AMERICAN LITERATURE II

Anne Bradstreet’s ‘Prologue’

In Anne Bradstreet’s ‘Prologue’, the speaker is a woman who is trying to overcome the stereotype of women as homemakers and is demonstrating her own knowledge and artistic ability. It attempts to show the difficulties faced by a talented and knowledgeable woman in a man’s world(patriarchy), to get attention or respect for doing something out of her social norm. Throughout the poem, the mood is condescending because the speaker is lowering herself by thinking the same way that society does. Figurative language and imagery are used throughout the poem to convey the theme. For example, “mean pen” is personified and explains that the speaker’s pen is humble according to the speaker.

Bradstreet strikes a note of humility when she says that her “mean pen” would be unequal to the task of writing anything as lofty as the epic. Pen symbolizes literary creativity which was considered to be prerogative of men. “Obscure lines” carries the connotation that she is hardly recognized as a poet, as literary critics were gender biased. Bradstreet cleverly caters to the male ego by asserting the poetic superiority to Bartas to ward off critical censure. The mood of self-depreciation is evident as she acknowledges her deficiencies as a poet. One must not expect much from her just as one cannot expect rhetoric from a schoolboy or hope for harmony from a defective musical instrument. Her poetry is immature and lacks the ‘sugared lines’ associated with ‘great Bartas’. The absence of ‘perfect beauty’ in her verse is due to one chief defect – the Muse that inspires her is “foolish broken and blemished”. And there is no art by which one may set right this natural handicap. The speaker is supremely confident and is only sarcastic about the notion of woman’s lack of literary creativity. Although a great deal can be achieved by art, yet there is no remedy for “a weak or wounded brain”- an attack on the prejudice against women in literary arena.

The speaker opines that may be, writing about wars, captains and kings lies outside her experience as a woman, but to suggest that her talent is better suited for needlework is very disagreeable to her. She feels that even if she were to write a good poetry, she still would not be appreciated. Originality and talent in woman poet are viewed with suspicion. Given this cultural and intellectual hostility, she feels that the Greeks perhaps were more mild and understanding than the men of her own generation, as they have made women as the nine Muses. The ironical implication is that the Greeks held the idea that women are only inspirers and not creators. It is a dubious privilege women enjoy as Muses.

Putting on the mask of humility, the speaker says “Men can do best, and women know it” and so she expects the male poets to be gracious enough to make a small allowance to women’s work. She goes on to suggest that the male poet’s true merit as writers is dubious as their praise is dependent on their capacity to hunt down(condemn) their prey(women writers).  Anticipating the adverse criticism of male poets, Bradstreet deliberately humbles herself and request these “high-flown quills” to condescendingly cast a glance at her “low lines”, and crown her efforts with a wreath made of thyme and parsley(both used in cooking) as she does not merit one made out of bay.

The concluding couplet is very significant as it suggests that the poetry of male writers is not intrinsically great. It shines by contrast with the poetry of women acting as a foil, further it has to be borne in mind that the pure gold has its origin in “mean and unrefined ore”.  Bradstreet calls for a less hostile atmosphere for the writing of women poets to improve and begin to glitter like gold.

Denise Levertov’s ‘The Mutes’

‘The Mutes’ is built around an event which is so much a part of our urban culture that no serious heed is paid to it. Women, the target of unsavoury attention, often dismiss it with lady-like disregard. If, however, they experience revulsion, they either eschew it or occasionally resort to a sharp rebuke. This too common and familiar incident is analysed by Denise Levertov from various perspectives, leading to startling and relevant indictment of our decadent culture.

The first stanza describe the incident and the next two problematises  it by raising a serious question. The poet muses about “Those groans men use/ passing a woman in the street’ or elsewhere. A street scene with a far too familiar spectacle of harassment of women is immediately conjured. The use of the demonstrative pronoun “those” makes the groans specific, the kind men use only when they are excited by a woman and want “to tell her that she is a female/ and their flesh knows it”. There are two key words in the second stanza, “female” and “flesh”. The word ‘female’ is disagreeable as it introduces a gender bias with its attendant functions – in the present context she is seen as an agent of sexual arousal. And man’s response to her is purely physical(of the flesh). Her human identity is submerged by her function as a female. Levertov hints at all this but instead of resorting to the conventional moral censure, she sees the problem as an abuse of the faculty of speech. The groans to her sound like an ugly song “sung/by a bird with a slit tongue” which “is meant for music”. Tongue, one of the organs of speech, which could be effectively used to produce musical notes in praise of a woman’s beauty has lost its function and can only produce groans to suggest how men have become emotionally and intellectually inarticulate. The men who stand at street corners are seen as objects of pity for they are the deafmutes of our culture. The groans are in a sense a muffled cry for attention apart from being a sort of ugly tune. They fail to realize that between a man and a woman there can be more enduring and mutually gratifying ties than mere casual copulation.

Having psychoanalyzed men, Levertov directs her attention to women’s response to the “groans men use”. Her comment is forthright and candid: “yet a woman, in spite of herself,/ knows it’s a tribute”.  A woman is regarded not as a warm human being but a “warm hole”. Being aware of the implications of the sub-text of groans, the woman “wants to/ throw the tribute away,” because it is no tribute to her good looks, but to her function in bed.

 “Life after life goes by/without poetry,/ without seemliness,/ without love.” The lines very vividly capture for us the bleak and empty lives of individuals who lack aesthetic sensibility and love. In that sense the poem is an indictment of our culture that fosters spiritual, intellectual and emotional barrenness.

The line “Life after life goes by” records with profound regret the absence of the growth of finer feelings . In the absence of poetry, seemliness and love, life is lived at a very primitive level – seeing everything in terms of sexual gratification and having no concern for finer fellow feelings. Thus a woman is seen only as “a warm hole.”

Theodore Roethke’s ‘The Meadow Mouse’

In ‘The Meadow Mouse’ , the speaker expresses his feeling about the little meadow mouse he had picked up, and how he cared for it as if it was his child. A clear image and description of what he is feeling and thinking is presented to the readers.

The speaker describes the way the mouse acted towards him when he found him for the first time – “trembled and shook” with fear. The speaker uses parental words like “baby”, “cradled”,”little” and “puppy”. The readers would be able to tell that the speaker treats and looks at the meadow mouse as if he is looking at his own baby. Further, the reader also could feel the care and love that the speaker has for this particular meadow mouse. The poet brought the baby meadow mouse “cradled “ in his hand” which shows the great care and gentleness in handling it. Then it is put “in a shoe box stuffed in an old nylon stocking” which projects the idea of warmth and safe being. The speaker has provided the little mouse with shelter and “five kinds of cheese” draws the attention of the readers to the love and the pampering.  When the mouse is full, it “lays it one corner…his bat-like ears twitching, tilting toward the least sound” shows that the speaker pays undistracted attention on this mouse because he notices even the finest twitch of the mouse’s ears. He observes every movement of the meadow mouse and this again shows the motherly love the person felt towards this mouse that he found in the meadow.

“Do I imagine he no longer trembles when I come close to him?” The speaker asks himself whether the mouse is still trembling but he is not sure. He wanted to give the mouse a feeling of safety and protection. The speaker assumes that he had offered the mouse enough love and protection that the mouse now trust and feels safe with him. The speaker assumes that the mouse had settled in and is no longer afraid of him and had perhaps even developed a better relationship with him.

In the fourth stanza the speaker finds that the shoe box which contained the mouse “is empty”. He wonders what had happened to it; “had it gone to live by courtesy of a snake?” “Run under the eye of the owl” or “ran under the wing of the hawk?” All these are enemies of a mouse and can be fatal predators to a mouse, especially one as young as the one the speaker had picked up. The speaker fears for the mouse and this feeling is passed to the reader, fearing for the little mouse’s faith and life.

The last stanza is all the possibilities the speaker thinks has happened to his mouse, “nestling fallen into the deep grass”; “turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway” are all horrifying images of helpless animals whose lives are at stake. At this point, the speaker is referring to his lost baby mouse who is out there somewhere on his own, unprotected by the speaker, who had tried everything to put the mouse under his wings of protection.

Roethke makes a human correlation, a discovery about human conditions and parental worries over a child. Even though the world is fraught with danger, in the natural scheme of things, every parent knows their child will leave the safe environment of home to seek his or her own fortune in this dangerous world; and even though the dangers are real, a parent must let the child go.

Emily Dickinson’s ‘Much Madness is divinest Sense—‘

The narrator distinguishes between madness and sanity: the beliefs of the majority constitute sanity, whereas those who dissent are considered insane. This poem states that what is often declared madness is actually the most profound kind of sanity when viewed by someone with a ‘discerning Eye’. What is often called sense or sanity is in fact not just madness but profound madness and it is only called ‘sense’ not because it is defined by reason, but by what the majority thinks.

Since the majority rules, the act of agreeing, no matter to what, means that you are, in the public mind sane. If one disagrees, or even hesitate in his/her assent, he/she is not only declared crazy, but dangerously so. The act of disagreeing with the majority leads to a loss of freedom, thus one can either be physically free, but ruled by the majority, or imprisoned with their own beliefs.

This poem is not just concerned with the judgement of ‘madness’ or ‘sense’, however, but with the prospect of any judgements that have important ramifications, and with who has the power to make them. In this poem, the judgement of a person’s insanity is made ‘straightway’, and only because this person chooses to ‘demur’ from the majority. The diction here, especially in the contrast between the extremes of these two words: ‘straightaway’ is as fast as a decision can be made, while ‘demur’ is a rather weak form of objection, as opposed to, say, a rebellion.

There is no slow, steady, rational process of judgment before this person is labeled insane and “handled with a Chain,” it is instead simply a kneejerk reaction, yet one that takes away the insane person’s freedom. The use of the word “Chain,” too, has a hint of violence to it, so it is not just a loss of freedom, but potentially a violent one. Dickinson throughout her poems is very concerned with the issue of truth, and the fact that it is almost impossible to ever really find it. If this is the case, then passing judgment in any fair way is inherently impossible, and to do so quickly is a horrifying crime.

Emily Dickinson’s ‘The Soul Selects Her Own Society’

The speaker says that “the Soul selects her own Society—” and then “shuts the Door,” refusing to admit anyone else—even if “an Emperor be kneeling / Upon her mat—.” Indeed, the soul often chooses no more than a single person from “an ample nation” and then closes “the Valves of her attention” to the rest of the world.

“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” takes a playful tone to the idea of reclusiveness and privacy, the tone of “The Soul selects her own Society—” is quieter, grander, and more ominous. The idea that “The Soul selects her own Society” (that people choose a few companions who matter to them and exclude everyone else from their inner consciousness) conjures up images of a solemn ceremony with the ritual closing of the door, the chariots, the emperor, and the ponderous Valves of the Soul’s attention.

Essentially, the middle stanza functions to emphasize the Soul’s stern and uncompromising attitude towards anyone trying to enter into her Society once  after the metaphorical door is shut—even chariots, even an emperor, cannot persuade her. The third stanza then illustrates the severity of the Soul’s exclusiveness—even from “an ample nation” of people, she easily settles on one single person to include, summarily and unhesitatingly locking out everyone else. The concluding stanza, with its emphasis on the “One” who is chosen, gives the poem, the feel of a tragic love poem, although we need not reduce our understanding of the poem to see its theme as merely romantic. The poem is an excellent example of Dickinson’s tightly focused skills with metaphor and imagery; cycling through her regal list of door, divine Majority, chariots, emperor, mat, ample nation, and stony valves of attention, Dickinson continually surprises the reader with her vivid and unexpected series of images, each of which furthers the somber mood of the poem.

Emerson’s ‘Hamatreya’

The poem addresses the question of ownership – whether humans own the land or the land owns the humans. By specifically naming each of the landlords –“Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,” and their agricultural products – “Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood,” Emerson demonstrates the dependence that humans have upon the earth. However, because the landlords work upon the land, they come to see their crops as a result of their own work, rather than a result of nature’s processes, and they develop a sense of ownership of the land. These landlords do not consider that death comes for every person, and that it returns them to the soil which they claim to own. The founders took satisfaction in their ownership of the trees and hills, and believed that the land would belong to them and to their descendants forever. The speaker asks where they are now and answers “Asleep beneath their grounds”, suggesting a kinship with the earth quite different from that which the founders thought they possessed. He writes of the Earth laughing at her “boastful boys” who were so proud of owning what was not actually theirs, but who could not avoid death. The speaker enumerates the ways in which they altered their land. These men appreciated the stability of their property as they sailed back and forth across the ocean, never dreaming that the land that awaited their return would outlast their claims to it. They did not realize that death would transform each of them into “a lump of mould”, turning them back into the land they owned.

The “Earth-Song”, the second poem nested within “Hamatreya’ is Nature’s answer to the landlords’ assertions of ownership. “Mine and yours; / Mine, not yours, / Earth endures” indicates a relationship where Nature actually has ownership of man. During life, the landlords have a partnership with nature which gives them a feeling of ownership of the earth, but once a landlord dies, the earth belongs only to itself.

The words ‘I’ and ‘mine’ constitute ignorance. In the earth song, the Earth mocks the legal deeds by which the property of the first settlers was supposedly conveyed to their heirs, and she sings that the inheritors of the land are, like their progenitors, also gone, as are the lawyers and the laws through which the ownership was effected. Everyone of the men who controlled the land is gone, even though all of them wanted to stay. The Earth underscores her hold over the men who firmly believed that they held her.

In the third section of the poem, the speaker of the poem states that the Earth-Song took away his bravery and avarice, “Like lust in the chill of the grave,” thus ending the poem on a note of sober awareness.

Emerson drew on a passage in the VishnuPurana in writing ‘Hamatreya’. The origin of the poem’s title is unclear, because there is no Hindu word or name ‘Hamatreya’. Edward Waldo Emerson noted in his annotations to the poem in the Centenary Edition of his father’s writings that ‘Hamatreya’ appears to be an adaptation of ‘Maitreya’, one of the characters in the Hindu text. In the original passage, Maitreya is engaged in a dialogue with the deity Vishnu. Vishnu tells Maitreya about the Hindu kings who mistakenly believed themselves possessors of the Earth. But the kings have disappeared, while the Earth endures. Vishnu recites the chant of the Earth, who laughs at and pities the egotistical kings and their blindness to their mortality. He tells Maitreya that the Earth’s song will cause proud ambition to melt away.

Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’

The theme of the poem is Lenore, the beautiful mysterious maiden who died very young with whom the poet was deeply in love. The very name conjures in the poet sorrowful flights of fancy, on a dismal wintry night of dark December, the season of decay and cold death, chilling in its suggestive loneliness and haunting aloofness. The embers falling out of the hearth in ghostly shadows, the silken rustle of the pink curtains, suggestive of unknown fears, the mild tapping at the chamber door, half-heard at midnight hour by the poet whose mind is on the borderland of sleepiness, fill the atmosphere with a sense of foreboding. The poet is sorrowladen with memories of beloved Lenore, no more on earth; but in his make-believe, as belonging to the world of angels and hailed as one among them. This heavy air of foreboding is given a further denseness in the manner of the advent of the Raven, the very symbol of ill omen.

The Raven takes over as the titular hero of the poem’s narration from here, as though the motif of the great grief of the poet for Lenore were a preparation for its arrival. Lenore, the symbol of the poet’s soul in agony of separation over a length of time, meets with another symbol of the raven in a dimension of the spiritual world, concretised in awful majesty. The pompous stealth with which it makes its presence known by rapping at the window, the manner of its entry as of right, fluttering majestically to occupy its accustomed place on the bust of Pallas Athene as one expected at that midnight hour, adds to the ominous quality of the visit.

The Raven becomes the centre of attraction. It comes to occupy the central place in the poem. The poet’s thoughts are centred round the bird. The mystery that surrounds the radiant maiden Lenore is overlaid with the equally mysterious appearance of the Raven. It is a bird of yore who belongs to the Hades, the world of Plutus, whose appearance spells doom.

The popular superstition about the Raven being a thing of evil tidings is exploited by the poet in this poem sustaining the theme of Lenore whose whereabouts as a spirit is agitating his thoughts. The Raven ensconced comfortably is questioned by the poet as to what tidings it has to convey from the spirit world from where it has come.

The Raven, the black bird hailing from the black interiors of the netherworld, belongs to the dark ages of yore. It keeps its distance in far off regions of long ago, of dead souls and spirits, having access to dark secrets of dark world. The awesome ugliness and grim smugness of The Raven is amusing at first, but assumes the role of mystery when it repeats the word, “Nevermore” to every anxious, agonized appeal of the poet to tell him where his beloved Lenore is. The Raven assumes a more irritating, more grotesque and more ambiguous role to the poet who is bewildered by its reply in one word repeatedly said as if that one word, “Nevermore” were the very essence of its soul. The mystery adds suspense. The poet tries to play down his fears watching the bird reclining on the soft chair before it. Its eyes peer into the poet’s soul and burn it as it were. The eyes are red as live coal reflecting the floss of the dim light. Its beak, the poet feels, is pecking at his heart. His attempts to find out the implication of the word ‘nevermore’ are frustrated. The bird is differently flattered by the poet as a prophet come from Heaven or from the Hades to tell him if the sainted Lenore is not hailed by the angels. The Ravens utters again the same word with an agonizing monotony ‘Nevermore’. It adds fuel to the fire. In the name of God, the poet asks if there is no balm or opiate that can drown his sorrow for Lenore, which can be found in Gilead, near Palestine. The Raven should be aware, being all-knowing. The allusion to Gilead is skillfully made to prove that the Raven, against the popular conception as foreboding evil, is also a consecrated divine bird, holy and wise, as it was the ravens that fed Elijah the saint of Gilead long ago. In this faith, the poet flatters the bird as having a double attribute as messenger of Heaven as well as of Hell. It has access also to Heaven. He desperately asks for the last time if Lenore is not somewhere to be found in the region of the Garden of Eden with the angels calling her by that name. The maiden being a radiant girl, she cannot but be in Heaven with angels. But the Raven replies ‘Nevermore’. The poet roused to indignation beyond control gets hysterical and cries at it to vacate its usurped place above his door on the bust of Pallas and leave no token of its terrifying undesirable visit and to return to the netherworld, its real original habitation. It had better left his haunted house alone. The poet is now convinced that the Raven is more of a thing of evil, though a prophet, a harbinger of death and not a holy messenger from the heaven. It is the devil. It should not leave even a single black plume behind. For it has spoken a lie as black as its soul.

Robert Frosts’ ‘The Death of the Hired Man’

In this domestic epic, a man and woman converse on the porch of their farmhouse. The man is just coming home in the evening; his wife meets him at the door to warn him that Silas, the old  hired hand, had returned that day. Silas looked terribly ill, yet he didn’t ask for help. Instead, he told her he would cut the upper pasture, and he kept inquiring about the college boy he worked with on the farm a few years back. He and the boy argued all the time; now the old man wants to "make things right." In the poem, Frost outlines the traditions of duty and hard work that he explores in many of his other poems. Silas returns to the farm so that he can fulfill his broken contract to Warren and die honorably. It also signals the importance of the work that he performed on the farm as a way to give his life meaning and satisfaction.

The husband shakes his head. No, he will not take Silas back. The old man walked away one too many times. You can’t depend on him to stay and finish the job when someone comes around offering him a little "pocket money" to go elsewhere. Indeed, Silas’s brother is the president of a bank; why doesn’t he go to his brother for help? At last the husband quiets down and goes in to see the old man, who is presumably asleep beside the stove. A few moments later, he returns to the porch. To his wife’s query, "’Dead,’ was all he answered."

The hired hand has returned "home" to die. Though kinship would suggest that the old man’s rich brother ought to provide a home for him, Silas evidently feels more at home with the farm couple, who have supported him over the years. The poem presents two definitions of "home": " ’Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.’ / ’I should have called it / Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’ "In this case Silas appears to have come "home" by both definitions. Despite his initial refusal, it looks as if Warren (the farmer) will have to take his old hand in, though Silas has done nothing to deserve it. Of course, when the moment of truth arrives, Silas is already dead.

Ironically, even after Silas’ attempt to die in the companionship of Mary and Warren, the people whom he views as family more than any others, he ultimately dies alone. Moreover, he dies without ever fulfilling his contract to ditch the meadow and clear the upper pasture. For all his attempts to fulfill his duty, achieve satisfaction through hard work, and find a sense of family, Silas’ efforts are unsuccessful. Even the way in which his death is introduced expresses its bleak isolation: Warren merely declares, “Dead.”

The poem also creates a clear dichotomy between Mary and Warren, between Mary’s compassionate willingness to help Silas and Warren’s feelings of resentment over the broken contract. Mary follows the model of Christian forgiveness that expects her to help Silas because he needs it, not because he deserves it. Warren, on the other hand, does not believe that they owe anything to Silas and feels that they are not bound to help him. It is interesting to note that, of the two, only Mary actually sees Silas over the course of the poem. She finds him huddled against the barn and instantly recognizes the extent of his illness. As a result, she is automatically more willing to be compassionate toward him. Having not seen Silas in his current state, Warren takes the more rational view of the situation. Had Warren found Silas first, his treatment of the former farmhand would no doubt have been more compassionate.

Amy Lowells’ ‘Patterns’

Lowell captures the love the woman in her poem holds for her lover by having her follow a set of patterns. The pattern of her dress, the tears she shed for her lover, and the garden she paces through each day gives the readers a sense of this woman’s incompleteness. Lowell also shows how these patterns are destroyed. The one event of the lover’s death caused the hopeful patterns to be useless. We all follow patterns in our own lives. Most of these patterns, however, will constantly need changing for the rest of our lives.

Lowell speaks of a “stiff, brocaded gown” that this woman wears throughout the entire poem. This dress is none other than a wedding gown. The woman in the story is waiting to marry her lover who has gone off to war, and while she awaits his return, she wears this wedding gown. In the first stanza, the woman speaks of the elegance of her dress, and all the pains taken to look as she does.”Not a softness anywhere about me,/ only whalebone and brocade”. In the third stanza, the woman in the poem begins to tire of her richly-made gown. Despite the discomfort this woman feels in her gown, she still carries within herself the hope that her lover will be returning soon.

The woman begins to dream of her lover’s return in the fourth stanza. The two young lovers childishly run through the gardens without having any cares. However, the woman still wears her wedding dress, while her lover wears his uniform.  Everything that the pattern of her life follows is for her lover. When she dreams that the two of them are finally together, she is “very like to swoon”.

After finding out about her lover’s death, the woman in the poem reverts to bitterness. In the fifth stanza and on through the rest of the poem, she refers to her dress as a “stiff brochade”. Her wedding dress no longer has any meaning when the man she loves is dead. The gown is no longer a beautiful symbol of these two lovers’ lives together, but simply a stiff, uncomfortable dress.

Lowell also uses a pattern of water in her poem. The water is a symbol of the tears that this woman sheds for her husband. This particular pattern, however, is not mentioned until the twenty-fifth line in the poem. The reasoning behind this is that the longer the woman’s lover is away, the harder it becomes for the woman to carry on with her daily patterns. The symbolism – if this one young flower is chosen to die of all the flowers on the lime-tree, the same could hold true for her lover. Although she optimistically hopes for the return of her husband, she nevertheless cries harder than before.

The last pattern that this woman follows is the pattern in the gardens. Throughout the poem, it is noted that the woman walks up and down the gardens. The only thing that changes is the scenery of the garden : bright and cheery atmosphere to that one of despair.

After receiving the message that her lover is dead, the woman begins to think back to her words her lover spoke to her while they were still together. She believed all that her lover had told her and now how can she trust what is dead? All the patterns she followed while her lover was away, where they all a waste? “Christ! What are patterns for?”

Robinson’s ‘Richard Cory’

The poem ‘Richard Cory’ is a man’s life-story distilled into sixteen lines.  The first two lines suggest Richard Cory’s distinction, his separation from ordinary folk. The second two lines tell what it is in his natural appearance that sets him off. The next two mention the habitual demeanor that elevates him still more in men’s regard: his apparent lack of vanity, his rejection of the eminence that his fellows would accord him. At the beginning of the third stanza, “rich” might seem to be an anticlimax –  as the second line indicates, in their eyes wealth is everything. The last two lines of the stanza record a total impression of a life that perfectly realizes the dream that most men have of an ideal existence; while the first two lines of the last stanza bring us back with bitter emphasis to the poem’s beginning, and the impassable gulf, for most people – but not, they think, for Richard Cory – between dream and fact. Thus the first fourteen lines are a painstaking preparation for the last two, with their stunning overturn of the popular belief.

Robinson has sketched in Cory’s gentlemanliness and his wealth, but not his despondency, and he lets the suicide seal the identity of the man forever beyond our knowing or judging. On the other hand, he can characterize the chorus just because they lack individuality. Those who count over what they lack and fail to bless the good before their eyes are truly desperate. The blind see only what they can covet or envy. With their mean complaining, they are right enough about their being in darkness, and their dead-gray triviality illuminates by contrast Cory’s absolute commitment to despair.

The irony of these lines, and the poem as a whole, depends on the contrast between the serenity of Cory’s appearance and the violence of his death; its melancholy, upon our recognizing that Cory – for all his privileges – is as acutely isolated and spiritually starved as anyone else. “There is more in every person’s soul than we think”, Robinson observed once, “Even the happy mortals we term ordinary….act their own mental tragedies and live a far deeper and wider life than we are inclined to believe possible in the light of our prejudices.” This is precisely the lesson that the ‘we’ of the poem, Cory’s neighbours in Tilbury Town, never learn: the night on which Cory shoots himself remains ‘calm’ in their view, and the use of that word only underlines the distance between him and them.

The speaker appears to contradict himself, or, more exactly, state the truth about Richard Cory. Cory is not a king, he is human. The narrator then confesses through his own hyperbole, his own exaggerated viewpoint of the man. In the next line, the narrator even acknowledges (“But still”) the collective fault of the people; the lines might be paraphrased as follows: even though we knew deep inside us Cory was a human, something else inside compelled us to blow up his proportions(“he fluttered pulses” and “he glittered”). The narrator admits essentially to this view in lines eleven and twelve.

In light of the narrator’s attitude line one establishes that it is Richard Cory who comes down town; in other words, Richard Cory makes an attempt to communicate with the people. His activity contrasts with their passivity or stasis(‘on we worked and waited”). Nowhere in the poem it is suggested that the people try to come to Cory. Quite simply the people have erected a barrier around themselves and their only reaction to Cory is stasis and silence. The phrase “when he talked” even suggests that Cory makes more than a token effort.

SYLVIA PLATH’S ‘LADY LAZARUS’

The title ‘Lady Lazarus’ is reminiscent of the biblical John Lazarus – resurrected from the death. The ‘lady’ projects an image of a powerful woman – reincarnated after each suicide attempt. The first stanza acts as an introduction to the poem and it introduces the idea of attempted suicide and death.

Plath alludes herself as “a sort of walking miracle” echoing the title. She then uses a powerful comparison ‘bright as a Nazi lampshade” to describe her skin and the suicidal tyrant that lives within her. This image is contrasted with a subdued metaphor – “a featureless, fine / Jew linen” to depict her face – the victim of the suicidal tyrant. This pair of contrasting images demonstrates how she imposes death on her body as Nazi’s onto the Jews. The suicidal tyrant has fixated on her firmly.

The next section is the beginning of the crude sarcasm the author would be using throughout the poem. Plath dares her enemy to “peel off the napkin” followed by a rhetorical question “Do I terrify?” as a spectacle of suicidal tyrant. She assures the listeners that she can get over the “grave cave(death)” and restore “a smiling woman” in a day’s time.

Next she states her age with the pride of someone who has a lifetime ahead of them and makes a witty comparison with the cat, which both have “nine times to die”. Then, in a boastful tone, she declares that “This is Number Three”. The capitalization effectively blows out of proportion the somber event as a grand and exciting occasion. Next she refers to her one per decade near-death experiences, the last two being attempted suicides in self-disgust – “a million filament”.

The usage of “gentleman and ladies” is satirical and used to mock the “peanut crunching crowd” to whom Plath offers herself as a vulgar piece of meat. Plath acts as a guide to her features. “These are my hands/My knees”. She reassures us that she is the “same identical woman” inspite of her altered physical appearances.

She briefs about her first two near-death experiences, the second time she tried to kill herself with sleeping pills in a well-hidden spot in her home. She was found out only three days later practically dead with earthworms crawling over her.

Plath considers herself as an expert in the art of dying. “Dying is an art, like everything else, I do it exceptionally well” to the point of obsession that she calls her suicide attempts as “a call”. Plath finds it easy to commit suicide and to summon death upon herself. She also describes her disappointment that she feels when she realizes she is still alive among the peanut crunching crowd. As she is resurrected, the crowd is in awe and entertained but completely indifferent to the fact that she is alive still. She has a dig at the holocaust business.

Addressing the “Doktor”, she is defining what she represents for him. Otto Plath may be whom she is talking to, as she says she is his “valuable/ the pure gold baby” and that she knows that he is trying to do what he thinks is best for her. Her sarcastic tone reveals that she does not want anyone to save her or to have pity on her.

Plath feels disgusted at her own dehumanization and she would love to triumph over her enemy after she dies even after she is burnt to nothingness. Although nothing much remains of her at this point, she knows the enemy will be profiting from her death. In an access of anger and grandiosity, she warns the great powers from above and below: "Herr God, Herr Lucifer / Beware / Beware." Additionally, she acknowledges no power greater than herself, as Plath accomplishes her own resurrection, unlike the biblical miracle of Lazarus of Bethany. We can clearly see how she grows stronger by the end of the poem as she rises "Out of the ash" like a phoenix with "red hair." Finally, with her concluding and blatantly feministic verse, "I eat men like air," she declares that she has defeated all her enemies, all the men in her life: the doctors who kept reviving her, the businessmen who sold her body to the crowd, and perhaps her father. In concluding this poem, Sylvia Plath finally has triumphed as her own puppet and puppet master.

WALLACE STEVENS ‘ANECDOTE OF THE JAR’

    In the poem, Anecdote of the Jar, Stevens portrays the complex relationship of human to nature through confusion of who is greater than whom, how they depend on each other, the connection between the two, and the form the poem is written in. Stevens forces the reader to feel the confusion and chaos present between the jar (a symbol for humans) and nature. This relationship can be felt and read through the form the poem is written in.
    The poem uses confusing wording to show the relationship of humans to nature. For example, line 9 says, "It took dominion everywhere." "It" referring to nature, means the power that nature has over the jar (humans). Nature's dominant overpowering weakens humans. Another line proving this dominance states, "The jar was gray and bare." This line describes the jar of being plain and simple. This normalcy becomes ineffective and powerless. The ordinary doesn't have as much power as the objects that stick out from the crowd. Humans don't seem to stand out in the vastness of the wilderness.
    The next line turns the control in an interesting way: "It did not give of bird or bush." Because the jar was in the previous line, it is natural to think "it" in this line refers to the jar. The plot begins to thicken as it was previously suggested that the wilderness had all the control in the relationship. The jar now becomes an authority because it will not give into the natural world. To the reader, the relationship just became undefined. The power was turned over from nature to man.
    Stevens also shows the dominance issue in the beginning of the poem. He says, "It made the slovenly wilderness /Surround that hill." The authority is placed again in front of the jar. The wilderness is careless and aware of this new object placed in its environment. Then the poem states, "The wilderness rose up to it, / And sprawled around no longer wild." The roles are reversed once again. The wilderness is now in charge. The reversal of the roles contained the poem in an environment of utter confusion. Stevens showed the audience that this relationship really was chaotic, throughout the poem, to prove his point. With all the confusion in the poem, Stevens reveals an underlying message to the reader. Line 7 in the poem reads, "The jar was round upon the ground. " This section of the poem shows the dependency of humans on nature. Through the rhymes of "round" and "ground", we can see the relationship.   
   The next line (8) also supports this hidden security of the relationship between human and the natural world. It says, "And tall and of a port in air." This line represents the unseen connection between human and nature. The "port" refers to a connecting force that ties the relationship together. The jar, being "tall" in the air, represents the depth of the relationship. Above the initial confusion and chaos, there is a deeper meaning to the relationship. The "port" runs through the confusion to get above it and reveal the true relationship. Stevens used the word "air" to represent the unseen connection. We, as humans, depend on air to survive. Although we have never seen, touched, or heard air, we know that it is there and depend on it to live. Stevens refers to air to show the unseen connection between mankind and the natural world. This connection is very important and crucial to the relationship. In fact, the relationship depends on this connection.

O’Henry’s ‘After Twenty Years’

O’Henry’s ‘After Twenty Years’ is a story about two friends who separated twenty years ago. One went to west leaving New York to make a fortune, the other one was a simpleton and a good fellow and stayed in New York. They had promised each other that they would meet exactly twenty years later at ten pm. So the first arrived. The story takes place around 10 p.m. along a dark, windy New York City business avenue, mostly within the darkened doorway of a closed hardware store. This particular location had been a restaurant until five years ago. The weather worsens as the drama builds going from "chilly gusts of wind with a taste of rain" to a "fine, cold drizzle falling, and wind had risen from its uncertain puffs into a steady blow." The plot begins with a policeman "on the beat" who discovers a man standing in the dark doorway. The man then proceeds to explain why he is there. He and his best friend, Jimmy Wells had parted exactly twenty years ago to make their fortunes and had promised to meet at that spot after twenty years. He had gone west and became rich and was sure his friend, Jimmy would meet him if at all possible. They talked a while and the policeman carried on.

 After some time his friend Jimmy Wells comes and they talk, but due to difference in features Bob realizes that he is not the real Jimmy. It is then that Bob is told that he is arrested and is handed a note from the patrolling policeman who was the actual Jimmy that he had reached on time but could not arrest his friend himself. Sometimes honesty is more important than personal loyalty.

O. Henry's stories frequently have surprise endings. In his day, he was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant. Both authors wrote plot twist endings, but O. Henry stories were much more playful. His stories are also known for witty narration. Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early 20th century. Many take place in New York City and deal for the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, waitresses. O. Henry's work is wide-ranging, and his characters can be found roaming the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art of the con-man, or investigating the tensions of class and wealth in turn-of-the-century New York. O. Henry had an inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible economy and grace of language.

The Tell-Tale Heart

The protagonist of the "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a classic example of Poe's unreliable narrator, a man who cannot be trusted to tell the objective truth of what is occurring. His unreliability becomes immediately evident in the first paragraph of the story, when he insists on his clarity of mind and attributes any signs of madness to his nervousness and oversensitivity, particularly in the area of hearing. However, as soon as he finishes his declaration of sanity, he offers an account that has a series of apparent logical gaps that can only be explained by insanity. In his writings, Poe often sought to capture the state of mind of psychotic characters.
The narrator's emotional instability provides a clear counterargument to his assertions of good judgment. In almost no cases does he respond in the manner that one would expect. He is so bothered by the old man's vulture-like eye that his loathing overcomes his love for the man, leading him to premeditate a murder. Later, when he finally succeeds in killing the victim, he becomes positively cheerful, feeling that he has accomplished his goal cleverly and with the rationality that he associates with sanity. However, the unsuspecting behavior of the policemen suggests that the narrator has become essentially unaware of his behavior and his surroundings. Because he cannot maintain the distance between reality and his inner thoughts, he mistakes his mental agitation for physical agitation and misinterprets the innocent chatter of the policemen for malevolence. Nevertheless, he imagines the whole time that he has correctly and rationally interpreted all the events of the story, suggesting that in Poe's mind, the key to irrationality is the belief in one's rationality.
Poe uses his words economically in the “Tell-Tale Heart”—it is one of his shortest stories—to provide a study of paranoia and mental deterioration. Poe strips the story of excess detail as a way to heighten the murderer’s obsession with specific and unadorned entities: the old man’s eye, the heartbeat, and his own claim to sanity. Poe’s economic style and pointed language thus contribute to the narrative content, and perhaps this association of form and content truly exemplifies obsession.
Another contradiction central to the story involves the tension between the narrator’s capacities for love and hate. Poe explores here a psychological mystery—that people sometimes harm those whom they love or need in their lives. Poe’s narrator loves the old man. He is not greedy for the old man’s wealth, nor vengeful because of any slight. The narrator thus eliminates motives that might normally inspire such a violent murder. As he proclaims his own sanity, the narrator fixates on the old man’s vulture-eye. He reduces the old man to the pale blue of his eye in obsessive fashion. He wants to separate the man from his “Evil Eye” so he can spare the man the burden of guilt that he attributes to the eye itself. The narrator fails to see that the eye is the “I” of the old man, an inherent part of his identity that cannot be isolated as the narrator perversely imagines.
The narrator’s newly heightened sensitivity to sound ultimately overcomes him, as he proves unwilling or unable to distinguish between real and imagined sounds. Because of his warped sense of reality, he obsesses over the low beats of the man’s heart yet shows little concern about the man’s shrieks, which are loud enough both to attract a neighbor’s attention and to draw the police to the scene of the crime. The police do not perform a traditional, judgmental role in this story. Ironically, they aren’t terrifying agents of authority or brutality. Poe’s interest is less in external forms of power than in the power that pathologies of the mind can hold over an individual. The narrator’s paranoia and guilt make it inevitable that he will give himself away. The police arrive on the scene to give him the opportunity to betray himself. The more the narrator proclaims his own cool manner, the more he cannot escape the beating of his own heart, which he mistakes for the beating of the old man’s heart. As he confesses to the crime in the final sentence, he addresses the policemen as “[v]illains,” indicating his inability to distinguish between their real identity and his own villainy.

The Tell-Tale Heart: Summary

Before beginning his account, the unnamed narrator claims that he is nervous and oversensitive but not mad, and offers his calmness in the narration as proof of his sanity. He then explains how although he loved a certain old man who had never done him wrong and desired none of his money, the narrator could not stand the sight of the old man's pale, filmy blue eye. The narrator claims that he was so afraid of the eye, which reminds him of a vulture's, that he decided to kill the man so he would no longer have to see it.

Although the narrator is aware that this rationalization seems to indicate his insanity, he explains that he cannot be mad because instead of being foolish about his desires, he went about murdering the old man with "caution" and "foresight." In the week before the murder, the narrator is very kind to the old man, and every night around midnight, he sneaks into the old man's room and cautiously shines a lantern onto the man's eye. However, because the eye is always closed and the narrator wishes to rid himself of the eye rather than the man, the narrator never tries to kill him, and the next morning, he again enters the chamber and cheerfully asks how the old man has slept, in order to avoid suspicion.

On the eighth night, the narrator is particularly careful while opening the door, but this time, his thumb slips on the lantern's fastening, waking the old man. The narrator freezes, but even after an hour, the old man does not return to sleep because he feels afraid and senses someone's presence. At length, the narrator decides to slowly open the lantern until the light shines on the old man's eye, which is wide open. The narrator's nerves are wracked by the sight, and he fancies that because of his oversensitivity, he has begun to hear the beating of the old man's heart.

The beating firms his resolve as he continues to increase the intensity of the light on the man's eye. The beating grows louder and louder until the narrator begins to worry that a neighbor will hear the noise, so he decides to attack. The old man screams once before the narrator drags him to the floor and stifles him with the mattress. When the narrator stops hearing the beating, he examines the corpse before dismembering it and concealing it beneath the floorboards. He laughs somewhat hysterically as he describes how the tub caught all the blood, leaving no stains on the floor.

By the time he finishes the clean-up, it is four in the morning, and someone knocks on the door. In a cheerful mood, the narrator answers the door only to find three policemen who have come to investigate because a neighbor heard the old man's shriek and alerted the police to the possibility of foul play. The narrator invites them inside, knowing that he has nothing to fear, and he explains that he had been the one to yell as a result of a bad dream and that the old man is currently out visiting the country. He shows the policemen the house and confidently allows them to search it before bringing out chairs which he, in his assurance, places on top of the floorboards that hide the corpse.

The narrator's lack of suspicious behavior convinces the policemen that nothing is wrong, and they sit down on the chairs and chat with him. However, after a while, the narrator begins to wish that the policemen would leave, as his head aches and he hears a ringing in his ears. The ringing increases in volume, for which the narrator compensates by chatting more jovially, but it finally turns into a dull beating which also begins to rise in volume. The narrator becomes more and more agitated in his behavior, gesturing wildly and pacing back and forth, but the policemen hear and suspect nothing.

Soon, the narrator begins to suspect that the pleasantries of the policemen are merely a ruse to ridicule his distress. However, he cannot stand the intensity of the beating and grows tired of what he perceives as the mockery of the policemen. He feels that he "must scream or die," so he finally shrieks the truth, telling the policemen to tear up the floorboards and reveal the beating of the old man's heart.

Young GoodMan Brown

In “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne reveals what he sees as the corruptibility that results from Puritan society’s emphasis on public morality, which often weakens private religious faith. Although Goodman Brown has decided to come into the forest and meet with the devil, he still hides when he sees Goody Cloyse and hears the minister and Deacon Gookin. He seems more concerned with how his faith appears to other people than with the fact that he has decided to meet with the devil. Goodman Brown’s religious convictions are rooted in his belief that those around him are also religious. This kind of faith, which depends so much on other people’s views, is easily weakened. When Goodman Brown discovers that his father, grandfather, Goody Cloyse, the minister, Deacon Gookin, and Faith are all in league with the devil, Goodman Brown quickly decides that he might as well do the same. Hawthorne seems to suggest that the danger of basing a society on moral principles and religious faith lies in the fact that members of the society do not arrive at their own moral decisions. When they copy the beliefs of the people around them, their faith becomes weak and rootless.

Goodman Brown shows both innocence and corruptibility as he vacillates between believing in the inherent goodness of the people around him and believing that the devil has taken over the minds of all the people he loves. At the beginning of the story, Goodman Brown believes in the goodness of his father and grandfather, until the old man, likely the devil, tells him that he knew them both. Goodman Brown believes in the Christian nature of Goody Cloyse, the minister, and Deacon Gookin, until the devil shows him that Goody Cloyse is a witch and the other two are his followers. Finally, he believes that Faith is pure and good, until the devil reveals at the ceremony that Faith, too, is corruptible. This vacillation reveals Goodman Brown’s lack of true religion—his belief is easy to shake—as well as of the good and evil sides of human nature.

Through Goodman Brown’s awakening to the evil nature of those around him, Hawthorne comments on what he sees as the hidden corruption of Puritan society. Goodman Brown believes in the public professions of faith made by his father and the elders of his church and in the societal structures that are built upon that faith. Hawthorne suggests, however, that behind the public face of godliness, the Puritans’ actions were not always Christian. The devil in the story says that he was present when Brown’s father and grandfather whipped Quakers and set fire to Indian villages, making it clear that the story of the founding of New England has a dark side that religion fails to explain. The very fact that Goodman Brown is willing to visit the forest when he has an idea of what will happen there is an indication of the corruptibility and evil at the heart of even the most faithful Puritan.

Young GoodmanBrown suggests an ‘everyman’. The story is set in 17^th century Salem and includes characters who were actually condemned and executed in the witchcraft persecution viz., Goody Cloyse. But Hawthorne’s principal concern is with the crisis in Brown’s mind and soul.

MARKTWAIN’S ‘LUCK’

Mark Twain uses the narrator as a literary device in his short story Luck ' The author first uses his own voice to give the story an air of authenticity . He then changes narrators , building on the original air of authenticity to create a second authentic narrator . The first person narrator that Twain chooses to tell the majority of the story is ostensibly a unnamed clergyman , formerly a cornet (second lieutenant ) in the British army under a lieutenant-general the first narrator gives the pseudonym Scoresby ' Simply by setting the fiction of the need for a pseudonym for the lieutenant general , Twain has created the suggestion of literal truth for the story about to follow . The second narrator , however , is an unreliable one .

By stating that Scoresby 's success comes solely from luck , it is clearly apparent that the clergyman 's opinion would differ from that of the lieutenant general . There is some question as to why these opinions would differ at least from the clergyman 's perspective . While it should come as no surprise that Scoresby would certainly prefer to characterize his success as deriving from skill, the clergyman could have one of three reasons for having a different opinion . All of these reasons extend from his knowledge of how Scoresby came to be a member of the military First, it is possible that Scoresby is truly an inept , but lucky man. The reader is left to reason for him or herself whether Scoresby could possibly be that fortunate .

 The story traces the career of a military hero from his modest beginnings at Woolwich to his triumph in battle against the Russians. Years after the war's end a celebratory dinner is held to honor the famous general, and it is at this point that the tale begins. During the banquet the narrator, who has been joining in the chorus of adulation, meets an old acquaintance: a clergyman of undoubted probity, who dissents from the view that the general is a military genius. Surprised and intrigued, the narrator asks for more detail, which the clergyman agrees to supply a few days later. The rest of the short tale is told retrospectively by this clergyman, who becomes the de facto narrator from this point on. The clergyman had been the general's tutor when he was a cadet at Woolwich, and had followed him to the Crimea. The burden of his message is that the general, far from deserving his fame, was merely the beneficiary of an incredible string of lucky coincidences.

The narrator knows the clergyman to be honest and reliable, but his bare assertion that Scoresby's success was due to luck alone would not be believable without supporting detail. This is precisely what the clergyman supplies. (According to him, Scoresby was a complete failure as a student, hopelessly stupid, an absolute fool. Out of pity, the clergyman had tutored him in Caesar's history; as luck would have it, the examiners asked him only about what he had been tutored in, with the result that he passed with flying colors. Next came mathematics. Once again the clergyman helped prepare him, with results that were even more astounding: Because he was once again asked only what he happened to know, Scoresby took first place. With such sterling marks, he was able to graduate and become an officer. ) The Clergyman establishes three stages in Scoresby's luck: first with Caesar, second with math, finally in the Crimea.
One needs to keep in mind, however, that Scoresby is not pretending to be anything he is not. The point of the repetition of the word "unconsciousness" in the opening paragraph is to emphasize that Scoresby is not performing in the sense of playing a role. His only performance is the carrying out of his military duties. He is not engaged in creating a public persona. It is true that the clergyman comments that Scoresby is "the supremest fool in the universe; and until half an hour ago nobody knew it but himself and me." But aside from this assertion the story itself gives no indication that Scoresby shares this awareness. He is unconscious of being misperceived. A natural fool, he is incapable of deceit. The clergyman's further assertion in the final paragraph that Scoresby is as "unpretending as a man can be" confirms this.

LOCOMOTIVE 38, THE OBIJWAY

It is about an American teenager called Aram who is befriended by a native American who comes to his small town and asks for his help in buying a car and driving him around. The stated reason being that he does not know how to drive. So the teenager becomes the man’s chauffeur during the summer, and they strike up a sort of friendship. The man’s name in his native tongue translates, it seems, to Locomotive 38. At the end of the summer, Locomotive suddenly disappears, and when Aram enquires about town, he learns that the man drove off in his car. The story ends with the following lines: “He was just a young man who’d come to town on a donkey, bored to death or something, who’d taken advantage of the chance to be entertained by a small-town kid who was bored to death, too. That’s the only way I could figure it out without accepting the general theory that he was crazy.”

AMERICAN LITERATURE – II

Section – A (20 marks)

Answer any TEN of the following questions in about 50 words each :  (10x2=20)

1.       How does Bradstreet express her modesty in the beginning of ‘The Prologue’?

2.       How does Whitman describe his entry into the mystic state in ‘Song of myself’?

3.       Whom does Dickinson dedicate her ‘The soul selects her own society’?

4.       How does Wallace Stevens differentiate ‘perception’ from ‘reality’ in ‘Anecdote of the Jar’?

5.       Explain the Biblical reference in ‘Lady Lazarus’.

6.       Explain ‘Goodman’ in ‘Young Goodman Brown’.

7.       How does Hemingway describe the appearance of Santiago?

8.       What does Santiago symbolize in ‘The Old man and the Sea’?

9.       What does the title ‘Hamatreya’ refer to?

10.   What is the setting of ‘Young Goodman Brown’?

11.   What is the theme of Poe’s ‘The Raven’?

12.   What is Frost’s definition of poetry?

Section – B (25 marks)

Answer any Five of the following questions in about 150 words each:  (5x5=25)

13.   Bring out the influence of Hindu mythology on Emerson.

14.   Elucidate the lyrical beauty of ‘The Raven’.

15.   Comment on the obscurity of ‘the anecdote of the jar’.

16.   Consider Emily Dickinson a recluse with reference to ‘The Soul selects her own society’.

17.   Examine the role played by Manolin  in ‘The Old man and the sea’.

18.   Bring out the elements of suspense in Poe’s ‘Tell Tale Hearts’.

19.   Write an appreciation of O’Henry’s ‘After Twenty Years’.

Section – c (30 marks)

Answer any THREE of the following in about 300 words each:  (3x10=30)

20.   Illustrate the mystical quality of ‘song of myself’.

21.   Examine ‘the death of a hired man’ in the light of Frost’s own definition of poetry.

22.   Comment on the confessional tone of ‘Lady Lazarus’.

23.   Discuss Hemingway’s philosophy of life as revealed in ‘The Old Man and the Sea’.

24.   Appreciate Twain’s art of story telling with reference to ‘Luck’.