Reading Notes

Andreea Dogaru, series 1, group 2, 2nd year

English A- German B

Seminar instructor: Andreea Paris-Popa

Course Prof. : Bogdan Stefanescu gg

 Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad

A. Colonialism

Postcolonialism can be defined as the academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and
imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonised people
and their lands. Heart of Darkness can be interpreted as the darkness of the European’s hearts, which
the whites project on the Africans, through the dehumanizing actions they undertake to colonize the
rich lands of Africa.

As a result, this novel starts to be about the battle between white and black, where all the attributes of
the blacks are actually just stereotypes, which are part of a long-standing tradition
that has been harmful to blacks for centuries.

BLACKs
WHITEs
-US - THEM- ‘’the other’’
- savage
-civilized

-rationality/ reason – the parent who has - Irrationality/instinctive and emotive

to guide their children-POWER; beings- children who need to be guided-
HEPLESSNESS/ DEFENSELESS (walk
-colonization: as a national mission, naked)
blessed by God;

-political domination - Given names by the conquers, their

identity is repressed by the conquistadors;

- seen as just a place on the map, not as

human beings, but as animals which need
to be trained

- Difficult to control

- Unknown--- attractive/odd- ‘’ insect under

the glass’’
 - Seen as shadows- no contour, just part of
the decor;

- Dominated;

- Economically dependent;

- exploitative

‘’Yet the whole point of what Kurtz and Marlow talk about is in fact imperial mastery, white
European over black Africans, and their ivory, civilization over the primitive dark continent. By
accentuating the discrepancy between the official “idea” of empire and the remarkably disorienting
actuality of Africa, Marlow unsettles the reader’s sense not only of the very idea of empire, but of
something more basic, reality itself. For if Conrad can show that all human activity depends on
controlling a radically unstable reality to which words approximate only by will or convention, the
same is true of empire, of venerating the idea, and so forth. With Conrad, then, we are in a world
being made and unmade more or less all the time. What appears stable and secure—the policeman at
the corner, for instance—is only slightly more secure than the white men in the jungle and requires
the same continuous (but precarious) triumph over an all-pervading darkness, which by the end of the
tale is shown to be the same in London and in Africa.
Conrad’s genius allowed him to realize that the ever-present darkness could be colonized or
illuminated—Heart of Darkness is full of references to the mission civilisatrice, to benevolent as well
as cruel schemes to bring light to the dark places and peoples of this world by acts of will and
deployments of power—but that it also had to be acknowledged as independent. Kurtz and Marlow
acknowledge the darkness, the former as he is dying, the latter as he reflects retrospectively on the
meaning of Kurtz’s final words. They (and of course Conrad) are ahead of their time in
understanding that what they call “the darkness” has an autonomy of its own and can reinvade and
reclaim what imperialism had taken for its own. But Marlow and Kurtz are also creatures of their
time and cannot take the next step, which would be to recognize that what they saw, disabling and
disparagingly, as a non-European “darkness” was in fact a non-European world resisting
imperialism so as one day to regain sovereignty and independence, and not, as Conrad reductively
says, to re-establish the darkness. Conrad’s tragic limitation is that even though he could see clearly
that on one level imperialism was essentially pure dominance and land-grabbing, he could not then
conclude that imperialism had to end so that “natives” could lead lives free from European
domination. As a creature of his time, Conrad could not grant the natives their freedom, despite his
severe critique of the imperialism that enslaved them.’’ (Said-16)

“Two Visions in Heart of Darkness- Edward Said.” Joseph Conrad, by Harold Bloom, Bloom's Literary
Criticism, 2008
‘’In Kurtz, the alleged benevolence of colonialism has flowered into criminality. Marlow’s voyage
from Europe to Africa and then upriver to Kurtz’s Inner Station is a revelation of the squalors and
disasters of the colonial “mission”; it is also, in Marlow’s mind, a journey back to the beginning of
creation, when nature reigned exuberant and unrestrained, and a trip figuratively down as well,
through the levels of the self to repressed and unlawful desires.
At death’s door, Marlow and Kurtz find each other(...)

(...) Out of sight of their countrymen back home, who continue to cloak the colonial mission in the
language of Christian charity and improvement, the “pilgrims” have become rapacious and cruel.
The cannibals eating hippo meat practice restraint; the Europeans do not. That was the point of
Shapiro’s taunting initial sally: “savagery” is inherent in all of us, including the most “civilized,” for
we live, according to Conrad, in a brief interlude between innumerable centuries of darkness and the
darkness yet to come. Only the rivets, desperately needed to repair Marlow’s pathetic steamboat,
offer stability—the rivets and the ship itself and the codes of seamanship and duty are all that hold life
together in a time of moral anarchy.’’

Psychoanalysis
1. Oedipus Complex
‘’Frederick Crews applies to Conrad’s fiction psychoanalytical models developed by Sigmund Freud.
In doing so, he finds Heart of Darkness to be an expression of the Oedipus complex, which involves
the repressed childhood wish to displace the parent of the same sex and take his or her place in the
affections of the parent of the opposite sex. Crews suggests that if the plot of Herat of Darkness were
recounted to a psychoanalyst as a dream:

Kurtz- the exposed sinner -an image of the father, accused of sexual rites with the mother

Marlow- the dreamer -an image of the son interrupting the primal scene by making his journey
into the maternal body (...)

(...) Since Crews published his now-famous chapter, a number of critics have read Conrad
in terms of the Oedipus complex. As Catherine Rising has notes in her book Darkness at
Heart: Fathers and Sons in Conrad (1990), some of these interprets view Heart of Darkness as
Crew does, in terms of sexual rivalry between Marlow (or Conrad) and his father. But others
have views the story in terms of more general, oedipal rivalry, one involving an illustrious,
older man, a young man with mixed feelings about his elder, the death of the former, and the
survival of the latter, who surpasses his father figure morally or artistically.’ (Murfin- Case
studies in Contemporary Criticism 106-107).

2. Double nature of human beings

Using Freud’s notion that human beings are essentially double in nature-that all of us contain a
rational, socialized self and a dark double, a repressed instinctual self- Donal M. Kartigner viewed
Kurtz as Marlow’s outlaw alter ego(...)
 Betinna Knapp viewed Heart of Darkness not as a tale revelling Marlow’s dark side, but rather, as
one through which Conrad searched for his exiled ‘’shadow’’ self, an identity consisting of ‘’animal’’
traits he projects onto African blacks -based on writings of Jung (he developed the theory that there is
a collective human unconscious). According to Knapp, Conrad’s story of a journey to the heart of the
African continent draws on ‘’archaic levels of human psyche’’, levels inhabited by ‘’archetypal’’
images such as that of the waterway and those involving eating and being eaten.

Barrry Stamf examines the syntax, using Freud’s concept that repressed ideas sometimes are
allowed to surface so long as they are negated. Stampf examines ‘’Marlow’s negatives (the oft-
repeated word ‘’impenetrable’’ would be an example) and related belief qualifiers’’. Marlow says of
dying slaves that it was ‘’as if’’ they were ‘’overcome with a great weariness; speaking of the
Company he says that ‘’It was just as though I had been let into a conspiracy’’. According to Stampf,
negative and highly qualified terms often give us insight into what Marlow knows deep down to be
true- that the Congo has been penetrated-raped-by Europeans, That the African slaves he sees are
overcome by weariness.

3.ID, EGO, SUPEREGO

SUPEREGO

‘’When Marlow arrives at the Outer Station in Africa, he is in the superego of the mind,
marked by morals and one’s impression in society. Marlow realizes the evil of exploiting the
Congo natives when he observes the dehumanized slaves, saying, “They were not enemies,
they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease
and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.” (Conrad 20) He then meets the chief
accountant, very concerned with his image, surrounded by slavery and death but still wearing
the superego’s “high, starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket” (Conrad 21). At the
Outer Station, Marlow is still morally upright and aware, despite the decay of civilization
around him.’’

EGO

‘’As Marlow travels up the Congo River to the Central Station and enters the ego state of his
psyche, his morals fade. The ego is the transition between the superego and the id, concerned
not with society’s impression of one’s actions, but how to carry out the id’s impulsive desires
in a logical way. While traveling, Marlow and his crew encounter cannibals. His moral
judgment falters when he sees the cannibals as “fine fellows” since “after all, they did not eat
each other before my face” (Conrad 36). Throughout their time around the central station,
Marlow becomes obsessed with meeting Kurtz, a sort of mystery in Marlow’s eyes. The hazy
fog that appears as Marlow and his crew near the Central Station is a metaphorical transition.
When the fog disappears, so does their concern with civilization’s rules, bringing their psyche
closer to the id’’

ID

‘’In the jungle’s heart, there is neither civilization nor rule, making it an ideal domain for the
id. Freud says the id represents unrepressed human instinctive desires, and Kurtz is the prime
example. With only his own rules, Kurtz has created his own world, complete with human
heads as trophies that “seemed to sleep at the top of that pole” (Conrad 57). When Kurtz is
forced to leave his own kingdom, the true heart of darkness is exposed: Kurtz has recruited
the natives to worship him as a god with “the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of
weird incantations” (Conrad 65). The lawlessness of the land and Kurtz’s absolute power
exist because “Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there
was something wanting in him” (Conrad 57).

The id of the mind is a lustful and irresistible state, tempting human nature. While in the heart
of darkness, Kurtz has no laws to follow, luring him to make his own empire. The superego
and ego, focused on image, protect the id. Similarly, to protect Kurtz’s fiancé, Marlow tells
her that Kurtz’s last words were here name since the truth was “too dark—too dark
altogether” (Conrad 76). It was similar to the Imperialists disguising from European
civilization that their colonialist mission truly exploited the natives for their ivory. Kurtz’s id
was satisfied because nothing could stop it in the heart of darkness, but Marlow and European
civilization play the role of the superego and ego to shelter the id.’’
 THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK
T.S. ELIOT

New Criticism
This approach regards literature as “a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on
its own terms.” All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work
itself. Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the elements of form—style, structure, tone,
imagery, —that are found within the text, relying on connotations, implications, associations,
suggestion and evocation of meanings. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover
how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. A primary
goal for formalist critics is to determine how such elements work together with the text’s content to
shape its effects upon readers.

’io credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Intertextuality: reference to Dante’s Inferno- the 8th circle of Hell; In the passage, Dante, who is touring Hell, has begun to
converse with one of the inhabitants, Guido da Montefeltro, who is initially reluctant to respond; but on the reasonable
assumption that Dante must be in Hell for all eternity too, he begins to speak: ‘If I thought my answer were to one who ever
could return to the world, this flame should shake no more; but since none ever did return alive from this depth, if what I hear be
true, without fear of infamy I answer thee.’’ As a result this could be an image of the IDEAL LISTENER of the poem

Let us go then, you and I, -------------NOWHERE TO GO, just as Guido is forever trapped in hell, so is Prufrock
caught inside his mind
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table; ---------YELLOWISH/ ALIENATION/SADNESS/ DEPRESSION
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent ---------- LABIRINT
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...----- has a very important question to ask
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” ----wouldn’t let her know about it out of fear of being heard and judged
Let us go and make our visit. --------postpones giving vent to his thoughts

- there’s the mystery of who’s speaking to whom; the still-disturbing image of the etherized patient; the
impressionistic blur of backstreet detail.
- The indicative active verbs are “go”, “go”, “follow”, “lead”, “ask”, “is”, “go” and “make”. Then there are the
passives and participles: “spread”, “etherized”, “deserted”, “muttering” and “overwhelming”. The first cluster
suggests some kind of quest. The second has connotations of sickness (mental as well as physical, once you add
in that “muttering”) and the ends of civilizations (to “overwhelm” is to submerge something completely, and
when you put that alongside “deserted” it’s hard to avoid feeling at least mildly apocalyptic);
- The active verbs are urging us on a quest and the passives all around us are saturated with apocalyptic sickness.
That’s not what we think when we read the opening lines, but on one level it’s what we feel.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

-frustration/ instability/ inferiority---- He is an old man who can no longer attract women, he is not like David----
sexual overtone;
- melodic quantity, like a chorus--- haunting melody that will wake us

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house and fell asleep.

-PERSONIFICATION: fog=cat------ comfort-zone; laziness; inactivity

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; - -----mask- modern condition is unauthentic
There will be time to murder and create, - human condition is about killing the boredom of your life, to create
some excitement in your life; Everything you’re creating you’re murdering; everything you’re murdering,
you’re creating;
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

- He doesn’t rush into a decision; constant postponement can also be observed in the structure: avoiding
full stops, and rather using commas, dashed and question marks

In the room the women come and go - nothing actually happens

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”- old people have the tendency to begin to wonder what people are
thinking about them : Who am I? How have i changed? Am I the same?
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) -----physical appearance
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare-----------------------Do I dare to do something that is not unusual? He is old and he hasn’t disturbed the
universe, he lived a life measures in coffee spoons
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
- caught up in rhymes that are no rhymes but merely repetitions, enacting the way he is victimised by the insistently
reiterative movements of his own anxious mind – as, say, when he can’t dislodge the accusation of being too
‘thin’
-
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; ------------ his life had been about a certain kind of rhythm,
calculated: day after day, the way you would make coffee/ mundane/ repetitive
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, ------------ inferior to his peers
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, --------- a fear of women, and a fretfulness about the humiliations of
social encounter that rises here and there to a kind of suppressed hysteria
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume? - What it would be like if you come at the end of your life and realize you’ve
done nothing? You’ve done something but this something is nothing. What’s the point of it all?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? -----------When you are already old how do you begin again?

- Symbol of ‘’hair’’ is for Eliot sensual, sexual symbol, an object of physical attraction; intimacy
between them: being in the lamplight demonstrates that they already share intimate moments, he
already knows these arms and eyes.
- Is he able to attract women anymore?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

- Contemplation on how he should tell her his intentions; use of rhetorical questions/ constant doubt

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. ------- Moved from questions to a statement; Statement is stated in such a
way that is kind of like a question; Below the surface of the ocean- stream of consciousness.

- Crabs are known for their side-to-side motion; similarly, Prufrock also does not move forward, constantly
scuttling between one outside opinion and the next. Being burdened by the thoughts of other people prevents
progress and the acquisition of self-confidence. By comparing himself to a crab, Prufrock is subsequently
implying that he, too, is a bottom-dweller of sorts. Crabs live on the ocean floor, feeding on whatever happens to
drift down to them. Just as a crab consumes food, Prufrock consumes every glance and every degrading
comment that may come his way. This, however, is no way to live, for it becomes a burden to his psyche.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid. -----------of what? Of living? Of death? Of live he has not lived? Death he has to live?

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
-By this point the tense has quietly shifted from present to past, and the speaker offers a series of prolonged
interrogatives on the consequences of action not taken. While its grammatical context ("And would it have been
worth it") reduces it to the contemplation of "what might have been"; the language and imagery of this passage
enact with renewed intensity the recurring drama of mental conflict
-The infinitives in this passage--to have bitten, to have squeezed, to roll--conform to the poem's widespread use of
transitive verbs of direct action in expressing the speaker's violent impulse to combat the forces of disorder: to
murder and create, to disturb the universe, to spit out all the butt-ends, to force the moment.
-The structure of the imagery at this point in the poem corresponds to the thematic role played by linguistic form.
To have "bitten off" the matter, in addition to its hint of blunt force, would constitute a positive reaction against
endlessly idle talk; squeezing the universe into a ball would counteract the world's tendency to fall apart and to
spread itself out like yellow fog; finally, the act of rolling it toward some overwhelming question at least imparts
direction to the movement of the universe, even if the actual destination, like the question, remains unclear. The
idea of proclaiming oneself a prophet "come back to tell you all" implies a power of linguistic discourse equal in
magnitude to the physical act of squeezing the universe into a ball. Once more the idea of language joins with
images of purpose, only this time in such hyperbolic fashion that the ultimate failure of discourse strikes one as
inevitable: "That is not what I meant at all."

If one, settling a pillow by her head

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”-------------failure of communication

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!--------------the modern condition; we know we feel sadness, rage,
alienation, but we can’t find the words. The modern condition is a core of both alienation and frustration
-The speaker's failure to master language leads in this case not to a statement on the inadequacy of words
themselves, but rather reflects upon the speaker's own impotence. In a poem so obsessed with problems of
speech and definition, to have failed with words is to have lost the war on the inarticulate: the speaker as heroic
Lazarus or Prince Hamlet is suddenly reduced to the stature of an attendant lord,
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;------ I’m not a fighter like Hamlet but like Polonius and old fool
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

There is a systematic confusion of tenses and times in the poem, so that it is difficult to tell if certain images
exist in past, present, future. Prufrock begins by talking of his visit to the lady as something yet to be done, and
later talks of his failure to make the visit as something long past ("And would it have been worth it, after
all,/Would it have been worth while" (CP, 61). Like the women talking of Michelangelo, he exists in an eternal
present, a frozen time in which everything that might possibly happen to him is as if it had already happened:
"For I have known them all already, known them all" (CP, 4). In this time of endless repetition Prufrock cannot
disturb the universe even if he should presume to try to do so. Everything that might happen is foreknown, and
in a world where only one mind exists the foreknown has in effect already happened and no action is possible.
Prufrock's infirmity of will is not so much a moral deficiency as a consequence of his subjectivism.

The poem's linguistic and thematic strategy consistently opposes active verbs to the passive voice which causes
things to be spread out, etherized, smoothed, and stretched. It sets these infinitives against present participles,
which are constantly muttering, sprawling, rubbing, scuttling, and settling. Finally, it opposes these transitive
verbs to intransitive verbs which lie, linger, malinger, lean, curl, trail, wrap, slip, and sleep. A relative lack of
modifiers and the absence of plural forms further distinguishes the passage cited above. By contrast the
language of disordered experience, of imprecision and aimlessness, abounds in modifiers and plurals: restless
nights, one-night cheap hotels, visions and revisions, the sunsets and the dooryards, and the sprinkled streets.

The form of the verse co-operates in this universe of non-ending by avoiding the different sorts of
progressiveness that would come from using stanzas, or blank verse, or heroic couplets. Eliot’s poem has no
regular rhyme or rhythmical patterning: it is in free verse, vers libre, though the effect here is anything but a
launch into untrammelled freedom, as some of the proponents of vers libre at the beginning of the 20th century
liked to claim. Vers libre involves abandoning the ‘comforting echo of rhyme’, he said; but his poem does not
do without rhyme at all, just without regular rhyme, as in a rhyme scheme. Eliot wrote beautifully about the
possibilities of this, as though in oblique commentary on his own poem: ‘There are often passages in an
unrhymed poem where rhyme is wanted for some special effect, for a sudden tightening-up, for a cumulative
insistence, or for an abrupt change of mood.’ You could find examples of all of those in the poem, and other
effects besides, created by rhyme’s interruption into an unrhymed or unpredictably rhymed space: ‘Should I,
after tea and cakes and ices, / Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?’
 B. Psychoanalysis
The object of psychoanalytic literary criticism, at its very simplest, can be the psychoanalysis of the
author or of a particularly interesting character in a given work. The criticism is similar to
psychoanalysis itself, closely following the analytic interpretive process discussed in Freud's The
Interpretation of Dreams and other works. Critics may view the fictional characters as psychological
case studies, attempting to identify such Freudian concepts as the Oedipus complex, penis envy,
Freudian slips, Id, ego and superego, and so on, and demonstrate how they influence the thoughts and
behaviours of fictional characters.

Prufrock lends itself to psychoanalytical criticism because of its dream-like, stream-of-consciousness

style. Viewed from this lens, the speaker of the poem reveals anxieties about himself and sexuality.
The speaker brings up ‘’an overwhelming question’’ that he is too afraid to ask. He refers to ‘’the
eyes’’ that he feels must be judging him. He imagines his failure to connect emotionally and woman’s
disappointment with the repeated words, ‘’That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.’’ The
speaker frets about his physical shortcomings-getting older, losing his hair, being too thin.

The world of1. Alfred Prufrock is clearly a paranoid-schizoid one, composed of shadows rather than
solid things. Whether he muses in his room or sets out through half-deserted streets remains unclear;
there is insufficient differentiation between inner and outer for any reality-testing to take place.
Objects do not exist independently and in their own right but are already assimilated to Prufrock's
subjectivity. This is not a universe of significant otherness involving three-dimensional space, but
rather the 'flat world of changing lights and noise' to which the simple soul issues forth in 'Animal'
(CP, p. 113). Just as in that later poem there is an inability to make objects cohere into wholes, so too
in 'Prufrock' such objects as are discerned are typically part-objects: hands that lift and drop a question
on your plate, arms that are braceleted and white and bare, eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase. It
is less a specific woman than these intimidating part -objects that are Prufrock's concern in the text.
As there is no sense of objective space, so there is none of time; past, present and future coexist.
'Should I . . . have the strength. ' Prufrock ponders prospectively, but eight lines later concedes, 'I was
afraid', as if the crisis were a determinate past event (CD, pp. 15-16); such temporal dislocations are
characteristic. Prufrock even proposes his own theory to explain them.

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

It is proximity to the female body that ruptures narrative continuity: not only can the alarming
fragments of that body not be totalised, but one's relationship to it cannot be given the reassuring
shape of a teleology. Both space and time are collapsed into the all-encompassing simultaneity of the
Bradleyan finite centre, and in the context of this paranoid-schizoid world Prufrock's oral fixation can
come as no surprise. The fog is imaged as licking its tongue into the corners of the evening; Prufrock
himself yearns to spit out all the butt-ends of his days, longs to bite off the matter with a smile,
wonders if he dares to eat a peach, and knows that if he ever does gain the strength to force the
moment to its crisis it will only happen after the oral debauch of 'tea and cakes and ices.
 Leda and the Swan
W.B. Yeats

A. Feminism

Feminist criticism is concerned with "...the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions)
reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women"
(Tyson). This school of theory looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal (male
dominated) and "...this critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit misogyny in male writing
about women".

Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some areas of
commonality:

1.Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically;

patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which women are oppressed.

2In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined only by her
difference from male norms and values.

3All of Western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example,
4in the Biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world.

4.While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (scales of
masculine and feminine).

5.All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to
change the world by prompting gender equality.

6.Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the
production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or no

Given not only the sexual nature of the poem but the violence used against Leda, using the feminist
theory is an apt critical approach to take in regards to “Leda and the Swan”. A woman is accosted by a
god, taken advantage of and is physically violated. This alone makes the poem worthy of attention
from a feminist point of view. On the surface, it is quite easy to point out and critique the poem on a
feminist level. There is a classic strong versus the weak story occurring with the woman in the
position of weakness and the man in the position of power. The poem is quite sexist in portraying a
virile man overtaking a weak woman scenario.

Leda and the Swan

(helpless, weak) vs. (indifferent powerful swan)

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed-------fragile/ seduced

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

-- From the poem's beginning, Leda is put into the position of victim. She is "helpless" to defend
herself against the swan, and her "staggering" reveals her to be both confused and weak as well. She is
easily brought down by the "sudden blow" and is immediately rendered bewildered by the swan.
Physically, she is tottering, staggering about under the literal weight of the swan she has rescued;
emotionally and psychologically, she becomes powerless under the traumatic weight of her rape.
However, the word "staggering" also carries a more powerful underlying definition that is obscured
by the context of the poem--that of "astounding" or "amazing". This is another example of Yeats
attempting to combine two opposites -- in this case power and control, and futility and weakness.
While Leda does not seem to possess control of this situation, her position as a Queen and her
responsibility as mother of Helen of Troy do empower her nonetheless. In this subtle way Yeats
seems to be qualifying Leda in a way, as if noting her worthy of Zeus' attention and of the importance
placed upon her through this molestation, not unlike the Virgin Mary's importance through her
immaculate conception. Further complicating this phrase is the use of the diminutive "girl",
effectively obscuring Yeats' intentions. This phrase alone, then, even without the context of the myth,
poem, or surrounding word usage, characterizes Leda as significant and powerful as a symbol and in
this particular role, but also powerless in direct opposition to Zeus' plans.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

- The key to these two lines lies in the poet's use of adjectives in parallel structures. Here, there are
three adjectives referencing Leda ("terrified vague", "loosening") and only one referencing the swan
("feathered"). Along with another case of bodily fragmentation that dehumanizes Leda and another
reference to her bewilderment, the overall intent of this line is identify Leda as not only a simple
victim, but a powerless and, indeed, a complying one (where by her own volition or not). Although
Leda is "terrified" in her situation and a general theme of struggle is maintained throughout the poem,
her fingers are "vague" in their defence of her body. Her "loosening thighs" tell of acceptance, as if
she is unsure of her true affections toward this swan or is being brainwashed or hypnotized during the
act. These images stand against one another, however, and it is difficult to state with any certainty if
these lines are meant to depict rape or mere seduction, and to what degree we are to believe this in
either case. In the case of the swan, the noun following the adjective, "glory," is especially telling.
Where Leda is terrified, the swan's body is described as "The feathered glory", as if Yeats admires his
beauty.

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

- Leda here is completely "mastered" by Zeus' inherent "power" as God and as a male entity, and it
seems that her struggles have indeed been futile, but Yeats does not end it at that, although he easily
could have. Instead, Yeats wonders whether or not, in those harsh moments, Leda understood her role
as Helen's mother, as the vessel of destruction and death in the future proposed by lines 10-11. Did
she understand that it was she who must bear this physical and mental burden, she who must be and
would be held accountable for her children, she who must bear the twisting of her story from one of
rape and violence to one of love and lust? This is the key to opening this subtle yet convoluted puzzle
of a poem -- the true struggle is not a physical one as it is between Leda and her captor, but rather a
metaphysical, metaphorical, and psychological one, grounded firmly in the societal norms of the time.
Although this event is said to have happened far in the past, this male dominance is something that
has permeated modern society long after its inception through Leda's encounter with the swan, and
Yeats recognizes this in his unique rendition of "Leda and the Swan". Man is "indifferent" or ignorant
of the struggles of women, who must bear the responsibility of reversing or equalizing this dominance
that has too long rendered women all but powerless in the face of politics, domestic life, and nearly
every aspect of their being.

Leda: "loins" (9), "thighs" (2), "breast" (4), "nape" (3), "fingers" (5), "body" (7)

Swan: "wings" (1), "bill" (3), "dark webs" (3), "breast" (4), "feathered glory" (6), "heart" (8), "beak"
(15)

Throughout the poem, Yeats chooses to describe not whole persons, but rather parts of Leda and the
swan both. The selection of words used in each case (outlined above) can be viewed collectively and
analysed, and this is what I have endeavoured to do.

Leda is aptly described in overtly sexual and violent terms, easily painting in her the image of the
victim. However, this fragmentation and decomposition of Leda's body, though garnering some form
of unease and perturbation, also acts as a dehumanizing force. Leda become less woman and more the
aspects that construct her. It is as if she, as well as the swan, is being literally scrutinized under a
microscope until all that is visible is the various parts that make a whole. This becomes most
problematic when one realizes that this is not an extensive list; Yeats chooses very particular aspects
to be analysed by the reader.

Conversely, the descriptions of the swan, already dehumanized (or more literally "de-deized" from
god to animal), serve a similar function that lends credence to the bestial rape imagery of the poem,
except in one crucial line. In line 6-7, Leda is described as a "body" while swan-Zeus is given a
"heart," a strangely human identifier in the midst of otherwise utter bestiality. While a heart in its
physical form may be possessed by any living thing, including a god, a heart in its more abstract
indefinite form is much less so, and certainly does not seem possible in this context of bestiality and
brutishness. That Zeus is seen as having a heart while Leda possesses a mere body or vessel for Zeus'
needs is both disturbing and telling. The imagery of the physical swan is also meant to be more
beautiful and elegant than that of Leda, all curved white "great wings" and "power", where Leda is all
sprawling limbs, "loosening thighs", and general lewdness. This too gives the swan the upper hand in
status and respect, even without taking into account his maleness versus Leda's femininity.’’
 The second coming
W.B. Yeats

Myth criticism

‘’In “The Second Coming” the speaker sets out to conjoin the mythical and the thingly realities,
typically for a Yeats poem. In the first two lines the incipient chaos and dissolution are adumbrated in
the famous falcon metaphor: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the
falconer.” Yet the image of the falcon losing its touch with the falconer that is to introduce the
incipient destruction of the old order may be argued to play another role. The falcon and the falconer
closely resemble the dancer and the dance coupling from “Among School Children;” even though the
two images differ in that while the dancer and the dance imply complete union of the actant and the
action, the falcon and the falconer suggest hierarchy and subjugation. Nonetheless, in both cases a
similar assumption of identity between the two ideas lies at their basis. Therefore, a similar logic
might be followed in “The Second Coming” as in the later poem. If the dancer cannot be separated
from the dance, for they are both conjoined in the movement of the earth and the world as has been
argued above, neither can the falconer and the falcon be separated. This implication is confirmed
when the gyre philosophy is consulted in that the two cones only revert their movement when one
reaches the point of utmost expansion and the other the final contraction. The falcon can never break
free of the falconer entirely, for it is part of the falconer as much as the falconer is a part of the bird.
Just as the cones, even when they are at the farthest possible removes from each other, cannot
separate, for that would shatter the very foundation of the system as it was conceived by Yeats, so the
falcon and the falconer cannot part. The chaos the image evokes may also be seen as being subverted
in as much as the “Mere anarchy” as well as “The blood-dimmed tide” and the drowning of “The
ceremony of innocence” all point to the incipient arrival of the new phase in the eternal recurrence of
the two phases of the gyres. Yet it is not only the hope for the future that is expressed in the poem but
also for the present. The speaker especially in the second stanza seems to display a sinister delight in
the fearsome vision that visits him. The first two lines of the second stanza are an exclamation of
apparent satisfaction. It is only later that the poet’s sight is troubled by the image of the beast in the
desert. Nevertheless, the ending of the lyric again makes one think of a joy at the knowledge gained
from the vision rather than a horror:

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

The strongly stressed phrase “but now I know” may be viewed as an expression of an implicit
satisfaction with the knowledge achieved by the speaker. The vision appears to be what the solitary
student sought in his tower in “Phases of the Moon.” Yet here he is not to be derided by Robartes and
Aherne, for he wins the insight into the wisdom of the dead. This phrase opens the path to reading the
horrific images that follow according to the principles of A Vision, which shows that the horror of the
beastly rule is perhaps only what must be experienced during the interchange of the tinctures; the
following antithetical era will thus be the time of slow rebuilding of the world according to a new
fashion. Surprisingly, it is not the beast that is nightmarish but the past age which Yeats assumes
started with the birth of Jesus Christ. The past two millennia have been a nightmare while the reign of
the beast “troubles” the speaker quite likely in the sense of “puzzles” in that he admits to not knowing
what the beast will be like. Myth in this poem invokes the Nietzschean paradigm of the struggle
between the Dionysian and the Apollonian in the sense that while the vision seems to come from the
orgiastic frenzy induced by Dionysus, the images that scud across the speaker’s imagination are
framed in Apollonian form. This indicates that the poem has embraced the raw material of Dionysian
frenzy and filtered it through the material of Apollonian image. The horror that lies at the foundation
of the poem seems to be accepted by the speaker with satisfaction. The implicit contentment is thus
the felling of the poet who dwells with the innermost Being. The revelation that comes to the poet
constitutes the mythical space wherein the world sets forth the truth and the earth sets itself up
concealing it. The eternal recurrence that underlies the poem in the shape of Yeats’s gyres amplifies
the emotions of happiness rather than dread which accompany the speaker. After all the present phase
is governed by the worst who “Are full of passionate intensity” therefore the next phase, even with the
rule of the beast, cannot bring any worse danger. The speaker turns the chaos of the thingly reality
into an aesthetic expression of the pleasurably horrific image of the beast which fills him with
satisfaction. Myth is being retrieved in the quasi-dance of the ponderous “shape with lion body and
the head of a man.” This interchange of ages appears in Nietzsche’s juxtaposition of

Socrates with Dionysus; whilst the former stands for the reasonable mind which Heidegger deplores in
his notion of “a destitute time,” the latter is all that opposes scientific man: “The age of Socratic man is
past: crown yourself with ivy, grasp the thyrsus and do not be amazed if tigers and panthers lie down
fawning at your feet. Now dare to be tragic men” (Nietzsche 2003, 98). The speaker of “The Second
Coming” seems to understand Nietzsche’s cry. He does not fear the beast or “the indignant
desert birds,” for he knows that in the Dionysian procession he will be entertained by such monstrosities
in the eternal fear of joy and joy of fear. Therefore the myth the speaker resorts to is the myth of the
Nietzschean self-realisation in the conflict that lies at the basis of the Heideggerian process of searching
for the Being that absconds. The self-realisation is the will to power as the need for the continuous
recreation and, as Markowski argues, interpretation: “the law that introduces eternal differentiation and
variation into the structure of the world Nietzsche calls the will to power”
(2001, 168 translation W. P.). The ceaseless seeing things in their difference, which in the second part
of this analysis will be given thorough explication, and their reinterpretation represent the Dionysian
contentment of the speaker of Yeats’s poem, since he witnesses the foreshadowing of the future of the
world and does not leap in conclusions. The acceptance of the beast as an ambiguous image follows
Nietzsche’s dictum of tragic joy as a premise of the will to power. The unconcealment of Being is based
on the continuous searching and it is only if the quest is pursued with joy that the shining of truth may
be glimpsed.’’

"The Second Coming" is viewed as a prophetic poem that envisions the close of the Christian epoch
and the violent birth of a new age. The poem's title makes reference to the Biblical reappearance of
Christ, prophesied in Matthew 24 and the Revelations of St. John, which according to Christianity,
will accompany the Apocalypse and divine Last Judgment. Other symbols in the poem are drawn
from mythology, the occult, and Yeats's view of history as defined in his cryptic prose volume A
Vision. The principal figure of the work is a sphinx-like creature with a lion's body and man's head, a
"rough beast" awakened in the desert that makes its way to Christ's birthplace, Bethlehem. While
critics acknowledge the work's internal symbolic power, most have studied its themes in relation to
Yeats's A Vision. According to the cosmological scheme of A Vision, the sweep of history can be
represented by two intersecting cones, or gyres, each of which possesses one of two opposing
"tinctures," primary and antithetical, that define the dominant modes of civilization. Yeats associated
the primary or solar tincture with democracy, truth, abstraction, goodness, egalitarianism, scientific
rationalism, and peace. The contrasting antithetical or lunar tincture he related to aristocracy,
hierarchy, art, fiction, evil, particularity, and war. According to Yeats's view, as one gyre widens over
a period of two thousand years the other narrows, producing a gradual change in the age. The process
then reverses after another twenty centuries have passed, and so on, producing a cyclic pattern
throughout time. In the early twentieth-century Yeats envisioned the primary gyre, the age of
Christianity, to be at its fullest expansion and approaching a turning point when the primary would
begin to contract and the antithetical enlarge. Yeats wrote: "All our scientific, democratic, fact-
accumulating, heterogeneous civilisation belongs to the outward gyre and prepares not the
continuance of itself but the revelation as in a lightning flash. . of the civilisation that must slowly
take its place." Thus, in "The Second Coming" scholars view the uncontrolled flight of the falcon as
representative of this primary expansion at its chaotic peak, while the coming of an antithetical
disposition is symbolized in the appearance of the "rough beast" in the desert, a harbinger of the new
epoch.’’
 NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
George Orwell

A. Marxism

‘’Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describing literary criticism based on socialist and
dialectic theories. Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social
institutions from which they originate. The simplest goals of Marxist literary criticism can
include an assessment of the political 'tendency' of a literary work, determining whether its
social content or its literary form are 'progressive'. It also includes analysing the class
constructs demonstrated in the literature. Further, another of the ends of Marxist criticism is
to analyse the narrative of class struggle in a given text.’’

‘’Nineteen Eighty-Four exposes in its fictional space the mechanisms of ideological

manipulation (which reduce individual freedom to false consciousness) and the efficient
engineering of (totalitarian) power. In Oceania, technological advancement, state
institutions, ideology and the secret police cooperated for controlling the actions, life and
mind of the population. Officially and ideally, the individuals of Oceania and of Airstrip One
(The West, and Britain or London, respectively) formed a herd of easily monitored,
brainwashed, obedient and devoted similar individuals, all of them members of the single,
monolithical party. They were constantly monitored in their work-places and apartments by
telescreens which ordered them about and synchronized all their actions to those of every
other party member at all time of day; the children of party members were encouraged to spy
and report on their parents or other adults in their neighbourhood; private life, marriage, was a
pretext for producing offspring without love and educated in the spirit of hate; slogans and
monolithical, simplified language served to wash off everyone’s brain, leaving no trace of
individuality and nonconformist thinking; everybody was exposed to the same gobbledygook
language in violent media campaigns meant to aligning all individuals to the ideology of the
totalitarian party; ideological statements (all of them lies which changed from one date to the
next) were fabricated in an ironically designated Ministry of Truth (where the protagonist of
the novel is also employed); the Ministry of Plenty administered the actual post-war poverty
and distributed rationed food, tasteless coffee and cigarettes (like the ones distributed to the
rank and file soldiers in the trenches); the Ministry of Peace was responsible for the war
communiqués about Oceania’s war with the rest of the world, Eurasia or Eastasia; the
Ministry of Love administered state organized terrorism and the repression of enemies. This
is where the protagonist’s rebellious life is turned into its opposite by scientifically organized
torture.
The most horrifying lie (guilty/immoral fiction) on which totalitarian manipulation was based
received the name of pastoral power much later than the date when Nineteen Eighty Four was
published (in Michel Foucault’s work of the 1980s). In Orwell’s book, Big Brother (alias
Stalin) is presented as a shepherd who lays down his life for his flock. The dystopian reality is
that there is nobody but a repressive state apparatus controlled by the Inner Party Members
behind his publicly advertised self.’’

‘’1984 is limited in scope: it does not investigate the genesis of totalitarianism, nor the laws of
its economy, nor the prospects for its survival; it merely presents a paradigmatic version of its
social life. Orwell’s profoundest insight is his insistence that in a totalitarian society man’s
life is completely shorn of dynamic possibilities. The end of life is completely predictable in
its beginning, the beginning merely a manipulated preparation for the end. There is no
 opening for that spontaneous surprise which is the token of, and justification, for freedom. For
while the society itself may evolve through certain stages of economic development, the life
of its members is static, incapable of climbing to tragedy or dropping to comedy. Human
personality, as we have come to grasp for it in class societies and hope for it in a classless
society, is obliterated; man becomes a mere function of a process.

The totalitarian society, whether of the fascist or Stalinist variety, thus represents a qualitative
break from Western history and tradition. There have been unfree societies in the past; during
the Middle Ages there was hardly anything of what we would now call democracy. Yet it was
then possible for an occasional group of scholars to create an oasis of relatively free
intellectual life (free not by our standards but in relation to the society of the time). The
totalitarian society permits no such luxuries: it offers a total “solution” to the problems of the
20th century, that is, a total distortion of what could be the actual solution.

Fascism may indeed be, as Marxists have said, a final decayed form of capitalism, and
Stalinism a bastard society arising during that decay as a result of the failure of socialism; but
such descriptions, while essential, do not exhaust the problem. Fascism and Stalinism have
more in common with each other, despite the difference between their property relations, than
either have with capitalism or any past form of Western society. Unlike previous societies,
both forms of totalitarianism enter the historical scene completely reactionary, without even
the faintest, most ambiguous contribution to humanity; both utilize modern technology to
suppress freedom to an extent not merely unthought of, but actually impossible, in previous
societies. They leave no margin, no Church in which sanctuary is possible for the thief, no
Siberia where the revolutionist can freeze and starve but also study, not even a private life to
which the dissident can retire in humiliation and despair. When Winston Smith rebels in 1984
the state apparatus not only destroys him, it first forces him to believe he was wrong to rebel.

The social horror of 1984 is to some extent the product of Orwell’s imagination, but the
power of that imagination derives from the fact that it is based on, extrapolated from reality.
There are no telescreens in Russia but there could well be: nothing in Russian society
contradicts the “principle” of telescreens. The fictitious telescreen is horrible precisely
because it is so close to reality; imaginative fictions stir us because they are distorted and
thereby more distinct versions of our experience.’’

B. Psychoanalysis

‘’ Freud was a great psychologist of memory. The strength of his approach rests on the
way our minds play tricks with us about our past. The distortions and selectivity of memory
are, Freud held, the stuff of neurosis. The analyst should aim to correct false recollections
and, through reawakening past experiences, to repair psychological damages. At the outset of
1984, Orwell’s protagonist suffers from an unintelligible childhood. Winston makes an
effort to recover childhood memories; he wonders whether London has always been the same.
As he forces himself to reminisce in diary-writing, new memories arise that clarify the past.
At one-point Winston tries to get his girlfriend Julia to collaborate in retrospection: he
encourages her memory to go backwards. Winston feels that his own memory is “not
satisfactorily under control,” and therefore he has “furtive” knowledge that others lack. He
feels in his bones “some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different.” The
tormenting capacity of memory lends 1984 its nightmarish air.
Winston’s sense of smell in particular evokes the past. In the Spartan world of 1984 fresh
coffee succeeds in reminding him of “the half-forgotten world of his childhood.” Chocolate
makes him think of something he once did which he would prefer to undo, but which remains
inexorably a part of his past. It takes only a whiff of a scent of chocolate to stir up a personal
memory that is both “powerful and troubling.” Dreams reawaken when Winston would like
to forget. He takes his dreaming seriously as “a continuation of one’s intellectual life. .in
which one becomes aware of facts and ideas which still seem new and valuable after one is
awake.” After one such dream, Winston becomes conscious why memories of his mother had
been tearing at his heart; a childhood bit of greediness for chocolate on his part had preceded
the disappearance of both his mother and his sister.

Winston’s concern with memory is public as well as private. In the course of 1984 he goes
down and out, trying to test an old man’s recollections; regretfully he finds only “a rubbish
heap of details” instead of a useful historical account. The Proles, who comprise the non-
Party 85 percent of the population of Oceania, are no help in resisting tyranny. Winston
bitterly comments that “where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read
and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory.”
Winston’s job as an Outer Party member is in the Records Department, where he specializes
in the falsification of written material. History can be manipulated and destroyed, as evidence
from the past gets incinerated in “memory holes.” Not only events but people as well can be
made to disappear, as they are “vaporized” into oblivion. Winston fears the danger not merely
of death but of annihilation. Winston knows that anyone’s existence can be “denied and then
forgotten.”

During his captivity, the continuity of Winston’s daily memories is broken. After he and
O’Brien have looked at a document incriminating to the official version of the past, Winston
reminds O’Brien of what they have just seen; but O’Brien flatly repudiates the memory. After
lengthy interrogation and repugnant cruelty, Winston gets physical treatment for his mind.
O’Brien administers what is described as “a devastating explosion. .as though a piece had
been taken out of his brain.” Afterwards Winston is still occasionally troubled by “false
memories”; but if he recalls anything contrary to the Party’s demands, Winston can now
dismiss it as a product of self-deception. ‘’
 Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett

A. Reader Response Criticism

Reader-response criticism???

Meaning – given by the reader;

Gauss:

- ‘’A literary work is not an object that stands by itself and that offers the same view to each reader in each
period. It is not a monument that monologically reveals its timeless essence. It is much more like orchestration
that strikes ever new resonances among its readers...’’( jauss, 113) -NO LITERARY WORK IS TIMELESS;
IT DOESN’T HAVE AN UNIVERSAL, FIXED MEANING the meaning is always changing
depending on the reader’s historical background, reading experience and education

-‘’HORIZON OF EXPECTATIONS’’ – no literary work is completely new for a reader as it ‘’predisposes its
audience to a very specific kind of reception by announcements, overt and covert signals, familiar
characteristics, implicit allusion(...) it awakens memories of that which was already read, brings the reader to
a specific emotional attitude, and with its beginning arouses expectations for the ‘’the middle and end’’,which
then can be maintained intact or altered’’ ( jauss, 113)

- AESTHETIC VALUE of that work is given by ‘’the distance between th horizon of expectations and
the work, between the familiarity of previous aesthetic experience and the horizontal change ‘’(Jauss,
114) - the greater the distance the greater the value. ‘’ ‘’it requires a special effort to read
them against the grain of the accustomed experience to catch sight of their artistic character once
again(jauss, 115)’’

First audience response

-‘’THEATRE BABYLON’’ Paris, 1953

,, This reactions of the audience on the first night and in the following weeks set the pattern for responses that were later
repeated in cities around the world. Some people were baffled, bored, irritated: the play had no plot; it seemed to maunder
on repetitiously to no discernible dramatic point(...)Still other playgoers nervously speculated about its meaning and
constructed allegories about the death or disappearance of God based on the provocations of Beckett’s title and his specific
allusions to Christianity. One bewildered reviewer, looking for a more material peg on which to hang a thesis, thought
Beckett (whom he believed to be an American novelist) was portraying the miserable plight of famished tramps persecuted
by farmers in the American South. (...) Playgoers argued in lobbies, wrote to the papers, and made Godot the talk of the
town. Taking a second look, the London Times reviewer admitted that Beckett’s ‘sophisticated fantasy’ appeared ‘to hold
last night’s audience; and
in the attentive silence one could almost hear the seeds of a cult growing’. The cult, of course, was not without its scoffers.
At least a third, sometimes half, of a typical audience walked out at the intermission,
and the visiting American journalist, Maria Mannes, saw the play as ‘typical of the self-delusion of which certain
intellectuals are capable, embracing obscurity, pretence, ugliness, and negation as
protective colouring for their own confusions’ ‘’ (GRAVER, 10-13)
- San Quentin penitentiary, 1956

‘’ ‘’ No live play had been performed at San Quentin since Sarah Bernhardt appeared there in 1913. Now, forty-four
years later, the play that had been chosen, largely because no woman appeared in it, was Samuel Beckett's Waiting for
Godot. No wonder the actors and Herbert Blau, the director, were apprehensive. How were they to face one of the toughest
audiences in the world with a highly obscure, intellectual play that had produced near riots among a good many highly
sophisticated audiences in Western Europe? Herbert Blau decided to prepare the San Quentin audience for what was to
come. Blau compared the play to a piece of jazz music ‘to which one must listen for whatever one may find in it’. In the
same way, he hoped, there would be some meaning, some personal significance for each member of the audience in Waiting
for Godot. The curtain parted. The play began. And what had bewildered the sophisticated audiences of Paris, London, and
New York was immediately grasped by an audience of convicts. (...)A reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle who
was present noted that the convicts did not find it difficult to understand the play. One prisoner told him, ‘Godot is society.’
Said another: ‘ He's the outside.’3 A teacher at the prison was quoted as saying, ‘They know what is meant by waiting …
and they knew if Godot finally came, he would only be a disappointment.’( esslin)

‘’Why did a play of the supposedly esoteric avant-garde make so immediate and so deep an impact on an audience of
convicts? Because it confronted them with a situation in some ways analogous to their own? Perhaps. Or perhaps because
they were unsophisticated enough to come to the theatre without any preconceived notions and ready-made expectations, so
that they avoided the mistake that trapped so many established critics who condemned the play for its lack of plot,
development, characterization, suspense, or plain common sense. Certainly the prisoners of San Quentin could not be
suspected of the sin of intellectual snobbery, for which a sizeable proportion of the audiences of Waiting for Godot have
often been reproached; of pretending to like a play they did not even begin to understand, just to appear in the know. The
reception of Waiting for Godot at San Quentin, and the wide acclaim given to plays by Ionesco, Adamov, Pinter, and others,
testify that these plays, which are so often superciliously dismissed as nonsense or mystification, have something to say and
can be understood.’’ ( esselin)

WHY THESE REACTIONS? WHAT WERE THEIR EXPECTATIONS? HOW WERE THESE
EXPECTATIONS TRANCENDED?

Traditional drama vs. Theatre of the absurd

1. the plot has to be well-constructed,
based on cause-effect relations
2. coordinates of time and space have to be
clearly stated
3. well-individualized protagonists
4. refined, sophisticated language
‘’the Theatre of the Absurd strives to express its sense of
the senselessness of the human condition and the
inadequacy of the rational approach by the open
abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought.
While Sartre or Camus express the new content in the old
convention, the Theatre of the Absurd goes a step further
in trying to achieve a unity between its basic assumptions
and the form in which these are expressed.’’( esselin)
transcending the horizon of expectations
1. no plot – ‘’nothing to be done’’ - an
inert situation where the audience wait,
just as the two tramps wait for
something to happen, finding ways to
pass the time;
2. ‘’a tree'', ''a country road'', not ''the
country road'' - it could be anywhere at
any time;
3. Vladimir/Didi and Estragon/Gogo can
be mistaken for each other- and we
know nothing about their inner lives or
their background
4. The conversation between the 2 tramps
very often doesn’t seem to be a real
conversation, as they don’t respond to
each other;
‘’As the Theatre of the Absurd is not concerned
with conveying information or presenting the
problems or destinies of characters that exist outside
the author's inner world, as it does not expound a
thesis or debate ideological propositions, it is not
concerned with the representation of events, the
narration of the fate or the adventures of characters,
but instead with the presentation of one individual's
basic situation. It is a theatre of situation as against
a theatre of events in sequence, and therefore it
uses a language based on patterns of concrete
images rather than argument and discursive
speech. And since it is trying to present a sense of
being, it can neither investigate nor solve problems
of conduct or morals. Because the Theatre of the
Absurd projects its author's personal world, it lacks
objectively valid characters. It cannot show the clash
of opposing temperaments or study human passions
locked in conflict and is therefore not dramatic in the
accepted sense of the term. Nor is it concerned with
telling a story in order to communicate some moral
or social lesson, as is the aim of Brecht's narrative,
‘epic’ theatre. The action in a play of the Theatre of
the Absurd is not intended to tell a story but to
communicate a pattern of poetic images. To give
but one example: things happen in Waiting for
Godot, but these happenings do not constitute a plot
or story; they are an image of Beckett's intuition
that nothing really ever happens in man's
existence.’’ (esslin).
 B. Dramatology

Theatre of the absurd:

a) NO PLOT: ‘’nothing to be done’’ -an anticipation that there is no plot to talk about but an
inert situation where the audience wait, just as the two tramps wait for something to happen,
finding ways to pass the time
b) Lack of spatial or temporal coordinates-‘a tree'', ''a country road'', not ''the country road'', it
could be anywhere at any time.
c) Characters are somehow puppets emptied of identity, which is why their external appearance,
the way they are dressed, the gesture they made matter more than their essential identity. This
is why in the theatre of the absurd characters usually appear in pairs, easily mistaken for one
another: in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Vladimir/Didi and Estragon/Gogo can be
mistaken for each other, while they also resemble the pair of Pozzo and Lucky, the more
decisive master and slave couple in the play, at the same time the language is used to mirror
the absurdity, meaningless of life.
d) the conversation between the 2 tramps very often doesn’t seem to be a real conversation, as
they don’t respond to each other. The language is very simple and not a refined
 The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles
A.Feminism
‘’As an entertaining Victorian story à rebours: the main feminine character is not the domestic
Ernestina, who dwindles, while Sarah Woodruff looms greater with every chapter, to become the
fully emancipated 20th c woman, the product of the sexual revolution of the late 1960s; the Victorian
male protagonists are all of them overridden (defeated) by the improved twentieth-century
feminine type. Sarah Woodruff is like a bomb introduced in the novel to shatter it, in accordance
with the best rules of the historiographic-metafictional art.’’

‘’The French Lieutenant’s Woman is about a love story happened in nineteenth Century in Britain. A
sad and mysterious Victorian woman, is a virgin but claimed to have committed to a French
lieutenant, be regarded as sinful and lewd woman was cast aside. While her mysterious, unique,
bold, deep, melancholy beauty and wild enthusiasm arouse sympathy and affection of the men.
Sarah fell in love with Charles but after Charles lifted the engagement with others she rejected his
proposal and left quietly. Although Sarah strove for freedom and independence, but eventually
because of the limitation of the times and the subjectivity of the author and other reasons not fully
realized.

In the emotional aspects of Sarah and Charles, Sarah has been in a dominant position. Throughout
the book, Sarah was ambiguous on Charles. When two people encountered for the first time in the
Lyme Regis Undercliff, Charles had been chased and proactively talked to Sarah. Charles
affectionately stared at Sarah and at that time he had been captivated by the mystery of Sarah.
Sarah, however, had long been suffered from mockery and slander against, well aware of Charles's
identity, so intentionally kept a distance from Charles.

The heroine Sarah was a courageous and determined woman whom rebelled against traditional
customs, in bold pursuit of true love and in strong defence of freedom. However, Sarah did not
achieve real freedom and independence. In contrast with the Victorian times’ women’s style of
dressing, Sarah was always in black. Although her black appearance was against with traditional
customs, it was more of way to attract the attention of Charles. Charles generated interest in this
woman who seemed to conflict with society. In a word, Charles was gravitated toward the mystery
of Sarah.’’

B. Postmodernism
Postmodern literature is a form of literature which is marked, both stylistically and ideologically, by a
reliance on such literary conventions as fragmentation, paradox, unreliable narrators, often unrealistic
and downright impossible plots, games, parody, paranoia, dark humour and authorial self-reference.
Postmodern authors tend to reject outright meanings in their novels, stories and poems, and, instead,
highlight and celebrate the possibility of multiple meanings, or a complete lack of meaning, within a
single literary work.

Postmodern literature also often rejects the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' forms of art and
literature, as well as the distinctions between different genres and forms of writing and storytelling.
Here are some examples of stylistic techniques that are often used in postmodern literature:

Pastiche: The taking of various ideas from previous writings and literary styles and pasting them
together to make new styles.

Intertextuality: The acknowledgment of previous literary works within another literary work.

Metafiction: The act of writing about writing or making readers aware of the fictional nature of the
very fiction they're reading.

Temporal Distortion: The use of non-linear timelines and narrative techniques in a story.

Minimalism: The use of characters and events which are decidedly common and non-exceptional
characters.

Maximalism: Disorganized, lengthy, highly detailed writing.

Magical Realism: The introduction of impossible or unrealistic events into a narrative that is
otherwise realistic.

Faction: The mixing of actual historical events with fictional events without clearly defining what is
factual and what is fictional.

Reader Involvement: Often through direct address to the reader and the open acknowledgment of the
fictional nature of the events being described.

Many critics and scholars find it best to define postmodern literature against the popular literary style
that came before it: modernism. In many ways, postmodern literary styles and ideas serve to dispute,
reverse, mock and reject the principles of modernist literature.

For example, instead of following the standard modernist literary quest for meaning in a chaotic
world, postmodern literature tends to eschew, often playfully, the very possibility of meaning. The
postmodern novel, story or poem is often presented as a parody of the modernist literary quest for
meaning.
‘’The purpose of The French Lieutenant’s Woman’s is to debunk the imperial/domineering, proud
ethos of Victorianism: it is a savage anti-Victorian INTERTEXTUAL satire which REWRITES the
convention-ridden realistic novel by Thomas Hardy in The Return of the Native in such a way as to
expose Victorian social and religious conventionalism and prudishness - implicitly. The literary
discourse of The French Lieutenant’s Woman is HYBRID because it extensively mixes its fictional
with explicitly paratextual documentary and literary-historical material (the epigraphs, like in
Eliot’s “The Waste Land”; the copious/scientific foot-notes which accompany the story; the mottoes
from Victorian writers). Fictionality is essentially problematized with the strategic CODE-INFRINGING
chapters (the chapter where the author addresses the audience directly to confess that he does not
know what to do with his character further; the one where Charles meets with the author of the
book on the train; the multiple endings of the novel; the different endings which deconstruct/expose
the arbitrariness or constructedness of the novel’s own fictional universe. So – readers end up
wondering what matters more than the emerging and shattered twentieth century love-story
between Sarah Woodruff, the twentieth century emancipated woman and the still Victorian Charles
Smithson, or than the broken potential Victorian love and marriage story which would have tied
Charles Smithson to Ernestina. If the novel constructs anything but a self-defeating narrative joke,
then it must be an aporia.

As a very self-conscious and critical English book, this novel, set in the Victorian age, shows the
reverse of nineteenth century respectability with historical, literary and sociological documents
intertextually used, paratextually articulated in a fictionally self-defeating (subversive) story that
ends up reducing to an aporia every form of middle class/genteel Victorian belief : the Victorian
belief in domesticity and in scientific progress being capable to replace the gradual loss of faith in
God (and in the traditional religious institution). Through the development of its main feminine
character, Sarah Woodruff, at the end of the novel, it makes good the new aestheticist faith which
appeared in the late Victorian age in Pre-Raphaelite circles. ‘’