the air where it had been.” Although grief is a central theme in Beloved, nothing in a slave’s life was ever simple. For example, although “crawling already?” baby was murdered by her own mother, Sethe was acting out of love and desperation for a situation beyond her control. No wonder the reaction to the child’s death is so complicated—her family feels grief, of course, but that grief is often tinged with anger, resignation, guilt, and denial. For Sethe’s children, the loss of “crawling already?” baby is less about grief for their sister and more about what they have lost personally. For instance, although she befriends the ghost at 124, Denver resents the fact that her sister’s death has alienated her from friends and community: “All that leaving: first her brothers, then her grandmother—serious losses since there were no children willing to circle her in a game or hang by their knees from her porch railing.” It is not surprising, then, that Denver describes the ghost as “rebuked. Lonely and rebuked.” This is precisely how Denver feels.

Because she is a child, Denver cannot see beyond her own grief to forgive her mother or to recognize her mother’s grief. On the other hand, compared to the adults around her, Denver’s grief is manageable and survivable precisely because she does not fully recognize the endemic nature of grief among slaves. In contrast, for Baby Suggs whose “past had been like her present—intolerable,” grief for “crawling already?” baby is one grief too many. In response, Baby Suggs escapes into a dream world in which she can contemplate color as opposed to the sorrow that has followed her into freedom and indeed into her very home. Unfortunately, by retreating from family and community, Baby Suggs contributes to her own undoing. “Baby Suggs died shortly after the brothers left, with no interest whatsoever in their leave-taking or hers.” She dies alone, of grief. Like Baby Suggs, Paul D. has grieved intensely all of his life, and he also shuts down. His tale of grief reads like a litany: “It was some time before he could put Alfred, Georgia, Sixo, schoolteacher, Halle, his brothers, Sethe, Mister, the taste of iron, the sight of butter, the smell of hickory, notebook paper, one by one, into the tobacco tin lodged in his chest. By the time he got to 124 nothing in this world could pry it open.” Given Paul D.’s survival strategy, it is not surprising that Paul D. literally drives the grief out of 124. Unfortunately, as the appearance of Beloved demonstrates, fighting one’s grief will lead to its manifestation in another, potentially more hazardous form. Sethe does grieve, but guilt prevents healing. Not only has she murdered her own child, she has also set into motion the grief that leads to Baby Suggs’s death, the running away of Howard and Buglar, and the loneliness of Denver. “However many times Baby denied it, Sethe knew the grief at 124 started when she jumped down off the wagon, her newborn tied to her chest in the underwear of a whitegirl looking for Boston.” Sethe’s guilt blocks her memory and feeds Beloved’s vengeance, which nearly destroys Sethe. Although Sethe does survive, she takes to Baby Suggs’s deathbed, suggesting that for Sethe, too, the grief is almost too much to bear. However, Sethe has Denver and Paul D., and in that sense the novel ends with hope.

796â•…â•… Morrison, Toni Throughout Beloved, Morrison reveals the variety of ways in which individuals deal with an unspeakable tragedy. Interestingly, in the process she sheds light on why it has been difficult for the United States to grieve for the tragic victims of slavery. Like Sethe, the United States recognizes its complicity in the tragedy. However, the fact that Beloved has achieved such popularity, and films such as Gone With the Wind that deny the realities of slavery are no longer produced, suggests that the United States has finally conquered its feelings of guilt and can now remember the truth and sincerely and unselfishly grieve for its past. Morrison’s effort in Beloved is a solid start. Nancy Wilson

Morrison, Toniâ•… The Bluest Eyeâ•… (1970)

The Bluest Eye tells the story of three little black girls whose lives are indelibly impacted by the racism of the 1940s. Nine-year-old Claudia MacTeer, who occasionally narrates the text, does not yet believe society’s mandate that she is ugly and worthless because she is black. Yet her older sister Frieda and friend Pecola Breedlove have fully absorbed the message imparted by the adults’ adoration of Shirley Temple and white baby dolls. Indeed, Pecola believes she would be loved if she only had blue eyes. Claudia and Frieda passively witness the destruction of Pecola as she is tormented by her peers and shunned even by her family. Schoolmates Maureen Peal and Junior despise Pecola for her dark complexion, even though they also are black; even Pecola’s mother, Pauline, thinks, “Lord she was ugly.” Cholly, Pecola’s alcoholic father, cannot comprehend parenthood after being abandoned at birth and traumatized by white men as a teenager. Ultimately, in what began as a misguided attempt to show her affection, Cholly rapes his daughter. Pregnant at 11 years, Pecola visits Soaphead Church, a fraudulent spiritualist, in the hope of receiving the life-changing blue eyes, as her prayers to God remain unanswered. He tricks her into believing her wish has been granted. Pecola’s baby dies and she goes insane, finally happy from looking at her blue eyes in a mirror. An adult Claudia muses that the

townspeople needed Pecola’s destruction in order to feel better about themselves: “We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness.” The Bluest Eye is an impressive testament to the inveterate cruelty and destructiveness of racism in America. This novel addresses the themes of isolation, race, and violence. Robin E. Field

Isolation in The Bluest Eye

Although the theme of isolation is one that transcends writer, place, and time, it has a special significance in African-American literature, considering that Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all areas of American life. Even before the advent of Jim Crow laws, the institution of slavery featured an intentional separation of black family members from one another. Even though The Bluest Eye focuses on Pecola Breedlove’s descent into madness and estrangement from everyone, it is vital to understand that her mother, Pauline Breedlove, shares much responsibility for Pecola’s disconcerting conditions. Although Pauline contributes tremendously to Pecola’s emotional and physical isolation, Pauline’s own past impacts her ability to give her daughter the emotional support she needs. In examining Pauline’s past, the reader understands that Pauline’s inability to help prevent Pecola’s isolation is a result of Pauline’s own mother, Ada’s, emotional isolation from Pauline. When Pauline is a very young child, she accidentally suffers an injury that leaves “ . . . her with a crooked, archless foot that flopped when she walked. .  .  .  ” Ada fails to protect Pauline from “the general feeling of separateness and unworthiness . . . ” that her physical conditions create for her. With a full understanding of this aspect of Pauline’s past, one can see that she has to battle internal demons of her own. Moreover, her mother’s lack of response to her feeling of alienation suggests a reason why she might isolate herself from Pecola. Because Pauline never received the love she needed from Ada, she in turn feels no affection for Pecola. Ada’s unwillingness to help Pauline confront her “feeling of separateness” has an impact on the type of love that Pauline is able to show Pecola. Without the love she wants to receive from Ada, Pauline has a void that she needs to satisfy before

The Bluest Eyeâ•…â•… 797 she can provide Pecola with the physical love that Pecola longs for. Even though Pauline’s past negatively impacts Pecola, understanding it is vital to understanding Pauline’s effort to resist a descent into a state of isolation. Pauline seeks friendship as a means of filling the void of love that her mother does not provide. In Pauline’s dreams, she longs for a companion who will fulfill her emptiness: “ . . . the Presence would know what to do. She had only to lay her head on his chest and he would lead her away to the sea, to the city, to the woods . . . forever.” Pauline’s willingness to remain hopeful that this “Presence” will materialize enables her to embrace an opportunity for companionship when she meets Cholly Breedlove, her future husband. Although Pauline finds her “archless foot” to be a negative dimension of her body, Cholly embraces it: “Instead of ignoring her infirmity, pretending it was not there, he made it seem like something special and endearing.” Pauline recognizes Cholly as her “Presence” because he recognizes that she matters. The attention that Cholly gives to her helps to fill some of the void. Pauline’s inadequacy is a source of attraction for Cholly, which is a strong utopian suggestion that physical deformities cannot hinder true love. The emotional support Cholly shows Pauline suggests that love can be instrumental in helping vulnerable people from falling prey to the ravages of emotional and physical isolation. Unfortunately, Pecola Breedlove does not receive enough love from Cholly Breedlove to overcome her emotional and physical isolation from society. Instead of assisting Pecola with the harsh realities of her social milieu, Cholly contributes to her tragic condition: He rapes Pecola. The Bluest Eye evinces the significance of parental involvement in helping children to avoid isolating themselves physically and emotionally from others. Although Pauline is able to gain some help with combating emotional isolation from Cholly, Pauline and Cholly do not seem to understand the need to help their daughter (Pecola) with her vexing descent into a disquieting emotional and physical isolation from others. It would seem natural that Pauline would want to return the support she receives from Cholly with the internal demons of her past, but she simply leaves her daughter to become the prey of a vicious and racist society.

Left without emotional support, Pecola attempts to find happiness in the false comforts of her physical and emotional isolation from her reality. Antonio Maurice Daniels

Race in The Bluest Eye

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison’s first novel, the reader encounters Pecola Breedlove—the protagonist of the novel who has to confront the dominant culture’s oppressive standard of beauty. Morrison’s narrative is situated in 1941, a time period that featured tremendous racial discrimination against African Americans on the basis of their skin color. Since the dominant culture’s standard of beauty does not allow African Americans in 1941 to be considered as beautiful because of their dark (nonwhite) skin color, Pecola Breedlove experiences great racial shame because of this oppressive standard of beauty and desires to transcend the manacles of race. Pecola does not desire to be considered simply beautiful, but she has the strongest desire to be the most beautiful living human being. Therefore, in order to become the most beautiful living human being, Pecola aspires to have the bluest eye (a physical characteristic of the dominant culture’s standard of beauty) to enable her to escape the oppressive bondage and limitations that her race places on her ability to see herself as the most beautiful human being. For Pecola, the only way that she will be able to be perceived as beautiful is to live imaginatively in a world where she does have the bluest eye—biologically impossible in the world in which she physically resides. In helping the reader to understand how Pecola Breedlove perceives how the dominant culture views her, Morrison writes: “She has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white people. So. The distaste must be for her, her blackness . . . But her blackness is static and dread. And it is the blackness that accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes.” Although Pecola is able to see the “distaste” that the dominant culture has for her “blackness,” Morrison is able to share with readers one of her most pervasive themes, permeating all eight of her novels, including The Bluest Eye: African Americans must seek alternatives to the oppressive reality that the social construction of race has caused them to experience. While Morrison’s

798â•…â•… Morrison, Toni narrative interrogates salient issues surrounding the issue of race through Pecola, her focus on the racial shame of Claudia MacTeer, one of Pecola’s closest friends and the novel’s narrator, operates powerfully in illuminating her multifarious and nuanced ways of exploring the issue of race in The Bluest Eye. One of the most important ways in which Morrison has Claudia MacTeer interface with the theme of race is through her interaction with Maureen Peal—a young African American with lighter skin than Claudia and Pecola. Claudia has internalized her racial shame and desires for Pecola not to voice her racial shame in the presence of Maureen. In a pivotal encounter where Claudia, Pecola, and Frieda (Claudia’s sister) have an argument with Maureen about Maureen’s claim that light-complexioned blacks are beautiful and dark-complexioned blacks are ugly, Pecola’s silence, which endorses Maureen’s claim about the relationship between skin color and beauty, accentuates and unveils Claudia’s great internalized racial shame. In demonstrating her tremendous indignation for Pecola’s conspicuous endorsement of Maureen’s reprehensible claim, Claudia states, “She seemed to fold into herself, like a pleated wing. Her pain antagonized me. I wanted to open her up, crisp her edges, ram a stick down that hunched and curving spine, force her to stand erect and spit the misery out on the street.” Claudia’s internalized racial shame is vividly clear as she expresses her anger with Pecola for giving Maureen’s disgraceful claim validity. While Claudia and Frieda attempt to conceal their racial shame through their incensed retorts to Maureen’s claim, Claudia becomes increasingly angry with Pecola because she identifies with the conspicuous way in which Pecola sinks under “the wisdom, accuracy, and relevance” of Maureen’s shameful and painful position. Morrison’s treatment of racial shame in the novel enables her readers not only to unearth the significant psychological impact of Pecola and Claudia perceiving themselves as racially inferior, but also to embrace the opportunity to understand the oppressive economic, social, and cultural milieu and problems that have plagued blacks historically. Pecola and Claudia are two of the most important vehicles Morrison employs for discussing salient issues about

race. The novel is an instructive denunciation of the social construction of race. Antonio Maurice Daniels

Violence in The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye is a novel filled with terrible violence. Toni Morrison’s story revolves around an unthinkable crime: the rape of 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove by her father, Cholly. Yet Morrison demonstrates how this sexual violence derives from myriad personal and social circumstances, all of which must be acknowledged in order to understand the roots of Pecola’s tragedy. Therefore, we learn about the psychological trauma Cholly suffered as a teenager at the hands of racist white men, information that does not condone his actions, but does explain their origins. In addition to Pecola’s tragedy, the novel details the systematic psychological abuse of racism that in particular damages the young black girls in the story. The Bluest Eye chronicles the devastating effects of both physical and psychological violence in the black community. Pecola’s life is fraught with violence from the very first. Her parents’ marriage has decayed into mutual loathing, punctuated by angry quarrels and physical brawls. Our first glimpse of the Breedlove household is a quarrel that occurs after Cholly comes home drunk. Morrison writes, “Because it had not taken place immediately, the oncoming fight would lack spontaneity; it would be calculated, uninspired, and deadly.” What begins as a verbal exchange of insults soon escalates to blows: “He fought her the way a coward fights a man—with feet, the palms of his hands, and teeth. She, in turn, fought back in a purely feminine way—with frying pans and pokers, and occasionally a flatiron would sail toward his head.” The children’s reaction to this brawl differs. Pecola’s older brother, Sammy, joins the fight against his father, screaming “Kill him!” But Pecola stays motionless in her bed, praying that God will make her disappear so she won’t have to witness these events. Her desire to disappear eventually shifts to the wish for blue eyes; for she believes that being beautiful will bring love and happiness into her life. And according to contemporary society, beauty means the big blue eyes of someone like Shirley Temple. Morrison uses Pecola’s dream of

Song of Solomonâ•…â•… 799 having blue eyes to illustrate the psychological damage wrought by white beauty standards upon young black girls. Psychological trauma is the genesis of Cholly’s violent personality. Abandoned by his parents as an infant, Cholly grows up with few models for appropriate parenting. Yet more important to his warped psychological development is a terrifying encounter with armed white hunters when he is a teenager. Cholly is engaged in his first sexual experience with a neighbor girl in the woods when the two hunters happen upon them. The men order Cholly to continue having sex with Darlene and to “make it good,” reinforcing their power by ominously shifting their guns and running their lights over the couple’s half-clothed bodies.” Unable to refuse, Cholly and Darlene are transformed into a sexual spectacle for the voyeuristic gratitude of the hunters. Cholly lowers his pants and feigns intercourse, for he has been rendered impotent by fear. His concurrent anger he directs upon Darlene: “He hated her. He almost wished he could do it—hard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much.” Cholly is unable to vent his frustration except upon the girl beneath him. For Cholly, sex is no longer an avenue for enjoyment, but a way to express anger and violence and to demonstrate power over another person. The metaphorical rape of Cholly by the white men—their stripping of his self-respect and agency through sexual humiliation—allows the reader to understand his warped understanding of sex. His subsequent rape of Pecola results from his feelings of anger, guilt, and revulsion toward his child, all emotions he associates with sex. The other two young black girls in the novel, Frieda and Claudia MacTeer, also suffer physical and psychological violence. In another example of the home as unsafe space, Frieda is sexually molested by the family’s boarder, Mr. Henry. Frieda also joins the adult adoration of the “cu-ute” Shirley Temple, valorizing those blonde curls and blue eyes as superior to her own brown hair and eyes. The younger Claudia has not yet been brainwashed into believing whiteness is superior and destroys the white baby dolls she is given as Christmas gifts. Her observation is biting: “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had

agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.” Ultimately, however, Claudia is one of the many townspeople who passively witness Pecola’s insanity and friendlessness after the death of her baby. The ultimate violence, Morrison intimates, is when the community turns upon one of its own: “when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.” The Bluest Eye beautifully documents the destructive effects of individual and societal violence. Robin E. Field

Morrison, Toniâ•… Song of Solomonâ•… (1977)

Toni Morrison’s celebrated novel, Song of Solomon, is the story of Macon Dead, who seeks to make good in a world dominated by racial prejudice, and his son, Milkman Dead, whose quest for his real self and his struggle to discover his roots carries the burden of a major thematic strand of the novel. Guitar, Milkman’s erstwhile best friend, tries to kill Milkman more than once after incorrectly suspecting he has been cheated of hidden gold. Ruth, Macon Dead’s wife, Pilate, Macon’s sister, her daughter Reba and her granddaughter Hagar are other characters who dominate the narrative. Their personal, familial, and social interactions are set against the backdrop of a world dominated by race and gender prejudice and a social fabric marred by a variegated pattern of violence. Hagar falls desperately in love with Milkman and is unable to cope with his rejection. Morrison’s insights into distorted love and its consequences are most intuitively apprehended and made credible and accessible to the reader. Toni Morrison’s work gives us a unique understanding of life and living in an African-American context. Also, as a remarkably skillful and perceptive author, she rises above her immediate concerns. Through the vividly delineated local color, she analyzes the universal and perennial human Â�predicament. The ultimate impact of her work, especially Song of Solomon, is one of joy, hope and triumph of the human spirit. Gulshan Taneja

800â•…â•… Morrison, Toni

Grief in Song of Solomon

After being reared for virtually her entire childhood by her devoted and elitist father, Ruth Foster Dead evolves into womanhood dependent on and loyal to her father for the great affection he showed her throughout her life. However, after her father’s death, Ruth understands that her tremendous investment in her father’s life contributed significantly to her lack of a personal identity. Since her father had great wealth and many of the finest material things, she developed a false consciousness that she would not need anything or anybody other than her father. Therefore, through convincing herself that her father is the only person or thing she needs in life, Ruth exposes herself to the possibility that she will have to experience the harmful impact of a lasting grief. In delineating her despondent condition, Ruth states, “I didn’t think I’d ever need a friend because I had him. I was small, but he was big. The only person who ever really cared whether I lived or died . . . he cared . . . and there was, and is no one else in the world ever did.” Ruth carries the burden of her self-inflicted grief by electing to alienate herself from establishing a meaningful camaraderie with someone other than her father. Therefore, the obsession that she develops for her father leads her to experience the significant grief that accompanies an excessive attachment to temporal beings or things that cannot transcend the ravages of time. As a means of attempting to satisfy constantly her fetish for her father, Ruth visits his grave each night to revitalize her connection to her father and restore that “cared-for-feeling.” However, Ruth finds that her grief over her father’s death only further complicates her relationships with her husband and son. The novel provides an interesting engagement with the theme of grief not only through its treatment of Ruth’s response to her father’s death, but also through its treatment of Macon Dead II’s grief, which emerges in response to Ruth’s uncanny fetish for her father. Macon carries the grief of not being able to show his wife love and affection. He grieves the loss of their relationship after he finds her alone with her father’s dead body. With disgust, he thinks, “In the bed. That’s where she was when I opened the door. Laying next to him. Naked as a yard dog, kissing

him. Him dead and white and puffy and skinny, and she had his fingers in her mouth.” Therefore, the reader is able to see that the grief that Macon Dead II experiences results from his wife having such a strange fetish for her father that she places his dead fingers in her mouth. Ruth’s eccentric sexual act with her dead father is so traumatic for Macon because it shocks his consciousness. He knows that he cannot ever kiss and show his wife affection without this unspeakable memory coming back to him. He becomes so psychologically disturbed that he “started thinking all sorts of things,” including the possibility that he is not the father of his and Ruth’s children. Morrison’s novel enables the reader to see how intricately complex and debilitating grief can be for individuals, especially individuals who already are situated in a historical moment that does not afford African Americans treatment and opportunities equal to those enjoyed by members of the dominant culture. Ruth and Macon are classic examples of how incommodious it can be to overcome the depredation of salient grief. Unfortunately, Ruth and Macon Dead II are unable to overcome their overwhelmingly challenging grief. Antonio Maurice Daniels

Race in Song of Solomon

In her novel, Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison does not attempt to provide a solution for racial conflict, but rather depicts the effects of racism on three generations of an African-American family and the communities in which they live. Morrison depicts racism as both a physical and mental barrier that exists not only between multiple races (interracial) but also within a single race (intraracial). For the Deads and the closely knit African-American community in Song of Solomon, race significantly affects every aspect of their lives. The novel, set in the 1930s and 1940s in an unnamed Michigan town, opens with an introduction to race as a physical divider, which Morrison presents in terms of the socially and legally authorized, race-based segregation prevalent in American society up through the 20th century. Robert Smith, an African-American insurance agent, has determined to “take off from Mercy and fly away on [his]

Song of Solomonâ•…â•… 801 own wings.” Smith’s flight draws a crowd to Not Doctor Street, which is the unofficial name of the street where “the only colored doctor in the city had lived and died.” As Morrison explains how the street came to be called Not Doctor Street, she also draws the physical line that separates the city’s AfricanAmerican population from the white population. When the doctor moved to the street in 1896, he was the only Negro on the street. His patients, who were predominantly Negroes, did not live on or near the street, which they began to call Doctor Street. As time progressed and the town’s Negro population continued to refer to the street as Doctor Street, the city legislators attempted to force the black community to refer to the street as Mains Avenue. Some of the city legislators, whose concern for appropriate names and the maintenance of the city’s landmarks was the principal part of their political life, saw to it that “Doctor Street” was never used in any official capacity. And since they knew that only Southside residents kept it up, they had notices posted in the stores, barbershops, and restaurants in that part of the city saying that the avenue . . . had always been and would always be known as Mains Avenue and not Doctor Street. It was after this that the Southside residents began to refer it as Not Doctor Street. The idea that Negroes did not originally live on or near Doctor Street and were later confined to the “Southside,” indicates the physical barriers of racial segregation between blacks and whites. The physical segregation was not limited to where one lived, but extended to where people were able to obtain public services, including health care. In 1931, Robert Smith drew the crowd to Mercy Hospital on Not Doctor Street, and as a result “the first colored expectant mother was allowed to give birth inside its wards and not on its steps.” This incident was quite possibly a forced integration, being that the woman went into labor while standing outside the hospital witnessing Mr. Smith’s flight. Until that time, neither the Negro doctor nor any of his patients, aside from two, both white, were granted privileges or admitted at Mercy.

Stories of interracial segregation are not uncommon; yet, Morrison moves beyond the external complications of race to the internal or intraracial effects of race and racism upon the African-American community. As a consequence of colonialism and interracial racism, many in the black community internalize this racism and inflict it upon one another. In Song of Solomon, the internalization of prejudice is expressed in terms of the internal thoughts of African-American characters and in their actions toward African-American characters. Macon Dead II, the richest black man in town, is a materialistic, “colored man of property” whose chief interest is obtaining money and land. He is ashamed of his sister, Pilate, and her daughter and granddaughter, all of whom essentially reject the idea of materialism that he values. In a lone instance when Pilate visits Macon’s house, his internalization of Eurocentric ideals is apparent by his thoughts. “He trembled with thought of the white men in the bank—the men who helped him buy and mortgage houses—discovering that this raggedy bootlegger was his sister.” Rather than concern himself with his relationship with his sister, Macon Dead is more concerned with and even fearful of what “white men” might think. This is indicative of the mental barrier that is a consequence of racism. Intraracial racism and internalized Eurocentrism is also presented in terms of how African Americans regard themselves and other African Americans. Mrs. Bains, one of Macon Dead II’s tenants, says, “A nigger in business is a terrible thing to see. A terrible, terrible thing to see.” Mrs. Bains says this after an encounter with Macon Dead II. She degrades an African American by referring to him as a “nigger,” while implying that African Americans should not be business owners. This indicates her internalization of the notion of African-American inferiority. Race is a prevalent theme throughout Song of Solomon, and there are several instances in which Morrison depicts the negative and lasting effects of racism on the African-American community. Racist notions uphold physical and mental barriers both externally and internally. ShaShonda Porter

802â•…â•… Morrison, Toni

Violence in Song of Solomon

In the pattern of life and living that Toni Morrison weaves for her characters, violence appears as an unmistakable, insistent, and deliberately plotted component. Violence that marks the life of the characters in Song of Solomon is sometimes the result of a failure of self-restraint or of explosive emotional outbursts. Domestic violence in Song of Solomon falls in this category. The nature of the relationship that Macon Dead and his unloved wife Ruth share provides ample examples of this kind of violence. Characters in Song of Solomon resort to extreme physical and emotional reaction in response to deep trauma. Hagar, who falls desperately in love with Milkman, is unable to cope with his rejection and, traumatized, hunts for him with a “Carlson skinning knife”: “ . . . Totally taken over by her anaconda love, she had no self left, no fears, no wants, no intelligence that was her own” (137). Ruth Dead addresses herself to Hagar: “‘You are trying to kill him.   .  .  . If you so much as bend a hair on his head, so help me Jesus, I will tear your throat out.’↜” Guitar’s reaction to Milkman’s betrayal in refusing to share the hidden gold leads to a ruthless manhunt in which he tries to kill Milkman more than once. Pilate threatens her daughter’s current lover with a knife, “positioned  .  .  . at the edge of his heart,” when he beats her up. There is street violence between Milkman and other Negroes in Shalimar town. In another dimension to the violence that casts a shadow over the lives of African Americans, there is the emotional violence that characters suffer in the context of racial discrimination when they are ill treated, or worse, when the humiliating treatment meted out to the blacks by the whites is assumed to be appropriate. Escalating the violence, both groups prey on each other. Macon Dead, Sr., is shot dead in front of his children. Every time a black American is killed, the members of the Seven Day Group kill a white man in the same manner. The stories of killers fill the narrative. Winnie Ruth’s doings are the talk of the town and staple gossip at the local barbershop where men regularly get together. The murder of Emmett Till receives much attention in the novel in order to remind the

reader of the real history of racial violence in America. Milkman is supposed to have killed a white man in the cave. Pilate keeps a skeleton, eventually confirmed as that of her father, in a sack most of her life as her “inheritance.” It is significant that violence of all and any kind in Song of Solomon performs a deeply symbolic function in the total context of the novel, however essential it may appear to be to the basic narrative. By itself, the domestic violence in the Dead household seems to hold little significance to the characters, but it allows the reader to perceive a pattern of all-pervasive aggression that envelops the novel. The physical bloodshed resulting from racial hatred is orchestrated as a chorus-like, ritualistic and congruent occurrence, such as the reciprocal killings of the whites by the Seven Day Group. Milkman’s clash with others in Shalimar town comes across more as a rite of passage than the angry outburst of young men having a go at each other. Morrison holds her prose in firm control and registers just the right nuance. Violence is presented as the norm rather than as an exception in the variegated collage of human existence. An all-pervasive current of ferocity connects humanity to a state of raw, wild, and seemingly a pre-civilized existence. The violence and brutality that govern the life and times of black America reveal the nature and significance of black American experience. But this also allows Morrison to connect the postwar black American experience to human existence at its most elemental level, thus focusing on universal dimensions of humanity, much like Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies, and Ayn Rand’s Anthem, all of which show humanity shorn of the icings of civilization. It is ironic that the African-American desire to achieve social equality is equated with the AfricanAmerican ambition to achieve material gains, as Macon Dead’s economic upward mobility, or the narrator’s references to money, hidden gold, and poverty, is plainly designed to show. But Morrison’s insights into deeper human urges raise her artistic endeavor to a finer level. Morrison’s reliance on the myth as her essential artistic tool helps her achieve this goal. The essential core of Song of Solomon, in its deeper penetrations, therefore, projects a universal

Sulaâ•…â•… 803 human dilemma rather than a limited and limiting black American experience. Gulshan Taneja

Morrison, Toniâ•… Sulaâ•… (1973)

Sula (1973) is Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s second published novel. Spanning the years from 1919 to 1965, the story centers on the childhood friendship and later estrangement of two women living in a black community called the Bottom, near the town of Medallion, Ohio. Sula Peace, the only daughter of a young and attractive widow, Hannah Peace, lives in the labyrinthine house of her grandmother, Eva Peace, who is a fiercely protective but emotionally distant matriarch. Nel Wright is the only daughter of lakeman Wiley Wright and beautiful and morally impeccable Helene, whose mother, Rochelle Sabat, is a Creole prostitute in New Orleans. Meeting in 1920, when they are both around 10 years old, Sula and Nel become inseparable. After Nel marries a local man, Jude Greene, in 1927, Sula leaves town, presumably to attend college. Upon Sula’s sudden return 10 years later, their friendship revives but quickly dies when Sula seduces Jude. Years later, in 1965, Nel realizes that she has actually been missing not her husband but Sula, who has been dead 25 years. The novel’s other major characters include Shadrack, a World War I veteran who founds an enigmatic annual ritual called National Suicide Day; Plum, Sula’s uncle and another traumatized war veteran; and Ajax, Sula’s lover who is attracted to her fierce independence, which separates her from all other women of the community. The major themes of the novella include race, gender, sexuality, freedom, alienation, grief, individual and society, love, parenthood, community, oppression, violence, and religion. Tomoko Kuribayashi

Gender in Sula

In Toni Morrison’s second novel, gender issues cannot be separated from issues of race and racism. The legacy of slavery has left its mark on Morrison’s black characters, who live in a rural Ohio community called the Bottom. The many serious conflicts that exist between the black women and men, as well

as their traditional gender roles and expectations, need to be considered in light of this legacy and its aftereffects. All the male characters in Sula, for example, seem defeated, unable to become responsible adults in a society that will not grant them full manhood. Eva Peace’s husband and the father of her three children is a prime example of stunted male growth, as his name, BoyBoy, clearly indicates. Nel Wright’s husband, Jude Greene, also suffers from the sense that his masculinity is inadequate; he and other young black men of the Bottom are extremely disappointed and frustrated when, fully capable physically and eager to contribute hard labor, they are denied road construction jobs in favor of skinny white men. Even Ajax, a much admired local Lothario, yearns for a white man’s job, the privilege of flying airplanes. The three Deweys, adopted by Eva as young boys, are healthy and active, but never grow beyond four feet and remain childish in behavior. Plum Peace and Shadrack, both traumatized World War I veterans, cannot function normally; though their major problems may stem from battle fatigue, arguably some of the trauma was caused by the army’s racism and the black soldiers’ treatment upon their homecoming. The Bottom’s black women are given the responsibility of caring for black men who suffer from the sense that they are not “man enough.” While Eva wholeheartedly hates BoyBoy for deserting his family, she, and other Peace women, simply love maleness. Despite missing one leg, Eva has a steady flow of male visitors admiring her as if she were a goddess, even though they share no sexual intimacy. Her daughter Hannah, a young widow, has many lovers who appreciate her natural beauty and easy-going manners. Helene Wright, in contrast, suppresses any expression of female sexuality—or any spontaneous self-expression, for that matter—in herself and her daughter, Nel. Helene fears the blood of her prostitute mother, Rochelle Sabat, should be manifesting itself in them. Raised by her grandmother, a devout Catholic in New Orleans, Helene believes in women’s spiritual and moral superiority. For the Wright women, as for the Peaces, taking care of men’s various needs forms the core of a woman’s life: Helene prides herself on her impeccable housekeeping and Nel devotes herself to meeting her husband’s and,

804â•…â•… Morrison, Toni later, her children’s needs; in fact, Jude’s proposal to her is prompted by Nel’s fierce desire to soothe his pain after his failure to get a more manly job. When Jude and Nel concur that the racist world humiliates black men at every possible juncture, Sula retorts that black women—and children—hang on every word black men say, making black men “the envy of the world.” Sula represents the opposite of what dictates the lives of the women in the Bottom. When she returns to the community after 10 years’ absence, her grandmother Eva tells her to get married and have children. Sula replies that she would rather make herself than make babies. She takes numerous lovers, many of them other women’s husbands, including her best friend Nel’s, but she also discards them quickly afterward, unlike her mother Hannah who was generous with her sexual favors. Lovemaking, for Sula, is a means by which she can find herself and be alone with herself, despite the physical proximity to another person. Sula’s radical independence, defying the black community’s norm for female behavior, infuriates both men and women. When Nel tells Sula on her deathbed that a colored woman cannot act like a man or act independent, Sula replies that being a colored woman equals being a man, free to do as one likes. One man who is attracted to Sula’s individualism is Ajax, who seeks in her the same quality he admires in his mother, an evil “conjure” woman worshipped by her seven sons. But Ajax’s case may highlight another gender problem common in the black community: a too strong, often smothering bond between mother and son, also existent between Eva and Plum Peace. In admiring Sula for her resemblance to his mother, Ajax, like the other characters in the novel, reinforces traditional and troubling gender roles. Tomoko Kuribayashi

Parenthood in Sula

Like all other themes found in Sula, the issue of parenthood cannot be considered in separation from race and racism. Parent-child relationships in Sula, both for women and for men, are heavily influenced by the history of slavery and the racism that poisoned 20th-century American society.

Plainly put, Morrison’s male characters fail to be responsible fathers. For example, after several years of womanizing, drinking, and spousal abuse, BoyBoy leaves Eva Peace with three young children and virtually nothing to her name, which forces Eva, as rumor goes, to have her leg severed so that she may collect insurance money with which to support her family. Jude Greene, Nel Wright’s husband and also father to three young children, abandons his family after having a casual affair with Nel’s best friend, Sula Peace. Both of these men, along with virtually all other male characters in the novella, seem to suffer from the sense that they are inferior to white men and therefore incapable of responsible adulthood and meaningful fatherhood; even BoyBoy, apparently successful and well-to-do upon his brief homecoming, seems to Eva to harbor defeat in his posture. Additionally, the practice of not granting slaves any paternal rights, or even recognition of biological fatherhood, has left black men unable to perform the duties of husbands and fathers. Significantly, the only responsible father figure in the novella, Nel’s father Wiley Wright, is noticeable mainly as an absence. He is usually gone for his job on a lake ship, which is welcome to his wife, Helene, to whom sexual intimacy not for the purpose of procreation is anathema, having been raised by a devoutly Catholic grandmother. The black men’s failure to parent leaves the black women to raise their young single-handedly. Often that calls for extreme self-sacrifice, as in the case of Eva who reportedly mutilated herself physically to earn a living large enough for her family. Nel also takes on various cleaning jobs to support her children after Jude’s desertion. A few black women, like Teapot’s Mamma in the Bottom or Helene Wright’s birth mother Rochelle Sabat, who is a New Orleans prostitute, are deemed guilty of neglecting—if not abusing—their children, emotionally or otherwise. Their failure as mothers seems to stem from their seemingly excessive sexual interest in men, which implies that black mothers cannot be sexual and maternal at the same time. The novella, however, may suggest that even the most conscientious mother cannot respond to a child’s every need. For example, Sula Peace overhears her young widowed mother, Hannah,

Sulaâ•…â•… 805 comment that she loves Sula but does not like her, which sends the young girl on a self-destructive path while it also frees her from certain obligations of black womanhood, including motherhood. Devoted mothers like Eva and Helene can be labeled as domineering, suffocating, and/or manipulative, possibly doing what they do for their own satisfaction rather than for the well-being of their children. Helene focuses her energy on suppressing Nel’s wilder inclinations to shape her in the mold of respectable black femininity. Eva provides for her children, both biological and adopted, but the children regard her with fear and anxiety. Asked by her daughter Hannah whether she ever loved her children when they were young, that is, whether she coddled and played with them, Eva angrily replies that she helped them survive amid extreme deprivation. Another question asked by Morrison’s novella is how much control mothers should have over their children’s lives. When her son Plum comes back from the World War a broken man and heroin addict, Eva chooses to burn him to death in his drug-induced stupor. The same Eva, however, almost kills herself trying to save Hannah from a fire. Sula rebels against the sociocultural injunction that black women be good mothers, or at least be mothers. When Eva tells her that as a woman she needs to have babies, Sula replies that she wants to make herself, not babies. This refusal to give herself over to motherhood, coupled with her random sampling and callous dismissal of the community’s men, leads to her ostracism in the Bottom. Paradoxically, Sula’s selfish, unwomanly behavior ends up consolidating the parent-child bonds as well as marital relations in the black community. Tomoko Kuribayashi

Race in Sula

Toni Morrison’s novel opens with the description of a linguistic manifestation of racism in the United States. A slave was promised freedom and a piece of bottom land—considered the best farm land—by a white farmer in exchange for several difficult feats. When the tasks were completed, the farmer made the slave believe that hilly land, less fertile and backbreaking to farm, was indeed the bottom land, being the bottom of heaven. Thus, the novel’s first episode

shows how racist society manipulates language to deprive and oppress black people while also pointing out that emancipated slaves were given little to no financial means to improve their lives. When Sula opens in 1920, the novel’s main characters live in “the Bottom,” near the town of Medallion, Ohio, in extreme poverty and in a state of general oppression. A drowned black child’s body, dragged through the water by a white bargeman afraid that the corpse’s smell might rub off on his gear, is unrecognizable by the time he is returned to his mother. Conflicts with the police are considered “the natural hazards of Negro life” by local young men. Even respectable black women like Helene Wright and her daughter Nel are subjected to racist treatment on their train ride south to Helene’s grandmother’s funeral. Accustomed to such mistreatment by fellow human beings, the residents of the Bottom accept evil as part of life. For them God has four faces, not the three of the Holy Trinity; the fourth face is the face of the devil. Another major way race and racism affect Morrison’s black characters’ lives is through gender roles and expectations. The black men suffer from the sense that their masculinity is inferior to that of white men: For example, they are not given jobs for local road construction, which would allow them to prove their manhood. Much other desirable work, including the privilege of flying airplanes, is exclusively reserved for white men. Plum Peace and Shadrack both come home from World War I, never to become wholly functional again due to the racism experienced by black soldiers in the army and on their homecoming. The debilitating lack of confidence in their manhood, possibly coupled with the denial of paternal rights in slavery, leads to black men’s failure to become husbands and fathers. BoyBoy, Eva Peace’s husband, deserts her and their three young children, forcing Eva to make great sacrifices to feed her family. Nel Wright’s husband, Jude Greene, also ends up abandoning his family after his affair with Sula Peace, Nel’s best friend, is discovered. Given men’s diffidence and inability to parent, black women must shoulder the double burden of nursing the men’s hurt—or enduring their abuse—and raising their children single-handedly, as Eva Peace and Nel Greene are forced to do.

806â•…â•… Morrison, Toni Because of race-specific gender expectations formed by a racist society, Sula Peace’s insistence that she should retain her independence and individuality, and her refusal to cater to the needs of others, make her an outcast in the Bottom. The black community’s suspicion and hatred of her are further fueled by the rumor that she has slept with white men. In light of the history of mass rape of black slave women by white men, it is an unforgivable sin for a black woman to have voluntary sexual relations with a white man. It is for the same reason that Helene Wright tries to suppress what she regards as the wild blood of her Creole mother, who as a prostitute had sex with white men, as Helene’s own skin color proves. Yet the color of their skin, a source of much suffering and sorrow, seems to be also what gives the characters their sense of self and of belonging. For one, Shadrack re-recognizes himself for the first time after the war when he sees his black face reflected in water; he then goes on to establish the annual ritual of National Suicide Day, which becomes an accepted part of the life of the Bottom and possibly is a celebration of slaves’ defiance of the fear that permeated their lives. Sula sees Ajax’s black skin and imagines alabaster bones and black loam underneath. Even Hannah Peace and Plum’s death by fire may commemorate the death by burning experienced by many lynching victims. The three Deweys adopted by Eva continue to play chain-gang as adults. Thus, in 1965, Nel reflects that despite the much touted social progress made on behalf of black people, something important has been lost when the black community of the Bottom disintegrated. Tomoko Kuribayashi

Morrison, Toniâ•… Tar Babyâ•… (1982)

Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby updates the classic Uncle Remus story about a doll made of tar used to trap Br’er Rabbit. Full of references to tar—in particular, the tar-like swamp into which Morrison’s protagonist, Jadine ( Jade), falls halfway through the novel—Morrison’s text calls into question who is tricking whom and what is at stake when the trap is sprung. Most traditional readings of Morrison’s novel interpret Jadine as trying desperately to escape

“the swamp” that is otherwise composed of aspects of her own origins. By “escaping” to Europe and modeling Eurocentric styles, Jadine feels as though she is above the swamp women who seem to call to her. However, in the end, it seems as though she has not been trapped, or even tricked, by the tar-like swamp at all, but by European standards of beauty that cause her to forget her roots and her identity as a woman of African-American descent. Aimee Pozorski

Love in Tar Baby

Without exception, Toni Morrison’s novels dramatize the effects of a love that is “too thick”—a mother’s love or a lover’s love that is so committed and intense that it threatens the lives of both lover and beloved. Tar Baby showcases this love through a mother and her child: the one, a former beauty queen and lonely wife of a candy-store owner; the other, a grown son who appears to resent his mother, although no one knows why, exactly, except for Ondine, the servant behind the scenes and running the lives of this family. Although the novel more explicitly focuses on such themes as race, identity, and success, Tar Baby opens and closes with a discussion of whether Michael, the beloved son, will attend Christmas dinner with the Streets and their staff. As anticipation builds for the arrival of Michael, so too does it grow for the arrival of a camp footlocker, a locker that becomes a symbol for Michael: closed tight, not just to carry clothes, but also to carry secrets that he has kept locked inside since childhood. In addition to the footlocker, several other details offered in the beginning of the novel suggest that something has gone awry between this mother, Margaret, and her son. Margaret’s eyes, for example, are described as “blue-if-it’s-a-boy blue”—not simply to emphasize Margaret’s marks of beauty as valued by an Anglophilic world, but also to emphasize her role and ambivalence as a young mother: Her child was wrapped tight in a blue blanket upon birth, and the pressure seemed to mount from there.” Morrison’s novel seems to turn on this tension—both through flashbacks of a tormented past and through present-day conversations between the wealthy white Margaret, lady of the house, and

Tar Babyâ•…â•… 807 Ondine, the black servant who was as young as Margaret when she began working for the Streets. Margaret and Ondine very nearly became friends. But, as we find out in one of the most intense conversations of the novel, only Ondine knows Michael and Margaret’s secret—that Margaret cut and burned her baby because “she could,” as she later confesses.” “You white freak! You baby killer! I saw you! I saw you!” Ondine shrieks at the dinner table, to which Margaret responds, “Shut up! Shut up! You nigger! You nigger bitch! Shut your big mouth, I’ll kill you! ” After dinner, Jadine, Ondine’s niece, says, “↜‘That was awful, awful,” which is the emotional response of the reader as well. What is interesting in this argument about a mother’s inappropriate behavior is that, it, too, gets bound up with representations of race and the complicated relationships between women. Ondine calls Margaret a “white freak,” to which Margaret retaliates with “you nigger.” At no time during this argument is the experience of Michael mentioned. The argument is about these two women alone (women who once also loved each other, in their own way), with the accused, significantly, threatening murder—“I’ll kill you”—instead of denying the charges. It is not until later that it becomes clear that, from Morrison’s point of view, this mother’s abuse is the exemplary case, in this novel, of a mother’s “too-thick” love: Margaret has decided to talk about it with her husband, to which he responds: “Why does he love you?” Margaret answers, her eyes again described as “blue-if-it’s-a-boy,” “Because I love him.” Margaret and Valerian repeat this question and answer three times, to which Margaret finally—the third time—answers the question of why Michael could possibly love his mother with “I don’t know.” Margaret’s “I don’t know” resonates not only within this scene, but also throughout the novel, in relation to nearly all of the love relationships: the romantic love between Jade and Son, one a privileged and successful, light-skinned mulatto, the other a dark African-American man who literally (as if to underscore the Streets’ belief in primitivism) arrives naked on their boat; the familial bond between Ondine and Jade, the one a servant who worked her entire life for an abusive mother in order

to pay for the privilege of Jade; the marital bond between Ondine and her husband Sydney—working side by side all of those years for the “crazy, white” folks. The only relationship that so clearly lacks love is the relationship between Margaret and her husband Valerian, which seems to say something not only about wealth and beauty, but also about humanity generally: Money and beauty cannot buy love—and without adult love, the novel seems to suggest in the end, we are doomed to destroy our children. Aimee Pozorski

Race in Tar Baby

As Tar Baby’s epigraph—from 1 Corinthians— makes clear, “there are contentions among” the characters in the novel. These contentions arise from the characters’ divergent experiences of themselves as black, and the way blackness has been constructed by white culture. This is a novel that pits the lightskinned Jadine Childs against the swampy, chronic blackness of Son, an African-American stowaway without a proper name. Through the characters of Jadine and Son, Tar Baby explores the way historically disadvantaged groups can frequently take on the oppressive categories of the dominant culture. Tar Baby revolves around the family of a patriarchal white entrepreneur, Valerian Street, and his beauty-queen wife, Margaret; their black house servants, Sydney and Ondine, and the servants’ niece, Jadine Childs. While the servants Sydney and Ondine do feel put upon by the Streets, the novel’s real contention is in the younger generation, represented by Son and Jadine. Margaret finds Son hidden in a closet in the family’s mansion, L’Arbe de la Croix. Playing upon the white racist fantasy that African-American men want to “sully” pure white women, Margaret assumes that Son fully intends to rape her. However, he is really in love with Jadine, a European sophisticate who admires the soft, black skin of baby seals wrapped around her when she first speaks with Son—a cloak symbolic of the potential of Son himself. In fact, the novel begins and ends with the perspective of Son, who falls in love while watching the fair-skinned Jadine sleep. Immediately, Morrison contrasts the two characters based on their connec-

808â•…â•… Morrison, Toni tions to racial heritage: Son appears to have come from a swamp, carrying with him an animal stench and unkempt hair. He is referred to by Jadine’s uncle as a “stinking, ignorant swamp nigger” and “a wild-eyed pervert who hides in women’s closets.” By contrast, Jadine, with Valerian’s help, is a European model in high demand; her fair complexion has earned her fame in Paris, as has her European education. While the elegant, beautiful, well-spoken Jadine seems to be the hero of the novel, it is actually Son who emerges as the most sympathetic character. As we see the city-raised Jadine lose touch with her ancestors, indicated by her haunting, guilt-provoking visions of the swamp women and African women who bare their breasts during their most private hours, Son remains faithful to his family and friends of African descent who continue to survive in the slow, southern town of Eloe, Florida. Even at the end of the novel, when Son pursues Jade to the Isle of Chevaliers after a violent argument in New York City, Morrison does not clearly indicate whether Son and Jade will ever reunite. Led by Thérèse, a former employee of the Street family who is also aging and nearly blind, Son ends up figuratively blind himself, climbing out of a boat in the dark to take on the 10-mile walk to Jade’s aunt and uncle with the intention of asking her whereabouts. When she leaves him, groping and in the dark, Thérèse says to Son, “The men. The men are waiting for you. . . . You can choose now. They are naked and they are blind too. . . . But they gallop; they race horses like angels all over the hills.” While we do not get confirmation of Son’s ultimate choice—Jade and her Eurocentric views, or “the men” as symbolized by the fraternity of Eloe and his experiences in the Vietnam War—the novel ends with a fairly strong indication that he chooses the men and their horses by mimicking the sound of blind men on horseback: “Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Licketylickety-lickety-split.” After being celebrated for his trophy girlfriend and wealthy connections, in the end Son is reduced to blindness, surrounded by the onomatopoetic sounds of galloping horses. But in this reduction—to a primitive, more “pure” sense of self over and against the Eurocentric vision of Jadine that has caused her to lose all connection with her

African heritage, including her aunt and uncle— Son comes out on top. Just as the rabbits in the African folktale are distracted from the white farmer’s produce by a tar baby, Son is momentarily distracted by Jadine Childs. But, with the help of a blind old woman, Son himself becomes blind and, paradoxically, sees the light: The way home is not toward Jadine, but toward the men on horseback who represent his heritage. When the mist lifts, and he realizes the way “home,” he runs toward them: “lickety-licketylickety-split,” toward a racial origin that has maintained its identity despite the technology of the city and the values of a white, patriarchal economy. Aimee Pozorski

Success in Tar Baby

Through the central figure of Jade, Tar Baby challenges key assumptions about what makes someone a success. Jade is an internationally known model whose face has graced the covers of Vogue and Elle; she has been educated in Europe and lived in France, and—when the novel opens—is being pursued by a wealthy businessman who sends her a seal-skin coat. Early in the novel, however, it becomes clear that even this kind of success has limitations. The signaled limitations take the form of a woman in yellow who emerges on a day when Jade goes to the market, knowing she is “intelligent and lucky.” For Jade, “the vision itself was a woman much too tall. Under her long canary yellow dress Jadine knew there was too much hip, too much bust. The agency would laugh her out of the lobby, so why was she and everybody else in the store transfixed?” (45). The reference to tar later in this scene echoes the “tar baby” of the title, but also foreshadows a scene several chapters into the novel, when Jade gets stuck, alone, in a tar-like swamp, surrounded, apparently, by women who “looked down from the rafters of the trees [and] stopped murmuring. They were delighted when first they saw her, thinking a runaway child had been restored to them. But upon looking closer they saw differently. This girl was fighting to get away from them.” This swamp, surrounded by phantom women, is described as “slime,” “moss-covered jelly,” “oil,” “mud,” “shit,” and “pitch.” Ultimately, however, we

The Middleman and Other Stories â•…â•… 809 understand that the color of the tar is like the color of the first nameless woman in the European market, and, as such, it is an important part of Jade’s heritage from which she is trying to escape. The gaze of the women from the rafters of trees seems to suggest to Jade that, although she is successful by European standards, she has lost track of—even, perhaps, rejected—her African roots. This rejection seems no more clear than in Jade’s first meeting with Son, the descendant of Africans who hides in the home of Jade’s benefactor, Valerian Street. Understood as primitive by the wealthy Americans on the island, and even, to an extent, Jadine, Son is the opposite of Jade: Whereas she chooses the city life of Paris or New York, Son values his home in Eloe, Florida; whereas Jade thinks of herself as an enlightened intellectual, Son embraces the communal life of a small southern town. Son’s connection to his past, however, suggests a different kind of success for Jade—one that she is able to entertain briefly by visiting Eloe with Son, but that she ultimately rejects for brighter lights and a bigger city. Son, in an attempt to make things work with Jade, in an attempt to foster the meeting of two different lives and perspectives on success, moves briefly with Jade to New York City, where he observes that black girls in New York City are perpetually unhappy and their husbands and boyfriends do not seem to notice. He thinks the men did not wish to see the “crying girls split into two parts by their tight jeans, screaming at the top of their high, high heels, straining against the pull of their braids and the fluorescent combs holding their hair.” Even in New York, together, trying to make their relationship work, Son notices what Jadine does not: that “success” in New York causes women to cry and men to become oblivious; it requires the black girls, in particular, to suffer as they wear such unnatural styles as tight jeans, high heels, and dramatic hair. In this way, Son appears in the novel as an unlikely doppelgänger for Jade’s benefactor, Valerian. A wealthy, white, Philadelphia businessman, Valerian is the only nonplussed resident of L’Arbe de la Croix when Son appears before them, cramped in the closet of Valerian’s wife. In fact, rather than turn Son in, Valerian and Son bond over plants struggling to thrive in Valerian’s greenhouse. An

important symbol for living things struggling to grow outside of their natural element, the plants represent the women both Son and Valerian love— women driven by success in innumerable ways, but who fall far short when it comes to personal happiness. Becoming the wife of Valerian and a mother at a young age, and taking over his impressive mansion in the Caribbean, Margaret is driven to abuse their only son and thus purge herself of his life in adulthood; becoming a successful model and European scholar at a young age, and escaping the visions of women who are trying to call her home, results in an equal sense of loss for Jade—loss not only of a particular kind of success, but also of identity, and, crucially, of the love that might save her. Aimee Pozorski

Mukherjee, Bharatiâ•… The Middleman and Other Storiesâ•… (1988)

Bharati Mukherjee offers new ways of examining East-West migration patterns in this complex collection of short stories. These stories unearth invisible spaces, silenced voices, and unknown borders from within the bowels of Western societies in Canada, Latin America, Europe, and largely America. The reader is introduced to a variety of immigrant characters who have arrived at the homeland at different times. The eponymous middleman is the classic migrant persona of the wandering Jew exiled in a contemporary setting: Latin American guerrilla territory. In this story, Mukherjee’s middleman embodies basic principles that guide all of her other migrant characters. Life in a new homeland is based on two things: provisional loyalty and/or the ability to remain consistently useful. Mukherjee’s other migrants follow either one or both of these doctrines, which have interesting results, such as fluid identification and cultural patterns as well as the creation of new social and economic networks to facilitate both natives and other migrants. However, Mukherjee also introduces another significant perspective in this collection: the citizens who have to deal with this influx of migrants through their borders. In this group Mukherjee represents a wide cross section of American society, hinting at its own variety and its older waves of

810â•…â•… Mukherjee, Bharati migration. On both sides of the border, the reader discerns a similar range of responses toward others. Xenophobia, denial, grudging acceptance, sympathy, and, finally, integration are evident in both immigrants and citizenry. In this way, the reader is introduced to a more balanced perspective of both groups in diaspora and the text avoids becoming propaganda for either side. This collection offers a raw, unflinching perspective about immigration, an outlook that is well supported by Mukherjee’s clear, precise prose and the short story format. The open-ended nature of these stories attests to the immigrant’s life as being in perpetual flux, subject to the whims of larger forces and learning to deal with their judgments. In the end, the reader is left dissatisfied, hungry for more immigrant vignettes and insights into an invisible world that lies just beneath the surface of mainstream society. Saadiqa Khan

Freedom in The Middleman and Other Stories

In this collection of short stories, Mukherjee explores freedom from the migrant’s perspective. The desire to leave the developing homeland constitutes the first freedom for the migrant. The opportunity of a better life in the developed society often motivates this departure. With money and connections with other successful migrants, Ro, Jasmine, Rosie, Alfred, Mr. Venkatesan, and Blanquita cross borders illegally. Marriage, education, and even adoption provide the legal options for Mrs. Bhave, Panna, Maya, and Eng in Canada and America respectively. The manner of the migrant’s entry determines his relationship with his new society. The illegal immigrant discovers that borders are paradoxically imaginary and real simultaneously. If he is successful, the illegal migrant has to deal with several changes. Because of his status, he is forced to become invisible, which limits his physical freedom and he is dependent on the goodwill of others to protect him. Mr. Venkatesan is instructed on “the most prudent conduct for undocumented transients” that turns out to be imprisonment in Queenie’s flat until he can escape. Ro’s roommates protest his invisibility over the phone. In the case of Jasmine, Rosie, and

Blanquita, they are often sexually exploited by their “protectors,” which they endure in order to survive. The land they live in is “ . . . America through the wrong end of the telescope.” On the other hand, they believe they have gained freedom from their constricting pasts, a freedom that Mukherjee often reveals as illusory and half-realized. Jasmine leaves her home from “the middle of nowhere” thinking she can pursue her ambitions (which are never identified,) only to end up repeating those stereotypes of the exotic, promiscuous island girl that she disparages. Even when she thinks she has abandoned all the aspects of her old life, she keeps returning to them unconsciously, thus living within a state of ambivalence and uncertainty. What does the illegal gain? It is access to a new culture, new people, new relationships and the perspective of viewing their culture from outside its borders. The legal immigrants also share this ambiguous freedom. They attempt to shape their futures in their new society. Maya and Panna free themselves from Hindu tradition as they pursue their goals of higher education; they break taboos of caste and religion in their new relationships while Mrs. Bhave is able to discover a new life after widowhood. However, they are never allowed to forget their past. Mrs. Chatterjee subtly informs Maya that her scandalous past is no secret to the Indian community. Panna confronts her own past when her husband visits her in New York and tries to assume his traditional role as her caretaker, only to grudgingly surrender because of his ignorance in the new land. Eng’s nightmares of wartorn Vietnam migrate with her to her new home, denying her any chance of a new life. Whether legal or illegal, the migrant finds himself in limbo as he is suspended between two worlds, enjoying a tenuous relationship with both. Very few migrants ever achieve the freedom of the eponymous middleman. Alfred the Jew is a perpetual transient; he has no loyalties to any border or to anyone. He knows how to survive by keeping an emotional distance from his past and by deriving profit from the worst of circumstances. The legal citizens have a diverse relationship with these new migrants. On one hand, there are xenophobes like Jeb who feels trapped and enraged by the fact that his country is overwhelmed with

The Middleman and Other Stories â•…â•… 811 migrants but fails to realize that, ironically, he too is dependent on them to make a living. He attempts to “regain control” by raping the Indian girl, a throwback to his war days, a clue that he never really left Vietnam. Other characters like Rindy and Jason enter significant relationships with their migrants and learn of the real America that is brutal in its treatment of the Third World and its people. They also learn that the freedoms they enjoy have been created with the blood of such refugees. Other characters like the old migrants offer a mixture of support and exploitation, and this is seen between Jasmine and the Daboos, Ro and Mumtaz, Danny and his girls. Thus the freedom to move between and within borders can bring other losses and gains, which the migrant must be prepared to deal with if he is to survive in his new world. Saadiqa Khan

Success in The Middleman and Other Stories

Bharati Mukherjee explores the theme of success in her collection of short stories through an examination of her immigrant characters, who attempt to renegotiate their lives in their new homelands. These immigrants belong to two groups that define and achieve success in different ways. The first group includes immigrants who pursue different ambitions and goals that often involve the reshaping of cultural patterns and codes from the old homeland. Ro, Jasmine, Panna, Maya, and Mrs. Bhave are not afraid to surrender some of their cherished traditions and assimilate new ones in the quest for more rewarding lives. This cultural exchange challenges accepted patterns of identification as the immigrants demonstrate that there are new ways of being Afghan, Trinidadian, and Indian, respectively. Their attempts at integration, especially through relationships with Americans and other immigrants, also force them to confront stereotypes that seek to define and contain them. Ro, Panna, and Maya maneuver between superficial sympathy and racial insults while breaking sexual and social taboos and pursuing their educational careers. Mrs. Bhave and Jasmine fearlessly assume new roles through their labels of helpless Indian widow and exotic, naïve island girl. The movement from an inferior, backward, Third World victim to being equal to

a Western individual is a rite of passage that the immigrants undergo; resilience and the willingness to adapt to new situations are two qualities that ensure success through this process. In contrast, the other group of immigrants defines success through its manipulation in the host societies. Alfred Judah, Danny, Aunt Lini, Mumtaz, Mr. Chatterji, Eng, Blanquita, Mr. Venkatesan, Queenie, and the Patels are bent on material gain and social security at the expense of other vulnerable migrants and citizens or through the exploitation of the existing social and economic systems. Such immigrants are content to remain entrenched within their cultural norms. Devinder Chatterjee, the Patels, Blanquita, and Eng attempt to recreate the homelands they left behind in their new domestic spaces to the extent that it alienates others who enter the spaces and strains their relationships with others. On the other hand, Danny, Aunt Lini, Alfred, Mumtaz and Queenie, and even the Patels profitably conduct their legal and illegal businesses from their homes, which creates new economic spaces within the host society. Although they are socially isolated, their economic input cannot be ignored. Their economic success also introduces new power relations between their dependent migrant clients and themselves, which were nonexistent in the old homeland and which ignore traditional claims of class and gender on either side of this power binary. Aunt Lini as the female moneylender and brothel owner enjoys a power that would have been impossible back in the homeland, whereas Ro, the son of a wealthy landlord, is forced to do lowly jobs such as plucking chickens in Mumtaz’s business to pay rent. The ability to transcend such praxes entails a limited social success. Yet there is a final group that requires consideration. This is the “fringe citizenry”: white Americans such as social misfits, corrupt exiles, and Vietnam veterans, who are considered outsiders in their own land. These outcasts are often intricately linked with both immigrant groups described earlier. Ironically, even though the American outcasts regard the migrants as outsiders, they are frequently dependent on them economically and socially. For Jeb, the Vietnam War never ended; he continues as a thug in Mr. Vee’s pay, even though he hates

812â•…â•… Mukherjee, Bharati Â� immigrants. He despises the fact that he and his kind have become “coolie labor” in their own country. Maya’s first landlord is dependent on her cash but he maintains a deliberate distance until he finds an excuse to evict her. The social and economic failures endured by this group serve as a unique contrast to the immigrant groups and reveal to the reader another face of American society: These people are a far cry from the white picket fence and suburban home. In fact, through this diasporic perspective, the reader is able to discern the emergence of another America: a society undergoing constant transformation through the activities taking place not through its mainstream life but rather on its peripheries and margins. In this society, it is the immigrant rather than the citizenry who enjoys economic and social success, often making more fruitful contributions to the larger society than the legal citizens; this is the invisible America that increasingly demands a voice, one that has been effectively provided through the short stories in this collection. Saadiqa Khan

Survival in The Middleman and Other Stories

Bharati Mukherjee explores in her collection one of the oldest and most basic concerns in the study of ethnic literature: the business of survival. With the exception of “The Middleman” and “Buried Lives,” the stories focus on the challenges of surviving in the new homeland of post-Vietnam America, depicted as an unforgiving and hostile landscape. The characters undertake these challenges in two ways that reflect their perceptions about living within these new borders. For those migrants who are forcibly uprooted from their old homes, the new homeland is viewed as an in-transit destination, and thus the acquisition of opportunities to remain economically viable remains central to their daily existence. For the lucky migrants who can return, being ready and prepared for such a border crossing is essential. In other cases where return remains elusive for the displaced person, provisionality remains the order of the day. For some migrants who voluntarily leave their old homes, life in the new host society goes beyond basic survival as they seek to recreate their lives and pursue goals and ambitions that

were unlikely or impossible in their old homes. Very often Mukherjee juxtaposes these two conflicting attitudes in her stories. Alfred Judah, the displaced Jew, turns survival into an art form. Whether he is in New Jersey or in guerrilla territory, Alfred knows how to integrate himself into the best social networks and circles from which he can substantially profit. He also learns about the flexibility of borders and loyalties and the importance of being ready to depart at a moment’s notice. For Alfred, self-preservation is the order of the day. He serves as an interesting contrast to the other characters, who have also reduced themselves to the business of survival. Mr. Venkatesan and Dr. Chatterji choose to alienate themselves from mainstream society while remaining immersed in memories of the old home, the only vestiges of the past to endure the border crossing. Such characters become the target of Mukherjee’s irony as she portrays them greedily benefiting from the same social systems that they willingly berate and despise. On another level, such characters are presented as foils to the other group of migrants, who approach survival differently. Maya, Panna, Mrs. Bhave, and Roashan free themselves from brutal and shattered pasts to recreate themselves in the American landscape. For them, migration is more than risk or resignation. It is rebirth and opportunity. These migrants brave the scorn of their diasporic communities to pursue spiritual and educational goals that would have been impossible to achieve at home. They manage with some difficulty to maintain a balance between two cultural systems. Even the liberated Maya cannot resist the lure of the Periodicals Room in the library where the foreign newspapers are located. It is in the Indian newspapers that she is confronted with a description of herself as the “new emancipated Indo-American woman.” The irony of such a woman seeking love in an Indian personals column emphasizes how strong the bonds of home can be, even for those who have supposedly left for good. When she meets Ashoke Mehta, her days of being a tenant are over; she has made the full circle and returned to her Indian roots once more, albeit in a new homeland. For those who do not have the security of scholarships, education, and family connections, the

The Middleman and Other Stories â•…â•… 813 land of opportunity becomes one of manipulation. Jasmine, Blanquita, and Rosie become trapped in “contracts” that deprive them of economic independence and freedom. They allow themselves to be sexually exploited by their employers and/or lovers because their survival depends on it. They become mistresses, surrogate mothers, and unstable lovers who reinstate their males into traditional roles that had been lost or undermined in this post-Vietnam America. Paradoxically, even as they restore these gender power relations, they transform and recon-

stitute American family structures and relationship patterns. Thus, survival for Indians abroad is more than a question of economics and finding a place to live. It entails complex psychological negotiations, brutality, and rebirth. It creates possibilities for both self-development and regression. It is a rite of passage for each of Mukherjee’s migrant characters that determines his or her trajectory in the new land. Saadiqa Khan

part ii

Authors and Works N–Z `

Nabokov, Vladimirâ•… Lolitaâ•… (1955)

ance, and having sold more than 50 million copies worldwide, it continues to delight and disconcert in equal measure. P. B. Grant

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s 12th novel (his third in English) is regarded by many as his masterpiece as well as one of the finest novels of the 20th century. It is also one of the most notorious. Nabokov (1899– 1977) knew that the novel’s scandalous subject matter—a middle-aged pedophile’s sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl—was bound to cause controversy, and a number of American publishers shared his apprehension: Fearing prosecution on charges of obscenity, they turned Lolita down, and it finally found a home with Paris-based Olympia Press, which specialized in publishing pornographic fiction. Olympia published Lolita in 1955; it was banned the following year, but after being championed by a number of authors, the ban was lifted, and it appeared in America in 1958, becoming a best seller. Readers who had been attracted by the controversy were bemused by the lack of salacious material: Lolita, while erotic, is not pornographic. Others applauded Nabokov’s dazzling prose style, pitch-black humor, and satiric evocation of America. Lolita is now an indelible part of pop culture: the story has spawned two movies and inspired rock songs, while the name Lolita is often used (inaccurately) to describe any sexually precocious young girl. Some books survive on notoriety alone, but Lolita’s longevity can be credited to Nabokov’s skills as a writer: more than 55 years after its first appear-

Innocence and Experience in Lolita

Innocence and experience function on different levels in Lolita. The novel is primarily concerned with sexual innocence, in terms of its attraction for Humbert and, from Lolita’s point of view, the dangers of being subjected to adult experiences at too young an age. But these themes also have legal connotations: Humbert writes Lolita from prison, where he is awaiting trial for killing Quilty, so the memoir gives him an opportunity to account for his experiences and, should he choose to, proclaim his innocence. Lolita’s innocence is an important part of what attracts Humbert. The lure lies in the discrepancy between his age and her youth, “a certain distance that the inner eye thrills to surmount.” He describes how Lolita and her fellow nymphets live on an “enchanted island of time,” and in a sense, his pursuit of her is an attempt to join her on that island and recapture his own lost innocence. This is impossible because through the sexual act, innocence is lost in the very process of trying to recapture it; moreover, that innocence belongs to Lolita, who does not live on an enchanted island but in the real world, and who becomes a victim of Humbert’s selfish desires.

815

816â•…â•… Nabokov, Vladimir Before he meets Lolita, Humbert claims that “he had the utmost respect for ordinary children, with their purity and vulnerability, and under no circumstances would he have interfered with the innocence of a child, if there was the least risk of a row.” He takes this approach with Lolita, claiming that he is determined “to protect the purity of that twelveyear-old child” and satisfy his sexual desires “without impinging on a child’s chastity.” According to him, the danger lies the other way, for it seems Lolita has a “twofold nature”: She is not “the fragile child of a feminine novel” but a “daemon disguised as a female child,” and he is her innocent victim. To reinforce this idea, he portrays her as “hopelessly depraved,” describing, for example, how she throws herself into his arms before she leaves for camp and kisses him passionately when they are reunited. Although he knows that the kiss is “an innocent game on her part” in imitation of some “fake romance” she has seen in a movie or a magazine, he stresses her forwardness. This shifting of responsibility reaches its climax when they have sex and Humbert claims that she seduced him. He learns that he is “not even her first lover”: She has already been “debauched” by Charlie Holmes. This makes him the innocent party: “I am not a criminal sexual psychopath taking indecent liberties with a child. The rapist was Charlie Holmes; I am the therapist.” For two years, Humbert “ignores Lolita’s states of mind while comforting [his] own base self,” exploiting her dependency and vulnerability and making her a virtual prisoner to his sexual demands. At one point, he forces her to fondle him in a school classroom beneath a print of Joshua Reynolds’s Age of Innocence, a horribly ironic scene that underscores the disparity between Lolita’s life with Humbert and the one she should be living at her age. Only later, after the damage has been done, does Humbert drop his pretense of innocence and admit that he is guilty of destroying her life. This “moral apotheosis” occurs after Lolita has fled with Quilty. Humbert hears “the melody of children at play” from a distant town and realizes that “the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from [his] side, but the absence of her voice from that concord.” Robbed of her childhood and prematurely thrust into an adult world, Lolita does not have the chance to experience

adolescence naturally; as a result, her innocence has been irretrievably lost. Humbert says that if he were his own judge, he would give himself at least 35 years for rape and dismiss the rest of the charges. While we respect his admission of guilt over what he has done to Lolita, it is strange that he should think of Quilty’s murder as being inconsequential and himself as being innocent of any wrongdoing in the matter. Perhaps his own experience as a sexual predator has taught Humbert that Quilty is beyond redemption, or perhaps he sees the murder as a twisted form of atonement for what he did to Lolita. Whatever the case may be, he is “guilty of killing Quilty,” and his reluctance to face up to the consequences of that fact suggest that he is unwilling to take full responsibility for his actions. Humbert dies days before his trial begins, so we do not know whether he would have been found guilty or innocent; we also have no way of knowing how much he has truly learned from his experience. P. B. Grant

Love in Lolita

Despite Humbert’s sexual depravity, Lolita manages to be a moving love story. This causes problems. We want to condemn Humbert unequivocally for what he has done, but because his professions of love for Lolita seem genuine, we have difficulty doing so; indeed, some readers, persuaded by his “fancy prose style,” find themselves almost condoning his behavior. This may be a deliberate strategy on Humbert’s part: If he can elicit sympathy by portraying himself as a tragic figure cheated of his true love by a despicable rival, he will feel exonerated. In order to arrive at a reasonably accurate appraisal of his true feelings, then, we must never lose sight of his motives and look past his persuasive rhetoric to the evidence Nabokov provides. When Humbert says that he was “madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love” with Annabel Leigh, we have no cause to doubt him, though we know young people are prone to exaggerate emotions. His true feelings for Lolita, however, are difficult to gauge. Shortly after meeting her, he claims to have “fallen in love with Lolita forever,” but this does not stop him from wondering how he will “get rid” of her when her “magic nymphage had evaporated.”

Lolitaâ•…â•… 817 When he sees Lolita for the last time, he finds that this has come to pass: Her looks are “ruined,” and she has lost the sexual allure she once had. This seems to signal a change in Humbert’s attitude: He finally sees Lolita as a fully rounded individual and reveals the depth of his love for her: “I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else.” Humbert knows we will be skeptical about this, given his previous behavior, so he stresses his sincerity: “You may jeer at me .  .  . but I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child.” This goes some way toward convincing us that his lust has changed to love, as do the pages that follow, where he reflects on what he has done to Lolita and declares his love for her in the face of his shame: “I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you.” Again, this seems genuine, but we must not forget the psychiatrist John Ray Jr.’s warning: The “desperate honesty that throbs through [Humbert’s] confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning.” Humbert’s professions of love for Lolita may simply be staged for the benefit of his readers. We should also recall his remark describing his pedophilia in relation to his loss of Lolita: “My accursed nature could not change, no matter how my love for her did.” Humbert’s love for Lolita is also questionable given that his desire for her is not exclusive. When he is on the verge of sexually possessing her for the first time, for example, he still manages to register the looks of another nymphet; after he has sex with her, he asks her for salacious secrets about one of her classmates; and during their first cross-country trip, he makes her caress him while he ogles other girls. Lolita’s escape with Quilty may destroy Humbert’s spirit, but it does not cure him of his condition: He still seeks “the flash of a nymphet’s limbs.” Even when he is en route to his last meeting with Lolita and the man he intends to kill for taking her from him, he cannot quell his desire: “[T]he ancient beast in me was casting about for some lightly clad child I might hold against me for a minute.” On this evidence, sex, not love, seems to be Humbert’s primary concern.

Is Humbert’s love for Lolita less genuine because he is a pedophile? Lolita’s relationship with Quilty, who is also a pedophile, may provide an answer. She is warned about Quilty’s pedophilia before she begins a relationship with him, but she is able to see past it in a way that she cannot see past Humbert’s perversion. Both relationships are unnatural, but Lolita finds Humbert’s role less defensible than Quilty’s. This may be because Quilty does not attempt to mask his perversion under the guise of love, as Humbert does, and because her feelings for Quilty are not complicated by a familial tie, as they are with Humbert, who is her stepfather. Like Humbert, Quilty takes advantage of Lolita, but the experience does not embitter her: She calls Quilty “the only man she had ever been crazy about.” Lolita’s relationship with him proves that sexual perversion does not preclude the possibility of genuine affection, and it suggests that Lolita may be an authentic love story despite its being written by a pedophile whose feelings are not reciprocated. Ironically, it is Humbert’s habitual insincerity that undermines his declarations of love and prevents us from believing him even when he is, perhaps, at his most sincere. P. B. Grant

Sex and Sexuality in Lolita

Almost every character in Lolita is defined by their sexuality, but hardly any engage in conventional sexual activities. Humbert’s pedophilia prevents him from having proper sexual relationships with women; Lolita, being the object of his lust, is unable to explore her own sexuality normally and chooses her next sexual partner badly, falling for Quilty, another pedophile and also a pornographer. Theirs is not a happy story: Quilty is murdered; his killer is imprisoned; and their victim ends up married and pregnant at 17, then dies in childbirth. By presenting us with an abnormal gallery of characters and a story that ends on such a bleak, sterile note, Nabokov seems to be suggesting something about the nature of sexuality and moral responsibility. Humbert traces the source of his pedophilia to an “incomplete childhood romance” with an “initial girl-child,” Annabel Leigh. Consequently, he is in thrall to nymphets, sexually alluring girls “between the age limits of nine and fourteen.” This renders

818â•…â•… Naipaul, V. S. him unable to have normal sexual relations with adult women; any pleasure he gets depends on how closely they resemble little girls. Monique appeals to him because “her young body .  .  . still retained . . . a childish something”; he is attracted to Valeria because of “the imitation she gave of a little girl”; in order to have sex with Charlotte, he “evoke[s] the child while caressing the mother”; and after Lolita leaves him, he takes up with Rita, who has a “prepubescent” body. By lusting after little girls, Humbert is violating one of Western society’s strongest taboos, so he tries to prove that these taboos are relative. He also tries to redefine the notion of what being sexually “normal” means and to overturn the conventional picture of pedophiles, arguing that “the majority of sex offenders .  .  . are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid.” In reality, he is none of these things. His feelings for Lolita are suspect, too. He may claim that he is “not concerned with so-called ‘sex’ at all” and that the attraction he feels for her transcends such vulgarity, but the novel’s first sentence indicates that the sexual aspects of his obsession are as important as the emotional: Lolita is not only the “light of [his] life,” she is also the “fire of [his] loins”—that is, the source of his sexual arousal. Lolita’s first experience with sexual intercourse involves someone in her own age group: 13-yearold Charlie Holmes. Despite his having “as much sex appeal as a raw carrot,” she finds it “sort of fun.” The same cannot be said for her sexual relationship with Humbert, who is 37 years old when they meet: Even if she does initiate sexual intercourse, as Humbert claims, over time her feelings shift from “rash curiosity” to “amused distaste” to “plain repulsion”; indeed, reacting to her habitual lack of response, Humbert dubs her “The Frigid Princess.” Initially, Humbert has trouble persuading Lolita to have sex, but once she begins to realize the extent of her power over him, she starts to prostitute herself in order to earn pocket money. She also uses sex as a form of threat: When she argues with Humbert, “she said she would sleep with the very first fellow who asked her.” Sex soon becomes divorced from feeling for Lolita, and it is disturbing how blasé she becomes about it. It is ironic that Headmistress Pratt believes that Lolita is “morbidly uninterested in sexual matters”: The truth is, her sexual growth

has been irreparably damaged by her relationship with Humbert. In taking up with Quilty, she thinks her circumstances will improve, but Quilty has even less compassion than Humbert, and he kicks her out when she refuses to perform in one of his pornographic movies. Quilty casts himself in the role of Lolita’s hero, who “saved her from a beastly pervert,” but he is no better, for he, too, treats her as a sexual object. Like Humbert, Quilty is “a complete freak in sex matters,” but the fact that he is “practically impotent” implies that sex is a sterile, voyeuristic sport for him. Because of this, some readers think that he embodies Humbert’s degenerate side (a monster minus a conscience), and argue that when Humbert kills Quilty, he is symbolically destroying his evil self. Nevertheless, both men are beyond redemption. At their last meeting, when Humbert asks Lolita what sexual acts Quilty tried to persuade her to take part in, she is vague: “Weird, filthy, fancy things.” He presses her for a precise answer, but “she refused to go into particulars with that baby inside her.” Her reluctance reflects her wish to protect the purity of her unborn child: Simply to speak of these sordid acts would be to sully its innocence. As it transpires, her baby dies with her in childbirth, a poignant symbol of how Lolita’s own innocence and growth were stunted by Humbert’s sexual obsession. This seems to suggest that sex without love, without a sense of morality and responsibility, is, as Humbert finally acknowledges, nothing but “sterile and selfish vice.” P. B. Grant

Naipaul, V. S.â•… A Bend in the Riverâ•… (1979)

First published in 1979, A Bend in the River was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in the United Kingdom, that year. In the novel, V. S. Naipaul (b. 1932) takes up topics such as the impact of cultural, ethnic, and political ideology and indoctrination on individual psychology and the complexities of postcolonial nationhood in Africa. A Bend in the River uses as its background the descent of a Central African nation from postcolonial disruption through New African corruption to

A Bend in the Riverâ•…â•… 819 near-anarchy. The narrative focuses on the personal experiences of Salim, the narrator, an Indian Muslim who buys a general store in a small trading town by a river. Neither European nor African, Salim is trapped between the upsurge of African nationalism and the decaying residue of European colonialism. Through him, Naipaul describes armed coups, massacres, ethnic cleansing, and political terror tactics that have historical authenticity without specifically criticizing any one country or person. Salim occupies a centrist position, racially and politically. He interacts with Zabeth, who represents “authentic” Africa with its progressive impulses rooted in tribal traditions and superstitions. Zabeth’s son Ferdinand becomes the model for the “new African” generation seeking power within modern African statehood. Conversely, Salim’s servant Metty (also known as Ali) characterizes the worst of postcolonial culture’s corruption and betrayals. Naipaul uses these characters and indirect historical reference to examine such themes as fate, hope, and nationalism. His ability to depict the deterioration of former colonies honestly was particularly relevant to the political environment of the 1960s and 1970s. It offers an important corrective to the romantic view of colonialism. Divya Saksena

Fate in A Bend in the River

A Bend in the River explores the personal and collective alienation experienced in new nations that are still struggling to integrate their native and Western-colonial heritages. V. S. Naipaul’s 1979 novel is set in an unnamed African country (probably modeled on Mobutu Sésé Seko’s Zaire, originally the Belgian Congo) after independence. The narrator, Salim, is an ethnic Indian Muslim shopkeeper in a small town in the country’s remote interior. Though born and raised in another country in a more cosmopolitan urban environment during the colonial period, Salim feels his identity is neither European nor fully African. As such, he initially observes the rapid changes in his homeland under a “Big Man” with an outsider’s distance and indifference. From the beginning, Salim appears to be a fatalist, slogging away at his business, taking events as they come, negotiating his way around them if

he can, but always aware of a vast, unseen hand of providence overshadowing everything he does and experiences. The opening sentence of the book suggests Salim’s and Naipaul’s worldview: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.” Within this essentially pessimistic premise, Naipaul reiterates the essential corruptibility of mankind. Salim buys Nazruddin’s shop in the small town on the bend of the river and gradually rebuilds the shattered business as the townspeople limp back to some semblance of normality. He has success but soon realizes he has no future in this country ruled by the Big Man, president for life. Here Salim will always be the outsider who has to confront the knowledge that, despite all his efforts, his way of life is coming to its end and eventually he must give up everything. The town, aspiring to be a city, is in constant conflict with the bush or jungle that surrounds it. In this it becomes symbolic of human endeavor confronting an inexorable predestination. The bush is a place of senseless violence and unseen crimes, such as the meaningless murder of Father Huisman, whose enthusiasm for collecting African relics makes him a target for native nationalists. He has tried to see “human richness” in the bush, but Salim recognizes that “His idea of civilization was also like his vanity.” In his vanity, Father Huisman has overreached the benefits of his liberal intellectualism and invited his own fate, to become a target for the rage and anger of the neo-nationalists. While Naipaul’s characters all face the existential dilemma of confronting chaos within and around them, they also choose to endure psychic torture, to seek a means of coping with their pain and loss. As Salim muses after Huisman’s death, he and his friends are fated to remain “outsiders, but neither settlers nor visitors, just people with nowhere better to go.” But he further realizes that their fate is linked to the economics of their situation as well. Civilized but homeless people like him are forced to live with the knowledge of their own vulnerability, with the temporality of their success, yet their only option in life is to keep making money while they can. Alongside this fatalistic mentality, there is also the ray of optimism they share with Huisman, the belief that things are destined to change: “Unless

820â•…â•… Naipaul, V. S. we believed that change was coming to our part of Africa, we couldn’t have done our business.” This argues a fate-bound but not entirely pessimistic worldview. The individual will of the characters can transcend external conditions, to restore their faith in basic humanity and the rejection of ethical nihilism. Hence, Salim befriends Zabeth, the African tradeswoman, who becomes his most loyal and sometimes only customer. Zabeth brings her young son Ferdinand from the bush to be educated by Salim. In troubled times, Ferdinand shelters in Salim’s house; it is a protection he acknowledges and returns. When violence strikes the town again, Salim’s servant Metty betrays him to the police because Salim has given his money away to other people, not understanding that Ali, too, wants money. Ferdinand, who now occupies an important position close to the new president, risks his career and possibly his life to rescue Salim from jail. Ferdinand urges Salim to finally acknowledge that there is nothing left for him in the town, and that he must leave while he is alive and free. He has not been harmed in jail, not because he is innocent, but because it simply “hasn’t occurred” to his jailers to beat him up. Ferdinand tells Salim that “The bush runs itself. But there is no place to go,” acknowledging the faceless barbarity in the human soul that they both recognize and accept as their overruling reality. Therefore, Ferdinand advises him to take the chance fate is offering him: “. . . they’ll take you in again. And I won’t always be here to get you out . . . Forget everything and go.” As Salim escapes from the town on the last steamer, he also escapes the fate to which he was ready to resign himself. An inexorable, predestined force has led to the devastation of his life in this little African town. Yet human civility, like that of Ferdinand, and the basic decency of man to man have made for his redemption from that fated reality and rendered the constant threat of chaos and anarchy bearable. Divya Saksena

Hope in A Bend in the River

V. S. Naipaul’s own quest for identity, his 1979 novel A Bend in the River, explores the personal and collective alienation experienced in new nations struggling to integrate their native and Western-

colonial heritages. The novel uses its internalized view of the hopes and aspirations of one man—an Indian who, in the turmoil of Third World history, has set up business in an isolated but rivercommerce-dependent town in a newly independent country in Africa. The hope that echoes through the novel derives from Salim’s observation of events in his little town, which becomes a microcosm of the nation, and postcolonial Africa, as a whole. Through Salim, Naipaul depicts a place caught between its hope of integrating with the modern Western world and its reliance on its own deeply rooted history and traditions. Amid all the turmoil of a troubled nation emerging from imperial colonial rule and struggling to define itself, the question arises: What is there to hope for? Early in the novel, Salim is subject to fatalism: “We simply lived; we did what was expected of us. What we had seen the previous generation do. We never asked why.” The oppressive sense of stagnation is reinforced: “The assumption seemed to be that things would continue, that marriages would continue to be arranged between approved parties, that trade and business would go on, that Africa would be for us as it had been,” suggesting an inherent loss or absence of hope for change in the future. Indeed, Salim’s hopes are largely founded on the status quo being maintained so that his business and trade may flourish. At the beginning, conscious that he wants change and that he is poised on the brink of a social cataclysm, Salim is unable, or unwilling, to fully articulate his desire for something new or different to happen. Instead, he develops the “habit of looking, detaching myself from a familiar scene and trying to consider it from a distance.” The resulting objectivity makes him realize how hopelessly stagnant his community has become, acknowledging, “And that was the beginning of my insecurity.” To alleviate this sense of insecurity in a world that is fast becoming destabilized, Salim becomes involved in the Domain, a modern enclave where the president of the country entertains useful foreigners and technical professionals, “who had a high idea of the new Africa.” In this superficially advanced and “civilized” arena, he is initially euphoric at the vision of life integrated with the outside world. The Domain

A Bend in the Riverâ•…â•… 821 becomes for him the symbol and the space for his hope of a secure and prosperous future:

of her generation, education was something only foreigners could give.

I began to get some sense of the social excitements of life on the Domain, of people associating in a new way, being more open, less concerned with enemies and danger, more ready to be interested and entertained, looking for the human worth of the other man . . . they were in touch with the world. To be with them was to have a sense of adventure.

No wonder, then, looking “as an African” rather than an Indian expatriate, Salim sees Ferdinand’s face “then and later as one of great power.” For him, Zabeth’s son represents the hope of future generations of African nationalists, a power greater than the copycat technology and superficial Westernization he sees in the Domain. After Metty betrays him to Prosper during the revolution, Salim faces the downfall of all his personal and communal hopes while in jail. He also confronts some hard-won and discomforting truths about the change that he and others like him had once hoped for so much and that has destroyed his old world while leaving him unfit for the new one:

Salim realizes almost too late that the hope generated by life in the Domain is false, that “human worth” is actually more degraded there than it was under colonial rule. However, it takes him a long while to overcome the essentially romanticized vision of Africa that lures people into the materialism of the Domain: “In the magical atmosphere of the Domain, among the avenues and new houses, another Africa had been created.” Salim acknowledges that this romantic vision, while briefly exhilarating, clashes in the long term “with our cynicism, created by years of insecurity.” In contrast to this old-world cynicism and insecurity, Salim’s servant Metty represents the hope of freedom and “a new sense of worth” even outside the limits of the dreams perpetuated within the Domain. This hope is also reflected in Zabeth and Ferdinand’s desire for “a better life,” which keeps them both hard at work to earn money for Ferdinand’s education. Salim can agree with them that the best hope for their future and for the economic revival of the country seems to lie in acquiring an education that might lead to connection with “an outside world.” Comparing his real-life experiences among the town’s ordinary folk with the high culture of the Domain, Salim sees Ferdinand as being situated at the meeting point of the old and new Africas, as well as with the outside world: Zabeth lived a purely African life; for her only Africa was real. But for Ferdinand she wished something else. . . . This better life lay outside the timeless ways of village and river. It lay in education and the acquiring of new skills; and for Zabeth, as for many Africans

Those faces of Africa! Those masks of childlike calm that had brought down the blows of the world, and of Africans as well, as now in the jail. . . . They had prepared themselves for death not because they were martyrs; but because what they were and what they knew they were was all they had. The much-vaunted hope for a better future for Africa built by Africans, Salim realizes at last, was merely an idea that has met its destructions at the hands of Africans. In place of the promised new Africa governed by free people, he sees only the “people crazed with the idea of who they were. I never felt closer to them, nor more far away.” The demise of hope and the confirmation of cynicism seems inevitable. Eventually, Salim is released from jail through the timely intervention of Ferdinand “progressing through the world.” Salim is intensely conscious of the gap that now yawns between them, but, strangely, “Ferdinand seemed shrunken and characterless in the regulation uniform .  .  . He was, after all, like other high officials. I wondered why I thought he would be different.” He now sees in his unexpected rescuer both the apex and the nadir of all hope. Ferdinand’s last conversation with Salim confirms Naipaul’s ultimate assertion of the failures of neo-nationalist aspirations that

822â•…â•… Naipaul, V. S. seek to override not only colonial boundaries but time-honored cultural traditions as well. For Salim, as for Ferdinand and for others like them, hope for the future will now always be tinged with the fear of incipient chaos, anarchy, and the abuse of power. As Ferdinand puts it, this brave new world “is bad for everybody. . . . Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. We’re being killed. Nothing has any meaning. That is why everyone is so frantic. . . . They feel they’re losing the place they can run back to.” Now that the much-hoped-for change has set in, it must inexorably be a one-way process, with no hope for either maintaining the status quo or for retaining the safety of familiar traditions and boundaries. As Salim waits for the steamer that will take him away from the town to some measure of liberty and security, his former servant and betrayer Metty begs him for help. All Salim can say to him is: “You have to take your chance.” Divya Saksena

Nationalism in A Bend in the River

This 1979 novel gives us an internal view of the life of one man—an Indian who, as rootless in the turmoil of Third World history, has set up business in an isolated but river-commerce–dependent town in a newly independent African nation. V. S. Naipaul depicts a convincing yet disturbing vision of a place caught between the dangerous allure of the modern world and its own deeply ingrained history and traditions. The theme of nationalism that echoes through the novel derives from the narrator Salim’s observation of events in his little town, which becomes a microcosm of the nation as a whole. A condition frequently encountered in Naipaul’s work is the fateful linkage of former colonies in the West Indies and Africa, for example, to the ways of their colonial masters, which they otherwise denounce. Escaping from the confines of his family compound on the coast, which he considers not truly an African but an “Arab-Indian-PersianPortuguese place,” Salim purchases his dry-goods store cheaply when the revolution causes real estate values to decline. In the rise and fall of political fortunes that he witnesses, he is drawn into several

casual but illuminating relationships, until another regional conflict, more severe than previous ones, forces him to leave. Salim becomes involved in the Domain, a modern enclave where the president of the country entertains useful foreigners and technical professionals, “who had a high idea of the new Africa.” He is at first exhilarated by the sense of power and connecting with the outside world: “On the Domain they had their own way of talking about people and events; they were in touch with the world. To be with them was to have a sense of adventure.” Here he meets an old friend, Indar, and engages with the casual hypocrisies of an apparently sophisticated world, as seen in the behavior of the Big Man’s white men and the records of Joan Baez. However, he is intensely conscious of being an outsider: “I was aware, in the Domain, that I belonged to the other world.” Hence, he is attracted but not fooled by the nationalist rhetoric he hears: “It was make-believe . . . You couldn’t listen to sweet songs about injustice unless you expected justice and received it much of the time.” Nevertheless, visiting the Domain also enhances Salim’s understanding of young, European-educated Africans becoming self-aware of their national identity in the 20th century. The town’s elite gather daily at Bigburgers, where the franchise owner Mahesh boasts, “They don’t just send you the sauce, you know, Salim. They send you the whole shop.” To Salim, who regards himself as a coastal African with an Indian heritage, Bigburgers represents the town’s very simple economy. Villagers from the bush sell smoked monkey meat to steamer passengers and use the money to buy pots, cloth, and razor blades from shops like Salim’s in the town. The shop owners can then eat Bigburgers and imagine themselves rubbing shoulders with the best in global business. The height of success and acceptability for them is being invited to the Domain. While the “army men or officials in the customs or policemen” at Mahesh’s Bigburgers remain service-oriented “Africans,” Salim notes how they “wore gold as much as possible.” He and others like him covet the wealth but also adhere to their simple ideals: “Our ideas of men were simple; Africa was a place where we had to survive. But in the Domain it was different. . . .

A House for Mr. Biswasâ•…â•… 823 In the Domain Africans—the young men at the polytechnic—were romantics.” Salim realizes how the spirit of nationalism, which had originally led to emancipation from colonial fetters, is now becoming a divisive force in the newly independent nation. He sees this in people like Indar, who hangs on the fringes of the Domain’s new society and gives lip service to its ideas, finding “his perfect setting” in “the artificiality of the Domain.” In Salim’s encounters with Raymond, a Belgian historian who has been engaged to rewrite the nation’s history as propaganda for the Big Man’s administration, Naipaul raises questions about the validity of historical documents and sources in the construction of a nationalist ideology, and he reveals the link between power, nationalism and the representation of history from prejudiced points of view. From the beginning, Salim has doubts about the authenticity of Raymond’s rhetoric, doubts that are reinforced every time he returns from “the exaltation of the Domain” to the ramshackle town “to grasp reality again.” Raymond interprets and analyzes events from the perspectives of his European identity, but he records them in language that pleases the Big Man. Salim realizes that even if Raymond has “made Africa his subject,” “he had less true knowledge of Africa, less feel for it, than Indar or Nazruddin or even Mahesh.” Naipaul makes Salim cast doubt on the authenticity and legitimacy of nationalist discourses and historical sources. Ironically, Raymond himself questions the probability of producing an entirely faithful account of the African past. During Yvette’s reception, Raymond comments on all the events that have gone unrecorded: “Do you think we will ever get to know the truth about what has happened in Africa in the last hundred or even fifty years? All the wars, all the rebellions, all the leaders, all the defeats?” Naipaul notes the impossibility of covering the totality of national events and also reveals Raymond as an untrustworthy historian who distorts selected events to suit those in power and to reinforce their ideology. Salim begins to wonder if anybody, including those in the Domain like Indar, really “believe in the Africa of words.” The high nationalist rhetoric of the Domain, “the glory and the social excitements of the life there,” call to

him, but he is always glad to escape, to “get away from that Africa of words and ideas as it existed on the Domain (and from which, often, Africans were physically absent).” Indeed, he observes throughout the novel that perhaps the most visible presence of an African is that of the president, whose portrait, alongside the national flag, dominates the landscape in the town, in the Domain, and wherever the army operates: “The flag and the President’s portrait were only like their fetishes, the sources of their authority.” Salim is left wondering at the power of hypocrisy and fake nationalist rhetoric to change people like Indar as they change history and truth. Sadly, he concludes that he is beginning to understand, but not endorse, the new kind of nationalism and its dangers, the “anxieties about imported doctrines, the danger to Africa of its very newness .  .  . some dishonesty, or just an omission, some blank, around which we both had to walk carefully.” Divya Saksena

Naipaul, V. S.â•… A House for Mr. Biswasâ•… (1961)

Born under inauspicious circumstances, Mohun Biswas (later simply Mr. Biswas) is fated for a life of hardship and disappointment. Though he dreams of escaping Trinidad for a life of continental adventure, a misplaced love letter leads to a full-blown offer of marriage into the prosperous Tulsi family. Here he is expected to become a good “citizen” in the bustling Tulsi household, obeying every whim of its demanding matriarch and her overseer, Seth. His true aspiration, however, is simply to find a space for himself and his family—a space with a door that can be shut against the relentless train of Tulsi relatives. Mr. Biswas’s quest to become a homeowner is beset with failed business ventures, poverty, and marital strife, though he has a successful career as a provincial journalist. He never escapes Trinidad, nor writes the great novel that makes his fame international, but he can finally call himself a homeowner. Like the man himself, the house is flawed and in various stages of disrepair, though it becomes the sanctuary where he can fill his days with reading, family, and the solitude he has sorely lacked in life. Joshua Grasso

824â•…â•… Naipaul, V. S.

Individual and Society in A House for Mr. Biswas

It might be too much to call Mr. Biswas, the hero of V. S. Naipaul’s novel, an “everyman,” as he is one of the most unique characters in 20th-century literature. And yet his story of impotent daydreams, thwarted chances, and the unflagging desire to buck the system speaks to the “little man” in every society. Mr. Biswas—so called by the narrator even as a child of seven—does not have a propitious start in life: The midwife, upon delivering him, announces that he is “six-fingered, and born in the wrong way,” prompting the astrologer to pronounce him to be “a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well.” His mother is resigned to being disappointed by this illfavored offspring, even agreeing that his adolescent fantasies of suicide “would be the best thing for you. And for me.” As a child, Biswas shuttles between the narrow possibilities for a poor Indian in Trinidad: a pundit (holy man), a laborer, or a shopkeeper. However, he is too independent to take up a traditional occupation and too imaginative not to see himself as the hero of his own romance. As a young man, he rewrites the rags-to-riches stories of Samuel Smiles (similar to America’s Horatio Alger) in his head, imagining his first big fortune—and love—just around the corner. Of course, living in a postcolonial society, Biswas is continually struck by the “point when the resemblance ceased.” The heroes had rigid ambitions and lived in countries where ambitions could be pursued and had a meaning. He had no ambition, and living in this hot land, apart from opening a shop or buying a motorbus, what could he do?” Indeed, what is the fate of the imaginative youth, raised on foreign ambition, in the “hot land” of narrow expectations—and money? Though not an orthodox Hindu, Biswas remains bound by its rules and customs. This is most clearly seen when his attempt at a casual romance—slipping a love note to Shama—is interpreted as an offer of marriage. For all Biswas’s independence, he is blown about like a dandelion on the winds of fate, not only agreeing to the match but finding himself

moving in with his bride’s family (a humorous reversal of tradition) only days after. At Hanuman House, he finds a microcosm of everything he detests about colonial society: tradition, caste, and invisibility. Indeed, he is married to Shama largely because he was the proper caste, and as a man without “money or position,” he is expected to become a groveling (and rather anonymous) member of the Tulsi family. Like many young men, the prospect of his entire life settled by a single alliance terrifies him; he immediately rebels in the most grotesque ways imaginable, insulting the family with disparaging nicknames, avoiding his wife and children, and adopting radical sentiments that rattle the conservative life of the house. What fuels his rebellion is his deep-rooted knowledge that he is someone, and that everything—his marriage, his jobs, and even Hanuman House itself—is temporary, a mere prelude to his grand adventure. A newspaper headline hanging on his wall sums up his dreams and character: “AMAZING SCENES WERE WITNESSED YESTERDAY WHEN.” His life is lived in grim expectation for the “amazing scenes” he will enjoy when he finds the luck—or pluck—to strike out on his own. Ultimately, however, Biswas realizes that he is not Samuel Smiles, nor is life at Hanuman House grooming him for such a career. As Naipaul writes: “Change had come over him without his knowing. There had been no precise point at which the city had lost its romance and promise, no point at which he had begun to consider himself old, his career closed.” Yet the one dream that never dies—and perhaps his true career—is that of homeowner. From his fledgling attempts to build a house in Green Vale to his final, hasty purchase of a home in Port of Spain, home ownership becomes his final bid for independence. He no longer wants to escape Trinidad, but to claim a small piece of it, enough to escape the sun, the rain, and the inevitable train of Tulsi relatives. As he ruminates at the very end of his life: “The wonder of being in his own house, the audacity of it: to walk in through his own front gate, to hear no noises except those of his own family, to wander freely from room to room and about his yard.” The word audacity sticks out, as behind closed doors, he can indulge in his own private rebellion:

A House for Mr. Biswasâ•…â•… 825 to read Marcus Aurelius; write short stories; and, in general, act in ways totally unbecoming a Tulsi. Joshua Grasso

Success in A House for Mr. Biswas

Throughout his life, Mr. Biswas struggles to define success as it relates to two worlds: the cosmopolitan world he encounters in books and newspapers, offering him a tantalizing glimpse of fame and romance; and the narrow, circumscribed world of the Tulsi household, which weighs all his achievements against communal rank and jealousy. As a young man with few prospects, he initially seeks success in a romantic attachment, trying to emulate the heroes of Samuel Smiles novels. Yet his awkward attempts at lovemaking are interpreted by the literal-minded Tulsis as a proposal of marriage. Appalled, Biswas finds himself sucked into a traditional marriage which to him—and in the opinion of his family and friends—is a failure of the first degree. As he reflects, “he would be losing romance forever, since there could be no romance at Hanuman House.” In the world of the Tulsis, success is not a heroic, individual achievement but a bitterly pragmatic solution. For Biswas’s wife, Shama, “ambition, if the word could be used, was a series of negatives: not to be unmarried, not to be childless, not to be an undutiful daughter, sister, wife, mother, widow.” Biswas, raised on European notions of “making it,” finds it difficult to view himself as a cultural negative, relying on the addition of the Tulsis to give him a measure of respect and identity. Not surprisingly, he dates his “failure” in life to the moment he entered Hanuman House, a decision that blasts his hopes as a man of promise. As a low-ranking member of the Tulsi household, Biswas quickly defines success as a way to defy Mrs. Tulsi and Seth and at the same time carve out a space for himself on the island. Thus begins his lifelong quest for a house, where he can order his life in private and not pay obeisance to the “gods” of the manor. This refusal to live meekly in Hanuman House earns him the nickname of “Biswas the paddler,” as one who wants to paddle his own canoe and steer his own course. Yet it is not until he stumbles onto the career of a journalist that he tastes his first measure of success. In this role, he indulges in

his adolescent daydreams by adopting the Western sobriquet of “The Scarlet Pimpernel” and roaming the Trinidad countryside as a figure of mystery (doling out fantastic prizes to those who can recognize him). Returning to Hanuman House from Port of Spain, he is no longer the Biswas of old; indeed, “[h]is return was as magnificent as he had wished. He was still climbing up the steps from the courtyard when he was greeted by shouts, scampering and laughter.” His new position also brings him the ultimate sign of success in society: free meals and bribes. Nevertheless, journalistic success is not fulfilling: Biswas is still unable to purchase a house, publish his short stories (which he starts but never finishes), or look back on his life with approval. During the height of his fame, he tellingly confides to his son, Anand: “I don’t want you to be like me.” Toward the end of his “career,” Biswas abandons any thought of his future, looking to Anand for salvation. His one hope of success lies in getting Anand to win a scholarship for the university—and, ultimately, to study abroad in England or America. Anand’s success becomes Biswas’s greatest triumph, as his office mates congratulate him on Anand’s scholarship (which is published in the papers), and he is able to trump his rival, W. C. Tuttle, whose own son passed his exams without distinction. Here Biswas is able to touch the life of freedom and scholarship denied him as a youth. With affection he “reserved .  .  . the pleasure of taking Anand’s exhibitioner’s form to Muir Marshall’s in Marine Square and bringing home a parcel of books, free. He papered the covers and lettered the spines. On the front and back end-papers of each book he wrote Anand’s name, form, and the name of the college and the date.” Sadly, Anand’s success soon whisks him off to England, where his letters become less and less frequent, only to disappear altogether. No longer able to follow Anand’s career, Mr. Biswas retires with his family in a hastily purchased house, riddled with problems and yet undeniably his own. He takes pleasure in the simple joys of his house and family, and at the very end of his life, reflects: “How terrible it would have been . . . to have died among the Tulsis . . . to have left Shama and the children among them, in one room; worse, to have lived without

826â•…â•… Naipaul, V. S. even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth.” Here he enjoys a measure of success over fate and the shadow of Hanuman House, dying as a man of great ambitions—however modest his posthumous achievement. Joshua Grasso

Tradition in A House for Mr. Biswas

Despite his disregard for the ceremonies of Hanuman House and the strictures of caste and religion, Mr. Biswas’s life is bound by the myriad traditions of the postcolonial world. Perhaps most obvious are the traditions of the Indian community in Trinidad, particularly as represented by the Tulsis at Hanuman House. Their family was established by Pundit Tulsi, who, unlike other Indian émigrés, was not fleeing the Indian Mutiny or ill fortune. As Naipaul writes: “The deference paid to Pundit Tulsa in his native district had followed him to Trinidad and now that he was dead attached to his family.” This status reinforces the ancient concept of caste, which is transplanted wholesale among the Indian communities in Trinidad, making the Tulsis—and anyone attached to Hanuman House—figures of great importance. However, in this new world, the lower castes can rise above their fate and surpass their traditional betters. This revelation comes to Biswas when he meets his sister’s husband, Ramchand, a former garden worker who eloped with his higher caste sister. Ramchand is reluctant to invite Biswas to dinner, since traditionally he would have no business associating with such a luminary. Noticing Ramchand’s hesitation, Biswas remembers “that Ramchand was of a low caste; and though it was absurd in the Main Road to think that of a man earning twelve dollars a month in addition to bonuses and other advantages, Mr. Biswas was flattered that Ramchand looked upon him as someone to be flattered and conciliated.” Thus it is that many Indians, despised by the Tulsis, prosper and assume important roles in Trinidad society, while the Tulsis themselves begin to wither among their traditional rights and honors. Though caste and religion go hand in hand, traditional religious beliefs—like their language— acquire a distinctly Caribbean accent. Indeed, many lower-caste Hindus converted to Catholicism or Presbyterianism in an effort to solidify their new

social standing, holding “all unconverted Hindus in contempt.” And while the Tulsis numbly rehearse the ancient rituals of Pundit Tulsi, Mrs. Tulsi is not above praying to another God to advance her children. To Mr. Biswas’s immense delight, the pious Mrs. Tulsi makes her elder son wear a crucifix, since “[i]t was regarded in the house as an exotic and desirable charm. The elder god wore many charms and it was thought fitting that someone so valuable should be well protected.” Indeed, before examinations, he is made to undergo a hodgepodge of rituals borrowing from Hinduism, Christianity, and British culture (drinking a glass of Guinness stout). While tradition remains the bedrock of their faith and identity, they are no longer as “Indian” as they would like to believe. As Naipaul writes: “They continually talked of going back to India, but when the opportunity came, many refused, afraid of the unknown, afraid to leave the familiar temporariness.” This “familiar temporariness,” as in so many of Naipaul’s stories, has become their lives. Yet perhaps the most profound way tradition functions in the novel is through education. As a former British colony, Trinidad, like India, indoctrinates its students with English language and culture—chiefly through such textbooks as the Royal Reader and the King George V Hindi Reader. They learn to recite the Lord’s Prayer in Hindi, read Wordsworth and Keats, and memorize the history of the British nation. Following Thomas Macaulay’s famous statement that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia,” Biswas learns nothing of his native or adopted culture; rather, he is taught to emulate an English childhood, mentally replacing palm trees with oaks and hurricanes with snowstorms. Even in their compositions, the students are expected to write about English traditions and amusements, though their poverty and endless round of examinations leaves them little room for enjoyment. Reflecting on Anand’s education, Naipaul notes that “[c]hildhood, as a time of gaiety and responsibility, was for these exhibition pupils only one of the myths of English Composition . . . only there did they indulge in what the composition notes called ‘schoolboy’s pranks.’↜” Likewise, when Biswas decides to take up writing, he sends off for

The Women of Brewster Placeâ•…â•… 827 a correspondence course that instructs him to write pieces on “Guy Fawkes Night, Some Village Superstitions, The Romance of Place Names (‘Your vicar is likely to prove a mine of colorful information’).” The weight of British tradition forces many, such as Owad, one of the “gods” of Hanuman House, into life as “mimic men,” affecting the attitudes of an abstract world. Others, such as Biswas himself, struggle to find success and identity in a world that bears no resemblance to their hallowed traditions. Joshua Grasso

Naylor, Gloriaâ•… The Women of Brewster Placeâ•… (1982)

The Women of Brewster Place is Gloria Naylor’s first novel and the winner of the 1983 American Book Award. Subtitled “A Novel in Seven Stories,” the book brings together the lives of seven women who live in a walled-off “ghetto” neighborhood. The “separate” stories of the novel, however, belie a complex unity. Mattie Michael’s story is the first and most fully developed. Her story begins with an account of her southern childhood and her adulthood as a single mother in a home with a generous and loving surrogate mother. Like the other characters, however, Mattie, too, “ends up” in Brewster Place. Unlike Brewster Place, the characters are not “walled-off ” in their own stories. Mattie, as matriarch, connects their disparate lives: She “heals” Luciella Louise Turner after the accidental death of her child; councils Cora Lee about motherhood; welcomes home Etta Mae Johnson from her travels, chasing dreams of love and money; and acts as a peacemaker when tempers flare and adviser when neighbors falter, as with Kiswana Browne’s (the only character who “chooses” to live in Brewster Place) attempts to organize the community. Mattie’s “magic,” however, cannot heal Brewster Place. Lorraine and Theresa, “The Two,” who move to Brewster Place to escape prejudice about their sexuality, are the targets of innuendo and violence, and the final block party, which depicts a redemptive, if not destructive, liberation from Brewster Place, is revealed to be merely a dream. Christopher Hudson

The American dream in The Women of Brewster Place

In many respects, The Women of Brewster Place preÂ�sents the antithesis of the so-called American dream. The bleak descriptions of the streets and alleyways, the apartments, and the coarseness of the residents’ lives support the impression that Brewster Place is the end of the line. Opportunity, prosperity, and freedom—the typical constituents of the American dream—are seemingly absent. The residents of Brewster Place are there “because they had no choice” and “remain for the same reason.” Gloria Naylor’s lyrical portrayal of the “hardedged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased” women of Brewster Place, however, not only balances the darkness with her account of “nutmeg arms,” “ebony legs,” and “saffron hands” but also with the persistence of dreams. The Women of Brewster Place is, in fact, dominated by dreams. From its epigraph—Langston Hughes’s poem “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?”—to Mattie’s dream of an apocalyptic block party, dreams sustain and delude every character in the novel. The same can be said of the American dream itself: It is considered a goal, a desire, even a right; it is also considered a grand illusion that masks a less savory reality. Moreover, it is also clear the American dream is closely associated with the trappings of material success, a characteristic that is obviously absent in Brewster Place. The novel therefore begs the questions: What is the American dream when its materialistic aspects are subtracted? Mattie Michael’s story, for example, is such a story of subtraction. Forced to leave her childhood home in Tennessee because she becomes pregnant, Mattie wanders to North Carolina, where she begins her version of the American dream. She and her baby son, Basil, are taken in by Eva Turner, who gives Mattie a room and a home, urging her to put her rent money in savings. After Eva dies, Mattie inherits the house and manages to maintain it with her work and savings. Her coddled son, though, kills another man in a fight. Mattie hires a lawyer who believes he can argue a successful defense, but Basil jumps bail. As a result (and in an allusion to the common financing of many “American dreams”), Mattie loses the home “she exchanged thirty years of

828â•…â•… Naylor, Gloria her life to pay for” and is forced to move to Brewster Place. The other characters’ versions of pursuing the American dream have similar results. Etta Mae Johnson follows the excitement and promise of bigcity life for years, but she ends up arriving at Brewster Place in a stolen Cadillac. Cora Lee’s obsession with baby dolls as a child turns into an unsustainable cycle of bearing children with multiple “shadow” fathers. As the children grow, her attention wanes until she can again turn her attention to a new baby. The gloom of her seemingly hopeless existence, however, is briefly lifted while watching a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream in the park. Ciel, exiled from the same home as Mattie, suffers the death of a child and abandonment by the child’s father, and she leaves Brewster Place. She finally returns on the verge of financial and emotional success .  .  . but only in Mattie’s dream. Lorraine and Theresa come to Brewster Place with the hope of escaping prejudice about their sexuality, reasoning that the people of Brewster Place are so low that they will go unnoticed. Their dreams, tragically, are shattered by rape and death. Kiswana Browne can be said to function as plaintiff ’s counsel for the women abandoned by the American dream. Raised in Linden Hills, the African-American apotheosis of the American dream (a place and subject Naylor will address in her second novel, Linden Hills [1985]), where the superficial aspects of the American dream have all been met, Kiswana rejects that life to organize and represent “her people.” Her philanthropic dream, though, is shown to be ineffective. All of the women of Brewster Place, then, have some experience or vision of an American dream. In the novel, that dream is distilled of all its material substance to its most basic essence. The women’s dreams, though, struggle for existence on a “crowded windowsill,” like the beautiful plants Mattie brings from the sun room of her former home. While the novel concludes with the notion that Brewster Place itself will indeed eventually “die,” the residents continue their struggle and pack up “the remnants of their dreams and [leave] .  .  . to inherit another aging street.” Christopher Hudson

Community in The Women of Brewster Place

Communities are usually places, and those places are made up of individuals. The contrary, however, is also true: Places full of individuals are not necessarily communities, and communities do not necessarily have to be places. The Women of Brewster Place’s subtitle, “A Novel in Seven Stories,” draws attention to this tension inherent in the idea of “community.” The novel begins not with the seven stories but with a brief and lyrical history of Brewster Place itself entitled “Dawn.” Naylor uses the language of childbirth and child rearing—“consummation,” “conceived,” “parentage,” “baptism”—to describe the creation of the area, suggesting a “natural” origin of the neighborhood. Brewster Place, though, is the “bastard child” of politics and money: It is not an “organic” community but a compromise between politicians and developers. Literally walled-off from the unnamed larger city, Brewster Place is established originally as a holding place for the Irish community; later it becomes a “Mediterranean” community; and, finally, it welcomes the “multicolored ‘Afric’ children of it’s old age,” a place where people came because “they had no choice.” It is the third generation of Brewster Place inhabitants that populate Naylor’s novel. Their stories represent a shift of focus from place to individuals. Mattie Michael’s story is the first presented, and it also is the most fully developed. Her story begins with her moving van pulling into Brewster Place, a sign of transience that she shares with all of the novel’s characters. Her apartment, overshadowed by the wall that marks off the neighborhood, scarcely receives enough sun to keep the potted plants from her former home alive, suggesting that Brewster is a place of bare subsistence. The other stories present various reasons why the characters come to Brewster Place, all seemingly trapped by socioeconomic circumstances. The characters, however, are not isolated within their own stories as Brewster Place is within the larger city: Their everyday lives are interconnected in ways that one would expect in a community. Mattie, for instance, acts as a matriarch of Brewster Place: She “heals” Luciella Louise Turner after the accidental death of her child, welcomes home Etta Mae Johnson from her travels, and acts as a peacemaker

The Women of Brewster Placeâ•…â•… 829 when tempers flare. Mattie’s matriarchal position in Brewster Place is important, particularly given the almost total absence of males in the novel—she is the anchor of this community of women. The novel’s most dramatic scene, however, belies this sense of community. Lorraine and Theresa (“The Two”), lesbians who move to Brewster Place to escape prejudice about their sexuality, are the targets of rumor and innuendo. Lorraine nevertheless befriends Ben (the first black resident of Brewster Place), and they begin an almost fatherdaughter relationship. However, she is brutally raped by a neighborhood gang of young men, and in a moment of anger and pain, she strikes out and kills Ben. The final chapter, “The Block Party,” shows the residents of Brewster Place coming together after the violence in an effort to raise legal funds to press the absentee landlord for repairs. The party seems to be a success. As rain clouds gather and a downpour begins, though, Cora finds a blood-splattered brick left after the rape. The women gather and begin to tear apart the wall brick by brick and toss the pieces into the boulevard. The block party becomes indistinguishable from a riot. Like the Langston Hughes poem that serves as an epigraph to the novel, the dream of a community coming together explodes. Ironically, that dream is itself a dream. The communal gathering (both joyful and violent) is merely Mattie’s dream. The seven stories end as Mattie awakens on a sunny morning the day the party is supposed to take place. The Women of Brewster Place concludes with the individuals who constitute the novel seemingly erased and returns to a narrative about the place itself. Brewster Place is to be condemned and “die.” But the women of Brewster Place, like an “ebony phoenix,” pack up “the remnants of their dreams . . . to inherit another aging street.” Despite the separate stories of individual residents, there is nevertheless an overriding sense that the women of Brewster Place do indeed form a community—and that community extends far beyond the wall that confines them and represents the struggle of poor black women across the United States. Naylor’s focus, though, is a reminder that this broader community is not just a demographic statistic but is also made up

of individuals, who “each in her own time and with her own season had a story.” Christopher Hudson

Gender in The Women of Brewster Place

Any reading of The Women of Brewster Place is bound to raise the question of gender because the novel is so clearly focused on the stories of independent (voluntarily or involuntarily) women and their struggles to survive life at the “end of the line.” At the time the novel was written, government reports highlighted the absence of the father figure as a major reason for the impoverishment, culturally and economically, of African-American families. Challenging this interpretation, Naylor presents a clearly feminine “community.” One can speak of Mattie Michael as a matriarchal figure, the community of women as a bulwark against patriarchal society, and the individual struggles of the characters as representative of the broader struggles of women. In these cases, as in the novel, men are almost entirely absent except as negative apparitions—ghosts that wander through the novel as through Cora’s bedroom, as intangible as sociological statistics, leaving the women to fend for themselves, or as nightmarish entities that perpetrate senseless violence, leaving only statistics in their wake. It would take Gloria Naylor another 15 years to return to Brewster Place and compose a novel about the men who certainly were present there. While The Men of Brewster Place gives flesh to some male characters of the neighborhood (though Ben remains a ghostly presence), the males of The Women of Brewster Place function as traces of the patriarchal social structure that Naylor places outside the walls of Brewster Place and into the realms of memory, transience, and violence. We know from the first pages of the novel that Brewster Place was begotten as a “bastard child” of a presumably male-dominated social order. And it is easy to list the males who play any significant role in the novel: Ben, the first black to move into the neighborhood and the surrogate father to Lorraine, who later kills him; Butch Fuller, the man who seduces Mattie and begets Basil, who abandons her; Mattie’s father, who beats her, searching for the name of the father; Etta’s temporary loves and

830â•…â•… O’Brien, Tim the preacher who plays “the game” better than she; Eugene, who deserts Ciel after the death of their child; and Cora’s shadowy lovers “who came in the night and showed her the thing that felt good in the dark” and did not leave “fractured jaws or bruised eyes.” Naylor emphasizes the male absence to highlight the feminine presence. During Lorraine’s rape, the male presence is felt most viscerally—and ironically in the childish, brutal, pure physicality of C. C. Baker and the boys, the gang, the pubescent patriarchy—where she found herself: “on her knees, surrounded by the most dangerous species in existence—human males with an erection to validate in a world that was only six feet wide.” This graphic violence appears to stand in direct contrast to the shadowy appearances and disappearances of men throughout the novel; however, the rape sets off a neighborhood-wide series of nightmares that haunt the women of Brewster Place until the day of the block party. As much as dreams are a symbol for hope and possibility in The Women of Brewster Place, the apparitions of men counterbalance those hopeful dreams. After being raped, Lorraine kills Ben and, to some extent, the story of the men of Brewster Place ends. Regardless of his empathetic connection to Lorraine, Ben, like the gang, is a symbol of the patriarchy—men who adhere to the larger system of power and privilege beyond the walls of race. Even with the violence of the gang, whose rage stems from the threat lesbianism represents to their maleness, Naylor makes the case that matriarchy is not the cause of the diminishing status of the African-American community but the residual— and perhaps foundational—strength of it. Naylor displaces the sociological view that the absence of males is the cause of economic and cultural poverty with the belief that the presence of women is the core of hope. And while critics have disagreed about Naylor’s presentation (or lack thereof ) of the black male in The Women of Brewster Place, one can also understand the black male’s position not as a purely negative one, but as one of a mere shadow of the patriarchal power structure that reveals the ineffectual double function of the wall of Brewster Place as a barrier to intrusion and to escape. There the men “reigned in that unlit alley like dwarfed

warrior-kings. . . . [And] they only had that threehundred-foot alley to serve them as stateroom, armored tank and executioner’s chamber,” while the women of Brewster Place strive to craft the same space as a home. Christopher Hudson

O’Brien, Timâ•… Going after Cacciatoâ•… (1978)

Going after Cacciato, which won the National Book Award in 1979, is a critically acclaimed novel that chronicles the experiences of a group of soldiers in the Vietnam War. Written by Tim O’Brien (b. 1946), who experienced the war’s multifaceted reality firsthand, the novel describes the life of a soldier in realistic detail. At the same time, it is a dreamlike fantasy about the hopes of a young man at war. The book tells the story of Cacciato, who leaves his post and embarks on a journey across continents to the freedom of Paris. In its weaving of reality and fantasy, the novel proves the point of its chosen epigraph: “Soldiers are dreamers.” Going after Cacciato is, at its most basic level, a war story that explores the brutal, and sometimes banal, realities of war, from the fear and death to boredom and incessant marching. But it is the very word reality that calls attention to more interesting aspects of this novel. The story of the chase after Cacciato takes place mainly, if not completely, in the imagination of another soldier, Paul Berlin. In this way, Going after Cacciato is a story about the act of storytelling itself. While the narrative alternates between the mundane and the romantic, the story is more than a dream. As Berlin says about his own act of imagining, “it wasn’t even pretending .  .  . it was a working out of the possibilities.” And the possibilities worked out in Going after Cacciato are the possibilities in a time of war for basic survival, for expiation of guilt, and, in the end, for a kind of heroism. Brian Chanen

Guilt in Going after Cacciato

The narrative of Going after Cacciato alternates between what are essentially two separate narrative paths that are situated in related, yet quite distinct,

Going after Cacciatoâ•…â•… 831 “realities.” While the novel seems to begin at the level of Paul Berlin’s actual experience in Vietnam, by the end of the first chapter, as the men begin their hunt for Cacciato, the imaginings—Berlin’s “working out of the possibilities”—take over half of the narrative. Berlin’s ideas and dreams are clearly linked to his desire to escape the brutalities of war. In addition, though, the narrative structure of both the story about Berlin in Vietnam, leading up to Cacciato’s escape, and the story of the chase told through Berlin’s imaginings, consistently avoids a single event. Both narratives circle around a gap in the story that holds the novel’s most disturbing truth: the persistence of guilt. The very first clues to the split between real and imagined narratives in the work may be the confusing chronology. The chronology—the order in which the events are told as compared to when they actually occur—also points the reader toward Berlin’s guilt. Paul Berlin is fixated on the general “bad time.” He sits in the observation post sometime in November and tries to make sense of all that has happened. “The order of things—chronologies— that was the hard part” for Berlin, and it is also the key to the darkest moment of the novel. His memory takes the reader from June up until a moment in October when Cacciato . . . escapes? Dies? At the same time, his imagination carries the narrative on another arc beginning in Vietnam in October and ending in Paris. Despite the flashbacks, reported memories, and imaginings taking place at various points throughout, the narrative never settles on key moments in “Lake Country,” which may be the key moments of guilt. Both narratives consistently avoid the death of Lieutenant Sidney Martin and the possible fate of Cacciato. The central importance of Cacciato himself is the key to Berlin’s feelings of guilt in the story. From the start, characters wonder why Cacciato decided to leave the war, and they wonder why he leaves clues along the trail so that the men can follow. The reader could also ask, why the focus on this particular soldier? It is not until near the end of the novel, as the narrative recounting the early days in the war creeps toward October, that the reader finds out that Cacciato is the only soldier who avoids taking part in the killing of Lieutenant Martin. It is the moment

in the Lake Country that the story has been avoiding. Cacciato refuses to touch the rifle being passed around, signifying that he is not going to take part in the murder and that he is not agreeing to keep silent. Cacciato, for Paul Berlin, is the embodiment of his general and specific feelings of guilt. The narrative also circles around Berlin’s almost instinctual response to Cacciato. Berlin yells “go” as Cacciato takes off alone into the hills of Vietnam. Later, Berlin remembers surrounding Cacciato on the grassy hill and as the men move in, he shouts “go” and “that was the end of it. The last known fact.” In an imagined Paris, Berlin screams “go” again as the men storm Cacciato’s hotel room, and the scene ends in violence and confusion, with Berlin wondering “what had gone wrong.” Berlin’s deepest guilt is not only the general horror of war, or the killing of Lieutenant Martin, but the possible killing of conscience itself, the possible murder of Cacciato. The gap in the narratives within Going after Cacciato are not only blank spaces in the telling of the story but are actual physical holes that in turn symbolize the guilt felt by Paul Berlin. These are the tunnels that the men must search for enemy soldiers, the hole where Lieutenant Martin dies, the hole the platoon falls through on their way to Paris. These haunt Berlin. Deep in the hole on the road to Paris, he views the surface through a periscope and sees soldiers clustered around a tunnel—perhaps a view into the past of the killing of Lieutenant Martin. Berlin cannot get away from the scene of his guilt. At the same time, he learns that “things may be viewed from many angles. From down below, or from inside out, you often discover entirely new understandings.” While the novel constantly jumps around the guilt in the story, and Paul Berlin tries to imagine other possibilities instead of the brutal truth, the real and imagined stories of Going after Cacciato represent an attempt, despite or because of guilt, to view the darkest events from different angles. Brian Chanen

Heroism in Going after Cacciato

Going after Cacciato is a dreamlike novel that manages to capture some of the everyday brutalities of war. While much of the story takes place in the

832â•…â•… O’Brien, Tim mind of Paul Berlin, recounting an improbable escape from war, the rest of the story is rooted in the wartime reality of boredom and random violence. In both the imagined world and perhaps actual world of the war, Berlin’s ideas about heroism are persistently shaken. References to combat medals, valor, and strength remind the reader that the romantic notion of wartime sacrifice and success may yield to a more basic notion of what it means to be a hero. In chapter 2 of the novel, Berlin stands watch at the observation post and begins to consider the desertion of Cacciato. He thinks about Cacciato’s flight and wonders whether it was “courage or ignorance, or both” that made the young soldier think he could make a trek from Vietnam to Paris. “Was it even possible,” Berlin wonders, “to combine courage and ignorance?” This question in itself gets to the heart of Berlin’s—and the reader’s—contemplation of heroism. A war is supposed to be the proving ground for heroes, and the traditional notion of a hero involves conscious, purposeful action in the face of danger. Berlin is all too aware that he lives in a world of confusion and ignorance of “what happened and what might have happened,” which rules out an easy path to heroism. Before the war, Berlin’s notions of being a soldier might have leaned toward the traditional or romantic. Once in Vietnam, he tries to imagine a heroic return to his home in Fort Dodge, where he would step down from the train, “brush off his uniform and be certain all the medals were in place,” and look his father in the eye with pride. Berlin attempts to hold on to this fleeting image of heroism. Even as he experiences the boredom of the war and the intermittent fear, he believes in the possibility that somewhere inside himself there was perhaps a “chemical maybe, or a lone chromosome” that would allow him a moment of valor. Heroism is something, Berlin begins to feel, that must be inherent, partly because he cannot reconcile the image of his own success with his own uncontrollable fear. Despite this—irrationally or hopefully—he is sure that “there was a Silver Star twinkling somewhere inside him.” While heroism as pure force of will does not fit with the reality of Vietnam, neither does the genetic option. If heroism is strictly biological, it is almost

as random as the deaths that are listed at the start of the novel. The places where Berlin does manage control or courage in the real world of war offer a much more ordinary and modest view of heroism. His “only goal is to simply live long enough to have a goal”—a seemingly less than heroic aim. In fact, even in his imagined expedition to Paris, as he watches Stink Harris empty his rifle into the sides of a water buffalo, he shows willpower only in his “rare courage to peek.” This action, so small and seemingly inconsequential, at least represents something conscious, something that is an outward exhibition of his power over fear. But even if fear is overcome and the daily job of the war is accomplished, the effort, like clearing a tunnel, may lead to more deaths than it prevents. Why, through effort or biology, should this fear be overcome in the first place? In his thoughts, Paul Berlin moves away from a belief in heroism. He understands that the time he came closest to winning a Silver Star was the time that Bernie Lynn instead won the medal by going down to clear a tunnel and dying in the process. The purpose of being a hero escapes Paul Berlin. When his companion Sarkin Aung Wan asks him earnestly who Eisenhower was, Berlin replies, “Nobody . . . A hero.” The word is no longer significant. At the same time, one of the novel’s final scenes, the final confrontation with Cacciato at a hotel in Paris, offers one final possibility for being a hero. Before the group enters Cacciato’s room, Oscar hands Berlin a rifle, saying, “heroes first.” Seconds later, “the shining Silver Star was gone,” and all romantic heroism has vanished. But this moment in the novel is the place where Berlin, in his imagination, tries to face the truth about what happened during his time at the front—what happened during the real hunt for Cacciato. By the end of the novel, heroism is exemplified in the mental act of finding a way to face the truth. Brian Chanen

Survival in Going after Cacciato

The opening of Going after Cacciato is a matter-offact list of the soldiers in Paul Berlin’s platoon who have died. From the men who have died of fright to those who died in tunnels or in undescribed ways, these men are the people Berlin knows who did not survive. The focus, however, quickly shifts to the

The Things They Carriedâ•…â•… 833 other realities of the war—the damp, the illness, the monotony, and the ways of surviving the everyday brutality. Vaught’s self-inflicted wound earns him a ticket to a hospital in Japan. The soldiers left behind rely on jokes for their survival, keeping their distance from each other and making light of the survivors they envy (like Vaught) or the dead whose fate they fear the most. The chapter continues with the central event of Cacciato’s desertion. He has not only run away but has apparently decided to trek from Vietnam to Paris. Cacciato’s move is the ultimate, most romantic, attempt to survive. At the same time (since most if not all of Cacciato’s flight takes place in Paul Berlin’s mind), the trip to Paris, the subsequent chase, and the act of imagining itself represent Berlin’s own basic attempt to survive. All Paul Berlin ever wanted was “to live a normal life, to live to an old age.” But when he arrives in Vietnam, his routine becomes part drudgery and part horror. Vietnam can be about passing time on an endless watch or about watching a friend die while waiting for the dust-off helicopter. For Berlin, survival in this environment is only possible by trying not to think, and he finds that “there were tricks to keep from thinking.” Berlin counts steps. Cacciato collects and chews gum. Eddie Lazzutti sings. But Berlin also finds that he can think in a different way: He can imagine. Before Berlin left for the war, his father’s advice was to look for the good in the midst of everything. Though perhaps this is more difficult than it seems, Berlin manages to focus on the good by dreaming, or, more accurately, by “pretending he was not in the war.” The way to survive is not just by counting footsteps but by imagining the possibilities, whether it is the mundane thoughts that every soldier has of what he will do when the war is over or the elaborate description of tracking Cacciato across continents all the way to Paris. Even in the imagination, there is danger, such as when the men are imprisoned in Tehran, but here surviving demands the gift of storytelling. Berlin demonstrates a storyteller’s ability to create tension, resolve conflicts, and paint a picture of the situation so that his story is a captivating tale of romantic escape that allows the reader—and Berlin is both the author and the “reader”—to

believe that the tale could be true, that escape and survival can be real. Berlin’s storytelling acts as a survival mechanism by allowing him both to face difficulties and to avoid them. Talking about the deaths of Pederson or Buff is a way of facing them. Imagining the journey to Paris is a way of forgetting about those deaths. And some memories, the book implies, need to be avoided for the sake of peace or sanity. Berlin’s narrative adamantly skirts around the story of Lieutenant Sydney Martin, who, as it turns out, is killed by his own men, Berlin among them. The soldiers need to use all of their psychological coping mechanisms, including imagination, to survive mentally, morally, and physically. The narrative focus of Going after Cacciato shifts between real and imagined action. At times it is hard to tell what actually has happened and what Berlin is making up. The novel ends, however, with action that both demonstrates the reality of the war and suggests the longings of the soldiers who cannot run away. After a day in which he sees Billy Watkins die of fright, and takes part in the death of Lieutenant Martin, Berlin seems to succumb to fear. He has a dreamless sleep, as if he is facing some sort of truth about the war. After he awakes, he and Lieutenant Corson consider the possible fate of Cacciato, who has just fled. Though they both agree that Cacciato’s chances of success are slim, Berlin suggests that perhaps Cacciato will make it. The lieutenant’s final words end the book: “maybe so.” In the end, Going after Cacciato is about keeping the imagination alive, thus keeping alive the possibility of survival. Brian Chanen

O’Brien, Timâ•… The Things They Carriedâ•… (1990) The Things They Carried is a collection of stories that Tim O’Brien published in the 1970s and 1980s after his return from the Vietnam War. The stories are interrelated and structured such that the collection reads more like a novel than as a set of discrete stories. As a collection, the stories make up the reflections of “Tim O’Brien,” a character sharing traits and personal history with the real O’Brien, but one

834â•…â•… O’Brien, Tim who is careful to highlight the mediated, fictive nature of his writings. A key premise of the novel is that stories are true whether or not they relate “actual” events. In one story, we learn of a character’s guilt over allowing a fellow soldier to die, and then we learn that it was actually the narrator who let the character die. After telling us about a man he killed with a grenade, the narrator later tells us he watched the man die but did not kill him, then follows that with, “Even that story is made up.” Each of the stories recounts incidents from the war that try to find perspective in the events and to humanize the men who were involved with the purpose of rescuing them from their deaths. In many ways, the point of The Things They Carried is to examine the nature of storytelling itself and to discover how we use narrative to construct our understanding of events that would otherwise seem random, pointless, and cruel. Themes that inform the novel include cruelty, death, gender, grief, guilt, heroism, innocence and experience, spirituality, and violence. Michael Little

Gender in The Things They Carried

There are very few women in The Things They Carried, and all that we know about them is what we are told by the male characters who love, admire, or observe them, but for whom the women are inaccessible. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries a picture of Martha, who he knows does not love him; Norman Bowker drives aimlessly around a lake after the war, imagining conversations with Sally Kramer as if she were not now married and named Sally Gustafson; Rat Kiley writes a warm and thoughtful letter to the sister of a dead soldier, but she never writes back; and the novel ends with the narrator telling us about his childhood love for Linda, who died at nine years old. All of these women are remembered, filtered through the memories, imaginations, and emotional projections of men, all of whom want something that the women cannot or will not provide: Cross wants Martha to love him, Bowker wants Sally to listen to him, Kiley wants the sister to acknowledge him, and the narrator wants Linda to offer him some solace and perspective. The men in The Things They Carried need women to provide for them, but all of the women

remain out of reach, unbounded by the role each man wants for her. This is perhaps most strikingly true in the story of high-school sweethearts Mark Fossie and Mary Anne Bell. Fossie manages to bring Mary Anne to join him at the medical aid station to which he is posted, and she immediately begins asking questions about munitions, helping during emergencies, and insisting she be allowed to visit a nearby village. One night she disappears altogether, only to return from a mission with a unit of Green Berets. Fossie confronts her in private, and she arrives at the mess hall wearing “a white blouse, a navy blue skirt, and a pair of plain black flats”; her hair is “freshly shampooed.” Fossie’s efforts to force Mary Anne back into the role he wants her to play are short-lived, however: Mary Anne continues on patrols with the Green Berets for weeks at a time, and then she even splits with the Green Berets, melting into the jungle, becoming “part of the land,” and seen in glimpses and shadows “wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues.” None of the men question the way they insist on projecting roles onto women, even as the women regularly refuse to submit to those roles. Moreover, none of the men question the ways their behavior embodies stereotypically masculine roles as fighters and leaders. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, in fact, consciously embraces his leadership role after one of his soldiers is killed. Cross blames himself for concentrating on his love for Martha—he has been reading letters from Martha, staring at her picture, carrying a lucky pebble from her in his mouth—over the task of leading and protecting his men. He discards everything physical and psychological that distracts him from war, rejecting everything feminine and emotional for things masculine and hard. “He would dispense with love,” require discipline from his soldiers, and accept the responsibility for their deaths: “He would be a man about it.” The Things They Carried presents stereotypical gender roles and does little explicitly to interrogate them, but that is not to say that the novel does not invite us to interrogate those roles ourselves. However, all of the women in the novel are presented to us through levels of mediation, and those mediating influences are always engendered as male. In this

The Things They Carriedâ•…â•… 835 way, O’Brien offers an implicit commentary about the men—these particular men—who are thinking about women in particular ways. Because the representations of women are all localized, then, it would be a mistake to read these representations as universal. The women in The Things They Carried are projections of male fantasy, hope, and need (emotional, sexual, psychological), and as such, they help to focus our sympathies on the internal damage these men suffer from their experiences at war. Michael Little

Guilt in The Things They Carried

The title and opening story in The Things They Carried offers lists of the items each soldier carries through the jungles of Vietnam. The lists include tangible items (“They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares . . . and much more”), metaphorical items (“They carried the land itself.  .  .  . They carried the sky.  .  .  . [T]hey carried gravity”), and emotional items (“grief, terror, love, longing”). Throughout the rest of the novel’s stories, though, guilt emerges as the one item that they all seem to carry but cannot share. Some of the guilt these men feel follows the killing of enemy combatants, as in the story “The Man I Killed.” The narrator recounts the aftermath of throwing a grenade that kills a slight Vietnamese man walking toward him. The narrator studies the damage caused by a bullet to the face, repeating several descriptions and seemingly unable to acknowledge the efforts of his friend Kiowa to talk him out of his shock and to mitigate his feelings of guilt by pointing out that one of the others would have shot the man had the narrator not done so: “The guy was dead the second he stepped on the trail. Understand me? We all had him zeroed.” O’Brien pairs guilt and forgiveness in the novel, indicating that we need forgiveness for our guilt, and we need to be willing to offer forgiveness to others. The narrator is shot at one point, and the new medic has a moment of panic before rallying and saving the narrator from shock. The narrator is unwilling to forgive the medic and concocts a plan for revenge with the help of Azar, a character we have seen to have a limited capacity for conscientious behavior and who refuses to let the narrator back down

once the plan is in place. After terrifying the medic during a night watch, the narrator seeks an uneasy truce, feeling guilty for his childishness and for his self-righteous refusal to accept the medic’s sincere apologies. A counterpoint to this story is that of the narrator’s own need of forgiveness. At the center of the novel sits the story of Kiowa’s death, spanning several stories and generating complex feelings of guilt in other characters. We first learn of Kiowa’s death in “Speaking of Courage,” as we watch Norman Bowker drive around his hometown’s lake and hold an imaginary conversation with his father. During a nighttime mortar bombardment, Kiowa is hit and begins to sink into a sodden, muddy field that is as much excrement as mud. Bowker tries to pull Kiowa up but “suddenly he felt himself going too. He could taste it. The shit was in his nose and eyes. . . . [A]nd he could no longer tolerate it. Not here, he thought. Not like this. He released Kiowa’s boot and watched it slide away.” In the following story, “Notes,” we learn that Bowker later killed himself. But we also learn from the narrator that “Norman did not experience a failure of nerve that night. He did not freeze up or lose the Silver Star for valor. That part of the story is my own.” And in the story after that, “In the Field,” we learn that Lieutenant Cross blames himself for insisting that they camp in that particular field, in spite of warnings from locals that he has chosen to ignore. O’Brien is deliberately slippery throughout The Things They Carried. In telling the story of Kiowa’s death, the author obscures culpability: Is it Cross’s fault for camping in a field that nearby villagers used to hold sewage? Is it Bowker’s fault for being too repulsed by the filth to save Kiowa? Or is it the narrator’s fault, since he claims that he, not Bowker, actually failed to pull Kiowa out of the muck? In the end, O’Brien has presented a confusion of guilt that suggests we all have an individual inclination to assume guilt. In that case, it does not matter how much any of us may be objectively to blame for an outcome. What matters instead is our capacity for introspection and self-reflection in the service of understanding why we assume guilt. If the narrator is truly to blame for Kiowa’s death, then he has tried to gain perspective on his actions by assigning them

836â•…â•… O’Brien, Tim to Bowker and then studying them from the outside. What the narrator learns, at least for himself, is that we cannot absolve our guilt, real or imagined. He returns after 20 years to the field where Kiowa died, “where I looked for signs of forgiveness or personal grace or whatever else the land might offer.” O’Brien does not make it clear if the narrator finds what he is looking for. Michael Little

Innocence and Experience in The Things They Carried

The narrator of The Things They Carried offers no extended commentary, rumination, or observations about the degree to which war’s brutal and dehumanizing violence destroys the innocence of young soldiers. But the loss of innocence is a recurring theme in the novel as O’Brien recounts a number of incidents in which characters show themselves to be unprepared for their experiences of war. Characters are innocently ignorant of harsh realities, which in this novel take the form of death and violence, always cruelly random and always pitiless. Characters respond in different ways, though. One of the most striking is the extended story of Mary Anne Bell, a woman who joins her high school sweetheart in Vietnam and quickly loses herself to the wilderness and the war. O’Brien’s characters pay considerable attention to the incongruity of Mary Anne’s appearance and the situations in which she willingly engages. She arrives with a midwestern, wholesome prettiness but quickly begins to participate in trauma triage, then goes on extended missions with a detachment of Green Berets. By the end of her story, she has abandoned all pretense to civilization to become a savage killer in the jungle. Not all of the characters are innocent. This is most true in Azar, a character at the center of many of the novel’s ugliest incidents. Azar kills a puppy by “strapping it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and [squeezing] the trigger.” When the platoon comes across a village that has been destroyed and sees a local girl dancing in the ruins, Azar mocks her dancing. When the narrator asks for Azar’s help getting revenge on a medic but then tries to back out, Azar just stares at him and finally says, “Poor, poor boy.” Azar justifies his behavior by claiming

innocence: “↜‘What’s everybody so upset about?’ Azar said. ‘I mean, Christ, I’m just a boy.’↜” One way to understand O’Brien’s depiction of Azar is to see a character who coldly justifies his actions by claiming an innocence that he does not have. Yet it is also possible to read Azar as a representative of the true core of humanity: We believe we start out innocent and experience strips away our blinders, but in truth our innocence is a sham that tries to cover our essential viciousness. This reading is complicated by studying the character of Rat Kiley, who savagely maims and then kills a baby water buffalo by shooting it carefully to pieces. This is a cruelty worthy of Azar, but in Kiley it takes on a brutal irony. Kiley is a medic, a lifesaver, driven mad by the arbitrary viciousness of war to the point that he brutalizes an innocent animal. Azar’s deliberately cold acts are contrasted with Kiley’s crazed actions, and in this way O’Brien steers us back from the bleak determination that innocence is an illusion. Whether or not innocence is an illusion to be stripped away by experience or our true self that experience slowly corrupts, O’Brien ends the novel with a story that emphasizes innocence and shows our need to retain or reclaim it. In “The Lives of the Dead,” O’Brien tells the story of the narrator’s love for Linda when the narrator and Linda were only nine years old. Linda dies of a brain tumor, a tragedy too enormous for the narrator to fully understand at nine years old and that he still does not understand at 43, even though the accumulation of his experiences in life and at war show him that arbitrary death is not an aberration but an unhappy norm. The narrator tells the story sweetly but with a weariness that contrasts with the naive ignorance of his nine-year-old counterpart, Timmy. Linda wears a stocking cap all the time and is the source of ridicule until another kid yanks it from her head in class. The sight of her near-baldness is a rough moment of awakening for the bully and for Timmy, a moment that indicates to the children that they are more innocently ignorant than they realize, and the story suggests that they cannot understand this intellectually but are fully aware of it as raw emotion. Finally, the narrator tells us of his determination to salvage innocence, as much as possible, through the

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find”â•…â•… 837 redemptive power of storytelling. The story of Linda is his way of “dreaming Linda alive”; the entire novel is his way of dreaming his friends from Vietnam alive. And finally, the entire effort is “Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story.” Innocence may be born of ignorance and lost through experience and knowledge, but the hope of innocence is always available to be reclaimed. Michael Little

O’Connor, Flanneryâ•… “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”â•… (1955)

Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” was first published in 1955 as part of the author’s second work, a story collection of the same title, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The short story is about a family road trip in the southern United States that ends with the death of all six family members at the hands of an escaped convict, the Misfit, and his accomplices. The central character of the story is the grandmother who, despite her difficult personality (which O’Connor emphasizes throughout the story), is touched by grace and thus acts graciously, immediately preceding and in one sense causing her own death. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is one of O’Connor’s most widely read and also most often taught works, as it beautifully exemplifies the hallmarks of her fiction. Her interest in the grotesque is central to this story, which manages to treat violence and humor alongside each other to great effect, forcing the reader to engage with the message of her work. Equally important is O’Connor’s ability to capture the people, language, and landscapes of the American South on the pages of her work. Ultimately, this story, like the rest of O’Connor’s fiction, focuses on the religious questions that were central to her as a Catholic. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a powerful apologetic for a Christian faith that leads to transformed lives rather than empty religious ceremonialism. Wiebke Omnus

Family in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a short story about a family road trip with a tragic outcome.

O’Connor carefully sketches and underlines the family dynamic between the travelers, and she also introduces a completely different notion of family through the inclusion of the Misfit, the man who has them murdered. Family, then, is not only central to the story as it unfolds, but the concept of family itself is also transformed and taken to an entirely different level as the narrative progresses toward a pivotal moment of grace. Family ties are fundamental in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find:” The central character, for example, whose perception shapes the story, is known as “the grandmother,” and thus she is defined in relation to the other characters rather than by a name. The reader immediately learns that “Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy.” Similarly, Bailey’s wife is referred to as “the children’s mother,” and the youngest member if the family is simply “the baby”; only Bailey and the two older children, John Wesley and June Star, are actually called by their names. The family is closely linked and constantly interacting: The grandmother gives Bailey and his wife parenting tips, which they disregard, and the children are, to varying degrees, disobedient and disrespectful toward their elders. While the grandmother insists that during her day “children were more respectful. . . . People did right then,” it is important to note that there is no hostility in their relationships, which shows, for example, in the description of the grandmother holding the baby or her telling the older children a story about her suitors. The family is a complete entity in itself. June Star, the family’s daughter, is very vocal about not wishing to be adopted into the family of Red Sam and his wife, the couple who run “The Tower.” The encounter with the Misfit and his accomplices challenges the established family dynamic, however. As the grandmother begins conversing with the man whom she recognizes to be the escaped convict, she asks the Misfit about his family: “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!” The Misfit replies: “God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy’s heart was pure gold”; however, the reader eventually learns that The Misfit was convicted of murdering his father: “It was a head-doctor at the

838â•…â•… O’Connor, Flannery penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it.” The Misfit is not part of any family, and the loss of his family forced him into criminality. The name Misfit, which the criminal has given himself to indicate that it is impossible for crime and punishment to perfectly add up, also implies that he is apart from any family. He simply does not fit in anywhere—he is a social outcast. The Misfit expresses his dislike of children repeatedly, commenting that they make him nervous, thus underlining his own isolation. The grandmother begins reaching out to the Misfit by suggesting he put on one of Bailey’s shirts; he ends up taking the one Bailey is actually wearing after shooting Bailey. When the Misfit confesses that, had he been there during Christ’s earthly ministry, he would be a different man, this touches the grandmother profoundly: “His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant. She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, ‘Why, you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!’ She reached out and touched him on the shoulder.” Thus, in the story’s conclusion, the family structure is radically challenged and turned upside down. The grandmother, in her moment of grace, acknowledges the Misfit, who has just killed Bailey, to be her son. The family O’Connor has in mind is God’s, into which sinners are welcomed by adoption as they repent. This grace is completely unmerited and thus apart from the individual; it depends on Christ’s sacrifice on the cross alone and welcomes characters as “bad” as the Misfit if they choose to accept it. Wiebke Omnus

Religion in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

As is typical of Flannery O’Connor’s fiction, her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a commentary on the universal need for the grace and hope of Jesus Christ, as the author introduces characters that are extremely ungracious and situations that are completely devoid of hope. Through a fatal, personal encounter with the character of the Misfit, a mass murderer of whom the grandmother warns

from the very beginning of the narrative, O’Connor engages with the Christian gospel in a very direct manner. Having built up the theme of human goodness throughout the text, goodness is radically challenged and redefined in the story’s conclusion. During her dialogue with the Misfit while her family is taken away and brutally killed one after the other, the grandmother appeals to the killer’s sense of goodness, which she associates with not being from a “common” family, but also with goodness of heart and the fact that she herself is “a lady” and therefore cannot be killed by a good person. O’Connor, however, is concerned with an entirely different kind of goodness, one that the grandmother does not even begin to understand until it completely overwhelms her in the face of death, and that the Misfit shies away from, as he recognizes it as being life-consuming—the goodness of Christ. When the grandmother calls for her son Bailey, unaware that he has just been murdered, the Misfit informs her that “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead . . . and He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.” Apart from Christ, proclaims the Misfit, goodness does not make any sense; he dares to face and point out the logical consequences of atheism. If there is no meaning in life, no higher standard of right and wrong, no absolute truth, there is no reason not to be a murderer. Through the Misfit, O’Connor presents the consequences of a life that truly does not acknowledge God and puts the self at the center of human existence. Having proclaimed that he is simply not sure of Christ’s existence, although he would like to have witnessed his ministry just to be certain, the Misfit lives his godless life to the fullest. In that sense, he is the only sincere character in the story, acknowledging that true Christianity cannot be halfhearted. Prior to encountering the Misfit, the grandmother’s faith is without fruit; her life is not shaped by

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find”â•…â•… 839 Christian values, as the reader can see as the story follows her conversations and inner convictions. She is not consumed by Christ in the way that the Misfit knows a true follower would be. In fact, the grandmother is most willing to compromise Christ’s power when she sees this as a chance to save her life, claiming that perhaps he did not raise the dead after all. Ironically, at the very moment at which the grandmother is transformed and experiences the life-altering grace of Christ, embracing the murderer of her family as her son, the Misfit shoots her because he cannot handle the affection she directs at him, and because he does not desire grace in his life. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a story about goodness in humans, which, as O’Connor shows, is nonexistent apart from Christ. When the Misfit proclaims in the end that the grandmother “would of been a good woman .  .  . if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life,” he ultimately points to Christ’s death on the cross, an outside force that made the grandmother change. Through the character of the Misfit, who so freely admits his own guilt in light of Christ’s innocence, O’Connor points to a universal need for grace. She puts words of wisdom into his mouth as he proclaims that if Jesus is indeed who he says he is, the only proper human response is worship and abandonment of the self. If Jesus does not exist, human evil is justified, as it remains without eternal consequences. Wiebke Omnus

V iolence in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” anticipates the family’s violent death at the hands of the Misfit from the very first paragraph of the short story. The grandmother’s initial fears, expressed as an attempt to manipulate her family to alter their travel plans and make east Tennessee rather than Florida the destination of their trip, are not taken seriously. Yet they are dreadfully fulfilled in the short story’s conclusion, as the entire family is shot by the Misfit and his accomplices. O’Connor mingles violence and humor to a specific purpose, and she manages to affect her readers perhaps even more powerfully by not going into minute descriptions of bloody scenes. Ultimately, she points to the

violence on the cross of Christ through the events portrayed in the story. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is an extremely violent story, but it is also outrageously funny. The combination of violence and humor is typical of O’Connor’s fiction as she attempts to shock her reader, hoping to create a critical distance that will cause him or her to consider the larger point of her story. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” she shapes her characters and portrays the dynamic between them with great care, crafting intricate details to create situations that are both funny and shocking. For example, Bailey, the son with whom the grandmother lives, is wearing “a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it,” and after the car accident, which the grandmother causes, the narrator comments that Bailey’s “face was as yellow as the shirt.” As he is being taken away to be killed, Bailey’s “eyes were as blue and intense as the parrots in his shirt.” The grandmother offers the Misfit one of her son’s shirts immediately preceding the shot that kills him, and the Misfit ends up putting on the parrot shirt Bailey was wearing after having shot him, which the grandmother is too traumatized to acknowledge. Thus, O’Connor pokes fun at Bailey’s fashion taste immediately before his execution and then dresses the murderer in the victim’s shirt, transferring the grandmother’s motherly affections from Bailey to the Misfit; readers do not know whether to laugh or to be horrified, being forced to carefully evaluate the cause of their emotions. Violence is presented very subtly and in a manner that is far removed from the actual violent event. Avoiding gory scenes or even the mere mention of bloodshed, O’Connor works with suggestions rather than descriptions. Thus, the aforementioned parrot shirt, alongside two pistol shots, serves as an indicator for Bailey’s death. It is left to the reader’s imagination to picture what happened in the woods, which increases the intensity of the reading experience and causes the reader to focus on the meaning of the events as opposed to paying attention only to the details themselves. Violence and the concept of grace are closely linked in this story. It is in the face of violence that the grandmother, whom O’Connor has taken great care to portray as rather unlikable and judgmental,

840â•…â•… O’Connor, Flannery overcomes her prejudices and reaches out to the Misfit, who shoots her in return. He has found a license for violence in his rejection of Christ and reacts aversely to the grace the grandmother shows him. Through his life experience, the Misfit has discovered that punishment for crime is ineffective and thus does not discourage violence, because punishment has no lasting consequences and does not make the individual consider or even remember what has happened. Crime and punishment are incongruent, which has caused him to call himself “The Misfit.” Being accused of having killed his father and subsequently being “buried alive” in the penitentiary for something he claims not to have done, he concludes that there is no real justice. In the Christian gospel, Grace is defined as unmerited favor, expressed in God’s forgiveness toward humanity, and in its reverse, it means that Jesus received unmerited violent punishment. Violence in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” must be seen in relation to the violence of the cross. O’Connor often alludes to the violence that God directed at himself so that he could spare humanity. The Misfit sees violence as a reasonable reaction to the assumption that God does not exist. For O’Connor, violence against others is the ultimate sign of the absence of grace, and yet she portrays characters who, in all their violence, are redeemable, and who can be swept away in moments of grace. Wiebke Omnus

O’Connor, Flanneryâ•… Wise Bloodâ•… (1952)

Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, is the story of a wounded veteran of World War II, 22-year-old Hazel Motes, and his attempts to reconcile his beliefs in a world where there is no sin and no Jesus, with the “wild ragged figure [of Jesus] motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark.” In a 1962 author’s note to the second edition, O’Connor (1925–64) calls it a “comic novel about a Christian malgré lui, and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death.” O’Connor began writing the novel in 1947 while studying for her M.F.A. in creative writing at

the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and in 1948 she won the Rinehart-Iowa Fiction Award for her submission of a portion of this novel. While at Yaddo, the writer’s colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1948 and 1949, she continued to work on Wise Blood, and it was finally published in 1952. A reader should begin a study of O’Connor’s work with the understanding that her Catholic faith is a significant factor in its meaning. In 1954, in response to a letter from a reader, O’Connor wrote, “My background and my inclinations are both Catholic, and I think this is very apparent in the book.” Not well reviewed when it was first published, Wise Blood is today considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. Susan Amper

Commodification/Commercialization in Wise Blood

Wise Blood acknowledges the pull of consumerism and commercialism and represents, to some extent, a comment on American consumer culture. Flannery O’Connor is adamant about the evils of commercialization and a materialist postwar suburban ethic that was already manifest in 1947 when she won the Rinehart-Iowa Fiction Award for a section of Wise Blood, later her first novel. The deleterious effects of commercialism are most evident in Hazel’s dealings with Hoover Shoats and Mrs. Flood. Hoover Shoats espouses religion to make a buck. He is a con man who sees Hazel’s effectiveness and offers to produce his preaching gigs for him. Shoats sees a way to make money off gullible listeners, but Hazel wants no part of the money-making scheme, and Shoats replies, “I can get my own new jesus and I can get Prophets for peanuts.” Shoats finds a lookalike in Solace Layfield and establishes the Holy Church of Christ Without Christ on a firm profit-making basis. Hazel kills his compromising twin, because he “ain’t true,” but also because he is using Hazel’s concept to make money. For the murder weapon, Hazel uses his car—his only material possession. Materialism and consumerism thus lead to death. From this point on, Hazel’s attempts to rid himself of all things material is complicated by his landlady, Mrs. Flood, who endeavors to keep him

Wise Bloodâ•…â•… 841 tied to the material world. Mrs. Flood sees life only in terms of the physical: eating, spending, working. Hazel’s behavior, his refusal to talk to her, his walking off when she comes near, can all be read as condemnations of her self-interested generosity and good works that are performed only when they are good business. When she tells Hazel that he has dropped money into a garbage can, he tells her that he does not need the money. Such a thought is alien to Mrs. Flood, for she is immersed in the material world. She feels safe in the world of physical objects, and she has habituated herself to viewing as much of existence as possible in terms of those physical objects. Food is one of her favorites. She notes that Hazel does not eat much and just sits quietly for most of the day, and she thinks to herself that if she herself were blind, she would sit by the radio all day eating ice cream and cake and soaking her feet. Despite her revulsion when she looks at Hazel’s ravaged face, Mrs. Flood allows him to keep his room in her house and offers to cook his meals, all for an increase in his rent, for when she is not thinking of food, she is thinking of money. She rationalizes her behavior, thinking that she is “justified in getting any [of her taxes] back that she could. She felt justified in getting anything at all back that she could, money or anything else.” She notes that Hazel gets a monthly pension from the government for his war injury, and she is prepared to marry him to get her hands on this steady stream of income. When Mrs. Flood is with Hazel, she feels that there is something “valuable hidden near her, something she couldn’t see,” and whatever she looks at, she wants. Hazel’s landlady feels that in his blindness, “she was being cheated.” “Why had he destroyed his eyes,” she wonders, “and saved himself unless he had some plan.” She does not want to “look at the mess he made in his eye sockets” because the daily sight of him forces questions on her that she has refused to consider before, and though she tries to “keep her mind going on something else” when he is near her, she finds “herself leaning forward, staring into his face as if she expected to see something she hadn’t seen before.” The result of this wanton materialism, though, is death. Mrs. Flood has been so intent on supplying

her own material needs that she seems hardly aware that Hazel is dying. When Hazel does not return from his final flight from Mrs. Flood, she calls the police and asks that he be returned to her so that he can pay his rent. Before he can be picked up, Hazel dies. Mrs. Flood, unaware that the body returned to her house is no longer alive, offers Hazel free room and board. Even at this point, though, she remains blind to the truth: She is still trying, even at the very end, to “see how she had been cheated or what had cheated her.” Susan Amper

Religion in Wise Blood

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood is filled with grotesqueries, bleakness, and sinfulness, yet O’Connor called it a “hopeful book.” The hopefulness comes in the form of Hazel Motes, who, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, is waylaid, blinded, and reborn. Hazel’s salvific nature, though, does not become apparent until the end of the novel. At the start of his journey to salvation, Hazel, like many of O’Connor’s characters, is moody and misanthropic. Despite his willful blindness, nihilism, and violent nature, Hazel can be viewed as a Christ figure. Numerous life images are attached to him. Green, the color of new life, is linked specifically to Hazel, whose twisted spiritual quest begins with him seated on a plush green train seat; his berth on the same train is enclosed by green curtains, and the interior of his car is green. Water, another image of rebirth, surrounds Hazel as he dies. Leaving Mrs. Flood’s house for the last time, he walks through an icy rain and dies lying in a drainage ditch filled with water. Other references late in the novel also associate Hazel with spiritual or even eternal life, including his living without material possessions and caring little for food or money. Hazel is further associated with Christ by the number 3, which recurs frequently in the New Testament. Christ is tempted three times, rises on the third day, and is part of the Trinity. Hazel is influenced by three women: Mrs. Watts, Mrs. Flood, and Sabbath Lilly, representing light, water, and rebirth, respectively. Other multiples of three include the three dollars a week Hazel pays Mrs. Watts for his room, the three dollars a night Solace Layfield

842â•…â•… O’Connor, Flannery receives for his services, and the three strands of barbed wire Hazel uses to mortify his flesh. Another prominent Christian motif is that of sight and blindness. The most obvious reference is Hazel’s last name: Motes. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells the assembled to beware of false prophets and promises salvation to those who do the will of the Father. “First,” says Jesus, “cast the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:5). For much of the novel, Hazel remains willfully blind. With this futile attempt, he can be seen as attempting to return to an innocent state. In Genesis, God cautions Adam and Eve about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: “From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die” (Gen. 2:17). After Adam and Eve eat of the tree, “the eyes of both of them were opened.” Knowledge has an effect on them, and knowledge has an effect on Hazel. He has spent many years avoiding the knowledge of sin, but it is only, as with Adam and Eve, true knowledge of sin that allows Hazel to see that God will not be denied and that he must cast out the beam in his own eye. In addition to his self-blinding, the theme of vision is made explicit at the end of the novel when he dies with his eyes open. Despite these ties to Christ, Hazel takes every opportunity to vigorously deny his existence, yet even his denials link him to Christ. On the road to Calgary, St. Peter denies knowledge of Christ. Like St. Peter, Hazel also claims that Christ does not exist. “I do not know the man,” says Peter (Matt. 26:72); “Jesus don’t exist,” Hazel declares. The image of Peter enhances the Christian theme of the novel, for Peter is the rock on which the Christian Church is founded. Hazel, too, founds a church. If the horrifying destructiveness of Hazel’s selfblinding and his subsequent self-mortification make us doubt the salvific character of the deeds, his effect on Mrs. Flood eliminates that doubt. With Hazel, Mrs. Flood feels that there is something “hidden near her but out of her reach.” Hazel’s landlady feels that because of Hazel’s blindness, “she was being cheated,” and she stares “into his face as if she expected to see something she hadn’t seen before.” What she sees in Hazel is the light of Christ, and

at the end of the novel, Mrs. Flood begins her own journey to salvation: She shut her eyes and saw the pin point of light, but so far away that she could not hold it steady in her mind. . . . She sat staring with her eyes shut, into eyes, and felt as if she had finally got to the beginning of something she couldn’t begin, and she saw him moving farther and farther away, farther and farther into the darkness until he was the pin point of light. Through his deeds, particularly his self-blinding, Hazel has become for others the guiding light of Christ. Susan Amper

Suffering in Wise Blood

Hazel Motes is called to make a leap of faith, to believe in that which cannot be seen. He goes on a Christian quest in spite of himself, pulled simultaneously by a desire to know spiritual truth and a fear of knowing. Driven by intertwining motivations, he seeks a transformative experience but would prefer one that will prove that Christ does not exist. His denial of Christ within himself leads to his brutal suffering at the end of Wise Blood. The novel begins in a train traveling through the desolate vistas of Tennessee, bound for Taulkinham. The train identifies for the reader that a quest has begun. At the start of his journey to salvation, Hazel wanders unaware of the spirituality of life, and it is only through intense suffering and soul-wrenching moments that he is awakened from his deadened state. It is through suffering that Hazel Motes comes to know Christ. To know Christ is to “suffer for his sake” (Phil. 1:29), but if a man suffers for Christ, he “shall also reign with” Christ (2 Tim. 2:12). Jesus suffered for all humankind, and it is his example that Christians seek to follow. Suffering can lead to a return of faith. Part of Hazel’s suffering comes from his complete isolation. While still a child, he experienced the loss of two brothers and his father, and he lost his mother when he was 16. At the start of the novel, Hazel is 22, and he returns from the war to Eastrod,

The Iceman Comethâ•…â•… 843 his hometown, to find that there are no more Moteses; in fact, the whole town appears to have died off. By the novel’s end, Hazel’s only hope is to identify with Christ, and to do this he must daily experience the crucifying of his own self. Hazel’s “wise blood” allows him to see that salvation comes through daily suffering, and as part of his suffering and path to a true vision of Christ, he eventually blinds himself with lime, binds his chest with barbed wire, and puts rocks and broken glass in his shoes, walking around in them as a way to bear his own cross and follow Jesus. Before this transformative experience of suffering, Hazel spends much of the novel attempting to escape the haunting figure of Jesus in his life. He believes that the way to avoid Jesus and the dark, blind faith that this entails is to avoid sin. When the specter of Jesus, the “wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark,” does not go away despite his efforts to remain pure, Hazel makes up his mind to reject all that has formed him in the past, especially his childhood belief in Christ and sin. After his return from the war, Hazel decides to banish the ragged figure by embracing sin. “What do I need with Jesus?” he asks. “I got Leora Watts.” He expects his sexual encounter with Mrs. Watts will be transformative, but afterward he feels neither more nor less sinful than he did before, neither liberated nor damned. Because his sinfulness is without efficacy, it must not be real. After killing the lookalike false prophet Solace Layfield, Hazel finally stops running from the ragged figure. Initially he flees from the scene of the crime, but when a policeman destroys his car, he decides to return to Taulkinham. His behavior resembles that of Saint Peter fleeing persecution in Rome. As he approaches the city gates, Peter has a vision of Christ, who says that he is coming to Rome to be again crucified. “Coming to himself,” according to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, Peter understands that it is in his own passion that Christ intends to suffer. The apostle then returns with joy to meet his death. Hazel’s fate is similarly sealed. Making the leap he has so long feared, accepting the ragged figure’s invitation “to turn around and come off into the dark,” he blinds himself with lime and begins a regimen of self-castigation.

When his landlady, Mrs. Flood, asks Hazel, “What do you walk on rocks for?,” he replies “To pay.” Mrs. Flood asks, “Pay for what?” Hazel responds, “It don’t make any difference for what . . . I’m paying.” Mrs. Flood does not understand what Hazel means because he does not have anything to “show” for what he has been suffering. Mrs. Flood cannot see what has become clear to Hazel: “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3–10). Hazel’s redemption can only be attained through his suffering. Susan Amper

O’Neill, Eugeneâ•… The Iceman Comethâ•… (published 1940; first performed 1946)

The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O’Neill’s lengthy yet spellbinding American drama set in New York City in 1912, was first performed on Broadway in 1946. The choice of the play’s setting is rather arbitrary— in all likelihood due to the author’s personal preferences—but its subject matter in regard to the nature of the human condition is universal and timeless. The primary focus of The Iceman Cometh is on the need to pursue dreams and the ramifications that can occur if this quest is stripped from us. While the characters may be down on their luck, most of them have a dream, but they are apprehensive about acting on it. Instead, they spend their time drinking away the reality that their lives are not all that they could be. Fitting to the nature of the play, the action of The Iceman Cometh takes place in a saloon aptly called Harry Hope’s No Chance Saloon. At Harry Hope’s, a colorful cast of ensemble characters—all of them social outcasts or the dregs of society—congregate to blur the boundaries between their realities and their dreams with the old stand-by tranquilizer, alcohol. The play’s main action occurs when Theodore Hickman or “Hickey” arrives for his yearly visit reformed and newly sober and tries to convert his cohorts to the belief that they would be better off if only they would give up their “pipe dreams.” Trudi Van Dyke

844â•…â•… O’Neill, Eugene

Alienation in The Iceman Cometh

Most if not all of the characters in Eugene O’Neill’s drama The Iceman Cometh would generally be considered social outcasts—prostitutes, a pimp, a traitor, unemployable bums, and even a murderer—who represent a class of people who are alienated from more polite society. However, within the context of the play, as these outcasts all congregate at Harry Hope’s No Chance Saloon, they are unified in their unsavory reputations. As a result, if alienation is largely considered to be the separation of an individual from his or her natural surroundings, then the primary source of alienation within in The Iceman Cometh is the protagonist, Hickey. Hickey, a traveling salesman, comes to the saloon once a year to celebrate the proprietor’s birthday. This year, however, he is a changed man. Usually praised by the other dregs of humanity who patronize Harry Hope’s for his prowess both with alcohol and the ladies, Hickey returns for his annual visit sober and apparently rehabilitated. Newly reformed, he tries to play the part of savior by rescuing his friends from pipe dreams, which are a worse demon in this play than alcohol. Hickey says: I know now, from my experience, they’re the things that really poison and ruin a guy’s life and keep him from finding any peace. If you knew how free and contented I feel now. I’m like a new man. And the cure for them is so damned simple, once you have the nerve. Just the old dope of honesty is the best policy— honesty with yourself, I mean. And while Hickey’s efforts at advocating salvation alienate him from his friends, “the bughouse preacher escaped from an asylum” (as they refer to him) has a hard job being honest with himself and tackling his own demons; when he does, it destroys him. Near the end of the play, Hickey—also referred to, quite appropriately, as “de old Foolsopher”— finally begins to practice what he has been preaching. He admits that he murdered his own “nagging pipe dream,” his adoring wife Evelyn, who always forgave him no matter what he did. When Hickey finally does face the truth about himself, he coun-

terattacks it with another illusion or pipe dream, claiming that he must have been insane when he killed Evelyn. He says: All I want you to see is I was out of my mind afterwards, when I laughed at her! I was a raving lunatic or I couldn’t have said—Why, Evelyn was the only thing on God’s earth I ever loved! I’d have killed myself before I’d ever have hurt her! This statement illustrates that not only has Hickey alienated his cohorts in the bar, but he has even become alienated within himself. Like someone experiencing a psychological trauma in which they cannot escape from what they have done, Hickey contends that he could only have killed Evelyn if he was crazy, a claim that is, in all probability, another pipe dream, as Hickey appears to be completely sane. When Hickey is led away in handcuffs, the audience is left without a clue as to his final fate, but it is presumably the electric chair for murder. Whether this is the punishment for alienating his once-faithful followers or not, Hickey does become a martyr, and nothing really changes at Harry Hope’s; the rest of the derelicts return to their “pipe dreams” and to their alcohol, which has miraculously gotten its “kick” back—all of them, that is, except the suicidal Parritt, and Larry, who claims that he is the only “real convert” Hickey made and that he will “be a weak fool looking with pity at the two sides of everything till the day I die!” As for Hickey’s fate, on the surface, O’Neill seems to be suggesting that giving up on selfdelusion can make one mad. Obviously, this is ironic given that most people would initially assume the opposite to be true. In addition, O’Neill seems to be asking the audience to consider whether the risks we take when standing up for a cause or to challenge others’ belief systems are worth the price of alienation to which we are likely to be subjected. However, perhaps the primary message of The Iceman Cometh is to consider, before we risk everything for martyrdom, whether we truly believe in the cause ourselves. After all, are pipe dreams so damaging if they keep you safe, hopeful, and (above all) sane? Trudi Van Dyke

The Iceman Comethâ•…â•… 845

The American dream in The Iceman Cometh

Eugene O’Neill’s tragedy The Iceman Cometh profoundly illustrates the struggle between the societal expectation that all Americans covet the American dream—a unique concept assuming individuals can achieve even their most extraordinary goals through ambition and hard work rather than nepotism and/or class structure—and those who have lost the desire to pursue any dreams at all, let alone the American dream. From the perspective of the majority of the characters in The Iceman Cometh, dreams in general are no longer regarded as a sacred goal to strive for to make their lives more meaningful. Instead, dreams—or so-called pipe dreams—are turned into just another illusion to keep the characters from facing an unsatisfying reality and to dull their senses, similar to the effects of the alcohol that they continually consume. Pipe dreams, combined with liquor, have an extremely powerful tranquilizing effect, much more than reality would have by itself. Consequently, the inhabitants of Harry Hope’s No-Chance Saloon are marked by a pseudo-death, symbolized through the references to the morgue, the “Iceman,” and an atmosphere of a drunken stupor that permeates the play. Two of the main characters in the play, Larry and Hickey, are in direct opposition to one another in regard to how they view dreams and the choices that people have in life, although they used to share similar perspectives. Larry contends that for the characters in the play, wasting their lives in a saloon waiting for tomorrow is their own personal version of the American dream. At one point he says: Don’t waste your pity. They wouldn’t thank you for it. They manage to get drunk, by hook or crook, and keep their pipe dreams, and that’s all they ask of life. I’ve never known more contented men. It isn’t often that men attain the true goal of their heart’s desire. And there may be something to what Larry says. After all, the concept of the American dream is about achieving one’s aspirations. If an individual’s goals entail nothing more ambitious than existing within a perpetual drunken stupor, dreaming of

what is yet to come, then the denizens of Harry Hope’s have certainly achieved their American dream. On the other hand, Hickey, who used to concur with Larry, has acquired a more innovative way of thinking when the action takes place, one that he desperately tries to convert his friends into believing. Hickey, a natural salesman, is under the impression that when the characters at Harry Hope’s realize they cannot make themselves go through the necessary steps to make their dreams or illusions come true, they will face up to the unsatisfying reality that they have ruined their lives, not only with wishful thinking about tomorrows that never come, but also with alcohol. However, when Hickey faces his own reality and the truth about himself, his American dream comes crashing down. Because he murdered his own pipe dream, both literally and figuratively in the form of his almost-too-merciful wife, he will probably die by going to the electric chair for the crime. In the end, Hickey’s fate suggests that while the American dream may be an overrated, nearly mythic concept, it is still the decision of each individual to choose what exactly it consists of, how to go about pursuing it, and essentially to decide whether it is a sham to beware of or a paradigm for which to strive. It is undeniable that The Iceman Cometh is a tragedy. However, the reasons why it constitutes a tragedy are not entirely clear. Is it tragic because a man murdered his wife? Or because it shows the effects of delusion, not only related to the American dream but also in the addiction of alcoholism? Or is there more to it than that? Largely, the play and its characters illustrate that it is human nature to numb an unsatisfying reality with booze and pipe dreams. At the conclusion of the play, most of the characters may have kept their pipe dreams as well as their alcoholism, but they are still residing at a place called Harry Hope’s and they are not yet facing death, as Hickey, who has murdered his illusions, will surely face. Yet despite hope, in the end there is no denying that The Iceman Cometh is a tragedy of the greatest kind because it demonstrates that most of us will never take the necessary steps to pursue our own American dreams, whatever they may be. Trudi Van Dyke

846â•…â•… O’Neill, Eugene

Hope in The Iceman Cometh

Fitting for a play steeped in alcohol, The Iceman Cometh takes place in a boarding house and barroom, aptly called Harry Hope’s No-Chance Saloon. Although the saloon is named after the proprietor, hope is the quest, or as the play’s protagonist Hickey would argue, the “pipe dream” that keeps all of the boardinghouse dwellers alive. However, the concept of hope, allied with the phrase no chance, hints at the idea that the characters in the play are past their prime, and Hickey would undoubtedly concur. Ever the eternal dreamers and procrastinators, the saloon’s regulars never stop believing that their yesterdays are where their true glory lived, but that it is always possible for them to change their world tomorrow. All the while, they never admit aloud, and perhaps not even to themselves, that yesterday cannot be brought back and sometimes tomorrow never comes: They still have hope, however futile. The regulars who congregate at Harry Hope’s No-Chance Saloon are representative of a facet of humanity that is so deeply immersed in illusions that its members have lost touch with reality. Many of them have sunk so far down into the depths that they never even leave the saloon unless they are forced to, as if they have completely forgotten that another world exists outside. The concept of Harry Hope’s saloon being a point of no return is illustrated quite well in some of the play’s speeches. Even though some of the regulars are aware deep down that they are in a state of pseudo-death, most persist in believing they are not. As Larry, perhaps the regular who is the least immersed in illusion, says at one point about the bar: Café, the Bottom of the Sea Rathskeller! Don’t you notice the beautiful calm atmosphere? That’s because it’s the last harbor. No one here has to worry about where they’re going next, because there is no farther they can go. It’s a great comfort to them. Although even here they keep up the appearances of life with a few harmless pipe dreams about their yesterdays and tomorrows . . . In an ingeniously ironic twist, O’Neill places these characters, whom one would consider either past

the point or altogether unworthy of redemption, in a situation where they could be redeemed. The would-be savior is their old friend Hickey, who has recently experienced an epiphany, which, being the salesman that he is, he tries to sell to the others. Hickey desperately tries to convert his friends to his new way of thinking because he believes that when the others realize they do not have the ambition to make their dreams or illusions come true, they will face the reality that they have ruined their lives with wishful thinking and alcohol. However, his pleading only succeeds in removing the pleasure from their existence by taking the hope out of their lives—and, more significantly, out of their alcohol. After Hickey realizes that he cannot persuade his friends to abandon their last shred of hope, he confesses why he has lost his: He admits he murdered his own “nagging pipe dream,” his adoring and forgiving wife, Evelyn. Although the audience is not made privy to Hickey’s fate, O’Neill may be suggesting that Hickey’s loss of hope, coupled with his truthful confession, will ultimately lead to death. Therefore, while truth is regarded as superior to illusion, perhaps truth should not be so highly esteemed because it can leave people virtually hopeless. Even if there is a danger of ignoring the truth in illusions or pipe dreams, having hope can be an asset because it has the power to make our lives not only more tolerable but perhaps more meaningful as well. On the other hand, if people only dwell in a dream world, they often lack the incentive for doing anything significant with their lives, and consequently they could drink their days away in a saloon. With this rather ambiguous conclusion, the audience is just left “weak fool[s] looking with pity at the two sides of everything,” as O’Neill gives the audience no definitive or tangible resolution as to whether believing in truth or pacifying with illusion is more satisfying when it comes to hope. Trudi Van Dyke

O’Neill, Eugeneâ•… Long Day’s Journey into Nightâ•… (1956) Long Day’s Journey into Night, one of Eugene O’Neill’s best plays, and certainly his most autobiographic work, was written in 1940 but was pub-

Long Day’s Journey into Nightâ•…â•… 847 lished posthumously at its author’s request. O’Neill (1888–1953) received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama in recognition of what many consider to be his masterpiece. The play is based on the interplay between love and hatred among the four members of the Tyrone family on the day when they find out that Mary, the mother, has gone back on morphine, and the younger son, Edmund, is suffering from tuberculosis. Mary blames her addiction on her husband James Tyrone’s stinginess, while he reproaches his wife for her lack of will to fight her addiction. Jamie, the elder son, is a failed actor. He has drinking problems caused by his mother’s condition, his own failure, and a sense of inferiority to Edmund. Edmund is a promising intellectual who blames his father for his mother’s addiction and feels guilty that she started on morphine to kill the pains after he was born. Each has caused great suffering to the others; nevertheless, the family ties are so strong that although each has symbolically “left” the family several times, they have always returned. The play has only four characters: Mary, James, Jamie, and Edmund Tyrone. Cathleen, the maid, appears only briefly. Through these characters, O’Neill explores such themes as family, guilt, memory, alienation, illness, love, and suffering. The play is a bitter analysis of family bonds, of how close or how harmful parents can be to children and children to parents. It also points at the effects alcohol and drug abuse can have on family life. Aloisia Sorop

Family in Long Day’s Journey into Night

What makes a family? Few would say that blood ties are all that are needed; most would call for strong affection among its members, a common past and a shared sense of the future, a home and a sense of mutual responsibility. Are the Tyrones a family? This is a question Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night tries to answer by presenting one day in their life in August 1912. There is much love and much hatred among the four Tyrones. Each has caused the failure or tragedy of the others. Each displays great fondness for the others but at the same time has his or her own way of alienating the family. There is constant tension

between each of them and the whole family. They seem to belong to and at the same time try to tear away from the family. They show their tenderness by using nicknames such as “Kid” and “Old Man,” but they also sneer at one another and use invectives such as “Broadway loafer,” and “dope-fiend mother.” The father, James Tyrone, Sr., has always been closefisted as a result of his very difficult childhood. His stinginess, for which the whole family repeatedly reproaches him, caused Mary to be treated by a cheap doctor after she delivered Edmund, and she consequently became a morphine addict. Even now, when he is a well-off estate owner, he makes arrangements for Edmund to be admitted to a cheap state sanatorium. He is also responsible for Jamie’s hard drinking habit, as he used to soothe him with alcohol when he was a child. Despite this, Tyrone is devoted to his family; he loves his wife dearly and does his best to protect her from upsetting news such as Edmund’s serious illness. Mary has sacrificed much for James. She left a rich, well-educated family when she married Tyrone and started touring the country with him. She used to be a good wife and mother until she was hurt: physically, when she was treated with morphine, and mentally, when her infant son, Eugene, died from measles as she left him behind and joined Tyrone on his tour. The lack of a proper home and feminine company that would have offered her stability, social status, and psychological balance turns her into a slowly disintegrating person who symbolically “leaves” her family by deceiving herself that Edmund has only “a bad summer cold” and finding oblivion in morphine and memories of the past. Jamie and Edmund are intelligent, though not successful in their careers. Jamie kept being expelled from colleges and he became an actor against his will. Edmund is a poet and a journalist, widely read and sensitive. The two sons are terribly upset to see their mother falling back on morphine after her short attempt at rehabilitation. They are loving and at the same time loathing. They reproach their parents for their weaknesses, but they also long for harmony in the family. They side together against their parents, but they also side with their mother in blaming Tyrone for his self-centeredness, and with their father when he accuses Mary of losing her will

848â•…â•… O’Neill, Eugene to fight addiction. Much as they are drawn to each other, the brothers do not have a smooth relationship, either. Jamie is sincerely devastated by his brother’s illness, but he confesses he was jealous of his brother’s position in the family, calling him “Mama’s baby, Papa’s pet,” and “the family’s White Hope” and admitting he wished bad things for Edmund. But a family also has roots and history. Tyrone proudly reminds them they are Irish Catholics, thus insisting on their fortitude and faith, while Mary, on the other hand, is haunted by the memory of her dead father and infant son. Family is at the core of this bitter, autobiographical play. The Tyrones are strongly tied by their mutual love and personal tragedies. They are a family, but they cannot help being drawn apart by their sense of guilt, their repressed aspirations and mutual accusations. Aloisia Sorop

Guilt in Long Day’s Journey into Night

Guilt is a highly traumatic feeling that betrays dissatisfaction with one’s own person or actions based on some real or imaginary personal failures. Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night is built on feelings of guilt, self-pity, and mutual accusations. The Tyrones experience such a shock to find that the mother is on morphine again and the younger son has tuberculosis that long repressed feelings of guilt emerge and tell bits of the family’s story. The most guilt-ridden person is Mary, the mother. Disappointed with her marriage, longing for the stability a home and friends can offer, she has built a moral framework that generates long- and short-term guilt. Her long-term feelings of guilt regard her failure as a wife and as a mother and recall events that happened long ago, such as marrying the handsome James Tyrone, a successful actor, instead of following her own artistic calling. Guilt also pervades her thoughts concerning the death of her infant son, Eugene. This event was so devastating that she became depressive and considered herself unworthy to give birth to her third son, Edmund, a sickly and sensitive child, now a promising intellectual. Though slow in accepting the seriousness of Edmund’s tuberculosis, Mary blames it on herself and considers it a punishment for her sin.

Mary’s short-term feelings of guilt relate to her recent relapse to morphine and her growing awareness that her family are watching her. She lies to them as she lies to herself. She prefers to ignore unpleasant realities and wallow in memories of the past. James Tyrone’s feelings of guilt mix with selfpity. His remorse is limited because he will not admit that his stinginess caused Mary to be treated with morphine by a cheap doctor after Edmund’s birth. Tyrone is repeatedly reproached by his family that, though now a rich man, he remains closefisted and is still haunted by the image of the poorhouse. Mary also blames him for her empty life when she was young and accompanied him on his tours, and for his obvious jealousy of her babies. Self-pity is more powerful in Tyrone than feelings of guilt. He admits to Edmund, when drunk, that his poverty-stricken childhood put its imprint on his character and even spoiled his chances of becoming a great actor by pushing him toward immediate financial success in cheap popular roles. Jamie, a cynical drunkard and womanizer, is also tormented by feelings of guilt. He failed as an actor, and he has always been jealous of Edmund for being the favorite child. He admits he taught him bad things, in spite of his great love for him, only to reduce the difference between them. Edmund, in his sensitive and poetic way, voices his remorse that his mother became an addict because of him. He openly accuses his father for his obsession with money which caused his mother’s addiction and, under the present desperate conditions, prompts him to choose a cheap state sanatorium for his sick son. The feelings of guilt are associated with exterior and interior factors of oppression. Outside, there is the fog coming from the harbor. Mary’s relapse to morphine is paralleled by her coming to terms with the fog. If the foghorn kept her awake all night, the next day she increases the dose of morphine and gradually grows fond of the fog. Unlike her, Tyrone is symbolically deaf to the foghorn. But Edmund, too, loves the fog, which offers him refuge from reality: “It was what I needed. The fog was where I wanted to be.” The house, too, is dimly lit, as if it were a projection of the Tyrones’ hazy conscience. When drunk

Long Day’s Journey into Nightâ•…â•… 849 and remorseful, Tyrone turns on three bulbs in the chandelier to show his repentance, but only for a short spell. The remedies sought by the Tyrones to ease their feelings of guilt show their inability or refusal to correct their mistakes. Mary chooses to forgive her husband and seek oblivion in morphine. In spite of his commitment to his family, Tyrone prefers self-pity and vague remorse. Jamie finds wasting his life on drinks and women a sort of selfinflicted punishment for his fratricidal thoughts, which he seals with a full confession to Edmund. And Edmund, the poet, has a poet’s remorse—gratuitous and ineffectual since he is only guilty of having been born. Guilt turns into a way of living for the characters in this modern drama. Aloisia Sorop

Memory in Long Day’s Journey into Night

Memory is so inherent a part of our personality that people tend to forget how much of our life relies on remembering things. Memory can be a friendly companion or a haunting visitor; it depends on how tuned in we are to our own consciousness. Mary Tyrone, the mother in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, apologizes for remembering out loud. Recollection, reminding, and oblivion are the different manifestations of memory experienced by the four Tyrones. The whole play is actually constructed on the interplay between past and present caused by the persistent interference of memory in the characters’ lives. James Tyrone, the father, is a formerly successful actor, now retired, whose memories of his difficult childhood have turned him into a closefisted man. He keeps reminding the others of it by being stingy with the family’s money. But he becomes uneasy whenever his wife or sons remind him of his role in Mary’s turning into a drug addict because he had a cheap and incompetent doctor treat her, or the fact that although he is now a prosperous estate owner, he chooses a cheap state sanatorium for his tubercular son. Jamie, the elder son, is the black sheep of the family, a failed actor, heavy drinker, and womanizer. Edmund, the younger son, is a promising journalist who has to face several problems on the day of the play’s action in August 1912. He becomes aware of

his mother’s slow return to addiction, and he receives the news of his serious condition, tuberculosis. He also has the bitter revelation that his elder brother, Jamie, both loves and loathes him for his favored position in the family. The two sons are too young to find their memories burdensome, but they are so intricately linked to their parents’ lives that they resent the latter’s games with memory. The character most exposed to the effects of memory is Mary Tyrone. She married James out of love but does not have a happy life. She never had a proper home to raise her children but had to join her husband on his tours, and as a result, one of her boys died of measles in infancy. After Edmund, their youngest son, was born, she was treated with morphine and consequently became an addict. She has just returned from a sanatorium, but to her family’s dismay, she gradually and stealthily returns to her addiction. She uses recollections of happy times as remedies for present pains. Her gradual retreat into the oblivion induced by morphine is caused by her desire to detach herself from the upsetting present. On the other hand, Mary cannot help remembering several painful moments in her life such as her father’s death of tuberculosis (then called consumption) and, the most devastating memory, the death of her infant son, Eugene. She associates memory with feelings of guilt and remorse. When Tyrone asks her if she cannot forget, she answers that she can only forgive but not forget. Her reply reveals the bitterness at the core of her heart: She considers him responsible for most of the tragedy in her life, past and present. As the play progresses, Mary is more and more under the influence of morphine and subconsciously drawn into her memories. She treats the things that remind her of her repressed aspirations differently: She avoids looking at her old and bony fingers, which could have made her into a pianist, but she produces her wedding gown out of a trunk. She wants both to forget and to remember, and she is the only character who passes through the whole range of instances of memory. She starts by recollecting things, painful things in particular; then she seeks oblivion in drugs and resigned forgiveness. Failing this, she seems to accommodate reminiscences of her former life, a fragmented past that mingles

850â•…â•… Orwell, George with a fragmented present. At the end of the play, she seems to freeze into the past, and the present becomes totally meaningless. She imagines she is at the convent where she was raised and partially remembers a discontinuous past: “Then in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time.” Memory is the Tyrones’ secret companion, which opens doors into their troubled past and wounds that would not heal. It is both a soothing and a tormenting ghost that cannot, unfortunately, save them from their personal tragedies. Aloisia Sorop

Orwell, Georgeâ•… Animal Farmâ•… (1945)

In 1945 Eric Arthur Blair published Animal Farm under the pseudonym George Orwell (a name he had used when posing as a tramp in order to see how the poorest of London’s inhabitants lived). A socialist critical of socialism, Orwell (1903–50) had fought in the Spanish civil war against Franco (where he survived a bullet through the neck), and had high hopes for the Russian Revolution in its early days. Animal Farm represents, among other things, his disappointment with the eventual realities of the Soviet Union, particularly under Stalin. Through the allegorical tale of a group of animals rebelling against their farmer and seizing control of the goods they produce, Orwell investigates and explicates the ways in which the implementation of a revolution can undermine and distort the principles from which that revolution originates. In Animal Farm, the animals agree to a set of maxims by which to live their lives and prosecute their revolution, surmounted by the principle of “all animals are equal.” Yet once their original plan of throwing off the shackles of servility to humanity is realized, their new utopian society quickly deviates from the high ideals by which it was established. In the name of efficiency and survival, many of the cruel practices and deprivations they had rebelled to escape are reimposed, and over time each of the seven maxims are slowly eroded, altered, or deleted, in order that the “official” version of the guiding

principles matches the behavior of the corrupt animals now governing the farm. This distortion and corruption comes to a final, ignoble end when the ultimate principle is found to read “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Michael Aiken

Community in Animal Farm

Notions of community constitute one of the driving themes in Animal Farm. The animals’ standard means of determining what course of action to take—a group meeting resolved by representative voting—shows a clear consciousness of shared community among the animals. Similarly, in condemning Jones (and later Snowball) to exile, they reveal the intrinsic value they place on being included in a community; to be driven out is to be all but erased from existence. The animals put a great deal of time and discussion into determining who should be included in their community and why, ultimately deciding that anything human is essentially alien, while all animals, even the wild rats and the shiftless, lazy cat are recognized as “friends.” This last point is perhaps the most fatal flaw of the Rebellion, as it leads them to determine who is worthy of their community by way of a generalization (“two legs bad”), glossing over the counterproductive behavior of individuals like the cat, qualified to remain simply because it has four legs. This flaw is particularly important as it undermines one of the rebellion’s principle concerns namely, that Jones is guilty because he “consumes without producing”: He does not contribute to the community he profits from. While this is the underlying crime by which he is judged unfit to remain, animals who consume without producing, such as the cat and the pigs, escape any recrimination because of the “two legs bad, four legs good” maxim, while the chickens and ducks, who make some of the greatest sacrifices for their community by selling their unborn eggs for the good of the farm, are subject to an undefined but pervading suspicion as a result of that same maxim. One of the overarching principles that guides the way the animals govern their farm, as also one of the key principles by which they judge Jones guilty,

Animal Farmâ•…â•… 851 is the responsibility of members of a community to that community. In the novel’s opening sequence, Jones symbolically fails the farm community when, in his drunkenness, he inadequately secures the chicken coop. The ramifications of this failure and the signal that it is symptomatic of Jones’s lack of value to the community are further spelled out by the fact that his sloppy security enables the chickens to escape that evening and thereby attend the meeting at which Old Major urges them to rebel against Jones. Similarly, the reasons why the farm animals as a whole admire community members like Boxer and hate ones like Moses are born of this principle. Mutual commitment between the community and its members is also one of the principles by which the animals’ rebellion can be judged a failure, for their governing council, the pigs, increasingly shirk responsibilities while enjoying ever more exclusive access to what luxuries the farm has to offer: milk, apples, beds, and alcohol. In the end, it is clear the animals are not living in any more of a genuine community than before Jones left; their exploitation by fellow animals, the lack of care for the workers shown by the pigs, and the imbalance in how “in common” the property of the farm is actually held all reveal that their project to institute a genuine community has failed. The Rebellion’s exclusion of humans from “all animals” is yet another betrayal of the concept of community, and by excluding some animals from their community, they doom it. Napoleon and his underlings are able to stoke fear of the exiles, as well as fear of exile itself, in order to manipulate and subjugate those remaining in the community. The animals’ unwillingness to treat humans civilly—lying to and manipulating Pilkington and Frederick regarding the wood, for example—further contribute to the downfall of Animal Farm. If they had been willing to interact honestly and with a sense of community, Pilkington might have helped repel Frederick; similarly, Frederick might never have attacked in the first place. Major asks that there be perfect unity among all the animals, yet if we apply such criteria to the farm post-Rebellion, it is clearly a failure. The theme of community is therefore one of the novel’s most complex, as it is the foundation and motivation of

the central event—the Rebellion—as well as the principle by which that rebellion is ultimately found wanting. Michael Aiken

Cruelty in Animal Farm

Acts of cruelty are not only a regular event in the lives of Animal Farm’s characters; the forms of cruelty they experience help to shape, guide, and punctuate their lives. Early in the novel, Old Major gives a speech in which he lists the cruelties to which the animals are subjected on a regular basis, including whippings, being worked to exhaustion, and minimal food and shelter. Many of these brutalities characterize their day-to-day lives, while some particularly awful events mark their birth (or not, as is the case of the many hens’ eggs removed by the farmer before they can grow to chicks) and death, as Old Major attests with his statement that their lives are brought to an early end when they are slaughtered with “hideous” cruelty. In Major’s speech, as in later speeches of the other pigs as well, the physical torture they suffer in order to produce the farm’s goods is implicitly linked to psychological and social (some might say “moral”) cruelties, specifically the fact that, at the end of their laborious days, the animals do not benefit from the abuses they endure—their suffering produces wealth they themselves are denied, thus perpetrating a further moral cruelty upon them. As noted, acts of cruelty not only punctuate the animals’ lives, serving as epoch-marking occasions (such as their slaughter), they also shape and at times precipitate the plot of the novel: While Major’s speech in large part insists things must change because of the injustice of the animals’ suffering and their exclusion from the fruits of that suffering, life goes on as cruelly as ever after his speech. It is not until the animals’ unnecessary starvation for an entire day—an act of cruelty exceptional even by the farm’s standards—that the animals finally bring themselves to rebel. This cruelty beyond endurance drives the animals to free themselves and break into the feed store. When the humans respond with more cruelty, whipping the animals to drive them off the food, the combination of abuses further galvanizes the animals to revolt, leading to their

852â•…â•… Orwell, George Â� successful attack on the farmer, Jones, and his wife and employees, all of whom they drive out. Despite the humans’ cruelty spurring the Rebellion, as well as the animals holding an end to cruelty as one of their rebellion’s greatest goals, it is not long before cruelty returns to the life of the farm. Napoleon, the lead pig and therefore the leader of the newly communal farm, removes the recently born dog pups from their parents, an unnecessary act that deprives them of a loving upbringing and denies the parents any relationship with their children. He then uses his position as their sole caregiver (and indeed sole contact) to distort the pups’ personalities such that they become cold-blooded killers obeying only his orders. In a related fashion, the pigs use their superior intellect to confuse and bewilder the other animals, specifically to assert control over them and, later, to exploit that control for unfair gain, as when they justify their exclusive access to luxury items like apples and milk with contrived arguments that the slower-witted animals cannot contest. Napoleon’s dogs go on to serve his government as instruments of control and oppression via physical cruelty, tearing out their victims’ throats as a means of punishment, terrorizing the other animals with physical intimidation, and psychologically torturing them through fear. The pigs go on to readopt many of the humans’ routine tortures, including reducing food to nearstarvation levels and working the animals to early graves with an ever-increasing workload. Toward the end of the novel, these cruelties culminate in gratuitous human practices such as the use of whips and the final “hideously cruel” slaughter of former “Animal Hero” Boxer, thus recreating the all-encompassing cruelty of the days before the Rebellion. Other acts that may be considered cruel in the book include the continual lying and deception on the part of the governing pigs, deceit that makes the animals suspicious of one another and traps them into more and more work for less and less food, the removal of the hens’ eggs (again a reinstatement from Jones’s era), and the final irony that the rule of the pigs is something the animals fought for in order to free themselves of humans and their cruelty. As the novel closes, the pigs are far closer to humans than to the other animals, who are more abused

than ever, while the neighboring farmers applaud the pigs for running the farm with more “efficiency” than ever before, very largely based on the systematic use of cruelty. Michael Aiken

Work in Animal Farm

Work is a daily event, a key determinant of one’s suffering or privilege and, by extension, the indicator of one’s societal worth in Animal Farm. It is also the factor driving specific events central to the plot and a recurring theme. Notions about work—whom it is required of and why, and for what purpose it is undertaken—directly inform the rationale for the Rebellion, and the failure to resolve conflicts associated with these notions after the successful establishment of the utopian Animal Farm serves to perpetuate the inequalities that gave rise to the Rebellion in the first place. Characters are typically introduced with a description of both their personality and their working function on the farm, such as Boxer’s “steadiness of character and tremendous powers of work.” Each animal’s capacity and willingness to perform work on the farm directly affects his or her prestige among the other animals, as illustrated by the total veneration with which Boxer is regarded, in contrast to the hatred felt for Moses because he “d[oes] no work” or the dismissal of the vacuous Mollie because her traditional role under Jones is simply to draw his trap on special outings. The exception to this principle, an exception that throughout the novel creates an uneasy tension due to its contradictory nature, is the position of the pigs: Never seen to do any work (before or after the Rebellion), they are nonetheless accorded the highest office, maintaining the governance of the farm, because of their greater intellectual capacities. Furthermore, the pigs allot themselves more and more food and contraband luxuries with the excuse that they do the “brain work” and are therefore more heavily taxed than other animals. The fact that this situation remains constant throughout the otherwise equitable Animal Farm’s existence is the source of some of the novel’s greatest riddles and conundrums, raising as it does questions regarding the quantification and qualification of

Nineteen Eighty-Fourâ•…â•… 853 “equal” contributions of work, the definition of work itself, and how the need for governmental acumen among the managers of a communal group can be satisfied in a climate of such concerns. The position of the pigs as nonworkers controlling a community wherein an ability to work is the measure of a citizen’s worth highlights the potential exploitation of the undereducated by the intelligentsia in any community, and this underscores the need to respect the diversity of skills a community must have in order to survive. This post-Rebellion exploitation also suggests a conflict between the goals of the original Rebellion—to escape the rule of those who consume without producing—and the fact that the prime instigators of that rebellion were not “workers” in the first place. The tension caused by the unethical status of privilege assumed by the pigs is also foreshadowed by the injustices of the relationship Jones bears to the animals prior to the Rebellion and the impetus that relationship gives to the Rebellion. The imbalance between the vast amount of work the animals contribute to the farm and the meager sustenance they receive from it compared with the minimal work Jones undertakes while accruing the wealth and control of the farm for himself is the key concern by which the animals justify their rebellion. Major’s charge against “man,” and Jones in particular, is that he “consumes without producing”—a statement that makes explicit the animals’ belief that to be part of their society and receive its support and sustenance, one must participate in work necessary to its maintenance. The implicit injustice of this situation becomes a governing concern defining the society the animals create, and it is a clear theme of their revolt that to reside in their community without working is a crime against that society. The pigs, however, breach this principle immediately; Napoleon entirely avoids the first work to be done following the Rebellion, the harvest of the hay, and thence onward the pigs never perform manual labor but simply supervise, putting themselves above the others in breach of the seventh precept of the Rebellion—“all animals are equal.” Just as this inequality quickly replicates the imbalance that existed between the animals and the humans during Jones’s time, so, too, do the pigs go on to adopt

ever more overtly human practices, learning to read and write and to make and use tools. This process of humanization—most notably the pigs’ avoidance of manual, animal work—segregates them from the other animals, exaggerating to the point of caricature the social segregation that inequitable divisions of labor create in a community. Michael Aiken

Orwell, Georgeâ•… Nineteen EightyFourâ•… (1949)

Nineteen Eighty-Four is the transcendent political novel of the 20th century. It remains relevant and enduring as a powerful condemnation of totalitarianism that proved to be extremely prescient for 1949. Many of Orwell’s prophecies became realities during the cold war in the Soviet Union and, some would argue, in the post-9/11 era in the United States. When Orwell conceived Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1944, the world was reeling from the devastation of World War II and would soon become entangled in the epic struggle of capitalism against communism that would characterize the cold war era. Nineteen Eighty-Four was a clarion call to Western societies still uncertain of how to deal with the communist threat, and an alarming number of their citizens found the tenets of communism credible and attractive. Orwell intended to write a story that would inform the public of the inherent evils of totalitarian societies. Orwell depicted Oceania as a utopian society where the totalitarian government controlled by the Party rules through fear and coercion, where even thoughts are monitored. Dissension and rebellion are not permitted, and those who speak against the government and the Party are branded as traitors and tortured without due process. The subjugation of individuality by the ruling Party for the “benefit” of society is a major theme of the novel. Winston Smith is locked in a constant struggle to retain some semblance of his individuality amid the omnipresence of the Party and Big Brother and in defiance of the propaganda machine meant to control the sycophantic loyalists who are ubiquitous in Oceania. Drew McLaughlin

854â•…â•… Orwell, George

Heroism in Nineteen Eighty-Four

Literature abounds with heroic archetypes. There are the mythological heroes of the Greeks and Romans, manipulative and domineering, and the heroes of American folklore such as Davy Crockett, pure in intent and devoid of self-interest. There are heroes crippled by their own humanity who must overcome their deepest failings to succeed. One of the most common heroic archetypes of literature is the reluctant hero, a person thrust into a situation not of his own choosing whose heroism arises when he is called upon to act, but who would much prefer to remain a spectator. Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s cautionary novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is one such hero. Winston Smith tries to be a loyal member of the Party, the ruling regime that controls Oceania in Nineteen Eighty-Four, but he is dogged by suspicions of corruption, lies, and rumors of torture. In his job at the Ministry of Truth, Winston’s job is to correct the historical record to ensure that the Party has never been wrong about anything in the past. The Party says that Oceania is allied with Eastasia against Eurasia, but Winston seems to recall a time when that was not true. He peddles lies from within the halls of the Ministry of Truth. Under the omnipotent eye of Big Brother and the omnipresent telescreens, his actions are constantly monitored, and his individuality extinguished. Free thought and romantic relationships have been banned. The Party has not only criminalized vocal dissension, but even thoughts against the government have been outlawed. These laws are enforced by the Thought Police. The Party has striven to eliminate any words of rebellion from the language itself and institutes a new language, Newspeak, which will make it impossible to voice opposition to the Party because those words will not exist. Winston begins to covertly rebel against these Party edicts and societal constraints. He discovers a diary in the prole district where he can record and catalogue his illegal political thoughts and his true feelings about the Party’s oppression. He repeatedly writes, “Down with Big Brother,” in his first entry. Calling for the downfall of the acknowledged symbol of the Party is the ultimate act of treason and an unpardonable offense in the eyes of the Party.

Winston fully expects the Thought Police to come to his door and arrest him at any minute. Winston’s hatred of the Party continues to fuel his rebellious actions, but with every heroic act, his fatalistic nature convinces him that capture, interrogation, and torture are inevitable. Winston’s crimes against the Party escalate in intention and scope. He starts an illicit affair with Julia, a dark-haired woman who works in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. These two heroes bring different motivations to their rebellious sexual relationship. Julia is a person committed to living in the present and concerned more with her own personal gratification than any large-scale revolution against the Party. Winston sees his actions as part of a larger scheme. He yearns to join the anti-Party movement led by the secret Brotherhood and to read Brotherhood founder Emmanuel Goldstein’s manifesto. He wants his rebellion to progress, despite the fact that he believes the pursuit to be hopeless. Winston’s rebellion culminates when he is indoctrinated into the Brotherhood by O’Brien, a powerful member of the Inner Party who represents himself to Winston as a leader of the revolutionary group to trap Winston in an undeniable disloyal action against the Party. Winston is arrested by the Thought Police in the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop when it is revealed that Charrington was a member of the Thought Police himself. His heroic stand against the Party does not stop with his arrest. He is subjected to brutal torture and isolation in the “room without darkness.” He clings to his love for Julia and is determined to codify his hatred of Big Brother until his death. Winston hopes that he can die a martyr with dignity, his loathing of the Party intact. He believes that to be a personal, albeit small, victory against the oppression of the Party in Oceania. Winston carries his pride and his reluctant heroism into Room 101, but he does not leave with it. O’Brien straps him into a chair and assures Winston that “the worst thing in the world” is in the room. He carries a cage teeming with filthy, ravenous rats over to Winston and dangles the cage inches from his face. O’Brien promises to release the rats and allow them to claw and eat Winston’s face unless he recants. Faced with his greatest primal fear,

Nineteen Eighty-Fourâ•…â•… 855 Winston breaks and pleads with O’Brien to torture Julia instead of him. Winston’s heroic rebellion may not survive the torment of Room 101, but it does not diminish his previous actions. He constantly rebelled against the omnipotent power of the Party, testing the limits of its power, even though, as he feared he would, he inevitably failed in his quest. Winston Smith is a heroic figure because he held true to his beliefs as far as he could carry them. He withstood excruciating pain and psychological torment but ultimately reached a breaking point. Nineteen Eighty-Four shows us that even the heroic can be crushed and manipulated by the unrestrained oppression of a totalitarian regime. Drew McLaughlin

Individual and Society in Nineteen Eighty-Four

The citizens of Oceania are subjugated under absolute despotism and suffer the unyielding gaze of Big Brother and the ever-present monitoring of the Thought Police. The Party controls everything. They control the past: The Ministry of Truth erases and rewrites history at will. Citizens are forbidden to keep any mementos or records of the past, which leaves them susceptible to accept the propaganda of the Party without a mechanism to question it. The Party’s political power and control is cemented in the present by its use of “historical fact” as literal truth that perpetuates the notion of the Party’s omnipotence and infallibility. They have indoctrinated the citizens of Oceania to believe that the world before the inception of the Party was plagued by famine, slavery, and deprivation. Thus, the Party liberated the human race and is an instrument of good in the world and in the lives of the citizens of Oceania. This past coerces submission to Party ideology and aspirations, and it precludes citizens from questioning the Party’s methods in the present. The Party makes sure of this through its allencompassing presence: And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted,

because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested. The Party controls the home as well. The Thought Police monitor a citizen’s sanctuary through telescreens that record everything that occurs in any given room. The slogan “Big Brother is everywhere” is a constant reminder to the citizenry. The Party even controls language and programs citizens to hold two contradictory ideas in their minds simultaneously. “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength” is its slogan. The acceptance of “doublethink,” such as this slogan, emerges after years of dilution and degradation of the individual human mind. It is merely another means of control. The Party also strives to create a language, Newspeak, which will eradicate all words that question or challenge it. Opposition to the Party will be nonexistent because the people will be unable to express it. The narrator explains Newspeak: The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc (English Socialism), but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words. The greatest weapon in a revolutionary’s arsenal is language. When language is removed, manipulated, or corrupted, revolution is inhibited and maybe even impossible. Would the American Revolution have survived without Thomas Paine’s Common Sense ? Oceania is a nation of suppressed individuality and therefore subdued rebellion. The Party understands that the seed of rebellion is individuality. Individuals will think. Individuals will question. Individuals will challenge. Individuals will overthrow. Removing all traces of individuality elicits submission and dependency. A citizen dependent on

856â•…â•… Orwell, George the Party will be unwilling to threaten or remove it. The Party permeates all aspects of Oceania society, a society that does not permit individual thought or expression. The novel’s main conflict is Winston Smith’s resistance to the Party’s fear and oppression, as well as his quest for individuality. Winston defies the Party’s rule through various illegal activities. He begins a diary in which he writes such thoughts as “Down with Big Brother.” He begins an illicit affair with Julia, a coworker at the Ministry of Truth who works in the Fiction Department. He seeks to be inducted into the Brotherhood, the secret society devoted to the downfall of Big Brother and the Party. His rebelliousness is only equaled by his unmitigated fatalism. As he willfully commits these illegal acts, he is adamant in his belief that he will be caught and tortured for his crimes. From the moment he puts individual thought to his diary until the moment a rendezvous with Julia at an antique store invites his arrest, Winston is unrelenting in his path toward his downfall. Winston is tortured for months until he is broken. His worst fears exploited, Julia abandoned, and his individualism eradicated, he is released back into society. He has accepted the brainwashing program and has become an unadulterated follower of Big Brother. His transformation is described: He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears tickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. The great casualty of the novel is Winston’s individualism. The Party does not take his life but removes his identity. He is assimilated into a society of ignorant loyalists at the expense of Winston Smith. Drew McLaughlin

Suffering in Nineteen Eighty-Four

The Party controls Oceania through fear and coercion. They manipulate the mind through propaganda peddled by the Ministry of Truth and indoctrinate citizens through torture inflicted by the Thought Police. Everyone is suspicious of everyone. Big Brother is always watching. Telescreens installed in party members’ homes allow the Party to be omnipresent. Suffering permeates George Orwell’s futuristic nightmare. Children are encouraged to turn their parents in to the Thought Police, the very words of rebellion are eliminated from the language and replaced by Newspeak, friendships are dangerous, and romantic relationships are forbidden. Independent thought is outlawed as well. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell envisions a totalitarian society where such primal human instincts and natural rights as thought and emotions are suppressed. There is nothing more insufferable to human nature than the absence of normal human contact. The novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, takes actions to counteract the suffering imposed by the Party. Smith begins to keep a personal diary in which he records all his illegal anti-Party suspicions and beliefs. He cultivates a friendship with O’Brien, who he suspects is a member of the Brotherhood, the organization devoted to the Party’s overthrow. Ultimately, Smith is indoctrinated into the Brotherhood, but more important, he embarks on an illicit affair with Julia. His love for her grows as his fatalistic conception of his destiny expands as well. Winston is adamant in his conviction that from the moment he first wrote “Down with Big Brother” in the diary, met O’Brien, and met Julia, he was doomed to be discovered by the Party, arrested, and probably tortured for thoughtcrime. His paranoia and fatalism prove correct. He is arrested by the Thought Police above Mr. Charrington’s shop, where he rented a room to carry on his affair with Julia. He soon learns that Charrington was a member of the Thought Police all along and that O’Brien was not a member of the Brotherhood but a Party operative of the Ministry of Love. Winston’s hatred and personal rebellion against the Party is a threat to its existence and must be

The Age of Reasonâ•…â•… 857 expunged; however, it is insufficient for him to be converted back for expediency. He must refute his criminal past, accept the Party, and love Big Brother. The Party’s impositions of psychological suffering and manipulation have failed to produce a Party loyalist in Winston, so O’Brien has no recourse but to resort to physical pain and torment. Winston is therefore imprisoned in a “place where there is no darkness.” O’Brien oversees the extended torture sessions where Winston is beaten mercilessly. He tells Winston that torture is the only way to cure him of his mistaken independent ideology. Still defiant, Winston continues to hate Big Brother and remain true to Julia, held captive in the Ministry of Love as well. After a brief respite from the torturous pain, O’Brien takes Winston into the dreaded Room 101, where “the worst thing in the world awaits” him. This is the final stop for Winston. He believes he will be killed in this room, but he hopes he will die still clutching his hatred of Big Brother and his love for Julia, thereby securing a modest victory over the ruling Party. He is strapped to a chair. O’Brien carries a cage filled with bloodthirsty, flesh-eating rats, Winston’s greatest fear. O’Brien cradles the cage just inches from Winston’s face, promising to unleash them and allow them to satisfy their hunger with his flesh. Unable to do more than squirm, Winston cracks and pleads with O’Brien to torture Julia instead. He betrays his love in the interest of self-preservation, but his betrayal is the key to his freedom. Broken and despondent, he is no longer regarded as a threat by the Party. When Winston meets Julia again after their release, they confess their mutual betrayals of one another. Julia says to Winston: And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.

This is the Party’s ultimate victory over the individual. Even the bonds of love will be discarded when the prisoner is subjected to physical pain. The Party controls not only the mind but the body as well, and control of one leads to control of the other. Psychological manipulation is enhanced by the prospect of suffering, torture, and even death. An individual will ultimately surrender independence by acting in his or her own best interest. Suffering is wielded as a control mechanism in this novel, the supreme weapon of indoctrination and subjugation. Winston Smith’s torture in Room 101 has eliminated any rebellious instinct. He accepts the Party and unapologetically loves Big Brother. The suffering inflicted upon him in Room 101 has wrought another casualty in the Party’s continual war of control and its regime of oppression. Drew McLaughlin

Paine, Thomasâ•… The Age of Reasonâ•… (1794, 1795, 1807)

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was a prominent writer during the American Revolution who believed ardently that “common” men—not monarchs—held the right to rule their lives. In his essay “The Age of Reason,” Paine takes his revolutionary ideas regarding politics and applies them to religion. Just as he does not believe that a single individual should be able to dictate the masses’ governmental structure, he also does not believe that one man, such as a pope or a king, should exercise arbitrary authority over a specific religion’s followers. Because of his open criticism of Christianity in The Age of Reason, Paine was often accused of being an atheist. In fact, his popularity in America waned drastically after the pamphlet’s publication. Many American citizens viewed his criticism of organized religion as a direct attack on spiritual tenets they regarded as integral parts of their society, and thus they were severely offended. However, for a clear reading of Paine’s essay, it is important to note that he was a deist, not an atheist. Deists believe that one supreme God created the universe and that religious truths can be gleaned through the use of reason and through a constant scrutiny of their surrounding natural world. Unlike

858â•…â•… Paine, Thomas most world religions, deists do not believe that God plays a role in the daily lives of humans; rather, God created the world and merely “watches” it in motion. Paine’s The Age of Reason applies a critical lens to many of the accepted doctrines of Christian religion. In his exploration, he addresses such themes as religion, the individual and society, freedom, ethics, nationalism, and spirituality. LuElla Putnam

Ethics in The Age of Reason

Thomas Paine wrote the first section of The Age of Reason after the execution of Louis xvi during the French Revolution. Although he was originally a supporter of the Revolution, he did not believe that the bloodshed enacted in that case was fair. Paine was afraid that because of the revolutionaries’ extremism, France would become a country of atheists. He felt that well-reasoned and therefore ethical decision making was vanishing from the Revolution, and that it was his duty to bring about its return. Paine wanted to ensure that “in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology” in France, the countrymen there did not “lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of theology that is true.” Because of his ties with the American Revolution, Paine also desired for his writing to reach and affect the new American nation as well. As a deist in particular, he felt it was his mission to oppose what he believed to be the false belief systems most of humankind seemed to uphold. It was his sincere hope that “man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.” Paine did not believe that the world’s religions had any use; rather, he wished to topple them and for man to begin finding God through the use of his own mind. Obviously, then, Paine did not want any man to base his morality on books or on stories that had been passed down to him. In fact, in “The Age of Reason,” he openly admonishes this type of “passed on” thinking, which he sees as perpetuating religion. He writes that most of the men who believe in religion “were educated to believe it” and “would have believed anything else in the same manner.” In other words, these men were not employing their own

critical skills of analysis to understand what the best way to act in a particular situation would be; rather, they were merely accepting what others told them and were relying on belief and trust alone to render ethical judgments. Paine goes so far as to say that the Christian faith “professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism with but little deism.” To Paine, reliance on stories passed down through men is a type of “atheism,” or, as he terms it, “man-ism.” There is no “real” spiritual truth in these stories, only a faith that what other men have said is accurate. To Paine, this refusal to use reason to generate one’s ethical opinions is ludicrous, especially since there are so many logical ways to understand the universe and God’s will. Paine writes: “It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite.” By “creation,” he means the physical world surrounding humankind, in which he believes all answers about God can be found. God’s wisdom can be found in the order the natural world possesses. His mercy can be seen in allowing all humans to experience nature, and his power can be seen in the sheer vastness of his creation. Through the application of one’s own reason, man can find all of the answers he needs about life. Therefore, ultimately, Paine believes that reason and ethics are synonymous. He also argues that, since he can best see God in the reasoned structure of the natural world, then science provides the most logical venue through which to understand the Creator’s desires. He states: “That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science . . . is the study of the works of God . . . and is the true theology.” In Paine’s mind, science is not an antithesis to religion, but it is religion. Hence, men should take the logical principles that are the basis of science and use them in their own lives. He adds, “It would . . . be ignorance, or something worse, to say that the scientific principles, by the aid of which man is enabled to calculate and foreknow when an eclipse will take place, are an human invention.” In other words, an eclipse is the physical manifestation of God. Humans did not create it; God did. Accordingly, through their use of reason to understand science, humans can better understand

The Age of Reasonâ•…â•… 859 the mind of God. Science and religion do not fight against each another in this scenario but, instead, complement each other. Paine contends that God, through offering humankind the application of reason, provides them with obvious, ethical guidelines to follow in their everyday lives. LuElla Putnam

Individual and Society in The Age of Reason

Throughout Thomas Paine’s essay The Age of Reason, there is a pervading sense of the writer’s distrust of society as a whole. The text begins by emphasizing the author’s personal viewpoints. Chapter 1 is actually entitled “The Author’s Profession of Faith,” and in it, Paine discusses how he thinks his own beliefs can render a far-reaching impact on the world around him. He openly proclaims that his reason-based beliefs are in direct opposition to the core tenets of the world’s current primary religions. He declares, “My own mind is my own church,” indicating that he is setting himself apart from the institutions that the majority of the general public turns to when seeking moral authority. Paine even goes so far as to say that “All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit.” Thus, it is his purpose in “The Age of Reason” to release the hold he believes various religions possess over the general populace. He desires to replace the “myths” of religion with the hard “facts” of reason. One tactic Paine employs to set himself apart as a free thinker is his logical deconstruction of the ideas of “missions and revelations” upon which many religious institutions were founded. In most world religions, God makes himself known to individuals called prophets and reveals his mind to them. Those prophets will write down what they have observed and, accordingly, pass their knowledge on to others. Paine finds this methodology suspect, arguing that “It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand.” Here, he is again emphasizing the significance of individuality. He does not believe that one should ever rely on the facts others impart to him. On the

contrary, truth can only be gleaned if one can see it for him or herself. One of the most controversial examples Paine provides about the inability of men to trust their brethren involves the Virgin Mary. He asserts, “When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man; and that her betrothed husband Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it.” At this point, he is calling into question the foundation of the Christian religion. Essentially, he is saying that others have attempted to convince him that Jesus is the son of God, but as he has no proof for himself, then he has made the conscious decision not believe it. His individual reasoning has thus superseded hundreds of years of church doctrine. Generally, Paine believes that to serve God, then one must serve reason first. Otherwise, one is detracting from the most valuable gift God has provided to mankind. In “The Age of Reason,” an individual’s personal knowledge is heightened to such a level that the opinions of others are of almost no consequence. Finally, it is vital to point out that, beyond Paine’s blatant attack on Christianity, his writing was also seen as controversial by many of those in power because of its plain, easily comprehensible language. As a primary activist during the American Revolution, Paine believed that all men had the ability to use reason to find and know God. One did not have to be a prophet or high church member to understand the inner workings of God; one merely had to use the reason with which he had been bestowed from birth. Thus, rather than using a convoluted poetic style, Paine’s writing is clear to nearly all readers. It is not surprising that this emphasis on the common man was frowned on by many of those in power. In fact, prior to Paine’s writing, most of the concepts he was presenting were only in circulation to a privileged, elite class of white men. Paine, however, actually concluded his work by saying, “When opinions are free, either in matters of government or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.” Ultimately, he held the belief that all men, no matter their economic or social standings,

860â•…â•… Paine, Thomas should utilize their individual abilities for reason in order to understand and contend with the accepted expectations society had undoubtedly forced on them from birth. LuElla Putnam

Justice in The Age of Reason

According to Thomas Paine, the Christian view of the Bible is unjust toward both the Creator and humankind. Once, as Christians see it, wrote Thomas Paine, God revealed certain historical events only to certain persons, who then set down as his word the events they had seen, and also the ways those revelations had appeared to them; these people’s writings should be accepted as the only word of God. As Christians see things, according to Paine, it does not matter that many essential parts of these tales are borrowed from the non-Christian world; the different times and circumstances in which they were written do not matter, either, and it does not matter how the tales were collected into a book. What gets lost and added while translating them into contemporary languages does not matter; neither does the highly imaginative way the stories themselves are put, nor one’s own personal view of them. According to Paine, Christian churches dictate that the Bible should only be read as a historical record dictated directly to individual persons by God himself, and whoever reads the Bible that way and does not then accept what its words claim is either an infidel or a heretic and, depending on the time and place, maybe a criminal too. In Paine’s opinion, the Christian churches use their most important text, the Bible, to interpret the relationship between God and a single person, in the same spirit in which modern political states use their most important text, a constitution, to interpret the relationship between one person and another person. To him, that spirit is called Unreason. Paine saw things like this: The state is going to assume that its citizens will act unreasonably toward each other, and more often than they do already, if the state does not threaten them with punishments, which they did not personally agree to in advance, under laws they might not even know about; and in the meantime, those citizens have handed over their political liberty in trust to that state, as a

guarantee of their rights against any violation of them by their fellow citizens. Paine believed that the state assumes its citizens quite naturally desire to harm each other, and he accepted such pessimism, because it can be influenced in this direction or that by political or, at least, worldly means. But as Paine had it, the Christian church assumes in the same way that God sees members of humankind as treating each other with the very same selfishness and ill will, even when the state’s dictates subside for a moment and we are left to ourselves in silence; and so God has breathed his word into them, that they may have orders to follow even then. According to either the modern state or the Christian church, Paine felt, humankind falls into error when not directed and threatened from above; and the result to him was that any person who is not watching another with the modern state’s eyes is watching with the Christian God’s. Belief in the Christian God is unjust because it puts evil on a par with the Creator, outside and opposite, rather than as part of the Creator, wrote Paine; and it is unjust because it takes the senses and imagination and heart out of the Creator’s relationship with humans—takes all of the Creation out. Paine argued that it is reasonable and just to believe instead in that Creator whose word reveals itself to all humankind equally via the five senses and the heart and the imagination and the intellect, constantly, rather than only in a few people’s interpretation of a single book. In its day, this belief was called deism. The known means and ends of justice, law, statecraft, and religion were all outlawed during the Reign of Terror in France, and all the French royals, aristocrats, and clergymen were arrested, given show trials, and guillotined publicly. Paine wrote as an Englishman living under suspicion there at that time, and many of his friends were dying this way. In his pamphlet, he claims to show the mistakes the church and state have made in the past, and he wants to prevent the same ones from being made again there, where he is living, if nowhere else. Finally, he remarks that he had finished writing the first half of The Age of Reason just before being arrested himself, for being a foreigner. George Noonan

Common Senseâ•…â•… 861

Paine, Thomasâ•… Common Senseâ•… (1776)

Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine during the American Revolution. Widely regarded as the most important pamphlet of its time, it inspired the American people to make a stand for their own independence and fight against tyranny. It also helped shift the mood from reconciliation with Great Britain to a total break, which many colonists welcomed and others feared. The pamphlet is divided into four sections. Like many fellow Enlightenment thinkers, Paine is interested in tracing the origin of society in order to determine answers to current political situations. He first suggests that there is a natural tendency for human beings to gather together for the purpose of survival. Then, because of the abuse of political powers, the monarchy’s hereditary succession is validated and becomes the seed of all political evils. To remedy it, Paine advocates that everyone participate in general affairs for the betterment of the society. He sees the American people as being under the yoke of British rule and therefore lacking the ability to make decisions for themselves. It is obvious that he wants not only an independent country but also a society whose members can think freely and develop a strong sense of community. After all, this is only “commonsensical.” Reading through the pamphlet, one will discover that this is by no means just an “instruction manual” on how to win the war. Rather, it is filled with Enlightenment principles that aim at creating a fair government and an independent mind. Huang-Hua Chen

Community in Common Sense

Where does community start and end? What does it include and exclude? What does it mean when we say “a sense of community”? These seem to be the questions that Thomas Paine grapples with when trying to imagine an American nation. At times, he wants to include everyone; but other times, he urges a severance from the British monarchy, likening Britain to “brutes” that “devour” their young. While he wants to raise a sense of pride by emphasizing the colonies’ uniqueness, he also constantly refers to Europe as the cultural origin and seeks to establish

a cosmopolitan community. In a sense, community unites and divides, as one can easily observe from the two opposite directions that Paine’s political pamphlet takes on: It calls for a civil society based on “common sense,” yet it does so by distinguishing between friends and foes. The difficulty that Paine faces probably derives from the definition of community, as it can extend to so many different social groups. He himself gives an interesting observation in the section entitled “Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs” that people will naturally associate with those around them despite different backgrounds or nationalities. Later, when discussing the Continental Charter, he seems to favor local representatives from each region. Paine clearly tries to establish this line of thinking right from the beginning: He begins the pamphlet by positing that the origin of society starts with geographical isolation. He then states that “in this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought.” Community, in this sense, suggests a common geographical background. Therefore, people from the same area should understand each other, as it is “common sense” for them to cooperate with each other. It is not difficult to see how this argument is effective during the time of the American War of Independence. Paine’s sense of community is not limited to geographical differences. At the beginning of the work, he identifies two kinds of communities: the society and government. The former unites people’s affection, whereas the latter often becomes the source of evil; Paine supplies brutal examples of the British monarchy. His sense of community, therefore, has to be a project of affection, as he continues to emphasize the fact that people identify with each other based on moral imperatives, not calculating self-interest or a nationalist agenda. He states that “thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessing of which would supercede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other.” For Paine, it is almost an obligation that people form communities based on the European Enlightenment principles of freedom, reason, and independence.

862â•…â•… Paine, Thomas As a result, Paine’s sense of community operates on another level; that is, his pleas of “common sense” have to extend to everyone who shares the values of the Enlightenment. In this sense, the community is a cosmopolitan one, and everyone who possesses the same feeling is automatically in the same community. Like many of his fellow 18th-century thinkers, Paine embraces the Enlightenment spirit. Enlightenment, as they understand it, is a process of personal maturity from self-incurred slavery to being one’s own master. But this personal enlightenment cannot be achieved unless the individual can take the public into account. In other words, one has to be morally responsible for the good of humankind. Thus, for Paine, the colonies’ struggle against the British rule is no longer just a petty, local grudge between the colonies and England; it is a matter of moral imperative. One can see clearly that Paine’s use of language—pleas, protests, solicitations, exclamations— seeks a broader audience on the basis of affection. At one point, his passion overtakes his calm demeanor, and he accuses those who stand by silently of having “the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.” He seems to suggest that one’s freedom is never just one’s own, and the inability to be enlightened will “bring ruin upon posterity” and turn the current situation with England into a “relapse more wretched than the first.” Perhaps this is what Paine’s concept of community is really about: Though contradicted at times, what he really wants is a sense of self that is always based on the welfare of all. Huang-Hua Chen

Freedom in Common Sense

In his essay “What is Enlightenment?,” the 18thcentury German philosopher Immanuel Kant says that human beings must take the initial responsibility to free themselves from dependence on authority. But this awareness of one’s freedom is never just alone; it always accompanies a sense of collectivity. For Kant, one is free only when one takes into consideration the collective inability of men to free themselves from immaturity that one is truly enlightened. Such is the historical condition that produces the overarching theme of freedom in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

Paine’s arguments reflect several Enlightenment ideals. In the section entitled “Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession,” for example, he argues that there is no original inequality among human beings. It is only after the concept of king is introduced that “oppressions” and “wars” begin. Paine shares with his fellow Enlightenment thinkers similar views on the vice of the government in restraining personal freedom and promoting corruption. For instance, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau talks extensively about the initial natural status of humankind and the subsequent inequality and corruption of human nature. This idea of natural rights was prevalent in the 18th century, and it becomes the foundation of Paine’s freedom. From this point of view, therefore, it is only “reasonable” to assume one’s own natural rights. Paine goes one step further. Without these rights, one is subject to the harsh rule of the monarchial system because it will only think for its own self-interest. He attacks the English monarch for being an enemy to liberty and for discovering such a desire for power at all costs. Only a civil society where the freedom of electing one’s representative is enforced makes sure that common welfare is promoted. Paine advocates the idea of a representative political system in Common Sense. He talks about forming a constitution that would protect civil liberty without political encroachment. For him, independence means making our own laws, and the ideal manifestation would be a republic. As a result, he says, “a government of our own is our natural right: And when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner.” But this is not the only reason for Paine to go against harsh rules of the monarchy. To submit to the rule of the king means to forfeit one’s own enlightenment, to go against the reasonable faculties that have been bestowed on us. Like Kant, Paine thinks this is by no means self-determining; rather, it is a form of laziness that hinders one from attaining true enlightenment. When attacking the idea of the monarch and the hereditary succession, Paine says that “as the first is a degradation and lessen-

Common Senseâ•…â•… 863 ing of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity.” His argument is twofold: While dependence on authority is a sign of “self-incurred immaturity” (the converse of Kant’s definition of Enlightenment) and therefore results in the lack of freedom, it will also affect the society as a whole, including its posterity. Paine sees personal enlightenment not only as the way to collective freedom but also as an ethical exigency. That is why his Common Sense constantly resorts to this moral imperative and seeks to bring forth a sense of communal feeling. For example, he ends the section on “Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs” with a passionate passage: O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind. Paine firmly believes that freedom is not only the way to a strong republic, but the beginning to a strong global community. This aspect of moral responsibility to the whole of humankind as derived from personal freedom is, perhaps, always at the core of his concept of freedom. Huang-Hua Chen

Oppression in Common Sense

Too often when people mention oppression, they think of political, cultural, and economic exploitation. It is true that Thomas Paine had these in mind when he wrote Common Sense. However, he not only prescribes remedies for these symptoms of oppression, he also describes a collective inability to fight against injustice and to seek out the root of the dearth of “common sense” he sees in his world. It was natural for most Enlightenment thinkers to trace their ideas back to the origin of political oppression. They would imagine a scenario of the first man, then the formation of society, and the

subsequent rise of the monarchy. Paine suggests that a communal sense of society is the most natural form of human congregation, whereas government is usually created out of the necessity for evil. He spends a whole section on the problem of monarchy and hereditary succession because it is the reason why the American people have to endure the British rule. Here, Paine points out two important thoughts about oppression. First, political oppression is usually without a legitimate foundation; therefore, people have the right to overthrow the government. Second, it is by allowing oneself to be quiet and defenseless that the root of the evil is able to prevail. In other words, there is a collective unwillingness to oppose what is unjust and illegitimate. For Paine, it is obvious that the American people are under the oppression of the British monarch. He does not hesitate to point out right from the beginning that in light of their long and violent abuse of power, the British monarchs have oppressed the American people. The more important question, however, is why Americans should fight this oppression and how they should go about doing that. The later sections of Common Sense are devoted to explaining why the American people should first fight the delusion that the British are their friends; for example, he suggests that the colonists still depend on the protection of Great Britain and do not have the courage to break away from what is servitude. He says that the British monarchy is only interested in protecting its own interest, not that of the colonies. Indeed, while there is an implicit familial link between Great Britain and the colonies, the American people should be able to learn to stand on their own and not succumb to tyranny. It is this ability to be independent that helps one tell tyranny from lawful rule. At the end, oppression for Paine is never just a matter of monarchial abuse of power; it is a result of a lack of checks and balances. In this sense, Common Sense serves as a cautionary tale that shows what would happen if one fails to be one’s own master. At the same time, it also offers hope for those who are silenced. Just as the title suggests, if it is commonsensical to fight against tyranny and oppression, it is also a wish that “common sense” exists in everyone. Huang-Hua Chen

864â•…â•… Paton, Alan

Paton, Alanâ•… Cry, the Beloved Countryâ•… (1948)

Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country is a tale set in pre-apartheid South Africa, where an informal, social segregation precedes the more famous formalized institution of apartheid. The novel follows a black priest, Stephen Kumalo, on his journey to the great city of Johannesburg as he searches for his long-lost family members. Kumalo’s journey is not a happy one as he finds his sister living in squalor, raising a child on her own. His brother, John, is a rich civil rights activist whose selfishness and lack of piety are contrary to Stephen’s gentler, devout nature. Worst of all, he eventually discovers that his son, Absalom, is under arrest for the murder of Arthur Jarvis, a white activist who sympathized heavily with the native struggle for equality. Due to a chance happening, Kumalo meets James Jarvis, the father of the man killed by Absalom. In a powerful scene, the ashamed Kumalo is unable to even stand upon seeing the man whom his son caused so much pain. Sadly, Absalom is sentenced to death, whereas his coconspirators are set free. However, the shared suffering of Kumalo and James Jarvis leads to an unlikely friendship. Jarvis donates water, supplies, and training to the people of Kumalo’s small, struggling village, vastly improving the quality of life for the poor black natives. This tale is important in that it highlights the suffering and struggle of a nation divided racially, culturally, and economically. The native tribal structure has been destroyed, and a capitalist system has been imposed on the country. There is rampant crime, widespread poverty, and economic inequality. However, the story ends on a hopeful note, as Paton uses Kumalo and Jarvis to demonstrate the notion that all South Africans must selflessly work together and improve the state of their nation. Kevin Fitzgerald

Family in Cry, the Beloved Country

Throughout Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, the theme of family takes a central role in the narrative, best exhibited through the Kumalo and Jarvis families. While Kumalo and Jarvis have strong ideas of family that are tied to loyalty and love, other characters, such as John Kumalo, shun the traditional

notion of family loyalty if that shunning results in personal gain. The idea of the family seems to be in peril throughout the novel, as characters like Kumalo are faced with alienated kin, a disintegrating tribal structure, and a society that is not conducive to traditional family values. Of course, the most prominent display of this theme is the relationship between Kumalo and his immediate family. Kumalo is already sad that he has lost touch with many of his family members following their migration to Johannesburg. His brother, sister, and son have all moved from his small tribal village to search for a new livelihood in the great city. One day, he receives a letter from a fellow priest, stating that his sister, Gertrude, is in grave danger. He decides to make the journey to Johannesburg and attempt to save his sister; he also decides that he will attempt to locate the rest of his family while he is there. When Kumalo arrives at Johannesburg, he finds that Gertrude has spent time in prison for prostitution and has mothered a child out of wedlock. He is quick to help her and save the child from a life of crime and poverty. A strong notion of family surfaces, as Kumalo is quick to love the child, despite not even previously knowing of his existence. Also, he is willing to take his sister and nephew to his village of Ndotsheni and care for them. Gertrude seems to genuinely want to change her ways and repent for her sins. However, she runs off the day before returning to the village, leaving behind her son, whom Kumalo decides to keep. After finding his sister, Kumalo has another unpleasant experience with his brother. Initially, he is enthused to discover that John has gained fame as a politician and speaker. However, he is saddened to discover that John has renounced the Catholic Church, finding its teachings ineffective. While proud of his brother’s great influence, Kumalo is upset that he would deny his religion. There is a small sense of betrayal in Kumalo, which is only to be mirrored by John Jr.’s future betrayal of Absalom. Kumalo’s final encounter with a family member is by far his most trying. He embarks on a long and mysterious search for his son that leads him to Shanty Town, where he finds his son’s girlfriend, who is pregnant. He also discovers that Absalom

Cry, the Beloved Country â•…â•… 865 has spent time in a reform school and has recently disappeared. During his disappearance, it is revealed that Absalom, John Kumalo Jr., and another friend were involved in a burglary that ended in the death of a white man, Arthur Jarvis. Absalom and his cohorts are in jail, awaiting their sentences. One of Kumalo’s first acts is to wed Absalom to his girlfriend. As a result, the girlfriend officially becomes family and receives Kumalo’s protection and care. He eventually allows the girl and her future child to stay at Ndotsheni with him and treats them like his own children. Absalom, however, is beyond saving; Despite the efforts of a skilled lawyer, he is sentenced to death. The greatest disappointment during the course of the trial is that Absalom is betrayed by his cousin and friend, who say that they are blameless in the crime. John Kumalo hires a separate, high-powered lawyer to represent his son and incriminate Absalom. John and John Jr.’s betrayal of Absalom counter all the noble characteristics of family that Kumalo embodies. While Kumalo is able to undergo suffering and inconvenience for his family members, John is willing to betray them in order to preserve his own interests. Of course, a full treatment of family in the novel would not be complete without examining the relationship between Jarvis and his son, Arthur. Jarvis, the rich white planter, is somewhat of a foil to Kumalo. Like Kumalo, Jarvis loses a son—ironically, killed at the hands of Absalom. Also, like Kumalo, Jarvis is willing to adopt and care for his son’s wife and child. Both characters are put in a similar position in which they must care for the offspring of their deceased or estranged kin. This parallel situation eventually allows for friendship and respect to emerge between the two characters, leading to Jarvis’s acts of philanthropy to Kumalo’s village. The notion of family is a central theme of Cry, the Beloved Country. Throughout the novel, the family is threatened by migration to the city, crime, and self-centered aims. As a character, Kumalo embodies the traditional familial notions of loyalty, respect, sacrifice, and love and rejects those newer notions that threaten the traditional incarnation of the family. It can even be argued that the erosion of the family mirrors the breakdown of the traditional

small-village tribal structure to which Kumalo is accustomed. More than anything, it appears to be the corruption of the city that challenges the very existence of the family. Kevin Fitzgerald

Race in Cry, the Beloved Country

Of all the themes illuminated and treated in Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, race is unquestionably at the heart of the novel. It is discussed openly and publicly by activists and political figures like John Kumalo and Arthur Jarvis, and talked about privately by almost every character in the novel. Whether it is the constant turmoil regarding South Africa’s unstable and inequitable economic system or the racial contexts and dialogue provoked by the murder of Arthur Jarvis, almost every occurrence and action in the book has race at its center. The novel takes place before the institution of apartheid formalized and required segregation in South Africa in 1948. However, in the absence of state-imposed apartheid, Paton presents an informal and cultural segregation that divides the country. In the countryside, Stephen Kumalo’s village is inhabited almost entirely by black South Africans, whereas the wealthy whites live in grand houses on hills, overlooking the impoverished and droughtruined town. In the city, the rich white areas are almost absent, the focus resting on the poor shanty towns and crime-ridden neighborhoods inhabited by black residents. Rarely, with a few notable exceptions, is there any real, tangible interaction between white and black South Africans. Of course, the most apparent and explosive racial issue is Absalom Kumalo’s murder of Arthur Jarvis. The crime is not simply referred to as a “murder” or a killing, but rather the “killing of a white man.” Its heinousness is not in the act of ending a person’s life; rather, the real issue is the murder of a white man by a black man. The problem is further agitated due to the fact that Jarvis is a famous activist and spokesman for sympathy and reform in racial policies. Jarvis preached tolerance and social reform, often sympathizing with the poor black majority of the population. In his writings, Jarvis targets imperialism and the imposition of European social systems as the key factor in the prevalence of native

866â•…â•… Paton, Alan crime. He writes, “The old tribal system was, for all its violence and savagery, for all its superstition and witchcraft, a moral system. Our natives today produce criminals and prostitutes and drunkards, not because it is their nature to do so, but because their simple system of order and tradition .  .  . has been destroyed.” Clearly, Jarvis finds blame not in a native tendency toward crime but, rather, as a violent reaction to the colonial system that has ravaged the country’s traditional tribal structure. It is Jarvis’s support of the natives and their economic struggle that makes his murder, to white South Africans, even more despicable. The sadness and ultimately the irony of the situation is that Jarvis’s support and theories seem to go unanswered, both by the whites in power and the natives in poverty. Jarvis, however, is not the only politician and activist in the novel who focuses primarily on race. John Kumalo, brother of Stephen, is a powerful figure in the black politics of the time. He is known as an explosive and charismatic speaker who desires social and economic change for his struggling brethren. His primary concern involving race is the economic inequality that faces black South Africans. In a vivid speech, he says, “Go to our hospitals . . . and see our people lying on the floors. They lie so close you cannot step over them. But it is they who dig the gold. For three schillings a day . . . And when gold is not found it is we who get more labour.” For Kumalo, the racial struggle is most aptly demonstrated in the workplace, where scores of men, young and old, toil in the white-owned mines for a paltry salary. The whites provide the land and means of mining, and the blacks are forced to do the hard labor. This system has caused a huge gap between the wealthy and the working class, resulting in a rich white elite and a poor black majority. The irony, of course, is that while John appears to be a selfless worker for the people, he is, in fact, incredibly selfish. When Absalom’s murder case commences, John does not join the fight against the injustice of the court systems or the way in which race has influenced the media coverage. Rather, he is concerned only with the safety and acquittal of his son, an accomplice in the crime. The characters of Arthur Jarvis and John Kumalo highlight the tension that festers between the

white and black residents of South Africa. Absalom Kumalo’s crime and the bus boycott show the importance of race in the country’s media, politics, and workplaces. However, the book’s message is simple and clearly stated by Msimangu, who says, “I see only one hope for our country, and it is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good of our country, come together and work for it.” This dream scenario is at least begun in the end of the novel, as Stephen Kumalo and James Jarvis selflessly work together for the good of Kumalo’s village. The intertwining stories of Kumalo and Jarvis show that even in the face of great tragedy, loss, and injustice, hope and brotherhood can emerge. Kevin Fitzgerald

Suffering in Cry, the Beloved Country

The opening words of each book in Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country are identical. The passages describe a trail up South Africa’s rolling hills and fair valleys, into the small village of Ndotsheni, where the landscape undergoes a drastic change. The lush green grass and chirping birds are replaced with a barren, dusty terrain, afflicted by drought and overgrazing. The reader’s first glimpse of South Africa reveals a physical landscape that is suffering, unable to reach its full potential and beauty. The very title of the novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, suggests a nation that is in pain. The suffering of South Africa itself is mirrored by that of its inhabitants. Stephen Kumalo, the local priest (or umfundisi) in Ndotsheni, gazes helplessly as his village decays. Kumalo watches the land wither, just as he sees countless inhabitants, including his own family, leave for the great city of Johannesburg. This mass migration into the city represents, to Kumalo, the breakdown of the old tribal structure, or, more important, the erosion of the familial relationships that were the hallmarks of the town. And worst of all for the umfundisi, when people leave for Johannesburg, they do not write. Kumalo’s sister, brother, and son all left for the city, and each stopped writing home. One day, however, Kumalo receives a letter from Johannesburg regarding his sister. It is from a fellow priest who urges the umfundisi to travel to the city

Six Characters in Search of an Authorâ•…â•… 867 and tend to his sibling. Kumalo’s arrival at Johannesburg reveals a city that suffers from overcrowding, just as Ndotsheni suffers from overgrazing. People with large families rent out spare rooms just to pay the bills. Those with no place to live form Shanty Town, a small, makeshift settlement built of corrugated iron and scrap metal. Thieves and vagabonds move from house to house until their landlords evict them for their illegal practices. The city’s space is overcrowded with people, just as Ndotsheni’s land suffers from an overabundance of livestock. Kumalo’s lingering suffering is only amplified when he learns the fate of his family members. He soon discovers that his sister Gertrude had become rich in the illegal liquor business. Having lost her wealth, she essentially prostitutes herself while raising a son. Kumalo’s brother, John, has risen to power and wealth as a politician but has turned his back on the church. Kumalo is saddened to hear of his sister’s transgressions and his brother’s rebellion against religion. Learning of his family’s ventures in Johannesburg only amplifies the suffering that Kumalo feels for his people. However, the umfundisi does not experience his greatest suffering until he learns the fate of his son, Absalom. After days of fruitless searching and dead ends, Kumalo eventually discovers that his son became a thief, preying on the city’s rich white households. During a routine robbery, Absalom becomes frightened and shoots a young white man. He is caught by the police and eventually found guilty of murder. The young man is sentenced to death, leaving behind his pregnant wife. Kumalo’s suffering is especially bitter because the man Absalom killed was the son of a rich white man who lives not far from Ndotsheni. His suffering is so great that during a chance encounter with the man’s father, James Jarvis, Kumalo falls to the ground, incapable of movement or speech. It is also important to consider the suffering of the others involved in the murder. Absalom is perhaps the one who suffers most, considering that his sentence is death. Furthermore, his accomplices, Johannes and Matthew (his cousin), deny any part in the murder and are acquitted of all charges. Absalom is left to suffer imprisonment and hanging alone, without even the companionship of his closest

friends. Also, there is the suffering of Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis, who must endure the horrible fate of outliving their progeny. Mrs. Jarvis is so grief-stricken that her eventual death may be blamed on a “broken heart.” The outcomes of these sufferings, however, are quite interesting. Jarvis, upon learning of the drought and famine that devastates Ndotsheni, is moved to provide milk, water, and an irrigation system to the struggling village. He hires a young man to teach the natives how to farm properly and even donates a new church building. Furthermore, Kumalo strikes up a friendship with Jarvis’s grandson—the son of the man who was slain by Absalom. In the novel, a friend of Kumalo’s states, “[ Jesus] suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering.” Paton’s vision of suffering, then, is not merely a debilitating experience but, rather, one that allows for empathy and generosity. Experiencing true suffering, as Kumalo and Jarvis do, occasions great acts of sympathy and charity. It seems that Paton’s outlook on suffering is a hopeful one, in that understanding the suffering of others allows for greater empathy and compassion. Kevin Fitzgerald

Pirandello, Luigiâ•… Six Characters in Search of an Authorâ•… (1921)

Six Characters in Search of an Author is a three-act postmodern play-within-a play. In the manner of much theater of the absurd, it invests clichés or ridiculous situations with a kind of sense. The most radical aspect of Six Characters is that the characters seek to talk back to their creator, their author. He is not available, but in one of many witticisms, he is identified as Pirandello (act 1). The characters have to settle for an audience of the producer of a play, plus the actors who are present for a rehearsal. The six characters include the Father; the Mother (his former wife); the Son they had together; and the Stepdaughter, the Boy, and the Little Girl, who are the offspring of the Mother and her paramour, the Father’s assistant. The stage directions show that these six characters inhabit a different reality. Their clothing is thicker and stiffer, as well as starker in

868â•…â•… Pirandello, Luigi color, than the “real” actors. The lighting of the six characters is also different, and their expressions are set and almost masklike (a throwback to early Greek tragedy). Certainly the situation of made-up characters “coming to life” and demanding satisfaction from their author is absurd. However, the six characters also exhibit many similarities to what is taken as “real life.” Like many people who have been traumatized, they are stuck in the experience of their tragedy and cannot get beyond it. Most of all, Six Characters is useful as an exercise in extending empathy. If the readers and audience can feel sympathy for the six characters, then perhaps they will be better able to feel empathy for others whom the readers and audience have “characterized” or whom society has locked in a particular “role.” Natalie Tarenko

Identity in Six Characters in Search of an Author

In Six Characters in Search of an Author, characters in a play function as an extended metaphor for human beings in “real” life. The identity for characters is a part the actors are playing, just as people play a part in “real” life. The Six Characters of Pirandello’s play comprise a couple who used to be married, the Father and Mother; their Son; and the three offspring of the Mother and the man with whom she ran off—the Stepdaughter, the Boy, and the Little Girl. These six characters show up at a theater during a rehearsal one day and demand to speak with an author. They want to have a life on stage. These characters have been involved in traumatic events and “cannot give up” their roles, much as “real” people live the traumatic events in their own lives over and over. When the Son defends his behavior by saying that he is “not a fully developed character,” both the literary and the actual meanings pertain. Eventually, the initial parallels between theater and “real” life seem to run out. For example, the characters’ reality and identity “can’t change, because it is already determined, like this, for ever,” while the reality and identity of “real” people can and do change. However, the seeming differences actually

pose deeper and more terrible parallels. What if the reality and identity of “real” people also is “determined, like this, for ever”? The metaphor of theater for “real” life not only carries frightening meaning for the identity of the “real” audience/viewer; the metaphor also makes the concept of characters more to be empathized with. After all, characters are fixed in their agonized identities: While a play is a game for the actors, not reality, the events are reality, and not a game, for the characters. The six characters have come back to the theater to talk back about their lack of existence, for their author, Pirandello, did not complete the work for which he originally conceived them. All the theater staff in Six Characters find it absurd that the six characters have come back in this way, for no one expects characters to talk back to authors about what the authors have done with them. However, this talking back is one more important parallel for “real” people: Perhaps we can and should talk back to the authors of our own roles and identities. Natalie Tarenko

Justice in Six Characters in Search of an Author

In the play Six Characters in Search of an Author, created, fictional characters come to a theater. This situation at first seems to be highly unrealistic. However, these characters’ search for justice becomes more and more moving and even reflective of aspects of reality. Like many traumatized people and victims, the six characters demand to be heard and to be taken seriously. They come to the theater to tell their story, which their author had abandoned, unfinished. In quite traditional dramatic structure, the beginning of Pirandello’s play functions as exposition to fill in earlier events. The six characters consist of the Father, his former wife, the Mother; their Son, and the wife’s three younger children from another man, who had once worked for the husband. The wife had gone with the other man only at the insistence of her husband, who wanted to end his relationship with her. Years later, the father of the younger children died, leaving their mother in poverty. Her eldest daughter took a job in a dressmaker’s shop, which is really a cover for

The Bell Jarâ•…â•… 869 prostitution. One of the men who tried to buy her services turned out to be her mother’s first husband, the girl’s own stepfather. Out of guilt and a sense of obligation, the stepfather allowed his former wife and her second family to move in with him and their eldest son. The characters are locked in their parts or roles, as are many traumatized people, and they continually replay the past. The Father makes two statements about justice in the first act of the play. First, he points out that so-called real people are themselves really many people in the course of a day, depending on the other people with whom they interact. He argues that it is unjust to condemn all the facets of an individual based on one interaction, no matter how heinous. He makes this argument in the context of the Stepdaughter’s constantly referring bitterly to his actions toward her in the dressmaker’s shop. In addition, the Father argues that “a fact is like a sack”—an empty container that needs to be contextualized with the emotions and thoughts of the people involved. A fact without context cannot lead to fair judgments. Natalie Tarenko

Suffering in Six Characters in Search of an Author

The characters in the play Six Characters in Search of an Author seek relief in expressing their suffering to the author, who, they feel, is responsible for it and should at least be aware of it. Their suffering is inexplicable to them and is tragically out of proportion to their actions. The six characters seek relief by trying to express their suffering to the one they hold responsible, their author. They settle, however, for telling a theatrical producer, who they hope will rewrite their situation. For the six characters, their suffering is tragically out of proportion to their actions. As we learn from their story, in the beginning were the Father, the Mother, and the Son. The Father noticed that his wife and his male secretary/assistant had fallen in love. Probably already tired of his wife, the Father brought it about that his wife and his assistant would go off together and have a relationship, while the Son stayed with him. The mother and the former assistant had three more children, a daughter—

called the Stepdaughter—and the Boy and Little Girl. Then the Mother’s lover died, leaving her with financial difficulties. In an almost Greek-tragedy instance of nonrecognition, the Father propositions a young girl who is working for a seamstress; he does not know that this is actually his stepdaughter, his wife’s oldest daughter. The Stepdaughter bitterly resents that her mother did not protect her from prostitution; the mother aches for the love of her oldest son, whom the Father kept; the Little Girl drowns, and the Boy shoots himself. The six characters’ suffering is repetitive. What they tell the stage director is only their latest reenactment of their grief and torment. In discussing literature, critics often talk about Shakespeare’s plays and other classics as still occurring; Here, the characters bear the burden of that claim, for they are stuck in an endless reenactment of their situation. Most of all, their suffering is real to them. Over and over again, they try to communicate the reality of their suffering to the producer and other actors. Act 3 even includes a play on the words game and reality, using the rhetorical device known as antimetabole. That kind of repetition with reversal blurs distinctions between the “game” of theater and the “reality” of the audience’s lives. Natalie Tarenko

Plath, Sylviaâ•… The Bell Jarâ•… (1963)

Originally published in 1963 under the pen name Victoria Lucas, The Bell Jar has since become one of the most popular novels in post–World War II American literature, indelibly connected with the life of the real author, the poet Sylvia Plath (1932– 63). Appearing in England less than a month before Plath’s suicide by asphyxiation, the novel is widely acknowledged as a semiautobiographical account of Plath’s own mental breakdown and first suicide attempt. The Bell Jar depicts in evocative detail the personal experience of depression and insanity brought on by pressures to conform to society’s contradictory expectations and desires. Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of The Bell Jar, represents the ideal female student of the 1950s. When her carefully conceived plans for the future

870â•…â•… Plath, Sylvia begin to fall apart, however, her sense of identity also fractures, and she begins to sink into depression and mental illness, culminating in her suicide attempt. The novel follows her treatment and recovery at several psychiatric hospitals, while narrating though a series of flashbacks the events that lead to her breakdown. By dramatizing Esther’s internal conflicts and resolutions, The Bell Jar highlights a variety of themes, including illness, ambition, and education. Through the work of Plath’s novel, the image of the bell jar has become synonymous with the isolation and debilitating pressure of social conformity, particularly that faced by women. Perhaps even more than Plath’s acclaimed poems, The Bell Jar, like J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, to which it is often compared, offers a compelling account of adolescent coming of age. Eric Leuschner

Ambition in The Bell Jar

One of the first thoughts that Esther Greenwood has in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is that “I was supposed to be having the time of my life. I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girls just like me all over America.” Having won a series of scholarships and finally a contest that provided her a month-long job at a successful New York magazine, Esther finds herself poised to achieve several goals. Her experience, however, frustrates her ambition, and she finds herself wasting the chance, “letting it run through my fingers like so much water.” Throughout the novel, Esther’s ambitions are thwarted, primarily through the perceived constraints placed on her by a variety of social forces. Esther establishes herself as ambitious from the start of the novel, but her experiences in New York indicate the vagueness of her actual understanding. While discussing her future with her editor-mentor Jay Cee, she mentally reviews her future plans: graduate from school, study abroad, become a professor or an editor, and write books of poems. Her response to Jay Cee, however, is a noncommittal “I don’t really know,” revealing, as she herself recognizes, the truth. Before the month is over, Esther is again asked of her future plans, this time by a photographer. When she responds as before, her editor has a rejoinder:

“↜‘She wants,’ said Jay Cee wittily, ‘to be everything.’↜” Esther replies simply that she wants to be a poet, but she breaks into tears moments later, suggesting the fragility of her ideas. Much of Esther’s sense of identity revolves around her ambition to be a poet. She imagines anonymously submitting her own manuscript to Jay Cee, who would recognize it as remarkable, and places great stock in being accepted to a summer writing course staffed by a well-known author. When she is not accepted into the class, she first channels her ambition into writing a novel while living at home for the summer, but she quickly discovers that she lacks life experience, which inspires her to envision various alternatives: “[P]lan after plan started leaping through my head, like a family of scatty rabbits.” While she has a great deal of ambition, she can never pin down one particular plan. Esther’s frustration stems in part from the expectations placed on her as a woman, and she often measures herself against those whom she knows. In New York, both Jay Cee and a Russian interpreter challenge her sense of identity and ambition. She tallies her inadequacies, from not being able to speak a foreign language to not being able to cook. At home, she contrasts herself with Dodo Conway, who had graduated from college, married an architect, lived in a large house, and raised six children. In addition, her mother persists in advising Esther to learn shorthand, the ideal job qualification for a woman in the 1950s, her prescription echoing throughout the novel. In the recurrent image of the fig tree, the theme of ambition resonates. Esther first reads about the fig tree in a short story while living in New York. While initially linked to her possible future with Buddy Willard, the image later offers the expanse of a multitude of opportunities, including famous poet, “brilliant professor,” wife and mother, “amazing editor,” “Olympic lady crew champion,” international traveler, and lover of exotic men. Even with these choices, she imagines countless other figs that she cannot discern. Faced with limitless opportunity, she finds herself “starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest.” In Esther’s

The Bell Jarâ•…â•… 871 mind, they are self-exclusive, forcing her to choose only one. In her indecision, each opportunity shrivels up and falls away. The novel’s conclusion addresses Esther’s uncertainty with regard to ambition and identity. For Esther, the two have been intertwined; it is always her potential that provides her sense of self. In an earlier image, she imagines a series of 19 telephone poles, one for each year of her life; after the 19th, though, she can only see a dangling of wires. In the end, instead of feeling confident about the future, all Esther can envision are question marks. However, this feeling has been transformed into a cathartic one, and she is poised to step into the interview room, her future in all its uncertainty before her. Eric Leuschner

Education in The Bell Jar

Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of Sylvia Plath’s semiautobiographical novel The Bell Jar, is a 20-year-old senior at a private women’s college in New England. In the novel, education, symbolized by the campus’s physical environs, is repeatedly invoked. The image of campus suffuses and informs the novel, controlling the narrative with its intrusions and flashbacks. The novel contains more than 40 references to campus, and while some may appear minor, the cumulative effect creates a type of omnipresence for the idea of education. Esther— like Plath, a graduate of Smith College, a private women’s college in New England—constructs her future based on her performance in college, but it is a future that is torn between opposing desires and realities. Much of Esther’s thought processes in the novel are filtered through her educational experience. For instance, she thinks of her Ladies’ Day fiction editor Jay Cee as her former science teacher, Mr. Manzi. Of the college references in the novel, however, Esther’s association of place with the dorm are the most revealing. For Plath and Esther, the dorm room functions as the microcosm of college where the social and the academic mix. The Amazon Hotel, with its cluster of 12 girls sharing rooms on the same floor in a protected environment, reminds her of her dorm room. Plath’s description of the hotel reiterates the college-like feeling: “This hotel—the Ama-

zon—was for women only, and they were mostly girls my age with wealthy parents who wanted to be sure their daughters would be living where men couldn’t get at them and deceive them.” The protective nature of college is also suggested by the fact that, although Esther won many prizes and received accolades while in college, none of it really matters in New York and at home. Even more striking is how Belsize, the psychiatric hospital, also reminds her of a dorm. The patients, all women, are often seen socializing in a common parlor, congregating around the piano, playing cards, or talking. In contrast are the single, cubicle-like rooms where they sleep or occasionally lock themselves in for solitude, just as students retreat to their rooms to study. When Buddy Willard visits Esther, the nurse’s announcement takes Esther back to college: “The smiling, snow-capped nurse poked her head in through the door, and for a confused second I thought I really was back in college and this spruce white furniture, this white view over trees and hills, an improvement on my old room’s nicked chairs and desk and outlook over the bald quad.” The nurse’s “A man to see you!” is the identical phrase used by the “girl on watch” who answers the dormitory phone. Esther’s realization that there is nothing “in Belsize, so different from the girls playing bridge and gossiping studying in the college to which I would return” is cathartic for her as she realizes in the novel’s accusatory announcement, “Those girls, too, sat under bell jars of a sort.” Esther sees college as deciding point in her life and career. Before the summer of the novel, her success has been wrapped up in her accomplishments. She must do well and must make the right decision. In her image of the fig tree, which offers all her opportunities—famous poet, brilliant professor, wife and mother, amazing editor, Olympic lady crew champion, international traveler—she finds herself “starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest.” These choices are, in a sense, offered by education and her college experience. Without the credentials college provides, they would not be available. In Esther’s mind (and enforced by the institution), however, they are also

872â•…â•… Plath, Sylvia self-exclusionary and she is forced to choose. What finally sparks her depression and suicide attempt is her failure to make the summer writing course. When that is taken away, she has no structure or meaning to her life. Eric Leuschner

Illness in The Bell Jar

In many ways, the primary theme of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is that of illness. The novel’s main narrative line follows Esther Greenwood’s psychological breakdown, a mental illness that leads her to attempt suicide and results in her confinement to an institution to undergo electroshock therapy. In addition to Esther’s illness, however, Plath interweaves a variety of illnesses into the novel to reflect and underscore Esther’s. These multiple images constitute a novel that is ultimately about the illness of the modern world that contributes to Esther’s—and, by extension, all women’s—suffering. The novel’s opening lines describe Esther being “sick” at the idea of the execution (by electric chair) of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, which reminds her of the first time she saw a cadaver, the head imagined “like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.” Esther also recalls visiting her boyfriend, Buddy Willard, and touring the medical school. She sits in on a lecture on sickle-cell anemia, where patients are wheeled onto the stage, questioned briefly, and quickly wheeled off. She also hears an ominous description of a young girl who dies shortly after discovering a mole on her cheek. The feeling of sickness manifests for Esther in a case of ptomaine food poisoning that affects 11 of the girls, including Esther, participating in the New York intern program. As the Rosenberg execution foreshadows Esther’s later electroshock therapy, where she feels what it is like “being burned alive all along your nerves,” this physiological sickness sets up the mental illness Esther later experiences. What is even more frightening is the public attitude toward illness portrayed in the novel. The prevailing solution to illness in the novel is to ignore it and forget it. The card sent by the Ladies’ Day magazine following the food poisoning shows little real concern for the girls: “The front of the card showed a poodle in a flowered bedjacket sitting in a

poodle basket with a sad face, and the inside of the card showed the poodle lying down in the basket with a little smile, sound asleep under an embroidered sampler that said, ‘You’ll get well best with lots and lots of rest.’ At the bottom of the card somebody had written, ‘Get well quick! from all of your good friends at Ladies’ Day,’ in lavender ink.” Similarly, at the hospital, Buddy tells Esther that women giving birth are given a drug that would make them forget the pain of labor and hints that she might be given that drug as well. Illness in The Bell Jar is not limited to women. Buddy’s illness, tuberculosis, is also treated by isolation and rest: He is “taking the cure for TB somewhere in upper New York State.” Esther ascribes his illness to his belief in sexual double standards; she describes it as “a punishment for living the kind of double life Buddy lived.” But Buddy suffers from the societal ignorance as well, especially when his father, who “simply couldn’t stand the sight of sickness,” returns home after only a brief visit. Yet there is a difference in Buddy’s illness. Although it, too, is an internal disease, “like living with a bomb in your lung,” the outer manifestation is the opposite of what Esther expects. Instead of being wasted away, she finds Buddy to be fat, with a pot belly and plump cheeks. This contrasts with Esther’s illnesses and suggests again the double standard at the base of the novel. Suffused with images and description of illness in the first half, the novel ultimately turns to the mental breakdown brought on by the increasing social pressures that Esther discovers as she comes of age. With the illness and disease imagery firmly established, it becomes clear that Plath views the mental breakdown not as something caused by an intrinsic weakness but as an illness with a specific cause. While Esther’s response to problems often exacerbates the situation by her withdrawing, as in the bathtub where she slowly imagines everything but herself dissolving, Plath pinpoints the major problem as those social forces, imagined in the titular image of the bell jar itself: the double standard of a male-dominated society; the false promises offered to girls of having both a career and family; and the institutions that enforce them, including the university and the medical establishment. Although Esther

“The Fall of the House of Usher”â•…â•… 873 absolves Buddy of responsibility (for her breakdown and Joan’s suicide) near the end, the absolution is tempered by his response: “↜‘Well,’ Buddy breathed. ‘I’m glad of that.’ And he drained his tea like a tonic medicine.” Esther’s new self-reliance is significant, but it is telling that Buddy is freed by false medicine, as if his culpability is an illness as well. Eric Leuschner

Poe, Edgar Allanâ•… “The Fall of the House of Usher”â•… (1839)

The short story “The Fall of House of Usher” was first published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in 1839. Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) revised it for his collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, published the following year. In the story, Roderick Usher, one of the final remaining descendants of the ancient Usher family, is now suffering from physical and emotional illness, and he sends a letter to his boyhood friend requesting his company during the days of his ill health. The boyhood friend, who narrates this disturbing tale of identity and struggling lineage, responds at once, only to find the Usher home to be in a state of decay and disrepair. Much like the home, the narrator finds that Roderick Usher, too, is not the person he once knew. Time and disease have taken a toll on him, as it has the entire Usher lineage, leaving Roderick and his sister as the sole survivors of the Ushers. Once inside the home, the narrator observes the rooms and long passages as he approaches the room where Roderick is found. Here, the narrator learns that Roderick suffers from nerves and fear, and the narrator comes to believe that Usher is afraid of his own home. The narrator tries to comfort his friend by listening to him play guitar and create lyrics for his music. The narrator also reads stories to Roderick, but nothing seems to be able to lift his spirits. Madeline, Roderick’s twin sister, lives in the home and is suffering from a debilitating illness as well. Madeline dies shortly after readers are introduced to her. Roderick decides that he wants Madeline buried in the house, so he and the narrator create a tomb for her in the cellar of the Usher home. After Madeline’s body is entombed, Roderick

grows more and more uneasy. One night, Roderick and the narrator notice a bright-looking gas around the home, which the narrator explains is completely natural. To alleviate Roderick’s uneasiness, the narrator reads to him. While reading “Mad Trist” by Sir Launcelot Canning, he begins to hear noises that match images contained in the story. At first, the narrator tries to convince himself that the noises are merely his imagination, but he soon learns that Roderick has been hearing the noises for days. Roderick believes that they may have buried Madeline alive and the noises are her trying to escape. The door opens, and Madeline stands before them in a bloodstained white robe. Madeline attacks Roderick, and he dies from fear. The narrator runs from the house, and as he escapes, the Usher home collapses behind him. Andrew Andermatt

Death in “The Fall of the House of Usher”

Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are often associated with the theme of death, and “The Fall of the House of Usher” is no exception. The theme of death, however, goes further than just the physical state of life’s inevitable end. The story uses death to examine the protagonist’s confrontation with mortality and immortality. The story’s main character, Roderick Usher, must face not only his own mortality but that of his family as well. From the initial details of the decaying Usher mansion in the story’s exposition to the conflict of Roderick’s sanity to the destruction of the Usher mansion at the story’s conclusion, Roderick’s mortality is continually examined and challenged. One could argue that Poe’s overall imagery in the story offers a sense of morbidity and dread. The setting established early in the story foreshadows the later confrontation Roderick Usher has with his own mortality. Upon the reader’s first meeting with the story’s narrator, Usher’s childhood friend, he suggests that there is an obvious gloom that pervades the area. The gloom alerts the reader to the fact that not all is well. In fact, the gloomy environment, and the condition of the Usher mansion as the reader first sees it, symbolizes the end of the Ushers, as the family lineage and the last two

874â•…â•… Poe, Edgar Allan Usher family members are meeting their respective demises. The narrator carefully observes the “vacant eye-like windows,” along with the few white trunks of decayed trees that surround Roderick’s home, and concludes that the home to which his ill friend had summoned him is a “mansion of gloom.” Perhaps the most obvious piece of foreshadowing, the “perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction,” indicates not only the physical decay of the home but the illness and weakening of the Usher family. Since much of the story’s description of the Usher family’s backstory is centered on the significance of the Usher mansion, it is easy to make connections between Roderick’s slip from sanity and the collapse of the Usher estate. The narrator observes “an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapour dull, sluggish, faintly discernable, and leaden-hued,” and he further concludes that “the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.” For some readers, the images here conjure up images of the Usher family in their graves. The decay of the exterior of the Usher home, which reflects Roderick’s obvious physical illness, is cleverly juxtaposed against the condition of the house’s interior, which resembles Roderick’s inner struggle with his own sanity as he confronts his mortality. The narrator clearly makes reference to the long-term decay that has been going on inside the home and inside of Usher as well, and, of course, we cannot neglect Poe’s sleight of hand, presenting the image of the “neglected vault,” possibly the resting place of past family or even that of Roderick himself. The image of the books and musical instruments, which lay scattered and “failed to give any vitality to the scene,” might represent the loss of Roderick’s sanity. The more physical sense of inner decay is seen from the doctor who is attending Madeline. As he passes the narrator on the stairs, his facial expression is one of “low cunning and perplexity.” Madeline’s character, serving as Roderick’s more stable

double, is slowly wasting away, and once Madeline dies, what remains of Roderick’s sanity quickly dwindles. Madeline’s entombment represents both the death of the Usher family and the “death” of Roderick’s sanity. The reappearance of Madeline represents the immortality of memories—painful memories of what must cease to exist. Roderick’s proclamations, “I shall perish” and “I must perish” are never more adamant than with Roderick’s acceptance of both his and his family’s demise. At the story’s conclusion, the house crumbles to the ground, seemingly coming apart at the fissure that has compromised the structure’s security. Andrew Andermatt

Identity in “The Fall of the House of Usher”

The construction of identity in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” evolves primarily by using the concept of the gothic double—a characteristic of the gothic story where the story’s characters and the fears of the character or a given society act as doubles or mirror images. Like the theme of identity in many works of literature, the identity of the main character, Roderick Usher, is devised through carefully chosen symbols that serve as mirror images of the main character with likenesses of the entire Usher family and estate. Poe uses several objects, including the house, Roderick’s sister, and illness, to serve as symbols of Usher’s close identification with his estate. First, the narrator establishes Roderick Usher’s identity by the significant time spent observing careful details of his appearance. The narrator, Usher’s childhood friend, states that he knows little of Usher, as his “reserve had been always excessive and habitual.” The lineage of family seems to be one of the most blatant forms of identity in the story. The narrator remarks several times about the Usher lineage, especially as it comes to peculiar “sensibility of temperament.” The narrator also notes that the “entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.” The Ushers are inextricably associated with the estate. The identity of the Usher family is captured through the decay of the Usher estate (the physical

“The Fall of the House of Usher”â•…â•… 875 house) and that of Roderick Usher himself. “It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood,” the narrator states. “Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable.” Usher’s illness symbolizes the beginning of the end of the Usher family: “And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous luster of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me.” The nature of Usher’s malady is a “constitutional and a family evil.” Usher is a mirror of what used to be, a family estate that has slowly decayed over time. The double identity of the estate, which is now collapsing in around Usher, is depicted clearly in the ballad “The Haunted Palace,” which is contained within the story. First, in the second stanza, the lyric states: Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow; (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odour went away. The stanza depicts the way life used to be, glorious and full of celebration. The ballad’s third stanza mentions the music and glamour of the “[s]pirits,” which the wanderers in the valley could see in the window. By stanza five, a change comes over the palace’s celebratory atmosphere: But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.

This stanza suggests that the estate, and perhaps the family, have met their demise. The outward appearance of the Usher home, now covered with fungi and surrounded by decayed trees, shows signs of age and wear. Perhaps a much more difficult symbol to comprehend as it relates to identity in the story is the appearance of Usher’s twin sister, Madeline. The fact that Madeline is his twin is significant in two ways. First, she serves as an extension of the Usher estate. Though ill, Madeline is a reminder of what used to be—the beauty of the Usher lineage. Second, Madeline represents the sanity of her brother, Roderick. She is slowly dying, and once she passes away, Usher and the narrator are quick to entomb her, as referenced in the last line of the fifth stanza of “The Haunted Palace.” Madeline’s sudden resurrection serves as the undying reminder that Roderick cannot bury the memories of his past, which haunt him constantly. Andrew Andermatt

Illness in “The Fall of the House of Usher”

Illness is used in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” both literally and figuratively. From the three main characters—Roderick Usher, Madeline Usher, and the narrator—to Usher’s mansion’s interior and exterior condition, Poe plays with the idea of illness as a double mirror of affliction both on the inside and outside. The most predominant occurrences of illness in the story are within the characters themselves. Poe uses Roderick Usher’s illness to illustrate the increasingly complex culmination of the story’s events. When readers first meet Usher, they are given a physical explanation of his illness. The narrator informs readers that Usher suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS), which explains Usher’s nervous agitation and his failing appearance on the outside. The narrator describes Usher’s exaggerated features and laments, “Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!” Upon further study, it seems that Usher’s condition goes deeper, as Poe gives the reader several indications that he is suffering not only from a physical deterioration but an inner one as well—a mental

876â•…â•… Poe, Edgar Allan disorder. First, Usher’s illness is the reason the narrator, who has maintained only a limited friendship with him, comes to the mansion to visit. Once the narrator engages in conversation with Usher over the course of several weeks, it is clear that his illness extends beyond the physical into the psychological. Readers discover the nature of Usher’s malady is that of a “constitutional and family evil” and reflect a “morbid acuteness of the senses.” After the supposed death of Usher’s sister, Madeline, his illness seems to extend itself into fits of insanity and hysteria. While Usher’s illness develops from external (physical) to internal (mental), the illness and character of his sister Madeline are much more complicated to understand. The narrator tells us that doctors are baffled by Madeline’s disease, which is described as the “wasting away of the person.” Madeline’s illness and appearance in the story might best be understood on a figurative level. Usher’s illness is literal, even though the narrator refers to him as a hypochondriac several times in the story. Madeline, who we learn is Usher’s twin, may be seen as his mirrored reflection or alter ego, his internal psyche, which he tries to rid himself of by burying Madeline in the vault beneath the house. While some readers may question the credibility of Madeline’s ability to escape the vault, which would have been impossible to get out of because of its “massive iron” door, if Madeline is the representation of Usher’s insanity and hysteria, then the fact that she is able to escape the vault on her own and take Usher’s life at the end of the story is easily explained: She represents the terrifying mental illness that Usher cannot successfully bury. Usher suffers from fear of himself, ultimately, which leads to his demise and the literal collapse of the “house of Usher.” Usher and Madeline are not the only characters in the story to be plagued with illness. The narrator also finds himself beginning to “catch” the insanity that has gripped the Usher household. Contagion of illness, superstition, nervousness, and sleeplessness all plague him once he and Usher bury Madeline in the vault. The narrator’s illness, nonexistent outside the Usher mansion, quickly manifests itself once he has spent several weeks in it. As the analysis of illness moves from a literal to figurative representation, readers must take into

consideration not only the characters but the Usher mansion itself, which many would argue takes on the role of a character as well. When the narrator arrives at the house, he describes the murky, fetid environment in which the house sits, which leaves him with “a sense of insufferable gloom.” First, he observes the general appearance of the house as discolored and covered with fungi. The scene consists of decayed trees and a feeling of utter disease and gloom. On the inside, which mirrors the physical appearance of the house’s exterior, the narrator describes the condition of the master’s room with its “feeble gleams of light” and furniture which is “comfortless and tattered.” The room “failed to give any vitality to the scene.” Like many authors, Poe uses the theme of illness to show the deterioration of one man’s world. Usher’s health, fortune, and familial lineage slips away, but not without a struggle to keep them in place. Whether describing outside or internal “appearance,” Poe uses the theme of illness to illustrate the literal and figurative effects of fear on an individual. Andrew Andermatt

Poe, Edgar Allanâ•… “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”â•… (1841)

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was first published in Graham’s Magazine in April 1841. The tale introduced C. Auguste Dupin, a Parisian with a singular talent for solving crimes. Poe again used Dupin and his sidekick, the story’s nameless narrator, in two more tales of ratiocination, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842–43) and “The Purloined Letter” (1844). The two figures are forerunners of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson; indeed, Holmes and Watson discuss Poe’s Dupin in A Study in Scarlet (1887), the first of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels. In writing “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Poe was influenced by Voltaire’s Zadig, or Destiny (1748), which is referred to in Poe’s “Hop-Frog” (1849), and several stories published in 1838–39 in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine about Eugène François Vidocq, the chief Parisian detective under Napoleon Bonaparte. Dupin mentions Vidocq by name in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”â•…â•… 877 In the story, Dupin and the narrator investigate the mysterious double murder of Madame and Mademoiselle L’Espanaye, which occurred in an upstairs room locked from the inside. The Parisian police have arrested Adolphe Le Bon for the crime; however, after reading in the newspaper the known facts of the crime, Dupin is skeptical of the ability of the police to investigate the crime scene competently. With his astute powers of observation and analysis and to the chagrin of G—, the embarrassed prefect of police, Dupin figures out that the crime was committed by an escaped orangutan. Derrick Spradlin

Individual and Society in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

The protagonist of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Edgar Allan Poe’s detective extraordinaire C. Auguste Dupin, maintains a seemingly contradictory relationship with society, one of simultaneous distance and intimacy. The text emphasizes his isolation from Parisian society, an isolation that stems from his poverty, despite his descent from an “illustrious family.” By the time of the story, though, isolation had become sought after, for he “had been reduced to such poverty that the energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased to bestir himself in the world.” Dupin does, however, maintain several personal relationships. He knows the prefect of police well enough to gain access to the Rue Morgue crime scene, and he owes a favor to Adolphe Le Bon, who has been arrested for perpetrating the murders. Dupin’s disconnection from his fellow man undoubtedly changes when he meets the story’s nameless narrator in a library. Their shared interest in “the same very rare and very remarkable volume,” the narrator states, “brought us into closer communion. We saw each other again and again.” The narrator further explains: “I felt that the society of such a man would be to me a treasure beyond price,” and for this reason he has Dupin move into the mansion he rents “in a retired and desolate portion of the Faubourg St. Germain.” There, the new friends revel in self-imposed estrangement from the world. “Our seclusion was perfect,” the narrator states. “We admitted no visitors. Indeed the locality

of our retirement had been carefully kept a secret from my own former associates; and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris. We existed within ourselves alone.” Thus, while Dupin shuns society at large, he is not afraid of people. The narrator offers insight into the relationship between Dupin and society through the introductory paragraphs, which discuss the “mental features discoursed of as the analytical,” or, as the narrator also phrases it, “that moral activity which disentangles.” He opens with this discussion because Dupin manifests the analytical abilities he details. To illustrate analysis, the narrator contrasts the playing of chess with that of draughts (checkers). Draughts, he concludes, demands greater analytical abilities than chess because in chess, the moves of different pieces and the endless combinations of moves by different pieces favor the player who avoids “oversight,” but not necessarily the one who has greater powers of analysis; in draughts, the moves of the game pieces are simple enough that victory comes only through “some strong exertion of the intellect.” Without any advantages to be had through the composition of the game itself, the analytical player gains advantage by accurately reading his opponent and anticipating his moves. He “throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.” That is, analysis, and mastery of draughts, hinges upon correctly gauging human behavior. These faculties of analysis, according to the narrator, “are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment.” These lines characterize Dupin, who, like the analyst figure of the introductory paragraphs, “glories” and “derives pleasure” from the exercise of his abilities. For an analyst such as Dupin, society and the individuals who constitute it become part of a game, and Dupin investigates the Rue Morgue murders, in part, to “afford us [Dupin and the narrator] amusement.” In treating his investigation as an amusement, Dupin maintains a critical distance from the crime

878â•…â•… Poe, Edgar Allan and all the individuals it involves; he maintains, in other words, his habitual distance from society. This distance is crucial to his ability to, like the analytical player of draughts, throw himself into the spirit of not only the murderer but the police. By identifying the latter’s investigative deficiencies, he solves the mystery of the murders. Regarding the police, he comments that “not trusting to their eyes, I examined with my own.” While he segregates himself from the society in which he lives, Dupin knows human nature well. The narrator writes: “He boasted to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms.” Through this analytical insight, Dupin knows in what ways the Parisian police have failed in their investigation of the murders and, resultantly, how the murders were carried out by the fugitive orangutan. Derrick Spradlin

Innocence and Experience in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

Edgar Allan Poe uses the key concept of emotional and intellectual balance in his development of the theme of innocence versus experience in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” What Poe sought to show in nearly all of his writings is that when the intellect and the emotions are out of balance, when one lives too wholly in the mind or in the heart, something is fundamentally askew. Humans are balanced individuals, and for Poe, the study of what happens when that balance is thrown off is essential to American romanticism, something that is pragmatically applied to this story in particular. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Poe creates two primary characters through which the audience witnesses the discussion of victims of a gruesome crime. Dupin becomes the voice of experience, the mind that has learned to live wholly in the logical realm, capable of both inductive and deductive reasoning, desirous of teaching the narrator to think openly. The narrator becomes the voice of innocence, incapable of separating his revulsion for the crime or his awe of Dupin’s thinking skills from the crime itself; his goal is to learn how to think from Dupin, to move beyond ordinary assumptions into analytical thinking at work.

In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Poe presents reasons for the weak thinking on the part of the Parisian police and the narrator. Two women, Madame and Mademoiselle L’Espanaye, have been savagely murdered. One witness, the bank clerk Adolphe Le Bon, testifies that three days before the murder, Madame L’Espanaye withdrew 4,000 francs from her account and that the gold was in the house. Robbery therefore becomes a key and erroneous assumption in the investigation. The police enter the room where Mademoiselle L’s body has been stuffed inside the chimney, and the newspaper report recounts that “no person was seen. The windows, both of the back and front room, were down and firmly fastened from within . . . locked, with the key on the inside.” Repeatedly, through witnesses, police, and newspapers, the audience is shown that the crime entailed shrieks that were “very awful and distressing”; that the corpse of Mademoiselle L was “much bruised and excoriated,” while the corpse of Madame L was “shattered” and “horribly mutilated”; that overheard was the word diable; and that the crime was so heinous it “struck every one present not less with horror than with astonishment.” Because of the ferocity of the attacks on the two women, all parties involved in the solving of the case have difficulty moving past the emotive response to the nature of the killings. In Poe’s theory of romanticism, then, those set on solving the case are out of balance, incapable of doing much of anything until they find balance. These are all voices of innocence in critical thinking—unbalanced because of the emotive stranglehold. Dupin, as the voice of experience, informs the audience at large that he alone has noticed key details because he has been able to quickly accept that the murders are savage and has moved on to cataloguing the details of the crimes. Dupin explains that “[t]ruth is not always in a well .  .  . the depth lies in the valleys where we seek her”; but in order to find the truth, the seeker must be willing to look beyond the simple—to the core of the matter. Dupin focuses on the differences of the witness testimonies in order to achieve his ultimate conclusion. Deducing that because no witness can agree on the origin of the “culprit’s” voice, coupled with the crime’s “strength superhuman, a ferocity brutal,” Dupin

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”â•…â•… 879 leads the narrator to conclude that the crimes have been committed by a madman, but then he shows the narrator and the audience the fallacies of that line of thinking. The voice of experience here is teaching the audience to think, to see the limitations of each error, to see the only logical conclusion. Deduction leads Dupin to show unwaveringly that only a “tawny, Ourang-Outang of the Bornese species” would have the strength to have committed the crimes. Obviously, with such an unusual ending, the audience is freed from having to think about a human having inflicted this sort of savagery on the victims. More, though, Poe has shown that even unusual situations, ones that we would never imagine happening, can be explained through carefully reasoning if sufficient attention is given to the details. Thus, the voice of experience here essentially teaches the narrator, the future Dupin, to think open-mindedly about any potential outcome, even the most unexpected. And the voice of innocence learns to not rely on emotive, fallacious, or worn-out thinking in order to solve problems as they arise. Eileen Sweeney

Nationalism in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

The theme of nationalism is a common one in literature. Characters live their culture’s norms and standards while showing audiences the assumed better qualities of that particular national identity. There are two sides to nationalism as a literary theme: creating a sense of pride in characters and audiences and allowing those same groups to live in sociocentric ignorance. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” characters display both the positive and the negative aspects of nationalism. The inherent problems of nationalism as a theme and living ideology are shown fully through the witness testimonies that keep the Parisian police from solving the murders of two women, Madame and Mademoiselle L’Espanaye. This idea of a national identity becomes central to “The Murders in The Rue Morgue” because each witness who testifies about the crime in the Rue Morgue claims to have heard a distinctive voice, one clearly not belonging to his particular national group, creating for each

character a sense of group identity and showing full participation in sociocentric thinking. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the testimony of witnesses is essential to the police understanding of the crime and the newspaper reports. Unfortunately, the witnesses fail to agree on a single, vital detail: the voice of the murderer in the room with victims, Madame and Mademoiselle L’Espanaye. It seems that if the police could identify the voice, the crime could be solved, but the witnesses each point their fingers at an unseen perpetrator of a different nationality, disallowing that anyone of their own backgrounds could be capable of such brutalities. What Poe sets up here is a case for national pride, for nationalism at its potential best, as each cultural group wants to see only the good of its own, never the potential for such wickedness. Of the voice of the murderer, each witness looks to the rest of the world’s population to be the perpetrator. The French gendarme witness “believed the language to be Spanish.” Henri Duval, a Frenchman, “was not acquainted with the Italian language .  .  . but was convinced by the intonation that the speaker was Italian.” William Bird, an Englishman, thought the voice “appeared to be that of a German .  .  . [d]oes not understand German.” Another witness, a native of Spain, thought the voice belonged to an “Englishman .  .  . [d]oes not understand the English language, but judges by the intonation”; while another Frenchman, who does not speak Russian, just assumed the voice belonged to a Russian. Clearly knowledge of the language being pointed to—and therefore the culture represented—is not necessary. The witnesses each must point away from their own groups toward any other. For this story and as a thematic goal, nationalism creates a problematic text and ideology. The testimonies allow people to willingly admit that they do not know the language and therefore the perpetrator’s national identity; however, each witness does point to what he does not know as the cause for the murder. This sense of pride in one’s own nation creates a backlash against the identity of others— allowing ignorance to sound like the truth to those reading the news accounts and trying to solve the crime. However, the audience is shown the problem

880â•…â•… Poe, Edgar Allan of nationalistic thinking when Dupin states: “My ultimate object is only the truth. My immediate purpose is to lead you to place in juxtaposition, that very unusual activity of which I have just spoken, with that very peculiar shrill (or harsh) and unequal voice, about whose nationality no two persons could be found to agree, and in whose utterance no syllabification could be detected.” Because no one person could agree on a set nationality for the voice, because no utterances sounded equal to anyone, Dupin argues that there is a problem with everyone’s logic. All witnesses in this case are subject to the failings of their own perceptions. Because no one is willing to admit to not knowing the language heard, but is willing to point to a language unknown, Dupin rejects the truthfulness of all accounts. National identities have gotten in the way of truth. Nationalism allows each character in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” to want the best of their own countrymen—to have their own people not be the murderer. This is a simple desire of most people—to be proud of the people around them and to feel safe living among their own. But through Dupin’s rejection of the testimonies, we can see that the limitations of nationalism can sometimes circumvent the usefulness of ideology. When Dupin must show the police the necessity of logic over faulty witness testimony, clearly, national pride has gotten in the way of sound judgment. Eileen Sweeney

Poe, Edgar Allanâ•… “The Tell-Tale Heart”â•… (1843)

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the unnamed narrator and protagonist murders an elderly man with whom he lives, dismembers the body, and hides the pieces under the floorboards of his bedroom. Although the obsessive, paranoid narrator claims that he is not a madman, that he does not have criminal tendencies, and that he has no burning motivation to kill (that is, the old man never “insulted” him), he is driven to commit the murder by his antagonist’s evil “pale blue eye,” which is slowly compromising his sanity. The protagonist’s paranoia forces him to live a life of contradictions: He conveys to the reader

that he is not mad but nervous; not passionate but detached; not weak and demented but powerful and sagacious; not conniving but “healthily” methodical. However, it is clear that in each case, he is the not the latter but the former. Because of his paranoia (or what he calls his “nervous condition”), the protagonist’s senses are heightened. He is able to see images and hear sounds that are undetectable to a “normal” human being. His struggle with mental illness and his penchant for cruelty only intensify his reaction to the deceased man’s “tell-tale” beating heart, which only he can hear. The heart, which comes to symbolize the guilt the protagonist inevitably experiences after committing the murder, eventually leads to the unraveling of his mental and physical composure, forcing him into a cycle of humility and arrogance, which culminates in his self-incrimination. Tanfer Emin Tunc

Cruelty in “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Like the themes of guilt and illness, cruelty is also an integral part of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In fact, the protagonist seems to thrive on a perverse sense of cruelty, deriving pleasure from observing his victim (the old man) as he sleeps. On one occasion while the narrator is monitoring the old man, he “had [his] head in [the doorway], and was about to open the lantern, when [his] thumb slipped upon the tin fastening .  .  . the old man sprang up in the bed, crying out, ‘Who’s there?’↜” Rather than making his presence known, the protagonist “kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour [he] did not move a muscle, and in the meantime [he] did not hear [the old man] lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed, listening; just as [the narrator had] done night after night.” Although the protagonist and the old man both suffer from alienation, mental anguish, and fear, the narrator’s cruel streak prevents them from comforting one another. When the protagonist hears the old man’s familiar “groan of mortal terror .  .  . the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe,” he does not allow his personal sympathies to intervene. Rather, his sadistic nature only permits a mocking, terrorfilled laughter: “I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him although I chuckled at heart.” Moreover,

“The Tell-Tale Heart”â•…â•… 881 the protagonist seems to enjoy the malicious mind games that he inflicts upon the old man: “I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. . . . He had been saying to himself, ‘It is nothing but the wind in the chimney, it is only a mouse crossing the floor.’↜” However, the cruel narrator knows that the old man’s “comforting” rationalizations are “in vain” because death is approaching. The protagonist’s cold-blooded and pitiless attitude actually facilitates the murder that he commits. By allowing his hatred for the old man’s “blue eye” to overcome him, the vindictive narrator is able to disassociate, or detach, himself from the violent act of killing and dismembering the old man. Once finished, the malicious narrator “smiled gaily .  .  . [now that] his eye would trouble me no more.” As he gains more confidence for having gotten away with murder, the narrator begins to imagine that the brutal slaying of the old man simply had to be done. The banality of his evil deed reaches its climax when the police officers arrive. He spitefully admits, “I smiled, for what had I to fear?” However, he ultimately becomes a victim of his own cruelty. By the end of the story, his growing guilt over the murder subsumes the perverted pleasure he derived from destroying the blue eye, culminating in his self-incrimination and the discovery of the old man’s violent demise. The thematic thread of cruelty in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is heightened by Poe’s use of gothic elements. Gothic literature traditionally combines horror with romance, both of which are present in this story. The narrator is clearly obsessed with the old man and often vacillates between an extreme hatred of the old man’s evil eye and a pathetic adoration that is fueled by undercurrents of self-identification and covert sympathy. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is also laden with other trademark devices often featured in gothic fiction, including terror (psychological and physical), mystery, madness, darkness, death, decay, and deception. Moreover, the protagonist is an archetypal gothic character: a villainous maniac who murders in cold blood and, at times, represents the devil himself. What is interesting to note, however, is that his guilt, mental illness, and cruel tendencies all converge to

create a gothic tyrant who is in denial and beyond self-control. Never, at any point in the story, does the protagonist confess to any of his dangerous qualities. Rather, he is constantly projecting his own proclivities onto others: The old man’s blue eye is “evil”; the police officers are “villains”; and he lives in a “cruel” world that ignores the plight of those who suffer from a fear of the night. In fact, he is obsessed with convincing the reader of his sanity, stating, multiple times, that his “over-acuteness” is not a by-product of his madness but, rather, of his superior mental acumen. As the narrator admits, while his actions may be criminal, they are not “mad” because they are calm and calculated. Nevertheless, despite his merciless machinations, he is ultimately trapped in his own cruel game, becoming the tragic victim of the insanity that he so forcefully denied. Tanfer Emin Tunc

Guilt in “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Despite his “normal” self-portrayal, it is clear from the tone and mood of “The Tell-Tale Heart” that the narrator is mentally unstable and vacillates between love and hate. During the day, he exhibits a fond affection for the elderly man, but at night, he stalks him and plots his murder. Ironically, the murderer and his victim are kindred spirits: They both suffer from abandonment and have been marginalized by society for their peculiarities. They inhabit the same boarding house, and both suffer from insomnia and a terrifying loneliness, especially at night. However, the narrator’s obsession with the old man’s veiled, blue “vulture” eye allows him to ignore their human similarities and inhumanely reduce his antagonist to body parts. His fixation only intensifies the week before the murder when he befriends the old man as part of his murderous plot. During that week, the paranoid narrator becomes increasingly preoccupied with destroying the blue eye and its icy knowing gaze, which he believes is recording his every move. He resolves that murdering the antagonist is the only solution. Killing the old man would destroy his film-covered, opaque eye, which, to the narrator, represents the torment of aging alone, of seeing the evils of the world, of blindly witnessing tragedy without having the courage to speak out. The old man observed the horrors

882â•…â•… Poe, Edgar Allan of life with his eyes metaphorically shut and now in old age, as death approaches, cannot even keep them closed long enough to sleep through the night. He, like the narrator, is consumed by nightmares— by the guilt of undisclosed, past events—and the alienation that has come to define his life. The narrator first becomes conscious of the beating heart (which was probably his own racing heart) as he approaches the old man to commit the murder. He is distracted by the sound, which grows louder and louder as the moment of horror draws near, increasing his “fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.” Trying to keep his composure and guilt in check, he focuses on the blue eye, the object of his hatred, and not on the human being who is the unfortunate vehicle of his obsession. He is able to detach the person from the eye, suffocating him with his own bed linens. The narrator dismembers the body, which is appropriate given the fact that he perceives his victim not as a human being but as mere body parts, and then arrogantly conceals the limbs, torso, and head under the old man’s bedroom floorboards. Even though the old man is “stone dead” and his eye will trouble the narrator no longer, the beating of his heart (the narrator’s guilt) only intensifies. It reaches a fevered pitch when police officers come to investigate screams that had been reported by neighbors. The protagonist calmly explains to the officers that he had shrieked because of a dream and that the old man was visiting relatives in the countryside. He confidently invites them in and even shows them the old man’s room, placing his chair over the area where the corpse is buried. This fatal flaw of delusional arrogance eventually begins to chip away at the narrator’s conscience: He grows pale, his head begins to throb, and his heart begins to pound, just like the pulsating heart, which is “ringing” under the floorboards. Even though the officers do not suspect the narrator and, as he notes, forget about the investigation, starting to chat “of familiar things,” his increasing guilt (represented by the increasing, unified intensity of his heartbeat coupled with the imagined heartbeat of the old man), compels him to act erratically. He begins to speak and gesticulate violently, gasping for breath as if suffocating (just like the old man had

suffocated): “I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men—. . . I foamed—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise [of the heart] arose over all and continually increased.” The beating of the heart (his guilty conscience) is intensifying, yet the officers continue to chat and smile pleasantly. As he writhes in both mental and physical anguish, the narrator begins to believe that the officers’ complacency is actually mockery. No longer able to tolerate their “derision, hypocrisy and suspicion,” he incriminates himself: “Villains!” I shrieked, “Dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!” The unbearable guilt of the murder finally unites the two men in an inescapable destiny that hinges on the simultaneous beating of their “tell-tale hearts.” Tanfer Emin Tunc

Illness in “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a masterful examination of both the mental psychoses and physical debilities that often characterize a murderer. A cursory reading of the story immediately reveals that the protagonist is not only paranoid but also suffers from delusions of grandeur that allow him to rationalize the old man’s murder through egotistical excuses. Moreover, he also complains of an overarching nervous disorder which manifests itself through trembling, paleness, and an “over-acuteness” (or hypersensitivity) to environmental stimuli. As the narrator discloses: “The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.” The narrator’s mental and physical ailments are antagonized by the internal conflict that he faces as he plots the murder. He is clearly sympathetic to the old man and his personal struggles (he even suffers from the same bouts of loneliness and “mortal terror,”) yet he insists that his victim must perish because of his “Evil Eye” (which is probably “veiled” due to glaucoma). Thus, the reader is presented with the possibility that the protagonist might suffer not just from paranoia but also from schizophrenia or

The Rape of the Lockâ•…â•… 883 split personality disorder: He clearly exhibits a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde-type persona, with the extremes of adoration and detestation cohabitating the same body. This conflicting manifestation of his mental illness comes to substitute for the usual motives of murder (jealousy, greed, lust, and so on) and shape both the protagonist’s and the antagonist’s destinies: “Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!” The narrator’s delusional paranoia reaches its climax after the murder, when the police officers arrive to investigate complaints of “a shriek [which] had been heard by a neighbor during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.” At first, he greets them with a suave boldness that even he finds surprising: “In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.” His audacity, however, soon manifests itself. As the beating of the tell-tale heart grows louder, the narrator suddenly becomes violent, lashing out at the officers in an erratic fashion. The color drains from his face, and he begins gasping for air, raving like a rabid animal. Then, in a flash of insanity, the narrator becomes overwhelmed by his paranoia, which leads to his eventual self-incrimination: “They heard!— they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!—this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die!” The irony of the final scene is that the narrator’s mental psychoses, which compel him to waiver between sane and insane, inevitably prove to be his fatal flaw. Initially, the police officers do not intend to arrest him—they are simply responding to a routine complaint. What they do not know, however, is that the narrator’s deteriorating mental state, combined with his personal guilt over the murder, have

taken over his ability to act like a rational individual. His guise of sanity quickly disintegrates, and in the end, he begs them to tear up the floorboards and silence the beating of the old man’s heart. When viewed through the thematic lens of “illness,” the surprise ending of “The Tell-Tale Heart” becomes an exposition of the duality of human nature (in this case manifested through the psychopathology of the split personality). As Poe cunningly illustrates, not only are human beings capable of emotional extremes (for example, of good and evil), but that in many individuals, they often coexist within the same body. Tanfer Emin Tunc

Pope, Alexanderâ•… The Rape of the Lockâ•… (1712, 1714)

Alexander Pope’s neoclassical mock-epic poem The Rape of the Lock was first published anonymously in Lintot’s Miscellany in 1712. It was revised and republished under the poet’s name as the expanded five-canto version in 1714, which included the supernatural Rosicrucian machinery featuring sylphs and gnomes, guardian spirits of fashionable virgins. As the “epistle dedicatory” attached to the second edition makes clear, the poem’s plot and premise center on a real historical quarrel between Catholic families of high standing in early 18th-century London, a quarrel precipitated by a British nobleman’s apparently misguided flirtatious gesture. The poem makes light of Lord Petre’s illicit snipping of a lock of hair from the head of the celebrated beauty Arabella Fermor and the protracted dispute between their families that this act engenders. Like all mock epics, which use epic conventions to represent mundane or trivial subjects for comedic effect, The Rape of the Lock makes abundant reference to the catalogue of epic poems that would have been well-known to its 18th-century reader. The poem opens, for instance, with a traditional epic invocation of the muse, though the inspirational figure called upon is a mere mortal, Pope’s friend John Caryll, who asked Pope to compose the poem in order to reconcile the warring Fermor and Petre families. Moreover, the major events of the plot are depicted as comparisons to famous epic battles (for

884â•…â•… Pope, Alexander example, Belinda, the poem’s protagonist, dresses herself in a scene likened to Achilles’ putting on of armor and weaponry before battle). Many of the poem’s themes are interconnected. The proliferation of commodified objects suggests the violence of imperialism, and a great deal of the violence within the text is dramatized through the gender relations in the poem. The vices of the age, at least according to Pope—the vanity of women, the effeminacy of modern gentlemen, the idleness and superficiality of the fashionable elite—are all satirized through the techniques of mock epic. Hilary Englert

Commodification/Commercialization in The Rape of the Lock

Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock was written during a period in English history marked by a series of trade wars and by rapid mercantile expansion. By the early 18th century, England had emerged as the dominant commercial power in Europe, London was the center of world commerce, and the East India and South Sea trading companies comprised England’s biggest business. While the poem is set in and around London, its central concerns extend far beyond the domestic to England’s growing trading empire and its implications for English fashionable society. The famed toilet scene in canto 1, in which Belinda is readying herself at her dressing table, features an array of oddly animated luxury goods transported from India, the Middle East, the West Indies, Asia, and Africa into the home and onto the body of a young English lady of fashion. These commercial wares offer themselves up as eager sacrifices to the holy “Rites of Pride” performed by the beautiful Belinda at her dressing table, or “Altar’s side” (1.28, 27). It is in the name of Belinda’s adornment that “India’s glowing Gems” submit themselves, that “All Arabia breathes from yonder box,” and that “The Tortoise .  .  . and Elephant unite, / Transform’d to Combs” (1.133–136). “Unnumber’d Treasures ope at once” and “the various Off ’rings of the World” simply “appear” as though reporting for duty (1.129, 130). Personified objects from around the world attach themselves to the female icon whose “heav’nly Image” (1.125) the reader sees in

the process of its making. Even as the trappings of commodity culture are mystified in the depictions of Belinda as naturally the “Fairest of Mortals,” whose dressing ritual merely “repairs,” “awakens,” and “calls forth” her essential charms, Belinda’s “awful beauty” is revealed in the scene as both artificially constructed and conditioned by mercantile capitalism (1.27, 141, 142, 139). Exotic apparel, fashionable ornaments and accessories, foreign perfumes, and cosmetics manufacture Belinda, while the processes of their manufacture and acquisition remain hidden. As the scene unfolds, this fair “Belle” emerges as both idol and toiling priestess, imperial “Goddess” of the Commodity (1.8, 32) and pious worshiper of the commodities from which her identity, power, and culture are inseparable. The toilet scene sustains a tension between representations of global commodities as “Off ’rings” and their figuration as “Spoil” (1. 130, 132). Belinda’s wares are cast alternately as the legitimate (even enthusiastic) profits of world trade on the one hand and the plunder of colonial exploitation on the other. Belinda is “deck’d with all that Land and Sea afford” (5.11, emphasis added), suggesting that the nations of the world have given readily of their resources, have bestowed themselves comfortably upon Belinda and her like. And yet, if this is so, why are the goods on the dressing table kept in a locked “Casket” (1.33), implicitly connecting them with death, and Belinda’s beautification rituals with funeral rites? In the context of the poem’s mock-epic design, it is formally ridiculous—that is, part of the satirical project—that the items populating Belinda’s dressing table should be so closely identified with British mercantile expansion. The mock epic appears to trivialize the politics of empire by miniaturizing the globe as cosmetic clutter. On the other hand, the poem’s preoccupation with figures of conquest and colonialism seems to suggest that the link is more than a joke. Belinda’s beauty, her identity, and her desirability can only be understood as a function of her adornment in foreign commodities. Her toilet explicitly suggests the process by which distant lands were mined for resources by British trading companies, just as it implicates both Belinda and the social

The Rape of the Lockâ•…â•… 885 world she represents in the violence of early 18thcentury mercantilism. It is in this context that we may understand the appearance of the commodified objects in this and other scenes of the poem as more vivid, animated figures than the characters who possess them. It is Belinda’s accoutrements more than her company that are active and alive, “glittering,” “glowing,” “breathing,” and “shining” (1.32, 33, 34, 37). Later, as the party prepares for coffee, it is the beans that “crackle,” the mill that “turns round,” the Japanese lacquered table that “shin[es],” and the china cups that “receive” the “grateful .  .  . fuming Liquor” (3.106, 107, 110, 109, 114). Even the interiority of female character is depicted as a “moving Toyshop . . . Where Wigs with Wigs, with Swordknots Sword-knots strive, / Beau banish Beau, and Coaches Coaches drive” (1.100–103). The things in these passages stand in metonymically for people, implying a world of dynamic objects and a reality defined more by relations with things than with other people. The final and most famous line of the toilet passage dramatizes the logic of arbitrary accumulation that characterizes the fashionable consumerism at the heart of the poem. Among the beauty supplies on the table lie “Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux” (1.138). The proliferation of objects accelerates apparently randomly, even as the formal elements of the line—its alliteration and familiar meter—suggest order and meaning. The effect is that of a world of different, even incommensurate, things masquerading as equivalents and a reality in which the exchange of falsely equivalent but interchangeable objects has taken over all meaning. Hilary Englert

Gender in The Rape of the Lock

Centrally concerned with “Female errors” and “faults” (2.18, 17), The Rape of the Lock is often read as a satire on female manners and on the fashionable, highly feminized social world that Belinda represents. While universally adored, this “Fairest of Mortals” (1.27) is nonetheless portrayed as vain, artificial, selfish, and temperamental, more invested in appearances and surfaces than in realities and depths, more protective of her reputation than of her

virtue. In her decorative self-fashioning, ornamental accomplishments, and rule-governed social interaction, Belinda may be seen as ironically submitting to a naturalized set of gender norms and imperatives, which require that she act as accomplice to her own trivialization and containment. To be sure, the poem trafficks in an array of misogynist pieties—in particular the idea that women are fickle, vain, and consumed with trivial pleasures and petty forms of power. Significantly, however, the critique focuses on women’s artificial manners—that is, on the “gay ideas” that “early taint the Female Soul, / Instruct the Eyes of young Coquettes to roll, / Teach Infant-Cheeks a bidden Blush to know, / And little Hearts to flutter at a Beau” (1.83, 87–90). The emphasis of these lines is on female learning, on the external forces and social conventions that condition female habits and sensibilities. In other words, the passage refrains from assigning an innate frailty to women. Instead, the codified manners of the fashionable lady are conditioned by corrupting teachers, who are themselves given concrete form as the sylphs, gnomes, and other personified figures populating the cave of Spleen. “Affectation” of canto 4, for instance, models the alluring gestures of female weakness, as she, “Practic’d to Lisp, and hang the head aside, / Faints into Airs, and languishes with Pride; / On the rich Quilt sinks with becoming Woe, / Wrap in a Gown, for Sickness, and for Show” (4.31, 33–35). Female weakness is exposed in the poem as a ruse, a performance calculated to function ironically as a form of power. Despite strict adherence to a code of female conduct, Belinda is early characterized by her “graceful ease, and sweetness” (2.15), which are connected to her commanding presence, her personal power and the sway that she holds over men. Her image is “heavenly” (1.125), all men bow to her; and she is depicted as a goddess and a warrior: “Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare,/And beauty draws us with a single hair” (2.27–28). Her glances commit “Murders,” and “Millions” are “slain” by her smiles (5.145, 146). Indeed, the poem’s epic action is dominated by Belinda and Clarissa, its two central female characters. Clarissa is presented as the poem’s moral center, and the other figures of gravity or authority—Ariel, Umbrial, and the Goddess of

886â•…â•… Pope, Alexander Spleen, for instance—are also female (if not strictly human). Unlike the female characters in the poem, who merely play at weakness, the male characters are genuinely feeble, ineffectual, and effeminate. After losing a card game to his female opponent, the Baron musters the strength to snip her lock only once he has emboldened himself with a caffeine stimulant. The snuff-addicted Sir Plume is too intoxicated to manage a coherent utterance let alone a manly act. The very names of Dapperwit and Sir Fopling suggest a highly feminized male social type: the dandy, whose concern with delicate tastes and French fashions extends to meticulous adornment in wigs, cosmetics and perfumes, fancy apparel, and shiny shoes. With a cast of male characters like this, the reader cannot be entirely unsympathetic to Thalestris’s disdainful suggestion that “Men, Monkeys, Lap-dogs, [and] Parrots” be regarded as equivalents, the pets and playthings of women (4.120). At the heart of this poem is a playful, if combative, dynamic between the genders and a contest for power that culminates in a practical joke—the illicit clipping off of Belinda’s lock of hair—cast as a violent sexual “assault” by an otherwise “well-bred Lord” (1.9). Of course, the comparison to rape is meant to be understood as a ridiculous one. The reader is urged to judge Belinda’s reaction to the prank as disproportionately dire, to giggle at her “Rage, Resentment and Despair” (4.9), and to consider her “Airs, and Flights, and Screams, and Scolding” (5.32), as all too symptomatic of women’s superficiality and emotionalism. Well-positioned, then, to appreciate Clarissa’s intervention in Belinda’s histrionics, her recommendation of “good Sense” and “good Humor” in the face of adversity, the reader is offered a simple antidote to the “female faults” with which the poem is concerned (5.16, 30, 32). Clarissa’s speech serves as a conservative appeal to Belinda to reconcile herself to her fate as a docile “Huswife” since the charms of youth and “frail Beauty must decay, / Curl’d or uncurl’d, since Locks will turn to grey, / Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade, / And she who scorns a Man, must die a Maid” (5.21, 25–28). Hilary Englert

Violence in The Rape of the Lock

If the plot of this poem is mundane enough—a fashionable young lady awakes, dresses, and enjoys a day of leisure playing cards, drinking coffee, and engaging in light intrigue—this plot is persistently rendered through grand metaphors of epic warfare and heroic violence. Belinda’s ablutions are repeatedly represented as the putting on of “arms” in preparation for “Conquests yet to come” (1.39, 3.29, 28). Her beauty enslaves “mighty hearts” and leads to “the destruction of Mankind” (2.24, 19). Moreover, the sylphs—the disembodied female spirits duty-bound to protect the fair and innocent—are described as a “light Militia” (1.43) and an “Aerial Guard” (3.31). The world of imperial conquest and trade is invoked in the items on Belinda’s dressing table in canto 1, in the game of Ombre dramatized as extended “Combat” and the ritualized preparing and drinking of coffee in canto 3, and, of course, in the apocalyptic battle of canto 5, which ends quite definitively in “Millions slain” (3.44, 5.146). We may explain the prevalence of this martial figuration by recalling its usage as a classic mockepic strategy. According to this method, a satirical effect is produced when the reader reckons with the ridiculous disparity between the poem’s banal substance and weighty form, between the “trivial Things” of the world and the “Mighty Contests” to which they give rise (1.2). On the other hand, as we have already seen, the mock-epic contrasts of this poem seem consistently to expose serious comparisons, proximity where the form promises disparity, parallels where the form urges us to discover incongruity. While the poem’s central character is associated with—even indistinguishable from—the products and perils of mercantilism, its plot, too, dramatizes the violence of imperialism. This imagery is perhaps most palpable during the card game of canto 3, which is depicted as an epic, imperial “War,” among “Armies,” with each card serving alternately as “Captive,” “Victor,” “Tyrant,” “Victim,” and “Imperial consort” (3.65, 50, 64, 69, 68). The game is cast as an elaborate political allegory, a contest between “Monarchs” making “easie Conquest[s]” of “Asia’s Troops, and Africk’s Sable Sons” and competing to “grasp[ ] the Globe” (3.74, 82, 78, 75).

The Chosenâ•…â•… 887 Likewise, the feverish battle that erupts after (and in spite of ) Clarissa’s sensible speech imploring women to cultivate “Merit,” and “good Humour,” is cast preposterously in epic proportions (5.34, 31). Belinda calls “To Arms, to Arms!” and “to the Combat flies” (5.37, 38). Both the characters and their world of objects emerge active combatants: “Fans clap, Silks rustle, and tough Whalebones crack,” as the company fights “Like Gods” (5.40, 44). Despite the ostensible disparity between the trivial card game and its epic depiction, the superficial squabble and its representation as heroic battle, we might note that these leisurely pursuits take place at the queen’s royal palace among a community that controls the nation’s military operations and orchestrates actual battles as though they were games. Clearly, there is more than a false or silly relationship between the social world of this poem and the warfare that it persistently wages. While one reading might emphasize the mock-epic disparity between the poem’s form and content (dressing for a social outing bears little resemblance to preparation for war), from another perspective, the two are quite closely connected. This was the first major era of English imperial expansion. The international trade in valuables such as coffee, tea, cocoa, textiles, spices, and slaves expanded in an unparalleled fashion during the 18th century, and much of England’s foreign policy was organized around trade considerations. Indeed, the poem’s frequent references to coffee, tea, tobacco, snuff, chocolate, japanned surfaces, china cups, fans, Indian screens and other exotic objects point directly to England’s imperial enterprise and to the violence—however satirized—that that enterprise entailed. The poem is not without explicit acknowledgment of its ideological implications. Clarissa’s direct address to the reader in canto 5, for instance, warns against overvaluing the fleeting honors of imperial victory and the “vain .  .  . Glories” of war (5.15). And yet her moral goes entirely unheeded by the company, who, upon its conclusion, immediately erupts into an elaborate physical fight. As though in alliance with Clarissa, the speaker concludes the poem by reproving the kind of rewards that are “obtain’d with Guilt, and kept with Pain” (1.109) and with which “no Mortal must be blest” (1.111), and

yet these sentiments are offered very much at the expense of the characters in the poem. Their merits are left to the reader to weigh. While it might be argued that the mock-epic structure serves to mystify the very real relationship between the poem’s many spoils and the imperial violence with which they have, in reality, been acquired and brought home, other strains of the poem seem insistent on exposing this relationship. The social world of this poem—its luxury, comforts, games, and trivial character—is made possible by the realities of political and commercial struggle, war, and imperial conquest. If the poem’s mock violence distances the reader from serious recognition of these realities, Clarissa’s speech and the speaker’s final address to the reader do much to compensate. Hilary Englert

Potok, Chaimâ•… The Chosenâ•… (1967)

A finalist for the National Book Award, The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, is a classic novel about a friendship between an unlikely pair. When Danny Saunders, an Orthodox Hasidic Jew, shatters a pair of glasses into Reuven Malter’s eye with a baseball during a tournament between schools, the two strike up a conversation and eventually a friendship. Danny visits Reuven in the hospital in an attempt to assuage his guilt, but that leads to a partnership throughout each boy’s high school and college career. Danny struggles with his father’s silence and a set of expectations for his future that counter the dreams he cultivates to become an expert in psychology. With the arrival of Reuven Malter, a deeply religious but considerably more secular Jewish young man, Danny finally has someone with whom he can share his deepest secrets. Each boy tries to reconcile his devout Judaism with his place in modern American culture, a contrast of extremes. In addition to their friendship, the novel explores relationships between fathers and sons. Reuven’s relationship with his father, David Malter, a scholar and a leader in the Zionist movement, is a warm and nurturing one. Their connection is shown in stark contrast to Danny’s relationship with his father, Rabbi Isaac Saunders, the leader of a traditional sect of Judaism. Reb Saunders chooses to raise Danny

888â•…â•… Potok, Chaim in strict silence, unless they are studying the Torah, a body of religious teachings. That situation takes a toll on Danny, although he respects his father tremendously. Finally, each boy develops a relationship with the other’s father, allowing him to embrace his identity more fully. Jeana Hrepich

Identity in The Chosen

The Chosen is a coming of age story that takes Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders, two Jewish young men grappling with their identities, as its central subjects. It is also a story about their fathers’ high expectations for them and, in some cases, their defiance of those dreams for the right to follow their own. Danny Saunders has a formidable mind. He memorizes whole passages from the Torah, and his analysis is impeccable. Each week on Shabbat afternoons, Danny’s father, Reb Saunders, quizzes Danny on the major tractates of the Talmud, a collection of Jewish law. Danny answers questions that require knowledge of minute details that astound his friend, Reuven Malter, who sees these sessions as “a strange, almost bizarre quiz.” Reuven does not yet understand that Reb Saunders is training Danny to be a good leader of their people, a group of extremely Orthodox Jews who are fiercely loyal to their rabbi, their synagogue, and their customs. However, Danny has a rebellious spirit and a mind of his own. On one hand, Danny feels responsible for his father’s people, and his respect for his father is great, even though he was raised in silence. Danny’s father only speaks to him during their Shabbat “quizzes” as a method to help Danny feel the suffering of other people. Reb Saunders wanted to raise a son who had both brains and a soul. Danny says, “I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it.” While once he resented his father, now he begins to understand and, in his eyes, benefit from the quiet that engulfed him as a young man. Still, despite his fledgling understanding of his father’s choice to raise him in silence and his feeling of obligation to his father and his people, Danny has dreams of his own. As a young teenager, he spent hours at the library where he read stacks of books that his father would consider taboo. In fact, it is

Reuven Malter’s father, David, who begins to guide Danny’s forbidden explorations. Eventually Danny’s studies become even more controversial as he examines psychology, Freud, and psychoanalysis. When he embarks on German, the language of the people who so recently killed 6 million Jews, even Reuven is taken aback. Nevertheless, Danny’s predilection for the study of the mind consumes him, and his future takes a drastic turn. Danny realizes that his little brother, an ill, pale child, could take their father’s place, leaving Danny to follow his own path. Danny admits to Reuven that the real reason he had concern for his brother’s health was because his brother’s life as a tzaddik, a Hasidic spiritual leader, and the next of kin to their father’s dynasty, would allow Danny to pursue psychology without abandoning the extended family of his people. Danny says, “I think I had to justify to myself having to become a tzaddik,” but his hopes for his brother put an end to his expectations for himself to follow in his father’s footsteps. The decision is not easy, however. Danny’s wife had been chosen for him when he was a toddler, as is the custom in his community. Danny tells Reuven, “That’s another reason it won’t be so easy to break out of the trap. It doesn’t only involve my own family.” Ironically, it is Reuven Malter who pursues the dream of becoming a rabbi. His father had alternative plans for him, though, just as Reb Saunders sought other results for Danny’s future. “I would have liked you to become a university professor. But I think you have already decided,” David Malter says to his son after Reuven insists that he will become a rabbi. In a way, Danny fulfills the dreams Reuven Malter’s father had for Reuven, and Reuven fulfills the dreams Danny Saunders’s father had for Danny. Neither young man becomes what he was expected, but each becomes the best at what he set out to be. Identity, then, cannot be shaped by a father’s wishes; young men must forge identities for themselves, according to the examples in The Chosen. Jeana Hrepich

Parenthood in The Chosen

Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders are an unlikely pair in Chaim Potok’s The Chosen. Their fathers,

The Chosenâ•…â•… 889 too, could not be more contrary. However, when one considers each father’s devotion to his son, which is immeasurable on both sides, one sees that Reb Saunders, a Hasidic rabbi, and David Malter, an ardent Zionist, are more similar than they first seem. Each man strives to make his son a pillar of compassion and righteousness, though each man’s method for achieving those ends is drastically different. David Malter’s approach to raising his son is dialogic. When Reuven is younger, he and his father discuss the politics of World War II, the fate of Jewish people in concentration camps, and Reuven’s friend, Danny. As Reuven ages, their conversations turn as David Malter preoccupies himself with Zionism. Reuven watches him pour his energy into the movement, and his pride for his father’s work reaches its climax when, “with tears of pride,” he listens to his father’s rousing speech during a “massive” rally at Madison Square Garden. When the United Nations votes on the partition plan to create a Jewish state, Reuven and his father’s reactions exemplify the traits that characterize David’s parenting style. “We alternately wept and talked until after three in the morning when we finally went to bed,” Reuven recounts. David and his son relate through a profusion of language and emotion, unlike Danny and his father. Just like David Malter, Reb Saunders has high hopes for his son. After years of silence, Danny learns that his father’s approach was intended to make his son feel pain so that he may have compassion for others. Reb Saunders explains to Danny, “Better I should have no son at all than to have a brilliant son who had no soul.” Reb Saunders saw in young Danny a child with a brilliant mind and no soul. To combat this extreme flaw, which Reb Saunders had witnessed in his brother many years before, the rabbi speaks to Danny only during Talmud study. By this method, Danny’s father is certain he will raise a tzaddik, a Hasidic spiritual leader and a highly moral man, though the pain of his decision weighs heavily on both himself and his son. Reb Saunders suffers, and makes his son suffer, for the salvation of Danny’s soul. Reb Saunders is also a parental figure to a congregation of followers. Following the slaughter of the majority of his community by Cossacks in the

Bolshevist Revolution, including the murder of his first wife and two children, Reb Saunders escaped Russia with 43 surviving families. With fatherly strength, he led these survivors to Ellis Island and then settled with them in Brooklyn, where they raised their families and started their lives over. Reuven is perplexed when he learns this history, and he questions Danny about why men would follow Reb Saunders unquestioningly. Danny explains, “They would have followed him anywhere” because “[h]e’s a tzaddik.” In other words, Reb Saunders is a holy man whose righteousness is boundless. His people’s trust and devotion is mighty, as they see him as a powerful bridge to God. Each father’s primary parental relationship is with his own son, but each also has a parental relationship the other’s son. In the case of Reb Saunders, Reuven is used as a conduit to Danny; Reb Saunders speaks to Danny through Reuven. He realizes that Reuven does not understand his choices in raising Danny, but he believes Danny comprehends the intention and the purpose. Through Reuven, Reb Saunders may finally speak, “Forgive me . . . a wiser father . . . may have done differently.” Danny’s father admits he did the best he could do. David Malter is not in favor of the rabbi’s silence toward his son, but he also argues that every father has a right to raise his son as he wishes. David has some influence on Danny, since he recommends texts to him when they first meet in the library as strangers and later acts as a voice of reason. When Danny prepares to inform his father about his plans to become a psychology student at Columbia University, it is David Malter who urges him to think about Reb Saunders’s reaction and to prepare for it. The varying styles of parenting that David Malter and Reb Saunders practice have a common aim. Both fathers wish to raise compassionate, faithful men, and each son responds to his father’s parenting. Though different in their methods, their common hope is duly born out of their hearts. Jeana Hrepich

Religion in The Chosen

Chaim Potok’s The Chosen reveals a succession of conflicts. All of these conflicts center around each character’s deeply rooted sense of righteousness and

890â•…â•… Potok, Chaim faith. The profound and meaningful relationships between fathers, sons, and friends is both nourished and challenged by Judaism, which is the foundation of this deeply religious book. The novel begins with a high school baseball game between two schools, one an Orthodox yeshiva (a Jewish parochial school) and the other a considerably less traditional Jewish school. The tense conflict between these groups is heightened by the slurs the Hasidic boys hurl at their foes. Potok writes, “Sometime during the half inning one of the members of the yeshiva team had shouted at us in Yiddish, ‘Burn in Hell, you apikorsim!’↜” The evocation of the word apikorsim, a slander for secular Jews, moves a player on the other team to comment that “all of us knew that this was not just another ball game.” Indeed, the hatred on the field erupts when the pitcher Reuven Malter’s eye is smashed by Danny Saunders’s base hit. Reuven is rushed to the hospital, where he learns that he will need surgery to repair the damage. What follows is a burgeoning relationship between two young men whose religious paths differ vastly. Although Reuven and Danny have been influenced to follow a different set of rules and values by their fathers, both of them share a deep respect for studying the Torah, the most important text in Judaism. Potok explains, “Virtuosity on Talmud was the achievement most sought after by every student of a yeshiva, for it was the automatic guarantee of a reputation for brilliance.” Danny’s photographic memory makes him an authority on Talmud scripture at a very young age, while Reuven also proves his mastery as an adroit college student. Reuven manages to gain access into Danny’s home life by demonstrating his Talmudic knowledge in the presence of Rabbi Isaac Saunders, Danny’s strict father, a Hasidic rabbi who escaped persecution in Europe to found a devout religious community in Brooklyn, New York. Danny struggles to break free of his father’s strictures by reading forbidden texts, studying the German language, and eventually choosing psychology as a field of study rather than inherit his father’s position as rabbi of their congregation. The struggle between Danny and his father is a primary conflict in the text, one that hinges on Danny’s refusal to accept all of his father’s religious values and beliefs. Reuven’s father, David Malter,

cites single-mindedness as Hasidism’s major downfall: “What annoyed him was their fanatic sense of righteousness, their absolute certainty that they and they alone had God’s ear, and every other Jew was wrong, totally wrong, a sinner, a hypocrite, an apikoros, and doomed, therefore, to burn in hell.” As Danny grows up and his passion for studying the human mind deepens, he strays from what his father has taught him. Reb Saunders isolates his son from Reuven Malter’s company once he learns that Reuven’s father is an outspoken Zionist leader. Zionism, a movement to secure a Jewish state in Palestine, does not fit into Reb Saunders’s sense of righteousness. He says to Reuven, “Your father is a great scholar. But what he writes, ah, what he writes!” In fact, it is the conflict between David Malter’s avowal of Zionism and Reb Saunders’s distaste for it that causes immense turmoil in the later half of the novel. Once the United Nations votes in favor of the Partition Plan, dividing Jerusalem into Arab and Jewish states, David Malter is “almost incoherent with joy,” and “[t]he death of the six million Jews had finally been given meaning, he kept saying over and over again.” However, Reb Saunders’s camp bemoans the continued bloodshed that has resulted from the UN plan. “↜‘Hitler wasn’t enough,’↜” they said, “↜‘Now more Jewish blood, more slaughter. What does the world want from us? Six million isn’t enough? More Jews have to die?’↜” Religion plays a significant role in the two wars that prevail in The Chosen. Initially, World War II looms over Reuven as he recovers in his hospital bed from his eye injury at Brooklyn Memorial Hospital. That war takes a toll on both fathers and sons as each man suffers from knowing what great crimes were committed against his people. Finally, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict brings David Malter and Reb Saunders great physical and mental hardship. David Malter suffers from a heart attack under the stress of his involvement in the Zionist movement. Both of these wars caused great devastation to Jewish people and to the characters in The Chosen. Likewise, the internal suffering of Reuven Malter, and especially Danny Saunders, is very much the result of their religious beliefs and responsibilities. Jeana Hrepich

Remembrance of Things Pastâ•…â•… 891

Proust, Marcelâ•… Remembrance of Things Pastâ•… (À la recherche du temps perdu)â•… (1913–1927) Remembrance of Things Past consists of seven semiautobiographical novels published between 1913 and 1927. The work has a complicated publication history. Marcel Proust (1871–1922) initially had difficulty finding a publisher and eventually released the first volume, Swann’s Way, at his own expense. While Swann’s Way received little fanfare, the second volume, Within a Budding Grove (1919) was awarded the prestigious French literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. Volumes 3 and 4 appeared between 1920 and 1922, when Proust died. The three final volumes, including Time Regained, were published posthumously. The first six volumes of the novel were translated into English in the 1920s by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff and revised by Terence Kilmartin in 1981. A definitive French edition was released in the 1980s. A new English translation appeared in 2002, with each volume translated by a different translator. While Remembrance of Things Past as a whole is known for its descriptions of involuntary memory, the power of writing, and its portrayal of a dying society, the first volume, with its famous account of the tea-soaked madeleine, is now the most widely known. The work deals with a variety of themes— including the passage of time, childhood, art, sex and sexuality, love, and social class—and reflects the many social and cultural changes underway at the beginning of the 20th century. Katherine Ashley

Love in Remembrance of Things Past

The vision of love that Marcel Proust presents in Remembrance of Things Past is far from positive, but it is psychologically insightful. Although love is presented in many guises, it is rarely benign: It causes obsessions, delusions, and disappointment, yet the two main characters, the narrator and Charles Swann, seem incapable of resisting it. Familial love is powerfully felt in the novel and influences the actions of parents, spouses, adults, and children. The narrator’s great-aunt Léonie sequesters herself in her rooms after her husband’s death; likewise, Swann’s father is inconsolable after his wife dies. The composer Vinteuil devotes his life to his

daughter and “gradually [dies] of a broken heart” when she begins her lesbian affair. Even as an adult, the housekeeper, Françoise, weeps for her longdead parents, while the narrator’s attachment to his mother is so all-consuming that his father considers it unhealthy. Indeed, the strength of the narrator’s passion for his mother causes him both physical distress and extreme elation. In addition, it affects his relationships later in life: As a child, he used to “receive, in her kiss, the heart of [his] mother,” but as an adult he is unable to fully “possess” the heart of his mistresses. Consequently, romantic love will always be a disappointment for him. Both the narrator and Swann engage in childish behavior when it comes to love: They structure their days around women; Swann saves Odette’s letters and flowers; the narrator scribbles Gilberte’s name in his notebook. While this behavior initially seems harmless, both men are prone to infatuation. Romantic love is portrayed as a sort of obsessive “malady”; after a certain point, Swann’s love for Odette is “past operation.” His “illness” exacerbates his jealousy. Proving the narrator’s contention that it is inevitable to doubt one’s lovers “at the moment when one believes in them,” Swann (rightly) questions Odette’s honesty and fidelity. It transpires that Odette has been unfaithful to Swann throughout their relationship and has had numerous lovers, male and female. Nonetheless, no matter how many times Swann is disillusioned and disheartened, he persists in loving her. Clearly, for him, romantic love is an emotion that does not depend on reciprocity. It is ironic that Swann slowly begins to reassess his relationship with Odette once her promiscuity is revealed. Prior to meeting her, Swann himself—like the narrator’s uncle Adolphe—was a womanizer, having pursued women of all stations, and he may even have impregnated the Combray kitchen maid. These physical relationships require no emotional involvement on his part; in fact, “depth of character . . . freeze[s] his senses.” Instead, these relationships revive in him “a feeling of vanity” that has little to do with sexual prowess and everything to do with not having his “social value underrated.” Inevitably, there are social consequences to his liaisons: Swann’s conquests, Odette included, are beneath him socially,

892â•…â•… Proust, Marcel and as a result, he cannot appear in high society with Odette, and their “unfortunate marriage” is disapproved of. According to the narrator, lovers have a remarkable capacity for self-delusion: When love “no longer evolves by itself,” lovers often “come to its aid.” Swann, for instance, creates love where there is none because he is content being “in love for the pleasure of loving” and delights in “living by love alone.” In this respect, the idealized Odette whom Swann loves does not exist outside of his mind. Initially, he is “indifferent” to her; however, like the narrator who loves Gilberte because he thinks she scorns him, Swann is attracted to Odette once he (wrongly) learns that she might be difficult to seduce. Moreover, Swann only finds Odette desirable, and falls in love with her, after he compares her to a Botticelli painting. When he looks at her “in the flesh,” he doubts her beauty; when he imagines she is in a painting, he is able to introduce her image “into a world of dreams and fancies” and so loves her. In the end, Swann so successfully deludes himself regarding Odette that he begins “adopting her opinions”—about the Verdurins, for instance— and hides his true self. In the days of his first fascination for Gilberte, the narrator felt that “Love did really exist, apart from ourselves.” As an adult, he suggests that love, including Swann’s, is an invention that enlivens humdrum existences, providing a “fresh charm” in a wearying world. Love is also a source of torment. It affects how the narrator and Swann act and how they interpret their environment, and it is ultimately a projection of their own needs, desires, and personalities. Katherine Ashley

Memory in Remembrance of Things Past

The title of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu has been translated into English in two different ways: Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time. The first title focuses on the act of remembering and the role of specific memories—of events, people, “fragment[s] of landscape”—in the narrator’s life; the second focuses on the passage of time and the feeling of wistful nostalgia that often permeates the text. Together, the two titles underscore the importance of memory and the role of the past in Proust’s novel.

According to the narrator, actively trying to regain the past is “a labour in vain” because the past is “beyond the reach of intellect.” Memories are like a “luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy background,” and the difficulty lies in bringing the past into focus. Some of the narrator’s oldest recollections are “instinctive” and belong to the “deepest layer” of his “mental soil,” but others can only be uncovered by unconscious reactions to material objects. In these involuntary memories, sensory stimuli—odors, tastes, sounds—generate reminiscences that are central to identity; the perception of reality; and, in the case of the narrator, the creative process. The most obvious example of the connection between an external stimulus and the resurfacing of long-buried memories is the madeleine incident: the entire “Combray” account is triggered by the taste of a madeleine cake dipped in tea, which transports the narrator back to his youth. Similarly, at the end of the novel, the vision of trees in the Bois de Boulogne returns the narrator to an era when he waited impatiently for a glimpse of the elegant Mme. Swann. Other characters are also affected by evocative powers of the senses: Because Vinteuil’s sonata evokes “forgotten strains of happiness” in Charles Swann, when he hears it, he is carried back to an earlier period in his relationship with Odette. The narrator’s obsession with memory is not a simple case of nostalgia, a mere sentimental longing for the past. On the contrary, memory plays a central role in the creation of identity in the text. For example, the narrator observes that, for him, “going back in memory,” there are two different Charles Swanns, each reflecting a different part of his own former life. How the narrator perceives others in the present is affected by their role in his past, to the extent that all personalities are “created by the thoughts of other people.” In addition, the narrator is in many ways the sum total of his memories: Without them and the process of recollection, his story could not and would not have been told. The act of writing is presented as a means of recapturing the past; the novel that we read is therefore meant to resurrect the narrator’s past. When he refers to the “vast structure of recollection,” he is, in a sense, referring to Remembrance of Things Past itself. In this respect, remembering is a creative act,

Remembrance of Things Pastâ•…â•… 893 but it also provides the text with its structure: The narrator jumps forward and backward through time, often presenting memories within memories, while also recounting other people’s memories, as in the second part of the novel, Swann in Love. For the narrator, the importance of remembrance stems from its relationship to the passage of time. Even when he is not actively remembering, he is overly conscious of the fleeting nature of the present. For this reason, when he describes his angst about his mother’s goodnight kiss, he evokes both the intense anticipation of the hoped-for event and the regret that he cannot delay this pleasurable experience. As soon as the kiss takes place, it no longer exists: The moment is gone and becomes a part of the past, an “old, dead moment.” This acute sense of the passage of time is related to a deeper existential issue. According to the narrator, because time is “fugitive,” always ticking, “reality will take shape in the memory alone.” The “life of the mind” is, therefore, richer than day-to-day reality because everything is susceptible to change except our memories. For this reason, as is shown in the final section of Swann’s Way, “Place Names: The Name,” words have the power to evoke the past and often contain more meaning than the things they describe. Thus, when the narrator is older and alone, writing his novel, his recollections and the act of remembering give his life meaning, even though they cannot erase all pain, even though “remembrance of a certain form is but regret for a particular moment.” Katherine Ashley

Social Class in Remembrance of Things Past

In its portrayal of the changing nature of the “sharply defined castes” of early 20th-century France, Remembrance of Things Past is not so much a criticism of the class system as a critique of snobbery and misplaced social ambitions. Characters act differently depending on whether they are in high, bourgeois, or bohemian society, and they must regulate their relationships for fear of flouting conventional “laws of middle-class morality” and fueling social jealousy. But at the same time as it exposes the pettiness and hypocrisy of bourgeois society, Remembrance of Things Past hints at the demise of the rigid social structures of 19th-century France.

Moving in social circles outside of one’s class is frowned upon. While independent spirits such as the narrator’s grandmother think that “distinction [is] a thing wholly independent of social position,” others, such as his great-aunt, subscribe to “provincial dogmatism,” whereby to “associat[e] outside the caste in which [one] had been born and bred” is tantamount to “utter degradation.” The difference in attitude rests on the extent to which characters have social ambitions of their own and are concerned by how others perceive them. Thus, although the Verdurins, for example, are ridiculed by the narrator, people of all social classes—from Françoise the servant to Mme. de Franquetot—are concerned with keeping up appearances. Even the composer, Vinteuil, displays a “strong .  .  . element of hypocrisy”: His daughter disgraces him socially, but he still deplores Charles Swann’s inappropriate marriage. The caste system is particularly rigid for the middle classes, who must climb neither up nor down the social ladder. The narrator’s grandfather likens the Verdurins to the “riffraff of Bohemia,” the Verdurins refer to those above them as “bores,” and the narrator’s uncle is ostracized by his family because of his acquaintances. Most significantly, however, Charles Swann leads a double life by concealing the fact that he “had entirely ceased to live in the kind of society which his family had frequented.” Swann has committed two sins against society: He cannot mention Odette and the Verdurins (who are beneath him), but neither can he admit that he moves in high society (which is above him). Thus, while he implicitly understands the social taboo he violates in marrying Odette—“he never attempt[s] to introduce” his wife to the narrator’s family—he also hides the fact that he is “sought after in the aristocratic world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.” “Worldly ambition” is something the narrator’s grandmother is “little capable of feeling, or indeed of understanding,” but others are clearly social climbers. Legrandin, for instance, worries that the rich might know “that he numbered . . . among his friends middle-class people.” This snobbery leads to social snubs: Legrandin invites the young narrator to dinner, only to ignore his family in the street the following day—“in a word, he was a snob.” Similarly, the Verdurins aspire to exclusivity. Their

894â•…â•… Rand, Ayn “little nucleus” is governed by shallow social rules that reinforce false feelings of social superiority. In particular, Mme. Verdurin is prone to social jealousy and does not wish to acknowledge that there are “people in the world who ‘mattered more’ than herself.” Fittingly, the Verdurins turn against Swann because he refuses to wholly adopt their social “dogmas” and because they gradually discover his “brilliant position in society.” In contrast to Legrandin and the Verdurins, Swann is free “from all taint of snobbishness” precisely because he finds high society and social standing “unimportant.” This underscores his inherent nobility of character (rather than rank), but it also highlights the enormous social changes taking place at the beginning of the 20th century. While the social structure of the narrator’s childhood no longer exists by the time he writes down his memories, it is not entirely inaccessible. When he was a child, his family went for walks in two “diametrically opposed” directions, the Guermantes way and Swann’s way, each representing a competing social world. To the boy, the Guermantes way was “ideal rather than real.” The narrator understood that the Duc and Duchesse of Guermantes were “real personages who did actually exist,” but because the aristocratic world they represented was out of bounds for people of his social standing, he could not conceive of them as anything other than imaginary. He pictured them “in tapestry” or in “changing, rainbow colours,” “wrapped in .  .  . mystery.” Although social castes become less sharply defined over time, and the narrator, like Swann, “was to know [Guermantes] well enough one day,” by the time of writing, the old world of the narrator’s youth belongs to the realm of memory. Both “ways,” and indeed the entire social structure of his childhood, have assumed the status of fiction and are now only accessible through the act of remembering, a fact that makes social ambitions doubly futile. Katherine Ashley

Rand, Aynâ•… Anthemâ•… (1938)

Anthem is a science fiction novella by the author of The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) and contains much of the controversial ideas embodied in those two novels. Ayn Rand (1905–82)

believed that an individual’s pursuit of his own rational self-interest and happiness is life’s highest moral purpose. Anthem delineates a dystopia located in an unspecified future dark age in which society has complete control over the lives of its citizens. The children are brought up by the state, identified by numbers and subsequently classified and assigned suitable vocations in the interest of the state. The first-person singular I is forbidden in the City. Individuals have no right to “think” for themselves, nurture innate tendencies, or make choices. Equality 7-2521, the protagonist, describes the dystopian society in which he lives in a secret diary. He discovers the remnants of an “individualistic” society from Unmentionable Times and seeks to interest the Collective Council of the City in the scientific achievements of the forgotten past upon which he stumbles. The insistent attempt on the part of Equality 7-2521 to “think” and “question” results in severe punishment for him. He escapes, and Liberty-5-3000, a woman he has fallen in love with and calls “The Golden One,” throws her lot with him. The two discover a house in the mountains preserved by impenetrable overgrowth and live there. In the house, they find much to read to learn the values of individualistic society, and they hope and plan to achieve a new future to regain total freedom for the individual. The title, Anthem, with its quasi-religious meaning of a hymn to what is praise-worthy, celebrates individualism, which Rand considered human beings’ most valuable attribute. Gulshan Taneja

Heroism in Anthem

The concept of heroism portrayed in Anthem has an interesting dimension to it. The protagonist in Ayn Rand’s novella stands apart from the mere “others” by virtue of being able to think, reflect, and gain or create knowledge. The burden of knowledge is as hard to bear as the burden of physical strength and moral excellence historically associated with a hero, and thus it is similarly equally laudable. Some believe the basic sense of “hero” is “one who safeguards” or “protector.” Equality 7-2521 not only gains knowledge, he seeks to nurture, safeguard, and protect it. It is this ability to perceive, extract, and appropriate knowledge that distinguishes Equality. It

Anthemâ•…â•… 895 Â� projects him as a hero with unique abilities which he can exercise for the benefit of mankind. For Equality, this battle is not easily won. The very first sentence in the novella reads: It is sin to write this [the account of the long lost forgotten civilization when men were free]. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. . . . And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. Equality 7-2521, we are told, was raised, like all other children, away from his biological parents in the Home of the Infants. He was educated in the Home of the Students. Later he realized that he was born with a “curse”: He is eager to think and keen to question. Even though he excelled in math and science and dreamed of becoming a Scholar, the Council of Vocations assigned him to the Home of the Street Sweepers. Equality accepts his profession willingly in order to repent for his transgression, of which his desire to learn is considered tantamount. Equality’s curiosity will not go away, however, and he remains inquisitive. One day he finds the entrance to a subway tunnel left over from the Unmentionable Times before the creation of Anthem’s society, and he explores it. Equality surreptitiously enters the tunnel and regularly undertakes scientific experiments. He rediscovers electricity and the light bulb. He decides to take his inventions to the World Council of Scholars so that they will recognize his talent and allow him to work with them. But he is arrested for performing unauthorized actions. He escapes into the mountains. If a readiness for self-sacrifice is a characteristic of a hero, Equality is willing to risk his life for what he considers a worthy cause. Along with the Golden One, who had followed him into the forest, Equality lives in the house hidden in the forest away from the world of Anthem. “We shall never leave this house .  .  . nor let it be taken from us,” they resolve. “This is our home and the end of the journey.” As they discover the glorious past of humanity, Equality wonders: “And now we look upon the earth and sky. This spread of naked

earth rock and peaks and moonlight is like a world ready to be born, a world that waits. . . . It seems to say it has great gifts to lay before us.” He reflects: “May knowledge come to us.” The last two chapters sum up Rand’s fundamental beliefs in the supremacy of the individual. Equality, who has renamed himself Prometheus, is shown determined to resurrect the vision of a forgotten world. Rand uses the concept of the hero skillfully to let her protagonist be the embodiment as well as the carrier of knowledge on which the future of man and his happiness depends. Despite the emotional and dramatic tone of the last soliloquy on the part of the protagonist, there is an erudite and dry, objective ring to the thoughts he expresses. The triumph of individualism, self-centeredness, and ego is proclaimed, even though apparently an illusion of virtue and sense of the “general” good is allowed to guide him. It is fascinating to observe how deftly Rand allows the protagonist to proclaim the triumph of the individual while at once subjugating himself to let humanity share the rewards of his triumph. Gulshan Taneja

Individual and Society in Anthem

Ayn Rand greatly admired Nietzsche for his belief in human potential. In an appendix to Atlas Shrugged, Rand states: “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” In Anthem, which embodies a dystopian vision of a futuristic society where collectivism has triumphed at the cost of the individual, the protagonist expresses his sense of discovery of the significance of the “individual”: This—my body and spirit—this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. . . . My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

896â•…â•… Rand, Ayn Rand’s emphasis on the “individual,” totally “man-centred” focus often raises the question of a human’s relationship with other people in the immediate context of his or her life, family, neighborhood, and the larger context of state and nation. Rand’s view is that community in any form must exist only to further the individual human potential. The individual cannot be subjugated to some larger purpose that goes against the essential spirit of man. The so-called common good, or larger purpose (or whatever ideal by which the individual is denied the right and freedom to exercise free will), must in fact be recognized as a form of degeneracy. Rand has the protagonist of Anthem proclaim in no uncertain terms that it is through such false pretexts that “the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.” Rand firmly supported the individualism that Anthem projects. She was highly critical of the “total collectivism” that certain forms of social organization, such as communism, espoused. Her attitude toward such questions emerged out of her philosophical views, generally labeled objectivism. She believed in reason and rational egoism, and sought objective reality in metaphysics. She believed that individuals must choose their values and actions solely by reason. The individual, she maintained must operate alone, not subjugating himself or herself to others or subjugating others. For Rand, the state existed merely to provide protection to citizens through police and military from criminal aggression from within and foreign aggression from without. The state machinery must exist as a “necessary evil,” but it must exist only at the minimalist level. It should be responsible for maintaining a system of justice through laws and courts to determine guilt or innocence and to resolve disputes among individuals. A resolute defender of individual rights, Rand believed the government machinery existed only to defend those rights. Rand wrote philosophically rich fiction. Her novels propound her essential views with the commitment and intensely logical reasoning of a philosopher. She was influenced by Aristotle’s Organon (“Logic”); by several ideas of Nietzsche; by John Locke, who promulgated the idea that individuals

“own themselves”; and more generally by the philosophical thought of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. Her sociopolitical stance upheld laissez-faire capitalism and the American values of rational egoism and individualism. Her intense interest in reason led her to denounce mysticism and religion as obstacles in the path of human happiness. For Rand, then, the individual and society have an inescapable connection, but the interaction between the two must be so fashioned as to lead to the enhancement of the individual potential. Gulshan Taneja

Oppression in Anthem

Oppression finds a sharper, more vivid delineation in Anthem than it does even in the later, better-known novels of Ayn Rand. Its stark simplicity of design and form and a relatively narrower narrative objective as an expression of its authorial intent convinces the reader of the reality of the evil as a nightmare does even after one wakes up. Oppression has been variously described as the use of power to silence or subjugate one group of people or category—to privilege or empower the oppressor, who appropriates force, authority, or apparently commonly acceptable social norms in order to gain control. When institutionalized, as in a dictatorship, it may take the form of systematic oppression. Racism, sexism, and other sociopolitical prejudices are examples of it. Anthem goes a step further and projects a society in which the members are completely convinced of the justness of their predicament. They consider their state of existence as an ideal form of life achieved through superior historical effort. This internalized oppression is one of the most horrifying forms of social existence that Rand delineates through the fable of Equality 7-2521 and “The Golden One,” the two main characters in the novella. The events in Anthem take place at some future date when humankind has entered another dark age as a result of the evils of irrationality and collectivism. Technological advancement is discouraged, when it is allowed to occur at all. The notion of individuality has been allowed to wither away. The word I has been eliminated from everyday speech.

Mumbo Jumboâ•…â•… 897 Equality 7-2521, writing in a tunnel under the earth, explains his life, the society around him, and his eventual escape from this society. His exclusive use of plural pronouns (we, our, they) to refer to himself and others defers to the mandate of the World Council, which seeks to eliminate all individualist ideas. The council raises children away from their biological parents, assigns to them suitable skills to learn, and then allocates them their roles in society. Equality’s ability to think and question is considered a curse. It is taken to mean that he is unwilling to give up himself for others. That violates the principles upon which Anthem’s dystopian society is founded. Equality’s discovery of the life and artifacts from the Unmentionable Times is considered a threat to the social structure. He flees into the Uncharted Forest outside the City, and upon entering the forest, he realizes that he is free. He no longer must wake up every morning with others to sweep the streets. Now that he sees this, he is not stricken with the sense that he will die at the fangs of the beasts of the forest as a result of his transgressions. He develops a new understanding of the world and his place in it. On his second day of living in the forest, Equality stumbles upon the Golden One, Liberty 5-3000, who has followed him from the City. They embrace, fumbling to articulate their feelings as they do not know how to feel specific individual feelings and relate them to others. They discover a house from the Unmentionable Times in the mountains, completely preserved for hundreds of years by thick overgrowth. Equality and the Golden One make it their home. There is an unmistakable note of overt grim intensity in the narrative that goes back to the authorial intention and the resultant authorial intervention in the narrative. The firsthand experience of oppression that motivated Ayn Rand to raise a bulwark of creative and critical writing against it was neither unique nor the most horrific. Oppression has been part of the history of humankind from the time of the plight of English Protestants under the Catholic queen Mary to the oppression of African Americans in the free America and the colonial enterprise of the European powers. What apparently stunned Rand was the total failure on the part of the then-contemporary American intellectual establishment to appreciate the extent of it in the

Russian Empire. In fact, the very existence of it was misjudged. In the United States, Macmillan’s refusal to publish Anthem was based on the belief that “the author does not understand socialism.” Gulshan Taneja

Reed, Ishmaelâ•… Mumbo Jumboâ•… (1972)

Mumbo Jumbo was the first of Ishmael Reed’s novels to garner widespread critical acclaim and remains one of his most significant works. A complex assault on monolithic culture and an argument for multiculturalism, the novel is specifically interested in demonstrating that European culture has obscured its dependence on a more vital, rich, and seminal African culture. At its core, Mumbo Jumbo is a critique of the Harlem Renaissance, which was a short but vibrant outpouring of black culture during the 1920s. In the novel, this outpouring takes the form of Jes’ Grew, an individualized creative expression through dance and jazz that threatens the staid dominant culture. Jes’ Grew needs its sacred and ancient text to sustain itself, though, and the oppressive Christian Wallflower Order seeks the text in order to destroy it. At the same time, the voodoo priest PaPa LaBas, the central figure in the novel, is also seeking the text in order to preserve it. All the while, the text is in the hands of a black militant Muslim, Abdul Sufi Hamid, who destroys it without ever recognizing the full impact of what he has done, and Jes’ Grew fades. The novel is difficult to characterize, exploring such themes as the individual and society, oppression, pride, race, spirituality, and tradition. It is at once postmodern, satirical, parodic, and polemical as it relies on narrative fragmentation; footnotes; complex references to myth, religion, and history; allusions to other literary works; and lengthy diatribes on the ways Western culture and religion have systematically worked to contain and marginalize African and Eastern culture and religion. Moreover, Reed (b. 1938) argues that even black artists have been so co-opted by European culture that they have forgotten how rich are the offerings of their own heritage. Michael Little

898â•…â•… Reed, Ishmael

Oppression in Mumbo Jumbo

Several art history students in Mumbo Jumbo begin “to see that the Art instructor was speaking as if he didn’t know we were in the room.” These students are a racially diverse group who suddenly recognize that their instructor is speaking of art from a sense of cultural superiority that privileges white, European art over the art of other cultures. The students channel their righteous indignation into stealing art from museums and returning it to the people who produced it, liberating and repatriating the collections of “primitive” artifacts with the help of “sympathetic White students and intellectuals” who are “unaffected by 1 of America’s deadlier and more ravaging germs: racism.” The thieves call themselves Mu’tafikah; author Ishmael Reed explains in a footnote that Mu’tafikah is the Quran’s word for the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah who “were the bohemians of their day” just like these “art-nappers” are the “bohemians of the 1920s Manhattan,” where the action of Mumbo Jumbo takes place. Museums, or “Centers of Art Detention” as they are called in the novel, practice a form of cultural oppression by removing artifacts from their original cultural context—in which they might serve as art pieces or as everyday tools or as necessary elements of significant rituals—and putting them on display for people who will treat them, even if respectfully, as curios. The novel’s argument is that artifacts that are integral to the cultural, spiritual, and even day-to-day life of a people should remain with those people. Removing those artifacts from their context, taking them from the people who would use them, and treating them as relics simply highlights how powerless the creators were to keep their creations. Moreover, the museum seems to suggest that the original culture does not deserve to keep its artifacts, that their use for their creations is less important than the museum’s use. Museums thus implicitly argue that cultures whose material objects are on display are inferior cultures, which in turn subtly reinforces the feelings of superiority held by museum visitors. This argument is stated directly by Biff Musclewhite, the curator of the Center of Art Detention: “They’re the 1s who must change, not us, they . . .

they must adopt our ways, producing Elizabethan poets; they should have Stravinskys and Mozarts in the wings, they must become Civilized!!!!” Musclewhite’s rage-filled rant depends on an assumption that nonwhite, non-European cultures are underdeveloped, underrefined, and not only inferior but in need of improvement. Musclewhite defines the core of oppression, speaking for those who think they know what a culture needs better than that culture itself. A more insidious form of cultural oppression is enacted by Hinckle Von Vampton, publisher of the journal The Benign Monster. Von Vampton manipulates an idealistic but unsophisticated black writer to argue against black culture and for the superiority of European culture; this is presented as the “Negro Viewpoint,” but behind the writer’s back, Von Vampton refers to him as the “Talking Android.” Von Vampton is loosely modeled on Carl Van Vechten, a champion of black artists and writers during the Harlem Renaissance (writers including Langston Hughes and Richard Wright). Ishmael Reed is thus able to use Von Vampton to expose the oppression inherent in a culture that needs champions for minority voices in the first place. Reed is careful to demonstrate that oppression is not limited to white-on-black, nor is it limited to the arts; Abdul Sufi Hamid is a militant black Muslim who practices both. Hamid’s response to the emerging phenomenon of jazz is to see it as the same kind of culturally backward curiosity that fills Musclewhite’s museum, only Hamid also sees it as representative of the ways black culture refuses to advance itself: “O that’s just a lot of people twisting they butts and getting happy. Old, primitive, superstitious jungle ways. Allah is the way. Allah be praised.” Hamid even destroys the ancient Book of Thoth—without which jazz cannot become more than a sidelight in the culture at large—because he refuses to believe that the sensual, expressive individualism it supports is dangerous to his vision for civilized black culture. Oppression is often thought of as any direct action to keep a group from voting, or from working, or from equitable pay. Reed concentrates on cultural oppression, arguing that culture is how we

Mumbo Jumboâ•…â•… 899 express our deepest sense of ourselves, and when that expression is belittled and subjugated, we lose our ability to understand who we are. Michael Little

Spirituality in Mumbo Jumbo

Ishmael Reed’s depictions of spirituality in Mumbo Jumbo are painted with fairly broad strokes. Reed is exploring spirituality on two levels, contrasting religious systems on one level and presenting individual concerns on another. PaPa LaBas is the main character and central spiritual figure in the novel. He is a houngan, a voodoo priest, who performs the Work to help others in spiritual distress. LaBas is able to perform the Work through communion with a collection of loas, or spirits, that he feeds daily in honor and tribute. LaBas’s younger assistant, Earline, feeds the loas according to LaBas’s instructions, but she does not take those instructions seriously, and when she remembers on her way to a party that one of the loas needs to be fed, she decides it can wait and leaves the feeding tray empty for several days. In truth, Earline is not convinced that the loas even exist, and if they do, she is not convinced that feeding them actually amounts to anything. After she is possessed by a loa, though, and probably the loa angered by her neglect, she embraces LaBas’s Work and want to know more, accusing him of not being forthright about the meanings of the ritual: “You should have explained to me what that particular rite was all about, pop, maybe I would have respected it.” While it may be possible for LaBas to explain the rites, the core of the Work is indefinable and ever-shifting. LaBas is reluctant to insist that Earline learn his ways out of deference to the idea that each generation must find its own source of spiritual meaning. In many ways it cannot be taught—it descends on people unexpectedly and individually. Because of its improvisational and unpredictable nature, it is described as having “jes’ grew” out of nothing and taken whatever form suits the individual. LaBas is said to carry Jes’ Grew in him like most other folks carry genes,” but for all of his mastery of the Work and for all of his renown as a houngan, LaBas suffers what might be called a crisis of faith.

He fails to impress Earline with the seriousness of feeding the loas because he is reluctant to insist that she learn his ways. Once Earline is possessed, LaBas is unable to exorcise the loa and has to get help from another houngan, Black Herman. “Maybe I’m too rigid,” he says, to which Black Herman replies, “You ought to relax. . . . Doing The Work is not like taking inventory. Improvise some. Open up, PaPa. Stretch on out with It.” For the Work to be successful, its practitioners must remain open-minded and flexible—the number of loas is limitless, a new loa can come into being at any time, and each loa has a distinct personality and interest—and LaBas recognizes that his practice of the Work has become too formulaic and too structured. Yet LaBas’s reluctance to insist that Earline learn his ways leads to her possession. Reed’s central concern here is the balance between too much and too little rigidity. The real risk LaBas realizes he faces is that of slipping into the spiritual oppression of Atonism. In Reed’s mythology, the inflexible and intolerant Jewish/ Christian/Muslim systems of laws and discipline derive from the followers of the Egyptian god Aton. The Atonist religions are constrained in practice, critical of sensual and emotional displays of religious fervor, and insist that everyone worship a single god and conform to written liturgies. LaBas thinks of the Atonist mind trying to “interpret the world by using a single loa” and compares it to “filling a milk bottle with an ocean.” This, of course, stands in direct contrast to the practices of LaBas and Herman, which rely on a system of belief in which loas represent variety and joyful selfexpression and respond to the needs of individual believers. The story of Mumbo Jumbo is the story of a spiritual pandemic ( Jes’ Grew) that sweeps the country while the forces of Atonism work to crush it. Ultimately, Jes’ Grew is unable to sustain itself because it cannot find its text; without some degree of codification, it unravels under its own infinite multiplicity. The problem Reed is highlighting in the novel is the difficulty of finding just the right amount of structure to give spirituality form without constraining its individuality. Michael Little

900â•…â•… Reed, Ishmael

Tradition in Mumbo Jumbo

PaPa LaBas, the voodoo priest at the center of Mumbo Jumbo, traces the history of tension and strife between Western and Eastern cultural traditions back to the antagonistic Egyptian rulers (and brothers) Set and Osiris. Osiris was an artist, a dancer whose powerfully inventive dances earned him a sizable following and considerable popularity among his and his brother’s subjects. After days spent farming and tending crops, the Egyptians would spend their evenings dancing, all to the increasing frustration of Set, who was jealous of Osiris’s popularity and who considered the celebrations frivolous. In time, though, people began dancing during the day, as if they could not control themselves, and the crops began to suffer. Uncertain what to do, Osiris asked the artist Thoth to study the dances and write them down in an attempt to make some sense of them and gain some control over them. Thoth believed that “the outbreaks occurred because the mysteries had no text to turn to,” no litany to give the dances structure and meaning. The Book of Thoth worked to maintain balance until Set killed Osiris, and in time the book was lost. In Ishmael Reed’s mythology, the dances and the spirits of those dances persist. Just as the Egyptians would be suddenly overcome by the urge to dance, almost as if possessed, moments in history see sudden outpourings of cultural invention. The action in Mumbo Jumbo takes place during the Harlem Renaissance, chronicling the Jes’ Grew movement, which spreads explosively around the country. Jes’ Grew is an updated manifestation of Osiris’s dancing: Reports come in that “people were doing ‘stupid sensual things,’ were in a state of ‘uncontrollable frenzy,’ were wriggling like fish, doing something called the ‘Eagle Rock’ and the ‘Sassy Bump’; were cutting a mean ‘Mooche,’ and ‘lusting after relevance.’↜” The problem for Jes’ Grew is that it has no text: Without the Book of Thoth to provide some order, Jes’ Grew sweeps the country and then evaporates. The Osirian impulse is described in Mumbo Jumbo as a natural part of human expression and emotion, but one that is not able to grow and flourish because it has no tradition of validation; it remains always an individual urge. The paradox is

that the tradition’s vitality is rooted in its individual expression, but the variety of individual expression prevents the tradition from ever taking coherent form. Traditions need a text in order to be transmitted and preserved, but also to preserve cultural knowledge, to help individuals understand how they fit into a community, and to help them make sense of their individual impulses. Yet traditions risk becoming too conventional, adhering too strictly to their texts and thus surrendering their meaning to the sterile observance of sanctioned forms. Reed is expansive in his critique of hidebound traditions and the ways that established traditions will react aggressively and fearfully to preserve themselves and subjugate others. As Jes’ Grew is seeking the Book of Thoth, opponents are actively working to keep the book hidden and to suppress any efforts to recreate its text. Just as the Osirian traditions continue, albeit sporadically, Set’s jealousy and lust for power persist in the Wallflower Order, the secret guardians of Judeo-Christian traditions and power. One of Reed’s more powerful critiques emerges from his depiction of the Wallflower Order’s efforts to repress one tradition by creating a lesser version that they could control. Their vehicle is the literary journal The Benign Monster, which presents the “Negro Viewpoint” through the writings of a naive young black man who is manipulated by the journal’s white editor. The goal of the journal is to hide its agenda behind an African-American voice that writes to denounce Jes’ Grew, arguing instead for the superiority of European culture and traditions. Equally at fault is Abdul Sufi Hamid, a militant black Muslim who has the Book of Thoth but does not realize its significance. After reading it and deciding “that black people could never have been involved in such a lewd, nasty, decadent thing as is depicted here,” he burns the book, and shortly thereafter Jes’ Grew dies out. In the end, PaPa LaBas is reduced to a relic who is paraded through university lectures where he is patronized as an “eccentric old character from the 20s,” and Jes’ Grew is reduced to a curiosity that flares up in various cultural movements but never coalesces into a viable tradition of its own. The critique Reed offers is to excoriate those traditions that encourage moribund

Wide Sargasso Seaâ•…â•… 901 group thinking over those that would celebrate and encourage individual expression. Michael Little

Rhys, Jeanâ•… Wide Sargasso Seaâ•… (1966)

It was a radio broadcast of Jean Rhys’s novel Good Morning, Midnight (1939) in 1958 that led to a renewed interest in the author. The popularity she had enjoyed prior to World War II had faded, but in 1966 she published her masterpiece: Wide Sargasso Sea. The novel takes as its protagonist Bertha Rochester—renamed Antoinette Cosway—the “‘madwoman in the attic’” of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), although the only point at which the two narratives are made directly intertextual is in the final conflagration of Rochester’s home. Indeed, Wide Sargasso Sea is framed by fire: Antoinette’s childhood home is set alight by her stepfather’s angry employees, and Rhys burned the first manuscript during an argument with her husband. Antoinette’s is the story of the marginalized Other, the woman pushed to the edges of Rochester’s house and the limits of the text. Throughout the novel’s three sections, Rhys draws the passion and loneliness of a girl who is always an outsider, her family isolated by social class and race. These differences later epitomize the threat of madness, femininity, and the exotic which Rochester fears, desires, and seeks to dominate. The novel is influenced by Rhys’s own girlhood in Dominica and the complex societal relations she witnessed between the British colonizers and the black and white Creole populations. However, it is Rhys’s reading of the implicit attitudes to race, gender, madness, memory, and the postcolonial in Brontë’s text which most clearly subverts and reinscribes elements of the dominant discourse and Victorian attitudes to the Other. Jessica Gildersleeve

Gender in Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea is a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, revealing its marginalized discourse of Antoinette Cosway, the first Mrs. Rochester. Jean Rhys gives voice to the silenced Other ignored by canonical Victorian literature through her explora-

tion of Antoinette/Bertha, the “madwoman in the attic.” Rhys questions the oppositions inherent in British patriarchal culture: those of class, race and, significantly, gender. The novel makes clear the dominance of Rochester’s language in the narrative structure to demonstrate the Victorian doctrines that silence Antoinette. That is, although the narrative is divided between Antoinette and the deliberately unnamed Rochester, the voice of the latter makes up the greater bulk of the novel and forms its central third; the words of Antoinette are pushed to the margins. Jane Eyre is often described as a feminist text, lauded for its brave exploration of the independent and determined young Jane. However, Rhys was uncomfortable with Brontë’s depiction of the first Mrs. Rochester locked in the attic, her dark strangeness exiled to the attic. Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys decided, would tell Bertha’s story: the young Creole woman’s passion for an increasingly suspicious and bitter man, who makes her a slave to his love and sends her mad. The novel describes the construction and destruction of female identity. For example, Rhys demonstrates the way in which the several names by which Antoinette is known disturb her identity: “I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.” Born Antoinette Cosway, her surname is changed to Mason after her mother’s marriage and to Rochester after her own. Her husband insists on calling her Bertha because he has discovered that Antoinette was the name of his wife’s mother, but also to demonstrate his power over her: “You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. I know, that’s obeah too.” The alterations to her name mark shifts in Antoinette’s identity, from frightened girl to beautiful young woman, from happy wife to raging madwoman. “Names matter,” Antoinette reflects; indeed, they reflect the patriarchal power structures underpinning the novel and 19th-century life. The attitude of the British colonizer is echoed in Rochester’s treatment of Antoinette and his desire to make her “mine.” The island, like Antoinette, is strange and alien to Rochester. Its night is “[n]ot night or darkness as I knew it but night with blazing stars, an alien moon—night full of strange noises.”

902â•…â•… Rhys, Jean Similarly, the languages spoken by Antoinette and her servants are unfamiliar and, for Rochester, enhance the strangeness of the island and its people. The island and Antoinette’s femininity become entwined in Rochester’s mind: Both are foreign and dangerous. Rochester and Mr. Mason wish to conquer women in the same way they conquer and colonize the island: They want “what it hides.” Antoinette is to him the epitome of strangeness, Otherness, with her beauty, her “dark alien eyes,” her unfamiliar language, and her reluctance to believe in Rochester’s home country: “She was a stranger to me,” Rochester thinks, “a stranger who did not think or feel as I did.” He believes her sexual hold over him to be due to enchantment. Christophine’s power is also foreign to Rochester; her dark knowledge of obeah and her maternal hold over Antoinette become so threatening to his own authority that he orders her to leave. Rochester comes to believe that he has been tricked into this marriage when weak and recovering from fever. He has been betrayed by the very laws he embodies, but he still repeatedly appeals to the “rational” systems of British law—the police, laws surrounding marriage—attempting to impose them on the “irrational” feminine island. Rochester fools Antoinette with promises of his love, just as he had been fooled by their families. Antoinette’s habit of holding her left wrist in her right hand as if shackled, imprisoned by her husband’s word, demonstrates his triumph of masculine law over feminine body. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys fuses the unfamiliar Caribbean island and its strange magic with Antoinette and the power of female sexuality. Rochester’s attempt to own his wife and her property are mirrored in his wish to understand and penetrate the island, to know its secrets. In this way, Rhys makes clear the patterns of patriarchal power operating in Victorian society and the novel. Jessica Gildersleeve

Illness in Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys’s marginalized narrative of Charlotte Brontë’s madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre focuses on the first Mrs. Rochester’s Otherness—the gendered shortcomings that characterized her as “mad.” Mental and physical illness recurs in Wide Sargasso

Sea for Antoinette, her husband, and her mother. Moreover, references to insanity escalate as the narrative progresses, building to Rochester’s climactic repeated refrain, a phrase born of paranoia: “mad girl.” Physical illness in Wide Sargasso Sea often appears as fever, underscoring the fire and burning throughout the novel. Illness marks Antoinette’s adolescence in the convent; similarly, it circumscribes Rochester’s narrative in the novel’s second section. He attributes his willingness to marry Antoinette and his failure to notice her “[l]ong, sad, dark alien eyes” prior to their wedding to the fever he contracted upon arrival in Jamaica. He repeatedly recalls this illness, describing it as having “left me too exhausted to appreciate [the island] fully,” unable to “think or write coherently,” and that “I am not myself yet.” Moreover, both Rochester and Antoinette experience forgetting as an effect of their illnesses: Antoinette is feverish and delirious after the fire at Coulibri, and she is told that throughout this time, she “didn’t know anything.” Rochester, too, is unable to recall anything from his illness. Similarly, the poison he believes Antoinette and Christophine to have slipped into his drink makes Rochester violently ill, but it also erases his memory of the previous night. He thinks, “I remember putting out the candles on the table near the bed and that is all I remember. All I will remember of the night.” This is one example of the link Wide Sargasso Sea forms between sexual desire and madness. Antoinette is addicted, made “drunk” by her love for her husband, and Rochester views his passion for Antoinette as a mad thirst he cannot control; “you bewitch with her,” Christophine tells him. He sees his eventual dominance over Antoinette as recovery from his madness; he feels “exhausted,” as after his earlier fever, and declares himself cured of his love even though, paradoxically, it is he who psychotically rants, “I’ll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She’s mad but mine, mine. . . . My lunatic. My mad girl.” While Rochester’s illness is depicted as imposed on him, Antoinette’s is implied to be hereditary. Her illness, and those of her relatives, is mental, genetic, and internal. Much of the evidence for Antoinette’s psychological instability is attributed to her mother’s madness: Annette Cosway “talked aloud to herself ”

Wide Sargasso Seaâ•…â•… 903 and displays aggressive behavior when prevented from rescuing her parrot from the fire. The connection between the two women and their madness is made explicit at several points in the novel—for example: “Look the crazy girl, you crazy like your mother. . . . She have eyes like zombi and you have eyes like zombi too.” Both Antoinette and Annette, moreover, are driven to madness by their English husbands; as Christophine notes of the latter: “They drive her to it. They tell her she is mad, they act like she is mad.” Indeed, it is upon discovering the history of Antoinette’s family that Rochester refuses to call his wife by her name—the name she shared with her mother. More than this, knowledge of Annette’s madness and Rochester’s fear of the unfamiliar and exotic—his wife and the island—triggers paranoia and madness in Rochester’s own mind: “[T]he feeling of something unknown and hostile was very strong.” Thus, Rochester is unable to assimilate his wife into the expected female role of angel in the house, and instead positions her as Other; her feminine, hereditary madness relegating her to the role of madwoman in the attic. Occurrences of illness and madness thus weave throughout Wide Sargasso Sea. Rochester and Antoinette are both afflicted in various ways, their physical and mental illnesses circumscribing the course of their relationship, as well as the narrative. Jessica Gildersleeve

Memory in Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys’s final novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, is concerned with memory in both form and content. The text at once recalls and foreshadows Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, twisting the permutations of past and future. The narrative’s past tense positions the events of the novel within Antoinette’s and Rochester’s memories, only admitting the present at its conclusion. The circular narrative draws on its own memories, repeating events and anticipating its own future; for example, Rochester’s early vow, “I’d remember her effort to escape,” is confirmed in the final section. These repetitions are seen with regard to Antoinette’s mother, whose name lives on in her daughter, and whom Antoinette cannot forget though told she “must forget and pray for [her] as though she were dead.” Wide Sargasso Sea

is also informed by Rhys’s own memories of her West Indian childhood and the tensions existing between its divergent populations during the late 19th century. In this novel, memory preserves the past: “[S]ome things happen and are there for always even though you forget why or when,” Antoinette reminds us; like the stone of her childhood home after the fire, memory “could not be stolen or burned.” Antoinette is “not a forgetting person”; sounds and tastes return to her, and events live on in her mind, “only here now.” Nevertheless, forgetting and amnesia do work against the function of memory. Antoinette’s mother prefers to forget and be forgotten—“a better fate.” Rochester’s memory becomes increasingly unreliable throughout the narrative until his determined forgetting of Antoinette in the attic of his house: “She is only a memory to be avoided, locked away, and like all memories a legend.” Indeed, he “hardly remember[s]” Antoinette on their wedding day and on several occasions admits, “There are blanks in my mind that cannot be filled up.” His fear and hatred of Antoinette grow when he believes her to have poisoned him and controlled his ability to remember. His revenge is to remove his wife from the memory of others, but to prevent her from the peace of forgetting, for when Christophine suggests that their marriage end so that “She forget about you and live happy,” Rochester is overcome by a “pang of rage and jealousy .  .  . Oh no, she won’t forget. I laughed.” Rochester makes Antoinette, in effect, dead and forgotten, “a ghost in the grey daylight,” a specter haunting the halls of his home: the madwoman in the attic. For Antoinette, memory and dream are often confused, so that she, paradoxically, remembers the future. For example, her dream of “an enclosed garden surrounded by a stone wall and . . . different trees,” of wearing a beautiful white dress and climbing a steep staircase at the end of the first section anticipates her final imprisonment in Rochester’s home in England. Later, Antoinette again appears to remember the future: “For I know that house where I will be cold and not belonging, the bed I shall lie in has red curtains and I have slept there many times before, long ago. How long ago? In that bed I will dream the end of my dream.” Furthermore, the

904â•…â•… Roth, Philip thoughts with which she concludes the text collapse temporal boundaries and permit the irruption of the past into the present. This slippage between dream and memory, between past, present, and future, works to make the reliability of Antoinette’s narrative tenuous and thereby underscores Rochester’s view of her as mad. Wide Sargasso Sea is concerned not only with individual memory but with cultural memorializing and colonial history. For example, the custom of acknowledging the “bastard” children born to slave women and English men is described as an “old custom . . . better dead and buried,” and old Mr. Cosway calls his own son “what’s your name:” “I can’t remember all their names—it’s too much to expect of me.” Secrecy also shrouds some cultural activities; as when Antoinette tells herself she has forgotten witnessing Christophine practicing obeah. However, Rhys makes clear the importance of remembering the past in the face of its suppression. She reminds us that although one may try to forget, memory remains; the town Massacre retains its name and its history, despite Antoinette’s insistence that “Nobody remembers now.” History is not easily erased, Wide Sargasso Sea suggests: Indeed, it is memory that shapes the narrative at every turn. Jessica Gildersleeve

Roth, Philipâ•… American Pastoralâ•… (1997)

Philip Roth’s 1997 novel American Pastoral examines the value of the American dream against the backdrop of the post–World War II climate in the suburbs of New Jersey as well as the Vietnam era of the 1960s and 1970s. In so doing, the novel tracks the American experience spanning two generations, starting with Seymour “The Swede” Levov—a fairhaired, Jewish high school athlete in Weequahic, New Jersey, who embodies the Jewish community’s postwar hopes and dreams—and ending with his daughter, Merry Levov, the stuttering child who blows up the community’s post office as an attempt to protest the Vietnam War. In telling—and, at times, imagining—the story of the Swede, the novel’s narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, must necessarily come to terms with his own sense of America

as well as the hope that he, too, has invested in the family of the Swede. Aimee Pozorski

Identity in American Pastoral

As with many novels by Philip Roth, American Pastoral focuses on the perceived identity of a community of Jews living in New Jersey. But also, as the first novel in what is now referred to as the “American Trilogy,” American Pastoral is a novel about our identity as Americans during the Vietnam era, and the identity of the United States itself. The novel begins with a two-word fragment: “The Swede.” Itself an identity marker, the fragment effectively introduces the reader to the story’s main character: Seymour Irving “The Swede” Levov. However, the phrase is misleading in all of its irony. Levov, of course, is not Swedish at all. He just looks Swedish—which is, in part, why everyone loves him. In fact, he is an American Jew who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, during World War II and who sees his personal fortune disintegrate during the 1960s and 1970s after his daughter blows up the post office to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam. At first glance, it appears as though Levov’s identity has been imposed on him from the outside—from his peers at Rimrock High who named him the Swede, celebrating “the steep-jawed, insentient Viking mask of this blue-eyed blond” and his athletic prowess in order to forget, as the narrator explains, the “war against the Germans and the Japanese.” The fears related to World War II in this case, as well as the desire to forget the war, were not related simply to racial identity or profiling, but rather to human vulnerability: sons, brothers, and husbands were getting killed in the war, but the Swede, on the other hand, appears to possess “a bizarre, delusionary kind of sustenance.” Such a sustenance, coupled with his physical prowess and temperamental grit, allows him to succeed, by “American” standards, during the years after the war. He marries a Christian beauty queen, buys a beautiful home in a prestigious neighborhood in New Jersey, and runs a thriving glove business that he took over from his father. In other words, he lives out—in many ways—the fantasy of his boyhood friends. He clearly has “made it” in these terms,

American Pastoralâ•…â•… 905 but a closer look forces one to consider how he has succeeded and what drives this success. Equating himself with none other than Johnny Appleseed, the Swede appears as a “true” American—but only insofar as he has assimilated himself into society through business and marriage. As the novel progresses, the Swede’s identity becomes increasingly vexed and slippery, not only in terms of racial heritage but in terms of political and economic values as well. In fact, the emotional crux of the novel involves the battle between the Swede and his privileged daughter, Merry, as a biological extension of himself and his wife. Levov has a difficult time understanding how she became so different from her parents: She rejects her mother’s beauty ideals; stutters; criticizes American capitalism and its position on Vietnam; and, ultimately, takes up Jain Buddhism, refusing any form of luxury, including warm clothing, soap, and water. While her criticism of U.S. foreign policy and—of course—her bombing of the post office in protest rattle Levov, it is not so much what Merry says or does that unravels him so completely, but what she represents in opposition to Levov’s identity as a Jew, and, more significantly, as an American. Late in the novel, Levov cries: “I gave her all I could, everything, everything, I gave everything.  .  .  . You think I’m inadequate? If I’m inadequate, where are you going to get people who are adequate . . . if I’m . . . do you understand what I’m saying? What am I supposed to be? What are other people if I’m inadequate?” What is interesting here is that Levov, like all parents to some extent, equates his very sense of being, his identity, with the perceived failure of his daughter. Her rejection of the U.S. government is also a rejection of her father, his “American”-ness, his capitalistic business sense, his once-happy home life, and his Christian wife. The ellipses above that surround the small, tentative phrase “if I’m” and the unspeakable thoughts that follow reveal a moment of crisis here for Levov, a crisis felt by many Americans during this moment. “What am I supposed to be?” the typical American found herself asking in the wake of Vietnam, and how does one define or determine inadequacy in the face of an endless war? The novel ends, however, with a tentative reclamation of the Swede’s life and identity. On the one

hand, Zuckerman, the narrator, reflects: “They’ll never recover. Everything is against them, everyone and everything that does not like their life. All the voices from without, condemning and rejecting their life!” But, these are not the last words because, for the idealistic Zuckerman, they fail to account for the value he finds in Levov’s life all along. In the last paragraph, one that is composed of two open questions, Zuckerman reflects: “And what is wrong with their life? What on earth is less reprehensible than the life of the Levovs?” It is not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it is better than all the alternatives. And perhaps that is all we could ask for during this moment in the nation’s history. Aimee Pozorski

Parenthood in American Pastoral

Parenthood presents a particularly acute challenge to Seymour “The Swede” Levov, the athletic hero of a Newark neighborhood who eventually marries Dawn Dwyer, the 1949 Miss New Jersey. With the Swede’s athleticism and Dawn’s beauty, the couple dream of parenting the perfect child—one raised in the comfort of Old Rimrock and supported by the success of Newark Maid, the glove factory the Swede inherited from his father, and so on down the line. Swede Levov’s inheritance of Newark Maid Leatherware fascinates American Pastoral’s narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, as it is in this passing from father to son that the Swede’s life seems to be blessed, if not by his father, then at least by the good old American capitalism that allowed for the success of so many immigrants near the turn of the last century. Zuckerman reports: “Mr. Levov got rich manufacturing ladies’ gloves. His own father— Swede Levov’s grandfather—had come to Newark from the old country in the 1890s and found work fleshing sheepskins fresh from the lime vat, the lone Jew alongside the roughest of Newark’s Slav, Irish, and Italian immigrants.” Located in the very beginning of the novel, this passage—among many others about Mr. Levov’s manufacturing success—suggests that the kind of parenthood this novel becomes invested in is found in the line connecting fathers to sons, and, in particular, in the family business that unites them.

906â•…â•… Roth, Philip However, the Swede and Dawn parent a daughter, Merry Levov—her name already invoking a sense of irony—who rejects not only her father’s capitalist enterprise but also her mother’s beauty and their comfortable way of living in what appears to Levov to be “Johnny Appleseed country.” In order to protest the Vietnam War, but also her family’s apparent perpetuation of the war’s anticommunist project generally, Merry Levov bombs the post office in Old Rimrock, with devastating effects. The monstrous intents of Merry—and the effect her act has on her idealistic father—are perhaps best conveyed by the Swede’s brother Jerry, a character who appears to wander in from the margins in order to narrate for Zuckerman his brother’s struggle with parenthood. As Jerry recalls: Seymour wasn’t built like me. He had a big, generous nature and with that they really raked him over the coals, all the impossible ones. Unsatisfiable father, unsatisfiable wives, and the little murderer herself, the monster daughter. The monster Merry. The solid thing he once was. For Jerry, it is Swede’s simultaneous generosity and idealism—his belief in the American dream—that has allowed others to destroy him. Whereas we typically think about parents having the upper hand when dealing with their children, it is Merry in this novel who has the most power: She is the most manipulative—the monster daughter, the monster Merry, the murderer—who brings her father to his knees. What is perhaps so powerful about the Swede’s character, however, is that his very generosity and idealism are what drive him to pursue his daughter in order to protect her after she goes into hiding. Despite all of her hatred for her father, where he has come from and what he stands for, he seeks her out; despite their ideological difference and antithetical values, he seeks her out. Zuckerman tries to understand this parental relationship in narrating the Swede’s story. Regarding the Swede, he understands that “everything that gave meaning to his accomplishments had been American. Everything he loved was here.” Regarding Merry, on the other

hand, Zuckerman reports: “For her, being an American was loathing America, but loving America was something he could not let go of any more than he could have let go of loving his father and his mother, any more than he could have let go of his decency. How could she ‘hate’ this country, when she had no conception of this country? How could a child of his be so blind as to revile the ‘rotten system’ that had given her own family every opportunity to succeed?” What is particularly striking about this passage is that here even Zuckerman—a third party, an outsider trying to understand what went wrong in Levov’s life—zeroes in on perhaps the most compelling confusion of Levov’s life: that the conception of his daughter Merry, the new life engendered to appreciate all he has achieved in the world, leads only to hatred and death resulting from his daughter’s failure to conceive all that is right and decent about the United States. Ultimately, Zuckerman goes too far in imagining why Merry could possibly blow up her life along with her father’s. A writer first and foremost, Zuckerman imagines a scenario when even Levov’s good intentions go awry, leading him to seduce Merry as he would his own beautiful wife. But this is Zuckerman’s fantasy, not Levov’s; it is, if anything, one last effort to try to understand how the child of an American all-star and his Miss New Jersey could reject—as we all do—so much of what our parents value most. Aimee Pozorski

Violence in American Pastoral

American Pastoral tells the story of Seymour Levov, a blue-eyed, steep-jawed athlete who allowed his Jewish neighborhood to enter into “a fantasy about itself and the world, the fantasy of sports fans everywhere” and, ultimately, a fantasy where “they could forget the war.” As described by one of Roth’s most constant narrators, Nathan Zuckerman, Seymour “The Swede” Levov was embraced as “a symbol of hope by so many”—not only because of his high school stardom during World War II, but also because of his later successes. However, as with every story Zuckerman tells, there is a catch. Levov’s catch has to do with his daughter’s involvement in the antiwar movement and the questions posed to Levov by her

The Â�Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson â•…â•… 907 involvement. When Merry Levov bombs the local post office to protest the Vietnam War, Levov’s life is shattered, and Zuckerman tries to make sense of the pieces. On the surface, then, American Pastoral appears as a novel nostalgic for some unnamable moment “before the Vietnam war”: a time before the Vietnam era brought home to America the reality of violence experienced in other parts of the world. However, Zuckerman argues something darker: He appears to claim that democracy descended on 18thcentury America like a flaming sword. Merry’s bomb is not a disruption of a previously untroubled Eden but, rather, a fresh outbreak of a peculiarly American discomfort: How to live freely with others. At first glance, the novel seems to uphold Merry, and her radicalism, as ungrateful. Early on, we learn that Merideth Levov, Seymour’s daughter, was The Rimrock Bomber. She is, according to her uncle Jerry, “A charming child .  .  . who brought the war home to Lyndon Johnson by blowing up the post office in the general store.” Her own father resents Merry for bringing the war not to the White House but to the family home: Levov thought, “it was not the specific war that she’d had in mind, but it was a war, nonetheless, that she brought home to America—home into her very own house.” Merry’s objection to the war, however, is exactly the opposite of this. Merry complains that the United States has been exporting its values, willynilly, around the world, imposing them by violence if need be. She thinks of the Vietnam War as a proxy war against the Soviet Union: Supporting the collapsing South Vietnamese government was, in her view, an unjust act of a Johnny Appleseed out to spread the seeds of democracy without regard for the consequences. That Levov sees himself as a modern-day Appleseed only clinches the way national myth, cold war geopolitics, and family dynamics coalesce in this family. Whereas Levov cannot separate himself from his country—and therefore sees in the “conception” everything of value it has offered him (high school popularity, his dream wife, a nice house, a thriving business)—Merry sees the “rotten system” for what is it: a violent project to spread U.S. values around the world. The only sense we have that Levov might

have second thoughts about the victims of Vietnam whom Merry stands to defend, in fact, comes from Zuckerman engaging in speculation—another fantasy about where Levov could possibly stand, trapped as he is between his love for America and his love for a daughter trying to destroy it, and him as well. Merry’s key insight into democracy is that it frequently arrives through antidemocratic means, or even that it unleashes a propensity to violence among its citizens (hence the Bill of Rights’s protections for minority freedoms). She recoils from this insight in horror, whereas her idealistic grandfathers and father cannot see it at all. Merry says President Johnson is a war criminal, that he is “not going to stop the war, Grandpa, because you tell him to.” In the end, however, it was not World War II that the Swede helped the people in their New Jersey community forget, and it is not Vietnam that Merry brings home to them, but the War of Independence that was the starting point for all of the violence unleashed in the name of upholding an impossible ideal. The Vietnam War, in this way, although central to the plot of American Pastoral, is not the crisis that disrupts the American Eden. It is not, contrary to appearances, the fall that Levov should be worried about. Rather, it points up in new ways how America was “always” fallen—how it began on a false premise—and provocatively suggests that all of the violence and wars since have been a way of returning to that founding moment: a return to understand what it meant, precisely, and to uncover the perpetual violence that lies beneath the surface. Aimee Pozorski

Rowlandson, Mary╅ The �Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson╅ (1682)

Originally titled The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, this work was first published in 1682 and has appeared under several titles. An autobiographical account, Mrs. Rowlandson’s text falls into the category of early American literature called captivity narratives, which relate the captivity and release of someone (usually a woman) at the hands of American Indians.

908â•…â•… Rowlandson, Mary In her narrative, Rowlandson tells of the roughly 11 weeks she spent in captivity with the Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag. She recounts her story in 20 “removes” (journeys), including details about her grief over losing a child, her hunger, her grappling with the new set of societal rules among her captors, and her thoughts about the reasons for her captivity and other events. Rowlandson’s narrative deals with themes of religion, identity, and gender. Detailing her trials in captivity, she inadvertently gives the reader an insider’s view of early American Indian tribes and the hardships they faced themselves. Though she focuses on her own perspective, the various kindnesses and jokes she encounters, as well as the numerous contradictions in her language and story, reveal her captors as inhabiting a community dealing with complex social and political issues. Indeed, Rowlandson’s narrative repeatedly contradicts itself with regard to all three themes, making it a text worthy of further, thoughtful examination. Robin Gray Nicks

Gender in The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Gender is an important, almost controlling facet of Mary Rowlandson’s narrative. Her status as the wife of a clergyman and a prominent figure in her town contribute to the framing of her narrative, the way her captors treat her, and her insistence on her devoutness and chastity. The framework of Rowlandson’s narrative, a preface written by a clergyman and a sermon by her husband, exist to stress her modesty and piety, attributes important to all Puritans, especially women. The very existence of the narrative calls into question these characteristics as it publicly calls attention to the author. The preface insists, “Some friends having obtained sight of it .  .  . [judged] it worthy of publick view, and altogether unmeet that such works of God should be hid from present and future Generations.” The writer goes on to explain Rowlandson’s reason for publishing the text: “This Gentlewoman’s modesty would not thrust it into the Press, yet her gratitude unto God . . . let it pass, that God might have his due glory and others benefit by it as well as herself.” Thus, to convince the reader

that Rowlandson is a pious, godly woman interested in helping others, the preface places the responsibility for the publication not on her but on her friends. This also helps her escape the stigma of being a woman speaking about her experiences with God, something that only a Puritan man should do. She agrees simply because she does not want to stand in the way of God’s glory. This is reinforced by the inclusion of her husband’s sermon at the end of the text, an inclusion that underscores the author’s position as a wife. Further reinforcing Rowlandson’s position as a pious wife and mother, she reminds the reader of her grief at her separation from her husband, the death of her youngest child, and separation from the others. When her daughter dies, she lays down with the body through the night, in spite of the fact that she previously could not be near a dead person. In addition, the only events to lift her spirits during her captivity are visits with her daughter and son in captivity with other groups and the word of her husband. Though any mother would react in these ways, Rowlandson’s repetition works to reassure the reader of her worthiness. That said, Rowlandson’s actions and attitude occasionally belie the text’s insistence on her good character. Though she attributes the entire captivity and its trials to God’s will, she complains habitually about her situation. In several “removes,” she objects to her load, which correlates directly to her position as a white woman of standing, though she attributes it to other factors. The load she complains about consists only of her knitting and two quarts of meal, while her female captors carry “all they had, bag and baggage,” as well as children. Treating her as though she is an important guest, the Indians ensure that she is able to cross the river without getting wet, whereas many of them wade across. They also repeatedly assure her that she will not be harmed; she is too valuable as a hostage. Her experience differs dramatically from that of her female captors, and they often abuse her in response to her attitude of superiority. Rowlandson benefits from the fact that she possesses certain attributes as a Puritan woman. She knits for her captors, who pay her for her work. In fact, unlike captives or slaves in Puritan households,

The Â�Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson â•…â•… 909 she is allowed to keep the profits of her labor rather than having to turn them over to her master. The author recognizes her importance to her master and asserts that his wives were concerned over whose household she would be a part of, given the fact that the wife who “owned” her would benefit the most from the ransom when they released her. Rowlandson’s return to the Puritan world and its acceptance of her depend upon her ability to reassure her family, friends, and readers of her continued chastity during her captivity; as a woman, her worth relates to her faithfulness to her husband. Several times, she mentions sleeping in the tents of various tribespeople who have supplied her with food, raising questions in some scholars’ minds about the truthfulness of her claims to chastity. Regardless of what the truth is, Rowlandson must assert that she remained faithful to her husband in order to maintain her position as a respectable Puritan woman, a step male authors of captivity narratives do not have to take. Robin Gray Nicks

Identity in The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Identity plays an important role in Mary Rowlandson’s narrative, shaping the way in which she interacts with others and the way that she writes about that experience. Rowlandson writes from the perspective of a white, English, Puritan identity and contrasts that with the identity of her captors, who are, in her words, “heathens” and “savages.” Her identity as a white, English, Puritan woman informs Rowlandson’s text to a great degree. Within the first two paragraphs of the text, Rowlandson refers to the enemy attackers as “Indians” seven times. Her descriptions of the attackers’ actions fail to take into account the many factors that led the Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag to attack her village of Lancaster, Massachusetts, that day. In the midst of King Philip’s War, the Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag faced violence from the English, as well as starvation and disease. Neglecting these events, Rowlandson describes her eventual captors as “murtherous wretches” and “hell-hounds, roaring, singing, ranting, and insulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out.” She contrasts

herself, her family, and the other English as “Christians” against the Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag as “Barbarous Creatures.” Unfortunately, Rowlandson’s identity and separation from her captors causes her to repeatedly misunderstand her captors’ statements and actions. For instance, after complaining nonstop for 12 “removes,” Rowlandson asks a visiting Indian if he has seen her son or knows about his condition. She receives the following answer: “He answered me, that such a time his master roasted him [Rowlandson’s son], and that himself did eat a piece of him as big as his two fingers, and that he was very good meat.” At first shocked, Rowlandson later attributes this story to the natives’ “horrible addictedness to lying” without stopping to consider that the informant might have been having a bit of fun at her expense. It would be hard to imagine that Rowlandson’s captors would not have tired of her ceaseless complaints of tiredness, hunger, and pain when they were experiencing the same. She was too valuable for Metacom (King Philip) to allow any harm to come to her. She went across the river in the fifth remove without getting wet in spite of the fact that many of her captors did. She was given food and shelter on numerous occasions, and Metacom allowed her to earn money by making clothing for her other captors. While Rowlandson does endure a small amount of physical abuse at the hands of Metacom’s second wife, throughout the narrative, Metacom and his wives treat her with a degree of respect that other captives and captors did not enjoy. Occasionally poking fun at her and her beliefs about their culture must have been an outlet for their frustrations when they were unable to seriously harm her. Of course, the separation between a white Puritan identity and a “heathen,” “savage” identity breaks down throughout the narrative. This occurs early in the text, when Rowlandson explains her change of heart about what she could and could not eat: The first week of my being among them, I hardly ate any thing; the second week, I found my stomach grow very faint for want of something; and yet it was very hard to get down their filthy trash; but the third week, though I could think how formerly my

910â•…â•… Rowlandson, Mary stomach would turn against this or that, and I could starve and die before I could eat such things, yet they were sweet and savory to my taste. The longer Rowlandson remains with her captors, the more she becomes able to navigate the culture. In spite of the fact that some of her captors steal ears of corn from her store in the seventh remove, causing her much consternation and “trouble,” Rowlandson does not express any remorse when she literally takes food out of the mouth of an English child in the 18th remove. Rowlandson’s own language belies the contradictions about identity within her narrative. Calling the Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag and other groups derogatory names throughout the narrative, she nonetheless accepts their sympathies, food, and shelter when offered. In fact, her captors treat her much better than she could have expected, and she becomes increasingly able to function as a part of their community, earning money, food, and other goods for her sewing. Thus, the separation of these two groups of people—white, English Puritans and the American Indians—breaks down in spite of Rowlandson’s attempts to maintain the division. Robin Gray Nicks

Religion in The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Mary Rowlandson’s The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson functions as a jeremiad, a text expressing God’s anger with his chosen people over their declining morality and urging its readers to repent. Rowlandson sees her story as symbolic of the captivity and restoration of God’s people. From the text’s framework to her discussion of her life as a captive, we see both reinforcement and subtle questioning of Puritan beliefs and ideals. Opened with a preface written by a clergyman and closed with a sermon, the narrative’s frame of religiosity seeks to justify and verify Rowlandson’s story. Though Rowlandson steps into the public arena with her narrative, the preface assures the reader repeatedly of her piety and modesty, the most important virtues a Puritan possessed. The closing

portion of the frame, a sermon delivered by the author’s husband, the Reverend Joseph Rowlandson, also works to reinforce the narrative’s piety and its claims of the author’s captivity as the will of God. The sermon’s title, “The Possibility of God’s Forsaking a People that have been Visibly Near and Dear to him together with the Misery of a People thus Forsaken,” thematically ties it to the actual narrative, while the content of the sermon preaches against pride, a sin of which both Rowlandsons claim the Puritan settlers were guilty. In keeping with the religious framework, Rowlandson explains her captivity as part of God’s larger plan: “The Lord hath shewed me the vanity of these outward things . . . That we must rely on God himself, and our whole dependence must be upon him.” She discusses her captivity as punishment for her carelessness in her “walk with God.” Everything she encounters she attributes to God’s will, going so far as to attribute her captors’ successes in battle and in eluding the English to God’s providence. At the same time, Rowlandson subtly questions God’s plan. Toward the end of her narrative, she includes a list of five “passages of providence” she observes as being of special importance. Among these, she includes several notes about the Indians’ successes in the face of the English army’s failures. She includes the English army’s slowness in setting out after her captors, their inability to cross the Baquaug River when the Indians crossed with ease, and the Indians’ ability to survive and strengthen on food the English’s dogs would not eat. Though she ends each point by praising the strangeness of God’s providence, one could easily read a bit of sarcasm in her words. At least, the passages’ obvious questioning of God is striking. Still, the embrace of piety is important in Rowlandson’s narrative. Deliberately marking a difference between herself and her captors, she clarifies that they do not allow her to observe the Sabbath or observe it in any way themselves. For example, she points to her captors’ attempts to thwart her desire to read the Bible on the Sabbath by throwing her Bible outside in the dirt. This does not end Rowlandson’s adherence to biblical instruction, and she sneaks time to read it any time her captors are not around.

The God of Small Thingsâ•…â•… 911 In fact, scriptures are an integral part of Rowlandson’s narrative. Biblical verses accompany the description of each action or inaction, showing Rowlandson’s belief that her captivity represents the larger captivity of God’s chosen few. At times, the verses are of clear importance and relevance. For instance, at one of the worst moments of her captivity, she quotes from Isaiah 54:7—“For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee”—and continues by describing a rare visit with her son, which lifts her spirits. At other times, however, Rowlandson seeks to justify otherwise horrible actions through biblical verse, as in the time when she steals food out of the mouth of a captive English child and justifies it by quoting from the book of Job. Many other instances of Rowlandson’s adherence to Puritan beliefs and ideals populate her text. The Bible and religion play important roles in shaping the narrative and its message, as well as in justifying its publication and Rowlandson’s actions during her captivity. Robin Gray Nicks

Roy, Arundhatiâ•… The God of Small Thingsâ•… (1997)

The God of Small Things (1997), which won the prestigious Man Booker Prize, propelled Arundhati Roy (b. 1961) onto the international scene, making her a voice to be reckoned with by all powers both inside and outside of India. It is a poetic tale of growing up in Kerala, a southern state of India that has a long history of Marxist-communist rule, high populations of Christians, and the highest literacy rate in India. The novel, which is loosely based on Roy’s life, is innovative, intellectual, and poetic in its deconstruction of master narratives. Although told through a third-person point of view, it looks at events through the achingly innocent perspective of a pair of seven-year-old twins and is to caste relationships in India what Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is to race relationships in the United States. Written somewhat in the same style as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight ’s Children, The God of Small Things exposes the devastating effects of caste discrimination which, though legally banned,

is very much present in the social consciousness of people. The novel also unravels the failure of all new and progressive ideologies, including Marxist and Christian ideologies, that, while offering hope of empowering the disenfranchised, fail to engender the necessary compassion and humility in the disempowered to recognize the plight and suffering of those in even worse conditions than the officially disenfranchised. Sukanya B. Senapati

Abandonment in The God of Small Things

Flight is the first response to danger, but most humans prefer to return to their homes after the real or perceived danger is over. In rare cases do people abandon homes and communities, refusing to return even for visits. Abandonment is the grossest form of neglect and an accurate indicator of a people’s and a community’s lack of humanity. However, abandonment is one of the major themes in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, with responsible, powerful adults abandoning homelands, belief systems, families, spouses, and children. But powerless children and disenfranchised pariahs abandon neither place nor people, nor even the most pitiful and despicable creatures. The ancestral Ipe home in Ayemenem, where the novel is set, at first appears to be a safe haven, with family members returning to it in difficult times; Baby Kochamma returns after a spell as a nun; Ammu and her two children return after her divorce and Chacko after his. Chacko’s ex-wife, Margaret, and their child, Sophie Mol, even travel all the way from England to visit Ayemenem to recover from Joe’s death. But after the accidental drowning of Sophie Mol, an incident that is so central in the novel that all time is marked by “Before the Terror” or “After the Terror,” the Ipe home either expels its inhabitants (Ammu and her children) or is abandoned by its masters (Chacko leaves; Mammachi dies). Only the caste-conscious Baby Kochamma remains, perhaps because she represents all that is wrong and evil about the place. At the end of the novel, the parentless, homeless, and casteless Estha is abandoned yet again in this abandoned place, drifting forever a ghost suspended in time, a time “Before the Terror.”

912â•…â•… Roy, Arundhati In earlier times, when Indians went abroad, as the Ayemenem patriarch Pappachi the entomologist does, they did so temporarily to educate themselves. But in modern times, such journeys are permanent, for the new elite go abroad and abandon their countries to become emigrants of prosperous nations. Similarly, by the end of this novel, Rahel has moved to America, Chacko to Canada, and Baba to Australia, just like many other residents of Ayemenem, all in search of their pot of gold. In addition to abandoning their homeland, these modern Indians abandon their belief systems. Baby Kochamma abandons her allegiance to the Christian faith and to serving God. After joining a convent, she rescinds her vows when they do not aid her in her personal agenda. The powerful Marxist party that Velutha has put all his faith in abandons him when he goes for help to fight false charges of rape, his request dismissed as a personal matter that has no place in party politics. The enlightened Rhodes scholar Chacko abandons all love and reason after his daughter, Sophie Mol, accidentally drowns, holding his sister and her children responsible for Sophie’s death. He rips apart Ammu’s already fractured family, separating Ammu from her children and thereby sending her to an early death and her children away forever. The Ayemenem police abandon their responsibility to order and fair play by mercilessly beating to death a pariah who dared to be more of a human than all the powerful people of Ayemenem put together and who, despite his disenfranchised and socially powerless position, dared to have compassion for abandoned members of powerful families such as Ammu, Estha, and Rahel. The theme of abandonment appears on a third and most devastating level in the abandonment of people. Pappachi abandons all communications with his wife when Chacko puts a stop to his wife abuse; Baba abandons wife, family, and decency for alcohol; Ammu and Velutha abandon their families by dying prematurely; Vellya Paapen abandons his love and allegiance for his son, Velutha, because of centuries of brainwashing abuse. Hence, in this novel, the most sacred and intimate relationships are abandoned either for the most inane and trivial matters or because of misplaced loyalty and eons of abuse.

However, despite all the abandonment that goes on in the novel, there are two people who do not abandon each other: Estha and Rahel. They remain close despite all the time and space that is forced between them, because they are indeed two separate individuals, but one entity, “we.” Furthermore, Estha does not abandon his compassion or his responsibility. He does not abandon the sick, mangy dog Khubchand, choosing to nurse the pitiful creature through the last stages of its incontinent, pathetic life. He does not abandon his responsibility in causing Velutha’s death, holding himself eternally accountable for choosing Ammu over Velutha, even though he was forced into the choice. Finally, everyone in the novel abandons something that is sacred and significant, hiding such gross negligence in the crevices of social mores, except one—Estha—who deliberately abandons nothing, but unconsciously abandons everything—sensation, speech, sanity—and living only in the reality of what once were Little Ammu and the love he had known for and through her. Sukanya B. Senapati

Commodification/Commercialization in The God of Small Things

Many scholars contend that the hegemony of Western colonial nations continues to paralyze the morale of former colonies, despite their liberation at least a half century ago. This problem is further exacerbated by the instantaneous dissemination of these master cultures through electronic images. While in the not too distant past, British colonizers had to force Indian natives to buy imported goods from England through bans imposed on the production and selling of indigenous goods, Western colonial nations no longer have to use such force. According to scholars, native minds have been effectively colonized, disabling them from independent thought and engendering in them only the desire to mimic their former masters. This mimicry creates a bigger market for the culture and material goods both produced and consumed by colonial master nations. In The God of Small Things, this commercial relation between the British colonizers and the colonized Indians is revealed through the rapid commercialization of Ayemenem and

The God of Small Thingsâ•…â•… 913 its commodification into a tourist destination for foreigners. But the effect of such commercialism is the intrusion of commercial language into the language of love, an intrusion that has devastating consequences. Tourism is the major revenue-generating industry for many postcolonial nations. Native people and places are packaged for consumption, as is revealed by the transformation of the Kari Saipu estate into the Hotel Heritage complex, where “Toy Histories [are constructed] for rich tourists to play in.” The furniture and other knickknacks in the complex are labeled as museum pieces for tourists to gape and gawk at, as they alleviate any shame they may feel for their rapacious consumption by combining pleasure with the enlightenment of learning. Roy calls this reconstruction “in the Heart of Darkness” the enlistment of “History and Literature for commerce.” Huge walls separate the clean, neatly arranged hotel complex from the filthy living quarters of the natives, hiding the poverty and chaos of living from the tourists’ view. The presence of Hotel Heritage in the onetime remote town of Ayemenem reveals just how far into the interior commercialism has intruded and how easily land, life, and people can be commercialized. Commerce further creeps into the interior space of private homes when food preservation is transformed into a revenue-generating industry. Mammachi makes pickles, jams, and jellies on a large scale for profit. The success of this small cottage industry depends on her culinary and managerial talents. So when Chacko comes home from England and appropriates his mother’s successful business, he ruins it by bringing in heavy machinery, commercial workers, and ridiculous advertisements. Under Chacko’s enlightened vision of Marxist machinery and unionized workers, the pickle business buckles, falls into disrepair, and is abandoned. The effect of commercialism is metaphorically made visible through the damming of the powerful river that runs through Ayemenem and has gained notoriety for having taken Sophie Mol’s life. The river is no longer the living, vital river it once was but a sick, stagnant canal chock-full of human refuse. The vibrant, nourishing, and cleansing river that provided a backdrop for Velutha’s and Ammu’s love

is no longer a lover’s paradise but a stagnant cesspool of commercial and human waste. However, the most devastating effects of commercialism are seen through the creeping of the vocabulary of commerce into the language of love that Roy calls the “Love Laws . . . Who should be loved. And how. And how much.” When love laws are laid down and love gets quantified, it enters the economy of the marketplace and becomes a commodity of commerce. Furthermore, when all human activity, especially the activity of food preparation that sustains life and family relationships, is quantified and commodified, and when commercial tourism enters the heart of darkness, the core of a community that anchors it to a particular place and its people is ruined. Sukanya B. Senapati

Pride in The God of Small Things

Pride is rightly considered the most destructive of the seven deadly sins, for it makes people believe they are superior to the rest of humanity and inevitably brings great suffering. While people’s talents and contributions to society deserve recognition, this often brings a desire for its permanent and eternal continuation. History and literature are replete with proud characters and the consequences of overweening pride, yet humans never learn, perhaps because of the very fine line that separates necessary self-respect from unwarranted pride. In the Ipe family, pride rears its ugly head first in Pappachi, whose primary source of fame comes from his being the progeny of the “blessed one,” the little boy who wove through the forest of adult legs and presented himself to the visiting pope, a result of uncontrolled childish behavior, not divine intervention. However, while some members of the Ipe family see this blessing as an opportunity to do God’s work, Pappachi views it as his inherent superiority. Pappachi’s second source of pride is that he is a foreign-educated entomologist who almost made a great scientific discovery in identifying a new species of butterfly. His third source of pride is his blue Plymouth. All these conditions inflate his ego, perverting his perspective on what is owed to him. When the time comes to share the limelight with his wife’s musical and culinary talents, he cannot.

914â•…â•… Rushdie, Salman He uses his socially sanctioned gender privilege to prevent Mammachi from exercising her concertquality musical talents, and he routinely beats her with a heavy metal vase to make himself feel better. Although Mammachi is talented, she is also proud, but not because of those talents. Her pride follows the conventional norms of a mother’s pride in her son. Mammachi is extremely proud of her son, Chacko, the Rhodes scholar, not because of his scholarship but because he stands up for her, intervening and stopping the routine physical abuse she suffers at Pappachi’s hands. Her pride on this account makes it selfish, utilitarian, and ultimately sexist. Mammachi’s pride also comes from being the torchbearer of her family’s progressive ideas. She allows Velutha, an untouchable, to do the work of touchables in her factory, sheerly mercenary on her part because she needs Velutha’s handyman talents to run the factory machinery. She thinks Velutha owes her and her family for recognizing and nurturing his talents and allowing him to work in their factory. Unfortunately, her pride in spotting Velutha’s talent does not extend to recognizing him as a suitable sexual companion for her daughter, Ammu, a recognition that would have made her truly progressive and prevented the disaster that follows. Chacko, like his mother, is proud of being progressive and believing in the liberal ideas of classless societies with empowered people. But these are abstract ideas that he verbalizes in his “read aloud voice,” not ones that have any material reality in his conduct and dealings with the disenfranchised. Nonetheless, what he is most proud of is his white ex-wife, Margaret, and their daughter, Sophie Mol, a pride that makes him believe that his child is a cut above his sister’s dark-hued children. Baby Kochamma’s pride follows along the same racial lines. Her sense of pride comes from her belief that she is a cultured, sophisticated person with highclass taste, a taste for fair-skinned, green-eyed, Irish priests, like Reverend Mulligan, and Europeans like Miss Mittens. She is also proud of her tiny, delicate feet, a mark of high-class refinement. The destructive nature of pride is most visible in Mammachi, who has enough gumption to run a successful food-processing business but not enough

self-respect to put a stop to her routine physical abuse. However, it is not lack of self-respect that causes this imbalance but the differential gender hierarchy of patriarchy. Similarly, socially sanctioned caste hierarchy dictates who is owed the most allegiance, something Vellya Paapen has learned so well that he betrays his own son, Velutha, to his benefactor, Mammachi. Thus, in The God of Small Things, who and what a character can be proud of is socially determined, revealing that feelings of pride have little to do with talents, abilities, and contributions to society and humanity and more to do with a hierarchy that is determined by gender, social class, caste, and race ideologies. Additionally, pride blinds characters to the reality of their lives and masks their deepest insecurities about the socially privileged positions they occupy. The least talented and least active people in this text (Pappachi, Baby Kochamma, and Chacko) are the most proud, while the most talented and active person (Velutha) has the least pride. Although Velutha has no pride, he has selfrespect, a sense of self derived from the practice and deployment of his talents in fixing machinery, creating furniture, ingenious contraptions, dramas, and stories that make life bearable for marginalized returned daughters and unloved children. Sukanya B. Senapati

Rushdie, Salmanâ•… Midnight’s Â� Childrenâ•… (1981)

The winner of numerous awards, including the 1981 Booker Prize, Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie (b. 1947), is a complicated, funny, fantastic, fictional history of modern India. It is narrated by Saleem Sinai, the most celebrated of the “Midnight’s Children” of the title—1,001 children born in the first 24 hours after Indian declared her independence from Great Britain. Saleem and his counterpart, Shiva, are the most powerful of these children, having been born at the stroke of midnight. Their powers are monumental. Saleem can read minds; indeed, he can allow all 1,001 of the children to communicate within his mind. Shiva can destroy anything he wants to destroy, calling to mind his namesake, the Hindu god Shiva, the destroyer. The

Midnight’s Â�Childrenâ•…â•… 915 other children have various powers, which are less and less impressive the farther away their births are from midnight. Saleem’s story starts with the story of his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, a doctor from rural India. As Saleem narrates his story and that of his family, he takes readers through the major milestones of 20thcentury Indian history, the Amritsar massacre, the rise of leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru, Independence from Britain, the language riots, the partitioning of Pakistan and the subsequent Indo-Pakistani War, and finally the state of emergency declared by Indira Gandhi, referred to here as the Widow. Saleem takes great liberties with his story, telling it how he feels it happened rather than worrying too much about the facts. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Identity in Midnight’s Children

Saleem Sinai’s identity is formed by too many elements to count. Much like the country whose genesis coincides with his, he is a creature of multiple facets, some of which contradict one another, but all of which play a part in who he is. Saleem’s origins, about which the reader eventually learns the truth, are complicated. He believes himself to be the son of Ahmed and Amina Sinai, middle-class Muslims. In reality, he is the son of the impoverished Hindu Wee Willie Winkie and his wife, Vanita—and because she had an affair with William Methwold, Saleem is the biological son of the English colonizer. Rushdie tells us that Saleem has a face “like the map of India.” Indeed, this convoluted history makes him both English and Indian, as well as Muslim, Hindu, and Christian all at once. Although the circumstances of his birth are indeed auspicious, Saleem’s identity began forming long before that day. Rushdie begins Saleem’s story with the story of Aadam Aziz, Saleem’s maternal grandfather. Even as Padma keeps bullying him “back into the world of linear narrative,” Saleem is drawn back to the past. In order for the story of who he is to be accurate, the reader must know so many things: We must know how Aadam and the Reverend Mother became engaged, so that we can understand what kind of influence they were on their children. Moving forward, we must know

what Amina Sinai (once Mumtaz Aziz) thought of herself, her parents, her husband, and her children if we are to know how Saleem came to be Saleem. After giving us this family history, Saleem gradually arrives at the moment of his birth, but not before preparing us properly. We are told, for instance, that his “annunciation saved a life.” Indeed, when his mother saved Lifafa Das from the mob in the street by announcing she was with child, she saved his life. Further, that life-saving gesture leads Amina to Das’s cousin, who delivers the prophecy that will describe Saleem’s life. This baby, Ramram Seth says, will “never be older than his motherland.” He will be guided by voices and mutilated by friends. He will be claimed by the jungle and reclaimed by wizards. And finally, he will “die before he is dead.” But the baby in Amina’s womb is Shiva, not Saleem, and none of that describes him. This confusion forces the reader to consider how identity is formed: Clearly, it is formed not by our genes but by our experiences. Ramram Seth knows that the baby Amina carries will never know her, so instead he tells her what will happen to her real son, the son she will raise as her own. Saleem’s identity, then, is shown to be a product of his environment, not a fixed, genetic entity. Because Saleem’s identity is so closely tied to that of his country, we must also consider the implications of his complicated, ever-changing identity for India itself. If Midnight’s Children shows us anything about India, it is that it is a complicated, multiplicitous place, with no one, pure identity. Saleem’s power allows him to “become” others, moving from person to person all with the power of his mind. Sampling the variety this power grants him, he is, variously, a tourist, a priest, a rickshaw driver, a “fisherwoman whose sari was as tight as her morals were loose,” a landlord, a schoolteacher, a beggar, and an infant. He flies from the glory of the Taj Mahal to the slums of Calcutta to the Himalayas; from small, rural villages to holy temples to, finally, the halls of government, where he occupies the mind of Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India. All the while, he seems to be coming to the understanding that just as all of these people are “him,” all of these people are India. Saleem’s identity can be fluid over time as well. As an adult looking back, his 10-year-old self,

916â•…â•… Rushdie, Salman heady with the power of his gift, is a different person from what he would become. Indeed, during the war, Saleem even forgets his name, being called “the Buddha” for a time. Many characters in Midnight’s Children become someone else as their lives progress. Naseem becomes the Reverend Mother, the Brass Monkey becomes Jamila Singer, Mumtaz becomes Amina. It is the circumstances of our lives, these changes seem to say, that make us who we are, and as those circumstances change, so do our identities. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Memory in Midnight’s Children

When the narrator of a novel is a actual character, as opposed to an omniscient unnamed being, the reliability of the narrator’s recollections and perceptions may be called into question. In Midnight’s Children, the narrator, Saleem Sinai, is self-consciously unreliable. In fact, he is deliberately unreliable on occasion, describing false memories and then defending his right to remember the past that way. Saleem also wants Padma, his audience within the story, and his readers to remember things the way he does, and so he gives us frequent recaps of the story thus far. These recaps have the effect of making the memories our memories as well. When, shortly before narrating his own birth, he reminds us that “[t]hirty-two years before the transfer of power, my grandfather bumped his nose against Kashmiri earth,” we remember Grandfather Aadam’s accident right along with him. Then, when he goes on to recall the perforated sheet, Tai the boatman, the Hummingbird, Nadir Khan’s escape into the cornfield, and Ramram Seth and his prophecy, sprinkled in with real-life references to M. A. Jinnah (the first governor-general of Pakistan), Lord Mountbatten (the last viceroy of India), and the goddess Mumbadevi, the reader undergoes the process of accessing memory as well. As we do this, the memories become our own, instead of remaining Saleem’s alone. The effect of this style of narration is that we understand the nature of memory with more depth. For instance, in a traditional narrative, the narrator might foreshadow events that have yet to occur but would rarely tell the reader outright what is going

to happen. Saleem, however, frequently tells us what is going to happen before it does. For instance, long before his family makes their fateful move to Pakistan, he says, “Years later, in Pakistan, on the very night when the roof was to fall in on her head and squash her flatter than a rice-pancake, Amina Sinai saw the washing-chest in a vision.” The effect of this is that in the end, we too feel that we hold Saleem’s entire story in our heads, and therefore we understand how it might be subject to question. Reinforcing the idea that memories are not carved in stone is Saleem’s tendency to get the facts wrong. Because Midnight’s Children is at once a history of the fictional Saleem and the real India, fiction mixes with fact throughout. On occasion, Saleem’s facts do not correspond to reality. For instance, he gets Mahatma Gandhi’s death wrong, but refuses to change it. He says “The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi occurs, in these pages, on the wrong date. But I cannot say, now, what the actual sequence of events might have been; in my India, Gandhi will continue to die at the wrong time.” He also gives us the wrong dates for the 1957 elections—but claims that even though he knows this, his memory “refuses, stubbornly, to alter the sequence of events.” Right or wrong, correct or false, is relative, Saleem’s memory seems to indicate. What matters most is how the story gets told. To those who doubt his veracity, Saleem says, “believe, don’t believe” and asks his readers (and his listener, Padma) how accurate and believable their own memories are. After Saleem’s family is killed in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, after his sister disappears and he himself becomes a soldier for a cause in which he does not believe, he loses his memory entirely. He cannot remember his own name and is simply called “the Buddha” by his fellow soldiers. His attempt to drown out the past is unsuccessful, however, and ultimately he spends 400 days mourning his family—immersing himself in his memory of them. His narrative, in the end, is the truth. He tells Padma that memory has its own special kind of truth: It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events;

Midnight’s Â�Childrenâ•…â•… 917 and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own. That is the nature of memory, and in Midnight’s Children, despite the often fantastical plot details, the reader is made to understand that memory brings us to our own truth, and “reality” is of secondary importance to that. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Nationalism in Midnight’s Children

Saleem Sinai, the narrator of Midnight’s Children, is “handcuffed to history,” as he says on the first page of his story. He is born at midnight, on August 15, 1947—the precise moment at which India became an independent country. His face, he will later tell us, is a “map of India,” with bulging temples on either side of his forehead. The novel lets us know from the start that his connection with his home country is not merely casual. His destinies are “indissolubly chained to those of [his] country.” The fates of Saleem and his family will always be tied inextricably to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the fates of all who live there. Fate begins intervening for Saleem long before his birth, when his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, is present at the infamous Amritsar Massacre, during which British troops, under the command of Reginald Dyer, opened fire on a peaceful gathering of men, women, and children, killing up to 400 people. This event turns his grandfather into a nationalist. He says, “I started off as a Kashmiri and not much of a Muslim. Then I got a bruise on my chest that turned me into an Indian.” Saleem’s own birth, 28 years later, forever ties the family to India, as the child is publicly celebrated as the first child of the new nation, one of “Midnight’s Children.” At first, he seems as if he, a Muslim child born in a predominantly Hindu country, might well represent the new era. However, as things began to deteriorate for Muslims in the new democracy, Saleem and his family emigrate to West Pakistan, or the “West Wing” as Saleem calls it. His entire family—save himself, his sister, and his uncle Mustapha—is killed during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, due to their associations with Muslim leaders. Saleem finds himself in the Pakistani army, ultimately fighting against

his own Hindu friends during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. He winds up in a ghetto in Delhi, wanted for war crimes, hiding from his old enemy Shiva, also born at the fateful stroke of midnight and now a general in the Indian army. He is sterilized in Indira Gandhi’s forced vasectomy campaign. Finally, his son, whom he will name Aadam after his grandfather, is born at the precise moment Indira Gandhi declares a state of emergency on June 26, 1975, effectively allowing her to rule by decree. This history, Saleem’s history, turns out to be a myth. For Aadam is not really Saleem’s son, but Shiva’s. And Saleem is not really the son of Ahmed and Amina Sinai, but rather the son of William Methwold and Vanita, the Hindu wife of the impoverished street performer Wee Willie Winkie. Switched at birth (with Shiva, no less) by the Christian nanny Mary Perreria, Saleem’s whole life has been a myth. India, too, Midnight’s Children seems to be saying, has never truly existed. Before he narrates his own birth, Saleem says of India, [A] nation which had never previously existed was about to win its freedom, catapulting us into a world which, although it had five thousand years of history, although it had invented the game of chess and traded with Middle Kingdom Egypt, was nevertheless quite imaginary; into a mythical land, a country which would never exist except by the efforts of a phenomenal collective will—except in a dream we all agreed to dream. In India, it seems, nationalism can only be thought of—it cannot be real. The country is too vast, too full of division and sectarianism, and has too much history to be simply united into an entity that can peacefully move forward. Indeed, even at the moment of its birth, division was already there, in the form of Pakistan, divided into the western section (Kashmir and Punjab) and the eastern section (most of Bengal) and separated by 1,000 miles of India. Pakistani nationalism, too, makes no sense to Saleem as he finds himself on the same side as genocidal murderers and rapists devastating East Pakistan, which would ultimately become Bangladesh.

918â•…â•…Salinger, J. D. These soldiers, he thinks, are now fighting those who were once their own, just as Indira Gandhi will soon issue orders that devastate her own people, all in the name of Indian nationalism. Jennifer McClinton-Temple

Salinger, J. D.â•… The Catcher in the Ryeâ•… (1951)

Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger (1919–2010), sparked controversy over its employment of adult themes and subjects in a work narrated by a teenager. However, the novel has endured as a masterpiece due to Salinger’s magnificent use of voice and keen insights into the nature of cruelty, innocence, duplicity, and isolation. Holden Caulfield narrates the events of the novel from a hospital, where he is presumably being treated for mental illness, and tells the readers of the events that ensued after learning of his expulsion from Pencey Preparatory School, where he was failing four of his five subjects. The title of the novel comes from a Robert Burns poem, “Coming Thro’ the Rye,” as Holden imagines himself in a rye field full of children and must catch them before they fall off the edge of a cliff, becoming the titular “catcher in the rye.” This is the central metaphor of the novel, as Holden wishes to preserve the innocence of childhood before children can be exposed to the complexity and “phoniness” of adulthood. It is worthwhile to note that Holden Caulfield is an “unreliable narrator,” declaring to the reader, “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.” The reader, therefore, can never be certain if the information Holden relates is the truth, or whether Holden’s reminiscences are distorted by his memory, mental state, or propensity for lying. Jeff Pettineo

Cruelty in The Catcher in the Rye

Cruelty is manifest in The Catcher in the Rye primarily as violence, though there are many examples of psychological cruelty as well. Although Holden is dismayed at the capacity and even tolerance human beings display for acts of cruelty—be they psychological or physical—he never fully realizes that he is responsible for acts of cruelty as well.

Early in the novel, J. D. Salinger describes the setting at Pencey Preparatory School using imagery of war and violence. Holden stands atop a hill near a cannon from the Revolutionary War, looking down at a football game, where “the two teams were bashing each other all over the place.” This initial description is a foreshadowing of the cruelty Holden will face outside of the “structured” environment of sports and school as he travels around New York. Holden, however, is the instigator of cruelty on several occasions. For example, he becomes angered by his classmate Stradlater’s refusal to answer his question about whether or not Stradlater had sex with Jane Gallagher, a childhood companion of Holden’s. As a result, Holden reacts violently, taking a swing at Stradlater but missing: “I tried to sock him, with all my might, right smack in the toothbrush, so it would split his goddam throat open. Only, I missed.  .  .  . It probably hurt him a little bit, but not as much I wanted.” Holden even muses that at Pencey, “You never saw so many mean guys in your life,” referring to boys who try to ostracize the more awkward classmates such as Robert Ackley. Holden is also the victim of violence. In one episode, Maurice, a pimp Holden meets at a hotel, roughs him up for not paying for a prostitute in full. Maurice threatens Holden, then snaps his finger on Holden’s pajamas—“I won’t tell you where he snapped it, but it hurt like hell.” And Holden is cruel to himself. When his brother, Allie, passed away, Holden claims he slept in the garage that night and “broke all the windows in the garage,” and as a result, he cannot make a tight fist with his hand. There are several instances of psychological cruelty, especially on Holden’s part. In one case, Holden tells his friend Sally Hayes that she gives him “a royal pain in the ass,” even after declaring that he loves her and suggesting they run off together to get married. Later, he confesses that although “he meant it” when he first suggested his plan to Sally, he declares, “I probably wouldn’t have taken her even if she wanted to go with me.” He also lashes out at his own sister, Phoebe, telling her to “shut up” and relating that “I was almost set to hit her. I thought I was going to smack her for a second. I really did.” His anger makes Phoebe cry.

The Catcher in the Ryeâ•…â•… 919 Perhaps Mr. Antolini, one of Holden’s former teachers, understands his dilemma the best. Mr. Antolini attempts to explain that Holden is searching for something that human behavior simply cannot provide—purity or consistency or compassion. Antolini claims that he is heading for a “fall,” because people who share a similar outlook to that of Holden are “men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their environment couldn’t supply them with.” In addition, Mr. Antolini comments that Holden is almost too preoccupied with the cruel side of human nature, and the way to come to terms with that part of human existence is to approach it in a scholarly manner, by writing and thinking about it and passing on what one has learned to others:

a child singing parts of the Robert Burns poem “Coming Thro’ the Rye,” though Holden replaces the verb come with catch. He explains his vision of preserving innocence to Phoebe:

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn from you too.”

Thus, Holden wishes to be the one who preserves the innocence of youth, even though it is Phoebe, his young sister, who “saves” him from his fall. Holden is confused, angered, and frightened by the adult world, a world obsessed with status, wealth, and sex, yet he is fascinated by children, delighting in the wild imaginations of his siblings, especially regarding the poems his deceased brother, Allie, wrote on his baseball glove and the stories his sister Phoebe writes in her notebook. Holden’s wish to prevent children from falling, facing danger, or encountering the complex world of adulthood is also exemplified by his disgust at seeing the word fuck scrawled on the wall of Phoebe’s school. He is worried that the kids will find out what the word means and then become preoccupied with sex themselves: “I thought how Phoebe and all the other kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them .  .  . and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days.” When at the museum, Holden sees another “fuck you” inscription, and he muses that even on his tombstone, one would probably see a “fuck you” written under his life dates. As a teenager, he is also trying to understand human sex and sexuality, stimulated and excited by the prospect of sexual contact but also terrified by the “unknown,” confessing at one point that he is a virgin.

Although Holden is dismayed by the phoniness and cruelty of human existence, he is also responsible for much cruelty on his own part, as his inability to deal with cruelty and phoniness spurs him to react, at times, irrationally and even violently. In the end, the person Holden manages to torture the most is himself. Jeff Pettineo

Innocence and Experience in The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye is often categorized as a bildungsroman, or coming of age novel, and its title is directly related to Holden Caulfield’s longing to preserve the childlike innocence of those about whom he cares. Holden explains that he would be the “catcher in the rye,” saving children from falling off of a cliff—a title he invents after he overhears

Anyway, I keep picturing these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.

920â•…â•…Salinger, J. D. At the end of the novel, Holden takes Phoebe to the zoo and watches her go for a ride on the carousel. He notices the children trying to grab for a gold ring and finally comes to realize that just as he can’t rub out all the “fuck you” signs in the world, he must allow children to reach for the ring even though they might fall off their horses. In essence, though he wants to be the “catcher in the rye,” preserving the innocence of youth, he must allow people to experience life: “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them.” Finally, Holden comes to realize that, metaphorically, children are going to “fall off their horses,” but it is a necessary part of the maturation process. One of the central questions the reader must ask about The Catcher in the Rye is whether or not Holden Caulfield has “changed” or developed as a result of his experiences. There is some evidence to suggest that he has not changed, as he declares that one psychoanalyst at the hospital keeps asking if he is going to apply himself. Holden replies that he does not know, and cannot know if he is going to do something until he does it. “I swear it’s a stupid question,” he muses. But Holden’s admission to the reader that one has to allow kids to “reach for the ring” despite a possible fall indicates, perhaps, that he is starting to come to terms with the ephemeral and dynamic nature of human existence. Jeff Pettineo

Isolation in The Catcher in the Rye

Although Holden Caulfield meets or tells stories about at least a score of people, and although sometimes he initially takes an interest in others, even if it is only a physical interest in the case of many girls, he almost always parts company in acrimonious fashion. The fleeting nature of his interactions is responsible for much of his loneliness, though many times his isolation is also self-imposed, as he knowingly attempts to irritate others by leading them on or denouncing them as inferior in some way. He desperately longs for human companionship, but due to his lack of maturity or frustration with human duplicity and “phoniness,” he tends to

be excessively critical of—and therefore irritated by—nearly everyone he meets. Initially, Holden is cut off from his own classmates, as he has just been expelled from school for failing four subjects. He is also ostracized by the fencing team during a bus ride because he left the team’s equipment at the train station. Moreover, he feels isolated to such a degree that he fears he is going to “disappear” out of existence. When he goes to see his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, for example, Holden relates that “I felt like I was sort of disappearing. It was that kind of a crazy afternoon .  .  . and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.” Later, when he pretends to call out to his deceased brother Allie, pleading for Allie to save him from disappearing whenever he crosses a block—“Every time I’d get to the end of the block I’d make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I’d say to him, ‘Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Please, Allie.’ And then when I’d reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I’d thank him.” Later in the novel, Holden entertains ideas of living like a recluse. He imagines he could go “out West,” where he would live in anonymity—“where nobody’d know me and I’d get a job . . . I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they’d have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They’d get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life.” Holden perhaps imagines that his only solution to the phony and cruel aspects of human behavior is to cut himself off from human contact completely, an idea on which he intends to follow through, and he even writes a goodbye letter that he delivers to Phoebe at school. He finally abandons his plan when Phoebe comes to meet him at the museum with a packed suitcase, pleading for Holden to allow her to come along. He abandons his plan when he realizes his trip would hurt Phoebe, perhaps his only conduit to stability and happiness in the novel. Although Holden identifies many of the novel’s characters as “phonies,” and although it appears

Hamletâ•…â•… 921 at times that he hates being around people, there is evidence to suggest at the end of the book that he does come to terms with the fleeting nature of relationships and human existence, as Phoebe finally provides him with companionship and fosters some brief moments of happiness in his life. Indeed, the novel’s final passage is an almost “mature” understanding of the fleeting nature of relationships, as Holden implores the reader, “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” Thus, perhaps he begins to realize that the time he has to spend with people is precious and not to be wasted. We see another instance of Holden taking an interest in others’ lives when he becomes concerned about two boys at the museum trying to find the mummies. Although he professes that one of his plans is to move out West and be a mute, his concern for the boys’ well-being and willingness to help them indicates that, at least in the case of children, Holden has made some effort to establish links with others. Thus, his isolation from his classmates, friends, and society is largely self-imposed, as he often alienates others through rudeness or belligerence. Jeff Pettineo

Shakespeare, Williamâ•… Hamletâ•… (1603)

The story begins by filling the audience in on the back story of the elder King Hamlet’s victorious killing of King Fortinbras of Norway. This history sets the stage for the recurring references to young Fortinbras, who is on the march with his army to regain the lands his father lost to Denmark. We hear of the ghost of King Hamlet, and then we are introduced to the dead king’s son, Hamlet, who has been called back to Elsinore Castle in Denmark from his studies at Wittenberg to attend his father’s funeral. Within two months of King Hamlet’s death, his brother, Claudius, married the dead king’s wife, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. Hamlet is mourning his father and is upset by his mother’s marriage to his uncle. Hamlet’s friends tell him they have seen a ghost, but before Hamlet can see the ghost for himself, Shakespeare introduces us to Ophelia, Hamlet’s

“girlfriend,” and her father, Polonius, the king’s adviser. We also meet Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, who is about to leave for Paris. Polonius, who delivers numerous clichés of wisdom to his children, advises his daughter to reject Hamlet, who does not appear to be taking his courtship of her seriously. Then, the ghost reappears, and Hamlet follows him and hears the story of his father’s death: King Hamlet had been murdered while asleep in the garden by Claudius, who had poured poison into his ear. The ghost expects Hamlet to avenge his death. In act 2, four months have passed. Hamlet begins acting in a rather deranged way at this juncture, and Polonius attributes his behavior to Ophelia’s rejection of him. In the meantime, Hamlet has been contemplating how to avenge his father’s murder, and Claudius is feeling suspicious of the young man’s changeable behavior. The plot thickens in act 3, when a meeting between Ophelia and Hamlet is set, and Polonius and Claudius watch from a hidden place. Hamlet now brutally rejects Ophelia. From this point on, we understand, Ophelia goes into an emotional and mental decline. Laertes will learn of Ophelia’s situation, and his outrage will bring him back to Elsinore to make Hamlet accountable for what he has done to Ophelia. Hamlet goes to his mother’s chamber to talk to her about his concerns, and he is so intense that Gertrude cries out. Polonius, with Claudius’s permission, has been hiding behind a curtain to eavesdrop on their conversation, and when Gertrude cries out, so does he. Hamlet, thinking the eavesdropper is Claudius, stabs him through the curtain. He discovers his mistake and, after the scene with his mother, will hide Polonius’s body. In act 4, Claudius learns from Gertrude about Polonius’s death, and although Gertrude maintains that Hamlet is simply mad, Claudius decides to send Hamlet to England right away. In a moment of foreshadowing, we hear news of Fortinbras of Norway, who is crossing Denmark with his army to fight the soldiers of Poland, and Hamlet wishes he had Fortinbras’s sense of honor and military energy. Laertes returns to Elsinore and learns of his father’s death. Then Gertrude describes the drowning death of Ophelia, who had gone mad with grief

922â•…â•…Shakespeare, William after her father’s murder at Hamlet’s hand. The court receives word from Hamlet that his ship had been attacked by pirates, and that he managed to escape and is making his way back home. Later, in act 5, we will discover, as Hamlet tells his friend Horatio, that he uncovered Claudius’s plot to have him killed at the hands of his friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Claudius’s plan to have Hamlet killed gone awry, he now contrives with Laertes to set up a fencing match at which Hamlet will be murdered with a poisoned sword. In case that does not work, for added insurance, Claudius will bring a cup of poisoned wine. In the final scene, while Hamlet is fighting Laertes, Gertrude innocently drinks from the poisoned cup and dies. Hamlet is pierced by Laertes’ poisoned sword, but then Laertes is also wounded with his own blade. Laertes forgives Hamlet for everything he has done and then dies. Hamlet finally kills Claudius, and then he himself dies. Fortinbras enters the bloody hall, and Horatio tells him what has transpired. Hamlet is honorably borne off for burial, and order and justice prevail. Ellen Rosenberg

Death in Hamlet

In Hamlet, the theme of death goes hand-in-glove with the play’s objective of bringing retribution to those who do evil. At play’s end, justice is delivered through death, and the characters who have been wronged, the audience, and society itself are morally satisfied. The human condition, however—that is, the idea that all who live must eventually yield to death—encompasses larger questions than those posed by the quest for vengeance. Consider the variety of and means by which deaths occur in the play. King Hamlet has slain King Fortinbras in military battle before the play opens. Claudius becomes king by killing King Hamlet, his brother. Originally thought to have died from a “serpent’s sting,” the ghost of King Hamlet informs us that he has been killed by poison having been poured into his ear. The play within the play is an entertainment on the subject of murder and is also an exemplar of art’s primary purpose: to hold a mirror up to life. In doing so, “The Murder of Gonzago” reflects Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet.

In a case of mistaken identity, Hamlet kills the unarmed, elderly, eavesdropping Polonius by stabbing him with a dagger through a drape. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been sent to England with Hamlet with sealed orders in which Claudius asks that Hamlet be executed on the spot. Hamlet, in an act of self-defense, rewrites the orders, sealing the fate of his friends. The gravedigger who has been at his job since the day Hamlet was born unearths a variety of human bones, but it is Yorick’s skull that affects Hamlet. He knew the jester, who presumably died of old age in life. Finally, of course there is the gruesome fencingmatch death scene. Gertrude is killed by the poison wine that Claudius intended for Hamlet. Laertes avenges his father’s death by cutting Hamlet with a poisoned sword. Hamlet has switched swords with Laertes in a scuffle, and he cuts Laertes with his own sword. If we are looking for a moral, we may say that Laertes, who has made his peace with Hamlet in the end, is bound to be punished nevertheless for conniving with the evil Claudius. Claudius is the play’s third king to die (if we start counting in the history of the play), but because Claudius is so heinous a villain, Shakespeare has Hamlet kill him twice: once by Laertes’ sword and once by drinking the dregs of the poisoned cup. Hamlet himself dies twice and by the same means. After all, he has been responsible for a number of deaths that went beyond his revenge motive. The Norwegian army, acting in honor to avenge the slain King Fortinbras, is rendered unnecessary as Horatio conveys to the young Fortinbras Hamlet’s last words, giving him the Danish throne. In addition to the growing heap of corpses Shakespeare provides, the audience is also invited to examine some of the rituals and beliefs that pertain to the dead. We learn, for example, that Hamlet is wearing black clothing because he is in mourning. Since she has remarried, Gertrude objects to Hamlet’s funereal garb and tells her son, “Good Hamlet, cast off thy nighted garb . . . / Do not for ever with thy vailed lids / Seek for thy father in the dust. / . . . all that lives must die / Passing through nature to eternity” (1.2.68–73). The presence of a ghost suggests a belief in the afterlife as well as a belief in a system of judgment

Hamletâ•…â•… 923 of the dead. When Hamlet supposes Claudius to be to praying, he says: Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven; And so am I revenged. That would be scann’d: A villain kills my father; and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. He took my father grossly, full of bread; With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; And how his audit stands who knows save heaven? (3.3.73–83) In other words, Hamlet wrongly assumes that Claudius is praying; if he kills him, then Claudius’s soul will go to heaven, and he will have done the murderer a favor. Instead of being damned, Claudius will be saved for having confessed his sins. This possibility is doubly distasteful to Hamlet, because he says that Claudius has sent King Hamlet to death “full of bread”—that is, he has not had the chance to confess his sins, and therefore he may not be able to go to heaven. A fascinating feature of Hamlet resides in Shakespeare’s interest in the practical aspects of death and his dark humor about mortality. When Hamlet enters the churchyard, for example, he is startled that one of the diggers is singing, cracking jokes and tossing bones and skulls about without any sense of the solemn nature of death. Hamlet wonders whether the skulls the Clown is tossing up belonged to a courtier, a politician or a lawyer. Then he asks the pragmatic question: Hamlet: How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot? First Clown: I’ faith, if he be not rotten before he die . . . he will last you some eight year or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year. Hamlet: Why he more than another? First Clown: Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that he will keep

out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. (5.1.144–152) These questions about the decay of the body are met with semi-merry responses from the gravedigger, who supposes that a man who turns raw animal skins into leather will, himself, have waterproofed his own body and will last a good year more underground than the average person. This is the moment at which the jester Yorick’s skull is produced, and it leads Hamlet to ask Horatio if Alexander the Great looked and smelled as badly as Yorick. Perhaps the most memorable aspect of Shakespeare’s examination of death in Hamlet centers on the metaphysical and philosophical meditations that run through the length of the play. Hamlet’s musings on suicide, for example, start in the first act of the play. After Gertrude has chided Hamlet about wearing black, and he has defended his “inky cloak” as “denoting his grief ” (1.2.77, 82), Hamlet expresses his despair over his father’s death and his mother’s hasty marriage: O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! (1.2.129–134) Here, Hamlet is already considering suicide even before he speaks to his father’s ghost and discovers that he must shift from contemplative inaction and grief to killing and revenge. Shakespeare returns to the theme again in the famous soliloquy of act 3 that begins, “To be or not to be, that is the question” (3.1.56). The problem Hamlet encounters as he soliloquizes about whether or not he should kill himself is “the dread of something after death, / The undiscover’d country from whose bourn / No traveller returns” (3.1.78–80). Life is filled with woe, but the yawning, unknown world of death that may be filled with nightmarish

924â•…â•…Shakespeare, William experiences for man’s soul will come soon enough without being accelerated through suicide. The play’s last words tie up the theme of death. Fortinbras has entered the castle and effectively asks what “feast of death” has occurred. Horatio tells Hamlet’s story, and the last scene of the last act ends with a “dead march” in which Hamlet’s body is borne off by Fortinbras’s men to the sounds of cannon in a military cortege. Ellen Rosenberg

Justice in Hamlet

“Revenge should have no bounds” (4.7.123), Claudius tells Laertes, and Hamlet is indeed a revenge tragedy, a genre that was especially popular in Renaissance England. The focus of this genre is personal justice: A crime or evil is committed against a person or family, usually involving someone’s murder; for various reasons, the institutions dedicated to moral, civil, and social justice—the church, the government and society at large, the courts—are not able to mete out justice for the act of wrongdoing, yet retaliation for the injustice must be achieved in order to slake the hero’s (and the audience’s) moral thirst. The revenge tragedy positions the protagonist to achieve this personal form of justice, even if it means the hero’s own death or the death of those near and dear to him. In Hamlet, there are multiple manifestations of the revenge theme. A little-discussed aspect of revenge that is antecedent to the play, but which is resolved in the action, is the war that Fortinbras, the elder king of Norway, had waged against Hamlet’s father, the king of Denmark. In seeking to annex portions of Poland, the elder Fortinbras had brought his army through and against Denmark. The elder King Hamlet slew King Fortinbras and took land from him; it was on that day that young Hamlet was born. Throughout Hamlet, references are made to the young Fortinbras, who is on his way, through Denmark, to Poland, to reclaim the territories his father had lost. The threat of Fortinbras turning his army against Denmark is noted in the play, but Fortinbras is restrained in act 4 and simply asks for passage across the land. The threat that runs throughout Hamlet is that Fortinbras will turn his military might against Hamlet and Denmark to avenge the death of the elder Fortinbras. The turn

of events at the end of Hamlet makes Fortinbras’s act of vengeance unnecessary: The royal Danish family has destroyed itself, and Hamlet’s dying wish is for Horatio to give Denmark to Fortinbras to rule. Justice on a political level is served, and in a fashion resembling ancient Greek drama, the “curse” on the house of Hamlet is resolved. The play’s primary call for justice is to avenge the murder of King Hamlet, and it is organized around this main narrative theme and its corollary issues. This demand for justice and, therefore, the objective of the play, comes from the ghost of Hamlet’s father, who appears to Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio in act 1, scene 1. He reappears in scene 4 to reveal Claudius’s secret crime to Hamlet and the audience and to set Hamlet into action. The ghost will visit Hamlet again later in the play when Hamlet loses control in questioning his mother. The king was asleep in the garden when Claudius poured poison into his ear, and Hamlet must avenge his murder. On a narrative level, Hamlet now must find out whether the ghost has told the truth. There are numerous corollary issues of justice surrounding this theme. Gertrude, for example, must redeem herself for rushing into marriage with her brother-in-law so close upon her husband’s death. This matter becomes Hamlet’s obsession: Did his mother collude with Claudius to kill the king? Does she simply have poor judgment, or is she weak or trying to garner security for herself, a woman, in a man’s world? Moreover, even before Hamlet is informed of the murder, he finds himself put out of the natural order of succession to the throne since Claudius has seized it. Claudius’s marriage to Gertrude may be a strategy to align himself with his late brother’s power and attract the people’s goodwill. Or, perhaps, he loves Gertrude and killed to have her. Most centrally, if Hamlet feels sure that Claudius has indeed committed the murder, then he must bring his uncle to justice, because Claudius is the law of the land, and Hamlet will not be able to have formal retribution put into place by the very man who has committed the crime. As the play develops, Claudius’s continuing villainy will finally convince Hamlet that the ghost has told the truth. In terms of the plot, then, both Claudius and Gertrude must

Hamletâ•…â•… 925 be brought to justice for their offenses against King Hamlet and Hamlet himself. A second motive for revenge is introduced late in the play when Claudius, worried that his nephew is aware of his crime, secretly orders Hamlet’s friends to take Hamlet to his death. These friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have already betrayed Hamlet by spying on him for Claudius. Their deaths will avenge their betrayals of honor and friendship. Hamlet’s cruel rejection of Ophelia may be attributed to his “madness,” as Gertrude would like to believe, triggered by the death of his father. Alternatively, he may be losing his mind as he tries to accept the ghost and his murderous tale as real and to resolve to take physical action against Claudius. After all, Hamlet has been a student, and, as such, he is a contemplative man. He has been trained in combat as any prince would be, but he is not living that role when the play opens. Furthermore, he cannot come to grips with the notion that his mother may have been complicit in his father’s killing. Hamlet’s pitiless attacks against Ophelia and Gertrude are, of course, unpleasant but, in and of themselves, not reason enough to demand blood justice. For example, after he famously orders Ophelia to “Get thee to a nunnery” in act 3, scene 1, he asks her this question: “Wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” The logic here may be understood to mean that “breeders” are mothers, and we have a glimpse of Hamlet comparing Ophelia to Gertrude in horror. Perhaps, Shakespeare wants us to consider whether she might come to be complicit in Hamlet’s future murder. Further, Hamlet explains that men are born of women, and men are sinners. While he describes himself as “indifferent honest,” even he could be made out to be a sinner who wishes he had never been born and, therefore, Ophelia should take an oath of celibacy to prevent more monstrous men from being born. Ophelia has, in fact, rejected Hamlet on her father’s advice, and perhaps she feels responsible for driving him off balance. Still, Hamlet’s angry response to her is wildly out of proportion to her refusal. Later, Laertes returns to Elsinore in a rage against Hamlet’s treatment of his sister, and Ophelia does finally commit suicide, ostensibly because of Hamlet’s behavior and his murder of

their father, Polonius. While the murder was a case of mistaken identity, justice must be had. Laertes, then, is a secondary character in the play who has his own motives for revenge. He joins forces with the evildoer Claudius against Hamlet because it is expedient, but Laertes is living up to his code of honor, thereby allowing the court and royal family to break up. In the heat of his accusations against his mother, Hamlet has finally begun to act on his conviction that Claudius has wrongfully murdered King Hamlet. Thus, the end of act 4 brings us solidly into the third movement of the revenge tragedy. It has taken Hamlet so long to arrive at this moment that the forces of evil and chaos have had time to coalesce, promising a bloodbath. We are not disappointed. In a portrayal of absolute right and wrong, Hamlet’s former friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have died for obeying Claudius’s order and betraying Hamlet. Ophelia has died by her own hand for not following her heart, thus contributing to Hamlet’s anguish. Polonius has been stabbed for meddling, and his death has been avenged by Laertes. Laertes has been cut by his own poisoned sword as punishment for scheming with Claudius against Hamlet. Gertrude dies by innocently drinking from the poisoned cup Claudius has brought to kill Hamlet, satisfying all questions about her ostensible guilt, either through complicity with Claudius or through her own weakness. Hamlet avenges his father’s ghost by murdering Claudius, and he dies twice over through being cut by the poisoned sword and by drinking the dregs of the poisoned cup. Justice is completely served as Horatio relates the events to Fortinbras, who takes command and restores order to Denmark. Ellen Rosenberg

Love in Hamlet

If Hamlet is a veritable bouquet of death and vengeance, then the garden from which it was cut was watered with love. Love is the premise and motive that drives the play’s dramatic actions and circumstances. Had Hamlet not loved and honored his late father, for example, he would not have been so powerfully pressed to avenge his death. The theme is presented in a variety of forms in a range of intensities: love within families, the passionate and driving

926â•…â•…Shakespeare, William first love of young adulthood, love between friends, the love of power, and the love of honor. The customary love between children and their parents is exemplified by Ophelia and Laertes’ love for their father and Polonius’s love of them. In fussing over Laertes as he prepares to return to Paris, Polonius displays a normal, if wordy, concern for his son’s honorable conduct in the world. Similarly, Polonius seems genuinely to want to protect his daughter as he assesses her relationship with Hamlet. During the Renaissance, marriage among the powerful was often simply a business transaction intended to consolidate power, territory, and wealth. It seems clear that Ophelia and Hamlet are in love, but in the world of Elsinore, that may not be enough. Had Ophelia married Hamlet in the best of all possible worlds, eventually she would have become his queen. But Hamlet has just lost succession to the throne because his uncle, Claudius, has usurped it. Perhaps this political reality has stymied Polonius’s ambitions for Ophelia: Since it is the worst of all possible worlds, if she ties herself to Hamlet, her future is now murky at best. On the one hand, when Polonius cautions her to reject Hamlet, surely he has her innocence in mind and wants to protect her from the improper sexual transgressions to which young lovers may be prone. On the other hand, he may want to take time to evaluate his daughter’s situation. Finally, Ophelia and Laertes’ natural love for their father is employed narratively by Shakespeare when Hamlet mistakenly murders Polonius. Ophelia’s already aggrieved mental state is made worse by mourning the death of her father at the hands of the man she has loved. Her drowning, then, is a result of her depression and a further impetus for Laertes to avenge his father’s murder. Laertes’ love for his sister and family honor is already the reason why he has returned from France in a state of outrage. This indignation, coupled with his grief when he learns of his father’s death, and then of his sister’s death, is the motive for him joining forces with Claudius against Hamlet. The love between children and their parents is distorted in the case of Hamlet’s family due to extreme circumstances. Had King Hamlet died

naturally of old age, the prince would have mourned and recovered. Had a normal period of grieving elapsed before Gertrude married Claudius, Hamlet might have adjusted to the reorganization of power and family relationships. Instead, escalating problems are added to his heap of woes. The ghost reveals the crime and asks for vengeance; Ophelia rejects him; and Gertrude’s possible complicity with Claudius contaminates Hamlet’s trust of Ophelia, simply because she is a woman. Ultimately, though, he yields to the ghost’s cry for justice because he loves his father, and as a noble man of conscience, he loves honor and must make things right. Hamlet torments Gertrude about her involvement because he loves her and wishes for her to be innocent, but he cannot shake his suspicions. Perhaps he loves her too much. As the play progresses, he articulates increasingly rank and graphic images of his mother coupled with Claudius in the conjugal bed that in act 3 he calls a “sty.” His ability to envision his mother in the act of sex with his uncle is sometimes understood by critics to be a sign of Hamlet’s unnaturally strong psychological attachment to his mother. For Gertrude’s part, she clearly loves her son, and she worries about his increasingly disturbed appearance and behavior. Explaining to Laertes why he has not yet punished Hamlet for killing Polonius, Claudius says, “The queen his mother / Lives almost by his looks” (4.7.11–12). The crazier Hamlet acts, the more Gertrude defends him as simply being mad. Even when Hamlet berates her, in the closet scene, for having given herself to Claudius, “In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, / Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love,” Gertrude asks him to stop, but calls him “sweet Hamlet” (3.4.92–97), one could say that their extreme, reciprocal love for one another is nearly incestuous, as is Gertrude’s having married her husband’s brother. One question that remains unanswered in the play is whether Gertrude figured strongly in Claudius’s decision to murder King Hamlet, if we are to believe the ghost’s version of what happened. After all, Claudius is no adolescent subject to the intoxications of first love. Yet when Claudius discusses with Laertes Hamlet’s murder of Polonius, he explains that he has not moved against Hamlet because Ger-

Henry IV, Part 1â•…â•… 927 trude “is so conjunctive for my life and soul / That, as the star moves not but in his sphere / I could not but by her” (4.7.11). To arrest Hamlet would wound Gertrude, whom Claudius says he loves profoundly. Of course, he could be lying to cover his motive for the murder: love of power. After all, he has secret plans to have Hamlet executed by the king of Â�England. He wants to appear innocent to Gertrude but reckons that Hamlet is a greater threat to him alive than Gertrude’s sorrow if Hamlet were to die. We are left to ask ourselves what motivates Claudius: love for power or love for Gertrude. The metaphor of being driven mad by being blocked from acting on the impulses of passion applies to both Hamlet and Ophelia. The obstacle to consummating their love is their respective filial duty. The command to honor their fathers structures the course of their relationship and their mental well-being, ultimately leading both to their deaths. In the case of Ophelia, as we have seen, Polonius has advised her to “repel his letters and deny [him] access” (2.1.98–99) after Hamlet has “importuned [her] with love in honorable fashion” (1.4.110–111), and she has done so. Subsequent to her rebuff, Ophelia is frightened by Hamlet’s appearance and conduct toward her, yet still has wits enough to observe of Hamlet’s mad behavior, “O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” (3.1.146). By the end of that act, Hamlet will have stabbed her father and hidden the body from the court. In act 5, when Ophelia comes into audience with Gertrude and Claudius, she is mad, singing vulgar ditties and foreshadowing her own death: “Indeed, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t” (5.5.56). There can no longer be love in a world in which her mad lover has killed her father. She must drown. In the case of Hamlet, even if he has been affected by Ophelia’s rejection of him, his father’s revelations and demands, as delivered by the ghost, must take precedence over everything. More than Ophelia’s refusal of Hamlet, the question Hamlet grapples with concerning the integrity of women seems to be the most disturbing to him. As we have seen, his confusion over his mother’s involvement with Claudius raises for Hamlet the question of whether all women are innately whores. He plagues Ophelia with innuendoes about her base sexuality but has no

foundation to do so. In the end, the only thing left in the world for Hamlet to love is Denmark. Hamlet manifests this love of honor, order, and country by convincing his last friend in the world, Horatio, to speak to Fortinbras of what has transpired. He restores honor to his father’s name and to Elsinore by passing the rule of Denmark to Fortinbras, a military leader who loves honor as much as Hamlet did. Ellen Rosenberg

Shakespeare, Williamâ•… Henry IV, Part 1â•… (1598)

William Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 was written between 1596 and 1597 and first published in 1598. Because of its memorable characters and fluid narrative, the play remains one of Shakespeare’s most enjoyable and accessible history plays. Shakespeare effortlessly balances scenes of high drama and pathos with scenes of bawdy humor, all the while examining the dangers of civil war during the early reign of Henry IV, and debating (through his characters) what honor really means. For Falstaff, honor is merely a word. The main characters of Henry IV, Part 1 are split into two factions: those who support Henry IV and those who are rebelling against his policies. While Henry is the king, he is nonetheless reduced to a supporting role; his son, Prince Hal (the future Henry V), is the play’s protagonist and the one who directs most of the action. With Hal we see a troubled youth, someone who seems incapable of leading his nation one day. Hal’s best friend is Falstaff, an overweight drunk who is the target of much ridicule and trickery. Hal is seemingly ignorant of the political machinations that are unfolding. Since the deposition and death of Richard II, the Percys (who aided Henry in his quest to dethrone Richard) are upset with their king’s political dealings. Already marked by an inharmonious relationship, the Percys gain support for a rebellion and begin to organize an army led by the young and rash Henry Percy (Hotspur), eldest son of the earl of Northumberland. The rebellion is crushed at the Battle of Shrewsbury, and all conclude that rebellion is disastrous for all persons involved.

928â•…â•…Shakespeare, William Through this play, Shakespeare examines the themes of coming of age, pride, and violence. Henry IV, Part 1 is a violent play that also contains some of the best comedic scenes in Western literature. Its wide-ranging appeal is a result of Shakespeare examining some of humankind’s more complex dimensions. Alexander L. Kaufman

Coming of Age in Henry IV, Part 1

From the beginning of Henry IV, Part 1 to its close, Henry, Prince of Wales (called Hal), undergoes a profound change in his behavior and personality. As readers, we are witness to Hal’s maturation from a knavish thug to the living embodiment of the future of England: Henry V. Through a series of contrasting scenes and characters, Shakespeare makes it clear that the play’s protagonist