QNo.

1:Mourning Becomes Electra, a trilogy by O’Neil, is the recreation of

Greek tragic play Oresteia, The play, giving rise to the grave Psychological
debates over human nature and sexual urges, was then written by the legend
Playwright Aeschylus. In the lines of Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus complex, the
play features murder, incest and revenge. “ Mourning Becomes Electra” can
be called a modern tragedy of “ Oresteia” were Neil has not only changed the
story but also altered the prime Greek belief that human actions and destiny
are Modeled and Molded by fate. Though they are influenced by fate to a
certain extent, yet O’Neil’s characters are to be held responsible personally
for their Psychological problems and immoral sexual impudence. Home
Coming is the first part of the trilogy of Mourning Becomes Electra.
Elaborate?

Answer No.1: O'Neill was an Irish American playwright and Nobel laureate in
literature. He was born on October 16, 1888. “Mourning Becomes Electra” is
considered to be one the finest works in English literature. From the end of the
nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth century, however, a different
approach has gradually taken shape. The former pointed at the significance of
myths in terms of their religious, psychological, and historical meaning, while the
latter explained their importance in terms of their peculiar language, which is the
language of symbol. The language of myth was thus taken to be significantly
related to the understanding of our own psyche. And yet, one has to bear in mind
that, in spite of the liberating aspects of his thought, the key word, actually, for the
system Freud developed is - control. The rationalistic element in Freud, as Lionel
Trilling was right to emphasize,5 is foremost in his system - by no means
secondary or accidental. Freud himself described the therapeutic aim of his
psychoanalytic method as 'the draining of the Zuyder Zee" - his aim, in other
words, was the control of the irrational, non-logical, 'night side' of man' s life. The
measures he, therefore, proposed were all aimed at the strengthening of the ego at
the expense of the id. Ironically, it was by adopting this approach that he actually
remained true to the ideals, and the ideology, of the pro-patriarchal cultural
background of the age that he was so insistent on opposing. Indeed, in spite of his
repeated criticism of it, Freud actually remained a devoted spokesman of the age of
Enlightenment. He spoke from within the limitations of the patriarchal culture of
the Western world, and his view on myths, based on his interpretation of dreams
(which he took to be in the service of the pleasure principle as opposed to the
reality principle) necessarily reflected the patterns prevailing in the culture he
spoke from.

1.As a modern tragedy of “ Oresteia”:

Thematically ‘“Mourning Becomes Electra”’ tells us that when a person crosses

the limits of  Nature, Reason and Truth , his doom becomes certain. It implies that
there is no role of fate in man’s destruction, death or life. It is only the Poetic
Justice which is the base of man’s happiness or sadness. Hence, the sense of doom
and fate which the Greek Tragedian intensified through the judgment of gods and
goddesses has equally well achieved and intensified through judgment of one’s
own guilt complex or by self-punishment in “Mourning Becomes Electra”. That is
why Orin is caught in the guilt of matricide which drives him to suicide. Moreover,
according to the psycho-analysis of the play, it is Oedipus Complex and Electra
Complex that disturb according to O’Neil, Oresties and Orin, Electra and Livinia
respectively. Now, we may safely say that in“ Mourning Becomes Electra”O’Neil
has discarded the Greek concept Fate is Character . We can add to the introduction
of the play by saying that it is a Melodrama as it satisfies all the requirements of a
Melodrama. We know that Melodrama is a kind of romantic, sensational,
sentimental and conventional drama with strict attention to poetic justice and
happy ending. Further we can claim that “Mourning Becomes Electra” not only
bears the melodrama plot but allegorical as well, as it is an adaptation of the Greek
Tragedy Oresteia by Aeschylus. . "Mourning Becomes Electra" can be called a
modern tragedy of "Oresteia" where Neil has not only changed the names of
characters as well as the story but also altered the prime Greek belief that human
actions and destiny are modelled and moulded by fate.

The play under the light of asked question can be discussed in its pure thematic
senses as following:

2.Oedipus and Electra complex:

Interpretations of O'Neill's play, and his work in general, usually state his
connection to Freud and orthodox psychoanalysis. It has been said that in treating
Orin' s youth and Christine' s death O' Neill relied on the ancient tale of Oedipus.10
That is why, as seen by psychoanalysis-oriented critics, the play resembles a case-
study rather than a powerful tragic drama. The source of the confusion is to be
found in the fact that O' Neill is wrongly believed to have relied on Freud's own
interpretation of the Oedipus, instead of the mythical story itself. We should,
therefore, turn our attention now to the central aspects of this related and equally
significant Western 'story '. The story of Oedipus in Sophocles' trilogy begins,
remarkably, after all the crucial events have already happened. The story is focused
upon Oedipus conducting a quest for the slayer of Laius, the former king of
Thebes, the discovery and punishment of the culprit being demanded by the oracle.
. In the lines of Sigmund Freud's "Oedipus Complex", the play features murder,
incest and revenge. Though they are influenced by fate to a certain extent, yet O'
Neil's characters are to be held responsible personally for their psychological
problems and immoral sexual impudence. "Home Coming" is the first part of the
trilogy of "Mourning Becomes Electra". The Electra complex is a psychoanalytic
term used to describe a girls sense of competition with her mother for the affection
of her father. It is comparable to the Oedipus complex. The influence of classical
literature can be categorized as under:

 A play based on the myth Oedipus Rex was written by Sophocles.

 Greek mythological character Oedipus.

 Killed his father and became the victim of his own fate.

By borrowing the word from Sophocles through "Oedipus Complex", Sigmund

Freud originated the theory that children of ages up to 5 are sexually desirous of
the parent of opposite gender. During this phase, the kids respond with a certain
level of jealousy and rivalry.The Mannon family becomes subject to Oedipus
complex when the selfish mother, Christine, fails to fulfil her motherly duties and
the children are subject to certain psychological fixations leading to Oedipus
complex or even Electra complex. Lavinia is the prime victim of this fixation
whereas Orin is also no exception to this complex. Both of them suffer and ruin
their lives under the influence of this complex.

3. Destiny and Fate:

The tragic destiny that befalls the characters in O'Neill's play is, thus, suggested to
be the necessary consequence of this fatal victory recorded in the plays of the
Greek dramatists. It would be appropriate therefore to look for the most revealing
clues in the part which brings into focus the relationship between Ezra Mannon and
his wife Christine. Far from being triumphant, the renowned judge and military
hero comes back from war with a growing sense of waste. Mourning becomes
Electra, widely known as the American tragedy. Characters are tragedy or destiny.
Fate plays a major role in Greek and Shakespearean tragedies. The tension between
Islam and the pride of freedom, love, death and life. The family lineage of New
England's religions is ancestral, not limited to a single generation. There is no
supernatural agency, including a playwright to create the page.

3. Psychological problems and immoral sexual impudence.

Eugene O'Neill's setting of the Electra tragedy at the end of the American Civil
War is a sprawling work of quite exquisite poetry, yet it is also flawed. Howard
Davies' production lifts this play into an extraordinary and memorable night in the
theatre minimizing the problems and emphasizing the greatness of this drama.
Helen Mirren, a star draw, heads the cast as Christine Mannon, the Clytemnestra
equivalent character. From the moment the audience enters and sees the majestic
set, a large colonial mansion with Greek revival pillars, the spacious veranda, the
underside of the portico covered with a faded and fraying version of the stars and
stripes of the American flag, they know that they are about to witness the grandeur
of a special dramatic event. 

When we come across the characters of the play as it started from Manon family
of New England , Ezra Menon the brigadier General and an ex- judge has gone to
participate in civil war and the mother Christine and the daughter Lavinia waits
for the return of Ezra Manon. Ezra Manon is to return as the war ended on
surrender of Lee’s forces. But when Ezra Manon returns the family members
were becomes happy but if we minutely observe the happy moment for the return
we will found that the family members only does show ups they in real sense not
looking happy because the familiar love is prevalent between them was not real
but was an illusion. Levinia is the daughter of Ezra Manon and she falls into the
love of Adam Brant who was the son of Lavonia’s Grand uncle who had seduced
the Canadian maid servant. Lavonia’s father was ill and so she went to New York
and then she met with Brant again it shows irresponsible daughter who gives
important to her boyfriend rather than her ill father. Lavinia was very dear to her
father. Brant was very close to his mother. The first part ends here and here we will
found Oedipus and Electra complex into the play. So the first part ends with the
analysis of Oedipus and Electra complex. O’ Neill broods over death and there is
in his, and there is in him a susceptibility to extremes of passion, will and
affliction, that one discerns in the Jacobean. So we can say that O’Neill vision of
life as something terryifying and magnificent and often quite horrible that makes
tragedies so powerful moving. The second part of the play is The Haunted in this
part Orin returns from the war. And was got injury. Levinia gives minute detail of
Christin’s room where her father’s dead body was lying. Manon realize that her
treachery and calls Lavinia for help. Lavinia rushes to her father. With his dying
effort, Ezra indicates his wife: “She’s guilty not medicine.” He asps and then dies.
Her strength gone, Christine collapse in a faint. So we will find that hoe O’Neill‘s
preoccupation with death and gloom makes him a kin of Webster and Ford, the
prominent Jacobean dramatists. Into the third part we will found that in to the third
part Lavinia has grown more beautiful like her mother and he brother has
incestuous love for her. Lavinia wanted to marry Orin but his wish will never
fulfill. Orin shoots himself and so Lavinia loves Peter but breaks relations with
him. In this part Orin and Lavinia are back after visiting the China and various
other Islands. O’Neill has used many symbols he has used sea symbol and
developed south Island motives which appear as peace, security, beauty, freedom
of conscience, soundlessness etc.
Question No. 2 Regarded by critics as Arthur Miller’s first successful play, All
My Sons presents a narrow slice of American middle-class life. The play’s
context is limited: A manufacturer sells defective parts to the military and
then covers up his crime by forcing his partner to take the blame. The ensuing
situation, however, is where the scope of the play enlarges, culminating in the
moment when the American Everyman must take a moral stand. Do you
agree or disagree? Defend your opinion.

Answer 2:

Society helps man to develop the human quality, the quality of thinking on a
subject. Without society nothing differentiates man from the beast. One can say
that society humanizes man. A man is generally defined by his social condition.
Primarily he belongs to his family, where he learns specific features to become a
member of the whole. Through his social life he learns values, way of thinking and
many other value orientation behaviour. It is this stage that he bears the major
responsibility to society. A person’s intellectual make up displays the clear imprint
of the life of society he lives in. All his activities are the expressions of the
historically formed social practice of humanity. The wealth and complexity of an
individual’s life is depended on the diversity of his links with the society as a
whole. This is why the level of individual development is an indication of the level
of development of society. The unique quality of an individual is that he dissolves
into society, but through his individuality he makes his contribution to the society.
He further proves that society shapes the human being, and the human being also
shapes the society. The history of mankind lives in the past. The past is the only
real thing happens in life. No matter how far one goes from the past, to some
extent it lives. With the development of civilization, differentiation of social
thinking took place. People acquired rights and duties, personal names and realised
the growing measure of personal responsibility. His this relation with society
changed his personality and he became a complex character. In the Feudal society
on the shoulder of the common toiler grew up an enormous parasitic tree with
kings or tsars as its summit. Not only the toilers but also the rulers bowed the knee
to the dogma of Holy Scripture and the image of the Almighty. The age of
Renaissance strongly developed the ideal of human beings blazing trails of
discovery into foreign lands, broadening the horizon of science, and creating
masterpieces of art and technical perfection. By this time common men became
aware of their civil and political rights. But also welcomed alienation in its wake.
Alienation with its dangerous forces became a threat to modern society. The
growing bureaucracy, utilitarianism and technologism in culture narrowed the
opportunities for individual to express and develop himself. Man became an
insignificant cog in the gigantic machine which was controlled by capital. Under
super power forces of alienation some people lived at the expense of other people’s
labour and every time human dignity was flouted and man’s physical and
intellectual powers were drained by exploitation. An individual should live freely
where he himself could be the chief goal of society, the object of all its plans and
provisions. He could then liberate another individual from exploitation, hunger and
poverty and reassert the sense of dignity. This is the kind of utopian society that
writers, socialists and scientists dreamed. Society is never made of chosen few but
of all genuine working people. A person with high ideals and creative activity can
genuinely change his surroundings.

Representation of American middle-class life

In All My Sons, the light is simply thrown on the social issues, following the
tradition of social problems dealt in the plays of Ibsen, Shaw and Galsworthy.
Miller explains that human being is placed in a situation whose forces are from
outside the life of the individual and tragedy permanently exists in that situation.
As a consequence the individual is not only attacked fiercely, he is degraded too.
Miller always believed that every individual should have dignity in their life and
tragedy reveals the truth concerning the society which frustrates and denies the
right to personal dignity. The function of the tragedy is to support the moral law
and to support the right of an individual. Hence Miller has paved the path for that
revival of the American theatre which started in 1959. Like O’Neill before him the
writers were obsessed with psychological and social issues and ignored to confront
the serious aspects of human situation. Miller’s success lies not that he was
sensitive to contemporary issues, but his ability to penetrate the abstract ideas,
whose existence and consequences, can be realized by human world. All My Sons
suggests Miller’s potential of becoming a great writer and a hope for a vital
American play, because it raises certain issues which if are not confronted, one can
never go beyond the idealistic egalitarianism of a postwar world. The title of the
play apparently suggests the moral, conveying the expression of Emersonian
transcendentalism or the most recent Marxism of Steinback. Joe Keller is brought
out from his disapproval of ultimate responsibility to his final acceptance of
recognizing the society as ‘all my sons’. It is not Joe Keller’s acceptance of being
guilty but his ability to recognize the necessary relationship between self and
society which is implied in his acceptance by the ideal of universal brotherhood.
Like Macbeth, Joe Keller, too, works his way to prosperity through unscrupulous
and dishonest means. Though he lacks the sensitiveness of Macbeth and does not
suffer the qualms of a guilty conscience like him, he does realize the full horror of
his deed and can’t escape from the consequence. The forces of evil outside
Macbeth are represented in part by Lady Macbeth and in part by the witches.
Similarly in All My Sons the private guilt of individual is matched against larger
social evil. Social pressure from outside world work upon Joe Keller and makes
him do what he does. Miller strikes a subtle balance between individual
responsibility and social pressures. Arthur Miller always professed that the society
and the family are two pulleys, one smaller than the other, but both joined together
by a common axle so that the movement of one has a corresponding reaction on the
other. Individual and society cannot be substituted for one another. Neither they
oppose each other. If they do so, the balance they constitute will collapse. It is
unwise to envisage relationship between man and society in the light of opposition.
It is through the effort of other men that man is worth what he is. Society
compromises precisely between two individuals. The play All My Sons depicts
that man can’t disown society for his family. Keller does that. He isolates himself
from others and thinks that his family can prosper at the expense of the society. Joe
Keller’s fanatic allegiance to a family centered dream and to hold it blindly, fails
him to recognize his place in society. He never realizes that his effort to and
confirm himself in his family’s eye has contributed to his downfall. As Barry
Gross points out, “ there is no zealot like a convert and there is probably no more
devoted parent than a neglected or an abandoned child.” (Gross 17) Keller devotes
himself to his family to compensate for his childhood losses. However, instead of
ensuring that the problem of the part is not repeated, he behaves in an opposite
manner and causes a complete breakdown of the family unit. Joe Keller is neither
malignant nor villainuous. His fault lies in his sidedness and in his myopic vision.
The play is also about betrayal, about fathers and sons, about America, about self-
deceit, about self-righteousness, about egotism presented as idealism, about a fear
of mortality, about guilt, about domestic life as evasion about the space between
appearance and reality, about the suspect nature of language, about denial, about
repression, about a kind of despair finessed into hope, about money, about an
existence resistant to needs, about a wish for innocence when, as Miller later says
in his autobiography, innocence kills, about a need for completion, about the gulf
between the times we live in and the people we wish to believe ourselves to be,
about the fragility of what we take to be reality about time as enemy and time as
moral force and so on.

Everyman must take a moral stand?

The play is an analogy between betrayal of Quentin’s friends and his wives and the
planned Nazi extermination of the Jews. It show an American professional man’s
manic desire to confess exhibitionistically, what he really feels, and how he is
different from callous mob. The psychological aspect of the play is in Quentin’s
mind, which is full of betrayal, hypocrisy and violence. In the term of sociological
aspect the innocence has much wider social implications in the world one lives and
is very different from that Quentin refers as “some kind of a paradise”. The
political moralists also contribute in killing of innocence of man by forming
House-Committee and ploting against innocent, independent minded thinkers and
intellectuals. Miller has dramatized this problem in The Crucible also through
allegorical frame work of witch-hunting. However the loss of innocence and
violence results into man’s atrocities on man. From social point of view the vital
social relationships exist between Lou and Mickey, Lou and Quentin and others are
important. The House Committee on UnAmerican Activities is yet, another
powerful social image of man’s suspicion and cruelty towards man. It richly
suggests how human relation fumble and fail and break down under social
pressure. Lou for example, a saintly professor of law and a suspected communist
sees this happening in his own relationship with wife. He tells Quentin, “It’s
shaken her terribly…whole relationship.” (151) A shadow of Miller’s own in Lou
and his communist associates in the past, in fact, Quentin tells Lou, “a radical is
not a leprosy… we only turned left because it seemed the truth was there.” (152)
What is more significant in the play is not whether Miller was a communist or not
but the tragic repercussion of the social forces on individual lives and social
relationships. Mickey, for instance, who too had been summoned by court for Un-
American activities, decides to name the names. Lou, who is certainly more honest
of the two says, “ If you do it… destroy my career.” (163) “After such friendship
such love between them! And for so many years!”(164) After this incident Lou and
Mickey break apart. There in lies the quintessence of tragedy. In the play Quentin’s
loyalty and integrity is constantly questioned. Quentin is committed to Lou,
fortunately for Quentin, when Lou is killed by a subway train, he feels genuine
relief and a secret sense of joy, “the joy I felt now that my danger had spilled out
on the subway track.” (184) He feels a sense of joy, “that joy, that when a burden
dies and leaves you safe.” Quentin understands his guilt but can’t absolve himself
from it and discovers the truth that he too has been an accomplice in the larger evil.
To Miller, Holocaust or anti semeticism is not limited to an event in Europe. It
opens the door to more disturbing questions, distant in time and place. Miller spoke
on Civil right movements, voiced on the atrocities of American government on
Vietnamese, totally belonging to another world. He feels that evils of Nazis still
exists in the society and everyone is aware of it. Through his plays and essays he
appeals to the people of international world to eliminate such social evils. He
faithfully represents the great ideas of liberty. Though he presents the tragic
predicament of the American individual in a regimented capitalist society, the
essence of his positive faith is that man’s life, any where, can be, will be better. It
is man who has to fight with any sort of corruption, social evils and political
prejudices for the sake of humanity. The only triumph for evil is that good men do
nothing. There is no doubt that Miller serves as a great defender of human rights.
Question No. 3 A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American
ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English
nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield - the weary,
demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on
Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this
gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and
the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep. Ernest Hemingway famously
said that he rewrote his ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get
the words right. What do you say about the nature of relationship between the
two lovers? How do you feel at the tragic ending of the novel?

World War I began in 1914 and ended on Nov. 11, 1918. Fought primarily
between the Triple Alliance powers of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire
and the Triple Entente countries of England, France, Russia, Italy, and the U.S.
(Italy defected from the Triple Alliance in 1915; the U.S. joined the war in 1917),
the Great War, as it was called, with its vast scope, modernized weaponry, and
vague political struggle over land, laid waste to Europe's landscape and population.
Roughly half of the 70 million men and women serving in the war were killed,
injured, or taken prisoner.

Hemingway's own wartime experience

A Farewell to Arms is greatly informed by Hemingway's own wartime experience.

Rejected from the U.S. army for his poor eyesight (which he later falsely claimed
was due to boxing), Hemingway's determination to join the war effort landed him a
post with the Red Cross as an ambulance driver on the Italian front. He jumped at
the chance to be a canteen-provider on the front lines, handing out chocolate and
cigarettes to the troops during battle, and on July 8, 1918 he was hit in the leg by
an Austrian mortar shell. Despite the wound, he managed to carry an Italian soldier
to the nearby command post. However, machine-gun fire struck him in the knee
and foot, and he was eventually sent to a hospital in Milan, Italy. A similar injury
befalls Henry in the novel. During his convalescence, the 19-year-old Hemingway
had an affair with an American Red Cross nurse seven years his senior, Agnes von
Kurowsky. This experience inspired Henry's romance with Catherine in the novel,
though Hemingway most likely embellished it; most scholars believe Agnes, a
committed nurse, never let him move beyond kissing and did not reciprocate his
intense feelings. Though she did not die during the war, as Catherine does, Agnes
eventually rejected Hemingway via a letter. The painful emotions of a broken body
and heart no doubt embittered Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms (1929), which
some critics consider the finest novel to come out of the war and Hemingway's
personal best, reflected the widespread disillusionment with war - and with a world
that allows such barbarity - of Hemingway's young but weary post-WWI "Lost
Generation."

Looming horrors of the battlefield

Lieutenant Frederic Henry, a young American ambulance driver with the Italian
army during World War I, takes a winter leave from the front. When he returns, he
meets and quickly falls in love with Catherine Barkley, an English nurse's aide in
the town's British hospital. She mourns the death of her fiancé from the war last
year, and she eagerly enters the pleasurable diversion the game of love offers with
Henry. Henry, too, is revived by love after the horror he has seen of war. Henry's
knee is badly wounded during an artillery bombardment, and he is sent to a
hospital in Milan for an operation. Catherine transfers to his hospital and helps him
recuperate from the surgery. They spend all their free time together, and their love
deepens as they gradually acknowledge that they stand alone against the cruel
world. Before Henry returns to the front, Catherine reveals she is pregnant. They
are both pleased with this, however, and cannot wait to see each other again. Back
at the front, the Germans and Austrians break through the Italian line, and the
Italians are forced to make a lengthy retreat. Henry travels with some other drivers,
two Italian engineering sergeants, and two Italian girls. When the sergeants
abandon the drivers when their car gets stuck, Henry shoots one of them, and
another driver finishes him off. Later, the triggerhappy Italian rear guard
mistakenly shoots one of the Italian drivers. One of the drivers deserts the group,
choosing to be taken prisoner rather than face potential death. At a bridge over a
flooded river, the corrupt Italian military singles out Henry as a lieutenant and
accuses him of treachery leading to the Italian defeat. Knowing he will be
executed, Henry jumps into the river and escapes with the current. Henry manages
to get out of the fast-moving river and jump a train to Milan. He thinks he has
made a "separate peace" and is no longer attached to the military. He finds
Catherine in the town of Stresa and, prior to Henry's arrest for desertion, the two
make a daring nighttime escape by a borrowed boat to Switzerland. They enjoy an
idyllic, isolated life that winter in the Swiss town of Montreux, spending time
outdoors and preparing for the arrival of their baby; Henry is not completely
without guilt, however, for abandoning his friends at the front. They move to the
town of Lausanne in the spring to be close to its hospital, and Catherine soon goes
into labor. The pregnancy is lengthy and painful, and the baby, delivered through a
Caesarean, is stillborn. Catherine dies soon after of multiple hemorrhages with
Henry by her side. He tries to say goodbye to her, but it is like saying goodbye to a
statue, and he walks back to his hotel room in the rain.
Struggle between loyalty and desertion

Hemingway repeatedly emphasizes the horrific devastation war has wrought on

everyone involved. From the opening account of cholera that kills "only" 7,000
men to the graphic description of the artillery bombardment to the corrupt violence
during the Italian retreat, A Farewell to Arms is among the most frank anti-war
novels. But Hemingway does not merely condemn war. Rather, he indicts the
world at large for its atmosphere of destruction. Henry frequently reflects upon the
world's insistence on breaking and killing everyone; it is as if the world cannot
bear to let anyone remain happy and safe. Indeed, whenever Henry and Catherine
are blissful, something comes along to interrupt it - be it Henry's injury, his being
sent back to the front, his impending arrest, or, finally, Catherine's death from
childbirth. With such misery confronting them at every turn, the two turn to each
other. Catherine, especially, plunges almost too easily into love when she first
meets Henry. She admits she was "crazy" at first, most likely over the fairly recent
death of her fiancé, but Henry, too, succumbs to the temptations of love. Love is a
pleasurable diversion (see Games, below) that distracts lovers from the outside
world; the two often tell each other not to think about anything else, as it is too
painful. Hidden within the shelter of Catherine's beautiful hair, Henry and
Catherine feel protected from the cruel outside world. The major problem with
such escapist love is, as Henry and other characters point out several times, one
does not always know the "stakes" of love until it is over, or that one does not
know about something until one has lost it. Henry hardly allows himself to think of
life without Catherine while he is in love, and once he does lose her, it seems
unlikely that he will recover.
Grace under pressure and the Hemingway hero

Although less important in this novel than in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises,
Hemingway maps out what it means to be a hero. Chiefly, the "Hemingway hero,"
as literary criticism frequently tags him, is a man of action who coolly exhibits
"grace under pressure" while confronting death. Henry's narration is certainly
detached and action-oriented - only rarely does he let us into his most private
thoughts - and he displays remarkable cool when shooting the engineering
sergeant. Characters in the novel strive for this grace under pressure in an
otherwise chaotic world. Even when the men eat spaghetti (and especially when
they eat macaroni in the dugout during the artillery bombardment), they try to
exercise mastery over a single skill to compensate for the uncontrollable chaos
elsewhere. Dr. Valentini is another example of a skillful, confident Hemingway
hero. The Hemingway hero also eschews glory for a more personal code of honor.
Unlike the selfish and boastful Ettore, Henry is not greedy for accolades, nor is he
stupidly sacrificial. He judiciously determines what is worth the sacrifice, and
decides that the war is no longer worthwhile. Even after he makes his "separate
peace," however, he feels slightly guilty over letting his friends continue the battle
without him.

Rain and destruction

From the first chapter to the last word, the novel is flooded with rain and other
images of water. The rain almost always heralds destruction and death; it impinges
upon whatever momentary happiness Henry and Catherine have and turns it into
muddy misery. Ironically, rain often signifies fertility in literature but here stands
for sterility, as it does in much post-WWI literature. However, water is positive in
other ways. Henry receives symbolic baptisms when he bathes and, more
prominently, when he twice escapes from the authorities via a river and a lake.
Frozen water is kinder to him and to soldiers in general; snow usually prevents
fighting, and Henry and Catherine are happiest during their snowy winter in
Switzerland.

Diversions

Nearly all the characters in the novel try to divert themselves with pleasurable
activities from the horror of war. The soldiers play card games, drink heavily, and
carouse in brothels; Rinaldi is the poster-boy for this hedonistic excess. Henry goes
along somewhat, but his biggest diversion is love itself; he and Catherine treat it
like a game at first, flirting and teasing each other. Above all, ignorance is prized
during the war; if one does not think about the war, then one cannot be unhappy
during the ongoing pursuit of games and diversions.

Abandonment

The novel deploys several instances of abandonment, intentional and forced, in the
realms of love and war. After the death of her fiancé, Catherine understandably
fears abandonment by Henry, and he makes every attempt when separated to
reunite with her. Even Helen fears abandonment by Catherine. In the war, we see
several cases of abandonment: the engineering sergeants, who abandon Henry and
the other drivers; Bonello, who abandons the drivers to give himself up as a
prisoner; the Italian retreat, a large-scale abandonment; and Henry's escape from
army. However, Henry's abandonment is completely justified (he was going to be
executed if he did not), and it is less a desertion that what he calls a "separate
peace." Ultimately, he decides that not abandoning Catherine is far more important
than not abandoning the war, though he does feel guilty over leaving behind
Rinaldi and the others at the front.
Journalistic style of omission

As is typical in a Hemingway work, Henry's narration is spare, detached, and

journalistic. Contrary to what the reader might expect, the effect often heightens
emotion. For example, Hemingway ratchets up the connotations of death and
violence by omitting explicit mention of blood when it drips on Henry in the
ambulance. Hemingway shows his range when he occasionally uses a near
"stream-of-consciousness" narration for Henry. In these few cases, Henry's
thoughts are ungrammatical, awkwardly worded, and repetitive - much as the mind
works, especially under such chaotic circumstances. A notable example is the long
second-person narrative passage in last phase after Henry has divorced himself
from the army. By addressing himself as "you," Henry shows how he has separated
from his former self through his "separate peace."
Question No. 4 Frost is that rare twentieth century poet who achieved both
enormous popularity and critical acclaim. In an introductory essay to his
collected poems, Frost insists that a poem “will forever keep its freshness as a
metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once
unfolded by surprise as it went,” an observation that applies to most of his
three hundred-odd poems. Once his work came into circulation, its freshness
and deceptive simplicity captivated audiences that shied away from more
difficult poets such as T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, while astute critics
came to recognize the subtlety of thought and feeling that so often pervade
these “simple” poems. Keeping in view of Frost’s best-known poems—
Mending Wall, The Death of the Hired Man, Home Burial, The Wood-Pile,
you are required to give critical assessment of the above mentioned views.

Frost is one of the most popular and honored poets in America. Robert Graves
called him “the voice of America”. The central themes of his poems are men and
women, humanity, loneliness, isolation and nature. He wrote against traditional
rules of poetry, as he wanted poetry to be free flowing and natural as love. His
poetry has all the elements of modernism such as symbolism, realism,
existentialism, social constraints, alienation, isolation and destruction caused by
industrialization.

Jarrell points out the following qualities of frost poetry:

1. Frost’s tenderness, sadness and humor, which are adulterated with variety and
hard complacency.

2. Frost’s sorrowful acceptance of things as they are without his exaggerating

them or explaining them away
3. His many poems in which there are real people with their real speech and real
thoughts and real emotions.

4. Subtlety and exactness.

5. A classical understatement and restraint.

Frost truly said of himself, “I am not a regionalist, I am a realist. I wrote about

realms of democracy and realms of the spirit”.

Fresh as metal’s Fragrance

The most striking quality in Frost’s poetry is clarity and simplicity. His poetry is
specific. It does not puzzle the reader unlike other modern poets like Pound and
Eliot. His thoughts are not ambiguous. The seemingly triviality has depth
underneath but on the surface level, every ordinary reader can read and enjoy his
verse. W.G.O Daniel writes about Frost’s poetry: “his lucidity is such that he who
runs may read; there is always an easy grasped meaning or image for the reader_
some perception of nature, some comment about birches, blueberry patches, or
deep woods filling up with snow. Were there nothing in frost below this superficial
level, he would certainly have to be set down as a simple bard with a gift for
versifying”. The example of this claim can be taken by his poem “Stopping by the
woods on a snowy evening”. On the surface level, it tells of a man’s temptation to
answer the strange call of the woods by getting into it and of his resisting the
temptation by thinking of the promises he has to keep:

“The woods are lovely dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

 And miles to go before I sleep”
He says, “For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I
did not know I knew, I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from a
cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the
rest follows- The figure a poem makes. Frost does not imply that the poem writes
itself. The poet must establish a careful balance between the present experience
and the remembered experience. This equilibrium is truly a large part of artistry.
To attain this equilibrium “you adjust yourself to the motion of the thing itself”.
The projection of the poem arises out of the poets‟ pleasure in discovering words,
images, metaphors, phrases, native to the grain of emotion, thought and situation.
Like Emerson (his essay theory of poetry) Frost also say that meaning in a poem is
a means to end and the end is delight. Beauty is its own excuse for being, that the
delight is the goal. On a higher plane, there is a pleasure which arises from a
deeper understanding let the poem start and finish even so playfully, it will touch
and illuminate experience. For Frost poetry highlights certain permanent truth and
enduring qualities in human nature.

Mending Wall,

Frost expresses his ideas and feelings in a simple and graphic language. He
introduces speaking voices in his poems. Most of the poems are simple truths are
revealed through technical subtleties and symbols. Written in the colloquial or
speaking manner. These characters put forth their views independently. To
expedite the effect of ordinary speech, the poet takes resort to dots, dashes,
parentheses and Quick transitions of thought his poem begin in a casual way, very
often the poet employs the drama of the speaking voice as we seen in „Home
Burial‟ In order to sound realistic and natural Frost does not care for syntax and
structure. Frost enlivens his variation by using the method of direct speech. By
such a method the poet can effectively convey what he wants to. This is what he
means by clarification. We have a good deal of drama in poems in Mending wall.
Frost’s Mending Wall, which can also be read in full here, was published in 1914
by David Nutt. In modern literature, it is considered as one of the most analyzed
and anthologized poems. In the poem, the poet is a New England farmer, who
walks along with his neighbor in the spring season to repair the stone wall that falls
between their two farms. As they start mending the wall, the narrator asks his
neighbor why we need a wall. The poet says that there is something that doesn’t
love a wall, but his neighbor says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Mending Wall principally analyses the nature of human relationships. When you

read Mending Wall it feels like peeling off an onion. The reader analyses,
philosophizes and dives deep to search for a definite conclusion that he is unable to
find. Yet the quest is more thrilling and rewarding as compared to the Holy Grail
itself. The reader understands life in a new way and challenges all definitions.

At the very outset, the poem takes you to the nature of things. Therefore, the
narrator says something does exist in the nature that does not want a wall. He says
man makes many walls, but they all get damaged and destroyed either by nature or
by the hunters who search for rabbits for their hungry dogs. Hence, as soon as the
spring season starts, he (narrator), with his neighbor, sets out to repair the wall that
keeps their properties separated. Though the narrator comes together with his
neighbor to repair the wall, he regards it an act of stupidity. He believes that in fact
both of them don’t need a wall. He asks why should there be a wall, when his
neighbor has only pine trees and he has apple. How could his apple trees go across
the border and eat his neighbor’s pine cones. Moreover there is no chance of
offending one and another as they don’t also have any cows at their homes. While
the narrator tries to make his neighbor understand that they don’t need a wall, his
neighbor is stone-headed savage, who only believes in his father’s age old saying
that, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

The Death of the Hired Man

The greatest of all modern poets, T.S. Eliot and many other poets are profoundly
influenced by the technique and themes of the imagist Robert Frost. Pound thanked
him for 1breaking away from “stilted Pseudo- literary language” and daring to
write in the Natural speech of new-England. His poetry is deceptively simple, He
uses speech tones for his poetic style. Though his style is speech rhythm, it is
elevated and inimitable. Frost further created the illusion of a new England
Farmer-poet writing the poetry of opinion, the woods, since Frost stroke strove
hard towards pastoral poetry of the woods that are lovely, dark deep and Frosty. He
has come out of the restrictions of the contemporary poets in their quest for new
ways to be new and teased them for their desperate attempts to follow same body.

There are many critics that have analyzed and agreed that the theme that Robert
Frost presents in his poem "The Death of the Hired Man" is that people need to be
forgiven and accepted before it is too late. In the critical essay by Bloom, he
mentions that in the poem the main character Warren begins to focus on the word
"home" and the idea of "home". This continues in the conversation between the
husband and wife, Warren and Mary, as they subtly consider human responsibility,
kinship, and justice (Bloom 2). Through this conversation, "Frost uses the dialogue
to examine the social and familial fabric of a place where interaction with
neighbors punctuates a potentially unbearable sense of isolation" (Bloom 2). This
means that Warren and Mary are having a conversation in which Mary attempts to
convince her husband to see that their farm is the only "home" that Silas has and
that in the end he wasn't such a bad guy, so then Warren needs forgive him and
accept him into their home with open and loving arms.

Also, Bloom notices that Mary has a "perspective of compassionate identification

and emotional response that contrasts Warren's more rational view of fair
judgment. Frost encapsulates Mary's attitude in one present tense, active sentence,
'I sympathize'" (Bloom 2). The line that Bloom quotes from the poem is located in
line eighty of the poem. This representation of Mary gives hint to the allusion that
Robert Frost presents in the poem of the parable of the Lost Son which can be seen
in Luke 15 verses 11-32. The attitude that Warren has toward the idea of Silas
claiming their home and their farm as his one and only "home" even when he has a
very wealthy brother who happens to live thirteen miles down the road is that he
believes that "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to
take you in," and for this reason he believes that their home should not be claimed
by Silas as his "home" for that very reason (Bloom 3). That quote is located on
lines one-hundred-twenty-three and one-hundred-twenty-four.

In addition, in the critical essay by Katherine Kearns argues that Mary acquires a
maternal nurturing figure with Silas and that is why she forgives and accepts him
more readily than her husband because he takes on a fatherly role and sees Silas as
a son that has chosen a relatively dissolute life and not learned a single lesson or
moral from him through all the years that he has employed him. This also
correlates with the allusion that Frost attempts to show in his poem because Mary
shares the same role that the father in the parable does when he accepts his "lost"
son with open and loving arms back into his life and his home. The evidence that
critics have found in the poem to support the theme of how there is a need for
people to accept and forgive others before it is too late, Robert Frost supports this
more thoroughly through structural, poetic and metrical devices that come directly
from the poem and he uses them specifically to help show the theme of his poem
"The Death of the Hired Man".

There are many different poetic, structural, and metrical devices that Robert Frost
uses throughout his poem to grab the reader's attention to that point specifically
and to help show the theme of the poem; these along with the allusion that is
present all throughout the poem, help the reader understand the author's theme. The
first of these is the characterization of the main character of Mary that Frost
presents in the poem. This characterization presents her as a very kind,
compassionate, loving, understanding, and motherly person who cares very much
for the character of Silas because of the hard life that he has lived. The reader can
see this in lines one-hundred-fifty-five to one-hundred-sixty-one when Mary says,

No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay

And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back.

He wouldn't let me put him on the lounge.

You must go in and see what you can do.

I made the bed up for him there to-night.

You'll be surprised at him - how much he's broken.

His working days are done; I'm sure of it.

Another way in which the character of Mary is seen as compassionate, loving,

nurturing mother is in the name that Robert Frost gives her character. Throughout
history the name "Mary" has been synonymous with characters throughout the
New Testament of the Bible. These characteristics can be seen through the biblical
characters of Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus. This can be seen
when Mary Magdalene wept at Christ's tomb after His crucifixion and when Mary,
"kept all things and pondered them in heart" after the three Magi visited Jesus
bearing gifts (John 20:11; Luke 2:19). Both of these examples show the love and
compassion that the name Mary is famous for throughout history.

Home Burial,

Frost has said many times that there is a striking analogy between the course of a
true poem and that of a true love, each begins as an impulse, a disturbing
excitement to which the individual surrenders himself. “No one can really hold that
the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it
inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs the
course of lucky events and ends in a clarification of life.

Pay special attention to the tone, vocabulary, and phrasing of the dialogue. At the
time of “Home Burial” ’s publication, it represented a truly new poetic genre: an
extended dramatic exercise in the natural speech rhythms of a region’s people,
from the mouths of common, yet vivid, characters.

“Home Burial” is one of Frost’s most overtly sad poems. There are at least two
tragedies here: the death of a child, which antecedes the poem, and the collapse of
a marriage, which the poem foreshadows. “Home Burial” is about grief and
grieving, but most of all it seems to be about the breakdown and limits of
communication.

The husband and the wife represent two very different ways of grieving. The
wife’s grief infuses every part of her and does not wane with time. She has been
compared to a female character in Frost’s A Masque of Mercy, of whom another
character says, “She’s had some loss she can’t accept from God.” The wife
remarks that most people make only pretense of following a loved one to the grave,
when in truth their minds are “making the best of their way back to life / And
living people, and things they understand.” She, however, will not accept this kind
of grief, will not turn from the grave back to the world of living, for to do so is to
accept the death. Instead she declares that “the world’s evil.” The husband, on the
other hand, has accepted the death. Time has passed, and he might be more likely
now to say, “That’s the way of the world,” than, “The world’s evil.” He did grieve,
but the outward indications of his grief were quite different from those of his wife.
He threw himself into the horrible task of digging his child’s grave into physical
work. This action further associates the father with a “way-of-the-world”
mentality, with the cycles that make up the farmer’s life, and with an organic view
of life and death. The father did not leave the task of burial to someone else,
instead, he physically dug into the earth and planted his child’s body in the soil.
One might say that any form of grief in which the bereaved stubbornly finds the
world “evil” is not a very healthy one. One could also claim that the bereaved who
never talks through his grief, who never speaks of it is doing himself and others
injury. But, again, the purpose of the poem isn’t really to determine the right way
to grieve. Rather, it intends to portray a failure of empathy and communication.
Each person fails to appreciate the other’s grieving process, fails to credit it, allow
it, and have patience with it. And each fails to alter even slightly his or her own
form of grief in order to accommodate the other.

The Wood-Pile,

Frost is considered the pastoral poet and a poet of nature; his poems have unique
quality of being poems of nature than rest of the poets of nature. Yet there is a
great controversy as to whether he should be recognize as a poet of nature. Frost
himself said: I think I am not a nature poet. Critics compare him with William
Wordsworth and find certain similarities and dissimilarities. When we study them
both placing them in juxtaposition we find that both of them are the keen observers
of nature but Wordsworth romanticizes nature as perfect lover that has nothing
wrong with it. He spiritualizes and philosophizes nature and loves it blindly.
Whereas frost does not only keeps an eye on beauty and optimism of nature but
also equally sees the cruelty and destruction that the power of nature possesses.

‘The Wood-Pile’ by Robert Frost is a thirty-nine line poem that is contained within
one block of text. It is written in blank verse. This means that there is not pattern of
rhyme or rhythm, a common feature of Frost’s work.  The Wood-Pile’ by Robert
Frost describes a speaker’s journey through the woods to a strangely placed, and
abandoned, woodpile. 

The poem begins with the speaker stating that he is making his way through a
frozen swamp. He isn’t sure the journey is a good idea, but he is committed to
making it. He soon comes into contact with a frightened bird which seems at once
interested in who he is, and terrified that he’s going to try something. The speaker
has no desire to harm this creature and wishes he could convey that fact to the
bird.  His attention is soon drawn by a pile of wood, abandon, leaning against a
tree. It has clearly been there fr a long time. The speaker can’t understand the man
who would spend all day cutting it and then choose to leave it in that spot, far from
any home it could warm. 

Frost is mainly interested in the contradictions which his characters show in their
makeup. He believes that life itself is a bundle of contradictions. He lets them
express their views freely and frankly through the medium of dialogue in the
poems. We may or may not agree with them and their stand, this is the liberal
understanding of frost for instance.

CONCLUSION
Finally, Frost‟s poetry is the poetry that never pretends. It is the poerty of
conversation and plain style. It seems up the past and enlivens the present for a
happy and wise future. It transcends time and space. It is universal in its appeal. It
is powerful enough to express both things and thoughts. It is symbolic it plays on
the modern technique of contrasts and suggestions. “We talked and laughed, but
for the most part listened while Robert Frost kept on and on and on”. Holding us
with shrewd turns and racy quips like a piece of ice on hot coals his poetry melts
on to its his ultimate goal- beginning gin delight and ends in wisdom. Frosts poetry
is subjective. His poems were used by President Kennedy for his election
campaign. He participated in the American Presidents inauguration programme. He
visited Russia in 1961 as a cultural ambassador. And it was then he read his poem
“Mending wall” – The poet‟s reprimand to the Russians. He died in Boston in
1963. President Kennedy mourn him in the following words.

“His death impoverished all of US but he has bequeathed his nation a body of
imperishable verse from which Americans will forever drive joy and
understanding. He has promises to keep and miles to go and now he sleeps”.

THE END………………………………………………………………………