The Tell-Tale Heart , Edgar Allan Poe

Poe uses his words economically in the “Tell-Tale Heart”—it is one of his shortest stories—to
provide a study of paranoia and mental deterioration. Poe strips the story of excess detail as a
way to heighten the murderer’s obsession with specific and unadorned entities: the old man’s
eye, the heartbeat, and his own claim to sanity. Poe’s economic style and pointed language
thus contribute to the narrative content, and perhaps this association of form and content truly
exemplifies paranoia. Even Poe himself, like the beating heart, is complicit in the plot to catch
the narrator in his evil game.

As a study in paranoia, this story illuminates the psychological contradictions that contribute
to a murderous profile. For example, the narrator admits, in the first sentence, to being
dreadfully nervous, yet he is unable to comprehend why he should be thought mad. He
articulates his self-defense against madness in terms of heightened sensory capacity. Unlike
the similarly nervous and hypersensitive Roderick Usher in “The Fall of the House of Usher,”
who admits that he feels mentally unwell, the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” views his
hypersensitivity as proof of his sanity, not a symptom of madness. This special knowledge
enables the narrator to tell this tale in a precise and complete manner, and he uses the stylistic
tools of narration for the purposes of his own sanity plea. However, what makes this narrator
mad—and most unlike Poe—is that he fails to comprehend the coupling of narrative form and
content. He masters precise form, but he unwittingly lays out a tale of murder that betrays the
madness he wants to deny.

Another contradiction central to the story involves the tension between the narrator’s
capacities for love and hate. Poe explores here a psychological mystery—that people
sometimes harm those whom they love or need in their lives. Poe examines this paradox half a
century before Sigmund Freud made it a leading concept in his theories of the mind. Poe’s
narrator loves the old man. He is not greedy for the old man’s wealth, nor vengeful because of
any slight. The narrator thus eliminates motives that might normally inspire such a violent
murder. As he proclaims his own sanity, the narrator fixates on the old man’s vulture-eye. He
reduces the old man to the pale blue of his eye in obsessive fashion. He wants to separate the
man from his “Evil Eye” so he can spare the man the burden of guilt that he attributes to the
eye itself. The narrator fails to see that the eye is the “I” of the old man, an inherent part of his
identity that cannot be isolated as the narrator perversely imagines.

The murder of the old man illustrates the extent to which the narrator separates the old man’s
identity from his physical eye. The narrator sees the eye as completely separate from the man,
and as a result, he is capable of murdering him while maintaining that he loves him. The
narrator’s desire to eradicate the man’s eye motivates his murder, but the narrator does not
acknowledge that this act will end the man’s life. By dismembering his victim, the narrator
further deprives the old man of his humanity. The narrator confirms his conception of the old
man’s eye as separate from the man by ending the man altogether and turning him into so
many parts. That strategy turns against him when his mind imagines other parts of the old
man’s body working against him.

The narrator’s newly heightened sensitivity to sound ultimately overcomes him, as he proves
unwilling or unable to distinguish between real and imagined sounds. Because of his warped
sense of reality, he obsesses over the low beats of the man’s heart yet shows little concern
about the man’s shrieks, which are loud enough both to attract a neighbor’s attention and to
draw the police to the scene of the crime. The police do not perform a traditional, judgmental
role in this story. Ironically, they aren’t terrifying agents of authority or brutality. Poe’s
interest is less in external forms of power than in the power that pathologies of the mind can
hold over an individual. The narrator’s paranoia and guilt make it inevitable that he will give
himself away. The police arrive on the scene to give him the opportunity to betray himself.
The more the narrator proclaims his own cool manner, the more he cannot escape the beating
of his own heart, which he mistakes for the beating of the old man’s heart. As he confesses to
the crime in the final sentence, he addresses the policemen as “[v]illains,” indicating his
inability to distinguish between their real identity and his own villainy.

Definition of hyperaesthesia - excessive physical sensitivity, especially of the skin.

Love and Hate

Poe explores the similarity of love and hate in many stories, especially “The Tell-Tale Heart”
and “William Wilson.” Poe portrays the psychological complexity of these two supposedly
opposite emotions, emphasizing the ways they enigmatically blend into each other. Poe’s
psychological insight anticipates the theories of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian founder of
psychoanalysis and one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers. Poe, like Freud,
interpreted love and hate as universal emotions, thereby severed from the specific conditions
of time and space.

The Gothic terror is the result of the narrator’s simultaneous love for himself and hatred of his
rival. The double shows that love and hate are inseparable and suggests that they may simply
be two forms of the most intense form of human emotion. The narrator loves himself, but
when feelings of self-hatred arise in him, he projects that hatred onto an imaginary copy of
himself. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator confesses a love for an old man whom he then
violently murders and dismembers. The narrator reveals his madness by attempting to
separate the person of the old man, whom he loves, from the old man’s supposedly evil eye,
which triggers the narrator’s hatred. This delusional separation enables the narrator to remain
unaware of the paradox of claiming to have loved his victim.

Eyes

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator fixates on the idea that an old man is looking at him
with the Evil Eye and transmitting a curse on him. At the same time that the narrator obsesses
over the eye, he wants to separate the old man from the Evil Eye in order to spare the old man
from his violent reaction to the eye. The narrator reveals his inability to recognize that the
“eye” is the “I,” or identity, of the old man. The eyes symbolize the essence of human
identity, which cannot be separated from the body. The eye cannot be killed without causing
the man to die. Similarly, in “Ligeia,” the narrator is unable to see behind Ligeia’s dark and
mysterious eyes. Because the eyes symbolize her Gothic identity, they conceal Ligeia’s
mysterious knowledge, a knowledge that both guides and haunts the narrator.
Nature – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature (1836) by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803882) is the key statement of the principles
informing New England transcendentalism. The transcendentalist movement was a highly
diverse phenomenon whose representatives addressed themselves in many voices and from
many different perspectives to every important concern agitating New England life and
thought in the decades preceding the Civil War. In view of this diversity, it may seem
hazardous to claim one text as central to the movement. Nature owes its pivotal position to
Emerson's searching exploration and provocative expression of the philosophical principles
that most vitally affected transcendentalist thoughthether that thought addressed itself to
religious, literary, social, or political questions. Not surprisingly, Nature has often been called
the "manifesto" of transcendentalism.

Nature is an essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published anonymously in 1836. It is in

this essay that the foundation of transcendentalism is put forth, a belief system that espouses a
non-traditional appreciation of nature.[1] Transcendentalism suggests that divinity suffuses all
nature, and speaks to the notion that we can only understand reality through studying nature.[2]
A visit to the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris inspired a set of lectures
delivered in Boston and subsequently the ideas leading to the publication of Nature.

Within this essay, Emerson divides nature into four usages; Commodity, Beauty, Language
and Discipline. These distinctions define the ways by which humans use nature for their basic
needs, their desire for delight, their communication with one another and their understanding
of the world.[3]

Henry David Thoreau had read "Nature" as a senior at Harvard College and took it to heart. It
eventually became an essential influence for Thoreau's later writings, including his seminal
Walden. In fact, Thoreau wrote Walden while living in a self-built cabin on land that Emerson
owned. Their longstanding acquaintance offered Thoreau great encouragement in pursuing his
desire to be a published author.[4]

Emerson followed the success of this essay with a famous speech entitled "The American
Scholar". These two works laid the foundation for both his new philosophy and his literary
career.

In “Nature,” Emerson lays out a problem that he attempts to solve throughout the essay: that
humans do not fully accept nature’s beauty and all that it has to offer. According to Emerson,
people are distracted by the world around them; nature gives to humans, but humans do not
reciprocate. Emerson breaks his essay into eight sections—–Nature, Commodity, Beauty,
Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit and Prospects—–each of which sheds a different
perspective on the relationship between humans and nature.

According to Emerson, humans must take themselves away from society’s flaws and
distractions in order to experience the “wholeness” with nature for which they are naturally
suited. Emerson believes that solitude is the only way humans can fully adhere to what nature
has to offer. Reflecting upon this idea of solitude, and humans' search for it, Emerson states,
“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am
not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone,
let him look at the stars.” Clearly, a person must allow nature to “take him away,” society can
destroy humans' wholeness. Nature and humans must create a reciprocal relationship,
“Nature, in its ministry to man, is only the material, but is also the process and the result. All
the parts incessantly work into each other’s hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the
seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other
side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal;
and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man,” as Jefferson says, nature
and humans need each other to be beneficial. This relationship that Emerson depicts is
somewhat spiritual; humans must recognize the spirit of nature, and accept it as the Universal
Being. “Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or
bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is
obedient.” Emerson explains that nature is not “fixed or fluid;” to a pure spirit, nature is
everything.

Although highly metaphorical, “Nature” creates such a different perspective towards one's
view of nature. Emerson abstractly speaks to everyone; metaphorically creating common
ground.

Emerson uses spirituality as a major theme in his essay, “Nature”. Emerson believed in
reimagining the divine as something large and visible, which he referred to as nature; such an
idea is known as transcendentalism, in which one perceives anew God and their body, and
becomes one with their surroundings. Emerson confidently exemplifies transcendentalism,
stating, “From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid
transformations: the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the
morning wind”, proving that humans and wind are one. Emerson referred to nature as the
“Universal Being”; he believed that there was a spiritual sense of the natural world around
him. Depicting this sense of “Universal Being”, Emerson states, “The aspect of nature is
devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the
breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship”.

According to Emerson, there were three spiritual problems addressed about nature for humans
to solve, “What is matter? Whence is it? And Whereto?”. What is matter? Matter is a
phenomenon, not a substance; rather, nature is something that is experienced by humans, and
grows with humans' emotions. Whence is it and Whereto? Such questions can be answered
with a single answer, nature’s spirit is expressed through humans, “Therefore, that spirit, that
is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us”, states
Emerson. Emerson clearly depicts that everything must be spiritual and moral, in which there
should be goodness between nature and humans.

1. Nature: it is an experience of solitude. He first notes that when one wants to be alone,
one can look at the stars because they inspire a feeling of respect, because they remain
inaccessible. He adds: "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would
men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of
God which had been shown!" All the objects in nature entail such an impression of wisdom,
happiness and simplicity.

Emerson insists on the importance of this link between man and nature. He says: "His
intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a
wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows." This power of ecstasy is not due
only to nature, but to the human, to the harmony between the two. In fact, on contact with
nature, we become an integral part of God.
Finally, Emerson adds that we have to use the pleasure of nature with some moderation
because "Nature always wears the colors of the spirit".

2. Commodity: Nature is perfectly fitted for human beings, as Emerson said: "All the parts
incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the
sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the
planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus
the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man".

Emerson seems to have an idyllic vision of nature as something which is alive and surrounds
men and which is at their service. However, his vision does not reject industry as being in
contradiction with nature: for him, both are complementary.

3. Beauty: he divides the latter into three elements: first, beauty as a pleasure in perceiving
natural forms, as a relief for men. Then, beauty as "the mark God sets upon virtue".
Concerning this aspect, he provides a really romantic explanation of the phenomenon, when
he says, for instance, that he sees beauty and virtue "when Leonidas and his three hundred
martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and look at them once in
the steep defile of Thermopylae". To conclude, he considers beauty as an object of the
intellect, saying for instance that "The production of a work of art throws a light upon the
mystery of humanity".

His conceptions of values are really close to those of the Greeks: for him Truth, Goodness and
Beauty are the same thing ("Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the
same All"), as they are for Plato.

4. Language: for Emerson, "Language is a third use which Nature subserves to man". First,
he notes that words are signs of natural facts. For instance, "Right means straight; wrong
means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind; transgression, the crossing of a line". Then, he
realizes the existence of a universal symbolism, when he says: "Every natural fact is a symbol
of some spiritual fact". This can be compared to the symbolism in poetry, like that of Paul
Verlaine, when the latter writes, for instance "your soul is a selected landscape" [votre âme
est un paysage choisi, Fêtes Galantes].

5. Discipline: Every material event is a lesson which the soul has to take as a spiritual lesson.
Discipline can be defined as a capacity to make one's actions dependent on some key
principles. We can take the example of the ploughman: his activity is always linked to nature,
to the season. The ploughman has to follow the constancy of nature as a discipline to achieve
his work. Actually, men have to be inspired by nature in their moral being and follow nature's
principles, like resistance or inertia.

Another important idea in this chapter is the pragmatism demanded by Emerson: his idealism
is a practical idealism when he says: "good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless
they be executed". We can compare his thought with that of the 20th century German thinker
and sociologist Mannheim: a utopia only exists if it is implemented.

To conclude, in this chapter, he opposes the philosophy of the Ancients when he says:
"Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly
as the ass on which the Saviour rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material
which he may mould into what is useful". Whereas the Ancients considered man as one
element among others in the Cosmos, Emerson is also heir to the galileo-cartesian revolution
in which man stopped considering himself as an element like any other in nature, but as the
master and owner of it (Descartes). Like Bacon, Emerson thinks that we have to question
nature to make it confess its secrets.

6. Idealism: Emerson is opposed to a Christian vision of nature. In Genesis, after the fall of
Adam and Eve from Eden, God says "cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall
eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall
eat the plants of the field". Adam will have to work to harvest the fruits of the soil. On the
contrary, Emerson does not consider nature as miserly or cursed, but in the service of man.

7. Spirit: The essential for man is to recognize the Spirit in nature.

8. Prospects: Emerson concludes his essay by offering to build man's spirituality by a new
vision of nature.

We may observe that the US was the first country to open National Parks to preserve nature.
This is characteristic of an essentially American vision of the subject. Indeed, the first
American settlers were confronted with a virgin space, a nature in a state of wildness. This
also represents an important value in Americans thoughout this period.

Emerson raises a really current issue when he refers to the benefits of nature on the human
soul, when he explains that nature helps to free us from daily worries. For instance, in the
chapter about Beauty, he says: "The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of
the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds
himself (...)We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough". But, in cities today,
everybody is not able to "see far enough", to be in contact with nature: trees are sparse, forests
even more and sometimes, even the sky is not accessible because of pollution. In the chapter
Language, he says that the life of cities is artificial and curtailed. In the chapter about nature,
he writes that "In the woods, we return to reason and faith. (...)Standing on the bare ground,
-- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism
vanishes", he raises a real problem: are people who do not have access to nature condemned
never to return to reason, nor escape mean egotism?

When studying Thoreau's philosophy of Nature and Transcendentalism, it could be interesting

to emphasize the influence of Emerson's work on the definition of an American identity. In
his essay Experience, he asks "Where do we find ourselves?" and an answer might be that the
American philosophy is based on the concept of the "common". Indeed, the independence of
American thought requested by Emerson is a claiming of the common. In The American
Scholar, he specifies: "I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy
or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provençal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and
sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the
antique and future worlds». This demand for the popular, the common is built in opposition
with the elitism of European culture. It is not an answer to the problem of knowledge, but a
means to re-think the question of the relationship with the world. According to Emerson,
America has the capacity to re-invent tragedy, as it can re-invent Kantian philosophy,
following its own forms.

Emerson also claims for the pursuit of a better me, an improvement of the self, as in Plato's
philosophy, but with the new idea of an improvement, a change, in daily life, by the
intelligibility of the daily, the common, the concrete. He insists on the fact that perceptions
are more reliable than thoughts: there exists a world of thinking as in the cavern of Plato, but
the only world where I can change things is the common world. Here lies the optimism of
Emerson.

In Emerson's philosophy, the original America does not exist and never existed, and
Americans are finally not settlers but migrants (Thoreau says in Walden: « I left the woods for
as good a reason as I went there »). Emerson and Thoreau are not philosophers of the
American identity, but of migration. Indeed, today, the process of migration is really better
accepted in the United States than in Europe, for instance. American people do not hesitate to
move from one end of the United States to the other for their work or to start a new job.

Emerson refuses philanthropy, not from an egoistic point of view, but because he considers
that "a charitable dollar is a mean dollar", because it is given to a person in a context of
inequality, thus maintaining the latter in a state of inferiority. He refuses a society where
giving alms is a necessity. As we have seen in the chapter concerning discipline, Emerson
defends a practical idealism, and so is against charity and in favor of social action.

H. D. Thoreau – Walden from Solitude

Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an American book written by
noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The work is part personal declaration of
independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-
reliance.[2] First published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two
years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland
owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The
book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to
symbolize human development.

By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of

society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's
other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central
theme of the American Romantic Period. As Thoreau made clear in his book, his cabin was
not in wilderness but at the edge of town, about two miles (3 km) from his family home.

"Walden is a difficult book to read for three reasons: First, it was written by a gifted writer
who uses surgically precise language, extended, allegorical metaphors, long and complex
paragraphs and sentences, and vivid, detailed, and insightful descriptions. Thoreau does not
hesitate to use metaphors, allusions, understatement, hyperbole, personification, irony, satire,
metonymy, synecdoche, and oxymorons, and he can shift from a scientific to a transcendental
point of view in mid-sentence. Second, its logic is based on a different understanding of life,
quite contrary to what most people would call common sense. Ironically, this logic is based on
what most people say they believe. Thoreau, recognizing this, fills Walden with sarcasm,
paradoxes, and double entendres. He likes to tease, challenge, and even fool his readers. And
third, quite often any words would be inadequate at expressing many of Thoreau's non-verbal
insights into truth. Thoreau must use non-literal language to express these notions, and the
reader must reach out to understand."
— Ken Kifer[9]
Walden emphasizes the importance of solitude, contemplation, and closeness to nature in
transcending the "desperate" existence that, he argues, is the lot of most people. The book is
not a traditional autobiography, but combines autobiography with a social critique of
contemporary Western culture's consumerist and materialist attitudes and its distance from
and destruction of nature. That the book is not simply a criticism of society, but also an
attempt to engage creatively with the better aspects of contemporary culture, is suggested both
by Thoreau's proximity to Concord society and by his admiration for classical literature.
There are signs of ambiguity, or an attempt to see an alternative side of something common.
Some of the major themes that are present within the text are:

•Self Reliance: Thoreau constantly refuses to be in "need" of the companionship of others.

Though he realizes its significance and importance, he thinks it unnecessary to always be in
search for it. Self-reliance, to him, is economic and social and is a principle that in terms of
financial and interpersonal relations is more valuable than anything. To Thoreau, self-reliance
can be both spiritual as well as economic. Connection to transcendentalism and to Emerson's
essay.

•Simplicity: simplicity seems to be Thoreau's model for life. IT is philosophical and necessity
to him. Throughout the book, Thoreau constantly seeks to simplify his lifestyle: he patches his
clothes rather than buy new ones, he minimizes his consumer activity, and relies on leisure
time and on himself for everything.

•Progress: In a world where everyone and everything is eager to advance in terms of

progress, Thoreau finds it stubborn and skeptical to think that any outward improvement of
life can bring inner peace and contentment.

•The need for spiritual awakening

•Man as part of nature

•Nature and its reflection of human emotions

•The state as unjust and corrupt

The Importance of Self-Reliance

Four years before Thoreau embarked on his Walden project, his great teacher and role model
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an enormously influential essay entitled “Self-Reliance.” It can
be seen as a statement of the philosophical ideals that Thoreau’s experiment is meant to put
into practice. Certainly self-reliance is economic and social in Walden Pond: it is the principle
that in matters of financial and interpersonal relations, independence is more valuable than
neediness. Thus Thoreau dwells on the contentment of his solitude, on his finding
entertainment in the laugh of the loon and the march of the ants rather than in balls,
marketplaces, or salons. He does not disdain human companionship; in fact he values it highly
when it comes on his own terms, as when his philosopher or poet friends come to call. He
simply refuses to need human society. Similarly, in economic affairs he is almost obsessed
with the idea that he can support himself through his own labor, producing more than he
consumes, and working to produce a profit. Thoreau does not simply report on the results of
his accounting, but gives us a detailed list of expenditures and income. How much money he
spent on salt from 1845 to 1847 may seem trivial, but for him it is not. Rather it is proof that,
when everything is added up, he is a giver rather than a taker in the economic game of life.

As Emerson’s essay details, self-reliance can be spiritual as well as economic, and Thoreau
follows Emerson in exploring the higher dimensions of individualism. In Transcendentalist
thought the self is the absolute center of reality; everything external is an emanation of the
self that takes its reality from our inner selves. Self-reliance thus refers not just to paying
one’s own bills, but also more philosophically to the way the natural world and humankind
rely on the self to exist. This duality explains the connection between Thoreau the accountant
and Thoreau the poet, and shows why the man who is so interested in pinching pennies is the
same man who exults lyrically over a partridge or a winter sky. They are both products of
self-reliance, since the economizing that allows Thoreau to live on Walden Pond also allows
him to feel one with nature, to feel as though it is part of his own soul.

The Value of Simplicity

Simplicity is more than a mode of life for Thoreau; it is a philosophical ideal as well. In his
“Economy” chapter, Thoreau asserts that a feeling of dissatisfaction with one’s possessions
can be resolved in two ways: one may acquire more, or reduce one’s desires. Thoreau looks
around at his fellow Concord residents and finds them taking the first path, devoting their
energies to making mortgage payments and buying the latest fashions. He prefers to take the
second path of radically minimizing his consumer activity. Thoreau patches his clothes
instead of buying new ones and dispenses with all accessories he finds unnecessary. For
Thoreau, anything more than what is useful is not just an extravagance, but a real impediment
and disadvantage. He builds his own shack instead of getting a bank loan to buy one, and
enjoys the leisure time that he can afford by renouncing larger expenditures. Ironically, he
points out, those who pursue more impressive possessions actually have fewer possessions
than he does, since he owns his house outright, while theirs are technically held by mortgage
companies. He argues that the simplification of one’s lifestyle does not hinder such pleasures
as owning one’s residence, but on the contrary, facilitates them.

Another irony of Thoreau’s simplification campaign is that his literary style, while concise, is
far from simple. It contains witticisms, double meanings, and puns that are not at all the kind
of New England deadpan literalism that might pass for literary simplicity. Despite its
minimalist message, Walden is an elevated text that would have been much more accessible to
educated city-dwellers than to the predominantly uneducated country-dwellers.

The Illusion of Progress

Living in a culture fascinated by the idea of progress represented by technological, economic,

and territorial advances, Thoreau is stubbornly skeptical of the idea that any outward
improvement of life can bring the inner peace and contentment he craves. In an era of
enormous capitalist expansion, Thoreau is doggedly anti-consumption, and in a time of
pioneer migrations he lauds the pleasures of staying put. In a century notorious for its
smugness toward all that preceded it, Thoreau points out the stifling conventionality and
constraining labor conditions that made nineteenth-century progress possible.

One clear illustration of Thoreau’s resistance to progress is his criticism of the train, which
throughout Europe and America was a symbol of the wonders and advantages of
technological progress. Although he enjoys imagining the local Fitchburg train as a mythical
roaring beast in the chapter entitled “Sounds,” he generally seems peeved by the
encroachment of the railway upon the rustic calm of Walden Pond. Like Tolstoy in Russia,
Thoreau in the United States dissents from his society’s enthusiasm for this innovation in
transportation, seeing it rather as a false idol of social progress. It moves people from one
point to another faster, but Thoreau has little use for travel anyway, asking the reason for
going off “to count the cats in Zanzibar.” It is far better for him to go vegetate in a little corner
of the woods for two years than to commute from place to place unreflectively.

Thoreau is skeptical, as well, of the change in popular mindset brought by train travel. “Have
not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented?” he asks with
scarcely concealed irony, as if punctuality were the greatest virtue progress can offer. People
“talk and think faster in the depot” than they did earlier in stagecoach offices, but here again,
speedy talk and quick thinking are hardly preferable to thoughtful speech and deep thinking.
Trains, like all technological “improvements” give people an illusion of heightened freedom,
but in fact represent a new servitude, since one must always be subservient to fixed train
schedules and routes. For Thoreau, the train has given us a new illusion of a controlling
destiny: “We have constructed a fate, a new Atropos, that never turns aside.” As the Greek
goddess Atropos worked—she determined the length of human lives and could never be
swayed (her name means “unswerving”)—so too does the train chug along on its fixed path
and make us believe that our lives must too.

Summary: Solitude

Thoreau describes a “delicious evening” in which he feels at one with nature, “a part of
herself.” It is cool and windy, but nevertheless the bullfrogs and night animals give it a special
charm. When he returns to his home, he finds that visitors have passed by and left small gifts
and tokens. Thoreau remarks that even though his closest neighbor is only a mile away, he
may as well be in Asia or Africa, so great is his feeling of solitude. Paradoxically, he is not
alone in his solitude, since he is “suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in
Nature . . . as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant.” It is not
that he is giving up society, but rather that he is exchanging the “insignificant” society of
humans for the superior society of nature. He explains that loneliness can occur even amid
companions if one’s heart is not open to them. Thoreau meditates on the deep pleasure he
feels in escaping the gossips of the town. Instead of their poisonous company, he has the
company of an old settler who lives nearby and tells him mystical stories of “old time and
new eternity,” and the company of an old woman whose “memory runs back farther than
mythology.” It is unclear whether these companions are real or imaginary. Thoreau again
praises the benefits of nature and of his deep communion with it. He maintains that the only
medicine he needs in life is a draught of morning air.

Analysis

While the preceding chapter on reading emphasizes the connections between the individual
and society (if not the inferior society of Concord, then the grand society of great past
authors), these two chapters focus on the individual by himself. Yet, paradoxically, this
removal from society does not mean that Thoreau is alone, for he continually asserts that
nature offers better society than humans do. What Thoreau means by “solitude,” we discover,
is not loneliness or isolation, but rather self-communion and introspection. It has little to do
with the physical proximity of others, since he says that a man can be lonely when surrounded
by others if he does not feel real companionship with them.
Solitude is thus more a state of mind than an actual physical circumstance, and for Thoreau it
approaches a mystical state. Solitude means that he is on his own spiritually, confronting the
full array of nature’s bounty without any intermediaries. The importance of worldly affairs,
even the ones that occupy him in the first chapters, fades. Far less activity, whether physical
or mental, occupies these chapters, than had occupied earlier ones. Thoreau is emptying his
life of busy work in order to confront the reality of the cosmos. There are no more messages
from great minds to decipher; Thoreau here does not listen to another’s words or heed
another’s authority, but rather perceives empty sounds like the hooting of owls, the scream of
the Fitchburg train, and the bells of the local church. These sounds are different from the
words of Aeschylus and Homer mentioned in the last chapter not only because they are
audible rather than silent, but also because they have no wisdom or message to convey. The
wail of the train does not signify anything; it merely wails. The sparrow chirps, but there is no
clue as to what, if anything, it wishes to communicate.

Bartleby, the scrivener - Melville

"Bartleby the Scrivener" is one of Melville's most famous stories. It is also one of the most
difficult to interpret. For decades, critics have argued over numerous interpretations of the
story.

The plot is deceptively simple. The Lawyer, a well-established man of sixty working on Wall
Street, hires a copyist—seemingly no different from any other copyist, though the Lawyer is
well-accustomed to quirky copyists. But Bartleby is different. Bartleby's initial response of "I
would prefer not to," seems innocent at first, but soon it becomes a mantra, a slogan that is an
essential part of Bartleby's character. It is, as the Lawyer points out, a form of "passive
resistance."

Bartleby's quiet, polite, but firm refusal to do even the most routine tasks asked of him has
always been the main source of puzzlement. Bartleby has been compared to philosophers
ranging from Cicero, whose bust rests a few inches above the Lawyer's head in his office, to
Mahatma Gandhi. His refusal of the Lawyer's requests has been read as a critique of the
growing materialism of American culture at this time. It is significant that the Lawyer's office
is on Wall Street; in fact, the subtitle of "Bartleby" is "A Story of Wall Street." Wall Street
was at this time becoming the hub of financial activity in the United States, and Melville (as
well as other authors, including Edgar Allan Poe) were quick to note the emerging importance
of money and its management in American life. Under this reading, Bartleby's stubborn
refusal to do what is asked of him amounts to a kind of heroic opposition to economic control.

But if this interpretation is correct—if Melville intended such a reading—it seems to be an

extremely subtle theme, since the Lawyer never really contemplates Bartleby's refusal to be a
working member of society. He is simply amazed by Bartleby's refusal to do anything, even
eat, it seems, or find a place to live. Throughout the story, Bartleby simply exists; he does do
some writing, but eventually he even gives that up in favor of staring at the wall. There are
many more interpretations of Bartleby and the story, which will be discussed in the next
section. It is important to note the other characters in the story, as well as Melville's style.

Aside from the Lawyer and Bartleby, the only other characters in the story are Turkey,
Nippers and Ginger Nut. Turkey and Nippers are the most important. Neither of their
nicknames appears to really fit their character. Turkey does not seem to resemble a turkey in
any way, unless his wrinkled skin, perhaps turned red when he has one of his characteristic
fits, makes him look like he has a turkey's neck. Nippers might be so named because he is ill-
tempered and "nippy" in the morning, but this too seems like a rather glib interpretation.
Melville seems to have named the characters in a way that makes them memorable, but in a
way that also alienates them somewhat; by refusing to give them real names, Melville
emphasizes the fact that they can easily be defined by their function, behavior or appearance
—each is just another nameless worker.

Turkey and Nippers are also reminiscent of nursery rhyme or fairy tale characters, partially
due to their strange names, but also in the way their behavior complements one another.
Turkey is a good worker in the morning, while Nippers grumbles over a sour stomach and
plays with his desk. In the afternoon, Turkey is red-faced and angry, making blots on his
copies, while Nippers works quietly and diligently. As the Lawyer points out, they relieve
each other like guards. They are the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of the Wall Street world.

Some critics have proposed that the Lawyer is a "collector" of sorts; that is, he collects
"characters" in the from of strange scriveners: "I have known very many of them and, if I
pleased, could relate [diverse] histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and
sentimental souls might weep." Bartleby, then, is the "prize" of the Lawyer's collection, the
finest tale: the Lawyer says, "I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages
in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener, the strangest I ever saw, or heard of." Under this
reading, the Lawyer seems a little cold in his recollection—as if Bartleby were no more than
an interesting specimen of an insect. The role of the Lawyer is just one of the many hotly
debated aspects of the story. Of particular interest is the question of whether the Lawyer is
ultimately a friend or foe to Bartleby. His treatment of Bartleby can be read both as
sympathetic, pitying, or cold, depending on one's interpretation. Some readers simply resign
themselves to the fact that nothing in Melville is set in such black-and-white terms.

Bartleby

For decades, literary critics have argued over how to interpret the character of Bartleby from
"Bartleby the Scrivener" (1853). At first glance, he seems to have little or no character to
speak of: he arrives at the offices of the Lawyer, is hired to do some copying, then begins to
respond to any request made of him with "I would prefer not to." This reply becomes a
mantra, and the politely cold, yet firm way Bartleby says it prevents the Lawyer from taking
any real action against him. Time and again, the Lawyer is stymied by Bartleby's simple
phrase: "I would prefer not to." The term prefer begins to infect the Lawyer's speech, even his
mind.

But who is Bartleby? What does he represent? Baffled by the character's behavior, many
critics have bypassed interpreting Bartleby as a universal symbol in favor of looking at him in
the context of Melville's life. Some critics think Bartleby represents Melville himself: at this
time of his life, Melville's most recent works (including White Jacket (1850) and Moby Dick
(1851)) had failed miserably, despite the fact that they would achieve acclaim later on. At that
time, his readers wanted more adventure, like the adventure in his earlier works such as
Typee. Some critics think that, therefore, the Lawyer represents Melville's readers, asking
Melville to write the same old fiction he had been writing all along, and Bartleby is Melville
himself, replying that he would "prefer not to" and eventually withdrawing into himself and
his misery.
This is just one interpretation, and it is a very simplified version of it. A more universally
symbolic interpretation is possible. We have one clue about Bartleby's past, given by the
narrator at the end of the story: Bartleby is said to have once worked in the Dead Letter office,
and to have lost his job after an administrative shake-up. The narrator (the Lawyer) wonders if
such a miserable job—burning letters that have been sent to people that have died in the
meantime or who have vanished—were what caused Bartleby's ennui and his descent into
seeming insanity.

Herman Mellville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" presents a story where a narrator describes his
personal experience, as a Master in Chancery, with an unusual man who "prefers not to" and
is inexplicable to all who encounter his presence. Although the story presents other characters
that, while extremely interesting and humorous they might be to the reader, will not be
mentioned in order to focus on the narrator and style the author has presented us. This way the
main points of the story, complicated as they may seem at first, will be explained in a more
organized manner.

First one must begin by considering the narrator. The fact that it's in first person changes the
whole perspective of the story. Imagine if Bartleby's story was told by Bartleby himself.
Maybe one would then know the whole story behind this eccentric man and why he acted how
he did. Furthermore, the first person narration served a useful purpose in learning how
Bartleby's presence and actions effected those around him, a point of view that probably
would have not been included had it been Bartleby narrating. "Somehow, of late I had got into
the way of involuntarily using this word 'prefer' upon all sorts of not exactly suitable
occasions. And I trembled to think that my contact with the scrivener had already and
seriously affected me in a mental way."

One of the ways the author has conveyed the message of Bartleby's stories is through his
references of past names, Bible passages, and situations. This chosen style brings life to the
message, since it interweaves Bartleby's situation with other humanistic references,
strengthening the message.

Charity and Selfishness

"Bartleby the Scrivener" contains a very critical look at "charity," and the story may be a wry
commentary by Melville on the way materialism and consumerism were affecting it. The
Lawyer thinks of charitable actions in terms of cost and returns: "Poor fellow! thought I, he
means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence I can get along with him. If I turn him
away he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely treated here
I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby will cost me little or
nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my
conscience." Note the lawyer's train of thought: he first pities Bartleby; then he recognizes the
fact that Bartleby is useful to him; then he notes that Bartleby would be ill-treated at another
office, presumably making him less useful to some other employer and, by extension, society;
and finally, the Lawyer pats himself on the back for keeping Bartleby on as a worker. He
"purchases" self-approval, a "sweet morsel for his conscience" which will cost him little.
Through "charity," the Lawyer is actually just buying himself a good conscience. In a broader
sense, he also believes he is making the best use possible of Bartleby. If he can at least get
Bartleby to make copies, then at least he is doing something.
Of course, eventually Bartleby refuses even to make copies. Still, the Lawyer decides that he
will let Bartleby live on in his offices, so that he doesn't starve; but as soon as Bartleby affects
his business, the Lawyer moves his offices and abandons Bartleby. The Lawyer does make
the kindly offer to let Bartleby live in his own home, but the Lawyer might do this just to
relieve himself of the annoyance of having to dealing with the tenants who complain about
Bartleby. Of course, were the Lawyer to take Bartleby into his home, he could purchase great
amounts of good conscience. But Bartleby refuses the Lawyer's charity, as he does whenever
it is offered to him, saying that he "would prefer not to." The Lawyer then decides to keep
Bartleby on his staff as a sort of "charity case."

Walt Whitman – Song of myself

While “Song of Myself” is crammed with significant detail, there are three key episodes that
must be examined. The first of these is found in the sixth section of the poem. A child asks the
narrator “What is the grass?” and the narrator is forced to explore his own use of symbolism
and his inability to break things down to essential principles. The bunches of grass in the
child’s hands become a symbol of the regeneration in nature. But they also signify a common
material that links disparate people all over the United States together: grass, the ultimate
symbol of democracy, grows everywhere. In the wake of the Civil War the grass reminds
Whitman of graves: grass feeds on the bodies of the dead. Everyone must die eventually, and
so the natural roots of democracy are therefore in mortality, whether due to natural causes or
to the bloodshed of internecine warfare. While Whitman normally revels in this kind of
symbolic indeterminacy, here it troubles him a bit. “I wish I could translate the hints,” he
says, suggesting that the boundary between encompassing everything and saying nothing is
easily crossed.

The second episode is more optimistic. The famous “twenty-ninth bather” can be found in the
eleventh section of the poem. In this section a woman watches twenty-eight young men
bathing in the ocean. She fantasizes about joining them unseen, and describes their semi-nude
bodies in some detail. The invisible twenty-ninth bather offers a model of being much like
that of Emerson’s “transparent eyeball”: to truly experience the world one must be fully in it
and of it, yet distinct enough from it to have some perspective, and invisible so as not to
interfere with it unduly. This paradoxical set of conditions describes perfectly the poetic
stance Whitman tries to assume. The lavish eroticism of this section reinforces this idea:
sexual contact allows two people to become one yet not one—it offers a moment of
transcendence. As the female spectator introduced in the beginning of the section fades away,
and Whitman’s voice takes over, the eroticism becomes homoeroticism. Again this is not so
much the expression of a sexual preference as it is the longing for communion with every
living being and a connection that makes use of both the body and the soul (although
Whitman is certainly using the homoerotic sincerely, and in other ways too, particularly for
shock value).

Having worked through some of the conditions of perception and creation, Whitman arrives,
in the third key episode, at a moment where speech becomes necessary. In the twenty-fifth
section he notes that “Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, / It
provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, / Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out
then?” Having already established that he can have a sympathetic experience when he
encounters others (“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the
wounded person”), he must find a way to re-transmit that experience without falsifying or
diminishing it. Resisting easy answers, he later vows he “will never translate [him]self at all.”
Instead he takes a philosophically more rigorous stance: “What is known I strip away.” Again
Whitman’s position is similar to that of Emerson, who says of himself, “I am the unsettler.”
Whitman, however, is a poet, and he must reassemble after unsettling: he must “let it out
then.” Having catalogued a continent and encompassed its multitudes, he finally decides: “I
too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of
the world.” “Song of Myself” thus ends with a sound—a yawp—that could be described as
either pre- or post-linguistic. Lacking any of the normal communicative properties of
language, Whitman’s yawp is the release of the “kosmos” within him, a sound at the
borderline between saying everything and saying nothing. More than anything, the yawp is an
invitation to the next Walt Whitman, to read into the yawp, to have a sympathetic experience,
to absorb it as part of a new multitude.

Whitman’s grand poem is, in its way, an American epic. Beginning in medias res—in the
middle of the poet’s life—it loosely follows a quest pattern. “Missing me one place search
another,” he tells his reader, “I stop somewhere waiting for you.” In its catalogues of
American life and its constant search for the boundaries of the self “Song of Myself” has
much in common with classical epic. This epic sense of purpose, though, is coupled with an
almost Keatsian valorization of repose and passive perception. Since for Whitman the
birthplace of poetry is in the self, the best way to learn about poetry is to relax and watch the
workings of one’s own mind.

The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald

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 sophistication—he dropped out of St. Olaf’s
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 Daisy’s 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.
Gatsby’s reputation precedes him—Gatsby 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 Gatsby’s background and the source of his wealth in mystery (the reader learns
about Gatsby’s childhood in Chapter 6 and receives definitive proof of his criminal dealings
in Chapter 7). As a result, the reader’s 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 Gatsby’s 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.

(See Important Quotations Explained)

As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsby’s 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 America’s 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 Fitzgerald’s
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 Fitzgerald’s 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
Daisy’s 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 Fitzgerald’s 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 Nick’s 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 Gatsby’s
party in Chapter 2. After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsby’s dream and presiding over the
appalling spectacle of Gatsby’s 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 Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from
Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick’s cousin and the object of Gatsby’s 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 Daisy’s 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 perfection—she 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 Gatsby’s
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 Gatsby’s 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 Fitzgerald’s conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral
values of the aristocratic East Egg set.

“Nick Carraway is a snob. He dislikes people in general and denigrates them in particular. He
dodges emotional commitments. Neither his ethical code nor his behavior is exemplary:
propriety rather than morality guides him. He is not entirely honest about himself and
frequently misunderstands others. Do these shortcomings mean that Nick is an unreliable
narrator? At times and in part, yes. But they also mean that he is the perfect narrator for The
Great Gatsby and that Fitzgerald’s greatest technical achievement in the novel was to invent
this narrative voice at once “within and without” the action.”

Scott Donaldson, “The Trouble with Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely”

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous
about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of
those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.

“In an early draft of Gatsby, Nick is said to “read” Gatsby himself as if he were a character in
a magazine within which Nick is “reading the climaxes only” (qtd. in Eble 90). The logical
impossibility of a story made only of “climaxes” reflects Fitzgerald’s sense of narrative as
precisely the opposite: a structure that depends for its effect upon a finely differentiated
process of modulation and pacing. Fitzgerald repeatedly renders the “communicative
situation” as a complex, dynamic interaction unfolding in time. His keen sense of both telling
and listening as time-bound transactions pervades the narration of Gatsby.”

Barbara Hochman, “Disembodied Voices and Narrating Bodies in The Great Gatsby”

Whereas its eponymous central character embodies the stereotype of the self-made man who
has risen from nowhere, Buchanan represents the type of millionaire that is anchored in a
solid tradition of socially acceptable (because inherited) wealth, and of the power derived
from it. As Tony Tanner points out: “Buchanan is no more grounded in, or significantly
related to, ancient American history than Gatsby” (1990, xii)

Gatsby’s gestures

 House
 Parties
 Signature
 Manner of speaking
 Car
 Suit
 Shirts
 “a compendium of social gaucheries” (Donaldson)
 “Gatsby is the American self-made, indeed, self-invented man. He believes in the
American dream (‘the orgastic future’).” (Matthew J. Bruccoli)

Man…
James Gatz — that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of
seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career — when he
saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was
James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a
pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the
TUOLOMEE, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an
hour.

… and persona (Gatz à Gatsby)

I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and
unsuccessful farm people — his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at
all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic
conception of himself. He was a son of God — a phrase which, if it means anything, means
just that — and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and
meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy
would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.

n The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s main innovation was to introduce a first person narrator
and protagonist whose consciousness filters the story’s events. This device was not a total
invention since a character through whose eyes and mind the central protagonist is discovered
is to be found in two of Conrad’s books : Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. As usual with this
device, the main protagonist remains strange and shady. This technique reinforces the mystery
of the characters. The second advantage is that the mediation of a character-witness permits a
play between the real and the imaginary. This indirect approach is inherited from Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Hence, it is difficult to distinguish between true representation and fantasizing.
For Emerson, vision was more important than the real world.

I. Nick’s vision : the ‘modified’ first person technique

The story is narrated through a ‘modified’ first person viewpoint :

 it is not the main protagonist (Gatsby) who recounts his own story but a secondary
character, Nick Carraway, who is successively suspicious, wary and eventually
fascinated by Gatsby. Nick is not trustworthy, not fully reliable : he oscillates.
 whenever Nick cannot obtain a first hand version of facts, he does not hesitate to
quote other sources. For instance, Gatsby’s love affair is told by Jordan Baker
(chap.4 p80). Nick reports her words but the problem is that she is said to be a liar :
how far can she be trusted ?
 Nick is obliged to reconstruct an event through the collage of different testimonies.
Nick uses his logical mind to come up with a definitive story, result of words that have
been filtered by different minds.

That is why this first person viewpoint is modified : Nick can only rely on what he has been
told.

Nick witnesses some of the events of Gatsby’s last summer and sometimes participates in
them. He has two functions : seeing and acting. The emphasis is put on visual perception. The
act of seeing creates mystery instead of providing information. A lot about Gatsby’s life is
bound to remain unfathomable : there is more in Gatsby’s life than Nick’s eyes can meet.
Nick’s scope of vision is limited. Yet, Nick is a good observer and can draw his own
conclusions. He can analyze Gatsby’s facial expressions and put a meaning on his gestures.
See chapter 5 with the re-union between Gatsby and Daisy. He is sometimes over-informed.
When Gatsby dashes into the kitchen, Nick is made privy of his companion’s feelings.
Through Nick’s agency, the reader is provided with the real feelings of Gatsby : ‘this is a
terrible mistake‘. This tends to suggest that Fitzgerald tried to favor the sentimental
dimension of his character at the expense of his ‘business’.

All the characters are not depicted with the same clarity. Those described with most lucidity
are those for whom Nick feels indifferent : Catherine, Myrtle Wilson and Mc Kee. In contrast,
the closer the characters get to Nick and the more blurred they prove to be : Gatsby and Daisy,
as if Nick was afraid to jump to conclusions concerning Gatsby. Because Nick participates
vicariously in Gatsby’s adventures, he finds it difficult to come to a clear cut picture of the
man.

In the Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses various colors, objects, and gestures as symbols
to portray the lack of moral and spiritual values of people and the different aspects of society
in the 1920's.

The Bear – Faulkner

The revisionary capacity of his work opens its essential contradictions to our eyes, forcing us
to recall its spaced (out), erased origins, allowing us to view its truly radical nature in the
critical and cultural aftermath that follows its writing.

“I have much to say about the ways in which Faulkner constructed novels—about how he
tended to center every novel around a major character, such as Joe Christmas or Sutpen or Ike
McCaslin, how novel after novel conducted a searching action, a movement inward toward
knowledge about that character and why each was the way he or she was (best exemplified in
Absalom, Absalom!); how every novel used comedy as one of its voices in a kind of dialectic
or dialogue Faulkner always conducted with himself in his imaginative life…”

Go down, Moses (1942)

“The title—Go Down, Moses—states at once what is to be main concern of the fiction:
liberation and deliverance from different forms of enslavement, which, in Faulkner, is a very
complex matter indeed. The title comes, specifically, from a Negro spiritual in which the
blacks are substituted for the Jews, the South for Egypt, and the racial destiny of the Jews
(which is to be led out of bondage by a law giver, a holy man, and guided by this same man
toward the promised land) is transferred to the blacks. It is a black song used by a white man
who knows what all the substitutions and transfers are and understands (in his imagination
and in his fictions anyway) the deep yearning for liberation which it expresses.” (Rueckert,
160)

“Faulkner’s fictions tend to gather toward a center rather than unfold as a line; one can, by an
act of will, set them into a linear form, but even when one has done this, they—the fictions—
immediately regather themselves around their center again. Time is very fluid in Faulkner’s
fictions, which does not mean, really, that it flows but that it is a three-dimensional element in
which the self swims.” (Rueckert, 166)
History often seems to exist in Faulkner as a vast accumulation in the present (Was as Is),
embodied, present, somehow, in an individual person. To discover the present, you look back;
or conversely (but really the same thing) to discover the past, look inward. Faulkner also
implies that it is not only was but also will be. Time (past, present, future; was, is, will be)
accumulates in the self, almost in the manner of geologic deposits; and the evolutionary,
geological concept of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny must be taken absolutely seriously
in Faulkner. (Rueckert, 182)

“The ultimate act of ownership, however, is bodily control, especially of women. For women
who are so controlled by their masters, to reproduce is not just to duplicate themselves as
property, but to reproduce the image of the owner. "Reproduction,“ master-slave intercourse
leading to reproduction, is a narcissistic act in addition to being a declaration of legal
authority of not merely patriarchy (the law of the father), but also of the law of the land.”

“Faulkner thoughtfully explores the tragic implications of land ownership and the depredation
of the wilderness, although he does so in a manner sufficiently ambiguous as to suggest the
complexity of the issues.”

Although originally published in 1942 as Go Down, Moses and Other Stories (apparently
against the desires of the author) Go Down, Moses may be considered a unified, though
fragmented, novel. (Faulkner received editorial help from H.L. Mencken.) It spans more than
a century in the history of the McCaslin family, viewing their hardships and triumphs by
examining their daily lives. Its plantation and the fictional Yoknapatawpha County are in
Mississippi. It deals with such issues as slavery and race, the relationship between man and
nature, the vanishing wilderness, stewardship versus ownership of land, and property and
inheritance.

The title refers to the spiritual "Go Down Moses", which draws a comparison between the
enslavement of blacks in America and the Jews in Egypt, as is evidenced by Molly(Mollie)

"The Bear" is the centerpiece of Go Down, Moses, just as Isaac McCaslin is the book's central
character. It is the longest story in the book, and it is Faulkner's most intense, focused, and
symbolic exploration of the relationship of man and nature. Old Ben, the legendary bear, is a
symbol of the power and inscrutability of nature--he is nearly immortal, nearly invulnerable,
capable of overpowering virtually anything, and capable of wreaking havoc on human
settlements and establishments. The men, who put their minds to work on the single purpose
of hunting him, are in some way representative of man's drive to control nature. (There is
some thematic ambiguity in the fact that hunting has been portrayed as a noble and respectful
act, but here it becomes, in part, a symbol of man's attempt to conquer nature, to which it has
previously been contrasted.) Old Ben is a virtually mythic force, and only over the course of
years are the men able to bring him down. But, like the wilderness in Isaac McCaslin's
lifetime, he is brought down in the end. The death of Old Ben at the hands of Boon
Hogganbeck is also somewhat ambiguous--it is a moving, devastating scene, but it seems
unclear whether Old Ben's death is a right or a wrong in Faulkner's eyes or something more
complex than either. There is something almost wild about Boon Hogganbeck, Old Ben's
killer, himself; the image that closes the story, with Boon trying desperately to fix his gun so
that he can shoot the squirrels and shouting at Isaac that they are his, is certainly an unsettling
metaphor for the destructiveness and possessiveness of human civilization.
Contrasted with the wild, solemn, primal forest in the story is the dry, orderly human
Commissary, where Isaac reads Buck and Buddy's old ledgers and imprints a sense of the evil
of land ownership and the warped thinking that justifies it. When he rejects his birthright--
rejecting even the idea that it is his birthright--by refusing to inherit the plantation, he does so
both because of his experiences in the wilderness and because of his sense of the evil that
stems from ownership. In his argument with McCaslin Edmonds, Isaac traces the curse of
ownership from Biblical parables to European history to the institution of slavery and the
downfall of the South during the Civil War. He says that he will be free--and in this moment,
Old Ben becomes, in memory, a symbol of a wild, fierce freedom, so keen to defend itself that
it constantly threw itself into harm's way simply to accomplish the defense. In this way, Old
Ben becomes a symbol both of untamed nature and of some principle of freedom and
independence in the human spirit. Isaac, whose feelings form the thematic center of the novel,
had earlier believed that killing the buck required him to make his life worthy of what he had
taken from the animal he hunted; now the spiritual internalization of Old Ben enables him to
make his life worthy of the great bear's indomitable will and of his death. In any event, Isaac
remains morally committed to nature and to hunting; in his final trip to the camp, he sees a
giant rattlesnake that seems to be the same kind of manifestation as the giant buck in "The
Old People," and, like Sam Fathers with the buck, he calls it "grandfather." In rejecting the
patrimony of Carothers McCaslin, Isaac reaffirms his acceptance of the patrimony of nature.

A Good Man is Hard to Fiind – Flannery O Conner

The Grandmother

The unnamed grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” considers herself morally
superior to others by virtue of her being a “lady,” and she freely and frequently passes
judgment on others. She claims that her conscience is a guiding force in her life, such as when
she tells Bailey that her conscience wouldn’t allow her to take the children in the same
direction as the Misfit. She criticizes the children’s mother for not traveling to a place that
would allow the children to “be broad,” and she compares the mother’s face to a cabbage. She
chastises John Wesley for not having more respect for Georgia, his home state. She also takes
any opportunity to judge the lack of goodness in people in the world today. During all this,
she proudly wears her carefully selected dress and hat, certain that being a lady is the most
important virtue of all, one that she alone harbors.

The grandmother never turns her critical eye on herself to inspect her own hypocrisy,
dishonesty, and selfishness. For example, the conscience the grandmother invokes at the
beginning of the story is conveniently silent when she sneaks Pitty Sing into the car, lies to
the children about the secret panel, and opts not to reveal that she made a mistake about the
location of the house. When the Misfit systematically murders the family, the grandmother
never once begs him to spare her children or grandchildren. She does, however, plead for her
own life because she can’t imagine the Misfit wanting to kill a lady. She seems certain that
he’ll recognize and respect her moral code, as though it will mean something to him despite
his criminal ways. She tries to draw him into her world by assuring him that he’s a good man,
but even though he agrees with her assessment of him, he doesn’t see this as a reason to spare
her. Only when the grandmother is facing death, in her final moments alone with the Misfit,
does she understand where she has gone wrong in her life. Instead of being superior, she
realizes, she is flawed like everyone else. When she tells the Misfit that he is “one of [her]
own children,” she is showing that she has found the ability to see others with compassion and
understanding. This is a moment of realization, one that is immediately followed by her death.

The Misfit

With his violent, wanton killing, the Misfit seems an unlikely source to look to for spiritual or
moral guidance, but he demonstrates a deep conviction that the other characters lack. Unlike
the grandmother, who simply assumes that she is morally superior to everyone else, the Misfit
seriously questions the meaning of life and his role in it. He has carefully considered his
actions in life and examined his experiences to find lessons within them. He has even
renamed himself because of one of these lessons, believing that his punishment didn’t fit his
crime. Because the Misfit has questioned himself and his life so closely, he reveals a self-
awareness that the grandmother lacks. He knows he isn’t a great man, but he also knows that
there are others worse than him. He forms rudimentary philosophies, such as “no pleasure but
meanness” and “the crime don’t matter.”

The Misfit’s philosophies may be depraved, but they are consistent. Unlike the grandmother,
whose moral code falls apart the moment it’s challenged, the Misfit has a steady view of life
and acts according to what he believes is right. His beliefs and actions are not moral in the
conventional sense, but they are strong and consistent and therefore give him a strength of
conviction that the grandmother lacks. Twisted as it might be, he can rely on his moral code to
guide his actions. The grandmother cannot, and in the last moments of her life, she recognizes
his strength and her weaknesses. O’Connor called the Misfit a “prophet gone wrong,” and
indeed, if he had applied his moral integrity to a less depraved lifestyle, he could have been
considered a true preacher, pillar, or teacher.

The Elusive Definition of a “Good Man”

The grandmother applies the label “good” indiscriminately, blurring the definition of a “good
man” until the label loses its meaning entirely. She first applies it to Red Sammy after he
angrily complains of the general untrustworthiness of people. He asks her why he let two
strangers charge their gasoline—he’s obviously been swindled—and the grandmother says he
did it because he’s “a good man.” In this case, her definition of “good” seems to include
gullibility, poor judgment, and blind faith, none of which are inherently “good.” She next
applies the label “good” to the Misfit. After she recognizes him, she asks him whether he’d
shoot a lady, although he never says that he wouldn’t. Because being a lady is such a
significant part of what the grandmother considers moral, the Misfit’s answer proves that he
doesn’t adhere to the same moral code as she does. The grandmother desperately calls him a
good man, as though appealing to some kind of underlying value that the Misfit wouldn’t
want to deny. Her definition of “good,” however, is skewed, resting almost entirely on her
claim that he doesn’t have “common blood.”

The grandmother’s wanton application of the label “good man” reveals that “good” doesn’t
imply “moral” or “kind.” For the grandmother, a man is a “good man” if his values are
aligned with her own. Red Sammy is “good” because he trusts people blindly and waxes
nostalgic about more innocent times—both of which the grandmother can relate to. The Misfit
is “good” because, she reasons, he won’t shoot a lady—a refusal that would be in keeping
with her own moral code. Her assumption, of course, proves to be false. The only thing
“good” about the Misfit is his consistency in living out his moral code of “no pleasure but
meanness.”
The Unlikely Recipients of Grace

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the grandmother and the Misfit are both recipients of
grace, despite their many flaws, sins, and weaknesses. According to Christian theology,
human beings are granted salvation through God’s grace, or favor, which God freely bestows
on even the least likely recipients. In other words, God has the power to allow even bad
people to go to heaven, which he does by granting them grace. The grandmother is an
unlikely candidate for receiving grace. She lies to her grandchildren, manipulates her son, and
harps constantly about the inadequacy of the present and superiority of the past. She has no
self-awareness and seems oblivious to the world around her. Certain of her own moral
superiority, the grandmother believes that she is the right person to judge the goodness of
others as well as the right person to instruct other people on how to live their lives. However,
she herself has an inherent moral weakness. She instructs the Misfit to pray, for example,
even though she herself is unable to formulate a coherent prayer. She changes her mind about
Jesus’ rising from the dead as she grows more afraid of what will happen to her. The Misfit,
for his part, is an unrepentant murderer. Both “bad” people in their own way, they are each
unlikely—even undeserving—recipients of grace.

Grace, however, settles on them both, suggesting that even people like the grandmother and
Misfit have the potential to be saved by God. The grandmother, moved by the Misfit’s wish to
know for sure what Jesus did and didn’t do, experiences a moment of grace when her head
momentarily clears and she exclaims, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own
children!” The Misfit isn’t literally the grandmother’s child; rather, this points to the fact that
she realizes they are both human beings. Her comment seems inappropriate—even insane—
given the circumstances, but this is actually the grandmother’s most lucid moment in the
story. She has clarity and, more important, compassion. God has granted her grace just before
she dies. The Misfit, too, is open to grace at this moment. Although he had claimed earlier
that there was “no pleasure but meanness” in life, he now denies that there is any pleasure in
life at all. Killing has ceased to bring him happiness, suggesting that he, too, may harbor the
possibility to change.

Moral Codes

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the grandmother and Misfit live by moral codes that affect
their decisions, actions, and perceptions. A moral code is a set of beliefs and behaviors that
people abide by to live what they consider to be a reasonable, fulfilling lives. The term moral
doesn’t necessarily mean “good”; it’s simply a code of conduct, while the righteousness of a
person’s morals is entirely subjective. Although at first glance the Misfit’s code seems to be
misguided, it is actually the grandmother’s code that proves to be flimsy and inconsistent. The
grandmother has built her moral code on the characteristics that she believes make people
“good.” She places great stock in being a lady, for example, which emphasizes appearance
over substance. At the same time, she repeatedly deceives her family and lacks even a
rudimentary awareness of the world around her. Despite her professed love for Christian
piety, she herself is unable to pray when she finds herself in a crisis and even begins to
question the power and divinity of Jesus.

The Misfit, however, adheres to a moral code that remains consistent and strong. From his
experiences as a convicted criminal, he believes that the punishment is always
disproportionate to the crime and that the crime, in the end, doesn’t even really matter. He
also harbors a genuine bafflement about religion. Whereas the grandmother accepts faith
unquestioningly and weakly, the Misfit challenges religious beliefs and thinks deeply about
how he should follow them or not follow them. He has chosen to live under the assumption
that religion is pointless and adheres to his own kind of religion: “No pleasure but meanness.”
His moral code is violent and never wavers, and in the end, his is the one that triumphs.

In "A Good Man Is Hard To Find", Flannery O'Connor uses a variety of narrative techniques
to create an intriguing story. O'Connor writes from a third person narrator and tells the story
from the perspective of the Grandmother. The point of view straddles the line between limited
omniscience and total omniscience. According to Janet Burroughway, in her book, Writing
Fiction, limited omniscience is when the narrator "interprets one character's actions and
thoughts but we see the other's only externally" (226). Burroughway describes the total
omniscient author as "God" (224). Burroughway gives us five advantages of total
omniscience:

1) Objectively report what is happening;

2) Go into the mind of any character;

3) Interpret for us that character's appearance, speech, actions, and thoughts, even if the
character cannot do so;

4) Move freely in time or space to give us a panoramic, telescopic, microscopic, or historical

view, tell us what else has happened elsewhere or in the past or what will happen in the
future;

5) Provide general reflections, judgements and truths. 225

O'Connor lets us know whose story this is in the first two lines, "The grandmother didn't want
to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was
seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind" (2148). O'Connor is not giving us any
thoughts. She is giving us background information about what happens just before the story
starts that only an omniscient or panoramic narrator would know. She does, however, limit the
point of view to the grandmother and continues to do so in the next lines, "Bailey was the son
she lived with, her only boy" (2148). The only action we see is as it relates to the limited view
of the grandmother, "Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and
faced the children's mother, a young woman in slacks . . ." (2148).

O'Connor uses the same technique throughout the story making it difficult to exactly define
the point of view of the story. There are other times where the story slips into total
omniscience. "There was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees on
the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark
and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance. . ." (2154). The use of the pronoun
"they" instead of "she" does not limit the point of view to the grandmother. The narrator is
telling us what they all saw. They""the point of view of everyone in the car""is total
omniscience not limited.

O'Connor's use of both totally omniscient and limited omniscient narrators telling a story from
the grandmother's point of view is brilliant. It allows us to see the story as it unfolds, but
limits it to the grandmother's view of the action. It is the grandmother who curses the family
by warning about "The Misfit." It is the grandmother who gets the family lost, and eventually
killed. Seeing the story from a panoramic god's eye view, without the grandmother's thoughts,
allows us to interpret what is happening, while adding to the drama. We don't need to know
the grandmother's thoughts. The narrator shows us everything we need to know and allows
the reader to make their own conclusions about what the characters are thinking. Is there any
doubt about what the grandmother was thinking when she heard the gun shot and then called,
"Bailey Boy?" No thoughts are necessary. We know what she is thinking through her actions.
O'Connor writes in a way that lets us know the character's thoughts, without her telling us.

In the end, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" could not be told from the grandmother's limited
point of view. She is dead, and dead people have no actions or thoughts. What we get is a
totally omniscient account of what happens immediately after her death. The effect O'Connor
achieves could not have been accomplished by only using either a limited or total omniscient
point of view. O'Connor meets Burroughway's definitions of both limited omniscient and total
omniscient point of view. We see most of the action through the point of view of the
grandmother, limited omniscience. We also get a panoramic view and an objective report of
what is happening, total omniscience. The result is a story that is neither limited nor total
omniscience, but a subtle mixture of both.

Howl – A. Ginsberg

Part I

Called by Ginsberg "a lament for the Lamb in America with instances of remarkable lamb-
like youths", Part I is perhaps the best known, and communicates scenes, characters, and
situations drawn from Ginsberg's personal experience as well as from the community of poets,
artists, political radicals, jazz musicians, drug addicts, and psychiatric patients whom he
encountered in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ginsberg refers to these people, who were
underrepresented outcasts in what the poet believed to be an oppressively conformist and
materialistic era as "the best minds of my generation." He describes their experiences in
graphic detail, openly discussing drug use and homosexual activity at multiple points.

Most lines in this section contain the fixed base "who." In "Notes Written on Finally
Recording Howl," Ginsberg writes, "I depended on the word 'who' to keep the beat, a base to
keep measure, return to and take off from again onto another streak of invention."[14]

Part II

Ginsberg says that Part II, in relation to Part I, "names the monster of mental consciousness
that preys on the Lamb." Part II is about the state of industrial civilization, characterized in the
poem as "Moloch". Ginsberg was inspired to write Part II during a period of peyote-induced
visionary consciousness in which he saw a hotel façade as a monstrous and horrible visage
which he identified with that of Moloch, the Biblical idol in Leviticus to whom the Canaanites
sacrificed children.[14]

Ginsberg intends that the characters he portrays in Part I be understood to have been
sacrificed to this idol. Moloch is also the name of an industrial, demonic figure in Fritz Lang's
Metropolis, a film that Ginsberg credits with influencing "Howl, Part II" in his annotations for
the poem (see especially Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions).
Most lines in this section contain the fixed base "Moloch". Ginsberg says of Part II, "Here the
long line is used as a stanza form broken into exclamatory units punctuated by a base
repetition, Moloch."[14]

Part III

Part III, in relation to Parts I, II, and IV is "a litany of affirmation of the Lamb in its glory,"
according to Ginsberg. It is directly addressed to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met during a
brief stay at a psychiatric hospital in 1949; called "Rockland" in the poem, it was actually
Columbia Presbyterian Psychological Institute. This section is notable for its refrain, "I'm
with you in Rockland," and represents something of a turning point away from the grim tone
of the "Moloch"-section. Of the structure, Ginsberg says Part III is, "pyramidal, with a
graduated longer response to the fixed base."[14]

Footnote

The closing section of the poem is the "Footnote", characterized by its repetitive "Holy!"
mantra, an ecstatic assertion that everything is holy. Ginsberg says, "I remembered the
archetypal rhythm of Holy Holy Holy weeping in a bus on Kearny Street, and wrote most of it
down in notebook there ... I set it as 'Footnote to Howl' because it was an extra variation of the
form of Part II."[14]

“Howl” is best known for its first and second parts, though Ginsberg wrote a third part and a
fourth part entitled “Footnote to Howl.” This fourth part was separate from the first three and
titled this because it was a variation on the structure and rhythm of the first three parts. The
poem’s subtitle, “For Carl Solomon,” dedicates the poem to his friend whom Ginsberg met in
a mental institution. Though Solomon was never a poet in the traditional sense (he did some
minor writing), Ginsberg found real genius in his life and his insanity. Some of Part I
documents Solomon’s struggle with insanity, while Part II is specifically dedicated to
Solomon’s life and tragedy.

The title of Ginsberg's poem prepares the reader for what to expect. This will not be a quiet
poem. It will not be a sonnet or an ode. It will be a poem of noise and unsettling images and
themes. Ginsberg wanted “Howl” to express the pent up frustration, artistic energy, and self-
destruction of his generation, a generation that he felt was being suppressed by a dominant
American culture that valued conformity over artistic license and opportunity. For a poet or
the individual to howl, meant that that person was breaking from the habit of conformity to
the virtues and ideals of American civilization and expressing a counter-cultural vision of free
expression.

The title also expresses one of the major themes in the poem - that of madness. To howl is
usually associated with animals howling at the moon, an image that Ginsberg wanted to
convey. The artists of the Beat generation were like animals, instinctively wild and only
allowed out at night into an underground scene of literature and jazz not accepted by more
cultured members of society. The moon is also a symbol associated with madness. Medical
opinions from the nineteenth century and before believed that persons who were mad or evil
would naturally manifest these tendencies when the moon was full. To howl at the moon in
poetic and artistic terms, then, is to announce that madness has entered into society and will
not be silently put away. This is a theme that Ginsberg would return to throughout his career.
"Howl" does not keep the traditional meter or rhythm of a poem but is instead meant to be an
extended diatribe or association and stream of consciousness writing. Ginsberg uses a triadic
verse form, the form used by his mentor William Carlos Williams, but he extends the lines out
to his own long breath length. Each line was meant to be spoken in a single breath. Ginsberg
was specifically trying to use Kerouac's prose and the way his own rhythms mirrored jazz
music as inspiration.

One important thing to note about "Howl" is that it is a male-centric poem. Ginsberg speaks
from a male point of view, but it is a decidedly homosexual male point of view. Like other
Beat writers, Ginsberg's poem creates women that are simply ancillary characters to the male
protagonists. Women are there for sex, for children, and to be a kind of anchor for men to the
"real world." This role is not one that is ever glorified. The male is the hero. He is free to
experiment in life; with drugs, with sex, with art.

Ginsberg begins "Howl" by describing his subjects. This is arguably the most famous line in
all of Ginsberg's poetry: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...."
These "best minds" are Ginsberg's friends, literary associates, and acquaintances - all of those
that would become associated with the Beat generation, and they are collectively the
protagonists of the story that “Howl” attempts to tell in a broken, stream of consciousness
style. To call “Howl” a “story” is not really accurate. While there are traces of narrative
within the poem as it moves from location to location, it is meant to be more of a snapshot of
Beatnik life. It is the fractured stories of the fractured lives of the “best minds.” Ginsberg uses
the "who" to start many of the lines and to designate these “best minds” as the character for
the poem.

It is worth reflecting on why Ginsberg believed these people to be the “best minds” of his
generation. Of course, there were several individuals in Ginsberg’s circle of friends that went
on to become known as some of the greatest figures in twentieth century literature, including
Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. But there were just as many who never gained
literary or artistic fame or who were not even interested in creating their own art or literature
or original thought. These were still the “best minds” for Ginsberg because they were outside
of the group think that characterized the domestic, militaristic, unthinking patriotism of the
time. Their minds were not captured by America’s hegemonic culture. They were able to
think outside of these restraints and were, therefore, in Ginsberg’s mind, the best of citizens in
a wayward republic.

The second half of Part I continues with many of the themes of the earlier lives. It is a
documentary style of poetry, taking scenes and snippets from Ginsberg's own life and
interweaving them with incidents of insanity and anarchy from the lives of his friends.

The use of African-American culture, especially jazz music, is a crucial point of "Howl."
Ginsberg references it in the first lines of the Part I, writing of the "Negro" streets. Here,
writing of some of the crazy and debauched acts of his friend Neal Cassady, Ginsberg tells the
reader that Cassady "leaped on negroes." The line works in two ways because it tells of an
actual event in Cassady's life, but it also represents the way in which the Beat poets leaped
into African-American culture of the day.

It was a culture that was not accepted by white mainstream America. African-Americans were
not accepted into the institutions of society - schools, government, or business. In many places
there were treated as second class citizens. Though the Beats could never fully participate in
the suffering of racism because almost all the Beats were white and from that middle or
working class that they rejected, they also felt rejected by the same society that rejected
African-Americans.

Jazz music as it was played in the backroom clubs in seedy and unruly parts of San Francisco
thus became a kind of beat that Ginsberg and his friends would try and emulate in their work.
This is exactly where the term "Beat poets" came from. They rejected standard form and
rhythm and embraced the syncopated rhythms and improvisational styles of jazz. "Howl"
exemplifies this technique with the absence of formed stanza's and lines. Ginsberg later said
that "Howl" came from a deep place of consciousness and that he only wanted to write what
came naturally from his mind.

Part II of Ginsberg’s “Howl” was written separately from Part I, but within the same period of
Ginsberg’s life in San Francisco. Ginsberg writes that Part I “names the monster...that preys
on the Lamb.” The Lamb, in this case, are the “best minds” and “angel headed hipsters” of
Part I.

Part II uses a great deal of metaphor and symbolism to make social and political points. Thus,
it is different from Part I, which was mainly a fractured narrative of the lives of the Beat
generation. Though one could certainly make social and political inferences from Part I, and
Ginsberg does challenge the power authorities of institutions like higher education, mental
health, and public safety, the social forces that cause the hardships, violence, and addiction in
the lives of the “best minds” are not named beyond vague references. Part II, however, gives a
very specific name for these social forces - “Moloch.”

The use of the name “Moloch,” a name traditionally associated with specific gods or rituals
from ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean religion, is most commonly used to denote a
power or force that demands great sacrifice. The figure has been used in a variety of modern
artistic settings, including John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Fritz Lang’s pioneering film
“Metropolis.” In Ginsberg’s poem, it comes to symbolize all of society’s great evils: corporate
power and domination, militarization, governmental violence and oppression, just to name a
few.

Ginsberg first thought of the name “Moloch” when out in the streets of San Francisco one
evening with a friend and future life-long partner, Peter Orlovsky. Both took peyote, a drug
with mind altering effects, and walked the streets, having hallucinations. As they walked,
Ginsberg saw the St. Francis Hotel, a landmark building in downtown San Francisco. The
lights and shape of the building and the effects of the peyote, made Ginsberg see, “robot
upstairs eyes & skullface, in smoke....” Ginsberg names this monster Moloch. The became the
symbol of social oppression, the cause of the demise and insanity of the “best minds.”

Part III of “Howl” is the poem’s most direct address to Carl Solomon, the person to whom the
poem is dedicated. Ginsberg met Solomon during a brief stay in the Columbia Presbyterian
Psychological Institute in 1949. In the poem, Ginsberg names the mental institution Rockland,
and the refrain of the third part of the poem is Ginsberg crying to Solomon that: “I’m with
you in Rockland!”

The third part of the poem slowly builds to a crescendo in lines 43-48, before subsiding
somewhat in the last four lines of poem, 49-52. Ginsberg noted that the verse in Part III was
supposed to build upon each previous verse. Additionally, the progression of the third part is
meant to take the reader on a journey into Carl Solomon’s madness, much as Solomon took
Ginsberg into his madness during their friendship in New York.

The first half of the poem utilizes a vantage point of the author, empathizing with Solomon’s
condition. The pronoun “you” is used to distinguish the author from Solomon. This then
moves into a perspective from within “Rockland,” the mental institution, and the reader
begins to understand some of the conditions that might drive a person crazy. The last third of
the poem comes from the perspective of Solomon’s own insanity. Ginsberg moves from the
“you” pronoun to a “we,” meaning that both the writer and reader have entered into a state of
altered mind. The last three lines of the poem give the intimation of an extraction from the
insanity. Solomon’s immanent presence is no longer assumed and Solomon becomes more of
a dream-like figure.

While Parts II and III seem quite different from each other and, in turn, both have differences
in theme, tone, and structure from Part I, both of these final parts of the poem play a
complimentary role. Part I had been a kind of documentary of the madness and destruction
that had characterized the lives of Ginsberg’s “best minds.” Part II had then named the cause
of this destruction: Moloch, a symbol for everything that Ginsberg saw as wrong in American
culture. Part III, then, names a savior: Carl Solomon. Yet, Solomon is also a tragic savior and,
in the end, not able to offer much salvation either for himself or for anyone else. He has been
the one chiefly broken by the Molochs of the world. While there is a holiness in Solomon’s
madness, this holiness goes hand in hand with his tragedy.

Ginsberg wrote the “Footnote to Howl” as a fourth part to the poem that was meant to riff and
experiment with the forms of long line he had used in previous sections. The key to
understanding the rhythm and structure of “Footnote” is to hear the poem as if it is being read
in a jazz styling. Just as a trumpet might blow a long succession of one note, using a staccato
pacing to give the musical piece a particular meaning, so too does Ginsberg begin with a
single word, “Holy,” said in succession fifteen times.

Like Part III, the word “Holy” is meant to ground the rhythm of the poem just as the phrase
“I’m with you in Rockland” grounded Part III with a steady beat of words. But it is also meant
to be a variation. Holy does not start every line, and it is scattered throughout the poem,
between words after certain phrases and before certain others.

The theme of “Footnote” is the sacred and it is meant to offer a competing vision to the one of
destruction that was presented in Part II. While Moloch is a force that destroys the world,
there is a holiness in mankind - exemplified by Ginsberg and the Beat poets - that offers the
hope of salvation. This is a kind of hidden world that no one else sees. Ginsberg probably
even means to suggest that no one in their right mind - meaning, no one who remains a part of
“normal” society - can even understand the true beauty and holiness that exists in the world.

In Parts I and III, Ginsberg attributed holy and Christlike attributes to the two heroes of the
poem, Neal Cassady and Carl Solomon. In “Footnote,” he attributes these qualities to all of
the Beat poets. The end of the poem glorifies their own sacrifices of sanity, status, or wealth
as being the path towards social salvation. While Part I of “Howl” documented the true
wretchedness of the lives of these “best minds,” the “Footnote” finds the holiness that lies
behind such insanity. “Howl” becomes not just an artistic, social, or political statement but
now a religious statement as well. It is the religion of the Beat generation.
On the Road – Kerouac

On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac. On the Road is based on the travels
of Kerouac and his friends across America. It is considered a defining work of the postwar
Beat Generation with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug
use.

5 parts

The main ideas of the Beat Generation, the longing for belief and meaning in life, are
reflected in On the Road. While interest in the book initially revolved more around Kerouac's
personal life rather than the literary nature of the text, critical attention has burgeoned in
recent years. Although the book can be viewed through many lenses, several major themes
rise up from a deeper study.

Kerouac has admitted that the biggest of these themes is religion. In a letter to a student in
1961, he wrote:

"Dean and I were embarked on a journey through post-Whitman America to FIND that
America and to FIND the inherent goodness in American man. It was really a story about 2
Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him."
[22]

This idea of an inward adventure is illustrated in all of the experimentation. The Beats had a
more liberal definition of God and spirituality closely related to personal experience.

All of the travel and personal interaction in the book permit an examination of the ideas of
masculinity and mobility in the 1950s. While these concepts may seem unrelated, Kerouac
weaves them together to provide another form of rebellion against the social norm of
conformity. Mary Pannicia Carden examines this and proposes that traveling was a way for
the characters to assert their independence. "[Sal and Dean] attempt to replace the model of
manhood dominant in capitalist America with a model rooted in foundational American ideals
of conquest and self-discovery."[23] Travel is a very symbolic act both in history and in
literature of coming of age and self-realization, especially for males. But not only do they see
conformity as restricting, but in many senses, they view women this way as well.
"Reassigning disempowering elements of patriarchy to female keeping, they attempt to
substitute male brotherhood for the nuclear family and to replace the ladder of success with
the freedom of the road as primary measures of male identity."[23] The interactions of the book
come down to balances of power and gains and losses of masculinity. Even though they seek
to defy its traditional markers, Dean and Sal also rely on this masculinity in their self-
definition. In the end, their divergence to different paths reflects Sal's understanding of the
limitations of complete freedom that is sought on the road in so far as it pertains to relations to
culture and identity.

In a broader sense, On the Road's major lesson is about the proper way of growing up. Unlike
Holden Caulfield, Sal Paradise is struggling with getting through adolescence and maturity
rather than delaying it. We see this contrasted with Dean Moriarty who is portrayed as the
depiction of a child, always on the move. Sal's struggle is how to balance these opposing
forces. We saw these exact issues in Holmes's definition of the Beat Generation as a whole, of
which Sal Paradise becomes the metaphorical face.

Jerome David Salinger, Raise high the roof beam, carpenters

Meet the Glass Family

Salinger has written much about the Glass family before, but he fits the back-story in here, in
case you missed it. There are seven Glass siblings, starting with Seymour, who is about to get
married. Following Seymour we have Buddy, the narrator, then Boo Boo, who is out to sea as
a naval ensign, the twins Walt and Waker (both similarly out of the picture at the moment),
and the youngest two, Zooey and Franny, who are still living with the Glass parents. The
Glass children are a special bunch. As kids, they were all on a radio quiz program called "It's
a Wise Child," where they answered questions and impressed the public with their precocity.
They are all extremely intelligent and well educated, particularly in the fields of literature,
religion, and philosophy. The oldest sibling, Seymour, is largely responsible for educating his
younger siblings.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

"Roof Beam" takes place in 1942, on the day of Seymour's wedding. (Buddy, narrating from a
later vantage point, tells us Seymour kills himself soon after the wedding.) Since all the rest of
the Glass family is abroad or unavailable, Buddy is the only one who can make it to the
wedding. He is in the army and so gets a three-day leave to travel to New York for the
ceremony. He's been recovering from pleurisy (a painful infection affecting the lungs) and so
the trip is a hot, uncomfortable, cough-ridden fiasco.

On top of that, Seymour doesn't end up coming to his own wedding. The bride, Muriel, is
taken away in tears, and the various guests (all from her side) are told to take the guest cars
over to the reception anyway. Buddy ends up getting into a car with four other guests, much
to his own surprise. One of the guests is the Matron of Honor, who spends the entire trip
ranting about what a psycho Seymour is. Another is a bride's great-uncle, who is both deaf
and mute. Buddy takes great comfort in his silence and Zen-like calm while trying to discern
if the angry Matron of Honor actually knows he (Buddy) is Seymour's brother.

In the end it does come out that Buddy is Seymour's brother, but this doesn't stop the Matron
of Honor from railing on Seymour all the more. Through her ranting and Buddy's narrative
commentary, more of the real story comes out. It turns out that Seymour is a peculiar
individual. He's spiritual, socially detached, and in all likelihood suffering Posttraumatic
Stress Disorder from his time in the army during World War II.

The Matron of Honor also heard a terrible story that Seymour is responsible for the crooked
smile of a very famous actress of the day – supposedly he gave her a bunch of stitches in her
face when they were kids together. On the other hand, Seymour's fiancée Muriel is a social,
light-hearted girl. Muriel's mother, Mrs. Fedder, thinks that Seymour ought to be
psychoanalyzed. Apparently, the night before the wedding, Seymour called Muriel and made
her meet him a hotel lobby to talk for several hours. He told her that he was too happy to get
married, and that they would just have to put the whole thing off until he felt steadier.

Meanwhile the car with these five guests has been stopped in the middle of the hot city streets
to allow a parade to pass. The guests despair, and Buddy invites them all over to his nearby
apartment that he and Seymour used to share. There, Buddy discovers that Seymour has been
by recently and left out his diary out. We get to see several entries in which Seymour
documents his feelings for and interactions with Muriel. He says he loves her dearly, but it's
clear that he has great difficulty in relating to anyone, even her.

As the guests mill around the apartment, they find some photos on the wall taken when the
Glass children were small. They identify a little girl in the photos with Seymour as Charlotte
Mayhew, the famous actress discussed earlier. Muriel's aunt, points out that Muriel actually
looks quite a bit like Charlotte. Buddy reels from this information and its "implications."

The Matron of Honor ends up phoning the bride's parents and reports back that everything
turned out just fine – Seymour showed up and whisked Muriel away to elope with him. The
guests, relieved, bustle out of Buddy's apartment, forgetting about the great-uncle and leaving
him alone with Buddy. Buddy, thoroughly drunk at this point from a foray into the liquor
cabinet, tells the uncle (who is deaf) the story of how Seymour gave Charlotte all those
stitches. It's clear that there was an intense childhood love between the two of them.

Seymour: an Introduction

"Seymour: an Introduction" is quite a different story from "Roof Beam." The narrator is once
again Buddy Glass, but here he is 40 and writing from his isolated home in the woods. This is
not as much a short story, he explains, as it is his attempt at describing Seymour to us. The
piece is an amalgamation of narrative commentary, digressions, and anecdotes from Buddy
and Seymour's childhood. It is not only about Seymour, but about the writing process as well.
In particular, "Seymour" is about the difficulty of writing anything final about a person who,
in Buddy's words, is too large to fit on paper.

In any case this short story is fragmented, non-linear, and not something we can re-tell for you
in a paragraph or two. We can tell you that the piece explores Seymour's own writing – it
turns out that he was a prolific poet in his last few years. It also explores his spirituality
(Buddy describes him as a "God-knower"), which is actually very much related to his poetry
(Seymour wrote a sort of specialized haiku). We hear about the enormous influence Seymour
had on Buddy when they were growing up together, especially in the realm of Buddy's own
writing. (Seymour was always the first to read and respond to Buddy's work.)

Buddy ends up discussing – somewhat subtly – several of Salinger's other works, which he
claims to have written himself ("A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Teddy" are discussed.
It's possible that Buddy also alludes to The Catcher in the Rye). Buddy admits that he can't
help but write about Seymour, even when a story is supposed to be about something else. He
references Seymour's suicide without discussing it in detail; he won't be ready for that for
another few years, he says.

Though Buddy is primarily talking about Seymour, we learn a lot about Buddy from listening
to him narrate. He currently teaches English at a women's college, writes professionally, and
lives like a hermit in his little house in the woods. Buddy appears largely cynical throughout
the course of the narrative with regard to readers, English students, publishers, critics, and his
own teaching. He concludes at the end of "Seymour," however, that the most important thing
he does is go into work every day and teach his class of students. It's clear that his optimistic
conclusions are the result of Seymour's influence on his character and personal philosophy.
The Enormous Radio – John Cheever

According to Alan Lloyd Smith, author of American Gothic Fiction - An Introduction ISBN
0-8264-1595-4, a concept of domestic abjection is one that "disturbs identity, order, and
system". This is exactly what the new radio did in the Westcott household. When Mrs.
Westcott saw the new radio in the large gumwood cabinet, she did not like the enormousness
of it. The Gumwood cabinet is a "dark" cabinet and did not fit in with the living room
furnishings and colors that Irene had personally chosen. This cabinet is dark and ugly,
bringing darkness into the living room and their lives. Eventually, Irene identifies herself with
the object.

Another gothic concept of The Enormous Radio is the element of buried secrets. Both Jim and
Irene begin to recognize that there is tension in their marriage. Irene had many deep dark
secrets that she feels guilty about. She has successfully hidden these secrets all these years
until the ugliness of the radio brings up her neighbors problems. Irene has suppressed and
hidden her feelings to others and herself for a long time. This is the reason she is drawn to the
radio, it exposes the inner life of others and eventually hers. Irene identified with the others in
the building as her own problems. It is ironic that the thing purchased to bring joy to the
Westcott's life did nothing but cause trouble between them. Secrets revealed are sometimes
not able to be handled well.

Alan Lloyd Smith also identifies Domestic Gothic as,[2] intimately bound up with the idea of
the house, gender, and family, which becomes through metaphor, a way of externalizing the
inner life of fictional characters.

In the Enormous Radio, the reader finds that Jim and Irene Westcott, the main characters of
the story, seem like an average family although the truth is not. They are seeing themselves as
the superior people who listen classical music which is referred to high level of society.
However; after participating the new radio into their life, they notice such of problems that
have already been in their life. Thus they, especially Irene begin to analyze her family's life.
Apparently, Symbolic elements was used in text in order to connect their life with readers'
daily life. For example The new radio which can commonly be encountered in life connect
Jim and Irene Westcott to their neighbour. Moreover; actually main characters symbolize the
normal English family whose members assumes and try to reflect unproblematic daily life to
others. If [Link] English people is analyzed, the kind of people like Jim and Irene
Westcott must be met.
Because of new radio's purpose which is telling something about other's life in the story, the
old radio has the mission of hiding of their issues. The reader understands these with the
entering new radio into their, especially Irene's, life from beginning the problems with new
radio. Therefore it symbolize these kind of issues encountered in English 20. century life.
To sum up John Cheever used symbolism as these elements in the story, Moreover the
question, why the writer chose a radio, not choose something else, is the most essential one.
The answer is simple, the radio refers to invention of modern life that stands at the center of
the Enormous Radio.

Emily Dickinson

Eccentricities

 white dresses
  occasional refusal to come downstairs to meet even close friends
 was hurrying out of the room or from the garden at the approach of the outsiders
 conversation with people from behind the door
 offering her guests by choice a glass of wine or a rose
 insistence even when she was very ill to be examined by the doctor as she walked by
an open door while he remained seated in the next room

“Safe in their alabaster chambers”

The narrator elucidates on the apathy of the living world to the dead and brings forth the
understanding that: No matter how grand and mighty you are in life. In death, you are
nothing. The living world does not care and your death is as impactless, trivial and “soundless
as dots on a disk of snow”.

It gradually gets clearer as the poem progresses that the narrator is reflecting on the nature of
death. In death, you finally get eternal rest. You are safe from and untouched by the
vicissitudes, sorrows, joys and terrors of the living world. There is no regard for time
(morning, noon) or the living. “Alabaster’ denotes gypsum or calcite, type of stone used for
tombs and connotes something lifeless and eternal which reflects the permanence of death.

Yet, we are aware that death might not be as eternal as the poem describes for it is merely a
‘sleep’, a short rest in which during judgment day, the members of the resurrection’ or the
dead would be called forth by lord into heaven and eternal life with the promise by Jesus that
the meek shall inherit the earth. Yet, it is ironic to a certain degree as since the dead would
gain eternal life in heaven, why are they still asleep inside their alabaster chambers?

The narrator continues in his description of the tomb or alabaster chambers of the dead, the
‘meek members of the resurrection’, with the beams lined with satin supporting a stone roof.
In a series of dazzling contrasts, the narrator establish the indifferent attitude of the living in
contrast with the dead; the lightheartedness of light laughing in contrast to the gravity of
death, the castle of sunshine in contrast with the tombs of darkness. The dead lay unknown
and the living is ignorant of the dead as the bee babbles disrespectfully into the unresponsive
ear of the dead and the birds pipe ignorantly of the “sagacity”, the wise sages that is buried in
the alabaster chambers.

Even with the momentousness of death, time continues as years pass in the crescent above the
dead and the universe continue moving, “scooping’ and ‘rowing’. The living too continue
living as royalty loses their crowns ( diadems) and wars are lost ( doges surrender). In death,
the world does not cease to exist and each human life is brief and its fall (death) as dots on a
disk of snow, inconsequential.

Both versions of the poem have deep religious meanings about death and the salvation
believers feel will be theirs after this life. The difference between the poems and their
meanings is, for the most part, in the second stanza.

The first stanza can be read straightforward. Emily is describing believers “sleeping” or living
their lives satisfied because they known that salvation will be theirs after death. In the second
stanza the world seems to be laughing at the dead. It has a sarcastic tone as if the “meek” have
been part of some cosmic joke.