Ruminations of a Tarnished Jewel

Quoted passages from “A Prayer For Owen Meany” by John Irving

2012-02-12T00:47:00.000-08:00

“But Owen Meany’s manner of making and keeping a thing mysterious was to
allude to something too dark and terrible to mention. He
was changing churches, he said, TO ESCAPE THE CATHOLICS—or, actually, it was
his father who was escaping and defying the Catholics by sending Owen to Sunday
school, to be confirmed, in the Episcopal Church. When Congregationalists turned into
Episcopalians, Owen told me, there was nothing to it; it simply represented a
move upward in church formality—in
HOCUS POCUS, Owen called it. But for
Catholics to move to the Episcopal Church was not only a move away from the hocus-pocus; it was a move
that risked eternal damnation.” (Pg. 30, para. 5)

“Not only did Catholics kneel and mutter litanies and creeds without
ceasing, but they ritualized any hope of contact with God to such an extent
that Owen felt they’d interfered with his ability to pray—to talk to God DIRECTLY,
as Owen put it.” (Pg. 31, para. 1)

“The Soviets said they wouldn’t test any weapons until the U.S. tested
first,” I told the canon. “Don’t you see
how deliberately provactive this is? How
arrogant! How unconcerned with any arms agreement—of anykind! Every American should be forced to live
outside the United States for a year or two.
Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else’s version
of themselves—to anyone else’s
version! Every country knows more about
America than Americans know about themselves!
And Americans now absolutely nothing
about any other country!” (Pg. 203, para. 7) (regarding the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty between the US and USSR).

An interesting notation: page 233,
third page of Chapter 6 “The Voice” had a font change. From Times New Roman to something along the
lines of Lucida. But on the next page,
234, it returned to the original font.

“Oh, boy. Mrs. Reagan said that the
congressional hearings on the Iran-contra deals had not affected the
president. Mrs. Reagan was in Sweden to
observe a drug-abuse program in a high school in a Stockholm suburb; I guess she’s one of those many American
adults of a certain advanced age who believe that the root of all evil lies in
the area of young people’s self-abuse.
Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people—not even young people
on drugs—are not the ones responsible
for the major problems besetting the world!”
(Pg., para. 8)

“It makes me sick to hear the lectures delivered to Lt. Col. Oliver
North. What are they lecturing him for?
The colonel wants to support the contras—“for the love of God and for
the love of country”; he’s already testified that he’d do anything his
commander-in-chief- wanted him to do.
And now we get to listen to the senators and the representatives who are
running for office again; they tell the colonel all he doesn’t know about the
U.S. Constitution; they point out to him that patriotism is not necessarily defined
as blind devotion to a president’s particular agenda—and that to dispute a
presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American. They might add that God is not a proven right-winger! Why are they pontificating the obvious to
Colonel North? Why don’t they have the
balls to say this to their blessed commander-in-chief?” (Pg. 339, para. 8)

(Regarding the death of Marilyn Monroe) “It has to do with all of us,” said Owen Meany, when I
called him that night. “She was just
like our whole country—not quite young anymore, but not old either; a little
breathless, very beautiful, maybe a little stupid, maybe a lot smarter than she
seemed. And she was looking for
something—I think she wanted to be good.
Look at the men in her life—Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller, maybe the
Kennedys. Look at how good they seemed!
Look at how desirable she
was! That’s what she was: She was desirable. She was finny and sexy—and she was
vulnerable, too. She was never quite
happy, she was always a little overweight.
She was just like our country,” he repeated… “And those men,” he
said. “Those famous, powerful men—did they
really love her? Did they take care of
her? If she was ever with the Kennedys,
they couldn’t have loved her—they were just using her, they were just being
careless and treating themselves to a thrill.
That’s what powerful men do to this country—it’s a beautiful, sexy,
breathless country, and powerful men use it to treat themselves to a
thrill! They say they love it but they
don’t mean it. They say things to make
themselves appear good—they make themselves appear moral. That’s what I thought
Kennedy was: a moralist. But he was just
giving us a snow job. He was just being
a good seducer. I thought he was a savior.
I thought he wanted to use his power to do good. But people will say and do anything just to
get the power; then they’ll use the power just to get a thrill. Marilyn Monroe was always looking for the
best man—maybe she wanted the man with the most ability to do good. And she was seduced, over and over again—she got
fooled, she was tricked, she got used, she was used up. Just like the
country. The country wants a
savior. The country is a sucker for
powerful men who look good. We thing they’re moralists and then they just use us. That’s what’s going to happen to you and me,”
said Owen Meany. “We’re going to be
used.” (Pgs. 381-382, para. 7)

“…Oh just drop dead! He thought.
“At that precise moment, that is what he’d prayed. Then Owen Meany hit the next pitch. This is what a self-centered religion does to
us: it allows us to use it to further
our own ends. How could the Rev. Lewis
Merrill agree with me—that Mr. and Mrs. Meany were “monsters of superstition”—if
he himself believed that God had listened to his prayer at that Little League
game; and that God had not “listened” to him since? Because he’s wished my mother dead, my father
said, God had punished him; God had taught Pastor Merrill not to trifle with
prayer. And I suppose that was why it
had been so difficult for Mr. Merrill to pray for Owen Meany—and why he had
invited us all to offer up our silent prayers for Owen, instead of speaking out
himself. And he called Mr. and Mrs. Meany “superstitious”! Look at the world: look at how many of our peerless leaders
presume to tell us that they know what God
wants! It’s not God who’s fucked up, it’s
the screamers who say they believe in Him and who claim to pursue their dark
ends in His holy name!” (Pg. 481, para.
2)

#28 A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving

2012-02-11T23:55:00.000-08:00

A
Prayer for Owen Meany was the seventh published novel by American writer
John Irving. Published in 1989, it tells
the story of John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany growing up
together in a small New England town during the 1950-60s. Owen is a remarkable
boy in many ways; he believes himself to be God's instrument, doesn’t believe
in accidents, and journeys on a truly extraordinary path. It is regarded as a symbolic and often comic
study of religious doubt and faith.
Writing from his home in Toronto,
Canada in 1987, John Wheelwright narrates the story of his childhood. Owen
Meany also featured Irving's dark reflections on American history from the
1960s to the late 1980s. I confess that
this is a time period that I am politically ignorant, or do not know as much as
I should know. Peppering his narrative
with frequent diary entries in which he chronicles his outrage against the
behavior of the Ronald Reagan administration in the late 1980s, Wheelright
tells the story of his early life in Gravesend, New Hampshire, when his best
friend was Owen Meany, who he remembers as the boy who accidentally killed
Wheelwright's mother and made Wheelright believe in God. The narrative of A Prayer for Owen Meany does not follow
a perfect chronology, as John pieces together the story he wants to tell.
Though most of its events are
fictional, the broad contour of Owen
Meany's storyline conforms to the contour of Irving's life; it is probably
his most autobiographical novel. The town in which the novel is set--Gravesend,
New Hampshire--is modeled explicitly on Irving's childhood town of Exeter, and
Gravesend Academy is simply a literary version of Phillips Exeter Academy. Like
Irving, John Wheelwright grows up on Front Street, is the stepson of an academy
history teacher, and does not know who his real father is. Like Irving,
Wheelright is dyslexic, and attends the academy and the University of New
Hampshire; like Irving, Wheelright becomes a teacher, and teaches at an
all-girls school (Irving taught at Mount Holyoke College). At the time of the
novel's narration, John lives in Toronto, where Irving now spends part of each
year. Still, Owen Meany is hardly
autobiography; though it features Irving's reflections on small-town life and
on the events of American history during his lifetime, its central character,
the miraculous Owen Meany, is entirely a product of Irving's imagination.
Irving became a teacher himself,
working at Mount Holyoke College, but he continued to write, and began to
publish novels in the late 1960s. Irving has always aspired to be a storyteller
in the Dickensian sense, and his novels--frequently long, sprawling narratives
featuring fantastical plots and memorable characters--are written for the
intelligent general reader. I find that
I am encouraged to take my time with his works.
The novel is also homage to The Tin Drum, one of the most famous
works of the acclaimed German novelist Günther Grass. Grass was a great
influence for John Irving, as well as a close friend. After briefly attending the University of
Pittsburgh, he studied at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna under
the tutelage of Grass. He eventually returned to the US and graduated from the
University of New Hampshire, following which Irving studied at the highly
prestigious Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he was mentored
by Kurt Vonnegut. It’s interesting to
note that the main characters of both novels, Owen Meany and Oskar Matzerath,
share the same initials as well as some other characteristics, and the stories
show some parallels too. Irving confirmed this explicitly in interviews and
articles. "A Prayer for Owen Meany", however, is a completely independent
story and in no sense a copy of The Tin Drum.
Irving's work lies somewhere between
literary and popular fiction; in that sense, he has not been widely accepted as
an artistically important American writer, but his work is critically acclaimed
and beloved by millions of people. His fourth novel, 1978's The World According to Garp, became a
popular sensation--as well as a movie starring Robin Williams--and since then
his novels have consistently become bestsellers. In addition to Garp, Irving has written Setting Free the Bears (1968), The Water-Method Man (1972), The 158-Pound Marriage (1974), The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), The Cider House Rules, A Son of the Circus (1994), A Widow for One Year (1998), and the
work widely considered to be his finest, 1989's A Prayer for Owen Meany. In addition to his career as a novelist,
Irving has also written screenplay adaptations of several of his works. In
1999, he won an Academy Award for The
Cider House Rules, which was made into a film starring Michael Caine.
Irving's newest work, a novel entitled The
Fourth Hand, was published in the summer of 2001, A Widow for One Year was published in 2004, and Until I Find You was released in 2005.
I ran across two interesting side
notes about Irving as I was researching him.
He was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as an
“Outstanding American” in 1993, for his great passion for and accomplishments
in wrestling. The second mention was of
a more unusual sort. According to “Chat
with Phil Jackson” on ESPN LA, the
Los Angeles Lakers coach has passed out this book to his team in the past as
part of his ritual of assigning readings to players.

#19 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

2012-02-01T11:47:00.000-08:00

“All of Greece is
bursting with pride and gratitude for our men who are greater than Achilles and
Agamemnon put together.” (Pg. 106, para. 1)
Captain
Corelli's Mandolin, released simultaneously as Corelli's Mandolin in the United States, is a 1994 Louis de
Bernières’ novel, imbued with a mythical weight and a delightful tragicomic
lightness that bursts with tenderness and wit.
It takes place on the island of Cephallonia (Kefalonia) during the Italian
and German occupation of World War II. The main characters are Antonio Corelli,
an Italian captain, and Pelagia, the daughter of the local physician, Dr.
Iannis. An important event in the novel is the massacre of Italian troops by
the Germans in September 1943 -- the Italian Acqui Division had refused to
surrender and fought the Germans for nine days before running out of
ammunition. Some 1,500 Italian soldiers died in the fighting, 5,000 were
massacred after surrendering and the rest shipped to Germany -- although 3,000
drowned when the ship carrying them hit a mine or were bombed by the British.
“New empires were now
lapping against the shores of the old.
In a short time it would no longer be a question of the conflagration of
a valley and the death by fire of lizards, hedgehogs, and locusts; it would be
a question of the incineration of Jews and homosexuals, gypsies and the
mentally afflicted. It would be a case
of Guernica and Abyssinia writ large across the skies of Europe and North
Africa, Singapore and Korea. The
self-anointed superior races, drunk on Darwin and nationalist hyperbole,
besotted with eugenics and beguiled by myth, were winding up machines of
genocide that soon would be unleashed upon a world already weary to the heart
of such infinite foolery and contemptible vainglory.” (Pg. 17, para. 1)
Captain
Corelli’s Mandolin has a complicated, episodic structure that leaps from
quiet island life to the rantings of Mussolini, Saint’s Day celebrations,
soul-destroying war in Albania, politicians’ musings in Athens, treatises on
Greek history and the hallucinations of a sick soldier. It is told sometimes in
the first person, sometimes in the third, and the style varies between stream
of consciousness, social comedy, epistle, wretched confessional, and coldly
factual historical account. The variety of style and subject encompassed make
it hard to summarize it, not that I would, as I feel it would allow you to
expect the twists and turns. But I will
tell you that the story takes us to a tightly-knit community, with the
attendant cast of quirky characters, refusing to be dominated by its
"conquerors." This is the story of love found, betrayed, lost, and at
long last found again.
Corelli's
Mandolin is not in the least a simple love story. It is a portrait of a
fiercely proud and independent little community rebelling in what small ways it
can. It is a snapshot of the horrors endured by the men in combat during the
Second World War. It is a damning commentary on the grandiose lack of sense
among the leaders who would mold the world to fit their petty desires. It is a
witty, charming, intelligent tale that possesses the reader to finish without
stopping. It is a tragic story of star-crossed lovers given one more chance at
happiness after a lifetime of loss, and it is worth every moment you spend
turning its pages.
“How the mighty have
fallen! He was a meteor who had turned
out to be an incandescent fart. All our
commanders were incandescent farts… “ (Pg. 104, para. 1)
While most WWII stories seem to portray
the Germans or the Italians as a whole, this novel meshed people of different
personalities, different religions, different political viewpoints, different
nationalities, and different ethnicities into one intricate story, showing how
they interacted and were intertwined forever.
Marxists lived peacefully with Royalists and Communists. The Italian Occupiers lived smartly with the
Greek Occupied. The religious lived
tolerably with the not-so-religious.
“Empedocles said that
God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is
nowhere. If that is true, then I don’t
need to go to church. And I don’t need
to believe the same things as you to see that you have a purpose.” (Pg. 53,
para 3)
It also made perfectly clear that
the effects of war were far reaching, beyond merely the physical. It didn’t matter what side you are on, or
what role you played.
“We found that there
is also a wild excitement when the tension of waiting is done with, and that
sometimes this transforms itself into a kind of demented sadism once an action
is commenced. You cannot always blame
soldiers for their atrocities, because I can tell you from experience that they
are the natural consequences of the inferno of relief that comes from not
having to think any more. Atrocities are
sometimes nothing less than the vengeance of the tormented. Catharsis is the world I was looking
for. A Greek word.” (Pg. 61, para.
2)
I have read many accounts of the
Second World War, been to concentration camps, and watched WWII movies, and I
don’t believe that I’ve seen one mention of Greece in any of them. It is easy for one to forget that there were
more battlegrounds than just Germany, Austria, Italy, or Poland in this war. How the occupied populations dealt with the
brutality of the Nazis is no different, though, nor was the general opinion of
the people about the Nazis. The
admirable human quality of perseverance was a streak of iron throughout the
Cephallonian population. Like a plant
regrowing after a case of bad pruning, the effects of war can be seen in the
masses, as they are memories that will never be forgotten.
“The islanders
remember that the Germans were not human beings. They were automata without principles,
machines finely tuned in the art of pillage and brutality, without any passion
except the love of strength, and without belief except in their natural right
to grind an inferior race beneath the heel.” (Pg. 358, para. 2)
“She thought about
war, and felt her heart grow heavy, reflecting that in the old days men were
the playthings of the gods, and had advanced no further than to become the toys
of other men who thought that they themselves were gods.” (Pg. 88, para 2)
In the end, everyone lost. The Greeks were betrayed by the British. The Nazis were betrayed by the Italians. The Italian Army was betrayed by their
leaders. As it is with even our Army
today, those in control cannot (or will not) see what is going on in the field,
and haven’t a clue to the reality that the Soldiers must face, and nor do they
care. Decisions are made based on
politics and self-interest, not for the welfare of the Soldiers or the people,
or even our country.
This novel was written upon a
backbone of truth. And it is fascinating
to imagine who might be the inspiration for the characters within the
novel. Any time anyone writes about
historical times, there is bound to be similarities in the characters of both
history and the novel. While de
Bernières has denied that the character of Corelli is based on Amos Pampaloni
who was then an Italian artillery captain in Cephellonia, it is acknowledged
that there are many similarities in their stories. Pampaloni survived
execution, joined ELAS, the Partisans in the Greek civil war, and fought with
them in Epirus for 14 months. Pampaloni was interviewed by The Guardian newspaper in 2000 and expressed the view that the
novel was unduly critical of the Greek left.
The novel also shows some
similarities to Bandiera bianca a
Cefalonia, a novel by Marcello Venturi published in 1963, translated in
English as The White Flag (1969). I wonder, though, can there really be no
similarities if writing about a single delicate event as on an island?
I have ordered
the movie from the library for one of our movie nights. I see that it has Nicholas Cage in it
(smiles).
“All of Greece is
bursting with pride and gratitude for our men who are greater than Achilles and
Agamemnon put together.” (Pg. 106, para. 1)

#29 The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck

2012-02-01T11:35:00.001-08:00

The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.Set during the Great Depression, this wrenching novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of sharecroppers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in financial and agricultural industries. They were victims of a ruthless system of agricultural economics, and like countless other share croppers and small-scale farmers, they become dispossessed from their land that had been their home for generations. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and, in part, because they were trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads dispose of all their belongings except for the bare necessities and migrate to California. Along with thousands of other "Okies", they sought jobs, land, dignity, and a future.The novel has an unusual structure, with chapters that present historical and social information that led to the present situation ("intercalary chapters") are interspersed with chapters of narration that focus on specific characters and develop the plot. Steinbeck emphasized that only through unity, dignity, family, and selflessness can people survive. Despite their grueling problems, the Joads move from a concern for their own welfare to a concern for everyone. This is especially obvious in the development of the main character, Tom Joad. As the novel opens, Tom has returned home after serving a jail sentence. The Dust Bowl has decimated the region; foreclosures have forced the farmers off the land. Tom and the itinerant preacher Jim Casy decide to accompany Tom's family to California to find work. Tom's initial narrow concern only for his own problems slowly moves to a concern for his family unit (quickly augmented by the addition of others unrelated by blood or kinship) and by the end of the novel, to a concern for all the Okies. Thus, the family's literal journey West becomes symbolic of an acceptance of humanity. To Steinbeck, this inclusiveness is essential because the migrants' misery is caused by people who benefit from it -- the California farmers who deliberately degrade the migrant workers to keep them powerless -- not by capricious weather or simple ill fortune. It is in the power of “we” that the overwhelming sense of loneliness and doom are brought to a level more able to be endured.The Grapes of Wrath was first regarded as a protest novel, and later was viewed as a work of art. It is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy. Unfortunately, there are those who wish to ban it from the curriculum”“The Grapes of Wrath is inappropriate and school children should not be allowed to read it. It uses vulgar language, it should be banned.”-Micheal DavisI must admit that when I was assigned to read this book back in high school, it had little more effect on me than merely an assignment. After reading it this time, my opinion of it has changed. Perhaps because I have lived long enough and have endured some hard times, some as a result of my own stupid decisions, some not. There were several phrases in this book that caught me, but this passage had a more marked effect:"One man, one family driven from the land; the rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land. A single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family camps in the ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and the children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here 'I lost my land' is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate - 'We lost our land.' The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first 'we' there grows a still more dangerous thing: 'I have a little food' plus 'I have none.' If from this problem the sum is 'We have a little food', the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket -- take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning -- from 'I' to we.'"Despite my dislike for having to read stories written in dialects, I was able to feel the emotions and thoughts being telegraphed through the words. I could hear the pain and desperation in the dialog and thoughts of the characters. I could feel the frustration and loss as they moved through the story. Often, I felt anger at the way things were stacked against them and at the way people were pitted against each other by the powers that were. It was difficult to comprehend the scenes of waste by the California farmers who felt it was worth their while to destroy that crops and livestock since it wasn’t cost effective to harvest them. With so many people starving, I cannot fathom any realistic reason as to why the starving people were not offered to purchase these items that were soon destroyed.“The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. They stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry, there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” (Pg. 349, para. 4)It seemed that the bank was an evil in this story, just as it is a frequent source of issues in today’s society. One would think that society would have learned how to hold the reins of that beast to not let it get out of control again!“We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.Yes, but the bank is only made of men.No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.” (Pg 33, para. 10-12)I felt extreme pity for “Ma”, who remained an enduring strength for those around her, and made sacrifices for the comfort and welfare of others. I often felt anger and loss of patience for Rose of Sharon, who seemed to portray self-centeredness and a lack of respect for others. I often felt compelled to reach into the story and slap her, saying that the world did not revolve around her. She finally did pay compensation for her selfishness in one of the most famous images in The Grapes of Wrath, the novel's final one, in which Rose of Sharon Joad, whose baby was recently stillborn, breast-feeds a sickly, starving man on the floor of an old barn. In this image, Steinbeck powerfully dramatizes the desperate plight of Depression-era migrant workers, whom the author felt had been abandoned by society. There seemed to be no place for these people to turn. Even the Salvation Army was mentioned several times as being an entity that not only belittled the migrant workers, but also took advantage of those down on their luck. Eventually, they learned to turn to each other, and to stick together against all the odds stacked against them, and they were feared by the California farmers and agents.“Repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.” (Pg. 238, para. 1)When The Grapes of Wrath was published on March 14, 1939, it created a national sensation for its depiction of the devastating effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s. By the end of April, it was selling 2,500 copies a day—a remarkable number considering the hard economic times. In May, the novel was a number-one best-seller, selling at a rate of 10,000 copies a week. By the end of 1939, close to a half million copies had been sold. John Steinbeck was shocked by the tremendous response to his novel. Almost overnight, he was transformed from a respected, struggling writer into a public sensation. Yet The Grapes of Wrath was bound to cause controversy in a country experiencing a decade of major social upheaval during the Depression. With the novel’s publication, Steinbeck found himself immersed in a great national debate over the migrant labor problem. Many people were shocked by the poverty and hopelessness of the story, and others denied that such circumstances could happen in America. Amidst the controversy, people who had never read a book before bought a copy of The Grapes of Wrath. At $2.75 per copy, it was affordable and quickly sold out. Libraries had waiting lists for the novel that were months long. It was perhaps inevitable that such an epic novel would cause a sensation. With the exception of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936), The Grapes of Wrath was the publishing event of the decade. Widespread charges of obscenity were brought against the novel, and it was banned and burned in Buffalo, New York; East Saint Louis, Illinois; and Kern County, California, where much of the novel is set. In fact, the novel remains one of the most frequently banned books in the United States, according to school and library associations. The book was denounced in Congress by Representative Lyle Boren of Oklahoma, who called the novel’s depiction of migrant living conditions a vulgar lie. Charges were made that “obscenity” had been included in the book in large part to sell more copies. Eventually, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt stepped in to praise the book and defend Steinbeck against his critics. In 1940, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize. Yet, at the time, such were the pressures of Steinbeck’s celebrity that he described fame as “a pain in the ass.” The popularity of the novel has endured. It is estimated that it has sold fifteen million copies since its publication. For almost sixty years, Steinbeck’s novel has been a classic in American literature; it has been translated into several languages, including French, German, and Japanese. The Grapes of Wrath has also been an integral part of the school curriculum in America since the end of World War II. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was made in 1940. I’ve ordered this from the library, and is probably the only way I’m going to get my husband to appreciate this fine piece of literature!

#27 Middlemarch by George Eliot

2012-01-19T19:47:00.000-08:00

Middlemarch:
A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary
Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then
put aside during the final illness of Thornton Lewes, the son of her companion
George Henry Lewes. During the following year Eliot resumed work, fusing
together several stories into a coherent whole, and during 1871–72 the novel
appeared in serial form. The first one-volume edition was published in 1874,
and attracted large sales.
Subtitled "A Study of Provincial Life," the
novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch during the period
1830–32. Middlemarch is a novel about
social and political reform. But it's also a novel about love and marriage. And
about trying and failing. And about second chances. It is, in other words, a
huge and wide-ranging novel. And I do mean huge (by the standards of the
average US citizen): the edition I used (the 1984 First Modern Library Edition)
is 795 pages long. That's a lot of pages, but then, Eliot had a lot to say. It has multiple plots with a large cast of
characters, and in addition to its distinct though interlocking narratives it
pursues a number of underlying themes, including the status of women, the
nature of marriage, idealism and self-interest, religion and hypocrisy,
political reform, and education. The pace is leisurely, the tone is mildly
didactic (with an authorial voice that occasionally bursts through the
narrative), and the canvas is very broad.
The length of the novel actually
forced Eliot's agent (and long-time lover), George Henry Lewes, to invent a new
way to publish it. For most of the 19th-century, novels were published in one
of two ways – either broken into installments of one or two chapters to be
printed in a magazine (like Charles Dickens's novels), or published in 3-volume
hardbacks (called triple deckers). But Middlemarch
was too big to fit into three volumes, and publishing it a chapter or two at a
time would take forever. So Lewes arranged to have it printed in eight
installments over the course of sixteen months to get people hooked on the
story, and then to print it altogether in four volumes. This was a great move
by Lewes – Middlemarch sold like
crazy, and confirmed Eliot's reputation as the greatest living English
novelist.
Although it has some comical
characters (Mr. Brooke, the "tiny aunt" Miss Noble) and comically
named characters (Mrs. Dollop), Middlemarch
is a work of realism. Through the voices and opinions of different characters
we become aware of various broad issues of the day: the Great Reform Bill, the
beginnings of the railways, the death of King George IV and the succession of
his brother, the Duke of Clarence (who became King William IV). We learn
something of the state of contemporary medical science. We also encounter the
deeply reactionary mindset within a settled community facing the prospect of
what to many is unwelcome change.
Her intention with the novel was to
analyze recent political, social, and economic threads through a series of
personal accounts. The characters and stories told within the novel are meant
to show how people are affected by historical change while it happens, and how
progress happens in people's lives. Eliot manages to weave in the Catholic
emancipation, the death of George IV, the dissolution of Parliament in 1831,
the outbreak of cholera in 1832, and the passage of the Reform Bill later that
year. Eliot manages to weave these things into the concerns of the characters
and the narrative; they are not the focus of the novel, but are balanced with
the novel's literary concerns.
One of the most widespread concerns
in the novel is change, and how people react to it. All the historical concerns
in the novel are involved in this, as are people's reactions under stress, and
to progress in their society. Eliot is able to show people acting naturally in
close detail, and present criticism on them, while still allowing the readers
to form their own opinion of them. Overall, every character in this novel is
human; each of them can be liked or disliked according to their personal
foibles and flaws. But Eliot's point is that we, like they, are human; we can
only judge them as we judge ourselves. She is not totally impartial in the
narrative, which would be impossible in making criticisms; but there is still
plenty of room for people to make up their own minds, and interpret the
characters in their own way.
Eliot's stated goal with writing
this novel, along with her others, was to give her readers "a clearer
conception and a more active admiration of those vital elements which bind men
together and give a higher worthiness to their existence," according to a
letter of 1868 that she wrote. The novel, especially the characters of Dorothea
and Farebrother, are very much influenced by Eliot's personal belief in the
religion of humanity. Her views of marriage are also interjected into the
novel; Eliot was not favorable about society's ideas of gender roles and
marriage, hence her depictions of Rosamond and Lydgate's marital troubles.
The novel is very much concerned
with women's roles, women's lives, and how they should be changed. However, it
also exposes Eliot's ambivalence on the subject. Although she had no children
and lived with her lover, George Lewes, without being married, at the same time
she believed that women should be married, and had obligations to their
husbands and children. The novel advocates change in women's roles, and in
their spheres of influence; but, at the same time, no woman is happy who isn't
married, and in a solid partnership with her husband. This tension in Eliot's
personal views forms the struggles that Rosamond, Dorothea, and Celia face, and
determines the outcome of their unions according to their character and
effectiveness.
If there is one metaphor that
serves to sum up the way people and society work in Middlemarch, it is a web. Just as Rosamond and Lydgate spin their
own web and get caught in it, every character is bound in a huge web, and if
one pulls one way or another, the web shifts, and someone is affected. Things
and people are inextricable connected and an event, like Featherstone's
funeral, can have a very palpable meaning to someone who has no involvement,
like Dorothea. Middlemarch is a very
carefully woven work of social commentary and human analysis, with many living,
breathing characters who are as real as the historical time period they inhabit.
The eight "books" which
compose the novel are not autonomous entities, but merely reflect the form of
the original serialization. A short prelude introduces the idea of the
latter-day St. Theresa, presaging the character Dorothea; a postscript or
"finale" after the eighth book gives the post-novel fates of the main
characters, minus the fate of the Bulstrodes, which is left to our imagination.
In my opinion, one of the most
memorable passages in the book is stated by Dorothea to Mr. Farebrother and Sir
James Chettam regarding the tarnished reputation of Dr. Lydgate:
“People glorify all
sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest
neighbors” (pg 699, para. 1) This was quite profound to me, and encouraged
me to admire this character despite her quirks.
An oddity for me were the
mysterious initials “E.M.” that appeared randomly on the bottom of the pages
only on the right-hand side of the book (being the odd numbers). There was no rhyme or reason for the spacing
of the initials on the pages. When the page
numbers were inserted into a program, no numerical consistencies or patterns
could be detected. Also, an oddity, is
that this book was located BEA 823.8 in the library, which was strange to me,
as well.
In general Middlemarch has retained its popularity and status as one of the
masterpieces of English fiction, although some reviewers have expressed
dissatisfaction at the destiny recorded for Dorothea. In separate centuries,
Florence Nightingale and Kate Millet both remarked on the eventual
subordination of Dorothea's own dreams to those of her admirer, Ladislaw;
however, Virginia Woolf gave the book unstinting praise, describing Middlemarch as "the magnificent
book that, with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written
for grown-up people." Martin Amis
and Julian Barnes have cited it as probably the greatest novel in the English
language. The book was a fairly good
read using above average vocabulary, but not at a level so overwhelming to the
average reader.

#32 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

2012-01-17T10:25:00.000-08:00

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad, 1967), by Gabriel García Márquez, is a novel which tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia. The non-linear story is narrated via different time frames, a technique derived from the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (as in The Garden of Forking Paths). The widely acclaimed story, considered by many to be the author's masterpiece, was first published in Spanish in 1967, and subsequently has been translated into thirty-seven languages and has sold more than 20 million copies. The magical realist style and thematic substance of One Hundred Years of Solitude established it as an important, representative novel of the literary Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s, that was stylistically influenced by Modernism (European and North American), and the Cuban Vanguardia (Vanguard) literary movement. There is a legend Gabriel Garcia Marquez likes to tell about the writing of his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. He claims that he wrote the book barricaded in his study in Mexico, after receiving a vision. One day, while he and his wife and children were in their car driving to Acapulco, he saw that he "had to tell [his] story the way his grandmother used to tell hers, and that [he] was to start from that afternoon in which a father took his child to discover ice." He made an abrupt U-turn on the highway, the car never made it to Acapulco, and he locked himself in his study. Fifteen months later, he emerged with the manuscript, only to meet his wife holding a stack of bills. They traded papers, and she put the manuscript in the mail to his publisher. Like everything Marquez writes, there is some truth and much fiction in this tale. The truth in the tale is that One Hundred Years of Solitude is a very personal book for the author. It would not have been written if he had not experienced the childhood he had. Marquez grew up with his maternal grandparents in Aracataca, Colombia. His grandparents were cousins who moved to Aracataca from Riohacha at the end of the War of a Thousand Days (1899-1902), a few years before a leafstorm. Marquez's childhood anecdotes tell of a big house full of ghosts, conversations in code, and relatives who could foretell their own deaths. It was also a house filled with guests and social events, shaded by almond trees and bursting with flowers. When Marquez's grandfather died, Marquez was sent to live with his parents. In his grandfather's absence, his grandmother, who was blind, could no longer keep up the house. It fell into a state of ruin, and red ants destroyed the trees and flowers. Also early in his childhood, Marquez witnessed the massacre of striking banana workers at a plantation named Macondo at a train station. The government made every attempt to block information from the public and pacify the foreign plantation owners. Marquez was horrified, and even more horrified when he reached high school and learned that the event had been deleted from his history textbook. Careful readers of One Hundred Years of Solitude will recognize many of these elements in the book; there is no doubt that if Marquez had not grown up in Aracataca and had a keen ear, the novel would not exist. On one hand, the context for the book is Marquez's own personal nostalgia for childhood, for his grandparents, for a big house filled with ghosts and laughter. On the other hand, the context for the book is Marquez's political beliefs and the oft-brutal realities of growing up in a particularly tumultuous developing country. Growing up in Colombia, which has a long and tragic socioeconomic history, Marquez learned about politics and economics early on. In his conversations with other Latin American writers the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes was one of the writers who gave Marquez extensive feedback and advice on the early chapters of Solitude he developed his own theoretical views about writing and politics. He often claims "The first duty of a writer is to write well"implying that writing must not be polemical but there is no doubt that the economic history of Latin America, which is a history of inequality and exploitation, has had a crucial impact on all of his writing. Marquez's approach to writing One Hundred Years of Solitude combining his own memories and imagination with focused aesthetics and an eye for the tragic history of his country has had an immeasurable impact on writers of color worldwide. Coming at the time it did, in the midst of a boom in Latin American writing, it was immediately recognized as one of the finest, if not the finest, offerings from that period. More importantly, it crossed every boundary to becoming an international bestseller and worldwide phenomenon. Even Latin American writers who found fault with it could not deny that it had directed the attentions of the literary world to Latin America. The book was an immediate commercial and critical success when it appeared in 1967, and has since been translated into 26 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide. Other writers of color from different traditions followed in Marquez's footsteps to draw attention to their own countries and struggles. As critic Regina James says, "Solitude represented the marginal and the primitive, yet it neither adopted the superior perspective of the Western anthropologist nor imitated an imagined, alien innocence. Many writers recognized their own ambivalent and difficult relationships with a traditional culture. In much of the world, the unimaginably old coexists with the unbearably new. For writers conscious of straddling two cultures, nostalgia for a simpler, primitive past vies with wonder at the persistence of habits of thought, patterns of life, and modes of belief that surely ought to be extinct, mere harmless fossils. Garcia Marquez turned puzzlement or outrage into ironic wonder, and he enhanced the strangeness of the real" Today, we see his influence in such celebrated writers as America's Toni Morrison, India (and England)'s Salman Rushdie, and Trinidad's V.S. Naipaul. One Hundred Years of Solitude is the story of seven generations of the Buendía Family in the town of Macondo. The founding patriarch of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía, and Úrsula, his wife (and first cousin), leave Riohacha, Colombia, to find a better life and a new home. One night of their emigration journey, whilst camping on a riverbank, José Arcadio Buendía dreams of "Macondo", a city of mirrors that reflected the world in and about it. Upon awakening, he decides to found Macondo at the river side; after days of wandering the jungle, José Arcadio Buendía's founding of Macondo is utopic. Founding patriarch José Arcadio Buendía believes Macondo to be surrounded by water, and from that island, he invents the world according to his perceptions. Soon after its foundation, Macondo becomes a town frequented by unusual and extraordinary events that involve the generations of the Buendía family, who are unable or unwilling to escape their periodic (mostly) self-inflicted misfortunes. Ultimately, a hurricane destroys Macondo, the city of mirrors; just the cyclical turmoil inherent to Macondo. At the end of the story, a Buendía man deciphers an encrypted cipher that generations of Buendía family men had failed to decipher. The secret message informed the recipient of every fortune and misfortune lived by the Buendía Family generations. The critical interpretation of Colombian history that is the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude draws from the nationally agreed-upon history to establish the world of Macondo, where a man's will to power allows him to invent the world according to his perceptions. Before the Spanish colonization of the Americas by "right of conquest", the northern region of South America that is contemporary Colombia had no culture akin to that of the (Peruvian) Incas, the (Central American) Mayas, or the (Mexican) Aztecs. That region was populated by the Tairona and Chibcha Indian tribes, who were organized as clans, from which derived the local monarchy who governed pre–Hispanic "Colombia". In 1509, Vasco Núñez de Balboa established the first settlement and is now named the first city of Colombia, as an advanced guard of the Spanish invasion and conquest. The founding of Macondo by the patriarchal Buendía Family is metaphor of the colonization of the future "Colombia". A dominant theme in One Hundred Years of Solitude is the inevitable and inescapable repetition of history in Macondo. The protagonists are controlled by their pasts and the complexity of time. Throughout the novel the characters are visited by ghosts. "The ghosts are symbols of the past and the haunting nature it has over Macondo. The ghosts and the displaced repetition that they evoke are, in fact, firmly grounded in the particular development of Latin American history". "Ideological transfiguration ensured that Macondo and the Buendías always were ghosts to some extent, alienated and estranged from their own history, not only victims of the harsh reality of dependence and underdevelopment but also of the ideological illusions that haunt and reinforce such social conditions. The fate of Macondo is both doomed and predetermined from its very existence. "Fatalism is a metaphor for the particular part that ideology has played in maintaining historical dependence, by locking the interpretation of Latin American history into certain patterns that deny alternative possibilities. The narrative seemingly confirms fatalism in order to illustrate the feeling of entrapment that ideology can performatively create. García Márquez uses colors as symbols. Yellow and gold are the most frequently used colors and they are symbols of imperialism and the Spanish Siglo de Oro. Gold signifies a search for economic wealth, whereas yellow represents death, change, and destruction. The glass city is an image that comes to José Arcadio Buendía in a dream. It is the reason for the location of the founding of Macondo, but it is also a symbol of the ill fate of Macondo. Higgins writes that, "By the final page, however, the city of mirrors has become a city of mirages. Macondo thus represents the dream of a brave new world that America seemed to promise and that was cruelly proved illusory by the subsequent course of history" Images such as the glass city and the ice factory represent how Latin America already has its history outlined and is, therefore, fated for destruction. Overall, there is an underlying pattern of Latin American history in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It could be said that the novel is one of a number of texts that "Latin American culture has created to understand itself". In this sense, the novel can be conceived as a linear archive. This archive narrates the story of a Latin America discovered by European explorers, which had its historical entity developed by the printing press. The Archive is a symbol of the literature that is the foundation of Latin American history and also a decoding instrument. Melquíades, the keeper of the historical archive in the novel, represents both the whimsical and the literary. Finally, "the world of One Hundred Years of Solitude is a place where beliefs and metaphors become forms of fact, and where more ordinary facts become uncertain" “The rise and fall birth and death of the mythical but intensely real Macondo, and the glories and disasters of the wonderful Buendía family; make up an intensely brilliant chronicle of humankind’s comedies and tragedies. All the many varieties of life are captured here: inventively, amusingly, magnetically, sadly, humorously, luminously, truthfully.” Critics often cite certain works by García Márquez, such as A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings and One Hundred Years of Solitude, as exemplary of magical realism, a style of writing in which the supernatural is presented as mundane, and the mundane as supernatural or extraordinary. The term was coined by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925. The novel presents a fictional story in a fictional setting. The extraordinary events and characters are fabricated. However the message that García Márquez intends to deliver explains a true history. García Márquez utilizes his fantastic story as an expression of reality. "In One Hundred Years of Solitude, myth and history overlap. The myth acts as a vehicle to transmit history to the reader. García Márquez's novel can furthermore be referred to as anthropology, where truth is found in language and myth. What is real and what is fiction are indistinguishable. There are three main mythical elements of the novel: classical stories alluding to foundations and origins, characters resembling mythical heroes, and supernatural elements". Magical realism is inherent in the novel-achieved by the constant intertwining of the ordinary with the extraordinary. This magical realism strikes at one's traditional sense of naturalistic fiction. There is something clearly magical about the world of Macondo. It is a state of mind as much as, or more than, a geographical place. For example, one learns very little about its actual physical layout. Furthermore, once in it, the reader must be prepared to meet whatever the imagination of the author presents to him or her. García Márquez achieves a perfect blend of the real with the magical through the masterful use of tone and narration. By maintaining the same tone throughout the novel, García Márquez makes the extraordinary blend with the ordinary. His condensation of and lackadaisical manner in describing events causes the extraordinary to seem less remarkable than it actually is, thereby perfectly blending the real with the magical. Reinforcing this effect is the unastonished tone in which the book is written. This tone restricts the ability of the reader to question the events of the novel, however, it also causes the reader to call into question the limits of reality. Furthermore, maintaining the same narrator throughout the novel familiarizes the reader with his voice and causes he or she to become accustomed to the extraordinary events in the novel. Critics often classify Marquez's writing as "magic realism" because of his combination of the real and the fantastic. The novel carefully balances realistic elements of life, like poverty and housecleaning, with outrageous instances, like a levitating priest. There are many purposes of this. One is to introduce the reader to Marquez's Colombia, where myths, portents, and legends exist side by side with technology and modernity. Another reason for this is lead the reader to question what is real and what is fantastic, especially in the realm of politics. It is to force to question the absurdity of our everyday lives. With regards to the subjectivity of experienced reality, we can see that although the realism and the magic that One Hundred Years of Solitude includes seem at first to be opposites, they are, in fact, perfectly reconcilable. Both are necessary in order to convey Márquez’s particular conception of the world. Márquez’s novel reflects reality not as it is experienced by one observer, but as it is individually experienced by those with different backgrounds. These multiple perspectives are especially appropriate to the unique reality of Latin America—caught between modernity and pre-industrialization; torn by civil war, and ravaged by imperialism—where the experiences of people vary much more than they might in a more homogenous society. Magical realism conveys a reality that incorporates the magic that superstition and religion infuse into the world. This novel treats biblical narratives and native Latin American mythology as historically credible. This approach may stem from the sense, shared by some Latin American authors, that important and powerful strains of magic running through ordinary lives fall victim to the Western emphasis on logic and reason. If García Márquez seems to confuse reality and fiction, it is only because, from some perspectives, fiction may be truer than reality, and vice versa. For instance, in places like Márquez’s hometown, which witnessed a massacre much like that of the workers in Macondo, unthinkable horrors may be a common sight. Real life, then, begins to seem like a fantasy that is both terrifying and fascinating, and Márquez’s novel is an attempt to recreate and to capture that sense of real life Jose Arcadio Buendia, Amaranta, Ursula, Aureliano, Jose Arcadio Segundo--are left completely alone, even forgotten, for years at a time. Buendia men named Aureliano are said to have a "solitary" air. And the town itself is isolated and alienated from the outside world. At the very end of the book, the narrator concludes that the Buendias are a race condemned to solitude, and therefore they will not get a second chance. Marquez intends for the theme of solitude to be read in many different ways. It is a protest against the practice of the Western world to "condemn" people of color to solitude, denying them access to the resources of the developed world. It is also a comment on the nature of man a comment that too much solitude can be destructive both to individuals and to society at large. One Hundred Years of Solitude contains several ideas concerning time. Although the story can be read as a linear progression of events, both when considering individual lives and Macondo's history, García Márquez allows room for several other interpretations of time. He reiterates the metaphor of history as a circular phenomenon through the repetition of names and characteristics belonging to the Buendía family. Over six generations, all the José Arcadios possess inquisitive and rational dispositions as well as enormous physical strength. The Aurelianos, meanwhile, lean towards insularity and quietude. This repetition of traits reproduces the history of the individual characters and, ultimately, a history of the town as a succession of the same mistakes ad infinitum due to some endogenous hubris in our nature. The novel explores the issue of timelessness or eternity even within the framework of mortal existence. A major trope with which it accomplishes this task is the alchemist's laboratory in the Buendía family home. The laboratory was first designed by Melquíades near the start of the story and remains essentially unchanged throughout its course. It is a place where the male Buendía characters can indulge their will to solitude, whether through attempts to deconstruct the world with reason as in the case of José Arcadio Buendía, or by the endless creation and destruction of golden fish as in the case of his son Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Furthermore, a sense of inevitability prevails throughout the text. This is a feeling that regardless of what way one looks at time, its encompassing nature is the one truthful admission. On the other hand, it is important to keep in mind that One Hundred Years of Solitude, while basically chronological and "linear" enough in its broad outlines, also shows abundant zigzags in time, both flashbacks of matters past and long leaps towards future events. One example of this is the youthful amour between Meme and Mauricio Babilonia, which is already in full swing before we are informed about the origins of the affair. For the characters in the novel, time alternatively moves quickly and stagnates for years. In general, children grow up quickly, but when they are adults particularly the male adults time abandons them, leaving them to sit with their own nostalgia and bitterness for years on end. Time abandons Colonel Aureliano Buendia after the civil wars, and Jose Arcadio Segundo, both of them locked in Melquiades' laboratory, refusing to join the living, moving world. In her later years when Ursula considers her family, time appears to be moving in a circle. New children turn out to be like their ancestors, only horribly exaggerated in some flaw or strength. Time is indeed moving in a circle in this book, but instead of expanding outward it is collapsing in on the Buendia family as their eventual demise draws closer. Marquez's point is that time moves in circles and cycles, and people are not always progressing. From the names that return generation after generation to the repetition of personalities and events, time in One Hundred Years of Solitude refuses to divide neatly into past, present, and future, and we must, therefore, acknowledge this inseparability. Úrsula Iguarán is always the first to notice that time in Macondo is not finite, but, rather, moves forward over and over again. Sometimes, this simultaneity of time leads to amnesia, when people cannot see the past any more than they can see the future. Other times the future becomes as easy to recall as the past. The prophecies of Melquíades prove that events in time are continuous: from the beginning of the novel, the old gypsy was able to see its end, as if the various events were all occurring at once. Similarly, the presence of the ghosts of Melquíades and José Arcadio Buendía shows that the past in which those men lived has become one with the present. Perhaps the most dominant theme in the book is that of solitude. Macondo was founded in the remote jungles of the Colombian rainforest. The solitude of the town is representative of the colonial period in Latin American history, where outposts and colonies were, for all intents and purposes, not interconnected. Isolated from the rest of the world, the Buendías grow to be increasingly solitary and selfish. With every member of the family living only for himself or herself, the Buendías become representative of the aristocratic, land-owning elite who came to dominate Latin America in keeping with the sense of Latin American history symbolized in the novel. This egocentricity is embodied, especially, in the characters of Aureliano, who lives in a private world of his own, and Remedios, who destroys the lives of four men enamored by her beauty. Throughout the novel it seems as if no character can find true love or escape the destructiveness of their own egocentricity. A recurring theme in One Hundred Years of Solitude is the Buendía family's propensity toward incest. The patriarch of the family, Jose Arcadio Buendía, is the first of numerous Buendías to intermarry when he marries his first cousin, Úrsula. It is worth noting that this initial, incestuous act can be viewed as an "original sin", however it will not be the last one. Furthermore, the fact that "throughout the novel the family is haunted by the fear of punishment in the form of the birth of a monstrous child with a pig's tail" can be attributed to this initial, and the recurring acts of incest among the Buendías. Incest is also a secondary theme of solitude. It plays an enormous role in the novel, from the very beginning with Ursula's warning that children born of incestuous relationships may be born with the tails of pigs. And indeed, at the very end of the novel, a Buendia is born with the tail of a pig. For most families, incest is not a great threat. The fact that it is something the Buendias have to keep dodging marks them as a family unable to escape the family homestead, unable to look outside themselves. They are too solitary. Essentially, incest is the practice of keeping family members within the familyso it marks the Buendias as too disengaged from the world around them. The selfishness of the Buendía family is eventually broken by the once superficial Aureliano Segundo and Petra Cotes, who discover a sense of mutual solidarity and the joy of helping others in need during Macondo's economic crisis. This pair even finds love, and their pattern is repeated by Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Úrsula. Eventually, Aureliano and Amaranta decide to have a child, and the latter is convinced that it will represent a fresh start for the once-conceited Buendía family. However, the child turns out to be the perpetually feared monster with the pig's tail. An interesting note: The words "solitude" or "solitary" appear on almost every page of this novel. Nonetheless, the appearance of love represents a shift in Macondo, albeit one that leads to its destruction. "The emergence of love in the novel to displace the traditional egoism of the Buendías reflects the emergence of socialist values as a political force in Latin America, a force that will sweep away the Buendías and the order they represent." The ending to One Hundred Years of Solitude could be a wishful prediction by García Márquez, a well-known socialist, regarding the future of Latin America. In Solitude, organized religion is often the subject of jokes and satire. One of the novel's most unsympathetic characters, Fernanda del Carpio, is a fervent Catholic who thinks nothing of putting her own child in a convent and forgetting about her. Macondo's priest, Father Nicador, is trotted out again and again for comic relief. In general, organized religion is regarded with skepticism. The characters who follow the path of God in an unconventional, but moral, way, like Ursula, are treated with more dignity and respect. The novel follows the town of Macondo from its founding to its demise. In between, there is prosperity, growth, war and civil strife, modernity and progress, and a cataclysmic event that leads to its downfall and eventual demise. Some critics have noted that the book also follows the trajectory of classical Greek civilization, with its careful recording of how and when science, art, and politics come to Macondo. This contributes to Solitude's appearance as a "total novel," with everything contained in it. It also contributes to Marquez's overall vision of Macondo as a lens through which all human history and all human nature can be seen. Although language is in an unripe, Garden-of-Eden state at the beginning of One Hundred Years of Solitude, when most things in the newborn world are still unnamed, its function quickly becomes more complex. Various languages fill the novel, including the Guajiro -language that the children learn, the multilingual tattoos that cover José Arcadio’s body, the Latin spoken by José Arcadio Buendía, and the final Sanskrit translation of Melquíades’s prophecies. In fact, this final act of translation can be seen as the most significant act in the book, since it seems to be the one that makes the book’s existence possible and gives life to the characters and story within. What realism is there in this “power of reading and of language”? As García Márquez makes reading the final apocalyptic force that destroys Macondo and calls attention to his own task as a writer, he also reminds us that our reading provides the fundamental first breath to every action that takes place in One Hundred Years of Solitude. While the novel can be thought of as something with one clear, predetermined meaning, García Márquez asks his reader to acknowledge the fact that every act of reading is also an interpretation, and that such interpretations can have weighty consequences. Aureliano (II), then, does not just take the manuscripts’ meanings for granted, but, in addition, he must also translate and interpret them and ultimately precipitate the destruction of the town. One Hundred Years of Solitude draws on many of the basic narratives of the Bible, and its characters can be seen as allegorical of some major biblical figures. The novel recounts the creation of Macondo and its earliest Edenic days of innocence, and continues until its apocalyptic end, with a cleansing flood in between. We can see José Arcadio Buendía’s downfall—his loss of sanity—as a result of his quest for knowledge. He and his wife, Ursula Iguarán, represent the biblical Adam and Eve, who were exiled from Eden after eating from the Tree of Knowledge. The entire novel functions as a metaphor for human history and an extended commentary on human nature. On the one hand, their story, taken literally as applying to the fictional Buendías, evokes immense pathos. But as representatives of the human race, the Buendías personify solitude and inevitable tragedy, together with the elusive possibility of happiness, as chronicled by the Bible. Specifically, Márquez mentions the Book of Genesis. From the very first paragraph, the narrator gives readers the impression that Macondo is akin to the Garden of Eden. The preponderance of plagues that the town suffers through (insomnia, rain) are also biblical; as is the flood that rains on Macondo in an effort to rid the town of wicked men. By consciously echoing the Book of Genesis, Marquez is alerting us that this is his attempt to rewrite the history of the world and the human race, in a novel that has everything in it. At least two definite plagues come to Macondo: the insomnia plague and the rains that last for almost five years. Critics go back and forth on whether or not the invasion of the foreign businessmen constitutes a third plague, although they certainly bring death and destruction with them. The first of these plagues very nearly causes Macondo to lose its memory; the second of these plagues brings about the eventual downfall of the town. Essentially, both plagues are dangerous because they prevent Macondo from staying in touch with reality and the world around them by plunging them into nostalgia and erasing the town's memory. The twisted and meandering world of politics is under a great deal of scrutiny in this novel, particularly the chapters that deal with Colonel Aureliano Buendia. The world of politics is a gloomy one. There is little difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives; both parties kill and exploit the people. Although Marquez has a definite anti-capitalist bent, his purpose in portraying the politics of the region is not to be polemical. Instead, he comments on how the nature of Latin American politics is towards absurdity, denial, and never-ending repetitions of tragedy. This theme is particularly important for the chapters dealing with the banana plantation. In the span of only a few years, Macondo is transformed from a sleepy backwater to a frighteningly modern town via the influences of technology, economic exploitation and foreign invasion. But the arrival of new machines and farming techniques do not make Macondo a better place to live in, in fact things only get worse. The point of this is that modern technology is meaningless without a concurrent improvement in ethics, and "progress" turns brutal without a plan to lessen economic inequality. Although a lesser theme in the novel, important patterns surface regarding the theme of women's sexuality. In general, the women who have unconventional relationships Rebeca, Petra Cotes, Amaranta Ursula are happier and more sympathetic than the women who cling to society's standards of behavior Amaranta and Fernanda del Carpio. The fact that Aureliano Segundo's coupling with Petra Cotes dramatically increases the proliferation of his animals is a signal that free love can be healthy for society at large. While the characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude consider total forgetfulness a danger, they, ironically, also seem to consider memory a burden. About half of the novel’s characters speak of the weight of having too many memories while the rest seem to be amnesiacs. Rebeca’s overabundance of memory causes her to lock herself in her house after her husband’s death, and to live there with the memory of friends rather than the presence of people. For her, the nostalgia of better days gone by prevents her from existing in a changing world. The opposite of her character can be found in Colonel Aureliano Buendía, who has almost no memories at all. He lives in an endlessly repeating present, melting down and then recreating his collection of little gold fishes. Nostalgia and amnesia are the dual diseases of the Buendía clan, one tying its victims to the past, the other trapping them in the present. Thus afflicted, the Buendías are doomed to repeat the same cycles until they consume themselves, and they are never able to move into the future. Gypsies are present in One Hundred Years of Solitude primarily to act as links. They function to offer transitions from contrasting or unrelated events and characters. Every few years, especially in the early days of Macondo, a pack of wandering gypsies arrives, turning the town into something like a carnival and displaying the wares that they have brought with them. Before Macondo has a road to civilization, they are the town’s only contact with the outside world. They bring both technology—inventions that Melquíades displays—and magic—magic carpets and other wonders. Gypsies, then, serve as versatile literary devices that also blur the line between fantasy and reality, especially when they connect Macondo and the outside world, magic and science, and even the past and present. Frequently throughout the book, there was mention of the “little gold fishes”. The meaning of the thousands of little gold fishes that Colonel Aureliano Buendía makes shifts over time. At first, these fishes represent Aureliano’s artistic nature and, by extension, the artistic nature of all the Aurelianos. Soon, however, they acquire a greater significance, marking the ways in which Aureliano has affected the world. His seventeen sons, for example, are each given a little gold fish, and, in this case, the fishes represent Aureliano’s effect on the world through his sons. In another instance, they are used as passkeys when messengers for the Liberals use them to prove their allegiance. Many years later, however, the fishes become collector’s items, merely relics of a once-great leader. This attitude disgusts Aureliano because he recognizes that people are using him as a figurehead, a mythological hero that represents whatever they want it to represent. When he begins to understand that the little gold fishes no longer are symbolic of him personally, but instead of a mistaken ideal, he stops making new fishes and starts to melt down the old ones again and again. The railroad represents the arrival of the modern world in Macondo. This devastating turn leads to the development of a banana plantation and the ensuing massacre of three thousand workers. The railroad also represents the period when Macondo is connected most closely with the outside world. After the banana plantations close down, the railroad falls into disrepair and the train ceases even to stop in Macondo anymore. The advent of the railroad is a turning point. Before it comes, Macondo grows bigger and thrives; afterward, Macondo quickly disintegrates, folding back into isolation and eventually expiring. At first, the English encyclopedia that Meme receives from her American friend is a symbol for the way the American plantation owners are taking over Macondo. When Meme, a descendant of the town’s founders, begins to learn English, the foreigners’ encroachment on Macondo’s culture becomes obvious. The concrete threat posed by the encyclopedia is later lessened when Aureliano Segundo uses it to tell his children stories. Because he does not speak English, Aureliano Segundo makes up stories to go with the pictures. By creating the possibility for multiple interpretations of the text, he unwittingly diffuses the encyclopedia’s danger. I had to laugh when the golden chamber pot was mentioned, and to think of the formal thought of “my sh*t doesn’t stink!” It was brought by Fernanda del Carpio to Macondo from her home and is, for her, a marker of her lofty status; she believes that she was destined to be a queen. But while the gold of the chamber pot is associated with royalty, the function of the chamber pot is, of course, associated with defecation: a sign of the real value of Fernanda’s snooty condescension. Later, when José Arcadio (II) tries to sell the chamber pot, he finds that it is not really solid gold, but, rather, gold-plated. Again, this revelation represents the hollowness of Fernanda’s pride and the flimsiness of cheap cover-ups. The mention of the Treaty of Neerlandia was, for me, a bit of solid ground for me to stand on with this novel. It was a little chaotic, and I was struggling to figure out where this story was taking place, besides being in the new Americas. To me, it gave a backbone of reality to place this unbelievable story about things that could have possibly taken place. So to do the book justice, I must, therefore, tell you a little about the history of the area and the time period during which the story takes place. The Thousand Days' War (1899–1902) (Spanish: Guerra de los Mil Días), was a civil armed conflict in the newly created Republic of Colombia, (including its then province of Panama) between the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and its radical factions. In 1899 the ruling conservatives were accused of maintaining power through fraudulent elections. The situation was worsened by an economic crisis caused by falling coffee prices in the international market, which mainly affected the opposition Liberal Party, which had lost power. Throughout the 19th century, Colombia was a country filled with political instability, which was the factor that evolved into the main cause of the war in 1886. This was the year in which the 1863 constitution was suppressed and replaced by a more centralist and conservative document. The 1863 constitution had been criticized as a result of federalist excesses during the period in which the Liberal radicals were in power. With Regeneración (Regeneration) period and the creation of the 1886 constitution, the centralist regime only managed to aggravate the political problems. Some departments soon began to complain about these problems to the central government. In the economic field, poor political decisions also led to economic problems. The detonating factor of the war was simply the confrontation between the Liberals and Conservatives, as much among them as within their respective parties. The Conservatives had used fraudulent elections to remain in power, and this led to much anger amongst the opposition. On top of increasingly hostile political environment, President Manuel Antonio Sanclemente was too ill to rule the country, leading to a power-vacuum in the country. The political environment and the increasingly dire economic situation created a powder-keg that required only the smallest light to set it off. The intended date for the beginning of the civil war was October 20, 1899. However, due to the imprudence of some of the Liberal generals who wished to begin the war on October 17, it was moved forward. The reaction of many Liberals was hesitant, since they believed that they did not have sufficient numbers or organization. Despite this, the rebellion began in the municipality of Socorro, Santander, and the rebels awaited military reinforcements from Venezuela. The Conservative government, however, did not simply stand idle while all of this was occurring. They prepared a military force to be sent to Bucaramanga, the capital of Santander. The force never arrived, however, because the troops refused to accept payment in "tickets", which the government had to use due to the dire economic situation. No one expected, or was prepared for, a war that would last three years and would bring disastrous ruin to the country. With time, the war spread to every corner of Colombia. The first Liberal defeats came early in the war, with the Conservative victory at the battle of Magdalena River on October 24. However, the Conservatives were in a delicate situation as well. The Conservative side had split into two factions, the Historical and National, in a frenetic attempt to bring order to the country. First, they removed president Sanclemente and replaced him with Jose Manuel Marroquin. In response, the Liberals nominated Gabriel Vargas Santos for the presidency. With the advance of the war, it became more repressive and cruel. The population was even driven to take part in each side in more fanatical ways, in spite of the efforts of each party to gain victories (which soon were revealed to be illusionary). Without a doubt, the battles of Peralonso and Palonegro (in Santander) showed the country the magnitude of the damages that the war was causing. At Peralonso, the Liberals achieved victory under the leadership of Rafael Uribe Uribe. At Palonegro (May 26, 1900) the Conservatives halted the enemy in what was an extraordinarily bloody encounter. After Palonegro, the war became devoid of sense and of meaning for the parties. With their defeat, the Liberals as well were split into two different factions, this time pacifists and the warmongers. The Nationals of the Conservative side believed it was time to end the war, which by this time was focused in the province of Panama and on the coast of the Caribbean Sea. With that decision, internationalization of the war was avoided, which Venezuela wished to do through its president Cipriano Castro (who held to Uribe Uribe as President of Colombia). Conservative troops under the command of Marroquín managed to cut Venezuelan aid to the Liberals (July 29), who at this time were suffering defeats at the hands of the Conservative General Juan B. Tovar. General Uribe saw that the Liberals would not be able to defeat the Conservatives, and therefore was inclined to surrender, albeit with certain conditions. The peace treaty was signed on the Neerlandia plantation on October 24, 1902, although the fighting lasted until November of that year in Panama. From late 1901, fighting between the ships Admiral Padilla (Liberal) and the Lautaro (of Chilean property, lent to the conservatives), the latter of which was defeated in front of City of Panama on January 20, 1902. Later the threat came from the American navy, sent by the government of Theodore Roosevelt to protect the United States' future interests in the construction of the Panama Canal. The Liberals under the command of General Benjamin Herrera were then forced to lay down their arms. The definitive peace treaty was signed on the American battleship Wisconsin on November 21, 1902. The Liberals were represented by general Lucas Caballero Barrera, who was in charge of the united army of Cauca and Panama, and Colonel Eusebio A. Morales, who was representing General Benjamin Herrera. The Conservatives were represented by General Víctor M. Salazar, governor of the department of Panama, and general Alfredo Vázquez Cobo, chief of staff of the Conservative army on the Atlantic Coast, the Pacific, and Panama. Together, representing the entire government, they signed the end of the war. Although One Hundred Years of Solitude has come to be considered one of, if not the, most influential Latin American texts of all time, the novel and Gabriel García Márquez have both received occasional criticisms. Stylistically, Harold Bloom remarked that "My primary impression, in the act of rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude, is a kind of aesthetic battle fatigue, since every page is rammed full of life beyond the capacity of any single reader to absorb... There are no wasted sentences, no mere transitions, in this novel, and you must notice everything at the moment you read it." Additionally, David Haberly alleges that García Márquez may have borrowed themes from several works, such as William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha, Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography, Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, and Chateaubriand's Atala."

#26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

2011-12-25T07:29:00.000-08:00

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, also known as Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Tess of the d'Urbervilles or just Tess, is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, like the other major works by Thomas Hardy, although technically a nineteenth century work, anticipates the twentieth century in regard to the nature and treatment of its subject matter. Tess of the d'Urbervilles was the twelfth novel published by Thomas Hardy. Although Hardy only added the novel's subtitle, 'A Pure Woman' at the last minute in one of the later editions, various changes in the text suggest he had been changing his emphasis to bring out Tess's purity. Early critics attacked Hardy for the novel's subtitle, "A Pure Woman," arguing that Tess could not possibly be considered pure. It is Hardy's penultimate novel, followed by Jude the Obscure.
He began the novel in 1889, but, in spite of his reputation, Hardy had difficulty finding a periodical willing to publish the book when he offered it for serialization to London's leading reviews. The subject matter—a milkmaid who is seduced by the son of her employer and who thus is not considered a pure and chaste woman by the rest of society, then married and rejected by another, and who eventually murders the first one—was considered unfit for publications which young people might read. The novel questions society’s sexual mores through this compassionate portrayed heroine. It was rejected by several periodicals from July to December. To appease potential publishers, Hardy took the novel apart, rewrote some scenes and added others. In due course, a publisher was secured. It initially appeared in a censored and serialized version, published by the British illustrated newspaper, The Graphic, in December. When it came time to publish the novel in book form, Hardy reassembled it as it was originally conceived. Though now considered an important work of English literature, the book received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual mores of Hardy's day. They denounced his frank—for the time—depiction of sex, criticism of organized religion, and dark pessimism. Although it is now considered a major work of fiction, the poor reception of Tess and Jude the Obscure precipitated Thomas Hardy's transition from writing fiction to poetry. Nevertheless, the novel was commercially successful and assured Hardy's financial security. Today, the novel is praised as a courageous call for righting many of the ills Hardy found in Victorian society and as a link between the late-Victorian literature of the end of the nineteenth century and that of the modern era. The original manuscript is on display at the British Library, showing that it was originally titled "Daughter of the d'Urbervilles."
When Tess of the d'Urbervilles appeared in 1891, Thomas Hardy was one of England's leading men of letters. He had already authored several well-known novels, including The Return of the Native, and numerous short stories. Tess brought him notoriety—it was considered quite scandalous—and fortune. Despite this success, the novel was one of Hardy's last. He was deeply wounded by some of the particularly personal attacks he received from reviewers of the book. In 1892, he wrote in one of his notebooks, quoted in The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892-1928, compiled by Florence Emily Hardy, "Well, if this sort of thing continues no more novel-writing for me. A man must be a fool to deliberately stand up to be shot at."
Tess of the d'Urbervilles deals with several significant contemporary subjects for Hardy, including the struggles of religious belief that occurred during Hardy's lifetime. Hardy was largely influenced by the Oxford movement, a spiritual movement involving extremely devout thinking and actions. Hardy's family members were primarily orthodox Christians and Hardy himself considered entering the clergy, as did many of his relatives. Yet Hardy eventually abandoned his devout faith in God based on the scientific advances of his contemporaries, including most prominently Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Hardy's own religious experiences can thus be seen in the character of Angel Clare, who resists the conservative religious beliefs of his parents to take a more religious and secular view of philosophy.
The novel also reflects Hardy's preoccupation with social class that continues through his novels. Hardy had connections to both the working and the upper class, but felt that he belonged to neither. This is reflected in the pessimism contained in Tess of the d'Urbervilles toward the chances for Tess to ascend in society and Angel's precarious position as neither a member of the upper class nor a working person equivalent to his fellow milkers at Talbothays. Again, like Angel Clare, Thomas Hardy found himself torn between different social spheres with which he could not fully align himself. Tess of the d'Urbervilles reflects that divide.
Tess of the d’Urbervilles presents complex pictures of both the importance of social class in nineteenth-century England and the difficulty of defining class in any simple way. Certainly the Durbeyfields are a powerful emblem of the way in which class is no longer evaluated in Victorian times as it would have been in the Middle Ages—that is, by blood alone, with no attention paid to fortune or worldly success. Indubitably the Durbeyfields have purity of blood, yet for the parson and nearly everyone else in the novel, this fact amounts to nothing more than a piece of genealogical trivia. In the Victorian context, cash matters more than lineage, which explains how Simon Stokes, Alec’s father, was smoothly able to use his large fortune to purchase a lustrous family name and transform his clan into the Stoke-d’Urbervilles. The d’Urbervilles pass for what the Durbeyfields truly are—authentic nobility—simply because definitions of class have changed. The issue of class confusion even affects the Clare clan, whose most promising son, Angel, is intent on becoming a farmer and marrying a milkmaid, thus bypassing the traditional privileges of a Cambridge education and a parsonage. His willingness to work side by side with the farm laborers helps endear him to Tess, and their acquaintance would not have been possible if he were a more traditional and elitist aristocrat. Thus, the three main characters in the Angel-Tess-Alec triangle are all strongly marked by confusion regarding their respective social classes, an issue that is one of the main concerns of the novel.
Hardy's writing often illustrates the "ache of modernism", and this theme is notable in Tess, which, as one critic noted, portrays "the energy of traditional ways and the strength of the forces that are destroying them". Hardy describes modern farm machinery with infernal imagery; also, at the dairy, he notes that the milk sent to the city must be watered down because the townspeople cannot stomach whole milk. Angel's middle-class fastidiousness makes him reject Tess, a woman whom Hardy often portrays as a sort of Wessex Eve, in harmony with the natural world. When he parts from her and goes to Brazil, the handsome young man gets so sick that he is reduced to a "mere yellow skeleton." All these instances are typically interpreted as indications of the negative consequences of man's separation from nature, both in the creation of destructive machinery and in the inability to rejoice in pure nature.
The society of Tess of the d’Urbervilles is basically focused on the rural workers in farm and village. Within the novel, towns exist only very peripherally, while the middle-class and gentry hardly impinge, except for the male protagonists who are themselves uprooted from their normal community. This rural community is the one in which Hardy grew up, and with which he continued to associate himself, though his portrayal of the rural workers is much less optimistic than in earlier novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd. Echoing the real economic constraints of the 1890s, Hardy depicts agricultural laborers primarily in a grave position of loss: losing power and control over their own lives, losing stability and security, and losing community and common land. Traditionally, in the days before the Enclosure Acts (the majority enacted by Parliament between 1750 and 1830), those living on the land had had access to common land, from which they could support themselves. They may have owed labor to landlords etc., but there was some degree of permanence and independence in many of their lives (see Agricultural and social conditions).
With drastic changes in farming methods and because of the rural depression at the beginning of the nineteenth century, much of this common land was lost. Dorset was one of the worst hit of the English counties. Workers usually owned little beyond a yard and a site on an allotment on which to grow food (Ch 50). They were employed by farmers, and their contracts were often only for a year or even quarter year. 'Hiring fairs', where laborers would present themselves for employment, became very significant, but such workers were very much at the mercy of the farmers and the economic conditions. There was little social welfare, only a harshly administered Poor Law (enacted 1834) that often broke families up. All this Hardy shows us, especially in the latter half of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. The workers at Flintcombe-Ash present themselves at a hiring fair, held at Candlemas (Ch 46), in readiness for Old Lady Day, from which is when new contracts were dated (Ch 51, 52). The growth of the tied cottage system, when accommodation went with a job, also made life for rural workers less secure. Once the job was lost, then the cottage was too, causing further impermanence and loss of control (Ch 38).
Unfairness dominates the lives of Tess and her family to such an extent that it begins to seem like a general aspect of human existence in Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Tess does not mean to kill Prince, but she is punished anyway, just as she is unfairly punished for her own rape by Alec. Nor is there justice waiting in heaven. Christianity teaches that there is compensation in the afterlife for unhappiness suffered in this life, but the only devout Christian encountered in the novel may be the reverend, Mr. Clare, who seems more or less content in his life anyway. For others in their misery, Christianity offers little solace of heavenly justice. Mrs. Durbeyfield never mentions otherworldly rewards. The converted Alec preaches heavenly justice for earthly sinners, but his faith seems shallow and insincere. Generally, the moral atmosphere of the novel is not Christian justice at all, but pagan injustice. The forces that rule human life are absolutely unpredictable and not necessarily well-disposed to us. The pre-Christian rituals practiced by the farm workers at the opening of the novel, and Tess’s final rest at Stonehenge at the end, remind us of a world where the gods are not just and fair, but whimsical and uncaring. When the narrator concludes the novel with the statement that “‘Justice’ was done, and the President of the Immortals (in the Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess,” we are reminded that justice must be put in ironic quotation marks, since it is not really just at all. What passes for “Justice” is in fact one of the pagan gods enjoying a bit of “sport,” or a frivolous game.
One of the recurrent themes of the novel is the way in which men can dominate women, exerting a power over them linked primarily to their maleness. Sometimes this command is purposeful, in the man’s full knowledge of his exploitation, as when Alec acknowledges how bad he is for seducing Tess for his own momentary pleasure. Alec’s act of abuse, the most life-altering event that Tess experiences in the novel, is clearly the most serious instance of male domination over a female. But there are other, less blatant examples of women’s passivity toward dominant men. When, after Angel reveals that he prefers Tess, Tess’s friend Retty attempts suicide and her friend Marian becomes an alcoholic, which makes their earlier schoolgirl-type crushes on Angel seem disturbing. This devotion is not merely fanciful love, but unhealthy obsession. These girls appear utterly dominated by a desire for a man who, we are told explicitly, does not even realize that they are interested in him. This sort of unconscious male domination of women is perhaps even more unsettling than Alec’s outward and self-conscious cruelty.
Even Angel’s love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it seems, dominates her in an unhealthy way. Angel substitutes an idealized picture of Tess’s country purity for the real-life woman that he continually refuses to get to know. When Angel calls Tess names like “Daughter of Nature” and “Artemis,” we feel that he may be denying her true self in favor of a mental image that he prefers. Thus, her identity and experiences are suppressed, albeit unknowingly. This pattern of male domination is finally reversed with Tess’s murder of Alec, in which, for the first time in the novel, a woman takes active steps against a man. Of course, this act only leads to even greater suppression of a woman by men, when the crowd of male police officers arrest Tess at Stonehenge. Nevertheless, for just a moment, the accepted pattern of submissive women bowing to dominant men is interrupted, and Tess’s act seems heroic.
Another important theme of the novel is the sexual double standard to which Tess falls victim; despite being, in Hardy's view, a truly good woman, she is despised by society after losing her virginity before marriage. Hardy plays the role of Tess's only true friend and advocate, pointedly subtitling the book "a pure woman faithfully presented" and prefacing it with Shakespeare's words from The Two Gentlemen of Verona: "Poor wounded name! My bosom as a bed/ Shall lodge thee." However, although Hardy clearly means to criticize Victorian notions of female purity, the double standard also makes the heroine's tragedy possible, and thus serves as a mechanism of Tess's broader fate. Hardy variously hints that Tess must suffer either to atone for the misdeeds of her ancestors, or to provide temporary amusement for the gods, or because she possesses some small but lethal character flaw inherited from the ancient clan.
From numerous pagan and neo-Biblical references made about her, Tess has been viewed variously as an Earth goddess or as a sacrificial victim. Early in the novel, she participates in a festival for Ceres, the goddess of the harvest, and when she performs a baptism she chooses a passage from Genesis, the book of creation, over more traditional New Testament verses. At the end, when Tess and Angel come to Stonehenge, commonly believed in Hardy's time to be a pagan temple, she willingly lies down on an altar, thus fulfilling her destiny as a human sacrifice.
This symbolism may help explain Tess as a personification of nature — lovely, fecund, and exploitable — while animal imagery throughout the novel strengthens the association. Examples are numerous: Tess's misfortunes begin when she falls asleep while driving Prince to market, thus causing the horse's death; at Trantridge, she becomes a poultry-keeper; she and Angel fall in love amid cows in the fertile Froom valley; and on the road to Flintcombe-Ashe, she kills some wounded pheasants to end their suffering. In any event, Tess emerges as a character not because of this symbolism but because "Hardy's feelings for Tess were strong, perhaps stronger than for any of his other invented personages."
Images of birds recur throughout the novel, evoking or contradicting their traditional spiritual association with a higher realm of transcendence. Both the Christian dove of peace and the Romantic songbirds of Keats and Shelley, which symbolize sublime heights, lead us to expect that birds will have positive meaning in this novel. Tess occasionally hears birdcalls on her frequent hikes across the countryside; their free expressiveness stands in stark contrast to Tess’s silent and constrained existence as a wronged and disgraced girl. When Tess goes to work for Mrs. d’Urberville, she is surprised to find that the old woman’s pet finches are frequently released to fly free throughout the room. These birds offer images of hope and liberation. Yet there is irony attached to birds as well, making us doubt whether these images of hope and freedom are illusory. Mrs. d’Urberville’s birds leave little white spots on the upholstery, which presumably some servant—perhaps Tess herself—will have to clean. It may be that freedom for one creature entails hardship for another, just as Alec’s free enjoyment of Tess’s body leads her to a lifetime of suffering. In the end, when Tess encounters the pheasants maimed by hunters and lying in agony, birds no longer seem free, but rather oppressed and submissive. These pheasants are no Romantic songbirds hovering far above the Earth—they are victims of earthly violence, condemned to suffer down below and never fly again.
The Genesis story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is evoked repeatedly throughout Tess of the d’Urbervilles, giving the novel a broader metaphysical and philosophical dimension. The roles of Eve and the serpent in paradise are clearly delineated: Angel is the noble Adam newly born, while Tess is the indecisive and troubled Eve. When Tess gazes upon Angel in chapter 27, “she regarded him as Eve at her second waking might have regarded Adam.”Alec, with his open avowal that he is bad to the bone, is the conniving Satan. He seduces Tess under a tree, giving her sexual knowledge in return for her lost innocence. The very name of the forest where this seduction occurs, the Chase, suggests how Eve will be chased from Eden for her sins. This guilt, which will never be erased, is known in Christian theology as the original sin that all humans have inherited. Just as John Durbeyfield is told in Chapter I that “you don’t live anywhere,”and his family is evicted after his death at the end of the novel, their homelessness evokes the human exile from Eden. Original sin suggests that humans have fallen from their once great status to a lower station in life, just as the d’Urbervilles have devolved into the modern Durbeyfields. This Story of the Fall—or of the “Pure Drop,”to recall the name of a pub in Tess’s home village—is much more than a social fall. It is an explanation of how all of us humans—not only Tess—never quite seem to live up to our expectations, and are never able to inhabit the places of grandeur we feel we deserve.
The transformation of the d’Urbervilles into the Durbeyfields is one example of the common phenomenon of renaming, or variant naming, in the novel. Names matter in this novel. Tess knows and accepts that she is a lowly Durbeyfield, but part of her still believes, as her parents also believe, that her aristocratic original name should be restored. John Durbeyfield goes a step further than Tess, and actually renames himself Sir John, as his tombstone epitaph shows. Another character who renames himself is Simon Stokes, Angel’s father, who purchased a family tree and made himself Simon Stoke-d’Urberville. The question raised by all these cases of name changing, whether successful or merely imagined, is the extent to which an altered name brings with it an altered identity. Alec acts notoriously ungentlemanly throughout the novel, but by the end, when he appears at the d’Urberville family vault, his lordly and commanding bearing make him seem almost deserving of the name his father has bought, like a spoiled medieval nobleman. Hardy’s interest in name changes makes reality itself seem changeable according to whims of human perspective. The village of Blakemore, as we are reminded twice in chapters 1 and 2, is also known as Blackmoor, and indeed Hardy famously renames the southern English countryside as “Wessex.” He imposes a fictional map on a real place, with names altered correspondingly. Reality may not be as solid as the names people confer upon it.
When Tess dozes off in the wagon and loses control, the resulting death of the Durbeyfield horse, Prince, spurs Tess to seek aid from the d’Urbervilles, setting the events of the novel in motion. The horse’s demise is thus a powerful plot motivator, and its name a potent symbol of Tess’s own claims to aristocracy. Like the horse, Tess herself bears a high-class name, but is doomed to a lowly life of physical labor. Interestingly, Prince’s death occurs right after Tess dreams of ancient knights, having just heard the news that her family is aristocratic. Moreover, the horse is pierced by the forward-jutting piece of metal on a mail coach, which is reminiscent of a wound one might receive in a medieval joust. In an odd way, Tess’s dream of medieval glory comes true, and her horse dies a heroic death. Yet her dream of meeting a prince while she kills her own Prince, and with him her family’s only means of financial sustenance, is a tragic foreshadowing of her own story. The death of the horse symbolizes the sacrifice of real-world goods, such as a useful animal or even her own honor, through excessive fantasizing about a better world.
A double-edged symbol of both the majestic grandeur and the lifeless hollowness of the aristocratic family name that the Durbeyfields learn they possess, the d’Urberville family vault represents both the glory of life and the end of life. Since Tess herself moves from passivity to active murder by the end of the novel, attaining a kind of personal grandeur even as she brings death to others and to herself, the double symbolism of the vault makes it a powerful site for the culminating meeting between Alec and Tess. Alec brings Tess both his lofty name and, indirectly, her own death later; it is natural that he meets her in the vault in d’Urberville Aisle, where she reads her own name inscribed in stone and feels the presence of death. Yet the vault that sounds so glamorous when rhapsodized over by John Durbeyfield in chapter 1 seems, by the end, strangely hollow and meaningless. When Alec stomps on the floor of the vault, it produces only a hollow echo, as if its basic emptiness is a complement to its visual grandeur. When Tess is executed, her ancestors are said to snooze on in their crypts, as if uncaring even about the fate of a member of their own majestic family. Perhaps the secret of the family crypt is that its grandiosity is ultimately meaningless.
Rather surprising for a novel that seems set so solidly in rural England, the narration shifts very briefly to Brazil when Angel takes leave of Tess and heads off to establish a career in farming. Even more exotic for a Victorian English reader than America or Australia, Brazil is the country in which Robinson Crusoe made his fortune and it seems to promise a better life far from the humdrum familiar world. Brazil is thus more than a geographical entity on the map in this novel: it symbolizes a fantasyland, a place where dreams come true. As Angel’s name suggests, he is a lofty visionary who lacks some experience with the real world, despite all his mechanical know-how in farm management. He may be able to milk cows, but he does not yet know how to tell the difference between an exotic dream and an everyday reality, so inevitably his experience in the imagined dream world of Brazil is a disaster that he barely survives. His fiasco teaches him that ideals do not exist in life, and this lesson helps him reevaluate his disappointment with Tess’s imperfections, her failure to incarnate the ideal he expected her to be. For Angel, Brazil symbolizes the impossibility of ideals, but also forgiveness and acceptance of life in spite of those disappointed ideals.
When Tess of the d’Urbervilles was first published in 1891, there was a huge debate about whether Hardy should have described Tess as pure. According to conventional Victorian morality (based on the teachings of the church) no one who had engaged in pre-marital sex could be described as ‘pure’. Rather they were to be seen as ‘fallen’ into sexual sin – mistresses and prostitutes were commonly described as ‘fallen women’ and shunned by polite society (although their male partners were not!).
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, readers are more likely to be troubled by Tess's murder of Alec, rather than her sexual experiences. It would seem an act of gratuitous violence. Why could she not just walk out on him? Only by reading the novel in Hardy's terms, rather than their own, can one appreciate that there is a deeper level on which to discuss the issue, involving intentions, desires and human endurance. This is where the universality of the novel lies. This contextual awareness is also necessary in order to understand Hardy's masculine construction of femininity in general and female sexuality in particular. He sets the stage early when Angel tells her if Alec were to die…
Hardy establishes Tess's purity in a number of ways. The first was through omission. Hardy does not actually provide the details of the worst things that happened to Tess. In fact, her violation by Alec in Ch. 11 was not quite understood by me to be an actual rape until doing research into metaphorical analysis. Hardy does not quite go into much detail regarding the period of living with Alec immediately afterwards in Ch. 12. Quite vague is the letter holding Tess’s confession to Angel before they marry in Ch. 33. Nor does he quite go into much detail during her confession to Angel face to face on their wedding night in Ch. 34. Again, vagueness prevails during her arguments against Christianity that help cause Alec to lose his faith and how she was persuaded to live with Alec again, and, ultimately, the act of murdering Alec. It might seem that Hardy was bound by convention not to be explicit, but it is much more probable he used these limitations to exploit ambiguity. This is a much more modern way of writing, forcing the reader to reconstruct events and then challenging this reconstruction. It also spares us the grisly details, so that a more idealized vision of Tess may be maintained.
In revising the text, Hardy makes the men seem worse by bringing out the flaws of Alec and Angel. An element of force is added to Alec's seduction to make it seem as though it could have been rape (in the initial serialization, Alec involved her in a bogus marriage). His conversion was made to seem more superficial by not only his willingness to drop it so rapidly, but by the foreshadowing of Angel of his opinion of Alec upon the mention of his father’s interaction with the before mentioned character. I must admit that I became very disenchanted with Angel after he rejected Tess after she forgave his indiscretions when his hypocrisy is so emphasized. It is my opinion, however, that the potential difficulty of making the men more evil is to make Tess seem more a victim rather than establishing her purity. Hardy does not deny Tess has weaknesses, but when Tess blames herself excessively, the reader tends to defend her against herself, as she shoulders the blame for not only Prince’s death in Ch.4, but also for feeling condemned by the sign-writer in Ch. 12. Hardy places further emphasis on her self-condemnation as he brings increased attention to her feelings of guilt in Ch. 13.
Hardy creates a number of dramatic situations which symbolically reinforce Tess’s innocence over her victimhood. The length to which she sought the baptism for her dying baby in Ch. 14, her endurance of Angel’s sleepwalking and her own burial in Ch. 37, her acceptance of her purgatorial sufferings at Flintcombe-Ash in chapters 42 and 43, the reveling in her idyllic stay with Angel in the New Forest in Ch. 57, and her ultimate final self-sacrifice at Stonehenge in Ch. 58 are but a few of the more memorable displays of her innocence, her purity. In terms of symbolic color imagery, Hardy associates Tess with images and descriptions of white in particular, though the presence of red increasingly haunts her.
Direct comments about Tess’s virtue are made either by Hardy as narrator or other characters. For example, chapter 36 contains Angel’s assertions to his mother supported with Hardy’s comments, and chapter 40 voiced Izz’s confession of Tess’s love for Angel during their carriage ride to the station. So often, Tess’s virtues are emphasized throughout the book, with multiple chapters harboring Tess’s sense of responsibility for her hapless family. In chapter 22, as the reader witnesses her attempts to evade a union with Clare, she attempts to commend the other girls to Angel. Several times we witness her patient acceptance of Angel’s judgment linked to her loyalty, resignation and renunciation, all of which are regarded as female virtues by the Victorians. Even her refusal to pity herself in chapter 41 can be viewed as a virtue.
Hardy does not deny Tess has weaknesses, but when Tess blames herself excessively, the reader tends to defend her against herself, as she shoulders the blame for not only Prince’s death in Ch.4, but also for feeling condemned by the sign-writer in Ch. 12. Hardy places further emphasis on her self-condemnation as he brings increased attention to her feelings of guilt in Ch. 13.
Some religions operate around the system of sacrificing either an animal or human victim, either to appease the gods worshipped or to gain some benefit. Such sacrifices usually have to be physically or morally spotless, and on them are laid the wrongdoing or sin of the whole community which they then ‘pay for’ with their lives. People who have died, though guiltless of any crime and usually against their will are often referred to as 'innocent victims'. However, in the Christian faith, Jesus Christ is seen as the ultimate, willing sacrifice, choosing death rather than being forced into it. (For an account of Jesus' trial, crucifixion and resurrection, see Luke 22:47-71, Luke 23:1-56 and Luke 24:1-12). How Hardy means Tess to be regarded is somewhat conflicting. There are contrasting views. On one hand, he expresses that Tess is merely a tragic victim. Tess passively accepts her fate in chapters 7 and 8 when she allows her needs to be sacrificed for the sake of her family, just like she passively accepts Angel’s judgment of her in chapters 35 and 36 as the “laying on” of sin. We, as the reader, feel that Tess is the victim of Alec’s ruthless pursuit in Ch. 47. She is subject to the forces of convention and prejudice in society working against her. She dies on an altar at Stonehenge, where previously victims of Sun worship may have been sacrificed. And in the end, Hardy suggests “The President of the Immortals” is also against her.
But on the other hand, Hardy shows that Tess is not merely a tragic victim. She does make choices. She chooses to go with Alec, and she delays in confessing to Angel. It is a possibility that Tess’s fatal flaw is an “acquiescence in chance” for being the reason that she is not “spotless”, as displayed in Ch. 37. She is not portrayed as a one-dimensional victim, but as a complex individual who undergoes a process of suffering and punishment, which ultimately refines and develops her character.
Perhaps Tess can be viewed as a representative of a powerless group. Historicist and Marxist interpretations make Tess a type or example of social groups that were being victimized at the time of writing. Thus, Tess could be seen as typical of the rural working class which became more and more powerless as they lost the security of employment and housing.
To feminist interpretations, Tess typifies women in Victorian society in that she is the victim of not only Alec’s privileged predatory instincts and made an “object” of desire, but also that of Angel, by failing to uphold his unreal idealism of her. She has no recourse against either. It’s also suggested that at some deeper level, she could possibly claim to the victim of Hardy himself, who was determined to pursue her to death.
Hardy was always fascinated by women and seems to have had an intuitive understanding of them, despite his deteriorating relationship with his wife, Emma. His own relationship with his mother was very close. In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, he demonstrates an awareness of female society and of how it functions. Although men's and women's worlds are much the same among the working rural communities Tess inhabits, there are significant differences and inequalities to which Hardy draws our attention. The club-walking (Ch 2) at the beginning of the novel, which forms our first introduction to Tess, is basically just for women, though its very existence is under threat and, elsewhere, it appears, women's clubs have disappeared. The event seems a mixture of female ritual and social event, the wearing of white symbolizing innocence, virginity and purity. Men are allowed in at a later stage and then it could be seen as a courtship dance. Tess is certainly upset at not having Angel to dance with.
Tess works in the poultry house for Mrs d'Urberville (Ch 9). Working with poultry was typically woman's work, but the idea of the cockerel and hens symbolically re-enacts Alec's lordship over the women who surround him or who work on his estate. That said, the Trantridge community seems mixed in every other regard (Ch 10). The harvesting of Ch 14 appears a communal event, yet the men and women have a degree of separation in approach, dress and specific jobs. This is reinforced in Ch 47, 48. Alec has a sense of Farmer Groby getting Tess to do ‘men's work’ on the machine and protests about this. Groby, of course, is revenging himself on Tess and Tess is helpless to prevent it. At Talbothays, the dairy work is equally divided between men and women and thus seems the perfectly balanced rural community (Ch 17). What Hardy fails to mention is that the men and the women would have been paid at different rates. Hardy only briefly mentions middle-class women such as Mrs Clare and Mercy Chant. They would not have had access to many work opportunities. Grace Melbury in The Woodlanders is another example: she has little to do except wait for a husband, even though her father owns an agricultural business.
Tess has received a typical village school education, which was available equally to boys and girls up to the age of ten (raised to eleven in 1893) (Ch 3). Girls were offered their one escape from rural work and class, since the best students could continue their schooling, then train to be teachers, as Hardy's two sisters did, one becoming a headmistress. Such an opportunity is there for Tess, but for her family’s inability to grasp the right opportunities. However, education has modified Tess's rural dialect, and she would have had the opportunity to become a domestic servant because of this (Ch 41). This would have been worse paid than agricultural labor but was slightly more permanent and generally lighter work. By contrast, the only education denied Angel is a university one. Both he and Alec would have had a male middle-class education, which would have fitted them for their status as gentlemen.
Hardy makes other significant comments about women, especially their psychology, in terms of powers of recuperation (Ch 16). Women have traditionally formed friendships in the face of suffering. Tess is part of a quartet of lovelorn dairymaids. Their hopeless infatuation might seem melodramatic but it did a few things that must be mentioned. It helps define the quality of Tess’s love, gives a context to her inner conflict, brings out her natural superiority to the other girls, and provides Tess with an opportunity for renunciation and demonstration of loyalty. The four girls remain loyal to each other, even as they become individualized. By contrast, the village girls of Marlott form no real support system for Tess and she soon becomes isolated from them (Ch 13).
In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Hardy establishes a theme of marginality in Tess through expression of the differences in her character and through her potential. He shows that Tess differs not only from her family in terms of responsibility and guilt, but also from the villagers in terms of her ancestry, especially in her pride, even though she has friends there. He shows that Tess is intelligent and has enough education to become a teacher. She marries an educated member of the gentry, potentially a gentleman farmer. She eventually slides into the position of the mistress of a wealthy man. But despite that all these potentials are enough to set her apart from her companions, she is hindered from translating potential into reality. She fails to enter a new social class.
I am drawn to the concepts of coincidence, fate and destiny in Hardy's novels because they seem central to the way in which he makes his plots work. However, Hardy was not a systematic philosopher, so it is not helpful to try to extract a coherent ‘worldview’ from his use of these ideas. Any novel has to use coincidence to some extent, whether it be to tie up a plot, resolve mysteries or secrets, to bring characters together, or even to create ironies and surprises. Coincidences, of themselves, are neutral. It is how they affect the characters that matters. In fiction, any coincidence has to be made to work and to turn the plot in one direction or another. Hardy's coincidences may appear to be happy at the outset, but ironically they often turn out badly. There is a necessity of coincidences with a limited cast. Hardy has very few characters in Tess, dispersed over a period of five years and an area of some fifty miles by thirty miles. Realistically, the chances of three people meeting and re-meeting in such circumstances are very low, yet such a coincidence is never impossible. Given these parameters, it could be said that Hardy uses coincidence to the minimum in Tess. Only a few times do we find the coincidences a little far-fetched, for example the Darch girls turning up on the farm at Flintcombe-Ash. The one big coincidence is re-meeting Alec, as in Ch. 44 had it occur. But within the narrative arc, he is a past that has to be faced and resolved.
In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy says that 'character is destiny'. George Eliot said a similar thing in Mill on the Floss, except she used the word 'fate'- as does Alec in Ch 8. He claims that it was 'my fate' to have a vicious horse; it is clearly in his character to possess such an animal. It could be said that it is Tess's characteristic lack of resolve which makes ‘coincidences’ affect her so greatly, such as how easily she is discouraged from reaching Angel’s parents and is turned back by the coincidence of overhearing his brothers and Mercy (Ch 44). The same argument could be applied to when she pushes the letter to Angel under the carpet. Could it be that, at some subconscious level, she did not want Angel to get the letter? She perhaps wanted it 'brushed under the carpet'. An ironic novelist such as Hardy exploits such alternative explanations but refuses to guide his readers. Thus, a tension between writer and reader is set up.
'Fate' has a more impersonal connotation than 'destiny', and is usually perceived as a more hostile force. That is why, as the coincidences stack up against Tess, the reader perhaps feels there is some malevolent force against her. Hardy emphasizes this idea with his comment on Tess’s execution, that ‘the President of the Immortals … had ended his sport with Tess.’ Hardy uses various prefiguring devices, such as omens, to prepare us for such patterns of malevolence working through apparent coincidences (though this denies that there is a role for chance and coincidence!). At times, the character of Time itself seems to act as fate. Hardy writes: 'thus Time destroys its own Romances' (Ch 49).

The Red Pony by John Steinbeck

2011-12-21T11:42:00.000-08:00

This book was not on the BBC’s Top 100 Books List of 2011, but was read when the book was accidentally picked up in lieu of another.
The Red Pony, an episodic novella written by American writer John Steinbeck in 1933, is a classic story about an immature young boy faced with the realities of birth and death. The first three chapters were published separately in magazines from 1933–1936. Steinbeck began The Red Pony fairly early in his career; his letters indicate he was working on a pony story in 1933, and the first two sections of the story sequence, “The Gift” and “The Great Mountains,” were published in the North American Review in November and December of that year. The third section, “The Promise,” did not appear in Harpers until 1937, and these three parts were published in a slim volume in 1937 by Covici Friede. “The Leader of the People,” the final section, was not added until the publication of his story collection The Long Valley in 1938. But manuscript and textual evidence suggests that the later sections were written some time before their publication, not very long after the first two stories. The four sections are connected by common characters, settings, and themes, forming a clearly unified story sequence, which was published separately as The Red Pony in 1945. A modestly successful movie version, for which Steinbeck wrote the screenplay, followed in 1949.
The Red Pony—which some critics believe represents one of Steinbeck's best works—is divided into four separate sections, unlike standard chapters. The sections are held together by common characters, location, and themes, and they follow a similar time line, but the continuation of story line is not as smooth as the transition between normal chapters of a novel. They all follow the trials of Jody Tiflin, however, as he progresses through the rites of passage from young boy to young man. Although “The Red Pony” may at first glance appear to be a light tale for young readers, it is actually considerably deeper in application and scope, dealing with feelings of rage, sorrow, and futility. A particularly interesting aspect of “The Red Pony” is John Steinbeck’s use of incompletion to add depth and feeling to the stories. This story sequence traces Jody’s initiation into adult life with both realism and sensitivity, a balance that Steinbeck did not always achieve. The vision of characters caught up in the harsh world of nature is balanced by their deep human concerns and commitments. Each story about Jody and his life on his father's California ranch embodies an important moral lesson. All the stories take place on the Tiflin ranch in the Salinas Valley, California. Steinbeck’s evocation of the vital beauty of the ranch setting matches his work in Of Mice and Men, and his symbols grow naturally out of this setting. The setting stresses the end of the frontier and of the American dream; in a sense Jody’s maturation matches that of modern America.
In the first story, titled “The Gift”. It concerns Jody’s red pony, which he names Gabilan after the nearby mountain range. The pony soon becomes a symbol of the boy’s growing maturity and his developing knowledge of the natural world. Later he carelessly leaves the pony out in the rain, and it takes cold and dies despite Billy Buck’s efforts to save it. Thus Jody learns of nature’s cruel indifference to human wishes. He learns that even the incredibly experienced Billy Buck can be wrong, and that something as exciting and promising as a new horse can end in tragedy.
In the second section, “The Great Mountains,” Jody learns that he can better sympathize with a stranger than his mature, grown-up father can, and that he has a desire to explore that his father doesn’t understand. The Tiflin ranch is visited by a former resident, Gitano, an aged Mexican-American laborer raised in a hacienda that is no longer standing. Old Gitano has come home to die. Carl persuades Ruth that they cannot take Old Gitano in, but their dialogue proves pointless. Jody spends time with him, learning from the quiet man. Stealing a broken-down nag significantly named Easter, the old man rides off into the mountains to die in dignity which holds the young boy’s fascination. Again, Jody discovers some of the complex, harsh reality of adult life.
In “The Promise,” the third story, Jody learns of the intricate connections between life and death, when he is once again confronted with death, but this time he learns that sometimes life comes from death. In order to get his son another colt, Carl breeds one of the mares. Jody is responsible for the care of that mare, and works hard at his chores to pay for the cost. The thrill soon wears off, and the waiting bothers Jody who also fears the horse handler will do something which will lead to the death of the foal. But the birth is complicated one and decisions must be made. Feeling responsible for the tragedy in the death of Gabilan, Billy Buck goes to extreme lengths to ensure Jody gets his cold, and must kill the mare to save the colt. Jody is horrified at the brutality of the circumstances, even though he gets what he wants.
The themes of death and life converge naturally in the first three stories, preparing readers for the final section of the sequence. He learns that his father’s sternness and temper can get him into trouble, and that tales of adventure do not add up to a successful, happy life, which complicates his longing to leave the ranch. The final story is “The Leader of the People.” This story brings the sequence to an end with another vision of death and change. Jody’s grandfather comes to visit, retelling his timeworn stories of the great wagon crossing. Carl Tiflin cruelly hurts the old man by revealing that nobody except Jody is really interested in these repetitious tales. The grandfather realizes that Carl is right, but later he tells Jody that the adventurous stories were not the point, that his message was “Westering” itself. For the grandfather, “Westering” is a force like the frontier, the source of American identity; now with the close of the frontier, “Westering” has ended. Westerners have degenerated to petty landholders such as Carl Tiflin and aging cowboys such as Billy Buck. From the cruel words of his father to his grandfather, Jody has to once again take a look at his life, who he is, and who he will become. In his grandfather’s ramblings, Jody discovers a sense of mature purpose, and by the conclusion of the sequence he, too, can hope to be a leader of the people.
Tied up with the theme of Jody's coming-of-age is his changing relationship with his father. As the book opens, we see Carl Tiflin as a man who keeps his emotions hidden. When he does say something kind to Jody it thrills the boy in a way that shows such praise is rare. Jody can see his father only as a powerful man, a sort of mammoth, powerful distant, object. As the stories progress their relationship changes. Through the threat and promise of adventure inherent in Gitano, Jody begins to see that his own imagination is far more powerful than his father's and that his dreams and his father's dreams do not in any way coincide. As Jody grows up he is forced to face his differences with his father and to see his father as a person of faults and limitations. The arrival of Jody's grandfather in the fourth story, further shows Carl's coldness, and the sympathy of the boy for the old man shows what is lacking in his relationship with his father: sympathy, and a desire for adventure.
Throughout The Red Pony, as in his other works, Steinbeck uses spare language to describe both the physical landscape and the actions of his characters. He does not delve into his characters interior lives and instead tries to portray that life through their exterior words and actions. This combination of unadorned prose style and an insistence on representing only what can be seen or heard or felt is a feature of the realism movement, of which Steinbeck is one of the foremost stylists.
A writer of great talent, sensitivity, and imagination, John Steinbeck entered into the mood of the country in the late 1930s with an extraordinary responsiveness. The Depression had elicited a reevaluation of American culture, a reassessment of the American dream; a harsh realism of observation was balanced by a warm emphasis on human dignity. Literature and the other arts joined social, economic, and political thought in contrasting traditional American ideals with the bleak reality of bread lines and shantytowns. The literary qualities in The Red Pony typify the style that won Steinbeck immense popularity. Rising to prominence at the height of the Depression, Steinbeck seemed to reflect the mood of the era with his bare lines of simple prose. During World War II, when people began to realize how complicated the world had become, Steinbeck’s development as a novelist faltered, and he never recovered his artistic momentum. Even East of Eden, the work he thought his masterpiece, proved a critical failure although a popular success. Since his death, Steinbeck has remained widely read, both in America and abroad. His critical reputation has enjoyed a modest revival, and will most likely continue to develop, for few writers have better.
Steinbeck derives his literary power from his use of symbolism for ironic effect. The symbolic images in the plot allow the reader to perceive the significance of an event on a much deeper level than do the characters. The pony in The Red Pony, for example, functions as a symbol of Jody’s boyhood and innocence as well as a symbol of his future. When the pony dies, the reader experiences a sense of loss, because the pony’s death represents Jody’s loss of innocence. But while the reader understands that Jody’s life has been dramatically altered by the death of the pony, Jody, ironically, grieves for his pony without the ability to fully see the death in a larger context.
Perhaps the major symbol of dislocation was the Dust Bowl. The American garden became a wasteland from which its dispossessed farmers fled. The arts in the 1930’s focused on these harsh images and tried to find in them the human dimensions which promised a new beginning.
Over the course of the four sections of this book, the protagonist, Jody Tiflin, goes through several experiences that force him to encounter many difficult emotions. In the process of dealing with the harsh realities of life, Jody changes from a naive young boy into a responsible and maturing young man. Many ancient cultures have specific ceremonies for inducting a young boy into the realm of grown men. These ceremonies are often referred to as rites of passage. In modern cultures, even though the ceremony is less traditional or formalized, young boys and girls still experience, sometimes randomly, certain types of rituals that mark them for life. In urban settings, in the absence of strong family relationships, this rite of passage might be experienced through membership in a gang. Biologically, every young boy and girl goes through physical changes that signal the onset of adulthood.
Interestingly, The Red Pony is throughout a study of contrasts and pairs. The wonderful red pony colt Galiban reflects Black Demon, the marred colt whose birth was the death of its mother. The Galiban Mountains themselves reflect the fearful, unexplored mountains to the West. The old man Gitano reflects Jody’s Grandfather, in that both old men are rejected by Carl Tiflin, and both of the men were explorers, Gitano of the mountain ranges to the West and Grandfather of the Westering himself. Carl Tiflin and Billy Buck contrast each other, with Carl Tiflin being hard and shy at the same time, while Billy Buck seems to show more interest and care for Jody.
The Red Pony is perhaps the height of John Steinbeck’s use of incompletion. The stories that it contains have no happy ending. Jody does not end up matured by his experience as so many other similar books, “The Yearling,” for example, would have it appear. John Steinbeck refuses to sentimentalize. Though the passages may seem sad or emotional this is purely reader response. Steinbeck takes care to portray the scenes with a sterile, detached distance, a matter of fact attitude.
It is this tone and mood in particular that make “The Red Pony” a great work of art. John Steinbeck’s writing style is perhaps even more thought-provoking, even more evocative than if he had purposely directed the passages in a sentimental direction or used them to promote some external purpose or fairy tale ending. For this reason I highly enjoyed “The Red Pony” as a piece of classic literature and a work of art. I recommend it to all readers.
A number of famous readers have commented on the novel. The St. Petersburg Times noted that “News reports said that [President Barack Obama] bought two classics from young readers, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony.” In an interview with Eric Clapton, Billboard complimented the novel by stating that The Red Pony, [by] John Steinbeck, [is a] wrenching story of adolescent initiation into the world of death, birth, and disappointment.” However, Eric Clapton later complained that “[t]he [book] just made me want to commit suicide. The Red Pony, I could not believe this book. It broke my heart, and I thought there is no happy ending to anything.” Clapton did some research to see why an author would write about a story like this and criticized those types of authors by saying that they are “alcoholic, damaged people with a poisoned viewpoint on life.” He added that “as much as it was incredibly exciting and death-defying to read, it was not necessarily very good for the growth of one’s spirit.”
It is through The Red Pony, which Jody receives as a gift from his father, that he learns about death. This is a painful experience for a shy young boy who is so proud of his pony that he invites friends home from school just to look at the small horse. Likewise, it is through other animals that populate this book that Jody also learns about sex, old age, sickness, and birth. He is gently guided through his journey from boy to man with the help of a ranch hand named Billy Buck, who is reputed to know more about horses than any man around. However, even Billy cannot defy nature and must learn that he cannot make promises that he cannot keep. Through Billy and Jody's mother, Jody learns compassion and understanding. Jody's father is not as open to other people, but Steinbeck takes care not to depict Jody's father as a villain. Steinbeck treats all his characters fairly and fleshes out their personalities to their fullest extent possible within the confines of his stories.
Jody Tifflin begins this novel as a thoughtful but somewhat malicious boy who daydreams by the mossy spring tub yet destroys a small bird then dissects and discards it with the same regard he crushes a melon and hides the evidence. By then end of the story cycle, however, he has learned what it means to be a grown man through his experiences with death. His first great lesson comes when Gabilan the pony dies under his care. Next, his fascination with the mountains and the old man Gitano lead him to consider his own mortality. The turning point comes in "The Promise" when he learns that life and death are "inseparably bound together." Finally, his appreciation for his grandfather teaches him empathy and the value of respect. Jody's offer to comfort his grandfather with a glass of lemonade, and the gesture of mature respect for another's feelings that the gesture contains, demonstrates that the boy is beginning to view the world as a man. In order to reach that point, however, he first had to understand that man is powerless against death and acceptance of this condition is the essence of manhood.
The stories that comprise The Red Pony are suffused with examples of man's powerlessness against the laws of nature. Billy Buck's failed attempt to save the pony's life teaches Jody that even the ministrations of the man whose abilities he admires coupled with his own vigil and care cannot circumvent death. Even the buzzard that he kills in senseless anger fails to acknowledge the boy's desire for revenge. His experience with Gitano - who unfalteringly claims that he will stay on the ranch because he was born there but departs on the old horse Easter - causes the boy to consider that much of a man's life is immutable and unknown like the mountains into which the old man and the horse retire. When Billy Buck must kill Nellie to save her colt Jody comprehends that his friend has been forced to sacrifice a life in order to keep his promise to deliver another safely. And finally Jody learns that the passage of time eclipses an individual man's work when he empathizes with his grandfather's obsession with the past. He is shown through all of this that nature is indifferent to man.
From a personal point of view, I felt that the beginning was similar to My Friend Flicka, a 1941 novel by Mary O’Hara. It kept my attention, but I was very disappointed in the manner of which it ended. It made evoked the feeling that it had to be less than 100 pages, which I felt detracted from the piece. I can see why it didn’t make BBC’s Top 100 Books List of 2011.

#52 Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck

2011-12-21T11:33:00.000-08:00

Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA.
Based on Steinbeck's own experiences as a bindlestiff in the 1920s (before the arrival of the Okies he would vividly describe in The Grapes of Wrath), the title is taken from Robert Burns' eighteenth-century poem "To a Mouse", which features a couplet that has become widely known and quoted: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley." (The best laid schemes of mice and men / Go oft awry.) That last phrase, written in Scottish dialect, translates as “often go wrong.” As will become clear, the quotation relates directly to our two protagonists, who do indeed have a “scheme” to get out of the cycle of poverty and alienation that is the migrant worker’s lot: they plan to purchase a farm of their own and work on it themselves. Lennie visualizes this future possibility as near to heaven – he can imagine nothing better than life with “the rabbits.” Their action in the novel is largely motivated by a desire to achieve the independence of this farm life.
Required reading in many schools, Of Mice and Men has been a frequent target of censors for vulgarity and what some consider offensive language; consequently, it appears on the American Library Association's list of the Most Challenged Books of 21st Century.
John Steinbeck’s enduring popularity is largely the result of his ability to weave a complicated fictional reality from simple elements – simple language, simple characters, simple techniques. One of the techniques he uses consistently is the juxtaposition of the human and the natural worlds. He often – as in The Grapes of Wrath – alternates short natural vignettes with the parallel struggles of humankind. Of Mice and Men, as is clear from the title alone, features this parallelism as well. It is a novel about the natural world – “of mice” – and the social world – “and men.” The relationship between these two worlds is not one of conflict but of comparison; he invites us to witness the similarities between the human and animal worlds.
Poverty, in Burns’ work as well as Steinbeck, draws the human and the natural worlds closer together. During the Great Depression, in which the novel is set, workers were thrust from relative comfort to fend for themselves in a cruel and uncaring world. They face the original challenges of nature – to feed themselves, to fight for their stake. Poverty has reduced them to animals – Lennie a ponderous, powerful, imbecilic bear; George a quiet, scheming, scrappy rodent of a man. Notice how frequently the two men, particularly Lennie, are described in animal similes: Lennie drags his feet “the way a bear drags his paws” (2) and drinks from the pool “like a horse” (3). Lennie even fantasizes about living in a cave like a bear.
Of course, Lennie’s vision of nature is hardly realistic; he thinks of nature as full of fluffy and cute playthings. He has no notion of the darkness in the natural world, the competition and the cruelty. He wouldn’t have the faintest notion how to feed himself without George. In this too the men balance each other: George sees the world through suspicious eyes. He sees only the darkness where Lennie sees only the light. George may complain about how burdensome it is to care for Lennie, but this complaint seems to ring hollow: in truth, George needs Lennie’s innocence as much as Lennie needs George’s experience. They compliment each other, complete each other. Together, they are more than the solitary and miserable nobodies making their migrant wages during the Depression. Together, they have hope and solidarity.
George’s complaint – “Life would be so easy without Lennie” – and Lennie’s counter-complaint – “I could just live in a cave and leave George alone” – are not really sincere. They are staged, hollow threats, like the threats of parents and children (“I’ll pull this car over right now, mister!”). Similarly, George’s story about how “things are going to be,” with rabbits and a vegetable garden and the fat of the land, also has a formulaic quality, like a child’s bedtime story. Children (like Lennie) love to hear the same tale repeated countless times; even when they have the story memorized, they love to talk along, anticipating the major turns in the story and correcting their parents if they leave out any details. “The rabbits” is Lennie’s bedtime story, and while George isn’t exactly a parent to Lennie, he is nevertheless parental. George is Lennie’s guardian – and in guarding Lennie, George is in effect guarding innocence itself.
Steinbeck's plots are as simple and finely honed as his characters. Each topic discussed - the woman who mistakenly thought that Lennie was trying to rape her, the mice that Lennie crushes with affection, George's order that Lennie return to the campsite if anything goes wrong - will come into play later on in the book. The reader should keep these in mind as the book is read.
The novel as a whole shares many elements with stage drama. Steinbeck often uses a single room as a setting for a scene, as he uses the bunk house in the beginning. This technique allows him to introduce a wide variety of characters quickly without using a narrator - the characters talk about each other, interact, and even describe each other (as when Candy talks about Curley being a "little guy"), all of which facilitates relatively rich characterization in a relatively short number of pages. This stage technique applies to Steinbeck's descriptions as well as his dialogue. Consider the description of Candy's dog at the close of the chapter: "[The dog] gazed about with mild, half-blind eyes. He sniffed, and then lay down and put his head between his paws [etc.]." Steinbeck's language is completely shorn of emotion; he simply describes the animal's actions as a playwright might write stage directions.
This "dramatic" technique gives Steinbeck's story a portentous quality. On one level, he is simply describing an evening among itinerant workers in a realistic way; on another level, the actions and personae of these workers take on a larger, almost mythic significance. Just as in dramatic works of the same period - such as Thornton Wilder's Our Town - Steinbeck blends the workaday with the highly stylized, bringing out the eternal, allegorical character of everyday life. Thus Curley comes to represent all petty, embittered men; Crooks stands in for the persecution and the suffering of all African Americans; George is the eternal cynic-with-a-heart-of-gold and Lennie personifies clumsy innocence. The characters are types, or even archetypes, as much as they are individuals - a technique more popularly associated with plays and films than with literary fiction.
This stage technique also allows Steinbeck to build tension quickly without exposition. The atmosphere soon becomes hostile and uncomfortable as they arrive at the bunkhouse: George suspects that his bed is infested, the Boss suspects that George and Lennie are trying to pull a fast one, Candy is miserable and decrepit, Curley is looking for a fight, Curley's wife is vamping around suspiciously. Lennie, in his instinctive, animalistic way, captures the foreboding tone of the Chapter when he bursts out, "I don't like this place, George. This ain't no good place." Right away, there are several points of inevitable conflict, most of them hinging on the character of Curley, who seems to rub everyone the wrong way. The only positive character thus encountered at the ranch in the beginning is Slim, who is also the character described at greatest length; but even Slim comes off as life-hardened - the first fact we learn about him is that he has drowned four out of his nine new puppies. One should immediately recognize how completely out-of-place Lennie is in this hostile, gloomy environment: he is innocent, naive, clumsy and childish in the midst of a bunch of shrewd, ugly, lonely, conniving men.
And Steinbeck's novel certainly features men rather than women. The only woman with any important role in the novel (aside from the memory of Lennie's Aunt Clara) is Curley's Wife, a lonely and desperate "tramp," to use Candy's word, who is every bit as meddlesome as Curley fears. Steinbeck's attitude toward her, at least at this stage in the novel, is hardly sympathetic. She doesn't even receive a name, she dresses garishly and talks provocatively. There is more than a whiff of sexism in her depiction. However, Steinbeck is careful to hint as a possible motive for her behavior even at this early stage. She is, after all, stuck with the most loathsome imaginable husband, Curley - who apparently keeps her confined in their house whenever possible, who obnoxiously brags about their sex life (exemplified by the grotesque image of the Vaseline-filled glove), and who cannot be good company. Curley married her because she was flashy, and now her flashiness causes him nothing but distress. She is stuck in a loveless - and perhaps, despite Curley's bragging to the contrary, a sexless - marriage, and can be pitied for seeking other company.
Steinbeck references hands often and variedly throughout the book. On the most basic level, hands are crucial to the work of the farm - these men, after all, live by their labor. They also function metaphorically. Curley, especially, is repeatedly described as "handy," a term that Candy uses to mean "good at fighting." His hands are further connected to his sex life - his Vaseline-filled glove creates an association between his hand and his sexual organ (why else, after all, would one soften up one's hand?). This association becomes especially important as the tension that is established at the Vaseline-filled glove’s mention spills over into crisis soon.
It’s amazing how Steinbeck carefully controls the events, weaving even the smallest detail into a rich whole. The atmosphere remains gloomy as the action progresses from the account of Lennie and George's near-lynching, to the shooting of Candy's dog, to the fight between Curley and Lennie - with one exceptional spot of light, George's monologue "about the rabbits" and Candy's offer to finance their dream.
To take these events as they occur, the near-lynching in Weed provides another instance of the danger of women. Again, Steinbeck gives voice to attitudes that are sexist at best. He already showed Curley's wife acting just as desperately vampy as her reputation; here he piles on examples of the danger and misunderstanding that comes from sex. The woman in the red dress in Weed (whose pretty dress "provokes" Lennie into action) clearly resembles Curley's garishly attired wife. And George tells of another man, Andy Cushman, who landed in the San Quention penitentiary after succumbing to "a tart" (pg. 62). Women equal danger in Steinbeck's masculine dramatic world.
The only good women, George suggests (pg. 61), are those whose sexual motives one knows - either because they are totally desexualized, like Lennie's Aunt Clara, or completely sexualized, like the whores at Susy's and Clara's. Indeed, Steinbeck's double use of the name "Clara" (which means "clear," suggesting that the social and sexual roles of these two women are transparent) links the one model of womanhood - motherliness - with its opposite - whoredom. Figures like the woman in the red dress, or Curley's wife, who seem to exist between these two extremes, at once off-limits and up-for-grabs, are presented as dangerous, especially for a man as sexually innocent yet powerful as Lennie. He is as dangerous to them as they are to him - they are like the pet mice and rabbits that Lennie loves literally to death, soft and easily crushed. (Steinbeck heightens the association between the women and the small cuddly creatures at several points, for instance when he writes that the woman in the red dress "rabbit[ed]" to the lawmen with her accusation of Lennie (pg. 46).) I suppose one can certainly take issue with Steinbeck's depiction of women, but their role in the work as kindling for trouble seems quite clear.
The shooting of Candy's dog draws a parallel between the old swamper and George and Lennie. Indeed, Candy and his dog come off as an "old timer" version of the younger duo. Just as Lennie is an incredible worker, so too Candy's dog was once "the best damn sheep dog I ever saw" (pg. 49). And just as the other men cannot understand the bond that keeps an apparently hale and clever man like George yoked to the burdensome, infantile Lennie, so too the men cannot understand Candy's sentimental companionship with his now-decrepit and stinking dog. Steinbeck strengthens their parallel bonds of companionship with continued associations of Lennie and dogs - he is absolutely attached to his puppy; he obeys George's commands unthinkingly, as a dog obeys an owner; and George's commands often directly resemble commands one gives a dog, such as when he sics George on Curley.
Candy thus emerges as the only character in the bunk house who has something approaching George and Lennie's preference for social (and perhaps socialist) companionship over isolated individualism. Their thematic link makes his eagerness to join George and Lennie in their farm life natural and understandable. Candy, unlike the others, displays an interest in others and hope for the future. His sympathetic nature comes through even in his decision to allow his dog's death. Candy only relents to their request to put the dog out of its misery when they frame the argument in terms of the dog's suffering, and even this request is not granted easily. Yet Candy does finally relent to the men, for despite his similarities to George and Lennie, Candy is an inherently passive character. He relents to others' decisions easily, incapable of fully standing up for his own beliefs. He allows another man to shoot his dog, despite his repeated insistence that he wants to keep the old hound. (The shooting of the dog in the back of the head, a supposedly painless maneuver, foreshadows later events in the story.)
In the world Of Mice and Men describes, Candy’s dog represents the fate awaiting anyone who has outlived his or her purpose. Once a fine sheepdog, useful on the ranch, Candy’s mutt is now debilitated by age. Candy’s sentimental attachment to the animal—his plea that Carlson let the dog live for no other reason than that Candy raised it from a puppy—means nothing at all on the ranch. Although Carlson promises to kill the dog painlessly, his insistence that the old animal must die supports a cruel natural law that the strong will dispose of the weak. Candy internalizes this lesson, for he fears that he himself is nearing an age when he will no longer be useful at the ranch, and therefore no longer welcome.
"A dragfooted sheepdog, gray of muzzle, and with pale, blind old eyes" (pg. 26), Candy's dog is a far cry from his sheepherding days. Carlson says to Candy, in regard to the dog: "Got no teeth, he's all stiff with rheumatism. He ain't no good to you, Candy. An' he ain't no good to himself. Why'n't you shoot him, Candy?" (pg. 49). And Candy is left with no other option, but to shoot his longtime companion. This sub-plot is an obvious metaphor for what George must do to Lennie, who proves to be no good to George and no good to himself. Steinbeck re-emphasizes the significance of Candy's dog when Candy says to George that he wishes someone would shoot him when he's no longer any good. And when Carlson's gun goes off, Lennie is the only other man not inside the bunk house, Steinbeck having placed him outside with the dog, away from the other men, his gun shot saved for the novel's end.
The tragic fate of Candy's dog reminds us that the rest of the bunk house society - including even Slim - cannot understand or tolerate sentimental attachment to a weak creature. This is no world for Candy's dog, and it appears to be no world for Lennie either. Steinbeck even subtly suggests that their now-realistic dream of co-owning a plot of land might also be too dreamy for the hard truths of the world. When Candy decides to collaborate with them and the idea of owning a farm becomes tangible, none of the men know how to respond. For George and Lennie their dream serves as a diversion from the travails of everyday life and not as a realistic goal.
The farm that George constantly describes to Lennie—those few acres of land on which they will grow their own food and tend their own livestock—is one of the most powerful symbols in the book. It seduces not only the other characters but also the reader, who, like the men, wants to believe in the possibility of the free, idyllic life it promises. Candy is immediately drawn in by the dream, and even the cynical Crooks hopes that Lennie and George will let him live there too. A paradise for men who want to be masters of their own lives, the farm represents the possibility of freedom, self-reliance, and protection from the cruelties of the world.
Turning to the fight between Lennie and Curley, we see first-hand that there is a deep and ruthless capacity for violence in the generally docile Lennie. This violence is sometimes casual and inadvertent - as in his accidental killing of the mice in his pockets - and sometimes an explosion of directed rage, as when he crushes Curley's hand. Lennie seems willing to kill to protect the things he loves, whether George or the rabbits or what have you. His violence is child-like - or dog-like: the sudden ferocity of an otherwise affectionate pet. His casual declaration that he will snap the necks of any cats who attempt to kill the rabbits on his fantasy farm is shocking - we know that he means exactly what he says. I compare him to my beloved Ivan, a Rottweiler who attacked to protect me. I was forced to put him down because of his ferocious love and protection.
When George gives him permission to fight back against Curley, Lennie cannot control his capacity for violence. He only stops crushing Curley's hand when George issues a direct order - leading one to wonder how he would behave in a similar situation is George were not there to control him. The fight between Curley and Lennie fulfills the foreshadowed confrontation between the two characters, but it does not resolve the situation. We know Curley well enough to sense that his spoken resolution to pretend the incident didn't happen - to pretend he caught his hand in "a machine" - rings hollow.
By the way, Lennie's crushing of Curley's hand - an unusual form of fighting, to say the least - is highly significant. We've already seen how Curley's hand is associated with his sexuality - he keeps one hand soft for his wife. Thus the injury he sustains resonates with his (already uneasy) sense of sexual prowess. Lennie has, metaphorically at least, crushed more than the man's hand - he has also crushed his very manhood. Lennie cannot understand the significance of this gesture, but the others - or, at least, the reader - can. Lennie has unwittingly unmanned his rival and indirectly revealed his superior physical (and sexual) prowess. Thus Steinbeck lays the foundation for a conflict that directly links Lennie, Curley, and Curley's sexual object, his wife.
Steinbeck has already implicitly contrasted the lonesome, individualistic existence of most of the farmhands with the more collective, communal attitude of George, Lennie and Candy. This contrast becomes still more marked as the book progresses. Indeed, as Crooks, Candy and Lennie - the three mentally or physically impaired "outcasts" of the farm - discuss their dream of living "of the fat of the land" one can sense a strong whiff of socialism. For a moment, they imagine a life of freedom from prejudice and racism, in which each man works for "just his keep" regardless of color or disability (pg. 84).
Four of Steinbeck's characters are handicapped: Candy is missing a hand, Crooks has a crooked spine, Lennie is mentally slow, and Curley acquires a mangled hand in the course of the novel. They are physical manisfestations of one of the novel's major themes: the schemes of men go awry. Here, to re-iterate the point, Steinbeck has the actual bodies of his characters go awry. It is as if nature herself is often doomed to errors in her scheme. And whether they be caused at birth, or by a horse, or by another man, the physical deformities occur regardless of the handicapped person's will or desire to be otherwise, just as George and Lennie's dream goes wrong despite how much they want it to be fulfilled.
It's fitting that the three virtual servants of the farm - the black man, the swamper, and the mentally disabled workhorse - collaborate in this dream. They are, metaphorically, the proletariat - the downtrodden workers of society - linking to form a socialist utopia. Or, at least, fantasizing about such a link. It's possible to go quite far with this socialist reading the more one knows about Marxist theory. One might look at Crooks' description of his past - when he had a farm of his own (pg. 81) - as a socialist "utopian past" from which the inequalities of capitalism have torn the worker. One might even consider George a kind of middle-class revolutionary leading the proletariat from their downtrodden position to a reunion with the natural cycles of labor. Of course, one ought to keep in mind that their revolution remains very small-scale - they desire merely to alter their own lives, not the lives of humanity at large - and nebulous. But as the others leave his room, Crooks has utterly abandoned his dream of farm life.
It's also necessary to note that this fantasy farm does not seem to include women. Indeed, Curley's wife eventually emerges as both more complex and more loathsome than before. She is, on the one hand, much more than a one-dimensional harlot; at the same time, though, she represents a clear interruption of the socialist fantasy that the three men entertain. Indeed, she literally interrupts them at the height of their fantasizing. She is the snake - or, more to the point, the Eve - in the garden, the fact of life that makes a peaceful farm life so difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. At the same time, at least she knows herself. We are allowed a glimpse into Curley's wife's discontent, and her frustration with life in some ways mirrors that of the three enfeebled men who have been left behind. She is especially comparable to Crooks; both are obviously intelligent and perceptive of themselves as well as others, and both contain a deep bitterness stemming from their mistreatment. The one is mistreated because he is black, the other because she is a woman. Both have a bleak and accurate insight into the fundamental nastiness of people. Curley's wife understands the deep-laden competitive urge for possessing women which tears men apart, and she knows that she is cast as the villain in this eternal game of one-upmanship.
However, she is also quick to act the villainous part. She knows how to use the unfairness of life to her advantage, which becomes disturbingly clear when she dangles the threat of crying rape in front of Crooks. She knows that as a black man he would be lynched if she told the others that he'd even tried to rape her, and she wields this power to her advantage. Ultimately, though, she is revealed as frightened of her husband as she sneaks off to her house. Curley's wife has been trapped by life, and however brazen and manipulative she may be, she is ultimately one of the comparatively powerless figures in the novel. She is therefore, perhaps, an object of the reader's sympathy.
As we near the climax of the novel, note how carefully Steinbeck has continued to develop the most conflict-laden thematic threads in the action. Curley's wife - the source of so much tension on the farm - and Lennie - who is capable of unthinking and brutal (if innocent) violence - have finally come into contact. Again, their relationship is subtly sexual. Curley's wife flirtatiously refers to Lennie as "Machine" (pg. 88) - revealing that she knows how her husband's hand was crushed and hinting that she "likes machines." Lennie is utterly incapable of dealing with this sort of flirtation. He is presented as a mere animal, drawn to Curley's wife by dumb instinct. Her effect on the horses as she exits clearly resonates with her effect on Lennie: "[W]hile she went through the barn, the halter chains rattled, and some horses snorted and some stamped their feet" (pg. 90). Lennie, who is both gentle and terribly dangerous, is at her mercy - which means, ultimately, that she is at his, though she doesn't know it yet.
After he finds the body of Curley's wife, George notes that though Lennie does many "bad things," he never acts out of "meanness," only out of an inability to understand the world or control himself. George's choice of words is apt. Not only does "meanness" suggest "cruelty" - as in the childhood use of the word in the common phrase, "You're mean." "Meanness" also suggests small-mindedness or pettiness. Many of the characters in the novel act out of self-interested malice. Lennie never does. He acts with the best intentions at almost every turn; indeed (and despite his name) he has a simplicity of soul that contrasts starkly with the "smallness" of others. The word also suggests another variation - "meaning." Lennie doesn't mean to do bad things - they simply happen to him. He acts badly without intending to act at all.
Indeed, Lennie's crime is a fundamental inability to understand the frailty of others. He literally loves things to death. His puppy is soft, so he pets it to death. Only George understands him fully, knows his childish mixture of innocence and dangerousness. Others, including Curley's wife, treat him as a sort of sounding board for their own complaints and fantasies. Their failure to understand the danger that goes along with Lennie's obvious innocence results in the "bad things" that Lennie does. Crooks is just barely able to defuse Lennie's capacity for violent rage in the preceding chapter. Curley's wife, in this chapter, is not so lucky.
But then, the events ought to surprise no one, really. They certainly don't surprise George or Slim, who are instantly able to determine from a look at Curley's wife that Lennie is the culprit and that he acted out of confused panic, just as he did at Weed. Lennie, like an animal, doesn't understand his actions as morally wrong. Rather, he thinks of them simply in terms of George's approval. Like a dog who feels a mixture of fear and love for his master, Lennie is both fiercely loyal to George and terrified of upsetting his friend. He knows instinctively that he has done something wrong both in killing the puppy and in killing Curley's wife. For Lennie, however, the two actions are roughly equivalent - in both cases, he simply feels that he risks losing George's permission to tend the rabbits. The question of the intrinsic value of human life never enters his thinking.
The dead mouse and the dead puppy, these two soft, furry creatures that Lennie accidentally kills, are both metaphors and foreshadowing devices. As metaphors, they serve as a physical representation of what will happen to George and Lennie's dream: they (Lennie in particular) will destroy it. Lennie never intends to kill the thing he loves, the soft things he wants more than anything, but they die on him nonetheless. The dead mouse is also an allusion to the novel's title, a reminder that dreams will go wrong, even the desire to pet a mouse. And because bad things come in threes, Lennie's two accidental killings of animals foreshadow the final killing of Curley's wife, an accident that seals his fate and ruins the dream for him, George, and Candy.It’s important to note that Lennie’s puppy is one of several symbols that represent the victory of the strong over the weak. Lennie kills the puppy accidentally, as he has killed many mice before, by virtue of his failure to recognize his own strength. Although no other character can match Lennie’s physical strength, the huge Lennie will soon meet a fate similar to that of his small puppy. Like an innocent animal, Lennie is unaware of the vicious, predatory powers that surround him.
Curley's wife, as Steinbeck depicts her, does not share Lennie's innocence. Steinbeck rests a measure of blame for the killing on the victim herself. Again and again, Lennie's intrusion in the affairs of Curley and Curley's wife have been tinged with sex, and her offer to let Lennie touch her hair may be construed as a sexual advance. She even prefaces the offer by complaining of loneliness and dissatisfaction in her marriage. However sincere and pitiable these complaints may be, she is ultimately a self-absorbed, manipulative figure in the scene. She fails to understand the danger of Lennie - despite the evidence of his violent power in her husband's mutilated hand - and instead interprets his conflict with her husband and his fear of encountering her through a prism of vanity. She assumes that Lennie is her husband's babyish rival - a harmless admirer. Thus she "leads him on," to use the age-old misogynistic excuse for rape.
The full extent of the misogyny latent in the portrayal of Curley's wife comes following her death. Steinbeck describes her as having more life and vitality as a dead than a living character. The trope of finding beauty in a young woman's corpse is a very old one in Western literature - it can be found in countless texts, such as the dead Ophelia in Hamlet, or the dead maidens of Edgar Allen Poe's lyric poems. The basic idea in Steinbeck's description of Curley's wife's corpse is that in death her beauty can finally be appreciated apart from her conniving, duplicitous personality. It is as though he casts her sentience itself as her worst characteristic. In this way, she is completely objectified - reduced, in death, to the grotesque ideal of the silent and docile woman she never was in life. A modern reader has every reason to find this depiction objectionable.
Indeed, to pile indignity upon indignity, the final time we encounter her corpse occurs when Candy curses at it, calling her a tramp and a tart. Even in death she is nothing more than a scapegoat; and even her own husband fails to mourn her. Perhaps unintentionally, Steinbeck thus illustrates perfectly the horrible atmosphere of neglect and abuse that perhaps led her to act out in the first place. She was never considered as a person, only as Curley's problematic trophy.
We have seen so many threads of the story come together already, and the final plot movement of the story has a similarly inevitable trajectory. Steinbeck invites the reader to recall several additional associations in order to piece together the tragic resolution to come. We recall George's order from the beginning of the book - that if any trouble goes down, Lennie is to hide in the bushes near their original campsite. Thus we know that George has deliberately misled the posse by claiming that Lennie is likely headed south. Moreover, Carlton's missing Luger is highly significant. That was, after all, the gun that was used to shoot Candy's old sheep dog. The men assume that Lennie has stolen the weapon for his own protection - again revealing how little they understand Lennie, who is absolutely incapable of such calculation. The reader knows better, however.
Steinbeck's careful control of setting in the novel is especially clear in the last scene, which finds us back at the beginning - at the brush near the Salinas River. As he did in the opening chapter, Steinbeck begins with a description of nature. Once again, this nature vignette resonates with the themes of the novel. We see the casual violence of nature - the stork devouring the water snake - and we see Lennie's nonchalant integration into this atmosphere as he stoops and drinks with his lips like a thirsty dog.
The content of Lennie's thoughts, and of Lennie and George's eventual conversation, also mirrors the opening. Lennie repeats the child-like, ritualistic cycle of separation and reconciliation that has seemingly marked his relationship with George for years. Once again he hears George complain that he could live it up if not for Lennie; once again he offers to leave George and live in the hills; once again he gets George to tell him about their rabbit utopia.
However, these similarities - the setting and the content - only ultimately emphasize how much has changed since the novel's opening. Where George was once full of life - angry and forgiving - now he is a husk of himself, bereft of emotion as he goes through his monologues. What was once a plausible - if far-fetched - fantasy has disintegrated into delusion. He knows what must happen, even as Lennie goes on believing in the rabbits. Whereas in the beginning, we see George and Lennie's "best laid plans," here at the end, we have irrefutable evidence that, just as Robert Burns' poem predicts, these plans have gone awry.
Emphasizing the delusional nature of Lennie's point-of-view, Steinbeck adapts his one experimental narrative gesture in the novel, choosing to depict two hallucinations - first Aunt Clara, and then (more ludicrous still) a giant sardonic rabbit. It is unclear whether we are supposed to understand these hallucinations to be one-time phenomena or regularly recurring. (By the way, the reader may find it a bit unbelievable that this gentle giant, who everywhere else proves incapable of understanding figurative language, is able to imaginatively generate such colorful self-chastisements as "you ain't worth a greased jack-pin to ram you into hell" (pg. 112).)
Either way, the last scene represents our closest approach to Lennie's experience - his simultaneous fear and love of authority figures, his relentless obsession with the rabbits, and his constant (if confused) regret that he never fails to act in a confused and problematic way. Lennie, social pack animal that he is, has a deep-seated need for discipline and forgiveness. His self-chastisement is quite moving, both because it reveals a degree of self-understanding in Lennie and because it suggests that he is regularly and brutally upset with himself. His remorse hardly counts as a conscience - at no point does he register that he has committed murder, only that he has done yet another inscrutable "bad thing" - but it makes a claim on the reader's sympathy nevertheless.
George's mercy killing of Lennie neatly parallels the earlier events, when Candy allowed Carlson to shoot his malodorous old dog. Steinbeck is even careful to involve the same Luger in each killing. Whereas the meek and passive Candy proved unable to do the job himself, George shows no such weakness. As has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt at this point, Lennie's lethal innocence is not compatible with the world. He cannot learn to change his ways - he cannot even understand why the "bad things" he has done are bad. The fate he would meet at Curley's (mutilated) hands - likely a drawn-out, vengeful lynching - is enough to convince George that his only real option is to make Lennie's death as quick and painless as possible.
At the novel's end, a few haunting questions remain. Why, after all, is George so attached to Lennie? What did he gain from the infantile and troublesome giant's companionship? Many theories have emerged over the years, as readers and critics have speculated that George is somehow specifically in Aunt Clara's debt, that George and Lennie are actually related after all, or even that George and Lennie are in love - romantically, not merely as friends. However, before (or at least alongside) such speculation, it's important to note that Steinbeck deliberately chooses to leave this central question murky. In a novel so carefully wrought in all other respects, this central motivational ambiguity stands as a deliberate and unsolvable mystery.
` The simple answer may be that in the callous world of the itinerant laborer, the constant loyalty and companionship of a man like Lennie acts as an antidote to alienation. Lennie, paradoxically, represents the instinctual innocence in life. Writers as diverse as William Blake in his Songs of Innocence or Mark Twain in The Mysterious Stranger have explored the interesting ways in which innocence is not, in fact, altogether innocent. Divorced from a sense of good and evil, the truly innocent are capable of performing acts of apparent cruelty without remorse. Lennie is just such an innocent. He tempers George's worldly weariness with the constant presence of discovery and hope even as he plagues George's life with the threat of misunderstanding and ignorant folly. In many ways, Lennie completes George. And as his hollow despair at the close of the novel suggests, George ultimately needs Lennie's innocence just as much as Lennie depends on George's experience.
When discussing the thematics of Steinbeck's novel, we would do well to first examine the title, which is an allusion to a line of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft aglay." Translated into modern English, the verse reads: "The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry." This cynical statement is at the heart of the novel's action and serves as a foreshadowing prophecy of all that is to come. For, indeed, the novels two main characters do have a scheme, a specific dream of changing their current way of life in order to have their own place and work only for themselves. The tragedy, of course, lies in the fact that no matter how elaborately our heroes plan, regardless of how intensely they hope and dream, their plan does not find fulfillment.
Of Mice and Men teaches a grim lesson about the nature of human existence. Nearly all of the characters, including George, Lennie, Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife, admit, at one time or another, to having a profound sense of loneliness and isolation, which is a significant factor in the lives of these characters. Each desires the comfort of a friend, but will settle for the attentive ear of a stranger. George sets the tone for these confessions early in the novella when he reminds Lennie that the life of a ranch-hand is among the loneliest of lives. Men like George who migrate from farm to farm rarely have anyone to look to for companionship and protection. As the story develops, Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife all confess their deep loneliness. The fact that they admit to complete strangers their fear of being cast off shows their desperation. Candy is lonely after his dog is gone. The companionship of George and Lennie is the result of loneliness. Despite the need for companionship, Steinbeck emphasizes how the nature of loneliness is sustained though the barriers established from acting inhuman to one another. Curley’s wife admits to Candy, Crooks, and Lennie that she is unhappily married. She is lonely because her husband is not the friend she hoped for. Therefore, she deals with her loneliness by flirting with the men on the ranch, which causes Curley to increase his abusiveness and jealousy, which causes all the ranch hands to avoid her. Crooks tells Lennie that life is no good without a companion to turn to in times of confusion and need. He states the theme candidly as "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you." Crooks's barrier results from being barred from the bunkhouse by restraining him to the stable; his bitterness is partially broken, however, through Lennie's ignorance. Each of these characters searches for a friend, someone to help them measure the world, as Crooks says. In the end, however, companionship of his kind seems unattainable. I found it interesting that the author further reinforces this theme through subtle methods by situating the story near the town of Soledad, which means "solitude" in Spanish.
The characters are rendered helpless by their isolation, and yet, even at their weakest, they seek to destroy those who are even weaker than they. Perhaps the most powerful example of this cruel tendency is when Crooks criticizes Lennie’s dream of the farm and his dependence on George. Having just admitted his own vulnerabilities—he is a black man with a crooked back who longs for companionship—Crooks zeroes in on Lennie’s own weaknesses. In scenes such as this one, Steinbeck records a profound human truth: oppression does not come only from the hands of the strong or the powerful. Crooks seems at his strongest when he has nearly reduced Lennie to tears for fear that something bad has happened to George, just as Curley’s wife feels most powerful when she threatens to have Crooks lynched. The novella suggests that the most visible kind of strength—that used to oppress others—is itself born of weakness
Steinbeck explores different types of strength and weakness throughout the novella. The first, and most obvious, is physical strength. As the story opens, Steinbeck shows how Lennie possesses physical strength beyond his control, as when he cannot help killing the mice. Great physical strength is, like money, quite valuable to men in George and Lennie’s circumstances. Curley, as a symbol of authority on the ranch and a champion boxer, makes this clear immediately by using his brutish strength and violent temper to intimidate the men and his wife. Physical strength is not the only force that oppresses the men in the book. It is the rigid, predatory human tendencies, not Curley, that defeat Lennie and George in the end. Lennie’s physical size and strength prove powerless; in the face of these universal laws, he is utterly defenseless and therefore disposable.
Steinbeck's characters are often powerless, due to intellectual, economic, and social circumstances. Lennie possesses the greatest physical strength of any character, which should therefore establish a sense of respect as he is employed as a ranch hand. However, his intellectual handicap undercuts this and results in his powerlessness. Economic powerlessness is established as many of the ranch hands are victims of the Great Depression. As George, Candy and Crooks are positive, action- oriented characters, they wish to purchase a homestead, but because of the Depression, they are unable to generate enough money. Lennie is the only one who is basically unable to take care of himself, but the other characters would do this in the improved circumstances they seek. Since they can not do so, the real danger of Lennie's mental handicap comes to the fore.
One of the reasons that the tragic end of George and Lennie’s friendship has such a profound impact is that one senses that the friends have, by the end of the novella, lost a dream larger than themselves. The farm on which George and Lennie plan to live—a place that no one ever reaches—has a magnetic quality, as Crooks points out. After hearing a description of only a few sentences, Candy is completely drawn in by its magic. Crooks has witnessed countless men fall under the same silly spell, and still he cannot help but ask Lennie if he can have a patch of garden to hoe there. The men in Of Mice and Men desire to come together in a way that would allow them to be like brothers to one another. That is, they want to live with one another’s best interests in mind, to protect each other, and to know that there is someone in the world dedicated to protecting them. Given the harsh, lonely conditions under which these men live, it should come as no surprise that they idealize friendships between men in such a way.
Another key element is the companionship between George and Lennie. The two men are not unique for wanting a place and a life of their own, but they are unique in that they have each other. Their companionship contrasts the loneliness that surrounds them-the loneliness of the homeless ranch worker, the loneliness of the outcast black man, the loneliness of the subjected woman, the loneliness of the old, helpless cripple-and it arouses curiosity in the characters that they encounter, Slim included. And indeed, the reader becomes curious as to their friendship as well. And can we call it friendship? Lennie would call George a friend, but George would perhaps be hard-pressed to admit the same of Lennie. As he tells Slim, he has simply become so used to having Lennie around that he "can't get rid of him" (pg. 45). Despite his annoyance, George also demonstrates protectiveness, patience, and pride when it comes to Lennie. He is perhaps motivated to stay with Lennie by a sense of guilt, or responsibility, or pity, or a desire to not be alone himself. Most likely it is a combination of all of these motivations. Yet it seems strange that George would choose to remain with Lennie, given the danger that Lennie causes for the both of them. George is not blind to the fact that life would be easier without Lennie, and he often yearns for independence when Lennie becomes troublesome, creating a major source of tension in the novel. This tension is not resolved until the final gunshot by the riverside, when the strain of Lennie's company makes it impossible for George to survive with his companion.
George is often in the habit of playing solitaire, a card game that requires only one person, while he is in the bunk house. He never asks Lennie to play cards with him because he knows that Lennie would be incapable of such a mental task. Solitaire, which means alone, is a metaphor for the loneliness of the characters in the novel, who have no one but themselves. It is also a metaphor for George's desire to be "solitaire," to be no longer burdened with Lennie's company, and his constant playing of the game foreshadows his eventual decision to become a solitary man.
Ultimately, however, the world is too harsh and predatory a place to sustain such relationships. Lennie and George, who come closest to achieving this ideal of brotherhood, are forced to separate tragically. With this, a rare friendship vanishes, but the rest of the world—represented by Curley and Carlson, who watch George stumble away with grief from his friend’s dead body—fails to acknowledge or appreciate it. The presence of Fate is felt most heavily as the characters' aspirations are destroyed as George is unable to protect Lennie (who is a real danger). Steinbeck presents this as "something that happened" or as his friend coined for him "non-teleological thinking" or "is thinking", which postulates a non-judgmental point of view. By killing Lennie, George eliminates a monumental burden and a threat to his own life (Lennie, of course, never threatened George directly, but his actions endangered the life of George, who took responsibility for him). The tragedy is that George, in effect, is forced to shoot both his companion, who made him different from the other lonely workers, as well as his own dream and admit that it has gone hopelessly awry. His new burden is now hopelessness and loneliness, the life of the homeless ranch worker. Slim's comfort at the end ("You hadda George" (pg. 118)) indicates the sad truth that one has to surrender one's dreams in order to survive, not the easiest thing to do in America, the Land of Promise.) For George, the hope of such companionship dies with Lennie, and true to his original estimation, he will go through life alone.
This is a novel of defeated hope and the harsh reality of the American Dream. Most of the characters in Of Mice and Men admit, at one point or another, to dreaming of a different life. Before her death, Curley’s wife confesses her desire to be a movie star. Crooks, bitter as he is, allows himself the pleasant fantasy of hoeing a patch of garden on Lennie’s farm one day, and Candy latches on desperately to George’s vision of owning a couple of acres. Before the action of the story begins, circumstances have robbed most of the characters of these wishes. Curley’s wife, for instance, has resigned herself to an unfulfilling marriage. What makes all of these dreams typically American is that the dreamers wish for untarnished happiness, for the freedom to follow their own desires. George and Lennie are poor homeless migrant workers, doomed to a life of wandering and toil in which they are never able to reap the fruits of their labor. Their desires may not seem so unfamiliar to any other American: a place of their own, the opportunity to work for themselves and harvest what they sow with no one to take anything from them or give them orders. George and Lennie’s dream of owning a farm, which would enable them to sustain themselves, and, most important, offer them protection from an inhospitable world, represents a prototypically American ideal. They Lennie desperately cling to the notion that they are different from other workers who drift from ranch to ranch because, unlike the others, they have a future and each other. But characters like Crooks and Curley's wife serve as reminders that George and Lennie are no different from anyone who wants something of his or her own. Their journey, which awakens George to the impossibility of this dream, sadly proves that the bitter Crooks is right: such paradises of freedom, contentment, and safety are not to be found in this world. Just as any other citizen who found themselves in the midst of America’s most trying times, I honestly feel that today’s average citizen can also fully comprehend the ramifications of the impossibility of the great American Dream.
All the characters (all the ones that Steinbeck has developed, at least) wish to change their lives in some fashion, but none are capable of doing so; they all have dreams, and it is only the dream that varies from person to person. George aspires to independence, to be his own boss, to have a homestead, and most importantly to be "somebody". Lennie aspires to be with George on his independent homestead, and to quench his fixation on soft objects. Candy aspires to reassert his responsibility lost with the death of his dog, and for security for his old age — on George's homestead. Curley's wife has already had her dream of being an actress pass her by and now must live a life of empty hope of ever obtaining the fame that is forever lost since she married Curley. Crooks' situation hints at a much deeper oppression than that of the white worker in America-the oppression of the black people. Through Crooks, Steinbeck exposes the bitterness, the anger, and the helplessness of the black American who struggles to be recognized as a human being, let alone have a place of his own. Crooks aspires to a small homestead where he can express self-respect, acceptance, and security. Crooks' hopelessness underlies that of George's and Lennie's and Candy's and Curley's wife's. But all share the despair of wanting to change the way they live and attain something better. Even Slim, despite his Zen-like wisdom and confidence, has nothing to call his own and will, by every indication, remain a migrant worker until his death. Slim differs from the others in the fact that he does not seem to want something outside of what he has, he is not beaten by a dream, he has not laid any schemes. Slim seems to have somehow reached the sad conclusion indicated by the novel's title, that to dream leads to despair.
Despite the portrayal of women in Of Mice and Men being limited and unflattering, we can feel a strong presence of what Steinbeck portrays as the “corrupting power of women”. We learn early on that Lennie and George are on the run from the previous ranch where they worked, due to encountering trouble there with a woman. Misunderstanding Lennie’s love of soft things, a woman accused him of rape for touching her dress. George berates Lennie for his behavior, but is convinced that women are always the cause of such trouble. Their enticing sexuality, he believes, tempts men to behave in ways they would otherwise not.
A visit to the “flophouse” (a cheap hotel, or brothel) is enough of women for George, and he has no desire for a female companion or wife. Curley’s wife, the only woman to appear in Of Mice and Men, seems initially to support George’s view of marriage. Dissatisfied with her marriage to a brutish man and bored with life on the ranch, she is constantly looking for excitement or trouble. In one of her more revealing moments, she threatens to have the black stable-hand lynched if he complains about her to the boss. Her insistence on flirting with Lennie seals her unfortunate fate. Although Steinbeck does, finally, offer a sympathetic view of Curley’s wife by allowing her to voice her unhappiness and her own dream for a better life, women have no place in the author’s idealized vision of a world structured around the brotherly bonds of men.
Of Mice and Men was Steinbeck's first attempt at writing in the form of novel-play termed a "play-novelette" by one critic. Structured in three acts of two chapters each, it is intended to be both a novella and a script for a play. He wanted to write a novel that could be played from its lines, or a play that could be read like a novel.
Steinbeck originally titled it Something That Happened (referring to the events of the book as "something that happened" because nobody can be really blamed for the tragedy that unfolds in the story), however, he changed the title after reading Robert Burns's poem To a Mouse. Burns's poem tells of the regret the narrator feels for having destroyed the home of a mouse while plowing his field.
A fun trivia question: Steinbeck wrote this book and The Grapes of Wrath in what is now Monte Sereno, California. An early draft of the novel was eaten by Steinbeck's dog.
Attaining the greatest positive response of any of his works up to that time, Steinbeck's novella was chosen as a Book of the Month Club selection before it was published. Praise for the work came from many notable critics, including Maxine Garrard (Enquirer-Sun), Christopher Morley, and Harry Thornton Moore (New Republic). New York Times critic Ralph Thompson described the novel as a "grand little book, for all its ultimate melodrama." It also appeared again on the BBC’s Top 100 Books List of 2011.
The novella has been banned from various US public and school libraries or curricula for allegedly "promoting euthanasia", "condoning racial slurs", being "anti-business", containing profanity, and generally containing "vulgar" and "offensive language". Many of the bans and restrictions have been lifted and it remains required reading in many other American, Australian, Irish, British, New Zealand and Canadian high schools. As a result of being a frequent target of censors, Of Mice and Men appears on the American Library Association's list of the Most Challenged Books of 21st Century (number 4).

#63 A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

2011-12-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .”
A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature. Even if you have not ventured to read it, more than likely the opening line is familiar to you.
A Tale of Two Cities is one of only two works of historical fiction by Charles Dickens (Barnaby Rudge is the other one). It has fewer characters and sub-plots than a typical Charles Dickens novel. The author's primary historical source was The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle: Charles Dickens wrote in his Preface to Tale that "no one can hope to add anything to the philosophy of Mr. Carlyle's wonderful book". While Dickens is renowned for his humor, A Tale of Two Cities is one of his least comical books. Dickens also uses as humor in the book to show different points of view. The book is full of tragic situations, leaving little room for intended humor provided by Dickens.
The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows the lives of several protagonists through these events. The most notable are Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. Darnay is a French once-aristocrat who falls victim to the indiscriminate wrath of the revolution despite his virtuous nature, and Carton is a dissipated British barrister who endeavors to redeem his ill-spent life out of his unrequited love for Darnay's wife, Lucie Manette.
The 45-chapter novel was published in 31 weekly installments in Dickens' new literary periodical titled All the Year Round. From April 1859 to November 1859, Dickens also republished the chapters as eight monthly sections in green covers. Dickens' previous novels had appeared only as monthly installments. The first weekly installment of A Tale of Two Cities ran in the first issue of All the Year Round on 30 April 1859. The last ran thirty weeks later, on 26 November.
Dickens uses literal translations of French idioms for characters who can't speak English, such as "What the devil do you do in that galley there?!!" and "Where is my husband? ---Here you see me." Again, Dickens animatedly adds the flavor of the various dialects to this text, but what was disturbing most to me was the multitude of typographical errors present in the text. Whether it be from the literal French translations, the dialects, or the typos, Penguin Classics edition of the novel notes that "Not all readers have regarded the experiment as a success."
With A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens asserts his belief in the possibility of resurrection and transformation, both on a personal level and on a societal level. In Dickens' England, resurrection always sat firmly in a Christian context. Most broadly, Sydney Carton is resurrected in spirit at the novel's close (even as he, paradoxically, gives up his physical life to save Darnay's—just as in Christian belief, Christ died for the sins of the world.) More concretely, "The First Book " deals with the rebirth of Dr. Manette from the living death of his incarceration.
Resurrection appears for the first time when Mr. Lorry replies to the message carried by Jerry Cruncher with the words "Recalled to Life". Resurrection also appears during Mr. Lorry's coach ride to Dover, as he constantly ponders a hypothetical conversation with Dr. Manette: ("Buried how long?" "Almost eighteen years." ... "You know that you are recalled to life?" "They tell me so."). He believes he is helping with Dr. Manette's revival and imagines himself "digging" up Dr. Manette from his grave. As this statement implies, the doctor’s eighteen-year imprisonment has constituted a death of sorts. Lucie’s love enables Manette’s spiritual renewal, and her maternal cradling of him on her breast reinforces this notion of rebirth.
Resurrection is the main overriding theme in this novel, and manifests both literally and figuratively. In Jarvis Lorry's thoughts of Dr. Manette, resurrection is first spotted as a theme. It is also the last theme: Carton's sacrifice. Dickens originally wanted to call the entire novel Recalled to Life. (This instead became the title of the first of the novel's three "books".) Book I became titled “Recalled to Life” and embodies the rediscover of Doctor Manette, who has been jailed in the Bastille for eighteen years. Code for the secret mission to rescue him from Paris, is the simple phrase "recalled to life," which starts Mr. Lorry thinking about the fact that the prisoner has been out of society long enough to have been considered dead.
Jerry is also part of the recurring theme: he himself is involved in death and resurrection in ways the reader does not yet know. The first piece of foreshadowing comes in his remark to himself: "You'd be in a blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!" The black humor of this statement becomes obvious only much later on. Five years later, one cloudy and very dark night (in June 1780), Mr. Lorry reawakens the reader's interest in the mystery by telling Jerry it is "Almost a night ... to bring the dead out of their graves". Jerry responds firmly that he has never seen the night do that. It turns out that Jerry Cruncher's involvement with the theme of resurrection is that he is what the Victorians called a "Resurrection Man", one who (illegally) digs up dead bodies to sell to medical men (there was no legal way to procure cadavers for study at that time). Although his trade of digging up dead bodies and selling their parts seems gruesome, it provides him with the crucial knowledge that a spy named Roger Cly has been literally resurrected—in that he was never buried at all.
Connected to the theme of the possibility of resurrection is the notion that sacrifice is necessary to achieve happiness. Dickens examines this second theme, again, on both a national and personal level. For example, the revolutionaries prove that a new, egalitarian French republic can come about only with a heavy and terrible cost—personal loves and loyalties must be sacrificed for the good of the nation. Also, when Darnay is arrested for the second time, in the Third Book, Chapter 7, the guard who seizes him reminds Manette of the primacy of state interests over personal loyalties. Moreover, Madame Defarge gives her husband a similar lesson when she chastises him for his devotion to Manette—an emotion that, in her opinion, only clouds his obligation to the revolutionary cause. Most important, Carton’s transformation into a man of moral worth depends upon his sacrificing of his former self. In choosing to die for his friends, Carton not only enables their happiness but also ensures his spiritual rebirth.
The opposite of resurrection is of course death. Death and resurrection appear often in the novel. Dickens is angered that in France and England, courts hand out death sentences for insignificant crimes. In France, peasants are even put to death without any trial, at the whim of a noble. The Marquis tells Darnay with pleasure that "[I]n the next room (my bedroom), one fellow ... was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter—his daughter!" Interestingly, the demolition of Dr. Manette's shoe-making workbench by Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry is described as "the burning of the body". It seems clear that this is a rare case where death or destruction (the opposite of resurrection) has a positive connotation, since the "burning" helps liberate the doctor from the memory of his long imprisonment. But Dickens' description of this kind and healing act is strikingly odd:
“So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.”
Sydney Carton's martyrdom atones for all his past wrongdoings. He even finds God during the last few days of his life, repeating Christ's soothing words, "I am the resurrection and the life". The most important “resurrections” in this novel are those of Charles Darnay. Carton’s resemblance to him saves him from being convicted and executed in England, and then, the same resemblance allows the latter to switch places with him in the Conciergerie. Darnay is rescued at the last moment and recalled to life; Carton chooses death and resurrection to a life better than that which he has ever known: "it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there ... he looked sublime and prophetic". These resurrections are surrounded with heavily religious language that compares Carton's sacrifice of his own life for others' sins to Christ's sacrifice on the cross. The narrative suggests that Sydney Carton’s death secures a new, peaceful life for Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, and even Carton himself. By delivering himself to the guillotine, Carton ascends to the plane of heroism, becoming a Christ-like figure whose death serves to save the lives of others. His own life thus gains meaning and value. Moreover, the final pages of the novel suggest that, like Christ, Carton will be resurrected—Carton is reborn in the hearts of those he has died to save. Similarly, the text implies that the death of the old regime in France prepares the way for the beautiful and renewed Paris that Carton supposedly envisions from the guillotine. Although Carton spends most of the novel in a life of indolence and apathy, the supreme selflessness of his final act speaks to a human capacity for change. Although the novel dedicates much time to describing the atrocities committed both by the aristocracy and by the outraged peasants, it ultimately expresses the belief that this violence will give way to a new and better society. In the broadest sense, at the end of the novel Dickens ultimately foresees a resurrected social order in France, rising from the ashes of the old one.
Hans Biedermann writes that water "is the fundamental symbol of all the energy of the unconscious—an energy that can be dangerous when it overflows its proper limits (a frequent dream sequence)." This symbolism suits Dickens' novel; in A Tale of Two Cities, the frequent images of water stand for the building anger of the peasant mob, an anger that Dickens sympathizes with to a point, but ultimately finds irrational and even animalistic. Early in the book, Dickens suggests this when he writes, “[T]he sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction.” The sea here represents the coming mob of revolutionaries. After Gaspard murders the Marquis, he is “hanged there forty feet high—and is left hanging, poisoning the water.” The poisoning of the well represents the bitter impact of Gaspard's execution on the collective feeling of the peasants.
After Gaspard’s death, the storming of the Bastille is led (from the St. Antoine neighborhood, at least) by the Defarges; “As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled around Defarge’s wine shop, and every human drop in the cauldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex...” The crowd is envisioned as a sea. “With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into a detested word [the word Bastille], the living sea rose, wave upon wave, depth upon depth, and overflowed the city...”
Darnay’s jailer is described as “unwholesomely bloated in both face and person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water.” Later, during the Reign of Terror, the revolution had grown “so much more wicked and distracted ... that the rivers of the South were encumbered with bodies of the violently drowned by night...” Later a crowd is “swelling and overflowing out into the adjacent streets ... the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and whirled them away.”
During the fight with Miss Pross, Madame Defarge clings to her with “more than the hold of a drowning woman”. Commentators on the novel have noted the irony that Madame Defarge is killed by her own gun, and perhaps Dickens means by the above quote to suggest that such vicious vengefulness as Madame Defarge's will eventually destroy even its perpetrators.
So many read the novel in a Freudian light, as exalting the (British) superego over the (French) id. Yet in Carton's last walk, he watches an eddy that "turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it onto the sea"—his fulfillment, while masochistic and superego-driven, is nonetheless an ecstatic union with the subconscious.
As is common in English literature, good and evil are symbolized with light and darkness. Lucie Manette is the light and Madame Defarge is darkness. Darkness represents uncertainty, fear and peril. It is dark when Mr. Lorry rides to Dover; it is dark in the prisons; dark shadows follow Madame Defarge; dark, gloomy doldrums disturb Dr. Manette; his capture and captivity are shrouded in darkness; the Marquis’s estate is burned in the dark of night; Jerry Cruncher raids graves in the darkness; Charles's second arrest also occurs at night. Both Lucie and Mr. Lorry feel the dark threat that is Madame Defarge. "That dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me," remarks Lucie. Although Mr. Lorry tries to comfort her, "the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself". Madame Defarge is "like a shadow over the white road", the snow symbolizing purity and Madame Defarge's darkness corruption. Dickens also compares the dark color of blood to the pure white snow: ”The blood takes on the shade of the crimes of its shedders”.
Throughout the novel, Dickens approaches his historical subject with some ambivalence. While he supports the revolutionary cause, he often points to the evil of the revolutionaries themselves. Charles Dickens was a champion of the maltreated poor because of his terrible experience when he was forced to work in a factory as a child. His sympathies, however, lie only up to a point with the revolutionaries; he condemns the mob madness which soon sets in. When madmen and -women massacre eleven hundred detainees in one night and hustle back to sharpen their weapons on the grindstone, they display "eyes which any unbrutalized beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun". Dickens deeply sympathizes with the plight of the French peasantry and emphasizes their need for liberation. The several chapters that deal with the Marquis Evrémonde successfully paint a picture of a vicious aristocracy that shamelessly exploits and oppresses the nation’s poor. Although Dickens condemns this oppression, however, he also condemns the peasants’ strategies in overcoming it. For in fighting cruelty with cruelty, the peasants effect no true revolution; rather, they only perpetuate the violence that they themselves have suffered. Dickens makes his stance clear in his suspicious and cautionary depictions of the mobs. The scenes in which the people sharpen their weapons at the grindstone and dance the grisly Carmagnole come across as deeply macabre. Dickens’s most concise and relevant view of revolution comes in the final chapter, in which he notes the slippery slope down from the oppressed to the oppressor: “Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.” Though Dickens sees the French Revolution as a great symbol of transformation and resurrection, he emphasizes that its violent means were ultimately antithetical to its end.
The reader is shown the poor are brutalized in France and England alike. As crime proliferates, the executioner in England is "stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now hanging housebreaker ... now burning people in the hand" or hanging a broke man for stealing sixpence. In France, a boy is sentenced to have his hands removed and be burned alive, only because he did not kneel down in the rain before a parade of monks passing some fifty yards away. At the lavish residence of Monseigneur, we find "brazen ecclesiastics of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives ... Military officers destitute of military knowledge ... [and] Doctors who made great fortunes ... for imaginary disorders". (This incident is fictional, but is based on a true story related by Voltaire in a famous pamphlet, An Account of the Death of the Chevalier de la Barre.)
The Marquis recalls with pleasure the days when his family had the right of life and death over their slaves, "when many such dogs were taken out to be hanged". He won't even allow a widow to put up a board bearing her dead husband’s name, to discern his resting place from all the others. He orders Madame Defarge's sick brother-in-law to heave a cart all day and allay frogs at night to exacerbate the young man's illness and hasten his death.
In England, even banks endorse unbalanced sentences: a man may be condemned to death for nicking a horse or opening a letter. Conditions in the prisons are dreadful. "Most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practiced, and ... dire diseases were bred", and sometimes killing the judge before the accused. So riled is Dickens at the brutality of English law that he depicts some of its punishments with sarcasm: "the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanizing and softening to behold in action". He faults the law for not seeking reform: "Whatever is, is right" is the dictum of the Old Bailey. The gruesome portrayal of quartering highlights its atrocity.
Without entirely forgiving him, Dickens understands that Jerry Cruncher robs graves only to feed his son, and reminds the reader that Mr. Lorry is more likely to rebuke Jerry for his humble social status than anything else. Jerry reminds Mr. Lorry that doctors, men of the cloth, undertakers and watchmen are also conspirators in the selling of bodies.
Dickens wants his readers to be careful that the same revolution that so damaged France will not happen in Britain, which (at least at the beginning of the book) is shown to be nearly as unjust as France. But his warning is addressed not to the British lower classes, but to the aristocracy. He repeatedly uses the metaphor of sowing and reaping; if the aristocracy continues to plant the seeds of a revolution through behaving unjustly, they can be certain of harvesting that revolution in time. The lower classes do not have any agency in this metaphor: they simply react to the behavior of the aristocracy. In this sense it can be said that while Dickens sympathizes with the poor, he identifies with the rich: they are the book's audience, its "us" and not its "them". "Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind".
With the people starving and begging the Marquis for food; his uncharitable response is to let the people eat grass; the people are left with nothing but onions to eat and are forced to starve while the nobles are living lavishly upon the people's backs. Every time the nobles refer to the life of the peasants it is only to destroy or humiliate the poor.
Class struggle is a theme inevitable in a novel concerning the French Revolution. Dickens chooses a side, ultimately showing opposition to the Revolution due to the ruthless and uncontrolled force of its aroused mobs. Even so, the story of the Marquis's rape of the peasant along, with other details of aristocratic mistreatment of the lower classes, provide some justification for the goals of the French mob. In the end, he portrays the mob as having moved beyond the pale to a degree beyond what happened in England; the French mob acts with such force that it resembles a natural element like fire or water.
This historical novel carefully marks the passage of time, and the introductory sentences of chapters often contain specific references to years or months. Keeping track of time is important because time carries out fate, which is an extremely important presence. From the first chapter, which describes trees waiting to be formed into guillotines in France, Dickens describes the revolution as something inevitable. Individual characters also feel the pull of fate. For example, Darnay feels himself drawn back to France as if under the influence of a magnet. Lucie's presentiment that the noise of feet echoing in her home portends some future intrusion correctly predicts what is bound to happen--Darnay's past does catch up with him, and he must pay for the wrongs of his ancestors. Fate operates ominously rather than optimistically among the characters in the novel, especially given Madame Defarge's representation as one of the mythical Fates connecting the future to darkness.
From the very title of A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens signals that this is a novel about duality. The novel’s opening words (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .”) immediately establish the centrality of doubles to the narrative. Everything from the settings (London, Paris), to the people, come in pairs. The pairs are occasionally related together. Dickens positions various characters as doubles as well, thus heightening the various themes within the novel. A crucial incidence of related doubling involves the resemblance between Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, a similarity that drives the plot. Dickens’s doubling technique functions not only to draw oppositions, but to reveal hidden parallels. Carton, for example, initially seems a foil to Darnay; Darnay as a figure reminds him of what he could have been but has failed to become. By the end of the novel, however, Carton transforms himself from a good-for-nothing to a hero whose goodness equals or even surpasses that of the honorable Darnay. While the two men’s physical resemblance initially serves only to underscore Carton’s moral inferiority to Darnay, it ultimately enables Carton’s supremely self-elevating deed, allowing him to disguise himself as the condemned Darnay and die in his place. As Carton goes to the guillotine in his double’s stead, he raises himself up to, or above, Darnay’s virtuous status. The pairs are more often oppositional, just as in the dichotomous opening: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." For example, the loving and nurturing Lucie's physical and moral brightness is played off against the bloodthirsty Madame Defarge’s darkness and hate. Dickens then uses this opposition to make judgments and thematic assertions. Thus, for example, while Lucie’s love initiates her father’s spiritual transformation and renewal, proving the possibility of resurrection, Madame Defarge’s vengefulness only propagates an infinite cycle of oppression, showing violence to be self-perpetuating.
The theme of reversals is played out in Dickens’ novel. The two main ways we can see this is through the role reversals of society and of good and evil. One of the primary effects of the upheaval caused by the French Revolution was due to its literally revolutionary influence; it turned society upside down and banged it on its head. When Darnay returns to France, he observes that the noblemen are in prison, while criminals are their jailors. The replacement of Darnay with Carton at the end of the novel is another reversal, illustrating that a bad man can replace a good man in such a revolutionary society.
The novel focuses attention on the preservation of family groups. The first manifestation of this theme occurs in Lucie's trip to meet her father in Paris. Although she worries that he will seem like a ghost rather than her father, the possibility of a reunion is enough to make her undertake the long trip. After Lucie marries Charles Darnay, the novel tends to be concerned with their struggle to keep their family together. When Darnay laments his own death sentence, it is for the sake of his family, not for his own sake. The final triumph is the sacrifice of Carton, a man who is unattached to any sort of family, who thus preserves the group consisting of the Doctor, Lucie, her husband, and her children.
The theme of social injustice is intertwined with the theme of class struggle, because those who feel the negative effects of injustice begin to struggle against it. Dickens maintains a complex perspective on the French Revolution because although he did not particularly sympathize with the gruesome and often irrational results, he certainly sympathized with the unrest of the lower orders of society. Dickens vividly paints the aristocratic maltreatment of the lower classes, such as when Monseigneur only briefly stops to toss a coin toward the father of a child whom he has just run over. Because the situation in France was so dire, Dickens portrays the plight of the working class in England as rather difficult, though slightly less difficult than in other works such as Hard Times or Oliver Twist, which also emphasize social injustice.
Shadows dominate the novel, creating a mood of thick obscurity and grave foreboding. An aura of gloom and apprehension surrounds the first images of the actual story—the mail coach’s journey in the dark and Jerry Cruncher’s emergence from the mist. The introduction of Lucie Manette to Jarvis Lorry furthers this motif, as Lucie stands in a room so darkened and awash with shadows that the candlelight seems buried in the dark panels of the walls. This atmosphere contributes to the mystery surrounding Lorry’s mission to Paris and Manette’s imprisonment. It also manifests Dickens’s observations about the shadowy depths of the human heart. As illustrated in the chapter with the appropriate subheading “The Night Shadows,” every living person carries profound secrets and mysteries that will never see the light of day. Shadows continue to fall across the entire novel. The vengeful Madame Defarge casts a shadow on Lucie and all of her hopes, as emphasized in Book III, Chapter 5. As Lucie stands in the pure, fresh snow, Madame Defarge passes by “like a shadow over the white road.” In addition, the letter that Defarge uses to condemn Darnay to death throws a crippling shadow over the entire family; fittingly, the chapter that reveals the letter’s contents bears the subheading “The Substance of the Shadow.”
Imprisonment wasn’t always physical. Some of it was mental, emotional, in the metaphorical sense. Almost all of the characters in A Tale of Two Cities fight against some form of imprisonment. For Darnay and Manette, this struggle is quite literal. Both serve significant sentences in French jails. Still, as the novel demonstrates, the memories of what one has experienced prove no less confining than the walls of prison. Manette, for example, finds himself trapped, at times, by the recollection of life in the Bastille and can do nothing but revert, trembling, to his pathetic shoemaking compulsion. Similarly, Carton spends much of the novel struggling against the confines of his own personality, dissatisfied with a life that he regards as worthless.
Dickens was a master at symbolism. With his depiction of a broken wine cask outside Defarge’s wine shop, and with his portrayal of the passing peasants’ scrambles to lap up the spilling wine, Dickens creates a symbol for the desperate quality of the people’s hunger. This hunger is both the literal hunger for food—the French peasants were starving in their poverty—and the metaphorical hunger for political freedoms. On the surface, the scene shows the peasants in their desperation to satiate the first of these hungers. But it also evokes the violent measures that the peasants take in striving to satisfy their more metaphorical cravings. For instance, the narrative directly associates the wine with blood, noting that some of the peasants have acquired “a tigerish smear about the mouth” and portraying a drunken figure scrawling the word “blood” on the wall with a wine-dipped finger. Indeed, the blood of aristocrats later spills at the hands of a mob in these same streets.
Throughout the novel, Dickens sharply criticizes this mob mentality, which he condemns for perpetrating the very cruelty and oppression from which the revolutionaries hope to free themselves. The scene surrounding the wine cask is the novel’s first tableau of the mob in action. The mindless frenzy with which these peasants scoop up the fallen liquid prefigures the scene at the grindstone, where the revolutionaries sharpen their weapons (Book III, Chapter 2), as well as the dancing of the macabre Carmagnole (Book III, Chapter 5).
The consistent mentioning of Madame Defarge’s knitting always got me. Madame Defarge’s knitting constitutes a whole network of symbols. Into her needlework she stitches a registry, or list of names, of all those condemned to die in the name of a new republic. But on a metaphoric level, the knitting constitutes a symbol in itself, representing the stealthy, cold-blooded vengefulness of the revolutionaries. As Madame Defarge sits quietly knitting, she appears harmless and quaint. In fact, however, she sentences her victims to death. Similarly, the French peasants may appear simple and humble figures, but they eventually rise up to massacre their oppressors.
Dickens’s knitting imagery also emphasizes an association between vengefulness and fate, which, in Greek mythology, is traditionally linked to knitting or weaving. The Fates, three sisters who control human life, busy themselves with the tasks of weavers or seamstresses: one sister spins the web of life, another measures it, and the last cuts it. Madame Defarge’s knitting thus becomes a symbol of her victims’ fate—death at the hands of a wrathful peasantry.
The Marquis Evrémonde is less a believable character than an archetype of an evil and corrupt social order. He is completely indifferent to the lives of the peasants whom he exploits, as evidenced by his lack of sympathy for the father of the child whom his carriage tramples to death. As such, the Marquis stands as a symbol of the ruthless aristocratic cruelty that the French Revolution seeks to overcome.
Some have argued that in A Tale of Two Cities Dickens reflects on his recently begun affair with eighteen-year-old actress Ellen Ternan, which was possibly asexual but certainly romantic. Lucie Manette resembles Ternan physically, and some have seen "a sort of implied emotional incest" in the relationship between Dr. Manette and his daughter.
After starring in a play by Wilkie Collins entitled The Frozen Deep, Dickens was first inspired to write A Tale of Two Cities. In the play, Dickens played the part of a man who sacrifices his own life so that his rival may have the woman they both love; the love triangle in the play became the basis for the relationships between Charles Darnay, Lucie Manette, and Sydney Carton in Tale.
Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay may also bear importantly on Dickens' personal life. The plot hinges on the near-perfect resemblance between Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay; the two look so alike that Carton twice saves Darnay through the inability of others to tell them apart. It is implied that Carton and Darnay not only look alike, but they have the same "genetic" endowments (to use a term that Dickens would not have known): Carton is Darnay made bad. Carton suggests as much:
'Do you particularly like the man [Darnay]?' he muttered, at his own image [which he is regarding in a mirror]; 'why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for talking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes [belonging to Lucie Manette] as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.'
Many have felt that Carton and Darnay are doppelgängers, which Eric Rabkin defines as a pair "of characters that together, represent one psychological persona in the narrative". If so, they would prefigure such works as Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Darnay is worthy and respectable but dull (at least to most modern readers), Carton disreputable but magnetic.One can only suspect whose psychological persona it is that Carton and Darnay together embody (if they do), but it is often thought to be the psyche of Dickens himself. Dickens was quite aware that between them, Carton and Darnay shared his own initials.

#47 A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

2011-12-15T11:27:00.000-08:00

A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The novella met with instant success and critical acclaim.
The book was written and published in early Victorian-era Britain when it was experiencing a nostalgic interest in its forgotten Christmas traditions, and at the time when new customs such as the Christmas tree and greeting cards were being introduced. Dickens' sources for the tale appear to be many and varied but are principally the humiliating experiences of his childhood, his sympathy for the poor, and various Christmas stories and fairy tales.
The tale has been viewed as an indictment of nineteenth century industrial capitalism and was adapted several times to the stage, and has been credited with restoring the holiday to one of merriment and festivity in Britain and America after a period of sobriety and somberness. Illustrated by John Leech, A Christmas Carol remains popular, has never been out of print, and has been adapted to film, opera, and other media.
In the middle 19th century, a nostalgic interest in pre-Cromwell Christmas traditions swept Victorian England following the publications of Davies Gilbert's Some Ancient Christmas Carols (1822), William B. Sandys's Selection of Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern (1833), and Thomas K. Hervey's The Book of Christmas (1837). That interest was further stimulated by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's German-born husband. Prince Albert's introduction of the Christmas tree in 1841, the first Christmas card in 1843, and a revival in carol singing. Hervey's study on Christmas customs attributed their passing to social change and the urbanization of England.
Dickens' Carol was one of the greatest influences in rejuvenating the old Christmas traditions of England, but, while it brings to the reader images of light, joy, warmth and life, it also brings strong and unforgettable images of darkness, despair, coldness, sadness and death. Scrooge himself is the embodiment of winter, and, just as winter is followed by spring and the renewal of life, so too is Scrooge's cold, pinched heart restored to the innocent goodwill he had known in his childhood and youth.
Dickens was not the first author to celebrate the Christmas season in literature, but it was he who superimposed his secular vision of the holiday upon the public. The forces that impelled Dickens to create a powerful, impressive, and enduring tale were the profoundly humiliating experiences of his childhood, the plight of the poor and their children during the boom decades of the 1830s and 1840s, Washington Irving's stories of the traditional old English Christmas, fairy tales and nursery stories, as well as satirical essays and religious tracts.
While Dickens' humiliating childhood experiences are not directly described in A Christmas Carol, his conflicting feelings for his father as a result of those experiences are principally responsible for the dual personality of the tale's protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge. In 1824, Dickens' father was imprisoned in the Marshalsea and twelve-year-old Charles was forced to take lodgings nearby, pawn his collection of books, leave school, and accept employment in a blacking factory. The boy had a deep sense of class and intellectual superiority and was entirely uncomfortable in the presence of factory workers who referred to him as "the young gentleman". He developed nervous fits. When his father was released at the end of a three-month stint, young Dickens was forced to continue working in the factory, which only grieved and humiliated him further. He despaired of ever recovering his former happy life. The devastating impact of the period wounded him psychologically, colored his work, and haunted his entire life with disturbing memories. Dickens both loved and demonized his father, and it was this psychological conflict that was responsible for the two radically different Scrooges in the tale – one Scrooge, a cold, stingy, and greedy semi-recluse, and the other Scrooge, a benevolent, sociable man whose generosity and goodwill toward all men earn for him a near-saintly reputation. It was during this terrible period in Dickens' childhood that he observed the lives of the men, women, and children in the most impoverished areas of London and witnessed the social injustices they suffered.
Dickens was keenly touched by the lot of poor children in the middle decades of the 19th century. In early 1843, he toured the Cornish tin mines where he saw children working in appalling conditions. The suffering he witnessed there was reinforced by a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several London schools set up for the education of the capital's half-starved, illiterate street children. Inspired by the February 1843 parliamentary report exposing the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon poor children called Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission, Dickens planned in May 1843 to publish an inexpensive political pamphlet tentatively titled, "An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child" but changed his mind, deferring the pamphlet's production until the end of the year. He wrote to Dr. Southwood Smith, one of eighty-four commissioners responsible for the Second Report, about his change in plans: "[Y]ou will certainly feel that a Sledge hammer has come down with twenty times the force – twenty thousand times the force – I could exert by following out my first idea." The pamphlet would become A Christmas Carol.
Social Commentary--particularly those statements directed at the Poor Laws governing the lower classes during Dickens' time--plays an important but not a central role in A Christmas Carol. Dickens often uses Scrooge as a mouthpiece to express the more callous justifications and excuses used to defend the harsh treatment of the poor. Malthus' theory that anyone who could not support himself did not have a right to live is a good example of these outrageous claims. Asked whether he wishes to support a charity, Scrooge replies that he does support charities--prisons and workhouses, which are all the charity the poor need. Dickens harshly criticizes these attitudes and presents a highly sympathetic view of the poor through his depiction of the Cratchits. On the whole, however, the numerous messages of A Christmas Carol expand far beyond this narrow political critique of Victorian society. Dickens blames the huge class stratification of Victorian England on the selfishness of the rich and, implicitly, on the Poor Laws that keep down the underclass. Scrooge is the obvious symbol of the greedy Victorian rich, while the Cratchits represent the working poor. But Dickens goes beyond sentimental portraits and reveals the underbelly of the city, notably in Stave Four. Even in the scene of the thieving workers divvying up the dead Scrooge's possessions, the accountability for their actions is put on Scroogehad he not been such a miser, they would not have resorted to stealing from him. When the children of Ignorance and Want crawl out from under the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present, the ghost sends a message to Scrooge, and the same is given to the Victorian reader: to help out those in Want, and beware of Ignorance in oneself and others.
Other likely influences were a visit made by Dickens to the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from March 20-22, 1842; the decade-long fascination on both sides of the Atlantic with spiritualism; fairy tales and nursery stories (which Dickens regarded as stories of conversion and transformation); contemporary religious tracts about conversion; and the works of Douglas Jerrold in general, but especially "The Beauties of the Police" (1843), a satirical and melodramatic essay about a father and his child forcibly separated in a workhouse, and another satirical essay by Jerrold which may have had a direct influence on Dickens' conception of Scrooge called "How Mr. Chokepear keeps a merry Christmas" (Punch, 1841).
A Christmas Carol is a fairly straightforward allegory built on an episodic narrative structure in which each of the main passages has a fixed, obvious symbolic meaning. The book is divided into five sections (Dickens labels them Staves in reference to the musical notation staff--a Christmas carol, after all, is a song), with each of the middle three Staves revolving around a visitation by one of the three famous spirits. The three spirit-guides, along with each of their tales, carry out a thematic function--the Ghost of Christmas Past, with his glowing head, represents memory; the Ghost of Christmas Present represents charity, empathy, and the Christmas spirit; and the reaper-like Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come represents the fear of death. Scrooge, with his Bah! Humbug! attitude, embodies all that dampens Christmas spirit--greed, selfishness, indifference, and a lack of consideration for one's fellow man.
With A Christmas Carol, Dickens hopes to illustrate how self-serving, insensitive people can be converted into charitable, caring, and socially conscious members of society through the intercession of moralizing quasi-religious lessons. Warmth, generosity, and overall goodwill, overcome Scrooge's bitter apathy as he encounters and learns from his memory, the ability to empathize, and his fear of death. Memory serves to remind Scrooge of a time when he still felt emotionally connected to other people, before he closed himself off in an austere state of alienation. Empathy enables Scrooge to sympathize with and understand those less fortunate than himself, people like Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit. The fear of death hints at imminent moral reckoning--the promise of punishment and reward.
With each Ghost's tale functioning as a parable, A Christmas Carol advances the Christian moral ideals associated with Christmas--generosity, kindness, and universal love for your community--and of Victorian England in general. But is it fair to limit the view to Christianity, as if Christians are the only ones who can have moral ideas associated with this time of year? I think not. The book also offers a distinctly modern view of Christmas, less concerned with solemn religious ceremony and defined by more joyous traditions--the sharing of gifts, festive celebrations, displays of prosperity. The book also contains a political edge, most evident in Dickens' development of the bustling, struggling Cratchit family, who are a compelling, if one-dimensional, representation of the plight of the poor. Dickens, with every intention of tugging on your heartstrings, paints the Cratchits as a destitute family that finds a way to express profound gratitude for its emotional riches. Dickens carries this sentiment even further with the tragic figure of the pure-hearted, crippled Cratchit son, Tiny Tim. Scrooge's emotive connection to Tiny Tim dramatically underscores his revelatory acceptance of the Christmas ideal. Scrooge begins to break through his emotional barricade in Stave Three as he expresses pity for Tiny Tim. The reader, upon hearing the usually uncaring miser inquire into Tim's fate, begins to believe Scrooge has a chance at salvation. Scrooge's path to redemption culminates with his figurative "adoption" of Tiny Tim, acting as "a second father" to the little boy.
A Christmas Carol is an allegory in that it features events and characters with a clear, fixed symbolic meaning. In the novella, Scrooge represents all the values that are opposed to the idea of Christmas--greed, selfishness, and a lack of goodwill toward one's fellow man. The Ghost of Christmas Past, with his glowing head symbolizing the mind, represents memory; the Ghost of Christmas Present represents generosity, empathy, and the Christmas spirit; and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come represents the fear of death and moral reckoning. The Cratchits represent the poor, whom Dickens portrays with warmth and sympathy while seeking to draw attention to their plight.
Time is very important in A Christmas Carol, which is structurally centered around distinct elements of Past, Present, and Future. But, the time scheme of the story itself seems to make little sense. On Christmas Eve, Jacob Marley's ghost tells Scrooge that he will be visited by three ghosts on three successive nights. On Christmas morning, Scrooge awakes, having already been visited by all three ghosts. The three nights seem to be compressed into a single night. The presence of the spirits apparently bends the normal flow of time. A view further supported b y the fact that Scrooge goes to bed at two o'clock in the morning after Marley's visitation and awakes at midnight the same night--two hours after he fell asleep. Dickens uses the tem poral inconsistencies to emphasize the supernatural powers of the spirits--when they are around, normal earthly standards, including the flow of time, have no effect.
A Christmas Carol is foremost an allegory of redemption (while many texts say it is specifically a “Christian” allegory, I beg to differ) about, as Fred says, the "kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time" of Christmas. Scrooge is a skinflint businessman who represents the greediest impulses of Victorian England's rich. He subscribes to the guidelines of the Poor Laws, which oppress the underclass, and has no warmth in his spirit for anything but money. Cratchit is the underclass's representative, a humble, powerless man who has no choice but to kowtow to his employer's demands. But above all, A Christmas Carol is a celebration of Christmas and the good it inspires. At Christmas time, people forget their petty quotidian disputes, selfish tendencies, and workaholic schedules in favor of friendship, charity, and celebration. Several representatives of these virtues stand out in Dickens's cast. Fred is a model of good cheer, while Fezziwig adds to this the dimensions of being a tremendous friend and generous employer. Tiny Tim's courage and selflessness in the face of his ill health are also noteworthy, as is the loving nature of the entire Cratchit family. Scrooge learns the lessons of the Christmas spirit through his visions of Christmases past, present, and future; in each he sees either the ill effects his miserly nature has wrought or the good tidings that others bring about through their love and kindness.
Yet underneath the simple Christian allegory, Dickens investigates the complicated nature of time in a capitalist system. The references to signifiers of time are numerous in the chapter; the bells ring to herald Marley's arrival, and even the repetitive discussion of Marley's death at the beginning emphasizes the present tense in which Scrooge is stuck.
Why the present tense? Capitalism functions in the now. Always aware of the clock, of how much time has passed and how much is left, capitalism is foremost concerned with what can be done at the present to accumulate money. Scrooge believes Christmas time is simply "capitalist time," to coin a phrase, whereas Fred believes it constitutes a departure from capitalist time.
Scrooge's temporal problem, then, is his inability to hold a more humane version of the present tense. Moreover, he is unable to combine the three tenses past, present, and future into a singular redemptive vision of humanity. Scrooge foreshadows the concept of the epiphany when he asks for all three ghosts at once; perhaps the epiphany somehow depends on time in such a universal way. At the beginning of the novella, Scrooge seems aware of only the present tense, the tense of capitalism. The now is the time to make or lose money, and the past and future exist only to serve the present. Dickens's attention to clocks and bells reinforces Scrooge's mania with time.
However, Scrooge is redeemed when he learns to integrate the past, present, and future into his worldview. He steps out of the capitalist obsession with the present tense and into a timeless framework in which qualities like generosity and love cannot be quantified. His appreciation of the three tenses also comes in one fell swoop, overnight, and suggests that the epiphany, the sudden revelation of a profound meaning in life, encapsulates all three tenses.
Dickens also structures A Christmas Carol with the musical notation of five "staves." Dickens's choice to call his story a song emphasizes the communal theme carolers rarely sing alone, after all and perhaps to underscore the temporal theme at play, since songs are temporal forms that rely on repetition of the chorus.
While we are meant to believe that the visitation of the ghosts is actually happening, it is perhaps more important to think of them and the scenes they reveal of Scrooge's life as products of Scrooge's imagination. Provoked by the sudden thought in his old age that his life has possibly been for naught, he reconsiders what Christmas means to him.
This type of instantaneous, life-changing thought can be called an epiphany, and Dickens suggests that epiphanies require the mind to integrate all three major tenses the past, present, and future into a coherent, unified tense. For all intents and purposes, it does not matter that the Ghost of Christmas Past has visited Scrooge; Scrooge may simply be reliving his life through his memory, and the Ghost is merely a convenient symbol for memory. (Indeed, the Ghost looks like both an old man and a child, underscoring the elderly Scrooge's flashback to his childhood.)
The Ghost provokes Scrooge's redemption from miser to a good, charitable Christian. He has two strategies: he reminds Scrooge of his own loneliness, and gives Scrooge models of intimacy to which he should aspire. Scrooge gains empathy for the neglected (and, implicitly, the poor, who are otherwise neglected by the rich) when the Ghost reminds Scrooge of his own neglected childhood, inspiring him to want to give to the caroling boy he neglected.
On the other hand, Fezziwig is the paragon of friendship, and his scene makes Scrooge reflect on his own callous treatment of his employees. Finally, the Ghost shows Scrooge how money has interfered with his potential romance and the joys of family life. All of these scenes expose how money has driven a wedge between Scrooge and others, and his loneliness, which he seems to have repressed for years, is returning in profound new ways.
We have seen little attention paid to the religious ceremony of Christmas. Instead, Dickens focuses on the celebratory nature of Christmas while the Christian ideals of love and sacrifice are underscored. Lavish descriptions of large dinners and raucous accounts of games dominate this stave, since eating and playing imply pleasure for both the individual and the community. Dickens wants to show that giving does not deplete the giver, but rather enriches him.
The set piece of the stave is the Cratchit family dinner. Love trumps poverty in Dickens's sentimental portrait of the Cratchits, but he adds a dark note at the end when he reveals Tiny Tim will die unless the future is changed. Another foreshadowed element is the "Doom" written across the Ignorant boy's brow. In both cases, the Ghost suggests that Scrooge has a stake in changing the future.
A Christmas Carol, then, celebrates the potentiality for redemption in everyone, promotes the idea that it is never too late to learn to love, and elevates the importance of free will. By doing so, Dickens provides hope for English Victorian society to close the chasm between the Haves and Have-Nots and overturn the unjust Poor Laws that keep the underclass enchained.
The Ghost's brief life span of one day also reminds Scrooge, and the reader, that we must act quickly if we are to change the present. Unlike before, when Scrooge was concerned with the present only insofar as it was related to the transaction of money, he is starting to see it in "seize the day" terms as an opportunity to change the lives of the less fortunate, right now.
Dickens continues his development of the theme of free will over determinism. Scrooge understands that the future he is shown is alterable and that he can change his fate. Again, this idea celebrates the potential for redemption in anyone and urges people to change their ill ways right now as opposed to later.
Dickens also focuses on the ways a person has influence beyond his or her lifetime. What cheers up Bob after Tiny Tim's death is that his son's memory will live on and remind them of the good in the world. Conversely, the only joy Scrooge's life will provide for others after it is over is through their acquisition of his material goods or release from debt, not through his memory.
Scrooge finally has the redemptive epiphany he has been gradually learning throughout his travels in the past, present, and future. However, an epiphany, by definition, is a sudden revelation. How can we call Scrooge's adventure, which supposedly stretches over three days, an epiphany? As we will see in Stave Five, all of the ghostly visits took place over just one night. Just as Scrooge learns to assimilate the past, present, and future into his life, the three different temporal ghosts have come to Scrooge in one time frame, perhaps even all at once. For Dickens, then, the epiphany is a sudden revelation that encompasses all time.
The two other definitions of epiphany have associations with A Christmas Carol. Epiphany, on January 6, is the festival commemorating the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. Epiphany also means an appearance or manifestation especially of a divine being, and the ghosts certainly fit into this category.
In addition, the silent Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come looks much like the Grim Reaper and has similarly divine powers in his final judgment of human lives. Those who lead good lives like Tiny Tim will go to heaven and be commemorated on earth, while those who lead bad lives like Scrooge will go to hell and be scorned on earth.
A great deal of symmetry ties up A Christmas Carol after Scrooge's conversion. Scrooge does right by everyone he previously wronged in Stave One; the portly gentleman, the Cratchits (note how he even asks Cratchit to put more coal on the fire after he previously made him shiver in the cold), and Fred, not to mention everyone else in the city. The greatest pleasure in A Christmas Carol is watching Scrooge's transformation from money-pinching grouch to generous gentleman. His redemption, a major motif in Christian art, is made possible through free will. While Scrooge is shown visions of the future, he states (and his statement is borne out in Stave Five) that they are only visions of things that "May" be, not what "Will" be. He has the power to change the future with his present actions, and Dickens tries to impart this sense of free will to the reader; if Scrooge can change, then so can anyone.
As discussed in the analysis of Stave Four, all the ghosts have visited Scrooge in one night, not three. This pleasant surprise allows Scrooge to start his giving ways on Christmas Day, and promotes the idea that he has had an overnight epiphany. After suffering through a hellish nightmare, he wakes up a happy, charitable, and redeemed man. Anyone can change his behavior for the better, Dickens implies, as can any society.
Dickens began to write A Christmas Carol in October 1843, and completed the book in six weeks with the final pages written in the beginning of December. As the result of a feud with his publisher over the meager earnings on his previous novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens declined a lump-sum payment for the tale, chose a percentage of the profits in hopes of making more money thereby, and published the work at his own expense. High production costs however brought him a mere £230 (equal to £19,128 today) rather than the £1,000 (equal to £83,164 today) he expected and needed, as his wife was once again pregnant.
Bound in red cloth with gilt-edged pages, the book was published in London by Chapman and Hall, and released on 17 December 1843. Four expensive, hand-coloured etchings and four black and white wood engravings by John Leech accompanied the text. Production was not without problems. The drab olive endpapers were replaced for the second printing with yellow endpapers, but, once replaced, clashed with the title page which was then redone.
Modestly priced at five shillings (equal to £20.79 today), the first run of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve and the book continued to sell well into the New Year. By May 1844, a seventh edition had sold out. In all, twenty-four editions ran in its original form. In spite of the disappointing profits for the author, the book was a huge artistic success with most critics responding positively.
Dickens wrote in the wake of British government changes to the welfare system known as the Poor Laws, changes which required among other things, welfare applicants to work on treadmills. Dickens asks, in effect, for people to recognize the plight of those whom the Industrial Revolution has displaced and driven into poverty, and the obligation of society to provide for them humanely. Failure to do so, the writer implies through the personification of Ignorance and Want as ghastly children, will result in an unnamed "Doom" for those who, like Scrooge, believe their wealth and status qualifies them to sit in judgment of the poor rather than to assist them.
Some critics like Restad have suggested that Scrooge's redemption underscores what they see as the conservative, individualistic, and patriarchal aspects of Dickens's 'Carol philosophy', which propounded the idea of a more fortunate individual willingly looking after a less fortunate one. Personal moral conscience and individual action led in effect to a form of 'noblesse oblige' which was expected of those individuals of means.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

2011-12-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

Hard Times was not on the BBC Top 100 Books List of 2011, but it was in the book Charles Dickens; Greenwich Unabridged Library Classics along with Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, and A Tale of Two Cities. It is, however, on my large list of about 500 books to read. So I have adequately checked it off.
Hard Times - For These Times (more commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book appraises English society and is aimed at highlighting the social and economic pressures of the times. The novel is unusual in that it did not contain illustrations; nor is it set in or around London (both usual in Dickens's novels). Instead the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, not unlike Manchester, partially based upon 19th-century Preston. As typical with his novels, he wrote in phonetics, as the character would have sounded like, and I found it very hard to understand what the character was trying to say when read silently in my head.
Dickens's reasons for writing Hard Times were mostly monetary. Sales of his weekly periodical, Household Words, were low, and he hoped the inclusion of this novel in installments would increase sales. Since publication it has received a mixed response from a diverse range of critics, such as F.R. Leavis, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Macaulay, mainly focusing on Dickens's treatment of trade unions and his post-Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between Capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era.
The prevalence of utilitarianism shows it was one of the targets of this novel. Utilitarianism was a prevalent school of thought during this period, its founders being Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, father to political theorist John Stuart Mill. Theoretical Utilitarian ethics hold that promotion of general social welfare is the ultimate goal for the individual and society in general: "the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people." Dickens believed that in practical terms, the pursuit of a totally rationalized society could lead to great misery. Bentham's former secretary, Edwin Karbunkle, helped design the Poor Law of 1834, which deliberately made workhouse life as uncomfortable as possible. In the novel, this is conveyed in Bitzer's response to Gradgrind's appeal for compassion.
Dickens was appalled by what was, in his interpretation, a selfish philosophy, which was combined with materialist laissez-faire capitalism in the education of some children at the time, as well as in industrial practices. In Dickens' interpretation, the prevalence of utilitarian values in educational institutions promoted contempt between mill owners and workers, creating young adults whose imaginations had been neglected, due to an over-emphasis on facts at the expense of more imaginative pursuits.
Dickens wished to satirize radical Utilitarians whom he described in a letter to Charles Knight as "seeing figures and averages, and nothing else." He also wished to campaign for reform of working conditions. Dickens had visited factories in Manchester as early as 1839, and was appalled by the environment in which workers toiled. Drawing upon his own childhood experiences, Dickens resolved to "strike the heaviest blow in my power" for those who labored in horrific conditions.
John Stuart Mill had a similar, rigorous education to that of Louisa Gradgrind, consisting of analytical, logical, mathematical, and statistical exercises. In his twenties, Mill had a nervous breakdown, believing his capacity for emotion had been enervated by his father's stringent emphasis on analysis and mathematics in his education. In the book, Louisa herself follows a parallel course, being unable to express herself and falling into a temporary depression as a result of her dry education.
The novel was published as a serial in his weekly publication, Household Words. Sales were highly responsive and encouraging for Dickens who remarked that he was "Three parts mad, and the fourth delirious, with perpetual rushing at Hard Times". The novel was serialized, every week, between April 1 and August 12, 1854. It sold well, and a complete volume was published in August, totaling 110,000 words. Another related novel, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, was also published in this magazine. It follows a classical tripartite structure, and the titles of each book are related to Galatians 6:7, "For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Book I is entitled "Sowing", Book II is entitled "Reaping", and the third is "Garnering."
Relating back to Dickens' aim to "strike the heaviest blow in my power," he wished to educate readers about the working conditions of some of the factories in the industrial towns of Manchester, and Preston. Relating to this also, Dickens wished to confront the assumption that prosperity runs parallel to morality, a notion which is systematically deconstructed in this novel through his portrayal of the moral monsters, Mr. Bounderby, and James Harthouse. Dickens was also campaigning for the importance of imagination in life, and not for people's life to be reduced to a collection of material facts and statistical analyses. Dickens' favorable portrayal of the Circus, which he describes as caring so "little for Plain Fact", is an example of this.
The theme of “Fact vs. Fancy” is developed early on, the bastion of Fact being the eminently practical Mr. Gradgrind, and his model school, which teaches nothing but Facts. Any imaginative or aesthetic subjects are eradicated from the curriculum, but analysis, deduction and mathematics are emphasized. Conversely, Fancy is the opposite of Fact, encompassing, fiction, music, poetry, and novelty shows such as Sleary's circus. It is interesting that Mr. Sleary is reckoned to be a fool by the Fact men, but it is Sleary who realizes people must be "amuthed" (amused). This is made cognizant by Tom's sybaritic gambling and Louisa, who is virtually soulless as a young child, and as a married woman. Bitzer, who has adhered to Gradgrind's teachings as a child, turns out to be an uncompassionate egotist. Head versus Heart: Hard Times shows the inadequacy of an approach to life that emphasizes only the human intellect at the expense of the imagination and the heart. The character who most embodies the false approach is Thomas Gradgrind. Gradgrind worships facts and figures and prides himself on being very practical. He thinks that the only things valuable in life are those that can be objectively measured. He believes that human behavior can be shaped for the better by the rational application of practical knowledge. Gradgrind refuses to accept the validity of "fancy" or imagination; only practical things matter, and he puts his faith in abstract theories rather than direct observation of how real people behave, and what their real needs are. In his satirical portrait of Gradgrind, Dickens is taking aim at what he saw as the underlying principles operating in the industrial England of his time. It was a lop-sided approach to human life that denied some of the basic needs of human beings. The qualities of imagination and heart are found in the circus folk that Gradgrind despises. Sissy Jupe in particular embodies the values of a heart-centered life. It is for that reason that she does not thrive in Gradgrind's school. Louisa is another victim of Gradgrind's repressive philosophy. She grows up emotionally stunted because she has not been allowed to develop her natural qualities of heart and imagination. The philosophy that acknowledges the value only of the intellect leads to impoverished, inadequate lives. While Mr. Gradgrind insists that his children should always stick to the facts, Hard Times not only suggests that fancy is as important as fact, but it continually calls into question the difference between fact and fancy. Dickens suggests that what constitutes so-called fact is a matter of perspective or opinion. For example, Bounderby believes that factory employees are lazy good-for-nothings who expect to be fed “from a golden spoon.” The Hands, in contrast, see themselves as hardworking and as unfairly exploited by their employers. These sets of facts cannot be reconciled because they depend upon perspective. While Bounderby declares that “[w]hat is called Taste is only another name for Fact,” Dickens implies that fact is a question of taste or personal belief. As a novelist, Dickens is naturally interested in illustrating that fiction cannot be excluded from a fact-filled, mechanical society. Gradgrind’s children, however, grow up in an environment where all flights of fancy are discouraged, and they end up with serious social dysfunctions as a result. Tom becomes a hedonist who has little regard for others, while Louisa remains unable to connect with others even though she has the desire to do so. On the other hand, Sissy, who grew up with the circus, constantly indulges in the fancy forbidden to the Gradgrinds, and lovingly raises Louisa and Tom’s sister in a way more complete than the upbringing of either of the older siblings. Just as fiction cannot be excluded from fact, fact is also necessary for a balanced life. If Gradgrind had not adopted her, Sissy would have no guidance, and her future might be precarious. As a result, the youngest Gradgrind daughter, raised both by the factual Gradgrind and the fanciful Sissy, represents the best of both worlds.
During the Victorian era, women were commonly associated with supposedly feminine traits like compassion, moral purity, and emotional sensitivity. Dickens tried hard to stress the importance of said femininity. Hard Times suggests that because they possess these traits, women can counteract the mechanizing effects of industrialization. For instance, when Stephen feels depressed about the monotony of his life as a factory worker, Rachael’s gentle fortitude inspires him to keep going. He sums up her virtues by referring to her as his guiding angel. Similarly, Sissy introduces love into the Gradgrind household, ultimately teaching Louisa how to recognize her emotions. Indeed, Dickens suggests that Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy of self-interest and calculating rationality has prevented Louisa from developing her natural feminine traits. Perhaps Mrs. Gradgrind’s inability to exercise her femininity allows Gradgrind to overemphasize the importance of fact in the rearing of his children. On his part, Bounderby ensures that his rigidity will remain untouched since he marries the cold, emotionless product of Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind’s marriage. Through the various female characters in the novel, Dickens suggests that feminine compassion is necessary to restore social harmony.
Prying and knowledge is key to several characters, namely Mrs. Sparsit and Mr. Bounderby. They seem to live off of officiousness and spying. Mr. Bounderby spends his whole time fabricating stories about his childhood, covering up the real nature of his upbringing, which is solemnly revealed at the end of the novel. While not a snooper himself, he is undone by Sparsit unwittingly revealing the mysterious old woman to be his own mother, and she unravels Josiah's secrets about his upbringing and fictitious stories. Mr. Bounderby himself superintends through calculating tabular statements and statistics, and is always secretly rebuking the people of Coketown for indulging in conceitful activities. This gives Bounderby a sense of superiority, as it does with Mrs. Sparsit, who prides herself on her salacious knowledge gained from spying on others. Bounderby's grasp for superiority is seen in Blackpool's talks to Bounderby regarding divorce proceedings and a union movement at his factory, accusing him that he is on a quest 'to feast on turtle soup and venison, served with a golden spoon.' All "superintendents" of the novel are undone in one way, or another.
Honesty is closely related to Dickens' typical social commentary, which is a theme he uses throughout his entire œuvre. Dickens portrays the wealthy in this novel as being morally corrupt. Bounderby has no moral scruples; he fires Blackpool "for a novelty". He also conducts himself without any shred of decency, frequently losing his temper. He is cynically false about his childhood. Harthouse, a leisured gent, is compared to an "iceberg" who will cause a wreck unwittingly, due to him being "not a moral sort of fellow", as he states himself. Stephen Blackpool, a destitute worker, is equipped with perfect morals, always abiding by his promises, and always thoughtful and considerate of others, as is Sissy Jupe.
Another of Dickens's purposes in Hard Times was to attack industrialism and the conditions of life in England's industrial cities. His fictional town of Coketown was in fact modeled on Manchester, in northern England. Towns such as these helped to produce the wealth that made England the foremost industrial power in the mid-nineteenth century, but the cost in human happiness was great. In Coketown, the needs of the factories dominate everything else. The town is an unnatural place, awash in industrial pollution, an "ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in" (Book 1, chapter 10). The factory hands work long hours in oppressive and dangerous conditions, and they live in cramped, unsanitary houses. Their lives are monotonous; every day is exactly like every other day, just as all the houses and streets look alike. In Coketown, there is a strict uniformity in everything. The workers have little time off to relax and enjoy themselves.
Dickens also wanted to expose the bad state of relations between factory employers and their employees. His sympathies are clearly with the workers, as his portrait of Stephen Blackpool, the honest factory hand, shows. Dickens also believed that employers showed little if any interest in the welfare of their employees and often regarded them with contempt. In the novel, this kind of employer is represented by Bounderby, who gets rich on what the factories produce but has a low opinion of the workers, even though he does not bother to get to know any of them at a personal level.
Although Dickens presents the problems of industrialism and industrial relations very acutely, he does not propose any solutions. Stephen Blackpool's comment that the bosses should simply treat their employees better, remembering that they are real people with real feelings, strikes many critics as inadequate, given the vastness of the industrial machine, the continual need for profits, and the disparity in power between employers and employees. The obvious solution, that workers should organize collectively in trade unions to protect their interests, was not one that Dickens embraced. In Hard Times, his portrait of the trade union, led by the fiery Slackbridge, is not an attractive one. Slackbridge himself is an unpleasant character, and the workers are all too ready to exert a tyranny of their own when they collectively shun Stephen Blackpool.
Hard Times suggests that nineteenth-century England’s overzealous adoption of industrialization threatens to turn human beings into machines by thwarting the development of their emotions and imaginations. This suggestion comes forth largely through the actions of Gradgrind and his follower, Bounderby: as the former educates the young children of his family and his school in the ways of fact, the latter treats the workers in his factory as emotionless objects that are easily exploited for his own self-interest. In Chapter 5 of the first book, the narrator draws a parallel between the factory Hands and the Gradgrind children—both lead monotonous, uniform existences, untouched by pleasure. Consequently, their fantasies and feelings are dulled, and they become almost mechanical themselves. The mechanizing effects of industrialization are compounded by Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy of rational self-interest. Mr. Gradgrind believes that human nature can be measured, quantified, and governed entirely by rational rules. Indeed, his school attempts to turn children into little machines that behave according to such rules. Dickens’s primary goal in Hard Times is to illustrate the dangers of allowing humans to become like machines, suggesting that without compassion and imagination, life would be unbearable. Indeed, Louisa feels precisely this suffering when she returns to her father’s house and tells him that something has been missing in her life, so much so that she finds herself in an unhappy marriage and may be in love with someone else. While she does not actually behave in a dishonorable way, since she stops her interaction with Harthouse before she has a socially ruinous affair with him, Louisa realizes that her life is unbearable and that she must do something drastic for her own survival. Appealing to her father with the utmost honesty, Louisa is able to make him realize and admit that his philosophies on life and methods of child rearing are to blame for Louisa’s detachment from others.
One defense of the new economic conditions created by the Industrial Revolution was its expansion of individual opportunity. The wealthy could justify the condition of the poor by pointing out that if the poor worked industriously, they could work their way into a fortune. Dickens implicitly mocks that idea by presenting one such supposed self-made man as a blundering braggart. By exposing Bounderby as a fraud who did not actually start from nothing, as he so often claims, Dickens questions the validity of that entire justification for poverty. If the self-made man is a lie, then what can the poor hope to achieve? Moreover, Dickens raises the question of whether the self-made man owes anything to the rest of society. Are the wealthy under any obligation to help the poor? Or must the poor help themselves?
Hard Times is a novel about the social condition of poverty, but very few of its major characters are actually poor and comparatively little time is spent with the poor characters. It may be that Dickens chose to center his novel on the wealthy -middle class rather than on the lower classes he sought to defend because he realized that most of his Victorian readers would come from the middle classes and that very few of his readers would come from the lower classes. By centering his book on characters with whom his readers could identify, he was better able to awaken their feelings for characters with whom they might otherwise be unable to identify—namely, the poor of Coketown and of England in general. In that sense, the book does its job. Of course, the contrary argument could also be made that the novel simply reinforces comfortable middle-class stereotypes about the noble poor, and it offers no real solution or possibility for change.
Although Mrs. Sparsit is a relatively minor character, her pride drives much of the action in the second half of the novel. Originally from an aristocratic background, Mrs. Sparsit has fallen on hard times, and she must work as Bounderby’s housekeeper for a living. Because she wants to marry Bounderby so that she can share his wealth, Mrs. Sparsit secretly connives to destroy his marriage to Louisa. Yet even while she panders to Bounderby, Mrs. Sparsit considers him an upstart “Noodle,” and considers herself his superior because of her aristocratic blood. Although she is a proud aristocrat, Mrs. Sparsit shares the calculating self-interest of capitalists like Bounderby. Thus, Mrs. Sparsit illustrates the transition from a social hierarchy in which aristocrats hold the power to one in which the wealthy middle class holds the power. In her attempt to retain her power within a new social order, Mrs. Sparsit simply ends up looking ridiculous.
Dickens also wanted to attack the failings of education and the wrong-headedness of the prevailing educational philosophy. He believed that many schools discouraged the development of the children's imaginations, training them as "little parrots and small calculating machines" (Dickens used this phrase in a lecture he gave in 1857). Nor did Dickens approve of the recently instituted teacher training colleges. These had been set up in the 1840s, after the British government acknowledged the need to raise the standard of education in schools. The first graduates of these training colleges began teaching in 1853, a year before the publication of Hard Times. M'Choakumchild, the teacher in Gradgrind's school (which was a non fee-paying school that catered to the lower classes), is Dickens's satirical portrait of one of these newly trained teachers. Many educators at the time shared Dickens's view of what was wrong with the schools. They believed there was too much emphasis on cramming the children full of facts and figures, and not enough attention given to other aspects of their development.
According to Dickens, Coketown is always covered by clouds of smoke, an image that conveys the murky, polluted nature of this industrialized town. The phrase Dickens uses is "serpents of smoke," a sinister image that conveys the idea that something evil hovers over Coketown. Dickens uses another sinister image to describe the pistons of the steam engines; they constantly go up and down "like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness" (Book 1, chapter 5). This unusual image suggests awesome amounts of energy and strength trapped in meaningless repetitive activity-which rather sums up the life of the factory.
The smoke that suffocates Coketown is contrasted with the image of fire. Fire represents the creative imagination, or "fancy," and it is used in the novel only in association with Louisa. Louisa often sits in the corner of the living room gazing into the fire, because it stimulates her thoughts and her imagination. But in the environment she finds herself in, that fire cannot flourish. A telling image comes in the scene in which Gradgrind informs Louisa of Bounderby's marriage proposal. In speaking to her father of how she is not, given the kind of education she has received, in a position to know much about matters of the heart, Louisa makes an unconscious gesture. She closes her hand, "as if upon a solid object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or ash." The fire of life cannot burn brightly in this environment; it turns to nothing. When Louisa is first introduced, in Chapter 3 of Book the First, the narrator explains that inside her is a “fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow.” This description suggests that although Louisa seems coldly rational, she has not succumbed entirely to her father’s prohibition against wondering and imagining. Her inner fire symbolizes the warmth created by her secret fancies in her otherwise lonely, mechanized existence. Consequently, it is significant that Louisa often gazes into the fireplace when she is alone, as if she sees things in the flames that others—like her rigid father and brother—cannot see. However, there is another kind of inner fire in Hard Times—the fires that keep the factories running, providing heat and power for the machines. Fire is thus both a destructive and a life-giving force. Even Louisa’s inner fire, her imaginative tendencies, eventually becomes destructive: her repressed emotions eventually begin to burn “within her like an unwholesome fire.” Through this symbol, Dickens evokes the importance of imagination as a force that can counteract the mechanization of human nature.
At a literal level, the streams of smoke that fill the skies above Coketown are the effects of industrialization. However, these smoke serpents also represent the moral blindness of factory owners like Bounderby. Because he is so concerned with making as much profit as he possibly can, Bounderby interprets the serpents of smoke as a positive sign that the factories are producing goods and profit. Thus, he not only fails to see the smoke as a form of unhealthy pollution, but he also fails to recognize his own abuse of the Hands in his factories. The smoke becomes a moral smoke screen that prevents him from noticing his workers’ miserable poverty. Through its associations with evil, the word “serpents” evokes the moral obscurity that the smoke creates.
Bounderby frequently reminds us that he is “Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.” This emphatic phrase usually follows a description of his childhood poverty: he claims to have been born in a ditch and abandoned by his mother; raised by an alcoholic grandmother; and forced to support himself by his own labor. From these ignominious beginnings, he has become the wealthy owner of both a factory and a bank. Thus, Bounderby represents the possibility of social mobility, embodying the belief that any individual should be able overcome all obstacles to success—including poverty and lack of education—through hard work. Indeed, Bounderby often recites the story of his childhood in order to suggest that his Hands are impoverished because they lack his ambition and self-discipline. However, “Josiah Bounderby of Coketown” is ultimately a fraud. His mother, Mrs. Pegler, reveals that he was raised by parents who were loving, albeit poor, and who saved their money to make sure he received a good education. By exposing Bounderby’s real origins, Dickens calls into question the myth of social mobility. In other words, he suggests that perhaps the Hands cannot overcome poverty through sheer determination alone, but only through the charity and compassion of wealthier individuals.
Dickens contrasts mechanical or man-made time with natural time, or the passing of the seasons. In both Coketown and the Gradgrind household, time is mechanized—in other words, it is relentless, structured, regular, and monotonous. As the narrator explains, “Time went on in Coketown like its own machine.” The mechanization of time is also embodied in the “deadly statistical clock” in Mr. Gradgrind’s study, which measures the passing of each minute and hour. However, the novel itself is structured through natural time. For instance, the titles of its three books—“Sowing,” “Reaping,” and “Garnering”—allude to agricultural labor and to the processes of planting and harvesting in accordance with the changes of the seasons. Similarly, the narrator notes that the seasons change even in Coketown’s “wilderness of smoke and brick.” These seasonal changes constitute “the only stand that ever was made against its direful uniformity.” By contrasting mechanical time with natural time, Dickens illustrates the great extent to which industrialization has mechanized human existence. While the changing seasons provide variety in terms of scenery and agricultural labor, mechanized time marches forward with incessant regularity.
There are many unequal and unhappy marriages in Hard Times, including those of Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind, Stephen Blackpool and his unnamed drunken wife, and most pertinently, the Bounderbys. Louisa agrees to marry Mr. Bounderby because her father convinces her that doing so would be a rational decision. He even cites statistics to show that the great difference in their ages need not prevent their mutual happiness. However, Louisa’s consequent misery as Bounderby’s wife suggests that love, rather than either reason or convenience, must be the foundation of a happy marriage.
I loved the symbol of the staircase. When Mrs. Sparsit notices that Louisa and Harthouse are spending a lot of time together, she imagines that Louisa is running down a long staircase into a “dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom.” This imaginary staircase represents her belief that Louisa is going to elope with Harthouse and consequently ruin her reputation forever. Mrs. Sparsit has long resented Bounderby’s marriage to the young Louisa, as she hoped to marry him herself; so she is very pleased by Louisa’s apparent indiscretion. Through the staircase, Dickens reveals the manipulative and censorious side of Mrs. Sparsit’s character. He also suggests that Mrs. Sparsit’s self-interest causes her to misinterpret the situation. Rather than ending up in a pit of shame by having an affair with Harthouse, Louisa actually returns home to her father.
In a world of hard facts and figures, Dickens used the Pegasus, the winged horse from Greek mythology, as a symbol of fancy and wonder. In Hard Times, Pegasus is associated with the circus people, who embody values that are quite different from those of Gradgrind and Bounderby. Sleary's circus people live at an inn called the Pegasus's Arms. The inn has a picture of Pegasus on its sign-board, and inside there is a portrait of one of the circus horses, which is described as "another Pegasus." This Pegasus has "real gauze let in for his wings, golden stars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness made of red silk." The circus horses, in conjunction with the skill and daring of their riders, create a sense of wonder in the audience, allowing them to escape the drudgery of the "hard facts" world served up to them by people like Gradgrind and Bounderby. Seen in this light, the existence of the circus horses is a direct reproach to Gradgrind, who in Book I, chapter 2 asks the children in class to define a horse. Bitzer gives a factual definition: "Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four-eye teeth, and twelve incisive." This pleases Gradgrind, but it comes nowhere near to suggesting the capacities of the horse as symbolized by Pegasus. Mr. Sleary’s circus entertainers stay at an inn called the Pegasus Arms.
Inside this inn is a “theatrical” pegasus, a model of a flying horse with “golden stars stuck on all over him.” The pegasus represents a world of fantasy and beauty from which the young Gradgrind children are excluded. While Mr. Gradgrind informs the pupils at his school that wallpaper with horses on it is unrealistic simply because horses do not in fact live on walls, the circus folk live in a world in which horses dance the polka and flying horses can be imagined, even if they do not, in fact, exist. The very name of the inn reveals the contrast between the imaginative and joyful world of the circus and Mr. Gradgrind’s belief in the importance of fact.
As in all the literary world, it is a curiosity how an author ranks with his or her peers. Unfortunately, George Bernard Shaw was critical of the book's message while other critics have had a diverse range of opinions on the novel. Renowned critic John Ruskin declared Hard Times to be his favorite Dickens work due to its exploration of important social questions. However, Thomas Macaulay branded it "sullen socialism", on the grounds that Dickens did not fully comprehend the politics of the time. This point was also made by George Bernard Shaw, who decreed Hard Times to be a novel of "passionate revolt against the whole industrial order of the modern world." Shaw criticized the novel for its failure to provide an accurate account of trade unionism of the time, deeming Dickens' character of Slackbridge, the poisonous orator as "a mere figment of middle-class imagination." F. R. Leavis, in his controversial book, The Great Tradition, described the book as essentially being a moral fable, and awarded it the distinction of being a work of art, decreeing it the only significant novel of Dickens worth scrutinizing. Walter Allen, in an introduction to an alternative edition, characterized Hard Times as being an unsurpassed "critique of industrial society", which was later superseded by works of D. H. Lawrence. Other writers have described the novel as being, as G. K. Chesterton commented in his work Appreciations and Criticisms, "the harshest of his stories"; whereas George Orwell praised the novel (and Dickens himself) for "generous anger."
As for me, the story was a good read. It reflected an author’s view of the world around him that he felt powerless to change, and used his work to express his anger and disappointment at the “atrocities” around him. While off to a slow start, which I find to be the course for Dickens’ works, it kept me entertained, even through the rough reading of the dialects of an old English country bumpkin and a lisping circus entertainer. Containing a predictable number of twists and turns, Dickens tidies up the story with the a messy knot, leaving the reader to contemplate the future for all the characters.

#17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

2011-12-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861 and has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times.
Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, a novel depicting growth and personal development (in this case, of Pip), and is written in the first person from the point of view of the orphan Pip. The novel, like much of Dickens's work, draws on his own experiences of life and people. It uses language and grammar that has fallen out of common use since its publication, and it made it difficult to understand, at times, what was happening in the novel. The title Great Expectations refers to the 'Great Expectations' Pip has of coming into his benefactor's property upon his disclosure to him and achieving his intended role as a gentleman at that time.
Some of the major themes of Great Expectations are crime, social class, empire and ambition. From an early age, Pip feels guilt; he is also afraid that someone will find out about his crime and arrest him. The theme of crime comes in to even greater effect when Pip discovers that his benefactor is in fact a convict on the run. Pip has an internal struggle with his conscience throughout the book. Great Expectations explores the different social classes of the Georgian era. Throughout the book, Pip becomes involved with a broad range of classes, from criminals like Magwitch to the extremely rich like Miss Havisham. Pip has great ambition, as demonstrated constantly in the book.
When Dickens started his thirteenth novel, Great Expectations, in 1860, he was already a national hero. He had come from humble beginnings, working as a child in a shoe polish factory while his family was in debtor's prison, to become the quintessential Victorian gentleman. He was involved in all aspects of English life: writing, acting, producing, going on book tours, publishing magazines, and, as always, active in social welfare and criticism. Amidst all this, however, Dickens' private life had entered a dark period. Dickens had just separated from his wife two years earlier, there were rumors of an affair with a young actress in the newspapers, and he was spending more and more time at his home in Chatham. Dickens himself had risen to achieve greater expectations than any clerk's boy could expect, but he had not found happiness. The idea that one must search beyond material wealth and social standings and look within themselves for happiness becomes the major theme in Great Expectations.
Some time in 1860, Dickens had started a piece that he found funny and truthful and thought it might do better as a novel: "...it so opens out before me that I can see the whole of a serial revolving on it, in a most singular and comic manner," he wrote. Dickens had told friends that he had gone back and read David Copperfield and was quite struck by the story now that he looked back upon it. Copperfield was a happy novel, the story of a young man who came into his fortune though hard work and luck. Its influences and similarities are seen in Great Expectations. There are, however, some major thematic differences.
Though not considered as autobiographical as David Copperfield which he had published some ten years earlier, the character of Pip represented a Dickens who had learned some hard lessons in his later life. Especially strong throughout the novel are the concepts of fraternal and romantic love, how society thwarts them, how a man should find them.
For financial reasons, Dickens had to shorten the novel, making it one of his tighter and better written stories. It was published in serial form, as were all of his novels, and the reader can still see the rhythm of suspense and resolution every couple of chapters that kept all of England waiting for the next issue.
Though a dark novel, Great Expectations was deliberately more humorous than its predecessor A Tale of Two Cities, and even while it presented Dickens' ever present social critique, it did so in a way that made people laugh. The greatest difference between Great Expectations and Dickens' earlier novels is the introduction of dramatic psychological transformations within the lead characters, as opposed to characters that are changed only through their circumstances and surroundings. The story of Pip is a Bildungsroman -- a story that centers on the education or development of the protagonist -- and we can follow closely the things that Pip learns and then has to unlearn.
All in all, Great Expectations is considered the best balanced of all of Dickens' novels, though a controversy still persists over the ending. Dickens had originally written an ending where Pip and Estella never get back together. Many critics, including George Bernard Shaw, believe that this rather depressing ending was more consistent with the overall theme and tone of the novel, which began, continued, and perhaps should have finished with a serious, unhappy note. Nevertheless, Dickens published the ending where all is forgiven and Estella and Pip walk out of the Satis House garden together. It was, perhaps, an ending that Dickens would have like to have had for his own life. Dickens published one more novel, Our Mutual Friend, before dying in 1870.

#16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

2011-12-11T10:44:00.000-08:00

Number 16 on the Top 100 BBC Book List of 2011 is The Wind In the Willows. And while I know I read this back in grade school, I could not, with a clear conscience, check it off the list without reading it again.
In 1908 Grahame retired from his position as secretary of the Bank of England. He moved back to Cookham, Berkshire, where he had been brought up and spent his time by the River Thames doing much as the animal characters in his book do—namely, as one of the most famous phrases from the book says, "simply messing about in boats"—and wrote down the bed-time stories he had been telling his son Alistair, starting on Alastair’s fourth birthday. The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in that same year (1909 in the US). The principle characters of these stories are four anthropomorphised animal characters who live in a pastoral version of England around a river, though to the animals, it is “the River” (author’s emphasis). At the time of the work’s publication, Grahame had already published four books of fiction. He was most well known for his collections of stories The Golden Age and its sequel Dream Days. Though the works were written about children, they were not written for children. The Wind in the Willows was not initially well received because it deviated from his previous works; however, it eventually became the work that he is most famous for, enjoyed by children and adults alike. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, the novel is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality, and camaraderie and celebrated for its evocation of the nature of the Thames valley.
A small interesting note here is that The Wind in the Willows was in its thirty-first printing when then-famous playwright, A. A. Milne, who loved it, adapted a part of it for stage as Toad of Toad Hall in 1929. Also, the Catholic church issued a warning regarding Pan, stating, “The mystical digression at the center of the book "The Piper at the gates of dawn" needs to be explained. The god of nature in the form of Pan is a pagan myth.”

The Wind in the Willows was a book that we all greatly loved and admired when we were little, and could read aloud or alone, over and over and over. I confess that, as an adult, I did not enjoy the book as much as I remembered enjoying it as a child. I did, however, enjoy the format of this book. It is, in a way, two separate books put into one. There are, on the one hand, those chapters concerned with the adventures of Toad; and on the other hand there are those chapters that explore human emotions – the emotions of fear, nostalgia, awe, wanderlust. I was drawn to the second group, of which “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was, by far, my favorite.
There are several inspirations for this book that must be mentioned. First, Mapledurham House in Berkshire was an inspiration for Toad Hall. After looking at pictures of Mapledurham House, I can clearly envision Toad living in such a place. The village of Lerryn, Cornwall lays claim to being the setting for the book. I can see this as being a possibility when I reviewed hundreds of pictures of the waterways and rolling countryside. Simon Winchester has suggested that the character of Ratty was based on Frederick Furnivall, a keen oarsman and acquaintance of Kenneth Grahame. There are articles in The Scotsman and Oban Times that have suggested The Wind in the Willows was inspired by the Crinan Canal in Scotland, because Grahame spent some of his childhood in Ardrishaig.
There is a theory that the idea for the story arose when its author saw a water vole beside the River Pang in Berkshire, southern England. A 29 hectare extension to the nature reserve at Moor Copse, near Tidmarsh Berkshire, was acquired in January 2007 by the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust
The principle characters in the novel, though they all have their faults, are idealized in many ways. Several virtues are epitomized in Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad, so much so that they become themes. There are numerous examples of hospitality, forgiveness, compassion, generosity, and humility. Even the arrogant Toad is able to humble himself and put aside his conceited ways in the end, having matured though a succession of trying circumstances with the guidance and help of loyal friends.
Kenneth Grahame, Secretary to the Bank of England in the 1890's, wrote two successful books about childhood ('Golden Age' and 'Dream Days') which were aimed firmly at adults. Then came 'Wind in the Willows', which caused a good deal of consternation as its dressed-up talking animals could be enjoyed on the child's level, but decidedly more so on an adult-and-child's level. How to comprehend this chimerical beast, destined as it was to become the true classic of the three books?
Fortunately, the book had two powerful advocates which ensured its success. In the USA President Theodore Roosevelt wrote from the White House to Kenneth Grahame to say how greatly his whole family enjoyed it, and in Britain A.A. Milne made a very popular play out of it called 'Toad of Toad Hall'. And indeed Mole, Rat, Badger, Toad, and Otter can be enjoyed simply for their distinctive characters and their adventures, major and minor, by the riverbank. Personally I must admit that I had to make a certain effort to suspend my disbelief (as to a lesser extent for 'Animal Farm') and allow myself to enjoy the humorous characterizations and banter - there is no Narnian or Middlearth magic to get you 'over the hump'. However, there is a great deal to enjoy at this child's level once you get into it.
Then there are the elements for more adult entertainment. Mr. Grahame clearly had a high old time writing this book; when Toad is arrested he indulges himself in a page of Shakespeare: 'Then the brutal minions of the law fell upon the hapless Toad...past men-at-arms in casquet and corselet of steel...past ancient warders, their halberds leant against the wall...till they reached the door of the grimmest dungeon...'. Then there is the gentle parody on the positivistic scientific method when Rat and Mole have to find Badger's front door in the snow by logical deduction; the Otter (that gay blade) describing how even rabbits can be made to talk sense if you just give them a bit of a slapping; the awe of the numinous on the river island when they have a vision of the good god Pan looking after the lost child otter; the wily sea-faring Rat mesmerizing our River-Rat into going to sea with him; and finally the grand battle to recapture Toad Hall from those villains the (....) - but it would be unfair to reveal that plot element and ruin some of the suspense. To be read more than once."
The Wind in the Willows is a children's story that lives in the hearts and minds of its readers well into adulthood. With its subtle blend of anthropomorphism and very-British humor, the book is a classic tale of river life and friendship.
The Wind in the Willows is surprisingly dark and thrilling in places--particularly in the later chapters and the battle of Toad Hall. The book provides something that few novels of its time can claim: all-round entertainment for all ages. The story confirms the power of close friends and courage to make a difference in the lives of others.
The true joy of The Wind in the Willows is the image of English life put in such a way as to be easily understood and envisioned: a very Georgian, upper-middle-class take on the world in which the countryside is covered by an incessant summer time and which days can be spent idling by the riverside and watching the world go by. Because of the success of The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame was able to leave his unhappy job in a bank and live very much the life he represented in the books pages--a life full of cake at tea time, and the soothing sound of the river running past.
The novel is also very much loved for its characters: the slightly pompous and ridiculous toad (who is completely carried away by his latest obsession), and the wise old badger (who is crotchety, but who has very high regard for his friends). They are characters who embody the English values of fortitude and good humor. But, these creatures are also incredibly honorable and willing to fight (even to the death) for their little piece of England.
There is something ineffably comforting about Grahame's little story--familiar and also very powerful. The animal characters are completely humanized, but their personalities and characteristics are still linked to their animal's characters. The Wind in the Willows is wryly humorous and tremendously fun. This book is one of the greatest children's books of all time.

#6 To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

2011-11-25T12:13:00.001-08:00

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960। It was instantly successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.
The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explains the novel's impact by writing, "In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism."
As a Southern Gothic novel and a Bildungsroman, the primary themes of To Kill a Mockingbird involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence. Scholars have noted that Lee also addresses issues of class, courage, compassion, and gender roles in the American Deep South. The book is widely taught in schools in English-speaking countries with lessons that emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. Despite its themes, To Kill a Mockingbird has been subject to campaigns for removal from public classrooms, often challenged for its use of racial epithets. Scholars also note the black characters in the novel are not fully explored, and some black readers receive it ambivalently, although it has an often profound effect on many white readers.
Reception to the novel varied widely upon publication. Literary analysis of it is considerably sparse compared to the number of copies sold and its use in education. Author Mary McDonough Murphy, who collected individual impressions of the book by several authors and public figures, calls To Kill a Mockingbird "an astonishing phenomenon". In 2006, British librarians ranked the book ahead of the Bible as one "every adult should read before they die". It was adapted into an Oscar-winning film in 1962 by director Robert Mulligan, with a screenplay by Horton Foote. Since 1990, a play based on the novel has been performed annually in Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. To date, it is Lee's only published novel, and although she continues to respond to the book's impact, she has refused any personal publicity for herself or the novel since 1964.
Ultimately, Lee spent two and a half years writing To Kill a Mockingbird. A description of the book's creation by the National Endowment for the Arts relates an episode when Lee became so frustrated that she tossed the manuscript out the window into the snow. Her agent made her retrieve it. The book was published on July 11, 1960. It was initially titled Atticus, but Lee renamed it to reflect a story that went beyond a character portrait. The editorial team at Lippincott warned Lee that she would probably sell only several thousand copies. In 1964, Lee recalled her hopes for the book when she said, "I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird.' ... I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected." Instead of a "quick and merciful death", Reader's Digest Condensed Books chose the book for reprinting in part, which gave it a wide readership immediately. Since the original publication, the book has never been out of print.
Lee has said that To Kill a Mockingbird is not an autobiography, but rather an example of how an author "should write about what he knows and write truthfully". Nevertheless, several people and events from Lee's childhood parallel those of the fictional Scout. Lee's father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was an attorney, similar to Atticus Finch, and in 1919, he defended two black men accused of murder. After they were convicted, hanged, and mutilated, he never tried another criminal case. Lee's father was also the editor and publisher of the Monroeville newspaper. Although more of a proponent of racial segregation than Atticus, he gradually became more liberal in his later years. Though Scout's mother died when she was a baby, and Lee was 25 when her mother died, her mother was prone to a nervous condition that rendered her mentally and emotionally absent. Lee had a brother named Edwin, who — like the fictional Jem — was four years older than his sister. As in the novel, a black housekeeper came daily to care for the Lee house and family.
The character of Dill was modeled on Lee's childhood friend, Truman Capote, known then as Truman Persons. Just as Dill lived next door to Scout during the summer, Capote lived next door to Lee with his aunts while his mother visited New York City. Like Dill, Capote had an impressive imagination and a gift for fascinating stories. Both Lee and Capote were atypical children: both loved to read. Lee was a scrappy tomboy who was quick to fight, but Capote was ridiculed for his advanced vocabulary and lisp. She and Capote made up and acted out stories they wrote on an old Underwood typewriter Lee's father gave them. They became good friends when both felt alienated from their peers; Capote called the two of them "apart people". In 1960, Capote and Lee traveled to Kansas together to investigate the multiple murders that were the basis for Capote's nonfiction novel In Cold Blood.
Down the street from the Lees lived a family whose house was always boarded up; they served as the models for the fictional Radleys. The son of the family got into some legal trouble and the father kept him at home for 24 years out of shame. He was hidden until virtually forgotten and died in 1952.
The origin of Tom Robinson is less clear, though many have speculated that his character was inspired by several models. When Lee was 10 years old, a white woman near Monroeville accused a black man named Walter Lett of raping her. The story and the trial were covered by her father's newspaper, and Lett was convicted and sentenced to death. After a series of letters appeared claiming Lett had been falsely accused, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He died there of tuberculosis in 1937. Scholars believe that Robinson's difficulties reflect the notorious case of the Scottsboro Boys, in which nine black men were convicted of raping two white women on very poor evidence. However, in 2005 Lee stated that she had in mind something less sensational, although the Scottsboro case served "the same purpose" to display Southern prejudices. Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered for flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, and whose death is credited as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement, is also considered a model for Tom Robinson.
Despite the novel's immense popularity upon publication, it has not received the close critical attention paid to other modern American classics. Don Noble, editor of a book of essays about the novel, estimates that the ratio of sales to analytical essays may be a million to one. Christopher Metress writes that the book is "an icon whose emotive sway remains strangely powerful because it also remains unexamined". Noble suggests it does not receive academic attention because of its consistent status as a best-seller ("If that many people like it, it can't be any good.") and that general readers seem to feel they do not require analytical interpretation.
Harper Lee has remained famously detached from interpreting the novel since the mid-1960s. However, she gave some insight into her themes when, in a rare letter to the editor, she wrote in response to the passionate reaction her book caused: "Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners."
When the book was released, reviewers noted that it was divided into two parts, and opinion was mixed about Lee's ability to connect them. The first part of the novel concerns the children's fascination with Boo Radley and their feelings of safety and comfort in the neighborhood. Reviewers were generally charmed by Scout and Jem's observations of their quirky neighbors. One writer was so impressed by Lee's detailed explanations of the people of Maycomb that he categorized the book as Southern romantic regionalism. This sentimentalism can be seen in Lee's representation of the Southern caste system to explain almost every character's behavior in the novel. Scout's Aunt Alexandra attributes Maycomb's inhabitants' faults and advantages to genealogy (families that have gambling streaks and drinking streaks), and the narrator sets the action and characters amid a finely detailed background of the Finch family history and the history of Maycomb. This regionalist theme is further reflected in Mayella Ewell's apparent powerlessness to admit her advances toward Tom Robinson, and Scout's definition of "fine folks" being people with good sense who do the best they can with what they have. The South itself, with its traditions and taboos, seems to affect the plot more than the characters.
The second part of the novel deals with what book reviewer Harding LeMay termed "the spirit-corroding shame of the civilized white Southerner in the treatment of the Negro". In the years following its release, many reviewers considered To Kill a Mockingbird a novel primarily concerned with race relations. Claudia Durst Johnson considers it "reasonable to believe" that the novel was shaped by two events involving racial issues in Alabama: Rosa Parks' refusal to yield her seat on a city bus to a white person, which sparked the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the 1956 riots at the University of Alabama after Autherine Lucy and Polly Myers were admitted (Myers eventually withdrew her application and Lucy was expelled, but reinstated in 1980). In writing about the historical context of the novel's construction, two other literary scholars remark: "To Kill a Mockingbird was written and published amidst the most significant and conflict-ridden social change in the South since the Civil War and Reconstruction. Inevitably, despite its mid-1930s setting, the story told from the perspective of the 1950s voices the conflicts, tensions, and fears induced by this transition."
Scholar Patrick Chura, who suggests Emmett Till was a model for Tom Robinson, enumerates the injustices endured by the fictional Tom that Till also faced. Chura notes the icon of the black rapist causing harm to the representation of the "mythologized vulnerable and sacred Southern womanhood". Any transgressions by black males that merely hinted at sexual contact with white females during the time the novel was set often resulted in a punishment of death for the accused. Tom Robinson's trial was juried by poor white farmers who convicted him despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence, as more educated and moderate white townspeople supported the jury's decision. Furthermore, the victim of racial injustice in To Kill a Mockingbird was physically impaired, which made him unable to commit the act he was accused of, but also crippled him in other ways. Roslyn Siegel includes Tom Robinson as an example of the recurring motif among white Southern writers of the black man as "stupid, pathetic, defenseless, and dependent upon the fair dealing of the whites, rather than his own intelligence to save him". Although Tom is spared from being lynched, he is killed with excessive violence during an attempted escape from prison, when he is shot seventeen times.
The theme of racial injustice appears symbolically in the novel as well. For example, Atticus must shoot a rabid dog, even though it is not his job to do so. Carolyn Jones argues that the dog represents prejudice within the town of Maycomb, and Atticus, who waits on a deserted street to shoot the dog, must fight against the town's racism without help from other white citizens. He is also alone when he faces a group intending to lynch Tom Robinson and once more in the courthouse during Tom's trial. Lee even uses dreamlike imagery from the mad dog incident to describe some of the courtroom scenes. Jones writes, "[t]he real mad dog in Maycomb is the racism that denies the humanity of Tom Robinson.... When Atticus makes his summation to the jury, he literally bares himself to the jury's and the town's anger."
“One of the amazing things about the writing in To Kill a Mockingbird, is the economy with which Harper Lee delineates not only race—white and black within a small community—but class. I mean different kinds of black people and white people, both from poor white trash to the upper crust—the whole social fabric.
-Lee Smith

In a 1964 interview, Lee remarked that her aspiration was "to be ... the Jane Austen of South Alabama." Both Austen and Lee challenged the social status quo and valued individual worth over social standing. When Scout embarrasses her poorer classmate, Walter Cunningham, at the Finch home one day, Calpurnia, their black cook, chastises and punishes her for doing so. Atticus respects Calpurnia's judgment, and later in the book even stands up to his sister, the formidable Aunt Alexandra, when she strongly suggests they fire Calpurnia. One writer notes that Scout, "in Austenian fashion", satirizes women with whom she does not wish to identify. Literary critic Jean Blackall lists the priorities shared by the two authors: "affirmation of order in society, obedience, courtesy, and respect for the individual without regard for status".

Scholars argue that Lee's approach to class and race was more complex "than ascribing racial prejudice primarily to 'poor white trash' ... Lee demonstrates how issues of gender and class intensify prejudice, silence the voices that might challenge the existing order, and greatly complicate many Americans' conception of the causes of racism and segregation." Lee's use of the middle-class narrative voice is a literary device that allows an intimacy with the reader, regardless of class or cultural background, and fosters a sense of nostalgia. Sharing Scout and Jem's perspective, the reader is allowed to engage in relationships with the conservative antebellum Mrs. Dubose; the lower-class Ewells, and the Cunninghams who are equally poor but behave in vastly different ways; the wealthy but ostracized Mr. Dolphus Raymond; and Calpurnia and other members of the black community. The children internalize Atticus' admonition not to judge someone until they have walked around in that person's skin, gaining a greater understanding of people's motives and behavior.
The novel has been noted for its poignant exploration of different forms of courage. Scout's impulsive inclination to fight students who insult Atticus reflects her attempt to stand up for him and defend him. Atticus is the moral center of the novel, however, and he teaches Jem one of the most significant lessons of courage. In a statement that foreshadows Atticus' motivation for defending Tom Robinson and describes Mrs. Dubose, who is determined to break herself of a morphine addiction, Atticus tells Jem that courage is "when you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what".
Charles Shields, who has written the only book-length biography of Harper Lee to date, offers the reason for the novel's enduring popularity and impact is that "its lessons of human dignity and respect for others remain fundamental and universal". Atticus' lesson to Scout that "you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb around in his skin and walk around in it" exemplifies his compassion. She ponders the comment when listening to Mayella Ewell's testimony. When Mayella reacts with confusion to Atticus' question if she has any friends, Scout offers that she must be lonelier than Boo Radley. Having walked Boo home after he saves their lives, Scout stands on the Radley porch and considers the events of the previous three years from Boo's perspective. One writer remarks, "... [w]hile the novel concerns tragedy and injustice, heartache and loss, it also carries with it a strong sense [of] courage, compassion, and an awareness of history to be better human beings."
Just as Lee explores Jem's development in coming to grips with a racist and unjust society, Scout realizes what being female means, and several female characters influence her development. Scout's primary identification with her father and older brother allows her to describe the variety and depth of female characters in the novel both as one of them and as an outsider. Scout's primary female models are Calpurnia and her neighbor Miss Maudie, both of whom are strong willed, independent, and protective. Mayella Ewell also has an influence; Scout watches her destroy an innocent man in order to hide her own desire for him. The female characters who comment the most on Scout's lack of willingness to adhere to a more feminine role are also those who promote the most racist and classist points of view. For example, Mrs. Dubose chastises Scout for not wearing a dress and camisole, and indicates she is ruining the family name by not doing so, in addition to insulting Atticus' intentions to defend Tom Robinson. By balancing the masculine influences of Atticus and Jem with the feminine influences of Calpurnia and Miss Maudie, one scholar writes, "Lee gradually demonstrates that Scout is becoming a feminist in the South, for with the use of first-person narration, she indicates that Scout/ Jean Louise still maintains the ambivalence about being a Southern lady she possessed as a child."
Absent mothers and abusive fathers are another theme in the novel. Scout and Jem's mother died before Scout could remember her, Mayella's mother is dead, and Mrs. Radley is silent about Boo's confinement to the house. Apart from Atticus, the fathers described are abusers. Bob Ewell, it is hinted, molested his daughter, and Mr. Radley imprisons his son in his house until Boo is remembered only as a phantom. Bob Ewell and Mr. Radley represent a form of masculinity that Atticus does not, and the novel suggests that such men as well as the traditionally feminine hypocrites at the Missionary Society can lead society astray. Atticus stands apart from other men as a unique model of masculinity; as one scholar explains: "It is the job of real men who embody the traditional masculine qualities of heroic individualism, bravery, and an unshrinking knowledge of and dedication to social justice and morality, to set the society straight."
Allusions to legal issues in To Kill a Mockingbird, particularly in scenes outside of the courtroom, has drawn the attention from legal scholars. Claudia Durst Johnson writes that "a greater volume of critical readings has been amassed by two legal scholars in law journals than by all the literary scholars in literary journals". The opening quote by the 19th-century essayist Charles Lamb reads: "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once." Johnson notes that even in Scout and Jem's childhood world, compromises and treaties are struck with each other by spitting on one's palm and laws are discussed by Atticus and his children: is it right that Bob Ewell hunts and traps out of season? Many social codes are broken by people in symbolic courtrooms: Mr. Dolphus Raymond has been exiled by society for taking a black woman as his common-law wife and having interracial children; Mayella Ewell is beaten by her father in punishment for kissing Tom Robinson; by being turned into a non-person, Boo Radley receives a punishment far greater than any court could have given him. Scout repeatedly breaks codes and laws and reacts to her punishment for them. For example, she refuses to wear frilly clothes, saying that Aunt Alexandra's "fanatical" attempts to place her in them made her feel "a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on [her]". Johnson states, "[t]he novel is a study of how Jem and Scout begin to perceive the complexity of social codes and how the configuration of relationships dictated by or set off by those codes fails or nurtures the inhabitants of (their) small worlds.”
Songbirds and their associated symbolism appear throughout the novel. The family's last name of Finch also shares Lee's mother's maiden name. The titular mockingbird is a key motif of this theme, which first appears when Atticus, having given his children air-rifles for Christmas, allows their Uncle Jack to teach them to shoot. Atticus warns them that, although they can "shoot all the bluejays they want", they must remember that "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird". Confused, Scout approaches her neighbor Miss Maudie, who explains that mockingbirds never harm other living creatures. She points out that mockingbirds simply provide pleasure with their songs, saying, "They don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us." Writer Edwin Bruell summarized the symbolism when he wrote in 1964, "'To kill a mockingbird' is to kill that which is innocent and harmless—like Tom Robinson." Scholars have noted that Lee often returns to the mockingbird theme when trying to make a moral point.
Tom Robinson is the chief example among several innocents destroyed carelessly or deliberately throughout the novel. However, scholar Christopher Metress connects the mockingbird to Boo Radley: "Instead of wanting to exploit Boo for her own fun (as she does in the beginning of the novel by putting on gothic plays about his history), Scout comes to see him as a 'mockingbird'—that is, as someone with an inner goodness that must be cherished." The last pages of the book illustrate this as Scout relates the moral of a story Atticus has been reading to her, and in allusions to both Boo Radley and Tom Robinson states about a character who was misunderstood, "when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things ... Atticus, he was real nice," to which he responds, "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."
The novel exposes the loss of innocence (and innocents) so frequently that reviewer R. A. Dave claims it is inevitable that all the characters have faced or will face defeat, giving it elements of a classical tragedy. In exploring how each character deals with his or her own personal defeat, Lee builds a framework to judge whether the characters are heroes or fools. She guides the reader in such judgments, alternating between unabashed adoration and biting irony. Scout's experience with the Missionary Society is an ironic juxtaposition of women who mock her, gossip, and "reflect a smug, colonialist attitude toward other races" while giving the "appearance of gentility, piety, and morality". Conversely, when Atticus loses Tom's case, he is last to leave the courtroom, except for his children and the black spectators in the colored balcony, who rise silently as he walks underneath them, to honor his efforts.
The most important theme of To Kill a Mockingbird is the book’s exploration of the moral nature of human beings—that is, whether people are essentially good or essentially evil. The novel approaches this question by dramatizing Scout and Jem’s transition from a perspective of childhood innocence, in which they assume that people are good because they have never seen evil, to a more adult perspective, in which they have confronted evil and must incorporate it into their understanding of the world. As a result of this portrayal of the transition from innocence to experience, one of the book’s important subthemes involves the threat that hatred, prejudice, and ignorance pose to the innocent: people such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are not prepared for the evil that they encounter, and, as a result, they are destroyed. Even Jem is victimized to an extent by his discovery of the evil of racism during and after the trial. Whereas Scout is able to maintain her basic faith in human nature despite Tom’s conviction, Jem’s faith in justice and in humanity is badly damaged, and he retreats into a state of disillusionment.
The moral voice of To Kill a Mockingbird is embodied by Atticus Finch, who is virtually unique in the novel in that he has experienced and understood evil without losing his faith in the human capacity for goodness. Atticus understands that, rather than being simply creatures of good or creatures of evil, most people have both good and bad qualities. The important thing is to appreciate the good qualities and understand the bad qualities by treating others with sympathy and trying to see life from their perspective. He tries to teach this ultimate moral lesson to Jem and Scout to show them that it is possible to live with conscience without losing hope or becoming cynical. In this way, Atticus is able to admire Mrs. Dubose’s courage even while deploring her racism. Scout’s progress as a character in the novel is defined by her gradual development toward understanding Atticus’s lessons, culminating when, in the final chapters, Scout at last sees Boo Radley as a human being. Her newfound ability to view the world from his perspective ensures that she will not become jaded as she loses her innocence.
The forces of good and evil in To Kill a Mockingbird seem larger than the small Southern town in which the story takes place. Lee adds drama and atmosphere to her story by including a number of Gothic details in the setting and the plot. In literature, the term Gothic refers to a style of fiction first popularized in eighteenth-century England, featuring supernatural occurrences, gloomy and haunted settings, full moons, and so on. Among the Gothic elements in To Kill a Mockingbird are the unnatural snowfall, the fire that destroys Miss Maudie’s house, the children’s superstitions about Boo Radley, the mad dog that Atticus shoots, and the ominous night of the Halloween party on which Bob Ewell attacks the children. These elements, out of place in the normally quiet, predictable Maycomb, create tension in the novel and serve to foreshadow the troublesome events of the trial and its aftermath.

Because exploration of the novel’s larger moral questions takes place within the perspective of children, the education of children is necessarily involved in the development of all of the novel’s themes. In a sense, the plot of the story charts Scout’s moral education, and the theme of how children are educated—how they are taught to move from innocence to adulthood—recurs throughout the novel (at the end of the book, Scout even says that she has learned practically everything except algebra). This theme is explored most powerfully through the relationship between Atticus and his children, as he devotes himself to instilling a social conscience in Jem and Scout. The scenes at school provide a direct counterpoint to Atticus’s effective education of his children: Scout is frequently confronted with teachers who are either frustratingly unsympathetic to children’s needs or morally hypocritical. As is true of To Kill a Mockingbird’s other moral themes, the novel’s conclusion about education is that the most important lessons are those of sympathy and understanding, and that a sympathetic, understanding approach is the best way to teach these lessons. In this way, Atticus’s ability to put himself in his children’s shoes makes him an excellent teacher, while Miss Caroline’s rigid commitment to the educational techniques that she learned in college makes her ineffective and even dangerous.
Differences in social status are explored largely through the overcomplicated social hierarchy of Maycomb, the ins and outs of which constantly baffle the children. The relatively well-off Finches stand near the top of Maycomb’s social hierarchy, with most of the townspeople beneath them. Ignorant country farmers like the Cunninghams lie below the townspeople, and the white trash Ewells rest below the Cunninghams. But the black community in Maycomb, despite its abundance of admirable qualities, squats below even the Ewells, enabling Bob Ewell to make up for his own lack of importance by persecuting Tom Robinson. These rigid social divisions that make up so much of the adult world are revealed in the book to be both irrational and destructive. For example, Scout cannot understand why Aunt Alexandra refuses to let her consort with young Walter Cunningham. Lee uses the children’s perplexity at the unpleasant layering of Maycomb society to critique the role of class status and, ultimately, prejudice in human interaction.
Counterbalancing the Gothic motif of the story is the motif of old-fashioned, small-town values, which manifest themselves throughout the novel. As if to contrast with all of the suspense and moral grandeur of the book, Lee emphasizes the slow-paced, good-natured feel of life in Maycomb. She often deliberately juxtaposes small-town values and Gothic images in order to examine more closely the forces of good and evil. The horror of the fire, for instance, is mitigated by the comforting scene of the people of Maycomb banding together to save Miss Maudie’s possessions. In contrast, Bob Ewell’s cowardly attack on the defenseless Scout, who is dressed like a giant ham for the school pageant, shows him to be unredeemably evil.
The title of To Kill a Mockingbird has very little literal connection to the plot, but it carries a great deal of symbolic weight in the book. In this story of innocents destroyed by evil, the “mockingbird” comes to represent the idea of innocence. Thus, to kill a mockingbird is to destroy innocence. Throughout the book, a number of characters (Jem, Tom Robinson, Dill, Boo Radley, Mr. Raymond) can be identified as mockingbirds—innocents who have been injured or destroyed through contact with evil. This connection between the novel’s title and its main theme is made explicit several times in the novel: after Tom Robinson is shot, Mr. Underwood compares his death to “the senseless slaughter of songbirds,” and at the end of the book Scout thinks that hurting Boo Radley would be like “shootin’ a mockingbird.” Most important, Miss Maudie explains to Scout: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but . . . sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That Jem and Scout’s last name is Finch (another type of small bird) indicates that they are particularly vulnerable in the racist world of Maycomb, which often treats the fragile innocence of childhood harshly.
As the novel progresses, the children’s changing attitude toward Boo Radley is an important measurement of their development from innocence toward a grown-up moral perspective. At the beginning of the book, Boo is merely a source of childhood superstition. As he leaves Jem and Scout presents and mends Jem’s pants, he gradually becomes increasingly and intriguingly real to them. At the end of the novel, he becomes fully human to Scout, illustrating that she has developed into a sympathetic and understanding individual. Boo, an intelligent child ruined by a cruel father, is one of the book’s most important mockingbirds; he is also an important symbol of the good that exists within people. Despite the pain that Boo has suffered, the purity of his heart rules his interaction with the children. In saving Jem and Scout from Bob Ewell, Boo proves the ultimate symbol of good.
Scout is a very unusual little girl, both in her own qualities and in her social position. She is unusually intelligent (she learns to read before beginning school), unusually confident (she fights boys without fear), unusually thoughtful (she worries about the essential goodness and evil of mankind), and unusually good (she always acts with the best intentions). In terms of her social identity, she is unusual for being a tomboy in the prim and proper Southern world of Maycomb.
One quickly realizes when reading To Kill a Mockingbird that Scout is who she is because of the way Atticus has raised her. He has nurtured her mind, conscience, and individuality without bogging her down in fussy social hypocrisies and notions of propriety. While most girls in Scout’s position would be wearing dresses and learning manners, Scout, thanks to Atticus’s hands-off parenting style, wears overalls and learns to climb trees with Jem and Dill. She does not always grasp social niceties (she tells her teacher that one of her fellow students is too poor to pay her back for lunch), and human behavior often baffles her (as when one of her teachers criticizes Hitler’s prejudice against Jews while indulging in her own prejudice against blacks), but Atticus’s protection of Scout from hypocrisy and social pressure has rendered her open, forthright, and well meaning.
At the beginning of the novel, Scout is an innocent, good-hearted five-year-old child who has no experience with the evils of the world. As the novel progresses, Scout has her first contact with evil in the form of racial prejudice, and the basic development of her character is governed by the question of whether she will emerge from that contact with her conscience and optimism intact or whether she will be bruised, hurt, or destroyed like Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. Thanks to Atticus’s wisdom, Scout learns that though humanity has a great capacity for evil, it also has a great capacity for good, and that the evil can often be mitigated if one approaches others with an outlook of sympathy and understanding. Scout’s development into a person capable of assuming that outlook marks the culmination of the novel and indicates that, whatever evil she encounters, she will retain her conscience without becoming cynical or jaded. Though she is still a child at the end of the book, Scout’s perspective on life develops from that of an innocent child into that of a near grown-up.
As one of the most prominent citizens in Maycomb during the Great Depression, Atticus is relatively well off in a time of widespread poverty. Because of his penetrating intelligence, calm wisdom, and exemplary behavior, Atticus is respected by everyone, including the very poor. He functions as the moral backbone of Maycomb, a person to whom others turn in times of doubt and trouble. But the conscience that makes him so admirable ultimately causes his falling out with the people of Maycomb. Unable to abide the town’s comfortable ingrained racial prejudice, he agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a black man. Atticus’s action makes him the object of scorn in Maycomb, but he is simply too impressive a figure to be scorned for long. After the trial, he seems destined to be held in the same high regard as before.
Atticus practices the ethic of sympathy and understanding that he preaches to Scout and Jem and never holds a grudge against the people of Maycomb. Despite their callous indifference to racial inequality, Atticus sees much to admire in them. He recognizes that people have both good and bad qualities, and he is determined to admire the good while understanding and forgiving the bad. Atticus passes this great moral lesson on to Scout—this perspective protects the innocent from being destroyed by contact with evil.
Ironically, though Atticus is a heroic figure in the novel and a respected man in Maycomb, neither Jem nor Scout consciously idolizes him at the beginning of the novel. Both are embarrassed that he is older than other fathers and that he doesn’t hunt or fish. But Atticus’s wise parenting, which he sums up in Chapter 30 by saying, “Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him,” ultimately wins their respect. By the end of the novel, Jem, in particular, is fiercely devoted to Atticus (Scout, still a little girl, loves him uncritically). Though his children’s attitude toward him evolves, Atticus is characterized throughout the book by his absolute consistency. He stands rigidly committed to justice and thoughtfully willing to view matters from the perspectives of others. He does not develop in the novel but retains these qualities in equal measure, making him the novel’s moral guide and voice of conscience.
If Scout is an innocent girl who is exposed to evil at an early age and forced to develop an adult moral outlook, Jem finds himself in an even more turbulent situation. His shattering experience at Tom Robinson’s trial occurs just as he is entering puberty, a time when life is complicated and traumatic enough. His disillusionment upon seeing that justice does not always prevail leaves him vulnerable and confused at a critical, formative point in his life. Nevertheless, he admirably upholds the commitment to justice that Atticus instilled in him and maintains it with deep conviction throughout the novel.
Unlike the jaded Mr. Raymond, Jem is not without hope: Atticus tells Scout that Jem simply needs time to process what he has learned. The strong presence of Atticus in Jem’s life seems to promise that he will recover his equilibrium. Later in his life, Jem is able to see that Boo Radley’s unexpected aid indicates there is good in people. Even before the end of the novel, Jem shows signs of having learned a positive lesson from the trial; for instance, at the beginning of Chapter 25, he refuses to allow Scout to squash a roly-poly bug because it has done nothing to harm her. After seeing the unfair destruction of Tom Robinson, Jem now wants to protect the fragile and harmless.
The idea that Jem resolves his cynicism and moves toward a happier life is supported by the beginning of the novel, in which a grown-up Scout remembers talking to Jem about the events that make up the novel’s plot. Scout says that Jem pinpointed the children’s initial interest in Boo Radley at the beginning of the story, strongly implying that he understood what Boo represented to them and, like Scout, managed to shed his innocence without losing his hope.
I read the book back when I was in school, and was pleased that the book had not lost any scope for me. In fact, it had deepened for me as a direct result of my life experiences. I feel that the prejudices of today have heightened more so beyond a level than they were in the ‘30’s. There are so many more ways to wreak havoc and cause pain in today’s society when someone doesn’t fit into that pretty mold. The places to hide are exposed by modern technology, and there doesn’t seem to be many places to escape it. No matter what you are, or are not, there is always some group openly hating. Sad.

#1 Lord of the Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien

2011-11-24T22:59:00.000-08:00

The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit (1937), but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in stages between 1937 and 1949, much of it during the Second World War. It is the second best-selling novel ever written, with over 150 million copies sold. Only A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens has sold more copies worldwide while the third best-selling novel is Tolkien's The Hobbit.
The work was initially intended by Tolkien to be one volume split into three sections. However, when Tolkien submitted the first volume entitled The Lord of the Rings to his publisher, it was decided for economic reasons to publish the work as three separate volumes, each consisting of two books, over the course of a year from the 21st of July 1954 to October 1955, thus creating the now familiar Lord of the Rings trilogy. The three volumes were entitled The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Structurally, the volumes are divided internally into six books, two per volume, with several appendices of background material, much abbreviated from Tolkien's originals, included at the end of the third volume. The Lord of the Rings has since been reprinted numerous times and translated into many languages, becoming one of the most popular and influential works in the field of 20th-century fantasy literature and the subject of several films.
The title of the novel refers to the story's main antagonist, the Dark Lord Sauron, who had in an earlier age created the One Ring to rule the other Rings of Power as the ultimate weapon in his campaign to conquer and rule all of Middle-earth. From quiet beginnings in the Shire, a Hobbit land not unlike the English countryside, the story ranges across north-west Middle-earth, following the course of the War of the Ring through the eyes of its characters, notably the Hobbits Frodo Baggins, Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck and Peregrin "Pippin" Took, but also the Hobbits' chief allies and travelling companions: Aragorn, a Human Ranger, Boromir, a Human nobleman, Gimli, a Dwarf warrior, Legolas, an Elven prince, and Gandalf, a Wizard.
Tolkien's work has been the subject of extensive analysis of its themes and origins. Although a major work in itself, the story was only the last movement of a larger epic Tolkien had worked on since 1917, in a process he described as mythopoeia. Influences on this earlier work, and on the story of The Lord of the Rings, include philology, mythology, religion and the author's distaste for the effects of industrialization, as well as earlier fantasy works and Tolkien's experiences in World War I. The Lord of the Rings in its turn is considered to have had a great effect on modern fantasy; the impact of Tolkien's works is such that the use of the words "Tolkienian" and "Tolkienesque" has been recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary.
The Lord of the Rings started as a sequel to J. R. R. Tolkien's earlier work, The Hobbit, published in 1937. The popularity of The Hobbit had led George Allen & Unwin, the publishers, to request a sequel. Tolkien warned them that he wrote quite slowly, and responded with several stories he had already developed. Having rejected his contemporary drafts for The Silmarillion, putting on hold Roverandom, and accepting Farmer Giles of Ham, Allen & Unwin thought more stories about hobbits would be popular. So at the age of 45, Tolkien began writing the story that would become The Lord of the Rings. The story would not be finished until 12 years later, in 1949, and would not be fully published until 1955, when Tolkien was 63 years old.
Although The Lord of the Rings was published in the 1950s, Tolkien insisted that the One Ring was not an allegory for the Atomic Bomb, nor were his works a strict allegory of any kind, but were open to interpretation as the reader saw fit.
A few critics have found what they consider to be racial elements in the story, generally based upon their views of how Tolkien's imagery depicts good and evil, characters' race (e.g. Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit, Southron, Númenórean, Orc); and that the character's race is seen as determining their behavior. Counter-arguments note that race-focused critiques often omit relevant textual evidence to the contrary, cite imagery from adaptations rather than the work itself; ignore the absence of evidence of racist attitudes or events in the author's personal life and claim that the perception of racism is itself a marginal view. The book has been read as fitting the model of Joseph Campbell's "monomyth".
The King vs. the Steward was the first theme presented in the trilogy. At the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, Middle-earth is weak and disunited, with little trust existing among the various races. Dissension plagues the different human kingdoms, and one of the main problems is that the true leaders are not in their rightful positions. In The Return of the King, Théoden of Rohan proves himself to be a good, noble leader when he heeds Gondor’s cry for help, but he was not always so effective. For a while, a spell cast by Sauron incapacitated him, and his kingdom was effectively ruled by the evil wizard Saruman. Even after Théoden’s strength is restored, he is incapable of uniting all humanity. Only the king of Gondor can do that.
Until the conclusion of the trilogy, Gondor is without a king. The throne is instead occupied by the steward Denethor, a weak-willed man who seems to be losing his mind. The perilous state of Denethor’s sanity suggests the weakness of Gondor when it is ruled by a steward rather than a king. Boromir, Denethor’s son and heir to the stewardship, also displays considerable moral weakness when he attempts to steal the ring from Frodo. Aragorn, the true heir to the throne and the future king of Gondor, is able to resist the temptation of the ring. Just as Saruman had to be cast out of Rohan to restore that kingdom to strength, the real king of Gondor must assume his throne for that kingdom to thrive. Throughout the trilogy, this tension between true leader and acting leader means the difference between life and death, success and defeat, and unity and dissent among the people of Middle-earth.
The theme of the Limitations of Fellowship was a hard one for the characters to swallow. Though the fellowship is integral to the success of Frodo’s mission, it cannot make the entire journey with Frodo or help him at the journey’s end. The fellowship serves as a kind of backup for Frodo, keeping enemies at bay and Middle-earth as calm as possible so he can fulfill his mission. Frodo must ultimately make the journey with only the company of Sam. The entire fellowship is committed to Frodo’s success, but their roles are ultimately limited by the nature of the task at hand. The journey is such that only the two small hobbits are capable of making it successfully.
The nature of the ring itself puts its own limits on fellowship. The ring is a heavy burden for whoever carries it, and it forces its bearer into tremendous isolation. Gollum was a victim of the ring, and his peaceful life as a hobbit ended when he gave in to its temptation. He retreated into a cave and became isolated from the world. The ring isolates Frodo, too, even though Sam accompanies him. While the entire fellowship is in great danger, only Frodo is haunted by visions of Mordor and Sauron. He is unable to share this torment with the others, so it becomes the very basis of his isolation. At the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, Galadriel tells Frodo that bearing the ring is a solitary task, prompting him to leave the others. Though Sam refuses to leave Frodo alone and gives him much comfort, he remains blind to his friend’s inner torment. Even after the ring is destroyed, Frodo remains isolated. He is unable to readjust to life in the Shire and eventually leaves the other hobbits behind. His experience as ring-bearer has permanently isolated him from his peers.
Indeed, the Shire was seen as a fantasy of home, and even as they returned, they realized that a fantasy was what it had been. At the very start of their journey, Sam notes to Frodo that they have just passed the spot that marks the farthest he’s ever before been from home, the first of many thoughts the hobbits will have about home and their distance from it. Nostalgia for home, even to the point of homesickness, plagues Frodo and Sam throughout their journey, and Sam speaks of it most often. When Sam and Frodo travel to Mordor, Frodo’s intense focus on the journey to Mount Doom is balanced by Sam’s focus on the return journey. The Shire is a lush, happy place untouched by the tumult disturbing much of Middle-earth and, compared to the rocky, dangerous terrain Frodo and Sam face on their journey, seems for them a kind of paradise. However, their talk of returning to the Shire is rooted in more than the physical Shire itself. The Shire suggests a childlike innocence, which the hobbits left behind with the very first step of their journey. It also suggests a different kind of life, where hobbits live simply, unworried, and free from war, greed, evil, death, and all the other vices and hardships that complicate life in much of Middle-earth. In Frodo’s and Sam’s memories, the Shire becomes a sort of Eden, where life was perfect and could be perfect again, if they can only get back. The thought of returning animates them and gives them strength in their darkest moments.
The paradise of the Shire, however, is an illusion. Though the Shire remains lush and the hobbits who live there remain happy and joyful, especially when Frodo and Sam return, the innocence and ignorance Frodo and Sam once enjoyed in the Shire are gone forever. They have seen and experienced too much, and they have become adults now, with many painful memories. Though Sam adapts to his new status in the Shire and thrives in the happiness it offers, Frodo cannot regain a sense of equilibrium even being back at home. Returning to the Shire had seemed to promise the end of fear and worry, but Frodo must journey on.
Frodo and Sam’s destination is Mordor, specifically the volcanic Mount Doom, in which they intend to destroy the ring of power. Though their journey is hard, their destination is almost always in sight, at the edge of the horizon. However, actually reaching Mordor proves to be extremely difficult. The hobbits frequently find themselves going in circles. When they finally arrive at Mordor, Faramir captures them and brings them back to Osgiliath. Later, Gollum leads them back to the gates of Mordor, only to propose a different way in. Sam and Frodo seem to be always on their way to Mordor, but they never quite arrive. Mordor is the place that drives their every action and the goal they hold above all else. The closer they get, the further off Mordor seems, and their journey takes on epic proportions, outlasting two tremendous battles.
The journey to Mordor is fraught with setbacks not only because Mordor is located in difficult terrain and guarded by dangerous monsters, but also because this journey represents another journey, a spiritual quest that Frodo, as well as Sam and other characters, must undertake. This journey takes Frodo to a private Mordor, the dark core of his soul, where even his pure heart is no match for the temptations of the ring. The many delays in the journey to the actual Mordor suggest the many trials and tribulations Frodo must face in confronting his internal Mordor. The hobbits eventually reach Mordor, and Frodo faces his inner darkness. Though he returns to the Shire, the Mordor he’s seen within himself precludes his journey coming to a completely peaceful end.
The temptation of the ring is the motivating force behind every action in The Lord of the Rings, whether characters are fighting the temptation, nurturing it, denying it, or preventing someone else from giving in to it. Characters of every race pursue the ring. The ringwraiths and Sauron seek it constantly. Gollum attacks Frodo several times to try to take it from him. The sons of Denethor, Boromir and Faramir, both try to take it from Frodo. The ring tempts Gandalf and Galadriel, each of them drawn to the thought of the immense power it could give them. Even pure-hearted Sam briefly wonders how it would be to possess the ring. No one, apparently, is immune to its temptation, and Frodo is no exception. Though he is chosen as ring-bearer because he is most resistant to the ring’s lure, Frodo must constantly fight his desire for it. He is sometimes tempted to hand it over to his more powerful friends, while at other times he wants to keep it for himself. When he finally arrives at Mount Doom, Frodo elects to keep the ring, despite the tremendous anguish it has caused him. At no other moment in the trilogy is Frodo more tempted by the ring’s power. Frodo gives up the ring only because Gollum appears and fights him for it, a fight that leads to its destruction. The ring that has possessed so many and that has served as a kind of connective tissue among all the races of Middle-earth is ultimately destroyed by its own power.
The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy about a journey, but this large journey consists of many smaller journeys that advance the greater one. Individuals and groups are constantly setting off for someplace, to pursue a goal of their own, rescue someone, or escape. Merry and Pippin engage in an unintentional journey when they join forces with Frodo and Sam early in The Fellowship of the Ring. Aragorn takes many dramatic journeys across Middle-earth on his horse, a Lone-Ranger-type figure taking the brave and necessary steps to save his people. Gollum journeys with Frodo and Sam and also within his own conflicted soul. The elves journey to their land of immortality, though Arwen elects to remain behind—her own journey will be one that leads her to Aragorn and a mortal life. The last time we see Frodo in The Return of the King, he is embarking on yet another journey, this time with the elves, to pursue his next adventure. A constant feeling of movement stretches through all three films, and, though the destinations are always clear, the journeys often seem to have no end in sight.
Throughout The Lord of the Rings, water serves as a lifesaving force for the good beings of Middle-earth. Gandalf and Aragorn are saved from death after long falls when they land in bodies of water. When Arwen races to Rivendell on horseback with a badly injured Frodo, she escapes the pursuing ringwraiths when they are flooded by water. Similarly, Isengard loses its power when its plain is flooded. Water also suggests the afterlife. The elves depart Middle-earth on a boat and sail out to a great body of water. When Boromir dies, his dead body is placed on a pyre and sent down a river. Although he is dead, this journey suggests that he will live on in the memory of others. In my opinion, water is probably one of the most frequent but varying symbols in the trilogy.
The ring is the center of the trilogy, and it gains multiple, changeable meanings as Frodo’s journey proceeds. Created by the evil Sauron, it is at first synonymous with its maker’s evil power. Those who encounter the ring are overcome with longing for power over others, and the ring could give more power to Sauron. For all, the ring suggests the dangerous urges that lurk even in the most pure-hearted beings of Middle-earth. It also suggests slavery and weakness, since whoever gives in to the temptation of the ring becomes a slave to it. Gollum is an example of what happens physically when one succumbs to the ring. Man, too, is weak, and Isildur failed to destroy the ring in Mordor. The fact that weakness affects every race of Middle-earth shows the extent of the ring’s power.
As the trilogy proceeds, new symbols emerge to counteract the temptation of the ring. The sword Anduril suggests good and unity, rather than evil and disunity. When Elrond presents the sword to Aragorn, he says that the fate of Arwen has been linked to the fate of the ring: as the ring grows stronger, she grows weaker. Arwen, therefore, serves as a kind of symbol herself, the very opposite of Sauron: the anti-ring, the symbol of hope and good.
Mount Doom is both the birthplace of the ring and the place where it can be destroyed. This is Frodo’s ultimate destination, and it also presents him with his greatest challenge. Destroying the ring is in many ways more difficult than reaching Mount Doom, and twice we see characters fail when faced with the task. Isildur, after defeating Sauron’s armies, enters the fiery mountain intending to destroy the ring, but at the last moment he turns back and decides to keep it for himself. When Frodo brings the ring to Mount Doom, he, too, intends to destroy it, but like Isildur, he decides at the last minute to keep it. Though the ring is ultimately destroyed after Frodo and Gollum’s struggle for it, Frodo did not let it go on his own. Though he passes many tests on his journey, Frodo fails in this final test at Mount Doom. Mount Doom in this case suggests the darkness and weakness that exists even in the most pure-hearted, a lure so powerful that even the most determined voyager needs additional help to resist temptation. Mount Doom also marks the furthest Frodo gets from the security and familiarity of the Shire. He is as out of place at Mount Doom as the ring was in the Shire, and this is the place where Frodo comes closest to actually giving himself over to evil.
The books were very well written, very descriptive, precise. The movies soon became disappointments for the details that were so readily available to them, but left to the reader’s imagination. While the movies made me feel that Frodo and Sam were always on their way to Mount Doom, the book filled in all those steps with so much fodder for my mind’s eye, that it became a varied and colorful journey that kept my mind moving. Hidden and insinuated details were also offered to fill in the holes that the movies left.

#25 The Hobbit (There and Back Again), by J.R.R. Tolkien

2011-11-24T22:51:00.000-08:00

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, better known by its abbreviated title The Hobbit, is a fantasy novel and children's book by J। R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction. The book remains popular and is recognized as a classic in children's literature. Themes of personal growth and forms of heroism figure in the story. Along with conflict, these themes lead critics to cite Tolkien's own experiences, and those of other writers who fought in World War I, as instrumental in shaping the story. The author's scholarly knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature and interest in fairy tales are also often noted as influences.

Set in a time "Between the Dawn of Fairy and the Dominion of Men", The Hobbit follows the quest of home-loving hobbit Bilbo Baggins to win a share of the treasure guarded by the dragon, Smaug. Bilbo's journey takes him from light-hearted, rural surroundings into darker, deeper territory. The story is told in the form of an episodic quest, and most chapters introduce a specific creature, or type of creature, of Tolkien's Wilderland. By accepting the disreputable, romantic, fey and adventurous side of his nature (the "Tookish" side) and applying his wits and common sense, Bilbo develops a new level of maturity, competence and wisdom. The story reaches its climax in the Battle of Five Armies, where many of the characters and creatures from earlier chapters re-emerge to engage in conflict.
The development and maturation of the protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is central to the story. This journey of maturation, where Bilbo gains a clear sense of identity and confidence in the outside world, may be seen as a Bildungsroman rather than a traditional quest. The Jungian concept of individuation is also reflected through this theme of growing maturity and capability, with the author contrasting Bilbo's personal growth against the arrested development of the dwarves. The analogue of the "underworld" and the hero returning from it with a boon (such as the ring, or Elvish blades) that benefits his society is seen to fit the mythic archetypes regarding initiation and male coming-of-age as described by Joseph Campbell. Jane Chance compares the development and growth of Bilbo against other characters to the concepts of just Kingship versus sinful kingship derived from the Ancrene Wisse (which Tolkien had written on in 1929) and a Christian understanding of Beowulf. Specific plot elements and features in The Hobbit that show similarities to Beowulf include Bilbo's title thief, the underground path into the mountain, and Smaug's personality which leads to the destruction of Laketown.
The overcoming of greed and selfishness has been seen as the central moral of the story. Whilst greed is a recurring theme in the novel, with many of the episodes stemming from one or more of the characters' simple desire for food (be it trolls eating dwarves or dwarves eating Wood-elf fare) or a desire for beautiful objects, such as gold and jewels, it is only by the Arkenstone's influence upon Thorin that greed, and its attendant vices "coveting" and "malignancy", come fully to the fore in the story and provide the moral crux of the tale. Bilbo steals the Arkenstone—a most ancient relic of the dwarves—and attempts to ransom it to Thorin for peace. However, Thorin turns on the Hobbit as a traitor, disregarding all the promises and "at your services" he had previously bestowed. In the end Bilbo gives up the precious stone and most of his share of the treasure in order to help those in greater need. Tolkien also explores the motif of jewels that inspire intense greed which corrupts those that covet them in the Silmarillion, and there are connections between the words "Arkenstone" and "Silmaril" in Tolkien's invented etymologies.

The Hobbit employs themes of animism. An important concept in anthropology and child development, animism is the idea that all things—including inanimate objects and natural events, such as storms or purses, as well as living things like animals and plants—possess human-like intelligence. John D. Rateliff calls this the "Doctor Dolittle Theme" in The History of the Hobbit, and cites the multitude of talking animals as indicative of this theme. These talking creatures include ravens, spiders and the dragon Smaug, alongside the anthropomorphic goblins and elves. Patrick Curry notes that animism is also found in Tolkien's other works, and mentions the "roots of mountains" and "feet of trees" in The Hobbit as a linguistic shifting in level from the inanimate to animate. Tolkien saw the idea of animism as closely linked to the emergence of human language and myth: "...The first men to talk of 'trees and stars' saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings... To them the whole of creation was "myth-woven and elf-patterned".'
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born January 3, 1892, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, where his father was a bank manager. After his father’s death, four-year-old Ronald, his younger brother, and mother settled in Sarehole, a village in the West Midlands of England. Tolkien retained an idealized image of the Sarehole Mill, the old mill pool with its overhanging willow tree, a nearby tempting mushroom patch, and clusters of cottages-all of which later figured in his picture of Hobbiton. At this time young Ronald was already discovering two interests that were to shape his life: languages and stories about imaginative places. When his mother moved the family to Birmingham, the trains and factories created a much more forbidding atmosphere, one from which he later encouraged people to “escape” through imaginative literature.
In the fantasy world of Middle-earth, Tolkien has created many echoes of the “real” world. Familiar human traits, both good and bad, abound in the actions of the hobbits, elves, dwarves, goblins, wizards, necromancers, dragons, and other more unusual inhabitants of this world. In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien states that one of the major values of stories about the Perilous Realm of Faerie is that such stories provide opportunities for regaining a clearer perspective on the real world. While the adventure story is an entertaining, well-constructed narrative, it is also an appreciation of the simple things in life-good and regular meals, comfortable homes, songs and traditions, and the joys of friendship. In The Hobbit an unlikely hero learns that courage, honesty, and imagination count far more than physical power.
Much of the evil that the forces of good must overcome in Middle-earth is embodied in fantastic beings: a dragon, trolls, goblins, and monstrous spiders. The kind of evil that they represent, especially greed and destructive malice, is, however, familiar to all readers, children or adults. The strongest lesson about the insidious nature of evil lies in the way in which a good dwarf, Thorin, yields to greed and almost destroys his friends. It is Bilbo’s willingness to give up the wealth to which he has a right, combined with his sense of responsibility for his friends, that keeps forces for good from destroying one another and allows them to unite against common enemies. Although Tolkien never implies that his fantasy world can be completely freed from evil, he shows clearly that good is attainable by the individual who really works for it, whether that individual is a strong character like the wizard Gandalf or a diminutive, timid hobbit like Bilbo Baggins.
The hero of The Hobbit is Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit who, at the age of 50, has never had an adventure and who asserts that no respectable hobbit wants adventures. An adventure, however, comes to him at the instigation of Gandalf, the wizard known to Bilbo only by his reputation for fireworks, great stories, and the ability to tempt young hobbits to try unusual things. The companions of Bilbo and Gandalf are thirteen dwarves, treasure-seekers who, following Gandalf’s advice, take Bilbo with them as their official burglar. Bilbo’s major assignment is to help them retrieve their ancestral treasures, long guarded by the dragon Smaug. The subtitle of the book, “There and Back Again,” suggests the cyclic nature of the quest as the underlying theme: Bilbo accomplishes his quest and returns home, but he is, as Gandalf tells him, a different hobbit than before.
As the quest takes Bilbo “There and Back Again,” two related themes develop: the nature of maturity and the nature of heroism. In the early stages of the book Bilbo seldom has an opportunity to make decisions for himself. He is forced by the requirements of hospitality to welcome Gandalf and the dwarves to his “unexpected party.” During their planning session he first let’s himself be drawn into the discussion because he resents the dwarves’ condescending remarks about his size and his ability. When he finds himself running to catch up to the dwarves, his major concern is that he has forgotten to take his pipe and his handkerchief. It is his desire to impress the dwarves that almost turns them into troll food and it is his physical limitations that lead to his encounter with Gollum.
Gollum’s nature and background are not related in this book, but in The Lord of the Rings Gandalf explains to Bilbo’s nephew (and to the reader) that Gollum’s family had been hobbits. By the time Bilbo meets him, however, Gollum has degenerated from his original happy, friendly nature into a repulsive creature of darkness. The riddle game is Gollum’s idea, but once Bilbo has accepted the suggestion he plays alertly, making the most of accidental advantages: solving the “time” riddle and creating the unorthodox “pocket” riddle. This alertness helps him to discover the secret of the ring of invisibility and to turn Gollum’s efforts to capture him into an escape route. His ability to think under pressure suggests that Bilbo is maturing, but two other traits emerge during the Gollum episode that give clearer evidence of Bilbo’s developing maturity and heroism: his pity for Gollum, which leads him to risk being caught rather than kill a defenseless enemy, and his decision to return to the goblins’ cave in search of his friends.
In the adventures with the goblins and wargs, with the eagles, and with Beorn the skin-changer, Bilbo is again relatively ineffective, but his wits and courage are both needed when he rescues the dwarves from the giant spiders of Mirkwood and later from the wood elves. At Esgaroth, where the first human characters figure in the story, Thorin briefly assumes leadership, claiming his title as “King under the Mountain” and obtaining from the Lake-men provisions and transportation for the last stages of the journey to Smaug’s Lonely Mountain.
When the companions reach Smaug’s cave, they are still without Gandalf, who left them before they entered Mirkwood. By this time the dwarves, even Thorin, have accepted Bilbo as their leader-and their risk-taker. He is the one who recognizes the significance of the thrush when they are trying to find the secret of the door. Once inside, he goes alone to investigate the tunnel and takes a gold cup from the sleeping Smaug. Showing courage and ingenuity, he returns to the angered dragon’s lair, flattering Smaug in order to discover his weak spot. After Smaug’s furious attack on the mountain side, the dwarves again turn to Bilbo to investigate the treasure chamber and to check on Smaug’s whereabouts. While the dwarves wait timidly in the tunnel, Bilbo plunges into the darkness, not yet certain that the treasure-guardian has left. During this solo investigation Bilbo finds and keeps the Arkenston, the family jewel that Thorin is eager to locate. Only when the dwarves are convinced that Smaug is no longer at home do they join Bilbo and move through the tunnels to find the main entrance, a passage down which Thorin is now willing to lead the way.
Smaug has been portrayed as a typical fairy-tale dragon: winged, breathing fire, obsessed first by love for his treasure and later by the desire for vengeance on the Lake-men, who, he thinks, are responsible for encouraging the dwarves to invade his premises. While Bilbo and the dwarves are exploring his cave, Smaug flies off to destroy Lake-town. At this point Tolkien introduces a human hero, Bard the dragon-slayer. Warned by the flaming approach of Smaug, Bard plans for defense, directing the filling of water buckets, the destruction of bridges, and the careful positioning of bowmen. Throughout Smaug’s swooping attacks, he encourages the Lakemen to keep up their steady defense and, when only one of his arrows remains, he calmly listens to the thrush who brings him news of Smaug’s armor-free spot and then carefully aims his arrow to kill Smaug. Bard has shown heroic traits during Smaug’s attack, and other aspects of his leadership emerge as he directs repairs on the village, sends to the wood elves for help, and organizes an expedition to the Lonely Mountain to claim part of the treasure as compensation for the destruction caused by Smaug.
The leadership roles of Bilbo, Bard, and Gandalf merge when Thorin refuses to share any of the treasure with the Lake-men or the elves. Bilbo takes the Arkenstone to Bard, suggesting that he use it to bring Thorin into a bargaining mood. In doing this, he sacrifices his own claims to part of the treasure and risks losing the friendship of the dwarves in pursuit of the greater good. Bard’s role is to unite the forces of men and elves, to arrange the treaty with Thorin, and to ensure that Thorin keeps his promise. Gandalf, who has arrived from other tasks, resumes his leadership role by uniting men, elves, and dwarves against their common enemies: goblins and wargs. Eventually, the forces of good conquer, even though Thorin dies after being reconciled with Bilbo.
Thorin’s dying words to Bilbo convey one of the underlying themes of Tolkien’s book, a theme that contributes to the appeal of the hero himself: “There is more in you of good than you know…If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
Due to the book's critical and financial success, Tolkien's publishers requested a sequel. As work on The Lord of the Rings progressed, Tolkien made retrospective accommodations for it in one chapter of The Hobbit. These few but significant changes were integrated into the second edition. Further editions followed with minor emendations, including those reflecting Tolkien's changing concept of the world into which Bilbo stumbled.
The work has never been out of print. Its ongoing legacy encompasses many adaptations for stage, screen, radio, board games and video games. Some of these adaptations have received critical recognition of their own, including a video game that won the Golden Joystick Award, a scenario of a war game that won an Origins Award, and an animated picture nominated for a Hugo Award.

#92 The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M. Auel

2011-11-22T21:39:00.000-08:00

The Clan of the Cave Bear is a historical novel by Jean M. Auel about prehistoric times set before the extinction of the Neanderthal race after 600,000 years as a species, and at least 10-15,000 years after Homo sapiens remains are documented and dated in Europe as a viable second human species. It is the first book in the Earth's Children book series which speculates on the possibilities of interactions between Neanderthal and modern Cro-Magnon humans.

The novel references the "coming" advance of "the polar ice" sheets, setting the story before 18,000 years Before Present, when the farthest southern encroachment of the last glacial period of the current Ice Age occurred. Auel's timeframe, somewhere between 28,000 and 25,000 years B.P., corresponds with archeological estimates of the Neanderthal branch of humankind dying out some time between 30,000 and 22,000 years B.P..No definitive evidence yet exists that the Aurignacian tool making culture that existed until about 26,000 years was Cro-Magnon, making it possible that the civilization was in fact "the last hurrah" of the Neanderthals' civilization and racial existence.

The culture and loci of the better matches for Auel's portrayed homelands for the Cro-Magnon cultures of her works starting from the plains of the Ukraine and Danube valley to across the Alps to western France, which is consistent with mainstream archeological thinking. Her intermingling of Neanderthal peoples is in a timeframe after their extinction is suggested but muddled by the uncertainty of archaeological dating and can be accepted as an appropriate use of poetic license.

The Clan of the Cave Bear was initially met with reluctance by publishers when Jean Auel approached them with her plan for a series of novels set in prehistoric times. Although meticulously researched, the sheer length of the original manuscript made many publishers unwilling to take the risk on the untried author. Indeed The Clan of the Cave Bear is one of those novels that is either loved or hated. I personally enjoyed it. It frequently had me asking about the gene interaction between the Cro-Magnon and the Neanderthals.

The story concerns a young girl named Ayla who is orphaned by a natural disaster and then adopted by a group known as the Clan. Ayla is very different from the Clan: physically, she is blond and blue-eyed and the people in the Clan are stocky and dark; she is expressive, sensitive, and smart and they are dour, plodding, and cold. Historians and anthropologists immediately reacted to Auel's book, maintaining that her assumptions about Neanderthal life were not realistic. In fact, Auel seems to be basing her view of the Neanderthal on the racially motivated "bad" science of late nineteenth-century French anthropology. It is precisely this "bad" science and overt racism that has prompted many anthropologists to denounce the novel.

One of the most prevalent themes in The Clan of the Cave Bear is the idea of "nature versus nurture"; in other words, is the way one behaves more controlled by genetics or environment? Auel insists that The Clan survives only by following the traditional rules and gender roles to the point where they have become incapable of change and cannot adapt to new situations. For example, Clan women do not hunt simply because women do not hunt: they do not want to hunt. She also describes the Clan woman as naturally submissive and physically unable to learn new things. Ayla's presence forces the Clan to question their society and their traditions. Ayla seems driven to rebel against the Clan's traditions because she cannot logically understand them. Although she behaves as a model Clan woman, there is a bounce to her step and a refusal to bend her will to that of anyone else.

In my opinion, it was very well written. Auel’s writing style brought me vivid mental images as I ploughed through the chapters. I cannot wait to start the next book of the set.

#33 Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett

2011-11-22T21:27:00.000-08:00

The Pillars of the Earth is a 973-page historical novel by Ken Follett first published in 1989 by the New American Library, a division of the Penguin Group। Divided into 6 manageable part that offers intense story lines backed up by a proper stage, Pillars of the Earth keeps the reader wanting more. The novel is about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England. It is set in the middle of the 12th century, primarily during the Anarchy, between the time of the sinking of the White Ship and the murder of Thomas Becket. The book traces the development of Gothic architecture out of the preceding Romanesque architecture and the fortunes of the Kingsbridge priory against the backdrop of actual historical events of the time. Set during the reign of King Stephen and the Anarchy, the novel explores themes of intrigue and conspiracy using historical events to explore medieval architecture, civil war, secular/religious conflicts and shifting political loyalties.

The novel's Kingsbridge is fictional and not Kingsbridge, Devon, or any other British town of the name. Its location is that of Marlborough, Wiltshire; Follett chose it as Winchester, Gloucester, and Salisbury can be reached within a few days on horseback. Kingsbridge Cathedral is based on the cathedrals of Wells and Salisbury.

In the 1999 Preface to The Pillars of the Earth, Follett informs readers that: "When I was a boy, all my family belonged to a Puritan religious group called the Plymouth Brethren. For us a church was a bare room with rows of chairs around a central table... So I grew up pretty much ignorant of Europe's wealth of gorgeous church architecture." But his passion for historical English cathedrals and the stories behind their erections drove him to write this masterpiece.

With his novel, Follett provides an intimate look into cathedral building in 12th century England, in his novel, The Pillars of the Earth. The story follows Prior Philip, a devout monk with a dream to build a great cathedral and his architect Tom along with the timeless struggle of good versus evil, ambition, lust and power. Follett does an amazing job of both presenting a realistic picture of the period and connecting the characters so closely, that the 2 threads are interwoven, instead of one outshining the other.

The imagery he portrays, even in the opening paragraph makes this novel one that is hard to put down:

"The small boys came early to the hanging. It was still dark when the first three or four of them sidled out of the hovels, quiet as cats in their felt boots. A thin layer of fresh snow covered the little town like a new coat of paint, and theirs were the first footprints to blemish its perfect surface."

Best known for his tautly suspenseful espionage thrillers, Ken Follett took a radical departure far into the past with this epic story of the construction of a cathedral. While there is a mystery here, the book focuses more on the lives of the various people who created the cathedral or were touched by those who did.

I didn't know what to expect when I first opened this novel; now I believe it is far and away Follett's best work. While it does not offer the high-level of suspense he so brilliantly maintains in his thrillers, there are still moments of breathless anticipation and heart-pounding fear. The characters are, as Follett's characters usually are, sympathetic, flawed, ingenious, courageous, cowardly, poignant, and real. His depiction of medieval England is vivid; he weaves a tapestry of adventure, drama, romance and mystery so richly textured that the reader is almost unaware of the underlying themes of good and evil, spiritual trauma, human frailty, and hope.

One of the most enjoyable elements is the way Follett shares his love of cathedrals and his knowledge of how they were constructed in the Middle Ages through revealing human detail. We follow Tom as he plans out the structure, and see how it's the kind of edifice that a builder lives to create. Later, Jack yearns to carve not merely the decorative geometric shapes he has been given to work on, but natural shapes and designs, and he eventually does carve a figure that strains and grimaces as it appears to hold up part of the church. It is these details that make the cathedral more real to us, just as the people become more real to us, as well. This book is a wonderful way to absorb history and enjoy a multilayered story in the process, but does not overwhelm the reader.

#2 Pride And Prejudice, by Jane Austen

2011-11-22T21:11:00.000-08:00

Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813 and to date, the book has sold some 20 million copies worldwide. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman, living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London.

The novel was originally titled First Impressions by Jane Austen, and was written between October 1796 and August 1797. On 1 November 1797 Austen's father sent a letter to London bookseller Thomas Cadell to ask if he had any interest in seeing the manuscript, but the offer was declined by return of post. Austen made significant revisions to the manuscript for First Impressions between 1811 and 1812. She later renamed the story Pride and Prejudice. In renaming the novel, Austen probably had in mind the "sufferings and oppositions" summarized in the final chapter of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, called "Pride and Prejudice", where the phrase appears three times in block capitals. It is possible that the novel's original title was altered to avoid confusion with other works. In the years between the completion of First Impressions and its revision into Pride and Prejudice, two other works had been published under that name: a novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith.

Pride and Prejudice, like most of Jane Austen's works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech. This has been defined as "the free representation of a character's speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character's thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke". By using narrative which adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, that of Elizabeth), Austen invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth's viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us solely through Elizabeth's point of view and her free indirect speech is essential ... for it is through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth's misprisions."

Many critics take the novel's title as a starting point when analyzing the major themes of Pride and Prejudice; however, Robert Fox cautions against reading too much into the title since commercial factors may have played a role in its selection. "After the success of Sense and Sensibility, nothing would have seemed more natural than to bring out another novel of the same author using again the formula of antithesis and alliteration for the title. It should be pointed out that the qualities of the title are not exclusively assigned to one or the other of the protagonists; both Elizabeth and Darcy display pride and prejudice."

The second daughter in the Bennet family, and the most intelligent and quick-witted, Elizabeth is the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice and one of the most well-known female characters in English literature. Her admirable qualities are numerous—she is lovely, clever, and, in a novel defined by dialogue, she converses as brilliantly as anyone. Her honesty, virtue, and lively wit enable her to rise above the nonsense and bad behavior that pervade her class-bound and often spiteful society. Nevertheless, her sharp tongue and tendency to make hasty judgments often lead her astray; Pride and Prejudice is essentially the story of how she (and her true love, Darcy) overcome all obstacles—including their own personal failings—to find romantic happiness. Elizabeth must not only cope with a hopeless mother, a distant father, two badly behaved younger siblings, and several snobbish, antagonizing females, she must also overcome her own mistaken impressions of Darcy, which initially lead her to reject his proposals of marriage. Her charms are sufficient to keep him interested, fortunately, while she navigates familial and social turmoil. As she gradually comes to recognize the nobility of Darcy’s character, she realizes the error of her initial prejudice against him.

The son of a wealthy, well-established family and the master of the great estate of Pemberley, Fitzwilliam Darcy is Elizabeth’s male counterpart. The narrator relates Elizabeth’s point of view of events more often than Darcy’s, so Elizabeth often seems a more sympathetic figure. The reader eventually realizes, however, that Darcy is her ideal match. Intelligent and forthright, he too has a tendency to judge too hastily and harshly, and his high birth and wealth make him overly proud and overly conscious of his social status. Indeed, his haughtiness makes him initially bungle his courtship. When he proposes to her, for instance, he dwells more on how unsuitable a match she is than on her charms, beauty, or anything else complimentary. Her rejection of his advances builds a kind of humility in him. Darcy demonstrates his continued devotion to Elizabeth, in spite of his distaste for her low connections, when he rescues Lydia and the entire Bennet family from disgrace, and when he goes against the wishes of his haughty aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by continuing to pursue Elizabeth. Darcy proves himself worthy of Elizabeth, and she ends up repenting her earlier, overly harsh judgment of him.

A major theme in much of Austen's work is the importance of environment and upbringing on the development of young people's character and morality. Social standing and wealth are not necessarily advantages in her world, and a further theme common to Jane Austen's work is ineffectual parents. In Pride and Prejudice, the failure of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet (particularly the latter) as parents is blamed for Lydia's lack of moral judgment; Darcy, on the other hand, has been taught to be principled and scrupulously honourable, but is also proud and overbearing. Kitty, rescued from Lydia's bad influence and spending more time with her older sisters after they marry, is said to improve greatly in their superior society.

The social milieu of Austen’s Regency England was particularly stratified, and class divisions were rooted in family connections and wealth. In her work, Austen is often critical of the assumptions and prejudices of upper-class England. She distinguishes between internal merit (goodness of person) and external merit (rank and possessions). Though she frequently satirizes snobs, she also pokes fun at the poor breeding and misbehavior of those lower on the social scale. Nevertheless, Austen was in many ways a realist, and the England she depicts is one in which social mobility is limited and class-consciousness is strong.

Socially regimented ideas of appropriate behavior for each gender factored into Austen’s work as well. While social advancement for young men lay in the military, church, or law, the chief method of self-improvement for women was the acquisition of wealth. Women could only accomplish this goal through successful marriage, which explains the ubiquity of matrimony as a goal and topic of conversation in Austen’s writing. Though young women of Austen’s day had more freedom to choose their husbands than in the early eighteenth century, practical considerations continued to limit their options.

The theme of love is prevalent throughout the Pride and Prejudice, as it contains one of the most cherished love stories in English literature: the courtship between Darcy and Elizabeth. As in any good love story, the lovers must elude and overcome numerous stumbling blocks, beginning with the tensions caused by the lovers’ own personal qualities. Elizabeth’s pride makes her misjudge Darcy on the basis of a poor first impression, while Darcy’s prejudice against Elizabeth’s poor social standing blinds him, for a time, to her many virtues. (Of course, one could also say that Elizabeth is guilty of prejudice and Darcy of pride—the title cuts both ways.) Austen, meanwhile, poses countless smaller obstacles to the realization of the love between Elizabeth and Darcy, including Lady Catherine’s attempt to control her nephew, Miss Bingley’s snobbery, Mrs. Bennet’s idiocy, and Wickham’s deceit. In each case, anxieties about social connections, or the desire for better social connections, interfere with the workings of love. Darcy and Elizabeth’s realization of a mutual and tender love seems to imply that Austen views love as something independent of these social forces, as something that can be captured if only an individual is able to escape the warping effects of hierarchical society. Austen does sound some more realist (or, one could say, cynical) notes about love, using the character of Charlotte Lucas, who marries the buffoon Mr. Collins for his money, to demonstrate that the heart does not always dictate marriage. Yet with her central characters, Austen suggests that true love is a force separate from society and one that can conquer even the most difficult of circumstances.

Pride and Prejudice depicts a society in which a woman’s reputation is of the utmost importance. A woman is expected to behave in certain ways. Stepping outside the social norms makes her vulnerable to ostracism. This theme appears in the novel, when Elizabeth walks to Netherfield and arrives with muddy skirts, to the shock of the reputation-conscious Miss Bingley and her friends. At other points, the ill-mannered, ridiculous behavior of Mrs. Bennet gives her a bad reputation with the more refined (and snobbish) Darcys and Bingleys. Austen pokes gentle fun at the snobs in these examples, but later in the novel, when Lydia elopes with Wickham and lives with him out of wedlock, the author treats reputation as a very serious matter. By becoming Wickham’s lover without benefit of marriage, Lydia clearly places herself outside the social pale, and her disgrace threatens the entire Bennet family. The fact that Lydia’s judgment, however terrible, would likely have condemned the other Bennet sisters to marriageless lives seems grossly unfair. Why should Elizabeth’s reputation suffer along with Lydia’s? Darcy’s intervention on the Bennets’ behalf thus becomes all the more generous, but some readers might resent that such an intervention was necessary at all. If Darcy’s money had failed to convince Wickham to marry Lydia, would Darcy have still married Elizabeth? Does his transcendence of prejudice extend that far? The happy ending of Pride and Prejudice is certainly emotionally satisfying, but in many ways it leaves the theme of reputation, and the importance placed on reputation, unexplored. One can ask of Pride and Prejudice, to what extent does it critique social structures, and to what extent does it simply accept their inevitability?

The theme of class is related to reputation, in that both reflect the strictly regimented nature of life for the middle and upper classes in Regency England. The lines of class are strictly drawn. While the Bennets, who are middle class, may socialize with the upper-class Bingleys and Darcys, they are clearly their social inferiors and are treated as such. Austen satirizes this kind of class-consciousness, particularly in the character of Mr. Collins, who spends most of his time toadying to his upper-class patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though Mr. Collins offers an extreme example, he is not the only one to hold such views. His conception of the importance of class is shared, among others, by Mr. Darcy, who believes in the dignity of his lineage; Miss Bingley, who dislikes anyone not as socially accepted as she is; and Wickham, who will do anything he can to get enough money to raise himself into a higher station. Mr. Collins’s views are merely the most extreme and obvious. The satire directed at Mr. Collins is therefore also more subtly directed at the entire social hierarchy and the conception of all those within it at its correctness, in complete disregard of other, more worthy virtues. Through the Darcy-Elizabeth and Bingley-Jane marriages, Austen shows the power of love and happiness to overcome class boundaries and prejudices, thereby implying that such prejudices are hollow, unfeeling, and unproductive. Of course, this whole discussion of class must be made with the understanding that Austen herself is often criticized as being a classist: she doesn’t really represent anyone from the lower classes; those servants she does portray are generally happy with their lot. Austen does criticize class structure but only a limited slice of that structure.

In a sense, Pride and Prejudice is the story of two courtships—those between Darcy and Elizabeth and between Bingley and Jane. Within this broad structure appear other, smaller courtships: Mr. Collins’s aborted wooing of Elizabeth, followed by his successful wooing of Charlotte Lucas; Miss Bingley’s unsuccessful attempt to attract Darcy; Wickham’s pursuit first of Elizabeth, then of the never-seen Miss King, and finally of Lydia. Courtship therefore takes on a profound, if often unspoken, importance in the novel. Marriage is the ultimate goal, courtship constitutes the real working-out of love. Courtship becomes a sort of forge of a person’s personality, and each courtship becomes a microcosm for different sorts of love (or different ways to abuse love as a means to social advancement).

Nearly every scene in Pride and Prejudice takes place indoors, and the action centers around the Bennet home in the small village of Longbourn. Nevertheless, journeys—even short ones—function repeatedly as catalysts for change in the novel. Elizabeth’s first journey, by which she intends simply to visit Charlotte and Mr. Collins, brings her into contact with Mr. Darcy, and leads to his first proposal. Her second journey takes her to Derby and Pemberley, where she fans the growing flame of her affection for Darcy. The third journey, meanwhile, sends various people in pursuit of Wickham and Lydia, and the journey ends with Darcy tracking them down and saving the Bennet family honor, in the process demonstrating his continued devotion to Elizabeth.

Pride and Prejudice is remarkably free of explicit symbolism, which perhaps has something to do with the novel’s reliance on dialogue over description. Nevertheless, Pemberley, Darcy’s estate, sits at the center of the novel, literally and figuratively, as a geographic symbol of the man who owns it. Elizabeth visits it at a time when her feelings toward Darcy are beginning to warm; she is enchanted by its beauty and charm, and by the picturesque countryside, just as she will be charmed, increasingly, by the gifts of its owner. Austen makes the connection explicit when she describes the stream that flows beside the mansion. “In front,” she writes, “a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance.” Darcy possesses a “natural importance” that is “swelled” by his arrogance, but which coexists with a genuine honesty and lack of “artificial appearance.” Like the stream, he is neither “formal, nor falsely adorned.” Pemberley even offers a symbol-within-a-symbol for their budding romance: when Elizabeth encounters Darcy on the estate, she is crossing a small bridge, suggesting the broad gulf of misunderstanding and class prejudice that lies between them—and the bridge that their love will build across it.

#11 Catch-22, Joseph Heller

2011-11-22T20:42:00.000-08:00

The satirical Catch-22 is a historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. Riddled with the themes of absolute power of bureaucracy, loss of religious faith, the impotence of language, and the inevitability of death, it is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century. He commenced writing it in 1953, and saw it first published in 1961. Although Heller always had a desire to be an author from an early age, his own experiences as a bombardier during World War II strongly influenced Catch-22. Heller later said, however, that he "never had a bad officer". There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Echoes of Yossarian, the wise-ass bombardier who was too smart to die but not smart enough to find a way out of his predicament, could be heard throughout the counterculture. As a result, it's impossible not to consider Catch-22 to be something of a period piece। But 40 years on, the novel's undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic. Again and again, Heller's characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad; what is sensible, is nonsense.

The novel is set during World War II in 1943। It follows Yossarian, a U।S. Army Air Force B-25 bombardier, and a number of other characters. Most events occur while the Airmen of the fictional 256th squadron are based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Italy. While a few characters are most prominent, notably Yossarian and the Chaplain, the majority of named characters are described in a typical extent, with fully fleshed out or multidimensional personas, to the extent that there are few if any "minor characters". The narrator presents an air of being omniscient, seeing and knowing all things and forges characters and events in a humorous, satirical light while seeming to have real sympathy for some of them as well. It is narrated in the third person, focusing mostly on what Yossarian does and what Yossarian thinks and feels. Ridiculous behavior and illogical arguments are presented in a flatly satirical tone, never stating outright that matters are funny, but always making the reader aware of how outrageously bizarre the characters and situations are.

Yossarian and his friends endure a nightmarish, absurd existence defined by bureaucracy and violence: they are inhuman resources in the eyes of their blindly ambitious superior officers। The squadron is thrown thoughtlessly into brutal combat situations and bombing runs in which it is more important for the squadron members to capture good aerial photographs of explosions than to destroy their targets. Their colonels continually raise the number of missions that they are required to fly before being sent home, so that no one is ever sent home. Still, no one but Yossarian seems to realize that there is a war going on; everyone thinks he is crazy when he insists that millions of people are trying to kill him.

Yossarian’s story forms the core of the novel, so most events are refracted through his point of view। He takes the whole war personally: unswayed by national ideals or abstract principles, and is furious that his life is in constant danger through no fault of his own. He has a strong desire to live and is determined to be immortal or die trying. As a result, he spends a great deal of his time in the hospital, faking various illnesses in order to avoid the war. As the novel progresses through its loosely connected series of recurring stories and anecdotes, Yossarian is continually troubled by his memory of Snowden, a soldier who died in his arms on a mission when Yossarian lost all desire to participate in the war. Yossarian is placed in ridiculous, absurd, desperate, and tragic circumstances—he sees friends die and disappear, his squadron get bombed by its own mess officer, and colonels and generals volunteer their men for the most perilous battle in order to enhance their own reputations.

"Catch-22" is a law defined in various ways throughout the novel। First, Yossarian discovers that it is possible to be discharged from military service because of insanity. Always looking for a way out, Yossarian claims that he is insane, only to find out that by claiming that he is insane he has proved that he is obviously sane—since any sane person would claim that he or she is insane in order to avoid flying bombing missions. Elsewhere, "Catch-22" is defined as a law that is illegal to read. Ironically, the place where it is written that it is illegal is in "Catch-22" itself. It is yet again defined as the law that the enemy is allowed to do anything that one can’t keep him from doing. In short, then, "Catch-22" is any paradoxical, circular reasoning that catches its victim in its illogic and serves those who have made the law. "Catch-22" can be found in the novel not only where it is explicitly defined but also throughout the characters’ stories, which are full of catches and instances of circular reasoning that trap unwitting bystanders in their snares—for instance, the ability of the powerful mess officer Milo Minderbinder to make great sums of money by trading among the companies that he himself owns.

Yossarian comes to realize that "Catch-22" does not actually exist, but because the powers that be claim it does, and the world believes it does, "Catch-22" and the belief of its existence, nevertheless, have potent effects। Indeed, because it does not exist, there is no way it can be repealed, undone, overthrown, or denounced. The combination of force with specious and spurious legalistic justification is one of the book's primary motifs. The way it’s written offers a satirical viewpoint of the absurdity of conflict.

Catch-22 possesses a distinctive non-chronological style that appears to be haphazard, where events are described from different characters' points of view and out of sequence so that the time line develops along with the plot. It is well-noted for its circular, non-linear structure, with flashbacks within flashbacks and no clear distinction of "real-time events." Certain episodes, particularly one dealing with the death of a young tail-gunner, Snowden, are repeated several times throughout the novel, gaining greater detail with each repetition. The seemingly random non-chronological structure to the novel is misleading, though, as Catch 22 is actually highly structured। It is, however, a structure of free association, where ideas run into one another through seemingly random connections. For example, Chapter 1 entitled "The Texan" ends with "everybody but the CID man, who had caught cold from the fighter captain and come down with pneumonia."Chapter 2, entitled "Clevinger", begins with "In a way the CID man was pretty lucky, because outside the hospital the war was still going on." The CID man connects the two chapters like a free association bridge and eventually Chapter 2 flows from the CID man to Clevinger through more free association links.

Many events in the book are repeatedly described from differing points of view, so the reader learns more about each event from each iteration, with the new information often completing a joke, the punch line of which was told several chapters previously। The narrative often describes events out of sequence, but events are referred to as if the reader is already familiar with them, so that the reader must ultimately piece together a timeline of events। Specific words, phrases, and questions are also repeated frequently, generally to comic effect।

Much of Heller's prose in Catch-22 is circular and repetitive, exemplifying in its form the structure of a "Catch-22"। Heller revels in paradox, for example: " In three days no one could stand him", and "The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with." This atmosphere of apparent logical irrationality pervades the whole book.

Among other things, Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning। Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase "Catch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. Within the book, "Catch-22" is a military rule, the self-contradictory circular logic that, for example, prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions. In Heller's own words:

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind। Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.” (Chapter 5, page 46)

Other forms of "Catch-22" are invoked throughout the novel to justify various bureaucratic actions। At one point, victims of harassment by military police quote the MPs' explanation of one of "Catch-22's provisions": "Catch-22 states that agents enforcing Catch-22 need not prove that Catch-22 actually contains whatever provision the accused violator is accused of violating." Another character explains: "Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing." The theme of a bureaucracy marginalizing the individual in an absurd way is similar to the world of Kafka's The Trial, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The concept of "doublethink" has definite echoes in Heller's work.

In 1998, some critics raised the possibility that Heller's book had questionable similarities to Louis Falstein's 1950 novel, Face of a Hero. However, Falstein himself never raised the issue between Catch-22's publication and his death in 1995, and Heller claimed never to have been aware of the obscure novel। Instead, Heller stated that the novel had been influenced by Céline, Waugh and Nabokov. Many of the similarities have been stated to be attributable to the two authors' similar experiences; both served in the U.S. Air Force on bombing crews in Italy in World War II. Their general themes and styles are quite different.

I found the novel to be a pure delight to read। While it was a little disorienting getting accustom to the format, I likened the layout to the conversation with a new friend who is describing a situation and has to backtrack to fill in the support information. Often, I found myself chuckling out loud or shaking my head after reading a passage, completely taken in by the responses to the absurd situations that the characters found themselves in. I felt great sympathy for the ones caught up in the bureaucracy of superiors who were only concerned with elevating their own careers at the expense of those under them. It happens way too often, but unlike the civilian world, it can cost a Soldier his life in the military realm.

The motif of bureaucratic absurdity is further explored in 1994's Closing Time, Heller's sequel to Catch-22. This darker, slower-paced, apocalyptic novel explores the pre- and post-war lives of some of the major characters in Catch-22, with particular emphasis on the relationship between Yossarian and tailgunner Sammy Singer. It may be one that I have to add to the list.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

2011-10-10T02:39:00.000-07:00

Number 13 on the BBC's Top 100 Books List of 2011.

Birdsong is a 1993 war novel by the English author Sebastian Faulks, the fourth of Faulks’ novels. It tells of a man called Stephen Wraysford at different stages of his life both before and during World War I, and the effects of the war upon not only the protagonist, but also his granddaughter, Elizabeth Benson, later in the future. Birdsong is part of a trilogy of novels by Sebastian Faulks which includes The Girl at the Lion d'Or and Charlotte Gray which are all linked through location, history and several minor characters.

While the majority of the novel concentrates on Stephen's life in France before and during the war, the novel also focuses on the life of Stephen's granddaughter, Elizabeth, and her attempts to find out more about her grandfather's experiences in World War I. The story is split into seven sections which has an episodic structure, moving through three different time periods: before, during, and after the war.

Set before and during the Great War (WWI), Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen, a vibrant 20-year-old Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. He has an affair with the married woman of the house of his host, a textile baron, which produces a child of which he is unaware. There's a bit of high-toned erotica thrown into the mix to convince even the doubtful. Wrayford convinces her to leave a life of passionless comfort to be at his side, but things do not turn out according to plan. After she leaves him, Wraysford is haunted by this doomed affair and carries it with him into the trenches of the war. Stephen fights the Germans and is deeply affected by the violence he witnesses. Sixty years later, Elizabeth becomes interested in learning about her grandparents and studies the war to gain a better understanding of her grandfather, Stephen. Birdsong is an interesting and entertaining novel about how war affects those who serve in battle and how the history of war is important for those in the future seeking to understand the past. It derives most of its power from its descriptions of mud and blood, and Wraysford's attempt to retain a scrap of humanity while surrounded by it. Simultaneous descriptions of his present-day granddaughter's quest to read his diaries, give some sense of perspective; this device is only somewhat successful. Nevertheless, Birdsong is a rewarding read, an unflinching war story and a touching romance.

I was caught quite off guard with the soft-porn-like flare of the first section’s affair between Stephen Waysford and Isabella Azaire. I kind of felt dirty reading it! Once we got into the trenches of WWI, Faulks’ descriptions of the Battle of the Somme and Messines Ridge (Ypres) the story really drew me in. I realized that there were many trenches, but what I didn’t realize, was the mass use of miners to create tunnels to lay charges under the enemy’s trenches, and just how pivotal their role in the war were. The gripping details of what faced the troops combined with their reactions kept me turning the pages.

Here is an interesting fact for you all: the title comes from the practice of coal miners bringing a "canary in the coal mine" to test for bad air.

Jane Eyre

2011-09-05T04:06:00.000-07:00

BBC’s Top 100 Book List of 2011, #10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre is a famous and influential novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. The Penguin edition describes it as an "influential feminist text" because of its in-depth exploration of a strong female character's feelings.

The novel merges elements of three distinct genres. It has the form of a Bildungsroman, a story about a child's maturation, focusing on the emotions and experiences that accompany growth to adulthood. The novel also contains much social criticism, with a strong sense of morality at its core, and finally has the brooding and moody quality and Byronic character typical of Gothic fiction.

It is a novel often considered ahead of its time due to its portrayal of the development of a thinking and passionate young woman who is both individualistic, desiring for a full life, while also highly moral. Jane evolves from her beginnings as a poor and plain woman without captivating charm to her mature stage as a compassionate and confident whole woman. As she matures, she comments much on the complexities of the human condition. Jane also has a deeply pious personal trust in God, but is also highly self-reliant. Although Jane suffers much, she is never portrayed as a damsel in distress who needs rescuing. For this reason, it is sometimes regarded as an important early feminist (or proto-feminist) novel.

Plot Introduction:
Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character. The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations and oppression; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family during which her earnest but cold clergyman-cousin St John Rivers proposes to her; and the finale with her reunion with and marriage to her beloved Rochester.

Jane Eyre is divided into 38 chapters and most editions are at least 400 pages long (although the preface and introduction on certain copies are liable to take up another 100). The original was published in three volumes, comprising chapters 1 to 15, 16 to 26, and 27 to 38; this was a common publishing format during the 19th century, see Three-volume novel.

Brontë dedicated the novel's second edition to William Makepeace Thackeray.

Personal Points:
The author makes a gift to the readers of the vivid mental image of life in the early 1800’s of England, and what it meant to be a woman during of the era. Even after 164 years, the dynamic imagery yet prevails. The main character demonstrates the true virtues of Christian faith with little deviance from the true righteous path. She struggles between that virtue and earthly happiness, but is always governed by self respect and a sense of moral conviction, despite various types of deviance in others professing the faith. Forgiveness and atonement are the main tools in her bag as she describes painful and devastating actions, but always followed up with a softness that brings forth pity from the reader for the offending characters.

It becomes interesting the different types of Christians that she exposes throughout the life of Jane Eyre, as she searched for her place in the world. The clergyman headmaster Mr. Brocklehurst gripped the Lowood School with a puritanical fist, and yet the life of his family oozed with gluttony. Hannah, the Rivers’ housekeeper, attempted to chase away Jane despite the severe weather, and her near-death condition. Even St. John Rivers, a devoted clergyman, perverted religion for his own gainful end, by attempting to defile the sanctity and intent of marriage, and use others as tools and stepping stones, even, at times, against their very will, to obtain his lofty and prideful dreams. Even Jane, herself, struggled for a moment, allowing societal influence to effect the way she temporarily thought about the pheasant students. She forgot for a moment that there truly is no difference between children of any walk of life.

One must acknowledge the brave and forthcoming feminism that operated in her every action, despite the patriarchal Victorian society. All the main male characters attempted to maintain Jane in a subordinate position when her life’s path intertwined with theirs. Both St. John Rivers and her precious Mr. Rochester attempted to trap her into marriage, but she was able to thwart their control by clinging to her virtue and moral resolution as a baby clings to its mother’s bosom.

The most touching caress of this story, is that the author drew all of the key parts from her own life experiences.

BBC’s Top 100 Book List of 2011 (plus some of my own desires!)

2011-09-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

So here is the list that the BBC presented this year as the "Top 100 Books To Read". As I've gone along, I've also read others in the series, such as CS Lewis' books that go along with #9, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, to complete the series. I've also ran across other books that sounded good, and added them at the end of the list.

The rules of the game: You must have started reading them in 2011. So books like The Grapes of Wrath and Pride and Prejudice that were read in high school do not count. I recently came across the grand idea of telling a little bit about the book, and my opinion. So enjoy. The titles that are in bold are books that have been accomplished in 2011.

1. The Lord of the Rings, (Trilogy) JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Roll of Thunder, Hear Me Cry, Mildred D. Taylor
102. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson
103. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
104. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
105. The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank
106. James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
107. The History of God, Karen Armstrong
108. I Heard the Owl Call My Name, Margaret Craven
109. God Is Red, Vine Deloria
110. Sioux Indian Religion, Raymond J. DeMallie & Douglas R. Parks
111. Touch the Earth, T.C. McLuhan
112. Horse Soldiers, Douglas Stanton
113. Analects of Confucius
114. The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
115. Game of Thrones series
116. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
117. Stardust, Neil Gaiman
118. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
119. The Guernsey and Potato Peel Pie Literary Society, Shaffer, Mary Ann, Barrows, Annie
120. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë
121. The Odyseey, Homer

September 2nd Images

2010-09-02T00:42:00.000-07:00

Fields Of Gold by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Fields of Gold - Along the Interstate between North and South Carolina. Great aesthetic value for travlers.

Fields Of Gold 2 by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Fields of Gold 2 - Along the Interstate between North and South Carolina. Great aesthetic value for travlers.

Fields Of Gold 3 by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Fields of Gold 3 - Along the Interstate between North and South Carolina. Great aesthetic value for travlers.

Flying High Over Ft Moultrie by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Flying High Over Ft. Moultrie - The Colors fly high still over Ft. Moultrie today.

Old Bridge Over the Harpeth by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Old Bridge Over the Harpeth - Found while looking for Lover's Leap in Tennessee.

Old City Jail by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Old City Jail - Looking up at the old Charleston City Jail before our late hour ghost tour (SC).

Old City Jail Window by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Old City Jail Window - A lower floor window of the old Charleston City Jail (SC). Ghost tours available.

Bend Over

2010-09-01T08:48:00.001-07:00

In just six months, on January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.

They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.

On January 1, 2011, here's what happens... (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)...

First Wave:

Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011.

Personal income tax rates will rise.

The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise.

Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.

The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%

The 25% bracket rises to 28%

The 28% bracket rises to 31%

The 33% bracket rises to 36%

The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family.

The "marriage penalty" (narrower tax Â brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will Â be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.

The return of the Death Tax.

This year only, there is no death tax. (It's a quirk!) For those dying on or after January 1, 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes, a business, a retirement account, could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones. Think of the farmers who don't make much money, but their land, which they purchased years ago with after-tax dollars, is now worth a lot of money. Their children will have to sell the farm, which may be their livelihood, just to pay the estate tax if they don't have the cash sitting around to pay the tax. Think about your own family's assets. Maybe your family owns real estate, or a business that doesn't make much money, but the building and equipment are worth $1 million. Upon their death, you can inherit the $1 million business tax free, but if they own a home, stock, cash worth $500K on top of the $1 million business, then you will owe the government $275,000 cash! That's 55% of the value of the assets over$1 million! Do you have that kind of cash sitting around waiting to pay the estate tax?

Higher tax rates on savers and investors.

The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.

Second Wave:

Obamacare

There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:

The "Medicine Cabinet Tax"

Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The "Special Needs Kids Tax"

This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States , and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington , D.C. ( National Child Research Center ) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars cannot be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

The HSA (Health Savings Account) Withdrawal Tax Hike.

This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Third Wave:

The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and Employer Tax Hikes

When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they'll be in for a nasty surprise-the AMT won't be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired.

The major items include:

The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year.

According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center , Congress' failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families-rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear.

Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or "depreciate") equipment purchases up to $250,000.

This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can currently expense half of their purchases of equipment.

In January of 2011, all of it will have to be "depreciated."

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses.

There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the "research and experimentation tax credit," but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced.

The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits Â for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses.

Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut.

Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed.

Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual "required minimum distribution." This ability will no longer be there.

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PDF Version Read more:

http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171#%23ixzz0sY8waPq1

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And worse yet? Now, your insurance will be INCOME on your W2's! One of the surprises we'll find come next year, is what follows - - a little "surprise" that 99% of us had no idea was included in the "new and improved" healthcare legislation . . . the dupes, er, dopes, who backed this administration will be astonished!

Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health Â insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or governmental body of some sort.

If you're retired? So what... your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.

You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your Â tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year.

For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.

This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the 15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases.

Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries.....

On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001, as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."

- Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.

- Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what is above.

As a side note, I wanted to thank everyone who pushed for nationwide health care system. Thanks a lot. But those of you who have an income of some sort that isn't subsidized by the government will be kicking yourself in the ass. For those that are subsidized... well... they have won a longer free ride.

Remember, remember this coming November.

September 1st Images

2010-09-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

Capital Ghosts by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Capital Ghosts - These trees have long shaded the walkways surrounding the South Carolina State Capital Building.

Capital Ghosts 1 by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Capital Ghosts 1 - These trees have long shaded the walkways surrounding the South Carolina State Capital Building.

Charleston Monument by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Charleston Monument - Because of the Enlightenment-era association of Egypt with mortuary arts, obelisks became associated with timelessness and memorialization.

Classic Reflections by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Classic Reflections - A reflection captured in the hub of a 1955 Ford Pick-up (Charleston, SC).

Footprints In the Sand 2 by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Footprints In the Sand 2 - Evidence of someone escaping the surf of Folly Beach (SC).

Footprints In the Sand 3 by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Footprints In the Sand 3 - Evidence of someone escaping the surf of Folly Beach (SC).

Kayaker by RaineCarr on Zooomr

Kayaker - Enjoying the Saluda River in downtown Columbia (SC) near the Saluda Textile Mill Ruins.