LIT 1
UNIT III
YOUR LAUGHTER
Pablo Neruda
- Green was his favorite color; he always wrote in
green as it was the color of hope. Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, Colombian novelist, once referred to
him as, “the greatest poet of the 20th century in
any language.” He was a communist who fought
for world unity and peace, persecuted in his
country and forced to exile. His work is a
reflection that safeguards the cultural heritage of
Chile and the entire South American continent.
Universidad de Chile (1921)
Childhood:
- Pablo Neruda’s real name was Neftalí Ricardo
Reyes Basoalto and was born in the town of
Parral in the Maule Region in Chile on July
12th, 1904.
- José del Carmen Reyes Morales – Neruda’s
father; a railway employee
- Rosa Basoalto Opazo – Neruda’s mother; a
school teacher who died of tuberculosis two
months after giving birth to his first and only son.
- They moved to Temuco and his father remarried
Trinidad Candia Malverde. Neruda grew up
with half-brother Rodolfo and half-sister Laura.
- Men’s Lyceum of Temuco – where he
completed high school; was renamed Lyceum
Pablo Neruda of Temuco after he was awarded
the Nobel Prize.
Early Years (1917-1920)
- While in high school at age 13, he published his
first poems among them are, “Entusiasmo y
Perseverancia (Enthusiasm and
Perseverance),” in the regional daily, La
Mañana.
- In 1918, he published 13 poems in the journal,
“Run and Fly,” including, “My Eyes.”
- In 1919, he won the third prize in a local contest
with his poem, “Nocturno Ideal.”
- Neruda’s father opposed his son’s interest in
writing, nevertheless he found support in his
school teachers.
- Gabriella Mistral – a teacher in the local girl’s
school; she introduced him to the work of
European poets and particularly Russian
literature which influenced him the most.
- Because he wanted to hide his publications from
his father, he chose the pseudonym of Pablo
Neruda. All publications after October 1920
were published under that name.
- Jan Neruda – a Czech poet who inspired Pablo
Neruda and from whom he took his last name.
later, he legally changed his name to Pablo
Neruda.
- In 1920, he became a contributor in Selva
Austral, Diario Austral of Temuco and various
literary student journals in Temuco. He beame
president of the Athenaeum Literary in his high
school and deputy secretary of the Student
Association. He won the first prize for poetry in
the spring festival in Temuco.
- Neruda’s father wanted him to become a teacher.
He moved to Santiago to study Education and
French at the University of Chile. He had no
interest in pedagogy; his passion was in learning
French so that he could read French literature in
that language. He published a series of poems in
the university magazine, Clarity, signed as Pablo
Neruda.
- Rosa Albertina Azocar – his inspiration for a
series of poems in Twenty Love Poems and a
Song of Despair.
- It was clear that Pablo wanted to pursue a career
in writing, so his father stopped sending money.
- In July 1923, the first edition of
“Crespusculario” (Book of Twilights) was
published by Clarity Editions of the Student
Federation of Chile.
- In 1924, the first edition of “Veinte Poemas de
Amor y una Cancion Desesperada” (Twenty
Love Poems and a Song of Despair) was
published by Nascimiento Editors, which would
become one of his best-known and most
translated works.
- The publication of Twenty Love Poems was
notoriously controversial due to its eroticism
which led to the publication in “La Nacion” of a
letter titled, “Exegesis and Loneliness.” This
letter explained the creation of the love poem and
his frustration at the lack of understanding within
the literary critics.
- In 1925, he became the director of the magazine
Knights of Wands. In the following year,
“Tentativa y su Esperanza” (The Habitant and
His Hope) and “Anillos” (Rings) were published
by Nascimiento. Crespusculario (Book of
Twilights) goes on a second edition.
LIT 1
Diplomatic Career (1926) founded Green Horse for Poetry – a literary
magazine. He left his wife and daughter in
- Because of his literary achievement and
Barcelona and moved in with Delia del Carril shame
relationships he cultivated as a writer, he was able
- In 1927, General Carlos Ibanez del Campo
to obtain a consular job in Burma. He remained a
seizes power and establishes dictatorship.
regular contributor to the newspaper “La
Nacion” in Santiago where he published his Spanish Civil War and Communism
travel chronics.
- On July 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out
- He stayed in Burma as an honorary consul from
and Federico Garcia Lorca was assassinated by
1927 to 1929. He was appointed consul in
forces loyal to Franco. This experience had an
Colombo, Sri Lanka. During these years, he
intense effect on Neruda who, for the first time,
experimented with different styles and wrote a
became politicized supporting the republican side
series of surrealistic poems which would be a part
and becoming a communist for the rest of his life.
of “Residencia en la Tierra” (Residence on
Because of his post as a consul, he should remain
Earth).
neutral to political causes.
- In 1930, he was appointed consul in Singapore
- He published anonymously Song to the Mothers
and Batavia in Java where he married a Dutch
of the dead Militants in the literary journal The
woman named Marie Antoinette Haagenar
Blue Monkey which later became part of Spain
Vogelzang.
in the Heart. The Chilean government decided to
- In 1931, the international economic downturn
close its consulate in Madrid.
made the government of Chile cut on consular
- In 1937, he moved to Paris with del Carril and
positions and Neruda was asked to return to
began his work supporting the Spanish Republic.
Chile.
He organized the Latin American Committee to
- After a voyage of two months, in February of
defend the Spanish Republic and gave a
1932, he arrived in Chile accompanied by his new
conference about Federico Garcia Lorca against
wife. He resettled in Santiago and was offered a
the Chilean government advice.
job at the Library of the Foreign Ministry
- He published his views in the magazine The
which did not satisfy him; two months later he
World Poets Defend the Spanish People which
was transferred to the Department of Culural
was published in Spanish and French. Neruda
Extension of the Ministry of Labor. At this
joined Peruvian Cesar Vallejo with whom he
time, the second edition of Twenty Poems of
worked in the Association for the Defense of
Love and a Song of Despair is published.
Culture. He published the poem In this Way in
- In 1933, Neruda was appointed Consul in
The Blue Monkey which was later known as I
Buenos Aires, Argentina and Nascimiento
Explain a Few Things in his book Spain in the
Editors publishes Residence on Earth limiting
Heart. This poem is a breakthrough in Neruda’s
its publications to only one hundred copies.
style, which changed to a radical and militant
- In Buenos Aires, he met Federico Garcia Lorca
tone concerned with social and political matters.
with whom he was to establish a close friendship.
- From 1938 to 1946, communists, socialists, and
By the end of the year, he was appointed consul
radicals form Popular Front coalition and
in Barcelona. In Madrid, he was reunited with
introduce economic policies based on U.S. New
Lorca who introduced him to Rafael Alberti,
Deal.
César Vallejo and Miguel Hernández. He also
- By the end of the year, he had to move back to
met Delia del Carril who later become his
Chile as he lost his post because of his political
second wife.
views. In Chile, he founded the Alliance of
- In August 1934, his daughter, Malva Marina
Intellectuals from Chile for the Defense of
Trinidad, was born in Madrid. She was born
Culture.
with hydrocephalus, a condition that leads to
- The first edition of 2000 copies of “España en el
brain swelling. This was a stressful period in the
Corazon” (Spain in the Heart) sold out in the
lives of Neruda and his wife, and so he began a
first few weeks. Two months later, a second
relationship with del Carril wtf
edition was in print. “España en el Corazon”
- In 1935, Neruda was transferred to Madrid as
consul, replacing Gabriela Mistral. Neruda
LIT 1
had great impact as it was printed during the civil
war.
- His father died in Termuco on May 1938.
- Neruda supported the election of the newly
elected president, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, and
soon after, he was appointed special consul to
Paris to assist in the immigration of Spanish
refugees in France. He assisted about 2000
political refugees flee to Chile.
- In 1940, Spanish philologist and literary critic,
Amado Alonso, published the first major
academic work about Pablo Neruda’s work,
“Poetry and Style of Pablo Neruda,
Interpretation of a Hermetic Poetry.”
Mexico (1940-1943)
- In 1940, Neruda was appointed Consul General
of Chile in Mexico City. After the assassination
attempt of Leon Trotsky, Neruda granted a visa
to Chile to Mexican muralist David Alfaro
Return to Chile and the Communist Party (1944)
Siqueiros who was accused as one of the
conspirators to murder Trotsky. Neruda was
suspended for one month without pay for
engaging in such misconduct. Once in Chile, the
painter spent one year painting a mural in a school
in Chillán.
- In 1942, Neruda was invited to Cuba by the
Ministry of Education to give a series of
lectures. While in Cuba, he received the news of
the passing of Miguel Hernandez, a close friend,
in Spanish prison. During his stay in Cuba, he
wrote two poems: To Miguel Hernandez Killed
in the Prisons of Spain and The Lost Shepherd
which were included in Canto General and The
Grapes and the Wind respectively.
- In Cuba, he started collecting seashells. On a trip
to Mexico at the Theater of the Mexican Union
of Electricians, he read his poem Song to
Stalingrad which celebrated the first major
Russian victory over the Nazis. This generated
such criticism that he wrote another poem New
Love Song to Stalingrad, both poems were
included in his book Third Residence.
- A first private edition of one hundred copies of
Canto General of Chile, Fragments was
published in Mexico. Exclusive and elegantly
printed, all the copies were signed by Neruda and
given to friends and family.
- On March 1943, his daughter, Malva, had died in
Nazi occupied Holland and, shortly, he married
his companion, Delia del Carril, though the
Chilean courts declared it illegal.
- Neruda violated his diplomatic neutrality again
when he read his poem “Dura Elegía” at the
funeral of Leocadia Felizardo, mother of
Brazilian communist leader Luis Carlos Prestes,
making remarks that offends Getulio Vargas, the
Brazilian dictator.
- Neruda voluntarily stepped down of his position
and returned to Chile. On his way to Santiago, he
traveled to Cusco where he visited the ruins of
Machu Picchu. The Inca citadel inspired him to
write Alturas de Machu Picchu (Heights of
Machu Picchu) which he completed in 1945. In
this book, he valued the accomplishments of
ancient Andean civilizations but also denounced
the slavery that took place in order to achieve
such an outstanding construction and their
subsequent conquest by the Spaniards.
- Neruda, like many left-leaning intellectuals of his
generation, came to admire the Soviet Union of
Joseph Stalin, partly for the role it played in
defeating Nazi Germany and partly because of an
idealist interpretation of Marxist doctrine.
- Soon after his return to Chile, he was appointed
candidate for senator for the provinces of
Antofagasta and Tarapacá representing the
Communist Party of Chile.
- A bilingual edition of Residence on Earth was
published by New Directions, New York.
- In 1945, he was elected senator of the republic.
- In 1946, Gabriel Gonzales Videla was elected
president of Chile in an alliance with the
Communist Party. The following year, Gonzales
Videla turns against the Communists and aligns
himself with the United States starting a
campaign against the communists.
- A violent repression of a miner’s strike in Lota
led the poet to criticize President Gonzales
Videla’s policy in a speech known as “Yo
Acuso” (I accuse) in which he read the names of
the miners and their families who were
imprisoned. Because Gonzales Videla banned the
communist party newspaper “The Century,”
Neruda published a letter, “Intimate letter for
millions of men,” in many Latin American
countries. This letter denounced the government
policies against its workers.
LIT 1
- The government accused Neruda of defamation by a blood clot. Matilde Urrutia, a Chilean
and of denigrating Chile abroad and started the singer, was hired to take care of him. They had a
process of impeachment. From February 1948 love affair which lasted until his death in 1973.
harot ampota
until March 1949, he lived in hiding and
- He produced many poems where Matilde Urritia
constantly changing houses to avoid being
was his muse and they are included in The
captured. During this period, he finished Canto
Captain’s Verses, On Hundred Love Sonnets,
General.
Estravagario, The Barcarolle, and The Sea and
- From 1948 to 1958, the Communist Party was
the Bells. From 1953 onwards, her presence in
banned.
the poet’s work becomes more intense.
Exile (1948) - In 1950, while recovering in Mexico, Canto
General was published in Mexico City with an
- Local and international solidarity was expressed initial edition of 500 copies, and, in Chile, the
in defense of the Chilean poet. After several communist party published a clandestine edition.
failed attempts to escape Chile, Neruda finally At the end of the year, he received the Stalin
succeeded to cross the border to Argentina with Prize for the Peace.
the help of his friends Victor Pey, Jorge Bellet,
Raul Bulnes and Victor Bianchi. Return to Chile (1952)
- When receiving the Nobel Prize in 1971, the poet
- Neruda retuned to Chile in 1952 after three years
remembered this adventure as a spiritual journey
in exile. His return was made possible by the
to freedom. Once in Buenos Aires, he joined his
weakness of Gonzales Vileda’s government and
long-time friend Miguel Angel Asturias and,
the support of the poet’s movement group
taking advantage of their physical resemblance,
comprised of intellectuals and politicians.
Asturias lent Neruda his passport to travel to
- During this period, The Captain’s Verses was
Europe. He crossed the Argentinean border to
published. This book was controversial as it was
Montevideo, Uruguay and from there to France
published anonymously for many editions out of
disguised as the Guatemalan novelist Miguel
respect for his wife. In this book, his mistress,
Angel Asturias.
Matilde Urrutia, was the muse of his poems. By
- In order to assume his own identity, Pablo Neruda
the time the book was published he was separated
had to go to Switzerland where his old passport,
from his wife.
brought by his wife, was waiting for him. Pablo
- Neruda was actively involved in the presidential
Picasso made use of his prestige to make this
election of Salvador Allende and participated in
possible. Back in Paris he attended the World
the XI Congress of the Communist Party of
Congress of Peace to a surprised and stunned
Chile. During this period, he traveled the world
audience. The Chilean Embassy requested to
extensively promoting his books and giving
confiscate Neruda’s passport but it was in vain.
speeches and lectures and, when not traveling, he
- In Moscow and Leningrad, the poet participated
would spend his time in his house in Isla Negra.
in the sesquicentennial of the birth of Alexander
- In 1959, during a visit to Cuba he met Fidel
Pushkin. Neruda was an admirer of the Soviet
Castro.
Union and Stalin which is reflected in his poetry
- Between 1954 and 1959, seven books were
“Canto a Stalingrado” (Song to Stalingrad)
published. Among them are three elementary
and “Nuevo Canto de Amor a Stalingrado”
odes books: Elementary Odes, Third Book of
(New Love Song to Stalingrad). Later he would
Odes, New Elementary Odes, Navigations and
denounce Stalin’s cult of personality and the
Return, Extravagaria, Grapes and the Wind,
crimes committed under his command.
and One Hundred Love Sonnets. The last one is
- He travelled to India, China, Poland, Hungary,
one of the most accomplished and greatest poems
and the Czechoslovakia. In Prague, he applied
of the Neruda. It celebrates his love for his lover
for a visa to London but he was denied.
Matilde Urrutia whom he married in 1966.
- In 1949, he travelled to Mexico where he
- On March 1966, his first wife, Maria Antonieta
participated in the Latin American Congress for
Hagenaar, died in Holland. On the same year, he
Peace. In Mexico, the poet became ill with
became the first Latin American to receive the
thrombophlebitis, inflammation of a vein caused
LIT 1
title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Philosophy
from Oxford University.
The Nobel Prize of Literature (1971)
(https://www.southernexplorations.com/politics-life-
- In 1970, the Communist Party of Chile appointed
pablo-neruda)
Neruda as pre-candidate for the upcoming
presidential election; however he withdrew from Your Laughter
it and supported Salvador Allende, the candidate
of the Popular Unity Party, the first socialist
elected president.
- In 1971, Neruda gets nominated ambassador to
Chile in Paris which would last until 1972 when
his health deteriorated. As ambassador, he got to
negotiate the Chilean external debt with the Paris
Club.
- On October 1971, he was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature. The Nobel Prize Academy
pointed out the poet’s persecution and his work
for the world’s community and peace. However,
the decision was not an easy one as they did not
forget the poet’s past support of the Stalinist
dictatorship. At the end of the month, his health
started deteriorating and was operated from
prostate cancer in Paris. He spent his recovery at
The Manquel, a cottage he bought in Normandy.
- He resigned his post as ambassador of Chile in
Paris.
Final Years
- Neruda never recuperated and was terminally ill
when he returned to Chile. He spent his final
years in his house in Isla Negra accompanied by
his wife, Matilde Urrutia, and his close friends.
- As the government of Allende collapsed,
prosecutions were initiated against his political
supporters. Most of Neruda’s friends were taken
prisoners or had to seek asylum abroad. Neruda’s
house in Isla Negra gets broken into and his books
and notes destroyed by the military police.
- His health was rapidly failing and he had to be
transferred from Isla Negra to Santiago. Neruda
was hospitalized at Santa María Clinic in
Santiago and, three days later, on the evening of
September 23, 1973, the poet died of heart
failure.
- Neruda was temporarily buried in the mausoleum
of the Fittborn family. Large crowds gathered at
the cemetery defying the measures of the military
police where they paid tribute to one of the
greatest poet Chile had known.
- Was he poisoned upon orders of dictator General
Augusto Pinochet?
For further reading: Politics in the Life of Pablo Neruda
- It was published as part of a collection of poetry
by Neruda titled, “The Captain’s Verses,”
which was published in the year 1972. As with
many of Neruda’s poems, it is written in free
verse, though his poems are accessible only
through various translations.
- Metaphor is used as a rhetoric for two major
themes, that is of an actual desire for the beloved,
and that of a deeper aspect that generally reflects
Neruda’s political life. The beloved’s laughter is
compared with many things, and all of these give
rise to vivid images in the reader’s mind. As
Neruda is a diplomat for the Communist cause
purged from his native Chile, he felt that same
pangs of needing that bread and breath. That
laughter, as can be interpreted, may reflect that
yearning to hear his fellow Chileans supporting
him.
- He always wrote in green as it was the color of
hope.
Take bread away from The image of laughter
me, if you wish, recurs throughout the
take air away, but poem as it is its main
do not take from me your focus. It is for the speaker
laughter. the only essential thing in
his life to keep him going.
Do not take away the Described as something
rose, that is important, the
the lance flower that you speaker pleas not to have
pluck, this laughter taken from
the water that suddenly him.
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave of silver
born in you.
My struggle is harsh His troubles are now
and I come back listed down, he feels alive
with eyes tired again with this laughter.
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter
enters
it rises to the sky seeking
me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.
LIT 1
My love, in the darkest Here he makes this lover - He openly supports the socialist democratic party.
hour your laughter promise that despite Not everyone liked his folksy affectation,
opens, and if suddenly whatever happens to the however. Robert Frost described his
you see my blood staining speaker, the lover must contemporary as "the most artificial and studied
the stones of the street, laugh for him to feel how ruffian the world has had." The description was
laugh, because your much he is loved. not without merit.
laughter Laughter here is now - August Johnson – his father, a semiliterate
will be for my hands heard as a cheer.
laborer
like a fresh sword.
- Clara Anderson – his mother, a menial worker
Next to the sea in the Autumn equates to the
autumn, coming cold of Winter. It - “Sandburg” – family’s idea to separate Carl
your laughter must raise is after that suffering the from other Johnsons in the neighborhood.
its foamy cascade, speaker wishes to hear the - At age 13, he drifted from one hands-on job to
and in the spring, love, lover’s laughter once the another.
I want your laughter like cold has passed. Here it is - 1899 – served at West Point and fought for eight
the flower I was waiting indicated that this is no months in Puerto Rico with the Sixth Regiment
for, ordinary lover. Of what of the Illinois Volunteers during the Spanish-
the blue flower, the rose was thought as a person is American War.
of my echoing country. actually a country’s love - Briefly studied at Lombard College but quit
for a patriot. before getting a degree.
Laugh at the night, Perhaps it is Neruda’s - Met and got support from Professor of English,
at the day, at the moon, dying wish to hear his
Philip Green Wright, and was helped in
laugh at the twisted country laugh, not simply
publishing first poetry collection, In Reckless
streets of the island, for him, but for the
laugh at this clumsy country’s happiness heard Ecstasy (1904).
boy who loves you, over and beyond. - 1907 – met future wife, Lilian “Paula” Steichen,
but when I open while organizing the Wisconsin Social Democrat
my eyes and close them, Party.
when my steps go, - He later became secretary to Emil Seidel,
when my steps return, Milwaukee's first socialist mayor, and then he
deny me bread, air, took various writing jobs until World War I.
light, spring, - Sandburg served the Newspaper Enterprise
but never your laughter Associates as Stockholm correspondent until the
for I would die. end of the war and settled in Chicago with his
family.
CHICAGO - Wrote editorials for the Chicago Daily News.
- Sandburg published his famous "Chicago" in
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) 1914 in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, and
- The people’s poet. produced pulsing, realistic verse set in America's
- A restless vagabond; he’d be seen touring every urban industrial complex, which he idealized as a
summer, reciting folk songs plucked out on his brusque, up-and-coming national treasure.
banjo and guitar, earning ready cash. - His steady outpouring resulted in Complete
- He spoke directly and compellingly of the Poems (1950), winner of the 1951 Pulitzer Prize
worker, a vigorous, enduring composite character for poetry.
who embodied Sandburg's free-verse portraits of - Passed away at home from a second heart attack
democracy's inhabitants. on July 22, 1967. He was eulogized at the nearby
- He engagingly uses street slang as much as the St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church;
ordinary working class, never elevating himself his and Paula's ashes are buried in Galesburg
above them. beneath Remembrance Rock.
- He was associated with figures including socialist Chicago
Lincoln Steffens, actor Gary Cooper, President
Lyndon Johnson, and editor Harry Golden, Hog Butcher for the Written in free-verse, it
Sandburg's traveling buddy. World, ignores meter and rhyme
LIT 1
Tool Maker, Stacker of
Wheat,
Player with Railroads and
the Nation's Freight
Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are
wicked and I believe them,
for I have seen your
painted women under the
gas lamps luring the farm
boys.
And they tell me you are
crooked and I answer:
Yes, it is true I have seen
the gunman kill and go
free to kill again.
And they tell me you are
brutal and my reply is:
On the faces of women
and children I have seen
the marks of wanton
hunger.
And having answered so
I turn once more to those
who sneer at this my city,
and I give them back the
sneer and say to them:
Come and show me
another city with lifted
head singing so proud to
be alive and coarse and
strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses
amid the toil of piling job
on job, here is a tall bold
slugger set vivid against
the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with
tongue lapping for action,
cunning as a savage pitted
against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking,
rebuilding
altogether in favor of
brash, assertive
statements and direct
imagery in the context of
Chicago’s labor sector.
Here in the first line
shows what Chicago
really is for the speaker, a
city of hardworking
laborers, tuff and resilient.
"They" refers to those
people "who sneer at this
my city", as the poem
makes clear a few lines
below. They are the
people who criticize
Chicago for its corruption,
vice and social
inequalities. Sandburg
accepts the city’s
unforgiving brutality, its
crooked ways and wicked
humor.. There is a hint,
however, that all cities
have them.
The city of Chicago is
personified as a strong,
resilient working man, "a
tall bold slugger" with
"Big Shoulders,"
"laughing," "half-naked,
sweating, (and) proud."
Under the smoke, dust The forces that undergird
all over his mouth, Chicago's permanence
laughing with white teeth, founder on the edge of
Under the terrible burden honesty and
of destiny laughing as a respectability, implying
young man laughs, that too much gentility
Laughing even as an saps a growing nation,
ignorant fighter laughs depriving it of the
who has never lost a underworld heft essential
battle, to progress.
Bragging and laughing
that under his wrist is the
pulse, and under his ribs
the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy,
husky, brawling laughter
of Youth, half-naked,
sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker,
Stacker of Wheat, Player
with Railroads and
Freight Handler to the
Nation.
Things acknowledged by the speaker:
• “Strength comes from adversity.”
• “Hard times build character.”
• “Realistic valuing for the love of a city.”
THE KILLERS
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway – was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak
Park, Illinois.
- He was an American novelist and short-story
writer.
- He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel
Prize in Literature in the following year for his
masterpiece, “The Old Man and the Sea.”
- He based many of his stories on his experiences
during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and
the World War II.
- He committed suicide on July 2, 1961, in
Ketchum, Idaho due to physical and mental
health issues.
- First published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1927,
it later became part of an anthology entitled The
Nick Adams Stories. Nick Adams became a
famous Hemingway character where Adams
crosses over from teenager to adult in a series of
short stories.
LIT 1
- The 1920’s was considered the peak of organized
crime during the Prohibition era. Cities are run by
different mobs and Chicago was run by the most
famous of all, Al Capone. When things became
too dangerous for the mob, they retreated to the
suburb of Summit. This is where Hemingway’s
short story took place. Not long before the story
was written, the Chicago mob had killed a
popular boxer of the time, Andre Anderson,
who’d once knocked Jack Dempsey off his feet,
likely Hemingway’s source for the Swede.
The Iceberg Theory (Theory of Omission) – is a style
of writing (turned colloquialism) where the story is
believed to have a deeper meaning and should not be
evident on the surface but should shine through
implicitly.
Code Hero (by Sarah Bostock) – refers to Ernest
Hemingway’s characters that exhibit certain views toward
the world around them. Scholar Philip Young coined the
phrase “Code Hero” and not Hemingway.
- The characteristics of a Code Hero stem from the
state of the world after World War I, which most
writers describe as a world without meaning.
Hemingway’s heroes fond meaning only through
themselves and not externally.
- Does not believe in anything, especially religion,
which he believes is false. Life is everything
whereas death is nothing.
- Nada – Spanish word for “nothing.”
- A man of action and not a man of words.
- Confident in every action in which he performs,
and he does not discuss his heroic actions with
anyone. The hero believes that discussing his
actions makes them less admirable. In fact, a hero
does not exhibit emotion because he believes it is
a sign of weakness.
- Lives a very disciplined and structured life amid
a chaotic and destructive world. He lives by strict
moral rules, and he follows them religiously.
- Rejects cultural and social morals, and he only
really believes in self-discovery and blunt
honesty. To the Code Hero, the only thing that
matters is how a person chooses to live life.
- Faces death bravely in hopes to survive it. He
only faces death in order to find out more about
his internal being, and he needs to continue life
for as long as possible. A Code Hero faces death
with dignity because it is the only thing the hero
is really guaranteed.
- Most of Hemingway’s Code Heroes fear the
darkness night brings. The Code Hero sees
darkness as symbolic of death, which one day he
will face. In order to avoid nighttime and
reminders of death, the hero drinks heavily a
night and sleeps during the day. It is at night that
the Code Hero becomes very sensuous and
engages in all of his desires.
- The Code Hero sees his desires – sex, alcohol,
and food – as the only pleasures in life, so it is his
view to enjoy everything life offers.
Theme of Emasculation – the two killers show their
bullying swagger as they boss and taunt Nick, George,
and Sam.
Kosher Convent – to most people, a convent is associated
with Catholicism; here, Max jokes that Al, probably
Jewish, would have to be in a “kosher” convent.
- A Yiddish for food that is ritually clean,
according to dietary laws.
Theme of Accepting the Status Quo – George and Sam
accept the reality around them with little or no desire to
change it.
Other themes handled in the short story: Courage,
Disillusionment, Death, Futility.
[read: The Killers]
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
Thomas Lanier Williams (Mar. 26, 1911-Feb. 25, 1983)
Tennessee Williams – he was brilliant and prolific,
breathing life and passion into such memorable characters
as Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski in his critically
acclaimed A Streetcar Named Desire. And like them, he
was troubled and self-destructive, an abuser of alcohol
and drugs.
- He was awarded four Drama Critic Circle
Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes and the Presidential
Medal of Freedom. He was derided by critics and
blacklisted by Roman Catholic Cardinal
Spellman, who condemned one of his scripts as,
“revolting, deplorable, morally repellent,
offensive to Christian standards of decency.” He
was Tennessee Williams, one of
the greatest playwrights in American history.
Early Life
LIT 1
- Born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus,
Mississippi in 1911, Tennessee was the son of a
shoe company executive and a Southern belle.
- Williams described his childhood in Mississippi
as happy and carefree. This sense of belonging
and comfort were lost, however, when his family
moved to the urban environment of St. Louis,
Missouri. It was there he began to look inward,
and to write — “because I found life
unsatisfactory.”
- Williams’ early adult years were occupied with
attending college at three different universities, a
brief stint working at his father’s shoe company,
and a move to New Orleans, which began a
lifelong love of the city and set the locale for A
Streetcar Named Desire.
Rising Career
- Williams spent a number of years traveling
throughout the country and trying to write. His
Modernism and the American Playwrights
first critical acclaim came in 1944 when The
Glass Menagerie opened in Chicago and went to
Broadway. It won the New York Drama Critics’
Circle Award and, as a film, the New York Film
Critics’ Circle Award.
- At the height of his career in the late 1940s and
1950s, Williams worked with the premier artists
of the time, most notably Elia Kazan, the director
for stage and screen productions of A Streetcar
Named Desire, and the stage productions of
Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and
Sweet Bird of Youth. Kazan also directed
Williams’ film Baby Doll. Like many of his
works, Baby Doll was simultaneously praised and
denounced for addressing raw subject matter in a
straightforward realistic way.
Down Spiral to Tragedy
- The 1960s were perhaps the most difficult years
for Williams, as he experienced some of his
harshest treatment from the press. In 1961, he
wrote The Night of the Iguana; and in 1963, The
Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.
- His plays, which had long received criticism for
openly addressing taboo topics, were finding
more and more detractors.
- Around this time, Williams’ longtime
Artistic Craft
companion, Frank Merlo, died of cancer.
Williams began to depend more and more on
alcohol and drugs and though he continued to
write, completing a book of short stories and
another play, he was in a downward
spiral. In 1969 he was hospitalized by his brother.
After his release from the hospital in the 1970s,
Williams wrote plays, a memoir, poems, short
stories and a novel.
- In 1975, he published memoirs, which detailed
his life and discussed his addiction to drugs and
alcohol, as well as his homosexuality.
- In 1980, Williams wrote Clothes for a Summer
Hotel, based on the lives of Zelda and F. Scott
Fitzgerald.
- Only three years later, Tennessee Williams died
in a New York City hotel filled with half-finished
bottles of wine and pills. It was in this
desperation, which Williams had so closely
known and so honestly written about, that we can
find a great man and an important body of work.
His genius was in his honesty and in the
perseverance to tell his stories.
- American theater grew out of the milieu of
sweeping economic, political, social, and
cultural changes that occurred in the last half of
the nineteenth century and throughout the
twentieth. The fallout of the Industrial Revolution
and the shockwave of new psychological theories
would resonate throughout American culture,
making strong impact on a burgeoning American
population realigned by surges of immigrants,
traumatized by war, and increasingly uprooted in
the shift from a primarily agrarian to an
urban/suburban society.
- Ironically, American playwrights in their reach to
clarify and give meaning to the turbulent changes
of this “modern” world would draw heavily from
the sources that had helped effect change.
Experimenting in symbiotic relationship with
European writers and artists of other genres,
American dramatists found inspiration in the
intellectual “arguments” of Charles Darwin,
Karl Marx, and Herbert Spencer and
especially the psychoanalytical concepts of
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The vibrancy of
the themes and forms of modern American drama
resound with these influences.
- Tennessee Williams crafted forceful statements
of psychological and spiritual displacement, loss
of connections, loneliness, self-deception, and
LIT 1
retrogression into sexual hedonism. In
confronting problems of the lost individual in an
industrial, mechanized society, they lay bare
human passions, exposed the raw tensions of the
American family, and challenged
Victorian/Puritan morality. Whether delivered in
the shocking hyperbole of overstatement, the
ambiguity of images and symbols, or the
heartbreak tone of understatement, the messages
wrought indictments of a wasteland in which the
term “heroic” was redefined.
- The protagonist was no longer an idealistic
“doer” who ventured out to save the day. He was
an alienated tragic hero seeking to belong in an
eroded jungle society, or an everyman trying to
cope through false compensations of pipe
dreams, or a muted survivor living a life of quiet
desperation, a victim of societal pressure, animal
desires, and loss of integrity.
- His themes revolve around the old South’s lost
aristocracy in tension with the invading
materialism of the reconstructed South.
- Many of his female characters are individuals
psychologically trapped in the myths, self-
delusions, and pretensions of the “gentility” of
the agrarian, “Cavalier” past. Some are of the
Southern wench variety, passionate in behavior,
sex-driven, in conflict with Puritan/Victorian
mores.
- Some of his male characters are lusty, self-
serving, rednecks; others are poet realists who try
to find their way in the shifting economic profile,
changed values, and altered morality of a new
South. Yet others are dull, unimaginative types,
representative of Williams’ view of those who
have bought into the herd mentality of the
American shoe-factory world.
- Williams’ dramatic power comes not only from
the content of his plays, but also from his non-
linear structural patterns and the devices of
technical support he integrates into his scripts.
His use of symbols such as the animal figures in
The Glass Menagerie, his use of music, lighting,
and set design to move his narrator in and out of
memory; his destination names for trolleys and
the end-of-the-line location in Streetcar, and
certainly the vibrant images in his play titles
reinforce, through nuance and insinuation, his
characterizations and basic themes add a haunting
third dimension to his plays.
Setting
- The setting for A Streetcar Named Desire takes
place two years after the end of World War II.
The entire play is staged in a modest, cramped
two-room flat in a particularly low-income are of
the French Quarter in New Orleans. All of the
action takes place on the first floor of a two-
bedroom apartment. The set is designed so that
the audience can also see outside and observe
characters on the street. In the play, the tightly
squeezed setting is a key factor in the drama: it
provides instant conflict.
- This simple set is viewed by the various
characters in sharply contrasting ways — ways
that directly reflect the dynamics of the
characters. This clash of views speaks to the heart
of the plot of this popular play.
The Real New Orleans
- Though these are actual places, the names also
have significant allusions in the play.
o Elysian Fields Avenue – a broad, straight avenue
named after the Avenue des Champs-Elysees in
Paris.
o L & N tracks – the Louisville and Nashville
railroad operating freight and passenger services
in the Southeast of United States.
o the river – refers to the Mississippi River that
down streams from New Orleans to the Gulf of
Mexico.
o The French Quarter – it was established by the
French in 1718, which is why it’s also known as
the vieux carre (old square in French). It is the
city’s historic heart, famous for its vibrant
nightlife and colorful buildings with cast-iron
balconies. Crowd-pleasing Bourbon Street
features jazz clubs, Cajun eateries and raucous
bars serving potent cocktails. Quieter streets lead
to the French Market, with gourmet food and
local crafts, and to Jackson Square where street
performers entertain in front of soaring St. Louis
Cathedral.
o Preservation Hall – a musical venue in the
French Quarter that perpetuate traditional New
Orleans Jazz.
o Lake Pontchartrain – a brackish estuary located
in southeastern Louisiana that covers an area of
630 square miles with depth of 12 to 20 feet.
LIT 1
o Bourbon Street – a historic street in the heart of
the French Quarter. Famous for its many bars and
strip clubs.
o Desire Street – named after Desiree Gautler
Montrieul, the daughter of Robert Gautler de
Montrieul who owned the plantation on the land
where the street now lies.
o Canal Street – a major thoroughfare in the city
of New Orleans. Served historically as the
dividing line between the colonial-era city and the
newer American Sector, todays Central Business
District.
Characters:
Stella Kowalski – Blanche’s sister; left family estate to
marry and make a life for herself
Harold Mitchell – Stanley’s friend; known as Mitch
Eunice & Steve Hubbell – neighbors of Stella and
Stanley Kowalski
Blanche Dubois – high school English teacher; tried to
save family estate (Belle Reve)
- Innocent-like in appearance but internally
damaged by the succeeding tragedies that befell
her, Blanche lived in an imagined world of the
past where gentility and refined delicate
sensitivity still mattered. She presents herself to
others as cultured and intelligent, detesting vulgar
remarks and actions. The problem with her is that
she only tells only what ought to be the truth.
- She was married to a young boy who has
tenderness and softness which wasn't like a man's,
even though he wasn't the least bit effeminate
looking. It turns out, as to her discovery, that the
boy was gay, and was having a relationship with
an older man. Her revulsion and deliberate act of
cruelty against him pushed the boy to suicide.
This was followed by a series of deaths in her
family and the ultimate loss of her ancestral
home. To escape from these brutalities and to
escape from the lonely void created by her young
husband's death, Blanche turned to alcohol and
sexual promiscuity.
- Blanche gave herself to men for other reasons.
She felt that she had failed her young husband in
some way. Therefore, she tried to alleviate her
guilt by giving herself at random to other young
men. And by sleeping with others, she was trying
to fill the void left by Allan's death — intimacies
with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my
empty heart with. And she was particularly drawn
to very young men who would remind her of her
young husband. During those years of
promiscuity, Blanche had never been able to find
anyone to fill the emptiness.
- Despite these, she still felt pure and innocent,
playing the ideal type of person she would like to
be. For her, it is only her body that she has given
to strangers, but not her whole being.
Stanley Kowalski – Stella’s husband; a blue-collar
worker
- Somewhat seen by most as a brute, Stanley can
be understood as being the practical and
straightforward guy. He is loud, and dresses like
one, hating refinements and subtleties and most
especially pretensions. This is reflected as how
people see him as common, crude and vulgar.
Stan is also run by his basic instincts, the reason
why his animal-like behavior often rises. This can
be seen the way he equates love with sex, his
exuberating masculinity, and his territorial
attitude under the guise of the Napoleonic Code.
And when that territory is threatened, he strikes
back with hostility.
The Napoleonic Code (France, 1804) – French civil
code by Napoleon Bonapart enacted on March 21, 1804,
and still extant, with revisions. It was the main influence
on the 19th-century civil codes of most countries of
continental Europe and Latin America. Under the code all
male citizens are equal.
- The first book of the code deals with the law of
persons: the enjoyment of civil rights, the
protection of personality, domicile, guardianship,
tutorship, relations of parents and children,
marriage, personal relations of spouses, and the
dissolution of marriage were favored in divorce
proceedings. Many of those provisions were
reformed only in the second half of the 20th
century.
- The second book deals with the law of things: the
regulation of property rights — ownership,
usufruct, and servitudes.
- The third book deals with the methods of
acquiring rights: by succession, donation,
marriage settlement, and obligations. In the last
chapters, the code regulates a number of
nominate contracts, legal and conventional
LIT 1
mortgages, limitations of actions, and
prescriptions of rights.
Scene Two
“Early the following evening, Stella and Stanley
talk while Blanche is in the bathroom preparing to go out
to dinner with Stella because it is poker night. She
mentions that Belle Reve has been lost and asks Stanley
to be nice to Blanche. She tells him of the difficult life
Blanche has led and that she has never told Blanche about
the apartment and neighborhood. Stanley asks about the
plantation and becomes angry as Stella tries to downplay
the loss. He tells her that the Napoleonic code means that
he, because he is married to her, owned part of Belle Reve
and they have been swindled. He goes to Blanche’s trunk
and pulls out her clothes and jewelry to prove that she has
money when they do not. Stella becomes angry, tells him,
“You have no idea how stupid and horrid you’re being”
(36) and leaves. Stanley stays in the kitchen waiting for
Blanche. When she enters from the bathroom, Stanley
mentions her elegant and expensive clothes, and they talk
about her appearance and his manliness. When Stella calls
out from the street, Blanche asks her to get her a lemon-
coke at the drugstore, obviously a ploy to get her out of
hearing distance. Stanley’s comment — “If I didn’t know
that you was my wife’s sister, I’d get ideas about you”
(41)—makes clear the underlying sex that is part of their
new relationship. Stanley asks to see papers related to the
loss of Belle Reve. Blanche says that everything she owns
is in her trunk. He rummages through the trunk, and she
reaches in to get the box containing her papers. Stanley
notices other papers under the box. When Blanche tells
him that they are “love letters all from one boy” (41), he
grabs them. She demands them back and says, “Now that
you’ve touched them, I’ll burn them!” (42), adding that
they are poems written by the young husband she hurt. As
Stanley looks through the papers, she tells him that blame
for the loss of the plantation belongs to “our improvident
grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers [who]
exchanged the land for their epic fornications” (43).
While explaining the Napoleonic code, Stanley also
mentions that Stella is pregnant. Stella returns, Stanley
takes the papers into the bedroom, and Blanche joins
Stella outside. After Blanche tells her that she treated
Stanley’s comments as a joke, she admits to flirting with
him. The poker players arrive, and Blanche and Stella
leave for dinner and a show.”
Vocabulary:
• absconding – running away, usually after having
stolen something
• airily – in a light or frivolous manner
• atomizer – a type of spray dispenser that turns
liquids (perfume, in this usage) into a fine mist
• fornications – sexual acts
• gander – a look
• improvident – careless, reckless, irresponsible
• perpetrated – committed, carried out
• peruse – to read carefully or thoroughly
• swindled – cheated
• tiara – a type of jeweled headdress resembling a
crown
• treachery – betrayal, disloyalty
Scene Five
“Later, as Blanche is writing a letter and reading
it to Stella, the Hubbells have a loud and violent fight.
Eunice rushes out saying she is going to the police.
Stanley and Blanche exchange insults, and he brings up
the hotel where she was a prostitute. He exits. Blanche
asks Stella if she has heard any rumors. When she says no,
Blanche begins to hint about what happened in the hotel.
When Stella brings Blanche a drink, Blanche becomes
emotional about the support that Stella gives her and
promises to leave soon. She tells Stella that Mitch is
coming that evening and admits to wanting him but
needing “to deceive him enough to make him—want me”
(81). Stanley returns, and Stella leaves with him,
cautioning Blanche not to have anything more to drink. A
young man arrives collecting for the newspaper, and
Blanche flirts with him and kisses him as he tries to leave.
Mitch then arrives with roses.”
Understanding the Play
- The structure of this play is best seen through a
series of confrontations between Blanche DuBois
and Stanley Kowalski. In the first scene the
confrontation is not so severe, but it increases in
severity until one of the two must be destroyed.
To understand fully the scenes of confrontations,
readers should have a good understanding of what
is at stake in each encounter.
- The most obvious difference between the worlds
of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski lies in
the diversity of their backgrounds. Blanche
belonged to the aristocratic and refined as
compared to Stanley who came from the working
class. This stark contrast reflects why Blanche’s
kind prefers tea parties, luncheons and cocktails.
Stanley prefers playing poker and bowling. It also
shows how each value money, where Stan openly
admits the need for money as the means to
LIT 1
happiness. Stanley's interest in Belle Reve centers
only upon the fact that under the Napoleonic
Code he loses money. He cares nothing for the
tradition of the place but only its financial value.
Money, to his type, is a power that can buy some
basic wants or pleasures of life. This gives him a
type of animal superiority to the world of people
(like the DuBois) who do not understand the value
of money and then become destitute.
- A Kowalski, as seen in Stanley, is simple,
straightforward, and honest. He tolerates nothing
but the bare, unembellished truth. Blanche, so to
speak, puts a sugar-coated, romantic view on the
harshness of truth. This isn't lying to her. A lie,
for Blanche, would be a betrayal of herself, of
everything she believes in. Therefore, it would
not only be a verbal lie but also a lie in act.
Stanley abhors excuses. He accepts it for nothing
other than a lie and detests Blanche for deceiving
others with it. This conflict is irresolvable
because it originates in the essence of their
personalities. To concede to the other's view
entails self-destruction.
- Love is essential to both worlds but has entirely
different significance for each. Stanley needs love
to satisfy his animal desires. To him it is the
physical act of love, no more. Blanche's
sensitivity is the key to her approach to love. She
needs someone not to fulfill her basic physical
desires but to protect her or she feels the need of
giving herself to someone. Her concept of love is
on a higher level than Stanley's. Shunning the
brutality and animality of a Kowalski, she seeks
some type of communication, some capacity for
devotion. Desire isn't the lustful passion that
Stanley regards it, but it is a spiritual need.
Speaking of Mitch, Stella asks her, "Blanche, do
you want him?" She answers, "I want to rest. I
want to breathe quietly again." She seeks security
and protection for her sensitiveness against the
rough edges of her surroundings.
- Thus, the play is structured on the principle of
presenting the two worlds, establishing what each
world believes in, and then placing these worlds
in a series of direct confrontations until one is
destroyed.
On a Streetcar Named Success
- By Tennessee Williams; this essay appeared in
The New York Times Drama Section,
November 30, 1947 – four days before the New
York opening of A Streetcar Named Desire.
“Sometime this month I will observe the third
anniversary of the Chicago opening of "The Glass
Menagerie," and even which terminated one part of my
life and began another about as different in all external
circumstances as could be well imagined. I was snatched
out of a virtual oblivion and thrust into sudden
prominence, and from the precarious tenancy of furnished
rooms about the country I was removed to a suite in a first-
class Manhattan hotel. My experience was not unique.
Success has often come that abruptly into the lives of
Americans.
“No, my experience was not exceptional, but neither
was it quite ordinary, and if you are willing to accept the
somewhat eclectic proposition that I had not been writing
with such an experience in mind--and many people are not
willing to believe that a playwright is interested in
anything but popular success--there may be some point in
comparing the two estates.
“The sort of life which I had had previous to this
popular success was one that required endurance, a life of
clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding
on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than
the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life
because it was the sort of life for which the human
organism is created. I was not aware of how much vital
energy had gone into this struggle until the struggle was
removed. I was out on a level plateau with my arms still
thrashing and my lungs still grabbing at air that no longer
resisted. This was security at last.
“I sat down and looked about me and was suddenly
very depressed. I thought to myself, this is just a period of
adjustment. Tomorrow morning, I will wake up in this
first-class hotel suite above the discreet hum of an East
Side boulevard and I will appreciate its elegance and
luxuriate in its comforts and know that I have arrived at
our American plan of Olympus. Tomorrow morning when
I look at the green satin sofa, I will fall in love with it. It
is only temporarily that the green satin looks like slime on
stagnant water.
“But in the morning the inoffensive little sofa looked
more revolting than the night before and I was already
getting too fat for the $125 suit which a fashionable
acquaintance had selected for me. In the suite things
began to break accidentally. An arm came off the sofa.
Cigarette burns appeared on the polished surfaces of the
furniture. Windows were left open and a rainstorm
flooded the suite. But the maid always put it straight and
LIT 1
the patience of the management was inexhaustible. Late
parties could not offend them seriously. Nothing short of
a demolition bomb seemed to bother my neighbors.
“I lived on room-service. But in this, too, there was a
disenchantment. Sometime between the moment when I
ordered dinner over the 'phone and when it was rolled into
my living room like a corpse on a rubber-wheeled table, I
lost all interest in it. Once I ordered a sirloin steak and a
chocolate sundae, but everything was so cunningly
disguised on the table that I mistook the chocolate sauce
for gravy and poured it over the sirloin steak. Of course,
all this was the more trivial aspect of a spiritual
dislocation that began to manifest itself in far more
disturbing ways. I soon found myself becoming
indifferent to people. A well of cynicism rose in me.
Conversations all sounded like they had been recorded
years ago and were being played back on a turntable.
Sincerity and kindliness seemed to have gone out of my
friends' voices. I suspected them of hypocrisy. I stopped
calling them, stopped seeing them. I was impatient of
what I took to be inane flattery.
“I got so sick of hearing people say, "I loved your
play!" that I could not say thank you any more. I choked
on the words and turned rudely away from the usually
sincere person. I no longer felt any pride in the play itself
but began to dislike it, probably because I felt too lifeless
inside ever to create another. I was walking around dead
in my shoes, and I knew it but there was no one I knew or
trusted sufficiently, at that time, to take him aside and tell
him what was the matter.
“This curious condition persisted about three months,
till late spring, when I decided to have another eye
operation, mainly because of the excuse it gave me to
withdraw from the world behind a gauze mask. It was my
fourth eye operation, and perhaps I should explain that I
had been afflicted for about five years with a cataract on
my left eye which required a series of needling operations
and finally an operation on the muscle of the eye. (The
eye is still in my head. So much for that.)
“Well, the gauze mask served a purpose. While I was
resting in the hospital the friends whom I had neglected
or affronted in one way or another began to call on me and
now that I was in pain and darkness, their voices seemed
to have changed, or rather that unpleasant mutation which
I had suspected earlier in the season had now disappeared
and they sounded now as they used to sound in the
lamented days of my obscurity. Once more they were
sincere and kindly voices with the ring of truth in them.
“When the gauze mask was removed, I found myself
in a readjusted world. I checked out of the handsome suite
at the first-class hotel, packed my papers and a few
incidental belongings and left for Mexico, and elemental
country where you can quickly forget the false dignities
and conceits imposed by success, a country where
vagrants innocent as children curl up to sleep on
pavements and human voices especially when their
language is not familiar to the ear, are soft as birds'. My
public self, that artifice of mirrors, did not exist here and
so my natural being was resumed.
“Then, as a final act of restoration, I settled for a while
at Chapala to work on a play called "The Poker Night,"
which later became "A Streetcar Named Desire." It is only
in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction,
for the actual world is less intense than the world of his
invention and consequently his life, without recourse to
violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right
condition for him is that in which his work is not only
convenient but unavoidable.
“This is an over-simplification. One does not escape
that easily from the seductions of an effete way of life.
You cannot arbitrarily say to yourself, I will now continue
my life as it was before this thing. Success happened to
me. But once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life
without struggle you are equipped with the basic means
of salvation. Once you know this is true, that the heart of
man, his body and his brain, are forged in a white-hot
furnace for the purpose of conflict (the struggle of
creation) and that with the conflict removed, the man is a
sword cutting daisies, that not privation but luxury is the
wolf at the door and that the fangs of this wolf are all the
little vanities and conceits and laxities that Success is heir
to--why, then with this knowledge you are at least in a
position of knowing where danger lies.
“You know, then, that the public Somebody you are
when you "have a name" is a fiction created with mirrors
and that the only somebody worth being is the solitary and
unseen you that existed from your first breath and which
is the sum of your actions and so is constantly in a state of
becoming under your own volition--and knowing these
things, you can even survive the catastrophe of Success!
“It is never altogether too late, unless you embrace the
Bitch Goddess, as William James called her, with both
arms and find in her smothering caresses exactly what the
homesick little boy in you always wanted, absolute
protection and utter effortlessness. Security is a kind of
death, I think, and it can come to you in a storm of royalty
checks beside a kidney-shaped pool in Beverly Hills or
LIT 1
anywhere at all that is removed from the conditions that
made you an artist, if that's what you are or were intended
to be. Ask anyone who has experienced the kind of
success I am talking about--What good is it? Perhaps to
get an honest answer you will have to give him a shot of
truth-serum but the word he will finally groan is
unprintable in genteel publications.
“Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human
affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral
conviction, that first made the experience of living
something that must be translated into pigment or music
or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that's
dynamic and expressive--that's what's good for you if
you're at all serious in your aims. William Saroyan wrote
a great on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success
worth having. "In the time of your life--live!" That time is
short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while
I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of
the clock is Loss, Loss, Loss unless you devote your heart
to its opposition.”
BLACK MAN IN A WHITE MAN’S COURT
Rolihlala Mandela – was born into the Madiba clan in
the village of Mvezo, in the Eastern Cape, on 18 July
1918.
- His mother was Nonqaphi Nosekeni and his
father was Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla
Mandela, principal counsellor to the Acting King
of Thembu people, Jongintaba Dalindyebo. In
1930, when he was 12 years old, his father died,
and the young Rolihlahla became of a ward of
Jongintaba at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni1.
- Hearing the elders’ stories of his ancestors’ valor
during the wars of resistance, he dreamed also of
making his contribution to the freedom struggle
of his people.
- He attended primary school in Qunu where his
teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave him the name
Nelson, in accordance with the custom of giving
all schoolchildren “Christian” names.
- He completed his Junior Certificate at
Clarkebury Boarding Institute and went on to
Healdtown, a Wesleyan secondary school of
some repute, where hi matriculated.
- Mandela began his studies for a Bachelor of Arts
degree at the University College of Fort Hare but
did not complete the degree there as he was
expelled for joining in a student protest.
- On his return to the Great Place at Mqhekezweni,
the King was furious and said if he didn’t return
to Fort Hare he would arrange wives for him and
his cousin justice. They ran away to
Johannesburg instead, arriving there in 1941.
There he worked as a mine security officer and
after meeting Walter Sisulu, an estate agent, he
was introduced to Lazer Sidelsky.
- He then did his articles through a firm of
attorneys – Witkin, Eidelman and Sidelsky. He
completed his BA through the University of
South Africa and went back to Fort Hare for his
graduation in 1943.
- Meanwhile, he began studying for an LLB at the
University of the Witwatersrand. By his own
admission, he was a poor student and left the
university in 1952 without graduating. He only
started studying again through the University of
London after his imprisonment in 1962 but also
did not complete that degree.
- In 1989, while in the last months of his
imprisonment, he obtained an LLB through the
University of South Africa. He graduated in
absentia at a ceremony in Cape Town.
Entering Politics
- Mandela, while increasingly politically involved
from 1942, only joined the African National
Congress in 1944 when he helped to form the
ANC Youth League (ANCYL).
- In 1944, he married Walter Sisulu’s cousin,
Evelyn Mase, a nurse. They had two sons,
Madiba Thembekile "Thembi" and
Makgatho, and two daughters both called
Makaziwe, the first of whom died in infancy. He
and his wife divorced in 1958.
- Mandela rose through the ranks of the ANCYL
and through its efforts, the ANC adopted a more
radical mass-based policy, the Programme of
Action, in 1949 In 1952 he was chosen as the
National Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance
Campaign with Maulvi Cachalia as his deputy.
This campaign of civil disobedience against six
unjust laws was a joint programme between the
ANC and the South African Indian Congress. He
and 19 others were charged under the
Suppression of Communism Act for their part
in the campaign and sentenced to nine months of
hard labor, suspended for two years.
- A two-year diploma in law on top of his BA
allowed Mandela to practice law, and in August
1952, he and Oliver Tambo established South
Africa’s first black law firm, Mandela & Tambo.
LIT 1
- At the end of 1952, he was banned for the first
time. As a restricted person he was only permitted
to watch in secret as the Freedom Charter was
adopted in Kliptown on 26 June 1955.
The Treason Trial
- Mandela was arrested in a countrywide police
swoop on 5 December 1956, which led to the
1956 Treason Trial. Men and women of all races
found themselves in the dock in the marathon trial
that only ended when the last 28 accused,
including Mandela, were acquitted on 29 March
1961.
- On 21 March 1960, police killed 69 unarmed
people in a protest in Sharpeville against the
passed laws. This led to the country’s first state of
emergency and the banning of the ANC and the
Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) on 8 April.
Mandela and his colleagues in the Treason Trial
were among thousands detained during the state
of emergency.
- During the trial Mandela married a social worker,
Winnie Madikizela, on 14 June 1958. They had
two daughters, Zenani and Zindziswa. The
couple divorced in 1996.
- Days before the end of the Treason Trial,
Mandela travelled to Pietermaritzburg to speak
at the All-in Africa Conference, which resolved
that he should write to Prime Minister
Verwoerd requesting a national convention on a
non-racial constitution, and to warn that should
he not agree there would be a national strike
against South Africa becoming a republic. After
he and his colleagues were acquitted in the
Treason Trial, Mandela went underground and
began planning a national strike for 29, 30 and 31
March.
- In the face of massive mobilization of state
security, the strike was called off early. In June
1961, he was asked to lead the armed struggle and
helped to establish Umkhonto weSizwe (Spear
of the Nation), which launched on 16 December
1961 with a series of explosions.
- On 11 January 1962, using the adopted name
David Motsamayi, Mandela secretly left South
Africa. He travelled around Africa and visited
England to gain support for the armed struggle.
Release from Prison
He received military training in Morocco and
Ethiopia and returned to South Africa in July
1962. He was arrested in a police roadblock
outside Howick on 5 August while returning from
KwaZulu-Natal, where he had briefed ANC
President Chief Albert Luthuli about his trip.
- He was charged with leaving the country without
a permit and inciting workers to strike. He was
convicted and sentenced to five years'
imprisonment, which he began serving at the
Pretoria Local Prison. On 27 May 1963, he was
transferred to Robben Island and returned to
Pretoria on 12 June. Within a month police raided
Liliesleaf, a secret hideout in Rivonia,
Johannesburg, used by ANC and Communist
Party activists, and several of his comrades were
arrested.
- On 9 October 1963, Mandela joined 10 others on
trial for sabotage in what became known as the
Rivonia Trial. While facing the death penalty his
words to the court at the end of his famous
"Speech from the Dock" on 20 April 1964
became immortalized: “I have fought against
white domination, and I have fought against
black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a
democratic and free society in which all persons
live together in harmony and with equal
opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live
for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal
for which I am prepared to die.”
- On 11 June 1964, Mandela and seven other
accused, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada,
Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Denis
Goldberg, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew
Mlangeni, were convicted and the next day were
sentenced to life imprisonment. Goldberg was
sent to Pretoria Prison because he was white,
while the others went to Robben Island.
- Mandela’s mother died in 1968 and his eldest son,
Thembi, in 1969. He was not allowed to attend
their funerals.
- On 31 March 1982, Mandela was transferred to
Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town with Sisulu,
Mhlaba and Mlangeni. Kathrada joined them in
October. When he returned to the prison in
November 1985 after prostate surgery, Mandela
was held alone. Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee
visited him in hospital. Later Mandela initiated
talks about an ultimate meeting between the
apartheid government and the ANC.
- On 12 August 1988, he was taken to hospital
where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. After
more than three months in two hospitals he was
LIT 1
transferred on 7 December 1988 to a house at Asians and Coloreds – people of mixed race. In white-
Victor Verster Prison near Paarl where he spent ruled South Africa, black people were denied basic human
his last 14 months of imprisonment. He was rights and political rights. Their labor was exploited, their
released from its gates on Sunday 11 February lives segregated.
1990, nine days after the unbanning of the ANC
- Under Apartheid, racist beliefs were enshrined in
and the PAC and nearly four months after the
law and any criticism of the law was suppressed.
release of his remaining Rivonia comrades.
Apartheid was racism made law. It was a system
Throughout his imprisonment he had rejected at
dictated in the minutest detail as to how and
least three conditional offers of release.
where the large black majority would live, work
- Mandela immersed himself in official talks to end
and die. This system of institutionalized racial
white minority rule and in 1991 was elected ANC
discrimination defied the principles of the United
President to replace his ailing friend, Oliver
Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration
Tambo. In 1993, he and President FW de Klerk
of Human Rights.
jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize and on 27
April 1994 he voted for the first time in his life. Under Apartheid:
President - A population register is established to fix the
racial classification of every South African
- On 10 May 1994, he was inaugurated as South
citizen.
Africa’s first democratically elected President.
- Marriage or living together between whites and
On his 80th birthday in 1998, he married Graça
non-whites is a criminal offense.
Machel, his third wife.
- Towns and rural areas are divided into zones in
- True to his promise, Mandela stepped down in
which ownership of property, commercial
1999 after one term as President. He continued to
activity and residence is limited to people of a
work with the Nelson Mandela Children’s
specific racial group. Africans travel into white
Fund he set up in 1995 and established the
areas to work, but they require passes to do so.
Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Mandela
- The universities are reserved for white students,
Rhodes Foundation.
while 'apartness' is carried to extreme lengths in
- In April 2007, his grandson, Mandla Mandela,
the educational arrangements for everyone else:
was installed as head of the Mvezo Traditional
Coloreds, Asians and even the major African
Council at a ceremony at the Mvezo Great Place.
tribal groups (Sotho, Xhosa and Zulu) are now
- Nelson Mandela never wavered in his devotion to
provided with colleges of their own. In everyday
democracy, equality and learning. Despite
life separate facilities are introduced where
terrible provocation, he never answered racism
previously there was no formal segregation – in
with racism. His life is an inspiration to all who
buses and trains, post offices and libraries,
are oppressed and deprived; and to all who are
cinemas and theatres.
opposed to oppression and deprivation.
- The non-white population of South Africa is
- He died at his home in Johannesburg on 5
progressively excluded from the nation's political
December 2013.
processes. The Colored citizens of the Cape
If you are NOT WHITE, you cannot: Province, for example, are deprived in 1956 (after
a long legal battle) of their previous electoral
• Take up a skilled trade rights.
• Travel where you want - The advocates of apartheid claim that these
• Live in areas reserved for white people limitations are balanced by a separate political
• Own land system designed for the African majority. The
• Go to university Promotion of Self Government Act, in 1959,
• Receive the same education as white people arranges for the creation of ten African
• Vote homelands (also known as Bantustans) which
will be to some extent self-governing, though
Apartheid – consisted of numerous laws that allowed the
their policies remain subject to veto by the
ruling white minority in South Africa to segregate, exploit
national administration in Pretoria. The Transkei,
and terrorize the vast majority: Africans, mostly, but also
LIT 1
dating from 1959, is the largest and earliest of the substantially equal, so allowing the government to
Bantustans. provide better facilities to whites.
- In 1948, the National Party, led by Dr. Daniel
- Every amenity imaginable was subject to racial
Malan, won a General Election and promised to
categorization, from taxis and ambulances, parks,
introduce Apartheid (separation) into South
maternity wards and graveyards to walkways
Africa. There were already a number of laws in
over roads and parking spaces in drive-in
place, e.g. the Native Land Acts and laws against
cinemas. Beaches were strictly segregated with
marriages between the races, that separated black
those offering more facilities, bathing and interest
and white South Africans. However, these were
(such as Boulders Beach) designated 'White
to be developed by a series of grand and petty
only'. Africans were only permitted on Mnandi
Apartheid laws.
Beach, and although coloreds were allocated
Grand Apartheid Laws: more coastal areas these were unattractive and
lacking in facilities.
o The Population Registration Act – this grouped
- In the mid-fifties, the government attempted to
every South African into a particular race - white,
further restrict racially mixed gatherings by
Indian, colored (mixed race) and black (Bantu).
amending the Group Areas Act to prevent
Only whites could vote, and the opportunities
anyone going to a restaurant, a concert or the
available to each group decreased according to
cinema in an area not zoned for their racial group.
their race.
With the threat of large fines, only a few groups,
o The Mixed Marriages Act – this made it a crime
such as the National Union of South African
for any marriage to take place between a white
Students (NUSAS) and the Liberal Party, dared
person and a person of any other racial group.
continue mixed social gatherings.
o The Immorality Act – this made it a crime for
- The Native Laws Amendment Act (1957)
any sexual act to be committed between a white
prohibited Africans from going to church
person and a person of any other racial group.
services in white areas. However, despite the lack
Between 1950 and 1985 there were more than
of protest by the Dutch Reformed Church, the
24,000 prosecutions and nearly half (11,614)
law was not enforced, and some churches became
were convictions.
the rare public places where cross-racial
o The Group Areas Act – this divided South
gatherings persisted.
Africa up into different areas where the different
- Somewhat ironically, the only other places where
race groups could live. 84% of the land was given
this occurred were in nightclubs such as the
to the whites, even though they were only 15% of
Catacombs and Navigators' Den, famous for
the total population. Blacks were only given 14%
drug-dealing and prostitution.
of the land, known as the ‘Tribal Homelands’,
Mandela’s first major act of defiance was to form
even though they made up over 80% of the
South Africa’s first black law firm with his
population. If you were living in the ‘wrong’ area
colleague, Oliver Tambo. Soon after, Mandela
you had to move. Usually it was black and
began to lead the ANC, and was joined by many
colored people that had to move: out of 3.5
people, both black and white, who wanted to
million people who had to leave their homes
speak out against apartheid. Mandela hoped that
under this act between 1951 and 1986, only 2%
peaceful protest could get rid of the policy, but
were white.
what he was trying to do was very dangerous, and
o The Pass Laws – these laws made it compulsory
in 1956, Mandela and 155 other people were
for blacks to carry pass books (identity cards) at
arrested and imprisoned for treason. It was only
all times, which allowed them to have permission
after a trial lasting five years that he was set free.
to be in a white area for a limited amount of time.
In 1960, some people held a demonstration
If they did not have their pass, blacks could be
against apartheid at Sharpeville, near
arrested and imprisoned.
Johannesburg. The police shot dead 69 black
Petty Apartheid Laws – segregated everyday places. people. Despite this, the government blamed the
The Separate Amenities Act of 1953 included a clause ANC, and subsequently banned the organization.
stating that separate facilities no longer had to be It was at this point that instead of being the leader
of the ANC, Mandela became that of a secret
LIT 1
army, known as Umkhonto we Sizwe, or ‘Spear
of the Nation’. As a result, he was hunted by the
police, and had to hide and use disguise. He also
travelled to other countries to ask for help, but on
5th August 1962 Mandela was arrested again and
accused of plotting to overthrow the government.
In 1964, at the age of 46, he was given a life
sentence.
Disguised as a chauffeur, he was arrested by
police in 1962 (supposedly turned in by the CIA)
and jailed for five years for leaving the country
without a passport. On 5th August 1962, Nelson
Mandela was imprisoned for attempting to
overthrow South Africa’s apartheid rule.
When security police swooped down on the
African National Congress underground hideout
in 1963, they found a fanciful guerrilla warfare
document that would have terrorists from Russia
and Algeria landing by submarine. Mandela was
brought from prison to stand trial for treason
along with seven comrades. Defending himself,
Mandela gave his now-famous “black man in a
white man’s court.”
[read: On Freedom: Black Man in a White Court (Nelson
Mandela’s First Court Statement, 1962)]