19th Century American Literature: A Course Manual for ...
19th Century American Literature: A Handbook prepared for the
Undergraduate Students of University of Nizwa
By Professor Abraham Panavelil
Department of Foreign Languages
University of Nizwa
I went to the woods,
Because I wished to live deliberately,
To front only the essential facts of life,
And see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived
- Henry David Thoreau
Preface
This handbook introduces the students some of the major figures of 19th century American literature. It begins with an introduction to literature in general, explaining briefly the major differences between British literature and American literature. It provides an overview of American literature in general and 19th century American literature in particular focusing on some of the major writers of the age and their works. It also offers critical interpretations of some of the texts including the original ones mentioned in the Appendix along with questions and assignments. Please remember that the purpose of the Handbook is to initiate the students in reading and studying original works written by great American authors. I hope the students and instructors will find this Handbook useful. Suggestions for improvement are welcome from all concerned.
Abraham Panavelil Abraham Ph. D
Professor of English
Department of Foreign Languages
University of Nizwa
Sultanate of Oman
CONTENTS
Page Number
Preface 2
Introduction 4
Chapter 1- Literature of Exploration 5
Chapter 2- Puritanism and its influence on American writings 7
Chapter 3- Literary Beginnings- 18th century 8
And the beginning of 19th century
Chapter 4- Transcendentalism and its influence on American writings 10
Chapter 5- Realism and Naturalism 34
Chapter 6- American Poetry of the 19th Century 36
Appendix 1 38
Appendix 2 58
Appendix 3 64
For Further Reading 70
Introduction
What is literature?
Literature is a term used to describe written or spoken material. Broadly speaking, "literature" is used to describe anything from creative writing to more technical or scientific works, but the term is most commonly used to refer to works of the creative imagination, including works of poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction.
Why do we read literature?
Literature represents a language or a people: culture and tradition. But, literature is more important than just a historical or cultural artifact. Literature introduces us to new worlds of experience. Literature is a mirror upon which the realities of life are reflected. We can see ourselves on the pages of a novel, or in the enactment of a play. Literature also offers us a lot of pleasure. Literature is also defined as a criticism of life. It unlocks the culture of the time period, and in a way can give wisdom to the modern society about life. Literature allows us to interpret our own life and emotions in a creative way. It is also a form of entertainment and allows people to use their imagination to visualize the story within their own mind. Literature also helps us to connect to other human beings so they find meaning in their own life. Studying literature requires more than reading literature. When students study literature, they are studying an art form, like painting or music. Think of music, for a minute. Almost everyone enjoys music, but those who have studied music can appreciate it to a much greater extent because they understand what goes into writing and performing a piece of music. And so it is with literature. After studying the various forms of literature (plays, stories, poetry, novels), students begin to recognize literary elements (such as imageries, irony, figures of speech, symbolism etc) and to understand how they contribute to the work. Studying literature will make it possible for us to enjoy what we read to a greater extent as we will understand the artistry that created it. In short, the five important reasons for studying/reading literature are
1. It gives us enjoyment
2. It helps us in knowing about other cultures
3. It helps us in developing our ability to understand, appreciate and enjoy poems, novels, short stories, plays etc.
5. It helps us in developing our creative thinking and makes us able to express well, and if possible, write poems and stories on our own.
Difference between American literature and British literature
In simple terms American literature is writing created by American authors who write in English language and British literature is literary works created by British authors in English language.
George Bernard Shaw, the famous British writer of the 20th century once said, “United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK) are two countries divided by a common language”. The basic difference between British literature and American literature is that of culture. American literature focuses mostly on individuals and/or small groups. Generally speaking, in
American literature, individuals and/or groups are exceptional in some way - usually they are rebels, who do not represent their society. American culture values independence and resistance, above all things.
British literature, by and large, focuses on important social and cultural changes. The main characters are individuals or small groups but they are simply examples of what is happening in society. British culture values history and tradition above all else. Unlike British literature, American literature reflects the many religious, historical, and cultural traditions. English literature is known for its dry wit, emphasis on manners and differences between the classes, and stressing theme and style over plot and characterization. American literature is usually much more character-driven and plot-driven, and is often more realistic in its depictions of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
Different Views
Initially, there was disagreement about how American literature should grow. There were three different views:
1. American literature lacked national feeling as there was a need for books that expressed the special character of the nation, not books that were based on European culture.
2. American Literature was too young to declare its independence from the British literary tradition.
3. There is no need for a specific American literature as good literature was universal, always rising above the time and place.
However, as American literature grew and flowered, the greatest writers found a way to combine the best qualities of the literature of the old and the new, giving it an identity of its own. The writers also gave their works the universality of great literature.
Chapter One
The Literature of Exploration- The beginning of American literature
The first known and sustained contact between the Americans and the rest of the world began with the famous voyage of an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus who was given financial help by the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. In a far country, man’s immediate impulse is to tell his distant friends of what he finds and how he fares. Columbus wrote to the Royal Treasurer, “Because my undertakings have attained success, I know that it will be pleasing to
You.” Here was the beginning of the written record of the American adventure. In fact, Columbus Letter (1493) sets the form and content of the earliest American literature.
Other “letters home” reported most of the subsequent voyages of the explorers who followed during this and the next century. After the Spanish and the Portugal, came the French, British, Dutch and the Swedes to settle in the new land. Except for a few volumes like William
Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantations (1856), much of the writing left by these early explorers and settlers makes rather dreary reading for us. Their writings discussed their enterprises, new lands, riches and explained the geographic, climatic and economic conditions in order to help those who were to follow them. The accounts of the expeditions of the Spanish conqueror Coronado, British adventurer Captain John Smith tell much the same story of lands rich in natural resources and peopled by strange and primitive tribes. In short, American literature during this period gave a glowing picture of the land of riches and opportunity. Accounts of the colonization became well known.
In the 17th century, pirates, adventurers, and explorers opened the way to a second wave of permanent colonists. The early literature of exploration, made up of stories, letters, travel journals supplanted by the settled colonies.
The discovery and settlement of the Western continent is only the first part of the American story. America was also a ‘new world of the mind and spirit’. The modern idea of a ‘free individual’ began to spread in America. Later, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his famous book Walden: “I went to the woods, because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”. The joy that comes from acceptance of this simple faith and the despair that comes from its denial are the two main streams of the American tradition. Americans from the start have gone to the woods to live deliberately, and their literature is the record of their success and failures.
Native Americans
In the name of the colonization, the Native Americans suffered at the hands of the colonists. Their religions, languages and culture were spoiled by the so- called idealism and progress of the colonists. The fact that the Native Indian retreated and suffered is not really an evidence of his inferiority. He left an indelible mark upon the imagination of his conqueror. To the white invader he was an obstacle to be removed, but to their imagination he often symbolized the nobility man could achieve by living openly with nature.
In describing the Native Americans, the colonial writers used only black or white, with no shading; and little is left of the Indian’s own account of life because his poetry and prose existed only in oral tradition. The Native Americans had no written record other than pictographs, and his conqueror was not interested, at that time, in writing down his thoughts and feelings for him. However, whatever few materials that we have about the Native Americans give clues about the
rich culture that was soon forgotten. It was the American Indian of the white man’s imagination rather than the Indian of historical fact who finally became an important part of the usable past of American literature.
Chapter Two
Puritanism and its influence on American writings
Background
Among the British who first came to live in America there were those who came seeking economic opportunity, like the settlers of Virginia Colony. There were also who came mainly for religious reasons, like the Puritans who settled in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
The story of the Puritans goes back to the beginning of the 16th century, when the efforts of Martin Luther in Germany to reform the Roman Catholic Church led to the establishment of the first Protestant churches. The Puritans were Calvinists (followers of John Calvin, 1509-1564) of the various European countries who advocated radical changes in doctrine and religious worship. They were members of the Church of England itself, who wanted further reforms in the Church. For their rigid approach, they were hounded out of England and they finally sought a place in America where they could establish their own church. Between 1630 and 1640, about 10,000 Puritans immigrated to America and established colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Aspects of Puritanism
The puritans believed that sin is inherited by all human beings. The only hope of man- inherently evil and undeserving- is salvation through the grace of God. Following man’s brief time on earth his soul will either face eternal salvation or eternal damnation or suffering. Satan and his band of devils play upon man’s weaknesses, especially his attachment to worldly things, wealth, power and status. Puritans emphasized the inherent sinfulness of all men and the need for complete dedication to God at every moment. They emphasized that very few souls- the Elect- were predestined to be saved by God’s grace; the vast majority were doomed to damnation. They believed that they had found the truth as revealed in the Bible and that they were the chosen people, the Elect few.
One of the most significant aspects of Puritan life was the habit of introspection- to know oneself. Hard work was a religious duty, blasphemy; fornication, drunkenness, playing games of chance, and participation in theatrical activities were penal offenses. During the 18th century, the hold of Puritanism on the people of New England was weakened and the idea of Enlightenment spread from Europe to America, bringing a view of man as inherently “good” and which he could improve through his own natural powers. From this view – which was adapted and given a distinctive American character – came the hope which filled the founders of the American republic. They were optimistic and in the name of reason and common sense, they rejected the notion of innate depravity of man as well as the idea of predestination. They created a theology based on man’s innate goodness and his spiritual freedom in a universe created by God.
Puritanism in America has played an important role in the intellectual and literary life of the nation. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Emily Dickinson are some of the 19th century
American writers whose writings reflect elements of “Puritanism” though none of them were of the Puritan faith.
Chapter Three
Literary Beginnings- 18th Century and beginning of 19th century
Early American literature is, in fact, an offshoot of the European writings and did not at first display any distinctively national quality. Only gradually, did the new American literature become American in the real sense of the term. The most memorable writing in 18th century was done by the Founding Fathers who led the Revolution of 1775-1783 and who wrote the Constitution in 1789. None of them were creative writers. But they were practical philosophers who shared the Enlightenment belief that human intelligence (or reason) could not understand both nature and man. Unlike the Puritans- who considered man as sinful from birth- the Enlightenment thinkers believed that man could improve himself. They wanted to create a happy society based on justice and freedom.
Important Writers
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Benjamin Franklin showed the Enlightenment spirit in America at its best and most optimistic. His style is quite modern and, even today; his works are a joy to read. His earliest work, Do good Papers (1722) was written when he was only sixteen. These are series of short pieces which are very funny, but full of moral advice (praising honesty and attacking drunkenness etc). His Poor Richard’s Almanac gives similar advice. His most famous work is his Autobiography which was published in 1784. Benjamin Franklin is still known for his famous sayings like “Lost time is never found again”, “Up sluggard, and not waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough” “God helps those who helps themselves” etc.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
He was the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, the most important political document of America and a fine piece of writing. This document gives a clear picture of what democracy means for America. Jefferson was also deeply influenced by the ideas of Enlightenment. As an Enlightenment thinker, Jefferson believed that all humanity is naturally good.
Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
Freneau was one of the best poets of his time. He was also a political journalist, and this influenced his early poetry. He wrote about the importance of American independence with
strong patriotic feelings. His most important poems are – “Pictures of Columbus” (1771), “British Prison Ship” (1781). In his last poem “The Wild Honey Suckle” (1786), the flower
becomes a symbol for unnoticed beauty which quickly passes away. The last lines of the poem compare the shortness of human life to that of the flower:
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810)
The first American to devote himself exclusively to a literary career was Charles Brockden Brown, who was born in Philadelphia in 1771 and published six novels before his death in 1810. Brown, in his books, dealt with American ideals of freedom and social reform. One of the most popular literary genres during this period was the “Gothic novel”, which dealt with morbid emotions and sensational experiences, often occurring in medieval castles and involving elements of the supernatural. Brown’s novels showed the influence of Gothic novel. They depicted a sense of horror by presenting characters who are criminals and suffering from neurosis and insanity. Skywalk or The Man Unknown to Himself and Wieland are famous books written by Brown. He began the “gothic” form of writing in America which was later developed by Poe and Hawthorne and has continued to be one of the dominant characteristics of American fiction till today.
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
In the early part of the 19th century, New York City was the center of American writing. Its writers were called “Knickerbockers”, and the period from 1810 to 1840 is known as the “Knickerbockers’ era” of American literature. The name comes from the book A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809), by Washington Irving. Irving’s book created a lot of interest in the local history of New York, but it was a humorous version rather than a serious one. The book is indeed a masterpiece of comedy which laughs at the Puritans and at New York’s early Dutch governors. Washington Irving’s next important work, The Sketch Book (1819) contains two of the best-loved stories from American literature: “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. (One or both of the stories may be studied in detail) – See Appendix -1 for the story “Rip Van Winkle”
The plots of both stories are based on old German folk tales. But Irving fills them with the “local color” of New York’s Hudson River Valley. Even today, the real places he mentions are associated with his stories. The Catskill Mountains, on the western side of the Hudson Valley, are still considered as the place where Rip Van Winkle fell asleep for 20 years. Sleepy Hollow, just north of the city, is still famous as the place where, late one night, Ichabold Crane was chased by the “headless horseman”. In this last story, as in many of his others, Irving contrasts the personality of the New England “Yankees” with that of the New Yorker. Ichabold Crane, a New Englander, is made a comic figure. He is greedy and superstitious. The “headless horseman” who frightens him out of the valley is not real. He was invented by local New Yorkers, in order to frighten outsiders. The Sketch Book contains 32 stories. The majority are on European subjects, mostly English. Like many important American writers after him, Irving found that the rich,
older culture gave him a lot of materials for his stories. Irving is considered to be the father of American short story.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Unlike Irving, James Fenimore Cooper wanted to speak for all America. Although his books are not great, they contain much creative criticism of American society. In Europe he was known as “the American Walter Scott”. (Like the British writer Scott, he also wrote adventure stories filled with historical facts) though this did not please him because he considered his works to be original. The Pioneers (1823) was the first novel for which he became popular. Natty Bumppo (who is often called Leatherstocking) appears in all of the novels in the series and is one of the best known characters in American Literature. He is a typical American pioneer figure. He has an unusually deep love for nature and is afraid of destroying it. His sympathy for the American Indians is reflected in the novels. In his novels, Cooper combines history, adventure and local customs into what he calls “a descriptive tale”. The other important novels in the Leatherstocking series are The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deer slayer (1841)
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
Bryant was a poet who followed the romantic pattern of writing poems such as William Wordsworth and he believed that the new poetry should not be an imitation of ancient classics. Rather it should break away from the old patterns. Like Wordsworth and other Romantics Bryant believed that poetry is “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and they are “emotions recollected in tranquility”. His famous poems are “Thanatopsis” (1817) “Forest Hymn” (1825), “The Prairies” (1832) etc.
CHAPTER FOUR
Transcendentalism and its influence on American writings
Transcendentalism was a literary and philosophical movement that began in Germany in the 19th century. In America it flourished as a movement against Puritanism. Many young people were suffocated by the rigid rules of the Puritans and Transcendentalism brought a new ideology based on liberty, equality and fraternity. German philosophers like Kant,
Hegel, Schelling had affirmed that man could apprehend reality by direct spiritual insight and intuition without any outside interference. Emerson and other writers acquired this attitude partly from the Germans and partly from such English writers as Coleridge and Carlyle. Unlike the Puritans, Transcendentalists believed that man is basically divine and not inherently sinful and affirmed that all people, and not merely the elect few, might achieve a state of grace by casting off external authority and responding to their own spiritual intuitions. In the 19th century America, many writers like Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne and Melville were influenced by this philosophy and their writings reflect the various aspects of Transcendentalism.
Important Writers
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Emerson founded the “Transcendentalist club”. In 1836, he published “Nature”, a treatise on Transcendentalist ideas. In it he stated that man should not see nature merely as something to be used; that man’s relationship with nature transcends the idea of usefulness. In 1837, Emerson gave a famous speech at Harvard University on the topic “The American Scholar”. Here, he attacked the influence of tradition and the past, and called for a new burst of American creativity. To him, the scholar did not refer to the man of “book learning”, but to the original thinker. Such a man knows himself through intuition and the study of nature, not of books. “Self Reliance” (1841) is one of the most famous essays written by Emerson. The essay has many memorable lines such as:
1) “To believe in your own thoughts, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius”
2) “To be great is to be misunderstood”
3) “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin [spirit that plays tricks and misleads] of little minds’
Equally important is Emerson’s essay “The Over-Soul” (1841). The “Over-Soul” is “that unity …within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all things”. Flowing out of that unity, “man is a stream whose source is hidden.” From the Over-Soul come all ideas and intelligence: “We do not determine what we think. We only open our senses…and suffer the intellect to see”.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Thoreau had been deeply influenced by reading Emerson’s “Nature” and he remained a pure Transcendentalist all his life. He and Emerson held similar ideas about life and nature. Emerson often remarked that Thoreau’s ideas are a continuation of his own. Over the years, however, the relationship became increasingly difficult.
In 1846, Thoreau was arrested and put in jail for one night for refusing to pay taxes. It was a protest against the US government’s policy. In his essay “Civil Disobedience”(1849), he wrote: As I stood considering the walls of solid stone… and the iron grating [cross bars] which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of the institution which treated me as if I were flesh and bones, to be locked up…. As they could not reach me, they had resolved [determined] to punish my body”.
The theme of his work- “that we should be men first and subjects afterward”- made a great impact on such great men like Mahatma Gandhi, Tolstoy and Martin Luther King.
From 1845 to 1847, Thoreau lived alone in a hut he built for himself on the north shore Walden Pond, a few miles from Concord. Later in 1854, he wrote the world famous book Walden.
Synopsis of Walden
On the surface, it is about the practical side of living alone in the woods, of the plants, animals and insects one finds there, and of the changing seasons. But, in fact, it is a completely Transcendentalist work where the author tries to “live through the visible to the invisible, through the temporal [ruled by time] to the eternal [lasting for ever]. He rejects the things ordinary people desire in life, such as money and possessions. Instead, he cherishes the search for true wisdom” “While civilization has been improving our homes, it has not equally improved those who live in them”. True enjoyment comes only when one throws off all unnecessary things. Describing his little home, he says, “My best room---always ready for company ---- were the pine woods behind my house.” Walden is an optimistic book, encouraging people to lead an austere, sincere life. Thoreau sees the world as “more wonderful as it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful.” [Students are advised to read the original text]
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804- 1864)
Many of Hawthorne’s stories are set in Puritan New England. His most important works are : Fanshawe (1828)Twice Told Tales(1837) [A collection of short stories], The Minister’s Black Veil, Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), The Birth Mark (1843) Rappacini’s Daughter (1844), Young Goodman Brown (1835), Ethan Brand (1851). His greatest novel, The Scarlet Letter (1850), has become the classic portrayal of Puritan America. The novel is a criticism against Puritanism. It tells the passionate, forbidden love affair linking a sensitive, religious priest of the Puritan community, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and the beautiful Hester Prynne.
Synopsis of The Scarlet Letter
The novel is about the public shaming and punishment of a young woman named Hester Prynne in mid-17th century Boston in America- a Puritan community. When Hester becomes pregnant, everyone believes her to be guilty of adultery: she has been separated from her husband for two full years, and the baby cannot be his. The magistrates (local law enforcers) and ministers order her to wear a scarlet letter "A" on the bodice of her dress, so that everyone can know about her adultery.
The Scarlet Letter begins when Hester is briefly released from prison so that she can be paraded through town; displaying her scarlet "A" while standing on top of the town scaffold (a public stage). She carries her baby daughter, Pearl, in her arms. Pearl was born in prison. Hester steadfastly refuses to reveal the name of Pearl’s father, so that he might be saved from punishment.
Hester Prynne’s long lost husband arrives in the midst of the public shame while standing on the scaffold. He visits her in prison before her release and asks her not to tell anyone that he’s in
town. His plan is to disguise himself so that he can ferret out and seek revenge on her lover.
Hester’s husband tells the townspeople that he is a physician, and he adopts a fake name: Roger Chillingworth. Hester keeps his secret. Chillingworth soon realizes that the minister, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, is the likely father of Hester’s baby, and he haunts the minister’s mind and soul, day and night, for the next seven years.
The minister is too afraid to confess his sin publicly, but his guilt makes him sick and feeble; Chillingworth’s constant examination makes him scared and more sick. Seven years pass and, finally, Hester realizes the evil her husband has done to the man she loves, the father of her child. She reveals Chillingworth’s true identity to Dimmesdale, and the two makes a plan to leave Boston and go to England, where they might hide from Hester’s husband and create a new life together.
But the minister is unable to go through with the plan. Eventually, Dimmesdale confesses his sin to the townspeople on the scaffold that had, seven years earlier, been the scene of Hester’s public shaming. His dying act is to throw open his shirt so that the scarlet letter A that he has carved onto his chest is revealed to his parishioners. Dimmesdale finds peace through confession.
When Chillingworth dies approximately a year after Dimmesdale, he leaves all his money and property to Pearl. Hester and Pearl finally escape the community where they have been outcasts for so many years and return to the Old World. However, many years later, Hester returns to the New England community that had been the site of her shame, resuming the scarlet letter of her own will.
When she dies, she is buried near the minister, and they share a gravestone. The gravestone contains an image, described as follows: "On a field, sable, and the letter A, gules." In other words, marked on the headstone is a scarlet letter A drawn over a black background.
[Students are urged to read the original text]
Characters
Hester Prynne
It was very rare in those days that a woman becomes a protagonist
of a novel. Moreover, Hester Prynee is a different type of heroine- strong and determined. She is rebellious and refuses authority. Her suffering, her punishment and social isolation make her bold and independent. Her decisions reflected great individuality and independence. In a way, she represented what America would one day become. She, who comes from England, represents the new colonial mentality that is desperately trying to break away from old world traditions. Hester is truly responsible for her own destiny. She left the prison and walked to the scaffold of her own free will. She bravely decides to remain in Boston, even though she could have fled. She made the decision for herself and the reverend to flee together to Europe. Once she had succeeded in
giving Pearl a better life than her own, she returned to Boston of her own free will- and she wore the scarlet letter again because she wanted to do so.
We know very little about Hester prior to her affair with Dimmesdale and her resultant public shaming. We read that she married Chillingworth although she did not love him, but we never fully understand why. The early chapters of the book suggest that, prior to her marriage, Hester was a strong-willed and impetuous young woman—she remembers her parents as loving guides who
frequently had to restrain her incautious behavior. The fact that she has an affair also suggests that she once had a passionate nature.
But it is what happens after Hester’s affair that makes her into the woman with whom the reader is familiar. Shamed and alienated from the rest of the community, Hester becomes contemplative. She speculates on human nature, social organization, and larger moral questions. Hester’s tribulations also lead her to be stoic and a freethinker. Although the narrator pretends to disapprove of Hester’s independent philosophizing,
Hester also becomes a kind of compassionate maternal figure as a result of her experiences. Hester moderates her tendency to be rash, for she knows that such behavior could cause her to lose her daughter, Pearl. Hester is also maternal with respect to society: she cares for the poor and brings them food and clothing. By the novel’s end, Hester has become a very strong mother figure to the women of the community. The shame attached to her scarlet letter is long gone. Women recognize that her punishment stemmed in part from the town fathers’ sexism, and they come to Hester seeking shelter from the sexist forces under which they themselves suffer. Throughout The Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as an intelligent, capable, but not necessarily extraordinary woman. It is the extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her such an important figure.
Roger Chillingworth
As his name suggests, Roger Chillingworth is a man deficient in human warmth. His twisted, stooped, deformed shoulders mirror his distorted soul. From what the reader is told of his early years with Hester, he was a difficult husband. He ignored his wife for much of the time, yet expected her to nourish his soul with affection when he did condescend to spend time with her. Chillingworth’s decision to assume the identity of a “leech,” or doctor, is fitting. Unable to engage in equitable relationships with those around him, he feeds on the vitality of others as a way of energizing his own projects. Chillingworth’s death is a result of the nature of his character. After Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth no longer has a victim. Similarly, Dimmesdale’s revelation that he is Pearl’s father removes Hester from the old man’s clutches. Having lost the objects of his revenge, the leech has no choice but to die.
Ultimately, Chillingworth represents true evil. He is associated with secular and sometimes illicit forms of knowledge, as his chemical experiments and medical practices occasionally verge on witchcraft and murder. He is interested in revenge, not justice, and he seeks the deliberate destruction of others rather
than a redress of wrongs. His desire to hurt others stands in contrast to Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin, which had love, not hate, as its intent. Any harm that may have come from the young lovers’ deed was unanticipated and inadvertent, whereas Chillingworth reaps deliberate harm.
Arthur Dimmesdale, like Hester Prynne, is an individual whose identity owes more to external circumstances than to his innate nature. The reader is told that Dimmesdale was a scholar of some renown at Oxford University. His past suggests that he is probably somewhat aloof, the kind of man who would not have much natural sympathy for ordinary men and women. However, Dimmesdale has an unusually active conscience. The fact that Hester takes all of the blame for their shared sin goads his conscience, and his resultant mental anguish and physical weakness open up his mind and allow him to empathize with others. Consequently, he becomes an eloquent and emotionally powerful speaker and a compassionate leader, and his congregation is able to receive meaningful spiritual guidance from him.
Ironically, the townspeople do not believe Dimmesdale’s protestations of sinfulness. Given his background and his penchant for rhetorical speech, Dimmesdale’s congregation generally interprets his sermons allegorically rather than as expressions of any personal guilt. This drives Dimmesdale to further internalize his guilt and self-punishment and leads to still more deterioration in his physical and spiritual condition. The town’s idolization of him reaches new heights after his Election Day sermon, which is his last. In his death, Dimmesdale becomes even more of an icon than he was in life. Many believe his confession was a symbolic act, while others believe Dimmesdale’s fate was an example of divine judgment.
Pearl
Hester’s daughter, Pearl, functions primarily as a symbol. She is quite young during most of the events of this novel—when Dimmesdale dies she is only seven years old—and her real importance lies in her ability to provoke the adult characters in the book. She asks them pointed questions and draws their attention, and the reader’s, to the denied or overlooked truths of the adult world. In general, children in The Scarlet Letter are portrayed as more perceptive and more honest than adults, and Pearl is the most perceptive of them all.
Pearl makes us constantly aware of her mother’s scarlet letter and of the society that produced it. From an early age, she fixates on the emblem. Pearl’s innocent, or perhaps intuitive, comments about the letter raise crucial questions about its meaning. Similarly, she inquires about the relationships between those around her—most important, the relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale—and offers perceptive critiques of them. Pearl provides the text’s harshest, and most penetrating, judgment of Dimmesdale’s failure to admit to his adultery. Once her father’s identity is revealed, Pearl is no longer needed in this symbolic capacity; at Dimmesdale’s death she becomes fully “human,” leaving behind her otherworldliness and her preternatural vision.
Themes
Sin, Knowledge, and the Human Condition
Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. As a result of their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of their humanness, that which separates them from the divine and from other creatures. Once expelled from the Garden of Eden, they are forced to toil and to procreate—two “labors” that seem to define the human condition. The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledge—specifically, in knowledge of what it means to be human. For Hester, the scarlet letter functions as “her passport into regions where other women dared not tread,” leading her to “speculate” about her society and herself more “boldly” than anyone else in New England. As for Dimmesdale, the “burden” of his sin gives him “sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrate[s] in unison with theirs.” His eloquent and powerful sermons derive from this sense of empathy. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on a daily basis and try to reconcile it with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other hand, insist on seeing earthly experience as merely an obstacle on the path to heaven. Thus, they view sin as a threat to the community that should be punished and suppressed. Their answer to Hester’s sin is to ostracize her. Yet, Puritan society is stagnant, while Hester and Dimmesdale’s experience shows that a state of sinfulness can lead to personal growth, sympathy, and understanding of others. Paradoxically, these qualities are shown to be incompatible with a state of purity.
The Nature of Evil
The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the “Black Man,” the embodiment of evil. Over the course of the novel, the “Black Man” is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Mistress Hibbins, and little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devil’s child. The characters also try to root out the causes of evil: did Chillingworth’s selfishness in marrying Hester force her to the “evil” she committed in Dimmesdale’s arms? Is Hester and Dimmesdale’s deed responsible for Chillingworth’s transformation into a malevolent being? This confusion over the nature and causes of evil reveals the problems with the Puritan conception of sin. The book argues that true evil arises from the close relationship between hate and love. As the narrator points out in the novel’s concluding chapter, both emotions depend upon “a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent . . . upon another.” Evil is not found in Hester and Dimmesdale’s lovemaking, nor even in the cruel ignorance of the Puritan fathers. Evil, in its most poisonous form, is found in the carefully plotted and precisely aimed revenge of Chillingworth, whose love has been perverted. Perhaps Pearl is not entirely wrong when she thinks Dimmesdale is the “Black Man,” because her father, too, has perverted his love. Dimmesdale, who should love Pearl, will not even publicly acknowledge her. His cruel denial of love to his own child may be seen as further perpetrating evil.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
1. The Scarlet Letter
The scarlet letter is meant to be a symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester. The letter’s meaning shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as an adulterer, the “A” eventually comes to stand for “Able.” Finally, it becomes indeterminate: the Native Americans who come to watch the Election Day pageant think it marks her as a person of importance and status. Like Pearl, the letter functions as a physical reminder of Hester’s affair with Dimmesdale. But, compared with a human child, the letter seems insignificant, and thus helps to point out the ultimate meaninglessness of the community’s system of judgment and punishment. The child has been sent from God, or at least from nature, but the letter is merely a human contrivance. Additionally, the instability of the letter’s apparent meaning calls into question society’s ability to use symbols for ideological reinforcement. More often than not, a symbol becomes a focal point for critical analysis and debate.
2. The Meteor
As Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl in Chapter 12, a meteor traces out an “A” in the night sky. To Dimmesdale, the meteor implies that he should wear a mark of shame just as Hester does. The meteor is interpreted differently by the rest of the community, which thinks that it stands for “Angel” and marks Governor Winthrop’s entry into heaven. But “Angel” is an awkward reading of the symbol. The Puritans commonly looked to symbols to confirm divine sentiments. In this narrative, however, symbols are taken to mean what the beholder wants them to mean. The incident with the meteor obviously highlights and exemplifies two different uses of symbols: Puritan and literary.
3. Pearl
Although Pearl is a complex character, her primary function within the novel is as a symbol. Pearl is a sort of living version of her mother’s scarlet letter. She is the physical consequence of sexual sin and the indicator of a transgression. Yet, even as a reminder of Hester’s “sin,” Pearl is more than a mere punishment to her mother: she is also a blessing. She represents not only “sin” but also the vital spirit and passion that engendered that sin. Thus, Pearl’s existence gives her mother reason to live, bolstering her spirits when she is tempted to give up. It is only after Dimmesdale is revealed to be Pearl’s father that Pearl can become fully “human.” Until then, she functions in a symbolic capacity as the reminder of an unsolved mystery.
4. The Rosebush Next to the Prison Door
The narrator chooses to begin his story with the image of the rosebush beside the prison door. The rosebush symbolizes the ability of nature to endure and outlast man’s activities. Yet, paradoxically, it also symbolizes the futility of symbolic interpretation: the narrator mentions various significances that the rosebush might have, never affirming or denying them, never privileging one over the others.
Reference:
Spark Notes Editors. “SparkNote on The Scarlet Letter. Spark . SparkNotesLLC.2003 Web. 14 Janaury, 2011.
Quiz
1. In what century is the story of Hester Prynne set?
[pic](A) The sixteenth century
[pic](B) The seventeenth century
[pic](C) The eighteenth century
[pic](D) The nineteenth century
2. What is the occupation of the narrator of this story?
[pic](A) Attorney
[pic](B) Minister
[pic](C) Land surveyor
[pic](D) Customs officer
3. Where do Hester and Chillingworth live before coming to America?
[pic](A) Amsterdam
[pic](B) Paris
[pic](C) Edinburgh
[pic](D) Jamaica
4. With whom has Chillingworth been living before he appears in Boston?
[pic](A) Another band of Puritans
[pic](B) Native Americans
[pic](C) Spanish settlers in Florida
[pic](D) Canadian fur trappers
5. What is situated immediately outside the door of the prison in which Hester is kept?
[pic](A) A rosebush
[pic](B) A pine tree
[pic](C) A gallows
[pic](D) A graveyard
6. What item in the governor’s mansion shows Hester a distorted reflection of herself?
[pic](A) An antique mirror
[pic](B) A suit of armor
[pic](C) A stained-glass window
[pic](D) The governor’s eyeglasses
7. Which of the following is a method Dimmesdale uses to punish himself for his sins?
[pic](A) Scourging or whipping
[pic](B) Fasting
[pic](C) Vigils (extended periods of wakefulness and/or prayer)
[pic](D) All of the above
8. In what city do Hester and Pearl live?
[pic](A) Salem
[pic](B) Providence
[pic](C) Boston
[pic](D) Hartford
9. Who is Mistress Hibbins?
[pic](A) The governor’s sister
[pic](B) Hester’s mother
[pic](C) Dimmesdale’s aunt
[pic](D) Chillingworth’s second wife
10. How does Hester support herself financially?
[pic](A) As a prostitute
[pic](B) As a seamstress
[pic](C) As a nurse
[pic](D) As a farmhand
11. Next to whom is Hester buried?
[pic](A) Dimmesdale
[pic](B) Chillingworth
[pic](C) Pearl
[pic](D) No one; her body is burned
12. What natural phenomenon comes to symbolize both Dimmesdale’s “sin” and Governor Winthrop’s “virtue”?
[pic](A) A lightning bolt
[pic](B) A meteor
[pic](C) A forest fire
[pic](D) A flood
13. Why does Pearl not recognize her mother when she sees her with Dimmesdale in the forest?
[pic](A) Hester has removed the scarlet letter
[pic](B) Hester has removed her cap to expose her long hair
[pic](C) Hester is not wearing her usual plain gray dress
[pic](D) Mistress Hibbins has cast a spell on Hester, changing her appearance
14. How does Pearl acknowledge Dimmesdale as her father at his death?
[pic](A) By calling him “father”
[pic](B) By interrupting his sermon
[pic](C) By kissing him
[pic](D) By announcing that she has seen him with her mother
15. What mark can supposedly be seen on Dimmesdale’s chest?
[pic](A) A scarlet letter “A”
[pic](B) A tattoo
[pic](C) The mark of the devil
[pic](D) A red rose
16. How do Hester and Dimmesdale plan to escape their suffering?
[pic](A) By going to live with the Native Americans
[pic](B) By boarding a ship bound for Europe
[pic](C) By killing Chillingworth
[pic](D) By committing suicide
17. How does Pearl become wealthy?
[pic](A) She discovers pirates’ treasure
[pic](B) She marries the governor’s son
[pic](C) She inherits Chillingworth’s estate and marries a nobleman
[pic](D) She becomes a famous actress and dancer
18. Where does the narrator first encounter Hester Prynne’s story?
[pic](A) He finds a manuscript in the attic of the Salem Custom House
[pic](B) He hears it from an elderly aunt
[pic](C) He hears it from one of the old men who work at the Salem Custom House
[pic](D) It comes to him in a dream
19. What item of clothing does Hester make for Governor Winthrop?
[pic](A) A cloak for his swearing-in
[pic](B) A nightcap
[pic](C) A pair of gloves
[pic](D) A winter hat
20. What color of clothing does Hester always wear?
[pic](A) Scarlet
[pic](B) White
[pic](C) Black
[pic](D) Gray
21. Where do Hester and Pearl live?
[pic](A) In the poorhouse
[pic](B) In an abandoned cottage on the outskirts of Boston
[pic](C) In the forest
[pic](D) In the house of Roger Chillingworth
22. What does Chillingworth pretend to be?
[pic](A) A minister
[pic](B) A doctor
[pic](C) A madman
[pic](D) A scholar
23. What does Hester’s letter “A” eventually come to represent to the townspeople?
[pic](A) “Able”
[pic](B) “Alone”
[pic](C) “Avaricious”
[pic](D) “Absolutely Admirable”
Herman Melville (1819- 1891)
Melville and Hawthorne were contemporaries and both have a pessimistic view about the idea of Transcendentalism though they believed in the efficacy of this important philosophical and literary movement. In Melville’s fiction, man lives in a world divided into two conflicting parts: good against evil, God against Satan, the “head’ against the “heart”. There is no way to overcome these opposites. Melville, like Hawthorne, has a tragic view of life: he seems to believe that the universe itself is working against human happiness and peace of mind.
Most of his stories have the background of the sea. His most important works are: Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), Mardi (1849), Redburn (1849), White Jacket (1850). Writing these novels helped him to prepare his masterpiece Moby – Dick (1851), perhaps still considered to be the greatest novel of American Literature. Other important works of Melville are: The Confidence Man (1857), Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) and Billy Bud (1924)
Synopsis of Moby Dick
The story begins with Ishmael heading out to find a whaling vessel to join. On his way to Nantucket, the first American City of whaling, he meets a harpooning savage named Queequeg, and the two become quick friends. They find their ship, the Pequod, and despite ominous warnings, and absence of the captain, they board with the rest.
However, things are not what they seem, because when the head of the boat, Captain Ahab, make his first appearance, there is something troubling about him. Things become even more clearly wrong when Ahab gives voice to his desire: he wishes to hunt down the White Whale, Moby Dick, the whale that took his leg, and kill him. All other desires in him are second to that, and nothing can prevent him from achieving his goal. The majority of his crew is all for the adventure, although one man, the chief mate Starbuck, is worried about its eventual end.
The Pequod sails over foreign seas, in order to reach the equator, a known hangout of Moby Dick, at the right season. They meet various crafts, and some ships have stories to tell of the White Whale; their stories describe only death and destruction; Moby Dick is unable to be killed by human hands, an immortal creature. Moby Dick takes on mythical overtones, as an avenging angel, and even possibly God himself. The ship goes about the regular business of whaling, and in between chapters of the story, Ishmael takes up instructing his reader on the process of killing whales and processing it for oil, the persistence of whales in our culture, and even biology lessons on their physical natures.
Finally they approach their intended destination. With each ship they pass, they come closer and closer to finding Moby Dick, and Ahab is driven further into madness. He creates a weapon out of steel, blessed by harpooner's blood, for the specific purpose of killing the whale, and he ignores the pleas of help from another ship, trying to find its lost men.
Moby Dick is seen at last. The hunt spans over three days, and after it is done, the entire crew of the Pequod, except Ishmael, the narrator, has been killed. The ship is sunk, the whale-boats destroyed, and Ahab himself is yanked to his death by the very iron he himself forged. Only Ishmael survives, to be picked up by another vessel; only he is left to tell the tale. [Students are advised to read the original text]
Key Facts
Key Facts
Title Moby-Dick; or The Whale
Author Herman Melville
Type of work Novel
Genre Epic, adventure story, quest tale, allegory, tragedy
Language English
Time and place written Between 1850 and 1851, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and New York City
Date of first publication 1851
Publisher Harper & Brothers in America (simultaneously published in England by Richard Bentley as The Whale )
Narrator Ishmael, a junior member of the Pequod’s crew, casts himself as the author, recounting the events of the voyage after he has acquired more experience and studied the whale extensively.
Point of view Ishmael narrates in a combination of first and third person, describing events as he saw them and providing his own thoughts. He presents the thoughts and feelings of the other characters only as an outside observer might infer them.
Tone Ironic, celebratory, philosophical, dramatic, and hyperbolic
Tense Past
Setting (time) 1830s or 1840s
Setting (place) Aboard the whaling ship the Pequod, in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans
Major conflict Ahab dedicates his ship and crew to destroying Moby Dick, a white sperm whale, because he sees this whale as the living embodiment of all that is evil and malignant in the universe. By ignoring the physical dangers that this quest entails, setting himself against other men, and presuming to understand and fight evil on a cosmic scale, Ahab arrogantly defies the limitations imposed upon human beings.
Rising action Ahab announces his quest to the other sailors and nails the doubloon to the mast; the Pequod encounters various ships with news and stories about Moby Dick.
Climax In Chapter 132, “The Symphony,” Ahab interrogates himself and his quest in front of Starbuck, and realizes that he does not have the will to turn aside from his purpose.
Falling action The death of Ahab and the destruction of the Pequod by Moby Dick; Ishmael, the only survivor of the Pequod’s sinking, floats on a coffin and is rescued by another whaling ship, the Rachel.
Themes The limits of knowledge; the deceptiveness of fate; the exploitative nature of whaling
Motifs Whiteness; surfaces and depths
Symbols The Pequod symbolizes doom; Moby Dick, on an objective level, symbolizes humankind’s inability to understand the world; Queequeg’s coffin symbolizes both life and death
Foreshadowing Foreshadowing in Moby-Dick is extensive and inescapable: everything from the Pequod’s ornamentation to the behavior of schools of fish to the appearance of a giant squid is read as an omen of the eventual catastrophic encounter with Moby Dick.
Critical Note
From the beginning, it is clear that the voyage of the whaling ship “Peqod” is a symbolic voyage. It is also clear that Moby- Dick, the great white whale, represents Nature or fate, although Melville gives the reader a great deal of factual information about whale-hunting in order to make the world of Moby Dick seem real. Captain Ahab, the central character, is “a grand, ungodly, God-like man”. He is torn between his humanity and his desire to destroy the white whale. These two sides – the light and the dark- fight each other in Ahab. The dark side wins. To Ahab, Moby Dick is part of a “universal mystery” which he hates, because he cannot understand it. When Ahab finds the whale and attacks him, his ship is destroyed. Ahab himself is pulled down into the sea to his death. Melville seems to say that personal identity is only an illusion.
Main Characters
Ishmael
Despite his centrality to the story, Ishmael doesn’t reveal much about himself to the reader. We know that he has gone to sea out of some deep spiritual malaise and that shipping aboard a whaler is his version of committing suicide—he believes that men aboard a whaling ship are lost to the world. It is apparent from Ishmael’s frequent digressions on a wide range of subjects—from art, geology, and anatomy to legal codes and literature—that he is intelligent and well educated, yet he claims that a whaling ship has been “[his] Yale College and [his] Harvard.” He seems to be a self-taught Renaissance man, good at everything but committed to nothing. Given the mythic, romantic aspects of Moby-Dick, it is perhaps fitting that its narrator should be an enigma: not everything in a story so dependent on fate and the seemingly supernatural needs to make perfect sense.
Additionally, Ishmael represents the fundamental contradiction between the story of Moby-Dick and its setting. Melville has created a profound and philosophically complicated tale and set it in a world of largely uneducated working-class men; Ishmael, thus, seems less a real character than an instrument of the author. No one else aboard the Pequod possesses the proper combination of intellect and experience to tell this story. Indeed, at times even Ishmael fails Melville’s purposes,
and he disappears from the story for long stretches, replaced by dramatic dialogues and soliloquies from Ahab and other characters.
Ahab
Ahab, the Pequod’s obsessed captain, represents both an ancient and a quintessentially modern type of hero. Like the heroes of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, Ahab suffers from a single fatal flaw, one he shares with such legendary characters as Oedipus and Faust. His tremendous overconfidence, or hubris, leads him to defy common sense and believe that, like a god, he can enact his will and remain immune to the forces of nature. He considers Moby Dick the embodiment of evil in the world, and he pursues the White Whale monomaniacally because he believes it his inescapable fate to destroy this evil. According to the critic M. H. Abrams, such a tragic hero “moves us to pity because, since he is not an evil man, his misfortune is greater than he deserves; but he moves us also to fear, because we recognize similar possibilities of error in our own lesser and fallible selves.”
Unlike the heroes of older tragic works, however, Ahab suffers from a fatal flaw that is not necessarily inborn but instead stems from damage, in his case psychological and physical, inflicted by life in a harsh world. He is as much a victim as he is an aggressor, and the symbolic opposition that he constructs between himself and Moby Dick propels him toward what he considers a destined end.
Moby Dick
In a sense, Moby Dick is not a character, as the reader has no access to the White Whale’s thoughts, feelings, or intentions. Instead, Moby Dick is an impersonal force, one that many critics have interpreted as an allegorical representation of God, an inscrutable and all-powerful being that humankind can neither understand nor defy. Moby Dick thwarts free will and cannot be defeated, only accommodated or avoided. Ishmael tries a plethora of approaches to describe whales in general, but none proves adequate. Indeed, as Ishmael points out, the majority of a whale is hidden from view at all times. In this way, a whale mirrors its environment. Like the whale, only the surface of the ocean is available for human observation and interpretation, while its depths conceal unknown and unknowable truths. Furthermore, even when Ishmael does get his hands on a “whole” whale, he is unable to determine which part—the skeleton, the head, the skin—offers the best understanding of the whole living, breathing creature; he cannot localize the essence of the whale. This conundrum can be read as a metaphor for the human relationship with the Christian God (or any other god, for that matter): God is unknowable and cannot be pinned down.
Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask
The Pequod’s three mates are used primarily to provide philosophical contrasts with Ahab. Starbuck, the first mate, is a religious man. Sober and conservative, he relies on his Christian faith to determine his actions and interpretations of events. Stubb, the second mate, is jolly and
cool in moments of crisis. He has worked in the dangerous occupation of whaling for so long that the possibility of death has ceased to concern him. A fatalist, he believes that things happen as they are meant to and that there is little that he can do about it. Flask simply enjoys the thrill of the hunt and takes pride in killing whales. He doesn’t stop to consider consequences at all and is “utterly lost . . . to all sense of reverence” for the whale. All three of these perspectives are used to accentuate Ahab’s monomania. Ahab reads his experiences as the result of a conspiracy against him by some larger force. Unlike Flask, he thinks and interprets. Unlike Stubb, he believes that he can alter his world. Unlike Starbuck, he places himself rather than some external set of principles at the center of the cosmic order that he discerns.
Themes
The Limits of Knowledge
As Ishmael tries, in the opening pages of Moby-Dick, to offer a simple collection of literary excerpts mentioning whales, he discovers that, throughout history, the whale has taken on an incredible multiplicity of meanings. Over the course of the novel, he makes use of nearly every discipline known to man in his attempts to understand the essential nature of the whale. Each of these systems of knowledge, however, including art, taxonomy, and phrenology, fails to give an adequate account. The multiplicity of approaches that Ishmael takes, coupled with his compulsive need to assert his authority as a narrator and the frequent references to the limits of observation (men cannot see the depths of the ocean, for example), suggest that human knowledge is always limited and insufficient. When it comes to Moby Dick himself, this limitation takes on allegorical significance. The ways of Moby Dick, like those of the Christian God, are unknowable to man, and thus trying to interpret them, as Ahab does, is inevitably futile and often fatal.
The Deceptiveness of Fate
In addition to highlighting many portentous or foreshadowing events, Ishmael’s narrative contains many references to fate, creating the impression that the Pequod’s doom is inevitable. Many of the sailors believe in prophecies, and some even claim the ability to foretell the future. A number of things suggest, however, that characters are actually deluding themselves when they think that they see the work of fate and that fate either doesn’t exist or is one of the many forces about which human beings can have no distinct knowledge. Ahab, for example, clearly exploits the sailors’ belief in fate to manipulate them into thinking that the quest for Moby Dick is their common destiny. Moreover, the prophesies of Fedallah and others seem to be undercut in Chapter 99, when various individuals interpret the doubloon in different ways, demonstrating that humans project what they want to see when they try to interpret signs and portents.
The Exploitative Nature of Whaling
At first glance, the Pequod seems like an island of equality and fellowship in the midst of a racist, hierarchically structured world. The ship’s crew includes men from all corners of the globe and all races who seem to get along harmoniously. Ishmael is initially uneasy upon meeting
Queequeg, but he quickly realizes that it is better to have a “sober cannibal than a drunken Christian” for a shipmate. Additionally, the conditions of work aboard the Pequod promote a certain kind of egalitarianism, since men are promoted and paid according to their skill. However, the work of whaling parallels the other exploitative activities—buffalo hunting, gold mining, unfair trade with indigenous peoples—that characterize American and European territorial expansion. Each of the Pequod’s mates, who are white, is entirely dependent on a nonwhite harpooner, and nonwhites perform most of the dirty or dangerous jobs aboard the ship. Flask actually stands on Daggoo, his African harpooner, in order to beat the other mates to a prize whale. Ahab is depicted as walking over the black youth Pip, who listens to Ahab’s pacing from below deck, and is thus reminded that his value as a slave is less than the value of a whale.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Pequod
Named after a Native American tribe in Massachusetts that did not long survive the arrival of white men and thus memorializing extinction, the Pequod is a symbol of doom. It is painted a gloomy black and covered in whale teeth and bones, literally bristling with the mementos of violent death. It is, in fact, marked for death. Adorned like a primitive coffin, the Pequod becomes one.
Moby Dick
Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals. To the Pequod’s crew, the legendary White Whale is a concept onto which they can displace their anxieties about their dangerous and often very frightening jobs. Because they have no delusions about Moby Dick acting malevolently toward men or literally embodying evil, tales about the whale allow them to confront their fear, manage it, and continue to function. Ahab, on the other hand, believes that Moby Dick is a manifestation of all that is wrong with the world, and he feels that it is his destiny to eradicate this symbolic evil.
Moby Dick also bears out interpretations not tied down to specific characters. In its inscrutable silence and mysterious habits, for example, the White Whale can be read as an allegorical representation of an unknowable God. As a profitable commodity, it fits into the scheme of white economic expansion and exploitation in the nineteenth century. As a part of the natural world, it represents the destruction of the environment by such hubristic expansion.
Queequeg’s Coffin
Queequeg’s coffin alternately symbolizes life and death. Queequeg has it built when he is seriously ill, but when he recovers; it becomes a chest to hold his belongings and an emblem of his will to live. He perpetuates the knowledge tattooed on his body by carving it onto the coffin’s
lid. The coffin further comes to symbolize life, in a morbid way, when it replaces the Pequod’s life buoy. When the Pequod sinks, the coffin becomes Ishmael’s buoy, saving not only his life but the life of the narrative that he will pass on.
Reference:
Spark Notes Editors. “Spark Notes. Moby Dick. Spark . SparkNotesLLC.2003 Web. 14 Janaury, 2011.
Quiz
1. Where does Ishmael want to go to find a berth on a whaling ship?
[pic](A) Boston
[pic](B) Nantucket
[pic](C) New Bedford
[pic](D) New York
2. Which biblical figure is the focus of Father Mapple’s sermon?
[pic](A) Job
[pic](B) Solomon
[pic](C) Isaiah
[pic](D) Jonah
3. Which body part has Ahab lost to Moby Dick?
[pic](A) His leg
[pic](B) His arm
[pic](C) His eye
[pic](D) His fingers
4. What is the name of Ahab’s ship?
[pic](A) The Town-Ho
[pic](B) The Rachel
[pic](C) The Samuel Enderby
[pic](D) The Pequod
5. After what is Ahab’s ship named?
[pic](A) Its owner
[pic](B) A vanished tribe of Native Americans
[pic](C) A species of whale
[pic](D) A biblical character
6. For what were whales primarily hunted?
[pic](A) Oil
[pic](B) Skin
[pic](C) Meat
[pic](D) Fins
7. Which of the following characters falls overboard and goes insane as a result?
[pic](A) Tashtego
[pic](B) Pip
[pic](C) Queequeg
[pic](D) Starbuck
8. Who rescues Tashtego when he falls overboard inside the whale’s head?
[pic](A) Ishmael
[pic](B) Stubb
[pic](C) Fedallah
[pic](D) Queequeg
9. What does Ahab nail to the ship’s mast to motivate his crew in his quest for Moby Dick?
[pic](A) A gold coin
[pic](B) A severed head
[pic](C) A drawing of Moby Dick
[pic](D) A pirate flag
10. Which of the following characters survives the Pequod’s sinking?
[pic](A) Pip
[pic](B) Ahab
[pic](C) Flask
[pic](D) None of the above
11. What keeps Ishmael afloat after the Pequod sinks?
[pic](A) A coffin
[pic](B) A barrel of oil
[pic](C) A lifeboat
[pic](D) A mattress
12. What does the crew look for to indicate the presence of a whale?
[pic](A) Fins
[pic](B) Spouts
[pic](C) Seabirds
[pic](D) Lightning
13. What frightens Ishmael the most about Moby Dick?
[pic](A) The whale’s size
[pic](B) The whale’s teeth
[pic](C) The whiteness of the whale
[pic](D) The sounds that the whale makes
14. What is cetology?
[pic](A) The skill of navigation
[pic](B) The study of old manuscripts
[pic](C) The process used to render oil out of a whale
[pic](D) The study of whales
15. What covers Queequeg’s skin?
[pic](A) Scars
[pic](B) Tattoos
[pic](C) Hair
[pic](D) Blisters
16. What does Ishmael have tattooed on his forearm?
[pic](A) A naked woman
[pic](B) A spouting whale
[pic](C) The dimensions of a whale
[pic](D) A passage from the Book of Job
17. With what is the Pequod adorned?
[pic](A) Sperm whale teeth
[pic](B) American flags
[pic](C) Red paint
[pic](D) Whale fins
18. From what is Ahab’s false leg made?
[pic](A) A whale’s jawbone
[pic](B) Wood
[pic](C) An elephant’s tusk
[pic](D) Leather
19. With which of the following characters does Ishmael share a bed at the Spouter-Inn?
[pic](A) Starbuck
[pic](B) Fedallah
[pic](C) Bildad
[pic](D) Queequeg
20. Out of what is Fedallah’s turban made?
[pic](A) Whale skin
[pic](B) His hair
[pic](C) Silk from China
[pic](D) Dried seaweed
21. How does the Pequod sink?
[pic](A) She is rammed by Moby Dick.
[pic](B) She is overloaded with oil.
[pic](C) She gets lost in a storm.
[pic](D) She is rammed by another ship.
22. Who owns the Pequod?
[pic](A) Father Mapple
[pic](B) Captain Ahab
[pic](C) The town of Nantucket
[pic](D) Bildad and Peleg
23. With what does Queequeg sleep?
[pic](A) The statue of his god
[pic](B) His harpoon
[pic](C) A cat
[pic](D) A bottle of rum
24. Ahab’s mates include
[pic](A) Starbuck
[pic](B) Stubb
[pic](C) Flask
[pic](D) All of the above
25. What does Ahab see when he studies the gold doubloon nailed to the mast?
[pic](A) Moby Dick
[pic](B) Himself
[pic](C) God
[pic](D) The face of Evil
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Edgar Allan Poe is yet another writer of the 19th century America who was interested in the psychology and the darker side of human nature. His fiction belongs to the Southern, rather than the New England writing tradition. It is far more romantic in language and imagery. His MS Found in a Battle (1833), which he wrote at the age of 24, shows how quickly Poe had mastered the art of short story. The theme of this strange sea story was used in many of his later stories. Poe made significant contributions to American literature in three areas: the short story, literary criticism, and poetry. Many of Poe’s tales of horror are known throughout the world. His method was to put his characters into unusual situations. Next, he would carefully describe their feelings of terror and guilt. Examples are The Pit and the Pendulum (1841), The Tell Tale Heart (1843) and The Black Cat (1843). He doesn’t tell directly what the object of the horror is. He leaves it to the imagination of the reader.
The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) is the best known of Poe’s tales. It is a good example of his method of story telling. According to him “unity of effect is everything”. The story’s setting and its symbols reveal the character of the hero. A crack in the house symbolizes the relationship between the adult twins - Roderick and Madeline Usher. When Roderick buries his twin sister before she is really dead, she returns to the house from the grave. When Roderick dies, the house sinks into the black lake surrounding it. Poe’s heroines often “return from the grave” by various means. In Legeia (1838), the ghost of the hero’s first wife returns to life by stealing the body of the second wife.
Poe was also one of the pioneers of the modern detective story. These stories examine the mysteries and problems of life. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842), The Purloined Letter (1845) and The Gold Bug (1843) are examples. [One of these stories may be prescribed for detailed study]
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens and Mark Twain is the pen name. He is well known as a humorist, famous for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), called the “Great American Novel”, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Upon his death in 1910, he was praised as “the greatest American humorist of his age” and William Faulkner called him “the Father of American Literature”. In his greatest novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain gives his young hero very adult problems. Huck and an escaped slave, Jim, are floating down the Mississippi River on a raft. During their trip, in the various towns and villages along the way, Huck learns about the evil of the world. Huck, meanwhile, is facing a big moral problem. The laws of society say he must return Jim to his “Owner”. But in the most important part of the book, he decides that the slave is a man, not a “thing”. He thinks deeply about morality and then decides to break the law. After that he is no more a child... Many critics see The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the great novel of American democracy. It shows the basic goodness and wisdom of ordinary people. Ernest Hemingway another great 20th century writer once said, “All modern American literature comes from Huckleberry Finn”. [Students are advised to read “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”]
CHAPTER FIVE
Realism and Naturalism
By 1875, American writers were moving towards realism in literature. Writers like Mark Twain and Bret Harte are examples. However, Twain’s stories still had many unrealistic qualities: “tall-tales” and unlikely coincidences”. He was never a pure realist. In the meantime, in France, realism had become a very serious literary movement. French novelists like Zola were changing the relationship between literature and society. For them realism was an ideology and the novel had the power to become a political weapon.
In 1890s, many realists became “naturalists”. “Naturalism” was a literary term created by the French novelist, Emile Zola. In studying human life, the naturalist used the discoveries and knowledge of modern science. He believed people were not really “free” and on the contrary, their lives, opinions and morality were all controlled by social, economic and psychological causes.
Important writers
William Dean Howells (1837- 1920)
He created the first theory of American realism. He was also a friend and supporter of Mark Twain and Henry James. Howell put his realist theories into practice through his novels. His main works are: A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890).
Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
He is the first American naturalist. He was indeed a genius who wrote his first novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) at the age of 22. It is the sad story of a girl brought up in a poor area of New York City. She is betrayed by her family and friends and finally has to become a prostitute. Almost every day she experiences the violence and cruelty of society. Finally, she goes tot eh river and looks down at the water, “lapping oily against the timbers”. Then she jumps in. Like Maggie, all of Crane’s characters are controlled by their environment. This is what makes Crane a “naturalist”. Although Maggie wants to be good, the accidents of life make her seem bad and hence the tragic end. In The Red Badge of Courage (1895), the accidents of war make a young man seem to be a hero. The story is set in the Civil war. According to the author, war changes man into savages. Seeing that he is about to be killed, young Fleming (the hero of the novel) runs like an animal to save his life. After running, he hates himself for being a coward. Then he is accidently hit on the head. The other soldiers think it is a battle wound. They call it his “red badge of courage”. In his short story, “The Open Boat” (1898), Crane shows how even life and death are determined by fate. After a shipwreck four men struggle to stay alive. In the end, three live and one dies. Man is a victim of fate.
Crane’s descriptions of places and events are both realistic and poetic. In 1899, at the fag end of his tragically short life, Crane wrote a collection of poems called War is Kind. This one expresses the theme which lies at the heart of his novels:
A man said to the universe,
Sir, I exist!”
; However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation”
Henry James (1843-1916)
Henry James was, in fact, a realist and not a naturalist. He was more of an observer of the mind rather than a recorder of the times. His realism was a special kind of psychological realism. His characters watch life more than they live it. James is interested in how their minds respond to the events of the story. He named it “stream of consciousness” literature. In the late 19th century, most readers were not ready for such a new approach and so Henry James’ great novels were not very popular. It was only in 20th century that that the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique became very popular through the novels of Virginia Woolf like To The Light House and Mrs. Dalloway . Henry James’ career as a writer can be divided into 3 stages: early, middle and mature. The novels of his early period deal with his thoughts and feelings as an American living in Europe. James himself spent most of his life in England and in 1915; he finally became a British citizen. His major works are: The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1879) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881). The last one is considered to be his masterpiece. Here, a young bright American girl goes to Europe to “explore life”. After many good offers of marriage, she chooses the wrong man. The most important part of the book is where she realizes her mistake. She sits all alone, late at night, in her “house of darkness”. James shows her inner consciousness in this quite moment. The dramatic situation is not created by her actions but by the thoughts of her mind. This description marks the beginning of James’ “mature” period.
CHAPTER SIX
American poetry of the 19th century
American poetry differs from British poetry mainly because of the cultural differences which affect the tone, diction, forms and rhythms in many ways. American poetry thus embodies a clearly identifiable tension between tradition and innovation, past and future, and old forms and new forms. American poetry thus remains a hybrid form that tries to separate itself from the tradition of British poetry even as it adds or changes that tradition. Early American poetry was just an imitation of the British forms.
Walt Whitman (1819- 1892)
Whitman is probably the most representative poets of the 19th century American literature who has given a new form and idiom for the American poetry. He left school at the age of 11. But he was a born poet and his verses came out spontaneously. He received most of his knowledge from his early jobs in printing shops and newspapers rather than from schools. At a time when most young Americans were working hard to rise in the world, Whitman took long walks in the country side and by the seashore where he obtained inspiration for his poetry. He describes this way of life in “Song of Myself”- “I loaf and invite my soul, I lean and loaf [waste of time] at my ease observing a spear of summer grass… I am enamored [charmed] of growing out- doors, of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods”. All of Whitman’s poetry was collected in a single volume called “Leaves of Grass”, which was first published in 1855 and
constantly revised and expanded until the final edition of 1892. The hundreds of poems in this volume concentrate on a small number of favorite themes. Most of the important themes can be found in the poems that follow: the material and the spiritual, the ideal and the practical are one; truth can be observed by direct observation of nature: God is everywhere and in everything; life does not stop with death; all men and women, regardless of wealth or condition, are equally important in the universe; and every experience, big or small contributes to one’s growth.
The most important poem in the collection is his long poem “Song of Myself”. Here we can see all the major themes of Whitman’s work. In the first lines, he begins with himself: “I celebrate myself and sing myself”. But this “self” soon grows to include friends, the entire nation and finally humanity. He then introduces himself as “Walt Whitman, a Cosmos”. To him, the real “self” includes everything in the universe. “Nothing, not God, is greater than the self is”. This is a Transcendentalist idea of “self” and the whole poem is an expansion of Emerson’s idea of the “over-soul”.
Form of Whitman’s Poetry
Whitman invented a new form of writing poetry where the poet is freed from the rigid, classical rules of writing poems. Through Whitman, American poets were freed from the old English traditions. To him message was always more important than form, and he was the first to explore the possibilities of free verse (poetry in a form that does not follow any regular pattern). In his poetry the lines are not usually organized into stanzas; they look more like ordinary sentences. Although he rarely uses rhyme or meter, we can still hear (or feel) a clear rhythm (expected beat or rhythm). In his poems words or sounds are often repeated. This, along with the content, gives unity to his poetry. Whitman developed his style to suit his message and the audience he hoped to reach. He preferred to use simple and plain style so that common people could read them. [Students will learn two of Whitman’s poems, “Oh! Captain! My Captain” and “A Passage to India”- See Appendix 2]
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
She was another poet who wrote during the Civil war era. She lived a quite, private life in a big old house in her little hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. Of all the great writers of the 19th century, she had the least influence on her times. It may be due to her recluse life, that he could create a very personal and pure kind of poetry. Since her death, her fame has grown leap and bounds and her poetry is now seen as very modern for its time. Most of her poems are concerned with the issue of life in terms of death. Besides the Bible, she was also influenced by the philosophy of Emerson and Transcendentalism. Her poetry is filled with images and themes taken from Emerson’s essays, but most of her poems are pessimistic. She looked at the world as a “place where God and nature are silent”, and the universe is a “design of darkness”.
[Students will study Dickinson’s poems ‘I’m Nobody” “Because I could Not Stop for Death” and “Success is Counted Sweetest” – See Appendix 3]
Appendix 1.
RIV VAN WINKLE – WASHINGTON IRVING
A Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbockers
Prologue
"Rip Van Winkle" was written by Washington Irving (1783-1859), a lawyer who pursued a writing career after he discovered that practicing law did not interest him. At a time when most Americans read British authors almost exclusively, Irving proved that American writers could compete with their British counterparts. He was among the first American writers who gained an international reputation by writing short stories. Irving had a special talent for creating a magical, fairytale quality in his tales–notably "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"–and thus helped shape the folklore of early America. His elegant writing style, full of gentle humor and vivid descriptions, continues to enchant modern readers. It is likely that his engaging stories will remain popular for ages to come.
The following Tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the Dutch history of the province, and the manners of the descendants from its primitive settlers. His historical researches, however, did not lie so much among books as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the old burghers, and still more their wives, rich in that legendary lore, so invaluable to true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and studied it with the zeal of a book-worm.
The result of all these researches was a history of the province during the reign of the Dutch governors, which he published some years since. There have been various opinions as to the literary character of his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be. Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its first appearance, but has since been completely established; and it is now admitted into all historical collections, as a book of unquestionable authority.
The old gentleman died shortly after the publication of his work, and now that he is dead and gone, it cannot do much harm to his memory to say that his time might have been better employed in weightier labors. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby his own way; and though it did now and then kick up the dust a little in the eyes of his neighbors, and grieve the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt the truest deference and affection; yet his errors and follies are remembered "more in sorrow than in anger," and it begins to be suspected, that he never intended to injure or offend. But however his memory may be appreciated by critics, it is still held dear by many folks, whose good opinion is well worth having; particularly by certain biscuit-bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his likeness on their new-year cakes; and have thus given him a chance for immortality, almost equal to the being stamped on a Waterloo Medal, or a Queen Anne's Farthing.
The Story
Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky, but, sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.
At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small
yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weather-cocks.
In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple good-natured fellow of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.
Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual, with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossiping, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood.
The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.
In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; every thing about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray, or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst conditioned farm in the neighborhood.
His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.
Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house - the only side which, in truth, belongs to a hen-pecked husband.
Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much hen-pecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master's going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods - but what courage can withstand the ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broom-stick or ladle, he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation.
Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman's money to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveler. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place.
The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sundial. It is true he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When anything that was read or related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds; and sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of perfect approbation.
From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquility of the assemblage and call the members all to naught; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness.
Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. "Poor Wolf," he would say, "thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!" Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfuly in his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.
In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands.
On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle.
As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air: "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" - at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master's side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it. On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion - a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist - several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion had labored on in silence; for though the former marveled greatly what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe and checked familiarity.
On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of similar style with that of the guide's. Their visages, too, were peculiar: one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes: the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat set off with a little red cock's tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor
of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement. What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.
As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-luster countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game.
By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.
On waking, he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes - it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze. "Surely," thought Rip, "I have not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor - the mountain ravine - the wild retreat among the rocks - the woe-begone party at ninepins - the flagon - "Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!" thought Rip - "what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle!"
He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roysterers of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.
He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening's gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. "These mountain beds do not agree with me," thought Rip; "and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." With some difficulty he got down into the glen: he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path. Finally, he reached to where the
ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward.
As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!
He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors - strange faces at the windows - every thing was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill Mountains - there ran the silver Hudson at a distance - there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been - Rip was sorely perplexed - "That flagon last night," thought he, "has addled my poor head sadly!"
It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay - the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed - "My very dog," sighed poor Rip, "has forgotten me!"
He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears - he called loudly for his wife and children - the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence.
He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village inn - but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, "the Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular
assemblage of stars and stripes - all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipes; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a scepter, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON.
There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens - elections - members of congress - liberty - Bunker's Hill - heroes of seventy-six - and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.
The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, eyeing him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "Whether he was Federal or Democrat?" Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, "what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?" - "Alas! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!"
Here a general shout burst from the by-standers - "A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern.
"Well - who are they? - name them." Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, "Where's Nicholas Vedder?" There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin piping voice, "Nicholas Vedder! Why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the church-yard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten and gone too." "Where's Brom Dutcher? "Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point - others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's Nose. I don't know - he never came back again." "Where's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?" "He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, and is now in congress." Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could
not understand: war - congress - Stony Point; - he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, "Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?" "Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three, "Oh, to be sure! That’s Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree." Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name? "God knows," exclaimed he, at his wit's end; "I'm not myself - I'm somebody else - that's me yonder - no - that's somebody else got into my shoes - I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and every thing's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!" The by-standers began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, "hush, you little fool; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. "What is your name, my good woman?" asked he. "Judith Gardenier." "And your father's name?" "Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since - his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl."
Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice: "Where's your mother?" "Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New-England peddler. There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. "I am your father!" cried he - "Young Rip Van Winkle once - old Rip Van Winkle now! - Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?"
All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, "Sure enough! It is Rip Van Winkle - it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbor - Why, where have you been these twenty long years?
Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks: and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head - upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage. It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill Mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed
that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half-moon; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river, and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine-pins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder.
To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm; but evinced a hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his business.
Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor.
Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times "before the war." It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war - that the country had thrown off the yoke of old England - and that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was - petticoat government. Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.
He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunderstorm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of nine-pins; and it is a common wish of all hen-pecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle's flagon.
Plot Summary
.At the foot of the Catskill Mountains of New York was a picturesque village founded by Dutch colonists. Approaching it, one would see gabled homes with smoke curling up from the chimneys and shingle roofs reflecting the sunlight. A simple, easygoing man named Rip Van Winkle lived in this village, in a weather-beaten house, at the
time when New York was an English colony. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who served with distinction under Peter Stuyvesant in his struggles against Swedish settlers at Fort Christina (in present-day Delaware).
.Because he was kind and gentle, Rip was popular with all of his neighbors. Children especially loved him, for he would play with them, make them toys, and tell those stories. No one had a cross word for Rip–except his wife, who, taking advantage of his meekness, regularly nagged him. Her treatment of him earned Rip the sympathy of other wives.
His only weak point was his inability to work for profit. It was not that he lacked patience or perseverance; for, as the narrator points out, “He would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble.” Moreover, he was always ready to help a neighbor with hard work and frequently ran errands and did odd jobs for housewives. But when it came time to tend his own farm and keep up his own property, he was of little use. Fences would collapse, a cow would run off, and rain would fall at the very moment he decided to work. The only plants that thrived on his farm were weeds. Consequently, he had the least productive and least attractive farm in the area.
One of his children, little Rip, seemed to take after his father. Not only did he look like the elder Rip but he also wore Rip’s hand-me-down clothes, including a pair of galligaskins (loose-fitting trousers) which he would continually hitch up with one hand.
.Dame Van Winkle ceaselessly browbeat Rip for his failings, saying he was bringing the family to ruin. Rip would shrug and go outside, out of range of her scolding tongue. She treated his dog, Wolf, the same way, and Wolf began to resemble Rip in submissiveness. Rip often sought refuge with a village group that convened on a bench in front of an inn to gossip, tell stories, and on one occasion discuss events reported in a newspaper left behind by a traveler. The village schoolmaster, Derrick Van Brummel, would read the newspaper accounts. Old Nicholas Vedder, the owner of the inn, was the gray eminence of this group, guiding its thought and conversation even though he did little more than smoke his pipe and shift his position on the bench to remain in the shade of a tree. Unfortunately for Rip, Dame Van Winkle would sometimes come to the inn for him and haul him off, all the while her tongue lashing him and his compatriots, including Vedder.
To escape his wife and the drudgery of his farm, Rip would sometimes head into the woods with Wolf and his gun. One day, high in the Catskill Mountains, he hunted squirrels, firing one shot after another. Hours later, tired from all the activity, he decided to lie down for a rest on a green knoll overlooking the rich forests and the Hudson River in the distance. When evening neared, he got up to return home, heaving a sigh at the thought of Dame Van Winkle and the terror of her tongue. At that moment, a man came up the mountain, calling out Rip’s name. Rip and Wolf both came to attention. As the man neared, Rip noticed that he was short and squat, with a
beard and bushy hair, and wore old-fashioned Dutch clothes with buttons down the sides of his breeches. He was carrying a keg–probably liquor, Rip thought–and beckoned for Rip to help him. Always ready to assist others, Rip did so. As they ascended the mountain, Rip heard rumbling, like thunder, coming from a ravine. After they passed through it, they came to a hollow bordered by cliffs with overhanging trees; it resembled an amphitheater. There, Rip saw bearded
men–all dressed like his companion and all of odd appearance, one with a large head and one with a large nose–playing ninepins. They neither spoke nor smiled. When they rolled their balls toward the pins, Rip again heard peals of thunder.
Upon the arrival of Rip, the players stopped and stared at him, unnerving him. His companion opened the keg and emptied it into flagons, then motioned for Rip to serve the players, which he did. After the strange men resumed their game, Rip began to feel at ease and decided to sample the brew. It was excellent. He drank another, then another and another. By and by, the liquor had a heavy effect, and he drifted into a deep sleep.
.When he woke up to a sunny morning, he was on the same green knoll upon which he rested when he first saw the man with the keg. His mind reviewed the events of the night before–the men, the ninepins, and the liquor. Dame Van Winkle would give him a severe scolding this time. He reached out for his gun but was surprised to find that its barrel was rusted and its stock eaten away by worms. Perhaps those bowlers had stolen his gun and replaced it with a sorry old firelock. Wolf was nowhere to be found. When he arose to return to the place of the previous night’s revels to look for Wolf and retrieve his gun, he discovered that he was stiff in the joints.
“These mountain beds do not agree with me,” thought Rip, “and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.”
However, the path he had walked with the strange man was now a mountain stream. Moreover, at the place where he entered the ravine, there was now only a wall of rock. Dumfounded, he returned to the village but was further puzzled when he saw people he did not recognize, all wearing strange fashions. Stroking his chin in bewilderment, he discovered that he had a beard a foot long.
.The village was larger than when he left it, with more people. He saw strange houses with strange names over the doors. Dogs barked at him and children made fun of him. When he reached his house, he saw an old, deteriorating dwelling with broken windows and a collapsed roof. An old dog outside–was it Wolf?–growled at him. Inside, he looked about but found only emptiness. Immediately, he walked over to the inn–but it was gone. In its place was a ramshackle building with these words painted on the door: “The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.” There were men outside–but none that he recognized. One man was speaking loudly about “rights of citizens–election–members of Congress–liberty–Bunker’s Hill–heroes of ’76–and other words, that were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.”
.The men gathered around him and eyed him, for he was a strange sight to them. Women and children from the village also came to look at the peculiar man with the long beard and odd clothes. One man asked him how he voted. (Apparently, it was Election Day.) Another asked whether he was a Federal or a Democrat. A third man with a cane, seeing the old gun, asked whether Rip had come to the village to start a riot. Rip told them, ““I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God blesses him!” At that, they declared him a Tory and a spy.
The man with the cane calmed the others down and inquired again why Rip had come to the village. Rip assured him he meant no harm, then inquired where his neighbors were, naming them one by one: Nicholas Vedder, Brom Dutcher, Van Brummell the schoolmaster. Vedder has been dead 18 years, Rip was told. Dutcher went off to war and never returned. Van Brummell,
too, went off to war, attained the rank of general, and got him elected to Congress. All these replies puzzled Rip.
.Then he said, “Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?” One man replied, “Oh, to be sure!
That’s Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.” The fellow looked exactly like Rip and even wore ragged clothes. When a man asked Rip his name, he said he did not know, for he now doubted his own identity. A woman named Judith Gardener came up just then holding a child named Rip. When Rip asked her who her father was, she replied, “Ah, poor man, his name was Rip Van Winkle; it’s twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since—his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl.” She also mentioned that her mother had died when she suffered a broken blood vessel shouting at a peddler. Rip then identified himself...“I am your father!” cried he–“Young Rip Van Winkle once–old Rip Van Winkle now!–Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle!”
.An old woman stepped forward for a closer look at him and confirmed that he was indeed Rip Van Winkle. When she asked where he had been for twenty years, Rip told his story to everyone. The people, skeptical, winked at one another or shook their heads. It happened that the oldest inhabitant of the village, Peter Vanderdonk, was coming up the road, and he was asked for his opinion. He immediately identified Rip. In addition, it was a fact, the narrator reports him as saying, that strange beings had always roamed the Catskills and that Henrdrick Hudson, the discoverer of the region, visited the area every twenty years with the crew of his ship, the Half-Moon, to “keep a guardian eye upon the river.” The narrator further reports that Vanderdonk’s father once observed Hudson and the crew playing ninepins in the mountains and that Vanderdonk himself once heard the thunderous sound of their rolling balls.
.The crowd then disbanded. Rip went to live with his daughter and her farmer husband. Rip’s son–the man leaning against the tree–had been hired to work the farm but spent all his time on his own interests. Rip went for walks, took up his old habits, and even found a few of his old friends. However, he preferred the company of the younger generation.
At an age when he could do as he pleased, which was to say nothing, he began sitting on the bench in front of the Doolittle's Hotel. There the villagers looked upon him as one of their patriarchs. In time, he learned that there had been a revolutionary war in which the country broke from England and that he was now a citizen of the United States. Overall, he was a happy man and was especially pleased to be free of the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle.
.From time to time, he told his story to strangers and eventually everyone in the village knew all the details by heart. Some inhabitants still doubted the tale, but old-timers swore by it and even claimed, whenever they heard a thunderstorm, that Hendrick Hudson and his crew was playing ninepins again.
A Brief Analysis of the Story
Washington Irving's ‘‘Rip Van Winkle’’ is one of the best-known short stories in American literature. That is to say, the character of Rip Van Winkle, the man who sleeps for twenty years
and awakens to a greatly changed world and a long beard, is one of the best-known characters in American popular culture, widely recognized through his many appearances and references in books, movies, cartoons, and advertisements. The story was first published in 1819 in a collection called The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. The book was issued in installments in the United States and was so successful that Irving arranged for a British edition. This became the first book by an American writer to achieve international success. While many pieces from the collection have been forgotten, ''Rip Van Winkle'' has never gone out of print and is widely available in textbooks and anthologies, including the multivolume set The Complete Works of Washington Irving published by Twayne.
The story is based on German folk tales that Irving learned about through a lifetime of reading and years of travel in Europe. One of his goals was to give the United States, a new country, some of the same feeling of tradition that older nations had because of their traditional lore. For several of his stories Irving borrowed European plots, but transported them into American settings. In a humorous context, ‘‘Rip Van Winkle’’ deals with issues of politics, as he shows how the American Revolution changed one small village, and gender issues, as he shows the comical relationship between a lazy husband and a bad-tempered wife.
The story is framed with a commentary from an unnamed writer. Before the story itself begins, three paragraphs in brackets explain the story's origin: The tale ‘‘was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker,’’ a man who dedicated much of his life to studying and recording the history of the Dutch inhabitants of upstate New York. Knickerbocker's published history, the narrator claims, is known for its ‘‘scrupulous accuracy,'' and the tale of ''Rip Van Winkle,’’ therefore, should be accepted as truth.
The tale itself opens with a description of the Kaatskill (now called Catskill) Mountains, beautiful and mysterious, at the foot of which is the village where the central character lives. The time is the late 1760s or the early 1770s, while the area is still a colony of Great Britain under the rule of King George III. Rip Van Winkle is a ‘‘simple, goodnatured fellow'' with a faithful dog, a son, a daughter, and a domineering wife. Rip is a favorite of the women and children of the village, and a popular member of the crowd of men who gather outside the local tavern to argue about politics, but he is not as welcome in his own family. As willing as he is to play with the neighborhood children or to help his neighbors with chores, he is lazy and unproductive at home. His farm, which is the family's source of food and income, is falling to ruin. Rip has gradually sold off most of it piece by piece, and what little land remains is rocky and infertile. Truth be told, he does not spend much time working on the farm, preferring to be out in the village visiting or in the mountains hunting and fishing. In short, he is "ready to attend to anybody's business but his own.’’ His wife never lets him forget his responsibilities to the family, or the many ways he fails to fulfill them.
Setting
The story begins about five or six years before the American Revolution and ends twenty years later. The action takes place in a village in eastern New York, near the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. The river was named after Englishman Henry Hudson, who explored it in
1609. The Catskill Mountains were named after Kaaterskill, the Dutch word for a local stream, Wildcat Creek. The Catskills contain many other streams, as well as lakes, waterfalls, and gorges.
Characters
Rip Van Winkle: Meek, easygoing, ne’er-do-well resident of the village who wanders off to the mountains and meets strange men playing ninepins
Dame Van Winkle: Rip’s nagging wife
Nicholas Vedder: Owner of a village inn where menfolk congregate
Derrick Van Brummell: Village schoolmaster
Wolf: Rip’s dog
Man Carrying Keg Up the Mountain: Spirit of Englishman Henry Hudson, explorer of the Hudson River
Ninepin Bowlers: Henry Hudson’s crewmen from his ship, the Half-Moon
Brom Dutcher: Neighbor of Rip who went off to war while Rip was sleeping
Old Woman: Woman who identifies Rip when he returns to the village after his sleep
Peter Vanderdonk: Oldest resident of the village. He confirms Rip’s identity and cites evidence indicating Rip’s strange tale is true
Judith Gardener: Rip’s married daughter. She takes her father in after he returns from his sleep
Mr. Gardener: Judith’s husband, a farmer
Rip Van Winkle II: Rip’s ne’er-do-well son
Rip Van Winkle III: Rip’s infant grandchild. Its mother is Judith Gardener
Van Schaick: Village parson
Jonathan Doolittle: Owner of the Union Hotel, the establishment that replaced the village inn
The Catskill Mountains: See Personification
Various Men, Women, and Children of the Village
Type of Work, Source, and Publication Information
"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story–one of America's most beloved–based on German folk tales. It was first published in a collection of Irving's works called The Sketch Book (1819-1820).
Themes
Change with Continuity and Preservation of Tradition
After Rip awakens from his long sleep and returns to the village, he does not recognize the people he encounters. But not only are their faces new but also their fashions and the look of the village: It is larger, with rows of houses he had never seen. His own house is in a shambles now with no one living in it, and the inn he frequented is a hotel. His wife and old Vedder are dead. Others left the village and never came back. Everything is different, it seems; nothing is as it was. There has even been a revolutionary war in which America gained its independence from England and became a new country. However, when Rip looks beyond the village, he sees that the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains are exactly the same as they were before his sleep. He also begins to encounter people who knew him long ago: first, the old woman, then the old man, Peter Vanderdonk, who testifies to the truth of Rip’s strange tale about the ninepin bowlers he met in the mountains. At this point in the story, Irving’s main theme begins to emerge: Although wrenching, radical changes are sometimes necessary to move society
forward, such changes must not eradicate old ways and traditions entirely. Real, lasting change is an amalgam of the old and new. New builds on the foundations of the old. There must be continuity. So it is that old Vanderdonk, in confirming Rip’s tale, says he himself has heard the thunder of ninepin bowlers, who are the crewmen of The Half-Moon, the ship Henry Hudson captained in his exploration of the Hudson River. It seems that their spirits return to the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains every twenty years to keep a “guardian eye” on the river and its environs. Hudson was an Englishman, yes, but his association with his overthrown country does not mean the values he represents must die with the revolution. Rip also sees his son, Rip II, now a grown man, who looks just like him, and is reunited with his daughter, now a grown woman, who is holding an infant–Rip III. Thus, though, change has come to the village, their remain links with the past; there is continuity. New generations come along that bring change, but old values and traditions–as well as family lines–remain alive and thriving. And, every now and then, thunder rumbles in the Catskills when Hudson and his crew play ninepins.
The Magic of the Imagination
Irving’s story suggests that human imagination can give society charming, humorous stories that become part of an enduring, magical folklore. Today, the Catskill and Hudson Valley regions well remember Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane–the hero of another Irving story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”–as if they were real persons. A bridge across the Hudson has even been named after Rip. Sunnyside, Irving’s Tarrytown home between 1835 and 1859, is a major tourist attraction in the Hudson Valley.
Climax
The climax of the story occurs when the townspeople recognize Rip after he returns to his village.
The Game of Ninepins
Ninepins is a game (or sport) in which a participant rolls wooden balls on a lane in an attempt to knock down nine bottle-shaped wooden pins arranged in the shape of a diamond. The participant may bowl up to three balls to knock down all the pins. Ninepins is similar to the modern sport of bowling.
Personification: The Catskills as a Character
In the beginning of the story, Washington Irving uses personification to invest the Catskill Mountains with human qualities. Irving tells us in Paragraph 1 that they are part of a “family,” the Appalachian family. And they are a proud, majestic member of that family, “lording it over the surrounding country.” They are also active rather than passive, reacting to the weather and the seasons with changes in their “magical hues and shapes.” In fair weather, “they are clothed in blue and purple.” But sometimes, even though the sky is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory. Making the mountains come alive enables them to become mysterious and unpredictable.
Reference:
Spark Notes Editors. “SparkNote “Rip Van Winkle”. Spark . SparkNotesLLC.2003 Web. 14 January, 2011.
Quiz
1. In “Rip Van Winkle,” a man falls asleep for
A) 10 years C) 20 years
B) centuries D) forever
2. Rip’s biggest problem was
A) Dame Van Winkle C) back rent
B) Wolf D) laziness
3. Rip was amazed at the men playing nine pins because
A) they had the gravest faces C) They drank so much
B) They had strange clothes D) all of the above
4. Rip fell asleep
A) along the Hudson C) in the Kaatskills
B) at the bowling alley D) at home
5. After his long sleep, and with all the changes that occurred,
A) nobody remembered Rip C) Rip’s life was virtually unchanged
B) Rip’s life was dramatically changed D) The entire village was gone
6. What does visages mean in this sentence? “Their visages, too were peculiar: one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes…”
A) Clothes C) vision
B) Voices D) faces
7. Who did Rip meet up in the hills?
A) Dame Van Winkle C) Brom Bones
B) Hendrick Hudson D) Washington Irving
8. The story, “Rip Van Winkle” begins in the year
A) 1730 C) 1812
B) 1760 D) 1849
9. Rip sleeps through the
A) Dinner C) Civil War
B) War of 1812 D) American Revolution
10. How does Rip usually solve conflicts?
A) avoids them C) fights
B) meets them head on D) thinks his way through them
11. Rip was rid of one form of government under which he had long groaned. What was that government?
A) British Monarchy C) American Democracy
B) Nazi rule D) petticoat government
12. What does impunity mean in this sentence? “ … and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, (Rip) took his place once more on the bench at the inn door…
A) Pride C) importance
B) ability not to get in trouble D) money
13. Hawthorne writes seriously about his subjects,
A) but Irving writes about his subjects humorously.
B) and Irving also writes seriously about historical stories.
14. Irving’s purpose for writing this story might be to:
A) Inform C) describe
B) Persuade D) entertain
15. Irving had a negative view of women in his stories. This might be because:
A) he was happily married himself
B) he never was married
Study Questions and Essay Topics
• Even though he was a failure as a farmer, Rip Van Winkle was a success as a human being. What were the most praiseworthy qualities that he possessed?
• In what way does Irving's portrayal of Dame Van Winkle help to illumine Rip's character?
• Write a short essay (or a paragraph or two) that uses personification and/or other figure of speech to invest with a personality the natural surroundings where you live, as Irving did in "Rip Van Winkle."
• If you fell asleep today and awakened 20 years from now, what questions would you ask the first person you saw?
• When Rip returns to his village, he learns that Dame Van Winkle has died and that his fellow Americans liberated themselves from English rule in a revolutionary war. What do the war and the death of Rip's wife have in common in terms of how Rip will live the rest of his life?
• Although "Rip Van Winkle" is a fictional tale, it presents truths that can teach the reader. Write an essay that focuses on the truths presented
APPENDIX 2
|Poem # 1 |
|Passage to India |
|Singing my days, |
|Singing the great achievements of the present, |
|Singing the strong light works of engineers, |
|Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,) |
|In the Old World the east the Suez canal, |
|The New by its mighty railroad span’s, |
|The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires; |
|Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul, |
|The Past! The Past! The Past! |
| |
|The Past—the dark unfathomed retrospect! |
|The teeming gulf—the sleepers and the shadows! |
|The past—the infinite greatness of the past! |
|For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past? |
|(As a projectile form'd, impelled, passing a certain line, still keeps on, |
|so the present, utterly form'd, impelled by the past.) |
|2 |
|Passage O soul to India! |
|Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables. |
| |
|Not you alone proud truths of the world, |
|Nor you alone ye facts of modern science, |
|But myths and fables of eld, Asia's, Africa's fables, |
|The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloosed dreams, |
|The deep diving bibles and legends, |
|The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions; |
|O you temples fairer than lilies poured over by the rising sun! |
|O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting |
|to heaven! |
|You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnished with gold! |
|Towers of fabled immortal fashioned from mortal dreams! |
|You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest! |
|You too with joy I sing. |
| |
|Passage to India! |
|Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first? |
|The earth to be span’s, connected by network, |
|The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, |
|The oceans to be cross’s, the distant brought near, |
|The lands to be welded together. |
| |
|A worship new I sing, |
|You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours, |
|Your engineers, you architects, machinists, yours, |
|You, not for trade or transportation only, |
|But in God's name, and for thy sake O soul. |
Background and explanation
Passage to India is a long poem in nine sections. Its major theme is spirituality and the possibilities of a meeting between peoples of different places, cultures and religions. In 1869, Walt Whitman saw the opening of the Suez Canal as reason for celebration, for this new passage to India was both a marvel of engineering and an opportunity to connect with the spiritual traditions of faraway lands. His verse argues that there are different ways of knowing—through scientific knowledge and through the wisdom of ancient stories—in its first three lines: "Not you alone, proud truths of the world!/ Nor you alone, ye facts of modern science!/ But myths and fables of eld—Asia's, Africa's fables!" At this point—in part because the sentence's subject and verb have yet to come—the reader doesn't know why the speaker includes myths and fables in this group. But the next seven lines make clear his admiration for these ancient civilizations.
Repetition plays a key role in his praise. Lines four through six start with "the;" the next three lines, and five out of the next six, have "you" as the first or second word; and all of the lines end with punctuation that creates a full stop. The effect—one lush phrase following another—adds emphasis to the celebration of these fables and their mystical power.
By the time the subject and verb of the sentence arrive—"You too I welcome, and fully, the same as the rest"—the speaker's reverence is clear. He welcomes Eastern and African "bibles," "religions," and "temples" as much as Western ones. Whitman's use of the present tense in the stanza's final line, "You too with joy I sing," implicitly compares poetry to song, and after so many longer lines, its monosyllabic simplicity makes the praise even more immediate and joyful.
Whitman uses repetition—repeating first words and ending lines with punctuation—in the next stanza as well. Here, in conversation with his soul, the speaker gives voice to God's purpose for the new passage to India: to bring people together. When "The earth be spann'd, connected by net-work," barriers are erased, love is nurtured, and people evolve. Imagining a peaceful new era, the speaker proclaims:
worship new, I sing;
you captains, voyagers, explorers, yours!
You engineers! You architects, machinists, yours!
You, not for trade or transportation only,
But in God's name, and for thy sake, O soul.
With his eye fixed on a higher purpose, the speaker addresses all the people who made the canal possible. Just as the Suez Canal links distant parts of the world, Whitman's poetry links both ancient religions and modern technology, God and engineering, and the terminology associated with each. In doing so, he is guiding us, looking into a bright future and extending an invitation that is both tender and challenging. The poem can be called a transcendental poem as it seeks spiritual unification and fulfillment of man.
The three events mentioned in the poem help man to achieve physical unity but the great spiritual gap remains. Whitman tries to fill up this gap. He is optimistic of the future where he finds hope and confidence and spiritual unity. This is because the poet understands the secret, responds to affections and links together all these separations and gaps. He involves his soul to sail even ‘farther than India’ and achieve the mystic union with the divine which is the ultimate goal or purpose of human life.
Another interpretation of the poem
God wants that men of different nations and races would ultimately merge and mingle to bring forth a new generation of humanity.
“Passage to India!
La, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be cross’d, the distant trough near,
The lands to be welded together.”
The poem “Passage to India” is very rich in texture and various levels of meaning can be found in it. The poem is a vision of history, starting with the dawn of civilization in the East and coming up to the modern railway train thundering across the American continent. The poet gives new meanings to the old myths. He brings himself into contact with history, geography and society of India. But the poet is not satisfied with only a passage to India. He wants something more – and therefore he cries in passionate intensity:
“Passages to more than India!
O secret of the earth and sky!
Of you, a waters of the sea!
O winding creeks and rivers!
Of you, a woods and fields! Of you
Strong mountains of my land!
Of you, a prairies! of you gray rocks!”
We remember in this connection that it was this aspect of the poem which probably prompted E.M. Forster to borrow the name of his most famous novel A Passage to India. Moreover, Forster’s belief that the world “is a globe of men trying to reach one another” is very similar to Whitman’s belief.
Through his poems, Whitman constantly sought to teach the ideology that in spite of all differences we are one. It is that “unity in diversity’ that Whitman is trying to propagate through the poem.
Whitman’s faith in the posterity has been partly vindicated. His books have been, and still are read extensively throughout the world. But time is perhaps not yet ripe for the emergence of the type of reading public that he envisaged in his poetry. In this strife-torn world full of violence, the voice of the brotherhood of man and idealistic internationalism may appear to the young readers naive and unconvincing. Yet perhaps it would be profitable to note that a glorious future cannot be envisaged without some touch of the vision shaped by Walt Whitman. Even while living and breathing in an atmosphere of acute dejection and dilemma, one still fondly hopes that the bridge that Whitman built has not yet broken and the future quivers with expectation for the materialization of his broad and healthy and optimistic vision of life.
Questions
1. What are the modern wonders mentioned in the poem?
2. The Poet compares the present time to a “projectile” that comes out of a gun. Identify and explain the figure of speech
3. The poet talks about the fables, myths, bibles, temples of Asia and Africa. He addresses these inanimate things using the pronoun “You”. What do we call this figure of speech?
4. What do “passage” and “India” symbolize in the poem?
5. Is the poet concerned more with material or spiritual unity?
6. What does the poet say about the relation between the present and the past (Lines 13-15)
7. In the poem “India” does not refer to a specific country. It is instead a symbol for something much larger and more inclusive. What does this symbol suggest to you?
|Poem # 2 - O Captain! My Captain |
|O CAPTAIN! My Captain! our fearful trip is done; |
|The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won; |
|The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, |
|While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: |
|But O heart! Heart! Heart! |
|O the bleeding drops of red, |
|Where on the deck my Captain lies, |
|Fallen cold and dead. |
| |
| |
|O Captain! My Captain! rise up and hear the bells; |
|Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills; 10 |
|For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding; |
|For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; |
|Here Captain! Dear father! |
|This arm beneath your head; |
|It is some dream that on the deck, |
|You've fallen cold and dead. |
| |
| |
|My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; |
|My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will; |
|The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; |
|From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20 |
|Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! |
|But I, with mournful tread, |
|Walk the deck my Captain lies, |
|Fallen cold and dead. |
Critical Notes
Whitman has written two poems (O Captain! My Captain!” and “When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”) based on the death of Abraham Lincoln who was one of the greatest presidents of America. Lincoln died for the great cause of abolition of slavery in America and bringing forth equality and democracy. “O Captain My Captain” is an allusion to Abraham Lincoln and the poem talks about how the war is over and everyone is celebrating, but Lincoln is dead. The poet wrote it shortly after Abraham Lincoln died, it is telling about how he thought of him as the father of the nation and when the poem says that the prize is won, he is talking about the freedom of the slaves and the unity of the north and south. Whitman has used figurative language in many places. For example the comparison of Abraham Lincoln to a ship's captain is a figurative language. The tone is sad and somewhat despairing. The Theme is that a great man, who was well loved, is lost but he didn't die in vain.
The poem is an elegy, a type of poem that is sad in tone and which describes the death or separation of a dear person. Beginning the stanza with “O Captain, my Captain” the speaker seems to be both addressing his Captain and talking to himself about his Captain. The “prize we sought is won” is the victory that the union achieved in the civil war. “The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting” is a reference to the fact that because the war is won, the people are happy and the end is near. \"our fearful trip is done\" is referring to the civil war being over. The next four lines deliver the message of the “Captain”, falling dead after the victory. The repetition of “But O Heart! Heart! Heart!” portrays the speaker’s horror at the fact that his Captain has died, more so because of the repetition three times. “Bleeding drops of red” symbolize both the Captains wounds, and also the speakers wounded heart. The deck is the deck of the “ship” that is America. The method that the lines shows the rhythm of the poem and portray emotional. In the second stanza, the speaker blends two distinct scenes: one where the crowds gather to celebrate the military victory of the captain, and the other the crowds mourning him as a fallen hero. The bells can be interpreted as both the bells of victory and the bells or a church in a funeral, as well as the bugle can be interpreted as military calls for victory or as taps, which is played at soldiers funerals. The people are both rejoicing in the victory and also mourning for Captain’s assassination. In the second half of this segment, the speaker is almost going through denial about his Captain’s death, calling it a “dream”. Also, the line “you’ve fallen cold and dead” is now directed at the Captain, which emphasizes the denial of the speaker of his Captain’s death by speaking to him as if he were alive. In the last stanza, the speaker comes to reality with his Captain’s death. All of the imagery in the stanza portrays death. Lips being pale and still, not feeling his arm, having no pulse, and having no will all point directly toward death. In this excerpt, in the last lines of the poem, the speaker talks about how the rest of the nation should rejoice in the military victory, but how he will continue to mourn the Captain. In the last two lines of the poem, the speaker acknowledges that his Captain is indeed dead, and will mourn him.
Questions
1. What is the form of the poem: elegy or narrative? Explain
2. Explain the line ‘our fearful trip is done’
3. What do “Captain” and “ship” symbolize?
4. Why does the poet repeat the words “O heart? Heart! Heart? What is the figure of speech used here/
5. Explain any 4 figures speech from the poem
6. Write from your memory the first stanza of the poem
Appendix 3. – Poems of Emily Dickinson
|Poem # 1 |
|"I'm Nobody! Who are you?" |
|I'm Nobody! Who are you? |
|Are you - Nobody - Too? |
|Then there's a pair of us! |
|Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know! |
|How dreary - to be - Somebody! |
|How public - like a Frog - |
|To tell one's name - the livelong June - |
|To an admiring Bog! |
Critical Notes
This poem opens with a literally impossible declaration—that the speaker is “Nobody.” This “nobody”, however, quickly comes to mean that she is outside of the public sphere; perhaps, here Dickinson is touching on her own failure to become a published poet, and thus the fact that to most of society, she is “Nobody.”
The speaker does not seem bitter about this—instead she asks the reader, playfully, “Who are you?” and offers us a chance to be in cahoots with her (“Are you – Nobody – Too?”). In the next line, she assumes that the answer to this question is yes, and so unites herself with the reader (“Then there’s a pair of us!”), and her use of exclamation points shows that she is very happy to be a part of this failed couple.
Dickinson then shows how oppressive the crowd of “somebody” can be, encouraging the reader to keep this a secret (“Don’t tell!”) because otherwise “they’d advertise,” and the speaker and her reader would lose their ability to stand apart from the crowd.
It then becomes abundantly clear that it is not only preferable to be a “Nobody,” it is “dreary” to be a “Somebody.” These “somebody”, these public figures who are so unlike Dickinson, are next compared to frogs, rather pitifully, we can imagine, croaking away to the “admiring Bog.” These public figures do not even attempt to say anything of importance—all they do is “tell one’s name,” that is, their own name, over and over, in an attempt to make themselves seem important.
This “admiring Bog” represents those people who allow the public figures to think they are important, the general masses who lift them up. These masses are not even granted the respect of having a sentient being to represent them. Instead, they are something into which one sinks, which takes all individuality away, and has no opinion to speak of, and certainly not one to be respected.
The poem is an example of one of Dickinson’s more comical poems, yet the comedy is not simply for pleasure. Rather, it contains a biting satire of the public sphere, both of the public figures who benefit from it, and of the masses who allow them to. Dickinson’s light tone, childish voice, and invitation to the reader to be on her side, however, keep the sharp edge of the satire from cutting too stingingly.
This poem mocks the pretensions of the public world, as it imagines public figures---or perhaps, published writers—as loud bullfrogs. These frogs have nothing of import to say; instead, they advertise their own names, over and over, selling themselves for the purpose of maintaining their fame, but not having any substance behind it. This especially makes it seem like this poem is speaking towards Dickinson’s lack of publication, as even when she did publish, she did so anonymously, avoiding the prospect of telling her name.
The frogs are not the only ones at fault, however. Their audience—closely tied to them through rhyme—is “an admiring Bog,” with all of its members having joined into the whole, losing all individuality or identity. And indeed, this whole is a swamp, something that sucks one in, or sucks in all they are told, but puts forward no opinion or judgment of its own. This audience thus is spared the dreariness of being “somebody,” for they have no identity, but they become worthless, for they are without opinion, and only serve to listen to and support the public figures.
This public sphere is not only unpleasant in itself, but it is also tries to impose itself on those “nobodies,” like the speaker and ostensibly the reader, who do their best to avoid it. The speaker fears that even telling anyone that there is now “a pair of us,” that is, nobodies, outsiders, will lead to their very identities being advertised, and thus taken from them, for they will no longer be able to be the anonymous, free-thinking nobodies that they have chosen to be.
In the world of this poem, then, the public sphere is about advertised or self-advertised identities: people marketing their names and their existence. This marketing becomes the only way for anyone to enter the public sphere. Talent itself is inconsequential, and thus for someone like Dickinson, or, ostensibly, the reader, who desires to think and to perform with meaning, rather than just maintaining their own fame, participation or recognition in this public world is impossible.
Questions
1. Write a note on the significance of the title of the poem
2. Explain the figure of speech “simile” used in the poem
3. Memorize this short poem and write
|Poem # 2 |
|Because I Could Not Stop for Death |
|Because I could not stop for Death, |
|He kindly stopped for me; |
|the carriage held but just ourselves |
|And Immortality. |
|We slowly drove, he knew no haste, |
|And I had put away |
|My labor and my leisure too, |
|For his civility. |
|We passed the school, where children strove |
|At recess, in the ring; |
|We passed the fields of gazing grain, |
|We passed the setting sun. |
|Or rather, he passed us; |
|The dews grew quivering and chill, |
|For only gossamer my gown, |
|My tippet only tulle. |
|We paused before a house that seemed |
|A swelling of the ground; |
|The roof was scarcely visible, |
|The cornice but a mound. |
|Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each |
|Feels shorter than the day |
|I first surmised the horses' heads |
|Were toward eternity |
.
Explanation
The poem consists of three main parts: death as a character, the journey to the grave, and the cessation (stopping) of all activities. In most of Dickinson’s poems, death is personified as a character. The poet considers Death as a person whom she knew and trusted well. He (death) some time in life might be any gentleman belonging to her own town. Because she could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for her. “The carriage held but just ourselves-/ And immortality’. The carriage holds but the two of them. Yet the ride, as she states with quiet emphasis, is a last ride together. Clearly, there has been no deception on his part. They drive in a leisurely manner.
Death is personified as a gentleman caller or suitor. Thomas H. Johnson calls him "one of the great characters of literature." But exactly what kind of person is he?
• Is Death a kind, polite suitor? The speaker refers to his "kindness" and "civility." He drives her slowly; is this expression of tact and consideration for her? If he is the courteous suitor, then Immortality, who is also in the carriage (or hearse), would be their chaperon, a silent one.
• Is Death actually a betrayer, and is his courtly manner an illusion to seduce her? Because of his kindness in stopping for her, she agrees to go with him ("put away / My labor and my leisure too"). Is Death really cruel? She is not properly dressed for their journey; she is wearing only a gossamer gown and tulle tippet (gossamer: very light, thin cloth; tulle: a thin, fine netting used for veils, scarfs, etc.; tippet: covering for the shoulders). Is Immortality really an accomplice to Death's deception?
The drive symbolizes her leaving life. She progresses from childhood, maturity (the "gazing grain" is ripe) and the setting (dying) sun to her grave. The children are presented as active in their leisure ("strove"). The images of children and grain suggest futurity, that is, they have a future; they also depict the progress of human life. Is there irony in the contrast between her passivity and inactivity in the coach and their energetic activity?
The word "passed" is repeated four times in stanzas three and four. They are "passing" by the children and grain, both still part of life. They are also "passing" out of time into eternity. The sun passes them as the sun does everyone who is buried. With the sun setting, it becomes dark, in contrast to the light of the preceding stanzas. It also becomes damp and cold ("dew grew quivering and chill"), in contrast to the warmth of the preceding stanza. Also the activity of stanza three contrasts with the inactivity of the speaker in stanzas four and five. They pause at the grave. What is the effect of describing it as a house?
In the final stanza, the speaker has moved into death; the language becomes abstract; in the previous stanzas the imagery was concrete and specific. What is Dickinson saying about death or her knowledge of death with this change? The speaker only guesses ("surmised") that they are heading for eternity. Why does she have to guess? She has experienced life, but what does she specifically know about being dead? And why didn't death tell her? If eternity is their goal, can Immortality be a passenger? Or is this question too literal-minded?
Why does Dickinson change from past tense to present tense with the verb "feels" (line 2, stanza 6)? Does eternity have an end?
In this poem, exclusion occurs differently than it does in "The soul selects her own society" Here the speaker is excluded from activities and involvement in life; the dead are outside "the ring" of life. As you read Dickinson's poems, notice the ways in which exclusion occurs and think about whether it is accurate to characterize her as the poet of exclusion.
Questions
1. “Because I could not stop for Death-/He kindly stopped for me”- In these lines why does the poet describe Death as kindly?
2. To whom does the pronoun ‘he’ or ‘his’ in the second stanza refer?
3. Does ‘He’ in the fourth stanza refer to the sun or to death?
4. Explain the figures of speech in the poem.
5. What is the poet’s attitude towards death? Is it positive or negative?
6. Who are the three passengers in the carriage?
|Poem # 3 |
|Success is Counted Sweetest |
| |
|Success is counted sweetest |
|By those who ne'er succeed. |
|To comprehend nectar |
|Requires sorest need. |
| |
|Not one of all the purple Host |
|Who took the Flag today |
|Can tell the definition |
|So clear of Victory |
| |
|As he defeated--dying-- |
|On whose forbidden ear |
|The distant strains of triumph |
|Burst agonized and clear |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| | |
Analysis
The poem expresses the idea of compensation. Every evil gives some balancing good. Through bitterness we are able to appreciate the sweetness. The defeated and dying soldier of this poem is compensated by a greater awareness of the meaning of victory than the victors themselves can have. He can appreciate the joy of success through its polar contrast to his own despair. The poet seems to argue the superiority of defeat over victory, of frustration over satisfaction. The victors have a victory which they cannot define or enjoy. The victors have only the victory, a victory which they cannot clearly define or fully enjoy. They have paid for their triumph by a sacrifice of awareness; a material gain has cost them a spiritual loss. For the dying soldier, the case is reversed; defeat and death are attended by an increase of awareness, find material loss thus leads to spiritual gain.
Assignments
1. Explain the function of Literature
2. What do you understand by American literature? What are some of the differences between American literature and British literature?
3. Write two paragraphs each about “Puritanism” and “Transcendentalism”
4. Write a critical appreciation of the poems “O Captain My Captain” “Passage to India”, “Success is Counted Sweetest’ and “I’ m Nobody”
5. Write in your own words the story of “Rip Van Winkle”
6. Explain what is an irony? Give examples from the story that you have learned
7. Is the story “Rip Van Winkle” open ending or close ending? Explain why?
8. Write a character sketch of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale
9. Write a note on the importance of The Scarlet Letter in American Literature
FOR FURTHER READING
Bayam, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Beginnings to 1875, ed. W. W Norton, 2002
Bloom, Harold, ed. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2007.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. New York: Chelsea House, 1996.
Cowan, Bainard. Exiled Waters: Moby-Dick and the Crisis of Allegory. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
Davey, Michael. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick: A Sourcebook. New York: Rutledge, Heimert, Alan. Moby-Dick and American Political Symbolism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Eliot House Edition, 1991.
Johnson, Claudia D. Understanding The Scarlet Letter: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.
Kesterson, David B., ed. Critical Essays on Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. Levine, Robert S., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998
Lewis, R. W. B. American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the 19th Century. University of Chicago Press, 1959
Matthiessen, F.O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. Oxford University Press, 1941
Olson, Charles. Call Me Ishmael. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Parrington,Vernon Louis. Main Currents in American Thought: Volume 1- The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800. University of Oklahoma Press. 1987
Slade, Leonard A. Symbolism in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick From the Satanic to the Divine. Lewiston, New York: E. Mellen Press, 1998.
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