POPULAR AMERICAN LITERARY TEXTS - STUDY MATERIAL

Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’

                                                                                                                  

  Robert Frost is a celebrated American poet. He loved Nature, but he had to live in a highly mechanized society. He tried to compensate for this by writing about nature in his poems. Through his simple poems, he conveys complex theories of life.

His famous lines:

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep...”   are very often quoted by orators and writers alike.

As is usual with Frost, his poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. Here Frost describes a simple incident in simple language, but packs it with hidden meaning. The poem seems to be about his choosing between two diverging paths in a wood, but the poet figuratively presents the problem of making a difficult choice in life. A choice once made alters the future. One will always be regretting the choice, hoping for better things from the rejected alternative and hence the title is ‘The Road Not Taken’. His subject matter is the minutely observed details of Nature interpreted through human experience. He knows not only Nature so well, but also the minds of people in the countryside. “The moral influence of Nature upon an individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him”. Paths in the woods and forks in roads are ancient and deep-seated metaphor for the lifeline, its crises and decisions.

    

     The Poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ tells us how crucial it is to make a choice when one is at the crossroads in one’s life. After making the choice, it is important to succeed in it. Otherwise, the person will be blamed and more importantly he will be blaming himself. He will be wondering whether he would have done better if he had chosen some other option.

     Once Frost was standing at a fork in a wood indecisive as to which road he should take, both roads seemed equally trodden. There were leaves that had not been trodden black. His curiosity to see ahead made him crane his neck to peep through one. Unfortunately, it bent and he was not able to see further. He resolved to take the other one, consoling himself that there were tufts of grass indicating that it was not used that much as the other. It was challenging and inviting to choose it. He regretted that he was only one and would not be able to travel on both of them. But having made up his mind, he consoled himself that he would come back one day and try the other. Yet, he knew that once he proceeded along one path, there would be other routes opening up new avenues and he would never come back to the fork.

     The decision had to be taken with great caution. There should be no regrets later on. The moment of choice was very important and he looked upon the path with apprehension. He should not in future tell himself that he should have taken the other route. Luckily for him, his choice of becoming a poet was not only a different choice but also a right choice for him, as he earned popularity. After many years, he was able to recount his experience with a sense of pride mingled with great relief.

“I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

     When we are at the crossroads of life, there may be many alternatives to choose from. According to our own abilities and will power in facing risks, we must analyze the options and with extreme care decide upon one. Once we proceed there should not be any wavering of thought, our decisions will be irrevocable. We must achieve something in our chosen path to look upon it with satisfaction.

     Hereon, a choice once made determines the future. Even if it turns out to be a good choice, one fancies that the other alternative might have yielded better results. It is to this weakness of human nature that Frost draws attention here and thereby the title is ‘The Road Not Taken’ though the poem describes the decision of taking a particular road and his success in life.

West Running Brook

In ‘West Running Brook’, Frost poses the basic questions of identity related to human beings in the context of nature. He talks continually about the west running brook, the way the water flows, the foam that rides on the waves and the continual flow of water. But through Nature he poses the questions which in philosophy we call as ‘absolutes’. The inevitable question relating to identity which always remains unanswered. Relationships are always important for Frost. In his ‘Birches’, he says that he will always come back to earth because the earth is the best place for relationships. Finally the young couple identify themselves not individually but in relationship with each other and nature. The Brook becomes the centre of their understanding of them and the flow of waters symbolizes the flow of life and time.

The conversation takes place between two people who are just beginning their life. One of their names happens to be Fred. Very few poems of Frost contain people, very often it is an individual. Strangely their discussion seems trivial may be for the start but actually it is not so as Frost’s poems begins in delight and ends in wisdom. Frost puts forth the questions relating to life, seeking direction from the mouth of the couple in their honeymoon near a river side. Frost is putting the basic question of life into two people who are just beginning their life and the Brook becomes the centre of their understanding of them.

The brook runs west. Evidently all the rivers in that area run east, but this brook runs west. The brook has the innate ability to go by contraries and trusts itself to go by contraries as the girl can with the man and as the man with the girl. The brook has inherent capability to run west as marriage is to decement the differences.

This west running brook inspires the girl to question what are we? It is an unchanging question and in philosophy they call it ‘absolutes’. One cannot answer it. These questions stems out from the psychology of man which seeks identity. The man’s keen observation offers insight into life. We must be something. We must have some kind of identity. We must be something near context. We must fit somewhere in the context as everyman born has some importance attached on this universe.

They realize that they can establish their identity in terms of relationship. Relationship with nature is vital for tracing their identity. “We’ll both be married to the brook.” She wants a third party to affirm their marriage. She wants a tripartite relationship because that’s where validity exits. She wants Nature to affirm their identity in their scheme of life.  When one builds bridges one is actually building relationship sans all differences. The first line offers the inclination (argument) and ends in clarification.

Suddenly her imagination seems to associate idea; she feels that the brook waves to her. The brook runs fast and dashes against a rock and curls itself backwards. But the young girl thinks it waves to her. Human nature contextualizes it. She says it is waving to me. We can dismiss this speech as something naïve and innocent. The man says yeah, it’s that way. Heaven is something above the earth. When you want to explain something which cannot be explained one says that they were made in heaven.

Here he is talking of life. In poetry water symbolizes life. Life is a struggle; it started it goes on happening “not gaining and not losing”. One can do nothing about it. Life is unforgiving - dashes, hits and falls back. Life does not stagnate and is ever flowing. It picks itself up and flows on. Life is mysterious. It was always this way, it is this way it will always be this way. It is never going to change. One cannot have hold on Time, Death like life is a reality and it lends credibility for life. So one has to accept life as it is. The couple have at last found themselves in the context of Nature.

 STILL I RISE    - Maya Angelou

Kinds of Discrimination:

In the genre, ‘Black American Women’s Writing’ the terms ‘black’ and ‘women’ receives emphasis, as they bring to one’s mind racism and sexism respectively. The Blacks as a race have been exploited by the Whites and women have been subordinated to men - white and black men, in the social hierarchy. Black Women is doubly victimized one as a member of the oppressed sex and the other as member of a disadvantaged racial group.

Optimism:

‘Still I Rise’ is “spoken by a confident voice of strength that recognizes its own power and will no longer be pushed into passivity”, carries a message of hope for the future of the black race, especially for its women.

The poem is a strong affirmation of life and the tone is throughout confident and forceful. There is no bitterness against her oppressors only a quiet strength stemming from her own sense of self worth. Her ‘oil pumps and diamond mines” are not to be found outside. Her resources are within and therefore she is inherently rich as in Tennessee Williams ‘Blanche’ : “ Physical beauty is passing. A transitory possession. But beauty of the mind and richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart – and I have all of those things – aren’t taken away, but grow.”

Critical Analysis :

The poem ‘Still I Rise’ begins on a note of scorn for the people who write the speaker down in history with “bitter twisted lies”. Both the Blacks and women have always been only ‘subjects’ of history which has been as much a White Male construct It describes its ‘subjects’ as seen from the point of view of the dominant group. The subordinate group has always been ‘invisible’; their contributions have been blackened out. They are seen not as agents of action but as passive receivers and in this sense history has been only a record of “bitter twisted lies” and not of facts usually claimed.

But this does not intimidate (threaten) the Speaker. She affirms that she shall overcome this forced invisibility and misrepresentation. She may have been trampled (compress) upon by her oppressors. But just as the dust which, when trampled upon rises to cloud the vision of the trampler she too shall rise and confront (face) her oppressors and defy (challenge) their attempts to bury her.

In a confident tone, she observes that her “sassiness” upsets her oppressors. The traditional conception of women requires that she be neither seen nor heard. She is expected to be coy and docile and is never allowed to have a mind of her own. The Blacks too are expected to show deference to their ‘racial superiors’. But here is a Black Women who walks with the calm assurance of the “owner of oil pumps”.

In the next stanza, the poet asserts with supreme self-assurance that her rising up is as certain as the rising of tides.  The use of plurals “moons and suns” is both unusual and significant. Perhaps, the suggestion is that each time the sun and the moon rise, they are in a sense new, just as every day is a new one bringing fresh experiences and altering an individual ever so slightly. Further, when the sun sets every evening there is the certainty of it’s rising the next morning; the ebbing tide is sure to be followed by a flow. The analogy of the sun, moon and tide to “hopes springing high” is thus appropriate and reminiscent of Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’: “If winter comes can spring be far behind?”

The poet has defeated all those who wanted to see her weighted down and broken. She exudes (displays) confidence as she refuses to bow down or lower her eyes as a mark of acknowledgement of the ‘supremacy’ of her oppressors. They expect her shoulders to drop down under the weight of her heavy heart and weary soul. But, she has responded to them with an assurance that is interpreted as haughtiness (arrogance) by them. Instead of being weighed down by tears, she laughs with the gay abandon of one who has “gold mines in the backyard”. She is all defiance and contempt when she tells her oppressors that though they may try to hurt, humiliate and degrade her, to cut her down to size with scathing looks, she shall rise up like the air. A literary parallel is seen in Sylvia’s Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” : “Out of the ash \ I rise with my red hair \ And I eat men like air..”

In the next stanza, the poet asserts her own sexuality as against the traditional conception of a women’s sexuality as something to be controlled. It is evident that “the I” of Angelou’s refrain is obviously female and in this instance, a woman forthright about the sexual nuances of personal and social struggle. The ritual chant of “I Rise” suggests the idea of resurrection – the resurrection not of an individual but of a whole race.

The phrase “history’s shame” is doubly significant. The poet herself shall shake away the shackles of shame and low self-esteem thrust upon her and her race. At the same time, it is a matter of shame that human history should be tainted by the blots of racism and sexism. Further with “You may write me down in history\ with your bitter, twisted lies” , the poem comes to a full circle.

It is from the very “past that’s rooted in pain” that she now gains her strength to face the present and build a future. She does not reject her past in her march forward, but rather draws sustenance and nourishment from it in her resurrection into a new stronger being. She has come a long way from the nightmarish experiences of her past, the “nights of fear and terror”.

The line “I’m a black ocean leaping and wide” suggests that she is a representative of her race and her sex – she is an ocean seething and welling up ; an ocean which holds an immense potential for life.

The narrator here overcomes these experiences and ventures into a dawn that holds hope. This dawn would be one in history shall be rewritten – a history that takes proper account of the “gifts of her ancestors”, a history that does not push them into obscurity. The poem ends with a promise of a better future, with the assertive repetition of “I rise” thrice. The three vertical lines has the visual impact of an image of an pillar bearing the entire burden and import of the preceding lines.

WOMEN     - May Swenson

Kate Millet in her ‘Sexual Politics’ demonstrates that “men had instrumental traits, they were tenacious, aggressive, curious, ambitious and competitive and women were affectionate, obedient, responsive to sympathy, kind and friendly”. This poem attests the fact that women have been conditioned to accept their secondary status from early childhood. In Sexual Politics, from time immemorial men has tried to gain control over women and as all institutions were in the hands of men they powerfully controlled women so much that women accepted these ‘positionings’ as natural. In this poem the woman is visualized as a pedestal or a rocking horse, but never a human being.  The Poem “Women”, a poetic pictogram, presents women as props (leg\support) for men, supporting men in all their causes. The patriarchal world expects women to play a passive role and to remain an ever conservative without any rebellious notion in the men’s world.

‘Pedestals’ and ‘rocking horses’ are important images that adequately describe their condition. Women are “moving pedestals to the motions of men”. In other words, under patriarchy women have no autonomous existence and are denied individual thinking. A woman is looked upon as a plaything – a toy in the nursery or in this instance a human toy in a man’s hand.   ‘Pedestals’ also reminds one of the time when women were not pedestals, but were instead placed on pedestals by poets. Women were deemed to be beautiful and virtuous and beyond the reach of men. The women were so idealized that they were in a sense less than flesh and blood creatures. It was apparently a way of curbing a woman’s sphere of activity by binding her to a social code that at once glorified her and fitted her into a role designed to exclude her from full participation in the larger areas of life.

May Swenson reads the mind of men when she suggests that women should be nothing more than “wooden, sweet, old-fashioned, painted rocking horses”.  Each descriptive word builds up a picture of women who is to play a subservient role. A woman is expected to display no personal feelings – ‘wooden’, and be sweet-tempered all the time. She must be physically attractive- ‘painted’, and at the same time ‘old-fashioned’ to ensure that she does not cherish any rebellious notions of liberty for herself. Under these conditions they would make ideal passive things\toys – ‘rocking horses’, for men to sit on and ride. Because of their subservient traits, women become “the gladdest things in the toy room”.

Man exercises total control while rocking is suggested by the way in which he rubs the pegs-like-ears of the woman. “Trusting fists” is a very powerful image that conveys the idea that power resides in man. He is the prime mover with the woman as a passive agent acted upon. He could be very loving while rocking or perform that act without any feeling. This association between man and woman is not seen as mutual gratification. Man sees rocking as an act of assertion of power and he dismounts when his male ego is satisfied. The woman is manipulated “feelingly and then unfeelingly” to satisfy man. Woman is man’s hobby horse, a toy and his preoccupation.  The line “egos dismount and legs stride away” powerfully captures the role both men and women play. The former is active and aggressive and the latter submissive and subservient. The woman is expected to be “immobile, sweet lipped, sturdy and smiling…and waiting”. The words ‘waiting and willing’ clearly spell out woman’s role. In a man’s world woman is denied self-determination. She is indoctrinated into accepting a role assigned to her under patriarchy.

Interestingly the poet does not aggressively shout from a roof top decrying her lot or the inhumanity of man. In her own subtle ways of phraseology and tone she examines the issue of unfavourable position of women. In this context, the auxillary verb ‘should’ is very tellingly used by the poet and one wonders if any other poet has used it more profoundly to accommodate meaning. “Women should be pedestals… Women should always be waiting…they should be little horses” – all such utterances expose the hypocrisy of patriarchal society where laws are laid down by men. Women can utmost write a poem about it, but can never change the views of the patriarchal world.  May be like Nora, in Ibsen’s ‘Doll’s House’, she ‘should’ be happy to hear endearing terms which her husband everyday spoke into her ears in an apparent condescending way. Of course towards the end she understands the meaninglessness of it and realizes that she had forfeited her whole life in her roles as daughter, wife and mother, forgetting her more important role of that of a human being. Moses gave Ten Commandments, but man has many more for woman to adhere to.

Form:

Here poetry resides not only in the content of words but also in the way it is printed – the visual inventiveness. The poet’s intention in using ‘iconographs’ is “to cause instant object-to-eye encounter with each poem even before it is read word-for-word.” In poetry the function of metaphor is to create “verbal equivalents for non-verbal experience”, and then shape functions even better than a metaphor. In poetry, experience comes first and then the text to verbalise this experience then the visual shape integrates and heightens both.

SCENARIO       by Denise Levertov

A lovely church wedding is effectively contrasted with the grotesque scene depicted in the poem. The lovely bride walking down the aisle is replaced by a deformed creature hobbling towards the altar “she has one breast, one eye, half of her scalp is bald.” She is the innocent victim of war, maimed and rendered so much less of a human being having lost half her physical frame. Then we have rather pathetic bridegroom, who instead of looking at the bride with unconcealed pride and joy shudders at the spectacle before him. Although he has “no visible wounds”, the war has psychologically devastated him. It is with horror that his body begins to shudder, “to ripple with shudders”.  Instead of the customary festive mood and gorgeous decoration associated with a wedding what we have in the poem is “ a cast of thousands weeping”. The stage setting cumulatively creates a scene of surrealistic horror: “ Left center, well lit, a mound of unburied bodies, or parts of body, Right...a whole body on which a splash of napalm is working.”

This visual impact of the stage setting is quite unsettling and it is reminiscent of the grotesque creatures that Dali has depicted on canvass. Denise Levertov’s eloquence of horror requires no words as words would fail to adequately verbalise this soul-shattering human experience.

This poem reminds one of the Theatre of Absurd and particularly the play, “Act Without Words’ by Samuel Beckett. The absence of any speech or dialogue suggests the idea that once one comprehends or sees the horrors of war nothing need be said further. The short terse lines are arranged in couplets, to hit the reader with full force and conviction, startling him out of his complacency. This poem is a good example of anti-war poetry and protest poetry.

THE PROLOGUE     - Anne Bradstreet

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, to get attention or respect for doing something out of her social norm. This is the main theme of this poem. It also shows how, through the use of figurative language and allusions, the speaker effectively displays her feelings, thoughts, and emotions. She defends her own writings as she anticipates the reaction beforehand.       "The mental setting of the poem is the speaker's thoughts and realizations about her skill as a writer and the lack of attention that she receives for it, " If what I do prove well, it won't advance, they'll say it's stol'n or else it was by chance"(29-30). Throughout the poem the mood is condescending because the speaker is lowering herself by thinking the same way that society does, and the mental setting relates to the mood as a result of her thinking that way. Figurative language and imagery are used all through this poem to convey theme. For example, "mean pen" is personified and explains that the speaker's pen is humble according to the narrator.

The epic has been ranked by Aristotle as second only to tragedy and the Renaissance critics considered it the highest genre of all. 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. Over the centuries women has been discouraged from having literary ambition and literary criticism has always had a gender bias. ”Obscure lines” carries the connotation that she is hardly recognized as a poet. The literary tradition of her time had little regard for the poetic output or talent of a woman.

She next has a look at lyric poetry and is overawed by the ‘sugared lines’ of Du Bartas, a French writer of religious epics, by whom she was inspired. Bradstreet is envious that the goddesses of poetry did not make an even distribution of talent between her and Du Bartas. But she consoles herself by saying that one writes according to one’s skill. Her simple verse should not be compared with the ‘sugared lines’ of Bartas. Here Bradstreet  is cleverly catering to the male ego by asserting 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 low estimate that she presents of herself is not to be taken seriously as she is being sarcastic about the notion of woman’s lack of literary creativity popularly held. She is so supremely confident of her craft that she can afford to underrate herself to please the peevish men of her time.

Further she says that she is not like the ‘sweet-tongued Greek’ who by art and industry overcame his early speech problems and learnt to “speak plain and fluent”. She probably has in mind Demosthenes, the famous Greek orator, who overcame his stammer by constantly declaiming and speaking with pebbles in his mouth. He attained a style that was plain and free from all embellishments. Although a great deal can be achieved by art, yet there is no remedy for “ A weak or wounded brain”. She is probably voicing the contemporary prejudice against women – that literary creativity called for a tough mental fibre which women, unlike men did not possess. Women have to work against this current of the world. The Poet in her apologetic tone presents humility and self-effacement.

In a direct contrast to the apologetic tone, she is now full of resentment at the unjust treatment of women poets. She is upset with her detractors who have such a poor opinion of a woman’s intellect that they feel that she ought not to assume the “poet’s pen”. 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 would still be accused of scorning a poet’s vocation. She is quite aware of this spiteful nature of men, and realizes that due credit is hardly ever given to women for writing. If what they write is truly good, it is not likely to receive any accolades. The critics will dismiss their work saying that it was either plagiarized, or produced by chance. Originality and talent in a woman poet are viewed with suspicion. In our male-oriented culture a woman poet is deemed to be an inferior poet.

Given this cultural and intellectual hostility, she feels that the Greeks perhaps were more mild and understanding than the men of her own generation, or else they would not have made the nine Muses the promoters of the fine arts, with poetry being placed under the care of Calliope – one of the Muses inspiring epic. The implication of this declaration is, however ironical for she knows that the Greeks too were merely pretending and being hypocritical in making the goddesses patrons of the arts, while at the same time denying the women the privilege to write. She emphatically concludes the stanza by saying that Greeks played the fool and lied and hence the need to repudiate the idea that women are only inspirers and not creators. It is a dubious privilege they enjoy as Muses.

After this passionate rebuke she once again puts on the mask of humility. She panders to male vanity by declaring that men excel women in everything and enjoy precedence over them. Any war between the two would be unjust and futile: “Men can do best, and women know it.” So, she expects them to be gracious enough to make a small allowance to women’s work.

In the concluding stanza, she visualizes the male poets as soaring like birds in the sky as they write in a lofty style. While the term “high-flown quill” is apparently meant to be complimentary, it is not free from ridicule as writing that is “high-flown” is bombastic but without much sense. She goes on to suggest that their 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 requests 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 as she does not merit one made out of bay. Both thyme and parsley are used in cooking and seasoning and therefore appropriate to her as woman.

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, just as gold glitters all the more when it is place beside “mean and unrefined ore”. The thing to remember is that pure gold has its origin in “mean and unrefined ore”. That being so, Bradstreet seems to imply that given a less hostile atmosphere, the writing of women poets too would improve and begin to glitter like gold.

 Confessional Poetry

Confessional Poetry consuming the literary imagination for almost two decades ruptured the topical taboos of its time: abortion, alcoholism, divorce, mental hospitals, and suicide attempts – nothing was sacred and everything was fair game.

The Confessional Poetry created a disturbing often autobiographical poetry of pain that shocked the world with its raw oratory of human suffering. Indebted to both romantic poets and French Symbolists for their introspective ruminations on the darker realms, the movement dramatized everyday human angst with unsparing technical mastery, blurring boundaries between personal torment and political realities.

Anne Sexton explored her abortions and depressions; Sylvia Plath charted her suicidal tendencies; Lowell scrutinized his marital discord and emotional breakdowns. Confessional Poetry’s tone of guilt-ridden despair was not limited to the page. Sometimes called the ‘murderous art’, the movement lost many of its practitioners to suicide, including Plath and Anne Sexton.

The legacy of the Confessional Poetry lives on as a mode: the ultra-candid dissection of private distress. Rosenthal recognized a further willingness by American Poets to open their own private life all displayed on the pages for the scrutiny of readers as easily as innocent family photographs might be shared with friends.

The Confessional Poets were not merely recording their emotions on page; craft and constructions were extremely important to her work. While their treatment of the ‘poetic self’ may have been groundbreaking and shocking to some readers, these poets maintained a high level of craftsmanship through their careful attention to and use of parody.

Confessional Poetry is a reaction against Eliot’s School of ‘Extinction of Personality’ – Snodgrass’s ‘Heart’s Needle’.

Plath’s persona in her poem maintains a sort of ritualistic defense against their situation, persons were made rigid by suffering., her poems reflect the fight of the mind against extreme circumstances through intensification of its manipulative skill, which result in parody.

Confessional Poetry is an important movement that should not be disregarded as narcissistic, but rather be welcomed as a new way to involve the reader in the hermeneutic process, to approach universal values through the thematization of events out of the speaker’s lives.

Confessional Poetry broke away from modernism’s dedication to impersonality and reopened poetry to intense self-exploration and frank revelation of personal experience. Although each confession poet varies used their poetry to explore political issues, their investigations of how personal identity is constructed laid the ground for a more openly political poetry that emerged in America

Plath as a Confessional Poet:

From her earlier madwomen and hysterical virgins to the late suicides and father-killers, Plath portrays characters whose stage performances are subversions of the creative act. Absorbed in their rituals, they confess nothing. They are not anxious to make a break through back into life. In fact their energies are engaged in erecting a barricade against self-revelation. Plath’s fascination with this parodist image of the creative artist stems from a deep knowledge of the machinations of the mind. If she reveals herself in these poems, she does so in the grotesque mirror of parody. If these poems come out of her own emotional experiences, as she said they did, they are not uninformed cries from the heart. Rather, she chose to deal with her experience by creating characters who could not deal with thieves and through their rituals demonstrate their failure. These poems like the speakers in them are superbly controlled; but the poet behind the poem uses her immense technical control to manipulate the tone, the rhythm, the rhyme, the pace of the speaker’s language in order to reveal truths about the speakers that their obsessive assertions deny.

Daddy:

For all the frankness of this poem, the name calling, the dark feeling that pervades it is undefined, held back rather than revealed by the technique. The poet who has created this speaker knows the speaker’s strategies because they are perverted version of her own, and that is the distinction between the speaker’s ‘light verse’ and the poet’s serious poem.

In the poem, the characteristic Plath trap forcing herself to deal with a situation she finds unacceptable. ‘Daddy’ is not so much an account of a true-life situation as a demonstration of the mind confronting its own suffering and trying to control that by which it feels controlled. The simplistic, insistent rhythm is one form of control, the obsessive rhyming and repeated short phrase are others, meant by which she attempts to charm and hold off the evil spirits. But the speaker is even craftier than this technical expertise demonstrates. She is skilled at image-making like a poet and she can manipulate her images with extreme facility. The images themselves are important for what they tell us of her sense of being victimized and victimize but more significant than the actual image is the swift ease with which she can turn it to various uses. For example, she starts out imagining herself as a prisoner living like a foot in the black shoe of her father. Then she casts her father in her own role and he becomes “one grey toe/ Big as a Frisco seal” and then quickly she is looking for his foot, his root. Next he reverts to his original boot identity, and she is the one with “The boot in the face”. And immediately he returns with “a cleft in your chin instead of your foot.” At the end, she sees the villagers stamping on him. Thus she moves from booted to booter as her father reverses the direction. The mind that works in this way is neither logical nor psychologically penetrating; it is simply extremely adept as juggling images, but she seems to have no understanding of the confusion her wild image-making betrays.  When she identifies herself as a foot, she suggests that she is trapped, but when she calls her father a foot the association break down. In the same way, when she caricatures her father as a Fascist and herself as a Jew, she develops association of torture which is not exactly reversed when she reverses the identification and calls herself the killer of her vampire father.

The speaker here can categorize and manipulate her feelings in name-calling, in rites, in images, but there are only techniques, and her frenzied use of them suggests that they are methods she employs in the absence of any other.

When she says, “Daddy, I ‘ve had to kill performs, but the frantic pitch of the language and the swift switches of image do not confirm any self-understanding. The pace of the poem reveals its speaker as one driven by a hysterical need for complete control, a need that stems from the fear that without such control, a need that stems from the fear that without such control she will be destroyed. Her simple, incantory monologue is the perfect vehicle of expression for the orderly disordered mind.

Lady Lazarus:

‘Lady Lazarus’ draws on Plath’s own suicide attempts the poem tells us little more than a newspaper account of the actual event. It is not a personal confession. What it does reveal is Plath’s understanding of the way the suicidal person thinks.

The relationship between poet and speaker in ‘Lady Lazarus’ and ‘Daddy’ is somewhat more complicated because these poems do call upon specific incidents in Plath’s biographs, her suicide attempts and her father’s death. Yet to associate the poet with the speaker directly as many critics have done, does not account for the fact that Plath employs here as before the technique of caricature, hyperbole and parody that serve both to distance the speaker from the poet and at the same time to project onto the speaker as subversive variety of the poet’s own strategies.

Plath’s outraged speakers do not confess their misery so much as they vent it – they have generalized figures not real-life people, types that Plath manipulates dramatically in order to reveal their unconscious.

Ariel:

In terms of the autobiographical overtones, the poem can be seen as what apparently it is infact – an account of the Poet’s going for a ride on her favourite horse. Each of the details she mentions with respect to the ride(atleast in the first six stanzas) can be seen exactly reporting of what it is like to ride a horse. The last five stanzas of the poem obvious more beyond the literal telling of taking a horseback ride and more into something which partakes of the mystery whereby the rider experiences something of the unity which is created between horse and rider, if not literally but metaphorically. This change in the theme of the poem is signaled both a change in tone and by a change in technique, and specifically by the break in the rhyme scheme.

To treat ‘Ariel’ as a confessional poem is to suggest that its actual importance lies in the horse ride taken by the author, is the author’s psychological problems, or in its position within the geographical development of the author; but none of these issues is as significant as the imagistic and thematic development rendered by the poem itself.

The process of doing away with daddy in the poem represents the personal attempts at psychic purgation of the image ‘the mode’ of fake she has constructed. Her method, however are more akin to magic than murder, since it is through a combination of exorcism and sympathetic magic that she works to dispossess herself of her own fantasies.

When M.C.Rosenthal first used the term confessional poetry, he had in mind a phase turned to themes of sexual guilt, alcoholism, confinement in a mental hospital and developed in them in the first person in a way that intended in the point of view, to point to the poet himself. Plath’s poetry lacks the realistic details – we should reconsider the nature of the speaker in her poem, her relationship with the poet and the extent to which the poem are confessional.

Plath unlike Lowell incorporates abstracted autobiographic details in her poetry only to amplify or dramatize feeling of pain and sorrow rather than to induce actual self-revelation. “There are some thing that are fit for inclusion in poetry and others which are not?”-Dr.Johnson ‘No Taboo’  Robert Lowell’s ‘Life Studies’ – Lowell’s poems about his experience in a mental hospital peculiar, private and taboo subjects. Anne Sexton writes about her experiences as a mother, as a mother  who has had a nervous breakdown, is an emotional and psychological depth.

Plath’s persona in her poems maintains (persons made rigid by suffering) a sort of ritualistic defense against their situation, her poems reflect the fight of the mind against extreme circumstances through intensification of its manipulative skill, which result in parody.

O’Neil’s ‘Emperor Jones’

                                                                                           

Expressionism is a dramatic technique which enables a dramatist to depict inner reality the soul or psyche of his personages. The emphasis shifts from the external to the internal reality. The action moves backward and forward freely in space and time in harmony with the thought processes of the character concerned. There is a deeper and deeper probing of the sub-conscious, action is increasingly internalized and what goes on within the soul becomes more important than the external action. Instead of a dramatic sequence of events there is a concentration on ‘the streams of consciousness’.

The play is a record of the shedding of false masks acquired by the black man through his association with the white man and of his return to his primitive home. ‘The Emperor Jones’ is a study in atavism. For the terrors of the jungle reduce the proud Jones to a cringing, crawling African savage before his end. O’Neill was convinced that the real cultural roots of the Negro lay in Africa from where had come, leaving the primeval jungle across the Atlantic to be sold as slave in the US. Jones, though he himself was never a slave, has within him a racial memory and in his tragedy we have the enactment of the Negro’s story. The play only reverses the direction of events. Jones is introduced at the height of the power that he has grabbed for himself through unscrupulous exploitation of the ignorant natives. But he regresses, as seen from a series of hallucinations, to his primitive state, and this process is triggered off by terror in the tropical forest. The Hero is symbolic of something more universal – the primitive forces that lurk beneath the surface of civilized human beings.

Jung’s contention is that the mind of man contains ideas from the collective unconscious which come to him simply by virtue of his membership in the human race as well as ideas inherited from his own specific, race, tribe and family. This manifests itself in archetypal symbols and pattern latent in the mind of all men. Finally from this personal unconsciousness emerges his own consciousness, his ego. This play is a record of the gradual breaking down of Jones’ conscious ego and the revelation of his personal and collective unconscious. The first two visions of Jeff and of the Prison Guard proceed from his personal unconscious and the later hallucinations proceed from a racial memory. For Jones had never actually undergone the traumatic experience of being auctioned as a slave nor had he a direct knowledge of a Congo Witch Doctor. Yet under the influence of fear, when his veneer of culture is not there to protect him, his racial unconscious projects frightening visions and completely subjugates his conscious mind.

The sin of pride has a particular meaning for the dramatist. Man commits a fatal error when he relies on his conscious ego too much in order to fulfill all his needs without acknowledging the power of the unconscious. Hence the unconscious is viewed as the equivalent of the Greek gods. Self knowledge is something that everyone should strive for. The gradual disintegration of his conscious ego, the revelation of his personal and collective unconscious and his flight from himself constitute the dramatic movement.

The dramatist has employed the expressionistic technique in this play. Expressionism is a term applied to a style of painting or sculpture or literary work, which is concerned with the inner world of feeling rather that with the outer world of fact. It seeks to represent concretely on the stage what happens inside a character’s mind. This play is not a typical expressionist play. It mixes realism with expressionism. Till the death of Jones the audience are carried away with waves of expressionism. But with the explanation offered in the last scene, if the idea of magic is to be accepted then it gives way to realism.

In the play O’Neill has shown how the ego or self of Emperor Jones breaks down under the impact of terror, and how his personal and racial memories crowd in upon him, cause the disintegration of his ego or personal consciousness. It is in this way that the past of Jones determines his present and leads to his decay. To achieve this dramatist has minimized the external and maximized the internal action. Despite a lot of running around, bumping of the heads and firing of shots on the stage, our concern remains mainly with what is passing in Jones’ mind.

The beating tom-tom symbolizes the all-pervasive and inescapable presence of the primitive. The tom-tom beats in the camp of the ‘bush niggers’ and it beats in Jones’ body, representing the primitive blood which charges through his arteries. At the beginning it is only faintly heard and with the increase in terror within the mind of Jones and with his visions it perceptively becomes louder and louder to cease instantly as Jones is killed with a silver bullet.

The first scene and the last scene of the play consist of realistic dialogue in the best manner of O’Neill, but the central six scenes which take place at night in the forest are sustained pieces of the interior monologue of Jones. A brief analysis of these forest scenes shows a step by step spiritual disintegration and regression of the erstwhile emperor. In these scenes he is seen continuously talking to himself, as visions from his personal past of crime and evil-doing as well as from his racial past, crowd in upon him.

In scene ii, we find Jones in the grip of an extremely intensified fear-complex. He is continually talking to himself in order to get rid of the nervousness and fear to which he has become subject owing to the woods and the threatening beat of the tom-tom. He has mistaken the route which he should have taken and when he looks for the white stones under which he had hidden his food, he finds that they have disappeared. This makes him even more nervous and the strain of his strenuous journey of three hours begins to tell upon him. Finally he is overcome by hunger and has the horrifying hallucinatory vision of the ‘Little Formless Fears’ moving towards him. The nervous fear of which he is a victim is conveyed to the audience in a dramatic manner with the help of this monologue.

In scene iii, we have retrospective dramatic monologue in which Jones imagines that he is seeing the ghostly figure of the Negro Jeff whom he had killed in a quarrel over a game of dice. This figure is nothing but a hallucinatory vision conjured by the over worked brain of Jones. He addresses it directly and tries to talk to it. Finally not finding any response he gets nervous and fires at it with furious rage. The moment the smoke clears away, he finds that he is alone in the forest.

In scene iv we find a completely exhausted and miserable Jones, the erstwhile emperor. He tears away the “frippery Emperor trappin’s” from his body. It makes him feel lighter. Throughout he continues talking to himself in a wild fashion. The things which he keeps seeing have made him absolutely nervous. He tries to reassure himself that there are no such things. Almost immediately after this he has another hallucinatory vision and he prays aloud to Lord Jesus. His guilty conscience makes him see the vision of that white prison-guard who had whipped him across the back and whom he had killed in a fit of rage. The whole scene is reenacted on the stage of his mind. The impression is so vivid that he actually gets into the posture of striking at the guard. Just as he feels sure, that he has caught him, he realizes with sudden horror that his hands are empty. He shouts and fires. Immediately the whole vision is blotted out and Jones stands alone in his darkness.

In scene v, as the night advances Jones journey through the forest becomes more and more tormented. His morale has sunk and is courage is no longer kept. In his anguish he asserts to Lord Jesus  as a poor sinner to protect him from them. But his words lack conviction as his faith is not deep-rooted. As the primitive jungle tightens its grip over Jones, he throws off his shoes and adds “Emperor you ‘se gitting mighy low”. The hallucination that Jones has in this scene is not the projection of his own unconscious. It is the first Jungian touch that O’Neill provides in the play, for the auction-scene set in the Southern State of America is part of Jones ‘collective unconsciousness’. In part of the racial memory of the Negroes, what Jung calls ‘Collective Unconsciousness’.

The hallucinatory visions presented in scenes vi and vii are two of the greatest triumphs of the modern psycho-analysis and the law of mental association. The first of these visions make Jones feel that he has already been sold as a slave and he finds himself on board a galley where he is plying at the oars like a common galley-slave. The pathetic wail of the slaves in which Jones also joins is symbolic of the bottomless pit of despair into which he has fallen. It is not possible for a man to descend lower than this. He has lost all his hopes of being saved and has turned into a perfect nervous wreck.

Finally, the unconscious associations in Jones’ mind carry him to the original home of his ancestors, into the dark and dreadful jungles of Africa, where in a horrifying vision he joins in the crooning and dancing of the Congo Witch-Doctor who by a gesture seems to tell him that he must offer himself as a sacrifice in order to appease an angry god. Then the huge head of a crocodile, with wide open jaws appears on the stage and Jones, hypnotized by the fascinating glare of its green eyes moves towards it with deliberately slow steps all the time praying to Lord Jesus to have mercy on him. Then all of a sudden the spell is broken and coming out his trance Jones fires at the crocodile. Immediately the whole vision disappears and he falls flat on ground.

 Eugene O’Neill’s ‘The Hairy Ape’

Eugene O’Neill’s ‘The Hairy Ape’ presents a disheartening assessment of the impact of living in the industrialized society of the twentieth century. O’Neil portrays a world in which spiritual, communal and behavioural values of the past have been displaced by the lure of technology and materialism and by patterns of cultural barbarism.

The resounding theme of the play is the effect of industrialization and technological progress on the worker. Industralization has reduced the human worker into a machine: men are programmed to do one task, are turned on and off by whistles, and are not required to think independently. Workers are thus forced into jobs that require nothing but grunt work and physical labour, which has in turn caused a general deterioration of the worker into a Neanderthal or Ape-like state. This is made clear by O’Neill’s stage direction which indicates that the Firemen actually look like Neanderthals and one of the oldest workers, Paddy as “extremely monkey like”. As a whole, the play is a close investigation of this regressive pattern through the character Yank – the play marks his regression from a Neander on the ship to an actual ape at the zoo.

The subtitle – ‘A Comedy of Ancient and Modern Life in 8 Scenes’ is reminiscent of Jungians theory of the ‘unconscious’.  ‘Class’ determines both Mildred and Yank’s financial resources, educational opportunities, outlook on life and culture. The play reveals how deeply and rigidly class is inscribed into American culture and the cultural and financial boundaries it erects. Mildred and Yank are representatives of the highest and the lowest societal classes – as Long would term it, the bourgeois and the proletariat. Yank’s idiosyncratic speech, characterized by chopped and mangled words eliminate the possibility of Yank’s successes  or acceptance in a world/class other than his own. Yank’s speech defines his class and place in society – rigid, unchanging and binding . yank can only break the bounds of his vocabulary and his style in the same violent and ultimately frustrated way that he bends the bars of his cell he can’t break the mould of the apparently flexible yet imprisoning medium that is language and that is life. The settings and environment of the play reveal larger social and cultural realities. Yank and the Firemen exist within the cramped and hot forecastle and stokehole, described as a formidable cage. In contrast, Mildred and her Aunt’s environment, the promenade deck of the ship is filled with fresh air and sun.  The ocean that surrounds them is infinitely spacious and the general feeling of freedom abounds. The promenade deck is also symbolically situated above at the top of the ship, far above the stokehole. Both the stokehole and the promenade deck setting epitomize the lifestyles and characteristics of the ship’s literal decks and subsequent upper and lower classes aboard.

However, while Mildred and Yank’s lifestyles are extremely different, they share similar complaints about class. Mildred describes herself as the ‘waste product’ of her father’s steel company. She has reaped the financial benefits of the company, but has felt none of the vigour or passion that created it. Mildred yearns to find passion – to touch ‘life’ beyond her cushioned bourgeois world. Yank, on the other hand, has felt too much of the ‘life’ Mildred describes. Both the characters actively struggle with their environmental and class boundaries. Yank yearns to become steel and Mildred desires to learn what is natural.

Although Mildred should be considered the antagonist of the ‘Hairy Ape’, she is equally victimized by class as Yank. Though Mildred has more education and cultural experience than Yank, she still cannot escape her cultural identity. Mildred describes herself as the waste of her father’s steel company, as she has felt the benefits, but not the hard work that brought them. She shares with Yank the need to find a sense of usefulness or belonging – the fate of both characters were decided before they were born. Thus, Yank and Mildred desperately search to find an identity that is their own. The failure of both these characters lies in the conscious and unconscious refusal to shed their values and knowledge while searching for a new identity. For example, Mildred will not change out of her white dress and Yank’s coal dust is saturated into his skin. Neill develops the themes of entrapment through charting to different social status. The mutual discomfort and helplessness is not only imposed by the greater societal structure but also stem from their ignorance of their societal and natural order – Yank’s lack of knowledge of Mildred and Mildred’s ignorance of Yank.

‘Steel’ is both a symbol of power and oppression in the play. While Yank exclaims in scene (ii) that he is steel, “the muscles and the punch behind it”, he is all the while penned in a virtual cage of steel created by the ship around him. Steel creates other cages in the play – Yank’s jail cell and the cell of the ape. Steel is also oppressive because it creates jobs like Yank’s, it is symbolic of the technology that force Yank and the Firemen into slave-like jobs. Yank desires to topple the class structure by re-inscribing the importance and necessity of the working class.

The idea of who ‘belongs’ and the idea of ‘belonging’ are continually reinforced throughout the play. Yank equates ‘belonging’ with power and importance, and uses ‘belonging’ as a way to reverse societal power structures. In scene (i), Yank claims that he ‘belongs’ to the ship, as opposed to the passengers in first class who are merely ‘baggage’. Yank also associates ‘belonging’ with an individual’s usefulness and functionality. The firemen ‘belong’ because they make the ship run and are essential to its workings.

Yank is especially affected by Mildred because she presents a world and class which he cannot belong to. After their meeting, the play essentially follows Yank in his quest to find belonging, finally leading him to the monkey-house at the zoo.

Mildred Douglas’s reaction to Yank is the catalyst which makes Yank come to class awareness. His attempt to get revenge on Mildred Douglas widens to revenge on the steel industry and finally the entire Bourgeois.

Throughout this struggle Yank defines ‘belonging’ as power. When he thinks he ‘belongs’ to something he gains strength, when Yank is rejected by a group, he is terribly weak. However, Yank is rejected by all facets of society: his fellow firemen, Mildred, the street goers of fifth avenue, the IWW and finally the ape in the zoo.

Yank symbolizes the struggle of modern man within industrial society – he cannot break class or ideological barriers, nor create new ones. Yank is the outsider, and eventually just the freak at the zoo for the people to cage and point at.

Expressionism is a dramatic technique which enables a dramatist to depict inner realities of he social/psyche of the personages. The emphasis shifts from the external to the internal reality. The action moves backwards and forward freely in space and time in harmony with the thought processes of the character concerned. There is a deeper and deeper probing of the sub-conscious, action is increasingly internalized and what goes on within the soul becomes more important than the external action. Instead of a dramatic sequence of events there is a concentration on ‘the stream of consciousness’. Rodent’s thinker is an expressionistic device in the dramatic reinforcement of theme through the juxtaposition of the Yank with the image of a Gorilla.

The ape symbolizes man in a primitive state before technology, complex language structures, complex thought or money was necessary. The ape represents man that is not only behind in an evolutionary sense, but is free of class, technology and other elements of modern society.

Paddy brings historical perspectives to the play with his presence the audience would not have as much perspective about the revolution brought about by machines. Paddy has experienced life on the sea that was free, where he was empowered and valued. Paddy, unlike many of the men knows what it is like to not do slave labour. (He knows freedom).

Yank’s continual references to Paddy as “dead” and “old” and not ‘belonging’ with the other men aboard the ocean liner reveals Yank’s own rejection of freedom. The acceptance and attachment to the modern ship machine enslaves men like Yank. The need for belonging, without the knowledge of what else to belong to, is dangerous as exemplified by Yank’s encounter with Mildred. Initially Yank sees himself as the motivator of progress – the steel and the engine that drives the ocean liner or modern society. Yank does not realize that as the “mover”, the industrial workers, he is caged in the bottom of the ship and never feel any of the benefits of the ships’s movement. While Yank shovels coal into the engine, the upper classes, symbolically on the top deck lounge on the promenade deck and take in the sea breeze. Technology has further separated the upper and the lower classes.

Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’

                                                                                                      

Introduction:

     America has long been recognized as a democratic nation, a nation operating under the will of the people. The forefathers of America fought incessantly against British tyranny to start a land of freedom and opportunity. Because America revived the ancient Greek ideology of democracy, the nation was set apart from the rest of the world and was revered for the freedom and justice it provided its people. However, not everyone thinks that American democracy means freedom and liberty. On the contrary writers such as Henry David Thoreau in ‘Civil Disobedience’ along with Herman Melville in ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’, suggest that democracy can actually oppress and restrict the individual. Thoreau views government as a fundamental hindrance to the creative enterprise of the people it purports to represent.

Thoreau firmly asserts the primacy of individual conscience over collective pragmatism. Civil disobedience however has two restrictions: the means of resistance advocated and practiced by Thoreau are non-violent and that the act of resistance should specifically target the injustice to be remedied. Moral objection to a particular law does not authorize nonobservance of all laws. Some aspects of Thoreau’s argument seem anti-democratic on their face, particularly his disregard for majority opinion as expressed through elected representatives. His fundamental respect for democracy and the Constitution coexist with a pervasive cynicism.

Thoreau the transcendentalist says “Transcendentalism was, at its core, a philosophy of naked individualism, aimed at the creation of the new American, the self-reliant man, complete and independent." Although they stressed self-reform the transcendentalists participated in most of the social action movements of the times Thoreau’s  Civil Disobedience is one such work.

The Idea of Majority Ruling:

In ‘Civil Disobedience’, Thoreau criticizes the American Government for its democratic nature, viz., the idea of majority ruling. Thoreau portrays this very fundamental element of democracy where the power belongs to the majority as a brutish fight where the strongest wins. Thoreau, the transcendentalist believes in the importance of the individual, in a society where there are many individuals with conflicting perceptions and beliefs. Unlike Emerson, Thoreau rejects passivity and challenges his readers to stand up against the government that focuses on majorities over individuals. Thoreau describes the majority in a democracy as men who “serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies…in most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense”. He feels that those who belong to a democracy are essentially machines controlled by the majority, lacking in ability to make choices for themselves. Thoreau repeatedly condemns the democratic system for it is lack of morality and tendency to disempower the individual.

Individual Conscience and Morality:

 Thoreau objects to the notion of majority ruling on which democracy is theoretically founded, noting that the views of the majority do not always coincide with the morally right one. Thoreau turns to the issue of effecting change through democratic means. The position of the majority, however legitimate in the context of a democracy, is not tantamount to a moral position. A man has an obligation to act according to the dictates of his conscience, even if the latter goes against majority opinion, the presiding leadership, or the laws of the society.

Resistance:

In the American tradition, men have a recognized and cherished right of revolution, from which Thoreau derives the concept of civil disobedience. A man disgraces himself by associating with a government that treats even some of its citizens unjustly, even if he is not the direct victim of injustice. Thoreau takes the issue with William Paley, an English theologian and philosopher, who argues that any movement of resistance to government must balance the enormity of the grievance to be redressed and the “probability and expense” of redressing it. It may not be convenient to resist, and the personal costs may be greater than the injustice to be remedied; however, Thoreau firmly asserts the primacy of individual conscience over collective pragmatism.    

Thoreau’s notion of service to one’s own country paradoxically takes the form of resistance against it. Resistance is the highest form of patriotism because it demonstrates a desire not to subvert government but to build a better one in the long term.

Along these lines, Thoreau does not advocate a wholesale rejection of government, but resistance to those specific features deemed to be unjust or immoral.                                          Thoreau believes that the real obstacle to reform lies with those who disapprove of the measures of government while tacitly lending it their practical allegiance. At the very least, if an unjust government is not to be directly resisted, a man of true conviction should cease to lend it his indirect support in the form of taxes. Thoreau acknowledges that it is realistically impossible to deprive the government of tax dollars for the specific policies that one wishes to oppose. Still, complete payment of his taxes would be tantamount to expressing complete allegiance to the State.

Money is generally corrupting force because it binds men to the institutions and the government responsible for unjust practices and policies. Thoreau sees a paradoxically inverse relationship between money and freedom. The poor man has the greatest liberty to resist because he depends the least on the government for his own welfare and protection. For the ‘rich man’, crudely speaking, the consequences of disobedience often seem too great, either to his property or personal standing in society.

State Vs Individual:

In contrast to his repeated comparison of the State to a machine, Thoreau personifies the State “ as a lone woman with her silver spoons”. He casts government not as a mechanical agent of injustice but as a feminized object of pity. Thoreau’s confrontation with the State proves to him that physical violence is less powerful than individual conscience. Bodies can be contained behind walls, but ideas cannot. During his stay in prison, Thoreau comes to the realization that, far from being a formidable brute force, government is in fact weak and morally pathetic. That he should choose the figure of a woman to make this point reveals an interestingly gendered conception of civil disobedience, given the constant emphasis on the virtues of men in relation to the State, here personified as a woman.

Despite his stance of civil disobedience on the questions of slavery and the Mexican war. Thoreau claims to have great respect and admiration for the ideals of American government and its institutions. Thoreau goes so far as to state that his first instinct has always been conformity. Statesmen, legislators, politicians are unable to scrutinize the government that lends them their authority. Thoreau values their contributions to society, their pragmatism and their diplomacy, but feels that only someone outside of government can speak the Truth about it.

Conclusion:

Democracy is not the last step in the evolution of the government, as there is still greater room for the State to recognize the freedom and rights of the individual. Thoreau concludes on an utopian note, saying such a State is one he has imagined “but not yet anywhere seen”.                                               

Upon closer examination, it is apparent that Thoreau derives his justification of resistance both from the historical tradition of revolution in America and also from religious sources as well. Throughout Civil Disobedience, passages from the Bible are referenced and seamlessly integrated into his argument about political dissent and civil disobedience. Thoreau cites Corinthians to emphasize the importance of individual conscience. Later, he quotes from Matthew to underscore his point about government and the corrupting effects of wealth. Thoreau’s allusions to the Bible are imbued with strong romantic and naturalist imagery. The source of truth is a “stream” that comes “trickling into this lake or that pool” from which wise men “drink”. Such imagery points to Thoreau’s transcendentalist belief that God is ultimately found within nature. Thoreau turns to another organic metaphor: as soon as an individual has been cultivated and “ripened” to the point of maturity, the State should allow him “to drop off” the tree and to live free and independently.

Thoreau counterbalances this idealistic vision with a more historical overview of government, commenting on the changing relationship in modern times between people and those who rule and legislate. The momentum of that change has favoured greater individualism and autonomy: “The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.” Thoreau’s concept of civil disobedience fits into the larger historical narrative of “progress” by empowering the individual to achieve greater freedom and equality for him and others.

Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Cask Of Amontillado’

                                                                                       

Introduction:

Burduck writes: “A master of artistic effect, Poe … does not disappoint the audience that seeks to journey into the domain of fear. This tale, in a sense, entombs its readers in their own cellars of mental dread. ‘The Cask of Amontillado’  an ‘Arabesque Short Story’, deals with one of the most recognizable themes of Poe’s best horror writing, that of the burial of a living victim.

‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is a carefully crafted story so that every detail contributes to ‘a certain unique or single effect’. The theme, the narrative, the setting, the sound effects and the irony brings the desired effect . Beginning at the end is the unique method of narrative adopted here that which contributes to the singleness of effect. By telling the story from Montresor's point of view, Poe forces the reader to look into the inner workings of a murderer's mind.
Theme:

‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is a powerful tale of revenge. Montresor, the sinister narrator of this tale pledges revenge upon Fortunato for an insult. Montresor intends to seek vengeance in support of his family motto: “No one assails me with impunity”. On the court of arms which bears the motto appears “a huge human foot d’or, in a field of azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are embedded in the heel”. It is important for Montresor to have his victim know what is happening to him as he derives pleasure from the fact that as Fortunato slowly dies, the thought of his rejected opportunities of escape will sting him with unbearable regret, and as he sobers with terror, the final blow will come from the realization that his craving for the wine has led him to his doom. The envisioned ‘cask actually draws Fortunato into the ‘casket’ wherein he still lies. The most dry sherry produced by the mountains of Spain contrasts with the dank depths of Fortunato’s tomb. (In structure, there can be no doubt, that both Montresor’s plan of revenge and Poe’s story are carefully crafted to create the desired effect.)

Point of View:

Poe writes this story from the perspective of Montresor who vows revenge against Fortunato. Poe does not intend for the reader to sympathize with Montresor because he has been wronged by Fortunato, but rather to judge him. Telling the story from Montresor’s point of view, intensifies the effect of moral shock and horror and also invites the reader to delve into the inner workings of a sinister mind. Montresor is not a reliable narrator, and that he has a tendency to hold grudges and exaggerate terribly, as he refers to the "thousand injuries" that he has suffered at the hands of Fortunato.  This adds to the effect of a horror story.

Characters:

Although several characters are mentioned in this story, the true focus lies upon Montresor, the diabolical narrator of this tale of horror, who pledges revenge upon Fortunato for an insult. When the two meet during the carnival season, there is a warm greeting with excessive shaking of hands which Montresor attributes to the fact that Fortunato had been drinking. Montresor also appears to be ‘happy’ to see Fortunato since he is planning to murder him. Fortunato’s clown or jester’s costume appears to be appropriate not only for the carnival season but also for the f act that Montresor intends to make a ‘fool’ out of him. The jingling bells here are not merry bells but death bells.

 Setting:

The story begins around dusk, one evening during the carnival season in an unnamed European city. The location quickly changes from the lighthearted activities associated with such a festival to the damp, dark catacombs under Montressor’s palazzo which helps to establish the sinister atmosphere of the story.

Irony:

Irony, both dramatic and verbal plays an important role in this process. Dramatic irony occurs when the reader becomes painfully aware of what will become of Fortunato even though the character continues his descent into the catacombs in pursuit of the Amontillado. Poe further adds to this effect by calling the character Fortunato, and dressing him in a clown or a fool’s costume since Montresor intends to make a fool of him as part of his dark plan. The entire situation is ironic – that is, the most terrible and gruesome deeds are executed in a carnival atmosphere of gaiety and happiness; Montressor is using the atmosphere of celebration to disguise the horribly atrocious act of entombing a man alive.

The Story:

During the din of the carnival season, the protagonist, Montressor, decides to avenge his honor after receiving insult from Fortunato. Feigning(fake) outward congeniality toward his enemy, Montressor shrugs off numerous insults from the drunken Fortunato, inviting Fortunato to his home to sample "a pipe of what passes for Amontillado," an exquisite and rare sherry. Fortunato, the consummate connoisseur, guilelessly accepts Montressor's offer. Hastily they make for Montressor's vaults (burial chamber).

Having planned all details of his revenge, Montressor has given instructions to his servants not to leave their duties for the duration of his long absence; as carnival is in full swing, the servants naturally take the opportunity to vacate the house immediately.

Montressor leads the inebriated (drunk) Fortunato into the bowels of the family crypts, all the while giving Fortunato more to drink, ostensibly to help Fortunato's oppressive cough. There are numerous examples of verbal irony within Montresor's words. Montresor expresses concern about Fortunato's health, and several times he suggests that they should turn back for fear that Fortunato's cough will worsen as a result of the cold and dampness of the catacombs. One of the most memorable lines of the story is given by Montresor in response to Fortunato saying, "I will not die of a cough." Montresor says, "True--true...." Other examples can be seen when Montresor toasts Fortunato's long life as well as when he says that he is a mason, but not in the sense that Fortunato means. "In pace requiescat!" ("Rest in peace!") is the last irony of a heavily ironic tale. "In pace" also refers to a very secure monastic prison.

Upon finally reaching the termination of the vaults, Montressor invites Fortunato to precede him into the tiny niche wherein lies the phantom cask. Fortunato comply, and upon striking the far end of the darkened recess, stands dumbfounded for long enough to allow Montressor to shackle him to the wall.

Immediately, Montressor begins to wall up the recess, allowing Fortunato to slowly gain his senses and realize the stupidity of his actions. Upon the wall reaching breast level, Fortunato begins to shriek uncontrollably. Momentarily unnerved, Montressor thinks to end the life of his enemy immediately, but, satisfied with the incapability of his crime and the utter hideousness with which it will torture Fortunato, Montressor decides simply to scream back at his foe, and drown out any of Fortunato's hope of escape with his own hideous howls.
Before placing the final stone into place, Montressor thrusts his torch into the tiny remaining aperture, and is answered by Fortunato's seemingly deranged giggles. Fortunato pleads one last time for his life, imploring Montressor with the impassioned cry, "for the love of God," but Montressor, quietly answers, "yes, for the love of God." Fortunato makes no further reply, and Montressor, heartily frightened, speedily completes his work. Piling bones upon the masonry to conceal the newly finished work, Montressor departs, and since then has allowed Fortunato "in pace requiescat."

By the end of Poe's story, Montresor has gotten his revenge against unsuspecting Fortunato, whose taste for wine has led him to his own death. Once again we are reminded of the coat of arms and the Montresor family motto. The insignia is symbolic of Montresor's evil character, who like the serpent intends to get revenge.