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DANIEL DEFOE

Daniel Defoe's early life was not easy. He was born about 1660 in London to a poor, but hardworking butcher who was, in addition, a Dissenter from the Church of England. Because his father
was a Dissenter, Daniel was unable to attend such traditional and prestigious schools as Oxford
and Cambridge; instead, he had to attend a Dissenting academy, where he studied science and the
humanities, preparing to become a Presbyterian minister. It was not long, however, before he
decided against the ministry. Living for the rest of his life in the strict confines of a parish seemed
stifling. Daniel recognized his independent, ambitious nature and wanted to be a part of the rapidly
growing business world of London. So, after a short apprenticeship, he decided to set up his own
haberdashery shop in a fashionable section of London.
Not only did Defoe prove that he had a flair for business, but he also tried his talents in yet another
field: politics. England, in 1685, was ruled by James Stuart, a Catholic, who was strongly antiProtestant. Defoe was a staunch believer in religious freedom and, during the next three years, he
published several pamphlets protesting against the king's policies. This in itself was risky, but Defoe
was never a man to be stopped when he felt strongly about an issue. Shortly thereafter, James
Stuart was deposed, and Defoe held several part-time advisory positions under the new king.
In 1662, the economic boom that had created many rich men and increased employment suddenly
collapsed. Foreign trade came to a sudden halt when war was declared with France. Among the
many men whose fortunes disappeared was Daniel Defoe. Then, after several years of trying to pay
off his debts, Defoe suffered another setback: King William died, and Defoe, still a fierce Dissenter,
found himself persecuted once again. And, after he published a particularly sharp political satire, he
found himself quartered in Newgate Prison for three months. He was finally released, but he had
yet another ordeal to endure; he was fastened in a public pillory for three days.
When Defoe returned home, he found a failing business and a family wracked by poverty. His
money gone, his family destitute, and his own health deteriorated, it is little wonder that Defoe
compromised his principles and pledged to support his foremost adversary, Queen Anne.
Newly sworn to the Tory party, Defoe was soon writing again. Ironically, he began publishing a
newspaper that was used for propaganda purposes by one of Queen Anne's chief politicians, a
man who had been instrumental in Defoe's imprisonment. But Defoe could not silence his true
political feelings and, several years later, he published several pamphlets and spent several more
months in Newgate Prison. A year later, Defoe was arrested because of another political writing, but
this time he avoided Newgate. Defoe then tried a new tactic: He began secretly writing for his own
party's journal, while publishing essays for the Tory journal. In 1719, Defoe finished and
published Robinson Crusoe, a long, imaginative literary masterpiece. It was popular with the public
and has never lost its appeal to adventure and romance. Other novels soon followed, in addition to
his multitude of articles and essays. But debts still plagued Defoe, and he died at 70, hiding in a
boarding house, trying to evade a bill collector.

Robinson Crusoe

Book Summary

Robinson Crusoe, as a young and impulsive wanderer, defied his parents and went to sea. He was
involved in a series of violent storms at sea and was warned by the captain that he should not be a
seafaring man. Ashamed to go home, Crusoe boarded another ship and returned from a successful

trip to Africa. Taking off again, Crusoe met with bad luck and was taken prisoner in Sallee. His
captors sent Crusoe out to fish, and he used this to his advantage and escaped, along with a slave.
He was rescued by a Portuguese ship and started a new adventure. He landed in Brazil, and, after
some time, he became the owner of a sugar plantation. Hoping to increase his wealth by buying
slaves, he aligned himself with other planters and undertook a trip to Africa in order to bring back a
shipload of slaves. After surviving a storm, Crusoe and the others were shipwrecked. He was
thrown upon shore only to discover that he was the sole survivor of the wreck.
Crusoe made immediate plans for food, and then shelter, to protect himself from wild animals. He
brought as many things as possible from the wrecked ship, things that would be useful later to him.
In addition, he began to develop talents that he had never used in order to provide himself with
necessities. Cut off from the company of men, he began to communicate with God, thus beginning
the first part of his religious conversion. To keep his sanity and to entertain himself, he began a
journal. In the journal, he recorded every task that he performed each day since he had been
marooned.
As time passed, Crusoe became a skilled craftsman, able to construct many useful things, and thus
furnished himself with diverse comforts. He also learned about farming, as a result of some seeds
which he brought with him. An illness prompted some prophetic dreams, and Crusoe began to
reappraise his duty to God. Crusoe explored his island and discovered another part of the island
much richer and more fertile, and he built a summer home there.
One of the first tasks he undertook was to build himself a canoe in case an escape became
possible, but the canoe was too heavy to get to the water. He then constructed a small boat and
journeyed around the island. Crusoe reflected on his earlier, wicked life, disobeying his parents, and
wondered if it might be related to his isolation on this island.
After spending about fifteen years on the island, Crusoe found a man's naked footprint, and he was
sorely beset by apprehensions, which kept him awake many nights. He considered many
possibilities to account for the footprint and he began to take extra precautions against a possible
intruder. Sometime later, Crusoe was horrified to find human bones scattered about the shore,
evidently the remains of a savage feast. He was plagued again with new fears. He explored the
nature of cannibalism and debated his right to interfere with the customs of another race.
Crusoe was cautious for several years, but encountered nothing more to alarm him. He found a
cave, which he used as a storage room, and in December of the same year, he spied cannibals
sitting around a campfire. He did not see them again for quite some time.
Later, Crusoe saw a ship in distress, but everyone was already drowned on the ship and Crusoe
remained companionless. However, he was able to take many provisions from this newly wrecked
ship. Sometime later, cannibals landed on the island and a victim escaped. Crusoe saved his life,
named him Friday, and taught him English. Friday soon became Crusoe's humble and devoted
slave.
Crusoe and Friday made plans to leave the island and, accordingly, they built another boat. Crusoe
also undertook Friday's religious education, converting the savage into a Protestant. Their voyage
was postponed due to the return of the savages. This time it was necessary to attack the cannibals
in order to save two prisoners since one was a white man. The white man was a Spaniard and the

other was Friday's father. Later the four of them planned a voyage to the mainland to rescue
sixteen compatriots of the Spaniard. First, however, they built up their food supply to assure enough
food for the extra people. Crusoe and Friday agreed to wait on the island while the Spaniard and
Friday's father brought back the other men.
A week later, they spied a ship but they quickly learned that there had been a mutiny on board. By
devious means, Crusoe and Friday rescued the captain and two other men, and after much
scheming, regained control of the ship. The grateful captain gave Crusoe many gifts and took him
and Friday back to England. Some of the rebel crewmen were left marooned on the island.
Crusoe returned to England and found that in his absence he had become a wealthy man. After
going to Lisbon to handle some of his affairs, Crusoe began an overland journey back to England.
Crusoe and his company encountered many hardships in crossing the mountains, but they finally
arrived safely in England. Crusoe sold his plantation in Brazil for a good price, married, and had
three children. Finally, however, he was persuaded to go on yet another voyage, and he visited his
old island, where there were promises of new adventures to be found in a later account.

Analysis
The impetus for the idea for Robinson Crusoe came to Defoe from his reading of the account of a
man named Alexander Selkirk who, in a fit of anger, had himself put ashore on a deserted island.
Earlier, Selkirk had gotten into a fight with a fellow crewman and had himself and his effects put
ashore on an island outside of Chili. When he realized the effect of his actions, he pleaded with his
shipmates to come back for him, but it was too late. He was marooned on the island for four and a
half years. When he was later rescued, the report states that he could hardly speak any more, but
he did apparently quickly regain his speech.
The account of Alexander Selkirk was published widely throughout England; he was the subject of
an article by Richard Steele in the Englishman, and an account of his adventures appeared in many
other papers. Consequently, Defoe was quite familiar with Selkirk's adventures, and some
biographers maintain that Defoe interviewed Selkirk personally, but this is debatable.
Many of Selkirk's activities on his island are paralleled by Robinson Crusoe on his island; for
example, Selkirk fed on turnips, fish, and goat's meat; he became overrun with cats, and he had to
use his ingenuity to survive, all reflected in Defoe's novel. In addition, Alexander Selkirk's original
name had been Alexander Selcraig, just as Robinson Crusoe's real name had been Robinson
Kreutznaer.
A clue to one of the basic ideas of the novel is given in the first chapter, when Crusoe's father
admonished his son to stay "in the middle station" of life this station being the one which "had
the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of
mankind." Crusoe's pride would not allow him to remain in this "middle station." So Crusoe, like the
protagonists in many Greek myths and dramas, suffers from the sin of hubris and is accordingly

punished. Often during his confinement on the island, Crusoe is reminded of his father's advice and
rues his own impulsiveness. Furthermore, the father's pronouncement that his "boy might be happy
if he would stay at home, but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that was ever
born" becomes a prophetic statement which foreshadows Crusoe's later predicament. The father's
prediction comes true sooner than even Crusoe could expect. His first boat founders and Crusoe
makes solemn vows in a time of trouble, but as soon as the trouble is over, he forgets his vows.
Thus, we have his first reneging on his word to God. Throughout the rest of the novel, he will
constantly contemplate his relationship with God and how much God is punishing him for his
"wicked ways."

Analysis of Major Characters


Robinson Crusoe
While he is no flashy hero or grand epic adventurer, Robinson Crusoe 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 seeing them again, Friday jumps and sings for joy when he meets his father, and
this emotional display makes us see what is missing from Crusoes stodgy heart. Fridays
expression of loyalty in asking Crusoe to kill him rather than leave him is more heartfelt than
anything Crusoe ever says or does. Fridays sincere questions to Crusoe about the devil, which
Crusoe answers only indirectly and hesitantly, leave us wondering whether Crusoes knowledge of

Christianity is superficial and sketchy in contrast to 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 ex-cannibal 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.

JONATHAN SWIFT

Context
Jonathan Swift, son of the English lawyer Jonathan Swift the elder, was born in Dublin, Ireland, on
November 30, 1667. He grew up there in the care of his uncle before attending Trinity College at the age
of fourteen, where he stayed for seven years, graduating in 1688. In that year, he became the secretary
of Sir William Temple, an English politician and member of the Whig party. In 1694, he took religious
orders in the Church of Ireland and then spent a year as a country parson. He then spent further time in
the service of Temple before returning to Ireland to become the chaplain of the earl of Berkeley.
Meanwhile, he had begun to write satires on the political and religious corruption surrounding him,
working on A Tale of a Tub, which supports the position of the Anglican Church against its critics on the
left and the right, and The Battle of the Books, which argues for the supremacy of the classics against
modern thought and literature. He also wrote a number of political pamphlets in favor of the Whig party.
In 1709 he went to London to campaign for the Irish church but was unsuccessful. After some conflicts
with the Whig party, mostly because of Swifts strong allegiance to the church, he became a member of
the more conservative Tory party in 1710.
Unfortunately for Swift, the Tory government fell out of power in 1714 and Swift, despite his fame for his
writings, fell out of favor. Swift, who had been hoping to be assigned a position in the Church of
England, instead returned to Dublin, where he became the dean of St. Patricks. During his brief time in
England, Swift had become friends with writers such as Alexander Pope, and during a meeting of their
literary club, the Martinus Scriblerus Club, they decided to write satires of modern learning. The third
voyage of Gullivers Travels is assembled from the work Swift did during this time. However, the final

work was not completed until 1726, and the narrative of the third voyage was actually the last one
completed. After his return to Ireland, Swift became a staunch supporter of the Irish against English
attempts to weaken their economy and political power, writing pamphlets such as the satirical A Modest
Proposal, in which he suggests that the Irish problems of famine and overpopulation could be easily
solved by having the babies of poor Irish subjects sold as delicacies to feed the rich.
Gullivers Travels was a controversial work when it was first published in 1726. In fact, it was not until
almost ten years after its first printing that the book appeared with the entire text that Swift had originally
intended it to have. Ever since, editors have excised many of the passages, particularly the more caustic
ones dealing with bodily functions. Even without those passages, however, Gullivers Travels serves as
a biting satire, and Swift ensures that it is both humorous and critical, constantly attacking British and
European society through its descriptions of imaginary countries.
Late in life, Swift seemed to many observers to become even more caustic and bitter than he had been.
Three years before his death, he was declared unable to care for himself, and guardians were
appointed. Based on these facts and on a comparison between Swifts fate and that of his character
Gulliver, some people have concluded that he gradually became insane and that his insanity was a
natural outgrowth of his indignation and outrage against humankind. However, the truth seems to be that
Swift was suddenly incapacitated by a paralytic stroke late in life, and that prior to this incident his
mental capacities were unimpaired.
Gullivers Travels is about a specific set of political conflicts, but if it were nothing more than that it would
long ago have been forgotten. The staying power of the work comes from its depiction of the human
condition and its often despairing, but occasionally hopeful, sketch of the possibilities for humanity to
rein in its baser instincts.

Gulliver's Travels

Book Summary

Gulliver's Travels is an adventure story (in reality, a misadventure story) involving several voyages
of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, who, because of a series of mishaps en route to recognized
ports, ends up, instead, on several unknown islands living with people and animals of unusual
sizes, behaviors, and philosophies, but who, after each adventure, is somehow able to return to his
home in England where he recovers from these unusual experiences and then sets out again on a
new voyage.
Book I: When the ship Gulliver is traveling on is destroyed in a storm, Gulliver ends up on the
island of Lilliput, where he awakes to find that he has been captured by Lilliputians, very small
people approximately six inches in height. Gulliver is treated with compassion and concern. In
turn, he helps them solve some of their problems, especially their conflict with their enemy,
Blefuscu, an island across the bay from them. Gulliver falls from favor, however, because he

refuses to support the Emperor's desire to enslave the Blefuscudians and because he "makes
water" to put out a palace fire. Gulliver flees to Blefuscu, where he converts a large war ship to his
own use and sets sail from Blefuscu eventually to be rescued at sea by an English merchant ship
and returned to his home in England.
Book II: As he travels as a ship's surgeon, Gulliver and a small crew are sent to find water on an
island. Instead they encounter a land of giants. As the crew flees, Gulliver is left behind and
captured. Gulliver's captor, a farmer, takes him to the farmer's home where Gulliver is treated
kindly, but, of course, curiously. The farmer assigns his daughter, Glumdalclitch, to be Gulliver's
keeper, and she cares for Gulliver with great compassion. The farmer takes Gulliver on tour across
the countryside, displaying him to onlookers. Eventually, the farmer sells Gulliver to the Queen. At
court, Gulliver meets the King, and the two spend many sessions discussing the customs and
behaviors of Gulliver's country. In many cases, the King is shocked and chagrined by the
selfishness and pettiness that he hears Gulliver describe. Gulliver, on the other hand, defends
England.
One day, on the beach, as Gulliver looks longingly at the sea from his box (portable room), he is
snatched up by an eagle and eventually dropped into the sea. A passing ship spots the floating
chest and rescues Gulliver, eventually returning him to England and his family.
Book III: Gulliver is on a ship bound for the Levant. After arriving, Gulliver is assigned captain of a
sloop to visit nearby islands and establish trade. On this trip, pirates attack the sloop and place
Gulliver in a small boat to fend for himself. While drifting at sea, Gulliver discovers a Flying Island.
While on the Flying Island, called Laputa, Gulliver meets several inhabitants, including the King. All
are preoccupied with things associated with mathematics and music. In addition, astronomers use
the laws of magnetism to move the island up, down, forward, backward, and sideways, thus
controlling the island's movements in relation to the island below (Balnibarbi). While in this land,
Gulliver visits Balnibarbi, the island of Glubbdubdrib, and Luggnagg. Gulliver finally arrives in Japan
where he meets the Japanese emperor. From there, he goes to Amsterdam and eventually home to
England.
Book IV: While Gulliver is captain of a merchant ship bound for Barbados and the Leeward Islands,
several of his crew become ill and die on the voyage. Gulliver hires several replacement sailors in
Barbados. These replacements turn out to be pirates who convince the other crew members to
mutiny. As a result, Gulliver is deposited on a "strand" (an island) to fend for himself. Almost
immediately, he is discovered by a herd of ugly, despicable human-like creatures who are called, he
later learns, Yahoos. They attack him by climbing trees and defecating on him. He is saved from
this disgrace by the appearance of a horse, identified, he later learns, by the name Houyhnhnm.
The grey horse (a Houyhnhnm) takes Gulliver to his home, where he is introduced to the grey's
mare (wife), a colt and a foal (children), and a sorrel nag (the servant). Gulliver also sees that the
Yahoos are kept in pens away from the house. It becomes immediately clear that, except for
Gulliver's clothing, he and the Yahoos are the same animal. From this point on, Gulliver and his
master (the grey) begin a series of discussions about the evolution of Yahoos, about topics,
concepts, and behaviors related to the Yahoo society, which Gulliver represents, and about the
society of the Houyhnhnms.

Despite his favored treatment in the grey steed's home, the kingdom's Assembly determines that
Gulliver is a Yahoo and must either live with the uncivilized Yahoos or return to his own world. With
great sadness, Gulliver takes his leave of the Houyhnhnms. He builds a canoe and sails to a
nearby island where he is eventually found hiding by a crew from a Portuguese ship. The ship's
captain returns Gulliver to Lisbon, where he lives in the captain's home. Gulliver is so repelled by
the sight and smell of these "civilized Yahoos" that he can't stand to be around them. Eventually,
however, Gulliver agrees to return to his family in England. Upon his arrival, he is repelled by his
Yahoo family, so he buys two horses and spends most of his days caring for and conversing with
the horses in the stable in order to be as far away from his Yahoo family as possible.

Analysis
It is unusual when a masterpiece develops out of an assignment, but that is, more or less, what
happened in the case of Gulliver's Travels. The Martinus Scriblerus Club, made up of such
notables as Pope, Arbuthnot, and Gay, proposed to satirize the follies and vices of learned,
scientific, and modern men. Each of the members was given a topic, and Swift's was to satirize
the numerous and popular volumes describing voyages to faraway lands. Ten years passed
between the Scriblerus project and the publication of the Travels, but when Swift finished, he
had completed what was to become a children's classic (in its abridged form) and a satiric
masterpiece. Swift kept the form of the voyage book but expanded his target. Instead of simply
parodying voyage literature, he decided to attack what he considered were people's most
conspicuous vices. He makes the abstract become concrete. Ideas are metamorphosed into
grotesque, foreign creatures; absurd customs are represented by absurd objects; and the
familiar becomes new and surprising.

Analysis of Major Characters


Lemuel Gulliver Although Gulliver is a bold adventurer who visits a multitude of strange lands, it is
difficult to regard him as truly heroic. Even well before his slide into misanthropy at the end of the book,
he simply does not show the stuff of which grand heroes are made. He is not cowardlyon the contrary,
he undergoes the unnerving experiences of nearly being devoured by a giant rat, taken captive by
pirates, shipwrecked on faraway shores, sexually assaulted by an eleven-year-old girl, and shot in the
face with poison arrows. Additionally, the isolation from humanity that he endures for sixteen years must
be hard to bear, though Gulliver rarely talks about such matters. Yet despite the courage Gulliver shows
throughout his voyages, his character lacks basic greatness. This impression could be due to the fact
that he rarely shows his feelings, reveals his soul, or experiences great passions of any sort. But other
literary adventurers, like Odysseus in Homers Odyssey, seem heroic without being particularly open
about their emotions.
What seems most lacking in Gulliver is not courage or feelings, but drive. One modern critic has
described Gulliver as possessing the smallest will in all of Western literature: he is simply devoid of a
sense of mission, a goal that would make his wandering into a quest. Odysseuss goal is to get home
again, Aeneass goal in Virgils Aeneid is to found Rome, but Gullivers goal on his sea voyage is
uncertain. He says that he needs to make some money after the failure of his business, but he rarely

mentions finances throughout the work and indeed almost never even mentions home. He has no
awareness of any greatness in what he is doing or what he is working toward. In short, he has no
aspirations. When he leaves home on his travels for the first time, he gives no impression that he
regards himself as undertaking a great endeavor or embarking on a thrilling new challenge.
We may also note Gullivers lack of ingenuity and savvy. Other great travelers, such as Odysseus, get
themselves out of dangerous situations by exercising their wit and ability to trick others. Gulliver seems
too dull for any battles of wit and too unimaginative to think up tricks, and thus he ends up being passive
in most of the situations in which he finds himself. He is held captive several times throughout his
voyages, but he is never once released through his own stratagems, relying instead on chance factors
for his liberation. Once presented with a way out, he works hard to escape, as when he repairs the boat
he finds that delivers him from Blefuscu, but he is never actively ingenious in attaining freedom. This
example summarizes quite well Gullivers intelligence, which is factual and practical rather than
imaginative or introspective.
Gulliver is gullible, as his name suggests. For example, he misses the obvious ways in which the
Lilliputians exploit him. While he is quite adept at navigational calculations and the humdrum details of
seafaring, he is far less able to reflect on himself or his nation in any profoundly critical way. Traveling to
such different countries and returning to England in between each voyage, he seems poised to make
some great anthropological speculations about cultural differences around the world, about how
societies are similar despite their variations or different despite their similarities. But, frustratingly,
Gulliver gives us nothing of the sort. He provides us only with literal facts and narrative events, never
with any generalizing or philosophizing. He is a self-hating, self-proclaimed Yahoo at the end,
announcing his misanthropy quite loudly, but even this attitude is difficult to accept as the moral of the
story. Gulliver is not a figure with whom we identify but, rather, part of the array of personalities and
behaviors about which we must make judgments.

The Queen of Brobdingnag


The Brobdingnagian queen is hardly a well-developed character in this novel, but she is important in one
sense: she is one of the very few females in Gullivers Travelswho is given much notice. Gullivers own
wife is scarcely even mentioned, even at what one would expect to be the touching moment of
homecoming at the end of the fourth voyage. Gulliver seems little more than indifferent to his wife. The
farmers daughter in Brobdingnag wins some of Gullivers attention but chiefly because she cares for
him so tenderly. Gulliver is courteous to the empress of Lilliput but presumably mainly because she is
royalty. The queen of Brobdingnag, however, arouses some deeper feelings in Gulliver that go beyond
her royal status. He compliments her effusively, as he does no other female personage in the work,

calling her infinitely witty and humorous. He describes in proud detail the manner in which he is
permitted to kiss the tip of her little finger. For her part, the queen seems earnest in her concern about
Gullivers welfare. When her court dwarf insults him, she gives the dwarf away to another household as
punishment. The interaction between Gulliver and the queen hints that Gulliver is indeed capable of
emotional connections.

Lord Munodi
Lord Munodi is a minor character, but he plays the important role of showing the possibility of individual
dissent within a brainwashed community. While the inhabitants of Lagado pursue their attempts to
extract sunbeams from cucumbers and to eliminate all verbs and adjectives from their language, Munodi
is a rare example of practical intelligence. Having tried unsuccessfully to convince his fellows of their
misguided public policies, he has given up and is content to practice what he preaches on his own
estates. In his kindness to strangers, Munodi is also a counterexample to the contemptuous treatment
that the other Laputians and Lagadans show Gulliver. He takes his guest on a tour of the kingdom,
explains the advantages of his own estates without boasting, and is, in general, a figure of great
common sense and humanity amid theoretical delusions and impractical fantasizing. As a figure isolated
from his community, Munodi is similar to Gulliver, though Gulliver is unaware of his alienation while
Munodi suffers acutely from his. Indeed, in Munodi we glimpse what Gulliver could be if he were wiser: a
figure able to think critically about life and society.

Don Pedro de Mendez


Don Pedro is a minor character in terms of plot, but he plays an important symbolic role at the end of the
novel. He treats the half-deranged Gulliver with great patience, even tenderness, when he allows him to
travel on his ship as far as Lisbon, offering to give him his own finest suit of clothes to replace the
seamans tatters, and giving him twenty pounds for his journey home to England. Don Pedro never
judges Gulliver, despite Gullivers abominably antisocial behavior on the trip back. Ironically, though Don
Pedro shows the same kind of generosity and understanding that Gullivers Houyhnhnm master earlier
shows him, Gulliver still considers Don Pedro a repulsive Yahoo. Were Gulliver able to escape his own
delusions, he might be able to see the Houyhnhnm-like reasonableness and kindness in Don Pedros
behavior. Don Pedro is thus the touchstone through which we see that Gulliver is no longer a reliable
and objective commentator on the reality he sees but, rather, a skewed observer of a reality colored by
private delusions.

Mary Burton Gulliver


Gullivers wife is mentioned only briefly at the beginning of the novel and appears only for an instant at
the conclusion. Gulliver never thinks about Mary on his travels and never feels guilty about his lack of
attention to her. A dozen far more trivial characters get much greater attention than she receives. She is,
in this respect, the opposite of Odysseuss wife Penelope in the Odyssey, who is never far from her
husbands thoughts and is the final destination of his journey. Marys neglected presence in Gullivers
narrative gives her a certain claim to importance. It suggests that despite Gullivers curiosity about new
lands and exotic races, he is virtually indifferent to those people closest to him. His lack of interest in his
wife bespeaks his underdeveloped inner life. Gulliver is a man of skill and knowledge in certain practical
matters, but he is disadvantaged in self-reflection, personal interactions, and perhaps overall wisdom.

JOHN KEATS

Context

In his short life, John Keats wrote some of the most beautiful and enduring poems in the English
language. Among his greatest achievements is his sequence of six lyric odes, written between March
and September 1 8 1 9 astonishingly, when Keats was only twenty-four years old. Keatss poetic
achievement is made all the more miraculous by the age at which it ended: He died barely a year after
finishing the ode To Autumn, in February 1 8 2 1 .
Keats was born in 1 7 9 5 to a lower-middle-class family in London. When he was still young, he lost both
his parents. His mother succumbed to tuberculosis, the disease that eventually killed Keats himself.
When he was fifteen, Keats entered into a medical apprenticeship, and eventually he went to medical
school. But by the time he turned twenty, he abandoned his medical training to devote himself wholly to
poetry. He published his first book of poems in 1 8 1 7 ; they drew savage critical attacks from an
influential magazine, and his second book attracted comparatively little notice when it appeared the next
year. Keatss brother Tom died of tuberculosis in December 1 8 1 8 , and Keats moved in with a friend in
Hampstead.
In Hampstead, he fell in love with a young girl named Fanny Brawne. During this time, Keats began to
experience the extraordinary creative inspiration that enabled him to write, at a frantic rate, all his best
poems in the time before he died. His health and his finances declined sharply, and he set off for Italy in
the summer of1 8 2 0 , hoping the warmer climate might restore his health. He never returned home. His
death brought to an untimely end one of the most extraordinary poetic careers of the nineteenth century
indeed, one of the most extraordinary poetic careers of all time. Keats never achieved widespread

recognition for his work in his own life (his bitter request for his tombstone: Here lies one whose name
was writ on water), but he was sustained by a deep inner confidence in his own ability. Shortly before
his death, he remarked that he believed he would be among the English poets when he had died.
Keats was one of the most important figures of early nineteenth-century Romanticism, a movement that
espoused the sanctity of emotion and imagination, and privileged the beauty of the natural world. Many
of the ideas and themes evident in Keatss great odes are quintessentially Romantic concerns: the
beauty of nature, the relation between imagination and creativity, the response of the passions to beauty
and suffering, and the transience of human life in time. The sumptuous sensory language in which the
odes are written, their idealistic concern for beauty and truth, and their expressive agony in the face of
death are all Romantic preoccupationsthough at the same time, they are all uniquely Keatss.
Taken together, the odes do not exactly tell a storythere is no unifying plot and no recurring
charactersand there is little evidence that Keats intended them to stand together as a single work of
art. Nevertheless, the extraordinary number of suggestive interrelations between them is impossible to
ignore. The odes explore and develop the same themes, partake of many of the same approaches and
images, and, ordered in a certain way, exhibit an unmistakable psychological development. This is not to
say that the poems do not stand on their ownthey do, magnificently; one of the greatest felicities of the
sequence is that it can be entered at any point, viewed wholly or partially from any perspective, and still
prove moving and rewarding to read. There has been a great deal of critical debate over how to treat the
voices that speak the poemsare they meant to be read as though a single person speaks them all, or
did Keats invent a different persona for each ode?
There is no right answer to the question, but it is possible that the question itself is wrong: The
consciousness at work in each of the odes is unmistakably Keatss own. Of course, the poems are not
explicitly autobiographical (it is unlikely that all the events really happened to Keats), but given their
sincerity and their shared frame of thematic reference, there is no reason to think that they do not come
from the same part of Keatss mindthat is to say, that they are not all told by the same part of Keatss
reflected self. In that sense, there is no harm in treating the odes a sequence of utterances told in the
same voice. The psychological progress from Ode on Indolence to To Autumn is intimately personal,
and a great deal of that intimacy is lost if one begins to imagine that the odes are spoken by a sequence
of fictional characters. When you think of the speaker of these poems, think of Keats as he would have
imagined himself while writing them. As you trace the speakers trajectory from the numb drowsiness of
Indolence to the quiet wisdom of Autumn, try to hear the voice develop and change under the
guidance of Keatss extraordinary language.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
The Inevitability of Death
Even before his diagnosis of terminal tuberculosis, Keats focused on death and its inevitability in his
work. For Keats, small, slow acts of death occurred every day, and he chronicled these small mortal
occurrences. The end of a lovers embrace, the images on an ancient urn, the reaping of grain in
autumnall of these are not only symbols of death, but instances of it. Examples of great beauty and art
also caused Keats to ponder mortality, as in On Seeing the Elgin Marbles ( 1 8 1 7 ). As a writer, Keats
hoped he would live long enough to achieve his poetic dream of becoming as great as Shakespeare or
John Milton: in Sleep and Poetry (1 8 1 7 ), Keats outlined a plan of poetic achievement that required him
to read poetry for a decade in order to understandand surpassthe work of his predecessors.
Hovering near this dream, however, was a morbid sense that death might intervene and terminate his
projects; he expresses these concerns in the mournful 1 8 1 8 sonnet When I have fears that I may
cease to be.

The Contemplation of Beauty


In his poetry, Keats proposed the contemplation of beauty as a way of delaying the inevitability of death.
Although we must die eventually, we can choose to spend our time alive in aesthetic revelry, looking at
beautiful objects and landscapes. Keatssspeakers contemplate urns (Ode on a Grecian Urn), books
(On First Looking into Chapmans Homer [1 8 1 6 ], On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
[1 8 1 8 ]), birds (Ode to a Nightingale), and stars (Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art [ 1 8 1 9 ]).
Unlike mortal beings, beautiful things will never die but will keep demonstrating their beauty for all time.
Keats explores this idea in the first book of Endymion (1 8 1 8 ). The speaker in Ode on a Grecian Urn
envies the immortality of the lute players and trees inscribed on the ancient vessel because they shall
never cease playing their songs, nor will they ever shed their leaves. He reassures young lovers by
telling them that even though they shall never catch their mistresses, these women shall always stay
beautiful. The people on the urn, unlike the speaker, shall never stop having experiences. They shall
remain permanently depicted while the speaker changes, grows old, and eventually dies.

Motifs
Departures and Reveries
In many of Keatss poems, the speaker leaves the real world to explore a transcendent, mythical, or
aesthetic realm. At the end of the poem, the speaker returns to his ordinary life transformed in some way
and armed with a new understanding. Often the appearance or contemplation of a beautiful object
makes the departure possible. The ability to get lost in a reverie, to depart conscious life for imaginative
life without wondering about plausibility or rationality, is part of Keatss concept of negative capability. In
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art, the speaker imagines a state of sweet unrest ( 1 2 ) in

which he will remain half-conscious on his lovers breast forever. As speakers depart this world for an
imaginative world, they have experiences and insights that they can then impart into poetry once theyve
returned to conscious life. Keats explored the relationship between visions and poetry in Ode to
Psyche and Ode to a Nightingale.

The Five Senses and Art


Keats imagined that the five senses loosely corresponded to and connected with various types of art.
The speaker in Ode on a Grecian Urn describes the pictures depicted on the urn, including lovers
chasing one another, musicians playing instruments, and a virginal maiden holding still. All the figures
remain motionless, held fast and permanent by their depiction on the sides of the urn, and they cannot
touch one another, even though we can touch them by holding the vessel. Although the poem
associates sight and sound, because we see the musicians playing, we cannot hear the music. Similarly,
the speaker in On First Looking into Chapmans Homer compares hearing Homers words to pure
serene (7 ) air so that reading, or seeing, becomes associating with breathing, or smelling. In Ode to a
Nightingale, the speaker longs for a drink of crystal-clear water or wine so that he might adequately
describe the sounds of the bird singing nearby. Each of the five senses must be involved in worthwhile
experiences, which, in turn, lead to the production of worthwhile art.

The Disappearance of the Poet and the Speaker


In Keatss theory of negative capability, the poet disappears from the workthat is, the work itself
chronicles an experience in such a way that the reader recognizes and responds to the experience
without requiring the intervention or explanation of the poet. Keatss speakers become so enraptured
with an object that they erase themselves and their thoughts from their depiction of that object. In
essence, the speaker/poet becomes melded to and indistinguishable from the object being described.
For instance, the speaker of Ode on a Grecian Urn describes the scenes on the urn for several
stanzas until the famous conclusion about beauty and truth, which is enclosed in quotation marks. Since
the poems publication in 1 8 2 0 , critics have theorized about who speaks these lines, whether the poet,
the speaker, the urn, or one or all the figures on the urn. The erasure of the speaker and the poet is so
complete in this particular poem that the quoted lines are jarring and troubling.

Symbols
Music and Musicians
Music and musicians appear throughout Keatss work as symbols of poetry and poets. In Ode on a
Grecian Urn, for instance, the speaker describes musicians playing their pipes. Although we cannot

literally hear their music, by using our imaginations, we can imagine and thus hear music. The speaker
of To Autumn reassures us that the season of fall, like spring, has songs to sing. Fall, the season of
changing leaves and decay, is as worthy of poetry as spring, the season of flowers and rejuvenation.
Ode to a Nightingale uses the birds music to contrast the mortality of humans with the immortality of
art. Caught up in beautiful birdsong, the speaker imagines himself capable of using poetry to join the
bird in the forest. The beauty of the birds music represents the ecstatic, imaginative possibilities of
poetry. As mortal beings who will eventually die, we can delay death through the timelessness of music,
poetry, and other types of art.

Nature
Like his fellow romantic poets, Keats found in nature endless sources of poetic inspiration, and he
described the natural world with precision and care. Observing elements of nature allowed Keats,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, among others, to create extended meditations and thoughtful odes
about aspects of the human condition. For example, in Ode to a Nightingale, hearing the birds song
causes the speaker to ruminate on the immortality of art and the mortality of humans. The speaker of
Ode on Melancholy compares a bout of depression to a weeping cloud ( 1 2 ), then goes on to list
specific flowers that are linked to sadness. He finds in nature apt images for his psychological state. In
Ode to Psyche, the speaker mines the night sky to find ways to worship the Roman goddess Psyche
as a muse: a star becomes an amorous glow-worm (2 7 ), and the moon rests amid a background of
dark blue. Keats not only uses nature as a springboard from which to ponder, but he also discovers in
nature similes, symbols, and metaphors for the spiritual and emotional states he seeks to describe.

The Ancient World


Keats had an enduring interest in antiquity and the ancient world. His longer poems, such as The Fall of
Hyperion or Lamia, often take place in a mythical world not unlike that of classical antiquity. He borrowed
figures from ancient mythology to populate poems, such as Ode to Psyche and To Homer ( 1 8 1 8 ).
For Keats, ancient myth and antique objects, such as the Grecian urn, have a permanence and solidity
that contrasts with the fleeting, temporary nature of life. In ancient cultures, Keats saw the possibility of
permanent artistic achievement: if an urn still spoke to someone several centuries after its creation,
there was hope that a poem or artistic object from Keatss time might continue to speak to readers or
observers after the death of Keats or another writer or creator. This achievement was one of Keatss
great hopes. In an 1 8 1 8 letter to his brother George, Keats quietly prophesied: I think I shall be among
the English poets after my death.

"When I Have Fears"


When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pild books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the nights starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting lovethen on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
Summary When Keats experiences feelings of fear (1) that he may die before he has written the
volumes of poetry that he is convinced he is capable of writing, (2) that he may never write a long
metrical romance, fragments of which float through his mind, and (3) that he may never again see a
certain woman and so never experience the raptures of passionate love then he feels that he is
alone in the world and that love and fame are worthless.
Analysis In "When I Have Fears," Keats turns to the Shakespearean sonnet with its abab, cdcd,
efef, gg rhyme scheme and its division into three quatrains and a concluding couplet. It was written
after Keats made a close study of Shakespeare's songs and sonnets and, in its development, it
imitates closely one of Shakespeares own sonnet patterns. The three quatrains are subordinate
clauses dependent on the word "when"; the concluding couplet is introduced by the word "then."
The sonnet, like "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," is constructed with care. Like
"Chapman's Homer," it is concerned with the subject of poetry, to which Keats adds another favorite
theme, that of love. The sonnet is distinguished by Keats' characteristic melodiousness and by his
very distinctive style, which is marked by the presence of archaic words borrowed from the
Elizabethan poets. The first line, "When I have fears that I may cease to be," appeals at once to the
ear and is a compelling invitation to the reader to go on with the poem. "Before high-piled books, in
charact'ry, / Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain" contains two words, charact'ry and garners,
that are quite remote from the kind of language recommended by Wordsworth in his famous
preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads and quite remote from the language used by Keats
in conversation with his friends. "When I Have Fears" is a very personal confession of an emotion
that intruded itself into the fabric of Keats' existence from at least 1816 on, the fear of an early
death. The fact that both his parents were short-lived may account for the presence of this
disturbing fear. In the poem, the existence of this fear annihilates both the poet's fame, which Keats

ardently longed for, and the love that is so important in his poetry and in his life. As it happened,
Keats was cheated by death of enjoying the fame that his poetry eventually gained for him and of
marrying Fanny Brawne, the woman he loved so passionately. This fact gives the poem a pathos
that helps to single it out from among the more than sixty sonnets Keats wrote. The "fair creature of
an hour" that Keats addresses in the poem was probably a beautiful woman Keats had seen in
Vauxhall Gardens, an amusement park, in 1814. Keats makes her into an archetype of feminine
loveliness, an embodiment of Venus, and she remained in his memory for several years; in 1818,
he addressed to her the sonnet "To a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall." "When I Have
Fears" was written the same year. One of his earliest poems, "Fill for Me a Brimming Bowl," written
in 1814, also concerns this lovely lady. In the poem, he promises that "even so for ever shall she be
/ The Halo of my Memory."

Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice Context
Jane Austen was born in Steventon, England, in 1775, where she lived for the first twenty-five years of
her life. Her father, George Austen, was the rector of the local parish and taught her largely at home.
She began to write while in her teens and completed the original manuscript of Pride and
Prejudice, titled First Impressions,between 1796 and 1797. A publisher rejected the manuscript, and it
was not until 1809 that Austen began the revisions that would bring it to its final form. 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. Austen published four more novels: Mansfield Park,
Emma, Northanger Abbey, andPersuasion. The last two were published in 1818, a year after her death.
During Austens life, however, only her immediate family knew of her authorship of these novels. At one
point, she wrote behind a door that creaked when visitors approached; this warning allowed her to hide
manuscripts before anyone could enter. Though publishing anonymously prevented her from acquiring
an authorial reputation, it also enabled her to preserve her privacy at a time when English society
associated a females entrance into the public sphere with a reprehensible loss of femininity.
Additionally, Austen may have sought anonymity because of the more general atmosphere of repression
pervading her era. As the Napoleonic Wars (18001815) threatened the safety of monarchies
throughout Europe, government censorship of literature proliferated.
The social milieu of Austens Regency England was particularly stratified, and class divisions were
rooted in family connections and wealth. In her work, Austen is often critical of the assumptions and
prejudices of upper-class England. She distinguishes between internal merit (goodness of person) and
external merit (rank and possessions). 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 classconsciousness is strong.
Socially regimented ideas of appropriate behavior for each gender factored into Austens work as well.
While social advancement for young men lay in the military, church, or law, the chief method of selfimprovement for women was the acquisition of wealth. Women could only accomplish this goal through
successful marriage, which explains the ubiquity of matrimony as a goal and topic of conversation in
Austens writing. Though young women of Austens day had more freedom to choose their husbands
than in the early eighteenth century, practical considerations continued to limit their options.
Even so, critics often accuse Austen of portraying a limited world. As a clergymans daughter, Austen
would have done parish work and was certainly aware of the poor around her. However, she wrote
about her own world, not theirs. 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. This lack of interest in the lives of the poor may be a failure on Austens
part, but it should be understood as a failure shared by almost all of English society at the time.
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. Her plots, which often feature characters forging their
respective ways through an established and rigid social hierarchy, bear similarities to such works of
Johnsons contemporaries as Pamela, written by Samuel Richardson. 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).

Plot Overview
The news that a wealthy young gentleman named Charles Bingley has rented the manor of Netherfield
Park causes a great stir in the nearby village of Longbourn, especially in the Bennet household. The
Bennets have five unmarried daughtersfrom oldest to youngest, Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and
Lydiaand Mrs. Bennet is desperate to see them all married. After Mr. Bennet pays a social visit to Mr.
Bingley, the Bennets attend a ball at which Mr. Bingley is present. He is taken with Jane and spends
much of the evening dancing with her. His close friend, Mr. Darcy, is less pleased with the evening and
haughtily refuses to dance with Elizabeth, which makes everyone view him as arrogant and obnoxious.

At social functions over subsequent weeks, however, Mr. Darcy finds himself increasingly attracted to
Elizabeths charm and intelligence. Janes friendship with Mr. Bingley also continues to burgeon, and
Jane pays a visit to the Bingley mansion. On her journey to the house she is caught in a downpour and
catches ill, forcing her to stay at Netherfield for several days. In order to tend to Jane, Elizabeth hikes
through muddy fields and arrives with a spattered dress, much to the disdain of the snobbish Miss
Bingley, Charles Bingleys sister. Miss Bingleys spite only increases when she notices that Darcy, whom
she is pursuing, pays quite a bit of attention to Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth and Jane return home, they find Mr. Collins visiting their household. Mr. Collins is a
young clergyman who stands to inherit Mr. Bennets property, which has been entailed, meaning that it
can only be passed down to male heirs. Mr. Collins is a pompous fool, though he is quite enthralled by
the Bennet girls. Shortly after his arrival, he makes a proposal of marriage to Elizabeth. She turns him
down, wounding his pride. Meanwhile, the Bennet girls have become friendly with militia officers
stationed in a nearby town. Among them is Wickham, a handsome young soldier who is friendly toward
Elizabeth and tells her how Darcy cruelly cheated him out of an inheritance.
At the beginning of winter, the Bingleys and Darcy leave Netherfield and return to London, much to
Janes dismay. A further shock arrives with the news that Mr. Collins has become engaged to Charlotte
Lucas, Elizabeths best friend and the poor daughter of a local knight. Charlotte explains to Elizabeth
that she is getting older and needs the match for financial reasons. Charlotte and Mr. Collins get married
and Elizabeth promises to visit them at their new home. As winter progresses, Jane visits the city to see
friends (hoping also that she might see Mr. Bingley). However, Miss Bingley visits her and behaves
rudely, while Mr. Bingley fails to visit her at all. The marriage prospects for the Bennet girls appear bleak.
That spring, Elizabeth visits Charlotte, who now lives near the home of Mr. Collinss patron, Lady
Catherine de Bourgh, who is also Darcys aunt. Darcy calls on Lady Catherine and encounters
Elizabeth, whose presence leads him to make a number of visits to the Collinss home, where she is
staying. One day, he makes a shocking proposal of marriage, which Elizabeth quickly refuses. She tells
Darcy that she considers him arrogant and unpleasant, then scolds him for steering Bingley away from
Jane and disinheriting Wickham. Darcy leaves her but shortly thereafter delivers a letter to her. In this
letter, he admits that he urged Bingley to distance himself from Jane, but claims he did so only because
he thought their romance was not serious. As for Wickham, he informs Elizabeth that the young officer is
a liar and that the real cause of their disagreement was Wickhams attempt to elope with his young
sister, Georgiana Darcy.

This letter causes Elizabeth to reevaluate her feelings about Darcy. She returns home and acts coldly
toward Wickham. The militia is leaving town, which makes the younger, rather man-crazy Bennet girls
distraught. Lydia manages to obtain permission from her father to spend the summer with an old colonel
in Brighton, where Wickhams regiment will be stationed. With the arrival of June, Elizabeth goes on
another journey, this time with the Gardiners, who are relatives of the Bennets. The trip takes her to the
North and eventually to the neighborhood of Pemberley, Darcys estate. She visits Pemberley, after
making sure that Darcy is away, and delights in the building and grounds, while hearing from Darcys
servants that he is a wonderful, generous master. Suddenly, Darcy arrives and behaves cordially toward
her. Making no mention of his proposal, he entertains the Gardiners and invites Elizabeth to meet his
sister.
Shortly thereafter, however, a letter arrives from home, telling Elizabeth that Lydia has eloped with
Wickham and that the couple is nowhere to be found, which suggests that they may be living together
out of wedlock. Fearful of the disgrace such a situation would bring on her entire family, Elizabeth
hastens home. Mr. Gardiner and Mr. Bennet go off to search for Lydia, but Mr. Bennet eventually returns
home empty-handed. Just when all hope seems lost, a letter comes from Mr. Gardiner saying that the
couple has been found and that Wickham has agreed to marry Lydia in exchange for an annual income.
The Bennets are convinced that Mr. Gardiner has paid off Wickham, but Elizabeth learns that the source
of the money, and of her familys salvation, was none other than Darcy.
Now married, Wickham and Lydia return to Longbourn briefly, where Mr. Bennet treats them coldly. They
then depart for Wickhams new assignment in the North of England. Shortly thereafter, Bingley returns to
Netherfield and resumes his courtship of Jane. Darcy goes to stay with him and pays visits to the
Bennets but makes no mention of his desire to marry Elizabeth. Bingley, on the other hand, presses his
suit and proposes to Jane, to the delight of everyone but Bingleys haughty sister. While the family
celebrates, Lady Catherine de Bourgh pays a visit to Longbourn. She corners Elizabeth and says that
she has heard that Darcy, her nephew, is planning to marry her. Since she considers a Bennet an
unsuitable match for a Darcy, Lady Catherine demands that Elizabeth promise to refuse him. Elizabeth
spiritedly refuses, saying she is not engaged to Darcy, but she will not promise anything against her own
happiness. A little later, Elizabeth and Darcy go out walking together and he tells her that his feelings
have not altered since the spring. She tenderly accepts his proposal, and both Jane and Elizabeth are
married.

Analysis of Major Characters

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

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

Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley


Elizabeths beautiful elder sister and Darcys wealthy best friend, Jane and Bingley engage in a
courtship that occupies a central place in the novel. They first meet at the ball in Meryton and enjoy an
immediate mutual attraction. They are spoken of as a potential couple throughout the book, long before
anyone imagines that Darcy and Elizabeth might marry. Despite their centrality to the narrative, they are

vague characters, sketched by Austen rather than carefully drawn. Indeed, they are so similar in nature
and behavior that they can be described together: both are cheerful, friendly, and good-natured, always
ready to think the best of others; they lack entirely the prickly egotism of Elizabeth and Darcy. Janes
gentle spirit serves as a foil for her sisters fiery, contentious nature, while Bingleys eager friendliness
contrasts with Darcys stiff pride. Their principal characteristics are goodwill and compatibility, and the
contrast of their romance with that of Darcy and Elizabeth is remarkable. Jane and Bingley exhibit to the
reader true love unhampered by either pride or prejudice, though in their simple goodness, they also
demonstrate that such a love is mildly dull.

Mr. Bennet
Mr. Bennet is the patriarch of the Bennet householdthe husband of Mrs. Bennet and the father of
Jane, Elizabeth, Lydia, Kitty, and Mary. He is a man driven to exasperation by his ridiculous wife and
difficult daughters. He reacts by withdrawing from his family and assuming a detached attitude
punctuated by bursts of sarcastic humor. He is closest to Elizabeth because they are the two most
intelligent Bennets. Initially, his dry wit and self-possession in the face of his wifes hysteria make him a
sympathetic figure, but, though he remains likable throughout, the reader gradually loses respect for him
as it becomes clear that the price of his detachment is considerable. Detached from his family, he is a
weak father and, at critical moments, fails his family. In particular, his foolish indulgence of Lydias
immature behavior nearly leads to general disgrace when she elopes with Wickham. Further, upon her
disappearance, he proves largely ineffective. It is left to Mr. Gardiner and Darcy to track Lydia down and
rectify the situation. Ultimately, Mr. Bennet would rather withdraw from the world than cope with it.

Mrs. Bennet
Mrs. Bennet is a miraculously tiresome character. Noisy and foolish, she is a woman consumed by the
desire to see her daughters married and seems to care for nothing else in the world. Ironically, her
single-minded pursuit of this goal tends to backfire, as her lack of social graces alienates the very
people (Darcy and Bingley) whom she tries desperately to attract. Austen uses her continually to
highlight the necessity of marriage for young women. Mrs. Bennet also serves as a middle-class
counterpoint to such upper-class snobs as Lady Catherine and Miss Bingley, demonstrating that
foolishness can be found at every level of society. In the end, however, Mrs. Bennet proves such an
unattractive figure, lacking redeeming characteristics of any kind, that some readers have accused
Austen of unfairness in portraying heras if Austen, like Mr. Bennet, took perverse pleasure in poking
fun at a woman already scorned as a result of her ill breeding.

CHARLES DICKENS
DAVID COPPERFIELD Context
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, and spent the first ten years of his life in Kent, a marshy
region by the sea in the east of England. Dickens was the second of eight children. His father, John
Dickens, was a kind and likable man, but his financial irresponsibility placed him in enormous debt and
caused tremendous strain on his family. When Charles was ten, his family moved to London. Two years
later, his father was arrested and thrown in debtors prison. Dickenss mother moved into the prison with
seven of her children. Only Charles lived outside the prison in order to earn money for the struggling
family. He worked with other children for three months pasting labels on bottles in a blacking warehouse,
where the substance people used to make boots black was manufactured. His experiences at this
warehouse inspired passages in David Copperfield.
After an inheritance gave John Dickens enough money to free himself from his debt and from prison,
Charles attended school for two years at Wellington House Academy. He became a law clerk, then a
newspaper reporter, and finally a novelist. His first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1837), met with huge
popular success. Dickens was a literary celebrity throughout England for the rest of his life.
In 1849, Dickens began to write David Copperfield, a novel based on his early life experiences. Like
Dickens, David works as a child, pasting labels onto bottles. David also becomes first a law clerk, then a
reporter, and finally a successful novelist. Mr. Micawber is a satirical version of Dickenss father, a likable
man who can never scrape together the money he needs. Many of the secondary characters spring
from Dickenss experiences as a young man in financial distress in London.
In later years, Dickens called David Copperfield his favourite child, and many critics consider the novel
to be one of his best depictions of childhood. Dickenss other works include Oliver Twist (1837
1839), Nicholas Nickelby (18381839), and A Christmas Carol (1843). Perhaps his best known
novel, Great Expectations (18601861) shares many thematic similarities with David Copperfield.
Dickens died in Kent on June 9, 1870, at the age of fifty-eight.
David Copperfield is set in early Victorian England against a backdrop of great social change. The
Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had transformed the social
landscape and enabled capitalists and manufacturers to amass huge fortunes. Although the Industrial
Revolution increased social mobility, the gap between rich and poor remained wide. London, a teeming
mass of humanity lit by gas lamps at night and darkened by sooty clouds from smokestacks during the

day, rose in dark contrast to Britains sparsely populated rural areas. More and more people moved from
the country to the city in search of the opportunities that technological innovation promised. But this
migration overpopulated the already crowded cities, and poverty, disease, hazardous factory conditions,
and ramshackle housing became widespread. Dickens acutely observed these phenomena of the
Industrial Revolution and used them as the canvas on which he painted David Copperfield and his other
urban novels.

Plot Overview
Now a grown man, David Copperfield tells the story of his youth. As a young boy, he lives happily with
his mother and his nurse, Peggotty. His father died before he was born. During Davids early childhood,
his mother marries the violent Mr. Murdstone, who brings his strict sister, Miss Murdstone, into the
house. The Murdstones treat David cruelly, and David bites Mr. Murdstones hand during one beating.
The Murdstones send David away to school.
Peggotty takes David to visit her family in Yarmouth, where David meets Peggottys brother, Mr.
Peggotty, and his two adopted children, Ham and Little Emly. Mr. Peggottys family lives in a boat turned
upside downa space they share with Mrs. Gummidge, the widowed wife of Mr. Peggottys brother.
After this visit, David attends school at Salem House, which is run by a man named Mr. Creakle. David
befriends and idolizes an egotistical young man named James Steerforth. David also befriends Tommy
Traddles, an unfortunate, fat young boy who is beaten more than the others.
Davids mother dies, and David returns home, where the Murdstones neglect him. He works at Mr.
Murdstones wine-bottling business and moves in with Mr. Micawber, who mismanages his finances.
When Mr. Micawber leaves London to escape his creditors, David decides to search for his fathers
sister, Miss Betsey Trotwoodhis only living relative. He walks a long distance to Miss Betseys home,
and she takes him in on the advice of her mentally unstable friend, Mr. Dick.
Miss Betsey sends David to a school run by a man named Doctor Strong. David moves in with Mr.
Wickfield and his daughter, Agnes, while he attends school. Agnes and David become best friends.
Among Wickfields boarders is Uriah Heep, a snakelike young man who often involves himself in matters
that are none of his business. David graduates and goes to Yarmouth to visit Peggotty, who is now
married to Mr. Barkis, the carrier. David reflects on what profession he should pursue.
On his way to Yarmouth, David encounters James Steerforth, and they take a detour to visit Steerforths
mother. They arrive in Yarmouth, where Steerforth and the Peggottys become fond of one another.
When they return from Yarmouth, Miss Betsey persuades David to pursue a career as a proctor, a kind

of lawyer. David apprentices himself at the London firm of Spenlow and Jorkins and takes up lodgings
with a woman named Mrs. Crupp. Mr. Spenlow invites David to his house for a weekend. There, David
meets Spenlows daughter, Dora, and quickly falls in love with her.
In London, David is reunited with Tommy Traddles and Mr. Micawber. Word reaches David, through
Steerforth, that Mr. Barkis is terminally ill. David journeys to Yarmouth to visit Peggotty in her hour of
need. Little Emly and Ham, now engaged, are to be married upon Mr. Barkiss death. David, however,
finds Little Emly upset over her impending marriage. When Mr. Barkis dies, Little Emly runs off with
Steerforth, who she believes will make her a lady. Mr. Peggotty is devastated but vows to find Little
Emly and bring her home.
Miss Betsey visits London to inform David that her financial security has been ruined because Mr.
Wickfield has joined into a partnership with Uriah Heep. David, who has become increasingly infatuated
with Dora, vows to work as hard as he can to make their life together possible. Mr. Spenlow, however,
forbids Dora from marrying David. Mr. Spenlow dies in a carriage accident that night, and Dora goes to
live with her two aunts. Meanwhile, Uriah Heep informs Doctor Strong that he suspects Doctor Strongs
wife, Annie, of having an affair with her young cousin, Jack Maldon.
Dora and David marry, and Dora proves a terrible housewife, incompetent in her chores. David loves her
anyway and is generally happy. Mr. Dick facilitates a reconciliation between Doctor Strong and Annie,
who was not, in fact, cheating on her husband. Miss Dartle, Mrs. Steerforths ward, summons David and
informs him that Steerforth has left Little Emly. Miss Dartle adds that Steerforths servant, Littimer, has
proposed to her and that Little Emly has run away. David and Mr. Peggotty enlist the help of Little
Emlys childhood friend Martha, who locates Little Emly and brings Mr. Peggotty to her. Little Emly and
Mr. Peggotty decide to move to Australia, as do the Micawbers, who first save the day for Agnes and
Miss Betsey by exposing Uriah Heeps fraud against Mr. Wickfield.
A powerful storm hits Yarmouth and kills Ham while he attempts to rescue a shipwrecked sailor. The
sailor turns out to be Steerforth. Meanwhile, Dora falls ill and dies. David leaves the country to travel
abroad. His love for Agnes grows. When David returns, he and Agnes, who has long harbored a secret
love for him, get married and have several children. David pursues his writing career with increasing
commercial success.

Analysis of Major Characters


David Copperfield
Although David narrates his story as an adult, he relays the impressions he had from a youthful point of
view. We see how Davids perception of the world deepens as he comes of age. We see Davids initial
innocence in the contrast between his interpretation of events and our own understanding of them.
Although David is ignorant of Steerforths treachery, we are aware from the moment we meet Steerforth
that he doesnt deserve the adulation David feels toward him. David doesnt understand why he hates
Uriah or why he trusts a boy with a donkey cart who steals his money and leaves him in the road, but we
can sense Uriahs devious nature and the boys treacherous intentions. In Davids first-person narration,
Dickens conveys the wisdom of the older man implicitly, through the eyes of a child.
Davids complex character allows for contradiction and development over the course of the novel.
Though David is trusting and kind, he also has moments of cruelty, like the scene in which he
intentionally distresses Mr. Dick by explaining Miss Betseys dire situation to him. David also displays
great tenderness, as in the moment when he realizes his love for Agnes for the first time. David,
especially as a young man in love, can be foolish and romantic. As he grows up, however, he develops
a more mature point of view and searches for a lover who will challenge him and help him grow. David
fully matures as an adult when he expresses the sentiment that he values Agness calm tranquility over
all else in his life.

Uriah Heep
Uriah serves a foil to David and contrasts Davids qualities of innocence and compassion with his own
corruption. Though Uriah is raised in a cruel environment similar to Davids, Uriahs upbringing causes
him to become bitter and vengeful rather than honest and hopeful. Dickenss physical description of
Uriah marks Uriah as a demonic character. He refers to Uriahs movements as snakelike and gives
Uriah red hair and red eyes. Uriah and David not only have opposing characteristics but also operate at
cross-purposes. For example, whereas Uriah wishes to marry Agnes only in order to hurt David, Davids
marriages are both motivated by love. The frequent contrast between Uriahs and Davids sentiments
emphasizes Davids kindness and moral integrity.
While Davids character development is a process of increased self-understanding, Uriah grows in his
desire to exercise control over himself and other characters. As Uriah gains more power over Mr.
Wickfield, his sense of entitlement grows and he becomes more and more power-hungry. The final
scenes of the novel, in which Uriah praises his jail cell because it helps him know what he should do,
show Uriahs need to exert control even when he is a helpless prisoner. But imprisonment does not

redeem his evilif anything, it compounds his flaws. To the end, Uriah plots strategies to increase his
control. Because he deploys his strategies to selfish purposes that bring harm to others, he stands out
as the novels greatest villain.

James Steerforth
Steerforth is a slick, egotistical, wealthy young man whose sense of self-importance overwhelms all his
opinions. Steerforth underscores the difference between what we understand as readers and what
David seesand fails to seein his youthful navet. David takes Steerforths kindness for granted
without analyzing his motives or detecting his duplicity. When Steerforth befriends David at Salem
House, David doesnt suspect that Steerforth is simply trying to use David to make friends and gain
status. Though Steerforth belittles David from the moment they meet, David is incapable of conceiving
that his new friend might be taking advantage of him. Because Steerforths duplicity is so clear to us,
Davids lack of insight into Steerforths true intentions emphasizes his youthful innocence. Steerforth
likes David only because David worships him, and his final betrayal comes as a surprise to David but
not to us.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Plight of the Weak


Throughout David Copperfield, the powerful abuse the weak and helpless. Dickens focuses on orphans,
women, and the mentally disabled to show that exploitationnot pity or compassionis the rule in an
industrial society. Dickens draws on his own experience as a child to describe the inhumanity of child
labor and debtors prison. His characters suffer punishment at the hands of forces larger than
themselves, even though they are morally good people. The arbitrary suffering of innocents makes for
the most vividly affecting scenes of the novel. David starves and suffers in a wine-bottling factory as a
child. As his guardian, Mr. Murdstone can exploit David as factory labor because the boy is too small
and dependent on him to disobey. Likewise, the boys at Salem House have no recourse against the
cruel Mr. Creakle. In both situations, children deprived of the care of their natural parents suffer at the
hands of their own supposed protectors.
The weak in David Copperfield never escape the domination of the powerful by challenging the powerful
directly. Instead, the weak must ally themselves with equally powerful characters. David, for example,

doesnt stand up to Mr. Murdstone and challenge his authority. Instead, he flees to the wealthy Miss
Betsey, whose financial stability affords her the power to shelter David from Mr. Murdstone. Davids
escape proves neither self-reliance nor his own inner virtue, but rather the significance of family ties and
family money in human relationships.

Equality in Marriage
In the world of the novel, marriages succeed to the extent that husband and wife attain equality in their
relationship. Dickens holds up the Strongs marriage as an example to show that marriages can only be
happy if neither spouse is subjugated to the other. Indeed, neither of the Strongs views the other as
inferior. Conversely, Dickens criticizes characters who attempt to invoke a sense of superiority over their
spouses. Mr. Murdstones attempts to improve Davids mothers character, for example, only crush her
spirit. Mr. Murdstone forces Clara into submission in the name of improving her, which leaves her meek
and voiceless. In contrast, although Doctor Strong does attempt to improve Annies character, he does
so not out of a desire to show his moral superiority but rather out of love and respect for Annie. Doctor
Strong is gentle and soothing with his wife, rather than abrasive and imperious like Mr. Murdstone.
Though Doctor Strongs marriage is based at least partially on an ideal of equality, he still assumes that
his wife, as a woman, depends upon him and needs him for moral guidance. Dickens, we see, does not
challenge his societys constrictive views about the roles of women. However, by depicting a marriage in
which a man and wife share some balance of power, Dickens does point toward an age of empowered
women.

Wealth and Class


Throughout the novel, Dickens criticizes his societys view of wealth and class as measures of a
persons value. Dickens uses Steerforth, who is wealthy, powerful, and noble, to show that these traits
are more likely to corrupt than improve a persons character. Steerforth is treacherous and selfabsorbed. On the other hand, Mr. Peggotty and Ham, both poor, are generous, sympathetic characters.
Many people in Dickenss time believed that poverty was a symptom of moral degeneracy and that
people who were poor deserved to suffer because of inherent deficiencies. Dickens, on the other hand,
sympathizes with the poor and implies that their woes result from societys unfairness, not their own
failings.
Dickens does not go so far as to suggest that all poor people are absolutely noble and that all rich
people are utterly evil. Poor people frequently swindle David when he is young, even though he too is
poor and helpless. Doctor Strong and Agnes, both wealthy, middle-class citizens, nonetheless are
morally upstanding. Dickens does not paint a black-and-white moral picture but shows that wealth and

class are are unreliable indicators of character and morality. Dickens invites us to judge his characters
based on their individual deeds and qualities, not on the hand that the cruel world deals them.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
texts major themes.

Mothers and Mother Figures


Mothers and mother figures have an essential influence on the identity of the characters in David
Copperfield. Almost invariably, good mother figures produce good children while bad mothers yield
sinister offspring. This moral connection between mothers and children indicates Dickenss belief that
mothers have an all-important role in shaping their childrens characters and destinies.
The success of mother figures in the novel hinges on their ability to care for their children without
coddling them. Miss Betsey, the aunt who raises David, clearly adores him but does not dote on him.
She encourages him to be strong in everything he does and to be fair at all times. She corrects him
when she thinks he is making a mistake, as with his marriage to Dora, and her ability to see faults in him
helps him to mature into a balanced adult. Although Miss Betsey raises David to deal with the difficulties
of the world, she does not block those hardships. Instead, she forces David to confront them himself. In
contrast, Uriahs mother, Mrs. Heep, dotes on her son and allows him to dominate her. As a result, Uriah
develops a vain, inflated self-regard that breeds cruel behavior. On the whole, Dickenss treatment of
mother-child relationships in the novel is intended to teach a lesson. He warns mothers to love their
children only in moderation and to correct their faults while they can still be fixed.

Accented Speech
Dickens gives his characters different accents to indicate their social class. Uriah Heep and Mr. Peggotty
are two notable examples of such characters whose speech indicates their social standing. Uriah, in an
attempt to appear poor and of good character, consistently drops the h in humble every time a group
of Mr. Wickfields friends confront him. Uriah drops this accent as soon as his fraud is revealed: he is not
the urchin-child he portrays himself to be, who grew up hard and fell into his current character because
of the cruelty of the world. Rather, Uriah is a conniving, double-crossing social climber who views
himself as superior to the wealthy and who exploits everyone he can. Mr. Peggottys lower-class accent,
on the other hand, indicates genuine humility and poverty. Dickens uses accent in both cases to
advance his assertion that class and personal integrity are unrelated and that it is misleading to make
any connection between the two.

Physical Beauty
In David Copperfield, physical beauty corresponds to moral good. Those who are physically beautiful,
like Davids mother, are good and noble, while those who are ugly, like Uriah Heep, Mr. Creakle, and Mr.
Murdstone, are evil, violent, and ill-tempered. Dickens suggests that internal characteristics, much like
physical appearance, cannot be disguised permanently. Rather, circumstances will eventually reveal the
moral value of characters whose good goes unrecognized or whose evil goes unpunished. In David
Copperfield, even the most carefully buried characteristics eventually come to light and expose elusive
individuals for what they really are. Although Steerforth, for example, initially appears harmless but
annoying, he cannot hide his true treachery for years. In this manner, for almost all the characters in the
novel, physical beauty corresponds to personal worth.

Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Sea
The sea represents an unknown and powerful force in the lives of the characters inDavid
Copperfield, and it is almost always connected with death. The sea took Little Emlys father in an
unfortunate accident over which she had no control. Likewise, the sea takes both Ham and Steerforth.
The sea washes Steerforth up on the shorea moment that symbolizes Steerforths moral emptiness,
as the sea treats him like flotsam and jetsam. The storm in the concluding chapters of the novel alerts us
to the danger of ignoring the seas power and indicates that the novels conflicts have reached an
uncontrollable level. Like death, the force of the sea is beyond human control. Humans must try to live in
harmony with the seas mystical power and take precautions to avoid untimely death.

Flowers
Flowers represent simplicity and innocence in David Copperfield. For example, Steerforth nicknames
David Daisy because David is nave. David brings Dora flowers on her birthday. Dora forever paints
flowers on her little canvas. When David returns to the Wickfields house and the Heeps leave, he
discovers that the old flowers are in the room, which indicates that the room has been returned to its
previous state of simplicity and innocence. In each of these cases, flowers stand as images of rebirth
and healtha significance that points to a springlike quality in characters associated with their
blossoms. Flowers indicate fresh perspective and thought and often recall moments of frivolity and
release.

Mr. Dicks Kite


Mr. Dicks enormous kite represents his separation from society. Just as the kite soars above the other
characters, Mr. Dick, whom the characters believe to be insane, stands apart from the rest of society.
Because Mr. Dick is not a part of the social hierarchies that bind the rest of the characters, he is able to
mend the disagreement between Doctor and Mrs. Strong, which none of the other characters can fix.
The kites carefree simplicity mirrors Mr. Dicks own childish innocence, and the pleasure the kite offers
resembles the honest, unpretentious joy Mr. Dick brings to those around him.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS Charles Dickens


Context
Many of the events from Dickenss early life are mirrored in Great Expectations,which, apart from David
Copperfield, is his most autobiographical novel. Pip, the novels protagonist, lives in the marsh country,
works at a job he hates, considers himself too good for his surroundings, and experiences material
success in London at a very early age, exactly as Dickens himself did. 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. Dickenss magazine, All the Year Round, had become extremely popular
based on the success of works it had published in serial, such as his own A Tale of Two Cities and
Wilkie Collinss The Woman in White. But it had experienced a decline in popularity after publishing a
dull serial by Charles Lever called A Days Ride. 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.
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 (17941796) 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.

Plot Overview
Pip, a young orphan living with his sister and her husband in the marshes of Kent, sits in a cemetery one
evening looking at his parents tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs up from behind a
tombstone, grabs Pip, and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg irons. Pip obeys, but the
fearsome convict is soon captured anyway. The convict protects Pip by claiming to have stolen the items
himself.
One day Pip is taken by his Uncle Pumblechook to play at Satis House, the home of the wealthy
dowager Miss Havisham, who is extremely eccentric: she wears an old wedding dress everywhere she
goes and keeps all the clocks in her house stopped at the same time. During his visit, he meets a
beautiful young girl named Estella, who treats him coldly and contemptuously. Nevertheless, he falls in
love with her and dreams of becoming a wealthy gentleman so that he might be worthy of her. He even
hopes that Miss Havisham intends to make him a gentleman and marry him to Estella, but his hopes are
dashed when, after months of regular visits to Satis House, Miss Havisham decides to help him become
a common laborer in his familys business.
With Miss Havishams guidance, Pip is apprenticed to his brother-in-law, Joe, who is the village
blacksmith. Pip works in the forge unhappily, struggling to better his education with the help of the plain,
kind Biddy and encountering Joes malicious day laborer, Orlick. One night, after an altercation with
Orlick, Pips sister, known as Mrs. Joe, is viciously attacked and becomes a mute invalid. From her
signals, Pip suspects that Orlick was responsible for the attack.

One day a lawyer named Jaggers appears with strange news: a secret benefactor has given Pip a large
fortune, and Pip must come to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman. Pip happily
assumes that his previous hopes have come truethat Miss Havisham is his secret benefactor and that
the old woman intends for him to marry Estella.
In London, Pip befriends a young gentleman named Herbert Pocket and Jaggerss law clerk, Wemmick.
He expresses disdain for his former friends and loved ones, especially Joe, but he continues to pine
after Estella. He furthers his education by studying with the tutor Matthew Pocket, Herberts father.
Herbert himself helps Pip learn how to act like a gentleman. When Pip turns twenty-one and begins to
receive an income from his fortune, he will secretly help Herbert buy his way into the business he has
chosen for himself. But for now, Herbert and Pip lead a fairly undisciplined life in London, enjoying
themselves and running up debts. Orlick reappears in Pips life, employed as Miss Havishams porter,
but is promptly fired by Jaggers after Pip reveals Orlicks unsavory past. Mrs. Joe dies, and Pip goes
home for the funeral, feeling tremendous grief and remorse. Several years go by, until one night a
familiar figure barges into Pips roomthe convict, Magwitch, who stuns Pip by announcing that he, not
Miss Havisham, is the source of Pips fortune. He tells Pip that he was so moved by Pips boyhood
kindness that he dedicated his life to making Pip a gentleman, and he made a fortune in Australia for
that very purpose.
Pip is appalled, but he feels morally bound to help Magwitch escape London, as the convict is pursued
both by the police and by Compeyson, his former partner in crime. A complicated mystery begins to fall
into place when Pip discovers that Compeyson was the man who abandoned Miss Havisham at the altar
and that Estella is Magwitchs daughter. Miss Havisham has raised her to break mens hearts, as
revenge for the pain her own broken heart caused her. Pip was merely a boy for the young Estella to
practice on; Miss Havisham delighted in Estellas ability to toy with his affections.
As the weeks pass, Pip sees the good in Magwitch and begins to care for him deeply. Before Magwitchs
escape attempt, Estella marries an upper-class lout named Bentley Drummle. Pip makes a visit to Satis
House, where Miss Havisham begs his forgiveness for the way she has treated him in the past, and he
forgives her. Later that day, when she bends over the fireplace, her clothing catches fire and she goes
up in flames. She survives but becomes an invalid. In her final days, she will continue to repent for her
misdeeds and to plead for Pips forgiveness.
The time comes for Pip and his friends to spirit Magwitch away from London. Just before the escape
attempt, Pip is called to a shadowy meeting in the marshes, where he encounters the vengeful, evil
Orlick. Orlick is on the verge of killing Pip when Herbert arrives with a group of friends and saves Pips

life. Pip and Herbert hurry back to effect Magwitchs escape. They try to sneak Magwitch down the river
on a rowboat, but they are discovered by the police, who Compeyson tipped off. Magwitch and
Compeyson fight in the river, and Compeyson is drowned. Magwitch is sentenced to death, and Pip
loses his fortune. Magwitch feels that his sentence is Gods forgiveness and dies at peace. Pip falls ill;
Joe comes to London to care for him, and they are reconciled. Joe gives him the news from home:
Orlick, after robbing Pumblechook, is now in jail; Miss Havisham has died and left most of her fortune to
the Pockets; Biddy has taught Joe how to read and write. After Joe leaves, Pip decides to rush home
after him and marry Biddy, but when he arrives there he discovers that she and Joe have already
married.
Pip decides to go abroad with Herbert to work in the mercantile trade. Returning many years later, he
encounters Estella in the ruined garden at Satis House. Drummle, her husband, treated her badly, but
he is now dead. Pip finds that Estellas coldness and cruelty have been replaced by a sad kindness, and
the two leave the garden hand in hand, Pip believing that they will never part again. ( N O T E : Dickenss
original ending to Great Expectations differed from the one described in this summary. The final
Summary and Analysis section of this SparkNote provides a description of the first ending and explains
why Dickens rewrote it.)

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.

Estella
Often cited as Dickenss first convincing female character, Estella is a supremely ironic creation, one
who darkly undermines the notion of romantic love and serves as a bitter criticism against the class
system in which she is mired. Raised from the age of three by Miss Havisham to torment men and
break their hearts, Estella wins Pips deepest love by practicing deliberate cruelty. Unlike the warm,
winsome, kind heroine of a traditional love story, Estella is cold, cynical, and manipulative. Though she
represents Pips first longed-for ideal of life among the upper classes, Estella is actually even lower-born

than Pip; as Pip learns near the end of the novel, she is the daughter of Magwitch, the coarse convict,
and thus springs from the very lowest level of society.
Ironically, life among the upper classes does not represent salvation for Estella. Instead, she is
victimized twice by her adopted class. Rather than being raised by Magwitch, a man of great inner
nobility, she is raised by Miss Havisham, who destroys her ability to express emotion and interact
normally with the world. And rather than marrying the kindhearted commoner Pip, Estella marries the
cruel nobleman Drummle, who treats her harshly and makes her life miserable for many years. In this
way, Dickens uses Estellas life to reinforce the idea that ones happiness and well-being are not deeply
connected to ones social position: had Estella been poor, she might have been substantially better off.
Despite her cold behavior and the damaging influences in her life, Dickens nevertheless ensures that
Estella is still a sympathetic character. By giving the reader a sense of her inner struggle to discover and
act on her own feelings rather than on the imposed motives of her upbringing, Dickens gives the reader
a glimpse of Estellas inner life, which helps to explain what Pip might love about her. Estella does not
seem able to stop herself from hurting Pip, but she also seems not to want to hurt him; she repeatedly
warns him that she has no heart and seems to urge him as strongly as she can to find happiness by
leaving her behind. Finally, Estellas long, painful marriage to Drummle causes her to develop along the
same lines as Pipthat is, she learns, through experience, to rely on and trust her inner feelings. In the
final scene of the novel, she has become her own woman for the first time in the book. As she says to
Pip, Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching. . . . I have been bent and broken, butI hope
into a better shape.

Miss Havisham
The mad, vengeful Miss Havisham, a wealthy dowager who lives in a rotting mansion and wears an old
wedding dress every day of her life, is not exactly a believable character, but she is certainly one of the
most memorable creations in the book. Miss Havishams life is defined by a single tragic event: her jilting
by Compeyson on what was to have been their wedding day. From that moment forth, Miss Havisham is
determined never to move beyond her heartbreak. She stops all the clocks in Satis House at twenty
minutes to nine, the moment when she first learned that Compeyson was gone, and she wears only one
shoe, because when she learned of his betrayal, she had not yet put on the other shoe. With a kind of
manic, obsessive cruelty, Miss Havisham adopts Estella and raises her as a weapon to achieve her own
revenge on men. Miss Havisham is an example of single-minded vengeance pursued destructively: both
Miss Havisham and the people in her life suffer greatly because of her quest for revenge. Miss
Havisham is completely unable to see that her actions are hurtful to Pip and Estella. She is redeemed at
the end of the novel when she realizes that she has caused Pips heart to be broken in the same

manner as her own; rather than achieving any kind of personal revenge, she has only caused more
pain. Miss Havisham immediately begs Pip for forgiveness, reinforcing the novels theme that bad
behavior can be redeemed by contrition and sympathy.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Ambition and Self-Improvement


The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are more
important than social advancement, wealth, and class. Dickens establishes the theme and shows Pip
learning this lesson, largely by exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvementideas that quickly
become both the thematic center of the novel and the psychological mechanism that encourages much
of Pips development. At heart, Pip is an idealist; whenever he can conceive of something that is better
than what he already has, he immediately desires to obtain the improvement. When he sees Satis
House, he longs to be a wealthy gentleman; when he thinks of his moral shortcomings, he longs to be
good; when he realizes that he cannot read, he longs to learn how. Pips desire for self-improvement is
the main source of the novels title: because he believes in the possibility of advancement in life, he has
great expectations about his future.
Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectationsmoral, social, and educational;
these motivate Pips best and his worst behavior throughout the novel. First, Pip desires moral selfimprovement. He is extremely hard on himself when he acts immorally and feels powerful guilt that
spurs him to act better in the future. When he leaves for London, for instance, he torments himself about
having behaved so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy. Second, Pip desires social self-improvement. In
love with Estella, he longs to become a member of her social class, and, encouraged by Mrs. Joe and
Pumblechook, he entertains fantasies of becoming a gentleman. The working out of this fantasy forms
the basic plot of the novel; it provides Dickens the opportunity to gently satirize the class system of his
era and to make a point about its capricious nature. Significantly, Pips life as a gentleman is no more
satisfyingand certainly no more moralthan his previous life as a blacksmiths apprentice. Third, Pip
desires educational improvement. This desire is deeply connected to his social ambition and longing to
marry Estella: a full education is a requirement of being a gentleman. As long as he is an ignorant
country boy, he has no hope of social advancement. Pip understands this fact as a child, when he learns
to read at Mr. Wopsles aunts school, and as a young man, when he takes lessons from Matthew
Pocket. Ultimately, through the examples of Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch, Pip learns that social and

educational improvement are irrelevant to ones real worth and that conscience and affection are to be
valued above erudition and social standing.

Social Class
Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging from
the most wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to
the middle class (Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss Havisham). The theme of social class is central to
the novels plot and to the ultimate moral theme of the bookPips realization that wealth and class are
less important than affection, loyalty, and inner worth. Pip achieves this realization when he is finally
able to understand that, despite the esteem in which he holds Estella, ones social status is in no way
connected to ones real character. Drummle, for instance, is an upper-class lout, while Magwitch, a
persecuted convict, has a deep inner worth.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the novels treatment of social class is that the
class system it portrays is based on the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England. Dickens
generally ignores the nobility and the hereditary aristocracy in favor of characters whose fortunes have
been earned through commerce. Even Miss Havishams family fortune was made through the brewery
that is still connected to her manor. In this way, by connecting the theme of social class to the idea of
work and self-advancement, Dickens subtly reinforces the novels overarching theme of ambition and
self-improvement.

Crime, Guilt, and Innocence


The theme of crime, guilt, and innocence is explored throughout the novel largely through the characters
of the convicts and the criminal lawyer Jaggers. From the handcuffs Joe mends at the smithy to the
gallows at the prison in London, the imagery of crime and criminal justice pervades the book, becoming
an important symbol of Pips inner struggle to reconcile his own inner moral conscience with the
institutional justice system. In general, just as social class becomes a superficial standard of value that
Pip must learn to look beyond in finding a better way to live his life, the external trappings of the criminal
justice system (police, courts, jails, etc.) become a superficial standard of morality that Pip must learn to
look beyond to trust his inner conscience. Magwitch, for instance, frightens Pip at first simply because
he is a convict, and Pip feels guilty for helping him because he is afraid of the police. By the end of the
book, however, Pip has discovered Magwitchs inner nobility, and is able to disregard his external status
as a criminal. Prompted by his conscience, he helps Magwitch to evade the law and the police. As Pip
has learned to trust his conscience and to value Magwitchs inner character, he has replaced an external
standard of value with an internal one.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
texts major themes.

Doubles
One of the most remarkable aspects of Dickenss work is its structural intricacy and remarkable balance.
Dickenss plots involve complicated coincidences, extraordinarily tangled webs of human relationships,
and highly dramatic developments in which setting, atmosphere, event, and character are all seamlessly
fused.
In Great Expectations, perhaps the most visible sign of Dickenss commitment to intricate dramatic
symmetryapart from the knot of character relationships, of courseis the fascinating motif of doubles
that runs throughout the book. From the earliest scenes of the novel to the last, nearly every element
of Great Expectations is mirrored or doubled at some other point in the book. There are two convicts on
the marsh (Magwitch and Compeyson), two invalids (Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham), two young women
who interest Pip (Biddy and Estella), and so on. There are two secret benefactors: Magwitch, who gives
Pip his fortune, and Pip, who mirrors Magwitchs action by secretly buying Herberts way into the
mercantile business. Finally, there are two adults who seek to mold children after their own purposes:
Magwitch, who wishes to own a gentleman and decides to make Pip one, and Miss Havisham, who
raises Estella to break mens hearts in revenge for her own broken heart. Interestingly, both of these
actions are motivated by Compeyson: Magwitch resents but is nonetheless covetous of Compeysons
social status and education, which motivates his desire to make Pip a gentleman, and Miss Havishams
heart was broken when Compeyson left her at the altar, which motivates her desire to achieve revenge
through Estella. The relationship between Miss Havisham and Compeysona well-born woman and a
common manfurther mirrors the relationship between Estella and Pip.
This doubling of elements has no real bearing on the novels main themes, but, like the connection of
weather and action, it adds to the sense that everything in Pips world is connected. Throughout
Dickenss works, this kind of dramatic symmetry is simply part of the fabric of his novelistic universe.

Comparison of Characters to Inanimate Objects


Throughout Great Expectations, the narrator uses images of inanimate objects to describe the physical
appearance of charactersparticularly minor characters, or characters with whom the narrator is not
intimate. For example, Mrs. Joe looks as if she scrubs her face with a nutmeg grater, while the
inscrutable features of Mr. Wemmick are repeatedly compared to a letter-box. This motif, which Dickens
uses throughout his novels, may suggest a failure of empathy on the narrators part, or it may suggest

that the characters position in life is pressuring them to resemble a thing more than a human being. The
latter interpretation would mean that the motif in general is part of a social critique, in that it implies that
an institution such as the class system or the criminal justice system dehumanizes certain people.

Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Satis House
In Satis House, Dickens creates a magnificent Gothic setting whose various elements symbolize Pips
romantic perception of the upper class and many other themes of the book. On her decaying body, Miss
Havishams wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and degeneration. The wedding dress
and the wedding feast symbolize Miss Havishams past, and the stopped clocks throughout the house
symbolize her determined attempt to freeze time by refusing to change anything from the way it was
when she was jilted on her wedding day. The brewery next to the house symbolizes the connection
between commerce and wealth: Miss Havishams fortune is not the product of an aristocratic birth but of
a recent success in industrial capitalism. Finally, the crumbling, dilapidated stones of the house, as well
as the darkness and dust that pervade it, symbolize the general decadence of the lives of its inhabitants
and of the upper class as a whole.

The Mists on the Marshes


The setting almost always symbolizes a theme in Great Expectations and always sets a tone that is
perfectly matched to the novels dramatic action. The misty marshes near Pips childhood home in Kent,
one of the most evocative of the books settings, are used several times to symbolize danger and
uncertainty. As a child, Pip brings Magwitch a file and food in these mists; later, he is kidnapped by
Orlick and nearly murdered in them. Whenever Pip goes into the mists, something dangerous is likely to
happen. Significantly, Pip must go through the mists when he travels to London shortly after receiving
his fortune, alerting the reader that this apparently positive development in his life may have dangerous
consequences.

Bentley Drummle
Although he is a minor character in the novel, Bentley Drummle provides an important contrast with Pip
and represents the arbitrary nature of class distinctions. In his mind, Pip has connected the ideas of
moral, social, and educational advancement so that each depends on the others. The coarse and cruel
Drummle, a member of the upper class, provides Pip with proof that social advancement has no
inherent connection to intelligence or moral worth. Drummle is a lout who has inherited immense wealth,

while Pips friend and brother-in-law Joe is a good man who works hard for the little he earns.
Drummles negative example helps Pip to see the inner worth of characters such as Magwitch and Joe,
and eventually to discard his immature fantasies about wealth and class in favor of a new understanding
that is both more compassionate and more realistic.

WALT WHITMAN
Walt Whitman, a famous American poet, was born on May 31, 1819 in the West Hills of Long
Island, New York. His mothers name was Loisia Van Velsor, of Dutch descent., and amazingly
could not read very well, if at all. His dad was an English carpenter who probably could not read his
sons poetry. His parents family consisted of nine children, four of whom had disabilities. His start in
literature came when, at the age of 12, he was withdrawn from school to work as a printer. At this
time he began to learn to love reading books. He read whenever he could and was self taught.
When he was seventeen, he became a teacher in a small school. Five years later he took a job as
a journalist and was the editor of many New York papers. He studied the French language, and
many of his poems contain French words. When he traveled to the New Orleans, he witnessed
slavery which in turn helped him write his poems according to Walt Whitman. Between 1848 and
1855 he developed the style of poetry he is known for. In 1891 he finished the 30 years of constant
writing; it took him to write the book Leaves of Grass. The Leaves of Grass basically was his lifes
work and contained 400 poems. He is known as a poet for the Leaves of Grass. An interesting fact:
his opening poem in the Leaves of Grass tells about how he knows he will die soon. It says that I
have walked the roads you will walk which is telling about how he once was alive just like us. It is a
poem that remembers him and speaks to future generations.

Leaves of Grass Summary and Analysis of "Song of Myself"


Summary
Whitman begins this poem by naming its subject himself. He says that he celebrates himself and
that all parts of him are also parts of the reader. He is thirty-seven years old and in perfect health
and begins his journey Hoping to cease not till death. He puts all Creeds and schools in
abeyance hoping to set out on his own, though he admits he will not forget these things. Whitman
then describes a house in which the shelves are / crowded with perfumes and he breathes in the
fragrance though he refuses to let himself become intoxicated with it. Instead, he seeks to go to
the bank by the wood and become naked and undisguised where he can hear all of nature around
him. Whitman says that he has heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the / beginning and
the end, but he refuses to talk of either. Instead, he rejects talk of the past or future for an

experience in the now. This is the urge of the world which calls to him. Whitman sees all the things
around him The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old / and new, but he
knows that they are not the Me myself. He remembers in his own past that he once sweated
through fog with fashionable arguments. He no longer holds these pretensions, however.
Whitman then describes an encounter between his body and soul. He invites his soul to loafe with
me on the grass and to lull him with its valved voice. He tells his soul to settle upon him, your
head athwart my hips and gently turnd / over upon me.. He invites his soul to undress him and
reach inside him until the soul feels his feet. This will bring him perfect peace that pass all the
argument of the earth. This peace is the promise of God and is what allows all people to become
his brothers and sisters. Whitman recalls a scene in which a child came to him with a handful of
grass and asked him what it was. Whitman has no answer for the child. The grass is the flag of my
disposition and it is the handkerchief of the Lord. It is also the child or a symbol for all of
humanity. Whitman sees the grass sprouting from the chests of young men, the heads of old
women, and the beards of old men. He remembers all those that have died and recalls that each
sprout of grass is a memorial to those that have come before. Whitman reflects that to die is
different from what any one supposed, and / luckier. Whitman then writes a parable. Twenty-eight
young men bathe on a sea shore while a young woman, richly drest hides behind the blinds of her
house on the waters bank. She observes the men and finds that she loves the homeliest of them.
She then goes down to the beach to bathe with them, though the men do not see her. An unseen
hand also passes over the bodies of the young men but the young men do not think of who holds
onto them or whom they souse with spray.
Whitman describes groups of people that he stops to observe. The first is a butcher-boy
sharpening his knife and dancing. He sees the blacksmiths taking on their grimy work with
precision. Whitman then observes a negro as he works a team of horses at a construction site.
Whitman admires his chiseled body and his polishd and perfect limbs. He sees and loves this
picturesque giant. He admits in the next poem that he is enamourdOf men that live among
cattle or taste of the ocean or woods, / Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of
axes / and mauls / I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out. In a lengthy section,
Whitman describes the work of all people of the land the carpenter, the duck-shooter, the deacons
of the church, the farmers, the machinist, and many more. They often have hard, ordinary lives, yet
Whitman proclaims that these people tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them and they all
weave the song of myself.
Whitman describes himself as old and young and foolish as much aswise. He is Maternal
as well as paternal, a child as well as a man. He is of all the land of North America from the
South even into Canada. He notes that these are not his own original thoughts, however. These
thoughts have been a part of the human condition for all of time. These thoughts are the grass that
grows wherever the land isthe common air that bathes the globe. His thoughts are for all people,
even those that society has considered outcasts.
Whitman wonders why he should adhere to the old ways prayer or ceremony. He claims that he
has pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair and found that nothing is as true and sweet as my

own bones. Whitman understands himself. He is august and vindicated by his own nature. I exist
as I am, that is, enough. He does not have to explain his inconsistencies. Those are only to be
accepted. Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain
multitudes.) All pleasure and all pain are found within his own self. Whitman describes himself in
the basest terms: Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, he does not feign
interest in manners. He hears the primeval voices of democracy and mankind and gives himself
over to these forbidden lusts. Above all, Whitman says, I believe in the flesh and the appetites.

Analysis
The first thing to note is that Whitman calls his poems songs. This insinuates that Whitman feels
there is an audible quality to his work; that the true meanings of his poems will not be understood if
they are not heard by a listener. Thus, Whitman feels as though he will not be understood as an
individual if he is not heard by the world. Song of Myself, as the linchpin of this first half of Leaves
of Grass, is his attempt to make himself heard.
Whitmans subject is himself, but it is clear that Whitman means more than just his physical self.
Whitman calls himself a universe of meanings. He uses the symbol of his naked self in nature to
symbolize his own fusion with the world around him. Whitmans self is the whole of America and the
whole of nature. This is best seen in Whitmans use of the catalog. A catalog is a literary device
used in epic poetry as a rhetorical naming or inventory. Whitman uses a catalog in Song of Myself
to name a variety of professions and people that he meets on his journey across the States. He
says that he becomes part of these people and these people come to compose his own self. In this
section, Whitman first engages the idea of individuality and collectivity. The catalog is Whitmans
example of the collective. This refers back to his opening inscription in which Whitman proclaimed
that his work is of the self, both the individual self and the democratic self. The collection of all
people in the land forms a self that is distinct from the individual self, yet is similar in that it has its
own soul and being. Whitman uses the metaphor of grass in the sixth section of Songs of Myself
to try and explain the democratic self. His explanation, he admits, is incomplete. Whitman describes
a child coming to him and asking him what is the grass. He has no real answer, meaning that he
cannot fully describe the democratic self to those that do not inherently understand it. Whitman can
only tell the child that he sees the democratic self in young men and old women, meaning that he
sees it in all people. Whitman then takes the metaphor one step farther, telling the child that even
the grass that has died and has gone back to the earth is a part of the whole. Song of Myself
balances the themes of individuality and collectivity as two important ingredients for the democratic
experiment of America. This is Whitmans political argument. Whitman breaks up Song of Myself
with a kind of parable. A parable is a short, succinct story that offers a moral or instructive lesson for
its hearers. Whitmans lesson is an erotic one and it is instructive to see how Whitmans passion for
democracy is equated with a sexual and erotic passion. A woman sees twenty-eight men bathing
and lusts to be with them. When she joins them, they are together through the power of an unseen
hand. Whitman uses shocking erotic images of the men and spraying water, a reference to male
ejaculation, to arouse the reader. Whitman is telling his readers that they must not only observe the

democratic life but they must become one with it. This joining is both mysterious and erotic for
those that take part.
Whitman closes Song of Myself by trying to name this large, democratic collectivity, yet he finds it
impossible. He makes a point to let the reader know that he contradicts himself and that this
democratic self is full of inconsistencies. Whitman understands very well that the democracy of
America is imperfect, filled with injustice, self-serving, and undermined by the tyranny of the
individual. He pares this democratic self down to its essentials: it is primal, the flesh and the
appetites. Whitman continues Leaves of Grass with this carnal vision in the next sections.

SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE

In the context of literary history, Samuel Taylor Coleridge is often seen as "the most intellectual of
the English Romantics" due to his extensive forays into critical writing, especially his Biographia
Literaria (1817) and lectures on Shakespeare. This is not to say that Coleridge's creative side
received short shrift; friends and colleagues knew him as an unrelentingly passionate poet. In a
letter to a friend, Dorothy Wordsworth gushed: "His eye is large and full, not dark but grey; such an
eye as would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression; but it speaks every emotion of his
animated mind; it has more of the `poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling' than I ever witnessed." Like his
famous character, the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge's very eyes spoke of his compulsion to tell stories.
But Coleridge did not take himself too seriously; in addition to publishing under his initials, STC (or
"Estisi"), he was known to publish works mocking his own style under the lighthearted pseudonyms
Silas Tomkyn Comerbache and Nehemiah Higginbottom.
Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 in Devonshire, England. He was the youngest of 14
children. Coleridge proved to be a brilliant student from early on, and continued his excellence at
Jesus College. At the same time, however, he was experimenting with the pleasures of alcohol,
women, and most famously, opium. After school, Coleridge joined the Dragoons for a short time
and then hastily married Sara Southey, the younger sister of his friend, the future poet laureate
Robert Southey. He earned a living as a Unitarian preacher for a short time while remaining in an
incompatible marriage, and began to focus seriously on his love of writing. In the late 1790s,
Coleridge began his famous friendship with William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy. Their
intellectual and artistic exchanges culminated in Lyrical Ballads 1798, in which "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner" was first published. The collection was a major landmark in the Romantic
Movement; in it, the two writers exemplified the examination of the mundane, natural, and intensely
subjective. Many of the poems were also written in everyday language, avoiding the ornamented
styles of speech and elaborate rhyme schemes favored by poets of earlier periods. "The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner" is one exception to this trend, as in it Coleridge used both a rhyme scheme
and words derived from Middle English. Soon after the publication of Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge fell
in love with Sara Hutchinson, the sister of Wordsworth's future wife. Since he was already married,

he was forced to channel his love for Sara Hutchinson into his poetry, where he referred to her by
an anagram of her name, "Asra." Coleridge published the second version of "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner" in 1817 in the volume Sibylline Leaves. In it he removed much of the original
poem's deliberate archaism and added marginal glosses.
After travels abroad in Sicily and Malta, Coleridge returned to England in a state that worried his
closest friends. His opium addiction had escalated to the point of straining his relationships with his
wife and friends. Most notably, in 1810 Coleridge and Wordsworth suffered a falling out, and never
entirely regained their former closeness. Eventually, on the verge of suicide, he moved in with a
doctor who managed his care for the last eighteen years of his life. While in the doctor's care,
Coleridge published the unfinished poems "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan", which became icons of
Romantic poetry.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge died on July 25, 1834 at the age of 61. Upon his death, his good friend
Charles Lamb claimed he could not grieve for Coleridge, saying: "It seemed to me that he long had
been on the confines of the next world - that he had a hunger for eternity." According to Lamb,
Coleridge spent his life striving for the eternal and sublime, so that death was for him the fulfillment
of his deepest desire, rather than a dreaded end.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Summary & Analysis


Three young men are walking together to a wedding, when one of them is detained by a grizzled
old sailor. The young Wedding-Guest angrily demands that the Mariner let go of him, and the
Mariner obeys. But the young man is transfixed by the ancient Mariners glittering eye and can do
nothing but sit on a stone and listen to his strange tale. The Mariner says that he sailed on a ship
out of his native harborbelow the kirk, below the hill, / Below the lighthouse topand into a
sunny and cheerful sea. Hearing bassoon music drifting from the direction of the wedding, the
Wedding-Guest imagines that the bride has entered the hall, but he is still helpless to tear himself
from the Mariners story. The Mariner recalls that the voyage quickly darkened, as a giant storm
rose up in the sea and chased the ship southward. Quickly, the ship came to a frigid land of mist
and snow, where ice, mast-high, came floating by; the ship was hemmed inside this maze of ice.
But then the sailors encountered an Albatross, a great sea bird. As it flew around the ship, the ice
cracked and split, and a wind from the south propelled the ship out of the frigid regions, into a foggy
stretch of water. The Albatross followed behind it, a symbol of good luck to the sailors. A pained
look crosses the Mariners face, and the Wedding-Guest asks him, Why lookst thou so? The
Mariner confesses that he shot and killed the Albatross with his crossbow.

At first, the other sailors were furious with the Mariner for having killed the bird that made the
breezes blow. But when the fog lifted soon afterward, the sailors decided that the bird had actually
brought not the breezes but the fog; they now congratulated the Mariner on his deed. The wind
pushed the ship into a silent sea where the sailors were quickly stranded; the winds died down, and
the ship was As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean. The ocean thickened, and the men
had no water to drink; as if the sea were rotting, slimy creatures crawled out of it and walked across
the surface. At night, the water burned green, blue, and white with death fire. Some of the sailors
dreamed that a spirit, nine fathoms deep, followed them beneath the ship from the land of mist and
snow. The sailors blamed the Mariner for their plight and hung the corpse of the Albatross around
his neck like a cross.
A weary time passed; the sailors became so parched, their mouths so dry, that they were unable to
speak. But one day, gazing westward, the Mariner saw a tiny speck on the horizon. It resolved into
a ship, moving toward them. Too dry-mouthed to speak out and inform the other sailors, the Mariner
bit down on his arm; sucking the blood, he was able to moisten his tongue enough to cry out, A
sail! a sail! The sailors smiled, believing they were saved. But as the ship neared, they saw that it
was a ghostly, skeletal hull of a ship and that its crew included two figures: Death and the Nightmare Life-in-Death, who takes the form of a pale woman with golden locks and red lips, and thicks
mans blood with cold. Death and Life-in-Death began to throw dice, and the woman won,
whereupon she whistled three times, causing the sun to sink to the horizon, the stars to instantly
emerge. As the moon rose, chased by a single star, the sailors dropped dead one by oneall
except the Mariner, whom each sailor cursed with his eye before dying. The souls of the dead
men leapt from their bodies and rushed by the Mariner.
The Wedding-Guest declares that he fears the Mariner, with his glittering eye and his skinny hand.
The Mariner reassures the Wedding-Guest that there is no need for dread; he was not among the
men who died, and he is a living man, not a ghost. Alone on the ship, surrounded by two hundred
corpses, the Mariner was surrounded by the slimy sea and the slimy creatures that crawled across
its surface. He tried to pray but was deterred by a wicked whisper that made his heart as dry as
dust. He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the dead men, each of who glared at him with
the malice of their final curse. For seven days and seven nights the Mariner endured the sight, and
yet he was unable to die. At last the moon rose, casting the great shadow of the ship across the
waters; where the ships shadow touched the waters, they burned red. The great water snakes
moved through the silvery moonlight, glittering; blue, green, and black, the snakes coiled and swam
and became beautiful in the Mariners eyes. He blessed the beautiful creatures in his heart; at that

moment, he found himself able to pray, and the corpse of the Albatross fell from his neck, sinking
like lead into the sea.
Form The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is written in loose, short ballad stanzas usually either four
or six lines long but, occasionally, as many as nine lines long. The meter is also somewhat loose,
but odd lines are generally tetrameter, while even lines are generally trimeter. (There are
exceptions: In a five-line stanza, for instance, lines one, three, and four are likely to have four
accented syllablestetrameterwhile lines two and five have three accented syllables.) The
rhymes generally alternate in an ABAB or ABABAB scheme, though again there are many
exceptions; the nine-line stanza in Part III, for instance, rhymes AABCCBDDB. Many stanzas
include couplets in this wayfive-line stanzas, for example, are rhymed ABCCB, often with an
internal rhyme in the first line, or ABAAB, without the internal rhyme.
Commentary The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is unique among Coleridges important works
unique in its intentionally archaic language (Eftsoons his hand drops he), its length, its bizarre
moral narrative, its strange scholarly notes printed in small type in the margins, its thematic
ambiguity, and the long Latin epigraph that begins it, concerning the multitude of unclassifiable
invisible creatures that inhabit the world. Its peculiarities make it quite atypical of its era; it has little
in common with other Romantic works. Rather, the scholarly notes, the epigraph, and the archaic
language combine to produce the impression (intended by Coleridge, no doubt) that the Rime is a
ballad of ancient times (like Sir Patrick Spence, which appears in Dejection: An Ode), reprinted
with explanatory notes for a new audience.
But the explanatory notes complicate, rather than clarify, the poem as a whole; while there are
times that they explain some unarticulated action, there are also times that they interpret the
material of the poem in a way that seems at odds with, or irrelevant to, the poem itself. For
instance, in Part II, we find a note regarding the spirit that followed the ship nine fathoms deep: one
of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the
learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted.
What might Coleridge mean by introducing such figures as the Platonic Constantinopolitan,
Michael Psellus, into the poem, as marginalia, and by implying that the verse itself should be
interpreted through him?
This is a question that has puzzled scholars since the first publication of the poem in this form.
(Interestingly, the original version of the Rime, in the 1 7 9 7 edition ofLyrical Ballads, did not
include the side notes.) There is certainly an element of humor in Coleridges scholarly glossesa
bit of parody aimed at the writers of serious glosses of this type; such phrases as Platonic
Constantinopolitan seem consciously silly. It can be argued that the glosses are simply an amusing
irrelevancy designed to make the poem seem archaic and that the truly important text is the poem

itselfin its complicated, often Christian symbolism, in its moral lesson (that all creatures great
and small were created by God and should be loved, from the Albatross to the slimy snakes in the
rotting ocean) and in its characters. If one accepts this argument, one is faced with the task of
discovering the key to Coleridges symbolism: what does the Albatross represent, what do the
spirits represent, and so forth. Critics have made many ingenious attempts to do just that and have
found in the Rime a number of interesting readings, ranging from Christian parable to political
allegory. But these interpretations are dampened by the fact that none of them (with the possible
exception of the Christian reading, much of which is certainly intended by the poem) seems
essential to the story itself. One can accept these interpretations of the poem only if one disregards
the glosses almost completely. A more interesting, though still questionable, reading of the poem
maintains that Coleridge intended it as a commentary on the ways in which people interpret the
lessons of the past and the ways in which the past is, to a large extent, simply unknowable. By
filling his archaic ballad with elaborate symbolism that cannot be deciphered in any single, definitive
way and then framing that symbolism with side notes that pick at it and offer a highly theoretical
spiritual-scientific interpretation of its classifications, Coleridge creates tension between the
ambiguous poem and the unambiguous-but-ridiculous notes, exposing a gulf between the old
poem and the new attempt to understand it. The message would be that, though certain moral
lessons from the past are still comprehensiblehe liveth best who loveth best is not hard to
understand other aspects of its narratives are less easily grasped. In any event, this first segment
of the poem takes the Mariner through the worst of his trials and shows, in action, the lesson that
will be explicitly articulated in the second segment. The Mariner kills the Albatross in bad faith,
subjecting himself to the hostility of the forces that govern the universe (the very un-Christianseeming spirit beneath the sea and the horrible Life-in-Death). It is unclear how these forces are
meant to relate to one anotherwhether the Life-in-Death is in league with the submerged spirit or
whether their simultaneous appearance is simply a coincidence.
After earning his curse, the Mariner is able to gain access to the favor of Godable to regain his
ability to prayonly by realizing that the monsters around him are beautiful in Gods eyes and that
he should love them as he should have loved the Albatross. In the final three books of the poem,
the Mariners encounter with a Hermit will spell out this message explicitly, and the reader will learn
why the Mariner has stopped the Wedding-Guest to tell him this story.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The most influential writer in all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a
successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare attended
grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he married an older
woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and
traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical acclaim quickly followed,
and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part-owner of the
Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 15581603) and James I (ruled
16031625), and he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeares
company the greatest possible compliment by bestowing upon its members the title of Kings Men.
Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At
the time of Shakespeares death, literary luminaries such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as
timeless.
Shakespeares works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his
death, and by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in
English was well established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce
curiosity about Shakespeares life, but the dearth of biographical information has left many details
of Shakespeares personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have concluded from this fact
and from Shakespeares modest education that Shakespeares plays were actually written by
someone elseFrancis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular candidatesbut
the support for this claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken seriously by
many scholars.
In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of
the thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy of this body of work is
immense. A number of Shakespeares plays seem to have transcended even the category of
brilliance, becoming so influential as to affect profoundly the course of Western literature and
culture ever after.
Writing Style
William Shakespeare's early plays were written in the conventional style of the day, with elaborate
metaphors and rhetorical phrases that didn't always align naturally with the story's plot or
characters. However, Shakespeare was very innovative, adapting the traditional style to his own
purposes and creating a freer flow of words. With only small degrees of variation, Shakespeare
primarily used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse,

to compose his plays. At the same time, there are passages in all the plays that deviate from this
and use forms of poetry or simple prose.

MACBETH

Context

Shakespeares shortest and bloodiest tragedy, Macbeth tells the story of a brave Scottish general
(Macbeth) who receives a prophecy from a trio of sinister witches that one day he will become King
of Scotland. Consumed with ambitious thoughts and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders
King Duncan and seizes the throne for himself. He begins his reign racked with guilt and fear and
soon becomes a tyrannical ruler, as he is forced to commit more and more murders to protect
himself from enmity and suspicion. The bloodbath swiftly propels Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to
arrogance, madness, and death.
Macbeth was most likely written in 1606, early in the reign of James I, who had been James VI of
Scotland before he succeeded to the English throne in 1603. James was a patron of Shakespeares
acting company, and of all the plays Shakespeare wrote under Jamess reign, Macbeth most clearly
reflects the playwrights close relationship with the sovereign. In focusing on Macbeth, a figure from
Scottish history, Shakespeare paid homage to his kings Scottish lineage. Additionally, the witches
prophecy that Banquo will found a line of kings is a clear nod to Jamess familys claim to have
descended from the historical Banquo. In a larger sense, the theme of bad versus good kingship,
embodied by Macbeth and Duncan, respectively, would have resonated at the royal court, where
James was busy developing his English version of the theory of divine right.
Macbeth is not Shakespeares most complex play, but it is certainly one of his most powerful and
emotionally intense. Whereas Shakespeares other major tragedies, such
as Hamlet and Othello, fastidiously explore the intellectual predicaments faced by their subjects and
the fine nuances of their subjects characters, Macbeth tumbles madly from its opening to its
conclusion. It is a sharp, jagged sketch of theme and character; as such, it has shocked and
fascinated audiences for nearly four hundred years.

Plot Overview
The play begins with the brief appearance of a trio of witches and then moves to a military camp,
where the Scottish King Duncan hears the news that his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, have
defeated two separate invading armiesone from Ireland, led by the rebel Macdonwald, and one
from Norway. Following their pitched battle with these enemy forces, Macbeth and Banquo
encounter the witches as they cross a moor. The witches prophesy that Macbeth will be made

thane (a rank of Scottish nobility) of Cawdor and eventually King of Scotland. They also prophesy
that Macbeths companion, Banquo, will beget a line of Scottish kings, although Banquo will never
be king himself. The witches vanish, and Macbeth and Banquo treat their prophecies skeptically
until some of King Duncans men come to thank the two generals for their victories in battle and to
tell Macbeth that he has indeed been named thane of Cawdor. The previous thane betrayed
Scotland by fighting for the Norwegians and Duncan has condemned him to death. Macbeth is
intrigued by the possibility that the remainder of the witches prophecythat he will be crowned
kingmight be true, but he is uncertain what to expect. He visits with King Duncan, and they plan
to dine together at Inverness, Macbeths castle, that night. Macbeth writes ahead to his wife, Lady
Macbeth, telling her all that has happened.
Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husbands uncertainty. She desires the kingship for him and
wants him to murder Duncan in order to obtain it. When Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she
overrides all of her husbands objections and persuades him to kill the king that very night. He and
Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncans two chamberlains drunk so they will black out; the next morning
they will blame the murder on the chamberlains, who will be defenseless, as they will remember
nothing. While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and a number of
supernatural portents, including a vision of a bloody dagger. When Duncans death is discovered
the next morning, Macbeth kills the chamberlainsostensibly out of rage at their crimeand easily
assumes the kingship. Duncans sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland,
respectively, fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires their demise as well.
Fearful of the witches prophecy that Banquos heirs will seize the throne, Macbeth hires a group of
murderers to kill Banquo and his son Fleance. They ambush Banquo on his way to a royal feast,
but they fail to kill Fleance, who escapes into the night. Macbeth becomes furious: as long as
Fleance is alive, he fears that his power remains insecure. At the feast that night, Banquos ghost
visits Macbeth. When he sees the ghost, Macbeth raves fearfully, startling his guests, who include
most of the great Scottish nobility. Lady Macbeth tries to neutralize the damage, but Macbeths
kingship incites increasing resistance from his nobles and subjects. Frightened, Macbeth goes to
visit the witches in their cavern. There, they show him a sequence of demons and spirits who
present him with further prophecies: he must beware of Macduff, a Scottish nobleman who opposed
Macbeths accession to the throne; he is incapable of being harmed by any man born of woman;
and he will be safe until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castle. Macbeth is relieved and feels
secure, because he knows that all men are born of women and that forests cannot move. When he
learns that Macduff has fled to England to join Malcolm, Macbeth orders that Macduffs castle be
seized and, most cruelly, that Lady Macduff and her children be murdered.

When news of his familys execution reaches Macduff in England, he is stricken with grief and vows
revenge. Prince Malcolm, Duncans son, has succeeded in raising an army in England, and
Macduff joins him as he rides to Scotland to challenge Macbeths forces. The invasion has the
support of the Scottish nobles, who are appalled and frightened by Macbeths tyrannical and
murderous behavior. Lady Macbeth, meanwhile, becomes plagued with fits of sleepwalking in which
she bemoans what she believes to be bloodstains on her hands. Before Macbeths opponents
arrive, Macbeth receives news that she has killed herself, causing him to sink into a deep and
pessimistic despair. Nevertheless, he awaits the English and fortifies Dunsinane, to which he
seems to have withdrawn in order to defend himself, certain that the witches prophecies guarantee
his invincibility. He is struck numb with fear, however, when he learns that the English army is
advancing on Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam Wood. Birnam Wood is indeed
coming to Dunsinane, fulfilling half of the witches prophecy.
In the battle, Macbeth hews violently, but the English forces gradually overwhelm his army and
castle. On the battlefield, Macbeth encounters the vengeful Macduff, who declares that he was not
of woman born but was instead untimely ripped from his mothers womb (what we now call birth
by cesarean section). Though he realizes that he is doomed, Macbeth continues to fight until
Macduff kills and beheads him. Malcolm, now the King of Scotland, declares his benevolent
intentions for the country and invites all to see him crowned at Scone.

Summary
Act 1
The play takes place in Scotland. Duncan, the king of Scotland, is at war with the king of Norway.
As the play opens, he learns of Macbeth's bravery in a victorious battle against Macdonalda Scot
who sided with the Norwegians. At the same time, news arrives concerning the arrest of the
treacherous Thane of Cawdor. Duncan decides to give the title of Thane of Cawdor to Macbeth.
As Macbeth and Banquo return home from battle, they meet three witches. The witches predict that
Macbeth will be thane of Cawdor and king of Scotland, and that Banquo will be the father of kings.
After the witches disappear, Macbeth and Banquo meet two noblemen Ross and Angus, who
announce Macbeth's new title as thane of Cawdor. Upon hearing this, Macbeth begins to
contemplate the murder of Duncan in order to realize the witches' second prophecy.
Macbeth and Banquo meet with Duncan, who announces that he is going to pay Macbeth a visit at
his castle. Macbeth rides ahead to prepare his household. Meanwhile, Lady Macbeth receives a
letter from Macbeth informing her of the witches' prophesy and its subsequent realization. A servant
appears to inform her of Duncan's approach. Energized by the news, Lady Macbeth invokes

supernatural powers to strip her of feminine softness and thus prepare her for the murder of
Duncan. When Macbeth arrives, Lady Macbeth tells him that she will plot Duncan's murder.
When Duncan arrives at the castle, Lady Macbeth greets him alone. When Macbeth fails to appear,
Lady Macbeth finds him is in his room, contemplating the weighty and evil decision to kill Duncan.
Lady Macbeth taunts him by telling him that he will only be a man if he kills Duncan. She then tells
him her plan for the murder, which Macbeth accepts: they will kill him while his drunken bodyguards
sleep, then plant incriminating evidence on the bodyguards.
Act 2
Macbeth sees a vision of a bloody dagger floating before him, leading him to Duncan's room. When
he hears Lady Macbeth ring the bell to signal the completion of her preparations, Macbeth sets out
to complete his part in the murderous plan.
Lady Macbeth waits for Macbeth to finish the act of regicide. Macbeth enters, still carrying the
bloody daggers. Lady Macbeth again chastises him for his weak-mindedness and plants the
daggers on the bodyguards herself. While she does so, Macbeth imagines that he hears a haunting
voice saying that he shall sleep no more. Lady Macbeth returns and assures Macbeth that "a little
water clears us of this deed" (II ii 65).
As the thanes Macduff and Lennox arrive, the porter pretends that he is guarding the gate to hell.
Immediately thereafter, Macduff discovers Duncans dead body. Macbeth kills the two bodyguards,
claiming that he was overcome with a fit of grief and rage when he saw them with the bloody
daggers. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain, fearing their lives to be in danger, flee to England
and Ireland. Their flight brings them under suspicion of conspiring against Duncan. Macbeth is thus
crowned king of Scotland.
Act 3
In an attempt to thwart the witches' prophesy that Banquo will father kings, Macbeth hires two
murderers to kill Banquo and his sonFleance. Lady Macbeth is left uninformed of these plans. A
third murderer joins the other two on the heath and the three men kill Banquo. Fleance, however,
manages to escape.
Banquos ghost appears to Macbeth as he sits down to a celebratory banquet, sending him into a
frenzy of terror. Lady Macbeth attempts to cover up for his odd behavior but the banquet comes to a
premature end as the thanes begin to question Macbeth's sanity. Macbeth decides that he must
revisit the witches to look into the future once more.
Meanwhile, Macbeth's thanes begin to turn against him. Macduff meets Malcolm in England to
prepare an army to march on Scotland.
Act 4

The witches show Macbeth three apparitions. The first warns him against Macduff, the second tells
him to fear no man born of woman, and the third prophesizes that he will fall only when Birnam
Wood comes to Dunsinane castle. Macbeth takes this as a prophecy that he is infallible. When he
asks the witches if their prophesy about Banquo will come true, they show him a procession of eight
kings, all of whom look like Banquo.
Meanwhile in England, Malcolm tests Macduff's loyalty by pretending to confess to multiple sins and
malicious ambitions. When Macduff proves his loyalty to Scotland, the two strategize for their
offensive against Macbeth. Back in Scotland, Macbeth has Macduffs wife and children murdered.
Act 5
Lady Macbeth suffers from bouts of sleepwalking. To a doctor who observes her symptoms, she
unwittingly reveals her guilt as she pronounces that she cannot wash her hands clean of
bloodstains. Macbeth is too preoccupied with battle preparations to pay much heed to her dreams
and expresses anger when the doctor says he cannot cure her. Just as the English army led by
Malcolm, Macduff, Siward approaches, Lady Macbeths cry of death is heard in the castle. When
Macbeth hears of her death, he comments that she should have died at a future date and muses on
the meaninglessness of life.
Taking the witches second prophecies in good faith, Macbeth still believes that he is impregnable to
the approaching army. But Malcolm has instructed each man in the English army to cut a tree
branch from Birnam Wood and hold it up to disguise the armys total numbers. As a result,
Macbeth's servant reports that he has seen a seemingly impossible sight: Birnam Wood seems to
be moving toward the castle. Macbeth is shaken but still engages the oncoming army.
In battle, Macbeth kills Young Siward, the English general's brave son. Macduff then challenges
Macbeth. As they fight, Macduff reveals that he was not "of woman born" but was "untimely ripped"
from his mother's womb (V x 13-16). Macbeth is stunned but refuses to yield to Macduff. Macduff
kills him and decapitates him. At the end of the play, Malcolm is proclaimed the new king of
Scotland.

Analysis of Major Characters


Macbeth
Because we first hear of Macbeth in the wounded captains account of his battlefield valor, our initial
impression is of a brave and capable warrior. This perspective is complicated, however, once we
see Macbeth interact with the three witches. We realize that his physical courage is joined by a
consuming ambition and a tendency to self-doubtthe prediction that he will be king brings him joy,
but it also creates inner turmoil. These three attributesbravery, ambition, and self-doubtstruggle
for mastery of Macbeth throughout the play. Shakespeare uses Macbeth to show the terrible effects

that ambition and guilt can have on a man who lacks strength of character. We may classify
Macbeth as irrevocably evil, but his weak character separates him from Shakespeares great
villainsIago in Othello,Richard III in Richard III, Edmund in King Learwho are all strong enough
to conquer guilt and self-doubt. Macbeth, great warrior though he is, is ill equipped for the psychic
consequences of crime.
Before he kills Duncan, Macbeth is plagued by worry and almost aborts the crime. It takes Lady
Macbeths steely sense of purpose to push him into the deed. After the murder, however, her
powerful personality begins to disintegrate, leaving Macbeth increasingly alone. He fluctuates
between fits of fevered action, in which he plots a series of murders to secure his throne, and
moments of terrible guilt (as when Banquos ghost appears) and absolute pessimism (after his
wifes death, when he seems to succumb to despair). These fluctuations reflect the tragic tension
within Macbeth: he is at once too ambitious to allow his conscience to stop him from murdering his
way to the top and too conscientious to be happy with himself as a murderer. As things fall apart for
him at the end of the play, he seems almost relievedwith the English army at his gates, he can
finally return to life as a warrior, and he displays a kind of reckless bravado as his enemies
surround him and drag him down. In part, this stems from his fatal confidence in the witches
prophecies, but it also seems to derive from the fact that he has returned to the arena where he has
been most successful and where his internal turmoil need not affect himnamely, the battlefield.
Unlike many of Shakespeares other tragic heroes, Macbeth never seems to contemplate suicide:
Why should I play the Roman fool, he asks, and die / On mine own sword? (5.10.12). Instead,
he goes down fighting, bringing the play full circle: it begins with Macbeth winning on the battlefield
and ends with him dying in combat.
Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeares most famous and frightening female characters. When we
first see her, she is already plotting Duncans murder, and she is stronger, more ruthless, and more
ambitious than her husband. She seems fully aware of this and knows that she will have to push
Macbeth into committing murder. At one point, she wishes that she were not a woman so that she
could do it herself. This theme of the relationship between gender and power is key to Lady
Macbeths character: her husband implies that she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body,
which seems to link masculinity to ambition and violence. Shakespeare, however, seems to use
her, and the witches, to undercut Macbeths idea that undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing
but males (1.7.7374). These crafty women use female methods of achieving powerthat is,
manipulationto further their supposedly male ambitions. Women, the play implies, can be as

ambitious and cruel as men, yet social constraints deny them the means to pursue these ambitions
on their own.
Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband with remarkable effectiveness, overriding all his objections;
when he hesitates to murder, she repeatedly questions his manhood until he feels that he must
commit murder to prove himself. Lady Macbeths remarkable strength of will persists through the
murder of the kingit is she who steadies her husbands nerves immediately after the crime has
been perpetrated. Afterward, however, she begins a slow slide into madnessjust as ambition
affects her more strongly than Macbeth before the crime, so does guilt plague her more strongly
afterward. By the close of the play, she has been reduced to sleepwalking through the castle,
desperately trying to wash away an invisible bloodstain. Once the sense of guilt comes home to
roost, Lady Macbeths sensitivity becomes a weakness, and she is unable to cope. Significantly,
she (apparently) kills herself, signaling her total inability to deal with the legacy of their crimes.
The Three Witches
Throughout the play, the witchesreferred to as the weird sisters by many of the characterslurk
like dark thoughts and unconscious temptations to evil. In part, the mischief they cause stems from
their supernatural powers, but mainly it is the result of their understanding of the weaknesses of
their specific interlocutorsthey play upon Macbeths ambition like puppeteers.
The witches beards, bizarre potions, and rhymed speech make them seem slightly ridiculous, like
caricatures of the supernatural. Shakespeare has them speak in rhyming couplets throughout (their
most famous line is probably Double, double, toil and trouble, / Fire burn and cauldron bubble in
4.1.1011), which separates them from the other characters, who mostly speak in blank verse. The
witches words seem almost comical, like malevolent nursery rhymes. Despite the absurdity of their
eye of newt and toe of frog recipes, however, they are clearly the most dangerous characters in
the play, being both tremendously powerful and utterly wicked (4.1.14).
The audience is left to ask whether the witches are independent agents toying with human lives, or
agents of fate, whose prophecies are only reports of the inevitable. The witches bear a striking and
obviously intentional resemblance to the Fates, female characters in both Norse and Greek
mythology who weave the fabric of human lives and then cut the threads to end them. Some of their
prophecies seem self-fulfilling. For example, it is doubtful that Macbeth would have murdered his
king without the push given by the witches predictions. In other cases, though, their prophecies are
just remarkably accurate readings of the futureit is hard to see Birnam Wood coming to
Dunsinane as being self-fulfilling in any way. The play offers no easy answers. Instead,

Shakespeare keeps the witches well outside the limits of human comprehension. They embody an
unreasoning, instinctive evil.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Corrupting Power of Unchecked Ambition
The main theme of Macbeththe destruction wrought when ambition goes unchecked by moral
constraintsfinds its most powerful expression in the plays two main characters. Macbeth is a
courageous Scottish general who is not naturally inclined to commit evil deeds, yet he deeply
desires power and advancement. He kills Duncan against his better judgment and afterward stews
in guilt and paranoia. Toward the end of the play he descends into a kind of frantic, boastful
madness. Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, pursues her goals with greater determination, yet she
is less capable of withstanding the repercussions of her immoral acts. One of Shakespeares most
forcefully drawn female characters, she spurs her husband mercilessly to kill Duncan and urges him
to be strong in the murders aftermath, but she is eventually driven to distraction by the effect of
Macbeths repeated bloodshed on her conscience. In each case, ambitionhelped, of course, by
the malign prophecies of the witchesis what drives the couple to ever more terrible atrocities. The
problem, the play suggests, is that once one decides to use violence to further ones quest for
power, it is difficult to stop. There are always potential threats to the throneBanquo, Fleance,
Macduffand it is always tempting to use violent means to dispose of them.
The Relationship Between Cruelty and Masculinity
Characters in Macbeth frequently dwell on issues of gender. Lady Macbeth manipulates her
husband by questioning his manhood, wishes that she herself could be unsexed, and does not
contradict Macbeth when he says that a woman like her should give birth only to boys. In the same
manner that Lady Macbeth goads her husband on to murder, Macbeth provokes the murderers he
hires to kill Banquo by questioning their manhood. Such acts show that both Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth equate masculinity with naked aggression, and whenever they converse about manhood,
violence soon follows. Their understanding of manhood allows the political order depicted in the
play to descend into chaos.
At the same time, however, the audience cannot help noticing that women are also sources of
violence and evil. The witches prophecies spark Macbeths ambitions and then encourage his
violent behavior; Lady Macbeth provides the brains and the will behind her husbands plotting; and

the only divine being to appear is Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. Arguably, Macbeth traces the
root of chaos and evil to women, which has led some critics to argue that this is Shakespeares
most misogynistic play. While the male characters are just as violent and prone to evil as the
women, the aggression of the female characters is more striking because it goes against prevailing
expectations of how women ought to behave. Lady Macbeths behavior certainly shows that women
can be as ambitious and cruel as men. Whether because of the constraints of her society or
because she is not fearless enough to kill, Lady Macbeth relies on deception and manipulation
rather than violence to achieve her ends.
Ultimately, the play does put forth a revised and less destructive definition of manhood. In the scene
where Macduff learns of the murders of his wife and child, Malcolm consoles him by encouraging
him to take the news in manly fashion, by seeking revenge upon Macbeth. Macduff shows the
young heir apparent that he has a mistaken understanding of masculinity. To Malcolms suggestion,
Dispute it like a man, Macduff replies, I shall do so. But I must also feel it as a man (4.3.221
223). At the end of the play, Siward receives news of his sons death rather complacently. Malcolm
responds: Hes worth more sorrow [than you have expressed] / And that Ill spend for him
(5.11.1617). Malcolms comment shows that he has learned the lesson Macduff gave him on the
sentient nature of true masculinity. It also suggests that, with Malcolms coronation, order will be
restored to the Kingdom of Scotland.
The Difference Between Kingship and Tyranny
In the play, Duncan is always referred to as a king, while Macbeth soon becomes known as the
tyrant. The difference between the two types of rulers seems to be expressed in a conversation
that occurs in Act 4, scene 3, when Macduff meets Malcolm in England. In order to test Macduffs
loyalty to Scotland, Malcolm pretends that he would make an even worse king than Macbeth. He
tells Macduff of his reproachable qualitiesamong them a thirst for personal power and a violent
temperament, both of which seem to characterize Macbeth perfectly. On the other hand, Malcolm
says, The king-becoming graces / [are] justice, verity, temprance, stableness, / Bounty,
perseverance, mercy, [and] lowliness (4.3.9293). The model king, then, offers the kingdom an
embodiment of order and justice, but also comfort and affection. Under him, subjects are rewarded
according to their merits, as when Duncan makes Macbeth thane of Cawdor after Macbeths victory
over the invaders. Most important, the king must be loyal to Scotland above his own interests.
Macbeth, by contrast, brings only chaos to Scotlandsymbolized in the bad weather and bizarre
supernatural eventsand offers no real justice, only a habit of capriciously murdering those he

sees as a threat. As the embodiment of tyranny, he must be overcome by Malcolm so that Scotland
can have a true king once more.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the texts major themes.
Hallucinations
Visions and hallucinations recur throughout the play and serve as reminders of Macbeth and Lady
Macbeths joint culpability for the growing body count. When he is about to kill Duncan, Macbeth
sees a dagger floating in the air. Covered with blood and pointed toward the kings chamber, the
dagger represents the bloody course on which Macbeth is about to embark. Later, he sees
Banquos ghost sitting in a chair at a feast, pricking his conscience by mutely reminding him that he
murdered his former friend. The seemingly hardheaded Lady Macbeth also eventually gives way to
visions, as she sleepwalks and believes that her hands are stained with blood that cannot be
washed away by any amount of water. In each case, it is ambiguous whether the vision is real or
purely hallucinatory; but, in both cases, the Macbeths read them uniformly as supernatural signs of
their guilt.
Violence
Macbeth is a famously violent play. Interestingly, most of the killings take place offstage, but
throughout the play the characters provide the audience with gory descriptions of the carnage, from
the opening scene where the captain describes Macbeth and Banquo wading in blood on the
battlefield, to the endless references to the bloodstained hands of Macbeth and his wife. The action
is bookended by a pair of bloody battles: in the first, Macbeth defeats the invaders; in the second,
he is slain and beheaded by Macduff. In between is a series of murders: Duncan, Duncans
chamberlains, Banquo, Lady Macduff, and Macduffs son all come to bloody ends. By the end of the
action, blood seems to be everywhere.
Prophecy
Prophecy sets Macbeths plot in motionnamely, the witches prophecy that Macbeth will become
first thane of Cawdor and then king. The weird sisters make a number of other prophecies: they tell
us that Banquos heirs will be kings, that Macbeth should beware Macduff, that Macbeth is safe till
Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, and that no man born of woman can harm Macbeth. Save for
the prophecy about Banquos heirs, all of these predictions are fulfilled within the course of the play.

Still, it is left deliberately ambiguous whether some of them are self-fulfillingfor example, whether
Macbeth wills himself to be king or is fated to be king. Additionally, as the Birnam Wood and born
of woman prophecies make clear, the prophecies must be interpreted as riddles, since they do not
always mean what they seem to mean.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Blood
Blood is everywhere in Macbeth, beginning with the opening battle between the Scots and the
Norwegian invaders, which is described in harrowing terms by the wounded captain in Act 1, scene
2. Once Macbeth and Lady Macbeth embark upon their murderous journey, blood comes to
symbolize their guilt, and they begin to feel that their crimes have stained them in a way that cannot
be washed clean. Will all great Neptunes ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? Macbeth
cries after he has killed Duncan, even as his wife scolds him and says that a little water will do the
job (2.2.5859). Later, though, she comes to share his horrified sense of being stained: Out,
damned spot; out, I say . . . who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in
him? she asks as she wanders through the halls of their castle near the close of the play (5.1.30
34). Blood symbolizes the guilt that sits like a permanent stain on the consciences of both Macbeth
and Lady Macbeth, one that hounds them to their graves.
The Weather
As in other Shakespearean tragedies, Macbeths grotesque murder spree is accompanied by a
number of unnatural occurrences in the natural realm. From the thunder and lightning that
accompany the witches appearances to the terrible storms that rage on the night of Duncans
murder, these violations of the natural order reflect corruption in the moral and political orders.

ROMEO AND JULIET Context


Shakespeare did not invent the story of Romeo and Juliet. He did not, in fact, even introduce the
story into the English language. A poet named Arthur Brooks first brought the story of Romeus and
Juliet to an English-speaking audience in a long and plodding poem that was itself not original, but
rather an adaptation of adaptations that stretched across nearly a hundred years and two

languages. Many of the details of Shakespeares plot are lifted directly from Brookss poem,
including the meeting of Romeo and Juliet at the ball, their secret marriage, Romeos fight with
Tybalt, the sleeping potion, and the timing of the lovers eventual suicides. Such appropriation of
other stories is characteristic of Shakespeare, who often wrote plays based on earlier works.
Shakespeares use of existing material as fodder for his plays should not, however, be taken as a
lack of originality. Instead, readers should note how Shakespeare crafts his sources in new ways
while displaying a remarkable understanding of the literary tradition in which he is working.
Shakespeares version of Romeo and Julietis no exception. The play distinguishes itself from its
predecessors in several important aspects: the subtlety and originality of its characterization
(Shakespeare almost wholly created Mercutio); the intense pace of its action, which is compressed
from nine months into four frenetic days; a powerful enrichment of the storys thematic aspects;
and, above all, an extraordinary use of language.
Shakespeares play not only bears a resemblance to the works on which it is based, it is also quite
similar in plot, theme, and dramatic ending to the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, told by the great
Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses. Shakespeare was well aware of this similarity; he includes
a reference to Thisbe in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare also includes scenes from the story of
Pyramus and Thisbe in the comically awful play-within-a-play put on by Bottom and his friends in A
Midsummer Nights Dreama play Shakespeare wrote around the same time he was
composing Romeo and Juliet. Indeed, one can look at the play-within-a-play inA Midsummer
Nights Dream as parodying the very story that Shakespeare seeks to tell in Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in full knowledge that the story he was telling was old,
clichd, and an easy target for parody. In writingRomeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, then, implicitly set
himself the task of telling a love story despite the considerable forces he knew were stacked
against its success. Through the incomparable intensity of his language Shakespeare succeeded in
this effort, writing a play that is universally accepted in Western culture as the preeminent,
archetypal love story.

Plot Overview
In the streets of Verona another brawl breaks out between the servants of the feuding noble
families of Capulet and Montague. Benvolio, a Montague, tries to stop the fighting, but is himself
embroiled when the rash Capulet, Tybalt, arrives on the scene. After citizens outraged by the
constant violence beat back the warring factions, Prince Escalus, the ruler of Verona, attempts to
prevent any further conflicts between the families by decreeing death for any individual who
disturbs the peace in the future.

Romeo, the son of Montague, runs into his cousin Benvolio, who had earlier seen Romeo moping in
a grove of sycamores. After some prodding by Benvolio, Romeo confides that he is in love with
Rosaline, a woman who does not return his affections. Benvolio counsels him to forget this woman
and find another, more beautiful one, but Romeo remains despondent.
Meanwhile, Paris, a kinsman of the Prince, seeks Juliets hand in marriage. Her father Capulet,
though happy at the match, asks Paris to wait two years, since Juliet is not yet even fourteen.
Capulet dispatches a servant with a list of people to invite to a masquerade and feast he
traditionally holds. He invites Paris to the feast, hoping that Paris will begin to win Juliets heart.
Romeo and Benvolio, still discussing Rosaline, encounter the Capulet servant bearing the list of
invitations. Benvolio suggests that they attend, since that will allow Romeo to compare his beloved
to other beautiful women of Verona. Romeo agrees to go with Benvolio to the feast, but only
because Rosaline, whose name he reads on the list, will be there.
In Capulets household, young Juliet talks with her mother, Lady Capulet, and her nurse about the
possibility of marrying Paris. Juliet has not yet considered marriage, but agrees to look at Paris
during the feast to see if she thinks she couldfall in love with him.
The feast begins. A melancholy Romeo follows Benvolio and their witty friend Mercutio to Capulets
house. Once inside, Romeo sees Juliet from a distance and instantly falls in love with her; he
forgets about Rosaline completely. As Romeo watches Juliet, entranced, a young Capulet, Tybalt,
recognizes him, and is enraged that a Montague would sneak into a Capulet feast. He prepares to
attack, but Capulet holds him back. Soon, Romeo speaks to Juliet, and the two experience a
profound attraction. They kiss, not even knowing each others names. When he finds out from
Juliets nurse that she is the daughter of Capulethis familys enemyhe becomes distraught.
When Juliet learns that the young man she has just kissed is the son of Montague, she grows
equally upset.
As Mercutio and Benvolio leave the Capulet estate, Romeo leaps over the orchard wall into the
garden, unable to leave Juliet behind. From his hiding place, he sees Juliet in a window above the
orchard and hears her speak his name. He calls out to her, and they exchange vows of love.
Romeo hurries to see his friend and confessor Friar Lawrence, who, though shocked at the sudden
turn of Romeos heart, agrees to marry the young lovers in secret since he sees in their love the
possibility of ending the age-old feud between Capulet and Montague. The following day, Romeo

and Juliet meet at Friar Lawrences cell and are married. The Nurse, who is privy to the secret,
procures a ladder, which Romeo will use to climb into Juliets window for their wedding night.
The next day, Benvolio and Mercutio encounter TybaltJuliets cousinwho, still enraged that
Romeo attended Capulets feast, has challenged Romeo to a duel. Romeo appears. Now Tybalts
kinsman by marriage, Romeo begs the Capulet to hold off the duel until he understands why
Romeo does not want to fight. Disgusted with this plea for peace, Mercutio says that he will fight
Tybalt himself. The two begin to duel. Romeo tries to stop them by leaping between the
combatants. Tybalt stabs Mercutio under Romeos arm, and Mercutio dies. Romeo, in a rage, kills
Tybalt. Romeo flees from the scene. Soon after, the Prince declares him forever banished from
Verona for his crime. Friar Lawrence arranges for Romeo to spend his wedding night with Juliet
before he has to leave for Mantua the following morning.
In her room, Juliet awaits the arrival of her new husband. The Nurse enters, and, after some
confusion, tells Juliet that Romeo has killed Tybalt. Distraught, Juliet suddenly finds herself married
to a man who has killed her kinsman. But she resettles herself, and realizes that her duty belongs
with her love: to Romeo.
Romeo sneaks into Juliets room that night, and at last they consummate their marriage and their
love. Morning comes, and the lovers bid farewell, unsure when they will see each other again. Juliet
learns that her father, affected by the recent events, now intends for her to marry Paris in just three
days. Unsure of how to proceedunable to reveal to her parents that she is married to Romeo, but
unwilling to marry Paris now that she is Romeos wifeJuliet asks her nurse for advice. She
counsels Juliet to proceed as if Romeo were dead and to marry Paris, who is a better match
anyway. Disgusted with the Nurses disloyalty, Juliet disregards her advice and hurries to Friar
Lawrence. He concocts a plan to reunite Juliet with Romeo in Mantua. The night before her
wedding to Paris, Juliet must drink a potion that will make her appear to be dead. After she is laid to
rest in the familys crypt, the Friar and Romeo will secretly retrieve her, and she will be free to live
with Romeo, away from their parents feuding.
Juliet returns home to discover the wedding has been moved ahead one day, and she is to be
married tomorrow. That night, Juliet drinks the potion, and the Nurse discovers her, apparently
dead, the next morning. The Capulets grieve, and Juliet is entombed according to plan. But Friar
Lawrences message explaining the plan to Romeo never reaches Mantua. Its bearer, Friar John,
gets confined to a quarantined house. Romeo hears only that Juliet is dead.

Romeo learns only of Juliets death and decides to kill himself rather than live without her. He buys
a vial of poison from a reluctant Apothecary, then speeds back to Verona to take his own life at
Juliets tomb. Outside the Capulet crypt, Romeo comes upon Paris, who is scattering flowers on
Juliets grave. They fight, and Romeo kills Paris. He enters the tomb, sees Juliets inanimate body,
drinks the poison, and dies by her side. Just then, Friar Lawrence enters and realizes that Romeo
has killed Paris and himself. At the same time, Juliet awakes. Friar Lawrence hears the coming of
the watch. When Juliet refuses to leave with him, he flees alone. Juliet sees her beloved Romeo
and realizes he has killed himself with poison. She kisses his poisoned lips, and when that does not
kill her, buries his dagger in her chest, falling dead upon his body.
The watch arrives, followed closely by the Prince, the Capulets, and Montague. Montague declares
that Lady Montague has died of grief over Romeos exile. Seeing their childrens bodies, Capulet
and Montague agree to end their long-standing feud and to raise gold statues of their children sideby-side in a newly peaceful Verona.

Analysis of Major Characters


Romeo
The name Romeo, in popular culture, has become nearly synonymous with lover. Romeo,
in Romeo and Juliet, does indeed experience a love of such purity and passion that he kills himself
when he believes that the object of his love, Juliet, has died. The power of Romeos love, however,
often obscures a clear vision of Romeos character, which is far more complex.
Even Romeos relation to love is not so simple. At the beginning of the play, Romeo pines for
Rosaline, proclaiming her the paragon of women and despairing at her indifference toward him.
Taken together, Romeos Rosaline-induced histrionics seem rather juvenile. Romeo is a great
reader of love poetry, and the portrayal of his love for Rosaline suggests he is trying to re-create the
feelings that he has read about. After first kissing Juliet, she tells him you kiss by th book,
meaning that he kisses according to the rules, and implying that while proficient, his kissing lacks
originality (1.5.107). In reference to Rosaline, it seems, Romeo loves by the book. Rosaline, of
course, slips from Romeos mind at first sight of Juliet. But Juliet is no mere replacement. The love
she shares with Romeo is far deeper, more authentic and unique than the clichd puppy love
Romeo felt for Rosaline. Romeos love matures over the course of the play from the shallow desire
to be in love to a profound and intense passion. One must ascribe Romeos development at least in
part to Juliet. Her level-headed observations, such as the one about Romeos kissing, seem just the
thing to snap Romeo from his superficial idea of love and to inspire him to begin to speak some of
the most beautiful and intense love poetry ever written.

Yet Romeos deep capacity for love is merely a part of his larger capacity for intense feeling of all
kinds. Put another way, it is possible to describe Romeo as lacking the capacity for moderation.
Love compels him to sneak into the garden of his enemys daughter, risking death simply to catch a
glimpse of her. Anger compels him to kill his wifes cousin in a reckless duel to avenge the death of
his friend. Despair compels him to suicide upon hearing of Juliets death. Such extreme behavior
dominates Romeos character throughout the play and contributes to the ultimate tragedy that
befalls the lovers. Had Romeo restrained himself from killing Tybalt, or waited even one day before
killing himself after hearing the news of Juliets death, matters might have ended happily. Of course,
though, had Romeo not had such depths of feeling, the love he shared with Juliet would never have
existed in the first place.
Among his friends, especially while bantering with Mercutio, Romeo shows glimpses of his social
persona. He is intelligent, quick-witted, fond of verbal jousting (particularly about sex), loyal, and
unafraid of danger.
Juliet
Having not quite reached her fourteenth birthday, Juliet is of an age that stands on the border
between immaturity and maturity. At the plays beginning however she seems merely an obedient,
sheltered, nave child. Though many girls her ageincluding her motherget married, Juliet has
not given the subject any thought. When Lady Capulet mentions Pariss interest in marrying Juliet,
Juliet dutifully responds that she will try to see if she can love him, a response that seems childish
in its obedience and in its immature conception of love. Juliet seems to have no friends her own
age, and she is not comfortable talking about sex (as seen in her discomfort when the Nurse goes
on and on about a sexual joke at Juliets expense in Act 1, scene 3).
Juliet gives glimpses of her determination, strength, and sober-mindedness, in her earliest scenes,
and offers a preview of the woman she will become during the four-day span of Romeo and
Juliet. While Lady Capulet proves unable to quiet the Nurse, Juliet succeeds with one word (also in
Act 1, scene 3). In addition, even in Juliets dutiful acquiescence to try to love Paris, there is some
seed of steely determination. Juliet promises to consider Paris as a possible husband to the precise
degree her mother desires. While an outward show of obedience, such a statement can also be
read as a refusal through passivity. Juliet will accede to her mothers wishes, but she will not go out
of her way to fall in love with Paris.
Juliets first meeting with Romeo propels her full-force toward adulthood. Though profoundly in love
with him, Juliet is able to see and criticize Romeos rash decisions and his tendency to romanticize

things. After Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished, Juliet does not follow him blindly. She makes a
logical and heartfelt decision that her loyalty and love for Romeo must be her guiding priorities.
Essentially, Juliet cuts herself loose from her prior social mooringsher nurse, her parents, and her
social position in Veronain order to try to reunite with Romeo. When she wakes in the tomb to find
Romeo dead, she does not kill herself out of feminine weakness, but rather out of an intensity of
love, just as Romeo did. Juliets suicide actually requires more nerve than Romeos: while he
swallows poison, she stabs herself through the heart with a dagger.
Juliets development from a wide-eyed girl into a self-assured, loyal, and capable woman is one of
Shakespeares early triumphs of characterization. It also marks one of his most confident and
rounded treatments of a female character.
Friar Lawrence
Friar Lawrence occupies a strange position in Romeo and Juliet. He is a kindhearted cleric who
helps Romeo and Juliet throughout the play. He performs their marriage and gives generally good
advice, especially in regard to the need for moderation. He is the sole figure of religion in the play.
But Friar Lawrence is also the most scheming and political of characters in the play: he marries
Romeo and Juliet as part of a plan to end the civil strife in Verona; he spirits Romeo into Juliets
room and then out of Verona; he devises the plan to reunite Romeo and Juliet through the
deceptive ruse of a sleeping potion that seems to arise from almost mystic knowledge. This
mystical knowledge seems out of place for a Catholic friar; why does he have such knowledge, and
what could such knowledge mean? The answers are not clear. In addition, though Friar Lawrences
plans all seem well conceived and well intentioned, they serve as the main mechanisms through
which the fated tragedy of the play occurs. Readers should recognize that the Friar is not only
subject to the fate that dominates the playin many ways he brings that fate about.
Mercutio
With a lightning-quick wit and a clever mind, Mercutio is a scene stealer and one of the most
memorable characters in all of Shakespeares works. Though he constantly puns, jokes, and teases
sometimes in fun, sometimes with bitternessMercutio is not a mere jester or prankster. With his
wild words, Mercutio punctures the romantic sentiments and blind self-love that exist within the play.
He mocks Romeos self-indulgence just as he ridicules Tybalts hauteur and adherence to fashion.
The critic Stephen Greenblatt describes Mercutio as a force within the play that functions to deflate
the possibility of romantic love and the power of tragic fate. Unlike the other characters who blame

their deaths on fate, Mercutio dies cursing all Montagues and Capulets. Mercutio believes that
specific people are responsible for his death rather than some external impersonal force.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Forcefulness of Love
Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the English literary tradition. Love is naturally the
plays dominant and most important theme. The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the
intense passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, love
is a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions.
In the course of the play, the young lovers are driven to defy their entire social world: families
(Deny thy father and refuse thy name, Juliet asks, Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, / And
Ill no longer be a Capulet); friends (Romeo abandons Mercutio and Benvolio after the feast in
order to go to Juliets garden); and ruler (Romeo returns to Verona for Juliets sake after being
exiled by the Prince on pain of death in 2.1.7678). Love is the overriding theme of the play, but a
reader should always remember that Shakespeare is uninterested in portraying a prettied-up, dainty
version of the emotion, the kind that bad poets write about, and whose bad poetry Romeo reads
while pining for Rosaline. Love in Romeo and Juliet is a brutal, powerful emotion that captures
individuals and catapults them against their world, and, at times, against themselves.
The powerful nature of love can be seen in the way it is described, or, more accurately, the way
descriptions of it so consistently fail to capture its entirety. At times love is described in the terms of
religion, as in the fourteen lines when Romeo and Juliet first meet. At others it is described as a sort
of magic: Alike bewitchd by the charm of looks (2.Prologue.6). Juliet, perhaps, most perfectly
describes her love for Romeo by refusing to describe it: But my true love is grown to such excess /
I cannot sum up some of half my wealth (3.1.3334). Love, in other words, resists any single
metaphor because it is too powerful to be so easily contained or understood.
Romeo and Juliet does not make a specific moral statement about the relationships between love
and society, religion, and family; rather, it portrays the chaos and passion of being in love,
combining images of love, violence, death, religion, and family in an impressionistic rush leading to
the plays tragic conclusion.

Love as a Cause of Violence


The themes of death and violence permeate Romeo and Juliet, and they are always connected to
passion, whether that passion is love or hate. The connection between hate, violence, and death
seems obvious. But the connection between love and violence requires further investigation.
Love, in Romeo and Juliet, is a grand passion, and as such it is blinding; it can overwhelm a person
as powerfully and completely as hate can. The passionate love between Romeo and Juliet is linked
from the moment of its inception with death: Tybalt notices that Romeo has crashed the feast and
determines to kill him just as Romeo catches sight of Juliet and falls instantly in love with her. From
that point on, love seems to push the lovers closer to love and violence, not farther from it. Romeo
and Juliet are plagued with thoughts of suicide, and a willingness to experience it: in Act 3, scene 3,
Romeo brandishes a knife in Friar Lawrences cell and threatens to kill himself after he has been
banished from Verona and his love. Juliet also pulls a knife in order to take her own life in Friar
Lawrences presence just three scenes later. After Capulet decides that Juliet will marry Paris, Juliet
says, If all else fail, myself have power to die (3.5.242). Finally, each imagines that the other looks
dead the morning after their first, and only, sexual experience (Methinks I see thee, Juliet says, . .
. as one dead in the bottom of a tomb (3.5.5556). This theme continues until its inevitable
conclusion: double suicide. This tragic choice is the highest, most potent expression of love that
Romeo and Juliet can make. It is only through death that they can preserve their love, and their
love is so profound that they are willing to end their lives in its defense. In the play, love emerges as
an amoral thing, leading as much to destruction as to happiness. But in its extreme passion, the
love that Romeo and Juliet experience also appears so exquisitely beautiful that few would want, or
be able, to resist its power.
The Individual Versus Society
Much of Romeo and Juliet involves the lovers struggles against public and social institutions that
either explicitly or implicitly oppose the existence of their love. Such structures range from the
concrete to the abstract: families and the placement of familial power in the father; law and the
desire for public order; religion; and the social importance placed on masculine honor. These
institutions often come into conflict with each other. The importance of honor, for example, time and
again results in brawls that disturb the public peace.
Though they do not always work in concert, each of these societal institutions in some way present
obstacles for Romeo and Juliet. The enmity between their families, coupled with the emphasis
placed on loyalty and honor to kin, combine to create a profound conflict for Romeo and Juliet, who

must rebel against their heritages. Further, the patriarchal power structure inherent in Renaissance
families, wherein the father controls the action of all other family members, particularly women,
places Juliet in an extremely vulnerable position. Her heart, in her familys mind, is not hers to give.
The law and the emphasis on social civility demands terms of conduct with which the blind passion
of love cannot comply. Religion similarly demands priorities that Romeo and Juliet cannot abide by
because of the intensity of their love. Though in most situations the lovers uphold the traditions of
Christianity (they wait to marry before consummating their love), their love is so powerful that they
begin to think of each other in blasphemous terms. For example, Juliet calls Romeo the god of my
idolatry, elevating Romeo to level of God (2.1.156). The couples final act of suicide is likewise unChristian. The maintenance of masculine honor forces Romeo to commit actions he would prefer to
avoid. But the social emphasis placed on masculine honor is so profound that Romeo cannot
simply ignore them.
It is possible to see Romeo and Juliet as a battle between the responsibilities and actions
demanded by social institutions and those demanded by the private desires of the individual.
Romeo and Juliets appreciation of night, with its darkness and privacy, and their renunciation of
their names, with its attendant loss of obligation, make sense in the context of individuals who wish
to escape the public world. But the lovers cannot stop the night from becoming day. And Romeo
cannot cease being a Montague simply because he wants to; the rest of the world will not let him.
The lovers suicides can be understood as the ultimate night, the ultimate privacy.
The Inevitability of Fate
In its first address to the audience, the Chorus states that Romeo and Juliet are star-crossed
that is to say that fate (a power often vested in the movements of the stars) controls them
(Prologue.6). This sense of fate permeates the play, and not just for the audience. The characters
also are quite aware of it: Romeo and Juliet constantly see omens. When Romeo believes that
Juliet is dead, he cries out, Then I defy you, stars, completing the idea that the love between
Romeo and Juliet is in opposition to the decrees of destiny (5.1.24). Of course, Romeos defiance
itself plays into the hands of fate, and his determination to spend eternity with Juliet results in their
deaths. The mechanism of fate works in all of the events surrounding the lovers: the feud between
their families (it is worth noting that this hatred is never explained; rather, the reader must accept it
as an undeniable aspect of the world of the play); the horrible series of accidents that ruin Friar
Lawrences seemingly well-intentioned plans at the end of the play; and the tragic timing of
Romeos suicide and Juliets awakening. These events are not mere coincidences, but rather
manifestations of fate that help bring about the unavoidable outcome of the young lovers deaths.

The concept of fate described above is the most commonly accepted interpretation. There are other
possible readings of fate in the play: as a force determined by the powerful social institutions that
influence Romeo and Juliets choices, as well as fate as a force that emerges from Romeo and
Juliets very personalities.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the texts major themes.
Light/Dark Imagery
One of the plays most consistent visual motifs is the contrast between light and dark, often in terms
of night/day imagery. This contrast is not given a particular metaphoric meaninglight is not always
good, and dark is not always evil. On the contrary, light and dark are generally used to provide a
sensory contrast and to hint at opposed alternatives. One of the more important instances of this
motif is Romeos lengthy meditation on the sun and the moon during the balcony scene, in which
Juliet, metaphorically described as the sun, is seen as banishing the envious moon and
transforming the night into day (2.1.46). A similar blurring of night and day occurs in the early
morning hours after the lovers only night together. Romeo, forced to leave for exile in the morning,
and Juliet, not wanting him to leave her room, both try to pretend that it is still night, and that the
light is actually darkness: More light and light, more dark and dark our woes (3.5.36).
Opposite Points of View
Shakespeare includes numerous speeches and scenes in Romeo and Juliet that hint at alternative
ways to evaluate the play. Shakespeare uses two main devices in this regard: Mercutio and
servants. Mercutio consistently skewers the viewpoints of all the other characters in play: he sees
Romeos devotion to love as a sort of blindness that robs Romeo from himself; similarly, he sees
Tybalts devotion to honor as blind and stupid. His punning and the Queen Mab speech can be
interpreted as undercutting virtually every passion evident in the play. Mercutio serves as a critic of
the delusions of righteousness and grandeur held by the characters around him.
Where Mercutio is a nobleman who openly criticizes other nobles, the views offered by servants in
the play are less explicit. There is the Nurse who lost her baby and husband, the servant Peter who
cannot read, the musicians who care about their lost wages and their lunches, and the Apothecary
who cannot afford to make the moral choice, the lower classes present a second tragic world to
counter that of the nobility. The nobles world is full of grand tragic gestures. The servants world, in
contrast, is characterized by simple needs, and early deaths brought about by disease and poverty

rather than dueling and grand passions. Where the nobility almost seem to revel in their capacity for
drama, the servants lives are such that they cannot afford tragedy of the epic kind.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Poison
In his first appearance, in Act 2, scene 2, Friar Lawrence remarks that every plant, herb, and stone
has its own special properties, and that nothing exists in nature that cannot be put to both good and
bad uses. Thus, poison is not intrinsically evil, but is instead a natural substance made lethal by
human hands. Friar Lawrences words prove true over the course of the play. The sleeping potion
he gives Juliet is concocted to cause the appearance of death, not death itself, but through
circumstances beyond the Friars control, the potion does bring about a fatal result: Romeos
suicide. As this example shows, human beings tend to cause death even without intending to.
Similarly, Romeo suggests that society is to blame for the apothecarys criminal selling of poison,
because while there are laws prohiting the Apothecary from selling poison, there are no laws that
would help the apothecary make money. Poison symbolizes human societys tendency to poison
good things and make them fatal, just as the pointless Capulet-Montague feud turns Romeo and
Juliets love to poison. After all, unlike many of the other tragedies, this play does not have an evil
villain, but rather people whose good qualities are turned to poison by the world in which they live.
Thumb-biting
In Act 1, scene 1, the buffoonish Samson begins a brawl between the Montagues and Capulets by
flicking his thumbnail from behind his upper teeth, an insulting gesture known as biting the thumb.
He engages in this juvenile and vulgar display because he wants to get into a fight with the
Montagues but doesnt want to be accused of starting the fight by making an explicit insult.
Because of his timidity, he settles for being annoying rather than challenging. The thumb-biting, as
an essentially meaningless gesture, represents the foolishness of the entire Capulet/Montague feud
and the stupidity of violence in general.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM

Context

Written in the mid-1590s, probably shortly before Shakespeare turned to Romeo and Juliet, A
Midsummer Nights Dream is one of his strangest and most delightful creations, and it marks a
departure from his earlier works and from others of the English Renaissance. The play
demonstrates both the extent of Shakespeares learning and the expansiveness of his imagination.

The range of references in the play is among its most extraordinary attributes: Shakespeare draws
on sources as various as Greek mythology (Theseus, for instance, is loosely based on the Greek
hero of the same name, and the play is peppered with references to Greek gods and goddesses);
English country fairy lore (the character of Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, was a popular figure in
sixteenth-century stories); and the theatrical practices of Shakespeares London (the craftsmens
play refers to and parodies many conventions of English Renaissance theater, such as men playing
the roles of women). Further, many of the characters are drawn from diverse texts: Titania comes
from Ovids Metamorphoses, and Oberon may have been taken from the medieval romance Huan
of Bordeaux, translated by Lord Berners in the mid-1530s. Unlike the plots of many of
Shakespeares plays, however, the story in A Midsummer Nights Dream seems not to have been
drawn from any particular source but rather to be the original product of the playwrights
imagination.

Plot Overview
Theseus, duke of Athens, is preparing for his marriage to Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, with a
four-day festival of pomp and entertainment. He commissions his Master of the Revels, Philostrate,
to find suitable amusements for the occasion. Egeus, an Athenian nobleman, marches into
Theseuss court with his daughter, Hermia, and two young men, Demetrius and Lysander. Egeus
wishes Hermia to marry Demetrius (who loves Hermia), but Hermia is in love with Lysander and
refuses to comply. Egeus asks for the full penalty of law to fall on Hermias head if she flouts her
fathers will. Theseus gives Hermia until his wedding to consider her options, warning her that
disobeying her fathers wishes could result in her being sent to a convent or even executed.
Nonetheless, Hermia and Lysander plan to escape Athens the following night and marry in the
house of Lysanders aunt, some seven leagues distant from the city. They make their intentions
known to Hermias friend Helena, who was once engaged to Demetrius and still loves him even
though he jilted her after meeting Hermia. Hoping to regain his love, Helena tells Demetrius of the
elopement that Hermia and Lysander have planned. At the appointed time, Demetrius stalks into
the woods after his intended bride and her lover; Helena follows behind him.
In these same woods are two very different groups of characters. The first is a band of fairies,
including Oberon, the fairy king, and Titania, his queen, who has recently returned from India to
bless the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. The second is a band of Athenian craftsmen
rehearsing a play that they hope to perform for the duke and his bride. Oberon and Titania are at
odds over a young Indian prince given to Titania by the princes mother; the boy is so beautiful that
Oberon wishes to make him a knight, but Titania refuses. Seeking revenge, Oberon sends his

merry servant, Puck, to acquire a magical flower, the juice of which can be spread over a sleeping
persons eyelids to make that person fall in love with the first thing he or she sees upon waking.
Puck obtains the flower, and Oberon tells him of his plan to spread its juice on the sleeping Titanias
eyelids. Having seen Demetrius act cruelly toward Helena, he orders Puck to spread some of the
juice on the eyelids of the young Athenian man. Puck encounters Lysander and Hermia; thinking
that Lysander is the Athenian of whom Oberon spoke, Puck afflicts him with the love potion.
Lysander happens to see Helena upon awaking and falls deeply in love with her, abandoning
Hermia. As the night progresses and Puck attempts to undo his mistake, both Lysander and
Demetrius end up in love with Helena, who believes that they are mocking her. Hermia becomes so
jealous that she tries to challenge Helena to a fight. Demetrius and Lysander nearly do fight over
Helenas love, but Puck confuses them by mimicking their voices, leading them apart until they are
lost separately in the forest.
When Titania wakes, the first creature she sees is Bottom, the most ridiculous of the Athenian
craftsmen, whose head Puck has mockingly transformed into that of an ass. Titania passes a
ludicrous interlude doting on the ass-headed weaver. Eventually, Oberon obtains the Indian boy,
Puck spreads the love potion on Lysanders eyelids, and by morning all is well. Theseus and
Hippolyta discover the sleeping lovers in the forest and take them back to Athens to be married
Demetrius now loves Helena, and Lysander now loves Hermia. After the group wedding, the lovers
watch Bottom and his fellow craftsmen perform their play, a fumbling, hilarious version of the story
of Pyramus and Thisbe. When the play is completed, the lovers go to bed; the fairies briefly emerge
to bless the sleeping couples with a protective charm and then disappear. Only Puck remains, to
ask the audience for its forgiveness and approval and to urge it to remember the play as though it
had all been a dream.

Analysis of Major Characters


Puck
Though there is little character development in A Midsummer Nights Dream and no true
protagonist, critics generally point to Puck as the most important character in the play. The
mischievous, quick-witted sprite sets many of the plays events in motion with his magic, by means
of both deliberate pranks on the human characters (transforming Bottoms head into that of an ass)
and unfortunate mistakes (smearing the love potion on Lysanders eyelids instead of Demetriuss).
More important, Pucks capricious spirit, magical fancy, fun-loving humor, and lovely, evocative
language permeate the atmosphere of the play. Wild contrasts, such as the implicit comparison
between the rough, earthy craftsmen and the delicate, graceful fairies, dominate A Midsummer

Nights Dream. Puck seems to illustrate many of these contrasts within his own character: he is
graceful but not so saccharine as the other fairies; as Oberons jester, he is given to a certain
coarseness, which leads him to transform Bottoms head into that of an ass merely for the sake of
enjoyment. He is good-hearted but capable of cruel tricks. Finally, whereas most of the fairies are
beautiful and ethereal, Puck is often portrayed as somewhat bizarre looking. Indeed, another fairy
mentions that some call Puck a hobgoblin, a term whose connotations are decidedly less
glamorous than those of fairy (II.i.40).
Nick Bottom
Whereas Pucks humor is often mischievous and subtle, the comedy surrounding the overconfident
weaver Nick Bottom is hilariously overt. The central figure in the subplot involving the craftsmens
production of the Pyramus and Thisbe story, Bottom dominates his fellow actors with an
extraordinary belief in his own abilities (he thinks he is perfect for every part in the play) and his
comical incompetence (he is a terrible actor and frequently makes rhetorical and grammatical
mistakes in his speech). The humor surrounding Bottom often stems from the fact that he is totally
unaware of his own ridiculousness; his speeches are overdramatic and self-aggrandizing, and he
seems to believe that everyone takes him as seriously as he does himself. This foolish selfimportance reaches its pinnacle after Puck transforms Bottoms head into that of an ass. When
Titania, whose eyes have been anointed with a love potion, falls in love with the now ass-headed
Bottom, he believes that the devotion of the beautiful, magical fairy queen is nothing out of the
ordinary and that all of the trappings of her affection, including having servants attend him, are his
proper due. His unawareness of the fact that his head has been transformed into that of an ass
parallels his inability to perceive the absurdity of the idea that Titania could fall in love with him.
Helena
Although Puck and Bottom stand out as the most personable characters in A Midsummer Nights
Dream, they themselves are not involved in the main dramatic events. Of the other characters,
Helena, the lovesick young woman desperately in love with Demetrius, is perhaps the most fully
drawn. Among the quartet of Athenian lovers, Helena is the one who thinks most about the nature
of lovewhich makes sense, given that at the beginning of the play she is left out of the love
triangle involving Lysander, Hermia, and Demetrius. She says, Love looks not with the eyes, but
with the mind, believing that Demetrius has built up a fantastic notion of Hermias beauty that
prevents him from recognizing Helenas own beauty (I.i.234). Utterly faithful to Demetrius despite
her recognition of his shortcomings, Helena sets out to win his love by telling him about the plan of
Lysander and Hermia to elope into the forest. Once Helena enters the forest, many of her traits are

drawn out by the confusion that the love potion engenders: compared to the other lovers, she is
extremely unsure of herself, worrying about her appearance and believing that Lysander is mocking
her when he declares his love for her.

SONNETS
A sonnet is a 14-line poem that rhymes in a particular pattern. In Shakespeare's sonnets, the rhyme
pattern is abab cdcd efef gg, with the final couplet used to summarize the previous 12 lines or
present a surprise ending. The rhythmic pattern of the sonnets is the iambic pentameter. An iamb is
a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable and one unstressed syllable as in dah-DUM,
dah-DUM dah-DUM dah-DUM dah-DUM. Shakespeare uses five of these in each line, which
makes it a pentameter. The sonnet is a difficult art form for the poet because of its restrictions on
length and meter.
Although Shakespeare's sonnets can be divided into different sections numerous ways, the most
apparent division involves Sonnets 1126, in which the poet strikes up a relationship with a young
man, and Sonnets 127154, which are concerned with the poet's relationship with a woman,
variously referred to as the Dark Lady, or as his mistress.
In the first large division, Sonnets 1126, the poet addresses an alluring young man with whom he
has struck up a relationship. In Sonnets 117, he tries to convince the handsome young man to
marry and beget children so that the youth's incredible beauty will not die when the youth dies.
Starting in Sonnet 18, when the youth appears to reject this argument for procreation, the poet
glories in the young man's beauty and takes consolation in the fact that his sonnets will preserve
the youth's beauty, much like the youth's children would.
By Sonnet 26, perhaps becoming more attached to the young man than he originally intended, the
poet feels isolated and alone when the youth is absent. He cannot sleep. Emotionally exhausted,
he becomes frustrated by what he sees as the youth's inadequate response to his affection. The
estrangement between the poet and the young man continues at least through Sonnet 58 and is
marked by the poet's fluctuating emotions for the youth: One moment he is completely dependent
on the youth's affections, the next moment he angrily lashes out because his love for the young
man is unrequited.
Despondent over the youth's treatment of him, desperately the poet views with pain and sorrow the
ultimate corrosion of time, especially in relation to the young man's beauty. He seeks answers to
the question of how time can be defeated and youth and beauty preserved. Philosophizing about
time preoccupies the poet, who tells the young man that time and immortality cannot be conquered;
however, the youth ignores the poet and seeks other friendships, including one with the poet's
mistress (Sonnets 4042) and another with a rival poet (Sonnets 7987). Expectedly, the
relationship between the youth and this new poet greatly upsets the sonnets' poet, who lashes out
at the young man and then retreats into despondency, in part because he feels his poetry is

lackluster and cannot compete with the new forms of poetry being written about the youth. Again,
the poet fluctuates between confidence in his poetic abilities and resignation about losing the
youth's friendship.
Philosophically examining what love for another person entails, the poet urges his friend not to
postpone his desertion of the poet if that is what the youth is ultimately planning. Break off the
relationship now, begs the poet, who is prepared to accept whatever fate holds. Ironically, the more
the youth rejects the poet, the greater is the poet's affection for and devotion to him. No matter how
vicious the young man is to the poet, the poet does not emotionally can not sever the
relationship. He masochistically accepts the youth's physical and emotional absence.
Finally, after enduring what he feels is much emotional abuse by the youth, the poet stops begging
for his friend's affection. But then, almost unbelievably, the poet begins to think that his newfound
silence toward the youth is the reason for the youth's treating him as poorly as he does. The poet
blames himself for any wrong the young man has done him and apologizes for his own treatment of
his friend. This first major division of sonnets ends with the poet pitiably lamenting his own role in
the dissolution of his relationship with the youth.
The second, shorter grouping of Sonnets 127154 involves the poet's sexual relationship with the
Dark Lady, a married woman with whom he becomes infatuated. Similar to his friendship with the
young man, this relationship fluctuates between feelings of love, hate, jealousy, and contempt. Also
similar is the poet's unhealthy dependency on the woman's affections. When, after the poet and the
woman begin their affair, she accepts additional lovers, at first the poet is outraged. However, as he
did with the youth, the poet ultimately blames himself for the Dark Lady's abandoning him. The
sonnets end with the poet admitting that he is a slave to his passion for the woman and can do
nothing to curb his lust. Shakespeare turns the traditional idea of a romantic sonnet on its head in
this series, however, as his Dark Lady is not an alluring beauty and does not exhibit the perfection
that lovers typically ascribe to their beloved.
Summary and Analysis Sonnet 1
Shakespeare begins his sonnets by introducing four of his most important themes immortality,
time, procreation, and selfishness which are interrelated in this first sonnet both thematically and
through the use of images associated with business or commerce.
The sonnet's first four lines relate all of these important themes. Individually, each of these four
lines addresses a separate issue. Line 1 concerns procreation, especially in the phrase "we desire
increase"; line 2 hints at immortality in the phrase "might never die"; line 3 presents the theme of
time's unceasing progress; and line 4 combines all three concerns: A "tender heir" represents
immortality for parents, who will grow old and die. According to the sonnet's poet, procreating

ensures that our names will be carried on by our children. If we do not have children, however, our
names will die when we do.
But, the scenario the poet creates in these four lines apparently has been rejected by the young
man, whom the poet addresses as "thou," in lines 512. Interested only in his own selfish desires,
the youth is the embodiment of narcissism, a destructively excessive love of oneself. The poet
makes clear that the youth's self-love is unhealthy, not only for himself but for the entire world.
Because the young man does not share himself with the world by having a child to carry on his
beauty, he creates "a famine where abundance lies" and cruelly hurts himself. The "bud" in line 11
recalls the "rose" from line 2: The rose as an image of perfection underscores the immaturity of the
young man, who is only a bud, still imperfect because he has not fully bloomed.
The final couplet the last two lines reinforces the injustice of the youth's not sharing his beauty
with the world. The "famine" that he creates for himself is furthered in the phrase "To eat the world's
due," as though the youth has the responsibility and the world has the right to expect the young
man to father a child. Throughout the sonnets, Shakespeare draws his imagery from everyday life
in the world around him. In Sonnet 1, he writes of love in terms of commercial usury, the practice of
charging exorbitant interest on money lent. For example, in the first line, which reads, "From fairest
creatures we desire increase," "increase" means not only nature's gain through procreation but also
commercial profit, an idea linked to another trade term, "contracted," in line 5. In line 12, by using
the now-antiquated term "niggarding," which means hoarding, the poet implies that the youth,
instead of marrying a woman and having children, is selfishly wasting his love all for himself.

HAMLET

Plot Overview

On a dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered first
by a pair of watchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost resembles the recently deceased
King Hamlet, whose brother Claudius has inherited the throne and married the kings widow, Queen
Gertrude. When Horatio and the watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead
king, to see the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring ominously that it is indeed his fathers spirit, and
that he was murdered by none other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge on the man
who usurped his throne and married his wife, the ghost disappears with the dawn.
Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his fathers death, but, because he is contemplative and
thoughtful by nature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness.
Claudius and Gertrude worry about the princes erratic behavior and attempt to discover its cause.
They employ a pair of Hamlets friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch him. When
Polonius, the pompous Lord Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad with love for his

daughter, Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet in conversation with the girl. But though
Hamlet certainly seems mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery
and declares that he wishes to ban marriages.
A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncles
guilt. He will have the players perform a scene closely resembling the sequence by which Hamlet
imagines his uncle to have murdered his father, so that if Claudius is guilty, he will surely react.
When the moment of the murder arrives in the theater, Claudius leaps up and leaves the room.
Hamlet and Horatio agree that this proves his guilt. Hamlet goes to kill Claudius but finds him
praying. Since he believes that killing Claudius while in prayer would send Claudiuss soul to
heaven, Hamlet considers that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides to wait. Claudius,
now frightened of Hamlets madness and fearing for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to
England at once.
Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry.
Hearing a noise from behind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws his
sword and stabs through the fabric, killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediately dispatched to
England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, Claudiuss plan for Hamlet includes more
than banishment, as he has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed orders for the King of
England demanding that Hamlet be put to death.
In the aftermath of her fathers death, Ophelia goes mad with grief and drowns in the river.
Poloniuss son, Laertes, who has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in a rage. Claudius
convinces him that Hamlet is to blame for his fathers and sisters deaths. When Horatio and the
king receive letters from Hamlet indicating that the prince has returned to Denmark after pirates
attacked his ship en route to England, Claudius concocts a plan to use Laertes desire for revenge
to secure Hamlets death. Laertes will fence with Hamlet in innocent sport, but Claudius will poison
Laertes blade so that if he draws blood, Hamlet will die. As a backup plan, the king decides to
poison a goblet, which he will give Hamlet to drink should Hamlet score the first or second hits of
the match. Hamlet returns to the vicinity of Elsinore just as Ophelias funeral is taking place.
Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and declares that he had in fact always loved Ophelia. Back
at the castle, he tells Horatio that he believes one must be prepared to die, since death can come at
any moment. A foolish courtier named Osric arrives on Claudiuss orders to arrange the fencing
match between Hamlet and Laertes.

The sword-fighting begins. Hamlet scores the first hit, but declines to drink from the kings proffered
goblet. Instead, Gertrude takes a drink from it and is swiftly killed by the poison. Laertes succeeds
in wounding Hamlet, though Hamlet does not die of the poison immediately. First, Laertes is cut by
his own swords blade, and, after revealing to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible for the queens
death, he dies from the blades poison. Hamlet then stabs Claudius through with the poisoned
sword and forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies, and Hamlet dies
immediately after achieving his revenge.
At this moment, a Norwegian prince named Fortinbras, who has led an army to Denmark and
attacked Poland earlier in the play, enters with ambassadors from England, who report that
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome sight of the entire
royal family lying sprawled on the floor dead. He moves to take power of the kingdom. Horatio,
fulfilling Hamlets last request, tells him Hamlets tragic story. Fortinbras orders that Hamlet be
carried away in a manner befitting a fallen soldier.

Analysis of Major Characters


Hamlet
Hamlet has fascinated audiences and readers for centuries, and the first thing to point out about
him is that he is enigmatic. There is always more to him than the other characters in the play can
figure out; even the most careful and clever readers come away with the sense that they dont know
everything there is to know about this character. Hamlet actually tells other characters that there is
more to him than meets the eyenotably, his mother, and Rosencrantz and Guildensternbut his
fascination involves much more than this. When he speaks, he sounds as if theres something
important hes not saying, maybe something even he is not aware of. The ability to write soliloquies
and dialogues that create this effect is one of Shakespeares most impressive achievements.
A university student whose studies are interrupted by his fathers death, Hamlet is extremely
philosophical and contemplative. He is particularly drawn to difficult questions or questions that
cannot be answered with any certainty. Faced with evidence that his uncle murdered his father,
evidence that any other character in a play would believe, Hamlet becomes obsessed with proving
his uncles guilt before trying to act. The standard of beyond a reasonable doubt is simply
unacceptable to him. He is equally plagued with questions about the afterlife, about the wisdom of
suicide, about what happens to bodies after they diethe list is extensive.

But even though he is thoughtful to the point of obsession, Hamlet also behaves rashly and
impulsively. When he does act, it is with surprising swiftness and little or no premeditation, as when
he stabs Polonius through a curtain without even checking to see who he is. He seems to step very
easily into the role of a madman, behaving erratically and upsetting the other characters with his
wild speech and pointed innuendos.
It is also important to note that Hamlet is extremely melancholy and discontented with the state of
affairs in Denmark and in his own familyindeed, in the world at large. He is extremely
disappointed with his mother for marrying his uncle so quickly, and he repudiates Ophelia, a woman
he once claimed to love, in the harshest terms. His words often indicate his disgust with and distrust
of women in general. At a number of points in the play, he contemplates his own death and even
the option of suicide.
But, despite all of the things with which Hamlet professes dissatisfaction, it is remarkable that the
prince and heir apparent of Denmark should think about these problems only in personal and
philosophical terms. He spends relatively little time thinking about the threats to Denmarks national
security from without or the threats to its stability from within (some of which he helps to create
through his own carelessness).
Claudius
Hamlets major antagonist is a shrewd, lustful, conniving king who contrasts sharply with the other
male characters in the play. Whereas most of the other important men in Hamlet are preoccupied
with ideas of justice, revenge, and moral balance, Claudius is bent upon maintaining his own power.
The old King Hamlet was apparently a stern warrior, but Claudius is a corrupt politician whose main
weapon is his ability to manipulate others through his skillful use of language. Claudiuss speech is
compared to poison being poured in the earthe method he used to murder Hamlets father.
Claudiuss love for Gertrude may be sincere, but it also seems likely that he married her as a
strategic move, to help him win the throne away from Hamlet after the death of the king. As the play
progresses, Claudiuss mounting fear of Hamlets insanity leads him to ever greater selfpreoccupation; when Gertrude tells him that Hamlet has killed Polonius, Claudius does not remark
that Gertrude might have been in danger, but only that he would have been in danger had he been
in the room. He tells Laertes the same thing as he attempts to soothe the young mans anger after
his fathers death. Claudius is ultimately too crafty for his own good. In Act V, scene ii, rather than
allowing Laertes only two methods of killing Hamlet, the sharpened sword and the poison on the
blade, Claudius insists on a third, the poisoned goblet. When Gertrude inadvertently drinks the

poison and dies, Hamlet is at last able to bring himself to kill Claudius, and the king is felled by his
own cowardly machination.
Gertrude
Few Shakespearean characters have caused as much uncertainty as Gertrude, the beautiful
Queen of Denmark. The play seems to raise more questions about Gertrude than it answers,
including: Was she involved with Claudius before the death of her husband? Did she love her
husband? Did she know about Claudiuss plan to commit the murder? Did she love Claudius, or did
she marry him simply to keep her high station in Denmark? Does she believe Hamlet when he
insists that he is not mad, or does she pretend to believe him simply to protect herself? Does she
intentionally betray Hamlet to Claudius, or does she believe that she is protecting her sons secret?
These questions can be answered in numerous ways, depending upon ones reading of the play.
The Gertrude who does emerge clearly in Hamlet is a woman defined by her desire for station and
affection, as well as by her tendency to use men to fulfill her instinct for self-preservationwhich, of
course, makes her extremely dependent upon the men in her life. Hamlets most famous comment
about Gertrude is his furious condemnation of women in general: Frailty, thy name is woman!
(I.ii.146). This comment is as much indicative of Hamlets agonized state of mind as of anything
else, but to a great extent Gertrude does seem morally frail. She never exhibits the ability to think
critically about her situation, but seems merely to move instinctively toward seemingly safe choices,
as when she immediately runs to Claudius after her confrontation with Hamlet. She is at her best in
social situations (I.ii and V.ii), when her natural grace and charm seem to indicate a rich, rounded
personality. At times it seems that her grace and charm are her onlycharacteristics, and her reliance
on men appears to be her sole way of capitalizing on her abilities.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
THE SCARLET LETTER
CONTEXT
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. His family descended from the
earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; among his forebears was John Hathorne
(Hawthorne added the w to his name when he began to write), one of the judges at the 1692

Salem witch trials. Throughout his life, Hawthorne was both fascinated and disturbed by his kinship
with John Hathorne. Raised by a widowed mother, Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Maine,
where he met two people who were to have great impact upon his life: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would later become a famous poet, and Franklin Pierce, who would later become
president of the United States.
After college Hawthorne tried his hand at writing, producing historical sketches and an anonymous
novel, Fanshawe, that detailed his college days rather embarrassingly. Hawthorne also held
positions as an editor and as a customs surveyor during this period. His growing relationship with
the intellectual circle that included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller led him to abandon
his customs post for the utopian experiment at Brook Farm, a commune designed to promote
economic self-sufficiency and transcendentalist principles. Transcendentalism was a religious and
philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century that was dedicated to the belief that divinity
manifests itself everywhere, particularly in the natural world. It also advocated a personalized, direct
relationship with the divine in place of formalized, structured religion. This second transcendental
idea is privileged in The Scarlet Letter.
After marrying fellow transcendentalist Sophia Peabody in 1842, Hawthorne left Brook Farm and
moved into the Old Manse, a home in Concord where Emerson had once lived. In 1846 he
published Mosses from an Old Manse, a collection of essays and stories, many of which are about
early America. Mosses from an Old Manseearned Hawthorne the attention of the literary
establishment because America was trying to establish a cultural independence to complement its
political independence, and Hawthornes collection of stories displayed both a stylistic freshness
and an interest in American subject matter. Herman Melville, among others, hailed Hawthorne as
the American Shakespeare.
In 1845 Hawthorne again went to work as a customs surveyor, this time, like the narrator of The
Scarlet Letter, at a post in Salem. In 1850, after having lost the job, he published The Scarlet
Letter to enthusiastic, if not widespread, acclaim. His other major novels include The House of the
Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852), and The Marble Faun (1860). In 1853
Hawthornes college friend Franklin Pierce, for whom he had written a campaign biography and
who had since become president, appointed Hawthorne a United States consul. The writer spent
the next six years in Europe. He died in 1864, a few years after returning to America.
The majority of Hawthornes work takes Americas Puritan past as its subject, butThe 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.
PLOT OVERVIEW
The Scarlet Letter opens with a long preamble about how the book came to be written. The
nameless narrator was the surveyor of the customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. In the
customhouses attic, he discovered a number of documents, among them a manuscript that was
bundled with a scarlet, gold-embroidered patch of cloth in the shape of an A. The manuscript, the
work of a past surveyor, detailed events that occurred some two hundred years before the
narrators time. When the narrator lost his customs post, he decided to write a fictional account of
the events recorded in the manuscript. The Scarlet Letter is the final product.
The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester
Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter
A on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for
adultery. Hesters husband, a scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he
never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her
husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal
her lovers identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public shaming, is her punishment
for her sin and her secrecy. On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the
town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her childs father.
The elderly onlooker is Hesters missing husband, who is now practicing medicine and calling
himself Roger Chillingworth. He settles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true identity to
no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years pass. Hester supports herself by
working as a seamstress, and Pearl grows into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the community,
they live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt to take Pearl
away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale, a young and eloquent minister, the
mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be wasting away

and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological distress.
Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can
provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a
connection between the ministers torments and Hesters secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale
to see what he can learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers a mark
on the mans breast (the details of which are kept from the reader), which convinces him that his
suspicions are correct.
Dimmesdales psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himself. In the
meantime, Hesters charitable deeds and quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn
of the community. One night, when Pearl is about seven years old, she and her mother are
returning home from a visit to a deathbed when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold,
trying to punish himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands.
Dimmesdale refuses Pearls request that he acknowledge her publicly the next day, and a meteor
marks a dull red A in the night sky. Hester can see that the ministers condition is worsening, and
she resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdales
self-torment. Chillingworth refuses.
Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because she is aware that
Chillingworth has probably guessed that she plans to reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. The former
lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They will take a ship
sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a sense of release, and Hester removes her scarlet letter
and lets down her hair. Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without the letter. The
day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a holiday and Dimmesdale preaches his
most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan
and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church after his sermon, sees
Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the scaffold with his
lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing a scarlet letter seared into the flesh of his
chest. He falls dead, as Pearl kisses him.
Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no
one knows what has happened to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the
scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resume her charitable work. She receives occasional
letters from Pearl, who has married a European aristocrat and established a family of her own.
When Hester dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a single tombstone, which
bears a scarlet A.

Analysis of Major Characters


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.
Summary
A writer of story-books! What kind of a business in life,what mode of glorifying God, or being
serviceable to mankind in his day and generation,may that be?
This introduction provides a frame for the main narrative of The Scarlet Letter. The nameless
narrator, who shares quite a few traits with the books author, takes a post as the chief executive
officer, or surveyor, of the Salem Custom House. (Customs are the taxes paid on foreign imports
into a country; a customhouse is the building where these taxes are paid.) He finds the
establishment to be a run-down place, situated on a rotting wharf in a half-finished building. His
fellow workers mostly hold lifetime appointments secured by family connections. They are elderly
and given to telling the same stories repeatedly. The narrator finds them to be generally
incompetent and innocuously corrupt.
The narrator spends his days at the customhouse trying to amuse himself because few ships come
to Salem anymore. One rainy day he discovers some documents in the buildings unoccupied
second story. Looking through the pile, he notices a manuscript that is bundled with a scarlet, goldembroidered piece of cloth in the shape of the letter A. The narrator examines the scarlet badge
and holds it briefly to his chest, but he drops it because it seems to burn him. He then reads the

manuscript. It is the work of one Jonathan Pue, who was a customs surveyor a hundred years
earlier. An interest in local history led Pue to write an account of events taking place in the middle of
the seventeenth centurya century before Pues time and two hundred years before the narrators.
The narrator has already mentioned his unease about attempting to make a career out of writing.
He believes that his Puritan ancestors, whom he holds in high regard, would find it frivolous and
degenerate. Nevertheless, he decides to write a fictional account of Hester Prynnes experiences.
It will not be factually precise, but he believes that it will be faithful to the spirit and general outline of
the original. While working at the customhouse, surrounded by uninspiring men, the narrator finds
himself unable to write. When a new president is elected, he loses his politically appointed job and,
settling down before a dim fire in his parlor, begins to write his romance, which becomes the body
of The Scarlet Letter.
Analysis
This section introduces us to the narrator and establishes his desire to contribute to American
culture. Although this narrator seems to have much in common with Nathaniel Hawthorne himself
Hawthorne also worked as a customs officer, lost his job due to political changes, and had Puritan
ancestors whose legacy he considered both a blessing and a curseit is important not to conflate
the two storytellers. The narrator is not just a stand-in for Hawthorne; he is carefully constructed to
enhance the book aesthetically and philosophically. Moreover, Hawthorne sets him up to parallel
Hester Prynne in significant ways. Like Hester, the narrator spends his days surrounded by people
from whom he feels alienated. In his case, it is his relative youth and vitality that separates him from
the career customs officers. Hesters youthful zest for life may have indirectly caused her alienation
as well, spurring her to her sin. Similarly, like Hester, the narrator seeks out the few who will
understand him, and it is to this select group that he addresses both his own story and the tale of
the scarlet letter. The narrator points out the connection between Hester and himself when he notes
that he will someday be reduced to a name on a custom stamp, much as she has been reduced to
a pile of old papers and a scrap of cloth. The narrators identification with Hester enables the reader
to universalize her story and to see its application to another society.
Despite his devotion to Hesters story, the narrator has trouble writing it. First, he feels that his
Puritan ancestors would find it frivolous, and indeed he is not able to write until he has been
relieved of any real career responsibilities. Second, he knows that his audience will be small, mostly
because he is relating events that happened some two hundred years ago. His time spent in the
company of the other customhouse men has taught the narrator that it will be difficult to write in
such a way as to make his story accessible to all types of peopleparticularly to those no longer

young at heart. But he regards it as part of his challenge to try to tell Hesters story in a way that
makes it both meaningful and emotionally affecting to all readers. His last step in preparing to write
is to stop battling the real world of work and small-mindedness and to give himself up to the
romance atmosphere of his story.
The narrator finds writing therapeutic. Contrary to his Puritan ancestors assertions, he also
discovers it to be practical: his introduction provides a cogent discourse on American history and
culture. Hawthorne wrote at a time when America sought to distinguish itself from centuries of
European tradition by producing uniquely American writersthose who, like Hawthorne, would
encourage patriotism by enlarging the worlds sense of Americas comparatively brief history.
Yet Hawthorne, like the narrator, had to balance the need to establish a weighty past with the
equally compelling need to write an interesting and relevant story. Neither the narrator nor
Hawthorne wants to see his work pigeonholed as only American. Americanness remains both a
promise and a threat, just as the eagle over the customhouse door both offers shelter and appears
ready to attack. The tale of the scarlet letter may add to the legitimacy of American history and
culture, but in order to do so it must transcend its Americanness and establish a universal appeal:
only then can American culture hold its own in the world.
Hesters story comes to us twice removed. It is filtered first through John Pue and then through the
narrator. Awareness of the storys various stages of treatment gives the reader a greater sense of
its remoteness from contemporary life, of its antique qualitiesit is a history with a history. Yet the
storys survival over the years speaks to the profundity of its themes: the narrator has found, in
American history and in Hesters life, a tale rich in philosophical meaning.

LEWIS CARROLL
ALICES ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
Context
Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer in
mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, who lived from 1832 to 1898. Carrolls physical deformities,
partial deafness, and irrepressible stammer made him an unlikely candidate for producing one of
the most popular and enduring childrens fantasies in the English language. Carrolls unusual

appearance caused him to behave awkwardly around other adults, and his students at Oxford saw
him as a stuffy and boring teacher. He held strict religious beliefs, serving as a deacon in the
Anglican Church for many years and briefly considering becoming a minister. Underneath Carrolls
awkward exterior, however, lay a brilliant and imaginative artist. A gifted amateur photographer, he
took numerous portraits of children throughout his adulthood. Carrolls keen grasp of mathematics
and logic inspired the linguistic humor and witty wordplay in his stories. Additionally, his unique
understanding of childrens minds allowed him to compose imaginative fiction that appealed to
young people.
Carroll felt shy and reserved around adults but became animated and lively around children. His
crippling stammer melted away in the company of children as he told them his elaborately
nonsensical stories. Carroll discovered his gift for storytelling in his own youth when he served as
the unofficial family entertainer for his five younger sisters and three younger brothers. He staged
performances and wrote the bulk of the fiction in the family magazine. As an adult, Carroll continued
to prefer the companionship of children to adults and tended to favor little girls. Over the course of
his lifetime he made numerous child friends whom he wrote to frequently and often mentioned in his
diaries.
In 1856, Carroll became close with the Liddell children and met the girl who would become the
inspiration for Alice, the protagonist of his two most famous books. It was in that year that classics
scholar Henry George Liddell accepted an appointment as Dean of Christ Church, one of the
colleges that comprise Oxford University, and brought his three daughters to live with him at Oxford.
Lorina, Alice, and Edith Liddell quickly became Carrolls favorite companions and photographic
subjects. During their frequent afternoon boat trips on the river, Carroll told the Liddells fanciful
tales. Alice quickly became Carrolls favorite of the three girls, and he made her the subject of the
stories that would later became Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
Almost ten years after first meeting the Liddells, Carroll compiled the stories and submitted the
completed manuscript for publication.
Alices Adventures in Wonderland received mostly negative reviews when first published in 1865.
Critics and readers alike found the book to be sheer nonsense, and one critic sneered that the book
was too extravagantly absurd to produce more diversion than disappointment and irritation. Only
John Tenniels detailed illustrations garnered praise, and his images continue to appear in most
reprints of the Alice books. Despite the books negative reception, Carroll proposed a sequel to his
publisher in 1866 and set to work writing Through the Looking-Glass. By the time the second book
reached publication in 1871, Alices Adventures in Wonderland had found an appreciative

readership. Over time, Carrolls combination of sophisticated logic, social satire, and pure fantasy
would make the book a classic for children and adults alike. Critics eventually recognized the
literary merits of both texts, and celebrated authors and philosophers ranging from James Joyce to
Ludwig Wittgenstein praised Carrolls stories.
In 1881, Carroll resigned from his position as mathematics lecturer at Oxford to pursue writing full
time. He composed numerous poems, several new works for children, and books of logic puzzles
and games, but none of his later writings attained the success of the Alice books. Carroll continued
to have close friendships with children. Several of his child friends served as inspiration for the
Sylvie and Bruno books. Like the Alice stories, Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno
Concluded (1898) relied heavily on childrens silly sayings and absurd fantasies. Carroll died in
1898 at the age of sixty-six, soon after the publication of the Sylvie and Bruno books. He passed
away in his familys home in Guildford, England.
Carrolls sudden break with the Liddell family in the early 1860s has led to a great deal of
speculation over the nature of his relationship with Alice Liddell. Some books indicate that the split
resulted from a disagreement between Carroll and Dean Liddell over Christ Church matters. Other
evidence indicates that more insidious elements existed in Carrolls relationships with young
children and with Alice Liddell in particular. This possibility seems to be supported by the fact that
Mrs. Liddell burned all of Carrolls early letters to Alice and that Carroll himself tore pages out of his
diary related to the break. However, no concrete evidence exists that Carroll behaved
inappropriately in his numerous friendships with children. Records written by Carrolls associates
and Alice Liddell herself do not indicate any untoward behavior on his part.
Carrolls feelings of intense nostalgia for the simple pleasures of childhood caused him to feel deep
discomfort in the presence of adults. In the company of children, Carroll felt understood and could
temporarily forget the loss of innocence that he associated with his own adulthood. Ironically,
Carroll mourned this loss again and again as he watched each of his child friends grow away from
him as they became older. As he wrote in a letter to the mother of one of his young muses, It is
very sweet to me, to be loved by her as children love: though the experience of many years have
now taught me that there are few things in the world so evanescent [fleeting] as a childs love.
Nine-tenths of the children, whose love once seemed as warm as hers, are now merely on the
terms of everyday acquaintance. The sentiment of fleeting happiness pervades Carrolls seemingly
lighthearted fantasies and infuses the Alice books with melancholy and loss.

Plot Overview

Alice sits on a riverbank on a warm summer day, drowsily reading over her sisters shoulder, when
she catches sight of a White Rabbit in a waistcoat running by her. The White Rabbit pulls out a
pocket watch, exclaims that he is late, and pops down a rabbit hole. Alice follows the White Rabbit
down the hole and comes upon a great hallway lined with doors. She finds a small door that she
opens using a key she discovers on a nearby table. Through the door, she sees a beautiful garden,
and Alice begins to cry when she realizes she cannot fit through the door. She finds a bottle marked
DRINK ME and downs the contents. She shrinks down to the right size to enter the door but
cannot enter since she has left the key on the tabletop above her head. Alice discovers a cake
marked EAT ME which causes her to grow to an inordinately large height. Still unable to enter the
garden, Alice begins to cry again, and her giant tears form a pool at her feet. As she cries, Alice
shrinks and falls into the pool of tears. The pool of tears becomes a sea, and as she treads water
she meets a Mouse. The Mouse accompanies Alice to shore, where a number of animals stand
gathered on a bank. After a Caucus Race, Alice scares the animals away with tales of her cat,
Dinah, and finds herself alone again.
Alice meets the White Rabbit again, who mistakes her for a servant and sends her off to fetch his
things. While in the White Rabbits house, Alice drinks an unmarked bottle of liquid and grows to the
size of the room. The White Rabbit returns to his house, fuming at the now-giant Alice, but she
swats him and his servants away with her giant hand. The animals outside try to get her out of the
house by throwing rocks at her, which inexplicably transform into cakes when they land in the
house. Alice eats one of the cakes, which causes her to shrink to a small size. She wanders off into
the forest, where she meets a Caterpillar sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah (i.e., a
water pipe). The Caterpillar and Alice get into an argument, but before the Caterpillar crawls away
in disgust, he tells Alice that different parts of the mushroom will make her grow or shrink. Alice
tastes a part of the mushroom, and her neck stretches above the trees. A pigeon sees her and
attacks, deeming her a serpent hungry for pigeon eggs.
Alice eats another part of the mushroom and shrinks down to a normal height. She wanders until
she comes across the house of the Duchess. She enters and finds the Duchess, who is nursing a
squealing baby, as well as a grinning Cheshire Cat, and a Cook who tosses massive amounts of
pepper into a cauldron of soup. The Duchess behaves rudely to Alice and then departs to prepare
for a croquet game with the Queen. As she leaves, the Duchess hands Alice the baby, which Alice
discovers is a pig. Alice lets the pig go and reenters the forest, where she meets the Cheshire Cat
again. The Cheshire Cat explains to Alice that everyone in Wonderland is mad, including Alice
herself. The Cheshire Cat gives directions to the March Hares house and fades away to nothing
but a floating grin.

Alice travels to the March Hares house to find the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the Dormouse
having tea together. Treated rudely by all three, Alice stands by the tea party, uninvited. She learns
that they have wronged Time and are trapped in perpetual tea-time. After a final discourtesy, Alice
leaves and journeys through the forest. She finds a tree with a door in its side, and travels through it
to find herself back in the great hall. She takes the key and uses the mushroom to shrink down and
enter the garden.
After saving several gardeners from the temper of the Queen of Hearts, Alice joins the Queen in a
strange game of croquet. The croquet ground is hilly, the mallets and balls are live flamingos and
hedgehogs, and the Queen tears about, frantically calling for the other players executions. Amidst
this madness, Alice bumps into the Cheshire Cat again, who asks her how she is doing. The King of
Hearts interrupts their conversation and attempts to bully the Cheshire Cat, who impudently
dismisses the King. The King takes offense and arranges for the Cheshire Cats execution, but
since the Cheshire Cat is now only a head floating in midair, no one can agree on how to behead it.
The Duchess approaches Alice and attempts to befriend her, but the Duchess makes Alice feel
uneasy. The Queen of Hearts chases the Duchess off and tells Alice that she must visit the Mock
Turtle to hear his story. The Queen of Hearts sends Alice with the Gryphon as her escort to meet
the Mock Turtle. Alice shares her strange experiences with the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, who
listen sympathetically and comment on the strangeness of her adventures. After listening to the
Mock Turtles story, they hear an announcement that a trial is about to begin, and the Gryphon
brings Alice back to the croquet ground.
The Knave of Hearts stands trial for stealing the Queens tarts. The King of Hearts leads the
proceedings, and various witnesses approach the stand to give evidence. The Mad Hatter and the
Cook both give their testimony, but none of it makes any sense. The White Rabbit, acting as a
herald, calls Alice to the witness stand. The King goes nowhere with his line of questioning, but
takes encouragement when the White Rabbit provides new evidence in the form of a letter written
by the Knave. The letter turns out to be a poem, which the King interprets as an admission of guilt
on the part of the Knave. Alice believes the note to be nonsense and protests the Kings
interpretation. The Queen becomes furious with Alice and orders her beheading, but Alice grows to
a huge size and knocks over the Queens army of playing cards.
All of a sudden, Alice finds herself awake on her sisters lap, back at the riverbank. She tells her
sister about her dream and goes inside for tea as her sister ponders Alices adventures.

Analysis of Major Characters

Alice
Alice is a sensible prepubescent girl from a wealthy English family who finds herself in a strange
world ruled by imagination and fantasy. Alice feels comfortable with her identity and has a strong
sense that her environment is comprised of clear, logical, and consistent rules and features. Alices
familiarity with the world has led one critic to describe her as a disembodied intellect. Alice
displays great curiosity and attempts to fit her diverse experiences into a clear understanding of the
world.
Alice approaches Wonderland as an anthropologist, but maintains a strong sense of noblesse
oblige that comes with her class status. She has confidence in her social position, education, and
the Victorian virtue of good manners. Alice has a feeling of entitlement, particularly when comparing
herself to Mabel, whom she declares has a poky little house, and no toys. Additionally, she flaunts
her limited information base with anyone who will listen and becomes increasingly obsessed with
the importance of good manners as she deals with the rude creatures of Wonderland. Alice
maintains a superior attitude and behaves with solicitous indulgence toward those she believes are
less privileged.
The tension of Alices Adventures in Wonderland emerges when Alices fixed perspective of the
world comes into contact with the mad, illogical world of Wonderland. Alices fixed sense of order
clashes with the madness she finds in Wonderland. The White Rabbit challenges her perceptions of
class when he mistakes her for a servant, while the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Pigeon challenge
Alices notions of urbane intelligence with an unfamiliar logic that only makes sense within the
context of Wonderland. Most significantly, Wonderland challenges her perceptions of good manners
by constantly assaulting her with dismissive rudeness. Alices fundamental beliefs face challenges
at every turn, and as a result Alice suffers an identity crisis. She persists in her way of life as she
perceives her sense of order collapsing all around her. Alice must choose between retaining her
notions of order and assimilating into Wonderlands nonsensical rules.
The Cheshire Cat
The Cheshire Cat is unique among Wonderland creatures. Threatened by no one, it maintains a
cool, grinning outsider status. The Cheshire Cat has insight into the workings of Wonderland as a
whole. Its calm explanation to Alice that to be in Wonderland is to be mad reveals a number of
points that do not occur to Alice on her own. First, the Cheshire Cat points out that Wonderland as a
place has a stronger cumulative effect than any of its citizens. Wonderland is ruled by nonsense,
and as a result, Alices normal behavior becomes inconsistent with its operating principles, so Alice

herself becomes mad in the context of Wonderland. Certainly, Alices burning curiosity to absorb
everything she sees in Wonderland sets her apart from the other Wonderland creatures, making
her seem mad in comparison.
The Queen of Hearts
As the ruler of Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts is the character that Alice must inevitably face to
figure out the puzzle of Wonderland. In a sense, the Queen of Hearts is literally the heart of Alices
conflict. Unlike many of the other characters in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts is not as
concerned with nonsense and perversions of logic as she is with absolute rule and execution. In
Wonderland, she is a singular force of fear who even dominates the King of Hearts. In the Queens
presence, Alice finally gets a taste of true fear, even though she understands that the Queen of
Hearts is merely a playing card. The Gryphon later informs Alice that the Queen never actually
executes anyone she sentences to death, which reinforces the fact that the Queen of Heartss
power lies in her rhetoric. The Queen becomes representative of the idea that Wonderland is
devoid of substance.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Tragic and Inevitable Loss of Childhood Innocence
Throughout the course of Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice goes through a variety of absurd
physical changes. The discomfort she feels at never being the right size acts as a symbol for the
changes that occur during puberty. Alice finds these changes to be traumatic, and feels discomfort,
frustration, and sadness when she goes through them. She struggles to maintain a comfortable
physical size. In Chapter 1, she becomes upset when she keeps finding herself too big or too small
to enter the garden. In Chapter 5, she loses control over specific body parts when her neck grows
to an absurd length. These constant fluctuations represent the way a child may feel as her body
grows and changes during puberty.
Life as a Meaningless Puzzle
In Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice encounters a series of puzzles that seem to have no
clear solutions, which imitates the ways that life frustrates expectations. Alice expects that the
situations she encounters will make a certain kind of sense, but they repeatedly frustrate her ability
to figure out Wonderland. Alice tries to understand the Caucus race, solve the Mad Hatters riddle,
and understand the Queens ridiculous croquet game, but to no avail. In every instance, the riddles

and challenges presented to Alice have no purpose or answer. Even though Lewis Carroll was a
logician, in Alices Adventures in Wonderland he makes a farce out of jokes, riddles, and games of
logic. Alice learns that she cannot expect to find logic or meaning in the situations that she
encounters, even when they appear to be problems, riddles, or games that would normally have
solutions that Alice would be able to figure out. Carroll makes a broader point about the ways that
life frustrates expectations and resists interpretation, even when problems seem familiar or
solvable.
Death as a Constant and Underlying Menace
Alice continually finds herself in situations in which she risks death, and while these threats never
materialize, they suggest that death lurks just behind the ridiculous events of Alices Adventures in
Wonderland as a present and possible outcome. Death appears in Chapter 1, when the narrator
mentions that Alice would say nothing of falling off of her own house, since it would likely kill her.
Alice takes risks that could possibly kill her, but she never considers death as a possible outcome.
Over time, she starts to realize that her experiences in Wonderland are far more threatening than
they appear to be. As the Queen screams Off with its head! she understands that Wonderland
may not merely be a ridiculous realm where expectations are repeatedly frustrated. Death may be a
real threat, and Alice starts to understand that the risks she faces may not be ridiculous and absurd
after all.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
texts major themes.
Dream
Alices Adventures in Wonderland takes place in Alices dream, so that the characters and
phenomena of the real world mix with elements of Alices unconscious state. The dream motif
explains the abundance of nonsensical and disparate events in the story. As in a dream, the
narrative follows the dreamer as she encounters various episodes in which she attempts to interpret
her experiences in relationship to herself and her world. Though Alices experiences lend
themselves to meaningful observations, they resist a singular and coherent interpretation.
Subversion
Alice quickly discovers during her travels that the only reliable aspect of Wonderland that she can
count on is that it will frustrate her expectations and challenge her understanding of the natural

order of the world. In Wonderland, Alice finds that her lessons no longer mean what she thought, as
she botches her multiplication tables and incorrectly recites poems she had memorized while in
Wonderland. Even Alices physical dimensions become warped as she grows and shrinks erratically
throughout the story. Wonderland frustrates Alices desires to fit her experiences in a logical
framework where she can make sense of the relationship between cause and effect.
Language
Carroll plays with linguistic conventions in Alices Adventures in Wonderland, making use of puns
and playing on multiple meanings of words throughout the text. Carroll invents words and
expressions and develops new meanings for words. Alices exclamation Curious and curiouser!
suggests that both her surroundings and the language she uses to describe them expand beyond
expectation and convention. Anything is possible in Wonderland, and Carrolls manipulation of
language reflects this sense of unlimited possibility.
Curious, Nonsense, and Confusing
Alice uses these words throughout her journey to describe phenomena she has trouble explaining.
Though the words are generally interchangeable, she usually assigns curious and confusing to
experiences or encounters that she tolerates. She endures is the experiences that are curious or
confusing, hoping to gain a clearer picture of how that individual or experience functions in the
world. When Alice declares something to be nonsense, as she does with the trial in Chapter 12, she
rejects or criticizes the experience or encounter.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Garden
Nearly every object in Alices Adventures in Wonderland functions as a symbol, but nothing clearly
represents one particular thing. The symbolic resonances of Wonderland objects are generally
contained to the individual episode in which they appear. Often the symbols work together to
convey a particular meaning. The garden may symbolize the Garden of Eden, an idyllic space of
beauty and innocence that Alice is not permitted to access. On a more abstract level, the garden
may simply represent the experience of desire, in that Alice focuses her energy and emotion on
trying to attain it. The two symbolic meanings work together to underscore Alices desire to hold
onto her feelings of childlike innocence that she must relinquish as she matures.

The Caterpillars Mushroom


Like the garden, the Caterpillars mushroom also has multiple symbolic meanings. Some readers
and critics view the Caterpillar as a sexual threat, its phallic shape a symbol of sexual virility. The
Caterpillars mushroom connects to this symbolic meaning. Alice must master the properties of the
mushroom to gain control over her fluctuating size, which represents the bodily frustrations that
accompany puberty. Others view the mushroom as a psychedelic hallucinogen that compounds
Alices surreal and distorted perception of Wonderland.

EMILY DICKINSON
Context
Emily Dickinson read about the world around her, but for most of her adult life, she did not live in it.
She spent much of her life behind locked doors, refusing visitors and producing poem after poem in
her room. However, politics engaged Dickinson's attention for some time. Her father, Edward
Dickinson, was a United States Congressman. Dickinson's ancestry traced back to the beginnings
of New England history. The Dickinsons had come to America with John Winthrop in 1630 and had
settled all over the Connecticut River Valley by the time Emily Dickinson was born two hundred
years later.
During Dickinson's life, a number of important events and movements took place. A social and
religious movement called the Great Revival renewed religious fervor among the people of New
England. It resulted in the closing of saloons all over Massachusetts and Connecticut. Dickinson's
father joined the Great Revival movement in supporting the temperance pledge, but Dickinson
looked on the movement with skepticism.
During the 1840s and 1850s, the abolitionist movementa social movement organized in the North
to abolish the institution of slaverygained support. On May 30, 1854, Congress passed the
Kansas-Nebraska Act. This bill made the Kansas and Nebraska territories full-fledged states. As a
result of granting Kansas and Nebraska statehood, the slave debate in America intensified, for the
new bill permitted slavery, enraging some United States citizens. The Kansas-Nebraska Act stated
that the new states would decide to adopt slavery or not based on "popular sovereignty," or the will
of the inhabitants of the territory. Leaving the adoption of slavery up to the individual states directly
contradicted the Missouri Compromise, which barred the extension of slavery into new states.

Edward Dickinson fought vehemently against the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The bill passed, and as a
result, Edward Dickinson and about forty other U.S. Congressmen began planning an entirely new
political party, which would come to be called the Republican party.
The Civil War also touched Emily Dickinson's life. Her brother Austin paid a conscript to take his
place in the war, avoiding it, but Emily's great friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson led the first
black regiment in the Union army, and one of her dearest friend's husbands was killed by an
explosion in the conflict.
The American literary world was not closed to female writers, but it did not welcome them, either.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was the notable exception to the unspoken rules barring women from the
literary club. In 1852, Stowe published the immensely popular, controversial novel Uncle Tom's
Cabin. Despite the gains made in fiction by women like Stowe, poetry was still considered a man's
arena, especially in New England, where heavyweights like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt
Whitman practiced their art.
Dickinson's father was liberal in some respects and conservative in others. He would have
disapproved if he knew Dickinson spent her time writing in her room, so she kept her massive
collection of writings locked in a secret drawer in her room. Dickinson's only publicly disseminated
poems were those she sent to friends and family as notes, birthday greetings, and Valentines. In
her lifetime, Dickinson published only seven poem out of the nearly 2,000 that would eventually be
published after her death. During Dickinson's life, nearly all of the seven published poems were
published anonymously in the Springfield Republican newspaper. Dickinson, socially brilliant as a
young woman, became increasingly reclusive as her life progressed. In her mid-twenties, she
began wearing only clothing that was white. Eventually, she stopped receiving most visitors, even
refusing to see dear friends that came to her house.
Dickinson's great poetic achievement was not fully realized until years after her death, even though
Dickinson understood her own genius when she lived. Many scholars now identify Dickinson's style
as the forerunner, by more than fifty years, of modern poetry. At the time in which Dickinson wrote,
the conventions of poetry demanded strict form. Dickinson's broken meter, unusual rhythmic
patterns, and assonance struck even respected critics of the time as sloppy and inept. In time, her
style was echoed by many of our most revered poets, including Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
However, while she lived, the few publishers could not appreciate the innovation of Dickinson's
form. Her unique technique discomfited them, and they could not see beyond it to appreciate her
jewels of imagery and her unexpected and fresh metaphors.

Dickinson's niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Dickinson's sister Lavinia collected and published
some of Dickinson's poetry after her death, but the world was still slow to recognize Dickinson. In
1945, the collection of poems titled Bolts of Melody was published. In 1955 Dickinson's letters and
selected commentaries on her life and work were published, and in 1960, her complete poems,
edited by Thomas H. Johnson, were published. At last the world began to recognize Dickinson's
innovation and brilliance. Today, Dickinson is ensconced in the canon and almost universally
considered one of the greatest poets in history.
In recent years, many scholars have rejected the popular view of Emily Dickinson as a heartsick
recluse who spent her entire life pining for an unnamed lover, foregoing sex and companionship in
order to concentrate more fully on her writing. Some scholars have argued that research on Emily
Dickinson has focused too heavily on her personal life and on the importance of men to her poetry.
There can be no doubt, however, that her poetry was a forerunner to modern poetry and that her
poems contained some of the most unusual and daring innovations in the history of American
poetry.
General Summary
Emily Dickinson, the "Belle of Amherst", is one of the most highly-regarded poets ever to write. In
America, perhaps only Walt Whitman is her equal in legend and in degree of influence. Dickinson,
the famous recluse dressed in white, secretly produced an enormous canon of poetry while locked
in her room and refusing visitor after visitor. Her personal life and its mysteries have sometimes
overshadowed her achievements in poetry and her extraordinary innovations in poetic form, to the
dismay of some scholars.
Dickinson was born in December of 1830 to a well-known family, long established in New England.
Her family lived in the then-small farming town of Amherst, Massachusetts. The middle child,
Dickinson was adored by both her older brother Austin and her younger Dickinson Lavinia. Her
relationship with her mother was distant, and though she was likely her father's favorite, her
relationship with him was sometimes frosty.
Dickinson regularly attended her family's church, and New England Calvinism surrounded her.
Dickinson stood out as an eccentric when, as a young girl, she refused to join the church officially
or even to call herself a Christian. At school she proved a good student, but spent only one year at
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before leaving the school due to health problems. In the years
prior to her cloistered existence at the house in Amherst, Dickinson was quite social, attending

parties, impressing her father's Washington political comrades during a trip there, and amusing
everyone with her witticisms. Emily Dickinson was a fun, fiercely intelligent, young woman.
Something changed in her life, and that change is one of the greatest mysteries surrounding
Dickinson's legend. Some time around 1850 she began writing poetry. Her first poems were
traditional and followed established form, but as time passed and she began producing huge
amounts of poetry, Dickinson began experimenting. In 1855, Dickinson, already a homebody, took a
trip to Washington D.C. after much prodding from her family. She also went to Philadelphia,
spending three weeks there. While in Philadelphia, she made the acquaintance of a brilliant,
serious man named Dr. Charles Wadsworth, a married reverend at one of the Presbyterian
churches in the city. He was an arresting figure and Dickinson deeply admired him. Most scholars
agree that Wadsworth was the man Dickinson fell in love with, and the man who inspired much of
her love poetry. Just before he left his Philadelphia church in 1861 to move to San Francisco,
Wadsworth visited Dickinson to tell her of his plans to leave. No one in the family witnessed their
meeting, but when he left, Dickinson suffered a nervous breakdown that incapacitated her for a
week and nearly ruined her eyesight.
Dickinson was experimenting with the form and structure of the poem. Many of her innovations form
the basis of modern poetry. She sent her poems as birthday greetings and as valentines, but her
love poetry was private. She tied it in tight little bundles and hid it away. She did, however, seek out
a mentor in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a prominent literary critic in Boston. They began a
correspondence that would last for the rest of her life. Though she doggedly sought out his advice,
she never took the advice he gave, much to Higginson's annoyance.
During the 1860s and 1870s, Dickinson grew even more reclusive. She stopped wearing clothes
that had any hint of color and dressed only in white, she turned away almost every visitor who came
to see her, and she locked herself in her room for days at a time. In the late 1870s and early 1880s,
a number of people close to Dickinson died in quick succession, including her mother, her friend
Judge Otis Lord, her young nephew, her good friend Helen Fiske Hunt and Dr. Charles Wadsworth.
In 1886, Dickinson's health began deteriorating and she found herself slowly becoming an invalid.
Dickinson was only fifty-six, but she was suffering from a severe case of Bright's disease. She died
on May 15, 1886, and was buried in a white coffin in Amherst.

HERMAN MELVILLE
MOBY-DICK

Context

Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819, the third of eight children born to Maria
Gansevoort Melville and Allan Melville, a prosperous importer of foreign goods. When the family
business failed at the end of the 1820s, the Melvilles relocated to Albany in an attempt to revive
their fortunes. A string of further bad luck and overwork, however, drove his father to an early grave,
and the young Melville was forced to start working in a bank at the age of thirteen.
After a few more years of formal education, Melville left school at eighteen to become an
elementary school teacher. This career was abruptly cut short and followed by a brief tenure as a
newspaper reporter. Running out of alternatives on land, Melville made his first sea voyage at
nineteen, as a merchant sailor on a ship bound for Liverpool, England. He returned to America the
next summer to seek his fortune in the West. After settling briefly in Illinois, he went back east in the
face of continuing financial difficulties.
Finally, driven to desperation at twenty-one, Melville committed to a whaling voyage of indefinite
destination and scale on board a ship called the Acushnet. This journey took him around the
continent of South America, across the Pacific Ocean, and to the South Seas, where he abandoned
ship with a fellow sailor in the summer of 1842, eighteen months after setting out from New York.
The two men found themselves in the Marquesas Islands, where they accidentally wandered into
the company of a tribe of cannibals. Lamed with a bad leg, Melville became separated from his
companion and spent a month alone in the company of the natives. This experience later formed
the core of his first novel, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life,published in 1846. An indeterminate
mixture of fact and fiction, Melvilles fanciful travel narrative remained the most popular and
successful of his works during his lifetime.
Life among these natives and other exotic experiences abroad provided Melville with endless
literary conceits. 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 was
followed by Omoo (1847) andMardi and a Voyage Thither (1849), two more novels about his
Polynesian experiences. Redburn, also published in 1849, is a fictionalized account of Melvilles
first voyage to Liverpool. His next novel, White-Jacket; or The World in a Man-of-War, published
in 1 8 5 0 , is 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; orThe Whale, which first appeared in 1851.
A story of monomania aboard a whaling ship, Moby-Dick is a tremendously ambitious novel that
functions at once as a documentary of life at sea and a vast philosophical allegory of life in general.
No sacred subject is spared in this bleak and scathing critique of the known world, as Melville
satirizes by turns religious traditions, moral values, and the literary and political figures of the day.
Melville was influenced in the writing of Moby-Dick by the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, author
of The Scarlet Letter, 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. Though the works of Shakespeare and Milton and stories in
the Bible (especially the Old Testament) influenced Moby-Dick, Melville didnt look exclusively to
celebrated cultural models. He drew on sources from popular culture as well; whaling narratives, for
example, were popular in the nineteenth century. Melville relied on Thomas Beales
encyclopedic Natural History of the Sperm Whaleand the narrative Etchings of a Whaling Cruise, by
J. Ross Browne.
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. He died in 1891.
Moby-Dick remained largely ignored until the 1920s, when it was rediscovered and promoted by
literary historians interested in constructing an American literary tradition. To these critics, MobyDick 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.

Plot Overview
Ishmael, the narrator, announces his intent to ship aboard a whaling vessel. He has made several
voyages as a sailor but none as a whaler. He travels to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he
stays in a whalers inn. Since the inn is rather full, he has to share a bed with a harpooner from the
South Pacific named Queequeg. At first repulsed by Queequegs strange habits and shocking
appearance (Queequeg is covered with tattoos), Ishmael eventually comes to appreciate the mans

generosity and kind spirit, and the two decide to seek work on a whaling vessel together. They take
a ferry to Nantucket, the traditional capital of the whaling industry. There they secure berths on
the Pequod, a savage-looking ship adorned with the bones and teeth of sperm whales. Peleg and
Bildad, the Pequods Quaker owners, drive a hard bargain in terms of salary. They also mention the
ships mysterious captain, Ahab, who is still recovering from losing his leg in an encounter with a
sperm whale on his last voyage.
The Pequod leaves Nantucket on a cold Christmas Day with a crew made up of men from many
different countries and races. Soon the ship is in warmer waters, and Ahab makes his first
appearance on deck, balancing gingerly on his false leg, which is made from a sperm whales jaw.
He announces his desire to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the legendary great white whale who took
his leg, because he sees this whale as the embodiment of evil. Ahab nails a gold doubloon to the
mast and declares that it will be the prize for the first man to sight the whale. As the Pequodsails
toward the southern tip of Africa, whales are sighted and unsuccessfully hunted. During the hunt, a
group of men, none of whom anyone on the ships crew has seen before on the voyage, emerges
from the hold. The mens leader is an exotic-looking man named Fedallah. These men constitute
Ahabs private harpoon crew, smuggled aboard in defiance of Bildad and Peleg. Ahab hopes that
their skills and Fedallahs prophetic abilities will help him in his hunt for Moby Dick.
The Pequod rounds Africa and enters the Indian Ocean. A few whales are successfully caught and
processed for their oil. From time to time, the ship encounters other whaling vessels. Ahab always
demands information about Moby Dick from their captains. One of the ships, the Jeroboam, carries
Gabriel, a crazed prophet who predicts doom for anyone who threatens Moby Dick. His predictions
seem to carry some weight, as those aboard his ship who have hunted the whale have met
disaster. While trying to drain the oil from the head of a captured sperm whale, Tashtego, one of
the Pequods harpooners, falls into the whales voluminous head, which then rips free of the ship
and begins to sink. Queequeg saves Tashtego by diving into the ocean and cutting into the slowly
sinking head.
During another whale hunt, Pip, the Pequods black cabin boy, jumps from a whaleboat and is left
behind in the middle of the ocean. He goes insane as the result of the experience and becomes a
crazy but prophetic jester for the ship. Soon after, the Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby, a
whaling ship whose skipper, Captain Boomer, has lost an arm in an encounter with Moby Dick. The
two captains discuss the whale; Boomer, happy simply to have survived his encounter, cannot
understand Ahabs lust for vengeance. Not long after, Queequeg falls ill and has the ships

carpenter make him a coffin in anticipation of his death. He recovers, however, and the coffin
eventually becomes the Pequods replacement life buoy.
Ahab orders a harpoon forged in the expectation that he will soon encounter Moby Dick. He
baptizes the harpoon with the blood of the Pequods three harpooners. The Pequod kills several
more whales. Issuing a prophecy about Ahabs death, Fedallah declares that Ahab will first see two
hearses, the second of which will be made only from American wood, and that he will be killed by
hemp rope. Ahab interprets these words to mean that he will not die at sea, where there are no
hearses and no hangings. A typhoon hits the Pequod, illuminating it with electrical fire. Ahab takes
this occurrence as a sign of imminent confrontation and success, but Starbuck, the ships first mate,
takes it as a bad omen and considers killing Ahab to end the mad quest. After the storm ends, one
of the sailors falls from the ships masthead and drownsa grim foreshadowing of what lies ahead.
Ahabs fervent desire to find and destroy Moby Dick continues to intensify, and the mad Pip is now
his constant companion. The Pequod approaches the equator, where Ahab expects to find the great
whale. The ship encounters two more whaling ships, the Rachel and the Delight, both of which
have recently had fatal encounters with the whale. Ahab finally sights Moby Dick. The harpoon
boats are launched, and Moby Dick attacks Ahabs harpoon boat, destroying it. The next day, Moby
Dick is sighted again, and the boats are lowered once more. The whale is harpooned, but Moby
Dick again attacks Ahabs boat. Fedallah, trapped in the harpoon line, is dragged overboard to his
death. Starbuck must maneuver the Pequod between Ahab and the angry whale.
On the third day, the boats are once again sent after Moby Dick, who once again attacks them. The
men can see Fedallahs corpse lashed to the whale by the harpoon line. Moby Dick rams
the Pequod and sinks it. Ahab is then caught in a harpoon line and hurled out of his harpoon boat to
his death. All of the remaining whaleboats and men are caught in the vortex created by the
sinking Pequod and pulled under to their deaths. Ishmael, who was thrown from a boat at the
beginning of the chase, was far enough away to escape the whirlpool, and he alone survives. He
floats atop Queequegs coffin, which popped back up from the wreck, until he is picked up by
the Rachel, which is still searching for the crewmen lost in her earlier encounter with Moby Dick.

Analysis of Major Characters


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 selftaught 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.
Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask
The Pequods three mates are used primarily to provide philosophical contrasts with Ahab.
Starbuck, the first mate, is a religious man. Sober and conservative, he relies on his Christian faith
to determine his actions and interpretations of events. Stubb, the second mate, is jolly and cool in
moments of crisis. He has worked in the dangerous occupation of whaling for so long that the
possibility of death has ceased to concern him. A fatalist, he believes that things happen as they are
meant to and that there is little that he can do about it. Flask simply enjoys the thrill of the hunt and
takes pride in killing whales. He doesnt stop to consider consequences at all and is utterly lost . . .
to all sense of reverence for the whale. All three of these perspectives are used to accentuate
Ahabs monomania. Ahab reads his experiences as the result of a conspiracy against him by some
larger force. Unlike Flask, he thinks and interprets. Unlike Stubb, he believes that he can alter his
world. Unlike Starbuck, he places himself rather than some external set of principles at the center of
the cosmic order that he discerns.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Limits of Knowledge


As Ishmael tries, in the opening pages of Moby-Dick, to offer a simple collection of literary excerpts
mentioning whales, he discovers that, throughout history, the whale has taken on an incredible
multiplicity of meanings. Over the course of the novel, he makes use of nearly every discipline
known to man in his attempts to understand the essential nature of the whale. Each of these
systems of knowledge, however, including art, taxonomy, and phrenology, fails to give an adequate
account. The multiplicity of approaches that Ishmael takes, coupled with his compulsive need to
assert his authority as a narrator and the frequent references to the limits of observation (men
cannot see the depths of the ocean, for example), suggest that human knowledge is always limited
and insufficient. When it comes to Moby Dick himself, this limitation takes on allegorical
significance. The ways of Moby Dick, like those of the Christian God, are unknowable to man, and
thus trying to interpret them, as Ahab does, is inevitably futile and often fatal.
The Deceptiveness of Fate
In addition to highlighting many portentous or foreshadowing events, Ishmaels narrative contains
many references to fate, creating the impression that thePequods doom is inevitable. Many of the
sailors believe in prophecies, and some even claim the ability to foretell the future. A number of
things suggest, however, that characters are actually deluding themselves when they think that they
see the work of fate and that fate either doesnt exist or is one of the many forces about which
human beings can have no distinct knowledge. Ahab, for example, clearly exploits the sailors belief
in fate to manipulate them into thinking that the quest for Moby Dick is their common destiny.
Moreover, the prophesies of Fedallah and others seem to be undercut in Chapter 99, when various
individuals interpret the doubloon in different ways, demonstrating that humans project what they
want to see when they try to interpret signs and portents.
The Exploitative Nature of Whaling
At first glance, the Pequod seems like an island of equality and fellowship in the midst of a racist,
hierarchically structured world. The ships crew includes men from all corners of the globe and all
races who seem to get along harmoniously. Ishmael is initially uneasy upon meeting Queequeg, but
he quickly realizes that it is better to have a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian for a
shipmate. Additionally, the conditions of work aboard the Pequod promote a certain kind of
egalitarianism, since men are promoted and paid according to their skill. However, the work of
whaling parallels the other exploitative activitiesbuffalo hunting, gold mining, unfair trade with
indigenous peoplesthat characterize American and European territorial expansion. Each of

the Pequods mates, who are white, is entirely dependent on a nonwhite harpooner, and nonwhites
perform most of the dirty or dangerous jobs aboard the ship. Flask actually stands on Daggoo, his
African harpooner, in order to beat the other mates to a prize whale. Ahab is depicted as walking
over the black youth Pip, who listens to Ahabs pacing from below deck, and is thus reminded that
his value as a slave is less than the value of a whale.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the texts major themes.
Whiteness
Whiteness, to Ishmael, is horrible because it represents the unnatural and threatening: albinos,
creatures that live in extreme and inhospitable environments, waves breaking against rocks. These
examples reverse the traditional association of whiteness with purity. Whiteness conveys both a
lack of meaning and an unreadable excess of meaning that confounds individuals. Moby Dick is the
pinnacle of whiteness, and Melvilles characters cannot objectively understand the White Whale.
Ahab, for instance, believes that Moby Dick represents evil, while Ishmael fails in his attempts to
determine scientifically the whales fundamental nature.
Surfaces and Depths
Ishmael frequently bemoans the impossibility of examining anything in its entirety, noting that only
the surfaces of objects and environments are available to the human observer. On a live whale, for
example, only the outer layer presents itself; on a dead whale, it is impossible to determine what
constitutes the whales skin, or which partskeleton, blubber, headoffers the best understanding
of the entire animal. Moreover, as the whale swims, it hides much of its body underwater, away
from the human gaze, and no one knows where it goes or what it does. The sea itself is the
greatest frustration in this regard: its depths are mysterious and inaccessible to Ishmael. This motif
represents the larger problem of the limitations of human knowledge. Humankind is not all-seeing;
we can only observe, and thus only acquire knowledge about, that fraction of entitiesboth
individuals and environmentsto which we have access: surfaces.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Pequod
Named after a Native American tribe in Massachusetts that did not long survive the arrival of white
men and thus memorializing an extinction, the Pequod is a symbol of doom. It is painted a gloomy
black and covered in whale teeth and bones, literally bristling with the mementos of violent death. It
is, in fact, marked for death. Adorned like a primitive coffin, the Pequod becomes one.
Moby Dick
Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals. To thePequods crew, the
legendary White Whale is a concept onto which they can displace their anxieties about their
dangerous and often very frightening jobs. Because they have no delusions about Moby Dick acting
malevolently toward men or literally embodying evil, tales about the whale allow them to confront
their fear, manage it, and continue to function. Ahab, on the other hand, believes that Moby Dick is
a manifestation of all that is wrong with the world, and he feels that it is his destiny to eradicate this
symbolic evil.
Moby Dick also bears out interpretations not tied down to specific characters. In its inscrutable
silence and mysterious habits, for example, the White Whale can be read as an allegorical
representation of an unknowable God. As a profitable commodity, it fits into the scheme of white
economic expansion and exploitation in the nineteenth century. As a part of the natural world, it
represents the destruction of the environment by such hubristic expansion.

HENRY JAMES
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

Context

Henry James was born in New York City in 1843 and was raised in Manhattan. James's father, a
prominent intellectual and social theorist, traveled a great deal to Geneva, Paris, and London, so
Henry and his brother, William, accompanied him and virtually grew up in those locations as well.
As a child, James was shy, delicate, and had a difficult time mixing with other boyshis brother,
who was much more active, called him a sissy. William James, of course, went on to become a
great American philosopher, while Henry became one of the nation's preeminent novelists.

The James family moved to Boston when Henry was a teenager, and Henry briefly attended
Harvard Law School. But he soon dropped out in order to concentrate on his writing. He found
success early and often: William Dean Howells, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, befriended the
young writer, and by his mid- twenties James was considered one of the most skilled writers in
America. In novels such as The American, The Europeans, and Daisy Miller, James perfected a
unique brand of psychological realism, taking as his primary subject the social maneuverings of the
upper classes, particularly the situation of Americans living in Europe. For James, America
represented optimism and innocence, while Europe represented decadence and social
sophistication; James himself moved to Europe early on in his professional career and was
naturalized as a British citizen in 1915 to protest America's failure to enter World War I.
Throughout his career, James earned criticism for the slow pacing and uneventful plotting of his
novels, as well as for his elliptical technique, in which many of a work's important scenes are not
narrated, but only implied by later scenes. But as a stylist James earned consistent admiration; he
is often considered to be a "writer's writer," and his prose is remarkable for its elegance of balance,
clarity, and precision.
First written in the 1880s and extensively revised in 1908, The Portrait of a Lady is often considered
to be James's greatest achievement. In it, he explored many of his most characteristic themes,
including the conflict between American individualism and European social custom and the situation
of Americans in Europe. It also includes many of his most memorable characters, including the lady
of the novel's title, Isabel Archer, the indomitable Mrs. Touchett, the wise and funny Ralph Touchett,
the fast-talking Henrietta Stackpole, and the sinister villains, Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle.
While he was a dedicated observer of human beings in society, James was a socially distant man
who formed few close friendships. He never married and openly claimed to practice celibacy.
Perhaps this gave him time to write: in four decades of his writing career, he produced nearly 100
books, including such classics as The Golden Bowl, The Wings of the Dove, and the immortal ghost
story "The Turn of the Screw." He died on February 28, 1916, shortly after receiving the English
Order of Merit for his dedication to the British cause in World War I.

Plot Overview
Isabel Archer is a woman in her early twenties who comes from a genteel family in Albany, New
York, in the late 1860s. Her mother died when she was a young girl, and her father raised her in a
haphazard manner, allowing her to educate herself and encouraging her independence. As a result,
the adult Isabel is widely read, imaginative, confident in her own mind, and slightly narcissistic; she

has the reputation in Albany for being a formidable intellect, and as a result she often seems
intimidating to men. She has had few suitors, but one of them is Caspar Goodwood, the powerful,
charismatic son of a wealthy Boston mill owner. Isabel is drawn to Caspar, but her commitment to
her independence makes her fear him as well, for she feels that to marry him would be to sacrifice
her freedom.
Shortly after Isabel's father dies, she receives a visit from her indomitable aunt, Mrs. Touchett, an
American who lives in Europe. Mrs. Touchett offers to take Isabel on a trip to Europe, and Isabel
eagerly agrees, telling Caspar that she cannot tell him whether she wishes to marry him until she
has had at least a year to travel in Europe with her aunt. Isabel and Mrs. Touchett leave for
England, where Mrs. Touchett's estranged husband is a powerful banker. Isabel makes a strong
impression on everyone at Mr. Touchett's county manor of Gardencourt: her cousin Ralph, slowly
dying of a lung disorder, becomes deeply devoted to her, and the Touchetts' aristocratic neighbor
Lord Warburton falls in love with her. Warburton proposes, but Isabel declines; though she fears
that she is passing up a great social opportunity by not marrying Warburton, she still believes that
marriage would damage her treasured independence. As a result, she pledges to accomplish
something wonderful with her life, something that will justify her decision to reject Warburton.
Isabel's friend Henrietta Stackpole, an American journalist, believes that Europe is changing Isabel,
slowly eroding her American values and replacing them with romantic idealism. Henrietta comes to
Gardencourt and secretly arranges for Caspar Goodwood to meet Isabel in London. Goodwood
again presses Isabel to marry him; this time, she tells him she needs at least two years before she
can answer him, and she promises him nothing. She is thrilled to have exercised her independence
so forcefully. Mr. Touchett's health declines, and Ralph convinces him that when he dies, he should
leave half his wealth to Isabel: this will protect her independence and ensure that she will never
have to marry for money. Mr. Touchett agrees shortly before he dies. Isabel is left with a large
fortune for the first time in her life. Her inheritance piques the interest of Madame Merle, Mrs.
Touchett's polished, elegant friend; Madame Merle begins to lavish attention on Isabel, and the two
women become close friends.
Isabel travels to Florence with Mrs. Touchett and Madame Merle; Merle introduces Isabel to a man
named Gilbert Osmond, a man of no social standing or wealth, but whom Merle describes as one of
the finest gentlemen in Europe, wholly devoted to art and aesthetics. Osmond's daughter Pansy is
being brought up in a convent; his wife is dead. In secret, Osmond and Merle have a mysterious
relationship; Merle is attempting to manipulate Isabel into marrying Osmond so that he will have

access to her fortune. Osmond is pleased to marry Isabel, not only for her money, but also because
she makes a fine addition to his collection of art objects.
Everyone in Isabel's world disapproves of Osmond, especially Ralph, but Isabel chooses to marry
him anyway. She has a child the year after they are married, but the boy dies six months after he is
born. Three years into their marriage, Isabel and Osmond have come to despise one another; they
live with Pansy in a palazzo in Rome, where Osmond treats Isabel as barely a member of the
family: to him, she is a social hostess and a source of wealth, and he is annoyed by her
independence and her insistence on having her own opinions. Isabel chafes against Osmond's
arrogance, his selfishness, and his sinister desire to crush her individuality, but she does not
consider leaving him. For all her commitment to her independence, Isabel is also committed to her
social duty, and when she married Osmond, she did so with the intention of transforming herself
into a good wife.
A young American art collector who lives in Paris, Edward Rosier, comes to Rome and falls in love
with Pansy; Pansy returns his feelings. But Osmond is insistent that Pansy should marry a
nobleman, and he says that Rosier is neither rich nor highborn enough. Matters grow complicated
when Lord Warburton arrives on the scene and begins to court Pansy. Warburton is still in love with
Isabel and wants to marry Pansy solely to get closer to her. But Osmond desperately wants to see
Pansy married to Warburton. Isabel is torn about whether to fulfill her duty to her husband and help
him arrange the match between Warburton and Pansy, or to fulfill the impulse of her conscience
and discourage Warburton, while helping Pansy find a way to marry Rosier.
At a ball one night, Isabel shows Warburton the dejected-looking Rosier and explains that this is the
man who is in love with Pansy. Guiltily, Warburton admits that he is not in love with Pansy; he
quietly arranges to leave Rome. Osmond is furious with Isabel, convinced that she is plotting
intentionally to humiliate him. Madame Merle is also furious with her, confronting her with shocking
impropriety and demanding brazenly to know what she did to Warburton. Isabel has realized that
there is something mysterious about Madame Merle's relationship with her husband; now, she
suddenly realizes that Merle is his lover.
At this time, Ralph is rapidly deteriorating, and Isabel receives word that he is dying. She longs to
travel to England to be with him, but Osmond forbids it. Now Isabel must struggle to decide whether
to obey his command and remain true to her marriage vows or to disregard him and hurry to her
cousin's bedside. Encouraging her to go, Osmond's sister, the Countess Gemini, tells her that there
is still more to Merle and Osmond's relationship. Merle is Pansy's mother; Pansy was born out of

wedlock. Osmond's wife died at about the same time, so Merle and Osmond spread the story that
she died in childbirth. Pansy was placed in a convent to be raised, and she does not know that
Merle is her real mother. Isabel is shocked and disgusted by her husband's atrocious behavior
she even feels sorry for Merle for falling under his spellso she decides to follow her heart and
travel to England.
After Ralph's death, Isabel struggles to decide whether to return to her husband or not. She
promised Pansy that she would return to Rome, and her commitment to social propriety impels her
to go back and honor her marriage. But her independent spirit urges her to flee from Osmond and
find happiness elsewhere. Caspar Goodwood appears at the funeral, and afterwards, he asks
Isabel to run away with him and forget about her husband. The next day, unable to find her,
Goodwood asks Henrietta where she has gone. Henrietta quietly tells him that Isabel has returned
to Rome, unable to break away from her marriage to Gilbert Osmond.

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.
Gilbert Osmond - A cruel, narcissistic gentleman of no particular social standing or wealth,
who seduces Isabel and marries her for her money. An art collector, Osmond poses as a
disinterested aesthete, but in reality he is desperate for the recognition and admiration of those
around him. He treats everyone who loves him as simply an object to be used to fulfill his
desires; he bases his daughter Pansy's upbringing on the idea that she should be unswervingly
subservient to him, and he even treats his longtime lover Madame Merle as a mere tool. Isabel's
marriage to Osmond forces her to confront the conflict between her desire for independence
and the painful social proprieties that force her to remain in her marriage.
Madame Merle - An accomplished, graceful, and manipulative woman, Madame Merle is a
popular lady who does not have a husband or a fortune. Motivated by her love for Gilbert
Osmond, Merle manipulates Isabel into marrying Osmond, delivering Isabel's fortune into his
hands and ruining Isabel's life in the process. Unbeknownst to either Isabel or Pansy, Merle is

not only Osmond's lover, but she is also Pansy's mother, a fact that was covered up after
Pansy's birth. Pansy was raised to believe that her mother died in childbirth.
Ralph Touchett - Isabel's wise, funny cousin, who is ill with lung disease throughout the entire
novel, which ends shortly after his death. Ralph loves life, but he is kept from participating in it
vigorously by his ailment; as a result, he acts as a dedicated spectator, resolving to live
vicariously through his beloved cousin Isabel. It is Ralph who convinces Mr. Touchett to leave
Isabel her fortune, and it is Ralph who is the staunchest advocate of Isabel remaining
independent. Ralph serves as the moral center of Portrait of a Lady: his opinions about other
characters are always accurate, and he serves as a kind of moral barometer for the reader, who
can tell immediately whether a character is good or evil by Ralph's response to that character.

JOSEPH CONRAD HEART OF DARKNESS


Context
Joseph Conrad did not begin to learn English until he was twenty-one years old. He was born Jozef
Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, in the Polish Ukraine. When Conrad was quite
young, his father was exiled to Siberia on suspicion of plotting against the Russian government.
After the death of the boys mother, Conrads father sent him to his mothers brother in Krakw to
be educated, and Conrad never again saw his father. He traveled to Marseilles when he was
seventeen and spent the next twenty years as a sailor. He signed on to an English ship in 1878,
and eight years later he became a British subject. In 1889, he began his first novel, Almayers
Folly, and began actively searching for a way to fulfill his boyhood dream of traveling to the Congo.
He took command of a steamship in the Belgian Congo in 1890, and his experiences in the Congo
came to provide the outline for Heart of Darkness. Conrads time in Africa wreaked havoc on his
health, however, and he returned to England to recover. He returned to sea twice before
finishing Almayers Folly in 1894 and wrote several other books, including one about Marlow
called Youth: A Narrative before beginning Heart of Darkness in 1898. He wrote most of his other
major worksincluding Lord Jim, which also features Marlow; Nostromo; and The Secret Agent, as
well as several collaborations with Ford Madox Fordduring the following two decades. Conrad
died in 1924.
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.

Plot Overview
Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo
River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a
riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he
travels to Africa and then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in
the Companys stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Companys
service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Companys

agents. The cruelty and squalor of imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the impassive and
majestic jungle that surrounds the white mans settlements, making them appear to be tiny islands
amidst a vast darkness.
Marlow arrives at the Central Station, run by the general manager, an unwholesome, conspiratorial
character. He finds that his steamship has been sunk and spends several months waiting for parts
to repair it. His interest in Kurtz grows during this period. The manager and his favorite, the
brickmaker, seem to fear Kurtz as a threat to their position. Kurtz is rumored to be ill, making the
delays in repairing the ship all the more costly. Marlow eventually gets the parts he needs to repair
his ship, and he and the manager set out with a few agents (whom Marlow calls pilgrims because of
their strange habit of carrying long, wooden staves wherever they go) and a crew of cannibals on a
long, difficult voyage up the river. The dense jungle and the oppressive silence make everyone
aboard a little jumpy, and the occasional glimpse of a native village or the sound of drums works the
pilgrims into a frenzy. Marlow and his crew come across a hut with stacked firewood, together with
a note saying that the wood is for them but that they should approach cautiously. Shortly after the
steamer has taken on the firewood, it is surrounded by a dense fog. When the fog clears, the ship is
attacked by an unseen band of natives, who fire arrows from the safety of the forest. The African
helmsman is killed before Marlow frightens the natives away with the ships steam whistle. Not long
after, Marlow and his companions arrive at Kurtzs Inner Station, expecting to find him dead, but a
half-crazed Russian trader, who meets them as they come ashore, assures them that everything is
fine and informs them that he is the one who left the wood. The Russian claims that Kurtz has
enlarged his mind and cannot be subjected to the same moral judgments as normal people.
Apparently, Kurtz has established himself as a god with the natives and has gone on brutal raids in
the surrounding territory in search of ivory. The collection of severed heads adorning the fence
posts around the station attests to his methods. The pilgrims bring Kurtz out of the station-house
on a stretcher, and a large group of native warriors pours out of the forest and surrounds them.
Kurtz speaks to them, and the natives disappear into the woods. The manager brings Kurtz, who is
quite ill, aboard the steamer. A beautiful native woman, apparently Kurtzs mistress, appears on the
shore and stares out at the ship. The Russian implies that she is somehow involved with Kurtz and
has caused trouble before through her influence over him. The Russian reveals to Marlow, after
swearing him to secrecy, that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamer to make them believe he
was dead in order that they might turn back and leave him to his plans. The Russian then leaves by
canoe, fearing the displeasure of the manager. Kurtz disappears in the night, and Marlow goes out
in search of him, finding him crawling on all fours toward the native camp. Marlow stops him and
convinces him to return to the ship. They set off down the river the next morning, but Kurtzs health
is failing fast. Marlow listens to Kurtz talk while he pilots the ship, and Kurtz entrusts Marlow with a

packet of personal documents, including an eloquent pamphlet on civilizing the savages which ends
with a scrawled message that says, Exterminate all the brutes! The steamer breaks down, and
they have to stop for repairs. Kurtz dies, uttering his last wordsThe horror! The horror!in the
presence of the confused Marlow. Marlow falls ill soon after and barely survives. Eventually he
returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtzs Intended (his fiance). She is still in mourning, even
though it has been over a year since Kurtzs death, and she praises him as a paragon of virtue and
achievement. She asks what his last words were, but Marlow cannot bring himself to shatter her
illusions with the truth. Instead, he tells her that Kurtzs last word was her name.

Analysis of Major Characters


Marlow. 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.
Kurtz
Kurtz, like Marlow, can be situated within a larger tradition. Kurtz resembles the archetypal evil
genius: the highly gifted but ultimately degenerate individual whose fall is the stuff of legend. Kurtz
is related to figures like Faustus, Satan in Miltons Paradise Lost, Moby-Dicks Ahab, and Wuthering
Heightss Heathcliff. Like these characters, he is significant both for his style and eloquence and for
his grandiose, almost megalomaniacal scheming. In a world of mundanely malicious men and
flabby devils, attracting enough attention to be worthy of damnation is indeed something. Kurtz

can be criticized in the same terms that Heart of Darknessis sometimes criticized: style entirely
overrules substance, providing a justification for amorality and evil.
In fact, it can be argued that style does not just override substance but actually masks the fact that
Kurtz is utterly lacking in substance. Marlow refers to Kurtz as hollow more than once. This could
be taken negatively, to mean that Kurtz is not worthy of contemplation. However, it also points to
Kurtzs ability to function as a choice of nightmares for Marlow: in his essential emptiness, he
becomes a cipher, a site upon which other things can be projected. This emptiness should not be
read as benign, however, just as Kurtzs eloquence should not be allowed to overshadow the
malice of his actions. Instead, Kurtz provides Marlow with a set of paradoxes that Marlow can use
to evaluate himself and the Companys men.
Indeed, Kurtz is not so much a fully realized individual as a series of images constructed by others
for their own use. As Marlows visits with Kurtzs cousin, the Belgian journalist, and Kurtzs fiance
demonstrate, there seems to be no true Kurtz. To his cousin, he was a great musician; to the
journalist, a brilliant politician and leader of men; to his fiance, a great humanitarian and genius. All
of these contrast with Marlows version of the man, and he is left doubting the validity of his
memories. Yet Kurtz, through his charisma and larger-than-life plans, remains with Marlow and with
the reader.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Hypocrisy of Imperialism
Heart of Darkness explores the issues surrounding imperialism in complicated ways. As Marlow
travels from the Outer Station to the Central Station and finally up the river to the Inner Station, he
encounters scenes of torture, cruelty, and near-slavery. At the very least, the incidental scenery of
the book offers a harsh picture of colonial enterprise. The impetus behind Marlows adventures, too,
has to do with the hypocrisy inherent in the rhetoric used to justify imperialism. The men who work
for the Company describe what they do as trade, and their treatment of native Africans is part of a
benevolent project of civilization. Kurtz, on the other hand, is open about the fact that he does not
trade but rather takes ivory by force, and he describes his own treatment of the natives with the
words suppression and extermination: he does not hide the fact that he rules through violence
and intimidation. His perverse honesty leads to his downfall, as his success threatens to expose the
evil practices behind European activity in Africa.

However, for Marlow as much as for Kurtz or for the Company, Africans in this book are mostly
objects: Marlow refers to his helmsman as a piece of machinery, and Kurtzs African mistress is at
best a piece of statuary. It can be argued that Heart of Darkness participates in an oppression of
nonwhites that is much more sinister and much harder to remedy than the open abuses of Kurtz or
the Companys men. Africans become for Marlow a mere backdrop, a human screen against which
he can play out his philosophical and existential struggles. Their existence and their exoticism
enable his self-contemplation. This kind of dehumanization is harder to identify than colonial
violence or open racism. While Heart of Darkness offers a powerful condemnation of the
hypocritical operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues surrounding race that is
ultimately troubling.
Madness as a Result of Imperialism
Madness is closely linked to imperialism in this book. Africa is responsible for mental disintegration
as well as physical illness. Madness has two primary functions. First, it serves as an ironic device to
engage the readers sympathies. Kurtz, Marlow is told from the beginning, is mad. However, as
Marlow, and the reader, begin to form a more complete picture of Kurtz, it becomes apparent that
his madness is only relative, that in the context of the Company insanity is difficult to define. Thus,
both Marlow and the reader begin to sympathize with Kurtz and view the Company with suspicion.
Madness also functions to establish the necessity of social fictions. Although social mores and
explanatory justifications are shown throughout Heart of Darkness to be utterly false and even
leading to evil, they are nevertheless necessary for both group harmony and individual security.
Madness, in Heart of Darkness, is the result of being removed from ones social context and
allowed to be the sole arbiter of ones own actions. Madness is thus linked not only to absolute
power and a kind of moral genius but to mans fundamental fallibility: Kurtz has no authority to
whom he answers but himself, and this is more than any one man can bear.
The Absurdity of Evil
This novella is, above all, an exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and moral confusion. It explodes
the idea of the proverbial choice between the lesser of two evils. As the idealistic Marlow is forced
to align himself with either the hypocritical and malicious colonial bureaucracy or the openly
malevolent, rule-defying Kurtz, it becomes increasingly clear that to try to judge either alternative is
an act of folly: how can moral standards or social values be relevant in judging evil? Is there such
thing as insanity in a world that has already gone insane? The number of ridiculous situations
Marlow witnesses act as reflections of the larger issue: at one station, for instance, he sees a man
trying to carry water in a bucket with a large hole in it. At the Outer Station, he watches native

laborers blast away at a hillside with no particular goal in mind. The absurd involves both
insignificant silliness and life-or-death issues, often simultaneously. That the serious and the
mundane are treated similarly suggests a profound moral confusion and a tremendous hypocrisy: it
is terrifying that Kurtzs homicidal megalomania and a leaky bucket provoke essentially the same
reaction from Marlow.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
texts major themes.
Observation and Eavesdropping
Marlow gains a great deal of information by watching the world around him and by overhearing
others conversations, as when he listens from the deck of the wrecked steamer to the manager of
the Central Station and his uncle discussing Kurtz and the Russian trader. This phenomenon
speaks to the impossibility of direct communication between individuals: information must come as
the result of chance observation and astute interpretation. Words themselves fail to capture
meaning adequately, and thus they must be taken in the context of their utterance. Another good
example of this is Marlows conversation with the brickmaker, during which Marlow is able to figure
out a good deal more than simply what the man has to say.
Interiors and Exteriors
Comparisons between interiors and exteriors pervade Heart of Darkness. As the narrator states at
the beginning of the text, Marlow is more interested in surfaces, in the surrounding aura of a thing
rather than in any hidden nugget of meaning deep within the thing itself. This inverts the usual
hierarchy of meaning: normally one seeks the deep message or hidden truth. The priority placed on
observation demonstrates that penetrating to the interior of an idea or a person is impossible in this
world. Thus, Marlow is confronted with a series of exteriors and surfacesthe rivers banks, the
forest walls around the station, Kurtzs broad foreheadthat he must interpret. These exteriors are
all the material he is given, and they provide him with perhaps a more profound source of
knowledge than any falsely constructed interior kernel.
Darkness
Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the books title. However, it is difficult to
discern exactly what it might mean, given that absolutely everything in the book is cloaked in
darkness. Africa, England, and Brussels are all described as gloomy and somehow dark, even if the

sun is shining brightly. Darkness thus seems to operate metaphorically and existentially rather than
specifically. Darkness is the inability to see: this may sound simple, but as a description of the
human condition it has profound implications. Failing to see another human being means failing to
understand that individual and failing to establish any sort of sympathetic communion with him or
her.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Fog
Fog is a sort of corollary to darkness. Fog not only obscures but distorts: it gives one just enough
information to begin making decisions but no way to judge the accuracy of that information, which
often ends up being wrong. Marlows steamer is caught in the fog, meaning that he has no idea
where hes going and no idea whether peril or open water lies ahead.
The Whited Sepulchre
The whited sepulchre is probably Brussels, where the Companys headquarters are located. A
sepulchre implies death and confinement, and indeed Europe is the origin of the colonial
enterprises that bring death to white men and to their colonial subjects; it is also governed by a set
of reified social principles that both enable cruelty, dehumanization, and evil and prohibit change.
The phrase whited sepulchre comes from the biblical Book of Matthew. In the passage, Matthew
describes whited sepulchres as something beautiful on the outside but containing horrors within
(the bodies of the dead); thus, the image is appropriate for Brussels, given the hypocritical Belgian
rhetoric about imperialisms civilizing mission. (Belgian colonies, particularly the Congo, were
notorious for the violence perpetuated against the natives.)
Women
Both Kurtzs Intended and his African mistress function as blank slates upon which the values and
the wealth of their respective societies can be displayed. Marlow frequently claims that women are
the keepers of nave illusions; although this sounds condemnatory, such a role is in fact crucial, as
these nave illusions are at the root of the social fictions that justify economic enterprise and
colonial expansion. In return, the women are the beneficiaries of much of the resulting wealth, and
they become objects upon which men can display their own success and status.

The River
The Congo River is the key to Africa for Europeans. It allows them access to the center of the
continent without having to physically cross it; in other words, it allows the white man to remain
always separate or outside. Africa is thus reduced to a series of two-dimensional scenes that flash
by Marlows steamer as he travels upriver. The river also seems to want to expel Europeans from
Africa altogether: its current makes travel upriver slow and difficult, but the flow of water makes
travel downriver, back toward civilization, rapid and seemingly inevitable. Marlows struggles with
the river as he travels upstream toward Kurtz reflect his struggles to understand the situation in
which he has found himself. The ease with which he journeys back downstream, on the other hand,
mirrors his acquiescence to Kurtz and his choice of nightmares.

LORD JIM

by Joseph Conrad
Summary

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 thePatna, 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, nonchronological 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.

Characters
Jim - Also known as "Lord Jim," or "Tuan Jim." The hero of our story, Jim is a young man who,
inspired by popular literature, goes to sea dreaming of becoming a hero. He gets his chance when
the ship he is aboard gets damaged, and fails utterly by abandoning ship with the rest of the crew.
Haunted by his failure and stripped of his officer's certificate, he wanders from job to job, finally
becoming the manager of a remote trading post. He falls in love with Jewel, a beautiful, half-native
girl, and, by defeating a local bandit, becomes leader of the people. His dreams of heroism lead to
his failure to kill a marauding white pirate, Gentleman Brown, which in turn leads to the death of
Dain Waris, his best friend and son of Doramin, the local chief. Jim allows Doramin to shoot him in
retribution.
Marlow - The narrator of this story and a ship's captain. Marlow first encounters Jim at the inquiry
where Jim loses his certification. Feeling that Jim is "one of us," he takes an interest in him, first
helping him find employment as a water clerk and as a trading post manager for Stein, then
compulsively piecing together Jim's story and perpetuating it through various retellings. It is Marlow
who filters and interprets most of the narrative for the reader.
Jewel - Daughter of the Dutch-Malay woman and stepdaughter of Cornelius. She and Jim fall in
love, and she makes him promise never to leave her. She is a pragmatic woman and encourages

Jim to fight to survive after Dain Waris's death. Marlow encounters her after Jim's death at Stein's,
where she, broken and saddened, reminds Marlow that her prediction of Jim's infidelity has come
true.
Stein - The owner of a large trading post, he sends first Cornelius and then Jim to Patusan. Stein
was forced to flee Europe as a young man after becoming involved in revolutionary activities.
Having made his way to the East Indies, he has become successful as a trader. A thoughtful,
analytical man who immediately "diagnoses" Jim for Marlow, he collects butterflies and beetles.
Gentleman Brown - A white pirate who, having barely escaped Spanish officials in the Philippines,
comes to Patusan hoping to steal some provisions. He is rather famous in this part of the world,
and is used as the stock bad guy whenever locals are telling stories. He is proud, terrified of
confinement. He and his men are attacked upon arrival in Patusan by Dain Waris and his band,
who have had advance warning of their coming. Although he had initially wanted to conquer and
loot Patusan, he realizes he is outnumbered and negotiates with Jim. In those negotiations, Brown
shows that he is aware that Jim has a dark past, thereby appealing to Jim's tortured sense of ideals
and receiving permission to retreat in safety. Brown has been conspiring with Cornelius and the
Rajah Allang, though, and on his way back to his ship, he surprises Dain Waris and his men at their
camp. Dain Waris is killed, which will lead to Jim's death. Brown and his men are shipwrecked soon
after. Brown is the only survivor, although he dies soon afterward. Marlow visits him on his
deathbed and gets part of the story from him. Brown is an important contrast to Jim, as a man who
lives a romantic life, but one that is far from moral or idealized. Unlike Jim, Brown is quick to own up
to his past and his fears.

Analysis
Lord Jim is remarkable for its elaborately woven scheme of narration, which is similar in many ways
to that of The Good Soldier, a novel written by Conrad's friend and collaborator Ford Madox Ford.
The narrative comes to the reader primarily through Marlow, a world-weary sea captain who
identifies deeply with Jim's fallibilities. Marlow has complete control over the story, though, and he
exercises his power in increasingly complicated ways. Time is broken up: in a single paragraph of
narration, Marlow will reference the past, the present, and the future. By manipulating the flow of
the narrative, Marlow is able to create juxtapositions and contrasts that highlight particular aspects
of the story. He is a master at withholding information: Jim's final fate becomes a matter for
discussion eight chapters before the reader learns what that fate actually is. This creates suspense,
of course, but it also allows Marlow to shape the reader's eventual reaction when he or she does
receive the relevant information. Marlow also offers the reader narrative blocks from a variety of
sources, of differing degrees of reliability. Much of the story has come from Jim, but significant
sections have come from other characters or have been pieced together by Marlow based on

inference. Information is conveyed by letters, midnight conversations, deathbed interviews,


forwarded manuscripts, and, most significantly, in the form of a tale told to an audience of listeners.
The narrative occasionally breaks to show Marlow telling Jim's story to a group of acquaintances at
a much later date. Temporally, this scene of storytelling takes place after Jim's arrival in Patusan but
before the arrival of Gentleman Brown and Jim's eventual defeat. Marlow must thus leave the story
unfinished for a time. He completes it by sending a manuscript to one member of his audience. This
shift from an oral mode of storytelling to a written form of narrative is significant. A storyteller has
the power to shape his material to match his audience's response; a writer, on the other hand, who
works in solitude, must offer his distant reader a predetermined message.
Marlow constantly ponders the "message"--the meaning of Jim's story. His language is dense with
terms like "inscrutable" and "inexplicable," words that denote imprecision and indecipherability, but
which also possess a certain quality of uncertainty in themselves, as words. He struggles to name
things, and is often reduced to wondering if there even is a meaning to Jim's story and his
fascination with it. Sometimes he concludes that the meaning is an "enigma"; sometimes he
decides there is no meaning to be found at all. Words are constantly being contested in this novel;
at least three major episodes center around the misinterpretation of a single spoken word. This
uncertainty about language is the key feature of Conrad's style. Conrad is the master of a high,
elegiac language that seems to contain depths of profundity nearly inexpressible in words. As one
who did not learn English until he was in his twenties, he must certainly have been aware of each
and every word he used, and each must have been carefully chosen. His language is often
deliberately difficult, and in that quality his prose shares some of the features of modernism. But his
diction also matches, in its linguistic difficulty, the thematic and interpretive difficulty of his material.
This synthesis between form and content is powerful, making Conrad's prose a thing of tortured
beauty.
Even more tortured is the analysis of idealism and heroism that lies at the center ofLord Jim. Jim is
a young man who enters the world motivated primarily by fantasies of daring and noble deeds lifted
from cheap novels. His ideals break down, however, in the face of real danger; they are, in fact,
untenable when applied to any form of reality. This nave idealism seems absurd when it leads to
Jim's refusal to forget the Patna incident, but it leads to real tragedy when he allows it to guide his
conduct when Patusan is threatened. What is honorable behavior in this world? Captain Brierly,
who is presented as the prime example of success both professionally and in terms of character,
can't live with himself and commits suicide. Gentleman Brown, one of the most self-possessed and
self-scrutinizing of men, is nothing but a petty bandit. All these men are connected by being what
Marlow calls "one of us," but what does that term mean? Ideals are a troublesome burden, and

each character reveals to some degree a fear that he will be confronted with a situation in which he
must choose between ideals of conduct and a happy outcome.
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.

JAMES JOYCE

ULYSSES
Context

James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland, into a Catholic middle-class family
that would soon become poverty-stricken. Joyce went to Jesuit schools, followed by University
College, Dublin, where he began publishing essays. After graduating in 1902, Joyce went to Paris
with the intention of attending medical school. Soon afterward, however, he abandoned medical
studies and devoted all of his time to writing poetry, stories, and theories of aesthetics. Joyce
returned to Dublin the following year when his mother died. He stayed in Dublin for another year,
during which time he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle. At this time, Joyce also began work on an
autobiographical novel called Stephen Hero. Joyce eventually gave up on Stephen Hero, but
reworked much of the material into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which features the same
autobiographical protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, and tells the story of Joyces youth up to his 1902
departure for Paris.
Nora and Joyce left Dublin again in 1904, this time for good. They spent most of the next eleven
years living in Rome and Trieste, Italy, where Joyce taught English and he and Nora had two
children, Giorgio and Lucia. In 1907 Joyces first book of poems, Chamber Music, was published in
London. He published his book of short stories, Dubliners, in 1914, the same year he published A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in serial installments in the London journal The Egoist.
Joyce began writing Ulysses in 1914, and when World War I broke out he moved his family to
Zurich, Switzerland, where he continued work on the novel. In Zurich, Joyces fortunes finally

improved as his talent attracted several wealthy patrons, including Harriet Shaw
Weaver. Portrait was published in book form in 1916, and Joyces play, Exiles, in 1918. Also in
1918, the first episodes of Ulysses were published in serial form in The Little Review. In 1919, the
Joyces moved to Paris, where Ulysses was published in book form in 1922. In 1923, with his
eyesight quickly diminishing, Joyce began working on what became Finnegans Wake, published in
1939. Joyce died in 1941.
Joyce first conceived of Ulysses as a short story to be included in Dubliners, but decided instead to
publish it as a long novel, situated as a sort of sequel to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man. Ulysses picks up Stephen Dedaluss life more than a year after where Portrait leaves off. The
novel introduces two new main characters, Leopold and Molly Bloom, and takes place on a single
day, June 16, 1904, in Dublin.
Ulysses strives to achieve a kind of realism unlike that of any novel before it by rendering the
thoughts and actions of its main characters both trivial and significantin a scattered and
fragmented form similar to the way thoughts, perceptions, and memories actually appear in our
minds. In Dubliners, Joyce had tried to give his stories a heightened sense of realism by
incorporating real people and places into them, and he pursues the same strategy on a massive
scale inUlysses. At the same time that Ulysses presents itself as a realistic novel, it also works on a
mythic level, by way of a series of parallels with Homers Odyssey.Stephen, Bloom, and Molly
correspond respectively to Telemachus, Ulysses, and Penelope, and each of the eighteen episodes
of the novel corresponds to an adventure from the Odyssey.
Ulysses has become particularly famous for Joyces stylistic innovations. In Portrait,Joyce first
attempted the technique of interior monologue, or stream-of-consciousness. He also experimented
with shifting stylethe narrative voice ofPortrait changes stylistically as Stephen matures.
In Ulysses, Joyce uses interior monologue extensively, and instead of employing one narrative
voice, Joyce radically shifts narrative style with each new episode of the novel.
Joyces early work reveals the stylistic influence of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Joyce
began reading Ibsen as a young man; his first publication was an article about a play of Ibsens,
which earned him a letter of appreciation from Ibsen himself. Ibsens plays provided the young
Joyce with a model of the realistic depiction of individuals stifled by conventional moral values.
Joyce imitated Ibsens naturalistic brand of realism in Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, and especially in his play Exiles. Ulysses maintains Joyces concern with realism but also
introduces stylistic innovations similar to those of his Mo-dernist contemporaries.Ulyssess

multivoiced narration, textual self-consciousness, mythic framework, and thematic focus on life in a
modern metropolis situate it close to other main texts of the Modernist movement, such as T. S.
Eliots mythic poem The Waste Land (also published in 1922) or Virginia Woolfs stream-ofconsciousness novel, Mrs. Dalloway (1925).
Though never working in collaboration, Joyce maintained correspondences with other Modernist
writers, including Samuel Beckett, and Ezra Pound, who helped find him a patron and an income.
Joyces final work, Finnegans Wake, is often seen as bridging the gap between Modernism and
postmodernism. A novel only in the loosest sense, Finnegans Wake looks forward to postmodern
texts in its playful celebration (rather than lamentation) of the fragmentation of experience and the
decentered nature of identity, as well as its attention to the nontransparent qualities of language.
Like Eliot and many other Modernist writers, Joyce wrote in self-imposed exile in cosmopolitan
Europe. In spite of this fact, all of his work is strongly tied to Irish political and cultural history,
and Ulysses must also be seen in an Irish context. Joyces novel was written during the years of the
Irish bid for independence from Britain. After a bloody civil war, the Irish Free State was officially
formedduring the same year that Ulysses was published. Even in 1904, Ireland had experienced
the failure of several home rule bills that would have granted the island a measure of political
independence within Great Britain. The failure of these bills is linked to the downfall of the Irish
member of Parliament, Charles Stewart Parnell, who was once referred to as Irelands Uncrowned
King, and was publicly persecuted by the Irish church and people in 1889 for conducting a longterm affair with a married woman, Kitty OShea. Joyce saw this persecution as an hypocritical
betrayal by the Irish that ruined Irelands chances for a peaceful independence.
Accordingly, Ulysses depicts the Irish citizens of 1904, especially Stephen Dedalus, as involved in
tangled conceptions of their own Irishness, and complex relationships with various authorities and
institutions specific to their time and place: the British empire, Irish nationalism, the Roman Catholic
church, and the Irish Literary Revival.

Plot Overview
Stephen Dedalus spends the early morning hours of June 16, 1904, remaining aloof from his
mocking friend, Buck Mulligan, and Bucks English acquaintance, Haines. As Stephen leaves for
work, Buck orders him to leave the house key and meet them at the pub at 1 2 : 3 0 . Stephen
resents Buck.

Around 10:00 A . M . , Stephen teaches a history lesson to his class at Garrett Deasys boys school.
After class, Stephen meets with Deasy to receive his wages. The narrow-minded and prejudiced
Deasy lectures Stephen on life. Stephen agrees to take Deasys editorial letter about cattle disease
to acquaintances at the newspaper.
Stephen spends the remainder of his morning walking alone on Sandymount Strand, thinking
critically about his younger self and about perception. He composes a poem in his head and writes
it down on a scrap torn from Deasys letter.
At 8:00 A . M . the same morning, Leopold Bloom fixes breakfast and brings his wife her mail and
breakfast in bed. One of her letters is from Mollys concert tour manager, Blazes Boylan (Bloom
suspects he is also Mollys lover)Boylan will visit at 4:00 this afternoon. Bloom returns downstairs,
reads a letter from their daughter, Milly, then goes to the outhouse.
At 10:00 A . M . , Bloom picks up an amorous letter from the post officehe is corresponding with a
woman named Martha Clifford under the pseudonym Henry Flower. He reads the tepid letter, ducks
briefly into a church, then orders Mollys lotion from the pharmacist. He runs into Bantam Lyons,
who mistakenly gets the impression that Bloom is giving him a tip on the horse Throwaway in the
afternoons Gold Cup race.
Around 11:00 A . M . , Bloom rides with Simon Dedalus (Stephens father), Martin Cunningham, and
Jack Power to the funeral of Paddy Dignam. The men treat Bloom as somewhat of an outsider. At
the funeral, Bloom thinks about the deaths of his son and his father.
At noon, we find Bloom at the offices of the Freeman newspaper, negotiating an advertisement for
Keyes, a liquor merchant. Several idle men, including editor Myles Crawford, are hanging around in
the office, discussing political speeches. Bloom leaves to secure the ad. Stephen arrives at the
newspaper with Deasys letter. Stephen and the other men leave for the pub just as Bloom is
returning. Blooms ad negotiation is rejected by Crawford on his way out.
At 1:00 P.M . , Bloom runs into Josie Breen, an old flame, and they discuss Mina Purefoy, who is in
labor at the maternity hospital. Bloom stops in Burtons restaurant, but he decides to move on to
Davy Byrnes for a light lunch. Bloom reminisces about an intimate afternoon with Molly on Howth.
Bloom leaves and is walking toward the National Library when he spots Boylan on the street and
ducks into the National Museum.

At 2:00 P.M . , Stephen is informally presenting his Hamlet theory in the National Library to the
poet A.E. and the librarians John Eglinton, Best, and Lyster. A.E. is dismissive of Stephens theory
and leaves. Buck enters and jokingly scolds Stephen for failing to meet him and Haines at the pub.
On the way out, Buck and Stephen pass Bloom, who has come to obtain a copy of Keyes ad.
At 4:00 P.M . , Simon Dedalus, Ben Dollard, Lenehan, and Blazes Boylan converge at the Ormond
Hotel bar. Bloom notices Boylans car outside and decides to watch him. Boylan soon leaves for his
appointment with Molly, and Bloom sits morosely in the Ormond restauranthe is briefly mollified
by Dedaluss and Dollards singing. Bloom writes back to Martha, then leaves to post the letter.
At 5:00 P.M . , Bloom arrives at Barney Kiernans pub to meet Martin Cunningham about the
Dignam family finances, but Cunningham has not yet arrived. The citizen, a belligerent Irish
nationalist, becomes increasingly drunk and begins attacking Blooms Jewishness. Bloom stands
up to the citizen, speaking in favor of peace and love over xenophobic violence. Bloom and the
citizen have an altercation on the street before Cunninghams carriage carries Bloom away.
Bloom relaxes on Sandymount Strand around sunset, after his visit to Mrs. Dignams house nearby.
A young woman, Gerty MacDowell, notices Bloom watching her from across the beach. Gerty
subtly reveals more and more of her legs while Bloom surreptitiously masturbates. Gerty leaves,
and Bloom dozes.
At 10:00 P.M . , Bloom wanders to the maternity hospital to check on Mina Purefoy. Also at the
hospital are Stephen and several of his medi-c-al student friends, drinking and talking boisterously
about subjects related to birth. Bloom agrees to join them, though he privately disapproves of their
revelry in light of Mrs. Purefoys struggles upstairs. Buck arrives, and the men proceed to Burkes
pub. At closing time, Stephen convinces his friend Lynch to go to the brothel section of town and
Bloom follows, feeling protective.
Bloom finally locates Stephen and Lynch at Bella Cohens brothel. Stephen is drunk and imagines
that he sees the ghost of his motherfull of rage, he shatters a lamp with his walking stick. Bloom
runs after Stephen and finds him in an argument with a British soldier who knocks him out.
Bloom revives Stephen and takes him for coffee at a cabmans shelter to sober up. Bloom invites
Stephen back to his house.
Well after midnight, Stephen and Bloom arrive back at Blooms house. They drink cocoa and talk
about their respective backgrounds. Bloom asks Stephen to stay the night. Stephen politely

refuses. Bloom sees him out and comes back in to find evidence of Boylans visit. Still, Bloom is at
peace with the world and he climbs into bed, tells Molly of his day and requests breakfast in bed.
After Bloom falls asleep, Molly remains awake, surprised by Blooms request for breakfast in bed.
Her mind wanders to her childhood in Gibraltar, her afternoon of sex with Boylan, her singing
career, Stephen Dedalus. Her thoughts of Bloom vary wildly over the course of the monologue, but
it ends with a reminiscence of their intimate moment at Howth and a positive affirmation.

Analysis of Major Characters


Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom functions as a sort of Everymana bourgeois Odysseus for the twentieth century.
At the same time, the novels depiction of his personality is one of the most detailed in all literature.
Bloom is a thirty-eight-year-old advertising canvasser. His father was a Hungarian Jew, and Joyce
exploits the irony of this factthat Dublins latter-day Odysseus is really a Jew with Hungarian
originsto such an extent that readers often forget Blooms Irish mother and multiple baptisms.
Blooms status as an outsider, combined with his own ability to envision an inclusive state, make
him a figure who both suffers from and exposes the insularity of Ireland and Irishness in 1904. Yet
the social exclusion of Bloom is not simply one-sided. Bloom is clear-sighted and mostly
unsentimental when it comes to his male peers. He does not like to drink often or to gossip, and
though he is always friendly, he is not sorry to be excluded from their circles.
When Bloom first appears in Episode Four of Ulysses, his character is noteworthy for its differences
from Stephens character, on which the first three episodes focus. Stephens cerebrality makes
Blooms comfort with the physical world seem more remarkable. This ease accords with his
practical mind and scientific curiosity. Whereas Stephen, in Episode Three, shuts himself off from
the mat-erial world to ponder the workings of his own perception, Bloom appears in the beginning of
Episode Four bending down to his cat, wondering how her senses work. Blooms comfort with the
physical also manifests itself in his sexuality, a dimension mostly absent from Stephens character.
We get ample evidence of Blooms sexualityfrom his penchant for voyeurism and female
underclothing to his masturbation and erotic correspondencewhile Stephen seems inexperienced
and celibate.
Other disparities between the two men further define Blooms character: where Stephen is
depressive and somewhat dramatic, Bloom is mature and even-headed. Bloom possesses the
ability to cheer himself up and to pragmatically refuse to think about depressing topics. Yet Bloom
and Stephen are similar, too. They are both unrealized artists, if with completely different agendas.

As one Dubliner puts it, Theres a touch of the artist about old Bloom. We might say that Blooms
conception of art is bourgeois, in the sense that he considers art as a way to effect peoples actions
and feelings in an immediate way. From his desire to create a newer, better advertisement, to his
love poem to Molly, to his reading of Shakespeare for its moral value, Blooms version of art does
not stray far from real-life situations. Blooms sense of culture and his aspiration to be cultured
also seem to bring him close to Stephen. The two men share a love for music, and Stephens
companionship is attractive to Bloom, who would love to be an expert, rather than a dabbler, in
various subjects.
Two emotional crises plague Blooms otherwise cheerful demeanor throughoutUlyssesthe
breakdown of his male family line and the infidelity of his wife, Molly. The untimely deaths of both
Blooms father (by suicide) and only son, Rudy (days after his birth), lead Bloom to feel cosmically
lonely and powerless. Bloom is allowed a brief respite from these emotions during his union with
Stephen in the latter part of the novel. We slowly realize over the course of Ulysses that the first
crisis of family line is related to the second crisis of marital infidelity: the Blooms intimacy and
attempts at procreation have broken down since the death of their only son eleven years ago.
Blooms reaction to Mollys decision to look elsewhere (to Blazes Boylan) for sex is complex. Bloom
enjoys the fact that other men appreciate his wife, and he is generally a passive, accepting person.
Bloom is clear-sighted enough to realize, though, that Blazes Boylan is a paltry replacement for
himself, and he ultimately cheers himself by recontextualizing the problem. Boylan is only one of
many, and it is on Molly that Bloom should concentrate his own energies.
In fact, it is this ability to shift perspective by sympathizing with another viewpoint that renders
Bloom heroic. His compassion is evident throughouthe is charitable to animals and people in
need, his sympathies extend even to a woman in labor. Blooms masculinity is frequently called into
question by other characters; hence, the second irony of Ulysses is that Bloom as Everyman is also
somewhat feminine. And it is precisely his fluid, androgynous capacity to empathize with people
and things of all typesand to be both a symbolic father and a mother to Stephenthat makes him
the hero of the novel.
Molly Bloom
Over the course of the novel, we get a very clear picture of Bloom and Stephen because we
witness their interactions with many different people and see what they are thinking throughout all
of these interactions. For most of the novel we only see Molly Bloom through other peoples eyes,
so it may be tempting to dismiss her as a self-centered, unfaithful woman. The way we decide to
view her will require us to reevaluate the understanding we have thus far formed of Leopold Bloom.

If we focus on the vulgarity and physicality of her monologue, our built-up sympathies with Bloom
as the well-meaning husband of a loose woman are ratified. But a more nuanced understanding of
her involves seeing her as an outgoing woman who takes a certain pride in her husband, but who
has been feeling a lack of demonstrative love. This idea yields a reevaluation of Bloom as being
unfaithful in his own ways and complicit in the temporary breakdown of their marriage.
Like Bloom, Molly is a Dublin outsider. She was raised in the military atmosphere of Gibraltar by her
father, Major Brian Tweedy. Molly never knew her mother, who was possibly Jewish, or just Jewishlo-oking. Bloom associates Molly with the hot-blooded Mediterranean regions, and, to a lesser
degree, the exoticism of the East. Yet Molly considers her own childhood to have been normal,
outside the dramatic entrances and exits of young, good-looking soldiers going off to war. Molly
seems to organize her life around men and to have very few female friends. She enjoys being
looked at and gains self-esteem from the admiration of men. Molly is extremely self-aware and
perceptiveshe knows without looking when she is being looked at. A mans admiration of her
does not cloud her own negative judgments about him. She is frank about topics that other people
are likely to sentimentalizeintimacy, mourning, and motherhood, for example. She is also frank
about the extent to which living involves adaptations of different roles. Her sense of this truth
which is perhaps related to her own career as a stage singeraligns her with Stephen, who is also
conscious of his outward existence in terms of a series of roles. Molly and Stephen both share a
capacity for storytelling, scene-setting, and mimicry. Mollys storytelling and frankness about roleplaying evinces her sense of humor, and it also mediates our sense of her as a hypocritical
character. Finally, it is this pragmatic and fluid adoption of roles that enables Molly to reconnect with
Bloom through vivid recollections, and, indeed, reenactments, of the past, as in her final memory of
the Howth scene at the end of Ulysses.
Stephen Dedalus
The character of Stephen Dedalus is a harshly drawn version of Joyce himself at age twenty-two.
Stephen first appeared as the main character of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which
followed his development from early childhood to his proud and ambitious days before leaving
Dublin for Paris and the realization of his artistic capabilities. When we meet Stephen again at the
beginning of Ulysses, it is over two years after the end of Portrait. Stephen has been back in Dublin
for over a year, having returned to sit at his mothers deathbed. Stephens artistic talent is still
unrealizedhe is currently a reluctant teacher of history at a boys school. He is disappointed and
moody and is still dressed in mourning over the death of his mother almost a year ago. Stephens
interactions with various charactersBuck, Haines, Mr. Deasyin the opening episodes of the

book crystallize our sense of the damaging ties and obligations that have resulted from Stephens
return to Ireland. At the beginning of Ulysses, Stephen is a self-conscious young man whose
identity is still in formation. Stephens aloofness and his attempts to understand himself through
fictional characters such as Hamlet dramatize his struggle to solidify this identity.
Stephen is depicted as above most of the action of the novel. He exists mainly within his own world
of ideashis actions in the world tend to pointedly distance himself from others and from the world
itself. His freeness with money is less a demonstration of his generosity than of his lack of material
concerns. His unwashed state similarly reflects his removal from the material world. His cryptic
stories and riddles cut o-thers off rather than include them. He stubbornly holds grudges, and our
admiration of his noble struggle for independence is tempered by our knowledge of the
impoverished siblings he has left behind. If Stephen himself is an unsympathetic character,
however, the issues central to his identity struggle are easier for us to sympathize with. From his
contemplation of the eyes perception of the outside world to his teaching of a history lesson to his
meditations on amor matris or mother love, Stephens mental meanderings center on the problem
of whether, and how, to be an active or passive being within the world.
Stephens struggles tend to center around his parents. His mother, who seems to blame Stephen
for refusing to pray at her deathbed, represents not only a mothers love but also the church and
Ireland. Stephen is haunted by his mothers memory and ghost in the same ways that he is haunted
by memories of his early piety. Though Stephens father is still alive and well, we see Stephen
attempting to ignore or deny him throughout all of Ulysses. Stephens struggle with his father seems
to be about Stephens need to have a space in which to createa space untainted by Simon
Dedaluss overly critical judgments. Stephens struggle to define his identity without the constraint
or aid imposed by his father bleeds into larger conflictsStephens struggle with the authority of
God, the authority of the British empire, even with the authority of the mocker or joker.
After the first three episodes, Stephens appearances in Ulysses are limited. However, these limited
appearancesin Episodes Nine, Fourteen, and Fifteendemonstrate that Stephens attempted
repudiation of authority and obligations has precipitated what seems to him to be the abandonment
of all those close to him. At the end of Episode Fifteen, Stephen lies nearly unconscious on the
ground, feeling as though he has been betrayed by everyone. Never before has Stephen seemed
so much in need of a parent, and it is Bloomnot wholly father nor motherwho cares for him.
Though Stephen plays a part in the final episodes of Ulysses, we see less and less of his thoughts
as the novel progresses (and, perhaps not coincidentally, Stephen becomes drunker and drunker).

Instead, the circumstances of the novel and the apparent choices that Stephen makes take over
our sense of his character. By the novels end, we see that Stephen recognizes a break with Buck
Mulligan, will quit his job at Deasys school, and has accepted, if only temporarily, Blooms
hospitality. In Blooms kitchen, Stephen puts something in his mouth besides alcohol for the first
time since Episode One, and has a conversation with Bloom, as opposed to performing as he did
earlier in the day. We are thus encouraged to understand that, in the calm of the late-night hours,
Stephen has recognized the power of a reciprocal relationship to provide sustenance.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Quest for Paternity
At its most basic level, Ulysses is a book about Stephens search for a symbolic father and Blooms
search for a son. In this respect, the plot of Ulysses parallels Telemachuss search for Odysseus,
and vice versa, in The Odyssey. Blooms search for a son stems at least in part from his need to
reinforce his identity and heritage through progeny. Stephen already has a biological father, Simon
Dedalus, but considers him a father only in flesh. Stephen feels that his own ability to mature and
become a father himself (of art or children) is restricted by Simons criticism and lack of
understanding. Thus Stephens search involves finding a symbolic father who will, in turn, allow
Stephen himself to be a father. Both men, in truth, are searching for paternity as a way to reinforce
their own identities.
Stephen is more conscious of his quest for paternity than Bloom, and he mentally recurs to several
important motifs with which to understand paternity. Stephens thinking about the Holy Trinity
involves, on the one hand, Church doctrines that uphold the unity of the Father and the Son and, on
the other hand, the writings of heretics that challenge this doctrine by arguing that God created the
rest of the Trinity, concluding that each subsequent creation is inherently different. Stephens
second motif involves his Hamlet theory, which seeks to prove that Shakespeare represented
himself through the ghost-father in Hamlet, but alsothrough his translation of his life into art
became the father of his own father, of his life, and of all his race. The Holy Trinity and Hamlet
motifs reinforce our sense of Stephens and Blooms parallel quests for paternity. These quests
seem to end in Blooms kitchen, with Bloom recognizing the future in Stephen and Stephen
recognizing the past in Bloom. Though united as father and son in this moment, the men will soon
part ways, and their paternity quests will undoubtedly continue, for Ulyssesdemonstrates that the
quest for paternity is a search for a lasting manifestation of self.

The Remorse of Conscience


The phrase agenbite of inwit, a religious term meaning remorse of conscience, comes to
Stephens mind again and again in Ulysses. Stephen associates the phrase with his guilt over his
mothers deathhe suspects that he may have killed her by refusing to kneel and pray at her
sickbed when she asked. The theme of remorse runs through Ulysses to address the feelings
associated with modern breaks with family and tradition. Bloom, too, has guilty feelings about his
father because he no longer observes certain traditions his father observed, such as keeping
kosher. Episode Fifteen, Circe, dramatizes this remorse as Blooms Sins of the Past rise up and
confront him one by one. Ulysses juxtaposes characters who experience remorse with characters
who do not, such as Buck Mulligan, who shamelessly refers to Stephens mother as beastly dead,
and Simon Dedalus, who mourns his late wife but does not regret his treatment of her. Though
remorse of conscience can have a repressive, paralyzing effect, as in Stephens case, it is also
vaguely positive. A self-conscious awareness of the past, even the sins of the past, helps constitute
an individual as an ethical being in the present.
Compassion as Heroic
In nearly all senses, the notion of Leopold Bloom as an epic hero is laughablehis job, talents,
family relations, public relations, and private actions all suggest his utter ordinariness. It is only
Blooms extraordinary capacity for sympathy and compassion that allows him an unironic heroism
in the course of the novel. Blooms fluid ability to empathize with such a wide variety of beings
cats, birds, dogs, dead men, vicious men, blind men, old ladies, a woman in labor, the poor, and so
onis the modern-day equivalent to Odysseuss capacity to adapt to a wide variety of challenges.
Blooms compassion often dictates the course of his day and the novel, as when he stops at the
river Liffey to feed the gulls or at the hospital to check on Mrs. Purefoy. There is a network of
symbols in Ulysses that present Bloom as Irelands savior, and his message is, at a basic level, to
love. He is juxtaposed with Stephen, who would also be Irelands savior but is lacking in
compassion. Bloom returns home, faces evidence of his cuckold status, and slays his competition
not with arrows, but with a refocused perspective that is available only through his fluid capacity
for empathy.
Parallax, or the Need for Multiple Perspectives
Parallax is an astronomical term that Bloom encounters in his reading and that arises repeatedly
through the course of the novel. It refers to the difference of position of one object when seen from
two different vantage points. These differing viewpoints can be collated to better approximate the

position of the object. As a novel, Ulysses uses a similar tactic. Three main charactersStephen,
Bloom, and Mollyand a subset of narrative techniques that affect our perception of events and
characters combine to demonstrate the fallibility of one single perspective. Our understanding of
particular characters and events must be continually revised as we consider further perspectives.
The most obvious example is Mollys past love life. Though we can construct a judgment of Molly
as a loose woman from the testimonies of various characters in the novelBloom, Lenehan, Dixon,
and so onthis judgment must be revised with the integration of Mollys own final testimony.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
texts major themes.
Lightness and Darkness
The traditional associations of light with good and dark with bad are upended inUlysses, in which
the two protagonists are dressed in mourning black, and the more menacing characters are
associated with light and brightness. This reversal arises in part as a reaction to Mr. Deasys antiSemitic judgment that Jews have sinned against the light. Deasy himself is associated with the
brightness of coins, representing wealth without spirituality. Blazes Boylan, Blooms nemesis, is
associated with brightness through his name and his flashy behavior, again suggesting surface
without substance. Blooms and Stephens dark colors suggest a variety of associations:
Jewishness, anarchy, outsider/wanderer status. Furthermore, Throwaway, the dark horse, wins
the Gold Cup Horserace.
The Home Usurped
While Odysseus is away from Ithaca in The Odyssey, his household is usurped by would-be suitors
of his wife, Penelope. This motif translates directly to Ulysses and provides a connection between
Stephen and Bloom. Stephen pays the rent for the Martello tower, where he, Buck, and Haines are
staying. Bucks demand of the house key is thus a usurpation of Stephens household rights, and
Stephen recognizes this and refuses to return to the tower. Stephen mentally dramatizes this
usurpation as a replay of Claudiuss usurpation of Gertrude and the throne inHamlet. Meanwhile,
Blooms home has been usurped by Blazes Boylan, who comes and goes at will and has sex with
Molly in Blooms absence. Stephens and Blooms lack of house keys
throughout Ulysses symbolizes these usurpations.

The East
The motif of the East appears mainly in Blooms thoughts. For Bloom, the East is a place of
exoticism, representing the promise of a paradisiacal existence. Blooms hazy conception of this
faraway land arises from a network of connections: the planters companies (such as Agendeth
Netaim), which suggest newly fertile and potentially profitable homes; Zionist movements for a
homeland; Molly and her childhood in Gibraltar; narcotics; and erotics. For Bloom and the reader,
the East becomes the imaginative space where hopes can be realized. The only place where Molly,
Stephen, and Bloom all meet is in their parallel dreams of each other the night before, dreams that
seem to be set in an Eastern locale.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Plumtrees Potted Meat
In Episode Five, Bloom reads an ad in his newspaper: What is home without / Plumtrees Potted
Meat? / Incomplete. / With it an abode of bliss. Blooms conscious reaction is his belief that the ad
is poorly placeddirectly below the obituaries, suggesting an infelicitous relation between dead
bodies and potted meat. On a subconscious level, however, the figure of Plumtrees Potted Meat
comes to stand for Blooms anxieties about Boylans usurpation of his wife and home. The image of
meat inside a pot crudely suggests the sexual relation between Boylan and Molly. The wording of
the ad further suggests, less concretely, Blooms masculine anxietieshe worries that he is not the
head of an abode of bliss but rather a servant in a home incomplete. The connection between
Plumtrees meat and Blooms anxieties about Mollys unhappiness and infidelity is driven home
when Bloom finds crumbs of the potted meat that Boylan and Molly shared earlier in his own bed.
The Gold Cup Horserace
The afternoons Gold Cup Horserace and the bets placed on it provide much of the public drama
in Ulysses, though it happens offstage. In Episode Five, Bantam Lyons mistakenly thinks that
Bloom has tipped him off to the horse Throwaway, the dark horse with a long-shot chance.
Throwaway does end up winning the race, notably ousting Sceptre, the horse with the phallic
name, on which Lenehan and Boylan have bet. This underdog victory represents Blooms eventual
unshowy triumph over Boylan, to win the Gold Cup of Mollys heart.

Stephens Latin Quarter Hat


Stephen deliberately conceives of his Latin Quarter hat as a symbol. The Latin Quarter is a student
district in Paris, and Stephen hopes to suggest his exiled, anti-establishment status while back in
Ireland. He also refers to the hat as his Hamlet hat, tipping us off to the intentional brooding and
artistic connotations of the head gear. Yet Stephen cannot always control his own hat as a symbol,
especially in the eyes of others. Through the eyes of others, it comes to signify Stephens mock
priest-liness and provinciality.
Blooms Potato Talisman
In Episode Fifteen, Blooms potato functions like Odysseuss use of moly in Circes denit serves
to protect him from enchantment, enchantments to which Bloom succumbs when he briefly gives it
over to Zoe Higgins. The potato, old and shriveled now, is an heirloom from Blooms mother, Ellen.
As an organic product that is both fruit and root but is now shriveled, it gestures toward Blooms
anxieties about fertility and his family line. Most important, however, is the potatos connection to
IrelandBlooms potato talisman stands for his frequently overlooked maternal Irish heritage.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

PYGMALION

Context
Born in Dublin in 1856 to a middle-class Protestant family bearing pretensions to nobility (Shaw's
embarrassing alcoholic father claimed to be descended from Macduff, the slayer of Macbeth),
George Bernard Shaw grew to become what some consider the second greatest English
playwright, behind only Shakespeare. Others most certainly disagree with such an assessment, but
few question Shaw's immense talent or the play's that talent produced. Shaw died at the age of 94,
a hypochondriac, socialist, anti-vaccinationist, semi-feminist vegetarian who believed in the Life
Force and only wore wool. He left behind him a truly massive corpus of work including about 60
plays, 5 novels, 3 volumes of music criticism, 4 volumes of dance and theatrical criticism, and
heaps of social commentary, political theory, and voluminous correspondence. And this list does not
include the opinions that Shaw could always be counted on to hold about any topic, and which this
flamboyant public figure was always most willing to share. Shaw's most lasting contribution is no
doubt his plays, and it has been said that "a day never passes without a performance of some
Shaw play being given somewhere in the world." One of Shaw's greatest contributions as a modern

dramatist is in establishing drama as serious literature, negotiating publication deals for his highly
popular plays so as to convince the public that the play was no less important than the novel. In that
way, he created the conditions for later playwrights to write seriously for the theater.
Of all of Shaw's plays, Pygmalion is without the doubt the most beloved and popularly received, if
not the most significant in literary terms. Several film versions have been made of the play, and it
has even been adapted into a musical. In fact, writing the screenplay for the film version of 1938
helped Shaw to become the first and only man ever to win the much coveted Double: the Nobel
Prize for literature and an Academy Award. Shaw wrote the part of Eliza in Pygmalion for the
famous actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, with whom Shaw was having a prominent affair at the time
that had set all of London abuzz. The aborted romance between Professor Higgins and Eliza
Doolittle reflects Shaw's own love life, which was always peppered with enamored and beautiful
women, with whom he flirted outrageously but with whom he almost never had any further relations.
For example, he had a long marriage to Charlotte Payne-Townsend in which it is well known that he
never touched her once. The fact that Shaw was quietly a member of the British Society for the
Study of Sex Psychology, an organization whose core members were young men agitating for
homosexual liberation, might or might not inform the way that Higgins would rather focus his
passions on literature or science than on women. That Higgins was a representation of Pygmalion,
the character from the famous story of Ovid's Metamorphoses who is the very embodiment of male
love for the female form, makes Higgins sexual disinterest all the more compelling. Shaw is too
consummate a performer and too smooth in his self- presentation for us to neatly dissect his sexual
background; these lean biographical facts, however, do support the belief that Shaw would have an
interest in exploding the typical structures of standard fairy tales.

Summary
Two old gentlemen meet in the rain one night at Covent Garden. Professor Higgins is a scientist of
phonetics, and Colonel Pickering is a linguist of Indian dialects. The first bets the other that he can,
with his knowledge of phonetics, convince high London society that, in a matter of months, he will
be able to transform the cockney speaking Covent Garden flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a woman
as poised and well-spoken as a duchess. The next morning, the girl appears at his laboratory on
Wimpole Street to ask for speech lessons, offering to pay a shilling, so that she may speak properly
enough to work in a flower shop. Higgins makes merciless fun of her, but is seduced by the idea of
working his magic on her. Pickering goads him on by agreeing to cover the costs of the experiment
if Higgins can pass Eliza off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. The challenge is taken,
and Higgins starts by having his housekeeper bathe Eliza and give her new clothes. Then Eliza's

father Alfred Doolittle comes to demand the return of his daughter, though his real intention is to hit
Higgins up for some money. The professor, amused by Doolittle's unusual rhetoric, gives him five
pounds. On his way out, the dustman fails to recognize the now clean, pretty flower girl as his
daughter.
For a number of months, Higgins trains Eliza to speak properly. Two trials for Eliza follow. The first
occurs at Higgins' mother's home, where Eliza is introduced to the Eynsford Hills, a trio of mother,
daughter, and son. The son Freddy is very attracted to her, and further taken with what he thinks is
her affected "small talk" when she slips into cockney. Mrs. Higgins worries that the experiment will
lead to problems once it is ended, but Higgins and Pickering are too absorbed in their game to take
heed. A second trial, which takes place some months later at an ambassador's party (and which is
not actually staged), is a resounding success. The wager is definitely won, but Higgins and
Pickering are now bored with the project, which causes Eliza to be hurt. She throws Higgins'
slippers at him in a rage because she does not know what is to become of her, thereby bewildering
him. He suggests she marry somebody. She returns him the hired jewelry, and he accuses her of
ingratitude.
The following morning, Higgins rushes to his mother, in a panic because Eliza has run away. On his
tail is Eliza's father, now unhappily rich from the trust of a deceased millionaire who took to heart
Higgins' recommendation that Doolittle was England's "most original moralist." Mrs. Higgins, who
has been hiding Eliza upstairs all along, chides the two of them for playing with the girl's affections.
When she enters, Eliza thanks Pickering for always treating her like a lady, but threatens Higgins
that she will go work with his rival phonetician, Nepommuck. The outraged Higgins cannot help but
start to admire her. As Eliza leaves for her father's wedding, Higgins shouts out a few errands for
her to run, assuming that she will return to him at Wimpole Street. Eliza, who has a lovelorn
sweetheart in Freddy, and the wherewithal to pass as a duchess, never makes it clear whether she
will or not.

Characters
Professor Henry Higgins - Henry Higgins is a professor of phonetics who plays Pygmalion to
Eliza Doolittle's Galatea. He is the author of Higgins' Universal Alphabet, believes in concepts like
visible speech, and uses all manner of recording and photographic material to document his
phonetic subjects, reducing people and their dialects into what he sees as readily understandable
units. He is an unconventional man, who goes in the opposite direction from the rest of society in
most matters. Indeed, he is impatient with high society, forgetful in his public graces, and poorly

considerate of normal social niceties--the only reason the world has not turned against him is
because he is at heart a good and harmless man. His biggest fault is that he can be a bully.
Eliza Doolittle - "She is not at all a romantic figure." So is she introduced in Act I. Everything
about Eliza Doolittle seems to defy any conventional notions we might have about the romantic
heroine. When she is transformed from a sassy, smart-mouthed kerbstone flower girl with
deplorable English, to a (still sassy) regal figure fit to consort with nobility, it has less to do with her
innate qualities as a heroine than with the fairy-tale aspect of the transformation myth itself. In other
words, the character of Eliza Doolittle comes across as being much more instrumental than
fundamental. The real (re-)making of Eliza Doolittle happens after the ambassador's party, when
she decides to make a statement for her own dignity against Higgins' insensitive treatment. This is
when she becomes, not a duchess, but an independent woman; and this explains why Higgins
begins to see Eliza not as a mill around his neck but as a creature worthy of his admiration.
Colonel Pickering - Colonel Pickering, the author of Spoken Sanskrit, is a match for Higgins
(although somewhat less obsessive) in his passion for phonetics. But where Higgins is a boorish,
careless bully, Pickering is always considerate and a genuinely gentleman. He says little of note in
the play, and appears most of all to be a civilized foil to Higgins' barefoot, absentminded crazy
professor. He helps in the Eliza Doolittle experiment by making a wager of it, saying he will cover
the costs of the experiment if Higgins does indeed make a convincing duchess of her. However,
while Higgins only manages to teach Eliza pronunciations, it is Pickering's thoughtful treatment
towards Eliza that teaches her to respect herself.
Alfred Doolittle - Alfred Doolittle is Eliza's father, an elderly but vigorous dustman who has had at
least six wives and who "seems equally free from fear and conscience." When he learns that his
daughter has entered the home of Henry Higgins, he immediately pursues to see if he can get
some money out of the circumstance. His unique brand of rhetoric, an unembarrassed,
unhypocritical advocation of drink and pleasure (at other people's expense), is amusing to Higgins.
Through Higgins' joking recommendation, Doolittle becomes a richly endowed lecturer to a moral
reform society, transforming him from lowly dustman to a picture of middle class morality--he
becomes miserable. Throughout, Alfred is a scoundrel who is willing to sell his daughter to make a
few pounds, but he is one of the few unaffected characters in the play, unmasked by appearance or
language. Though scandalous, his speeches are honest. At points, it even seems that he might be
Shaw's voice piece of social criticism (Alfred's proletariat status, given Shaw's socialist leanings,
makes the prospect all the more likely).

VIRGINIA WOOLF

MRS. DALLOWAY
Context

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

of its central characters over a single day in postWorld War I London. Divided into parts, rather
than chapters, the novel's structure highlights the finely interwoven texture of the characters'
thoughts. Critics tend to agree that Woolf found her writers voice with this novel. At forty-three, she
knew her experimental style was unlikely to be a popular success but no longer felt compelled to
seek critical praise. The novel did, however, gain a measure of commercial and critical success.
This book, which focuses on commonplace tasks, such as shopping, throwing a party, and eating
dinner, showed that no act was too small or too ordinary for a writers attention. Ultimately, Mrs.
Dalloway transformed the novel as an art form.
Woolf develops the books protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, and myriad other characters by
chronicling their interior thoughts with little pause or explanation, a style referred to as stream of
consciousness. Several central characters and more than one hundred minor characters appear in
the text, and their thoughts spin out like spider webs. Sometimes the threads of thought crossand
people succeed in communicating. More often, however, the threads do not cross, leaving the
characters isolated and alone. Woolf believed that behind the cotton wool of life, as she terms it in
her autobiographical collection of essays Moments of Being(1 9 4 1 ), and under the downpour of
impressions saturating a mind during each moment, a pattern exists.
Characters in Mrs. Dalloway occasionally perceive lifes pattern through a sudden shock, or what
Woolf called a moment of being. Suddenly the cotton wool parts, and a person sees reality, and
his or her place in it, clearly. In the vast catastrophe of the European war, wrote Woolf, our
emotions had to be broken up for us, and put at an angle from us, before we could allow ourselves
to feel them in poetry or fiction. These words appear in her essay collection, The Common Reader,
which was published just one month before Mrs. Dalloway. Her novel attempts to uncover
fragmented emotions, such as desperation or love, in order to find, through moments of being, a
way to endure.
While writing Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf reread the Greek classics along with two new modernist writers,
Marcel Proust and James Joyce. Woolf shared these writers' interest in time and psychology, and
she incorporated these issues into her novel. She wanted to show characters in flux, rather than
static, characters who think and emote as they move through space, who react to their
surroundings in ways that mirrored actual human experience. Rapid political and social change
marked the period between the two world wars: the British Empire, for which so many people had
sacrificed their lives to protect and preserve, was in decline. Countries like India were beginning to
question Britains colonial rule. At home, the Labour Party, with its plans for economic reform, was
beginning to challenge the Conservative Party, with its emphasis on imperial business interests.

Women, who had flooded the workforce to replace the men who had gone to war, were demanding
equal rights. Men, who had seen unspeakable atrocities in the first modern war, were questioning
the usefulness of class-based sociopolitical institutions. Woolf lent her support to the feminist
movement in her nonfiction book A Room of Ones Own(1 9 2 9 ), as well as in numerous essays,
and she was briefly involved in the womens suffrage movement. Although Mrs. Dalloway portrays
the shifting political atmosphere through the characters Peter Walsh, Richard Dalloway, and Hugh
Whitbread, it focuses more deeply on the charged social mood through the characters Septimus
Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway. Woolf delves into the consciousness of Clarissa, a woman
who exists largely in the domestic sphere, to ensure that readers take her character seriously,
rather than simply dismiss her as a vain and uneducated upper-class wife. In spite of her heroic and
imperfect effort in life, Clarissa, like every human being and even the old social order itself, must
face death.
Woolfs struggles with mental illness gave her an opportunity to witness firsthand how insensitive
medical professionals could be, and she critiques their tactlessness in Mrs. Dalloway. One of
Woolfs doctors suggested that plenty of rest and rich food would lead to a full recovery, a cure
prescribed in the novel, and another removed several of her teeth. In the early twentieth century,
mental health problems were too often considered imaginary, an embarrassment, or the product of
moral weakness. During one bout of illness, Woolf heard birds sing like Greek choruses and King
Edward use foul language among some azaleas. In 1 9 4 1 , as England entered a second world war,
and at the onset of another breakdown she feared would be permanent, Woolf placed a large stone
in her pocket to weigh herself down and drowned herself in the River Ouse.

Plot Overview
Mrs. Dalloway covers one day from morning to night in one womans life. Clarissa Dalloway, an
upper-class housewife, walks through her London neighborhood to prepare for the party she will
host that evening. When she returns from flower shopping, an old suitor and friend, Peter Walsh,
drops by her house unexpectedly. The two have always judged each other harshly, and their
meeting in the present intertwines with their thoughts of the past. Years earlier, Clarissa refused
Peters marriage proposal, and Peter has never quite gotten over it. Peter asks Clarissa if she is
happy with her husband, Richard, but before she can answer, her daughter, Elizabeth, enters the
room. Peter leaves and goes to Regents Park. He thinks about Clarissas refusal, which still
obsesses him. The point of view then shifts to Septimus, a veteran of World War I who was injured
in trench warfare and now suffers from shell shock. Septimus and his Italian wife, Lucrezia, pass
time in Regents Park. They are waiting for Septimuss appointment with Sir William Bradshaw, a

celebrated psychiatrist. Before the war, Septimus was a budding young poet and lover of
Shakespeare; when the war broke out, he enlisted immediately for romantic patriotic reasons. He
became numb to the horrors of war and its aftermath: when his friend Evans died, he felt little
sadness. Now Septimus sees nothing of worth in the England he fought for, and he has lost the
desire to preserve either his society or himself. Suicidal, he believes his lack of feeling is a crime.
Clearly Septimuss experiences in the war have permanently scarred him, and he has serious
mental problems. However, Sir William does not listen to what Septimus says and diagnoses a
lack of proportion. Sir William plans to separate Septimus from Lucrezia and send him to a mental
institution in the country. Richard Dalloway eats lunch with Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton,
members of high society. The men help Lady Bruton write a letter to the Times, London's largest
newspaper. After lunch, Richard returns home to Clarissa with a large bunch of roses. He intends to
tell her that he loves her but finds that he cannot, because it has been so long since he last said it.
Clarissa considers the void that exists between people, even between husband and wife. Even
though she values the privacy she is able to maintain in her marriage, considering it vital to the
success of the relationship, at the same time she finds slightly disturbing the fact that Richard
doesnt know everything about her. Clarissa sees off Elizabeth and her history teacher, Miss
Kilman, who are going shopping. The two older women despise one another passionately, each
believing the other to be an oppressive force over Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Septimus and Lucrezia are
in their apartment, enjoying a moment of happiness together before the men come to take
Septimus to the asylum. One of Septimuss doctors, Dr. Holmes, arrives, and Septimus fears the
doctor will destroy his soul. In order to avoid this fate, he jumps from a window to his death. Peter
hears the ambulance go by to pick up Septimuss body and marvels ironically at the level of
Londons civilization. He goes to Clarissas party, where most of the novels major characters are
assembled. Clarissa works hard to make her party a success but feels dissatisfied by her own role
and acutely conscious of Peters critical eye. All the partygoers, but especially Peter and Sally
Seton, have, to some degree, failed to accomplish the dreams of their youth. Though the social
order is undoubtedly changing, Elizabeth and the members of her generation will probably repeat
the errors of Clarissas generation. Sir William Bradshaw arrives late, and his wife explains that one
of his patients, the young veteran (Septimus), has committed suicide. Clarissa retreats to the
privacy of a small room to consider Septimuss death. She understands that he was overwhelmed
by life and that men like Sir William make life intolerable. She identifies with Septimus, admiring him
for having taken the plunge and for not compromising his soul. She feels, with her comfortable
position as a society hostess, responsible for his death. The party nears its close as guests begin to
leave. Clarissa enters the room, and her presence fills Peter with a great excitement.

Analysis of Major Characters

Clarissa Dalloway
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
Septimus, 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.
Peter Walsh
Peter Walshs most consistent character trait is ambivalence: he is middle-aged and fears he has
wasted his life, but sometimes he also feels he is not yet old. He cannot commit to an identity, or
even to a romantic partner. He cannot decide what he feels and tries often to talk himself into
feeling or not feeling certain things. For example, he spends the day telling himself that he no
longer loves Clarissa, but his grief at losing her rises painfully to the surface when he is in her
presence, and his obsession with her suggests that he is still attracted to her and may even long for
renewed romance. Even when he gathers his anger toward Clarissa and tells her about his new
love, he cannot sustain the anger and ends up weeping. Peter acts as a foil to Richard, who is
stable, generous, and rather simple. Unlike calm Richard, Peter is like a storm, thundering and
crashing, unpredictable even to himself. Peters unhealed hurt and persistent insecurity make him
severely critical of other characters, especially the Dalloways. He detests Clarissas bourgeois
lifestyle, though he blames Richard for making her into the kind of woman she is. Clarissa intuits
even his most veiled criticisms, such as when he remarks on her green dress, and his judgments
strongly affect her own assessments of her life and choices. Despite his sharp critiques of others,
Peter cannot clearly see his own shortcomings. His self-obsession and neediness would have
suffocated Clarissa, which is partly why she refused his marriage proposal as a young woman.
Peter acquiesces to the very English society he criticizes, enjoying the false sense of order it offers,
which he lacks in his life. Despite Peters ambivalence and tendency toward analysis, he still feels
life deeply. While Clarissa comes to terms with her own mortality, Peter becomes frantic at the
thought of death. He follows a young woman through the London streets to smother his thoughts of
death with a fantasy of life and adventure. His critical nature may distance him from others, but he
values his life nonetheless.

Sally Seton
Sally Seton exists only as a figure in Clarissas memory for most of the novel, and when she
appears at Clarissas party, she is older but still familiar. Though the women have not seen each
other for years, Sally still puts Clarissa first when she counts her blessings, even before her
husband or five sons. As a girl, Sally was without inhibitions, and as an adult at the party, she is still
effusive and lacks Clarissas restraint. Long ago, Sally and Clarissa plotted to reform the world
together. Now, however, both are married, a fate they once considered a catastrophe. Sally has
changed and calmed down a great deal since the Bourton days, but she is still enough of a loose
cannon to make Peter nervous and to kindle Clarissas old warm feelings. Both Sally and Clarissa
have yielded to the forces of English society to some degree, but Sally keeps more distance than
Clarissa does. She often takes refuge in her garden, as she despairs over communicating with
humans. However, she has not lost all hope of meaningful communication, and she still thinks
saying what one feels is the most important contribution one can make to society.
Clarissa considers the moment when Sally kissed her on the lips and offered her a flower at
Bourton the most exquisite moment of her whole life. Society would never have allowed that love
to flourish, since women of Clarissas class were expected to marry and become society wives.
Sally has always been more of a free spirit than Clarissa, and when she arrives at Clarissas party,
she feels rather distant from and confused by the life Clarissa has chosen. The womens kiss
marked a true moment of passion that could have pushed both women outside of the English
society they know, and it stands out in contrast to the confrontation Peter remembers between Sally
and Hugh regarding womens rights. One morning at Bourton, Sally angrily told Hugh he
represented the worst of the English middle class and that he was to blame for the plight of the
young girls in Piccadilly. Later, Hugh supposedly kissed her in the smoking room. Hughs is the
forced kiss of traditional English society, while the kiss with Clarissa is a revelation. Ultimately, the
society that spurs Hughs kiss prevails for both women.
Richard Dalloway
Richards simplicity and steadfastness have enabled him to build a stable life for Clarissa, but these
same qualities represent the compromise that marrying him required. Richard is a simple,
hardworking, sensible husband who loves Clarissa and their daughter, Elizabeth. However, he will
never share Clarissas desire to truly and fully communicate, and he cannot appreciate the beauty
of life in the same way she can. At one point, Richard tries to overcome his habitual stiffness and
shyness by planning to tell Clarissa that he loves her, but he is ultimately too repressed to say the
words, in part because it has been so long since he last said them. Just as he does not understand

Clarissas desires, he does not recognize Elizabeths potential as a woman. If he had had a son, he
would have encouraged him to work, but he does not offer the same encouragement to Elizabeth,
even as she contemplates job options. His reticence on the matter increases the likelihood that she
will eventually be in the same predicament as Clarissa, unable to support herself through a career
and thus unable to gain the freedom to follow her passions. Richard considers tradition of prime
importance, rather than passion or open communication. He champions the traditions England went
to war to preserve, in contrast to Septimus, and does not recognize their destructive power. Despite
his occasional misgivings, Richard has close associations with members of English high society. He
is critical of Hugh, but they revere many of the same symbols, including the figure of the grand old
lady with money, who is helpless when it comes to surviving in a patriarchal society. Richard likes
the fact that women need him, but sometimes he wrongly assumes they do. For example, he does
not recognize that a female vagrant may not want his help but may instead enjoy living outside the
rules of his society. For Richard, this sort of freedom is unimaginable.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols


Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Communication vs. Privacy
Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa, Septimus, Peter, and others struggle to find outlets for
communication as well as adequate privacy, and the balance between the two is difficult for all to
attain. Clarissa in particular struggles to open the pathway for communication and throws parties in
an attempt to draw people together. At the same time, she feels shrouded within her own reflective
soul and thinks the ultimate human mystery is how she can exist in one room while the old woman
in the house across from hers exists in another. Even as Clarissa celebrates the old womans
independence, she knows it comes with an inevitable loneliness. Peter tries to explain the
contradictory human impulses toward privacy and communication by comparing the soul to a fish
that swims along in murky water, then rises quickly to the surface to frolic on the waves. The war
has changed peoples ideas of what English society should be, and understanding is difficult
between those who support traditional English society and those who hope for continued change.
Meaningful connections in this disjointed postwar world are not easy to make, no matter what
efforts the characters put forth. Ultimately, Clarissa sees Septimuss death as a desperate, but
legitimate, act of communication.

Disillusionment with the British Empire


Throughout the nineteenth century, the British Empire seemed invincible. It expanded into many
other countries, such as India, Nigeria, and South Africa, becoming the largest empire the world
had ever seen. World War I was a violent reality check. For the first time in nearly a century, the
English were vulnerable on their own land. The Allies technically won the war, but the extent of
devastation England suffered made it a victory in name only. Entire communities of young men
were injured and killed. In 1 9 1 6 , at the Battle of the Somme, England suffered6 0 ,0 0 0 casualties
the largest slaughter in Englands history. Not surprisingly, English citizens lost much of their faith
in the empire after the war. No longer could England claim to be invulnerable and all-powerful.
Citizens were less inclined to willingly adhere to the rigid constraints imposed by Englands class
system, which benefited only a small margin of society but which all classes had fought to preserve.
In 1 9 2 3 , when Mrs. Dalloway takes place, the old establishment and its oppressive values are
nearing their end. English citizens, including Clarissa, Peter, and Septimus, feel the failure of the
empire as strongly as they feel their own personal failures. Those citizens who still champion
English tradition, such as Aunt Helena and Lady Bruton, are old. Aunt Helena, with her glass eye
(perhaps a symbol of her inability or unwillingness to see the empire's disintegration), is turning into
an artifact. Anticipating the end of the Conservative Partys reign, Richard plans to write the history
of the great British military family, the Brutons, who are already part of the past. The old empire
faces an imminent demise, and the loss of the traditional and familiar social order leaves the
English at loose ends.
The Fear of Death
Thoughts of death lurk constantly beneath the surface of everyday life in Mrs. Dalloway, especially
for Clarissa, Septimus, and Peter, and this awareness makes even mundane events and
interactions meaningful, sometimes even threatening. At the very start of her day, when she goes
out to buy flowers for her party, Clarissa remembers a moment in her youth when she suspected a
terrible event would occur. Big Ben tolls out the hour, and Clarissa repeats a line from
ShakespearesCymbeline over and over as the day goes on: Fear no more the heat o the sun /
Nor the furious winters rages. The line is from a funeral song that celebrates death as a comfort
after a difficult life. Middle-aged Clarissa has experienced the deaths of her father, mother, and
sister and has lived through the calamity of war, and she has grown to believe that living even one
day is dangerous. Death is very naturally in her thoughts, and the line from Cymbeline, along with
Septimuss suicidal embrace of death, ultimately helps her to be at peace with her own mortality.
Peter Walsh, so insecure in his identity, grows frantic at the idea of death and follows an

anonymous young woman through London to forget about it. Septimus faces death most directly.
Though he fears it, he finally chooses it over what seems to him a direr alternativeliving another
day.
The Threat of Oppression
Oppression is a constant threat for Clarissa and Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway, and Septimus dies in
order to escape what he perceives to be an oppressive social pressure to conform. It comes in
many guises, including religion, science, or social convention. Miss Kilman and Sir William
Bradshaw are two of the major oppressors in the novel: Miss Kilman dreams of felling Clarissa in
the name of religion, and Sir William would like to subdue all those who challenge his conception of
the world. Both wish to convert the world to their belief systems in order to gain power and
dominate others, and their rigidity oppresses all who come into contact with them. More subtle
oppressors, even those who do not intend to, do harm by supporting the repressive English social
system. Though Clarissa herself lives under the weight of that system and often feels oppressed by
it, her acceptance of patriarchal English society makes her, in part, responsible for Septimuss
death. Thus she too is an oppressor of sorts. At the end of the novel, she reflects on his suicide:
Somehow it was her disasterher disgrace. She accepts responsibility, though other characters
are equally or more fully to blame, which suggests that everyone is in some way complicit in the
oppression of others.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
texts major themes.
Time
Time imparts order to the fluid thoughts, memories, and encounters that make upMrs. Dalloway.
Big Ben, a symbol of England and its might, sounds out the hour relentlessly, ensuring that the
passage of time, and the awareness of eventual death, is always palpable. Clarissa, Septimus,
Peter, and other characters are in the grip of time, and as they age they evaluate how they have
spent their lives. Clarissa, in particular, senses the passage of time, and the appearance of Sally
and Peter, friends from the past, emphasizes how much time has gone by since Clarissa was
young. Once the hour chimes, however, the sound disappearsits leaden circles dissolved in the
air. This expression recurs many times throughout the novel, indicating how ephemeral time is,
despite the pomp of Big Ben and despite peoples wary obsession with it. It is time, Rezia says to
Septimus as they sit in the park waiting for the doctor's appointment on Harley Street. The ancient
woman at the Regents Park Tube station suggests that the human condition knows no boundaries

of time, since she continues to sing the same song for what seems like eternity. She understands
that life is circular, not merely linear, which is the only sort of time that Big Ben tracks. Time is so
important to the themes, structure, and characters of this novel that Woolf almost named her
book The Hours.
Shakespeare
The many appearances of Shakespeare specifically and poetry in general suggest hopefulness, the
possibility of finding comfort in art, and the survival of the soul inMrs. Dalloway. Clarissa quotes
Shakespeares plays many times throughout the day. When she shops for flowers at the beginning
of the novel, she reads a few lines from a Shakespeare play, Cymbeline, in a book displayed in a
shop window. The lines come from a funeral hymn in the play that suggests death should be
embraced as a release from the constraints of life. Since Clarissa fears death for much of the novel,
these lines suggest that an alternative, hopeful way of addressing the prospect of death exists.
Clarissa also identifies with the title character in Othello, who loves his wife but kills her out of
jealousy, then kills himself when he learns his jealousy was unwarranted. Clarissa shares with
Othello the sense of having lost a love, especially when she thinks about Sally Seton. Before the
war, Septimus appreciated Shakespeare as well, going so far as aspiring to be a poet. He no longer
finds comfort in poetry after he returns.
The presence of an appreciation for poetry reveals much about Clarissa and Septimus, just as the
absence of such appreciation reveals much about the characters who differ from them, such as
Richard Dalloway and Lady Bruton. Richard finds Shakespeares sonnets indecent, and he
compares reading them to listening in at a keyhole. Not surprisingly, Richard himself has a difficult
time voicing his emotions. Lady Bruton never reads poetry either, and her demeanor is so rigid and
impersonal that she has a reputation of caring more for politics than for people. Traditional English
society promotes a suppression of visible emotion, and since Shakespeare and poetry promote a
discussion of feeling and emotion, they belong to sensitive people like Clarissa, who are in many
ways antiestablishment.
Trees and Flowers
Tree and flower images abound in Mrs. Dalloway. The color, variety, and beauty of flowers suggest
feeling and emotion, and those characters who are comfortable with flowers, such as Clarissa, have
distinctly different personalities than those characters who are not, such as Richard and Lady
Bruton. The first time we see Clarissa, a deep thinker, she is on her way to the flower shop, where
she will revel in the flowers she sees. Richard and Hugh, more emotionally repressed

representatives of the English establishment, offer traditional roses and carnations to Clarissa and
Lady Bruton, respectively. Richard handles the bouquet of roses awkwardly, like a weapon. Lady
Bruton accepts the flowers with a grim smile and lays them stiffly by her plate, also unsure of how
to handle them. When she eventually stuffs them into her dress, the femininity and grace of the
gesture are rare and unexpected. Trees, with their extensive root systems, suggest the vast reach
of the human soul, and Clarissa and Septimus, who both struggle to protect their souls, revere
them. Clarissa believes souls survive in trees after death, and Septimus, who has turned his back
on patriarchal society, feels that cutting down a tree is the equivalent of committing murder.
Waves and Water
Waves and water regularly wash over events and thoughts in Mrs. Dalloway and nearly always
suggest the possibility of extinction or death. While Clarissa mends her party dress, she thinks
about the peaceful cycle of waves collecting and falling on a summer day, when the world itself
seems to say that is all. Time sometimes takes on waterlike qualities for Clarissa, such as when
the chime from Big Ben flood[s] her room, marking another passing hour. Rezia, in a rare moment
of happiness with Septimus after he has helped her construct a hat, lets her words trail off like a
contented tap left running. Even then, she knows that stream of contentedness will dry up
eventually. The narrative structure of the novel itself also suggests fluidity. One characters thoughts
appear, intensify, then fade into anothers, much like waves that collect then fall.
Traditional English society itself is a kind of tide, pulling under those people not strong enough to
stand on their own. Lady Bradshaw, for example, eventually succumbs to Sir Williams bullying,
overbearing presence. The narrator says she had gone under, that her will became water-logged
and eventually sank into his. Septimus is also sucked under societys pressures. Earlier in the day,
before he kills himself, he looks out the window and sees everything as though it is underwater.
Trees drag their branches through the air as though dragging them through water, the light outside
is watery gold, and his hand on the sofa reminds him of floating in seawater. While Septimus
ultimately cannot accept or function in society, Clarissa manages to navigate it successfully. Peter
sees Clarissa in a silver-green mermaids dress at her party, [l]olloping on the waves. Between
her mermaids dress and her ease in bobbing through her party guests, Clarissa succeeds in
staying afloat. However, she identifies with Septimuss wish to fight the cycle and go under, even if
she will not succumb to the temptation herself.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Prime Minister


The prime minister in Mrs. Dalloway embodies Englands old values and hierarchical social system,
which are in decline. When Peter Walsh wants to insult Clarissa and suggest she will sell out and
become a society hostess, he says she will marry a prime minister. When Lady Bruton, a champion
of English tradition, wants to compliment Hugh, she calls him My Prime Minister. The prime
minister is a figure from the old establishment, which Clarissa and Septimus are struggling
against. Mrs. Dalloway takes place after World War I, a time when the English looked desperately
for meaning in the old symbols but found the symbols hollow. When the conservative prime minister
finally arrives at Clarissas party, his appearance is unimpressive. The old pyramidal social system
that benefited the very rich before the war is now decaying, and the symbols of its greatness have
become pathetic.
Peter Walshs Pocketknife and Other Weapons
Peter Walsh plays constantly with his pocketknife, and the opening, closing, and fiddling with the
knife suggest his flightiness and inability to make decisions. He cannot decide what he feels and
doesnt know whether he abhors English tradition and wants to fight it, or whether he accepts
English civilization just as it is. The pocketknife reveals Peters defensiveness. He is armed with the
knife, in a sense, when he pays an unexpected visit to Clarissa, while she herself is armed with her
sewing scissors. Their weapons make them equal competitors. Knives and weapons are also
phallic symbols, hinting at sexuality and power. Peter cannot define his own identity, and his
constant fidgeting with the knife suggests how uncomfortable he is with his masculinity. Characters
fall into two groups: those who are armed and those who are not. Ellie Henderson, for example, is
weaponless, because she is poor and has not been trained for any career. Her ambiguous
relationship with her friend Edith also puts her at a disadvantage in society, leaving her even less
able to defend herself. Septimus, psychologically crippled by the literal weapons of war, commits
suicide by impaling himself on a metal fence, showing the danger lurking behind man-made
boundaries.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
THE GREAT GATSBY

Context

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor
Francis Scott Key, the author of The Star-Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul,
Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey

boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at
Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and
he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.
Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery,
Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre.
Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to
delay their wedding until he could prove a success. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in
1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda
to marry him.
Many of these events from Fitzgeralds early life appear in his most famous novel,The Great
Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from
Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school (in Nicks case, Yale), who moves to New York after
the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and
luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the
South.
Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence,
while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a
great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and
throwing parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisys love. As the giddiness of the Roaring
Twenties dissolved into the bleakness of the Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous
breakdown and Fitzgerald battled alcoholism, which hampered his writing. He published Tender Is
the Night in 1934, and sold short stories to The Saturday Evening Post to support his lavish
lifestyle. In 1937, he left for Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1940, while working on his
novel The Love of the Last Tycoon,died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four.
Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed the Jazz Age.
Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which
the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation.
Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth
Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground
culture of revelry sprang up. Sprawling private parties managed to elude police notice, and
speakeasiessecret clubs that sold liquorthrived. The chaos and violence of World War I left
America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant

living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of the previous decade were
turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the day.
Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like
Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained
materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick,
Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath,
and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsbyrepresents
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.

Plot Overview
Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn
about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but
unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently
to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nicks nextdoor neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic
mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.
Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egghe was educated at Yale and has social
connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class.
Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her
husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nicks at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan
Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also
learns a bit about Daisy and Toms marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson,
who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York
City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar,
gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy,
and Tom responds by breaking her nose.
As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsbys legendary
parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly
young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone old sport.
Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his
mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in

love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the
bay from his mansion. Gatsbys extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to
impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is
afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have
tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion,
Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.
After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wifes relationship with Gatsby. At a
luncheon at the Buchanans house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom
realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is
deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive
into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he
and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his wife that
Gatsby is a criminalhis fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy
realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with
Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.
When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that
Gatsbys car has struck and killed Myrtle, Toms lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick
learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to
take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtles husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the
car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have
been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots
himself.
Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the
Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsbys life and for the
emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as
Gatsbys dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of
happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsbys
power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him great, Nick reflects that the era of
dreamingboth Gatsbys dream and the American dreamis over.

Analysis of Major Characters

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 himGatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role until Chapter 3.
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 (the reader learns about Gatsbys childhood in Chapter 6 and
receives definitive proof of his criminal dealings in Chapter 7). As a result, the readers first, distant
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.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.
As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsbys self-presentation, 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 cold-hearted, aristocratic bully, Gatsby is a loyal and good-hearted
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 1, 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 at the end of
Chapter 9.
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 2.
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.
Daisy Buchanan
Partially based on Fitzgeralds wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville,
Kentucky. She is Nicks cousin and the object of Gatsbys love. As a young debutante in Louisville,
Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay
Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to
convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won Daisys heart, and they made love
before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose
instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise
her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents.
After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her the single goal of all of his
dreams and the main motivation behind his acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity.
To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfectionshe has the aura of charm, wealth,
sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he longed for as a child in North Dakota and that first
attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy falls far short of Gatsbys ideals. She is beautiful and
charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person
who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves her real nature when

she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter 7, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle
Wilson even though she herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than attend Gatsbys funeral,
Daisy and Tom move away, leaving no forwarding address.
Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of
affection (she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but
not of sustained loyalty or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing
her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter 7. In Fitzgeralds
conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg
set.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s
On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The
main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of
its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a
circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a
highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the
American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its
overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to
decadent parties and wild jazz musicepitomized inThe Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that
Gatsby throws every Saturday nightresulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream,
as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I
ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely
disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of
early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock
market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a
newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person
from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy
families with old wealthscorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators. Additionally, the
passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving
underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.

Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick
and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and
cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who
attend Gatsbys parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between old money
and new money manifests itself in the novels symbolic geography: East Egg represents the
established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsbys fortune
symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.
As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter 9), the American dream was originally about
discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however,
easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast.
The main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsbys dream of loving Daisy is ruined
by the difference in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to
impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally, places and
objects in The Great Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill them with meaning: the
eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify this idea. In Nicks mind, the ability to create
meaningful symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early Americans
invested their new nation with their own ideals and values.
Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of
Daisys dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own
lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor
possesses. Gatsbys dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream
in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its objectmoney and pleasure. Like 1920s
Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby
longs to re-create a vanished pasthis time in Louisville with Daisybut is incapable of doing so.
When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to
Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.
The Hollowness of the Upper Class
One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how
the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the
countrys richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while
East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald
portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste.
Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-

Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes
invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance,
epitomized by the Buchanans tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan
Baker.
What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers
prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to moneys ability to ease their
minds that they never worry about hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype when,
at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new house far away rather than condescend to
attend Gatsbys funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand, whose recent wealth derives from criminal
activity, has a sincere and loyal heart, remaining outside Daisys window until four in the morning in
Chapter 7 simply to make sure that Tom does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsbys good qualities
(loyalty and love) lead to his death, as he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy
be punished, and the Buchanans bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them to remove
themselves from the tragedy not only physically but psychologically.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the texts major themes.
Geography
Throughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the 1920s American
society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich,
the valley of ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited,
amoral quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral decay and
social cynicism of New York, while the West (including Midwestern and northern areas such as
Minnesota) is connected to more traditional social values and ideals. Nicks analysis in Chapter 9 of
the story he has related reveals his sensitivity to this dichotomy: though it is set in the East, the
story is really one of the West, as it tells how people originally from west of the Appalachians (as all
of the main characters are) react to the pace and style of life on the East Coast.
Weather
As in much of Shakespeares work, the weather in The Great Gatsby unfailingly matches the
emotional and narrative tone of the story. Gatsby and Daisys reunion begins amid a pouring rain,
proving awkward and melancholy; their love reawakens just as the sun begins to come out.
Gatsbys climactic confrontation with Tom occurs on the hottest day of the summer, under the

scorching sun (like the fatal encounter between Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet). Wilson
kills Gatsby on the first day of autumn, as Gatsby floats in his pool despite a palpable chill in the air
a symbolic attempt to stop time and restore his relationship with Daisy to the way it was five
years before, in 1917.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Green Light
Situated at the end of Daisys East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsbys West Egg lawn, the
green light represents Gatsbys hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy,
and in Chapter 1 he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal.
Because Gatsbys quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light
also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In Chapter 9, Nick compares the green light to how
America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.
The Valley of Ashes
First introduced in Chapter 2, the valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of
a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It represents the moral
and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves
with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight of the
poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.
The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old
advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and
judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly.
Instead, throughout the novel, Fitzgerald suggests that symbols only have meaning because
characters instill them with meaning. The connection between the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
and God exists only in George Wilsons grief-stricken mind. This lack of concrete significance
contributes to the unsettling nature of the image. Thus, the eyes also come to represent the
essential meaninglessness of the world and the arbitrariness of the mental process by which people
invest objects with meaning. Nick explores these ideas in Chapter 8, when he imagines Gatsbys
final thoughts as a depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and dreams.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY
A CLEAN, WELL-LIGHTED PLACE

Context

Born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, near Chicago, Ernest Hemingway was the second of six children.
His father, a doctor, loved hunting and fishing and quickly taught these loves to young Hemingway.
He gave Hemingway his first gun when he was just ten. When Hemingway finished high school,
World War I was raging across Europe, and he wanted to enlist in the army. His father forbade him
from enlisting, however, so Hemingway became a reporter for the Kansas City Star, where he
began to hone his writing skills. Eventually, he grew restless and became an ambulance driver for
the Red Cross in Italy. After being injured, he recovered at a Milan hospital, where he had an affair
with a nurse. He returned home in 1919 but moved to Paris in 1921 to work as a reporter for the
Toronto Daily Star. There, he joined a group of expatriate writers and artists who would come to
define the Lost Generation, men and women whose early adulthood was defined by World War I.
Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Pablo Picasso were among his circle of friends
and colleagues.
Hemingway moved back to the United States in 1928, setting up a home in Key West, Florida,
where he lived for more than ten years. In 1937, he went to Spain as a reporter to cover the
Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance and eventually published For Whom
the Bell Tolls (1940), a novel based on his experiences. In the years that followed, he moved
around a great deal, first to Havana, Cuba, and then back to Europe to contribute to the war effort
in World War II.
Hemingway published his first novel, The Torrents of Spring, in 1925 and The Sun Also Rises in
1926. The latter novel was his first literary success and coincided with the end of his marriage to
Hadley Richardson. Hemingway went on to marry three more times and publish many more novels,
including A Farewell to Arms (1929), based on his experiences in Italy during World War I, and The
Old Man and the Sea(1952), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He also published many
collections of short stories, including In Our Time (1925), Men Without Women (1927), and Winner
Take Nothing (1933) in which A Clean, Well-Lighted Place first appeared. The range, skill, and
influence of Hemingways work won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is one of Hemingways most acclaimed short stories, as much for its
exquisitely sparse writing style as for its expertly rendered existentialist themes. Existentialism is a
philosophical movement whose adherents believe that life has no higher purpose and that no

higher being exists to help us make sense of it. Instead, humans are left alone to find meaning in
the world and their lives. In A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, the older waiter sums up the despair that
drives him and others to brightly lit cafs by saying simply, It is a nothing.
Despite his great literary successes, Hemingway struggled with depression, alcoholism, and related
health problems throughout his life. In 1960, Hemingway and his fourth wife, Mary Welsh, moved to
Ketchum, Idaho, and Hemingway began treatments for depression. He died from self-inflicted
gunshot wounds in 1961 at age sixty-one.

Plot Overview
An old man sits alone at night in a caf. He is deaf and likes when the night grows still. Two waiters
watch the old man carefully because they know he wont pay if he gets too drunk. One waiter tells
the other that the old man tried to kill himself because he was in despair. The other waiter asks why
he felt despair, and the first waiter says the reason was nothing because the man has a lot of
money.
The waiters look at the empty tables and the old man, who sits in the shadow of a tree. They see a
couple walk by, a soldier with a girl. One of the waiters says the soldier had better be careful about
being out because the guards just went by. The old man taps his glass against its saucer and asks
the younger waiter for a brandy. The younger waiter tells him hell get drunk, then goes back and
tells the older waiter that the old man will stay all night. The younger waiter says he never goes to
bed earlier than 3 A . M . and that the old man should have killed himself. He takes the old man his
brandy. As he pours it, he tells the old man that he should have killed himself, but the old man just
indicates that he wants more brandy in the glass.
The younger waiter tells the older waiter that the old man is drunk, then asks again why he tried to
kill himself. The older waiter says he doesnt know. The younger waiter asks how he did it. The
older waiter says he tried to hang himself and his niece found him and got him down. The younger
waiter asks why she got him down, and the older waiter says they were concerned about his soul.
The waiters speculate on how much money the old man has and decide hes probably age eighty.
The younger waiter says he wishes the old man would leave so that he can go home and go to bed
with his wife. The older waiter says that the old man was married at one time. The younger waiter
says a wife wouldnt do him any good, but the older waiter disagrees. The younger waiter points out
that the old man has his niece, then says he doesnt want to be an old man. The older waiter points

out that the old man is clean and drinks neatly. The younger waiter says again that he wishes the
old man would leave.
The old man indicates that he wants another brandy, but the younger waiter tells him theyre
closing. The old man pays and walks away. The older waiter asks the younger waiter why he didnt
let him drink more because its not even 3 A . M . yet, and the younger waiter says he wants to go
home. The older waiter says an hour doesnt make much difference. The younger waiter says that
the old man can just drink at home, but the older waiter says its different. The younger waiter
agrees.
The older waiter jokingly asks if the younger waiter is afraid to go home early. The younger waiter
says he has confidence. The older waiter points out that he also has youth and a job, whereas the
older waiter has only a job. The older waiter says that he likes to stay at cafs very late with the
others who are reluctant to go home and who need light during the nighttime. The younger waiter
says he wants to go home, and the older waiter remarks that they are very different. The older
waiter says he doesnt like to close the caf in case someone needs it. The younger waiter says
there are bars to go to, but the older waiter says that the caf is clean and well lit. They wish each
other good night.
The older waiter continues thinking to himself about how important it is for a caf to be clean and
well lit. He thinks that music is never good to have at a caf and that standing at a bar isnt good
either. He wonders what hes afraid of, deciding its not fear but just a familiar nothing. He says two
prayers but substitutes nada (Spanish for nothing) for most of the words. When he arrives at a
bar, he orders a drink and tells the bartender that the bar isnt clean. The bartender offers another
drink, but the waiter leaves. He doesnt like bars, preferring cafs. He knows that he will now go
home and fall asleep when the sun comes up. He thinks he just has insomnia, a common problem.

Analysis of Major Characters


The Older Waiter
Like the old man, the older waiter likes to stay late at cafs, and he understands on a deep level
why they are both reluctant to go home at night. He tries to explain it to the younger waiter by
saying, He stays up because he likes it, but the younger waiter dismisses this and says that the
old man is lonely. Indeed, both the old man and the older waiter are lonely. The old man lives alone
with only a niece to look after him, and we never learn what happened to his wife. He drinks alone
late into the night, getting drunk in cafs. The older waiter, too, is lonely. He lives alone and makes
a habit of staying out late rather than going home to bed. But there is more to the older waiters

insomnia, as he calls it, than just loneliness. An unnamed, unspecified malaise seems to grip him.
This malaise is not a fear or dread, as the older waiter clarifies to himself, but an overwhelming
feeling of nothingnessan existential angst about his place in the universe and an uncertainty
about the meaning of life. Whereas other people find meaning and comfort in religion, the older
waiter dismisses religion as nadanothing. The older waiter finds solace only in clean, well-lit
cafs. There, life seems to make sense.
The older waiter recognizes himself in the old man and sees his own future. He stands up for the
old man against the younger waiters criticisms, pointing out that the old man might benefit from a
wife and is clean and neat when he drinks. The older waiter has no real reason to take the old
mans side. In fact, the old man sometimes leaves the caf without paying. But the possible reason
for his support becomes clear when the younger waiter tells the older waiter that he talks like an old
man too. The older waiter is aware that he is not young or confident, and he knows that he may one
day be just like the old manunwanted, alone, and in despair. Ultimately, the older waiter is
reluctant to close the caf as much for the old mans sake as for his own because someday hell
need someone to keep a caf open late for him.
The Younger Waiter
Brash and insensitive, the younger waiter cant see beyond himself. He readily admits that he isnt
lonely and is eager to return home where his wife is waiting for him. He doesnt seem to care that
others cant say the same and doesnt recognize that the caf is a refuge for those who are lonely.
The younger waiter is immature and says rude things to the old man because he wants to close the
caf early. He seems unaware that he wont be young forever or that he may need a place to find
solace later in life too. Unlike the older waiter, who thinks deeplyperhaps too deeplyabout life
and those who struggle to face it, the younger waiter demonstrates a dismissive attitude toward
human life in general. For example, he says the old man should have just gone ahead and killed
himself and says that he wouldnt want to be that old. He himself has reason to live, and his whole
life is ahead of him. You have everything, the older waiter tells him. The younger waiter, immersed
in happiness, doesnt really understand that he is lucky, and he therefore has little compassion or
understanding for those who are lonely and still searching for meaning in their lives.
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes
Life as Nothingness
In A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Hemingway suggests that life has no meaning and that man is an
insignificant speck in a great sea of nothingness. The older waiter makes this idea as clear as he
can when he says, It was all a nothing and man was a nothing too. When he substitutes the
Spanish word nada (nothing) into the prayers he recites, he indicates that religion, to which many
people turn to find meaning and purpose, is also just nothingness. Rather than pray with the actual
words, Our Father who art in heaven, the older waiter says, Our nada who art in nada
effectively wiping out both God and the idea of heaven in one breath. Not everyone is aware of the
nothingness, however. For example, the younger waiter hurtles through his life hastily and happily,
unaware of any reason why he should lament. For the old man, the older waiter, and the other
people who need late-night cafs, however, the idea of nothingness is overwhelming and leads to
despair.
The Struggle to Deal with Despair
The old man and older waiter in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place struggle to find a way to deal with
their despair, but even their best method simply subdues the despair rather than cures it. The old
man has tried to stave off despair in several unsuccessful ways. We learn that he has money, but
money has not helped. We learn that he was once married, but he no longer has a wife. We also
learn that he has unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide in a desperate attempt to quell the despair
for good. The only way the old man can deal with his despair now is to sit for hours in a clean, welllit caf. Deaf, he can feel the quietness of the nighttime and the caf, and although he is essentially
in his own private world, sitting by himself in the caf is not the same as being alone.
The older waiter, in his mocking prayers filled with the word nada, shows that religion is not a viable
method of dealing with despair, and his solution is the same as the old mans: he waits out the
nighttime in cafs. He is particular about the type of caf he likes: the caf must be well lit and
clean. Bars and bodegas, although many are open all night, do not lessen despair because they
are not clean, and patrons often must stand at the bar rather than sit at a table. The old man and
the older waiter also glean solace from routine. The ritualistic caf-sitting and drinking help them
deal with despair because it makes life predictable. Routine is something they can control and
manage, unlike the vast nothingness that surrounds them.

Motifs
Loneliness
Loneliness pervades A Clean, Well-Lighted Place and suggests that even though there are many
people struggling with despair, everyone must struggle alone. The deaf old man, with no wife and
only a niece to care for him, is visibly lonely. The younger waiter, frustrated that the old man wont
go home, defines himself and the old man in opposites: Hes lonely. Im not lonely. Loneliness, for
the younger waiter, is a key difference between them, but he gives no thought to why the old man
might be lonely and doesnt consider the possibility that he may one day be lonely too. The older
waiter, although he doesnt say explicitly that he is lonely, is so similar to the old man in his habit of
sitting in cafs late at night that we can assume that he too suffers from loneliness. The older waiter
goes home to his room and lies in bed alone, telling himself that he merely suffers from
sleeplessness. Even in this claim, however, he instinctively reaches out for company, adding, Many
must have it. The thought that he is not alone in having insomnia or being lonely comforts him.
Symbols
The Caf
The caf represents the opposite of nothingness: its cleanliness and good lighting suggest order
and clarity, whereas nothingness is chaotic, confusing, and dark. Because the caf is so different
from the nothingness the older waiter describes, it serves as a natural refuge from the despair felt
by those who are acutely aware of the nothingness. In a clean, brightly lit caf, despair can be
controlled and even temporarily forgotten. When the older waiter describes the nothingness that is
life, he says, It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order.
The it in the sentence is never defined, but we can speculate about the waiters meaning: although
life and man are nothing, light, clealiness, and order can serve as substance. They can help stave
off the despair that comes from feeling completely unanchored to anyone or anything. As long as a
clean, well-lighted caf exists, despair can be kept in check.

EUGENE O'NEILL
MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA
Context

Eugene O'Neill (18881953) was the son of an actor whose work meant that the family led a
difficult life on the road. O'Neill would later deeply resent his insecure childhood, pinning the family's
many problems, including his mother's drug addiction, on his father. Educated at boarding schools,
O'Neill gained admission to Princeton University but left after only one year to go to sea. He spent
his early twenties living on the docks of Buenos Aires, Liverpool, and New York, sinking into an
alcoholism that brought him to the point of suicide. Slowly O'Neill recovered from his addiction and
took a job writing for a newspaper. A bout of tuberculosis left him incapacitated and he was
consigned to a sanitarium for six months. While in recovery, O'Neill decided to become a
playwright.
O'Neill wrote his first play, Bound East for Cardiff, in 1916, premiering it with a company in
Provincetown, MA that took it to New York that same year. In 1920, O'Neill's breakthrough came
with his play Beyond the Horizon. Historians of drama identify its premiere as a pivotal event on the
Broadway stage, one that brought a new form of tragic realism to an industry almost entirely
overrun with stock melodramas and shallow farces. O'Neill went on to write over twenty innovative
plays in the next twenty years, to steadily growing acclaim. The more famous works from his early
period include The Great God Brown (1926), a study in the conflicts between idealism and
materialism, and Strange Interlude (1928), an ambitious 36-hour saga on the plight of the
Everywoman. His late career brought such works as his masterpiece, The Iceman Cometh (1946),
an Ibsenian portrait of man's hold on his pipe dreams, and A Long Day's Journey into Night (1956),
the posthumously published and painfully autobiographical tragedy of a family haunted by a
mother's drug addiction.
O'Neill wrote morality plays and experimented with the tragic form. O'Neill's interest in tragedy
began as early as 1924 with his Desire Under the Elms, a tale of incest, infanticide, and fateful
retribution, but would come to maturity with his monumental revision of
Aeschylus's Oresteia, Mourning Becomes Electra (1931). O'Neill chose Electra because he felt that
her tale had been left incomplete. More generally, as his diary notes indicate, O'Neill understood his
exercises in tragedy as an attempt to find a modern analogue to an ancient mode of experience.
Thus Mourning aims to provide a "modern psychological approximation of the Greek sense of fate"
in a time in which the notion of an inescapable and fundamentally non-redemptive determinism is
incomprehensible. Accordingly, the setting of the trilogy, the American Civil War, springs from
O'Neill's attempt to negotiate the chasm between ancient and modern. For O'Neill, the Civil War
provided a setting that would allow audiences to locate the tragic in their national history and
mythology while retaining enough distance in time to lend the tale its required epic

proportions.Mourning also provided O'Neill with an occasion to abandon the complex set design of
the Art Theater, which he had long bemoaned as a constraint on the playwright's creative freedom.

Plot Overview
The Homecoming
It is late spring afternoon in front of the Mannon house. The master of the house, Brigadier-General
Ezra Mannon, is soon to return from war.
Lavinia, Ezra's severe daughter, has just come, like her mother Christine, from a trip to New York.
Seth, the gardener, takes the anguished girl aside. He needs to warn her against her would-be
beau, Captain Brant. Before Seth can continue, however, Lavinia's suitor Peter and his sister Hazel,
arrive. Lavinia stiffens. If Peter is proposing to her again, he must realize that she cannot marry
anyone because Father needs her.
Lavinia asks Seth to resume his story. Seth asks if she has not noticed that Brant looks just like her
all the other male Mannons. He believes that Brant is the child of David Mannon and Marie
Brantme, a Canuck nurse, a couple expelled from the house for fear of public disgrace.
Suddenly Brant himself enters from the drive. Calculatingly Lavinia derides the memory of Brant's
mother. Brant explodes and reveals his heritage. Lavinia's grandfather loved his mother and
jealously cast his brother out of the family. Brant has sworn vengeance.
A moment later, Lavinia appears inside her father's study. Christine enters indignantly, wondering
why Lavinia has summoned her. Lavinia reveals that she followed her to New York and saw her
kissing Brant. Christine defiantly tells Lavinia that she has long hated Ezra and that Lavinia was
born of her disgust. She loves her brother Orin because he always seemed hers alone.
Lavinia coldly explains that she intends to keep her mother's secret for Ezra's sake. Christine must
only promise to never see Brant again. Laughingly Christine accuses her daughter of wanting Brant
herself. Lavinia has always schemed to steal her place. Christine agrees to Lavinia's terms. Later
she proposes to Brant that they poison Ezra and attribute his death to his heart trouble.
One week later, Lavinia stands stiffly at the top of the front stairs with Christine. Suddenly Ezra
enters and stops stiffly before his house. Lavinia rushes forward and embraces him.

Once she and Ezra alone, Christine assures her that he has nothing to suspect with regards to
Brant. Ezra impulsively kisses her hand. The war has made him realize that they must overcome
the wall between them. Calculatingly Christine assures him that all is well. They kiss.
Toward daybreak in Ezra's bedroom, Christine slips out from the bed. Mannon's bitterly rebukes
her. He knows the house is not his and that Christine awaits his death to be free. Christine
deliberately taunts that she has indeed become Brant's mistress. Mannon rises in fury, threatening
her murder, and then falls back in agony, begging for his medicine. Christine retrieves a box from
her room and gives him the poison.
Mannon realizes her treachery and calls Lavinia for help. Lavinia rushes to her father. With his
dying effort, Ezra indicts his wife: "She's guiltynot medicine!" he gasps and then dies. Her
strength gone, Christine collapses in a faint.
The Hunted
Peter, Lavinia, and Orin arrive at the house. Orin disappointedly complains of Christine's absence.
He jealously asks Lavinia about what she wrote him regarding Brant. Lavinia warns him against
believing Christine's lies.
Suddenly Christine hurries out, reproaching Peter for leaving Orin alone. Mother and son embrace
jubilantly. Suspiciously Orin asks Christine about Brant. Christine explains that Lavinia has gone
mad and begun to accuse her of the impossible. Orin sits at Christine's feet and recounts his
wonderful dreams about her and the South Sea Islands. The Islands represented all the war was
not: peace, warmth, and security, or Christina herself. Lavinia reappears and coldly calls Orin to see
their father's body.
In the study, Orin tells Lavinia that Christine has already warned him of her madness. Calculatingly
Lavinia insists that Orin certainly cannot let their mother's paramour escape. She proposes that
they watch Christine until she goes to meet Brant herself. Orin agrees.
The night after Ezra's funeral, Brant's clipper ship appears at a wharf in East Boston. Christine
meets Brant on the deck, and they retire to the cabin to speak in private. Lavinia and an enraged
Orin listen from the deck. The lovers decide to flee east and seek out their Blessed Islands. Fearing
the hour, they painffully bid each other farewell. When Brant returns, Orin shoots him and ransacks
the room to make it seem that Brant has been robbed.

The following night Christine paces the drive before the Mannon house. Orin and Lavinia appear,
revealing that they killed Brant. Christine collapses. Orin knees beside her pleadingly, promising
that he will make her happy, that they can leave Lavinia at home and go abroad together. Lavinia
orders Orin into the house. He obeys.
Christine glares at her daughter with savage hatred and marches into the house. Lavinia
determinedly turns her back on the house, standing like a sentinel. A shot is heard from Ezra's
study. Lavinia stammers: "It is justice!"
The Haunted
A year later, Lavinia and Orin return from their trip East. Lavinia's body has lost its military stiffness
and she resembles her mother perfectly. Orin has grown dreadfully thin and bears the statue-like
attitude of his father.
In the sitting room, Orin grimly remarks that Lavinia's has stolen Christine's soul. Death has set her
free to become her. Peter enters from the rear and gasps, thinking he has seen Christine's ghost.
Lavinia approaches him eagerly. Orin jealously mocks his sister, accusing her of becoming a true
romantic during their time in the Islands.
A month later, Orin works intently at a manuscript in the Mannon study. Lavinia knocks sharply at
the locked door. With forced casualness, she asks Peter what he is doing. Orin insists that they
must atone for Mother's death. As the last male Mannon, he has written a history of the family
crimes, from Abe's onward. Lavinia is the most interesting criminal of all. She only became pretty
like Mother on Brant's Islands, with the natives staring at her with desire.
When Orin accuses her of sleeping with one of them, she assumes Christine's taunting voice.
Reacting like Ezra, Orin grasps his sister's throat, threatening her murder. He has taken Father's
place and she Mother's.
A moment later, Hazel and Peter appear in the sitting room. Orin enters, insisting that he see Hazel
alone. He gives her a sealed envelope, enjoining her to keep it safe from his sister. She should only
open it if something happens to him or if Lavinia tries to marry Peter. Lavinia enters from the hall.
Hazel moves to leave, trying to keep Orin's envelope hidden behind her back. Rushing to Orin,
Lavinia beseeches him to make her surrender it. Orin complies.

Orin tells his sister she can never see Peter again. A "distorted look of desire" comes into his face.
Lavinia stares at him in horror, saying, "For God's sake! No! You're insane! You can't mean!"
Lavinia wishes his death. Startled, Orin realizes that his death would be another act of justice.
Mother is speaking through Lavinia.
Peter appears in the doorway. Unnaturally casual, Orin remarks that he was about to go clean his
pistol and exits. Lavinia throws herself into Peter's arms. A muffled shot is heard.
Three days later, Lavinia appears dressed in deep mourning. A resolute Hazel arrives and insists
that Lavinia not marry Peter. The Mannon secrets will prevent their happiness. She already has told
Peter of Orin's envelope.
Peter arrives, and the pair pledges their love anew. Started by the bitterness in his voice, Lavinia
desperately flings herself into his arms crying, "Take me, Adam!" Horrified, Lavinia orders Peter
home.
Lavinia cackles that she is bound to the Mannon dead. Since there is no one left to punish her, she
must punish herselfshe must entomb herself in the house with the ancestors.

Analysis of Major Characters


Lavinia Mannon
Lavinia is Ezra's wooden, stiff-shouldered, flat-chested, thin, and angular daughter. She is garbed in
the black of mourning. Her militaristic bearing, a mark of her identification with her father,
symbolizes her role as a functionary of the Mannon clan or, to use Christine's terms, as their sentry.
Lavinia appears as the keeper of the family crypt and all its secrets, figuring as an agent of
repression throughout the play. She will urge Orin in particular to forget the dead, compulsively
insist upon the justice of their crimes, and keep the history of the family's past from coming to light.
Lavinia's repressive stiffness and mask-like countenance mirrors that of the house, the monument
of repression erected by her ancestors to conceal their disgraces. Ultimately this manor becomes
her tomb, Lavinia condemning herself to live with the Mannon dead until she and all their secrets
with her die.
Despite her loyalties to the Mannon line, Lavinia appears as her mother double from the outset of
the play, sharing the same lustrous copper hair, violet eyes, and mask-like face. Christine is her
rival. Lavinia considers herself robbed of all love at her mother's hands, Christine not only taking

her father but her would-be lover as well. Thus she schemes to take Christine's place and become
the wife of her father and mother of her brother. She does so upon her mother's death,
reincarnating her in her own flesh.
In doing so, Lavinia comes to femininity and sexuality. Lavinia traces a classical Oedipal trajectory,
in which the daughter, horrified by her castration, yearns to become the mother and bear a child by
her father that would redeem her lack. Orin figures as this child as well as the husband she would
leave to be with her son, that is, Peter substituting as Brant.
Orin Mannon
The Mannon son returned from war, Orin is the boyish counterpart to Aeschylus's Orestes. He loves
his mother incestuously, yearning for pre-Oedipal plentitude, the mythic moment prior to the
intervention of the father into the mother-son dyad. This pre-Oedipal paradise appears primarily in
two fantasies: that of the secret world he shares with Christine in childhood and the Blessed Island
he imagines as a haven from the war.
As the stage notes indicate, Orin bears a striking resemblance to the other Mannon men though he
appears as a weakened, refined, and oversensitive version of each. These doubles are his rivals
within the Mother-Son love affair that structures the trilogy, with Orin competing with Ezra and Brant
for Christine's desire. Thus he flies into a jealous rage upon the discovery of her love affair that
leads to Christine and Brant's deaths. Orin will then force he and his sister to judgment for their
crimes in an attempt to rejoin his mother in death.
Christine Mannon
Christine is a striking woman of forty with a fine, voluptuous figure, flowing animal grace, and a
mass of beautiful copper hair. Her pale face is also a life- like mask, a mask that represents both
her duplicity and her almost super-human efforts at repression.
Having long abhorred her husband Ezra, Christine plots his murder with her lover Brant upon his
return from the Civil War. She loves incestuously, repudiating her husband and clinging to her son
as that which is all her own. She repeats this incestuous relation in her affair with Brant,
rediscovering Orin in a substitute.
Like her double, Brant's mother Marie, Christine moves with an animal-like grace, grace that codes
for her sexual excess. This grace makes her exotic, or even of another race, aligning her with the

recurring figures of the island native. It makes sense that Lavinia must go among the natives to fully
assume her figure.
As her characteristic green dress suggests, Christine is consumed with envy. She envies Brant's
Island women, hating them for their sexual pleasures. Despite the desperate veneer of kindness,
she envies Hazel for her youth, imagining her as a figure for what she once was. Before the threat
of her oncoming age, she must secure her love affair with Brant at all costs.
Ezra Mannon
As his homophonic name suggests, he is Agamemnon's counterpart, the great general returned
from war to be murdered by his wife and her lover. We first encounter Ezra prior to his homecoming
in the former of the ominous portrait hanging in his study. Here, as throughout the trilogy, Ezra is
dressed in his judge's robes and appears as a symbol of the law.
Ezra's authority rests primarily in his symbolic form. Indeed, he is far more the figure for the law in
this form than as a broken, bitter, ruined husband. Both before and after his death, Ezra will
continuously appear in his symbolic capacities. His mannerisms, for example, suggest the
unyielding statue-like poses of military heroes; to Christine, he imagines himself as a statue of a
great man standing in a square. After his death, Lavinia will constantly invoke his name and voice.
Christine will hear herself condemned by his corpse. Ezra's various images will call his family to
judgment from beyond the grave.
Adam Brant
Brant is a powerful, romantic sea captain. He has swarthy complexion, sensual mouth, and long,
coal-black hair. He dresses, as if some romantic Byronic ideal, in almost foppish extravagance with
touches of studied carelessness. The child of the illegitimate Mannon line, he returns to wreak
vengeance on Ezra's household. He steals Ezra's wife and seduces Lavinia to conceal their affair.
Brant also of course bares a striking resemblance to the other Mannon men. He does so as yet
another son incestuously enthralled with Mother and her substitutes.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols


Themes
Oedipus
Although O'Neill supposedly derived Mourning Becomes Electra from the Oresteia,the myth that
actually structures the play's action is overwhelming that of Oedipus. Oedipus was the Theban king

who unwittingly killed his father and murdered his mother, bringing ruin to the land. Famously Freud
elaborated this myth into his Oedipus complex, the structure through which children are
conventionally introduced into the social order and normative sexual relations.
At the center of this complex in what Freud defined as its positive form is the child's incestuous
desire for the parent of the opposite sex, a desire possibly surmounted in the course of the child's
development or else subject to repression. Its development is starkly differentiated for boys and
girls. Both begin with a primary love object, the mother. The boy child only moves from the mother
upon the threat of castration posed by his rival, the father. In other words, the boy fears that the
father would cut his penis off if he continues to cling to the mother who rightfully belongs to her
husband. By prohibiting incest and instituting the proper relations of desire within the household,
the Father becomes a figure of the law. In surmounting his Oedipal desires, the boy would then
abandon his mother as a love object and identify himself with his father.
In contrast, the girl abandons the mother upon realizing both the mother's castration and her own.
To her dismay, neither she nor her mother have a penis. She then turns to the father in hopes of
bearing a child by him that would substitute for her missing penis; the girl would become a mother
in her mother's place. Thus, whereas castration ends the Oedipus complex for the boy, it begins it
for the girl.
The Oedipal drama in its many permutations determines the course of the trilogy. Lavinia, for
example, yearns to replace Christine as wife to her father and mother to her brother. Christine
clings to Orin as that the "flesh and blood," entirely her own, that would make good on her
castration. Brant, in turn, is but a substitute for her precious son. Orin yearns to re- establish his
incestuous bond with his mother. But the war, where he would finally assume the Mannon name,
forces him from their pre-Oedipal embrace in the first place.
Though titled after Electra, the predominant pair of lovers in Mourning is the Mother-Son. Put
bluntly, the male Mannons in some way or another take their female love objects as Mother
substitutes, and the women pose them as their sons. The Fathers of the play, Ezra and otherwise,
figure as the rival who would break this bond of love. As we will see, what is primarily being
mourned here is the loss of this love relation, this "lost island" where Mother and Son can be
together.

Fate, Repetition, and Substitution


As Travis Bogard notes, O'Neill wrote Mourning to convince modern audiences of the persistence
of Fate. Accordingly, throughout the trilogy, the players will remark upon a strange agency driving
them into their illicit love affairs, murders, and betrayals. What O'Neill terms fate is the repetition of
a mythic structure of desire across the generations, the Oedipal drama.
As Orin will remark to Lavinia in "The Haunted," the Mannons have no choice but to assume the
roles of Mother-Son that organize their family history. The players continually become substitutes
for these two figures, a substitution made most explicit in Lavinia and Orin's reincarnation as
Christine and Ezra. In this particular case, Lavinia traces the classical Oedipal trajectory, in which
the daughter, horrified by her castration, yearns to become the mother and bear a child by her
father that would redeem her lack. Orin at once figures as this child as well as the husband she
would leave to be with her son.
The Double/the Rival
The various substitutions among the players as structured by the Oedipal drama make the players
each other's doubles. The double is also the rival, the player who believes himself dispossessed
convinced that his double stands in his proper place. Thus, for example, Lavinia considers Christine
the wife and mother she should be.
To take another example, Mourning's male players universally vie for the desire of Mother. The Civil
War, generally remembered as a war between brothers, comes to symbolize this struggle. The
men's rivalries are murderously infantile, operating according to a jealous logic of "either you go or I
go." Because in these rivalries the other appears as that which stands in the self's rightful place
within the Oedipal triangle, the rivals appear as doubles of each other as well. Orin's nightmare of
his murders in the fog allegorizes this struggle, Orin repeatedly killing the same man, himself, and
his father. This compulsive series of murders demonstrates the impossibility of the lover ever
acceding to his "rightful place" within the Oedipal triangleMother will always want another,
producing yet another rival.
The Law of the Father
In the Oedipal myth, what tears the son away from his incestuous embrace with the mother is the
imposition of the father's law. Mourning's principal father, Ezra, serves as figure for this paternal
law, though more in his symbolic form than in his own person. Ezra's symbolic form includes his

name, the portrait in which he wears his judge's robes, and his ventriloquist voice. Indeed, his
symbolic form almost usurps his person. Note how Ezra, in fearing that he has become numb to
himself, muses that he has become the statue of a great man, a monument in the town square.
Ezra's death makes the importance of his symbolic function even more apparent. With the death of
his person, he exercises the law with all the more force, haunting the living in his various symbolic
forms. Thus, for example, Christine will cringe before his portrait, Lavinia will invoke his voice and
name to command Orin to attention.
Motifs
The Blessed Islands
The fantasy of the Blessed Island recurs among the major players as the lost Mother-Son dyad
disrupted by the Oedipal drama. It, rather than any of their deaths, is the trilogy's principal object of
mourning.
Orin offers the most extensive vision of the Blessed Island to Christine in Act II of "The Hunted." A
sanctuary from the war, the Island is a warm, peaceful, and secure paradise composed of the
mother's body. Thus Orin can imagine himself with Christine without her being there. In terms of the
trilogy's sexual drama, the Blessed Island is the realm of the pre-Oedipal, the time of plentitude and
wholeness shared by mother and child. However, Orin goes to war to do his duty as a Mannon.
The Natives
The Blessed Islands are also populated, in the players' imaginations, by natives, which entwine
their fantasies of sex with those of race. Generally the native appears through two divergent
images: the sexual innocent and the sexually depraved. Thus, for example, Lavinia will recall the
islands as the home of timeless children, dancing naked on the beach and loving without sin. This
island is the perfect home for a prelapsarian love affair. For Orin, however, the natives display an
almost bestial sexual prowess, stripping his sister with their lascivious gazes. The native assumes
these proportions when imagined as rivals, the prowess and pleasure they would ostensibly provide
the lover becoming objects of envy.
Symbols
Though Mourning is rife with symbolism, the symbol that dominates the playing space is certainly
the Mannon house. The house is built in the style of a Greek temple, with white columned portico
covering its gray walls. As Christine complaints in Act I of "Homecoming," the house is the

Mannons' "whited sepulcher." It functions not only as crypt to the family's dead but also to its
secrets. Its founder, Abe Mannon, designs it as a monument of repression, building it to cover over
the disgrace that sets this revenge cycle in motion. What symbolizes this repression in turn is the
house's distinguishing feature, the "incongruous white mask" of a portico hiding its ugliness. This
mask doubles those of its residents, evoking the "life-like masks" the Mannons wear as their faces.

WILLIAM FAULKNER
ABSALOM, ABSALOM!

Context

William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, in September 1897; he died in Mississippi in
1962. Faulkner achieved a reputation as one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century
largely based on his series of novels about a fictional region of Mississippi called Yoknapatawpha
County, centered on the fictional town of Jefferson. The greatest of these novelsamong them The
Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!rank among the finest novels of
world literature.
Faulkner was especially interested in moral themes relating to the ruins of the Deep South in the
post-Civil War era. His prose stylewhich combines long, uninterrupted sentences with long strings
of adjectives, frequent changes in narration, many recursive asides, and a frequent reliance on a
sort of objective stream-of- consciousness technique, whereby the inner experience of a character
in a scene is contrasted with the scene's outward appearanceranks among his greatest
achievements. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.
Absalom, Absalom! is perhaps Faulkner's most focused attempt to expose the moral crises which
led to the destruction of the South. The story of a man hell-bent on establishing a dynasty and a
story of love and hatred between races and families, it is also an exploration of how people relate to
the past. Faulker tells a single story from a number of perspectives, capturing the conflict, racism,
violence, and sacrifice in each character's life, and also demonstrating how the human mind
reconstructs the past in the present imagination.

Summary
In 1833, a wild, imposing man named Thomas Sutpen comes to Jefferson, Mississippi, with a group
of slaves and a French architect in tow. He buys a hundred square miles of land from an Indian
tribe, raises a manor house, plants cotton, and marries the daughter of a local merchant, and within

a few years is entrenched among the local aristocracy. Sutpen has a son and a daughter, Henry
and Judith, who grow up in a life of uncultivated ease in the northern Mississippi countryside. Henry
goes to college at the University of Mississippi in 1859, and meets a sophisticated fellow student
named Charles Bon, whom he befriends and brings home for Christmas. Charles meets Judith, and
over time, an engagement between them is assumed. But Sutpen realizes that Bon is actually his
own sonHenry and Judith's half-brotherfrom a previous marriage which he abandoned when he
discovered that his wife had negro blood. He tells Henry that the engagement cannot be, and that
Bon is Henry's own brother; Henry reacts with outrage, refusing to believe that Bon knew all along
and willingly became engaged to his own sister. Henry repudiates his birthright, and he and Bon
flee to New Orleans. When war breaks out, they enlist, and spend four hard years fighting for the
Confederacy as the South crumbles around them. At the end of the war, Sutpen (a colonel) finds his
son and reveals to him that not only is Bon his and Judith's half-brother, he is also, in part, a black
man.
That knowledge makes Henry revolt against Bon in a way that even the idea of incest did not, and
on the day Bon arrives to marry Judith, Henry murders him in front of the gates of the Sutpen
plantation. Sutpen returns to a broken house, and becomes a brokenthough still forcefulman;
he slides slowly into alcoholism, begins an affair with a fifteen-year-old white girl named Milly, and
continues in that vein until, following the birth of his and Milly's daughter, he is murdered by Milly's
grandfather Wash Jones in 1869.
Decades later, in 1909, Quentin Compson is a twenty-year-old man, the grandson of Sutpen's first
friend in the country (General Compson), who is preparing to leave Jefferson to attend Harvard. He
is summoned by Miss Rosa Coldfield, the sister of Sutpen's wife Ellen (and briefly Sutpen's fiancee
herself), to hear the story of how Sutpen destroyed her family and his own. Over the following
weeks and months, Quentin is drawn deeper and deeper into the Sutpen story, discussing it with
his father, thinking about it, and later telling it in detail to his Harvard roommate Shreve. The story is
burned into his brain the night he goes with Miss Rosa to the Sutpen plantation, where they find
Henry Sutpen now an old manwaiting to die. Months later, Rosa attempts to return for Henry
with an ambulance, but Clytie, Thomas Sutpen's daughter with a slave woman and now a withered
old woman herself, sets fire to the manor house, killing herself and Henry, and bringing the Sutpen
dynasty to a fiery end.

Characters
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 Coldfields 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.

T. S. ELIOT
ELIOTS POETRY

Context

Thomas Stearns Eliot, or T.S. Eliot as he is better known, was born in 1 8 8 8 in St. Louis. He was
the son of a prominent industrialist who came from a well- connected Boston family. Eliot always felt
the loss of his familys New England roots and seemed to be somewhat ashamed of his fathers
business success; throughout his life he continually sought to return to the epicenter of AngloSaxon culture, first by attending Harvard and then by emigrating to England, where he lived
from 1 9 1 4 until his death. Eliot began graduate study in philosophy at Harvard and completed his
dissertation, although the outbreak of World War I prevented him from taking his examinations and
receiving the degree. By that time, though, Eliot had already written The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock, and the War, which kept him in England, led him to decide to pursue poetry full-time.
Eliot met Ezra Pound in 1 9 1 4 , as well, and it was Pound who was his main mentor and editor and
who got his poems published and noticed. During a 1 9 2 1 break from his job as a bank clerk (to
recover from a mental breakdown), Eliot finished the work that was to secure him fame, The Waste
Land. This poem, heavily edited by Pound and perhaps also by Eliots wife, Vivien, addressed the

fragmentation and alienation characteristic of modern culture, making use of these fragments to
create a new kind of poetry. It was also around this time that Eliot began to write criticism, partly in
an effort to explain his own methods. In 1 9 2 5 , he went to work for the publishing house Faber &
Faber. Despite the distraction of his wifes increasingly serious bouts of mental illness, Eliot was
from this time until his death the preeminent literary figure in the English-speaking world; indeed, he
was so monumental that younger poets often went out of their way to avoid his looming shadow,
painstakingly avoiding all similarities of style.
Eliot became interested in religion in the later 1 9 2 0 s and eventually converted to Anglicanism. His
poetry from this point onward shows a greater religious bent, although it never becomes dogmatic
the way his sometimes controversial cultural criticism does. Four Quartets, his last major poetic
work, combines a Christian sensibility with a profound uncertainty resulting from the wars
devastation of Europe. Eliot died in 1 9 6 5 in London.

Analysis
Eliot attributed a great deal of his early style to the French SymbolistsRimbaud, Baudelaire,
Mallarm, and Laforguewhom he first encountered in college, in a book by Arthur Symons
called The Symbolist Movement in Literature. It is easy to understand why a young aspiring poet
would want to imitate these glamorous bohemian figures, but their ultimate effect on his poetry is
perhaps less profound than he claimed. While he took from them their ability to infuse poetry with
high intellectualism while maintaining a sensuousness of language, Eliot also developed a great
deal that was new and original. His early works, like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The
Waste Land, draw on a wide range of cultural reference to depict a modern world that is in ruins yet
somehow beautiful and deeply meaningful. Eliot uses techniques like pastiche and juxtaposition to
make his points without having to argue them explicitly. As Ezra Pound once famously said, Eliot
truly did modernize himself. In addition to showcasing a variety of poetic innovations, Eliots early
poetry also develops a series of characters who fit the type of the modern man as described by
Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others of Eliots contemporaries. The title character of Prufrock is a
perfect example: solitary, neurasthenic, overly intellectual, and utterly incapable of expressing
himself to the outside world.
As Eliot grew older, and particularly after he converted to Christianity, his poetry changed. The later
poems emphasize depth of analysis over breadth of allusion; they simultaneously become more
hopeful in tone: Thus, a work such as Four Quartets explores more philosophical territory and offers
propositions instead of nihilism. The experiences of living in England during World War II inform
theQuartets, which address issues of time, experience, mortality, and art. Rather than lamenting the

ruin of modern culture and seeking redemption in the cultural past, as The Waste Land does, the
quartets offer ways around human limits through art and spirituality. The pastiche of the earlier
works is replaced by philosophy and logic, and the formal experiments of his early years are put
aside in favor of a new language consciousness, which emphasizes the sounds and other physical
properties of words to create musical, dramatic, and other subtle effects.
However, while Eliots poetry underwent significance transformations over the course of his career,
his poems also bear many unifying aspects: all of Eliots poetry is marked by a conscious desire to
bring together the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the emotional in a way that both honors the past
and acknowledges the present. Eliot is always conscious of his own efforts, and he frequently
comments on his poetic endeavors in the poems themselves. This humility, which often comes
across as melancholy, makes Eliots some of the most personal, as well as the most intellectually
satisfying, poetry in the English language.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
The Damaged Psyche of Humanity
Like many modernist writers, Eliot wanted his poetry to express the fragile psychological state of
humanity in the twentieth century. The passing of Victorian ideals and the trauma of World War I
challenged cultural notions of masculine identity, causing artists to question the romantic literary
ideal of a visionary-poet capable of changing the world through verse. Modernist writers wanted to
capture their transformed world, which they perceived as fractured, alienated, and denigrated.
Europe lost an entire generation of young men to the horrors of the so-called Great War, causing a
general crisis of masculinity as survivors struggled to find their place in a radically altered society.
As for England, the aftershocks of World War I directly contributed to the dissolution of the British
Empire. Eliot saw society as paralyzed and wounded, and he imagined that culture was crumbling
and dissolving. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1 9 1 7 ) demonstrates this sense of indecisive
paralysis as the titular speaker wonders whether he should eat a piece of fruit, make a radical
change, or if he has the fortitude to keep living. Humanitys collectively damaged psyche prevented
people from communicating with one another, an idea that Eliot explored in many works, including
A Game of Chess (the second part of The Waste Land) and The Hollow Men.
The Power of Literary History
Eliot maintained great reverence for myth and the Western literary canon, and he packed his work
full of allusions, quotations, footnotes, and scholarly exegeses. In The Tradition and the Individual

Talent, an essay first published in 1 9 1 9 , Eliot praises the literary tradition and states that the best
writers are those who write with a sense of continuity with those writers who came before, as if all of
literature constituted a stream in which each new writer must enter and swim. Only the very best
new work will subtly shift the streams current and thus improve the literary tradition. Eliot also
argued that the literary past must be integrated into contemporary poetry. But the poet must guard
against excessive academic knowledge and distill only the most essential bits of the past into a
poem, thereby enlightening readers. The Waste Land juxtaposes fragments of various elements of
literary and mythic traditions with scenes and sounds from modern life. The effect of this poetic
collage is both a reinterpretation of canonical texts and a historical context for his examination of
society and humanity.
The Changing Nature of Gender Roles
Over the course of Eliots life, gender roles and sexuality became increasingly flexible, and Eliot
reflected those changes in his work. In the repressive Victorian era of the nineteenth century,
women were confined to the domestic sphere, sexuality was not discussed or publicly explored,
and a puritanical atmosphere dictated most social interactions. Queen Victorias death
in 1 9 0 1 helped usher in a new era of excess and forthrightness, now called the Edwardian Age,
which lasted until 1 9 1 0 . World War I, from 1 9 1 4 to 1 9 1 8 , further transformed society, as people
felt both increasingly alienated from one another and empowered to break social mores. English
women began agitating in earnest for the right to vote in 1 9 1 8 , and the flappers of the Jazz Age
began smoking and drinking alcohol in public. Women were allowed to attend school, and women
who could afford it continued their education at those universities that began accepting women in
the early twentieth century. Modernist writers created gay and lesbian characters and re-imagined
masculinity and femininity as characteristics people could assume or shrug off rather than as
absolute identities dictated by society.
Eliot simultaneously lauded the end of the Victorian era and expressed concern about the freedoms
inherent in the modern age. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock reflects the feelings of
emasculation experienced by many men as they returned home from World War I to find women
empowered by their new role as wage earners. Prufrock, unable to make a decision, watches
women wander in and out of a room, talking of Michelangelo (1 4 ), and elsewhere admires their
downy, bare arms. A disdain for unchecked sexuality appears in both Sweeney Among the
Nightingales (1 9 1 8 ) and The Waste Land. The latter portrays rape, prostitution, a conversation
about abortion, and other incidences of nonreproductive sexuality. Nevertheless, the poems central
character, Tiresias, is a hermaphroditeand his powers of prophesy and transformation are, in

some sense, due to his male and female genitalia. With Tiresias, Eliot creates a character that
embodies wholeness, represented by the two genders coming together in one body.
Motifs
Fragmentation
Eliot used fragmentation in his poetry both to demonstrate the chaotic state of modern existence
and to juxtapose literary texts against one another. In Eliots view, humanitys psyche had been
shattered by World War I and by the collapse of the British Empire. Collaging bits and pieces of
dialogue, images, scholarly ideas, foreign words, formal styles, and tones within one poetic work
was a way for Eliot to represent humanitys damaged psyche and the modern world, with its
barrage of sensory perceptions. Critics read the following line from The Waste Land as a statement
of Eliots poetic project: These fragments I have shored against my ruins (4 3 1 ). Practically every
line in The Waste Land echoes an academic work or canonical literary text, and many lines also
have long footnotes written by Eliot as an attempt to explain his references and to encourage his
readers to educate themselves by delving deeper into his sources. These echoes and references
are fragments themselves, since Eliot includes only parts, rather than whole texts from the canon.
Using these fragments, Eliot tries to highlight recurrent themes and images in the literary tradition,
as well as to place his ideas about the contemporary state of humanity along the spectrum of
history.
Mythic and Religious Ritual
Eliots tremendous knowledge of myth, religious ritual, academic works, and key books in the
literary tradition informs every aspect of his poetry. He filled his poems with references to both the
obscure and the well known, thereby teaching his readers as he writes. In his notes to The Waste
Land, Eliot explains the crucial role played by religious symbols and myths. He drew heavily from
ancient fertility rituals, in which the fertility of the land was linked to the health of the Fisher King, a
wounded figure who could be healed through the sacrifice of an effigy. The Fisher King is, in turn,
linked to the Holy Grail legends, in which a knight quests to find the grail, the only object capable of
healing the land. Ultimately, ritual fails as the tool for healing the wasteland, even as Eliot presents
alternative religious possibilities, including Hindu chants, Buddhist speeches, and pagan
ceremonies. Later poems take their images almost exclusively from Christianity, such as the
echoes of the Lords Prayer in The Hollow Men and the retelling of the story of the wise men in
Journey of the Magi (1 9 2 7 ).

Infertility
Eliot envisioned the modern world as a wasteland, in which neither the land nor the people could
conceive. In The Waste Land, various characters are sexually frustrated or dysfunctional, unable to
cope with either reproductive or nonreproductive sexuality: the Fisher King represents damaged
sexuality (according to myth, his impotence causes the land to wither and dry up), Tiresias
represents confused or ambiguous sexuality, and the women chattering in A Game of Chess
represent an out-of-control sexuality. World War I not only eradicated an entire generation of young
men in Europe but also ruined the land. Trench warfare and chemical weapons, the two primary
methods by which the war was fought, decimated plant life, leaving behind detritus and carnage. In
The Hollow Men, the speaker discusses the dead land, now filled with stone and cacti. Corpses
salute the stars with their upraised hands, stiffened from rigor mortis. Trying to process the
destruction has caused the speakers mind to become infertile: his head has been filled with straw,
and he is now unable to think properly, to perceive accurately, or to conceive of images or thoughts.
Symbols
Water
In Eliots poetry, water symbolizes both life and death. Eliots characters wait for water to quench
their thirst, watch rivers overflow their banks, cry for rain to quench the dry earth, and pass by fetid
pools of standing water. Although water has the regenerative possibility of restoring life and fertility,
it can also lead to drowning and death, as in the case of Phlebas the sailor from The Waste Land.
Traditionally, water can imply baptism, Christianity, and the figure of Jesus Christ, and Eliot draws
upon these traditional meanings: water cleanses, water provides solace, and water brings relief
elsewhere in The Waste Land and in Little Gidding, the fourth part ofFour Quartets. Prufrock
hears the seductive calls of mermaids as he walks along the shore in The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock, but, like Odysseus in HomersOdyssey (ca. 8 0 0 B . C . E . ), he realizes that a malicious
intent lies behind the sweet voices: the poem concludes we drown (1 3 1 ). Eliot thus cautions us to
beware of simple solutions or cures, for what looks innocuous might turn out to be very dangerous.
The Fisher King
The Fisher King is the central character in The Waste Land. While writing his long poem, Eliot drew
on From Ritual to Romance, a 1 9 2 0 book about the legend of the Holy Grail by Miss Jessie L.
Weston, for many of his symbols and images. Westons book examined the connections between
ancient fertility rites and Christianity, including following the evolution of the Fisher King into early
representations of Jesus Christ as a fish. Traditionally, the impotence or death of the Fisher King

brought unhappiness and famine. Eliot saw the Fisher King as symbolic of humanity, robbed of its
sexual potency in the modern world and connected to the meaninglessness of urban existence. But
the Fisher King also stands in for Christ and other religious figures associated with divine
resurrection and rebirth. The speaker of What the Thunder Said fishes from the banks of the
Thames toward the end of the poem as the thunder sounds Hindu chants into the air. Eliots scene
echoes the scene in the Bible in which Christ performs one of his miracles: Christ manages to feed
his multitude of followers by the Sea of Galilee with just a small amount of fish.
Music and Singing
Like most modernist writers, Eliot was interested in the divide between high and low culture, which
he symbolized using music. He believed that high culture, including art, opera, and drama, was in
decline while popular culture was on the rise. In The Waste Land, Eliot blended high culture with
low culture by juxtaposing lyrics from an opera by Richard Wagner with songs from pubs, American
ragtime, and Australian troops. Eliot splices nursery rhymes with phrases from the Lords Prayer in
The Hollow Men, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is, as the title, implies a song, with
various lines repeated as refrains. That poem ends with the song of mermaids luring humans to
their deaths by drowninga scene that echoes Odysseuss interactions with the Sirens in
the Odyssey. Music thus becomes another way in which Eliot collages and references books from
past literary traditions. Elsewhere Eliot uses lyrics as a kind of chorus, seconding and echoing the
action of the poem, much as the chorus functions in Greek tragedies.

The Waste Land Summary


The poem begins with a section entitled "The Burial of the Dead." In it, the narrator -- perhaps a
representation of Eliot himself -- describes the seasons. Spring brings "memory and desire," and so
the narrator's memory drifts back to times in Munich, to childhood sled rides, and to a possible
romance with a "hyacinth girl." The memories only go so far, however. The narrator is now
surrounded by a desolate land full of "stony rubbish."
He remembers a fortune-teller named Madame Sosostris who said he was "the drowned
Phoenician Sailor" and that he should "fear death by water." Next he finds himself on London
Bridge, surrounded by a crowd of people. He spots a friend of his from wartime, and calls out to
him.
The next section, "A Game of Chess," transports the reader abruptly from the streets of London to a
gilded drawing room, in which sits a rich, jewel-bedecked lady who complains about her nerves and
wonders what to do. The poem drifts again, this time to a pub at closing time in which two Cockney

women gossip. Within a few stanzas, we have moved from the upper crust of society to London's
low-life.
"The Fire Sermon" opens with an image of a river. The narrator sits on the banks and muses on the
deplorable state of the world. As Tiresias, he sees a young "carbuncular" man hop into bed with a
lonely female typist, only to aggressively make love to her and then leave without hesitation. The
poem returns to the river, where maidens sing a song of lament, one of them crying over her loss of
innocence to a similarly lustful man.
"Death by Water," the fourth section of the poem, describes a dead Phoenician lying in the water -perhaps the same drowned sailor of whom Madame Sosostris spoke. "What the Thunder Said"
shifts locales from the sea to rocks and mountains. The narrator cries for rain, and it finally comes.
The thunder that accompanies it ushers in the three-pronged dictum sprung from
the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: "Datta, dayadhvam, damyata": to give, to sympathize, to control.
With these commandments, benediction is possible, despite the collapse of civilization that is under
way -- "London bridge is falling down falling down falling down."
Character List
The Narrator
The most difficult to describe of the poem's characters, he assumes many different shapes and
guises. At times the Narrator seems to be Eliot himself; at other times he stands in for all humanity.
In "The Fire Sermon" he is at one point the Fisher King of the Grail legend, at another the blind
prophet Tiresias. When he seems to reflect Eliot, the extent to which his ruminations are
autobiographical is ambiguous.
Madame Sosostris
A famous clairvoyant referred to in Aldous Huxley's novel Crome Yellow and borrowed by Eliot for
the Tarot card episode. She suffers from a bad cold, but is nonetheless "known to be the wisest
woman in Europe, / With a wicked pack of cards."
Stetson
A friend of the Narrator's, who fought in the war with him. Which war? It is unclear. Perhaps the
Punic War or World War I, or both, or neither.
The Rich Lady
Never referred to by name, she sits in the resplendent drawing room of "A Game of Chess." She
seems to be surrounded by luxury, but unable to appreciate or enjoy it. She might allude to Eliot's
wife Vivienne.

Philomela
A character from Ovid's Metamorphoses. She was raped by Tereus, then, after taking her
vengeance with her sister, morphed into a nightingale.
Themes
Death
Two of the poems sections -- The Burial of the Dead and Death by Water --refer specifically to
this theme. What complicates matters is that death can mean life; in other words, by dying, a being
can pave the way for new lives. Eliot asks his friend Stetson: That corpse you planted last year in
your garden, / Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? Similarly, Christ, by dying,
redeemed humanity and thereby gave new life. The ambiguous passage between life and death
finds an echo in the frequent allusions to Dante, particularly in the Limbo-like vision of the men
flowing across London Bridge and through the modern city.
Rebirth
The Christ images in the poem, along with the many other religious metaphors, posit rebirth and
resurrection as central themes. The Waste Land lies fallow and the Fisher King is impotent; what is
needed is a new beginning. Water, for one, can bring about that rebirth, but it can also destroy.
What the poet must finally turn to is Heaven, in the climactic exchange with the skies: Datta.
Dayadhvam. Damyata. Eliots vision is essentially of a world that is neither dying nor living; to
break the spell, a profound change, perhaps an ineffable one, is required. Hence the prevalence of
Grail imagery in the poem; that holy chalice can restore life and wipe the slate clean; likewise, Eliot
refers frequently to baptisms and to rivers both life-givers, in either spiritual or physical ways.
The Seasons
"The Waste Land" opens with an invocation of April, the cruellest month. That spring be depicted
as cruel is a curious choice on Eliots part, but as a paradox it informs the rest of the poem to a
great degree. What brings life brings also death; the seasons fluctuate, spinning from one state to
another, but, like history, they maintain some sort of stasis; not everything changes. In the end,
Eliots waste land is almost seasonless: devoid of rain, of propagation, of real change. The world
hangs in a perpetual limbo, awaiting the dawn of a new season.
Lust
Perhaps the most famous episode in "The Waste Land" involves a female typists liaison with a
carbuncular man. Eliot depicts the scene as something akin to a rape. This chance sexual
encounter carries with it mythological baggage the violated Philomela, the blind Tiresias who lived
for a time as a woman. Sexuality runs through "The Waste Land," taking center stage as a cause of
calamity in The Fire Sermon. Nonetheless, Eliot defends a moments surrender as a part of
existence in What the Thunder Said. Lust may be a sin, and sex may be too easy and too

rampant in Eliots London, but action is still preferable to inaction. What is needed is sex that
produces life, that rejuvenates, that restores sex, in other words, that is not sterile.
Love
The references to Tristan und Isolde in The Burial of the Dead, to Cleopatra in A Game of
Chess, and to the story of Tereus and Philomela suggest that love, in "The Waste Land," is often
destructive. Tristan and Cleopatra die, while Tereus rapes Philomela, and even the love for the
hyacinth girl leads the poet to see and know nothing."

WILLIAM GOLDING
LORD OF THE FLIES

Context

William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Cornwall, England. Although he tried to write a
novel as early as age twelve, his parents urged him to study the natural sciences. Golding followed
his parents wishes until his second year at Oxford, when he changed his focus to English literature.
After graduating from Oxford, he worked briefly as a theater actor and director, wrote poetry, and
then became a schoolteacher. In 1940, a year after England entered World War II, Golding joined
the Royal Navy, where he served in command of a rocket-launcher and participated in the invasion
of Normandy.
Goldings experience in World War II had a profound effect on his view of humanity and the evils of
which it was capable. After the war, Golding resumed teaching and started to write novels. His first
and greatest success came with Lord of the Flies(1954), which ultimately became a bestseller in
both Britain and the United States after more than twenty publishers rejected it. The novels sales
enabled Golding to retire from teaching and devote himself fully to writing. Golding wrote several
more novels, notably Pincher Martin (1956), and a play, The Brass Butterfly (1958). Although he
never matched the popular and critical success he enjoyed with Lord of the Flies, he remained a
respected and distinguished author for the rest of his life and was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1983. Golding died in 1993, one of the most acclaimed writers of the second half of the
twentieth century.
Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of English schoolboys marooned on a tropical island after
their plane is shot down during a war. Though the novel is fictional, its exploration of the idea of
human evil is at least partly based on Goldings experience with the real-life violence and brutality

of World War II. Free from the rules and structures of civilization and society, the boys on the island
inLord of the Flies descend into savagery. As the boys splinter into factions, some behave
peacefully and work together to maintain order and achieve common goals, while others rebel and
seek only anarchy and violence. In his portrayal of the small world of the island, Golding paints a
broader portrait of the fundamental human struggle between the civilizing instinctthe impulse to
obey rules, behave morally, and act lawfullyand the savage instinctthe impulse to seek brute
power over others, act selfishly, scorn moral rules, and indulge in violence.
Golding employs a relatively straightforward writing style in Lord of the Flies, one that avoids highly
poetic language, lengthy description, and philosophical interludes. Much of the novel is allegorical,
meaning that the characters and objects in the novel are infused with symbolic significance that
conveys the novels central themes and ideas. In portraying the various ways in which the boys on
the island adapt to their new surroundings and react to their new freedom, Golding explores the
broad spectrum of ways in which humans respond to stress, change, and tension.
Readers and critics have interpreted Lord of the Flies in widely varying ways over the years since
its publication. During the 1950s and 1960s, many readings of the novel claimed that Lord of the
Flies dramatizes the history of civilization. Some believed that the novel explores fundamental
religious issues, such as original sin and the nature of good and evil. Others approached Lord of
the Flies through the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who taught that the human
mind was the site of a constant battle among different impulsesthe id (instinctual needs and
desires), the ego (the conscious, rational mind), and the superego (the sense of conscience and
morality). Still others maintained that Golding wrote the novel as a criticism of the political and
social institutions of the West. Ultimately, there is some validity to each of these different readings
and interpretations of Lord of the Flies. Although Goldings story is confined to the microcosm of a
group of boys, it resounds with implications far beyond the bounds of the small island and explores
problems and questions universal to the human experience.

Plot Overview
In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down
over a deserted tropical island. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch shell on the
beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the other boys. Once assembled,
the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their
leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will hunt food for the
entire group.

Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they
return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing ships. The
boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the lenses of Piggys
eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to playing than to monitoring the fire, and the
flames quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the
youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to death.
At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing in the
water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire
and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader,
Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting.
When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to their horror, that the
signal firewhich had been the hunters responsibility to maintainhas burned out. Furious, Ralph
accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the hunters seem gripped
with a strange frenzy, reenacting the chase in a kind of wild dance. Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits
Piggy across the face. Ralph blows the conch shell and reprimands the boys in a speech intended
to restore order. At the meeting, it quickly becomes clear that some of the boys have started to
become afraid. The littlest boys, known as littluns, have been troubled by nightmares from the
beginning, and more and more boys now believe that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking
on the island. The older boys try to convince the others at the meeting to think rationally, asking
where such a monster could possibly hide during the daytime. One of the littluns suggests that it
hides in the seaa proposition that terrifies the entire group.
Not long after the meeting, some military planes engage in a battle high above the island. The boys,
asleep below, do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A parachutist drifts to
earth on the signal-fire mountain, dead. Sam and Eric, the twins responsible for watching the fire at
night, are asleep and do not see the parachutist land. When the twins wake up, they see the
enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it makes. Thinking the
island beast is at hand, they rush back to the camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked
them.
The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster. Jack and Ralph, who are
increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain. They see the silhouette of the parachute from a
distance and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds a meeting at which Jack
and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a coward and that he should be

removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Jack angrily runs away
down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies the remaining boys to build a new
signal fire, this time on the beach rather than on the mountain. They obey, but before they have
finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join Jack.
Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a violent,
ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize the occasion. The hunters then decapitate the sow and place
its head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. Later, encountering the
bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible vision, during which it seems to him that the head is
speaking. The voice, which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of the Flies, says that Simon will
never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints. When he wakes up, he goes to the
mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist. Understanding then that the beast does not exist
externally but rather within each individual boy, Simon travels to the beach to tell the others what he
has seen. But the others are in the midst of a chaotic revelryeven Ralph and Piggy have joined
Jacks feastand when they see Simons shadowy figure emerge from the jungle, they fall upon
him and kill him with their bare hands and teeth.
The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done. Jacks hunters attack them
and their few followers and steal Piggys glasses in the process. Ralphs group travels to Jacks
stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam and Eric tied up and fights
with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down the mountain, killing Piggy
and shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears.
Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while the others hunt him like an animal.
Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding place. Ralph
stays in the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sows head, but eventually, he is forced out
onto the beach, where he knows the other boys will soon arrive to kill him. Ralph collapses in
exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees a British naval officer standing over him. The officers
ship noticed the fire raging in the jungle. The other boys reach the beach and stop in their tracks at
the sight of the officer. Amazed at the spectacle of this group of bloodthirsty, savage children, the
officer asks Ralph to explain. Ralph is overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is safe but, thinking
about what has happened on the island, he begins to weep. The other boys begin to sob as well.
The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their composure.

Analysis of Major Characters

Ralph
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. Ralphs commitment to civilization and morality is strong, and his main wish is to be
rescued and returned to the society of adults. 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.
In the earlier parts of the novel, Ralph is unable to understand why the other boys would give in to
base instincts of bloodlust and barbarism. The sight of the hunters chanting and dancing is baffling
and distasteful to him. 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 and continually pushes the boundaries of his subordinate role in the group. 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.
Simon
Whereas Ralph and Jack stand at opposite ends of the spectrum between civilization and savagery,
Simon stands on an entirely different plane from all the other boys. Simon embodies a kind of
innate, spiritual human goodness that is deeply connected with nature and, in its own way, as
primal as Jacks evil. The other boys abandon moral behavior as soon as civilization is no longer
there to impose it upon them. They are not innately moral; rather, the adult worldthe threat of
punishment for misdeedshas conditioned them to act morally. To an extent, even the seemingly
civilized Ralph and Piggy are products of social conditioning, as we see when they participate in the
hunt-dance. In Goldings view, the human impulse toward civilization is not as deeply rooted as the
human impulse toward savagery. Unlike all the other boys on the island, Simon acts morally not out
of guilt or shame but because he believes in the inherent value of morality. He behaves kindly
toward the younger children, and he is the first to realize the problem posed by the beast and the
Lord of the Fliesthat is, that the monster on the island is not a real, physical beast but rather a
savagery that lurks within each human being. The sows head on the stake symbolizes this idea, as
we see in Simons vision of the head speaking to him. Ultimately, this idea of the inherent evil within
each human being stands as the moral conclusion and central problem of the novel. Against this
idea of evil, Simon represents a contrary idea of essential human goodness. However, his brutal
murder at the hands of the other boys indicates the scarcity of that good amid an overwhelming
abundance of evil.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols


Themes
Civilization vs. Savagery
The central concern of Lord of the Flies is the conflict between two competing impulses that exist
within all human beings: the instinct to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and
value the good of the group against the instinct to gratify ones immediate desires, act violently to
obtain supremacy over others, and enforce ones will. This conflict might be expressed in a number

of ways: civilization vs. savagery, order vs. chaos, reason vs. impulse, law vs. anarchy, or the
broader heading of good vs. evil. Throughout the novel, Golding associates the instinct of
civilization with good and the instinct of savagery with evil.
The conflict between the two instincts is the driving force of the novel, explored through the
dissolution of the young English boys civilized, moral, disciplined behavior as they accustom
themselves to a wild, brutal, barbaric life in the jungle.Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, which
means that Golding conveys many of his main ideas and themes through symbolic characters and
objects. He represents the conflict between civilization and savagery in the conflict between the
novels two main characters: Ralph, the protagonist, who represents order and leadership; and
Jack, the antagonist, who represents savagery and the desire for power.
As the novel progresses, Golding shows how different people feel the influences of the instincts of
civilization and savagery to different degrees. Piggy, for instance, has no savage feelings, while
Roger seems barely capable of comprehending the rules of civilization. Generally, however,
Golding implies that the instinct of savagery is far more primal and fundamental to the human
psyche than the instinct of civilization. Golding sees moral behavior, in many cases, as something
that civilization forces upon the individual rather than a natural expression of human individuality.
When left to their own devices, Golding implies, people naturally revert to cruelty, savagery, and
barbarism. This idea of innate human evil is central to Lord of the Flies, and finds expression in
several important symbols, most notably the beast and the sows head on the stake. Among all the
characters, only Simon seems to possess anything like a natural, innate goodness.
Loss of Innocence
As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved, orderly children longing for rescue to cruel,
bloodthirsty hunters who have no desire to return to civilization, they naturally lose the sense of
innocence that they possessed at the beginning of the novel. The painted savages in Chapter 12
who have hunted, tortured, and killed animals and human beings are a far cry from the guileless
children swimming in the lagoon in Chapter 3. But Golding does not portray this loss of innocence
as something that is done to the children; rather, it results naturally from their increasing openness
to the innate evil and savagery that has always existed within them. Golding implies that civilization
can mitigate but never wipe out the innate evil that exists within all human beings. The forest glade
in which Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of innocence. At first, it is a place of natural
beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the novel, he discovers the bloody sows head
impaled upon a stake in the middle of the clearing. The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted

the paradise that existed beforea powerful symbol of innate human evil disrupting childhood
innocence.
Motifs
Biblical Parallels
Many critics have characterized Lord of the Flies as a retelling of episodes from the Bible. While
that description may be an oversimplification, the novel does echo certain Christian images and
themes. Golding does not make any explicit or direct connections to Christian symbolism in Lord of
the Flies; instead, these biblical parallels function as a kind of subtle motif in the novel, adding
thematic resonance to the main ideas of the story. The island itself, particularly Simons glade in the
forest, recalls the Garden of Eden in its status as an originally pristine place that is corrupted by the
introduction of evil. Similarly, we may see the Lord of the Flies as a representation of the devil, for it
works to promote evil among humankind. Furthermore, many critics have drawn strong parallels
between Simon and Jesus. Among the boys, Simon is the one who arrives at the moral truth of the
novel, and the other boys kill him sacrificially as a consequence of having discovered this truth.
Simons conversation with the Lord of the Flies also parallels the confrontation between Jesus and
the devil during Jesus forty days in the wilderness, as told in the Christian Gospels.
However, it is important to remember that the parallels between Simon and Christ are not complete,
and that there are limits to reading Lord of the Flies purely as a Christian allegory. Save for Simons
two uncanny predictions of the future, he lacks the supernatural connection to God that Jesus has
in Christian tradition. Although Simon is wise in many ways, his death does not bring salvation to
the island; rather, his death plunges the island deeper into savagery and moral guilt. Moreover,
Simon dies before he is able to tell the boys the truth he has discovered. Jesus, in contrast, was
killed while spreading his moral philosophy. In this way, Simonand Lord of the Flies as a whole
echoes Christian ideas and themes without developing explicit, precise parallels with them. The
novels biblical parallels enhance its moral themes but are not necessarily the primary key to
interpreting the story.
Symbols
The Conch Shell
Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start of the novel and use it to
summon the boys together after the crash separates them. Used in this capacity, the conch shell
becomes a powerful symbol of civilization and order in the novel. The shell effectively governs the
boys meetings, for the boy who holds the shell holds the right to speak. In this regard, the shell is

more than a symbolit is an actual vessel of political legitimacy and democratic power. As the
island civilization erodes and the boys descend into savagery, the conch shell loses its power and
influence among them. Ralph clutches the shell desperately when he talks about his role in
murdering Simon. Later, the other boys ignore Ralph and throw stones at him when he attempts to
blow the conch in Jacks camp. The boulder that Roger rolls onto Piggy also crushes the conch
shell, signifying the demise of the civilized instinct among almost all the boys on the island.
Piggys Glasses
Piggy is the most intelligent, rational boy in the group, and his glasses represent the power of
science and intellectual endeavor in society. This symbolic significance is clear from the start of the
novel, when the boys use the lenses from Piggys glasses to focus the sunlight and start a fire.
When Jacks hunters raid Ralphs camp and steal the glasses, the savages effectively take the
power to make fire, leaving Ralphs group helpless.
The Signal Fire
The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to attract the notice of passing ships
that might be able to rescue the boys. As a result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of the boys
connection to civilization. In the early parts of the novel, the fact that the boys maintain the fire is a
sign that they want to be rescued and return to society. When the fire burns low or goes out, we
realize that the boys have lost sight of their desire to be rescued and have accepted their savage
lives on the island. The signal fire thus functions as a kind of measurement of the strength of the
civilized instinct remaining on the island. Ironically, at the end of the novel, a fire finally summons a
ship to the island, but not the signal fire. Instead, it is the fire of savagerythe forest fire Jacks
gang starts as part of his quest to hunt and kill Ralph.
The Beast
The imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stands for the primal instinct of savagery that exists
within all human beings. The boys are afraid of the beast, but only Simon reaches the realization
that they fear the beast because it exists within each of them. As the boys grow more savage, their
belief in the beast grows stronger. By the end of the novel, the boys are leaving it sacrifices and
treating it as a totemic god. The boys behavior is what brings the beast into existence, so the more
savagely the boys act, the more real the beast seems to become.

The Lord of the Flies


The Lord of the Flies is the bloody, severed sows head that Jack impales on a stake in the forest
glade as an offering to the beast. This complicated symbol becomes the most important image in
the novel when Simon confronts the sows head in the glade and it seems to speak to him, telling
him that evil lies within every human heart and promising to have some fun with him. (This fun
foreshadows Simons death in the following chapter.) In this way, the Lord of the Flies becomes
both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure
who evokes the beast within each human being. Looking at the novel in the context of biblical
parallels, the Lord of the Flies recalls the devil, just as Simon recalls Jesus. In fact, the name Lord
of the Flies is a literal translation of the name of the biblical name Beelzebub, a powerful demon in
hell sometimes thought to be the devil himself.
Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and Roger
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, and many of its characters signify important ideas or
themes. Ralph represents order, leadership, and civilization. Piggy represents the scientific and
intellectual aspects of civilization. Jack represents unbridled savagery and the desire for power.
Simon represents natural human goodness. Roger represents brutality and bloodlust at their most
extreme. To the extent that the boys society resembles a political state, the littluns might be seen
as the common people, while the older boys represent the ruling classes and political leaders. The
relationships that develop between the older boys and the younger ones emphasize the older boys
connection to either the civilized or the savage instinct: civilized boys like Ralph and Simon use
their power to protect the younger boys and advance the good of the group; savage boys like Jack
and Roger use their power to gratify their own desires, treating the littler boys as objects for their
own amusement.

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