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BRITISH & AMERICAN LITERATURE

"1984" GEORGE ORWELL

Context
George Orwell was primarily a political novelist; 1984 was his masterpiece. Born Eric Blair in India in 1903, Orwell was educated as a scholarship student at prestigious boarding schools in England. Because of his family background--he famously described his family as "lower-upper-middle class"--he never quite fit in, and felt oppressed and outraged by the dictatorial control the schools exercised over their students' lives. After graduating from Eton, Orwell decided to forego college in order to work as a British Imperial Policeman in Burma. He hated his life in Burma, where he was required to enforce the strict laws of a political regime he despised. His failing health, which troubled him throughout his life, caused him to be sent back to England on convalescent leave; in England, he quit the Imperial Police and dedicated himself to becoming a writer.
Inspired by Jack London, Orwell bought ragged clothes from a second-hand store and went to live among the very poor in London; he published a book about the experience. Later, he lived among destitute coal miners in northern England, an experience that caused him to subscribe to democratic socialism. He traveled to Spain in 1936 to cover the Spanish Civil War, where he witnessed firsthand Fascism's nightmarish atrocities. The rise to power of dictators such as Adolf Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union inspired Orwell's mounting hatred of totalitarianism and political authority, and he began to devote himself to writing more politically charged novels, first in Animal Farm in 1944, then in 1984 in 1949.
1984 is Orwell's most perfect novel, and it remains one of the most powerful warnings ever made against the dangers of a totalitarian society. In Spain, Germany, and Russia, Orwell had seen for himself the peril of absolute political authority in an age of advanced technology; he illustrated that peril harshly in 1984. Along with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's book is the most famous member of the genre of the negative utopian novel. In a utopian novel, the writer aims to portray the perfect human society; in a novel of negative utopia, the goal is the exact opposite--to show the worst human society imaginable, and to convince readers to avoid any path that might lead toward such societal degradation.

Orwell succeeded dazzlingly, and terrifyingly. In the world of 1949, at the dawn of the nuclear age, before the television had become a fixture in the family home, Orwell's world of post-atomic dictatorship--in which every individual is ceaselessly monitored through the telescreen--seemed just possible enough to terrify. And that Orwell postulated such a society only 35 years into the future, in 1984, made the horror caused by the novel seem more relevant and more real.
Of course, the year 1984 has come and gone, and the world Orwell describes has not materialized in England or America. But just as it did in 1949, the novel remains just relevant enough to frighten, just accurate enough to feel possible. In the novel, for instance, war is used as a device for political manipulation on television--a concept presented strikingly in the recent film Wag the Dog. In the novel, historical records are rewritten to match the political ideology of the ruling Party--a technique used as recently as a decade ago by the Soviet Union, and still common in some parts of the world. The year 1984 may have passed, but the warning of Orwell's novel remains important; the world has not completely escaped from the dystopian dangers Orwell describes.

Characters
Winston Smith - A minor member of the ruling Party in near-future London, Winston Smith is a thin, frail, 39 year-old man who wears blue Party coveralls. Winston is sick of the Party's rigid control over his life and world, and begins trying to rebel against the Party--writing defiant thoughts in a secret diary and starting an illegal affair with Julia. Winston is a fatalist, harboring no illusions about his chances of rebelling successfully: the moment he begins to write in his diary, he knows he has condemned himself to death at the hands of the thought police. Even as he joins the legendary anti-Party order called the Brotherhood, Winston considers himself a dead man.
Julia - Winston's lover, a beautiful dark-haired girl working in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Julia enjoys sex, and claims to have had affairs with dozens of Party members. Where Winston is contemplative and fatalistic, Julia is pragmatic and optimistic--she plans their affair, explains to Winston why the Party prohibits sex, and is content to rebel in small ways, for her own enjoyment, without worrying about the overall social order. Unlike Winston, Julia is content to accept the world as it is; also unlike Winston, she believes she can lead a relatively happy life as long as she plans carefully and tempers her rebellious activities.
O'Brien - A mysterious, powerful, and sophisticated member of the Inner Party whom Winston believes is a member of the Brotherhood. Throughout the novel, Winston is obsessed with O'Brien, dreaming he will meet him one day in "the place where there is no darkness." O'Brien secretly contacts Winston and inducts him into the Brotherhood, but appears later at the Ministry of Love to oversee Winston's torture--apparently, he was on the side of the Party all along, though his history and his motives remain mysterious, as does the Brotherhood's existence. It might be real or it might be an invention used by the Party to trap the rebellious. When Winston asks O'Brien in the Ministry of Love whether he has been caught, O'Brien says "They got me long ago," suggesting a rebellious past that may confirm Winston's belief in the Brotherhood.
Big Brother - Though he never appears in the novel, and though he may not actually exist, Big Brother is nevertheless extremely important to the book as the perceived dictator of Oceania. Winston seems to remember Big Brother coming to power around the time of the revolution in 1960, but now the official histories record Big Brother's exploits as far back as the '30s. Everywhere Winston looks he sees posters of Big Brother's face bearing the message BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. Big Brother's face is stamped on coins and broadcast on the telescreen; it haunts Winston's life and fills him with hatred and fascination. At the end of the novel, after being tortured and brainwashed into accepting the Party's authority, Winston realizes that he has learned to love Big Brother, a sign of how effective the Party's methods have been in "healing" Winston's rebellious nature.
Mr. Charrington - A kindly old man who runs a second-hand store in the prole district. Winston buys his diary at Mr. Charrington's store, and also buys a paperweight there that becomes very important to him. Mr. Charrington seems to share Winston's interest in the past; he even shows Winston the room above his shop, which has no telescreen, only an old picture of St. Clement's church. Winston later rents this room for his affair with Julia. Of course, neither the room nor Mr. Charrington are, as they seem: a telescreen is hidden behind the picture of the church, and Mr. Charrington himself is a member of the Thought Police.
Syme - An intelligent and outgoing little man who works with Winston at the Ministry of Truth. Syme specializes in language; as the novel opens, he is working on a new edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Winston thinks that Syme is too intelligent to stay in the Party's favor, and sure enough, he disappears shortly before Hate Week.
Parsons - A fat, obnoxious, dull Party member who lives near Winston and works at the Ministry of Truth. Parsons is in charge of decorating for Hate Week, and solicits a contribution from Winston. He has a dull wife and a group of suspicious, ill-mannered children, who eventually turn him in for thoughtcrime. Winston later encounters Parsons at the Ministry of Love, where they briefly share a cell.
Emmanuel Goldstein - Another figure who exerts an influence on the novel without ever appearing in it. According to the Party, Goldstein is the legendary leader of the Brotherhood. He seems to have been a Party leader who fell out of favor with the regime; in any case, the Party trumpets him as the most dangerous and treacherous man in Oceania. O'Brien gives Winston a book that is supposedly Goldstein's manifesto for the Brotherhood; later, in the Ministry of Love, Winston learns that O'Brien himself wrote the book.

Summary
Winston Smith is an insignificant member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, he is watched through telescreens, and everywhere he looks he sees the face of the Party's omniscient leader, a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything, even the people's history and language: The Party is currently forcing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal-- thoughtcrime is the worst crime of all.
As the novel opens, Winston feels frustrated by the oppression and rigid control of the Party, which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. Winston has illegally purchased a diary in which to write his criminal thoughts, and has become fixated on a powerful Party member named O'Brien, whom Winston believes is a secret member of the Brotherhood, the legendary group that works to overthrow the Party.
Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to fit the needs of the Party. He notices a co-worker, a beautiful dark-haired girl, staring at him, and worries that she is an informant who will turn him in for his thoughtcrime. He worries about the Party's control of history: it claims Oceania has always been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia, but Winston seems to recall a time when this wasn't true; the Party also claims that Emmanuel Goldstein, the leader of the Brotherhood, is the most dangerous man alive, but Winston doubts the claim. He spends his evenings wandering through the poorest neighborhoods in London, where the proletarians, or proles, live relatively free of Party monitoring.
One day, Winston receives a note from the dark-haired girl that reads, "I love you." Her name is Julia, and they begin a covert affair, always on the lookout for signs of Party monitoring; they rent a room above the second-hand store in the prole district where Winston bought the diary. Finally, he receives the message he has been waiting for: O'Brien wants to see him.
O'Brien indoctrinates Winston and Julia into the Brotherhood, and gives Winston a copy of Emmanuel Goldstein's book. Winston reads the book to Julia in the room above the store, but suddenly soldiers barge in and seize them; the proprietor of the store has been a member of the Thought Police all along. Torn away from Julia and taken to a place called the Ministry of Love, Winston finds that O'Brien is a Party spy as well; O'Brien spends months torturing and brainwashing Winston, finally sending him to the dreaded Room 101. Here, O'Brien straps a cage full of rats onto Winston's head and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face. Winston snaps, pleading with O'Brien to do it to Julia, not to him. His spirit broken, Winston has been fully brainwashed and is released to the outside world. He meets Julia, but no longer feels anything for her. Winston has accepted the Party entirely. He has learned to love Big Brother.

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"A FAREWELL TO ARMS" E.HEMINGWAY

Author
Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in the summer of 1899. As a young man, he left home to become a newspaper writer in Kansas City. Early in 1918, he joined the Italian Red Cross and became an ambulance driver in Italy, serving in the battlefield in the First World War, in which the Italians allied with the British, the French, and the Americans, against Germany and Austria-Hungary. In Italy, he observed the carnage and the brutality of the Great War firsthand. On July 8, 1918, a trench mortar shell struck him while he crouched beyond the front lines with three Italian soldiers. Though Hemingway embellished the story of his wounding over the years, this much is certain: He was transferred to a hospital in Milan, where he fell in love with a Red Cross nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky. Scholars are divided over Agnes' role in Hemingway's life and writing, but there is little doubt that his affair with her provided the background for A Farewell to Arms, which many critics consider to be Hemingway's greatest novel.
Published in 1929, A Farewell to Arms tells the story of Frederic Henry, a young American ambulance driver and first lieutenant ("Tenente") in the Italian army. Hit in the leg by a trench mortar shell in the fighting between Italy and Austria-Hungary, Henry is transferred to a hospital in Milan, where he falls in love with an English Red Cross nurse named Catherine Barkley. The similarities to Hemingway's own life are obvious.
After the war, when he had published several novels and become a famous writer, Hemingway claimed that the account of Henry's wounding in A Farewell to Arms was the most accurate version of his own wounding he had ever written. Hemingway's life certainly gave the novel a trenchant urgency, and its similarity to his own experience no doubt helped him refine the terse, realistic, descriptive style for which he became famous and which made him one of the most influential American writers of the twentieth century.

Characters
Frederic Henry - The novel's protagonist. A young American ambulance driver in the Italian army during the First World War, Henry is disciplined and courageous but feels detached from life. When introduced to Catherine Barkley, Henry discovers a capacity for love he had not known he possessed, and he begins a process of development that culminates with his desertion of the Italian army. Throughout the novel, the Italian soldiers under Henry's command call him "Tenente"--the Italian word for "lieutenant."
Catherine Barkley - An English nurse who falls in love with Frederic Henry. Catherine's fiance was killed in the battle of the Somme before she met Henry. Catherine has cast aside conventional social values and lives according to her own values, devoting herself wholly to her love for Henry. Her long, beautiful hair is her most distinctive physical feature.
Rinaldi - Frederic's friend an Italian surgeon. Mischievous and wry, Rinaldi is nevertheless a passionate and skilled doctor. Rinaldi makes a practice of always being in love with a beautiful woman, and at the beginning of the novel he is attracted to Catherine Barkley; Rinaldi's infatuation causes him to introduce Frederic and Catherine to one another.
Helen Ferguson - A friend of Catherine's. Though she remains fond of the lovers and helps them, Helen is much more committed to social convention than Henry and Catherine; she vocally disapproves of their "immoral" love affair.
Miss Gage - An American nurse. Miss Gage becomes a friend to both Catherine and Henry--in fact, she may be in love with Henry. Unlike Helen Ferguson, she sets aside conventional social values to support their love affair.
Miss Van Campen - The superintendent of nurses at the American hospital where Catherine works. Miss Van Campen is strict, cold, and unlikable; she is obsessed with rules and regulations and has no patience for or interest in individual feelings.
Dr. Valentini - An Italian surgeon who comes to the American hospital. Self-assured and confident, Dr. Valentini is also a highly talented surgeon. Frederic Henry takes an immediate liking to him.
Count Greffi - A spry 94-year-old nobleman. Henry knows Count Greffi from his time in Stresa, and the two play billiards together toward the end of the novel. Despite his advanced age, the count is intelligent, disciplined, and fully committed to life.

Summary
Frederic Henry, a young American ambulance driver with the Italian army in World War I, meets a beautiful English nurse named Catherine Barkley near the front between Italy and Austria-Hungary. At first Henry's relationship with Catherine is an elaborate game based on his attempt to seduce her, but when he is wounded and sent to the American hospital where Catherine works, their relationship progresses and they begin a passionate affair.
After his convalescence in the hospital, Henry returns to the war front. During a massive retreat from the Austrians and Germans, the Italian forces become disordered and chaotic. Henry is forced to shoot an engineer sergeant under his command and, in the confusion, is arrested by the Italian military police for the crime of not being Italian. Disgusted with the army and facing death at the hands of the battle police, Henry decides he has had enough of war; he dives into the river to escape.
After swimming to safety, Henry boards a train and reunites with Catherine--now pregnant with Henry's child--in Stresa. With the help of an Italian bartender, they escape to Switzerland and attempt to put the war behind them forever. They spend a happy time together in Switzerland and plan to marry after the baby is born. When Catherine goes into labor, however, things go terribly wrong: the doctor announces that her pelvis is too narrow to deliver the baby. He attempts an unsuccessful Caesarian section, and Catherine dies in childbirth. To Henry, her dead body is like a statue; he walks back to his hotel without finding a way to say good-bye.

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"A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN" J.JOYCE

Author
James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in the town of Rathgar, near Dublin, Ireland. He was the oldest of ten children, the son of a well-meaning but financially inept father and a solemn, pious mother. His parents managed to scrape together enough money to send their talented son to the Clongowes Wood College, a prestigious boarding school, and then to the less-expensive Belvedere College, where Joyce excelled as an actor and a writer. Later, he attended University College in Dublin, where he became increasingly committed to language and literature as a champion of modernism. In 1902, Joyce left the university, and moved to Paris, but he returned to Ireland briefly for the death of his mother in 1903. Shortly after his mother's death, Joyce began work on the story that would later become A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Published in serial form in 1914-15, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man draws very, very heavily on details from Joyce's early life. Its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is in many ways Joyce's fictional double--Joyce had even published stories under the pseudonym "Stephen Daedalus" before writing the novel. Like Joyce himself, Stephen is the son of an impoverished father and a highly Catholic mother; like Joyce, he attends Clongowes Wood, Belvedere, and University College, and like him, he struggles with questions of faith and nationality before leaving Ireland to make his own way as an artist. Many of the scenes from the book are fictional, of course, but some of the most powerful are virtually autobiographical: both the Christmas-dinner scene shortly after the death of Charles Parnell and Stephen's first sexual experience with the Dublin prostitute accord closely to actual experiences in Joyce's life.
After completing Portrait of the Artist in Zurich in 1915, Joyce returned to Paris, where he wrote, over the course of the next several years, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. These three works, along with the story collection Dubliners, form the core of his remarkable literary career. He died in 1941.
Joyce was one of the great literary pioneers of the twentieth century--he was one of the first writers to make extensive and convincing use of a stylistic form called stream-of-consciousness, a type of writing in which the written prose seeks to mirror the thoughts and perceptions of particular characters, rather than rendering them in an objective, external portrait. This technique (used in Portrait mostly during the opening sections and in the fifth chapter) can make a prose passage confusing to read. But with effort, the jumbled perceptions can crystallize into a coherent and sophisticated portrayal of experience.

Characters
Stephen Dedalus - The protagonist and main character of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A sensitive, thoughtful boy, Stephen is the son of Simon and Mary Dedalus. His large family runs into deepening financial difficulties over the course of the book, resulting in several moves to different parts of Ireland. They manage to send Stephen to prestigious schools, however, and eventually to university. As he grows up, Stephen grapples with questions of nationality, religion, family, and sin, and finally decides to reject all socially imposed bonds and live freely as an artist.
Simon Dedalus - Stephen's father, an impoverished former medical student with a strong sense of Irish patriotism. Simon spends a great deal of his time reliving past experiences, lost in his own sentimental nostalgia. Joyce often uses Simon to symbolize the bonds imposed on Stephen by his family and the burden of his country.
Mary Dedalus - Stephen's mother, Simon Dedalus's wife. Mary is not a devoted Irish nationalist like her husband, but she is deeply religious and strongly committed to the Roman Catholic faith. She is often melancholy, and seems to have been defeated by the circumstances of her life and her marriage.
Uncle Charles - Stephen's lively great uncle. Charles lives with Stephen's family. During the summer, the young Stephen enjoys taking long walks with him and listening to Charles and his father discuss the history of both Ireland and the Dedalus family. Dante - The extremely fervent and piously Catholic governess of the Dedalus children. Dante (whose real name is Mrs. Riordan) becomes involved with Mr. Casey in a long and unpleasant argument over the fate of Parnell during Christmas dinner when Stephen is about six.
Mr. John Casey - Simon Dedalus's friend, who attends the Christmas dinner at which young Stephen is allowed to sit with the adults for the first time. At the dinner, Mr. Casey, like Simon a believer in Irish nationalism, argues with Dante over the fate of Parnell.
The Dedalus Children - Though his siblings do not play a major role in the novel, Stephen has several brothers and sisters, including Maurice, Katey, Maggie, and Boody.
Eileen Vance - A young girl who lives near Stephen when he is a young boy. When Stephen tells Dante that he wants to marry Eileen, Dante is enraged, because Eileen is a Protestant. Later, Stephen remembers Eileen's long, white hands.
Father Conmee - The rector at Clongowes Wood College, where Stephen attends school as a young boy. Father Conmee is kind to Stephen after Father Dolan beats the young boy with the pandybat, and promises to resolve the matter with Father Dolan. Later, however, Stephen learns to his humiliation that Conmee and Dolan had later laughed about the incident with Stephen's father.
Father Dolan - The cruel prefect of studies at Clongowes Wood College, where Stephen attends school as a young boy. Father Dolan punishes Stephen severely in Latin class one day for not doing his lessons. Stephen says he has been excused from lessons because of his broken glasses--which is the truth--but Father Dolan accuses him of lying and beats his palm with a pandybat.
Father Arnall - Stephen's stern Latin teacher at Clongowes Wood College. He later delivers three fiery sermons at a religious retreat Stephen attends; his fierce depiction of the torments of hell is enough to frighten Stephen into temporarily embracing his Catholicism.
Brother Michael - The kindly monk who tends to Stephen and Athy in the infirmary after Wells pushes Stephen into the cesspool. Brother Michael reads the newspaper aloud to cheer up his patients, and it is from this source that Stephen first hears about Parnell's death.
Athy - A friendly boy whom Stephen meets in the infirmary. Athy likes Stephen because they both have unusual names ("Dedalus" being a highly unusual last name for a young boy in Ireland). Athy's father owns and cares for racehorses.
Wells - The bully at Clongowes Wood College. Wells taunts Stephen for kissing his mother before he goes to bed, and one day he pushes Stephen into the infected cesspool, causing Stephen to catch a bad fever. Wells later apologizes, seeming to feel guilty--but he is also worried that Stephen will report him to the priests.
Mike Flynn - A friend of Simon Dedalus's who tries, with little success, to train Stephen to be a runner during their summer at Blackrock.
Aubrey Mills - A young boy with whom Stephen plays imaginary adventure games at Blackrock.
Cranly - Stephen's friend at the university, to whom Stephen confides his thoughts and feelings. Eventually, though, Cranly begins to encourage Stephen to conform to the wishes of his family and to try harder to fit in with his peers, advice Stephen fiercely resents.
Lynch - Stephen's friend at the university, a coarse and often unpleasantly dry young man. Stephen explains his theory of aesthetics to Lynch in Chapter 5.
Davin - Stephen's friend at the university. Davin comes from the Irish provinces, and has a simple, solid nature. Stephen admires his talent for athletics, but is repelled by his unquestioning Irish patriotism, which Davin encourages Stephen to adopt.
McCann - A fiercely political student at the university who tries to convince Stephen to be more concerned with politics. He is offended when Stephen refuses to sign his petition.
Temple - A young man at the university who openly admires Stephen's keen independence, and who tries to copy his friend's ideas and sentiments.
Emma Clere - Stephen's "beloved," the young girl to whom he is fiercely attracted over the course of many years. Stephen does not know Emma particularly well, and is generally too embarrassed or afraid to talk to her, but whenever he sees her, she unleashes a powerful response within him. His first poem ("To E----- C----- -") is to her.
Charles Stewart Parnell - Not a fictional character in the novel, but a real Irish political leader whose death influences many characters in Portrait. During the late nineteenth century, Parnell was the powerful leader of the Irish National Party, and his influence seemed to promise Irish independence from England. But when Parnell's affair with a married woman was exposed, he was condemned by the Irish Catholic Church and fell from grace. His fevered attempts to regain his former position of influence led to his death from exhaustion. Many in Ireland (such as John Casey) considered him a hero and blamed the Church for his death; many other (such as Dante) thought the church had done the right thing to condemn him.

Summary
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tells the story of Stephen Dedalus, a boy growing up in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, who gradually decides to cast off all his social, familial, and religious constraints and live a life devoted to artistic pursuits. As a young boy, Stephen is influenced heavily by his Catholic faith and his Irish nationality. He attends a strict religious boarding school called Clongowes Wood College. The death of Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell becomes the subject of a furious argument over Christmas dinner.
Stephen's father Simon is inept with money, and his family sinks deeper and deeper into debt. After a summer spent in the company of his spry old Uncle Charles, Stephen learns that the family cannot send him back to Clongowes. He moves to a prestigious day school called Belvedere, where he grows to excel as a writer and as an actor in the student theater. His first sexual experience--with a young Dublin prostitute--unleashes a storm of guilt and shame as Stephen tries to reconcile his physical yearnings with the stern Catholic moralism of his surroundings. On a three-day religious retreat Stephen hears a trio of fiery sermons about sin, judgment, and hell. Deeply shaken, the young man resolves to rededicate himself to a life of Christian piety.
Stephen begins attending Mass every day, but his belief quickly wavers, and--despite a talk about entering the priesthood with the director of his school--his old religious doubts creep back in. Stephen hopes attending the university will enable him to make some sense out of his life. One day, Stephen learns from his sister that the family will be moving, once again for financial reasons. Stephen goes for a walk on the beach, where he observes a young girl wading in the tide. He is struck by her beauty, and realizes in an epiphanic moment that to love and desire beauty should not be a source of shame. He resolves to live his life to the fullest, and not to be constrained by the boundaries of his family, his nation, and his religion.
At the university, Stephen works to formulate his theories about art while cultivating an independent existence liberated from the expectations of his family and friends. He becomes more and more determined to remain free from all limiting pressures, and eventually decides to leave Ireland to escape them. Like his mythical namesake Daedalus, Stephen hopes to build himself wings on which he can fly above all obstacles and achieve a life as an artist.

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"A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE" T.WILLIAMS

Author
Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911. Much of his childhood was spent in St. Louis. The nickname 'Tennessee' seems to have been pinned on him in college, in reference to his father's birthplace or his own deep Southern accent, or maybe both. Descended from an old and prominent Tennessee family, Williams's father worked at a shoe company and was often away from home. Williams lived with mother, his sister Rose (who would suffer from mental illness and later undergo a lobotomy), and his maternal grandparents.
At sixteen, Williams won $5 in a national competition for his essay, "Can a Wife be a Good Sport?" published in Smart Set. The next year he published his first story in Weird Tales. Soon after, he entered the University of Missouri, where he wrote his first play. He withdrew from the university before receiving his degree, and went to work at his father's shoe company. After entering and dropping out of Washington University, Williams graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938. He continued to work on drama, receiving a Rockefeller grant and studying play writing at The New School in Manhattan. During the early years of World War Two, Williams worked in Hollywood as a scriptwriter.
In 1944, The Glass Menagerie opened in New York, won the prestigious New York Critics' Circle Award, and catapulted Williams into the upper echelon of American playwrights. Two years later, A Streetcar Named Desire cemented his reputation, garnering another Critics' Circle and adding a Pulitzer Prize. He would win another Critics' Circle and Pulitzer for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955.
Tennessee Williams mined his own life for much of the pathos in his drama. His most memorable characters (many of them complex females, such as Blanche DuBois) contain recognizable elements of their author or people close to him. Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness in search of purpose, and insanity were all part of Williams's world. Certainly his experience as a known homosexual in an era and culture unfriendly to homosexuality informed his work. His setting was the South, yet his themes were universal and compellingly enough rendered to win him an international audience and worldwide acclaim. In later life, as most critics agree, the quality of his work diminished. He suffered a long period of depression after the death of his longtime partner in 1963. Yet his writing career was long and prolific: twenty-five full-length plays, five screenplays, over seventy one act plays, hundreds of short stories, two novels, poetry, and a memoir. Five of his plays were made into movies.
Williams died of choking in an alcohol-related incident in 1983.

Characters
Blanche - Stella's older sister, until recently a high school English teacher in Laurel, Mississippi. She arrives in New Orleans a loquacious, witty, arrogant, fragile, and ultimately crumbling figure. Blanche once was married to and passionately in love with a tortured young man. He killed himself after she discovered his homosexuality, and she has suffered from guilt and regret ever since. Blanche watched parents and relatives--all the old guard--die off, and then had to endure foreclosure on the family estate. Cracking under the strain, or perhaps yielding to urges so long suppressed that they now cannot be contained, Blanche engages in a series of sexual escapades, which trigger an expulsion from her community. In New Orleans she puts on the airs of a woman who has never known indignity, but Stanley sees through her. Her past catches up with her and destroys her relationship with Mitch. Stanley, as she fears he might, destroys what's left of her. At the end of the play she is led away to an insane asylum.
Stella Kowalski - Blanche's younger sister, with the same timeworn aristocratic heritage, but who has jumped the sinking ship and linked her life with lower-class vitality. Her union with Stanley is animal and spiritual, violent but renewing. She cannot really explain it to Blanche. While she loves her older sister, and pities her, she cannot bring herself to believe Blanche's accusation against Stanley. Though it is agony, she has her sister committed.
Stanley Kowalski - Stanley is the epitome of vital force. He is a man in the flush of life, a lover of women, a worker, a fighter, new blood--a chief male of the flock, with his tail feathers fanned and brilliant. He is loyal to his friends, passionate to his wife, and heartlessly cruel to Blanche.
Mitch - An army buddy, coworker, and poker buddy of Stanley. He is the sensitive member of that crowd, perhaps because he lives with his slowly dying mother. Mitch and Blanche are both people in need of companionship and support. Though Mitch is of Stanley's world, and Blanche is off in her own world, the two believe they have found an acceptable companion in the other. Mitch woos Blanche over the course of the summer until Stanley reveals secrets about Blanche's past.
Eunice - Stella's friend and landlady. Lives above the Kowalskis with Steve.
Steve - Poker buddy of Stanley. Lives upstairs with Eunice.
Pablo - Poker buddy of Stanley.
A Negro Woman - Two brief appearances. She is sitting on the steps talking to Eunice when Blanche arrives. Later, in the 'real-world-struggle-for-existence' sequence, she rifles through a prostitute's abandoned handbag.
A Doctor - Comes to the door at the play's finale to whisk Blanche off to an asylum. After losing a struggle with the nurse, Blanche willingly goes with the kindly seeming doctor.
A Nurse - Comes with the doctor to collect Blanche and bring her to an institution. A matronly, unfeminine figure with a talent for subduing hysterical patients.
A Young Collector - A young man (seventeen, perhaps), who comes to the door to collect for the newspaper. Blanche lusts after him but constrains herself to flirtation and a passionate farewell kiss. The boy leaves bewildered.
A Mexican woman - A vendor of Mexican funeral decorations who frightens Blanche by issuing the plaintive call: Flores para los muertos. The Mexican woman later reprises this role in the underrated comedy Quick Change (1990), starring Bill Murray and Geena Davis.

Summary
Stanley and Stella Kowalski live on a street called Elysian Fields in a rundown but charming section of New Orleans. They are newly married and desperately in love. One day Stella's older sister, Blanche DuBois, arrives to stay with them, setting up the drama's central conflict: an emotional tug-of-war between the raw, brute sensuality of Stanley and the fragile, crumbling gentility of Blanche. Truth is told, it is not an even match, for Blanche is already sliding down a slippery slope. Blanche and Stella are the last in a line of landed Southern gentry. Stella has renounced the worn dictates of class propriety to follow her heart and marry an uncultured blue-collar worker of Polish extraction. Meanwhile, Blanche has played nursemaid to the old guard on its deathbed and watched the family estate slip through her fingers into foreclosure. Her professed values are those of an older South, of charm and wit and chivalry, gaiety and light, appearance and code.
Blanche claims she has been given a leave of absence from her high school teaching job to recover from a nervous breakdown. She settles in with the Kowalskis but things do not go smoothly. Her disapproval of Stanley and the station in life her sister Stella has chosen is obvious, though she strives to be polite. Her feelings against Stanley are galvanized when she witnesses him strike Stella in a fit of drunken rage. Stanley's feelings for her are similarly hardened when he overhears her describe him as animal-like, neolithic, and brutish. Blanche's imposition, her airs, and her distortions of reality infuriate Stanley. He begins to chip away at her thin veneer of armor.
Of Stella and Stanley's friends, one seems to stand above the rest in sensitivity and grace. This is Mitch, who works at the same factory as Stanley, and lives with his sick mother. He has no refinement, but his native gentleness and sincerity inspire Blanche to return his affection. The two seem to need each other. They see a great deal of one another as the summer wears on, but Blanche places strict limits on their intimacy. She has old-fashioned ideals and morals, she tells him. Meanwhile, Stella's first pregnancy progresses and Stanley continues his subtle campaign of intimidation against Blanche.
Blanche's past catches up with her. When she was younger, she fell in love with and married a man whom she later caught in bed with another man. When she confronted him, he killed himself for shame. This knocked the foundations out from under her, and the subsequent poverty and emotional hardships were too much for her. She sought solace or oblivion in the intimacy of strangers; apparently many intimacies with many strangers, and a disastrous affair with a seventeen-year-old student at her high school. Blanche departed Mississippi in disgrace and arrived in New Orleans with nowhere else to go. Stanley discovers this sordid account. He tells Mitch and effectively ends the budding relationship. For Blanche's birthday, Stanley presents her with a one-way bus ticket back to Mississippi. And then, while Stella is in labor at the hospital, Stanley rapes Blanche.
Stella cannot believe the story Blanche tells her about the man she loves. And Blanche's grasp on reality is otherwise shattered. So, with supreme remorse, Stella has Blanche committed. In the final scene of the play, Stella sobs in agony and the rest look on indifferently as a doctor and a nurse lead Blanche away.

Analysis
One entry into A Streetcar Named Desire is to look at Blanche and Stanley as polar opposites along several different, though related, axes. The first might be Fantasy vs. Reality. Blanche clearly represents the former. As she admits to Mitch, she wants to misrepresent things, and wants things misrepresented to her. She lives for how things ought to be, not how they are. She prefers magic and shadows to facing facts in bright light. Stanley, on the other hand, is a no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase kind of guy. That's not to say he's dour or humorless in the least. On the contrary, he looks for joy in life, and where he finds it he celebrates it. But he expects, as he says, people to lay their cards on the table. Idle chitchat, social compliments, and humoring fools and frauds are not for him.
Blanche calls the area behind the apartment the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." "Those are the L&N tracks," Stella corrects her. Since her husband shot himself many years ago, Blanche has been avoiding reality in one way or another. In New Orleans, it catches up to her in the person of Stanley Kowalski.
A similar polarity describes the question of an Old South vs. a New South. Blanche and Stella are the last aboard the sinking ship that is the old decadence of Southern aristocracy. Years of "epic fornications," as Blanche puts it, have swallowed up the material resources of the family. All that remain are the manners and pretensions. Yet Blanche clings to threads and imagines a world in which they are still relevant. Stella, however, has jumped ship. She has turned her back on the decadence and degeneration of her ancestors and married someone who would be considered below her station, if that station were worth anything anymore. Not coincidentally, Stanley is the child of immigrants. He works in a factory, engaged in the industrialization of the South, in sharp contrast to Blanche and Stella's plantation roots. He's a new breed, without breeding; new blood for a new South in transition. But Williams portrays Stanley as possessing a fare share of brutality--a brutality that is echoed on a more pervasive scale in the scene with the prostitute and the drunk. The changing world in which Stanley so perfectly fits is not necessarily kind. The reality of the new South is that gentility is dead. A struggle for survival has replaced it. There will be casualties; in a sense Blanche is one of them.
Primitive and Civilized mark another set of poles. The exact terms change, but Blanche repeatedly refers to Stanley and his world as brutish, primitive, ape-like, rough, and uncivilized. This sort of superiority is perhaps what offends Stanley the most. But there is something primal and brutish about Stanley. If Stanley represents Early Man, though, Blanche's version of civilization is one decidedly on the decline. She speaks vaguely of art, music, and poetry as proof of progress, but in practice the coin of her culture is manner, witty banter, snippets of French, puff and fluff worn on the sleeve. Blanche does not give Stanley credit for any higher feelings, but the root of Blanche's problem seems to be her inability to reconcile herself to her own "lower" feelings.
This comparison of Primitive and Civilized leads to the issue of desire. Blanche is the victim of a culture that has civilized itself out of a healthy connection to its passions, to its primal and natural urges. For her, all but a narrow realm of sex becomes illicit; love is proscribed across boundaries of class, race, and "normal" gender relationships. Of course, Blanche and her forebears were no less in thrall of desire, but they had demonized it and made it taboo. Suppressed, this desire from time to time erupted in the "epic fornications," to which Blanche adds her own chapter. In an over-civilized society, in which desire cannot be acknowledged, it must instead be hidden. This comes at a cost. Blanche's ancestors paid for their lust with their wealth; Blanche pays with her sanity.
Stanley and Stella's relationship, on the other hand, merges the dual "primitive" elements of desire and spirituality. Their bond is animal and spiritual, rather than intellectual or practical. If Blanche cannot understand why her sister would enter into such a rough and tumble union, it is because she has never reconciled her identity with her own profound desire. The divide is too great between her aristocratic sense of self and the "animal" urges that have at times controlled her. Instead, she makes up a reality that conveniently ignores her own animality, her own brutishness. She knows that a streetcar named Desire has brought her to her present predicament, but she separates that desire from herself, as if that wasn't really her on board. And so she presumes to look down on Stella and Stanley, from an imagined height.
But Williams isn't simply saying Primal desire is good, civilization is bad. Stanley is no one's prototype for the perfect man, and a relationship in which a husband strikes his pregnant wife deserves no awards. But desire is an ineluctable fact of life and a driving force in the lives of Williams's characters, and Blanche's way of dealing with it--or rather, trying not to deal with it--clearly does not work. Desire is a pole on another of Streetcar's axes. As Blanche herself remarks, death is its opposite. Blanche turned to sex, to intimacies with strangers, when she could no longer bear the death that surrounded her. Her parents died, her relatives died, and she nursed them all. What's more, she had never recovered from the suicide of her husband. To wantonly follow her immediate desires and detach herself from the consequences can be seen as a sort of survival mechanism: to find a deathlike oblivion apart from death itself. Williams the symbolist underscores the relationship between death and desire in the very first act. Blanche: "They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at--Elysian Fields!" There you have desire, you have death, and together they lead to an oblivion (pagan, in this case) called Elysian Fields. Unable to deal with desire, unable to deal with death, Blanche ultimately finds a third oblivion: dementia.

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"ALL THE KING'S MEN" R.P.WARREN

Author
Robert Penn Warren was one of the twentieth century's outstanding men of letters. He found great success as a novelist, a poet, a critic, and a scholar, and enjoyed a career showered with acclaim. He won two Pulitzer Prizes, was Poet Laureate of the United States, and was presented with a Congressional Medal of Freedom. He founded the Southern Review and was an important contributor to the New Criticism of 1930s and '40s. Born in 1905, Warren showed his exceptional intelligence from an early age; he attended college at Vanderbilt University, where he befriended some of the most important contemporary figures in Southern literature, including Allan Tate and John Crowe Ransom, and where he won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England.
During a stay in Italy, Warren wrote a verse drama called Proud Flesh, which dealt with themes of political power and moral corruption. As a professor at Louisiana State University, Warren had observed the rise of Louisiana political boss Huey Long, who embodied, in many ways, the ideas Warren tried to work into Proud Flesh. Unsatisfied with the result, Warren began to rework his elaborate drama into a novel, set in the contemporary South, and based in part on the person of Huey Long. The result was All the King's Men, Warren's best and most acclaimed book. First published in 1946, All the King's Men is one of the best literary documents dealing with the American South during the Great Depression. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize, and was adapted into a movie that won an Academy Award in 1949.
All the King's Men focuses on the lives of Willie Stark, an upstart farm boy who rises through sheer force of will to become Governor of an unnamed Southern state during the 1930s, and Jack Burden, the novel's narrator, a cynical scion of the state's political aristocracy who uses his abilities as a historical researcher to help Willie blackmail and control his enemies. The novel deals with the large question of the responsibility individuals bear for their actions within the turmoil of history, and it is perhaps appropriate that the impetus of the novel's story comes partly from real historical occurrences. Jack Burden is entirely a creation of Robert Penn Warren, but there are a number of important parallels between Willie Stark and Huey Long, who served Louisiana as both Governor and Senator from 1928 until his death in 1935.
Like Huey Long, Willie Stark is an uneducated farm boy who passed the state bar exam; like Huey Long, he rises to political power in his state by instituting liberal reform designed to help the state's poor farmers. And like Huey Long, Willie is assassinated at the peak of his power by a doctor--Dr. Adam Stanton in Willie's case, Dr. Carl A. Weiss in Long's. (Unlike Willie, however, Long was assassinated after becoming a Senator, and was in fact in the middle of challenging Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.)

Characters
Jack Burden - Willie Stark's political right-hand man, the narrator of the novel and in many ways its protagonist. Jack comes from a prominent family (the town he grew up in, Burden's Landing, was named for his ancestors), and knows many of the most important people in the state. Despite his aristocratic background, Jack allies himself with the liberal, amoral Governor Stark, to the displeasure of his family and friends. He uses his considerable skills as a researcher to uncover the secrets of Willie's political enemies. Jack was once married to Lois Seager, but has left her by the time of the novel. Jack's main characteristics are his intelligence and his curious lack of ambition; he seems to have no agency of his own, and for the most part he is content to take his direction from Willie. Jack is also continually troubled by the question of motive and responsibility in history: he quit working on his Ph.D. thesis in history when he decided he could not comprehend Cass Mastern's motives. He develops the Great Twitch theory to convince himself that no one can be held responsible for anything that happens. During the course of the novel, however, Jack rejects the Great Twitch theory and accepts the idea of responsibility.
Willie Stark - Jack Burden's boss, who rises from poverty to become the governor of his state and its most powerful political figure. Willie takes control of the state through a combination of political reform (he institutes sweeping liberal measures designed to tax the rich and ease the burden on the state's many poor farmers) and underhanded guile (he blackmails and bullies his enemies into submission). While Jack is intelligent and inactive, Willie is essentially all motive power and direction. The extent of his moral philosophy is his belief that everyone and everything is bad, and that moral action involves making goodness out of the badness. Willie is married to Lucy Stark, with whom he has a son, Tom. But his voracious sexual appetite leads him into a number of affairs, including one with Sadie Burke and one with Anne Stanton. Willie is murdered by Adam Stanton toward the end of the novel.
Anne Stanton - Jack Burden's first love, Adam Stanton's sister, and, for a time, Willie Stark's mistress. The daughter of Governor Stanton, Anne is raised to believe in a strict moral code, a belief which is threatened and nearly shattered when Jack shows her proof of her father's wrongdoing.
Adam Stanton - A brilliant surgeon and Jack Burden's closest childhood friend. Anne Stanton's brother. Jack persuades Adam to put aside his moral reservations about Willie and become director of the new hospital Willie is building, and Adam later cares for Tom Stark after his injury. But two revelations combine to shatter Adam's worldview: he learns that his father illegally protected Judge Irwin after he took a bribe, and he learns that his sister has become Willie Stark's lover. Driven mad with the knowledge, Adam assassinates Willie in the lobby of the Capitol towards the end of the novel.
Judge Montague Irwin - A prominent citizen of Burden's Landing and a former state Attorney General; also a friend to the Scholarly Attorney and a father figure to Jack. When Judge Irwin supports one of Willie's political enemies in a Senate election, Willie orders Jack to dig up some information on the judge. Jack discovers that his old friend accepted a bribe from the American Electric Power Company in 1913 to save his plantation. (In return for the money, the judge dismissed a case against the Southern Belle Fuel Company, a sister corporation to American Electric.) When he confronts the judge with this information, the judge commits suicide; when Jack learns of the suicide from his mother, he also learns that Judge Irwin was his real father.
Sadie Burke - Willie Stark's secretary, and also his mistress. Sadie has been with Willie from the beginning, and believes that she made him what he is. Despite the fact that he is a married man, she becomes extremely jealous of his relationships with other women, and they often have long, passionate fights. Sadie is tough, cynical, and extremely vulnerable; when Willie announces that he is leaving her to go back to Lucy, she tells Tiny Duffy in a fit of rage that Willie is sleeping with Anne Stanton. Tiny tells Adam Stanton, who assassinates Willie. Believing herself to be responsible for Willie's death, Sadie checks into a sanitarium.
Tiny Duffy - Lieutenant Governor of the state when Willie is assassinated. Fat, obsequious, and untrustworthy, Tiny swallows Willie's abuse and contempt for years, but finally tells Adam Stanton that Willie is sleeping with Anne. When Adam murders Willie, Tiny becomes Governor. Sugar-Boy O'Sheean - Willie Stark's driver, and also his bodyguard--Sugar-Boy is a crack shot with a .38 special and a brilliant driver. A stuttering Irishman, Sugar-Boy follows Willie blindly.
Lucy Stark - Willie's long-suffering wife, who is constantly disappointed by her husband's failure to live up to her moral standards. Lucy eventually leaves Willie to live at her sister's poultry farm. They are in the process of reconciling when Willie is murdered.
Tom Stark - Willie's arrogant, hedonistic son, a football star for the state university. Tom lives a life of drunkenness and promiscuity before he breaks his neck in a football accident. Permanently paralyzed, he dies of pneumonia shortly thereafter. Tom is accused of impregnating Sibyl Frey, whose child is adopted by Lucy at the end of the novel.
Jack's mother - A beautiful, "famished-cheeked" woman from Arkansas, Jack's mother is brought back to Burden's Landing by the Scholarly Attorney, but falls in love with Judge Irwin and begins an affair with him; Jack is a product of that affair. After the Scholarly Attorney leaves her, she marries a succession of men (the Tycoon, the Count, the Young Executive). Jack's realization that she is capable of love--and that she really loved Judge Irwin--helps him put aside his cynicism at the end of the novel.
Sam MacMurfee - Willie's main political enemy within the state's Democratic Party, and governor before Willie. After Willie crushes him in the gubernatorial election, MacMurfee continues to control the Fourth District, from which he plots ways to claw his way back into power.
Ellis Burden - The man whom Jack believes to be his father for most of the book, before learning his real father is Judge Irwin. After discovering his wife's affair with the judge, the "Scholarly Attorney" (as Jack characterizes him) leaves her. He moves to the state capital where he attempts to conduct a Christian ministry for the poor and the unfortunate.
Theodore Murrell - The "Young Executive," as Jack characterizes him; Jack's mother's husband for most of the novel.
Governor Joel Stanton - Adam and Anne's father, governor of the state when Judge Irwin was Attorney General. Protects the judge after he takes the bribe to save his plantation.
Hugh Miller - Willie Stark's Attorney General, an honorable man who resigns following the Byram White scandal.
Joe Harrison - Governor of the state who sets Willie up as a dummy candidate to split the MacMurfee vote, and thereby enables Willie's entrance onto the political stage. When Willie learns how Harrison has treated him, he withdraws from the race and campaigns for MacMurfee, who wins the election. By the time Willie crushes MacMurfee in the next election, Harrison's days of political clout are over.
Mortimer L. Littlepaugh - The man who preceded Judge Irwin as counsel for the American Electric Power Company in the early 1900s. When Judge Irwin took Littlepaugh's job as part of the bribe, Littlepaugh confronted Governor Stanton about the judge's illegal activity. When the governor protected the judge, Littlepaugh committed suicide.
Miss Lily Mae Littlepaugh - Mortimer Littlepaugh's sister, an old spiritual medium who sells her brother's suicide note to Jack, giving him the proof he needs about Judge Irwin and the bribe.

Gummy Larson - MacMurfee's most powerful supporter, a wealthy businessman. Willie is forced to give Larson the building contract to the hospital so that Larson will call MacMurfee off about the Sibyl Frey controversy, and thereby preserve Willie's chance to go to the Senate.
Lois Seager - Jack's sexy first wife, whom he leaves when he begins to perceive her as a person rather than simply as a machine for gratifying his desires.
Byram B. White - The State Auditor during Willie's first term as governor. His acceptance of graft money propels a scandal that eventually leads to an impeachment attempt against Willie. Willie protects White and blackmails his enemies into submission, a decision that leads to his estrangement from Lucy and the resignation of Hugh Miller.
Hubert Coffee - A slimy MacMurfee employee who tries to bribe Adam Stanton into giving the hospital contract to Gummy Larson.
Sibyl Frey - A young girl who accuses Tom Stark of having gotten her pregnant; Tom alleges that Sibyl has slept with so many men, she could not possibly know he was the father of her child.
Marvin Frey - Sibyl Frey's father, who threatens Willie with a paternity suit. (He is being used by MacMurfee.)

Cass Mastern - The brother of Jack's grandmother. During the middle of the nineteenth century, Cass had an affair with Annabelle Trice, the wife of his friend Duncan. After Duncan's suicide, Annabelle sold a slave, Phebe; Cass tried to track down Phebe, but failed. He became an abolitionist, but fought in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, during which he was killed. Jack tries to use his papers as the basis of his Ph.D. dissertation, but walked away from the project when he was unable to understand Cass Mastern's motivations.
Gilbert Mastern - Cass Mastern's wealthy brother.
Annabelle Trice - Cass Mastern's lover, the wife of Duncan Trice. When the slave Phebe brings her Duncan's wedding ring following his suicide, Annabelle says that she cannot bear the way Phebe looked at her, and sells her.
Duncan Trice - Cass Mastern's hedonistic friend in Lexington, Annabelle Trice's husband. When he learns that Cass has had an affair with Annabelle, Duncan takes off his wedding ring and shoots himself.
Phebe - The slave who brings Annabelle Trice her husband's wedding ring following his suicide. As a result, Annabelle sells her.

Summary
All the King's Men is the story of the rise and fall of a political titan in the Deep South during the 1930s. Willie Stark rises from hardscrabble poverty to become governor of his state and its most powerful political figure; he blackmails and bullies his enemies into submission, and institutes a radical series of liberal reforms designed to tax the rich and ease the burden of the state's poor farmers. He is beset with enemies--most notably Sam MacMurfee, a defeated former governor who constantly searches for ways to undermine Willie's power--and surrounded by a rough mix of political allies and hired thugs, from the bodyguard Sugar-Boy O'Sheean to the fat, obsequious Tiny Duffy.
All the King's Men is also the story of Jack Burden, the scion of one of the state's aristocratic dynasties, who turns his back on his genteel upbringing and becomes Willie Stark's right-hand man. Jack uses his considerable talents as a historical researcher to dig up the unpleasant secrets of Willie's enemies, which are then used for purposes of blackmail. Cynical and lacking in ambition, Jack has walked away from many of his past interests--he left his dissertation in American History unfinished, and never managed to marry his first love, Anne Stanton, the daughter of a former governor of the state.
When Willie asks Jack to look for skeletons in the closet of Judge Irwin, a father figure from Jack's childhood, Jack is forced to confront his ideas concerning consequence, responsibility, and motivation. He discovers that Judge Irwin accepted a bribe, and that Governor Stanton covered it up; the resulting blackmail attempt leads to Judge Irwin's suicide. It also leads to Adam Stanton's decision to accept the position of director of the new hospital Willie is building, and leads Anne to begin an affair with Willie. When Adam learns of the affair, he murders Willie in a rage, and Jack leaves politics forever.
Willie's death and the circumstances in which it occurs force Jack to rethink his desperate belief that no individual can ever be responsible for the consequences of any action within the chaos and tumult of history and time. Jack marries Anne Stanton and begins working on a book about Cass Mastern, the man whose papers he had once tried to use as the source for his failed dissertation in American History.

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"THE ANIMAL FARM" GEORGE ORWELL

Author
George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, a British political novelist and essayist that lived during the first half of the twentieth century. Born to British colonists in Bengal, India, Orwell was educated at Eton, an elite school in England. His painful experiences with snobbishness and social elitism at Eton made him deeply suspicious of the entrenched class system in English society. Orwell became a socialist, but unlike many British socialists in the early years of the Soviet Union, Orwell did not hope for the success of the Soviet Union or consider it a representative socialist society. He could not turn a blind eye to the cruelties and hypocrisies of the totalitarian Communism that subsumed the Russian government under the dictatorial reign of Joseph Stalin. Orwell became a vicious critic of both capitalism and Communism, and though he was a dedicated socialist, he is remembered today chiefly as an advocate of freedom and a committed opponent of Communist oppression; his two greatest anti-Communist novels, Animal Farm and 1984, are the works on which his reputation rests. Orwell died in 1950, only three years after the completion of 1984.
1984 is a dystopian novel, which attacks the idea of totalitarian Communism (a political system in which one ruling political party plans and controls the collective social action of a nation) by painting a terrifying picture of a world under its control. Animal Farm, written in 1945, is much shorter, and in some ways much simpler: written as a "fairy story" in the style of Aesop's fables, it tells the history of Soviet Communism as a fable taking place among farm animals on a single English farm. Certain animals are based directly on Communist leaders in Russia (Napoleon and Snowball are based on Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, for instance). Orwell carries out this reduction of the massive history of the Russian Revolution to a short, ugly fable about farm animals for a number of aesthetic and political reasons; in understanding these reasons, it is helpful to know at least the rudiments of Soviet history under Communism, beginning with the October Revolution of 1917.
In February 1917, Czar Nicholas II, the monarch of Russia, had abdicated, and Alexander Kerensky became premier; at the end of October (November 7 on current calendars), Kerensky was ousted, and Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Revolution, became Chief Commissar. Almost immediately, as wars raged on virtually every Russian front, Lenin's chief allies began jockeying for power in the newly formed state; the most influential included Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Gregory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev. Trotsky and Stalin in particular emerged as the most likely heirs of Lenin's vast power. Trotsky was a popular and charismatic leader, famous for his impassioned speeches, while the taciturn Stalin preferred to consolidate his power behind the scenes. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin orchestrated an alliance against Trotsky between himself, Zinoviev, and Kaminev; in the following years, Stalin became the unquestioned dictator of the Soviet Union, while Trotsky was expelled first from Moscow, then from the Communist Party, and finally from Russia altogether. Permanently exiled in 1936, Trotsky fled to Mexico, where he was assassinated on Stalin's orders in 1940.
In 1934, Stalin's ally Serge Kirov was assassinated in Leningrad, prompting Stalin to begin his infamous purges of the Communist party. Holding show trials whose outcomes were already decided, Stalin had his enemies denounced and executed as enemies of the people, and as participants in Trotskyist or anti- Stalinist conspiracies. As Communist economic planning faltered and failed, violence, fear, and starvation swept across Russia. Stalin used his former opponent as a tool to help keep the suffering populace docile under his rule: Trotsky became a common national enemy, a frightening specter used to conjure even worse eventualities than the current one, and a ready-made excuse for Stalin to use in eliminating his enemies from the Communist Party.
These and many other developments in Soviet history before 1945 have direct parallels in Animal Farm: the pig Napoleon ousts the pig Snowball from the farm, and after the windmill collapses he uses Snowball in his purges just as Stalin used Trotsky; Napoleon becomes a dictator, while Snowball is never heard from again. Orwell was inspired to write Animal Farm in part by his experiences in a Trotskyist outfit during the Spanish Civil War, and Snowball certainly receives a more sympathetic portrayal than Napoleon. But though Animal Farm was written as a specific attack against a specific government, its general themes of oppression, suffering, and injustice have far broader application, and today the book is recognized as a powerful attack on any political, rhetorical, or military powers which seek unjustly to control human beings.

Characters
Napoleon - The pig who emerges as the leader of Animal Farm after the Rebellion. Based on the figure of Joseph Stalin, Napoleon uses military force (his nine loyal attack dogs) to have Snowball expelled from the farm, then proceeds to consolidate and expand his power. By the end of the novel, he is an uncontested dictator who walks on two feet and carries a whip, and the animals are no longer able to tell the difference between him and a human being.
Snowball - The pig who challenges Napoleon for control of Animal Farm after the Rebellion, based on the figure of Leon Trotsky. Intelligent, passionate, and eloquent where Napoleon is crafty, subtle, and manipulative, Snowball seems to cement his power over the issue of the windmill; but just as his speech seems poised to sway the vote, Napoleon's attack dogs make their first appearance and chase him from the farm. Snowball is never heard from again, though Napoleon continues to use him a specter in his show trials and purges, and to blame anything that goes wrong on the farm on Snowball's secret and malign influence.
Boxer - The great carthorse whose incredible strength, dedication, and loyalty enable the early prosperity of Animal Farm and the later completion of the windmill. Beloved of all the animals, Boxer is slow-witted, and naively decides to trust the pigs to make all his decisions for him; his two mottoes are "I will work harder" and "Napoleon is always right." Boxer is injured in a late battle with Mr. Frederick's forces, and falls while working on the windmill shortly after that. His usefulness exhausted, he is betrayed by Napoleon, who sells him to a glue-maker for money to buy a crate of whisky.
Squealer - The pig who spreads Napoleon's propaganda among the other animals, justifying the pigs' monopolization of resources and spreading false statistics that supposedly prove that the farm is thriving and prosperous. Orwell uses the figure of Squealer to explore the ways in which rhetoric and language can be twisted and manipulated into an instrument of social control.
Old Major - The prize-winning boar that has the first great vision of a socialist utopia for animals, beginning the fervor that leads to the Rebellion. Old Major dies three days after he tells the animals of his vision and teaches them the song "Beasts of England," leaving Snowball and Napoleon to struggle for control of his legacy.
Moses - The tame raven who spreads stories of Sugarcandy Mountain, the paradise to which animals are supposed to go when they die. A minor figure in Animal Farm, Orwell uses Moses to explore the interactions between Communism and religion.
Clover - The good-hearted female carthorse, Boxer's close friend. Clover often suspects the pigs of violating one or another of the Seven Commandments, but whenever she has Muriel read the commandment to her, there is always more to it than she remembered. The pigs, of course, simply change the commandments to suit their desires, but Clover does not suspect them.
Mollie - The vain, flighty mare who pulls Mr. Jones's carriage. Mollie loves ribbons in her mane and attention from human beings, and has a difficult time with her new life on Animal Farm. She eventually runs away and becomes a carriage-horse for a new master.
Old Benjamin - The long-lived donkey who refuses to become excited by the Rebellion, assuming that life will be unpleasant no matter who is in charge.
Muriel - The white goat who reads the Seven Commandments to Clover whenever she suspects the pigs of violating one of them.
Mr. Jones - The drunken farmer who runs the Manor Farm before the animals stage their Rebellion and establish Animal Farm.
Mr. Frederick - The tough, shrewd operator of Pinchfield, a neighboring farm. Mr. Frederick betrays Napoleon by giving him forged bank notes for a pile of lumber and then attacking the farm with his men. His men dynamite the newly completed windmill into oblivion.
Mr. Pilkington - The easy-going gentleman farmer who runs Foxwood, a neighborhing farm. Mr. Pilkington is Mr. Frederick's bitter enemy, and attends Napoleon's dinner at the end of the novel.
Mr. Whymper - The human solicitor whom Napoleon hires to represent Animal Farm among human beings.
Jessie and Bluebell - Two dogs, each of whom give birth early in the novel. In the interest of "education", Napoleon takes their puppies, who reappear later as an army of slavishly loyal attack dogs.
Minimus - The poet pig who writes verse about Napoleon, and who pens the song "Animal Farm, Animal Farm" to replace "Beasts of England."

Summary
Old Major, the prize-winning boar, gathers the animals of the Manor Farm together for a meeting in the big barn. He tells them of a dream he has had, in which all animals lived together in a communal paradise with no human beings to oppress or control them; he tells the animals that they must work toward such a paradise, and teaches them a song called "Beasts of England," in which his dream vision is lyrically described. The animals are deeply enthusiastic about Old Major's vision. When he dies, only three days after the meeting, two younger pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, formulate his main principles into a philosophy called Animalism. One night the animals manage to defeat the farmer Mr. Jones in a battle and run him off the farm. They rename it Animal Farm and dedicate themselves to achieving Old Major's dream. In particular the great carthorse Boxer devotes himself to the cause, taking "I will work harder" as his maxim and committing his great strength to the prosperity of the farm.
At first everything goes well, and there is food for all; Snowball works at teaching the animals to read, and Napoleon takes a group of young puppies to educate them in the principles of Animalism. The animals defeat Mr. Jones's forces again, in what comes to be known as the Battle of the Cowshed, and erect a monument to the event. As time passes, however, Napoleon and Snowball are increasingly at odds, and struggle for power and influence among the other animals. Snowball concocts a scheme to build a windmill that could be used to generate electricity for the animals, and Napoleon declares himself roundly opposed to it. At the meeting to vote on whether to build the windmill, Snowball gives a passionate speech that seems to have won the day. But Napoleon gives a strange signal, and nine attack dogs--the puppies Napoleon has been "educating"--burst in to the barn and attack Snowball, chasing him from the farm. Napoleon becomes the leader of Animal Farm, and declares that there will be no more meetings; from now on, the pigs will make all the decisions in private--for everyone's best interest.
Napoleon changes his mind about the windmill, and the animals, especially Boxer, devote their efforts to completing it. After a storm one night, the windmill is found toppled. The human farmers in the area declare smugly that the animals made the walls too thin, but Napoleon claims that Snowball returned to the farm to sabotage the windmill. He stages a great purge during which any animal found to be in Snowball's great conspiracy--meaning any animal who opposes Napoleon's uncontested leadership--is killed by the dogs. His leadership unquestioned (Boxer makes "Napoleon is always right" his second maxim), Napoleon begins expanding his powers, rewriting history to make Snowball a villain. Napoleon also begins to act more and more like a human being--sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and engaging in trade with neighboring farmers. His propagandist, the pig Squealer, justifies every action to the common animals, convincing them that Napoleon is a great leader--this despite the fact that they are cold, hungry, overworked, and miserable.
Mr. Frederick, a neighboring farmer, cheats Napoleon in the purchase of some timber, and then attacks the farm and dynamites the windmill, now rebuilt. After the windmill explodes a pitched battle ensues, during which Boxer is badly wounded. The animals rout the farmers, but Boxer is weakened, and when he falls while working on the windmill not long after the battle the outlook is grim. Napoleon sells his most loyal worker to a glue-maker for whisky money, while claiming to have sent him to a human hospital, where, according to Squealer, he died in peace.
Years pass on Animal Farm, and the pigs become more and more like human beings-- walking upright, carrying whips, and wearing clothes. Eventually the seven principles of Animalism, known as the Seven Commandments and inscribed on the side of the barn, are replaced with a single principle reading "ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS." Napoleon entertains Mr. Pilkington, a human farmer, at a dinner, and declares his intent to change the name of Animal Farm back to The Manor Farm. Looking in at the party through the farmhouse window, the common animals are unable to tell who are the pigs and who are the human beings.

Analysis
Animal Farm is a simple story with a complex field of reference, an Aesopian fable that viciously attacks the history and rhetoric of Soviet Communism by retelling it as the story of a group of farm animals. Animal Farm is a miniature nation, surrounded by a county full of farms that parallel the other nations of the world. Each phase of Joseph Stalin's rise to dictatorial power in Russia is present in Animal Farm: the Russian Revolution, here represented by the animals' overthrow of Mr. Jones and their human oppressors; the consolidation of power in the hands of the Communist Party, here represented by the pigs' emergence as the animals in charge of the farm; the struggle for pre-eminence between Trotsky and Stalin, here represented by the struggle between the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, which, as with Trotsky, leads to Snowball's expulsion from the farm; the Party purges and show trials with which Stalin eliminated his enemies, here represented by the false confessions and executions of animals Napoleon distrusts following the collapse of the windmill; Stalin's emergence as a figure so powerful he was essentially a tyrant, here represented by Napoleon and the other pigs' adoption of human characteristics such as walking upright and carrying whips.
But Animal Farm is more than just an invective against Stalin. One of the book's most impressive qualities is its evocation not just of the figures in power, but of the oppressed people themselves. Animal Farm is not told from the perspective of any particular character, though occasionally it does slip into Clover's consciousness. Rather, the story is told from the perspective of the common animals as a whole. Gullible, loyal, slow-witted, and hard working, the common animals give Orwell a chance to sketch the human qualities that enable oppression to flourish, rather than simply the motives of the oppressors. Napoleon's psyche is not the only important terrain explored in Animal Farm; Boxer's is just as central to the novel, and the betrayal of the great horse forms the novel's grotesquely melodramatic climax.
Grotesque melodrama of a certain kind is the heart and soul of Animal Farm, which makes a very big point by telling a very small story. Orwell's reduction of the novel to the form of a children's fable works on a number of levels: it makes the anti-Communist moral of the novel seem fundamental and obvious, so basic it can form the foundation of a children's story; it makes the reader see the real events it refers to from a new perspective, because they are told in such a startlingly different way; it makes the real story of Communism seem massive and pressing, simply because the novel itself is so small and so un-pressing, a kind of catastrophic understatement more effective than a thousand-page treatise; and it makes the reader marvel at how such a thing could come to pass in reality, simply by making the story so alien and implausible. Orwell calls his book a "fairy story," but unlike most frightening fairy tales, this one almost literally came true. Perhaps most importantly, the form of fable enables Orwell to assume complete control over the tone and mood of Communist history in a way that would have been impossible had he been writing about historically-based human characters; he is able to portray the Communists as grotesque pigs, the suffering people as noble horses, and the complicit masses as mindless sheep. Orwell takes everything impressive and grand away from the sweep of Communist history, as if to say that they do not deserve it, as if to say that at its heart, the story of Communism is simple an ugly melodrama that could have happened on a farm.
This is not to say that Orwell underestimates the Communists' power or their ability to maintain control of their subjects even when the improvements promised by the Revolution have visibly made things worse. One of Orwell's central concerns, both in Animal Farm and in 1984, is the way in which language can be manipulated as an instrument of control. In 1984, the very structure of language has been altered so that dissident thoughts are literally impossible to express. In Animal Farm, a simpler rhetoric of socialist revolution is gradually twisted and distorted to justify the pigs' behavior and keep the other animals in the dark. The animals wholeheartedly embrace Old Major's visionary ideal of socialism. After Old Major dies, the pigs gradually inject new nuances of meanings into his words, so that the other animals are seemingly unable to oppose them without also opposing the ideals of the Revolution. Thus by the end of the novel, after Squealer's repeated rephrasings of Old Major's Seven Commandments, the main principle of the farm can be openly stated as "ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS." This garish abuse of the word "equal" and of the ideal of equality generally is wholly typical of the pigs' method, which becomes increasingly audacious as the novel progresses. (When the pigs decide to walk upright, they simply change the motto "Four legs good, two legs bad" to "Four legs good, two legs better.") Orwell's sophisticated deconstruction of this use of language is one of the most compelling and most enduring features of his novel, worthy of close study even after the parallelisms of the fable have been exhausted.


It is the history of a revolution that went wrong - and of the excellent excuses that were forthcoming at every step for the perversion of the original doctrine', wrote Orwell in the original blurb for the first edition of Animal Farm in 1945. His simple and tragic fable has become a world-famous classic of English prose.
George Orwell is the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair. The change of the name corresponded to a profound shift in Orwell's life-style, in which he changed from a pillar of the British imperial establishment into a literary and political rebel.
Orwell is famous for his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four. In 1944 Orwell finished Animal Farm, a political fable based on the story of the Russian Revolution and its betrayal by Joseph Stalin. In this book the group of barnyard animals overthrow and chase off their exploitative human masters and set up an egalitarian society of their own. Eventually the animals' intelligent and power-loving leaders, the pigs, subvert the revolution and form a dictatorship whose bondage is even more oppressive a heartless than that of their former masters.
Orwell derived his inspiration from the mood of Britain in the '40s. Animal Farm confronted the unpalatable truth that the victory over Fascism would in some respects unwittingly aid the advance of totalitarianism, while in Nineteen Eighty-four warns the dangers to the individual of enroaching collectivism. In these last, bleak fables Orwell attempted to make the art of political writing in the traditions of Swift and Defoe. The most world-known Gulliver's Travels. This satire? First published in 1726, relates to the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon on a merchant ship, and it shows the vices and defects of man and human institutions. So far as satire has become the subject of our research-work, it is necessary we look at the nature and sources of comic.
What is comic? Similar considerations apply to the historically earlier forms and theories of the comic. In Aristotle's view 'laughter was intimately related to ugliness and debasement'. Cicero held that the province of the ridiculous lay in the certain baseness and deformity. In 19th century Alexander Bain, an early experimental psychologist, thought alone these lines 'not in physical effects alone, but in everything where a man can achieve a stroke of superiority, in surpassing or discomforting а rival is the disposition of laughter apparent'. Sidney notes that 'while laughter comes from delight not all objects of delight cause laugh. We are ravished in delight to see a fair woman and yet are far from being moved to laughter. We laugh at deformed creatures, wherein certainly we can delight'. Immanuel Kant realized that what causes laughter is 'the sudden transformation of a tense expectation into nothing'. This can be achieved by incongruity between form and content, it is when two contradictory statements have been telescoped into a line whose homely, admonitory sound conveys the impression of a popular adage. In a similar way nonsense verse achieves its effect by pretending to make sense. It is interesting to note that the most memorable feature of Animal Farm - the final revision of the animals revolutionary commandments: 'All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others', is based on that device.
Other sources of innocent laughter are situations in which the part and the home change roles and attention becomes focused on a detail torn out of the functional defect on which its meaning depends. 'A bird's wing, comrades, is an organ of propulsion not of manipulation'. Orwell displaces attention from meaning to spelling. One of the most popular comic devices is impersonation. The most aggressive form of impersonation is parody, designed to deflate hollow pretence, to destroy illusion and to undermine pathos by harping on the weaknesses of the victim. Orwell resorts to that device describing Squealer:' The best known among them was a small fat pig named Squealer with very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements and a shrill voice. He was a brilliant talker:'
A succession of writers from the ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes through Swift to George Orwell, have used this technique to focus attention on deformities of society that, blunted by habit, are taken for granted. Satire assumes standards against which professions and practices vicious, the ironic perception darkens and deepens. The element of the incongruous point in the direction of the grotesque which implies an admixture of elements that do not march. The ironic gaze eventually penetrates to a vision of the grotesque quality of experience, marked by the discontinuity of word and deed and the total lack of coherence between the appearance and reality. This suggests one of the extreme limits of comedy, the satiric extreme in which the sense of the discrepancy between things as they are and things they might be or ought to be has reached to the borders of the tragedy.
Early theories of humour, including even those of Bergson and Freud, treated it as an isolated phenomenon, without attempting to throw light on the intimate connections between the comic and tragic, between laughter and crying. Yet these two domains of creative activity form a continuum with no sharp boundaries between wit and ingenuity. The confrontation between diverse codes of behaviour may yield comedy, tragedy or new psychological insights. Humour arouses malice and provides a harmless outlet for it. Comedy and tragedy, laughter and weeping yields further clues of this challenging problem. The detached malice of the comic impersonator that turns pathos into bathos, tragedy into travesty. Comedy is an imitation of common errors of our life, which represented in the most ridiculous and scornful sorts that may be.
Surely satire reflects changes in political and cultural climate and it had its ups and downs. George Orwell's satire of the 20th century is much more savage than that of Jonathan Swift in 18th century. It is only in the mid 20th century that the savage and the irrational have come to be viewed as part of the normative condition of the humanity rather than as tragic aberration from it. The savage and irrational amount to grotesque parodies of human possibility ideally conceived. Thus it is the 20th century novelists have recognized the tragicomic nature of the contemporary human image and predicament, and the principal mode of representing both is the grotesque. This may take various forms. In Animal Farm it takes a form of apocalyptic nightmare of tyranny and terror.
The satire in Animal Farm has two important aims - both based on the related norms of limitation and moderation. First, Animal Farm exposes and criticizes extremist political attitudes as dangerous. On the one hand, it satirizes the mentality of the utopian revolutionary - the belief at through the conscious effort of a ruling elite a society can be suddenly severed from its past and fashioned into a new, rational system. Implicit in Snowball's vision of high technology modernisation is the extirpation of the animals' resent agricultural identity as domesticated creatures and - if Boxer's goal of improving his mind is any indication, they're eventual transformation into Houyhnhnms. Instead, Snowball's futuristic incantations conjure up the power-hungry and pleasure-loving Napoleon.
An allegorical view of reality - the thing said or displayed really meaning something else-suited the Marxist-oriented social criticism of the 1930s,which was indefatigable in pointing out an economically self-serving motives underlying the surface features of modern bourgeois society. One form of allegory is the masque, a spectacle with masked participants.
Analyzing the novel we can hardly determine comedy from tragedy. We can't find those sharp boundaries that divide these two. Orwell can be called the true expert of man's psychology. Cause only a man who studied psychology of the crowd could create such a vivid image of characters, which we see in Animal Farm. Describing the characters Orwell attaches great significance to the direct remarks which help the reader to determine who is the victim and who is hunter in the novel. The features of the animals are 'A white stripe down his nose gave him somewhat stupid appearance', 'Mollie, foolish, pretty white mare'. Stupidity becomes a kind of leitmotif in the description of the animals. Pigs on the contrary are represented as very clever animals: 'the pigs were so clever that they could think of the way round every difficulty', 'with their superior knowledge...'
The author creates the image of the crowd that plays a very important role in the novel. What is a crowd? This is not only mass of individuals if to look deeper from the psychological point of view we shall find out that crowd is a gathering of people under the definite conditions which has its traits, which differ from that of single individual. The conscious person disappears, besides feelings and ideas of everyone who forms that gathering which is called crowd, receive united, indivisible direction. Orwell ridiculed that vice of the society. In this respect it takes the form of innocent laughter. Old Major found an answer to all problems of the animals and opened the thing on which 'the support and pleasure' of their days depend on. 'It is summed up in a single word- Man. Man is the only real enemy we have'. That episode makes the reader laugh but at the same time this very moment can be considered the tragic one, as the victim of the crowd has been chosen and pointed out and now nothing can stop the process. 'It is not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evels of the life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings? Only get rid of Man, and the produce of our labour would be our own. Almost overnight we can become rich and free.'
Major provides animals with scapegoat. In the nature of individual the image of an enemy excites aggressiveness but in the dimensions of the crowd the hostility increases thousands times. S.Moskovichy wrote in his book 'The machine that creates Gods', that 'society is ruled by passions on which one should play and even stimulate them in order to have an opportunity to rule them and to subordinate to intellect'. Having read that episode we don't pay attention to its deep psychological sense, but simply enjoy the humour with which the author speaks of it.

Orwell uses very popular device he gives the description of the character and at the end he gives a short remark which completely destroy the created image: 'Old Major was so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hours sleep in order to hear what he had to say... they nestled down inside it and promptly fell asleep','she purred contentedly throughout Majors speech without listening to a word of what he was saying'. He uses the same device in the situation when Old Major is telling the animals about the song: 'Many years ago when I was a little pig, my mother and other sows used to sing an old song of which they knew only the tune and the first three words I had known that tune in infancy, but it had long since past out of my mind, last night however it came back to me in my dream'. The reader is carefully prepared to hear some kind of patriotic march but instead of that the author in one sentence breaks down the created image: 'It was a stirring tune something between 'Clementine' and 'La Cucaracha'. Through those short remarks we learn the attitude the author towards what is going on in his novel. He laughs at his heroes pretending that the things he speaks about to be very important while making the reader understand the contrary thing. We can see hear again an integral part of any kind of humour-incongruity between the reality and the situation as it is said to be. The lack of coherence between things in its turn lead to the very invisible boundary between comedy and tragedy.
Orwell's novel is always balancing between tragedy and comedy. In Animal Farm Orwell is exposing the selfish power-hunger of the few behind a collectivist rhetoric used to gull the many. And in at least two Orwell's allegorical exposure is also an exposure of allegory. Because the surface fiction tends to be considered of lesser importance than the implied meaning, allegory is inherently hierarchical, and the insistence on the dominant meaning makes it an authoritarian mode.
If allegory tends to subordinate narrative to thesis, the structure of allegory, its dualistic form can be emphasised to restore a balance between fictional events and conceptual massage. In Animal Farm there are signs of a balance struck between satiric devices allegorically martialed to expose and assault a dangerous political myth and collateral apolitical elements - the latter akin to the 'solid objects and useless scraps of information'. Orwell allows the reader to fix disgust at cruelty, torture and violence on one leading character-Napoleon. The way Orwell presents the figure is structural, in that the figure of the Napoleon clarifies his political intent for the reader. There is no doubt about the way the reader feels toward Napoleon, but Orwell's handling of him is all the more effective for combining 'humour with the disgust'. 'Napoleon was a large, rather fierce looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker but with the reputation for going his own way'.
Orwell presents Napoleon to us in ways they are, at first amusing as, for example, in the scene where he shows his pretended disdain at Snowball's plans for the windmill, by lifting his leg and urinating on the chalked floor. 'One day, however, he arrived unexpectedly to examine the plans. He walked heavily round the shed, looked closely at every detail of the plans and snuffed at them once or twice, then stood for a little while contemplating them out of the corner of his eye; then suddenly he lifted his leg, urinated over the plans and walked out without uttering a word.' The increasing tension of description is broken down immediately this makes the reader smile. Besides the author speaks of Napoleon's ridiculous deeds in such a natural way, as that is the normal kind of behaviour that we just can't stand laughing. 'Napoleon produced no schemes of his own, but said quietly that Snowball's would come to nothing'. Napoleon is seen to have no respect for Snowball who creates the plans. This is most apparent in his urinating on them, which emphasises his brutal and uncivilised character. Animals urinate on objects to mark their territory. This is symbolic as Napoleon later takes the idea for the windmill as his own.
On the allegorical level the differing views of socialism held by Trotsky and Stalin are apparent. In contrast with Snowball's speeches, Napoleon merely makes the minimum response and when he does speak it is usually to criticise Snowball. Speech becomes less and less important to Napoleon. The sheep with their mindless bleating effectively silence the opposing opinions as no one else can be heard. ' It was noticed that they were especially liable to break 'Four legs good, two legs bad' in the crucial moments of Snowball's speeches. Snowball's reduction of Animalism for the benefit of stupider animals and the way the sheep mindlessly take it up, parodies the way socialist ideology reduces itself to simply formulas that everyone can understand, but which stop any kind of thought. In the Communist Manifesto, for example, there is the following sentence: 'The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: 'Abolition of private property''. Set this beside the basic principle of Animalism: 'Four legs good, two legs bad'. Orwell's feelings about dangers of over simplification are clear. 'The more short the statement is the more it is deprived from any kind of provement, the more it influences the crowd. The statement exerts influence only if it is repeated very often, in the same words'. Napoleon said that 'there is only one figure of the theory of orators art, which deserves attention -repetition. By the means of repetition an idea installs in the minds so deeply, that at last it is considered to be the proven truth.
What the truth is? The Russian dictionary gives the definition of truth as: the truth is, what corresponds to the reality. But is it always so? Very often it happens so that we accept as the true the false things which we want to be true, or the things that someone want us to accept. That is one of the most interesting peculiarities of man's psychology that Orwell ridicules. There is one universe truth, but the man has a strange habit to pervert truth.
Napoleon appears to have gained the support of dogs and sheep and is helped by the fickle nature of the crowd.
From the start it seems Napoleon turns events to his own advantage. When the farm is attacked in the 'Battle of Cowshed', Napoleon is nowhere to be seen. Cowardice is hinted ft and his readiness to rewrite history later in the novel shows the ways in which Napoleon is prepared to twist the truth for his own ends. The Seven Commandments in which are condified the ethnical absolutes of the new order, are perverted throughout the book to suit his aims.
There is an interesting thing to notice about Seven Commandments. That is an important device to use the 'lucky number' to deepen the impression of animals misfortune. Every time the changing of the commandment takes place, we see an example of how the political power, as Orwell sees it, is prepared to alter the past in peoples minds, if the past prevents it from doing what he wishes to do. Firstly the fourth commandment is altered in order that pigs could sleep comfortably in warm beds. A simple addition of two words does it. 'Read me the fourth commandment. Does it not say something about sleeping in beds? With some difficulty Muriel spelt it out. 'It says that ' no animal shall sleep in the bed with sheets''. Whenever the pigs infringe one of Major's commandments, Squealer is sent to convince the other animals that that is the correct interpretation. 'You didn't suppose, surely, that there was ever a ruling against beds? A bed merely means the place to sleep in. A pile of straw in a stall is a bed, properly regarded. The rule was against sheets, which are a human invention'.
Napoleon secures his rule through an unpleasant mix of lies distortion and hypocrisy / there are two scenes where Napoleon's cruelty and cold violence are shown in all their horror: the scene of the trials and the episode where Boxer is brought to the knacker's. The veil of mockery is drown aside. In these episodes humour is absent, the stark reality of Napoleons hunger for power and the cruelty< and death it involves are presented. Orwell reminds of the 'heavy' stink of blood, and associates that smell with Napoleon.
'And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before the Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones'.
Napoleon in the novel stands for Joseph Stalin, and of course we can't omit the way the author skilfully creates this character. Everything from pervasion of communist ideology to the cult of personality of Stalin found its reflection in the novel.
Orwell in the cruellest kind of parody gives to Napoleon such titles as: 'Our, leader, Comrade Napoleon', 'The Farther of all animals, Terror of Mankind, Protector of the Sheepfold, Ducklin's Friend.'
The novel mainly is based on the historical facts, and even the relationships of Soviet Union and Germany are shown in that fairy tale. For the all cleverness of the Napoleon, though, he is fooled by Frederic of Pinchfield (he stands for Hitler's Germany) who gets the timber out of him, pays him false money, then attacks the farm, and blows up the windmill.
Orwell's satire will be no iconoclastic wrecking job on the Stalinist Russia whose people had been suffering so cruelly from the war and whose soldiers, under Stalin's leadership, were locked in desperate combat with the German invader even as Animal Farm was being written. That Orwell's assault is primarily on an idea, the extremists fantasy of technological utopianism devoid of hard work, and less a living creature, the commander is chief, is demonstrating during the most dramatic moment of Farmer Frederick's attack on the farm-the juxtaposition of dynamited windmill and the figure of Napoleon alone standing unbowed. And despite Orwell's fascination with Gulliver's Travels, it is a sign of his attempt to draw back from the Swiftian revulsion at the flash - a disgust that, as Orwell later noted could extend to political behaviour - toward the more balanced and positive view of life that Animal Farm, despite it's violence, has few references to distasteful physical realities, and those two are appropriate to the events of the narrative.
Napoleon is a simple figure. Orwell makes no attempt as to give reasons as to why he comes to act the way he does. If Napoleon was a human character in the novel, if this where a historical novel about a historical figure Orwell would have had to make Napoleon convincing in human terms. But isn't human and this is not a novel. It is an animal fable and Orwell presents the figure of Napoleon in ways that make us see clearly and despise what he stands for. He is simplified for the sake of clarity. He lends force of Orwell's political massage, that power tends to corrupt, by allowing the reader to fix his disgust at cruelty torture and violence.
The primary objective of the tale is that we should loathe Napoleon for what he stands for. The other animals are used to intensify our disgust or else to add colour and life to the tale by the addition of the farmyard detail. The most significant of the other animals is undoubtedly the cart-horse Boxer, and in his handling of him Orwell shows great expertise in controlling the readers reactions and sympathies and in turning them against what is hates.
Throughout the novel boxer is the very sympathetic figure. Honest and hardworking, he is devoted to the cause in a simple-minded way, although his understanding of the principles of Animalism is very limited. He is strong and stands nearly eighteen feet high, and is much respected by the other animals. He has two phrases which for him solve all problems, one, 'I shall work harder', and later on, despite the fact that Napoleon's rule is becoming tyrannical, 'Napoleon is always right'. At one point he does question Squealer, when he, in his persuasive way, is convincing the animals that Snowball was trying to betray them in the Battle of Cowshed. Boxer at first can not take this, he remembers the wound Snowball received along his back from Jones's gun. Squealer explains this by saying that 'it had been arranged for Snowball to be wounded, it had all been part of Jones's plan'. Boxer's confused memory of what actually happened makes him 'a little uneasy' but when Squealer announces, very slowly that Napoleon 'categorically' states that Snowball was Jones's agent from the start then the honest cart-horse accepts the absurdity without question.
Orwell through the figure of Boxer is presenting a simple good nature, which wishes to do good, and which believes in the Rebellion. So loyal is Boxer that he is prepared to sacrifice his memory of facts, blurred as it is. Nevertheless, so little is he respected, and so fierce is the hatred the pigs hatred the pigs have for even the slightest questioning of their law that, when Napoleon's confessions and trials begin, Boxer is among the first the dogs attack. Wish his great strength he has no difficulty in controlling them: He just simply, almost carelessly 'put out his great hoof, caught a dog in mid-air, and pinned him to the ground'. At a word from Napoleon he lets the dog go, but still he doesn't realise he is a target. Boxer's blind faith in the pigs is seeming disastrous. Confronted with the horrifying massacre of the animals on the farm, Boxer blames himself and buries himself in his work. This show of power pleases us as a reader, in what we like to think of physical strength being allied to good nature, simple though a good nature may be. Boxer has our sympathy because he gives his strength selflessly for what he believes, whereas Napoleon gives nothing, believes in nothing and never actually works. Boxer exhausts himself for the cause. Every time the animals have to start rebuilding of the windmill he throws himself into the task without a word of complaint, getting up first half an hour, then three quarters of an hour before everybody else.
Boxer's sacrificial break down in the service of what he and the other worker animals believed to be technological progress might be interpreted as allegorically portending the future deterioration of the animal community.
At last his strength gives out and when it does his goodness is unprotected. The pigs are going to send him to the knacker's to be killed and boiled out into glue. Warned by Benjamin the donkey (his close, silent friend throughout the book) and by Clover he tries to kick his way out of the van, but he has given all his energy to the pigs and now has none left to save himself. The final condition of Boxer, inside the van about to carry him to the knacker's in exchange for money needed to continue work on the windmill, emblematically conveys a message close to the spirit of Orwell's earlier warnings: 'The time had been when a few kicks of Boxers hoofs would have smashed the van to mach wood. But alas! His strength had left him; and in the few moments the sound of drumming hoofs grew fainter and died away'. This is the most moving scene in a book Indeed our feelings here as reader's are so simple, deep and uninhibited that as Edward Thomas has said movingly, 'we weep for the terrible pity of it like children who meet injustice for the first time.
Boxer can be attributed to the tragic heroes cause he doesn't struggle with the injustice, as the tragic hero should do. And surely we can consider him a comical hero as all through the story the reader has compassion on him. Orwell managed to unite tragedy and comedy in one character. Boxer arouses mixed contradictory feelings. His story is no longer comic, but pathetic and evokes not laughter but pity. It is an aggressive element that detached malice of the comic impersonator, which turns pathos into bathos and tragedy into travesty.
Not only Boxer's story reminds us more of a tragedy. The destiny of all animals makes us weep. If at the beginning of the novel they are 'happy and excited' in the middle 'they work like slaves but still happy', at the end 'they are shaken and miserable'. After Napoleon's dictatorship has showed it's disregard for the facts and it's merciless brutality, after the animals witnessed the forced confessions and the execution, they all go to the grassy knoll where the windmill is being built Clover thinks back on Major's speech before he died, and thinks how far they had gone from what he would have intended: 'as Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. This scenes of terror and slaughter where not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the week. Instead - she did not know why - they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes'.
From the sketch of the political background to Animal Farm it will be quite clear that the main purpose of that episode is to expose the lie which Stalinist Russia had become. It was supposed to be a Socialist Union of States, but it had become the dictatorship. The Soviet Union in fact damaged the cause of the true socialism. In a preface Orwell wrote to Animal Farm he says that 'for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of socialist movement'. Animal Farm attempts, through a simplification of Soviet history, to clarify in the minds of readers what Orwell felt Russia had become. The clarification is to get people to face the facts of injustice, of brutality, and hopefully to get them to think out for themselves some way in which a true and 'democratic socialism' will be brought about. In that episode Orwell shows his own attitude to what is happening on his fairy farm. And he looks at it more as at the tragedy than a comedy, but still he returns to his genre of satire and writes: 'there was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that even as things were they were far better than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings'.
Finally, the moderateness of Orwell's satire is reinforced by a treatment of time that encourages the reader's sympathetic understanding of the whole revolutionary experiment from it's spontaneous and joyous beginnings to it's ambiguous condition on the final page. A basic strategy of scathing social satire is to dehistoricize the society of the specific socio-political phenomena being exposed to ridicule and condemnation.
In Animal Farm the past that jolts the creatures from the timeless present of the animal condition into manic state of historical consciousness is a quick, magically transformative moment.

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JOSEPH HELLER "CATCH-22"

Author
Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923. He served as an Air Force bombardier in World War II and has enjoyed a long career as a writer and a teacher. His best-selling books include Something Happened, Good as Gold, Picture This, God Knows, and Closing Time--but his first novel, Catch-22, remains his most famous and acclaimed work.
Written while Heller worked producing ad copy for a New York City marketing firm, Catch-22 draws heavily on Heller's Air Force experience and presents a war story that is at once hilarious, grotesque, bitterly cynical, and utterly stirring. The novel generated a great deal of controversy upon its publication; critics tended either to adore it or despise it, and those who hated it did so for the same reason as the critics who loved it. Over time, Catch-22 has become one of the defining novels of the twentieth century. It presents an utterly unsentimental vision of war, stripping all romantic pretenses away from combat, replacing visions of glory and honor with a kind of nightmarish comedy of violence, bureaucracy, and paradoxical madness.
Unlike other anti-romantic war novels, such as Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Catch-22 relies heavily on humor to convey the insanity of war, presenting the horrible meaninglessness of armed conflict through a kind of desperate absurdity, rather than through graphic depictions of suffering and violence. Catch-22 also distinguishes itself from other anti-romantic war novels by its core values: Yossarian's story is ultimately not one of despair but one of hope; the positive urge to live and to free can redeem the individual from the dehumanizing machinery of war. The novel is told as a disconnected series of loosely related, tangential stories in no particular chronological order; the final narrative that emerges from this structural tangle upholds the value of the individual in the face of the impersonal, collective military mass; at every stage, it mocks insincerity and hypocrisy even when they appear to be triumphant.

Characters
Yossarian - The protagonist and hero of the novel. Yossarian is a captain in the Air Force and a lead bombardier in his squadron, but he hates the war. His powerful desire to live has led him to the conclusion that millions of people are trying to kill him, and he has decided either to live forever or, ironically, die trying.
Milo Minderbinder - The fantastically powerful mess officer, Milo controls an international black market syndicate and is revered in obscure corners all over the world. He ruthlessly chases after profit and bombs his own men as part of a contract with Germany. Milo insists that everyone in the squadron will benefit from being part of the syndicate and that "everyone has a share."
Colonel Cathcart - The ambitious, unintelligent colonel in charge of Yossarian's squadron. Colonel Cathcart wants to be a general, and he tries to impress his superiors by bravely volunteering his men for dangerous combat duty whenever he gets the chance. He continually raises the number of combat missions required of the men before they can be sent home. Colonel Cathcart tries to scheme his way ahead; he thinks of successful actions as "feathers in his cap" and unsuccessful ones as "black eyes."
The Chaplain - The timid, thoughtful chaplain who becomes Yossarian's friend. He is haunted by a sensation of deja vu and begins to lose his faith in God as the novel progresses.
Hungry Joe - An unhinged member of Yossarian's squadron. Hungry Joe is obsessed with naked women, and he has horrible nightmares on nights when he isn't scheduled to fly a combat mission the next morning.
Nately - A good-natured 19-year-old boy in Yossarian's squadron. Nately comes from a wealthy home, falls in love with a whore, and generally tries to keep Yossarian from getting into trouble.
Nately's whore - The beautiful whore Nately falls in love with in Rome. After a good night's sleep, she falls in love with Nately, as well. When Yossarian tells her about Nately's death, she begins a persistent campaign to ambush Yossarian and stab him to death.
Clevinger - An idealistic member of Yossarian's squadron who argues with Yossarian about concepts such as country, loyalty, and duty, in which Clevinger firmly believes. Clevinger's plane disappears inside a cloud during the Parma bomb run, and he is never heard from again.
Doc Daneeka - The medical officer. Doc Daneeka feels very sorry for himself because the war interrupted his lucrative private practice in the States, and he refuses to listen to other people's problems. Doc Daneeka is the first person to explain Catch-22 to Yossarian.
Dobbs - A co-pilot, Dobbs seizes the controls from Huple during the mission to Avignon, the same mission on which Snowden dies. Dobbs later develops a plan to murder Colonel Cathcart and eventually awaits only Yossarian's go-ahead to put it in action.
McWatt - A cheerful, polite pilot who often pilots Yossarian's planes. McWatt likes to joke around with Yossarian and sometimes buzzes the squadron. One day, he accidentally flies in too low and slices Kid Sampson in half with his propeller; he then commits suicide by flying his plane into a mountain.
Major Major Major Major - The supremely mediocre squadron commander. Born Major Major Major, he is promoted to major on his first day in the army by a mischievous computer. Major Major is painfully awkward and will only see people in his office when he isn't there.
Aarfy - Yossarian's navigator. Aarfy infuriates Yossarian by pretending he cannot hear Yossarian's orders during bomb runs. Toward the end of the novel, Aarfy stuns Yossarian when he rapes and murders the maid of the officers' apartments in Rome.
Orr - Yossarian's often maddening roommate. Orr almost always crashes his plane or is shot down on combat missions, but he always seems to survive.
Appleby - A handsome, athletic member of the squadron and a superhuman Ping-Pong player. Orr enigmatically says that Appleby has flies in his eyes.
Captain Black - The squadron's bitter intelligence officer. He wants nothing more than to be squadron commander. Captain Black exults in the men's discomfort and does everything he can increase it; when Nately falls in love with a whore in Rome, Captain Black begins to buy her services regularly just to taunt him.
Colonel Korn - Colonel Cathcart's wily, cynical sidekick.
Major ----- de Coverley - The fierce, intense executive officer for the squadron. Major ----- de Coverley is revered and feared by the men--they are even afraid to ask his first name-- though all he does is play horseshoes and rent apartments for the officers in cities taken by American forces. When Yossarian moves the bomb line on a map to make it appear that Bologna has been captured, Major ----- de Covereley disappears in Bologna trying to rent an officers' apartment.
Major Danby - The timid operations officer. Before the war, he was a college professor; now, he does his best for his country. In the end, he helps Yossarian escape.
General Dreedle - The grumpy old general in charge of the wing in which Yossarian's squadron is placed. General Dreedle is the victim of a private war waged against him by the ambitious General Peckem
Nurse Duckett - A nurse in the Pianosa hospital who becomes Yossarian's lover.
Dunbar - Yossarian's friend, the only other person who seems to understand that there is a war going on. Dunbar has decided to live as long as possible by making time pass as slowly as possible, so he treasures boredom and discomfort. He mysteriously "disappeared" as part of a conspiracy toward the end of the novel.
Chief White Halfoat - An alcoholic Indian from Oklahoma who has decided to die of pneumonia.
Havermeyer - A fearless lead bombardier. Havermeyer never takes evasive action, and he enjoys shooting field mice at night.
Huple - A 15-year-old pilot; the pilot on the mission to Avignon on which Snowden is killed. Huple is Hungry Joe's roommate, and his cat likes to sleep on Hungry Joe's face.
Washington Irving - A famous American author whose name Yossarian signs to letters during one of his many stays in the hospital. Eventually, military intelligence believes Washington Irving to be the name of a covert insubordinate, and two C.I.D. (Criminal Investigation Division) men are dispatched to ferret him out of the squadron.
Luciana - A beautiful girl Yossarian meets, sleeps with, and falls in love with during a brief period in Rome.
Mudd - Generally referred to as "the dead man in Yossarian's tent," Mudd was a squadron member who was killed in action before he could be processed as an official member of the squadron. As a result, he is listed as never having arrived, and no one has the authority to move his belongings out of Yossarian's tent.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf - Later Colonel Scheisskopf and eventually General Scheisskopf. He helps train Yossarian's squadron in America and shows an unsettling passion for elaborate military parades. ("Scheisskopf" is German for "shithead.")
The Soldier in White - A body completely covered with bandages in Yossarian and Dunbar's ward in the Pianosa hospital.
Snowden - The young gunner whose death over Avignon shattered Yossarian's courage and opened his eyes to the madness of the war. Snowden died in Yossarian's arms with his entrails splattered all over Yossarian's uniform, a trauma that is gradually revealed throughout the novel.
Corporal Whitcomb - Later Sergeant Whitcomb, the chaplain's atheist assistant. Corporal Whitcomb hates the chaplain for holding back his career and makes the chaplain a suspect in the Washington Irving scandal.
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen - The mail clerk at the Twenty-Seventh Air Force Headquarters, Wintergreen is able to intercept and forge documents and, thus, wields enormous power in the Air Force. He continually goes AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and is continually punished with loss of rank.
General Peckem - The ambitious special operations general who plots incessantly to take over General Dreedle's position.
Kid Sampson - A pilot in the squadron. Kid Sampson is sliced in half by McWatt's propeller when McWatt jokingly buzzes the beach with his plane.
Lieutenant Colonel Korn - Colonel Cathcart's wily, condescending sidekick.
Colonel Moodus - General Dreedle's son-in-law. General Dreedle despises Colonel Moodus and enjoys watching Chief White Halfoat bust him in the nose.
Flume - Chief White Halfoat's old roommate who is so afraid of having his throat slit while he sleeps that he has taken to living in the forest.
Dori Duz - A friend of Scheisskopf's wife. Together, they sleep with all the men training under him while he is stationed in the United States.

Summary
During the latter half of World War II, Yossarian is stationed with his Air Force squadron on the island of Pianosa, near the Italian coast and the Mediterranean Sea. He and his friends endure a nightmarish, absurd existence defined by bureaucracy and violence: They are inhuman resources in the eyes of their blindly ambitious superior officers. The squadron is thrown thoughtlessly into brutal combat situations and bombing runs on which it is more important for them to capture a good aerial photograph of an explosion than to destroy their targets. Their colonels continually raise the number of missions they are required to fly before being sent home so that no one is ever sent home. Still, no one but Yossarian seems to realize that there is a war going on; everyone thinks he is crazy when he insists that millions of people are trying to kill him.
Yossarian is unique because he takes the whole war personally--rather than being swayed by national ideals or abstract principles, Yossarian is furious that his life is constantly in danger, and not as a result of his own misdeeds. He has a deep desire to live and is determined to be immortal or die trying. As the novel progresses through its loosely connected series of recurring stories and anecdotes, Yossarian is continually troubled by his memory of Snowden, who died in his arms on the mission when Yossarian lost his nerve for war. He is placed in ridiculous, absurd, desperate, and tragic circumstances--he sees friends die and disappear, his squadron bombed by its own mess officer, and colonels and generals who bravely volunteer their men for the most perilous battle. He is haunted by the paradoxical law called Catch-22, the cruel mechanism behind the military. In the end, Yossarian decides to save his own life by deserting the army; he turns his back on the dehumanizing cold machinery of the military, rejects the rule of Catch-22, and strives for a future in which he is in control of his own life.

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CHARLOTTE BRONTE "JANE EYRE"

Author
Born in Yorkshire, England, on April 21, 1816, Charlotte Bronte was raised by her father, an eccentric curate, and her aunt, a zealous Christian, in a tiny village in the English moor country. Her childhood companions consisted largely of her brother and sisters, including Anne Bronte, later the author of Agnes Grey, and Emily BrontК, later the author of Wuthering Heights. Bronte and three of her sisters were sent to a harsh charity school called Cowan Bridge in 1824, but after an outbreak of tuberculosis killed Charlotte's sisters Maria and Elizabeth, the surviving girls--Emily and Charlotte--were brought home. Pressured to help provide money for her impoverished family, Charlotte became a governess in 1835; this job, which essentially required her to live with a wealthy family as a private tutor for its children, was a misery to her, and she left it as soon as she could.
Having participated in collaborative writing projects with her siblings since early childhood, Charlotte suggested that she, Anne, and Emily publish a book of poems together. The idea that they should each write a novel soon followed. Anne and Emily produced their masterpieces in 1847, but Charlotte's book, The Professor, was not published. Charlotte wrote another novel later that year, Jane Eyre. A devastating critique of Victorian assumptions about gender and social class, it was one of the most successful novels, both critically and commercially, of the Victorian era. Ironically, given its proto-feminist subject matter, Jane Eyre was published under a male pseudonym, Currer Bell, in order to ensure its acceptance by a public that disapproved of the idea of women writers. (Emily and Anne wrote under the pseudonyms Ellis Bell and Acton Bell, respectively.) Following the success of Jane Eyre, Charlotte wrote several other novels, most notably Shirley (1849). But the deaths of her sisters Emily and Anne and of her brother Branwell in 1848 left her dejected and lonely. She married the Reverend Arthur Nicholls in 1854, though she claimed not to love him.
The incidents of Charlotte BrontК's life play a crucial role throughout much of Jane Eyre. Jane's experience at the Lowood School, where her dearest friend dies of tuberculosis, closely resembles Charlotte's experience at Cowan Bridge. Like Jane's cousin John, Charlotte's brother Branwell descended into alcoholism and debauchery before dying at an early age. And like her creator, Jane Eyre becomes a governess, where she is in a unique position to observe, suffer through, and criticize the oppressive social preconceptions of nineteenth-century Victorian society.

Analysis
Jane Eyre is one of the most complex novels of the mid-nineteenth century, offering more than progressive political content and trenchant social observation. Modern readings of Jane Eyre, however, tend to focus on these aspects, often to the neglect of the novel's many other excellent qualities.
Jane Eyre's most striking feature is its heroine, who narrates the book approximately ten years after the events of the story take place. (In fact, the first edition of Jane Eyre claimed to be an autobiography, which Currer Bell--Charlotte Bronte's pseudonym--was credited with editing.) Jane's patient, meticulous eye for detail, her subtle understanding of the psychology of interpersonal relationships, and her strong moral sense all contribute to her role as one of the first feminist heroines, and underscore her critical encounters with many of Victorian England's most snobbish and oppressive preconceptions about class and gender roles. As an orphan raised by a wealthy family, Jane herself is of ambiguous social standing. Her status continues to lie awkwardly between poles when she becomes the governess at Thornfield: as a woman, she is automatically a second-class citizen of her time; as a governess, she is forced into a social position subordinate to Rochester and the aristocracy even though she is expected to possess the manners and education of a well-bred lady. Jane's struggle to integrate her love for Rochester with her desire for independence and equality, and to integrate both with the ethical strictures of Christianity, form the principal inner conflict of the novel. That Jane is able to resolve this conflict, marrying Rochester and living happily as his wife, is an important and optimistic conclusion to BrontК's novel: love, at least in the world of Jane Eyre, is not incompatible with equality.
In addition to its social and political elements, Jane Eyre cultivates a haunting atmosphere that has helped to ensure its place in the hearts and minds of readers. Structurally, Jane Eyre is based on a novelistic form called Bildungsroman, a kind of novel that tells the story of a character's development from childhood into adulthood based on a set of worldly experiences. Jane's story takes her through five distinct phases, each associated with a house or a building: her childhood at Gateshead; her education at the Lowood School; her time as Adele's governess at Thornfield; her time with the Rivers family at Marsh End (also called Moor House); and her reunion and marriage with Rochester at Ferndean. Each of these phases represents a distinct period of psychological development for Jane; together they form the mature and steady-handed woman who narrates the novel.
But the Bildungsroman of Jane Eyre is filtered through another literary tradition--that of the gothic horror story. A form that became popular in England in the late eighteenth century, the gothic horror story features supernatural encounters, remote landscapes, and eerie mysteries designed to create an atmosphere of suspense and fear. Jane encounters ghosts, dark secrets, plots, and mysteries throughout her story, mitigating the moral seriousness of her social observation with the gripping and crowd-pleasing psychodrama of gothic romance.

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JANE AUSTEN "EMMA"

Author
Considered the foremost English novelist by some critics, Jane Austen is best known for her satirical glimpses into village life and the rituals of courtship and marriage. She was born in Steventon, England, in 1775 and educated at the Abbey School in Reading. Austen never married but lived with her mother and sisters in a house owned by her wealthy brother after her father's death in 1805. She began work on her first novel while in her 20s, but she did not publish until 1811, when Sense and Sensibility was issued. She did not receive much critical or popular recognition during her lifetime, but she published six novels, of which Emma is often considered the most complex.
All of Austen's novels contain complicated plot twists and a multitude of characters, but Emma is particularly rich in this respect. Emma Woodhouse herself is probably the most well-developed of Austen's heroines, and her comic missteps and self-importance lead readers to like and dislike her at the same time. The novel centers on issues that might seem trite and trivial today. We should remember, however, that during Austen's time, a young woman would have no intellectual outlet beyond flirtation, courtship, marriage, and matchmaking. Emma entertains herself by attempting to arrange matches; she learns her own limitations through her mistakes.
Throughout the novel, Emma exempts herself from marriage and romance in order to assert her independence. Ultimately, of course, she is lured into love just like the other characters. Emma is wealthy enough not to require a husband to support herself, and she is so attached to her father that she does not long to leave his house. In the end, her family draws her into romance and marriage: She finally takes her place as a married woman, no longer convinced that she can separate herself entirely from the expected path for a young woman of her time.

Characters
Emma Woodhouse - The novel's title character and protagonist, she is beautiful, charming, quick-witted, and intelligent. Austen declared her to be "a character whom no one but me will much like." Emma is certainly immodest and somewhat self-absorbed, but her missteps and confusion are what make her human. She lives alone with her father and participates with great pleasure in all the village's social events--not least because they provide ample opportunity for matchmaking and flirtation. She does not have many friends her own age, and she enthusiastically takes on Harriet Smith as a new project, happily serving as an example of lady-like perfection and pointing out similar exemplars of the perfect gentleman among their male acquaintances. Simultaneously venerated and mocked, Emma is perhaps the most well-developed character in all of Jane Austen's works. She is a young woman too intelligent for her time; finding no adequate vehicle for her talents, she must put them to use in matters of courtship, gossip, and matchmaking.
Mr. Knightley - He is Emma's brother-in-law and an old family friend. He is the only character who is openly critical of Emma, pointing out her flaws and foibles with great frankness. At the same time, he clearly possesses great affection for her, and all of his advice is aimed at improving Emma's character and behavior. He lives at Donwell Abbey and leases property to the Martins, a family of wealthy farmers whom he likes and counsels.
Harriet Smith - A parlor-boarder at the local girls' school, she is 19 and extremely impressionable. She exalts Emma and obeys her every suggestion, even casting aside her relationship with Robert Martin because Emma implies that it is beneath her. Supported at school by an unknown sponsor, Harriet's parentage is unknown and she is, therefore, of a lower class than Emma herself. She is beautiful but not very accomplished, and Emma introduces her to a social circle higher than what she is accustomed to and encourages her to marry into it.
Frank Churchill - The somewhat estranged son of Mr. Weston, he is considered a potential suitor for Emma. He is irresponsible and rash, and Emma is soon put off by his temperamental behavior.
Jane Fairfax - She is the niece of a local spinster. She is beautiful and accomplished and naturally becomes a rival in Emma's mind, though the two maintain a loose friendship.
Mr. Woodhouse - Emma's father, he is a well-established village gentleman and a doting parent. A hypochondriac, he does not like to keep late hours and panics at the thought of sitting out-of-doors or walking "past the shrubbery." He wants Emma to remain unmarried and keep him company, and he encourages her in all of her pursuits, even matchmaking.
Mrs. Weston and Mr. Weston - The former Miss Taylor, she raised Emma and remains her adviser and close friend. She left Hartfield to marry Mr. Weston, a local widower, but continues to entertain the young people of the village and encourages an association between Emma and her stepson Frank.
Mr. Elton - He is the village vicar and Emma's first choice as a husband for Harriet. Instead, he marries Augusta Hawkins in Bath.
Mrs. Elton - She is the daughter of a rich merchant in Bath. She is unpopular in Highbury due to her poor manners and arrogance, but she becomes good friends with Jane Fairfax.
Mr. John Knightley - He is Knightley's brother and Woodhouse's son-in-law. He is married to Isabella, Emma's sister. They live in London and visit only occasionally. Mr. John Knightley is given to complaint and bad humor; his wife is submissive and devoted entirely to him.

Summary
Emma, like Jane Austen's other novels, centers around the intrigue surrounding marriage and courtship. At once satirical and thought-provoking, it also details a young woman's attempts to understand human nature, including her own. After self-declared success at matchmaking between her governess and Mr. Weston, a village widower, Emma imagines herself to be naturally gifted in conjuring love. Although convinced that she herself will never marry, she takes it upon herself to groom Harriet Smith, a younger friend of dubious parentage, into a potential gentleman's wife. She sets her sights on Mr. Elton, the vicar, one of Highbury's most eligible bachelors, steering Harriet away from the eager Robert Martin, a well-to-do farmer. Harriet rejects Martin's proposal and becomes infatuated with Mr. Elton under Emma's encouragement, but Emma's plans go awry when Elton makes it clear that she herself is the true object of his affections. Deluded by her own matchmaking plans, Emma cannot see these events clearly and never acknowledges the possibility of Elton's romantic intentions toward her.
Mr. Knightley, the oldest bachelor in Highbury at age 37, watches all these events with a critical eye toward Emma. He has a particular interest in Robert Martin's well-being, as he is the owner of the Martins' farm and the young man's mentor. He and Emma argue over Harriet's appropriate station in life and Emma's meddling; Knightley, as usual, emerges the wiser of the pair. Elton spurned by Emma and offended by her insinuation that Harriet is his equal, leaves for Bath and marries almost immediately. Emma is left to comfort Harriet and to wonder about the character and possibilities of a new visitor to Highbury, Mr. Weston's son.
Enter Frank Churchill, raised by his aunt and uncle in London and devoted enough to them to take their name in place of his father's. Long deterred from visiting his father by his aunt's illnesses and complaints, he is completely unknown to Emma. Knightley is immediately suspicious of the young man, especially after he rushes down to London only to have his hair cut. Emma notices his attentions directed at her and she plans to discourage them but instead finds herself flattered and engaged in flirtatious banter with the young man. Another addition to the Highbury set, Jane Fairfax provokes envy and some resentment from Emma, for she is equally talented and more diligent than Emma.
Knightley comes to Jane's defense immediately, and Emma soon warms to her. However, she begins to suspect that Knightley's attention toward Jane is romantic. At the same time, she begins to dismiss Frank Churchill as a potential suitor and imagines Harriet in love with him after she declares her infatuation with a man above her social station. Ultimately, however, the answers unravel through a letter to Mrs. Weston: Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax are already engaged and have been throughout the past months. In trying to keep this betrothal a secret, Frank directed his attention toward Emma, thinking it altogether unwanted and imagining that Emma was fully aware of its falseness.
Upon receiving this news, Emma immediately thinks of Harriet's disappointment but instead is told that her supposition was incorrect: it was not Frank Churchill, but Mr. Knightley, who took Elton's place in Harriet's affection. In considering why this match is so troubling to her, Emma has a revelation: she is in love with Mr. Knightley. Expecting Knightley to tell her of his attachment to Harriet, she instead hears what she desires most, as Knightley declares his affections for her. Harriet marries Robert Martin, and Emma marries Mr. Knightley, securing the course of true love.

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Swift's Gulliver's Travels: Satirical, Utopian, or Both?

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Jonathan Swift


When Gulliver's Travels was first published in 1726, Swift instantly became history's most famous misanthrope. Thackeray was not alone in his outrage when he denounced it as "past all sense of manliness and shame; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene" (quoted in Hogan, 1979: 648). Since then, few literary works have been so dissected, discussed and disagreed apon. It is the magnum opus of one of the English language's greatest satirists, but certainly does not offer any easy answers. It is written like the typical travel book of the day, but instead of offering a relaxing escape from the real world, it brings us face to face with reality in all its complexity.

Of the four books comprising the work, by far the most controversial has been the last: "A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms". In it, the narrator, Gulliver, is deposited by mutineers on an island inhabited by two species. The Yahoos are dirty, savage and barbaric, with no capacity for reason. These wretched creatures physically resemble humans but immediately fill Gulliver with loathing. The Houyhnhnms, on the other hand, are a race of talking horses governed completely by reason. They lead natural, simple lives, and use the Yahoos for menial labour. They are so honest they cannot conceive of the notion of dishonesty. They regard Gulliver as a precocious Yahoo and, after a few years, banish him from the Island. Gulliver is heartbroken, having developed a love for these serene creatures and their way of life. He spends the rest of his life in England, trying talk to horses and regarding his fellow humans "only with Hatred, Disgust and Contempt".

Until the 20th century, criticism of book four tended to equate Gulliver with Swift. Gulliver would rather jump from the ship that "rescued" him than re-enter human society He cannot bear to look at his own reflection because of the resemblance he bears to the Yahoos. He sees himself as unworthy even to kiss the hoof of his Houyhnhnm master. This deeply offended an England which regarded man as the apex of creation and the paradigm of reason. Swift seemed to be damning mankind to a useless, horrible existence, without the prospect of any self-improvement or progress.
Modern criticism, however, can be divided into two broad schools of thought concerning the extent Swift wished to present the Houyhnhnm society as ideal. James L. Clifford distinguishes between a Њsoft' and a Њhard' approach (Lock, 1999). The approach one takes has a bearing on one's entire notion of the book: on the narrative technique, on the genre, and, most importantly, on the target of Swift's satire.
The soft approach, currently the more popular of the two, defends Swift from his 18th century detractors by refuting the idea of Swift as a people-hater. Exponents believe that there is a clear distinction between Gulliver and Swift, and that Swift is satirising his narrator rather than speaking through him. The Houyhnhnms are ironic devices not meant to be taken as ideal. Similarly, the reader is not to despise the Yahoos as Gulliver does, because the Yahoos, too, are abstractions. Gulliver's behaviour at the end is so absurd and silly that all the "insight" he has gained cannot be taken seriously. He regards the kind Captain Mendez as just another Yahoo, thus he is clearly unreliable, say the critics.
Furthermore, the Houyhnhm society is, by modern standards, far from ideal. Houyhnhnms love all members of their race equally, yet feel no romantic or sexual love. As supremely rational creatures, they see it as folly to mourn the death of a particular family member or friend. They reject anything that they are not familiar with. They exploit the Yahoos and procreate according to strict eugenic principles so as to breed an inferior servant class. Their language is limited and their culture primitive. They come across as remote, cold and dreary. George Orwell takes particular exception to the Houyhnhnms, calling them walking corpses. He sees their society as the epitome of totalitarianism, where the attitude is "we know everything already, so why should dissident opinions be tolerated?" (Orwell, 1971: 353).
Surely this could not have been Swift's idea of an ideal society, says the soft school. The Houyhnhnms must be symbols for man's rational element, and the Yahoos symbols for man's appetitive, sensual qualities. Swift hated deistic rationalism, popular in the 18th century, which relied on reason as the only guide for belief and action. Thus Gulliver is satirised for failing to find a balance between his humanity and his intellect. Crane sums up the imputed moral: "human nature is bad enough, but it is not altogether hopeless; reason is a good thing, but a life of pure reason is no desirable end for man". This critical approach tends to see Gulliver's Travels as a novel. Gulliver is a psychologically complex character and Swift uses him as a dramatic device. This paper wishes to reject the easy compromises of this approach in favour of the traditional, Њhard' school of thought. Gulliver's Travel's is a satire, and Gulliver as satirical device does not have a fully-fledged personality. Although it is dangerous to equate narrator with author completely, Gulliver and Swift share the same basic view of human nature. The difference, as R. Crane says, is simply "between a person who has just discovered a deeply disturbing truth about man and is considerably upset and one who has known this truth all along and can therefore write of his hero's discovery calmly and with humour". There are no indications anywhere that Swift did not himself believe the words he puts into his hero's mouth. Readers have no other source but Gulliver, no contradicting views between which to decide. The ending of the book is not comical, but poignant. Gulliver, once so self-assured and proud of his species, has undergone a tragic disillusionment which cleverly forms the climax of the entire work.
The view that Gulliver's Travels does in fact despair of the human condition ties in with what is known of the author. His declaration that "Principally [he] hate[s] and detest[s] that animal called man" (quoted in Columbia, 1993) is certainly unequivocal enough. Swift was an orthodox Christian and a conservative. His puritanical views caused him to regard man as "fallen", as inherently sinful and evil. The Houyhnhnms represent prelapsarian existence. Unlike them, Adam and Eve were not content to live in blissful ignorance and brought about man's wretched state by following their appetites rather than their reason. Similarly, Gulliver's curiosity and thirst for adventure is the cause of all his troubles and of his cruelty to those he leaves behind.
He was certainly no democrat‹he hated lords and politicians but felt no better about the lower classes. To claim Swift could not have sanctioned the exploitation of the Yahoos or lower caste of Houyhnhnms is to assume that Swift had modern values such as freedom and equality. These values resemble meliorism, which argued for the possibility of progress and improvement of society and which Swift dismissed even in his own day.

We also know, from another work, the Battle of the Books and from book three's Voyage to Glubdubbdrib that Swift had great respect for Classical Man. Although the Ancient Greeks and Romans were still human, they were as noble, uncorrupted and sensible as man could get. The Houyhnhnm society reminds of the Classical society in its simplicity. It corresponds particularly well with Plato's description of his ideal state in the Republic. In the Republic, everyone knows their place and duties in society. Inferiors do not strive to be equal to their superiors, and superiors do not ill-treat their inferiors. Children are educated only in mythology and physical fitness. The rulers have no private property or families, having given their children to the "community" at birth. Plato felt that only a few people possessed the capacity to reason properly, but that this capacity was the most valuable. He also distrusted the written medium, which he regarded as imperfect and misleading.

It seems as if Swift had Plato specifically in mind when creating the Houyhnhnms. Plato did not believe that his ideal society would ever come into existence, and Swift probably believed so even less. But unlike the soft school, which says that a life of reason is unattainable and undesirable, Swift believed that it is only unattainable. Whether Swift portrays the Houyhnhnm society as perfect for humans is an almost superfluous question, as it will never come about. Rather, it is a foil for human society, a device to show that we are not as rational as we think. Swift, in a letter to Pope, says that Gulliver's Travels aims at "proving the falsity of that definition animale rationale; and to show that it should be only rationis capax" (quoted in Hogan, 1979: 648). By this he means that man has the capacity for a smattering of reason, but that instead of using it to uplift himself, he uses it to increase his depravity. The singularly human phenomenon of war, for instance, so ridiculous when explained by Gulliver, requires some intelligence on the part of humans‹but not much. Gulliver's sleeping quarters are literally halfway between the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms, and this becomes a metaphor for man's paradoxical state. Swift includes sympathetic characters like Captain Mendez in the book to drive home the point that he is referring to all humans, including the reader who may imagine himself exempted.

Perhaps this is the reason why readers are so eager to soften the message of Gulliver's Travels‹because they want to deflect the harsh glare of his satire away from themselves. This is certainly why the work has become a popular children's story. The idea that we are all Yahoos for life alarms people as much today as it did almost three centuries ago. Then there are the numerous references to excrement, which becomes a symbol for man's filthiness. When the Yahoos first see Gulliver, they defecate on his head, whereas Swift's ideal being, the horse, has particularly inoffensive dung and lives cleanly. This ties in with the contrast between the Yahoo diet and the Houyhnhnm diet. Gulliver cannot live on the monotonous but healthy diet of the Houyhnhnms, and this is further proof of barbarism.
However, Swift does, ultimately, give us a glimmer of hope for humanity. After all, this is the Irish patriot who pronounced Ireland "the most miserable country apon earth". Although he is passionate in his hatred for humankind, he is almost equally passionate in his love for it. True, this is no gentle humanist who sees the world basking in a rosy glow. Yet no-one who really does not care for his own species is so angry at finding it deficient. If Swift were really an all-out misanthrope, he would not have seen the point of trying to make humanity aware of its condition. He would not have given two thirds of his earnings to the poor. In his own forceful way, Swift dedicated his life to improving society. He knew he could not make Houyhnhnms of humans, but at least he could hold up his famous mirror of satire to show his fellow Yahoos what they really are.

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JOSEPH CONRAD "HEART OF DARKNESS"

Author
Joseph Conrad did not begin to learn English until he was 21 years old. He was born Teodor Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski on Dec. 3, 1857, in the Polish Ukraine. His father was an esteemed literary figure, who was exiled to Siberia on suspicion of plotting against the Russian government, and Conrad and his mother went with him. Conrad's mother was a frail woman and died when he was 8 years old. Conrad's father sent him to his mother's brother in Krakow to be educated. Conrad never again saw his father. Conrad traveled to Marseilles when he was 17 and spent the next 20 years as a sailor. He signed on to an English ship in 1878, and 8 years later he became a British subject. In 1889, Conrad began his first novel, Almayer's Folly, and began actively searching for a way to fulfill his boyhood dream of traveling to the Congo River in Africa. He took command of a steamship in the Belgian Congo and began taking notes for what would be one of his greatest masterpieces. His time in Africa wreaked havoc on his health, however, and he returned to England to recover. He returned to sea twice before finishing Almayer's Folly in 1894 and wrote several other books, including one about Marlow called Youth: A Narrative before beginning Heart of Darkness in 1898. He wrote many of his other major works (including Lord Jim, Nostromo, and The Secret Agent) after this and lived a happy, successful life with his wife and children until his death in 1924.
Conrad was already well established in the literary world when he wrote Heart of Darkness, but this work represents a radically new course in his style. His earlier works were comparatively straightforward and objective, but Heart of Darkness is intensely psychological and analytical. It includes a great deal of highly personal autobiographical details as well as purely symbolic elements.

Characters
Marlow - The narrator and protagonist of Heart of Darkness' central plot. Marlow is the only one in the frame story who still "follows the sea," and he is a wanderer as well as a sailor (most sailors, the narrator explains, are of a sedentary nature, as their home is the ship and they never leave it). Marlow possesses a profoundly intuitive mind with a broad, ageless wisdom; he sees history in wide perspective and accepts the relative aspect of time (nineteen hundred years ago was yesterday to him, says we "live in the flicker" of the transitory light of civilization). Marlow has a strong work ethic and stresses its importance in keeping a man sane. He is subject to many of the prejudices of other European men, but he manages to keep an open mind and to empathize with unfamiliar peoples.
Kurtz - The exceptional chief of the Inner Station, a man with high ideals hailed as a universal genius. His most outstanding talent is a remarkable eloquence. Kurtz lacks a certain restraint, however, and in the wilderness he succumbs to the temptations of a barbarous lifestyle.
General Manager - The chief agent of the Company in its African territory. He owes his success to a hardy constitution that allows him to outlive all his competitors. He is average in appearance and unremarkable in abilities, but he possesses a strange capacity to inspire a terrible uneasiness in those around him, keeping everyone just unsettled enough to exert his control over them. Marlow cannot comprehend what could control such a man as this, and suspects that he may be completely hollow.
Brickmaker - The brickmaker is a favorite of the manager and assumed by the other agents at the Central Station to be his spy on them. He never actually produces any bricks, as he is supposedly waiting for some essential element that is never delivered. He is petty and conniving and assumes that everyone else is, too. Marlow suspects him of also being empty inside.
Chief Accountant - An efficient worker with an incredible habit of dressing up and keeping himself spotlessly tidy. He is a somewhat unsympathetic man, but Marlow admires him a great deal for his strong work ethic and strength of character (misdirected as it may be into his appearance) in the face of widespread foolishness and absurdity.
Pilgrims - The bumbling, greedy agents of the Central Station. They carry long wooden staves with them everywhere, reminding Marlow of traditional religious travelers. They all want to be appointed to a station so that they can trade for ivory and earn a commission, but none of them actually take any effective steps toward achieving this goal. They are obsessed with keeping up a veneer of civilization and proper conduct and are motivated entirely by self-interest. They hate the natives and treat them as subhuman.
Cannibals - Natives hired as the crew of the steamer, a surprisingly reasonable and well-tempered bunch. Marlow respects their restraint and calm acceptance of adversity.
Russian trader - A Russian sailor who went traipsing off into the wilderness with some Dutch supplies and no idea of what would happen to him. He is boyish in appearance and temperament, and seems to exist wholly on the glamour of youth and the audacity of adventurousness. His brightly patched clothes remind Marlow of a harlequin. He is a devoted disciple of Kurtz.
Helmsman - A young man from the coast trained by Marlow's predecessor to pilot the steamer. He is mediocre at best as a pilot, and given to rash, unadvisable courses of action.
Intended - Kurtz's sweet, pure, faithful fiancee, who lives in a dream world just like all other women, as Conrad implies.
Aunt - Marlow's doting relative who secures him a position with the Company. She believes firmly in the righteous doctrines of Kipling's "White Man's Burden."
Narrator - The unnamed speaker in the framing story. Like the rest of the characters on the Nellie, he was once a sailor. He is somewhat idealistic and thoughtful, making him susceptible to the eeriness of Marlow's tale.
The Director of Companies - The host of the cruise in the frame story. He is extremely nautical and as trustworthy as a ship's pilot, but his work now resides on land.
The Lawyer - A fellow of many years and many virtues in the frame story.
The Accountant - Another character in the frame story. He brings the dominos.

Summary
Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, a reportedly idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job with the Company piloting a steamship in the Belgian Congo. Marlow encounters widespread idiocy and absurd inefficiency in the Company's stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been impressed into service for the Company, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill-treatment at the hands of the Company's agents.
When Marlow arrives at the Central Station, under the control of the general manager, an unwholesome, conspiratorial character, he finds that his steamship has been sunk and spends several months waiting for parts to repair it. His interest in Kurtz grows during this period. The manager and his favorite, the brickmaker, seem to fear Kurtz as a threat to their position. Kurtz is rumored to be ill, making the delays all the more costly. Marlow eventually gets the parts he needs to repair his ship, and he and the manager set out with a few agents (whom Marlow calls pilgrims because of their strange habit of carrying long, wooden staves wherever they go) and a crew of cannibals on a long, difficult voyage up the river.
They come across a hut with firewood stacked and a note saying it is for them but to approach cautiously. They are attacked by natives and the helmsman is killed before Marlow frightens the natives away with the steam whistle. They come to Kurtz's Inner Station, expecting to find him dead, but a Russian trader there assures them everything is alright and reveals that he is the one who left the wood. The Russian claims Kurtz has enlarged his mind and cannot be subjected to the same moral judgments as normal people. Kurtz has established himself as a god with the natives and gone out on brutal raids in the surrounding territory in search of ivory. The pilgrims bring Kurtz out of the station-house on a stretcher, and a large group of native warriors pours out of the forest and surrounds them. Kurtz speaks to them and they disappear into the woods.
They bring Kurtz aboard. A beautiful native woman appears on the shore and stares out at the ship; the Russian implies that she is somehow involved with Kurtz and has caused trouble before with her influence over him. The Russian reveals to Marlow, under promise of secrecy, that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamer in order to make them believe he was dead and turn back so he could stay. Then he leaves, as the pilgrims do not trust him, and the manager has plotted to have him hanged. Kurtz disappears in the night, and Marlow goes out to find him crawling on all fours towards the native camp. Marlow stops him and convinces him to return to the ship. They set off down the river, but Kurtz's health is failing fast.
Marlow listens to him talk while he pilots the ship, and Kurtz entrusts him with a packet of personal documents, including an eloquent pamphlet on civilizing the savages which ends (as Kurtz seems to have forgotten) with a scrawled message that says, "Exterminate all the brutes!" The steamer breaks down and they have to stop for repairs. Kurtz dies, uttering his last words while Marlow is present: "The horror! The horror!" Marlow falls ill soon after and just barely pulls through. He returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtz's Intended. She is still in mourning, even though it has been over a year since Kurtz's death, and she praises him as a paragon of virtue and achievements. She asks what his last words were, but Marlow cannot bring himself to shatter her illusions with the truth. Instead, he tells her Kurtz's last word was her name.

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MARK TWAIN "HUCKLEBERRY FINN"

Author
Samuel Clemens was born in Missouri in 1835. He grew up in the town of Hannibal, Missouri, which would become the model for St. Petersburg, the fictional town where Huckleberry Finn begins. Missouri was a "slave state" during this period, and Clemens' family owned a few slaves. In Missouri, most slaves worked as domestic servants, rather than on the large agricultural plantations that most slaves elsewhere in the United States experienced. This domestic slavery is what Twain generally describes in Huckleberry Finn, even when the action occurs in the deep South. The institution of slavery figures prominently in the novel and is important in developing both the theme and the two most important characters, Huck and Jim.
Twain received a brief formal education, before going to work as an apprentice in a print shop. He would later find work on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. Twain developed a lasting affection for the Mississippi and life on a steamboat, and would immortalize both in Life on the Mississippi (1883), and in certain scenes of Tom Sawyer (1876), and Huckleberry Finn (1885). He took his pseudonym, "Mark Twain," from the call a steamboat worker would make when the ship reached a (safe) depth of two fathoms. Twain would go on to work as a journalist in San Francisco and Nevada in the 1860s. He soon discovered his talent as a humorist, and by 1865 his humorous stories were attracting national attention.
In 1870, Twain married Olivia Langdon of New York State. The family moved to Hartford, Connecticut, to a large, ornate house paid for with the royalties from Twain's successful literary adventures. At Hartford and during stays with Olivia's family in New York State, Twain wrote The Gilded Age, co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner in 1873 and The Prince and the Pauper (1882), as well as the two books already mentioned. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was finally published in 1885. Twain had begun the book years earlier, but the writing was done in spurts of inspiration interrupted by long periods during which the manuscript sat in the author's desk. Despite the economic crisis that plagued the United States then, the book became a huge popular and financial success. It would become a classic of American literature and receive acclaim around the world--today it has been published in at least twenty-seven languages.
Still, at the time of publication, the author was bothered by the many bad reviews it received in the national press. The book was principally attacked for its alleged indecency. After the 1950s, the chief attacks on the book would be against its alleged racism or racial bigotry. For various reasons, the book frequently has been banned from US schools and children's libraries, though it was never really intended as a children's book. Nonetheless, the book has been widely read ever since its first publication well over a century ago, an exception to Twain's definition of a classic as "a book which people praise and don't read."

Characters
Huckleberry Finn - The protagonist and narrator of the novel. Huck is the thirteen or fourteen year-old son of the local drunk in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, at the start of the novel. He is kidnapped by his father, Pap, from the "sivilizing" influence of the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, and then fakes his own death to escape. He meets Jim on Jackson's Island. The rest of the novel is largely motivated by two conflicts: the external conflict to achieve Jim's freedom, and the internal conflict within Huck between his own sense of right and wrong and society's. Huck has a series of "adventures," making many observations on human nature and the South as he does. He progressively rejects the values of the dominant society and matures morally as he does.
Jim - A slave who escaped from Miss Watson after she considered selling him down river. He encounters Huck on Jackson's Island, and the two become friends and spend most of the rest of the novel together. Jim deeply grieves his separation from his wife and two children and dreams of getting them back. He is an intensely human character, perhaps the novel's most complex. Through his example, Huck learns to appreciate the humanity of black people, overcoming his society's bigotry and making a break with its moral code. Twain also uses him to demonstrate racial equality. But Jim himself remains somewhat enigmatic; he seems both comrade and father figure to Huck, though Huck, the youthful narrator, may not be able to thoroughly evaluate his friend, and so the reader has to suppose some of his qualities.
The Duke and Dauphin - These two criminals appear for much of the novel. Their real names are never given, but the younger man, about thirty years old, claims to be the Duke of Bridgewater, and is called both "the Duke" and "Bridgewater" in the novel, though for the sake of clarity, he is only called "the Duke" here. The much older man claims to be the son of Louis XVI, the executed French king. "Dauphin" was the title given to heirs to the French throne. He is mostly called "the king" in the novel (since his father is dead, he would be the rightful king), though he is called "the Dauphin" in this study guide since the name is more distinctive. The two show themselves to be truly bad when they separate a slave family at the Wilks household, and later sell Jim.
Tom Sawyer - Huck's friend, and the protagonist of Tom Sawyer, the novel for which Huckleberry Finn is ostensibly the sequel. He is in many ways Huck's foil, given to exotic plans and romantic adventure literature, while Huck is more down-to-earth. He also turns out to be profoundly selfish. On the whole, Tom is identified with the "civilzation" from which Huck is alienated.
Widow Douglas and Miss Watson - Two wealthy sisters who live together in a large house in St. Petersburg. Miss Watson is the older sister, gaunt and severe-looking. She also adheres the strongest to the hypocritical religious and ethical values of the dominant society. Widow Douglas, meanwhile, is somewhat gentler in her beliefs and has more patience with the mischievous Huckleberry. She adopted Huck at the end of the last novel, Tom Sawyer, and he is in her care at the start of Huckleberry Finn. When Miss Watson considers selling Jim down to New Orleans, away from his wife and children and deep into the plantation system, Jim escapes. She eventually repents, making provision in her will for Jim to be freed, and dies two months before the novel ends.
Pap - Huckleberry's father and the town drunk and ne'er- do-well. When he appears at the beginning of the novel, he is a human wreck, his skin a disgusting ghost-like white, and his clothes hopelessly tattered. Like Huck, he is a member of the least privileged class of whites, and is illiterate. He is angry that his son is getting an education. He wants to get hold of Huck's money, presumably to spend it on alcohol. He kidnaps Huck and holds him deep in the woods. When Huck fakes his own murder, Pap is nearly lynched when suspicions turn his way. But he escapes, and Jim eventually finds his dead body on an abandoned houseboat.
Judge Thatcher - Judge Thatcher is in charge of safeguarding the money Huck and Tom won at the end of Tom Sawyer. When Huck discovers his father has come to town, he wisely signs his fortune over to the Judge. Judge Thatcher has a daughter, Becky, whom Huck calls "Bessie."
Aunt Polly - Tom Sawyer's aunt and guardian. She appears at the end of Huckleberry Finn and properly identifies Huck, who has pretended to be Tom; and Tom, who has pretended to be his brother, Sid (who never appears in this novel).
The Grangerfords - The master of the Grangerford clan is "Colonel" Grangerford, who has a wife. The children are Bob, the oldest, then Tom, then Charlotte, aged twenty- five, Sophia, twenty, and Buck, the youngest, about thirteen or fourteen. They also had a deceased daughter, Emmeline, who made unintentionally humorous, maudlin pictures and poems for the dead. Huckleberry thinks the Grangerfords are all physically beautiful. They live on a large estate worked by many slaves. Their house is decked out in humorously tacky finery that Huckleberry innocently admires. The Grangerfords are in a feud with the Shepardsons, though no one can remember the cause of the feud or see any real reason to continue it. When Sophia runs off with a Shepardson, the feud reignites, and Buck and another boy are shot. With the Grangerfords and the Shepardsons, Twain illustrates the bouts of irrational brutality to which the South was prone.
The Wilks Family - The deceased Peter Wilks has three daughters, Mary Jane, Susan, and Joanne (whom Huck calls "the Harelip"). Mary Jane, the oldest, takes charge of the sisters' affairs. She is beautiful and kind- hearted, but easily swindled by the Duke and Dauphin. Susan is the next youngest. Joanna possess a cleft palate (a birth defect) and so Huck somewhat tastelessly refers to her as "the Hare Lip" (another name for cleft palate). She initially suspects Huck and the Duke and Dauphin, but eventually falls for the scheme like the others.
The Phelps family - The Phelps family includes Aunt Sally, Uncle Silas and their children. They also own several slaves. Sally and Silas are generally kind-hearted, and Silas in particular is a complete innocent. Tom and Huck are able to continue playing pranks on them for quite some time before they suspect anything is wrong. Sally, however, displays a chilling level of bigotry toward blacks, which many of her fellow Southerners likely share. The town in which they live also cruelly kills the Duke and Dauphin. With the Phelps, Twain contrasts the good side of Southern civilization with its bad side.

Summary
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was finally published in 1885. Twain had begun the book years earlier, but the writing was done in spurts of inspiration interrupted by long periods during which the manuscript sat in the author's desk. Despite the economic crisis that plagued the United States then, the book became a huge popular and financial success. It would become a classic of American literature and receive acclaim around the world--today it has been published in at least twenty-seven languages.
Still, at the time of publication, the author was bothered by the many bad reviews it received in the national press. The book was principally attacked for its alleged indecency. After the 1950s, the chief attacks on the book would be against its alleged racism or racial bigotry. For various reasons, the book frequently has been banned from US schools and children's libraries, though it was never really intended as a children's book. Nonetheless, the book has been widely read ever since its first publication well over a century ago, an exception to Twain's definition of a classic as "a book which people praise and don't read."

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WALTER SCOTT "IVANHOE"

Author
Walter Scott was born in 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland; his father was a lawyer, and as a young man Walter was expected to follow in his footsteps. In 1786 he was apprenticed to his father, but he preferred reading to studying. After a childhood spent often in a sickbed, Scott married in 1797. Around the same time, he began publishing poems, and slowly made a name for himself as a narrative poet--his long, novelistic poems The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and The Lady of the Lake (1810) were extremely popular throughout England. By around 1813, however, Lord Byron had overtaken him in popularity and literary success as a narrative poet, and Scott turned to novels to revitalize his career. His Waverly (1814), a historical novel set during the Scottish Jacobite rebellion of 1745, became a huge success, and Scott began a long career as a historical novelist. Many of his works had to do with the history of Scotland, but his best and most famous novel, 1819's Ivanhoe, had nothing to do with Scotland at all. Set in England in the last years of the twelfth century, Ivanhoe tells the story of a noble knight involved with King Richard I--known to history as "Richard the Lion-Hearted"--and his return to England from the Crusades, the long wars during which the forces of Christian Europe sought to conquer the Holy Land of Jerusalem from its Muslim occupants.
Richard mounted the Third Crusade in 1190, shortly after attaining the English crown. Richard had far less interest in ruling his nation wisely than in winning the city of Jerusalem and finding honor and glory on the battlefield. He left England precipitously, and it quickly fell into a dismal state in the hands of his brother, Prince John, the legendarily greedy ruler from the Robin Hood stories. In John's hands, England languished. The two peoples who occupied the nation--the Saxons, who ruled England until the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and the French-speaking Normans, who conquered the Saxons--were increasingly at odds, as powerful Norman nobles began gobbling up Saxon lands. Matters became worse in 1092, when Richard was captured in Vienna by Leopold V, the Duke of Austria. (Richard had angered both Austria and Germany by signing the Treaty of Messina, which failed to acknowledge Henry VI, the Emperor of Germany, as the proper ruler of Sicily; Leopold captured Richard primarily to sell him to the Germans.) The Germans demanded a colossal ransom for the king, which John was in no hurry to supply; in 1194, Richard's allies in England succeeded in raising enough money to secure their lord's release. Richard returned to England immediately, and was re-crowned in 1194.
Ivanhoe takes place during the crucial historical moment just after Richard's landing in England, before the king has revealed himself to the nation; throughout the novel, Richard travels in disguise, waiting for his allies to raise a sufficient force to protect him against Prince John and his allies. The emphasis of the book is on the conflict between the Saxons and the Normans; Ivanhoe--a Saxon knight loyal to a Norman king--emerges as a model of how the Saxons can adapt to life in Norman England. But more important than any metaphor in Ivanhoe is the book's role as an adventure story, which is by far its most important aspect. With its scenes of jousting knights, burning castles, and damsels in distress, Ivanhoe is one of the most popular historical romances of all time. Walter Scott was first and foremost a storyteller, and Ivanhoe is his greatest tale.

Characters
Wilfred of Ivanhoe - Known as "Ivanhoe." The son of Cedric; a Saxon knight who is deeply loyal to King Richard I. Ivanhoe was disinherited by his father for following Richard to the Crusades, but he won great glory in the fighting, and has been richly rewarded by the king. Ivanhoe is in love with his father's ward, the beautiful Rowena. He represents the epitome of the knightly code of chivalry, heroism, and honor.
King Richard I - The King of England and the head of the Norman royal line, the Plantagenets. He is known as "Richard the Lion-Hearted" for his valor and courage in battle, and for his love of adventure. As king, Richard cares about his people, but he has a reckless disposition and is something of a thrill-seeker. His courage and prowess are beyond reproach, but he comes under criticism--even from his loyal knight Ivanhoe--for putting his love of adventure ahead of the well being of his subjects.
Lady Rowena - The ward of Cedric the Saxon, a beautiful Saxon lady who is in love with Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe and Rowena are prevented from marrying until the end of the book because Cedric would rather see Rowena married to Athelstane--a match that could reawaken the Saxon royal line. Rowena represents the chivalric ideal of womanhood: she is fair, chaste, virtuous, loyal, and mild-mannered. She shows some backbone, however, in defying her guardian by refusing to marry Athelstane.
Rebecca - A beautiful Jewish maiden, the daughter of Isaac of York. Rebecca tends to Ivanhoe after he is wounded in the tournament at Ashby, and falls in love with him despite herself. Rebecca's love for Ivanhoe is in conflict with her good sense; she knows that they can never marry (he is a Christian and she is a Jew), but she is drawn to him nonetheless. Still, she restrains her feelings; Rebecca is a strong-willed woman with an extraordinary degree of self-control. The novel's equivalent of a tragic heroine, she is among the most sympathetic characters in the book.
Cedric the Saxon - Ivanhoe's father, a powerful Saxon lord who has disinherited his son for following Richard to the Crusades. Cedric is fiercely proud of his Saxon heritage, and his first priority is to the prospects of his people--hence his desire to marry Rowena to Athelstane rather than to Ivanhoe. Cedric's unpolished manners make him the butt of jokes among his Norman superiors, but he has a knack for making grand gestures to restore the balance--as when he shocks Prince John by toasting Richard at John's tournament feast.
Prince John - Richard's power-hungry and greedy brother, who sits on the throne of England in Richard's absence. John is a weak and uninspiring ruler who allows himself to be pushed around by his powerful Norman nobles. But his tenacious desire to hold the throne makes a great deal of trouble for England; he aggravates tensions between the Saxons and the Normans, and does everything he can to keep Richard in his Austrian prison. John's chief adviser is Waldemar Fitzurse, and his allies include Maurice de Bracy and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf.
Brian de Bois-Guilbert - A knight of the Templar Order, also known as the Knights-Templars. The Knights-Templars are a powerful international military/religious organization ostensibly dedicated to the conquest of the Holy Land, but in reality often meddling in European politics. Brian de Bois- Guilbert is a formidable fighter, but he is a weak moralist and often allows his temptations to take control of him. Among the most complex characters in Ivanhoe, de Bois-Guilbert begins the novel as a conventional villain--he and Ivanhoe are mortal enemies--but as the novel progresses, his love for Rebecca brings out his more admirable qualities. Locksley - The leader of a gang of forest outlaws who rob from the rich and give to the poor, Locksley is soon revealed to be none other than Robin Hood. Robin and his merry men help Richard to free the Saxon prisoners from Torquilstone, and later save the king from Waldemar Fitzurse's treacherous attack. A gallant, witty, and heroic thief, Robin Hood adds an extra dash of adventure, excitement, and familiarity to the story of Ivanhoe--after all, the character of Robin Hood was deeply enshrined in English legend long before Scott wrote his novel.
Maurice de Bracy - A Norman knight who is allied to Prince John. John plans to marry de Bracy to Rowena, but de Bracy becomes impatient and kidnaps her party on its way home from Ashby, imprisoning them in Front-de-Boeuf's stronghold of Torquilstone. In most ways a cardboard villain, de Bracy experiences a strangely humanizing moment shortly after he kidnaps the Saxons: when he tries to force Rowena to marry him, she begins to cry, and he is moved by her tears. To his own surprise, he tries awkwardly to comfort her.
Reginald Front-de-Boeuf - The ugliest and most brutal villain in the novel, Front-de-Boeuf is a Norman knight allied to Prince John. He runs the stronghold of Torquilstone, where de Bracy brings his Saxon prisoners. Front- de-Boeuf threatens Isaac with torture unless the Jew coughs up 1,000 silver pieces. Front-de- Boeuf is killed in the fight for Torquilstone.
Isaac of York - Rebecca's father, a wealthy Jew. Isaac is a thoroughly stereotypical literary Jew, cut after the pattern of Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice: an avaricious, somewhat bumbling, but ultimately kind-hearted character who loves money more than anything in the world except his daughter.
Waldemar Fitzurse - Prince John's chief adviser, who has no great love for the prince, but who has tied his political aspirations to John's success. Fitzurse is a cool, calculating, and treacherous power- seeker, who often reacts calmly to news that makes John panic. At the end of the novel, Fitzurse leads an unsuccessful ambush against King Richard, and is banished from England forever.
Gurth - Cedric's swineherd, who becomes Ivanhoe's de facto squire. Gurth longs for nothing so much as his freedom, which he finally obtains from Cedric after he helps to orchestrate the attack on Torquilstone.
Wamba - Cedric's jester, a witty, incisive Saxon clown, whose barbed comments often mask nuggets of wry wisdom.
Prior Aymer - The abbot of a monastery, the prior is nonetheless addicted to good food and pleasure. Used to represent the hypocrisies of the medieval church, Prior Aymer is a companion of Brian de Bois-Guilbert.
Oswald - Cedric's porter.
Athelstane - A highborn Saxon nobleman whom Cedric hopes to see married to Rowena, thinking that their union could reawaken the Saxon royal line.
The Friar - A merry monk who befriends King Richard in Robin Hood's forest. He is soon revealed to be none other than the legendary Friar Tuck, a member of Robin Hood's band of merry men.
Ulrica - The Saxon crone who has lived her life as a consort to the Norman rulers of Torquilstone. At the end of the battle for the castle, she burns it to the ground, taunting Front-de-Boeuf and singing a weird death-song as the flames slowly engulf her.
Lucas Beaumanoir - The stern, moralistic Grand Master of the Knights-Templars.
Albert Malvoisin - The leader of the Templar stronghold of Templestowe. Malvoisin urges Brian de Bois-Guilbert to put aside his love for Rebecca and stay the course of his career with the Templars.
The Palmer - A religious pilgrim who wears a palm emblem to indicate that he has made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In reality, the Palmer is Ivanhoe in his first disguise.
The Disinherited Knight - The name under which Ivanhoe fights in the great tournament at Ashby, using a disguise because he still has not revealed his presence in England.
The Black Knight - The disguise King Richard uses during most of the novel, when he is still hiding his presence in England. As the mysterious Black Knight, Richard is involved in a spate of adventures: he fights with Ivanhoe (also in disguise) at the tournament, rescues the Saxon prisoners from Torquilstone, and meets Robin Hood and his merry men.

Summary
It is a dark time for England. Four generations after the Norman Conquest of the island, the tensions between Saxons and Normans are at a peak; the two peoples even refuse to speak one another's languages. King Richard is in an Austrian prison after having been captured on his way home from the Crusades; his avaricious brother, Prince John, sits on the throne, and under his reign the Norman nobles have begun routinely abusing their power. Saxon lands are capriciously repossessed, and many Saxon landowners are made into serfs. These practices have enraged the Saxon nobility, particularly the fiery Cedric of Rotherwood. Cedric is so loyal to the Saxon cause that he has disinherited his son Ivanhoe for following King Richard to war. Additionally, Ivanhoe fell in love with Cedric's highborn ward Rowena, whom Cedric intends to marry to Athelstane, a descendent of a long-dead Saxon king. Cedric hopes that the union will reawaken the Saxon royal line.
Unbeknownst to his father, Cedric's son Ivanhoe has recently returned to England, disguised as a religious pilgrim. Assuming a new disguise as the Disinherited Knight, he fights in the great tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. Here, with the help of a mysterious Black Knight, he vanquishes his great enemy, the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and wins the tournament. He names Rowena the Queen of Love and Beauty, and reveals his identity to the crowd. But he is badly wounded, and collapses on the field. In the meantime, the wicked Prince John has heard a rumor that Richard is free from his Austrian prison; he and his advisors, Waldemar Fitzurse, Maurice de Bracy, and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, begin plotting how to stop Richard from returning to power in England.
John has a scheme to marry Rowena to de Bracy; unable to wait, de Bracy kidnaps Cedric's party on its way home from the tournament, imprisoning the Saxons in Front-de-Boeuf's castle of Torquilstone. With the party are Cedric, Rowena, and Athelstane, as well as Isaac and Rebecca, a Jewish father and daughter who have been tending to Ivanhoe after his injury, and Ivanhoe himself. De Bracy attempts to convince Rowena to marry him, while de Bois-Guilbert attempts to seduce Rebecca, who has fallen in love with Ivanhoe. Both men fail, and the castle is attacked by a force led by the Black Knight who helped Ivanhoe at the tournament. Fighting with the Black Knight are the legendary outlaws of the forest, Robin Hood and his merry men. The villains are defeated and the prisoners are freed, but de Bois-Guilbert succeeds in kidnapping Rebecca. As the battle winds down, Ulrica, a Saxon crone, lights the castle on fire and it burns to the ground, engulfing both Ulrica and Front-de-Boeuf.
At Templestowe, the stronghold of the Knights-Templars, Brian de Bois-Guilbert comes under fire from his commanders for bringing a Jew into their sacred fortress. It is speculated amongst the Templars that perhaps Rebecca is a sorceress who has enchanted de Bois-Guilbert against his will; the Grand Master of the Templars concurs, and orders a trial for Rebecca. On the advice of de Bois-Guilbert, who has fallen in love with her, Rebecca demands a trial-by-combat, and can do nothing but await a hero to defend her. To his dismay, de Bois-Guilbert is appointed to fight for the Templars: if he wins, Rebecca will be killed, and if he loses, he himself will die. At the last moment, Ivanhoe appears to defend Rebecca, but he is so exhausted from the journey that de Bois-Guilbert unseats him in the first pass. But Ivanhoe wins a strange victory when de Bois-Guilbert falls dead from his horse, killed by his own conflicting passions.
In the meantime, the Black Knight has defeated an ambush carried out by Waldemar Fitzurse, and announced himself as King Richard, returned to England at last. When Athelstane steps out of the way, Ivanhoe and Rowena are married; Rebecca visits Rowena one last time to thank her for Ivanhoe's role in saving her life. Rebecca and Isaac are sailing for their new home in Granada; Ivanhoe goes on to have a heroic career under King Richard, until the king's untimely death puts an end to all his worldly projects.

Analysis
Ivanhoe is first and foremost an adventure novel; in fact, its popularity and longevity have secured it a place as one of the great historical romances of all time. The main goal of the novel is to entertain and excite its readers with a tale of heroism set in the high Middle Ages, and any symbolic or thematic purpose Walter Scott might have is decidedly secondary to that goal. Still, Scott was too intelligent an author to have written a mindless book; in addition to evoking the atmosphere of a vanished era, Ivanhoe's adventure story makes some critical points about an important time in English history, the moment when King Richard the Lion-Hearted returned to England after four years spent fighting in the Crusades and languishing in Austrian and German prisons. The novel's main historical emphasis focuses on the tension between the Saxons and the Normans, the two peoples who inhabited England. As a matter of course, the novel proposes Ivanhoe, the hero, as a possible resolution to those tensions--not because of anything Ivanhoe does, for he is weirdly inactive for an action hero (he spends more than half the novel on the sidelines with an injury), but for what he is, a Saxon knight who is passionately loyal to King Richard, a Norman king.
Structurally, Ivanhoe is divided into three parts, each of them centering on a particular adventure or quest. The first part involves Ivanhoe's return to England in disguise (disguise is a major motif throughout the novel: Ivanhoe, Richard, Cedric, Locksley, and Wamba each mask their identities at some point), and centers around the great jousting tournament held at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. The second part involves Sir Maurice de Bracy's kidnapping of Cedric's Saxon party out of lust for Rowena, and centers around the efforts of King Richard (in disguise, of course) and Robin Hood's (Lockley's) merry men to free the prisoners. The third part involves Rebecca's captivity at the hands of the Templars and Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and centers around the trial-by-combat which is arranged to determine whether she will live or die.
For a writer whose early novels were prized for their historical accuracy, Scott was remarkably loose with the facts when he wrote Ivanhoe. Historical errors plague the book, and in many cases (as in the depiction of Isaac, presented as the stereotypical literary Jew) the depictions reveal more about mores and attitudes when Scott wrote the book, in 1819, then when the story is supposed to have happened, in around 1194. This has led many contemporary critics, especially fans of Scott's popular Waverly novels, to criticize the book; but it is crucial to remember that Ivanhoe, unlike the Waverly books, is entirely a romance. It is meant to please, not to instruct, and is more an act of imagination than one of research. Despite this fancifulness, however, Ivanhoe does make some prescient historical points. The novel is occasionally quite critical of King Richard, who seems to love adventure more than he loves the well being of his subjects. This criticism did not match the typical idealized, romantic view of Richard the Lion-Hearted that was popular when Scott wrote the book; and yet it accurately echoes the way King Richard is often judged by historians today.

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D.H.LAWRENCE "LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER"

Author
Reviewers and government censors condemned D.H. Lawrence's last novel as radically pornographic, a vision of a relationship and a society without moral boundaries. But Lady Chatterley's Lover is not really a radical novel, unless it can be said to be radically reactionary, a profoundly conservative response to the modern condition. What was the modern condition that Lawrence found so foul, and who was the author, a paradoxical man whose somewhat puritan mind raged against modernity through an unprecedentedly unconstrained celebration of sexuality? Reviewers and government censors condemned D.H. Lawrence's last novel as radically pornographic, a vision of a relationship and a society without moral boundaries. But Lady Chatterley's Lover is not really a radical novel, unless it can be said to be radically reactionary, a profoundly conservative response to the modern condition. What was the modern condition that Lawrence found so foul, and who was the author, a paradoxical man whose somewhat puritan mind raged against modernity through an unprecedentedly unconstrained celebration of sexuality?
Lawrence supported himself by teaching school, although his ambition was to become a poet. In 1909, he published his first poems; in 1911 and 1912, he published his first two novels: The White Peacock and The Trespasser, respectively. In 1912, he left England with Frieda Weekley (nйe Von Richtofen), the wife of one of his college professors; they were married in 1914, after the publication of his third novel, the autobiographical Sons and Lovers (1913). His elopement marked the beginning of a nomadic lifestyle. Except for a stint in England during the First World War, Lawrence spent practically the rest of his life traveling the world, from Germany to New Mexico, in search of a healthy atmosphere in which to rehabilitate his lungs (he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, the disease that eventually killed him in 1930, at the age of 44). Lawrence's elopement also marked the first of his rejections of conventional morality, rejections that would play themselves out in sexual experimentation that almost ruined his marriage, and that informed his later writing, especially Lady Chatterley's Lover.
In the sixteen years between his marriage and his death, Lawrence was remarkably prolific, publishing many novels, including the novels generally considered his finest: The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920); nonfiction, including history textbooks, travel memoirs and scholarly psychological tracts; and several collections of short stories and poems. In the last years of his life, wracked by tuberculosis, Lawrence wrote three very different versions of what would prove his final novel, the sexually explicit Lady Chatterley's Lover. He survived to see the final version--first published in the spring of 1928--ripped by most reviewers and censored in England and America.
Lawrence was not the only author writing in the decades after the first World War whose work was considered radically immoral; famously, for instance, a furor arose over the publication of James Joyce's great novel Ulysses years before Lady Chatterley's Lover was written. Many of the modernist writers and poets who dominated postwar avant-garde literary art placed a high premium on discarding social convention, which they believed had been exposed as empty by the carnage of the war. Society was morally bankrupt, empty of real meaning, composed of individuals between whom no real connection or understanding was possible. In response, artists began to experiment radically with form, and they set a premium on art that was "real," that eliminated convention to get at the core of life.
D.H. Lawrence was not really one of these formally and thematically radical modernists. While he shared the modernist belief that the postwar world was virtually bereft of meaningful values, Lawrence laid the blame at the doorstep of technology, the class system, and intellectual life. He believed that modern industry had deprived people of individuality, making them cogs in the industrial machine, a machine driven by greed. And modern intellectual life conspired with social constraint to bleed men dry of their vital, natural vigor. Lawrence wanted to revive in the human consciousness an awareness of savage sensuality, a sensuality that would free men from their dual enslavement to modern industry and intellectual emptiness. He was in many ways a primitivist: he saw little reason for optimism in modern society, and looked nostalgically backwards towards the days of pastoral, agricultural England.

Characters
Lady Chatterley - The protagonist of the novel. Before her marriage, she is simply Constance Reid, an intellectual and social progressive, the daughter of Sir Malcolm and the sister ofHilda . When she marries Clifford Chatterley , a minor nobleman, Constance--or, as she is known throughout the novel, Connie--assumes his title, becoming Lady Chatterley. Lady Chatterley's Lover chronicles Connie's maturation as a woman and as a sensual being. She comes to despise her weak, ineffectual husband, and to love Oliver Mellors , the gamekeeper on her husband's estate. In the process of leaving her husband and conceiving a child with Mellors, Lady Chatterley moves from the heartless, bloodless world of the intelligentsia and aristocracy into a vital and profound connection rooted in sensuality and sexual fulfillment.
Oliver Mellors - The lover in the novel's title. Mellors is the gamekeeper on Clifford Chatterley 's estate, Wragby. He is aloof, sarcastic, intelligent and noble. He was born near Wragby, and worked as a blacksmith until he ran off to the army to escape an unhappy marriage. In the army he rose to become a commissioned lieutenant--an unusual position for a member of the working classes--but was forced to leave the army because of a case of pneumonia, which left him in poor health. Disappointed by a string of unfulfilling love affairs, Mellors lives in quiet isolation, from which he is redeemed by his relationship with Connie : the passion unleashed by their lovemaking forges a profound bond between them. At the end of the novel, Mellors is fired from his job as gamekeeper and works as a laborer on a farm, waiting for a divorce from his old wife so he can marry Connie. Mellors is the representative in this novel of the Noble Savage: he is a man with an innate nobility but who remains impervious to the pettiness and emptiness of conventional society, with access to a primitive flame of passion and sensuality.
Clifford Chatterley - Connie 's husband. Clifford Chatterley is a minor nobleman who becomes paralyzed from the waist down during World War I. As a result of his injury, Clifford is impotent. He retires to his familial estate, Wragby, where he becomes first a successful writer, and then a powerful businessman. But the gap between Connie and him grows ever wider; obsessed with financial success and fame, he is not truly interested in love, and she feels that he has become passionless and empty. He turns for solace to his nurse and companion, Mrs. Bolton , who worships him as a nobleman even as she despises him for his casual arrogance. Clifford represents everything that this novel despises about the modern English nobleman: he is a weak, vain man, but declares his right to rule the lower classes, and he soullessly pursues money and fame through industry and the meaningless manipulation of words. His impotence is symbolic of his failings as a strong, sensual man.
Mrs. Bolton - Ivy Bolton is Clifford 's nurse and caretaker. She is a competent, complex, still-attractive middle-aged woman. Years before the action in this novel, her husband died in an accident in the mines owned by Clifford's family. Even as Mrs. Bolton resents Clifford as the owner of the mines--and, in a sense, the murderer of her husband--she still maintains a worshipful attitude towards him as the representative of the upper class. Her relationship with Clifford--she simultaneously adores and despises him, while he depends and looks down on her--is probably the most fascinating and complex relationship in the novel. Michaelis - A successful Irish playwright with whom Connie has an affair early in the novel. Michaelis asks Connie to marry him, but she decides not to, realizing that he is like all other intellectuals: a slave to success, a purveyor of vain ideas and empty words, passionless.
Hilda Reid - Connie 's older sister by two years, the daughter of Sir Malcolm . Hilda shared Connie's cultured upbringing and intellectual education. She remains unliberated by the raw sensuality that changed Connie's life. She disdains Connie's lover, Mellors , as a member of the lower classes, but in the end she helps Connie to leave Clifford.
Sir Malcolm Reid - The father of Connie and Hilda . He is an acclaimed painter, an aesthete and unabashed sensualist who despises Clifford for his weakness and impotence, and who immediately warms to Mellors . Tommy Dukes - One of Clifford 's contemporaries, Tommy Dukes is a brigadier general in the British Army and a clever and progressive intellectual. Lawrence intimates, however, that Dukes is a representative of all intellectuals: all talk and no action. Dukes speaks of the importance of sensuality, but he himself is incapable of sensuality and uninterested in sex.
Charles May, Hammond, Berry - Young intellectuals who visit Wragby, and who, along with Tommy Dukes and Clifford , participate in the socially progressive but ultimately meaningless discussions about love and sex.
Duncan Forbes - An artist friend of Connie and Hilda . Forbes paints abstract canvases, a form of art both Mellors and D.H. Lawrence seem to despise. He once loved Connie, and Connie originally claims to be pregnant with his child.
Bertha Coutts - Although Bertha never actually appears in the novel, her presence is felt. She is Mellors ' wife, separated from him but not divorced. Their marriage faltered because of their sexual incompatibility: she was too rapacious, not tender enough. She returns at the end of the novel to spread rumors about Mellors' infidelity to her, and helps get him fired from his position as gamekeeper. As the novel concludes, Mellors is in the process of divorcing her.
Squire Winter - A relative of Clifford . He is a firm believer in the old privileges of the aristocracy.
Daniele, Giovanni - Venetian gondoliers in the service of Hilda and Connie . Giovanni hopes that the women will pay him to sleep with them; he is disappointed. Daniele reminds Connie of Mellors : he is attractive, a "real man."

Summary
Lady Chatterley's Lover begins by introducing Connie Reid , the female protagonist of the novel. She was raised as a cultured bohemian of the upper-middle class, and was introduced to love affairs--intellectual and sexual liaisons--as a teenager. In 1917, at 23, she marries Clifford Chatterley , the scion of an aristocratic line. After a month's honeymoon, he is sent to war, and returns paralyzed from the waist down, impotent.
After the war, Clifford becomes a successful writer, and many intellectuals flock to the Chatterley mansion, Wragby. Connie feels isolated; the vaunted intellectuals prove empty and bloodless, and she resorts to a brief and dissatisfying affair with a visiting playwright, Michaelis . Connie longs for real human contact, and falls into despair, as all men seem scared of true feelings and true passion. There is a growing distance between Connie and Clifford, who has retreated into the meaningless pursuit of success in his writing and in his obsession with coal-mining, and towards whom Connie feels a deep physical aversion. A nurse, Mrs. Bolton , is hired to take care of the handicapped Clifford so that Connie can be more independent, and Clifford falls into a deep dependence on the nurse, his manhood fading into an infantile reliance.
Into the void of Connie's life comes Oliver Mellors , the gamekeeper on Clifford's estate, newly returned from serving in the army. Mellors is aloof and derisive, and yet Connie feels curiously drawn to him by his innate nobility and grace, his purposeful isolation, his undercurrents of natural sensuality. After several chance meetings in which Mellors keeps her at arm's length, reminding her of the class distance between them, they meet by chance at a hut in the forest, where they have sex. This happens on several occasions, but still Connie feels a distance between them, remaining profoundly separate from him despite their physical closeness.
One day, Connie and Mellors meet by coincidence in the woods, and they have sex on the forest floor. This time, they experience simultaneous orgasms. This is a revelatory and profoundly moving experience for Connie; she begins to adore Mellors, feeling that they have connected on some deep sensual level. She is proud to believe that she is pregnant with Mellors' child: he is a real, "living" man, as opposed to the emotionally dead intellectuals and the dehumanized industrial workers. They grow progressively closer, connecting on a primordial physical level, as woman and man rather than as two minds or intellects.
Connie goes away to Venice for a vacation. While she is gone, Mellors' old wife returns, causing a scandal. Connie returns to find that Mellors has been fired as a result of the negative rumors spread about him by his resentful wife, against whom he has initiated divorce proceedings. Connie admits to Clifford that she is pregnant with Mellors' baby, but Clifford refuses to give her a divorce. The novel ends with Mellors working on a farm, waiting for his divorce, and Connie living with her sister, also waiting: the hope exists that, in the end, they will be together.
Analysis The greatness of Lady Chatterley's Lover lies in a paradox: it is simultaneously progressive and reactionary, modern and Victorian. It looks backwards towards a Victorian stylistic formality, and it seems to anticipate the social morality of the late 20th century in its frank engagement with explicit subject matter and profanity. One might say of the novel that it is formally and thematically conservative, but methodologically radical. The easiest of these assertions to prove is that Lady Chatterley's Lover is "formally conservative." By this I mean that there are few evident differences between the form of Lady Chatterley's Lover and the form of the high-Victorian novels written fifty years earlier: in terms of structure; in terms of narrative voice; in terms of diction, with the exception of a very few "profane" words. It is important to remember that Lady Chatterley's Lover was written towards the end of the 1920s, a decade which had seen extensive literary experimentation. The 1920s opened with the publishing of the formally radical novel Ulysses, which set the stage for important technical innovations in literary art: it made extensive use of the stream-of-consciousness form; it condensed all of its action into a single 24-hour span; it employed any number of voices and narrative perspectives. Lady Chatterley's Lover acts in many ways as if the 1920s, and indeed the entire modernist literary movement, had never happened. The structure of the novel is conventional, tracing a small group of characters over an extended period of time in a single place. The rather preachy narrator usually speaks with the familiar third-person omniscience of the Victorian novel. And the characters tend towards flatness, towards representing a type, rather than speaking in their own voices and developing real three-dimensional personalities.
But surely, if Lady Chatterley's Lover is "formally conservative," it can hardly be called "thematically conservative"! After all, this is a novel that raised censorious hackles across the English-speaking world. It is a novel that liberally employs profanity, that more-or-less graphically--graphically, that is, for the 1920s: it is important not to evaluate the novel by the standards of profanity and graphic sexuality that have become prevalent at the turn of the 21st century--describes sex and orgasm, and whose central message is the idea that sexual freedom and sensuality are far more important, more authentic and meaningful, than the intellectual life. So what can I mean by calling Lady Chatterley's Lover, a famously controversial novel, "thematically conservative"? Well, it is important to remember not only precisely what this novel seems to advocate, but also the purpose of that advocacy. Lady Chatterley's Lover is not propaganda for sexual license and free love. As D.H. Lawrence himself made clear in his essay "A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover," he was no advocate of sex or profanity for their own sake. The reader should note that the ultimate goal of the novel's protagonists, Mellors and Connie , is a quite conventional marriage, and a sex life in which it is clear that Mellors is the aggressor and the dominant partner, in which Connie plays the receptive part; all who would argue that Lady Chatterley's Lover is a radical novel would do well to remember the vilification that the novel heaps upon Mellors' first wife, a sexually aggressive woman. Rather than mere sexual radicalism, this novel's chief concern--although it is also concerned, to a far greater extent than most modernist fiction, with the pitfalls of technology and the barriers of class--is with what Lawrence understands to be the inability of the modern self to unite the mind and the body. D.H. Lawrence believed that without a realization of sex and the body, the mind wanders and a society without moral boundaries. But Lady Chatterley's Lover is not really a radical novel, unless it can be said to bmodern greed and the injustices of the class system. As the great writer Lawrence Durrell observed in reference to Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lawrence was "something of a puritan himself. He was out to cure, to mend; and the weapons he selected for this act of therapy were the four-letter words about which so long and idiotic a battle has raged." That is to say: Lady Chatterley's Lover was intended as a wake-up call, a call away from the hyper-intellectualism embraced by so many of the modernists, and towards a balanced approach in which mind and body are equally valued. It is the method the novel uses that made the wake-up call so radical--for its time--and so effective. This is a novel with high purpose: it points to the degradation of modern civilization--exemplified in the coal-mining industry and the soulless and emasculated Clifford Chatterley --and it suggests an alternative in learning to appreciate sensuality. And it is a novel, one must admit, which does not quite succeed. Certainly, it is hardly the equal of D.H. Lawrence's great novels, Women in Love and The Rainbow. It attempts a profound comment on the decline of civilization, but it fails as a novel when its social goal eclipses its novelistic goals, when the characters become mere allegorical types: Mellors as the Noble Savage, Clifford as the impotent nobleman. And the novel tends also to dip into a kind of breathless incoherence at moments of extreme sensuality or emotional weight. It is not a perfect novel, but it is a novel which has had a profound impact on the way that 20th-century writers have written about sex, and about the deeper relationships of which, thanks in part to Lawrence, sex can no longer be ignored as a crucial element.

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WILLIAM FAULKNER "LIGHT IN AUGUST"

Author
William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, in September 1897; he died in Mississippi in 1962. In between, he achieved a reputation as one of the greatest American novelists of the twentieth century, largely based on his series of novels about a fictional region of Mississippi called Yoknapatawpha County, centered on the fictional town of Jefferson. The greatest of these novels--among them The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! --rank among the very finest novels of world literature.
Faulkner was especially interested in moral themes relating to the ruins of the Deep South in the post-Civil War era. Combines long, uninterrupted sentences with long strings of adjectives, frequent changes in narration, many recursive asides, and a frequent reliance on a sort of objective stream-of-consciousness technique whereby the inner experience of a character in a scene is contrasted with the outward appearance of the scene, his innovative prose style ranks among his greatest achievements. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.
Stylistically speaking, Light in August is one of Faulkner's least demanding novels; the prose is easily comprehensible on a first reading. But thematically, the novel, written during the early 1930s, is one of Faulkner's richest and most complicated books. The story of Joe Christmas, Lena Grove, and Gail Hightower, largely set amid poor Southern laborers during the 1920s, takes up a wide range of thematic concerns centered on the conflict between the individual and the community. Propelled along by illicit sex, racial hatred, religious fanaticism, and brutal violence, the book is Faulkner's largest-scale attempt to capture the whole community of the county in a time of crisis. It is also one of his most focused looks into the social and moral psychology of human beings, and into the forces that threaten and disrupt the cohesion of communities.

Characters
Joe Christmas - A sullen, contemptuous man who looks white, but whose father was a black man. He lives in Jefferson, Mississippi, where he works in a planing mill and brews illegal whiskey on the side. He becomes Joanna Burden's lover, and murders her shortly before the beginning of the novel.
Reverend Gail Hightower - A minister in Jefferson. He fell from grace and was forced out of his church many years ago, after his wife died in a Memphis hotel room where she was staying with her lover. Obsessed with the memory of his grandfather, who died in Jefferson during the Civil War, he now spends a great deal of time alone, though occasionally he is visited by Byron Bunch.
Byron Bunch - A quiet, diminutive man working at the Jefferson planing mill. He works six days a week because he believes that working will keep him from doing any harm. His only friend is Gail Hightower. He falls in love with Lena Grove the instant he sees her.
Lena Grove - A young pregnant girl traveling from Alabama to Jefferson, Mississippi, in search of Lucas Burch, the father of her child. She loves seeing new places, and maintains a positive attitude despite her scandalous out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
Lucas Burch/Joe Brown - The father of Lena Grove's child, a shiftless, cowardly man who loves to hear himself talk. Lucas Burch is his real name; Joe Brown is the alias he uses in Jefferson, where he is Joe Christmas' bootlegging partner. He starts the fire at Miss Burden's house after he discovers her body, then tries to turn Christmas in and collect the thousand-dollar reward.
Miss Atkins - The dietitian in Joe Christmas' childhood orphanage. When Joe overhears her having sex with a doctor, she believes he plans to turn her in and have her fired from the orphanage. Paranoid and selfish, she takes steps to have him sent away from the institution.
Mr. McEachern - Joe Christmas' adoptive father, a stern, unfeeling, demanding man, and a pious Presbyterian. Joe kills him by hitting him over the head with a chair at a local dance. Mrs. McEachern - Joe Christmas' adoptive mother, a soft, clumsily loving woman whom Joe hates bitterly.
Uncle Doc Hines - Joe Christmas' grandfather, a racist who murders Joe's father, a black circus employee. He places Joe in an orphanage, where he briefly works as janitor.
Mrs. Hines - Joe Christmas' grandmother, the mother of Joe's mother Milly. She tries to keep her husband, Uncle Doc Hines, from killing Joe or having him lynched after he is captured.
Joanna Burden - The daughter of a family of northern abolitionists who moved to Jefferson during Reconstruction, after the Civil War. She helps and advises negro students and colleges. She becomes Joe Christmas' lover, but, after she holds him at gunpoint and demands that he undergoes a religious conversion, he murders her.
Bobbie Allen - A waitress and prostitute in the town closest to McEachern's farm; Joe Christmas' first lover.
Percy Grimm - An army captain with fiercely racist opinions. He first organizes a group of American Legion men to keep the townsfolk from lynching Joe Christmas; after Joe Christmas escapes, Grimm tracks him down, kills, and castrates him.

Summary
A young pregnant girl named Lena Grove comes to Jefferson, Mississippi, in search of Lucas Burch, the father of her unborn child. On the day of her arrival, Jefferson is shaken by a tragedy: the home of Joanna Burden, the heiress of a family of Northern abolitionists, burns to the ground, and Miss Burden is found dead, her head almost completely severed from her body. A man named Joe Brown comes forward to claim the thousand-dollar reward for information regarding the murder. He claims that Joe Christmas, a half-negro mill worker who used to be his bootlegging partner, had been Joanna's lover and committed the murder. Byron Bunch, who helps Lena find a place to stay when she reaches Jefferson, realizes that Joe Brown is the same person as Lucas Burch, and that he is simply using "Joe Brown" as an alias. Against the advice of his friend, the outcast Reverend Hightower, Byron installs Lena in the old negro cabin where Joe Brown and Joe Christmas lived before the murder. He does not tell her about the role of her lover in the tragic recent events.
Joe Christmas, who was sent away from his orphanage at a young age to be raised by the strict, almost inhuman Presbyterian McEachern, lives in the wilderness, trying to evade capture, and remembering his past--the long road of prostitutes and fighting that followed his killing of McEachern and his separation from his first lover, the prostitute Bobbie Allen. At last, Joe is unable to bear the struggle to avoid being caught and the attendant inner struggle to retain a measure of his humanity; he goes to Mottstown, where he is captured. The townspeople are outraged that Joe, a "nigger," would dare to lay hands on a white woman; Joe only escapes lynching because a local man stands to collect the reward if he is transported safely to Jefferson. Joe's grandparents, whom he has never seen, happen to live in Mottstown and hear of his capture. His grandfather, the fanatic religionist and racist Uncle Doc Hines, wants to kill him or have him lynched, but his grandmother, Mrs. Hines, protects him.
They follow him to Jefferson, where they meet Byron Bunch. Byron takes them to see Reverend Hightower, and asks Hightower to support a false alibi for Joe, claiming that he was with Hightower on the night of the murder. The alibi is tantamount to acknowledging a homosexual relationship with Joe, however, and Hightower, who has been accused of such a relationship in the past, angrily declines. Shortly thereafter, Lena's baby is born; Byron cannot find a doctor, so Hightower is forced to deliver it himself. Through this act, he begins to feel triumphantly reconnected to the world from which he has been isolated for so long.
Joe escapes from his captors in Jefferson and runs to Hightower's house, where he is killed and castrated by Percy Grimm, a racist army captain. Before Grimm kills Joe, Hightower tries to claim that Joe was with him the night of the murder. The claim fails, but the bare attempt completes Hightower's redemption; when he dies not long thereafter, he sees a giant, luminous wheel made of faces from his life, and his face is included on the wheel. Lena and Byron leave Jefferson with the baby, in pursuit of Lucas Burch, who fled out a window when he was taken to see Lena. Byron hopes that Lena will give up searching for Burch and marry him, but Lena insists on continuing the journey--possibly just because she enjoys traveling.

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E.O'NEILL "LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT"

Author
Long Day's Journey into Night is one of Eugene O'Neill's later plays. He wrote it for his wife on the occasion of their 12th wedding anniversary in 1940. The play was written in part as a way for O'Neill to show the world what his family was like and in what sort of environment he was raised. O'Neill wanted to create a play that would lay forth his own background in a forgiving nature, which is why he strove not to bias the play against any one character. The drama is very similar to O'Neill's family situation as a young man, but more importantly, it has become a universal play representing the problems of a family that cannot live in the present, mired in the dark recesses of a bitter, troubled past. Because of its deeply personal nature, O'Neill requested that the play be published posthumously, which meant that the play was not revealed to the world until O'Neill's death in 1956.
To be sure, O'Neill has always been seen as one of the greatest American playwrights. He was the only American dramatist to be awarded the Nobel Prize, an honor not bestowed upon either Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams, two other great American playwrights. He won the Pulitzer Prize for four plays, including Long Day's Journey into Night. His other best known plays are The Iceman Cometh, Mourning Becomes Electra, Ah Wilderness!, Strange Interlude, and The Hairy Ape. O'Neill was a huge Broadway success during his own adult life.
For information on what his childhood was like, one does best to read Long Day's Journey into Night and examine the character of Edmund, who is partly autobiographical. O'Neill was the son of a Broadway actor and a mother who disliked Broadway. He suffered from tuberculosis, which caused him to have a nervous breakdown early in life. He was born in 1888, but he did not achieve success as a playwright until his 30th play, Beyond the Horizon, appeared in 1920. Around the same time, his father died which devastated O'Neill, who had admired his father tremendously despite their differences.
After achieving success in 1920, O'Neill remained a dominant figure of American Theater throughout his life. He had numerous personal problems, including failed marriage, but he was most captivated by his troubles and experiences growing up, before he found fame. The early part of his life is the subject of Long Day's Journey into Night, which will forever remain O'Neill's goodbye to the world--the play that showed America who O'Neill was and where he came from. Characters
James Tyrone - The husband of Mary and the father of Jamie and Edmund, he was once a famous actor who toured the U.S. with his wife. Because his Irish father abandoned him at age 10, forcing him to work immediately to support himself, he has a strong work ethic and an appreciation for money that leads to strong financial prudence--bordering on stinginess.
Mary Tyrone - The wife of Tyrone and mother of Jamie and Edmund, she struggles from a morphine addiction that has lasted over two decades. While she has broken the addiction several times, she always resumes her morphine use after spending more time with her family. She is on morphine in each scene of the play, and her use increases steadily as the day wears on. Although she loves Tyrone, she oftentimes regrets marrying him because of the dreams she had to sacrifice of becoming a nun or a concert pianist.
Jamie Tyrone - The elder Tyrone son, he is in his early thirties. Because he squanders money on booze and women, he has to rely on his parents for support. He dropped out of several colleges and has very little ambition, much to the dismay of his parents.
Edmund Tyrone - The younger Tyrone son, he is ten years younger than Jamie. An intellectual and romantic dreamer, he learns during the play that he is afflicted with consumption (tuberculosis), which means that he will have to spend up to a year in a sanatorium. Like his brother and father, he is partially alcoholic, and he has a tendency to squander money, although he works harder than Jamie. Mary always holds out hope that he will become a success one day.
Cathleen - The Tyrone family maid. She appears in the play only briefly. She is flirtatious and, by Act III, drunk.

Summary
The play is set in the summer home of the Tyrone family, August 1912. The action begins in the morning, just after breakfast. We learn as the first act unravels that Mary has returned to her family recently after receiving treatment in a sanatorium for morphine addiction. Edmund, meanwhile, has in recent weeks begun to cough very violently, and we learn later on in the play that, as Tyrone and Jamie suspect, he has tuberculosis. Throughout the course of the play, we slowly find out that Mary is still addicted to morphine, much to the disappointment of her family members.
The gradual revelation of these two medical disasters makes up most of the play's plot. In between these discoveries, however, the family constantly revisits old fights and opens old wounds left by the past, which the family members are never unable to forget. Tyrone, for example, is constantly blamed for his own stinginess, which may have led to Mary's morphine addiction when he refused to pay for a good doctor to treat the pain caused by childbirth. Mary, on the other hand, is never able to let go of the past or admit to the painful truth of the present, the truth that she is addicted to morphine and her youngest son has tuberculosis. They all argue over Jamie and Edmund's failure to become successes as their father had always hoped they would become. As the day wears on, the men drink more and more, until they are on the verge of passing out in Act IV.
Most of the plot of the play is repetitious, just as the cycle of an alcoholic is repetitious. The above arguments occur numerous times throughout the four acts and five scenes. All acts are set in the living room, and all scenes but the last occur either just before or just after a meal. Act II, Scene I is set before lunch; scene ii after lunch; and Act III before dinner. Each act focuses on interplay between two specific characters: Act I features Mary and Tyrone; Act II Tyrone and Jamie, and Edmund and Mary; Act III Mary and Jamie; Act IV Tyrone and Edmund, and Edmund and Jamie.
The repetitious plot also helps develop the notion that this day is not remarkable in many ways. Instead, it is one in a long string of similar days for the Tyrones, filled with bitterness, fighting, and an underlying love.

Analysis
Long Day's Journey into Night is undoubtedly a tragedy--it leaves the audience with a sense of catharsis, or emotional rebirth through the viewing of powerful events, and it depicts the fall of something that was once great. The play focuses on the Tyrone family, whose once-close family has deteriorated over the years, for a number of reasons: Mary's drug addiction, Tyrone, Jamie, and Edmund's alcoholism, Tyrone's stinginess, the boys' lax attitude toward work and money, and a variety of other factors. As the play is set, the parents are aging, and while they always hoped that their sons would achieve great things, that hope is beginning to be replaced by a resigned despair.
The play is largely autobiographical; it resembles O'Neill's life in many aspects. O'Neill himself appears in the play in the character of Edmund, the younger son who, like O'Neill, suffers from consumption. Indeed, some of the parallels between this play and O'Neill's life are striking. Like Tyrone, O'Neill's father was an Irish Catholic, an alcoholic, and a Broadway actor. Like Mary, O'Neill's mother was a morphine addict, and she became so around the time O'Neill was born. Like Jamie, O'Neill's older brother did not take life seriously, choosing to live a life of whores, alcohol, and the fast-paced reckless life of Broadway. Finally, O'Neill had an older brother named Edmund who died in infancy; in this play, Edmund has an older brother named Eugene who died in infancy.
The play, published posthumously, represents O'Neill's last words to the literary world. It is important to note that his play is not condemning in nature; no one character is meant to be viewed as particularly worse than any other. This is one of the play's great strengths; it is fair and unbiased, and it shows that many character flaws can be seen as positives when viewed in a different light. Thus, Long Day's Journey into Night invests heavily in the politics of language. It is a world in which there is a large weight placed on the weakness of "stinginess" versus the virtue of "prudence."
The play also creates a world in which communication has broken down. One of the great conflicts in the play is the characters' uncanny inability to communicate despite their constant fighting. For instance, the men often fight amongst themselves over Mary's addiction, but no one is willing to confront her directly. Instead, they allow her to lie to herself about her own addiction and about Edmund's illness. Edmund and Jamie do not communicate well until the last act, when Jamie finally confesses his own jealousy of his brother and desire to see him fail. Tyrone, likewise, can only criticize his sons, but his stubborn nature will not allow him to accept criticism. All the characters have bones to pick, but they have trouble doing so in a constructive fashion.
Most of the bones that need picking emerge in the past, which is remarkably alive for the Tyrones. Mary in particular cannot forget the past and all the dreams she once had of being a nun or a pianist. Tyrone too has always had high hopes for Jamie, who has been a continual disappointment. All the conflicts and the problems from the past cannot be forgotten, and, in fact, they seem doomed to be relived day after day. It is important to note that Long Day's Journey into Night is not only a journey forward in time, but also a journey back into the past lives of all the characters, who continually dip back into their old lifestyles. We are left as an audience realizing that the family is not making progress towards betterment, but rather continually sliding into despair, as they remain bound to a past that they can neither forget nor forgive.
The play is all the more tragic because it leaves little hope for the future; indeed, the future for the Tyrones can only be seen as one long cycle of a repeated past bound in by alcohol and morphine. This play was awarded the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published, and it has remained one of the most admired plays of the 20th century. Perhaps most importantly, it has achieved commercial success because nearly every family can see itself reflected in at least some parts of the play. The Tyrone family is not a unique family, and it is easy to identify with many of the conflicts and characters. The play has a unique appeal to both the individual audience member and to scholars of American drama, which explains its popularity and enduring acclaim.

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WILLIAM GOLDING "LORD OF THE FLIES"

Author
William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Cornwall, England. After graduating from Oxford, he worked briefly as an actor, then became a schoolteacher. When England entered World War II, Golding joined the Royal Navy; after the war, he resumed a teaching career, and also began writing novels. His first and greatest success came with 1954's Lord of the Flies.
The novel, which tells the story of a group of English boys marooned on a tropical island after their plane was shot down during a war, is fiction. But the book's exploration of the idea of human evil, and an adult war raging around the boys' isolated island, occasionally breaking in, is to some extent based on Golding's experience with the violence and savagery of human beings during the War. The book dramatizes the breakdown into savagery of a group of boys free from the imposed moral constraints of civilization and society, and takes an allegorical form, with Ralph serving as a symbol of the civilizing instinct in humanity and Jack as a symbol of its opposite. The conflict between the two boys propels the novel, and the universal questions it poses have propelled the book to massive success among critics, students, and teachers. During its heyday in the late 1950s and 1960s, Lord of the Flies was studied as a major work of literature; today its reputation has undergone a slight decline, but it still maintains a secure place on high school and college reading lists, and remains a favorite of millions of readers throughout the world.
After the huge success of Lord of the Flies, Golding was able to retire from teaching and devote himself fully to writing. Although he never again attained the kind of popular and artistic success he enjoyed with Lord of the Flies, on the basis of that book he remained a respected and distinguished author for the rest of his life, publishing several novels and a play, The Brass Butterfly (1958). Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, William Golding died in 1993, one of the most acclaimed writers in England.

Characters
Ralph - The novel's protagonist, a boy twelve years of age. Marooned on a tropical island with a group of boys, Ralph is elected leader of the group and attempts to coordinate efforts to build a miniature civilization on the island, as well as to attract the attention of rescuers by maintaining a signal fire on a mountain. But as the restraints of civilization fall away and the boys begin to act more and more wildly, Ralph is supplanted by the savage Jack. By the end of the book, Ralph has become a hunted outcast, as doomed as his civilizing endeavor; it is only the improbable arrival of a navy ship that saves his life. Throughout Lord of the Flies, Ralph represents the civilizing instinct within human beings, as opposed to the savage instinct symbolized by Jack.
Jack - The novel's antagonist, one of the older boys stranded on the jungle island. Jack is the leader of the choirboys, and, after Ralph is elected leader, Jack becomes the leader of the hunters. But Jack longs for overarching power; he becomes increasingly wild, barbarous, and cruel as the novel progresses. By the end of the book, he has learned to use the mythology of the beast as an instrument of control over the other boys, and has supplanted Ralph as ruler of the island. Jack's behavior leads directly to the murders of Simon and Piggy, and the only thing that keeps him from killing Ralph is the arrival of the navy ship at the very end of the book.
Simon - One of the most important and difficult characters in the novel, Simon is in some ways the only naturally "good" character on the island. Simon acts kindly toward the "littluns" and is always helpful to Ralph; moreover, because his motivation seems rooted in his deep feeling of connection to nature, Simon is the only character whose moral behavior does not seem a forced imposition of society. Simon is also the first character to realize that the "monster" frightening all the boys is indeed real (though not externally); it exists within each of them. After a terrifying, hallucinatory confrontation with the Lord of the Flies, Simon discovers that the figure the boys thought was a monster is only the body of a dead parachutist. But before he can reveal this knowledge, Simon is brutally murdered by the other boys, who mistake him for the beast as he approaches them on the beach.
Piggy - Ralph's lieutenant; a whiny, intellectual boy whose inventiveness frequently leads to innovation, such as the makeshift sundial. Just as Ralph represents the civilizing instinct and Jack the barbarizing instinct, Piggy represents the scientific, rational side of civilization. He is killed toward the end of the book when Roger drops a boulder on him, also crushing the conch shell that symbolized the boys' early, orderly civilization on the island.
Roger - Jack's lieutenant, a sadistic, cruel older boy who brutalizes the littluns and eventually murders Piggy by rolling a boulder onto him.
Sam and Eric - A pair of twins closely allied with Ralph until the end of the novel, when they are tortured into joining Jack's tribe. They are the first characters to mistake the body of the parachutist for the beast; they later betray Ralph by divulging his hiding-place to Jack. Sam and Eric are always together, and are often treated as a single entity by the other boys; they are frequently referred to as "Samneric."
The Lord of the Flies - The name given to the sow's head impaled on a stake and erected in the forest as an offering for the "beast" just after Jack's most brutal hunt. Just as the conch shell symbolizes order and civilization, so does the blood-encrusted sow's head, covered with flies, come to symbolize the primordial instincts of power and cruelty that take control of Jack's tribe. Simon has a hallucinatory encounter with the sow's head, during which it comes to life as the Lord of the Flies; it tells Simon horribly that he will never escape the Lord of the Flies, for he exists within all human beings. Toward the end of the novel, Ralph lashes out against the totem and casts the sow's head, now a bare skull, to the ground. He takes up the leftover stake as a weapon to use against Jack.

Summary
In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of English boys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. Marooned, the boys set about electing a leader and finding a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader; Ralph appoints Jack as the leader of the hunters. Ralph, Jack, and Simon set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire that passing ships might see. The boys begin to do so, using the lens from Piggy's eyeglasses as a means of igniting dead wood. But they are more interested in playing than in paying close attention to their duties, and the fire quickly ignites the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control. One of the youngest boys disappears, presumably having burned to death.
At first, the boys enjoy their life without grownups. They splash in the lagoon and play games, though Ralph complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters have trouble catching a pig, but Jack becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting. One day, a ship passes by on the horizon, and Ralph and Piggy notice to their horror that the signal fire has burned out; it was the hunters' responsibility to maintain it. Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the boys seem gripped with a strange frenzy, dancing about and reenacting the chase in a kind of wild dance. When Piggy criticizes him, Jack hits him across the face.
Ralph blows the conch shell used to summon the boys and gives the group a furious speech in an attempt to restore order. But beyond the more immediate problems of the signal fire and the difficulties of hunting creeps a larger, more insidious problem: a growing fear among the boys. The littlest boys (known as "littluns") have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys are coming to accept that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. At the meeting, the older boys try to convince them to think rationally: if there were a monster, where would it hide during the daytime? One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea, a proposition that terrifies the whole group.
Not long after the meeting, an aircraft battle takes place high above the island. The boys are sleeping, so they do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A parachutist drifts to earth on the signal fire mountain. He is dead. Sam and Eric, the twins responsible for watching the fire at night, have fallen asleep, and so they do not see him land. But when they wake up, they see the enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it makes. Thinking the beast is at hand, they rush back to the camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked them.
The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for monsters. Jack and Ralph, who are increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain. They see the silhouette of the parachute from a distance; they think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds a meeting, at which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a coward and that he should be removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote him out of power. Jack angrily runs away down the beach, inviting all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies the remaining boys to build a new signal fire, on the beach this time instead of on the "monster's" mountain. They obey, but before they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join Jack.
Jack declares himself the leader of this new tribe, and they hunt and very violently kill a sow to solemnize the occasion. They then decapitate the sow and place its head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. Encountering the bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible vision, during which it seems to him that the head is speaking. The voice, which he imagines to belong to the Lord of the Flies, says that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints; when he wakes up, he travels to the mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist. Understanding then that the monster does not exist externally, but rather within each individual boy, Simon travels to the beach to tell the others what he has seen. But they are in the midst of a chaotic revelry--even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack's feast--and when they see Simon's shadowy figure emerge from the jungle, they fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands and teeth.
The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done; Jack's hunters come to attack them and their few followers, and steal Piggy's glasses in order to make a new fire. Ralph's group travels to Castle Rock in an attempt to make Jack see reason. But Jack has Sam and Eric tied up and fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down from the mountain, crushing Piggy and shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears.
All night and throughout the following day, Ralph hides and is hunted like an animal. Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke him out of his hiding place. Ralph discovers and destroys the sow's head in the forest; eventually, however, he is forced out onto the beach, where the other boys will kill him. Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees a naval officer standing over him, his ship summoned by the blazing fire now raging in the jungle. Ralph is saved; but thinking about what has happened on the island, he begins to weep.

Analysis
Lord of the Flies dramatizes a fundamental human struggle: the conflict between the impulse to obey rules, behave morally, and act lawfully, and the impulse to seek brute power over others, act selfishly, behave in a way that will gratify one's desires, scorn moral rules, and indulge in violence. The first set of impulses might be thought of as the "civilizing instinct," which encourages people to work together toward common goals and behave peacefully; the second set of impulses might be thought of as the "barbarizing instinct," or the instinct to savagery, which urges people to rebel against civilization, seeking anarchy, chaos, despotism, and violence. The novel's structure and style are extremely straightforward and simple, entirely devoted to the story, as opposed to poetic language, description, or philosophical interludes. The novel is also allegorical, which means that characters and objects directly represent the book's central thematic ideas.
In Lord of the Flies, the civilizing impulse is represented by a number of key characters and symbols, including Ralph, Piggy, and the conch shell the boys use to call meetings. The instinct to savagery is represented by Jack, Roger, the tribal hunting dance, and the decapitated sow's head that comes to be known as the Lord of the Flies. The conflict between Jack and Ralph, as it develops, represents the conflict between the civilizing impulse and the impulse to savagery both within the individual and within society as a whole, as the boys marooned on the island gradually reject the restraints of civilization in favor of a primal, violent, primitive existence of hunting, feasting, and homicide.
Because its story is allegorical, Lord of the Flies can be interpreted in many ways; during the 1950s and 1960s, a number of readings of the book attempted to connect it with extraordinarily grand historical, religious, and psychological schemes, claiming that the book dramatized the history of civilization or the history of religion, or the struggle between the Freudian components of unconscious identity--id, ego, and superego. There is a glimmer of truth in each of these readings--the book does deal with fundamental human tendencies, but it is important to remember that the novel's philosophical register is really quite limited--almost entirely restricted to the two extremes represented by Ralph and Jack--and is certainly not complex or subtle enough to offer a realistic parallel to the history of human endeavors as a whole. Every element of Lord of the Flies is sublimated to the book's exploration of its particular philosophical conflict.
The one truly complicating element in the novel is the character of Simon. Whereas Piggy represents the scientific, intellectual, and rational aspects of civilization, Simon seems to represent a kind of innate, spiritual human goodness, deeply connected with nature and, in its own way, as primal as Jack and Roger's primal evil. The other characters in the novel abandon moral behavior as soon as civilization no longer imposes it upon them; they are not innately moral, but have simply been conditioned to act morally by the adult world, by the threat of punishment for misdeeds. This is true even of Ralph and Piggy to an extent; in the psychology of the novel, the civilizing impulse is not as deeply rooted in the human psyche as the savage impulse. But Simon continues to act morally on the island; he behaves kindly to the younger children, and he is the first to realize the problem posed by the beast and the Lord of the Flies--that there is no external monster, but that rather a monster lurks within each human being. This idea finds representation in the sow's head, and eventually stands as the moral conclusion of the novel. The main problem of the book is the idea of inherent human evil; against this, Simon seems to represent an idea of essential human goodness--yet his brutal murder by the other boys near the end of the book indicates the scarcity of that goodness amid an overwhelming abundance of evil.

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HERMAN MELVILLE "MOBY DICK"

Author
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was a popular writer of sea narratives before he wrote Moby-Dick in 1851. What was to become his best known novel, The Whale; or Moby-Dick, received good reviews when it appeared in England, but the first American edition, coming out a month later in New York, received mixed reviews. It was not a financial success and baffled American critics until the 20th century, when it began to be considered a classic. Melville was not recognized as a genius in his time; his most famous works today--Moby-Dick, short stories like "Benito Cereno," and Billy Budd--were not widely read or heralded in the 19th century. Melville's America was a tumultuous place. In the North, rapid industrialization was changing social patterns and giving rise to new wealth. In the South, the cotton interest was trying to hold on to the system of black slavery. America was stretching westward, and encountering Native American tribes, as travel by train, road, sea, and canal become easier than before. Politicians appealed to the masses as the idea of "democracy" (versus republicanism) took hold. Nationalism was high in the early nineteenth century, but as national interconnectedness became more feasible, the deep divisions in society began to grow. Soon, sectionalism, racism, economic self-interest, and bitter political struggle would culminate in the Civil War. Against this backdrop, Melville sailed off on his first whaling voyage in 1841. This experience became the material for his first book, Typee (1846), a narrative that capitalized on exotic titillation about natives in the Marquesas Islands. Becoming well known for his earthy, rowdy stories of faraway places, he quickly followed his initial success with Omoo (1847) and Mardi (1849). But after Mardi, Melville's writing career started to level off. Though he had once thought he could be a professional writer, Moby-Dick's poor reviews meant that Melville would never be able to support himself by writing alone. Melville was always firmly middle-class, though his personas in books always seemed working class. He had a distinguished pedigree--some of his ancestors were Scottish and Dutch settlers of New York who played leading roles in the American Revolution and commercial development. But Melville often felt like the "savage" in the family, which may have explained why he was not afraid to tackle such risky topics as slave revolt (in "Benito Cereno") or the life-sucking potential of office jobs ("Bartleby the Scrivener"). Throughout his life, Melville was an avid reader. Much of his information for Moby-Dick comes from printed sources. The number of references to different texts (intertextuality) in Moby-Dick testifies to the importance of books in Melville's life. In particular, he admired Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom he befriended in 1850 and to whom he dedicated the novel. Melville admired Hawthorne's willingness to dive to deep psychological depths and gothic grimness, traits for which he would also be praised. The works of Shakespeare and stories in the Bible (especially the Old Testament) also influenced Moby-Dick. Moreover, Melville's novel was certainly not the first book on whaling. Whaling narratives were extremely popular in the 19th century. In particular, Melville relied on the encyclopedic Natural History of the Sperm Whale, by Thomas Beale, and the narrative Etchings of a Whaling Cruise, by J. Ross Browne. He also used information from a volume by William Scoresby, but mostly to ridicule Scoresby's pompous inaccuracy. One final note: many editions of Moby-Dick have been printed. Check your edition before using this guide, because "abridged" or "edited" versions may be different.

Characters
Ishmael - Ishmael is the narrator of the story, but not really the center of it. He has no experience with whaling when he signs on, and he is often comically extravagant in his storytelling. Ishmael bears the same name as a famous castaway in the Bible. Ahab - The egomaniacal captain of the whaling ship Pequod; his leg was taken off by Moby Dick, the white whale. He searches frantically for the whale, seeking revenge, and forces his crew to join him in the pursuit. Starbuck - This native of Nantucket is the first mate of the Pequod. Starbuck questions his commander's judgment, first in private and later in public. Queequeg - Starbuck's stellar harpooner and Ishmael's best friend, Queequeg was once a prince from a South Sea island who wanted to have a worldly adventure. Queequeg is a composite character, with an identity that is part African, Polynesian, Islamic, Christian, and Native American. Stubb - This native of Cape Cod is the second mate of the Pequod and always has a bit of mischievous good humor. Moby Dick - The great white sperm whale; an infamous and dangerous threat to seamen like Ahab and his crew. Tashtego - Stubb's harpooner, Tashtego is a Gay Head Indian from Martha's Vineyard. Flask - This native of Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard is the third mate of the Pequod. Short and stocky, he has a confrontational attitude and no reverence for anything. Daggoo - Flask's harpooner, Daggoo is a very big, dark-skinned, imperial-looking man from Africa. Pip - Either from Connecticut or Alabama (there is a discrepancy), Pip used to play the tambourine and take care of the ship. After being left to float on the sea alone for a short period of time, he becomes mystically wise--or possibly loses his mind. Fedallah - Most of the crew doesn't know until the first whale chase that Ahab has brought on board this strange, "oriental" old man, who is a Parsee (Persian fire-worshipper). Fedallah has a very striking appearance: around his head is a turban made from his own hair, and he wears a black Chinese jacket and pants. Like Queequeg, Fedallah's character is a composite of Middle Eastern and East Asian traits. Peleg - This well-to-do retired whaleman of Nantucket is one of the largest owners of the Pequod who, with Captain Bildad, takes care of hiring the crew. When the two are negotiating wages for Ishmael and Queequeg, Peleg plays the generous one. He is a Quaker. Bildad - Also a well-to-do Quaker ex-whaleman from Nantucket who owns a large share of the Pequod, Bildad is (or pretends to be) crustier than Peleg in negotiations over wages. Father Mapple - The preacher in the New Bedford Whaleman's Chapel. He delivers a sermon on Jonah and the whale. Captain Boomer - Boomer is the jovial captain of the English whaling ship Samuel Enderby; his arm was taken off by Moby Dick.

Summary
These prefatory sections establish the groundwork for a new book about whaling. Melville quotes from a variety of sources, revered, famous, and obscure, that may directly address whaling or only mention a whale in passing. The quotations include short passages from the Bible, Shakespeare, John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), other well-known poems, dictionaries, whaling and travel narratives, histories, and songs. The Etymology section, looking at the derivations of "whale," is compiled by a "late consumptive usher to a grammar school," and the Extracts section, a selection of short quotations describing whales or whaling, by a "sub-sub-librarian." Melville's humor comes through in these sections, both in the way he pokes fun at the "poor devil of a Sub-Sub" and as he mentions even the tiniest reference to a whale in these literary works. Epigraphs usually fix a reference point off of which the body of the text can play. Melville's epigraph from Paradise Lost, a story of Adam, Eve, and Satan, therefore accomplishes two things. First, it sets up Moby-Dick's commitment to intertextuality (reference to other books), especially "high" literary texts; second, it sets up the novel's ambitions to deal with something as profound and fundamental as the fall of man. It makes sense that Melville starts his intertextual investigation by looking cross-culturally at how people have defined a "whale" (in Etymology), since that is his ostensible theme. After setting up what he means by "whale," he can go on to list texts in which whales are mentioned. Note that Melville starts Extracts with quotations from the Bible (specifically, the Old Testament), signaling the importance of this book to his project. (Paradise Lost, too, deals with a Biblical theme.) But Melville does not just restrict himself to "high" texts, since he also includes popular whaling narratives such as J. Ross Browne's Etchings of a Whaling Cruise and a New England primer. The sheer variety in the sources, their relative accuracy or inaccuracy, cultural resonance or irrelevance, adds some wry comedy--especially since the usher (assistant schoolmaster) and sub-sub seem to take themselves most seriously in their search for anything related to whaling.

1 - 9
The story begins with one of the most famous opening lines in literary history: "Call me Ishmael." Whatever Ishmael's "real" name, his adopted name signals his identification with the Biblical outcast from the Book of Genesis. He explains that he went to sea because he was feeling a "damp, drizzly November in [his] soul" and wanted some worldly adventure. In the mood for old-fashioned whaling, Ishmael heads to New Bedford, the current center of whaling, to catch a ferry to Nantucket, the previous center of whaling. After wandering through the black streets of New Bedford, he finally stumbles upon The Spouter-Inn, owned by Peter Coffin. First passing by a large, somewhat inscrutable oil painting and a collection of "monstrous clubs and spears," Ishmael walks into a room filled with "a wild set of mariners." Because the inn is nearly full, Ishmael learns that he will have to share a room with "a dark complexioned" harpooner named Queequeg. At first, Ishmael decides that he would rather sleep on a bench than share a bed with some strange, possibly dangerous man. But, discovering the bench to be too uncomfortable, he decides to put up with the unknown harpooner, who, Coffin assures him, is perfectly fine because "he pays reg'lar." Still, Ishmael is worried, since Coffin tells him that the harpooner has recently arrived from the South Sea and peddles shrunken heads. When Queequeg finally returns, the frightened Ishmael watches him from the bed, noting with a little horror the harpooner's tattoos, tomahawk/pipe, and dark-colored idol. When Queequeg finally discovers Ishmael in his bed, he flourishes the tomahawk as Ishmael shouts for the owner. After Coffin explains the situation, they settle in for the night and, when they wake up, Queequeg's arm is affectionately thrown over Ishmael. Ishmael is sorry for his prejudices against the "cannibal," finding Queequeg quite civilized, and they become fast, close friends. The chapters called The Street, The Chapel, The Pulpit, and The Sermon establish the atmosphere in which Ishmael sets out on his whaling mission. Because of its maritime industry, New Bedford is a cosmopolitan town, full of different sorts of people (Lascars, Malays, Feegeeans, Tongatabooans, Yankees, and green Vermonters). In this town is the Whaleman's Chapel, where the walls are inscribed with memorials to sailors lost at sea and the pulpit is like a ship's bow. The preacher in this chapel, Father Mapple, is a favorite among whalemen because of his sincerity and sanctity. Once a sailor and harpooner, Mapple now delivers sermons. His theme for this Sunday: Jonah, the story of the prophet swallowed by "a great fish." (Today we talk about "Jonah and the Whale.") Mapple preaches a story about man's sin, willful disobedience of the command of God, and flight from Him. But, says Mapple, the story also speaks to him personally as a command "to preach the Truth in the face of Falsehood!" with a confidence born from knowing God's will. Through these chapters, we learn about Ishmael's naivete and particular biases. He begins by telling us his rationale for going whaling: he feels a "damp, drizzly November in [his] soul" and yearns for adventure. With such a temperament, it's not surprising that he also tends toward the melodramatic at times. But his exaggerations are funny: "Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however, the old sea-captains may order me about--however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way--either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content." Certainly, life on a whaling ship is hard, but Ishmael tends to take an idea to its logical, comical extreme. He is also the observer of the novel's "hero," so it is important to pay attention to how he observes. (This strategy of story telling also occurs in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.) After all, Ishmael is not the central actor in the story. Ahab, whom we meet later, and Moby Dick, the whale, take center stage. Ishmael is the observer. Ishmael's relationship to the South Sea Islander Queequeg is very important. By becoming best friends with this savage, Ishmael shows that he can go beyond the typical prejudices. Indeed, his interactions with Queequeg make Ishmael realize that although most would call Queequeg a "savage," the harpooner is really more civilized than he himself is. Saying, "[Queequeg] treated me with so much civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness," Ishmael starts taking apart some of the stereotypes about so-called "savages." In fact, "for all his tattooings," says Ishmael, "he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal." Not all cannibals are ugly, dirty, animal-like creatures. Interestingly, Queequeg is a mishmash of different racial and ethnic characteristics--African, Polynesian, Islamic, Christian, and Native American. Although he wanted to give Ishmael a chance to become good friends with an "other," Melville does not make Queequeg essentially one particular kind of "other." Queequeg, supposedly from Kokovoko, an island in the South Seas, worships an idol that looks like "a three days' old Congo baby" (West African) in a Ramadan (Islamic) ceremony and carries a tomahawk/pipe, something found in North American Indian tribes. Father Mapple is another important figure--his ideas resonate, though the man himself does not appear again. We might see Mapple's speech as a declaration of ambitions for Melville's book. He wants to "preach the Truth in the face of Falsehood," and he sees this "Truth" as something treacherous and dark. Truth will not necessarily "please," but "appall." (Here, again, we can see why Melville liked Nathaniel Hawthorne's writing.) Furthermore, Mapple's speech sets up an important precedent for the rest of the novel: the sermon takes a story about an encounter with a whale and draws religious, moral, philosophical, metaphorical, and metaphysical meaning out of it. That is, Jonah's story becomes more than just another story that's frivolous, if entertaining. The story is tied to a larger sense of the universe and human beings' relationship to God and Nature. Moby-Dick also attempts to do this. These chapters also set up an essential conflict between the will of the individual and the will of a higher power. Whereas Jonah, in Mapple's story, "leaves all his deliverance to God," Ahab trusts his "own inexorable self," not relying on higher powers. Some scholars consider the whole of early nineteenth-century literature as a response to Ralph Waldo Emerson's motto, "Trust thyself," in his famous essay "Self-Reliance." Melville's story therefore exposes some of the ways in which it is very difficult to trust thyself without problems.

10 - 21
In these chapters we learn more about the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg. Upon third consideration, Ishmael develops a great respect for his new friend. Although still a "savage," Queequeg becomes, in Ishmael's mind, "George Washington cannibalistically developed." Furthermore, after having intimate chats with him in bed, Ishmael admires Queequeg's sincerity and lack of Christian "hollow courtesies." Quick friends, they are "married" after a social smoke. The chapter called Biographical gives more information on Queequeg's past, detailing the harpooner's life as a son of a High Chief or King of Kokovoko. Intent on seeing the world, he paddled his way to a departing ship and persisted so stubbornly that they finally allowed him to stow away as a whaleman. Queequeg can never go back, because his interaction with Christianity has made him unfit to ascend his homeland's "pure and undefiled throne"; and so, says Ishmael, "that barbed iron [a harpoon] was in lieu of a sceptre now." Together, they set off with a wheelbarrow full of their things for Nantucket. On the trip over, a bumpkin mimics Queequeg. Queequeg flips him around to punish him and is subsequently scolded by the captain. But when the bumpkin is swept overboard as the ship has technical difficulties, Queequeg takes charge of the ropes to secure the boat and then dives into the water to save the man overboard. This action wins everyone's respect. Melville then writes a bit about Nantucket's history, about the "red-men" who first settled there, its ecology, and its dependence on the sea for livelihood. When the two companions arrive, they have a pot of the best chowder at the Try Pots. Charged by Yojo (Queequeg's wooden idol) to seek a ship for the two of them, Ishmael comes upon the Pequod, a ship "with an old fashioned claw-footed look about her" and "apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with pendants of polished ivory." But the Pequod is not just exotic to Ishmael; he also calls it a "cannibal of a craft" because it is bejeweled with whale parts. On board, he makes a deal with Peleg and Bildad, the Quaker owners of the ship, characterized as conniving cheapskates and bitter taskmasters. Evaluating Ishmael for his lay (portion of the ship's profits, a whaleman's wage), Peleg finally gives him the 300th lay. (This, Bildad says, is "generous.") At this time, Ishmael also learns that the ship's captain is Ahab, named after a wicked and punished Biblical king. Although Ahab has seemed a little moody since he lost his leg to the white whale Moby Dick, Bildad and Peleg believe in his competence. Ishmael does not meet the captain in person until much later. Returning to the inn, Ishmael allows Queequeg a day for his "Ramadan" ceremonies and then becomes worried when his friend does not answer the door in the evening. When the panicking Ishmael finally gets the door open, he finds Queequeg deep in meditation. The next day, they return to the Pequod to sign Queequeg up. Though the owners object at first to Queequeg's paganism, the Kokovokan impresses them with his skill by hitting a spot of tar on a mast with a harpoon. They give him the 90th lay, "more than ever was given a harpooner yet out of Nantucket." Although Bildad still tries to convert Queequeg, Peleg tells him to give up. "Pious harpooners never make good voyagers--it takes the shark out of 'em; no harpooner is worth a straw who ain't pretty sharkish." Just after signing the papers, the two run into a man named Elijah (a prophet, or just some frightening stranger) who hints to them about the peril of signing aboard Ahab's ship. They disregard him. For several days, there is preparation for the dangerous voyage. When they are near the ship, Ishmael thinks that he sees some "shadows" boarding the ship, but he dismisses the idea. Elijah warns them again just before they board. These chapters work on character development. The brotherhood that develops between Ishmael and Queequeg is important. Their transformation from mutual suspicion to mutual admiration is a marked change. Instead of seeing him as a thing "hideously marred about the face" and body because of tattoos, Ishmael comes to liken Queequeg to the American hero George Washington. Becoming "a cosy, loving pair," Ishmael and Queequeg show the kind of friendship possible between men. Indeed, their closeness is unusual even in cosmopolitan New Bedford, especially because of their races. When they walk in the street, even New Bedfordians find them queer, but they don't care. Moreover, Ishmael doesn't complain about Queequeg's higher lay, even though he is white. Ishmael is not petty enough to think that he ought to get more money just because he is white. Despite the racial differences, Ishmael totally accepts Queequeg in what seems like an early form of cultural relativism. Although Ishmael lectures Queequeg on religious habits, he does not force Queequeg to change. In fact, out of respect for his new friend, Ishmael turns idolater, though he was raised Presbyterian. "Better a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian," Ishmael says. Although we might say that Ishmael does indulge in stereotypical depictions of the non-whites in Moby-Dick, he does respect them and does try to see things from their perspective. In these chapters, Melville also pokes gentle fun at his narrator. Ishmael tends to layer on a deeper meaning to any event, but his commentary often becomes excessive. For example, when Ishmael describes his loyalty to Queequeg, he gets a little carried away: "From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle." Also, Ishmael's good-natured attempts to save Queequeg during Ramadan seem excessive. Naive Ishmael doesn't realize that Queequeg is not in danger. So when Ishmael attempts to lecture Queequeg on religion, Queequeg only looks back at Ishmael condescendingly. Ishmael's poor judgment in choosing the Pequod is also rather laughable--he is so impressed by its appearance and knows so little about the whaling trade that he doesn't know what a good lay would be and signs on without meeting the captain. This section also starts to set up the mystery around Ahab. Peleg's information about Ahab, that he is "desperate moody, and savage," inspires sympathy, pity, and "a strange awe" in Ishmael for the dark Ahab. Elijah's warning only adds to the aura. Also note the intertextuality in these chapters. So many of the characters have names from the Bible (particularly the Old Testament) that a reader can't help but think about those old stories that carry cultural resonance. Intertextuality is often tricky, because it might seem that the author is merely imitating an earlier book. But it is Melville's imagination that puts all of these characters from different Biblical stories into one story; it is Melville's imagination that reinvigorates these characters, which are certainly unique and very much a part of nineteenth-century America.

22 - 31
At Christmas, the ship finally heaves off from the port, and Ishmael gets his first taste of the rigors of whaling life. As the boat sails away from civilization, Bulkington, a noble sailor that Ishmael saw at the Coffin inn, appears on the Pequod's decks and makes Ishmael wax sentimental about the heroism in sailing into the deeps. In the chapter called The Advocate, Ishmael defends the whaling profession in a series of arguments and responses. Whaling is a heroic business, he says, that is economically crucial (for the oil) and that has resulted in geographical discovery. He finds the utmost dignity in whaling--a subject of good genealogy, worthy enough for Biblical writers and also educational. These, he says, are facts. He can't praise sperm whaling enough and even suggests that sperm oil has been used to anoint kings because it is the best, purest, and sweetest. In the chapter called Knights and Squires, we meet the mates and their lieutenants. The first mate, Starbuck, is a pragmatic, reliable Nantucketer. Speaking about Starbuck leads Ishmael to carry on about the working man and democratic equality. The pipe-smoking second mate, Stubb, a native of Cape Cod, is always cool under pressure and has "impious good humor." Third mate Flask, a native of Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard, is a short, stocky fellow with a confrontational attitude and no reverence for the dignity of the whale. He is nicknamed "King-Post" because he resembles the short, square timber known by that name in Arctic whalers. Already introduced, Queequeg is Starbuck's harpooner. Stubb's "squire" is Tashtego, "an unmixed Indian from Gay Head" (Martha's Vineyard). Flask's harpooner is Daggoo, "a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage" from Africa with an imperial bearing. The rest of the crew is also mostly international. But, says Ishmael, all these "Isolatoes" are "federated along one keel" and unified by accompanying Ahab. Ishmael also makes small mention of Pip, a poor Alabama boy who beats a tambourine on ship. Ahab finally appears on deck, and Ishmael observes closely. He sees Ahab as a very strong, willful figure, though his encounter with the whale has scarred him. Certainly, Ahab seems a bit psychologically troubled. Ahab's relationship to others on the boat is one of total dictatorship. When Stubb complains about Ahab's pacing, Ahab calls him a dog and advances on him. Stubb retreats. The next morning, Stubb wakes up and explains to Flask that he had a dream that Ahab kicked him with his ivory leg. (The title of this chapter, Queen Mab, refers to Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet, in which the character Mercutio talks about weird dreams.) In this introduction to the characters on the Pequod, Melville starts to sketch out ship dynamics. Unfortunately for Ishmael, not every ship is filled with noble Bulkingtons. Indeed, the heroic, all-American pioneer-sailor is all alone on a ship filled with internationals. The fact that he soon fades out (not to be mentioned again later in the novel) shows how atypical characters of Bulkington's type have become. Still, national identity does not prevent the ship from functioning properly. Not discrete "Isolatoes," the crew members have united under Ahab. Although Melville is probably allowing Ishmael to get a little carried away his imagery, Ishmael's idealism is based in truth. Even though we might think that the exotic qualities in the harpooners that Ishmael highlights would create insurmountable barriers between them and the other men on the ship, they all do get along to a certain degree. There is a sense of inclusion on the Pequod that was not normal for the very racist nineteenth-century American society on land. Interestingly, the proper functioning of the ship depends on hierarchy--that is, some men on top, many men on the bottom. Unified or not, the Pequod needs a leader. In fact, the leadership goes along a visible color divide: all of the officers are white and the sailors are from the South Sea Islands, Gay Head, Africa, etc. Critic Alan Heimert has suggested that, even though the mates are all from places in Massachusetts, they really symbolize different regions of America. Starbuck represents New England, and, just as the region depends on the Chinese/South Sea trade, he depends on Queequeg. Stubb represents the West, and his power derives from his subordination of the American Indian. Flask represents the South and controls the African. But over them all is the irresistibly charismatic Ahab. Even though Ahab has yet to introduce himself officially to the crew, it is clear that he rules the ship. In fact, even when Ahab abuses a mate like Stubb, the subordinate somehow rationalizes it and says that the dream about rebellion (kicking Ahab back) only teaches him that "the best thing you can do...is to let that old man alone, never speak quick to him, whatever he says." That is, never talk back, but always obey. Ishmael too sounds oddly awe-struck. The tone he uses to describe Ahab sounds a little extravagant. It is also ironic that when Ishmael shows the strictness of this hierarchy, he ends the chapter by praising the democratic spirit. Pay attention to Ishmael's techniques of narration. Part of the time he sticks to straightforward narration, where events succeed each other along a chronological line. Other times, he digresses, making side comments to the reader that are not in the timeline of the plot itself--e.g., in chapters such as The Advocate and Postscript. Ishmael then goes through a series of character sketches (of the mates, their harpooners, and Ahab). Also, these chapters do some foreshadowing. Stubb, for instance, hints that there is something fishy going on in the hold of the ship; only later do we discover what exactly Ahab has hidden on board.

32 - 40
"Cetology," as Ishmael explains, is "the science of whales." In the Cetology chapter and subsequent cetology-like chapters in the book, Ishmael tries to dissect whales scientifically. After including some quotations from previous writers on the whale, Ishmael says he here attempts a "draught" (draft) of a whale classification system that others can revise. He divides the whales into books and chapters (like today's Linnaean system that includes genus and species). His first subject is the sperm whale. At the end of the chapter, he pronounces it a "drought of a draught." The Specksynder is another cetology-like chapter, in that it tries to dissect the whaling industry. Beginning with trivia about the changing role of the specksynder (literally, "fat-cutter"), who used to be chief harpooner and captain, Ishmael moves on to a discussion of leadership styles, particularly that of royal or imperial leaders. The chapter called The Cabin-Table returns to the plot, showing the ship's officers at dinner. This is a rigid affair over which Ahab presides. After the officers finish, the table is re-laid for the harpooners. Then Ishmael discusses his first post on the mast-head watching for whales. He writes a history of mast-heads and their present role on a whaling ship. Ishmael, who can rarely stick to only one subject or one level of thinking, discusses metaphorical meanings of what he sees. Then, in the chapter called The Quarter-Deck, he returns to narrative plot, dramatizing Ahab's first official appearance before the men. Ahab's call and response tests the crew, checking whether they know what to do, and unites them under his leadership. Presenting a Spanish gold doubloon, he proclaims, "Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke--look ye, whosoever of ye raises that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!" The men cheer. Ahab then confesses, in response to Starbuck's query, that it was indeed this white whale Moby Dick who took off his leg, and announces his quest to hunt him down. The men shout together that they will hunt with Ahab, though Starbuck protests. Ahab then begins a ritual that binds the crew together. He fills a cup with alcohol and everyone on the ship drinks from that flagon. Telling the harpooners to cross their lances before him, Ahab grasps the weapons and anoints Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo "my three pagan kinsmen there--yon three most honorable gentlemen and noble men." He then makes them take the iron off of the harpoons to use as drinking goblets. They all drink together while Ahab proclaims, "God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!" Another chapter beginning with a stage direction, Sunset is a melancholy monologue by Ahab. He says that everyone thinks he is mad, and that he agrees somewhat. He self-consciously calls himself "demoniac" and "madness-maddened." Even though he seems to be the one orchestrating events, he does not feel in control: "The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run." Dusk is Starbuck's monologue. Though he feels that it will all come out badly, he feels inextricably bound to Ahab. When he hears the revelry coming from the crew's forecastle, he laments the whole doomed voyage. First Night-Watch is Stubb's monologue, giving another perspective on the voyage. Midnight, Forecastle is devoted to the jolly men who take turns showing off and singing together. They get into a fight when the Spanish Sailor makes fun of Daggoo. The onset of a storm, however, stops their fighting and makes them tend to the ship. The cetology section was added later in the writing process and seems to be another layer added on to the main plot. Nathaniel Hawthorne was often praised for his ability to embroider on a theme; Melville does the same thing here with Ishmael's pseudoscientific lecture. But Ishmael's painstakingly minute details also add a comic element, suggesting that classification schemes are tricky and that Ishmael may be fighting a losing battle in trying to classify something that seems to resist classification. One of the ways in which Moby-Dick is very intertextual is its frequent reference to other books. Stubb's monologue, for example, makes Stubb seem like the fool in a Shakespearean drama. And Melville was definitely reading Shakespeare at the time of writing Moby-Dick. These chapters also reinforce the hierarchy that was established in the previous section. By mentioning the old leadership system, in which the specksynder ran the ship, Ishmael can question the present system of leadership. But Ishmael does not question Ahab's leadership too much--in fact, he ends the chapter with a declaration of loyalty to Ahab. The chapter called The Cabin-Table illustrates hierarchy, too, since when the sailors are allowed to start eating and when they have to stop eating is dictated by rank. Even Flask, who is ranked higher than the regular men in the forecastle, gets shortchanged because he happens to be on the bottom. Recall Ishmael's statement from Chapter 1: "Who ain't a slave? Tell me that." The monologues that follow in Chapters 37 to 40 also descend in order based on shipboard rank (Ahab first, forecastle crew last). In The Quarter-Deck, we see the first hints of conflict between Ahab and Starbuck, though the ranking system should make these conflicts non-issues. Starbuck objects to Ahab's obsessive mission to hunt the whale because it does not make sense economically or rationally. To Starbuck, Ahab's quest is foolish and selfish; Starbuck went on the Pequod "to hunt whales, not [his] commander's vengeance." Ahab, pounding his heart, says that even if the quest after Moby Dick is not economically satisfying, it is emotionally satisfying. Here, Ahab's motion sets up a fundamental contrast: Starbuck is business-like and tries to be a straight arrow, while Ahab is led by his emotions. And Ahab's emotional appeal captures the imaginations of others on the ship, giving him the upper hand. "The crew, man, the crew!" says Ahab. "Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale?" In Dusk, the chapter after Ahab's monologue, Starbuck speaks. His statements are basically the first mate's response to Ahab's dominance. The practical Starbuck, however, does start to buck the system, because, we learn, he and Ahab interpret the world in fundamentally different ways. When Ahab looks around him and reads the world, he sees deep allegorical meaning in everything. When Starbuck says it is blasphemous to hunt a "dumb thing," Ahab says, "All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living act, the undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!" He sees malice behind the mask, but Starbuck does not think that Ahab's system of symbols is sound. Starbuck often sees the godly in things when Ahab sees the profane. What Ahab might see as a symbol of his own power, Starbuck may see as God's sign of Ahab's downfall. Melville continues to play with the idea of "civilized" versus "uncivilized" in these chapters. In the previous section, Ishmael said that Queequeg was more "civilized" than he was; in this section, Ahab, who, as captain, should represent the pinnacle of civilization, is described as uncivilized. Ishmael uses many images from the untamed American West to describe Ahab and the crew, especially animals such as the bison and prairie wolves and American Indian "savages." The Pequod, already characterized as a "barbarian" Ethiopian emperor in a previous chapter, becomes even more closely aligned with the "savage" as it heads into the oceanic wilderness. Note also the racial coding that goes on in the chapter Midnight, Forecastle. When the sailors come forward to say their parts, it is much like a pageant. They each make some appropriately short speech, peppered with token references to palm trees, pagodas, or the Ganges. The Spanish Sailor ends up fighting with Daggoo when they apply the metaphors of color to each other. The dark-skinned Daggoo does not like being called "the dark side of mankind--devilish dark at that." The Spanish Sailor does not like being taunted with "White skin, white liver!" But, interestingly, the fight is broken up when a storm comes on, showing that certain things on a whaling ship do supersede racism. If they don't all work together in a storm, they will probably die. This section, like the previous section, feels very stagy in parts. Ritual and drama are emphasized; stage directions are used. As a result, the reader is very conscious that Ahab is giving a performance, highlighting his skills of manipulation and making the scene much more intense.

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Ishmael is meditative again, starting with a discussion of the white whale's history. Rumors about Moby Dick are often out of control, he says, because whale fishermen "are by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them." It is easy to attach metaphorical meaning or make up legend about dangerously intense, life-threatening experiences. Ishmael is skeptical, though, about assertions that Moby Dick is immortal. He admits that there is a singular whale called Moby Dick who is distinguished by his "peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump" and that this whale is known to have destroyed boats in a way that seems "intelligent." No wonder Ahab hates the white whale, says Ishmael, since it does seem that Moby Dick did it out of spite. Intertwined with Moby Dick's history is Ahab's personal history. When the white whale took off Ahab's leg, the whale became to Ahab "the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung." Ahab's reaction was to magnify the symbolism of the whale; the whale didn't just take off his leg, but represents everything that he hates and everything that torments him. Ahab went crazy on the trip home, says Ishmael, though he tried to appear sane. The Whiteness of the Whale turns from what Moby Dick means to Ahab, to what it means to Ishmael. Above all, he says, it is the whiteness of the whale that appalls him. (Note Ishmael's pun--the root of the word "appall" literally means to turn white.) Ishmael begins his cross-cultural discussion of "whiteness" by saying how much it has been idealized as virtue or nobility. To him, however, the color white only multiplies terror when it is attached with any object "terrible" in itself. After a short, dramatic scene (Hark!) in which the sailors say to each other that they think there may be something or someone in the after-hold, Ishmael returns to an examination of Ahab in The Chart. Because Ahab believes that his skill with charts will help him locate Moby Dick, Ishmael discusses how one might scientifically track a whale. In The Affidavit, Ishmael explains in organized form "the natural verity of the main points of this affair." He realizes that this story seems preposterous in many ways and wants to convince the reader that his story is real by listing the "true" bases for this story in quasi-outline form (first, personal experiences, then tales of whale fishermen or collective memory, and finally books). He then looks at why people may not believe these stories. Perhaps readers haven't heard about the perils or vivid adventures in the whaling industry, he says. Or maybe they do not understand the immensity of the whale. He asks that the audience use "human reasoning" when judging his story. The chapter called Surmises returns the focus to Ahab, considering how the captain will accomplish his revenge. Because Ahab must use men as his tools, he has to be very careful. How can he motivate them? Ahab can appeal to their hearts, but also he knows that cash will keep them going. Ahab further knows that he has to watch that he does not leave himself open to charges of "usurpation." That is, he has to follow standard operating procedure, lest he give his officers reason to overrule him. The Mat-Maker returns to the plot. Ishmael describes the slow, dreamy atmosphere on the ship when they are not after a whale. He and Queequeg are making a sword-mat, and, in a famous passage, Ishmael likens their weaving to work on "the Loom of Time." (The threads of the warp are fixed like necessity. Man has limited free will: he can interweave his own cross-threads into this fixed structure. When Queequeg's sword hits the loom and alters the overall pattern, Ishmael calls this chance.) What jolts him out of his reverie is Tashtego's call for a whale. Suddenly, everyone is busied in preparations for the whale hunt. Just as they are about to push off in boats, "five dusky phantoms" emerge around Ahab. This section is one of the most important in the novel. In these chapters, Ishmael attempts to explain what things mean: what the whale means, what the whiteness of the whale means, what the mat-maker's loom means, etc. We could call this a section that stresses semiotics, or the study of the relationship between signs or symbols and what they represent. Ishmael wants to understand how Moby Dick has come to be a symbol for Ahab. So first there is Ahab's personal experience with the whale--it takes away his leg. But Ahab makes the whale more widely symbolic: "All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." This is what is at stake when Ahab pits himself against the whale. Because Ahab assumes that the whale injured him with malicious intent, and he attributes this malice to a larger power, he goes after it desperately. Taking a step back, Ishmael can see the strangeness and recklessness of Ahab's mission. "Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals--morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask." In other words, the officers are crazy, the crew is "untamed," and the mission goes around the entire globe. So what is it about this whale that inspires so much craziness, Ishmael wonders. He tries to explain "what, at times, he was to me" in The Whiteness of the Whale. Moby Dick's color is, after all, his most salient feature. So what, then, does his whiteness mean? He sees the whiteness metaphorically both in this chapter and later in Midnight, Forecastle. (And Ishmael's tendency to give things or events metaphorical depth is also apparent in The Mat-Maker.) And so Ishmael explains that whiteness is so metaphorically charged because it is so indefinite that it suggests "annihilation"; because whiteness is the "absence of color and at the same time the concrete of all colors"; because it presents a "dumb blankness, full of meaning"; because it makes color seem, in comparison, "like a harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within." Basically, whiteness is so threatening because it is contradictory. People have historically seen that which is white as something good or innocent. When something dangerous or evil is white, it becomes all the more sinister. "Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?" Color-coding is a very charged topic; we might also see the chapter in terms of race relations in the United States, since Melville was writing ten years before the Civil War and a year after the Compromise of 1850. Moby-Dick has so far been very conscious about the differences between the white and colored races. Therefore, we can read this chapter as a critique of white supremacy. That is, this chapter shows how inaccurate it is to assume that whiteness stands for goodness. Indeed, critic and writer Toni Morrison sees Moby-Dick as an illustration of what happens when a man becomes obsessed with whiteness. Chasing after whiteness eventually destroys him. One of the most remarkable qualities of Moby-Dick is its extraordinary pacing. Ishmael divides his narrative in this section into scenes of dramatic action and scenes of rumination and commentary. Ishmael's jumps from deep psychological probes to lighter-hearted discourses keep Moby-Dick moving. Even if the chapters do not advance the plot in a straightforward way, they do keep the reader moving along, since comical passages give the reader respite after emotionally intense sections. If the heavy chapters were packed too tightly, the reader might just give up in exhaustion. But Ishmael worries about his own narrative competence. Is he a good narrator? He feels the need to back himself up in The Affidavit. Many writers of the "Realist" school often worry about their own authenticity, backing themselves up with newspaper sources or "real"-sounding background details. By speaking in the language of lawyers and official documents, Ishmael tries to present his information and his status as narrator as legitimate. He also appeals to rationality and organization to make himself seem more authoritative. But Ishmael is far from impartial or completely rational. His own writing exposes his sentimentality and the ease with which he falls under Ahab's spell. As Ishmael tries to get inside Ahab's head, he ends up showing readers how much he himself has internalized his leader's personality. He says proudly, "I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest...A wild mystical sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine." And after Ishmael describes Ahab's obsessive methodicalness in The Chart, The Affidavit seems similarly methodical.

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These chapters return us to the action of Moby-Dick. We meet Fedallah for the first time, described as a dark, sinister figure with a Chinese jacket and turban made from coiling his own hair around his head. We also meet for the first time the "tiger-yellow...natives of the Manillas" (Ahab's boat crew) who were hiding in the hold of the Pequod. The other crews are staring at the newly-discovered shipmates, but Flask tells them to continue doing their jobs--that is, to concentrate on hunting the whale. The Pequod's first lowering after the whale is not very successful. Queequeg manages to get a dart in the whale, but the animal overturns the boat. The men are nearly crushed by the ship as it passes looking for them, because a squall has put a mist over everything. The chapter called The Hyena functions as a mooring of sorts--a self-conscious look back that puts everything in perspective. In this chapter, Ishmael talks about laughing at things, what a hyena is known for. Finding out that such dangerous conditions are typical, Ishmael asks Queequeg to help him make his will. Ishmael then comments on Ahab's personal crew. Ahab's decision to have his own boat and crew, says Ishmael, is not a typical practice in the whaling industry. But, however strange, "in a whaler, wonders soon wane" because there are so many unconventional sights in a whaler--the sheer variety of people, the strange ports of call, and the distance and disconnectedness of the ships themselves from land-based, conventional society. But even though whalemen are not easily awe-struck, Ishmael does say, "That hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the last." He is "such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly." Ishmael then focuses on Fedallah. On the masthead one night, the Parsee thinks he sees a whale spouting. The whole ship then tries to follow it, but the whale is not seen again until some days later. Ishmael calls it a "spirit-spout," because it seems to be a phantom leading them on. Some think it might be Moby Dick leading the ship on toward its destruction. The ship sails around the Cape of Good Hope (Africa), a particularly treacherous passage. Through it all, Ahab commands the deck robustly, and, even when he is down in the cabin, he keeps his eye on the cabin-compass that tells him where the ship is going. They soon see a ship called "The Goney," or Albatross, a vessel with a "spectral appearance" that is a long way from home. Of course, Ahab asks them as they pass by, "Have ye seen the White Whale?" While the other captain is trying to respond, a gust of wind blows the trumpet from his mouth. Their wakes cross as both ships continue on. The Pequod continues its way around the world, and Ishmael worries that this is dangerous--they might just be going on in mazes or will all be "[over]whelmed." Ishmael then explains that these two ships did not have a "gam." A gam, according to Ishmael, is "a social meeting of two (or more) whale-ships, generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats' crews: the two captains remaining, for the time, on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other." The Town-Ho's Story is a story within the larger story of Moby-Dick. During a gam with the ship Town-Ho (which they encounter after the Goney), a white sailor on the Town-Ho tells this story to Tashtego, who shares it with all the men in the forecastle. Ishmael announces at the beginning of the chapter that he is telling us what he once told to some friends in Lima. The basic story concerns Radney, a mate from Martha's Vineyard, and Steelkilt, a sailor from Buffalo, who have a conflict on board the Town-Ho, a sperm whaler from Nantucket. Steelkilt rebels against Radney's authority, assaults the mate (after the mate attacks him), and starts a mutiny. The mutineers are punished and released, but Steelkilt wants revenge. The ship runs into Moby Dick, and, in the process of trying to harpoon him, Radney falls out of the boat. Moby Dick snatches him in his jaws. Ishmael's listeners don't necessarily believe him, but he swears on a copy of the Four Gospels that he is telling the truth. In returning to the plot and characters, Ishmael starts to give us an impression of exactly how strange life aboard the Pequod is. He emphasizes the "savage" and "exotic" on Ahab's boat. Though we should always suspect Ishmael of overstating things, he says that everyone's first impression of the ship is one of oriental strangeness; Ahab's crew remains mysterious "to the last." Note the tone of Ishmael's descriptions--there is a sort of awe and mysticism when he says that the Manilla men have a "ghostly aboriginalness." He seems both afraid and awe-struck. His first description of Fedallah, in fact, uses such charged terms as "evilly" and "diabolism of subtilty." These chapters also show how all of the men on the Pequod work together. In The First Lowering, for example, we see how interdependent all of the parts are. For example, in the boat Flask sits on Daggoo's shoulders so that he can see. The emphasis is on completing their assigned task--that is, killing the whale. It is for this reason that Flask can tell the rowers in his boat to ignore Ahab's weird crew. "What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They are only five more hands come to help us--never mind from where--the more the merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone--devils are good fellows enough." Because they have a role in the hunt--they are there to help them catch the whale--they are all right in his book. Ahab's incredible pride also shows itself in these chapters. He stows his own boatload of men aboard the ship without telling anyone, he chases after the whale in his own boat, and he claims complete authority over the Pequod. When they run into other ships, he puts his personal business first: he always asks if the other ship has seen the white whale. "I never yet saw him kneel," says Stubb--and certainly, Ahab does not seem to defer to any authority. The Town-Ho's Story provides an interesting commentary on authority, then, since it illustrates what can happen when the ordinary men on the ship get tired of orders from above. Indeed, the men do not necessarily even want to mutiny in the first place, but the way a ship is run in the end forces them to rebel. Ishmael pays a great deal of attention to his narrative technique in this section, too. Ishmael knows he is telling a story when he retells a story that he had previously told his friends in Lima. The complicated framing of the story gives us some idea of how complexly conceived Moby-Dick is. The time jump in The Town-Ho's Story is also very important, since it is the only chapter that specifically occurs after the Pequod's voyage.

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Here, Melville describes poor representations of whales. To a whaleman who has actually seen whales, many historical, mythological, and scientific sources seem inaccurate. As a result, says Ishmael, "you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is the one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last." The only solution Ishmael sees is to go whaling yourself. The next chapter tries to find some acceptable depictions. To Ishmael's taste, the only things that are anywhere close are two large French engravings from a Garneray painting that show the Sperm and Right Whales in action. The following chapter tries to expand the discussion of representations of whales to include whales in various media. Ishmael then talks about how whalemen have been known to make scrimshaw. Whalemen who deal with whales so much start seeing whales everywhere, which is why he mentions stars. The Brit chapter brings back the encyclopedic cetology chapter type. Brit is a minute yellow substance upon which the Right Whale largely feeds. Ishmael uses the chapter as a platform on which to talk about contradictory views of the sea (frightening "universal cannibalism") and the earth ("green, gentle, and most docile" land). Past the field of Brit in the water, Daggoo thinks that he sights Moby Dick. It is a false alarm, however, as it is only a giant squid. In preparation for a later scene, says Ishmael, he will explain the whale-line. Made of hemp, this rope is connected to the harpoon at one end and free at the other so that it can be tied to other boats' lines. Because it whizzes out when a whale is darted, it is dangerous for the men in the boat. We then return to more action, where Stubb kills a black sperm whale. Ishmael vigorously describes the gore to us. In The Dart, Ishmael backtracks, describing what a harpooner does and how he uses a dart. Freely giving his opinion on whaling technique, Ishmael says that mates should throw both the dart and the lance, because the harpooner should be fresh, not tired from rowing. Then, to explain the crotch mentioned in the previous chapter, Ishmael backtracks again to describe the notched stick that furnishes a rest for the wooden part of the harpoon. Ishmael then returns to the plot: Stubb wants to eat the freshly killed whale, although most whalemen do not. (Usually the only creatures that eat whale meat are sharks.) He calls on the black cook Fleece to make his supper and make the sharks stop eating the whale flesh. In a sermon to the sharks, the cook tells them that they ought to be more civilized. Stubb and the cook get into a folksy religious discussion. He then likens Stubb to a shark. Ishmael then feels that he must describe what whale is like as a dish. Doing a historical survey of whale-as-dish, Ishmael remarks that no one except for Stubb and the "Esquimaux" accept it now. Deterrents include the exceedingly rich quality of the meat and its prodigious quantities. Furthermore, it seems wrong, because hunting the whale makes the meat a "noble dish," and one has to eat the meat by the whale's own light. But perhaps this blasphemy isn't so rare, says Ishmael, since the readers probably eat beef with a knife made from the bone of oxen or pick their teeth after eating goose with a goose feather. The main interest in this section deals with the idea of representation: How do you best represent the whaling experience? The answer, basically, is that you cannot. A person has to experience it firsthand to get a true picture, because whaling is so dangerous and intense. So this section, too, has semiotic issues: how does the symbol compare to the actual idea or experience it is supposed to symbolize? The flat, two-dimensional paintings do a poor job, and the books are not much better. Discussing a whaleman's tools helps to give the audience a sense of the material side of the hunt, but it does not give a satisfactory impression of the whaling industry. And Ishmael even tries to understand whales better by considering what it is like to eat a whale. Not one of these is satisfactory. But Melville is committed to multiplicity, according to critic F. O. Mathiessen, so it was important to him to approach the subject in as many ways as possible. In fact, one of the newest and most important ideas of the Romantic movement was the idea of plentitude: one should celebrate abundance and diversity. And so, while Ishmael dismisses the representations, he does try to consider whaling from as many perspectives as possible. In these chapters, Ishmael the narrator does little work to advance the plot. Every time he says anything about the action, he feels he needs to backtrack and explain every little detail. After saying that Stubb darts a whale, for example, Ishmael goes back to talk about the crotch where a whale dart rests. His explanations about the equipment and history give the novel a "realistic" and precise feel; sometimes the novel seems more like a documentary than a work of fiction. Ishmael also includes comic relief in these chapters: the cook Fleece (who probably got his name because nineteenth-century Americans described black people's hair as "woolly") is solely included to be laughed at. Like characters in Shakespearean dramas that provide comic relief, Fleece speaks in dialect. His statements put the main action in a different perspective. Fleece's sermon to the sharks, then, might be considered a parody of Father Mapple's sermon (the other explicitly named "sermon" in the novel). Whereas Mapple tried to deliver a lofty theological sermon, Fleece speaks in dialect and speaks to the sharks personally. And it is supposed to be funny, not disturbing or deeply moving as Mapple's is supposed to be. Like the chapters in Section 6, these chapters also address landscape studies. It is interesting to note Ishmael's responses to different spaces: the sea is a scary place of cannibalism, and land, now far away, is considered "gentle" and "docile." The link between wilderness and the ocean are strengthened here, and Ishmael aligns whaling with savagery. "Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage," says Ishmael, "owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him." Also, recall that Stubb is lumped with the "Esquimaux" as a whale-flesh-eater. Indeed, whalers are just like the "savage" indigenous peoples who are roaming and hunting in the unconquered American frontier. But Ishmael does not frown on savagery as mainstream society might. Instead, he praises the primitive. He has a high opinion of the Hawaiian and the "white sailor-savage." But the fact that the whaleman-savage is ready at a moment to rebel against his king highlights the problems in the command structure on whaling ships. Captains have to contain the tendency towards brutality. It makes Ahab's near-total control seem awe-inspiring.

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These chapters get into the minutiae of whaling technique. The Shark Massacre describes how sharks often swarm around dead whale carcasses, forcing whalemen to poke them with spades or kill them. Even when sharks are dead, they are often still dangerous: once, when Queequeg brought one on deck for its skin, it nearly took his hand off. There's no sacred Sabbath in whaling, since the gory business of cutting in occurs whenever there is a kill. Cutting in involves inserting a hook in the whale's blubber and peeling the blubber off as one might peel off an orange rind in one strip. Discussing the whale's blubber, Ishmael realizes that it is difficult to determine exactly what the whale's skin is. There is something thin and isinglass-like, but that's only the skin of the skin. If we decide that the blubber of the whale (the long pieces of which are called "blanket-pieces") is the skin, we are still missing something, since blubber only accounts for 3/4 of the weight of the blanket-pieces. After cutting in, the whale is then released for its "funeral," in which the "mourners" are vultures and sharks. The frightful white carcass floats away and a "vengeful ghost" hovers over it, deterring other ships from going near it. Ishmael backtracks in The Sphynx, saying that before whalers let a carcass go, they behead it in a "scientific anatomical feat." Ahab talks to this head, asking it to tell him of the horrors that it has seen. But Ahab knows that it doesn't speak and laments its inability: too many horrors are beyond utterance. The chapter about the Jeroboam (a ship carrying some epidemic) also backtracks, referring back to a story Stubb heard during the gam with the Town-Ho. A man, who had been a prophet among the Shakers in New York, proclaimed himself the archangel Gabriel on the ship and mesmerized the crew. Captain Mayhew wanted to get rid of him at the next port, but the crew threatened desertion. And the sailors aboard the Pequod now see this very Gabriel in front of them. When Captain Mayhew is telling Ahab a story about the White Whale, Gabriel keeps interrupting. According to Mayhew, the Jeroboam first heard about the existence of Moby Dick when they were speaking to another ship. Gabriel then warned against killing it, calling it the Shaker God incarnated. They ran into it about a year afterwards, and the ship's leaders decided to hunt it. As the mate was standing in the ship to throw his lance, the whale flipped the mate into the air and tossed him into the sea. Nothing was harmed except for the mate, who drowned. Gabriel, the entire time, had been on the mast-head and said, basically, "I told you so." When Ahab confirms that he intends to hunt the white whale still, Gabriel points to him, saying, "Think, think of the blasphemer--dead, and down there!--beware of the blasphemer's end!" Ahab then realizes that the Pequod is carrying a letter for the dead mate and tries to hand it over to the captain on the end of a cutting-spade pole. Somehow, Gabriel gets hold of it, impales it on the boat-knife, and sends it back to Ahab's feet as the Jeroboam pulls away. Ishmael backtracks again in The Monkey-Rope to explain how Queequeg inserts the blubber hook. Ishmael, as Queequeg's bowsman, ties the monkey-rope around his waist as Queequeg is on the whale's floating body trying to attach the hook. (In a footnote, we learn that only on the Pequod were the monkey and this holder actually tied together, an improvement introduced by Stubb.) While Ishmael holds him, Tashtego and Daggoo are also flourishing their whale-spades to keep the sharks away. When Dough-Boy, the steward, offers Queequeg some tepid ginger and water, the mates frown at the influence of pesky Temperance activists and make the steward bring him alcohol. Meanwhile, as the Pequod floats along, they spot a right whale. After killing him, Stubb asks Flask what Ahab might want with this "lump of foul lard." Flask responds that Fedallah says that a whaler with a Sperm Whale's head on her starboard side and a Right Whale's head on her larboard will never afterwards capsize. They then get into a discussion in which both of them confess that they do not like Fedallah and think of him as "the devil in disguise." In this instance and always, Fedallah watches and stands in Ahab's shadow. Ishmael notes that the Parsee's shadow seemed to blend with and lengthen Ahab's. These chapters illustrate some of Ishmael's narrative issues. For instance, how much of the plot movement should he detail in each of these technical chapters? Sometimes he just tacks on some action at the beginning or the end and spends most of the chapter talking about more peripheral issues. His tendency, after all, is to wax on about the larger, metaphorical meanings in ordinary things. When he speaks of dying whales, for example, he cannot help but talk of phantoms, ghosts, and fear. Also, Ishmael often backtracks, showing how hard it is to keep a story going straight ahead. Ishmael does get wryly self-conscious at times about his storytelling. When he reminds us at the beginning of Chapter 73 that we still have a head hanging on the side of the Pequod, he signals that he is conscious about his jumping from subject to subject. He also seems a little self-conscious about maintaining a tight hold on the story. It is interesting that, although he begins Moby-Dick with the authoritative declaration, "Call me Ishmael," he relegates his own comments in The Jeroboam's Story to parentheses. Of course, Ishmael is always present, but the question is how much the reader feels his presence. After all, the technical data on whaling seems pretty objective. But, in certain instances, such as The Blanket and The Funeral, in which Ishmael gets sentimental about whales, we remember that the story is told by a character that tends to get carried away about things. Ishmael's relationship to the whale is interesting from an environmental perspective, because the novel seems a little contradictory. On one hand, Moby-Dick glorifies the whale hunt, characterizing it as dangerous and valiant. Yet, Ishmael also genuinely likes whales and sympathizes with them. In fact, he often draws similarities between whales and men. For example, when he speaks of whale's blanket-pieces, he says whales can impart something to man: "Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among the ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep they blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own take after whales." Ishmael has a sense of wonder about whales, but also projects endearing human qualities on to them. (Some passages in Moby-Dick are perfect examples of anthropomorphism, the attribution of human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena.) In these chapters, Melville's pairing of characters becomes very evident. The major characters each have twins. Fedallah is joined to Ahab. Because Ishmael sees him as a figure of the occult, he hangs around in Ahab's shadow and adds to that darkness. Likewise, Queequeg and Ishmael are twins, connected by the monkey rope--"an elongated Siamese ligature." Earlier, Ishmael remarks that they are "wedded," but now they are even more closely linked and, "should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me [Ishmael] down in his wake." Ishmael calls Queequeg "my own inseparable twin brother." Recall, too, that each of the mates has a harpooner. But each of these pairings is not exclusive. For example, we shall see later that Ahab has another twin that exposes another part of his identity. In terms of character development, these chapters also bring up the question of insanity. Exactly what makes a person insane? Is Gabriel, the self-proclaimed prophet on the Jeroboam insane or gifted with heavenly ESP? Is Ahab insane? He certainly acts irrationally--but refusing to live his life according to a strict code of reason does not mean he lives without a code, or that his actions are not intelligible on some level. Likewise, how are we to understand the prophesizing Fedallah? He is a mystical, supernatural character who seems completely mysterious to the crew. But is he a crazy old spook who hangs around Ahab or is he some oriental soothsayer? As with all the other chapters, intertextuality is important here. References to the Bible again abound: Jeroboam, for example, was a wicked king of Israel who appears in I Kings (the Old Testament). But Moby-Dick also refers back to itself here. Like The Town-Ho's Story, The Jeroboam's Story is a frame story, or a story within the story. This sort of structure only stresses the importance of stories and storytelling. What Ahab wants is a story about Moby Dick--so he asks all whalers the same question. Stubb uses a story to make sense of the weird man standing on the Jeroboam. Gabriel uses the story of Moby Dick to support his own world-view, fashioning the story of Moby Dick to suit his own warnings. Finally, note the supernaturalism that runs through these chapters. The spookiness of the whale and Fedallah reminds some critics of scenes in Hawthorne's fiction that are eerie and intensely envisioned.

74 - 81
The paired chapters (74 and 75) do an anatomic comparison of the sperm whale's head and the right whale's head. In short, the sperm whale has a great well of sperm, ivory teeth, a long lower jaw, and one external spout-hole; the right whale has bones shaped like Venetian blinds in his mouth, a huge lower lip, a tongue, and one external spout-hole. Ishmael calls the right whale stoic and the sperm "platonian." The Battering-Ram discusses the blunt, large, wall-like part of the head that seems to be just a "wad." In actuality, inside the thin, sturdy casing is a "mass of tremendous life." He goes on to explain, in The Great Heidelberg Tun (a wine cask in Heidelberg with a capacity of 49,000 gallons), that there are two subdivisions of the upper part of a whale's head: the Case and the junk. The Case is the Great Heidelberg Tun, since it contains the highly-prized spermaceti. Ishmael then dramatizes the tapping of the case by Tashtego. It goes by bucket from the "cistern" (well) once Tashtego finds the spot. In this scene, Tashtego accidentally falls into the case. In panic, Daggoo fouls the lines, and the head falls into the ocean. Queequeg dives in and manages to save Tashtego. In The Prairie, Ishmael discusses the nineteenth-century arts of physiognomy (the art of judging human character from facial features) and phrenology (the study of the shape of the skull, based on the belief that it reveals character and mental capacity). By such analyses, the sperm whale's large, clear brow gives him the dignity of god. The whale's "pyramidical silence" demonstrates its genius. But later Ishmael abandons this line of analysis, saying that he isn't a professional. Besides, the whale wears a "false brow," because it really doesn't have much in its skull besides the spermy stuff. (The brain is about 10 inches big.) Ishmael then says that he would rather feel a man's spine to know him than his skull, throwing out phrenology. Judging by spines (which, like brains, are a network of nerves) would discount the smallness of the whale's brain and admire the wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal cord. The hump becomes a sign of the whale's indomitable spirit. The Jungfrau (meaning "virgin" in German) is out of oil and meets the Pequod to beg for some. Ahab, of course, asks about the White Whale, but the Jungfrau has no information. Almost immediately after the captain of the Jungfrau steps off the Pequod's deck, whales are sighted, and he goes after them desperately. The Pequod also gives chase and succeeds in harpooning the whale before the Germans. But, after bringing the carcass alongside the ship, they discover that the whale is sinking and dragging the ship along with it. Ishmael then discusses the frequency of sinking whales. The Jungfrau starts chasing a fin-back, a whale that resembles a sperm whale to the unskilled observer. So now Ishmael addresses the question, How can we evaluate a whale? One way would be to apply the human system of phrenology that was very popular in the nineteenth century. Phrenology rationalized the hierarchy of races--the Great Chain of Being that put Northern Europeans on top--and also gave rise to terms such as "high-brow" or "low-brow" that were widely used and very judgmental. But Ishmael's rejection of the study of skulls in favor of the study of spines shows his dissatisfaction with existing ideologies. Indeed, as he considers the whale, he never settles on just one part. Throughout all of his cetology explorations, he keeps going inward--from the outer surface of the skin he moves in to the blubber; from the outer skull, he moves in to the "nut" or brain. We might see this as Melville's commitment to inward probing--his tendency to try to get to the heart of things. Recall Ahab's statement that he must "strike through the mask," or the outward appearance. And Ishmael, in a self-conscious move, ties this mode of investigation to reading. After all, isn't phrenology just another form of reading? Instead of reading books, one reads skulls. So when he says, "I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can," Ishmael refers not just to the whale's skull, but also the book as a whole. It becomes a challenge to the reader of the novel to make sense of the bumps and curves in Moby-Dick. These chapters also give Ishmael another chance to demonstrate his sympathetic attitude toward the whales. When he describes their spearing of the whale and the animal's death, he is heavy on the blood and gore. The description is anthropomorphic. He hates to see the whale in this agony and describes its endearing, all-too-human emotions. We also see the playfulness of Ishmael's narration. When Ishmael describes Tashtego's near-death in the whale's head, Ishmael likens the way Queequeg pulls Tashtego out of the spermaceti to "obstetrics." The irony that Tashtego is emerging from spermaceti and the near obscenity of the comparison only adds to its wicked appeal. Such description shows the range of Ishmael's ability; he has a great variety of metaphors at his disposal.

82 - 92
Ishmael strays from the main action of the plot again, diving into the heroic history of whaling. First, he draws from Greek mythology, the Judeo-Christian Bible, and Hindu mythology. He then discusses the Jonah story in particular (a story that has been shadowing this entire novel from the start) through the eyes of an old Sag-Harbor whaleman who is crusty and questions the Jonah story based on personal experience. Ishmael then discusses pitch-poling by describing Stubb going through the motions (throwing a long lance from a jerking boat to secure a running whale). He then goes into a discursive explanation of how whales spout with some attempt at scientific precision. But he cannot define exactly what the spout is, so he has to put forward a hypothesis: the spout is nothing but mist, like the "semi-visible steam" that proceeds from the head of ponderous beings such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and himself! In the next chapter, he celebrates a whale's most famous part: his tail. He likes its potential power and lists its different uses. When the Pequod sails through the straits of Sunda (near Indonesia) without pulling into any port, Ishmael takes the opportunity to discuss how isolated and self-contained a whaleship is. While in the straits, they run into a great herd of sperm whales swimming in a circle (the "Grand Armada"), but as they are chasing the whales, they are being chased by Malay pirates. They try to "drugg" the whales so that they can kill them on their own time. (There are too many to try to kill at once.) They escape the pirates and go in boats after the whales, somehow ending up inside their circle, a placid lake. But one whale, which had been pricked and was floundering in pain, panics the whole herd. The boats in the middle are in danger but manage to get out of the center of the chaos. They try to "waif" the whales--that is, mark them as the Pequod's to be taken later. Ishmael then goes back to explaining whaling terms, starting with "schools" of whales. The schoolmaster is the head of the school, or the lord. The all-male schools are like a "mob of young collegians." Backtracking to a reference in Chapter 87 about waifs, Ishmael explains how the waif works as a symbol in the whale fishery. He goes on to talk about historical whaling codes and the present one that a Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it and a Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it. A fish is fast when it is physically connected (by rope, etc.) to the party after it or it bears a waif, says Ishmael. Lawyer-like, Ishmael cites precedents and stories to show how difficult it is to maintain rules. In Heads or Tails, he mentions the strange problem with these rules in England, because the King and Queen claim the whale. Some whalemen in Dover (or some port near there, says Ishmael) lost their whale to the Duke because he claimed the power delegated him from the sovereign. Returning to the narrative, Ishmael says they come up on a French ship Bouton de Rose (Rose-Button or Rose-Bud). This ship has two whales alongside: one "blasted whale" (one that died unmolested on the sea) that is going to have nothing useful in it and one whale that died from indigestion. Stubb asks a sailor about the White Whale. Never seen him, is the answer. Crafty Stubb then asks why the man is trying to get oil out of these whales when clearly there is none in either whale. The sailor on the Rose-Bud says that his captain, on his first trip, will not believe the sailor's own statements that the whales are worthless. Stubb goes aboard to tell the captain that the whales are worthless, although he knows that the second whale might have ambergris, an even more precious commodity than spermaceti. Stubb and the sailor make up a little plan in which Stubb says ridiculous things in English and the sailor says, in French, what he himself wants to say. The captain dumps the whales. As soon as the Rose-Bud leaves, Stubb mines and finds the sweet-smelling ambergris. Ishmael, in the next chapter, explains what ambergris is: though it looks like mottled cheese and comes from the bowel of whales, ambergris is actually used for perfumes. He uses dry legal language to describe ambergris and discuss its history, even though he acknowledges that poets have praised it. Ishmael then looks at where the idea that whales smell bad comes from. Some whaling vessels might have skipped cleaning themselves a long time ago, but the current bunch of South Sea Whalers always scrub themselves clean. The oil of the whale works as a natural soap. Ishmael begins this section by pitting world-views against each other. Sag-Harbor, who represents practical reason, takes on mystical and mythic texts. He takes on the Canon, or the long-accepted, dominant doctrine. But the Sag-Harbor interlude is important to Melville's commitment to plentitude. He wants to examine everything from different angles and empirical, or experience-based, evidence is an important challenge to the way people have historically understood the tale of Jonah. And Sag-Harbor is persistent. First, Sag-Harbor questions the Biblical story because the right whale has a small stomach. Bishop Jebb answers: but Jonah could be in the mouth of the whale not the stomach. Sag-Harbor says that a body inside the whale would have encountered gastric juices. A German exegete says that he could have been in a dead whale; others say that Jonah was in a vessel with a whale's head. Sag-Harbor asks how a person swallowed by a whale in the Mediterranean could end up near Nineveh, more than three days' journey away. Who wins this debate? It seems as if Sag-Harbor does, since Ishmael has to dismiss his objections as the "foolish pride of reason" and then discounts Sag-Harbor's ability to reason because the man has had little school-learning. It is rebellion against the clergy, says Ishmael. But these statements do little to argue against Sag-Harbor's objections. Melville believed strongly in the authority of experience, so it may be little wonder that Sag-Harbor's arguments are still left standing. These chapters also develop Ishmael's sympathy with the whales. Here, the struggle of man against whale becomes man next to whale. That is, the men in the Pequod's whaleboats are not always in opposition to the whale. In The Grand Armada, they peacefully observe the whales nursing. The men find the experience pleasant. Again, Ishmael adds in anthropomorphism, likening the group of male and female whales to an Ottoman and his concubines. Ishmael imagines these whales' relationship in human terms--a family with gender roles--though his choice to make them seem exotic and oriental makes for a bit of distance between himself and whales. (Whales are like human beings; but whales are not like the human beings with which Ishmael is most familiar.) Ishmael furthermore stresses interconnectedness in this section. Death and birth are connected as the blood of the panicked, hurt whales mingles with the milk that the calves are drinking. When the Pequod is chasing the whales, it is also being chased by pirates, illustrating that being on the seas means being part of a chain of events or a cycle. This puts the story of the Pequod in a larger, philosophical perspective. It also brings up this question: Is Ahab's quest a case of Ahab chasing the whale or a case of the whale chasing Ahab? Or is it both? As Ishmael takes on the philosophical issues of these chapters, he plays with variations in tone. He can be dry and legally tedious, as he is in discussions about codes of whaling. He seems to get a little mired in the technical specifics of vocabulary in these chapters. He painstakingly makes sure that the reader understands the terms he is using: waif, pitchpole, drugg, school, ambergris. But he can also get carried away talking about "the tornadoed Atlantic of my being" and emote about his soul. Pay attention to the register of his language and how he puts these registers together. The way he changes from register to register demonstrates the impressive range of his imagination. Ishmael is at his best when he applies minute specifics of whaling to larger topics. When he talks about whaling rules, for example, he sees that it can apply to other events in human history: "What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress?" or "What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish?" And again, intertextuality is important. The first chapter in this section draws from a wide range of references from a variety of cultures. By quoting epigraphs in two chapters (90 and 91) and referring to a range of sources, Moby-Dick situates itself in reference to what has come before it.

93 - 101
These are among the most important chapters in Moby-Dick. In The Castaway, Pip, who usually watches the ship when the boats go out, becomes a replacement in Stubb's boat. Having performed passably the first time out, Pip goes out a second time, and this time he jumps from the boat out of anxiety. When Pip gets foul in the lines, and his boatmates have to let the whale go free to save him, he makes them angry. Stubb tells him never to jump out of the boat again, because Stubb won't pick him up next time. Pip, however, does jump again, and he is left alone in the middle of the sea's "heartless immensity." Pip goes mad. A Squeeze of the Hand, which describes the baling of the case (emptying the sperm's head), is one of the funniest chapters in the novel. Because the spermaceti quickly cools into lumps, the sailors have to squeeze it back into liquid. Here, Ishmael goes overboard with his enthusiasm for the "sweet and unctuous" sperm. He squeezes all morning long, getting sentimental about the physical contact with the other sailors, whose hands he encounters in the sperm. He goes on to describe the other parts of the whale, including the euphemistically-named "cassock" (the whale's penis). This chapter is also very funny, blasphemously likening the whale's organ to the dress of clergymen because it has some pagan mysticism attached to it. It serves an actual purpose on the ship: the mincer wears the black "pelt" of skin from the penis to protect himself while he slices the horse-pieces of blubber for the pots. Ishmael then tries to explain the try-works, heavy structures made of pots and furnaces that boil the blubber and derive all the oil from it. He associates the try-works with darkness and a sense of exotic evil: it has "an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres." Furthermore, the pagan harpooners tend it. Ishmael also associates it with the red fires of Hell that, in combination with the black sea and the dark night, so disorient him that he loses sense of himself at the tiller. Everything becomes "inverted," he says, and suddenly there is "no compass before me to steer by." In a very short chapter, Ishmael describes in The Lamp how whalemen are always in the light, because their job is to collect oil from the seas. He then finishes describing how whale's oil is processed: putting the oil in casks and cleaning up the ship. Here he dismisses another myth about whaling: whalers are not dirty. Sperm whale's oil is a fine cleaning agent. But Ishmael admits that whalers are hardly clean for a day when the next whale is sighted and the cycle begins again. Ishmael returns to talking about the characters again, showing the reactions of Ahab, Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, the Manxman, Queequeg, Fedallah, and Pip to the golden coin fixed on the mainmast. Ahab looks at the doubloon from Ecuador and sees himself and the pains of man. Starbuck sees some Biblical significance about how man can find little solace in times of trouble. Stubb, first saying he wants to spend it, looks deeper at the doubloon because he saw his two superiors gazing meaningfully at it. He can find little but some funny dancing zodiac signs. Then Flask approaches and says he sees "nothing here, round thing made of gold and whoever raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So what's all this staring been about?" Pip is the last to look at the coin and says, prophetically, that here's the ship's "navel"--something at the center of the ship, holding it together. Then the Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby, a whaling ship from London with a jolly captain and crew. The first thing Ahab asks, of course, is if they have seen Moby Dick. The captain, named Boomer, has, and he lacks an arm because of it. The story is pretty gory, but Boomer does not dwell too much on the horrible details, choosing instead to talk about the hot rum toddies he drank during his recovery. The ship encountered the white whale again but did not want to try to fasten to it. Although the people on board the Enderby think he is crazy, Ahab insists on knowing which way the whale went and returns to his ship to pursue it. In the next chapter, Ishmael backtracks, to explain why the name Enderby is significant: this man fitted the first English sperm whaling ship. Ishmael then exuberantly explains the history behind the Enderby name before telling the story of the particular whaler Samuel Enderby. The good food aboard the Enderby earns the ship the title "Decanter." In these chapters, Ishmael is not afraid to probe deeply into the human psyche. First, there is the case of Pip, whose encounter with the terrible ocean completely changes his mind. He is no more the tambourine-playing darky from Alabama who dances around carefree. (Chapter 93 also presents another problem; now Ishmael says that Pip is from Tolland County in Connecticut, whereas 27 says that Pip is from Alabama.) He now speaks in the prophetic register, though he retains a kind of strange clownish quality. Indeed, he is like one of Shakespeare's fools, who say true things that sound initially ridiculous. Really, Pip grows uncannily perceptive. When he speaks of the doubloon, for instance, he perceives how much it holds the ship together. When he calls it the navel, he refers to folklore that says unscrewing the navel will cause one's backside to fall off. Indeed, taking away the quest of the white whale would result in a fracturing of shipboard unity. The ship would fall apart. Even though each person on the ship looks at the doubloon in a different way--"There's another rendering now, but still one text... I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look"--it is still the central reference point. What is important is the subject who looks, not what he sees. Discussing the meaning of the doubloon allows Ishmael to develop the psychological depth of the other characters and distinguish them from each other. Ahab, for example, sees meaning in things--a pessimistic, monomaniacal meaning, of course. Ahab is certain that it does have meaning since "some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way." Ahab implies that the only possible approaches to meaning are either nihilism or seeing significance in everything. These chapters therefore deal with semiotics. But while Starbuck also believes that tokens can have meaning, he usually reads biblical or Judeo-Christian morality into them. Starbuck confesses that cannot keep looking for symbols, however, "lest Truth shake me falsely." He puts too much store into symbols and therefore does not want to be shaken. But perhaps he takes things too seriously. Though Starbuck has faith that things do mean something, Stubb just laughs at taking too much meaning out of symbols. He is given to think of jollity if he sees meaning at all. Flask is the least imaginative and most explicit--he can't see beyond an object's physical characteristics. Indeed, the jovial nature aboard the Enderby also sets it in opposition to the somber Pequod. Captain Boomer explains that one should not keep malice going and that the white whale is not malicious. "What you take for the White Whale's malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints." For Ahab, however, "He's all a magnet!" Character pairings play a large role in this section, too. The boats Pequod and Enderby are bound together, as are their captains who suffer from similar wounds. The two men had totally opposite reactions to losing a limb: Ahab is pulled toward the whale, but Boomer is pushed away from it. We also better understand Ahab's relationship (or conflict) with Starbuck, since discussion of the doubloon allows Ishmael to talk about the fundamentally different ways they read the world. The Try-Works is a very important chapter, essential to the actual work of the whaler and essential to the work of the novel. First, the try-works are a fertile area for imagination. Ishmael can discuss its intense black and red color and the dangers of this intensity: "Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp--all others but liars!" The try-works can completely skew one's perspective and disorient a person. Especially when a man is at the tiller, keeping the ship oriented, he should stay away from the mind-altering effects of the try-work fire. Ishmael suggests that men trust only the daylight sun. Indeed, the pagan try-works have the power to invert perspectives. Somehow, the hints of Hell, influenced by Dante's allegories, and the exotic oriental imagery combine to make the try-works completely sinister. Staring at the try-works overturns convention, Ishmael says. It makes him think that the tiller has somehow reversed itself and makes him confused about the front and back of the ship. But not only does the try-works carry a mythic or deep symbolic meaning that conjures dark, frightening images of "the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness," it is also really part of the material of the industry. What is "really" important to the whale oil process and what is important to the story Moby-Dick are in harmony. Relativity is stressed in these chapters. In the intense red flames of the try-works, "all things look ghastly"--but not in the "gentler" sun. Furthermore, when he talks about the swooping Catskill eagle, he talks about the relative depths to which it dips and the heights to which it soars. Compared to other birds upon the plain, the Catskill eagle's "lowest swoop...is still higher," because he flies within a gorge in the mountains. Nothing can be evaluated in isolation. But Melville does seem to prefer the dark and horrifying in Moby-Dick. "The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped me." This gives a sense of Melville's aesthetic ideal--he sees the dark as beautiful. And he has more than passing interest in the devilish or blasphemous: the try-work's fires are like those in Hell. But for all this blackness, Melville is still capable of a lot of humor. Ishmael is funny in his discussion of squeezing sperm and the cassock. Also, Ishmael's parody of Scoresby's penchant for recording the trivial is also scathing. As in his relationship with Queequeg, Ishmael's feelings in A Squeeze of the Hand bring up questions of homoeroticism. What exactly is Ishmael feeling when he squeezes his fellow sailors' hands? The fact that they are in physical contact, squeezing sperm (a substance with definite sexual connotation), and feeling "affection, friendly, loving feeling" suggests a deep, shared emotion among the men. It is certainly sensual. But if this passage is not homoerotic, it does suggest a deeper-than-usual feeling of brotherhood or male companionship. These chapters bring up the semiotic problem again. What is the best way to learn about parts of blubber? Even though Ishmael insists on precise descriptions, he still feels that one must "descend into the blubber-room and have a long talk with its inmates" to really understand blubber and whaling. Indeed, the multiplicity of meanings for the doubloon simply illustrates the central problem of semiotics--how a symbol matches up with its referent (that which a symbol is supposed to symbolize). A symbol or signifier may lose all meaning and become simply a mirror, reflecting back the gazer and having no meaning of its own. In a way, the doubloon has become a mirror, telling more about the gazer than that which the gazer gazes upon.

102 - 114
Ishmael now tries another tactic for interpreting the whale. In the chapter called A Bower in the Arsacides, he discusses how he learned to measure a whale's bones. When he was visiting his friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, he lived in a culture in which the whale skeleton was sacred. After telling how he learned to measure, he goes on to tell the results of the measurements. He begins with the skull, the biggest part, then the ribs, and the spine. But these bones, he cautions, give only a partial picture of the whale, since so much flesh is wrapped around them. A person cannot still find good representation of a whale in its entirety. And Ishmael continues to "manhandle" the whale, self-consciously saying that he does the best he knows how. So he decides to look at the Fossil Whale from an "archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view." He can't be too grandiloquent with his exaggerated words and diction because the whale itself is so grand. He flashes credentials again, this time as a geologist, and then discusses his finds. But, again, he is unsatisfied: "the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body." But this chapter does give a sense of the whale's age and his pedigree. Ishmael finally gives up, in awe, deconstructing the whale--now he wants to know if such a fabulous monster will remain on the earth. Ishmael says that, though they may not travel in herds anymore, though they may have changed haunting grounds, they remain. Why? Because they have established a new home base at the poles, where man cannot penetrate; because they've been hunted throughout history and still remain; because the whale population is not in danger for survival because many generations of whales are alive at the same time. Ahab asks the carpenter to make him a new leg, because the one he uses is not trustworthy. After hitting it heavily on the boat's wooden floor when he returned from the Enderby, he does not think it will keep holding. Indeed, just before the Pequod sailed, Ahab had been found lying on the ground with the whalebone leg gouging out his thigh. So the carpenter, the do-it-all man on the ship, has to make Ahab a new prosthetic leg. They discuss the feeling of a ghost leg. When Ahab leaves, the carpenter thinks he is a little queer. A sailor then informs Ahab, in front of Starbuck, that the oil casks are leaking. The sailor suggests that they stop to fix them, but Ahab refuses to stop, saying that he doesn't care about the owners or profit. Starbuck objects, and Ahab points a musket at him. Says Starbuck, "I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man." In cleaning out the stowed oil casks, Queequeg falls sick. Thinking he is going to die, Queequeg orders a coffin made. He lies in it and closes the cover, as Pip dances around the coffin. Soon, Queequeg feels well again and gets out. Ishmael attributes this to his "savage" nature. In The Pacific, Ishmael gets caught up in the meditative, serene Pacific Ocean. At the end of the chapter, he comes back to Ahab, saying that no such calming thoughts entered the brain of the captain. Ishmael then pans over to the blacksmith, whose life on land disintegrated. With characteristic panache, Ishmael explains that the sea beckons to broken-hearted men who long for death but cannot commit suicide. The Forge dramatizes an exchange between the blacksmith and Ahab in which the captain asks the blacksmith to make a special harpoon to kill the white whale. Although Ahab gives the blacksmith directions, he takes over the crafting of the harpoon himself, hammering the steel on the anvil and tempering it with the blood of the three harpooners (instead of water). The scene ends with Pip's laughter. In The Gilder, Ishmael considers how the dreaminess of the sea masks a ferocity. He speaks of the sea as "gilt" because it looks golden in the sunset and is falsely calm. The sea even makes Starbuck rhapsodize, making an apostrophe (direct address of an absent or imaginary person or of a personified abstraction, especially as a digression in the course of a speech or composition) to the sea; Stubb answers him by surprise and, as usual, makes light of the situation. These chapters illustrate the multiplicity of interpretations that Melville tries to encourage. What is the essence of whaling? He has already tried to answer this question by studying the whale itself minutely and scientifically. At this point in the novel, he has already explored the outer parts of the whale; now is time to look further inside. So Ishmael turns his investigation to the whale's skeleton, that which structures, organizes, and gives form to the whale. (Structure, as an idea, is important because we might think of cetology as a structure to the story. An investigation of whales runs throughout and gives the story a backbone of sorts.) One way to look at a whale's skeleton is to measure it. Therefore, Ishmael discusses how he came to know how to measure (in Chapter 102) and then does some measuring in Chapter 103. But Ishmael is not sure this is the right approach. After all, he feels ill-qualified to measure a whale and tell what the measurements mean: "How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton." He feels as if he cannot comprehend the whale adequately and wearies in the effort. To do an adequate job discussing a whale is too ambitious, because it involves "the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and through the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs." It is interesting that here Ishmael makes an analogy to books: "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it." This links the process of investigating whales insolubly to the process of writing books. If all novels are on some level about the writing process, Moby-Dick owns up to it here. This section also makes another self-referential wink in the description of a woven whale skeleton that forms an Arsacidean religious house. Here, Ishmael sees on this loom life and death intertwined here as plants wind around the skeleton; in The Mat-Maker Ishmael saw fate and free will intertwined on the Loom of Time. The interconnection between life and death also tacks back to The Grand Armada, in which he saw nursing whales and dying whales intermingling. (In this section, we also see the interweaving of pain and support in Ahab's ivory leg in Leg and Arm. Ahab's use of whale ivory to replace what the white whale cut away intertwines the whale's body with his own and intertwines destruction and rehabilitation.) But weaving, as a general tactic, applies to Ishmael's storytelling strategy as well. There are so many different ways to tell a story--variations in tone, technique, and metaphor--and so many different bits of the story to tell that he has to act like a weaver; Ishmael must put everything together to present to the reader. Indeed, consider the way that serious dramatic monologues are mixed with lighter monologues and the way dramatic scenes are mixed with expository prose. Ishmael's concern for the whale kicks in again in these chapters. He worries that the whale will follow the same fate as the buffalo in the nineteenth century. (In this way, he connects the sea and the West again.) Luckily, says Ishmael, the sperm whale is perpetual, having survived from biblical times until now. These chapters recall Ishmael's statement in Chapter 1 that "meditation and water are wedded for ever." Indeed, the Pacific Ocean seems to be capable of limitless musings and interpretations. It can be a backdrop for human events; it can influence human events; it can beckon adventurers; it can be beautiful and soothing; it can be dangerous. The multiple interpretations of the sea affect the way Ishmael tells the story. Ahab, for instance, does not respond to the sea as Ishmael does; Ishmael therefore has to explain what the sea means to Ahab. Though Ishmael can appreciate its beauty and wonder at it, expanding his prose, he must try to cut back on his sentimentalism when he talks about Ahab's relationship to it, since the captain simply sees it as a thing that hides the white whale.

115 - 125
These chapters show how badly off the Pequod really is. The somber Pequod, still on the lookout for Moby Dick, runs into the Bachelor, a festive Nantucket whaler on its way home with a full cargo. The captain of the Bachelor, saying that he has only heard stories of the white whale and doesn't believe them, invites Ahab and the crew to join his party. Ahab declines. The next day, the Pequod kills several whales, and the way that a dying whale turns towards the sun spurs Ahab to speak out to it in wondrous tones. While keeping a night vigil over a whale that was too far away to take back to the ship immediately, Ahab hears from Fedallah the prophecy of his death. Before Ahab can die, he must see two hearses, one "not made by mortal hands" and one made of wood from America; and only hemp can kill the captain. Back on the ship, Ahab holds up a quadrant, an instrument that gauges the position of the sun, to determine the ship's latitude. Ahab decides that it does not give him the orienteering information he wants and tramples it underfoot. He orders the ship to change direction. The next day, the Pequod is caught in a typhoon. The weird weather makes white flames appear at the top of the three masts, and Ahab refuses to let the crew put up lightning rods to draw away the danger. While Ahab marvels at the ship's three masts lit up like three spermaceti candles, hailing them as good omens and signs of his own power, Starbuck sees them as a warning against continuing the journey. When Starbuck sees Ahab's harpoon also flickering with fire, he says that this is a sign that God is against Ahab. Ahab, however, grasps the harpoon and says, in front of a frightened crew, that there is nothing to fear in the enterprise that binds them all together. He blows out the flame to "blow out the last fear." In the next chapter, Starbuck questions Ahab's judgment again--this time saying that they should pull down the main-top-sail yard. Ahab says that they should just lash it tighter, complaining that his first mate must think him incompetent. On the bulwarks of the forecastle, Stubb and Flask are having their own conversation about the storm and Ahab's behavior. Stubb basically dominates the conversation and says that this journey is no more dangerous than any other, even though it seems as if Ahab is putting them in extreme danger. Suspended above them all on the main-top-sail yard, Tashtego says to himself that sailors don't care that much about the storm, just rum. When the storm finally dies down, Starbuck goes below to report to Ahab. On the way to Ahab's cabin, he sees a row of muskets, including the very one that Ahab had leveled at him earlier. Angry about Ahab's reckless and selfish behavior, he talks to himself about whether he ought to kill his captain. He decides he cannot kill Ahab in his sleep and goes up. When Ahab is on deck the next day, he realizes that the storm has thrown off the compasses. Ahab then pronounces himself "lord over the level loadstone yet" and makes his own needle. Here Ishmael comments, "In this fiery eye of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride." With all the other orienteering devices out of order, Ahab decides to pull out the seldom-used log and line. Because of heat and moisture, the line breaks, and Ahab realizes that he now has none of his original orienteering devices. He calls for Pip to help him, but Pip answers with nonsense. Ahab, touched by Pip's crazy speeches, says that his cabin will now be Pip's, because the boy "touches [his] inmost center." Pay close attention to how these chapters are told. Notice that sometimes Ishmael tells the story as any regular fictional narrator would (e.g., Chapter 115). And then, sometimes his voice fades out as a scene climaxes. In The Candles, for instance, Ishmael seems to be in control of the storytelling, but when lightning flashes and the flames on the masts leap up, the drama of the situation seems to take over. Ishmael's voice takes a back seat, stage directions come in, and Ahab begins a long speech. The "narrative" becomes a "performance" with Ahab as the star. Chapters 120 to 122 are completely written like scenes in a play, with stage directions and dialogue. (In a way, you might consider some of the other chapters as setting up the "props.") Scenes in dramas emphasize the speeches of the characters themselves, and in this section many characters go off on monologues or soliloquies. At this point in the novel, psychological depth is very important--we have been introduced to the characters and see how they act in certain situations, but need to understand how they think. These monologues aren't strictly realistic, but adopt some of the "asides" that Shakespeare used in his plays. Speaking of Shakespeare, we should note the amount of intertextuality in this section. The prophesy of Ahab's death in Chapter 117 echoes the scene in Macbeth in which the witches tell the king that he must be wary of Macduff, that he cannot be killed by a man born of woman, and that he cannot be killed until the forest moves. As this prophecy gave Macbeth false courage, so it does with Ahab: "I am immortal then," he boasts. Another Shakespearean tragedy, King Lear, also seems influential, especially in reference to the intense storm and the king's fool. Note also that there is a very deliberate order to these chapters. If Chapter 119 brings everything to a boiling point, the following chapters allow the action to cool down. Stubb and Flask never take anything seriously (in the middle of the storm, Stubb is singing!), so their dialogue in Chapter 121 releases some of the tension that is built up. Stubb's statement that this voyage isn't so much more dangerous than others pulls the reader out of the ground level of the typhoon that Melville has created. Literally, their position on the bulwarks is above the deck. But then Melville takes one more step away from the center of the storm with Tashtego. His statement is just comical (and comically short). Standing at the top of the ship looking down on everyone, he can put events in perspective and dismiss them. The progress of these chapters also indicates Ahab's increasing control over the ship. First Ahab throws away the quadrant, then he refuses to put up the lightning rods, makes his own compass, and then breaks the log and line. These manufactured devices kept the Pequod on some standard (or standardized) course. But now, all depends on him; there is no external control. He is so involved in his own psychology and has made his own mission the Pequod's such that parts of this ship start to symbolize parts of his psyche. (For instance, he sees the main-top-sail as a symbol of his own high-flying ambitions and refuses to give it up.) We might see this as an example of how far Emerson's doctrine of "Self-Reliance" might go: a self-reliant man might endanger all the people around him, turn the world around him into a self-reflective psychodrama, reject science, and take over the narrative of a story. Most of the long monologues in this section are, after all, Ahab's. Another way to consider how central Ahab has become is to see how all the other characters are set up in relation to Ahab in these chapters. The twinning of Ahab and Fedallah that occurred earlier becomes even more obvious. Ishmael says in Chapter 117 that the two of them sit silent "as one man" in the whaleboat. They start looking at the same things (e.g., the whale, the sun), which is close to looking through each other's eyes. And their sympathetic bonds are developing so tightly that their faces are showing the same emotions. By Chapter 119, we might say that Ahab has even converted to Fedallah's religion; Parsees are fire-worshippers and Ahab worships the flames on the Pequod's masts and his harpoon. Ahab also acquires another "dark" twin in this section. Pip and Ahab are very complementary: Ahab is white, while Pip is black. Ahab is at the center of the intrigue, while Pip is (seemingly) marginal. Ahab is atop the shipboard hierarchy, while Pip is at the bottom. Ahab is old and shipboard-wise, while Pip is young and knows nothing about whaling technique. But most importantly, Ahab seems just this side of crazy; Pip seems to have crossed over. They both see the world slightly aslant and feel alienated from the majority of the men on the ship. Their situation, as Pip explains it, creates between them a "man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by." The antagonism between Ahab and his first mate also grows in these chapters. At first, Starbuck keeps his discontent to himself, then he speaks to his captain in front of the crew, specifically asks to change the orders, and then contemplates imprisoning or killing his captain. The two men hold competing interpretations of the world, and this difference is starting to come to a head. Starbuck thinks about home with tenderness, not allowing this mission to take over his mind completely, considers the crew, and reasons (rather than emotes). His indecision (and the way he says it out loud to the audience) is reminiscent of the scene in Hamlet in which Hamlet considers killing Claudius while the king is praying. So much attention on Ahab brings up the question of how much impact one man can have on the vast universe. Ahab is aware of a higher power that structures his fate. In Chapter 118, Stubb reports that he heard Ahab mutter to himself, "Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine; swears that I must play them, and no others." Ahab, who seems the most willful character in the book and the one who seems most in control of his destiny, can see himself a puppet whose role has already been scripted. After all, The Candles establishes how mighty Nature is, and previous chapters have established how awe-inspiring the sea is. Is, then, Ahab's attempt to seize his own fate and steer the ship according to his liking simply a case of hubris, the sin of pride that took down many a tragic hero? Another thing to consider in these chapters is exoticism. We're certainly aware that this is no normal whaling voyage. The images that Ahab holds up as sacred are not those that mainstream American society would hold up as sacred. In Ahab's soliloquy on the dying whale, for instance, he invokes fire worship, Chinese ages, the Niger River, and Hinduism. What is inscrutable--in this case, the whale--is likened to things that are pagan or "other." They also bear some occult relationship to Nature. (For instance: "Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature.") How fairly considered Melville's exotic images are is up for grabs. Ahab's closest adviser, after all, is a mish-mash of oriental cultures (East Asian and Middle Eastern). ( Queequeg, as previously noted, is also a composite.) The linkage of the exotic and unconventional to some dark, mystical, natural principle does work on the level of images. Color and references to pagodas make it easier to see that Ahab isn't the conventional Yankee.

126 - 132
Sailors are very superstitious. As the Pequod approaches the Equatorial fishing ground, the sailors think that they hear ghosts wailing. The Manxman (man from the Isle of Man) says that these are the voices of the newly-drowned men in the sea. Ahab says nonsense. When the Pequod's life-buoy falls overboard and sinks, the sailors think it is a fulfillment of evil that was foretold. The officers decide to replace the life-buoy with Queequeg's coffin. Though the carpenter grumbles about having to transform the object, Ahab, who is aware of the irony of the substitution, nevertheless calls the carpenter "unprincipled as the gods" for going through with the substitution. The Pequod encounters the ship Rachel while it is looking for Moby Dick in these waters. Captain Gardiner of the Rachel, after affirming that he has indeed seen Moby Dick, climbs aboard Ahab's ship and begs Ahab to help him find his son, whose whaleboat was lost in the chase after the white whale. Ahab refuses. Now that Ahab knows that the white whale is near, he spends a lot of time walking the decks. As Ahab goes up one time, Pip wants to follow him, but Ahab tells him to stay in the captain's cabin, lest Pip's insanity start to cure his own just when he's getting close to the whale and needs to be a little crazy. And so Ahab, shadowed everywhere by Fedallah, remains on deck, ever watchful. This continuous watch sharpens Ahab's obsession, and he decides that he must be the first to sight the whale. He asks Starbuck to help him get up the main-mast head and watch his rope. When he is there, a black hawk steals his hat; Ishmael considers this a bad omen. The Pequod then runs into the miserably misnamed ship Delight. The Delight has indeed encountered Moby Dick, but the result was a gutted whaleboat and dead men. As the Pequod goes by, the Delight drops a corpse in the water and sprinkles the Pequod's hull with a "ghostly baptism." In the chapter called The Symphony, disparate parts come together for a crescendo. The pressure finally gets to Ahab, and he seems human here, dropping a tear into the sea. He and Starbuck have a bonding moment as Ahab sadly talks about his continual, tiring whaling. He calls himself a fool and thinks himself pathetic. Starbuck suggests giving up the chase, but Ahab wonders if he can stop, because he feels pushed on by Fate. But as Ahab is asking these grand questions, Starbuck steals away. When Ahab goes to the other side of the deck to gaze into the water, Fedallah, too, is looking over the rail. This section works on further developing Ahab's character. Ahab is still quite sensible about some matters; he says, for example, that the ghostly wailing the sailors hear is only the crying of seals. Like Hamlet, Ahab is "mad but North, North West"--that is, only when he thinks about the white whale. Once the whale enters the picture, he overthrows everything. Ahab's monomania about the whale even keeps him from helping a fellow whaleman look for his son! This might seem like common human decency, but Captain Gardiner cannot affect Ahab with his pleas. It is more understandable that a captain would obsessively search the seas for a child--but search the seas for a whale? We also learn more about Ahab and Fedallah. "At times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood far parted in the starlight," Ishmael notes. "Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast; but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance." They are in a mutually beneficial (symbiotic) relationship, in which both parts need something of the other; this divide in particular (the spirit from the body) is an old one. Furthermore, the way they are yoked together still leaves everyone unsure who is master and who is slave. Ostensibly, Ahab is captain, but sometimes Fedallah's glance "awes" Ahab. Ahab and Starbuck's relationship is also developed further. It seems cruel and perhaps dumb for Ahab to chose the first mate to hoist him up the mast when the first mate is the only one who disagrees with him. But Ahab is playing mind games--he knows that Starbuck would never drop him specifically because Starbuck does hate him and would not dare commit such an obvious crime. Indeed, this situation seems a parody or intensification of the Monkey-Rope chapter between Ishmael and Queequeg. But despite these disagreements, Ahab and Starbuck finally have a breakthrough in The Symphony: "Close! Stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God," gasps Ahab. For Ahab to want to look at something human when all he has been thinking about is whales signals a slight change in Ahab's attitude. He has stopped thinking about the whale just long enough to realize that he might soon die in this ridiculous quest. Starbuck, too, cracks, sympathizing with his captain for the first time and letting himself get emotional: "Oh, my Captain! My Captain! Noble soul! grand old heart," he says, giving up his resistance to Ahab. Indeed, things have certainly changed aboard the Pequod. The typical power structure has been overturned. For example, Pip, formerly a minor character, is now sitting "in the ship's full middle." Ahab, in fact, tells Pip to sit in his chair as if Pip "were the captain." Pip thinks this is strange, "when a black boy's host to white men with gold lace upon their coats!" After all, Pip is used to serving Ahab. And Pip knows that people like him (the young, the black) typically serve people like Ahab (older white men). It is not so clear that Ahab is in complete control anymore. "What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me," asks Ahab, "that against all natural lovings and longings, so I keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab?" Who is in control, then? In this self-conscious moment, Ahab wonders about his free will and his identity. Who is pushing him to go on? Is that his own self, or is he foreign even to himself?

133 - Epilogue
Ahab can sense by smell that Moby Dick is near. Climbing up to the main royal-mast head, Ahab spots Moby Dick and earns himself the doubloon. All the boats set off in chase of the whale. When Moby Dick finally surfaces, he stoves Ahab's boat. The whale is swimming too fast away from them, so they all return to the ship. Saying that persistent pursuit of one whale has historically happened before, Ishmael comments that Ahab still desperately wants to chase Moby Dick though he has lost one boat. They do sight Moby Dick again, and the crewmen, growing increasingly in awe of Ahab and caught up in the thrill of the chase, lower three boats. Starbuck stays to mind the Pequod. Ahab tries to attack Moby Dick head-on this time, but again, Moby Dick is triumphant. He stoves Ahab's ship and breaks his false leg. When they return to the Pequod, Ahab finds out that Fedallah is gone, dragged down by Ahab's own line. Starbuck tells him to stop, but Ahab, convinced that he is only the "Fate's lieutenant," says he must keep pursuing the whale. Still on the lookout, the crew spots the white whale for a third time, but sees nothing until Ahab realizes, "Aye, he's chasing me now; not I, him--that's bad." They turn the ship around completely, and Ahab mounts the masthead himself. He sights the spout and lowers again. As he gets into his boat and leaves Starbuck in charge, the two men exchange a poignant moment in which Ahab asks to shake hands with his first mate, and the first mate tries to tell him not to go. Dangerously, sharks bite at the oars as the boats pull away. In a monologue, Starbuck laments Ahab's sure doom. On the water, Ahab sees Moby Dick breach. Seeing Fedallah strapped to the whale by turns of rope, Ahab realizes that this is the first hearse that the Parsee had forecasted. The whale goes down again and Ahab rows close to the ship. He tells Tashtego to find another flag and nail it to the main masthead. The boats soon see the white whale again and go after him. But Moby Dick only turns around and heads for the Pequod at full speed. He smashes the ship. It goes down without its captain. The ship, Ahab realizes, is the second hearse. Impassioned, Ahab is now determined to strike at Moby Dick with all of his power: "Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!" After darting the whale, Ahab is caught around the neck by the flying line. He is dragged under the sea. Tashtego, meanwhile, is still trying to nail the flag to the ship's spar as it goes down. He catches a sky-hawk in mid-hammer, and the screaming bird, folded in the flag, goes down with everything else. In the Epilogue, Ishmael wraps up the story, saying that he is the only one who survived the wreck. All the boats and the ship were ruined. Ishmael survives only because Queequeg's coffin bobs up and becomes his life buoy. A day after the wreck, the Rachel, still cruising for her first lost son, saves Ishmael. Whether Moby Dick the whale continues to swim on after the destructive climax is uncertain. In Chapter 54 (The Town-Ho's Story), the only chapter that takes place after the sinking of the Pequod, Ishmael refers to the whale's immortality. But, it might also make sense if Ahab and the whale died together, too, since their fates had been linked since the beginning. First, Ishmael says only "one" survived the wreck--presumably himself. Second, the novel is, after all, a tragedy, and, in most tragedies, there is a sense of poetic justice. For example, the tragic mechanism that dictates that a hero take responsibility for his own actions dictates that Ahab die by his own hand. And so he is dragged down by the line he throws into the whale out of pride. When the ship is destroyed, Ahab recognizes his own handiwork, saying sadly, "Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work." But how did we expect Ahab to act? He is, after all, ruled by emotions and the heart. Ahab himself says, "Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal men! to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege." What seems like pride to everyone else then--a willful refusal to listen to other authorities--is to Ahab actually a form of deference to God. But Ahab still keeps a hearty sense of pride despite the downturn in his fate. Telling Tashtego to nail another flag to the masthead may seem extravagant, but Ahab can broadcast that his spirits are not flagging if the flag goes up. Once he understands (and accepts) what will happen to him, he also accepts how he is built: "I, oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief." We feel the extent of his desperation. The depth of his emotions determines the greatness of his legacy and work. Recall this spirit of relativism in the image of the Catskill eagle. The gap between the very emotional Ahab and the painfully rational Starbuck grows. They see the same events, but while Starbuck says they are bad omens, Ahab thinks they are welcoming. When the whale swims away from the boat, for example, Starbuck says that this is the whale letting them stop this crazy chase. But not Ahab--it is only another whale trick that he has figured out. This willfulness only shows to Starbuck that "Moby Dick seeks thee [Ahab] not. It is thou, thou that madly seekest him!" Not only do they read the world in their own separate ways, but the plot now physically separates them from each other. Starbuck watches the ship; Ahab goes forth and hunts. Moreover, Starbuck wonders whether he can activate his heart on any profound level: "Feel thy heart--beats it yet?" Starbuck asks himself. "Stir thyself, Starbuck!" But Ishmael does skillfully handle Ahab's relationship with the crew. If Ishmael said in Chapter 27 that the crew members were "Isolatoes" who were "federated along one keel" following Ahab, we can see exactly how they have become dominated by Ahab. They run into each other "in one concrete hull" which is "both balanced and directed by the long central keel all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to." Ahab is no longer just their leader that pulls them along a track; Ahab is their keel. Ishmael also pays attention to the structure behind these chapters. In Ahab's interactions with the whale, he grows increasingly confrontational. The first lowering was just like any other, not caring exactly how the patient approached the whale. The second lowering heads for Moby Dick straight-on. By the third lowering, Ahab makes the ship itself (not just the boat) take on the whale head-on. Ishmael has also folded drama into the texture of his novel. The epilogue owes much to Shakespearean studies, in which characters like Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream or the clown from Twelfth Night deliver a short monologue. This gloss at the end completes the frame effect nicely, since the book opens with commentary by Ishmael.

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CHARLES DICKENS "OLIVER TWIST"

Author
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812. When he was twelve years old, his father, mother, and siblings were sent to debtors' prison. Dickens did not join them; instead, he worked at the Warren Blacking Factory. The horrific conditions in the factory haunted Dickens for the rest of his life. In 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth, but after twenty years of marriage and ten children, Dickens fell in love with Ellen Ternan, an actress. Soon after, Dickens and his wife separated, ending a long stream of marital difficulties. Dickens, always a prolific writer, continued to work long hours in his later years. He died of a stroke in 1870.
Dickens worked as a newspaper reporter as well as a professional fiction writer. Many of his works were published in serialized magazine installments. Throughout his life, Dickens combined his work in journalism and literature with a liberal helping of editorial work. He often worked on several books at the same time. Some people have accused Dickens of writing so much simply because he was paid by the word. However, it seems more likely that he had an insatiable passion for writing.
Dickens' childhood experiences with the draconian English legal system made him a life-long champion of the poor. His novels are filled with downtrodden figures like abused impoverished orphans. He had a profound sympathy for childhood suffering which touches his work at almost every level. These themes heavily influence Oliver Twist. The title character, a poor orphan, wanders through Victorian society as the child of fortune or misery depending on the disposition of those he meets. He faces the malice of state institutions, as well as the malice of violent criminals. His story reflects the experience of poverty in the England of his era. While the novel is often fanciful and humorous, it also has recognizably bitter undertones. Perhaps those undertones echo the voice of the humiliated and resentful twelve-year-old Dickens who labored in the atrocious conditions of the Warren Blacking Factory.

Characters
Barney - Barney is one of Fagin's criminal associates. Like Fagin, he is also Jewish.
Charley Bates - Charley Bates is one of Fagin's pickpockets. He is ready to laugh at anything. After Sikes' murder of Nancy, he changes his criminal ways and leads an honest life. Mrs. Bedwin - Mrs. Bedwin is Mr. Brownlow's kind-hearted housekeeper. She is unwilling to believe Mr. Bumble's negative report of Oliver's character. Bet - Bet is one of Fagin's former child pickpockets.
Mr. Brittles - Mr. Brittles is a sort of handyman for Mrs. Maylie's estate. He has worked for Mrs. Maylie since he was a small boy.v Mr. Brownlow - Mr. Brownlow is Oliver's first benefactor. He owns a portrait of Oliver's mother, and he was a close friend of Oliver's father. When Oliver disappears on an errand, Mr. Brownlow offers a reward of five guineas for anyone who has information about his history or his whereabouts.
Mr. Bumble - Mr. Bumble is the pompous, self-important "beadle" (a minor church official) for the workhouse where Oliver is born. He delivers a bad report of Oliver to Mr. Brownlow. He marries Mrs. Corney because he hopes to gain financially as her husband. He becomes the workhouse master, giving up his office as parish beadle. He regrets both marrying Mrs. Corney and becoming the workhouse master. He and his wife accept a bribe from Monks to conceal Oliver's identity. Grimwig and Brownlow ensure that he never holds public office again after his role in Monks' schemes comes to light. As a result, he lives the rest of his life in poverty. Bulls-Eye - Bulls-Eye is Bill Sikes' dog. As brutal and vicious as his master, he functions as Sikes' alter-ego. He leaves bloody footprints in the room where Sikes murders Nancy. Sikes tries to drown him after the murder, because he is afraid the dog, which follows him everywhere, will give him away to the legal authorities.
Charlotte - Charlotte is the Sowerberrys' maid. She becomes romantically involved with Noah Claypole, Mr. Sowerberry's charity-boy apprentice. She mistreats Oliver when Oliver is also an apprentice to the undertaker. She runs away with Noah to London after they rob the Sowerberrys. After Fagin's hanging, she helps Noah live as a con-man.
Noah Claypole - Noah Claypole is Mr. Sowerberry's charity boy apprentice. He is an over-grown, cowardly bully. He mistreats Oliver when Oliver is Sowerberry's apprentice. He runs away to London with Charlotte after robbing the Sowerberrys. He joins Fagin's band as a thief. After Fagin's execution, he lives as a con man.
Mrs. Corney - Mrs. Corney is the matron of the workhouse where Oliver is born. She is hypocritical and callous. She marries Mr. Bumble but soon regrets it. She accepts a bribe from Monks to conceal Oliver's identity. As a result, Grimwig and Brownlow ensure that she never holds public office again. She ends by living in poverty with her husband.
Toby Crackit - He is one of Fagin and Sikes' associates. He participates in the attempted burglary of Mrs. Maylie's home.
Jack Dawkins (a.k.a. The Artful Dodger) - The Dodger is one of Fagin's pickpockets. He is an intelligent, humorous little thief. He introduces Oliver to Fagin.
Duff and Blathers - Duff and Blathers are the two bumbling police officers who investigate the attempted burglary of Mrs. Maylie's home.
Fagin - Fagin is a conniving career criminal. He gathers homeless boys under his wing and teaches them to pick pockets for him. He also serves as a fence for other people's stolen goods. He rarely commits crimes himself, because he employs others to commit them for him. He schemes with Monks to keep Oliver's identity a secret. Dickens portrays Fagin using extremely negative anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Mr. Fang - Mr. Fang is the harsh, judgmental, power-hungry magistrate who presides over Oliver's trial for pickpocketing.
Agnes Fleming - She is Oliver's mother, who gave birth to Oliver out of wedlock. To save her father and her sister from the shame of her condition, she ran away during her pregnancy. She died immediately after giving birth to Oliver in a workhouse.
Mr. Gamfield - Mr. Gamfield is a brutal chimney-sweep. Oliver almost becomes his apprentice.
Mr. Giles - Mr. Giles is Mrs. Maylie's butler. He shoots Oliver during the attempted burglary of Mrs. Maylie's home.
Mr. Grimwig - Mr. Grimwig is Brownlow's pessimistic, curmudgeonly friend. He tells Brownlow that Oliver is probably a boy of immoral and idle habits.
Mr. Leeford - Mr. Leeford is Oliver and Monks' father. His first marriage was forced on him by his family for economic reasons. He separated from his wife and had a love affair with Agnes Fleming, Oliver's mother.
Mr. Losberne - He is Mrs. Maylie's family physician. He conceals Oliver's role in the attempted burglary of Mrs. Maylie's home from the legal authorities.
Mrs. Mann - She superintends the juvenile workhouse where Oliver spends the first nine years of his life. She steals from the stipend meant for the care of the children living in her establishment. She physically abuses and half-starves the children in her care. Mrs. Maylie - She is a kind, generous woman. She takes pity on Rose when she finds her as a nameless, penniless orphan child. She welcomes Oliver in after he shows up on her doorstep, half-dead from the gunshot wound he suffered during the attempted burglary of her home. Her son, Harry, marries Rose.
Harry Maylie - He is Mrs. Maylie's son. He gives up his political ambitions in order to marry Rose.
Rose Maylie - She is Agnes Fleming's sister. Agnes and her father died when she was very young. Mrs. Maylie took her in and raised her as her own. She is kind and forgiving. She marries Harry Maylie.
Mr. Monks - He is Leeford's first son, and Oliver's brother. He schemes to conceal Oliver's identity because he wants his father's wealth all to himself.
Nancy - She is one of Fagin's former child pickpockets. She tries to save Oliver from being corrupted by Fagin's lifestyle. She is also Bill Sikes' lover. Sikes murders her after he learns of her contact with Brownlow and Rose.
Old Sally - She is the nurse who attends Oliver's birth. She steals Agnes' gold locket, the only clue to Oliver's identity.
Bill Sikes - He is a professional burglar. He is also a brutal alcoholic. He attempts to rob Mrs. Maylie's home. He leaves Oliver lying in a ditch after he is wounded in the burglary. He murders Nancy in a fit of rage after Fagin tells him that she has contacted Brownlow and Rose.
Mr. Slout - He is the workhouse master before Mr. Bumble assumes the office.
Mr. Sowerberry - He is the undertaker for the parish where Oliver is born. He tries to be kind to Oliver when Oliver is his apprentice, but he succumbs to his wife's pressure to beat Oliver for his physical confrontation with Noah.
Mrs. Sowerberry - She is a mean, judgmental woman. She mistreats and underfeeds Oliver when he is Mr. Sowerberry's apprentice. She pressures her husband to beat Oliver for his physical confrontation with Noah.
Oliver Twist - He is the protagonist of the novel. He is born a poor, nameless orphan in a workhouse. He represents the misery of poverty in 1830s England. His identity is the central mystery of the novel. He is the illegitimate son of Mr. Leeford, a wealthy Englishman. His evil brother, Monks, schemes to deprive him of his share of their father's wealth.

Summary
Oliver Twist provides insight into the experience of the poor in 1830s England. Beneath the novel's raucous humor and flights of fancy runs an undertone of bitter criticism of the attitudes toward the poor of the Victorian middle class. Dickens' scathing satire attacks the hypocrisy and venality of the legal system, workhouses, and middle-class moral values and marriage practices of 1830s England. As a child, Dickens endured the harsh conditions of poverty. His family was imprisoned for debt, and Dickens was forced to work in a factory at age twelve. These experiences haunted him for the rest of his life. The misery of impoverished childhood is a recurrent theme in his novels. Oliver Twist epitomizes the unfortunate situation of the orphaned pauper child. Oliver suffers the cruelty of hypocritical workhouse officials, prejudiced judges, and hardened criminals. Throughout the novel, his virtuous nature survives the unbelievable misery of his situation.
Oliver's experiences demonstrate the legal silence and invisibility of the poor. In 1830s England, wealth determined voting rights. Therefore, paupers had no say in the laws that governed their lives, and the Poor Laws strictly regulated the ability to seek relief. Since begging was illegal, workhouses were the only sources of relief. The workhouses were made to be deliberately unpleasant in order to discourage paupers from seeking their relief. The Victorian middle class assumed that the poor were impoverished due to lassitude and immorality. Since the poor had no voting rights, the state chose to recognize their existence only when they committed crimes, died, or entered the workhouses.
Dickens' Oliver Twist is one sympathetic portrayal among dozens of vicious, stereotypical portrayals of the poor. However, Dickens himself exhibits middle-class prejudice. He reproduces the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes in Fagin, the "villainous old Jew." The portrayal of Noah Claypole, the dirty charity boy, reveals some of the stereotypes of the poor that Dickens criticizes. Monks, Oliver's evil half-brother, is "bad from birth," although Dickens clearly satirizes the middle-class belief that the poor are born criminals. These inconsistencies weaken the larger impact of Dickens' crusade against the abuses leveled against the poor.
Oliver Twist is not considered one of Dickens' best novels. The plot is convoluted and often ridiculous. However, it merits study for its scathing critique of Victorian middle-class attitudes towards poverty.
More Information
Oliver Twist opens with a bitter invective directed at the nineteenth-century English poor laws. The laws were a distorted manifestation of the Victorian middle-class emphasis on the virtues of "work." England in the 1830s was rapidly undergoing a transformation from an agricultural, rural economy to an urban, industrial nation. The growing middle class had achieved an economic influence equal to, if not greater than, the British aristocracy. Class consciousness reached a peak for the middle class in the 1830s. It was in this decade that the middle class clamored for a share in political power with the landed gentry, bringing about a re-structuring of the voting system. Parliament passed a Reform Act that granted the right to vote to previously disenfranchised middle-class citizens. The middle class was eager to gain social legitimacy. This desire gave rise to the Puritan Evangelical religious movement and inspired sweeping economic and political change. The ideal social class belonged to the "gentleman," an aristocrat who could afford not to work for his living. The middle class was stigmatized for having to work for a living. One way to alleviate the stigma attached to middle-class wealth was to establish work as a moral virtue. Between the moral value attached to work and the insecurity of the middle class about its own social legitimacy, the poor were subject to hatred and cruelty. The middle-class Puritan value system transformed earned wealth into a sign of moral virtue. Victorian society interpreted economic success as a sign that God favored the honest, moral virtue of the successful individual's efforts. Thus, they interpreted the condition of poverty as a sign of the weakness of the poor individual. The sentiment behind the Poor Law of the 1830s reflected these beliefs. The law allowed the poor to receive public assistance only through established workhouses. Begging carried the punishment of imprisonment. Debtors were sent to prison, often with their entire families, which virtually ensured that they could not re-pay their debts. Workhouses were deliberately made to be as miserable as possible in order to deter the poor from relying on public assistance. The philosophy was that the miserable conditions would prevent able-bodied paupers from being lazy and idle bums.
Anyone who could not support himself or herself was considered an immoral, evil person. Therefore, such individuals should enjoy no comforts or luxuries in their reliance on public assistance. In order to create the misery needed to deter such immoral idleness, families were split apart upon entering the workhouse. Husbands were permitted no contact with their wives, lest they should breed more paupers. Mothers were separated from children, lest they impart their immoral ways to their children. Brothers were separated from their sisters because the middle-class patrons of workhouses feared the lower class' "natural" inclination towards incest. In short, the State undertook to become the surrogate "parents" of workhouse children, whether or not they were orphans. Moreover, meals served to workhouse residents were deliberately inadequate, so as to encourage the residents to find work and support themselves. Because of the great stigma attached to workhouse relief, many poor people chose to die in the streets rather than seek public "aid." The workhouse was supposed to demonstrate the virtue of gainful employment to the poor. In order to receive public assistance, they had to pay in suffering and misery. Puritan values stressed the moral virtue of suffering and privation, and the workhouse residents were made to experience these "virtues" many times over. Rather than improving the "questionable morals" of the able-bodied poor, the Poor Laws punished the most defenseless and helpless members of the lower class. The old, the sick, and the very young suffered more than the able-bodied benefited from these laws. Dickens meant to demonstrate this with the figure of Oliver Twist, an orphan born and raised in a workhouse for the first ten years of his life. His story demonstrates the hypocrisy of the petty middle-class bureaucrats, who treat a small child cruelly while voicing their belief in the Christian virtue of giving charity to the less fortunate.
Dickens was a life-long champion of the poor. He himself suffered the harsh abuse of the English legal system's treatment of the lower classes. In England in the 1830s, the poor truly had no voice, either politically or economically. In Oliver Twist, Dickens presents the everyday existence of the lowest members of English society. He went far beyond the experiences of the workhouse, extending his depiction of poverty to London's squalid streets, dark ale-houses, and thieves' dens. He gave voice to those who had no voice, establishing a close link between politics and literature.

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