English Literature

The Wild Duck: Title

2009-04-06T19:46:00.002+05:00

“The wild Duck” as a title is most apt for this play because it gives us a definite clue to the major theme of the play – the value of illusions in the average man’s life. The wild duck is a precise and an all-important symbol. The wild duck symbolizes the life of Hjalmar and his father, the life of Hedvig and also Ibsen’s own life at the time he wrote this play. Gregers too becomes a symbol by wishing to play the role of the clever dog and to bring the wounded duck back to the surface. As all this symbolism is the hub and the heart of the play, the title “The Wild Duck” is most suitable for it.

Mr. Werle was sailing a boat and seeing a wild duck, had shot at, and wounded, it. The wounded duck dived down to the bottom of the sea and tangle there to never come up again. But Mr. Werle’s clever dog dived after the wounded duck and brought it up again. The wounded wild duck was taken to Mr. Werle’s house but it did not thrive there. It was passed on to Old Ekdal where it became used to its present abode, and had forgotten its natural, wild life.

The wild duck as a symbol appears first in Mr. Werle’s speech with reference to the sad fate which had overtaken Old Ekdal. He says:

By the time Ekdal was released, he was a broken-down man, past help from anyone. There are people in this world who dive to the bottom the moment they are wounded, and never come up again.

We recall this speech when Old Ekdal, speaking to Gregers, describes how a wild duck behaves when it gets wounded. If the particular wild duck had not been rescued by dog, it would have remained at the bottom and would have died there. In Mr. Werle’s opinion, Old Ekdal, after his release from the prison, was in no position to lead a worth-while life because his spirit had completely been broken by his stay in the prison.

Hedvig says on two occasions that the wild duck belongs to her though she would not mind her father and grandfather borrowing it from her. Hedvig also says that her father and grandfather look after the wild duck well and try to make it comfortable. Gregers thereupon says that the wild duck is the most important person in his house. Hedvig says that the duck is a real “wild” bird and the wild duck must be feeling sad and alien here because no one knows it and it knows no one. Gregers finds that the wild duck has a damaged wing and that it is a little lame in one foot which the dog had held between its teeth when dragging the duck back to the surface of the water.

Gregers tells Hjalmar that the latter has a strain of the wild duck in him. He elaborates that Hjalmar has dived down and taken firm hold of the sea weeds. He further says that Hjalmar has landed in a “poisonous swamp” and has got an “insidious disease”, and has dived to the bottom “to die in the dark”. So he should not worry about his miserable condition because Gregers would see that Hjalmar rises to the surface again.

Gregers means that Hjalmar is hiding himself from the reality of life like the wild duck by diving to the bottom and hiding form the real life. Gregers knows Gina past but Hjalmar was unaware. Gregers compares Hjalmar to the wild duck and himself to the dog. He aims to open Hjalmar’s eyes to those facts. The wild duck becomes a symbol of Hjalmar’s life of ignorance; while Mr. Werle’s clever dog symbolizes Gregers who has resolved to awaken the ideal. The wild duck, which is lame and has a damaged wing, also symbolizes Hjalmar’s incomplete life.

The wild duck symbolizes Hedvig too. Hedvig too is an alien in this house like a wild duck. Hedvig is a product of Mr. Werle’s sport of making love to Gina. Hjalmar has been thinking her to be his own daughter. Thus there is much in common between the wild duck and Hedvig: both are a product of Mr. Werle’s sporting nature. The wild duck is lame, has a damaged wing, and is leading an incomplete and unsatisfactory life, shut within the four walls of a dark garret. Hedvig too is leading a narrow, limited kind of life, partly because she has weak eyesight and would soon become blind. Just as the wild duck has got used to its new abode, so, Hedvig is perfectly contented with her inadequate life in this house. And yet she is leading a frustrated life like that of the wild duck.

The wild duck symbolizes Old Ekdal’s life also. He used to hunt into the forest when young. Overtaken by a disaster he was jailed for some years. After his release he finds life wretched. When in garret, he imagines himself in a forest with wild animals. The same applies to Ekdal's putting on his lieutenant’s uniform at times. He is not entitled any more to wear it but he puts it on to recall the days when he was a lieutenant. These illusions are sustaining him in life which would otherwise appear to him to be not worth living. He too has become averse to reality, like the wild duck.

Gregers plays the role of a saviour, but with disastrous results. Gregers reveals the secret of Gina’s past to Hjalmar. Hjalmar’s reaction to this discloser is one of shock. On his asking Gina about her past, she confirms everything. Hjalmar’s grief knows no limits. He scolds Gina for having kept him in the dark and accuses her of deceiving him. He also comes to know that Hedvig is not his own daughter but Mr. Werle’s. Hjalmar now cannot even bear to look at Hedvig and declares his intention to leave the house. Hedvig feels miserable when she finds that she has lost Hjalmar’s love. Gregers advises Hedvig to shoot the wild duck in order to make a sacrifice to please her father but Hedvig shoots herself. Gregers had aimed at a reconstruction of Gregers’ domestic life but he succeeds only in wrecking a young life.

The wild duck also reflects Ibsen’s personality when he wrote the play. Ibsen wants us to know that he has now forgotten to live a wild life; he has, like the wild duck, grown plump and tame and contented with his limited life. Ibsen must have asked himself at the time of writing this play how far the artist shuts himself off from life. Both Hjalmar and Gregers represent different aspects of Ibsen: on the one hand, the evader of reality, and on the other, the impractical idealist who bothers mankind with his claims of the ideal because he has a sick conscience.

The Wild Duck is a perfectly suitable title for this play. The wild duck is the most important person in the story; it is Hedvig’s dearest possession; it is looked after by Old Ekdal with great care. Old Ekdal has provided a water-trough for the wild duck to splash about. Hjalmar too is deeply attached to the bird till he learns that the man to whom it had originally belonged had seduced Gina. Hedvig’s sacrifice would have been great if she had shot the wild duck, but Hedvig makes an even greater sacrifice of her own life. In any case the wild duck is the central symbol in the play, and round the wild duck the plot hinges.

The Wild Duck: Quotations

2009-04-06T19:43:00.006+05:00

Werle: Some people in this world only need to get a couple of slugs in them and they go plunging right down to the depths, and they never come up again.

Gina: Is Gregers still as awful as ever.

Hjalmar: She’s the only one, yes. She’s our greatest joy in life, and … she’s also our deepest sorrow, Gregers.

Ekdal: Felling, eh? …….. That’s a dangerous business, that. That brings trouble. The forests avenge themselves.

Ekdal: She did that. Always do that, wild ducks do. Go plunging right to the bottom … as deep as they can get, my dear sir … hold on with their beaks to the weeds and stuff … all other mess you find down there. Then they never come up again.

Gregers: So time stands still in there … besides the wild duck.

Hedvig: But she’s completely cut off from her friends. And then everything about the wild duck is so mysterious. Nobody really knows her; and nobody knows where she’s from either.

Hjalmar: Good Lord, you mustn’t ask me about details like dates. An invention is something you can never be completely master of. It’s largely a matter of inspiration ... of intuition … and it’s pretty nearly impossible to predict when that will come.

Relling: Personality? Him! If he ever showed any signs of anything as abnormal as a personality, it was all thoroughly cleared out of him, root and branch, when he was still a lad – that I can assure you.

Relling: I’m afraid not; I don’t give secret like that away to quacks. … But it’s a tried and tested method; I have used it on Molvik as well. I have made him a ‘demonic’. That’s the particular cure I had to apply to him.

Relling: While I remember, Mr. Werle junior – don’t use this fancy word ‘ideals’; we’ve got a plain word that’s good enough: ‘lies’.

Gregers: Dr. Relling, I shall not rest until I have rescued Hjalmar Ekdal from your clutches!

Relling: So much the worse for him. Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.

Gregers: Ah, if only you’d had your eyes opened to what really makes life worth while! If you had the genuine, joyous, courageous spirit of self-sacrifice, then you would see how quickly he would come back to you. But I still have faith in you, Hedvig.

Gregers: If you are right and I am wrong, life will no longer be worth living.

Gregers: Hedvig has not died in vain. Didn’t you see how grief brought out what was noblest in him?

Relling: Oh, life wouldn’t be too bad if only these blessed people who come canvassing their ideals round everybody’s door would leave us poor souls in peace.

Juno and the Paycock: Jingoism

2009-04-06T18:07:00.011+05:00

Sean O’Casey was born in 1818 and died in 1964. So it makes him a contemporary of T. S. Eliot. The play has been written on the background of Irish Civil War, which has been going for centuries. There are many faction involved in the play.

There are the free staters,
There are also those who demand have ruled Ireland within the authority of English parliament
There are the unionists, who want unity with min Ireland.

Main Ireland got independence after the First World War Ireland is divided into Southern and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is now called Ulster. The people of main Ireland are Roman Catholic. The majority of Ulster is Anglican. So there is political and religious problem.

Either to unite with main Ireland

OR

To unite with England

OR

To be total independent was the main problem or enigma

“Juno and the Paycock” also has, like O'Casey’s other plays, war at its background. O'Casey is very much against the war fought under any pretext. He closely observed how war affects the society and the individuals, how war crushes the economy and the system, how war disintegrates the family structure, how it demolishes the psychology of the people and how it creates generation gap. Thus O’Casey condemns the exploitation of man-by-man, man’s inhuman treatment towards man, man’s barbarity against man. The play begins with Mary's reading a newspaper. The very first information we get form the play is of a gruesome murder.

On a little bye-road, out beyant Finglas, he was found.

O'Casey evidently has sympathies for the poverty stricken and war ridden Irish society. There is nothing predicable in Ireland. Everyone is in extreme danger. They are hanging between life and death. There are lots of references in the play regarding Ireland's religious and political history. Irish makes many attempts to shake off the foreign yoke. Foreigners are very inhuman to them. In 1916, hundred of casualties and the execution of the leaders are faultless examples of that. But this inhumanity is not just caused by foreigners. The real problem arises with the killing of Irishman by Irishman. War, or to be more exact, a civil war has no solution to man’s problem; rather it aggravates the miseries of victims. The civil war is not confined to two fractions rather it expands to the whole Ireland. The death of Robbie Tancred and Johnny Boyle are perfect examples of that. Johnny, who has lost an arm and has a hip shattered in a fight, is at the end dragged away and shot by his former republican commanders because he betrayed comrade Tancred. All this shows that Ireland is preying on herself. Earlier Johnny had undoubtedly behaved heroically but the hellish civil war compelled him to betray his comrade. This means the stupid civil war is turning into traitors because of its nothingness and hollowness purposelessness. Juno emerges as a great humanist and realist. She is a true pacifist and is against man’s inhumanity against man. She has an acute observation and knows about the truth of things. She is very realist and anti-idealist. When Mary emphasizes that one ought to stand by one’s principle being “a principle’s a principle” and tries to justify her call of strike, Juno very realistically remarks:

When the employers sacrifice wan victim, the Trades Unions go wan betther be sacrificin’ a hundred.

Being a realist, she has a firm belief in the idea that the fault does not lie with the stars but with the people themselves. She says:

Ah, what can God do agen the’ stupidity o’ men!

The opportunist class represented by Nugent has also been condemned. According to O'Casey this opportunist class is more harmful than even the combatants. They themselves become the cause of civil war and play a double role. Nugent wants other to respect “Irish people national regard for the dead” but stitches suits for the civil guards at night. The domestic tragedy, which mainly springs out form pregnancy, is due to the inhumanity of the male. That male chauvinist society cannot tolerate a mistake by a young girl. Whereas on the other hand the idiots like captain Boyle and Joxer Daly are left unaccountable. Hope for a good time is only due to the courage of women. They are very humane and cooperative. O'Casey’s criticism of life is conveyed through the repetition of significance of deep dialogues. The words of Mrs. Tancred lamentation are pungently recorded by Juno, when she too, is mourning over a slain son.

Sacred Heart of the Crucified Jesus, take away our hearts o’ stone….....an’ give us hearts o’ flesh! ….....Take away this murdherin’ hate … an’ give us Thine own eternal love!

Against the vanity and moral bankruptcy of masculine character, O'Casey elevates the mother figure when Juno plans to work for Mary and her unborn child. Juno suffers the pain of existence but she sustains life. Thus, we see O'Casey very beautifully depicts man’s inhumanity towards man. O’Casey is at heart a humanist and a pacifist. He considers life mere inevitable and all idealism is subservient to it. He condemns all principles and gives one and the only principle to live all the days of life peacefully.

Death of a Salesman: Time Motif

2009-04-03T04:44:00.008+05:00

Half way through the first act, the reader hears something about a brother Ben. Willy wishes that he had gone to Alaska with his brother Ben. At the same time he speaks of Ben’s having walked into a jungle and when he came out Ben was rich. In the next speech, Happy tells his dad that he is going to retire him for life. Willy flares up and tells both his boys that:

… the woods are burning. I can't even drive a car.

All of these ideas and images emerge into one. Ben becomes Willy’s ideal. Here was a man who had nothing and ended up rich. The jungle that Ben walked into is symbolically the jungle of life.

Thus when Willy says that the woods are burning, he mans that life is closing in on him. Whereas, Ben conquered the jungle of life, Willy can only be trapped by the burning woods. Consequently the phrase “the woods are burning” suggests that time is running out on Willy. He no longer has enough time to do anything. This concept of time hurrying past man is again emphasized by Ben. Every time we see Ben, he has his watch out and keeps saying that he has only a few more minutes or that he has to catch a train. He is always on the move while Willy remains stagnantly still. What Ben stands for is captured in his phrase:

“When I was seventeen, I walked into the jungle and when I was twenty-one I walked out … And by God I was rich”.

Here was a man who utilized time while time has simply passed Willy by.

When Howard fires Willy, he has nowhere to turn. Now the woods are really burning. He must now rely upon boys, but his boys are not reliable. So when Biff tries to tell Willy the truth, Willy maintains that he is not interested in the past.

“… because the woods are burning, boys, you understand? There’s a big blaze going on all around. I was fired today.”

Willy then has spent his life “rising up a zero” and now there is no place for him to go. Therefore he conceives of a way out of his burning woods. This involves suicide. Through suicide he would be able to leave his sons twenty thousand dollars. But as Ben says:

“It does take a great kind of a man to crack the jungle”.

But here the jungle is no longer the jungle of life; instead it is the jungle of death. This jungle “is dark but full of diamonds”: that is, the diamonds represent the insurance money. And to Ben frantic calling that it is “Time, William, time”. Willy drives off to his own death.

Therefore, for Willy, the jungle was a life that he could never conquer and instead it became a type of burning woods that was constantly closing in upon him. But in the end, when time had completely overtaken him, the jungle became the darkness of death which wily thought he could mistakenly conquer by suicide.

Death of a Salesman: Symbolism

2009-04-03T04:40:00.005+05:00

Symbolism is a technique, employed by a large number of playwrights, in which an object or a metaphor is described having meaning and implications beyond its apparent meaning.

Many of the symbols used in “Death of a Salesman” have specifically American connotations. The play opens with reference to cars. Caris an American symbol of individual mobility, freedom and social status. But Miller uses it in a negative and ironic manner. In the very beginning of the play Willy comes home exhausted with driving. His exhaustion with driving symbolizes his tiredness from life. The car is going out of control. This symbolism gets its final intensity in the climax of the play when Willy drives his car out of the house into darkness and death.

Even in the setting of the play symbolism and expressionistic technique are obvious. There is an angry glow of orange in the environment in which the apartment houses are bathed. When Willy is lost in his memories of the past, the house is draped in a mantle of green. Similarly when Biff and Happy picks up two women at the restaurant callously ignoring their father, the stage directions demand “lucid red”. Finally when Willy appears to be at his wit’s end trying to sow seeds, the stage is flooded with “blue” simultaneously suggesting moonlight and his desperate mood.

There are references to stockings. These references have a narrative and psychological function in the play. Stockings symbolize Willy’s guilt. Willy gives new stockings to the woman as a presents while his wife has mend for her old stockings. Stockings make Willy nervous and his reaction is sudden.

“Will you stop mending stockings? At least while I am in the house. It gets me nervous.”

Even the sound of flute in the play is symbolic. The play opens with a melody of the flute. Here is a symbolism that subtly supports the meaning of the play. As the play closes with Linda leaving Willy’s grave the only thing left on the stage is the sound of the flute playing a rather sad dirge. Thus the melody of flute opens and closes the play or it may be said to encompass the entire drama. But the use of symbol of flute becomes more important when we come to know that Willy’s father used to make and sell flutes. In this way he was also a salesman but he used to sell flutes prepared by his own hands, whereas, Willy sells wares of some other person.

Half way through the first act, the reader hears something about Willy’s brother Ben. Willy wishes that he had gone to Alaska with his brother Ben. At the same time he speaks of Ben’s having walked into a jungle and when Ben came out he was rich. Happy tells his dad that he is going to retire him for life. Willy flares up and tells both the boys that:

“Woods are burning. I can't even drive a car.”

Ben becomes Willy’s ideal. Ben is a man who has nothing in the beginning but he ends up in riches. The Jungle than Ben walks into is symbolically the jungle of life. But the jungle becomes the woods for Willy. Thus when Willy says that ‘the woods are burning’ he means that life is closing in on him. Whereas, Ben conquered the jungle of life, Willy was trapped by the burning wood. Consequently the phrase ‘the woods are burning’ suggest that time is running out on Willy. He no longer has enough time to do anything. This concept of time is again emphasized by Ben. Every time we see Ben, he has his watch out and keeps saying that he has only a few minutes or that he has to catch a train. He is always on the move while Willy remains stagnant still.

The temporary optimism at the beginning of Act II is conveyed partly by references to seeds and tools. Willy imagines that he can make seeds grow in, but he can’t do so because of the hardness of earth. This implies that his life is a barren thing. But it is already too late and his gestures of planting in the hope of future growth are desperate and futile.

Finally it is possible to treat Willy as a symbolic character. Willy may be regarded as an American everyman. Willy is much more emphatically a representative figure, than any of Miller’s other characters. This means that Willy’s problems are much less personal dilemma than they are public issues.

Death of a Salesman: Social Drama

2009-04-03T04:03:00.006+05:00

Arthur Miller's “Death of a salesman” is not a tragedy according to the conventional concept of tragedy in which the hero and fate come into conflict and fate causes the tragedy of the hero or the central protagonist.

The play cannot attain the stature of a genuine tragedy because of its extreme social awareness nor can it be a social drama because it is fitting to call it a social tragedy and it is. Social tragedy is a modern kind of tragedy in which the conflict between the central protagonist and society is depicted and the protagonist becomes the victim of society’s ill-treatment.

Arthur Miller in his drama “Death of a Salesman” depicts the conflict within the family and the conflict between protagonist and the society. He is misfit in the capitalist society. He is the victim of a social injustice and this social injustice causes his tragedy.

Willy Loman, the protagonist, has been working in a company for almost thirsty-six years. He introduces the firm in many cities. He often says to his colleagues that he is a vital man for the firm. It is only due to Willy's effort that the firm has been introduced in many cities of America.

Willy Loman in his life, keeping David Singleman’s charming personality as a model before him, dreams of success which is for a big house, a beautiful car and a good job which earns him a lot of money. But despite his head-long service for thirty-six years, he is unable to achieve his goals of success. He is misfit in the capitalistic society in which for being successful one has to be practical and hardworking, whereas, a dreamer like Willy Loman is sure to be a victim of failure. At the age of sixty three he is working on commission and his salary is so little that he cannot pay his installments of insurance and of other households. He often has to borrow money from Charley to pay his installments.

His own failure in achieving his goal of success and his son’s failure in getting settled is frustrating and maddening him. He is in the verge of mental collapse. He cannot concentrate on his car driving and smashes his car for two or three times. Willy makes up his mind to see his employer, Howard, and ask him to give him a non-traveling job in New York and to increase his salary.

He considers himself a vital man for the firm but he is not aware of the fact that in the capitalistic society a man is needed so long as a man can raise profit for the firm. The sooner he is incapable of raising benefit for the firm, the sooner he is fired out. Willy realizes the fact when instead of considering his plea on the humanitarian grounds, Howard fires him out. Howard totally ignores his forty years service for the firm. As Willy can no more raise benefit to the firm so he is no more wanted at all. Howard says:

I cannot take blood from a stone.

Willy realizes that he is not a vital man at all for the firm and speaks the beautiful line, a satire on capitalistic society, that these capitalistic profiteers eat the fruit and throw the peels away.

To conclude we can rightly say that “Death of a Salesman” is a modern social tragedy in which conflict between man and society has been depicted. Willy Loman, the protagonist, becomes the victim of social injustice which compels him to commit suicide.

Juno and the Paycock: Tragi-comedy

2009-03-18T05:27:00.004+05:00

Tragi-comedy is a kind of writing in which comedy is hovering on the brinks of tragedy. O'Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock” is a tragi-comedy although, on the whole, it is a serious and somber play having much destruction and violence. But there are a number of comic elements in the play which would not fit into the pattern of a tragedy. On the other hand, as the comic elements do not outweigh the tragic ones, it would be inappropriate to label the play as a comedy. It means there is a co-existence in the play of tragic and comic elements and so, the best course is to treat it as a tragi-comedy.

The play starts with a graphic description of Boyle’s household. The setting reflects the poverty of the dwellers. Then the news of murder of Robbie Tancred is also very gloomy. Johnny's neurotic condition adds to the tension of the play. But suddenly the mood of the play changes when Captain Boyle and Joxer Daly come in. The description of Mr. Boyle and Joxer’s physiognomy creates laughter. They are in fact grotesques. Mr. Boyle's neck is short and his head looks like a stone ball on top of a gatepost. He carries himself with the upper part of his body slightly thrust forward. His walk is a slow consequential thrust.

We again burst into laughter when we see Juno hiding herself to catch Joxer and Captain Boyle as they make themselves at home. Joxer’s repetition of the words “a darling man, a darling man”, “a darling thing, a darling thing”; his attempt to escape from the situation at the sight of Juno; Mr. Boyle's pretension that he is searching for a job sincerely, are all funny indeed. When jerry Devine enters, the situation becomes more ludicrous. Mr. Boyle is not willing to accept the job opportunity brought by Jerry. His lame excuses produce nothing but laughter.

“Won’t it be a climbin’ job? How d’ye expect me to be able to go up a ladder with these legs? An’, if I get up a self, how am I goin’ to get down agen?”

We are also much amused when Captain Boyle is interrupted while singing first by sewing machine man’s entry and then by the thundering knocks at the door. And when Boyle invites Joxer to a cup of tea Joxer says:

“I’m afraid the missus ud pop in on us agen before we’d know where we are, somethin’s tellin’ me to go at wanst.”

And to this Boyle replies:

“Don’t be superstitious, man; we’re Dublin men, ……”

We are also greatly amused when we find Joxer Daly and Mr. Boyle discussing about books and history. But their mock-intellectual discussion is interrupted by the voice of a coal vender. Again we burst into laughter when Joxer flies out of the window at learning the voice of Juno.

In fact, this whole episode is very humorous and funny. But in this fun and ludicrous description there is a tinge of pathos as well. For example, at one place, Juno says to Boyle:

“Here, sit down an’ take your breakfast – it may be the last you’ll get, for I don’t know where the next is going to come from.”

Then when there is knocking at the door and Boyle asks Joxer to tuck this head out of the window and see who is there, Joxer replies:

“An, mebbe get a bullet in the kisser?”

Apparently, this remark may be funny but underneath there is a grim tragedy in it … the tragedy of Ireland destroyed and wasted by civil war. Boyle's remark that:

“… the clergy always had too much power over the people in this unfortunate country.”

This again shows the grim situation of Ireland. Thus here we have an intermingling of light and serious elements of a mixture of comedy and pathos.

In act II, too, we have much laughter. For example the changed attitude of Boyle at the prospect of false will, the singing of Juno and Mary, Mrs. Madigan and especially Joxer and Mr. Boyle are amusingly funny. In fact this whole episode is a merry comedy, although on the background we can also perceive the tensions of the funeral.

In act III, where there are much sufferings and destruction even then we find some comic situation there. Joxer’s behaviour at the downfall of Mr. Boyle is very funny. He instigates Nugent, the tailor, to get his suit away from Mr. Boyle. He also stoles away a bottle of brandy from the table and Boyle's indignation at the moment creates laughter.

Actually, on the whole, farce in the play, is verbal – the repartee, the comic catchphrases, the cumulative comedy of repetition. There is the comedy of dialect and mispronunciation; of pompous phrases misused; of ludicrous images. Inflation and deflation both are comic. Captain Boyle's inflation of his fantasies with invention, exaggeration, rhetoric and bombastic and Juno’ facility in knocking him down etc all are comic.

But, despite, so much laughter and comedy, the play is predominantly tragic in theme. For example, the ignorance that prompts Joxer’s and Captain Boyle's mistake makes us laugh at first but is fundamentally tragic; their idleness, drunkenness and deviousness give numerous opportunities for comedy, but are in themselves wasteful and destructive. Tenement life gives rise to farcical situations but is in reality grim. Thus the superficialities of certain circumstances of Dublin life make an audience laugh, whereas, these are tragic if examined in full e.g. heroes become cowards, nationalism becomes jingoism, labour, humanitarianism becomes inhumanity. These are the tragedies of the play, which are mingled with comedy.

The pith and marrow of all this discussion is that, comedy is here, in fact, hovering on the brink of tragedy and so we are apt and just when we call “Juno and the Paycock” a tragi-comedy.

Juno and the Paycock: Quotations

2009-03-18T04:46:00.003+05:00

She is a well-made and good-looking girl of twenty-two. (Mary)

She is forty-five years of age, and twenty years ago she must have been a pretty woman. (Juno)

… seven wounds he head – one entherin’ the neck, with an exit wound beneath the left shoulder-blade; another in the left breast penethratin’ the heart, an’…

Wan victim wasn’t enough. When the employers sacrifice wan victim, the Trades Unions go wan betther be sacrficin’ a hundred.

A principle’s a principle.

… he is a thin delicate fellow … He has evidently gone through a rough time. His face is pale and drawn; … fear in his eyes. (Johnny)

He is a man of about sixty; stout, grey-haired and stocky. His neck is short, and his head looks like a stone ball … upper part of his body slightly thrown back, … His walk is a slow consequential strut … he wears a faded seaman’s cap with a glazed peak.

… his eyes have a cunning twinkle; … he has a habit of constantly shrugging his shoulders.

… when the cat’s away, the mice can play!

I’ve a little spirit left in me still!

One that says all is God an’ no man; an’ th’ other that says all is man an’ no God!

Have none of yous any respect for the Irish people’s National regard for the dead?

Ah, him that goes a borrownin’ goes a sorrowin’!

I’ll put some o’ the gorgeous feathers out o’ your tail!

– your humanity is just as narrow as th’ humanity o’ th’ others.

Sacred Heart o’ Jesus, have mercy on me!

Ah, what can God do agen th’ stupidity o’ men!

It’ll have what’s far betther – it’ll have two mothers.

What was th’ pain I suffered, Johnny, bringin’ you into th’ world to carry you to yours cradle to th’ pains I’ll suffer carryin’ you out o’ th’ world to bring you to your grave!

Juno and the Paycock : A Feministic Play

2009-03-11T04:00:00.001+05:00

Like Ibsen and Shaw, Sean O'Casey is also a feminist playwright. His play “End of the Beginning”, “The Shadow of the Gunman” and “Juno and the Paycock” are the three extreme examples of feminism. The reason of his feministic approach is O'Casey’s great admiration for his mother. He led a very miserable life with is mother in slums. His mother nursed him in very poor circumstances. In return he loved her mother very much. Many of his heroines have glimpses of his mother and they are based on the personality of his mother while facing the adversity. O'Casey advocates that we have to give an equal status to women to progress in the modern world.

Like other plays of O'Casey “Juno and the Paycock” also projects the theme of feminism that traditionally man flatters woman. In this play Mary and Juno are flattered and dragged down by their circumstances caused by the men. Both worked hard to make both ends meet. While men are irresponsible, careless, coward and drunkard, they are not at all ready to pick up any responsibility or to do any betterment for the sake of home rather they are becoming the case of degeneracy for the home and are adding fuel to the fire.

Captain Boyle, the husband of Juno, is a drunkard, careless, irresponsible and a man of straw, having no conscience at all. He has never worked in his life and his only business is to peacock about the clubs and pubs with his friend Joxer Daly. They together boast of nationalism but they never bother about their homes. Captain Boyle is a typical aristocratic figure who does not care about his wife and children. Whenever Juno instigates him and laments him to do work at least for his own sake, he always makes lame excuses and complaints about pain in his legs – the legs with which he can wander round the day.

“Won’t it be a climbin’ job? How d’ye expect me to be able to go up a ladder with these legs? An’, if I get up a self, how am I goin’ to get down agen?”

Men in O'Casey world are impotent and dreamers. They are not realist rather escapist and scared while women are very much realistic and disillusioned. Johnny and Mr. Boyle think that one day Ireland must be free and the days of prosperity will come but women characters, now in the worst circumstance caused by war, suffers most of all in the time of calamity. They have to see … their husband … and sons killed and slaughtered and their lovers burned down. When Robbie Tancred is murdered, it is Mrs. Tancred who suffers behind him. The words of Mrs. Tancred’s lamentation on the death of her son always hurts Juno and she already prays for the life of Johnny.

“Blessed Virgin, … … Sacred Heart o’ Jesus, take away our hearts o’ stone, an’ give us hearts of flesh!”

Juno has to suffer on different grounds. She has a husband who keeps on strutting about from morning till night whereas she has to carry the burden to her whole family. Her son Johnny has lost an arm and has a hip shattered in the war. The daughter, who has turned rebel and is on strike, ultimately gives birth to a child by a schoolteacher, her fiancée. Amid the hell of circumstances Juno has to bear the sufferings of existence, but unlike Captain Boyle, she does not romanticize her son’s exploitation when Johnny drags on his sacrifice for Ireland by saying that he would sacrifice his other arm too because “a principle’s a principle”. Juno speaks bitterly:

“Ah, you lost your best principle, my boy, when you lost your arm:”

Thus O'Casey very beautifully portrays the high status of woman that woman are more realist in their approach to life in general and to war in particular. Here we see, though Juno is an uneducated woman, yet she holds her dignity and shatters the web of idealism attached to war and trade unionism. When Mary emphasizes that “a principle’s a principle” and tries to justify her call on strike, Juno remarks very realistically:

“When the employers sacrifice wan victim, the Trades Unions go wan betther be sacrificin’ a hundred.”

In the country like Ireland which is poverty stricken and war ridden one cannot afford any idealism. Rather the poor have to have the practical approach and must work hard in order to survive and break down the barriers of slavery. We see only Juno is conscious of this fact, when she ask Mary, what will the shopkeeper say when she says to him “a principle’s a principle”.

Juno is very conscious of the fact that the miseries of the Irish people are not because of their stars but they are because of their carelessness, misdeeds, romanticism and idealism. That’s why she asks Mary:

“Ah, what can God do agen the’ stupidity o’ men!”

In the play we see that Mary’s suffering are also caused by men. She rejects Jerry Devin because she realizes the fact that Jerry is not a type of man who will stand by her through thick and thin. She realizes Charley Banthem but he deceives her and leaves her desolate and pregnant. Boyle's so called questions of honour awaken only on this movement and he frightens Juno of dangerous consequences if Mary does not leave the house. But in all these circumstances it is only Juno who stands besides her. This shows O'Casey feminine independence.

All these leads us to conclude that women in “Juno and the Pacycock” are realist and wiser than men. They have the awareness of life which men lack. This assumption of O'Casey is not based on lie or any idealism. In fact O'Casey wants to stress and evoke women to follow their instinctive feminine good sense and to play their part in the domain of modern life.

Juno and the Paycock : An Introduction

2009-03-10T05:33:00.004+05:00

Sean O’Casey was born in 1880 and died in 1964. So it makes him a contemporary of T. S. Eliot. The play has been written on the background of Irish Civil War, which has been going for centuries. There are many faction involved in the play:

There are the free staters,
There are also those who demand have ruled Ireland within the authority of English parliament
There are the unionists, who want unity with min Ireland.

Main Ireland got independence after the 1st World War. Ireland is divided into Southern and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is now called Ulster. The people of main Ireland are Roman Catholic. The majority of Ulster is Anglican. So there is political and religious problem.

(i) Either to unite with main Ireland
OR
(ii) To unite with England
OR
(iii) To be total independent was the main problem or enigma.

In 1916, there was a great uprising and many people were killed. O’Casey felt sorry for them. O’Casey was basically a pacifist (peaceful). He looks for independence but not at the cost of peace and life. This approach is also like that of W. B. Yeats. Both feel sorry for human causalities. To both, war is an evil, fought under any pretext, (excuse). Reality is more important than ideology. Man is more important than patriotism and religious fanaticism. O’Casey is down to earth a realist. He is similar to Shaw and is strongly anti-war writer. He is an anti-war, anti-class, anti-patriotism, anti-fanaticism, anti-trade unionism, anti-dogmatism, anti-ideology and anti-false aristocracy. He is a feministic writer.

O’Casey has taken the characters of “Juno and the Paycock” from Greek mythology. One very important aspect of European literature is their interest in classical mythology. O’Neill wrote “Electra”, Shaw wrote “Pygmalion”, Yeats wrote about “Byzantium”, Ibsen has created his own myth “Wild Duck” influenced by Greek mythology.

The European writers want to write on contemporary themes. They want to write on mundane level, but now modern themes are trivial. As in this play, though the domestic problems do not have heroic dimensions. Therefore, modern writers refer to classical myths to give a colour of sublimity to their subject. The other reason is that due to contemporary chaos communications have become difficult because there is no share of feelings. Therefore, modern writers seek for some focal point which would be equally meaningful to various people. So, when we talk with reference to the myths of Oedipus, Hamlet, Pygmalion, Byzantium, Electra, the communication becomes easy. In a disintegrated society, myths provide a focus and a centrifugal face. Some writers create their own myths as in the Later Romantic period and in Early Modern period. As Shelley creates the myth of “West Wind”, Keats creates the myth of “Hyperion and Psyche”. Ibsen makes the myth of “Wild Duck” and then O’Casey also uses Greek mythology in the play “Juno and the Paycock”.

Juno is the goddess of household in Greek mythology. She has been presented on riding a chariot driven by peacocks. Juno’s husband was Jove, Jupiter or Zeus, the president of Olympian gods, but here he stands for Paycock i.e. showy and vain. He was the master of the world and he looked after the world but here Juno’s husband Captain Boyle is a very irresponsible and an idle person. This is O’Casey’s art of caricature. On the other hand, Juno is called “Juno” because she was born in June, married in June and begot a child in June.

Juno’s husband, Captain Boyle, has aristocratic airs about him. He hates manual work. He enjoys the company of courtiers like companion and of some sycophant who adores him in flattery and always praises him. Captain Boyle represents the old aristocracy of Ireland which is now in the bas state because of the political upheaval in Ireland. Many English and Scottish interpretive have come to settle in Ireland. They now control the economy of Ireland. Therefore, the real Irish aristocracy hates them. This hatred is primarily for the reason that they are foreign exploiter and the second reason is that they lack Irish culture. Thirdly, they are destroying the culture and the civilization of Ireland. Therefore, they start to hate them and do not want to work under their control.

People like Captain Boyle think that if they work under them, they will be promoting the interest of the foreign exploiters. That’s why they degenerate even more. In the play Boyle’s family consists of four persons; Captain Boyle, Juno Boyle, their son “Johnny” and their daughter “Mary”. The son has been crippled in the war. The daughter works in a factory and the factory workers are on strike. She is very much active in trade union. Therefore, now she is jobless. Se has been deceived by her companion and has become pregnant. Boyle also does not work. Thus, the whole burden is on Juno. Juno runs the house. She also symbolizes “Juno” the goddess of household. She is a conventional wife. She has an interesting relationship with her husband. Since she is the earning hand of the family, she dominates and scolds her husband but as a good wife, she also considers her husband as a lord and wishes to serve him. All this creates a very interesting situation. In a way this is a feministic play that Juno struggles handedly to serve her family. She suffers most of all. So, women are weakest of the weak and exploited of the exploits. One very great feature of the play is the realistic depiction of the slump life in Dublin.

Technically, the play is considered one of the most effective plays in English literature. Handling of the myth and contemporary themes is matchless. This has heightened the tragic effects and made trivial family story a great tragedy. The play is very humorous and very tragic at same time. O’Casey is the master of creating humour in tragedy and tragedy in humour. In this art, he is very close to Shakespeare.

Juno and the Paycock: O'Casey's Pacifism

2009-03-08T18:54:00.001+05:00

O'Casey is not only a great dramatist but also a great humane. Irish characters and Irish civilization constitute basic themes in his plays. O'Casey was committed throughout his life to the liberation of individualism. Being a humanist, O'Casey could never reconcile with the idea of jingoistic patriotism. He was without any exaggeration a great pacifist. He was disillusioned with the Irish republicanism. Though he did not fight in the Easter Rising yet he was imprisoned by English soldiers. He wishes for an independent Ireland but his sympathies were with the non-combatants.

His sympathies were enlarged because of his deep affection for his mother who narrowly escaped during the Easter Rising. He was the member of Irish Renaissance. He unveiled the depraved and highlighted the miseries of poor people during the civil war.

“Juno and the Paycock” also has, like O'Casey’s other plays, war at its background. O'Casey is very much against the war fought under any pretext. He closely observed how war affects the society and the individuals, how war crushes the economy and the system, how war disintegrates the family structure, how it demolishes the psychology of the people and how it creates generation gap. Thus O’Casey condemns the exploitation of man-by-man, man’s inhuman treatment towards man, man’s barbarity against man.

The play begins with Mary's reading a newspaper. The very first information we get form the play is of a gruesome murder.

“On a little bye-road, out beyant Finglas, he was found.”

O'Casey evidently has sympathies for the poverty stricken and war ridden Irish society. There is nothing predicable in Ireland. Everyone is in extreme danger. They are hanging between life and death.

There are lots of references in the play regarding Ireland's religious and political history. Irish makes many attempts to shake off the foreign yoke. Foreigners are very inhuman to them. In 1916, hundred of casualties and the execution of the leaders are faultless examples of that.

But this inhumanity is not just caused by foreigners. The real problem arises with the killing of Irishman by Irishman. War, or to be more exact, a civil war has no solution to man’s problem; rather it aggravates the miseries of victims. The civil war is not confined to two fractions rather it expands to the whole Ireland. The death of Robbie Tancred and Johnny Boyle are perfect examples of that.

Johnny, who has lost an arm and has a hip shattered in a fight, is at the end dragged away and shot by his former republican commanders because he betrayed comrade Tancred. All this shows that Ireland is preying on herself. Earlier Johnny had undoubtedly behaved heroically but the hellish civil war compelled him to betray his comrade. This means the stupid civil war is turning into traitors because of its nothingness and hollowness and purposelessness.

Juno emerges as a great humanist and realist. She is a true pacifist and is against man’s inhumanity against man. She has an acute observation and knows about the truth of things. She is very realist and anti-idealist. When Mary emphasizes that one ought to stand by one’s principle being “a principle’s a principle” and tries to justify her call of strike, Juno very realistically remarks:

“When the employers sacrifice wan victim, the Trades Unions go wan betther be sacrificin’ a hundred.”

Being a realist, she has a firm belief in the idea that the fault does not lie with the stars but with the people themselves. She says:

“Ah, what can God do agen the’ stupidity o’ men!”

The opportunist class represented by Nugent has also been condemned. According to O'Casey this opportunist class is more harmful than even the combatants. They themselves become the cause of civil war and play a double role. Nugent wants other to respect “Irish people national regard for the dead” but stitches suits for the civil guards at night.

The domestic tragedy, which mainly springs out form pregnancy, is due to the inhumanity of the male. That male chauvinist society cannot tolerate a mistake by a young girl. Whereas on the other hand the idiots like captain Boyle and Joxer Daly are left unaccountable.

Hope for a good time is only due to the courage of women. They are very humane and cooperative. O'Casey’s criticism of life is conveyed through the repetition of significance of deep dialogues. The words of Mrs. Tancred lamentation are pungently recorded by Juno, when she too, is mourning over a slain son.

“Sacred Heart of the Crucified Jesus, take away our hearts o’ stone….....an’ give us hearts o’ flesh! ….....Take away this murdherin’ hate … an’ give us Thine own eternal love!”

Against the vanity and moral bankruptcy of masculine character, O'Casey elevates the mother figure when Juno plans to work for Mary and her unborn child. Juno suffers the pain of existence but she sustains life.

Thus, we see O'Casey very beautifully depicts man’s inhumanity towards man. O’Casey is at heart a humanist and a pacifist. He considers life mere inevitable and all idealism is subservient to it. He condemns all principles and gives one and the only principle to live all the days of life peacefully.

Death of a Salesman: American Dream

2009-03-08T18:05:00.002+05:00

The tragedy of Willy Loman, says Arthur Miller, is:

“Willy gave his life, or sold it, in order to justify the waste of it…”

Willy represents Every low-man in America. Hence, it is a tragedy of every American. The play is really a challenge to the American Dream because it is the tragedy of a man troubled by the society. Willy believes in American myth that “Success is obtained by being well-liked”. His dream ends up in nightmare. So the play challenges to new American capitalistic concepts.

American dream means the dream of becoming rich overnight. The scale and merit of success is money, big house, a costly car and other material things. Nobility, truth, honesty are not merits. Values have been changed through this dream. Instead of hard work and courage, there is salesmanship. It implies fraud, the ability to sell a commodity regardless of its intrinsic uselessness. The goal of salesmanship is to earn a profit.

So, in these circumstances, man ceases to be man and spiritually he is hollow. He constantly wears a mask hiding his deceptive frauds. The only reality, the only goal is that of material success. The same situation happens with Willy Loman. By this way, Willy, to a large extent, represents Every Low-man in America. His fall, his death reflects the total break down of the concept of salesmanship, an integral part of America setup.

Willy believes that life’s problems can be solved by looking “Well-liked”. But he does not realizes the fact that the age in which he is living, the good looks does not matter, what matters is the wealth you have. By wealth you can buy anything. All relations are useless before almighty dollar. He receives his severest blows when he needs the greatest amount of love and care. He is unable to travel extensive. He makes a request to his young employer to relieve him of such a tiring burden and give him a comfortable job. But, for the capitalism businessman no moral or legal obligation can be biding. To him, Willy is commercially as useless as the peels of a fruit. So, he says:

I can’t take blood from a stone.

In fact, “Death of a Salesman” is a red light for American society. It shows that all Americans adopt one million ideas and dream for success. Everyone wants to become the president of America, but when he fails to achieves his dreams, he becomes frustrated. Willy’s suicide is a caution for such modern values.

Eugene O’Neil comments on the failure of American dream in following lines:

“I am going on the theory that the United States, instead of being the most successful country in the world, is the greatest failure”

In conclusion we can say that Miller in “Death of a Salesman” has tried to show the failure of American dream. Implicitly, he tells us tht man is not a machine, he has emotions too. Thus placing all the values on riches is wrong. The whole situation he sums up in Biff’s remark who says on his father’s death.

“He had the wrong dream. All, all wrong.”

The Sun Also Rises: Significance of Bull Fighting

2009-03-06T17:39:00.003+05:00

Bull fighting is a typical Spanish institution governed by ritual performance, and integrity of matador at one hand and bravery of bull on the other hand. From railway station bulls are left on the road and are directed towards corral. Those who have courage enough of running in front of bulls, run and those who do not have courage enough to run, stand by the roadside. Hence, bulls are brought into corral. In bull fighting, three matadors kill six bulls. Each matador kills two bulls.

In fact, “The Sun Also Rises” is a tragedy through ritual performance because it is a fight between good and bad. Bull fighting has aspects of tragedy, action, suspense, horror or terror, catharsis and tragic end. In bull fighting a matador fights two bulls. Bulls are led into bull ring where matador is ready to fight against bulls. The atmosphere is full of suspense when the wild bull attacks the matador. As soon as bull or matador is wounded, the whole atmosphere fills with horror, when bull or matador is killed our sentiments reach its peak and relieved latter. Hence, we can observe that “The Sun Also Rises” has requisites of tragedy.

Hemingway despite of the cruelty of bull fighting sees certain definite actions giving feeling of life and death. He presents these codes through bull fighting.

Man struggle against evil.
Winner takes nothing in the world.
Pain does not matter to a man.

In “The Sun Also Rises” bull fighting symbolically shows man’s struggle against evil in life, for bull is a symbol of evil and corral is a symbol of life. Group of expatriates does not have courage to fight against evil and Romero sets an example for them by instructing that they can find meanings of life by fighting against evils in life and that they should not be a victim of evils any more if they want to find meanings of life. Hence by fighting against bulls, Pedro Romero shows struggle against evils.

The theme of Hemingway’s novels, that winner takes nothing in the world, has also been conveyed through bull fighting. Pedro Romero, nineteen years old bull fighter, fights against bull, endangers his life for in fighting either bull or matador is killed. He can't go out of bull ring as it is a coward and disgraceful action for a man. He fights against bulls, kills them but what he gets as a reward is applause of the spectators and two ears of bull which he gives to Brett Ashley. So, it a crystal clear that winner takes nothing in the world.

Hemingway coveys another theme that pain does not matter to man. Pedro Romero despite being hurt by Robert Cohn, manly fights against bull. Though he feels pain, yet his code demands that he has to fight and kill the bull and he does so not caring for his wounds and pain.

On the other hand, Belmounte, the other matador also fights against bulls. He is comparatively old and experienced man; he is expected to perform better than him. On not showing superior performance he becomes victim of contemptuous of crowd, they make insulting remarks, throw tomatoes and bottles on him. Belmounte is feeling pain, on the one hand, for his injured hand and on the other hand for insult. But his code demands that he must go through the performance steadfastly. Public may be indifferent to one’s action but it does not matter because only one’s conscience justifies one’s action.

This is the code that Hemingway has enunciated and his latter heroes will form. The code also implies that only in the face of death one realizes oneself and knows one’s potentialities.

Hence we can justly say that bull fighting is symbolically depicted. On the one hand it is a ritual performance indicating fight against good and evil and on the other hand it depicts certain Hemingway’s code.

The Sun Also Rises: Hemingway's Style

2009-03-06T17:36:00.002+05:00

Whether Hemingway wrote in his early style or in his middle style or in his later style, he is unique among modern prose writers because he turns his style to serve his subject matter. In the absence of any code the style itself becomes the code. To use literary heights, Hemingway had his style instead if God.

Ernest Hemingway becomes popular for his direct, pithy, lucid, simple and straight forward style when he was awarded by the Nobel Prize in 1954. He was praised for his style.

This style he had learnt from Gertrude Stein who taught him to cut the unnecessary details in order to focus the reader’s attention on important scenes and events and to adopt the art of repetition of certain words with minor variations.

His style was a revolt against 19th century romanticism. Hemingway’s style emerged as a reply to the crash of values on English literary scene after the First World War.

He is considered the master of dialogues. His style is closely parallel to the code of endurance and stoicism. Though his style looks extremely simple, yet it is really not simple. It requires hard discipline and a very deep understanding of language.

Hemingway revived colloquial American language. He used simple and compound words. His style was not spontaneous.

Because of the bareness of Hemingway’s language one may suspect that there lies a disturbed state of mind behind the smooth surface of Hemingway’s simplest possible sentences.

In Hemingway’s style there are a lot of symbols. Hemingway by utilizing the technique of symbolism has added the richness to his bleak and bare style.

Hemingway also makes a good use of quotations as:

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Fish, I will show you what a man can do and what a man can endure.
I will see; who kills who.
Pain doesn’t matter to a man.
Man is not made for defeat.
A man can live only through the manly encounter against death.

Hemingway had a theory called the iceberg theory. He has done away with metaphorical fat because basically in life as well as in literature he has been a sportsman.

Hemingway's Wasteland

2009-03-06T17:34:00.000+05:00

Hemingway gains prominence among writers because he has the advantage of being a participant and eyewitness of the First World War. He voluntarily takes part in it as an ambulance driver and work on the Italian front: Hemingway completes his “The Sun Also Rises” in 1925 whereas, T. S. Eliot wrote “The Waste Land” in 1921. Both of these writers lament on the glory of bygone days and the bankruptcy of human ideals in the modern world. The close resemblance between the theme and the treatment of theme of “The Wasteland” and “The Sun Also Rises” compels certain critics to say that “The Sun Also Rises” is the prose version of “The Wasteland”. It is not mush important to investigate whether Hemingway had studied “The Wasteland” or not. The most important factor is that both Hemingway and T.S. Eliot present similar views of their time and use images and ideas in a common context. Therefore, we can enhance our understanding about their common images by comparison.

Both, Hemingway and T. S. Eliot use the idea of a protagonist who is physically sterile. Jake Barnes in “The Sun Also Rises” and Tiresias in “The Wasteland” have a parallel between them because both remain apart from the world around them and both are the passive observers of the sexual encounters taking place before them. The nature of the sexual relationships of the characters in “The Sun Also Rises” has close resemblance with the sexual relationship presented in “The Wasteland”. Both the books witness that sex occupies a very prominent place in modern place and, unfortunately, today sex has become merely an animal urge without any moral or social commitment. In wasteland, T. S. Eliot presents the mechanical approach to sexual relationship.

There is also a similarity between the passage of “The Hyacinth Girl” in the Wasteland and the lost part of the novel where Jake and Brett are all alone in the taxi.

There is another great similarity in “The Wasteland” and “The Sun Also Rises” as the central character in “The Wasteland” is also seen as the Fisher King while Jake Barnes is an ardent Fisherman. Fisher King is a very sinful king and suffers from drought and famine. According to another legend, the soldiers of the king rape the nuns attached to the chapel of the Holy Grail. As a result of the sin, his kingdom suffered from famine. The King Fisher hopes that one day a knight will go to chapel to perilous and thereafter his land will get fertile. A virtuous knight visits the chapel and the curse on King Fisher and on his land is removed. The same is the case with Jake Barnes who is also the maimed hero in “The Sun Also Rises”. However, his struggles become the basis on which future generations can build a stronger approach to reality, a sounder humanity, which will make the modern world wasteland fertile again.

We can also see another important similarity, which appears both in the novel as well as in the poem that the scene entirely changes between the mountains. Eliot says, “There you feel free” and in “The Sun Also Rises” the mountains of Baguette is the only place where Jake and Bill have their moment of peace.

To conclude, there are also numerous small analogies of detail because both the masterpieces are written in the same age, with the same theme even the usage of images and ideas has the same context. Therefore, it can rightly be said that “The Wasteland” and “The Sun Also Rises” are the two sides of the same coin.

The Sun Also Rises: The Lost Generation

2009-03-06T17:27:00.001+05:00

When we carefully study the main trends and events of the 19th century it becomes quite clear that the advancement of science and industrial rise transformed man’s outlook and affected every walk of life. Darwin’s epoch-making theory of evolution added fuel to fire which crumbled the powerful roots of Christianity because it challenged the very fundamental teachings of the Bible. During this century mankind enjoyed global peace and stability and almost for one hundred years there had been no large-scale continental war. The scientific and industrial evolution made physical life more comfortable, complacent and social and it as thought that man had conquered the beast in himself and learnt to live with his fellowmen harmoniously. On the other hand, this century is also remarkable for the mass-production of the fatal weapons of war which made modern war no longer a matter of man’s facing his enemy and with the out break of the first world war both the opponent groups do played such horrible weapons which wiped out humanity and devoured Europe like a horde of locusts. Whatever the steps were taken was undone by the unexpected development in the techniques of war because man had no experience of battle against machines. Daily newspapers were full of mass-rapes, child-slaughters and reports of poison gas. So, the men who had entered war with patriotic ideas to assert their honour, courage glory and manhood were stunned at man’s inherent barbarity. When they realized this horrible uncertainty, pettiness and meaninglessness of life, they were desperately disappointed and disillusioned. This generation which had witnessed the utter debasement of life, hollowness and emptiness of the high-sounding slogans of religious and political leaders was called “the lost generation”.

The phrase “The lost generation” got attention when Hemingway used Gertrude Stein’s remark “You are all a lost generation” in the front piece of “The Sun Also Rises”. After his exploits in the First World War Hemingway was unable, like Jake Barnes, to settle down and seek in activity some cure for the loss of faith and idealism. Instead of returning to America, he became an expatriate and settled in Paris, like several other young writers, with thousands of other expatriates who had taken part in World War I. These rootless members of ‘lost generation’ had fought so well but now they had been found useless in peacetime world. They were naturally embittered at the treatment they had received for having risked their lives in combat. They went through heart-breaking anguish and relied upon each other for support because their agony was impenetrate to the comprehension of others. They were fully aware of the illusory nature of social ideals. Having nothing, no code, no belief, which would serve in place of those social ideals, this generation, found itself morally a flout and each member of this generation was trying to create his own ideal or rules of conduct. In Hemingway’s work the meaning of the lost generation is not the generation that is lost in the sense that it is ruined and destroyed but the generation that is unable to find the way and which is in the quest of values. If we want to have a true understanding of The Sun Also Rises, we are to understand the nature of the ‘lostness’ of lost generation. Jean Paul calls this ‘lostness’ as ‘forlornness’ which follows when we understand that:

“God does not exist and we have to face all the consequences of this”.

For Jean Paul:

“Man is forlorn because neither within him or without does he find anything to cling to”.

The Sun Also Rises is mainly opted by this lost generation but the characters are not helpless, profane and dissipated, rather, they constitute a kind of a modern version of man. They assume certain heroic proportion but fall short of any recognizable ideal. Their heroism lies in the extent of their struggle to establish some mode of existence which may fulfill their own vision of good. The Sun Also Rises mainly focuses members of the lost generation who have the courage to see that they are forlorn but they struggle to achieve a way of life that is honourable in the midst of their forlornness.

The Sun Also Rises: The Fishing Trip

2009-02-23T04:58:00.001+05:00

A careful study of Hemingway’s novels and short stories reveals that he consistently repeats his major subject and themes. The 2nd book of “The Sun Also Rises” starts with the fishing trip – the subject which he has discussed in his several other novels and short stories. However, it is a great mastery of Hemingway’s art that even his repetitions do not create monotony.

After the exposition of chaotic conditions of life in Paris where every one is physically and emotionally sick, the fishing trip scene is a healthy shift to the serenity and tranquility of Burguette where only Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton go because Mike and Brett Ashley fail to reach Pamplona on the expected day.

Their journey to Burguette is slightly troublesome as the motor bus is full of passenger. However, they enjoy beautiful scenery and exposed their bodies to the sun and the wind. As the bus moves upward, Jake is enchanted by the beauty of rocky hills, grain growing up hillside and in the way a cloud hangs behind the bus. His poetic appreciation of the scene and communication with nature are in a sense aromantic escape from the injuries of war and complexities of life in Paris.

If we critically examine the position of this scene, it is quite clear that Hemingway has consciously inserted this trip midway between the scenes in Paris and those in Pamplona to lend it a structural and symbolic significance. Fishing scene is a kind of fulcrum that helps in measuring the frustration and unhappiness of the former or later episodes.

Fishing trip is neutral as it is set high in the Spanish mountains with the plains of Paris on one side and those of Pamplona on the other side. There are Jake and Bill, “Men without women”, without Brett to create jealousy among them and Jake is free from complexities of sex. It is one of those few occasions when Jake is found happy. This excursion is therapeutic process for Jake. He briefly speaks of his hindered love for Brett, but as religion is no more valid and love is no longer possible, he finds happiness through private and imaginative means. Thus, he constructs a more positive code to follow, which brings in him help, pleasure, beauty an order, and helps to wipe out the damage of his troubled life in Paris. Pamplona is an extension of Burguette which on the surface level is gayer and more joyous than Burguette but essentially more serious and eventful.

The Sun Also Rises: The Title

2009-02-23T04:54:00.000+05:00

Title of the novel “The Sun Also Rises” is suggestive. There is certain background and expression behind it. “The Sun Also Rises” comes from or is based upon a passage from ecclesiastical. The passage is:

“One generation passeth away, and other generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever – The sun also rises and goth down and hasteth to the place where he arise -- ”

“The Sun Also Rises” is the novel about lost generation. Lost generation is the term used for those who participated in the First World War and were wounded physically or spiritually. These wounded people began to take little interest in realistic activities of life and engaged themselves in evil things like too much drinking, dancing and making free sex. This generation has two groups. One of them was settled and other was a group of expatriates who wanted to learn how to live in this world. But as their attitude toward life was unmanly so they were unable to learn how to live in this world. This added to their frustration and to this group Hemingway is concerned.

This group of expatriates comprises Jakes Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley, Robert Cohn and Mike Campbell. Robert is physically wounded while others are spiritually wounded. Jake Barnes has lost his manhood by receiving genital wound and other lost their values. Brett Ashley has lost her moral values for she has been and still is indulging into making free sex. She has had affairs with Robert Cohn, Jake Barnes and still yearns to make more and thus in the end has affair with Pedro Romero. Mike Campbell is shown or told bankrupt which indicates that he has lost economic values. Robert is also victim of these evils. First he helps his mistress Frances and then spends with Brett Ashley who on one hand is trying to take divorce from her husband Mr. Ashley and on the other hand is engaged to Mr. Mike. Jake in the end pimping with Brett reveals that he has lost social values as well. This generation which is lost and has lost their values is compare with the setting sun.

On the other hand Pedro Romero, the young bull fighter extends to content the group of expatriates. He is 19 years old and represents young generation. He is called “Messiah”and is said to have come to save bull fighting from decadence. Bull is the symbol of evil and corral is the symbol of life. Pedro’s fight, in corral, with bull is in fact man’s struggle or fight against evil in life. Hence we can clearly observe that group of expatriates is the victim of evils for they indulge in dancing, drinking and sex but Pedro Romero’s fight against bull reveals that he is fighting against evils. Term “Messiah” has specially been used for Romero which means saviour. The sentence that he has come to save bull fighting means that he has come to teach the people not to be victim of evils but that they should master up courage to fight against evil. His young age and his fighting spirit indicate that he is the rising sun. Hence the sun that has set is rising again and this is the title “The Sun Also Rises”.

The Sound and the Fury: Shadow Motif

2009-02-23T04:47:00.001+05:00

The shadow motif refers chiefly to Quentin and, to a lesser degree, to Benjy. The shadow refers to the events of the past which are only vaguely understood. As a person, Quentin is obsessed with both the past and the significance that the past has for him. But these actions of the past appear to him only in shadowy form. Thus we return to the Shakespearean passage from which the title was taken:

“Life’s but a walking shadow.”

One critic of Faulkner’s writings has pointed out that the word “shadow” appears at least forty-five times in Quentin's monologue. Quentin senses all through his section that he is only a shadow of his ancestors. There are no more generals and governors left among his family. Furthermore, when Quentin tries to accomplish something the act always seems ridiculous. For example, he tries to make Caddy commit a double suicide but it is Quentin who fails to bring the act to completion; he tries to make Dalton Ames leave town but ends up by fainting like a girl; he tries to convince his father that he committed incest with Caddy but his father merely laughs at him. Thus all of Quentin’s actions are only shadows of real action. And unlike the real tragic protagonist who loses his life at the end of the drama, Quentin takes his life by the mid-point in the novel. The implication is that modern man cannot bring himself to cope with the problems of the final act of the drama and destroys himself in the middle. And Quentin’s final act is that of jumping in the river, where his shadow rises from the water below to meet him.

The Sound and the Fury: Time Motif

2009-02-23T04:39:00.000+05:00

One of Faulkner's chief concerns in his works is time and timelessness. It is often connected with his views of how often and how much past intrudes upon the present. Faulkner’s use of time in this novel is startling, new and effective. Time concepts are used differently in every section.

In Benjy’s narration clock tie is totally disregarded. Benjy is completely oblivious of time. Events of the past are constantly juxtaposed with various events of the present or of some other time in the past. Benjy makes no distinction between an event that happened only hours ago and one that occurred years ago. The memory of the episode at the branch (1898) is as recent and vivid as an episode in 1914 or on the morning of April 7, 1928. Therefore, for Benjy there is no distinction between the past and the present and there is no such thing as future. If he stands at the gate waiting of Caddy to return in 1928 it is because he has waited since 1902. The many years that he has waited in vain are non-existent to him because he remembers only those events which gave him pleasure. Faulkner violates traditional time in order to emphasize Benjy’s rejection of the distinction between various times and to show how actions of the past are important to Benjy because they gave him pleasure. The time motif is highly stimulating when we realize that Faulkner is writing about Benjy in 1928, and the event which Benjy remembers in 1898 foreshadows events which occur in 1906-10. Benjy remember a past event of Caddy getting her drawers muddy which foreshadows a future event about Caddy’s promiscuity in 1906-10.

Quentin expends all his energy trying to understand time. His section opens with his remembering his father’s comments about the futility of trying to keep up with time. He tears off the hands of his watch. By this act, he hopes to escape into a timeless world. But he cannot remove himself from time. He constantly hears his own watch ticking even though it has no hands. He asks the boys at the river if they know where a clock is. And in the midst of all these links with time, Quentin is constantly remembering various cynical comments that his father made about time.

The time motif carries significant implications about Quentin's character. Whereas Benjy made no distinction between time past and present. Quentin is more concerned with trying to understand how time in the past can influence time in the future. His major problem is that his father has told him that time will make a person forget all sorrow and remorse. But Quentin’s problem is that he does not want to forget. He must remember his present feeling of bereavement because if the forgets them, the feelings will have no meaning and then Quentin feels that his life will have no meaning. Therefore, Quentin tries to stop time from passing. The only way he can do this is by committing suicide which he does at the end of his section.

For Jason, time plays an important role and every second counts. In his section, we have Caddy returning for a five-second glimpse of her child, and we see Jason watching the clock and timing his every act. We have undelivered telegrams, wild chases and various assignations. But Jason sees no importance to the past except that certain events occurred which deprived him of a position in Herbert Head’s bank. Jason’s world is in the immediate present. He has rejected all ties and allegiance to the past and he exists only for his own selfish aims in the present moment.

The final section uses time by emphasizing the clock which Dilsey keeps on the kitchen wall. When the clock strikes five times, Dilsey knows that it is eight o’clock. She is able to bring order out of the confusion and chaos of the Compson world. When she takes Benjy to the church, she hears a sermon about the beginning and the end. She returns feeling that she has been with Compsons since the beginning and now she sees the end coming very soon. Dilsey, therefore, is the only character who functions within the continuum of time. Her present care for loyalty to the Compsons is a result of her past association with them.

The use of time motif is probably one of Faulkland’s main concerns in the novel. Much of the meaning of the novel evolves through an understanding of each character’s reaction to time.

The Sound and the Fury: The Theme - Decline of A Family

2009-02-07T20:07:00.001+05:00

Basically the novel presents the story of the decline of a family. The family shown in the novel has traits which can be perceived as signs of decadence resulting from regional history. Compson’s family comprises of long line of men full of decency and pride. But after civil war in America the family’s fortunes and abilities declined rapidly.

The Compson family consists of Mr. and Mrs. Compson, their four children Quentin, Caddy, Jason and Benjy. Mr. Compson is the first clear sign of decay in the family oppressed by the traditions. His self-pitying wife is a terrifying example of the functionless southern lady. Their children depict different degrees of degeneracy. Benjy is an idiot, Caddy is promiscuous and her daughter afterwards takes her path. Quentin drives himself to suicide by an obsession with his sister’s dishonour. Jason is villainous. Faulkner thus identifies the sources of destruction of the family in their individual character, which are full of self-destructive urges and impulses.

One aspect of the deterioration in the Compson family is the lack of parental love. Mr. Compson’s cynicism and nihilistic views have a very disturbing effect on the sensitive Quentin. Compson has a negative attitude towards time. He wishes to escape from time and regards his watch as a “mausoleum of all hope and desire”. To him victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

Mrs. Compson always seems to be complaining about her sickness and children. She believes that Benjy is a punishment for her and Jason is a source of “joy and salvation”. As a mother, she is a nonentity and we find Quentin lamenting in his monologue upon the fact that there was no one to which he could call Mother. Mrs. Compson’s hypochondria inflict sufferings on the family. She is chiefly the cause of the family’s misfortunes and disaster.

Benjy is the born idiot, incapable of speaking and expressing and almost all the time mourning and slobbering. Benjy is a grotesque character representing the degeneracy of an upper class white family.

Caddy, whom Faulkner adorned most, does not give any cause for rejoicing or even enthusiasm. When seventeen, she becomes promiscuous and becomes pregnant unaware of her seducer. She married in haste and soon becomes discarded by her husband. In this way she becomes a “fallen woman”. She is not allowed to visit her parental home and the very mention of her name is forbidden by her mother. Caddy certainly possesses some redeeming quality. She shows a great affection for Benjy and looks after him. She also possessed certain feminine charm which attracts different man and even her own brother. But these qualities cannot redeem the essential corruption of her nature. Thus she is the great cause of degeneration of the Compson's family.

Quentin started as a very promiscuous boy. He was sent to Harvard even though the family had to sell a part of estate to pay for his expenses. But he proved an incestuous passion for his sister. His unfulfilled incestuous love and his terrible sense of disappointment of Caddy’s dishonour give rise to the feeling of despair in him. This leads him to commit suicide. He is also a string reason for the fall of the Compson's family.

The youngest child of the family grows into a villain. The only positive aspect of his nature is his sense of humour. He deceives his mother by giving her fake cheques to burn while he uses to deposit the genuine cheques sent by Caddy in his account. He defrauds his niece Quentin for small amount of money. His treatment towards his niece shows his cold heartedness and callousness. He constantly suggests that Benjy should be sent to metal asylum. The moral sense is totally missing in him. His attitude towards Dilsey’s loyalty is unique.

The girl Miss Quentin proves to be much worse than her mother. Whereas, her mother shows great affection for Benjy but Miss Quentin even does not like to sit with him and does not care even for her grand mother. She becomes promiscuous at early age. Although her action in stealing Jason's money is the punishment which Jason richly deserved yet her theft for the money and her flight from her house with a lover leaves a very bad taste.

Mrs. Compson, Quentin and Jason are the protagonist of chaos. Each of three characters are bent upon self-pitying and self-justification.

Sexual perversion and violation of conventional behaviour play significant role in the story of the Compson’s brother. Uncle Mauray was beaten by neighbour for carrying on an adulterous affair with the neighbour’s wife. Jason has a mistress called Larrine but he is averse to marriage. According to a critic, in a Freudian sense both Benjy and Jason might unconsciously be attracted sexually by Caddy.

This degeneracy of the Compson family is heightened by the striking contrast between the member of this family and the servant Dilsey. She is a symbol of fidelity, companionship, love, devotion to duty, power of endurance, religious piety and much more as against the chaos of the Compson family.

Symbolism in "The Sound and the Fury"

2009-02-07T19:42:00.001+05:00

Complex subjects like the one in “The Sound and the Fury” cannot find their full expression in simple narration. They need illustration and that can be made only through symbolism. The theme of “The Sound and the Fury”, the decadence of Compson family is largely clarified through symbolization of its central characters and their actions.

Faulkner has worked out the whole pattern of the novel symbolically. The very title has symbolical implication. The motif of the novel has been conceived by Faulkner in a conflict between the order and chaos producing forces in symbolic terms. Mr. Compson nihilistic view that victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools, that virginity is myth invented by men and women are not conscious of it, that time is a mausoleum of all hopes and desires, Mrs. Compson’s self-pity and isolation, Benjy’s idiocy, Quentin’s emasculation, Jason’s pragmatic commercialism and Caddy’s promiscuity symbolize it.

The symbolic contrast between the forces of order and disorder has also been shown in the characters of Benjy and Quentin in their monologues. Benjy though a born idiot represents dignity and order. Whenever he sees something wrong being done, he at once protests against it by his moaning and slobbering. When he sees Charlie kissing Caddy, he pulls at her dress and starts crying. Caddy at once sends Charlie away and promises with Benjy that she will never do it again. Again when Luster takes the carriage in the wrong direction, he starts bellowing and calms down when Jason corrects the direction and rebukes Luster. Quentin, on the other hand, entertaining the wish to commit incest with Caddy and killing himself by committing suicide out of despair, his irritation displayed at sunlight and his frantic efforts to get rid of time by damaging his watch represents chaos and amoralism. Thus the vision of life of Benjy and Quentin placed in juxtaposition symbolize the contrast between the forces of order and disorder.

Quentin’s obsession with his shadow which he tries to destroy by trampling it under his feet has also symbolic implications. His shadow represents his alter ego completely different from his mind or intellectual personality. Quentin’s fight with his shadow symbolizes the conflict between man’s physical and mental personality.

Caddy’s muddy drawers has also symbolic significance. Her climbing a tree with muddy drawers visible to the brothers standing under the tree have symbolized Caddy’s advancement towards her future sexual life. Again her taking off her dress to dry it also symbolizes her giving up her innocence associated with her childhood. Her washing her mouth after having been kissed by Charlie symbolizes the cleansing ritual and her commitment she has made with. Balls at various occasions suggest Benjy’s castration to present him from sexually assaulting some young girls that pass by their house’s gate. Even the mention of honey suckle in Quentin's monologue has sexual implications. Quentin’s hatred of honey suckle’s odour show his disgust with sex. It is also disgusting because it reminds him of Caddy’s promiscuity. Quentin's rejection of the pistol offered to him by Datton Ames in his fight with Quentin exposes Quentin’s sick concern with virginity and his own importance.

The broken narcissus which Luster gives to Benjy is also symbolic of Quentin’s and Jason's self-love. Quentin’s obsession with time is also symbolically expressed in his efforts to break his watch to get rid of time. The clock in the Compson house, always losing time symbolizes Compsons lagging behind time and in the race of life.

Dilsey, the black house-keeper of the Compsons, symbolizes the concept of sanity, order and equilibrium. Her care for Compsons irrespective of their right or wrong attitude towards her makes her a symbol of love and order. The change of idiot boy’s name from Maury to Benjy is symbolic of Compson’s superstitious mentality. Dilsey taking Benjy to her Negro church at the end of the novel has also been seen as a symbolic act to have the Compsons from decadence.

Jason’s pursuit of making money through investment in cotton shares and through others pragmatic means symbolizes the emergence of the new commercial south. The decadence of the Compsons or the south also symbolizes the decadence of the morally confused modern World which suffers from lack of discipline, of sanctions, of community values in which self-interest and success provide the standards.

To sum up, as the subject of the novel is complex, Faulkner has provided a complex scheme of symbolism, to illuminate it and in this effort he has been brilliantly successful.

Robert Frost: A Modern Poet

2009-02-06T17:03:00.001+05:00

In spite of the Pastoral element predominant in Frost’s poems, he is still a modern poet because his poetry has been endowed with the awareness of the problems of man living in the modern world dominated by Science and Technology.

Critics have a difference of opinion over considering him a modern poet. Frost is a pastoral poet – poet of pastures and plains, mountains and rivers, woods and gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, and seeds and birds. They do not treat such characteristically modern subjects as ‘the boredom implicit in sensuality’, ‘the consciousness of neuroses’ and ‘the feeling of damnation’. Cleanth Brooks says:

“Frost’s best poetry exhibits the structure of symbolist metaphysical poetry. Much more clearly than does of many a modern poet.”

In fact, Frost’s poetry portrays the disintegration of values in modern life and the disillusionment of the modern man in symbolical and metaphysical terms as much as the poetry of great, modern poets does, because most of his poems deal with persons suffering from loneliness and frustration, regrets and disillusionment which are known as modern disease. In “An old Man’s Winter Night”, the old man is lonely, completely alienated from the society, likeness, the tiredness of the farmer due to over work in “Apple-Picking” and as a result of it his yielding to sleep:

For I have too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of great harvest I myself desired.

In his nature poems, Frost has also commented on the misery of the modern man which due to his going away from nature.

His metaphysical treatment of the subject in some of his poems is also an evidence of his modernity. In “Mending Walls”, Frost juxtaposes the two opposite aspects of the theme of the poem and then leaves it to the reader to draw his own conclusion. The conservative farmer says:

Good fences make good neighbour

and the modern radical farmer says:
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

According to J.F.Lynen the use of the pastoral technique by Frost in his poems, does not mean that the poet seeks an escape from the harsh realities of modern life. He argues that it provides him with a point of view.

Frost uses pastoral technique only to evaluate and comment on the modern lifestyle. His pastoralism thus registers a protest against the disintegration of values in the modern society and here he is one with great poets of the modern age like T.S.Eliot, Yeats and Hopkins.

Another poetic technique adopted by Frost which makes him a modern poet is symbolism. “The Road Not Taken” symbolizes the universal problem of making a choice of invisible barriers built up in the minds of the people which alienate them from one another mentally and emotionally thought they live together or as neighbours in the society. Similarly the Birch trees in “Birches” symbolize man’s desire to seek escape from the harsh suffering man to undergo in this world.

Unlike Romantics he has taken notice of both the bright and dark aspects of nature as we see in his poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time”. Beneath the apparently beautiful calm there is lurking turmoil and storms:

Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath

In fact the world of nature in Frost’s poetry is not a world of dream. It is much more harsh, horrible and hostile than the modern urban world. Hence his experience of the pastoral technique to comment on the human issue of modern world his realistic treatment of Nature, his employment of symbolic and metaphysical techniques and the projection of the awareness of human problems of the modern society in his poetry justly entitle him to be looked up to as modern poet.

Major Themes of Robert Frost

2009-02-06T16:59:00.001+05:00

Frost’s poems deal with man in relation with the universe. Man’s environment as seen by frost is quite indifferent to man, neither hostile nor benevolent. Man is alone and frail as compared to the vastness of the universe. Such a view of “man on earth confronting the total universe” is inevitably linked with certain themes in frost’s poetry.

One of the most striking themes in Frost’s poetry is man’s isolation from his universe or alienation from his environment. Frost writes in “Desert Places”, “The loneliness includes me unawares”. Man is essentially alone, as is borne out in frost’s poetry. Frost is not so much concerned with depicting the cultural ethos of New England people as with presenting them “caught up in a struggle with the elementary problem of existence”. The New England of Frost reflects his consciousness of “an agrarian society isolated within an urbanized world”. Man is alone in the countryside or in the city in “Acquainted with the Night”.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
---------------------------------------------------
But not to call me back or say good-by;

In “Home Burial”, the lady suffers from a terrible sense of self-alienation, as well as alienation from her surroundings. And, more than the physical loneliness, man suffers from the loneliness within.

I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

A concern with barrier is the predominant theme in Frost’s poetry. Man is always erecting and trying to bring down barriers-- between man and environment, between man and man. To Frost, these barriers seem favorable to mutual understanding and respect. Frost insists on recognizing these barriers instead of trying to tear them down as in the modern trend. And he even builds them wherever necessary.

Practically all of Frost’s poems depict the theme of human limitation. The universe seems chaotic and horrific because man’s limited faculties cannot comprehend its meaning. Walls, physical and real, mental and invisible, separate man from Nature. “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep” shows man’s limitation concerning the mysterious universe. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” conveys the sense of an impenetrable and indefinite universe. Frost’s human beings are aware of the gap between the ideal and the actual. The apple-picker had set out on his work with great hopes, but faces disillusionment.

For I have too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.

In some poems, however, Frost does indicate that man can exceed his limitations in his thought as in “Sand Dunes”.

Theme of extinction or death also runs through the major themes of Frost. In many a poem he writes of “sleep” which is associated with death. “Fire and Ice” is a noteworthy poem on destruction by excess of desire or hatred. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “After Apple Picking”, “An Old Man’s Winter Night”, all these poems have a reference to death. “Directive” is a poem in which three of Frost’s most obsessive themes isolation, extinction and the final limitations of man are blended. Each life is shown to be pathetic because it wears away into death. The poem dismays but it also consoles.

In most of Frost’s poems, the speaker undergoes a process of self-discovery. The wood-chopper of “Two Tramps in Mud Time” realizes by the end of the poem that he chops wood for love of work only but love and need should not be separated.

Theme of affirmation is also found in some of his poems. Frost ultimately presents the need for man to make the most of his situation. Aware of man’s limitations, he yet desires man to explore and seek knowledge and truth. Man should learn to accept things and his limitations cheerfully. He suggests stoical will and effort in the face of adversity as in “West Running Brook”. In the face of the mystery and riddle of life there is necessity for determined human performance.

But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I Sleep
And miles to go before I Sleep

Theme of love is central to Frost’s poems. If there is any force that can help man meet the challenges of the universe, it is love. In several of Frost’s poems, the significance of love between man and woman, or friendly love is brought out. It is when love breaks down or fades off that life becomes unbearable especially for the women in Frost’s poetry.

The major themes as discussed above are expressed through various devices. The symbolic significance invested in certain recurring objects like the stars, the snow, the woods serve to bring home to the reader all the more vividly the position of Man in the Universe.

Morality in Joseph Andrews

2009-02-05T23:42:00.003+05:00

Henry Fielding undoubtedly holds moral views far-ahead of his times. Morality is an approval of adherence to principles that govern ethical and virtuous conduct.

Fielding was accused of being immoral in his novels. Dr. Johnson called his novels “vicious and corrupting”. Richardson echoed the “charge of immorality” against him. Modern critics, however, has justified Fielding and gave him a credit of “an estimable ethical code”. Strachey declared him a “deep, accurate, scientific moralist”. Indeed neither “Joseph Andrews” nor “Tom Jones” strikes the modern sensibility as ‘low’ or ‘immoral’ either in purpose or in narration. Behind the truthful portrait of life, lies his broad moral vision. His writings are informed by an aim of correcting mankind with laughter.

“I have endeavored to laugh at mankind, out to their follies and vices.”

His satire is prompted by the positive and healthy desire to reform. He not merely presents society, but also criticizes it.

Fielding reacted sharply against the code of ethics as incited by Richardson in “Pamela”. He feels that Pamela’s virtue is an affectation and a commodity, exchangeable for material prosperity. Virtue cannot and should not be to chastity alone. Mere external respectability is not morality. For Fielding:

“Chastity without goodness of heart is without value.”

A truly virtuous man is disregardful of material benefits. He is devoid of an affectation which is necessary to avoid for becoming a virtuous man He finds:

“A delight in the happiness of mankind and a concern at their misery, with a desire, as much as possible, to procure the former and avert the latter …”

Fielding’s moral vision is much wider that Richardson’s. Morality is no longer equated with chastity or outward decorum. It is broad enough to include every aspect of human behaviour. Ones intentions, instincts, motives are equally important in judging a man.

Fielding aims to show human beings in various shades of vanity and hypocrisy and it is done ruthlessly and wittily in “Joseph Andrews”. Hypocrisy is worse than vanity. Morality is concerned with inner truth according to Fielding. A person of affected behaviour is immoral than an unchaste woman. Fielding exposes the follies, hypocrisy, corruption, affectation and the vices of his so-called society.

The stage-coach passengers, the coachman, the lawyer, the lady, all are models of hypocrisy. Each refuses to place Joseph in the coach on various excuses exposing their inner lack of worth. “O Jesus”, cry’d the lady, “A naked man! Dear coachman, drive on”. A man motivated by selfishness rather than social duty “makes all haste possible”. Only the poor postilion favours Joseph and gives him his warm coat. The journey undertaken by Joseph and Parson Adams reveals vanity or hypocrisy at every stage.

It is significant that Parson Adams jumps with joy at the reunion of Fanny and Joseph. It reflects an ability to sympathize with other’s feelings. He can feel the joys and sorrows of others as keenly as he can feel his own. Simple, kind, generous and courageous, Adams is the epitome of true feeling and goodness of heart which is a vital aspect of Fielding’s concept of morality. Adams impulses always prompt him to help anyone in distress. He saves Fanny’s life two times.

“He is an innocent … so completely sincere in his beliefs and actions that he can’t imagine insincerity in other; he takes everyone he meets at face-value.”

Kindness achieved supreme importance in Fielding’s moral code. A good and a moral man takes joy in helping others. Fielding says:

“I don’t know a better definition of virtue, than it is a delight in doing good.”

Fielding is as liberal in ridiculing affectation as he is hard on the lack of charity. Adams’ definition:

“A generously disposition to receive the poor.”

The simple test employed to man by Fielding to see check the capability of charity is to ask him for loan. When Parson Adams asks for some shillings to Parson Trulliber, he declares in frenzy:

“I know what charity is better than to give it to vagabonds”.

This shows 18th century’s clergy’s degeneracy reluctant to give some shillings. The rich Parson Tulliber, Mrs. Tow-wouse, Lady Booby and Peter Pounce lacks natural kindness whereas the poor postilion, Betty and Pedler are true Christians, for they are ready to help other man in distress asking nothing in return. But Mrs. Tow-wouse is of opinion,

“A man should die on their hands without the money to pay his bills.”

Fielding is against the prudish morality which considers sex as an unhealthy and dangerous for human life. He favours a healthy attitude towards sex. In his view, the restraint of natural impulses leads to unhealthy inhibition which is more immoral. Modern opinion is very close to him. But he does not approve of Lady Booby’s desire for Joseph nor does he favour Mr. Slipslop’s extreme whims. But Betty’s desires spring from a natural heart and feeling. It is worth noticing that Betty is free of hypocrisy. She acts as ordered by her nature.

“She is good-natured generosity and composition.”

Fielding’s concept of religion is linked with his views on morality and is practical. He does not confine religion to going to church on Sundays only. He criticizes two sorts of ethics. One who thinks that virtue can exist without religion. In Mr. Wilson’s story, they have no belief in Devine command. They are selfish and unable to resist immoral temptations. The other sort accepts religion but insists that faith is more important than good works. True religion encourages both faith and good deeds. Parson Adams is the best representative of his ideas.

Fielding’s views on morality are practical, liberal, full of common sense and free from hypocrisy that the conventional morality preached by many of his contemporaries.. He does not believe in prudish or rigid codes. His concept of human nature is realistic, tolerant, broad and fairly flexible. Modern opinion has vindicated the moral vision of Fielding as healthy, wide and practical.