2 1. Literature of the New World (1492-1620) The Discoveries of America: America has had many discoveries, first 2200
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1. Literature of the New World (1492-1620)
The Discoveries of America: America has had many discoveries, first 22000 years ago, emigrants from Asia These groups evolved into the great Aztec, Mayan and Inca civilizations In eleventh century Vikings made settlements in Newfoundland and attempted colonization October 12, 1492 – first recorder discovery of the New World – Christopher Columbus He was looking for a trading route to the Orient, not a new continent, was sure he found Asia Washington Irving – Columbus was a man „predisposed to be deceived― Credit for the discovery was given to the Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci, reached America while traveling to Brasil in 1501. Published discovery in Mundus Novus in 1503. A German geographer named Martin Waldseemuller named the continent by Amerigo Vespucci, claiming that it should bear the name of its founder. A Literature of Experience: Central issue of Renaissance thought – experience vs theory, modern observation vs ancient authority Experience became a key word for intellectual discourse In geography the conflict was dramatized by two sorts of maps – the theoretical maps of the entire world (mappi mundi) and the practical cruising charts (portolanos) – the early sailors and explorers faced huge differences between these two – what they showed and what they saw themselves Giovanni da Verrazano – Letter to the King: Record of his 1524 journey down the coast of North America. He is confused by what he sees as it doesn’t resemble what he saw in the maps at all; says that theory has been proven false by experience, like a true man of Renaissance. This would later develop into one of the major themes of American literature – an experiental challenge to an authoritative theoretical framework Verrazano also puts emphasis on the idyllic landscape of the New World He calls Virginia’s Accomack peninsula „Arcadia― – taking from Virgil This shapes up into a cultural attitude – not just the pastoral ideal, but also the escape from society and return to simpler ways of life
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America and the Pastoral Ideal This ideal had long been a European dream of golden age, seemed to come true with the discovery of the New World Seemed at last that a world untouched by human hand was found Columbus thought that he had literally come near the Terrestrial Paradise Later explorers would view America in this way too, seeing it as a an earthly paradise The primary motive for exploration was in the first place – gold and silver. New territories, beautiful lands and religious conversion of the natives were secondary and not as important Columbus first asked the natives about the gold and seemed to find none, like the other early explorers. America seemed to be an obstacle, if it was poorer than Europe. The pastoral ideal at the time was merely an acquired taste for a certain sort of landscape, not a vision from a direct encounter with nature Many people at the time found the ideal pastoral landscape similar to the ones from the famous Renaissance paintings Verazzano found the further part of the northern coast „dense― and the natives „barbarous―. Published Letter to the King, his record of the journey he made from North Carolina to Maine, explored eastern coast (Washington DC, NY, Boston). He was the firts person who explored north and introduced the idea of idyllic landscape. For the early explorers, wilderness presented a highly pejorative connotation, as it was directly opposed to the pastoral ideal of the Renaissance. By the end of 18th century the situation changed completely, and wilderness came to possess a highly positive value, and eventually replaced the cultivated garden as the ideal American landscape. The New American Hero Survival in the wildernes became one of the main themes in in both popular and classic American literature – all thanks to exploration narratives New type of hero: tough, self-reliant, experienced, in contact with life at its most elemental levels The Narrative of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (1542) – an account of four shipwrecked men’s survival in America while wandering for eight years through the wilderness of the Texas Gulf The explorer who typified the new American hero – John Smith 4
In his writing, the idea of experience takes on new significance – it is important not only as a method of testing the theory, but also as a supreme value in and for itself Experiences become cumulative and hierarchical. The hero has many experiences, the more extreme, the better. He published diaries, letters, pamphlets about the colony and his experiences. In 1612 he published Maps of Virginia, in 1616 published a description of New England, in 1629 New England Traits. Smith’s Arcadia is mainly an utilitarian Utopia, his descriptions are pastoral only in a way that they offer natural abundance Even though the new land is abundant with resources, Smith says it requires discipline and hard work to forge out the raw resources an idependent subsistence. In Smith’s books we find the earliest formulations of what would become the prevailing image of America – an open society where someone without the benefit of family connections, inheritance, or formal education can by virtue of hard work alone enjoy a happy, independent and prosperous life. Toward a Pluralistic Culture With captain John Smith, the English language and the American experience became inseparably united. For this reason he is often called the first American writer. It has to be said though, that the English made only a minority of the colonized world, and were way behind the efforts of the French, the Spanish and the Dutch settlers A cultural pluralism characterized the New World from the start. Exploration writing did not end with John Smith, but evolved into an American literary tradition as men and women conducted their various errands into the wilderness. The major American writers repeatedly beheld a world that was excitingly and inexhaustibly new, and this inescapable fact of newness may be what is the most essential about American literature. Puritans William Bradford (leader of the Plymouth Company) wrote about Plymouth Plantation (1620-1647) and most of what we know today about life of the first settler in Plymouth plantation comes from his writings. Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts because of his ideas. Williams spoke about equality of all people. He founded Rhode Island colony which became a haven for other religious refugees like Anne Hutchinson. She advocated Covenant of Works
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Anne Bradstreet is considered the first American writer The Mayflower Compact: (compact-agreement) first document about organisation of settlement. First agreement by American people. They agreed that the governor of the colony was going to be elected by the male members of colony, not going to be governed by the British Crown. It was a foundation of democracy. Governement institutions were to be responsible to the people. Constitution of the USA functions as a compact. Body politic –a group of people who make a political unit. It is the basic unit of American politics. Everything fuctioned on the principle of consent: people would come together and decide what’s best for their settlement. Puritans believed in equality of all people, all people are sinners. They encouraged individual reading of the Bible. They valued education and founded universities. There was a difference in New England colonies and Southern Colonies. The first were Puritans and believed in their mission while in the South lived uneducated, poor people, convicts. There was a great flowering of literature. Their legacy: democracy, self-reliance, theme of individual vs. community, American Dream, frontier hero
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2. American Renaissance (1830-1861)
The term „American Renaissance― refers to the flourishing of American literature. It is a consequence of a huge economic boost in the 13 colonies after the Civil War and the Revolution. There was a rapid development of government, trade, shipping, manufaturers, agricultural wealth and an expansions of the systems of roads and waterways. This expansion forced the Indian further westward, and got the masses to stop being focused on religion only. Regional influences: The city of New York: by 1800 the largest city in the United States, became the literary capital. Popular newspaper journalism (the Knickerbockers). Washington Irving, with the publication of The Sketch Book became the first American writer renowned in the rest of the world. Writers: Cooper, Bryant, Melville, Whitman Philadelphia: nicknamed the „Athens of America―. Writers: Poe, Bird, Taylor, Hawthorne, Cooper, Longfellow. It was the center of new, popular, periodical literature (Godey’s Lady’s Book, Graham’s Magazine) North vs South: The South: agricultural, dependent on England. Supported slavery. Very few writers, mainly went to North to fulfill their literary ambitions. The North: Sought to liberate itself from the British influence. It was much more industrial than the south. Detested slavery, offered more opportunities and democratic freedom.
Themes and Influences on Literature: Romanticism: Belief that we perceive world with our senses. Intuition is more important than reason, spirit has to guide us. Emphasis on self-confidence and inner life. Importance of social and political freedom. Interest in nature. Theme of nature was very important: Emerson thought that we are best when we are in nature. Melville, Cooper, Poe described Hudson Valley, celebrated American landscape. Views of nature: beautiful universe with human beings being chosen and favoured creatures in it (good-natured, glorified nature, during the time of discoveries) One of the major influences as it was flourishing in England and Europe at the time and the American writers met the English ones and read their works. They took ideas such as freedom and individualism. Its ideas influenced Emmerson’s intuitionalism and transcedentalism, as well as Poe’s and Hawthorne’s interest in psychology. Penchant for mystery, strangeness and exploration of evil. Imagination is very important. View of history: the British were interested in medieval themes. Americans didn’t have long 7
history or tradition, but different cultures were mixed in America (Dutch, German, French, English...) so the writers used their stories and enriched them with their own imagination, thus starting to create something that looked like folklore (superstitions, stories..), their own history. They wrote about early explorers, Captain John Smith, development of colonies, moving of frontiers, life of George Washington. Past is seen as more romantic (influence of Walter Scott).
The Nature and the Land: Who owns the land they were on? Indians? A major question was whether Americans were fair and just to the natives. They tried to justify themselves by saying that land belongs to them because they cultivate it and Indians don’t, they were mostly nomads, bred horses. But there were Indians who planted crops. Soldiers, Tories, women, they all wanted their part. Rapid urbanization and constant inflow of new settlers. Question of private ownership.
The Indians: Americans were responsible to them. They started being extinct at the time. The romantic impulse helped enlarge the Indian presence in American writing. William Gilmore Simms – contributed to the rapidly growing understanding of the first Americans by including them in his writing. Many writers wanted to preserve Indians and their heritage so they wrote plenty about them. Some Indians even wrote themselves, either in their own language by using the alphabet they created themselves, or in English. The Other. The Question of Women’s Rights (Women’s Rights Movement): Women too wanted to own land, be educated, independent and have the right to vote and be employed, but they didn’t have ANY rights whatsoever. Slavery: The northern colonies didn’t support slavery as they believed in human rights, so the writers themselves wrote against slavery and its extention. Civil war was therefore, an inevitable conflict
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3. Washington Irving: American Story Teller
Washington Irving was the first American writer who received international reputation, and people tend to regard him as the first real American writer. Born in 1783, died in 1859. Born in NY as the youngest of 11 children of Scottish born father and an English born mother. He read English literature moulding his early prose on Spectator by Joseph Addison, Shaks, Goldsmith and Sterne. When he showed the first signs of tuberculosis, he was sent to Europe, which proved to be very influential on his literary writing. He used to write down whatever he saw and found interesting. He was mostly interested in folk tales and ordinary people’s opinions, which is probably the reason he was loved so much by the common folk of America. He worked with his brother on the papers: The Morning Courier and Salmagundi. Irving read essays by Addison and Steel who were renowned essayists in Britain. In those magazines they made parody to high society and society in general. He was also exploring Hudson Valley and spent his time roaming New England. At the age of 23 he was a rounded and welleducated person. He was called to the bar and became a lawyer.He proposed to Matilda Hoffman, daughter of the judge at whom he studied law. When she died Irving’s refuge became researching and reading in local libraries. He began to work on The History of New York in which he introduced the infamous character of Diedrich Knickerbocker about whom he previously published an article in a newspaper, which was a part of a cunning publicity campaign. Knickerbocker was an imaginary gentleman who was annouced to have disappeared and among his papers there was a curious written book: History. With its publication, Irving became extremely popular. The History was reprinted in England where it reached Sir Walter Scott. He went to Europe and stayed there for 17 years. After his brother went bankrupt he had to turn to writing as a source of income. He was working on the Sketch Book when he met Scott who turned his attention to the wealth of unused literary material in German folktales. In 1819 he published Sketch Book which made him famous and established writer. His pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon became universally recognised. The English were surprised at the fact that a true American writer could write in such a British manner. But among the tame tributes to English scenes and characters The Sketch Book included two vigorous tales set in rural NY:Rip and Legend. His next two novels were Bracebridge Hall (1822) and Tales of a Traveller- both disappointing.He went to Spain to work as a diplomat. He was asked to write a biography of Columbus and he produced The Life and Voyages of C.C. in 1828 which was followed by A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada and Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus. Also alhambra, a book about his viyages and experience of Spain (known as the Spanish Sketch Book). He was then employed in Britain as a part of diplomatic service. Once he returned to America, people accused him of becoming too „europeanized―, but nothing could harm his reputation at that point. He roamed prairies and met a lot of setttlers.
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Inspired by this he wrote: A Tour on the Prairies, Astoria and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville. In the late 30s he settled in Tarrytown and didn’t write much during this period. In 1842 he was appointed minister to Spain. When he returned he started to write biographies (a new genre he established). Significant are Biography of Oliver Goldsmith and particularly Life of George Washington. He died in 1859. Decades before his death he achieved status of a classic writer. He inspired Hawthorne and Longfellow and their prose owed much to Irving. Melville also couldn’t escape his influence: it is obvious in his short stories and in a late poem Rip Van Winkle’s Lilacs which showed that he saw Rip as an archetypal artistic figure. He was the editor of a magazine called The Analectic Magazine, which he filled with essays from British periodicals. Several decades after his death, he received the status of a classic writer, and as a stylist – he was the best in the country. He inspired the works of Longfellow, Hawthorne and Melville. His contributions to the American Literature: 1. 2. 3.
Development of new forms: URBAN ESSAY (The History of New York by D. Knickerbocker and HUMOROUS ESSAY (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow), Development of new genres: HUMOROUS STORY (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) and BIOGRAPHY (first one to use extrusive biographies on the continent), juvenile literature New themes: first interested in different genres and different themes, fusion of art and folklore, European and American heritage, merges gothic and humour, love of landscape, wrote about prairies and early settlers, Gothic elements (approached them with a sense of humour)
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4. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Elements of Horror
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Some elements of horror are given explicitly, appearing in form of the characters, and yet some of them are presented less explicitly, in the form of many inexplicable incidents, mysteries, and through the very description of Sleepy Hollow and the behavior of its inhabitants. The inhabitants of this ―enchanted‖ valley believe in the existence of witches who reside in the woods, goblins and ghosts. For that reason, the air is filled with some strange undefined voices and music. The visitors find this frightening and mystic but at the same time very interesting. The horror also arises from the fact that there are many unexplained mysteries taking place in Sleepy Hollow, especially at night. This mystery is what makes Sleepy Hollow unique and appealing to adventurous visitors and at the same time helps the valley to resist the perpetual change overshadowing the rest of the countryside. Creatures such as witches, goblins and ghosts represent personified fears of the inhabitants. This is their way of channeling their fears and uncertainty – by putting a mask on them, no matter how abstract or fictional it may appear to others. At this point a tendency towards superstition is no longer frightening but it turns into a ritual that became a part of their culture. The night brings the horror to Sleepy Hollow. The fog comes from the forests and spreads through the valley and the characters from legends are brought to life. The fact that it happens during the night makes it easier for the inhabitants to cope with their fears. The fear of the woods and the description of it as the place where witches reside is a reflection of the fear of Indians deeply rooted in the minds of the first settlers. This fear dates from the time when settlers came to the valley and had close encounters with Indians who resided in the woods. The Indians, being the mystery for the settlers, got the reputation of being evil, dangerous, and life-treathening. These feelings were later projected onto the forest resulting in the way inhabitants felt about the forest in the story of Irving’s. On the other hand, daytime brought relief, security, tranquility and calmness. fear of the unknown, parallel with American writers The thing that inhabitants are frightened the most is Headless Horseman, who is supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper and who every night he comes out of the forest. His resting place is the nearby local church graveyard which evokes fear in people. BACKGROUND: Hessian troopers were German regiments hired by the British to kill the Americans. That is why the Americans felt such an enormous fear toward the troopers, and this fear remained captured in the legends of that area. CONSLUSION: The purpose of horror introduced in the story is to impose a feeling of mystery on readers. Furthermore, it may also serve as a demonstration of how everyone coming from the outside of the valley put themselves at risk of being defeated by local legends if they aren’t ready to keep their senses and make a clear-cut distinction between fiction and reality.
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5. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Elements of Humor
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Elements of humor and elements of horror are in balance. What is more, these two are at some points intervened, which is best demonstrated in the character of Crane whose appearance is presented as the scarecrow. Humor in this story originates both from comic and surprising situations and the descriptions of the characters, mostly of the Ichabod Crane. The writer includes Crane’s physical appearance (a tall, skinny man with funny clothes fluttering around him, feet like shovels, small head, huge ears, like a weather-cock, scare crow eloped from a cornfield). His attitude towards the countrymen and especially towards the children who attend his school. He plays with them mainly because he sees it as the way proving who has authority in the school and who is educated among them all. He thinks highly of himself and this attitude later on puts him in various troubles in which he doesn’t prove to be that educated nor skillful. His behavior enables us to learn all the paradoxes of which his complex character is composed. He is the master of the local school and he teaches science, and in that sense he is supposed to be a personification of high moral standards, reason and experience. He comes from Connecticut (pioneers of the mind) However, when not at school, Crane spends time gossiping with the housewives of the valley, listening and debating on fantastic stories and legends. He represents himself as an educated man, an intellectual, a scholar from the city. Yet he gets so absorbed in witchcraft (he was a perfect master of Cotton Mother’s History of New England Witchcraft) and becomes highly superstitious which ultimately makes him the theme of Brom’s jokes. The downfall of this comic character: his inability to distinguish and differentiate reality from fiction. His senses, intellectuality, as well as his superiority get defeated by local legends and gossiping housewives. FUNNY SITUATIONS: Crane is getting ready for the party thrown by Mr. Van Tassel. He spends much time making himself beautiful in order to be perceived as a true gentleman, but once he sits on his horse, Gunpowder, all his awkwardness and lack of physical skills come to surface. : Parody of traditional knights. Gunpowder is a broken-down plough-horse, one of his eyes has lost its pupil. Ironic attitude of the author : In this true spirit of romantic story Crane starts dancing at the party (looks funny, ridiculous). Dances San Vitus which is not only a dance but also a disease implying involuntary jerky body movements: not a limb of his body was idle while he danced. Crane’s appetite compared to that of anaconda’s. When he courts Katrina he sees everything as food. (pointing out his materialistic and animalistic side of personality. ) : parody of traditional romance - The purpose of elements of humor is to show the major difference between the city and the country and the fact how certain people who came from different surroundings may be ridiculed by the native inhabitants. It may be the writer’s way showing how the city lifestyle may be meaningless and misunderstood in a new surrounding, which is, in this case a conservative and traditional valley called Sleepy Hollow.
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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Treatment of Women
In the story women are represented as being great, unknown mystery to men. The writer himself doesn’t hide that to him as well women’s coquettish tricks are hard to understand. (beings that cause more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins and the whole race of witches put together). They are matters of riddle and admiration. Such perception of women inevitably leads to the feeling of fear towards them because men feel incapable of understanding them fully, and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow does feature such a feeling. Women in the story are seen as provocative, seductive, dangerous and able to trick an intellectual such as Crane. Yet they’re regarded as unimportant members of society, subjected to the men domination. Just as Katrina’s surname suggests (Tassel), women were perceived as ornaments. The story features two types of women:
o Gossiping housewives who maintain control over the valley by telling tales about the ghost of a Hessian trooper known by the name of Headless Horseman. Their role is important because they manage to preserve the past and defeat those like Crane who want to impose new attitude and ultimately change the valley by taking away it’s identity, uniqueness and distinctiveness. o o Cunning coquette (Katrina Van Tassel) who is heiress to a large fortune. Her function is to tease Crane, leaving him not knowing the true background and purpose of her reactions. She in a way defeats Crane as well by rejecting his affections. The fact that Crane was primarily interested in Katrina’s wealth and the way he was courting her makes this story a mocking of a traditional romance. o - In the story women are seen through various different eyes. They’re seen as ornaments from the society’s point of view, as food from Crane’s standpoint (Katrina: a tempting morsel), as simple things by their mothers (Katrina), and as witches and those prone to gossiping. Katrina Van Tassel is a blooming lass of fresh eighteen, famed not only for her beauty but also her expectations. She was a coquette, wearing ornaments of pure yellow gold and a provokingly short petticoat. Her father loves her better than his pipe (irony) and lets her way in everything. His wife looked after poultry because they must be looked after, but girls will take care of themselves.
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7. Rip Van Winkle: Dream as a Metaphor -The dream Rip wakes up from here illustrates how sudden and fast, and yet revolutionary were the changes America underwent during the War of Independence. This metaphor functions on two levels: globally, as the ―America Dream‖, and individually, as the fulfillment of Rip’s dreams and desires. - American Dream: Captain John Smith planted the first seeds of the American Dream at the beginning of the period of colonization. Everyone could come to Jamestown, regardless of their history, social status, wealth etc. and work hard to fulfill their dreams. American Dream as a phrase (today considered to be a cliché) appeared in the 19th century literature where it was commonly used as a theme. - What American Dream implies is (what American wished for): FREEDOM: from the British, freedom for the individuals to behave as they wish, freedom to make their own choices and govern their own lives. IDENTITY: of the new nation, something unique as the war now gave them history. EQUALITY: in every sense, no distinctions and divisions, to give ordinary people sense of importance. DEMOCRACY: a government of the people, by the people, for the people (Lincoln), for the first time people had the right to decide about their own destiny. -
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In the story people fulfilled their dream, but even though they got what they wanted, they were in a state of confusion as the change happened overnight and they didn’t have enough time to slowly adjust to the new life they got. They’re still the same people but the conditions they live in are different and Rip’s confusion on waking up represents the confusion of the American people and their questioning of their own identity. Before the war they were subjects to the King, but now they are free citizens, independent, with the power to decide on their own destiny. It is so revolutionary that they doubt whether they’re themselves or somebody else (just as Rip does). Their new country is being created with a lot of uncertainties, but gradually they gain confidence, identity, strength, history. When Rip finally recovers his identity and his function and purpose in this world the whole American nation does the same. His rediscovery of himself stands as a metaphor for the whole new nation with the brand new way of thinking that has risen after the Revolution. Individual level – Rip’s dream: To get rid of Dame At the beginning we see Rip as a hen-pecked husband who does everybody else’s work but his own. In other word he doesn’t do anything profitable for his own family and their home. For him success means freedom to pursue what he does best: story telling. After his dream, he feels like if he is in another reality. His village is still there but has changed dramatically and now everything seems so unusual to him. It is more difficult for him to accept the changes and adjust to them than it is to his fellow citizens because he overslept their development. By getting accustomed to the new conditions and the new system Rip finds the way to fulfill his own dream. An important precondition for this is the death of his wife – Dame Van Winkle which gave Rip the greatest feeling of pleasure, relief and joy. Now he was free to do as he pleases. He becomes a true self-made man, an artist (this artist inside of him is thought to have been silenced by Dame), he finds his place in the world: he can give the new nation (especially the young ones) a sense of identity by telling stories about past times and their
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ancestors = there are some missing pieces of the puzzle he can fill in. HIS DREAM CAME TRUE. In the beginning he is only a potential story-teller because there is no history to tell, but in the end there was the nation and a story to be told, all that society needed was a story teller. Irving was also a society’s story teller who tried to create a sense of tradition in American culture.
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8. Rip Van Winkle: Woman as a cultural Villain - From the very beginning Rip was presented as ―hen-pecked‖ husband whose biggest problem was his wife’s constant nagging, sharp tongue, and endless complaining. The longer they lived together, the worse her reproaches became and the only thing Rip could do was to run away from her to the mountain. Rip is a simple, good-natured man, kind neighbour, obedient hen-pecked husband. He is loved by children, plays with them, tells them long stories of ghosts witches and Indians, surrounded by a troop of them (story telling gift). However he has insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour. He fishes all day unsucessfully. He never refuses to help a neighbour and was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own, He can’t keep his farm in order. In fact it is the worstconditioned farm in all neighbourhood. If left to himself he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment but his wife kept continually dining in his ears about his idleness, carelessness and ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon and night, her tongue was incessantly going. Rip said nothing which provoked his wife again so he had to go outside his house. Even his dog Wolf was afraid of her. Rip in fact was no politician, but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned and that was petticoat governement. - Here Irving establishes the theme that would become a characteristic for nineteenth century fiction = the male character represents a simple, good-natured, artistic, sensible and free-spirited man, whereas the female character stands for someone who inhibits this sensibility and prevents the man from living the life he wants to live. - American fiction, together with Rip’s life seems to begin only after the silencing of Dame Van Winkle. Rip’s real victory is the feeling of relief that he felt after he heard the news about Dame’s death, and not the news about the victory over the British. - It can even be understood that the real American Dream for Irving and many others is actually a dream of a world in which women are silent or even dead. In other words, a world in which women are in one way or another excluded from men’s life. - On the other hand, Dame Van Winkle is not a villain. Like all the other women she had limited rights (no education, no land). She doesn’t even have real identity (we don’t know her first name). Even though she has no rights, Dame has many duties. She has children to feed and dress, household to run, and a husband who does everyone else’s job except for his own and rarely hears anything she tells him. All she’s left to do is to nag, hoping that someday she’ll reach him and influence him somehow. - Metaphorically, she can represent British Monarchy. Dame’s relationship with Rip can be paralleled with the relationship between the Monarchy and the colonies. - She forced him to work and bring the money back to her and the house, the same way the British forced colonies to pay taxes and limited their trades in order to trade only with them. They demanded hard work and profit, not pursuing of artistic possibilities. - Rip rejoices more the fact that she’s dead that the fact that he is free. In the same manner, it seems like the American celebrated the fact that Britain was defeated more that the fact that 16
they’re a free country. Dame stands for duty, self-discipline, diligence, decision making, hard work
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Rip Van Winkle: Transition of American Society
The main thing Washington Irving wanted to point out was how fast and revolutionary was the transition that the American society underwent. Before Rip falls asleep he is a subject to King George III, and then, just a dream later, he is a free citizen in a democratic country. The whole story as well as the American history can be presented on a time line: The starting point would be the period of colonization with the first inhabitants of the continent – the Indians.Then came Rip’s ancestors – the Dutch (Rip’s Dutch origin is emphasized in the scene when he goes to the mountains and sees the stranger dressed in traditional Dutch clothes with the others gathered together playing a Dutch traditional game.) The narrator describes the rural nature, a small village of Dutch settlers. There were some of the houses of the original settlers built in small yellow bricks brought from Holland. Next, America was British colony. During the next 20 years, Rip is asleep and the American Revolution takes place. The colonies gain independence and the USA becomes a free country.Rip is confused and doesn’t fully understand his own destiny nor his country’s history. The new sense of identity falters in American citizens, but gains the confidence back, just as Rip himself becomes self-confident by the end of the story. At first, he is confused, as he still feels like a subject to the King. It is imaginable to him that he is a free citizen now, because the whole transition happened too fast and was too revolutionary. The immensity of change of the whole society can be observed on the two descriptions of Rip’s village. On a bench before a small inn there were idle personages of the village. In the shade they were talking listlessly over village gossip or telling endlessly sleeping stories about nothing. There is also some irony in description of pre-revolutionary village: profound discussions. Old newspaper they read shows they had no influence on the events. Britaon was the centre of decision making. They discussed events months after they had taken place. After the Revolution, when Rip wakes up the village is larger and more populous, more houses, people are wearing different clothes, everything was strange. The very character of people changed: there was a busy bustling disputatious tone instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility. They talked about elections, members of congress, liberty, Bunker’s Hill. People are now interested Federalists vs. Democrats. Some of Rip’s old acquaintances were killed in the war: freedom was won at a certain cost. The Union Hotel and a tall naked pole. A flag with stars and stripes. All this is incomprehensible. There is some fine irony, however. Although the image of King George III is replaced by the one of Washington, the things in a way stay the same because a ruler is a ruler. He recognized the ruby face of King George just instead of a red he had a blue coat. The country had thrown off the yoke of Old England. Instead of being a subject of His Majesty George the Third Rip is now a free citizen of the US. That was a moment of confusion not only for Rip, but for all American citizens who just couldn’t find and define themselves in that particular moment.Rip asks ―Who am I?‖ – a frequently asked question at the time, and a very contemporary issue because Americans are often confused and doubt their identity. This identity is exactly the thing Rip can give them by telling them the story about their ancestors and how the things looked like. There are some missing pieces of history he can fill in.Now he finds his place in the society and purpose in the world because America now has history and a person to tell it. Pre-Revolutionary setting and post-revolutionary setting From British subjects to American citizens (from British colonies to free country) 18
10. James Fennimore Cooper: Writer of the American Frontier
Born in 1789, in a wealthy family, his father William established Cooperstown(southern shore of Otsego lake in NY). His parents were shrewd and ambitious, acquiring money easily so James Fenimore was exposed to leisures of life since he was born. They lived on the very frontier: land populated with Indians that would become settinf for his novels. He often wrote about English Quakers – this can be explained by the fact his line of ancestry connected him with Quakers through his father. He also wrote plenty about Indian warfare even though he had little to do with it. The Indians, a traditional frontier enemy had been severely beaten down in the Revolution. But the memory of the earlier massacres was still powerful. When James was 5 there was a false Indian alarm. This was his closest experience with Indian warfare, and from the safe distance of 40yrs Cooper would find the whole incident ridiculous. Perhaps this accounts for his comfort with using tons of Indian warfare in his books. He was very educated(expelled fromYale when he was 13 for misconduct), sent to become a sailor (3 years in the navy), enjoyed the experience. Inherited his father’s fortune and married Susan De Lancey. He first started writing after a number of deaths happened to him – five of his brother died. As he resented a certain British family novel, he decided to write one himself. Precaution was modeled on Jane Austen’s novels and appeared in 1820. He wrote epics with the classic purpose of Virgil’s Epic – to lay claim to heroic heritage, to infuse landscape, to inspire his contemporaries with various virtues. He also wrote: romances, political articles and social articles His works: The Spy (Historical novel about the American Revolution), Leatherstocking Tales, He also published travel books (Gleamings in Europe) political articles for newspapers, Little Page Manuscripts Leatherstocking Tales are most significant. It is a series of 5 novels about a frontier hero: Natty Bumppo (white hunter and trapper). 1.
The Pioneers
2.
The Last of the Mohicans (most famous: a romantic tale of a noble young Indian and his love for a white girl and their tragic death)
3.
Pathfinder
4.
Deerslayer
5.
The Prairie (Natty is an old man, dies) The Last Mohican is the most significant from the series. Depicting the disappearance of native Americans it is an elegy for the whole world of frontier diappearing. The character of Natty is based on Daniel Boon, a hero of Indian wars and the war with the French. Boon was very unhappy because of enmity between Americans and Indians. Natty is the first frontier hero in American literature. He is the ultimate hero, morally pure, friend with Indians. His friend is Chinachgook, a Mohican.
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Cooper’s work is significant because he introduced the idea of male bonding. A friendship between two men is more valuable than that between a man and a woman. Women are portrayed in the negative light. Even if they appear in this kind of a novel their function is to spoil male frienship. They are usually in danger and belong to one of two types: blonde-good or darkdangerous. Notion of the Other: everything you perceive as different. Indians were the Other, they were considered wild, dangerous and uncivilised. The other for each nation functions as a mirror image of that nation- everything they don’t like about themselves they project onto the Other. A trilogy Little Page Manuscripts follows the history of NY from the settlement to the 1840s: Satan’s Toe, The Chain bearer and the Redskins. Contributions to American literature: Development of genres: 1. Historical romance 2. Sea Adventure He established the image of frontier, first Am writer who wrote about the frontier. Sympathetic portayal of the Indians. He was writing romances in the manner of Scott representing past in the positive light and describing the setting of the prairies Cultural work: writing epics of American society with classic purposes of Virgil’s epic: to lay claim on heroic heritage and to infuse the landscape with an aura of elegy and grandeur. He was very serious in his criticism of European society and wrote several novels based on European history. He was the first one to critise society seriously (Irving did it humorously) Themes: fight for the land, battles with the Indians, independence, male bonding and companionship (where the leader in the relationship is usually a white male and the counterpart belongs to the black or any other ethnic minority)
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11. Transcedentalism – Ideas The most significant literary movement in the 19th c. America founded by R.W. Emerson and H.D. Thoreau.Essentially it combined Romanticism with reform. It celebrated the individual rather than the masses, emotion rather than reason, nature rather than man. Ralph Waldo Emmerson. He was a minister, dissatisfied with the church, priests and their relation to God, Jesus Christ and religion. Once in a serious religious crisis, he began to question Christian doctrines. The basic idea is the rejection of rationalism, pervading philosophy at the time. Transcendentalism rejected the Newtonian physics’ mechanistic conception of the Universe and Lockean philosophy of sensation. Philosophers thought that we can only perceive the world through our senses (even that we can’t be certain about), certain events are always happening in a certain order. It conceded that there are two ways of knowing, through the senses and through intution, but asserted that intuition transcended tuition. Although both matter and spirit both exist, the reality of spirit transcends the reality of matter. Transcendentalists were against consumerism and industrial society. American society was in transition, developing of industry. His essay „Nature“ is a sort of a manifest to transcdentalism, formulated a new philosophy to give answers to all his religious doubts. It is a little book of 95 pages, published in 1836. It formulated his essential philosophies- everything he wrote later was just an extension, amplification or amendment of these ideas. Transcendentalist club Influences: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Neoplatonistic philosophy – Kant European Romanitcs (especially Coleridge) Swedenborg Hindu philosophy Darvin He had a special way to mould his ideas through a polished literary style. Ideas:
1.
2.
Beyond this world accessible to senses there is the world of eternal truths, or the Highest Law. It is the center. The material world is its circumference, it is changeable and transient and therefore in philosophic sense: not real. The Highest Law possesses all attributes of God: it exists beyond space and time, it never changes, it is eternal and it is the primal cause of everything. The ability of human beings to transcend the materialistic world of sense, experience and facts and become conscious of the all-pervading spirit of the universe and the potentialities of human freedom. Nature is important because nature is our condition, there’s a connection between man and nature. In nature man becomes more aware of himself, relaxes and forgets about his worries. The man melts and moulds with nature and forgets his own body, the border between man and nature disappears. By leaving materialism, senses and reason, man enters a spiritual realm where body doesn’t matter any more. Revelation comes as a consequence of the study of nature. Natural phenomena are symbols by which God addresses man (Puritan belief). Since all natural phenomena are determined by the laws that pervade nature, then the study of nature is the only means of gaining insight into those laws and the only way of approaching the Highest Law. 21
3.
4.
God could best be found by looking inward into one’s self, one’s own soul, and from such an enlightened self-awareness would in turn come freedom of action and the ability to change one’s world according to the dictates of one’s own ideas and conscience. SPIRIT – he insists on it. Reason and senses are conventional things that exist thanks to intellect. What Reason is in relation to Intellect, that is Spirit in relation to Nature. God is percieved as an „oversoul― or a macrocosm. We all have our own microcosm, a portion of the divine within man and we can find it only if we take the trouble to look for it; it is our own intuition and we need to find it to guide us. Microcosm and macrocosm reflect each other, we don’t need religion as an institution or priests to tell us what to do. We can guide ourselves according to our own intuition and our hearts. SELF-RELIANCE – is a natural result from all of this. The individual must look in his own heart for guidance and not let other people influence him. He has to have the courage to be himself and live his life according to his intuitively derived perception. Concept of CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE that is related to Thoreau. He refused to pay taxes because they were used to finance wars. He was thrown into jail. He was advocating peaceful disobedience as a right of citizens to tell their government what was wrong. The night he spent in the Concord jail became the basis for the famous essay Civil Disobedience. Thoreau demanded for all men to follow unique lifestyles. Thoreau was not well-appreciated in the 19th c. and was often seen as a lesser imitation of Emerson. Only after 1890s did Thoreau come to be appreciated for his literary merit. Emerson believed that any man can have and achieve anything he wants, that he is as great as anybody else, and if he has an idea, he has to commit to it and realize it. American dream relies on this because Americans believe that they can achieve anything and be self-made men.
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12. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Literary Biography Son of the Reverend William Emmerson, pastor of the First Church in Boston. Ralph Waldo Emmerson inherited the profession of his ancestors, a line of non-confomists and Puritan clergymen. In 1811 his father died, leaving his widow to take care of the five sons in the face of poverty. Education: R.W.
was largely left to the intellectual care of his aunt Mary Moody Emmerson.
1812
entered Boston Public Latin School, his verses were encouraged and his literary gifts
were recognized. 1817 entered Harvard College, began writing journals, graduated in 1821. After this he assisted his brother at teaching at Boston School for Young Ladies and prepared for the entrance in Harvard Dignity School, which he entered in 1825. 1826 he was licensed to preach, but his illness slowed him down, so he began to preach at the Second Unitarian Church of Boston in 1829. In 1820 he married Ellen Louisa Tucker, she died of tuberculosis in 1831, and her death grieved him thoughrout his whole life. He had a serious religious crisis, began to question Christian doctrines and why got had taken his wife away. His sermons were unusual and free from traditional doctrines, announced his personal doctrine of self-reliance and selfsufficiency. In 1832 he resigned from the ministry – in order to become a minister, he had to stop being one. His sermons were always unusually free of traditional doctrine. According to him, church relied too much on the historicity of miracles. He divested Christianity of all external and historical supports and made itd basis one’s private intuition of the universal moral law. He went to Europe and travelled through France, Italy and Great Britain. Met such writers as Landor(?), Coleridge, Wordsworth and Carlyle, all of whom were somewhat influenced by recent German philosophy. Emmerson and Carlyle were contemporaries and lasting friends. In Europe he saw an exhibition of natural specimens arranged in a developmental order: to him it was a moment of enlightenment. It confirmed his belief that people are connected to nature, they should turn for the answers to nature. The
1830s
were
his
most
productive
years.
1833 became a lecturer and started writing his essay „Nature―
.
1835 married Lydia Jackson
.
Works: 1836 published a 95-page essay (book?) titled „Nature―, a manifesto of the new philosophy called transcedentalism. During the 1830s his concerns were shared with other intellectuals. Almost everything he wrote later was an extension, amplification or amendment of the ideas he first affirmed in „Nature― In 1836 young disciples joined the informal Transcedental Club and encouraged Emmerson in his activities. 1840 The Dial – famous magazine, first edited by Margaret Fuller and later by Emmerson, tried to present transcedentalist ideas to America. In the meantime, in a lecture called „The
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American Scholar“ held in 1837, he talked about the new liberated intellectual he himself had become and challenged the intellectuals at Harvard and their traditional doctrines. 1838 „Address at Divinity College― made his breach with the church definite (talked about how people should relate directly to God and not the established dogmas and conventions. He was asked not to speak publicly for a long period of time.
1841 Essays: emphasized the need of reliance on self and the expression of self, insisted on moral individualism. 1844 Essays: Second Series: accomodated his earlier idealism to the limitations of real life, later realized he was overreacting a bit, showed greater respect for the society and awareness that his genius is ambiguous and incomplete. Poems: very lyrical, although often neglected, they give the core of his philosophy. Collected Poems (1846) and May-Day (1867) 1849 Representative Men: biographies of Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon and Goethe English Traits: Essays 1860 The Conduct of Life: most mature work, humanism and full awareness of the human situation By the 1860s novelty of his rebellion wore off and he accomodated himself to society. His writing after 1860 shoes his powers waning although he continued giving frequent lectures. Upon his death in 1882 he transformed himself into the Sage of Concord. He is important as a link between European culture and America, for the flourish of literature during the American Renaissance (one of the leaders), started new religions, philosophical and ethical movement which concentrated on the spiritual potential of every man.
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13. American Novel as Romance IMORTANT: IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ROMANTIC LOVE! IT IS A FORM OF A NOVEL, NOT A GENRE!
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As works of art always reflect the present situation in the society, novel as a form wasn’t an appropriate literary form to describe the situation in the newly-settled America. The new culture was a blend of different European cultures, some of them rather different. Additionally, all the differences as well as dualities were explored within the romance form.
-
-Border fiction: romance presents fusion of reality and fantasy. Characters accept the fantastic elements as reality, like in magic realism.
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By choosing this form American novel developed in a completely different direction. When new genres appear they express a movement in society. In the 18th century novel reflected the attitude of the middle class. The issue of the U.S. is that it didn’t have such stratification like Europe. There were many settlers and everybosy was pretty much equal. There was no such machinery of political parties and government. The novel is not realistic, not focused on social hierarchy or society as a whole. Not realistic in the way that there are not that many details. Middle class in England was made up of merchants and craftsmen who were focused on the needs like food, furniture and described them in great detail. In American fiction the focus is on conflcit: individual vs. society. American laws protect the individual and European protect the state.
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Instead of imitating reality and writing about it, writers turn to irrationalism. For instance Hawthorne sets the action somewhere between the real world and the unexplored mysterious world – on a neutral territory where the reality and fantasy meet.
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ISSUES IT DEALS WITH: the psyche is in the center of the investigation The central character’s fight with their own conscience. It shadows the whole narrative and it is viewed from different angles.
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It explores the truth of the human heart The conditions of life in the romances are freed from the real word, thus easier to explore moral values and intellectual ideas. These ideas and the human consciousness are not explored directly and roughly, but rather indirectly through symbols and allegories.
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There are always complex feelings involved which is the result of the dualities
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According to Cooper it contains elements of melodrama
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Also deals with social issues such as women’s rights, slavery, relationship with the Indians, religion.
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Often shows the struggle between the individual and the society (the individual wants to change and improve the society)
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Influenced by Puritanism, American Renaissance way of thinking, Transcendentalism, Manichaeism (a religious movement in Persia 3rd century AD, influenced the dualism, the separation of reason and fancy, reality and fantasy, native Americans: wilderness, passion and Puritans).
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Romances are not didactic because most American writers were under the influence of Transcendentalism: people know what is right and wrong so there is no need to tell them.
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SETTING: The sense of setting is important. It’s not described in details, usually only through the eyes of the characters. Setting is often crucial because it creates the atmosphere which envelopes the entire narration and it is very often mystical.
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CHARACTERS: Often flat, without background. Moby Dick begins with Call me Ischmael. Part of American dream is reinvention of identity. They’re often symbolic, stand for something else, serve to express an ideal. Like Pearl in SC They’re troubled by certain moral conflicts and the focus is on their darker side. They’re usually lonely and alienated. They are torn between desire to act upon their passions and their morality which pulls them back, a constant dilemma. Lawrence presented it as a conflict between Christianity and Dionisian passions.
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Structure is episodic and the ending is open. This is more realistic. The good does not always win and the bad is not always punished.
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The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, Great Getsby
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Date from the medieval times (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)
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American romance:
o
Not realistic
o
Not focused on social hierarchy
o
Not many detailed descriptions of houses, clothes, food etc.
o
Conflict between individual and society
o
No background of characters
o
Psychology of characters
o
Elements of drama and melodrama I lives of characters
o
Elements of utopia
o
Plot relatively simple as well as the characters
o
Frequent usage of metaphors and symbols
o
No didactic
o
Omniscient narrator
o
Narration shifts (changes the point of view)
o
Subjective to objective 26
o
Limited vision (we only know what characters know)
o
Sense of setting (we are given character’s view of setting) More true to life (Bad guys punished and good guys awarded – doesn’t happen
o here)
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14.Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Contribution to American Literature
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, descendant of a long line of Puritans, lost his father at the age of 4 and left with an overprotective mother (very shy and bookish in childhood) -
Graduated from Bowdoin College where he became friends with Longfellow, Horatio Bridge and Franklin Pierce (later President of the US)
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After graduation he lived in Salem for 12 years. In this period lived with his mother’s home and was preparing for a literary career. He was engrossed in historical study and learning the writer’s craft. He researched the past of his family and the role his family had in history. His great grandfather was a judge in Puritan witch trials in Salem. On the one hand he was proud of his ancestors but on the other hand he felt troubled by their evil deeds. He wrote his first unsuccessful novel and several successful short stories. His first novel Fanshave was a chronicle of Bowdoin life.
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His first stories were published in The Token and other literary magazines
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in 1837 published Twice-Told Tales. It was a volume of masterpieces but only a few critics (including Poe and Emerson) appreciated his work.
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Became engaged to Sophia Pabody. Moved to Boston, became a Custom House measurer since he couldn’t earn enough with his writing.
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-
-
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Spent 7 months at Brook Farm After the marriage to Sophia Peabody they moved to Manse – centre of Transcendentalism at the time. During his life there, stories of Mosses from an Old Manse were published in series and as a volume. Returned to Salem, became a surveyor of the Custom House, but was soon dismissed. Devoted himself to writing The Scarlet Letter. He worked with zeal and imaginative energy he had never known before. He described it as a hell-fired story. Published in 1850 it was an immediate success, 1st symbolic novel in the American literature, 1st real romance Left Salem, settled permanently in Berkshires, wrote The House of The Seven Gables (1851), a novel of family decadence Became acquainted with Melville Published The Blithedale Romance about his experience at Brook Farm. He had mixed feelings about it, wrote about good and bad sides.
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The Life of Franklin Pierce – recognized by the president, Hawthorne got a job as a consul in Liverpool where he moved with his family
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Saw much of England and wrote English Note-Books
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Another important work is the Marble Fawn, an allegorical novel with Italian setting.
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Before his death returned with his family to America. Passed away in 1864 in Plymouth after a long period of illness.
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A misconception about him is that he was a shy recluse, a solitary figur with few friends. Contrary to popular belief about his mostly isolated and lonely life, he was a public figure, urban when necessary. He performed extrovert unctions of foreign consul with competence and made a large circle of friends.
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CONTRIBUTION: Concerns nature and functioning of evil and moral responsibility, symbolism and allegory, critical towards the Puritans. He had penetrating insight into the human nature. His contribution is development of romance an introduction of symbolical novel. He has major influence on Melville and Poe (short stories, gothic genre, symbols). Contributed to the genre of horror story. He had a remarkable sense of the past. The principal appeal of his work is the quality of his allegory, richly ambivalent, providing enigmas which reader solves on his own terms. The discovery of his past led him to long investigation of problems of moral and social responsibility. His enemies were intolerance and hypocrisy which hides the common sin, greed that refuses to share joy. His remedy is in the world freed not from sin but from the corrosive sense of guilt. One must accept human imperfection if one wants to remain human. His aim is not to solve the problem of sin and sense of guilt but simply to reveal it and draw attention to that part of human existence.
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15. The Scarlet Letter: Form and Narrative Structure -
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-
-
-
-
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Form: romance Thin border between reality and fantasy, doesn’t have a romantic plot, open ending, tendency towards melodrama, not many details about characters and their bacground, gap in the plot, episodic structure, no cause and effect chain, atmosphere of the setting of a Puritan village, point of view is more important than the details about the setting. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter is structurally very organized with symmetrically ordered chapters which may serve as hints for readers to make conclusions about the major events taking lace in each of the chapters. It has 24 chapters to which we can add the prologue ―The Custom House‖ which sets the framework to the story. The narrator tells about Puritans, their customs about the Scarlet Letter. Taking into account the introduction, the novel is divided into 2 equal, symmetrical parts with the chapter 12 in the centre of the story representing the climax. The first part primarily deals with the effect scarlet letter has on Hester, but on the society that surrounds her as well. The second part deals with the relationship between Hester and Dimesdale and the downfall of Chillingworth. In the prologue there are hints about the SC, the narrator mentions that when he puts it on his chest it burns (implication about how Dimmesdale has his SC and the influence it has on him and Hester) Three most important scenes in the novel are those happening at the scaffold and those are triggers for the action. They take central places in the structure of the novel. One of the scaffold scenes is taking place in the chapter 12 (The Minister’s Vigil) while the other two happen in chapters 2 (The Marketplace) and 23(The Revelation). In each of these chapters the story experiences major climax after which the line of the story drastically changes its course. Naturally, all four major characters are present in those scenes and affected by their outcome (Hester, Pear, Dimesdale and Chillingworth). Each part of the novel, being of the same length, has its epicenters – medial episodes. There are two of these in each part and they demonstrate a change in the personalities of Hester and Dimesdale. Medial episodes of the first part (chapters 7 and 8) represent an upward swing for Hester, yet a downward swing for Dimesdale. In addition to this, the medial episodes of part two (17 and 18) represent an upward of both of this characters, but this time, the story is set 7 years later. The novel begins with an introduction (The Prison Door) which features the typical Puritan setting with 4 inevitable elements: church, prison, scaffold and graveyard. These are places where the major events of the plot take part and are mentioned again and again in the novel. In the medial episodes of the first part Chapter 7 (The Governor’s Hall) and 8 (The Elf-Child and the Minister) we see Hester after she has worn SC for some time. She goes to the Governor’s Hall where she meets D and C for the first time after the first scaffold scene. The governor and officialy allow her to kepp Pearl. These chapters show how Hester progresses forward, she is developing while D and C both become consumed, one with guilt and the other with revenge. From chapters 9 to 12 we see the inner turmoil of D and C. In the second major climax D confesses and it is the first time that they stand together as a family. Meteor appears, C in the back. From chapters 13 to 16 Hester dramatically changes perception about D and what she did. She realizes her mistake: how she wronged D by making pact with C. Seven years after the meteor scene she is changed intellectually and spiritually. 30
-
-
Medial episodes Chapters 17 (The Pastor and His Parishioner) and 18 (A Flood of Sunshine) show increased closeness of H and D, they start planning their future, upward movement for both. From 19 to 22 it becomes clear why their plans for future can’t work. the third major climax Chapter 23 Chapter 24 (Conclusion) is the epilogue. The narrator tells us what happened to Pearl, H became an Angel. Gerber’s model: not taking introduction into account, he divides the rest of 24 chapters into 4 main parts having the chapter scheme 8-4-8-4. In the first 8 chapters all four main characters together with the community are found guilty for adultery. In the first 4 chapters it is predominantly Chillingworth to be blamed for the act of adultery. In the following 8 chapters Hester plays the role of the main responsible adulteress, while in the last part of the Novel it seems as Dimesdale is the main sinner. An alternative model takes into account all 25 chapters, thus perceiving the introduction and the conclusion as separate units. The remaining chapters follow the 3-5-3 3-5-5 scheme, with the chapter 12 as the central chapter.
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16.
-
The Scarlet Letter: Symbolism
Symbolic names of the characters:
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Hester Prynne: Hester Crawford who was sentenced to whipping for adultery by one of Hawthorne’s ancestors (his great-grandfather was a judge at the trial)
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Biblical source: Book of Ester in the Bible: Ester –a Jewish queen who sacrificed her life in order to save her people. Hester in the book makes a sacrifice in order to help people (poor, sick), she’s even called ―the sister of Mary‖
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Ester (lat) = star (connected with the meteor)
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Arthur Dimmesdale : Dim = dark, not clear, ambiguous, not pure
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Dale- stands for the depths of human soul
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The first letter of his name A = same as the letter Hester wears on her chest to remind her of the sin she committed
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Arthur- King Arthur
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Roger Chillingworth: Chill = cold, merciless, calculated, Worth = a worthy man who doesn’t reach his potential
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Pearl: Rather a metaphor than a real rounded character
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There is a lot of contradiction in her character. She is supposed to secure her mother a place in Heaven (Christian) but there are also implications that she is connected to Satan
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Biblical source: there was a man in the Bible who purchased a pearl of a great worth (symbol of acquiring spiritual state of grace). She symbolises something precious that has been purchased by sacrifice (both H and D sacrificed for her)
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Medieval poem Pearl about a man who loses his daughter, she is dead and in Heaven. He dreams of her and sees her but cannot reach her because she is on the other side of the stream (she is dead, he alive, different worlds). This scene is actually re-enacted in the novel: in one scene Pearl stands on one side of the brook and H and D on the other, and she does not recognize them.
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Symbol of the sin in the novel but a possibility of redemption as well, constant reminder of Hester’s sin, in a way Hester’s ticket to heaven
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A permanent connection to Dimmesdale. She is both source of happiness and a means of torture to Hester
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Embodiment of the letter as Hester dresses her in scarlet
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Doesn’t listens to anyone, described as a child of nature, half perosn half elf has mysterious knowledge of things. She instantly recognizes Chillingworth as the Black Man, she reads thoughts and feelings of D (You are not true)
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She has a moral code in herself knows what is good and bad. This reminds of Transcendentalist idea that we all have a compass within ourselves. This is a criticism of Puritan rules.
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She becomes human at the moment of grief after her father dies. She has to suffer to become a human being. She cries: her tears are pledge of her humanity.
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A symbol of a new woman
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Scarlet letter: Follows her in her transformation from adulteress to able and finally to angel.
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In ―Custom House‖ (the prologue) scarlet letter is described as a mystical symbol since it has different meanings which change through the novel.
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Connection with the red, hot iron that burns both on Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s chest – ability of the letter to hurt them.
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Artistically done- embroidered with golden thread , Hester made an object of art out of it.
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Black flower: Black flower of civilization – prison
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Metaphorically stands for all kinds of limitations, reflection of the treatment of the Puritan code: people didn’t express their desires because of the code
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At some point in the novel the symbol changes and becomes directly connected with Chillingworth (gathers the black weeds that grow on the graves of the sinners). When Chillingworth speaks about the black weeds Dimmesdale for the first time realizes that Chillingworth is dangerous.
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Important scene: Hester tells Chillingworth that she cannot keep the secret of his true identity any more and it seems to her as if he is touching the ground and the poisonous weed springs out of the ground. (connection to the black flower)
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Chillingworth tells Hester ―Let the black flower blossom as it may‖ (evil)
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Wilde rose bush: in contrast with the black flower (both symbols mentioned together at the beginning)
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black flower = prison, but right next to it a wild rose bush : balance
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symbol of hope and salvation but also love (H’s love for D and P), connection with pity, kindness and ultimate salvation, passion
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Directly linked to Anne Hutchinson (mentioned only once in the novel - The Prison Door, was a religious dissenter (1591–1643). In the 1630s she was excommunicated by the Puritans and exiled from Boston and moved to Rhode Island.). Puritans believed that rose bushes grew out of the steps of Anne H. while she was leaving Massachusetts Bay Colony. She didn’t believe in the idea of preelection (covenant of grace: God chose a few people that are going to be saved and end in Heaven, God’s grace saves people), rather she believed in covenant of works (people make their own covenants with god and they follow it and according to their work and their good deeds they get saved).
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Anne H is important because if she was right than there is chance for Hester and Pearl to go to Heaven Dimmesdale as a pure man and a true Puritan didn’t support Anne’s theory as he was very conservative. He believed he won’t go to heaven no matter how hard he tried to lead a pure life.
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Pearl said that her mother picked her up from the rose bush which directly connect her with passion and nature.
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Forest: symbol of nature, stands for freedom, natural love, wilderness (that’s different from Puritan com)
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Also connected to witch Hibbins. After the scene at the Governor’s Hall, H encounters witch Hibbins who asks her whether she would want to go to a witch meeting in the forest where she would meet the Black Man and sign her name in his book.
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H and D are free to be in love there
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Like any other symbol in the novel it is ambiguous, it has a double meaning since it is also connected with darkness, witches and the black man.
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The black man: symbol of Satan in the novel, directly connected with Chillingworth, in the second major scaffold scene Pearl recognizes C as a Blak man.
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Meteor: significant symbol and allegorical device
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It appears during the 2nd major scaffold scene as they stand together for the 1st time as a family.
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It shades light on Hester’s letter and has a different significance for different people: D-god’s way to point him that he knows he’s a sinner, Puritnas think that A stands for ANGEL (one of the governors died), H starts being called an angel, Hester realizes that D suffers and decides to help him. Pearl wants D to stand with them during the daylight which is impossible.
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Sunshine: Truth and God’s grace, sun always shines on P but never on H and D, but when H confesses to D sun starts shining on her , when D confesses it starts shining on him as well. At the end it shines on all three of them. In third major scaffold scene sun shines on D while he is dying. 34
17.
The Scarlet Letter: The Character of Hester Prynne
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embodiment of various contradictions: bad & beautiful, holy & sinful, conventional & radical, guilty & honest…She is flawed and complex, and thus a perfect character to show what happens when a woman breaks cultural and religious bonds and ultimately gains personal power and reputation.
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According to some critics, this novel is actually a drama of the patriarchic society’s need to control female sexuality in the most basic way. The time when Hawthorne wrote the novel was very appropriate since America was in the middle of a growing feminine movement.
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Physical appearance: 1st scene, at the scaffold, proud, brave, pale, in a gray dress + the scarlet letter, long dark hair, dark eyes, beautiful…
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Embroiders the letter with golden threads, makes a work of art out of it, makes it beautiful, she doesn’t agree with the sentencing of the society, doesn’t think her sin was a real sin, their sin was holy in a way because they loved each other.
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Hester wants to protect D from the Puritan society by not revealing his name, but D doesn’t pressure her to reveal his name either. (IF PEOPLE CONFESS AND REPENT THEY’RE FORGIVEN),Hester feels guilty but doesn’t conforms
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H endures public humiliation bravely, with grace and dignity, knowing that she had no mean intentions , that she followed her heart, not wanting to offend or disgrace the Puritan community.
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After being humiliated, Hester chooses to live in the remote outskirts of the town, thus choosing isolation and loneliness. She lives in the uninhabited area between the town and the forest, suggesting that she is not a part of ―the city upon a hill‖, yet not completely belonging to the nature.(between the civilization and wilderness, doesn’t belong anywhere). In fact she has the characteristics of both: passion of the nature but accepts Puritanism up to a certain point because she teaches Pearl in the Puritan manner, and she dresses herself in such a way to hide her beauty.(hides her hair under the cap, gray dresses, doesn’t want to attract attention) After all she wants her and her daughter to be accepted. Works as a maid and as a nurse, but her main role is the role of the mother. Helps people in need (they call her Sister of Mercy) (after 7 years)
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Hester is getting better, Dimmesdale is getting worse
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IF SHE REALLY WAS PURE, HOW COME THE LETTER DIDN’T FALL OFF?
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WHEN SHE BECOMES FREE OF GUILT THE LETTER WILL FALL OF BY ITSLEF?
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When it comes to the gradual but very evident transformation of Hester’s character, we can distinguish between three stages: adulteress, able and angel.
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After being band from the Puritan society, H dedicates herself completely to raising her child. (Puritans didn’t really banished her, it was her that chose to get away from them). She uses her skill in needlework to provide financial security for her and Pearl. Pearl gives her strength and motivation to keep going when in dark times. Indeed, H proves to be extremely able and capable of surviving despite all the hardship she has had to a face and go through alone.
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All these twists in H’s fate result in spiritual transformation of her character. It broadens her perspective of women’s position in the society. She learns that there is a solution to the problem of women’s inferiority. But since she’s already marked as sinful, she cannot be that new model of a woman. Still, the hope lies in her daughter, a potential prototype of that new woman.
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At the scaffold scene with the meteor H changes her attitude towards D when she sees that he suffers as much as she does. That ability and readiness of H earn her the status of an angel. Nevertheless, she feels restless until she sees the letter A in the sky which she sees like God’s sign that’s he is satisfied with her choice. For this reason H no longer feels the need to remove the letter from her bosom because she knows that it has changed its meaning and became a symbol of virtue.
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Hester Prynne may be seen as a mythical symbol of every women’s struggle to find ways to express their individuality and sexuality within the strict and oppressive laws of Puritan society.
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First rounded female character. She is not a cultural villain.
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THEMES:
o o
Conflict between an individual and the society Truth of the human heart (what makes people behave the way they do, what drives them do things)
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Violation of human heart
o
Corruption of the worthy man
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18. The Scarlet Letter: The Character of Dimmesdale
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Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is a young Puritan priest who only believes in the covenant of grace, and who dedicates himself to making Massachusetts Bay’s society strong and spiritually pure. He is an intelligent and emotional man and his sermons are masterpieces of eloquence and perseverance.
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On the other hand, at some point of the novel Hawthorne depicts Dimmesdale as a weak and cowardly man who refuses to face his wrong deed. For that reason the first impression of him as a saint-like, pure, highly respected man changes dramatically and we start seeing Dimmesdale as a coward and hypocrite.
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Just like Hester, he is a character whose identity owes more to external circumstances than to his own mental state.
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In the 1st scaffold scene D is standing above H, on the balcony of the Meeting House, being respected and admired by the society although he committed the same crime as H who was standing on the pillory (scaffold), despised by the people. Dimmesdale’s character is full of paradoxes. The first thing is his name (see 16: Symbolism).Next, having broken the Puritan law, he still performs his duties as a dignified priest. Although he supports Puritan doctrines, he doesn’t admit his guilt. There are two main reasons why he doesn’t admit and leaves H to deal with it alone. Firstly, he is afraid of losing his reputation and of being cursed by his followers. Secondly, as he explains in his hypocritical discussion, he feels an obligation to lead his people down the right path, to be a role model for them and to offer a spiritual guidance. The sin he committed and the suffering he went through helped D understand better the hardships and miseries of other people and sympathize with them. For that reason his sermons are so strong, convincing and effective. They are inspired by his sin and his suffering that no one knows about. In that aspect, Dimmesdale can be considered as a positive character even in that period of his life since he used his sin for noble purposes.
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But this high reputation of his makes him feel even worse because he know that since he is a minister he’ll not only have to answer to his followers, but to God as well. Dimmesdale is a sinner to society, God and himself. Deciding not to reveal his sin, he chooses to live a false life, running away from himself. Paradoxically, while he urges the people in the church to confess their sins openly, he is the one who has to do that in order to have a clear conscience.
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Dimmesdale carries a shameful sin and an undeserved public admiration. This leads him to self-destruction and deterioration of both his mental and physical conditions. He became emaciated because he let his sin eats him from the inside and the results were seen on the outside. He also spent many nights whipping himself. That brought him some relief but 37
didn’t cure his troubled mind. His inner struggle, the agony he lives in reflects on his looks as well as on his health condition. He is tremulous, pale, always holding his hand over his heart. His agony has come so far that he now both consciously and unconsciously subjects himself to Chillingwort’s manipulation. -
This state of mind ultimately leads Dimmesdale to accept his responsibility in the act of adultery and to redeem.
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The entire transformation of this character can best be seen in the three scaffold scenes.
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In the 1st scaffold scene Dimmesadle openly denies his sin and hides behind the mask of a dedicated priest. Yet he is not totally deprived of feelings for Hester and Pearl. He tries to help them when he talks in their favor when the authorities want to take Pearl away from Hester.
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In the 2nd scaffold scene Dimmesdale accepts his sin and admits it. He is still fighting the battle against remorse and cowardice. This scene also shows Pear, Hester and Dimmesdale together, hand in hand, as a family, but still away from the public eye. This scene is important because it shows Dimmesdale’s gradual but pprogressive awakening of Puritan inhibitions as well as the continuous strengthening of his passionate side.
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In the 3rd scaffold scene, Dimmesdale finally gathers strength to openly admit his sin, encouraged by Hester’s forgiveness and Pearl’s affection. After their reunion in the forest D realizes that he has to admit his sin in order to save his soul and that running away from the society’s judging and his own mistakes is impossible. What is more, it will lead him into another sin, far more serious than the adultery because it will be a product of rational mind, not passion and impulsiveness. Thus D steps to the scaffold inviting H and P to accompany him by which he throws himself in the hands of the people and in the end, in the hands of God. This is the first time the three of them stood together in public during the daylight.
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Dimmedale finally finds peace even though he never believed he would. He finally wins the battle against evil and in his death he becomes even more of an icon that he was in life.
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19. The Scarlet Letter: Character of Chillingworth
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Roger Chillingworth is a scholar who uses his knowledge to disguise himself as a doctor in order to perform his revenge on a secret lover of his wife – Arthur Dimmesdale.
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He is depicted as a self-absorbed, studious man who both physically and mentally doesn’t belong to the Puritan society. Towards the end of the novel, Hawthorne portrays him both physically and mentally as a monstrous character. (His name)
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C’s goal which gradually transforms into an ill obsession, affects his appearance and he slowly turns into a man of terrifying looks. Symbolically, his deformed physical appearance reflects his inner state.
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As for the early ages of C and H’s marriage, we can conclude that he was a difficult husband to cope with as he neglected his wife, but at the same time insisted on her to constantly show emotions and affection towards him.
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In the first scene in which the readers meet C, he is standing next to an Indian. Indians were considered to be savages because they resided in the woods, thus believed to have come from the devil. The fact that C has contact with the Indians and that he uses herbs in his medicine suggests that he is torn between two opposite worlds: the Puritans and the Indians. Interestingly, the author contrasts these two worlds and by describing C’s activities and opinions, and shows the readers that C does not conform to the established rules of Puritan society, that he is much closer to the Indians and their lifestyle.
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After his arrival in Massachusetts Bay, he promises H and himself that he’ll find a man who committed the sin against them both and take revenge. Unfortunately, the vengeance becomes C’s main purpose in life.
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The situation presented in the novel between H and C has roots in their marriage. C’s sin is thus his marriage to a younger woman whom he sends to the American soil alone. His first sin leads to the second: Hester’s suffering and her sin of adultery. This also causes C suffer and he gradually turns into a devil, ready to make another person suffer, thus violating the human hearth. He enjoys seeing Dimmesdale suffer and not for a moment does he repent for his misdeeds.
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Ironically, once dimmesdale has died, C’s life is shutting down as well. Being left with no reason to live and not being able to find another source of pleasure in his twisted life, C dies within a year.
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Analyzing the character of Chillingworth we can easily deduce that he is the embodiment of evil. He is tightly connected with nature and he disguises himself in order to be able to perform his mean plan. Even H thinks of him as being the devil’s messenger and the people of the town see the evil in him. He destroyed himself by his poisonous attitude. He 39
is the best example how one’s insatiable desire for vengeance can completely destroy that person’s life. -
This novel shows how fate can twist in a single moment, without us even being aware of it happening. Ironically, at the beginning of the novel C was the only character that seemed as if he had no problems in life, his dedication to vengeance and evil left him as the only character whose progression was towards the worse.
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20. Young Goodman Brown: Faith
The very word „faith“ in relation to the story „Young Goodman Brown― has dual meaning – it is the name of Brown’s wife but it also denotes his religion and faith in God. Therefore it can be examined in two levels. Faith – wife: Her symbolic role is obvious from her name . For Goodman she symbolizes goodness, purity & innocence and by marrying her he shows he wants to believe in good . Our knowledge of her appearance is very vague as we only know that she is young, good and pure. This shows the reluctance of American writers to include women as real characters; all the women in this story are merely symbols . Her cap with pink ribbons is an implicit symbol – the ribons are not white (the color of innocence), nor red, but somewhere in between, just as she is not as innocent as she appears to be, but rather somewhere between innocence and depravity. She also seems to be a decent Puritan woman, but she is troubled by bad dreams – again, dual nature.
She is an ambiguous character. She has premonition, dream: a hint that she might be connected to other forces. She is YGB’s last pillar of religious faith (fusion of metaphor and reality). His insecurity destroys them both. She probably had to carry all the burden of life on her back: raising children was her duty and she did not have a happy marriage. We can infer that. Faith – religion: The strength of Brown’s convictions is examined. In the beginning he is full of religious zeal, he believes in the Puritan way and its ability to guide him along the righteous path. At the same time, he is very gullible: He believes it could take only one night of temptation and resisting it to demonstrate to God that he is good enough to become elect; but he is wrong – it takes a lifetime of devotion. He also thinks he will go to Heaven by clinging on to Faith’s skirt, he doesn’t realize he has to rely on himself and not on somebody elsem which shows that his faith is not as strong as it may seem to be. He still seems strong and determined when he meets the devil and he says „faith kept me back awhile― – the symbolism is clear. Gradually proceeds further into the forest convinced he could go back and resist any time. He loses his faith in the good of Mankind: 1. 2. 3.
When he finds out that his ancestors participated in the devil’s processions (accepts this claim as a fact, doesn’t even doubt it) When he sees Goody Cloyse (a righteous woman who taught him what to believe in) The minister and deacon Gookin, the holy men who guide the people (a black cloud appears above him – his faith is shadowed) 41
4. 5.
When he sees all townspeople When he finds out that even Faith is present on the gathering he exclaims „My Faith is gone!― – very obvious symbolism
He starts running like mad; once he left the path of righteousness, it is hard to go back to it again, the forest of sin is full of darkness and confusion. He is confused, losing his mind Inevitably, he comes to the procession and there he appeals directly to Heaven and seemingly saves his soul. Actually, this temptation in the forest showed that his faith in everyone and everything is practically non-existant, it completely disappeared the moment he started doubting everyone and everything that was supposed to be right and true. Conclusion: Hawthorne is either criticizing Brown as a character or the Puritan religion. 1. 2.
It could be said that Young Goodman Brown is not a real Puritan at all because his Puritan religion should warn him not to trust the devil, not to let him talk him into following him further into the forest – even the most naive of sins is dangerous! He may be trying to say that Puritan learning and the catehism (spelling?) children are taught are ambiguous and paradoxical so Young Goodman Brown is only the victim of society and his own environment. The brilliance of the story: the way the Devil works on him. He removes the pillars that he stands on and that support him: one by one. YGB had nothing to stand on and he fell. But he should not have based his faith on other people. He should have relied on himself and, as a true Puritan, walk back home and not let himself be lost. That is his tragic flaw. Paradoxical: he went to the forest to prove to himself and others that he is a real Puritan, but he proved he is not, he does not behave like one. The advancement of his dissolution reached its peak when he noticed pink ribbon of his wife Faith hanging on a tree. ―My Faith is gone!‖ cried he, after one stupefied moment. ―There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for to thee is this world given.‖ Devil is also a character which has a long history of staging on the pages of various books. Doubtless, it represents sinfulness, innate human predisposition towards evil. His function, as well as Brown’s and Faith’s, is allegorical as he embodies evil side of every man, or in accordance with Freud’s theory, evil is integral part of our natural instinct for survival contained in Id. Puritan culture emphasized the need for introspection and the strict accounting for one’s feelings as well as one’s deeds. They believed in the conversion experience, an epiphany, which signified that a person was chosen to be among God's elect, and this belief was the center of evangelical experience. The Puritan theology rested primarily upon the doctrine of predestination and the inefficaciousness of good works; it separated men sharply and certainly into two groups, the saved and the damned, and, technically, at least, was not concerned with any subtler shadings. 42
The Puritan church insisted that its congregants lead godly lives and exhibit a clear understanding of the main principles of their Christian faith, and they also had to demonstrate that they had experienced true evidence of the workings of God’s grace in their souls. Only those who gave a convincing account of such an epiphany could be admitted to full church membership, and could have been called God's elect. Faith Faith is the wife of Young Goodman Brown, to whom he has been married only for three months. She is purely an allegorical character, to be more precise ―she is at once an allegorical idea and the means by which the idea is inverted‖ ―Not the least terrifying aspect of the story is the insinuation that Faith has made her own independent covenant with the Devil. There is a faint suggestion that her complicity may be prior to and deeper than Brown’s‖. In addition to this ―If he [Brown] believed in the certainty of depravity and only the possibility of salvation, as the [Puritan] catechism teaches, he would know that even so righteous a person as Faith is corrupt and not necessarily of the elect, appearances notwithstanding‖ Faith's name already tells us her significance in the story, for she stands for Goodman Brown's faith in God, faith in saintly nature of the people in his community, and faith in the spiritual leaders, the elects of God. If we are to view Goodman Brown as the first man, then Faith can be seen as Eve, the first woman. She is also under a similar compulsion as Brown, and she tries to persuade him to stay at home, for both hers as well as his sake, but her attempts prove to be unsuccessful. This could be seen as the lake of faith on Brown's part. One prominent feature about Faith are her pink ribbons. The color pink bears a significance, as in the case of her name, for they have a symbolic role; the color pink represents a mixture of red and white − red standing for Faith's passion and sexuality, while the color white symbolizes a women's purity and innocence. Her ribbons can therefore, represent tainted innocence, or tainted morality of the whole human race. ―Brown calls out three times for Faith to come to his aid, and not until he [Brown] sees a pink ribbon from Faith’s cap that has fluttered down from the sky and caught on the branch of a tree does he abandon hope . . . . [It is] the tangible evidence of Faith’s desertion‖ Also, ―The pink ribbon seen in the forest may be merely a lustful projection of the Goodman’s depraved fancy, which wills wickedness . . . even as it reluctantly departs from its forfeited innocence‖ Since Faith's allegorical function has already been explained, maybe we could observe her from a different perspective. Before embarking on his journey, Brown considers his wife to be an angel, a perfect creature. She is his safe haven, for he says so himself ―after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven‖ He is bewildered when he sees her in the coven, ready to be baptized by the Devil. So, this may also serve to demonstrate that we should never idolize someone the way Brown has. He creates an angelic image of his wife, projecting something unreal onto her, something out of this world, and that prevented him 43
from seeing her as a real person, made of flesh and blood, just as sinful as everyone else in the world. No wonder then that he became disillusioned with her. He believes Faith is an "angel" and one of the Puritans elects who is destined for heaven. Unfortunately, Brown's experience in the forest makes him reject his previous conviction of the prevailing power of good. He instead embraces the Devil's claim—―Evil is the nature of mankind‖). This has devastating consequences on their marital life; his grief causes suffering not just to him, but to her and their children.
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21. Young Goodman Brown – The Character of Goodman Brown
A young, innocent and vulnerable man who, in a night of temptation, gradually discovers the evil that exists in the world around him and fails to defeat it appropriately, thus becoming bitter and disappointed. The story is allegorical, shows the fight of good and evil, fantasy and reality, purity and corruption and Goodman Brown is a universal character in many ways. Name: Young: signifies inexperience, innocence and ignorance of certain knowledge − knowledge of sin and of evil in the world and the people that surround him Goodman: Goodman was a title used in the 17th century, and it was applied to a husband or the master of the household.Symbolizes youth and good nature; in the time when the story takes place, a good man was supposed to be one from a proper lineage, someone whose ancestors were respectable and his ancestors were such (there is also an autobiographical element here: Hawthorne’s ancestors were also devoted Puritans which made him proud, but one of them participated in the Salem trials, so he was ashamed of the cruelty Puritans showed)
Brown: can be compared to Everyman, the representative of the whole humanity; also, brown, as a color, is a mixture of white and black − the two colors as symbols represent two sides of humanity, two oppositions, good and evil; it can also stand for innocence which is tainted by experience and evil. Development: At the very beginning of the narrative, before setting out on his journey, Goodman Brown appears to be a very confident young man for he is innocent and inexperienced. Upon his return we are given the picture of a very changed man. To show how this change occurs, maybe it would be well to give a brief recording of what actually happened in the story, and through it explore our hero. The aim of his going to the forest is an attempt to achieve conversion experience: to resist every temptation and sin and to have some kind of epiphany, sudden realization and confirmation of God that he is among the elect. His wife Faith (also faith in good, more of a symbol than a real character) tries to convince him not to go, but he seems extremely confident and self-assured. He is also full of religious zeal and believes in his ability to fight and resist sin. Still, there are indications that his faith isn’t as strong as it may seem, as he believes he will go to Heaven by clinging on to Faith’s skirt – he doesn’t rely on himself. He is also very gullible – he thinks he can defeat sin and purify his soul in only one night, it takes a lot more than that.
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The forest is another realm, a world of mystery and fantasy, a world of the unconscious. The narrow path that closes behind him: the omnipresent evil whose realization will take innocence away. He meets the devil: refuses to take his staff (to succumb to evil). The devil talks him into it so he unconsciously proceeds: his faith is weak, Puritanism and catehism he was taught should have warned him that such a small sin could be dangerous – he is not a real believer. Also Goodman is very gullible, he instantly believes that his ancestors had a deal with the devil, he never doubts or questions the facts – he’s already too far from the reality and faith. Cloyse, minister and deacon Gookin – the people he relied on in moral sense, who taught him how to go to Heaven, now he realizes how hypocritical humans can be. A cloud comes directly over his head – symbol of his uncertainty and doubt in faith. When he sees a pink ribbon – (for him the tangible evidence of Faith’s desertion, but also a symbol of his reluctant parting from innocence) he is naively convinced that even Faith is a hypocrite („My Faith is gone―) After this, he starts running like mad. Comes to the procession and seemingly saves his soul, but actually becomes bitter and disappointed for the rest of his life. The main problem: He is unable to separate fantasy from reality. Doesn’t even know whether the events were true, he only saw shadows, shapes, light, a girl with a veil and heard mingled sounds. How did he percieve the evil? In the worst possible way. He chose to live in doubt and neglect his family and everything that matters instead of dealing with it somehow. He showed his weakness and lack of belief in anyone. Whose fault is this? Maybe his own because he wasn’t strong enough in his beliefs, maybe the society’s because he was taught ambiguous catehism. He can be seen as Everyman, with his doubts and his fight with sin as something universal. He is also an instrument for Hawthorne to criticize certain aspects of Puritanism – to constantly mistrust everyone around you and yourself cannot bring faith; constant questioning of oneself doesn’t bring peace, only confusion. The purpose of allegorical character is manifold. In Christian culture such characters were used for didactic purpose, to alert people to possible consequences one may suffer, if they disobey God and go astray. Most commonly, these allegorical embodiments of human nature served as a sort of a church’s instrument to frighten people, and make them follow their doctrine blindly. On the other hand, Hawthorne used it to justify himself, to stress how ordinary such an experience is, and that all people are basically prone to evil, since it is the integral part of their character. His aim was not to criticize the evil itself, but his own inability to cope with such a fact. Angie Soler talks of the ―repressed evil‖ that causes so painful discovery in Young Goodman Brown. it is beyond one’s reach to cope with their impulses. Evil is innate, it is the evolutional tie to our animal ancestors. By failing to accept the state of affairs Brown falls into a conflict with himself which resulted in him becoming a bitter, disillusioned man. No 46
one is completely pure, there in no such a simple binary opposition in human nature, or in nature itself. The world is not necessarily black or white; it is a mixture of good and evil, where always one is prevailing at the expense of another’s decrease. Yet Brown is not even sure whether this experience was real or illusional. In his work, Wagenknecht tries to explain this dilemma by saying:‖ The story is a kind of allegory, describing how sin can destroy both faith and joy. There is no forest journey, but only ―an inward journey into the black, despairing depths of [young Goodman Brown] soul.‖ Throughout the story we are guided by Brown’s state of mind as these spectral evidences, his view of nature, the laughter that he heard are just projections of his fears and inner conflicts. Deeper Character Analysis: ―Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street of Salem Village; but put his head back after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife‖ She pleads to ―put off his journey until sunrise,‖ but he responds that he cannot ―My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done 'twix now and sunrise.'‖ This nocturnal journey he takes is done under the influence of strong cravings. It is a journey each must take alone, in fear, away from home and the community, from conscious, everyday life, to the wilderness where the hidden self, the subconscious resides. It should not escape us that he did struggle for a while whit the temptation that was devouring him, but finally succumbed to it. At the point of his leave he is unaware of the gravity of the step he has taken. In the woods he meets the fellow-traveler, in appearance a man who bears a great resemblance to him and who carries a staff ―which bore the likeness of a great snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent‖ That this figure is a supernatural creature is made very obvious when he reprimands Goodman for being late, by remarking that ―the clock of the Old South was striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes agone‖. To this Brown replies ―Faith kept me back a while. This utterance meant that he was not sure of the action he was taking; he was still struggling with the temptation, trying to overcome it. Nevertheless, they proceed, but Goodman Brown is still reluctant and at one point refuses to continue the journey, especially bearing in mind his ancestors, who were the pride of his community. To this the traveler confronts him with the truth, saying that his forebears were nothing godly in the least, telling him that he knew them, and that he helped his grandfather, the constable, ―when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly‖. This is an autobiographical element, already mentioned in the introductory part. But, still Goodman Brown refuses to believe him, for the seed of skepticism has not jet strongly penetrated his heart. They soon overtake Goody Cloyse, ―a very pious and exemplary dame‖, who had taught Goodman his catechism. That she was in the woods with the same purpose as Brown is made very clear when she starts conversing with the Devil, and telling him how she is looking forward to their nocturnal meeting, for she knows that there is a youngman to be taken into communion, and also mentioning her broomstick, saying it was stolen by ―that unhanged witch, Goody Corey‖ Even though he is disillusioned with his old teacher, and in a way mentor, Brown is still reluctant in giving himself over to temptation, and refuses to proceed any farther. Unalarmed by his resistance the Devil gives him his staff to help him on his way when he decides to proceed, and leaves him to rest for a while. The staff that Brown was given could be interpreted as the seed of doubt, planted by the Devil, leaving him to struggle with it. While waiting, Deacon Gookin and the minister of the 47
community ride by and also obviously on their way to the coven. Brown is bewildered and is trying to pray, he cries ―With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil. The moment when the protagonist gives way to desperation is when he sees one of Faith's pink ribbons fluttering down through the air. He cries ―My Faith is gone!‖ . This utterance, of course, has a double meaning; it means that the one person Brown cherished more than anything in the world, his bellowed wife, angelic-like Faith, has betrayed him, deceived him by making him believe so blindly in her purity. And since she is both an allegorical character, standing for Brown's faith in general, it means that he has none anymore. Feeling that he has no longer anything sacred in this world, Goodman Brown pushes on to the coven to join the damned. There he will behold everyone from the Salem Village, the good and the bad, the godly and the wicked all mixed together, joined in ―one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot‖. Brown evokes his faith one more time, trying to prevent himself and his wife from receiving the diabolical baptism, and the entire vanishes, and Brown finds himself all alone in the forest. When Young Goodman Brown returns to Salem Village with the morning light, ―staring around him like a bewildered man,‖ he finds everything in perfect order, everyone going about the Lord's work. Faith greets him at the door giving no sign of any kind of change. Goodman Brown is not sure whether the night's event was a reality or not, but this does not even matter. The doubt exists, and like a cancer growing and spreading doubt on everyone around him, poisoning everything human in him. Since his eyes have finally been open to the true, evil nature of his fellowmen he inescapably knows that what he suspected of himself is true of all men. From now on he must live with that painful knowledge, and it makes him a disillusioned, an unhappy, and a gloomy man; a man that is skeptical of everyone that surrounds him. He had no true faith, for the experience, although painful, should have made him stronger, but he succumbed to his grief and gave in to desperation, imprisoning himself in the hell of his own creation, doomed to isolation forever. Young Goodman Brown's going into to the forest could be also interpreted, as he stands for all of humanity, as an outcry against the hypocritical norms of the Puritan society; but, as he lacks the most important quality − strength of faith − he ends up as empty as a shell, bereft of any kind of emotion, without any kind of meaning in life; Goodman Brown becomes the very thing he is fighting against − a stereotypical gloomy Puritan. The revelation that he had in the end − that no one is completely good or evil, but that everyone is a mixture of both − is represented in the forest, which can be seen as the symbol of the Puritan world, by both the representatives of good nature embodied in the spiritual leaders, pious people, elders of the church, chaste dames and virgins, and of evil nature, which are portrayed by the men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice. ―It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints‖ This shows to illustrate that there are two sides to everyone, good and bad. The people in the community were not saints as Goodman Brown idolized them. 48
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22. Young Goodman Brown – Dream vs. Reality
The confrontation of dream and reality, of the imaginary and and realistic lies in the centre of the romance form. In this story the dualistic nature of the early America is portrayed, reality and dream oppose each other and it is difficult to establish a clear boundary between them. Goodman Brown’s problem: He is unable to see the boundary between fantasy and reality, he doesn’t know where this boundary could be! We see him as naive and inexperienced, weak, incapable of resisting the temptation. He is very confident when entering the forest, determined to resist every temptation and sin. Little by litte, as the forest becomes darker and the mysterious atmosphere prevails and as the narrow path closes immediately behind him (cutting him off the real world and his innocence), Young Goodman Brown is gradually sinking into becoming less and less able to stick to reality. He becomes more prone to hallucinations and misinterpretations; if it weren’t so, he would be able to say that the events he viewed were nonsensical and thus unreal. E.g he could use common sense and decide that his forefathers were not on the devil’s side, that Goody Cloyse, a good Christian, couldn’t be a witch, that it is illogical that the minister and deacon Gookin participated in the congregation and finally, that his beloved, pure, innocent, worthy Faith was about to enter the vicious circle. His belief that they were all corrupt is far from realistic, it proves him unable to discern between good and evil and stick to common sense. After all, all the events are shadowed by the cloud of suspicion and mystery, he doesn’t see real people, he only sees shapes in darkness, flashes of light, hears vague voices... which he associates with the people he knows and finally – Faith is also under a veil, so it is not entirely sure whether it is actually her, but it doesn’t take more than a pink on a branch above him to convince Young Goodman Brown that even his wife Faith is about to become a witch. After all this, Young Goodman Brown has 3 possibilities: 1. 2. 3.
To decide it was all a dream, shake off all the suspicions, believe in his faith and common sense To view all the events as real, stand up to the sins and the sinners He chose the worst possible option: to keep living wondering where the boundary was, was it all real or not and thus finished his life miserably, leaving all his family without guidance; doubted everyone and everything. He didn’t manage to fulfill his dream of becoming the elect one, instead he ruined his chances of salvation. The problem of America: The question of America is also the question of reality and fantasy. Long after its discovery, America was seen as the New World, world of hope, welfare, plentitude and it soon grew into something mythical (the New Paradise, New Jerusalem, Arcadia...) 50
This is where the dualities come from – many people viewed America through their dreams – they wanted to be wealthy, free, independent, in control of their lives, it is how the American Dream was created. Unfortunately, some of the people couldn’t fulfill that dream and they became disappointed with reality, just like Young Goodman Brown. The question is, what makes Americans re-invent the dream all over again to this very day and continue to insist on it? The problem of the Puritans: Their goal and their dream was ti build the City upon a Hill – the New Jerusalem – a place where people would live dedicated to receiving God’s grace, becoming the elect, and the eternal life after death. However, their teachings were such that they insisted on constant self-examination, defeating the sin... so they ended up doubting everyone around them and even themselves. Hawthorne therefore says that this atmosphere of doubt and mistrust cannot bring true faith. Plus: Young Goodman Brown's going into the forest was no dream, but serves as a metaphor for Brown's inner consciousness. The journey he takes is the one of self examination, introspection of his deepest fears, doubts and perversities. The evil that he encounters in the forest is his own evil, projected on to others, for he has no strength to confront the hideousness he finds in himself. It is always easier to blame someone else for one's own failures. The fact that Hawthorne chose to portray the story as a dream like vision is no coincidence. The dreams, according to many psychological studies, often bring on to the surface the most subconscious parts of our mind. It helps us to deal with our imperfections, our fears, in order to make our lives less painful. The fact that Brown remained unaware of the true human nature is because he simply refused to open his eyes. For him it was easier to believe in the godly nature of the people surrounding him, rather than facing the imperfection of humanity. When the seed of doubt was left in him, he chose to ignore it, rather than trying to find inner strength in his faith; but the cancer of doubt growing inside of him was to much for him to bear. The story shows us that however noble an idea may seem in our imagination, it is not in accordance with human nature, which is imperfect. One must accept imperfection, first in himself, and then in others, if one wants to remain human. Goodman Brown never realized this, and that is why his dying hour was gloom. The protagonist lacks strength, and is very judgmental towards everyone. After his epiphany, in which he is shown the truth, he chooses to do nothing.
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23. Herman Melville: Literary Works
An American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet, whose work is often classified as part of the genre of dark romanticism.Born in 1819 in New York, third of eight children in a calvinist family. His father went bankrupt and died when Herman was aged 14. He was extremely poor while growing up, spent most of his time in the gloomy atmosphere of his mother’s house. Started working early, as a land surveyor, teacher and finally as a sailor. He found that life hard as sailors were treated as slaves, so he went for a harpooner. Returned from one of his voyages with a changed fortune, didn’t have to work any more so he decided to write. His real life started when he started writing. 1846 – first novel: Typee (in which he tells of his experience with canibals) a fictionalized travel narrative, was the author's most popular book during his lifetime. The narrator, a crew member of a whale ship, calls himself "Tom". He spends four months among a group of islanders on Nukuheva in the Pacific Ocean and learns to make a distinction between a savage and cannibal. Tattooing he rejects 1847 – second novel: Omoo (sequel to the Typee) tells of experiences where he rebelled against his captain. Based on Melville's experiences in Polynesian Islands, and gained a huge success as the first one. Throughout his career Melville enjoyed a rather higher estimation in Britain than in America. His older brother Gansevoort held a government position in London, and helped to launch Melville's career. These two novels had good reviews and were quite popular. They sold well and Melville became well read author and earned good money off sales. 1849 – Mardi – third novel. Not as successful as the first two. Decided to take distance to the expectations of his readers. In this he also succeeded, and lost his audience. The next two novels Melville wrote to get money: 1849 – Redburn (exposed the shipping industry, told of the injustice towards sailors, didn’t go well with the audience) 1850 – White Jacket (about sailing) Around 1850 he started his friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, a great influence on him for the rest of his writing career. He wanted to write just like him, he even used the same symbols. Eventually he even moved near his house so he could see him every day. Under the influence of Scarlet Letter, in 1851 he wrote 1851 – Moby Dick – a novel about whaling, highly symbolic, people did not understand it at first and it did not sold well. Melville, as well as the audience, were disappointed. Readers of Typee and Omoo were not expecting this kind of story, and its brilliance was only noted by some critics. Through the story Melville meditated questions about faith and the workings of God's intelligence. He returned to these meditations in his last great work, BILLY BUDD, a story left unfinished at his death. Its manuscript was found in Melville's desk when he died. After Moby Dick he started to write short stories. "Call me Ishmael," says the narrator in the beginning of Moby-Dick. We don't know is it his real name and exactly when the story is taking place. He signs abroad the whaler Pequod with his friend Queequeg, a harpooner from the South Sea Islands. Then the mood of the story 52
changes. The reader is confronted by a plurality of linguistic discourses, philosophical speculations, and Shakespearean rhetoric and dramatic staging. Mysterious Captain Ahab, a combination of Macbeth, Job, and Milton's Satan, appears after several days at sea. Melville named the character after the Israelite king who worshiped the pagan sun god Baal. Ahab reveals to the crew that the purpose of the voyage is to hunt and kill the snow-white sperm whale, known as Moby-Dick, that had cost Ahab his leg on a previous voyage. The captain has his own faith and sees the cosmos in contention between two rival deities. "Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance." Ahab has nailed a goldpiece to the mast and offers it as a reward to the first man who sights the creature. Starbuck, the first mate, tries to dissuade Ahab from the quest. The novel culminates when Moby-Dick charges the boat which sinks. Ahab is drowned, tied by the harpoon line his archenemy. In his end Ahab takes his crew with him. The only survivor is the narrator, who is rescued by a passing ship. Moby-Dick can be read as a thrilling sea story, an examination of the conflict between man and nature – the battle between Ahab and the whale is open to many interpretations. It is a pioneer novel but the prairie is now sea, or an allegory on the Gold Rush, but now the gold is a whale. The most important short story he wrote was Benito Cereno. Bartleby, the Scrivener – another short story. It is about a passive copyist, who confronts life with an Everlasting Nay – "I would prefer not to," is his quiet defense against the changing world. The narrator, a Wall Street lawyer, tries in vain to understand the unresponsive employee, who refuses to leave the office after being fired. The Piazza Tales (1856) – collection of short stories Had a depressive personal life, unhappy marriage. One of his sons killed himself, another died after a long period of illness. He turned to writing poetry, especially against slavery. During the Civil War he supported the North. He wrote a lot about the society at the time and about the position of black people. The Confidence Man (1857) - Melville's last major effort, was a harsh satire of American life set on a Mississippi River steamboat. After 1857 he wrote only some poetry. His health was failing, he did not earn enough money to support his family, and he was a dependent of his wealthy father-in-law. To recover from a breakdown, he undertook a long journey to Europe and the Holy Land. The long poem Clarel (1876), based on this trip, was about religious crisis and reflected Melville's Manichean view of God. Novel Billy Budd – unfinished, published in 1924 Died in 1891 in New York His style of writing was heavily influenced by J.F. Cooper, who first introduced the genre of writing about sea adventures. Melville introduced the exotic settings – islands, natives, canibals, condition of people on ships. His novels are not only about sea adventures as he criticized society, expressed his dissatisfaction with the situation in his state, criticized the civilization.
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When he died in 1891, he was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, most notably Moby-Dick which was hailed as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.
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24. Benito Cereno: The Character of Benito Cereno
Benito Cereno – represents the downfall of colonialism and slavery that comes as the result of the practice of mistreatment of other human beings and negligence of their rights. -
He stands for hatred, oppression and animality of colonizers He experiences how it is like to be a slave, when your word doesn’t matter and when you are a pupper in other people’s hands. Seen through the eyes of captain Delano, Benito Cereno is an epitome of the corrupted Europe as well as its system, that is destroyed by multiple wars. Yet, Cereno should also serve as a reminder to the time of where colonialism and slavery lead society, but he doesn’t. Contrary to that, Cereno stands for the whole society which refuses to see the roots of the problem that may destroy them all eventually. He is the left white captain of the ship of San Dominic which is in a state of decline: Spain is in a state of decline. That is where oppression leads people but once they engage themselves in violence they lose their common sense and evoke the worst inside them and seem to be incapable of perceiving things as they really are. Cereno has spent all of his life eating and being close the blacks, yet he still cannot really accept that they are human beings just like him. Inter-white racism – his relationship with Delano. Benito jumps into Delano’s boat to save his own life and not Delano’s. However, he forewarns Delano by drawing his attention to the inscription „follow your leader―. In the shaving scene, we see Benito’s inferiority and fear of Babo, the black man. Benito’s trembling, he is no position to save himself, he is completely dependent of Babo’s will. We see the roles are twisted. But it doesn’t make Benito change his mind regarding the problem of slavery. What is more, he never apologizes for his equally crual actions or states that slavery is destructive. It all points to the fact that evil is rooted too deeply in the society and a single person remains remains faithful to the policy of this society. That is why Benito still asks for the cruelest punishment for the black people in court. He has learned nothing from his experience and chooses to remain as equally ignorant of black people’s rights as he was before. Nevertheless, something has changed. Benito Cereno says that the shadow that seems to have covered his body is the one of a negro. The shadow is his fear, the feeling of uncertainty and the loss of faith in the system of his country and slavery in general, that came as the result of the evil inside him, that eems tohave overtaken their common sense and turned them all into murderers and cynics.
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25. Benito Cereno: The Character of Captain Delano
Captain Delano is the captain of the American ship, „Bachelor’s Delight― who finds himself face in face with the overtaken Spanish ship, unaware of what he is actually being a witness. He faces a man whose prejudices will ultimately affect the safety of other people as well as his own, His task from the very beginning is to make sense of the signs (clues) he is constantly coming across and to react appropriately. Still he fails to do that. The question is, why? Delano’s dim-witted blindness corresponds to the blindness Benito’s crew experiences while the slaves are staging the mutiny in front of their wide-open eyes, which happens as a result of the Whites allowing the slaves a certain amount of freedom on the ship. In other words, the Whites’ neglect of the negroes’ ability to rebel brought about the sudden take-over of the Spanish ship. In the same way, Delano’s ignorance results in many tragic consequences. Delano tries to explain his blindness by blaming his over-generous and noble nature for not being able to recognize evil in men. In addition to that he says, if he had acted differently, it would have cost him his life. As the story proceeds, his strongly pointed goodness seems to be applied selectively, guided by his previously adopted prejudice that the Whites are superior to Blacks. The very first sign of his inability to perceive things as they truly are is present in the beginning of the story. Delano sees the San Dominick as a „ghost ship―. Accordingly, the term „vapours― emerges many times. The term may apply to the fog-like moisture that surrounds the ship and the hysteria and hypochondria that Delano later discovers in Benito Cereno. Still, Delano sees the San Dominick as a „ghost ship―, thus clearly pointing to his own perception of Blacks – they are to him a race that is not supposed to be in control, thus cannot be as free as the ship at first appears to him. What is more, he sees the ship as being in a state of decline, pointing subconsciouly to his attitude towards Spain, meaning Europe. He sees it as being corrupt with so many wars and quarrels over teritories. In that aspects he also treats Benito in a bad manner, seeing him as a personification of an outdated system and hierarchy. The last few facts mentioned clearly demonstrate one of the core problems of Captain Delano’s personality: racism. Yet he introduces us to two different types of racism and in such a manner that he glorifies America as the only real world-leading country. 1. Racism towards the negroes manifested in his inability, or even unwillingness to realize that they too are able to stage a mutiny, that they are not in any way inferior to the whites and that they are equally aware of their position in respect to the whites. 2. Racism manifested in his attitude towards Benito Cereno and the Spanish in general. According to Delano’s view of the entire situation, it is Benito’s origin and his inability and the lack of authority and power to control his vessel that led to such a disaster. The most concrete evidence given explicitly in the story is the scene when Babo is shaving his „master―. Once Delano notices the Spanish flag used as a rug, he starts to smile and express his satisfaction. 56
The problems metioned above are the superficial ones. Yet the more important ones are those that are given explicitly and that arise when looking into the matter more closely. Namely, Delano is unaware of the reasons for the mutiny; he doesn’t even think about it. He does not see exploitation, slavery and brutality behind the obvious, the mutiny, he rather sees the Americans owning slaves as the result of tgeur great political and social power. In other words, he simply chooses what he wants to see, carefully disregarding all the problems that many change his already established, firm beliefs. Naturally, it cannot be perceived as his tendency towards seeing only what is good in people, as he puts it, but rather as self-blindness and self-deceit- Unfortunately, apart from affecting himself, it also affects those close to him. The above elaborated results in three different reactions on Delano’s part. Firstly, even in the beginning Delano doesn’t see the ship clearly. Secondly, whenever he’s at the brink of understanding, he gives up and doesn’t realize the truth. Finally, when he is supposed to untie the knot, solve the problem, he seems unable to do so. In my opinion it may be a natural reaction coming from a person who belongs to the society which relies on slavery. He is afraid that accepting the negroes for being predestined to serve and be tortured may shake up all the conceptions that the American society is built upon. It is much easier for him to wear a mask all the time and eventually turn it into a real face. He is wearing a mask to cover up his stupidity, racism and tendency towards superiority. Delano fails to learn the underlying problem: the American attitude towards slavery and the fact that it will inevitably result in the same terrifying outburst of the negroes’ surpressed shame and dignity. That is why the inscription „follow your leader― on the ship of San Dominick is there – to forewarn the Americans of the trouble awaiting them.
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26. Benito Cereno: Racism and Colonialism
Melville’s story can be interpreted on two levels. Firstly it may be just seen as a story dealing with the discovery of a mutiny, organized by the black slaves. Secondly, it may be seen as a stroy demonstrating how the excesses of slavery influences the society and giving us an insight into the social climate of Melville’s time. Melville was influenced by the shocking event of Amistad – the rebellion. Slave traders tried to smuggle slaves who organized a mutiny, rebelled and reached the north of USA instead of travelling back to Africa. What represented a big social issue back then was the treatment of slaves. Seen as animals, supposed to be controlled; transfer-ships were in awful condition; many slaves who proved unable to work during the voyage were thrown to sharks. Yet, in 1722, slavery was proclaimed illegal in England, which made it difficult for the Americans to import slaves; so the very plot of Melville’s story is set into a controversial surrounding – England and America’s dispute over slavery. What was happening in America at the time was that after the Amistad rebellion, a question of whom the escaped slaves belong to was risen. Eventually they were returned to Africa and set free. In addition to that, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, giving freedom to all slaves that fled to the North, the abolitionist part of the country. Melville, although dealing with real events, does not describe them in detail in his story because the contemporary readers were familiar with the current situation. In the story, the slaves are already resold, because they have Spanish names. By choosing this plot, Melville wants to explore the topics of racism, tyrannical oppression, human savagery and its representation in the institution of slavery. Concluding from the opinions expressed in it, Melville strongly opposed colonialism and slavery. Still, the story’s themes are intepreted in various ways today, thus serving as an argument for both the pro-slavery people and abolitionists. The above-mentioned themes are mostly expressed through the behaviour of Captain Delano and his relationship with the other characters; in other words, Delano’s character represents America and its policies. Firstly, racism towards blacks, secondly, inter-white racism. The scene in the court presented in the second part of the story demonstrates the fear of losing an already established system of slavery, as the judges cannot believe that the black people are capable of a mutiny. Simply accepting that as a possibility would shake up all the attitudes toward slavery, and evoke fear in people. Yet Melville forewarns the Americans by the use of the inscription on the San Dominick ship – „follow your leader―, meaning: if the Americans don’t follow their leader, Europe, in proclaiming slavery illegal, they too will end up suffering from terrible losses similar to those on Benito’s ship.
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To sum up the story about racism, black people were seen as those who need guidance and control. The whites simply could not understand why their slaves rebelled assuming that they got exactly what their race needed – inferior position and someone who would think and act for them – their owners. It is not enough to dislike slavery, one must recognize its roots – racism. The tendency towards colonialism is best represented through the rule of Aranda on the ship, which resembles the Spanish tendency towards colonialism and imperialism. What is more, even Captain Delano demonstrates a vision of New England – innocence which was the strategy of the Americans to impose colonial power over both Spain and Africa. By distrusting Benito and neglecting the abilities of the blacks he glorifies the American way of perceiving the world, thus pointing towards the American tendency for calculation exercized for the purpose of economic and political growth. It is related to the notion of Manifest Destiny, according to which the Americans see themselves as predestined by God to expand their territory and rule. Delano’s inability to see the real situation on San Dominick demonstrates the inability of Americans to recognize the equality of all people due to their economic and political strategies. To conclude the story, in the past one thing proved to be true: tyrannical oppression had led en to commit terrible acts and the brutality of slave-owners led tothe counter-brutality and revolt of the slaves. Herman Melville introduces his readers with the undeniable presence of an unjust institution, slavery, that happened as a result of colonialism and that led to racism rooted too deeply in human mind that they were left unable to see behind the obvious. That is what makes this work an important literary evidence to human cruelty exercised for the purpose of establishing the rule over the weak.
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27. Edgar Allan Poe: Invention of New Genres
E.A. Poe was born in 1809. He was a son of itinerant actors. His mother Elizabeth Arnold Poe was a very talented actress.His father was from a prominent family with a rich background. He was jealous of his wife because he was not that good actor. His family were angry with his choice of profession and disowned him. Edgar was the oldest of their three children. They were poor and hungry most of the time. Elizabeth became ill soon after. They both died eventually. Rich parents pf Poe’s father did not want to take children. Edgar was taken by the allan family, John Allan was a tobacco merchant and a very difficult man. His wife Francis was not a perfect mother: one day she was devoted and the other day she would ignore him. Edgar got an excellent education and was good at learning. When he was 6 the family went to England (because of John’s business). Poe attended school there which looked like a gothic mansion. Poe was fascinated and it had great influence on him. When he was 11 the family returned to the USA. John and Francis were fighting whether they should adopt him but they never did. Poe was looking for a surrogate mother. He fell in love with a mother of his friend from school (Jane Stith Stanard). Later he fell in love with Sarah Elmira Royster who was from a wealthy, renowned family. Her father encouraged Poe’s courting but when John told him that Edgar was not going to inherit anything the engagement was broken. Poe was 17 and very angry. He enrolled to the University of Virginia. He had financial problems so he gambled. He finished first year of classical and modern languages (French, Spanish, Italian). This explains his usage of foreign words in his works. But John refused to send him money so Edgar enlisted in the army, went to Boston and became a soldier. In 1827 he published his first collection of poems Tamerlane and other Poems. He excelled in the army and attended West Point, most prestigious military school. Poe met Mrs. Clemm, a distant relative in whom he found a surrogate mother and started living with her and her daughter Virginia. John was furious because Edgar left West Point. Francis died, John remarried and got a son. Poe turned to his new family. He started eriting short stories for magazines. He won 1st prize for MS Found in a Botle. He started working as a journalist in Southern Literary Magazine. He was a good writer and more people started to buy the magazine. Although he worked in several magazines in his life he would not keep the job for a long time. He was a difficult person and took to drinking. When Virginia was only 13 they married. They moved to New York where Edgar could get more work and tasks. He was writing short and detective stories. He was very methodical and a perfectionist who set high standards to himself. He would often write and rewrite his stories. He approached all his works as mathematical problems. In 1838 he wrote The Fall of the House of Usher and Ligeia. He was editor in a large number of literary magazines. In 1839 he published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. In 1842 Virginia contracted tuberculosis and eventually died. Edgar blamed himself for her death: they were extremely poor. He lost all the women he loved in his life. From this stems his
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obsession with beautiful women who can’t be saved and die. There are often feelings of them rising from the grave..Their love is impossible: star-crossed lovers. In 1845 he published the Raven and became famous in literary circles. He turned to alcohol after V’s death. In Richmond, Baltimore he met his old love Sarah Elmira Royster who was a widow. They were supposed to marry but unfortunately Edgar died under very weird and inexplicanle circumstances. He was found half-conscious in an inn, in someone else’s clothes. Nobody knew what he had been doing for four days. He introduced two genres into American literature: gothic(horror) and detective story. Originator of american short story which is even today one of the most popular genres in American literature. He was also a very good poet. His Philosophy of Composition set principles that every poet should apply. Unity of effect
Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Poe is often credited with the creation of Gothic (horror) story and detective story. He is celebrated as a father of short story in Amercan literature. Poe began writing tales when he realized that poetry generated little to no income Very quickly got skilled in writing fiction, did it expectating to earn money He did not in fact create the genre of Gothic story, he was even said to be wasting talent on "German" fiction, which, in the eyes of the critics was popular literature and could not have any real artistic value His mixture of odd humor and horror elements confused editors, did not get a chance to publish a full book so he published single stories in various magazines and editorials. He was influenced by romance as a form. He did not write novels but short stories, however he applied the rules of romance. He explored deeply the psychology of his characters and dealt with the other side of human psyche (madness, abnormality...). He was successful in building suspense in his horror stories. Poe's early detective fiction tales starring the fictitious C. Auguste Dupin laid the groundwork for future detectives in literature. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said, "Each [of Poe's detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed.... Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?" The Mystery Writers of America have named their awards for excellence in the genre the "Edgars". Poe's work also influenced science fiction, notably Jules Verne, who wrote a sequel to Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket called An Antarctic Mystery, also known as The Sphinx of the Ice Fields. Science fiction author H. G. Wells noted, "Pym tells what a very intelligent mind could imagine about the south polar region a century ago."
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28. The Raven: Structure, Themes, Unity of Effect
The Raven is Poe’s masterwork, thought to be his best poem structurally and content-wise. Poe elaborated the creation of this poem in his work „The Philosophy of Composition―.
Structure: Alternation of 3 metres: octometre, hectametre and tetrametre, for the purpose of swift trochaic rhythm The rhyme scheme is constantly ABCBBB The rhythmic model for this poem was a work by Elizabeth Barret – Lady Geraldine’s Courtship Lots of good alliteration. Poe took great pride in his technical skills. A perfect poem should be 100 lines long, so that it could be readable at a single sitting – The Raven has 108 lines Gothic story elements in the poem + detective story elements, as the poem builds suspense The poem is made up of 18 stanzas of six lines each. Generally, the meter is trochaic octameter — eight trochaic feet per line, each foot having one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable Themes: Death of a beautiful woman: A constant theme in Poe’s works. According to „Philosophy of Composition―, a perfect poem should evoke a mood of melancholy, with the theme being beauty – therefore death of a beautiful woman is a perfect theme. E.A. Poe was surrounded by deaths of several women, one of whom was his own mother, and later his own wife Virginia. The women in his works are not real characters, they are blank slates for their male lovers to inscribe their stories and emotions in. Lenore is the perfect example of this woman. Longing for a lover and a surrogate mother: this theme is very closely related to the first one, and it is very personal. In these beautiful women who died Poe and his narrator always seeks either for a lover or a mother he lost. Loss of beloved is a constant motif in Poe’s works. This is explained by his real life experiences. He lost his mother, his stepmother didn’t always give him the attention he needed. It made him crave attention.He fell in love with his best friend’s mother (wrote his first poem). He married Virginia (13) when he was 24. When she died of tuberculosis he was distracted with grief and became an alcoholic. The same idea that we find in the Raven can be found in Annabel Lee. The idea of starcrossed lovers: Gods are so envious of their love that they try to separate them. The Supernatural: this poem is widely known for the feeling of terror and gloom it provokes for the reader, simply because of its supernatural elements. The setting, the state of the lover 62
and his isolation are one part of the theme. The raven itself is an element of supernatural – a ghastly bird coming in the room of a scholar at a late hour, uttering words that scare him out of his wits. The narrator is in a numb state between walking and sleeping, life and death, the perfect basics for a supernatural setting. Life in death and death in life: The narrator is obsessed with death, and is desperately trying to bring his lost Lenore to life; the other solution would be his own death and seeing his lost love in Heaven. The state of the narrator is exactly this: a numb feeling of being alive, stuck between death and life. The raven serves to bridge the gap between the two worlds – he is a messenger from heaven or hell. „Plutonian shore― – after Pluto, Greek god of underworld. Questioning of faith: dualistic theme, as through the poem, the narrator questions his faith in God and the afterlife, as well as his own faith in Lenore and his love for her. In the end he returns to the „god he loves― and the thought of his darling. Alienation and loneliness: at the very beginning, we are faced with the fact that the narrator is located in a distant and secluded place, far from civilization and far from those he loves. This theme is necessary for the overall feeling of melancholy in the poem. The End: a feeling of finality undergoes through the whole song. With notions such as midnight and December, the end of a day and the end of a year, we see the glimpses of a nearing ending (death) for the narrator The answer the narrator received each time was already predetermined and both the reader and the narrator knew what the reply was going to be; therefore, continuously torturing the narrator. The main theme of the poem is one of undying devotion. The narrator experiences a perverse conflict between desire to forget and desire to remember. He seems to get some pleasure from focusing on loss. The narrator assumes that the word "Nevermore" is the raven's "only stock and store", and, yet, he continues to ask it questions, knowing what the answer will be. His questions, then, are purposely self-deprecating and further incite his feelings of loss. Poe leaves it unclear if the raven actually knows what it is saying or if it really intends to cause a reaction in the poem's narrator. The narrator begins as weak and weary, becomes regretful and grief-stricken, before passing into a frenzy and, finally, madness. Unity of Effect: Poe took this concept from ancient Greek philosophers and writers. A good work of art should have a unity of time, space and action. Poe implemented this unity in his work, elaborating his methods in „Philosophy of Composition― In "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe stresses the need to express a single effect when the literary work is to be read in one sitting. A poem should be only 100 lines long. A poem should always be written short enough to be read in one sitting, and should, therefore, strive to achieve this single, unique effect. The most important thing to consider in "Philosophy" is the fact that "The Raven," as well as many of Poe's tales, is written backwards. The effect is determined first, and the whole plot is set; then the web grows backwards from that single effect. Poe's "tales of ratiocination," e.g. the Dupin tales, are written in the same manner. "Nothing is more clear than that every plot, 63
worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen" The work must have a unity: of time, subject, matter, action, tone etc. The location of the narrator is very luxurious and secluded – parallels with ancient Greek mythology An artists should start a poem by thinking of what effect he wants the poem to have on the reader All poems should be about beauty. People should not seek truth in art but beauty. After choosing Beauty as the province, Poe considered sadness to be the highest manifestation of beauty. "Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones" Didactic poetry = no poetry. The perfect poem should evoke sadness as an emotion. The tone should be melancholy. Subject matter and theme: the death of a beautiful woman, as the perfect combination of beauty and melancholy. Of all melancholy topics, Poe wanted to use the one that was universally understood, and therefore, he chose Death as his topic. Poe (along with other writers) believed that the death of a beautiful woman was the most poetical use of death, because it closely allies itself with Beauty. After establishing subjects and tones of the poem, Poe started by writing the stanza that brought the narrator's "interrogation" of the raven to a climax, the third verse from the end, and he made sure that no preceeding stanza would "surpass this in rythmical effect." Poe then worked backwards from this stanza and used the word "Nevermore" in many different ways, so that even with the repetition of this word, it would not prove to be monotonous. Poe builds the tension in this poem up, stanza by stanza, but after the climaxing stanza he tears the whole thing down, and lets the narrator know that there is no meaning in searching for a moral in the raven's "nevermore". The Raven is established as a symbol for the narrator's "Mournful and never-ending remembrance." "And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor, shall be lifted - nevermore!"
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29. The Fall of the House of Usher: Characters of Roderick and Madeline Usher
The main characters in the story resemble typical characters Poe wrote about. Roderick is the main character and the rest are put in the story to help us understand him better. The other characters are Madeline, his deceased sister, the narrator and the House. Roderick: Autobiographical elements: Poe’s anxiety, restlessness, fear, disconnection from reality reflect in Roderick’s own troubles and some suppose that they even resemble physically He is one of the last descendants of the House of Usher, an old and respectable family At the beginning we find out that he has sent a letter to the narrator urging him to come. Being unable to cope with the situation, Roderick is helpless and his letter demands (rather than asks) for help – ISOLATION, DEVASTATION Appearance: Physical appearance reflects mental state According to the narrator, his once handsome and pleasant appearance is now completely different. Roderick is now miserable, pale, cadaverous, thin and ill. He is helpless and almost inhumane. Suffers from a mental illness; depression and acuteness of the senses (cannot stand food, odours or light), anxiousness Reason: mysterious illness of his sister (we can conclude it is catalepsy) who is his only friend and relative left, her eventual death will leave him completely alone Art: Spiritual activity is pronounced in his character. Enjoys intellectual activities: reading, writing, painting- he stands for the mind, intellect, spirit, soul. Music and painting, there to fill his free time in order not to think about his desperate situation, also there to show how his misery manifests Paintings are chaotic, they present his mental torment and struggle, his deepest concerns (one of them being Madeline’s tomb), tries to find an escape through art. Books he reads are also gloomy. His interests are in the mysterious spiritual, fanciful, religious subjects. „The Haunted Palace“ – one of the ’fantasias’, he accompanies the poem on the guitar It shows the contrast between the past and the present state of his mind and his obvious nostalgia for the past times. 65
Contrast: youth, harmony and sanity gave way to chaos, fall of thought thought troubles him the most. The title is a metaphor for his mind. The word haunted: 1. Literally, the house and its owner are haunted in the poem 2. Poe often felt haunted by evil forces 3. Roderick feels haunted and controlled by his house 4. Roderick predicts being haunted by Madeline Contemplating murder: There are indications that he is planning to entomb Madeline. The picture of the vault, the words ’entombed’ and ’blushed’ in the poem (Madeline’s cheeks are blushed) Reason: fear! Words of horror repeated many times through the story to emphasize it. This fear of being the only descendant of an ancient family makes him murderously enraged. After the entombment: his state deteriorates, he feels haunted by Madeline. His anxiety and disturbance reach a climax when she reappears. The House: the description of the house can be applied to Roderick as well with his fall, it symbolically crumbles down and disappears in the lake. Madeline: Stands for the body, senses, reality, matter. She is only physically present, we do not find out about her interests. His twin, appears three times but her presence is felt throught the whole narration. Ill, suffers from catalepsy, her death is only a matter of days. She is presented with deliberate vagueness, detached from the real world. Her description is vague, her beauty is only hinted, she doesn’t utter a word. (Male-centred world in Poe’s works; she only exists to explain Roderick’s character better) Their Relationship: Mental and physical components of a single being or soul, even supposed to be incestuous. They can sense what is happening to each other, only when Madeline is safe, Roderick is sane and filled with harmony. Illnesses: Roderick’s mental illness, makes his senses acute, tortures him and drives him to the world of imagery and delusion. His body is trying to get rid of the senses and everything physical until the only thing he has left is his intellect. Madeline’s illness is physical, she is in a coma-like state most of her time, her body is stiff. It seems that her body rejects her intellectual side. 66
The illnesses hint to what Roderick and Madeline represent. Her death: a change in attitude; he’s lost, restless, even more detached from the world; with her return he is destroyed: mind and body cannot live or exist without each other. Their relationship is deemed to be fatal, no soul can be divided. It is best evident in the end where they die together, bound to one another forever.
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30. The Fall of the House of Usher: Elements of Horror
From the very beginning it is evident that this is a horror story. The first paragraph establishes the atmosphere of terror and suspense and the condition of the mansion and by that also the condition of Roderick’s mind. These conditions disable an individual from living, developing and keeping his common sense, especially when he is isolated, from the outside world for so long. They take a part of the blame for Roderick’s state of mind and partially explain how he could do such a terrible thing as to bury his sister alive. Entombment – the central and scariest part: When Roderick entombs Madeline, he is very confused and restless. Although he is aware of her being cataleptic, he turns the screws on her coffin and secures the door – he consciously buries her alive. His mental state deteriorates and he continuosly hears sounds and he knows they come from Madeline One night the storm increases terror and fear, the awareness of her being alive tortures him. In order to calm him down, the narrator reads him a story (romance) and it happens that banging, scratching and screaming from the story coincide with Madeline’s while she is attempting to leave her tomb. The narrator is not acquainted with the situation and he ascribes the sounds to his imagination, while Roderick acts as if he notices none of them; finally the narrator asks Roderick if he hears the same sounds, he says that he has been hearing them for a few days but he was afraid to tell and ascribes his action to his acute senses and mental condition, but he is aware that she is coming to punish him. The End: Poe creates suspense throughout the whole story, it reaches its climax in the last scene where the suspense and horror are most intensive. Madeline reappears, she is standing at the door all covered in blood, looks horrifying. Roderick us petrified, when she falls at him they die together. This scene is both horrible and fascinating at the same time. After this the narrator runs out of the house and in the same time starts dividing into two points at the place where he previously saw a crack – a symbol of separation of the mind and body, separation of the family, decay of the house and the separation of the house and everything it stands for. The house sinks into a lake – when the last descendants have fallen, the mansion falls too, symbolizing the end of the House of Usher. Other elements: The mystery of Madeline’s illness; the vagueness of her appearance Roderick’s madness: his art, losing control of his own conduct 68
His helplessness produces rage which causes him to muder Madeline Mysterious sounds, blood, storm, fog, isolation; isolated mansion Supernatural elements: House which seemed firm separated and fell exactly when the siblings died Conciding of sounds Roderick’s death because of fear Blood-red moon, highly unusual weather No ghosts in the story but Madeline could function as one Unity of Effect: 1. 2. 3.
Briefness – the story must be read in a single sitting, so that the outside world does not distract the reader from the unity of the story Keeping the reader focused: words of terro repeated many times (depression, horror, terror, gloom, dark, etc.) in different contexts. Concise description, atmosphere, tone, all have to be unison Symbolism: descriptions sometimes have double reference, some phrases refer both to the house and Roderick (to emphasize the dark side of his mind that will lead him to destruction)
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31. Walt Whitman’s Poems: Themes, Form, Structure
What made Whitman one of the greatest American poets were the courage and vision upon which new epochs are created. He refused to conform to European trends of the time and created his own original and recognizable style. Themes: His life was what mostly influenced the themes he used. The title of his collection „Leaves of Grass― already suggests the theme of nature and the importance of nature for Whitman – he saw his poetry as something organic, he wanted it to grow and since he always worked on his poems and republished them, they DID grow. The village and the city: (urban vs rural surrounding) – influenced by his childhood spent on a farm on Long Island and later in urban Brooklyn, where he had a chance to meet many different people. The human body: glorified it and said that there is nothing dirty about it, that it is of the same importance as soul, every particle of a person is important. Love: wrote about all sorts of love, but since he was openly homosexual in some poems he explores his sexuality, loneliness and discomfort for not being able to express it. War: since he worked in the war as a male nurse, he had a first-hand experience of all the brutality but also all the sorrow of the families whose sons and fathers never got back home. Equality: equality of all the parts of America and all the people that live in it, equal importance of each person in the society (shown in his catalogues) Freedom Influenced by transcedentalism Form and Structure: Catalogue: basic unit of his poetry. In these catalogues he addressed everybody because he didn’t want anyone to feel excluded. Tries to present people, body parts (or whatever is included in the catalogues) as a whole, but also emphasizing their variety. Aria: a part of the opera, aimed for one person to sing it, very lyrical, carries a lot of emotion In his poetry arias are printed in italics, thus they are put in focus. Their rhythm is different from that of the whole poem. Free-verse: gave him possibilities to express himself, more than he would be able to using a conventional metre.
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POEMS: One’s – Self I Sing: The opening of Leaves of Grass, announces his major concerns and says to whom his poems are dedicated. His focus is the simple, everyday person, but above all, an individual Calls for the unity of readership to whom he is singing but also establishes himself as an individual. Wants soul and body, man and woman to unite, so he announces the new approach whose focus will be the modern, contemporary person. Me Imperturbe: Themes of nature and self-balance. Wants all parts of America to be in unison and to turn to nature and learn this self-balance from them. Evident influence of transcedentalism. I Hear America Singing: Theme of poet being a part of a mass but still an individual. Here he employs catalagoue, it is one of his typical poems He says how each individual, of any professions, sings their own strong, melodious song The job of the poet is to collect all these songs and put them into his own poetry. Whitman agrees with Shelley that the poet is a seer (because he can see more than many ordinary people) and sayer (than says all that through his poetry), he is capable of voicing what other people see. Song of Myself, Part 2: Theme of poet as a prophet – he believed a time will come when poets will replace priests. Expresses the idea that on a certain level, we are all the same, we carry poetry in ourselves. What we need to do is always discover something more („there are millions of suns left―) and gain our own knowledge. We shouldn’t take what somebody else wants to give us, but go and discover new things ourselves, find out what matters in our own time. Song of Myself, Part 6: Theme of nature, a series of answers to a child’s question, „What is grass?―
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Grass as a central theme because it is very common, it is all around us, an everyday, ordinary thing (very modest and humble, yet universal); its green colour symbolizes life and vitality; it is connected with nature, spring, growth and it constantly regenerates. 1. 2. 3.
Grass is perceived through the self, and the personal feelings, so we can all see that the poet feels good in nature. It can be perceived through God, as a gift from God to mankind, and God doesn’t want to be prominent, just like the grass. It is the „babe of vegetation“, meaning it is the first thing that appears in the spring when nature wakes up; it is short, small, soft, gentle and it grows – that is why it symbolizes life. Grass is „uniform― – something that includes everything and applies to everything. Also „hieroglyphic― – something that has to be translated, meaning that as we start thinking about it, numerous associations come to our mind, so we have to interpret them somehow. We can interpret it in terms of unity, democracy and equality everywhere
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It can stand for death Again, it is universal as it grows from all graves. As it grows directly from the dead, it can be their way to communicate with the living and save themselves from remembrance. The poet somehow wants to channel those words of the dead, because they may,in some aspect, continue to live He ends the poem by concluding that „nothing relapses―, nothing is destroyed forever and that dying is even luckier than living probably because we all have our own visions of life after death and we don’t want to believe it’s going to be so bad. In the end we can conclude that life and death are universal, just like nature, just like grass and that is one of the reasons why his poetry is organic. (Influence of transcedentalism) Part 11: Twenty-eight Young Men On the surface level – theme of body, physical love, women’s passion. On a deeper level – Whitman’s barrier to confess his own sexuality Talks about a woman who has all the wealth she needs, but she is alone and without love She is watching 28 young men bathing by the shore and she imagines herself among them as the twentyninth bather, having fun and caressing them, but they are completely oblivious of her presence. This 29th bather symbolizes desire, sex, yearning, lust and passion. Some think it is actually Whitman himself who at the time still repressed his sexuality and couldn’t talk about it. I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing: A poem written in his middle age. Poetry, inspiration, loneliness, nature. A live-oak is a symbol of strength. It stands alone and symbolizes poet’s own loneliness and its leaves present the words of a poet. It looks rude (because Whitman was very outspoken about all kinds of social problems and therefore considered rude) unbending (he really held on to his principles, didn’t write as everyone else did), lusty (because of his sexuality). The poet wonders how an oak can produce leaves standing alone, poet cannot create without companionship and love. 72
INTRODUCTION FOR ALL TOPICS – Emily Dickinson: Emily Dickinson served as a role model for all women poets who came after her. She was the first one, brave and in a way rebellious enough to introduce, so to say, a whole new model of that time woman – woman not afraid to be independent, inventive and imaginative. Her humble and recluse life proves that it is not of great importance to travel widely or live a scandalous life full of drama in order to write great poetry. Although she knew ―the shore is safer‖, Emily Dickinson was well aware that one cannot discover new waters if he or she is afraid to let go of the shore. Therefore, she committed her life to researching and exploring, to some other artists, terrifying sides of both life and death, and very sophisticatedly putting her discoveries into words explaining her views of them metaphorically through many images among which nature, love, death, religion and poetry were one of the most powerful ones.
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33. Emily Dickinson: Theme of Love
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The range of her love poetry is wide: many of her poems express her absolute devotion to the chosen one, but whether the chosen one is of earthly or heavenly being is hard to say. Some of her poems have an unmistakable erotic tone, which often puzzles those who look for biographical references in her poetry. Other poems speak of the tragedy of separation. Love is seen as fleeting and transitory and therefore is often painful and frightening. Her belief that any relationship is foredoomed by time’s encroachment that weakens and finally destroys it, led to her tragic renunciation of love. Nevertheless, she loved and was loved by her family and her cycle of intimate friends.
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Not all the experiences we come across in her poems are real, some of them are imagined since the ―I‖, so frequent in her poetry, is often a fictive one.
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When talking about Dickinson’s poems in which the theme of love prevails, we can differentiate between several subgroups among which the most poems are those about passion, those that describe her feelings when she is without love and those dedicated to ―Master‖. (Master = any influential male figure in her life: father, lovers, God, Jesus, reverend Charles Wadswarth).
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Love, to he, often led to a crucifixion of the heart, pain and a heavy sense of loss and is therefore commonly associated with the thoughts of evanescence, destruction and death.
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Wild Nights – Wild Nights: Open, explicitly erotic although it was not her custom to write about passionate love. Wild nights are here only hypothetical – what the speaker and her lover would have if they were together. She wants those passionate wild nights to happen, she yearns for them. However, her heart is partly closed. She is closed and she’d rather be free and not have her life guarded by any rules. She want to be tied with her lover, wants him to provide safety for her, but at the same time she wants to be free. Eden is presented as the sea and she often depicts the sea as the male force. Here, she wants to anchor to him but also to explore him and his depths.
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Done with the compass, done with the chart- they do not need reason. The sea can be either male or a female force so the speaker can also be either male or female. Dickinson sometimes writes from the male perspective (like in A Narrow Fellow). Sea and lake usually symbolise female principle.
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Over the fence: Here she says how strawberries which are red, sweet, juicy and sensual symbolize summer and therefore stand for love and passion, and they also grow over the fence which implies that they are forbidden. She knows that she could climb over this fence if only she wanted to. But she is aware that if she gave in to this passion she would be judged and punished by God because she acted immorally. It would leave a mark on her. On the other hand, if God were a boy, he would certainly transgress and would be more compassionate. This poem reflects the double standards she lived by. Men could do certain things women were forbidden, and not get looked down and judged by the society.
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Heart! We will forget him: She explains how lover is someone that gives love, warmth, light, life. She tells her heart they’ll forget him and everything did. However, she is aware that 74
it is not easy as it might seem and that remembering him even for a second would bring all the memories back. -
I envy seas: Deals with the distance between lovers. She is envious of every object that gets in contact with her lover. The whole poem shows just how deep her pain is. (Written at the time when reverend Charles Wadsworth left)
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If you were coming in the Fall: She is trying to show how anxious she would be if he were coming. She would be like housewife preparing for the guest (uses domestic imagery which tells a lot about her and her way of life). If she just knew he were coming, days, years, centuries wouldn’t be long, she would keep waiting. If she knew that she would have life in the eternity with him she would just toss this life and take up the next, happier one. But as she doesn’t know when and if she would see him, this life is unbearable, and it hurts and torments her. What troubles her is the indeterminacy of the time of their separation.
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Forever at His side to walk: Dedicated to Master. Might be about lover or God. Either way, she wants to walk forever by his side and considers herself smaller than him. If she were the one with him, she wouldn’t mind feeling grief or joy.
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My Life stood- a Loaded Gun: can be classified into Master poems although it deals with a lot more. It is about both her activity and passivity as woman, freedom to crate and oppression from the society. A loaded gun here probably stands for the oppressed inner strength of women not allowed to express themselves, and she is being one of them. This surrender of womanhood transformed her into a weapon and in return owner’s recognition and adoption ―identified‖ her. Now that the owner/Master carried her away, she has freedom but she is also owned and possessed. She becomes active as they go hunt the Doe (symbol of women’s fragility). Every time she fires as a gun, she actually speaks and nature replies instantly. And when she speaks her pleasure erupts and nature reflects her mood. It causes the eruption of joy and strength. At night she guards the Master. She is not beside him, but above his head. But as a gun she is useless until someone pulls the trigger and that’s why she needs him to inspire her in a way guide her.
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The Soul selects her own Society- It can be about both love and religion. She expresses her attitude to religion like in Some keep Sabbath. However, since she was in love with a clergyman it might be that she employs religious imagery to speak about love. The poem deals primarily with the spiritual aspect of love. The soul is the one that selects (alliteration: sound S). It is the most Godly part of human being. She says how a choice that is once made cannot be altered, it is forever. Like Shakespeare she speaks about marriage of true minds. She does not need material things: the highest earthly wealth (Emperor) means nothing to her. In the final stanza she says her love will never disappear: again a parallel with Shakespeare’s sonnet: Love is not love which alters when alteration finds.
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Through this relation with the Master she establishes relation with poetry. She always needs someone to tell her that her poetry is good.
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Mostly speaks about love between persons who are separated and hopelessness of separation.
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34.
Emily Dickinson: Theme of Religion
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Reverend Charles Wadsworth – Dickinson regarded him as ―dearest earthly friend‖, ―beloved clergyman‖, ―Master‖1. He was 16 years older than Dickinson, happily married and committed to his wife and children. Exchanged letters with Dickinson but unaware of her spiritual and emotional passion for him. She listened to his sermons which focused more on individuals and their relation to God. Under his influence she identified with Jesus more than with God. Just like Jesus people didn’t understand her and tended to exclude her from the society. 8 years after they met, he left Philadelphia – she grieved and in the year of his departure she wrote 360 poems and the following two years another 315 (more than 1/3 of her total output). These were poems of loss, despair, fear, death, love, religion.
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Dickinson was a very deeply religious poet, dealing with classic religious themes such as death, redemption, immortality.
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Her vocabulary bears the stamp of her puritan heritage: she often paraphrases Bible and uses the terms of the established theology: salvation, redemption, sacrament, lord, Heaven, Paradise…
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Nevertheless, her feelings were unorthodox. She didn’t respect the dogma. She was dissatisfied with Puritan tradition, questioned most of its theology, discarded much and redefined a great deal of it.
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At early ages she came to realize that she could never accept religion as convention that religion would have to be experienced not as teaching, but as a way of life.
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Her religion had no church because she could converse directly with God on personal terms. In some of her poems she uses the images of conventional faith, analyses and investigates them in her mind and in the end turns them against themselves.
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Some of the most vital religious themes she uses is the theme of life after death.
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Emily’s feelings towards immortality were indefinite and ambiguous not only because it is mysterious but because she felt she needed some faith to lean on when she experienced death of people close to her (mother, father, nephew, several close friends) .
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She often identifies with Jesus. Often calls herself Queen of Cavalry (cavalry-Jesus’ road to crucifixion). She understands his suffering she was also excluded from society and her poetry was rejected.
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It took her long to gain confidence. In her childhood she was troubled by religion. Her ancestors are Calvinists so as a child she went to sermons where priests would threaten with damnation, fires of hell... She would often not want to go to church but she was pressured to go. Later on, mostly due to the influence of a clergyman she was in love with she learned how personal relation to God is more important. She thought religion was too limiting: it should be more liberal. 1
Men who influenced her deeply were called ―Master‖ among which were her father, ―lovers‖, Jesus, God. 76
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Some keep the Sabbath going to Church: People go to church, and she stays at home because her garden is her church. She already has her wings and has a freedom to give herself the permission not to go to church. Instead of having a church choir she has her birds. She says she wears her Wings shich can mean 1. freedom or 2. that she is good which gives her permission not to go to the church. God is her preacher (not the priest) – his sermons are never long, he is brief. She says she is already in Heaven. Her attitude is very confident which is not the case in all her poems.
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Faith is a fine invention: She is questioning religion. Only when in need people turn to God and start paying as if they’re bargaining with God. She even compares religion with microscopes ( invention: faith vs. microscopes) saying that they’re more reliable and that they give you an immediate answer. She is being sarcastic. Instead of being everyday practice people pray only when they are in trouble. Microscopes are more prudent in an emergency because they give immediate results. Science is more to the point and realistic while prayer might not work.
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Prayer is a little implement: Again being sarcastic and ironic. She depicts a prayer as a tool by which people try to reach God. But God is not always available, he is busy and he’s not always listening so people have to fling their prayers, but than again, even then he might not hear you. Prayer is supposed to be both ways. interaction with God but people make it much more mediocre. They fling their prayer: aggressiveness.
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Papa above: She could be referring either to her father or to God. She wants a place for herself in her father’s house and in Heaven. Even though she is small (compares herself to a mouse) and insignificant, she deserves to have her secured place. She thinks she is worthy of it.Again employs domestic imagery: Cupboards.
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Why – do they south Me out of Heaven? : She’s asking herself what she did wrong… Did she sing too loud? = was she too outspoken in her poetry? Was it a mistake speaking her mind? She wants the second chance to enter Heaven, she would behave, just to prevent Angles from shutting the door. In the last stanza she says if she were God, she wouldn’t do that – she wouldn’t forbid anyone to enter. She is being obedient and says that she could sing minor notes- not be so loud. If she were God the Gentleman in the White Robe she wouldn’t behave in such a way.
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35. Emily Dickinson: Theme of Nature
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From the early age, Dickinson wrote poems about flowers which she adored with great sentiment. She particularly loved the white saprophytic Indian pipe, a very scarce and rare flower in occurrence. Interestingly, years after her death, the very same flowers graced the title page of the first edition of her published poems. Furthermore, she tended to associate certain flowers like for instance gentians and anemones with youth, innocence, modesty and restraint, while she identified others with prudence and insight
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As far as her knowledge of nature is concerned, Dickinson gained it while studying botany during her school years. Perhaps the most contributive to her knowledge of plants and flowers was a herbarium she was assigned to make in her botany class. She collected more than 400 plant specimens from forests, fields, but from her own well kept garden as well. Many literature scholars and critics consider this project as a beginning of Emily Dickinson’s grand love for nature which she celebrated as a holy temple.
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Beside many people who had significant roles in the process of carving the attitude and the style of Emily Dickinson, some movements also greatly contributed to that. Among all, Transcendentalism was probably the most influential one with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman as the most famous representatives. However, Emily Dickinson is not considered to be a Transcendentalist, even though her poetry portrays similar ideas to for instance Whitman’s. They both searched for the way to write poetry that differed from their society. Nevertheless, Dickinson never actually red any of Whitman’s work, for it was considered to be too aggressive and outspoken for that period. As opposed to Transcendentalists, who claimed that God should be seen and found through nature, Emily Dickinson saw nature as godlike, and celebrated it as her own religion. One the other hand, similar to many Transcendentalists, Dickinson also tried to heal and rebuild the original relationship between the people, God and nature.
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Although Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson shared many similarities when it comes to poetry, they also had their differences when it comes to the subject of nature. They shared a great love for nature and tried to emphasize the significance of an individual in it; however their approaches towards nature differed to some extent. Possibly, Whitman felt a slightly deeper connection to nature than Dickinson. As opposed to Whitman who felt he was a part of nature, Emily Dickinson viewed herself as an observer of nature – as someone who was on the outside watching it.
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Unlike the Romantics who adored and celebrated nature for its exquisite greatness and range, Dickinson was concentrated to its details which were commonly overlooked by other poets. That Dickenson paid much attention to almost every single object and creature in nature proves the fact that she often wrote about things such as bumble bees, flies, hills and eclipses, which other poets writing about nature usually failed to capture. Dickenson herself said that she found ―manifestations of the universal‖ in these details which made her feel harmonious and blissful. She sought inspiration mostly in her garden where she spent many hours watering flowers, watching tiny creatures such as birds and bees flying around, in other words enjoying herself to the fullest. This observation of hers made Dickinson think deeply and carefully about the meaning of life. She tried to draw a parallel and find certain symmetry between life in her garden and life in human society in general. While William Wordsworth, the father of English Romanticism, wrote in celebration of men’s return to nature, not only 78
artfully allusive descriptive poems, but allegorical pieces of art with the emphasis on the points that are to be revealed behind the description, Emily Dickinson wrote like she never actually left her natural surrounding. As opposed to Romantics who were continually coming back to rural areas, or to be precise, to nature in order to escape from the chaotic modern life in the industrialized cities, Emily Dickinson left her home town - Amherst only a couple of times. She spent most of her time in the house, and during the last few years of her life she even refused to leave her room. Hence her poems have a pretty much straight-forward attitude towards nature since she thought nature itself was worth adoring and praising without the need to carry any metaphorical meaning behind it. All in all, her love for nature can simply be described as worship. -
The garden at her home meant the world to Emily Dickinson throughout all her life and she took special care of the entire flora in it. She herself watered it and clipped it regularly. She even wrote strict instructions for their care when she was on a few occasions away from home. Besides being the place where Dickinson could freely observe the nature, her garden was also a kind of a shelter or a safe harbor for her to escape to from everybody and everything. In other words, the garden was the place where she felt like she belonged. Additionally, it was obvious that Dickinson could much easier identify with the living things in her garden than with the people that surrounded her. That is to say, she felt like she was a part of nature.
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I taste a liquor never brewed is the best representation of Emily Dickinson’s powerful amusement and satisfaction with every living thing that surrounded her. In this poem where she adopts a persona of a drunken bee, drunk on a liquor never brewed, she actually glories the air, the dew, and the never-ending summer days which completely intoxicate her. The liquor never brewed here represents the beauty of nature that she cannot get enough of. Paradoxically, it seems as if the more she drinks, the thirstier she gets. She finds herself in such a trans-like mood that she continues drinking even after her death. Yet the central image here evokes an intoxicant that is not made from what is found in nature but from something that is only to be found in the imagination. Finally, it seems as if the process of creating poetry serves as a kind of intoxication for Emily Dickinson.
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She plays with size when mentioning tankards scooped in pearl. Her alcohol is even more powerful than European. Inns are pubs in the sky, landlords are gods. The whole nature is a pub where she goes to drink. She is not allowed to enter heaven because of her whimsical behaviour. They envy her on her freedom. They are leaning against windows and watching her.
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A narrow Fellow in the grass: In the opening lines, Dickinson gives a precise visual description of the snake which is moving through the grass. However, not once does she mention the word snake in the poem. She calls it a ―narrow fellow‖ and by this she is trying to catch the readers’ attention and make them think about this creature in unfamiliar terms. Instead of slithering, he rides. She continues by asking the readers whether they have seen it and tells us where this slim fellow could be found. Additionally, she gives us several clues to why most people fear snakes. Later on she introduces a barefoot boy who comes upon it unaware of snake’s presence but for some reason doesn’t get bitten. She implicitly indicates that if the snake bit the boy, it was only out of fear and it came naturally. On the other hand, it seems like she knows where they live and they somehow know her. Nevertheless, as much as she is understanding of their reason for being, she gets scared when she runs into them unexpectedly. Therefore we get the impression she prefers they keep to their place and she keeps to hers. This way she might have been explaining how she felt towards other people and how she felt about her ―place in the world‖. On the other hand, the snake can be seen as a metaphor for a man in which case one can conclude that she is actually afraid of men. 79
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I started early – Took my Dog: In this poem Dickinson mentions mermaids which is a very good demonstration of her mixing of natural and supernatural elements. She says the mermaids are in the basement, alluding to the bottom of the sea, where they are thought to live. As opposed to basement, in the second stanza she mentions the ―Upper Floor‖ which stands for the surface of the sea where the mermaids came to look at her because she is so unusual and different. Although evidently distinctive, she thinks of herself as small and calls herself a Mouse. In the next stanza she introduces a sexual imagery, which very commonly appears in her poetry. She depicts the sea as a male force and gives it a sexual connotation. With gradation she creates the gradual advance of that male power that is trying to capture her and even in a way consume her, but at one point she very skillfully reverse these roles and by the end of the poem the sea withdraws and pays her respect. Obviously, this poem is just one of the reasons why Dickinson’s poetry cannot be taken for granted without deeper analysis.
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36. Emily Dickinson: Themes of Poetry
The best definition of how poetry should look, but at the same time the description of her own poetry is actually given by Emily Dickinson herself: ―If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way‖. In other words, Dickinson was never concerned about technical matters such as rhyme, metric feet or the organization of stanzas; rather she was focused on the subject matter and the emotions the poem would provoke in a potential readership. She was unhampered both by the pressure of publishing and internalized constraints and wrote as she pleased. She was revolutional, just like WW -
Tell all the truth but tell it slant: This is one of Dickinson’s most famous ―metapoems,‖ or poems about poetry, widely considered to be a key statement of her philosophy and way of writing. From this poem it is clear what her writing strategy was: she avoids being direct and uses a lot of ambiguity in her poems. She is often going in circles and uses circumvention. Slant is an important word here: Dickinson rarely used rhyme at the end of the line, she used slant rhyme. Dickinson sees the poet as a mother whose role is to isolate and protect her children/ readers from the lightning, by offering them ―kind explanations,‖ she allows them as much of the Truth as they are capable of absorbing. We are too handicapped to handle the truth because it is so light. She compares nature and truth because truth should also be like lightning: a natural phenomenom should not be manipulated with. She identifies lightening with the truth and says that lightening cannot be eased. To convey a hidden truth to the reader, the poet must first experience it herself. If all this is possible, than every man is blind?! ―Truth is such a rare thing it is delightful to tell it.‖
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Women in the 19th century were not encouraged to write poetry so they could not be direct. She uses paradoxical syllogism to tell us that. As you can’t soften lightning you should’t be able to dazzle truth. You cannot dazzle something gradually. Every man is blind, people keep masking the truth.
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They shut me up in Prose: They are probably male members of her family or society in general. Shut up can mean made silent or imprisoned. She is treated as a little girl, locked up and made to be ―still.‖ Although stillness, here, has a negative meaning, she nonetheless finds her own extravagant freedom. If she keeps silent, she’s in danger to go crazy. She feels imprisoned and introduces a bird which stands for freedom to show the contrast. She doesn’t want to fit in and is accused of treason by her society. But she is also saying that birds are beings of another sort than humans; the concept of ―treason‖ does not apply to them. Birds do not make moral decisions; like poets, their song is inborn. In the 3rd stanza she’s wondering if she can really get out of the cage and the last 4 lines can be interpreted as : Just as a Bird (Himself) simply by willing it, can rise as easily as a star and look down on captivity—so can I—.‖ In other words, she says that she will rise above the restrictions that others are truing in vain to impose on her.
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Obviously by being a poet, Dickinson has resisted her confinement to prose, a form considered more suitable to the limitations of the female mind than the rigorous demands of poetry. Thus, in overstepping the bounds of genre, Dickinson is simultaneously overstepping the boundaries of gender. Prose symbolizes norms and conventions she refused to conform to. 81
She was supposed to be domestic, a wife who cooks and cleans and not writes poetry. Her father didn’t want her to write poetry. -
In the second stanza she laughs and sneers, with the confidence of one who knows otherwise, one who sees the futility of this attempt at confinement. Her brain is in motion and cannot be stilled any more than a bird can be held by fences. The charge of Treason indicates her awareness of the political implications of her resistance to this confinement. The oppression is only effective if she believes and accepts her captor’s thinking.
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The dash with which she ends the poem is a poetic enactment of her resistance to confinement, by resising closure. Many of her poems end with a dash rendering them open to different interpretations. Does she mean she has no more difficulty than a bird or a star does in evading captivity, that she can do so with ease? Or that she has no more will? As a child she had the strength to resist but now no more?
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I’m Nobody: started t enjoy the fact that she was not going to publish her poetry. She is comparing people who think they are famous or important to frogs. People who are their audience are Bog, echoing each other.
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Publication – is the Auction: By the mid 19th century, writing had shifted from a leisure pastime into a paid subject to the laws of the market and a writer’s reputation depended on an unpredictable literary economy. This poem represents Dickenson’s refusal to subject her poetry to the demands of this literary marketplace. She believes that art shouldn’t be for sale nor competitive. If it were, she claims, it would be like selling one’s mind. People are trying to justify by poverty although it is disgusting. She would rather live in a garret (an unfurnished attic) and remain white than invest her snow- her creativity. She says that thoughts belong to God and people who think those thoughts. She does not understand people who think that they can measure and set price to Human Spirit. You can’t put your art in abox and sell it just like you can’t sell air in the parcel: paradox.
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I cannot dance upon my Toes: She is being ironic. At the time there was an opinion that in order to be a writer men needed to teach you. She had only George Eliot and Bronte sisters as her role models. But she says that a glee possesses her: although no one taught her, she has this fantasy that she can write. As the poem progresses she is being more and more sarcastic. She says she has no ringlet in her hair, no gown compares herself to a ballet dancer. She is not mad like primadonas, she does not know how to make piruetes. She wants to say that all the things that are instructed are artificial. She rejects the constructed image of femininity and does not want to conform and fit her poety into a certain mold. In the fourth stanza she says how she imagines audience in her mind: she can imagine a full house applauding. In the fifth stanza she mentions the word easy which describes her poetry: it flows naturally, it is not artificial and forced.
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The Robin’s my Criterion for Tune: Explains how much pressure there was for her to fit in. She was judged because she was provincial. The general opinion was that writers who didn’t travel didn’t have anything to say to people, travelling broadens the mind. It was customary to make a tour in Europe before you start writing. She often compares herself to birds because bird stands for freedom, voice, poetry, singing. Poetry is created spontaneously and is a part of her, something she cannot live without, just like the bird which has the natural urge to sing. Most often she identifies with Robin: she is small and modest. Robin stands for her poetry. She grew up in New England so she worked with what she had. She responds to those who criticize her confinement. She compares herself to the Queen who also never leaves her castle. If you can call me provincial you can call the Queen provincial. (lives in 82
Westminster and never goes out). Also she suggests that she is the queen of her realm: New England.
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37. Emily Dickinson: Theme of Death
- Death was always present in Dickinson’s poems, but whether it was someone dear to her who had just died or the sudden conviction of death itself is unimportant. - She is preoccupied with the theme of death to the verge of obsession. Her poems of death do not arise only from her personal experience with it (deaths of her parents, nephew, and close friends) but also from its inherent ambiguity that baffles her mind. - To her, men’s awareness of death is the essence of the human condition which differentiates men from animals. It’s a vital point of the human condition for it makes life more meaningful. - Death is men’s adventure into the unknown. The most natural complement to the love of life is an intense fear of death. Since Dickinson’s joy of living was extremely great, her poems are an attempt to overcome and triumph over the fear of death. The ways she does it vary from a simple acceptance of death as a natural phenomenon, through witty exposure of the significance often attached to it, to a vision of death as a passage from mortal state to immortality. Theme of evanescence is also closely related to the theme of death and the subject of immortality. - Her deep fear and despair at the thought of death and loss is due to her intense love of life and her experience of death of people close to her. Her feelings towards immortality are ambivalent not merely because it is a mystery but because she felt she needed some faith to lean on when people close to her died. - Father’s death: Dickinson was deeply affected by his death. The sorrow she felt was too big for her to be able to put it into words. She wrote a poem ―Dear Father‖ that began wit those words, signed it and left the space in between blank. The blank space represents the vacuum she felt after losing her parent. - After her mother died, she wrote: ―We don’t know where she is, though so many tell us.‖ She wants to believe in Heaven and the life after death, and to peacefully let her close ones to go, knowing that they’re going to be in a better place, but she is unsure of this. The images she uses to define Heaven indicate her essential uncertainty of immortality: Heaven is a House of Supposition. Heaven and Hell are projections of suffering and futile caused by death. I Heard a fly buzz-when I died: In this verse the appearance of the fly prevents the dying person from reaching thestate of ultimate calmness, despite her expectations, her death scene is disturbed by the triviality of thefly. In the second stanza a group of people gathers to observe the dying person, the last moments as the'king' is coming for her soul - 'when the king / Be witnessed in his power' . The 'king' may refer toChrist or God himself, but he can also be Death. If we approach the 'king' from a Christian point of view, upon his advent the soul will enter paradise. In the third stanza the inconsiderate fly 'interrupts the awesome approach of death' as the soul is ready to leave her life behind, and has finished her earthly businesses. Finally, the fly comes between the light and her, and the tone which, up to this point, was calm and neutral switches to an accusing one, as if the fly prevented the dreadful entrance of death and her 'glorious entrance into immortality'. Overall, we get to see a dying person's rage before death. The only thing that she doesn't seem understand about the fly, is that its 84
presence symbolizes that of death itself. In the final lines of the poem the speaker is left in darkness: 'I cannot see to see'. - I felt a Funeral, in my Brain: The speaker is reporting from beyond the grave, on what went on at her own funeral, describing the transition from life to death. The question of what comes after death is pounding in her brain. She furnishes the funeral with mourners, a service and the lifting and carrying away of the coffin. The whole funeral is an external image of her inner world as it never stands outside the speaker. Instead of a bell (which customarily rings at the funerals) tolling in her head, Space itself begins to toll. The plank of reason breaks and sends her plummeting into a downward journey that lends itself to two diametrically opposed interpretations. For some, the journey is a descent to hell. Far more likely, and more interesting in its implications is that the speaker’s descent is into psychological and spiritual depths. Finally, it seems as if the speaker came to the end of her plunge knowing something she didn’t know before. - After great pain, a formal feeling comes: She describes the state of numbness with the oxymoron ―a formal feeling‖. The three stanzas stand for three stages of the familiar ceremony: the formal service, the tread of pallbearers and the final lowering into the grave. The ―stiff Heart‖ is estranged from its own former capacity to bear great pain and has lost its ability to place the experience in the recent or distant past. The Feet are indifferent as to whether they ―go round‖ on the ground, in the air, or on whatever medium they may find themselves. The final stanza suggests the unlikeness of survival. There is no speaker or persona in the poem, the tone is impersonal, which enhances the calm objectivity that the poet uses to assess the situation. The 'formal feeling' is the disconnection between the soul and emotions, ceremoniously and calmly enduring grief. The sorrow is not physical, yet leaves the mind numbed. She personifies nerves, compares them to agroup of mourning people who are like tombs. The use of 'tombs' is not accidental, as the shock of loss and grief leaves the bodies still and calm, and the heart stiff. She expands this image by adding 'The feet, mechanical, go round / A wooden way' -quietly continuing everyday tasks andreaching contentment that is 'quartz'. The 'hour of lead' refers to the heaviness of the moment, the unbearable burden of pain which may cause the sufferer's death. She also uses the definite article the infront of nerves, heart and feet, which gives them a less specific, common quality, as they are nobody'syet everybody's. Here she underscores that agony is a universally human characteristic. The last twolines 'As freezing persons recollect the snow--/ First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.' summarize the stages of this state. 'First chill', as a result of loss and separation, then the gradual reachof the stiff coldness, by 'letting go' the body actually surrenders to Death, that is caused by this silent grieving of the soul. The passage is very powerful, as the final image is of the body freezing to death.This is a compressed and comprehensive picture of the many attributes of death: indifference, rigidness and the loss of 'vital warmth' + She wrote more than five hundred lyrics on pain and death, among which there were some less expressive, inferior ones which were simply sentimental and morbid, imagining her own death as the cause of pain of her estranged friends; her best poetry was dealing with the emotions and the 'sensations of a dying person' She applied this view to death and the details of the events immediately before and after it,trying to reach a deeper understanding thereof. This is reflected in her poems on pain and death which deal with these scenes, with vivid imagery depicting death scenes and funerals. As one needs courage to face pain, The purpose of this analysis was to 'turn deprivation into spiritual triumph' ultimately, what one attains is strength. Therefore we can establish that pain 85
as such has value, asthrough one's own experience of agony they will realize that it is inevitable and is a universal state ofhumankind. Her Puritan introspection allowed her to clearly see that death is no sudden change, as theway we live life will be projected on our death, therefore it will be just a continuation of our lives. Additionally, life happens by accident, by birth, and as much as she saw birth as a simple accident, sheextended this to death. The education that we receive by merely living is something that we accept, butwe may not expect nor want it.
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