Robinson Crusoe Summary Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe, as a young and impulsive wanderer, defied his parents and went to sea. He was involved in a
series of violent storms at sea and was warned by the captain that he should not be a seafaring man. Ashamed to
go home, Crusoe boarded another ship and returned from a successful trip to Africa. Taking off again, Crusoe
met with bad luck and was taken prisoner in Sallee. His captors sent Crusoe out to fish, and he used this to his
advantage and escaped, along with a slave.

He was rescued by a Portuguese ship and started a new adventure. He landed in Brazil, and, after some time, he
became the owner of a sugar plantation. Hoping to increase his wealth by buying slaves, he aligned himself with
other planters and undertook a trip to Africa in order to bring back a shipload of slaves. After surviving a storm,
Crusoe and the others were shipwrecked. He was thrown upon shore only to discover that he was the sole
survivor of the wreck.

Crusoe made immediate plans for food, and then shelter, to protect himself from wild animals. He brought as
many things as possible from the wrecked ship, things that would be useful later to him. In addition, he began to
develop talents that he had never used in order to provide himself with necessities. Cut off from the company of
men, he began to communicate with God, thus beginning the first part of his religious conversion. To keep his
sanity and to entertain himself, he began a journal. In the journal, he recorded every task that he performed each
day since he had been marooned.

As time passed, Crusoe became a skilled craftsman, able to construct many useful things, and thus furnished
himself with diverse comforts. He also learned about farming, as a result of some seeds which he brought with
him. An illness prompted some prophetic dreams, and Crusoe began to reappraise his duty to God. Crusoe
explored his island and discovered another part of the island much richer and more fertile, and he built a
summer home there.

One of the first tasks he undertook was to build himself a canoe in case an escape became possible, but the
canoe was too heavy to get to the water. He then constructed a small boat and journeyed around the island.
Crusoe reflected on his earlier, wicked life, disobeying his parents, and wondered if it might be related to his
isolation on this island.

After spending about fifteen years on the island, Crusoe found a man's naked footprint, and he was sorely beset
by apprehensions, which kept him awake many nights. He considered many possibilities to account for the
footprint and he began to take extra precautions against a possible intruder. Sometime later, Crusoe was
horrified to find human bones scattered about the shore, evidently the remains of a savage feast. He was plagued
again with new fears. He explored the nature of cannibalism and debated his right to interfere with the customs
of another race.

Crusoe was cautious for several years, but encountered nothing more to alarm him. He found a cave, which he
used as a storage room, and in December of the same year, he spied cannibals sitting around a campfire. He did
not see them again for quite some time.

Later, Crusoe saw a ship in distress, but everyone was already drowned on the ship and Crusoe remained
companionless. However, he was able to take many provisions from this newly wrecked ship. Sometime later,
cannibals landed on the island and a victim escaped. Crusoe saved his life, named him Friday, and taught him
English. Friday soon became Crusoe's humble and devoted slave.

Crusoe and Friday made plans to leave the island and, accordingly, they built another boat. Crusoe also
undertook Friday's religious education, converting the savage into a Protestant. Their voyage was postponed due
to the return of the savages. This time it was necessary to attack the cannibals in order to save two prisoners
since one was a white man. The white man was a Spaniard and the other was Friday's father. Later the four of
them planned a voyage to the mainland to rescue sixteen compatriots of the Spaniard. First, however, they built
up their food supply to assure enough food for the extra people. Crusoe and Friday agreed to wait on the island
while the Spaniard and Friday's father brought back the other men.
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A week later, they spied a ship but they quickly learned that there had been a mutiny on board. By devious
means, Crusoe and Friday rescued the captain and two other men, and after much scheming, regained control of
the ship. The grateful captain gave Crusoe many gifts and took him and Friday back to England. Some of the
rebel crewmen were left marooned on the island.

Crusoe returned to England and found that in his absence he had become a wealthy man. After going to Lisbon
to handle some of his affairs, Crusoe began an overland journey back to England. Crusoe and his company
encountered many hardships in crossing the mountains, but they finally arrived safely in England. Crusoe sold
his plantation in Brazil for a good price, married, and had three children. Finally, however, he was persuaded to
go on yet another voyage, and he visited his old island, where there were promises of new adventures to be
found in a later account.

Robinson Crusoe The narrator of the story. Crusoe sets sail at nineteen years of age, despite his father's
demand that he stay at home and be content with his "middle station" in life. Crusoe eventually establishes a
farm in Brazil and realizes he is living the life his father planned for him, but he is half a world away from
England. Crusoe agrees to sail to the Guinea Coast to trade for slaves, but when a terrible storm blows up, he is
marooned on an island, alone. He spends 35 years there, and his time on the island forms the basis of the novel.

Captain's Widow The wife of the first captain to take young Crusoe under his wing. Crusoe leaves his savings
with the widow, who looks after his money with great care. Crusoe sees her again after he leaves the island and
returns to England; she encourages him to settle in England.

Xury A servant on the ship on which young Crusoe is a slave; Xury is loyal to Crusoe when the two escape.
Xury's devotion to Crusoe foreshadows the role Friday later plays, although young Crusoe later sells Xury back
into slavery for a profit.

the Captain of the Ship The captain of the ship that rescues young Crusoe and Xury; this man befriends young
Crusoe and offers him money and guidance. They reunite after Crusoe's 35 years on the island.

Friday A "savage" whom Crusoe rescues from certain death at the hands of cannibals. Friday is handsome,
intelligent, brave, and loyal, none of which are qualities usually associated with "savages." He serves Crusoe
faithfully throughout his life.

The Ambivalence of Mastery

Crusoe’s success in mastering his situation, overcoming his obstacles, and controlling his environment shows
the condition of mastery in a positive light, at least at the beginning of the novel. Crusoe lands in an inhospitable
environment and makes it his home. His taming and domestication of wild goats and parrots with Crusoe as
their master illustrates his newfound control. Moreover, Crusoe’s mastery over nature makes him a master of his
fate and of himself. Early in the novel, he frequently blames himself for disobeying his father’s advice or
blames the destiny that drove him to sea. But in the later part of the novel, Crusoe stops viewing himself as a
passive victim and strikes a new note of self-determination. In building a home for himself on the island, he
finds that he is master of his life—he suffers a hard fate and still finds prosperity.

But this theme of mastery becomes more complex and less positive after Friday’s arrival, when the idea of
mastery comes to apply more to unfair relationships between humans. In Chapter XXIII, Crusoe teaches Friday
the word “[m]aster” even before teaching him “yes” and “no,” and indeed he lets him “know that was to be
[Crusoe’s] name.” Crusoe never entertains the idea of considering Friday a friend or equal—for some reason,
superiority comes instinctively to him. We further question Crusoe’s right to be called “[m]aster” when he later
refers to himself as “king” over the natives and Europeans, who are his “subjects.” In short, while Crusoe seems
praiseworthy in mastering his fate, the praiseworthiness of his mastery over his fellow humans is more doubtful.
Defoe explores the link between the two in his depiction of the colonial mind.

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The Necessity of Repentance
Crusoe’s experiences constitute not simply an adventure story in which thrilling things happen, but also a moral
tale illustrating the right and wrong ways to live one’s life. This moral and religious dimension of the tale is
indicated in the Preface, which states that Crusoe’s story is being published to instruct others in God’s wisdom,
and one vital part of this wisdom is the importance of repenting one’s sins. While it is important to be grateful
for God’s miracles, as Crusoe is when his grain sprouts, it is not enough simply to express gratitude or even to
pray to God, as Crusoe does several times with few results. Crusoe needs repentance most, as he learns from the
fiery angelic figure that comes to him during a feverish hallucination and says, “Seeing all these things have not
brought thee to repentance, now thou shalt die.” Crusoe believes that his major sin is his rebellious behavior
toward his father, which he refers to as his “original sin,” akin to Adam and Eve’s first disobedience of God.
This biblical reference also suggests that Crusoe’s exile from civilization represents Adam and Eve’s expulsion
from Eden.

For Crusoe, repentance consists of acknowledging his wretchedness and his absolute dependence on the Lord.
This admission marks a turning point in Crusoe’s spiritual consciousness, and is almost a born-again experience
for him. After repentance, he complains much less about his sad fate and views the island more positively.
Later, when Crusoe is rescued and his fortune restored, he compares himself to Job, who also regained divine
favor. Ironically, this view of the necessity of repentance ends up justifying sin: Crusoe may never have learned
to repent if he had never sinfully disobeyed his father in the first place. Thus, as powerful as the theme of
repentance is in the novel, it is nevertheless complex and ambiguous.

The Importance of Self-Awareness

Crusoe’s arrival on the island does not make him revert to a brute existence controlled by animal instincts, and,
unlike animals, he remains conscious of himself at all times. Indeed, his island existence actually deepens his
self-awareness as he withdraws from the external social world and turns inward. The idea that the individual
must keep a careful reckoning of the state of his own soul is a key point in the Presbyterian doctrine that Defoe
took seriously all his life. We see that in his normal day-to-day activities, Crusoe keeps accounts of himself
enthusiastically and in various ways. For example, it is significant that Crusoe’s makeshift calendar does not
simply mark the passing of days, but instead more egocentrically marks the days he has spent on the island: it is
about him, a sort of self-conscious or autobiographical calendar with him at its center. Similarly, Crusoe
obsessively keeps a journal to record his daily activities, even when they amount to nothing more than finding a
few pieces of wood on the beach or waiting inside while it rains. Crusoe feels the importance of staying aware
of his situation at all times. We can also sense Crusoe’s impulse toward self-awareness in the fact that he
teaches his parrot to say the words, “Poor Robin Crusoe. . . . Where have you been?” This sort of self-examining
thought is natural for anyone alone on a desert island, but it is given a strange intensity when we recall that
Crusoe has spent months teaching the bird to say it back to him. Crusoe teaches nature itself to voice his own
self-awareness.

Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift

Gulliver’s Travels recounts the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a practical-minded Englishman trained as a surgeon
who takes to the seas when his business fails. In a deadpan first-person narrative that rarely shows any signs of
self-reflection or deep emotional response, Gulliver narrates the adventures that befall him on these travels.
Gulliver’s adventure in Lilliput begins when he wakes after his shipwreck to find himself bound by innumerable
tiny threads and addressed by tiny captors who are in awe of him but fiercely protective of their kingdom. They
are not afraid to use violence against Gulliver, though their arrows are little more than pinpricks. But overall,
they are hospitable, risking famine in their land by feeding Gulliver, who consumes more food than a thousand
Lilliputians combined could. Gulliver is taken into the capital city by a vast wagon the Lilliputians have
specially built. He is presented to the emperor, who is entertained by Gulliver, just as Gulliver is flattered by the
attention of royalty. Eventually Gulliver becomes a national resource, used by the army in its war against the
people of Blefuscu, whom the Lilliputians hate for doctrinal differences concerning the proper way to crack
eggs. But things change when Gulliver is convicted of treason for putting out a fire in the royal palace with his
urine and is condemned to be shot in the eyes and starved to death. Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he is
able to repair a boat he finds and set sail for England.

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 After staying in England with his wife and family for two months, Gulliver undertakes his next sea voyage,
which takes him to a land of giants called Brobdingnag. Here, a field worker discovers him. The farmer initially
treats him as little more than an animal, keeping him for amusement. The farmer eventually sells Gulliver to the
queen, who makes him a courtly diversion and is entertained by his musical talents. Social life is easy for
Gulliver after his discovery by the court, but not particularly enjoyable. Gulliver is often repulsed by the
physicality of the Brobdingnagians, whose ordinary flaws are many times magnified by their huge size. Thus,
when a couple of courtly ladies let him play on their naked bodies, he is not attracted to them but rather
disgusted by their enormous skin pores and the sound of their torrential urination. He is generally startled by the
ignorance of the people here—even the king knows nothing about politics. More unsettling findings in
Brobdingnag come in the form of various animals of the realm that endanger his life. Even Brobdingnagian
insects leave slimy trails on his food that make eating difficult. On a trip to the frontier, accompanying the royal
couple, Gulliver leaves Brobdingnag when his cage is plucked up by an eagle and dropped into the sea.

Next, Gulliver sets sail again and, after an attack by pirates, ends up in Laputa, where a floating island inhabited
by theoreticians and academics oppresses the land below, called Balnibarbi. The scientific research undertaken
in Laputa and in Balnibarbi seems totally inane and impractical, and its residents too appear wholly out of touch
with reality. Taking a short side trip to Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver is able to witness the conjuring up of figures
from history, such as Julius Caesar and other military leaders, whom he finds much less impressive than in
books. After visiting the Luggnaggians and the Struldbrugs, the latter of which are senile immortals who prove
that age does not bring wisdom, he is able to sail to Japan and from there back to England.

Finally, on his fourth journey, Gulliver sets out as captain of a ship, but after the mutiny of his crew and a long
confinement in his cabin, he arrives in an unknown land. This land is populated by Houyhnhnms, rational-
thinking horses who rule, and by Yahoos, brutish humanlike creatures who serve the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver sets
about learning their language, and when he can speak he narrates his voyages to them and explains the
constitution of England. He is treated with great courtesy and kindness by the horses and is enlightened by his
many conversations with them and by his exposure to their noble culture. He wants to stay with the
Houyhnhnms, but his bared body reveals to the horses that he is very much like a Yahoo, and he is banished.
Gulliver is grief-stricken but agrees to leave. He fashions a canoe and makes his way to a nearby island, where
he is picked up by a Portuguese ship captain who treats him well, though Gulliver cannot help now seeing the
captain—and all humans—as shamefully Yahoolike. Gulliver then concludes his narrative with a claim that the
lands he has visited belong by rights to England, as her colonies, even though he questions the whole idea of
colonialism.

 Gulliver
The narrator and protagonist of the story. Although Lemuel Gulliver’s vivid and detailed style of narration
makes it clear that he is intelligent and well educated, his perceptions are naïve and gullible. He has virtually no
emotional life, or at least no awareness of it, and his comments are strictly factual. Indeed, sometimes his
obsession with the facts of navigation, for example, becomes unbearable for us, as his fictional editor, Richard
Sympson, makes clear when he explains having had to cut out nearly half of Gulliver’s verbiage. Gulliver never
thinks that the absurdities he encounters are funny and never makes the satiric connections between the lands he
visits and his own home. Gulliver’s naïveté makes the satire possible, as we pick up on things that Gulliver does
not notice.

Read an in-depth analysis of Gulliver.

 The emperor
The ruler of Lilliput. Like all Lilliputians, the emperor is fewer than six inches tall. His power and majesty
impress Gulliver deeply, but to us he appears both laughable and sinister. Because of his tiny size, his belief that
he can control Gulliver seems silly, but his willingness to execute his subjects for minor reasons of politics or
honor gives him a frightening aspect. He is proud of possessing the tallest trees and biggest palace in the
kingdom, but he is also quite hospitable, spending a fortune on his captive’s food. The emperor is both a satire
of the autocratic ruler and a strangely serious portrait of political power.

 The farmer
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 Gulliver’s first master in Brobdingnag. The farmer speaks to Gulliver, showing that he is willing to believe that
the relatively tiny Gulliver may be as rational as he himself is, and treats him with gentleness. However, the
farmer puts Gulliver on display around Brobdingnag, which clearly shows that he would rather profit from his
discovery than converse with him as an equal. His exploitation of Gulliver as a laborer, which nearly starves
Gulliver to death, seems less cruel than simpleminded. Generally, the farmer represents the average
Brobdingnagian of no great gifts or intelligence, wielding an extraordinary power over Gulliver simply by virtue
of his immense size.

 Glumdalclitch
The farmer’s nine-year-old daughter, who is forty feet tall. Glumdalclitch becomes Gulliver’s friend and
nursemaid, hanging him to sleep safely in her closet at night and teaching him the Brobdingnagian language by
day. She is skilled at sewing and makes Gulliver several sets of new clothes, taking delight in dressing him.
When the queen discovers that no one at court is suited to care for Gulliver, she invites Glumdalclitch to live at
court as his sole babysitter, a function she performs with great seriousness and attentiveness. To Glumdalclitch,
Gulliver is basically a living doll, symbolizing the general status Gulliver has in Brobdingnag.

 The queen
The queen of Brobdingnag, who is so delighted by Gulliver’s beauty and charms that she agrees to buy him
from the farmer for 1,000 pieces of gold. Gulliver appreciates her kindness after the hardships he suffers at the
farmer’s and shows his usual fawning love for royalty by kissing the tip of her little finger when presented
before her. She possesses, in Gulliver’s words, “infinite” wit and humor, though this description may entail a bit
of Gulliver’s characteristic flattery of superiors. The queen seems genuinely considerate, asking Gulliver
whether he would consent to live at court instead of simply taking him in as a pet and inquiring into the reasons
for his cold good-byes with the farmer. She is by no means a hero, but simply a pleasant, powerful person.

 The king
The king of Brobdingnag, who, in contrast to the emperor of Lilliput, seems to be a true intellectual, well versed
in political science among other disciplines. While his wife has an intimate, friendly relationship with the
diminutive visitor, the king’s relation to Gulliver is limited to serious discussions about the history and
institutions of Gulliver’s native land. He is thus a figure of rational thought who somewhat prefigures the
Houyhnhnms in Book IV.

 Lord Munodi
A lord of Lagado, capital of the underdeveloped land beneath Laputa, who hosts Gulliver and gives him a tour
of the country on Gulliver’s third voyage. Munodi is a rare example of practical-minded intelligence both in
Lagado, where the applied sciences are wildly impractical, and in Laputa, where no one even considers
practicality a virtue. He fell from grace with the ruling elite by counseling a commonsense approach to
agriculture and land management in Lagado, an approach that was rejected even though it proved successful
when applied to his own flourishing estate. Lord Munodi serves as a reality check for Gulliver on his third
voyage, an objective-minded contrast to the theoretical delusions of the other inhabitants of Laputa and Lagado.

Read an in-depth analysis of Lord Munodi.

 Yahoos
Unkempt humanlike beasts who live in servitude to the Houyhnhnms. Yahoos seem to belong to various ethnic
groups, since there are blond Yahoos as well as dark-haired and redheaded ones. The men are characterized by
their hairy bodies, and the women by their low-hanging breasts. They are naked, filthy, and extremely primitive
in their eating habits. Yahoos are not capable of government, and thus they are kept as servants to the
Houyhnhnms, pulling their carriages and performing manual tasks. They repel Gulliver with their lascivious
sexual appetites, especially when an eleven-year-old Yahoo girl attempts to rape Gulliver as he is bathing
naked. Yet despite Gulliver’s revulsion for these disgusting creatures, he ends his writings referring to himself
as a Yahoo, just as the Houyhnhnms do as they regretfully evict him from their realm. Thus, “Yahoo” becomes
another term for human, at least in the semideranged and self-loathing mind of Gulliver at the end of his fourth
journey.
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 Houyhnhnms
Rational horses who maintain a simple, peaceful society governed by reason and truthfulness—they do not even
have a word for “lie” in their language. Houyhnhnms are like ordinary horses, except that they are highly
intelligent and deeply wise. They live in a sort of socialist republic, with the needs of the community put before
individual desires. They are the masters of the Yahoos, the savage humanlike creatures in Houyhnhnmland. In
all, the Houyhnhnms have the greatest impact on Gulliver throughout all his four voyages. He is grieved to
leave them, not relieved as he is in leaving the other three lands, and back in England he relates better with his
horses than with his human family. The Houyhnhnms thus are a measure of the extent to which Gulliver has
become a misanthrope, or “human-hater”; he is certainly, at the end, a horse lover.

 Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master

The Houyhnhnm who first discovers Gulliver and takes him into his own home. Wary of Gulliver’s Yahoolike
appearance at first, the master is hesitant to make contact with him, but Gulliver’s ability to mimic the
Houyhnhnm’s own words persuades the master to protect Gulliver. The master’s domestic cleanliness,
propriety, and tranquil reasonableness of speech have an extraordinary impact on Gulliver. It is through this
horse that Gulliver is led to reevaluate the differences between humans and beasts and to question humanity’s
claims to rationality.

 Don Pedro de Mendez

The Portuguese captain who takes Gulliver back to Europe after he is forced to leave the land of the
Houyhnhnms. Don Pedro is naturally benevolent and generous, offering the half-crazed Gulliver his own best
suit of clothes to replace the tatters he is wearing. But Gulliver meets his generosity with repulsion, as he cannot
bear the company of Yahoos. By the end of the voyage, Don Pedro has won over Gulliver to the extent that he is
able to have a conversation with him, but the captain’s overall Yahoolike nature in Gulliver’s eyes alienates him
from Gulliver to the very end.

Read an in-depth analysis of Don Pedro de Mendez.

 Brobdingnagians
Giants whom Gulliver meets on his second voyage. Brobdingnagians are basically a reasonable and kindly
people governed by a sense of justice. Even the farmer who abuses Gulliver at the beginning is gentle with him,
and politely takes the trouble to say good-bye to him upon leaving him. The farmer’s daughter, Glumdalclitch,
gives Gulliver perhaps the most kindhearted treatment he receives on any of his voyages. The Brobdingnagians
do not exploit him for personal or political reasons, as the Lilliputians do, and his life there is one of satisfaction
and quietude. But the Brobdingnagians do treat Gulliver as a plaything. When he tries to speak seriously with
the king of Brobdingnag about England, the king dismisses the English as odious vermin, showing that deep
discussion is not possible for Gulliver here.

 Lilliputians and Blefuscudians

Two races of miniature people whom Gulliver meets on his first voyage. Lilliputians and Blefuscudians are
prone to conspiracies and jealousies, and while they treat Gulliver well enough materially, they are quick to take
advantage of him in political intrigues of various sorts. The two races have been in a longstanding war with each
over the interpretation of a reference in their common holy scripture to the proper way to eat eggs. Gulliver
helps the Lilliputians defeat the Blefuscudian navy, but he eventually leaves Lilliput and receives a warm
welcome in the court of Blefuscu, by which Swift satirizes the arbitrariness of international relations.

 Laputans
Absentminded intellectuals who live on the floating island of Laputa, encountered by Gulliver on his third
voyage. The Laputans are parodies of theoreticians, who have scant regard for any practical results of their own
research. They are so inwardly absorbed in their own thoughts that they must be shaken out of their meditations
by special servants called flappers, who shake rattles in their ears. During Gulliver’s stay among them, they do
not mistreat him, but are generally unpleasant and dismiss him as intellectually deficient. They do not care about
down-to-earth things like the dilapidation of their own houses, but worry intensely about abstract matters like
the trajectories of comets and the course of the sun. They are dependent in their own material needs on the land
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 below them, called Lagado, above which they hover by virtue of a magnetic field, and from which they
periodically raise up food supplies. In the larger context of Gulliver’s journeys, the Laputans are a parody of the
excesses of theoretical pursuits and the uselessness of purely abstract knowledge.

 Mary Burton Gulliver

Gulliver’s wife, whose perfunctory mention in the first paragraphs of Gulliver’s Travels demonstrates how
unsentimental and unemotional Gulliver is. He makes no reference to any affection for his wife, either here or
later in his travels when he is far away from her, and his detachment is so cool as to raise questions about his
ability to form human attachments. When he returns to England, she is merely one part of his former existence,
and he records no emotion even as she hugs him wildly. The most important facts about her in Gulliver’s mind
are her social origin and the income she generates.
Read an in-depth analysis of Mary Burton Gulliver.
 Richard Sympson
Gulliver’s cousin, self-proclaimed intimate friend, and the editor and publisher of Gulliver’s Travels. It was in
Richard Sympson’s name that Jonathan Swift arranged for the publication of his narrative, thus somewhat
mixing the fictional and actual worlds. Sympson is the fictional author of the prefatory note to Gulliver’s
Travels, entitled “The Publisher to the Readers.” This note justifies Sympson’s elimination of nearly half of the
original manuscript material on the grounds that it was irrelevant, a statement that Swift includes so as to allow
us to doubt Gulliver’s overall wisdom and ability to distinguish between important facts and trivial details.
 James Bates
An eminent London surgeon under whom Gulliver serves as an apprentice after graduating from Cambridge.
Bates helps get Gulliver his first job as a ship’s surgeon and then offers to set up a practice with him. After
Bates’s death, Gulliver has trouble maintaining the business, a failure that casts doubt on his competence,
though he himself has other explanations for the business’s failure. Bates is hardly mentioned in the travels,
though he is surely at least as responsible for Gulliver’s welfare as some of the more exotic figures Gulliver
meets. Nevertheless, Gulliver fleshes out figures such as the queen of Brobdingnag much more thoroughly in
his narrative, underscoring the sharp contrast between his reticence regarding England and his long-windedness
about foreigners.

 Abraham Pannell
The commander of the ship on which Gulliver first sails, the Swallow. Traveling to the Levant, or the eastern
Mediterranean, and beyond, Gulliver spends three and a half years on Pannell’s ship. Virtually nothing is
mentioned about Pannell, which heightens our sense that Gulliver’s fascination with exotic types is not matched
by any interest in his fellow countrymen.
 William Prichard
The master of the Antelope, the ship on which Gulliver embarks for the South Seas at the outset of his first
journey, in 1699. When the Antelope sinks, Gulliver is washed ashore on Lilliput. No details are given about the
personality of Prichard, and he is not important in Gulliver’s life or in the unfolding of the novel’s plot. That
Gulliver takes pains to name him accurately reinforces our impression that he is obsessive about facts but not
always reliable in assessing overall significance.
 Flimnap
The Lord High Treasurer of Lilliput, who conceives a jealous hatred for Gulliver when he starts believing that
his wife is having an affair with him. Flimnap is clearly paranoid, since the possibility of a love affair between
Gulliver and a Lilliputian is wildly unlikely. Flimnap is a portrait of the weaknesses of character to which any
human is prone but that become especially dangerous in those who wield great power.

 Reldresal
The Principal Secretary of Private Affairs in Lilliput, who explains to Gulliver the history of the political
tensions between the two principal parties in the realm, the High-Heels and the Low-Heels. Reldresal is more a
source of much-needed information for Gulliver than a well-developed personality, but he does display personal
courage and trust in allowing Gulliver to hold him in his palm while he talks politics. Within the convoluted
context of Lilliput’s factions and conspiracies, such friendliness reminds us that fond personal relations may still
exist even in this overheated political climate.

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 Skyresh Bolgolam
The High Admiral of Lilliput, who is the only member of the administration to oppose Gulliver’s liberation.
Gulliver imagines that Skyresh’s enmity is simply personal, though there is no apparent reason for such
hostility. Arguably, Skyresh’s hostility may be merely a tool to divert Gulliver from the larger system of
Lilliputian exploitation to which he is subjected.

 Tramecksan
Also known as the High-Heels, a Lilliputian political group reminiscent of the British Tories. Tramecksan
policies are said to be more agreeable to the ancient constitution of Lilliput, and while the High-Heels appear
greater in number than the Low-Heels, their power is lesser. Unlike the king, the crown prince is believed to
sympathize with the Tramecksan, wearing one low heel and one high heel, causing him to limp slightly.

 Slamecksan
The Low-Heels, a Lilliputian political group reminiscent of the British Whigs. The king has ordained that all
governmental administrators must be selected from this party, much to the resentment of the High-Heels of the
realm. Thus, while there are fewer Slamecksan than Tramecksan in Lilliput, their political power is greater. The
king’s own sympathies with the Slamecksan are evident in the slightly lower heels he wears at court.

Might Versus Right

Gulliver’s Travels implicitly poses the question of whether physical power or moral righteousness should be the
governing factor in social life. Gulliver experiences the advantages of physical might both as one who has it, as
a giant in Lilliput where he can defeat the Blefuscudian navy by virtue of his immense size, and as one who
does not have it, as a miniature visitor to Brobdingnag where he is harassed by the hugeness of everything from
insects to household pets. His first encounter with another society is one of entrapment, when he is physically
tied down by the Lilliputians; later, in Brobdingnag, he is enslaved by a farmer. He also observes physical force
used against others, as with the Houyhnhnms’ chaining up of the Yahoos.
But alongside the use of physical force, there are also many claims to power based on moral correctness. The
whole point of the egg controversy that has set Lilliput against Blefuscu is not merely a cultural difference but,
instead, a religious and moral issue related to the proper interpretation of a passage in their holy book. This
difference of opinion seems to justify, in their eyes at least, the warfare it has sparked. Similarly, the use of
physical force against the Yahoos is justified for the Houyhnhnms by their sense of moral superiority: they are
cleaner, better behaved, and more rational. But overall, the novel tends to show that claims to rule on the basis
of moral righteousness are often just as arbitrary as, and sometimes simply disguises for, simple physical
subjugation. The Laputans keep the lower land of Balnibarbi in check through force because they believe
themselves to be more rational, even though we might see them as absurd and unpleasant. Similarly, the ruling
elite of Balnibarbi believes itself to be in the right in driving Lord Munodi from power, although we perceive
that Munodi is the rational party. Claims to moral superiority are, in the end, as hard to justify as the random use
of physical force to dominate others.

The Individual Versus Society

Like many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands, Gulliver’s Travels explores the idea of utopia—an
imaginary model of the ideal community. The idea of a utopia is an ancient one, going back at least as far as the
description in Plato’s Republic of a city-state governed by the wise and expressed most famously in English by
Thomas More’s Utopia. Swift nods to both works in his own narrative, though his attitude toward utopia is
much more skeptical, and one of the main aspects he points out about famous historical utopias is the tendency
to privilege the collective group over the individual. The children of Plato’s Republic are raised communally,
with no knowledge of their biological parents, in the understanding that this system enhances social fairness.
Swift has the Lilliputians similarly raise their offspring collectively, but its results are not exactly utopian, since
Lilliput is torn by conspiracies, jealousies, and backstabbing.
The Houyhnhnms also practice strict family planning, dictating that the parents of two females should exchange
a child with a family of two males, so that the male-to-female ratio is perfectly maintained. Indeed, they come
closer to the utopian ideal than the Lilliputians in their wisdom and rational simplicity. But there is something
unsettling about the Houyhnhnms’ indistinct personalities and about how they are the only social group that
Gulliver encounters who do not have proper names. Despite minor physical differences, they are all so good and
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rational that they are more or less interchangeable, without individual identities. In their absolute fusion with
their society and lack of individuality, they are in a sense the exact opposite of Gulliver, who has hardly any
sense of belonging to his native society and exists only as an individual eternally wandering the seas. Gulliver’s
intense grief when forced to leave the Houyhnhnms may have something to do with his longing for union with a
community in which he can lose his human identity. In any case, such a union is impossible for him, since he is
not a horse, and all the other societies he visits make him feel alienated as well.

Gulliver’s Travels could in fact be described as one of the first novels of modern alienation, focusing on an
individual’s repeated failures to integrate into societies to which he does not belong. England itself is not much
of a homeland for Gulliver, and, with his surgeon’s business unprofitable and his father’s estate insufficient to
support him, he may be right to feel alienated from it. He never speaks fondly or nostalgically about England,
and every time he returns home, he is quick to leave again. Gulliver never complains explicitly about feeling
lonely, but the embittered and antisocial misanthrope we see at the end of the novel is clearly a profoundly
isolated individual. Thus, if Swift’s satire mocks the excesses of communal life, it may also mock the excesses
of individualism in its portrait of a miserable and lonely Gulliver talking to his horses at home in England.
The Limits of Human Understanding
The idea that humans are not meant to know everything and that all understanding has a natural limit is
important in Gulliver’s Travels. Swift singles out theoretical knowledge in particular for attack: his portrait of
the disagreeable and self-centered Laputans, who show blatant contempt for those who are not sunk in private
theorizing, is a clear satire against those who pride themselves on knowledge above all else. Practical
knowledge is also satirized when it does not produce results, as in the academy of Balnibarbi, where the
experiments for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers amount to nothing. Swift insists that there is a realm of
understanding into which humans are simply not supposed to venture. Thus his depictions of rational societies,
like Brobdingnag and Houyhnhnmland, emphasize not these people’s knowledge or understanding of abstract
ideas but their ability to live their lives in a wise and steady way.

W. Scott. Ivanhoe

It is a dark time for England. Four generations after the Norman conquest of the island, the tensions between
Saxons and Normans are at a peak; the two peoples even refuse to speak one another's languages. King Richard
is in an Austrian prison after having been captured on his way home from the Crusades; his avaricious brother,
Prince John, sits on the throne, and under his reign the Norman nobles have begun routinely abusing their
power. Saxon lands are capriciously repossessed, and many Saxon landowners are made into serfs. These
practices have enraged the Saxon nobility, particularly the fiery Cedric of Rotherwood. Cedric is so loyal to the
Saxon cause that he has disinherited his son Ivanhoe for following King Richard to war. Additionally, Ivanhoe
fell in love with Cedric's high-born ward Rowena, whom Cedric intends to marry to Athelstane, a descendent of
a long-dead Saxon king. Cedric hopes that the union will reawaken the Saxon royal line.

Unbeknownst to his father, Ivanhoe has recently returned to England disguised as a religious pilgrim. Assuming
a new disguise as the Disinherited Knight, he fights in the great tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. Here, with
the help of a mysterious Black Knight, he vanquishes his great enemy, the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and
wins the tournament. He names Rowena the Queen of Love and Beauty, and reveals his identity to the crowd.
But he is badly wounded and collapses on the field. In the meantime, the wicked Prince John has heard a rumor
that Richard is free from his Austrian prison. He and his advisors, Waldemar Fitzurse, Maurice de Bracy, and
Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, begin plotting how to stop Richard from returning to power in England.

John has a scheme to marry Rowena to de Bracy; unable to wait, de Bracy kidnaps Cedric's party on its way
home from the tournament, imprisoning the Saxons in Front-de-Boeuf's castle of Torquilstone. With the party
are Cedric, Rowena, and Athelstane, as well as Isaac and Rebecca, a Jewish father and daughter who have been
tending to Ivanhoe after his injury, and Ivanhoe himself. De Bracy attempts to convince Rowena to marry him,
while de Bois-Guilbert attempts to seduce Rebecca, who has fallen in love with Ivanhoe. Both men fail, and the
castle is attacked by a force led by the Black Knight who helped Ivanhoe at the tournament. Fighting with the
Black Knight are the legendary outlaws of the forest, Robin Hood and his merry men. The villains are defeated

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 and the prisoners are freed, but de Bois-Guilbert succeeds in kidnapping Rebecca. As the battle winds down,
Ulrica, a Saxon crone, lights the castle on fire, and it burns to the ground, engulfing both Ulrica and Front-de-
Boeuf.

At Templestowe, the stronghold of the Knights-Templars, de Bois-Guilbert comes under fire from his
commanders for bringing a Jew into their sacred fortress. It is speculated among the Templars that perhaps
Rebecca is a sorceress who has enchanted de Bois-Guilbert against his will; the Grand Master of the Templars
concurs and orders a trial for Rebecca. On the advice of de Bois-Guilbert, who has fallen in love with her,
Rebecca demands a trial-by-combat, and can do nothing but await a hero to defend her. To his dismay, de Bois-
Guilbert is appointed to fight for the Templars: if he wins, Rebecca will be killed, and if he loses, he himself
will die. At the last moment, Ivanhoe appears to defend Rebecca, but he is so exhausted from the journey that de
Bois-Guilbert unseats him in the first pass. But Ivanhoe wins a strange victory when de Bois-Guilbert falls dead
from his horse, killed by his own conflicting passions.

In the meantime, the Black Knight has defeated an ambush carried out by Waldemar Fitzurse and announced
himself as King Richard, returned to England at last. When Athelstane steps out of the way, Ivanhoe and
Rowena are married; Rebecca visits Rowena one last time to thank her for Ivanhoe's role in saving her life.
Rebecca and Isaac are sailing for their new home in Granada; Ivanhoe goes on to have a heroic career under
King Richard, until the king's untimely death puts an end to all his worldly projects.

 Wilfred of Ivanhoe
Known as Ivanhoe. The son of Cedric; a Saxon knight who is deeply loyal to King Richard I. Ivanhoe was
disinherited by his father for following Richard to the Crusades, but he won great glory in the fighting and has
been richly rewarded by the king. Ivanhoe is in love with his father's ward, the beautiful Rowena. He represents
the epitome of the knightly code of chivalry, heroism, and honor.

 King Richard I
The King of England and the head of the Norman royal line, the Plantagenets. He is known as "Richard the
Lion-Hearted" for his valor and courage in battle, and for his love of adventure. As king, Richard cares about his
people, but he has a reckless disposition and is something of a thrill-seeker. His courage and prowess are
beyond reproach, but he comes under criticism--even from his loyal knight Ivanhoe--for putting his love of
adventure ahead of the well-being of his subjects.

 Lady Rowena
The ward of Cedric the Saxon, a beautiful Saxon lady who is in love with Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe and Rowena are
prevented from marrying until the end of the book because Cedric would rather see Rowena married to
Athelstane--a match that could reawaken the Saxon royal line. Rowena represents the chivalric ideal of
womanhood: She is fair, chaste, virtuous, loyal, and mild-mannered. However, she shows some backbone in
defying her guardian by refusing to marry Athelstane.

 Rebecca
A beautiful Jewish maiden, the daughter of Isaac of York. Rebecca tends to Ivanhoe after he is wounded in the
tournament at Ashby and falls in love with him despite herself. Rebecca's love for Ivanhoe is in conflict with her
good sense; she knows that they can never marry (he is a Christian and she is a Jew), but she is drawn to him
nonetheless. Still, she restrains her feelings; Rebecca is a strong-willed woman with an extraordinary degree of
self-control. The novel's equivalent of a tragic heroine, she is among the most sympathetic characters in the
book.

 Cedric the Saxon

Ivanhoe's father, a powerful Saxon lord who has disinherited his son for following Richard to the Crusades.
Cedric is fiercely proud of his Saxon heritage, and his first priority is to the prospects of his people--hence his
desire to marry Rowena to Athelstane rather than to Ivanhoe. Cedric's unpolished manners make him the butt of
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 jokes among his Norman superiors, but he has a knack for making grand gestures to restore the balance--as
when he shocks Prince John by toasting Richard at John's tournament feast.

 Prince John
Richard's power-hungry and greedy brother, who sits on the throne of England in Richard's absence. John is a
weak and uninspiring ruler who lets himself be pushed around by his powerful Norman nobles. But his
tenacious desire to hold the throne makes a great deal of trouble for England; he aggravates tensions between
the Saxons and the Normans, and does everything he can to keep Richard in his Austrian prison. John's chief
adviser is Waldemar Fitzurse, and his allies include Maurice de Bracy and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf.

 Brian de Bois-Guilbert
A knight of the Templar Order, also known as the Knights-Templars. The Knights-Templars are a powerful
international military/religious organization ostensibly dedicated to the conquest of the Holy Land, but in reality
is often meddling in European politics. Brian de Bois-Guilbert is a formidable fighter, but he is a weak moralist
and often lets his temptations take control of him. Among the most complex characters in Ivanhoe, de Bois-
Guilbert begins the novel as a conventional villain--he and Ivanhoe are mortal enemies--but as the novel
progresses, his love for Rebecca brings out his more admirable qualities.
 Locksley
The leader of a gang of forest outlaws who rob from the rich and give to the poor, Locksley is soon revealed to
be none other than Robin Hood. Robin and his merry men help Richard to free the Saxon prisoners from
Torquilstone and later save the king from Waldemar Fitzurse's treacherous attack. A gallant, witty, and heroic
thief, Robin Hood adds an extra dash of adventure, excitement, and familiarity to the story of Ivanhoe--after all,
the character of Robin Hood was deeply enshrined in English legend long before Scott wrote his novel.
 Maurice de Bracy
A Norman knight who is allied to Prince John. John plans to marry de Bracy to Rowena, but de Bracy becomes
impatient and kidnaps her party on its way home from Ashby, imprisoning them in Front-de-Boeuf's stronghold
of Torquilstone. In most ways a cardboard villain, de Bracy experiences a strangely humanizing moment shortly
after he kidnaps the Saxons: When he tries to force Rowena to marry him, she begins to cry, and he is moved by
her tears. To his own surprise, he tries awkwardly to comfort her.

 Reginald Front-de-Boeuf
The ugliest and most brutal villain in the novel, Front-de-Boeuf is a Norman knight allied to Prince John. He
runs the stronghold of Torquilstone, where de Bracy brings his Saxon prisoners. Front-de-Boeuf threatens Isaac
with torture unless the Jew coughs up 1,000 silver pieces. Front-de-Boeuf is killed in the fight for Torquilstone.

 Isaac of York
Rebecca's father, a wealthy Jew. Isaac is a thoroughly stereotypical literary Jew, cut after the pattern of Shylock
in Shakespeare's ##The Merchant of Venice# an avaricious, somewhat bumbling, but ultimately kind-hearted
character who loves money more than anything in the world except his daughter.
 Waldemar Fitzurse
Prince John's chief adviser, who has no great love for the prince, but who has tied his political aspirations to
John's success. Fitzurse is a cool, calculating, and treacherous power-seeker, who often reacts calmly to news
that makes John panic. At the end of the novel, Fitzurse leads an unsuccessful ambush against King Richard and
is banished from England forever.

 Gurth
Cedric's swineherd, who becomes Ivanhoe's de facto squire. Gurth longs for nothing so much as his freedom,
which he finally obtains from Cedric after he helps to orchestrate the attack on Torquilstone.

 Wamba
Cedric's jester, a witty, incisive Saxon clown, whose barbed comments often mask nuggets of wry wisdom.

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 Prior Aymer
The abbot of a monastery, the prior is nonetheless addicted to good food and pleasure. Used to represent the
hypocrisies of the medieval church, Prior Aymer is a companion of Brian de Bois-Guilbert.

 Oswald
Cedric's porter.

 Athelstane
A high-born Saxon nobleman whom Cedric hopes to see married to Rowena, thinking that their union could
reawaken the Saxon royal line.

 The Friar
A merry monk who befriends King Richard in Robin Hood's forest. He is soon revealed to be none other than
the legendary Friar Tuck, a member of Robin Hood's band of merry men.

 Ulrica
The Saxon crone who has lived her life as a consort to the Norman rulers of Torquilstone. At the end of the
battle for the castle, she burns it to the ground, taunting Front-de-Boeuf and singing a weird death song as the
flames slowly engulf her.

 Lucas Beaumanoir
The stern, moralistic Grand Master of the Knights-Templars.

 Albert Malvoisin
The leader of the Templar stronghold of Templestowe. Malvoisin urges Brian de Bois-Guilbert to put aside his
love for Rebecca and stay the course of his career with the Templars.

 The Palmer
A religious pilgrim who wears a palm emblem to indicate that he has made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In
reality, the Palmer is Ivanhoe in his first disguise.

 The Disinherited Knight

The name under which Ivanhoe fights in the great tournament at Ashby, using a disguise because he still has not
revealed his presence in England.

 The Black Knight

The disguise King Richard uses during most of the novel, when he is still hiding his presence in England. As the
mysterious Black Knight, Richard is involved in a spate of adventures: He fights with Ivanhoe (also in disguise)
at the tournament, rescues the Saxon prisoners from Torquilstone, and meets Robin Hood and his merry men.

In Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott examines dispossession, or the depriving of home, possession, or security, on
several levels: national, individual, and cultural. On the national level the Normans have displaced the Saxons.

Pride and prejudice

The news that a wealthy young gentleman named Charles Bingley has rented the manor of Netherfield Park
causes a great stir in the nearby village of Longbourn, especially in the Bennet household. The Bennets have
five unmarried daughters—from oldest to youngest, Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia—and Mrs. Bennet
is desperate to see them all married. After Mr. Bennet pays a social visit to Mr. Bingley, the Bennets attend a
12
ball at which Mr. Bingley is present. He is taken with Jane and spends much of the evening dancing with her.
His close friend, Mr. Darcy, is less pleased with the evening and haughtily refuses to dance with Elizabeth,
which makes everyone view him as arrogant and obnoxious.

At social functions over subsequent weeks, however, Mr. Darcy finds himself increasingly attracted to
Elizabeth’s charm and intelligence. Jane’s friendship with Mr. Bingley also continues to burgeon, and Jane pays
a visit to the Bingley mansion. On her journey to the house she is caught in a downpour and catches ill, forcing
her to stay at Netherfield for several days. In order to tend to Jane, Elizabeth hikes through muddy fields and
arrives with a spattered dress, much to the disdain of the snobbish Miss Bingley, Charles Bingley’s sister. Miss
Bingley’s spite only increases when she notices that Darcy, whom she is pursuing, pays quite a bit of attention
to Elizabeth.

When Elizabeth and Jane return home, they find Mr. Collins visiting their household. Mr. Collins is a young
clergyman who stands to inherit Mr. Bennet’s property, which has been “entailed,” meaning that it can only be
passed down to male heirs. Mr. Collins is a pompous fool, though he is quite enthralled by the Bennet girls.
Shortly after his arrival, he makes a proposal of marriage to Elizabeth. She turns him down, wounding his pride.
Meanwhile, the Bennet girls have become friendly with militia officers stationed in a nearby town. Among them
is Wickham, a handsome young soldier who is friendly toward Elizabeth and tells her how Darcy cruelly
cheated him out of an inheritance.

At the beginning of winter, the Bingleys and Darcy leave Netherfield and return to London, much to Jane’s
dismay. A further shock arrives with the news that Mr. Collins has become engaged to Charlotte Lucas,
Elizabeth’s best friend and the poor daughter of a local knight. Charlotte explains to Elizabeth that she is getting
older and needs the match for financial reasons. Charlotte and Mr. Collins get married and Elizabeth promises to
visit them at their new home. As winter progresses, Jane visits the city to see friends (hoping also that she might
see Mr. Bingley). However, Miss Bingley visits her and behaves rudely, while Mr. Bingley fails to visit her at
all. The marriage prospects for the Bennet girls appear bleak.

That spring, Elizabeth visits Charlotte, who now lives near the home of Mr. Collins’s patron, Lady Catherine de
Bourgh, who is also Darcy’s aunt. Darcy calls on Lady Catherine and encounters Elizabeth, whose presence
leads him to make a number of visits to the Collins’s home, where she is staying. One day, he makes a shocking
proposal of marriage, which Elizabeth quickly refuses. She tells Darcy that she considers him arrogant and
unpleasant, then scolds him for steering Bingley away from Jane and disinheriting Wickham. Darcy leaves her
but shortly thereafter delivers a letter to her. In this letter, he admits that he urged Bingley to distance himself
from Jane, but claims he did so only because he thought their romance was not serious. As for Wickham, he
informs Elizabeth that the young officer is a liar and that the real cause of their disagreement was Wickham’s
attempt to elope with his young sister, Georgiana Darcy.

This letter causes Elizabeth to reevaluate her feelings about Darcy. She returns home and acts coldly toward
Wickham. The militia is leaving town, which makes the younger, rather man-crazy Bennet girls distraught.
Lydia manages to obtain permission from her father to spend the summer with an old colonel in Brighton, where
Wickham’s regiment will be stationed. With the arrival of June, Elizabeth goes on another journey, this time
with the Gardiners, who are relatives of the Bennets. The trip takes her to the North and eventually to the
neighborhood of Pemberley, Darcy’s estate. She visits Pemberley, after making sure that Darcy is away, and
delights in the building and grounds, while hearing from Darcy’s servants that he is a wonderful, generous
master. Suddenly, Darcy arrives and behaves cordially toward her. Making no mention of his proposal, he
entertains the Gardiners and invites Elizabeth to meet his sister.

Shortly thereafter, however, a letter arrives from home, telling Elizabeth that Lydia has eloped with Wickham
and that the couple is nowhere to be found, which suggests that they may be living together out of wedlock.
Fearful of the disgrace such a situation would bring on her entire family, Elizabeth hastens home. Mr. Gardiner
and Mr. Bennet go off to search for Lydia, but Mr. Bennet eventually returns home empty-handed. Just when all
hope seems lost, a letter comes from Mr. Gardiner saying that the couple has been found and that Wickham has
agreed to marry Lydia in exchange for an annual income. The Bennets are convinced that Mr. Gardiner has paid
13
off Wickham, but Elizabeth learns that the source of the money, and of her family’s salvation, was none other
than Darcy.

Now married, Wickham and Lydia return to Longbourn briefly, where Mr. Bennet treats them coldly. They then
depart for Wickham’s new assignment in the North of England. Shortly thereafter, Bingley returns to
Netherfield and resumes his courtship of Jane. Darcy goes to stay with him and pays visits to the Bennets but
makes no mention of his desire to marry Elizabeth. Bingley, on the other hand, presses his suit and proposes to
Jane, to the delight of everyone but Bingley’s haughty sister. While the family celebrates, Lady Catherine de
Bourgh pays a visit to Longbourn. She corners Elizabeth and says that she has heard that Darcy, her nephew, is
planning to marry her. Since she considers a Bennet an unsuitable match for a Darcy, Lady Catherine demands
that Elizabeth promise to refuse him. Elizabeth spiritedly refuses, saying she is not engaged to Darcy, but she
will not promise anything against her own happiness. A little later, Elizabeth and Darcy go out walking together
and he tells her that his feelings have not altered since the spring. She tenderly accepts his proposal, and both
Jane and Elizabeth are married.

Love
Pride and Prejudice contains one of the most cherished love stories in English literature: the courtship between
Darcy and Elizabeth. As in any good love story, the lovers must elude and overcome numerous stumbling
blocks, beginning with the tensions caused by the lovers’ own personal qualities. Elizabeth’s pride makes her
misjudge Darcy on the basis of a poor first impression, while Darcy’s prejudice against Elizabeth’s poor social
standing blinds him, for a time, to her many virtues. (Of course, one could also say that Elizabeth is guilty of
prejudice and Darcy of pride—the title cuts both ways.)
Austen, meanwhile, poses countless smaller obstacles to the realization of the love between Elizabeth and
Darcy, including Lady Catherine’s attempt to control her nephew, Miss Bingley’s snobbery, Mrs. Bennet’s
idiocy, and Wickham’s deceit. In each case, anxieties about social connections, or the desire for better social
connections, interfere with the workings of love. Darcy and Elizabeth’s realization of a mutual and tender love
seems to imply that Austen views love as something independent of these social forces, as something that can be
captured if only an individual is able to escape the warping effects of a hierarchical society.

Austen does sound some more realist (or, one could say, cynical) notes about love, using the character of
Charlotte Lucas, who marries the buffoon Mr. Collins for his money, to demonstrate that the heart does not
always dictate marriage. Yet with her central characters, Austen suggests that true love is a force separate from
society and one that can conquer even the most difficult of circumstances.

Reputation
Pride and Prejudice depicts a society in which a woman’s reputation is of the utmost importance. A woman is
expected to behave in certain ways. Stepping outside the social norms makes her vulnerable to ostracism. This
theme appears in the novel, when Elizabeth walks to Netherfield and arrives with muddy skirts, to the shock of
the reputation-conscious Miss Bingley and her friends. At other points, the ill-mannered, ridiculous behavior of
Mrs. Bennet gives her a bad reputation with the more refined (and snobbish) Darcys and Bingleys.
Austen pokes gentle fun at the snobs in these examples, but later in the novel, when Lydia elopes with Wickham
and lives with him out of wedlock, the author treats reputation as a very serious matter. By becoming
Wickham’s lover without benefit of marriage, Lydia clearly places herself outside the social pale, and her
disgrace threatens the entire Bennet family. The fact that Lydia’s judgment, however terrible, would likely have
condemned the other Bennet sisters to marriageless lives seems grossly unfair. Why should Elizabeth’s
reputation suffer along with Lydia’s? Darcy’s intervention on the Bennets’ behalf thus becomes all the more
generous, but some readers might resent that such an intervention was necessary at all. If Darcy’s money had
failed to convince Wickham to marry Lydia, would Darcy have still married Elizabeth? Does his transcendence
of prejudice extend that far? The happy ending of Pride and Prejudice is certainly emotionally satisfying, but in
many ways it leaves the theme of reputation, and the importance placed on reputation, unexplored. One can ask
of Pride and Prejudice, to what extent does it critique social structures, and to what extent does it simply accept
their inevitability?
Class
The theme of class is related to reputation, in that both reflect the strictly regimented nature of life for the
middle and upper classes in Regency England. The lines of class are strictly drawn. While the Bennets, who are
14
middle class, may socialize with the upper-class Bingleys and Darcys, they are clearly their social inferiors and
are treated as such. Austen satirizes this kind of class-consciousness, particularly in the character of Mr. Collins,
who spends most of his time toadying to his upper-class patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Though Mr. Collins offers an extreme example, he is not the only one to hold such views. His conception of the
importance of class is shared, among others, by Mr. Darcy, who believes in the dignity of his lineage; Miss
Bingley, who dislikes anyone not as socially accepted as she is; and Wickham, who will do anything he can to
get enough money to raise himself into a higher station. Mr. Collins’s views are merely the most extreme and
obvious. The satire directed at Mr. Collins is therefore also more subtly directed at the entire social hierarchy
and the conception of all those within it at its correctness, in complete disregard of other, more worthy virtues.

Through the Darcy-Elizabeth and Bingley-Jane marriages, Austen shows the power of love and happiness to
overcome class boundaries and prejudices, thereby implying that such prejudices are hollow, unfeeling, and
unproductive. Of course, this whole discussion of class must be made with the understanding that Austen herself
is often criticized as being a classist: she doesn’t really represent anyone from the lower classes; those servants
she does portray are generally happy with their lot. Austen does criticize class structure, but only a limited slice
of that structure.

Family
Family is an integral theme in the novel. All of the characters operate within networks of family connections
that shape their decisions and perspectives. For the female characters in particular, the influence and behavior of
their family members is a significant factor in their lives. Because “the business of [Mrs. Bennet’s] life was to
get her daughters married”, the Bennet sisters constantly have to navigate their mother’s plans and schemes.
While male characters like Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley have much more social and financial independence, they
still rely on the judgment and opinions of female family members like Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de
Bourgh. Individuals are judged according to the behavior of their family members, which is why Darcy points
out to Lizzy that he is doing her a favor by proposing even though she comes with embarrassing family
connections. The theme of family shows that individuals never lead totally autonomous lives, and that
individual actions have wider communal implications.

Integrity
Elizabeth Bennet considers herself to have very high standards of integrity, and she is often frustrated and
disappointed by the way she sees others behaving. She complains bitterly to her sister, “The more I see of the
world, the more am I dissatisfied with it, and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human
characters.” She behaves in ways she considers consistent with her definition of integrity by refusing to marry
both Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy (when he proposes the first time): Elizabeth thinks it is very important to only
marry a man she loves and respects, despite the pressure to achieve economic security.

By the end of the novel, Lizzy's commitment to integrity has been rewarded because she marries a partner who
will truly make her happy. She has also come to see that she can sometimes be too rigid and judge too quickly,
since she was initially mistaken about the nature and ethics of Wickham and Darcy. The novel endorses the
importance of integrity, but it also reminds readers not to be too quick to pass judgment on who has it and who
doesn’t.

Gender
Gender is a key theme in Pride and Prejudice. The story takes place at a time when gender roles were quite
rigid, and men and women had a very different set of options and influences. Marriage is a pressing question for
female characters like Charlotte Lucas and the Bennet sisters because marriage is the only way women can
achieve economic stability and autonomy. As upper-class women, they would not have been able to work to
earn a living, or live independently. Marriage offered one of the only ways to move beyond their birth families.
However, a woman’s marriageability relied on an impeccable reputation for chastity, and for women like
Georgiana Darcy or Lydia Bennet, a reckless decision to trust the wrong man could permanently ruin their
future prospects. Lydia’s elopement causes Lizzy to exclaim with horror that “she is lost forever.” If Lydia is
living with Wickham without being married to him, her reputation will be destroyed.
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Elizabeth Bennet
The novel’s protagonist. The second daughter of Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth is the most intelligent and sensible of
the five Bennet sisters. She is well read and quick-witted, with a tongue that occasionally proves too sharp for
her own good. Her realization of Darcy’s essential goodness eventually triumphs over her initial prejudice
against him.

Read an in-depth analysis of Elizabeth Bennet.

Fitzwilliam Darcy
A wealthy gentleman, the master of Pemberley, and the nephew of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though Darcy is
intelligent and honest, his excess of pride causes him to look down on his social inferiors. Over the course of the
novel, he tempers his class-consciousness and learns to admire and love Elizabeth for her strong character.

Read an in-depth analysis of Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Jane Bennet
The eldest and most beautiful Bennet sister. Jane is more reserved and gentler than Elizabeth. The easy
pleasantness with which she and Bingley interact contrasts starkly with the mutual distaste that marks the
encounters between Elizabeth and Darcy.

Read an in-depth analysis of Jane Bennet.

Charles Bingley
Darcy’s considerably wealthy best friend. Bingley’s purchase of Netherfield, an estate near the Bennets, serves
as the impetus for the novel. He is a genial, well-intentioned gentleman, whose easygoing nature contrasts with
Darcy’s initially discourteous demeanor. He is blissfully uncaring about class differences.

Read an in-depth analysis of Charles Bingley.

Mr. Bennet
The patriarch of the Bennet family, a gentleman of modest income with five unmarried daughters. Mr. Bennet
has a sarcastic, cynical sense of humor that he uses to purposefully irritate his wife. Though he loves his
daughters (Elizabeth in particular), he often fails as a parent, preferring to withdraw from the never-ending
marriage concerns of the women around him rather than offer help.

Read an in-depth analysis of Mr. Bennet.

Mrs. Bennet
Mr. Bennet’s wife, a foolish, noisy woman whose only goal in life is to see her daughters married. Because of
her low breeding and often unbecoming behavior, Mrs. Bennet often repels the very suitors whom she tries to
attract for her daughters.

Read an in-depth analysis of Mrs. Bennet.

George Wickham
A handsome, fortune-hunting militia officer. Wickham’s good looks and charm attract Elizabeth initially, but
Darcy’s revelation about Wickham’s disreputable past clues her in to his true nature and simultaneously draws
her closer to Darcy.

Lydia Bennet
The youngest Bennet sister, she is gossipy, immature, and self-involved. Unlike Elizabeth, Lydia flings herself
headlong into romance and ends up running off with Wickham.

Read an in-depth analysis of Lydia Bennet.

Mr. Collins
A pompous, generally idiotic clergyman who stands to inherit Mr. Bennet’s property. Mr. Collins’s own social
status is nothing to brag about, but he takes great pains to let everyone and anyone know that Lady Catherine de
Bourgh serves as his patroness. He is the worst combination of snobbish and obsequious.

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Miss Bingley
Bingley’s snobbish sister. Miss Bingley bears inordinate disdain for Elizabeth’s middle-class background. Her
vain attempts to garner Darcy’s attention cause Darcy to admire Elizabeth’s self-possessed character even more.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

A rich, bossy noblewoman; Mr. Collins’s patron and Darcy’s aunt. Lady Catherine epitomizes class snobbery,
especially in her attempts to order the middle-class Elizabeth away from her well-bred nephew.

Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner

Mrs. Bennet’s brother and his wife. The Gardiners, caring, nurturing, and full of common sense, often prove to
be better parents to the Bennet daughters than Mr. Bennet and his wife.

Charlotte Lucas
Elizabeth’s dear friend. Pragmatic where Elizabeth is romantic, and also six years older than Elizabeth,
Charlotte does not view love as the most vital component of a marriage. She is more interested in having a
comfortable home. Thus, when Mr. Collins proposes, she accepts.

Read an in-depth analysis of Charlotte Lucas.

Georgiana Darcy
Darcy’s sister. She is immensely pretty and just as shy. She has great skill at playing the pianoforte.

Mary Bennet
The middle Bennet sister, bookish and pedantic.

Catherine Bennet
The fourth Bennet sister. Like Lydia, she is girlishly enthralled with the soldiers.

Ch. Dickens. Oliver Twist.

Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse in 1830s England. His mother, whose name no one knows, is found on the
street and dies just after Oliver’s birth. Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in a badly run home for
young orphans and then is transferred to a workhouse for adults. After the other boys bully Oliver into asking
for more gruel at the end of a meal, Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle, offers five pounds to anyone who will take
the boy away from the workhouse. Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish chimney sweep and is
eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. When the undertaker’s other apprentice, Noah
Claypole, makes disparaging comments about Oliver’s mother, Oliver attacks him and incurs the Sowerberrys’
wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away at dawn and travels toward London.

Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter
in the London house of his benefactor, Fagin. It turns out that Fagin is a career criminal who trains orphan boys
to pick pockets for him. After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing mission with two other
boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an elderly gentleman, Oliver is horrified and runs off. He
is caught but narrowly escapes being convicted of the theft. Mr. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was
stolen, takes the feverish Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health. Mr. Brownlow is struck by Oliver’s
resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home,
but two young adults in Fagin’s gang, Bill Sikes and his lover Nancy, capture Oliver and return him to Fagin.

Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes,
is taken in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose. They grow fond of
Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named
Monks are set on recapturing Oliver. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Oliver’s mother left behind a gold locket
when she died. Monks obtains and destroys that locket. When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets
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 secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagin’s designs, but a member of Fagin’s gang overhears the
conversation. When word of Nancy’s disclosure reaches Sikes, he brutally murders Nancy and flees London.
Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently hangs himself while trying to escape.

Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts Monks and wrings the truth about
Oliver’s parentage from him. It is revealed that Monks is Oliver’s half brother. Their father, Mr. Leeford, was
unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair with Oliver’s mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks has been
pursuing Oliver all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived of his share of the family
inheritance. Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to sign over Oliver’s share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered that
Rose is Agnes’s younger sister, hence Oliver’s aunt. Fagin is hung for his crimes. Finally, Mr. Brownlow adopts
Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside.

 Oliver Twist
The novel’s protagonist. Oliver is an orphan born in a workhouse, and Dickens uses his situation to criticize
public policy toward the poor in 1830s England. Oliver is between nine and twelve years old when the main
action of the novel occurs. Though treated with cruelty and surrounded by coarseness for most of his life, he is a
pious, innocent child, and his charms draw the attention of several wealthy benefactors. His true identity is the
central mystery of the novel.
Read an in-depth analysis of Oliver Twist.
 Fagin
A conniving career criminal. Fagin takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him. He is
also a buyer of other people’s stolen goods. He rarely commits crimes himself, preferring to employ others to
commit them—and often suffer legal retribution—in his place. Dickens’s portrait of Fagin displays the
influence of anti-Semitic stereotypes.

Read an in-depth analysis of Fagin.

 Nancy
A young prostitute and one of Fagin’s former child pickpockets. Nancy is also Bill Sikes’s lover. Her love for
Sikes and her sense of moral decency come into conflict when Sikes abuses Oliver. Despite her criminal
lifestyle, she is among the noblest characters in the novel. In effect, she gives her life for Oliver when Sikes
murders her for revealing Monks’s plots.

Read an in-depth analysis of Nancy.

 Rose Maylie
Agnes Fleming’s sister, raised by Mrs. Maylie after the death of Rose’s father. A beautiful, compassionate, and
forgiving young woman, Rose is the novel’s model of female virtue. She establishes a loving relationship with
Oliver even before it is revealed that the two are related.

 Mr. Brownlow
A well-off, erudite gentleman who serves as Oliver’s first benefactor. Mr. Brownlow owns a portrait of Agnes
Fleming and was engaged to Mr. Leeford’s sister when she died. Throughout the novel, he behaves with
compassion and common sense and emerges as a natural leader.

 Monks
A sickly, vicious young man, prone to violent fits and teeming with inexplicable hatred. With Fagin, he schemes
to give Oliver a bad reputation.

 Bill Sikes
A brutal professional burglar brought up in Fagin’s gang. Sikes is Nancy's pimp and lover, and he treats both
her and his dog Bull’s-eye with an odd combination of cruelty and grudging affection. His murder of Nancy is
the most heinous of the many crimes that occur in the novel.

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 Mr. Bumble
The pompous, self-important beadle—a minor church official—for the workhouse where Oliver is born. Though
Mr. Bumble preaches Christian morality, he behaves without compassion toward the paupers under his care.
Dickens mercilessly satirizes his self-righteousness, greed, hypocrisy, and folly, of which his name is an
obvious symbol.

 Agnes Fleming
Oliver’s mother. After falling in love with and becoming pregnant by Mr. Leeford, she chooses to die
anonymously in a workhouse rather than stain her family’s reputation. A retired naval officer’s daughter, she
was a beautiful, loving woman. Oliver’s face closely resembles hers.

 Mr. Leeford
Oliver and Monks’s father, who dies long before the events of the novel. He was an intelligent, high-minded
man whose family forced him into an unhappy marriage with a wealthy woman. He eventually separated from
his wife and had an illicit love affair with Agnes Fleming. He intended to flee the country with Agnes but died
before he could do so.

 Mr. Losberne
Mrs. Maylie’s family physician. A hot-tempered but good-hearted old bachelor, Mr. Losberne is fiercely loyal
to the Maylies and, eventually, to Oliver.

 Mrs. Maylie
A kind, wealthy older woman, the mother of Harry Maylie and adoptive “aunt” of Rose.

 Harry Maylie
Mrs. Maylie’s son. Harry is a dashing young man with grand political ambitions and career prospects, which he
eventually gives up to marry Rose.

 The Artful Dodger

The cleverest of Fagin’s pickpockets. The Dodger’s real name is Jack Dawkins. Though no older than Oliver,
the Dodger talks and dresses like a grown man. He introduces Oliver to Fagin.

 Charley Bates
One of Fagin’s pickpockets. Charley is ready to laugh at anything.

 Old Sally
An elderly pauper who serves as the nurse at Oliver’s birth. Old Sally steals Agnes’s gold locket, the only clue
to Oliver’s identity.

 Mrs. Corney
The matron of the workhouse where Oliver is born. Mrs. Corney is hypocritical, callous, and materialistic. After
she marries Mr. Bumble, she hounds him mercilessly.

 Noah Claypole
A charity boy and Mr. Sowerberry’s apprentice. Noah is an overgrown, cowardly bully who mistreats Oliver
and eventually joins Fagin’s gang.

 Charlotte

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 The Sowerberrys’ maid. Charlotte becomes romantically involved with Noah Claypole and follows him about
slavishly.

 Toby Crackit
One of Fagin and Sikes’s associates, crass and not too bright. Toby participates in the attempted burglary of
Mrs. Maylie’s home.

 Mrs. Bedwin
Mr. Brownlow’s kindhearted housekeeper. Mrs. Bedwin is unwilling to believe Mr. Bumble’s negative report of
Oliver’s character.

 Bull’s-eye
Bill Sikes’s dog. As vicious as his master, Bull’s-eye functions as Sikes’s alter ego.

 Monks’s mother
An heiress who lived a decadent life and alienated her husband, Mr. Leeford. Monks’s mother destroyed Mr.
Leeford’s will, which left part of his property to Oliver. Much of Monks’s nastiness is presumably inherited
from her.

 Mr. Sowerberry
The undertaker to whom Oliver is apprenticed. Though Mr. Sowerberry makes a grotesque living arranging cut-
rate burials for paupers, he is a decent man who is kind to Oliver.

 Mrs. Sowerberry
Sowerberry’s wife. Mrs. Sowerberry is a mean, judgmental woman who henpecks her husband.

 Mr. Grimwig
Brownlow’s pessimistic, curmudgeonly friend. Mr. Grimwig is essentially good-hearted, and his pessimism is
mostly just a provocative character quirk.

 Mr. Giles
Mrs. Maylie’s loyal, though somewhat pompous, butler.

 Mr. Brittles
A sort of handyman for Mrs. Maylie’s estate. It is implied that Mr. Brittles is slightly mentally handicapped.

 Mrs. Mann
The superintendent of the juvenile workhouse where Oliver is raised. Mrs. Mann physically abuses and half-
starves the children in her care.

 Mr. Gamfield
A brutal chimney sweep. Oliver almost becomes Mr. Gamfield’s apprentice.

 Bet
One of Fagin’s former child pickpockets, now a prostitute.

 Mr. Fang

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 The harsh, irrational, power-hungry magistrate who presides over Oliver’s trial for pickpocketing.

 Barney
One of Fagin’s criminal associates. Like Fagin, Barney is Jewish.

 Duff and Blathers

Two bumbling police officers who investigate the attempted burglary of Mrs. Maylie’s home.

 Tom Chitling
A rather dim member of Fagin’s gang. Tom has served time in jail for doing Fagin’s bidding.

The Failure of Charity

Much of the first part of Oliver Twist challenges the organizations of charity run by the church and the
government in Dickens’s time. The system Dickens describes was put into place by the Poor Law of 1834,
which stipulated that the poor could only receive government assistance if they moved into government
workhouses. Residents of those workhouses were essentially inmates whose rights were severely curtailed by a
host of onerous regulations. Labor was required, families were almost always separated, and rations of food and
clothing were meager. The workhouses operated on the principle that poverty was the consequence of laziness
and that the dreadful conditions in the workhouse would inspire the poor to better their own circumstances. Yet
the economic dislocation of the Industrial Revolution made it impossible for many to do so, and the workhouses
did not provide any means for social or economic betterment. Furthermore, as Dickens points out, the officials
who ran the workhouses blatantly violated the values they preached to the poor. Dickens describes with great
sarcasm the greed, laziness, and arrogance of charitable workers like Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Mann. In general,
charitable institutions only reproduced the awful conditions in which the poor would live anyway. As Dickens
puts it, the poor choose between “being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it.”
The Folly of Individualism
With the rise of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, individualism was very much in vogue as a
philosophy. Victorian capitalists believed that society would run most smoothly if individuals looked out for
their own interests. Ironically, the clearest pronunciation of this philosophy comes not from a legitimate
businessman but from Fagin, who operates in the illicit businesses of theft and prostitution. He tells Noah
Claypole that “a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in
company.” In other words, the group’s interests are best maintained if every individual looks out for “number
one,” or himself. The folly of this philosophy is demonstrated at the end of the novel, when Nancy turns against
Monks, Charley Bates turns against Sikes, and Monks turns against Mrs. Corney. Fagin’s unstable family, held
together only by the self-interest of its members, is juxtaposed to the little society formed by Oliver, Brownlow,
Rose Maylie, and their many friends. This second group is bound together not by concerns of self-interest but
by “strong affection and humanity of heart,” the selfless devotion to each other that Dickens sees as the
prerequisite for “perfect happiness.”

Purity in a Corrupt City

Throughout the novel, Dickens confronts the question of whether the terrible environments he depicts have the
power to “blacken [the soul] and change its hue for ever.” By examining the fates of most of the characters, we
can assume that his answer is that they do not. Certainly, characters like Sikes and Fagin seem to have sustained
permanent damage to their moral sensibilities. Yet even Sikes has a conscience, which manifests itself in the
apparition of Nancy’s eyes that haunts him after he murders her. Charley Bates maintains enough of a sense of
decency to try to capture Sikes. Of course, Oliver is above any corruption, though the novel removes him from
unhealthy environments relatively early in his life. Most telling of all is Nancy, who, though she considers
herself “lost almost beyond redemption,” ends up making the ultimate sacrifice for a child she hardly knows. In
contrast, Monks, perhaps the novel’s most inhuman villain, was brought up amid wealth and comfort.

The Countryside Idealized

All the injustices and privations suffered by the poor in Oliver Twist occur in cities—either the great city of
London or the provincial city where Oliver is born. When the Maylies take Oliver to the countryside, he
21
discovers a “new existence.” Dickens asserts that even people who have spent their entire lives in “close and
noisy places” are likely, in the last moments of their lives, to find comfort in half--imagined memories “of sky,
and hill and plain.” Moreover, country scenes have the potential to “purify our thoughts” and erase some of the
vices that develop in the city. Hence, in the country, “the poor people [are] so neat and clean,” living a life that
is free of the squalor that torments their urban counterparts. Oliver and his new family settle in a small village at
the novel’s end, as if a happy ending would not be possible in the city. Dickens’s portrait of rural life in Oliver
Twist is more approving yet far less realistic than his portrait of urban life. This fact does not contradict, but
rather supports, the general estimation of Dickens as a great urban writer. It is precisely Dickens’s distance from
the countryside that allows him to idealize it.

E. Bronte. Wuthering Heights

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 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;
22
 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.

 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 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.

Read an in-depth analysis of Heathcliff.

 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.

Read an in-depth analysis of Catherine.

 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

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 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.

 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

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 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.

The Destructiveness of a Love That Never Changes

Catherine and Heathcliff’s passion for one another seems to be the center of Wuthering 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

25
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 Heights presents 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 in Wuthering 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”).

O. Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In the stately London home of his aunt, Lady Brandon, the well-known artist Basil Hallward meets Dorian
Gray. Dorian is a cultured, wealthy, and impossibly beautiful young man who immediately captures Basil’s
artistic imagination. Dorian sits for several portraits, and Basil often depicts him as an ancient Greek hero or a
mythological figure. When the novel opens, the artist is completing his first portrait of Dorian as he truly is, but,
as he admits to his friend Lord Henry Wotton, the painting disappoints him because it reveals too much of his
feeling for his subject. Lord Henry, a famous wit who enjoys scandalizing his friends by celebrating youth,
beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure, disagrees, claiming that the portrait is Basil’s masterpiece. Dorian
arrives at the studio, and Basil reluctantly introduces him to Lord Henry, who he fears will have a damaging
influence on the impressionable, young Dorian.

Basil’s fears are well founded; before the end of their first conversation, Lord Henry upsets Dorian with a
speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth. Worried that these, his most impressive characteristics,
are fading day by day, Dorian curses his portrait, which he believes will one day remind him of the beauty he
will have lost. In a fit of distress, he pledges his soul if only the painting could bear the burden of age and
infamy, allowing him to stay forever young. After Dorian’s outbursts, Lord Henry reaffirms his desire to own
the portrait; however, Basil insists the portrait belongs to Dorian.

Over the next few weeks, Lord Henry’s influence over Dorian grows stronger. The youth becomes a disciple of
the “new Hedonism” and proposes to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He falls in love with Sibyl
Vane, a young actress who performs in a theater in London’s slums. He adores her acting; she, in turn, refers to
him as “Prince Charming” and refuses to heed the warnings of her brother, James Vane, that Dorian is no good
for her. Overcome by her emotions for Dorian, Sibyl decides that she can no longer act, wondering how she can

26
pretend to love on the stage now that she has experienced the real thing. Dorian, who loves Sibyl because of her
ability to act, cruelly breaks his engagement with her. After doing so, he returns home to notice that his face in
Basil’s portrait of him has changed: it now sneers. Frightened that his wish for his likeness in the painting to
bear the ill effects of his behavior has come true and that his sins will be recorded on the canvas, he resolves to
make amends with Sibyl the next day. The following afternoon, however, Lord Henry brings news that Sibyl
has killed herself. At Lord Henry’s urging, Dorian decides to consider her death a sort of artistic triumph—she
personified tragedy—and to put the matter behind him. Meanwhile, Dorian hides his portrait in a remote upper
room of his house, where no one other than he can watch its transformation.
Lord Henry gives Dorian a book that describes the wicked exploits of a nineteenth-century Frenchman; it
becomes Dorian’s bible as he sinks ever deeper into a life of sin and corruption. He lives a life devoted to
garnering new experiences and sensations with no regard for conventional standards of morality or the
consequences of his actions. Eighteen years pass. Dorian’s reputation suffers in circles of polite London society,
where rumors spread regarding his scandalous exploits. His peers nevertheless continue to accept him because
he remains young and beautiful. The figure in the painting, however, grows increasingly wizened and hideous.
On a dark, foggy night, Basil Hallward arrives at Dorian’s home to confront him about the rumors that plague
his reputation. The two argue, and Dorian eventually offers Basil a look at his (Dorian’s) soul. He shows Basil
the now-hideous portrait, and Hallward, horrified, begs him to repent. Dorian claims it is too late for penance
and kills Basil in a fit of rage.

In order to dispose of the body, Dorian employs the help of an estranged friend, a doctor, whom he blackmails.
The night after the murder, Dorian makes his way to an opium den, where he encounters James Vane, who
attempts to avenge Sibyl’s death. Dorian escapes to his country estate. While entertaining guests, he notices
James Vane peering in through a window, and he becomes wracked by fear and guilt. When a hunting party
accidentally shoots and kills Vane, Dorian feels safe again. He resolves to amend his life but cannot muster the
courage to confess his crimes, and the painting now reveals his supposed desire to repent for what it is—
hypocrisy. In a fury, Dorian picks up the knife he used to stab Basil Hallward and attempts to destroy the
painting. There is a crash, and his servants enter to find the portrait, unharmed, showing Dorian Gray as a
beautiful young man. On the floor lies the body of their master—an old man, horribly wrinkled and disfigured,
with a knife plunged into his heart.

The Purpose of Art

When The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890, it was decried
as immoral. In revising the text the following year, Wilde included a preface, which serves as a useful
explanation of his philosophy of art. The purpose of art, according to this series of epigrams, is to have no
purpose. In order to understand this claim fully, one needs to consider the moral climate of Wilde’s time and the
Victorian sensibility regarding art and morality. The Victorians believed that art could be used as a tool for
social education and moral enlightenment, as illustrated in works by writers such as Charles Dickens and
George Gissing. The aestheticism movement, of which Wilde was a major proponent, sought to free art from
this responsibility. The aestheticists were motivated as much by a contempt for bourgeois morality—a
sensibility embodied in Dorian Gray by Lord Henry, whose every word seems designed to shock the ethical
certainties of the burgeoning middle class—as they were by the belief that art need not possess any other
purpose than being beautiful.
If this philosophy informed Wilde’s life, we must then consider whether his only novel bears it out. The two
works of art that dominate the novel—Basil’s painting and the mysterious yellow book that Lord Henry gives
Dorian—are presented in the vein more of Victorian sensibilities than of aesthetic ones. That is, both the portrait
and the French novel serve a purpose: the first acts as a type of mysterious mirror that shows Dorian the
physical dissipation his own body has been spared, while the second acts as something of a road map, leading
the young man farther along the path toward infamy. While we know nothing of the circumstances of the yellow
book’s composition, Basil’s state of mind while painting Dorian’s portrait is clear. Later in the novel, he
advocates that all art be “unconscious, ideal, and remote.” His portrait of Dorian, however, is anything but.
Thus, Basil’s initial refusal to exhibit the work results from his belief that it betrays his idolization of his
subject. Of course, one might consider that these breaches of aesthetic philosophy mold The Picture of Dorian
Gray into something of a cautionary tale: these are the prices that must be paid for insisting that art reveals the
artist or a moral lesson. But this warning is, in itself, a moral lesson, which perhaps betrays the impossibility of
Wilde’s project. If, as Dorian observes late in the novel, the imagination orders the chaos of life and invests it
with meaning, then art, as the fruit of the imagination, cannot help but mean something. Wilde may have
27
 succeeded in freeing his art from the confines of Victorian morality, but he has replaced it with a doctrine that
is, in its own way, just as restrictive.
The Supremacy of Youth and Beauty
The first principle of aestheticism, the philosophy of art by which Oscar Wilde lived, is that art serves no other
purpose than to offer beauty. Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, beauty reigns. It is a means to revitalize
the wearied senses, as indicated by the effect that Basil’s painting has on the cynical Lord Henry. It is also a
means of escaping the brutalities of the world: Dorian distances himself, not to mention his consciousness, from
the horrors of his actions by devoting himself to the study of beautiful things—music, jewels, rare tapestries. In
a society that prizes beauty so highly, youth and physical attractiveness become valuable commodities. Lord
Henry reminds Dorian of as much upon their first meeting, when he laments that Dorian will soon enough lose
his most precious attributes. In Chapter Seventeen, the Duchess of Monmouth suggests to Lord Henry that he
places too much value on these things; indeed, Dorian’s eventual demise confirms her suspicions. For although
beauty and youth remain of utmost importance at the end of the novel—the portrait is, after all, returned to its
original form—the novel suggests that the price one must pay for them is exceedingly high. Indeed, Dorian
gives nothing less than his soul.
The Superficial Nature of Society
It is no surprise that a society that prizes beauty above all else is a society founded on a love of surfaces. What
matters most to Dorian, Lord Henry, and the polite company they keep is not whether a man is good at heart but
rather whether he is handsome. As Dorian evolves into the realization of a type, the perfect blend of scholar and
socialite, he experiences the freedom to abandon his morals without censure. Indeed, even though, as Basil
warns, society’s elite question his name and reputation, Dorian is never ostracized. On the contrary, despite his
“mode of life,” he remains at the heart of the London social scene because of the “innocence” and “purity of his
face.” As Lady Narborough notes to Dorian, there is little (if any) distinction between ethics and appearance:
“you are made to be good—you look so good.”

The Negative Consequences of Influence

The painting and the yellow book have a profound effect on Dorian, influencing him to predominantly immoral
behavior over the course of nearly two decades. Reflecting on Dorian’s power over Basil and deciding that he
would like to seduce Dorian in much the same way, Lord Henry points out that there is “something terribly
enthralling in the exercise of influence.” Falling under the sway of such influence is, perhaps, unavoidable, but
the novel ultimately censures the sacrifice of one’s self to another. Basil’s idolatry of Dorian leads to his
murder, and Dorian’s devotion to Lord Henry’s hedonism and the yellow book precipitate his own downfall. It
is little wonder, in a novel that prizes individualism—the uncompromised expression of self—that the sacrifice
of one’s self, whether it be to another person or to a work of art, leads to one’s destruction.

 Dorian Gray
A radiantly handsome, impressionable, and wealthy young gentleman, whose portrait the artist Basil Hallward
paints. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian becomes extremely concerned with the transience of
his beauty and begins to pursue his own pleasure above all else. He devotes himself to having as many
experiences as possible, whether moral or immoral, elegant or sordid.

Read an in-depth analysis of Dorian Gray.

 Lord Henry Wotton
A nobleman and a close friend of Basil Hallward. Urbane and witty, Lord Henry is perpetually armed and ready
with well-phrased epigrams criticizing the moralism and hypocrisy of Victorian society. His pleasure-seeking
philosophy of “new Hedonism,” which espouses garnering experiences that stimulate the senses without regard
for conventional morality, plays a vital role in Dorian’s development.

Read an in-depth analysis of Lord Henry Wotton.

 Basil Hallward
An artist, and a friend of Lord Henry. Basil becomes obsessed with Dorian after meeting him at a party. He
claims that Dorian possesses a beauty so rare that it has helped him realize a new kind of art; through Dorian, he
finds “the lines of a fresh school.” Dorian also helps Basil realize his artistic potential, as the portrait of Dorian
that Basil paints proves to be his masterpiece.
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 Read an in-depth analysis of Basil Hallward.
 Sibyl Vane
A poor, beautiful, and talented actress with whom Dorian falls in love. Sibyl’s love for Dorian compromises her
ability to act, as her experience of true love in life makes her realize the falseness of affecting emotions onstage.

 James Vane
Sibyl’s brother, a sailor bound for Australia. James cares deeply for his sister and worries about her relationship
with Dorian. Distrustful of his mother’s motives, he believes that Mrs. Vane’s interest in Dorian’s wealth
disables her from properly protecting Sibyl. As a result, James is hesitant to leave his sister.

 Mrs. Vane
Sibyl and James’s mother. Mrs. Vane is a faded actress who has consigned herself and her daughter to a tawdry
theater company, the owner of which has helped her to pay her debts. She conceives of Dorian Gray as a
wonderful alliance for her daughter because of his wealth; this ulterior motive, however, clouds her judgment
and leaves Sibyl vulnerable.

 Alan Campbell
Once an intimate friend, Alan Campbell is one of many promising young men who have severed ties with
Dorian because of Dorian’s sullied reputation.

 Lady Agatha
Lord Henry’s aunt. Lady Agatha is active in charity work in the London slums.

 Lord Fermor
Lord Henry’s irascible uncle. Lord Fermor tells Henry the story of Dorian’s parentage.

 Duchess of Monmouth
A pretty, bored young noblewoman who flirts with Dorian at his country estate.

 Victoria Wotton
Lord Henry’s wife. Victoria appears only once in the novel, greeting Dorian as he waits for Lord Henry. She is
described as an untidy, foolishly romantic woman with “a perfect mania for going to church.”

 Victor
Dorian’s servant. Although Victor is a trustworthy servant, Dorian becomes suspicious of him and sends him
out on needless errands to ensure that he does not attempt to steal a glance at Dorian’s portrait.

 Mrs. Leaf
Dorian Gray’s housekeeper. Mrs. Leaf is a bustling older woman who takes her work seriously.

G. B. Shaw. Widower’s Houses.

Characters[edit]

 Harry Trench
 William de Burgh Cokane
 Mr. Sartorius
 Lickcheese

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 Waiter
 Porter
 Blanche
 The Parlor Maid

Plot[edit]
The play comprises three acts:
In Act I a poor but aristocratic young doctor named Harry Trench and his friend William Cokane are holidaying
at Remagen on the Rhine. They encounter fellow travellers Mr Sartorius, a self-made businessman, and his
daughter Blanche. Harry and Blanche fall in love and become engaged.
Act II opens with everyone back at home in London. Sartorius, in talking to Mr Lickcheese, whom he employs
as a rent-collector, reveals himself to be a slum landlord. He dismisses Lickcheese for dealing too leniently with
tenants. Trench and Cokane arrive to visit, but when Trench discovers that Sartorius makes his money by
renting slum housing to the poor, he is disgusted and refuses to allow Blanche to accept money from her father
after they are married, insisting that they must live instead on Harry's small income. Following a bitter
argument, they break up. Sartorius reveals that Trench's income depends on interest from mortgaged tenements,
and is therefore as "dirty" as his own; but the lovers do not reconcile. Blanche utterly rejects Harry because of
her wounded feelings.
In Act III, Trench, Cokane and Lickcheese return to Sartorius' house to plan a shady business venture. Trench,
disillusioned and coarsened by knowing his income is tainted by its source, no longer takes the moral high
ground. In the final scene, notable for its erotic tension, Harry and Blanche reunite.

“Widower’s Houses” by George Bernard Shaw is a quintessential work of the fin de siècle due to the way the
play grapples with topics such as social inequality, gender roles, and burgeoning urbanization in London.
Shaw’s three-act play is both a tale of romance but also of the business negotiations of the bourgeoisie. Act 1
begins at a garden restaurant in Remagen, Germany, on a summer afternoon in the eighteen-eighties where we
find two Englishmen on vacation. Dr. Harry Trench, a dark-haired 24-year-old who comes from an affluent
family, and Mr. William de Burgh Cokane, a balding older man, are waiting for beer in the garden restaurant.
While turning his nose up at the foreigners’ habits, Cokane also disparages Trench’s lack of fine dress and
manners. It is discovered that Trench has just been made a doctor after only four years in medical school.
Trench is jovial with Cokane, but becomes serious and nervous when Cokane mentions “the father,” a
distinguished gentleman they both encountered on the boat over. The aforementioned gentleman, a tall, well-
dressed, imposing man, arrives at the hotel, with his daughter, a good-looking, energetic young woman. Despite
the gentleman’s imperious manner with the hotel staff, Cokane manages to weasel his way into the conversation
with the gentleman by mentioning Trench’s affluent aunt, Lady Roxdale. The gentleman invites Trench and
Cokane over to his table for tea, and introduces himself as the widower Sartorius and his daughter as Blanche.
Cokane and Sartorius make light conversation about a possible church to visit, while the stage directions
indicate that Blanche and Trench make eyes at each other. Sartorius and Cokane leave to go visit one of the
churches, but Blanche and Trench stay behind. It is revealed that Trench and Blanche already know each other
from an encounter on the boat to Germany, and their re-meeting was no accident. Trench attempts to propose,
but becomes excessively nervous several times and does not follow through. Finally, after Blanche grabs
Trench’s hands, he manages to propose and Blanche accepts. Cokane and Sartorius re-enter upon this scene.
Sartorius isn’t entirely displeased by the match of Blanche and Trench, but he needs to know that Trench’s
affluent family will accept Blanche. Cokane helps Trench write a letter to Trench’s family, asking if they will
accept Blanche into the family, and discovers that Sartorius is a self-made man who rents real estate in London.
Cokane finishes the letter, and Blanche and Trench go in for dinner.  There is a sense that there may be some
kind of ulterior motive on the part of Sartorius; however, things are unclear.

Act 2 commences with Sartorius and the well-bred but motherless Blanche sitting in their library in their villa in
Surbiton, England. Blanche is reading “The Queen,” which is a clue as to her position in the story. The
Sartoriuses are awaiting news from Dr. Harry Trench on this particular Sunday, when he suddenly arrives with
Cokane and an employee of Sartorius in tow.  Blanche excuses herself to greet the gentlemen in the foyer.
Lickcheese, a shabby and “pertinaous sort of human terrier” arrives to hand over the rent book to Sartorius. This
30
brief exchange between men that ends in Lickcheese being discharged is very telling of how short tempered and
frugal Sartorius can be, especially with people of a lower class than his own. Trench presents all of the letters of
congratulations from his relations regarding his proposal, and Sartorius goes to break the good news to his
precious child. While Sartorius leaves the room, Lickcheese uses the opportunity to talk to Trench and Cokane,
hoping they will help him get his job back. He explains to Trench and Cokane how Sartorius obtains his money
as a landlord by taking from the poor. Trench claims he will not get involved but is bothered by Sartorius’s
methods. Lickcheese depicts the properties that Sartorius owns as being in a desperate and unsafe condition.
This servile older man reports that at least three women hurt themselves on the stairs he tried to repair cheaply,
and while this story is not glamorous, Cokane and Trench do not intervene when Sartorius returns to dismiss
Lickcheese. Sartorius and Cokane depart to take a celebratory stroll and leave Trench and Blanche to join them
shortly.

In this interlude, Trench confronts Blanche, and asks her if she can truly love and be satisfied with a man who
only earns 700 pounds a year. She playfully insists that her father will match his 700 pounds and that all will be
well; however, Trench firmly declines to entertain the idea of taking money from Sartorius. Blanche goes into a
rage and breaks the engagement, thus leaving Trench to speak with her father. Sartorius enters when Blanche
exits, and Sartorius attempts to talk Trench out of his decision to not take money from him. He explains that the
fact that Trench has a mortgage on his property makes him complicit in the whole scheme, and that really what
Sartorius is doing is not so bad. Trench is lost between wanting to take the moral high ground and knowing that
he plays a part in all of this. Sartorius tells Trench that he is “powerless to alter the state of society,” and thus it
is a waste to be perturbed by the truth of where money comes from in the increasingly urbanized society.
Meanwhile, an inconsolable Blanche attacks her parlor maid by gripping her by the hair and throat in a private
scene between the two. Sartorius enters again and tries to explain things to his poor motherless daughter;
however, to no avail she declares that she only wishes to remain in the comfortable position of her father’s
dependent.

As act 3 opens, the scene is set in Blanche’s reading room in the winter home in Bedford Square. Lickcheese
makes his way back into the story by making a business proposal to Sartorius. Lickcheese has a tiger fur coat, a
lovely black silk hat, and a revitalized and youthful countenance.  Lickcheese has gotten wind of a plan for a
new street which will make Robbins’s Row into an area for a slightly richer clientele than the current clientele
Sartorius has. Sartorius and Lickcheese discuss this possibly very profitable business transaction together while
Blanche discovers the ledger Lickcheese brought with him that lists all the unsavory dealings of many landlords
in the area. Upon reading the ledger Blanche discovers her father has been exploiting the poor, and she realizes
this is why Trench would not take the money. Blanche confronts her father about his business, while belittling
the poor. The statements of his daughter wound Sartorious, who is a self-made man. Sartorius, growing
somewhat tired of his needy daughter, has Lickcheese invite Trench and Cokane to the house to talk business as
well as pleasure.

Feigning as though he needs Trench to bare the brunt of the initial costs of renovations, Sartorius asks Trench to
consent to the temporary loss of income. When Trench proves himself to be unyielding and unconcerned with
the moral and humanitarian reasons that Sartorius and Lickcheese provide, Sartorius then admits that he can
afford to take a chance without his mortgagee’s help. Asserting himself as a man of means does nothing to sway
Trench toward Sartorius’s cause. Lickcheese then proposes a mixing of business with pleasure; if Trench were
to become a more amicable business associate, a relationship with Miss Sartorius may be in his future. Appalled
at the very suggestion, all of the men leave Trench to think things over.

Once again, Blanche and Trench are alone. In this moment, Trench’s emotional vulnerability is revealed. He sits
beside a piano and holds Blanche’s portrait in his arms and becomes so transfixed by the image that he does not
notice when the living, breathing Blanche enters. He drops the painting and feigns disinterest, but Blanche
launches into a tirade. She questions his morals and his greed for money. She insults him and all the while he
remains silent as the internal workings of his mind are at play. The stage directions indicate that Trench begins
to see Blanche’s fury as a kind of sexual or erotic energy. He views her anger as passion and her barrage of
questions as a kind of sincere interest. As she further berates him, the stage directions indicate that Trench
begins to see this passion as a deeply intimate exchange despite his lack of verbal input. She presses her arms
around him and inquires as to what he was doing with her portrait but he does not break his silence. Just as they
31
are nearing reconciliation, Sartorius, Lickcheese, and Cokane return. Blanche simmers, and Trench announces
to the gentlemen that he has had a change of heart. The five all exit for supper with Blanche coyly on the arm of
Lickcheese, walking ahead of the other three gentlemen.

J. Conrad. Heart of Darknes

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
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

32
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.

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.
Read an in-depth analysis of Marlow.
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.

Read an in-depth analysis of Kurtz.

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 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

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adventurousness. His brightly patched clothes remind Marlow of a harlequin. He is a devoted disciple of
Kurtz’s.

Read an in-depth analysis of Russian trader.

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.

Read an in-depth analysis of Kurtz’s Intended.

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 of Heart 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.

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 that Heart 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 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
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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.

Futility
Several images throughout Heart of Darkness suggest the futility of European presence in Africa. The first such
image Marlow witnesses off the West African coast, where a French warship fires pointlessly at an invisible
enemy. Another image appears later, at the Central Station, when Marlow watches as frantic Europeans
pointlessly attempt to extinguish a burning grass hut. In addition to these instances of useless action, Marlow
takes note of pointless labor practices at the Company Station. There he observes white Europeans forcing
Africans to blast a hole through a cliff for no apparent reason. He also nearly falls into a random hole in the
ground that slave laborers dug. Marlow speculates that the hole has no purpose other than to occupy the slaves:
“It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do.” As with
the examples of the warship and the grass hut, the grossly inefficient labor practices at the Company Station
suggest the pointlessness of the European mission in Africa.
Contradiction and Ambivalence
Contradictions appear everywhere in Heart of Darkness, and particularly with respect to European characters,
who serve as living embodiments of imperialism. For example, Marlow insists that Fresleven, the Danish
captain he replaced, was completely harmless, but he also describes how the man ended up in a violent dispute
over hens and died at the end of an African’s spear. European imperial missions sought to civilize “savage”
peoples and hence appeared pure in their intentions, but all too often they inflicted terrible violence instead. The
accountant Marlow meets at the Company Station provides another important example of contradiction. Despite
the filth and chaos that reigns at the station, the accountant maintains an immaculately clean suit and perfectly
coiffed hair. Marlow respects the man for maintaining a semblance of civility even in the wilderness. Such an
image of civilization in the jungle—or of light in the darkness—represents another contradiction of the
European civilizing mission. Contradictions also abound in Marlow’s outlook on colonialism, as well as in his
ambivalent views on life. He opens his story by describing his belief in the “idea” of colonialism, yet he goes on
to tell a long story about the horrors of the Belgian mission in the Congo. The evident contradiction between the
idea of colonialism and its reality doesn’t seem to bother Marlow. A similar tension affects Marlow’s treatment
of Africans. He finds it repulsive that Europeans mistreat African laborers at the stations along the river.
However, Marlow fails to see Africans as equals. When he laments the loss of his late helmsman, he describes
the man as “a savage” and “an instrument,” yet he insists that the two men had “a kind of partnership.” Marlow
35
remains unaware of the contradiction in his description. A further contradiction permeates the grim outlook that
Marlow expresses near the novella’s end, when he describes life as “that mysterious arrangement of merciless
logic for a futile purpose.” According to Marlow, life is at once full of “merciless logic” and yet has a
completely “futile purpose”—that is, it is at once meaningful and meaningless.
Hollowness
Throughout his journey, Marlow meets an array of people characterized by their hollow emptiness, reflecting
the way imperialism robbed Europeans of moral substance. For instance, Marlow refers to the chatty brickmaker
he meets at the Central Station as a “papier-mâché Mephistopheles” who has “nothing inside but a little loose
dirt, maybe.” Despite having a lot to say, the brickmaker’s words lack any real meaning or value. Like a nut
without the kernel inside—an image the narrator describes at the beginning of the novella—the brickmaker’s
speech is all form and no content, revealing his obvious idleness. Marlow speaks of Kurtz in similar terms. He
describes the African wilderness whispering to Kurtz: “It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at
the core.” Marlow comes to this realization of Kurtz’s emptiness after observing the severed African heads on
stakes, placed there for no apparent reason. Like the brickmaker, Kurtz is showy with his talk but ultimately
doesn’t have much reason, since all his ideas are morally bankrupt. Marlow develops this notion of Kurtz as a
hollow man later in the story. Although he continues to speak forcefully, Kurtz’s physical body wastes away,
making the man a “hollow sham,” or imitation, of his former self.

Th. Hardy. Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

The poor peddler John Durbeyfield is stunned to learn that he is the descendent of an ancient noble family, the
d’Urbervilles. Meanwhile, Tess, his eldest daughter, joins the other village girls in the May Day dance, where
Tess briefly exchanges glances with a young man. Mr. Durbeyfield and his wife decide to send Tess to the
d’Urberville mansion, where they hope Mrs. d’Urberville will make Tess’s fortune. In reality, Mrs. d’Urberville
is no relation to Tess at all: her husband, the merchant Simon Stokes, simply changed his name to d’Urberville
after he retired. But Tess does not know this fact, and when the lascivious Alec d’Urberville, Mrs.
d’Urberville’s son, procures Tess a job tending fowls on the d’Urberville estate, Tess has no choice but to
accept, since she blames herself for an accident involving the family’s horse, its only means of income.

Tess spends several months at this job, resisting Alec’s attempts to seduce her. Finally, Alec takes advantage of
her in the woods one night after a fair. Tess knows she does not love Alec. She returns home to her family to
give birth to Alec’s child, whom she christens Sorrow. Sorrow dies soon after he is born, and Tess spends a
miserable year at home before deciding to seek work elsewhere. She finally accepts a job as a milkmaid at the
Talbothays Dairy.

At Talbothays, Tess enjoys a period of contentment and happiness. She befriends three of her fellow milkmaids
—Izz, Retty, and Marian—and meets a man named Angel Clare, who turns out to be the man from the May Day
dance at the beginning of the novel. Tess and Angel slowly fall in love. They grow closer throughout Tess’s
time at Talbothays, and she eventually accepts his proposal of marriage. Still, she is troubled by pangs of
conscience and feels she should tell Angel about her past. She writes him a confessional note and slips it under
his door, but it slides under the carpet and Angel never sees it.

After their wedding, Angel and Tess both confess indiscretions: Angel tells Tess about an affair he had with an
older woman in London, and Tess tells Angel about her history with Alec. Tess forgives Angel, but Angel
cannot forgive Tess. He gives her some money and boards a ship bound for Brazil, where he thinks he might
establish a farm. He tells Tess he will try to accept her past but warns her not to try to join him until he comes
for her.

Tess struggles. She has a difficult time finding work and is forced to take a job at an unpleasant and
unprosperous farm. She tries to visit Angel’s family but overhears his brothers discussing Angel’s poor
marriage, so she leaves. She hears a wandering preacher speak and is stunned to discover that he is Alec
d’Urberville, who has been converted to Christianity by Angel’s father, the Reverend Clare. Alec and Tess are
each shaken by their encounter, and Alec appallingly begs Tess never to tempt him again. Soon after, however,
he again begs Tess to marry him, having turned his back on his -religious ways.
36
 Tess learns from her sister Liza-Lu that her mother is near death, and Tess is forced to return home to take care
of her. Her mother recovers, but her father unexpectedly dies soon after. When the family is evicted from their
home, Alec offers help. But Tess refuses to accept, knowing he only wants to obligate her to him again.

At last, Angel decides to forgive his wife. He leaves Brazil, desperate to find her. Instead, he finds her mother,
who tells him Tess has gone to a village called Sandbourne. There, he finds Tess in an expensive boardinghouse
called The Herons, where he tells her he has forgiven her and begs her to take him back. Tess tells him he has
come too late. She was unable to resist and went back to Alec d’Urberville. Angel leaves in a daze, and,
heartbroken to the point of madness, Tess goes upstairs and stabs her lover to death. When the landlady finds
Alec’s body, she raises an alarm, but Tess has already fled to find Angel.

Angel agrees to help Tess, though he cannot quite believe that she has actually murdered Alec. They hide out in
an empty mansion for a few days, then travel farther. When they come to Stonehenge, Tess goes to sleep, but
when morning breaks shortly thereafter, a search party discovers them. Tess is arrested and sent to jail. Angel
and Liza-Lu watch as a black flag is raised over the prison, signaling Tess’s execution.

 Tess Durbeyfield
The novel’s protagonist. Tess is a beautiful, loyal young woman living with her impoverished family in the
village of Marlott. Tess has a keen sense of responsibility and is committed to doing the best she can for her
family, although her inexperience and lack of wise parenting leave her extremely vulnerable. Her life is
complicated when her father discovers a link to the noble line of the d’Urbervilles, and, as a result, Tess is sent
to work at the d’Urberville mansion. Unfortunately, her ideals cannot prevent her from sliding further and
further into misfortune after she becomes pregnant by Alec d’Urberville. The terrible irony is that Tess and her
family are not really related to this branch of the d’Urbervilles at all: Alec’s father, a merchant named Simon
Stokes, simply assumed the name after he retired.

Read an in-depth analysis of Tess Durbeyfield.

 Angel Clare
An intelligent young man who has decided to become a farmer to preserve his intellectual freedom from the
pressures of city life. Angel’s father and his two brothers are respected clergymen, but Angel’s religious doubts
have kept him from joining the ministry. He meets Tess when she is a milkmaid at the Talbothays Dairy and
quickly falls in love with her.

Read an in-depth analysis of Angel Clare.

 Alec d’Urberville
The handsome, amoral son of a wealthy merchant named Simon Stokes. Alec is not really a d’Urberville—his
father simply took on the name of the ancient noble family after he built his mansion and retired. Alec is a
manipulative, sinister young man who does everything he can to seduce the inexperienced Tess when she comes
to work for his family. When he finally has his way with her, out in the woods, he subsequently tries to help her
but is unable to make her love him.

Read an in-depth analysis of Alec d’Urberville.

 Mr. John Durbeyfield
Tess’s father, a lazy peddler in Marlott. John is naturally quick, but he hates work. When he learns that he
descends from the noble line of the d’Urbervilles, he is quick to make an attempt to profit from the connection.

 Mrs. Joan Durbeyfield

Tess’s mother. Joan has a strong sense of propriety and very particular hopes for Tess’s life. She is continually
disappointed and hurt by the way in which her daughter’s life actually proceeds. But she is also somewhat
simpleminded and naturally forgiving, and she is unable to remain angry with Tess—particularly once Tess
becomes her primary means of support.

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 Mrs. d’Urberville
Alec’s mother, and the widow of Simon Stokes. Mrs. d’Urberville is blind and often ill. She cares deeply for her
animals, but not for her maid Elizabeth, her son Alec, nor Tess when she comes to work for her. In fact, she
never sees Tess as anything more than an impoverished girl.

 Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty Priddle

Milkmaids whom Tess befriends at the Talbothays Dairy. Marian, Izz, and Retty remain close to Tess
throughout the rest of her life. They are all in love with Angel and are devastated when he chooses Tess over
them: Marian turns to drink, Retty attempts suicide, and Izz nearly runs off to Brazil with Angel when he leaves
Tess. Nevertheless, they remain helpful to Tess. Marian helps her find a job at a farm called Flintcomb-Ash, and
Marian and Izz write Angel a plaintive letter encouraging him to give Tess another chance.

 Reverend Clare
Angel’s father, a somewhat intractable but principled clergyman in the town of Emminster. Mr. Clare considers
it his duty to convert the populace. One of his most difficult cases proves to be none other than Alec
d’Urberville.

 Mrs. Clare
Angel’s mother, a loving but snobbish woman who places great stock in social class. Mrs. Clare wants Angel to
marry a suitable woman, meaning a woman with the proper social, financial, and religious background. Mrs.
Clare initially looks down on Tess as a “simple” and impoverished girl, but later grows to appreciate her.

 Reverend Felix Clare

Angel’s brother, a village curate.

 Reverend Cuthbert
Clare Angel’s brother, a classical scholar and dean at Cambridge. Cuthbert, who can concentrate only on
university matters, marries Mercy Chant.

 Eliza Louisa Durbeyfield

Tess’s younger sister. Tess believes Liza-Lu has all of Tess’s own good qualities and none of her bad ones, and
she encourages Angel to look after and even marry Liza-Lu after Tess dies.

 Sorrow
Tess’s son with Alec d’Urberville. Sorrow dies in his early infancy, after Tess christens him herself. She later
buries him herself as well, and decorates his grave.

 Mercy Chant
The daughter of a friend of the Reverend Clare. Mr. Clare hopes Angel will marry Mercy, but after Angel
marries Tess, Mercy becomes engaged to his brother Cuthbert instead.

The Injustice of Existence

Unfairness dominates the lives of Tess and her family to such an extent that it begins to seem like a general
aspect of human existence in Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Tess does not mean to kill Prince, but she is punished
anyway, just as she is unfairly punished for her own rape by Alec. Nor is there justice waiting in heaven.
Christianity teaches that there is compensation in the afterlife for unhappiness suffered in this life, but the only
devout Christian encountered in the novel may be the reverend, Mr. Clare, who seems more or less content in
his life anyway. For others in their misery, Christianity offers little solace of heavenly justice. Mrs. Durbeyfield
never mentions otherworldly rewards. The converted Alec preaches heavenly justice for earthly sinners, but his
faith seems shallow and insincere. Generally, the moral atmosphere of the novel is not Christian justice at all,
38
but pagan injustice. The forces that rule human life are absolutely unpredictable and not necessarily well-
disposed to us. The pre-Christian rituals practiced by the farm workers at the opening of the novel, and Tess’s
final rest at Stonehenge at the end, remind us of a world where the gods are not just and fair, but whimsical and
uncaring. When the narrator concludes the novel with the statement that “‘Justice’ was done, and the President
of the Immortals (in the Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess,” we are reminded that justice must
be put in ironic quotation marks, since it is not really just at all. What passes for “Justice” is in fact one of the
pagan gods enjoying a bit of “sport,” or a frivolous game.
Changing Ideas of Social Class in Victorian England
Tess of the d’Urbervilles presents complex pictures of both the importance of social class in nineteenth-century
England and the difficulty of defining class in any simple way. Certainly the Durbeyfields are a powerful
emblem of the way in which class is no longer evaluated in Victorian times as it would have been in the Middle
Ages—that is, by blood alone, with no attention paid to fortune or worldly success. Indubitably the Durbeyfields
have purity of blood, yet for the parson and nearly everyone else in the novel, this fact amounts to nothing more
than a piece of genealogical trivia. In the Victorian context, cash matters more than lineage, which explains how
Simon Stokes, Alec’s father, was smoothly able to use his large fortune to purchase a lustrous family name and
transform his clan into the Stoke-d’Urbervilles. The d’Urbervilles pass for what the Durbeyfields truly are—
authentic nobility—simply because definitions of class have changed. The issue of class confusion even affects
the Clare clan, whose most promising son, Angel, is intent on becoming a farmer and marrying a milkmaid, thus
bypassing the traditional privileges of a Cambridge education and a parsonage. His willingness to work side by
side with the farm laborers helps endear him to Tess, and their acquaintance would not have been possible if he
were a more traditional and elitist aristocrat. Thus, the three main characters in the Angel-Tess-Alec triangle are
all strongly marked by confusion regarding their respective social classes, an issue that is one of the main
concerns of the novel.
Men Dominating Women
One of the recurrent themes of the novel is the way in which men can dominate women, exerting a power over
them linked primarily to their maleness. Sometimes this command is purposeful, in the man’s full knowledge of
his exploitation, as when Alec acknowledges how bad he is for seducing Tess for his own momentary pleasure.
Alec’s act of abuse, the most life-altering event that Tess experiences in the novel, is clearly the most serious
instance of male domination over a female. But there are other, less blatant examples of women’s passivity
toward dominant men. When, after Angel reveals that he prefers Tess, Tess’s friend Retty attempts suicide and
her friend Marian becomes an alcoholic, which makes their earlier schoolgirl-type crushes on Angel seem
disturbing. This devotion is not merely fanciful love, but unhealthy obsession. These girls appear utterly
dominated by a desire for a man who, we are told explicitly, does not even realize that they are interested in
him. This sort of unconscious male domination of women is perhaps even more unsettling than Alec’s outward
and self-conscious cruelty.

Even Angel’s love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it seems, dominates her in an unhealthy way. Angel
substitutes an idealized picture of Tess’s country purity for the real-life woman that he continually refuses to get
to know. When Angel calls Tess names like “Daughter of Nature” and “Artemis,” we feel that he may be
denying her true self in favor of a mental image that he prefers. Thus, her identity and experiences are
suppressed, albeit unknowingly. This pattern of male domination is finally reversed with Tess’s murder of Alec,
in which, for the first time in the novel, a woman takes active steps against a man. Of course, this act only leads
to even greater suppression of a woman by men, when the crowd of male police officers arrest Tess at
Stonehenge. Nevertheless, for just a moment, the accepted pattern of submissive women bowing to dominant
men is interrupted, and Tess’s act seems heroic.

J. Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

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

39
 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.

 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.
Read an in-depth analysis of Stephen Dedalus.
 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.

Read an in-depth analysis of Simon Dedalus.

 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.
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 Read an in-depth analysis of Emma Clery.
 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.

Read an in-depth analysis of Charles Stewart Parnell.

 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

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 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.

 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.

Read an in-depth analysis of Cranly.

 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.

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.
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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 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.
43
 D. H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Lady Chatterley's Lover begins by introducing Connie Reid, the female protagonist of the novel. She was raised
as a cultured bohemian of the upper-middle class, and was introduced to love affairs--intellectual and sexual
liaisons--as a teenager. In 1917, at 23, she marries Clifford Chatterley, the scion of an aristocratic line. After a
month's honeymoon, he is sent to war, and returns paralyzed from the waist down, impotent.
After the war, Clifford becomes a successful writer, and many intellectuals flock to the Chatterley mansion,
Wragby. Connie feels isolated; the vaunted intellectuals prove empty and bloodless, and she resorts to a brief
and dissatisfying affair with a visiting playwright, Michaelis. Connie longs for real human contact, and falls into
despair, as all men seem scared of true feelings and true passion. There is a growing distance between Connie
and Clifford, who has retreated into the meaningless pursuit of success in his writing and in his obsession with
coal-mining, and towards whom Connie feels a deep physical aversion. A nurse, Mrs. Bolton, is hired to take
care of the handicapped Clifford so that Connie can be more independent, and Clifford falls into a deep
dependence on the nurse, his manhood fading into an infantile reliance.

Into the void of Connie's life comes Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper on Clifford's estate, newly returned from
serving in the army. Mellors is aloof and derisive, and yet Connie feels curiously drawn to him by his innate
nobility and grace, his purposeful isolation, his undercurrents of natural sensuality. After several chance
meetings in which Mellors keeps her at arm's length, reminding her of the class distance between them, they
meet by chance at a hut in the forest, where they have sex. This happens on several occasions, but still Connie
feels a distance between them, remaining profoundly separate from him despite their physical closeness.

One day, Connie and Mellors meet by coincidence in the woods, and they have sex on the forest floor. This
time, they experience simultaneous orgasms. This is a revelatory and profoundly moving experience for Connie;
she begins to adore Mellors, feeling that they have connected on some deep sensual level. She is proud to
believe that she is pregnant with Mellors' child: he is a real, "living" man, as opposed to the emotionally-dead
intellectuals and the dehumanized industrial workers. They grow progressively closer, connecting on a
primordial physical level, as woman and man rather than as two minds or intellects.

Connie goes away to Venice for a vacation. While she is gone, Mellors' old wife returns, causing a scandal.
Connie returns to find that Mellors has been fired as a result of the negative rumors spread about him by his
resentful wife, against whom he has initiated divorce proceedings. Connie admits to Clifford that she is pregnant
with Mellors' baby, but Clifford refuses to give her a divorce. The novel ends with Mellors working on a farm,
waiting for his divorce, and Connie living with her sister, also waiting: the hope exists that, in the end, they will
be together.

 Lady Chatterley
The protagonist of the novel. Before her marriage, she is simply Constance Reid, an intellectual and social
progressive, the daughter of Sir Malcolm and the sister of Hilda. When she marries Clifford Chatterley, a minor
nobleman, Constance--or, as she is known throughout the novel, Connie--assumes his title, becoming Lady
Chatterley. Lady Chatterley's Lover chronicles Connie's maturation as a woman and as a sensual being. She
comes to despise her weak, ineffectual husband, and to love Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper on her husband's
estate. In the process of leaving her husband and conceiving a child with Mellors, Lady Chatterley moves from
the heartless, bloodless world of the intelligentsia and aristocracy into a vital and profound connection rooted in
sensuality and sexual fulfillment.
 Oliver Mellors
The lover in the novel's title. Mellors is the gamekeeper on Clifford Chatterley's estate, Wragby. He is aloof,
sarcastic, intelligent and noble. He was born near Wragby, and worked as a blacksmith until he ran off to the
army to escape an unhappy marriage. In the army he rose to become a commissioned lieutenant--an unusual
position for a member of the working classes--but was forced to leave the army because of a case of pneumonia,
which left him in poor health. Disappointed by a string of unfulfilling love affairs, Mellors lives in quiet
isolation, from which he is redeemed by his relationship with Connie: the passion unleashed by their
lovemaking forges a profound bond between them. At the end of the novel, Mellors is fired from his job as
gamekeeper and works as a laborer on a farm, waiting for a divorce from his old wife so he can marry Connie.
44
 Mellors is the representative in this novel of the Noble Savage: he is a man with an innate nobility but who
remains impervious to the pettiness and emptiness of conventional society, with access to a primitive flame of
passion and sensuality.

 Clifford Chatterley
Connie's husband. Clifford Chatterley is a minor nobleman who becomes paralyzed from the waist down during
World War I. As a result of his injury, Clifford is impotent. He retires to his familial estate, Wragby, where he
becomes first a successful writer, and then a powerful businessman. But the gap between Connie and him grows
ever wider; obsessed with financial success and fame, he is not truly interested in love, and she feels that he has
become passionless and empty. He turns for solace to his nurse and companion, Mrs. Bolton, who worships him
as a nobleman even as she despises him for his casual arrogance. Clifford represents everything that this novel
despises about the modern English nobleman: he is a weak, vain man, but declares his right to rule the lower
classes, and he soullessly pursues money and fame through industry and the meaningless manipulation of
words. His impotence is symbolic of his failings as a strong, sensual man.

 Mrs. Bolton
Ivy Bolton is Clifford's nurse and caretaker. She is a competent, complex, still-attractive middle-aged woman.
Years before the action in this novel, her husband died in an accident in the mines owned by Clifford's family.
Even as Mrs. Bolton resents Clifford as the owner of the mines--and, in a sense, the murderer of her husband--
she still maintains a worshipful attitude towards him as the representative of the upper class. Her relationship
with Clifford--she simultaneously adores and despises him, while he depends and looks down on her--is
probably the most fascinating and complex relationship in the novel.

 Michaelis
A successful Irish playwright with whom Connie has an affair early in the novel. Michaelis asks Connie to
marry him, but she decides not to, realizing that he is like all other intellectuals: a slave to success, a purveyor of
vain ideas and empty words, passionless.

 Hilda Reid
Connie's older sister by two years, the daughter of Sir Malcolm. Hilda shared Connie's cultured upbringing and
intellectual education. She remains unliberated by the raw sensuality that changed Connie's life. She disdains
Connie's lover, Mellors, as a member of the lower classes, but in the end she helps Connie to leave Clifford.

 Sir Malcolm Reid

The father of Connie and Hilda. He is an acclaimed painter, an aesthete and unabashed sensualist who despises
Clifford for his weakness and impotence, and who immediately warms to Mellors.

 Tommy Dukes
One of Clifford's contemporaries, Tommy Dukes is a brigadier general in the British Army and a clever and
progressive intellectual. Lawrence intimates, however, that Dukes is a representative of all intellectuals: all talk
and no action. Dukes speaks of the importance of sensuality, but he himself is incapable of sensuality and
uninterested in sex.

 Charles May, Hammond, Berry

Young intellectuals who visit Wragby, and who, along with Tommy Dukes and Clifford, participate in the
socially progressive but ultimately meaningless discussions about love and sex.

 Duncan Forbes
An artist friend of Connie and Hilda. Forbes paints abstract canvases, a form of art both Mellors and D.H.
Lawrence seem to despise. He once loved Connie, and Connie originally claims to be pregnant with his child.

45
 Bertha Coutts
Although Bertha never actually appears in the novel, her presence is felt. She is Mellors' wife, separated from
him but not divorced. Their marriage faltered because of their sexual incompatibility: she was too rapacious, not
tender enough. She returns at the end of the novel to spread rumors about Mellors' infidelity to her, and helps
get him fired from his position as gamekeeper. As the novel concludes, Mellors is in the process of divorcing
her.

 Squire Winter
A relative of Clifford. He is a firm believer in the old privileges of the aristocracy.

 Daniele, Giovanni
Venetian gondoliers in the service of Hilda and Connie. Giovanni hopes that the women will pay him to sleep
with them; he is disappointed. Daniele reminds Connie of Mellors: he is attractive, a "real man."

The greatness of Lady Chatterley's Lover lies in a paradox: it is simultaneously progressive and reactionary,
modern and Victorian. It looks backwards towards a Victorian stylistic formality, and it seems to anticipate the
social morality of the late 20th century in its frank engagement with explicit subject matter and profanity. One
might say of the novel that it is formally and thematically conservative, but methodologically radical.
The easiest of these assertions to prove is that Lady Chatterley's Lover is "formally conservative." By this I
mean that there are few evident differences between the form of Lady Chatterley's Lover and the form of the
high-Victorian novels written fifty years earlier: in terms of structure; in terms of narrative voice; in terms of
diction, with the exception of a very few "profane" words. It is important to remember that Lady Chatterley's
Lover was written towards the end of the 1920s, a decade which had seen extensive literary experimentation.
The 1920s opened with the publishing of the formally radical novel Ulysses, which set the stage for important
technical innovations in literary art: it made extensive use of the stream-of-consciousness form; it condensed all
of its action into a single 24-hour span; it employed any number of voices and narrative perspectives. Lady
Chatterley's Lover acts in many ways as if the 1920s, and indeed the entire modernist literary movement, had
never happened. The structure of the novel is conventional, tracing a small group of characters over an extended
period of time in a single place. The rather preachy narrator usually speaks with the familiar third-person
omniscience of the Victorian novel. And the characters tend towards flatness, towards representing a type,
rather than speaking in their own voices and developing real three-dimensional personalities.
But surely, if Lady Chatterley's Lover is "formally conservative," it can hardly be called "thematically
conservative"! After all, this is a novel that raised censorious hackles across the English-speaking world. It is a
novel that liberally employs profanity, that more-or-less graphically--graphically, that is, for the 1920s: it is
important not to evaluate the novel by the standards of profanity and graphic sexuality that have become
prevalent at the turn of the 21st century--describes sex and orgasm, and whose central message is the idea that
sexual freedom and sensuality are far more important, more authentic and meaningful, than the intellectual life.
So what can I mean by calling Lady Chatterley's Lover, a famously controversial novel, "thematically
conservative"?
Well, it is important to remember not only precisely what this novel seems to advocate, but also the purpose of
that advocacy. Lady Chatterley's Lover is not propaganda for sexual license and free love. As D.H. Lawrence
himself made clear in his essay "A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover," he was no advocate of sex or profanity
for their own sake. The reader should note that the ultimate goal of the novel's protagonists, Mellors and Connie,
is a quite conventional marriage, and a sex life in which it is clear that Mellors is the aggressor and the dominant
partner, in which Connie plays the receptive part; all who would argue that Lady Chatterley's Lover is a radical
novel would do well to remember the vilification that the novel heaps upon Mellors' first wife, a sexually
aggressive woman. Rather than mere sexual radicalism, this novel's chief concern--although it is also concerned,
to a far greater extent than most modernist fiction, with the pitfalls of technology and the barriers of class--is
with what Lawrence understands to be the inability of the modern self to unite the mind and the body. D.H.
Lawrence believed that without a realization of sex and the body, the mind wanders aimlessly in the wasteland
of modern industrial technology. An important recognition in Lady Chatterley's Lover is the extent to which the
modern relationship between men and women comes to resemble the relationship between men and machines.
Not only do men and women require an appreciation of the sexual and sensual in order to relate to each other
properly; they require it even to live happily in the world, as beings able to maintain human dignity and

46
individuality in the dehumanizing atmosphere created by modern greed and the injustices of the class system.
As the great writer Lawrence Durrell observed in reference to Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lawrence was
"something of a puritan himself. He was out to cure, to mend; and the weapons he selected for this act of
therapy were the four-letter words about which so long and idiotic a battle has raged." That is to say: Lady
Chatterley's Lover was intended as a wake-up call, a call away from the hyper-intellectualism embraced by so
many of the modernists, and towards a balanced approach in which mind and body are equally valued. It is the
method the novel uses that made the wake-up call so radical--for its time--and so effective.
This is a novel with high purpose: it points to the degradation of modern civilization--exemplified in the coal-
mining industry and the soulless and emasculated Clifford Chatterley--and it suggests an alternative in learning
to appreciate sensuality. And it is a novel, one must admit, which does not quite succeed. Certainly, it is hardly
the equal of D.H. Lawrence's great novels, Women in Love and The Rainbow. It attempts a profound comment
on the decline of civilization, but it fails as a novel when its social goal eclipses its novelistic goals, when the
characters become mere allegorical types: Mellors as the Noble Savage, Clifford as the impotent nobleman. And
the novel tends also to dip into a kind of breathless incoherence at moments of extreme sensuality or emotional
weight. It is not a perfect novel, but it is a novel which has had a profound impact on the way that 20th-century
writers have written about sex, and about the deeper relationships of which, thanks in part to Lawrence, sex can
no longer be ignored as a crucial element.

W. Irving. Rip Van Winkle.

‘Rip Van Winkle’: summary

In a village near the Catskill Mountains in New York lives a man named Rip Van Winkle – a kind neighbour
and henpecked husband. He is dutiful and quick to help his friends and neighbours, and is well liked. In addition
to his ‘termagant’ or fierce wife, he has children, including a son, also named Rip, who bears a strong
resemblance to his father.

Rip Van Winkle also has a dog, Wolf, who is also put upon by ‘Dame Van Winkle’, Rip’s wife. Rip’s farm is a
constant source of trouble for him, and the only pleasure he derives is from his regular meetings with other men
of the village, who meet outside the local pub, named after King George the Third of Great Britain, to discuss
village gossip and other topics.

One day, Rip Van Winkle goes for a walk up the Catskill Mountains, with his dog Wolf for company. As he is
about to descend, he hears someone shouting his name. A strange, short man with a grey beard appears, wearing
antique Dutch clothes. He beckons Rip to follow him, and they arrive at a woodland amphitheatre where strange
people are playing ninepins. They are also dressed in old clothes. The man who has led Rip here has a keg of
alcoholic drink, which he shares with these figures.

Rip tries the drink, and takes such a shining to it that he ends up drinking too much of it, and he sinks into a
deep sleep. When he wakes up, all of the strange figures have gone, including the man with the keg of liquor.
Rip’s dog has also gone. The gun he’d taken with him up the mountain has gone, and a rusted gun is there next
to him instead.

As he walks home, Rip realises his beard has grown a foot long. When he arrives back in his village, he meets
people he doesn’t know, and who don’t know him. All of the shops and houses look different. When he goes
into his home it’s to find that it’s rundown and deserted. Going out into the street, he finds that the pub he used
to meet with friends outside has changed from the King George the Third to the General Washington.

Rip speaks with the villagers and asks if any of them know two of his oldest friends, whom he names. They tell
him that those two friends have died. Rip asks them if anyone knows a man named Rip Van Winkle. They point
to a man who looks just like Rip: his son, now grown up and resembling his father.

Rip’s daughter, also grown up, appears with a baby. Rip asks her who her father was. She replies that his name
was Rip Van Winkle, but that he disappeared twenty years ago after he went for a walk in the mountains. They
feared he’d been captured by Native Americans, or had shot himself. It turns out that Rip Van Winkle thought
he’d slept for one night, but he had in fact been asleep for twenty years.

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Rip asks his daughter what happened to her mother (Rip’s wife). Upon learning that she has died, Rip is
relieved, so henpecked was he! At this point, Old Peter Vanderdonk, a descendant of a great historian, appears
and corroborates Rip’s story: he says that his ancestor told of Hendrick Hudson, the great explorer who helped
to found North America and after whom the Hudson River was named, keeping a vigil in the Catskill Mountains
every twenty years with his crew. Rip’s visit to the mountains just happened to coincide with one of these vigils.

Rip settles down to watch his grandchild grow, and his son tends to the farm while Rip Senior enjoys his
retirement. He eventually reacquaints himself with his remaining friends in the village, who take up their regular
meets outside the pub, and Rip Van Winkle becomes revered as a village elder and patriarch who remembers
what the village was like before the American Revolutionary War.

‘Rip Van Winkle’: analysis

‘Rip Van Winkle’ is perhaps the most famous homegrown American fairy tale. It has supernatural elements, the
idea of an enchanted wood, and focuses on simple village life, such as we find in many classic European fairy
stories. But the mention of the pub’s name – shifting from King George the Third to General Washington –
reveals that this is a specifically and unmistakably American tale.

‘Rip Van Winkle’, like many other stories which attain the status of modern myths or archetypes – Jekyll and
Hyde and Frankenstein are two other famous examples – has become more famous as an idea than a tale, at
least outside of the United States.

The story’s time setting is central: Rip Van Winkle goes to sleep before 1776 when the American colonies are
still ruled by the British, and wakes up after the American War of Independence, which has succeeded in
shaking off the British yoke and creating the independent nation of the United States of America.

E.A. Poe. The Fall of the House of Usher

An unnamed narrator approaches the house of Usher on a “dull, dark, and soundless day.” This house—the
estate of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher—is gloomy and mysterious. The narrator observes that the house
seems to have absorbed an evil and diseased atmosphere from the decaying trees and murky ponds around it. He
notes that although the house is decaying in places—individual stones are disintegrating, for example—the
structure itself is fairly solid. There is only a small crack from the roof to the ground in the front of the building.
He has come to the house because his friend Roderick sent him a letter earnestly requesting his company.
Roderick wrote that he was feeling physically and emotionally ill, so the narrator is rushing to his assistance.
The narrator mentions that the Usher family, though an ancient clan, has never flourished. Only one member of
the Usher family has survived from generation to generation, thereby forming a direct line of descent without
any outside branches. The Usher family has become so identified with its estate that the peasantry confuses the
inhabitants with their home.

The narrator finds the inside of the house just as spooky as the outside. He makes his way through the long
passages to the room where Roderick is waiting. He notes that Roderick is paler and less energetic than he once
was. Roderick tells the narrator that he suffers from nerves and fear and that his senses are heightened. The
narrator also notes that Roderick seems afraid of his own house. Roderick’s sister, Madeline, has taken ill with a
mysterious sickness—perhaps catalepsy, the loss of control of one’s limbs—that the doctors cannot reverse. The
narrator spends several days trying to cheer up Roderick. He listens to Roderick play the guitar and make up
words for his songs, and he reads him stories, but he cannot lift Roderick’s spirit. Soon, Roderick posits his
theory that the house itself is unhealthy, just as the narrator supposes at the beginning of the story.

Madeline soon dies, and Roderick decides to bury her temporarily in the tombs below the house. He wants to
keep her in the house because he fears that the doctors might dig up her body for scientific examination, since
her disease was so strange to them. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that
Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. The narrator also realizes suddenly that Roderick and
Madeline were twins. Over the next few days, Roderick becomes even more uneasy. One night, the narrator

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cannot sleep either. Roderick knocks on his door, apparently hysterical. He leads the narrator to the window,
from which they see a bright-looking gas surrounding the house. The narrator tells Roderick that the gas is a
natural phenomenon, not altogether uncommon.

The narrator decides to read to Roderick in order to pass the night away. He reads “Mad Trist” by Sir Launcelot
Canning, a medieval romance. As he reads, he hears noises that correspond to the descriptions in the story. At
first, he ignores these sounds as the vagaries of his imagination. Soon, however, they become more distinct and
he can no longer ignore them. He also notices that Roderick has slumped over in his chair and is muttering to
himself. The narrator approaches Roderick and listens to what he is saying. Roderick reveals that he has been
hearing these sounds for days, and believes that they have buried Madeline alive and that she is trying to escape.
He yells that she is standing behind the door. The wind blows open the door and confirms Roderick’s fears:
Madeline stands in white robes bloodied from her struggle. She attacks Roderick as the life drains from her, and
he dies of fear. The narrator flees the house. As he escapes, the entire house cracks along the break in the frame
and crumbles to the ground.

Analysis
“The Fall of the House of Usher” possesses the quintessential -features of the Gothic tale: a haunted house,
dreary landscape, mysterious sickness, and doubled personality. For all its easily identifiable Gothic elements,
however, part of the terror of this story is its vagueness. We cannot say for sure where in the world or exactly
when the story takes place. Instead of standard narrative markers of place and time, Poe uses traditional Gothic
elements such as inclement weather and a barren landscape. We are alone with the narrator in this haunted
space, and neither we nor the -narrator know why. Although he is Roderick’s most intimate boyhood friend, the
narrator apparently does not know much about him—like the basic fact that Roderick has a twin sister. Poe asks
us to question the reasons both for Roderick’s decision to contact the narrator in this time of need and the
bizarre tenacity of narrator’s response. While Poe provides the recognizable building blocks of the Gothic tale,
he contrasts this standard form with a plot that is inexplicable, sudden, and full of unexpected disruptions. The
story begins without complete explanation of the narrator’s motives for arriving at the house of Usher, and this
ambiguity sets the tone for a plot that continually blurs the real and the fantastic.

Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia in this story. The narrator is mysteriously trapped by the lure of
Roderick’s attraction, and he cannot escape until the house of Usher collapses completely. Characters cannot
move and act freely in the house because of its structure, so it assumes a monstrous character of its own—the
Gothic mastermind that controls the fate of its inhabitants. Poe, creates confusion between the living things and
inanimate objects by doubling the physical house of Usher with the genetic family line of the Usher family,
which he refers to as the house of Usher. Poe employs the word “house” metaphorically, but he also describes a
real house. Not only does the narrator get trapped inside the mansion, but we learn also that this confinement
describes the biological fate of the Usher family. The family has no enduring branches, so all genetic
transmission has occurred incestuously within the domain of the house. The peasantry confuses the mansion
with the family because the physical structure has effectively dictated the genetic patterns of the family.

N. Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter.

The Scarlet Letter opens with a long preamble about how the book came to be written. The nameless narrator
was the surveyor of the customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. In the customhouse’s attic, he discovered a
number of documents, among them a manuscript that was bundled with a scarlet, gold-embroidered patch of
cloth in the shape of an “A.” The manuscript, the work of a past surveyor, detailed events that occurred some
two hundred years before the narrator’s time. When the narrator lost his customs post, he decided to write a
fictional account of the events recorded in the manuscript. The Scarlet Letter is the final product.
The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is
led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. A
man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester’s husband, a
scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that
he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has given
birth to a child. She will not reveal her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public

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shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and
harangued by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child’s father.

The elderly onlooker is Hester’s missing husband, who is now practicing medicine and calling himself Roger
Chillingworth. He settles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true identity to no one but Hester, whom
he has sworn to secrecy. Several years pass. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and Pearl
grows into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the community, they live in a small cottage on the outskirts of
Boston. Community officials attempt to take Pearl away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale,
a young and eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however,
appears to be wasting away and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological
distress. Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can
provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a connection
between the minister’s torments and Hester’s secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can learn.
One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers a mark on the man’s breast (the details of
which are kept from the reader), which convinces him that his suspicions are correct.

Dimmesdale’s psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himself. In the meantime,
Hester’s charitable deeds and quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. One
night, when Pearl is about seven years old, she and her mother are returning home from a visit to a deathbed
when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to punish himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl
join him, and the three link hands. Dimmesdale refuses Pearl’s request that he acknowledge her publicly the
next day, and a meteor marks a dull red “A” in the night sky. Hester can see that the minister’s condition is
worsening, and she resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to
Dimmesdale’s self-torment. Chillingworth refuses.

Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because she is aware that Chillingworth has
probably guessed that she plans to reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. The former lovers decide to flee to
Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They will take a ship sailing from Boston in four days. Both
feel a sense of release, and Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. Pearl, playing nearby, does
not recognize her mother without the letter. The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a
holiday and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that
Chillingworth knows of their plan and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church
after his sermon, sees Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the scaffold
with his lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing a scarlet letter seared into the flesh of his
chest. He falls dead, as Pearl kisses him.

Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what
has happened to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old
cottage and resume her charitable work. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who has married a European
aristocrat and established a family of her own. When Hester dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two
share a single tombstone, which bears a scarlet “A.”

Sin, Knowledge, And The Human Condition

Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible begins with the story of Adam and
Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. As a
result of their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of their humanness, that which separates them from
the divine and from other creatures. Once expelled from the Garden of Eden, they are forced to toil and to
procreate—two “labors” that seem to define the human condition.

The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results
in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledge—specifically, in knowledge of what it means to be
human. For Hester, the scarlet letter functions as “her passport into regions where other women dared not
tread,” leading her to “speculate” about her society and herself more “boldly” than anyone else in New England.
As for Dimmesdale, the “burden” of his sin gives him “sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of
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mankind, so that his heart vibrate[s] in unison with theirs.” His eloquent and powerful sermons derive from this
sense of empathy. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on a daily basis and try to reconcile
it with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other hand, insist on seeing earthly experience as
merely an obstacle on the path to heaven. Thus, they view sin as a threat to the community that should be
punished and suppressed. Their answer to Hester’s sin is to ostracize her. Yet, Puritan society is stagnant, while
Hester and Dimmesdale’s experience shows that a state of sinfulness can lead to personal growth, sympathy,
and understanding of others. Paradoxically, these qualities are shown to be incompatible with a state of purity.

The Nature Of Evil

The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the “Black Man,” the embodiment of evil. Over the
course of the novel, the “Black Man” is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Mistress Hibbins, and
little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devil’s child. The characters also try to root out the causes of evil: did
Chillingworth’s selfishness in marrying Hester force her to the “evil” she committed in Dimmesdale’s arms? Is
Hester and Dimmesdale’s deed responsible for Chillingworth’s transformation into a malevolent being? This
confusion over the nature and causes of evil reveals the problems with the Puritan conception of sin.

The book argues that true evil arises from the close relationship between hate and love. As the narrator points
out in the novel’s concluding chapter, both emotions depend upon “a high degree of intimacy and heart-
knowledge; each renders one individual dependent . . . upon another.” Evil is not found in Hester and
Dimmesdale’s lovemaking, nor even in the cruel ignorance of the Puritan fathers. Evil, in its most poisonous
form, is found in the carefully plotted and precisely aimed revenge of Chillingworth, whose love has been
perverted. Perhaps Pearl is not entirely wrong when she thinks Dimmesdale is the “Black Man,” because her
father, too, has perverted his love. Dimmesdale, who should love Pearl, will not even publicly acknowledge her.
His cruel denial of love to his own child may be seen as further perpetrating evil.

Identity And Society

After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by the people of Boston to wear a badge of humiliation, her
unwillingness to leave the town may seem puzzling. She is not physically imprisoned, and leaving the
Massachusetts Bay Colony would allow her to remove the scarlet letter and resume a normal life. Surprisingly,
Hester reacts with dismay when Chillingworth tells her that the town fathers are considering letting her remove
the letter. Hester’s behavior is premised on her desire to determine her own identity rather than to allow others
to determine it for her. To her, running away or removing the letter would be an acknowledgment of society’s
power over her: she would be admitting that the letter is a mark of shame and something from which she desires
to escape. Instead, Hester stays, refiguring the scarlet letter as a symbol of her own experiences and character.
Her past sin is a part of who she is; to pretend that it never happened would mean denying a part of herself.
Thus, Hester very determinedly integrates her sin into her life.

Dimmesdale also struggles against a socially determined identity. As the community’s minister, he is more
symbol than human being. Except for Chillingworth, those around the minister willfully ignore his obvious
anguish, misinterpreting it as holiness. Unfortunately, Dimmesdale never fully recognizes the truth of what
Hester has learned: that individuality and strength are gained by quiet self-assertion and by a reconfiguration,
not a rejection, of one’s assigned identity.

Female Independence
Hawthorne explores the theme of female independence by showing how Hester boldly makes her own decisions
and is able to take care of herself. Before the novel even begins, Hester has already violated social expectations
by following her heart and choosing to have sex with a man she is not married to; she will later justify this
decision by explaining to Dimmesdale that “What we did had a consecration of its own.” Because Hester is cast
out of the community, she is liberated from many of the traditional expectations for a woman to be docile and
submissive. She also has practical responsibilities that force her to be independent: she has to earn a living so
that she and her daughter can survive, and she also has to raise a headstrong child as a single parent. These
unusual circumstances make Hester comfortable standing up for herself, such as when she violently objects to
Governor Bellingham trying to take Pearl away.

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The novel suggests Hester’s independence comes at a price. The narrator seems sympathetic to Hester’s vision
of a brighter future where “a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man
and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness.” However, the narrator also makes the point that because
Hester has been living outside of social conventions, she seems to have lost touch with key ethical principles:
“she had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness.” The novel also ends with Hester returning
to the community to live a humble life, and voluntarily choosing to start wearing the scarlet letter again, both of
which suggest that by the end of the novel she has abandoned some of her independent and free-thinking ways.
The descriptions of Pearl also suggest that female independence is antithetical to happiness. The narrator says
no one knew if Pearl’s “wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued, and made capable of a woman’s gentle
happiness,” implying that only by forfeiting her independent spirit could Pearl be truly content.

Guilt
Guilt is a major theme in The Scarlet Letter, and appears primarily in the psychology of Arthur Dimmesdale.
Dimmesdale is tormented both by guilt at his sinful act of fathering an illegitimate child, and then by the guilt of
failing to take responsibility for his actions and having to hide his secret. As he explains, “Had I one friend…to
whom… I could daily betake myself and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep
itself alive.” The minister’s guilt is also exaggerated by a sense of hypocrisy, because he is considered by many
to be exceptionally holy and righteous: “It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured
him!”
Dimmesdale spends a lot of time lamenting what a sinner he is, but he only takes public responsibility for
having fathered Hester’s child in the final moments of his life, when it is too late for anything to change. If
anything, his sense of guilt is what makes him so vulnerable to being manipulated by Chillingsworth. Through
the character of Dimmesdale, Hawthorne suggests that guilt is not necessarily virtuous if it is not accompanied
by an effort to change or redeem oneself.

Nature Vs Society
The theme of nature versus society is exemplified by Hester and Dimmesdale’s forbidden passion, and the
product of that passion: Pearl. Hester and Dimmesdale are drawn to each other by desires that cannot be
controlled by the rules of social, legal, and religious institutions. They follow their impulses, which leads to
conception and reproduction. While Hester’s pregnancy is condemned by society, it is the natural outcome of a
basic human impulse. The relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale explores the tension between natural
desires, and the ways in which society tries to control human nature by imposing rules and laws.

Similarly, Pearl, a product of natural impulses, exhibits a personality that aligns her with nature, rather than
society. She is a wild and impulsive child, and the narrator attributes Pearl’s personality to the circumstances
under which she was conceived: “In giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was a
being, whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder.” The novel’s climax, the key
scene where Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl are finally reunited, takes place in the woods. This location
highlights the tension between nature and society. In a space that is still untamed and not ruled by social
conventions, Dimmesdale and Hester can speak openly with each other, and even dare to imagine a future in
which they might be able to break free and find happiness together. Hawthorne depicts Nature being on the side
of the lovers: “that wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher
truth—with the bliss of those two spirits!” Likewise, Pearl can roam safely through the woods because “all
recognized a kindred wildness in the human child.” However, while nature offers a safe haven to the
unconventional family, they are ultimately still subject to the laws of society, and must eventually live with the
consequences.

Empathy
Throughout the novel, characters either achieve or fail to achieve feelings of empathy for their fellow humans.
Both Dimmesdale and Hester achieve greater compassion because they have suffered, and can sympathize with
how a good person might still make mistakes. This ability to show empathy makes Hester and Dimmesdale
highly sought after within the community: Dimmesdale gains a great reputation as a minister, and by the end of
the novel Hester has become a kind of wise woman: “people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and
besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble.”

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Meanwhile, characters like Governor Bellingham fail to show empathy because they are too busy judging others
and focusing on their flaws. For example, Bellingham suggests that little Pearl be taken away from her mother
because he thinks Hester’s sin makes her unfit to raise a child. Both Hester and Dimmesdale argue that the child
can learn from her mother’s mistakes, but Bellingham shows judgement rather than empathy. Hawthorne
connects the experience of suffering to the growth of empathy as a way to suggest that even tragic events can
have meaning and value.

Hester Prynne
Hester is the book’s protagonist and the wearer of the scarlet letter that gives the book its title. The letter, a
patch of fabric in the shape of an “A,” signifies that Hester is an “adulterer.” As a young woman, Hester married
an elderly scholar, Chillingworth, who sent her ahead to America to live but never followed her. While waiting
for him, she had an affair with a Puritan minister named Dimmesdale, after which she gave birth to Pearl. Hester
is passionate but also strong—she endures years of shame and scorn. She equals both her husband and her lover
in her intelligence and thoughtfulness. Her alienation puts her in the position to make acute observations about
her community, particularly about its treatment of women.

Read an in-depth analysis of Hester Prynne

Pearl
Hester’s illegitimate daughter Pearl is a young girl with a moody, mischievous spirit and an ability to perceive
things that others do not. For example, she quickly discerns the truth about her mother and Dimmesdale. The
townspeople say that she barely seems human and spread rumors that her unknown father is actually the Devil.
She is wise far beyond her years, frequently engaging in ironic play having to do with her mother’s scarlet letter.

Read an in-depth analysis of Pearl

Roger Chillingworth
“Roger Chillingworth” is actually Hester’s husband in disguise. He is much older than she is and had sent her to
America while he settled his affairs in Europe. Because he is captured by Native Americans, he arrives in
Boston belatedly and finds Hester and her illegitimate child being displayed on the scaffold. He lusts for
revenge, and thus decides to stay in Boston despite his wife’s betrayal and disgrace. He is a scholar and uses his
knowledge to disguise himself as a doctor, intent on discovering and tormenting Hester’s anonymous lover.
Chillingworth is self-absorbed and both physically and psychologically monstrous. His single-minded pursuit of
retribution reveals him to be the most malevolent character in the novel.

Read an in-depth analysis of Roger Chillingworth

Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale
Dimmesdale is a young man who achieved fame in England as a theologian and then emigrated to America. In a
moment of weakness, he and Hester became lovers. Although he will not confess it publicly, he is the father of
her child. He deals with his guilt by tormenting himself physically and psychologically, developing a heart
condition as a result. Dimmesdale is an intelligent and emotional man, and his sermons are thus masterpieces of
eloquence and persuasiveness. His commitments to his congregation are in constant conflict with his feelings of
sinfulness and need to confess.

Governor Bellingham
Governor Bellingham is a wealthy, elderly gentleman who spends much of his time consulting with the other
town fathers. Despite his role as governor of a fledgling American society, he very much resembles a traditional
English aristocrat. Bellingham tends to strictly adhere to the rules, but he is easily swayed by Dimmesdale’s
eloquence. He remains blind to the misbehaviors taking place in his own house: his sister, Mistress Hibbins, is a
witch.

Read an in-depth analysis of Governor Bellingham

Mistress Hibbins
Mistress Hibbins is a widow who lives with her brother, Governor Bellingham, in a luxurious mansion. She is
commonly known to be a witch who ventures into the forest at night to ride with the “Black Man.” Her
appearances at public occasions remind the reader of the hypocrisy and hidden evil in Puritan society.
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Read an in-depth analysis of Mistress Hibbins
Reverend Mr. John Wilson
Boston’s elder clergyman, Reverend Wilson is scholarly yet grandfatherly. He is a stereotypical Puritan father, a
literary version of the stiff, starkly painted portraits of American patriarchs. Like Governor Bellingham, Wilson
follows the community’s rules strictly but can be swayed by Dimmesdale’s eloquence. Unlike Dimmesdale, his
junior colleague, Wilson preaches hellfire and damnation and advocates harsh punishment of sinners.

Narrator
The unnamed narrator works as the surveyor of the Salem Custom-House some two hundred years after the
novel’s events take place. He discovers an old manuscript in the building’s attic that tells the story of Hester
Prynne; when he loses his job, he decides to write a fictional treatment of the narrative. The narrator is a rather
high-strung man, whose Puritan ancestry makes him feel guilty about his writing career. He writes because he is
interested in American history and because he believes that America needs to better understand its religious and
moral heritage.

H. Melville. Moby Dick.

Ishmael, the narrator, announces his intent to ship aboard a whaling vessel. He has made several voyages as a
sailor but none as a whaler. He travels to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he stays in a whalers’ inn. Since
the inn is rather full, he has to share a bed with a harpooner from the South Pacific named Queequeg. At first
repulsed by Queequeg’s strange habits and shocking appearance (Queequeg is covered with tattoos), Ishmael
eventually comes to appreciate the man’s generosity and kind spirit, and the two decide to seek work on a
whaling vessel together. They take a ferry to Nantucket, the traditional capital of the whaling industry. There
they secure berths on the Pequod, a savage-looking ship adorned with the bones and teeth of sperm whales.
Peleg and Bildad, the Pequod’s Quaker owners, drive a hard bargain in terms of salary. They also mention the
ship’s mysterious captain, Ahab, who is still recovering from losing his leg in an encounter with a sperm whale
on his last voyage.
The Pequod leaves Nantucket on a cold Christmas Day with a crew made up of men from many different
countries and races. Soon the ship is in warmer waters, and Ahab makes his first appearance on deck, balancing
gingerly on his false leg, which is made from a sperm whale’s jaw. He announces his desire to pursue and kill
Moby Dick, the legendary great white whale who took his leg, because he sees this whale as the embodiment of
evil. Ahab nails a gold doubloon to the mast and declares that it will be the prize for the first man to sight the
whale. As the Pequod sails toward the southern tip of Africa, whales are sighted and unsuccessfully hunted.
During the hunt, a group of men, none of whom anyone on the ship’s crew has seen before on the voyage,
emerges from the hold. The men’s leader is an exotic-looking man named Fedallah. These men constitute
Ahab’s private harpoon crew, smuggled aboard in defiance of Bildad and Peleg. Ahab hopes that their skills and
Fedallah’s prophetic abilities will help him in his hunt for Moby Dick.
The Pequod rounds Africa and enters the Indian Ocean. A few whales are successfully caught and processed for
their oil. From time to time, the ship encounters other whaling vessels. Ahab always demands information about
Moby Dick from their captains. One of the ships, the Jeroboam, carries Gabriel, a crazed prophet who predicts
doom for anyone who threatens Moby Dick. His predictions seem to carry some weight, as those aboard his ship
who have hunted the whale have met disaster. While trying to drain the oil from the head of a captured sperm
whale, Tashtego, one of the Pequod’s harpooners, falls into the whale’s voluminous head, which then rips free
of the ship and begins to sink. Queequeg saves Tashtego by diving into the ocean and cutting into the slowly
sinking head.
During another whale hunt, Pip, the Pequod’s black cabin boy, jumps from a whaleboat and is left behind in the
middle of the ocean. He goes insane as the result of the experience and becomes a crazy but prophetic jester for
the ship. Soon after, the Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby, a whaling ship whose skipper, Captain Boomer, has
lost an arm in an encounter with Moby Dick. The two captains discuss the whale; Boomer, happy simply to
have survived his encounter, cannot understand Ahab’s lust for vengeance. Not long after, Queequeg falls ill
and has the ship’s carpenter make him a coffin in anticipation of his death. He recovers, however, and the coffin
eventually becomes the Pequod’s replacement life buoy.
Ahab orders a harpoon forged in the expectation that he will soon encounter Moby Dick. He baptizes the
harpoon with the blood of the Pequod’s three harpooners. The Pequod kills several more whales. Issuing a
prophecy about Ahab’s death, Fedallah declares that Ahab will first see two hearses, the second of which will be

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 made only from American wood, and that he will be killed by hemp rope. Ahab interprets these words to mean
that he will not die at sea, where there are no hearses and no hangings. A typhoon hits the Pequod, illuminating
it with electrical fire. Ahab takes this occurrence as a sign of imminent confrontation and success, but Starbuck,
the ship’s first mate, takes it as a bad omen and considers killing Ahab to end the mad quest. After the storm
ends, one of the sailors falls from the ship’s masthead and drowns—a grim foreshadowing of what lies ahead.
Ahab’s fervent desire to find and destroy Moby Dick continues to intensify, and the mad Pip is now his constant
companion. The Pequod approaches the equator, where Ahab expects to find the great whale. The ship
encounters two more whaling ships, the Rachel and the Delight, both of which have recently had fatal
encounters with the whale. Ahab finally sights Moby Dick. The harpoon boats are launched, and Moby Dick
attacks Ahab’s harpoon boat, destroying it. The next day, Moby Dick is sighted again, and the boats are lowered
once more. The whale is harpooned, but Moby Dick again attacks Ahab’s boat. Fedallah, trapped in the harpoon
line, is dragged overboard to his death. Starbuck must maneuver the Pequod between Ahab and the angry
whale.
On the third day, the boats are once again sent after Moby Dick, who once again attacks them. The men can see
Fedallah’s corpse lashed to the whale by the harpoon line. Moby Dick rams the Pequod and sinks it. Ahab is
then caught in a harpoon line and hurled out of his harpoon boat to his death. All of the remaining whaleboats
and men are caught in the vortex created by the sinking Pequod and pulled under to their deaths. Ishmael, who
was thrown from a boat at the beginning of the chase, was far enough away to escape the whirlpool, and he
alone survives. He floats atop Queequeg’s coffin, which popped back up from the wreck, until he is picked up
by the Rachel, which is still searching for the crewmen lost in her earlier encounter with Moby Dick.

 Ishmael
The narrator, and a junior member of the crew of the Pequod. Ishmael doesn’t play a major role in the events of
the novel, but much of the narrative is taken up by his eloquent, verbose, and extravagant discourse on whales
and whaling.
Read an in-depth analysis of Ishmael.
 Ahab
The egomaniacal captain of the Pequod. Ahab lost his leg to Moby Dick. He is single-minded in his pursuit of
the whale, using a mixture of charisma and terror to persuade his crew to join him. As a captain, he is dictatorial
but not unfair. At moments he shows a compassionate side, caring for the insane Pip and musing on his wife and
child back in Nantucket.
Read an in-depth analysis of Ahab.
 Moby Dick
The great white sperm whale. Moby Dick, also referred to as the White Whale, is an infamous and dangerous
threat to seamen, considered by Ahab the incarnation of evil and a fated nemesis.

Read an in-depth analysis of Moby Dick.

 Starbuck
The first mate of the Pequod. Starbuck questions Ahab’s judgment, first in private and later in public. He is a
Quaker who believes that Christianity offers a way to interpret the world around him, although he is not
dogmatic or pushy about his beliefs. Starbuck acts as a conservative force against Ahab’s mania.
 Queequeg
Starbuck’s skilled harpooner and Ishmael’s best friend. Queequeg was once a prince from a South Sea island
who stowed away on a whaling ship in search of adventure. He is a composite of elements of African,
Polynesian, Islamic, Christian, and Native American cultures. He is brave and generous, and enables Ishmael to
see that race has no bearing on a man’s character.

 Stubb
The second mate of the Pequod. Stubb, chiefly characterized by his mischievous good humor, is easygoing and
popular. He proves a bit of a nihilist, always trusting in fate and refusing to assign too much significance to
anything.
 Tashtego
Stubb’s harpooner, Tashtego is a Gay Head Indian from Martha’s Vineyard, one of the last of a tribe about to
disappear. Tashtego performs many of the skilled tasks aboard the ship, such as tapping the case of spermaceti
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 in the whale’s head. Like Queequeg, Tashtego embodies certain characteristics of the “noble savage” and is
meant to defy racial stereotypes. He is, however, more practical and less intellectual than Queequeg: like many
a common sailor, Tashtego craves rum.

 Flask
A native of Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard and the third mate of the Pequod. Short and stocky, Flask has a
confrontational attitude and no reverence for anything. His stature has earned him the nickname “King-Post,”
because he resembles a certain type of short, square timber.
Read an in-depth analysis of Flask.
 Daggoo
Flask’s harpooner. Daggoo is a physically enormous, imperious-looking African. Like Queequeg, he stowed
away on a whaling ship that stopped near his home. Daggoo is less prominent in the narrative than either
Queequeg or Tashtego.

 Pip
A young black boy who fills the role of a cabin boy or jester on the Pequod. Pip has a minimal role in the
beginning of the narrative but becomes important when he goes insane after being left to drift alone in the sea
for some time. Like the fools in Shakespeare’s plays, he is half idiot and half prophet, often perceiving things
that others don’t.
 Fedallah
A strange, “oriental” old Parsee (Persian fire-worshipper) whom Ahab has brought on board unbeknownst to
most of the crew. Fedallah has a very striking appearance: around his head is a turban made from his own hair,
and he wears a black Chinese jacket and pants. He is an almost supernaturally skilled hunter and also serves as a
prophet to Ahab. Fedallah keeps his distance from the rest of the crew, who for their part view him with unease.

 Peleg
A well-to-do retired whaleman of Nantucket and a Quaker. As one of the principal owners of the Pequod, Peleg,
along with Captain Bildad, takes care of hiring the crew. When the two are negotiating wages for Ishmael and
Queequeg, Peleg plays the generous one, although his salary offer is not terribly impressive.
 Bildad
Another well-to-do Quaker ex-whaleman from Nantucket who owns a large share of the Pequod. Bildad is (or
pretends to be) crustier than Peleg in negotiations over wages. Both men display a business sense and a
bloodthirstiness unusual for Quakers, who are normally pacifists.
 Father Mapple
A former whaleman and now the preacher in the New Bedford Whaleman’s Chapel. Father Mapple delivers a
sermon on Jonah and the whale in which he uses the Bible to address the whalemen’s lives. Learned but also
experienced, he is an example of someone whose trials have led him toward God rather than bitterness or
revenge.

 Captain Boomer
The jovial captain of the English whaling ship the Samuel Enderby. Boomer lost his arm in an accident
involving Moby Dick. Unlike Ahab, Boomer is glad to have escaped with his life, and he sees further pursuit of
the whale as madness. He is a foil for Ahab, as the two men react in different ways to a similar experience.
 Gabriel
A sailor aboard the Jeroboam. Part of a Shaker sect, Gabriel has prophesied that Moby Dick is the incarnation
of the Shaker god and that any attempts to harm him will result in disaster. His prophecies have been borne out
by the death of the Jeroboam’s mate in a whale hunt and the plague that rages aboard the ship.

The Limits of Knowledge

As Ishmael tries, in the opening pages of Moby-Dick, to offer a simple collection of literary excerpts mentioning
whales, he discovers that, throughout history, the whale has taken on an incredible multiplicity of meanings.
Over the course of the novel, he makes use of nearly every discipline known to man in his attempts to
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understand the essential nature of the whale. Each of these systems of knowledge, however, including art,
taxonomy, and phrenology, fails to give an adequate account. The multiplicity of approaches that Ishmael takes,
coupled with his compulsive need to assert his authority as a narrator and the frequent references to the limits of
observation (men cannot see the depths of the ocean, for example), suggest that human knowledge is always
limited and insufficient. When it comes to Moby Dick himself, this limitation takes on allegorical significance.
The ways of Moby Dick, like those of the Christian God, are unknowable to man, and thus trying to interpret
them, as Ahab does, is inevitably futile and often fatal.
The Deceptiveness of Fate
In addition to highlighting many portentous or foreshadowing events, Ishmael’s narrative contains many
references to fate, creating the impression that the Pequod’s doom is inevitable. Many of the sailors believe in
prophecies, and some even claim the ability to foretell the future. A number of things suggest, however, that
characters are actually deluding themselves when they think that they see the work of fate and that fate either
doesn’t exist or is one of the many forces about which human beings can have no distinct knowledge. Ahab, for
example, clearly exploits the sailors’ belief in fate to manipulate them into thinking that the quest for Moby
Dick is their common destiny. Moreover, the prophesies of Fedallah and others seem to be undercut in Chapter
99, when various individuals interpret the doubloon in different ways, demonstrating that humans project what
they want to see when they try to interpret signs and portents.
The Exploitative Nature of Whaling
At first glance, the Pequod seems like an island of equality and fellowship in the midst of a racist, hierarchically
structured world. The ship’s crew includes men from all corners of the globe and all races who seem to get
along harmoniously. Ishmael is initially uneasy upon meeting Queequeg, but he quickly realizes that it is better
to have a “sober cannibal than a drunken Christian” for a shipmate. Additionally, the conditions of work aboard
the Pequod promote a certain kind of egalitarianism, since men are promoted and paid according to their skill.
However, the work of whaling parallels the other exploitative activities—buffalo hunting, gold mining, unfair
trade with indigenous peoples—that characterize American and European territorial expansion. Each of
the Pequod’s mates, who are white, is entirely dependent on a nonwhite harpooner, and nonwhites perform most
of the dirty or dangerous jobs aboard the ship. Flask actually stands on Daggoo, his African harpooner, in order
to beat the other mates to a prize whale. Ahab is depicted as walking over the black youth Pip, who listens to
Ahab’s pacing from below deck, and is thus reminded that his value as a slave is less than the value of a whale.

M. Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens by familiarizing us with the events of the novel that preceded it, The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Both novels are set in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, which lies on the banks
of the Mississippi River. At the end of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy with a drunken bum for a
father, and his friend Tom Sawyer, a middle-class boy with an imagination too active for his own good, found a
robber’s stash of gold. As a result of his adventure, Huck gained quite a bit of money, which the bank held for
him in trust. Huck was adopted by the Widow Douglas, a kind but stifling woman who lives with her sister, the
self-righteous Miss Watson.
As Huckleberry Finn opens, Huck is none too thrilled with his new life of cleanliness, manners, church, and
school. However, he sticks it out at the bequest of Tom Sawyer, who tells him that in order to take part in Tom’s
new “robbers’ gang,” Huck must stay “respectable.” All is well and good until Huck’s brutish, drunken father,
Pap, reappears in town and demands Huck’s money. The local judge, Judge Thatcher, and the Widow try to get
legal custody of Huck, but another well-intentioned new judge in town believes in the rights of Huck’s natural
father and even takes the old drunk into his own home in an attempt to reform him. This effort fails miserably,
and Pap soon returns to his old ways. He hangs around town for several months, harassing his son, who in the
meantime has learned to read and to tolerate the Widow’s attempts to improve him. Finally, outraged when the
Widow Douglas warns him to stay away from her house, Pap kidnaps Huck and holds him in a cabin across the
river from St. Petersburg.
Whenever Pap goes out, he locks Huck in the cabin, and when he returns home drunk, he beats the boy. Tired of
his confinement and fearing the beatings will worsen, Huck escapes from Pap by faking his own death, killing a
pig and spreading its blood all over the cabin. Hiding on Jackson’s Island in the middle of the Mississippi River,
Huck watches the townspeople search the river for his body. After a few days on the island, he encounters Jim,
one of Miss Watson’s slaves. Jim has run away from Miss Watson after hearing her talk about selling him to a
plantation down the river, where he would be treated horribly and separated from his wife and children. Huck
and Jim team up, despite Huck’s uncertainty about the legality or morality of helping a runaway slave. While

57
they camp out on the island, a great storm causes the Mississippi to flood. Huck and Jim spy a log raft and a
house floating past the island. They capture the raft and loot the house, finding in it the body of a man who has
been shot. Jim refuses to let Huck see the dead man’s face.

Although the island is blissful, Huck and Jim are forced to leave after Huck learns from a woman onshore that
her husband has seen smoke coming from the island and believes that Jim is hiding out there. Huck also learns
that a reward has been offered for Jim’s capture. Huck and Jim start downriver on the raft, intending to leave it
at the mouth of the Ohio River and proceed up that river by steamboat to the free states, where slavery is
prohibited. Several days’ travel takes them past St. Louis, and they have a close encounter with a gang of
robbers on a wrecked steamboat. They manage to escape with the robbers’ loot.

During a night of thick fog, Huck and Jim miss the mouth of the Ohio and encounter a group of men looking for
escaped slaves. Huck has a brief moral crisis about concealing stolen “property”—Jim, after all, belongs to Miss
Watson—but then lies to the men and tells them that his father is on the raft suffering from smallpox. Terrified
of the disease, the men give Huck money and hurry away. Unable to backtrack to the mouth of the Ohio, Huck
and Jim continue downriver. The next night, a steamboat slams into their raft, and Huck and Jim are separated.

Huck ends up in the home of the kindly Grangerfords, a family of Southern aristocrats locked in a bitter and
silly feud with a neighboring clan, the Shepherdsons. The elopement of a Grangerford daughter with a
Shepherdson son leads to a gun battle in which many in the families are killed. While Huck is caught up in the
feud, Jim shows up with the repaired raft. Huck hurries to Jim’s hiding place, and they take off down the river.

A few days later, Huck and Jim rescue a pair of men who are being pursued by armed bandits. The men, clearly
con artists, claim to be a displaced English duke (the duke) and the long-lost heir to the French throne (the
dauphin). Powerless to tell two white adults to leave, Huck and Jim continue down the river with the pair of
“aristocrats.” The duke and the dauphin pull several scams in the small towns along the river. Coming into one
town, they hear the story of a man, Peter Wilks, who has recently died and left much of his inheritance to his
two brothers, who should be arriving from England any day. The duke and the dauphin enter the town
pretending to be Wilks’s brothers. Wilks’s three nieces welcome the con men and quickly set about liquidating
the estate. A few townspeople become skeptical, and Huck, who grows to admire the Wilks sisters, decides to
thwart the scam. He steals the dead Peter Wilks’s gold from the duke and the dauphin but is forced to stash it in
Wilks’s coffin. Huck then reveals all to the eldest Wilks sister, Mary Jane. Huck’s plan for exposing the duke
and the dauphin is about to unfold when Wilks’s real brothers arrive from England. The angry townspeople hold
both sets of Wilks claimants, and the duke and the dauphin just barely escape in the ensuing confusion.
Fortunately for the sisters, the gold is found. Unfortunately for Huck and Jim, the duke and the dauphin make it
back to the raft just as Huck and Jim are pushing off.

After a few more small scams, the duke and dauphin commit their worst crime yet: they sell Jim to a local
farmer, telling him Jim is a runaway for whom a large reward is being offered. Huck finds out where Jim is
being held and resolves to free him. At the house where Jim is a prisoner, a woman greets Huck excitedly and
calls him “Tom.” As Huck quickly discovers, the people holding Jim are none other than Tom Sawyer’s aunt
and uncle, Silas and Sally Phelps. The Phelpses mistake Huck for Tom, who is due to arrive for a visit, and
Huck goes along with their mistake. He intercepts Tom between the Phelps house and the steamboat dock, and
Tom pretends to be his own younger brother, Sid.

Tom hatches a wild plan to free Jim, adding all sorts of unnecessary obstacles even though Jim is only lightly
secured. Huck is sure Tom’s plan will get them all killed, but he complies nonetheless. After a seeming eternity
of pointless preparation, during which the boys ransack the Phelps’s house and make Aunt Sally miserable, they
put the plan into action. Jim is freed, but a pursuer shoots Tom in the leg. Huck is forced to get a doctor, and Jim
sacrifices his freedom to nurse Tom. All are returned to the Phelps’s house, where Jim ends up back in chains.

When Tom wakes the next morning, he reveals that Jim has actually been a free man all along, as Miss Watson,
who made a provision in her will to free Jim, died two months earlier. Tom had planned the entire escape idea
all as a game and had intended to pay Jim for his troubles. Tom’s Aunt Polly then shows up, identifying “Tom”
58
and “Sid” as Huck and Tom. Jim tells Huck, who fears for his future—particularly that his father might reappear
—that the body they found on the floating house off Jackson’s Island had been Pap’s. Aunt Sally then steps in
and offers to adopt Huck, but Huck, who has had enough “sivilizing,” announces his plan to set out for the
West.

Huckleberry “Huck” Finn

The protagonist and narrator of the novel. Huck is the thirteen-year-old son of the local drunk of St. Petersburg,
Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River. Frequently forced to survive on his own wits and always a bit of an
outcast, Huck is thoughtful, intelligent (though formally uneducated), and willing to come to his own
conclusions about important matters, even if these conclusions contradict society’s norms. Nevertheless, Huck
is still a boy, and is influenced by others, particularly by his imaginative friend, Tom.

Read an in-depth analysis of Huckleberry “Huck” Finn.

Tom Sawyer
Huck’s friend, and the protagonist of Tom Sawyer, the novel to which Huckleberry Finn is ostensibly the sequel.
In Huckleberry Finn, Tom serves as a foil to Huck: imaginative, dominating, and given to wild plans taken from
the plots of adventure novels, Tom is everything that Huck is not. Tom’s stubborn reliance on the “authorities”
of romance novels leads him to acts of incredible stupidity and startling cruelty. His rigid adherence to society’s
conventions aligns Tom with the “sivilizing” forces that Huck learns to see through and gradually abandons.
Read an in-depth analysis of Tom Sawyer.
Jim
One of Miss Watson’s household slaves. Jim is superstitious and occasionally sentimental, but he is also
intelligent, practical, and ultimately more of an adult than anyone else in the novel. Jim’s frequent acts of
selflessness, his longing for his family, and his friendship with both Huck and Tom demonstrate to Huck that
humanity has nothing to do with race. Because Jim is a black man and a runaway slave, he is at the mercy of
almost all the other characters in the novel and is often forced into ridiculous and degrading situations.

Read an in-depth analysis of Jim.

Pap Finn
Huck’s father, the town drunk and ne’er-do-well. Pap is a wreck when he appears at the beginning of the novel,
with disgusting, ghostlike white skin and tattered clothes. The illiterate Pap disapproves of Huck’s education
and beats him frequently. Pap represents both the general debasement of white society and the failure of family
structures in the novel.

Read an in-depth analysis of Pap Finn.

The duke and the dauphin
A pair of con men whom Huck and Jim rescue as they are being run out of a river town. The older man, who
appears to be about seventy, claims to be the “dauphin,” the son of King Louis XVI and heir to the French
throne. The younger man, who is about thirty, claims to be the usurped Duke of Bridgewater. Although Huck
quickly realizes the men are frauds, he and Jim remain at their mercy, as Huck is only a child and Jim is a
runaway slave. The duke and the dauphin carry out a number of increasingly disturbing swindles as they travel
down the river on the raft.

Read an in-depth analysis of The duke and the dauphin.

Widow Douglas and Miss Watson
Two wealthy sisters who live together in a large house in St. Petersburg and who adopt Huck. The gaunt and
severe Miss Watson is the most prominent representative of the hypocritical religious and ethical values Twain
criticizes in the novel. The Widow Douglas is somewhat gentler in her beliefs and has more patience with the
mischievous Huck. When Huck acts in a manner contrary to societal expectations, it is the Widow Douglas
whom he fears disappointing.

Judge Thatcher
The local judge who shares responsibility for Huck with the Widow Douglas and is in charge of safeguarding
the money that Huck and Tom found at the end of Tom Sawyer. When Huck discovers that Pap has returned to
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town, he wisely signs his fortune over to the Judge, who doesn’t really accept the money, but tries to comfort
Huck. Judge Thatcher has a daughter, Becky, who was Tom’s girlfriend in Tom Sawyer and whom Huck calls
“Bessie” in this novel.

The Grangerfords
A family that takes Huck in after a steamboat hits his raft, separating him from Jim. The kindhearted
Grangerfords, who offer Huck a place to stay in their tacky country home, are locked in a long-standing feud
with another local family, the Shepherdsons. Twain uses the two families to engage in some rollicking humor
and to mock a overly romanticizes ideas about family honor. Ultimately, the families’ sensationalized feud gets
many of them killed.

The Wilks family

At one point during their travels, the duke and the dauphin encounter a man who tells them of the death of a
local named Peter Wilks, who has left behind a rich estate. The man inadvertently gives the con men enough
information to allow them to pretend to be Wilks’s two brothers from England, who are the recipients of much
of the inheritance. The duke and the dauphin’s subsequent conning of the good-hearted and vulnerable Wilks
sisters is the first step in the con men’s increasingly cruel series of scams, which culminate in the sale of Jim.

Silas and Sally Phelps

Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle, whom Huck coincidentally encounters in his search for Jim after the con men
have sold him. Sally is the sister of Tom’s aunt, Polly. Essentially good people, the Phelpses nevertheless hold
Jim in custody and try to return him to his rightful owner. Silas and Sally are the unknowing victims of many of
Tom and Huck’s “preparations” as they try to free Jim. The Phelpses are the only intact and functional family in
this novel, yet they are too much for Huck, who longs to escape their “sivilizing” influence.

Aunt Polly
Tom Sawyer’s aunt and guardian and Sally Phelps’s sister. Aunt Polly appears at the end of the novel and
properly identifies Huck, who has pretended to be Tom, and Tom, who has pretended to be his own younger
brother, Sid.

Racism and Slavery

Although Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn two decades after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the
Civil War, America—and especially the South—was still struggling with racism and the aftereffects of slavery.
By the early 1880s, Reconstruction, the plan to put the United States back together after the war and integrate
freed slaves into society, had hit shaky ground, although it had not yet failed outright. As Twain worked on his
novel, race relations, which seemed to be on a positive path in the years following the Civil War, once again
became strained. The imposition of Jim Crow laws, designed to limit the power of blacks in the South in a
variety of indirect ways, brought the beginning of a new, insidious effort to oppress. The new racism of the
South, less institutionalized and monolithic, was also more difficult to combat. Slavery could be outlawed, but
when white Southerners enacted racist laws or policies under a professed motive of self-defense against newly
freed blacks, far fewer people, Northern or Southern, saw the act as immoral and rushed to combat it.
Although Twain wrote the novel after slavery was abolished, he set it several decades earlier, when slavery was
still a fact of life. But even by Twain’s time, things had not necessarily gotten much better for blacks in the
South. In this light, we might read Twain’s depiction of slavery as an allegorical representation of the condition
of blacks in the United States even after the abolition of slavery. Just as slavery places the noble and moral Jim
under the control of white society, no matter how degraded that white society may be, so too did the insidious
racism that arose near the end of Reconstruction oppress black men for illogical and hypocritical reasons.
In Huckleberry Finn, Twain, by exposing the hypocrisy of slavery, demonstrates how racism distorts the
oppressors as much as it does those who are oppressed. The result is a world of moral confusion, in which
seemingly “good” white people such as Miss Watson and Sally Phelps express no concern about the injustice of
slavery or the cruelty of separating Jim from his family.
Intellectual and Moral Education
By focusing on Huck’s education, Huckleberry Finn fits into the tradition of the bildungsroman: a novel
depicting an individual’s maturation and development. As a poor, uneducated boy, for all intents and purposes
60
an orphan, Huck distrusts the morals and precepts of the society that treats him as an outcast and fails to protect
him from abuse. This apprehension about society, and his growing relationship with Jim, lead Huck to question
many of the teachings that he has received, especially regarding race and slavery. More than once, we see Huck
choose to “go to hell” rather than go along with the rules and follow what he has been taught. Huck bases these
decisions on his experiences, his own sense of logic, and what his developing conscience tells him.
On the raft, away from civilization, Huck is especially free from society’s rules, able to make his own decisions
without restriction. Through deep introspection, he comes to his own conclusions, unaffected by the accepted—
and often hypocritical—rules and values of Southern culture. By the novel’s end, Huck has learned to “read” the
world around him, to distinguish good, bad, right, wrong, menace, friend, and so on. His moral development is
sharply contrasted to the character of Tom Sawyer, who is influenced by a bizarre mix of adventure novels and
Sunday-school teachings, which he combines to justify his outrageous and potentially harmful escapades.

The Hypocrisy of “Civilized” Society

When Huck plans to head west at the end of the novel in order to escape further “sivilizing,” he is trying to
avoid more than regular baths and mandatory school attendance. Throughout the novel, Twain depicts the
society that surrounds Huck as little more than a collection of degraded rules and precepts that defy logic. This
faulty logic appears early in the novel, when the new judge in town allows Pap to keep custody of Huck. The
judge privileges Pap’s “rights” to his son as his natural father over Huck’s welfare. At the same time, this
decision comments on a system that puts a white man’s rights to his “property”—his slaves—over the welfare
and freedom of a black man. In implicitly comparing the plight of slaves to the plight of Huck at the hands of
Pap, Twain implies that it is impossible for a society that owns slaves to be just, no matter how “civilized” that
society believes and proclaims itself to be.

Again and again, Huck encounters individuals who seem good—Sally Phelps, for example—but who Twain
takes care to show are prejudiced slave-owners. This shaky sense of justice that Huck repeatedly encounters lies
at the heart of society’s problems: terrible acts go unpunished, yet frivolous crimes, such as drunkenly shouting
insults, lead to executions. Sherburn’s speech to the mob that has come to lynch him accurately summarizes the
view of society Twain gives in Huckleberry Finn: rather than maintain collective welfare, society instead is
marked by cowardice, a lack of logic, and profound selfishness.
Guilt/Shame
Huck experiences guilt and shame at various points throughout the novel, and these feelings force him into
serious questions about morality. Huck’s guilt is largely tied to the religious morality he learned from Widow
Douglas. Not long after he and Jim set out on their journey, Huck realizes that by helping Jim escape he has
done harm to Jim’s owner, Miss Watson. He explains: “Conscience says to me, . . . ‘What did that poor old
woman do to you, that you could treat her so mean?’ . . . I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most
wished I was dead” (Chapter 16). Here Huck recognizes that has broken the Golden Rule of Christianity, which
states, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Huck remains conflicted until near the end of the
book. The breaking point comes in Chapter 31, when he finds himself unable to pray. Huck realizes that in his
heart he doesn’t believe Jim should be returned to slavery, and saying so in a prayer would result in him
“playing double” and hence lying to God. When he finally resolves to help Jim escape for the last time, Huck
banishes the last vestiges of guilt.
Empathy
The theme of empathy is closely tied to the theme of guilt. Huck’s feelings of empathy help his moral
development by enabling him to imagine what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes. The theme of empathy
first arises when Huck worries about the thieves he and Jim abandon on the wrecked steamboat. Once he’s
escaped immediate danger, Huck grows concerned about the men: “I begun to think how dreadful it was, even
for murderers, to be in such a fix.” Huck’s concern drives him to go and find help. Another significant example
of empathy in the book comes in Chapter 23, when Huck wakes up to Jim “moaning and mourning to himself.”
Huck imagines that Jim is feeling “low and homesick” because he’s thinking about his wife and children: “I do
believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s
so.” Despite the residual racism in this comment, Huck’s capacity for empathy has a strong humanizing power.

Adventure
Ironically given the book’s title, the theme of “adventure” in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tends to
conjure a sense of immaturity and childish make-believe. The book begins by pointing backward to its
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prequel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the boyish exploits that resulted in Tom and Huck striking it rich.
Chapter 2 continues this type of adventure, with Tom and his “Gang” of highwaymen. This spirit of adventure
as play follows Huck beyond St. Petersburg. But the real-life situations Huck and Jim find themselves in
frequently demonstrate that adventure is not what Tom and his games have made it out to be. The first of these
situations occurs in Chapters 12 and 13, when Huck gets excited about a wrecked steamboat, but quickly flees
upon discovering that three real murderers are hiding out there. By the end of the book, when Tom returns and
tries to enforce an overly complicated and “romantical” plan for Jim’s escape, the very foundations of adventure
have come to strike Huck as childish and unrealistic. Even so, Huck retains some lust for adventure, which he
demonstrates when he declares his intent to leave Pikesville and “light out for the Territory.”
Money/Wealth
Money does nothing but cause problems in this book. Huck complains that ever since he came into a significant
sum of money at the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he has had to suffer attempts to “sivilize” and
educate him. In the early chapters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the biggest problem Huck’s money
brings him is his father, Pap. Pap mainly wants access to Huck’s money so he can buy more alcohol, and his
capacity for anger and violence becomes clear when Huck refuses to hand over any cash.
Further money-related problems arise following the initial appearance of the duke and the dauphin, who swindle
common townsfolk out of their money. Their scams cause anxiety for Huck and wreak havoc in all of the small
towns they visit. The only time money seems like it might have a redemptive power is at the end of the novel,
when Tom gives Jim forty dollars to pay his way back north. For Jim, money holds the promise of liberation.
But given the many problems money has brought throughout the book, it seems unlikely that money alone will
guarantee Jim his freedom.

Тh. Dreiser. An American Tragedy.

Kansas City, a hot summer evening. Two adults and four children are singing hymns and handing out religious
pamphlets. The oldest boy obviously does not like what he has to do, but his parents eagerly are given to the
salvation of lost souls, which, however, brings them only moral satisfaction. Asa Griffiths, the father of the
family, is characterized by impracticality, and the family could barely make ends meet.

Young Clyde Griffiths seeks to break out of this dull little world. He becomes an assistant in a drugstore, and
then a messenger to the hotel "Green-Davidson." Working in the hotel does not require any special skills, but it
brings good tips that allow Clyde not only to contribute to the family budget, but also to buy good clothes and
save funds.
His colleagues quickly take Clyde into their company, and he plunges into a fun new existence. He meets a
pretty saleswoman Hortense Briggs, who however is not going to have anyone's favor only for beautiful eyes.
She wants to have a fashionable jacket, which is one hundred and fifteen dollars, and Clyde cannot resist her
desire.

Soon, Clyde goes on a pleasure trip in the luxurious "Packard". This car has been taken by one of the young
men, Sparser, without permission from the garage of one rich man, whom his father is working for. On the way
back to Kansas City weather begins to deteriorate, it is snowing, and they have to go very slowly. Clyde and his
friends are late for work in the hotel and therefore ask Sparser to add speed. And so he does, but careless,
knocks down a girl, and then, fleeing from prosecution, cannot cope with the driving. The driver and one of the
girls are lying unconscious in a broken car; the rest of the company run away.

The next day the newspapers report on the incident. The girl has died, arrested Sparser says the names of all
other members of the company. Fearing arrest, Clyde and some of the other leave Kansas City. For three years
Clyde is living away from home under a false name, he performs the dirty thankless job and gets pennies for it.
But one day in Chicago, he meets his friend Ratterer, who was also with him in the Packard. Ratterer arranges
him in the "Union Club" as a messenger. Clyde is quite happy with his new life, but once in the club
appears Samuel Griffiths, his uncle, who lives in the city of Lycurgus, New York, and owns a factory of the
production of collars. The result of the meeting of relatives becomes Clyde’s moving in Lycurgus. Uncle
promised him a place in the factory, although does not promise the mountains of gold.
Samuel’s son Gilbert accepts his cousin with no special joy, and making sure that he does not have any useful
knowledge and skills, defines him to sufficiently heavy and low-paid work in shop housed in the basement.

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Clyde rents a room in a cheap boarding house and begins, as they say, from scratch, hoping, however, sooner or
later to succeed.

A month passes. Clyde regularly does whatever he is instructed. Griffiths Sr. asks the son, of the opinion of
Clyde but Gilbert is rather cold in the estimation. According to him, Clyde is unlikely to advance - he has no
education, is purposeless and too soft. However, Samuel finds Clyde good and he is ready to give his nephew a
chance to show himself. Contrary to the wishes of Gilbert, Clyde is invited into the house for a family dinner.
There, he meets not only with the family of his cousin, but with charming too ladies Bertine Cranston
and Sondra Finchley, who find him a quite beautiful and well-mannered young man.
Finally, on the insistence of his father, Gilbert finds Clyde less heavy and more prestigious job. However,
Gilbert warns him that he must keep up appearances in relationships with women workers and all sorts of
liberties will be strongly suppressed. Clyde is ready to faithfully fulfill all the requirements of his employers
and, despite attempts os some girls to tie a relationship with him, remains deaf to their overtures.

Soon, however, the factory receives an additional order for the collars, and this, in turn, requires an expansion of
the state. To the factory comes young Roberta Alden, whose charm Clyde cannot resist. They start dating,
Clyde’s courtship becomes more and more insistent, and brought up in strict rules Roberta is unable to
remember the maiden prudence. Meanwhile, Clyde meets again with Sondra Finchley, and the meeting abruptly
changes his life. The rich heiress, a spokeswoman for the local aristocracy of money, Sondra shows genuine
interest in the young man, and invites him to a night of dancing, where gathers the golden youth. Under the
pressure of new experiences modest charm of Roberta begins to fade in the eyes of Clyde. She feels that Clyde
is not so attentive to her, she is afraid of losing his love, and one day she gives in to the temptation. Roberta and
Clyde become lovers.
Sondra Finchley, however, does not disappear out of his life. Instead she introduces Clyde in her circle, and
enticing prospects hit into his head. This does not stay unnoticed by Roberta, and she experiences severe
torments of jealousy. To top it all it turns out that she is pregnant. She says that to Clyde, and he frantically tries
to find a way out of this situation. But drugs do not bring the desired result, and the doctor, whom they find so
hard, categorically refuses to do an abortion.

The only way out - to get married, absolutely does not satisfy Clyde. After all, this means that he will have to
give up dreams of a brilliant future instilled by the relationship with Sondra. Roberta is desperate. She is ready
to tell about what had happened to Clyde’s uncle. This would mean an end to his career, and the cross on the
affair with Sondra.. He promises Roberta to find some doctor, or marry her, even formally, and maintain her for
a while, until she can work again.

But here sees in a newspaper an article that tells about the tragedy at Pass Lake - a man and a woman took a
boat, but the next day the boat was found upside-down, and later the girl's body was found, but the man did not
show up. This story makes strong impression on him, especially since he received a letter from Roberta, who
had gone to her parents: she is not going to wait any longer, and promises to return to Lycurgus and to tell the
elder Griffiths. Clyde realizes that he has no time to spare, and he has to take a decision.

Clyde invites Roberta to make a trip to Big Bittern, then promises to marry her. So it seems that a terrible
decision is made, but he himself does not believe that will find the strength to carry out his plan. It's one thing to
commit murder in the imagination, and quite another - in reality.

And Clyde and Roberta go boating on a deserted lake. Clyde’s thoughtful look scares Robert, she carefully sits
beside him, asks what had happened. But when she tries to touch him, he hits her and pushes so that she loses
the balance and falls. The boat turns over, and hits Roberta. She begs Clyde to help her, but he is inactive. He
goes to the bank alone, without Roberta.

But Roberta’s body is quickly found. The investigator Haight and prosecutor Mason vigorously take the case
and soon come to Clyde. He initially pretends to know nothing, but for an experienced prosecutor it is not
difficult to corner him. Clyde is arrested - now his fate will be decided at the court.

Samuel Griffiths, of course, is shocked by what has happened, but nevertheless hires good lawyers. Those are
fighting tooth and nail, but Mason knows his business as well. A long and tense trial ends with the imposition of
the death penalty. Wealthy family cease to assist Clyde and only his mother is trying to do something for him.
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Clyde is transferred to Auburn prison, called the House of Death. Desperate attempts by his mother to find the
money to continue the fight for the life of her son do not bring success. Society has lost interest in the
condemned, and now nothing will prevent the machinery of justice from finishing its job.

The American Dream

The very title of Dreiser’s novel is an ironic inversion of the concept of the American Dream. The components
of that dream is rising above the economic level into which one is born and achieving a sense of identity and
respect through associations with wealth and influence. Clyde Griffiths pursues the American Dream with all
the vigor required by a lifetime of hearing that anyone in America can achieve anything they want if only they
are willing to work hard. Clyde finds outs too late that the promise of getting what you want by working hard is
mere propaganda that refuses to take into consideration the prime role that being born into the right
circumstances can play.
The Consolation of Religion
Clyde’s family turned their back on material comfort and a solid middle class existence to become evangelical
warriors in the Salvation Army. Clyde looks at their substandard mode of living and comes to recognize how the
promise of religion fails to materialize in any way. Not only are Clyde’s parents not reaping the financial
benefits promised by the American Dream, but there are also failing to reap any of the very benefits they preach
to others is the end result of accepting Jesus Christ. The dream of religion is every bit a dead end for someone in
Clyde’s position as the dream of material success.
The Random Universe
The forces of capitalist society present an obstruction to Clyde’s pursuit of material wealth and the status it
brings, but Dreiser suggest that an even greater force exerts an even greater influence. The course of events that
lead Clyde to that single moment in time on the lake that changes everything forever is punctuated by a series of
random exhibitions of chance, coincidence and fate flipping a coin that—had any one of them not occurred—
would have sent Clyde on a different path. Admittedly, a path that Dreiser still insists would not have led to
fulfillment of the American Dream, but perhaps at least might have a path that avoided death row. An
automobile accident, a chance encounter with a wealthy relative, the occasion of his meeting Sondra and many
others all conspire with the more solidified dynamism of capitalism to send Clyde on his inexorable march
toward a meeting with the executioner.
Alienation
The effects of alienation is a prevalent throughout the novel. Even when Clyde Griffiths is surrounded by
people, he always appears somewhat disconnected and out of place. In fact, Clyde seems every bit as much out
of place within the Salvation Army as he does among the young roving boys seeking drink and women as he
does among the upper class elite. Clyde’s alienation does not merely extend to the other characters as his
discomfort is also stimulated by external environmental forces. As much as Clyde desperately wants to enjoy all
the fruits of material gain and social status, his anxiety always increases whenever he finds himself within the
urban architecture that personifies that status.

J. London. Martin Eden.

As the novel begins, Martin, who lives in Oakland, is struggling to rise out of his current circumstances as a
destitute proletarian to make something of himself. He is on a mission to educate himself, which he believes
is the key to bettering his life. He hopes to one day achieve the same status as some of the literary scholars he
is studying.

One day, while working in his position as a sailor on a ferry, Martin defends Arthur Morse against a gang of
hooligans. Roughly the same age as Martin, Arthur comes from a well-to-do family and has received a formal
education. Wanting to show Martin his gratitude for having saved him, Arthur invites him to dinner, thinking
that his family will get a kick out of having an eccentric stranger as their dinner guest.

Martin accepts Arthur’s invitation, following him to his family home, which he finds is filled with exquisite
paintings, books, and music. Fascinated by the presence of such a rich culture in the Morse home, Martin
feels quite humbled in comparison. Martin is especially enthralled by the presence of Arthur’s sister, Ruth,
whom he believes to be the essence of purity and all that is good in the world. He is immediately determined
to prove himself worthy of her. He knows that because of the status of the Morse family, a union between him
and Ruth would be very unlikely unless he could somehow attain the same level of wealth and social status, a
seemingly impossible mission.
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Martin begins going to the library and reading extensively, immersing himself in the knowledge of languages
and literature. He believes that he can educate himself enough to compete with others with a formal
education. Ruth believes in Martin and helps him with his studies, acting as an encouraging presence in his
life. However, Ruth’s approach is very much a product of her own experiences and background, which she
tries to impose on Martin, unsuccessfully. She realizes that Martin is extremely different from the other men
of her social circle and has difficulty coming to terms with this fact.

Meanwhile, Martin is running out of money. He has spent all of the money he earned on his last voyage, and
must once again set sail in order to sustain himself and continue his studies. Martin has hired another sailor to
help him on this journey, and together, they go off to sea for an eight-month voyage.

During this time, Martin continues to learn, having brought books with him. He improves a lot, enriching his
vocabulary and learning a lot about himself along the way. During this voyage, Martin decides that he wants
to become a writer. He feels that it will be a great way to relay his experiences traveling to the rest of the
world, and especially to Ruth. He hopes to impress the girl with his writing and to share everything that he
sees with her.

When Martin returns to Oakland, he begins his writing process. His first piece of writing is an essay on
treasure hunters, which he sends to the San Francisco Observer. He then starts to work on a story about
whalers. During this time, he is overcome with excitement over his newfound passion, and he writes to Ruth
about it, expecting that she will be impressed with his dedication to the written word.

Ruth expresses that she is pleased that Martin has found his calling, but she does not share in his lofty visions
of being a celebrated writer. She sees changes in him that she appreciates, in the way he dresses and expresses
himself, but she is still concerned that he is not being realistic about his future. Believing that the road to
success is through studying, she encourages Martin to take his secondary school exams, which he fails
miserably.

Although this hardly fazes Martin, Ruth is very disappointed by his academic performance. Martin throws
himself into his writing, hardly considering it work at all. He has found a way to express himself, all of his
thoughts and feelings, and this excites him very much. However, he does not seem to be having any success
in getting published or making money through his writing, and Ruth is growing tired of waiting for Martin to
accomplish his dreams.

After two years, Ruth tells Martin she can wait no longer. She writes him a letter, explaining that she wishes
he had made more of an effort to settle down and make something of himself. Ironically, shortly after Ruth
abandons Martin, he begins to be noticed by publishers and magazines that had been snubbing him. He is so
jaded from his experiences that he cannot appreciate his newfound success, believing that people do not
actually value his work.

At the end of the novel, Martin is driven mad by his own discontentment and commits suicide by drowning.

W. Faulkner. Light in August

Lena Grove, a pregnant teenager, has made her way to Mississippi in search of her baby’s father. She hitches a
ride into the small town of Jefferson, which is home to a planing mill. One of the workers at the mill, Joe
Christmas, is a brooding, racially ambiguous man who appeared suddenly at the mill one day in search of a job.
After gaining employment, he was soon joined at the mill by another man named Joe Brown. The two formed a
partnership, making and selling liquor illegally, and eventually quit their jobs.

Another of the mill workers, Byron Bunch, is intrigued and unsettled when Lena Grove suddenly appears at the
mill one day. He tells the town’s disgraced former minister, Reverend Gail Hightower, of his efforts to care for
the girl. Soon, Lena comes to realize that the man she seeks—her baby’s father, Lucas Burch—is really Joe
Brown. Upon Lena’s arrival in town, Brown is being held in the town jail after the murder of a local woman,

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Joanna Burden, and the burning of her home. Joe Christmas, Miss Burden’s occasional lover, is the chief
suspect.

The narrative then shifts to explore several of the characters’ pasts. As a young minister, Gail Hightower secures
a church in Jefferson to feed his obsession with his grandfather, a Confederate cavalryman who was killed in the
town during the Civil War. Hightower’s young wife is unfaithful and grapples with mental health problems. She
eventually dies in a fall from the window of a Memphis hotel room where she is staying with another man. A
scandal ensues, and the Jefferson parishioners turn on Hightower, who is forced to step down.

As a child, Joe Christmas is left on the steps of an orphanage. When the facility’s dietician mistakenly believes
that Joe has overheard her having sex with a young doctor in her room, she worries she will lose her job. To
eliminate this risk, she threatens to expose young Joe’s biracial background and thus have him transferred to an
orphanage for black children. She discusses the plan with the orphanage’s janitor, who kidnaps Joe and takes
him to Little Rock, where he is found and returned, only to be adopted two weeks later by a sternly religious
man, Mr. McEachern, and his wife.

Joe’s new foster father subjects him to regular beatings. As Joe grows and enters puberty, he eventually crosses
paths with Bobbie, a prostitute who works as a waitress in the nearby town. When Mr. McEachern catches his
son at a dance with Bobbie, a fight erupts, and Joe kills his foster father by smashing a chair over his head.
Abandoned by Bobbie and her cohorts, Joe embraces a life on the run and wanders for more than fifteen years,
eventually making his way to Jefferson.

In Jefferson, Joe Christmas stays in the cabin on Joanna Burden’s property, and the two quickly become lovers.
Their relationship is marked by passion, violence, and long periods in which they ignore each other. Miss
Burden wants a child and claims to be pregnant, but Joe is strongly opposed to the idea. After a time, Joe Brown
comes to live with Joe Christmas in his cabin. Miss Burden tries to help Joe Christmas financially, but her
meddling only provokes his ire. One night, he savagely attacks and kills her with a razor after she tries to fire a
pistol at him in an apparent attempt at a murder-suicide.

Miss Burden’s nephew in New Hampshire offers a $1,000 reward for the capture of his aunt’s killer. Search
parties with bloodhounds comb the countryside for the fugitive Joe Christmas, who eludes capture for days,
running to the point of hunger and exhaustion. Lena, meanwhile, moves into the cabin that the two Joes had
shared in order to prepare for the birth of her baby; Byron Bunch stays in a tent nearby.

Joe Christmas is apprehended on the streets of nearby Mottstown. His biological maternal grandfather, Uncle
Doc Hines, makes his way through the crowd to curse Joe and call for his death. When the officials from
Jefferson arrive to take charge of the prisoner, Mrs. Hines breaks through the crowd as well, hoping to see the
face of the grandson who her husband told her died as a child. The Hineses then take the train to Jefferson
together.

Byron and the Hineses arrive at Hightower’s house and reveal that Joe Christmas’s father was a circus worker
who tried to run off with the Hineses’ daughter before Uncle Doc shot and killed him. Eventually, Uncle Doc
placed the baby in the orphanage in Memphis where he worked as a janitor. Byron wants Hightower to lie and
claim that Joe Christmas was with him, at his house, on the night of Joanna Burden’s murder. Hightower
becomes angry and asks them to leave.

Lena goes into labor, but by the time Byron arrives with the doctor, Hightower has already delivered the baby.
Assisting in the delivery is Mrs. Hines, who mistakenly believes that Lena is her long-dead daughter, Milly, and
that the newborn is her grandson, Joe Christmas. Byron arranges to have Joe Brown sent to Lena’s cabin; upon
arriving, Brown is shocked to see Lena holding his newborn son, slips out a back window, and runs away.
Byron sees Brown escape and tries to stop him, but the much larger man beats Byron soundly and escapes on a
passing train. Joe Christmas, meanwhile, escapes from his captors as well, while he is being led across the town

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 square. Before long, he is tracked down, shot, killed, and castrated in Hightower’s kitchen by a bounty hunter
named Percy Grimm. Afterward, the aging Hightower muses on his past and prepares for his own death.

After a road trip, a local furniture mover near Jefferson recounts to his wife how he gave a ride to a curious
couple—a woman with a newborn child accompanied by a man who was not the child’s father. The couple—
Lena and Byron—was halfheartedly in search of the baby’s biological father, as the man drove them deeper into
Tennessee.

 Joe Christmas
The novel’s protagonist, also known as Joe Hines or Joe McEachern. In his first appearance in the novel, Joe is
a young man in his early thirties, dressed in creased serge trousers, a soiled white shirt and tie, and a stiff-
brimmed straw hat. A wanderer, he has a rootless, overly independent quality to him that others frequently
misinterpret as ruthlessness, loneliness, or pride. Biracial, he is often mistaken for—and “passes” for—a white
man. Silent, unfriendly, and brooding, his face consistently projects a cold and quiet look of contempt.
Complex, conflicted, and multifaceted, Joe overtly sabotages the little happiness that he is able to find for
himself and consistently waylays any of his own attempts to find a place of belonging. Ultimately, this

Read an in-depth analysis of Joe Christmas.

 Lena Grove
A pregnant teenager from Alabama. Orphaned at twelve, Lena comes to Jefferson on foot and by hitching rides
on wagons along the way from her home outside Doane’s Mills. Inexperienced in the ways of the world, she is
determined to find the man, Lucas Burch, who made her pregnant and left her behind with the promise he would
eventually send for her. “Young, pleasantfaced, candid, friendly, and alert,” Lena is an easygoing presence who
seems unconcerned about her unsettled status in life.

Read an in-depth analysis of Lena Grove.

 Reverend Gail Hightower
A defrocked minister in Jefferson. Tall, overweight, with skin the color of “flour sacking,” Hightower was once
the minister of one of the town’s major churches. He sought the post because his grandfather, a Confederate
cavalryman, was gunned down in Jefferson while stealing chickens. Described as a “fifty-year-old outcast,” he
was forced to step down after his promiscuous wife died in a fall from a hotel window in Memphis. Refusing to
leave Jefferson, Hightower lives as a recluse, displaying his toughness and tenacity in withstanding the gossip,
meddling, coercion, and eventual beatings he suffers at the hands of the town residents who had hoped to drive
him off.

Read an in-depth analysis of Reverend Gail Hightower.

 Byron Bunch
A mill worker in Jefferson and the man who is initially misidentified to Lena as Lucas Burch, the father of her
baby. In his thirties, hardworking, and devout, Bunch leads a quietly regimented life—working six days a week
and then directing the choir of a rural church—that has continued uninterrupted in the same routine for years.
His life drastically shifts, however, when he meets the young, pregnant Lena, whose vulnerability and plight
trigger his natural instinct to protect and selflessly help others.

Read an in-depth analysis of Byron Bunch.

 Joe Brown (a.k.a. Lucas Burch)
A gambler, bootlegger, and con artist. Young and tall, with a distinctive white scar beside his mouth, Joe Brown
first appears in dirty overalls in search of work at the mill. Lazy, yet alert to any situation he can turn to his
advantage, Joe moves in a confident swagger but has the tendency to jerk his head to the side and to look
periodically over his shoulder. A known liar and exaggerator, his shady past and questionable dealings make
him an object of mockery and even contempt in the eyes of those who can see through his veneer of self-
satisfaction and confidence.

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 Joanna Burden
A reclusive lifelong resident of Jefferson. Born and raised in the house where she still lives on the outskirts of
town, Miss Burden is still considered a northerner, as her family relocated to the South after Reconstruction.
Her grandfather and brother, who supported voting rights for blacks, were killed by a local man, Colonel
Sartoris, in an infamous incident that town residents still recount. Subject to rumors and said to have had sexual
relations with black men, Miss Burden corresponds with and advises the faculties, trustees, and students of
various black colleges in the South, occasionally traveling to the campuses to meet with them in person.

 Simon McEachern
Joe Christmas’s foster father. Mr. McEachern is a thick-bodied man with a closely cropped brown beard and
cold, light-colored eyes. Stern and devout, his religiosity borders on fanaticism and far outweighs the limited
reserves of kindness and sympathy that he is able to muster. Blinded by his extreme faith and belief in divine
retribution, he displays a marked contempt for humanity and the folly and sin of others. He upholds that hard
labor, self-sacrifice, self-denial, and personal suffering are the hallmarks of a life lived in an upstanding and
staunchly moral manner. However, he is prone to violence, and his unyielding and authoritarian presence
compromises his essential humanity and ultimately provokes the homicidal rage of his foster son.

 Mrs. McEachern
Joe Christmas’s foster mother. Mrs. McEachern is a timid, hunched woman with a weather-beaten face that
makes her look considerably older than her husband. A silent, cringing, somewhat invisible presence in the
family, she tries to earn her son’s love and respect by countering her husband’s violence with excessive doting
and kindness. She also attempts to forge a closer bond with her adopted son by creating and indulging in secrets
that only the two of them share.

 Mr. Hines (a.k.a. Uncle Doc)

Joe Christmas’s biological grandfather. Uncle Doc is an unkempt, angry, and spiteful man whose violence and
extreme behavior have landed him in jail more than once. Infamous for his crazed ravings, he uses his religious
fundamentalism to justify his implicit belief in white superiority. His extreme, unyielding sense of right and
propriety pollutes his better intentions, causing him to punish and betray those who are closest to him. He
shuffles around in a near-catatonic state that is interrupted only by his boisterous attempts to incite the residents
of first Mottstown and then Jefferson to lynch his grandson.

 Mrs. Hines
Joe Christmas’s biological grandmother. Short, obese, and round-faced, Mrs. Hines is a shadow figure whom
few in town recognize, even though she has lived there for years. She is eccentric and emotional, and her
tenuous grasp on reality is compromised when the grandson she thought was dead is charged with the murder of
Miss Burden. Mrs. Hines’s passivity and deference to her husband have led to a series of tragedies—mistakes
she desires to make up for only when it is too late.

 Miss Atkins
The dietician at the orphanage. Insecure and spiteful, she allows her paranoia and fear stoke her racist attitudes
and vengeful nature. In order to exorcise the guilt she feels at her own sexual indiscretions, she alerts the matron
to young Joe Christmas’s biracial background, thus speeding his adoption and removal from the orphanage.

 Bobbie Allen
A prostitute passing for a waitress at the diner in Jefferson. Crude and earthy, with large hands, Bobbie brings
her Memphis street smarts to Max and Mame’s seedy restaurant, where she seduces Joe Christmas and takes
advantage of his inexperience and naïveté.

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The Burdens of the Past
History—in the broad, abstract meaning of the term, as well as in the sense of personal history—looms large
in Light in August. Miss Burden and Reverend Hightower each inherit a complex legacy of familial pride,
struggle, and shame. Miss Burden lives her life as a personal sacrifice to a cause, feeling an obligation to honor
her family’s staunch commitment to abolition and then black equality. It is ironically her charity itself that
causes her undoing, as the man she tries to help, Joe Christmas, brutally murders her when he resents and feels
threatened by her patronizing impulse to control and improve him. Reverend Hightower, meanwhile, is trapped
in the past, torn between the romantic image of his grandfather, the heroic cavalryman killed while stealing
chickens, and his father the pacifist. His unresolved relationship with his personal history compromises his
effectiveness as a spiritual leader and a husband and plays a part in his eventual defrocking.
Joe Christmas is on the opposite footing: he is a man without a history, beyond the personal reserve of
memories that form a painful pattern of violence, abuse, and neglect, both self-inflicted and visited on him by
those charged with his care. The past, of which he is personally unaware, proves to be too powerful a force to
escape or resist. Joe’s misanthropic, homicidal nature is partially explained when his origins become clear. The
grandfather he knew only as the janitor at the orphanage proves to have much in common with his grandson.
Both are violent men prone to antisocial behavior and murder.

Lena Grove emerges as the only figure able to sidestep the oppressive burden of the past. She is a child of
nature, unencumbered by personal stigma or shame. Like Christmas, she is an orphan, but rather than run from
the past—or be symbolically imprisoned by it—in the end she heads optimistically to an unscripted future.

The Struggle for a Coherent Sense of Identity

Although the novel explores issues of gender and race specifically, these particular thematic currents intersect to
become part of Faulkner’s larger, more all-encompassing inquiry concerning the nature of identity and how it is
influenced by history, nature, society, and individual lives. The residents of Jefferson have resolved a tacit
acceptance of Reverend Hightower, Joanna Burden, and Joe Christmas, but each of these characters deliberately
resists or abandons the distorting influence of a rigid social and moral order. Society, as embodied in Faulkner’s
collective voice of the community, attempts to superimpose simplistic, restrictive notions of identity based on
broad categories, such as race and gender. Whereas some individuals need these external cues to provide
themselves with a sense of clarity, order, and definition, others struggle under the weight of what are often
intrusive attempts to restrict and classify. For Joe Christmas, the lack of a stable and identifiable sense of self
assumes tragic dimensions. His wanderings become a symbolic journey to find out who he is, a search for
wholeness and self-completion, but they are tragically and ultimately an illusive and elusive quest.
The Isolation of the Individual
Light in August is filled with loners, isolated figures who choose or are forced to inhabit the fringes of society.
Byron shields himself from the outside world with his unconscious strategy of detachment. Lena is an
abandoned mother-to-be who, in seeking the support of Joe Brown, finds she is able to stand alone and is better
off for it. She is the catalyst that facilitates Byron’s final and delayed entrance into the world of human
interaction and contact. Though their vague and nontraditional family is still forming in the novel’s final
chapter, they are the only characters who are able to solve the riddle of their own estrangement and loneliness.
Reverend Hightower and Joe Christmas both are described as living outside of time, inhabiting their own
temporal order and a world of their own making. After the betrayal that Christmas experiences at the hands of
Bobbie Allen, replicating the abandonment and neglect that marked his childhood, he lives an unfettered and
rudderless existence, deliberately sabotaging any opportunity to establish an emotional tie or connection with
another. His one potentially auspicious attempt at human contact—his developing relationship with Miss
Burden—ends not in greater intimacy and connectedness but in murder and displaced rage.

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