The Tempest has little of action or progressive movement; the union of Ferdinand and Miranda is settled at their first interview, and Prospero merely throws apparent obstacles in their way; the shipwrecked band go leisurely about the island; the attempts of Sebastian and Antonio on the life of the king of Naples, and the plot of Caliban and the drunken sailors against Prospero are nothing but a feint, for we foresee that they will be completely frustrated by the magical skill of the latter; nothing remains, therefore, but the punishment of the guilty by dreadful sights which harrow up their consciences, and then the discovery and final reconciliation.
Yet this want of movement is so admirably concealed by the most varied display of the fascinations of poetry, and the exhilaration of mirth, the details of the execution are so very attractive, that it requires no small degree of attention to perceive that the denoument is, in some degree, anticipated in the exposition. The history of the loves of Ferdinand and Miranda, developed in a few short scenes, is enchantingly beautiful; an affecting union of chivalrous magnanimity on the one part, and on the other of the virgin openness of a heart which, brought up far from the world on an uninhabited island, has never learned to disguise its innocent movements. The wisdom of the princely hermit, Prospero, has a magical and mysterious air; the disagreeable impression left by the black falsehood of the two usurpers is softened by the honest gossiping of the old and faithful Gonzalo; Trinculo and Stephano, two good-for-nothing drunkards, find a worthy associate in Caliban; and Ariel hovers sweetly over the whole as the personified genius of the wonderful fable.
Caliban has become a by-word as the strange creation of a poetical imagination. A mixture of gnome and savage, half demon, half brute, in his behavior we perceive at once the traces of his native disposition, and the influence of Prospero's education. The latter could only unfold his understanding, without, in the slightest degree, taming his rooted malignity. It is as if the use of reason and human speech were communicated to an ape. In inclination Caliban is malicious, cowardly, false and base; and yet he is essentially different from the vulgar knaves of a civilized world, as portrayed occasionally by Shakespeare. He is rude, but not vulgar; he never falls into the prosaic and low familiarity of his drunken associates, for he is, in his way, a poetical being; he always speaks in verse. He has picked up everthing dissonant and thorny in language to compose out of it a vocabulary of his own; and of the whole variety of nature, the hateful, repulsive and deformed have alone been impressed on his imagination. The magical world of spirits, which the staff of Prospero has assembled on the island, casts merely a faint reflection into his mind, as a ray of light which falls into a dark cave, incapable of communicating to it either heat or illumination, serves merely to set in motion the poisonous vapors. The delineation of this monster is throughout consistent and profound, and, notwithstanding its hatefulness, by no means hurtful to our feelings, as the honor of human nature is left untouched.
In the zephyr-like Ariel the image of air is not to be mistaken, his name even bears an allusion to it; as, on the other hand, Caliban signifies the heavy element of earth. Yet they are neither of them simple, allegorical personifications, but beings individually determined. In general we find in A Midsummer Night's Dream, in The Tempest, in the magical part of Macbeth, and wherever Shakespeare avails himself of the popular belief in the invisible presence of spirits, and the possibility of coming in contact with them, a profound view of the inward life of nature and her mysterious springs, which, it is true, can never be altogether unknown to the genuine poet, as poetry is altogether incompatible with mechanical physics, but which few have possessed in an equal degree with Dante and himself.
The principal characters in The Tempest are drawn with remarkable strength. In Prospero we have a delineation of peculiar profundity. He was, once, not altogether just a prince, not thoroughly a just man; but he had the disposition to be both. His soul thirsted after knowledge; his mind sincere in itself, after love; and his fancy, after the secrets of nature; but he forgot what a prince should least of all forget, that, upon this moving earth, superior acquirements, in order to stand firmly, must be exercised carefully; that the world is full of enemies who can only be subdued by a watchful power and prudence, and that in certain situations the armor ought never to be put off. Thus it became easy for his nearest relation, his brother, with the help of a powerful neighboring king who could not resist the offered advantage, to depose him from his dukedom. But as the pure morals of the prince, although they were perhaps but lazily exercised in behalf of his subjects, had nevertheless acquired their love, and the usurper did not dare to make an attack on the lives of the fallen, Prospero saved himself, his daughter, and a part of his magical books, upon a desert island. Here he became what, in its highest sense, he had not yet been, a father and a prince. His knowledge extends. Nature listens to him, perhaps because he learned to know and love her more inwardly. Zephyr-like spirits, full of a tender, frolicsome humor, and rude, earth-born gnomes, are compelled to serve him. The whole island is full of wonders, but only such as the fancy willingly receives, of sounds and songs, of merry helpers and comical tormenters; and Prospero shows his great human wisdom particularly in the manner with which he, as the spiritual centre, knows how to conduct his intercourse with friends and foes. First, with his daughter. Miranda is his highest, his one, his all; nevertheless there is visible a certain elevation, a solemnity, in his behavior toward her--peculiarities which, even with the deepest love, the severely tried and aged man early assumes. Indeed, much as the pure sense of his daughter must have long cheered him, he deems it good to relate to her now for the first time the history of his earlier sufferings, now that he has mastery over, and the power to punish, his adversaries. The external miracles of Nature scarcely affect her upon an island where Nature herself has become a wonder, and the wonders become Nature. But for her, even on that account, there are only so many greater wonders in the heart and life of man.
Caliban is a character of the most powerful poetic fancy; and the more the character is investigated the more is our attention rewarded. He is the son of a witch, Sycorax, who, though long since dead, continues to work even from the grave. In her offspring there is a curious mixture of devil, man and beast, descending even to the fish species. He desires evil, not for the sake of evil or from mere wickedness, but because it is piquant, and because he feels himself opressed. He is convinced that gross injustice has been done him, and thus he does not rightly feel that what he desire may be wicked. He knows perfectly well how powerful Prospero is, whose art may perhaps even subdue his maternal god Setebos, and that he himself is nothing but a slave. Nevertheless, he cannot cease to curse, and he curses with the gusto of a virtuoso in this more than liberal art. Whatever he can find most base and disgusting he surrounds almost artistically with the most inharmonious and hissing words, and then wishes them to fall upon Prospero and his lovely daughter. He knows very well that all this will help him nothing, but that at night he will have "cramps" and "side-stitches," and be "pinched by urchins;" but still he continues to pour out new curses. He has acquired one fixed idea--that the island belonged to his mother, and, consequently, now to himself, the crown prince. The greatest horrors are pleasant to him, for he feels them only as jests which break the monotony of his slavery. He laments that he had been prevented from completing a frightful sin, and the thought of murder gives him a real enjoyment, perhaps chiefly on account of the noise and confusion that it would produce.
An eminent critic has aptly remarked: "We find him only laughably horrible, and as a marvelous, though at bottom a feeble monster, highly interesting; for we foresee from the first that none of his threats will be fulfilled. Opposed to him stands Ariel, by no means an ethereal, featureless angel, but a real airy and frolicsome spirit, agreeable and open, but also capricious, roguish, and, with his other qualities, somewhat mischievous." When we hear Prospero recite his too modest epilogue, after laying down his enchanted wand, we feel that the magic we have experienced was too charming and mighty not to be enduring.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
King Lear A critical analysis
As in Macbeth terror reaches its utmost height, in King Lear the sense of compassion is exhausted. The principal characters here are not those who act, but those who suffer. We have not in this, as in most tragedies, the picture of a calamity in which the sudden blows of fate seem still to honor the head which they strike, and where the loss is always accompanied by some flattering consolation in the memory of the former possession; but a fall from the highest elevation into the deepest abyss of misery, where humanity is stripped of all external and internal advantages, and given up a prey to naked helplessness.
The threefold dignity of a king, an old man, and a father, is dishonored by the cruel ingratitude of his unnatural daughters; the old king, who out of a foolish tenderness has given away everything, is driven out into the world a homeless beggar; the childish imbecility to which he was fast advancing changes into the wildest insanity, and when he is rescued from the destitution to which he was abandoned, it is too late. The kind consolations of filial care and attention and of true friendship are now lost on him; his bodily and mental powers are destroyed beyond hope of recovery, and all that now remains to him of life is the capability of loving and suffering beyond measure. What a picture we have in the meeting of Lear and Edgar in a tempestuous night and in a wretched hovel! The youthful Edgar has, by the wicked arts of his brother, and through his father's blindness, fallen, as did Lear, from the rank to which his birth entitled him; and, as the only means of escaping further persecution, is reduced to the disguise of a beggar tormented by evil spirits. The king's fool, notwithstanding the voluntary degradation which is implied in his condition, is, after Kent, Lear's most faithful associate, the wisest counsellor. This good-hearted fool clothes reason with the livery of his motley garb; the high-born beggar acts the part of insanity; and both, were they even in reality what they seem, would still be enviable in comparison with the king, who feels that the violence of his grief threatens to overpower his reason. The meeting of Edgar with the blinded Gloucester is equally pathetic; nothing could be more affecting than to see the ejected son become the father's guide, and the good angel, who, under the disguise of insanity, saves him by an ingenius and pious fraud from the horror and despair of self-murder.
The story of Lear and his daughers was left by Shakespeare as he found it in a fabulous tradition, with all the features characteristic of the simplicity of old times. But in that tradition there is not the slightest trace of the story of Gloucester and his sons, which was derived by Shakespeare from another source. The incorporation of the two stories has been censured as destructive of the unity of action. But whatever contributes to the intrigue of the dénoument must always possess unity. And with what ingenuity and skill are the two main parts of the composition dovetailed into one another! The pity felt by Gloucester for the fate of Lear becomes the means whereby his son Edmund effects his complete destruction, and affords the outcast Edgar an opportunity of being the savior of his father. On the other hand, Edmund is active in the cause of Regan and Goneril, and the criminal passion which they both entertain for him induces them to execute justice on each other and on themselves. The laws of the drama have therefore been sufficiently complied with, and it is the very combination which constitutes the beauty of the work.
The two cases resemble each other in the main; an infatuated father is blind toward his well-disposed child, and the unnatural children, whom he prefers, requite him by the ruin of his happiness. But all the circumstances are so different that the stories, while they each make a correspondent impression on the heart, for a complete contrast for the imagination. Were Lear alone to suffer from his daughters, the impression would be limited to the powerful compassion felt by us for his private misfortune. But two such unheard-of examples taking place at the same time have the appearance of a great commotion in the moral world; the picture becomes gigantic and fills us with such alarm as we should entertain at the idea that the heavenly bodies might one day fall from their orbits. To save in some degree the honor of human nature, Shakespeare never wishes his spectators to forget that the story takes place in a dreary and barbarous age; he lays particular stress on the circumstance that the Britons of that day were still heathens, although he has not made all the remaining circumstances to coincide learnedly with the time which he has chosen.
From this point of view we must judge of many coarsenesses in expression and manners; for instance, the immodest manner in which Gloucester acknowledged his bastard, Kent's quarrel with the steward, and more especially the cruelty personally inflicted on Gloucester by the duke of Cornwall. Even the virtue of the honest Kent bears the stamp of an iron age, in which the good and the bad display the same uncontrollable energy. Great qualities have not been superfluously assigned to the king; the poet could command our sympathy for his situation, without concealing what he had done to bring himself into it. Lear is choleric, overbearing and almost childish from age, when he drives out his youngest daughter because she will not join in the hypocritical exaggerations of her sisters. But he has a warm and affectionate heart, which is susceptible of the most fervent gratitude; and even rays of a high and kingly disposition burst forth from the eclipse of his understanding. Cordelia, with her heavenly beauty of soul, reminds us of Antigone. In the entire play little more than a hundred lines are assigned to her; yet, throughout the five acts, we can never forget her, and at the close she lingers in our recollection as if we had seen some being more beautiful and purer than a thing of earth.
After surviving so many sufferings, Lear can only die, and what more truly tragic end for him than to die from grief for the death of Cordelia? According to Shakespeare's plan, the guilty, it is true, are all punished, for wickedness destroys itself; but the virtues that would bring help and succor are either too late or are overmatched by the cunning activity of malice.
The legend of Lear had unquestionably been dramatized before Shakespeare produced his tragedy. "The true Chronicle History of King Leir and his three Daughters, Gonorill, Ragan and Cordelia, as it hath been divers and sundry times lately acted," was printed, probably for the first time, in 1605; but there can be no doubt that it belongs to a period some ten or perhaps twenty years earlier. In 1594 an entry was made at Stationer's hall, of "The moste famous Chronicle Hystorie of Leire King of England, and his Three Daughters." Shakespeare's story of Lear is taken from Holinshed's account of the legend, one dated back to the time when Joas reigned over Judah, or, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth's, to the days of Isaiah and Hosea. A garbled version of the play as written by the poet was prepared by one Nahum Tate, who, not understanding the art of Shakespeare and having no dramatic art himself, thought to adopt the original to the popular taste. For over a century this abortion helf possession of the stage, until Macready restored to us the work of the great master, since cleansed from its remaining impurities by able commentators.
In tragical pathos, in dramatic force, in grandeur of sentiment and diction, Lear has no superior in all the wide range of the world's drama. The language often rises to or exceeds, of possible, the sublimity of Aeschylus, and the tragedy has the further advantage of dealing with human beings, human passions, and human frailties, and not with the affairs of gods and demigods. The modern play-goer does not greatly concern himself with the deeds and thoughts of the powers supernal, and if he can see human beings set forth on the stage, with their virtues
The threefold dignity of a king, an old man, and a father, is dishonored by the cruel ingratitude of his unnatural daughters; the old king, who out of a foolish tenderness has given away everything, is driven out into the world a homeless beggar; the childish imbecility to which he was fast advancing changes into the wildest insanity, and when he is rescued from the destitution to which he was abandoned, it is too late. The kind consolations of filial care and attention and of true friendship are now lost on him; his bodily and mental powers are destroyed beyond hope of recovery, and all that now remains to him of life is the capability of loving and suffering beyond measure. What a picture we have in the meeting of Lear and Edgar in a tempestuous night and in a wretched hovel! The youthful Edgar has, by the wicked arts of his brother, and through his father's blindness, fallen, as did Lear, from the rank to which his birth entitled him; and, as the only means of escaping further persecution, is reduced to the disguise of a beggar tormented by evil spirits. The king's fool, notwithstanding the voluntary degradation which is implied in his condition, is, after Kent, Lear's most faithful associate, the wisest counsellor. This good-hearted fool clothes reason with the livery of his motley garb; the high-born beggar acts the part of insanity; and both, were they even in reality what they seem, would still be enviable in comparison with the king, who feels that the violence of his grief threatens to overpower his reason. The meeting of Edgar with the blinded Gloucester is equally pathetic; nothing could be more affecting than to see the ejected son become the father's guide, and the good angel, who, under the disguise of insanity, saves him by an ingenius and pious fraud from the horror and despair of self-murder.
The story of Lear and his daughers was left by Shakespeare as he found it in a fabulous tradition, with all the features characteristic of the simplicity of old times. But in that tradition there is not the slightest trace of the story of Gloucester and his sons, which was derived by Shakespeare from another source. The incorporation of the two stories has been censured as destructive of the unity of action. But whatever contributes to the intrigue of the dénoument must always possess unity. And with what ingenuity and skill are the two main parts of the composition dovetailed into one another! The pity felt by Gloucester for the fate of Lear becomes the means whereby his son Edmund effects his complete destruction, and affords the outcast Edgar an opportunity of being the savior of his father. On the other hand, Edmund is active in the cause of Regan and Goneril, and the criminal passion which they both entertain for him induces them to execute justice on each other and on themselves. The laws of the drama have therefore been sufficiently complied with, and it is the very combination which constitutes the beauty of the work.
The two cases resemble each other in the main; an infatuated father is blind toward his well-disposed child, and the unnatural children, whom he prefers, requite him by the ruin of his happiness. But all the circumstances are so different that the stories, while they each make a correspondent impression on the heart, for a complete contrast for the imagination. Were Lear alone to suffer from his daughters, the impression would be limited to the powerful compassion felt by us for his private misfortune. But two such unheard-of examples taking place at the same time have the appearance of a great commotion in the moral world; the picture becomes gigantic and fills us with such alarm as we should entertain at the idea that the heavenly bodies might one day fall from their orbits. To save in some degree the honor of human nature, Shakespeare never wishes his spectators to forget that the story takes place in a dreary and barbarous age; he lays particular stress on the circumstance that the Britons of that day were still heathens, although he has not made all the remaining circumstances to coincide learnedly with the time which he has chosen.
From this point of view we must judge of many coarsenesses in expression and manners; for instance, the immodest manner in which Gloucester acknowledged his bastard, Kent's quarrel with the steward, and more especially the cruelty personally inflicted on Gloucester by the duke of Cornwall. Even the virtue of the honest Kent bears the stamp of an iron age, in which the good and the bad display the same uncontrollable energy. Great qualities have not been superfluously assigned to the king; the poet could command our sympathy for his situation, without concealing what he had done to bring himself into it. Lear is choleric, overbearing and almost childish from age, when he drives out his youngest daughter because she will not join in the hypocritical exaggerations of her sisters. But he has a warm and affectionate heart, which is susceptible of the most fervent gratitude; and even rays of a high and kingly disposition burst forth from the eclipse of his understanding. Cordelia, with her heavenly beauty of soul, reminds us of Antigone. In the entire play little more than a hundred lines are assigned to her; yet, throughout the five acts, we can never forget her, and at the close she lingers in our recollection as if we had seen some being more beautiful and purer than a thing of earth.
After surviving so many sufferings, Lear can only die, and what more truly tragic end for him than to die from grief for the death of Cordelia? According to Shakespeare's plan, the guilty, it is true, are all punished, for wickedness destroys itself; but the virtues that would bring help and succor are either too late or are overmatched by the cunning activity of malice.
The legend of Lear had unquestionably been dramatized before Shakespeare produced his tragedy. "The true Chronicle History of King Leir and his three Daughters, Gonorill, Ragan and Cordelia, as it hath been divers and sundry times lately acted," was printed, probably for the first time, in 1605; but there can be no doubt that it belongs to a period some ten or perhaps twenty years earlier. In 1594 an entry was made at Stationer's hall, of "The moste famous Chronicle Hystorie of Leire King of England, and his Three Daughters." Shakespeare's story of Lear is taken from Holinshed's account of the legend, one dated back to the time when Joas reigned over Judah, or, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth's, to the days of Isaiah and Hosea. A garbled version of the play as written by the poet was prepared by one Nahum Tate, who, not understanding the art of Shakespeare and having no dramatic art himself, thought to adopt the original to the popular taste. For over a century this abortion helf possession of the stage, until Macready restored to us the work of the great master, since cleansed from its remaining impurities by able commentators.
In tragical pathos, in dramatic force, in grandeur of sentiment and diction, Lear has no superior in all the wide range of the world's drama. The language often rises to or exceeds, of possible, the sublimity of Aeschylus, and the tragedy has the further advantage of dealing with human beings, human passions, and human frailties, and not with the affairs of gods and demigods. The modern play-goer does not greatly concern himself with the deeds and thoughts of the powers supernal, and if he can see human beings set forth on the stage, with their virtues
A Critical Analysis of Hamlet
Why is Shakespeare considered to be one of the greatest playwrights of his time? Shakespeare lived in the Elizabethan era and had to write for an Elizabethan audience and theater. By today's standards, this was no picnic in the park. Under those circumstances, he wrote some of the greatest works in history. These works, still popular today, prove him to be a consummate dramatist.
Shakespeare knew how to craft dramatic scenes full of external and internal conflict and emotion, something the Elizabethan audience delighted in; he also intertwined superstitions of this era and pageantry, which the Elizabethans also loved.
Shakespeare creates external conflict between opposing characters to build tension onstage. When Hamlet and King Claudius interact in the second scene of Act I, tension builds: "But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son- A little more than kin, and less than kind. How is it that the clouds still hang on you? Not so, my lord, I am too much I'th'sun." (1.2.65-68).
While Queen Gertrude and Hamlet are heatedly discussing the "unlawful" marriage to Claudius, more tension builds between Hamlet and his mother: "Have you forgot me? No, by the rood, not so. You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife, And, would it were not so, you are my mother." (3.4.15-18). Shakespeare also creates internal conflict within Hamlet himself, using revenge, a common theme of that time. It was expected of playwrights of the Elizabethan era to write plays containing the motive revenge. He struggled with the decision to write Hamlet as a revenge play, and it is evident in the story in Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy which parallels Shakespeare's ambivalence about the theme of the play: "To be or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer….The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remembered." (3.1.63-78) Hamlet wants revenge when he thinks of his mother and her incestuous marriage to Claudius: "Haste me to know't, that I with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love may sweep to revenge." (1.5.33-35).
Hamlet doesn't want revenge when he sees King Claudius vulnerable while praying: "Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying. And now I'll do it. And so he goes to heaven; And so I am revenged. That would be scanned: A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge." (3.3.76-83).
Shakespeare whips up the emotion onstage by incorporating the conflict and tension between Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, his mother, and King Claudius, his unclestepfather. Kinship and inheritance are very strong themes in Hamlet. "Hamlet's excessive emotion is focused on Gertrude's sexual relations with Claudius"…. Because their marriage is "unlawful" according to the era and it deprives Hamlet of his rightful succession (Jardine 39).
According to the table of affinity, "unlawful" marriages that would conflict with possible inheritance would be, a man's marriage to his father's wife, his uncle's wife, his father's wife's daughter (his sister), his brother's wife (i.e. Claudius and Gertrude), or his wife's sister ( Jardine 40). Although none of these are blood ties, each creates questions over inheritance. In Hamlet's case, his uncle Claudius' marriage to his mother threatens his claim to inheritance. Hamlet, when talking alone with his mother, exclaims: "Nay but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty!" (3.4.100-104).
Hamlet, in a soliloquy, says to himself: "…. Within a month, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O most wicked speed! To post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!" (1.2.155-159).
Shakespeare uses beliefs and superstitions of the era to entertain and relate to his audience. Realizing the rift between Catholics and Protestants in his day, Shakespeare requests his audience to a belief in ghosts as a major necessity to understanding the play. Catholics, at the time, believed that ghosts came from purgatory and were the souls of the departed (Bloom 24), while "Protestants believed that ghosts came from hell….and were the devil….who had assumed the shape and appearance of the dead" (Bloom 24).
While Marcellus, Horatio, and Barnardo are on guard duty, they spot King Hamlet's ghost: "But soft, behold. Lo, where it comes again. I'll cross it though it blast me. Stay illusion: ….For which, they say, you spirits off walk in death…." (1.1.139-140; 152).
When a scene like the previous, occurred onstage, Shakespeare let his audience know the ghost from everyone else by having the ghost's costume be in a "ghostly" fashion. Ghosts were trained to speak in a slow, high-pitched, portentous tone (Charney 25); whether or not the ghost was wailing while moving onstage is unknown (Muir and Schoenbaum 35).
Pageantry and military content is something else Elizabethans expected to appear in their plays. Elizabethans loved blood and gore. This gave Shakespeare a good basis to incorporate this theme into Hamlet: The play begins on guard; Denmark is a warlike state; in Act III, scene iv in the event in which Hamlet kills Polonius displays a bloody and grotesque picture.
Staging and scenery were very important concepts for Shakespeare when writing a play. In early years of Shakespeare's time, plays were performed for audiences in courtyards of city inns and for upper class, in the great halls of institutions (Lamb 12). This concept didn't apply to Shakespeare when writing Hamlet; public theaters were built and being used. They play's staging actions and written text are a combination of courtyards, halls, and public theater stages (Lamb 12).
"The conventions of soliloquy allow characters to address the audience directly, outside of the dialogue form" (Charney 39). The construction of Shakespeare's apron stage helped to give soliloquy its complete efficiency. On this large stage that extended all the way into the middle of the "pit", an actor could come downstage to address the spectators in a tone of confidence (Charney 39).
Due to limitations in lighting in Elizabethan England, Shakespeare used certain theatrical conventions to accommodate these circumstances so that his audience would know what time of day or night it was; torches were brought onstage; candles were lit; poetry was used to describe the time and setting. Barnardo, arriving to guard the tower, says to Francisco: "'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco." (1.1.7). Barnardo says to Horatio and Marcellus of when the ghost left at daybreak: "It was about to speak when the cock crew." (1.1.164).
In Shakespearean theater, a scene does not necessarily take place in a certain geographical place. It is described by the words of the actors. "Very little was done to create the illusion of a place. Painted, movable scenery was not in general use until the end of the seventeenth century, so that the understanding of a 'scene' as a location does not hold for Elizabethan drama" (Charney 95). To overcome this obstacle, Shakespeare lets his audience know the setting by the words of his characters. He defines the setting, Denmark, in the words of the men on guard in the opening scene of Act I.
Without the requirements of located places, Shakespeare's scenes can move easily into each other in an uninterrupted sequence. There isn't any need for changing scenes; any needed props were thrust onto the stage. Shakespeare's plays maintain a quick pace, unimaginable in a modern production (i.e. Hamlet was completed in two hours). The advantage to having such a short play is that the dramatic effect can be intensified and the audience is able to feel the full effect of the climax.
Players in the Elizabethan era were of vast importance to the outcome of the play. Shakespeare displays this importance in Hamlet with references to the players of that time. The entire scene ii of Act III is based on the players and the play that Hamlet has rewritten to be performed for the King. Also in this scene is mention of Shakespeare's rivalry, The Lord Admiral's Men. Shakespeare mentions, too, the children players of the Black friar theater; they were harsh competition then. Rosencrantz says to Hamlet while discussing players and the theater: "….there is, sir, and eyrie of children…." (2.2.336).
When Shakespeare sat down to write his plays, he knew the limitations that he was faced with, limitations that modern-day authors would have a hard time accepting; yet, he leaps over these walls and presents us with masterpieces of art.
Due to scenery and staging complications, there weren't any breaks between scenes, as there are in today's productions. To Shakespeare, these types of scenes made no difference, they were just numbers of different groupings of "….people carrying on the actions of the play" (Lamb 13).
The exact origins of Hamlet are unknown, but it is believed that Shakespeare "cut, pasted, and edited" tales before his time that resembled Hamlet. One story can be traced back to the Danish chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus (thirteenth century). This account was printed in Latin in 1514 (Lamb 14-15). Another version of Hamlet is Belleforest's Historie Tragiques of 1582; this version is based on Saxo with a few minor changes. It was translated into English in 1608 as The Historie of Hamlet (Lamb 15).
It is believed that Shakespeare was familiar with both Saxo and Bellforest's tale of Hamlet; his only son was christened Hamnet in 1585 (Hamnet is one spelling of Hamlet) (Lamb 15). Another origin of the name Hamlet is believed to be from a young girl, Katherine Hamlett, who drowned near Stratford when Shakespeare was sixteen. Her drowning occurred under circumstances very similar to those of Ophelia (Bloom 96).
Similarities between the Earl of Essex (Shakespeare's supposed "lover") and Hamlet have also been commonly pointed out (Bloom 96).
Shakespeare, as a consummate dramatist, uses many different literature elements in his plays. The story of Hamlet came out in the seventh century, but in Shakespeare's version, Hamlet attends Wittenberg, a university founded in 1502 (Lamb 18-19). Shakespeare uses irony and dramatic irony: In scene iii of Act III, Hamlet thinks Claudius is kneeling to make his peace with God, but actually, Claudius is realizing that he can't repent and evil is the only path for him. The King says to Laertes: "….That we are made of stuff so flat and dull." (4.3.33).
Although faced with the many great challenges that playwrights faced in the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare proves himself worthy of the Elizabethan audience and also shows that he is a consummate dramatist in that his works are still being read and performed today.
Shakespeare knew how to craft dramatic scenes full of external and internal conflict and emotion, something the Elizabethan audience delighted in; he also intertwined superstitions of this era and pageantry, which the Elizabethans also loved.
Shakespeare creates external conflict between opposing characters to build tension onstage. When Hamlet and King Claudius interact in the second scene of Act I, tension builds: "But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son- A little more than kin, and less than kind. How is it that the clouds still hang on you? Not so, my lord, I am too much I'th'sun." (1.2.65-68).
While Queen Gertrude and Hamlet are heatedly discussing the "unlawful" marriage to Claudius, more tension builds between Hamlet and his mother: "Have you forgot me? No, by the rood, not so. You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife, And, would it were not so, you are my mother." (3.4.15-18). Shakespeare also creates internal conflict within Hamlet himself, using revenge, a common theme of that time. It was expected of playwrights of the Elizabethan era to write plays containing the motive revenge. He struggled with the decision to write Hamlet as a revenge play, and it is evident in the story in Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy which parallels Shakespeare's ambivalence about the theme of the play: "To be or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer….The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remembered." (3.1.63-78) Hamlet wants revenge when he thinks of his mother and her incestuous marriage to Claudius: "Haste me to know't, that I with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love may sweep to revenge." (1.5.33-35).
Hamlet doesn't want revenge when he sees King Claudius vulnerable while praying: "Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying. And now I'll do it. And so he goes to heaven; And so I am revenged. That would be scanned: A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge." (3.3.76-83).
Shakespeare whips up the emotion onstage by incorporating the conflict and tension between Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, his mother, and King Claudius, his unclestepfather. Kinship and inheritance are very strong themes in Hamlet. "Hamlet's excessive emotion is focused on Gertrude's sexual relations with Claudius"…. Because their marriage is "unlawful" according to the era and it deprives Hamlet of his rightful succession (Jardine 39).
According to the table of affinity, "unlawful" marriages that would conflict with possible inheritance would be, a man's marriage to his father's wife, his uncle's wife, his father's wife's daughter (his sister), his brother's wife (i.e. Claudius and Gertrude), or his wife's sister ( Jardine 40). Although none of these are blood ties, each creates questions over inheritance. In Hamlet's case, his uncle Claudius' marriage to his mother threatens his claim to inheritance. Hamlet, when talking alone with his mother, exclaims: "Nay but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty!" (3.4.100-104).
Hamlet, in a soliloquy, says to himself: "…. Within a month, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O most wicked speed! To post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!" (1.2.155-159).
Shakespeare uses beliefs and superstitions of the era to entertain and relate to his audience. Realizing the rift between Catholics and Protestants in his day, Shakespeare requests his audience to a belief in ghosts as a major necessity to understanding the play. Catholics, at the time, believed that ghosts came from purgatory and were the souls of the departed (Bloom 24), while "Protestants believed that ghosts came from hell….and were the devil….who had assumed the shape and appearance of the dead" (Bloom 24).
While Marcellus, Horatio, and Barnardo are on guard duty, they spot King Hamlet's ghost: "But soft, behold. Lo, where it comes again. I'll cross it though it blast me. Stay illusion: ….For which, they say, you spirits off walk in death…." (1.1.139-140; 152).
When a scene like the previous, occurred onstage, Shakespeare let his audience know the ghost from everyone else by having the ghost's costume be in a "ghostly" fashion. Ghosts were trained to speak in a slow, high-pitched, portentous tone (Charney 25); whether or not the ghost was wailing while moving onstage is unknown (Muir and Schoenbaum 35).
Pageantry and military content is something else Elizabethans expected to appear in their plays. Elizabethans loved blood and gore. This gave Shakespeare a good basis to incorporate this theme into Hamlet: The play begins on guard; Denmark is a warlike state; in Act III, scene iv in the event in which Hamlet kills Polonius displays a bloody and grotesque picture.
Staging and scenery were very important concepts for Shakespeare when writing a play. In early years of Shakespeare's time, plays were performed for audiences in courtyards of city inns and for upper class, in the great halls of institutions (Lamb 12). This concept didn't apply to Shakespeare when writing Hamlet; public theaters were built and being used. They play's staging actions and written text are a combination of courtyards, halls, and public theater stages (Lamb 12).
"The conventions of soliloquy allow characters to address the audience directly, outside of the dialogue form" (Charney 39). The construction of Shakespeare's apron stage helped to give soliloquy its complete efficiency. On this large stage that extended all the way into the middle of the "pit", an actor could come downstage to address the spectators in a tone of confidence (Charney 39).
Due to limitations in lighting in Elizabethan England, Shakespeare used certain theatrical conventions to accommodate these circumstances so that his audience would know what time of day or night it was; torches were brought onstage; candles were lit; poetry was used to describe the time and setting. Barnardo, arriving to guard the tower, says to Francisco: "'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco." (1.1.7). Barnardo says to Horatio and Marcellus of when the ghost left at daybreak: "It was about to speak when the cock crew." (1.1.164).
In Shakespearean theater, a scene does not necessarily take place in a certain geographical place. It is described by the words of the actors. "Very little was done to create the illusion of a place. Painted, movable scenery was not in general use until the end of the seventeenth century, so that the understanding of a 'scene' as a location does not hold for Elizabethan drama" (Charney 95). To overcome this obstacle, Shakespeare lets his audience know the setting by the words of his characters. He defines the setting, Denmark, in the words of the men on guard in the opening scene of Act I.
Without the requirements of located places, Shakespeare's scenes can move easily into each other in an uninterrupted sequence. There isn't any need for changing scenes; any needed props were thrust onto the stage. Shakespeare's plays maintain a quick pace, unimaginable in a modern production (i.e. Hamlet was completed in two hours). The advantage to having such a short play is that the dramatic effect can be intensified and the audience is able to feel the full effect of the climax.
Players in the Elizabethan era were of vast importance to the outcome of the play. Shakespeare displays this importance in Hamlet with references to the players of that time. The entire scene ii of Act III is based on the players and the play that Hamlet has rewritten to be performed for the King. Also in this scene is mention of Shakespeare's rivalry, The Lord Admiral's Men. Shakespeare mentions, too, the children players of the Black friar theater; they were harsh competition then. Rosencrantz says to Hamlet while discussing players and the theater: "….there is, sir, and eyrie of children…." (2.2.336).
When Shakespeare sat down to write his plays, he knew the limitations that he was faced with, limitations that modern-day authors would have a hard time accepting; yet, he leaps over these walls and presents us with masterpieces of art.
Due to scenery and staging complications, there weren't any breaks between scenes, as there are in today's productions. To Shakespeare, these types of scenes made no difference, they were just numbers of different groupings of "….people carrying on the actions of the play" (Lamb 13).
The exact origins of Hamlet are unknown, but it is believed that Shakespeare "cut, pasted, and edited" tales before his time that resembled Hamlet. One story can be traced back to the Danish chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus (thirteenth century). This account was printed in Latin in 1514 (Lamb 14-15). Another version of Hamlet is Belleforest's Historie Tragiques of 1582; this version is based on Saxo with a few minor changes. It was translated into English in 1608 as The Historie of Hamlet (Lamb 15).
It is believed that Shakespeare was familiar with both Saxo and Bellforest's tale of Hamlet; his only son was christened Hamnet in 1585 (Hamnet is one spelling of Hamlet) (Lamb 15). Another origin of the name Hamlet is believed to be from a young girl, Katherine Hamlett, who drowned near Stratford when Shakespeare was sixteen. Her drowning occurred under circumstances very similar to those of Ophelia (Bloom 96).
Similarities between the Earl of Essex (Shakespeare's supposed "lover") and Hamlet have also been commonly pointed out (Bloom 96).
Shakespeare, as a consummate dramatist, uses many different literature elements in his plays. The story of Hamlet came out in the seventh century, but in Shakespeare's version, Hamlet attends Wittenberg, a university founded in 1502 (Lamb 18-19). Shakespeare uses irony and dramatic irony: In scene iii of Act III, Hamlet thinks Claudius is kneeling to make his peace with God, but actually, Claudius is realizing that he can't repent and evil is the only path for him. The King says to Laertes: "….That we are made of stuff so flat and dull." (4.3.33).
Although faced with the many great challenges that playwrights faced in the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare proves himself worthy of the Elizabethan audience and also shows that he is a consummate dramatist in that his works are still being read and performed today.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Review on The Shadow lines by Amitav Gosh
The Shadow Lines by Amitav Gosh paints a landscape of symbolism and realism that spans both time and space. The concepts of distance and time are uniquely portrayed in both the physical borders that divide countries and the imaginary borders that divide human beings. From the image-conscious character of the grandmother to the riots that explode in the streets, Ghosh takes the reader on a fascinating journey of exploration, dissecting the characters of the story while simultaneously dissecting the human race.
The title of the novel is perhaps the most philosophical statement Ghosh makes, asserting that 'The Shadow Lines', or the lines that not only define our human shape but our inner struggles to choose between darkness and light, are an intricate part of all human existence. Shadows, like time, are both tangible and intangible at any given moment or realm of perspective. They are a fleeting, generically depicted, generally distorted representations of ourselves, and they can only be viewed in the proper light. Ghosh uses shadow lines as a way of telling us that the way we view ourselves is not always the way that others view us, and until we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves we will remain in the shadows of our own enlightenment.
Ghosh manages to speak excessively of shadows, darkness and light, weaving them subtly into the context of what he is trying to convey. He uses the terms both realistically and metaphorically to show that the shadow we cast, the one other people can see, is not always an accurate reflection of who we really are. Nick was not the hero he seemed to be and when May reveals this to the boy, they are in the process of moving from light to dark, both in physical environment and knowledge of the truth. In a way, a shadow is like a "fair weather friend" in that it appears to us only when the sun is directly overhead. While every human being casts a unique shadow, a common theme can be seen in them all, namely that they are just as much a part of us as they are detached from us. This is another realm in which Ghosh metaphorically uses the elements of shadow lines to tell his story.
Throughout literature's long history, shadows have been used as metaphors for secrets. Things hidden in the shadows, things which we cannot see though we can vaguely make out their outlines...these are the traditional metaphors which Ghosh cannot avoid. Ghosh demonstrates that when secrets come out from behind the shadows and are exposed to the stark, revealing brilliance of daylight, they do not immediately evaporate. Secrets tend to linger long after they've been exposed because the fact that they were hidden in the first place casts strong shadows of doubt upon the person keeping the secret. The revelation of these secrets can have severe consequences, such as being kicked out of school or being labeled a liar. Though the grandmother's "letter from the grave" is eventually dismissed, it's mere existence taught the boy some valuable lessons.
While he is astonished by his grandmother's ability to see past the shadows and into the light, he is equally annoyed by it. It seems to him that a person ought to be able to keep some secrets hidden, like his "visits to the women", but at the same time he respects his grandmother's insight. While her first revelation caused him great embarrassment, her second was a truth he wished he could have faced himself long ago. He is both praising and admonishing his late Grandmother in a single breath.
The narrator's secret love for his cousin Ila was forced to remain in the shadows because the feeling itself, was dark in nature. Anything that is considered taboo, such as sexual relations between members of the same family, automatically quivers in the shadows of its own dark truths. Both of the major truths that the grandmother exposed were laden with sexual taboos, which raises the question, should they ever have been exposed at all? In light of the pain they caused, one would think not, but in a world in which truth is the foundation of evolution into maturity, how can one claim that any truth should remain unilluminated?
On the one hand, Ila's enlightenment to her cousin's feelings for her was good in that it marked a promise of change in her behavior towards him which she hoped would help to dissipate his obsession. On the other hand, from the narrator's viewpoint, this revelation and his cousin's subsequent rejection caused him a great deal of emotional distress. Should his feelings have remained in the shadows, he may not have endured this sharp, heart-stabbing pain, yet he may have been subjected a long, slow torture instead. The answer to whether this truth should have been revealed lies in which kind of pain the narrator finds less troubling.
While the title'The Shadow Lines' can be read a thousand different ways, and the significance of shadows throughout the novel can be interpreted with vast distinctions, one thing remains clear. The shadows that all human beings reflect are as unique to the individual as each written word is to a talented author like Amitav Ghosh.
The title of the novel is perhaps the most philosophical statement Ghosh makes, asserting that 'The Shadow Lines', or the lines that not only define our human shape but our inner struggles to choose between darkness and light, are an intricate part of all human existence. Shadows, like time, are both tangible and intangible at any given moment or realm of perspective. They are a fleeting, generically depicted, generally distorted representations of ourselves, and they can only be viewed in the proper light. Ghosh uses shadow lines as a way of telling us that the way we view ourselves is not always the way that others view us, and until we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves we will remain in the shadows of our own enlightenment.
Ghosh manages to speak excessively of shadows, darkness and light, weaving them subtly into the context of what he is trying to convey. He uses the terms both realistically and metaphorically to show that the shadow we cast, the one other people can see, is not always an accurate reflection of who we really are. Nick was not the hero he seemed to be and when May reveals this to the boy, they are in the process of moving from light to dark, both in physical environment and knowledge of the truth. In a way, a shadow is like a "fair weather friend" in that it appears to us only when the sun is directly overhead. While every human being casts a unique shadow, a common theme can be seen in them all, namely that they are just as much a part of us as they are detached from us. This is another realm in which Ghosh metaphorically uses the elements of shadow lines to tell his story.
Throughout literature's long history, shadows have been used as metaphors for secrets. Things hidden in the shadows, things which we cannot see though we can vaguely make out their outlines...these are the traditional metaphors which Ghosh cannot avoid. Ghosh demonstrates that when secrets come out from behind the shadows and are exposed to the stark, revealing brilliance of daylight, they do not immediately evaporate. Secrets tend to linger long after they've been exposed because the fact that they were hidden in the first place casts strong shadows of doubt upon the person keeping the secret. The revelation of these secrets can have severe consequences, such as being kicked out of school or being labeled a liar. Though the grandmother's "letter from the grave" is eventually dismissed, it's mere existence taught the boy some valuable lessons.
While he is astonished by his grandmother's ability to see past the shadows and into the light, he is equally annoyed by it. It seems to him that a person ought to be able to keep some secrets hidden, like his "visits to the women", but at the same time he respects his grandmother's insight. While her first revelation caused him great embarrassment, her second was a truth he wished he could have faced himself long ago. He is both praising and admonishing his late Grandmother in a single breath.
The narrator's secret love for his cousin Ila was forced to remain in the shadows because the feeling itself, was dark in nature. Anything that is considered taboo, such as sexual relations between members of the same family, automatically quivers in the shadows of its own dark truths. Both of the major truths that the grandmother exposed were laden with sexual taboos, which raises the question, should they ever have been exposed at all? In light of the pain they caused, one would think not, but in a world in which truth is the foundation of evolution into maturity, how can one claim that any truth should remain unilluminated?
On the one hand, Ila's enlightenment to her cousin's feelings for her was good in that it marked a promise of change in her behavior towards him which she hoped would help to dissipate his obsession. On the other hand, from the narrator's viewpoint, this revelation and his cousin's subsequent rejection caused him a great deal of emotional distress. Should his feelings have remained in the shadows, he may not have endured this sharp, heart-stabbing pain, yet he may have been subjected a long, slow torture instead. The answer to whether this truth should have been revealed lies in which kind of pain the narrator finds less troubling.
While the title'The Shadow Lines' can be read a thousand different ways, and the significance of shadows throughout the novel can be interpreted with vast distinctions, one thing remains clear. The shadows that all human beings reflect are as unique to the individual as each written word is to a talented author like Amitav Ghosh.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Readers Response on Lord Jim
Recent Forum Posts on Lord Jim
Can anyone help?
I admit that at my first attempt to read this book, I was completly confused by it, and had the most difficult time figuring out what the heck was going on and what was suppose to be happening, I think I only got to maybe the 3rd chapter before I was just like forget it and stopped reading, but I have been considering trying again. Though sometimes I wonder if I will regeret that choice. But well the things that had the most difficulty with initially, was first, tracking the story, as it seemed to be jumping all over the place, and I could not figure out what was happening now, what already happerend, and just what was going on. And this kept bugging me, but is Lord Jim suppose to be African American, or White? I could never figure that one out and kept going back and forth between the two.
Posted By Dark Muse at Thu 31 Jan 2008, 3:15 PM in Lord Jim 10 Replies
Lord Jim
I read this book in my A.P. English class. We as a class felt that Conrad used way too much imagery and the detail went on and on. Jim is beyond flawed. Many of us felt he should have used the revolver on himself instead of the assassins. Jim just kept running from his fate, but in reality, Jim was running from himself. The readers know that he can not run from himself because he goes too.
Posted By Scott at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 1 Reply
Lord Jim
What was the name of the east asian island which differed by only one letter from the name of the boat that the hero deserts in a storm?
Posted By Helen at Thu 19 Dec 2002, 1:00 AM in Lord Jim 2 Replies
Victory?
I wonder whether this book is really to be read in as optimistic a light as that in which some of your contributors appear to have understood it? It seems to me that Conrad's novel is tragic in form, and that Jim is a flawed character, of the type which Aristotle famously defined as requisite to true tragedy. What is interesting about Jim is that the flaw, in his case, lies in his romantic idealism. He is, as the older, and more world-weary narrator emphasises, deeply romantic, highly imaginative, and extremely idealistic.The reader is given to understand that the narrator, at least, regards these qualities, on which so much store is sometimes set, as being of at least doubtful value. However natural they are to youth, they are, in themselves, not only an obstacle to a true understanding of the world, but treacherous to the exercise of practical virtue. Jim is inarticulate, self-obsessed, easily duped, and ultimately destroyed by his tendency to refer everything around him to the way in which he perceives himself. There is a tension in the book between the codes by which ordinary and unsung men live their lives of duty and self-sacrifice, and the ambitions of those who, in their own view at least, transcend the rules because they are born to a higher destiny. It seems to me that Conrad is sensitive to the strengths and limitations of both value systems, and that the current of the book takes the form of a debate in which the one is not necessarily preferred to the other.It seems to me too that those who want to see Jim's ultimate fate as a vindication of his honour need to think about the price that more than one other person in the book ends up having to pay for it.The moral may well be that romantic idealists are dangerous to themselves, and to those around them - a view that those raised on the virtues propounded by the Hollywood school of heroism may find hard to accept, but which those who have lived life in dangerous trades - and CXIX sea-faring was such a trade - may well regard as all but self-evident. A bit of decency, humility and respect for others is perhaps the best we can really hope for in life - the tragedy is that the practice of these virtues is very much more difficult than at first appears.
Posted By John Clay at Wed 23 Jun 2004, 1:00 AM in Lord Jim 2 Replies
No Subject
I like the character of Lord Jim because he is brave, idealist and a romantic. He dies for his ideals.
Posted By abdul at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 0 Replies
Lord Jim
I've been listening to Lord Jim on tape--quite a challenge. I agree that the book does start out strange and frustrating but grows more tractable and even memorable as it develops. Sometimes doing other things while listening to it distracts from significant details and profound insights. I am sorry for this but, nevertheless, glad for what I am gleaning from the book: thought-provoking glimpses into the contradictory realities of human nature.
Posted By Laura at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 0 Replies
No Subject
I have tried to read this books several times when I was younger, but I could not finished it. The subject of the book, about a man that has loose his honnor by an accident, is something that atract young people, because at this age all of us want to prove that we are a hero and not a coward. But the fact that sometimes the net of fate could come and destroy all of our dreams is something really scary. I have to face some shipwrecks on my life to turn my attention to this book again, but I had to begin with Heart of Darkness and Amy Foster. The first one is smaller in the number of pages (not in substance), and the follow is for a best start point. Both inspired good movies what could bring the subject more atractive. Well, Lord Jim is my lasting temptation, and I am trying to read it now. Although it has a good movie version, with Peter O Toole, that is for me one of his best acting, it is very difficult to find it on VCR format. I wish to watch it again to remind my first impression, that influence all my life. I promise that when I get the end of this word-by-word well-written book, I will come back again and will show you all my view.
Posted By Luis Cesar Nunes at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 0 Replies
Where is Patusan
Is Patusan even a real place? Was it ever a real place? I know sometimes Conrad changes names for the story's sake. Is this one of those times? I can not find it in Encarta Virtual Globe, which will list almost any little island, town, or provice that exists.if you can help, please email me.thanks
Posted By colmac at Sat 13 Sep 2003, 1:00 AM in Lord Jim 6 Replies
patna+ us. general...
i ve read some comments, and noticed that some said the island patusan differed from the name of the ship, the Patna, only by 2 letters.and have you also noticed that these letters form the word "us"?surely a reference to Jim, who is described by Marlow, the narrator, as "one of us".can we suppose it s to make the reader think that even if jim goes far away in a remote island, he s still one of the seamen? (or one of the Men, simply?)and this would contradict the verdict in court, which deprives jim from his seaman certificate.i d like to have some discussions about the book. don t hesitate to email me!!greetings from france!
Posted By jose, france at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 0 Replies
the complications
Two of the most difficult aspects of this novel are Conrad's use of narrations within narrations and his refusal to tell the story in a linear fashion. Reading the first third of the book, it is difficult to understand who is telling the story, and what part of the story is being told at the time - to the point that it seems more like a random conglomeration of unrelated events than a story. (especially if one misses subtle cues like Marlow speaking to the dinner guests and lighting his cigar, or the nest of quotation marks that are found around 99.96% of the paragraphs.)It is my belief that this is deliberate, and serves the purpose of taking the emphasis of the book off of the plot and events in Jim's life, and focusing attention on the roundness and complexity of Jim as a human character. Furthermore, by making use of well characterized narrators with whom we can relate to, Conrad causes readers to accept the judgements made about Jim by certain narrators as the readers' own judgements. This is especially evident in the case of Marlow, the principal narrator, who offers all of his thoughts and feelings about Jim to his audience alongside the facts of Jim's life. In effect, the reader is made to view Jim through the lens of Marlow's personal frame of mind.This is the argument I will make in the term paper I need to write between today and tomorrow.Does anyone have thoughts or comments they would care to share with me? I have provided my email address, and I would appreciate it if you would try to contact me with any of your insights, since I will probably not have time to come back to this forum until after my term paper is graded. (But, I check my email every day.); )
Posted By Vid at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 0 Replies
Can anyone help?
I admit that at my first attempt to read this book, I was completly confused by it, and had the most difficult time figuring out what the heck was going on and what was suppose to be happening, I think I only got to maybe the 3rd chapter before I was just like forget it and stopped reading, but I have been considering trying again. Though sometimes I wonder if I will regeret that choice. But well the things that had the most difficulty with initially, was first, tracking the story, as it seemed to be jumping all over the place, and I could not figure out what was happening now, what already happerend, and just what was going on. And this kept bugging me, but is Lord Jim suppose to be African American, or White? I could never figure that one out and kept going back and forth between the two.
Posted By Dark Muse at Thu 31 Jan 2008, 3:15 PM in Lord Jim 10 Replies
Lord Jim
I read this book in my A.P. English class. We as a class felt that Conrad used way too much imagery and the detail went on and on. Jim is beyond flawed. Many of us felt he should have used the revolver on himself instead of the assassins. Jim just kept running from his fate, but in reality, Jim was running from himself. The readers know that he can not run from himself because he goes too.
Posted By Scott at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 1 Reply
Lord Jim
What was the name of the east asian island which differed by only one letter from the name of the boat that the hero deserts in a storm?
Posted By Helen at Thu 19 Dec 2002, 1:00 AM in Lord Jim 2 Replies
Victory?
I wonder whether this book is really to be read in as optimistic a light as that in which some of your contributors appear to have understood it? It seems to me that Conrad's novel is tragic in form, and that Jim is a flawed character, of the type which Aristotle famously defined as requisite to true tragedy. What is interesting about Jim is that the flaw, in his case, lies in his romantic idealism. He is, as the older, and more world-weary narrator emphasises, deeply romantic, highly imaginative, and extremely idealistic.The reader is given to understand that the narrator, at least, regards these qualities, on which so much store is sometimes set, as being of at least doubtful value. However natural they are to youth, they are, in themselves, not only an obstacle to a true understanding of the world, but treacherous to the exercise of practical virtue. Jim is inarticulate, self-obsessed, easily duped, and ultimately destroyed by his tendency to refer everything around him to the way in which he perceives himself. There is a tension in the book between the codes by which ordinary and unsung men live their lives of duty and self-sacrifice, and the ambitions of those who, in their own view at least, transcend the rules because they are born to a higher destiny. It seems to me that Conrad is sensitive to the strengths and limitations of both value systems, and that the current of the book takes the form of a debate in which the one is not necessarily preferred to the other.It seems to me too that those who want to see Jim's ultimate fate as a vindication of his honour need to think about the price that more than one other person in the book ends up having to pay for it.The moral may well be that romantic idealists are dangerous to themselves, and to those around them - a view that those raised on the virtues propounded by the Hollywood school of heroism may find hard to accept, but which those who have lived life in dangerous trades - and CXIX sea-faring was such a trade - may well regard as all but self-evident. A bit of decency, humility and respect for others is perhaps the best we can really hope for in life - the tragedy is that the practice of these virtues is very much more difficult than at first appears.
Posted By John Clay at Wed 23 Jun 2004, 1:00 AM in Lord Jim 2 Replies
No Subject
I like the character of Lord Jim because he is brave, idealist and a romantic. He dies for his ideals.
Posted By abdul at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 0 Replies
Lord Jim
I've been listening to Lord Jim on tape--quite a challenge. I agree that the book does start out strange and frustrating but grows more tractable and even memorable as it develops. Sometimes doing other things while listening to it distracts from significant details and profound insights. I am sorry for this but, nevertheless, glad for what I am gleaning from the book: thought-provoking glimpses into the contradictory realities of human nature.
Posted By Laura at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 0 Replies
No Subject
I have tried to read this books several times when I was younger, but I could not finished it. The subject of the book, about a man that has loose his honnor by an accident, is something that atract young people, because at this age all of us want to prove that we are a hero and not a coward. But the fact that sometimes the net of fate could come and destroy all of our dreams is something really scary. I have to face some shipwrecks on my life to turn my attention to this book again, but I had to begin with Heart of Darkness and Amy Foster. The first one is smaller in the number of pages (not in substance), and the follow is for a best start point. Both inspired good movies what could bring the subject more atractive. Well, Lord Jim is my lasting temptation, and I am trying to read it now. Although it has a good movie version, with Peter O Toole, that is for me one of his best acting, it is very difficult to find it on VCR format. I wish to watch it again to remind my first impression, that influence all my life. I promise that when I get the end of this word-by-word well-written book, I will come back again and will show you all my view.
Posted By Luis Cesar Nunes at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 0 Replies
Where is Patusan
Is Patusan even a real place? Was it ever a real place? I know sometimes Conrad changes names for the story's sake. Is this one of those times? I can not find it in Encarta Virtual Globe, which will list almost any little island, town, or provice that exists.if you can help, please email me.thanks
Posted By colmac at Sat 13 Sep 2003, 1:00 AM in Lord Jim 6 Replies
patna+ us. general...
i ve read some comments, and noticed that some said the island patusan differed from the name of the ship, the Patna, only by 2 letters.and have you also noticed that these letters form the word "us"?surely a reference to Jim, who is described by Marlow, the narrator, as "one of us".can we suppose it s to make the reader think that even if jim goes far away in a remote island, he s still one of the seamen? (or one of the Men, simply?)and this would contradict the verdict in court, which deprives jim from his seaman certificate.i d like to have some discussions about the book. don t hesitate to email me!!greetings from france!
Posted By jose, france at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 0 Replies
the complications
Two of the most difficult aspects of this novel are Conrad's use of narrations within narrations and his refusal to tell the story in a linear fashion. Reading the first third of the book, it is difficult to understand who is telling the story, and what part of the story is being told at the time - to the point that it seems more like a random conglomeration of unrelated events than a story. (especially if one misses subtle cues like Marlow speaking to the dinner guests and lighting his cigar, or the nest of quotation marks that are found around 99.96% of the paragraphs.)It is my belief that this is deliberate, and serves the purpose of taking the emphasis of the book off of the plot and events in Jim's life, and focusing attention on the roundness and complexity of Jim as a human character. Furthermore, by making use of well characterized narrators with whom we can relate to, Conrad causes readers to accept the judgements made about Jim by certain narrators as the readers' own judgements. This is especially evident in the case of Marlow, the principal narrator, who offers all of his thoughts and feelings about Jim to his audience alongside the facts of Jim's life. In effect, the reader is made to view Jim through the lens of Marlow's personal frame of mind.This is the argument I will make in the term paper I need to write between today and tomorrow.Does anyone have thoughts or comments they would care to share with me? I have provided my email address, and I would appreciate it if you would try to contact me with any of your insights, since I will probably not have time to come back to this forum until after my term paper is graded. (But, I check my email every day.); )
Posted By Vid at Tue 24 May 2005, 6:07 PM in Lord Jim 0 Replies
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Can the subaltern speak.....Spivak
Spivak's essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?"--originally published in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg's Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (1988)--perhaps best demonstrates her concern for the processes whereby postcolonial studies ironically reinscribe, co-opt, and rehearse neo-colonial imperatives of political domination, economic exploitation, and cultural erasure. In other words, is the post-colonial critic unknowingly complicit in the task of imperialism? Is "post-colonialism" a specifically first-world, male, privileged, academic, institutionalized discourse that classifies and surveys the East in the same measure as the actual modes of colonial dominance it seeks to dismantle? According to Spivak, postcolonial studies must encourage that "postcolonial intellectuals learn that their privilege is their loss" (Ashcroft. et al 28). In "Can the Subaltern Speak?", Spivak encourages but also criticizes the efforts of the subaltern studies group, a project led by Ranajit Guha that has reappropriated Gramsci's term "subaltern" (the economically dispossesed) in order to locate and re-establish a "voice" or collective locus of agency in postcolonial India. Although Spivak acknowledges the "epistemic violence" done upon Indian subalterns, she suggests that any attempt from the outside to ameliorate their condition by granting them collective speech invariably will encounter the following problems: 1) a logocentric assumption of cultural solidarity among a heterogeneous people, and 2) a dependence upon western intellectuals to "speak for" the subaltern condition rather than allowing them to speak for themselves. As Spivak argues, by speaking out and reclaiming a collective cultural identity, subalterns will in fact re-inscribe their subordinate position in society. The academic assumption of a subaltern collectivity becomes akin to an ethnocentric extension of Western logos--a totalizing, essentialist "mythology" as Derrida might describe it--that doesn't account for the heterogeneity of the colonized body politic.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Self/ other..........Fanon
Self / Other
Fanon, Frantz. "The Negro and Recognition." chapter 7 from Black Skin White Masks. Trans.
"I hope I have shown that here the master differs basically from the master described by Hegel. For Hegel there is reciprocity; here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work.
In the same way, the slave here is in no way identifiable with the slave who loses himself in the object and finds in his work the source of his liberation.
The Negro wants to be like the master.
Therefore he is less independent than the Hegelian slave.
In Hegel the slave turns away from the master and turns toward the object.
Here the slave turns toward the master and abandons the object."
Fanon, footnote: 220-21
I would like to take issue with Fanon's application of Hegel's master / bondsman relationship and his conclusion that it is non-representational of the master / slave relationship found in the United States in the mid- to late 1800s and early to mid- 1900s.
Fanon's first statement in deriving his conclusion is the quotation above, "For Hegel there is reciprocity; here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work." Hegel's philosophy and ideas of "differentiated spirit" and "undifferentiated spirit" would suggest that for Hegel, reciprocity is not necessarily what one self (i.e., the master) gives another self (the slave); it is, rather, that the consciousness (say, of the slave, who Hegel seems to maintain would be more likely to recognize and fulfill her own self-consciousness) recognizes itself (also the slave-self) in the other (the master), and having recognized this consciousness of self in other, it must then destroy self (as slave) in order to have real self-consciousness or to experience objective truth.
Hegel seems not to identify the self with the body or with consciousness as Fanon does. Indeed, neither body nor mind, self nor consciousness seem to be exactly equal to life for Hegel, which he reminds us here, is the existent object, inasmuch as this discussion holds. Continuing this line of reasoning, I would state that, if life is object, consciousness must be subject, and self-consciousness may be viewed as one subject position (the most aware one attainable--one that sees itself in every other).
It may be helpful to examine Fanon's next points in turn: "In the same way, the slave here is in no way identifiable with the slave who loses himself in the object and finds in his work the source of his liberation." The slave has a greater risk of losing life (the object), Hegel says, and is therefore, by necessity, more concerned with it. The slave begins to identify the totality of self with life, thereby reducing consciousness to the mere fact of day-to-day survival. It is by deconstructing the self that the slave may then begin to construct, through recognition, the other and the negation of the other within himself (or the death of self in self) that precedes self-consciousness.
"The Negro wants to be like the master." There is no substantiation for this claim. I would maintain that the opposite is true, except perhaps in the sense that all life "aspires" to be at the top of the food / production chain. Again, there is self and other in every self; of course, there is a part of the slave who wants "to be like the master." I believe that Hegel would assert that there is also a part of the slave with which the master identifies: it is the fear of seeing this self in the other that necessitates sublimation, especially as it affects the ability of the master to see objective truth. It is, however, the recognition of this other in self that prompts the slave to become self-conscious in a way that the master may not. "Therefore he is less independent than the Hegelian slave." Again, the slave cannot become independent without recognizing self in the master. The slave of the early United States was no more or less independent that Hegel's bondsman.
"In Hegel the slave turns away from the master and turns toward the object. Here the slave turns toward the master and abandons the object." Again, Fanon is confusing what Hegel seems to define as the existent object in this discussion: life. I would argue that, given this definition for object rather than the one of the fetters or work that Fanon appears to be using, he would agree that the early American slaves certainly turned toward life: the objective truth for a slave is her life and her freedom to live it outside of chains. If slaves had abandoned the object as Fanon contends, there would have been a genocide by suicide or an unconditional acceptance of slavery and the agreed belief that self did not deserve to be recognized. Nowhere in our brief American history has this proven to be the case, especially with the slaves of African descent about whom Fanon is writing.
Fanon also makes a jump that the entire chain of master / slave dialectic is in the past: a dangerous assumption for anyone attempting to understand the condition of the African-American in the United States only a few over a hundred years since the abolition of slavery. The dialectic must be seen as ongoing until its resolution is complete: the recognition of self in other and the reciprocal recognition that may eventually flower into an awareness of consciousness that exceeds the boundaries of life or self.
Fanon, Frantz. "The Negro and Recognition." chapter 7 from Black Skin White Masks. Trans.
"I hope I have shown that here the master differs basically from the master described by Hegel. For Hegel there is reciprocity; here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work.
In the same way, the slave here is in no way identifiable with the slave who loses himself in the object and finds in his work the source of his liberation.
The Negro wants to be like the master.
Therefore he is less independent than the Hegelian slave.
In Hegel the slave turns away from the master and turns toward the object.
Here the slave turns toward the master and abandons the object."
Fanon, footnote: 220-21
I would like to take issue with Fanon's application of Hegel's master / bondsman relationship and his conclusion that it is non-representational of the master / slave relationship found in the United States in the mid- to late 1800s and early to mid- 1900s.
Fanon's first statement in deriving his conclusion is the quotation above, "For Hegel there is reciprocity; here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work." Hegel's philosophy and ideas of "differentiated spirit" and "undifferentiated spirit" would suggest that for Hegel, reciprocity is not necessarily what one self (i.e., the master) gives another self (the slave); it is, rather, that the consciousness (say, of the slave, who Hegel seems to maintain would be more likely to recognize and fulfill her own self-consciousness) recognizes itself (also the slave-self) in the other (the master), and having recognized this consciousness of self in other, it must then destroy self (as slave) in order to have real self-consciousness or to experience objective truth.
Hegel seems not to identify the self with the body or with consciousness as Fanon does. Indeed, neither body nor mind, self nor consciousness seem to be exactly equal to life for Hegel, which he reminds us here, is the existent object, inasmuch as this discussion holds. Continuing this line of reasoning, I would state that, if life is object, consciousness must be subject, and self-consciousness may be viewed as one subject position (the most aware one attainable--one that sees itself in every other).
It may be helpful to examine Fanon's next points in turn: "In the same way, the slave here is in no way identifiable with the slave who loses himself in the object and finds in his work the source of his liberation." The slave has a greater risk of losing life (the object), Hegel says, and is therefore, by necessity, more concerned with it. The slave begins to identify the totality of self with life, thereby reducing consciousness to the mere fact of day-to-day survival. It is by deconstructing the self that the slave may then begin to construct, through recognition, the other and the negation of the other within himself (or the death of self in self) that precedes self-consciousness.
"The Negro wants to be like the master." There is no substantiation for this claim. I would maintain that the opposite is true, except perhaps in the sense that all life "aspires" to be at the top of the food / production chain. Again, there is self and other in every self; of course, there is a part of the slave who wants "to be like the master." I believe that Hegel would assert that there is also a part of the slave with which the master identifies: it is the fear of seeing this self in the other that necessitates sublimation, especially as it affects the ability of the master to see objective truth. It is, however, the recognition of this other in self that prompts the slave to become self-conscious in a way that the master may not. "Therefore he is less independent than the Hegelian slave." Again, the slave cannot become independent without recognizing self in the master. The slave of the early United States was no more or less independent that Hegel's bondsman.
"In Hegel the slave turns away from the master and turns toward the object. Here the slave turns toward the master and abandons the object." Again, Fanon is confusing what Hegel seems to define as the existent object in this discussion: life. I would argue that, given this definition for object rather than the one of the fetters or work that Fanon appears to be using, he would agree that the early American slaves certainly turned toward life: the objective truth for a slave is her life and her freedom to live it outside of chains. If slaves had abandoned the object as Fanon contends, there would have been a genocide by suicide or an unconditional acceptance of slavery and the agreed belief that self did not deserve to be recognized. Nowhere in our brief American history has this proven to be the case, especially with the slaves of African descent about whom Fanon is writing.
Fanon also makes a jump that the entire chain of master / slave dialectic is in the past: a dangerous assumption for anyone attempting to understand the condition of the African-American in the United States only a few over a hundred years since the abolition of slavery. The dialectic must be seen as ongoing until its resolution is complete: the recognition of self in other and the reciprocal recognition that may eventually flower into an awareness of consciousness that exceeds the boundaries of life or self.
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