Absalom, Absalom

William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi(

September 1897- Mississippi
1962). Faulkner
achieved a reputation as one of the greatest American
novelists of the 20th century largely based on his
series of novels about a fictional region of Mississippi
called Yoknapatawpha County, centered on the
fictional town of Jefferson. The greatest of these
novels -among them The Sound and the Fury,Light in
August, and Absalom, Absalom!- rank among the
finest novels of world literature. Faulkner was
especially interested in moral themes relating to the
ruins of the Deep South in the post-Civil War era. His
prose style- which combines long, uninterrupted
sentences with long strings of adjectives, frequent
changes in narration, many recursive asides, and a
frequent reliance on a sort of objective stream-ofconsciousness technique, whereby the inner
experience of a character in a scene is contrasted
with the scene's outward appearance- ranks among
his greatest achievements. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. Absalom, Absalom!
is perhaps Faulkner's most focused attempt to expose
the moral crises which led to the destruction of the
South. The story of a man hell-bent on establishing a
dynasty and a story of love and hatred between races
and families, it is also an exploration of how people

relate to the past. Faulkner tells a single story from a

number of perspectives, capturing the conflict, racism,
violence, and sacrifice in each character's life, and
also demonstrating how the human mind reconstructs
the past in the present imagination.
Thomas Sutpen - Owner and founder of the plantation
Sutpen's Hundred, in Yoknapatawpha County, near
Jefferson, Mississippi. Married to Ellen Coldfield;
father of Henry, Judith, and Clytemnestra Sutpen, also
of Charles Bon. An indomitable, willful, powerful man,
who achieves his ends through shrewdness and
daring, but who lacks compassion. Murdered by Wash
Jones in 1869.
Charles Bon - Son of Thomas Sutpen and Eulalia
Bon, the part- black daughter of the owner of the
Haitian plantation on which the young Thomas Sutpen
was overseer. After Sutpen renounced his wife and
son upon learning of Eulalia's negro blood, Bon and
his mother moved to New Orleans, where Bon lived
until deciding to attend the University of Mississippi in
1859. A laconic, sophisticated, and ironical young
man.
Ellen Coldfield Sutpen - Thomas Sutpen's second
wife, mother of Henry and Judith Sutpen. A flighty and
excitable woman.
Rosa Coldfield - Ellen Coldfield's much-younger sister,
younger aunt of Henry and Judith Sutpen. Briefly

engaged to Thomas Sutpen following Ellen's death,

but left him after he insulted her. Spent the rest of her
life as a bitter spinster, obsessed with her anger and
hatred of Thomas Sutpen.
Mr. Coldfield - A middle-class Methodist merchant and
father of Ellen and Rosa.
Henry Sutpen - Thomas Sutpen's son with Ellen.
Grew up on Sutpen's Hundred, then attended the
University of Mississippi beginning in 1859. There he
befriended Charles Bon, whom he later murdered. A
well- meaning and romantic young man, with his
father's strength of purpose but lacking his father's
shrewdness.
Judith Sutpen - Thomas Sutpen's daughter with Ellen.
Grew up on Sutpen's Hundred, where she was
engaged to Charles Bon in 1860. Strong, indomitable,
and, like her father, swift to action.
Clytemnestra Sutpen ("Clytie") - Daughter of Thomas
Sutpen and a slave woman. Grew up on Sutpen's
Hundred as subservient to Judith and Henry;
remained at the plantation until burning the manor
house down in 1910, an event which caused her
death.
Wash Jones - A low-class squatter living in the
abandoned fishing camp at Sutpen's Hundred.
Performed odd jobs for and drinks whiskey with
Thomas Sutpen. Milly's grandfather; murdered Sutpen

with a rusted scythe in 1869.

Milly Jones - Wash Jones' young granddaughter, who
at fifteen gave birth to Thomas Sutpen's child.
Murdered, along with Sutpen and the baby, by her
grandfather shortly after the birth.
Charles Etienne de St. Valery Bon - Son of Charles
Bon and his octoroon mistress- wife. Taken by Clytie
to Sutpen's Hundred in 1871. Married a negro woman
in 1879. A tormented, violent man.
Jim Bond - Son of Charles Etienne de St. Valery Bon
and his negro wife. Raised by Clytie on Sutpen's
Hundred, from which he disappears following the fire
in 1910. A slack-jawed, oafish man.
Quentin Compson - A young man from Jefferson,
Mississippi, who is preparing to attend (and later does
attend) Harvard in the first part of the 20th century.
General Compson - Quentin's grandfather and
Thomas Sutpen's first friend in Yoknapatawpha
County. A Brigadier General for the Confederacy
during the Civil War, and a distinguished citizen of
Jefferson, Mississippi.
Mr. Compson - Quentin's father and General
Compson's son, a man who believes in the power of
fate to destroy human lives. Relays to Quentin many
of the stories he heard from his father about Thomas
Sutpen.

Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Charles

Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics at Christ
Church, Oxford, who lived from 1832 to 1898. His
religious beliefs were orthodox Anglican in every
respect except that he did not believe in eternal
damnation. He was an excellent amateur
photographer, specializing in portraits of famous
people and young girls. He was shy and reserved
around adults, but went to great lengths to meet
children (especially girls) and form friendships with
them. The most important of these friendships was
with the three daughters of Henry George Liddell, the
dean of Christ Church. His favorite of the three was
the second daughter, Alice, who was by all accounts
an attractive girl. He created many extemporaneous
fairy stories to entertain the three girls; the Alice books
grew out of one of these stories, which Carroll wrote
down at Alice's request. Carroll was a typical Victorian
and strove for propriety in everything he did,
especially in his many relationships with young girls;
his personal life remains a subject of much
speculation and controversy. His diary is filled with
mysterious, scathing self-reproaches and desperate
prayers to God to free his soul from sin.
Characters Alice - An English girl of about seven with
an active imagination and a fondness for showing off
her knowledge (which often is lacking). She is polite

and kind-hearted and genuinely concerned about

others. Brave and headstrong, she always followsthrough when she gets an idea. She is more confident
with her words and sure of her identity in the second
book. Mad Hatter - The crazy hat-seller trapped in a
perpetual tea-time. He is often impolite and seemingly
fond of confusing people. He reappears in Looking
Glass as one of the Anglo-Saxon messengers. March
Hare - The Mad Hatter's friend and companion,
equally crazy and discourteous. He also reappears as
an Anglo-Saxon messenger. Dormouse - The Hare
and the Hatter's lethargic, much-abused companion.
Caterpillar - Hookah-smoking insect who gives Alice
the means to change size at will. He is severe and
somewhat unfriendly, but at least he offers assistance.
Red Queen - Domineering and often unpleasant, but
not incapable of civility. She expects Alice to abide by
her rules of proper etiquette, even when it should be
apparent that she does not know what is happening.
White Queen - Sweet, but fairly stupid. She allows
herself to be dominated in the presence of her red
counterpart. Red King - Asleep. Tweedledum and
Tweedledee claim that he is the dreaming architect of
Looking-Glass world as we know it. White King Bumbling and ineffectual, but not altogether
unpleasant. He honors his promise to send all of his
horses and all of his men with amazing swiftness

when Humpty Dumpty (presumably) falls off his wall.

Humpty Dumpty - A pompous and easily-offended sort
who fancies himself a master of words. He is rude and
foolish and deserves what he gets. White Knight Kind, gentle, and strangely noble, despite his extreme
clumsiness. He tries to be very clever, but fails in the
end. He is terribly sentimental and enjoys Alice's
company immensely. He often is read as Carroll's
parody of himself. Cheshire-Cat - A grinning cat with
the ability to appear and disappear at will. He claims
to be mad; nevertheless, he is one of the most
reasonable characters in Wonderland. He listens to
Alice and becomes something of a friend to her.
White Rabbit - A nervous character of somewhat
important rank (though not aristocratic) in
Wonderland. He generally is in a hurry. He is capable
and sure of himself in his job, even to the point of
contradicting the King.
Queen of Hearts - A monstrous, violently domineering
woman. She seems to hold the ultimate authority in
Wonderland, although her continuous death
sentences are never actually carried out, leading us to
conclude that she is at least partly delusional. King of
Hearts - An incompetent and ineffectual ruler almost
entirely dominated by his wife. He is self-centered,
stubborn and generally unlikable. Duchess - An odd,
spiteful woman who mistreats her baby and submits

to a shower of abuse from her cook. She is horribly

ugly. In her anxiety to remain in the good graces of the
queen, she can be superficially sweet to someone she
thinks can aid her socially while simultaneously
causing her the utmost discomfort.

Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights England

under the reign of Queen Victoria was in a

prolonged phase of expansion. The Industrial

Revolution saw the transformation of a
predominately agricultural economy to a factory
economy. Millions would eventually flock to
London in search of the new jobs, but Emily
Bront grew up in the last days of rural England.
The tenor of the times was conservative, and
sensitive to society's unwillingness to accept
women as authors, Emily, Charlotte, and Anne
Bront all published under male pseudonyms.
The time in which the action of Wuthering Heights
takes place, and its themes of nature and the
individual, coincides with the Romantic Movement
in Europe, a turning away from reason and
intellect in favor of free and more mystical ideas,
inspired in part by the French Revolutionary War
of 1789. Wuthering Heights is Emily Bront's only
novel. It was first published in 1847 under the
pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second
edition was edited by her sister Charlotte. The
name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire
manor on the moors on which the story centres.
(As an adjective, wuthering is a Yorkshire word
referring to turbulent weather). Now considered a
classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights's

innovative structure met with mixed reviews by

critics when it first appeared.
LITERARY Canon The power of Wuthering
Heights owes much to its complex narrative
structure and to the ingenious device of having
two conventional people relate a very
unconventional tale. The story is organized as a
narrative within a narrative. The novel is set in the
Yorkshire moors of England, even now a bleakly
beautiful, sparsely populated area of high rolling
grassy hills, few trees, and scattered rocky
outcroppings or patches of heather. Emily
Bront's poetic vision is evident in the imagery
used throughout Wuthering Heights. Metaphors of
nature and the animal kingdom are pervasive. For
example, the first Catherine describes Heathcliff
to Isabella as "an arid wilderness of furze and
whinstone," and as Catherine lies dying, Heathcliff
foams "like a mad dog." References to weather
are everywhere. A violent storm blows up the
night Mr. Earnshaw dies; rain pours down the
night Heathcliff runs off to London and again the
night of his death. There are many scenes of raw
violence, such as the bulldog attacking Catherine
and Isabella crushing her wedding ring with a

poker. The supernatural is evoked in the many

references to Heathcliff as diabolical (literally, "like
the devil") and the descriptions of the ghost of the
first Catherine Linton. The references to food and
fire, and to domestic routine, help "to steady" the
story and to give credibility to the passion. One of
the major strengths of Wuthering Heights is its
formal organization. The design of the time
structure has significance both for its use of two
narrators and because it allows the significant
events in the novel to be dated precisely, though
dates are almost never given explicitly. The
triangular relationship that existed between
Heathcliff, Catherine, and Edgar is repeated in
Heathcliff's efforts to force young Catherine to
marry Linton, though its resolution is ultimately
different. On his arrival at Wuthering Heights,
Lockwood sees the names "Catherine Earnshaw,
Catherine Linton, Catherine Heathcliff scratched
into the windowsill. In marrying Hareton, young
Catherine Heathcliff will in turn become Catherine
Earnshaw, thus completing the circle.
Charles Dickens Many of the events from Dickenss
early life are mirrored in Great Expectations, which,

apart from David Copperfield, is his most

autobiographical novel. In form, Great Expectations
fits a pattern popular in nineteenth-century European
fiction: the bildungsroman, or novel depicting growth
and personal development, generally a transition from
boyhood to manhood such as that experienced by
Pip. The genre was popularized by Goethe with his
book Wilhelm Meister (1794-1796) and became
prevalent in England with such books as Daniel
Defoes Robinson Crusoe, Charlotte Bronts Jane
Eyre, and Dickenss own David Copperfield. Each of
these works, like Great Expectations, depicts a
process of maturation and self-discovery through
experience as a protagonist moves from childhood to
adulthood. Pip, the novels protagonist, lives in the
marsh country, works at a job he hates, considers
himself too good for his surroundings, and
experiences material success in London at a very
early age, exactly as Dickens himself did. In addition,
one of the novels most appealing characters,
Wemmick, is a law clerk, and the law, justice, and the
courts are all important components of the story.
Great Expectations is set in early Victorian England, a
time when great social changes were sweeping the
nation. The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries had transformed the
social
landscape,
enabling
capitalists
and

manufacturers to amass huge fortunes. Although

social class was no longer entirely dependent on the
circumstances of ones birth, the divisions between
rich and poor remained nearly as wide as ever.
London, a teeming mass of humanity, lit by gas lamps
at night and darkened by black clouds from
smokestacks during the day, formed a sharp contrast
with the nations sparsely populated rural areas. More
and more people moved from the country to the city in
search of greater economic opportunity. Throughout
England, the manners of the upper class were very
strict and conservative: gentlemen and ladies were
expected to have thorough classical educations and
to behave appropriately in innumerable social
situations. These conditions defined Dickenss time,
and they make themselves felt in almost every facet
of Great Expectations. Pips sudden rise from country
laborer to city gentleman forces him to move from one
social extreme to another while dealing with the strict
rules and expectations that governed Victorian
England. Ironically, this novel about the desire for
wealth and social advancement was written partially
out of economic necessity. Dickens conceived of
Great Expectations as a means of restoring his
publications fortunes. The book is still immensely
popular a century and a half later.The tone is comic,
cheerful, satirical, wry, critical, sentimental, dark,

dramatic, foreboding, Gothic, sympathetic.The themes

are: ambition and the desire for self-improvement
(social, economic, educational, and moral); guilt,
criminality, and innocence; maturation and the growth
from childhood to adulthood; the importance of
affection, loyalty, and sympathy over social
advancement and class superiority; social class; the
difficulty of maintaining superficial moral and social
categories in a constantly changing world
The motifs : crime and criminality; disappointed
expectations; the connection between weather or
atmosphere and dramatic events; doubles (two
convicts, two secret benefactors, two invalids, etc.)
The symbols :The stopped clocks at Satis House
symbolize Miss Havishams attempt to stop time; the
many objects relating to crime and guilt symbolize the
theme of guilt and innocence; Satis House represents
the upper-class world to which Pip longs to belong;
Bentley Drummle represents the grotesque caprice of
the upper class; Joe represents conscience, affection,
loyalty, and simple good nature; the marsh mists
represent danger and ambiguity.
Analysis of Major Characters
Pip As a bildungsroman, Great Expectations presents
the growth and development of a single character,
Philip Pirrip, better known to himself and to the world
as Pip. As the focus of the bildungsroman, Pip is by

far the most important character in Great

Expectations: he is both the protagonist, whose
actions make up the main plot of the novel, and the
narrator, whose thoughts and attitudes shape the
readers perception of the story. As a result,
developing an understanding of Pips character is
perhaps the most important step in understanding
Great Expectations. Because Pip is narrating his story
many years after the events of the novel take place,
there are really two Pips in Great Expectations: Pip
the narrator and Pip the characterthe voice telling
the story and the person acting it out. Dickens takes
great care to distinguish the two Pips, imbuing the
voice of Pip the narrator with perspective and maturity
while also imparting how Pip the character feels about
what is happening to him as it actually happens. This
skillfully executed distinction is perhaps best observed
early in the book, when Pip the character is a child;
here, Pip the narrator gently pokes fun at his younger
self, but also enables us to see and feel the story
through his eyes. As a character, Pips two most
important traits are his immature, romantic idealism
and his innately good conscience. On the one hand,
Pip has a deep desire to improve himself and attain
any possible advancement, whether educational,
moral, or social. His longing to marry Estella and join
the upper classes stems from the same idealistic

desire as his longing to learn to read and his fear of

being punished for bad behavior: once he
understands ideas like poverty, ignorance, and
immorality, Pip does not want to be poor, ignorant, or
immoral. Pip the narrator judges his own past actions
extremely harshly, rarely giving himself credit for good
deeds but angrily castigating himself for bad ones. As
a character, however, Pips idealism often leads him to
perceive the world rather narrowly, and his tendency
to oversimplify situations based on superficial values
leads him to behave badly toward the people who
care about him. When Pip becomes a gentleman, for
example, he immediately begins to act as he thinks a
gentleman is supposed to act, which leads him to
treat Joe and Biddy snobbishly and coldly. On the
other hand, Pip is at heart a very generous and
sympathetic young man, a fact that can be witnessed
in his numerous acts of kindness throughout the book
(helping Magwitch, secretly buying Herberts way into
business, etc.) and his essential love for all those who
love him. Pips main line of development in the novel
may be seen as the process of learning to place his
innate sense of kindness and conscience above his
immature idealism. Not long after meeting Miss
Havisham and Estella, Pips desire for advancement
largely overshadows his basic goodness. After
receiving his mysterious fortune, his idealistic wishes

seem to have been justified, and he gives himself

over to a gentlemanly life of idleness. But the
discovery that the wretched Magwitch, not the wealthy
Miss Havisham, is his secret benefactor shatters Pips
oversimplified sense of his worlds hierarchy. The fact
that he comes to admire Magwitch while losing Estella
to the brutish nobleman Drummle ultimately forces
him to realize that ones social position is not the most
important quality one possesses, and that his
behavior as a gentleman has caused him to hurt the
people who care about him most. Once he has
learned these lessons, Pip matures into the man who
narrates the novel, completing the bildungsroman.

Joseph Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857. He

did not begin to write until he was in his forties. Lord
Jim is the first of his major novels. It appeared in

1900, the year after Heart of Darkness, which is

perhaps his best-known work. Conrad was only
moderately successful during his lifetime. Conrad was
writing at the very moment when the Victorian Age
was disappearing and the Modern era was emerging.
Victorian moral codes still influenced the plots of
novels, but such principles were no longer absolute.
Novelists and poets were beginning to experiment
with form. The jumbled time sequence and elaborate
narrative frames of Lord Jim are part of this
movement. Lord Jim, with its insistence on the
frequent inability of language to communicate
straightforwardly, opens itself to new ways of using
words. A term as elusive as "inscrutable" may contain
within itself the immediately comprehensible essence
of the novel's protagonist, while a simple word like
"water" may fracture into a multiplicity of meanings,
each one available to only a single individual. The sun
hadn't set yet on Victoria's empire, however; in fact, it
was at its zenith. While this is one of Conrad's novels
least involved in the set of issues surrounding
colonialism, Lord Jim nevertheless situates itself in a
world where national differences are often reduced to
the dichotomy of "us" and "them," where the term "us"
can encompass a surprisingly heterogeneous group.
Both economic and racial versions of the colonial
dynamic come into play in this novel. When Conrad

died in 1924, the first World War had come and gone,
and modernism dominated literature. The new world
was one in which a novel like Lord Jim, in which an
older set of ideals about heroism do combat with a
modern sense of troubled personal identity, could no
longer be written with serious intent. Works like The
Great Gatsby and The Sound and the Fury, which
feature the same sort of conflict, present the struggle
as absurd and futile, and no longer profound. Lord Jim
comes out of a unique and very specific moment in
time.
Lord Jim is the story of a man named Marlow's
struggle to tell and to understand the life story of a
man named Jim. Jim is a promising young man who
goes to sea as a youth. He rises quickly through the
ranks and soon becomes chief mate. Raised on
popular sea literature, Jim constantly daydreams
about becoming a hero, yet he has never faced any
real danger. Finally, his chance comes. He is serving
aboard a vessel called the Patna, carrying Muslim
pilgrims to Mecca, when the ship strikes an
underwater object and springs a leak. With a storm
approaching, the crew abandons her and her
passengers to their fate. Jim, not thinking clearly,
abandons the ship with the rest of the crew. The
Patna does not sink, however, and Jim, along with the
rest of the officers, is subjected to an official inquiry by

his fellow seamen. It is at this inquiry, where Jim is

stripped of his officer's certification, that he first meets
Marlow. Seeing something in Jim that he recognizes,
or perhaps fears, in himself, Marlow strikes up a
tortured friendship with Jim. Jim tells him his story,
and Marlow helps him obtain a series of jobs. The
Patna incident haunts him, though; each time it is
mentioned, Jim flees his current situation, enlisting
Marlow's help once again. Finally, with the help of
Stein, an expatriate trader, Marlow gets Jim situated
as post manager in the remote territory of Patusan.
Jim is initially captured by one of the warring factions
of the area, but soon escapes and finally becomes a
hero by defeating a local bandit. He falls in love with
Jewel, the beautiful, half-native stepdaughter of the
previous trading post manager, a bitter little man
called Cornelius. Jim becomes the spiritual leader of
Patusan. Its citizens place their trust in him and rely
on him to enforce justice. One day, Gentleman Brown,
a pirate, shows up in Patusan with his crew in search
of provisions. A skirmish ensues, and Brown holes up
atop a hill. Cornelius, annoyed by Jim's success and
his own failures, secretly meets with Brown and a
conspiracy, including a dissenting Patusan faction, is
formed against Jim. Jim, unaware of the plot, agrees
to let Brown leave the area peacefully (Brown
guesses at Jim's dishonorable past, and Jim decides

it would be still more dishonorable to kill Brown simply

because Brown knows the truth about him). Cornelius
guides Brown down an alternate river channel, which
leads him to the camp of Dain Waris, the son of Jim's
closest ally, Doramin. Brown and his men ambush the
camp, killing Dain Waris. Jim, realizing that he has still
not been able to escape his initial failure aboard the
Patna, ignores Jewel's pleas and goes to Doramin's
compound, where the grieving father shoots and kills
him. Much of the novel is concerned with Marlow's
attempts to piece together Jim's story from a variety of
sources. Finally, he recounts the story to a group of
acquaintances. At this point in time, though, Brown
has not yet come to Patusan, and the story remains
unfinished. Once events are completed, Marlow writes
them down in manuscript form, which he then sends
to a member of the audience of the first part of the
story. The novel fragments time, and Marlow
juxtaposes different, non-chronological pieces of Jim's
story for maximum effect, all the while seeking to
discover the source of his own fascination with Jim
and the meaning behind the story. Like many of
Conrad's works, Lord Jim is set in a colonial world.
The critique of colonialism is much less central here,
however, than in a novel like Heart of Darkness.
Colonialism is most important as a backdrop to the
action and the moral struggles. In this world, the rules

of "home" (i.e. European society) do not necessarily

apply, particularly when one is dealing with men who
aren't white. National affiliations are much more
tenuous, too. Other allegiances--the idea of being
"one of us" versus "one of them," for example--take
their place, altering expectations of honorable
behavior. Most of all, though, Lord Jim is a novel
about storytelling, and in the confusion and
convolutions of its narrative form are reflected the
ambiguities of its ideals and its setting.
Heart of Darkness Conrads works, Heart of Darkness
in particular, provide a bridge between Victorian
values and the ideals of modernism. Like their
Victorian predecessors, these novels rely on
traditional ideas of heroism, which are nevertheless
under constant attack in a changing world and in
places far from England. Women occupy traditional
roles as arbiters of domesticity and morality, yet they
are almost never present in the narrative; instead, the
concepts of home and civilization exist merely as
hypocritical ideals, meaningless to men for whom
survival is in constant doubt. While the threats that
Conrads characters face are concrete onesillness,
violence, conspiracythey nevertheless acquire a
philosophical character. Like much of the best
modernist literature produced in the early decades of
the twentieth century, Heart of Darkness is as much

about alienation, confusion, and profound doubt as it

is about imperialism. Imperialism is nevertheless at
the center of Heart of Darkness. By the 1890s, most
of the worlds dark places had been placed at least
nominally under European control, and the major
European powers were stretched thin, trying to
administer and protect massive, far-flung empires.
Cracks were beginning to appear in the system: riots,
wars, and the wholesale abandonment of commercial
enterprises all threatened the white men living in the
distant corners of empires. Things were clearly falling
apart. Heart of Darkness suggests that this is the
natural result when men are allowed to operate
outside a social system of checks and balances:
power, especially power over other human beings,
inevitably corrupts. At the same time, this begs the
question of whether it is possible to call an individual
insane or wrong when he is part of a system that is so
thoroughly corrupted and corrupting. Heart of
Darkness, thus, at its most abstract level, is a
narrative about the difficulty of understanding the
world beyond the self, about the ability of one man to
judge another. Although Heart of Darkness was one of
the first literary texts to provide a critical view of
European imperial activities, it was initially read by
critics as anything but controversial. While the book
was generally admired, it was typically read either as

a condemnation of a certain type of adventurer who

could easily take advantage of imperialisms
opportunities, or else as a sentimental novel
reinforcing domestic values: Kurtzs Intended, who
appears at the novellas conclusion, was roundly
praised by turn-of-the-century reviewers for her
maturity and sentimental appeal. Conrads decision to
set the book in a Belgian colony and to have Marlow
work for a Belgian trading concern made it even
easier for British readers to avoid seeing themselves
reflected in Heart of Darkness. Although these early
reactions seem ludicrous to a modern reader, they
reinforce the novellas central themes of hypocrisy
and absurdity.
Analysis of Major Characters Although Marlow
appears in several of Conrads other works, it is
important not to view him as merely a surrogate for
the author. Marlow is a complicated man who
anticipates the figures of high modernism while also
reflecting his Victorian predecessors. Marlow is in
many ways a traditional hero: tough, honest, an
independent thinker, a capable man. Yet he is also
broken or damaged, like T. S. Eliots J. Alfred
Prufrock or William Faulkners Quentin Compson. The
world has defeated him in some fundamental way,
and he is weary, skeptical, and cynical. Marlow also
mediates between the figure of the intellectual and

that of the working tough. While he is clearly

intelligent, eloquent, and a natural philosopher, he is
not saddled with the angst of centuries worth of
Western thought. At the same time, while he is highly
skilled at what he doeshe repairs and then ably
pilots his own shiphe is no mere manual laborer.
Work, for him, is a distraction, a concrete alternative
to the posturing and excuse-making of those around
him.Marlow can also be read as an intermediary
between the two extremes of Kurtz and the Company.
He is moderate enough to allow the reader to identify
with him, yet open-minded enough to identify at least
partially with either extreme. Thus, he acts as a guide
for the reader. Marlows intermediary position can be
seen in his eventual illness and recovery. Unlike those
who truly confront or at least acknowledge Africa and
the darkness within themselves, Marlow does not die,
but unlike the Company men, who focus only on
money and advancement, Marlow suffers horribly. He
is thus contaminated by his experiences and
memories, and, like Coleridges Ancient Mariner,
destined, as purgation or penance, to repeat his story
to all who will listen.
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in
the town of Florida, Missouri, in 1835. When he was
four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, a town

on the Mississippi River much like the towns depicted

in his two most famous novels, The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1884).The riverboat life provided
him with the pen name Mark Twain, derived from the
riverboat leadsmens signalBy the mark, twain
that the water was deep enough for safe passage.
Life on the river also gave Twain material for the raft
scenes of Huckleberry Finn. His novel The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer (1876) received a great national
acclaim and cemented Twains position as a giant in
American literary circles. Twain began work on
Huckleberry Finn, a sequel to Tom Sawyer, in an effort
to capitalize on the popularity of the earlier novel. This
new novel took on a more serious character, however,
as Twain focused increasingly on the institution of
slavery and the South. Twain soon set Huckleberry
Finn aside, perhaps because its darker tone did not fit
the optimistic sentiments of the Gilded Age. Drawing
from his personal plight and the prevalent national
troubles of the day
by 1884 had it ready for
publication. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has
proved significant not only as a novel that explores
the racial and moral world of its time but also, through
the controversies that continue to surround it, as an
artifact of those same moral and racial tensions as
they have evolved to the present day. Picaresque

novel (episodic, colorful story often in the form of a

quest or journey); satire of popular adventure and
romance novels; bildungsroman (novel of education
or moral development). The narrator is Huckleberry
Finn with a
tone frequently ironic or mocking,
particularly concerning adventure -novels and
romances; also contemplative, as Huck seeks to
decipher the world around him; sometimes boyish and
exuberant. The setting time is before the Civil War;
roughly 18351845; Twain said the novel was set forty
to fifty years before the time of its publication. The
setting place is The Mississippi River town of St.
Petersburg,Missouri; various locations along the river
through Arkansas.
The major conflict - At the beginning of the novel,
Huck struggles against society and its attempts to
civilize him, represented by the Widow Douglas, Miss
Watson, and other adults. Later, this conflict gains
greater focus in Hucks dealings with Jim, as Huck
must decide whether to turn Jim in, as society
demands, or to protect and help his friend instead.
Themes - Racism and slavery; intellectual and moral
education; the hypocrisy of civilized society. Motifs Childhood; lies and cons; superstitions and folk
beliefs; parodies of popular romance novels
Symbols - The Mississippi River; floods; shipwrecks;
the natural world. Foreshadowing - Twain uses

parallels and juxtapositions more so than explicit

foreshadowing, especially in his frequent comparisons
between Hucks plight and eventual escape and Jims
plight and eventual escape
Character List- Huckleberry Finn - The protagonist
and narrator of the novel. Huck is the thirteen-year-old
son of the local drunk of St. Petersburg, Missouri, a
town on the Mississippi River. Frequently forced to
survive on his own wits and always a bit of an outcast,
Huck is thoughtful, intelligent (though formally
uneducated), and willing to come to his own
conclusions about important matters, even if these
conclusions contradict societys norms. Nevertheless,
Huck is still a boy, and is influenced by others,
particularly by his imaginative friend, Tom.
Huck Finn- From the beginning of the novel, Twain
makes it clear that Huck is a boy who comes from the
lowest levels of white society. His father is a drunk
and a ruffian who disappears for months on end. Huck
himself is dirty and frequently homeless. Although the
Widow Douglas attempts to reform Huck, he resists
her attempts and maintains his independent ways.
The community has failed to protect him from his
father, and though the Widow finally gives Huck some
of the schooling and religious training that he had
missed, he has not been indoctrinated with social
values in the same way a middle-class boy like Tom

Sawyer has been. Hucks distance from mainstream

society makes him skeptical of the world around him
and the ideas it passes on to him. Hucks instinctual
distrust and his experiences as he travels down the
river force him to question the things society has
taught him. According to the law, Jim is Miss Watsons
property, but according to Hucks sense of logic and
fairness, it seems right to help Jim. Hucks natural
intelligence and his willingness to think through a
situation on its own merits lead him to some
conclusions that are correct in their context but that
would shock white society. For example, Huck
discovers, when he and Jim meet a group of slavehunters, that telling a lie is sometimes the right course
of action. Because Huck is a child, the world seems
new to him. Everything he encounters is an occasion
for thought. Because of his background, however, he
does more than just apply the rules that he has been
taughthe creates his own rules. Yet Huck is not
some kind of independent moral genius. He must still
struggle with some of the preconceptions about
blacks that society has ingrained in him, and at the
end of the novel, he shows himself all too willing to
follow Tom Sawyers lead. But even these failures are
part of what makes Huck appealing and sympathetic.
He is only a boy, after all, and therefore fallible.
Imperfect as he is, Huck represents what anyone is

capable of becoming: a thinking, feeling human being

rather than a mere cog in the machine of society.

William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in

Cornwall, England. Golding followed his parents
wishes until his second year at Oxford, when he

changed his focus to English literature.

Goldings experience in World War II had a profound
effect on his view of humanity and the evils of which it
was capable. After the war, Golding resumed teaching
and started to write novels. His first and greatest
success came with Lord of the Flies (1954), which
ultimately became a bestseller in both Britain and the
United States after more than twenty publishers
rejected it.He remained a respected and distinguished
author for the rest of his life and was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. Golding died in
1993, one of the most acclaimed writers of the second
half of the twentieth century. Lord of the Flies tells the
story of a group of English schoolboys marooned on a
tropical island after their plane is shot down during a
war. Though the novel is fictional, its exploration of the
idea of human evil is at least partly based on
Goldings experience with the real-life violence and
brutality of World War II. Free from the rules and
structures of civilization and society, the boys on the
island in Lord of the Flies descend into savagery. As
the boys splinter into factions, some behave
peacefully and work together to maintain order and
achieve common goals, while others rebel and seek
only anarchy and violence. In his portrayal of the
small world of the island, Golding paints a broader
portrait of the fundamental human struggle between

the civilizing instinctthe impulse to obey rules,

behave morally, and act lawfullyand the savage
instinctthe impulse to seek brute power over others,
act selfishly, scorn moral rules, and indulge in
violence.
Golding employs a relatively straightforward writing
style in Lord of the Flies, one that avoids highly poetic
language, lengthy description, and philosophical
interludes. Much of the novel is allegorical, meaning
that the characters and objects in the novel are
infused with symbolic significance that conveys the
novels central themes and ideas. In portraying the
various ways in which the boys on the island adapt to
their new surroundings and react to their new
freedom, Golding explores the broad spectrum of
ways in which humans respond to stress, change, and
tension.
During the 1950s and 1960s, many readings of
the novel claimed that Lord of the Flies dramatizes the
history of civilization. Some believed that the novel
explores fundamental religious issues, such as
original sin and the nature of good and evil. Still
others maintained that Golding wrote the novel as a
criticism of the political and social institutions of the
West. Ultimately, there is some validity to each of
these different readings and interpretations of Lord of
the Flies. Although Goldings story is confined to the

microcosm of a group of boys, it resounds with

implications far beyond the bounds of the small island
and explores problems and questions universal to the
human experience.
William`s Golding Lord of the Flies is a Novel
Allegory; an adventure story; castaway fiction; loss-ofinnocence fiction. The story is told by an anonymous
third-person narrator who conveys the events of the
novel without commenting on the action or intruding
into the story. The narrator speaks in the third person,
primarily focusing on Ralphs point of view but
following Jack and Simon in certain episodes. The
narrator is omniscient and gives us access to the
characters inner thoughts. The tone is dark; violent;
pessimistic; tragic; unsparing Free from the rules that
adult society formerly imposed on them, the boys
marooned on the island struggle with the conflicting
human instincts that exist within each of themthe
instinct to work toward civilization and order and the
instinct to descend into savagery, violence, and
chaos, boys assemble on the beach. In the election
for leader, Ralph defeats Jack, who is furious when he
loses. As the boys explore the island, tension grows
between Jack, who is interested only in hunting, and
Ralph, who believes most of the boys efforts should
go toward building shelters and maintaining a signal
fire. When rumors surface that there is some sort of

beast living on the island, the boys grow fearful, and

the group begins to divide into two camps supporting
Ralph and Jack, respectively. Ultimately, Jack forms a
new tribe altogether, fully immersing himself in the
savagery of the hunt. The themes are: Civilization vs.
savagery; the loss of innocence; innate human evil,
the motifs are Biblical parallels; natural beauty; the
bullying of the weak by the strong; the outward
trappings of savagery (face paint, spears, totems,
chants)and the symbols are The conch shell; Piggys
glasses; the signal fire; the beast; the Lord of the
Flies; Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and Roger
Ralph is the athletic, charismatic protagonist of Lord
of the Flies. Elected the leader of the boys at the
beginning of the novel, Ralph is the primary
representative of order, civilization, and productive
leadership in the novel. While most of the other boys
initially are concerned with playing, having fun, and
avoiding work, Ralph sets about building huts and
thinking of ways to maximize their chances of being
rescued. For this reason, Ralphs power and influence
over the other boys are secure at the beginning of the
novel. However, as the group gradually succumbs to
savage instincts over the course of the novel, Ralphs
position declines precipitously while Jacks rises.
Eventually, most of the boys except Piggy leave
Ralphs group for Jacks, and Ralph is left alone to be

hunted by Jacks tribe. In a sense, this strength gives

Ralph a moral victory at the end of the novel, when he
casts the Lord of the Flies to the ground and takes up
the stake it is impaled on to defend himself against
Jacks hunters.
As the novel progresses, however, Ralph, like Simon,
comes to understand that savagery exists within all
the boys. Ralph remains determined not to let this
savagery -overwhelm him, and only briefly does he
consider joining Jacks tribe in order to save himself.
When Ralph hunts a boar for the first time, however,
he experiences the exhilaration and thrill of bloodlust
and violence. When he attends Jacks feast, he is
swept away by the frenzy, dances on the edge of the
group, and participates in the killing of Simon. This
firsthand knowledge of the evil that exists within him,
as within all human beings, is tragic for Ralph, and it
plunges him into listless despair for a time. But this
knowledge also enables him to cast down the Lord of
the Flies at the end of the novel. Ralphs story ends
semi-tragically: although he is rescued and returned
to civilization, when he sees the naval officer, he
weeps with the burden of his new knowledge about
the human capacity for evil.
Jack The strong-willed, egomaniacal Jack is the
novels primary representative of the instinct of
savagery, violence, and the desire for powerin

short, the antithesis of Ralph. From the beginning of

the novel, Jack desires power above all other things.
He is furious when he loses the election to Ralph .
Early on, Jack retains the sense of moral propriety
and behavior that society instilled in himin fact, in
school, he was the leader of the choirboys. The first
time he encounters a pig, he is unable to kill it. But
Jack soon becomes obsessed with hunting and
devotes himself to the task, painting his face like a
barbarian and giving himself over to bloodlust. The
more savage Jack becomes, the more he is able to
control the rest of the group. Indeed, apart from
Ralph, Simon, and Piggy, the group largely follows
Jack in casting off moral restraint and embracing
violence and savagery. Jacks love of authority and
violence are intimately connected, as both enable him
to feel powerful and exalted. By the end of the novel,
Jack has learned to use the boys fear of the beast to
control their behaviora reminder of how religion and
superstition can be manipulated as instruments of
power.
Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819,
the third of eight children.
Melville committed to a whaling voyage of indefinite
destination and scale on board a ship called the
Acushnet.
Armed with the voluminous knowledge obtained from

constant reading while at sea, Melville wrote a series

of novels detailing his adventures and his philosophy
of life: Typee , Omoo (1847), Mardi and a Voyage
Thither (1849),Redburn, also published in 1849,
White-Jacket, The World in a Man-of-War, published
in 1850 are a generalized and allegorical account of
life at sea aboard a warship.
Through the lens of literary history, these first five
novels are all seen as an apprenticeship to what is
today considered Melvilles masterpiece, Moby-Dick;
or The Whale, which first appeared in 1851.
A story of monomania aboard a whaling ship, MobyDick is a tremendously ambitious novel that functions
at once as a documentary of life at sea and a vast
philosophical allegory of life in general. No sacred
subject is spared in this bleak and scathing critique of
the known world, as Melville satirizes by turns
religious traditions, moral values, and the literary and
political figures of the day.
Melville was influenced in the writing of Moby-Dick by
the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The
Scarlet Letter, whom he met in 1850 and to whom he
dedicated Moby-Dick. Melville had long admired
Hawthornes psychological depth and Gothic grimness
and associated Hawthorne with a new, distinctively
American literature.
By the 1850s, whaling was a dying industry. Whales

had been hunted into near extinction, and substitutes

for whale oil had been found. Despite its range of
cultural references and affiliation with popular genres,
Moby-Dick was a failure. Its reception led Melville to
defy his critics by writing in an increasingly
experimental style and eventually forsaking novels in
favor of poetry. Moby-Dick was both a seminal work
elaborating on classic American themes, such as
religion, fate, and economic expansion, and a
radically experimental anachronism that anticipated
Modernism in its outsized scope and pastiche of
forms. It stands alongside James Joyces Ulysses and
Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy as a novel that
appears bizarre to the point of being unreadable but
proves to be infinitely open to interpretation and
discovery.
Ishmael
Despite his centrality to the story, Ishmael doesnt
reveal much about himself to the reader. We know
that he has gone to sea out of some deep spiritual
malaise and that shipping aboard a whaler is his
version of committing suicidehe believes that men
aboard a whaling ship are lost to the world. It is
apparent from Ishmaels frequent digressions on a
wide range of subjectsfrom art, geology, and
anatomy to legal codes and literaturethat he is
intelligent and well educated, yet he claims that a

whaling ship has been [his] Yale College and [his]

Harvard. He seems to be a self-taught Renaissance
man, good at everything but committed to nothing.
Given the mythic, romantic aspects of Moby-Dick, it is
perhaps fitting that its narrator should be an enigma:
not everything in a story so dependent on fate and the
seemingly supernatural needs to make perfect sense.
Additionally, Ishmael represents the fundamental
contradiction between the story of Moby-Dick and its
setting. Melville has created a profound and
philosophically complicated tale and set it in a world of
largely uneducated working-class men; Ishmael, thus,
seems less a real character than an instrument of the
author. No one else aboard the Pequod possesses
the proper combination of intellect and experience to
tell this story. Indeed, at times even Ishmael fails
Melvilles purposes, and he disappears from the story
for long stretches, replaced by dramatic dialogues and
soliloquies from Ahab and other characters.
Ahab
Ahab, the Pequods obsessed captain, represents
both an ancient and a quintessentially modern type of
hero. Like the heroes of Greek or Shakespearean
tragedy, Ahab suffers from a single fatal flaw, one he
shares with such legendary characters as Oedipus
and Faust. His tremendous overconfidence, or hubris,
leads him to defy common sense and believe that, like

a god, he can enact his will and remain immune to the

forces of nature. He considers Moby Dick the
embodiment of evil in the world, and he pursues the
White Whale monomaniacally because he believes it
his inescapable fate to destroy this evil. According to
the critic M. H. Abrams, such a tragic hero moves us
to pity because, since he is not an evil man, his
misfortune is greater than he deserves; but he moves
us also to fear, because we recognize similar
possibilities of error in our own lesser and fallible
selves.
Unlike the heroes of older tragic works, however,
Ahab suffers from a fatal flaw that is not necessarily
inborn but instead stems from damage, in his case
both psychological and physical, inflicted by life in a
harsh world. He is as much a victim as he is an
aggressor, and the symbolic opposition that he
constructs between himself and Moby Dick propels
him toward what he considers a destined end.
Moby Dick
In a sense, Moby Dick is not a character, as the
reader has no access to the White Whales thoughts,
feelings, or intentions. Instead, Moby Dick is an
impersonal force, one that many critics have
interpreted as an allegorical representation of God, an
inscrutable and all-powerful being that humankind can
neither understand nor defy. Moby Dick thwarts free

will and cannot be defeated, only accommodated or

avoided. Ishmael tries a plethora of approaches to
describe whales in general, but none proves
adequate. Indeed, as Ishmael points out, the majority
of a whale is hidden from view at all times. In this way,
a whale mirrors its environment. Like the whale, only
the surface of the ocean is available for human
observation and interpretation, while its depths
conceal
unknown
and
unknowable
truths.
Furthermore, even when Ishmael does get his hands
on a whole whale, he is unable to determine which
partthe skeleton, the head, the skinoffers the best
understanding of the whole living, breathing creature;
he cannot localize the essence of the whale. This
conundrum can be read as a metaphor for the human
relationship with the Christian God (or any other god,
for that matter): God is unknowable and cannot be
pinned down.

Virginia Woolf, the English novelist, critic, and

essayist, was born on January 25, 1882, to Leslie
Stephen, a literary critic, and Julia Duckworth
Stephen. Woolf grew up in an upper-middle-class,
socially active, literary family in Victorian London. She
suffered from mania and severe depression for all her

life. Patriarchal, repressive Victorian society did not

encourage women to attend universities or to
participate in intellectual debate. Nonetheless, Woolf
began publishing her first essays and reviews after
1904, the year her father died .Woolf and her friends
came to be called, disregarded the constricting taboos
of the Victorian era, and such topics as religion, sex,
and art fueled the talk at their weekly salons. The
Voyage Out, Woolfs first novel, was published in
1915,During the next few years, Woolf kept a diary
and wrote several novels, a collection of short stories,
and numerous essays. Before World War I, Woolf
viewed the realistic Victorian novel, with its neat and
linear plots, as an inadequate form of expression. Her
opinion intensified after the war, and in the 1920s she
began searching for the form that would reflect the
violent contrasts and disjointed impressions of the
world around her.
In Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925, Woolf discovered
a new literary form capable of expressing the new
realities of postwar England. The novel depicts the
subjective experiences and memories of its central
characters over a single day in postWorld War I
London. Divided into parts, rather than chapters, the
novel's structure highlights the finely interwoven
texture of the characters' thoughts. Critics tend to
agree that Woolf found her writers voice with this

novel. Mrs. Dalloway transformed the novel as an art

form. Woolf develops the books protagonist, Clarissa
Dalloway, and myriad other characters by chronicling
their interior thoughts with little pause or explanation,
a style referred to as stream of consciousness.
Several central characters and more than one
hundred minor characters appear in the text, and their
thoughts spin out like spider webs. Characters in Mrs.
Dalloway occasionally perceive lifes pattern through a
sudden shock, or what Woolf called a moment of
being. Her novel attempts to uncover fragmented
emotions, such as desperation or love, in order to
find, through moments of being, a way to endure.
While writing Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf reread the Greek
classics along with two new modernist writers, Marcel
Proust and James Joyce. Woolf shared these writers'
interest in time and psychology, and she incorporated
these issues into her novel.
Woolf delves into the consciousness of Clarissa, a
woman who exists largely in the domestic sphere, to
ensure that readers take her character seriously,
rather than simply dismiss her as a vain and
uneducated upper-class wife. In spite of her heroic
and imperfect effort in life, Clarissa, like every human
being and even the old social order itself, must face
death.
Clarissa Dalloway, the heroine of the novel, struggles

constantly to balance her internal life with the external

world. Her world consists of glittering surfaces, such
as fine fashion, parties, and high society, but as she
moves through that world she probes beneath those
surfaces in search of deeper meaning. Yearning for
privacy, Clarissa has a tendency toward introspection
that gives her a profound capacity for emotion, which
many other characters lack. However, she is always
concerned with appearances and keeps herself tightly
composed, seldom sharing her feelings with anyone.
She uses a constant stream of convivial chatter and
activity to keep her soul locked safely away, which can
make her seem shallow even to those who know her
well.
Constantly overlaying the past and the present,
Clarissa strives to reconcile herself to life despite her
potent memories. For most of the novel she considers
aging and death with trepidation, even as she
performs life-affirming actions, such as buying flowers.
Though content, Clarissa never lets go of the doubt
she feels about the decisions that have shaped her
life, particularly her decision to marry Richard instead
of Peter Walsh. She understands that life with Peter
would have been difficult, but at the same time she is
uneasily aware that she sacrificed passion for the
security and tranquility of an upper-class life. At times
she wishes for a chance to live life over again. She

experiences a moment of clarity and peace when she

watches her old neighbor through her window, and by
the end of the day she has come to terms with the
possibility of death. Like Septimus, Clarissa feels
keenly the oppressive forces in life, and she accepts
that the life she has is all shell get. Her will to endure,
however, prevails.
Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of World War I,
suffers from shell shock and is lost within his own
mind. He feels guilty even as he despises himself for
being made numb by the war. His doctor has ordered
Lucrezia, Septimuss wife, to make Septimus notice
things outside himself, but Septimus has removed
himself from the physical world. Instead, he lives in an
internal world, wherein he sees and hears things that
arent really there and he talks to his dead friend
Evans. He is sometimes overcome with the beauty in
the world, but he also fears that the people in it have
no capacity for honesty or kindness. Woolf intended
for Clarissa to speak the sane truth and Septimus the
insane truth, and indeed Septimuss detachment
enables him to judge other people more harshly than
Clarissa is capable of. The world outside of Septimus
is threatening, and the way Septimus sees that world
offers little hope.
On the surface, Septimus seems quite dissimilar to
Clarissa, but he embodies many characteristics that

Clarissa shares and thinks in much the same way she

does. He could almost be her double in the novel.
Septimus and Clarissa both have beak-noses, love
Shakespeare, and fear oppression. More important,
as Clarissas double, Septimus offers a contrast
between the conscious struggle of a working-class
veteran and the blind opulence of the upper class. His
troubles call into question the legitimacy of the English
society he fought to preserve during the war. Because
his thoughts often run parallel to Clarissas and echo
hers in many ways, the thin line between what is
considered sanity and insanity gets thinner and
thinner. Septimus chooses to escape his problems by
killing himself, a dramatic and tragic gesture that
ultimately helps Clarissa to accept her own choices,
as well as the society in which she lives.

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, England, in

1775.She began to write while in her teens and
completed the original manuscript of Pride and
Prejudice, titled First Impressions, between 1796 and
1797. Pride and Prejudice was published in January
1813, two years after Sense and Sensibility, her first

novel, and it achieved a popularity that has endured to

this day. In her work, Austen is often critical of the
assumptions and prejudices of upper-class England.
She distinguishes between internal merit (goodness of
person) and external merit (rank and possessions).
Though she frequently satirizes snobs, she also
pokes fun at the poor breeding and misbehavior of
those lower on the social scale. Nevertheless, Austen
was in many ways a realist, and the England she
depicts is one in which social mobility is limited and
class-consciousness is strong. The critiques she
makes of class structure seem to include only the
middle class and upper class; the lower classes, if
they appear at all, are generally servants who seem
perfectly pleased with their lot. In general, Austen
occupies a curious position between the -eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. Her favorite writer, whom
she often quotes in her novels, was Dr. Samuel
Johnson, the great model of -eighteenth-century
classicism and reason. Austens novels also display
an ambiguity about emotion and an appreciation for
intelligence and natural beauty that aligns them with
Romanticism. In their awareness of the conditions of
modernity and city life and the consequences for
family structure and individual characters, they
prefigure much Victorian literature (as does her usage
of such elements as frequent formal social gatherings,

sketchy characters, and scandal).

Elizabeth Bennet The novels protagonist. The
second daughter of Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth is the most
intelligent and sensible of the five Bennet sisters. She
is well read and quick-witted, with a tongue that
occasionally proves too sharp for her own good. Her
realization of Darcys essential goodness eventually
triumphs over her initial prejudice against him.
Fitzwilliam Darcy-A wealthy gentleman, the master of
Pemberley, and the nephew of Lady Catherine de
Bourgh. Though Darcy is intelligent and honest, his
excess of pride causes him to look down on his social
inferiors. Over the course of the novel, he tempers his
class-consciousness and learns to admire and love
Elizabeth for her strong character. Jane Bennet-The
eldest and most beautiful Bennet sister. Jane is more
reserved and gentler than Elizabeth. The easy
pleasantness with which she and Bingley interact
contrasts starkly with the mutual distaste that marks
the encounters between Elizabeth and Darcy. Charles
Bingley-Darcys considerably wealthy best friend.
Bingleys purchase of Netherfield, an estate near the
Bennets, serves as the impetus for the novel. He is a
genial, well-intentioned gentleman, whose easygoing
nature contrasts with Darcys initially discourteous
demeanor. He is blissfully uncaring about class
differences. Mr. Bennet-The patriarch of the Bennet

family, a gentleman of modest income with five

unmarried daughters. Mr. Bennet has a sarcastic,
cynical sense of humor that he uses to purposefully
irritate his wife. Though he loves his daughters
(Elizabeth in particular), he often fails as a parent,
preferring to withdraw from the never-ending marriage
concerns of the women around him rather than offer
help. Mrs. Bennet-Mr. Bennets wife, a foolish, noisy
woman whose only goal in life is to see her daughters
married. Because of her low breeding and often
unbecoming behavior, Mrs. Bennet often repels the
very suitors whom she tries to attract for her
daughters. George Wickham-A handsome, fortunehunting militia officer. Wickhams good looks and
charm attract Elizabeth initially, but Darcys revelation
about Wickhams disreputable past clues her in to his
true nature and simultaneously draws her closer to
Darcy. Lydia Bennet-The youngest Bennet sister, she
is gossipy, immature, and self-involved. Unlike
Elizabeth, Lydia flings herself headlong into romance
and ends up running off with Wickham. Mr. Collins-A
pompous, generally idiotic clergyman who stands to
inherit Mr. Bennets property. Mr. Collinss own social
status is nothing to brag about, but he takes great
pains to let everyone and anyone know that Lady
Catherine de Bourgh serves as his patroness. He is
the worst combination of snobbish and obsequious.

Miss Bingley-Bingleys snobbish sister. Miss Bingley

bears inordinate disdain for Elizabeths middle-class
background. Her vain attempts to garner Darcys
attention cause Darcy to admire Elizabeths selfpossessed character even more. Lady Catherine de
Bourgh - A rich, bossy noblewoman; Mr. Collinss
patron and Darcys aunt. Lady Catherine epitomizes
class snobbery, especially in her attempts to order the
middle-class Elizabeth away from her well-bred
nephew. Charlotte Lucas - Elizabeths dear friend.
Pragmatic where Elizabeth is romantic, and also six
years older than Elizabeth, Charlotte does not view
love as the most vital component of a marriage. She
is more interested in having a comfortable home.
Thus, when Mr. Collins proposes, she accepts.
Georgiana Darcy-Darcys sister. She is immensely
pretty and just as shy. She has great skill at playing
the pianoforte. Mary Bennet-The middle Bennet sister,
bookish and pedantic. Catherine Bennet-The fourth
Bennet sister. Like Lydia, she is girlishly enthralled.
Daniel Defoe was born in 1660, in London, and was
originally christened Daniel Foe. Defoe began writing
fiction late in life, around the age of sixty. He
published his first novel, Robinson Crusoe, in 1719,
attracting a large middle-class readership. He
followed in 1722 with Moll Flanders, the story of a

tough, streetwise heroine whose fortunes rise and fall

dramatically. Both works straddle the border between
journalism and fiction. Robinson Crusoe was based
on the true story of a shipwrecked seaman named
Alexander Selkirk and was passed off as history, while
Moll Flanders included dark prison scenes drawn from
Defoes own experiences in Newgate and interviews
with prisoners. His focus on the actual conditions of
everyday life and avoidance of the courtly and the
heroic made Defoe a revolutionary in English
literature and helped define the new genre of the
novel. Stylistically, Defoe was a great innovator.
Dispensing with the ornate style associated with the
upper classes, Defoe used the simple, direct, factbased style of the middle classes, which became the
new standard for the English novel. With Robinson
Crusoes theme of solitary human existence, Defoe
paved the way for the central modern theme of
alienation and isolation. Crusoe narrates in both the
first and third person, presenting what he observes.
Crusoe occasionally describes his feelings, but only
when they are overwhelming. Usually he favors a
more factual narrative style focused on actions and
events. Crusoes tone is mostly detached, meticulous,
and objective. He displays little rhetorical grandeur
and few poetic or colorful turns of phrase. He
generally avoids dramatic storytelling, preferring an

inventory like approach to the facts as they unfold. He

very rarely registers his own feelings, or those of other
characters, and only does so when those feelings
affect a situation directly, such as when he describes
the mutineers as tired and confused, indicating that
their fatigue allows them to be defeated. Shipwrecked
alone, Crusoe struggles against hardship, privation,
loneliness, and cannibals in his attempt to survive on
a deserted island. Crusoe disobeys his father and
goes out to sea. Crusoe has a profitable first
merchant voyage, has fantasies of success in Brazil,
and prepares for a slave-gathering expedition. Crusoe
becomes shipwrecked on an island near Trinidad,
forcing him to fend for himself and his basic needs.
Crusoe constructs a shelter, secures a food supply,
and accepts his stay on the island as the work of
Providence. Crusoe suffers a storm at sea near
Yarmouth, foreshadowing his shipwreck years later.
Crusoe dreams of cannibals arriving, and later they
come to kill Friday. Crusoe invents the idea of a
governor of the island to intimidate the mutineers,
foreshadowing the actual governors later arrival.
Robinson Crusoe While he is no flashy hero or grand
epic adventurer,displays character traits that have
won him the approval of generations of readers. His
perseverance in spending months making a canoe,
and in practicing pottery making until he gets it right,

is praiseworthy. Additionally, his resourcefulness in

building a home, dairy, grape arbor, country house,
and goat stable from practically nothing is clearly
remarkable. The Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
applauded
Crusoes
do-it-yourself
independence, and in his book on education, Emile,
he recommends that children be taught to imitate
Crusoes hands-on approach to life. Crusoes
business instincts are just as considerable as his
survival instincts: he manages to make a fortune in
Brazil despite a twenty-eight-year absence and even
leaves his island with a nice collection of gold.
Moreover, Crusoe is never interested in portraying
himself as a hero in his own narration. He does not
boast of his courage in quelling the mutiny, and he is
always ready to admit unheroic feelings of fear or
panic, as when he finds the footprint on the beach.
Crusoe prefers to depict himself as an ordinary
sensible man, never as an exceptional hero.But
Crusoes admirable qualities must be weighed against
the flaws in his character. Crusoe seems incapable of
deep feelings, as shown by his cold account of
leaving his familyhe worries about the religious
consequences of disobeying his father, but never
displays any emotion about leaving. Though he is
generous toward people, as when he gives gifts to his
sisters and the captain, Crusoe reveals very little

tender or sincere affection in his dealings with them.

When Crusoe tells us that he has gotten married and
that his wife has died all within the same sentence, his
indifference to her seems almost cruel. Moreover, as
an individual personality, Crusoe is rather dull. His
precise and deadpan style of narration works well for
recounting the process of canoe building, but it tends
to drain the excitement from events that should be
thrilling. Action-packed scenes like the conquest of the
cannibals become quite humdrum when Crusoe
narrates them, giving us a detailed inventory of the
cannibals in list form, for example. His insistence on
dating events makes sense to a point, but it ultimately
ends up seeming obsessive and irrelevant when he
tells us the date on which he grinds his tools but
neglects to tell us the date of a very important event
like meeting Friday. Perhaps his impulse to record
facts carefully is not a survival skill, but an irritating
sign of his neurosis.Finally, while not boasting of
heroism, Crusoe is nonetheless very interested in
possessions, power, and prestige. When he first calls
himself king of the island it seems jocund, but when
he describes the Spaniard as his subject we must
take his royal delusion seriously, since it seems he
really does consider himself king. His teaching Friday
to call him Master, even before teaching him the
words for yes or no, seems obnoxious even under

the racist standards of the day, as if Crusoe needs to

hear the ego-boosting word spoken as soon as
possible. Overall, Crusoes virtues tend to be private:
his industry, resourcefulness, and solitary courage
make him an exemplary individual. But his vices are
social, and his urge to subjugate others is highly
objectionable. In bringing both sides together into one
complex character, Defoe gives us a fascinating
glimpse into the successes,
failures,
and
contradictions of modern man.
Friday Probably the first nonwhite character to be
given a realistic, individualized, and humane portrayal
in the English novel, Friday has a huge literary and
cultural importance. If Crusoe represents the first
colonial mind in fiction, then Friday represents not just
a Caribbean tribesman, but all the natives of America,
Asia, and Africa who would later be oppressed in the
age of European imperialism. At the moment when
Crusoe teaches Friday to call him Master Friday
becomes an enduring political symbol of racial
injustice in a modern world critical of imperialist
expansion. Recent rewritings of the Crusoe story, like
J. M. Coetzees Foe and Michel Tourniers Friday,
emphasize the sad consequences of Crusoes failure
to understand Friday and suggest how the tale might
be told very differently from the natives perspective.
Aside from his importance to our culture, Friday is a

key figure within the context of the novel. In many

ways he is the most vibrant character in Robinson
Crusoe, much more charismatic and colorful than his
master. Indeed, Defoe at times underscores the
contrast between Crusoes and Fridays personalities,
as when Friday, in his joyful reunion with his father,
exhibits far more emotion toward his family than
Crusoe. Whereas Crusoe never mentions missing his
family or dreams about the happiness of seeingto
Fridays full understanding of his own god
Benamuckee. In short, Fridays exuberance and
emotional directness often point out the wooden
conventionality of Crusoes personality. Despite
Fridays subjugation, however, Crusoe appreciates
Friday much more than he would a mere servant.
Crusoe does not seem to value intimacy with humans
much, but he does say that he loves Friday, which is a
remarkable disclosure. It is the only time Crusoe
makes such an admission in the novel, since he never
expresses love for his parents, brothers, sisters, or
even his wife. The mere fact that an Englishman
confesses more love for an illiterate Caribbean excannibal than for his own family suggests the appeal
of Fridays personality. Crusoe may bring Friday
Christianity and clothing, but Friday brings Crusoe
emotional warmth and a vitality of spirit that Crusoes
own European heart lacks.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on

September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor
Francis Scott Key, the author of The Star-Spangled
Banner. With the publication of This Side of Paradise
in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation. Many
of these events from Fitzgeralds early life appear in

his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published

in 1925 a modernist novel, Jazz Age novel, novel of
manners. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a
thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an
Ivy League school (in Nicks case, Yale), who moves
to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is
Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes
wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful
young woman while stationed at a military camp in the
South. Nick Carraway narrates in both first and third
person, presenting only what he himself observes.
Nick alternates sections where he presents events
objectively, as they appeared to him at the time, with
sections where he gives his own interpretations of the
storys meaning and of the motivations of the other
characters.Nicks attitudes toward Gatsby and
Gatsbys story are ambivalent and contradictory. At
times he seems to disapprove of Gatsbys excesses
and breaches of manners and ethics, but he also
romanticizes and admires Gatsby, describing the
events of the novel in a nostalgic and elegiac
tone.Gatsby amasses a great deal of wealth at a
relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring
possessions and throwing parties that he believes will
enable him to win Daisys love.He died of a heart
attack at the age of forty-four. Fitzgerald was the most
famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he

dubbed the Jazz Age. Written in 1925, The Great

Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of
this period, in which the American economy soared,
bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the
nation. The chaos and violence of World War I left
America in a state of shock, and the generation that
fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to
compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn
values of the previous decade were turned on their
ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the
order of the day. Like Nick in The Great Gatsby,
Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and
exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the
very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which
unrestrained materialism set the tone of society,
particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like
Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz
Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath,
and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In
many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgeralds
attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the
Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his
love for a woman who symbolized everything he
wanted, even as she led him toward everything he
despised. Themes :The decline of the American
dream, the spirit of the 1920s, the difference between
social classes, the role of symbols in the human

conception of meaning, the role of the past in dreams

of the future. Motifs : The connection between events
and weather, the connection between geographical
location and social values, images of time,
extravagant parties, the quest for wealth.
Symbols:The green light on Daisys dock, the eyes of
Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, the valley of ashes, Gatsbys
parties, East Egg, West Egg.
Jay Gatsby The title character of The Great Gatsby is
a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from
an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to
become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved
this lofty goal by participating in organized crime,
including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in
stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby
despised poverty and longed for wealth and
sophisticationhe dropped out of St. Olafs College
after only two weeks because he could not bear the
janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition.
Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his
main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love
for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military
officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War
I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisys
aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about
his own background in order to convince her that he
was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for

him when he left for the war, but married Tom

Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at
Oxford after the war in an attempt to gain an
education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated
himself to winning Daisy back, and his acquisition of
millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion
on West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties are all
merely means to that end. Fitzgerald delays the
introduction of most of this information until fairly late
in the novel. Gatsbys reputation precedes him
Gatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role.
Fitzgerald initially presents Gatsby as the aloof,
enigmatic host of the unbelievably opulent parties
thrown every week at his mansion. He appears
surrounded by spectacular luxury, courted by powerful
men and beautiful women. He is the subject of a
whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is
already a kind of legendary celebrity before he is ever
introduced to the reader. Fitzgerald propels the novel
forward through the early chapters by shrouding
Gatsbys background and the source of his wealth in
mystery . As a result, the first impressions of Gatsby
strike quite a different note from that of the lovesick,
naive young man who emerges during the later part of
the novel. Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed
character revelation to emphasize the theatrical
quality of Gatsbys approach to life, which is an

important part of his personality. Gatsby has literally

created his own character, even changing his name
from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby to represent his
reinvention of himself. As his relentless quest for
Daisy demonstrates, Gatsby has an extraordinary
ability to transform his hopes and dreams into reality;
at the beginning of the novel, he appears to the
reader just as he desires to appear to the world. This
talent for self-invention is what gives Gatsby his
quality of greatness: indeed, the title The Great
Gatsby is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville
magicians as The Great Houdini and The Great
Blackstone, suggesting that the persona of Jay
Gatsby is a masterful illusion.As the novel progresses
and
Fitzgerald
deconstructs
Gatsbys
selfpresentation, Gatsby reveals himself to be an
innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything
on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams are
unworthy of him. Gatsby invests Daisy with an
idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly attain in
reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that
blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her
disintegrates, revealing the corruption that wealth
causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in the
way Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in
the 1920s, as Americas powerful optimism, vitality,
and individualism become subordinated to the amoral

pursuit of wealth. Gatsby is contrasted most

consistently with Nick. Critics point out that the former,
passionate and active, and the latter, sober and
reflective, seem to represent two sides of Fitzgeralds
personality. Additionally, whereas Tom is a coldhearted, aristocratic bully, Gatsby is a loyal and goodhearted man. Though his lifestyle and attitude differ
greatly from those of George Wilson, Gatsby and
Wilson share the fact that they both lose their love
interest to Tom.
Nick Carraway If Gatsby represents one part of
Fitzgeralds personality, the flashy celebrity who
pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the
woman he loved, then Nick represents another part:
the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid
East. A young man (he turns thirty during the course
of the novel) from Minnesota, Nick travels to New York
in 1922 to learn the bond business. He lives in the
West Egg district of Long Island, next door to Gatsby.
Nick is also Daisys cousin, which enables him to
observe and assist the resurgent love affair between
Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to
these two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to
narrate the novel, which functions as a personal
memoir of his experiences with Gatsby in the summer
of 1922. Nick is also well suited to narrating The Great
Gatsby because of his temperament. As he tells the

reader in Chapter I, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet,

and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to
talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in
particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a
confidant. Nick generally assumes a secondary role
throughout the novel, preferring to describe and
comment on events rather than dominate the action.
Often, however, he functions as Fitzgeralds voice, as
in his extended meditation on time and the American
dream. Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the
narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to
life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful
internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end
of the book. On the one hand, Nick is attracted to the
fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the
other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and
damaging. This inner conflict is symbolized throughout
the book by Nicks romantic affair with Jordan Baker.
He is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication
just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack
of consideration for other people. Nick states that
there is a quality of distortion to life in New York, and
this lifestyle makes him lose his equilibrium, especially
early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsbys
party in Chapter II. After witnessing the unraveling of
Gatsbys dream and presiding over the appalling
spectacle of Gatsbys funeral, Nick realizes that the

fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the

terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes
symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this
insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in
search of a quieter life structured by more traditional
moral values.

Tess of the D`Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy was born

on June 2, 1840. Far from the Madding Crowd,
published in 1874, was the authors first critical and
financial success.
Although he built a reputation as a successful
novelist, Hardy considered himself first and foremost

a poet. To him, novels were primarily a means of

earning a living. But Hardy cannot solely be labeled a
Victorian novelist. Nor can he be categorized simply
as a Modernist, in the tradition of writers like Virginia
Woolf or D. H. Lawrence, who were determined to
explode the conventions of nineteenth-century
literature and build a new kind of novel in its place. In
many respects, Hardy was trapped in the middle
ground between the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, between Victorian sensibilities and more
modern ones, and between tradition and innovation.
The novel also aroused a substantial amount of
controversy. In Tess of the dUrbervilles a Victorian,
tragic novel, Hardy demonstrates his deep sense of
moral sympathy for Englands lower classes,
particularly for rural women. He became famous for
his compassionate, often controversial portrayal of
young women victimized by the self-righteous rigidity
of English social morality. Perhaps his most famous
depiction of such a young woman is in Tess of the
dUrbervilles. This novel and the one that followed it,
Jude the Obscure, engendered widespread public
scandal with their comparatively frank look at the
sexual hypocrisy of English society.
The themes of the novel are the injustice of existence;
changing ideas of social class in Victorian England;
men dominating women, the motifs are birds; the

Book of Genesis; variant names and the symbols :the

Prince; the dUrberville family vault; Brazil. The major
conflict is that Tess is seduced, impregnated, and
abandoned by the son of her upper-class patroness,
making her unacceptable to her true love Angel later
in life. The narrator speaks in the third person, and
looks deep into the characters minds. The narrator is
objective but has an omniscient understanding of
future implications of characters actions as they
happen. The tone of the novel is realistic, pessimistic.
Hardy lived and wrote in a time of difficult social
change, when England was making its slow and
painful transition from an old-fashioned, agricultural
nation to a modern, industrial one. Tesss family in
Tess of the dUrbervilles illustrates this change, as
Tesss parents, the Durbeyfields, lose themselves in
the fantasy of belonging to an ancient and aristocratic
family, the dUrbervilles. Hardys novel strongly
suggests that such a family history is not only
meaningless but also utterly undesirable. Tess of the
dUrbervilles was met in England with widespread
controversy. Hardy was frustrated by the controversy
caused by his work, and he finally abandoned novelwriting altogether following Jude the Obscure. He
spent the rest of his career writing poetry. Though
today he is remembered somewhat more for his
novels, he was an acclaimed poet in his time and was

buried in the prestigious Poets Corner of Westminster

Abbey following his death in 1928.
Tess Durbeyfield Intelligent, strikingly attractive, and
distinguished by her deep moral sensitivity and
passionate intensity, Tess is indisputably the central
character of the novel that bears her name. But she is
also more than a distinctive individual: Hardy makes
her into somewhat of a mythic heroine. Her name,
formally Theresa, recalls St. Teresa of Avila, another
martyr whose vision of a higher reality cost her her
life. Other characters often refer to Tess in mythical
terms, as when Angel calls her a Daughter of Nature
, or refers to her by the Greek mythological names
Artemis and Demeter. The narrator himself
sometimes describes Tess as more than an individual
woman, but as something closer to a mythical
incarnation of womanhood and he says that her eyes
are neither black nor blue nor grey nor violet; rather
all these shades together, like an almost standard
woman. Tesss story may thus be a standard story,
representing a deeper and larger experience than that
of a single individual. In part, Tess represents the
changing role of the agricultural workers in England in
the late nineteenth century. Possessing an education
that her unschooled parents lack, since she has
passed the Sixth Standard of the National Schools,
Tess does not quite fit into the folk culture of her

predecessors, but financial constraints keep her from

rising to a higher station in life. She belongs in that
higher world, however, as we discover on the first
page of the novel with the news that the Durbeyfields
are the surviving members of the noble and ancient
family of the dUrbervilles. There is aristocracy in
Tesss blood, visible in her graceful beautyyet she is
forced to work as a farmhand and milkmaid. When
she tries to express her joy by singing lower-class folk
ballads at the beginning of the third part of the novel,
they do not satisfy hershe seems not quite
comfortable with those popular songs. But, on the
other hand, her diction, while more polished than her
mothers, is not quite up to the level of Alecs or
Angels. She is in between, both socially and
culturally. Thus, Tess is a symbol of unclear and
unstable notions of class in nineteenth-century Britain,
where old family lines retained their earlier glamour,
but where cold economic realities made sheer wealth
more important than inner nobility.
Beyond her social symbolism, Tess represents fallen
humanity in a religious sense, as the frequent biblical
allusions in the novel remind us. Just as Tesss clan
was once glorious and powerful but is now sadly
diminished, so too did the early glory of the first
humans, Adam and Eve, fade with their expulsion
from Eden, making humans sad shadows of what they

once were. Tess thus represents what is known in

Christian theology as original sin, the degraded state
in which all humans live, even whenlike Tess herself
after killing Prince or succumbing to Alecthey are
not wholly or directly responsible for the sins for which
they are punished. This torment represents the most
universal side of Tess: she is the myth of the human
who suffers for crimes that are not her own and lives a
life more degraded than she deserves.
Alec dUrberville
An insouciant twenty-four-year-old man, heir to a
fortune, and bearer of a name that his father
purchased, Alec is the nemesis and downfall of Tesss
life. His first name, Alexander, suggests the conqueror
as in Alexander the Greatwho seizes what he
wants regardless of moral propriety. Yet he is more
slippery than a grand conqueror. His full last name,
Stoke-dUrberville, symbolizes the split character of
his family, whose origins are simpler than their
pretensions to grandeur. After all, Stokes is a blunt
and inelegant name. Indeed, the divided and
duplicitous character of Alec is evident to the very end
of the novel, when he quickly abandons his newfound
Christian faith upon remeeting Tess. It is hard to
believe Alec holds his religion, or anything else,
sincerely. His supposed conversion may only be a
new role he is playing.

This duplicity of character is so intense in Alec, and its

consequences for Tess so severe, that he becomes
diabolical. The first part of his surname conjures
associations with fiery energies, as in the stoking of a
furnace or the flames of hell. His devilish associations
are evident when he wields a pitchfork while
addressing Tess early in the novel, and when he
seduces her as the serpent in Genesis seduced Eve.
Additionally, like the famous depiction of Satan in
Miltons Paradise Lost, Alec does not try to hide his
bad qualities. In fact, like Satan, he revels in them. He
bluntly tells Tess, I suppose I am a bad fellowa
damn bad fellow. I was born bad, and I have lived
bad, and I shall die bad, in all probability. There is
frank acceptance in this admission and no shame.
Some readers feel Alec is too wicked to be believable,
but, like Tess herself, he represents a larger moral
principle rather than a real individual man. Like Satan,
Alec symbolizes the base forces of life that drive a
person away from moral perfection and greatness.
Angel Clare A freethinking son born into the family of
a provincial parson and determined to set himself up
as a farmer instead of going to Cambridge like his
conformist brothers, Angel represents a rebellious
striving toward a personal vision of goodness. He is a
secularist who yearns to work for the honor and glory
of man, as he tells his father ,rather than for the

honor and glory of God in a more distant world. A

typical young nineteenth-century progressive, Angel
sees human society as a thing to be remolded and
improved, and he fervently believes in the nobility of
man. He rejects the values handed to him, and sets
off in search of his own. His love for Tess, a mere
milkmaid and his social inferior, is one expression of
his disdain for tradition. This independent spirit
contributes to his aura of charisma and general
attractiveness that makes him the love object of all the
milkmaids with whom he works at Talbothays. As his
namein French, close to Bright Angelsuggests,
Angel is not quite of this world, but floats above it in a
transcendent sphere of his own. The narrator says
that Angel shines rather than burns and that he is
closer to the intellectually aloof poet Shelley than to
the fleshly and passionate poet Byron. His love for
Tess may be abstract, as we guess when he calls her
Daughter of Nature or Demeter. Tess may be more
an archetype or ideal to him than a flesh and blood
woman with a complicated life. Angels ideals of
human purity are too elevated to be applied to actual
people: Mrs. Durbeyfields easygoing moral beliefs are
much more easily accommodated to real lives such as
Tesss. Angel awakens to the actual complexities of
real-world morality after his failure in Brazil, and only
then he realizes he has been unfair to Tess. His moral

system is readjusted as he is brought down to Earth.

Ironically, it is not the angel who guides the human in
this novel, but the human who instructs the angel,
although at the cost of her own life.

William Shakespeare was a great English playwright,

dramatist and poet who lived during the late sixteenth
and
early
seventeenth
centuries.
William
Shakespeare's plays have the reputation of being
among the greatest in the English language and in
Western literature. His plays have been translated into
every major living language, in addition to being

continually performed all around the world.

Shakespeare is considered to be the greatest
playwright of all time. There are many reasons as to
why William Shakespeare is so famous. He is
generally considered to be both the greatest dramatist
the world has ever known as well as the finest poet
who has written in the English language. He was able
to find universal human qualities and put them in a
dramatic situation creating characters that are
timeless. Shakespeare had a tremendous influence
on culture and literature throughout the world. He
contributed greatly to the development of the English
language. Shakespeare's ideas on subjects such as
romantic love, heroism, comedy, and tragedy have
helped shape the attitudes of millions of people.
Shakespeare's plays are usually divided into three
major categories. These are comedy (The Comedy of
Errors, A midsummer night dream), tragedy (Romeo
and Juliet, Hamlet), and history ( Henry V, Julius
Caesar). Among the most famous and critically
acclaimed of Shakespeare's plays are Romeo and
Juliet, King Lear, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's
Dream, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Othello, The Tempest,
Twelfth Night.
A MIDSUMMER tones: Romantic; comedic;
fantastic; satirical; dreamlike; joyful; farcical; symbols:
Theseus and Hippolyta represent order, stability, and

wakefulness; Theseuss hounds represent the coming

of morning; Oberons love potion represents the
power and instability of love; themes: The difficulties
of love; magic; the nature of dreams; the relationships
between fantasy and reality and between environment
and experience; motifs: Love out of balance; contrast
(juxtaposed opposites, such as beautiful and ugly,
short and tall, clumsy and graceful, ethereal and
earthy).Male dominance is one theme found in
A.M.N.D. Shakespeare's comedies often include a
section in which females enjoy more power and
freedom than they actually posses. Marriage is seen
as the ultimate social achievement for women while
men can go on to do many other great things and gain
societal recognition. Love is another theme found in
A.M.N.D. Despite the darkness and difficulty that
obstructs the love in A Midsummer Nights Dream, it is
still a comedy. Another theme found in A Midsummer
Nights Dream is the loss of individual identity, usually
for the sake of love or some other force. This theme
affects both the characters in the play as well as the
overall mood of the story. It seems that a desire to
lose ones individuality and find identity in the love of
another is what is quietly moving the events of A
Midsummer Nights Dream. It is the primary sense of
motivation and is even reflected in the scenery and
mood of the story. In writing Romeo and Juliet,

Shakespeare, implicitly set himself the task of telling a

love story despite the considerable forces he knew
were stacked against its success. The tone is
passionate, romantic, intense, rhapsodic, violent,
prone to extremes of emotion (ecstasy, rage, misery,
etc.) The themes Some common themes in R&J are:
Love ain't easy, Money corrupts, and Violence begets
more violence, the forcefulness of love; love as a
cause of violence; the individual versus society; the
inevitability of fate. The motives are Light/dark
imagery; opposite points of view and the symbols
poison; thumb-biting; Queen Mab. Through the
incomparable intensity of his language Shakespeare
succeeded in this effort, writing a play that is
universally accepted in Western culture as the
preeminent, archetypal love story. Hamlet is a
philosophically-minded prince who delays taking
action because his knowledge of his uncles crime is
so uncertain. Shakespeare went far beyond making
uncertainty a personal quirk of Hamlets, introducing a
number of important ambiguities into the play that
even the audience cannot resolve with certainty. For
instance, whether Hamlets mother, Gertrude, shares
in Claudiuss guilt; whether Hamlet continues to love
Ophelia even as he spurns her, in Act III; whether
Ophelias death is suicide or accident; whether the
ghost offers reliable knowledge, or seeks to deceive

and tempt Hamlet; and, perhaps most importantly,

whether Hamlet would be morally justified in taking
revenge on his uncle. Shakespeare makes it clear
that the stakes riding on some of these questions are
enormousthe actions of these characters bring
disaster upon an entire kingdom. At the end of the
play it is not even clear whether justice has been
achieved. The tone is dark, ironic, melancholic,
passionate, contemplative, desperate, violent ;the
themes The impossibility of certainty; the complexity
of action; the mystery of death; the nation as a
diseased body; the motives incest and incestuous
desire; ears and hearing; death and suicide; darkness
and the supernatural; misogyny the symbols The
ghost (the spiritual consequences of death); Yoricks
skull (the physical consequences of death). The
Tragedy of Julius Csar, more commonly known
simply as Julius Caesar, is a tragedy by William
Shakespeare written in 1599. It portrays the
conspiracy against the Roman dictator, Julius Caesar,
his assassination and its aftermath. It is the first of his
Roman plays, based on true events from Roman
history.
It
is
followed
by
Antony
and
Cleopatra.Although the title of the play is "Julius
Caesar", he is not the central character in the action
of the play, appearing in only three scenes and dying
at the beginning of the third Act. The central

protagonist of the play is Marcus Brutus and the

central psychological drama is his struggle between
the conflicting demands of honour, patriotism, and
friendship.The play reflected the general anxiety of
England due to worries over succession of leadership.
At the time of its creation and first performance,
Queen Elizabeth, a strong ruler, was elderly and had
refused to name a successor, leading to worries that a
civil war similar to that of Rome's might break out after
her death.The play contains many elements from the
Elizabethan period, making it anachronistic. The
characters mention objects such as hats, doublets
(large, heavy jackets), and cloaks - none of which
existed in ancient Rome. Caesar is mentioned to be
wearing an Elizabethan doublet instead of a Roman
toga. Themes Fate vs. Freewill Caesar brings up
questions about this but Cassius tells Brutus that
people can control their own fates. // Public self vs.
Private self The conspirators neglect private feelings
and focus on politics. Examples of this would be the
moments between Brutus and Portia as well as
Caesar
and
Calpurnia.
// Misinterpretations vs. Misreadings Cassius
manipulates Brutus into joining the conspirators by
forging letters from Romans. Pindarus tells Cassius
that Titinius has been captured, when he was being
congratulated by Brutus's men, this causes Cassius to

take his life.// Inflexability vs. Power Brutus and

Caesar are quite stubborn. Antony seems to be the
most flexible. // Rhetoric and Compromise Antony
convinces the conspirators that he means them no
harm and turns the plebeians against Brutus. Parallel
between Julius Caesar and Hamlet For a story to be
a tragedy it has to follow the principles set by
Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, or those of Arthur Miller
who is a twentieth century playwright. A tragedy, in
Aristotle's
view,
usually
concerns
the
fall
of an individual whose character is good but not
perfect and his misfortunes are brought about by the
tragic flaw. This flaw is the part of the character that
personifies him as being tragic. Miller uses this
definition of a tragedy but also broadens it including
the common man. All of these characteristics are
seen in the plays Julius Caesar and Hamlet. In the
play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William
Shakespeare, the character Marcus Brutus fits the
definition of the tragic hero. Like other tragic heroes,
he had great promise, ability, and integrity of
character. However, he had a tragic flaw: He was too
trusting. Brutus had great promise, ability, and
strength of character. The fact that he could singlehandedly take over the group of conspirators, and
completely overrule Cassius demonstrates his
strength of character, and his influence on others.

Brutus`s tragic flaw was his perception that all men

were identical to him in their motives. This factored
allowed his decisions to be easily influenced by others
whose motives were devious. Cassius was able to
convince Brutus to join the conspiracy because Brutus
thought the only reason behind the conspiracy was to
prevent one man from becoming Rex. He allowed
Antony`s speech to occur because he was sure that
Antony was motivated by the same honor which
motivated himself. Hamlet concerns the murder of the
king of Denmark and the murdered king's son's quest
for revenge. Its main character, Hamlet, possesses a
tragic flaw which obstructs his desire for revenge and
ultimately
brings about his death. This tragic flaw makes him a
tragic hero, a character who is destroyed because of
a major weakness, as his death at the end could
possibly have been avoided were it not for his tragic
flaw. Hamlet's flaw of irresolution is shown with the
famed "To be or not to be?" lines. Hamlet directly
identifies his own tragic flaw, remarking of his own
inability to act. This makes an individual second guess
his own actions at all, due to his own irresolution.
Hamlet remarks how everything around him attempts
to "spur my dull revenge", yet he takes no
action. Hamlet's indecisive pursuit in avenging his
father's death is shown as evidence of his tragic flaw.

After first hearing of the crime from his father's ghost,

Hamlet immediately sets out to take action. Hamlet
then began to think that perhaps his father's ghost
was conjured by the devil in an attempt to make
Hamlet become irrational and kill Claudius, who might
happen to be innocent, which would forever damn his
soul. Hamlet then schemes to determine Claudius's
guilt. Hamlet's flaw of irresolution essentially
destroyed him, as his failure to act in previous
situations led to his own death. Hamlet was able to
avenge his father's death, but his own death due to
his irresolution labels him as a tragic hero. The
Tragedy of Hamlet masterfully shows how the inability
to act, however noble the intentions, can be
detrimental to character.
Certain parallels can be drawn between William
Shakespeare's plays, "A Midsummer Night's Dream",
and "Romeo and Juliet". These parallels concern
themes and prototypical Shakespearian character
types. Both plays have a distinct pair of lovers',
Hermia and Lysander, and Romeo and Juliet,
respectively. Both plays could have also easily been
tragedy or comedy with a few simple changes. A
tragic play is a play in which one or more characters is
has a moral flaw that leads to his/her downfall. A
comedic play has at least one humorous character,
and a successful or happy ending. Comparing these

two plays is useful to find how Shakespeare uses

similar character types in a variety of plays, and the
versatility of the themes which he uses. In "Romeo
and Juliet", Juliet is young, "not yet fourteen", and she
is beautiful. Juliet is also prudent. She feels that
because they have just met, they should abstain from
sexual intercourse. Hermia is also young, and
prudent. When Lysander suggests that "One turf shall
serve as a pillow for both of us, One heart, one bed,
two bosoms, and one troth," Hermia replies "Nay,
good Lysander. For my sake, my dear, Lie further off
yet; do not lie so near." Although this couple has
known each other for a while (Romeo and Juliet knew
each other for one night when the above quote was
spoken), Hermia also abstains from even sleeping
near Lysander even though she believes he does not
have impure intentions. Romeo's and Juliet's families
are feuding. Because of these feuds, their own
parents will not allow the lovers to see each other. In
the a differnet way Hermia is not allowed to marry
Lysander. Egeus tells the Duke that his daughter can
marry Demetrius, not Lysander. Hermia replies ". . . If I
refuse to wed Demetrius," Egeus replies "Either to die
the death, or to abjure for ever the society of men." If
Hermia does go against her father's wishes, and weds
Lysander, she will either be put to death, or be forced
to become a nun.
Both pairs of lovers also seek

help from another. Juliet and Romeo seek Friar

Lawrence, and Lysander and Hermia seek Lysander's
aunt, who lives in the woods near Athens. Both sets of
youths have the same character type. They are
young, their love is prohibited, both women are
prudent, and both seek the help of an adult. Yet they
have their subtle differences.For example, Lysander,
never mentioned a love before Hermia. Romeo loved
Rosaline, before he loved Juliet. Hermia's family and
Lysander's family were not feuding, whereas the
Montagues' and Capulets' feude was central to the
plot of the play.The stories of "Romeo and Juliet" and
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" are very different
however. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a comedy.
Oberon, king of the fairies, sends a mischievous imp
named, Puck, to play a trick on the queen of the
fairies, Titania, and on a pair of Athenian youth. Puck
turns Nick Bottom's head into that of an ass (Nick
Bottom is the man in the play production within "A
Midsummer Night's Dream"; he tried to play every
part), and places an herb on Titania that causes her to
fall in love with him. This is quite humorous. However,
at the end of the play all the couples are back
together, with the ones they love. Thus Lysander and
Hermia do get married. If Egeus had showed up at the
wedding, he could have killed her. Egeus' dominate
nature is his flaw', and if he would have attended the

wedding, and killed his daughter, this play could have

been a tragedy.
Likewise, "Romeo and Juliet",
could have been a comedy. This play is a tragedy, not
because one character has a flaw, but both families
have a flaw- pride. Prohibited love, romance,
controlling families, both plays have it all. With a few
simple modifications, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
could have been a tragedy, and "Romeo and Juliet"
could have been a comedy. Shakespeare however,
uses many of the same character types, young,
prudent, rebellous lovers, and controling family
members, in both comedies and tragedies. The end
results are character molds, along with theme molds
that can be easily translated into almost any plot, in
any play.
18 This is one of the most famous of all the sonnets,
justifiably so. But it would be a mistake to take it
entirely in isolation, for it links in with so many of the
other sonnets through the themes of the descriptive
power of verse; the ability of the poet to depict the fair
youth adequately, or not; and the immortality
conveyed through being hymned in these 'eternal
lines'. It is noticeable that here the poet is full of
confidence that his verse will live as long as there are
people drawing breath upon the earth, whereas later
he apologises for his poor wit and his humble lines

which are inadequate to encompass all the youth's

excellence. Now, perhaps in the early days of his love,
there is no such self-doubt and the eternal summer of
the youth is preserved forever in the poet's lines. The
poem also works at a rather curious level of achieving
its objective through dispraise. The summer's day is
found to be lacking in so many respects (too short, too
hot, too rough, sometimes too dingy), but curiously
enough one is left with the abiding impression that 'the
lovely boy' is in fact like a summer's day at its best,
fair, warm, sunny, temperate, one of the darling buds
of May, and that all his beauty has been wonderfully
highlighted by the comparison.
130 With a deftness of touch that takes away any
sting that might otherwise arise from implied criticism
of other sonneteers, the poet satirises the tradition of
comparing one's beloved to all things beautiful under
the sun, and to things divine and immortal as well. It is
often said that the praise of his mistress is so negative
that the reader is left with the impression that she is
almost unlovable. On the contrary, although the octet
makes many negative comparisons, the sestet
contrives to make one believe that the sound of her
voice is sweeter than any music, and that she far
outdistances any goddess in her merely human
beauties and her mortal approachability. A typical
sonnet of the time which uses lofty comparisons to

praise a beloved idol is given below. There are many

others, and the tradition of fulsome praise in this vein
stretches back to Petrarch and his sonnets

The portrait of a Lady - Henry James was born in

New York City in 1843 and was raised in Manhattan.
James's father, a prominent intellectual and social
theorist.
In novels such as The American,The
Europeans, and Daisy Miller, James perfected a
unique brand of psychological realism, taking as his
primary subject the social maneuverings of the upper
classes, particularly the situation of Americans living
in Europe. His prose is remarkable for its elegance of
balance, clarity, and precision. For James, America
represented optimism and innocence, while Europe
represented decadence and social sophistication;

First written in the 1880s and extensively revised in

1908, The Portrait of a Lady is often considered to be
James's greatest achievement. In it, he explored
many of his most characteristic themes, including the
conflict between American individualism and
European social custom and the situation of
Americans in Europe. It also includes many of his
most memorable characters, including the lady of the
novel's title, Isabel Archer, the indomitable Mrs.
Touchett, the wise and funny Ralph Touchett, the fasttalking Henrietta Stackpole, and the sinister villains,
Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle
Character List
Isabel Archer- The novel's protagonist, the Lady of the
title. Isabel is a young woman from Albany, New York,
who travels to Europe with her aunt, Mrs. Touchett.
Isabel's experiences in Europeshe is wooed by an
English lord, inherits a fortune, and falls prey to a
villainous scheme to marry her to the sinister Gilbert
Osmondforce her to confront the conflict between
her desire for personal independence and her
commitment to social propriety. Isabel is the main
focus of Portrait of a Lady, and most of the thematic
exploration of the novel occurs through her actions,
thoughts, and experiences. Ultimately, Isabel chooses
to remain in her miserable marriage to Osmond rather
than to violate custom by leaving him and searching

for a happier life.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem,

Massachusetts, in 1804.The majority of Hawthornes
work takes Americas Puritan past as its subject, but
The Scarlet Letter uses the material to greatest effect.
The Puritans were a group of religious reformers who
arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630s under the
leadership of John Winthrop (whose death is
recounted in the novel). The religious sect was known
for its intolerance of dissenting ideas and lifestyles. In
The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses the repressive,
authoritarian Puritan society as an analogue for
humankind in general. The Puritan setting also

enables him to portray the human soul under extreme

-pressures. Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth,
while unquestionably part of the Puritan society in
which they live, also reflect universal experiences.
Hawthorne speaks specifically to American issues, but
he circumvents the aesthetic and thematic limitations
that might accompany such a focus. His universality
and his dramatic flair have ensured his place in the
literary canon.The Scarlet Letter is Symbolic novel;
semi-allegorical; historical fiction; romance (in the
sense that it rejects realism in favor of symbols and
ideas)The narrator is an unnamed customhouse
surveyor who writes some two hundred years after the
events he describes took place. He has much in
common with Hawthorne but should not be taken as a
direct mouthpiece for the authors opinions. The
narrator is omniscient, because he analyzes the
characters and tells the story in a way that shows that
he knows more about the characters than they know
about themselves. Yet, he is also a subjective
narrator, because he voices his own interpretations
and opinions of things. He is clearly sympathetic to
Hester and Dimmesdale. The tone is varies
contemplative and somewhat bitter in the introduction;
thoughtful, fairly straightforward, yet occasionally
tinged with irony in the body of the narrative The
Hester`s Prynne husband having inexplicably failed to

join her in Boston following their emigration from

Europe, Hester Prynne engages in an extramarital
affair with Arthur Dimmesdale. When she gives birth to
a child, Hester invokes the condemnation of her
communitya condemnation they manifest by forcing
her to wear a letter A for adulteroras well as the
vengeful wrath of her husband, who has appeared
just in time to witness her public shaming. The themes
of the novel are: sin, experience, and the human
condition; the nature of evil; identity and society; the
motifs are Civilization versus the wilderness; night
versus day; evocative names and the symbols are:
The scarlet letter; the town scaffold; the meteor; Pearl;
the rosebush next to the prison door.
Hester Prynne
Although The Scarlet Letter is about Hester Prynne,
the book is not so much a consideration of her innate
character as it is an examination of the forces that
shape her and the transformations those forces effect.
We know very little about Hester prior to her affair with
Dimmesdale and her resultant public shaming. We
read that she married Chillingworth although she did
not love him, but we never fully understand why. The
early chapters of the book suggest that, prior to her
marriage, Hester was a strong-willed and impetuous
young womanshe remembers her parents as loving
guides who frequently had to restrain her incautious

behavior. The fact that she has an affair also suggests

that she once had a passionate nature.
But it is what happens after Hesters affair that makes
her into the woman with whom the reader is familiar.
Shamed and alienated from the rest of the community,
Hester becomes contemplative. She speculates on
human nature, social organization, and larger moral
questions. Hesters tribulations also lead her to be
stoic and a freethinker. Although the narrator pretends
to disapprove of Hesters independent philosophizing,
his tone indicates that he secretly admires her
independence and her ideas.
Hester also becomes a kind of compassionate
maternal figure as a result of her experiences. Hester
moderates her tendency to be rash, for she knows
that such behavior could cause her to lose her
daughter, Pearl. Hester is also maternal with respect
to society: she cares for the poor and brings them
food and clothing. By the novels end, Hester has
become a protofeminist mother figure to the women of
the community. The shame attached to her scarlet
letter is long gone. Women recognize that her
punishment stemmed in part from the town fathers
sexism, and they come to Hester seeking shelter from
the sexist forces under which they themselves suffer.
Throughout The Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as
an intelligent, capable, but not necessarily

extraordinary woman. It is the extraordinary

circumstances shaping her that make her such an
important figure.
Roger Chillingworth
As his name suggests, Roger Chillingworth is a man
deficient in human warmth. His twisted, stooped,
deformed shoulders mirror his distorted soul. From
what the reader is told of his early years with Hester,
he was a difficult husband. He ignored his wife for
much of the time, yet expected her to nourish his soul
with affection when he did condescend to spend time
with her. Chillingworths decision to assume the
identity of a leech, or doctor, is fitting. Unable to
engage in equitable relationships with those around
him, he feeds on the vitality of others as a way of
energizing his own projects. Chillingworths death is a
result of the nature of his character. After Dimmesdale
dies, Chillingworth no longer has a victim. Similarly,
Dimmesdales revelation that he is Pearls father
removes Hester from the old mans clutches. Having
lost the objects of his revenge, the leech has no
choice but to die.
Ultimately, Chillingworth represents true evil. He is
associated with secular and sometimes illicit forms of
knowledge, as his chemical experiments and medical
practices occasionally verge on witchcraft and murder.
He is interested in revenge, not justice, and he seeks

the deliberate destruction of others rather than a

redress of wrongs. His desire to hurt others stands in
contrast to Hester and Dimmesdales sin, which had
love, not hate, as its intent. Any harm that may have
come from the young lovers deed was unanticipated
and inadvertent, whereas Chillingworth reaps
deliberate harm.
Arthur Dimmesdale
Arthur Dimmesdale, like Hester Prynne, is an
individual whose identity owes more to external
circumstances than to his innate nature. The reader is
told that Dimmesdale was a scholar of some renown
at Oxford University. His past suggests that he is
probably somewhat aloof, the kind of man who would
not have much natural sympathy for ordinary men and
women. However, Dimmesdale has an unusually
active conscience. The fact that Hester takes all of the
blame for their shared sin goads his conscience, and
his resultant mental anguish and physical weakness
open up his mind and allow him to empathize with
others. Consequently, he becomes an eloquent and
emotionally powerful speaker and a compassionate
leader, and his congregation is able to receive
meaningful spiritual guidance from him.
Ironically, the townspeople do not believe
Dimmesdales protestations of sinfulness. Given his
background and his penchant for rhetorical speech,

Dimmesdales congregation generally interprets his

sermons allegorically rather than as expressions of
any personal guilt. This drives Dimmesdale to further
internalize his guilt and self-punishment and leads to
still more deterioration in his physical and spiritual
condition. The towns idolization of him reaches new
heights after his Election Day sermon, which is his
last. In his death, Dimmesdale becomes even more of
an icon than he was in life. Many believe his
confession was a symbolic act, while others believe
Dimmesdales fate was an example of divine
judgment.
Pearl
Hesters daughter, Pearl, functions primarily as a
symbol. She is quite young during most of the events
of this novelwhen Dimmesdale dies she is only
seven years oldand her real importance lies in her
ability to provoke the adult characters in the book.
She asks them pointed questions and draws their
attention, and the readers, to the denied or
overlooked truths of the adult world. In general,
children in The Scarlet Letter are portrayed as more
perceptive and more honest than adults, and Pearl is
the most perceptive of them all.
Pearl makes us constantly aware of her mothers
scarlet letter and of the society that produced it. From
an early age, she fixates on the emblem. Pearls

innocent, or perhaps intuitive, comments about the

letter raise crucial questions about its meaning.
Similarly, she inquires about the relationships between
those around hermost important, the relationship
between Hester and Dimmesdaleand offers
perceptive critiques of them. Pearl provides the texts
harshest, and most penetrating, judgment of
Dimmesdales failure to admit to his adultery. Once
her fathers identity is revealed, Pearl is no longer
needed in this symbolic capacity; at Dimmesdales
death she becomes fully human, leaving behind her
otherworldliness and her preternatural vision.
A Passage to India (1924) is a novel by E. M. Forster
set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the
Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was
selected as one of the 100 great works of English
literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. A
Passage to India revolves around three characters:
Dr. Aziz, his British friend Cyril Fielding, and Adela
Quested. During a trip to the Marabar Caves, Adela
accuses Aziz of attempting to rape her. Aziz's trial,
and its run-up and aftermath, bring out all the racial
tensions and prejudices between indigenous Indians
and the British colonists who rule India. In A Passage
to India, Forster employs his first-hand knowledge of

India. A Passage to India has four central themes:

the difficulty of friendship between an Englishman and
an Indian, the racism and oppression of the British
who rule India, the "muddle" of Indian civilization and
psychology, and the unity of all life. One of the most
overt themes of the novel is the racist attitude of the
British in India toward the native population, and the
oppression of Indians that frequently results. The
cruelty of Major Callendar, who boasts of torturing an
injured Indian youth by putting pepper on his
shattered face, is the most egregious example. But
there are many others, from Mr. McBryde's
supercilious views on Indians' lust for white women, to
Mrs. Turton's vitriolic rantings, to Mr. Turton's
arrogance, Ronny Heaslop's ignorance, and Miss
Derek's scorn for her Indian employers. All the British
(except Fielding) assume that Aziz is guilty before his
trial, simply because he is an Indian. Yet even
Fielding, who respects Indians more than any other
white man, eventually comes to accept that British
rule over India is the best thing for that country. As a
result of British rudeness and arrogance, the Indians
in the novel come to hate their foreign masters. In
Part Two of A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
frequently refers to India as a "muddle." This is not
necessarily because he is racist, but because his
logical Western mind cannot accept the extreme

diversity of Indian religion, society, wildlife, and even

architecture. Westerners, Forster explains, are always
trying to categorize and label things, but India defies
labelling. But the Indians quietly accept this diversity,
not as a muddle but as a "mystery," like the Catholic
Trinity or Sacraments, things ordained by God that
must be accepted but cannot be explained in terms of
reason. Additionally, Indians rely more on emotion and
intuition in their judgments of people and events,
whereas the British are always trying to make their
opinions scientific and logical, like McBryde with his
pseudo-scientific theory about the lusting after of dark
men for white women. These differences in outlook
and psychology, Forster implies, are the ultimate
differences between the British and the Indians. For
British minds, shackled by reason and race, cannot
understand the Indian psyche. The Difficulty of
English-Indian Friendship A Passage to India begins
and ends by posing the question of whether it is
possible for an Englishman and an Indian to ever be
friends, at least within the context of British
colonialism. Forster uses this question as a
framework to explore the general issue of Britains
political control of India on a more personal level,
through the friendship between Aziz and Fielding. At
the beginning of the novel, Aziz is scornful of the
English, wishing only to consider them comically or

ignore them completely. Yet the intuitive connection

Aziz feels with Mrs. Moore in the mosque opens him
to the possibility of friendship with Fielding. Through
the first half of the novel, Fielding and Aziz represent
a positive model of liberal humanism: Forster
suggests that British rule in India could be successful
and respectful if only English and Indians treated each
other as Fielding and Aziz treat each otheras worthy
individuals
who
connect
through
frankness,
intelligence, and good will.
Yet in the aftermath of the novels climaxAdelas
accusation that Aziz attempted to assault her and her
subsequent disavowal of this accusation at the trial
Aziz and Fieldings friendship falls apart. The strains
on their relationship are external in nature, as Aziz
and Fielding both suffer from the tendencies of their
cultures. Aziz tends to let his imagination run away
with him and to let suspicion harden into a grudge.
Fielding suffers from an English literalism and
rationalism that blind him to Azizs true feelings and
make Fielding too stilted to reach out to Aziz through
conversations or letters. Furthermore, their respective
Indian and English communities pull them apart
through their mutual stereotyping. As we see at the
end of the novel, even the landscape of India seems
to oppress their friendship. Forsters final vision of the
possibility of English-Indian friendship is a pessimistic

one, yet it is qualified by the possibility of friendship

on English soil, or after the liberation of India. As the
landscape itself seems to imply at the end of the
novel, such a friendship may be possible eventually,
but not yet.
Dr. Aziz A young Muslim Indian Physician who works
at the British hospital in Chandrapore. He relies
heavily on intuition over logic, and he is more
emotional than his best friend, Fielding. He makes
friends easily and seems quite garrulous at times. His
chief drawback is an inability to view a situation
without emotion, which Forster suggests is a typical
Indian difficulty. Cyril Fielding The 45-year-old,
unmarried British headmaster of the small
government-run college for Indians. Fielding's logical
Western mind cannot comprehend the muddle (or
mystery) of India, but he is highly tolerant and
respectful toward Indians. He befriends Dr. Aziz, but
cultural and racial differences, and personal
misunderstandings, separate them. Adela Quested A
young British schoolmistress who is visiting India with
the vague intention of marrying Ronny Heaslop.
Intelligent, brave, honest, but slightly prudish, she is
what Fielding calls a "prig." She arrives with the
intention of seeing the real India. But after a
frightening trip to the Marabar Caves, she falsely
accuses Aziz of sexually assaulting her. Mrs. Moore

The elderly, thoughtful mother of Ronny Heaslop. She

is visiting Chandrapore to oversee her son's
engagement to Adela Quested. She respects Indians
and their customs, and the Indians in the novel
appreciate her more than they do any other Briton.
After undergoing an experience similar to Adela's, she
becomes apathetic and bitter. Ronny Heaslop The
British city magistrate of Chandrapore. Though not a
bad man, he shares his Anglo-Indian colleagues'
racist view of Indians. He breaks off his engagement
to Adela after she retracts her accusation against
Aziz. He considers it a betrayal of their race.
Professor Narayan Godbole An elderly, courteous,
contemplative Brahmin who views the world with
equanimity. He remains totally aloof from the novel's
conflicts. Mr. Turton
The British city collector of
Chandrapore. He does not hate Indians, for that
would be to negate his life's work. Nevertheless, he is
fiercely loyal to his race, reviles less bigoted people
like Fielding, and regards natives with thinly veiled
contempt. Mrs. Turton Mr. Turton's wife. Openly
racist, snobbish, and rude toward Indians and those
Anglo-Indians who are different, she screams at Adela
in the courtroom when the latter retracts her
accusation against Aziz. Maj. Callendar The British
head doctor and Aziz's superior at the hospital. He is
more openly racist than any other male character.

Rumors circulate among Indians that Callendar atually

tortured an injured Indian by putting pepper instead of
antiseptic on his wounds. Mr. McBryde The British
superintendent of police in Chandrapore. Like Mr.
Turton, he considers dark-skinned races inferior to
light-skinned ones. During Aziz's trial, he publicly
asserts that it is a scientific fact that dark men lust
after white women. Nevertheless, he is more tolerant
of Indians than most Britons, and he is friendly with
Fielding. Miss Derek An Englishwoman employed by
a Hindu royal family. She frequently borrows their car
-- and does not trouble to ask their permission or
return it in time. She is too boisterous and easygoing
for most of her compatriots' tastes. She has an affair
with McBryde, though. Nawab Bahadur The chief
Indian gentleman in Chandrapore. Wealthy (he owns
a car) and generous (he lends his car), he is loyal to
the British (he lends his car to Ronny Heaslop). But
after the trial, he gives up his title of "nawab," which
the British bestowed on him, in favor of plain "mister."
Hamidullah Aziz's uncle and friend. Educated in law
at Cambridge University, he declares at the beginning
of the novel that it is easier to be friends with an
Englishman in England than in India. Aziz comes to
agree with him. Amritrao A prominent Indian lawyer
from Calcutta, called in to defend Aziz. He is known
for his strong anti-British sentiment. He takes the case

for political reasons and becomes disgusted when the

case evaporates in court.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semiautobiographical novel by James Joyce, first
serialized in The Egoist from 1914 to 1915 and
published in book form in 1916. It depicts the
formative years in the life of Stephen Dedalus, a
fictional alter ego of Joyce and a pointed allusion to
the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology,
Daedalus. A Portrait is a key example of the
Knstlerroman (an artist's bildungsroman) in
English literature. Joyce's novel traces the intellectual
and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen
Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against
the Catholic and Irish conventions he has been
brought up in. He finally leaves for Paris to pursue his
calling as an artist. The work pioneers some of
Joyce's modernist techniques that would later come to

fruition in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The Modern

Library ranked Portrait as the third greatest Englishlanguage novel of the twentieth century. Portrait is a
complete rewrite of his earlier attempt at the story,
Stephen Hero, with which he grew frustrated in 1905.
Large portions of Stephen Hero found their way,
sometimes nearly unchanged, into Portrait, but the
tone was changed considerably in order to focus more
exclusively on the perspective of Stephen Dedalus.
For instance, several of his siblings made prominent
appearances in the earlier novel, but are almost
completely absent in Portrait. The incomplete first
draft of Stephen Hero was published posthumously in
1944.
Stylistically, the novel is written as a thirdperson narrative with minimal dialogue, though
towards the very end of the book dialogue-intensive
scenes and finally journal entries by Stephen are
introduced to mirror his alienation from society. Since
the work covers Stephen's life from the time he was a
child to his growing independence and ultimate
abandoning of Ireland as a young man, the style of
the work progresses through each of its five chapters,
with the complexity of language gradually increasing.
However, throughout the work, language and prose
are used to portray indirectly the state of mind of the
protagonist, and the subjective impact of the events of
his life. Hence the fungible length of some scenes and

chapters, where Joyce's intent was to capture the

subjective experience through language, rather than
to present the actual experience through prose
narrative. The book is set in Joyce's native Ireland,
especially in Dublin. It deals with many Irish issues
such as the quest for autonomy and the role of the
Catholic church. A particular figure, who is also
mentioned in Dubliners and Ulysses, and alluded to in
Finnegans Wake, is the Irish leader Charles Stewart
Parnell
Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), officially
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in
Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and
then a Captain of several Ships, is a novel by
Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature
and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a
classic of English literature.
The book became tremendously popular as soon as it
was published (John Gay said in a 1726 letter to Swift
that "it is universally read, from the cabinet council to
the nursery" [1] ), and it is likely that it has never been
out of print since then.
The book presents itself as a simple traveller's
narrative with the disingenuous title Travels into

Several Remote Nations of the World, its authorship

assigned only to "Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon,
then a captain of several ships". Different editions
contain different versions of the prefatory material
which are basically the same as forewords in modern
books. The book proper then is divided into four parts,
which are as follows.
A Voyage To Lilliput
The book begins with a short preamble in which
Gulliver, in the style of books of the time, gives a brief
outline of his life and history prior to his voyages. He
enjoys travelling. This turns out to be fortunate. On his
first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a
shipwreck and awakes to find himself a prisoner of a
race of people one-twelfth the size of normal human
beings (6 inches/15cm tall), who are inhabitants of the
neighbouring and rival countries of Lilliput and
Blefuscu. After giving assurances of his good
behaviour, he is given a residence in Lilliput and
becomes a favourite of the court. From there, the
book follows Gulliver's observations on the Court of
Lilliput, which is intended to satirize the court of
George I (King of Great Britain at the time of the
writing of the Travels). Gulliver assists the Lilliputians
to subdue their neighbours the Blefuscudians (by
stealing their fleet). However, he refuses to reduce the

country to a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King

and the court. Gulliver is charged with treason and
sentenced to be blinded. With the assistance of a kind
friend, Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he spots
and retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be
rescued by a passing ship which takes him back
home. The feuding between the Lilliputians and the
Blefuscudians is meant to represent the feuding
countries of England and France, but the reason for
the war is meant to satirize the feud between
Catholics and Protestants, over issues that Swift may
have found trivial.
A Voyage to Brobdingnag
When the sea vessel Adventure, which was an old old
wooden ship, is steered off course by storms and
forced to go in to land for want of fresh water, Gulliver
is abandoned by his companions and found by a
farmer who is 60 feet (24 meters) tall (the scale of
Lilliput is approximately 1:12; of Brobdingnag 10:1).
He brings Gulliver home and his extremely smart and
strong daughter cares for Gulliver. The farmer treats
him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money. The
word gets out and the queen wants to see the show.
She loves Gulliver and he is then bought by the
Queen of Brobdingnag and kept as a favorite at court.
In between small adventures such as fighting giant

wasps and being carried to the roof by a monkey, he

discusses the state of Europe with the King, who is
not impressed. On a trip to the seaside, his "traveling
box" is seized by a giant eagle which drops Gulliver
and his box right into the sea where he is picked up
by some sailors, who return him to England.
A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib,
Luggnagg and Japan
Gulliver has pirates as a crew and they maroon him
on a desolate rocky island, near India. Fortunately he
is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom
devoted to the arts of music and mathematics but
utterly unable to use these for practical ends. The
device described simply as The Engine is possibly the
first literary description in history of something
resembling a computer. Laputa's method of throwing
rocks at rebellious surface cities also seems the first
time that aerial bombardment was conceived as a
method of warfare. Gulliver is then taken to Balnibarbi
to await a Dutch trader who can take him on to Japan
and from there to England. While there, he tours the
country as the guest of a low-ranking courtier and
sees the ruin brought about by blind pursuit of science
without practical results in a satire on the Royal
Society and its experiments. He travels to a
magician's dwelling and discusses history with the

ghosts of historical figures, the most obvious

restatement of the "ancients versus moderns" theme
in the book. He also encounters the struldbrugs,
unfortunates who are immortal and very, very old. The
trip is otherwise reasonably free of incident and
Gulliver returns home, determined to stay there for the
rest of his days.
A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home,
Gulliver returns to sea where his crew was captured
by Dutch and Japanese pirates in order to force them
to also become pirates. He is abandoned in a landing
boat and comes first upon a race of (apparently)
hideous deformed creatures to which he conceives a
violent antipathy. Shortly thereafter he meets a horse
and comes to understand that the horses (in their
language Houyhnhnm or "the perfection of nature")
are the rulers and the deformed creatures ("Yahoos")
are human beings in their basest form. Gulliver
becomes a member of the horse's household, and
comes to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms
and their lifestyle, rejecting humans as merely Yahoos
endowed with some semblance of reason which they
only use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature
gave them. However, an Assembly of the
Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some

semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization

and he is expelled. He is then rescued, against his
will, by a Portuguese ship, and is surprised to see that
the captain, a Yahoo, is a wise, courteous and
generous person. He returns to his home in England.
However, he is unable to reconcile himself to living
among Yahoos; he becomes a recluse, remaining in
his house, largely avoiding his family and his wife, and
spending several hours a day speaking with the
horses in his stables.
Gulliver's Travels has been the recipient of several
designations: from Menippean satire to a children's
story, from proto-Science Fiction to a forerunner of the
modern novel. Possibly one of the reasons for the
book's classic status is that it can be seen as many
things to many different people. Broadly, the book has
three themes:
a satirical view of the state of European
government, and of petty differences between
religions.

an inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt

or whether they become corrupted.

a restatement of the older "ancients versus

moderns" controversy previously addressed by Swift
in The Battle of the Books.

In terms of storytelling and construction the parts

follow a pattern:
The causes of Gulliver's misadventures become
more malignant as time goes on - he is first
shipwrecked, then abandoned, then attacked by
strangers, then attacked by his own crew.

Gulliver's attitude hardens as the book progresses

he is genuinely surprised by the viciousness and
politicking of the Lilliputians but finds the behavior of
the Yahoos in the fourth part reflective of the behavior
of people.

Each part is the reverse of the preceding part

Gulliver is big/small/sensible/ignorant, the countries
are
complex/simple/scientific/natural,
forms
of
Government are worse/better/worse/better than
England's.

Gulliver's view between parts contrasts with its

other coinciding part Gulliver sees the tiny
Lilliputians as being vicious and unscrupulous, and
then the king of Brobdingnag sees Europe in exactly
the same light. Gulliver sees the Laputians as
unreasonable, and Gulliver's Houyhnhnm master sees
humanity as equally so.

No form of government is ideal the simplistic

Brobdingnagians enjoy public executions and have
streets infested with beggars, the honest and upright
Houyhnhnms who have no word for lying are happy to
suppress the true nature of Gulliver as a Yahoo and

equally unconcerned about his reaction to being

expelled.

Specific individuals may be good even where the

race is bad Gulliver finds a friend in each of his
travels and, despite Gulliver's rejection of and horror
toward all Yahoos, is treated very well by the
Portuguese captain, Don Pedro, who returns him to
England at the novel's end.
Of equal interest is the character of Gulliver himself
he progresses from a cheery optimist at the start of
the first part to the pompous misanthrope of the
book's conclusion and we may well have to filter our
understanding of the work if we are to believe the final
misanthrope wrote the whole work. In this sense
Gulliver's Travels is a very modern and complex
novel. There are subtle shifts throughout the book,
such as when Gulliver begins to see all humans, not
just those in Houyhnhnm-land, as Yahoos.
Despite the depth and subtlety of the book, it is often
classified as a children's story because of the
popularity of the Lilliput section (frequently
bowdlerised) as a book for children. It is still possible
to buy books entitled Gulliver's Travels which contain
only parts of the Lilliput voyage.

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade:

A Duty-Dance With Death (1969), by Kurt
Vonnegut, is a science fiction analysis of the human
condition using time travel as a plot device for
protagonist's coping with the aftermath of the Allied
bombing of Dresden in World War II and the meaning
of his life. Everyman Billy Pilgrim comes unstuck in
time, travelling to and fro in his life, randomly
(re)experiencing different times of his life, most
notably his World War Two soldiering and his family
relationships. Themes emerge via story-detail
accretion, as sub-plots overlap. In the title page, the
novel's full title and the writer's biography presage the
story's themes:
Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A
Duty-Dance With Death by Kurt Vonnegut, a fourthgeneration German-American now living in Cape Cod,
who, as an American infantry scout hors de combat,
as a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of
Dresden, Germany, "The Florence of the Elbe", a long
time ago, and survived to tell the tale.
The (short) title, Slaughterhouse-Five (German:
Schlachthof-Fnf) is where the Germans house

protagonist-soldier Billy Pilgrim as their PoW in

Dresden. The sub-title, The Children's Crusade: A
Duty-Dance With Death, refers to the Children's
Crusade, in the 13th century, of which many erstwhile
boy-soldiers were sold in slavery. The incidents of
Billy Pilgrim's story substantiate the sub-sub-title:
Duty-Dance with Death, about Louis-Ferdinand
Cline's writing, discussed in the preamble. First, the
Narrator visits war buddy Bernard V. Ohare, to talk
about war incidents he might use in the novel. [1] Mrs
OHare receives the Narrator coldly, denouncing his
writing a novel in which they (he, Bernard, and their
war buddies) are heroes, rather than scared boys,
arguing it would encourage more wars to which
children would be sent to die. The Narrator agrees,
that he and his friends were children at adulthood's
edge, and promises to title his novel The Children's
Crusade; she was my friend after that, says the
Narrator.
Chaplain's Assistant Billy Pilgrim, a disoriented, illtrained American soldier, is captured by the Germans
in the Battle of the Bulge. He arrived in France just as
the Germans defeat his unit; they had no time to issue
him combat kit and a weapon. The Germans then
imprison him and other PoWs in a disused
slaughterhouse in Dresden. During Allied air raids,
PoWs and guards hide in a deep cellar, because of

that, they are of the few survivors of the citydestroying firestorm.

For unexplained reasons, Billy has become "frozen in
time", perhaps because of the slight brain damage he
suffered in surviving an airplane crash. He meets and
is kidnapped by extraterrestrial aliens from the planet
Tralfamadore, who exhibit him in a zoo, with movie
star Montana Wildhack as his mate. The
Tralfamadorians see in four dimensions, the fourth
dimension being time. Already, the Tralfamadorians
have seen every instant of their lives, believing they
cannot choose to change anything about their fates,
but can choose to concentrate upon any moment in
their lives.
Billy travels in time, uncontrolled by him, reliving
occasions of his lives, real and fantastic, giving him
constant stage fright, because he never knows to
what life occasion he will next travel. He spends time
on Tralfamadore; in Dresden; in the War, walking in
deep snow before his German capture; his post-war,
whitebread, married life in 1950s U.S.A.; and the
moment of his murder. Moreover, by the time of his
murder, Billy has adopted Tralfamadorian fatalism,
granting him personal peace, and communicates it to
people, and so becoming popular throughout the
Earth.

His fatalism is grounded in the reality he perceives;

noting the copy of the Serenity Prayer in Billy's office,
the narrator says, "Among the things Billy Pilgrim
could not change were the past, the present, and the
future." A Tralfamadorian sympathetic to humans, tells
him that of thirty-one inhabited planets they visited,
"only on Earth is there any talk of free will."
The narrator's examination of Billy's life the death
of his wife, his German captivity, and the bombing of
Dresden segues to the secondary theme. Although
the his captivity in Dresden is the story's centre, the
secondary theme is his easy life as a rich optometrist
in Illium, New York, that sharply contrasts with his war
life and with his pre-war life in the postGreat
Depression U.S. Throughout, the narration repeats
existential phrases; So it goes whenever death and
dying occur downplays mortality to a routine, even
humorous occurrence, and Mustard gas and roses
denoting the odor of a rotting corpse or a of drunk's
breath.
Billy's death is consequence of a string of events;
after the Germans over-run his Army unit in
Luxembourg, Billy wanders the woods clad only a light
jacket and shoes, suffering hypothermia. In the event,
he meets Roland Weary, a soldier carrying prodigious
amounts of kit and wearing so much clothing he

barely notices the winter cold. Rather than share with

Billy, Weary makes it his business to keep Billy alive
(despite his pathetic appearance and willingness to
quit, lie down, and die), spending the time threatening
and cajoling Billy to stay alive. At their capture, the
Germans confiscate everything Weary has, including
his boots, giving him clogs to wear; he eventually dies
of gangrene caused by the clogs. Because Weary
blames Billy for his capture, and long-awaited death,
Weary's morbid friend, Paul Lazzaro, vows to kill him,
because revenge is "the sweetest thing in life". Timetraveller Billy, already knows where, when, and how
he will be killed: Paul Lazzaro shoots him after a
speech in a balkanized U.S. During the speech, Billy
says he will be killed after the speech, using said fact
to tell his audience that, because time is (just) another
dimension, all three-dimensional slices of life, as
people know them, simultaneously exist in a different
world, therefore, everyone is always alive, and death
is a bizzare, traumatic event that will happen to
everyone.
Characters
Narrator intrusive and anonymous, recurring as
a minor character, and as Kurt Vonnegut, himself,
when the narrator says: "That was I. That was me.
That was the author of this book". The narrator begins

the story describing his connection to the fire-bombing

of Dresden, and his reasons for writing Slaughter
House Five. Billy Pilgrim An optometrist esconced
in a dull, safe marriage, and living in Ilium, New York.
He randomly travels in time and is abducted by the
"four-dimensional" aliens from planet Tralfamadore. In
WWII, he was a PoW in Dresden, which much colours
his post-war life. His time travel occurs among
disparate times of his life, re-living events past, and,
so, becomes fatalistic, because he has seen when,
how, and why he will die. Roland Weary A weak
man dreaming of grandeur, he "saves" Billy several
times (despite Billy's protests) in hopes of military
glory, leading to their capture, and the loss of their
winter uniforms and boots. In the event, Weary dies of
gangrene in the train enroute to the PoW camp; he
blames Billy in his dying words. Paul Lazzaro
Another PoW. A sickly, ill-tempered car thief from
Cicero, Illinois, who takes Weary's dying words as a
revenge commission to kill Billy. He keeps a mental
enemies list, claiming he can have anyone "killed for a
thousand dollars plus traveling expenses". Kilgore
Trout - A failed science fiction writer who manages
newspaper delivery boys, and has received only one
fan letter. After Billy meets him in a back alley in Ilium,
New York, he invites Trout to his wedding anniversary
celebration. There, Kilgore follows Billy, thinking he

has seen a time window. That incident is triggered, not

by Billy's time travelling, but by a repressed war
memory. Edgar Derby A middle-aged man who
pulled strings to be able to fight in the war. He is a
fellow PoW to Billy and Paul Lazzaro. The Nazis
summarily execute him for stealing a teapot from a
Dresden corpse. Howard W. Campbell, Jr. An
American Nazi; before the War, he lived in Germany
as a successful, famous, German-language
playwright, and became a Nazi propagandist. In an
essay, he connects the misery of American poverty to
the disheveled appearance and behaviour of the
American PoWs. Edgar Derby confronts and
challenges him when he tries recruiting American
PoWs into the Free America Corps to fight the
Communist Russians in behalf of the Nazis. He is the
protagonist of Mother Night, an earlier Vonnegut
novel. Valencia Merble Billy's fat wife, and mother
of their two children, Robert and Barbara; he is
emotionally distant from her. She dies of carbon
monoxide poisoning resultant from a car crash
enroute to the hospital attending Billy after his
aeroplane crash. Robert Pilgrim Son of Billy and
Valencia; a troubled, middle-class boy, and
disappointing son, who so absorbs the whitebread
culture's
anti-Communist
world
view,
he
metamorphoses from pampered, suburban adolescent

rebel to hardcore Green Beret soldier. Barbara Pilgrim

Daughter of Billy and Valencia. She is a "bitchy
flibbertigibbet", from having had to assume the
family's leadership at the age of twenty. She has "legs
like an Edwardian grand piano", marries an
optometrist, and treats her widower father as a
childish invalid. Tralfamadorians The extraterrestrial
race who appear (to humans) like upright toilet
plungers with a hand atop, in which is set a single,
green eye. They abduct Billy and teach him about
time's relation to the world as a fourth dimension, fate,
and death's indiscriminate nature. Montana Wildhack
A film actress whom the Tralfamadorians kidnap to
be Billy's mate. "Wild Bob" - A superannuated Army
officer Billy met him in the war; he is crazy and dies.
He tells the PoWs to call him "Wild Bob"; he thinks
them his command, the 451st Infantry Regiment; "if
you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, ask for Wild Bob", is an
inspirational phrase of his that Billy repeats to himself.
Major themes Slaughterhouse-Five explores the
concepts of Fate and Free Will, and the illogical
nature of human beings. The protagonist, Billy Pilgrim,
is unstuck in time, experiencing the events of his life
at random, with no idea of which part of his life he will
next visit (re-live) so, his life does not end with
death; he re-lives his death, before its time, an
experience often mingling with other life experiences.

Billy Pilgrim says there is no free will; an assertion

confirmed by a Tralfamadorian, who says to him, "I've
visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe . . .
Only on Earth is there any talk of free will". This is the
central device, Vonnegut's belief that most humanity is
inconsequential; that is, they do what they do,
because they must.
To the Tralfamadorians, everything simultaneously
exists, therefore everyone is always alive. They, too,
have wars and suffer tragedies (they destroy the
universe whilst testing spaceship fuels), but, when
Billy asks what they do about wars, they reply that
they simply ignore them. Vonnegut uses the
Tralfamadorians to counter his true theme: life, as a
human being, only is enjoyable with unknowns.
Tralfamadorians do not make choices about what they
do, but have power only over what they think (a
subject explored in Timequake). As the Narrator, Mr
Vonnegut believes this theory, exposited in chapter
one, "that writing an anti-war book is like writing an
anti-glacier book", since both will always exist, and
are both equally difficult to stop. This concept is
difficult for Billy to accept, at first. Author Vonnegut's
other novels, e.g. The Sirens of Titan, suggest that
the Tralfamadorians, in Slaughterhouse-Five, satirize
Fatalism. The Tralfamadorians represent the belief in
war as inevitable. In their hapless destruction of the

universe, Vonnegut does not sympathize with their

philosophy. To human beings, Vonnegut says,
ignoring a war is unacceptable when we have free
will. This human illogicality appears in the climax,
which, ironically, occurs, not with the Dresden fire
bombing, but with the summary execution of a man
who committed a petty theft. In all of this horror,
death, and destruction, time is taken to punish one
man. Yet, the time is taken, and Vonnegut takes the
outside opinion of the bird asking, "Poo-tee-weet?".
The same birdsong ends the novel God Bless You,
Mr. Rosewater, as the protagonist gives away his
fortune to the plaintiffs of hundreds of false paternity
suits brought against him a Dada observation of
human absurdity. Slaughterhouse-Five is framed with
chapters in his own voice, about his experience of
war. This decision indicates that the novel is intimately
connected with his life and convictions. Once the
connection is established, Vonnegut withdraws,
allowing the unfolding of Billy Pilgrim's story.
Throughout, the writer is some character in the story:
in the PoW camp latrine, the corpse mines of
Dresden, when he mistakenly dials Billys telephone
number. These authorial appearances anchor Billy
Pilgrims life to larger reality, highlighting his existential
struggle to fit in the human world.

The Crying of Lot 49 is thought by many to be

Pynchon's best work. Others surely disagree, arguing
that The Crying of Lot 49 is simply Pynchon's most
accessible work, its short length and streamlined (for
Pynchon) plot allowing the reader to follow along with
less work than his longer novels require. But no
matter where The Crying of Lot 49 stands within

Pynchon's body of work, there is no doubt that in its

humor, story, and deep insight into American culture
and beyond, the book is an American landmark.
Oedipa Maas, the young wife of a man named Mucho,
lives in Kinneret, California. One day, she receives a
letter from a law firm telling her that her ex-boyfriend,
Pierce Inverarity, has died and named her the
executor of his estate. Oedipa resolves to faithfully
execute her duty, and she travels to San Narciso
(Pierce's hometown) where she meets the lawyer,
Metzger, assigned to help her, with whom she
spontaneously begins an affair.
As they go about sorting through Pierce's tangled
financial affairs, Oedipa takes note of the fact that
Pierce owned an extensive stamp collection. One
night, Oedipa and Metzger go to a bar called The
Scope, where they meet Mike Fallopian, a member of
a right-wing fanatical organization called the Peter
Pinguid Society. In the bathroom of the bar, Oedipa
sees a symbol that she later learns is supposed to
represent a muted post horn. Written below the
symbol are the acronym W.A.S.T.E. and the name
"Kirby." Oedipa makes a note of all this info before
returning to chat with Mike at the bar.
Oedipa and Metzger take a trip one day to Fangoso
Lagoons, an area in which Pierce owned a substantial
amount of land. There, they meet a man named

Manny di Presso, a lawyer who is suing the Inverarity

estate on behalf of his client, who recovered and sold
human bones to Inverarity but did not receive proper
payment. Pierce wanted the bones to make charcoal
for cigarette filters. A member of The Paranoids, a
hippie band that follows Oedipa around, points out
that Manny's story is similar to that of the 17th-century
play The Courier's Tragedy. Oedipa and Metzger
decide to see a production of the play nearby. The
play mentions the word "Tristero," a word that
fascinates Oedipa because of its placement within the
play. She goes backstage to speak with the director,
Randolph Driblette, who tells her to stop
overanalyzing the play. She resolves to call him back
later.
After rereading Pierce's will later on, Oedipa goes to a
stockholders' meeting for the Yoyodyne company, a
firm owned in part by Inverarity. After taking a brief
tour, she stumbles into the office of Stanley Koteks,
who is drawing the muted post horn symbol on his
pad of paper. He tells her about a scientist named
John Nefastis who has built a type of Mexwell's
Demon, or a physically impossible machine that
allows for perpetual motion by violating the Second
Law of Thermodynamics. Koteks encourages Oedipa
to meet with Nefastis.
Wanting to learn more about The Courier's Tragedy,

Oedipa gets an anthology of Jacobean revenge plays.

She notices that the paperback copy has no mention
of the Tristero, however, which puzzles her. She
decides to go to Berkeley to meet with the publisher.
In the meantime, she stops by an elderly care home
that Pierce had owned, where she meets an old man
with a ring depicting the muted post horn. She also
hires a philatelist (stamp expert) named Genghis
Cohen to go through Pierce's stamp collection. After
doing so, Genghis tells her that some of Pierce's
stamps have a muted post horn in their watermark.
Oedipa begins to realize that she is uncovering a
large mystery.
Oedipa goes to Berkeley to meet with John Nefastis,
who shows her his perpetual motion machine. It can
only be operated by people with special mental
capabilities allowing them to communicate with the
machine, and he tells Oedipa that she has no such
mental skills. He then propositions her, causing her to
run out screaming. Oedipa then begins a very, very
long night of wandering around aimlessly all over the
Bay area. She encounters the muted post horn
symbol almost everywhere, leading her to believe that
she may be hallucinating. Just before dawn, however,
she encounters an old man who hands her a letter
and asks her to deliver it via W.A.S.T.E. under the
freeway. After helping the man to his room, Oedipa

finds a W.A.S.T.E. facility under the freeway, drops in

the letter and waits for the delivery man, whom she
follows to Oakland and back to Berkeley after he picks
up the letters and delivers them. Oedipa returns to her
home in Kinneret to see her doctor, who begins
shooting at her as she pulls up. He has gone crazy,
obsessed with the idea that Israelis are coming to kill
him because he assisted the Nazis in World War II.
After he is arrested, Oedipa sees her husband,
Mucho, and spends some time with him, although she
quickly sees that he has become addicted to LSD,
making it difficult to communicate effectively.
Increasingly alone, Oedipa seeks out Emory Bortz, an
English professor at San Narciso College who has
extensive knowledge of Jacobean revenge plays.
With his help, she pieces together the history of the
Tristero, which dates back to mid-16th-century
Europe. She learns that Driblette has died, which
means she will never know why he included the lines
about the Tristero in his production of The Courier's
Tragedy (these lines are not ordinarily included in the
play). Oedipa begins to give up as she realizes that
she is very lonely and has no real friends. She visits
Mike Fallopian again, who suggests that the whole
Tristero mystery may be nothing more than a huge,
complex joke played on her by Pierce. Oedipa will not
accept this possibility but realizes that every route

leading to the Tristero also leads to the Inverarity

Estate. Meanwhile, Genghis Cohen helps her piece
together some mysteries about Pierce's stamp
collection, which is to be auctioned off by a local
dealer as Lot 49. Genghis has heard that a secretive
bidder will attend the auction to bid on Lot 49, but he
will not reveal himself beforehand. Oedipa goes to the
auction, excited to find out who the bidder is, thinking
that he may know the key to the Tristero. The novel
ends as Oedipa sits in the room waiting for the crying
of Lot 49, when she will discover the identity of the
mystery bidder.

The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story

written by Edgar Allan Poe. The story was first
published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in
September 1839. It was slightly revised before being
included in a collection of his fiction entitled Tales of
the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. It contains
within it the poem "The Haunted Palace", which had

earlier been published separately in the April 1839

issue of the Baltimore Museum magazine. The tale
opens with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house
of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter
from him in a distant part of the country complaining
of an illness and asking for his comfort. Although Poe
wrote this short story before the invention of modern
psychological science, Usher's symptoms can be
described according to its terminology. They include
hyperesthesia (extreme hypersensitivity to light,
sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria, and acute
anxiety. It is revealed that Usher's twin sister,
Madeline, is also ill, suffering from catalepsy. The
narrator is impressed with Usher's paintings, and
attempts to cheer him by reading with him and
listening to his improvised musical compositions on
the guitar. Usher sings "The Haunted Palace", then
tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in
to be sentient, and that this sentience arises from the
arrangement of the masonry and vegetation
surrounding it. Usher later informs the narrator that his
sister has died and insists that she be entombed for
two weeks in a vault in the house before being
permanently buried. They inter her, but over the next
week both Usher and the narrator find themselves
becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent
reason. A storm begins. Usher comes to the narrator's

bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault,

and throws open his window to the storm. He notices
that the bog surrounding the house seems to glow in
the dark, as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings,
although there is no lightning. The narrator attempts to
calm Usher by reading aloud The Mad Trist, a novel
involving a knight named Ethelred who breaks into a
hermit's dwelling in an attempt to escape an
approaching storm, only to find a palace of gold
guarded by a dragon. He also finds hanging on the
wall a shield of shining brass of which is written a
legend: that the one who slays the dragon wins the
shield. With a stroke of his mace, Ethelred fells the
dragon, who dies with a piercing shriek, and proceeds
to take the shield, which falls to the floor with an
unnerving clatter. As the narrator reads of the knight's
forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping
sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the
dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is
heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield
falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and
hollow, can be heard. Usher becomes increasingly
hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these sounds
are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive
when she was entombed and that Usher knew that
she was alive. The bedroom door is then blown open
to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls violently

in death upon her brother, who dies of his own terror.

The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does
so, notices a flash of light causing him to look back
upon the House of Usher, in time to watch it break in
two, the fragments sinking into the tarn.

The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1969 novel

by John Fowles. The book was inspired by the 1823
novel Ourika by Claire de Duras, which Fowles
translated to English in 1977 (and revised in 1994).
Fowles was a great fan of Thomas Hardy and in
particular likened his own work to that of Tess
D`Uberville in Hardy's popular novel, Tess of the

d'Urbervilles. The novel's central character is Sarah

Woodruff, the Woman of the book's title, also known
by the nickname "Tragedy" and by the unfortunate
nickname "The French Lieutenant's Whore." She lives
in the town of Lyme Regis as a disgraced woman,
supposedly ill-used by a French sailor who returned to
France and turned out to be married to another
woman. Throughout the story Sarah is portrayed with
ambiguity: is she a genuine ill-used woman, the
product of the French Lieutenant's lust? Is she a sly,
manipulative character who tries to get Charles to
succumb to her, using her own self pity? Is she merely
a victim to the notions of gender in upper middle class
Victorian society? Sarah spends her limited time off
from her domestic work on the Cobb [sea wall] at
Lyme Regis, staring at the sea. One day, she is seen
there by the gentleman Charles Smithson and his
fiance, Ernestina Freeman, the shallow daughter of a
wealthy tradesman. Ernestina tells Charles something
of Sarah's story, and he develops a strong curiosity
about her. They end up having several clandestine
meetings during which Sarah tells Charles her history
and asks for his support, mostly emotional. Although
Charles tries to remain distant, he ends up sending
Sarah to Exeter, where he cannot resist stopping to
see her during a journey. At the same time, Charles
learns his projected inheritance from an older uncle is

in jeopardy, as the uncle is now engaged to a woman

young enough to bear him an heir. From there,
Fowles offers three different endings. In one, Charles
marries Ernestina. Their marriage is not a happy one,
and Sarah's fate is unknown. Charles tells Ernestina
about an encounter with whom he implies is the
"French Lieutenant's Whore", but apparently
eliminating the worst details, and the matter is closed.
This ending, however, is possibly dismissed as a
daydream, before the alternative events of the
subsequent meeting with Ernestina are portrayed.
Before the second and third endings, the narrator not to be confused with Fowles himself - appears as a
minor character in the carriage Charles occupies on a
train. He flips a coin to determine in which order he
will portray the two other possible endings (detailed
below), emphasising their equal plausibility.In the
second, Charles becomes intimate with Sarah and
breaks his engagement to Ernestina, which brings
unpleasant consequences of its own. He becomes
disgraced, and his uncle marries and gets an heir.
Sarah flees to London without telling Charles, who,
very much in love with her, looks for her for several
years before finding her again--she is living with
several artists, likely the Rossettis, and enjoys an
artistic, creative life. He then sees that he has a child.
Their future as a family is left open, but there is an

implication that they might reunite. In the third, the

narrator appears again, standing outside the house in
which the second ending took place, apparently
directly afterwards. He turns back his pocketwatch by
fifteen minutes before leaving in his carriage. Events
are the same as in the second ending, but when
Charles finds Sarah again in London, their reunion is
a sour one. He realizes he has been used, but sees
some benefit in the journey towards self-knowledge.
Sarah does not tell him about the child, and
expresses no interest in furthering their relationship.
Charles leaves the house, deciding to return to
America, and sees the carriage in which Fowles
presumably drove off. This raises the question: is
Sarah a manipulating, lying woman with few morals,
exploiting Charles' obvious love for her to get what
she wants? Along the way, Fowles discourses on the
difficulties of controlling the characters one has
created, and offers tangents on Victorian customs and
class differences, the theories of Charles Darwin, and
the poetry of Matthew Arnold and Lord Tennyson. He
also calls upon the literature of Thomas Hardy to raise
questions about Victorian conventions, attitudes and
society. He questions the role of the author, such as
the time he speaks of how Charles "disobeys" his
orders, implying that the characters have a life of their
own within the novel. The idea of Existentialism is

mentioned at several points in the novel, and in

particular detail at the end, after the portrayal of the
two, apparently equally possible, endings.

The Old Man and the Sea is a novella (just over 100
pages in length) by Ernest Hemingway, written in
Cuba in 1951 and published in 1952. It was the last
major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway
and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous
works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging Cuban
fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in
the Gulf Stream.[1] It is noteworthy in twentieth century

fiction, reaffirming Hemingway's worldwide literary

prominence as well as being a significant factor in his
selection for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
The Old Man and the Sea recounts an epic battle
between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant
marlin said to be the largest catch of his life. It opens
by explaining that the fisherman, who is named
Santiago (but only directly referred to outside of
dialogue as "the old man"), has gone 84 days without
catching any fish at all. He is apparently so unlucky
that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been
forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and
been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen.
Still dedicated to the old man, however, the boy visits
Santiago's shack each night, hauling back his fishing
gear, feeding him, and discussing American baseball
most notably Santiago's idol, Joe DiMaggio.
Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will
venture far out into the Gulf to fish, confident that his
unlucky streak is near its end.
Thus on the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone,
taking his skiff far into the Gulf. He sets his lines and,
by noon of the first day, a big fish that he is sure is a
marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great
marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff.
Two days and two nights pass in this manner, during

which the old man bears the tension of the line with
his body. Though he is wounded by the struggle and
in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate
appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him
as a brother. He also determines that because of the
fish's great dignity, no one will be worthy of eating the
marlin. On the third day of the ordeal, the fish begins
to circle the skiff, indicating his tiredness to the old
man. Santiago, now completely worn out and almost
in delirium, uses all the strength he has left in him to
pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a
harpoon, thereby ending the long battle between the
old man and the tenacious fish. Santiago straps the
marlin to his skiff and heads home, thinking about the
high price the fish will bring him at the market and
how many people he will feed.
While Santiago continues his journey back to the
shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by
the marlin in the water. The first, a great mako shark,
Santiago kills with his harpoon, losing that weapon in
the process. He makes a new harpoon by strapping
his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next
line of sharks; in total, five sharks are slain and many
others are driven away. But by night, the sharks have
almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a
skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and
its head, the latter still bearing the giant spear. The old

man castigates himself for sacrificing the marlin.

Finally reaching the shore before dawn on the next
day, he struggles on the way to his shack, carrying the
heavy mast on his shoulder. Once home, he slumps
onto his bed and enters a very deep sleep. A group of
fishermen gathers the next day around the boat where
the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the
fishermen measures it to be eighteen feet from nose
to tail. Tourists at the nearby caf mistakenly take it
for a shark. Manolin, worried during the old man's
endeavor, cries upon finding him safe asleep. The boy
brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man
wakes, they promise to fish together once again.
Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of lions on
the African beach.
Unity: Hemingway spends a good deal of time
drawing connections between Santiago and his
natural environment: the fish, birds, and stars are all
his brothers or friends, he has the heart of a turtle,
eats turtle eggs for strength, drinks shark liver oil for
health, etc. Also, apparently contradictory elements
are repeatedly shown as aspects of one unified
whole: the sea is both kind and cruel, feminine and
masculine, the Portuguese man of war is beautiful but
deadly, the mako shark is noble but a cruel, etc. The
novella's premise of unity helps succor Santiago in the
midst of his great tragedy. For Santiago, success and

failure are two equal facets of the same existence.

They are transitory forms which capriciously arrive
and depart without affecting the underlying unity
between himself and nature. As long as he focuses on
this unity and sees himself as part of nature rather
than as an external antagonist competing with it, he
cannot be defeated by whatever misfortunes befall
him.
Heroism: Triumph over crushing adversity is the heart
of heroism, and in order for Santiago the fisherman to
be a heroic emblem for humankind, his tribulations
must be monumental. Triumph, though, is never final,
as Santiago's successful slaying of the marlin shows,
else there would be no reason to include the final 30
pages of the book. Hemingway vision of heroism is
Sisyphean,
requiring
continuous
labor
for
quintessentially ephemeral ends. What the hero does
is to face adversity with dignity and grace, hence
Hemingway's Neo-Stoic emphasis on self-control and
the other facets of his idea of manhood. What we
achieve or fail at externally is not as significant to
heroism as the comporting ourselves with inner
nobility. As Santiago says, "[M]an is not made for
defeat....A man can be destroyed but not defeated"
(103).
Manhood: Hemingway's ideal of manhood is nearly
inseparable from the ideal of heroism discussed

above. To be a man is to behave with honor and

dignity: to not succumb to suffering, to accept one's
duty without complaint, and most importantly, to
display a maximum of self-control. The representation
of femininity, the sea, is characterized expressly by its
caprice and lack of self-control; "if she did wild or
wicked things it was because she could not help
them" (30). The representation of masculinity, the
marlin, is described as great,' beautiful,' calm,'
and noble,' and Santiago steels him against his
pain by telling himself, "suffer like a man. Or a fish,"
referring to the marlin (92). In Hemingway's ethical
universe, Santiago shows us not only how to live life
heroically but in a way befitting a man.
Pride: While important, Hemingway's treatment of
pride in the novella is ambivalent. A heroic man like
Santiago should have pride in his actions, and as
Santiago shows us, "humility was not disgraceful and
it carried no loss of true pride" (14). At the same,
though, it is apparently Santiago's pride which
presses him to travel dangerously far out into the sea,
"beyond all people in the world," to catch the marlin
(50). While he loved the marlin and called him brother,
Santiago admits to killing it for pride, his blood stirred
by battle with such a noble and worthy antagonist.
Some have interpreted the loss of the marlin as the
price Santiago had to pay for his pride in traveling out

so far in search of such a catch. Contrarily, one could

argue that this pride was beneficial as it allowed
Santiago an edifying challenge worthy of his heroism.
In the end, Hemingway suggests that pride in a job
well done, even if pride drew one unnecessarily into
the situation, is a positive trait.
Success: Hemingway draws a distinction between two
different types of success: outer, material success and
inner, spiritual success. While Santiago clearly lacks
the former, the import of this lack is eclipsed by his
possession of the later. One way to describe
Santiago's story is as a triumph of indefatigable spirit
over exhaustible material resources. As noted above,
the characteristics of such a spirit are those of
heroism and manhood. That Santiago can end the
novella undefeated after steadily losing his hardearned, most valuable possession is a testament to
the privileging of inner success over outer success.
Worthiness: Being heroic and manly are not merely
qualities of character which one possesses or does
not. One must constantly demonstrate one's heroism
and manliness through actions conducted with dignity.
Interestingly, worthiness cannot be conferred upon
oneself. Santiago is obsessed with proving his
worthiness to those around him. He had to prove
himself to the boy: "the thousand times he had proved
it mean nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each

time was a new time and he never thought about the

past when he was doing it" (66). And he had to prove
himself to the marlin: "I'll kill him....in all his greatness
and glory. Although it is unjust. But I will show him
what a man can do and what a man endures" (66). A
heroic and manly life is not, then, one of inner peace
and
self-sufficiency;
it
requires
constant
demonstration of one's worthiness through noble
action.

"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is a

short story by Ernest Hemingway. Set in Africa, it
was published in 1936 concurrently with "The Snows
of Kilimanjaro."
As the story opens, Francis
Macomber and his wife Margaret (usually referred to
as 'Margot'), are being guided on a big-game hunt by
professional hunter Robert Wilson. We learn that
earlier in the day Francis had panicked and, in his
own words, "bolted like a rabbit" when a wounded lion
charged him. Margot mocks Macomber for this act of

cowardice, and that night she sleeps with Wilson. The

next day the party chase down three buffalo, and
Macomber joins Wilson in killing two of them.
Exhilarated by the hunt, Macomber feels transformed
and no longer afraid. "You know I dont think Id ever
be afraid of anything again," he says. It is soon
learned that the third buffalo was only wounded and
has gone into the bush. Wilson and Macomber will
have to track and kill the wounded animal,
reproducing the dangerous circumstances of the
previous day's lion hunt. Still Macomber feels
unafraid, and when the buffalo charges him he stands
his ground and fires at it, "shooting a touch high each
time and hitting the heavy horns, splintering and
chipping them like hitting a slate roof". Margot grabs a
gun, ostensibly to stop the still-charging buffalo, but
her shot hits Macomber, killing him. Though Wilson
says he will report Macomber's death as accidental, it
is unclear whether Margot shot her husband on
purpose or by accident. An important passage in the
story occurs in the moments just before Francis and
Robert Wilson go into the bush after the buffalo.
"You've gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly," his
wife said contemptuously, but her contempt was not
secure. She was very afraid of something. Macomber
laughed, a very natural hearty laugh. "You know I
have ," he said. "I really have." "Isn't it sort of late?"

Margot said bitterly. Because she had done the best

she could for many years back and the way they were
together now was no one person's fault. "Not for me,"
said Macomber. From this dialogue, the reader sees
that Margot has lost her edge in the relationship. She
is no longer in charge and deeply resents Macomber's
new-found courage.
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" has
been acclaimed as one of Hemingway's most
successful artistic achievements.[2] This is largely due
to the ambiguous complexity of its characters and
their motivations, and the debate this ambiguity has
generated. The most prominent source of debate, of
course, is whether Margot's shooting of her husband
was deliberate, accidental, or some combination of
the two. In the estimation of critic Kenneth G.
Johnston, "the prevailing critical view is that she
deliberatelyor at best, 'accidentally on purpose'
murdered him",[3] but there are many, including
Johnston himself, who hold the opposite view.
Hemingway scholar Carlos Baker calls Margot
Macomber "easily the most unscrupulous of
Hemingway's fictional females"; a woman "who is
really and literally deadly" and who "covets her
husband's money but values even more her power
over him."[4] Other authors who hold similar views

regarding Margot include Philip Young, Leslie A.

Fiedler and Frank O'Connor. A related point that has
been widely debated is whether Hemingway intended
the reader to view Robert Wilson as a heroic figure,
embodying Hemingway's ideal of the courageous,
hyper-masculine male. Critics who argue for Margot's
innocence are especially likely to question this
positive view of Wilson. It is through Wilson's words
that Margot's intentions are questioned, notably when
he asks after the shooting "Why didn't you poison
him? That's what they do in England." If Wilson is
intended to be the story's voice of morality, then this
implied accusation is damning. But if Wilson is a lessperfect character himself, then his judgement of
Margot is suspect. Some critics have noted that
Wilson chases down the buffalo in a car, violating the
law and perhaps also Hemingway's code of fairness in
hunting. Kenneth G. Johnston argues that Wilson "has
much to gain by making Mrs. Macomber believe that
the death of her husband could be construed as
murder," since he could lose his license if Margot
accurately described Wilson's use of the car in the
buffalo hunt.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by Edgar

Allan Poe first published in 1843. It follows an
unnamed narrator who insists on his sanity after
murdering an old man with a "vulture eye". The
murder is carefully calculated, and the murderer hides
the body by cutting it into pieces and hiding it under
the floorboards. Ultimately the narrator's guilt
manifests itself in the hallucination that the man's
heart is still beating under the floorboards. It is unclear
what relationship, if any, the old man and his murderer
share. It has been suggested that the old man is a

father figure or, perhaps, that his vulture eye

represents some sort of veiled secret. The ambiguity
and lack of details about the two main characters
stand in stark contrast to the specific plot details
leading up to the murder. The story was first published
in James Russell Lowell's The Pioneer in January
1843. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is widely considered a
classic of the Gothic fiction genre and one of Poe's
most famous short stories. It has been adapted or
served as an inspiration for a variety of media. "The
Tell-Tale Heart" is a first-person narrative of an
unnamed narrator who insists he is sane but suffering
from a disease which causes "over-acuteness of the
senses." The old man with whom he lives has a
clouded, pale, blue "vulture-like" eye which so
distresses the narrator that he plots to murder the old
man. The narrator insists that his careful precision in
committing the murder shows that he cannot possibly
be insane. For seven nights, the narrator opens the
door of the old man's room, a process which takes
him a full hour. However, the old man's vulture eye is
always closed, making it impossible to do the deed.
On the eighth night, the old man awakens and sits up
in his bed while the narrator performs his nightly ritual.
The narrator does not draw back and, after some
time, decides to open his lantern. A single ray of light
shines out and lands precisely on the old man's eye,

revealing that it is wide open. Thinking he hears the

old man's heartbeat beating unusually loudly from
terror, the narrator decides to strike, smothering the
old man with his own bed. The narrator proceeds to
chop up the body and conceal the pieces under the
floorboards. The narrator makes certain to hide all
signs of the crime. Even so, the old man's scream
during the night causes a neighbor to call the police.
The narrator invites the three officers to look around,
confident that they will not find any evidence of the
murder. The narrator brings chairs for them and they
sit in the old man's room, right on the very spot where
the body was concealed, yet they suspect nothing, as
the narrator has a pleasant and easy manner about
him. The narrator, however, begins to hear a faint
noise. As the noise grows louder, the narrator comes
to the conclusion that it is the heartbeat of the old man
coming from under the floorboards. The sound
increases, though the officers seem to pay no
attention to it. Shocked by the constant beating of the
heart and a feeling that the officers must be aware of
the sound, the narrator confesses to killing the old
man and tells them to tear up the floorboards to reveal
the body.