Victorian Period

WRITERS

Anne Brontë - an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family. After leaving
her teaching position, she fulfilled her literary ambitions. She published a volume of poetry with her sisters
(Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846) and two novels. Agnes Grey, based upon her experiences as a
governess, was published in 1847. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is
considered to be one of the first sustained feminist novels, appeared in 1848. Like her poems, both her
novels were first published under the masculine penname of Acton Bell. Anne's life was cut short when she
died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 29.

Charlotte Brontë - an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into
adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. She first published her works
(including her best known novel, Jane Eyre) under the pen name Currer Bell.

Arthur Hugh Clough - an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to ground-breaking
nurse Florence Nightingale. Clough's output is small and much of it appeared posthumously. His long
poems have a certain narrative and psychological penetration, and some of his lyrics have a strength of
melody to match their depth of thought. He has been regarded as one of the most forward-looking English
poets of the 19th century, in part due to a sexual frankness that shocked his contemporaries. He often went
against the popular religious and social ideals of his day, and his verse is said to have the melancholy and
the perplexity of an age of transition, although Through a Glass Darkly suggests that he did not lack certain
religious beliefs of his own, and in particular a belief in the afterlife where the struggle for virtue will be
rewarded.

Elizabeth Gaskell - a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. Her novels offer a
detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social
historians as well as lovers of literature. Gaskell was also the first to write a biography of Charlotte
Bronte, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, which was published in 1857.

Gerard Manley Hopkins - an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and aJesuit priest, whose posthumous
fame established him among the leading Victorian poets. His experimental explorations
in prosody(especially sprung rhythm) and his use of imagery established him as a daring innovator in a
period of largely traditional verse.

George Eliot – Mary Ann Evans - an English novelist, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of
the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the
Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in
provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.
She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously. Female authors were
published under their own names during Eliot's life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only
writing lighthearted romances. She also wished to have her fiction judged separately from her already
extensive and widely known work as an editor and critic. An additional factor in her use of a pen name may
have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her
relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years.

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William Morris - an English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist. Associated with
the British Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile
arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre,
while he played a significant role in propagating the early socialist movement in Britain.

Christina Rossetti -  an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems.
She wrote the poems Goblin Market and Remember, and the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak
Midwinter.

Robert Louis Stevenson - a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works
are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

A literary celebrity during his lifetime, Stevenson now ranks among the 26 most translated authors in the
world.[1] His works have been admired by many other writers.

Algernon Charles Swinburne - an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels,
and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Literature in every year from 1903 to 1907 and again in 1909.

William Makepeace Thackeray - an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for
his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.

Anthony Trollope - one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era.
Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the
imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote perceptive novels on political, social, and gender issues, and
on other topical matters.
Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, [2] but he regained the esteem
of critics by the mid-twentieth century.

TITLES

Tess of the d’Urbervilles - a novel by Thomas Hardy. It initially appeared in

a censored andserialised version, published by the British illustrated newspaper The Graphic in 1891[1] and
in book form in 1892. Though now considered a major nineteenth-century English novel and possibly
Hardy's masterpiece,[2] Tess of the d'Urbervilles received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part
because it challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England. The novel is set in impoverished rural
England, Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex, during the Long Depression of the 1870s. Because of the
numerous pagan and neo-Biblical references made about her, Tess has been viewed variously as an Earth
goddess or as a sacrificial victim.

Jude the Obscure -  the last completed of Thomas Hardy's novels, began as a magazine serial in December
1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. Its protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working class young
man, a stonemason, who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue
Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class,
education, religion and marriage.

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Aurora Leigh - an epic novel/poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poem is written in blank verse and
encompasses nine books (the woman's number, the number of the prophetic books of the Sibyl). It is a first
person narration, from the point of view of Aurora; its other heroine, Marian Erle, is an abused self-taught
child of itinerant parents. The poem is set in Florence, Malvern, London, and Paris. She uses her knowledge
of Hebrew and Greek, while also playing off modern novels, such as Corinne ou l'Italie by Anne Louise
Germaine de Staël and the novels by George Sand. Elizabeth Barrett Browning styled the poem "a novel in
verse", and referred to it as "the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions
upon Life and Art have entered." Scholar Deirdre David asserts that Barrett Browning's work in Aurora
Leigh has made her into "a major figure in any consideration of the nineteenth-century woman writer and of
Victorian poetry in general."

The Ring and the Book - a long dramatic narrative poem, and, more specifically, a verse novel, of 21,000
lines, written by Robert Browning. It was published in four volumes from 1868 to 1869 by Smith, Elder &
Co. The book tells the story of a murder trial in Rome in 1698, whereby an impoverished nobleman, Count
Guido Franceschini, is found guilty of the murders of his young wife Pompilia Comparini and her parents,
having suspected his wife was having an affair with a young cleric, Giuseppe Caponsacchi. Having been
found guilty despite his protests and sentenced to death, Franceschini then appeals—unsuccessfully—
to Pope Innocent XII to overturn the conviction. The poem comprises twelve books, nine of which
are dramatic monologues spoken by a different narrator involved in the case (Count Guido speaks twice),
usually giving a different account of the same events, and two books (the first and the last) spoken by the
author.

Middlemarch - a novel by English author George Eliot, first published in eight instalments (volumes) during
1871–2. The novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch during 1829–32,[1] and it comprises
several distinct (though intersecting) stories and a large cast of characters. Significant themes include the
status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and
education.

Although containing comical elements, Middlemarch is a work of realism that refers to many historical

events: the 1832 Reform Act, the beginnings of the railways, the death of King George IV, and the succession
of his brother, the Duke of Clarence (the future King William IV). In addition, the work incorporates
contemporary medical science and examines the deeply reactionary mindset found within a settled
community facing the prospect of unwelcome change.

Eliot began writing the two pieces that would eventually form Middlemarch during the years 1869–70 and
completed the novel in 1871. Although the first reviews were mixed, it is now widely regarded as her best
work and one of the greatest novels in English.

Jane Eyre - a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published on 16 October 1847, by Smith,
Elder & Co. of London, England, under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was
published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York.

Primarily of the bildungsroman genre, Jane Eyre follows the emotions and experiences of its title character,

including her growth to adulthood, and her love for Mr. Rochester, the byronic[1] master of
fictitious Thornfield Hall. In its internalisation of the action—the focus is on the gradual unfolding of Jane's
moral and spiritual sensibility, and all the events are coloured by a heightened intensity that was previously
the domain of poetry—Jane Eyre revolutionised the art of fiction. Charlotte Brontë has been called the 'first

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historian of the private consciousness' and the literary ancestor of writers like Joyce and Proust. [2] The novel
contains elements ofsocial criticism, with a strong sense of morality at its core, but is nonetheless a novel
many consider ahead of its time given the individualistic character of Jane and the novel's exploration
of classism, sexuality, religion, and proto-feminism.

The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens's first novel. He was asked to contribute to the project as an up-
and-coming writer following the success of Sketches by Boz, published in 1836 (most of Dickens' novels were
issued in shilling instalments before being published as complete volumes). Dickens (still writing under the
pseudonym of Boz) increasingly took over the unsuccessful monthly publication after the original
illustrator Robert Seymour had committed suicide.

With the introduction of Sam Weller in chapter 10, the book became the first real publishing phenomenon,
with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books, and other merchandise.

After the publication, the widow of Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her
husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any specific input,
writing that "Mr Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word, to be found in the
book."

Hard Times -  the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book appraises English
society and highlights the social and economic pressures of the times.

Bleak House -  a novel by Charles Dickens, was first published as a serial between March 1852 and
September 1853, and is considered to be one of Dickens' finest novels, containing vast, complex and
engaging arrays of characters and sub-plots. The story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther
Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. Memorable characters include haughty Lady Honoria
Dedlock, the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn, the realistic John Jarndyce, and the childish and disingenuous
Harold Skimpole, as well as the imprudent Richard Carstone.

The Importance of Being Earnest - a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St
James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personæ to
escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the
play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the
resulting satire of Victorian ways.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis
Stevenson that was first published in 1886. The work is commonly associated with the rare mental condition
often called "split personality", referred to in psychiatry asdissociative identity disorder, where within the
same body there exists more than one distinct personality. [4] In this case, there are two personalities within
Dr. Jekyll, one apparently good and the other evil. The novella's impact is such that it has become a part of
the language, with the very phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" coming to mean a person who is vastly different in
moral character from one situation to the next.

OTHER NAMES AND TERMS

John Stuart Mill - a British philosopher, political economist and civil servant. He was an influential
contributor to social theory, political theory and political economy. He has been called "the most influential

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English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century".[3] Mill's conception of liberty justified the freedom
of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.[4]

Thomas Babington Macaulay - a British historian and Whigpolitician. He wrote extensively as an essayist

and reviewer; his books on British history have been hailed as literary masterpieces. [1]

Macaulay held political office as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and the Paymaster-
General between 1846 and 1848. He played a major role in introducing English and western concepts to
education in India. He supported the replacement of Persian by English as the official language, the use of
English as the medium of instruction in all schools, and the training of English-speaking Indians as
teachers.[1]

In his view, Macaulay divided the world into civilised nations and barbarism, with Britain representing the
high point of civilisation. In his Minute on Indian Education of February 1835, he asserted, "It is, I believe,
no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written
in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at
preparatory schools in England". He was wedded to the Idea of Progress, especially in terms of the liberal
freedoms. He opposed radicalism while idealising historic British culture and traditions.

Utilitarianism - a theory in normative ethics holding that the moral action is the one that maximizes utility.
Utility is defined in various ways, including as pleasure, economic well-being and the lack of suffering.
Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, which implies that the "end justifies the means". This view can
be contrasted or combined with seeing intentions, virtues or the compliance with rules as ethically
important. Classical utilitarianism's two most influential contributors are Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart
Mill. Bentham, who takes happiness as the measure for utility, says, "it is the greatest happiness of the
greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong".

Benthamism - the belief in the utilitarian concepts and philosophies of Jeremy Bentham that the goal of
individuals and society should be the greatest happiness for the most people.

Reform Bills - a series of proposals to reform voting in the British parliament. These include the Reform
Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884. The bills reformed voting by increasing the electorate for the House of
Commons and removing certain inequalities in representation. The bill of 1832 disfranchised many
boroughs which enjoyed undue representation and increased that of the large towns, at the same time
extending the franchise, and was put through by the Whigs. The bill of 1867 was passed by
theConservatives under the urging of the Liberals, while that of 1882 was introduced by the Liberals and
passed in 1884. These latter two bills provided for a more democratic representation.

Chartists - a working-class movement for political reform in Britain which existed from 1838 to 1858. It
took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular
strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black
Country and the South Wales Valleys. Support for the movement was at its highest in 1839, 1842 and 1848
when petitions signed by millions of working people were presented to the House of Commons. The strategy
employed was to use the scale of support which these petitions and the accompanying mass meetings
demonstrated to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage. Chartism thus relied on
constitutional methods to secure its aims, though there were some who became involved in insurrectionary
activities, notably in south Wales and Yorkshire.

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the workhouse -  a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and
employment. The earliest known use of the term dates from 1631. The origins of the workhouse can be
traced to the Poor Law Act of 1388, which attempted to address the labour shortages following the Black
Death in England by restricting the movement of labourers, and ultimately led to the state becoming
responsible for the support of the poor.

a condition-of-England novel - work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem, such as gender, race, or
class prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel". [1] More specific examples of
social problems that are addressed in such works, include poverty, conditions in factories and mines, the
plight of child labor, violence against women, rising criminality, and epidemics because of over-crowding,
and poor sanitation in cities.[2]

Terms like thesis novel, propaganda novel, industrial novel, working-class novel and problem novel are also
used to describe this type of novel;[3] a recent development in this genre is the young adult problem novel. It
is also referred to as the sociological novel. The social protest novel is a form of social novel which places an
emphasis on the idea of social change, while the Proletarian novel is political form of the social protest novel
which may emphasizes revolution.[4] While early examples are found in 18th century England, social novels
have been written throughout Europe and the United States.

Great Exhibition -  the temporary structure in which it was held, was an international exhibition that took
place inHyde Park, London, from 1 May to 11 October 1851. It was the first in a series of World's
Fair exhibitions of culture and industry that were to become a popular 19th-century feature. The Great
Exhibition was organized by Henry Cole and Prince Albert, husband of the reigning monarch, Queen
Victoria.

John Henry Newman - an important figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was
known nationally by the mid-1830s.[4]

Originally an evangelical Oxford academic and priest in the Church of England, Newman then became
drawn to the high-church tradition of Anglicanism and became known as a leader of, and an able polemicist
for, the Oxford Movement, an influential and controversial grouping of Anglicans who wished to return to the
Church of England many Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from before the English Reformation.

evangelical movement -  a worldwide, transdenominational movement withinProtestant Christianity,

maintaining that the essence of the gospel consists in the doctrine
of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ's atonement.[1][2]

Evangelicals are Christians who believe in the centrality of the conversion or "born again" experience in
receiving salvation, believe in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity and have a strong
commitment to evangelism or sharing the Christian message.

Oxford Movement / Tractarianism -  a movement of High Church members of the Church of

England which eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original members were
mostly associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of some older Christian

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traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy and theology. They thought of Anglicanism as one
of three branches of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church

High/Low/Broad Church – high – liturgy, tradition, close to Catholicism; low – fundamental, close to
Evangelical movement; broad – mainstream Anglican Church, liberal doctrine.

Higher Criticism – scientific approach to Bible as a narrative. David Friedrich, Charles Lyell, Alfred
Tennyson, Charles Darwin.

Wessex novels - The English author Thomas Hardy set all of his major novels in the south
and southwest of England. He named the area "Wessex" after the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom that
existed in this part of that country prior to the Norman Conquest. Although the places that appear in his
novels actually exist, in many cases he gave the place a fictional name. Tess of the d’Urbervilles - Thomas
Hardy; it is a Wessex novel - set in a countryside, area resembling Hardy’s motherland; called also “novels of
character and environment”; in this novel Egdon Heath is depicted - countryside
Jude the Obscure - another Hardy’s Wessex novel; religious and social themes; focuses on the life of a
country stonemason, Jude, and his love for his cousin Sue, a schoolteacher

dramatic monologue - also known as a persona poem, is a type of poetry written in the form of a speech of
an individual character.

serialisation / instalments (in publishing) - also known asnumbers, parts, or fascicles, and are either
issued as separate publications or within in sequential issues of a single periodical publication.[1] The term
"serial" is applied in library and information science to materials "in any medium issued under the same title
in a succession of discrete parts, usually numbered (or dated) and appearing at regular or irregular intervals
with no predetermined conclusion."

Currer, Ellis, Acton Bell – pseudonyms of Bronte sisters.

Haworth parsonage - The Brontë Parsonage Museum is maintained by the Brontë Society in honour of
the Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily andAnne – in their former home, the parsonage in Haworth, West
Yorkshire, an area of England surrounded by moorland. It is popular with those seeking to find the source of
the sisters' inspiration, and is of particular interest as the Brontës spent most of their lives here and wrote
their famous novels in these surroundings.

The Brontë Society, one of the oldest literary societies in the English speaking world, is a registered charity.
Its members support the preservation of the museum and library collections.

the Arts and Crafts movement - an international movement in the decorative and fine arts that flourished
in Europe and North America between 1880 and 1910,[1] emerging later in Japan in the 1920s. It stood for
traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and it often used medieval, romantic or folk styles of
decoration. It advocated economic and social reform and has been said to be essentially anti-industrial. [2][3]
[4]
 Its influence was felt in Europe until it was displaced by Modernism in the 1930s[5] and continued among
craft makers, designers and town planners long afterwards.

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John Ruskin - the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron,draughtsman,
watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to
architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political economy. His writing styles
and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel
guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing
on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more
effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also
made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and
ornamentation.

Walter Pater - an English essayist, literary and art critic, and writer of fiction. Toward the end of his life
Pater's writings were exercising a considerable influence. The principles of what would be known as
the Aesthetic Movement were partly traceable to him, and his effect was particularly felt on one of the
movement's leading proponents.

decadence - an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals,
dignity, religious faith, or skill at governing among the members of the elite of a very large social structure,
such as an empire or nation state. By extension, it may refer to a decline in art, literature, science,
technology, and work ethics, or (very loosely) to self-indulgent behaviour. n literature, the Decadent
movement—late nineteenth century fin de siècle writers who were associated with Symbolism or
theAesthetic movement—was first given its name by hostile critics. Later it was triumphantly adopted by
some of the writers themselves. The Decadents praised artifice over nature and sophistication over
simplicity, defying contemporary discourses of decline by embracing subjects and styles that their critics
considered morbid and over-refined. Some of these writers were influenced by the tradition of the Gothic
novel and by the poetry and fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.

Yellow Nineties - It was a leading journal of the British 1890s; to some degree associated
with Aestheticism and Decadence, the magazine contained a wide range of literary and artistic genres,
poetry, short stories, essays, book illustrations, portraits, and reproductions of paintings. Aubrey
Beardsley was its first art editor,[2] and he has been credited with the idea of the yellow cover, with its
association with illicit French fiction of the period.

Aubrey Beardsley -  an English illustrator and author. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style
of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in
theAesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A. McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's
contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant, despite the brevity of
his career before his early death from tuberculosis.

ISSUES

Chronology of the Victorian Period

1. Early Victorian period, period of social conflicts, unrest, in literature social problem novels.
2. mid – Victorian period, age of equipoise, stability, economic prosperity, improvement of social
institutions, belief in progress, hope for the better future. Great Exhibition, History of England.
3. late Victorian period, uncertainty about new technologies, directions of changes, religious crisis
because of Darwin’s publication, criticism od early Victorian morality.

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1900 - 1945
WRITERS
 
Dorothy Richardson - a British author and journalist. Author of Pilgrimage, a sequence of 13 novels, she
was one of the earliest modernist novelists to use stream of consciousness as a narrative technique.
Richardson also emphasizes in Pilgrimage the importance and distinct nature of female experiences.
 
Wyndham Lewis - an English painter and author.  He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art,
and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST. He also wrote two autobiographical volumes.
 
Henry James - an American-English writer who spent most of his writing career in Britain. He is regarded
as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He is best known for a number of novels showing
Americans encountering Europe and Europeans. His method of writing from a character's point of view
allowed him to explore issues related to consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been
compared to impressionist painting. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and unreliable
narrators brought a new depth to narrative fiction. 
James contributed significantly to literary criticism, particularly in his insistence that writers be allowed the
greatest possible freedom in presenting their view of the world. James claimed that a text must first and
foremost be realistic and contain a representation of life that is recognisable to its readers. Good novels, to
James, show life in action and are, most importantly, interesting.

In addition to his voluminous works of fiction he published articles and books of travel, biography,
autobiography, and criticism, and wrote plays. James alternated between America and Europe for the first
twenty years of his life; eventually he settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before
his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916.
 
Ezra Pound - an expatriate American poet and critic who was a major figure in the
early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his development of Imagism, a movement
derived from classicalChinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language.
His best-known works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and the unfinished 120-
section epic, The Cantos (1917–69).
 
Arnold Bennett - an English writer. He is best known as a novelist, but he also worked in other fields such
as journalism, propaganda and film. His style was traditional rather than modern, which made him an
obvious target for those who liked to present themselves as ' challenging literary conventions '. For much of
the 20th Century, Bennett's work was affected by the Bloomsbury intellectuals' perception; it was not until
the 1990s that a more positive view of his work became widely accepted.
 
Herbert George Wells - a prolific English writer in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, and
social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games. He is now best remembered for his science
fiction novels, and Wells is called a father of science fiction.[4] His most notable science fiction works
include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War
of the Worlds(1898). His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science
fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of journalist. 
 
John Galsworthy - an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906–
1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in
1932.
 

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Rudyard Kipling -  an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He wrote tales and poems of British
soldiers in India and stories for children. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in England, in both
prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to
date. Among other honours, he was sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions
for a knighthood, all of which he declined. Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed according to the
political and social climate of the age and the resulting contrasting views about him continued for much of
the 20th century.
 
Edward Morgan Forster - an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best
for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British
society. His 1908 novel, A Room with a View, is his most optimistic work, while A Passage to India (1924)
brought him his greatest success. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 13 different years. 
 
Graham Greene - an English novelist and author regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century
but he was never awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writings which included over
25 novels, he explored the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, often through a
Catholic perspective. He supplemented his novelist's income with freelance journalism, book and film
reviews for The Spectator, and co-editing the magazine Night and Day. 
 
Siegfries Sassoon - an English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he
became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the
trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for
a jingoism-fuelled war. Sassoon later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised
autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston trilogy".
 
Evelyn Waugh -  an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist
and reviewer of books. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A
Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited(1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of
Honour (1952–61). As a writer, Evelyn Waugh is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English
language in the 20th century. After his death in 1966, Evelyn Waugh acquired a following of new readers,
because of their exposure to the film and television versions of his works, such as the television
serial Brideshead Revisited (1981). 
 
Aldous Huxley - an English writer, philosopher and a prominent member of the Huxley family. He was best
known for his novels including Brave New World, set in a dystopian London, and for non-fiction books, such
as The Doors of Perception, which recalls experiences when taking a psychedelic drug, and a wide-ranging
output of essays. Early in his career Huxley edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories
and poetry. Mid career and later, he published travel writing, film stories and scripts. He spent the later part
of his life in the US, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. In 1962, a year before his death, he was
elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.
Huxley was a humanist, pacifist, and satirist. Huxley later became interested in spiritual subjects such
as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism, in particular, Universalism. By the end of his life, Huxley
was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel
Prize in Literature in seven different years.
 
TITLES
 
Lord Jim - a novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October
1899 to November 1900.

10
An early and primary event is the abandonment of a ship in distress by its crew including the young British
seaman Jim. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to
terms with his past.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Lord Jim 85th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the
20th century. 
 
Finnegans Wake - a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is significant for its experimental style and
reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. The entire book is written in
a largely idiosyncratic language, consisting of a mixture of standard English lexical
items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which many critics believe were attempts
to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams. Owing to the work's expansive linguistic experiments, stream
of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and abandonment of narrative
conventions, Finnegans Wake remains largely unread by the general public. 
 
Tradition and the Individual Talent - an essay written by poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot. The essay was
first published in The Egoist (1919) and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, "The Sacred Wood" (1920). 
This essay is divided into three parts that are:
part one: The Concept of "Tradition".
part two: The Theory of Impersonal Poetry.
part three: The Conclusion or Summing up.
Eliot presents his conception of tradition and the definition of the poet and poetry in relation to it. He wishes
to correct the fact that, as he perceives it, "in English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we
occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence." Eliot posits that, though the English tradition
generally upholds the belief that art progresses through change – a separation from tradition, literary
advancements are instead recognised only when they conform to the tradition. Eliot, a classicist, felt that the
true incorporation of tradition into literature was unrecognised, that tradition, a word that "seldom...
appear[s] except in a phrase of censure," was actually a thus-far unrealised element of literary criticism. 
 
A Room of One's Own - an extended essay by Virginia Woolf, based on a series of lectures she delivered
at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October
1928.  The essay is generally seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and
figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy. 
 
Mrs Dalloway - a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictionalhigh-
society woman in post-First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.
Created from two short stories, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister," the
novel addresses Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host that evening. With an interior perspective,
the story travels forwards and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of
Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. In October 2005, Mrs Dalloway was included
on TIME magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.
 
The Waves - Virginia Woolf's most experimental novel. It consists of soliloquies spoken by the book's six
characters: Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, and Louis.  Also important is Percival, the seventh
character, though readers never hear him speak in his own voice. The soliloquies that span the characters'
lives are broken up by nine brief third-person interludes detailing a coastal scene at varying stages in a day
from sunrise to sunset.
As the six characters or "voices" speak Woolf explores concepts of individuality, self and community. Each
character is distinct, yet together they compose (as Ida Klitgård has put it) a gestalt about a silent central
consciousness. 
 

11
The Forsyte Saga - a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by Nobel
Prize-winning English author John Galsworthy. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of a
large commercial upper middle-class English family, similar to Galsworthy's own. Separate sections of the
saga, as well as the lengthy story in its entirety, have been adapted for cinema and television. 
 
Brave New World - a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London of AD
2540 (632 A.F.—"AfterFord"—in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive
technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, andclassical conditioning that combine profoundly
to change society. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World
Revisited (1958), and with Island (1962), his final novel. 
 
Animal Farm -  an allegorical and dystopian novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17
August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and
then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as
a satiricaltale against Stalin. 
 
OTHER NAMES AND TERMS TO DEFINE:
 
Edwardian period – 1901 – 1910; named after Edward, son of Queen Victoria; this era was supposed to be a
modern one, progressive, but it turned out to be only a continuation of Victorian Age.
- During this period a great number of novels and short stories was published;
- There was a significant distinction between “highbrow” (intellectual) literature and popular fiction.
 
Georgian poetry – term referring to poetry written during the reign of George V; Georgian period lasted from
1910 to 1914 and was interrputed by The Great War.
The name of the term is given by Edward Marsh; he edited series of anthologies called Georgian Poetry. Main
representative of this poetry is Rupert Brooke, who wrote war poetry.
 
Imagism – modernist movement (early 20th c.) that concentrated on images and stressed the importance of
visual aspects of literature; it is considered to be the first organized Modernist literary movement in the
English language; directness of presentation and economy of language as well as willingness to experiment
with non-traditional verse forms. Represented by Ezra+ Pound, e.g. in In a Station of the Metro.
 
Surrealism – modernist movement aiming to stress the irrational part of experience; emphasises the
unconscious part of the human psyche (influenced by Freud – id, ego, superego; Oedipus complex;
interpretation of dreams).
Painting: unnerving, illogical scenes, strange creatures created from everyday objects; developed techniques
that allowed the unconscious to express itself.
 
Expressionism – modernist movement conveying intense, subjective moods and violent emotions; presents
worlds shaped from subjective perspective. Influenced by William James's Principles of Psychlogy and his
concept of “stream of consciousness”, a constant flow of thoughts, imageries that constantly flow through
human mind (concept employed by Joyce and Woolf).
In literature also: referring to myths, symbols; random imaginations; multiplicity of points of view.Paiting:
Picasso, Georges Braque.
 
Futurism – modernist movement; emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts
of future (emphasized speed, technology, youth and violence and objects such as the car, the aeroplane and
the industrial city); new age as an age of mechanisms. Founded by Italian poet F.T.Marinetti.
 

12
Vorticism – modernist movement led by Wyndham Lewis, who issued the magazine Blast. Lewis presents
the world as dehumanized, full of destruction and violence; celebrates the age of machines. Geometric style
tending towards abstraction in art, rejection of landscape paintings and nudes.
 
Cubism – an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and
inspired related movements in music and literature. Movement pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo
Picasso.
In Cubist artwork objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form – often using
geometric figures.
Literature?
 
vers libre – Free verse; Vers libre is an open form of poetry that abandons consistent meter patterns, rhyme,
or other forms of musical pattern; based on irregular rhythm cadences.
Emblematic work: T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland.
 
Bloomsday - is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce during which the
events of his novel Ulysses are relived. It is observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere. Joyce
chose the date as it was the date of his first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle. The name is derived
from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses.
 
Bloomsbury Group – an influential group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and
artists, including Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster. This loose collective of friends and relatives lived, worked
or studied together near Bloomsbury, London (first half of 20th c.)
 
stream of consciousness - The term was coined by William James in 1890 in his The Principles of
Psychology. It is a narrative mode that seeks to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass
through the mind; constant flow of thoughts, imageries that constantly flow through human mind. Used for
the first time by Dorothy Richarson in her novelPointed Roofs. Employed also by Virginia Woolf and James
Joyce.
 
objective correlative – A theory largely developed through the writings of the poet and literary critic T.S.
Eliot. Helping define the objective correlative, Eliot’s essay "Hamlet and His Problems" discusses his view of
Shakespeare’s incomplete development of Hamlet’s emotions in the play Hamlet. Eliot uses Lady Macbeth's
state of mind as an example of the successful objective correlative.
In the simplest words: Poet should find an external equivalent for a state of mind; “such that when the
external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked”
(fromHamlet...).
 
dissociation of sensibility - a literary term first used by T. S. Eliot in his essay “The Metaphysical Poets”. It
refers to the way in which intellectual thought was separated from the experience of feeling in seventeenth
century poetry. He believes it started after the metaphysics.
 
 
Irish Literary Revival / Celtic Twilight
A flowering of Irish literary talent in the late 19th and early 20th century. The literary movement was
associated with a revival of interest in Ireland's Gaelic heritage and the growth of Irish nationalism from the
middle of the 19th century.
Wiecie, jacy autorzy są tu ważni?
 
ISSUES:
 

13
main directions in the avant-garde movement in the early twentieth century
Chodzi o te wszystkie ruchy modernistyczne I avant-gardowe. Myślę, że nie ma co znowu o nich pisać, bo
definicje są powyżej: symbolism, imagism, surrealism, futurism, dadaism, vorticism, expressionism, post-
impressionism, cubism.
 
experiment in modernist fiction, main representatives
Experimental movement in modern art and literature at the end of 19th century. It comprises different
styles, opposes existing conventions. International movement, began in France, spread all over Europe;
affected mainly literature.
In Britain first symptoms appeared at the end of 19th century; it lasted during the first three decades of the
20th century with the culmination after The Great War (Edwardian and Georgian Periods included).
Main representatives: T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Woolf (dodajcie jakichś, jak wiecie)
 
Conrad’s main preoccupations as a novelist
He mostly wrote stories about the sea, using the sea itself and ships as metaphors. As a writer, he tries to
pass the knowledge he managed to acquire, to share the truth about the world he had discovered
(philosophical and moral themes). He also explores the themes of moral choices and lack of communication
(as in Amy Foster). He expresses his pessimistic view on war by creating gloomy atmosphere and predicting
another big conflict.
 
features of Eliot’s poetry
- avoidance of direct statement: poetry is suggestive, indirect, obscure, ironic.
- no clear sequence – juxtaposition of images, fragments, collages; elimination of connective, transitional
passages, doesn't lead from one image to another
- imagism – strongly visual poems
- avoidance of self-expression: creates other speakers; never wanted to write about his own emotions
- frequent allusions to literary tradition, philosophy, Bible, etc.: Dante, Shakespeare, Jacobean drama,
metaphysical poets, French symbolists
- vers libre (free verse) – appeared later in his poetry
 
Joyce’s representations of Ireland and Dublin
He left Ireland, but never denied his Irishness. In Dubliners he formed a naturalistic depiction of Irish
middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. Depicted people have dreams
but are unable to skip the limitations of the city; there is disappointment and disillusionment.
 
Eliot’s main inspirations for The Waste Land
Anthropological parts of the poem:
- James Frazer The Golden Bough – cycle of life, fertility
- Jessie L. Weston From Ritual to Romance – recurring image of wasteland, fertility rituals, Quest for the
Holy Grail
 
Virginia Woolf’s experimental fiction
 
poets of the 1930s: main representatives; formal and thematic characteristics of their poetry

English Literature 1945-present

WRITERS (in addition to those whose chosen works are on the reading list):
period, type and characteristics of their writing, main achievements
 

14
Peter Ackroyd - (born 5 October 1949) – an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest
in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies
of, among others, William Blake, Charles Dickens, and T. S. Eliot he won the Somerset Maugham
Award and two Whitbread Awards. He is noted for the volume of work he has produced, the range of styles
therein, his skill at assuming different voices and the depth of his research.
Monica Ali - (1967) a Bangladeshi-born British writer. Debut novel - Brick Lane. (nie ma o niej nic w
notatkach)

Julian Barnes - (born 19 January 1946) - an English writer and a philosopher specialising in ancient
philosophy. Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for his book The Sense of an Ending (2011) - narrated by a
retired man named Tony Webster, who recalls how he and his clique met Adrian Finn at school and vowed to
remain friends for life. In 2004 he became a Commandeur of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has also
written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. Literary movement: postmodernism.Other
works:A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters - collection of short stories.Arthur & George - novel,
account of a true crime investigated by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (George is the accused). Biographical
elements.Nothing to be Frigthened Of - memoir 
Flaubert's Parrot
Levels of Life

John Fowles – (1926 – 2005) post-war novelist, best known for his bookThe French Lieutenant's Woman in
which the author enters his novel and meets the character (representative of metafiction) + the novel has
three alternative endings. The action happens in the Victorian era, although the narrator is contemporary,
imitates the Victorian style.

Tony Harrison - (b. 1937) English poet. Writes about the place of his origin (Leeds), class divisions.
Translated ancient and medieval plays.
v- (małe v) poem about his parents' grave in Leeds. Littered, there's a graffiti saying "united" on the grave
(symbolises either the name of a football club or the feeling of unity). Reference to "all the versus" - meaning
oppositions in our lives (eg. communism vs. fascism).

Ted Hughes – (1930-1998) English poet.

The Hawk in the Rain – hif first colletion of poems. Getting into animals' conscience.
Tales from Ovid – free verse translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Birthday Letters – his last poetic work, reference to his wife's (Sylvia Plath, an American poet) suicide.

Geoffrey Hill – (b.1932) English poet, still active.Themes: history, religion, faith. Quite obscure.
Mercian Hymns
Tenebrae
Broken Hierarchies

B.S. Johnson – (Bryan Stanley Johnson, 1933 - 1973) post-war novelist, known for experimetns with
form. Albert Angelo – holes in pages in order to “see the future”.
The Unfortunates – novel published in a box, no binding, readers can assemble the pages as they like (except
for the first and the last page).
House Mother Normal – chronological, but has parallel chapters, thought and experiences of characters cross
each other.

Iris Murdoch – (1919 – 1999) post-war novelist, novels mainly aboutabout good and evil, sexual
relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious.
 Novels:
Under the Net -first novel. The protagonist is trapped “under the net of ideas”.

15
The Black Prince – about manipulating other ans sexulan obsession. The title alludes to Hamelt mainly.
The Sea, the Sea - awarded the Booker Prize for it.
Essay:
Against Dryness – about charracters in novels.

V.S. Naipaul - first-generation immigrant to Britain (West Indies), British writer, typically postcolonial. 
The Enigma of Arrival - autobiographical novel
In a Free State
Half a Line

Salman Rushdie - first-generation immigrant to Britain from Indie. Author of an article "The Empire Writes
Back with a Vengeance" to which the authors of The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial
Literature (theoretical book on postcolonial literature) made a reference.
Works:
Midnight's Children - children born at midnight of the day of India's Independence obtain special powers. 
The Satanic Verses - controversial in Muslim countries for some reason.

Zadie Smith - English writer, ancestors from West Indies. Representative of multiculturalism in Britain
(second-generation immigrants). Best known for her novel White Teeth

Muriel Spark – (1919 – 2006) post-war Scottish novelist. Representative of metafiction.

The Comforters – the protagonist becomes aware she's a character in a novel.
The Driver's Seat – flashbacks about murders.Not to Disturb

Graham Swift - (b. 1949) English writer. Main preoccupations: recollecting the past (public and private),
how past forms present, retrospective narratives, reliving memories + relations between generations.
Waterland  - reflecting on history.
Ever After
Last Orders - Booker Prize. Monologue, history of war veterans in flashbacks.
Wish You Were Here
 
ISSUES:
 
the Movement (in poetry) – group of like-minded English poets of 1950s, loosely associated. Aim: to bring
poetry back to its traditional form (no imagism, symbolism and other modernist things) – no intention to
experiment. Mainly references to contemporary post-war England but avoided direct political comments.
Scepticism, understatement, irony. Ordinary, sometimes even colloquial language.
Main representatives: Philip Larkin, Kinglsey Amis.

post-war poetry: main representatives - Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, Thom Gunn, Philip Larkin,
Elizabeth Jennings.

the Theatre of the Absurd: definition, characteristics, representatives – no coherent movement, but
similar style, 1950s and 60s. Shaping factor: the trauma of the WWII (meaningless and arbitrariness of life
etc.). Representatives: Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot, Happy Days, Not I, Breath), Harold Pinter (The
Room, The Birthday Party, The DumbWalter, The Caretaker, The Homecoming). Plays depict what happens
when the communication breaks down, language is unreliable (characters' statement are often incoherent,
contradictory, no real information conveyed), setting is very limited and there is not much of a plot (although
something happens). Huma life depicted as meaningless, there is no hope, futility of man's effort. Play is
purposeless, no solution or atnything.

16
realism and (elements of) experiment in the post-war English novel – realism: writers focus on the new,
post-war reality, changes in society (emergance of new subjects: women and multiculturalism, class
mobility). Start drawing attention to materialistic aspects of life, work. Generally the background is usually
the contemporary British society. Experiment: metafiction (self-reflexivity of a novel, readers become aware
they are reading a work of fictions, sometimes the author enters the work, clear-cut boundaries between
fiction and reality), eg. John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman – writer enters the text and meets the
character, Muriel Spark The Comforters – the protagonist becomes aware she's a character in a novel. Also
experimets with the form, eg. Bryan Stanley Johnson Albert Angelo – holes in pages in order to “see the
future”, The Unfortunates – novel published in a box, no binding, readers can assemble the pages as they
like (except for the first and the last page), John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman – three alternative
endings.

main themes in the contemporary English novel

postcolonial literature in Britain: representatives, main preoccupations:
Postcolonial literature addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country and of a
nation, especially the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated colonial peoples. These
texts often deal with racial as well as social and cultural issues: once independence is achieved, what is the
new cultural identity of the country and its people? Who is really in power here? Which race? What is the
writer’s identity and role in this context? What kind of language should they use? Frequently, post-colonial
writers have mixed origins, live in different countries and have a complex Eastern-Western identity.
Representatives: 
Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God), Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children, Shame), Jean Rhys
(Wide Sargasso Sea, Tales of Wide Caribbean), Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude, The
Autumn of the Patriarch), Derek Walcott (Omeros, Dream on Monkey Mountain)Wg. wykładów:postcolonial
literature - term applied to writers from former, non-white colonies inhabited mainly by people of non-
European origins.
Problems with the term:- what about writers represeting the white minority in former colonies? (Doris
Lessing, J.M.Coetzee)- Non-European writers may not necessarity be interested in racial issues
- English or naive language? (Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote in both). 
Main themes:- historical, return to the country of their origin in their writigns, rewriting the history from the
point of view of the colonised
- problems with adaptation, transition to another culture, migration to another country
- ethnic and intercultural relations in contemporary diversified British society 
Representatives:
Nigeria: Buchi Emecheta, Ben Okri
Hong Kong: Timothy MoWest Indies: V.S. Naipaul, Zadie Smith, Caryl Philips
Pakistan: Hanif Kureishi 
Indie: Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai

The Lady of Shalott - Tennyson

Lord Alfred Tennyson – English poet, published « Poems by two brothers » and « Poems chiefly lyrical ».
Member of The Apostles – an undergraduate club, whose members remained his friends all his life. The
group met to discuss major philosophical issued.
Tennyson experimented with irregular metres and words employed for their musical or evocative powers
rather than for their strict meaning. In 1850 Queen Victoria nominated him for poet laureate. In 1884 he
was given knighthood.

Part I Long fields of barley and of rye, And through the field the road
That clothe the wold and meet runs by
On either side the river lie the sky; To many-towered Camelot; 

17
And up and down the people go, And so she weaveth steadily,
Gazing where the lilies blow And little other care hath she, A bow-shot from her bower-
Round an island there below, The Lady of Shalott.  eaves,
The island of Shalott. He rode between the barley-
And moving through a mirror sheaves,
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,  clear The sun came dazzling through
Little breezes dusk and shiver That hangs before her all the the leaves,
Through the wave that runs for year, And flamed upon the brazen
ever Shadows of the world appear. greaves
By the island in the river There she sees the highway Of bold Sir Lancelot.
Flowing down to Camelot. near A red-cross knight for ever
Four grey walls, and four grey Winding down to Camelot:  kneeled
towers,  There the river eddy whirls, To a lady in his shield,
Overlook a space of flowers, And there the surly village- That sparkled on the yellow
And the silent isle imbowers churls, field, 
The Lady of Shalott. And the red cloaks of market Beside remote Shalott.
girls,
By the margin, willow-veiled, Pass onward from Shalott. The gemmy bridle glittered free,
Slide the heavy barges trailed  Like to some branch of stars we
By slow horses; and unhailed Sometimes a troop of damsels see
The shallop flitteth silken-sailed glad,  Hung in the golden Galaxy.
Skimming down to Camelot: An abbot on an ambling pad, The bridle bells rang merrily 
But who hath seen her wave her Sometimes a curly shepherd- As he rode down to Camelot:
hand? lad, And from his blazoned baldric
Or at the casement seen her Or long-haired page in crimson slung
stand?  clad, A mighty silver bugle hung,
Or is she known in all the land, Goes by to towered Camelot; And as he rode his armour
The Lady of Shalott? And sometimes through the rung,
mirror blue  Beside remote Shalott. 
Only reapers, reaping early The knights come riding two
In among the bearded barley, and two: All in the blue unclouded
Hear a song that echoes cheerly  She hath no loyal knight and weather
From the river winding clearly, true, Thick-jewelled shone the
Down to towered Camelot: The Lady of Shalott. saddle-leather,
And by the moon the reaper The helmet and the helmet-
weary, But in her web she still delights feather
Piling sheaves in uplands airy, To weave the mirror's magic Burned like one burning flame
Listening, whispers "'Tis the sights,  together,
fairy  For often through the silent As he rode down to Camelot. 
Lady of Shalott." nights As often through the purple
A funeral, with plumes and night,
Part II lights Below the starry clusters bright,
And music, went to Camelot: Some bearded meteor, trailing
There she weaves by night and Or when the moon was light,
day overhead, Moves over still Shalott.
A magic web with colours gay. Came two young lovers lately
She has heard a whisper say, wed;  His broad clear brow in sunlight
A curse is on her if she stay  "I am half sick of shadows," said glowed; 
To look down to Camelot. The Lady of Shalott. On burnished hooves his war-
She knows not what the curse horse trode;
may be, Part III From underneath his helmet

18
flowed Down she came and found a Till her blood was frozen slowly,
His coal-black curls as on he boat And her eyes were darkened
rode, Beneath a willow left afloat, wholly,
As he rode down to Camelot. And round about the prow she Turned to towered Camelot.
From the bank and from the wrote  For ere she reached upon the
river  The Lady of Shalott. tide 
He flashed into the crystal The first house by the water-
mirror, And down the river's dim side,
"Tirra lirra," by the river expanse, Singing in her song she died,
Sang Sir Lancelot. Like some bold seër in a trance The Lady of Shalott.
Seeing all his own mischance--
She left the web, she left the With a glassy countenance  Under tower and balcony,
loom, Did she look to Camelot. By garden-wall and gallery, 
She made three paces through And at the closing of the day A gleaming shape she floated
the room,  She loosed the chain, and down by,
She saw the water-lily bloom, she lay; Dead-pale between the houses
She saw the helmet and the The broad stream bore her far high,
plume, away, Silent into Camelot.
She looked down to Camelot. The Lady of Shalott.  Out upon the wharfs they came,
Out flew the web and floated Knight and burgher, lord and
wide; Lying, robed in snowy white dame, 
The mirror cracked from side to That loosely flew to left and And round the prow they read
side;  right-- her name,
"The curse is come upon me," The leaves upon her falling The Lady of Shalott.
cried light--
The Lady of Shalott. Through the noises of the night Who is this? and what is here?
She floated down to Camelot:  And in the lighted palace near
Part IV And as the boat-head wound Died the sound of royal cheer; 
along And they crossed themselves for
In the stormy east-wind The willowy hills and fields fear,
straining, among, All the knights at Camelot:
The pale yellow woods were They heard her singing her last But Lancelot mused a little
waning, song, space;
The broad stream in his banks The Lady of Shalott. He said, "She has a lovely face;
complaining,  God in his mercy lend her
Heavily the low sky raining Heard a carol, mournful, holy,  grace, 
Over towered Camelot; Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, The Lady of Shalott."

Part 1: The poem opens with a description of a field by a river. There's a road running through the field that
apparently leads to Camelot, the legendary castle of King Arthur. From the road you can see an island in the
middle of the river called the Island of Shalott. On that island there is a little castle, which is the home of the
mysterious Lady of Shalott. People pass by the island all the time, on boats and barges and on foot, but they
never see the Lady. Occasionally, people working in the fields around the island will hear her singing an
eerie song.

Part 2: Now we actually move inside the castle on the island, and Tennyson describes the Lady herself. First
we learn that she spends her days weaving a magic web, and that she has been cursed, forbidden to look
outside. So instead she watches the world go by in a magic mirror. She sees shadows of the men and women
who pass on the road, and she weaves the things she sees into her web. We also learn that she is "half sick"
of this life of watching and weaving.

Part 3: Now the big event: One day the studly Sir Lancelot rides by the island, covered in jewels and shining

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armor. Most of this chunk of the poem is spent describing Lancelot. When his image appears in the mirror,
the Lady is so completely captivated that she breaks the rule and looks out her window on the real world.
When she does this and catches a glimpse of Lancelot and Camelot, the magic mirror cracks, and she knows
she's in trouble.

Part 4: Knowing that it's game over, the Lady finds a boat by the side of the river and writes her name on it.
After looking at Camelot for a while she lies down in the boat and lets it slip downstream. She drifts down
the river, singing her final song, and dies before she gets to Camelot. The people of Camelot come out to see
the body of the Lady and her boat, and are afraid. Lancelot also trots out, decides that she's pretty, and says
a little prayer for her.

Symbols:
RIVER
This is the first big image in the poem, and it comes up again and again after the first line. It's almost like
the backbone of the poem, running through it and holding it up. Do you feel how the river sort of pulls the
plot along? That's especially true toward the end, as the Lady begins her final journey. The movement of the
river, its flow and its strength, is so key to this poem that it's not surprising that Tennyson leads out with
this image.
CAMELOT
Just the name of Camelot calls up images of amazing castles, kings and knights, and people living in peace
and justice. Even in the fantasy world of this poem, it seems far away, untouchable until the very end. When
we finally do see Camelot, it's a place of joy and beauty, every bit as social and splendid as the island of
Shalott was lonely and sad.
THE ISLAND
The island in the river, cut off from the land and the outside world, is a majorsymbol of the Lady's isolation
and loneliness.
THE LADY OF SHALOTT
Obviously she's the main character and a huge part of this poem, but is the Lady of Shalott a major image?
Lancelot is almost buried in description, but we hear almost nothing about the Lady herself. Hair color, eyes,
height? Those things aren't all crucial, but they'd help us to build a mental picture of our main character. In
some ways, it feels like the speaker is trying to hold back an image of the Lady, to make her deliberately
hard to imagine
THE MAGIC WEB
We think this is one of the most memorable and fascinating images in the poem. That's partly because of
the use of the word "web." It must literally mean something like a tapestry, but when you hear that word, it's
hard not to think of the lady as a kind of spider. There's some irony there though, because, while she seems
to be in control, she's obviously caught in someone else's web. She should be the web-weaving predator, but
instead she turns out to be the prey of some unseen, mysterious force.
THE MIRROR
This is the web's twin, the other half of the Lady's pair of magical props. Although the mirror brings the
world to the Lady, it's nothing like the real thing. She sees images, shadows, a sort of half-world. It's like
someone staying cooped up in her apartment watching TV for years. She'd know what was going on outside,
but you couldn't really call that living could you? The Lady sees the world but she can't interact with it. In
that way the mirror becomes another symbol of her intense, terrible isolation from the world.
SIR LANCELOT
Even in the Arthur legends, he has a reputation as an irresistible ladies' man. This poem spends a bunch of
time letting us know how good he looks in his armor. Other than that, he doesn't have much to do – no
dragons to slay or anything like that. All he has to do is show up and look good in a mirror, and he totally
rocks the Lady of Shalott's world.

 The most basic division in the poem is the four big chunks (Parts 1-4). It might help to think of these like
acts in a play – they each focus on a different part of the plot. Part 1 describes the landscape around
Shalott. Part 2 describes the Lady and the things she sees in her mirror. Part 3 deals with the appearance of
Lancelot and how cool he is. Part 4 covers the Lady's boat ride and her death. When you move to a new part,
it's a signal that the poem's plot is shifting gears.

The next important things to notice are the stanzas, the smaller groups of lines, which are like the
paragraphs of a poem. In this particular poem, Tennyson makes it easy on us, because the stanzas
are always nine lines long. There are a total of nineteen stanzas in the whole poem. If we count up the
stanzas, we can see that the Parts of the poem get longer as we go along. The first two parts have four

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stanzas each, Part 3 has five stanzas, and Part 4 (the longest) has six stanzas. You definitely don't have to
memorize these details, but it's good to keep an eye out for them. Great poems are always carefully put
together.

Now let's check out the way this poem rhymes. Tennyson made a big deal out of the rhyming lines in this
poem, which are super-noticeable once you start to focus on them. Each stanza in this poem rhymes in
exactly the same way, so once we show you how one of them works, you'll know everything there is to know.
We'll demonstrate with the first stanza. To make it clearer, we'll put rhyming sounds in bold, and give each
different sound a letter:

Finally, let's take a look at the rhythm of this poem (what English teachers call themeter). This one gets a
little trickier than the rhyme. We won't bug you with all the details, but here's a quick overview:

Most of the lines in this poem have eight syllables, although there are a bunch with five or seven too.
Tennyson uses two different basic rhythms for these lines. We'll show them to you so you can compare.
Again, don't get freaked about these details, just think of them as a part of your poetry toolkit.

The first kind of meter is called iambic. In this meter, if you divide all the syllables in the line into groups of
two, the emphasis falls on the second syllable (da DUM). That's how the poem starts out.

In the next part the meter is trochaic.

We never find out who put that curse on the Lady of Shalott. This made us a little bit curious. What if it
turned out that it was the speaker of this poem? There are a lot of ways that you could picture the speaker
of the poem, and we imagine an old witch telling this story, looking down into her crystal ball where she can
see the images of the Lady and Lancelot.

Where do we get this? Well, there's the bird's-eye-view thing, right? This speaker sees and knows things no
one else could. More than that, though, we think there's something a little cold in the sound of this
speaker's voice, just a hint of pleasure at the way the Lady suffers, at the irony of her last meeting with
Lancelot. Plus, there's the way the speaker hides the details of the curse, almost like she was keeping a
secret. Finally, isn't this whole poem a little like a magical spell, meant to draw you into this world and hold
you there? The rhythm of the poem, the way we come back again and again to the same refrain – it's almost
like we are being hypnotized, put under a curse ourselves by the sneaky magic of the speaker.

The setting is like our world, only more so. Have you ever looked at something, and then put on a pair of
sunglasses and looked again? You know how they can make something like a sunset seems more intense,
brighter, more real than real? That's how we see the setting of this poem. It's not like you don't recognize the
things you see, it's just that everything has been soaked in a weird and beautiful kind of magic. Things like
trees that might ordinarily just stand there are suddenly almost alive; they dance and shiver. The river
suddenly has a voice. It doesn't just burble along, it complains (line 120). 

It's not like Tennyson just threw a few magic props into our world. There's something completely,
mysteriously different about it. You imagine the sun would be brighter, the songs would be sweeter, and the
knights would be taller and stronger. That magic mirror has a little bit of a "through-the-looking glass" feel
to it already, and that's what we see everywhere around here: a world like ours, but a little distorted, richer
and deeper and more fascinating.

Themes:
ISOLATION
Whatever else the Lady of Shalott has going on, she's definitely alone. We don't know who shut her away in
the castle or why, but it doesn't seem fair. We can tell that she's fed up with it; in fact she even says as
much. Her desire to be part of the world, to interact, to love and be loved, is what pushes the whole plot of
this poem. The fact that she never really breaks out of her loneliness is what gives "The Lady of Shalott" a
tragic edge.
MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD
"The Lady of Shalott" is stuffed with references to the natural world. Tennyson loops back again and again to
the fields and trees and flowers that surround the island of Shalott. In fact, you might get a little sick of
hearing about it. Still, the movements of nature (especially the endless flowing of the river) are a big part of

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this poem's rhythm; they help it all hang together.
ART AND CULTURE
Although she's alone, and not too happy about it, the Lady of Shalott does have two things to keep her busy.
She weaves and she sings. Even if no one sees her work, she's definitely an artist. A lot of people read this
whole poem as a metaphor for the lonely life of the artist. We'll definitely look at that possibility, but even
without that big metaphor, we think the theme of art and artists is still a major part of "The Lady of Shalott."
THE SUPERNATURAL
The mysterious curse on the Lady of Shalott is a big part of the plot. It rules her life and causes her death.
This little thread of black magic helps give "The Lady of Shalott" its spooky, sad atmosphere, and also
connects it to the medieval fantasy world of wizards and spells.
LOVE
This is a tricky one, since no one in "The Lady of Shalott" admits to being in love. Still, the idea of love, even
unspoken love, is so crucial to this entire plot. It's a really old story. Lancelot is the guy or girl you always
wanted to talk to but never worked up the courage. Maybe you saw him across the lunchroom, but he never
noticed you. Maybe she was in your math class but you never said hi. This is love from a distance, and it's
real and raw and painful in this poem.

My Last Duchess – Robert Browning

Robert Browning – English poet, often contrasted with Tennyson but he was more modern. Wrote “Pauline”,
“Paracelsus”, “Sordello”, was highly criticized. He wasn’t a very successful playwright but there he discovered
his strength – dramatic monologues. “Dramatic lyrics”, “Dramatic Romances and Lyrics”. He also wrote love
poetry.

THAT’S my last Duchess painted on the wall, Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 
Looking as if she were alive. I call Or blush, at least. She thanked men, – good! but
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands thanked
Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Somehow – I know not how – as if she ranked
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said  My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
Strangers like you that pictured countenance, This sort of trifling? Even had you skill 
The depth and passion of its earnest glance, In speech – (which I have not) – to make your will
But to myself they turned (since none puts by Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)  Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, Or there exceed the mark" – and if she let
How such a glance came there; so, not the first Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot – E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps  Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Frà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Over my lady’s wrist too much," or "Paint Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands
Must never hope to reproduce the faint Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough  The company below, then. I repeat,
For calling up that spot of joy. She had The Count your master’s known munificence
A heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad. Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Too easily impressed: she liked whate’er Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
Sir, ’twas all one! My favor at her breast,  At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
The dropping of the daylight in the West, Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
The bough of cherries some officious fool Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
She rode with round the terrace – all and each

The Duke of Ferrara is negotiating with a servant for the hand of a count’s daughter in marriage. (We don’t
know anything about the Count except that he is a count. And that he’s not the Count from Sesame Street –
different guy.) During the negotiations, the Duke takes the servant upstairs into his private art gallery and
shows him several of the objects in his collection. 

The first of these objects is a portrait of his "last" or former duchess, painted directly on one of the walls of
the gallery by a friar named Pandolf. The Duke keeps this portrait behind a curtain that only he is allowed to
draw. While the servant sits on a bench looking at the portrait, the Duke describes the circumstances in

22
which it was painted and the fate of his unfortunate former wife.

Apparently the Duchess was easily pleased: she smiled at everything, and seemed just as happy when
someone brought her a branch of cherries as she did when the Duke decided to marry her. She also blushed
easily. The Duchess’s genial nature was enough to throw the Duke into a jealous, psychopathic rage, and he
"gave commands" (45) that meant "all smiles stopped together" (46). We’re guessing this means he had her
killed although it’s possible that he had her shut up somewhere, such as in a convent. But it’s way more
exciting if you interpret it as murder, and most critics do. 

After telling this story to the servant of the family that might provide his next victim – er, sorry, bride – the
Duke takes him back downstairs to continue their business. On the way out, the Duke points out one more
of his favorite art objects: a bronze statue of Neptune taming a seahorse.

Symbols:
PAINTING
The most obvious symbol in "My Last Duchess" is the one that the Duke spends most of his time talking
about – the portrait of the Duchess painted by Frà Pandolf on the wall of his private gallery. Intriguingly, the
Duke doesn’t say much about the painting itself, except that it’s lifelike and that it seems to capture the
Duchess’s emotional state. We don’t get any sense of what pose the Duchess is in, what she’s wearing, or
what the color scheme or brushstrokes. What we do learn about the painting is that it’s painted directly on
the gallery wall, and so the Duke has to keep it covered by a curtain so that he can control who views it.
SPOT OF JOY
When the Duchess is happy about something – and we really mean anything, her marriage, her dinner, the
weather, anything at all – she smiles and blushes, and the Duke describes her blush s a "spot of joy" (21)
that appears in her cheek. The spot of joy is an involuntary signal of the Duchess's pleasure, something that
she can’t control, that betrays her inner feelings to the world. The Duke thinks of it as a "spot" – a stain, a
symbol of her tainted nature.
SMILES
Along with blushes, the Duchess bestows pleased smiles on anyone and anything that brings a little bit of
joy into her life. The Duke thinks of these smiles almost the way you might think of collector’s items – they’re
worth less (maybe even worthless) because she gives out so many of them. In fact, it seems like the Duke
thinks that the Duchess should only smile for him. Taking pleasure in your life, let alone in its subtle
details, just doesn’t fit with his prestige-and-power philosophy.
STOOPING
It’s important to notice that when the Duke describes something that he thinks of as inappropriate or base
for him to do, he does so by calling it "stooping." He considers himself to be on a high social pedestal, with
his "nine-hundred-years-old name" and his wealth. He can’t "lower" himself, even to tell someone that he’s
angry with them. Normal communication and behavior are out of the question for him, because they fall into
the category of "stooping."
STATUE OF NEPTUNE
The final art object that the Duke points out to the Count’s servant as they leave his gallery is a bronze
statue of Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, taming a seahorse. The Duke emphasizes that this statue was
cast for him specifically and names the sculptor, Claus of Innsbruck – which presumably means that this
sculptor is well-known. As readers, we have to consider this statue as a foil to the only other art object that
we see in the gallery – the portrait of the Duchess.

Browning himself described this poem as a "dramatic lyric" – at least, Dramatic Lyrics was the title he gave to
the book of poems in which "My Last Duchess" first appeared. The "dramatic" part of the poem is obvious: it
has fictional characters who act out a scene.

The "lyric" part is less clear. "My Last Duchess" doesn’t read like a typical lyric poem. Its rhymed iambic
pentameter lines, like its dramatic setup, remind us of Shakespeare’s plays and other Elizabethan drama.
But it is about the inner thoughts of an individual speaker, instead of a dialogue between more than one
person. That makes it more like the Romantic lyrics that came before it in the early part of the nineteenth
century – stuff by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley that are all about the mind of the individual. So,
really, Browning’s title Dramatic Lyrics says it all. "My Last Duchess" is what would happen if
Shakespeare’s Macbeth married Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey" and they had a baby. It’s a hybrid of a play
and a poem – a "dramatic lyric."

As for meter, "My Last Duchess" uses the rhythm called "iambic pentameter."Iambic means that the rhythm

23
is based on two-syllable units in which the first syllable is . . . oh, drat, your eyes are glazing over. Stay with
us here. Okay, an iamb goes "da DUM," like that. Pentameter means that there are five ("penta") of those in a
line. Listen: "There’s MY last DUCHess HANGing ON the WALL" – that’s iambic pentameter. Okay, okay, you
could argue that "on" shouldn’t be stressed and so forth, but that’s the basic idea. 

Why does this matter? Well, for one thing, some people like to claim that iambic pentameter is the most
"natural" rhythm for the English language to fall into, and that we often speak in iambic pentameter without
noticing. Nobody’s ever really been able to prove this, and probably nobody ever will, but it’s a persistent
"myth" about meter, so you should know it’s out there. It also means that lines written in iambic pentameter
feel conversational to us. If you listen to someone read "My Last Duchess" aloud (check out our "Links"
section for some online audio recordings by contemporary poets and scholars), you might not even notice
that it has a fancy meter, because it sounds more like normal speech than some other poetry does.

The other thing about iambic pentameter, like we said before, is that Shakespeare and other Elizabethan
dramatists used it in their plays. Browning, a very highly educated writer, knew this, and his decision to use
this meter in a poem that already feels sort of like a play is a direct allusion to the patterns of monologues
(speeches made to others) and soliloquies (speeches made while alone) in drama. "My Last Duchess" is more
of a monologue than a soliloquy, because there is a character listening to the Duke in the poem.
He’s not speaking his thoughts aloud to himself while he’s alone, the way Hamlet does.

Of course, although the iambic rhythm makes us think of Elizabethan drama, the rhymed couplets (pairs of
rhymed lines that occur together) of the poem keep tying the Duke’s speech into tidy packages, even though
his thoughts and sentences are untidy. Both Shakespeare and the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth
used iambic pentameter without rhyme, a form called blank verse. But Browning introduces couplets into
the mix. We think you can probably guess why it might be more appropriate for the control-freak Duke of
Ferrara to speak in harsh, structured, rhymed lines than in unrhymed ones.

The speaker of "My Last Duchess" is, of course, the Duke of Ferrara. But it’s important to think about him,
not only as a character, but as a speaker. We need to consider his rhetoric, and syntax, and speech
patterns. We know what kind of a man the Duke is, but what kind of an orator is he?

First of all, the Duke’s speech is highly formalized, using strict rhyme and meter to organize itself into
couplets (AABBCC etc.). He’s a man who appreciates control, and he takes pains to control his own
statements. But the syntax, or sentence structure, of the poem pulls against its rhyme scheme. The lines are
paired in rhymed couplets, but these couplets are "open" – that is, the sentences don’t finish at the same
time the lines do.

Unlike some lyric poetry, and very much like a play, "My Last Duchess" has a very definite physical and
geographical setting: a private art gallery in the palace of the Duke of Ferrara in mid-sixteenth-century
Renaissance Italy. The modern day country of Italy didn’t exist during the Renaissance – the many city-
states in the region weren’t unified until the late nineteenth century. But Ferrara was a city-state in what is
today northern Italy, sort of near Bologna. Browning even tells us this setting in the epigraph, as though he
were listing the location of the scene in a play. What’s interesting is that the real historical details of life in
sixteenth-century Ferrara are much less important to the poem than the connotations and stereotypes of an
Italian Renaissance palace.

Browning was writing for a nineteenth-century audience (even if that audience didn’t always "get" his
poetry), and that nineteenth-century audience would have immediately made certain assumptions about a
place like Ferrara. You know how, if we say "Transylvania," you immediately think of Dracula, werewolves,
and creepy moonlit castles? Well, for nineteenth-century British readers, saying "Renaissance Italy" would
have made them think of fantastic art objects, extravagant living, lavish palaces, and sinister political ideas
of the Machiavelli sort. In this way, that simple epigraph "Ferrara" suggests a whole cluster of themes – even
if some of those themes might be inaccurate stereotypes.

"My Last Duchess" reminds us of an arrogant speech by a witty guy who knows he’s witty. Because it’s
written in iambic pentameter, and because it has so many dramatic qualities, it reminds us of a
Shakespeare play. We imagine the most pompous actor we’ve ever seen standing in the middle of a stage,
planting his feet wide apart, and declaiming his lines with a lot of pretentious self-importance. There’s no
doubt that the Duke is self-important. After all, what makes him angry about the last Duchess's behavior is
that she thinks anyone could be important as important as he is. Toward the end of the poem, as the Duke

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walks his listener downstairs toward the rest of the party, he points out one last piece of art in his
collection: 

Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! (54-56)

We can just see the Duke pointing proudly at the statue, speaking each of his phrases with distinction, and
crackling those hard consonants ("Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!") for all he’s worth.

Themes:
POWER
"My Last Duchess" is all about power: the political and social power wielded by the speaker (the Duke) and
his attempt to control the domestic sphere (his marriage) in the same way that he rules his lands. He rules
with an iron fist. The Duke views everything that he possesses and everyone with whom he interacts as an
opportunity to expand his power base. Wives need to be dominated; servants need to understand his
authority; and fancy objects in his art gallery display his influence to the world – if he decides to show them.
Kindness, joy, and emotion are all threats to his tyrannical power.
LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
In "My Last Duchess," choices about what to communicate and what to withhold are the means by which
power is wielded. The Duke sees communicating openly and honestly with someone about the problems you
have with their behavior as impossible because it would compromise his authority. It’s also possible to hint
at his power by intentionally letting stories of the past exploits slip to a new listener. However, because
language is full of subtlety, the Duke might accidentally communicate more than he meant to about his own
psychosis
ART AND CULTURE
"My Last Duchess" is a piece of art about a piece of (fictional) art – a poem about a pretend painting. The
speaker of the poem, the Duke of Ferrara, is a connoisseur and collector of objets d’art, or art objects, which
he displays privately in order to impress people. In this poem, art and culture become tools for
demonstrating social status – and ways to reduce unstable elements, like the Duchess herself, to things that
can be physically controlled
MADNESS
In "My Last Duchess," a husband murders his wife because she blushes and smiles at other people – even
though theses blushes are out of her control and probably entirely innocent. This is pretty much the
textbook definition of an abusive, controlling husband. The Duke doesn’t even want his wife to thank people
for gifts, because it makes him jealous. But we think this goes beyond abuse into the realm of madness:
after all, trying to control someone is abuse; thinking that because someone blushes she must be having an
affair, and that the only remedy is murder is just insane.
JEALOUSY
The Duke in "My Last Duchess" is pretty much the green-eyed monster incarnate. He’s almost an allegorical
figure for jealousy. He’s jealous of the attention his wife shows to other people – even if all she does is thank
them for bringing her some cherries. He’s jealous of every smile and every blush that she bestows,
intentionally or unintentionally, on someone else. He’s so jealous that he can’t even bring himself to talk to
her about her behavior – murder is the only solution he can come up with. His jealousy isn’t just about
romantic attention; it’s about any kind of attention.

Ulysses – Alfred Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,  Myself not least, but honoured of them all –
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known – cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
 
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were

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For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle –  The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought
with me –  One equal temper of heroic hearts,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads – you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

"Ulysses" details Ulysses' intense dissatisfaction and boredom on his island home of Ithaca. The poem is a
monologue spoken by him, where he not only expresses his discontent, but also describes his desire to keep
sailing. He's getting older and doesn't have a lot of time left, so he wants to get busy living rather than busy
dying. The poem concludes with his resolution to "strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Symbols:
GREEK MYTHOLOGY
Because the poem is spoken by a famous Greek hero it's no surprise that references to Greek mythology
abound. Ulysses refers several times to the Trojan War and mentions several mythological landmarks in
order to convey just how hungry he is for new adventures. More specifically, Ulysses' references to Greek
mythology remind us of his heroic past while also giving us a sense of the (very large) scope of his future
ambitions.
TRAVELLING
Ulysses has done a lot of traveling; it took him ten years to get home from Troy, which means he's had an
entire decade to visit a whole lot of places. Apparently, those ten years weren't enough because all he talks
about is leaving home again. It's not entirely clear whether Ulysses wants to visit any specific place or if he
just wants to travel for its own sake. Maybe he just likes the smell of the ocean air. Either way, he wants to
get out of Dodge.
EATING AND DRINKING
As the king of Ithaca, Ulysses doesn't have a lot do besides eat and sleep and act as a judge every once and a
while. In fact, he's not too happy about just sitting around eating and drinking all day. He's hungry, sure,
but for something else. He sees the people who just sit around eating food and sleeping – his subjects – as
more like animals than people. This is partly why Ulysses has lost his appetite for ease, tranquility, and
regular food
STARS
Before the compass was invented, sailors used the stars to guide them. Ulysses has done a lot of sailing, so
it's no surprise that stars come up several times in the poem. The stars in this poem, however, are always
doing more than looking pretty; they have the power to affect things on earth, and they're also handy as
metaphors for Ulysses' experiences and desires
ANIMALS
There are a lot of sly references to animals in this poem, and we're not talking about Ulysses' poodle either.
The residents of Ithaca are described as uncultivated people that just eat and sleep and need to be tamed
like a bunch of wild animals. Ulysses doesn't want to end up like them, which he sees as a very real
possibility if he stays in Ithaca. He wants to be a different kind of animal, a predatory one that wanders
around, consuming different places as if they were exotic prey.

"Ulysses" is a dramatic monologue, a poetic form we usually associate with Robert Browning, a Victorian
poet and contemporary of Tennyson. A dramatic monologue is a poem spoken by a single person (mono-) to

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an audience; that audience could be one person or a group of people referred to in the poem (at line 49
Ulysses says "you and I are old") or any other implied audience. A monologue differs from a soliloquy (which
also has one speaker) because it is spoken to an audience that is a part of the situation, as opposed to the
audience in a theater. A dramatic monologue is identifiable by the fact that it resembles a conversation in
which you can only hear one person talking; the speaker seems clearly to be responding to someone, but
that person or group doesn't actually speak in the poem.

As far as meter goes, Tennyson was an expert metricist, but in this poem he keeps things pretty simple,
sticking with the standard meter of English, iambic pentameter. That means each line has five iambs, or
feet: each iamb contains an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in: "To strive, / to seek, /
tofind, / and not / to yield" (70).

Even though the poem is mostly in iambic pentameter, Tennyson frequently throws in different types of
beats. For example, line 69 begins with a beat that contains two stressed syllables: "Made weak." A beat
with two stressed syllables in a row like this is called a spondee. Other examples of spondees occur in lines
44, 45, and 67.

At other moments, Tennyson will use a beat that contains a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed
syllable, as in "Life to" (7). This is called a trochee. Tennyson varies the meter of his poem periodically
because it is a dramatic monologue; nobody speaks entirely in iambic pentameter, and the changing beats
give the poem a more realistic feel, so it seems more like somebody is actually speaking.

Ulysses is the speaker of the poem that bears his name; he's a semi-retired soldier who's also a king. In
many ways he's a lot like a vet you'd meet at the VA hospital, or your friend's grandpa who fought in World
War II. You're sitting around talking to this guy, and he starts going on about how bored he is, how bad the
food is at the nursing home, how he wishes he could still be in the army and travel around the world. His
legs are still strong, and so is his mind. As he continues to talk, he gets more and more animated, finally
realizing that if he still feels good he should try to do the things he used to, regardless of what anybody says.
Towards the end of the conversation, he goes into the other room and comes back dressed in his old army
uniform. In response to your surprise, he gives an incredibly heroic speech about how he's willing to brave
death to do what he wants to do and picks up the phone to dial the local recruiting office.

The poem takes place in several places in Ithaca; it starts by the hearth in Ulysses' palace or castle, then
points to port, and then somehow ends up there. By the end of the poem, we think that Ulysses is standing
next to his mariners by the ship.

Pretend that Ulysses is George Washington. He's just won the Revolutionary Warand is now living in the
president's house in Philadelphia (the City of Brotherly Love was briefly the nation's capital); even though
the presidential crib wasn't as fancy then as it is now, it was still really nice. Now, pretend that George
Washington got really bored with living in this gigantic house in Philly and decided to head to the nearest
army base and get his old uniform back on, as if he were preparing to go back into battle. If the poem were
called "George Washington," our first president would start out by speaking to us from his humongous living
room and eventually take us to an army or naval base.

Tennyson's poem is a lot like Mel Gibson's famous speech in Braveheart, or any other speech one might use
to rouse a group of soldiers to action. You can't start out yelling because you won't have any energy left at
the end; these things have to be planned carefully, and the best has to be saved for last.

The poem starts out by detailing a set of conditions or problems without overdoing it: "It little profits that an
idle king…(1). Eventually, it gathers momentum, and Ulysses' voice starts to rise as he gets more and more
excited. By the end he is in full force; he has reached the climactic moment and his moving and heroic lines
are almost as memorable as Mel's, "They'll never take our freedom!" "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to
yield" could be used in almost situation where one needs to get a group of people pumped up: before a big
game, before a big battle, or even before an important exam. Head over to "Best of the Web" to hear a couple
of readings of the poem to see what we mean.

Themes:
DISSATISFACTION
Let's face it, Ulysses is really bored. He can't stand just sitting around the house with his wife all day, eating
and sleeping and settling disputes every once in a while. It would be like if you spent the entire summer

27
 traveling around the world and then had to go to your corner office where all you had to do was count your
money and live in luxury. Yeah sure, it'd be nice, but wouldn't you get a craving for adventure every once in
a while? After visiting all kinds of strange places, Ulysses has to go back to Ithaca where, since he's the king,
he doesn't really have to do a whole lot. He's still in good physical shape, and he can't stand it that he
doesn't get to put that body to use.
PERSEVERANCE
Ulysses is an untamed spirit, and nothing is going to stop him; he's got a disease, and the only cure is to
keep traveling, to keep moving on. It's not that his life in Ithaca isn't good; there's a voice inside his head
that tells him his life is synonymous with perseverance, and that he should continue to see as many places
as he can before he dies so he can get the most out of life. He's determined to persevere against the lures of
domestic tranquility, even if it kills him.
MORALITY
The strong sense of urgency that Ulysses radiates stems largely from his own consciousness of death; it
seems like every time he talks about going back to sea he mentions the fact that he might die soon, or die
out there. Ulysses knows that death is stalking him, and he wants to try and cheat it for as long as he can.
In other words, he wants to try to steal as many moments as he can before the curtain drops. And he thinks
by traveling more he can somehow forestall death, can make the "eternal silence" wait just a bit longer for
him.
OLD AGE
In a lot of ways, Ulysses resembles a retiree, someone who's had a long, eventful life and has been forced to
hang it up just a bit too soon. Death isn't just stalking him because that's what death does; it's stalking him
because he's old! Ulysses spent twenty years away from home, and even if he left home at the age of 25, that
would still make him 45. That's like 70 if you're living in 1200 B.C.! And that's one of the reasons why he's
in such a hurry to get out of Ithaca; he doesn't want to spend his few remaining years sitting around
watching his son take over the family business. He'd rather say his goodbyes now and see what happens.
EXPLORATION
Ulysses is like that guy you once knew who was totally happy taking whatever he could fit in his backpack
and setting off for Europe, or Africa, or any other sprawling land mass. On one of those trips he got lost, was
presumed dead, but later made it back home; now he's on his way out the door again because he's not done
looking for new places. Ulysses knows he might die, but the search, the process of exploring, satisfies him in
ways that nothing else can.

In Memoriam 54, 55, 56 - Alfred Tennyson

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good          Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
         Will be the final end of ill, Or but subserves another's gain.
         To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; Behold, we know not anything;
         I can but trust that good shall fall
That nothing walks with aimless feet;          At last—far off—at last, to all,
         That not one life shall be destroy'd, And every winter change to spring.
         Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete; So runs my dream: but what am I?
         An infant crying in the night:
That not a worm is cloven in vain;          An infant crying for the light:
         That not a moth with vain desire And with no language but a cry.

Men trust that good will win out over ill, that “nothing walks with aimless feet” and everything has a purpose. Men
think that the vagaries of nature mean something. However, this trust is hard to maintain, for men know nothing.
The poet is like an infant who can only believe in what he sees. His faith is shaken by the realities of the rational
evidence against immortality.

The wish, that of the living whole          That Nature lends such evil dreams?
         No life may fail beyond the grave,          So careful of the type she seems,
         Derives it not from what we have So careless of the single life;
The likest God within the soul?
That I, considering everywhere
Are God and Nature then at strife,          Her secret meaning in her deeds,

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         And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
         And falling with my weight of cares
         Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
         And gather dust and chaff, and call
         To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

The poet wonders if God and Nature are at strife, meaning if the evidence found in Nature denies the immortality of
the soul. Nature seems utterly careless of “the single life” and is capable of waste and chaos. The poet stretches his
feeble hands out and tries to muster his faith.

"So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
"Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more." And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law--
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed--
Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil. 

The poet does not think Nature is careful at all. He notes that species have gone extinct. She cares for nothing.
Man, who is “her last work, who seem’d so fair” and who trusted God, is at odds against Nature, “red in tooth and
claw.” She cares nothing for his creed and his battling for the good and the just. He begins to think life is futile and
frail, and he hopes for Hallam’s voice to answer him or offer redress.

The Charge of the Light Brigade – Alfred Tennyson

I  Into the valley of Death 

Half a league, half a league,  Rode the six hundred.
Half a league onward, 
III 
All in the valley of Death 
Cannon to right of them, 
Rode the six hundred. 
Cannon to left of them, 
"Forward, the Light Brigade! 
Cannon in front of them 
Charge for the guns!" he said. 
Volleyed and thundered; 
Into the valley of Death 
Stormed at with shot and shell, 
Rode the six hundred.
Boldly they rode and well, 
II  Into the jaws of Death, 
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"  Into the mouth of hell 
Was there a man dismayed?  Rode the six hundred.
Not though the soldier knew 
IV 
Someone had blundered. 
Flashed all their sabres bare, 
Theirs not to make reply, 
Flashed as they turned in air 
Theirs not to reason why, 
Sab'ring the gunners there, 
Theirs but to do and die. 
Charging an army, while 
All the world wondered. 

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Plunged in the battery-smoke  While horse and hero fell. 
Right thro' the line they broke;  They that had fought so well 
Cossack and Russian  Came through the jaws of Death, 
Reeled from the sabre stroke  Back from the mouth of hell, 
Shattered and sundered.  All that was left of them, 
Then they rode back, but not  Left of six hundred.
Not the six hundred.
VI 
V  When can their glory fade? 
Cannon to right of them,  O the wild charge they made! 
Cannon to left of them,  All the world wondered. 
Cannon behind them  Honour the charge they made! 
Volleyed and thundered;  Honour the Light Brigade, 
Stormed at with shot and shell,  Noble six hundred!

There's not a whole ton of plot in this poem, but in our opinion, that's a good thing. Tennyson doesn't bog
you down in the history of the Crimean War, or describe the events leading up to the Battle of Balaclava (see
"In a Nutshell" for more on that). He just throws you into the middle of a battle, giving you a vivid sense of
the moment.

What's the moment, you ask? Well, basically, the 600 horsemen of the Light Brigade are ordered to charge
forward into a valley, with guns on all sides. They do, and they meet heavy fire. When they encounter their
Russian enemies, they attack them, kill some of them, and then retreat down the valley. The gunfire on the
way back is just as bad, and many of these heroic soldiers die.

Symbols:
VALLEY OF DEATH
The valley of Death is the first major visual image we get, and it haunts the whole poem. The valley is the
setting, the place where the charge takes place, but it doesn't quite seem to exist in the real world. It feels
supernatural. We imagine dusty, baked earth, vultures circling overhead, maybe some evil laughter. OK,
that's probably too much, but you get the idea, right? A super-nasty spot.
JAWS OF DEATH
When you give human or animal features to an idea like death, that's called personification. That's an
important technique here, because it turns death into a kind of character in this poem. It's not just the
name of a valley anymore – it becomes a living thing ready to gobble these guys up. We think it's key to
notice that Tennyson capitalizes the word Death – another way to emphasize its importance.
MOUTH OF HELL
Here's another major personification. Notice that it isn't that different from the "jaws of Death." Tennyson
moves in little steps here, and often loops back to the same image over and over, making tweaks each time.
THE LIGHT BRIGADE
We're not sure how hard to push this one, but here goes: before we knew what a "Light Brigade" was, we
thought this poem had something to do with actual light, like beams of sunlight. We know now that the
brigade is called "light" to distinguish them from "heavy" cavalry, who played a different role in battle. (See
"What's Up with the Title?" for more on this.) Still, we think it's hard not to associate the Light Brigade with
a kind of holy light. Maybe that wasn't the first thing Tennyson thought of, but poetic language often takes
advantage of all the meanings of words.
THE GUNS
Guns and cannon are a key image for the enemy, for the threat of death. Tennyson doesn't waste much time
telling us why this fight is happening, or who's attacking who. Maybe his readers at the time already knew
the story, but for folks today the details are pretty sketchy. There is one mention of the "Cossack and
Russian" soldiers, but mostly all we hear about is this big scary wall of guns
SABRES
These sabers the Light Brigade carries are a great symbol of their heroism and the power. On the one hand,
there's something noble and a little crazy about charging a cannon with a sword. On the other hand, they do
some real damage with these sabres, at least according to Tennyson.

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Let's tackle the way this poem rhymes first, because it's kind of interesting and unusual. Some poems have
very regular rhyme patterns, with the same sounds repeating every line or every other line. That's not true in
this poem.

The rhymes in "The Charge of the Light Brigade" aren't predictable, but they're still an important part of the
way the poem is put together. These rhymes can happen in all kinds of ways. Sometimes a bunch of lines in
a row will have rhyming words at the end, sometimes it will be every other line, sometimes two words will
almost rhyme but not quite (we call that near rhyme or slant rhyme).

The easiest way to describe this is just to show you. We'll put rhyming words in bold, and also tag each
sound at the end of a line with a letter, so you can see which ones match up. Let's look at Stanza 2, where
there's a lot of interesting rhyming going on:

"Forward, the Light Brigade!" (A)

Was there a man dismayed? (A)
Not though the soldier knew (B)
Someone had blundered. (C)
Theirs not to make reply, (D)
Theirs not to reason why, (D)
Theirs but to do and die. (D)
Into the valley of Death (E)
Rode the six hundred. (C)

See, we told you there was a lot going on here. Let's break it down a little.

We start out with two lines in a row that rhyme: Brigade, dismayed. That's called a rhyming couplet.

Then we have a line that doesn't rhyme with anything else: knew.

Now take a look at the fourth line. See how that sort of rhymes with the last line: blundered, hundred? The
words sound kind of alike, but they also stick in your mouth a little. That's what we call a near rhyme or
slant rhyme, and they're easy to find in this poem.

The last thing to check out here, and maybe the most noticeable part of the whole section, is the group of
three rhyming lines in the middle: reply, why, die. We call three rhyming lines in a row a "triplet."

OK, we'll leave off our discussion of rhyme at this point, but poke around a little in the other sections if you
feel like it. Every one has interesting rhymes.

Meter

Now for the meter. This part of the poem's form is definitely less complicated, once you get the hang of it.
The first thing we'll look for in each line is which syllables are emphasized. We call that the "stress." In
general, there are two main stresses in each line of "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Here, we'll show you
how that works again, using part of section 2. We'll put the stressed syllables in bold:

"Forward, the | Light Brigade!" 

Was there a | man dismayed?
Not though the | soldier knew 
Someone had | blundered. 
Theirs not to | make reply, 
Theirs not to | reason why, 
Theirs but to | do and die. 

See the pattern there? The stressed syllables come at the beginning and in the middle of the line. They are
always followed by two unstressed (or less stressed) syllables. Try saying that first line out loud: "For-ward,
the/ Light Bri-gade!" Hear that rhythm? DUM-da-da DUM-da-da.

See how we've split the lines up with slashes? Those little groups of syllables between the slashes are called
"feet" (silly, we know, but that's how it is). When the feet look like this – with a stressed syllable followed by
two unstressed syllables – we call that a dactyl. When there are two feet per line, that's called dimeter. So
the full, fancy English teacher name for the rhythm of this poem is dactylic dimeter. Snazzy terminology is

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 all well and good, but what we really want is for you to be able to hear that steady heartbeat rhythm running
through the poem: DUM-da-da DUM-da-da DUM-da-da. Cool, huh?

Have you ever seen a big-budget Hollywood movie about World War II? There's always a lot of fighting and
action, and then, sometimes, at the end, it cuts to an old veteran remembering the war and his lost buddies.
We imagine that guy narrating this poem.

To us, it seems like the speaker was there. He remembers the charge, and he wants to pass on the story of
the heroes who charged and died on that day. You can hear the power of his memories and his patriotism
behind every word. He sees the tragedy of war, but also the positive side, the things it brings out in men. He
wants you to see this too. He wants to stir you up, to make sure you don't forget. Sometimes he might get a
little carried away, maybe he's a little sentimental sometimes, but it's impossible not to like him and respect
him.

That's how we picture the speaker. How do you see him?

The poem is based on an actual historical event: the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of
Balaclava (which happened during the Crimean War). This went down in Crimea in 1854.

Here's the quick and dirty version of the history: The Crimean War, which took place between 1853 and
1856. This was essentially a battle between Britain (with its allies) and Russia for control over the territory
occupied by the crumbling Ottoman Empire. In late 1854, the allied troops tried to capture the Russian city
of Sebastopol, and the Battle of Balaclava was one of several fights in that campaign. During this battle, the
British commanders ordered a disastrous charge by the Light Brigade, which took many casualties. That's
the basic story. For history buffs, the web is packed with great resources about the Crimean War (we've
linked to a few in our "Best of the Web" section).

Themes:
WARFARE
Warfare is probably the #1 theme here.  Ultimately, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is a poem about a
battle.  It spends a lot of time describing the confusion, the terror, the bloodshed, and, yes, also the heroism
and excitement of armed combat.  Notice that most of the images and descriptions in the poem relate to
warfare: cannon, bullets, smoke, sabres, etc.
COURAGE
There's no question that the Light Brigade has guts.  Every last one of them (according to Tennyson) charges
forward to the enemy line and does his job.  Tennyson makes sure to point out that they know exactly how
dangerous and hopeless the job is, but they stand up and do it anyway.  "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is
about war, but we think its message is about the heroism of ordinary, nameless soldiers.
DEATH
The tragedy here is that many of the brave soldiers in the Light Brigade die in this battle.  Tennyson doesn't
say how many, and he doesn't go into gory details.  Still, death is everywhere in this poem.  It's a constant
presence, almost like a character.  The valley where the charge takes place belongs to "Death"; we hear all
about his jaws, and so forth.  Death is almost a physical presence in "The Charge of the Light Brigade,"
something you could see and touch, like the Grim Reaper.
DUTY
The men in the Light Brigade are just doing their job; they're soldiers and it's their duty to fight.  That's the
core of what makes them appealing and heroic, but it's also the thing that makes their deaths tragic.  The
Brigade doesn't need to go on a suicide mission and charge their enemies (some commander seems to have
given a bad order), and the Brigade knows that, but they do it anyway.  That's the code of a soldier, and it's
definitely what Tennyson is celebrating here – the last word in loyalty, in living up to your promises.
RESPECT
Tennyson doesn't write "The Charge of the Light Brigade" because it's a good story, or because he just thinks
you'd be kind of interested.  He wants to accomplish something specific.  He wants the memory of the
anonymous men of the Light Brigade to live forever.  You know what?  It worked. We guarantee that you
would never have heard about the Light Brigade in the Crimean War if it weren't for this poem, and now
you're part of the tradition of remembering these men.

Sonnets from the Portuguese 14 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
I love her for her smile ... her look ... her way

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Of speaking gently, ... for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

The main theme of Sonnet 14 is the eternal nature of love. It is not eternal, says the poet, if one lover loves
the other for earthly, temporal reasons. These reasons she details in lines 3-12. Earthly reasons fade, as do
human beings. Love itself does not fade and die, she states. Therefore, her lover should love her, if he must
love her, for the sake of love only.

A crucial distinction here is the word “must.” It is this word that casts the poem in the direction it ascends—
toward “eternity.” For example, if the poem had begun “If thou love me,” one would find a different theme
altogether. The poem would be about whether the lover truly loves. His love would be called into question, no
doubt, even before the poet were to plead for a certain kind of love.

“Must,” however, implies that the lover already loves the poet but that he does not have to. The “must” also
suggests a different kind of vulnerability on the poet’s part. Fate has a role here; she recognizes that if her
lover “must” love her, if it is fated in the manner of a “must,” then she wants him to love her for “love’s sake
only.” She wants the love to be lifted out of the realm of human passion into the realm of eternal, heavenly
passion. One thinks of the ending of the Sonnets from the Portuguese’s most famous poem, number 43 (“How
do I love thee? Let me count the ways”) that ends, “I shall but better love thee after death.” The poet sees
that if he must love her, it must be a love of eternal power.

This energy, then, becomes the power on which the love rests and through which it exists. To say the least,
Barrett Browning has high expectations of her love. If she loses the love, she wants to lose for no less a
reason than that the love could not attend to itself on its own course. It would fail because the lovers loved
for less than ideal reasons—that is, for earthly and temporal reasons.

The Blessed Damozel – Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti – English writer, comes from artistic family, was also a painter, torn between literature
and art, finally chose art. Liked medieval romances and gothic literature. Was fond of women. Was a Pre-
Raphaelite painter.

THE blessed Damozel lean'd out  Albeit, to them she left, her day 
         From the gold bar of Heaven:           Had counted as ten years. 
Her blue grave eyes were deeper much 
         Than a deep water, even.  (To one it is ten years of years: 
She had three lilies in her hand,           ...Yet now, here in this place, 
         And the stars in her hair were seven.  Surely she lean'd o'er me,--her hair 
         Fell all about my face.... 
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,  Nothing: the Autumn-fall of leaves. 
         No wrought flowers did adorn,           The whole year sets apace.) 
But a white rose of Mary's gift 
         On the neck meetly worn;  It was the terrace of God's house 
And her hair, lying down her back,           That she was standing on,-- 
         Was yellow like ripe corn.  By God built over the sheer depth 
         In which Space is begun; 
Herseem'd she scarce had been a day  So high, that looking downward thence, 
         One of God's choristers;           She scarce could see the sun. 
The wonder was not yet quite gone 
         From that still look of hers;  It lies from Heaven across the flood 

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         Of ether, as a bridge.           Saith His name audibly. 
Beneath, the tides of day and night 
         With flame and darkness ridge  'And I myself will teach to him,-- 
The void, as low as where this earth           I myself, lying so,-- 
         Spins like a fretful midge.  The songs I sing here; which his mouth 
         Shall pause in, hush'd and slow, 
But in those tracts, with her, it was  Finding some knowledge at each pause, 
         The peace of utter light           And some new thing to know.' 
And silence. For no breeze may stir 
         Along the steady flight  (Alas! to her wise simple mind 
Of seraphim; no echo there,           These things were all but known 
         Beyond all depth or height.  Before: they trembled on her sense,-- 
         Her voice had caught their tone. 
Heard hardly, some of her new friends,  Alas for lonely Heaven! Alas 
         Playing at holy games,           For life wrung out alone! 
Spake gentle-mouth'd, among themselves, 
         Their virginal chaste names;  Alas, and though the end were reach'd?... 
And the souls, mounting up to God,           Was thy part understood 
         Went by her like thin flames.  Or borne in trust? And for her sake 
         Shall this too be found good?-- 
And still she bow'd herself, and stoop'd  May the close lips that knew not prayer 
         Into the vast waste calm;           Praise ever, though they would?) 
Till her bosom's pressure must have made 
         The bar she lean'd on warm,  'We two,' she said, 'will seek the groves 
And the lilies lay as if asleep           Where the lady Mary is, 
         Along her bended arm.  With her five handmaidens, whose names 
         Are five sweet symphonies:-- 
From the fixt lull of Heaven, she saw  Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, 
         Time, like a pulse, shake fierce           Margaret and Rosalys. 
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove, 
         In that steep gulf, to pierce  'Circle-wise sit they, with bound locks 
The swarm; and then she spoke, as when           And bosoms covered; 
         The stars sang in their spheres.  Into the fine cloth, white like flame, 
         Weaving the golden thread, 
'I wish that he were come to me,  To fashion the birth-robes for them 
         For he will come,' she said.           Who are just born, being dead. 
'Have I not pray'd in solemn Heaven? 
         On earth, has he not pray'd?  'He shall fear, haply, and be dumb. 
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?           Then I will lay my cheek 
         And shall I feel afraid?  To his, and tell about our love, 
         Not once abash'd or weak: 
'When round his head the aureole clings,  And the dear Mother will approve 
         And he is clothed in white,           My pride, and let me speak. 
I'll take his hand, and go with him 
         To the deep wells of light,  'Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, 
And we will step down as to a stream           To Him round whom all souls 
         And bathe there in God's sight.  Kneel--the unnumber'd solemn heads 
         Bow'd with their aureoles: 
'We two will stand beside that shrine,  And Angels, meeting us, shall sing 
         Occult, withheld, untrod,           To their citherns and citoles. 
Whose lamps tremble continually 
         With prayer sent up to God;  'There will I ask of Christ the Lord 
And where each need, reveal'd, expects           Thus much for him and me:-- 
         Its patient period.  To have more blessing than on earth 
         In nowise; but to be 
'We two will lie i' the shadow of  As then we were,--being as then 
         That living mystic tree           At peace. Yea, verily. 
Within whose secret growth the Dove 
         Sometimes is felt to be,  'Yea, verily; when he is come 
While every leaf that His plumes touch           We will do thus and thus: 

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 Till this my vigil seem quite strange  With Angels, in strong level lapse. 
         And almost fabulous;           Her eyes pray'd, and she smiled. 
We two will live at once, one life; 
         And peace shall be with us.'  (I saw her smile.) But soon their flight 
         Was vague 'mid the poised spheres. 
She gazed, and listen'd, and then said,  And then she cast her arms along 
         Less sad of speech than mild,--           The golden barriers, 
'All this is when he comes.' She ceased:  And laid her face between her hands, 
         The light thrill'd past her, fill'd           And wept. (I heard her tears.) 

The poem was partially inspired by Poe's "The Raven",[2] with its depiction of a lover grieving on Earth over the
death of his loved one. Rossetti chose to represent the situation in reverse. The poem describes
the damozel observing her lover from heaven, and her unfulfilled yearning for their reunion in heaven.
The key term in the title, damozel, is an archaic word for damsel (maiden, unmarried young woman). Other
archaic words with the same meaning are damosel, damoiselle, and demoiselle. All of these words descend
from the Old French word dameisele. Rossetti's use of damozel perfumes the poem with an air of medieval
romance. The adjective blessed suggests that the damozel deserves recognition as a saint. In Roman
Catholic theology, a deceased candidate for sainthood receives the title Blessed before his or her name. Of
course, the word may also simply signify her goodness and holiness.
“The Blessed Damozel” is a dramatic lyric poem of 144 lines in 24 six-line stanzas.
Although the death of the damozel has separated her from the man she loves, the love between them lives on.
So does the hope that one day they will reunite in heaven.
The second, fourth, and sixth lines of each stanza rhyme according to vowel sound (as in place, face,
and apacein the fourth stanza), spelling similarity, or "eye rhyme" (as in even and seven in the first stanza),
and consonant sound (as in hers and years in the third stanza). The meter varies, but most lines contain
seven to nine syllables. The dominant lines are in iambic tetrameter. In this format, a line has four pairs of
unstressed and stressed syllables, for a total of eight syllables. The term tetrameter (from the Greek tetra,
meaning four, and metron, meaning measure) indicates that a line has four syllabic units. The first line of
each of the first five stanzas is in iambic tetrameter, as illustrated below by the opening line of the poem. 
Dante Gabriel Rossetti completed the first version of “The Blessed Damozel” in 1847 and published it in the
February 1850 issue of The Germ, a journal of the pre-Raphaelite movement in painting and literature. He
conceived the idea for the poem (and later a painting with the same title and subject) after reading Edgar
Allan Poe's “The Raven,” about a man who mourns the death of his beloved Lenore, and after reviewing
Dante Allighieri's Divine Comedy, in which the author's first love, Beatrice, escorts him from Purgatory to
Heaven during his imaginary journey through the realms of the afterlife. The damozel of Rossetti's poem is
thus a kind of composite of Lenore and Beatrice who pines for her earthbound lover. Rossetti revised and
republished the poem in 1856 in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine and in 1870 in Poems by D.G.
Rossetti. As to the influence of Poe, Rossetti told his biographer, T. Hall Caine, that he wrote "The Blessed
Damozel" as a sequel to "The Raven," saying, "I saw that Poe had done the utmost that it was possible to do
with the grief of a lover on earth, and so [I] determined to reverse the conditions, and give utterance to the
yearning of the loved one in heaven."

After Death – Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti – English poet, sister of Dante Gabriel. She wrote for kids, was devoted to religion, used
women characters and private themes, was writing about unhappy love and disappointment. Her poetry was
rhythmical, she used various styles and visual effects.

The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept
    And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
    And could not hear him; but I heard him say,
    ‘Poor child, poor child’: and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
    That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
         Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head:
         He did not love me living; but once dead
    He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm though I am cold.

In "After Death" (1862) Christina Rossetti addresses common themes in Victorian poetry at the time —
death, tragic love, and the possibility of an afterlife. As a female author, however, Rossetti offers a different
perspective on these subjects from the standard tone and attitude of other male poets, including that of her
brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rather than depicting a male narrator lusting after a lifeless, thoughtless
female, Rossetti elects to write from the woman's perspective. Laying on her death bed, the female subject

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remains a motionless object of male desire, as in Tennyson's "Lady of Shallott" (text) and Dante Gabriel
Rossetti's "The Blessed Damozel" (text); however, in giving her consciousness and a voice, Rossetti endows
the woman with power in her own right.

Not only did "After Death" provide a rather new female perspective, but the poem's lack of description
and visual details also countered the general style of other poets associated with the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, who endowed their works with hard-edge realism.

This rather cursory description affords the reader only the most basic understanding of the setting:
she describes a floor and bed, covered in rushes, and a half-covered window. Rossetti provides no physical
description of the man and woman portrayed in the poem. Instead, she engages readers with more active
verbs, such as, "swept," "strewn," and "crept," when illustrating the setting. Then, to relay the man's actions
at her bedside, Rossetti selects more forceful verbs, "leaned," "turned," "wept," "touch," "ruffle," "take,"
"raise," and "pitied."

Rossetti also uses active verbs to describe the female narrator's perceptions — verbs that show her as
an intelligent, feeling human. Despite being deceased, the woman sees, hears, and feels her male admirer's
grief. As Rossetti writes, the narrator "heard him say, 'Poor child, poor child," "knew that he wept," and
perceived his strong love for her, which did not truly surface until after her death.

These last few lines assert the female subject in a position of power. Other Victorian authors often
afforded their feminine objects of desire a sense of authority, derived from a man's devotion toward them. In
selecting a female narrator and giving her a voice, thoughts, and feelings, however, Rossetti heightened the
woman's prominence in her own right. In doing so, Rossetti essentially made a feminist statement, whether
intentionally or not.

Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold - an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. Matthew
Arnold has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on
contemporary social issues.

The sea is calm tonight. The Sea of Faith

The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's
shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

"Dover Beach" opens with a quiet scene. A couple looks out on the moonlit water of the English Channel,
and listens to the sound of the waves. Then, all of a sudden it zooms out. And we mean way out.

See, the sound of the waves makes the speaker think first of ancient Greece. Yep, Greece. Then he turns the
sound of the surf into a metaphor for human history, and the gradual, steady loss of faith that his culture

36
has experienced. The poem ends on a gorgeous, heartbreaking note, with the couple clinging to their love in
a world of violence and fear and pain

Symbols:
THE SEA
The sea is everywhere in "Dover Beach." It shows up in different places and in different forms, but we feel its
power all over the place. Sometimes it's a physical location, something you can actually see, like the English
Channel or the Aegean Sea, and sometimes it morphs into a metaphor for the fate of humanity. Heavy stuff,
for sure.
THE TIDE
The image of the tide shows up repeatedly in this poem. The slow, steady, endless movement of water, in and
out, in and out, becomes a symbol of eternity. It also, though, comes to represent change and loss. Let's turn
to the play-by-play.
THE MOON
The moon makes a couple of cameos at the beginning. Even though its role in this poem is pretty brief, we
think it's important. The opening parts of "Dover Beach" are so much about the world that we see, and the
moon is one of the crucial features of that first scene. It helps to establish a feeling of calm that will later be
completely shattered
NIGHT
The night has a few different roles to play in this poem. In a way, it's kind of a flexible image. At first, it
connects with the feelings of comfort and calm that dominate the opening scenes of the poem. By the end,
though, it's part of a much more sinister set of ideas, connected metaphorically with all of the pain and
suffering of humanity.
NAKED SHINGLES
This is such a pure and utterly bleak image that we think it deserves special attention. The speaker of this
poem has a bunch of different ways of describing the desolation of the modern world. For our money, this is
one of the best moments, one of the strongest expressions of that feeling of hopeless emptiness and
vulnerability.
DARKLING PLAIN
This is the imaginary landscape where the great final simile of the poem comes to its catastrophic end. Just
think about how far we've come in such a short poem, how far we are from the pleasure and calm of the
beginning. We think there's something totally spine-chilling about the image of this pitch-dark battlefield.

Matthew Arnold is experimenting with some of the conventions of traditional poetry. Sure, it's not a real
crazy experiment, but the freedom he takes with form, meter, andrhyme can still give us a lot of insight into
the poem's meaning. Think of it like remodeling an old house rather than tearing it down. We can still see
the traces of old techniques, like iambic rhythm and rhyming lines, but they've been loosened up and
reimagined.

So how does this actually work in the poem? Well, let's start with the poem'srhythm. The basic meter of this
poem is iambic. An iamb is a group of two syllables where the second syllable is stressed or emphasized, and
the first is not. For example, the word "return" in line 11 is iambic. Hear that? Return—daDUM. Iambic
meter just repeats that daDUM pattern over and over. Some lines in this poem are in consistent iambic
meter. Others, not so much. Let's look quickly at two examples. Lines 34-35 are in perfect iambic
pentameter:

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

See? daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM. That's just like the meter Shakespeare was writing 250 years
before. But then look a couple of lines down at line 36:

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight

At first, the meter is trochaic (that's just reverse iambic: DUMda). Then, on the word "alarms," the rhythm
stumbles, and the rest of the line breaks the trochaic pattern. In other words, the line itself starts to
"struggle" The chaos that Arnold is describing in the world shows up in his poem, too.

That's the payoff for this experimentation. Breaking the iambic traditions passed down from Shakespeare
and Milton helps him to make us feel how the world itself is changed and broken. Pretty cool, huh?

37
Rhyme, No Reason

We get more or less the same effect with the rhyme. There's a ton of rhyme in this poem, but it doesn't follow
a regular pattern from one stanza to the next. Let's look first at the second stanza (we'll put the rhyming
sounds in bold and match them up using capital letters).

Sophocles long ago (A)

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought (B)
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow (A)
Of human misery; we (C)
Find also in the sound a thought, (B)
Hearing it by this distant northern sea. (C)

So in this stanza the rhyme scheme is ABACBC. Every line has a rhyming partner Now let's look at the next
stanza:

The Sea of Faith (A)

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore (B)
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. (C)
But now I only hear (D)
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, (B)
Retreating, to the breath (A?)
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear (D)
And naked shingles of the world. (C)

See how different the rhyme pattern is? In addition, take a look at the pair marked with "A" and "A?" As
we've seen in the stanza above, Arnold is capable of making perfect rhymes. But here he chooses not to. The
match between "Faith" and "breath" is close at best—a kind of near rhyme. Again, this choice of form fits
naturally with Arnold's larger point in this poem. In this dark new world, faith is out of place, it has no
natural partner. Just like with the meter, he needs a new kind of poetic form to represent this new
experience.

We'll be the first to admit that we don't have some basic facts about this speaker. We don't even have a name
or a gender for this dude. (For the sake of convenience in cases like this, we use the same gender for the
speaker and the poet, although it's important to remember that they aren't the same person.) We don't know
how old he is, or what he looks like.

So what do we know? Well, we know that he's standing in a room in Dover, England with his lover, and
listening to the ocean. He's also educated enough to be able to drop a quick allusion to Socrates.

The Devil's in the (Lack of) Details

Still, that sounds like a lot of missing pieces to Shmoop. But that might just be the point. "Dover Beach"
isn't really about superficial details like names, hair color, age, or background. It's a whole lot more
universal than that. We don't want to blow this too far out of proportion or anything, but here goes: we think
this speaker wants us to know how he understands The Entire World. And we think, in 37 lines, he does a
pretty good job.

He shows us that he has a deeply bleak view of the present state of mankind, with little faith that human
happiness can survive against the chaotic darkness of life. He believes that the world "Hath really neither
joy, nor love, nor light." He's nostalgic for a time when there was more faith in the world, and he tells us that
"The Sea of Faith / was once at the full" (21-22) but it's hard to even tell when that was. He holds out some
hope for love (29-30) but that doesn't look good. When it comes down to it, we might say this speaker sounds
a little depressed. But we also think he should cheer up. After all, there's still poetry to read. And love to fall
in.

Seems like we're golden on this one, since the setting of the poem is in the title. This poem is set at the
beach in Dover, on the southeastern coast of England. Our work here is done, right?

Ah, not so fast, Shmoopers. In the first stanza, we get some more detail about the scene. First, the speaker
lets us know that the ocean is "calm" (1). He also tells us that it's high tide (2) and the there's a moon
lighting up the water (2-3). He's also with someone else, whom he asks to "come to the window" (which lets

38
us know that he's not alone, and he's indoors). The speaker can hear the sound of the waves crashing on the
shore, and see a light "on the French coast." From there, we take off into historical and metaphorical worlds
inside the poet's mind. Still we come back, in the final stanza (29-33), to the speaker and his "love" (29) and
his room on the English Channel.

We know for sure that Arnold himself went to Dover, and some critics have suggested that this poem is
based on his experiences on his honeymoon. From what we can gather, it sounds like that's not quite
settled, though.

There's a fight in this poem between light and dark, harmony and chaos (kind of makes it sound like Star
Wars doesn't it?). That fight doesn't just happen on the level of ideas and grand concepts though. We hear it
in the sound of the words, too.

In the first couple of stanzas, we hear the smooth, calm rhythm of the waves, washing in and out, soothing
us with soft sounds. Take line two for example: "The tide is full, the moon lies fair." Two matching, balanced
phrases, in perfect iambic meter: daDUM daDUM, daDUM daDUM. The sound of the words "full" and "fair" is
as relaxed as the meter and the imagery.

Shaking Things Up

Then, slowly, new sounds start to creep in. The word "grating" in line 9 is maybe the first sign of trouble.
There's nothing happy or calming about a grating sound, and it breaks into the easy tidal rhythm of the first
few lines. It's one of those words that sounds a little like the sound it's describing (the fancy word for that
isonomatopoeia). This trend picks up speed in the rest of the poem, as we get more lines with broken,
strange meter and harsh-sounding words, like "naked shingles" (28).

Finally, in the last lines, as the chaos of the world takes over, that chaos seeps into the sound of the poem
as well. The rhythm of the waves has been taken over by the harsh clanging sounds and disrupted rhythm of
battle and fear. Take the last line, for example: "Where ignorant armies clash by night" (37). The words and
the sounds are harsh, and the iambic meter is gone. Words like "ignorant" and "clash" attack our ears, and
the poem's transition to chaos is complete.

Themes:
MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD
"Dover Beach" is practically overflowing with deep philosophical thoughts, but they are all launched by and
rooted in the natural world that the speaker sees all around him. As the speaker pays attention to the sights
and sounds of a moonlight night by the ocean, he can't help but ponder Big Ideas about our world's history
and its future.
SADNESS
Okay. "Dover Beach" isn't a total bummer. There are definitely moments of love and beauty and pleasure
mixed in there, too. But Sadness with a capital S is threaded through everything, and it really builds at the
end. We won't sugarcoat it for you: this poem has a pretty grim view of the world. On the other hand, Arnold
does an amazing job of making that sadness memorable and moving, too.
SUFFERING
"Dover Beach" doesn't give you a pretty Disney-fied view of life (although maybe that's not fair to Disney—
we're still a little freaked out by the beginning of Bambi). The speaker confronts the pain and suffering in the
world head-on, no holds barred. While the world might seem nice to look at sometimes (like on a moonlit
night), it's really just an endless and confusing wilderness of pain.
SPIRITUALITY
Maybe "Dover Beach" isn't so much about spirituality as it is about the feeling of losing it. The speaker looks
back longingly to a time when people were more spiritual, when they had more faith in divine guidance. Now
that's mostly gone, and the absence of faith has left the world "naked," vulnerable, and miserable. Maybe life
has always been hard, but according to our speaker we're now more unprotected from that hardship than
we've ever been.
LIFE, EXISTENCE
Matthew Arnold's strategy for "Dover Beach" is something like "go big or go home." He doesn't restrict
himself to little issues, or a moment in time, or fleeting feelings. No, he deals with the Big Stuff, like History
and Faith and the True Nature of the World. In just 37 lines he zooms out so far that he's looking out over
all of human existence. Sure, the view he sees is pretty dark, but we think there's something exciting about
how grand and philosophical this poem manages to be in such a small space.

39
 Hap – Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy – English poet. Architect in youth, novelist in his 40, than poet, but not successful. He spent
his youth in the countryside.

If but some vengeful god would call to me Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, But not so.   How arrives it joy lies slain,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”  And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Our friend Thomas wishes for an angry god to peer down at him and laugh. Because god is such a powerful
being that rains down misfortunes on humans, Hardy would have someone to target his anger towards.
Hardy would know that God made him suffer and so Hardy would be completely alright dying hating god.
Hardy finishes off this poem by hinting that his anger towards god would be unjustified. God does not bring
forth only sadness, he also brings forth happiness and hope. If god gives us both, then why does Hardy need
to be so depressed? Why can not he be extremely happy? Hardy's answer to his own philosophical question
is: It is not some supreme being giving me happiness and then giving me sadness based on my actions. It is
just random chance. It is random chance that I have been extremely happy and extremely depressed.

Summary:
Hardy wishes that god exist but sadly, he doesn't. Because all the good things and bad things that happen
to us aren't based, created or assigned by a powerful being at all. It all depends on luck, chance or Hap

Sailing to Byzantium – Yeates

W. B. Yeates – born in Dublin, never studied, Nobel prize in literature, Senator of Irish Free state. Took up
painting. Developed his own system of beliefs. Irish origins were his source of inspiration. Was critical of
Irish nationalists.

I III

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

II IV

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Well, as our speaker says, the country we were in before pretty much sucked.

It's a nice enough place to be if you're young and pretty and perfect, but once you start to show a few
wrinkles or some grey hairs, things get ugly fast. In other words, it was a pretty brutal place to be. After all,

40
 who can be young and pretty and perfect all the time? Our speaker decides that the old country is for the
birds. Literally. It’s obsessed with the latest trends. Whatever’s newest and prettiest gets all the attention.
There’s no interest in things that might endure for generations. It’s sort of like a really bad episode
of Trading Spaces, when a crummy designer pours bright orange paint all over a bookcase that had been in
the family for generations. Sure, it looks pretty for a second…but orange goes out of style pretty quickly.
Then it’s just plain ugly.

Luckily, our speaker’s a resourceful guy. He’s so ready to get the heck outta Dodge that Byzantium (a
country nearby) starts to sound pretty appealing. It sounds so appealing, in fact, that he sails there.

Byzantium is a holy city, which works out well for our speaker. In fact, he’s expecting a revelation. Primarily,
he’s hoping that the wise folk in Byzantium will consume his soul. 

Once in Byzantium, our speaker starts thinking about death. Hmm….pleasant, right? Well, yes, actually. In
Byzantium, death becomes something that can be thought about realistically (which is a big improvement
over our speaker’s old home). In fact, once he starts reflecting about death, he actually begins to figure out
ways to commemorate life.

According to the speaker, the best way to commemorate life is art. (You had to know that one was coming.
After all, this is a poem.) He finally decides that art becomes a way to lodge the soul in a new "bodily form."
He’s not expecting the pictures on the walls to start talking or anything.

Symbols:
NATURE
Yeats begins his poem with a description of nature in all its youthful glory. Anything that starts out this
perfect, however, can’t stay that way for long. Death is the dark underbelly of all the delightful life that the
speaker references. As he ages, death seems to occupy more and more of his time. Mimicking his need to
escape thoughts of dying, the poem shifts from a contemplation of nature to a discussion of art as it
progresses.
ART
Art’s pretty. It’s often sparkly and full of gold (in this poem, at least). Really, what’s not to like? That’s what our
speaker thinks, at any rate. As old age approaches and nature becomes threatening, art starts to sound like
pretty good stuff. For one thing, it doesn’t age (like his body will). For another, it doesn’t ever go out of
circulation (again, like his body will). If you’ve got a pretty picture, chances are that someone will always
want to look at it. That’s where our speaker’s plan comes into play. He’s figuring that, if he can concentrate
his soul and his artistic sensibilities into a single work of art, he’ll turn what’s left of his spirit into
something that’s eternal. Remember how your elementary school art teachers always told you to "express
yourself?" That could be this guy’s motto.
REGENERATION
In this poem, regeneration takes on huge spiritual overtones. The artwork and the work of human life become
one and the same as our speaker tries to figure out how to break through the boundaries of human
experience. What is the soul capable of? Exactly how much of the artist’s intention is reflected in the work
he/she creates? Yeats is using some specialized symbols here, but the general concepts he works with are
pretty commonplace. After all, nearly every superhero we’ve ever read about goes through some sort of
emotional transformation. Chances are that they change their appearances, as well. That’s all our speaker is
asking for. Asking to become superhuman isn’t that big of a request, is it?
CIRCLES AND SPIRALS
Let’s make this clear: circles are bad. Spirals are good. And believe us, there aremajor differences between the
two. Think about it: if you were walking in a circle, you’d follow the same path forever. You end up right
back where you started, and then you start walking again. If you walk in a spiral, however, you’re going
places. You might be moving upwards (on a spiral staircase) or outwards (if you’re following a spiral path).
Either way, you’re seeing new things and making new tracks. For Yeats, the cycle of natural life is an
endless circle (and circles are bad, remember)? Things are born; they live; they die. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
How do you break out of this circle? Well, that’s challenge of this poem.

Divided into four eight-line stanzas, "Sailing to Byzantium" takes on a sort of formal regularity. It’s actually
written in ottava rima. OK, that’s a lot of technical jargon to throw out, right? But here’s the cool part: ottava
rima was traditionally an Italian poetic form. It was usually used in epic poems – poems that traced the
successes of a hero through battles, saving damsels in distress, and all other sorts of fun. Hmm…notice the
irony here? "Sailing to Byzantium" is in the form of traditional epics. Heck, its title even sounds like the

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 beginning of an epic quest. We’re all stoked to read about bloody battles and young heroes with rippling
muscles. What we get, of course, is an old, crotchety man. He’s certainly not trying to point out the
incredible abilities that he’s got. In fact, he’s trying to leave his body completely. After all, who’d want to be
stuck with a body that's like "a tattered coat on a stick"(9)?

Changing the content of a poem in ottava rima into something which isn’t an epic (at least in the traditional
sense) can make us, as readers, feel like the rug’s been ripped out from under us. Just in case we’re starting
to feel comfortable, though, Yeats tosses in a few extra formal kinks.

See, ottava rima traditionally contains the following rhyme scheme: ABABABCC. Yeats doesn’t play this
game. He starts out with rhymes that seem to be following the traditional scheme, but then he introduces
these weird, dissonant half-rhymes instead of full rhymes.

We interrupt this program for a quick Shmoop technical note: full rhymes are, well, rhymes. Here are some
examples from the poem: trees/seas, song/long, neglect/intellect. Half-rhymes, on the other hand,
don’t quite rhyme. They half-rhyme. Get it? Here are some examples: seas/dies, wall/soul/animal. Notice
how they’ve got the same final consonants ("s" and "l"), but they have different vowel sounds. When you read
them, it seems like they should rhyme – but they don’t.

Working with a corrupted ottava rima form and a twisted rhyme scheme, Yeats allows the formal
characteristics of his poem to reinforce its content. Sure, our speaker’s not a traditional hero. After all, that’s
why he left his old country. It’s "no country for old men," remember (1)? Maybe his unconventional attempt
to seek new truths and new life forms needs a new poetic form, as well.

This guy is a bit hard to pin down. Although our speaker’s the only real character in this poem (besides the
sages, who get a tiny shout out a bit later on), he never really reveals that much about his background. For
one thing, we don’t know if the speaker’s a man or a woman. And that’s just the start of our problems.
(We’re betting that he’s a man – after all, the first line of the poem suggests that his old country was no place
for men. But that’s just a hunch.) You might even want to ask yourself if it makes any difference whether
our speaker is male or female. We’ll leave that up to you.

We do know, however, that our speaker is sick and tired of his life. After years of living in a country that
doesn’t value anything but the current fads, he’s ready to be somewhere more substantial. He’s moving
from Barney to The Simpsons. It’s time to grow up. As he realizes, he’s gotten too old to live on Sesame
Street anymore.

Like the fine folks who write for The Simpsons, our speaker is a bit of a philosopher. He’s worried about the
nature of human existence. What happens to him when he dies? Does his soul outlast his body? How can he
find the answers to all her questions? They’re tricky ones…but he figures that the sages in Byzantium might
just have some answers. It’s probably good to note that our speaker doesn’t seem too interested in figuring
out all the answers for himself. He’s not the independent sort. Letting the sages bestow their knowledge onto
him is good enough for him.

Oh, one more thing: our speaker’s a bit of an art fanatic. There’s good art and bad art, of course, but at the
end of the day, all life is art. (Haven’t we heard that somewhere before?) The big exchange he’s hoping to
make is one that would allow him to trade the heap of old bones and rotting flesh he calls a body in for a
solid gold form. Not a bad trade, eh? That’s what he thinks, at any rate. As art, he’ll live forever in other’s
vision. Of course, this is still wishful thinking at this point…but hey, a guy can dream!

Byzantium was an ancient Greek city. It’s now Istanbul, Turkey. Before it was Istanbul, it was Constantinople.
Byzantium, however, was around from around 670 B.C. to 190 A.D., when it was captured by the Romans.
That’s when it became Constantinople.

For the purposes of this poem, however, it’s actually not so important to know all the nitty-gritty details of
Turkish history or the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. For all that the poem is set in Byzantium, we
don’t actually learn that much aboutByzantium. There aren’t any markets or streets or houses or temples
or…well, you get the picture. We do hear about the Emperor of Byzantium, but he could be just about
anybody. We know that it’s a holy place, but that’s about as much as we get.

OK, so we don’t hear much about the city. But why is it mentioned so many times? It’s in the poem’s title,

42
 after all. That’s got to mean something. Here’s our best hunch: since "Sailing to Byzantium" is, after all, a
poem about spiritual (and bodily) regeneration, chances are that referring to Byzantium allowed Yeats to
draw upon a certain set of cultural references. "Byzantium" becomes a shorthand way to say that the
speaker’s entered a mental space that allows him to think through the consequences of mortality. Sure, it
helps that there are holy sages around to draw him out of his everyday routine…but that’s not nearly as
important as the speaker’s own insistence on finding a way to deal with his own body.

Themes:
TRANSFORMATION
Life gives way to death. Youth turns into age. Change, it seems, is always in the air. Frustrated by the cruelty of
natural cycles, the speaker of "Sailing to Byzantium" tries to initiate a new dynamic by leaving his homeland
in search of spiritual rebirth. For once, he’s going to control the transformations that shape his life – and
sailing to Byzantium is only the first step of many. The possibility of spiritual cleansing leads into the
imagined possibility of physical rebirth, as well. Though he will die just like all humans, the speaker
imagines a time when he can live again in art.
OLD AGE
Growing old just isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. "Sailing to Byzantium" begins as a meditation on the things
which age leaves behind: bodily pleasure, sex, and regeneration. As death approaches, the speaker turns
towards the possibility of rebirth as a potential solution for the trauma of watching his own body deteriorate.
The line between spiritual and physical rebirth becomes blurred as the speaker imagines placing his soul
into an art object, something that can outlast all mortal creatures.
MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD
Tennyson once wrote a pretty great poem about "nature, red in tooth and claw." In other words, nature can be
pretty brutal. In Yeats’s poem, that’s certainly the case. No matter who (or what) you are, if you have a body,
you’re going to start decaying pretty quickly. The second we’re born we begin to die. Most importantly, this
means that there’s absolutely no distinction between humankind and all the other creatures creeping,
crawling, and flying around the planet. If you’re Yeats, the natural world is for the birds. Seriously. Humans
have the ability to be more than just flesh…it just takes a little work.
SPIRITUALITY
Art and the human spirit fuse in this poem as Yeats attempts to find some way to move outside the problems of
the human body. Spirituality in this poem is strongly linked to the body: there’s a constant struggle to figure
out exactly where the heart belongs. Is it part of the body? Will it die with the body? Or does it have a life
and existence of its own? If so, how can the soul best express itself? Through human communication?
Through art? Yeats has got loads of questions – and they don’t necessarily all get resolved here. After all, it’s
a pretty short poem.

Among School Children – W. B. Yeats

I
III
I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
I look upon one child or t'other there
To study reading-books and history,
And wonder if she stood so at that age—
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
For even daughters of the swan can share
In the best modern way—the children's eyes
Something of every paddler's heritage—
In momentary wonder stare upon
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.

II
IV
I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
Her present image floats into the mind—
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
That changed some childish day to tragedy—
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.
Better to smile on all that smile, and show

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There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

V
What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?
VII
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts—O Presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise—
O self-born mockers of man's enterprise;

VI
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
VIII
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

The speaker paces around a classroom, looking at the schoolchildren. The nun says that what they learn in
school is to read and to sing. They learn about history, sewing, and how to be neat “in a modern way.” The
children stare at the speaker, an old politician.

He dreams of a Leda-like body bent over a fire in a domestic scene. She is telling a story of how a small
interaction with a child turned its day to tragedy. Together, over the story, they share a great deal. Looking
at the children, he wonders what she was like at their age. He sees her as a child and is mad with love.
Her current, gaunt image comes to mind. She once was pretty, but she is now comfortable and old. Did the
speaker’s mother, when carrying him, know that seeing this woman would be enough compensation for her
child’s birth? Plato thought nature to be imperfect; Aristotle contemplated the nature of things, as did
Pythagoras...but these are all merely subjects for students to study.
Nuns and mothers adore images, but the mothers’ images are their children. The speaker questions life’s
very location, wondering what part of a tree is the essence of the tree, what part of a dancer is a dancer, and
which is the dance itself.

Analysis

The subject matter of schoolchildren contrasts greatly with that of the earlier historical poems in this
collection. Here is evidence of civil society, of progress, and of modernity - none of which were possible
during the Anglo-Irish War or the Civil War. From this, and from the implication that the speaker is a
senator (as Yeats was after 1924), one may deduce that this is a later poem, written from the standpoint of a
more peaceful Ireland.

The children are poignant for the speaker because they are associated both with an obvious type of
innocence and with the woman whom the speaker loves. By comparing her child self and her current
incarnation, it is sharply evident to the speaker how she has aged. The imagined conversation between the
two, in which she seems to be a schoolteacher rather than a revolutionary, is wishful thinking on his part.
Yeats’ musings on whether it was destined that he should fall in love with this woman is related to “Leda and
the Swan” in that it presupposes a series of events that must come to pass. The final stanza is a
philosophical riddle concerning whether man acts or is acted upon, and serves as a connection to Yeats'
uncertainty as to whether he loves or was destined to love.

The Love Song of J. A. Prufrock – T. S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I, Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
When the evening is spread out against the sky The muttering retreats
Like a patient etherized upon a table; Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

44
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-
panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the
window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from
chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the
chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a
simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will
reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
     So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all
— After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
45
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
     And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all
—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
     And should I then presume?
     And how should I begin?
          . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow
streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of
windows? …
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
          . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat,
and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and
me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
     Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
     That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the
sprinkled streets,
that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in
patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
     “That is not it at all,
     That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

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

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Meet Prufrock. (Hi, Prufrock!). He wants you to come take a walk with him through the winding, dirty streets
of a big, foggy city that looks a lot like London. He’s going to show you all the best sights, including the "one-
night cheap hotels" and "sawdust restaurants." What a gentleman, he is! Also, he has a huge, life-altering
question to ask you. He’ll get to that later, though.

Cut to a bunch of women entering and leaving a room. The women are talking about the
famous Renaissance painter Michelangelo. We don’t know why they’re talking about Michelangelo, and we
never learn. Welcome to Prufrock’s world, where no one does anything interesting. 

Did we mention that it’s foggy. Like really, really foggy. The fog has a delightful yellow color, and it acts a lot
like a cat.

Yawn. What a day. We’ve accomplished so much already with Prufrock. There’s still a lot of stuff he still
wants to get done before "toast and tea." People to see, decisions to make, life-altering questions to ask. But
not yet…There’s still plenty of time for all that later.

Where did the women go? Oh, yes, they’re still talking about Michelangelo.

Yup. Pleeeen-ty of time for Prufrock to do all that really important stuff. Except that he doesn’t know if he
should. He’s kind of nervous. You see, he was about to tell someone something really important, but then he
didn’t. Too nervous. Oops! At least he’s a sharp-looking guy. Well, his clothes are sharp-looking. The rest of
him is kind of not-so-sharp-looking. People say he’s bald and has thin arms.

But he still has pleeen-ty of time. And he’s accomplished so much already! For example, he has drank a lot
of coffee, and he’s lived through a lot of mornings and afternoons. Those are pretty big accomplishments,
right? Plus, he’s known a lot of women. Or at least he’s looked at their hairy arms, and that’s almost as
good.

Prufrock says something about how he wishes he were a crab. Oh, Prufrock! Always the joker. Wait, you
were serious? That’s kind of sad, my friend. Don’t you have important things to do?

Oops! It looks like he didn’t do that really important thing he meant to do. He was going to tell someone
something life-altering, but he was afraid of being rejected. So he didn’t. Oh well.

Meanwhile, Prufrock keeps getting older. He doesn’t worry about that really important thing anymore.
Instead, he worries about other important things, such as whether to roll his pant-legs or eat a peach.

It turns out that Prufrock really likes the ocean. He says he has heard mermaids singing – but they won’t
sing to him. Boy, you sure do talk a lot about yourself, Prufrock. Finally, he brings us back into the
conversation. He talks about how we lived at the bottom of the sea with him (geez, we don’t remember that
one!). It turns out we were asleep in the ocean, but all of a sudden, we get woken up by "human voices."
Unfortunately, as soon as we wake up, we drown in the salty ocean. Boy, what a day. We thought we were
talking a walk, and now we’re dead.

Symbols:
SINISTER STREETS

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The poem begins with Prufrock inviting us to take a walk with him, but we soon learn that this isn’t some
romantic tree-line avenue by the river. Quite the opposite, it seems to be the seediest part of town. True to
Prufrock’s circular and evasive style, the poem returns several times to the imagery of these gritty streets,
with contrast with the prim and proper middle-class life he seems to lead. Just like our narrator, the streets
are misleading and go nowhere.
EATING AND DRINKING
Have you ever seen one of those PBS shows or period films where British people sit around and sip tea and
eat finger foods? "Prufrock" offers a parody of this easy-going tradition, as Prufrock thinks constantly about
what he has just eaten, what’s he’s about to eat, or what he may or may not eat in the future. Especially tea.
He’s a total caffeine junky, which may explain why he seems to talk so much. It’s one of those small daily
pleasures he just can’t live without.
BODY PARTS
Prufrock is very concerned about his reputation, and he doesn’t want to stick out in a crowd. He’d rather
people not notice him at all, which is why he seems uncomfortable with doctors and scientists, whose jobs
involve examining and taking things about. But he’s also like a scientist himself in the way that he "cuts
people up" (yikes) in his mind, reducing people, and especially women, to a collection of body parts. He loves
to use the "synecdoche," which takes one part of an object and uses it to represent the whole. He talks about
"faces," "eyes," and "arms," but never full human beings.
THE OCEAN
Prufrock suggests that he might be better suited to living in the deep, cold, lonely ocean than in the society
of other people. We think he’s on to something. But when he ends up in the ocean through some crazy,
dream-like turn events at the end of the poem, he doesn’t do very well. In fact, he drowns.
ROOMS
Prufrock spends most of the poem cooped up in rooms, eating, drinking, and overhearing other people’s
conversations. He also fantasizes a lot about entering rooms – perhaps bedrooms – where the woman he
loves can be found. Always the pessimist, he images a woman leaning on a pillow who rejects him. At the
end of the poem, he just might have found the perfect room for him: at the bottom of the ocean.
HAMLET
Prufrock spends much of the poem acting like the notoriously indecisive Hamlet. But, in the end, he decides
that even indecision is too decisive for him. No, he’s more like an assistant to a lord – a guy who does
nothing but follow orders and generally acts like a tool.

A dialogue is a conversation between two people, but a monologue is just one person talking. ("Mono" means
"one). But "Prufrock" is a "dramatic" monologue because the person talking is a fictional creation, and his
intended audience is fictional as well. He is talking to the woman he loves, about whom we know very little
except for the stray detail about shawls and hairy arms.

A good dramatic monologue gradually reveals more and more about the person speaking, without them
intending to reveal so much. At the beginning Prufrock is just a slightly creepy guy who wants to take a
walk. As the poem goes on, we learn about his personal appearance, his love of food and fashion, and his
desire to be a pair of crab claws. The impression we get about him is exactly the opposite of the one he
wants to give. He wants us to think that he’s a decision-maker, a "decider," if you will, who dresses well and
seizes opportunities when they come. But he’s just a big fraud. He never decides anything, and when he
misses his big opportunity, he tries to pretend it’s no biggie.

So, the overarching form is the dramatic monologue, but if you look closer at the poem, you’ll find that Eliot
is experimenting with all kinds of forms and meters. For example, there are a lot of rhyming couplets, like
the first two lines, and the famous verse about the women and Michelangelo.

We think that Eliot is making fun of Prufrock by using this old-fashioned form. The rhyming couplets are
sometimes called "heroic" couplets, but our title character is anything but heroic. The rhymes also have a
singsong quality that makes them seem childish. He rhymes "is it" with "visit"? Come on. But this is
Prufrock’s song, and Eliot is just pulling the strings to make him look bad – quite masterfully, we might add.

Other lines don’t rhyme and sound more like free verse, which has no regular meter. Occasionally we’ll get a
couple of lines of blank verse, which have no rhyme but a regular meter, usually iambic pentameter, where
an unstressed syllable is followed by an accent. This is the meter that Shakespeare used most often, and
Eliot was a huge fan of Shakespeare. Thus, "I SHOULD have BEEN a PAIR of RAG-ged CLAWS."

Shakespeare also used rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter, and, lo and behold, this it the form we get in

47
lines 111-119, which discuss Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Using Shakespeare’s verse to talk about Shakespeare?
T.S., you clever man.

There are at least three sides to our speaker, Prufrock. On one side we have the sneaky trickster, who invites
us on a romantic walk only to lead us down windy roads and point out that the evening looks like a patient
about to undergo surgery. He keeps stalling and leading us away from the main subject (his "overwhelming
question"), as if he had something to hide. And he constantly confuses the time of day and even the past
versus the future, like a casino manager who removes all the clocks from the building so customers won’t
realize they have someplace else to be.

On the other side we have Prufrock the Fool, whose desperate attempts to make us think he’s a cool,
confident ladies’ man is comically transparent. Really, who is this guy think he’s kidding?

Finally, we have the sad, honest man who realizes the jig is up and can’t even convince himself of his own
stories. This Prufrock, who only lets his mask drop for a few lines at a time, is the one who admits that he
should have been "a pair of ragged claws" and that he has seen "the moment of [his] greatness flicker" (lines
72, 84). Like a juggler, the poem keeps a delicate balance between these three personalities, so that one
never gets an upper hand other the others.

Our speaker is an average middle-class man. In fact, we think that if you put a bunch of Prufrocks together
in a room, you would have "The Man," that mysterious killjoy who secretly controls the world. He doesn’t
want to rock the boat, and he is most concerned with keeping the status quo, which means nice clothes, fine
tea, and utter boredom all the time. He wields power in society but has no power of his domestic life. He
kind of suspects that he’s a "ridiculous" and a "Fool" but could never fully admit it to himself (lines 118-
119). This is a poem where we get to put "The Man" under the microscope and watch him squirm.

There’s one part of the poem, however, that isn’t in the voice of Prufrock. This is the Epigraph. We think the
Epigraph is Eliot’s little joke on Prufrock, and a warning to those who have read Dante (or who care to look
up the reference) that we shouldn’t trust everything we hear.

We start this journey in a dark, smelly neighborhood of London. It’s October. Steam is rising from the
streets, and a sick yellow fog circulates around the crooked houses. Drunks are stumbling out of the
"sawdust restaurants" and sloppy-looking couples argue outside of "cheap hotels." A woman with bright
clothes and too much makeup is leering at you from her doorway. And all the while Prufrock is there besides
you, gesturing for you to follow him further down this rabbit-hole of squalor and darkness . . . Pretty soon
you’re both lost, which was just what he intended.

Part of the poem takes place in this obviously hellish part of the big metropolis. But the poem’s other setting
is just as bad, though it looks nicer on the surface. This is the London of the tired and bored middle-class,
sitting in their cramped rooms drinking tea and coffee all day. All anyone seems to do is lie around and grow
older. In other parts of the house, people are talking and laughing and music is playing, but we’re not
allowed to go in there…Prufrock offers you yet another cup of coffee, and you don’t even know what time of
day it is. If you eat one more "cake" you think you’ll explode. Prufrock is getting older before your eyes – his
hair turns white and his arms get even thinner.

Out of nowhere, he takes us to the beach. (Finally! Our skin was getting pasty from all that staying indoors.)
Look, mermaids! This is the nicest thing we have seen all day. But suddenly things get all disoriented and
the world turns upside down. We’re at the bottom of the sea, surrounded by girls wrapped in seaweed. We
hear voices, wake up, and…uh-oh.

Themes:
LOVE
It’s hard to tell whether Prufrock is really in love with the person he is talking to. He speaks about himself a
lot, and he ignores her, or "us," for most of the poem. Maybe he’s too shy to speak his mind, although
"cowardly" seems more accurate. There are a couple of points where he almost overcomes his massive fear of
rejection, especially when he is standing on top of the stairs and wondering, "Do I dare?" (line 38). But he’s
so vain and so taken up with trivial pleasure like coffee and peaches that it’s hard to believe that the feeling
he has is really "love." It might just be lust or just a strong attraction. Whatever it is, the feeling never goes
anywhere, and Prufrock is left to drown with his would-be beloved in the deep, deep ocean.
MANIPULATION

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The poem’s epigraph is a quotation of Guido da Montefeltro, a particularly manipulative chap who finds a
place near the bottom of Dante’s Hell in Inferno. Right away, this epigraph sets off alarm bells that we
should be suspicious of everything that shy old Mr. Prufrock says. First he’s trying to lead us down dark,
winding streets, then he’s trying to convince us of how decisive he is. Prufrock is one of the most deceptive
narrators you’ll ever encounter.
PASSIVITY
Oh, Prufrock, why didn’t you just go into your lover’s "chamber" and ask her your darned "overwhelming
question" when you had the chance?! Prufrock is the dramatic equivalent of a bump on a log. He never does
anything. In this poem, no one does. Actions are discussed as either future possibilities or as thing already
done and past. And not for a second do we believe that Prufrock has "known" all the things he claims to have
known. The only thing this guy is good at is eating and wearing nice clothes.
TIME
In relation to time, this poem is a total trip. It ricochets back and forth between the past and the future,
almost never settling on the present. One moment Prufrock is talking about all the things he’s going to do
before having tea; the next moment he has had tea and still doesn’t have the energy to do anything. But
somehow, by the end of the poem, Prufrock’s big chance has passed him by, and he becomes a sad, old man
in flannel pants.
APPEARANCES
There seem to be no complete human beings in this poem. There are only bits and pieces of people: an arm
here, some eyes there, maybe a couple of voices in the next room. The person whose appearance we know
most about is Prufrock, and we kind of wish we hadn't learned about his bald spot or his bony arms and
legs. The lack of bodies is one of the signs that might make us think the poem is set in Hell.

The Soldier – Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke - an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War,
especially "The Soldier". He was also known for his boyish good looks, which were said to have prompted the
Irish poet W. B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England".

If I should die, think only this of me, 

    That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be 
    In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
    Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 
A body of England's, breathing English air,
    Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

    A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
      Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
    And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
      In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

The speaker informs his audience what to think should he die. He tells them only to consider that a portion
of some foreign field will be "forever England" as a result of his death. The soldier, who was raised and
nurtured by his country, England, will be buried in the earth. After he dies, the soldier will go to a peaceful,
English heaven, where he will re-experience all his English memories. Good times! Right?

Symbols:
ENGLAND
The word "England" or "English" occurs six times in this poem. That's a lot for a poem that is only 14 lines!
In this poem England is like a mother to the soldier; she gave birth to him, nourished him, made him who he
is. But England is also immortal. Even though, in death, the soldier must leave England, it's only for a little
while. When he dies, the soldier will go to a heaven that's just like the England he left behind on Earth.
Sweet deal!
NATURE
There's a lot of nature in this poem. Fields, dust, flowers, rivers, suns—it's all over the place. The
relationship between the speaker and the natural world is very close, even harmonious. When he dies, he
returns to the earth (as dust). Moreover, as a child, he was "washed" and "blest" by the rivers and sun of his

49
homeland (England). When he dies, his heaven will look like the England he knew as a child—including its
natural characteristics.
HEAVEN AND AFTERLIFE
When you die, you go to heaven, which will be like paradise. That, at any rate, is what the second half of
"The Soldier" tells us. Better than paradise, in fact, heaven for the soldier will be just like England! (We
wonder if the angels fly on the left side of the clouds.) If the soldier dies fighting for his country, it won't be
so bad, because he will get to go "home." His heaven apparently will be chock full of memories of England—
her "sights and sounds," and a whole lot of other good stuff. Like figgy pudding.

What we've got here, gang, is a sonnet. And that means a few things as far as form and meter are concerned.
Let's start with the overall form of the poem, shall we? We shall. So check it out: like any sonnet, "The
Soldier" has 14 lines. Now, most sonnets are subdivided into two groups: the first eight lines (called the
octave) and the last six lines (the sestet). In general, the octave introduces a problem which is then resolved
in the sestet. What's more, the ninth line of a sonnet (i.e., the first line of the sestet) is called the "turn" or
"volta" because this is where the poem usually starts to shift gears.

In the case of the "The Soldier," for example, the first 8 lines of the poem discuss the possibility of the soldier
dying and reflect on the role England has played in his development. In the ninth line, the speaker imagines
what it will be like in heaven (hint: like, totally super-awesome), and thus shifts or "turns" the direction of
the poem away from the earth and toward an afterlife in the sky.

So that's how the poem is organized in terms of general structure, but how about line for line? Well, just like
the good sonnet that it is, "The Soldier" is written in a metrical form called iambic pentameter. If that sounds
familiar to you, that's probably because it's the most common meter in English poetry. If you've read any
Shakespeare, you've run into this rhythm a time or two, even if you weren't aware of it at the time.

So what does iambic pentameter even mean? You see, every line of iambic pentameter contains five (pent- is
the prefix that means five) iambs. Now, an iamb is a two-syllable pair that consists of an unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed syllable. (Said out loud it sounds like this: da-DUM. "Allow," for example, is an iamb.)
Not satisfied? You want an example? Well, okay then! Just peep line 9:

And think, this heart, all evil shed away. 

Now, not every line in the poem scans as perfectly as this one does (what would be the fun in that?). Take
line 8 as an example:

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

You'll notice that this line begins with a stressed syllable, rather than an unstressed syllable. (In the poetry
biz, a syllable pair that contains a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable is called a trochee.) It
sure seems like the speaker really wants to emphasize that word "washed," doesn't it? Small substitutions
like this are fairly common in poetry, so just be on the lookout for any metrical oddities. Any time a pattern
is established, then broken, those breaks are designed to catch a reader's eye for emphasis (or catch their
ear, as in this case).

A Nice Cup of Euro-Blend

But why use a sonnet to begin with? Brooke has his choice of any form of poem—or no form, even—but he
went with this set-up. We think, though, that a sonnet is just a peachy choice. After all, the poem is
celebrating patriotism and English-ness, and there aren't too many other forms of poetry more closely
associated with England than the sonnet. And yet… this poem isn't exactly, 100% in the English style.

Let's roll it back for second. There are in fact many different types of sonnets, but the two most common are
the Petrarchan sonnet (named after the famous Italian sonneteer Francesco Petrarca) and the
Shakespearean (or English) sonnet. The major difference between these two types is the rhyme scheme. The
octave of a Petrarchan sonnet generally follows this form: ABBAABBA, where each letter represents one
particular end rhyme for that line. In this case, line 1 (A) would rhyme with lines 4, 5, and 8, while the sestet
could take several forms (CDECDE and CDCDCD being the most popular).

The English sonnet, in contrast, has a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCD EFEFGG (the final two, rhyming lines
are known as a heroic couplet, bee-tee-dubs). Now, we're telling you all this stuff about rhymes because
Brooke's poem combines elements of both the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean sonnet. The octave is like

50
an English sonnet, and its rhyme scheme is ABABCDCD. The sestet, however, takes the form of a
Petrarchan sonnet and has a rhyme scheme of EFGEFG.

So now for the big question: why did Brooke use two different types of sonnet in the poem—one historically
associated with England, and one with Italy? It may have something to do with the politics of the looming
war, we think. It's not that England and Italy were fighting yet (that didn't happen really until World War II).
But England was about to enter a conflict that began (and would be fought) on the European continent. In
joining these two sonnet forms together, then, Brooke's poem is in a way enacting the kind of English-
European fusion that was to come (only through arms this time, not words).

The speaker of "The Soldier," is the… soldier. Need we say more? Oh. We do? Well, then. There are a few
things to note about this guy, since he's pretty revealing in the way he goes about this poem. Let's take them
one at a time, shall we?

The Realist

When you start a poem with "If I should die," then you're already confronting a cold, hard truth that most
people would rather not think about. As a solider, though, the speaker is thrust face-to-face with his own
mortality, and so this poem is his way of working through that imminent possibility. (Historically, for
Brooke, that possibility became a sad reality when he went off to war and died of infection not long after this
poem was written.) So we feel that we must give the speaker props for dealing with reality, rather than
ignoring it.

The Idealist

Of course, the way that the speaker deals with the threat of death is hardly realistic. He imagines a kind of
heaven that will be just the like home, full of the same thoughts, sights, sounds, and even dreams of his
native land. Now, you could say that this makes our speaker a real patriot (more on that soon), but you
could also make the case that he's sort of deluding himself. Sure, it'd be nice to imagine heaven as a
place exactly like your favorite place, but think about that for a second. Isn't doing so just imagining that
you're current experiences will go on forever, despite death? Isn't this just an elaborate form of denial, then?

The Patriot (no—not you, Tom Brady)

Another way to read the speaker's "English heaven," though, is just to see it as a natural extension of his
love of country. We mean, dude is big into England. He celebrates his upbringing there, promises to claim
more land for it in the war, and portrays heaven as nothing more than the same pubs and fishmongers that
he knows from High Street. In other words, he's saying that England will go on forever—both in terms of
earthly conquest, and in terms of heavenly immortality.

This patriotism, then, is part of what ultimately blinds the speaker to the very real, impending horror of
World War I. While we have to cut Brooke some slack for not being able to tell what was to come when he
wrote "The Soldier," his speaker is a great example of the kind of naïve, overly-romantic, and jingoistic
thinking that could send millions of people into armed conflict against each other.

We can sum up the setting of this poem in one word for you, gang. Two syllables. Ready? Here they come:
England. That's right: England from the speaker's past, England in a foreign field, heck—even England up in
heaven! No matter where the speaker's mind roams (because the poem literally takes place in his mind,
rather than, say, a London pub), it always finds England. Of course, for any good soldier and patriot, it's
expected that home will be high up on the list of things to appreciate and think about. What's really telling
about this poem, though, is the way that England so dominates our speaker's thoughts and takes over every
possible setting—real or imagined. And what's not to like? We're told that it's got flowers, rivers, sun, air
that's nice and breathable. Sounds like a good place to us. For the soldier, though, this setting is everything.
It dominates his mind, and this poem.

Themes:
DEATH
The very first thing the speaker of "The Soldier" talks about is his own death. Throughout the first stanza, he
talks about himself as "dust," a word that makes us immediately think of funerals, death, and corpses. Good
times! Death almost seems inevitable, and this despite the fact that speaker says "If" in the very first line!

51
We're used to thinking of death as scary, but the speaker imagines a life after death that seems, at the very
least, peaceful and familiar.
WARFARE
The poem is called "The Soldier," so naturally it's about… war. Unlike many other famous World War I-era
poems, however, Brooke paints a more optimistic picture. The soldier's possible death is mentioned, yes, but
so is a blissful life after death. Moreover, the poem celebrates the fact that the soldier's death will give
England another "corner" of land. So, for the speaker, all this warfare business seems like a big win! Of
course, he hasn't actually been to war just yet….
PATRIOTISM
Six times! That's how many times the word England or English occurs in this poem. (Just go ahead and
count 'em. We'll wait right here.) So, you think "The Soldier" is patriotic? You could say so. The speaker
emphasizes the organic relationship between the soldier and his country—the soldier is a part of England,
and England is like his mother. In doing so, he underscores the importance of fighting for that country.
MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD
The speaker of "The Soldier" is very closely linked to the natural world. He returns to the earth when he dies
(in the form of dust). And, as a child, he was "washed" and "blest" by the rivers and suns of his homeland.
The natural world, it seems, plays a big role in our development as human beings, perhaps an even bigger
role than our parents. Thanks, nature!

Anthem for Doomed Youth – Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen -  an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking,
realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend and
mentor Siegfried Sassoon, and stood in stark contrast both to the public perception of war at the time and to
the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known
works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem
for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting".

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

    Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
    Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them, no prayers nor bells;
    Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – 
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;
    And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

    Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
    The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Our speaker asks us what sort of notice or holy ritual marks the deaths of soldiers who are slaughtered in
battle. He then answers his own question, pointing out that there are no special occasions or pleasant
ceremonies on the front—only the sounds of weapons and battle, which he compares to a demented sort of
song and ceremony.

Then he asks what ritual can be done to make those deaths a little easier to swallow. He concludes that only
tears and the pale, drained faces of their loved ones will send these deceased boys off; the tenderness of
patient minds will be like flowers on their graves. In the last image, our speaker shows us an image of
civilians pulling down their blinds at dusk.

Symbols:
WAR IMAGERY
In "Anthem for Doomed Youth," war is not what we might expect. Owen is all about exploring how war can
twist the way we see the world; men become cattle, artillery shells become choirs, and tears become candles.
Things in a world at war are not as they seem. In our speaker's eyes, the rituals of mourning the fallen
become mockeries, because they ring so hollow in the face of war's true horrors.

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MOURNG RITUALS
If you've got soldiers dying out in the trenches, chances are you've got some mourners back home. And the
woeful widows and forlorn family members are having quite a different experience than those fighting guys
out there in the heat of battle. So while the soldiers die senselessly—like cattle—the men and women back
home are forced to try to make sense of it all with grieving rituals, songs, funerals and the like. But can
those rituals ever equal the true experience of war? Probably not, says Owen.

"Anthem for Doomed Youth" is a sonnet written mostly in iambic pentameter. Right? Right. For you poets
and poetesses out there, that might sound like a no brainer. But for those of you who are new to poetry,
Shmoop will give you a quick and dirty explanation.

The sonnet is a fourteen-line poem with a rhyme scheme (of which there are several versions). We can thank
the Italians for this one; a dude named Petrarch perfected the form, and his influence brought it over into
realm of English literature. In fact, Thomas Wyatt was the first guy to translate Petrarch's Italian sonnets
into English, which happened in the early 16th century.

Wyatt and his bro buddy, the Earl of Surrey, then gave these new English sonnets their rhyming meter, and
divided them up a little differently, much to everyone's delight. Pretty soon, all kinds of poets were trying
their hands at them. Shakespearewrote a few (and by "a few" we mean 154), and pretty much every poet
since has at least dabbled in the form.

The sonnet has been around for a while, so it's had time to reinvent itself, several times over. There are a
bunch of different kinds of sonnets now, with exciting names like Petrarchan, Shakespearean, and
Spenserian. (Just think: if you become a literary giant and invent your own rhyme scheme, you could have a
kind of sonnet named after you. Yep, you!)

Owen Owes Us a Sonnet

Owen went old school on "Anthem for Doomed Youth." He chose the Petrarchan sonnet form from way way
back, but then he added a little dose of Big Willy and went for the more Shakespearean rhyme scheme of
ABABCDCD EFFEGG. How'd we figure that out?

Check out the ends of the lines in the octet (that's the first, eight-line stanza of the poem). Cattle from line 1
rhymes with rattle from line 3 (and guns rhymes with orisons). Bells and shells rhyme, while choirs and
shires have their own thing going on.

Then take a gander at the sestet, or the final, six-line stanza of the poem. All rhymes with pall, eyes with
byes, and minds with blinds. Simple enough, right?

In typical sonnets, the break between the first eight lines—the octet—and the last six lines—the sestet—
marks some sort of shift in the poem. A change of course, a transition between ideas, a problem and then its
solution. In the case of "Anthem for Doomed Youth," the shift is between the battlefield, and the quieter, less
action-packed world of civilians at home.

I Am Pentameter

A sonnet is hardly a sonnet without a bit of iambic pentameter. What's that, you say? Allow Shmoop to
explain:

An iamb is a rhythmic foot (yep, foot) made up of a stressed and unstressed syllable (da-DUM) and
pentameter means there are five of those feet in a row. That makes for about ten syllables per line and a
rhythm like "and each slow dusk adrawing-down of blinds" (14). Of course, in this poem as in many, it's
more of a prevailing pattern than a strict rhythm that must always be used.

But here's the thing. For all its iambic-ness and all its pentameter posturing, this poem sure does deviate
from its own rules. Just look at the first line:

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? (1)

Uh, Owen? We count eleven syllables.

And what about line 2?:

Only the monstrous anger ofthe guns

53
That's not exactly perfect iambic pentameter. In fact, Owen substitutes what's called a trochee (think of it as
the opposite of an iamb: DA-dum), for the usual iamb.

Owen includes all kinds of variations like these—extra syllables, non-iambic feet, and the like throughout
the poem. He's constantly keeping us on our toes, unsettling us as readers so that we can never get too
comfy with the rituals of grief. We're meant to be off kilter, upset, and troubled. If we grow too at ease, we're
missing the point.

Q and A

Q: What's the one last formal thing Shmoop wants to mention?

A: That this poem is set up in a question-and-answer format.

Q: Why might that be?

A: Well it certainly draws us in as readers.

Q: Why else?

We think it has something to do with the fact that these questions don't really have answers. There are no
"passing-bells for those who die as cattle" (1). And there are no "candles may be held to speed them all" (9).

Our speaker is disembodied. No, we don't mean he had his head chopped off in the heat of battle. We mean,
he doesn't seem to be physically present. He's not there to experience any of the things he's chatting about.
There's no "I," "my," or even "our." And yet he clearly associates himself closely with the soldiers and has an
intimate knowledge of the sounds and terror of a soldier's life. 

We get the impression that our speaker is a soldier who has stepped out of himself for the time being.
Whoever he is, he definitely knows the ins and outs and awfuls of trench warfare. But he also knows
something of what goes down on the home front, because he knows all about the ways in which the
noncombatants try to mark the loss of their men in battle. And he knows, or at least believes, that their
rituals and ceremonies can't ever come close to the terror of war.

What's so great about having a disembodied speaker is that he's got a sort of bird's-eye view. He has no
trouble jumping from image to image, and he can bound with the greatest of ease from the battlefront, to a
church funeral, to a house where the blinds are closed. He sees it all, knows it all, and isn't afraid to share it
all.

We think it's also safe to say that our unflinching speaker is outraged by the costs of war and what he sees
as the inability of religious rituals to address the real suffering that's going on.

Here's the short version: it's World War I, folks, and we're in the trenches.

But alas, the short version is nothing without the longer version, and when it comes to setting, that's a bit
more complicated. In the long version, the battlefield gives way to the home front, with its church bells,
candles, windows, and widows. In "Anthem for Doomed Youth," Owen seamlessly blends images from
different places to create a general atmosphere of war—both at home and on the front.

The effect is that we can be crouching in a trench one moment, listening to shells being fired, and then
standing with a soldier's family at his funeral the next. And, in addition, we can simultaneously hear a
prayer and rifle fire (or a choir and artillery shells) blended together in a sort of terrifying medley.

They didn't call World War I The Great War for nothin'. It affected everyone and everything; even the simple
act of lowering one's blinds at the end of the day is imbued with the sorrows of warfare.

Themes:
WARFARE
The speaker of "Anthem for Doomed Youth" never says the words soldier or war. He never names a country
or particular dispute. In a way, he's signaling to us that this poem is not about specific battles or individual
loves lost. Nope, Owen is writing all about a much more universal topic: the terrible costs and realities
of all wars, and the inability of our rituals to alleviate the death and suffering it brings about.

54
RELIGION
Choirs, candles, palls, and bells? "Anthem for Doomed Youth" is chock full of religious imagery, but it lacks
the peaceful, contemplative feel you might expect. Instead, our speaker is bent on comparing religious
rituals to the weapons of war, which is an alarming, but effective way of getting us to face facts: are the
religious rituals and institutions that glorify and promote war just as destructive as the instruments used to
carry out war? And will the religious rituals we participate in to mourn our lost loved ones really be enough
to honor them after they have died as cattle?
DEATH
Here's the deal: the big problem with war is that people die. We know, we know. Duh. Still, we figure it's
worth pointing out that even though "Anthem for Doomed Youth" doesn't directly mention death after the
first line, it's still completely obsessed with the concept. We move between the sounds of incoming death
(rifle and artillery fire) and images of mourning (coffin covers, candles, passing-bells). Where do we end up?
At dusk, a.k.a. the dying of day.

A Refusal to Mourn the Death By Fire of a Child of London – Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas - a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good
night" and "And death shall have no dominion", the "Play for Voices", Under Milk Wood, and stories and radio
broadcasts such as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. He became
popular in his lifetime and remained so after his premature death in New York City. In his later life he
acquired a reputation, which he encouraged, as a "roistering, drunken and doomed poet"

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
The majesty and burning of the child’s death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

And I must enter again the round Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,
Zion of the water bead Robed in the long friends,
And the synagogue of the ear of corn The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound mother,
Or sow my salt seed Secret by the unmourning water
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

This unusual elegy (which refuses to call itself such) was written amid the carnage of war-torn London and
first published in 1946. The dead child is a civilian counterpart to the iconic Unknown Soldier and he
commemorates her passing in a torrent of powerful religious images. The poet's ironic 'refusal to mourn'
refers to his belief that death is simply too enormous a subject to sum up in mere words, even though words
are, of course, the only tools at his disposal.

This poem tells us that Dylan Thomas isn't going to say something. I take it that the child was killed in an
air raid, and that Dylan Thomas won't say so because he is refusing to be distracted by thoughts about the
war from thoughts about the child herself or about death in general ... his is a refusal to integrate
perceptions of the dead girl into a coherent, 'logical' whole which is necessarily inadequate to its object, and
to use this misrepresented experience or fate of another person to achieve a false poetic resolution.' (William
Empson's article 'To Understand a Modern Poem': 'A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in
London' is in Argufying: Essays on Literature and Culture,

Thomas’s poetry has an almost revelatory power, in which meaning is experienced in the act of either
creating or re-creating (that is, reading) the poem. The sound, rhythm, and visual impact, as well as
psychological force, of the words have a transforming effect on the imagination. The violent shifts of
perspective that the poem achieves help make one receptive to its visionary, ultimately healing power.

Thomas’s concern with the creative process is evidenced in his own description of his “dialectical” method:An
image must be born and die in another; and any sequence of my images must be a sequence of creations,
recreations, destructions, contradictions.Out of the inevitable conflict of imagesI try to make that momentary
peace which is a poem.

55
The poet’s struggle is that of the creative imagination attempting to name the unnamable—that is, the
mysteries of existence. The poem confounds contradictory images of life and death, sacred and profane,
human and nonhuman, and the one and the many in an attempt to capture the inexhaustible fecundity and
resilience of life. It climaxes in a statement which is itself a paradox: Death is final and yet is not, ultimately,
definitive.

The poem’s vision of the protean unity of all things transforms grief into wonder. This insight is affirmed
both by ancient belief that life has eternal regenerative power and by scientific theory that matter can never
be destroyed but only transmuted—into energy.

“A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” a poem of twenty-four lines divided into four
stanzas of six lines each, follows the rhyme scheme abcabc. The title indicates the poet’s rejection of
conventional means of responding to death. The refusal takes on greater force as it confronts the senseless
casualty of a child to war; the fire refers to the firebombing of London during World War II.

The poem is written in the first person, and more is revealed about the poet who speaks than about the child
who has died. The poet declares that not until he himself dies will he declaim the child’s death. He rejects
somber elegies, with their toxic spirituality; in dying, the child has united with the elements from which life
springs and therefore is no longer prey to death.

The poem opens boldly with an extended adjective—“mankind/ making/ Bird, beast and flower/ Fathering
and all humbling”—that modifies “darkness.” The image locates the origin of life in death. The poet thus
evokes at the start the natural cycle of birth and death. The darkness signals the “last light breaking”—light
indicating consciousness—as well as the stilling of the “sea tumbling in harness,” or the blood surging
through the body. Death, then, extinguishes both the psychic and physical signs of an individual life.

The Unknown Citizen – W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden - an Anglo-American poet, born in England, an American citizen (from 1946), and regarded by
many critics as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.[5] His work is noted for its stylistic and
technical achievement, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety in tone, form and
content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the
relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his

56
 generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

We learn that the words we are about to read are written on a statue or monument dedicated to "The
Unknown Citizen." The poem consists of several different kinds of people and organizations weighing in on
the character of our dear "Citizen."

First, the not-so-friendly-sounding "Bureau of Statistics" says that "no official complaint" was ever made
against him. More than that, the guy was a veritable saint, whose good deeds included serving in the army
and not getting fired. He belonged to a union and paid his dues, and he liked to have a drink from time to
time. 

His list of stirring accomplishments goes on: he bought a newspaper and had normal reactions to
advertisements. He went to the hospital once – we don’t know what for – and bought a few expensive
appliances. He would go with the flow and held the same opinions as everyone else regarding peace and war.
He had five kids, and we’re sure they were just lovely. In fact, the only thing the government doesn’t know
about the guy is whether he was "free" and "happy," two utterly insignificant, trivial little details. He couldn’t
have been unhappy, though, because otherwise the government would have heard.

Symbols:
THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN
This isn’t a poem that uses a lot of similes and metaphors. In fact, at times it seems deliberately un-poetic.
The only metaphor we could find was the comparison between the Unknown Citizen and a saint. Then again,
the entire poem is an elaborate comparison between the Unknown Citizen, whose accomplishments are
ridiculously overstated, and the Unknown Soldier, which was created to honor heroic sacrifices that were
never witnessed or confirmed.
BUREAUCRACIES
The society depicted in the poem isn’t a real, historical place: it’s more like an ironic prophecy of the future
using present-day parallels (or at least present-day from the perspective of 1939). The Unknown Citizen has
been investigated to an absurd degree by all kinds of bureaucracies, from his employer, Fudge Motors, to
Social Psychology workers, to Public Opinion researchers. There’s a paper trail a mile long on this guy, but
none of it tells us anything useful about who he is.
PARODIES AND IRONY
The whole idea of the Unknown Citizen is a parody of the serious military concept of the Unknown Soldier,
which was created in order to recognize the sacrifice of soldiers who died anonymously. The poem is dripping
with irony, as the speaker lists off accomplishments that aren’t accomplishments at all. At many points, the
poem directly parodies existing American companies or organizations.

An "elegy" is a poem about a dead person. These types of poems can be sad and mopey or grand and
celebratory. "The Unknown Citizen" is of the grand and celebratory variety, but it’s also a satire, which
means that it is making fun of the person it pretends to celebrate. There’s not much that’s grand about the
Unknown Citizen. We know that he’s dead because the speaker refers to him in the past tense, and also
because the monument for "The Unknown Citizen" reminds us of "The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier," which
was created to honor soldiers who died in battle but whose remains were never identified.

The speaker of the poem thinks he is paying a lot of nice comments, but most of his compliments amount to
saying that the UC never caused anyone any problems. He sounds like the guy who agrees with everything
and whom everyone calls "a nice person." This is called "damning with faint praise," because the praise is so
weak and half-hearted that we know it’s just masking his utter insignificance. And, just so you know, Auden
didn’t write satiric elegies exclusively; he also wrote two of the best heartfelt elegies of the 20th century: "In
Memory of Sigmund Freud" and "In Memory of WB Yeats."

At a time when many poets were throwing themselves fully into unrhymed free verse, Auden was happily
continuing the tradition of writing in rhyme. His rhymes don’t sound old-fashioned, either, although
sometimes they seem ironic. When people complain that his poetry doesn’t rhyme anymore, you can point
them back to Auden’s work. 

57
However, he was far from a conventional poet, and "The Unknown Citizen" doesn’t follow a standard rhyme
scheme. Instead, it alternates between a few different, simple rhyme schemes. The simplicity of Auden’s
rhymes is striking, as if he had nothing to prove. Which he didn’t, considering that he was also a whiz with
more complicated forms of rhyme.

The poem begins with an ABAB pattern, but then switches to a rhyming couple (AA, BB, etc.), after which he
starts hopping around a lot. Some of the rhymes are sandwiched between other rhymes. Check out lines 8-
13, which follow the pattern ABBCCA. You think he’s not going to rhyme anything with "Inc.", but then, five
lines later, he comes at you with "drink." These two words are so far away that you might not even realize he
was rhyming, but we bet your inner ear did.

Finally, the rhythm of the poem roughly centers on the anapest, a metrical foot that has two unstressed
beats followed by a stressed beat. In the future, whenever you hear the tricky-sounding term anapest, think
of the first two lines of "’Twas the Night Before Christmas," which has eight perfect anapests in a row: "’Twas
the NIGHT before CHRISTmas and ALL through the HOUSE, / not a CREAture was STIRing not EVen a
MOUSE." Auden doesn’t ever use that many anapests in a row, but they are pretty common in the poem,
such as at the beginning, "He was FOUND by the BUReau . . ." 

Now, if this meter sounds corny to you, then you’re on to something. Remember that this is a dramatic
poem, and the fictional speaker is a government bureaucrat, so we would expect it to sound a bit corny, like
something you might read on a greeting card…or a monument.

We’re so familiar with the uptight bureaucrat as a source of parody that it’s easy to forget that we didn’t
always have bureaucrats. It wasn’t until governments got really huge and corporations became the center of
the economy that the large, complex organizations we call "bureaucracies" really took off.

The speaker of "The Unknown Citizen" is a bureaucrat who works for the State, or government. Or at least
he’s a big fan of bureaucracies. How do we know? Because he cites them…a lot. The first line, even, calls
attention to the Bureau of Statistics. Bureaucrats love to gather data and statistics, because they help
managers run an organization more efficiently. However, it’s a problem when living, breathing people become
mere statistics: John Doe watches 1,356 hours of television a day, runs 22 miles a week, reads 12.7 books,
etc. To the speaker, the Unknown Citizen is just a collection of statistics, which is why he remains
"unknown."

The speaker doesn’t just speak for himself, though; he represents the entire apparatus of the State. Like a
king during the Middle Ages, he uses the "Royal We" to make clear that his assessment of the Unknown
Citizen’s character is not just one person’s opinion: it’s the official position of the State. So he says, "our
Social Psychology works" and "our Eugenist." Clearly he has consulted with a lot of people before writing this
poem. It’s a real team effort, but also very creepy.

Seeing as the concept of "The Unknown Citizen" is a parody of the idea of "The Unknown Soldier," we see a
parallel here to the process of awarding a really high military award, like the Congressional Medal of Honor,
which is given out for extraordinary heroism in battle. Before such an award can be given out, the army
conducts detailed research into the recipient’s background and their deeds of heroism. Although the
Unknown Citizen doesn’t win any awards, he does have a marble monument in his honor, which is a big
deal. 

We might imagine the speaker as some guy in a grey suit sitting in a windowless office somewhere, reading
reports turned in by other people and organizations. He doesn’t know the UC, and probably doesn’t care, but
it’s his job to write up some flattering piece of verse, and by golly, he doesn’t want to let the State down. He
stinks at delivering compliments, and he gets a bit testy at the suggestion that maybe the Unknown Citizen
wasn’t free and happy. It’s like when you call up a company to tell them their product is broken and the
Customer Service person gets annoyed and says, "That’s not possible – our products never break – you must
be using it wrong!"

The last thing to say about the speaker is that he’s not actually speaking. That is, in the fictional world of
the poem, these lines are inscribed on the monument to the Unknown Citizen. It had to have been written by
someone, but this "someone" is also "unknown." Let’s call him "The Unknown Bureaucrat."

58
It’s hard to know what kind of setting to imagine for this poem. You’ve got the setting of the monument on
which the poem is inscribed, and then you’ve got the setting of The Big Man himself, our Unknown Citizen.

What kind of monument is it? We think a bronze statue of this famous Magritte painting would be a good fit.
We don’t think the monument would let us know very much about the UC at all. Maybe it would just be a
slab of clean white marble with no decoration, or a big marble replica of a dollar bill (because he was so good
at buying things), or maybe it would be an obelisk like the Washington Monument. We’re sure you can come
up with something interesting.

Anyway, we’re going to plop our monument down right in the middle of the Washington Mall, maybe next to
the Lincoln Memorial. The Unknown Citizen deserves a central place in our nation’s capital, considering all
his huge accomplishments like having five kids! It will be right down the street from the Bureau of Statistics,
a huge, drab marble building. And, of course, it will have that strange dedication "To JS/07 M 378" on it.

As for the Unknown Citizen, he lives a very neat, organized society. It looks like a squeaky-clean 1950s TV
show – except in the 1930s. The new Ford has just been waxed, the Jell-O is cooling in the frigidaire, and
the kids are on the living room floor, listening to the latest episode of Little Orphan Annie on the radio:

"Who's that little chatter box?

The one with pretty auburn locks?
Whom do you see?
It's Little Orphan Annie."

If you’ve ever seen the Jim Carrey movie, The Truman Show, you know what we mean. But there’s a slightly
seedy underside to this quaint little vision, and it’s that the government seems to know everything. There are
tons of reports and paperwork to fill out, and researchers into Public Opinion are walking the streets, taking
the mood of the public on every subject under the sun. If you say something odd or don’t pay your Union
dues, people will look at you cock-eyed and maybe even stop talking to you. And, trust us, no one is ever
going to ask if you’re happy.

Themes:
IDENTITY
By definition, the Unknown Citizen has no identity. With the related concept of the Unknown Soldier, it is
the soldier’s physical remains, or dead body, that cannot be identified. But for the Unknown Citizen, it is
more that his life was so conventional that he did not distinguish himself in any way from his fellow citizens.
There must be thousands, even millions, of Unknown Citizens out there, about whom little can be said
except that they didn’t get in anyone’s way. On the other hand, you might think that there is nothing wrong
with being "unknown," and that the poet is being elitist.
MANIPULATION
Monuments and public celebrations are always political. Even your town’s Fourth of July parade is a staged
political event. Now, "political" doesn’t have to have a negative connotation (who doesn’t love free candy and
bead necklaces on the Fourth of July?), but in this poem, the State is a creepy, manipulative bureaucracy
that is most concerned with preventing oddballs from getting in the way with the status quo. So they have
created this expensive marble monument to the blandest person in the country, the one least likely to mess
things up for those in power. The inscription on the monument – the poem – tells us almost nothing about
the man to whom it is dedicated. It tries to convince the imaginary reader to be more like the Unknown
Citizen.
PATRIOTISM
Some people say, "My country, right or wrong." Other people think argument and dissent are the signs of a
true patriot. Auden’s poem falls more toward the latter end of the spectrum. The poem tells us that "in
everything he did he served the Greater Community," but we’re not sure what this means. Who decides what
the interests of the Greater Community are? Does this group exclude anyone? Is individual identity at odds
with it? These are a few of the disturbing questions that the poem raises in relation to patriotism. And, of
course, things are complicated by the fact that the poem seems to be set in America but was written by an
Englishman.
PASSIVITY
The Unknown Citizen is called a modern-day "saint" by the State, but it isn’t clear just what he
has done that is so worthy of praise. His most potentially heroic deed is serving in the army during a war,
but does serving in a war automatically make you a hero, even if you were only doing what everyone else
did? On the whole, the Unknown Citizen belonged to the faceless masses, from his consumer habits to his

59
love of having "a drink" with his mates. Attacking the conformity of middle-class America has always been a
favorite sport of intellectuals, and you can find tons of more contemporary examples, like the Oscar-winning
movie American Beauty. You may choose to disagree with Auden’s perspective, or you could say, "Right on!"
This is the kind of poem that battles conformity by provoking strong opinions from its readers.

Toads – Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin -  an English poet, novelist, and librarian.

Why should I let the toad work Are skinny as whippets-and yet

          Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
          and drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
          With its sickening poison-
Just for paying a few bills!
          That's out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits:
          Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
          They don't end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes
          With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
          They seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet,
          Their unspeakable wives
          No one actually starves.
Ah, were I courageous enough
          To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
          That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like
          Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
          And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney
          My way to getting
The fame and the girl and the money
          All at one sitting.
I don't say, one bodies the other
          One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
          When you have both.

In the poem's first two stanzas, the speaker outlines the problem: life stinks because he has to work too
much, "just for paying a few bills." As the poem begins, we also see what that amphibian title is all about.
Larkin uses the image of a slimy, old toad to represent the work he so desperately wants to escape. Sorry
toad-lovers, this one isn't actually about our amphibian friends.

For the next three stanzas, our speaker gives us examples of folks that seem to have beat the system,
escaped that slimy toad work. The list includes "lots of folk [that] live on their wits," like conmen, and the
unemployed poor.

The poem's final four stanzas show the speaker coming to terms with the fact that the toad is inescapable. It
turns out that he has something "toad-like," something oppressive, in him as well, preventing him from
feeling fulfilled. With the realization that he's dealing with internal as well as external toady-ness, the
speaker resigns himself to life with his slimy nemesis.

Symbols:
TOAD
No need for a spoiler alert here. Toad imagery and symbolism is a big part of "Toads." Larkin makes good use
of our amphibian friend's long symbolic tradition and all of the slimy, warty, negative associations that go
along with it. Throughout history, toads pop up as everything from poisonous witches' companions to all-
around harbingers of death. Not cool.

Note: If you're one of those folks that have a desk or a dresser covered with adorable toad tchotchkes (you
know who you are), you can stop yelling at your computer screen. You're perfectly entitled to think toads are
wonderful, cuddly creatures. We get it. Some people like those little warty guys. To each their own. We just
want you to understand that your toads aren't the kind Larkin had in mind. Now, let's take a look at how
Larkin uses his toads in "Toads."
UNPLEASANT SMELLS, SOUNDS, SIGHTS
Larkin includes some pretty unpleasant sensory details and imagery in "Toads." He wants us to really feel, to
experience, the speaker's distaste and disdain for the "toad work" he was to deal with nearly everyday.
Larkin's word choice leaves use feeling kind of stinky and soiled by the end of this one. Thanks for nothin',
Phil.
REPETITION

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Larkin makes use of some well-placed repetition and wordplay to emphasize one of the poem's key ideas: the
inescapability and degrading qualities of work. Sounds fun, right? Larkin gets extra vocabulary bang for his
buck by choosing, and in some cases repeating, words that have secondary functions beyond their primary
meanings that help reinforce the ideas and images he wants us to consider.

Lots of Larkin's poems are formally and metrically strict. He was a guy that liked a pattern. That being said,
he wasn't afraid to have a little fun. "Toads" is a great example of how form and meter can be used in
unexpected ways, with unexpected results.

When we think of something being in a form, we think of predictability. A form means we know what to
expect, we know what's coming next. In "Toads," Larkin plays with this notion of predictability. The first
place this happens is in the "rhymes." Why, you ask, did we put the word rhymes in quotation marks? Glad
you asked. It's because those "rhymes" aren't really rhymes at all, at least not in The Cat in the Hat kind of
way.

Think of it this way: we all know what a rhyme is, right? (If you answered "No" or "Wrong" get ye to
the Shmoop Literature Glossary posthaste.) The rhymes in "Toads" don't fit the definition of full or perfect
rhyme. They have some similar sounds, or they look similar, but they just don't have what it takes to be
perfect. (Poor little imperfect rhymes, we know how you feel.)

Larkin is using what the literary world likes to call slant rhyme or half rhyme, like "life" and "off" (2, 4). He's
also using something called eye rhyme, like "blarney" and "money" (29, 31). It isn't that Larkin didn't have
the poetry chops to come up with the perfect rhymes. All you have to do is look at a few of his other poems
to see he is pretty much a rhyme master. No, Phil did this for a reason.

Why, you ask? Well, slant rhyme gives the illusion of rhyme, but you never really get the auditory
satisfaction of hearing a true, perfect rhyme. The experience of hearing slant rhyme can leave you wanting
more, feeling a little unsatisfied, a little cheated. (Sheesh—this is starting to sound like our last relationship.)

Our response to eye rhyme can be similar. The words look like they should rhyme, but the sound just isn't
there. We feel like we're missing out on something, or that something we want or need is being kept from us.
We're missing that rhyme-y sound we anticipate when we see those similar-looking words on the page. It can
be kind of, well, disappointing.

The poem's meter also makes us feel a bit unfulfilled. It never seems to settle intoone regular pattern
or rhythm. The term "irregular meter" means that the poem uses several different metrical patterns. Take a
look at the first stanza:

Why should I let the toad work

Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
and drive the brute off? (1-4)

See? The stressed and unstressed syllables don't fall into one, nice pattern. If you really search, you'll find
that the lines do alternate between uneven ("uneven" meaning there's often an extra syllable dangling here
and there) trimeter (3 metricfeet per line) and uneven dimeter (2 feet per line) in a variety of patterns. But
that's a far cry from the order and balance of a poem in, for example, iambic pentameter. As a result, the
rhythm of the poem kind of comes in and out.

We can see the alternating, uneven trimeter/dimeter lines pretty well in stanza 7. Careful, don't let the
occasional extra syllable fool you.

For something sufficiently toad-like (3 feet)

Squats in me, too; (2 feet)
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck, (3 feet)
And cold as snow. (2 feet) (25-28)

Can you see it? It seems kind of random—but trust us, there is a method to Larkin's madness. For example,
check out that spondee "hard luck." The hard, double stress sound mirrors the notion of "hard" in the
content. Larkin didn't want his description of bad luck to sound soft and melodic. He wanted it to thump in
your ears and have a foreboding feel. Mission accomplished.

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One of the things that heightens the unfulfilled feelings we might get from the poem's meter is the fact that
the poem is in quatrains. Very often, quatrains signal that the poet is going to use form and meter in a fairly
traditional way. Not our pal Phil (at least not this time.) Here again, we expect something, but we don't get it.

So, to answer the question you probably asked a couple paragraphs ago, the reason Larkin avoided perfect
rhyme, regular meter, and used quatrains was to make the poem's form mirror the content. The form
mirrors the speaker's feelings of dissatisfaction coming from an incomplete, imperfect life. We don't get what
we want or expect from the poem's form and meter just as the speaker fails to get what he wants from life.
The form and meter work together to put us in the same boat as the speaker, to make us feel the same way
he does. Larkin uses half rhyme. The speaker feels he's living a kind of half-life, with work taking up too
much of his time. The speaker's life is incomplete. He never gets "The fame and the girl and the money" all at
the same time (31). Just like we never get full rhyme or regular meter all in one stanza. Or do we?

There is actually one stanza where we see regular metrical patterns and one perfect rhyme. Can you find it?
Yup. Stanza 6 has it all. Check it out:

Ah, were I courageous enough

to shout Stuff yourpension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on. (21-24)

Those end words, "enough" and "stuff," sound nice and rhyme-y, and the end of the quatrain has a pretty
regular line of dactyls, followed by and iambic line. Looks like we can have it all at the same time—"the fame
and the girl and the money," or in this case the quatrain, the regular meter, and the perfect rhyme. All the
pieces are there. Hooray! But wait, what about the content? No sooner are we rejoicing in our feeling of a
full, complete poem-and-life then we realize this stanza is all about "the stuff" of dreams.

So, the one time all these elements come together, the meter gets regular and the rhymes get perfect, is in
the stanza about something that only happens in dreams. Bummer. Looks like things are going to stay
irregular and imperfect back in the real world.

Let's see… where to begin? Well, the obvious is a good place to start. It's pretty easy to tell that our speaker
is feeling more than a little put out by the whole toad-work thing. Those exclamation points that keep
popping up tell us that he's feeling fairly passionate about the injustice of it all: "Just for paying a few bills!"
"Stuff your pension!" But there is more to this guy than just being a little hot under the collar.

First of all, it doesn't seem like this is the first time the speaker has thought about this problem. This is
something that has been building up for some time. He probably isn't seventeen and toiling away at his first
fast-food job. It feels more like a middle-aged guy that is trying to come to terms with what his life is going to
amount to.

We also get the sense that this speaker is being honest with us. He admits to having that internal "toad"
after all—that has to be a little embarrassing, right? It's one thing to have an internal unicorn or perhaps an
internal Jedi master, but a toad?

It can be pretty boring listening to someone complaining, going on and on about this problem and that. But
we don't really feel that way with this speaker. He isn't whining and griping (or "whinging," as our British
friends like to say) just to hear his own voice. He seems like a guy that just can't see his way clear to a
solution and you might even feel a little sympathy for him (we do anyway). The sad thing is, even after his
little rant, he doesn't seem any closer to solving his problem. If anything, by the poem's last stanza, he
seems resigned to the fact that his toads (internal and external) aren't going anywhere.

Finally, the speaker seems educated but not pompous. He's familiar with Shakespeare ("that's the stuff /
That dreams are made on") but he also knows how regular, down-and-out folks live ("up lanes / With fires in
a bucket").

While it is always a good idea to separate the speaker of a poem from the poet, thisspeaker does seem to
share a certain bleak outlook with the poet himself. Larkin, like this speaker, didn't really have a rainbow-y
perspective on life. Check out "Calling Card" for more on that.

Larkin doesn't give us a super-obvious setting for this one. The speaker never declares he's here or there,
inside or out. But there are some aspects of the poem that give us some sense of place.

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There are some words that put us in an outdoors-y frame of mind: "pitchfork" (trust us, not a good inside
tool) "windfalls," "toads." But the poem's overall feeling is interior. Here's why:

Like we discussed in the "Sound Check" section, the poem has a very talk-y feel. (There's extra credit if you
can remember the term for that talk-y tone. If you said "colloquial," ten points for Gryffindor! Er, sorry—just
award yourself a bazillion Shmoop points.) This colloquial sound, coupled with the fact that the speaker is
going on and on about work and getting a little more serious and emotional as the poem nears the end,
reminds us of a guy sitting at the bar, pouring out his troubles to the bartender. Larkin sat at a bar or two
in his time, so he certainly would have had an ear for this kind of talk.

At the end of the day, though, this back and forth is really taking place inside the speaker's head. At first
he's wrestling with that toad, but then becomes resigned to defeat. Work does a big, warty bellyflop on his
spirit and pins him for the count—bummer.

Themes:
DISSATISFACTION
In "Toads," it isn't too tough to tell that the speaker is dissatisfied with his life. He might not say the words,
"I feel a great sense of dissatisfaction when I look at my life," but there are plenty of other clues letting us
guess that's probably what he's feeling. (Perhaps the biggest clue is the fact that this is a poem by Larkin—
his speakers are dissatisfied with something most of the time.)
FREEDOM
The speaker in "Toads" is feeling stuck for a couple of different reasons. First of all, he's got that ugly toad
(work) squatting on him. It keeps him from getting what he wants out of life. He feels confined by it and he
wants to find a way free from it. The trouble is, he's got one of those toads in him as well. (What, did he
swallow it or something?) It turns out that getting free from both of these toads might not be possible.
CLEVERNESS
The speaker in "Toads" seems to think his one shot at getting rid of the metaphorical toads that torment his
life comes in the form of wit. He figures maybe, just maybe, he can use his smarts, his cleverness, to "drive
the brute off." He has lots of evidence to support wit's power against the amphibian foes, but in the end even
wit proves useless for our poor speaker. Oh, well—good try?
DREAMS
Big plans? Hopes and dreams? We've all got 'em. Unfortunately, as the speaker in "Toads" discovers, things
don't always work out the way we'd like or the way we plan. He wants to have a fulfilling life. He hopes for
the Big Three: fame, fortune, and someone to share it all with. But instead he gets a bunch of toads. How
unfair.

The Tollund Man – Seamus Heaves

Seamus Heaves - an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, and the recipient of the 1995 Nobel
Prize in Literature.
I  Trove of the turfcutters' 
Some day I will go to Aarhus  Honeycombed workings. 
To see his peat-brown head,  Now his stained face 
The mild pods of his eye-lids,  Reposes at Aarhus. 
His pointed skin cap. 

In the flat country near by  II 

Where they dug him out,  I could risk blasphemy, 
His last gruel of winter seeds  Consecrate the cauldron bog 
Caked in his stomach,  Our holy ground and pray 
Him to make germinate 
Naked except for 
The cap, noose and girdle,  The scattered, ambushed 
I will stand a long time.  Flesh of labourers, 
Bridegroom to the goddess,  Stockinged corpses 
Laid out in the farmyards, 
She tightened her torc on him 
And opened her fen,  Tell-tale skin and teeth 
Those dark juices working  Flecking the sleepers 
Him to a saint's kept body,  Of four young brothers, trailed 
For miles along the lines. 

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 Watching the pointing hands 
III  Of country people, 
Something of his sad freedom  Not knowing their tongue. 
As he rode the tumbril 
Should come to me, driving,  Out here in Jutland 
Saying the names  In the old man-killing parishes 
I will feel lost, 
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,  Unhappy and at home. 

Story.

Heaney wants to go to Demark to see the wizened remains of the bog-body at Aarhus. He was executed with
his last meal still in his stomach. He wants to worship him, against all religious constraints. He wants to call
upon his to raise the dead Irish. He wants to derive a sort of power from the body, from the country, from
being alone.

Structure.

The poem is divided into eleven stanzas, and three parts. The first part has five stanzas, and the second and
third three. The first part of the poem is a description of what Heaney will see when he views the body. The
second part is the relationship between the religious sacrifice and the dead Irish, and the third Heaney in
the country of Denmark.

There is little rhyme (although Heaney uses end of line assonance occasionally), but there is a singsong
rhythm in the up and down of the vowel sounds, despite Heaney's use of enjambment.

Language.

Heaney makes a point of the place-names he uses in "The Tollund Man" - "Aarhus", "Tollund", "Graubelle",
"Nebelgard", "Jutland". The language used to describe the body is quite impersonal - "his peat brown head",
"a saint's kept body". He tries to emphasise the body's quasi-divinity.

Diction.

The poem has a first person persona, an "I". The Tollund Man is never named except in the title, it is only
"he". Despite this, the bog is personified as "she", the divine worship of the primitives takes on the same
identity as the people themselves. The poem is narrated in the future tense - with a sense of a perhaps, a
distant. Heaney never wanders in his conviction that he will go, and he will do exactly this and that, but it is
not a trip he is contemplating with urgency. It is a "Some day" poem.

Tone.

The opening tone of the first part is "mild" - Heaney will passively "see", and "stand for a long time", the
meticulous observer. The description of the primitive "goddess" to whom the man was sacrificed makes the
tone more ominous, more fateful. She "tighten[s]", "work[s]", and only away form her can he "repose".
Heaney's tone is more emphatic in the second part, his verbs and language becomes stronger. He "could
risk", "consecrate", "pray". His voice is doom-laden.

The tone of the last stanza is mournful. "Freedom" is "sad", a man who is "a home" must also be
"lost,/Unhappy". He is passive, accepting.

Mood.

The opening of the poem is expectant, determined - "Some day I will", and respectful, he intends to "stand for
a long time" in the presence of the dead, the "bridegroom to the goddess". There is a sense of powerlessness
on the part of the corpse, of larger forces drawing him along. He is consumed by the "torc" and "fen" of the

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"goddess". He is then left to chance, to the "turfcutters'/Honeycombed workings". He becomes anguished in
the second part, calling upon words such as "blasphemy" to describe his impotent longings obliterate the
wrongs of the past. In the third part the Heaney-persona feels quiet despair, quiet strength, "sad freedom".

Poetic Devices.

Alliteration - "peat... pods... pointed", "tightened... torc", "trove... turfcutters" "blasphemy... bog",
"consecrate... cauldron", "tell-tale... teeth... trailed", "something... sad... should... saying", "pointing... people"

Assonance - "Aarhus... head", "mild... lids", "bridegroom... goddess", "torc on", "honeycombed workings",
"cauldron... pray", "ambushed/Flesh", "teeth... sleepers", "miles... lines".

Figures of Speech.

Metaphor - "a saint's kept body"

Imagery.

The first image is that of the corpse, who is quiet and impersonal, the poem's victim of fate, caught in the
"torc" of others. He is "mild", and everything is done to him. He is "dug... out", "worked", left as a "trove". He
is exposed - "naked", and finally he sleeps. He is described in a wizened state, careful emphasis made on his
brown skin, the workings of the fen. He is destroyed and yet elevated at the same time.

There is a bleak, harsh feeling associated with the surrounding country, the "cauldron bog", the "tumbril".
They are the "old man-killing parishes", the larger for which the smaller is sacrificed. The "goddess" is part of
the country - it absorbs and strangles, alone or destroyed at will. The only marks it leaves on its victims are
the remains of their death "cap, noose and girdle".

The first victim of fate is extended to the others, "the scattered, ambushed/Flesh of labourers", of victims
"trailed/For miles along the lines." Their fellow in the Tollund Man should be somehow spiritually akin, his
preservation making him their saint. His paradoxical survival and "repose" should give him the power to
raise the others.

Heaney's primary use of Denmark (and foreignness) as imagery is in the third part. The isolation from
society is emphasised by dwelling on the strange names "Tollund, Graubelle, Nebelgard,", "not knowing their
tongue". The "at home" is not supposed to be comforting, it is just the persona's normal state. He is always
"lost,/Unhappy". But at the same time, the isolation from language gives a "sad freedom", too highly priced.

Theme.

The poem is about the forces of fate, the chance survival of the bog body, the "saint's kept body", against the
"scattered... flesh of labourers". But even the body was tied to religious forces out of his sphere. In "The
Tollund Man", freedom is bought at a high price, that of being "lost/Unhappy". There is no society, no group,
merely cold death, and outside forces.

The Tollund Man is a poem that promises a pilgrimage: "Some day I will go to Aarhus". In the first few
stanzas the tone is expectant, determined, yet at the same time the future tense is an indication of the
remoteness of the poem from the time it speaks of. While the poem never wanders in conviction, there is an
element of foreignness and distance, which is reinforced by the place names ‘Aarhus’, and later ‘Tollund,
Grauballe, Nebelgard’.

The Tollund Man is unnamed. The pilgrim will go "to see his peat brown head"; he goes to worship, in a way,
yet the tone remains impersonal. The Tollund Man is passive, his eye-lids "mild pods". A victim, the action of
the poem relates not who he is but what is done to him, and in the end he "reposes" in "sad freedom". The
Tollund Man, like the girl in Punishment, is portrayed as a scapegoat for society’s crimes and ignorance.

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The Tollund Man’s own journey begins when "they dug him out", destroyed and elevated at the same time.
The meticulous observations of the narrator are again, detached, "his last gruel of winter seeds/caked in his
stomach" yet also emphatic, emphasizing vulnerability "naked except for/the cap, noose and girdle" the
remains of a ritual death.
The pilgrim makes a respectful promise to "stand a long time", but the action itself is passive, promising not
to move.

The last line of this stanza "bridegroom to the goddess" takes on a more ominous, forceful tone as the bog
itself is personified and equated to Ireland, female and overwhelming "she tightened her torc on him". The
language indicates the powerlessness of the victim in the face of greater, unfathomable powers, but at the
same time metaphorically insists on his quasi-divinity, worked "to a saint’s kept body", bringing in religion
and relating it to violence and ritual death. The Tollund Man becomes almost, a surrogate Christ. He is left
to chance, "trove of the turf cutters" and finally resurrected until at last "his stained face/Reposes…"

The poet links religion with the ordering of violence or sacrifice in order to bring peace again in comparing
"the old man killing parishes of Jutland" with his own land.

The second part of the poem suddenly becomes more emphatic after the stillness of the previous line
"reposes at Aarhus" as the narrator says "I could risk blasphemy". Again here, religion is directly connected
to violence but this time the pilgrim says he could "consecrate the cauldron bog/our holy ground". Religion
derives it’s power from the land, as the land demands sacrifice, a 'bridegroom’, to whom the pilgrim will
"pray/him to make germinate". Deriving his power from the land which turned him to a saint, the Tollund
Man as victim, is linked to the "four young brothers", to whom he is both kin and saint, to "flesh of
labourers" and "stockinged corpses". His paradoxical survival and repose should, the poem implies, give him
the power to raise others. At this point, the language is both bleak and harsh, and can be interpreted as an
impotent longing to obliterate the wrongs of the past, attempting to see this resurrection as redemption from
violence, but seeing only the similarities of a ‘ritual’ of death, uncontrolled and meaningless.

The last part of the poem returns to the quiet beginning, but here, instead of determination and looking
forward, there is sorrow and despair, a sense of isolation which is linked to language. The pilgrim insists
that the ‘sad freedom’ of the Tollund Man "should come to me…/saying the names" yet showing that
ultimately exile means "watching the pointing hands/ of country people/not knowing their tongues" as
language is defined as the root of culture, of nationality. Along with religion, and a sense of history and
myth, language is central to Heaney’s poetry, and here the idea of isolation is brought sharply to the reader
through the idea of being ‘lost’ in a foreign land, yet ultimately the paradoxical nature of exile is realized, the
poet realizes that he feels at home in a state of homelessness, and welcomes the feeling of being lost, of not
belonging to society, a sort of ‘sad freedom’ he shares with the Tollund Man, no longer tied to religious
forces. The poem ends in a statement which describes both the isolation and empowering sense of exile: "I
will feel lost/unhappy and at home".

Education for Leisure – Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy - a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester
Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009.

She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to hold the position.

Today I am going to kill something. Anything. another language and now the fly is in another
I have had enough of being ignored and today language.
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day, I breathe out talent on the glass to write my
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets. name.

I squash a fly against the window with my thumb. I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half
We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in the chance. But today I am going to change the

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world. for signing on. They don’t appreciate my
Something’s world. The cat avoids me. The cat autograph.
knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain. and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar.
I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking. He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

Like STEALING, EDUCATION FOR LEISURE was written in the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was
Prime Minister. It was politically a time of great conflict- the Falklands War, the miner’s strike, the poll
tax riots, the inner city riots, the anti-cruise missile protests at Greenham Common- and there were
many cuts and changes in the health, social services and education budgets. Margaret Thatcher said,
and believed, that “there is no such thing as society” and vigorously encouraged the individual pursuit
of wealth. Many of the more vulnerable or underprivileged parts of society suffered educationally and
economically at that time. Thatcher’s Britain is the unseen background of EDUCATION FOR LEISURE.

EDUCATION FOR LEISURE is written in the voice of a teenaged boy who has left school and is on
unemployment benefit. Again, like STEALING, I do not specify in the poem that the speaker is male.
This is because I was concerned to allow a voice to emerge from the poem, rather than a character.
But I had a male voice in my head as I wrote the poem.

The poem was inspired by some visits I made as a poet to a run-down, underfunded comprehensive
school in the East End of London. Many of the students there would leave school to face
unemployment- often with few, if any, GCSEs. They would have a lot of leisure time ahead, but little
education. So the title of the poem, EDUCATION FOR LEISURE, is ironic. (It may have even been a
catchphrase of the time.) The speaker in the poem is attention-seeking in a quite disturbed way and
has started to become destructive- ultimately, of course, self-destructive. He is bored and frustrated,
but feels that there is more in him- perhaps even talent- although no-one seems to recognise this and
his education has not managed to bring it out. (“I am a genius./ I could be anything...”) He might also
feel that other people- teachers, adults at the benefit office, a radio disc jockey, in different ways “play
God” with his life. So today he is going to take control- “today/ I am going to play God”. Unfortunately,
he does not know how to be creative- Shakespeare is “in another language”, for example- or when he
tries to be creative he is blocked or thwarted- (“I dial the radio/ and tell the man he’s talking to a
superstar./ He cuts me off...”). And so all his energy- which could and should be creative- becomes
destructive. He squashes a fly, then pours away the goldfish, considers harming the budgie or the cat,
and the poem ends with him taking a knife from his family’s kitchen and going out to mug or stab
someone in the street. The “glamour” of violence is something he knows from video and television. It is
one way of being “famous”.

FORM
Like STEALING, EDUCATION FOR LEISURE does not use a formal rhyme scheme or strict metre. The
form of the poem has been largely dictated by the voice speaking in the poem. Like STEALING again, I
have used the simple form of 5 free verses, each with 4 lines, to contain the language and rhythm of
the poem. The verses are frames, or canvasses, which I use to order the energy of the voice, to control
it and select from it and so make it speak more articulately than in “real life”. The lines in the poem
are usually short- “I am a genius”; “The cat avoids me”-sometimes only one word long- “Anything”;
“Shakespeare”. There is a jabbing quality present in some of the phrasing in the poem which
anticipates the knife/mugging at the end. But there is also a gentler phrasing of some of the images
which suggests the yearning for something better buried within the boy’s psyche- “a sort of grey with
boredom stirring in the streets”; “I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name”. These lines also
have a more regular, iambic rhythm, implying order and grace as opposed to chaos and violence.

LANGUAGE
The language in EDUCATION FOR LEISURE is direct and colloquial, sometimes using slang- “I pour
the goldfish down the bog”, “signing on”, “superstar”. However, there is “another language” referred to
in the poem- a more creative language found in Shakespeare or the Bible. The line “I squash a fly
against the window with my thumb” vaguely reminds the boy of a forgotten Shakespeare play studied
at school.(King Lear: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods./They kill us for their sport.”) The
line “I see that it is good” refers to Genesis. Like many people, the boy in the poem has acquired more

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 language from Shakespeare and the Bible than he is aware of. In the poem, language is a form of life,
a positive thing- the boy writes his name on the window in the steam of his own breath and dials the
radio to talk about himself to the DJ. Like STEALING, EDUCATION FOR LEISURE uses the words
“boredom” and “Shakespeare” and in a sense in both poems these words are opposites.

David Lodge, 'Two Kinds of Modern Fiction'

 in the first ten years of the XX century, innovative authors like Yeats, James, Conrad, Joyce were
misunderstood and discouraged because of the supremacy of old-fashioned writers (Kipling, Newbolt,
Bridges)

 it changed when Ezra Pound, whose main goal was to make London the new avant-garde centre,
decided to promote Eliot and Joyce

 Virginia Woolf in her essays accused writers like Bennett or Wells of writing about unimportant
things, called them materialists – it's basically how modernists saw 'traditionalists': as materialists writing
shallow literature about irrelevant matters of the capitalistic world

 "For the moderns... the point of interest lies very likely in the dark places of psychology" – Woolf's
words about modernists

 critics took the word "moderns" and changed it to "modernists" to distinguish those who were
writing modern literature from those who wrote conservative, old-fashioned literature in modern age (like
Wells or Bennett)

 Joyce, James, Woolf, Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, Flaubert, Gertrude Stein – important names of
modernist fiction

 modernist novel – experimental or innovatory in form, concerned with consciousness, and also
with the subconscious and unconscious workings of the human mind. Traditional narrative art with external
events and objective outlook is diminished to make room for introspection, analysis, reflection and
reverie. Modernist novel has no real beginning, we get to know more by following the action/experiencing
with the narrator, the ending is open, ambiguous and leaving the reader in doubt. Modernist fiction rejects
the omniscient and intrusive narrator, instead it employs limited point of view or a method of multiple points
of view and lack of chronological order

 Modern fiction that is not modernist is called realistic – blending of private and public history
conveyed through third-person-past-tense authorial mode of narration or the autobiographical-confessional
mode

 post-war period has been named an age of reaction against experiments in English novel –
modernists were criticized for their elitist cultural assumptions, lack of communication with wide audience
and failure or refusal to engage with social issues (ostatni zarzut jest bez sensu, bo moderniści z założenia
nie zajmowali się sprawami społecznymi, za co z kolei krytykowali poprzednią generację, itp, itd, błędne
koło) 

 then they were also criticized for their lack of spirituality, their methods were incompatible with the
expression of a Christian world-view, meaning that modernist writing is attached to pagan or neo-Platonic
forms of religion and the idea of reincarnation

 the conclusion is that the modernist movement died because of the reasons listed above

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FROM MODERNIST TO POSTMODERNIST FICTION: CHANGE OF DOMINANT

 ‘Postmodernist’ – problematic, unsatisfactory term. ‘Post’ isn’t the right prefix (today and
historically) because movements are defined in their own terms, not by their relation to something
else. No artist wants to be ‘post’ anything.

 Frank Kermode argues that so-called postmodernism is only the persistence of modernism into a
third and fourth generation, thus deserving to be called, at best, “neomodernism.”

 There are many possible constructions of postmodernism(depending on what you understand as

postmodern literature), however, this does not mean that all constructs are equally interesting or
valuable, or that we are unable to choose among them.

 Various criteria for preferring one construction over the other:

1. the criterion of self - consistency and internal coherence

2. the criterion of scope - postmodernism should not be defined so liberally that it covers all
modes of contemporary writing, for then it would be of no use in drawing distinctions, but
neither should it be defined too narrowly

3. the criterion of productiveness - construction of post modernism that produces new

insights, new or richer connections, coherence of a different degree or kind, ultimately more
discourse

4. etc.  ogólnie te kryteria to nie jest nic ważnego, ale zostawiłam żebyście mieli jako takie
pojęcie o co mu chodzi

 The criterion of interest is a superior construction for McHale: If as literary historians we

construct the objects of our description (“the Renaissance,” “romanticism,” “postmodernism”) in the
very act of describing them, we should strive at the very least to construct interesting objects.
“Naturally I believe that the fiction of postmodernism which I have constructed in this book is a superior
construction.”  ach ta skromność

 Postmodernism is not post modern, whatever that might mean, but post modernism; it does not
come after the present (a solecism), but after the modernist movement. Thus the term signifies a
poetics which is the successor of, or possibly a reaction against, the poetics of early twentieth-
century modernism, and not some hypothetical writing of the future.
 historical consequentiality – constructing an argument about how the posterior phenomenon
emerges from its predecessor
 To capture this consequentiality—which is this book’s primary objective—we need a tool for
describing how one set of literary forms emerges from a historically prior set of forms. That tool can
be found in the Russian formalist concept of the dominant.

The dominant

(Jurij Tynjanov probably deserves the credit for this concept, but it is best known to us through a lecture of
Roman Jakobson’s, dating from 1935.)

 The dominant may be defined as the focusing component of a work of art: it rules, determines, and
transforms the remaining components. It is the dominant which guarantees the integrity of the
structure.
 Jakobson’s concept of the dominant is in fact plural. He applies his concept of the dominant to the
structure of the individual literary text, the synchronic and diachronic organization of the literary
system, the analysis of the verse medium in general (where rhyme, meter, and intonation are
dominant at different historical periods), of verbal art in general (where the aesthetic function is a
transhistorical dominant), and of cultural history (painting is the dominant art-form of the
Renaissance, music the dominant of the romantic period, and so on).

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  Different dominants may be distinguished depending upon the level, scope, and focus of the
analysis. Furthermore, one and the same text will yield different dominants depending upon what
aspect of it we are analyzing.
 In short, different dominants emerge depending upon which questions we ask of the text, and
the position from which we interrogate it.
 catalogues of features— the membra disjecta of literary scholarship, as Jakobson calls them. While
such catalogues do often help us to begin ordering the protean variety of postmodernist
phenomena, they also beg important questions, such as the question of why these particular
features should cluster in this particular way—in other words, the question of what system might
underlie the catalogue—and the question of how in the course of literary history one system has
given way to another. These questions cannot be answered without the intervention of something
like a concept of the dominant.
 Catalogues of postmodernist features are typically organized in terms of oppositions with features of
modernist poetics. We can see how a particular postmodernist feature stands in opposition to its
modernist counterpart, but we cannot see how postmodernist poetics as a whole stands in
opposition to modernist poetics as a whole, since neither of the opposed sets of features has been
interrogated for its underlying systematicity.

 With the help of dominant, we can both elicit the systems underlying these heterogeneous
catalogues, and begin to account for historical change. For to describe change of dominant is in
effect to describe the process of literary-historical change.

 General thesis about modernist fiction: the dominant of modernist fiction is epistemological.
That is, modernist fiction deploys strategies which engage and foreground questions: “How can I
interpret this world of which I am a part? And what am I in it? What is there to be known?; Who
knows it?; How do they know it, and with what degree of certainty?; How is knowledge transmitted
from one knower to another, and with what degree of reliability?; How does the object of knowledge
change as it passes from knower to knower?; What are the limits of the knowable? And so on.
 Second general thesis, this time about postmodernist fiction: the dominant of postmodernist
fiction is ontological. That is, postmodernist fiction deploys strategies which engage and
foreground questions like the ones Dick Higgins calls “post-cognitive”: “Which world is this? What is
to be done in it? Which of my selves is to do it?”, What is a world?; What kinds of world are there,
how are they constituted, and how do they differ?; What happens when different kinds of world are
placed in confrontation, or when boundaries between worlds are violated?; What is the mode of
existence of a text, and what is the mode of existence of the world (or worlds) it projects?; How is a
projected world structured? And so on.
 various catalogues of features: these features could easily be seen as strategies for foregrounding
ontological issues. In other words, it is the ontological dominant which explains the selection and
clustering of these particular features; the ontological dominant is the principle of systematicity
underlying these otherwise heterogeneous catalogues.

 Literary discourse, in effect, only specifies which set of questions ought to be asked first of a
particular text, and delays the asking of the second set of questions, slowing down the process by
which epistemological questions entail ontological questions and vice versa.

 This in a nutshell is the function of the dominant: it specifies the order in which different aspects
are to be attended to, so that, although it would be perfectly possible to interrogate a postmodernist
text about its epistemological implications, it is more urgent to interrogate it about its ontological
implications. In postmodernist texts, in other words, epistemology is backgrounded, as the price for
foregrounding ontology.

 potem McHale opisuje swoje tezy na przykładach tekstów kilku autorów, ale już nic z tego nie ogarniam

Analysis of Virginia Woolf's Essay "Modern Fiction"

  Virginia Woolf in her Modern Fiction makes a fair attempt to discuss briefly the main trends in the modern
novel or fiction. She begins her essay by mentioning the traditionalists like H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and
Galsworthy, who, while they propound new ideas and open out new vistas to the human mind, still follow
the Victorian tradition as far as the technique of the novel is concerned. Read More Essay They believed
that a great force on the individual was environment. However, they differed from one another in subject
matter – in Arnold and Galsworthy the socialist point of view dominated and Wells, a brilliant writer of
scientific romances. Read More Essay Mrs. Woolf marks these three as ‘materialists’. While defining the
term Woolf states that these writers as well as their writing is stuffed with unimportant things; they spend
immense skill and dexterity in making the trivial and transitory a boost of truth of life. As life escapes, the

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worth of the literary piece in minimal. Mrs. Woolf while criticizing the three makes a pivotal point of criticism
on the traditional method of novel writing of Fielding types.

            Extending the pinnacle of criticism Mrs. Woolf further bids her point that the types are devoid of life
or spirit, truth or reality. The essence of the novel i.e. the reality of life is missing in the traditional method of
novel writing which is superficial characterization, artificial framework. Here in this types ‘the writer seems
constrained, not by his own free will but some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant’.  Read More Essay The
tyrant is none other than the restriction or the catalogue of types – such as plot, comedy, tragedy, treatment
of love etc. in dressing up all these criterion what we receive is the death of life or spirit or spontaneity or
flow of conscience behest of terminology or doggerel methods.

            Mrs. Woolf makes it clear that the objective of the writer in his or her creation is to look within and
life as a whole. The traditionism or materialism do not capture that moment – the reception of the mind of
myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic, and evanescent or engraved. Thus to trust upon life, a writer is free
and he could write what he chose.  So to dot down what he feels should not be conventionally in comedy,
tragedy or love interests in accepted styles. Here is a withdrawal from external phenomena into the flickering
half shades of the author’s private world. The reality lies not in the outer actions, but in the inner working of
the human mind, in the inner perceptions.

Further, analyzing the inflow of life, Mrs. Woolf defines life not as a series of tales symmetrically arranged.
She says it as a ‘luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of
conscious to the end’. Conscious is a constant flow, not jointed, not chopped up in bits. Thus the purpose of
the writer should be the delineation of deeper and deeper into the human consciousness. Mrs. Woolf, in this
respect, mentions the innovators like James Joyce and Joseph Conrad. Citing an example from The Portrait
of The Artist as a Young Manand Ulysses, she points out that here is in the story apparent disconnection
and in coherence as a result of recording the ‘atoms of life’ in the stream of conscience. Read
More Essay Through ineffable style, fragmented, hazardous, and unpleasant, here is undeniably important
spirit or life. Mrs. Woolf comments “In contrast with those whom we have called materialists, Mr. Joyce is
spiritual’. Read More Essay The externals of personality the habits, manners, physical appearance etc are
altogether discarded as it seems impossible to give a psychologically true account of character by such
means. Joyce’s in his novel loses himself into the complexities and subtleties of inner life.

            The new novel on consciousness, as Mrs. Woolf clarifies, is purely psychological. Under the
influence of new psychological theories, life is not regarded as a mere tales, but a series of moments. Read
More Essay In fact, the psychological theory of the functioning mind is a stream – of –consciousness. The
technique or method by which it is possible to capture them is truly the new type, Mrs. Woolf asserts. Here
is Joyce and the types who are to explore the dark places of psychology ignored still date. Mrs. Woolf here
observes a key point from Russian literature where, particularly Chekhov is worth mentioning of exploring
the world of mind as well as the world of heart. Modern English fiction is influenced by Russian literature –
its spiritualism, saintliness, inquisitiveness.

            In conclusion, Mrs. Woolf in Modern Fictionpleads not to be narrow- minded and conventional. She
says that there are ample possibilities of the art and here is no limit to the horizon. Here no ‘method’, no
experiment, no extraordinary is forbidden, but only falsity and pretence should be discarded.  Read
MoreEssay The proper stuff of fiction does not exist – everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling,
every thought if they are saturated by spirit or life in it. 

WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Emily Brontë Plot Overview

In the late winter months of 1801, a man named Lockwood rents a manor house called Thrushcross Grange
in the isolated moor country of England. Here, he meets his dour landlord, Heathcliff, a wealthy man who
lives in the ancient manor of Wuthering Heights, four miles away from the Grange. In this wild, stormy
countryside, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the story of Heathcliff and the strange
denizens of Wuthering Heights. Nelly consents, and Lockwood writes down his recollections of her tale in his
diary; these written recollections form the main part of Wuthering Heights.

Nelly remembers her childhood. As a young girl, she works as a servant at Wuthering Heights for the owner
of the manor, Mr. Earnshaw, and his family. One day, Mr. Earnshaw goes to Liverpool and returns home
with an orphan boy whom he will raise with his own children. At first, the Earnshaw children—a boy named

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Hindley and his younger sister Catherine—detest the dark-skinned Heathcliff. But Catherine quickly comes
to love him, and the two soon grow inseparable, spending their days playing on the moors. After his wife’s
death, Mr. Earnshaw grows to prefer Heathcliff to his own son, and when Hindley continues his cruelty to
Heathcliff, Mr. Earnshaw sends Hindley away to college, keeping Heathcliff nearby.

Three years later, Mr. Earnshaw dies, and Hindley inherits Wuthering Heights. He returns with a wife,
Frances, and immediately seeks revenge on Heathcliff. Once an orphan, later a pampered and favored son,
Heathcliff now finds himself treated as a common laborer, forced to work in the fields. Heathcliff continues
his close relationship with Catherine, however. One night they wander to Thrushcross Grange, hoping to
tease Edgar and Isabella Linton, the cowardly, snobbish children who live there. Catherine is bitten by a dog
and is forced to stay at the Grange to recuperate for five weeks, during which time Mrs. Linton works to
make her a proper young lady. By the time Catherine returns, she has become infatuated with Edgar, and
her relationship with Heathcliff grows more complicated.

When Frances dies after giving birth to a baby boy named Hareton, Hindley descends into the depths of
alcoholism, and behaves even more cruelly and abusively toward Heathcliff. Eventually, Catherine’s desire
for social advancement prompts her to become engaged to Edgar Linton, despite her overpowering love for
Heathcliff. Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights, staying away for three years, and returning shortly
after Catherine and Edgar’s marriage.

When Heathcliff returns, he immediately sets about seeking revenge on all who have wronged him. Having
come into a vast and mysterious wealth, he deviously lends money to the drunken Hindley, knowing that
Hindley will increase his debts and fall into deeper despondency. When Hindley dies, Heathcliff inherits the
manor. He also places himself in line to inherit Thrushcross Grange by marrying Isabella Linton, whom he
treats very cruelly. Catherine becomes ill, gives birth to a daughter, and dies. Heathcliff begs her spirit to
remain on Earth—she may take whatever form she will, she may haunt him, drive him mad—just as long as
she does not leave him alone. Shortly thereafter, Isabella flees to London and gives birth to Heathcliff’s son,
named Linton after her family. She keeps the boy with her there.

Thirteen years pass, during which Nelly Dean serves as Catherine’s daughter’s nursemaid at Thrushcross
Grange. Young Catherine is beautiful and headstrong like her mother, but her temperament is modified by
her father’s gentler influence. Young Catherine grows up at the Grange with no knowledge of Wuthering
Heights; one day, however, wandering through the moors, she discovers the manor, meets Hareton, and
plays together with him. Soon afterwards, Isabella dies, and Linton comes to live with Heathcliff. Heathcliff
treats his sickly, whining son even more cruelly than he treated the boy’s mother.

Three years later, Catherine meets Heathcliff on the moors, and makes a visit to Wuthering Heights to meet
Linton. She and Linton begin a secret romance conducted entirely through letters. When Nelly destroys
Catherine’s collection of letters, the girl begins sneaking out at night to spend time with her frail young lover,
who asks her to come back and nurse him back to health. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Linton
is pursuing Catherine only because Heathcliff is forcing him to; Heathcliff hopes that if Catherine marries
Linton, his legal claim upon Thrushcross Grange—and his revenge upon Edgar Linton—will be complete.
One day, as Edgar Linton grows ill and nears death, Heathcliff lures Nelly and Catherine back to Wuthering
Heights, and holds them prisoner until Catherine marries Linton. Soon after the marriage, Edgar dies, and
his death is quickly followed by the death of the sickly Linton. Heathcliff now controls both Wuthering
Heights and Thrushcross Grange. He forces Catherine to live at Wuthering Heights and act as a common
servant, while he rents Thrushcross Grange to Lockwood.

Nelly’s story ends as she reaches the present. Lockwood, appalled, ends his tenancy at Thrushcross Grange
and returns to London. However, six months later, he pays a visit to Nelly, and learns of further
developments in the story. Although Catherine originally mocked Hareton’s ignorance and illiteracy (in an
act of retribution, Heathcliff ended Hareton’s education after Hindley died), Catherine grows to love Hareton
as they live together at Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff becomes more and more obsessed with the memory of
the elder Catherine, to the extent that he begins speaking to her ghost. Everything he sees reminds him of
her. Shortly after a night spent walking on the moors, Heathcliff dies. Hareton and young Catherine inherit
Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, and they plan to be married on the next New Year’s Day. After
hearing the end of the story, Lockwood goes to visit the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff.

Character List

Heathcliff -  An orphan brought to live at Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff falls into an
intense, unbreakable love with Mr. Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine. After Mr. Earnshaw dies, his resentful
son Hindley abuses Heathcliff and treats him as a servant. Because of her desire for social prominence,
Catherine marries Edgar Linton instead of Heathcliff. Heathcliff’s humiliation and misery prompt him to
spend most of the rest of his life seeking revenge on Hindley, his beloved Catherine, and their respective

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children (Hareton and young Catherine). A powerful, fierce, and often cruel man, Heathcliff acquires a
fortune and uses his extraordinary powers of will to acquire both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross
Grange, the estate of Edgar Linton.

Catherine -  The daughter of Mr. Earnshaw and his wife, Catherine falls powerfully in love with Heathcliff,
the orphan Mr. Earnshaw brings home from Liverpool. Catherine loves Heathcliff so intensely that she
claims they are the same person. However, her desire for social advancement motivates her to marry Edgar
Linton instead. Catherine is free-spirited, beautiful, spoiled, and often arrogant. She is given to fits of
temper, and she is torn between her wild passion for Heathcliff and her social ambition. She brings misery to
both of the men who love her.

Edgar Linton -  Well-bred but rather spoiled as a boy, Edgar Linton grows into a tender, constant, but
cowardly man. He is almost the ideal gentleman: Catherine accurately describes him as “handsome,”
“pleasant to be with,” “cheerful,” and “rich.” However, this full assortment of gentlemanly characteristics,
along with his civilized virtues, proves useless in Edgar’s clashes with his foil, Heathcliff, who gains power
over his wife, sister, and daughter.

Nelly Dean -  Nelly Dean (known formally as Ellen Dean) serves as the chief narrator of Wuthering Heights. A
sensible, intelligent, and compassionate woman, she grew up essentially alongside Hindley and Catherine
Earnshaw and is deeply involved in the story she tells. She has strong feelings for the characters in her
story, and these feelings complicate her narration.

Lockwood -  Lockwood’s narration forms a frame around Nelly’s; he serves as an intermediary between Nelly
and the reader. A somewhat vain and presumptuous gentleman, he deals very clumsily with the inhabitants
of Wuthering Heights. Lockwood comes from a more domesticated region of England, and he finds himself at
a loss when he witnesses the strange household’s disregard for the social conventions that have always
structured his world. As a narrator, his vanity and unfamiliarity with the story occasionally lead him to
misunderstand events.

Young Catherine -  For clarity’s sake, this SparkNote refers to the daughter of Edgar Linton and the first
Catherine as “young Catherine.” The first Catherine begins her life as Catherine Earnshaw and ends it as
Catherine Linton; her daughter begins as Catherine Linton and, assuming that she marries Hareton after
the end of the story, goes on to become Catherine Earnshaw. The mother and the daughter share not only a
name, but also a tendency toward headstrong behavior, impetuousness, and occasional arrogance. However,
Edgar’s influence seems to have tempered young Catherine’s character, and she is a gentler and more
compassionate creature than her mother.

Hareton Earnshaw -  The son of Hindley and Frances Earnshaw, Hareton is Catherine’s nephew. After
Hindley’s death, Heathcliff assumes custody of Hareton, and raises him as an uneducated field worker, just
as Hindley had done to Heathcliff himself. Thus Heathcliff uses Hareton to seek revenge on Hindley. Illiterate
and quick-tempered, Hareton is easily humiliated, but shows a good heart and a deep desire to improve
himself. At the end of the novel, he marries young Catherine.

Linton Heathcliff -  Heathcliff’s son by Isabella. Weak, sniveling, demanding, and constantly ill, Linton is
raised in London by his mother and does not meet his father until he is thirteen years old, when he goes to
live with him after his mother’s death. Heathcliff despises Linton, treats him contemptuously, and, by
forcing him to marry the young Catherine, uses him to cement his control over Thrushcross Grange after
Edgar Linton’s death. Linton himself dies not long after this marriage.

Hindley Earnshaw -  Catherine’s brother, and Mr. Earnshaw’s son. Hindley resents it when Heathcliff is
brought to live at Wuthering Heights. After his father dies and he inherits the estate, Hindley begins to
abuse the young Heathcliff, terminating his education and forcing him to work in the fields. When Hindley’s
wife Frances dies shortly after giving birth to their son Hareton, he lapses into alcoholism and dissipation.

Isabella Linton -  Edgar Linton’s sister, who falls in love with Heathcliff and marries him. She sees
Heathcliff as a romantic figure, like a character in a novel. Ultimately, she ruins her life by falling in love
with him. He never returns her feelings and treats her as a mere tool in his quest for revenge on the Linton
family.

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Mr. Earnshaw -  Catherine and Hindley’s father. Mr. Earnshaw adopts Heathcliff and brings him to live at
Wuthering Heights. Mr. Earnshaw prefers Heathcliff to Hindley but nevertheless bequeaths Wuthering
Heights to Hindley when he dies.

Mrs. Earnshaw -  Catherine and Hindley’s mother, who neither likes nor trusts the orphan Heathcliff when
he is brought to live at her house. She dies shortly after Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights.

Joseph -  A long-winded, fanatically religious, elderly servant at Wuthering Heights. Joseph is strange,
stubborn, and unkind, and he speaks with a thick Yorkshire accent.

Frances Earnshaw -  Hindley’s simpering, silly wife, who treats Heathcliff cruelly. She dies shortly after
giving birth to Hareton.

Mr. Linton -  Edgar and Isabella’s father and the proprietor of Thrushcross Grange when Heathcliff and
Catherine are children. An established member of the gentry, he raises his son and daughter to be well-
mannered young people.

Mrs. Linton -  Mr. Linton’s somewhat snobbish wife, who does not like Heathcliff to be allowed near her
children, Edgar and Isabella. She teaches Catherine to act like a gentle-woman, thereby instilling her with
social ambitions.

Zillah -  The housekeeper at Wuthering Heights during the latter stages of the narrative.

Mr. Green -  Edgar Linton’s lawyer, who arrives too late to hear Edgar’s final instruction to change his will,
which would have prevented Heathcliff from obtaining control over Thrushcross Grange.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes
The Destructiveness of a Love That Never Changes

Catherine and Heathcliff’s passion for one another seems to be the center ofWuthering Heights, given that it
is stronger and more lasting than any other emotion displayed in the novel, and that it is the source of most
of the major conflicts that structure the novel’s plot. As she tells Catherine and Heathcliff’s story, Nelly
criticizes both of them harshly, condemning their passion as immoral, but this passion is obviously one of
the most compelling and memorable aspects of the book. It is not easy to decide whether Brontë intends the
reader to condemn these lovers as blameworthy or to idealize them as romantic heroes whose love
transcends social norms and conventional morality. The book is actually structured around two parallel love
stories, the first half of the novel centering on the love between Catherine and Heathcliff, while the less
dramatic second half features the developing love between young Catherine and Hareton. In contrast to the
first, the latter tale ends happily, restoring peace and order to Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.
The differences between the two love stories contribute to the reader’s understanding of why each ends the
way it does.

The most important feature of young Catherine and Hareton’s love story is that it involves growth and
change. Early in the novel Hareton seems irredeemably brutal, savage, and illiterate, but over time he
becomes a loyal friend to young Catherine and learns to read. When young Catherine first meets Hareton he
seems completely alien to her world, yet her attitude also evolves from contempt to love. Catherine and
Heathcliff’s love, on the other hand, is rooted in their childhood and is marked by the refusal to change. In
choosing to marry Edgar, Catherine seeks a more genteel life, but she refuses to adapt to her role as wife,
either by sacrificing Heathcliff or embracing Edgar. In Chapter XII she suggests to Nelly that the years since
she was twelve years old and her father died have been like a blank to her, and she longs to return to the
moors of her childhood. Heathcliff, for his part, possesses a seemingly superhuman ability to maintain the
same attitude and to nurse the same grudges over many years.

Moreover, Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is based on their shared perception that they are identical.
Catherine declares, famously, “I am Heathcliff,” while Heathcliff, upon Catherine’s death, wails that he
cannot live without his “soul,” meaning Catherine. Their love denies difference, and is strangely asexual. The
two do not kiss in dark corners or arrange secret trysts, as adulterers do. Given that Catherine and
Heathcliff’s love is based upon their refusal to change over time or embrace difference in others, it is fitting
that the disastrous problems of their generation are overcome not by some climactic reversal, but simply by
the inexorable passage of time, and the rise of a new and distinct generation. Ultimately, Wuthering

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Heightspresents a vision of life as a process of change, and celebrates this process over and against the
romantic intensity of its principal characters.

The Precariousness of Social Class

As members of the gentry, the Earnshaws and the Lintons occupy a somewhat precarious place within the
hierarchy of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British society. At the top of British society was
the royalty, followed by the aristocracy, then by the gentry, and then by the lower classes, who made up the
vast majority of the population. Although the gentry, or upper middle class, possessed servants and often
large estates, they held a nonetheless fragile social position. The social status of aristocrats was a formal and
settled matter, because aristocrats had official titles. Members of the gentry, however, held no titles, and
their status was thus subject to change. A man might see himself as a gentleman but find, to his
embarrassment, that his neighbors did not share this view. A discussion of whether or not a man was really
a gentleman would consider such questions as how much land he owned, how many tenants and servants
he had, how he spoke, whether he kept horses and a carriage, and whether his money came from land or
“trade”—gentlemen scorned banking and commercial activities.

Considerations of class status often crucially inform the characters’ motivations inWuthering Heights.
Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar so that she will be “the greatest woman of the neighborhood” is only the
most obvious example. The Lintons are relatively firm in their gentry status but nonetheless take great pains
to prove this status through their behaviors. The Earnshaws, on the other hand, rest on much shakier
ground socially. They do not have a carriage, they have less land, and their house, as Lockwood remarks
with great puzzlement, resembles that of a “homely, northern farmer” and not that of a gentleman. The
shifting nature of social status is demonstrated most strikingly in Heathcliff’s trajectory from homeless waif
to young gentleman-by-adoption to common laborer to gentleman again (although the status-conscious
Lockwood remarks that Heathcliff is only a gentleman in “dress and manners”).

Motifs

Doubles

Brontë organizes her novel by arranging its elements—characters, places, and themes—into pairs. Catherine
and Heathcliff are closely matched in many ways, and see themselves as identical. Catherine’s character is
divided into two warring sides: the side that wants Edgar and the side that wants Heathcliff. Catherine and
young Catherine are both remarkably similar and strikingly different. The two houses, Wuthering Heights
and Thrushcross Grange, represent opposing worlds and values. The novel has not one but two distinctly
different narrators, Nelly and Mr. Lockwood. The relation between such paired elements is usually quite
complicated, with the members of each pair being neither exactly alike nor diametrically opposed. For
instance, the Lintons and the Earnshaws may at first seem to represent opposing sets of values, but, by the
end of the novel, so many intermarriages have taken place that one can no longer distinguish between the
two families.

Repetition

Repetition is another tactic Brontë employs in organizingWuthering Heights. It seems that nothing ever ends
in the world of this novel. Instead, time seems to run in cycles, and the horrors of the past repeat themselves
in the present. The way that the names of the characters are recycled, so that the names of the characters of
the younger generation seem only to be rescramblings of the names of their parents, leads the reader to
consider how plot elements also repeat themselves. For instance, Heathcliff’s degradation of Hareton repeats
Hindley’s degradation of Heathcliff. Also, the young Catherine’s mockery of Joseph’s earnest evangelical
zealousness repeats her mother’s. Even Heathcliff’s second try at opening Catherine’s grave repeats his first.

The Conflict Between Nature and Culture

In Wuthering Heights, Brontë constantly plays nature and culture against each other. Nature is represented
by the Earnshaw family, and by Catherine and Heathcliff in particular. These characters are governed by
their passions, not by reflection or ideals of civility. Correspondingly, the house where they live—Wuthering
Heights—comes to symbolize a similar wildness. On the other hand, Thrushcross Grange and the Linton
family represent culture, refinement, convention, and cultivation.

When, in Chapter VI, Catherine is bitten by the Lintons’ dog and brought into Thrushcross Grange, the two
sides are brought onto the collision course that structures the majority of the novel’s plot. At the time of that
first meeting between the Linton and Earnshaw households, chaos has already begun to erupt at Wuthering
Heights, where Hindley’s cruelty and injustice reign, whereas all seems to be fine and peaceful at
Thrushcross Grange. However, the influence of Wuthering Heights soon proves overpowering, and the

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inhabitants of Thrushcross Grange are drawn into Catherine, Hindley, and Heathcliff’s drama. Thus the
reader almost may interpret Wuthering Heights’s impact on the Linton family as an allegory for the
corruption of culture by nature, creating a curious reversal of the more traditional story of the corruption of
nature by culture. However, Brontë tells her story in such a way as to prevent our interest and sympathy
from straying too far from the wilder characters, and often portrays the more civilized characters as
despicably weak and silly. This method of characterization prevents the novel from flattening out into a
simple privileging of culture over nature, or vice versa. Thus in the end the reader must acknowledge that
the novel is no mere allegory.

Symbols

Moors

The constant emphasis on landscape within the text of Wuthering Heights endows the setting with symbolic
importance. This landscape is comprised primarily of moors: wide, wild expanses, high but somewhat soggy,
and thus infertile. Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its uniformity makes navigation difficult. It features
particularly waterlogged patches in which people could potentially drown. (This possibility is mentioned
several times in Wuthering Heights.) Thus, the moors serve very well as symbols of the wild threat posed by
nature. As the setting for the beginnings of Catherine and Heathcliff’s bond (the two play on the moors
during childhood), the moorland transfers its symbolic associations onto the love affair.

Ghosts

Ghosts appear throughout Wuthering Heights, as they do in most other works of Gothic fiction, yet Brontë
always presents them in such a way that whether they really exist remains ambiguous. Thus the world of
the novel can always be interpreted as a realistic one. Certain ghosts—such as Catherine’s spirit when it
appears to Lockwood in Chapter III—may be explained as nightmares. The villagers’ alleged sightings of
Heathcliff’s ghost in Chapter XXXIV could be dismissed as unverified superstition. Whether or not the ghosts
are “real,” they symbolize the manifestation of the past within the present, and the way memory stays with
people, permeating their day-to-day lives.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Charles Dickens Plot Overview

Pip, a young orphan living with his sister and her husband in the marshes of Kent, sits in a cemetery one
evening looking at his parents’ tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs up from behind a
tombstone, grabs Pip, and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg irons. Pip obeys, but the
fearsome convict is soon captured anyway. The convict protects Pip by claiming to have stolen the items
himself.

One day Pip is taken by his Uncle Pumblechook to play at Satis House, the home of the wealthy dowager
Miss Havisham, who is extremely eccentric: she wears an old wedding dress everywhere she goes and keeps
all the clocks in her house stopped at the same time. During his visit, he meets a beautiful young girl named
Estella, who treats him coldly and contemptuously. Nevertheless, he falls in love with her and dreams of
becoming a wealthy gentleman so that he might be worthy of her. He even hopes that Miss Havisham
intends to make him a gentleman and marry him to Estella, but his hopes are dashed when, after months of
regular visits to Satis House, Miss Havisham decides to help him become a common laborer in his family’s
business.

With Miss Havisham’s guidance, Pip is apprenticed to his brother-in-law, Joe, who is the village blacksmith.
Pip works in the forge unhappily, struggling to better his education with the help of the plain, kind Biddy
and encountering Joe’s malicious day laborer, Orlick. One night, after an altercation with Orlick, Pip’s sister,
known as Mrs. Joe, is viciously attacked and becomes a mute invalid. From her signals, Pip suspects that
Orlick was responsible for the attack.

One day a lawyer named Jaggers appears with strange news: a secret benefactor has given Pip a large
fortune, and Pip must come to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman. Pip happily
assumes that his previous hopes have come true—that Miss Havisham is his secret benefactor and that the
old woman intends for him to marry Estella.

In London, Pip befriends a young gentleman named Herbert Pocket and Jaggers’s law clerk, Wemmick. He
expresses disdain for his former friends and loved ones, especially Joe, but he continues to pine after
Estella. He furthers his education by studying with the tutor Matthew Pocket, Herbert’s father. Herbert
himself helps Pip learn how to act like a gentleman. When Pip turns twenty-one and begins to receive an

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income from his fortune, he will secretly help Herbert buy his way into the business he has chosen for
himself. But for now, Herbert and Pip lead a fairly undisciplined life in London, enjoying themselves and
running up debts. Orlick reappears in Pip’s life, employed as Miss Havisham’s porter, but is promptly fired
by Jaggers after Pip reveals Orlick’s unsavory past. Mrs. Joe dies, and Pip goes home for the funeral, feeling
tremendous grief and remorse. Several years go by, until one night a familiar figure barges into Pip’s room—
the convict, Magwitch, who stuns Pip by announcing that he, not Miss Havisham, is the source of Pip’s
fortune. He tells Pip that he was so moved by Pip’s boyhood kindness that he dedicated his life to making Pip
a gentleman, and he made a fortune in Australia for that very purpose.

Pip is appalled, but he feels morally bound to help Magwitch escape London, as the convict is pursued both
by the police and by Compeyson, his former partner in crime. A complicated mystery begins to fall into place
when Pip discovers that Compeyson was the man who abandoned Miss Havisham at the altar and that
Estella is Magwitch’s daughter. Miss Havisham has raised her to break men’s hearts, as revenge for the pain
her own broken heart caused her. Pip was merely a boy for the young Estella to practice on; Miss Havisham
delighted in Estella’s ability to toy with his affections.

As the weeks pass, Pip sees the good in Magwitch and begins to care for him deeply. Before Magwitch’s
escape attempt, Estella marries an upper-class lout named Bentley Drummle. Pip makes a visit to Satis
House, where Miss Havisham begs his forgiveness for the way she has treated him in the past, and he
forgives her. Later that day, when she bends over the fireplace, her clothing catches fire and she goes up in
flames. She survives but becomes an invalid. In her final days, she will continue to repent for her misdeeds
and to plead for Pip’s forgiveness.

The time comes for Pip and his friends to spirit Magwitch away from London. Just before the escape attempt,
Pip is called to a shadowy meeting in the marshes, where he encounters the vengeful, evil Orlick. Orlick is
on the verge of killing Pip when Herbert arrives with a group of friends and saves Pip’s life. Pip and Herbert
hurry back to effect Magwitch’s escape. They try to sneak Magwitch down the river on a rowboat, but they
are discovered by the police, who Compeyson tipped off. Magwitch and Compeyson fight in the river, and
Compeyson is drowned. Magwitch is sentenced to death, and Pip loses his fortune. Magwitch feels that his
sentence is God’s forgiveness and dies at peace. Pip falls ill; Joe comes to London to care for him, and they
are reconciled. Joe gives him the news from home: Orlick, after robbing Pumblechook, is now in jail; Miss
Havisham has died and left most of her fortune to the Pockets; Biddy has taught Joe how to read and write.
After Joe leaves, Pip decides to rush home after him and marry Biddy, but when he arrives there he
discovers that she and Joe have already married.

Pip decides to go abroad with Herbert to work in the mercantile trade. Returning many years later, he
encounters Estella in the ruined garden at Satis House. Drummle, her husband, treated her badly, but he is
now dead. Pip finds that Estella’s coldness and cruelty have been replaced by a sad kindness, and the two
leave the garden hand in hand, Pip believing that they will never part again. (N O T E : Dickens’s original
ending to Great Expectations differed from the one described in this summary. The final Summary and
Analysis section of this SparkNote provides a description of the first ending and explains why Dickens
rewrote it.)

Character List

Pip -  The protagonist and narrator of Great Expectations, Pip begins the story as a young orphan boy being
raised by his sister and brother-in-law in the marsh country of Kent, in the southeast of England. Pip is
passionate, romantic, and somewhat unrealistic at heart, and he tends to expect more for himself than is
reasonable. Pip also has a powerful conscience, and he deeply wants to improve himself, both morally and
socially.

Estella -  Miss Havisham’s beautiful young ward, Estella is Pip’s unattainable dream throughout the novel.
He loves her passionately, but, though she sometimes seems to consider him a friend, she is usually cold,
cruel, and uninterested in him. As they grow up together, she repeatedly warns him that she has no heart.

Miss Havisham -  Miss Havisham is the wealthy, eccentric old woman who lives in a manor called Satis
House near Pip’s village. She is manic and often seems insane, flitting around her house in a faded wedding
dress, keeping a decaying feast on her table, and surrounding herself with clocks stopped at twenty minutes
to nine. As a young woman, Miss Havisham was jilted by her fiancé minutes before her wedding, and now
she has a vendetta against all men. She deliberately raises Estella to be the tool of her revenge, training her
beautiful ward to break men’s hearts.

Abel Magwitch (“The Convict”) -  A fearsome criminal, Magwitch escapes from prison at the beginning
of Great Expectations and terrorizes Pip in the cemetery. Pip’s kindness, however, makes a deep impression

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on him, and he subsequently devotes himself to making a fortune and using it to elevate Pip into a higher
social class. Behind the scenes, he becomes Pip’s secret benefactor, funding Pip’s education and opulent
lifestyle in London through the lawyer Jaggers.

Joe Gargery -  Pip’s brother-in-law, the village blacksmith, Joe stays with his overbearing, abusive wife—
known as Mrs. Joe—solely out of love for Pip. Joe’s quiet goodness makes him one of the few completely
sympathetic characters inGreat Expectations. Although he is uneducated and unrefined, he consistently
acts for the benefit of those he loves and suffers in silence when Pip treats him coldly.

Jaggers -  The powerful, foreboding lawyer hired by Magwitch to supervise Pip’s elevation to the upper class.
As one of the most important criminal lawyers in London, Jaggers is privy to some dirty business; he
consorts with vicious criminals, and even they are terrified of him. But there is more to Jaggers than his
impenetrable exterior. He often seems to care for Pip, and before the novel begins he helps Miss Havisham to
adopt the orphaned Estella. Jaggers smells strongly of soap: he washes his hands obsessively as a
psychological mech-anism to keep the criminal taint from corrupting him.

Herbert Pocket -  Pip first meets Herbert Pocket in the garden of Satis House, when, as a pale young
gentleman, Herbert challenges him to a fight. Years later, they meet again in London, and Herbert becomes
Pip’s best friend and key companion after Pip’s elevation to the status of gentleman. Herbert nicknames Pip
“Handel.” He is the son of Matthew Pocket, Miss Havisham’s cousin, and hopes to become a merchant so
that he can afford to marry Clara Barley.

Wemmick -  Jaggers’s clerk and Pip’s friend, Wemmick is one of the strangest characters in Great
Expectations. At work, he is hard, cynical, sarcastic, and obsessed with “portable property”; at home in
Walworth, he is jovial, wry, and a tender caretaker of his “Aged Parent.”

Biddy -  A simple, kindhearted country girl, Biddy first befriends Pip when they attend school together. After
Mrs. Joe is attacked and becomes an invalid, Biddy moves into Pip’s home to care for her. Throughout most
of the novel, Biddy represents the opposite of Estella; she is plain, kind, moral, and of Pip’s own social class.

Dolge Orlick -  The day laborer in Joe’s forge, Orlick is a slouching, oafish embodiment of evil. He is
malicious and shrewd, hurting people simply because he enjoys it. He is responsible for the attack on Mrs.
Joe, and he later almost succeeds in his attempt to murder Pip.

Mrs. Joe -  Pip’s sister and Joe’s wife, known only as “Mrs. Joe” throughout the novel. Mrs. Joe is a stern
and overbearing figure to both Pip and Joe. She keeps a spotless household and frequently menaces her
husband and her brother with her cane, which she calls “Tickler.” She also forces them to drink a foul-
tasting concoction called tar-water. Mrs. Joe is petty and ambitious; her fondest wish is to be something
more than what she is, the wife of the village blacksmith.

Uncle Pumblechook -  Pip’s pompous, arrogant uncle. (He is actually Joe’s uncle and, therefore, Pip’s
“uncle-in-law,” but Pip and his sister both call him “Uncle Pumblechook.”) A merchant obsessed with money,
Pumblechook is responsible for arranging Pip’s first meeting with Miss Havisham. Throughout the rest of the
novel, he will shamelessly take credit for Pip’s rise in social status, even though he has nothing to do with it,
since Magwitch, not Miss Havisham, is Pip’s secret benefactor.

Compeyson -  A criminal and the former partner of Magwitch, Compeyson is an educated, gentlemanly
outlaw who contrasts sharply with the coarse and uneducated Magwitch. Compeyson is responsible for
Magwitch’s capture at the end of the novel. He is also the man who jilted Miss Havisham on her wedding
day.

Bentley Drummle -  An oafish, unpleasant young man who attends tutoring sessions with Pip at the
Pockets’ house, Drummle is a minor member of the nobility, and the sense of superiority this gives him
makes him feel justified in acting cruelly and harshly toward everyone around him. Drummle eventually
marries Estella, to Pip’s chagrin; she is miserable in their marriage and reunites with Pip after Drummle dies
some eleven years later.

Molly -  Jaggers’s housekeeper. In Chapter 4 8 , Pip realizes that she is Estella’s mother.

Mr. Wopsle -  The church clerk in Pip’s country town; Mr. Wopsle’s aunt is the local schoolteacher.
Sometime after Pip becomes a gentleman, Mr. Wopsle moves to London and becomes an actor.

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Startop -  A friend of Pip’s and Herbert’s. Startop is a delicate young man who, with Pip and Drummle,
takes tutelage with Matthew Pocket. Later, Startop helps Pip and Herbert with Magwitch’s escape.

Miss Skiffins -  Wemmick’s beloved, and eventual wife.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols Themes

Ambition and Self-Improvement

The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important
than social advancement, wealth, and class. Dickens establishes the theme and shows Pip learning this
lesson, largely by exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvement—ideas that quickly become both the
thematic center of the novel and the psychological mechanism that encourages much of Pip’s development.
At heart, Pip is an idealist; whenever he can conceive of something that is better than what he already has,
he immediately desires to obtain the improvement. When he sees Satis House, he longs to be a wealthy
gentleman; when he thinks of his moral shortcomings, he longs to be good; when he realizes that he cannot
read, he longs to learn how. Pip’s desire for self-improvement is the main source of the novel’s title: because
he believes in the possibility of advancement in life, he has “great expectations” about his future.

Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectations—moral, social, and educational;
these motivate Pip’s best and his worst behavior throughout the novel. First, Pip desires moral self-
improvement. He is extremely hard on himself when he acts immorally and feels powerful guilt that spurs
him to act better in the future. When he leaves for London, for instance, he torments himself about having
behaved so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy. Second, Pip desires social self-improvement. In love with
Estella, he longs to become a member of her social class, and, encouraged by Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, he
entertains fantasies of becoming a gentleman. The working out of this fantasy forms the basic plot of the
novel; it provides Dickens the opportunity to gently satirize the class system of his era and to make a point
about its capricious nature. Significantly, Pip’s life as a gentleman is no more satisfying—and certainly no
more moral—than his previous life as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Third, Pip desires educational
improvement. This desire is deeply connected to his social ambition and longing to marry Estella: a full
education is a requirement of being a gentleman. As long as he is an ignorant country boy, he has no hope
of social advancement. Pip understands this fact as a child, when he learns to read at Mr. Wopsle’s aunt’s
school, and as a young man, when he takes lessons from Matthew Pocket. Ultimately, through the examples
of Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch, Pip learns that social and educational improvement are irrelevant to one’s real
worth and that conscience and affection are to be valued above erudition and social standing.

Social Class

Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging from the
most wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to the middle
class (Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss Havisham). The theme of social class is central to the novel’s plot
and to the ultimate moral theme of the book—Pip’s realization that wealth and class are less important than
affection, loyalty, and inner worth. Pip achieves this realization when he is finally able to understand that,
despite the esteem in which he holds Estella, one’s social status is in no way connected to one’s real
character. Drummle, for instance, is an upper-class lout, while Magwitch, a persecuted convict, has a deep
inner worth.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the novel’s treatment of social class is that the class
system it portrays is based on the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England. Dickens generally
ignores the nobility and the hereditary aristocracy in favor of characters whose fortunes have been earned
through commerce. Even Miss Havisham’s family fortune was made through the brewery that is still
connected to her manor. In this way, by connecting the theme of social class to the idea of work and self-
advancement, Dickens subtly reinforces the novel’s overarching theme of ambition and self-improvement.

Crime, Guilt, and Innocence

The theme of crime, guilt, and innocence is explored throughout the novel largely through the characters of
the convicts and the criminal lawyer Jaggers. From the handcuffs Joe mends at the smithy to the gallows at
the prison in London, the imagery of crime and criminal justice pervades the book, becoming an important
symbol of Pip’s inner struggle to reconcile his own inner moral conscience with the institutional justice
system. In general, just as social class becomes a superficial standard of value that Pip must learn to look
beyond in finding a better way to live his life, the external trappings of the criminal justice system (police,
courts, jails, etc.) become a superficial standard of morality that Pip must learn to look beyond to trust his
inner conscience. Magwitch, for instance, frightens Pip at first simply because he is a convict, and Pip feels
guilty for helping him because he is afraid of the police. By the end of the book, however, Pip has discovered
Magwitch’s inner nobility, and is able to disregard his external status as a criminal. Prompted by his

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conscience, he helps Magwitch to evade the law and the police. As Pip has learned to trust his conscience
and to value Magwitch’s inner character, he has replaced an external standard of value with an internal one.

Motifs

Doubles

One of the most remarkable aspects of Dickens’s work is its structural intricacy and remarkable balance.
Dickens’s plots involve complicated coincidences, extraordinarily tangled webs of human relationships, and
highly dramatic developments in which setting, atmosphere, event, and character are all seamlessly fused.

In Great Expectations, perhaps the most visible sign of Dickens’s commitment to intricate dramatic
symmetry—apart from the knot of character relationships, of course—is the fascinating motif of doubles that
runs throughout the book. From the earliest scenes of the novel to the last, nearly every element of Great
Expectationsis mirrored or doubled at some other point in the book. There are two convicts on the marsh
(Magwitch and Compeyson), two invalids (Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham), two young women who interest Pip
(Biddy and Estella), and so on. There are two secret benefactors: Magwitch, who gives Pip his fortune, and
Pip, who mirrors Magwitch’s action by secretly buying Herbert’s way into the mercantile business. Finally,
there are two adults who seek to mold children after their own purposes: Magwitch, who wishes to “own” a
gentleman and decides to make Pip one, and Miss Havisham, who raises Estella to break men’s hearts in
revenge for her own broken heart. Interestingly, both of these actions are motivated by Compeyson:
Magwitch resents but is nonetheless covetous of Compeyson’s social status and education, which motivates
his desire to make Pip a gentleman, and Miss Havisham’s heart was broken when Compeyson left her at the
altar, which motivates her desire to achieve revenge through Estella. The relationship between Miss
Havisham and Compeyson—a well-born woman and a common man—further mirrors the relationship
between Estella and Pip.

This doubling of elements has no real bearing on the novel’s main themes, but, like the connection of
weather and action, it adds to the sense that everything in Pip’s world is connected. Throughout Dickens’s
works, this kind of dramatic symmetry is simply part of the fabric of his novelistic universe.

Comparison of Characters to Inanimate Objects

Throughout Great Expectations, the narrator uses images of inanimate objects to describe the physical
appearance of characters—particularly minor characters, or characters with whom the narrator is not
intimate. For example, Mrs. Joe looks as if she scrubs her face with a nutmeg grater, while the inscrutable
features of Mr. Wemmick are repeatedly compared to a letter-box. This motif, which Dickens uses
throughout his novels, may suggest a failure of empathy on the narrator’s part, or it may suggest that the
character’s position in life is pressuring them to resemble a thing more than a human being. The latter
interpretation would mean that the motif in general is part of a social critique, in that it implies that an
institution such as the class system or the criminal justice system dehumanizes certain people.

Symbols

Satis House

In Satis House, Dickens creates a magnificent Gothic setting whose various elements symbolize Pip’s
romantic perception of the upper class and many other themes of the book. On her decaying body, Miss
Havisham’s wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and degeneration. The wedding dress and the
wedding feast symbolize Miss Havisham’s past, and the stopped clocks throughout the house symbolize her
determined attempt to freeze time by refusing to change anything from the way it was when she was jilted on
her wedding day. The brewery next to the house symbolizes the connection between commerce and wealth:
Miss Havisham’s fortune is not the product of an aristocratic birth but of a recent success in industrial
capitalism. Finally, the crumbling, dilapidated stones of the house, as well as the darkness and dust that
pervade it, symbolize the general decadence of the lives of its inhabitants and of the upper class as a whole.

The Mists on the Marshes

The setting almost always symbolizes a theme in Great Expectations and always sets a tone that is perfectly
matched to the novel’s dramatic action. The misty marshes near Pip’s childhood home in Kent, one of the
most evocative of the book’s settings, are used several times to symbolize danger and uncertainty. As a child,
Pip brings Magwitch a file and food in these mists; later, he is kidnapped by Orlick and nearly murdered in
them. Whenever Pip goes into the mists, something dangerous is likely to happen. Significantly, Pip must go

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through the mists when he travels to London shortly after receiving his fortune, alerting the reader that this
apparently positive development in his life may have dangerous consequences.

Bentley Drummle

Although he is a minor character in the novel, Bentley Drummle provides an important contrast with Pip
and represents the arbitrary nature of class distinctions. In his mind, Pip has connected the ideas of moral,
social, and educational advancement so that each depends on the others. The coarse and cruel Drummle, a
member of the upper class, provides Pip with proof that social advancement has no inherent connection to
intelligence or moral worth. Drummle is a lout who has inherited immense wealth, while Pip’s friend and
brother-in-law Joe is a good man who works hard for the little he earns. Drummle’s negative example helps
Pip to see the inner worth of characters such as Magwitch and Joe, and eventually to discard his immature
fantasies about wealth and class in favor of a new understanding that is both more compassionate and more
realistic.

On the Western Circuit – plot summary

Charles Raye, a junior council from a London law firm, arrives in Melchester (Salisbury) as part of the
Western Legal Circuit. Whilst viewing the cathedral he is drawn into the vibrant activities of the town’s market
fair. Whilst there he meets Anna on a merry-go-round.

At the same time her employer Mrs Edith Harnham goes out to search for Anna. She finds her with Raye and,
caught up in the crowd, he squeezes her hand thinking it is Anna’s. Next morning Mrs Harnham sees Raye in
the Cathedral and is obviously attracted to him.

In the ensuing days Raye meets Anna repeatedly, and she gives yourself up to him completely. However his
work eventually takes him back to London.

In London he is bored and restless, and wonders why she has not written to him. He drops her a short notes
and receives in reply and eloquent and enthusiastic letter which rather surprisingly makes no special
demands of him.

The truth is that Anna cannot read or write. On receiving his note she showed it to Edith and asked her to
write back in reply. A regular correspondence is established in this way, and Edith (an unhappily married
woman) even writes to Raye in secret in Anna’s name when she is absent. Eventually it transpires that Anna
is pregnant. Edith honourably composes letters designed to keep Raye romantically connected and she wishes
Anna’s child were her own.

Anna is forced to go back to live on Salisbury Plain, so Edith continues the correspondence for her, eventually
taking it over without consulting Anna. Ray offers to marry Anna, based on his admiration for her powers of
sensitive expression.

They marry in London with Edith and a friend of Raye’s as witnesses. Immediately afterwards Raye feels a
‘gravitation’ towards Edith and a dissatisfaction with Anna. When he asks Anna to write a note to his sister
the true nature of her literacy emerges. Raye feels his life has been ruined and regards his true lover and wife
to be Edith. He parts from her with a passionate kiss, then goes on his honeymoon with Anna, meanwhile
reading Edith’s letters.

On the Western Circuit – commentary

The sexual impulse

This is one of many Hardy fictions in which someone’s (usually a man’s) prospects for career and social
advancement are fatally blighted by a impulsive sexual dalliance. Raye is only a junior counsel, but at least he
is the member of a profession (the law). He is London-based, but at the start of the story is temporarily in a
provincial location where he can understandably indulge himself.

He locates Anna by careful selection from amongst a number of possibilities on the merry-go-round, and then
the significant connection between them is made, which Hardy underscores with his mordant sense of world-
weary and tragic pre-destination:

Each time she approached the half of her orbit that lay nearest him they gazed at each other with smiles, and
with that unmistakable expression which means so little at the moment, yet so often leads up to passion,
heart-ache, union, disunion, devotion, overpopulation, drudgery, discontent, resignation, despair,

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There’s the whole plot of a novel in one sentence. And it is also a summary of the story. For despite his basic
decency, Raye is drawn into a passion for Anna that leads to their sexual union. A pregnancy is the natural
result, and although he is prepared to do the decent thing and marry the girl, he feels his career prospects
will be thwarted because she is from a lower class.

Irony
Of course the principal dramatic irony in the story is the fact that the letters that pass from Anna to Raye are
actually written by Edith Harnham. It’s a fact Raye emphasises in the denouement: “Why—you and I are
friends—lovers—devoted lovers—by correspondence.”

And even the magnetic attraction that seems to exist between them is flagged up by a very Hardyesque
incident at the opening of the story at the merry-go-round. When Edith, Anna, and Raye are squashed
together by the crowd, Raye thinks he has hold of Anna’s hand, when it is in fact Edith’s.

Not content with holding her hand, he playfully slipped two of his fingers inside her glove, against her palm.
Thus matters continued till the pressure lessened; but several minutes passed before the crowd thinned
sufficiently to allow Mrs Harnham to withdraw.

This charged erotic gesture (an invitation to and a symbolic act of intercourse) probably slipped by the
censors of the time, but it nevertheless cements very emphatically the other side of the story – the fact that
the unfulfilled Edith Harnham ends up yearning for the child by Raye that Anna has begot so naturally.

The subconscious
At another level, it might be possible to argue that Hardy is subconsciously creating a little authorial wish
fulfillment here – creating a male character who has erotic connections with two women at the same time –
one physical, the other spiritual and intellectual. It is certainly true that he explored these issues in his major
works such as Jude the Obscure and elsewhere.
Raye does not emerge very well from this particular reading of the story. He has known close up and at first
hand the nature of Anna’s sensibility. They have been sexually intimate, and he is hoping to hear from her
when he returns to London. The subsequent revelation that the letters have been written by somebody else
should be no excuse for his snobbish disparagement of her.

He claims his life (his prospect for a successful career) is ruined because she is not literate. And he sees his
true lover as Edith – with whom an imaginary relationship has been conducted on paper. Even though he has
married Anna, he is choosing to revere the intellectual bond he has with Edith over the sexual bond he has
with Anna – just as Jude does in choosing between Arabella and Sue Brideshead.

Of course in the context of the collection’s title, that’s why it is one of ‘life’s little ironies’. He is stuck with the
woman towards whom he was physically attracted, but is meanwhile imaginatively engaged with someone else
who facilitated their relationship.

HEART OF DARKNESS
Joseph Conrad Plot Overview

Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to
meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with
the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and then up the
Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native
inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company’s service, and they suffer terribly from overwork
and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents. The cruelty and squalor of imperial enterprise
contrasts sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle that surrounds the white man’s settlements,
making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a vast darkness.

Marlow arrives at the Central Station, run by the general manager, an unwholesome, conspiratorial
character. He finds that his steamship has been sunk and spends several months waiting for parts to repair
it. His interest in Kurtz grows during this period. The manager and his favorite, the brickmaker, seem to fear
Kurtz as a threat to their position. Kurtz is rumored to be ill, making the delays in repairing the ship all the
more costly. Marlow eventually gets the parts he needs to repair his ship, and he and the manager set out
with a few agents (whom Marlow calls pilgrims because of their strange habit of carrying long, wooden staves
wherever they go) and a crew of cannibals on a long, difficult voyage up the river. The dense jungle and the
oppressive silence make everyone aboard a little jumpy, and the occasional glimpse of a native village or the
sound of drums works the pilgrims into a frenzy.

Marlow and his crew come across a hut with stacked firewood, together with a note saying that the wood is
for them but that they should approach cautiously. Shortly after the steamer has taken on the firewood, it is

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surrounded by a dense fog. When the fog clears, the ship is attacked by an unseen band of natives, who fire
arrows from the safety of the forest. The African helmsman is killed before Marlow frightens the natives away
with the ship’s steam whistle. Not long after, Marlow and his companions arrive at Kurtz’s Inner Station,
expecting to find him dead, but a half-crazed Russian trader, who meets them as they come ashore, assures
them that everything is fine and informs them that he is the one who left the wood. The Russian claims that
Kurtz has enlarged his mind and cannot be subjected to the same moral judgments as normal people.
Apparently, Kurtz has established himself as a god with the natives and has gone on brutal raids in the
surrounding territory in search of ivory. The collection of severed heads adorning the fence posts around the
station attests to his “methods.” The pilgrims bring Kurtz out of the station-house on a stretcher, and a large
group of native warriors pours out of the forest and surrounds them. Kurtz speaks to them, and the natives
disappear into the woods.

The manager brings Kurtz, who is quite ill, aboard the steamer. A beautiful native woman, apparently
Kurtz’s mistress, appears on the shore and stares out at the ship. The Russian implies that she is somehow
involved with Kurtz and has caused trouble before through her influence over him. The Russian reveals to
Marlow, after swearing him to secrecy, that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamer to make them
believe he was dead in order that they might turn back and leave him to his plans. The Russian then leaves
by canoe, fearing the displeasure of the manager. Kurtz disappears in the night, and Marlow goes out in
search of him, finding him crawling on all fours toward the native camp. Marlow stops him and convinces
him to return to the ship. They set off down the river the next morning, but Kurtz’s health is failing fast.

Marlow listens to Kurtz talk while he pilots the ship, and Kurtz entrusts Marlow with a packet of personal
documents, including an eloquent pamphlet on civilizing the savages which ends with a scrawled message
that says, “Exterminate all the brutes!” The steamer breaks down, and they have to stop for repairs. Kurtz
dies, uttering his last words—“The horror! The horror!”—in the presence of the confused Marlow. Marlow
falls ill soon after and barely survives. Eventually he returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtz’s Intended (his
fiancée). She is still in mourning, even though it has been over a year since Kurtz’s death, and she praises
him as a paragon of virtue and achievement. She asks what his last words were, but Marlow cannot bring
himself to shatter her illusions with the truth. Instead, he tells her that Kurtz’s last word was her name.

Character List

Marlow -  The protagonist of Heart of Darkness. Marlow is philosophical, independent-minded, and

generally skeptical of those around him. He is also a master storyteller, eloquent and able to draw his
listeners into his tale. Although Marlow shares many of his fellow Europeans’ prejudices, he has seen
enough of the world and has encountered enough debased white men to make him skeptical of imperialism.

Kurtz -  The chief of the Inner Station and the object of Marlow’s quest. Kurtz is a man of many talents—we
learn, among other things, that he is a gifted musician and a fine painter—the chief of which are his
charisma and his ability to lead men. Kurtz is a man who understands the power of words, and his writings
are marked by an eloquence that obscures their horrifying message. Although he remains an enigma even to
Marlow, Kurtz clearly exerts a powerful influence on the people in his life. His downfall seems to be a result
of his willingness to ignore the hypocritical rules that govern European colonial conduct: Kurtz has “kicked
himself loose of the earth” by fraternizing excessively with the natives and not keeping up appearances; in so
doing, he has become wildly successful but has also incurred the wrath of his fellow white men.

General manager -  The chief agent of the Company in its African territory, who runs the Central Station.
He owes his success to a hardy constitution that allows him to outlive all his competitors. He is average in
appearance and unremarkable in abilities, but he possesses a strange capacity to produce uneasiness in
those around him, keeping everyone sufficiently unsettled for him to exert his control over them.

Brickmaker -  The brickmaker, whom Marlow also meets at the Central Station, is a favorite of the manager
and seems to be a kind of corporate spy. He never actually produces any bricks, as he is supposedly waiting
for some essential element that is never delivered. He is petty and conniving and assumes that other people
are too.

Chief accountant -  An efficient worker with an incredible habit of dressing up in spotless whites and
keeping himself absolutely tidy despite the squalor and heat of the Outer Station, where he lives and works.
He is one of the few colonials who seems to have accomplished anything: he has trained a native woman to
care for his wardrobe.

Pilgrims -  The bumbling, greedy agents of the Central Station. They carry long wooden staves with them
everywhere, reminding Marlow of traditional religious travelers. They all want to be appointed to a station so

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that they can trade for ivory and earn a commission, but none of them actually takes any effective steps
toward achieving this goal. They are obsessed with keeping up a veneer of civilization and proper conduct,
and are motivated entirely by self-interest. They hate the natives and treat them like animals, although in
their greed and ridiculousness they appear less than human themselves.

Cannibals -  Natives hired as the crew of the steamer, a surprisingly reasonable and well-tempered bunch.
Marlow respects their restraint and their calm acceptance of adversity. The leader of the group, in particular,
seems to be intelligent and capable of ironic reflection upon his situation.

Russian trader -  A Russian sailor who has gone into the African interior as the trading representative of a
Dutch company. He is boyish in appearance and temperament, and seems to exist wholly on the glamour of
youth and the audacity of adventurousness. His brightly patched clothes remind Marlow of a harlequin. He
is a devoted disciple of Kurtz’s.

Helmsman -  A young man from the coast trained by Marlow’s predecessor to pilot the steamer. He is a
serviceable pilot, although Marlow never comes to view him as much more than a mechanical part of the
boat. He is killed when the steamer is attacked by natives hiding on the riverbanks.

Kurtz’s African mistress -  A fiercely beautiful woman loaded with jewelry who appears on the shore when
Marlow’s steamer arrives at and leaves the Inner Station. She seems to exert an undue influence over both
Kurtz and the natives around the station, and the Russian trader points her out as someone to fear. Like
Kurtz, she is an enigma: she never speaks to Marlow, and he never learns anything more about her.

Kurtz’s Intended -  Kurtz’s naïve and long-suffering fiancée, whom Marlow goes to visit after Kurtz’s death.
Her unshakable certainty about Kurtz’s love for her reinforces Marlow’s belief that women live in a dream
world, well insulated from reality.

Aunt -  Marlow’s doting relative, who secures him a position with the Company. She believes firmly in
imperialism as a charitable activity that brings civilization and religion to suffering, simple savages. She, too,
is an example for Marlow of the naïveté and illusions of women.

The men aboard the Nellie -  Marlow’s friends, who are with him aboard a ship on the Thames at the
story’s opening. They are the audience for the central story ofHeart of Darkness, which Marlow narrates. All
have been sailors at one time or another, but all now have important jobs ashore and have settled into
middle-class, middle-aged lives. They represent the kind of man Marlow would have likely become had he
not gone to Africa: well meaning and moral but ignorant as to a large part of the world beyond England. The
narrator in particular seems to be shaken by Marlow’s story. He repeatedly comments on its obscurity and
Marlow’s own mysterious nature.

Fresleven -  Marlow’s predecessor as captain of the steamer. Fresleven, by all accounts a good-tempered,
nonviolent man, was killed in a dispute over some hens, apparently after striking a village chief.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

The Hypocrisy of Imperialism

Heart of Darkness explores the issues surrounding imperialism in complicated ways. As Marlow travels from
the Outer Station to the Central Station and finally up the river to the Inner Station, he encounters scenes of
torture, cruelty, and near-slavery. At the very least, the incidental scenery of the book offers a harsh picture
of colonial enterprise. The impetus behind Marlow’s adventures, too, has to do with the hypocrisy inherent
in the rhetoric used to justify imperialism. The men who work for the Company describe what they do as
“trade,” and their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project of “civilization.” Kurtz, on the
other hand, is open about the fact that he does not trade but rather takes ivory by force, and he describes
his own treatment of the natives with the words “suppression” and “extermination”: he does not hide the fact
that he rules through violence and intimidation. His perverse honesty leads to his downfall, as his success
threatens to expose the evil practices behind European activity in Africa.

However, for Marlow as much as for Kurtz or for the Company, Africans in this book are mostly objects:
Marlow refers to his helmsman as a piece of machinery, and Kurtz’s African mistress is at best a piece of
statuary. It can be argued thatHeart of Darkness participates in an oppression of nonwhites that is much
more sinister and much harder to remedy than the open abuses of Kurtz or the Company’s men. Africans

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become for Marlow a mere backdrop, a human screen against which he can play out his philosophical and
existential struggles. Their existence and their exoticism enable his self-contemplation. This kind of
dehumanization is harder to identify than colonial violence or open racism. While Heart of Darkness offers a
powerful condemnation of the hypocritical operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues
surrounding race that is ultimately troubling.

Madness as a Result of Imperialism

Madness is closely linked to imperialism in this book. Africa is responsible for mental disintegration as well
as physical illness. Madness has two primary functions. First, it serves as an ironic device to engage the
reader’s sympathies. Kurtz, Marlow is told from the beginning, is mad. However, as Marlow, and the reader,
begin to form a more complete picture of Kurtz, it becomes apparent that his madness is only relative, that
in the context of the Company insanity is difficult to define. Thus, both Marlow and the reader begin to
sympathize with Kurtz and view the Company with suspicion. Madness also functions to establish the
necessity of social fictions. Although social mores and explanatory justifications are shown throughout Heart
of Darkness to be utterly false and even leading to evil, they are nevertheless necessary for both group
harmony and individual security. Madness, in Heart of Darkness, is the result of being removed from one’s
social context and allowed to be the sole arbiter of one’s own actions. Madness is thus linked not only to
absolute power and a kind of moral genius but to man’s fundamental fallibility: Kurtz has no authority to
whom he answers but himself, and this is more than any one man can bear.

The Absurdity of Evil

This novella is, above all, an exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and moral confusion. It explodes the idea
of the proverbial choice between the lesser of two evils. As the idealistic Marlow is forced to align himself
with either the hypocritical and malicious colonial bureaucracy or the openly malevolent, rule-defying Kurtz,
it becomes increasingly clear that to try to judge either alternative is an act of folly: how can moral standards
or social values be relevant in judging evil? Is there such thing as insanity in a world that has already gone
insane? The number of ridiculous situations Marlow witnesses act as reflections of the larger issue: at one
station, for instance, he sees a man trying to carry water in a bucket with a large hole in it. At the Outer
Station, he watches native laborers blast away at a hillside with no particular goal in mind. The absurd
involves both insignificant silliness and life-or-death issues, often simultaneously. That the serious and the
mundane are treated similarly suggests a profound moral confusion and a tremendous hypocrisy: it is
terrifying that Kurtz’s homicidal megalomania and a leaky bucket provoke essentially the same reaction from
Marlow.

Motifs Observation and Eavesdropping

Marlow gains a great deal of information by watching the world around him and by overhearing others’
conversations, as when he listens from the deck of the wrecked steamer to the manager of the Central
Station and his uncle discussing Kurtz and the Russian trader. This phenomenon speaks to the
impossibility of direct communication between individuals: information must come as the result of chance
observation and astute interpretation. Words themselves fail to capture meaning adequately, and thus they
must be taken in the context of their utterance. Another good example of this is Marlow’s conversation with
the brickmaker, during which Marlow is able to figure out a good deal more than simply what the man has
to say.

Interiors and Exteriors

Comparisons between interiors and exteriors pervade Heart of Darkness. As the narrator states at the
beginning of the text, Marlow is more interested in surfaces, in the surrounding aura of a thing rather than
in any hidden nugget of meaning deep within the thing itself. This inverts the usual hierarchy of meaning:
normally one seeks the deep message or hidden truth. The priority placed on observation demonstrates that
penetrating to the interior of an idea or a person is impossible in this world. Thus, Marlow is confronted with
a series of exteriors and surfaces—the river’s banks, the forest walls around the station, Kurtz’s broad
forehead—that he must interpret. These exteriors are all the material he is given, and they provide him with
perhaps a more profound source of knowledge than any falsely constructed interior “kernel.”

Darkness

Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the book’s title. However, it is difficult to discern
exactly what it might mean, given that absolutely everything in the book is cloaked in darkness. Africa,
England, and Brussels are all described as gloomy and somehow dark, even if the sun is shining brightly.
Darkness thus seems to operate metaphorically and existentially rather than specifically. Darkness is the
inability to see: this may sound simple, but as a description of the human condition it has profound

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implications. Failing to see another human being means failing to understand that individual and failing to
establish any sort of sympathetic communion with him or her.

Symbols

Fog

Fog is a sort of corollary to darkness. Fog not only obscures but distorts: it gives one just enough
information to begin making decisions but no way to judge the accuracy of that information, which often
ends up being wrong. Marlow’s steamer is caught in the fog, meaning that he has no idea where he’s going
and no idea whether peril or open water lies ahead.

The “Whited Sepulchre”

The “whited sepulchre” is probably Brussels, where the Company’s headquarters are located. A sepulchre
implies death and confinement, and indeed Europe is the origin of the colonial enterprises that bring death
to white men and to their colonial subjects; it is also governed by a set of reified social principles that both
enable cruelty, dehumanization, and evil and prohibit change. The phrase “whited sepulchre” comes from
the biblical Book of Matthew. In the passage, Matthew describes “whited sepulchres” as something beautiful
on the outside but containing horrors within (the bodies of the dead); thus, the image is appropriate for
Brussels, given the hypocritical Belgian rhetoric about imperialism’s civilizing mission. (Belgian colonies,
particularly the Congo, were notorious for the violence perpetuated against the natives.)

Women

Both Kurtz’s Intended and his African mistress function as blank slates upon which the values and the
wealth of their respective societies can be displayed. Marlow frequently claims that women are the keepers of
naïve illusions; although this sounds condemnatory, such a role is in fact crucial, as these naïve illusions
are at the root of the social fictions that justify economic enterprise and colonial expansion. In return, the
women are the beneficiaries of much of the resulting wealth, and they become objects upon which men can
display their own success and status.

The River

The Congo River is the key to Africa for Europeans. It allows them access to the center of the continent
without having to physically cross it; in other words, it allows the white man to remain always separate or
outside. Africa is thus reduced to a series of two-dimensional scenes that flash by Marlow’s steamer as he
travels upriver. The river also seems to want to expel Europeans from Africa altogether: its current makes
travel upriver slow and difficult, but the flow of water makes travel downriver, back toward “civilization,”
rapid and seemingly inevitable. Marlow’s struggles with the river as he travels upstream toward Kurtz reflect
his struggles to understand the situation in which he has found himself. The ease with which he journeys
back downstream, on the other hand, mirrors his acquiescence to Kurtz and his “choice of nightmares.

ODOUR OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS
D. H. Lawrence Plot Overview

A locomotive engine comes chugging along the tracks, pulling seven loaded cars behind it. It is late afternoon
in the autumn, nearing dusk, in England’s coal country. The locomotive pulls into the colliery’s loading area,
as various miners make their way home. Nearby is a low cottage with a tiled roof and a garden, a sparse
apple orchard, and a brook beyond. Elizabeth Bates emerges from the chicken coop, watching the miners
walk along the railroad. She turns and calls her son, John, who emerges from the raspberry patch. She tells
him that it is time to come in. The locomotive her father is driving appears in the distance. As John makes
his way to the house, she chides him for tearing off the petals of the chrysanthemums and scattering them
on the path. She picks a few of the flowers and, after holding them against her cheek, sticks a sprig in her
apron.

The train comes to a stop near the gate, and Elizabeth brings her father tea and bread and butter. He tells
Elizabeth that it is time he remarried. He also informs her that her husband, Walter, had gone on another
drinking binge and was heard bragging in the local pub about how much he was going to spend. Done with
his tea, the old man drives off. Elizabeth enters the kitchen, where the table is set and awaiting Walter’s
return so that the family can have their tea. With no sign of Walter, Elizabeth continues preparing the meal.
Her daughter, Annie, enters the room, and Elizabeth mildly scolds her for being late. She asks Annie
whether she has seen Walter; she has not. Elizabeth fears that Walter is again at the pub, and at Annie’s

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urging, they start to eat. Annie is transfixed by the slowly dying fire. Eating little, Elizabeth grows
increasingly antsy and angry.

Elizabeth goes to get coal and drops a few pieces on the fire, which snuffs out almost all the light in the
room. John repeatedly complains about the darkness, and Elizabeth lights the overhead lamp, revealing for
the first time that she is pregnant. Annie exclaims at the sight of the chrysanthemums in Elizabeth’s apron.
She removes them and puts the flowers to her lips, enthralled by their scent. Looking at the clock, Elizabeth
realizes that Walter will not get home until he is again carried in, intoxicated, by his friends. She vows not to
clean him after his day of work and to leave him lying on the floor.

The children play quietly, afraid of angering Elizabeth, who sews in her rocking chair. After a while, she
sends them to bed, although Annie protests, as Walter has not come home yet. Elizabeth states that when
he does appear he will be all but unconscious from drinking. Putting the children to bed, she angrily and
fearfully resumes her sewing. At eight o’clock, she leaves the house. She makes her way to a row of dwellings
and enters a passage between two of the houses, asking Mrs. Rigley whether her husband is at home. Mrs.
Rigley answers that he has had his dinner and then gone briefly to the pub and that she will go find him.
Mrs. Rigley soon returns, with her husband in tow. He tells Elizabeth that he last saw Walter at the coal pit,
finishing a job. Elizabeth suggests that Walter is simply at another pub, and Mr. Rigley offers to go and find
out. He walks her home, as Mrs. Rigley runs immediately to her neighbor’s house to spread the fresh gossip.

After Elizabeth has waited for another forty-five minutes, her mother-in-law enters the cottage, crying
hysterically. Elizabeth asks whether Walter is dead, but all her mother-in-law tells her is that he has been in
a serious accident. As the mother-in-law laments and defends her son’s gradual slide into debauchery, a
miner arrives to inform the women that Walter has been dead for hours, smothered after a cave-in.
Elizabeth’s mother-in-law dissolves into tears, and Elizabeth quickly silences her, afraid that her wailing will
wake the children. She moves into the parlor to clear a space on the floor where the body can be laid. She
spreads cloths on the floor to protect the carpet, takes out a clean shirt to air it, and then waits in the
pantry.

Shortly, the pit manager and another man arrive with the body on a stretcher. As they bring Walter into the
parlor and lay him on the floor, one of the men accidentally tips over a vase of chrysanthemums. Elizabeth
quickly cleans up the water and broken glass. Annie, who has woken up, calls from upstairs, and Elizabeth
rushes up to comfort her. The men try to silence Walter’s mother, who is still sobbing loudly. With Annie
finally calmed and the men gone, Elizabeth and her mother-in-law prepare to undress, clean, and lay out the
body. Elizabeth embraces the body, trying to make a connection to her husband’s still-warm corpse. She
and Walter’s mother wash the body. Elizabeth presses her cheek against the body but is repulsed by the
dead flesh. She laments her marriage and the hand she had in its failure. Walter’s mother rouses Elizabeth
from her musing. Elizabeth, unable to weep, goes to fetch a shirt. With difficulty, she dresses Walter.
Covering him in a sheet and locking the parlor door, she tidies the kitchen, afraid and ashamed of the harsh
realizations she has come to as a result of Walter’s death.

Character List

Elizabeth Bates -  The protagonist of the story. Stern, cold, and pragmatic, Elizabeth is deeply resentful of
finding herself married to an alcoholic and living in a coal community. A good mother, she feels she cannot
afford to indulge emotional weakness or sentimentality but must be strong for the sake of her children.
Elizabeth attains a deep understanding of her life, husband, and marriage only when Walter is dead and she
is forced to confront her circumstances and her own role in her fate.

Walter Bates -  Elizabeth’s alcoholic husband who has just died in a cave-in. Walter was a handsome man,
blond and fleshy, with strong limbs and a moustache. Although he never appears in the story alive, he casts
a dark shadow over the story’s proceedings. He emerges as a caricature, the monstrous drunken husband,
who is gradually redeemed by Elizabeth’s growing recognition of the ways she has denied or ignored his
essential humanity.

Walter’s Mother -  An emotional woman of sixty who is with Elizabeth when Walter’s body is brought home.
Walter’s mother laments Walter’s louche tendencies and the gradual shirking of his responsibilities to his
family, while at the same time justifying his irresponsible behavior. She is slightly competitive with Elizabeth
when it comes to ministering to her son’s body.

Annie Bates -  Elizabeth’s young daughter. Annie has large blue eyes and curly hair that is changing from
blond to brunette. A sensitive girl, she is attached to her father but deferent to her mother’s harsh opinions
of him and his carousing. Annie is drawn to the scent of the chrysanthemums.

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John Bates -  Elizabeth’s five-year-old son. A small and sturdy boy with black hair, John wears clothes
made from a man’s suit that has been cut down to fit him. Childishly self-absorbed, and often indifferent to
what is going on around him, he reminds Elizabeth of Walter.

Elizabeth’s Father -  A short man with a gray beard and cheerful disposition. Pragmatic like Elizabeth,
Elizabeth’s father is resigned to remarrying in an effort to fill the domestic void in his life. He appears only
briefly at the beginning of the story, when his train passes Elizabeth’s house.

Mrs. Rigley -  A miner’s wife with twelve children. Mrs. Rigley offers Elizabeth a sympathetic ear while at the
same time exploiting the gossip potential of the Bates’s shaky marriage.

Mr. Rigley -  A miner who helps Elizabeth look for Walter. Mr. Rigley is a large man with a bony head and
blue scar on his temple, which he got from working in the coal pits. Kind and helpful, he is alert to the
potential dangers of life as a miner.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes

The Isolation of the Human Soul

As Elizabeth tends to Walter’s body, Lawrence writes that she feels “the utter isolation of the human soul,”
and this sense of isolation permeates the entire story. Early on, Elizabeth is isolated in her home as she
waits helplessly for Walter, and she is further isolated when she seeks help in finding him and thus becomes
the subject of gossip among the other wives. Pregnant and left alone with her other two children, Elizabeth
loses herself in anger and resentment. When Walter’s mother arrives and the two women learn of Walter’s
death, both women are isolated in their own way. Walter’s mother is lost in grief for a man she knew best as
a child, whereas Elizabeth must face the fact that her husband was little more than a stranger to her.

With Walter’s corpse unclothed and stretched out on the parlor floor, Elizabeth finally understands, when it
is too late, the grave injustice they have done each other in respectively giving up on their marriage. For
years, Elizabeth has perceived herself as a victim of her husband’s habits, failing to see her own possible role
in their strained relationship. She has willingly given up on their partnership, separating herself from Walter
while also lamenting her solitude and isolation. Although we know nothing of Walter beyond what Elizabeth
and her mother-in-law reveal, we can assume that Walter felt isolated in his marriage as well, unknown and
unseen by Elizabeth. In death, he has achieved the ultimate isolation, and widowed, Elizabeth is now even
further isolated than she was before.

The Nature of Love

The nature of love between mother and child and between husband and wife stand in sharp contrast to each
other in “Odour of Chrysanthemums.” Although she is often short with them, Elizabeth clearly loves her
children, John and Annie. She protects them from Walter’s indiscretions whenever she can and shields them
from seeing his dead body. When she struggles to figure out how to carry on when she fears that Walter is
dead, she understands that, first and foremost, she must worry about her children. Similarly, Walter’s
mother indulges Walter’s weaknesses because he is her son, and her deep love for him overshadows his
adult flaws. More complicated is Elizabeth’s relationship with her unborn child. It was conceived not out of
love but out of a cold coupling between isolated individuals, and the child is described as “a weight apart
from her” and “ice.” At this point, Elizabeth seems to connect the unborn child to her relationship with
Walter rather than to her life as a mother. The baby seems less a part of her than a part of her distant
relationship with Walter.

The nature of love between Elizabeth and Walter is much darker than the love between Elizabeth and her
two existing children. Little is left of their love, having been replaced by resentment, disgust, and anger, and
not even physical intimacy can overcome the fact that they are “two isolated beings, far apart.” Neither
spouse was willing to try to forgive or understand the other, and this inflexibility resulted in permanent
estrangement. Until she ministers to Walter at the end of the story, Elizabeth seems unable to see Walter
beyond her own disappointments. As she waits and waits for him, she berates herself for being a “fool” and
says, “And this is what I came here for, to this dirty hole, rats and all, for him to slink past his very door”—
neglecting entirely any love that may have once existed between them and that drew her into the marriage.

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Motifs

Suffocation

Suffocation brings about Walter’s death, when he is trapped in the coal pits after a cave-in, but the idea of
suffocation also appears throughout the story in Elizabeth’s domestic unhappiness. In a way, the coal pits
have smothered Elizabeth, because she came to this remote community only because she married Walter.
Rather than advancing her interests or opening up new possibilities, the role of wife has been a
diminishment, a slow, agonizing humiliation and gradual suffocation. Elizabeth is trapped in the confined
and parochial world of the cottage and community and sees no way out. Before she knows that Walter is
dead, she speculates on what may happen if he is simply injured, and she feels a fleeting moment of hope as
she envisions this as her chance to rid Walter of his drinking habits. But this moment quickly gives way to
the news that Walter is dead, and Elizabeth, shocked, is almost suffocated by the erratic rushing of her
heart once it “surged on again.” Elizabeth must now carry on in an even weightier, more burdensome
situation than before.

Darkness

“Odour of Chrysanthemums” takes place almost entirely under the cover of darkness, and natural light
appears only at the beginning, when Elizabeth’s father rolls through town. Once he leaves, Elizabeth retreats
to her home, lit only by candles and a waning fire. She scolds Annie for coming home after dark, although
Annie claims it’s “hardly a bit dark.” John complains of the lack of light in the cottage as the children eat
their dinner, and Elizabeth can barely see their faces. Darkness obscures various dangers: when Elizabeth
ventures out into the darkness to find Walter, rats scuffle around her; she senses eavesdropping housewives
who are prone to gossip; and as Mr. Rigley escorts Elizabeth home, he warns her of the ruts in the earth that
she cannot see in the blackness of the night.

Darkness has a life-giving element as well as a dangerous or threatening one. When Elizabeth prepares to
receive Walter’s dead body in the parlor, the one paltry candle she brings does little to dispel the gloom. She
can barely see Walter in a literal sense, but now, for the first time, she gets a glimpse of who he is as a
person. In life, she knew almost nothing about Walter, and even their closest physical encounters took place
in the dark. Now, with darkness surrounding her and with Walter in the permanent darkness of death,
startling truths come to light for Elizabeth. In this sense, darkness serves as a kind of renewal. Morning will
come for Elizabeth, but her life will be very different.

Symbols

Chrysanthemums

Throughout the story, chrysanthemums primarily suggest unpleasantness and death, and Elizabeth cannot
look at or smell them without being plagued by unhappy associations. We first see chrysanthemums as
Elizabeth’s son, John, strews them over the path toward the house, and Elizabeth chastises him because the
petals look “nasty.” At home, waiting for Walter to return, Elizabeth remembers bitterly the first time Walter
came home drunk, sporting brown chrysanthemums in his buttonhole. When Elizabeth is told that Walter is
dead, she notices two vases of chrysanthemums and their “cold, deathly smell” in the parlor, where she
plans to lay out Walter’s body. When the men eventually carry him in, one knocks over a vase of
chrysanthemums, and Elizabeth tidies up the mess before she turns to face the body.

Chrysanthemums, although primarily a symbol of death, occasionally have life-affirming associations as

well. Annie, Elizabeth’s daughter, is enamored with the chrysanthemums that Elizabeth has placed in her
apron and thinks they smell beautiful. When Elizabeth tells her daughter about the time Walter came home
drunk, she prefaces the memory with other celebratory moments when chrysanthemums have punctuated
her life: her marriage and the birth of Annie. The fact that Elizabeth keeps vases of chrysanthemums in her
home suggests that Elizabeth continues to have mixed feelings about the flowers, both resenting and
embracing the memories they evoke.

Imagery

Throughout the story, Lawrence’s dark, ominous imagery forms a threatening backdrop to the characters’
struggles. For example, when describing the Bates’s house, Lawrence writes, “A large bony vine clutched at
the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof.” We first see young John near raspberry plants that are “like
whips.” Lawrence twice compares humans to shadows: miners who walk past the house are “like shadows,”
and Elizabeth returns to the house “like a shadow” after she puts a dustpan outside. We get the sense that
these people are somehow disappearing, even as they go about their daily lives. Fire, in particular, appears
repeatedly in the story, almost always as a threatening force. At the beginning of the story, Lawrence

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describes the flames rising from the coal pit as “red sores licking its ashy sides,” as though the flames
themselves are alive. Inside the house, when Annie cries out in pleasure at seeing the flowers in Elizabeth’s
apron, Elizabeth is startled, fearing that “the house was afire.” Mrs. Rigley, whom Elizabeth approaches for
help in finding Walter, asks Elizabeth to make sure the children don’t “set theirselves afire.” Fire brings
warmth and light into the Bates’s home, but the characters are always conscious of the threat that
accompanies it.

The animal and natural imagery that Lawrence uses suggests that the characters are part of a larger, more
unpredictable natural cycle of life and death. John is “like a frog” when he crawls out from underneath the
sofa, and Elizabeth says angrily that when Walter comes home drunk he’ll be “like a log.” One of the miners
who brings Walter home compares the cave-in to a “mouse-trap,” which suggests that Walter himself was a
mouse as he worked in the dark, narrow mines. Walter’s mother’s tears are like “drops from wet leaves,” so
impersonal that Lawrence says she was “not weeping.” The unborn child feels “like ice” in Elizabeth’s womb,
an inhuman image that emphasizes how separate Elizabeth feels from both the child and its father. Finally,
life and death themselves take on human qualities at the end of the story, when Elizabeth says they are her
“immediate master” and her “ultimate master,” respectively. These are forces beyond her—or anyone else’s—
control, and she realizes that she will always be subservient to this natural cycle.

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
Virginia Woolf Plot Overview

Note: To the Lighthouse is divided into three sections: “The Window,” “Time Passes,” and “The Lighthouse.”
Each section is fragmented into stream-of-consciousness contributions from various narrators.

“The Window” opens just before the start of World War I. Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay bring their eight
children to their summer home in the Hebrides (a group of islands west of Scotland). Across the bay from
their house stands a large lighthouse. Six-year-old James Ramsay wants desperately to go to the lighthouse,
and Mrs. Ramsay tells him that they will go the next day if the weather permits. James reacts gleefully, but
Mr. Ramsay tells him coldly that the weather looks to be foul. James resents his father and believes that he
enjoys being cruel to James and his siblings.

The Ramsays host a number of guests, including the dour Charles Tansley, who admires Mr. Ramsay’s work
as a metaphysical philosopher. Also at the house is Lily Briscoe, a young painter who begins a portrait of
Mrs. Ramsay. Mrs. Ramsay wants Lily to marry William Bankes, an old friend of the Ramsays, but Lily
resolves to remain single. Mrs. Ramsay does manage to arrange another marriage, however, between Paul
Rayley and Minta Doyle, two of their acquaintances.

During the course of the afternoon, Paul proposes to Minta, Lily begins her painting, Mrs. Ramsay soothes
the resentful James, and Mr. Ramsay frets over his shortcomings as a philosopher, periodically turning to
Mrs. Ramsay for comfort. That evening, the Ramsays host a seemingly ill-fated dinner party. Paul and Minta
are late returning from their walk on the beach with two of the Ramsays’ children. Lily bristles at outspoken
comments made by Charles Tansley, who suggests that women can neither paint nor write. Mr. Ramsay
reacts rudely when Augustus Carmichael, a poet, asks for a second plate of soup. As the night draws on,
however, these missteps right themselves, and the guests come together to make a memorable evening.

The joy, however, like the party itself, cannot last, and as Mrs. Ramsay leaves her guests in the dining room,
she reflects that the event has already slipped into the past. Later, she joins her husband in the parlor. The
couple sits quietly together, until Mr. Ramsay’s characteristic insecurities interrupt their peace. He wants
his wife to tell him that she loves him. Mrs. Ramsay is not one to make such pronouncements, but she
concedes to his point made earlier in the day that the weather will be too rough for a trip to the lighthouse
the next day. Mr. Ramsay thus knows that Mrs. Ramsay loves him. Night falls, and one night quickly
becomes another.

Time passes more quickly as the novel enters the “Time Passes” segment. War breaks out across Europe.
Mrs. Ramsay dies suddenly one night. Andrew Ramsay, her oldest son, is killed in battle, and his sister Prue
dies from an illness related to childbirth. The family no longer vacations at its summerhouse, which falls into
a state of disrepair: weeds take over the garden and spiders nest in the house. Ten years pass before the
family returns. Mrs. McNab, the housekeeper, employs a few other women to help set the house in order.
They rescue the house from oblivion and decay, and everything is in order when Lily Briscoe returns.

In “The Lighthouse” section, time returns to the slow detail of shifting points of view, similar in style to “The
Window.” Mr. Ramsay declares that he and James and Cam, one of his daughters, will journey to the
lighthouse. On the morning of the voyage, delays throw him into a fit of temper. He appeals to Lily for
sympathy, but, unlike Mrs. Ramsay, she is unable to provide him with what he needs. The Ramsays set off,
and Lily takes her place on the lawn, determined to complete a painting she started but abandoned on her

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last visit. James and Cam bristle at their father’s blustery behavior and are embarrassed by his constant
self-pity. Still, as the boat reaches its destination, the children feel a fondness for him. Even James, whose
skill as a sailor Mr. Ramsay praises, experiences a moment of connection with his father, though James so
willfully resents him. Across the bay, Lily puts the finishing touch on her painting. She makes a definitive
stroke on the canvas and puts her brush down, finally having achieved her vision.

Character List

Mrs. Ramsay -  Mr. Ramsay’s wife. A beautiful and loving woman, Mrs. Ramsay is a wonderful hostess who
takes pride in making memorable experiences for the guests at the family’s summer home on the Isle of
Skye. Affirming traditional gender roles wholeheartedly, she lavishes particular attention on her male guests,
who she believes have delicate egos and need constant support and sympathy. She is a dutiful and loving
wife but often struggles with her husband’s difficult moods and selfishness. Without fail, however, she
triumphs through these difficult times and demonstrates an ability to make something significant and
lasting from the most ephemeral of circumstances, such as a dinner party.

Mr. Ramsay -  Mrs. Ramsay’s husband, and a prominent metaphysical philosopher. Mr. Ramsay loves his
family but often acts like something of a tyrant. He tends to be selfish and harsh due to his persistent
personal and professional anxieties. He fears, more than anything, that his work is insignificant in the grand
scheme of things and that he will not be remembered by future generations. Well aware of how blessed he is
to have such a wonderful family, he nevertheless tends to punish his wife, children, and guests by
demanding their constant sympathy, attention, and support.

Lily Briscoe -  A young, single painter who befriends the Ramsays on the Isle of Skye. Like Mr. Ramsay, Lily
is plagued by fears that her work lacks worth. She begins a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the beginning of the
novel but has trouble finishing it. The opinions of men like Charles Tansley, who insists that women cannot
paint or write, threaten to undermine her confidence.

James Ramsay -  The Ramsays’ youngest son. James loves his mother deeply and feels a murderous
antipathy toward his father, with whom he must compete for Mrs. Ramsay’s love and affection. At the
beginning of the novel, Mr. Ramsay refuses the six-year-old James’s request to go to the lighthouse, saying
that the weather will be foul and not permit it; ten years later, James finally makes the journey with his
father and his sister Cam. By this time, he has grown into a willful and moody young man who has much in
common with his father, whom he detests.

Paul Rayley -  A young friend of the Ramsays who visits them on the Isle of Skye. Paul is a kind,
impressionable young man who follows Mrs. Ramsay’s wishes in marrying Minta Doyle.

Minta Doyle -  A flighty young woman who visits the Ramsays on the Isle of Skye. Minta marries Paul
Rayley at Mrs. Ramsay’s wishes.

Charles Tansley -  A young philosopher and pupil of Mr. Ramsay who stays with the Ramsays on the Isle of
Skye. Tansley is a prickly and unpleasant man who harbors deep insecurities regarding his humble
background. He often insults other people, particularly women such as Lily, whose talent and
accomplishments he constantly calls into question. His bad behavior, like Mr. Ramsay’s, is motivated by his
need for reassurance.

William Bankes -  A botanist and old friend of the Ramsays who stays on the Isle of Skye. Bankes is a kind
and mellow man whom Mrs. Ramsay hopes will marry Lily Briscoe. Although he never marries her, Bankes
and Lily remain close friends.

Augustus Carmichael  -  An opium-using poet who visits the Ramsays on the Isle of Skye. Carmichael
languishes in literary obscurity until his verse becomes popular during the war.

Andrew Ramsay -  The oldest of the Ramsays’ sons. Andrew is a competent, independent young man, and
he looks forward to a career as a mathematician.

Jasper Ramsay -  One of the Ramsays’ sons. Jasper, to his mother’s chagrin, enjoys shooting birds.

Roger Ramsay -  One of the Ramsays’ sons. Roger is wild and adventurous, like his sister Nancy.

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Prue Ramsay -  The oldest Ramsay girl, a beautiful young woman. Mrs. Ramsay delights in contemplating
Prue’s marriage, which she believes will be blissful.

Rose Ramsay -  One of the Ramsays’ daughters. Rose has a talent for making things beautiful. She
arranges the fruit for her mother’s dinner party and picks out her mother’s jewelry.

Nancy Ramsay -  One of the Ramsays’ daughters. Nancy accompanies Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle on their
trip to the beach. Like her brother Roger, she is a wild adventurer.

Cam Ramsay -  One of the Ramsays’ daughters. As a young girl, Cam is mischievous. She sails with James
and Mr. Ramsay to the lighthouse in the novel’s final section.

Mrs. McNab -  An elderly woman who takes care of the Ramsays’ house on the Isle of Skye, restoring it after
ten years of abandonment during and after World War I.

Macalister -  The fisherman who accompanies the Ramsays to the lighthouse. Macalister relates stories of
shipwreck and maritime adventure to Mr. Ramsay and compliments James on his handling of the boat while
James lands it at the lighthouse.

Macalister’s boy -  The fisherman’s boy. He rows James, Cam, and Mr. Ramsay to the lighthouse.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

The Transience of Life and Work

Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay take completely different approaches to life: he relies on his intellect, while
she depends on her emotions. But they share the knowledge that the world around them is transient—that
nothing lasts forever. Mr. Ramsay reflects that even the most enduring of reputations, such as
Shakespeare’s, are doomed to eventual oblivion. This realization accounts for the bitter aspect of his
character. Frustrated by the inevitable demise of his own body of work and envious of the few geniuses who
will outlast him, he plots to found a school of philosophy that argues that the world is designed for the
average, unadorned man, for the “liftman in the Tube” rather than for the rare immortal writer.

Mrs. Ramsay is as keenly aware as her husband of the passage of time and of mortality. She recoils, for
instance, at the notion of James growing into an adult, registers the world’s many dangers, and knows that
no one, not even her husband, can protect her from them. Her reaction to this knowledge is markedly
different from her husband’s. Whereas Mr. Ramsay is bowed by the weight of his own demise, Mrs. Ramsay
is fueled with the need to make precious and memorable whatever time she has on earth. Such crafted
moments, she reflects, offer the only hope of something that endures.

Art as a Means of Preservation

In the face of an existence that is inherently without order or meaning, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay employ
different strategies for making their lives significant. Mr. Ramsay devotes himself to his progression through
the course of human thought, while Mrs. Ramsay cultivates memorable experiences from social interactions.
Neither of these strategies, however, proves an adequate means of preserving one’s experience. After all, Mr.
Ramsay fails to obtain the philosophical understanding he so desperately desires, and Mrs. -Ramsay’s life,
though filled with moments that have the shine and resilience of rubies, ends. Only Lily Briscoe finds a way
to preserve her experience, and that way is through her art. As Lily begins her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the
beginning of the novel, Woolf notes the scope of the project: Lily means to order and connect elements that
have no necessary relation in the world—“hedges and houses and mothers and children.” By the end of the
novel, ten years later, Lily finishes the painting she started, which stands as a moment of clarity wrested
from confusion. Art is, perhaps, the only hope of surety in a world destined and determined to change: for,
while mourning Mrs. Ramsay’s death and painting on the lawn, Lily reflects that “nothing stays, all changes;
but not words, not paint.”

The Subjective Nature of Reality

Toward the end of the novel, Lily reflects that in order to see Mrs. Ramsay clearly—to understand her
character completely—she would need at least fifty pairs of eyes; only then would she be privy to every
possible angle and nuance. The truth, according to this assertion, rests in the accumulation of different,
even opposing vantage points. Woolf’s technique in structuring the story mirrors Lily’s assertion. She is

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committed to creating a sense of the world that not only depends upon the private perceptions of her
characters but is also nothing more than the accumulation of those perceptions. To try to reimagine the
story as told from a single character’s perspective or—in the tradition of the Victorian novelists—from the
author’s perspective is to realize the radical scope and difficulty of Woolf’s project.

The Restorative Effects of Beauty

At the beginning of the novel, both Mr. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe are drawn out of moments of irritation by
an image of extreme beauty. The image, in both cases, is a vision of Mrs. Ramsay, who, as she sits reading
with James, is a sight powerful enough to incite “rapture” in William Bankes. Beauty retains this soothing
effect throughout the novel: something as trifling as a large but very beautiful arrangement of fruit can, for a
moment, assuage the discomfort of the guests at Mrs. Ramsay’s dinner party.

Lily later complicates the notion of beauty as restorative by suggesting that beauty has the unfortunate
consequence of simplifying the truth. Her impression of Mrs. Ramsay, she believes, is compromised by a
determination to view her as beautiful and to smooth over her complexities and faults. Nevertheless, Lily
continues on her quest to “still” or “freeze” a moment from life and make it beautiful. Although the vision of
an isolated moment is necessarily incomplete, it is lasting and, as such, endlessly seductive to her.

Motifs The Differing Behaviors of Men and Women

As Lily Briscoe suffers through Charles Tansley’s boorish opinions about women and art, she reflects that
human relations are worst between men and women. Indeed, given the extremely opposite ways in which
men and women behave throughout the novel, this difficulty is no wonder. The dynamic between the sexes is
best understood by considering the behavior of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. Their constant conflict has less to do
with divergent philosophies—indeed, they both acknowledge and are motivated by the same fear of mortality
—than with the way they process that fear. Men, Mrs. Ramsay reflects in the opening pages of the novel, bow
to it. Given her rather traditional notions of gender roles, she excuses her husband’s behavior as inevitable,
asking how men can be expected to settle the political and economic business of nations and not suffer
doubts. This understanding attitude places on women the responsibility for soothing men’s damaged egos
and achieving some kind of harmony (even if temporary) with them. Lily Briscoe, who as a -single woman
represents a social order more radial and lenient than Mrs. Ramsay’s, resists this duty but ultimately caves
in to it.

Brackets

In “Time Passes,” brackets surround the few sentences recounting the deaths of Prue and Andrew Ramsay,
while in “The Lighthouse,” brackets surround the sentences comprising Chapter VI. Each set of sentences in
brackets in the earlier section contains violence, death, and the destruction of potential; the short, stabbing
accounts accentuate the brutality of these events. But in Chapter VI of “The Lighthouse,” the purpose of the
brackets changes from indicating violence and death to violence and potential survival. Whereas in “Time
Passes,” the brackets surround Prue’s death in childbirth and Andrew’s perishing in war, in “The
Lighthouse” they surround the “mutilated” but “alive still” body of a fish.

Symbols The Lighthouse

Lying across the bay and meaning something different and intimately personal to each character, the
lighthouse is at once inaccessible, illuminating, and infinitely interpretable. As the destination from which
the novel takes its title, the lighthouse suggests that the destinations that seem surest are most
unobtainable. Just as Mr. Ramsay is certain of his wife’s love for him and aims to hear her speak words to
that end in “The Window,” Mrs. Ramsay finds these words impossible to say. These failed attempts to arrive
at some sort of solid ground, like Lily’s first try at painting Mrs. Ramsay or Mrs. Ramsay’s attempt to see
Paul and Minta married, result only in more attempts, further excursions rather than rest. The lighthouse
stands as a potent symbol of this lack of attainability. James arrives only to realize that it is not at all the
mist-shrouded destination of his childhood. Instead, he is made to reconcile two competing and
contradictory images of the tower—how it appeared to him when he was a boy and how it appears to him
now that he is a man. He decides that both of these images contribute to the essence of the lighthouse—that
nothing is ever only one thing—a sentiment that echoes the novel’s determination to arrive at truth through
varied and contradictory vantage points.

Lily’s Painting

Lily’s painting represents a struggle against gender convention, represented by Charles Tansley’s statement
that women can’t paint or write. Lily’s desire to express Mrs. Ramsay’s essence as a wife and mother in the
painting mimics the impulse among modern women to know and understand intimately the gendered

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experiences of the women who came before them. Lily’s composition attempts to discover and comprehend
Mrs. Ramsay’s beauty just as Woolf’s construction of Mrs. Ramsay’s character reflects her attempts to
access and portray her own mother.

The painting also represents dedication to a feminine artistic vision, expressed through Lily’s anxiety over
showing it to William Bankes. In deciding that completing the painting regardless of what happens to it is
the most important thing, Lily makes the choice to establish her own artistic voice. In the end, she decides
that her vision depends on balance and synthesis: how to bring together disparate things in harmony. In
this respect, her project mirrors Woolf’s writing, which synthesizes the perceptions of her many characters to
come to a balanced and truthful portrait of the world.

The Ramsays’ House

The Ramsays’ house is a stage where Woolf and her characters explain their beliefs and observations.
During her dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay sees her house display her own inner notions of shabbiness and her
inability to preserve beauty. In the “Time Passes” section, the ravages of war and destruction and the
passage of time are reflected in the condition of the house rather than in the emotional development or
observable aging of the characters. The house stands in for the collective consciousness of those who stay in
it. At times the characters long to escape it, while at other times it serves as refuge. From the dinner party to
the journey to the lighthouse, Woolf shows the house from every angle, and its structure and contents
mirror the interior of the characters who inhabit it.

The Sea

References to the sea appear throughout the novel. Broadly, the ever-changing, ever-moving waves parallel
the constant forward movement of time and the changes it brings. Woolf describes the sea lovingly and
beautifully, but her most evocative depictions of it point to its violence. As a force that brings destruction,
has the power to decimate islands, and, as Mr. Ramsay reflects, “eats away the ground we stand on,” the sea
is a powerful reminder of the impermanence and delicacy of human life and accomplishments.

The Boar’s Skull

After her dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay retires upstairs to find the children wide-awake, bothered by the boar’s
skull that hangs on the nursery wall. The presence of the skull acts as a disturbing reminder that death is
always at hand, even (or perhaps especially) during life’s most blissful moments.

The Fruit Basket

Rose arranges a fruit basket for her mother’s dinner party that serves to draw the partygoers out of their
private suffering and unite them. Although Augustus Carmichael and Mrs. Ramsay appreciate the
arrangement differently—he rips a bloom from it; she refuses to disturb it—the pair is brought
harmoniously, if briefly, together. The basket testifies both to the “frozen” quality of beauty that Lily
describes and to beauty’s seductive and soothing quality.

T. S. Eliot The Waste Land Section I: “The Burial of the Dead”

Summary
The first section of The Waste Land takes its title from a line in the Anglican burial service. It is made up of
four vignettes, each seemingly from the perspective of a different speaker. The first is an autobiographical
snippet from the childhood of an aristocratic woman, in which she recalls sledding and claims that she is
German, not Russian (this would be important if the woman is meant to be a member of the recently
defeated Austrian imperial family). The woman mixes a meditation on the seasons with remarks on the
barren state of her current existence (“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter”). The second
section is a prophetic, apocalyptic invitation to journey into a desert waste, where the speaker will show the
reader “something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at
evening rising to meet you; / [He] will show you fear in a handful of dust” (Evelyn Waugh took the title for
one of his best-known novels from these lines). The almost threatening prophetic tone is mixed with
childhood reminiscences about a “hyacinth girl” and a nihilistic epiphany the speaker has after an encounter
with her. These recollections are filtered through quotations from Wagner’s operatic version of Tristan und
Isolde, an Arthurian tale of adultery and loss. The third episode in this section describes an imaginative
tarot reading, in which some of the cards Eliot includes in the reading are not part of an actual tarot deck.
The final episode of the section is the most surreal. The speaker walks through a London populated by
ghosts of the dead. He confronts a figure with whom he once fought in a battle that seems to conflate the
clashes of World War I with the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage (both futile and excessively
destructive wars). The speaker asks the ghostly figure, Stetson, about the fate of a corpse planted in his

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garden. The episode concludes with a famous line from the preface to Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal (an
important collection of Symbolist poetry), accusing the reader of sharing in the poet’s sins.

Form
Like “Prufrock,” this section ofThe Waste Land can be seen as a modified dramatic monologue. The four
speakers in this section are frantic in their need to speak, to find an audience, but they find themselves
surrounded by dead people and thwarted by outside circumstances, like wars. Because the sections are so
short and the situations so confusing, the effect is not one of an overwhelming impression of a single
character; instead, the reader is left with the feeling of being trapped in a crowd, unable to find a familiar
face. Also like “Prufrock,” The Waste Land employs only partial rhyme schemes and short
bursts of structure. These are meant to reference—but also rework— the literary past, achieving
simultaneously a stabilizing and a defamiliarizing effect. The world of The Waste Land has some parallels to
an earlier time, but it cannot be approached in the same way. The inclusion of fragments in languages other
than English further complicates matters. The reader is not expected to be able to translate these
immediately; rather, they are reminders of the cosmopolitan nature of twentieth-century Europe and of
mankind’s fate after the Tower of Babel: We will never be able to perfectly comprehend one another.

The Waste Land Section II: “A Game of Chess”

Summary
This section takes its title from two plays by the early 1 7 th-century playwright Thomas Middleton, in one of
which the moves in a game of chess denote stages in a seduction. This section focuses on two opposing
scenes, one of high society and one of the lower classes. The first half of the section portrays a wealthy,
highly groomed woman surrounded by exquisite furnishings. As she waits for a lover, her neurotic thoughts
become frantic, meaningless cries. Her day culminates with plans for an excursion and a game of chess. The
second part of this section shifts to a London barroom, where two women discuss a third woman. Between
the bartender’s repeated calls of “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME” (the bar is closing for the night) one of the
women recounts a conversation with their friend Lil, whose husband has just been discharged from the
army. She has chided Lil over her failure to get herself some false teeth, telling her that her husband will
seek out the company of other women if she doesn’t improve her appearance. Lil claims that the cause of her
ravaged looks is the medication she took to induce an abortion; having nearly died giving birth to her fifth
child, she had refused to have another, but her husband “won’t leave [her] alone.” The women leave the bar
to a chorus of “good night(s)” reminiscent of Ophelia’s farewell speech in Hamlet.

Form
The first part of the section is largely in unrhymed iambic pentameter lines, or blank verse. As the section
proceeds, the lines become increasingly irregular in length and meter, giving the feeling of disintegration, of
things falling apart. As the woman of the first half begins to give voice to her paranoid thoughts, things do
fall apart, at least formally: We read lines of dialogue, then a snippet from a nonsense song. The last four
lines of the first half rhyme, although they are irregular in meter, suggesting at least a partial return to
stability.

The second half of the section is a dialogue interrupted by the barman’s refrain. Rather than following an
organized structure of rhyme and meter, this section constitutes a loose series of phrases connected by “I
said(s)” and “she said(s).” This is perhaps the most poetically experimental section of the entire poem. Eliot is
writing in a lower-class vernacular here that resists poetic treatment. This section refutes the prevalent
claim that iambic pentameter mirrors normal English speech patterns: Line length and stresses are
consistently irregular. Yet the section sounds like poetry: the repeated use of “I said” and the grounding
provided by the barman’s chorus allow the woman’s speech to flow elegantly, despite her rough phrasing
and the coarse content of her story.

The Waste Land Section III: “The Fire Sermon”Summary

The title of this, the longest section of The Waste Land, is taken from a sermon given by Buddha in which he
encourages his followers to give up earthly passion (symbolized by fire) and seek freedom from earthly
things. A turn away from the earthly does indeed take place in this section, as a series of increasingly
debased sexual encounters concludes with a river-song and a religious incantation. The section opens with a
desolate riverside scene: Rats and garbage surround the speaker, who is fishing and “musing on the king my
brother’s wreck.” The river-song begins in this section, with the refrain from Spenser’s Prothalamion: “Sweet
Thames, run softly till I end my song.” A snippet from a vulgar soldier’s ballad follows, then a reference back
to Philomela (see the previous section). The speaker is then propositioned by Mr. Eugenides, the one-eyed
merchant of Madame Sosostris’s tarot pack. Eugenides invites the speaker to go with him to a hotel known
as a meeting place for homosexual trysts.

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The speaker then proclaims himself to be Tiresias, a figure from classical mythology who has both male and
female features (“Old man with wrinkled female breasts”) and is blind but can “see” into the future.
Tiresias/the speaker observes a young typist, at home for tea, who awaits her lover, a dull and slightly
arrogant clerk. The woman allows the clerk to have his way with her, and he leaves victorious. Tiresias, who
has “foresuffered all,” watches the whole thing. After her lover’s departure, the typist thinks only that she’s
glad the encounter is done and over.

A brief interlude begins the river-song in earnest. First, a fisherman’s bar is described, then a beautiful
church interior, then the Thames itself. These are among the few moments of tranquility in the poem, and
they seem to represent some sort of simpler alternative. The Thames-daughters, borrowed from Spenser’s
poem, chime in with a nonsense chorus (“Weialala leia / Wallala leialala”). The scene shifts again, to Queen
Elizabeth I in an amorous encounter with the Earl of Leicester. The queen seems unmoved by her lover’s
declarations, and she thinks only of her “people humble people who expect / Nothing.” The section then
comes to an abrupt end with a few lines from St. Augustine’s Confessions and a vague reference to the
Buddha’s Fire Sermon (“burning”).

Form
This section of The Waste Land is notable for its inclusion of popular poetic forms, particularly musical
ones. The more plot-driven sections are in Eliot’s usual assortment of various line lengths, rhymed at
random. “The Fire Sermon,” however, also includes bits of many musical pieces, including Spenser’s
wedding song (which becomes the song of the Thames-daughters), a soldier’s ballad, a nightingale’s chirps, a
song from Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, and a mandolin tune (which has no words but is
echoed in “a clatter and a chatter from within”). The use of such “low” forms cuts both ways here: In one
sense, it provides a critical commentary on the episodes described, the cheap sexual encounters shaped by
popular culture (the gramophone, the men’s hotel). But Eliot also uses these bits and pieces to create high
art, and some of the fragments he uses (the lines from Spenser in particular) are themselves taken from
more exalted forms. In the case of the Prothalamion, in fact, Eliot is placing himself within a tradition
stretching back to ancient Greece (classically, “prothalamion” is a generic term for a poem-like song written
for a wedding). Again this provides an ironic contrast to the debased goings-on but also provides another
form of connection and commentary. Another such reference, generating both ironic distance and proximate
parallels, is the inclusion of Elizabeth I: The liaison between Elizabeth and Leicester is traditionally
romanticized, and, thus, the reference seems to clash with the otherwise sordid nature of this section.
However, Eliot depicts Elizabeth—and Spenser, for that matter—as a mere fragment, stripped of noble
connotations and made to represent just one more piece of cultural rubbish. Again, this is not meant to be a
democratizing move but a nihilistic one: Romance is dead.

The Waste Land Section IV: “Death by Water”

Summary
The shortest section of the poem, “Death by Water” describes a man, Phlebas the Phoenician, who has died,
apparently by drowning. In death he has forgotten his worldly cares as the creatures of the sea have picked
his body apart. The narrator asks his reader to consider Phlebas and recall his or her own mortality.

Form
While this section appears on the page as a ten-line stanza, in reading, it compresses into eight: four pairs of
rhyming couplets. Both visually and audibly, this is one of the most formally organized sections of the poem.
It is meant to recall other highly organized forms that often have philosophical or religious import, like
aphorisms and parables. The alliteration and the deliberately archaic language (“o you,” “a fortnight dead”)
also contribute to the serious, didactic feel of this section.

The Waste Land Section V: “What the Thunder Said”

Summary
The final section of The Waste Land is dramatic in both its imagery and its events. The first half of the
section builds to an apocalyptic climax, as suffering people become “hooded hordes swarming” and the
“unreal” cities of Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, and London are destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed
again. A decaying chapel is described, which suggests the chapel in the legend of the Holy Grail. Atop the
chapel, a cock crows, and the rains come, relieving the drought and bringing life back to the land. Curiously,
no heroic figure has appeared to claim the Grail; the renewal has come seemingly at random, gratuitously.

The scene then shifts to the Ganges, half a world away from Europe, where thunder rumbles. Eliot draws on
the traditional interpretation of “what the thunder says,” as taken from the Upanishads (Hindu fables).

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According to these fables, the thunder “gives,” “sympathizes,” and “controls” through its “speech”; Eliot
launches into a meditation on each of these aspects of the thunder’s power. The meditations seem to bring
about some sort of reconciliation, as a Fisher King-type figure is shown sitting on the shore preparing to put
his lands in order, a sign of his imminent death or at least abdication. The poem ends with a series of
disparate fragments from a children’s song, from Dante, and from Elizabethan drama, leading up to a final
chant of “Shantih shantih shantih”—the traditional ending to an Upanishad. Eliot, in his notes to the poem,
translates this chant as “the peace which passeth understanding,” the expression of ultimate resignation.

Form
Just as the third section of the poem explores popular forms, such as music, the final section of The Waste
Land moves away from more typical poetic forms to experiment with structures normally associated with
religion and philosophy. The proposition and meditation structure of the last part of this section looks
forward to the more philosophically oriented Four Quartets, Eliot’s last major work. The reasoned,
structured nature of the final stanzas comes as a relief after the obsessively repetitive language and
alliteration (“If there were water / And no rock / If there were rock / And also water...”) of the apocalyptic
opening. The reader’s relief at the shift in style mirrors the physical relief brought by the rain midway
through the section. Both formally and thematically, then, this final chapter follows a pattern of obsession
and resignation. Its patterning reflects the speaker’s offer at the end to “fit you,” to transform experience into
poetry (“fit” is an archaic term for sections of a poem or play; here, “fit” is used as a verb, meaning “to render
into a fit,” to make into poetry).

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

James Joyce Plot Overview

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tells the story of Stephen Dedalus, a boy growing up in Ireland at the
end of the nineteenth century, as he gradually decides to cast off all his social, familial, and religious
constraints to live a life devoted to the art of writing. As a young boy, Stephen's Catholic faith and Irish
nationality heavily influence him. He attends a strict religious boarding school called Clongowes Wood
College. At first, Stephen is lonely and homesick at the school, but as time passes he finds his place among
the other boys. He enjoys his visits home, even though family tensions run high after the death of the Irish
political leader Charles Stewart Parnell. This sensitive subject becomes the topic of a furious, politically
charged argument over the family's Christmas dinner.

Stephen's father, Simon, is inept with money, and the family sinks deeper and deeper into debt. After a
summer spent in the company of his Uncle Charles, Stephen learns that the family cannot afford to send
him back to Clongowes, and that they will instead move to Dublin. Stephen starts attending a prestigious
day school called Belvedere, where he grows to excel as a writer and as an actor in the student theater. His
first sexual experience, with a young Dublin prostitute, unleashes a storm of guilt and shame in Stephen, as
he tries to reconcile his physical desires with the stern Catholic morality of his surroundings. For a while, he
ignores his religious upbringing, throwing himself with debauched abandon into a variety of sins—
masturbation, gluttony, and more visits to prostitutes, among others. Then, on a three-day religious retreat,
Stephen hears a trio of fiery sermons about sin, judgment, and hell. Deeply shaken, the young man resolves
to rededicate himself to a life of Christian piety.

Stephen begins attending Mass every day, becoming a model of Catholic piety, abstinence, and self-denial.
His religious devotion is so pronounced that the director of his school asks him to consider entering the
priesthood. After briefly considering the offer, Stephen realizes that the austerity of the priestly life is utterly
incompatible with his love for sensual beauty. That day, Stephen learns from his sister that the family will
be moving, once again for financial reasons. Anxiously awaiting news about his acceptance to the university,
Stephen goes for a walk on the beach, where he observes a young girl wading in the tide. He is struck by her
beauty, and realizes, in a moment of epiphany, that the love and desire of beauty should not be a source of
shame. Stephen resolves to live his life to the fullest, and vows not to be constrained by the boundaries of
his family, his nation, and his religion.

Stephen moves on to the university, where he develops a number of strong friendships, and is especially
close with a young man named Cranly. In a series of conversations with his companions, Stephen works to
formulate his theories about art. While he is dependent on his friends as listeners, he is also determined to
create an independent existence, liberated from the expectations of friends and family. He becomes more and
more determined to free himself from all limiting pressures, and eventually decides to leave Ireland to escape
them. Like his namesake, the mythical Daedalus, Stephen hopes to build himself wings on which he can fly
above all obstacles and achieve a life as an artist.

Character List

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Stephen Dedalus  -  The main character of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.Growing up, Stephen
goes through long phases of hedonism and deep religiosity. He eventually adopts a philosophy of
aestheticism, greatly valuing beauty and art. Stephen is essentially Joyce's alter ego, and many of the events
of Stephen's life mirror events from Joyce's own youth.

Simon Dedalus  -  Stephen's father, an impoverished former medical student with a strong sense of Irish
patriotism. Sentimental about his past, Simon Dedalus frequently reminisces about his youth.

Mary Dedalus  -  Stephen's mother and Simon Dedalus's wife. Mary is very religious, and argues with her
son about attending religious services.

The Dedalus Children  -  Though his siblings do not play a major role in the novel, Stephen has several
brothers and sisters, including Maurice, Katey, Maggie, and Boody.

Emma Clery -  Stephen's beloved, the young girl to whom he is fiercely attracted over the course of many
years. Stephen constructs Emma as an ideal of femininity, even though he does not know her well.

Mr. John Casey  -  Simon Dedalus's friend, who attends the Christmas dinner at which young Stephen is
allowed to sit with the adults for the first time. Like Simon, Mr. Casey is a staunch believer in Irish
nationalism, and at the dinner he argues with Dante over the fate of Parnell.

Charles Stewart Parnell -  An Irish political leader who is not an actual character in the novel, but whose
death influences many of its characters. Parnell had powerfully led the Irish National Party until he was
condemned for having an affair with a married woman.

Dante (Mrs. Riordan) -  The extremely fervent and piously Catholic governess of the Dedalus children.
Dante, whose real name is Mrs. Riordan, becomes involved in a long and unpleasant argument with Mr.
Casey over the fate of Parnell during Christmas dinner.

Uncle Charles -  Stephen's lively great uncle. Charles lives with Stephen's family. During the summer, the
young Stephen enjoys taking long walks with his uncle and listening to Charles and Simon discuss the
history of both Ireland and the Dedalus family.

Eileen Vance -  A young girl who lives near Stephen when he is a young boy. When Stephen tells Dante that
he wants to marry Eileen, Dante is enraged because Eileen is a Protestant.

Father Conmee -  The rector at Clongowes Wood College, where Stephen attends school as a young boy.

Father Dolan -  The cruel prefect of studies at Clongowes Wood College.

Wells -  The bully at Clongowes. Wells taunts Stephen for kissing his mother before he goes to bed, and one
day he pushes Stephen into a filthy cesspool, causing Stephen to catch a bad fever.

Athy -  A friendly boy whom Stephen meets in the infirmary at Clongowes. Athy likes Stephen Dedalus
because they both have unusual names.

Brother Michael -  The kindly brother who tends to Stephen and Athy in the Clongowes infirmary after
Wells pushes Stephen into the cesspool.

Fleming -  One of Stephen's friends at Clongowes.

Father Arnall -  Stephen's stern Latin teacher at Clongowes. Later, when Stephen is at Belvedere College,
Father Arnall delivers a series of lectures on death and hell that have a profound influence on Stephen.

Mike Flynn -  A friend of Simon Dedalus's who tries, with little success, to train Stephen to be a runner
during their summer at Blackrock.

Aubrey Mills -  A young boy with whom Stephen plays imaginary adventure games at Blackrock.

Vincent Heron -  A rival of Stephen's at Belvedere.

Boland and Nash -  Two schoolmates of Stephen's at Belvedere, who taunt and bully him.

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Cranly -  Stephen's best friend at the university, in whom he confides his thoughts and feelings. In this
sense, Cranly represents a secular confessor for Stephen. Eventually, Cranly begins to encourage Stephen to
conform to the wishes of his family and to try harder to fit in with his peers—advice that Stephen fiercely
resents.

Davin -  Another of Stephen's friends at the university. Davin comes from the Irish provinces and has a
simple, solid nature. Stephen admires his talent for athletics, but disagrees with his unquestioning Irish
patriotism, which Davin encourages Stephen to adopt.

Lynch -  Another of Stephen's friends at the university, a coarse and often unpleasantly dry young man.
Lynch is poorer than Stephen. Stephen explains his theory of aesthetics to Lynch in Chapter 5.

McCann -  A fiercely political student at the university who tries to convince Stephen to be more concerned
with politics.

Temple -  A young man at the university who openly admires Stephen's keen independence and tries to
copy his ideas and sentiments.

Dean of Studies -  A Jesuit priest at University College.

Johnny Cashman -  A friend of Simon Dedalus.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes

The Development of Individual Consciousness

Perhaps the most famous aspect of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce's innovative use of
stream of consciousness, a style in which the author directly transcribes the thoughts and sensations that
go through a character's mind, rather than simply describing those sensations from the external standpoint
of an observer. Joyce's use of stream of consciousness makes A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a story
of the development of Stephen's mind. In the first chapter, the very young Stephen is only capable of
describing his world in simple words and phrases. The sensations that he experiences are all jumbled
together with a child's lack of attention to cause and effect. Later, when Stephen is a teenager obsessed with
religion, he is able to think in a clearer, more adult manner. Paragraphs are more logically ordered than in
the opening sections of the novel, and thoughts progress logically. Stephen's mind is more mature and he is
now more coherently aware of his surroundings. Nonetheless, he still trusts blindly in the church, and his
passionate emotions of guilt and religious ecstasy are so strong that they get in the way of rational thought.
It is only in the final chapter, when Stephen is in the university, that he seems truly rational. By the end of
the novel, Joyce renders a portrait of a mind that has achieved emotional, intellectual, and artistic
adulthood.

The development of Stephen's consciousness in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is particularly
interesting because, insofar as Stephen is a portrait of Joyce himself, Stephen's development gives us insight
into the development of a literary genius. Stephen's experiences hint at the influences that transformed
Joyce himself into the great writer he is considered today: Stephen's obsession with language; his strained
relations with religion, family, and culture; and his dedication to forging an aesthetic of his own mirror the
ways in which Joyce related to the various tensions in his life during his formative years. In the last chapter
of the novel, we also learn that genius, though in many ways a calling, also requires great work and
considerable sacrifice. Watching Stephen's daily struggle to puzzle out his aesthetic philosophy, we get a
sense of the great task that awaits him.

The Pitfalls of Religious Extremism

Brought up in a devout Catholic family, Stephen initially ascribes to an absolute belief in the morals of the
church. As a teenager, this belief leads him to two opposite extremes, both of which are harmful. At first, he
falls into the extreme of sin, repeatedly sleeping with prostitutes and deliberately turning his back on
religion. Though Stephen sins willfully, he is always aware that he acts in violation of the church's rules.
Then, when Father Arnall's speech prompts him to return to Catholicism, he bounces to the other extreme,
becoming a perfect, near fanatical model of religious devotion and obedience. Eventually, however, Stephen
realizes that both of these lifestyles—the completely sinful and the completely devout—are extremes that
have been false and harmful. He does not want to lead a completely debauched life, but also rejects austere
Catholicism because he feels that it does not permit him the full experience of being human. Stephen

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ultimately reaches a decision to embrace life and celebrate humanity after seeing a young girl wading at a
beach. To him, the girl is a symbol of pure goodness and of life lived to the fullest.

The Role of the Artist

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explores what it means to become an artist. Stephen's decision at the
end of the novel—to leave his family and friends behind and go into exile in order to become an artist—
suggests that Joyce sees the artist as a necessarily isolated figure. In his decision, Stephen turns his back
on his community, refusing to accept the constraints of political involvement, religious devotion, and family
commitment that the community places on its members.

However, though the artist is an isolated figure, Stephen's ultimate goal is to give a voice to the very
community that he is leaving. In the last few lines of the novel, Stephen expresses his desire to "forge in the
smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." He recognizes that his community will always be a
part of him, as it has created and shaped his identity. When he creatively expresses his own ideas, he will
also convey the voice of his entire community. Even as Stephen turns his back on the traditional forms of
participation and membership in a community, he envisions his writing as a service to the community.

The Need for Irish Autonomy

Despite his desire to steer clear of politics, Stephen constantly ponders Ireland's place in the world. He
concludes that the Irish have always been a subservient people, allowing outsiders to control them. In his
conversation with the dean of studies at the university, he realizes that even the language of the Irish people
really belongs to the English. Stephen's perception of Ireland's subservience has two effects on his
development as an artist. First, it makes him determined to escape the bonds that his Irish ancestors have
accepted. As we see in his conversation with Davin, Stephen feels an anxious need to emerge from his Irish
heritage as his own person, free from the shackles that have traditionally confined his country: "Do you
fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made?" Second, Stephen's perception makes
him determined to use his art to reclaim autonomy for Ireland. Using the borrowed language of English, he
plans to write in a style that will be both autonomous from England and true to the Irish people.

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text's
major themes.

Motifs

Music

Music, especially singing, appears repeatedly throughout A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen's
appreciation of music is closely tied to his love for the sounds of language. As a very young child, he turns
Dante's threats into a song, " [A]pologise, pull out his eyes, pull out his eyes, apologise." Singing is more
than just language, however—it is language transformed by vibrant humanity. Indeed, music appeals to the
part of Stephen that wants to live life to the fullest. We see this aspect of music near the end of the novel,
when Stephen suddenly feels at peace upon hearing a woman singing. Her voice prompts him to recall his
resolution to leave Ireland and become a writer, reinforcing his determination to celebrate life through
writing.

Flight

Stephen Dedalus's very name embodies the idea of flight. Stephen's namesake, Daedalus, is a figure from
Greek mythology, a renowned craftsman who designs the famed Labyrinth of Crete for King Minos. Minos
keeps Daedalus and his son Icarus imprisoned on Crete, but Daedalus makes plans to escape by using
feathers, twine, and wax to fashion a set of wings for himself and his son. Daedalus escapes successfully,
but Icarus flies too high. The sun's heat melts the wax holding Icarus's wings together, and he plummets to
his death in the sea.

In the context of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we can see Stephen as representative of both
Daedalus and Icarus, as Stephen's father also has the last name of Dedalus. With this mythological
reference, Joyce implies that Stephen must always balance his desire to flee Ireland with the danger of
overestimating his own abilities—the intellectual equivalent of Icarus's flight too close to the sun. To
diminish the dangers of attempting too much too soon, Stephen bides his time at the university, developing
his aesthetic theory fully before attempting to leave Ireland and write seriously. The birds that appear to
Stephen in the third section of Chapter 5 signal that it is finally time for Stephen, now fully formed as an
artist, to take flight himself.

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Prayers, Secular Songs, and Latin Phrases

We can often tell Stephen's state of mind by looking at the fragments of prayers, songs, and Latin phrases
that Joyce inserts into the text. When Stephen is a schoolboy, Joyce includes childish, sincere prayers that
mirror the manner in which a child might devoutly believe in the church, even without understanding the
meaning of its religious doctrine. When Stephen prays in church despite the fact that he has committed a
mortal sin, Joyce transcribes a long passage of the Latin prayer, but it is clear that Stephen merely speaks
the words without believing them. Then, when Stephen is at the university, Latin is used as a joke—his
friends translate colloquial phrases like "peace over the whole bloody globe" into Latin because they find the
academic sound of the translation amusing. This jocular use of Latin mocks both the young men's education
and the stern, serious manner in which Latin is used in the church. These linguistic jokes demonstrate that
Stephen is no longer serious about religion. Finally, Joyce includes a few lines from the Irish folk song "Rosie
O'Grady" near the end of the novel. These simple lines reflect the peaceful feeling that the song brings to
Stephen and Cranly, as well as the traditional Irish culture that Stephen plans to leave behind. Throughout
the novel, such prayers, songs, and phrases form the background of Stephen's life.

Symbols Green and Maroon

Stephen associates the colors green and maroon with his governess, Dante, and with two leaders of the Irish
resistance, Charles Parnell and Michael Davitt. In a dream after Parnell's death, Stephen sees Dante dressed
in green and maroon as the Irish people mourn their fallen leader. This vision indicates that Stephen
associates the two colors with the way Irish politics are played out among the members of his own family.

Emma

Emma appears only in glimpses throughout most of Stephen's young life, and he never gets to know her as a
person. Instead, she becomes a symbol of pure love, untainted by sexuality or reality. Stephen worships
Emma as the ideal of feminine purity. When he goes through his devoutly religious phase, he imagines his
reward for his piety as a union with Emma in heaven. It is only later, when he is at the university, that we
finally see a real conversation between Stephen and Emma. Stephen's diary entry regarding this
conversation portrays Emma as a real, friendly, and somewhat ordinary girl, but certainly not the goddess
Stephen earlier makes her out to be. This more balanced view of Emma mirrors Stephen's abandonment of
the extremes of complete sin and complete devotion in favor of a middle path, the devotion to the
appreciation of beauty.

James Joyce “Araby”

Summary

The narrator, an unnamed boy, describes the North Dublin street on which his house is located. He thinks
about the priest who died in the house before his family moved in and the games that he and his friends
played in the street. He recalls how they would run through the back lanes of the houses and hide in the
shadows when they reached the street again, hoping to avoid people in the neighborhood, particularly the
boy’s uncle or the sister of his friend Mangan. The sister often comes to the front of their house to call the
brother, a moment that the narrator savors.

Every day begins for this narrator with such glimpses of Mangan’s sister. He places himself in the front room
of his house so he can see her leave her house, and then he rushes out to walk behind her quietly until
finally passing her. The narrator and Mangan’s sister talk little, but she is always in his thoughts. He thinks
about her when he accompanies his aunt to do food shopping on Saturday evening in the busy marketplace
and when he sits in the back room of his house alone. The narrator’s infatuation is so intense that he fears
he will never gather the courage to speak with the girl and express his feelings.

One morning, Mangan’s sister asks the narrator if he plans to go to Araby, a Dublin bazaar. She notes that
she cannot attend, as she has already committed to attend a retreat with her school. Having recovered from
the shock of the conversation, the narrator offers to bring her something from the bazaar. This brief meeting
launches the narrator into a period of eager, restless waiting and fidgety tension in anticipation of the
bazaar. He cannot focus in school. He finds the lessons tedious, and they distract him from thinking about
Mangan’s sister.

On the morning of the bazaar the narrator reminds his uncle that he plans to attend the event so that the
uncle will return home early and provide train fare. Yet dinner passes and a guest visits, but the uncle does
not return. The narrator impatiently endures the time passing, until at 9  P . M .  the uncle finally returns,
unbothered that he has forgotten about the narrator’s plans. Reciting the epigram “All work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy,” the uncle gives the narrator the money and asks him if he knows the poem “The

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Arab’s Farewell to his Steed.” The narrator leaves just as his uncle begins to recite the lines, and, thanks to
eternally slow trains, arrives at the bazaar just before 1 0  P . M . , when it is starting to close down. He
approaches one stall that is still open, but buys nothing, feeling unwanted by the woman watching over the
goods. With no purchase for Mangan’s sister, the narrator stands angrily in the deserted bazaar as the lights
go out.

Analysis

In “Araby,” the allure of new love and distant places mingles with the familiarity of everyday drudgery, with
frustrating consequences. Mangan’s sister embodies this mingling, since she is part of the familiar
surroundings of the narrator’s street as well as the exotic promise of the bazaar. She is a “brown figure” who
both reflects the brown façades of the buildings that line the street and evokes the skin color of romanticized
images of Arabia that flood the narrator’s head. Like the bazaar that offers experiences that differ from
everyday Dublin, Mangan’s sister intoxicates the narrator with new feelings of joy and elation. His love for
her, however, must compete with the dullness of schoolwork, his uncle’s lateness, and the Dublin trains.
Though he promises Mangan’s sister that he will go to Araby and purchase a gift for her, these mundane
realities undermine his plans and ultimately thwart his desires. The narrator arrives at the bazaar only to
encounter flowered teacups and English accents, not the freedom of the enchanting East. As the bazaar
closes down, he realizes that Mangan’s sister will fail his expectations as well, and that his desire for her is
actually only a vain wish for change.

The narrator’s change of heart concludes the story on a moment of epiphany, but not a positive one. Instead
of reaffirming his love or realizing that he does not need gifts to express his feelings for Mangan’s sister, the
narrator simply gives up. He seems to interpret his arrival at the bazaar as it fades into darkness as a sign
that his relationship with Mangan’s sister will also remain just a wishful idea and that his infatuation was
as misguided as his fantasies about the bazaar. What might have been a story of happy, youthful love
becomes a tragic story of defeat. Much like the disturbing, unfulfilling adventure in “An Encounter,” the
narrator’s failure at the bazaar suggests that fulfillment and contentedness remain foreign to Dubliners,
even in the most unusual events of the city like an annual bazaar.

The tedious events that delay the narrator’s trip indicate that no room exists for love in the daily lives of
Dubliners, and the absence of love renders the characters in the story almost anonymous. Though the
narrator might imagine himself to be carrying thoughts of Mangan’s sister through his day as a priest would
carry a Eucharistic chalice to an altar, the minutes tick away through school, dinner, and his uncle’s boring
poetic recitation. Time does not adhere to the narrator’s visions of his relationship. The story presents this
frustration as universal: the narrator is nameless, the girl is always “Mangan’s sister” as though she is any
girl next door, and the story closes with the narrator imagining himself as a creature. In “Araby,” Joyce
suggests that all people experience frustrated desire for love and new experiences.

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