a.

Literatura britanic
Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice or Emma
Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights
Carroll, Lewis: Alices Adventures in Wonderland
Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness sau Lord Jim
Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations sau Oliver Twist
Forster, E. M.: A Passage to India sau A Room With a View
Fowles, John: The French Lieutenants Woman sau The Magus
Golding, William: Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the DUrbervilles sau Jude the Obscure
James, Henry: The Portrait of a Lady sau The Ambassadors
Joyce, James: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man sau Dubliners
Shakespeare, William: Sonnets XVIII, CXXX; Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, A Midsummer
Nights Dream.
Swift, Jonathan: Gullivers Travels
Woolf, Virginia: Mrs. Dalloway sau To the Lighthouse
15 9, 5s 29
1AUSTEN, JANE: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. 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 the British Regency. Elizabeth is the second of five
daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London.
CONTEXT
Austens Regency England was particularly stratified, and class divisions were rooted in family
connections and wealth. In her work, Austen is often critical of the assumptions and prejudices of
upper-class England. She distinguishes between internal merit (goodness of person) and external merit
(rank and possessions).
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.
Set in England in the early 19th century, The novel centres on Elizabeth Bennet, the second of the five
daughters of a country gentleman. Elizabeth Bennet shares her father's keen wit and occasionally sarcastic
outlook.
In general, Austen occupies a curious position between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her
favorite writer, whom she often quotes in her novels, was Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great model of
eighteenth-century classicism and reason.
Austens novels also display an ambiguity about emotion and an appreciation for intelligence and
natural beauty that aligns them with Romanticism. In their awareness of the conditions of modernity
and city life and the consequences for family structure and individual characters, they prefigure much
Victorian literature (as does her usage of such elements as frequent formal social gatherings, sketchy
characters, and scandal).
THEMES

Love
Pride and Prejudice contains one of the most cherished love stories in English literature: the courtship
between Darcy and Elizabeth.
Reputation

Pride and Prejudice depicts a society in which a womans reputation is of the utmost importance. A
woman is expected to behave in certain ways. Stepping outside the social norms makes her vulnerable to
ostracism.
Class
The theme of class is related to reputation, in that both reflect the strictly regimented nature of life for the
middle and upper classes in Regency England. The lines of class are strictly drawn. While the Bennets,
who are middle class, may socialize with the upper-class Bingleys and Darcys, they are clearly their social
inferiors and are treated as such. Austen satirizes this kind of class-consciousness, particularly in the
character of Mr. Collins, who spends most of his time toadying to his upper-class patron, Lady Catherine
de Bourgh.
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 Austen's work is ineffectual parents. In Pride and Prejudice, the failure of
Mr and Mrs Bennet 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 he is also proud and overbearing. The chief
method of self-improvement for women was the acquisition of wealth.
STYLE
Pride and Prejudice, like most of 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 that 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".
MOTIFS
Courtship
In a sense, Pride and Prejudice is the story of two courtshipsthose between Darcy and Elizabeth and
between Bingley and Jane.
Journeys
Nearly every scene in Pride and Prejudice takes place indoors, and the action centers around the Bennet
home in the small village of Longbourn. Nevertheless, journeyseven short onesfunction repeatedly as
catalysts for change in the novel. Elizabeths first journey, by which she intends simply to visit Charlotte
and Mr. Collins, brings her into contact with Mr. Darcy, and leads to his first proposal. Her second journey
takes her to Derby and Pemberley, where she fans the growing flame of her affection for Darcy. The third
journey, meanwhile, sends various people in pursuit of Wickham and Lydia.
SYMBOLS
Pemberley
Pride and Prejudice is remarkably free of explicit symbolism, which perhaps has something to do with the
novels reliance on dialogue over description. Nevertheless, Pemberley, Darcys estate, sits at the center of
the novel, literally and figuratively, as a geographic symbol of the man who owns it.

2AUSTEN, JANE: EMMA

EMMA, BY JANE AUSTEN, is a novel about youthful hubris (excessive pride or self-confidence) and
the perils of misconstrued (misinterpreted) romance. The novel was first published in December 1815.
As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in
Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters.
One way to understand Austens place in literary history is to think of her as part of the earlier eighteenth
century, the Age of Reason, when literature was associated with wit, poise, and propriety. Her novels
certainly belong to an eighteenth-century genre, the comedy of manners, which examines the behavior
of men and women of a single social class.
It is perhaps more useful to think of her as an early feminist. The intelligence and resourcefulness of her
heroines stand in constant contrast to the limits of the constricted world of courtship and marriage defining
their sphere of action.
Emma Woodhouse is the first Austen heroine with no financial concerns, which, she declares to the nave
Miss Smith, is the reason that she has no inducement to marry. This is a great departure from Austen's
other novels, in which the quest for marriage and financial security are often important themes in the
stories. In contrast to other Austen heroines Emma seems immune to romantic attraction. Unlike
Marianne Dashwood, who is attracted to the wrong man before she settles on the right one, Emma shows
no romantic interest in the men she meets.
THEMES
Marriage and Social Status
Emma is structured around a number of marriages recently consummated or anticipated, and, in each case,
the match solidifies the participants social status. In Austens time, social status was determined by a
combination of family background, reputation, and wealthmarriage was one of the main ways in
which one could raise ones social status. This method of social advancement was especially crucial to
women, who were denied the possibility of improving their status through hard work or personal
achievement.
The Confined Nature of Womens Existence
The novels limited, almost claustrophobic scope of action gives us a strong sense of the confined nature
of a womans existence in early-nineteenth-century rural England. Emma possesses a great deal of
intelligence and energy, but the best use she can make of these is to attempt to guide the marital destinies
of her friends, a project that gets her into trouble. The alternative pastimes depicted in the booksocial
visits, charity visits, music, artistic endeavorsseem relatively trivial, at times even monotonous.
The Blinding Power of Imagination
The novel offers sharply critical illustrations of the ways in which personal biases or desires blind
objective judgment. Emma cannot understand the motives that guide Mr. Eltons behavior because she
imagines that he is in love with Harriet. She later admits to herself that [s]he had taken up the idea, she
supposed, and made everything bend to it.
The Obstacles to Open Expression
The misunderstandings that permeate the novel are created, in part, by the conventions of social propriety.
To differing degrees, characters are unable to express their feelings directly and openly, and their feelings
are therefore mistaken.
MOTIFS
Visits
The main events of the novel take place during visits that the characters pay to each other. The frequency
and length of visits between characters indicates the level of intimacy and attachment between them.
Parties

More formal than visits, parties are organized around social conventions more than around individual
attachmentsEmmas hosting a dinner party for Mrs. Elton, a woman she dislikes, exemplifies this
characteristic. There are six important parties in the novel. Parties are microcosms of the social
interactions that make up the novel as a whole.
Conversational Subtexts
Much of the dialogue in Emma has double or even triple meanings, with different characters interpreting
a single comment in different ways. Sometimes these double meanings are apparent to individual
characters, and sometimes they are apparent only to the alert reader.
SYMBOLS
The Riddle
Also known as charades, riddles in the novel take the form of elaborate wordplay. They symbolize the
pervasive subtexts that wait to be decoded in characters larger social interactions.
The Word Game
Similar to the riddle, a word game is played in Chapter 41 between Emma, Frank, and Jane. It functions
as a metaphor for the partial understandings and misunderstandings that exist among Emma, Frank, Jane,
and Mr. Knightley.
Tokens of Affection
A number of objects in the novel take on symbolic significance as tokens of affection. Mr. Elton frames
Emmas portrait of Harriet as a symbol of affection for her, though Emma misunderstands it as a symbol
of affection for Harriet. Harriet keeps court plaster and a pencil stub as souvenirs of Mr. Elton. When the
engagement between Jane and Frank is briefly called off, she returns his letters to symbolize her
relinquishment of his affection.
3BRONTE, EMILY: WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Used mainly in the 19th century to describe the windy conditions of the weather in England.
Made famous by the classic novel by Emily Bront, 'Wuthering Heights'. The hostile Yorkshire Moors in
the early 19th century provide the setting for the novel. 'Wuthering Heights' is the name of a house on
these moors and it is named after the wild weather often experienced in what is today known as 'Bront
Country'.
CONTEXT
Victorian readers found the book shocking and inappropriate in its depiction of passionate, ungoverned
love and cruelty (despite the fact that the novel portrays no sex or bloodshed).
Emily Bront lived an eccentric, closely guarded life. Her father worked as a church rector, and her aunt,
who raised the Bront children after their mother died, was deeply religious. Emily Bront did not take to
her aunts Christian fervor; the character of Joseph, a caricature of an evangelical, may have been inspired
by her aunts religiosity.
The Bronts lived in Haworth, a Yorkshire village in the midst of the moors. These wild, desolate
expanseslater the setting of Wuthering Heightsmade up the Bronts daily environment, and Emily
lived among them her entire life. She died in 1848, at the age of thirty.
Charlotte wrote as Currer Bell, Emily as Ellis Bell, and Anne as Acton Bell. Their real identities remained
secret until after Emily and Anne had died, when Charlotte at last revealed the truth of their novels
authorship.
Like Charlotte Bronts Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights is based partly on the Gothic tradition of the late
eighteenth century, a style of literature that featured supernatural encounters, crumbling ruins, moonless
nights, and grotesque imagery, seeking to create effects of mystery and fear.

As a shattering presentation of the doomed love affair between the fiercely passionate Catherine and
Heathcliff, it remains one of the most haunting love stories in all of literature.
THEMES
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Although Wuthering Heights is now widely regarded as a classic of English literature, contemporary
reviews for the novel were deeply polarized; it was considered controversial because its depiction of
mental and physical cruelty was unusually stark, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals of the day,
including religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality.
The Destructiveness of a Love That Never Changes
Catherine and Heathcliffs passion for one another seems to be the center of Wuthering Heights, given
that it is stronger and more lasting than any other emotion displayed in the novel, and that it is the source
of most of the major conflicts that structure the novels plot. Heathcliff possesses a seemingly superhuman
ability to maintain the same attitude and to nurse the same grudges over many years. Moreover, Catherine
and Heathcliffs love is based on their shared perception that they are identical. Catherine declares,
famously, I am Heathcliff, while Heathcliff, upon Catherines death, wails that he cannot live without
his soul, meaning Catherine. Their love denies difference, and is strangely asexual. The two do not
kiss in dark corners or arrange secret trysts, as adulterers do.
The Precariousness of Social Class
Considerations of class status often crucially inform the characters motivations in Wuthering Heights.
Catherines decision to marry Edgar so that she will be the greatest woman of the neighborhood is only
the most obvious example. The Lintons are relatively firm in their gentry status but nonetheless take great
pains to prove this status through their behaviors. The Earnshaws, on the other hand, rest on much shakier
ground socially. They do not have a carriage, they have less land, and their house, as Lockwood remarks
with great puzzlement, resembles that of a homely, northern farmer and not that of a gentleman.
MOTIFS
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
texts major themes.
Doubles
Bront organizes her novel by arranging its elementscharacters, places, and themesinto pairs.
Catherine and Heathcliff are closely matched in many ways, and see themselves as identical. Catherines
character is divided into two warring sides: the side that wants Edgar and the side that wants Heathcliff.
Catherine and young Catherine are both remarkably similar and strikingly different. The two houses,
Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, represent opposing worlds and values. The novel has not one
but two distinctly different narrators, Nelly and Mr. Lockwood.
Repetition
Repetition is another tactic Bront employs in organizing Wuthering Heights. It seems that nothing ever
ends in the world of this novel. Instead, time seems to run in cycles, and the horrors of the past repeat
themselves in the present. The way that the names of the characters are recycled, so that the names of the
characters of the younger generation seem only to be rescramblings of the names of their parents, leads
the reader to consider how plot elements also repeat themselves.
The Conflict Between Nature and Culture
In Wuthering Heights, Bront constantly plays nature and culture against each other. Nature is represented
by the Earnshaw family, and by Catherine and Heathcliff in particular. These characters are governed by
their passions, not by reflection or ideals of civility. Correspondingly, the house where they live

Wuthering Heightscomes to symbolize a similar wildness. On the other hand, Thrushcross Grange and
the Linton family represent culture, refinement, convention, and cultivation.
Thus the reader almost may interpret Wuthering Heightss impact on the Linton family as an allegory for
the corruption of culture by nature, creating a curious reversal of the more traditional story of the
corruption of nature by culture.
SYMBOLS
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Moors
The constant emphasis on landscape within the text of Wuthering Heights endows the setting with
symbolic importance. This landscape is comprised primarily of moors: wide, wild expanses, high but
somewhat soggy, and thus infertile. Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its uniformity makes navigation
difficult. It features particularly waterlogged patches in which people could potentially drown. (This
possibility is mentioned several times in Wuthering Heights.) Thus, the moors serve very well as
symbols of the wild threat posed by nature.
Ghosts
Ghosts appear throughout Wuthering Heights, as they do in most other works of Gothic fiction, yet
Bront always presents them in such a way that whether they really exist remains ambiguous. Thus the
world of the novel can always be interpreted as a realistic one. Certain ghostssuch as Catherines spirit
when it appears to Lockwood in Chapter IIImay be explained as nightmares. The villagers alleged
sightings of Heathcliffs ghost in Chapter XXXIV could be dismissed as unverified superstition. Whether
or not the ghosts are real, they symbolize the manifestation of the past within the present, and the way
memory stays with people, permeating their day-to-day lives.
4ALICES ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
LEWIS CARROLL
Lewis Carroll was a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, who lived from 1832 to 1898.
Carrolls keen grasp of mathematics and logic inspired the linguistic humor and witty wordplay in his
stories. Additionally, his unique understanding of childrens minds allowed him to compose
imaginative fiction that appealed to young people. His crippling stammer melted away in the company of
children as he told them his elaborately nonsensical stories.
As an adult, Carroll continued to prefer the companionship of children to adults and tended to favor little
girls. Over the course of his lifetime he made numerous child friends whom he wrote to frequently and
often mentioned in his diaries.
THEMES
The Tragic and Inevitable Loss of Childhood Innocence
Throughout the course of Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice goes through a variety of absurd
physical changes. The discomfort she feels at never being the right size acts as a symbol for the changes
that occur during puberty. Alice finds these changes to be traumatic, and feels discomfort, frustration,
and sadness when she goes through them. She struggles to maintain a comfortable physical size.
Life as a Meaningless Puzzle
In Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice encounters a series of puzzles that seem to have no clear
solutions, which imitates the ways that life frustrates expectations. In every instance, the riddles and
challenges presented to Alice have no purpose or answer. Even though Lewis Carroll was a logician, in
Alices Adventures in Wonderland he makes a farce out of jokes, riddles, and games of logic.

Death as a Constant and Underlying Menace

Alice continually finds herself in situations in which she risks death, and while these threats never
materialize, they suggest that death lurks just behind the ridiculous events of Alices Adventures in
Wonderland as a present and possible outcome.
MOTIFS
Dream
Alices Adventures in Wonderland takes place in Alices dream, so that the characters and phenomena of
the real world mix with elements of Alices unconscious state. The dream motif explains the abundance of
nonsensical and disparate events in the story.
Subversion
Alice quickly discovers during her travels that the only reliable aspect of Wonderland that she can count
on is that it will frustrate = submina her expectations and challenge her understanding of the natural order
of the world. Even Alices physical dimensions become warped as she grows and shrinks erratically
throughout the story. Wonderland frustrates Alices desires to fit her experiences in a logical framework
where she can make sense of the relationship between cause and effect.
Language
Carroll plays with linguistic conventions in Alices Adventures in Wonderland, making use of puns and
playing on multiple meanings of words throughout the text. Carroll invents words and expressions and
develops new meanings for words.
Curious, Nonsense, and Confusing
Alice uses these words throughout her journey to describe phenomena she has trouble explaining. Though
the words are generally interchangeable, she usually assigns curious and confusing to experiences or
encounters that she tolerates.
SYMBOLS
The Garden
Nearly every object in Alices Adventures in Wonderland functions as a symbol, but nothing clearly
represents one particular thing. Often the symbols work together to convey a particular meaning. The
garden may symbolize the Garden of Eden, an idyllic space of beauty and innocence that Alice is not
permitted to access.
The Caterpillars Mushroom
Like the garden, the Caterpillars mushroom also has multiple symbolic meanings. Some readers and
critics view the Caterpillar as a sexual threat, its phallic shape a symbol of sexual virility. The Caterpillars
mushroom connects to this symbolic meaning. Alice must master the properties of the mushroom to gain
control over her fluctuating size, which represents the bodily frustrations that accompany puberty. Others
view the mushroom as a psychedelic hallucinogen that compounds Alices surreal and distorted perception
of Wonderland.
5CONRAD, JOSEPH: HEART OF DARKNESS
CONTEXT
Joseph Conrad did not begin to learn English until he was twenty-one years old. He was born in1857, in
the Polish Ukraine. When Conrad was quite young, his father was exiled to Siberia on suspicion of
plotting against the Russian government. After the death of the boys mother, Conrads father sent him to
his mothers brother in Krakw to be educated, and Conrad never again saw his father. He traveled to
Marseilles when he was seventeen and spent the next twenty years as a sailor. He signed on to an English

ship in 1878, and eight years later he became a British subject. He took command of a steamship in the
Belgian Congo in 1890, and his experiences in the Congo came to provide the outline for Heart of
Darkness. Conrads time in Africa wreaked havoc on his health, however, and he returned to England to
recover.
Conrads works, Heart of Darkness in particular, provide a bridge between Victorian values and the
ideals of modernism. Like their Victorian predecessors, these novels rely on traditional ideas of
heroism, which are nevertheless under constant attack in a changing world and in places far from
England. Concepts of home and civilization exist merely as hypocritical ideals, meaningless to men
for whom survival is in constant doubt. While the threats that Conrads characters face are concrete
onesillness, violence, conspiracythey nevertheless acquire a philosophical character. Like much of
the best modernist literature produced in the early decades of the twentieth century, Heart of
Darkness is as much about alienation, confusion, and profound doubt as it is about imperialism.
Imperialism is nevertheless at the center of Heart of Darkness. By the 1890s, most of the worlds dark
places had been placed at least nominally under European control, and the major European powers were
stretched then, trying to administer and protect massive, far-flung empires. Cracks were beginning to
appear in the system: riots, wars. Things were clearly falling apart. Heart of Darkness, thus, at its most
abstract level, is a narrative about the difficulty of understanding the world beyond the self, about the
ability of one man to judge another.
Heart of Darkness was one of the first literary texts to provide a critical view of European imperial
activities. Conrads decision to set the book in a Belgian colony and to have Marlow work for a Belgian
trading concern made it even easier for British readers to avoid seeing themselves reflected in Heart of
Darkness. Although these early reactions seem ludicrous to a modern reader, they reinforce the novellas
central themes of hypocrisy and absurdity.
THEMES
The Hypocrisy of Imperialism
As Marlow travels from the Outer Station to the Central Station and finally up the river to the Inner
Station, he encounters scenes of torture, cruelty, and near-slavery. The hypocrisy is inherent in the
rhetoric used to justify imperialism. The men who work for the Company describe what they do as
trade, and their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project of civilization.
Madness as a Result of Imperialism
Madness is closely linked to imperialism in this book. Kurtz, Marlow is told from the beginning, is mad.
Madness, in Heart of Darkness, is the result of being removed from ones social context and allowed to be
the sole arbiter of ones own actions. Madness is thus linked not only to absolute power and a kind of
moral genius but to mans fundamental fallibility: Kurtz has no authority to whom he answers but himself,
and this is more than any one man can bear.
The Absurdity of Evil
This novella is, above all, an exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and moral confusion. At one station,
for instance, he sees a man trying to carry water in a bucket with a large hole in it. At the Outer Station, he
watches native laborers blast away at a hillside with no particular goal in mind.
MOTIFS
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop the texts major
themes.
Observation and Eavesdropping
Marlow gains a great deal of information by watching the world around him and by overhearing others
conversations, as when he listens from the deck of the wrecked steamer to the manager of the Central
Station and his uncle discussing Kurtz and the Russian trader. This phenomenon speaks to the
impossibility of direct communication between individuals: information must come as the result of chance
observation and astute interpretation.

Interiors and Exteriors

Comparisons between interiors and exteriors pervade Heart of Darkness. As the narrator states at the
beginning of the text, Marlow is more interested in surfaces, in the surrounding aura of a thing rather than
in any hidden nugget of meaning deep within the thing itself. Thus, Marlow is confronted with a series of
exteriors and surfacesthe rivers banks, the forest walls around the station, Kurtzs broad foreheadthat
he must interpret.
Darkness
Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the books title. However, it is difficult to discern
exactly what it might mean, given that absolutely everything in the book is cloaked in darkness. Africa,
England, and Brussels are all described as gloomy and somehow dark, even if the sun is shining brightly.
Darkness thus seems to operate metaphorically and existentially rather than specifically. Darkness is
the inability to see: this may sound simple, but as a description of the human condition it has profound
implications. Failing to see another human being means failing to understand that individual and failing to
establish any sort of sympathetic communion with him or her.
SYMBOLS
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Fog
Fog is a sort of corollary to darkness. Fog not only obscures but distorts.
The Whited Sepulchre
The whited sepulchre is probably Brussels, where the Companys headquarters are located. A sepulchre
implies death and confinement. The phrase whited sepulchre comes from the biblical Book of
Matthew. In the passage, Matthew describes whited sepulchres as something beautiful on the outside
but containing horrors within (the bodies of the dead); thus, the image is appropriate for Brussels,
given the hypocritical Belgian rhetoric about imperialisms civilizing mission. (Belgian colonies,
particularly the Congo, were notorious for the violence perpetuated against the natives.)
Women
Both Kurtzs Intended and his African mistress function as blank slates upon which the values and the
wealth of their respective societies can be displayed. Marlow frequently claims that women are the
keepers of nave illusions. They become objects upon which men can display their own success and status.
The River
The Congo River is the key to Africa for Europeans. It allows them access to the center of the continent
without having to physically cross it; in other words, it allows the white man to remain always separate or
outside.
6CONRAD, JOSEPH: LORD JIM
Conrad was writing at the very moment when the Victorian Age was disappearing and the modern era was
emerging. Victorian moral codes still influenced the plots of novels, but such principles were no longer
absolute. Novelists and poets were beginning to experiment with form. The jumbled time sequence and
elaborate narrative frames of Lord Jim are part of this movement.
Lord Jim situates itself in a world where national differences are often reduced to the dichotomy of "us"
and "them," where the term "us" can encompass a surprisingly heterogeneous group. Both economic and
racial versions of the colonial dynamic come into play in this novel.
Is this Jim's story or Marlow's? In other words, is this a novel about actions, or a novel about
storytelling?
Conrad's is a male world, one of sea-faring and economic conquest.

Women represent domesticity--home--and as such represent the repository of basic cultural values. There
aren't many women here because they're all back in Europe. The women who do appear in this story are
natives, not white.
Colonialism is a problematic subject in this novel. Patusan is not actually a colonial possession; it is a
territory that has been raided for material goods and then forgotten. It is significant, though, that, as a
place populated by non-Europeans and not subject to the white man's law because it's not actually a
colony, Patusan serves as a dumping ground for white society's rejects.
Lord Jim is remarkable for its elaborately woven scheme of narration.
By manipulating the flow of the narrative, Marlow is able to create juxtapositions and contrasts that
highlight particular aspects of the story.
He is a master at withholding information: Jim's final fate becomes a matter for discussion eight
chapters before the reader learns what that fate actually is.
Information is conveyed by letters, midnight conversations, deathbed interviews, forwarded
manuscripts, and, most significantly, in the form of a tale told to an audience of listeners.
His language is dense with terms like "inscrutable" and "inexplicable," words that denote imprecision and
indecipherability, but which also possess a certain quality of uncertainty in themselves, as words.
STYLE
This uncertainty about language is the key feature of Conrad's STYLE. Conrad is the master of a high,
elegiac language that seems to contain depths of profundity nearly inexpressible in words. As one who did
not learn English until he was in his twenties, he must certainly have been aware of each and every
word he used, and each must have been carefully chosen. His language is often deliberately difficult,
and in that quality his prose shares some of the features of modernism.
Idealism and heroism that lies at the center of Lord Jim. Jim is a young man who enters the world
motivated primarily by fantasies of daring and noble deeds lifted from cheap novels.
7DEFOE, DANIEL: ROBINSON CRUSOE
CONTEXT
Daniel Defoe was born in 1660, in London. Like his character Robinson Crusoe, Defoe was a third child.
His mother and father, James and Mary Foe, were Presbyterian dissenters. James Foe was a middle-class
wax and candle merchant. As a boy, Daniel witnessed two of the greatest disasters of the seventeenth
century: a recurrence of the plague and the Great Fire of London in 1666. These events may have shaped
his fascination with catastrophes and survival in his writing. His Protestant values endured throughout
his life despite discrimination and persecution, and these values are expressed in Robinson Crusoe. In
1683, Defoe became a traveling hosiery salesman. Visiting Holland, France, and Spain on business,
Defoe developed a taste for travel that lasted throughout his life. His fiction reflects this interest; his
characters Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe both change their lives by voyaging far from their native
England.
Defoe became successful as a merchant, by 1692 he was bankrupt, having accumulated the huge sum of
17,000 pounds in debts. Though he eventually paid off most of the total, the wild ups and downs in ones
pocketbookbecame a prominent theme in his later novels. Robinson Crusoe contains many reflections
about the value of money. He also worked as a spy, reveling in aliases and disguises, reflecting his own
variable identity as merchant, poet, journalist, and prisoner. This theme of changeable identity would later
be expressed in the life of Robinson Crusoe, who becomes merchant, slave, plantation owner, and even
unofficial king.
Robinson Crusoe was based on the true story of a shipwrecked seaman named Alexander Selkirk
and was passed off as history.
Stylistically, Defoe was a great innovator. Dispensing with the ornate style associated with the upper
classes, Defoe used the simple, direct, fact-based style of the middle classes, which became the new
standard for the English novel. With Robinson Crusoes theme of solitary human existence, Defoe paved
the way for the central modern theme of alienation and isolation.

THEMES
The Ambivalence of Mastery
In short, while Crusoe seems praiseworthy in mastering his fate, the praiseworthiness of his mastery
over his fellow humans is more doubtful. Defoe explores the link between the two in his depiction of the
colonial mind.
The Necessity of Repentance
For Crusoe, repentance consists of acknowledging his wretchedness and his absolute dependence on the
Lord. This admission marks a turning point in Crusoes spiritual consciousness, and is almost a born-again
experience for him. After repentance, he complains much less about his sad fate and views the island more
positively.
The Importance of Self-Awareness
Unlike animals, he remains conscious of himself at all times. We see that in his normal day-to-day
activities, Crusoe keeps accounts of himself enthusiastically and in various ways. Crusoe obsessively
keeps a journal to record his daily activities.
MOTIFS
Counting and Measuring
Crusoe is a careful note-taker whenever numbers and quantities are involved.
Eating
One of Crusoes first concerns after his shipwreck is his food supply. He soon provides himself with food,
and indeed each new edible item marks a new stage in his mastery of the island, so that his food supply
becomes a symbol of his survival. His discovery of grain is viewed as a miracle, like manna from heaven.
But no sooner does Crusoe master the art of eating than he begins to fear being eaten himself. Eating is
an image of existence itself, just as being eaten signifies death for Crusoe.
Ordeals at Sea
Crusoes encounters with water in the novel are often associated not simply with hardship, but with a kind
of symbolic ordeal, or test of character.
SYMBOLS
The Footprint
Crusoes shocking discovery of a single footprint on the sand in Chapter XVIII is one of the most famous
moments in the novel, and it symbolizes our heros conflicted feelings about human companionship.
Immediately he interprets the footprint negatively, as the print of the devil or of an aggressor.
The Cross
Crusoe marks the passing of days with [his] knife upon a large post, in capital letters, and making it into
a great cross . The large size and capital letters show us how important this cross is to Crusoe as a
timekeeping device and thus also as a way of relating himself to the larger social world where dates and
calendars still matter. But the cross is also a symbol of his own new existence on the island.
Crusoes Bower
On a scouting tour around the island, Crusoe discovers a delightful valley in which he decides to build a
country retreat or bower in Chapter XII. This bower contrasts sharply with Crusoes first residence,
since it is built not for the practical purpose of shelter or storage, but simply for pleasure: because I was
so enamoured of the place.
8DICKENS, CHARLES: GREAT EXPECTATIONS

CONTEXT
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812. Dickenss father, John, was a kind and likable man, but he
was incompetent with money and piled up tremendous debts throughout his life.
Many of the events from Dickenss early life are mirrored in Great Expectations, which, apart from David
Copperfield, is his most autobiographical novel. Pip, the novels protagonist, lives in the marsh country,
works at a job he hates, considers himself too good for his surroundings, and experiences material
success in London at a very early age, exactly as Dickens himself did.
Great Expectations is set in early Victorian England, a time when great social changes were sweeping
the nation. The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had transformed
the social landscape, enabling capitalists and manufacturers to amass huge fortunes. Although social class
was no longer entirely dependent on the circumstances of ones birth, the divisions between rich and
poor remained nearly as wide as ever. More and more people moved from the country to the city in
search of greater economic opportunity. Throughout England, the manners of the upper class were very
strict and conservative. These conditions defined Dickenss time, and they make themselves felt in
almost every facet of Great Expectations.
In form, Great Expectations fits a pattern popular in nineteenth-century European fiction: the
bildungsroman, or novel depicting growth and personal development, generally a transition from
boyhood to manhood such as that experienced by Pip.
THEMES
Ambition and Self-Improvement
The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are more
important than social advancement, wealth, and class. Pip learns this lesson, largely by exploring ideas of
ambition and self-improvementideas that quickly become both the thematic center of the novel and the
psychological mechanism that encourages much of Pips development. When he sees Satis House, he
longs to be a wealthy gentleman; when he thinks of his moral shortcomings, he longs to be good; when he
realizes that he cannot read, he longs to learn how. Pips desire for self-improvement is the main source
of the novels title: because he believes in the possibility of advancement in life, he has great
expectations about his future.
Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectationsmoral, social, and educational;
these motivate Pips best and his worst behavior throughout the novel.
Social Class
Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging from
the most wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to the
middle class (Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss Havisham). The theme of social class is central to the
novels plot and to the ultimate moral theme of the bookPips realization that wealth and class are less
important than affection, loyalty, and inner worth.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the novels treatment of social class is that the class
system it portrays is based on the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England. Dickens
generally ignores the nobility and the hereditary aristocracy in favor of characters whose fortunes have
been earned through commerce.
Crime, Guilt, and Innocence
The theme of crime, guilt, and innocence is explored throughout the novel largely through the characters
of the convicts and the criminal lawyer Jaggers. From the handcuffs Joe mends at the smithy to the
gallows at the prison in London, the imagery of crime and criminal justice pervades the book.
MOTIFS
Doubles
From the earliest scenes of the novel to the last, nearly every element of Great Expectations is mirrored or
doubled at some other point in the book. There are two convicts on the marsh (Magwitch and

Compeyson), two invalids (Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham), two young women who interest Pip (Biddy
and Estella), and so on. There are two secret benefactors: Magwitch, who gives Pip his fortune, and Pip
Comparison of Characters to Inanimate Objects
Throughout Great Expectations, the narrator uses images of inanimate objects to describe the physical
appearance of charactersparticularly minor characters.
SYMBOLS
Satis House
In Satis House, Dickens creates a magnificent Gothic setting whose various elements symbolize Pips
romantic perception of the upper class and many other themes of the book.
On her decaying body, Miss Havishams wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and
degeneration. The wedding dress and the wedding feast symbolize Miss Havishams past, and the stopped
clocks throughout the house symbolize her determined attempt to freeze time by refusing to change
anything from the way it was when she was jilted on her wedding day. The brewery next to the house
symbolizes the connection between commerce and wealth: Miss Havishams fortune is not the product of
an aristocratic birth but of a recent success in industrial capitalism. Finally, the crumbling, dilapidated
stones of the house, as well as the darkness and dust that pervade it, symbolize the general decadence of
the lives of its inhabitants and of the upper class as a whole.
The Mists on the Marshes
The misty marshes near Pips childhood home in Kent, one of the most evocative of the books settings,
are used several times to symbolize danger and uncertainty.
Bentley Drummle
Although he is a minor character in the novel, Bentley Drummle provides an important contrast with Pip
and represents the arbitrary nature of class distinctions. Drummle is a lout who has inherited immense
wealth, while Pips friend and brother-in-law Joe is a good man who works hard for the little he earns.
9DICKENS, CHARLES: OLIVER TWIST
CONTEXT
The horrific conditions in the factory haunted him for the rest of his life, as did the experience of
temporary orphanhood.
The Poor Laws: Oliver Twists Social Commentary
Oliver Twist opens with a bitter invective directed at the nineteenth-century English Poor Laws. These
laws were a distorted manifestation of the Victorian middle classs emphasis on the virtues of hard work.
England in the 1830s was rapidly undergoing a transformation from an agricultural, rural economy to an
urban, industrial nation. The growing middle class had achieved an economic influence equal to, if not
greater than, that of the British aristocracy.
Victorian society interpreted economic success as a sign that God favored the honest, moral virtue of the
successful individuals efforts, and, thus, interpreted the condition of poverty as a sign of the weakness of
the poor individual.
The sentiment behind the Poor Law of 1834 reflected these beliefs. The law allowed the poor to receive
public assistance only if they lived and worked in established workhouses. Beggars risked
imprisonment. Debtors were sent to prison, often with their entire families, which virtually ensured
that they could not repay their debts. Families were split apart upon entering the workhouse.
The Poor Laws punished the most defenseless and helpless members of the lower class.
Dickens meant to demonstrate this incongruity through the figure of Oliver Twist, an orphan born and
raised in a workhouse for the first ten years of his life. His story demonstrates the hypocrisy of the
petty middle-class bureaucrats, who treat a small child cruelly while voicing their belief in the Christian
virtue of giving charity to the less fortunate.

Dickens was a lifelong champion of the poor. In England in the 1830s, the poor truly had no voice,
political or economic. In Oliver Twist, Dickens presents the everyday existence of the lowest members of
English society.
THEMES
The Failure of Charity
Much of the first part of Oliver Twist challenges the organizations of charity run by the church and the
government in Dickenss time. The workhouses operated on the principle that poverty was the
consequence of laziness.
The Folly of Individualism
With the rise of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, individualism was very much in vogue as a
philosophy. Victorian capitalists believed that society would run most smoothly if individuals looked out
for their own interests.
Purity in a Corrupt City
Even Sikes has a conscience, which manifests itself in the apparition of Nancys eyes that haunts him after
he murders her.
The Countryside Idealized
All the injustices and privations suffered by the poor in Oliver Twist occur in citieseither the great city
of London or the provincial city where Oliver is born. When the Maylies take Oliver to the countryside, he
discovers a new existence. Country scenes have the potential to purify our thoughts and erase some of
the vices that develop in the city.
MOTIFS
Disguised or Mistaken Identities
The plot of Oliver Twist revolves around the various false identities that other characters impose upon
Oliver, often for the sake of advancing their own interests.
Hidden Family Relationships
Oliver is at first believed to be an orphan without parents or relatives, a position that would, in that time
and place, almost certainly seal his doom. Yet, by the end of the novel, it is revealed that he has more
relatives than just about anyone else in the novel.
Surrogate Families
Before Oliver finds his real family, a number of individuals serve him as substitue parents, mostly with
very limited success.
Olivers Face
Mr. Sowerberry, Charley Bates, and Toby Crackit all comment on its particular appeal, and its
resemblance to the portrait of Agnes Fleming provides the first clue to Olivers identity.
SYMBOLS
Characters Names
The names of characters represent personal qualities. Oliver Twist himself is the most obvious example.
The name Twist, though given by accident, alludes to the outrageous reversals of fortune that he will
experience. Rose Maylies name echoes her association with flowers and springtime, youth and beauty.
Toby Crackits name is a lighthearted reference to his chosen profession of breaking into houses. Mr.
Bumbles name connotes his bumbling arrogance; Mrs. Manns, her lack of maternal instinct; and Mr.
Grimwigs, his superficial grimness that can be removed as easily as a wig.

Bulls-eye
Bill Sikess dog, Bulls-eye, has faults of temper in common with his owner and is a symbolic emblem
of his owners character. The dogs viciousness reflects and represents Sikess own animal-like brutality.
London Bridge
Nancys decision to meet Brownlow and Rose on London Bridge reveals the symbolic aspect of this
bridge in Oliver Twist. Bridges exist to link two places that would otherwise be separated by an
uncrossable chasm. The meeting on London Bridge represents the collision of two worlds unlikely ever to
come into contact.
10FORSTER, E. M.: A PASSAGE TO INDIA
CONTEXT
Edward Morgan Forster was born into a comfortable London family in 1879. His father, an architect, died
when Forster was very young, leaving the boy to be raised by his mother and great-aunt. Forster proved to
be a bright student, and he went on to attend Cambridge University, graduating in 1901. He spent much of
the next decade traveling and living abroad, dividing his time between working as a journalist and writing
short stories and novels.
Many of Forsters observations and experiences from this time figure in his fiction, most notably A Room
with a View (1908), which chronicles the experiences of a group of English people vacationing in Italy.
Two years after A Room with a View, the novel Howards End (1910), in which Forster criticized the class
divisions and prejudices of Edwardian England, solidified his reputation as a social critic and a master of
incisively observational fiction.
Long before Forster first visited India, he had already gained a vivid picture of its people and places from
a young Indian Muslim named Syed Ross Masood, whom Forster began tutoring in England starting in
1906. Forster and Masood became very close, and Masood introduced Forster to several of his Indian
friends. Echoes of the friendship between the two can be seen in the characters of Fielding and Aziz in A
Passage to India. By the time Forster first visited India, in 1912, the Englishman was well prepared for his
travels throughout the country.
At the time of Forsters visit, the British government had been officially ruling India since 1858, after the
failed Sepoy Rebellion in 1857, in which Indians attempted to regain rule from the British East India
Company. The East India Company, a privately owned trading concern, had been gaining financial and
political power in India since the seventeenth century. By the time of Forsters visit, Britains control over
India was complete: English governors headed each province and were responsible to Parliament. Though
England had promised the Indian people a role in government in exchange for their aid during World War
I, India did not win independence until three decades later, in 1949.
Forster spent time with both Englishmen and Indians during his visit, and he quickly found he preferred
the company of the latter. He was troubled by the racial oppression and deep cultural misunderstandings
that divided the Indian people and the British colonists, or, as they are called in A Passage to India, AngloIndians. The prevailing attitude among the British in India was that the colonists were assuming the white
mans burdennovelist Rudyard Kiplings phraseof governing the country, because the Indians could
not handle the responsibility themselves. Forster, a homosexual living in a society and era largely
unsympathetic to his lifestyle, had long experienced prejudice and misunderstanding firsthand. It is no
surprise, then, that Forster felt sympathetic toward the Indian side of the colonial argument. Indeed,
Forster became a lifelong advocate for tolerance and understanding among people of different social
classes, races, and backgrounds.
Forster began writing A Passage to India in 1913, just after his first visit to India. The novel was not
revised and completed, however, until well after his second stay in India, in 1921, when he served as
secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas State Senior. Published in 1924, A Passage to India examines the
racial misunderstandings and cultural hypocrisies that characterized the complex interactions between
Indians and the English toward the end of the British occupation of India.

Forsters style is marked by his sympathy for his characters, his ability to see more than one side of an
argument or story, and his fondness for simple, symbolic tales that neatly encapsulate large-scale problems
and conditions. These tendencies are all evident in A Passage to India, which was immediately acclaimed
as Forsters masterpiece upon its publication. It is a traditional social and political novel, unconcerned
with the technical innovation of some of Forsters modernist contemporaries such as Gertrude Stein or
T.S. Eliot. A Passage to India is concerned, however, with representing the chaos of modern human
experience through patterns of imagery and form. In this regard, Forsters novel is similar to modernist
works of the same time period, such as James Joyces Ulysses (1922) and Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway
(1925).
A Passage to India was the last in a string of Forsters novels in which his craft improved markedly with
each new work. After the novels publication, however, Forster never again attained the level of craft or
the depth of observation that characterized his early work. In his later life, he contented himself primarily
with writing critical essays and lectures, most notably Aspects of the Novel (1927). In 1946, Forster
accepted a fellowship at Cambridge, where he remained until his death in 1970.
THEMES
The Difficulty of English-Indian Friendship
A Passage to India begins and ends by posing the question of whether it is possible for an Englishman and
an Indian to ever be friends, at least within the context of British colonialism. Forster uses this question as
a framework to explore the general issue of Britains political control of India on a more personal level,
through the friendship between Aziz and Fielding. At the beginning of the novel, Aziz is scornful of the
English, wishing only to consider them comically or ignore them completely. Yet the intuitive connection
Aziz feels with Mrs. Moore in the mosque opens him to the possibility of friendship with Fielding.
Through the first half of the novel, Fielding and Aziz represent a positive model of liberal humanism:
Forster suggests that British rule in India could be successful and respectful if only English and Indians
treated each other as Fielding and Aziz treat each otheras worthy individuals who connect through
frankness, intelligence, and good will.
Yet in the aftermath of the novels climaxAdelas accusation that Aziz attempted to assault her and her
subsequent disavowal of this accusation at the trialAziz and Fieldings friendship falls apart. The strains
on their relationship are external in nature, as Aziz and Fielding both suffer from the tendencies of their
cultures. Aziz tends to let his imagination run away with him and to let suspicion harden into a grudge.
Fielding suffers from an English literalism and rationalism that blind him to Azizs true feelings and make
Fielding too stilted to reach out to Aziz through conversations or letters. Furthermore, their respective
Indian and English communities pull them apart through their mutual stereotyping. As we see at the end of
the novel, even the landscape of India seems to oppress their friendship. Forsters final vision of the
possibility of English-Indian friendship is a pessimistic one, yet it is qualified by the possibility of
friendship on English soil, or after the liberation of India. As the landscape itself seems to imply at the end
of the novel, such a friendship may be possible eventually, but not yet.
The Unity of All Living Things
Though the main characters of A Passage to India are generally Christian or Muslim, Hinduism also plays
a large thematic role in the novel. The aspect of Hinduism with which Forster is particularly concerned is
the religions ideal of all living things, from the lowliest to the highest, united in love as one. This vision
of the universe appears to offer redemption to India through mysticism, as individual differences disappear
into a peaceful collectivity that does not recognize hierarchies. Individual blame and intrigue is forgone in
favor of attention to higher, spiritual matters. Professor Godbole, the most visible Hindu in the novel, is
Forsters mouthpiece for this idea of the unity of all living things. Godbole alone remains aloof from the
drama of the plot, refraining from taking sides by recognizing that all are implicated in the evil of
Marabar. Mrs. Moore, also, shows openness to this aspect of Hinduism. Though she is a Christian, her
experience of India has made her dissatisfied with what she perceives as the smallness of Christianity.
Mrs. Moore appears to feel a great sense of connection with all living creatures, as evidenced by her
respect for the wasp in her bedroom.

Yet, through Mrs. Moore, Forster also shows that the vision of the oneness of all living things can be
terrifying. As we see in Mrs. Moores experience with the echo that negates everything into boum in
Marabar, such oneness provides unity but also makes all elements of the universe one and the samea
realization that, it is implied, ultimately kills Mrs. Moore. Godbole is not troubled by the idea that
negation is an inevitable result when all things come together as one. Mrs. Moore, however, loses interest
in the world of relationships after envisioning this lack of distinctions as a horror. Moreover, though
Forster generally endorses the Hindu idea of the oneness of all living things, he also suggests that there
may be inherent problems with it. Even Godbole, for example, seems to recognize that somethingif only
a stonemust be left out of the vision of oneness if the vision is to cohere. This problem of exclusion is,
in a sense, merely another manifestation of the individual difference and hierarchy that Hinduism
promises to overcome.
The Muddle of India
Forster takes great care to strike a distinction between the ideas of muddle and mystery in A Passage
to India. Muddle has connotations of dangerous and disorienting disorder, whereas mystery suggests a
mystical, orderly plan by a spiritual force that is greater than man. Fielding, who acts as Forsters primary
mouthpiece in the novel, admits that India is a muddle, while figures such as Mrs. Moore and Godbole
view India as a mystery. The muddle that is India in the novel appears to work from the ground up: the
very landscape and architecture of the countryside is formless, and the natural life of plants and animals
defies identification. This muddled quality to the environment is mirrored in the makeup of Indias native
population, which is mixed into a muddle of different religious, ethnic, linguistic, and regional groups.
The muddle of India disorients Adela the most; indeed, the events at the Marabar Caves that trouble her so
much can be seen as a manifestation of this muddle. By the end of the novel, we are still not sure what
actually has happened in the caves. Forster suggests that Adelas feelings about Ronny become
externalized and muddled in the caves, and that she suddenly experiences these feelings as something
outside of her. The muddle of India also affects Aziz and Fieldings friendship, as their good intentions are
derailed by the chaos of cross-cultural signals.
Though Forster is sympathetic to India and Indians in the novel, his overwhelming depiction of India as a
muddle matches the manner in which many Western writers of his day treated the East in their works. As
the noted critic Edward Said has pointed out, these authors orientalizing of the East made Western logic
and capability appear self-evident, and, by extension, portrayed the Wests domination of the East as
reasonable or even necessary.
The Negligence of British Colonial Government
Though A Passage to India is in many ways a highly symbolic, or even mystical, text, it also aims to be a
realistic documentation of the attitudes of British colonial officials in India. Forster spends large sections
of the novel characterizing different typical attitudes the English hold toward the Indians whom they
control. Forsters satire is most harsh toward Englishwomen, whom the author depicts as overwhelmingly
racist, self-righteous, and viciously condescending to the native population. Some of the Englishmen in
the novel are as nasty as the women, but Forster more often identifies Englishmen as men who, though
condescending and unable to relate to Indians on an individual level, are largely well-meaning and
invested in their jobs. For all Forsters criticism of the British manner of governing India, however, he
does not appear to question the right of the British Empire to rule India. He suggests that the British would
be well served by becoming kinder and more sympathetic to the Indians with whom they live, but he does
not suggest that the British should abandon India outright. Even this lesser critique is never overtly stated
in the novel, but implied through biting satire.
MOTIFS
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices
The Echo
The echo begins at the Marabar Caves: first Mrs. Moore and then Adela hear the echo and are haunted by
it in the weeks to come. The echos sound is bouma sound it returns regardless of what noise or
utterance is originally made. This negation of difference embodies the frightening flip side of the

seemingly positive Hindu vision of the oneness and unity of all living things. If all people and things
become the same thing, then no distinction can be made between good and evil. No value system can
exist. The echo plagues Mrs. Moore until her death, causing her to abandon her beliefs and cease to care
about human relationships. Adela, however, ultimately escapes the echo by using its message of
impersonality to help her realize Azizs innocence.
Eastern and Western Architecture
Forster spends time detailing both Eastern and Western architecture in A Passage to India. Three
architectural structuresthough one is naturally occurringprovide the outline for the books three
sections, Mosque, Caves, and Temple. Forster presents the aesthetics of Eastern and Western
structures as indicative of the differences of the respective cultures as a whole. In India, architecture is
confused and formless: interiors blend into exterior gardens, earth and buildings compete with each other,
and structures appear unfinished or drab. As such, Indian architecture mirrors the muddle of India itself
and what Forster sees as the Indians characteristic inattention to form and logic. Occasionally, however,
Forster takes a positive view of Indian architecture. The mosque in Part I and temple in Part III represent
the promise of Indian openness, mysticism, and friendship. Western architecture, meanwhile, is described
during Fieldings stop in Venice on his way to England. Venices structures, which Fielding sees as
representative of Western architecture in general, honor form and proportion and complement the earth on
which they are built. Fielding reads in this architecture the self-evident correctness of Western reasonan
order that, he laments, his Indian friends would not recognize or appreciate.
Godboles Song
At the end of Fieldings tea party, Godbole sings for the English visitors a Hindu song, in which a
milkmaid pleads for God to come to her or to her people. The songs refrain of Come! come recurs
throughout A Passage to India, mirroring the appeal for the entire country of salvation from something
greater than itself. After the song, Godbole admits that God never comes to the milkmaid. The song
greatly disheartens Mrs. Moore, setting the stage for her later spiritual apathy, her simultaneous awareness
of a spiritual presence and lack of confidence in spiritualism as a redeeming force. Godbole seemingly
intends his song as a message or lesson that recognition of the potential existence of a God figure can
bring the world together and erode differencesafter all, Godbole himself sings the part of a young
milkmaid. Forster uses the refrain of Godboles song, Come! come, to suggest that Indias redemption is
yet to come.
SYMBOLS
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Marabar Caves
The Marabar Caves represent all that is alien about nature. The caves are older than anything else on the
earth and embody nothingness and emptinessa literal void in the earth. They defy both English and
Indians to act as guides to them, and their strange beauty and menace unsettles visitors. The caves alien
quality also has the power to make visitors such as Mrs. Moore and Adela confront parts of themselves or
the universe that they have not previously recognized. The all-reducing echo of the caves causes Mrs.
Moore to see the darker side of her spiritualitya waning commitment to the world of relationships and a
growing ambivalence about God. Adela confronts the shame and embarrassment of her realization that she
and Ronny are not actually attracted to each other, and that she might be attracted to no one. In this sense,
the caves both destroy meaning, in reducing all utterances to the same sound, and expose or narrate the
unspeakable, the aspects of the universe that the caves visitors have not yet considered.
The Green Bird
Just after Adela and Ronny agree for the first time, in Chapter VII, to break off their engagement, they
notice a green bird sitting in the tree above them. Neither of them can positively identify the bird. For
Adela, the bird symbolizes the unidentifiable quality of all of India: just when she thinks she can
understand any aspect of India, that aspect changes or disappears. In this sense, the green bird symbolizes
the muddle of India. In another capacity, the bird points to a different tension between the English and

Indians. The English are obsessed with knowledge, literalness, and naming, and they use these tools as a
means of gaining and maintaining power. The Indians, in contrast, are more attentive to nuance,
undertone, and the emotions behind words. While the English insist on labeling things, the Indians
recognize that labels can blind one to important details and differences. The unidentifiable green bird
suggests the incompatibility of the English obsession with classification and order with the shifting quality
of India itselfthe land is, in fact, a hundred Indias that defy labeling and understanding.
The Wasp
The wasp appears several times in A Passage to India, usually in conjunction with the Hindu vision of the
oneness of all living things. The wasp is usually depicted as the lowest creature the Hindus incorporate
into their vision of universal unity. Mrs. Moore is closely associated with the wasp, as she finds one in her
room and is gently appreciative of it. Her peaceful regard for the wasp signifies her own openness to the
Hindu idea of collectivity, and to the mysticism and indefinable quality of India in general. However, as
the wasp is the lowest creature that the Hindus visualize, it also represents the limits of the Hindu vision.
The vision is not a panacea, but merely a possibility for unity and understanding in India.
11FORSTER, E. M.: A ROOM WITH A VIEW
CONTEXT
Edward Morgan Forster was born on January 1, 1879, in London, into an upper middle class family. His
father, an architect, died two years later, and the young Forster was raised by his mother and his great
aunt. These women remained influential over Forster for much of his life, which sheds some light on his
preference for strong female characters in his novels.
Forster graduated from King's College, Cambridge, in 1901 and resolved to pursue his writing. He
traveled in Italy and Greece with his mother, and worked as a tutor in Germany in 1905. In the same year
he published his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread. The Longest Journey (1907) and A Room with a
View (1908) soon followed. Forster wrote the first half of A Room with a View during a stay in Italy with
his mother. The novel shows his support for the new, liberal social behaviors of the Edwardian age, in
contrast to the more sober ideals prevalent during Queen Victoria's reign. Even in his early work, Forster's
style distinguished itself as lighter and more conversational in diction than the English novelists who
preceded him. His critical yet sympathetic views of people and their interactions marked him as a master
of character and societal analysis. In 1910, his novel Howard's End was published to great public acclaim.
A Passage to India (1924) was published in 1924, and is known as his most complex and mature work.
The years between the turn of the century and World War I were an optimistic time for England. As liberal
Edwardian ideals slowly moved in over the old Victorian ways, a general optimism began to prevail,
manifested in the belief that man might be made better through a more liberal education. Throughout his
life, Forster stressed the importance of individuality and good will, emphasizing his belief in humanity's
potential for self-improvement. Forster became an active member of a movement of writers and thinkers
known as the Bloomsbury Group, a number of intellectuals defined in part tby their radical opposition to
Victorian traditions and manners. Included among the other members of the group were Virginia Woolf
and John Maynard Keynes.
Cambridge offered Forster a fellowship in 1946, and he remained there until his death on June 7, 1970. He
accepted an Order of Merit in 1969. Along with his novels, Forster also published short stories, essays,
and the famous critical work, Aspects of the Novel. He also collaborated with Eric Crozier on the libretto
to the opera Billy Budd, Sailor, composed by Benjamin Britten. His novel Maurice, about a homosexual
man, was published, according to his wishes, after his death, in 1971.

ANALYSIS
The book depicts Lucy's struggles as she emerges as her own woman, growing from indecision to
fulfillment. She struggles between strict, old-fashioned Victorian values and newer, more liberal mores. In
this struggle Lucy's own idea of what is true evolves and matures. Her trip to Italy opens her sheltered
eyes to ideas and people unlike those she has known growing up in the English countryside. She also
notices how freely Italian classes seem to mix, and realizes that the social boundaries she has always

regarded as fixed are actually arbitrary. Her experience with the Emersons shows her that there can be
beauty in the things that are considered improper, and Charlotte's betrayal shows her that propriety is not
always the best judge of what is true.
Having more clearly found herself in Italy, Lucy's real test lies at home, where she must confront her old
familiar surroundings. She is still uncertain, however, and confused about what to think about her new
experiences. That she missteps and becomes engaged to the pretentious and domineering Cecil shows her
susceptibility to the pressures of society. As her bold piano playing suggests, she is cut out for a more
daring life, if only she could cut herself away from the restricting social boundaries that engulf her. The
Emersons, as free-thinking, modern, truth-loving people, are her deliverers from the grips of society. It is
this freedom that allows her to see beyond the dictates of propriety that forbid her marriage to the lowerclass George and, therefore, to follow her heart.
George is troubled by existential worries in Italy. He doesn't understand how life can be truly joyful and
worthwhile when it is always shadowed by enigma, symbolized by the question mark that he hangs on the
wall of his hotel. Lucy, though cautious, is loving by nature and enjoys life even when it challenges her
understanding. The two are united by a shared appreciation for beauty, which might be captured in their
love of views: Lucy adores the view of the Arno through the pension window, while George's first
memory is of himself and his parents gazing at a view. Each possesses what the other needs: George finds
simple joys staying with the Honeychurch family, while Lucy finds the courage to recognize her own
individuality through her contact with the Emersons.
A Room with a View is one of Forster's early works, and is not as complex as the more mature Howard's
End and Passage to India. However, its strength lies in its vivid cast of characters, humorous dialogue,
and comedic play upon the manners of the day, and in Forster's engaging, sympathetic exploration of
Lucy's character.
STUDY QUESTIONS
Discuss the role of nature in the book and its relevance to the struggles of characters to make decisions
about their lives.
During the swimming scene, Mr. Emerson points out that man must return to nature. When riding in the
carriage into the countryside, he also expresses the idea that mankind should not detest the impulses found
in nature, such as the impulse for love, when they occur in people. The book's structure shows that nature
and man are linked. The love between Lucy and George is fostered in spring and reaches its
consummation in spring again, whereas the coming of autumn sets Lucy's soul reeling into a metap hysical
darkness. Dark storm clouds settle over her town on the day that she announces her plans to go to Greece.
According to Mr. Emerson's view and the view that the book most sympathetically presents, the best way
to live one's life is to be true to one's nature, and to follow it in spite of all societal pressures. Only through
following nature will people find love, and only through love will they be able to understand each other
and the world. All that is necessary is the courage to listen to nat ure.
Do you think that Lucy has a strong character? Is she an example of a strong woman?
Given the times she lives in, Lucy's behavior does seem courageous. Her society has taught her that being
a woman means accepting a status inferior to men. Charlotte has told her that women should help men to
achieve, but should not achieve anyt hing themselves, and her mother has scoffed at the idea of women
writing novels rather than tending to their homes and children. Both these women come from an older
time, so their views represent the conservative norm of the day. The Emersons, who repre sent the new
ideas of a more liberal generation, encourage Lucy's unconventionality. She would probably not receive
the impetus she needs without these two men, so in a way, she is dependent upon them for her successes.
However, as George tells her when he explains why she should not marry Cecil, he does not want to tell
her what to do in order to attain mastery over her; rather, he wants to set her free for her own sake, so that
she may daringly make her own decisions. /ANSWER
What is Forster's view of art in this book? Are there right and wrong ways to apprehend and appreciate
artwork? Some characters seem to manipulate art in ways that seem inappropriate. Which characters do
this and what makes their actions wrong?
Like most of Forster's views, the importance of art centers around the individual. Lucy finds in Santa
Croce church that her own perceptions of art are as valid as those of any lecturer or guidebook. Art brings
beauty and majesty to life, though, as in Schumann, it can also express sorrow and tragedy. It is meant to

be an expression of true human feeling. Cecil, however, sees art only in the sense that it is useful to his
pretentious discussions. He may refer to famous artists or writers, but his purpose is only to impress
others, not to connect with the artwork on his own level, or connect to others by discussing it. Miss Lavish
is a writer, but her books are not only poorly written, but are executed as the expense of real life. She does
not r eally value the people she writes about.
14GOLDING, WILLIAM: LORD OF THE FLIES
CONTEXT
William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Cornwall, England. Although he tried to write a
novel as early as age twelve, his parents urged him to study the natural sciences. Golding followed his
parents wishes until his second year at Oxford, when he changed his focus to English literature. After
graduating from Oxford, he worked briefly as a theater actor and director, wrote poetry, and then became a
schoolteacher. In 1940, a year after England entered World War II, Golding joined the Royal Navy, where
he served in command of a rocket-launcher and participated in the invasion of Normandy.
Goldings experience in World War II had a profound effect on his view of humanity and the evils of
which it was capable. After the war, Golding resumed teaching and started to write novels. His first and
greatest success came with Lord of the Flies (1954), which ultimately became a bestseller in both Britain
and the United States after more than twenty publishers rejected it. The novels sales enabled Golding to
retire from teaching and devote himself fully to writing. Golding wrote several more novels, notably
Pincher Martin (1956), and a play, The Brass Butterfly (1958). Although he never matched the popular
and critical success he enjoyed with Lord of the Flies, he remained a respected and distinguished author
for the rest of his life and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. Golding died in 1993, one
of the most acclaimed writers of the second half of the twentieth century.
Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of English schoolboys marooned on a tropical island after their
plane is shot down during a war. Though the novel is fictional, its exploration of the idea of human evil is
at least partly based on Goldings experience with the real-life violence and brutality of World War II. Free
from the rules and structures of civilization and society, the boys on the island in Lord of the Flies descend
into savagery. As the boys splinter into factions, some behave peacefully and work together to maintain
order and achieve common goals, while others rebel and seek only anarchy and violence. In his portrayal
of the small world of the island, Golding paints a broader portrait of the fundamental human struggle
between the civilizing instinctthe impulse to obey rules, behave morally, and act lawfullyand the
savage instinctthe impulse to seek brute power over others, act selfishly, scorn moral rules, and indulge
in violence.
Golding employs a relatively straightforward writing style in Lord of the Flies, one that avoids highly
poetic language, lengthy description, and philosophical interludes. Much of the novel is allegorical,
meaning that the characters and objects in the novel are infused with symbolic significance that conveys
the novels central themes and ideas. In portraying the various ways in which the boys on the island adapt
to their new surroundings and react to their new freedom, Golding explores the broad spectrum of ways in
which humans respond to stress, change, and tension.
Readers and critics have interpreted Lord of the Flies in widely varying ways over the years since its
publication. During the 1950s and 1960s, many readings of the novel claimed that Lord of the Flies
dramatizes the history of civilization. Some believed that the novel explores fundamental religious issues,
such as original sin and the nature of good and evil. Others approached Lord of the Flies through the
theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who taught that the human mind was the site of a constant
battle among different impulsesthe id (instinctual needs and desires), the ego (the conscious, rational
mind), and the superego (the sense of conscience and morality). Still others maintained that Golding wrote
the novel as a criticism of the political and social institutions of the West. Ultimately, there is some
validity to each of these different readings and interpretations of Lord of the Flies. Although Goldings
story is confined to the microcosm of a group of boys, it resounds with implications far beyond the bounds
of the small island and explores problems and questions universal to the human experience.
THEMES

Civilization vs. Savagery

The central concern of Lord of the Flies is the conflict between two competing impulses that exist within
all human beings: the instinct to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and value the good
of the group against the instinct to gratify ones immediate desires, act violently to obtain supremacy over
others, and enforce ones will. This conflict might be expressed in a number of ways: civilization vs.
savagery, order vs. chaos, reason vs. impulse, law vs. anarchy, or the broader heading of good vs. evil.
Throughout the novel, Golding associates the instinct of civilization with good and the instinct of savagery
with evil.
The conflict between the two instincts is the driving force of the novel, explored through the dissolution of
the young English boys civilized, moral, disciplined behavior as they accustom themselves to a wild,
brutal, barbaric life in the jungle. Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, which means that Golding
conveys many of his main ideas and themes through symbolic characters and objects. He represents the
conflict between civilization and savagery in the conflict between the novels two main characters: Ralph,
the protagonist, who represents order and leadership; and Jack, the antagonist, who represents savagery
and the desire for power.
As the novel progresses, Golding shows how different people feel the influences of the instincts of
civilization and savagery to different degrees. Piggy, for instance, has no savage feelings, while Roger
seems barely capable of comprehending the rules of civilization. Generally, however, Golding implies that
the instinct of savagery is far more primal and fundamental to the human psyche than the instinct of
civilization. Golding sees moral behavior, in many cases, as something that civilization forces upon the
individual rather than a natural expression of human individuality. When left to their own devices,
Golding implies, people naturally revert to cruelty, savagery, and barbarism. This idea of innate human
evil is central to Lord of the Flies, and finds expression in several important symbols, most notably the
beast and the sows head on the stake. Among all the characters, only Simon seems to possess anything
like a natural, innate goodness.
Loss of Innocence
As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved, orderly children longing for rescue to cruel,
bloodthirsty hunters who have no desire to return to civilization, they naturally lose the sense of innocence
that they possessed at the beginning of the novel. The painted savages in Chapter 12 who have hunted,
tortured, and killed animals and human beings are a far cry from the guileless children swimming in the
lagoon in Chapter 3. But Golding does not portray this loss of innocence as something that is done to the
children; rather, it results naturally from their increasing openness to the innate evil and savagery that has
always existed within them. Golding implies that civilization can mitigate but never wipe out the innate
evil that exists within all human beings. The forest glade in which Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this
loss of innocence. At first, it is a place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the
novel, he discovers the bloody sows head impaled upon a stake in the middle of the clearing. The bloody
offering to the beast has disrupted the paradise that existed beforea powerful symbol of innate human
evil disrupting childhood innocence.
MOTIFS
Biblical Parallels
Many critics have characterized Lord of the Flies as a retelling of episodes from the Bible. While that
description may be an oversimplification, the novel does echo certain Christian images and themes.
Golding does not make any explicit or direct connections to Christian symbolism in Lord of the Flies;
instead, these biblical parallels function as a kind of subtle motif in the novel, adding thematic resonance
to the main ideas of the story. The island itself, particularly Simons glade in the forest, recalls the Garden
of Eden in its status as an originally pristine place that is corrupted by the introduction of evil. Similarly,
we may see the Lord of the Flies as a representation of the devil, for it works to promote evil among
humankind. Furthermore, many critics have drawn strong parallels between Simon and Jesus. Among the
boys, Simon is the one who arrives at the moral truth of the novel, and the other boys kill him sacrificially
as a consequence of having discovered this truth. Simons conversation with the Lord of the Flies also

parallels the confrontation between Jesus and the devil during Jesus forty days in the wilderness, as told
in the Christian Gospels.
However, it is important to remember that the parallels between Simon and Christ are not complete, and
that there are limits to reading Lord of the Flies purely as a Christian allegory. Save for Simons two
uncanny predictions of the future, he lacks the supernatural connection to God that Jesus has in Christian
tradition. Although Simon is wise in many ways, his death does not bring salvation to the island; rather,
his death plunges the island deeper into savagery and moral guilt. Moreover, Simon dies before he is able
to tell the boys the truth he has discovered. Jesus, in contrast, was killed while spreading his moral
philosophy. In this way, Simonand Lord of the Flies as a wholeechoes Christian ideas and themes
without developing explicit, precise parallels with them. The novels biblical parallels enhance its moral
themes but are not necessarily the primary key to interpreting the story.
SYMBOLS
The Conch Shell
Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start of the novel and use it to summon the
boys together after the crash separates them. Used in this capacity, the conch shell becomes a powerful
symbol of civilization and order in the novel. The shell effectively governs the boys meetings, for the boy
who holds the shell holds the right to speak. In this regard, the shell is more than a symbolit is an actual
vessel of political legitimacy and democratic power. As the island civilization erodes and the boys descend
into savagery, the conch shell loses its power and influence among them. Ralph clutches the shell
desperately when he talks about his role in murdering Simon. Later, the other boys ignore Ralph and throw
stones at him when he attempts to blow the conch in Jacks camp. The boulder that Roger rolls onto Piggy
also crushes the conch shell, signifying the demise of the civilized instinct among almost all the boys on
the island.
Piggys Glasses
Piggy is the most intelligent, rational boy in the group, and his glasses represent the power of science and
intellectual endeavor in society. This symbolic significance is clear from the start of the novel, when the
boys use the lenses from Piggys glasses to focus the sunlight and start a fire. When Jacks hunters raid
Ralphs camp and steal the glasses, the savages effectively take the power to make fire, leaving Ralphs
group helpless.
The Signal Fire
The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to attract the notice of passing ships that
might be able to rescue the boys. As a result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of the boys connection
to civilization. In the early parts of the novel, the fact that the boys maintain the fire is a sign that they
want to be rescued and return to society. When the fire burns low or goes out, we realize that the boys
have lost sight of their desire to be rescued and have accepted their savage lives on the island. The signal
fire thus functions as a kind of measurement of the strength of the civilized instinct remaining on the
island. Ironically, at the end of the novel, a fire finally summons a ship to the island, but not the signal fire.
Instead, it is the fire of savagerythe forest fire Jacks gang starts as part of his quest to hunt and kill
Ralph.
The Beast
The imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stands for the primal instinct of savagery that exists within
all human beings. The boys are afraid of the beast, but only Simon reaches the realization that they fear
the beast because it exists within each of them. As the boys grow more savage, their belief in the beast
grows stronger. By the end of the novel, the boys are leaving it sacrifices and treating it as a totemic god.
The boys behavior is what brings the beast into existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the more
real the beast seems to become.
The Lord of the Flies

The Lord of the Flies is the bloody, severed sows head that Jack impales on a stake in the forest glade as
an offering to the beast. This complicated symbol becomes the most important image in the novel when
Simon confronts the sows head in the glade and it seems to speak to him, telling him that evil lies within
every human heart and promising to have some fun with him. (This fun foreshadows Simons death in
the following chapter.) In this way, the Lord of the Flies becomes both a physical manifestation of the
beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who evokes the beast within each human
being. Looking at the novel in the context of biblical parallels, the Lord of the Flies recalls the devil, just
as Simon recalls Jesus. In fact, the name Lord of the Flies is a literal translation of the name of the
biblical name Beelzebub, a powerful demon in hell sometimes thought to be the devil himself.
Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and Roger
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, and many of its characters signify important ideas or themes.
Ralph represents order, leadership, and civilization. Piggy represents the scientific and intellectual aspects
of civilization. Jack represents unbridled savagery and the desire for power. Simon represents natural
human goodness. Roger represents brutality and bloodlust at their most extreme. To the extent that the
boys society resembles a political state, the littluns might be seen as the common people, while the older
boys represent the ruling classes and political leaders. The relationships that develop between the older
boys and the younger ones emphasize the older boys connection to either the civilized or the savage
instinct: civilized boys like Ralph and Simon use their power to protect the younger boys and advance the
good of the group; savage boys like Jack and Roger use their power to gratify their own desires, treating
the littler boys as objects for their own amusement.
15HARDY, THOMAS: TESS OF THE DURBERVILLES
CONTEXT
Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton in Dorset, a rural region of
southwestern England that was to become the focus of his fiction. The child of a builder, Hardy was
apprenticed at the age of sixteen to John Hicks, an architect who lived in the city of Dorchester. The
location would later serve as the model for Hardys fictional Casterbridge. Although he gave serious
thought to attending university and entering the church, a struggle he would dramatize in his novel Jude
the Obscure, declining religious faith and lack of money led Hardy to pursue a career in writing instead.
He spent nearly a dozen years toiling in obscurity and producing unsuccessful novels and poetry. Far from
the Madding Crowd, published in 1874, was the authors first critical and financial success. Finally able to
support himself as a writer, Hardy married Emma Lavinia Gifford later that year.
Although he built a reputation as a successful novelist, Hardy considered himself first and foremost a poet.
To him, novels were primarily a means of earning a living. Like many of his contemporaries, he first
published his novels in periodic installments in magazines or serial journals, and his work reflects the
conventions of serialization. To ensure that readers would buy a serialized novel, writers often structured
each installment to be something of a cliffhanger, which explained the convoluted, often incredible plots
of many such Victorian novels. But Hardy cannot solely be labeled a Victorian novelist. Nor can he be
categorized simply as a Modernist, in the tradition of writers like Virginia Woolf or D. H. Lawrence, who
were determined to explode the conventions of nineteenth-century literature and build a new kind of novel
in its place. In many respects, Hardy was trapped in the middle ground between the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, between Victorian sensibilities and more modern ones, and between tradition and
innovation.
Soon after Tess of the dUrbervilles (1891) was published, its sales assured Hardys financial future. But
the novel also aroused a substantial amount of controversy. In Tess of the dUrbervilles and other novels,
Hardy demonstrates his deep sense of moral sympathy for Englands lower classes, particularly for rural
women. He became famous for his compassionate, often controversial portrayal of young women
victimized by the self-righteous rigidity of English social morality. Perhaps his most famous depiction of
such a young woman is in Tess of the dUrbervilles. This novel and the one that followed it, Jude the
Obscure (1895), engendered widespread public scandal with their comparatively frank look at the sexual
hypocrisy of English society.

Hardy lived and wrote in a time of difficult social change, when England was making its slow and painful
transition from an old-fashioned, agricultural nation to a modern, industrial one. Businessmen and
entrepreneurs, or new money, joined the ranks of the social elite, as some families of the ancient
aristocracy, or old money, faded into obscurity. Tesss family in Tess of the dUrbervilles illustrates this
change, as Tesss parents, the Durbeyfields, lose themselves in the fantasy of belonging to an ancient and
aristocratic family, the dUrbervilles. Hardys novel strongly suggests that such a family history is not only
meaningless but also utterly undesirable. Hardys views on the subject were appalling to conservative and
status-conscious British readers, and Tess of the dUrbervilles was met in England with widespread
controversy.
Hardy was frustrated by the controversy caused by his work, and he finally abandoned novel-writing
altogether following Jude the Obscure. He spent the rest of his career writing poetry. Though today he is
remembered somewhat more for his novels, he was an acclaimed poet in his time and was buried in the
prestigious Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey following his death in 1928.
THEMES
The Injustice of Existence
Unfairness dominates the lives of Tess and her family to such an extent that it begins to seem like a
general aspect of human existence in Tess of the dUrbervilles. Tess does not mean to kill Prince, but she
is punished anyway, just as she is unfairly punished for her own rape by Alec. Nor is there justice waiting
in heaven. Christianity teaches that there is compensation in the afterlife for unhappiness suffered in this
life, but the only devout Christian encountered in the novel may be the reverend, Mr. Clare, who seems
more or less content in his life anyway. For others in their misery, Christianity offers little solace of
heavenly justice. Mrs. Durbeyfield never mentions otherworldly rewards. The converted Alec preaches
heavenly justice for earthly sinners, but his faith seems shallow and insincere. Generally, the moral
atmosphere of the novel is not Christian justice at all, but pagan injustice. The forces that rule human life
are absolutely unpredictable and not necessarily well-disposed to us. The pre-Christian rituals practiced by
the farm workers at the opening of the novel, and Tesss final rest at Stonehenge at the end, remind us of a
world where the gods are not just and fair, but whimsical and uncaring. When the narrator concludes the
novel with the statement that Justice was done, and the President of the Immortals (in the Aeschylean
phrase) had ended his sport with Tess, we are reminded that justice must be put in ironic quotation marks,
since it is not really just at all. What passes for Justice is in fact one of the pagan gods enjoying a bit of
sport, or a frivolous game.
Changing Ideas of Social Class in Victorian England
Tess of the dUrbervilles presents complex pictures of both the importance of social class in nineteenthcentury England and the difficulty of defining class in any simple way. Certainly the Durbeyfields are a
powerful emblem of the way in which class is no longer evaluated in Victorian times as it would have
been in the Middle Agesthat is, by blood alone, with no attention paid to fortune or worldly success.
Indubitably the Durbeyfields have purity of blood, yet for the parson and nearly everyone else in the
novel, this fact amounts to nothing more than a piece of genealogical trivia. In the Victorian context, cash
matters more than lineage, which explains how Simon Stokes, Alecs father, was smoothly able to use his
large fortune to purchase a lustrous family name and transform his clan into the Stoke-dUrbervilles. The
dUrbervilles pass for what the Durbeyfields truly areauthentic nobilitysimply because definitions of
class have changed. The issue of class confusion even affects the Clare clan, whose most promising son,
Angel, is intent on becoming a farmer and marrying a milkmaid, thus bypassing the traditional privileges
of a Cambridge education and a parsonage. His willingness to work side by side with the farm laborers
helps endear him to Tess, and their acquaintance would not have been possible if he were a more
traditional and elitist aristocrat. Thus, the three main characters in the Angel-Tess-Alec triangle are all
strongly marked by confusion regarding their respective social classes, an issue that is one of the main
concerns of the novel.
Men Dominating Women

One of the recurrent themes of the novel is the way in which men can dominate women, exerting a power
over them linked primarily to their maleness. Sometimes this command is purposeful, in the mans full
knowledge of his exploitation, as when Alec acknowledges how bad he is for seducing Tess for his own
momentary pleasure. Alecs act of abuse, the most life-altering event that Tess experiences in the novel, is
clearly the most serious instance of male domination over a female. But there are other, less blatant
examples of womens passivity toward dominant men. When, after Angel reveals that he prefers Tess,
Tesss 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 Alecs outward and self-conscious cruelty.
Even Angels love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it seems, dominates her in an unhealthy way. Angel
substitutes an idealized picture of Tesss country purity for the real-life woman that he continually refuses
to get to know. When Angel calls Tess names like Daughter of Nature and Artemis, we feel that he
may be denying her true self in favor of a mental image that he prefers. Thus, her identity and experiences
are suppressed, albeit unknowingly. This pattern of male domination is finally reversed with Tesss murder
of Alec, in which, for the first time in the novel, a woman takes active steps against a man. Of course, this
act only leads to even greater suppression of a woman by men, when the crowd of male police officers
arrest Tess at Stonehenge. Nevertheless, for just a moment, the accepted pattern of submissive women
bowing to dominant men is interrupted, and Tesss act seems heroic.
MOTIFS
Birds
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 Tesss silent and constrained existence as a wronged and
disgraced girl. When Tess goes to work for Mrs. dUrberville, she is surprised to find that the old womans
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. dUrbervilles birds leave little white spots on the upholstery, which presumably
some servantperhaps Tess herselfwill have to clean. It may be that freedom for one creature entails
hardship for another, just as Alecs free enjoyment of Tesss body leads her to a lifetime of suffering. In
the end, when Tess encounters the pheasants maimed by hunters and lying in agony, birds no longer seem
free, but rather oppressed and submissive. These pheasants are no Romantic songbirds hovering far above
the Earththey are victims of earthly violence, condemned to suffer down below and never fly again.
The Book of Genesis
The Genesis story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is evoked repeatedly throughout Tess of the
dUrbervilles, giving the novel a broader metaphysical and philosophical dimension. The roles of Eve and
the serpent in paradise are clearly delineated: Angel is the noble Adam newly born, while Tess is the
indecisive and troubled Eve. When Tess gazes upon Angel in Chapter XXVII, she regarded him as Eve at
her second waking might have regarded Adam. Alec, with his open avowal that he is bad to the bone, is
the conniving Satan. He seduces Tess under a tree, giving her sexual knowledge in return for her lost
innocence. The very name of the forest where this seduction occurs, the Chase, suggests how Eve will be
chased from Eden for her sins. This guilt, which will never be erased, is known in Christian theology as
the original sin that all humans have inherited. Just as John Durbeyfield is told in Chapter I that you dont
live anywhere, and his family is evicted after his death at the end of the novel, their homelessness evokes
the human exile from Eden. Original sin suggests that humans have fallen from their once great status to a
lower station in life, just as the dUrbervilles have devolved into the modern Durbeyfields. This Story of
the Fallor of the Pure Drop, to recall the name of a pub in Tesss home villageis much more than a

social fall. It is an explanation of how all of us humansnot only Tessnever quite seem to live up to our
expectations, and are never able to inhabit the places of grandeur we feel we deserve.
Variant Names
The transformation of the dUrbervilles 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, Alecs father, who purchased a family tree and made himself Simon Stoke-dUrberville. The
question raised by all these cases of name changing, whether successful or merely imagined, is the extent
to which an altered name brings with it an altered identity. Alec acts notoriously ungentlemanly
throughout the novel, but by the end, when he appears at the dUrberville family vault, his lordly and
commanding bearing make him seem almost deserving of the name his father has bought, like a spoiled
medieval nobleman. Hardys interest in name changes makes reality itself seem changeable according to
whims of human perspective. The village of Blakemore, as we are reminded twice in Chapters I and II, 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.
SYMBOLS
Prince
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 dUrbervilles, setting the events of the novel in motion. The horses demise
is thus a powerful plot motivator, and its name a potent symbol of Tesss 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, Princes 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, Tesss
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 familys 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.
The dUrberville Family Vault
A double-edged symbol of both the majestic grandeur and the lifeless hollowness of the aristocratic family
name that the Durbeyfields learn they possess, the dUrberville family vault represents both the glory of
life and the end of life. 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 dUrberville 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 I
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.
Brazil
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 Angels name suggests, he is a lofty visionary who lacks some experience with the
real world, despite all his mechanical know-how in farm management. 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 Tesss imperfections, her failure to incarnate the ideal he expected her to be. For Angel, Brazil
symbolizes the impossibility of ideals, but also forgiveness and acceptance of life in spite of those
disappointed ideals.
16HARDY, THOMAS: JUDE THE OBSCURE
CONTEXT
When Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure was first published in 1895, its critical reception was so negative
that Hardy resolved never to write another novel. Jude the Obscure attacked the institutions Britain held
the most dear: higher education, social class, and marriage. It called, through its narrative, for a new
openness in marriage laws and commonly held beliefs about marriage and divorce. It introduced one of
the first feminist characters in English fiction: the intellectual, free-spirited Sue Bridehead.
Hardy is famous for his tragic heroes and heroines and the grave, socially critical tone of his narratives.
His best known works are Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Return of the Native, Far from the Madding
Crowd, and The Mayor of Casterbridge. All his novels are set in Wessex, a fictional English county
modeled after the real Dorset county. They deal with moral questions, played out through the lives of
people living in the countryside, and point to the darker truths behind pastoral visions.
Hardy was born to a builder's family in 1840 and died in 1928. He spent much of his life working as an
architect and was married twice.
OVERALL ANALYSIS AND THEMES
Jude the Obscure focuses on the life of a country stonemason, Jude, and his love for his cousin Sue, a
schoolteacher. From the beginning Jude knows that marriage is an ill-fated venture in his family, and he
believes that his love for Sue curses him doubly, because they are both members of a cursed clan. While
love could be identified as a central theme in the novel, it is the institution of marriage that is the work's
central focus. Jude and Sue are unhappily married to other people, and then drawn by an inevitable bond
that pulls them together. Their relationship is beset by tragedy, not only because of the family curse but
also by society's reluctance to accept their marriage as legitimate.
The horrifying murder-suicide of Jude's children is no doubt the climax of the book's action, and the other
events of the novel rise in a crescendo to meet that one act. From there, Jude and Sue feel they have no
recourse but to return to their previous, unhappy marriages and die within the confinement created by their
youthful errors. They are drawn into an endless cycle of self-erected oppression and cannot break free. In
a society unwilling to accept their rejection of convention, they are ostracized. Jude's son senses
wrongdoing in his own conception and acts in a way that he thinks will help his parents and his siblings.
The children are the victims of society's unwillingness to accept Jude and Sue as man and wife, and Sue's
own feelings of shame from her divorce.
Jude's initial failure to attend the university becomes less important as the novel progresses, but his
obsession with Christminster remains. Christminster is the site of Jude's first encounters with Sue, the
tragedy that dominates the book, and Jude's final moments and death. It acts upon Jude, Sue, and their
family as a representation of the unattainable and dangerous things to which Jude aspires.
17JAMES, HENRY: THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
CONTEXT

Henry James was born in New York City in 1843 and was raised in Manhattan. James's father, a prominent
intellectual and social theorist, traveled a great deal to Geneva, Paris, and London, so Henry and his
brother, William, accompanied him and virtually grew up in those locations as well. As a child, James was
shy, delicate, and had a difficult time mixing with other boyshis brother, who was much more active,
called him a sissy. William James, of course, went on to become a great American philosopher, while
Henry became one of the nation's preeminent novelists.
The James family moved to Boston when Henry was a teenager, and Henry briefly attended Harvard Law
School. But he soon dropped out in order to concentrate on his writing. He found success early and often:
William Dean Howells, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, befriended the young writer, and by his midtwenties James was considered one of the most skilled writers in America. In novels such as The
American, The Europeans, and Daisy Miller, James perfected a unique brand of psychological realism,
taking as his primary subject the social maneuverings of the upper classes, particularly the situation of
Americans living in Europe. For James, America represented optimism and innocence, while Europe
represented decadence and social sophistication; James himself moved to Europe early on in his
professional career and was naturalized as a British citizen in 1915 to protest America's failure to enter
World War I.
Throughout his career, James earned criticism for the slow pacing and uneventful plotting of his novels, as
well as for his elliptical technique, in which many of a work's important scenes are not narrated, but only
implied by later scenes. But as a stylist James earned consistent admiration; he is often considered to be a
"writer's writer," and his prose is remarkable for its elegance of balance, clarity, and precision.
First written in the 1880s and extensively revised in 1908, The Portrait of a Lady is often considered to be
James's greatest achievement. In it, he explored many of his most characteristic themes, including the
conflict between American individualism and European social custom and the situation of Americans in
Europe. It also includes many of his most memorable characters, including the lady of the novel's title,
Isabel Archer, the indomitable Mrs. Touchett, the wise and funny Ralph Touchett, the fast-talking
Henrietta Stackpole, and the sinister villains, Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle.
While he was a dedicated observer of human beings in society, James was a socially distant man who
formed few close friendships. He never married and openly claimed to practice celibacy. Perhaps this gave
him time to write: in four decades of his writing career, he produced nearly 100 books, including such
classics as The Golden Bowl, The Wings of the Dove, and the immortal ghost story "The Turn of the
Screw." He died on February 28, 1916, shortly after receiving the English Order of Merit for his
dedication to the British cause in World War I.
STUDY QUESTIONS AND ESSAY TOPICS
Describe the elliptical technique James often uses in his narration. What is a narrative ellipsis? How
does James employ the technique? What effect does his frequent skipping forward have on the novel as a
whole?
For many of the novel's most important scenes, James utilizes an elliptical technique, which means
literally that he simply does not narrate them. Instead, many of the most crucial moments of the novel are
skipped over, and the reader is left to infer that they have occurred based on later evidence and their
mention in peripheral conversation. Moments which are eluded from the novel include Osmond's proposal
to Isabel, their wedding, and Isabel's decision to return to Rome after traveling to England for Ralph's
funeral. In this way, James tends to skip over the moments in which Isabel chooses to sacrifice her
freedom for Gilbert Osmond; this helps to create the sense that Osmond is a sinister figure, as though, in
choosing to be with him, Isabel is placing herself beyond the reach of the reader.
Portrait of a Lady, as its title would suggest, is largely devoted to the character of Isabel Archer. How does
James use his psychological portrayal of Isabel to justify her decision to surrender her treasured
independence in order to marry Osmond?
James's use of psychology in Portrait of a Lady enables him to unite his thematic exploration with his
character portrayal. In short, the novel is an exploration of the conflict between individualism and social
convention; James ensures that Isabel has a conscious commitment to individualism, but an unconscious
desire for the comfort, safety, and stability of social custom. Isabel's upbringing was haphazard, and her

father often left her to herself; this gave her a sense of intellectual independence, but it also made her long
for a more secure environment. Additionally, Isabel's active imagination was nourished by her selfdirected education in her grandmother's library. When she meets Gilbert Osmond, Isabel is attracted to the
stability and direction his life seems to offer her, and her imagination enables her to overlook his obvious
flawshis arrogance, his narcissism, and his crueltyand to create her own idyllic picture of him. In this
way, Isabel allows her need for social convention to overcome her commitment to independence, and her
marriage to Osmond becomes the tragic turning point in her life.
ANALYTICAL OVERVIEW
The Portrait of a Lady explores the conflict between the individual and society by examining the life of
Isabel Archer, a young American woman who must choose between her independent spirit and the
demands of social convention. After professing and longing to be an independent woman, autonomous and
answerable only to herself, Isabel falls in love with and marries the sinister Gilbert Osmond, who wants
her only for her money and who treats her as an object, almost as part of his art collection. Isabel must
then decide whether to honor her marriage vows and preserve social propriety or to leave her miserable
marriage and escape to a happier, more independent life, possibly with her American suitor Caspar
Goodwood. In the end, after the death of her cousin Ralph, the staunchest advocate of her independence,
Isabel chooses to return to Osmond and maintain her marriage. She is motivated partly by a sense of social
duty, partly by a sense of pride, and partly by the love of her stepdaughter, Pansy, the daughter of Osmond
and his manipulative lover Madame Merle.
As the title of the novel indicates, Isabel is the principal character of the book, and the main focus of the
novel is on presenting, explaining, and developing her character. James is one of America's great
psychological realists, and he uses all his creative powers to ensure that Isabel's conflict is the natural
product of a believable mind, and not merely an abstract philosophical consideration. In brief, Isabel's
independence of spirit is largely a result of her childhood, when she was generally neglected by her father
and allowed to read any book in her grandmother's library; in this way, she supervised her own haphazard
education and allowed her mind to develop without discipline or order. Her natural intelligence has always
ensured that she is at least as quick as anyone around her, and in Albany, New York, she has the reputation
of being a formidable intellect.
After she travels to England with her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, however, it becomes clear that Isabel has a
woefully unstructured imagination, as well as a romantic streak that suits her position as an optimistic,
innocent American. (For James, throughout Portrait of a Lady, America is a place of individualism and
navet, while Europe is a place of sophistication, convention, and decadence.) Isabel often considers her
life as though it were a novel. She also has a tendency to think about herself obsessively and has a vast
faith in her own moral strengthin fact, recognizing that she has never faced hardship, Isabel actually
wishes that she might be made to suffer, so that she could prove her ability to overcome suffering without
betraying her principles.
When Isabel moves to England, her cousin Ralph is so taken with her spirit of independence that he
convinces his dying father to leave half his fortune to Isabel. This is intended to prevent her from ever
having to marry for money, but ironically it attracts the treachery of the novel's villains, Madame Merle
and Gilbert Osmond. They conspire to convince Isabel to marry Osmond in order to gain access to her
wealth. Her marriage to Osmond effectively stifles Isabel's independent spirit, as her husband treats her as
an object and tries to force her to share his opinions and abandon her own.
This is the thematic background of Portrait of a Lady, and James skillfully intertwines the novel's
psychological and thematic elements. Isabel's downfall with Osmond, for instance, enables the book's
most trenchant exploration of the conflict between her desire to conform to social convention and her
fiercely independent mind. It is also perfectly explained by the elements of Isabel's character: her
haphazard upbringing has led her to long for stability and safety, even if they mean a loss of independence,
and her active imagination enables her to create an illusory picture of Osmond, which she believes in more
than the real thing, at least until she is married to him. Once she marries Osmond, Isabel's pride in her
moral strength makes it impossible for her to consider leaving him: she once longed for hardship, and now
that she has found it, it would be hypocritical for her to surrender to it by violating social custom and
abandoning her husband.

In the same way that James unites his psychological and thematic subjects, he also intertwines the novel's
settings with its themes. Set almost entirely among a group of American expatriates living in Europe in the
1860s and 70s, the book relies on a kind of moral geography, in which America represents innocence,
individualism, and capability; Europe represents decadence, sophistication, and social convention; and
England represents the best mix of the two. Isabel moves from America to England to continental Europe,
and at each stage she comes to mirror her surroundings, gradually losing a bit of independence with each
move. Eventually she lives in Rome, the historic heart of continental Europe, and it is here that she
endures her greatest hardship with Gilbert Osmond.
Narratively, James uses many of his most characteristic techniques in Portrait of a Lady. In addition to his
polished, elegant prose and his sedate, slow pacing, he utilizes a favorite technique of skipping over some
of the novel's main events in telling the story. Instead of narrating moments such as Isabel's wedding with
Osmond, James skips over them, relating that they have happened only after the fact, in peripheral
conversations. This literary technique is known as ellipses. In the novel, James most often uses his
elliptical technique in scenes when Isabel chooses to value social custom over her independenceher
acceptance of Gilbert's proposal, their wedding, her decision to return to Rome after briefly leaving for
Ralph's funeral at the end of the novel. James uses this method to create the sense that, in these moments,
Isabel is no longer accessible to the reader; in a sense, by choosing to be with Gilbert Osmond, Isabel is
lost.
18JAMES, HENRY: THE AMBASSADORS
CONTEXT
Henry James was born in New York City into an intellectually gifted and financially secure family on
April 15, 1843. His father, Henry James, Sr., was a well-known theologian and thinker, and his mother,
Mary Robertson Walsh, was the daughter of a wealthy Albany cotton merchant and a devout Presbyterian.
Henry was the second of five children born to the couple. His siblings include the distinguished
philosopher and psychologist William James and the noted diarist Alice James. The family spent Henrys
early years traveling back and forth across the Atlantic, and he was subsequently educated in Geneva,
Paris, London, and Bonn. At 19, he spent a year at Harvard Law School but did not find inspiration or
contentment in the study of law. Two years later, he published his first short story, A Tragedy of Errors
(1864), and decided to dedicate himself entirely to writing literature. Soon after, James became a frequent
contributor to the Nation and Atlantic Monthly magazines, where he published short fiction, essays, and
other types of writing for the next six years.
In 1876, after a short sojourn to Paris as a contributor to the New York Tribune, James settled in England,
where he would reside for the remainder of his life. As an American in England, James found not only the
environment that best suited his personal comfort but also one that fascinated him enough to drive his
greatest literary works. The publication of Daisy Miller (1878), the story of a nave American girl
attempting to navigate the complex corridors of European high society, established James as a writer of
international success and set forth what would become one of Jamess most reoccurring topical concerns:
the American abroad. The postCivil War economic upswing had made many wealthy Americans eager to
visit the Old World. The refined cultural trappings of European culture, however, often left brusque
Americans feeling alienated and unsure. This common occurrence gave Jamess interest in the culture
clash a potent currency and a contemporary relevance, and it helped foster his subsequent popularityone
that extends to The Ambassadors, a work that deals thematically with many different American reactions
to European culture.
Of the 20 novels, 112 stories and 12 plays he published in his lifetime, James considered The
Ambassadors to be his most perfect work of art. The novel was first published serially in 1903 in the
North American Review, and it was published two more timesin altered American and British editions
later that same year. The Ambassadors is in many ways a typical Jamesian novel in that it deals with the
psychological interior of a character obsessed with self-refection and preoccupied with regret. American
novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and French novelist Honor de Balzac were among the writers who most
influenced James and helped inspire Jamess unique approach to novel writing. In Hawthornes writing,
James found a frank discussion of human psychological complexity; in Balzacs, James found elegant

details of realist descriptionboth of which he would incorporate into his own work. Jamess other late
novels resemble The Ambassadors stylistically and structurally. Together, these three novelsThe Wings
of The Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904)are often read as a cohesive
trilogy. Many critics see them as one masterpiece in three parts.
Throughout his life, James kept up voluminous correspondence with many of the greatest thinkers and
writers of the turn of the century, including Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells. Nowhere in the letters is there
evidence that James ever had a romantic relationship or a consummate sexual experience, and nowhere in
this large body of written work is there any clear explanation as to why. Some biographers speculate that
James was a closeted homosexual, others point to a traumatic childhood incident that left him with an
obscure hurt, and still others hypothesize that the early death of his beloved cousin Mary Minnie
Templewho became the template for many of his early female charactersleft him romantically
cynical. Whatever the truth may have been, James often used his fiction to explore the terrain of the life
unlived. This topic, along with his interest in insular psychological narrative and New World/Old World
conflict, is the most common theme James explores.
Besides short visits, and one extended stay from 1904 to 1905, James never lived in America after his
youth, but he continued to be an American in spirit and on paper. Nevertheless, he was distressed by the
outbreak of World War I and the United Statess initial refusal to enter the war. Consequently, in 1915, he
became a British citizen as a sign of appreciation to his adopted country and as a protest against the
country of his birth. While in London on December 2, 1915, James suffered a severe stroke and was put in
the hospital. He died three months later on February 28, 1916, at age seventy-three, with two unfinished
novels in his desk. These novels, The Sense of the Past (1917) and The Ivory Tower (1917), as well as an
earlier memoir, The Middle Years (1917), were published posthumously. Henry James was the twentieth
centurys first truly international writer and one of modern literatures most astute stylists. Today, his
impact can be felt in the work of such contemporary writers as Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan.
THEMES
The Importance of Place
Throughout the novel, the narrator constantly locates events in specific places, and characters repeatedly
refer to specific locations. James foregrounds the importance of place right from the beginning by
emphasizing how different Strether feels in Europe than in the United States. Upon meeting in England,
Miss Gostrey tells Strether that she has met his friend Waymarsh in Milrose, Connecticut. Likewise,
Strether explains that he comes from Woollett, Massachusetts. The specificity of location is a form of
shorthand for the characters: where someone comes from gives all sorts of information about that persons
likes, dislikes, habits, and behavior. Miss Gostrey assumes that Chad has a virtuous relationship with a
woman simply by hearing that Chad has gone to Cannes, France. Had the relationship not been virtuous,
she reasons, Chad would not have been able to travel to such an exclusive place. She similarly reassures
Strether about little Bilham by explaining, hes all righthes one of us (that is, an American). In fact,
the importance of place and location spurs the novels plot: Mrs. Newsome sends Strether to rescue Chad
precisely because of where he is living. The family in Woollett worries about Chad because hes living in
Paris, a city known at the time for its debauchery and immorality.
The Lived vs. Unlived Life
As a character, Strether represents the struggle to live life to the fullest extent. When Strether first meets
Miss Gostrey, he articulates his inability to fully appreciate the moments of his life. He feels as though he
has suffered from this inability throughout his entire youth and adulthood, and he regrets having missed
out on significant life experiences. Now middle-aged, Strether fears that he will never be able to live fully
in the moment. But, in Paris, he begins to experience truly saturated moments. Thanks to the frank advice
and forthright guidance of Miss Gostrey, Strether learns to let go of the pain of regret and begins to live in
the present. In this way, he embodies the theme of the full, richly lived life versus the staid, boring unlived
life that is central to The Ambassadors. Strether originally goes to Paris with the intention of helping Chad
fulfill his potentialas a businessman in Woollett. Yet, Strether eventually feels that Chad would lead a
richer life by staying in Paris.

Strether further embodies the theme of the lived versus unlived life through his interactions with other
characters. Once Strether realizes the benefits of truly living life, he begins to lecture such characters as
little Bilham about enjoying their youth. In Glorianis garden, at the end of the first part of the novel,
Strether corners little Bilham and tells him, with earnest optimism, to live life to the fullest. Strether
believes he has missed his opportunity to experience all of what life has to offer, and he wants his young
friends to learn from his mistakes. Nevertheless, Strether fails to convince Chad to stay in Europe with
Madame de Vionnet. He blames Chads lack of imagination for his desire to return to the United States
and take over the family business. Ultimately, Strether leaves Europe as well, having decided that life has
in fact passed him by.
The American Abroad
After the Civil War, the American economy flourished, allowing the wealthy to travel to other places,
particularly Europe. The American abroad became a popular character in literature. Henry James himself
was an American abroad, and much of his writing explores the American experience in foreign lands. Just
about every character in The Ambassadors comes from the United States and now lives in Europe. The
manner in which each character responds to the European environment speaks to the larger experience of
Americans abroad. For instance, Jim Pocock wants to see the vice and opulence for which Paris has
become famous in the United States. In contrast, Waymarsh hates Paris because it fails to offer him what
he likes about his American home. These two characters represent opposite sides of the same American
provincialism. Neither character is able to appreciate what is truly great about Paris: its confident, age-old
culture and its reliance on culturalas opposed to monetaryvalues.
Unlike the other characters, Strether represents the best type of American abroad. Strether learns how to
see Europe through the experienced expatriate Miss Gostrey, herself an American abroad. He appreciates
Paris for itself and for its difference from Woollett, Massachusetts. Strether represents the kind of
American James thought he was: an American capable of appreciating the complex and rich culture of
Europe. But, like James, Strether also took the wisdom gained from the venerable Old World and
transferred it back to America. Strether leaves Europe at the end of the novel a changed man, and he
returns to the United States with a new perspective.
MOTIFS
Water
Both Strether and the narrator use water imagery to describe female characters, particularly the way
Strether relates to these women. After Miss Gostrey has gone away and left Strether to digest many
significant events on his own, he finds that he no longer depends on her help to properly understand the
events he witnesses. He then refers to her as one pail among many in his life, as one of the tributaries
from which the water of meaning he seeks to gather flows. Likewise, he describes Mrs. Newsome as a
large iceberg, as if to suggest both her firm, stubborn, insistence on certain ideas and to accentuate her
geographic distance from the matters at hand. Finally, he refers to Madame de Vionnet as a boat on water
that attracts him. Later, as Strether becomes more involved with Madame de Vionnet, he remarks that if
her boat sinks, he will sink as well, because he has agreed to help her keep Chad and thus is in her boat.
Finally, in the climax of the novel, Madame de Vionnet and Chad appear in an actual boat, exposing the
true nature of their relationship to Strether. In this way, water and water-related imagery coalesce to serve
as a constant reminder of Strethers complex and varied relationships to the women of the novel.
Virgin Mary
The similarity between the names Maria (Gostrey) and Marie (de Vionnet) suggests that these women
function as altered versions of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ. According to the tenets of
Christianity, the Virgin Mary symbolizes life, purity, holiness, and wisdom. Throughout The Ambassadors,
Maria Gostrey and Marie de Vionnet serve as important teachers and wisdom givers, for Strether and for
others. Miss Gostrey, for instance, makes her living as a guide to Europe for Americans. Through her eyes,
Strether learns to properly assess the culture of Paris. Likewise, Strether imagines that Chads growth as a
person is due to the nurturing influence of a motherlike figure. Strether sees Madame de Vionnet as a
paragon of virtue and thus imagines that she has been the constructive force in Chads maturity. His

discovery of the immoral relationship between Madame de Vionnet and Chad so shocks Strether that he
decides to leave Europe. Strether also rejects Miss Gostreys offer of love. His faith in the purity of
women has been so shaken that he feels he can no longer trust even his good friend, Miss Gostrey.
SYMBOLS
Gardens
The gardens in The Ambassadors function like miniature Gardens of Eden. At many key points in the
novel, characters enter gardens in which they are then enticed by or learn things that may lure away their
innocence. Strether and Miss Gostrey have their first real chat in the garden of their hotel in England.
Early on, Strether spends time in Luxembourg Gardens on the Parisian Left Bank. There, he first realizes
the Babylon-like qualities of Paris and wonders if the citys effect on his frame of mind will keep him
from properly executing his assigned task of bringing Chad back to the United States. Later, Strether
meets, and falls hard for, Madame de Vionnet, in Glorianis garden. Some critics equate Gloriani with the
biblical serpent, the devil masquerading as a snake who enticed Adam and Eve with the apple. Gloriani
represents the cultural splendor of Europe. At their meeting, both Gloriani and Madame de Vionnet
impress Strether. For Strether, meeting those two characters is equivalent to tasting the fruit of knowledge:
Strether will never be the same again. He loses his innocence and reticence. From that point on, Strether
sees Paris through rose-colored glasses and not only begins to enjoy his stay but also tries to convince
Chad to stay permanently as well.
Paris
Paris symbolizes the social, intellectual, and imaginative freedom of Europe. In Woollett, Massachusetts,
provincial Americans, as epitomized by Mrs. Newsome, fear that Paris will be a corrupting force on Chad,
the prodigal son. Throughout the novel, Woollett represents close-minded provincialism, and James
contrast the small American town with the cosmopolitan European city. At the time, Parisian culture was
thought to encourage sexual misconduct and vile relationships. Mrs. Newsome assumesand fearsthat
Chads time in Paris will expose him to these forces. Strether remembers his first visit to Paris as a young
manand he fears that his return to the vast bright Babylon, as he calls Paris, will negatively affect
him. He correctly realizes that his delight in Paris will permanently change him. But, as the novel
progresses, Strether discovers that the trade-off is worth it. He enjoys Paris, and he welcomes the
subsequent changes in his personality. In Woollett, social proprieties and a timid, young culture make
people anxious and preoccupied. In Paris, however, Strether learns that he is able to live in the present
moment, fully enjoying life.
Woollett
Although no part of The Ambassadors takes place in Woollett, Massachusetts, throughout the novel the
city figures as a symbol of the close-minded provincialism of small-town America. Initially, Strether is
embarrassed to report to Miss Gostrey that he is from Woollett, because he identifies Woollett with all
those things that oppose Parisian openness. Woollett, in the heart of New England, symbolizes the
immature American cultural landscape. Timid, young American culture is so unsure of itself that it fears
the influence of all outside forces, including the culturally rich Paris. Eventually, after Strether has
experienced the positive effects of Parisian social freedom, he declares that Woollett has as a female
cultureone characterized by gossiping, fearful women, like Sarah Pocock and Mrs. Newsome. He
realizes that if Chad returns to Woollett, Chad will lose the refinement he has gained in Paris and become
just one thing: a man out to make money. In this way, Woollett also represents the coarse, capitalistic
nature of America in contrast to the artistic, aesthetic Parisian sensibility.

19JOYCE, JAMES: A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

CONTEXT

James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in the town of Rathgar, near Dublin, Ireland. He was the
oldest of ten children born to a well-meaning but financially inept father and a solemn, pious mother.
Joyce's parents managed to scrape together enough money to send their talented son to the Clongowes
Wood College, a prestigious boarding school, and then to Belvedere College, where Joyce excelled as an
actor and writer. Later, he attended University College in Dublin, where he became increasingly
committed to language and literature as a champion of Modernism. In 1902, Joyce left the university and
moved to Paris, but briefly returned to Ireland in 1903 upon the death of his mother. Shortly after his
mother's death, Joyce began work on the story that would later become A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man.
Published in serial form in 19141915, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man draws on many details
from Joyce's early life. The novel's protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is in many ways Joyce's fictional double
Joyce had even published stories under the pseudonym "Stephen Daedalus" before writing the novel.
Like Joyce himself, Stephen is the son of an impoverished father and a highly devout Catholic mother.
Also like Joyce, he attends Clongowes Wood, Belvedere, and University Colleges, struggling with
questions of faith and nationality before leaving Ireland to make his own way as an artist. Many of the
scenes in the novel are fictional, but some of its most powerful moments are autobiographical: both the
Christmas dinner scene and Stephen's first sexual experience with the Dublin prostitute closely resemble
actual events in Joyce's life.
In addition to drawing heavily on Joyce's personal life, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man also makes
a number of references to the politics and religion of early-twentieth-century Ireland. When Joyce was
growing up, Ireland had been under British rule since the sixteenth century, and tensions between Ireland
and Britain had been especially high since the potato blight of 1845. In addition to political strife, there
was considerable religious tension: the majority of Irish, including the Joyces, were Catholics, and
strongly favored Irish independence. The Protestant minority, on the other hand, mostly wished to remain
united with Britain.
Around the time Joyce was born, the Irish nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell was spearheading the
movement for Irish independence. In 1890, however, Parnell's longstanding affair with a married woman
was exposed, leading the Catholic Church to condemn him and causing many of his former followers to
turn against him. Many Irish nationalists blamed Parnell's death, which occurred only a year later, on the
Catholic Church. Indeed, we see these strong opinions about Parnell surface in A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man during an emotional Christmas dinner argument among members of the Dedalus family. By
1900, the Irish people felt largely united in demanding freedom from British rule. In A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man, the young Stephen's friends at University College frequently confront him with
political questions about this struggle between Ireland and England.
After completing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in Zurich in 1915, Joyce returned to Paris, where
he wrote two more major novels, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, over the course of the next several years.
These three novels, along with a short story collection, Dubliners, form the core of his remarkable literary
career. He died in 1941.
Today, Joyce is celebrated as one of the great literary pioneers of the twentieth century. He was one of the
first writers to make extensive and convincing use of stream of consciousness, a stylistic form in which
written prose seeks to represent the characters' stream of inner thoughts and perceptions rather than render
these characters from an objective, external perspective. This technique, used in A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man mostly during the opening sections and in Chapter 5, sometimes makes for difficult reading.
With effort, however, the seemingly jumbled perceptions of stream of consciousness can crystallize into a
coherent and sophisticated portrayal of a character's experience.
Another stylistic technique for which Joyce is noted is the epiphany, a moment in which a character makes
a sudden, profound realizationwhether prompted by an external object or a voice from withinthat
creates a change in his or her perception of the world. Joyce uses epiphany most notably in Dubliners, but

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is full of these sudden moments of spiritual revelation as well.
Most notable is a scene in which Stephen sees a young girl wading at the beach, which strikes him with
the sudden realization that an appreciation for beauty can be truly good. This moment is a classic example
of Joyce's belief that an epiphany can dramatically alter the human spirit in a matter of just a few seconds.
THEMES
The Development of Individual Consciousness
Perhaps the most famous aspect of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce's innovative use of
stream of consciousness, a style in which the author directly transcribes the thoughts and sensations that
go through a character's mind, rather than simply describing those sensations from the external standpoint
of an observer. Joyce's use of stream of consciousness makes A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a
story of the development of Stephen's mind. In the first chapter, the very young Stephen is only capable of
describing his world in simple words and phrases. The sensations that he experiences are all jumbled
together with a child's lack of attention to cause and effect. Later, when Stephen is a teenager obsessed
with religion, he is able to think in a clearer, more adult manner. Paragraphs are more logically ordered
than in the opening sections of the novel, and thoughts progress logically. Stephen's mind is more mature
and he is now more coherently aware of his surroundings. Nonetheless, he still trusts blindly in the church,
and his passionate emotions of guilt and religious ecstasy are so strong that they get in the way of rational
thought. It is only in the final chapter, when Stephen is in the university, that he seems truly rational. By
the end of the novel, Joyce renders a portrait of a mind that has achieved emotional, intellectual, and
artistic adulthood.
The development of Stephen's consciousness in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is particularly
interesting because, insofar as Stephen is a portrait of Joyce himself, Stephen's development gives us
insight into the development of a literary genius. Stephen's experiences hint at the influences that
transformed Joyce himself into the great writer he is considered today: Stephen's obsession with language;
his strained relations with religion, family, and culture; and his dedication to forging an aesthetic of his
own mirror the ways in which Joyce related to the various tensions in his life during his formative years.
In the last chapter of the novel, we also learn that genius, though in many ways a calling, also requires
great work and considerable sacrifice. Watching Stephen's daily struggle to puzzle out his aesthetic
philosophy, we get a sense of the great task that awaits him.
The Pitfalls of Religious Extremism
Brought up in a devout Catholic family, Stephen initially ascribes to an absolute belief in the morals of the
church. As a teenager, this belief leads him to two opposite extremes, both of which are harmful. At first,
he falls into the extreme of sin, repeatedly sleeping with prostitutes and deliberately turning his back on
religion. Though Stephen sins willfully, he is always aware that he acts in violation of the church's rules.
Then, when Father Arnall's speech prompts him to return to Catholicism, he bounces to the other extreme,
becoming a perfect, near fanatical model of religious devotion and obedience. Eventually, however,
Stephen realizes that both of these lifestylesthe completely sinful and the completely devoutare
extremes that have been false and harmful. He does not want to lead a completely debauched life, but also
rejects austere Catholicism because he feels that it does not permit him the full experience of being
human. Stephen ultimately reaches a decision to embrace life and celebrate humanity after seeing a young
girl wading at a beach. To him, the girl is a symbol of pure goodness and of life lived to the fullest.
The Role of the Artist
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explores what it means to become an artist. Stephen's decision at
the end of the novelto leave his family and friends behind and go into exile in order to become an artist
suggests that Joyce sees the artist as a necessarily isolated figure. In his decision, Stephen turns his back
on his community, refusing to accept the constraints of political involvement, religious devotion, and
family commitment that the community places on its members.
However, though the artist is an isolated figure, Stephen's ultimate goal is to give a voice to the very
community that he is leaving. In the last few lines of the novel, Stephen expresses his desire to "forge in
the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." He recognizes that his community will

always be a part of him, as it has created and shaped his identity. When he creatively expresses his own
ideas, he will also convey the voice of his entire community. Even as Stephen turns his back on the
traditional forms of participation and membership in a community, he envisions his writing as a service to
the community.
The Need for Irish Autonomy
Despite his desire to steer clear of politics, Stephen constantly ponders Ireland's place in the world. He
concludes that the Irish have always been a subservient people, allowing outsiders to control them. In his
conversation with the dean of studies at the university, he realizes that even the language of the Irish
people really belongs to the English. Stephen's perception of Ireland's subservience has two effects on his
development as an artist. First, it makes him determined to escape the bonds that his Irish ancestors have
accepted. As we see in his conversation with Davin, Stephen feels an anxious need to emerge from his
Irish heritage as his own person, free from the shackles that have traditionally confined his country: "Do
you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made?" Second, Stephen's perception
makes him determined to use his art to reclaim autonomy for Ireland. Using the borrowed language of
English, he plans to write in a style that will be both autonomous from England and true to the Irish
people.
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text's
major themes.
MOTIFS
Music
Music, especially singing, appears repeatedly throughout A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Stephen's appreciation of music is closely tied to his love for the sounds of language. As a very young
child, he turns Dante's threats into a song, " [A]pologise, pull out his eyes, pull out his eyes, apologise."
Singing is more than just language, howeverit is language transformed by vibrant humanity. Indeed,
music appeals to the part of Stephen that wants to live life to the fullest. We see this aspect of music near
the end of the novel, when Stephen suddenly feels at peace upon hearing a woman singing. Her voice
prompts him to recall his resolution to leave Ireland and become a writer, reinforcing his determination to
celebrate life through writing.
Flight
Stephen Dedalus's very name embodies the idea of flight. Stephen's namesake, Daedalus, is a figure from
Greek mythology, a renowned craftsman who designs the famed Labyrinth of Crete for King Minos.
Minos keeps Daedalus and his son Icarus imprisoned on Crete, but Daedalus makes plans to escape by
using feathers, twine, and wax to fashion a set of wings for himself and his son. Daedalus escapes
successfully, but Icarus flies too high. The sun's heat melts the wax holding Icarus's wings together, and he
plummets to his death in the sea.
In the context of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we can see Stephen as representative of both
Daedalus and Icarus, as Stephen's father also has the last name of Dedalus. With this mythological
reference, Joyce implies that Stephen must always balance his desire to flee Ireland with the danger of
overestimating his own abilitiesthe intellectual equivalent of Icarus's flight too close to the sun. To
diminish the dangers of attempting too much too soon, Stephen bides his time at the university, developing
his aesthetic theory fully before attempting to leave Ireland and write seriously. The birds that appear to
Stephen in the third section of Chapter 5 signal that it is finally time for Stephen, now fully formed as an
artist, to take flight himself.
Prayers, Secular Songs, and Latin Phrases
We can often tell Stephen's state of mind by looking at the fragments of prayers, songs, and Latin phrases
that Joyce inserts into the text. When Stephen is a schoolboy, Joyce includes childish, sincere prayers that
mirror the manner in which a child might devoutly believe in the church, even without understanding the
meaning of its religious doctrine. When Stephen prays in church despite the fact that he has committed a
mortal sin, Joyce transcribes a long passage of the Latin prayer, but it is clear that Stephen merely speaks

the words without believing them. Then, when Stephen is at the university, Latin is used as a jokehis
friends translate colloquial phrases like "peace over the whole bloody globe" into Latin because they find
the academic sound of the translation amusing. This jocular use of Latin mocks both the young men's
education and the stern, serious manner in which Latin is used in the church. These linguistic jokes
demonstrate that Stephen is no longer serious about religion. Finally, Joyce includes a few lines from the
Irish folk song "Rosie O'Grady" near the end of the novel. These simple lines reflect the peaceful feeling
that the song brings to Stephen and Cranly, as well as the traditional Irish culture that Stephen plans to
leave behind. Throughout the novel, such prayers, songs, and phrases form the background of Stephen's
life.
SYMBOLS
Green and Maroon
Stephen associates the colors green and maroon with his governess, Dante, and with two leaders of the
Irish resistance, Charles Parnell and Michael Davitt. In a dream after Parnell's death, Stephen sees Dante
dressed in green and maroon as the Irish people mourn their fallen leader. This vision indicates that
Stephen associates the two colors with the way Irish politics are played out among the members of his
own family.
Emma
Emma appears only in glimpses throughout most of Stephen's young life, and he never gets to know her as
a person. Instead, she becomes a symbol of pure love, untainted by sexuality or reality. Stephen worships
Emma as the ideal of feminine purity. When he goes through his devoutly religious phase, he imagines his
reward for his piety as a union with Emma in heaven. It is only later, when he is at the university, that we
finally see a real conversation between Stephen and Emma. Stephen's diary entry regarding this
conversation portrays Emma as a real, friendly, and somewhat ordinary girl, but certainly not the goddess
Stephen earlier makes her out to be. This more balanced view of Emma mirrors Stephen's abandonment of
the extremes of complete sin and complete devotion in favor of a middle path, the devotion to the
appreciation of beauty.
20JOYCE, JAMES: DUBLINERS
CONTEXT
James Joyce was born into a middle-class, Catholic family in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin, on February 2,
1882. The familys prosperity dwindled soon after Joyces birth, forcing them to move from their
comfortable home to the unfashionable and impoverished area of North Dublin. Nonetheless, Joyce
attended a prestigious Jesuit school and went on to study philosophy and languages at University College,
Dublin. He moved to Paris after graduation in 1902 to pursue medical school, but instead he turned his
attention to writing. In 1903 he returned to Dublin, where he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, the
following year. From then on, Joyce made his home in other countries. From 1905 to 1915 he and Nora
lived in Rome and Trieste, Italy, and from 1915 to 1919 they lived in Zurich, Switzerland. Between World
War I and World War II, they lived in Paris. They returned to Zurich in 1940, where Joyce died in 1941.
In 1907, at the age of twenty-five, Joyce published Chamber Music, a collection of poetry. Previously,
hed also written a short-story collection, Dubliners, which was published in 1914. Though Joyce had
written the book years earlier, the stories contained characters and events that were alarmingly similar to
real people and places, raising concerns about libel. Joyce indeed based many of the characters in
Dubliners on real people, and such suggestive details, coupled with the books historical and geographical
precision and piercing examination of relationships, flustered anxious publishers. Joyces autobiographical
novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man followed Dubliners in 1916, and a play, Exiles, followed in
1918. Joyce is most famous for his later experimental novels, Ulysses (1922), which maps the Dublin
wanderings of its protagonist in a single day, and Finnegans Wake (1939). These two works emblematize
his signature stream-of-consciousness prose style, which mirrors characters thoughts without the
limitations of traditional narrative, a style he didnt use in Dubliners.

Ireland permeates all of Joyces writing, especially Ireland during the tumultuous early twentieth century.
The political scene at that time was uncertain but hopeful, as Ireland sought independence from Great
Britain. The nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell, who became active in the 1870s, had reinvigorated Irish
politics with his proposed Home Rule Bill, which aimed to give Ireland a greater voice in British
government. Parnell, dubbed the Uncrowned King of Ireland, was hugely popular in Ireland, both for
his anti-English views and his support of land ownership for farmers. In 1889, however, his political
career collapsed when his adulterous affair with the married Kitty OShea was made public. Kittys
husband had known for years about the affair, but instead of making it public, he attempted to use it to his
political and financial advantage. He waited until he filed for divorce to expose the affair. Both Ireland and
England were scandalized, Parnell refused to resign, and his career never recovered. Parnell died in 1891,
when Joyce was nine years old.
In the last part of the nineteenth century, after Parnells death, Ireland underwent a dramatic cultural
revival. Irish citizens struggled to define what it meant to be Irish, and a movement began to reinvigorate
Irish language and culture. The movement celebrated Irish literature and encouraged people to learn the
Irish language, which many people were forgoing in favor of the more modern English language.
Ultimately, the cultural revival of the late nineteenth century gave the Irish a greater sense of pride in their
identity.
Despite the cultural revival, the bitter publicity surrounding Parnells affair, and later his death, dashed all
hopes of Irish independence and unity. Ireland splintered into factions of Protestants and Catholics,
Conservatives and Nationalists. Such social forces form a complex context for Joyces writing, which
repeatedly taps into political and religious matters. Since Joyce spent little of his later life in Ireland, he
did not witness such debates firsthand. However, despite living on the continent, Joyce retained his artistic
interest in the city and country of his birth and ably articulated the Irish experience in his writings.
Dubliners contains fifteen portraits of life in the Irish capital. Joyce focuses on children and adults who
skirt the middle class, such as housemaids, office clerks, music teachers, students, shop girls, swindlers,
and out-of-luck businessmen. Joyce envisioned his collection as a looking glass with which the Irish could
observe and study themselves. In most of the stories, Joyce uses a detached but highly perceptive narrative
voice that displays these lives to the reader in precise detail. Rather than present intricate dramas with
complex plots, these stories sketch daily situations in which not much seems to happena boy visits a
bazaar, a woman buys sweets for holiday festivities, a man reunites with an old friend over a few drinks.
Though these events may not appear profound, the characters intensely personal and often tragic
revelations certainly are. The stories in Dubliners peer into the homes, hearts, and minds of people whose
lives connect and intermingle through the shared space and spirit of Dublin. A character from one story
will mention the name of a character in another story, and stories often have settings that appear in other
stories. Such subtle connections create a sense of shared experience and evoke a map of Dublin life that
Joyce would return to again and again in his later works.
THEMES
The Prison of Routine
Restrictive routines and the repetitive, mundane details of everyday life mark the lives of Joyces
Dubliners and trap them in circles of frustration, restraint, and violence. Routine affects characters who
face difficult predicaments, but it also affects characters who have little open conflict in their lives. The
young boy of An Encounter yearns for a respite from the rather innocent routine of school, only to find
himself sitting in a field listening to a man recycle disturbing thoughts. In Counterparts, Farrington, who
makes a living copying documents, demonstrates the dangerous potential of repetition. Farringtons work
mirrors his social and home life, causing his angerand abusive behaviorto worsen. Farrington, with
his explosive physical reactions, illustrates more than any other character the brutal ramifications of a
repetitive existence.
The most consistent consequences of following mundane routines are loneliness and unrequited love. In
Araby, a young boy wants to go to the bazaar to buy a gift for the girl he loves, but he is late because his
uncle becomes mired in the routine of his workday. In A Painful Case Mr. Duffys obsession with his
predictable life costs him a golden chance at love. Eveline, in the story that shares her name, gives up her
chance at love by choosing her familiar life over an unknown adventure, even though her familiar routines

are tinged with sadness and abuse. The circularity of these Dubliners lives effectively traps them,
preventing them from being receptive to new experiences and happiness.
The Desire for Escape
The characters in Dubliners may be citizens of the Irish capital, but many of them long for escape and
adventure in other countries. Such longings, however, are never actually realized by the stories
protagonists. The schoolboy yearning for escape and Wild West excitement in An Encounter is relegated
to the imagination and to the confines of Dublin, while Evelines hopes for a new life in Argentina
dissolve on the docks of the citys river. Little Chandler enviously fantasizes about the London press job
of his old friend and his travels to liberal cities like Paris, but the shame he feels about such desires stops
him from taking action to pursue similar goals. More often than offering a literal escape from a physical
place, the stories tell of opportunities to escape from smaller, more personal restraints. Eveline, for
example, seeks release from domestic duties through marriage. In Two Gallants, Lenehan wishes to
escape his life of schemes, but he cannot take action to do so. Mr. Doran wishes to escape marrying Polly
in A Boarding House, but he knows he must relent. The impulse to escape from unhappy situations
defines Joyces Dubliners, as does the inability to actually undertake the process.
The Intersection of Life and Death
Dubliners opens with The Sisters, which explores death and the process of remembering the dead, and
closes with The Dead, which invokes the quiet calm of snow that covers both the dead and the living.
These stories bookend the collection and emphasize its consistent focus on the meeting point between life
and death. Encounters between the newly dead and the living, such as in The Sisters and A Painful
Case, explicitly explore this meeting point, showing what kind of aftershocks a death can have for the
living. Mr. Duffy, for example, reevaluates his life after learning about Mrs. Sinicos death in A Painful
Case, while the narrator of The Sisters doesnt know what to feel upon the death of the priest. In other
stories, including Eveline, Ivy Day in the Committee Room, and The Dead, memories of the dead
haunt the living and color every action. In Ivy Day, for example, Parnell hovers in the political talk.
The dead cast a shadow on the present, drawing attention to the mistakes and failures that people make
generation after generation. Such overlap underscores Joyces interest in life cycles and their repetition,
and also his concern about those living dead figures like Maria in Clay who move through life with
little excitement or emotion except in reaction to everyday snags and delays. The monotony of Dublin life
leads Dubliners to live in a suspended state between life and death, in which each person has a pulse but is
incapable of profound, life-sustaining action.
MOTIFS
Paralysis
In most of the stories in Dubliners, a character has a desire, faces obstacles to it, then ultimately relents
and suddenly stops all action. These moments of paralysis show the characters inability to change their
lives and reverse the routines that hamper their wishes. Such immobility fixes the Dubliners in cycles of
experience. The young boy in Araby halts in the middle of the dark bazaar, knowing that he will never
escape the tedious delays of Dublin and attain love. Eveline freezes like an animal, fearing the possible
new experience of life away from home. These moments evoke the theme of death in life as they show
characters in a state of inaction and numbness. The opening story introduces this motif through the
character of Father Flynn, whose literal paralysis traps him in a state suspended between life and death.
Throughout the collection, this stifling state appears as part of daily life in Dublin, which all Dubliners
ultimately acknowledge and accept.
Epiphany
Characters in Dubliners experience both great and small revelations in their everyday lives, moments that
Joyce himself referred to as epiphanies, a word with connotations of religious revelation. These
epiphanies do not bring new experiences and the possibility of reform, as one might expect such moments
to. Rather, these epiphanies allow characters to better understand their particular circumstances, usually
rife with sadness and routine, which they then return to with resignation and frustration. Sometimes
epiphanies occur only on the narrative level, serving as signposts to the reader that a storys character has

missed a moment of self-reflection. For example, in Clay, during the Halloween game when Maria
touches the clay, which signifies an early death, she thinks nothing of it, overlooking a moment that could
have revealed something about herself or the people around her. Araby, Eveline, A Little Cloud, A
Painful Case, and The Dead all conclude with epiphanies that the characters fully register, yet these
epiphanies are tinged with frustration, sadness, and regret. At the end of The Dead, Gabriels revelation
clarifies the connection between the dead and the living, an epiphany that resonates throughout Dubliners
as a whole. The epiphany motif highlights the repeated routine of hope and passive acceptance that marks
each of these portraits, as well as the general human condition.
Betrayal
Deception, deceit, and treachery scar nearly every relationship in the stories in Dubliners, demonstrating
the unease with which people attempt to connect with each other, both platonically and romantically. In
The Boarding House, Mrs. Mooney traps Mr. Doran into marrying her daughter Polly, and Mr. Doran
dreads the union but will meet his obligation to pursue it. In Two Gallants, Lenehan and Corley both
suspect each other of cheating and scheming, though they join forces to swindle innocent housemaids out
of their livelihoods. Concerns about betrayal frame the conversations in Ivy Day in the Committee
Room, particularly as Parnells supporters see his demise as the result of pro-British treachery. Until his
affair was exposed, Parnell had been a popular and influential politician, and many Irish believe the
British were responsible for his downfall. All of the men in Ivy Day display wavering beliefs that
suggest betrayal looms in Irelands political present. In The Dead, Gabriel feels betrayed by his wifes
emotional outpouring for a former lover. This feeling evokes not only the sense of displacement and
humiliation that all of these Dubliners fear but also the tendency for people to categorize many acts as
betrayal in order to shift blame from themselves onto others.
Religion
References to priests, religious belief, and spiritual experience appear throughout the stories in Dubliners
and ultimately paint an unflattering portrait of religion. In the first story, The Sisters, Father Flynn
cannot keep a strong grip on the chalice and goes mad in a confessional box. This story marks religions
first appearance as a haunting but incompetent and dangerous component of Dublin life. The strange man
of An Encounter wears the same clothing as Father Flynn, connecting his lascivious behavior, however
remotely, to the Catholic Church. In Grace, Father Purdon shares his name with Dublins red-light
district, one of many subtle ironies in that story. In Grace, Tom Kernans fall and absent redemption
highlight the pretension and inefficacy of religionreligion is just another daily ritual of repetition that
advances no one. In other stories, such as Araby, religion acts as a metaphor for dedication that
dwindles. The presence of so many religious references also suggests that religion traps Dubliners into
thinking about their lives after death.
SYMBOLS
Windows
Windows in Dubliners consistently evoke the anticipation of events or encounters that are about to
happen. For example, the narrator in The Sisters looks into a window each night, waiting for signs of
Father Flynns death, and the narrator in Araby watches from his parlor window for the appearance of
Mangans sister. The suspense for these young boys centers in that space separating the interior life from
the exterior life. Windows also mark the threshold between domestic space and the outside world, and
through them the characters in Dubliners observe their own lives as well as the lives of others. Both
Eveline and Gabriel turn to windows when they reflect on their own situations, both of which center on
the relationship between the individual and the individuals place in a larger context.
Dusk and Nighttime
Joyces Dublin is perpetually dark. No streams of sunlight or cheery landscapes illuminate these stories.
Instead, a spectrum of grey and black underscores their somber tone. Characters walk through Dublin at
dusk, an in-between time that hovers between the activity of day and the stillness of night, and live their
most profound moments in the darkness of late hours. These dark backdrops evoke the half-life or in-

between state the characters in Dubliners occupy, both physically and emotionally, suggesting the
intermingling of life and d eath that marks every story. In this state, life can exist and proceed, but the
darkness renders Dubliners experiences dire and doomed.
Food
Nearly all of the characters in Dubliners eat or drink, and in most cases food serves as a reminder of both
the threatening dullness of routine and the joys and difficulties of togetherness. In A Painful Case, Mr.
Duffys solitary, duplicated meals are finally interrupted by the shocking newspaper article that reports
Mrs. Sinicos death. This interruption makes him realize that his habits isolate him from the love and
happiness of lifes feast. The party meal in The Dead might evoke conviviality, but the rigid order of
the rich table instead suggests military battle. In Two Gallants, Lenehans quiet meal of peas and ginger
beer allows him to dwell on his self-absorbed life, so lacking in meaningful relationships and security,
while the constant imbibing in After the Race fuels Jimmys attempts to convince himself he belongs
with his upper-class companions. Food in Dubliners allows Joyce to portray his characters and their
experiences through a substance that both sustains life yet also symbolizes its restraints.
21SWIFT, JONATHAN: GULLIVERS TRAVELS
CONTEXT
Jonathan Swift, son of the English lawyer Jonathan Swift the elder, was born in Dublin, Ireland, on
November 30, 1667. He grew up there in the care of his uncle before attending Trinity College at the age
of fourteen, where he stayed for seven years, graduating in 1688. In that year, he became the secretary of
Sir William Temple, an English politician and member of the Whig party. In 1694, he took religious orders
in the Church of Ireland and then spent a year as a country parson. He then spent further time in the
service of Temple before returning to Ireland to become the chaplain of the earl of Berkeley. Meanwhile,
he had begun to write satires on the political and religious corruption surrounding him, working on A Tale
of a Tub, which supports the position of the Anglican Church against its critics on the left and the right,
and The Battle of the Books, which argues for the supremacy of the classics against modern thought and
literature. He also wrote a number of political pamphlets in favor of the Whig party. In 1709 he went to
London to campaign for the Irish church but was unsuccessful. After some conflicts with the Whig party,
mostly because of Swifts strong allegiance to the church, he became a member of the more conservative
Tory party in 1710.
Unfortunately for Swift, the Tory government fell out of power in 1714 and Swift, despite his fame for his
writings, fell out of favor. Swift, who had been hoping to be assigned a position in the Church of England,
instead returned to Dublin, where he became the dean of St. Patricks. During his brief time in England,
Swift had become friends with writers such as Alexander Pope, and during a meeting of their literary club,
the Martinus Scriblerus Club, they decided to write satires of modern learning. The third voyage of
Gullivers Travels is assembled from the work Swift did during this time. However, the final work was not
completed until 1726, and the narrative of the third voyage was actually the last one completed. After his
return to Ireland, Swift became a staunch supporter of the Irish against English attempts to weaken their
economy and political power, writing pamphlets such as the satirical A Modest Proposal, in which he
suggests that the Irish problems of famine and overpopulation could be easily solved by having the babies
of poor Irish subjects sold as delicacies to feed the rich.
Gullivers Travels was a controversial work when it was first published in 1726. In fact, it was not until
almost ten years after its first printing that the book appeared with the entire text that Swift had originally
intended it to have. Ever since, editors have excised many of the passages, particularly the more caustic
ones dealing with bodily functions. Even without those passages, however, Gullivers Travels serves as a
biting satire, and Swift ensures that it is both humorous and critical, constantly attacking British and
European society through its descriptions of imaginary countries.
Late in life, Swift seemed to many observers to become even more caustic and bitter than he had been.
Three years before his death, he was declared unable to care for himself, and guardians were appointed.
Based on these facts and on a comparison between Swifts fate and that of his character Gulliver, some
people have concluded that he gradually became insane and that his insanity was a natural outgrowth of

his indignation and outrage against humankind. However, the truth seems to be that Swift was suddenly
incapacitated by a paralytic stroke late in life, and that prior to this incident his mental capacities were
unimpaired.
Gullivers Travels is about a specific set of political conflicts, but if it were nothing more than that it
would long ago have been forgotten. The staying power of the work comes from its depiction of the
human condition and its often despairing, but occasionally hopeful, sketch of the possibilities for
humanity to rein in its baser instincts.
THEMES
Might Versus Right
Gullivers Travels implicitly poses the question of whether physical power or moral righteousness should
be the governing factor in social life. Gulliver experiences the advantages of physical might both as one
who has it, as a giant in Lilliput where he can defeat the Blefuscudian navy by virtue of his immense size,
and as one who does not have it, as a miniature visitor to Brobdingnag where he is harassed by the
hugeness of everything from insects to household pets. His first encounter with another society is one of
entrapment, when he is physically tied down by the Lilliputians; later, in Brobdingnag, he is enslaved by a
farmer. He also observes physical force used against others, as with the Houyhnhnms chaining up of the
Yahoos.
But alongside the use of physical force, there are also many claims to power based on moral correctness.
The whole point of the egg controversy that has set Lilliput against Blefuscu is not merely a cultural
difference but, instead, a religious and moral issue related to the proper interpretation of a passage in their
holy book. This difference of opinion seems to justify, in their eyes at least, the warfare it has sparked.
Similarly, the use of physical force against the Yahoos is justified for the Houyhnhnms by their sense of
moral superiority: they are cleaner, better behaved, and more rational. But overall, the novel tends to show
that claims to rule on the basis of moral righteousness are often just as arbitrary as, and sometimes simply
disguises for, simple physical subjugation. The Laputans keep the lower land of Balnibarbi in check
through force because they believe themselves to be more rational, even though we might see them as
absurd and unpleasant. Similarly, the ruling elite of Balnibarbi believes itself to be in the right in driving
Lord Munodi from power, although we perceive that Munodi is the rational party. Claims to moral
superiority are, in the end, as hard to justify as the random use of physical force to dominate others.
The Individual Versus Society
Like many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands, Gullivers Travels explores the idea of utopia
an imaginary model of the ideal community. The idea of a utopia is an ancient one, going back at least as
far as the description in Platos Republic of a city-state governed by the wise and expressed most famously
in English by Thomas Mores Utopia. Swift nods to both works in his own narrative, though his attitude
toward utopia is much more skeptical, and one of the main aspects he points out about famous historical
utopias is the tendency to privilege the collective group over the individual. The children of Platos
Republic are raised communally, with no knowledge of their biological parents, in the understanding that
this system enhances social fairness. Swift has the Lilliputians similarly raise their offspring collectively,
but its results are not exactly utopian, since Lilliput is torn by conspiracies, jealousies, and backstabbing.
The Houyhnhnms also practice strict family planning, dictating that the parents of two females should
exchange a child with a family of two males, so that the male-to-female ratio is perfectly maintained.
Indeed, they come closer to the utopian ideal than the Lilliputians in their wisdom and rational simplicity.
But there is something unsettling about the Houyhnhnms indistinct personalities and about how they are
the only social group that Gulliver encounters who do not have proper names. Despite minor physical
differences, they are all so good and rational that they are more or less interchangeable, without individual
identities. In their absolute fusion with their society and lack of individuality, they are in a sense the exact
opposite of Gulliver, who has hardly any sense of belonging to his native society and exists only as an
individual eternally wandering the seas. Gullivers intense grief when forced to leave the Houyhnhnms
may have something to do with his longing for union with a community in which he can lose his human
identity. In any case, such a union is impossible for him, since he is not a horse, and all the other societies
he visits make him feel alienated as well.

Gullivers Travels could in fact be described as one of the first novels of modern alienation, focusing on an
individuals repeated failures to integrate into societies to which he does not belong. England itself is not
much of a homeland for Gulliver, and, with his surgeons business unprofitable and his fathers estate
insufficient to support him, he may be right to feel alienated from it. He never speaks fondly or
nostalgically about England, and every time he returns home, he is quick to leave again. Gulliver never
complains explicitly about feeling lonely, but the embittered and antisocial misanthrope we see at the end
of the novel is clearly a profoundly isolated individual. Thus, if Swifts satire mocks the excesses of
communal life, it may also mock the excesses of individualism in its portrait of a miserable and lonely
Gulliver talking to his horses at home in England.
The Limits of Human Understanding
The idea that humans are not meant to know everything and that all understanding has a natural limit is
important in Gullivers Travels. Swift singles out theoretical knowledge in particular for attack: his portrait
of the disagreeable and self-centered Laputans, who show blatant contempt for those who are not sunk in
private theorizing, is a clear satire against those who pride themselves on knowledge above all else.
Practical knowledge is also satirized when it does not produce results, as in the academy of Balnibarbi,
where the experiments for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers amount to nothing. Swift insists that there
is a realm of understanding into which humans are simply not supposed to venture. Thus his depictions of
rational societies, like Brobdingnag and Houyhnhnmland, emphasize not these peoples knowledge or
understanding of abstract ideas but their ability to live their lives in a wise and steady way.
The Brobdingnagian king knows shockingly little about the abstractions of political science, yet his
country seems prosperous and well governed. Similarly, the Houyhnhnms know little about arcane
subjects like astronomy, though they know how long a month is by observing the moon, since that
knowledge has a practical effect on their well-being. Aspiring to higher fields of knowledge would be
meaningless to them and would interfere with their happiness. In such contexts, it appears that living a
happy and well-ordered life seems to be the very thing for which Swift thinks knowledge is useful.
Swift also emphasizes the importance of self-understanding. Gulliver is initially remarkably lacking in
self-reflection and self-awareness. He makes no mention of his emotions, passions, dreams, or aspirations,
and he shows no interest in describing his own psychology to us. Accordingly, he may strike us as
frustratingly hollow or empty, though it is likely that his personal emptiness is part of the overall meaning
of the novel. By the end, he has come close to a kind of twisted self-knowledge in his deranged belief that
he is a Yahoo. His revulsion with the human condition, shown in his shabby treatment of the generous Don
Pedro, extends to himself as well, so that he ends the novel in a thinly disguised state of self-hatred. Swift
may thus be saying that self-knowledge has its necessary limits just as theoretical knowledge does, and
that if we look too closely at ourselves we might not be able to carry on living happily.
MOTIFS
Excrement
While it may seem a trivial or laughable motif, the recurrent mention of excrement in Gullivers Travels
actually has a serious philosophical significance in the narrative. It symbolizes everything that is crass and
ignoble about the human body and about human existence in general, and it obstructs any attempt to view
humans as wholly spiritual or mentally transcendent creatures. Since the Enlightenment culture of
eighteenth-century England tended to view humans optimistically as noble souls rather than vulgar bodies,
Swifts emphasis on the common filth of life is a slap in the face of the philosophers of his day. Thus,
when Gulliver urinates to put out a fire in Lilliput, or when Brobdingnagian flies defecate on his meals, or
when the scientist in Lagado works to transform excrement back into food, we are reminded how very
little human reason has to do with everyday existence. Swift suggests that the human condition in general
is dirtier and lowlier than we might like to believe it is.
Foreign Languages
Gulliver appears to be a gifted linguist, knowing at least the basics of several European languages and
even a fair amount of ancient Greek. This knowledge serves him well, as he is able to disguise himself as a
Dutchman in order to facilitate his entry into Japan, which at the time only admitted the Dutch. But even

more important, his linguistic gifts allow him to learn the languages of the exotic lands he visits with a
dazzling speed and, thus, gain access to their culture quickly. He learns the languages of the Lilliputians,
the Brobdingnagians, and even the neighing tongue of the Houyhnhnms. He is meticulous in recording the
details of language in his narrative, often giving the original as well as the translation. One would expect
that such detail would indicate a cross-cultural sensitivity, a kind of anthropologists awareness of how
things vary from culture to culture. Yet surprisingly, Gullivers mastery of foreign languages generally
does not correspond to any real interest in cultural differences. He compares any of the governments he
visits to that of his native England, and he rarely even speculates on how or why cultures are different at
all. Thus, his facility for translation does not indicate a culturally comparative mind, and we are perhaps
meant to yearn for a narrator who is a bit less able to remember the Brobdingnagian word for lark and
better able to offer a more illuminating kind of cultural analysis.
Clothing
Critics have noted the extraordinary attention that Gulliver pays to clothes throughout his journeys. Every
time he gets a rip in his shirt or is forced to adopt some native garment to replace one of his own, he
recounts the clothing details with great precision. We are told how his pants are falling apart in Lilliput, so
that as the army marches between his legs they get quite an eyeful. We are informed about the mouse skin
he wears in Brobdingnag, and how the finest silks of the land are as thick as blankets on him. In one sense,
these descriptions are obviously an easy narrative device with which Swift can chart his protagonists
progression from one culture to another: the more ragged his clothes become and the stranger his new
wardrobe, the farther he is from the comforts and conventions of England. His journey to new lands is also
thus a journey into new clothes. When he is picked up by Don Pedro after his fourth voyage and offered a
new suit of clothes, Gulliver vehemently refuses, preferring his wild animal skins. We sense that Gulliver
may well never fully reintegrate into European society.
But the motif of clothing carries a deeper, more psychologically complex meaning as well. Gullivers
intense interest in the state of his clothes may signal a deep-seated anxiety about his identity, or lack
thereof. He does not seem to have much selfhood: one critic has called him an abyss, a void where an
individual character should be. If clothes make the man, then perhaps Gullivers obsession with the state
of his wardrobe may suggest that he desperately needs to be fashioned as a personality. Significantly, the
two moments when he describes being naked in the novel are two deeply troubling or humiliating
experiences: the first when he is the boy toy of the Brobdingnagian maids who let him cavort nude on
their mountainous breasts, and the second when he is assaulted by an eleven-year-old Yahoo girl as he
bathes. Both incidents suggest more than mere prudery. Gulliver associates nudity with extreme
vulnerability, even when there is no real danger presenta pre-teen girl is hardly a threat to a grown man,
at least in physical terms. The state of nudity may remind Gulliver of how nonexistent he feels without the
reassuring cover of clothing.
SYMBOLS
Lilliputians
The Lilliputians symbolize humankinds wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence. Swift fully
intends the irony of representing the tiniest race visited by Gulliver as by far the most vainglorious and
smug, both collectively and individually. There is surely no character more odious in all of Gullivers
travels than the noxious Skyresh. There is more backbiting and conspiracy in Lilliput than anywhere else,
and more of the pettiness of small minds who imagine themselves to be grand. Gulliver is a nave
consumer of the Lilliputians grandiose imaginings: he is flattered by the attention of their royal family
and cowed by their threats of punishment, forgetting that they have no real physical power over him. Their
formally worded condemnation of Gulliver on grounds of treason is a model of pompous and selfimportant verbiage, but it works quite effectively on the nave Gulliver.
The Lilliputians show off not only to Gulliver but to themselves as well. There is no mention of armies
proudly marching in any of the other societies Gulliver visitsonly in Lilliput and neighboring Blefuscu
are the six-inch inhabitants possessed of the need to show off their patriotic glories with such displays.
When the Lilliputian emperor requests that Gulliver serve as a kind of makeshift Arch of Triumph for the
troops to pass under, it is a pathetic reminder that their grand paradein full view of Gullivers nether

regionsis supremely silly, a basically absurd way to boost the collective ego of the nation. Indeed, the
war with Blefuscu is itself an absurdity springing from wounded vanity, since the cause is not a material
concern like disputed territory but, rather, the proper interpretation of scripture by the emperors forebears
and the hurt feelings resulting from the disagreement. All in all, the Lilliputians symbolize misplaced
human pride, and point out Gullivers inability to diagnose it correctly.
Brobdingnagians
The Brobdingnagians symbolize the private, personal, and physical side of humans when examined up
close and in great detail. The philosophical era of the Enlightenment tended to overlook the routines of
everyday life and the sordid or tedious little facts of existence, but in Brobdingnag such facts become very
important for Gulliver, sometimes matters of life and death. An eighteenth-century philosopher could
afford to ignore the fly buzzing around his head or the skin pores on his servant girl, but in his shrunken
state Gulliver is forced to pay great attention to such things. He is forced take the domestic sphere
seriously as well. In other lands it is difficult for Gulliver, being such an outsider, to get glimpses of family
relations or private affairs, but in Brobdingnag he is treated as a doll or a plaything, and thus is made privy
to the urination of housemaids and the sexual lives of women. The Brobdingnagians do not symbolize a
solely negative human characteristic, as the Laputans do. They are not merely ridiculoussome aspects of
them are disgusting, like their gigantic stench and the excrement left by their insects, but others are noble,
like the queens goodwill toward Gulliver and the kings commonsense views of politics. More than
anything else, the Brobdingnagians symbolize a dimension of human existence visible at close range,
under close scrutiny.
Laputans
The Laputans represent the folly of theoretical knowledge that has no relation to human life and no use in
the actual world. As a profound cultural conservative, Swift was a critic of the newfangled ideas springing
up around him at the dawn of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, a period of great intellectual
experimentation and theorization. He much preferred the traditional knowledge that had been tested over
centuries. Laputa symbolizes the absurdity of knowledge that has never been tested or applied, the
ludicrous side of Enlightenment intellectualism. Even down below in Balnibarbi, where the local academy
is more inclined to practical application, knowledge is not made socially useful as Swift demands. Indeed,
theoretical knowledge there has proven positively disastrous, resulting in the ruin of agriculture and
architecture and the impoverishment of the population. Even up above, the pursuit of theoretical
understanding has not improved the lot of the Laputans. They have few material worries, dependent as
they are upon the Balnibarbians below. But they are tormented by worries about the trajectories of comets
and other astronomical speculations: their theories have not made them wise, but neurotic and
disagreeable. The Laputans do not symbolize reason itself but rather the pursuit of a form of knowledge
that is not directly related to the improvement of human life.
Houyhnhnms
The Houyhnhnms represent an ideal of rational existence, a life governed by sense and moderation of
which philosophers since Plato have long dreamed. Indeed, there are echoes of Platos Republic in the
Houyhnhnms rejection of light entertainment and vain displays of luxury, their appeal to reason rather
than any holy writings as the criterion for proper action, and their communal approach to family planning.
As in Platos ideal community, the Houyhnhnms have no need to lie nor any word for lying. They do not
use force but only strong exhortation. Their subjugation of the Yahoos appears more necessary than cruel
and perhaps the best way to deal with an unfortunate blot on their otherwise ideal society. In these ways
and others, the Houyhnhnms seem like model citizens, and Gullivers intense grief when he is forced to
leave them suggests that they have made an impact on him greater than that of any other society he has
visited. His derangement on Don Pedros ship, in which he snubs the generous man as a Yahoo-like
creature, implies that he strongly identifies with the Houyhnhnms.
But we may be less ready than Gulliver to take the Houyhnhnms as ideals of human existence. They have
no names in the narrative nor any need for names, since they are virtually interchangeable, with little
individual identity. Their lives seem harmonious and happy, although quite lacking in vigor, challenge, and
excitement. Indeed, this apparent ease may be why Swift chooses to make them horses rather than human

types like every other group in the novel. He may be hinting, to those more insightful than Gulliver, that
the Houyhnhnms should not be considered human ideals at all. In any case, they symbolize a standard of
rational existence to be either espoused or rejected by both Gulliver and us.
England
As the site of his fathers disappointingly small estate and Gullivers failing business, England seems to
symbolize deficiency or insufficiency, at least in the financial sense that matters most to Gulliver. England
is passed over very quickly in the first paragraph of Chapter I, as if to show that it is simply there as the
starting point to be left quickly behind. Gulliver seems to have very few nationalistic or patriotic feelings
about England, and he rarely mentions his homeland on his travels. In this sense, Gullivers Travels is
quite unlike other travel narratives like the Odyssey, in which Odysseus misses his homeland and laments
his wanderings. England is where Gullivers wife and family live, but they too are hardly mentioned. Yet
Swift chooses to have Gulliver return home after each of his four journeys instead of having him continue
on one long trip to four different places, so that England is kept constantly in the picture and given a
steady, unspoken importance. By the end of the fourth journey, England is brought more explicitly into the
fabric of Gullivers Travels when Gulliver, in his neurotic state, starts confusing Houyhnhnmland with his
homeland, referring to Englishmen as Yahoos. The distinction between native and foreign thus unravels
the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos are not just races populating a faraway land but rather types that Gulliver
projects upon those around him. The possibility thus arises that all the races Gulliver encounters could be
versions of the English and that his travels merely allow him to see various aspects of human nature more
clearly.

22WOOLF, VIRGINIA: MRS. DALLOWAY

CONTEXT
Virginia Woolf, the English novelist, critic, and essayist, was born on January 25, 1882, to Leslie Stephen,
a literary critic, and Julia Duckworth Stephen. Woolf grew up in an upper-middle-class, socially active,
literary family in Victorian London. She had three full siblings, two half-brothers, and two half-sisters.
She was educated at home, becoming a voracious reader of the books in her fathers extensive library.
Tragedy first afflicted the family when Woolfs mother died in 1895, then hit again two years later, when
her half-sister, Stella, the caregiver in the Stephen family, died. Woolf experienced her first bout of mental
illness after her mothers death, and she suffered from mania and severe depression for the rest of her life.
Patriarchal, repressive Victorian society did not encourage women to attend universities or to participate in
intellectual debate. Nonetheless, Woolf began publishing her first essays and reviews after 1904, the year
her father died and she and her siblings moved to the Bloomsbury area of London. Young students and
artists, drawn to the vitality and intellectual curiosity of the Stephen clan, congregated on Thursday
evenings to share their views about the world. The Bloomsbury group, as Woolf and her friends came to
be called, disregarded the constricting taboos of the Victorian era, and such topics as religion, sex, and art
fueled the talk at their weekly salons. They even discussed homosexuality, a subject that shocked many of
the groups contemporaries. For Woolf, the group served as the undergraduate education that society had
denied her.
The Voyage Out, Woolfs first novel, was published in 1915, three years after her marriage to Leonard
Woolf, a member of the Bloomsbury group. Their partnership furthered the groups intellectual ideals.
With Leonard, Woolf founded Hogarth Press, which published Sigmund Freud, Katherine Mansfield, T. S.
Eliot, and other notable authors. She determinedly pursued her own writing as well: During the next few
years, Woolf kept a diary and wrote several novels, a collection of short stories, and numerous essays. She
struggled, as she wrote, to both deal with her bouts of bipolarity and to find her true voice as a writer.
Before World War I, Woolf viewed the realistic Victorian novel, with its neat and linear plots, as an
inadequate form of expression. Her opinion intensified after the war, and in the 1920s she began searching
for the form that would reflect the violent contrasts and disjointed impressions of the world around her.
In Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925, Woolf discovered a new literary form capable of expressing the new
realities of postwar England. The novel depicts the subjective experiences and memories of its central

characters over a single day in postWorld War I London. Divided into parts, rather than chapters, the
novel's structure highlights the finely interwoven texture of the characters' thoughts. Critics tend to agree
that Woolf found her writers voice with this novel. At forty-three, she knew her experimental style was
unlikely to be a popular success but no longer felt compelled to seek critical praise. The novel did,
however, gain a measure of commercial and critical success. This book, which focuses on commonplace
tasks, such as shopping, throwing a party, and eating dinner, showed that no act was too small or too
ordinary for a writers attention. Ultimately, Mrs. Dalloway transformed the novel as an art form.
Woolf develops the books protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, and myriad other characters by chronicling
their interior thoughts with little pause or explanation, a style referred to as stream of consciousness.
Several central characters and more than one hundred minor characters appear in the text, and their
thoughts spin out like spider webs. Sometimes the threads of thought crossand people succeed in
communicating. More often, however, the threads do not cross, leaving the characters isolated and alone.
Woolf believed that behind the cotton wool of life, as she terms it in her autobiographical collection of
essays Moments of Being (1941), and under the downpour of impressions saturating a mind during each
moment, a pattern exists.
Characters in Mrs. Dalloway occasionally perceive lifes pattern through a sudden shock, or what Woolf
called a moment of being. Suddenly the cotton wool parts, and a person sees reality, and his or her place
in it, clearly. In the vast catastrophe of the European war, wrote Woolf, our emotions had to be broken
up for us, and put at an angle from us, before we could allow ourselves to feel them in poetry or fiction.
These words appear in her essay collection, The Common Reader, which was published just one month
before Mrs. Dalloway. Her novel attempts to uncover fragmented emotions, such as desperation or love, in
order to find, through moments of being, a way to endure.
While writing Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf reread the Greek classics along with two new modernist writers,
Marcel Proust and James Joyce. Woolf shared these writers' interest in time and psychology, and she
incorporated these issues into her novel. She wanted to show characters in flux, rather than static,
characters who think and emote as they move through space, who react to their surroundings in ways that
mirrored actual human experience. Rapid political and social change marked the period between the two
world wars: the British Empire, for which so many people had sacrificed their lives to protect and
preserve, was in decline. Countries like India were beginning to question Britains colonial rule. At home,
the Labour Party, with its plans for economic reform, was beginning to challenge the Conservative Party,
with its emphasis on imperial business interests. Women, who had flooded the workforce to replace the
men who had gone to war, were demanding equal rights. Men, who had seen unspeakable atrocities in the
first modern war, were questioning the usefulness of class-based sociopolitical institutions. Woolf lent her
support to the feminist movement in her nonfiction book A Room of Ones Own (1929), as well as in
numerous essays, and she was briefly involved in the womens suffrage movement. Although Mrs.
Dalloway portrays the shifting political atmosphere through the characters Peter Walsh, Richard Dalloway,
and Hugh Whitbread, it focuses more deeply on the charged social mood through the characters Septimus
Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway. Woolf delves into the consciousness of Clarissa, a woman who
exists largely in the domestic sphere, to ensure that readers take her character seriously, rather than simply
dismiss her as a vain and uneducated upper-class wife. In spite of her heroic and imperfect effort in life,
Clarissa, like every human being and even the old social order itself, must face death.
Woolfs struggles with mental illness gave her an opportunity to witness firsthand how insensitive medical
professionals could be, and she critiques their tactlessness in Mrs. Dalloway. One of Woolfs doctors
suggested that plenty of rest and rich food would lead to a full recovery, a cure prescribed in the novel, and
another removed several of her teeth. In the early twentieth century, mental health problems were too often
considered imaginary, an embarrassment, or the product of moral weakness. During one bout of illness,
Woolf heard birds sing like Greek choruses and King Edward use foul language among some azaleas. In
1941, as England entered a second world war, and at the onset of another breakdown she feared would be
permanent, Woolf placed a large stone in her pocket to weigh herself down and drowned herself in the
River Ouse.
THEMES
Communication vs. Privacy

Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa, Septimus, Peter, and others struggle to find outlets for
communication as well as adequate privacy, and the balance between the two is difficult for all to attain.
Clarissa in particular struggles to open the pathway for communication and throws parties in an attempt to
draw people together. At the same time, she feels shrouded within her own reflective soul and thinks the
ultimate human mystery is how she can exist in one room while the old woman in the house across from
hers exists in another. Even as Clarissa celebrates the old womans independence, she knows it comes with
an inevitable loneliness. Peter tries to explain the contradictory human impulses toward privacy and
communication by comparing the soul to a fish that swims along in murky water, then rises quickly to the
surface to frolic on the waves. The war has changed peoples ideas of what English society should be, and
understanding is difficult between those who support traditional English society and those who hope for
continued change. Meaningful connections in this disjointed postwar world are not easy to make, no
matter what efforts the characters put forth. Ultimately, Clarissa sees Septimuss death as a desperate, but
legitimate, act of communication.
Disillusionment with the British Empire
Throughout the nineteenth century, the British Empire seemed invincible. It expanded into many other
countries, such as India, Nigeria, and South Africa, becoming the largest empire the world had ever seen.
World War I was a violent reality check. For the first time in nearly a century, the English were vulnerable
on their own land. The Allies technically won the war, but the extent of devastation England suffered
made it a victory in name only. Entire communities of young men were injured and killed. In 1916, at the
Battle of the Somme, England suffered 60,000 casualtiesthe largest slaughter in Englands history. Not
surprisingly, English citizens lost much of their faith in the empire after the war. No longer could England
claim to be invulnerable and all-powerful. Citizens were less inclined to willingly adhere to the rigid
constraints imposed by Englands class system, which benefited only a small margin of society but which
all classes had fought to preserve.
In 1923, when Mrs. Dalloway takes place, the old establishment and its oppressive values are nearing their
end. English citizens, including Clarissa, Peter, and Septimus, feel the failure of the empire as strongly as
they feel their own personal failures. Those citizens who still champion English tradition, such as Aunt
Helena and Lady Bruton, are old. Aunt Helena, with her glass eye (perhaps a symbol of her inability or
unwillingness to see the empire's disintegration), is turning into an artifact. Anticipating the end of the
Conservative Partys reign, Richard plans to write the history of the great British military family, the
Brutons, who are already part of the past. The old empire faces an imminent demise, and the loss of the
traditional and familiar social order leaves the English at loose ends.
The Fear of Death
Thoughts of death lurk constantly beneath the surface of everyday life in Mrs. Dalloway, especially for
Clarissa, Septimus, and Peter, and this awareness makes even mundane events and interactions
meaningful, sometimes even threatening. At the very start of her day, when she goes out to buy flowers for
her party, Clarissa remembers a moment in her youth when she suspected a terrible event would occur. Big
Ben tolls out the hour, and Clarissa repeats a line from Shakespeares Cymbeline over and over as the day
goes on: Fear no more the heat o the sun / Nor the furious winters rages. The line is from a funeral
song that celebrates death as a comfort after a difficult life. Middle-aged Clarissa has experienced the
deaths of her father, mother, and sister and has lived through the calamity of war, and she has grown to
believe that living even one day is dangerous. Death is very naturally in her thoughts, and the line from
Cymbeline, along with Septimuss suicidal embrace of death, ultimately helps her to be at peace with her
own mortality. Peter Walsh, so insecure in his identity, grows frantic at the idea of death and follows an
anonymous young woman through London to forget about it. Septimus faces death most directly. Though
he fears it, he finally chooses it over what seems to him a direr alternativeliving another day.
The Threat of Oppression
Oppression is a constant threat for Clarissa and Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway, and Septimus dies in order to
escape what he perceives to be an oppressive social pressure to conform. It comes in many guises,
including religion, science, or social convention. Miss Kilman and Sir William Bradshaw are two of the
major oppressors in the novel: Miss Kilman dreams of felling Clarissa in the name of religion, and Sir

William would like to subdue all those who challenge his conception of the world. Both wish to convert
the world to their belief systems in order to gain power and dominate others, and their rigidity oppresses
all who come into contact with them. More subtle oppressors, even those who do not intend to, do harm
by supporting the repressive English social system. Though Clarissa herself lives under the weight of that
system and often feels oppressed by it, her acceptance of patriarchal English society makes her, in part,
responsible for Septimuss death. Thus she too is an oppressor of sorts. At the end of the novel, she reflects
on his suicide: Somehow it was her disasterher disgrace. She accepts responsibility, though other
characters are equally or more fully to blame, which suggests that everyone is in some way complicit in
the oppression of others.
MOTIFS
Time
Time imparts order to the fluid thoughts, memories, and encounters that make up Mrs. Dalloway. Big Ben,
a symbol of England and its might, sounds out the hour relentlessly, ensuring that the passage of time, and
the awareness of eventual death, is always palpable. Clarissa, Septimus, Peter, and other characters are in
the grip of time, and as they age they evaluate how they have spent their lives. Clarissa, in particular,
senses the passage of time, and the appearance of Sally and Peter, friends from the past, emphasizes how
much time has gone by since Clarissa was young. Once the hour chimes, however, the sound disappears
its leaden circles dissolved in the air. This expression recurs many times throughout the novel,
indicating how ephemeral time is, despite the pomp of Big Ben and despite peoples wary obsession with
it. It is time, Rezia says to Septimus as they sit in the park waiting for the doctor's appointment on
Harley Street. The ancient woman at the Regents Park Tube station suggests that the human condition
knows no boundaries of time, since she continues to sing the same song for what seems like eternity. She
understands that life is circular, not merely linear, which is the only sort of time that Big Ben tracks. Time
is so important to the themes, structure, and characters of this novel that Woolf almost named her book
The Hours.
Shakespeare
The many appearances of Shakespeare specifically and poetry in general suggest hopefulness, the
possibility of finding comfort in art, and the survival of the soul in Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa quotes
Shakespeares plays many times throughout the day. When she shops for flowers at the beginning of the
novel, she reads a few lines from a Shakespeare play, Cymbeline, in a book displayed in a shop window.
The lines come from a funeral hymn in the play that suggests death should be embraced as a release from
the constraints of life. Since Clarissa fears death for much of the novel, these lines suggest that an
alternative, hopeful way of addressing the prospect of death exists. Clarissa also identifies with the title
character in Othello, who loves his wife but kills her out of jealousy, then kills himself when he learns his
jealousy was unwarranted. Clarissa shares with Othello the sense of having lost a love, especially when
she thinks about Sally Seton. Before the war, Septimus appreciated Shakespeare as well, going so far as
aspiring to be a poet. He no longer finds comfort in poetry after he returns.
The presence of an appreciation for poetry reveals much about Clarissa and Septimus, just as the absence
of such appreciation reveals much about the characters who differ from them, such as Richard Dalloway
and Lady Bruton. Richard finds Shakespeares sonnets indecent, and he compares reading them to
listening in at a keyhole. Not surprisingly, Richard himself has a difficult time voicing his emotions. Lady
Bruton never reads poetry either, and her demeanor is so rigid and impersonal that she has a reputation of
caring more for politics than for people. Traditional English society promotes a suppression of visible
emotion, and since Shakespeare and poetry promote a discussion of feeling and emotion, they belong to
sensitive people like Clarissa, who are in many ways antiestablishment.
Trees and Flowers
Tree and flower images abound in Mrs. Dalloway. The color, variety, and beauty of flowers suggest
feeling and emotion, and those characters who are comfortable with flowers, such as Clarissa, have
distinctly different personalities than those characters who are not, such as Richard and Lady Bruton. The
first time we see Clarissa, a deep thinker, she is on her way to the flower shop, where she will revel in the

flowers she sees. Richard and Hugh, more emotionally repressed representatives of the English
establishment, offer traditional roses and carnations to Clarissa and Lady Bruton, respectively. Richard
handles the bouquet of roses awkwardly, like a weapon. Lady Bruton accepts the flowers with a grim
smile and lays them stiffly by her plate, also unsure of how to handle them. When she eventually stuffs
them into her dress, the femininity and grace of the gesture are rare and unexpected. Trees, with their
extensive root systems, suggest the vast reach of the human soul, and Clarissa and Septimus, who both
struggle to protect their souls, revere them. Clarissa believes souls survive in trees after death, and
Septimus, who has turned his back on patriarchal society, feels that cutting down a tree is the equivalent of
committing murder.
Waves and Water
Waves and water regularly wash over events and thoughts in Mrs. Dalloway and nearly always suggest the
possibility of extinction or death. While Clarissa mends her party dress, she thinks about the peaceful
cycle of waves collecting and falling on a summer day, when the world itself seems to say that is all.
Time sometimes takes on waterlike qualities for Clarissa, such as when the chime from Big Ben flood[s]
her room, marking another passing hour. Rezia, in a rare moment of happiness with Septimus after he has
helped her construct a hat, lets her words trail off like a contented tap left running. Even then, she knows
that stream of contentedness will dry up eventually. The narrative structure of the novel itself also suggests
fluidity. One characters thoughts appear, intensify, then fade into anothers, much like waves that collect
then fall.
Traditional English society itself is a kind of tide, pulling under those people not strong enough to stand
on their own. Lady Bradshaw, for example, eventually succumbs to Sir Williams bullying, overbearing
presence. The narrator says she had gone under, that her will became water-logged and eventually
sank into his. Septimus is also sucked under societys pressures. Earlier in the day, before he kills himself,
he looks out the window and sees everything as though it is underwater. Trees drag their branches through
the air as though dragging them through water, the light outside is watery gold, and his hand on the sofa
reminds him of floating in seawater. While Septimus ultimately cannot accept or function in society,
Clarissa manages to navigate it successfully. Peter sees Clarissa in a silver-green mermaids dress at her
party, [l]olloping on the waves. Between her mermaids dress and her ease in bobbing through her party
guests, Clarissa succeeds in staying afloat. However, she identifies with Septimuss wish to fight the cycle
and go under, even if she will not succumb to the temptation herself.
SYMBOLS
The Prime Minister
The prime minister in Mrs. Dalloway embodies Englands old values and hierarchical social system,
which are in decline. When Peter Walsh wants to insult Clarissa and suggest she will sell out and become
a society hostess, he says she will marry a prime minister. When Lady Bruton, a champion of English
tradition, wants to compliment Hugh, she calls him My Prime Minister. The prime minister is a figure
from the old establishment, which Clarissa and Septimus are struggling against. Mrs. Dalloway takes
place after World War I, a time when the English looked desperately for meaning in the old symbols but
found the symbols hollow. When the conservative prime minister finally arrives at Clarissas party, his
appearance is unimpressive. The old pyramidal social system that benefited the very rich before the war is
now decaying, and the symbols of its greatness have become pathetic.
Peter Walshs Pocketknife and Other Weapons
Peter Walsh plays constantly with his pocketknife, and the opening, closing, and fiddling with the knife
suggest his flightiness and inability to make decisions. He cannot decide what he feels and doesnt know
whether he abhors English tradition and wants to fight it, or whether he accepts English civilization just as
it is. The pocketknife reveals Peters defensiveness. He is armed with the knife, in a sense, when he pays
an unexpected visit to Clarissa, while she herself is armed with her sewing scissors. Their weapons make
them equal competitors. Knives and weapons are also phallic symbols, hinting at sexuality and power.
Peter cannot define his own identity, and his constant fidgeting with the knife suggests how uncomfortable
he is with his masculinity. Characters fall into two groups: those who are armed and those who are not.

Ellie Henderson, for example, is weaponless, because she is poor and has not been trained for any
career. Her ambiguous relationship with her friend Edith also puts her at a disadvantage in society, leaving
her even less able to defend herself. Septimus, psychologically crippled by the literal weapons of war,
commits suicide by impaling himself on a metal fence, showing the danger lurking behind man-made
boundaries.
The Old Woman in the Window
The old woman in the window across from Clarissas house represents the privacy of the soul and the
loneliness that goes with it, both of which will increase as Clarissa grows older. Clarissa sees the future in
the old woman: She herself will grow old and become more and more alone, since that is the nature of life.
As Clarissa grows older, she reflects more but communicates less. Instead, she keeps her feelings locked
inside the private rooms of her own soul, just as the old woman rattles alone around the rooms of her
house. Nevertheless, the old woman also represents serenity and the purity of the soul. Clarissa respects
the womans private reflections and thinks beauty lies in this act of preserving ones interior life and
independence. Before Septimus jumps out the window, he sees an old man descending the staircase
outside, and this old man is a parallel figure to the old woman. Though Clarissa and Septimus ultimately
choose to preserve their private lives in opposite ways, their view of loneliness, privacy, and
communication resonates within these similar images.
The Old Woman Singing an Ancient Song
Opposite the Regents Park Tube station, an old woman sings an ancient song that celebrates life,
endurance, and continuity. She is oblivious to everyone around her as she sings, beyond caring what the
world thinks. The narrator explains that no matter what happens in the world, the old woman will still be
there, even in ten million years, and that the song has soaked through the knotted roots of infinite
ages. Roots, intertwined and hidden beneath the earth, suggest the deepest parts of peoples souls, and
this womans song touches everyone who hears it in some way. Peter hears the song first and compares the
old woman to a rusty pump. He doesnt catch her triumphant message and feels only pity for her, giving
her a coin before stepping into a taxi. Rezia, however, finds strength in the old womans words, and the
song makes her feel as though all will be okay in her life. Women in the novel, who have to view
patriarchal English society from the outside, are generally more attuned to nature and the messages of
voices outside the mainstream. Rezia, therefore, is able to see the old woman for the life force she is,
instead of simply a nuisance or a tragic figure to be dealt with, ignored, or pitied.
23WOOLF, VIRGINIA: TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
CONTEXT
Virginia Woolf was born on January 25, 1882, a descendant of one of Victorian Englands most prestigious
literary families. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography
and was married to the daughter of the writer William Thackeray. Woolf grew up among the most
important and influential British intellectuals of her time, and received free rein to explore her fathers
library. Her personal connections and abundant talent soon opened doors for her. Woolf wrote that she
found herself in a position where it was easier on the whole to be eminent than obscure. Almost from
the beginning, her life was a precarious balance of extraordinary success and mental instability.
As a young woman, Woolf wrote for the prestigious Times Literary Supplement, and as an adult she
quickly found herself at the center of Englands most important literary community. Known as the
Bloomsbury Group after the section of London in which its members lived, this group of writers, artists,
and philosophers emphasized nonconformity, aesthetic pleasure, and intellectual freedom, and included
such luminaries as the painter Lytton Strachey, the novelist E. M. Forster, the composer Benjamin Britten,
and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Working among such an inspirational group of peers and
possessing an incredible talent in her own right, Woolf published her most famous novels by the mid1920s, including The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and To the Lighthouse. With these works she
reached the pinnacle of her profession.

Woolfs life was equally dominated by mental illness. Her parents died when she was youngher mother
in 1895 and her father in 1904and she was prone to intense, terrible headaches and emotional
breakdowns. After her fathers death, she attempted suicide, throwing herself out a window. Though she
married Leonard Woolf in 1912 and loved him deeply, she was not entirely satisfied romantically or
sexually. For years she sustained an intimate relationship with the novelist Vita Sackville-West. Late in
life, Woolf became terrified by the idea that another nervous breakdown was close at hand, one from
which she would not recover. On March 28, 1941, she wrote her husband a note stating that she did not
wish to spoil his life by going mad. She then drowned herself in the River Ouse.
Woolfs writing bears the mark of her literary pedigree as well as her struggle to find meaning in her own
unsteady existence. Written in a poised, understated, and elegant style, her work examines the structures of
human life, from the nature of relationships to the experience of time. Yet her writing also addresses issues
relevant to her era and literary circle. Throughout her work she celebrates and analyzes the Bloomsbury
values of aestheticism, feminism, and independence. Moreover, her stream-of-consciousness style was
influenced by, and responded to, the work of the French thinker Henri Bergson and the novelists Marcel
Proust and James Joyce.
This style allows the subjective mental processes of Woolfs characters to determine the objective content
of her narrative. In To the Lighthouse (1927), one of her most experimental works, the passage of time, for
example, is modulated by the consciousness of the characters rather than by the clock. The events of a
single afternoon constitute over half the book, while the events of the following ten years are compressed
into a few dozen pages. Many readers of To the Lighthouse, especially those who are not versed in the
traditions of modernist fiction, find the novel strange and difficult. Its language is dense and the structure
amorphous. Compared with the plot-driven Victorian novels that came before it, To the Lighthouse seems
to have little in the way of action. Indeed, almost all of the events take place in the characters minds.
Although To the Lighthouse is a radical departure from the nineteenth-century novel, it is, like its more
traditional counterparts, intimately interested in developing characters and advancing both plot and
themes. Woolfs experimentation has much to do with the time in which she lived: the turn of the century
was marked by bold scientific developments. Charles Darwins theory of evolution undermined an
unquestioned faith in God that was, until that point, nearly universal, while the rise of psychoanalysis, a
movement led by Sigmund Freud, introduced the idea of an unconscious mind. Such innovation in ways
of scientific thinking had great influence on the styles and concerns of contemporary artists and writers
like those in the Bloomsbury Group. To the Lighthouse exemplifies Woolfs style and many of her
concerns as a novelist. With its characters based on her own parents and siblings, it is certainly her most
autobiographical fictional statement, and in the characters of Mr. Ramsay, Mrs. Ramsay, and Lily Briscoe,
Woolf offers some of her most penetrating explorations of the workings of the human consciousness as it
perceives and analyzes, feels and interacts
THEMES
The Transience of Life and Work
Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay take completely different approaches to life: he relies on his intellect, while
she depends on her emotions. But they share the knowledge that the world around them is transientthat
nothing lasts forever. Mr. Ramsay reflects that even the most enduring of reputations, such as
Shakespeares, are doomed to eventual oblivion. This realization accounts for the bitter aspect of his
character. Frustrated by the inevitable demise of his own body of work and envious of the few geniuses
who will outlast him, he plots to found a school of philosophy that argues that the world is designed for
the average, unadorned man, for the liftman in the Tube rather than for the rare immortal writer.
Mrs. Ramsay is as keenly aware as her husband of the passage of time and of mortality. She recoils, for
instance, at the notion of James growing into an adult, registers the worlds many dangers, and knows that
no one, not even her husband, can protect her from them. Her reaction to this knowledge is markedly
different from her husbands. Whereas Mr. Ramsay is bowed by the weight of his own demise, Mrs.

Ramsay is fueled with the need to make precious and memorable whatever time she has on earth. Such
crafted moments, she reflects, offer the only hope of something that endures.
Art as a Means of Preservation
In the face of an existence that is inherently without order or meaning, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay employ
different strategies for making their lives significant. Mr. Ramsay devotes himself to his progression
through the course of human thought, while Mrs. Ramsay cultivates memorable experiences from social
interactions. Neither of these strategies, however, proves an adequate means of preserving ones
experience. After all, Mr. Ramsay fails to obtain the philosophical understanding he so desperately desires,
and Mrs. -Ramsays life, though filled with moments that have the shine and resilience of rubies, ends.
Only Lily Briscoe finds a way to preserve her experience, and that way is through her art. As Lily begins
her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the beginning of the novel, Woolf notes the scope of the project: Lily means
to order and connect elements that have no necessary relation in the worldhedges and houses and
mothers and children. By the end of the novel, ten years later, Lily finishes the painting she started,
which stands as a moment of clarity wrested from confusion. Art is, perhaps, the only hope of surety in a
world destined and determined to change: for, while mourning Mrs. Ramsays death and painting on the
lawn, Lily reflects that nothing stays, all changes; but not words, not paint.
The Subjective Nature of Reality
Toward the end of the novel, Lily reflects that in order to see Mrs. Ramsay clearlyto understand her
character completelyshe would need at least fifty pairs of eyes; only then would she be privy to every
possible angle and nuance. The truth, according to this assertion, rests in the accumulation of different,
even opposing vantage points. Woolfs technique in structuring the story mirrors Lilys assertion. She is
committed to creating a sense of the world that not only depends upon the private perceptions of her
characters but is also nothing more than the accumulation of those perceptions. To try to reimagine the
story as told from a single characters perspective orin the tradition of the Victorian novelistsfrom the
authors perspective is to realize the radical scope and difficulty of Woolfs project.
The Restorative Effects of Beauty
At the beginning of the novel, both Mr. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe are drawn out of moments of irritation
by an image of extreme beauty. The image, in both cases, is a vision of Mrs. Ramsay, who, as she sits
reading with James, is a sight powerful enough to incite rapture in William Bankes. Beauty retains this
soothing effect throughout the novel: something as trifling as a large but very beautiful arrangement of
fruit can, for a moment, assuage the discomfort of the guests at Mrs. Ramsays dinner party.
Lily later complicates the notion of beauty as restorative by suggesting that beauty has the unfortunate
consequence of simplifying the truth. Her impression of Mrs. Ramsay, she believes, is compromised by a
determination to view her as beautiful and to smooth over her complexities and faults. Nevertheless, Lily
continues on her quest to still or freeze a moment from life and make it beautiful. Although the vision
of an isolated moment is necessarily incomplete, it is lasting and, as such, endlessly seductive to her.
MOTIFS
The Differing Behaviors of Men and Women
As Lily Briscoe suffers through Charles Tansleys boorish opinions about women and art, she reflects that
human relations are worst between men and women. Indeed, given the extremely opposite ways in which
men and women behave throughout the novel, this difficulty is no wonder. The dynamic between the sexes
is best understood by considering the behavior of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. Their constant conflict has less to
do with divergent philosophiesindeed, they both acknowledge and are motivated by the same fear of
mortalitythan with the way they process that fear. Men, Mrs. Ramsay reflects in the opening pages of
the novel, bow to it. Given her rather traditional notions of gender roles, she excuses her husbands
behavior as inevitable, asking how men can be expected to settle the political and economic business of
nations and not suffer doubts. This understanding attitude places on women the responsibility for soothing
mens damaged egos and achieving some kind of harmony (even if temporary) with them. Lily Briscoe,

who as a -single woman represents a social order more radial and lenient than Mrs. Ramsays, resists this
duty but ultimately caves in to it.
Brackets
In Time Passes, brackets surround the few sentences recounting the deaths of Prue and Andrew Ramsay,
while in The Lighthouse, brackets surround the sentences comprising Chapter VI. Each set of sentences
in brackets in the earlier section contains violence, death, and the destruction of potential; the short,
stabbing accounts accentuate the brutality of these events. But in Chapter VI of The Lighthouse, the
purpose of the brackets changes from indicating violence and death to violence and potential survival.
Whereas in Time Passes, the brackets surround Prues death in childbirth and Andrews perishing in
war, in The Lighthouse they surround the mutilated but alive still body of a fish.
SYMBOLS
The Lighthouse
Lying across the bay and meaning something different and intimately personal to each character, the
lighthouse is at once inaccessible, illuminating, and infinitely interpretable. As the destination from which
the novel takes its title, the lighthouse suggests that the destinations that seem surest are most
unobtainable. Just as Mr. Ramsay is certain of his wifes love for him and aims to hear her speak words to
that end in The Window, Mrs. Ramsay finds these words impossible to say. These failed attempts to
arrive at some sort of solid ground, like Lilys first try at painting Mrs. Ramsay or Mrs. Ramsays attempt
to see Paul and Minta married, result only in more attempts, further excursions rather than rest. The
lighthouse stands as a potent symbol of this lack of attainability. James arrives only to realize that it is not
at all the mist-shrouded destination of his childhood. Instead, he is made to reconcile two competing and
contradictory images of the towerhow it appeared to him when he was a boy and how it appears to him
now that he is a man. He decides that both of these images contribute to the essence of the lighthouse
that nothing is ever only one thinga sentiment that echoes the novels determination to arrive at truth
through varied and contradictory vantage points.
Lilys Painting
Lilys painting represents a struggle against gender convention, represented by Charles Tansleys
statement that women cant paint or write. Lilys desire to express Mrs. Ramsays essence as a wife and
mother in the painting mimics the impulse among modern women to know and understand intimately the
gendered experiences of the women who came before them. Lilys composition attempts to discover and
comprehend Mrs. Ramsays beauty just as Woolfs construction of Mrs. Ramsays character reflects her
attempts to access and portray her own mother.
The painting also represents dedication to a feminine artistic vision, expressed through Lilys anxiety over
showing it to William Bankes. In deciding that completing the painting regardless of what happens to it is
the most important thing, Lily makes the choice to establish her own artistic voice. In the end, she decides
that her vision depends on balance and synthesis: how to bring together disparate things in harmony. In
this respect, her project mirrors Woolfs writing, which synthesizes the perceptions of her many characters
to come to a balanced and truthful portrait of the world.
The Ramsays House
The Ramsays house is a stage where Woolf and her characters explain their beliefs and observations.
During her dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay sees her house display her own inner notions of shabbiness and her
inability to preserve beauty. In the Time Passes section, the ravages of war and destruction and the
passage of time are reflected in the condition of the house rather than in the emotional development or
observable aging of the characters. The house stands in for the collective consciousness of those who stay
in it. At times the characters long to escape it, while at other times it serves as refuge. From the dinner
party to the journey to the lighthouse, Woolf shows the house from every angle, and its structure and
contents mirror the interior of the characters who inhabit it.
The Sea

References to the sea appear throughout the novel. Broadly, the ever-changing, ever-moving waves
parallel the constant forward movement of time and the changes it brings. Woolf describes the sea lovingly
and beautifully, but her most evocative depictions of it point to its violence. As a force that brings
destruction, has the power to decimate islands, and, as Mr. Ramsay reflects, eats away the ground we
stand on, the sea is a powerful reminder of the impermanence and delicacy of human life and
accomplishments.
The Boars Skull
After her dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay retires upstairs to find the children wide-awake, bothered by the
boars skull that hangs on the nursery wall. The presence of the skull acts as a disturbing reminder that
death is always at hand, even (or perhaps especially) during lifes most blissful moments.
The Fruit Basket
Rose arranges a fruit basket for her mothers dinner party that serves to draw the partygoers out of their
private suffering and unite them. Although Augustus Carmichael and Mrs. Ramsay appreciate the
arrangement differentlyhe rips a bloom from it; she refuses to disturb itthe pair is brought
harmoniously, if briefly, together. The basket testifies both to the frozen quality of beauty that Lily
describes and to beautys seductive and soothing quality.

12FOWLES, JOHN: THE FRENCH LIEUTENANTS WOMAN

In The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles does not merely recreate a Victorian novel; neither does
he parody one. He does a little of both, but also much more. The subject of this novel is essentially the
same as that of his other works: the relationship between life and art, the artist and his creation, and the
isolation resulting from an individual's struggle for selfhood. He works within the tradition of the
Victorian novel and consciously uses its conventions to serve his own design, all the while carefully
informing the reader exactly what he is doing. His style purposely combines a flowing nineteenth-century
prose style with an anachronistic twentieth-century perspective.
Fowles is as concerned with the details of the setting as were his Victorian counterparts. But he is also
conscious that he is setting a scene and does not hesitate to intrude into the narrative himself in order to
show the reader how he manipulates reality through his art. Like Dickens, Fowles uses dialogue to reveal
the personalities of his characters and often he will satirize them as well. For example, Charles' attitudes
toward Sarah and Ernestina are revealed in the way he talks to them. He is forever uncomfortable with
Sarah because she won't accept the way in which he categorizes the world, including his view of her.
Sarah's responses to the world around her, as seen through her words and actions are consistent, for she is
already aware of herself as an individual who cannot be defined by conventional roles. However, Charles
changes, depending upon whom he talks to, because he really does not know who he is yet, and he sees
himself as playing a series of roles. With his fiance, he is indulgent and paternal; with his servant Sam, he
is patronizing and humorous at Sam's expense, and with Sarah, he is stiff and uncomfortable. When he
attempts to respond to Sarah's honesty, he hears the hollowness of his own conventional responses.
Fowles does not recreate his Victorian world uncritically. He focuses on those aspects of the Victorian era
that would seem most alien to a modern reader. In particular, he is concerned with Victorian attitudes
towards women, economics, science, and philosophy. In this romance, Fowles examines the problems of
two socially and economically oppressed groups in nineteenth-century England: the poverty of the
working and servant classes, and the economic and social entrapment of women. While the plot traces a
love story, or what seems to be a love story, the reader questions what sort of love existed in a society
where many marriages were based as much on economics as on love. This story is thus not really a

romance at all, for Fowles' objective is not to unite his two protagonists, Sarah and Charles, but to show
what each human being must face in life in order to be able to grow.
While Fowles has titled his book The French Lieutenant's Woman, Sarah Woodruff is not really the central
character. She does not change greatly in the novel as it progresses, for she has already arrived at an
awareness that she must go beyond the definition of her individuality that society has imposed upon her.
Because her situation was intolerable, she was forced to see through it and beyond it in order to find
meaning and some sort of happiness in her life. In the early chapters of the novel, she perhaps makes one
last effort to establish a life within the norms of Victorian society. She chooses the role of the outcast, the
"French lieutenant's whore," and also falls in love with Charles or causes him to fall in love with her. But
even as she draws Charles away from his unquestioning acceptance of his life, she finds that she does not
want to be rescued from her plight. She has already rescued herself.
Charles, it seems, is the actual protagonist of this novel, for he must travel from ignorance to
understanding, by following the woman whom he thinks he is helping, but who in fact is his mentor. He
must discard each layer of the false Charles: Charles the naturalist, Charles the gentleman, Charles the
rake, and perhaps even Charles the lover, in order to find Charles the human being. The knowledge he
arrives at is bitter, for he has lost all his illusions, as Sarah discarded hers sometime before. But the result
itself is not bitter. Although Charles and Sarah are not reunited, for life's answers are never as simple and
perfect as those of art, they both achieve a maturity that enables them to control their lives as long as they
remember to look for answers nowhere but in themselves.
Fowles has taken two traditional romantic characters, a young hero and a mysterious woman, and has
transformed them into human beings.
There is no French lieutenant to pine after, and Sarah's life is not a tragedy that echoes her nickname in
Lyme. Charles' gift of marriage is not a gift at all. While the novel could have ended with the couple's
reconciliation, as it might have had it been a traditional romance, Fowles does not end it there. In the
second ending, Sarah rejects the familiar security that Charles offers and both are forced to go on alone.
Fowles' novel echoes the doubts raised by such novelists as Thomas Hardy, and by such poets as Matthew
Arnold and Alfred Lord Tennyson, about the solidity of the Victorian view of the world. The world was
changing and old standards no longer applied, though they lingered on long after many had discarded
them in their hearts. This theme that was approached by writers in the nineteenth century is picked up
again by Fowles and carried to a logical conclusion. The novel is therefore actually a psychological study
of an individual rather than a romance. It is a novel of individual growth and the awareness of one's basic
isolation which accompanies that growth.
13FOWLES, JOHN: THE MAGUS
CONTEXT
He started writing it in the 1950s, under the original title of The Godgame. He based it partly on his
experiences on the Greek island of Spetses, where he taught English for two years at the Anargyrios
School. He worked on it for twelve years before its publication in 1965. Despite gaining critical and
commercial success, he continued to rework it, publishing a final revision in 1977.

The Magus (1965) is a postmodern novel by British author John Fowles, telling the story of Nicholas
Urfe, a young British graduate who is teaching English on a small Greek island. Urfe becomes
embroiled in the psychological illusions of a master trickster, which become increasingly dark and
serious. Considered a metafiction, it was the first novel written by Fowles, but the third he
published. In 1977 he published a revised edition.
STYLE
Point of View
The novel is written and narrated from the first person, subjective point of view, that of the protagonist,
Nicholas Urfe. The essential value of this point of view is that it puts the reader in the same position as
Nicholas, experiencing what he experiences and in much the same way - visceral, immediate, and often
unexpected. While the technique of first person narration is often employed over a wide range of genres,
its application here is particularly effective because what Nicholas goes through over the course of the
novel becomes increasingly extreme, complicated and mysterious. As a result of this narrative choice, the
reader goes through a similar progression of intrigue, bewilderment, and quite probably frustration. A
secondary aspect of this use of point of view is the language "Nicholas" uses. On one hand, the quality of
language "he" uses tends...
The Magus by John Fowles is a peculiar novel. It is not like anything Id read previously a kind of mix
between the TV show Lost and the Michael Douglass movie, The Game, with a bit of Eyes Wide Shut
thrown in for good measure: Imagine Aristotle Onassis with a penchant for psychological warfare. Its
protagonist is a young Oxford graduate named Nicholas Urfe who, having become
bored of philandering and partying, undergoes an existential crisis and embarks for a teaching position
on the Greek island of Phraxos. Before leaving England, however, Nicholas breaks the heart of a beautiful
Australian girl named Alison, as he quickly adopts an atheistic, nihilist worldview.
As he arrives, he finds that the island is not exactly what it appears to be. Nicholas wanders into the
company of a wealthy Greek billionaire Named Maurice Conchis who seems to toy with Nicholas at every
turn, befriending him, yet in a distant, disingenuous way. Nicholas begins to experience strange events
that even make him question his own anti-supernatual presuppositions. He sees what he thinks are Greek
gods, as well as playlets that seem to match up to the Marquis de Sade. Nicholas realizes that these
masques become increasingly real, encompassing his entire existence on the island. Eventually, having
partaken of a hallucinogenic drug, and falling in love with one of a pair of twins that appears to be in the
employ of Maurice, Nicholas experiences another kind of breakdown, resulting in an initiation of sorts
similar to the process one sees in Eyes Wide Shut, as I argued.
The novel is thus not a story of mere intrigue, but of induction into the mysteries. However, this novel
presents the mysteries in a different fashion. In Fowles mind, the initiation is not one wherein Nicholas
world status changes, adjoining him to the elite, but rather operates as a kind of grand fuck you, where
Nicholas is forced to come to grips with the fact that there is an entire strata of individuals for whom
generations of enormous wealth has occasioned a godlike status on earth. As such, in Flowles construal,
the world becomes a kind of grand, global masque and stage. In fact, the novel is quite explicit that the
controllers are the Illuminati.
They are an Illuminati who are guided solely by science, reason and pragmatism not some ethereal
magickal mysticism. In fact, the magickal, mystery tour which Nicholas is enveloped in is merely part of
the journey. While at first Nicholas is led to believe that Conchis and his associates think they have
experienced metempsychosis and are reincarnated, eventually these facts become irrelevant. Nicholas is
led into a massive psychological game, where it is he who is the subject of all the events. In this, Jungian
psychoanalysis comes to the fore, as well as Sartrean elements of existential crisis. Meanwhile, Conchis,
and his round table of occult gods and deities have engineered all the events of Nicholas life after Oxford,
including the time spent with Alison, to bring him to the island as the test subject.

The book is spiced throughout with references to Tarot cards, greek deities, Baphomet, gnosticism, ritual
initiation, the Eleutherian mysteries, etc. Conchis eventually reveals to Nicholas, when hes drugged,
captured and placed in the judgment role that the real secret is science. While Nicholas is supposed to
judge the rest of the Illuminists present under the sign of the Pentagram and Baphomet, Nicholas ends
up confounded as the group of doctors and PhDs present dissect his entire life with psychoanalysis.
Nicholas is then forced to watch a pornographic film with the girl he loves that has been intertwined with
his own time spent on the island, recorded by numerous secret cameras. Here Bentham/Foucault-style
Panopticism emerges, as the prisoner is subjected to the all-pervading gaze of the eye of the elite.
Nicholas not only cannot escape their influence and power, he is also held captive to the narrative they
may construct about himself and his life. In short, he is helpless, though he thinks he is free in his
atheism and nihilism.
Maurice, then, turns out to be a combination of the trickster/magus, as well as the prince/ruler, with his
unlimited wealth. He can hire any actors, recreate any scenes, arrange any events he so desires. No
matter where Nicholas goes, or what he does, he cannot escape Maurices designs. Every time Nicholas
tries to construct a mask or excuse or identity for himself, he is reminded of the existential dictum that
he is condemned to be free. He continues to operate in Sartrean bad faith and inauthenticity to the
end, until he appears to concede that he is helpless.
Overall, the book is worth reading, and ends on an open note, where the reader is invited to interpret
Nicholas final interaction with Alison as he or she wants. This fits well with the meta-narrative theme of
the work, where the reader is also in a sense, playing a game, as well as part of the grand masque that is
reality. Fowles wants the reader to realize that his or her reality is also part of this play that we call reality,
that includes a heavy dose of fiction. And that fiction is largely manipulated by the Illuminati namely,
those billionaires and world-controllers who have an entirely different code of ethics. A code whereby the
manipulation of reality and world events is not seen as something inherently evil, but instead a kind of
game or labyrinth. As such, the novel becomes one of the top Illuminist novels ever written, akin to
Atlas Shrugged.

24SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM: SONNETS XVIII, CXXX

25SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM: ROMEO AND JULIET

CONTEXT
The most influential writer in all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a
successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare attended grammar
school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he married an older woman, Anne
Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London
to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare
eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe Theater. His
career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 15581603) and James I (ruled 16031625), and he was a
favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeares company the greatest possible
compliment by bestowing upon its members the title of Kings Men. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare
retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeares death, literary
luminaries such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless.
Shakespeares works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and
by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was well
established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about
Shakespeares life, but the dearth of biographical information has left many details of Shakespeares
personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have concluded from this fact that Shakespeares plays

were really written by someone elseFrancis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular
candidatesbut the support for this claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken
seriously by many scholars.
In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the
thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy of this body of work is immense. A
number of Shakespeares plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so
influential as to profoundly affect the course of Western literature and culture ever after.
Shakespeare did not invent the story of Romeo and Juliet. He did not, in fact, even introduce the story into
the English language. A poet named Arthur Brooks first brought the story of Romeus and Juliet to an
English-speaking audience in a long and plodding poem that was itself not original, but rather an
adaptation of adaptations that stretched across nearly a hundred years and two languages. Many of the
details of Shakespeares plot are lifted directly from Brookss poem, including the meeting of Romeo and
Juliet at the ball, their secret marriage, Romeos fight with Tybalt, the sleeping potion, and the timing of
the lovers eventual suicides. Such appropriation of other stories is characteristic of Shakespeare, who
often wrote plays based on earlier works.
Shakespeares use of existing material as fodder for his plays should not, however, be taken as a lack of
originality. Instead, readers should note how Shakespeare crafts his sources in new ways while displaying
a remarkable understanding of the literary tradition in which he is working. Shakespeares version of
Romeo and Juliet is no exception. The play distinguishes itself from its predecessors in several important
aspects: the subtlety and originality of its characterization (Shakespeare almost wholly created Mercutio);
the intense pace of its action, which is compressed from nine months into four frenetic days; a powerful
enrichment of the storys thematic aspects; and, above all, an extraordinary use of language.
Shakespeares play not only bears a resemblance to the works on which it is based, it is also quite similar
in plot, theme, and dramatic ending to the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, told by the great Roman poet
Ovid in his Metamorphoses. Shakespeare was well aware of this similarity; he includes a reference to
Thisbe in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare also includes scenes from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in the
comically awful play-within-a-play put on by Bottom and his friends in A Midsummer Nights Dreama
play Shakespeare wrote around the same time he was composing Romeo and Juliet. Indeed, one can look
at the play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Nights Dream as parodying the very story that Shakespeare
seeks to tell in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in full knowledge that the story he
was telling was old, clichd, and an easy target for parody. In writing Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare,
then, implicitly set himself the task of telling a love story despite the considerable forces he knew were
stacked against its success. Through the incomparable intensity of his language Shakespeare succeeded in
this effort, writing a play that is universally accepted in Western culture as the preeminent, archetypal love
story.
THEMES
The Forcefulness of Love
Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the English literary tradition. Love is naturally the
plays dominant and most important theme. The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the intense
passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, love is a violent,
ecstatic, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions. In the course of the
play, the young lovers are driven to defy their entire social world: families (Deny thy father and refuse
thy name, Juliet asks, Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, / And Ill no longer be a Capulet);
friends (Romeo abandons Mercutio and Benvolio after the feast in order to go to Juliets garden); and ruler
(Romeo returns to Verona for Juliets sake after being exiled by the Prince on pain of death in 2.1.7678).
Love is the overriding theme of the play, but a reader should always remember that Shakespeare is
uninterested in portraying a prettied-up, dainty version of the emotion, the kind that bad poets write about,
and whose bad poetry Romeo reads while pining for Rosaline. Love in Romeo and Juliet is a brutal,
powerful emotion that captures individuals and catapults them against their world, and, at times, against
themselves.
The powerful nature of love can be seen in the way it is described, or, more accurately, the way
descriptions of it so consistently fail to capture its entirety. At times love is described in the terms of

religion, as in the fourteen lines when Romeo and Juliet first meet. At others it is described as a sort of
magic: Alike bewitchd by the charm of looks (2.Prologue.6). Juliet, perhaps, most perfectly describes
her love for Romeo by refusing to describe it: But my true love is grown to such excess / I cannot sum up
some of half my wealth (3.1.3334). Love, in other words, resists any single metaphor because it is too
powerful to be so easily contained or understood.
Romeo and Juliet does not make a specific moral statement about the relationships between love and
society, religion, and family; rather, it portrays the chaos and passion of being in love, combining images
of love, violence, death, religion, and family in an impressionistic rush leading to the plays tragic
conclusion.
Love as a Cause of Violence
The themes of death and violence permeate Romeo and Juliet, and they are always connected to passion,
whether that passion is love or hate. The connection between hate, violence, and death seems obvious. But
the connection between love and violence requires further investigation.
Love, in Romeo and Juliet, is a grand passion, and as such it is blinding; it can overwhelm a person as
powerfully and completely as hate can. The passionate love between Romeo and Juliet is linked from the
moment of its inception with death: Tybalt notices that Romeo has crashed the feast and determines to kill
him just as Romeo catches sight of Juliet and falls instantly in love with her. From that point on, love
seems to push the lovers closer to love and violence, not farther from it. Romeo and Juliet are plagued
with thoughts of suicide, and a willingness to experience it: in Act 3, scene 3, Romeo brandishes a knife in
Friar Lawrences cell and threatens to kill himself after he has been banished from Verona and his love.
Juliet also pulls a knife in order to take her own life in Friar Lawrences presence just three scenes later.
After Capulet decides that Juliet will marry Paris, Juliet says, If all else fail, myself have power to die
(3.5.242). Finally, each imagines that the other looks dead the morning after their first, and only, sexual
experience (Methinks I see thee, Juliet says, . . . as one dead in the bottom of a tomb (3.5.5556). This
theme continues until its inevitable conclusion: double suicide. This tragic choice is the highest, most
potent expression of love that Romeo and Juliet can make. It is only through death that they can preserve
their love, and their love is so profound that they are willing to end their lives in its defense. In the play,
love emerges as an amoral thing, leading as much to destruction as to happiness. But in its extreme
passion, the love that Romeo and Juliet experience also appears so exquisitely beautiful that few would
want, or be able, to resist its power.
The Individual Versus Society
Much of Romeo and Juliet involves the lovers struggles against public and social institutions that either
explicitly or implicitly oppose the existence of their love. Such structures range from the concrete to the
abstract: families and the placement of familial power in the father; law and the desire for public order;
religion; and the social importance placed on masculine honor. These institutions often come into conflict
with each other. The importance of honor, for example, time and again results in brawls that disturb the
public peace.
Though they do not always work in concert, each of these societal institutions in some way present
obstacles for Romeo and Juliet. The enmity between their families, coupled with the emphasis placed on
loyalty and honor to kin, combine to create a profound conflict for Romeo and Juliet, who must rebel
against their heritages. Further, the patriarchal power structure inherent in Renaissance families, wherein
the father controls the action of all other family members, particularly women, places Juliet in an
extremely vulnerable position. Her heart, in her familys mind, is not hers to give. The law and the
emphasis on social civility demands terms of conduct with which the blind passion of love cannot comply.
Religion similarly demands priorities that Romeo and Juliet cannot abide by because of the intensity of
their love. Though in most situations the lovers uphold the traditions of Christianity (they wait to marry
before consummating their love), their love is so powerful that they begin to think of each other in
blasphemous terms. For example, Juliet calls Romeo the god of my idolatry, elevating Romeo to level of
God (2.1.156). The couples final act of suicide is likewise un-Christian. The maintenance of masculine
honor forces Romeo to commit actions he would prefer to avoid. But the social emphasis placed on
masculine honor is so profound that Romeo cannot simply ignore them.

It is possible to see Romeo and Juliet as a battle between the responsibilities and actions demanded by
social institutions and those demanded by the private desires of the individual. Romeo and Juliets
appreciation of night, with its darkness and privacy, and their renunciation of their names, with its
attendant loss of obligation, make sense in the context of individuals who wish to escape the public world.
But the lovers cannot stop the night from becoming day. And Romeo cannot cease being a Montague
simply because he wants to; the rest of the world will not let him. The lovers suicides can be understood
as the ultimate night, the ultimate privacy.
The Inevitability of Fate
In its first address to the audience, the Chorus states that Romeo and Juliet are star-crossedthat is to
say that fate (a power often vested in the movements of the stars) controls them (Prologue.6). This sense
of fate permeates the play, and not just for the audience. The characters also are quite aware of it: Romeo
and Juliet constantly see omens. When Romeo believes that Juliet is dead, he cries out, Then I defy you,
stars, completing the idea that the love between Romeo and Juliet is in opposition to the decrees of
destiny (5.1.24). Of course, Romeos defiance itself plays into the hands of fate, and his determination to
spend eternity with Juliet results in their deaths. The mechanism of fate works in all of the events
surrounding the lovers: the feud between their families (it is worth noting that this hatred is never
explained; rather, the reader must accept it as an undeniable aspect of the world of the play); the horrible
series of accidents that ruin Friar Lawrences seemingly well-intentioned plans at the end of the play; and
the tragic timing of Romeos suicide and Juliets awakening. These events are not mere coincidences, but
rather manifestations of fate that help bring about the unavoidable outcome of the young lovers deaths.
The concept of fate described above is the most commonly accepted interpretation. There are other
possible readings of fate in the play: as a force determined by the powerful social institutions that
influence Romeo and Juliets choices, as well as fate as a force that emerges from Romeo and Juliets very
personalities.
MOTIFS
Light/Dark Imagery
One of the plays most consistent visual motifs is the contrast between light and dark, often in terms of
night/day imagery. This contrast is not given a particular metaphoric meaninglight is not always good,
and dark is not always evil. On the contrary, light and dark are generally used to provide a sensory contrast
and to hint at opposed alternatives. One of the more important instances of this motif is Romeos lengthy
meditation on the sun and the moon during the balcony scene, in which Juliet, metaphorically described as
the sun, is seen as banishing the envious moon and transforming the night into day (2.1.46). A similar
blurring of night and day occurs in the early morning hours after the lovers only night together. Romeo,
forced to leave for exile in the morning, and Juliet, not wanting him to leave her room, both try to pretend
that it is still night, and that the light is actually darkness: More light and light, more dark and dark our
woes (3.5.36).
Opposite Points of View
Shakespeare includes numerous speeches and scenes in Romeo and Juliet that hint at alternative ways to
evaluate the play. Shakespeare uses two main devices in this regard: Mercutio and servants. Mercutio
consistently skewers the viewpoints of all the other characters in play: he sees Romeos devotion to love
as a sort of blindness that robs Romeo from himself; similarly, he sees Tybalts devotion to honor as blind
and stupid. His punning and the Queen Mab speech can be interpreted as undercutting virtually every
passion evident in the play. Mercutio serves as a critic of the delusions of righteousness and grandeur held
by the characters around him.
Where Mercutio is a nobleman who openly criticizes other nobles, the views offered by servants in the
play are less explicit. There is the Nurse who lost her baby and husband, the servant Peter who cannot
read, the musicians who care about their lost wages and their lunches, and the Apothecary who cannot
afford to make the moral choice, the lower classes present a second tragic world to counter that of the
nobility. The nobles world is full of grand tragic gestures. The servants world, in contrast, is
characterized by simple needs, and early deaths brought about by disease and poverty rather than dueling

and grand passions. Where the nobility almost seem to revel in their capacity for drama, the servants lives
are such that they cannot afford tragedy of the epic kind.
SYMBOLS
Poison
In his first appearance, in Act 2, scene 2, Friar Lawrence remarks that every plant, herb, and stone has its
own special properties, and that nothing exists in nature that cannot be put to both good and bad uses.
Thus, poison is not intrinsically evil, but is instead a natural substance made lethal by human hands. Friar
Lawrences words prove true over the course of the play. The sleeping potion he gives Juliet is concocted
to cause the appearance of death, not death itself, but through circumstances beyond the Friars control,
the potion does bring about a fatal result: Romeos suicide. As this example shows, human beings tend to
cause death even without intending to. Similarly, Romeo suggests that society is to blame for the
apothecarys criminal selling of poison, because while there are laws prohiting the Apothecary from
selling poison, there are no laws that would help the apothecary make money. Poison symbolizes human
societys tendency to poison good things and make them fatal, just as the pointless Capulet-Montague feud
turns Romeo and Juliets love to poison. After all, unlike many of the other tragedies, this play does not
have an evil villain, but rather people whose good qualities are turned to poison by the world in which
they live.
Thumb-biting
In Act 1, scene 1, the buffoonish Samson begins a brawl between the Montagues and Capulets by flicking
his thumbnail from behind his upper teeth, an insulting gesture known as biting the thumb. He engages in
this juvenile and vulgar display because he wants to get into a fight with the Montagues but doesnt want
to be accused of starting the fight by making an explicit insult. Because of his timidity, he settles for being
annoying rather than challenging. The thumb-biting, as an essentially meaningless gesture, represents the
foolishness of the entire Capulet/Montague feud and the stupidity of violence in general.
Queen Mab
In Act 1, scene 4, Mercutio delivers a dazzling speech about the fairy Queen Mab, who rides through the
night on her tiny wagon bringing dreams to sleepers. One of the most noteworthy aspects of Queen Mabs
ride is that the dreams she brings generally do not bring out the best sides of the dreamers, but instead
serve to confirm them in whatever vices they are addicted tofor example, greed, violence, or lust.
Another important aspect of Mercutios description of Queen Mab is that it is complete nonsense, albeit
vivid and highly colorful. Nobody believes in a fairy pulled about by a small grey-coated gnat whipped
with a crickets bone (1.4.65). Finally, it is worth noting that the description of Mab and her carriage goes
to extravagant lengths to emphasize how tiny and insubstantial she and her accoutrements are. Queen Mab
and her carriage do not merely symbolize the dreams of sleepers, they also symbolize the power of waking
fantasies, daydreams, and desires. Through the Queen Mab imagery, Mercutio suggests that all desires and
fantasies are as nonsensical and fragile as Mab, and that they are basically corrupting. This point of view
contrasts starkly with that of Romeo and Juliet, who see their love as real and ennobling.
26SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM: JULIUS CAESAR
CONTEXT
Likely the most influential writer in all of English literature and certainly the most important playwright of
the English Renaissance, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon in
Warwickshire, England. The son of a successful middle-class glove-maker, Shakespeare attended grammar
school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582, he married an older woman, Anne
Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590, he left his family behind and traveled to London
to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical acclaim quickly followed, and Shakespeare
eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part owner of the Globe Theater. His
career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 15581603) and James I (ruled 16031625); he was a

favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, King James paid Shakespeares theater company the greatest possible
compliment by endowing its members with the status of kings players. Wealthy and renowned,
Shakespeare retired to Stratford, and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeares
death, such luminaries as Ben Jonson hailed him as the apogee of Renaissance theater.
Shakespeares works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and
by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was well
established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about
Shakespeares life, but the dearth of biographical information has left many details of Shakespeares
personal history shrouded in mystery. Some scholars have concluded from this lack and from
Shakespeares modest education that his plays were actually written by someone elseFrancis Bacon and
the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular candidates. The evidence for this claim, however, is
overwhelmingly circumstantial, and few take the theory very seriously.
In the absence of definitive proof to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the thirtyseven plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy of this body of work is immense. A number of
Shakespeares plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so influential as
to affect profoundly the course of Western literature and culture ever after.
Julius Caesar takes place in ancient Rome in 44 b.c., when Rome was the center of an empire stretching
from Britain to North Africa and from Persia to Spain. Yet even as the empire grew stronger, so, too, did
the force of the dangers threatening its existence: Rome suffered from constant infighting between
ambitious military leaders and the far weaker senators to whom they supposedly owed allegiance. The
empire also suffered from a sharp division between citizens, who were represented in the senate, and the
increasingly underrepresented plebeian masses. A succession of men aspired to become the absolute ruler
of Rome, but only Julius Caesar seemed likely to achieve this status. Those citizens who favored more
democratic rule feared that Caesars power would lead to the enslavement of Roman citizens by one of
their own. Therefore, a group of conspirators came together and assassinated Caesar. The assassination,
however, failed to put an end to the power struggles dividing the empire, and civil war erupted shortly
thereafter. The plot of Shakespeares play includes the events leading up to the assassination of Caesar as
well as much of the subsequent war, in which the deaths of the leading conspirators constituted a sort of
revenge for the assassination.
Shakespeares contemporaries, well versed in ancient Greek and Roman history, would very likely have
detected parallels between Julius Caesars portrayal of the shift from republican to imperial Rome and the
Elizabethan eras trend toward consolidated monarchal power. In 1599, when the play was first performed,
Queen Elizabeth I had sat on the throne for nearly forty years, enlarging her power at the expense of the
aristocracy and the House of Commons. As she was then sixty-six years old, her reign seemed likely to
end soon, yet she lacked any heirs (as did Julius Caesar). Many feared that her death would plunge
England into the kind of chaos that had plagued England during the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses.
In an age when censorship would have limited direct commentary on these worries, Shakespeare could
nevertheless use the story of Caesar to comment on the political situation of his day.
As his chief source in writing Julius Caesar, Shakespeare probably used Thomas Norths translation of
Plutarchs Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, written in the first century a.d. Plutarch, who believed
that history was propelled by the achievements of great men, saw the role of the biographer as inseparable
from the role of the historian. Shakespeare followed Plutarchs lead by emphasizing how the actions of the
leaders of Roman society, rather than class conflicts or larger political movements, determined history.
However, while Shakespeare does focus on these key political figures, he does not ignore that their power
rests, to some degree, on the fickle favor of the populace.
Contemporary accounts tell us that Julius Caesar, Shakespeares shortest play, was first performed in
1599. It was probably the first play performed in the Globe Theater, the playhouse that was erected around
that time in order to accommodate Shakespeares increasingly successful theater company. However, the
first authoritative text of the play did not appear until the 1623 First Folio edition. The elaborate stage
directions suggest that this text was derived from the companys promptbook rather than Shakespeares
manuscript.
THEMES

Fate versus Free Will

Julius Caesar raises many questions about the force of fate in life versus the capacity for free will. Cassius
refuses to accept Caesars rising power and deems a belief in fate to be nothing more than a form of
passivity or cowardice. He says to Brutus: Men at sometime were masters of their fates. / The fault, dear
Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings (I.ii.140142). Cassius urges a return
to a more noble, self-possessed attitude toward life, blaming his and Brutuss submissive stance not on a
predestined plan but on their failure to assert themselves.
Ultimately, the play seems to support a philosophy in which fate and freedom maintain a delicate
coexistence. Thus Caesar declares: It seems to me most strange that men should fear, / Seeing that death,
a necessary end, / Will come when it will come (II.ii.3537). In other words, Caesar recognizes that
certain events lie beyond human control; to crouch in fear of them is to enter a paralysis equal to, if not
worse than, death. It is to surrender any capacity for freedom and agency that one might actually possess.
Indeed, perhaps to face death head-on, to die bravely and honorably, is Caesars best course: in the end,
Brutus interprets his and Cassiuss defeat as the work of Caesars ghostnot just his apparition, but also
the force of the peoples devotion to him, the strong legacy of a man who refused any fear of fate and, in
his disregard of fate, seems to have transcended it.
Public Self versus Private Self
Much of the plays tragedy stems from the characters neglect of private feelings and loyalties in favor of
what they believe to be the public good. Similarly, characters confuse their private selves with their public
selves, hardening and dehumanizing themselves or transforming themselves into ruthless political
machines. Brutus rebuffs his wife, Portia, when she pleads with him to confide in her; believing himself to
be acting on the peoples will, he forges ahead with the murder of Caesar, despite their close friendship.
Brutus puts aside his personal loyalties and shuns thoughts of Caesar the man, his friend; instead, he acts
on what he believes to be the publics wishes and kills Caesar the leader, the imminent dictator. Cassius
can be seen as a man who has gone to the extreme in cultivating his public persona. Caesar, describing his
distrust of Cassius, tells Antony that the problem with Cassius is his lack of a private lifehis seeming
refusal to acknowledge his own sensibilities or to nurture his own spirit. Such a man, Caesar fears, will let
nothing interfere with his ambition. Indeed, Cassius lacks all sense of personal honor and shows himself to
be a ruthless schemer.
Ultimately, neglecting private sentiments to follow public concerns brings Caesar to his death. Although
Caesar does briefly agree to stay home from the Senate in order to please Calpurnia, who has dreamed of
his murder, he gives way to ambition when Decius tells him that the senators plan to offer him the crown.
-Caesars public self again takes precedence. Tragically, he no longer sees the difference between his
omnipotent, immortal public image and his vulnerable human body. Just preceding his death, Caesar
refuses Artemidoruss pleas to speak with him, saying that he gives last priority to his most personal
concerns. He thus endangers himself by believing that the strength of his public self will protect his
private self.
Misinterpretations and Misreadings
Much of the play deals with the characters failures to interpret correctly the omens that they encounter. As
Cicero says, Men may construe things after their fashion, / Clean from the purpose of the things
themselves (I.iii.3435). Thus, the night preceding Caesars appearance at the Senate is full of portents,
but no one reads them accurately: Cassius takes them to signify the danger that Caesars impending
coronation would bring to the state, when, if anything, they warn of the destruction that Cassius himself
threatens. There are calculated misreadings as well: Cassius manipulates Brutus into joining the
conspiracy by means of forged letters, knowing that Brutuss trusting nature will cause him to accept the
letters as authentic pleas from the Roman people.
The circumstances of Cassiuss death represent another instance of misinterpretation. Pindaruss erroneous
conclusion that Titinius has been captured by the enemy, when in fact Titinius has reunited with friendly
forces, is the piece of misinformation that prompts Cassius to seek death. Thus, in the world of politics
portrayed in Julius Caesar, the inability to read people and events leads to downfall; conversely, the ability
to do so is the key to survival. With so much ambition and rivalry, the ability to gauge the publics opinion
as well as the resentment or loyalty of ones fellow politicians can guide one to success. Antony proves

masterful at recognizing his situation, and his accurate reading of the crowds emotions during his funeral
oration for Caesar allows him to win the masses over to his side.
Inflexibility versus Compromise
Both Brutus and Caesar are stubborn, rather inflexible people who ultimately suffer fatally for it. In the
plays aggressive political landscape, individuals succeed through adaptability, bargaining, and
compromise. Brutuss rigid though honorable ideals leave him open for manipulation by Cassius. He
believes so thoroughly in the purpose of the assassination that he does not perceive the need for excessive
political maneuvering to justify the murder. Equally resolute, Caesar prides himself on his steadfastness;
yet this constancy helps bring about his death, as he refuses to heed ill omens and goes willingly to the
Senate, into the hands of his murderers.
Antony proves perhaps the most adaptable of all of the politicians: while his speech to the Roman citizens
centers on Caesars generosity toward each citizen, he later searches for ways to turn these funds into cash
in order to raise an army against Brutus and Cassius. Although he gains power by offering to honor
Caesars will and provide the citizens their rightful money, it becomes clear that ethical concerns will not
prevent him from using the funds in a more politically expedient manner. Antony is a successful politician
yet the question of morality remains. There seems to be no way to reconcile firm moral principles with
success in politics in Shakespeares rendition of ancient Rome; thus each character struggles toward a
different solution.
Rhetoric and Power
Julius Caesar gives detailed consideration to the relationship between rhetoric and power. The ability to
make things happen by words alone is the most powerful type of authority. Early in the play, it is
established that Caesar has this type of absolute authority: When Caesar says Do this, it is performed,
says Antony, who attaches a similar weight to Octaviuss words toward the end of the play (I.ii.12). Words
also serve to move hearts and minds, as Act III evidences. Antony cleverly convinces the conspirators of
his desire to side with them: Let each man render me with his bloody hand (III.i.185). Under the guise
of a gesture of friendship, Antony actually marks the conspirators for vengeance. In the Forum, Brutus
speaks to the crowd and appeals to its love of liberty in order to justify the killing of Caesar. He also
makes ample reference to the honor in which he is generally esteemed so as to validate further his
explanation of the deed. Antony likewise wins the crowds favor, using persuasive rhetoric to whip the
masses into a frenzy so great that they dont even realize the fickleness of their favor.
MOTIFS
Omens and Portents
Throughout the play, omens and portents manifest themselves, each serving to crystallize the larger
themes of fate and misinterpretation of signs. Until Caesars death, each time an omen or nightmare is
reported, the audience is reminded of Caesars impending demise. The audience wonders whether these
portents simply announce what is fated to occur or whether they serve as warnings for what might occur if
the characters do not take active steps to change their behavior. Whether or not individuals can affect their
destinies, characters repeatedly fail to interpret the omens correctly. In a larger sense, the omens in Julius
Caesar thus imply the dangers of failing to perceive and analyze the details of ones world.
Letters
The motif of letters represents an interesting counterpart to the force of oral rhetoric in the play. Oral
rhetoric depends upon a direct, dialogic interaction between speaker and audience: depending on how the
listeners respond to a certain statement, the orator can alter his or her speech and intonations accordingly.
In contrast, the power of a written letter depends more fully on the addressee; whereas an orator must read
the emotions of the crowd, the act of reading is undertaken solely by the recipient of the letter. Thus, when
Brutus receives the forged letter from Cassius in Act II, scene i, the letter has an effect because Brutus
allows it to do so; it is he who grants it its full power. In contrast, Caesar refuses to read the letter that
Artemidorus tries to hand him in Act III, scene i, as he is heading to the Senate. Predisposed to ignore

personal affairs, Caesar denies the letter any reading at all and thus negates the potential power of the
words written inside.
SYMBOLS
Women and Wives
While one could try to analyze Calpurnia and Portia as full characters in their own right, they function
primarily not as sympathetic personalities or sources of insight or poetry but rather as symbols for the
private, domestic realm. Both women plead with their husbands to be more aware of their private needs
and feelings (Portia in Act II, scene i; Calpurnia in Act III, scene ii). Caesar and Brutus rebuff the pleas of
their respective wives, however; they not only prioritize public matters but also actively disregard their
private emotions and intuitions. As such, Calpurnia and Portia are powerless figures, willing though
unable to help and comfort Caesar and Brutus.
27SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM: HAMLET
CONTEXT
The most influential writer in all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a
successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare attended grammar
school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he married an older woman, Anne
Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London
to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare
eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe Theater. His
career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 15581603) and James I (ruled 16031625), and he was a
favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeares company the greatest possible
compliment by bestowing upon its members the title of Kings Men. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare
retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeares death, literary
luminaries such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless.
Shakespeares works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and
by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was well
established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about
Shakespeares life, but the dearth of biographical information has left many details of Shakespeares
personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have concluded from this fact that Shakespeares plays
were really written by someone elseFrancis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular
candidatesbut the support for this claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken
seriously by many scholars.
In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the
thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy of this body of work is immense. A
number of Shakespeares plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so
influential as to profoundly affect the course of Western literature and culture ever after.
Written during the first part of the seventeenth century (probably in 1600 or 1601), Hamlet was probably
first performed in July 1602. It was first published in printed form in 1603 and appeared in an enlarged
edition in 1604. As was common practice during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Shakespeare
borrowed for his plays ideas and stories from earlier literary works. He could have taken the story of
Hamlet from several possible sources, including a twelfth-century Latin history of Denmark compiled by
Saxo Grammaticus and a prose work by the French writer Franois de Belleforest, entitled Histoires
Tragiques.
The raw material that Shakespeare appropriated in writing Hamlet is the story of a Danish prince whose
uncle murders the princes father, marries his mother, and claims the throne. The prince pretends to be
feeble-minded to throw his uncle off guard, then manages to kill his uncle in revenge. Shakespeare
changed the emphasis of this story entirely, making his Hamlet a philosophically minded prince who
delays taking action because his knowledge of his uncles crime is so uncertain. Shakespeare went far
beyond making uncertainty a personal quirk of Hamlets, introducing a number of important ambiguities

into the play that even the audience cannot resolve with certainty. For instance, whether Hamlets mother,
Gertrude, shares in Claudiuss guilt; whether Hamlet continues to love Ophelia even as he spurns her, in
Act III; whether Ophelias death is suicide or accident; whether the ghost offers reliable knowledge, or
seeks to deceive and tempt Hamlet; and, perhaps most importantly, whether Hamlet would be morally
justified in taking revenge on his uncle. Shakespeare makes it clear that the stakes riding on some of these
questions are enormousthe actions of these characters bring disaster upon an entire kingdom. At the
plays end it is not even clear whether justice has been achieved.
By modifying his source materials in this way, Shakespeare was able to take an unremarkable revenge
story and make it resonate with the most fundamental themes and problems of the Renaissance. The
Renaissance is a vast cultural phenomenon that began in fifteenth-century Italy with the recovery of
classical Greek and Latin texts that had been lost to the Middle Ages. The scholars who enthusiastically
rediscovered these classical texts were motivated by an educational and political ideal called (in Latin)
humanitasthe idea that all of the capabilities and virtues peculiar to human beings should be studied and
developed to their furthest extent. Renaissance humanism, as this movement is now called, generated a
new interest in human experience, and also an enormous optimism about the potential scope of human
understanding. Hamlets famous speech in Act II, What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason,
how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in
apprehension how like a godthe beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! (II.ii.293297) is directly
based upon one of the major texts of the Italian humanists, Pico della Mirandolas Oration on the Dignity
of Man. For the humanists, the purpose of cultivating reason was to lead to a better understanding of how
to act, and their fondest hope was that the coordination of action and understanding would lead to great
benefits for society as a whole.
As the Renaissance spread to other countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, a more
skeptical strain of humanism developed, stressing the limitations of human understanding. For example,
the sixteenth-century French humanist, Michel de Montaigne, was no less interested in studying human
experiences than the earlier humanists were, but he maintained that the world of experience was a world
of appearances, and that human beings could never hope to see past those appearances into the realities
that lie behind them. This is the world in which Shakespeare places his characters. Hamlet is faced with
the difficult task of correcting an injustice that he can never have sufficient knowledge ofa dilemma that
is by no means unique, or even uncommon. And while Hamlet is fond of pointing out questions that
cannot be answered because they concern supernatural and metaphysical matters, the play as a whole
chiefly demonstrates the difficulty of knowing the truth about other peopletheir guilt or innocence, their
motivations, their feelings, their relative states of sanity or insanity. The world of other people is a world
of appearances, and Hamlet is, fundamentally, a play about the difficulty of living in that world.
THEMES
The Impossibility of Certainty
What separates Hamlet from other revenge plays (and maybe from every play written before it) is that the
action we expect to see, particularly from Hamlet himself, is continually postponed while Hamlet tries to
obtain more certain knowledge about what he is doing. This play poses many questions that other plays
would simply take for granted. Can we have certain knowledge about ghosts? Is the ghost what it appears
to be, or is it really a misleading fiend? Does the ghost have reliable knowledge about its own death, or is
the ghost itself deluded? Moving to more earthly matters: How can we know for certain the facts about a
crime that has no witnesses? Can Hamlet know the state of Claudiuss soul by watching his behavior? If
so, can he know the facts of what Claudius did by observing the state of his soul? Can Claudius (or the
audience) know the state of Hamlets mind by observing his behavior and listening to his speech? Can we
know whether our actions will have the consequences we want them to have? Can we know anything
about the afterlife?
Many people have seen Hamlet as a play about indecisiveness, and thus about Hamlets failure to act
appropriately. It might be more interesting to consider that the play shows us how many uncertainties our
lives are built upon, how many unknown quantities are taken for granted when people act or when they
evaluate one anothers actions.

The Complexity of Action

Directly related to the theme of certainty is the theme of action. How is it possible to take reasonable,
effective, purposeful action? In Hamlet, the question of how to act is affected not only by rational
considerations, such as the need for certainty, but also by emotional, ethical, and psychological factors.
Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that its even possible to act in a controlled, purposeful way.
When he does act, he prefers to do it blindly, recklessly, and violently. The other characters obviously
think much less about action in the abstract than Hamlet does, and are therefore less troubled about the
possibility of acting effectively. They simply act as they feel is appropriate. But in some sense they prove
that Hamlet is right, because all of their actions miscarry. Claudius possesses himself of queen and crown
through bold action, but his conscience torments him, and he is beset by threats to his authority (and, of
course, he dies). Laertes resolves that nothing will distract him from acting out his revenge, but he is
easily influenced and manipulated into serving Claudiuss ends, and his poisoned rapier is turned back
upon himself.
The Mystery of Death
In the aftermath of his fathers murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of
the play he considers death from a great many perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of
death, embodied in the ghost, and the physical remainders of the dead, such as by Yoricks skull and the
decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout, the idea of death is closely tied to the themes of spirituality,
truth, and uncertainty in that death may bring the answers to Hamlets deepest questions, ending once and
for all the problem of trying to determine truth in an ambiguous world. And, since death is both the cause
and the consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and justiceClaudiuss
murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlets quest for revenge, and Claudiuss death is the end of that quest.
The question of his own death plagues Hamlet as well, as he repeatedly contemplates whether or not
suicide is a morally legitimate action in an unbearably painful world. Hamlets grief and misery is such
that he frequently longs for death to end his suffering, but he fears that if he commits suicide, he will be
consigned to eternal suffering in hell because of the Christian religions prohibition of suicide. In his
famous To be or not to be soliloquy (III.i), Hamlet philosophically concludes that no one would choose
to endure the pain of life if he or she were not afraid of what will come after death, and that it is this fear
which causes complex moral considerations to interfere with the capacity for action.
The Nation as a Diseased Body
Everything is connected in Hamlet, including the welfare of the royal family and the health of the state as
a whole. The plays early scenes explore the sense of anxiety and dread that surrounds the transfer of
power from one ruler to the next. Throughout the play, characters draw explicit connections between the
moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the nation. Denmark is frequently described as a physical
body made ill by the moral corruption of Claudius and Gertrude, and many observers interpret the
presence of the ghost as a supernatural omen indicating that [s]omething is rotten in the state of
Denmark (I.iv.67). The dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong, forthright ruler under whose guard the
state was in good health, while Claudius, a wicked politician, has corrupted and compromised Denmark to
satisfy his own appetites. At the end of the play, the rise to power of the upright Fortinbras suggests that
Denmark will be strengthened once again.
MOTIFS
Incest and Incestuous Desire
The motif of incest runs throughout the play and is frequently alluded to by Hamlet and the ghost, most
obviously in conversations about Gertrude and Claudius, the former brother-in-law and sister-in-law who
are now married. A subtle motif of incestuous desire can be found in the relationship of Laertes and
Ophelia, as Laertes sometimes speaks to his sister in suggestively sexual terms and, at her funeral, leaps
into her grave to hold her in his arms. However, the strongest overtones of incestuous desire arise in the
relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude, in Hamlets fixation on Gertrudes sex life with Claudius and his
preoccupation with her in general.

Misogyny
Shattered by his mothers decision to marry Claudius so soon after her husbands death, Hamlet becomes
cynical about women in general, showing a particular obsession with what he perceives to be a connection
between female sexuality and moral corruption. This motif of misogyny, or hatred of women, occurs
sporadically throughout the play, but it is an important inhibiting factor in Hamlets relationships with
Ophelia and Gertrude. He urges Ophelia to go to a nunnery rather than experience the corruptions of
sexuality and exclaims of Gertrude, Frailty, thy name is woman (I.ii.146).
Ears and Hearing
One facet of Hamlets exploration of the difficulty of attaining true knowledge is slipperiness of language.
Words are used to communicate ideas, but they can also be used to distort the truth, manipulate other
people, and serve as tools in corrupt quests for power. Claudius, the shrewd politician, is the most obvious
example of a man who manipulates words to enhance his own power. The sinister uses of words are
represented by images of ears and hearing, from Claudiuss murder of the king by pouring poison into his
ear to Hamlets claim to Horatio that I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb (IV.vi.21).
The poison poured in the kings ear by Claudius is used by the ghost to symbolize the corrosive effect of
Claudiuss dishonesty on the health of Denmark. Declaring that the story that he was killed by a snake is a
lie, he says that the whole ear of Denmark is Rankly abused. . . . (I.v.3638).
SYMBOLS
Yoricks Skull
In Hamlet, physical objects are rarely used to represent thematic ideas. One important exception is
Yoricks skull, which Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene of Act V. As Hamlet speaks to
the skull and about the skull of the kings former jester, he fixates on deaths inevitability and the
disintegration of the body. He urges the skull to get you to my ladys chamber, and tell her, let her paint
an inch thick, to this favor she must comeno one can avoid death (V.i.178179). He traces the skulls
mouth and says, Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft, indicating his fascination
with the physical consequences of death (V.i.174175). This latter idea is an important motif throughout
the play, as Hamlet frequently makes comments referring to every human bodys eventual decay, noting
that Polonius will be eaten by worms, that even kings are eaten by worms, and that dust from the decayed
body of Alexander the Great might be used to stop a hole in a beer barrel.
28SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM: A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM
CONTEXT
The most influential writer in all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a
successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare attended grammar
school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he married an older woman, Anne
Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London
to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare
eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe Theater. His
career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 15581603) and James I (ruled 16031625), and he was a
favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeares company the greatest possible
compliment by bestowing upon its members the title of Kings Men. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare
retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeares death, literary
luminaries such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless.
Shakespeares works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and
by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was well
established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about
Shakespeares life, but the dearth of biographical information has left many details of Shakespeares
personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have concluded from this fact that Shakespeares plays
were really written by someone elseFrancis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular

candidatesbut the support for this claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken
seriously by many scholars.
In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the
thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy of this body of work is immense. A
number of Shakespeares plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so
influential as to profoundly affect the course of Western literature and culture ever after.
Written in the mid-1590s, probably shortly before Shakespeare turned to Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer
Nights Dream is one of his strangest and most delightful creations, and it marks a departure from his
earlier works and from others of the English Renaissance. The play demonstrates both the extent of
Shakespeares learning and the expansiveness of his imagination. The range of references in the play is
among its most extraordinary attributes: Shakespeare draws on sources as various as Greek mythology
(Theseus, for instance, is loosely based on the Greek hero of the same name, and the play is peppered with
references to Greek gods and goddesses); English country fairy lore (the character of Puck, or Robin
Goodfellow, was a popular figure in sixteenth-century stories); and the theatrical practices of
Shakespeares London (the craftsmens play refers to and parodies many conventions of English
Renaissance theater, such as men playing the roles of women). Further, many of the characters are drawn
from diverse texts: Titania comes from Ovids Metamorphoses, and Oberon may have been taken from the
medieval romance Huan of Bordeaux, translated by Lord Berners in the mid-1530s. Unlike the plots of
many of Shakespeares plays, however, the story in A Midsummer Nights Dream seems not to have been
drawn from any particular source but rather to be the original product of the playwrights imagination.
THEMES
Loves Difficulty
The course of true love never did run smooth, comments Lysander, articulating one of A Midsummer
Nights Dreams most important themesthat of the difficulty of love (I.i.134). Though most of the
conflict in the play stems from the troubles of romance, and though the play involves a number of
romantic elements, it is not truly a love story; it distances the audience from the emotions of the characters
in order to poke fun at the torments and afflictions that those in love suffer. The tone of the play is so
lighthearted that the audience never doubts that things will end happily, and it is therefore free to enjoy the
comedy without being caught up in the tension of an uncertain outcome.
The theme of loves difficulty is often explored through the motif of love out of balancethat is, romantic
situations in which a disparity or inequality interferes with the harmony of a relationship. The prime
instance of this imbalance is the asymmetrical love among the four young Athenians: Hermia loves
Lysander, Lysander loves Hermia, Helena loves Demetrius, and Demetrius loves Hermia instead of Helena
a simple numeric imbalance in which two men love the same woman, leaving one woman with too
many suitors and one with too few. The play has strong potential for a traditional outcome, and the plot is
in many ways based on a quest for internal balance; that is, when the lovers tangle resolves itself into
symmetrical pairings, the traditional happy ending will have been achieved. Somewhat similarly, in the
relationship between Titania and Oberon, an imbalance arises out of the fact that Oberons coveting of
Titanias Indian boy outweighs his love for her. Later, Titanias passion for the ass-headed Bottom
represents an imbalance of appearance and nature: Titania is beautiful and graceful, while Bottom is
clumsy and grotesque.
Magic
The fairies magic, which brings about many of the most bizarre and hilarious situations in the play, is
another element central to the fantastic atmosphere of A Midsummer Nights Dream. Shakespeare uses
magic both to embody the almost supernatural power of love (symbolized by the love potion) and to create
a surreal world. Although the misuse of magic causes chaos, as when Puck mistakenly applies the love
potion to Lysanders eyelids, magic ultimately resolves the plays tensions by restoring love to balance
among the quartet of Athenian youths. Additionally, the ease with which Puck uses magic to his own ends,
as when he reshapes Bottoms head into that of an ass and recreates the voices of Lysander and Demetrius,
stands in contrast to the laboriousness and gracelessness of the craftsmens attempt to stage their play.

Dreams
As the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer Nights Dream; they are linked to
the bizarre, magical mishaps in the forest. Hippolytas first words in the play evidence the prevalence of
dreams (Four days will quickly steep themselves in night, / Four nights will quickly dream away the
time), and various characters mention dreams throughout (I.i.78). The theme of dreaming recurs
predominantly when characters attempt to explain bizarre events in which these characters are involved: I
have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what / dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about
texpound this dream, Bottom says, unable to fathom the magical happenings that have affected him as
anything but the result of slumber.
Shakespeare is also interested in the actual workings of dreams, in how events occur without explanation,
time loses its normal sense of flow, and the impossible occurs as a matter of course; he seeks to recreate
this environment in the play through the intervention of the fairies in the magical forest. At the end of the
play, Puck extends the idea of dreams to the audience members themselves, saying that, if they have been
offended by the play, they should remember it as nothing more than a dream. This sense of illusion and
gauzy fragility is crucial to the atmosphere of A Midsummer Nights Dream, as it helps render the play a
fantastical experience rather than a heavy drama.
MOTIFS
Contrast
The idea of contrast is the basic building block of A Midsummer Nights Dream. The entire play is
constructed around groups of opposites and doubles. Nearly every characteristic presented in the play has
an opposite: Helena is tall, Hermia is short; Puck plays pranks, Bottom is the victim of pranks; Titania is
beautiful, Bottom is grotesque. Further, the three main groups of characters (who are developed from
sources as varied as Greek mythology, English folklore, and classical literature) are designed to contrast
powerfully with one another: the fairies are graceful and magical, while the craftsmen are clumsy and
earthy; the craftsmen are merry, while the lovers are overly serious. Contrast serves as the defining visual
characteristic of A Midsummer Nights Dream, with the plays most indelible image being that of the
beautiful, delicate Titania weaving flowers into the hair of the ass-headed Bottom. It seems impossible to
imagine two figures less compatible with each other. The juxtaposition of extraordinary differences is the
most important characteristic of the plays surreal atmosphere and is thus perhaps the plays central motif;
there is no scene in which extraordinary contrast is not present.
SYMBOLS
Theseus and Hippolyta
Theseus and Hippolyta bookend A Midsummer Nights Dream, appearing in the daylight at both the
beginning and the end of the plays main action. They disappear, however, for the duration of the action,
leaving in the middle of Act I, scene i and not reappearing until Act IV, as the sun is coming up to end the
magical night in the forest. Shakespeare uses Theseus and Hippolyta, the ruler of Athens and his warrior
bride, to represent order and stability, to contrast with the uncertainty, instability, and darkness of most of
the play. Whereas an important element of the dream realm is that one is not in control of ones
environment, Theseus and Hippolyta are always entirely in control of theirs. Their reappearance in the
daylight of Act IV to hear Theseuss hounds signifies the end of the dream state of the previous night and a
return to rationality.
The Love Potion
The love potion is made from the juice of a flower that was struck with one of Cupids misfired arrows; it
is used by the fairies to wreak romantic havoc throughout Acts II, III, and IV. Because the meddling fairies
are careless with the love potion, the situation of the young Athenian lovers becomes increasingly chaotic
and confusing (Demetrius and Lysander are magically compelled to transfer their love from Hermia to
Helena), and Titania is hilariously humiliated (she is magically compelled to fall deeply in love with the
ass-headed Bottom). The love potion thus becomes a symbol of the unreasoning, fickle, erratic, and

undeniably powerful nature of love, which can lead to inexplicable and bizarre behavior and cannot be
resisted.
The Craftsmens Play
The play-within-a-play that takes up most of Act V, scene i is used to represent, in condensed form, many
of the important ideas and themes of the main plot. Because the craftsmen are such bumbling actors, their
performance satirizes the melodramatic Athenian lovers and gives the play a purely joyful, comedic
ending. Pyramus and Thisbe face parental disapproval in the play-within-a-play, just as Hermia and
Lysander do; the theme of romantic confusion enhanced by the darkness of night is rehashed, as Pyramus
mistakenly believes that Thisbe has been killed by the lion, just as the Athenian lovers experience intense
misery because of the mix-ups caused by the fairies meddling. The craftsmens play is, therefore, a kind
of symbol for A Midsummer Nights Dream itself: a story involving powerful emotions that is made
hilarious by its comical presentation.

LITERATURA AMERICAN
1FAULKNER, WILLIAM: ABSALOM, ABSALOM
CONTEXT
William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, in September 1897; he died in Mississippi in
1962. Faulkner achieved a reputation as one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century largely
based on his series of novels about a fictional region of Mississippi called Yoknapatawpha County,
centered on the fictional town of Jefferson. The greatest of these novelsamong them The Sound and the
Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!rank among the finest novels of world literature.
Faulkner was especially interested in moral themes relating to the ruins of the Deep South in the post-Civil
War era. His prose stylewhich combines long, uninterrupted sentences with long strings of adjectives,
frequent changes in narration, many recursive asides, and a frequent reliance on a sort of objective streamof- consciousness technique, whereby the inner experience of a character in a scene is contrasted with the
scene's outward appearanceranks among his greatest achievements. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1949.
Absalom, Absalom! is perhaps Faulkner's most focused attempt to expose the moral crises which led to the
destruction of the South. The story of a man hell-bent on establishing a dynasty and a story of love and
hatred between races and families, it is also an exploration of how people relate to the past. Faulker tells a
single story from a number of perspectives, capturing the conflict, racism, violence, and sacrifice in each
character's life, and also demonstrating how the human mind reconstructs the past in the present
imagination.
COMMENTARY
Absalom, Absalom! is an unusual book in that its first chapter summarizes nearly the plot of the rest of the
book. The events Miss Rosa recounts in the life of Thomas Sutpen and his family are the same events that
subsequent chapters will examine in depth and from many different perspectives and angles. Part of
Faulkner's project in this novel is to show the way in which people relate to, think about, and interpret the
past; to achieve that end, he eschews a straightforward chronological narration in favor of a sequence of
eventsSutpen building the house and marrying Ellen, the war, Henry Sutpen killing Charles Bon just
before Charles would have married Judiththat will be repeated and deepened throughout the novel. The
events will be held up to the light by many different characters, each of whom will give the characters in
the Sutpen saga different motivations, and will read a different meaning into the story as a whole.
Most of the first chapter is narrated by Miss Rosa, whose relationship to her past is one of frantic and
traumatic bitterness, in which everything has intensified and grown out of proportion: Sutpen is a demon,
an ogre, a monster; his slaves were savage animals; and so forth. In addition to exploring the nuances of
man's relationship to the past, Faulkner sets out in Absalom, Absalom! to present a metaphor for the
history of the South. It is important to note that even at this early stage, Quentin (who will supply the
consciousness that unifies the whole book, just as Sutpen is the figure that dominates it) connects the story

of Sutpen to that of the South itself, speculating that the South lost the war because shrewd, strong men
like Sutpen lacked compassion or pity, and so earned the enmity of God. Later, Quentin's roommate at
Harvard will ask him to explain the South, and Quentin will tell the Sutpen story in answer. As the novel
progresses, Quentin's and the other characters' interpretations of the Sutpen story become increasingly a
struggle with the larger questions (family, race, honor, violence, morality, power, innocence) that define
the history of the South.
Chapter 1 is also the reader's first encounter with Faulkner's long-lined, recursive narrative style in which
events and sequences are interspersed and jumbled, clauses piled on clauses and adjectives on adjectives.
Narrators change sometimes without much warning, and characters are introduced as though the reader
were already familiar with them. This style, particularly in the early chapters of the novel, can be
dauntingly difficult. It is important to remember that Faulkner does not mean for his reader to understand
everything at once, so some confusion is to be expected. His technique is to gradually clarify the story as
the novel progresses, causing it to emerge piece by piece until finally, the reader begins to understand.
2FAULKNER, WILLIAM: THE SOUND AND THE FURY
CONTEXT
William Faulkner was born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, to a prominent Southern family. A
number of his ancestors were involved in the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and the
Reconstruction, and were part of the local railroad industry and political scene. Faulkner showed signs of
artistic talent from a young age, but became bored with his classes and never finished high school.
Faulkner grew up in the town of Oxford, Mississippi, and eventually returned there in his later years and
purchased his famous estate, Rowan Oak. Oxford and the surrounding area were Faulkners inspiration for
the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and its town of Jefferson. These locales became the
setting for a number of his works. Faulkners Yoknapatawpha novels include The Sound and the Fury
(1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Hamlet (1940),
and Go Down, Moses (1942), and they feature some of the same characters and locations.
Faulkner was particularly interested in the decline of the Deep South after the Civil War. Many of his
novels explore the deterioration of the Southern aristocracy after the destruction of its wealth and way of
life during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Faulkner populates Yoknapatawpha County with the
skeletons of old mansions and the ghosts of great men, patriarchs and generals from the past whose
aristocratic families fail to live up to their historical greatness. Beneath the shadow of past grandeur, these
families attempt to cling to old Southern values, codes, and myths that are corrupted and out of place in
the reality of the modern world. The families in Faulkners novels are rife with failed sons, disgraced
daughters, and smoldering resentments between whites and blacks in the aftermath of African-American
slavery.
Faulkners reputation as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century is largely due to his highly
experimental style. Faulkner was a pioneer in literary modernism, dramatically diverging from the forms
and structures traditionally used in novels before his time. Faulkner often employs stream of
consciousness narrative, discards any notion of chronological order, uses multiple narrators, shifts between
the present and past tense, and tends toward impossibly long and complex sentences. Not surprisingly,
these stylistic innovations make some of Faulkners novels incredibly challenging to the reader. However,
these bold innovations paved the way for countless future writers to continue to experiment with the
possibilities of the English language. For his efforts, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1949. He died in Mississippi in 1962.
First published in 1929, The Sound and the Fury is recognized as one of the most successfully innovative
and experimental American novels of its time, not to mention one of the most challenging to interpret. The
novel concerns the downfall of the Compsons, who have been a prominent family in Jefferson,
Mississippi, since before the Civil War. Faulkner represents the human experience by portraying events
and images subjectively, through several different characters respective memories of childhood. The
novels stream of consciousness style is frequently very opaque, as events are often deliberately obscured
and narrated out of order. Despite its formidable complexity, The Sound and the Fury is an overpowering
and deeply moving novel. It is generally regarded as Faulkners most important and remarkable literary
work.

THEMES
The Corruption of Southern Aristocratic Values
The first half of the nineteenth century saw the rise of a number of prominent Southern families such as
the Compsons. These aristocratic families espoused traditional Southern values. Men were expected to act
like gentlemen, displaying courage, moral strength, perseverance, and chivalry in defense of the honor of
their family name. Women were expected to be models of feminine purity, grace, and virginity until it
came time for them to provide children to inherit the family legacy. Faith in God and profound concern for
preserving the family reputation provided the grounding for these beliefs.
The Civil War and Reconstruction devastated many of these once-great Southern families economically,
socially, and psychologically. Faulkner contends that in the process, the Compsons, and other similar
Southern families, lost touch with the reality of the world around them and became lost in a haze of selfabsorption. This self-absorption corrupted the core values these families once held dear and left the newer
generations completely unequipped to deal with the realities of the modern world.
We see this corruption running rampant in the Compson family. Mr. Compson has a vague notion of
family honorsomething he passes on to Quentinbut is mired in his alcoholism and maintains a
fatalistic belief that he cannot control the events that befall his family. Mrs. Compson is just as selfabsorbed, wallowing in hypochondria and self-pity and remaining emotionally distant from her children.
Quentins obsession with old Southern morality renders him paralyzed and unable to move past his
familys sins. Caddy tramples on the Southern notion of feminine purity and indulges in promiscuity, as
does her daughter. Jason wastes his cleverness on self-pity and greed, striving constantly for personal gain
but with no higher aspirations. Benjy commits no real sins, but the Compsons decline is physically
manifested through his retardation and his inability to differentiate between morality and immorality.
The Compsons corruption of Southern values results in a household that is completely devoid of love, the
force that once held the family together. Both parents are distant and ineffective. Caddy, the only child
who shows an ability to love, is eventually disowned. Though Quentin loves Caddy, his love is neurotic,
obsessive, and overprotective. None of the men experience any true romantic love, and are thus unable to
marry and carry on the family name.
At the conclusion of the novel, Dilsey is the only loving member of the household, the only character who
maintains her values without the corrupting influence of self-absorption. She thus comes to represent a
hope for the renewal of traditional Southern values in an uncorrupted and positive form. The novel ends
with Dilsey as the torchbearer for these values, and, as such, the only hope for the preservation of the
Compson legacy. Faulkner implies that the problem is not necessarily the values of the old South, but the
fact that these values were corrupted by families such as the Compsons and must be recaptured for any
Southern greatness to return.
Resurrection and Renewal
Three of the novels four sections take place on or around Easter, 1928. Faulkners placement of the
novels climax on this weekend is significant, as the weekend is associated with Christs crucifixion on
Good Friday and resurrection on Easter Sunday. A number of symbolic events in the novel could be
likened to the death of Christ: Quentins death, Mr. Compsons death, Caddys loss of virginity, or the
decline of the Compson family in general.
Some critics have characterized Benjy as a Christ figure, as Benjy was born on Holy Saturday and is
currently thirty-three, the same age as Christ at the crucifixion. Interpreting Benjy as a Christ figure has a
variety of possible implications. Benjy may represent the impotence of Christ in the modern world and the
need for a new Christ figure to emerge. Alternatively, Faulkner may be implying that the modern world
has failed to recognize Christ in its own midst.
Though the Easter weekend is associated with death, it also brings the hope of renewal and resurrection.
Though the Compson family has fallen, Dilsey represents a source of hope. Dilsey is herself somewhat of
a Christ figure. A literal parallel to the suffering servant of the Bible, Dilsey has endured Christlike
hardship throughout her long life of service to the disintegrating Compson family. She has constantly
tolerated Mrs. Compsons self-pity, Jasons cruelty, and Benjys frustrating incapacity. While the
Compsons crumble around her, Dilsey emerges as the only character who has successfully resurrected the

values that the Compsons have long abandonedhard work, endurance, love of family, and religious
faith.
The Failure of Language and Narrative
Faulkner himself admitted that he could never satisfactorily convey the story of The Sound and the Fury
through any single narrative voice. His decision to use four different narrators highlights the subjectivity
of each narrative and casts doubt on the ability of language to convey truth or meaning absolutely.
Benjy, Quentin, and Jason have vastly different views on the Compson tragedy, but no single perspective
seems more valid than the others. As each new angle emerges, more details and questions arise. Even the
final section, with its omniscient third-person narrator, does not tie up all of the novels loose ends. In
interviews, Faulkner lamented the imperfection of the final version of the novel, which he termed his
most splendid failure. Even with four narrators providing the depth of four different perspectives,
Faulkner believed that his language and narrative still fell short.
MOTIFS
Time
Faulkners treatment and representation of time in this novel was hailed as revolutionary. Faulkner
suggests that time is not a constant or objectively understandable entity, and that humans can interact with
it in a variety of ways. Benjy has no concept of time and cannot distinguish between past and present. His
disability enables him to draw connections between the past and present that others might not see, and it
allows him to escape the other Compsons obsessions with the past greatness of their name. Quentin, in
contrast, is trapped by time, unable and unwilling to move beyond his memories of the past. He attempts
to escape times grasp by breaking his watch, but its ticking continues to haunt him afterward, and he sees
no solution but suicide. Unlike his brother Quentin, Jason has no use for the past. He focuses completely
on the present and the immediate future. To Jason, time exists only for personal gain and cannot be
wasted. Dilsey is perhaps the only character at peace with time. Unlike the Compsons, who try to escape
time or manipulate it to their advantage, Dilsey understands that her life is a small sliver in the boundless
range of time and history.
Order and Chaos
Each of the Compson brothers understands order and chaos in a different way. Benjy constructs order
around the pattern of familiar memories in his mind and becomes upset when he experiences something
that does not fit. Quentin relies on his idealized Southern code to provide order. Jason orders everything in
his world based on potential personal gain, attempting to twist all circumstances to his own advantage. All
three of these systems fail as the Compson family plunges into chaos. Only Dilsey has a strong sense of
order. She maintains her values, endures the Compsons tumultuous downfall, and is the only one left
unbroken at the end.
Shadows
Seen primarily in Benjys and Quentins sections, shadows imply that the present state of the Compson
family is merely a shadow of its past greatness. Shadows serve as a subtle reminder of the passage of time,
as they slowly shift with the sun through the course of a day. Quentin is particularly sensitive to shadows,
a suggestion of his acute awareness that the Compson name is merely a shadow of what it once was.
SYMBOLS
Water
Water symbolizes cleansing and purity throughout the novel, especially in relation to Caddy. Playing in
the stream as a child, Caddy seems to epitomize purity and innocence. However, she muddies her
underclothes, which foreshadows Caddys later promiscuity. Benjy gets upset when he first smells Caddy
wearing perfume. Still a virgin at this point, Caddy washes the perfume off, symbolically washing away
her sin. Likewise, she washes her mouth out with soap after Benjy catches her on the swing with Charlie.
Once Caddy loses her virginity, she knows that no amount of water or washing can cleanse her.

Quentins Watch
Quentins watch is a gift from his father, who hopes that it will alleviate Quentins feeling that he must
devote so much attention to watching time himself. Quentin is unable to escape his preoccupation with
time, with or without the watch. Because the watch once belonged to Mr. Compson, it constantly reminds
Quentin of the glorious heritage his family considers so important. The watchs incessant ticking
symbolizes the constant inexorable passage of time. Quentin futilely attempts to escape time by breaking
the watch, but it continues to tick even without its hands, haunting him even after he leaves the watch
behind in his room.
3FITZGERALD, F. SCOTT. THE GREAT GATSBY
CONTEXT
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott
Key, the author of The Star-Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an
intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite
being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy
plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917,
as World War I neared its end.
Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama.
There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally
agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to delay their
wedding until he could prove a success. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald
became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him.
Many of these events from Fitzgeralds early life appear in his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby,
published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated
at an Ivy League school (in Nicks case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to
Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with
a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South.
Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence, while
desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a great deal of
wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and throwing parties that he
believes will enable him to win Daisys love. As the giddiness of the Roaring Twenties dissolved into the
bleakness of the Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and Fitzgerald battled
alcoholism, which hampered his writing. He published Tender Is the Night in 1934, and sold short stories
to The Saturday Evening Post to support his lavish lifestyle. In 1937, he left for Hollywood to write
screenplays, and in 1940, while working on his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, died of a heart attack at
the age of forty-four.
Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed the Jazz Age.
Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the
American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban
on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution
(1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up. Sprawling
private parties managed to elude police notice, and speakeasiessecret clubs that sold liquorthrived.
The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the
war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of
the previous decade were turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the
day.
Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like
Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained
materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick,
Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part
of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgeralds
attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his

love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he
despised.
THEMES
The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s
On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main
theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action
takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical
area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s
America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented
prosperity and material excess.
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching
cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and
wild jazz musicepitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every
Saturday nightresulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for
money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of
young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they
had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy,
empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden,
sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and
consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune,
but the American aristocracyfamilies with old wealthscorned the newly rich industrialists and
speculators. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of
alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among
rich and poor alike.
Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick and
Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that
resulted from the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsbys parties
evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between old money and new money manifests
itself in the novels symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the
self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsbys fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and
bootlegging.
As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter 9), the American dream was originally about
discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy
money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. The main
plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsbys dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference
in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the
rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally, places and objects in The Great Gatsby
have meaning only because characters instill them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best
exemplify this idea. In Nicks mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols constitutes a central
component of the American dream, as early Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and
values.
Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisys
dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby
instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsbys dream is
ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the
unworthiness of its objectmoney and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a
bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished pasthis time in
Louisville with Daisybut is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby
to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.
The Hollowness of the Upper Class

One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the
newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the countrys richest
families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its
denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as
being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a
monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social
signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses
grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans tasteful home and the flowing white
dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.
What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers prove
themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to moneys ability to ease their minds that they
never worry about hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype when, at the end of the novel,
they simply move to a new house far away rather than condescend to attend Gatsbys funeral. Gatsby, on
the other hand, whose recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart,
remaining outside Daisys window until four in the morning in Chapter 7 simply to make sure that Tom
does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsbys good qualities (loyalty and love) lead to his death, as he takes the
blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be punished, and the Buchanans bad qualities
(fickleness and selfishness) allow them to remove themselves from the tragedy not only physically but
psychologically.
MOTIFS
Geography
Throughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the 1920s American society
that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of
ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited, amoral quest for money
and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral decay and social cynicism of New York,
while the West (including Midwestern and northern areas such as Minnesota) is connected to more
traditional social values and ideals. Nicks analysis in Chapter 9 of the story he has related reveals his
sensitivity to this dichotomy: though it is set in the East, the story is really one of the West, as it tells how
people originally from west of the Appalachians (as all of the main characters are) react to the pace and
style of life on the East Coast.
Weather
As in much of Shakespeares work, the weather in The Great Gatsby unfailingly matches the emotional
and narrative tone of the story. Gatsby and Daisys reunion begins amid a pouring rain, proving awkward
and melancholy; their love reawakens just as the sun begins to come out. Gatsbys climactic confrontation
with Tom occurs on the hottest day of the summer, under the scorching sun (like the fatal encounter
between Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet). Wilson kills Gatsby on the first day of autumn, as
Gatsby floats in his pool despite a palpable chill in the aira symbolic attempt to stop time and restore his
relationship with Daisy to the way it was five years before, in 1917.
SYMBOLS
The Green Light
Situated at the end of Daisys East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsbys West Egg lawn, the green
light represents Gatsbys hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter
1 he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsbys quest for
Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more
generalized ideal. In Chapter 9, Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean,
must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.
The Valley of Ashes

First introduced in Chapter 2, the valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a long
stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It represents the moral and social
decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for
nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George
Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.
The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising
billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and judging American
society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly. Instead, throughout the
novel, Fitzgerald suggests that symbols only have meaning because characters instill them with meaning.
The connection between the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilsons griefstricken mind. This lack of concrete significance contributes to the unsettling nature of the image. Thus,
the eyes also come to represent the essential meaninglessness of the world and the arbitrariness of the
mental process by which people invest objects with meaning. Nick explores these ideas in Chapter 8,
when he imagines Gatsbys final thoughts as a depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and
dreams.
5Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea
CONTEXT
Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, the son of a doctor and a music teacher. He
began his writing career as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. At age eighteen, he volunteered to serve as
a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I and was sent to Italy, where he was badly injured by
shrapnel.
In the 1930s, Hemingway lived in Key West, Florida, and later in Cuba, and his years of experience
fishing the Gulf Stream and the Caribbean provided an essential background for the vivid
descriptions of the fishermans craft in The Old Man and the Sea. In 1936, he wrote a piece for Esquire
about a Cuban fisherman who was dragged out to sea by a great marlin, a game fish that typically weighs
hundreds of pounds. Sharks had destroyed the fishermans catch by the time he was found half-delirious
by other fishermen. This story seems an obvious seed for the tale of Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea.
A great fan of baseball, Hemingway liked to talk in the sports lingo, and by 1952, he badly needed a
win.
Because Hemingway was a writer who always relied heavily on autobiographical sources, some critics,
not surprisingly, eventually decided that the novella served as a thinly veiled attack upon them. According
to this reading. The more compelling interpretation asserts that the novella is a parable about life itself,
in particular mans struggle for triumph in a world that seems designed to destroy him.
THEMES
The Honor in Struggle, Defeat & Death
From the very first paragraph, Santiago is characterized as someone struggling against defeat. He has
gone eighty-four days without catching a fish.
Both Santiago and the marlin display qualities of pride, honor, and bravery, and both are subject to the
same eternal law: they must kill or be killed. In Hemingways portrait of the world, death is inevitable, but
the best men (and animals) will nonetheless refuse to give in to its power.
His admiration for these opponents brings love and respect into an equation with death, as their
destruction becomes a point of honor and bravery that confirms Santiagos heroic qualities.
Pride as the Source of Greatness & Determination
If pride is Santiagos fatal flaw, he is keenly aware of it. After sharks have destroyed the marlin, the old
man apologizes again and again to his worthy opponent.

Because the old man acknowledges that he killed the mighty marlin largely out of pride, and because his
capture of the marlin leads in turn to his heroic transcendence of defeat, pride becomes the source of
Santiagos greatest strength.
MOTIFS
Crucifixion Imagery
In order to suggest the profundity of the old mans sacrifice and the glory that derives from it, Hemingway
purposefully likens Santiago to Christ, who, according to Christian theology, gave his life for the greater
glory of humankind. Crucifixion imagery is the most noticeable way in which Hemingway creates the
symbolic parallel between Santiago and Christ.
Life from Death
Death is the unavoidable force in the novella, the one fact that no living creature can escape. But death,
Hemingway suggests, is never an end in itself: in death there is always the possibility of the most
vigorous life.
The Lions on the Beach
Santiago dreams his pleasant dream of the lions at play on the beaches of Africa three times. Because
Santiago associates the lions with his youth, the dream suggests the circular nature of life.
SYMBOLS
The Marlin
Magnificent and glorious, the marlin symbolizes the ideal opponent. In a world in which everything
kills everything else in some way, Santiago feels genuinely lucky to find himself matched against a
creature that brings out the best in him: his strength, courage, love, and respect.
The Shovel-Nosed Sharks
The shovel-nosed sharks are little more than moving appetites that thoughtlessly and gracelessly attack the
marlin. As opponents of the old man, they stand in bold contrast to the marlin, which is worthy of
Santiagos effort and strength. They symbolize and embody the destructive laws of the universe and
attest to the fact that those laws can be transcended only when equals fight to the death. Because they are
base predators, Santiago wins no glory from battling them.
7MELVILLE, HERMAN. MOBY DICK
CONTEXT
Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. When the family business failed at the end of the
1820s, the Melvilles relocated to Albany in an attempt to revive their fortunes. Melville was forced to start
working in a bank at the age of thirteen.
Melville left school at eighteen to become an elementary school teacher. Running out of alternatives on
land, Melville made his first sea voyage at nineteen, as a merchant sailor on a ship bound for Liverpool,
England. Finally, Melville committed to a whaling voyage of indefinite destination and scale on board a
ship called the Acushnet. This journey took him around the continent of South America, across the Pacific
Ocean, and to the South Seas, where he abandoned ship with a fellow sailor in the summer of 1842,
eighteen months after setting out from New York. The two men found themselves in the Marquesas
Islands, where they accidentally wandered into the company of a tribe of cannibals. Lamed with a bad leg,
Melville became separated from his companion and spent a month alone in the company of the natives.
Melville wrote a series of novels detailing his adventures and his philosophy of life.
A story of monomania aboard a whaling ship, Moby-Dick is a tremendously ambitious novel that
functions at once as a documentary of life at sea and a vast philosophical allegory of life in general. No

sacred subject is spared in this bleak and scathing critique of the known world, as Melville satirizes by
turns religious traditions, moral values, and the literary and political figures of the day.
Melville was influenced in the writing of Moby-Dick by the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The
Scarlet Letter,. Melville had long admired Hawthornes psychological depth and gothic grimness and
associated Hawthorne with a new, distinctively American literature. Though the works of Shakespeare and
Milton and stories in the Bible (especially the Old Testament) influenced Moby-Dick, Melville didnt look
exclusively to celebrated cultural models. By the 1850s, whaling was a dying industry. Whales had been
hunted into near extinction, and substitutes for whale oil had been found.
To these critics, Moby-Dick was both a seminal work elaborating on classic American themes, such as
religion, fate, and economic expansion.
THEMES
The Limits of Knowledge
The multiplicity of approaches that Ishmael takes, coupled with his compulsive need to assert his authority
as a narrator and the frequent references to the limits of observation (men cannot see the depths of the
ocean, for example), suggest that human knowledge is always limited and insufficient. When it comes
to Moby Dick himself, this limitation takes on allegorical significance. Many of the sailors believe in
prophecies, and some even claim the ability to foretell the future.
The Exploitative Nature of Whaling
At first glance, the Pequod seems like an island of equality and fellowship in the midst of a racist,
hierarchically structured world. The ships crew includes men from all corners of the globe and all
races who seem to get along harmoniously. Ishmael is initially uneasy upon meeting Queequeg, but he
quickly realizes that it is better to have a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian for a shipmate.
Each of the Pequods mates, who are white, is entirely dependent on a nonwhite harpooner,
MOTIFS
Whiteness
Whiteness, to Ishmael, is horrible because it represents the unnatural and threatening: albinos, creatures
that live in extreme and inhospitable environments, waves breaking against rocks. These examples reverse
the traditional association of whiteness with purity. fundamental nature.
Surfaces and Depths
Ishmael frequently bemoans the impossibility of examining anything in its entirety, noting that only the
surfaces of objects and environments are available to the human observer.
SYMBOLS
The Pequod
Named after a Native American tribe in Massachusetts that did not long survive the arrival of white men
and thus memorializing an extinction, the Pequod is a symbol of doom.
Moby Dick
Because they have no delusions about Moby Dick acting malevolently toward men or literally embodying
evil, tales about the whale allow them to confront their fear, manage it, and continue to function. Ahab, on
the other hand, believes that Moby Dick is a manifestation of all that is wrong with the world.
Queequegs Coffin
Queequegs coffin alternately symbolizes life and death. Queequeg has it built when he is seriously ill,
but when he recovers, it becomes a chest to hold his belongings and an emblem of his will to live. He
perpetuates the knowledge tattooed on his body by carving it onto the coffins lid. The coffin further
comes to symbolize life, in a morbid way, when it replaces the Pequods life buoy. When the Pequod

sinks, the coffin becomes Ishmaels buoy, saving not only his life but the life of the narrative that he will
pass on.
10Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49
CONTEXT
Thomas Pynchon was born on Long Island, New York, in 1937. He served in the navy and graduated from
Cornell, after which he worked as a technical writer for Boeing Aircraft. During this time, he turned to
fiction writing and published his first novel, V., in 1963, to rave reviews. He followed up this novel two
years later with The Crying of Lot 49, a short but extremely complex novel. In a sense, The Crying of Lot
49 was a type of dress rehearsal for his long novel that succeeded it, Gravity's Rainbow, which won the
National Book Award and is perhaps the best-known long novel to emerge after World War II. Pynchon's
fourth major novel was called Vineland, and two years ago, he published his historical novel Mason and
Dixon. Through all of these books, with his use of surrealism and creation of vast, varied, and incredible
conspiracy theories, Pynchon has remained one of the most original and important of American novelists.
Almost all works by Pynchon are deliberately complex. The plots are often difficult to follow both
because of their intricate twists and turns and their sometimes incredibly esoteric subject matter. Pynchon's
characters, furthermore, can be hard to relate to. Pynchon has a tendency to fill his novels not with real
characters but rather with facades or brief cameo figures that exist in the novel only for some specific
purpose, after which they disappear. Indeed, Gravity's Rainbow has over 400 of these types of characters.
In The Crying of Lot 49, examples of such characters are Manny di Presso and Jesus Arrabel.
The Crying of Lot 49 is thought by many to be Pynchon's best work. Others surely disagree, arguing that
The Crying of Lot 49 is simply Pynchon's most accessible work, its short length and streamlined (for
Pynchon) plot allowing the reader to follow along with less work than his longer novels require. But no
matter where The Crying of Lot 49 stands within Pynchon's body of work, there is no doubt that in its
humor, story, and deep insight into American culture and beyond, the book is an American landmark.
OVERALL ANALYSIS
The Crying of Lot 49 was written in the 1960s, one of the most politically and socially turbulent decades
in U.S. history. The decade saw the rise of the drug culture, the Vietnam War, the rock revolution, as
well as the birth of numerous social welfare programs after the Democrats swept Congress in the 1964
elections. This was also the decade of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Martin Luther King's
assassination, Civil Rights, and, to some extent, women's rights.
The novel taps into this explosion of cultural occurrences, depicting a dramatically fragmented society.
The Crying of Lot 49 contains a pervasive sense of cultural chaos; indeed, the book draws on all areas of
culture and society, including many of those mentioned above. In the end, the novel's protagonist, Oedipa
Maas, finds herself alone and alienated from that society, having lost touch with the life she used to lead
before she began her attempt to uncover the mystery of the Tristero. The drug culture plays a big part in
this sense of isolation. The world around Oedipa seems to be a world perpetually on drugs, manic and
full of conspiracies and illusions. And though that world is exciting and new, it is also dangerous: drugs
contribute to the destruction of Oedipa's marriage, and drugs cause Hilarius to go insane. Oedipa
hallucinates so often that she seems to be constantly high, and ultimately, this brings her nothing but a
sense of chaotic alienation.
Many of the problems with chaos found in the novel are tied in to the idea of communication. The major
SYMBOL of order in the novel, Maxwell's Demon, cannot be operated because it requires a certain
unattainable level of communication.
Related to the THEME of the problem of communication is the novel's representation of the way in
which people impose interpretation on the meaningless.

There are two concepts underlying all this: puns and science. The novel is full of puns and language
games of all sorts. For instance, the odd names of the novel's characters are a type of play on different
words and their symbolic baggage. Another example is the concept of the word "lot" in the title, which
actually occurs several times in the book but does not relate to anything in the story until the last few
pages. Also, we see that Mucho's radio station spells "fuck" when read in reverse, forming another little
language game that does not have necessarily any inherent meaning but does indicate an interest in
manipulating language for intellectual enjoyment. Language is the means through which the story is
communicated, and Pynchon has chosen to use a language full of jokes, puns, and satires. Science seems
to stand in opposition to the chaos of language that all of Pynchon's manipulation suggests.
More than anything else, The Crying of Lot 49 appears to be about cultural chaos and communication as
seen through the eyes of a young woman who finds herself in a hallucinogenic world disintegrating
around her.
11TWAIN, MARK. HUCKLEBERRY FINN
CONTEXT
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in the town of Florida, Missouri, in 1835. When he
was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, a town on the Mississippi River much like the towns
depicted in his two most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1884).
Clemens spent his young life in a fairly affluent family that owned a number of household slaves. The
death of Clemenss father in 1847, however, left the family in hardship. Clemens left school, worked for a
printer, and, in 1851, having finished his apprenticeship, began to set type for his brother Orions
newspaper, the Hannibal Journal. But Hannibal proved too small to hold Clemens, who soon became a
sort of itinerant printer and found work in a number of American cities, including New York and
Philadelphia.
While still in his early twenties, Clemens gave up his printing career in order to work on riverboats on the
Mississippi. Clemens eventually became a riverboat pilot, and his life on the river influenced him a great
deal. Perhaps most important, the riverboat life provided him with the pen name Mark Twain, derived
from the riverboat leadsmens signalBy the mark, twainthat the water was deep enough for safe
passage. Life on the river also gave Twain material for several of his books, including the raft scenes of
Huckleberry Finn and the material for his autobiographical Life on the Mississippi (1883).
Clemens continued to work on the river until 1861, when the Civil War exploded across America and shut
down the Mississippi for travel and shipping. Although Clemens joined a Confederate cavalry division, he
was no ardent Confederate, and when his division deserted en masse, he did too. He then made his way
west with his brother Orion, working first as a silver miner in Nevada and then stumbling into his true
calling, journalism. In 1863, Clemens began to sign articles with the name Mark Twain.
Throughout the late 1860s and 1870s, Twains articles, stories, memoirs, and novels, characterized by an
irrepressible wit and a deft ear for language and dialect, garnered him immense celebrity. His novel The
Innocents Abroad (1869) was an instant bestseller, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) received
even greater national acclaim and cemented Twains position as a giant in American literary circles. As the
nation prospered economically in the postCivil War periodan era that came to be known as the Gilded
Age, an epithet that Twain coinedso too did Twain. His books were sold door-to-door, and he became
wealthy enough to build a large house in Hartford, Connecticut, for himself and his wife, Olivia, whom he
had married in 1870.
Twain began work on Huckleberry Finn, a sequel to Tom Sawyer, in an effort to capitalize on the
popularity of the earlier novel. This new novel took on a more serious character, however, as Twain
focused increasingly on the institution of slavery and the South. Twain soon set Huckleberry Finn aside,
perhaps because its darker tone did not fit the optimistic sentiments of the Gilded Age. In the early 1880s,
however, the hopefulness of the postCivil War years began to fade. Reconstruction, the political program
designed to reintegrate the defeated South into the Union as a slavery-free region, began to fail. The harsh
measures the victorious North imposed only embittered the South. Concerned about maintaining power,

many Southern politicians began an effort to control and oppress the black men and women whom the war
had freed.
Meanwhile, Twains personal life began to collapse. His wife had long been sickly, and the couple lost
their first son after just nineteen months. Twain also made a number of poor investments and financial
decisions and, in 1891, found himself mired in debilitating debt. As his personal fortune dwindled, he
continued to devote himself to writing. Drawing from his personal plight and the prevalent national
troubles of the day, he finished a draft of Huckleberry Finn in 1883, and by 1884 had it ready for
publication. The novel met with great public and critical acclaim.
Twain continued to write over the next ten years. He published two more popular novels, A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthurs Court (1889) and Puddnhead Wilson (1894), but went into a considerable decline
afterward, never again publishing work that matched the high standard he had set with Huckleberry Finn.
Personal tragedy also continued to hound Twain: his finances remained troublesome, and within the
course of a few years, his wife and two of his daughters passed away. Twains writing from this period
until the end of his life reflects a depression and a sort of righteous rage at the injustices of the world.
Despite his personal troubles, however, Twain continued to enjoy immense esteem and fame and
continued to be in demand as a public speaker until his death in 1910.
The story of Huckleberry Finn, however, does not end with the death of its author. Through the twentieth
century, the novel has become famous not merely as the crown jewel in the work of one of Americas
preeminent writers, but also as a subject of intense controversy. The novel occasionally has been banned in
Southern states because of its steadfastly critical take on the South and the hypocrisies of slavery. Others
have dismissed Huckleberry Finn as vulgar or racist because it uses the word nigger, a term whose
connotations obscure the novels deeper themeswhich are unequivocally antislaveryand even prevent
some from reading and enjoying it altogether. The fact that the historical context in which Twain wrote
made his use of the word insignificantand, indeed, part of the realism he wanted to createoffers little
solace to some modern readers. Ultimately, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has proved significant
not only as a novel that explores the racial and moral world of its time but also, through the controversies
that continue to surround it, as an artifact of those same moral and racial tensions as they have evolved to
the present day.
THEMES
Racism and Slavery
Although Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn two decades after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of
the Civil War, Americaand especially the Southwas still struggling with racism and the aftereffects of
slavery. By the early 1880s, Reconstruction, the plan to put the United States back together after the war
and integrate freed slaves into society, had hit shaky ground, although it had not yet failed outright. As
Twain worked on his novel, race relations, which seemed to be on a positive path in the years following
the Civil War, once again became strained. The imposition of Jim Crow laws, designed to limit the power
of blacks in the South in a variety of indirect ways, brought the beginning of a new, insidious effort to
oppress. The new racism of the South, less institutionalized and monolithic, was also more difficult to
combat. Slavery could be outlawed, but when white Southerners enacted racist laws or policies under a
professed motive of self-defense against newly freed blacks, far fewer people, Northern or Southern, saw
the act as immoral and rushed to combat it.
Although Twain wrote the novel after slavery was abolished, he set it several decades earlier, when slavery
was still a fact of life. But even by Twains time, things had not necessarily gotten much better for blacks
in the South. In this light, we might read Twains depiction of slavery as an allegorical representation of
the condition of blacks in the United States even after the abolition of slavery. Just as slavery places the
noble and moral Jim under the control of white society, no matter how degraded that white society may be,
so too did the insidious racism that arose near the end of Reconstruction oppress black men for illogical
and hypocritical reasons. In Huckleberry Finn, Twain, by exposing the hypocrisy of slavery, demonstrates
how racism distorts the oppressors as much as it does those who are oppressed. The result is a world of
moral confusion, in which seemingly good white people such as Miss Watson and Sally Phelps express
no concern about the injustice of slavery or the cruelty of separating Jim from his family.

Intellectual and Moral Education

By focusing on Hucks education, Huckleberry Finn fits into the tradition of the bildungsroman: a novel
depicting an individuals maturation and development. As a poor, uneducated boy, for all intents and
purposes an orphan, Huck distrusts the morals and precepts of the society that treats him as an outcast and
fails to protect him from abuse. This apprehension about society, and his growing relationship with Jim,
lead Huck to question many of the teachings that he has received, especially regarding race and slavery.
More than once, we see Huck choose to go to hell rather than go along with the rules and follow what
he has been taught. Huck bases these decisions on his experiences, his own sense of logic, and what his
developing conscience tells him. On the raft, away from civilization, Huck is especially free from
societys rules, able to make his own decisions without restriction. Through deep introspection, he comes
to his own conclusions, unaffected by the acceptedand often hypocriticalrules and values of Southern
culture. By the novels end, Huck has learned to read the world around him, to distinguish good, bad,
right, wrong, menace, friend, and so on. His moral development is sharply contrasted to the character of
Tom Sawyer, who is influenced by a bizarre mix of adventure novels and Sunday-school teachings, which
he combines to justify his outrageous and potentially harmful escapades.
The Hypocrisy of Civilized Society
When Huck plans to head west at the end of the novel in order to escape further sivilizing, he is trying
to avoid more than regular baths and mandatory school attendance. Throughout the novel, Twain depicts
the society that surrounds Huck as little more than a collection of degraded rules and precepts that defy
logic. This faulty logic appears early in the novel, when the new judge in town allows Pap to keep custody
of Huck. The judge privileges Paps rights to his son as his natural father over Hucks welfare. At the
same time, this decision comments on a system that puts a white mans rights to his propertyhis
slavesover the welfare and freedom of a black man. In implicitly comparing the plight of slaves to the
plight of Huck at the hands of Pap, Twain implies that it is impossible for a society that owns slaves to be
just, no matter how civilized that society believes and proclaims itself to be. Again and again, Huck
encounters individuals who seem goodSally Phelps, for examplebut who Twain takes care to show
are prejudiced slave-owners. This shaky sense of justice that Huck repeatedly encounters lies at the heart
of societys problems: terrible acts go unpunished, yet frivolous crimes, such as drunkenly shouting
insults, lead to executions. Sherburns speech to the mob that has come to lynch him accurately
summarizes the view of society Twain gives in Huckleberry Finn: rather than maintain collective welfare,
society instead is marked by cowardice, a lack of logic, and profound selfishness.
MOTIFS
Childhood
Hucks youth is an important factor in his moral education over the course of the novel, for we sense that
only a child is open-minded enough to undergo the kind of development that Huck does. Since Huck and
Tom are young, their age lends a sense of play to their actions, which excuses them in certain ways and
also deepens the novels commentary on slavery and society. Ironically, Huck often knows better than the
adults around him, even though he has lacked the guidance that a proper family and community should
have offered him. Twain also frequently draws links between Hucks youth and Jims status as a black
man: both are vulnerable, yet Huck, because he is white, has power over Jim. And on a different level, the
silliness, pure joy, and navet of childhood give Huckleberry Finn a sense of fun and humor. Though its
themes are quite weighty, the novel itself feels light in tone and is an enjoyable read because of this
rambunctious childhood excitement that enlivens the story.
Lies and Cons
Huckleberry Finn is full of malicious lies and scams, many of them coming from the duke and the
dauphin. It is clear that these con mens lies are bad, for they hurt a number of innocent people. Yet Huck
himself tells a number of lies and even cons a few people, most notably the slave-hunters, to whom he
makes up a story about a smallpox outbreak in order to protect Jim. As Huck realizes, it seems that telling
a lie can actually be a good thing, depending on its purpose. This insight is part of Hucks learning
process, as he finds that some of the rules he has been taught contradict what seems to be right. At other

points, the lines between a con, legitimate entertainment, and approved social structures like religion are
fine indeed. In this light, lies and cons provide an effective way for Twain to highlight the moral
ambiguity that runs through the novel.
Superstitions and Folk Beliefs
From the time Huck meets him on Jacksons Island until the end of the novel, Jim spouts a wide range of
superstitions and folktales. Whereas Jim initially appears foolish to believe so unwaveringly in these kinds
of signs and omens, it turns out, curiously, that many of his beliefs do indeed have some basis in reality or
presage events to come. Much as we do, Huck at first dismisses most of Jims superstitions as silly, but
ultimately he comes to appreciate Jims deep knowledge of the world. In this sense, Jims superstition
serves as an alternative to accepted social teachings and assumptions and provides a reminder that
mainstream conventions are not always right.
Parodies of Popular Romance Novels
Huckleberry Finn is full of people who base their lives on romantic literary models and stereotypes of
various kinds. Tom Sawyer, the most obvious example, bases his life and actions on adventure novels. The
deceased Emmeline Grangerford painted weepy maidens and wrote poems about dead children in the
romantic style. The Shepherdson and Grangerford families kill one another out of a bizarre, overexcited
conception of family honor. These characters proclivities toward the romantic allow Twain a few
opportunities to indulge in some fun, and indeed, the episodes that deal with this subject are among the
funniest in the novel. However, there is a more substantive message beneath: that popular literature is
highly stylized and therefore rarely reflects the reality of a society. Twain shows how a strict adherence to
these romantic ideals is ultimately dangerous: Tom is shot, Emmeline dies, and the Shepherdsons and
Grangerfords end up in a deadly clash.
SYMBOLS
The Mississippi River
For Huck and Jim, the Mississippi River is the ultimate symbol of freedom. Alone on their raft, they do
not have to answer to anyone. The river carries them toward freedom: for Jim, toward the free states; for
Huck, away from his abusive father and the restrictive sivilizing of St. Petersburg. Much like the river
itself, Huck and Jim are in flux, willing to change their attitudes about each other with little prompting.
Despite their freedom, however, they soon find that they are not completely free from the evils and
influences of the towns on the rivers banks. Even early on, the real world intrudes on the paradise of the
raft: the river floods, bringing Huck and Jim into contact with criminals, wrecks, and stolen goods. Then, a
thick fog causes them to miss the mouth of the Ohio River, which was to be their route to freedom.
As the novel progresses, then, the river becomes something other than the inherently benevolent place
Huck originally thought it was. As Huck and Jim move further south, the duke and the dauphin invade the
raft, and Huck and Jim must spend more time ashore. Though the river continues to offer a refuge from
trouble, it often merely effects the exchange of one bad situation for another. Each escape exists in the
larger context of a continual drift southward, toward the Deep South and entrenched slavery. In this
transition from idyllic retreat to source of peril, the river mirrors the complicated state of the South. As
Huck and Jims journey progresses, the river, which once seemed a paradise and a source of freedom,
becomes merely a short-term means of escape that nonetheless pushes Huck and Jim ever further toward
danger and destruction.
12VONNEGUT, KURT. SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5
CONTEXT
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in Indianapolis in 1922, a descendant of prominent German-American
families. His father was an architect and his mother was a noted beauty. Both spoke German fluently but
declined to teach Kurt the language in light of widespread anti-German sentiment following World War I.
Family money helped send Vonneguts two siblings to private schools. The Great Depression hit hard in

the 1930s, though, and the family placed Kurt in public school while it moved to more modest
accommodations. While in high school, Vonnegut edited the schools daily newspaper. He attended
college at Cornell for a little over two years, with instructions from his father and brother to study
chemistry, a subject at which he did not excel. He also wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun. In 1943 he
enlisted in the U.S. Army. In 1944 his mother committed suicide, and Vonnegut was taken prisoner
following the Battle of the Bulge, in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium.
After the war, Vonnegut married and entered a masters degree program in anthropology at the University
of Chicago. He also worked as a reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau. His masters thesis, titled
Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales, was rejected. He departed for Schenectady, New
York, to take a job in public relations at a General Electric research laboratory.
Vonnegut left GE in 1951 to devote himself full-time to writing. During the 1950s, Vonnegut published
short stories in national magazines. Player Piano, his first novel, appeared in 1952. Sirens of Titan was
published in 1959, followed by Mother Night (1962), Cats Cradle (1963), God Bless You, Mr. Rose-water
(1965), and his most highly praised work, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Vonnegut wrote prolifically until
his death in 2007.
Slaughterhouse-Five treats one of the most horrific massacres in European historythe World War II
firebombing of Dresden, a city in eastern Germany, on February 13, 1945with mock-serious humor and
clear antiwar sentiment. More than 130,000 civilians died in Dresden, roughly the same number of deaths
that resulted from the Allied bombing raids on Tokyo and from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima,
both of which also occurred in 1945. Inhabitants of Dresden were incinerated or suffocated in a matter of
hours as a firestorm sucked up and consumed available oxygen. The scene on the ground was one of
unimaginable destruction.
The novel is based on Kurt Vonneguts own experience in World War II. In the novel, a prisoner of war
witnesses and survives the Allied forces firebombing of Dresden. Vonnegut, like his pro-tagonist Billy
Pilgrim, emerged from a meat locker beneath a slaughter-house into the moonscape of burned-out
Dresden. His surviving captors put him to work finding, burying, and burning bodies. His task continued
until the Russians came and the war ended. Vonnegut survived by chance, confined as a prisoner of war
(POW) in a well-insulated meat locker, and so missed the cataclysmic moment of attack, emerging the day
after into the charred ruins of a once-beautiful cityscape. Vonnegut has said that he always intended to
write about the experience but found himself incapable of doing so for more than twenty years. Although
he attempted to describe in simple terms what happened and to create a linear narrative, this strategy never
worked for him. Billy Pilgrims unhinged timeshifting, a mechanism for dealing with the unfathomable
aggression and mass destruction he witnesses, is Vonneguts solution to the problem of telling an
untellable tale.
Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five as a response to war. It is so short and jumbled and jangled, he
explains in Chapter 1, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. The jumbled
structure of the novel and the long delay between its conception and completion serve as testaments to a
very personal struggle with heart-wrenching material. But the timing of the novels publication also
deserves notice: in 1969, the United States was in the midst of the dismal Vietnam War. Vonnegut was an
outspoken pacifist and critic of the conflict. Slaughterhouse-Five revolves around the willful incineration
of 100,000 civilians, in a city of extremely dubious military significance, during an arguably just war.
Appearing when it did, then, Slaughterhouse-Five made a forceful statement about the campaign in
Vietnam, a war in which incendiary technology was once more being employed against nonmilitary
targets in the name of a dubious cause.
THEMES
The Destructiveness of War
Whether we read Slaughterhouse-Five as a science-fiction novel or a quasi-autobiographical moral
statement, we cannot ignore the destructive properties of war, since the catastrophic firebombing of the
German town of Dresden during World War II situates all of the other seemingly random events. From his
swimming lessons at the YMCA to his speeches at the Lions Club to his captivity in Tralfamadore, Billy
Pilgrim shifts in and out of the meat locker in Dresden, where he very narrowly survives asphyxiation and
incineration in a city where fire is raining from the sky.

However, the not-so-subtle destructiveness of the war is evoked in subtle ways. For instance, Billy is quite
successful in his postwar exploits from a materialistic point of view: he is president of the Lions Club,
works as a prosperous optometrist, lives in a thoroughly comfortable modern home, and has fathered two
children. While Billy seems to have led a productive postwar life, these seeming markers of success speak
only to its surface. He gets his job not because of any particular prowess but as a result of his father-inlaws efforts. More important, at one point in the novel, Billy walks in on his son and realizes that they are
unfamiliar with each other. Beneath the splendor of his success lies a man too war-torn to understand it. In
fact, Billys name, a diminutive form of William, indicates that he is more an immature boy than a man.
Vonnegut, then, injects the science-fiction thread, including the Tralfamadorians, to indicate how greatly
the war has disrupted Billys existence. It seems that Billy may be hallucinating about his experiences with
the Tralfamadorians as a way to escape a world destroyed by wara world that he cannot understand.
Furthermore, the Tralfamadorian theory of the fourth dimension seems too convenient a device to be more
than just a way for Billy to rationalize all the death with he has seen face-to-face. Billy, then, is a
traumatized man who cannot come to terms with the destructiveness of war without invoking a far-fetched
and impossible theory to which he can shape the world.
The Illusion of Free Will
In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut utilizes the Tralfamadorians, with their absurdly humorous toiletplunger shape, to discuss the philosophical question of whether free will exists. These aliens live with the
knowledge of the fourth dimension, which, they say, contains all moments of time occurring and
reoccurring endlessly and simultaneously. Because they believe that all moments of time have already
happened (since all moments repeat themselves endlessly), they possess an attitude of acceptance about
their fates, figuring that they are powerless to change them. Only on Earth, according to the
Tralfamadorians, is there talk of free will, since humans, they claim, mistakenly think of time as a linear
progression.
Throughout his life, Billy runs up against forces that counter his free will. When Billy is a child, his father
lets him sink into the deep end of a pool in order to teach him how to swim. Much to his fathers dismay,
however, Billy prefers the bottom of the pool, but, against his free will to stay there, he is rescued. Later,
Billy is drafted into the war against his will. Even as a soldier, Billy is a joke, lacking training, supplies,
and proper clothing. He bobs along like a puppet in Luxembourg, his civilian shoes flapping on his feet,
and marches through the streets of Dresden draped in the remains of the scenery from a production of
Cinderella.
Even while Vonnegut admits the inevitability of death, with or without war, he also tells us that he has
instructed his sons not to participate in massacres or in the manufacture of machinery used to carry them
out. But acting as if free will exists does not mean that it actually does. As Billy learns to accept the
Tralfamadorian teachings, we see how his actions indicate the futility of free will. Even if Billy were to
train hard, wear the proper uniform, and be a good soldier, he might still die like the others in Dresden
who are much better soldiers than he. That he survives the incident as an improperly trained joke of a
soldier is a testament to the deterministic forces that render free will and human effort an illusion.
The Importance of Sight
True sight is an important concept that is difficult to define for Slaughterhouse-Five. As an optometrist in
Ilium, Billy has the professional duty of correcting the vision of his patients. If we extend the idea of
seeing beyond the literal scope of Billys profession, we can see that Vonnegut sets Billy up with several
different lenses with which to correct the worlds nearsightedness. One of the ways Billy can contribute to
this true sight is through his knowledge of the fourth dimension, which he gains from the aliens at
Tralfamadore. He believes in the Tralfamadorians view of timethat all moments of time exist
simultaneously and repeat themselves endlessly. He thus believes that he knows what will happen in the
future (because everything has already happened and will continue to happen in the same way).
One can also argue, however, that Billy lacks sight completely. He goes to war, witnesses horrific events,
and becomes mentally unstable as a result. He has a shaky grip on reality and at random moments
experiences overpowering flashbacks to other parts of his life. His sense that aliens have captured him and
kept him in a zoo before sending him back to Earth may be the product of an overactive imagination.
Given all that Billy has been through, it is logical to believe that he has gone insane, and it makes sense to

interpret these bizarre alien encounters as hallucinatory incidents triggered by mundane events that
somehow create an association with past traumas. Looking at Billy this way, we can see him as someone
who has lost true sight and lives in a cloud of hallucinations and self-doubt. Such a view creates the irony
that one employed to correct the myopic view of others is actually himself quite blind.
MOTIFS
So It Goes
The phrase So it goes follows every mention of death in the novel, equalizing all of them, whether they
are natural, accidental, or intentional, and whether they occur on a massive scale or on a very personal
one. The phrase reflects a kind of comfort in the Tralfamadorian idea that although a person may be dead
in a particular moment, he or she is alive in all the other moments of his or her life, which coexist and can
be visited over and over through time travel. At the same time, though, the repetition of the phrase keeps a
tally of the cumulative force of death throughout the novel, thus pointing out the tragic inevitability of
death.
The Presence of the Narrator as a Character
Vonnegut frames his novel with chapters in which he speaks in his own voice about his experience of war.
This decision indicates that the fiction has an intimate connection with Vonneguts life and convictions.
Once that connection is established, however, Vonnegut backs off and lets the story of Billy Pilgrim take
over. Throughout the book, Vonnegut briefly inserts himself as a character in the action: in the latrine at
the POW camp, in the corpse mines of Dresden, on the phone when he mistakenly dials Billys number.
These appearances anchor Billys life to a larger reality and highlight his struggle to fit into the human
world.
SYMBOLS
The Bird Who Says Poo-tee-weet?
The jabbering bird symbolizes the lack of anything intelligent to say about war. Birdsong rings out alone
in the silence after a massacre, and Poo-tee-weet? seems about as appropriate a thing to say as any, since
no words can really describe the horror of the Dresden firebombing. The bird sings outside of Billys
hospital window and again in the last line of the book, asking a question for which we have no answer,
just as we have no answer for how such an atrocity as the firebombing could happen.
The Colors Blue and Ivory
On various occasions in Slaughterhouse-Five, Billys bare feet are described as being blue and ivory, as
when Billy writes a letter in his basement in the cold and when he waits for the flying saucer to kidnap
him. These cold, corpselike hues suggest the fragility of the thin membrane between life and death,
between worldly and otherworldly experience.
6Hemingway, Ernest The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

4HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL. THE SCARLET LETTER

CONTEXT
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. His family descended from the earliest
settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; among his forebears was John Hathorne (Hawthorne added the
w to his name when he began to write), one of the judges at the 1692 Salem witch trials. Throughout his
life, Hawthorne was both fascinated and disturbed by his kinship with John Hathorne. Raised by a
widowed mother, Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Maine, where he met two people who were to
have great impact upon his life: Henry Wadsworth Long-fellow, who would later become a famous poet,
and Franklin Pierce, who would later become president of the United States.

After college Hawthorne tried his hand at writing, producing historical sketches and an anonymous novel,
Fanshawe, that detailed his college days rather embarrassingly. Hawthorne also held positions as an editor
and as a customs surveyor during this period. His growing relationship with the intellectual circle that
included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller led him to abandon his customs post for the utopian
experiment at Brook Farm, a commune designed to promote economic self-sufficiency and
transcendentalist principles. Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement of the early
nineteenth century that was dedicated to the belief that divinity manifests itself everywhere, particularly in
the natural world. It also advocated a personalized, direct relationship with the divine in place of
formalized, structured religion. This second transcendental idea is privileged in The Scarlet Letter.
After marrying fellow transcendentalist Sophia Peabody in 1842, Hawthorne left Brook Farm and moved
into the Old Manse, a home in Concord where Emerson had once lived. In 1846 he published Mosses from
an Old Manse, a collection of essays and stories, many of which are about early America. Mosses from an
Old Manse earned Hawthorne the attention of the literary establishment because America was trying to
establish a cultural independence to complement its political independence, and Hawthornes collection of
stories displayed both a stylistic freshness and an interest in American subject matter. Herman Melville,
among others, hailed Hawthorne as the American Shakespeare.
In 1845 Hawthorne again went to work as a customs surveyor, this time, like the narrator of The Scarlet
Letter, at a post in Salem. In 1850, after having lost the job, he published The Scarlet Letter to
enthusiastic, if not widespread, acclaim. His other major novels include The House of the Seven Gables
(1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852), and The Marble Faun (1860). In 1853 Hawthornes college
friend Franklin Pierce, for whom he had written a campaign biography and who had since become
president, appointed Hawthorne a United States consul. The writer spent the next six years in Europe. He
died in 1864, a few years after returning to America.
The majority of Hawthornes work takes Americas Puritan past as its subject, but The Scarlet Letter uses
the material to greatest effect. The Puritans were a group of religious reformers who arrived in
Massachusetts in the 1630s under the leadership of John Winthrop (whose death is recounted in the novel).
The religious sect was known for its intolerance of dissenting ideas and lifestyles. In The Scarlet Letter,
Hawthorne uses the repressive, authoritarian Puritan society as an analogue for humankind in general. The
Puritan setting also enables him to portray the human soul under extreme pressures. Hester, Dimmesdale,
and Chillingworth, while unquestionably part of the Puritan society in which they live, also reflect
universal experiences. Hawthorne speaks specifically to American issues, but he circumvents the aesthetic
and thematic limitations that might accompany such a focus. His universality and his dramatic flair have
ensured his place in the literary canon.
THEMES
Sin, Knowledge, and the Human Condition
Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible begins with the story of Adam
and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and
evil. As a result of their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of their humanness, that which
separates them from the divine and from other creatures. Once expelled from the Garden of Eden, they are
forced to toil and to procreatetwo labors that seem to define the human condition. The experience of
Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion
and suffering. But it also results in knowledgespecifically, in knowledge of what it means to be human.
For Hester, the scarlet letter functions as her passport into regions where other women dared not tread,
leading her to speculate about her society and herself more boldly than anyone else in New England.
As for Dimmesdale, the burden of his sin gives him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood
of mankind, so that his heart vibrate[s] in unison with theirs. His eloquent and powerful sermons derive
from this sense of empathy. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on a daily basis and
try to reconcile it with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other hand, insist on seeing
earthly experience as merely an obstacle on the path to heaven. Thus, they view sin as a threat to the
community that should be punished and suppressed. Their answer to Hesters sin is to ostracize her. Yet,
Puritan society is stagnant, while Hester and Dimmesdales experience shows that a state of sinfulness can

lead to personal growth, sympathy, and understanding of others. Paradoxically, these qualities are shown
to be incompatible with a state of purity.
The Nature of Evil
The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the Black Man, the embodiment of evil.
Over the course of the novel, the Black Man is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and
Mistress Hibbins, and little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devils child. The characters also try to root
out the causes of evil: did Chillingworths selfishness in marrying Hester force her to the evil she
committed in Dimmesdales arms? Is Hester and Dimmesdales deed responsible for Chillingworths
transformation into a malevolent being? This confusion over the nature and causes of evil reveals the
problems with the Puritan conception of sin. The book argues that true evil arises from the close
relationship between hate and love. As the narrator points out in the novels concluding chapter, both
emotions depend upon a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual
dependent . . . upon another. Evil is not found in Hester and Dimmesdales lovemaking, nor even in the
cruel ignorance of the Puritan fathers. Evil, in its most poisonous form, is found in the carefully plotted
and precisely aimed revenge of Chillingworth, whose love has been perverted. Perhaps Pearl is not
entirely wrong when she thinks Dimmesdale is the Black Man, because her father, too, has perverted his
love. Dimmesdale, who should love Pearl, will not even publicly acknowledge her. His cruel denial of
love to his own child may be seen as further perpetrating evil.
Identity and Society
After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by the people of Boston to wear a badge of humiliation, her
unwillingness to leave the town may seem puzzling. She is not physically imprisoned, and leaving the
Massachusetts Bay Colony would allow her to remove the scarlet letter and resume a normal life.
Surprisingly, Hester reacts with dismay when Chillingworth tells her that the town fathers are considering
letting her remove the letter. Hesters behavior is premised on her desire to determine her own identity
rather than to allow others to determine it for her. To her, running away or removing the letter would be an
acknowledgment of societys power over her: she would be admitting that the letter is a mark of shame
and something from which she desires to escape. Instead, Hester stays, refiguring the scarlet letter as a
symbol of her own experiences and character. Her past sin is a part of who she is; to pretend that it never
happened would mean denying a part of herself. Thus, Hester very determinedly integrates her sin into her
life.
Dimmesdale also struggles against a socially determined identity. As the communitys minister, he is more
symbol than human being. Except for Chillingworth, those around the minister willfully ignore his
obvious anguish, misinterpreting it as holiness. Unfortunately, Dimmesdale never fully recognizes the
truth of what Hester has learned: that individuality and strength are gained by quiet self-assertion and by a
reconfiguration, not a rejection, of ones assigned identity.
MOTIFS
Civilization Versus the Wilderness
In The Scarlet Letter, the town and the surrounding forest represent opposing behavioral systems. The
town represents civilization, a rule-bound space where everything one does is on display and where
transgressions are quickly punished. The forest, on the other hand, is a space of natural rather than human
authority. In the forest, societys rules do not apply, and alternate identities can be assumed. While this
allows for misbehavior Mistress Hibbinss midnight rides, for exampleit also permits greater honesty
and an escape from the repression of Boston. When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the woods, for a few
moments, they become happy young lovers once again. Hesters cottage, which, significantly, is located
on the outskirts of town and at the edge of the forest, embodies both orders. It is her place of exile, which
ties it to the authoritarian town, but because it lies apart from the settlement, it is a place where she can
create for herself a life of relative peace.
Night Versus Day

By emphasizing the alternation between sunlight and darkness, the novel organizes the plots events into
two categories: those which are socially acceptable, and those which must take place covertly. Daylight
exposes an individuals activities and makes him or her vulnerable to punishment. Night, on the other
hand, conceals and enables activities that would not be possible or tolerated during the dayfor instance,
Dimmesdales encounter with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold. These notions of visibility versus
concealment are linked to two of the books larger themesthe themes of inner versus socially assigned
identity and of outer appearances versus internal states. Night is the time when inner natures can manifest
themselves. During the day, interiority is once again hidden from public view, and secrets remain secrets.
Evocative Names
The names in this novel often seem to beg to be interpreted allegorically. Chillingworth is cold and
inhuman and thus brings a chill to Hesters and Dimmesdales lives. Prynne rhymes with sin, while
Dimmesdale suggests dimnessweakness, indeterminacy, lack of insight, and lack of will, all of
which characterize the young minister. The name Pearl evokes a biblical allegorical devicethe pearl
of great price that is salvation. This system of naming lends a profundity to the story, linking it to other
allegorical works of literature such as The Pilgrims Progress and to portions of the Bible. It also aligns
the novel with popular forms of narrative such as fairy tales.
SYMBOLS
The Scarlet Letter
The scarlet letter is meant to be a symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity
to Hester. The letters meaning shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as an adulterer,
the A eventually comes to stand for Able. Finally, it becomes indeterminate: the Native Americans
who come to watch the Election Day pageant think it marks her as a person of importance and status. Like
Pearl, the letter functions as a physical reminder of Hesters affair with Dimmesdale. But, compared with a
human child, the letter seems insignificant, and thus helps to point out the ultimate meaninglessness of the
communitys system of judgment and punishment. The child has been sent from God, or at least from
nature, but the letter is merely a human contrivance. Additionally, the instability of the letters apparent
meaning calls into question societys ability to use symbols for ideological reinforcement. More often than
not, a symbol becomes a focal point for critical analysis and debate.
The Meteor
As Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl in Chapter 12, a meteor traces out an A in
the night sky. To Dimmesdale, the meteor implies that he should wear a mark of shame just as Hester
does. The meteor is interpreted differently by the rest of the community, which thinks that it stands for
Angel and marks Governor Winthrops entry into heaven. But Angel is an awkward reading of the
symbol. The Puritans commonly looked to symbols to confirm divine sentiments. In this narrative,
however, symbols are taken to mean what the beholder wants them to mean. The incident with the meteor
obviously highlights and exemplifies two different uses of symbols: Puritan and literary.
Pearl
Although Pearl is a complex character, her primary function within the novel is as a symbol. Pearl is a sort
of living version of her mothers scarlet letter. She is the physical consequence of sexual sin and the
indicator of a transgression. Yet, even as a reminder of Hesters sin, Pearl is more than a mere
punishment to her mother: she is also a blessing. She represents not only sin but also the vital spirit and
passion that engendered that sin. Thus, Pearls existence gives her mother reason to live, bolstering her
spirits when she is tempted to give up. It is only after Dimmesdale is revealed to be Pearls father that
Pearl can become fully human. Until then, she functions in a symbolic capacity as the reminder of an
unsolved mystery.
8POE, EDGAR ALLAN. THE TELL-TALE HEART

CONTEXT
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, and died on October 7, 1849. In his stormy forty years,
which included a marriage to his cousin, fights with other writers, and legendary drinking binges, Poe
lived in all the important literary centers of the northeastern United States: Baltimore, Philadelphia, New
York City, and Boston. He was a magazine editor, a poet, a short story writer, a critic, and a lecturer. He
introduced the British horror story, or the Gothic genre, to American literature, along with the detective
story, science fiction, and literary criticism. Poe became a key figure in the nineteenth-century flourishing
of American letters and literature. Famed twentieth--century literary critic F.O. Matthiessen named this
period the American Renaissance. He argued that nineteenth-century American writers Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman crafted a
distinctly American literature that attempts to escape from the long shadow of the British literary tradition.
Matthiessen paid little attention to Edgar Allan Poe. Although he long had a reputation in Europe as one of
Americas most original writers, only in the latter half of the -twentieth century has Poe been viewed as a
crucial contributor to the American Renaissance.
The often tragic circumstances of Poes life haunt his writings. His father disappeared not long after the
childs birth, and, at the age of three, Poe watched his mother die of tuberculosis. Poe then went to live
with John and Frances Allan, wealthy theatergoers who knew his parents, both actors, from the Richmond,
Virginia, stage. Like Poes mother, Frances Allan was chronically ill, and Poe experienced her sickness
much as he did his mothers. His relationship with John Allan, who was loving but moody, generous but
demanding, was emotionally turbulent. With Allans financial help, Poe attended school in England and
then enrolled at the University of Virginia in 1826, but he was forced to leave after two semesters.
Although Poe blamed Allans stinginess, his own gambling debts played a large role in his fiscal woes. A
tendency to cast blame on others, without admitting his own faults, characterized Poes relationship with
many people, most significantly Allan. Poe struggled with a view of Allan as a false father, generous
enough to take him in at age three, but never dedicated enough to adopt him as a true son. There are
echoes of Poes upbringing in his works, as sick mothers and guilty fathers appear in many of his tales.
After leaving the University of Virginia, Poe spent some time in the military before he used his contacts in
Richmond and Baltimore to enter the magazine industry. With little experience, Poe relied on his
characteristic bravado to convince Thomas Willis White, then head of the fledgling Southern Literary
Messenger, to take him on as an editor in 1835. This position gave him a forum for his early tales,
including Berenice and Morella. The Messenger also established Poe as a leading and controversial
literary critic, who often attacked his New England counterpartsespecially poet Henry Wadsworth
Longfellowin the genteel pages of the magazine. Poe ultimately fell out of favor with White, but his
literary criticism made him a popular speaker on the lecture circuit. Poe never realized his most ambitious
dreamthe launch of his own magazine, the Stylus. Until his death, he believed that the New England
literary establishment had stolen his glory and had prevented the Stylus from being published.
His name has since become synonymous with macabre tales like The Tell-Tale Heart, but Poe assumed a
variety of literary personas during his career. The Messengeras well as Burtons Gentlemans Magazine
and Grahamsestablished Poe as one of Americas first popular literary critics. He advanced his theories
in popular essays, including The Philosophy of Composition (1846), The Rationale of Verse (1848),
and The Poetic Principle. In The Philosophy of Composition Poe explained how he had crafted The
Raven, the 1845 poem that made him nationally famous. In the pages of these magazines, Poe also
introduced of a new form of short fictionthe detective storyin tales featuring the Parisian crime solver
C. Auguste Dupin. The detective story follows naturally from Poes interest in puzzles, word games, and
secret codes, which he loved to present and decode in the pages of the Messenger to dazzle his readers.
The word detective did not exist in English at the time that Poe was writing, but the genre has become a
fundamental mode of twentieth-century literature and film. Dupin and his techniques of psychological
inquiry have informed countless sleuths, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes and
Raymond Chandlers Philip Marlowe.

Gothic literature, a genre that rose with Romanticism in Britain in the late eighteenth century, explores the
dark side of human experiencedeath, alienation, nightmares, ghosts, and haunted landscapes. Poe
brought the Gothic to America. American Gothic literature dramatizes a culture plagued by poverty and
slavery through characters afflicted with various forms of insanity and melancholy. Poe, Americas
foremost southern writer before William Faulkner, generated a Gothic ethos from his own experiences in
Virginia and other slaveholding territories, and the black and white imagery in his stories reflects a
growing national anxiety over the issue of slavery.
In the spectrum of American literature, the Gothic remains in the shadow of the dominant genre of the
American Renaissancethe Romance. Popularized by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Romantic literature, like
Gothic literature, relies on haunting and mysterious narratives that blur the boundary between the real and
the fantastic. Poes embrace of the Gothic with its graphic violence and disturbing scenarios places him
outside the ultimately conservative and traditional resolutions of Romantic novels such as Hawthornes
The House of the Seven Gables (1851).
In Romances like the novels of Hawthorne, conflicts occur among characters within the context of society
and are resolved in accordance with societys rules. Poes Gothic tales are brief flashes of chaos that flare
up within lonely narrators living at the fringes of society. Poes longest work, the 1838 novel Arthur
Gordon Pym, described in diary form a series of episodes on a journey to Antarctica. A series of bizarre
incidents and exotic discoveries at sea, Pym lacks the cohesive elements of plot or quest that tie together
most novels and epics and is widely considered an artistic failure. Poes style and concerns never found
their best expression in longer forms, but his short stories are considered masterpieces worldwide. The
Poes Gothic is a potent brew, best served in small doses.
THEMES
Love and Hate
Poe explores the similarity of love and hate in many stories, especially The Tell-Tale Heart and
William Wilson. Poe portrays the psychological complexity of these two supposedly opposite emotions,
emphasizing the ways they enigmatically blend into each other. The Gothic terror is the result of the
narrators simultaneous love for himself and hatred of his rival. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator
confesses a love for an old man whom he then violently murders and dismembers.
Self vs. Alter Ego
In many of Poes Gothic tales, characters wage internal conflicts by creating imaginary alter egos or
assuming alternate and opposite personalities.
The Power of the Dead over the Living
Poe often gives memory the power to keep the dead alive. Poe distorts this otherwise commonplace
literary theme by bringing the dead literally back to life, employing memory as the trigger that reawakens
the dead, who are usually women.
MOTIFS
The Masquerade
At masquerades Poes characters abandon social conventions and leave themselves vulnerable to crime. In
The Cask of Amontillado, for -example, Montresor uses the carnivals masquerade to fool Fortunato
into his own demise. The masquerade carries the traditional meanings of joy and social liberation. Reality
is suspended, and people can temporarily assume another identity.
Animals
In Poes murder stories, homicide requires animalistic element. Animals kill, they die, and animal imagery
provokes and informs crimes committed between men. Animals signal the absence of human reason and
morality, but sometimes humans prove less rational than their beastly counterparts.

In The Tell-Tale Heart, the murderer dehumanize his victims by likening him to animal. The narrator of
The Tell-Tale Heart claims to hate and murder the old mans vulture eye, which he describes as pale
blue with a film over it. He attempts to justify his actions by implicitly comparing himself to a helpless
creature threatened by a hideous scavenger.
SYMBOLS
Eyes
In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator fixates on the idea that an old man is looking at him with the Evil
Eye and transmitting a curse on him. At the same time that the narrator obsesses over the eye, he wants to
separate the old man from the Evil Eye in order to spare the old man from his violent reaction to the eye.
The narrator reveals his inability to recognize that the eye is the I, or identity, of the old man. The
eyes symbolize the essence of human identity, which cannot be separated from the body. The eye cannot
be killed without causing the man to die. Similarly, in Ligeia, the narrator is unable to see behind
Ligeias dark and mysterious eyes. Because the eyes symbolize her Gothic identity, they conceal Ligeias
mysterious knowledge, a knowledge that both guides and haunts the narrator.
ANALYSIS
Poe uses his words economically in the Tell-Tale Heartit is one of his shortest storiesto provide a
study of paranoia and mental deterioration. Poe strips the story of excess detail as a way to heighten the
murderers obsession with specific and unadorned entities: the old mans eye, the heartbeat, and his own
claim to sanity. Poes economic style and pointed language thus contribute to the narrative content, and
perhaps this association of form and content truly exemplifies paranoia. Even Poe himself, like the beating
heart, is complicit in the plot to catch the narrator in his evil game.
As a study in paranoia, this story illuminates the psychological contradictions that contribute to a
murderous profile. For example, the narrator admits, in the first sentence, to being dreadfully nervous, yet
he is unable to comprehend why he should be thought mad. He articulates his self-defense against
madness in terms of heightened sensory capacity. Unlike the similarly nervous and hypersensitive
Roderick Usher in The Fall of the House of Usher, who admits that he feels mentally unwell, the
narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart views his hypersensitivity as proof of his sanity, not a symptom of
madness. This special knowledge enables the narrator to tell this tale in a precise and complete manner,
and he uses the stylistic tools of narration for the purposes of his own sanity plea. However, what makes
this narrator madand most unlike Poeis that he fails to comprehend the coupling of narrative form
and content. He masters precise form, but he unwittingly lays out a tale of murder that betrays the
madness he wants to deny.
Another contradiction central to the story involves the tension between the narrators capacities for love
and hate. Poe explores here a psychological mysterythat people sometimes harm those whom they love
or need in their lives. Poe examines this paradox half a century before Sigmund Freud made it a leading
concept in his theories of the mind. Poes narrator loves the old man. He is not greedy for the old mans
wealth, nor vengeful because of any slight. The narrator thus eliminates motives that might normally
inspire such a violent murder. As he proclaims his own sanity, the narrator fixates on the old mans
vulture-eye. He reduces the old man to the pale blue of his eye in obsessive fashion. He wants to separate
the man from his Evil Eye so he can spare the man the burden of guilt that he attributes to the eye itself.
The narrator fails to see that the eye is the I of the old man, an inherent part of his identity that cannot be
isolated as the narrator perversely imagines.
The murder of the old man illustrates the extent to which the narrator separates the old mans identity from
his physical eye. The narrator sees the eye as completely separate from the man, and as a result, he is
capable of murdering him while maintaining that he loves him. The narrators desire to eradicate the mans
eye motivates his murder, but the narrator does not acknowledge that this act will end the mans life. By
dismembering his victim, the narrator further deprives the old man of his humanity. The narrator confirms
his conception of the old mans eye as separate from the man by ending the man altogether and turning
him into so many parts. That strategy turns against him when his mind imagines other parts of the old
mans body working against him.

The narrators newly heightened sensitivity to sound ultimately overcomes him, as he proves unwilling or
unable to distinguish between real and imagined sounds. Because of his warped sense of reality, he
obsesses over the low beats of the mans heart yet shows little concern about the mans shrieks, which are
loud enough both to attract a neighbors attention and to draw the police to the scene of the crime. The
police do not perform a traditional, judgmental role in this story. Ironically, they arent terrifying agents of
authority or brutality. Poes interest is less in external forms of power than in the power that pathologies of
the mind can hold over an individual. The narrators paranoia and guilt make it inevitable that he will give
himself away. The police arrive on the scene to give him the opportunity to betray himself. The more the
narrator proclaims his own cool manner, the more he cannot escape the beating of his own heart, which he
mistakes for the beating of the old mans heart. As he confesses to the crime in the final sentence, he
addresses the policemen as [v]illains, indicating his inability to distinguish between their real identity
and his own villainy.
9POE, EDGAR ALLAN THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
ANALYSIS
The Fall of the House of Usher possesses the quintessential -features of the Gothic tale: a haunted
house, dreary landscape, mysterious sickness, and doubled personality. For all its easily identifiable
Gothic elements, however, part of the terror of this story is its vagueness. We cannot say for sure where in
the world or exactly when the story takes place. Instead of standard narrative markers of place and time,
Poe uses traditional Gothic elements such as inclement weather and a barren landscape. We are alone with
the narrator in this haunted space, and neither we nor the -narrator know why. Although he is Rodericks
most intimate boyhood friend, the narrator apparently does not know much about himlike the basic fact
that Roderick has a twin sister. Poe asks us to question the reasons both for Rodericks decision to contact
the narrator in this time of need and the bizarre tenacity of narrators response. While Poe provides the
recognizable building blocks of the Gothic tale, he contrasts this standard form with a plot that is
inexplicable, sudden, and full of unexpected disruptions. The story begins without complete explanation of
the narrators motives for arriving at the house of Usher, and this ambiguity sets the tone for a plot that
continually blurs the real and the fantastic.
Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia in this story. The narrator is mysteriously trapped by the lure of
Rodericks attraction, and he cannot escape until the house of Usher collapses completely. Characters
cannot move and act freely in the house because of its structure, so it assumes a monstrous character of its
ownthe Gothic mastermind that controls the fate of its inhabitants. Poe, creates confusion between the
living things and inanimate objects by doubling the physical house of Usher with the genetic family line of
the Usher family, which he refers to as the house of Usher. Poe employs the word house metaphorically,
but he also describes a real house. Not only does the narrator get trapped inside the mansion, but we learn
also that this confinement describes the biological fate of the Usher family. The family has no enduring
branches, so all genetic transmission has occurred incestuously within the domain of the house. The
peasantry confuses the mansion with the family because the physical structure has effectively dictated the
genetic patterns of the family.