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Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
I. His Life and Works
Descended from a prominent Puritan family, Hawthorne was the son
of a sea captain who died when Nathaniel was 4 years old. When he
was 14 he and his mother moved to a lonely farm in Maine. After
attending Bowdoin College (1821-25), he devoted himself to writing.
His first novel, Fans awe (1829), published anonymously, was
unsuccessful. His short stories won notice and were collected in
Twice-Told Tales (1837; second series, 1842). Unable to
support himself by writing and editing, he took a job at the Boston
custom House.
Later, Hawthorne lived at the experimental community Brook Farm
for about six months, but he did not share the optimism and idealism
of the transcendentalist participants, and he did not feel himself
suited to communal life. In 1842 he married Sophia Peabody, a friend
and follower of Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller, and they
settled in Concord. There he wrote the tales and sketches in the
collection Mosses from an Old Manse
(1846).
In order to earn a livelihood Hawthorne served as surveyor of the
port at Salem (1846-49), where he began writing his masterpiece,
The Scarlet Letter (1850). Set in 17th-century Puritan New
England, the novel tells of the passionate, forbidden love affair
linking a sensitive, religious young man, the Reverend Arthur
Dimondale, and the sensuous, beautiful townsperson, Hester Prynne.
Set in Boston around 1650 during early Puritan colonization, the
novel highlights the Calvinistic obsession with morality, sexual
repression, guilt and confession, and spiritual salvation. The novel
explores deeply the human heart, presenting the problems of moral
evil and guilt through allegory and symbolism. It is often
considered the first American psychological novel. Hawthorne’s next
novel, The House of the Seven Gables (1851), takes place in
the New England of his own period but nevertheless also deals with
the effects of Puritanism.
For a time Hawthorne lived at “Tanglewood,” near Lenox,
Massachusetts, where he wrote A Wonder Book (1852), based on
Greek mythology, which became a juvenile classic, and Tanglewood
Tales (1853), also for children. At this time he befriended his
neighbor Herman Melville, who was one of the first to appreciate
Hawthorne’s genius. Returning to Concord, Hawthorne completed The
Blithedale Romance (1852), a novel based on his Brook Farm
experience.
A campaign biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce earned
Hawthorne the post of consul at Liverpool (1853-57) after Pierce
became President. Hawthorne’s stay in England is reflected in the
travel sketches of Our Old Home (1863), and a visit to Italy
resulted in the novel The Marble Faun (1860). After returning
to the United States, he worked on several novels that were never
finished. He died during a trip with Franklin Pierce.
II.
His Short Stories
Aside from his importance as a novelist,
Hawthorne is also justly celebrated as a short-story writer. He
helped to establish the American short story as a significant art
form with his haunting tales of human loneliness, frustration,
hypocrisy, eccentricity, and frailty. Among his most brilliant
stories are “The Minister’s Black Veil,” “Roger Malvin’s Burial,”
“Young Goodman Brown,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” “The Great Stone
Face,” and "My Kinsman, Major Molineux." Hawthorne's
recurring themes, and characteristic settings in Puritan colonial
New England, are trademarks of those of his best-known short
stories.
III. His Dominating Ideas
1. The influence of Puritanism
He is from a Puritan family,
therefore, he seems to be haunted by the sense of evil or sin all
his life. He believes that evil is at the core of human heart. This
idea is quite different from the pervading Transcendentalism,
especially Thoreau's ideas. So he is a romantic writer standing
aloof from Transcendentalism.
2. He holds a negative or conservative attitude towards science.
To him, evil comes from science. One theme, therefore, often
occurs in his writing is the tension between head (wisdom and
intellect) and heart (feelings and emotions). Accordingly,
scientists represent head, while ordinary people represent
heart.
IV. The Scarlet Letter
1. Plot Overview:
An aging English scholar sends his beautiful young wife, Hester,
to make their new home in New England. When he comes over two years
later he is bewildered to see his wife wearing a scarlet letter A on
her breast, holding her illicit child in her arms. Determined to
find out who her lover is, the old scholar disguises himself as a
physician and changes his name to Chillingworth. Gradually he
discovers that the villain is no other than the much-admired
brilliant clergyman, Dimmmesdale. Tormenting himself ruthlessly for
his sin, Dimmesdale cuts himself off community and withers
spiritually as well as physically. Hester’s response to the scarlet
letter A is a positive one. Though living on the fringe of the
community, she does her best to reestablish her fellowship with her
neighbors on a new, honest basis and finally wins their love and
admiration. At one time she plans to leave America with Dimmesdale,
but he refuses her help. He dies in her arms while confessing his
sin at a public gathering. Chillingworth withers. Pearl, Hester'
daughter, grows up to be married into a noble family of
Europe.
2. Interpretation of the Story
2.1. Hawthorne seems interested in the past.
The story is
based on New England in the 17th century. But he tries to connect
the past with present.
2.2. He is strongly influenced by humanistic view of the 19th
century.
We can see his attitude toward Hester through the
creation of this character. Here he criticizes Puritan morals,
especially those concerning sex and marriage. At the same time, he
also criticizes the Puritan way of punishment, which brings
psychological hurt to the victim.
2.3. He is concerned with moral, psychological and emotional
effect of sin on man.
The effect on Hester is her moral growth.
The scarlet letter A shifts from Adultery at the beginning to Able
and then Angel at last. From the changes, we know Hawthorne teaches
us that man should show his worst to the world and to be true and
honest.
Selected Reading of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne(
Chapter 5)
Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth
who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want.
She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded
comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for her
thriving infant and herself. It was the art--then, as now, almost
the only one within a woman's grasp--of needle-work. She bore on her
breast, in the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of her
delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames
of a court might gladly have availed themselves, to add the richer
and more spiritual adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of
silk and gold. Here, indeed, in the sable simplicity that generally
characterized the Puritanic modes of dress, there might be an
infrequent call for the finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the
taste of the age, demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions
of this kind, did not fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors,
who had cast behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder
to dispense with. Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the
installation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the
forms in which a new government manifested itself to the people,
were, as a matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted
ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep
ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves,
were all deemed necessary to the official state of men assuming the
reins of power; and were readily allowed to individuals dignified by
rank or wealth, even while
sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the
plebeian order. In the array of funerals, too,--whether for the
apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic
devices of sable
cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors,--there was a
frequent and characteristic demand for such labor as Hester Prynne
could supply. Baby-linen--for babies then wore robes of
state--afforded still another possibility of toil and emolument.
By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would
now be termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration
for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid
curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless
things; or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as
now, sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek
in vain; or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise
have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly
requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with
her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting
on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that had been
wrought by her sinful hands. Her needle-work was seen on the ruff of
the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister
on his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be
mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of the dead. But it is not
recorded that, in a single instance, her skill was called in aid to
embroider the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a
bride. The exception indicated the ever relentless vigor with which
society frowned upon her sin.
Hester sought not to acquire
any thing beyond a subsistence, of the plainest and most ascetic
description, for herself, and a simple abundance for her child. Her
own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue;
with only that one ornament,--the scarlet letter,--which it was her
doom to wear. The child's attire, on the other hand, was
distinguished by a fanciful, or, we may rather say, a fantastic
ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that
early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared
to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it hereafter.
Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant,
Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches
less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the
hand that fed them. Much of the time, which she might readily have
applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in making
coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an idea
of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a
real sacrifice of enjoyment, in devoting so many hours to such rude
handiwork. She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental
characteristic,--a taste for the gorgeously
beautiful, which, save in the exquisite productions of her needle,
found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life, to
exercise itself upon. Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to
the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester
Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore
soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected
it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial
matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast
penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply
wrong beneath.
In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a
part to perform in the world. With her native energy of character,
and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast her off, although it
had set a mark upon her, more intolerable to a woman's heart than
that which
branded the brow of Cain. In all her intercourse with society,
however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to
it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with
whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was
banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or
communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than
the rest of human kind. She stood apart from mortal interests, yet
close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside,
and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the
household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it
succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror
and horrible repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its bitterest
scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she retained in
the universal heart. It was not an age of delicacy; and her
position, although she understood it well, and was in little danger
of forgetting it, was often brought before her vivid
self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch upon the
tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom she sought
out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was
stretched forth to succor them. Dames of elevated rank, likewise,
whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were
accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes
through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a
subtile poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a
coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast
like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. Hester had schooled
herself long and well; she never responded to these attacks, save by
a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and
again subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was patient,--a
martyr, indeed,--but she forbore to pray for enemies; lest, in spite
of her forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should
stubbornly twist themselves into a curse.
Continually, and
in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of
anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying,
the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergymen paused
in the street to address words of exhortation, that
brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor,
sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath
smile of the Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find
herself the text of the discourse. She grew to have a dread of
children; for they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of
something horrible in this dreary woman, gliding silently through
the town, with never any companion but one only child. Therefore,
first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with
shrill cries, and the utterance of a word that had no distinct
purport to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her,
as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to
argue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew of it;
it could have caused her no deeper pang, had the leaves of the trees
whispered the dark story among themselves,--had the summer breeze
murmured about it,--had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another
peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. When strangers
looked curiously at the scarlet letter,--and none ever failed to do
so,--they branded it afresh into Hester's soul; so that, oftentimes,
she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering
the symbol with her hand. But then, again, an accustomed eye had
likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its cool stare of familiarity
was intolerable. From first to last, in short, Hester Prynne had
always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token;
the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow
more sensitive with daily torture.
But sometimes, once in
many days, or perchance in many months, she felt an eye--a human
eye--upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momentary
relief, as if half of her agony were shared. The next instant, back
it all rushed again, with still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that
brief interval, she had sinned anew. Had Hester sinned alone?
Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of
a softer moral and intellectual fibre, would have been still more
so, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to and
fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she
was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester,--if
altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be
resisted,--she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had
endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could
not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the
hidden sin in other hearts. She was terror-stricken by the
revelations that were thus made. What were they? Could they be other
than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have
persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that
the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were
everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a
bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or, must she receive those
intimations--so obscure, yet so distinct--as truth? In all her
miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so
loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well as shocked her, by
the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into
vivid action. Sometimes, the red infamy upon her breast would give a
sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or
magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of
antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship with
angels. "What evil thing is at hand?" would Hester say to herself.
Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the
scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint! Again, a mystic
sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met the
sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor of all
tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life. That
unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and the burning
shame on Hester Prynne's,--what had the two in common? Or, once
more, the electric thrill would give her warning,--"Behold, Hester,
here is a companion!"--and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of
a young maiden glancing at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and
quickly averted, with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks; as if
her purity were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend,
whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing,
whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?--Such loss
of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted
as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own
frailty, and man's hard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to
believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself.
The
vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a
grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story
about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a
terrific legend. They averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet
cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal
fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester
Prynne walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say, it
seared Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth
in the rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to
admit….
Topic Discussion:
1.
What is Hawthorn’s opinion on evil? How can we overcome it?
2.What
are artistic features of The Scarlet
Letter?
II. Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)
2.1 Melville’s Life and Works
Herman Melville was born on the first of August in 1819 in New
York City, the third of eight children of Allan and Maria Gansevoort
Melville. His ancestors included several Scottish and Dutch settlers
of New York as well as prominent leaders in the American Revolution.
His paternal grandfather, Major Thomas Melville, was a member of the
Boston Tea Party and his maternal grandfather, General Peter
Gansevoort, was famous for leading the defense of Ft. Stanwix
against the British during the revolution.
Melville's father was involved in the felt and fur import
business, yet in 1830 his business collapsed and the Melville family
moved from New York City to Albany, where Allan Melville died two
years later. As a child, Herman suffered from extremely poor
eyesight caused by a bout of scarlet fever, but he was able to
attend Male High School despite his difficulties. Herman Melville
worked as a bank clerk before attending the Albany Classical School,
and then worked for a short time as a teacher in Pittsfield,
Massachusetts.
Although he studied surveying at Landingsburgh Academy in order
to take part in the Erie Canal Project, he did not gain a post with
the project and instead shipped out of America as a cabin boy on the
St. Lawrence bound for Liverpool. By this time, Melville had already
started writing. In January of 1841 Melville undertook a second
voyage on the whaler Acushnet from New Bedford to the South Seas. By
June of the following year the Acushnet landed in the Polynesian
Islands, and Melville's adventures in this area became the basis for
his first novel, Typee (1846). This novel is the reputed
story of his life among the cannibalistic Typee people for
several months in 1842, but is likely a highly fictionalized
dramatization of the actual events. Melville's second novel,
Omoo (1847) detailed the adventures of another whaling
journey in which Melville took part in a mutiny and landed in a
Tahitian jail from which he later easily escaped.
In the summer of 1850, spurred by the influence of Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville bought the Arrowhead
farm near Pittsfield so that he could live near Hawthorne, and the
two men, who shared similar philosophies, became close. This
relationship with Hawthorne reawakened Melville's creative energies,
and in 1851 Melville published his most renowned novel, Moby
Dick. Although now heralded as a landmark work in American
literature, the novel received little acclaim upon its release.
Melville completed Billy Budd, the story of a sailor who
accidentally kills his master after being provoked by a false
charge. Melville finished the novel in April of 1891, and five
months later he died on September 28 in New York City.
2.2 Introduction of Moby Dick:
Critics have agreed
that Moby Dick is one of the world’s greatest masterpieces.
To get to know the nineteenth-century American mind and America
itself, one has to read this book. It is an encyclopedia of
everything, history, philosophy, religion, etc. in addition to a
detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry.
The novel Moby Dick was the sixth novel published by
Herman Melville, a landmark of American literature that mixed a
number of literary styles including a fictional adventure story,
historical detail and even scientific discussion. The story of the
voyage of the whaling ship Pequod , the novel draws at least
partially from the experiences of its author while a sailor and a
harpooner on whaling ships before settling in New England as a
writer.
The title character of Moby Dick was inspired by an
article in Knickerbocker magazine in May 1839 entitled "Mocha Dick:
or the White Whale of the Pacific." The author of this article,
Jeremiah Reynolds, detailed the capture of a giant sperm whale
legendary among whalers for its vicious attacks on ships. The whale
was named as such after the Mocha Islands, the area where the whale
was commonly sighted ("Dick" was used simply because it was a common
male name). The origin of the "Moby" of the novel's title has never
been conclusively determined.
Melville intended Moby Dick as a return to the type of
adventure stories such as Typee and Omoo that made his
reputation, but the novel instead took a different turn. In his
letters he described the novel as a romantic and fanciful adventure,
yet the final novel took a far different turn. During this time
Melville had become deeply influenced by Nathaniel
Hawthorne, whose cynical and imposing works bear some resemblance to
the tragic epic that Melville produced.
The first publication of Moby Dick was in London in
October of 1851. Entitled The Whale, the novel was published
in three volumes and was censored for some of its political and
moral content. The British publisher of the novel, Richard Bentley,
inadvertently left out the Epilogue to the novel, leading many
critics to wonder how the tale could be told in the first person by
Ishmael, when the final chapter witnesses the sinking of the Pequod
with presumably no survivors.
The first American publication of the novel came the following
month. The American version of the novel, published by Harper &
Brothers, although fixing the narrative error of the British version
through the inclusion of the epilogue, was poorly received by
critics and readers who expected a romantic high seas adventure akin
to Melville's first successes. The reputation of the novel
floundered for many years, and it was only after Melville's death
that it became considered one of the major novels in American
literature.
2.3 Short Summary:
The novel Moby Dick is an epic tale of the voyage of the
whaling ship the Pequod and its captain, Ahab, who relentlessly
pursues the great Sperm Whale (the title character) during a journey
around the world. The narrator of the novel is Ishmael, a sailor on
the Pequod who undertakes the journey out of his affection for the
sea.
Moby Dick begins with Ishmael's arrival in New Bedford as
he travels toward Nantucket. He rests at the Spouter Inn in New
Bedford, where he meets Queequeg, a harpooner from New Zealand who
will also sail on the Pequod. Although Queequeg appears dangerous,
he and Ishmael must share a bed together and the narrator quickly
grows fond of the somewhat uncivilized harpooner. Queequeg is
actually the son of a High Chief who left New Zealand because of his
desire to learn among Christians. The next day, Ishmael attends a
church service and listens to a sermon by Father
Mapple,a renowned preacher who delivers a sermon considering
Jonah and the whale that concludes that the tale is a lesson to
preacher Truth in the face of Falsehood.
On a schooner to Nantucket, Ishmael and Queequeg come across a
local bumpkin who mocks Queequeg. However, when this bumpkin is
swept overboard, Queequeg saves him. In Nantucket, Queequeg and
Ishmael choose between three ships for a year journey, and decide
upon the Pequod. The Captain of the Pequod, Peleg,
is now retired, and merely owns the boat with another Quaker,
Bildad. Peleg tells them of the new captain, Ahab, and immediately
describes him as a grand and ungodly man. Before leaving for their
voyage, Ishmael and Queequeg come across a stranger named Elijah
who predicts disaster on their journey. Before leaving on the
Pequod, Elijah again predicts disaster.
Ishmael and Queequeg board the Pequod, where Captain Ahab is
still unseen, secluded in his own cabin. Peleg and Bildad consult
withStarbuck,
the first mate. He is a Quaker and a Nantucket native who is quite
practical. The second mate is Stubb, a Cape Cod native with a more
jovial and carefree attitude. The third is Flask,
a Martha's Vineyard native with a pugnacious attitude. Melville
introduces the rest of the crew, including the Indian harpooner Tashtego,
the African harpooner Daggoo.
Several days into the voyage, Ahab finally appears as a man
seemingly made of bronze who stands on an ivory leg fashioned from
whalebone. He eventually gets into a violent argument with Stubb
when the second mate makes a joke at Ahab's expense, and kicks him.
This leads Stubb to dream of kicking Ahab's ivory leg off, but Flask
claims that the kick from Ahab is a sign of honor.
At last, Ahab tells the crew of the Pequod to look for a
white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow: Moby Dick, the legendary
whale that took Ahab's leg. Starbuck tells Ahab that his obsession
with Moby Dick is madness, but Ahab claims that all things are masks
and there is some unknown reasoning behind that mask that man must
strike through. For Ahab, Moby Dick is that mask. Ahab himself seems
to recognize his own madness. Starbuck begins to worry that the ship
is overmatched by the mad captain and knows that he will see an
impious end to Ahab.
While Queequeg and Ishmael weave a sword-mat for lashing to their
boat, the Pequod soon comes upon a whale and Ahab orders his crew to
their boats. Ahab orders his special crew, which Ishmael compares to
"phantoms," to their boats. The crew attacks a whale and Queequeg
does strike it, but this is insufficient to kill it. Among the
"phantoms" in the boat is Fedallah,
a sinister Parsee.
After passing the Cape of Good Hope, the Pequod comes across the
Goney (Albatross), another ship on its voyage. Ahab asks whether
they have seen Moby Dick as the ships pass one another, but Ahab
cannot hear his answer. The mere passing of the ships is unorthodox
behavior, for ships will generally have a 'gam,' a meeting between
two ships.
Ishmael interrupts his narration to tell a story that was told to
him by the crew of the Town-Ho, just as he would tell it to a circle
of Spanish friends after his journey on the Pequod. The story
concerns the near mutiny on the Town-Ho and its eventual conflict
with Moby Dick.
The Pequod does vanquish the next whale that it comes across, as
Stubb strikes a whale with his harpoon. However, as the crew of the
Pequod attempts to bring the whale into the ship, sharks attack the
carcass and Queequeg nearly loses his hand while fending them off.
The Pequod next comes upon the Jeroboam, a Nantucket ship
afflicted with an epidemic. Stubb later tells a story about the
Jeroboam and a mutiny that occurred on this ship because of a Shaker
prophet, Gabriel,
on board. The captain of the Jeroboam, Mayhew,
warns Ahab about Moby Dick.
After vanquishing a Sperm Whale, Stubb next also kills a Right
Whale. Although this is not on the ship's agenda, the Pequod pursues
a Right Whale because of the good omens associated with having the
head of a Sperm Whale and a head of a Right Whale on a ship. Stubb
and Flask discuss rumors that Ahab has sold his soul to Fedallah.
The next ship that the Pequod meets is the Jungfrau (Virgin), a
German ship in desperate need of oil. The Pequod competes with the
Virgin for a large whale, and the Pequod is successful in defeating
it. However, the whale carcass begins to sink as the Pequod attempts
to secure it and thus the Pequod must abandon it. The Pequod next
finds a large group of Sperm Whales and injures several of them, but
only captures a single one.
Stubb invents a plan to swindle the next ship that the Pequod
meets. Stubb tells them that the whales that they have vanquished
are useless and could damage their ship, and when the Rosebud leaves
these behind the Pequod takes them in order to gain the ambergris in
one of them.
Several days after encountering the Rosebud, a young black man on
the boat,Pippin,
becomes frightened while lowering after a whale and jumps from the
boat, becoming entangled in the whale line. Stubb chastises him for
his cowardice and tells him that he will be left at sea if he jumps
again. When Pippin (Pip) does the same thing again, Stubb remains
true to his word and Pip only survives because a nearby boat saves
him. Nevertheless, Pip loses his sanity from the event.
The next ship that the Pequod encounters, a British ship called
the Samuel Enderby, bears news of Moby Dick but its crewman Dr.
Bunger warns Ahab to leave the whale alone. Later, Ahab's leg
breaks and the carpenter must fix it. Ahab behaves scornfully toward
the carpenter. When Starbuck learns that the casks have sprung a
leak, he goes to Ahab's cabin to report the news. Ahab disagrees
with Starbuck's advice on the matter, and becomes so enraged that he
pulls a musket on Starbuck. Although Ahab warns Starbuck that there
is but one God on Earth and one Captain on the Pequod, Starbuck
tells him that he will be no danger to Ahab, for Ahab is sufficient
danger to himself. Ahab does relent to Starbuck's advice.
Queequeg becomes ill from fever and seems to approach death, so
he asks for a canoe to serve as a coffin. The carpenter measures
Queequeg for his coffin and builds it, but Queequeg returns to
health, claiming that he willed his own recovery. Queequeg keeps the
coffin and uses it as a sea chest.
Upon reaching the Pacific Ocean, Ahab asks Perth
the blacksmith to forge a harpoon to use against Moby Dick. Perth
fashions a harpoon that Ahab demands be tempered with the blood of
his pagan harpooners, and he howls out that he baptizes the harpoon
in the name of the devil.
The next ship that the Pequod meets is the Bachelor, a Nantucket
ship whose captain denies the existence of Moby Dick. The next day,
the Pequod slays four whales, and that night Ahab dreams of hearses.
He and Fedallah pledge to slay Moby Dick and survive the conflict,
and Ahab boasts of his own immortality.
Ahab must soon decide between an easy route past the Cape of Good
Hope back to Nantucket and a difficult route in pursuit of Moby
Dick. Ahab easily chooses to continue his quest. The Pequod soon
comes upon a typhoon on its journey in the Pacific, and while
battling this storm the Pequod's compass moves out of union. When
Starbuck learns this and goes to Ahab's cabin to tell him, he finds
the old man asleep. Starbuck considers shooting Ahab with his
musket, but he cannot move himself to shoot his captain after he
hears Ahab cry in his sleep "Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last."
The next morning after the typhoon, Ahab corrects the problem
with the compass despite the skepticism of his crew and the ship
continues on its journey. Ahab learns that Pip has gone insane and
offers his cabin to the poor boy. The Pequod comes upon yet another
ship, the Rachel, whose captain, Gardiner,
knows Ahab. He requests the Pequod's help in searching for his son,
who may be lost at sea, but Ahab flatly refuses when he learns that
Moby Dick is nearby. The final ship that the Pequod meets is the
Delight, a ship that has recently come upon Moby Dick and has nearly
been destroyed by its encounter with the whale. Before finally
finding Moby Dick, Ahab reminisces about the day nearly forty years
before in which he struck his first whale, and laments the solitude
of his years out on the sea. He admits that he has chased his prey
as more of a demon than a man.
The struggle against Moby Dick lasts three days. On the first
day, Ahab spies the whale himself, and the whaling boats row after
it. Moby Dick attacks Ahab's boat, causing it to sink, but Ahab
survives the ordeal when he reaches Stubb's boat. Despite this first
failed attempt at defeating the whale, Ahab pursues him for a second
day. On the second day of the chase, roughly the same defeat occurs.
This time Moby Dick breaks Ahab's ivory leg, while Fedallah dies
when he becomes entangled in the harpoon line and is drowned. After
this second attack, Starbuck chastises Ahab, telling him that his
pursuit is impious and blasphemous. Ahab declares that the chase
against Moby Dick is immutably decreed, and pursues it for a third
day.
On the third day of the attack against Moby Dick, Starbuck panics
for ceding to Ahab's demands, while Ahab tells Starbuck that "some
ships sail from their ports and ever afterwards are missing,"
seemingly admitting the futility of his mission. When Ahab and his
crew reach Moby Dick, Ahab finally stabs the whale with his harpoon
but the whale again tips Ahab's boat. However, the whale rams the
Pequod and causes it to begin sinking. In a seemingly suicidal act,
Ahab throws his harpoon at Moby Dick but becomes entangled in the
line and goes down with it. Only Ishmael survives this attack, for
he was fortunate to be on a whaling boat instead of on the Pequod.
Eventually he is rescued by the Rachel as its captain continues his
search for his missing son, only to find a different orphan.
2.4 Major Characters:
Captain Ahab: Ahab is the Captain of the Pequod, a grave older
man reaching his sixties who has spent nearly forty years as a
sailor, only three of which he has spent on dry land (Melville
alludes to Ahab as having a wife and son, but their existence seems
of little significance to Ahab). The novel is essentially the story
of Ahab and his quest to defeat the legendary Sperm Whale Moby Dick,
for this whale took Ahab's leg, causing him to use an ivory leg to
walk and stand. In many respects Melville portrays Ahab as barely
human, barely governed by human mores and conventions and nearly
entirely subject to his own obsession with Moby Dick. Melville
describes him in mostly alien terms, he is in some ways a machine,
unaffected by human appetites and without recognizable emotion.
Ishmael: Ishmael is the narrator of the novel, a simple sailor on
the Pequod who undertakes the journey. As the narrator
Ishmael establishes himself as somewhat of an everyman. His primary
task is to observe the conflicts around him. Nevertheless, Melville
does give his narrator several significant character traits, the
most important of which is his idealization of the Sperm Whale and
his belief in its majesty. Also, it is Ishmael who has the only
significant personal relationship in the novel; he becomes a close
friend with the pagan harpoonerQueequeg
and comes to cherish and adore Queequeg to a somewhat improbable
level open to great interpretation; Melville even describes their
relationship in terms of a marriage. Ishmael is the only survivor of
the Pequod's voyage, living to tell the tale of Moby Dick only
because he is by chance on a whaling boat when Moby Dick sinks the
Pequod and is rescued by a nearby ship.
2.5 Main Themes:
1) Blasphemous
Ahab as a Blasphemous Figure: A major assumption that runs through
Moby Dick is that Ahab's quest against the great whale is a
blasphemous activity, even apart from the consequences that it has
upon its crew. This blasphemy takes two major forms: the first type
of blasphemy to prevail within Ahab is the idea that Ahab thinks
himself the equal of God. The second type of blasphemy is a
rejection of God altogether for an alliance with the devil. The idea
that Ahab's quest for Moby Dick is an act of defiance toward God
assuming that Ahab is omnipotent first occurs before Ahab is even
introduced during Father Mapple's sermon.
2) The Whale as a Symbol of Unparalleled Greatness: When
Melville, through Ishmael, describes the Sperm Whale during the many
non-narrative chapters of Moby Dick, the idea that the whale
has no parallel in excellence recurs as a nearly labored point.
Melville approaches this theme from a variety of standpoints,
whether biological or historical, in order to prove the superiority
of the whale over all other creatures. The theme of the excellence
of the whale serves to place Ahab's quest against Moby Dick as, at
best, a virtually insurmountable task in which he is doomed to
failure. Melville constructs the whale as a figure that cannot be
easily vanquished, if it can be defeated at all.
3) Foreshadowing and Superstition: A recurring theme throughout
Moby Dick is the appearance of foreshadowing, superstitious
that foreshadow a tragic end to the story. Even before Ishmael
boards the Pequod, the Nantucket strangers Elijah warns Ishmael and
Queequeg against traveling with Captain Ahab. The Parsee Fedallah
also has a prophetic dream concerning Ahab's quest against Moby
Dick, dreaming of hearses (although he misinterprets the dream to
mean that Ahab will certainly kill Moby Dick). Indeed, the
characters are bound by superstition and myth: the only reason that
the Pequod kills a Right Whale is the legend that a ship will have
good luck if it has the head of a Right Whale and the head of a
Sperm Whale on its opposing sides.
4) It is a tragedy of man fighting against overwhelming odds in
an indifferent and even hostile universe. Moby Dick
represents the sum total of Melville’s bleak view of the world in
which he lived. Man in this universe lives a meaningless and futile
life, meaningless because futile. The loss of faith and the sense of
futility and meaninglessness which characterize modern life of the
West was expressed in Melville’s work so well that the twentieth
century has found it both fascinating and great.
5) The important thing that Melville intended to reveal is
alienation, which he sensed existing in the life of his time on
different levels, between man and man, man and society, and man and
nature. Moby Dick reveals the basic pattern of
nineteenth-century American life: loneliness and suicidal
individualism in a self-styled democracy.
6) Ahab may have been Melville’s portrait of an Emersonian
self-reliant individual. Melville lost no opportunity in his
criticism of New England Transcendentalism. Constantly under his
attack is tis emphasis on individualism and Oversoul. To say that
the whole of Moby Dick is a negative reflection upon
Transcendentalism is not in fact an
exaggeration.
III. Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
3.1 Whitman’s Life and Works
Whitman was brought up in a working-class background on Long
Island, New York. He had five years of schooling and a good deal of
“loafing” and reading. Whitman likes experience, so he tried at a
variety of jobs. At the same time, he got a first hand knowledge of
life and people in the new world. He worked as an office boy, a
printer’s apprentice, schoolmaster, printer, editor and journalist.
He wrote some frightened tales and some traditional verse. In 1848
he traveled to New Orleans and saw very much of the Mississippi
heartlands. The first edition of Leaves of Grass came out in
1855. It contained twelve poems and did not sell well, but it made a
stir on the American literary scene. Whitman’s poems broke with the
poetic convention, and its sexuality and exotic and vulgar language
brought harsh criticisms on it. Some critics regard Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass as “poetry of barbarism,” and ‘a mass of
stupid filth,” one of the New England poets, John Greeleaf Whittier
even threw his gift-copy into the fire. However, the Leaves of
Grass received a warm welcome from Emerson. The first edition is
important to American literature for the following reasons. One of
them is the fact that it revealed some strengths of Whitman’s art.
Just like Malcolm Cowley said, it is a “buried masterpiece of
American writing.” Whitman showed his freshest and boldest in
language, that is the great shock to the traditional American poetic
form and language.
During the Civil War, Whitman worked as a volunteer nurse in
military hospitals. The experience further enriched his knowledge of
life and the world. In the meantime he continued to revise and
expand his Leaves of Grass. It went through nine editions
altogether: 1855, 1856, 1860, 1867, 1871, 1876, 1881, 1889,
1891-1892. Whitman began to receive recognition in England and
America when his fifth edition appeared. Whitman suffered a
paralytic stroke in 1873, but he continued to work at his Leaves
of Grass until his death. In his last time he prepared the
“Deathbed Edition” which containing all of his 400-odd poems, became
the single poem.
3.2 Whitman’s Importance
1) Whitman was a catalog of American and European thought. As
“the great acceptor,” he was susceptible to many influences. The
enlightenment and its ideals of the rights and dignity of the
individual, idealism and in the Transcendentalism of Carlyle,
Coleridge, Wordsworth and Emerson, German philosophy, especially
Hegel’s “doctrine of a cosmic consciousness that unfolds through
conflict to divine ends,” with Newtonian and evolutionary, the idea
of progress, and current American life with its western frontier
spirit, individualism and Civil War Unionism. All these can be found
in his system and his poetry.
2) He broke the poetic convention by creating the Free
Verse.
Free Verse:
(1) is a form of poetry without fixed beat and regular rhyme
scheme.
(2)The lines and sentences are different in
length.
(3)The purpose is to deliver poetry from the restrictions of
formal metrical patterns and to recreate the free rhythms of natural
speech.
3) Emerson influenced Whitman so much. Whitman was considered one
of the representative writers of Transcendentalism.
3.3 Themes
1) Whitman extols the ideals of equality and democracy and
celebrates the dignity, the self-reliant spirit and the joy of the
common man. “Song of Myself” reveals a world of equality, without
rank and hierarchy. The prostitute draggling her shawl, the
President holding a cabinet council, the stately and friendly
matrons on the piazza walk, the Missourian crossing the plains and
an infinite number of other things and people find their way into
his poem and juxtapose with one another, illustrating the principle
of democracy and equality.
2) Whitman’s poetry is an inclusion of the commonplace. The poet
hears America singing. The mother is singing while setting food on
the table. The carpenter is singing, planning his boards. And the
day is singing “What belongs to the day.” Long catalogues of
different people and different occupations indicate that here the
new children of Adam are being restored to the Garden of Eden,
developing their potentiality to the fullest extent possible. In a
general sense Leaves of Grass is an Adamic song, and its
author an Adamic singer.
3) In his poems, Whitman responds enthusiastically to the
expansion of America. The new bustling and progressive republic,
with its dynamic creative fertility and its indomitable energy,
finds a willing and refreshing voice in Whitman. Read again “Song of
Myself” and poems like “There Was a Child Went Forth” and we see the
spirit of an emerging America at its most aggressive and daring.
4) In later years Whitman came to see the failure of democracy
and social and moral corruption in America, but he thought these
curable by the self-reform of the individual. Material gains are
fruitless without personal morality; individualism without
brotherhood is suicide. Thus “Passage to India” extols “the marriage
of continents” and different races, and “Proud Music of the Storm”
envisages unity of “all the tongues of nations.” The emphasis is
clearly on brotherhood and social solidarity. This shows that
Whitman was a transitional figure from Romanticism and
Transcendentalism to realism.
5) In Whitman’s poetry, people could see the unity of all men and
of men with universe.
6) Whitman concentrated some of his poems on the cycle of life
and death.
7) One of the themes of Whitman’s poetry is anti-slavery.
8) Whitman praises American individualism as one of the
themes.
3.4 Whitman’s Writing Style
Whitman was a daring experimentalist who, in the words of Ezra
Pound, “broke the new wood.” His early poems are in conventional
rime and meter, but obviously he found the restrictions
disappointing.
1) One of the major principle of Whitman’s technique is
parallelism.
2) Another main principle of Whitman’s versification is phonetic
recurrence, for example, the systematic repetition of words and
phrases at the beginning of the line, in the middle or at the end.
The two principles coordinate with and reinforce each other.
3) Whitman broke free from the traditional iambic pentameter and
wrote “free verse.” It is a poetic form without fixed beat and
regular rhymes scheme.
4) Whitman is the first person who is the master of the
technique. His long “catalogs” of lines gave free rein to his
imagination in his life.
3.5 Whitman’s Influence
Whitman’s influence on modern poetry is great in the world as
well as in America.
1) His best work has become part of the common property of
Western culture. Many poets in England, France, Italy and Latin
America are in his debt. Even in China, people can find Whitman’s
influence in Guo Moruo’s works.
2) In America, it is true that his optimism seems to have become
a liability to his reputation in the present century, but modern
American poets like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound would not have been
what they were without Whitman. Ezra Pond, who called him a
“pigheaded father,” recognized him nonetheless as a father figure
who led the break from the past. Carl Sandburg was probably the only
great poet who carried, in his Chicago poems, the Whitman’s
tradition into the twentieth century in a whole-hearted way. Whitman
has been compared to a mountain in American literary history. You
may go around him if you like, but you cannot pretend that he is not
there. His excessive optimism led to a decline of his reputation,
but the last few decades have seen an immense change in critical
attitude toward him and his poetry. Contemporary American poetry,
whatever school or form, bears witness to his great
influence.
3.6 Selected Readings
3.6.1 Introduction of the Poem
"I Hear America Singing" presents an image of America that
America would like to believe true—an image of proud and healthy
individualists engaged in productive and happy labor. Mechanic,
carpenter, mason, boatman, deckhand, shoemaker, hatter, wood-cutter,
plowboy—from city to country, from sea to land, the "varied carols"
reflect a genuine joy in the day’s creative labor that makes up the
essence of the American dream or myth. America singing emerges as a
happy, individualistic, proudly procreative, and robustly comradely
America. It is surprising that in such a brief poem so much of
Whitman’s total concept of modern man could be implied.
In "I Hear America Singing", Whitman imagined the dynamic power
of the nation not as a geographical entity spreading westward but as
an activity—and one of his favorite ones, at that: singing. The poem
consists of a vision of the various units of the country—the
mechanic, the carpenter, the mason, the young wife, the boatman—each
person separately "singing" his or her individual song. But where in
the poem each person acts his or her role separately, this poem
blends the individual acts of singing into a harmonious participial
ensemble of America singing.
I Hear America Singing
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe
and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off
work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deck
hand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing
as he stands,
The woodcutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning,
or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at
work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day-at night the party of young
fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
3.6.2 Questions and Answers
1. Comment on Whitman’s style and language.
answer
2. What is America in the poet’s mind?
answer
IV.
Emily Dickinson
4.1 Life
Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 into a Calvinist family of
Amherst, Mssachusetts. Dickinson spent almost all her
life in her birthplace. Her father was a prominent lawyer who was
active in civic affairs. His three children (Emily; a son, Austin;
and another daughter, Lavinia) thus had the opportunity to meet many
distinguished visitors. Emily Dickinson attended Amherst Academy
irregularly for six years and Mount Holyoke Seminary for one, and in
those years lived a normal life filled with friendships, parties,
church, and housekeeping. Before she was 30, however, she began to
withdraw from village activities and gradually ceased to leave home
at all. While she corresponded with many friends, she eventually
stopped seeing them. She often fled from visitors and eventually
lived as a virtual recluse in her father's house. As a mature woman,
she was intense and sensitive and was exhausted by emotional contact
with others.
Even before her withdrawal from the world Dickinson had been
writing poetry, and her creative peak seems to have been reached in
the period from 1858 to 1862. Although she was encouraged by the
critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson， who never truly comprehended her
genius, and Helen Hunt Jackson, who believed she was a great poet,
Dickinson published only seven poems during her lifetime.
Dickinson's mode of existence, although circumscribed, was evidently
satisfying, even essential, to her. After her death in 1886, Lavinia
Dickinson discovered over 1,000 poems in her sister's bureau. For
too long Dickinson was treated less as a serious artist than as a
romantic figure who had renounced the world after a disappointment
in love. This legend, based on conjecture, distortion, and even
fabrication, has been known to plague even some of her modern
biographers.
Dickinson was considered one of the greatest poets in the 19th
century.
1) Dickinson and Whitman worked together to create American
national poetry.
2) Dickinson and Crane were considered the great forerunners of
American Imagism in literature.
4.2 Works
While Dickinson wrote love poetry that indicates a strong
attachment, it has proved impossible to know the object of her
feelings, or even how much was fed by her poetic imagination. The
chief tension in her work comes from a different source: her
inability to accept the orthodox religious faith of her day and her
longing for its spiritual comfort. Immortality she called "the flood
subject," and she alternated confident statements of belief with
lyrics of despairing uncertainty that were both reverent and
rebellious. Her verse, noted for its epigrammatic style, its wit,
its delicate metrical variation and irregular rhymes, its directness
of statement, and its bold and startling imagery, has won enormous
acclaim and had a great influence on 20th-century poetry.
Dickinson's posthumous fame began when Mabel Loomis Todd and
Higginson edited and published two volumes of poems (1890, 1891) and
some of her correspondence (2 vol., 1894). Other editions of verse
followed, many of which were marred by unskillful and unnecessary
editing. A definitive edition of her works did not appear until the
1950s, when T. H. Johnson published her poems (3 vol., 1955) and
letters (3 vol., 1958); only then was serious study of her work
possible. Dickinson scholarship was further advanced by R. W.
Franklin's variorum edition of her poetry (3 vol., 1998).
4.3 Writing Style
1) Dickinson is good at catching the charm of something but
dropping the thing itself. “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” talks
about the snake all the while, but the word “snake” never occurs.
This may have, in a way, made Dickinson obscure and inscrutable
sometimes.
2) Like Whitman she was a courageous experimentalist. “I have no
monarch in my life,” she confessed. Indeed, little that she wrote
seemed conventional: her choice of words, her verbal constructions,
even her spelling and her images. To her poetry is “a bodying forth
by means of concrete images” of an inspired thought.
3) She did not use punctuation marks and capital letters
regularly.
4) Her poetry abounds in telling images. In the best of her poems
every word is a picture seen.
5) A salient feature of her technique was a severe economy of
expression. Her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity,
directness and plainest words.
4.4 Themes
1. Emily Dickinson’s poetry comes out in bursts. The poems are
short, many of them being based on a single image or symbol. But
within her little lyrics Miss Dickinson writes about some of the
most important things in life.
1) love and a lover, whom she either never really found or else
gave up.
2) Nature, which she considers attractive but unknowable.
3) mortality and immortality, which puzzled her quite often.
4) life and death and the relations between them.
5) success, which she considered her constant companion.
She
writes of these things so brilliantly that she is now ranked as one
of America’s great poets.
Her poetry is read today throughout much of the world and yet its
exact wording has not been completely determined, nor has its
arrangement and punctuation. Since Emily never prepared her poems
for publication, one of the bitterest battles in American literary
history has been fought over who should publish and edit what she
wrote. However, regardless of details or conflicts, there is no
doubt that the solitary Miss Dickinson of Amherst, Massachusetts, is
a writer of great power and beauty.
4.5 Selected Reading
4.5.1 Introduction of the Poem
Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death” is a
remarkable masterpiece that exercises thought between the known and
the unknown. In this poem, there is much impression in the tone, in
symbols, and in the use of imagery that exudes creativity.
In
this poem, Dickinson uses controlling adjectives “slowly” and
“passed” to create a tone that seems rather calm.
“We slowly drove, he knew no haste / ...We passed the School ...
/ We passed the Setting Sun” sets a slow, quiet, calm, and dreamy
atmosphere. The tone in Dickinson’s poem will put its readers the
ideas on a track heading towards a confusing atmosphere.
Dickinson’s masterpiece lives on complex ideas that appear
through symbols, which carry her readers through her poem. Dickinson
brought to light the mysteriousness of life cycle. Ungraspable to
many, the cycle of one’s life, as symbolized by Dickinson, has three
stages and then a final stage of eternity. In addition to these
three stages, the final stage of eternity was symbolized in the last
two lines of the poem, the Horses Heads, leading towards
Eternity.
Emily Dickinson dresses the scene such that mental
pictures of sight, feeling, and sound come to life. The imagery
begins the moment Dickinson invites her reader into the Carriage.
Death slowly takes the readers on a sight seeing trip where they see
the stages of life. In example, often times, when one experiences a
joyous time, time seems to fly. This poem exercises both the
thoughts and emotions of its reader and can effectively changes
one’s viewpoint of an eternal future.
Eternity and Death are two important characters in Emily
Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death.” One can say that
Emily Dickinson’s sole purpose in this poem is to show no fear of
death. Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop for Death,”
will leave many readers talking for years to come. This poem then,
puts on immortality through an act of mere creativity. You can say
that creativity was captured at all angles in this outstanding piece
of literature.
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 House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—
Since then— 'tis centuries— and yet each
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity—
4.5.2 Questions and Answers
1. Dickinson used a lot of symbols in this poem. Could you please
pick up and explain some of them?
Answer
2. Could you find some examples to show Dickinson’s writing
style?
Answer
Reference
Books：
1. 李宜燮、常耀信主编,《美国文学史》， 南开大学出版社，1991年。
2.
李宜燮、常耀信主编,《美国文学选读》， 南开大学出版社，1991年。
3. 吴伟仁,
《美国文学史及选读》，外语教学与研究出版社，2003年。
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