SPEN106

POSTGRADUATE COURSE
M.A. ENGLISH

FIRST YEAR
SECOND SEMESTER

PAPER - V

AMERICAN LITERATURE

INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS
M.A. ENGLISH PAPER - V
FIRST YEAR - SECOND SEMESTER AMERICAN LITERATURE

WELCOME
Warm Greetings.

It is with a great pleasure to welcome you as a student of Institute of Distance

Education, University of Madras. It is a proud moment for the Institute of Distance education
as you are entering into a cafeteria system of learning process as envisaged by the University
Grants Commission. Yes, we have framed and introduced Choice Based Credit
System(CBCS) in Semester pattern from the academic year 2018-19. You are free to
choose courses, as per the Regulations, to attain the target of total number of credits set
for each course and also each degree programme. What is a credit? To earn one credit in
a semester you have to spend 30 hours of learning process. Each course has a weightage
in terms of credits. Credits are assigned by taking into account of its level of subject content.
For instance, if one particular course or paper has 4 credits then you have to spend 120
hours of self-learning in a semester. You are advised to plan the strategy to devote hours of
self-study in the learning process. You will be assessed periodically by means of tests,
assignments and quizzes either in class room or laboratory or field work. In the case of PG
(UG), Continuous Internal Assessment for 20(25) percentage and End Semester University
Examination for 80 (75) percentage of the maximum score for a course / paper. The theory
paper in the end semester examination will bring out your various skills: namely basic
knowledge about subject, memory recall, application, analysis, comprehension and
descriptive writing. We will always have in mind while training you in conducting experiments,
analyzing the performance during laboratory work, and observing the outcomes to bring
out the truth from the experiment, and we measure these skills in the end semester
examination. You will be guided by well experienced faculty.

I invite you to join the CBCS in Semester System to gain rich knowledge leisurely at
your will and wish. Choose the right courses at right times so as to erect your flag of
success. We always encourage and enlighten to excel and empower. We are the cross
bearers to make you a torch bearer to have a bright future.

With best wishes from mind and heart,

DIRECTOR

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M.A. ENGLISH PAPER - V
FIRST YEAR - SECOND SEMESTER AMERICAN LITERATURE

COURSE WRITER

Dr. V.G. Latha (Temporary)

Assistant Professor of English
IDE, University of Madras,
Chennai.

COORDINATION & EDITING

Dr. S. Suma (Temporary)

Associate Professor of Education
IDE, University of Madras,
Chennai.

© UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS, CHENNAI 600 005.

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 M.A. DEGREE COURSE

ENGLISH
FIRST YEAR
SECOND SEMESTER
Paper - V
AMERICAN LITERATURE
SYLLABUS

Objectives of the Course

To familiarize the students with the origin and development of American Literature from the
time of the settlers and colonies to the post modern and multi cultural literature. Movements
like the flowering of New England, the American Renaissance-the philosophical attitude of
Emily Dickinson, the influence of Indian thought on Emerson, Urbanization and post-war
society, the economic depression, the civil war, the Harlem renaissance, post modern
influences in fiction and drama and multiculturalism also are at the background of the
objectives this paper.

Course Outline

UNIT I

Concepts and Movements: Beginnings of American Literature; Transcendentalism;

Individualism; The American South; The Frontier; Counter – Culture; Harlem Renaissance;
Rise of Black Culture and Literature; Multiculturalism.

UNIT 2

Poetry

Walt Whitman Passage to India

Emily Dickinson Success is Counted Sweetest
The Soul Selects her own society
Because I could not stop for death
Robert Frost Home Burial
Wallace Stevens Anecdote of the Jar
E.E. Cummings Any one lived in a pretty how own
Gwendolyn Brooks Kitchenette Building

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UNIT 3
Drama
Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into the Night
Marsha Norman ‘Night Mother

UNIT 4
Fiction
Mark Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Alice Walker The Color Purple

UNIT 5
Prose
R.W. Emerson Self – Reliance(An Anthology: American
Literature of the Nineteenth Century. ed.
Fisher, Samuelson &Reninger, Vaid

Henry David Thoreau Walden (Chapter titled “Pond”)

Recommended Texts:

1. Egbert S. Oliver ed., An Anthology: American Literature, 1890-1965, Eurasia

Publishing House (Pvt) Ltd., New Delhi.

2. Mohan Ramanan ed., 1996, Four centuries of American Literature, Macmillan

India Ltd., Chennai.

3. Standard Editions of texts

Reference Books :

1. John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, ed., 1970, American Theatre, Edward
Arnold.

2. Daniel Hoffman ed., 1979, Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing,

Oxford University Press, New Delhi.

Owen Thomas, 1986, Walden and Civil Disobedience: Norton Critical Edition
ed., Prentice – Hall & Indian Delhi.

Website, e-learning resources

www.gonzago.edu/faculty/cample/enl311/litfram.html

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 M.A. DEGREE COURSE

ENGLISH

FIRST YEAR / SECOND SEMESTER

Paper - V

AMERICAN LITERATURE

SCHEME OF LESSONS

Sl.No. Title Page

1 Concepts and Movements in American Literature 1

2 Passage to India 20

3 Poems of Emily Dickinson 30

4 Home Burial 39

5 Anecdote of the Jar 48

6 Any one who lived in a Pretty How Town” 56

7 Kitchenette Building 63

8 Long Day’s Journey into Night 71

9 ‘Night-Mother’ 82

10 Huckleberry Finn 89

11 The Colour Purple 96

12 Self-Reliance 103

13 Walden 109

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 1

LESSON - 1
CONCEPTS AND MOVEMENTS IN
AMERICAN LITERATURE

Learning Objectives

After learning this lesson you would be able to get an understanding of the concepts like

 beginning of American Literature

 Transcendentalism

 Individualism

 The American South

 The Frontier

 Counter-Culture

 Harlem Renaissance

 Rise of Black culture and Literature

 Multiculturalism

Structure
1.1 Introduction

1.2 Beginning of American Literature

1.3 Transcendentalism

1.3.1 Transcendentalism’s and its Impact on American Literature

1.4 Individualism

1.5 The American South

1.6 Overview of Southern Literature

1.7 History of Southern literature

1.8 The Frontier

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1.9 Counter-Culture

1.10 Harlem Renaissance

1.11 Rise of Black Culture and Literature

1.12 Multiculturalism

1.13 Summary

Check your Progress

1.14 Model Questions

1.1 Introduction
American literature is written and produced in the United States of America. It was in the
late 18th and 19th centuries that the nation’s first novels were published. An early example is
William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy published in 1791. Brown’s novel depicts a tragic
love story between siblings who fall in love without knowing they are related.

With an increasing desire to produce uniquely American literature and culture, a number
of key new literary figures emerged, perhaps most prominently Washington Irving, Edgar Allan
Poe. In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson started an influential movement known as
Transcendentalism. Inspired by that movement, Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden, which
celebrates individualism and nature and urges resistance to the dictates of organized society.
The political conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired the writings of William Lloyd Garrison
and Harriet Beecher Stowe in her famous novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. These efforts were
supported by the continuation of the slave narratives such as Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne published his magnum opus “The
Scarlet Letter”, a novel about adultery. Hawthorne influenced Herman Melville, who is notable
for the books “Moby –Dick” and “Billy Budd”. America’s greatest poets of the nineteenth
century were Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Mark Twain was the first major American
writer to be born away from the East Coast. Henry James put American literature on the
international map with novels like “The Portrait of a Lady”. At the turn of the twentieth century
a strong naturalist movement emerged that comprised writers such as Edith Wharton, Stephen
Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London.
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American writers expressed disillusionment following World War I. The short stories and
novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the mood of the 1920s, and John Dos Passo too wrote
about the war. Ernest Hemingway became famous with “The Sun Also Rises” and “A Farewell
to Arms”; in 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

William Faulkner became one of the greatest American writers with novels like “The
Sound and the Fury”. American poetry reached a peak after World War I with such writers as
Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and E.E Cummings. American drama
attained international status at the time with the works of Eugene O’ Neil, who won four Pulitzer
Prizes and the Nobel Prize. In the mid-twentieth century, American drama was dominated by
the work of playwrights Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, as well as by the maturation of
the American musical.

Depression era writers included John Steinbeck, notable for his novel “The Grapes of
Wrath”. Henry Miller assumed a distinct place in American Literature in the 1930s when his
semi-autobiographical novels were banned from the US. From the end of World War II until the
early 1970s many popular works in modern American literature were produced, like Harper
Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”. America’s involvement in World War II influenced works such
as Norman Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead” (1948), Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” (1961)
and Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s “Slaughterhouse –Five” (1969). The main literary movement since the
1970s has been postmodernism, and since the late twentieth century ethnic and minority literature
has sharply increased.

1.2 Beginning of American Literature

The story of American literature begins long before the US began its existence. Apart
from the oral literature of Native Americans, the earliest writers were explorers like Captain
John Smith (1580-1631), who wrote about his experiences in books like “General Historie of
Virginia”, “New England and the Summer Isles” (1624, “Pocahontas’ story”.

The first permanent settlers, the Puritans, were very interested in education and culture,
which they felt were at the root of their project to start a new theocratic society. Harvard was
founded in 1636, and the first printing press was started in 1638. Therefore, the New World saw
the emergence of a literature which was mainly made up of sermons, histories, autobiographies
and poems, all of them written with a religious purpose in mind.
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At the times of political turmoil that came during the American Revolution most writings
were political in nature. This was also the time of the Enlightenment, and American writers took
a very active role in the development of this movement. Contrary to the Puritan tradition, they
saw reason as the weapon to understand the world. The poetry written during these years
imitated European Neoclassical models of epic, mock epic and satire. The Connecticut Wits
were the first poetic circle.

The 18th century had brought important changes in the field of literature in England. This
was the time of ‘the Rise of the Novel’, with writers like Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe), Samuel
Richardson (Clarissa Harlowe, Pamela, and sentimental novels), Henry Fielding (Tom Jones,
Joseph Andrews, and satirical novels) or Walter Scott (historical novels, Ivanhoe). All these
types were somewhat adapted in America, except for sentimental novels which were never too
popular.

In the USA, the first professional novelist was Charles Brocken brown (1771-1810), who
adapted the English Gothic novel to American settings. Gothic novels like Horace Walpole’s
The Castle of Otranto were characterized by exotic settings in ruined castles, abbeys, the use
of magic and the supernatural in ghosts, mysteries and horror, and the predominance of
suspense, psychological depth and emotional power.

In Brown’s novels, the villain is a rebel against society, which is the way Americans, saw
themselves at the time, and maybe this is why this Gothic villain becomes the antecedent of the
hero in later American novels.

Leslie Fiedler, an American critic, wrote in “Love and Death” in the American Novel that
American Literature seems to be incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is pathologically
obsessed with death. Male characters tend to run away from society and conventional love,
and join other men in natural environments. The examples he used were Twain, Melville, Cooper,
Hemingway and others. Maybe this is the reason why sentimental novels have never been
popular in the US.

1.3 Transcendentalism
‘Transcendentalism’ was an idealistic literary and philosophical movement of the mid-
19th century. Beginning in New England in 1836, various visionaries, intellectuals, scholars,
and writers would come together regularly to discuss spiritual ideas. The Boston newspapers,
which advertised their meetings, called the group the Transcendentalists.
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The Transcendentalists were radical thinkers. At the time of their meetings, New England
was still holding on to a remnant of Puritanical values. There was a sense that organized religion
had authority over one’s personal life and individual choices. For the Transcendentalists, this
was a big no-no! They were quite critical of conformity, or forcing one’s behavior to match social
expectations or standards. They were nonconformists - people who do not conform to a
generally accepted pattern of thought or action. They rejected common ideas and practices,
particularly organized religion. There wasn’t a Transcendentalist church or a holy book of
Transcendentalism. Instead, there were regular meetings for lively conversation and a shared
hope of cultivating a modern, fluid, and personal sense of spirituality.

‘Transcendentalism’ was really a hodgepodge of ideas. The Transcendentalists were very

well read and borrowed from Puritanism (the bits they liked), German Idealism, Eastern religions,
and more. They merged and fused concepts, creating a flexible set of values. They valued
simplicity, a life not bound to material possessions. They valued self-reliance, or a reliance on
one’s own powers and resources rather than those of others, and trust in one’s own heart and
thoughts. They valued openness, openness to the beauty of the world.

1.3.1 Transcendentalism’s and its Impact on American Literature

The impact of Transcendentalism on American literature can easily be seen today. For
example, in the Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert goes on a journey
both physically and spiritually. Recently divorced, she finds self-reliance. She comes to value
the beauty of the everyday (pasta!). She meditates, hoping to connect with the ‘Eternal One’
within her. The Transcendentalists, particularly Emerson, perpetuated the idea that writers are
seers. It’s the writer’s duty to see the world clearly, to summon the world to life. Emerson called
poets ‘liberating gods.’ Literature was a platform to liberate people, to help them see what
needs to be seen: nature, spirituality, self-identity, and social injustice. The Transcendentalists
were forceful critics of slavery and gender inequality. In transcendental theory, every individual
has to be respected because every individual has a universal soul.

Transcendentalists also placed significant emphasis on imagination. Imagination allows

the mind to be resourceful, to form new ideas that are not present to the senses. As the writer
or reader imagines, he transcends himself. This allows him to move beyond his personal
experience, his mind and body, to consider something anew. The ability to imagine can effect
change. The Transcendentalists wanted their work to have an altering effect on individuals and
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on society as a whole. For the Transcendentalists, man needed to live in the world, participate
in it, look at it closely, and take action.

1.4 Individualism
Literary works reflect the main ideas of American mind. An American theme that is seen
in various works of literature is individuality. From the Renaissance to 1848, the concept of the
individual grew stronger. New ideas emerged, new movements occurred, and prominent figures
arose. Voltaire believed in laws which protect the freedom of the feeble against the ambitions of
the Strong and Diderot, along with other philosophers, published the Encyclopedia. Copernicus
was the first to derive a heliocentric theory. Vasco da Gama’s traveling to India led to the
claiming of India for Portugal.

‘Individuality’ is expressed in three different literary works of three writers, Robert Frost,
Kate Chopin and Thomas Paine. These writers aid us in developing an open mind about what
the American people should expect in society. Following others doesn’t guide one in any way
because it does not allow one to express one’s innermost feelings. Throughout of these three
writers, individualism is expressed in various ways.

Individualism is perhaps the primary concept that, transcending such categories as race,
gender, class, age and region, unites Americans across time and space to give coherence to
the national experience. From the earliest beginnings of the republic to the post-modernist
present, the rights of the individual citizen and his or her place in the scheme of things has been
of primary importance to American philosophers, artists, political theorists, theologians and
others concerned with articulating national values and principles.

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin,
“Billy Budd” by Herman Melville and “The Fountain Head” by Ayn Rand, different portrayals of
individualism are introduced. Although the different time periods and settings of these novels
cause the authors to delineate this philosophy in different ways, one idea remains constant
throughout each of these works. It is the idea that society is flawed and that individualism is the
ideal goal of humanity, with only the social restraints of the world in the ways. It’s a commonplace
of philosophy that the term “freedom” is multiply ambiguous, having one group of senses in the
context of metaphysical debates, and another.
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On a fairly standard account of the distinction, free will pertains primarily to mental acts
internal to the agent, which are beyond the power of others to control, while political freedom
consists in the absence of restrictions on overt actions, while lie within the jurisdiction of
government and can be violated by the acts of others. In all of his work, Faulkner used new
techniques to express his views of man’s position in the modern world. In his early works,
Faulkner viewed with despair, man’s position in the universe. He saw man as a weak creature,
incapable of rising above his selfish needs, later Faulkner’s view changed and he saw man as
potentially great, or in Faulkner’s own words, “Man will not only endure, he will prevail”.

1.5 The American South

Southern literature (sometimes called the Literature of the American South) is defined
as American Literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region.
Traditionally, the study of southern literature has emphasized a common Southern history, the
significance of family, a sense of community and one’s role within it, a sense of justice, the
region’s dominant religion ( Christianity- Protestantism), and the burdens or rewards religion
often brings, issues of racial tension, land and the promise it brings, a sense of social class and
place, and the use of the Southern dialect. However, since circa 2000, the scholarship of the
New Southern Studies has decentralized these conventional tropes in favor of a more
geographically, politically, and ideologically expansive “South” or “Souths.”

1.6 Overview of Southern Literature

In its simplest form, Southern literature consists of writing about the American South.
Southern literature occupies a luminal space within American culture. On the one hand, the
South has been marginalized within U.S. since the 18th century, because its reliance on plantation
agriculture and African slavery made it seem too British in the post-Revolutionary war era. On
the other hand, the white South has historically thrown its support behind American capitalist
endeavors and imperial ambitions (for instance, through the enthusiastic participation of many
white southerners in the Mexican-American war). At the same time, southern racial history has
come to be seen as emblematic of, rather than exceptional to, U.S. racism. Southern literature
has long reflected this ambivalence.

In addition to the geographical component of Southern literature, certain themes have

appeared because of the similar histories of the Southern states in regard to slavery, the American
Civil War, and Reconstruction. The conservative culture in the South has also produced a
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strong focus within Southern literature on the significance of family, religion, community in
one’s personal and social life, the use of the Southern Dialect, and a strong sense of “place.”
The South’s troubled history with racial issues also continually appeared in its literature.

Despite these common themes, there is debate as to what makes a literary work “Southern.”
For example, Mark Twain, a Missourian, defined the characteristics that many people associate
with Southern writing in his novel Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. Truman Capote, born and
raised in the Deep South is best known for his novel “In Cold Blood”, a piece with none of the
characteristics associated with “southern writing.”

Other Southern writers, such as popular authors Anne Rice and John Grisham, rarely
write about traditional Southern literary issues. John Berendt, who wrote the popular Midnight
in the Garden of Good and Evil, is not a Southerner. In addition, some famous Southern writers
moved to the Northern U.S. So while geography is a factor, the geographical location of the
author is not the defining factor in Southern writing.

1.7 History of Southern literature

During the 17th and 18th centuries, English colonists in the Southern part of the American
colonies produced a number of notable works. Two of the most famous were early memoirs of
Virginia: Captain John Smith’s account of the founding of Jamestown in the 1610s and 1620s,
and William Byrd II’s secret plantation diary, kept in the early 18th century. Both sets of
recollections are critical documents in early Southern history.

After American independence, in the early 19th century, the expansion of cotton planting
and slavery began to distinguish Southern society and culture more clearly from the rest of the
young republic. During this antebellum period, South Carolina, and particularly the city of
Charleston, rivaled and perhaps surpassed Virginia as a literary community. Writing in Charleston,
the lawyer and essayist Hugh Swinton Legare, the poets Paul Hamilton and Henry Timrod, and
the novelist William Gilmore Simms composed some of the most important works in antebellum
Southern literature.

Simms was a particularly significant figure, perhaps the most prominent Southern author
before the American Civil War. His novels of frontier life and the American Revolution celebrated
the history of South Carolina. Like James Fennimore Cooper, Simms was strongly influenced
by Walter Scott, and his works bore the imprint of Scott’s heroic romanticism. In The Yemassee,
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The Kinsmen, and the anti- Uncle Tom’s Cabin novel “The Sword and the Distaff”, Simms
presented idealized portraits of slavery and Southern life. While popular and well regarded in
South Carolina—and highly praised by such critics as Edgar Allan Poe—Simms never gained a
large national audience.

In Virginia, George Tucker produced in 1824 the first fiction of Virginia colonial life with
The Valley of Shenandoah. He followed in 1827 with one of the country’s first science fictions,
A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science and
Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians.

Tucker was the first Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Virginia. In 1836
Tucker published the first comprehensive biography of Thomas Jefferson - The Life of Thomas
Jefferson, Third President of the United States. Yet in his poetry and fiction Poe rarely took up
distinctively Southern themes or subjects; his status as a “Southern” writer remains ambiguous.

In the Chesapeake region, meanwhile, antebellum authors of enduring interest include

John Pendleton Kennedy, whose novel “Swallow Barn” offered a colorful sketch of Virginia
plantation life; and Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, whose 1836 work “The Partisan Leader” foretold
the secession of the Southern states, and imagined a guerrilla war in Virginia between federal
and secessionist armies.

Frederick Douglass’s Narrative is perhaps the most famous first-person account of black
slavery in the antebellum South. Harriet Jacobs, meanwhile, recounted her experiences in
bondage in North Carolina in Incidents in the Life of a Slave girl. And another Southern-born ex-
slave, William Wells Brown, wrote “Clotel”; or, “The President’s Daughter”—widely believed to
be the first novel ever published by an African- American. The book depicts the life of its title
character, a daughter of Thomas Jefferson and his black mistress, and her struggles under
slavery.

In 1884, Mark Twain published what is arguably the most influential southern novel of the
19th century, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. Ernest Hemingway said of the novel, “All
modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called “Huckleberry Finn.”
This statement applies even more to Southern literature because of the novel’s frank dealings
with issues such as race and violence.

During the first half of the 20th century, the lawyer, politician, minister, orator, actor, and
author Thomas Dixon wrote a number of novels, plays, sermons, and non-fiction pieces which
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were quite popular with the general public all over the USA. Today Dixon is perhaps best known
for writing a trilogy of novels about Reconstruction, one of which was entitled The Clansman
(1905), a book which would eventually become the inspiration for D. W. Griffth’s infamous
1915 film “The Birth of a Nation”. Overall Dixon wrote 22 novels, numerous plays and film
scripts, Christian sermons, and some non-fiction works during his lifetime.

The late 1930s also saw the publication of one of the best-known Southern novels, “Gone
with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell. The novel, published in 1936, quickly became a bestseller.
It won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize, and in 1939 an equally famous movie of the novel premiered.
Mitchell’s novel, she presents white southerners as victims of a rapacious Northern industrial
capitalism and depicts black southerners as either lazy, stupid, and over sexualized, or as
docile, childlike, and resolutely loyal to their white masters. Southern literature has always
drawn audiences outside the South and outside the United States, and Gone with the Wind has
continued to popularize harmful stereotypes of southern history and culture for audiences around
the world.

One of the most highly praised Southern novels of the 20th century, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
by Harper Lee, won the Pulitzer Prize when it was published in 1960. New Orleans native and
Harper Lee’s friend, Truman Capote also found great success in the middle 20th century with
“Breakfast” at Tiffany’s and later in “Cold Blood”.

Southern poetry bloomed in the decades following the Second World War in large part
thanks to the writing and efforts of Robert Penn Warren and James Dickey. Where earlier work
primarily championed a white, agrarian past, the efforts of such poets as Dave Smith, Charles
Wright, Ellen Bryant, Yusuf Komunyakaa, Jim Seay, Frank Stanford,Kate Daniels,James
Applewhite, Betty Adcock and Rodney Jones have opened up the subject matter and form of
Southern poetry.

Today, in the early twenty-first century, the American South is undergoing a number of
cultural and social changes, including rapid industrialization/deindustrialization, climate change,
and an influx of immigrants. As a result, the exact definition of what constitutes Southern literature
is changing. While some critics specify that the previous definitions of Southern literature still
hold, with some of them suggesting, only somewhat in jest, that all Southern literature must still
contain a dead mule within its pages, most scholars of the twenty-first century
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South highlight the proliferation of depictions of “Souths”: urban, undead, queer, activist,
televisual, cinematic, and particularly multiethnic (particularly Latinx, Native American, and African
American) Not only do these critics argue that the very fabric of the South has changed so
much that the old assumptions about southern literature no longer hold, but they argue that the
U.S. South has always been a construct.

1.8 The Frontier

‘The Frontier’ means the meeting point between savagery and civilization. Much has
been written about the frontier from the point of view of border warfare and the chase, but as a
field for the serious study of the economist and the historian it has been neglected.

The American frontier is sharply distinguished from the European frontier—a fortified
boundary line running through dense populations. The most significant thing about the American
frontier is that it lies at the hither edge of free land. In the census reports it is treated as the
margin of that settlement which has a density of two or more to the square mile. The term is an
elastic one, and for our purposes does not need sharp definition. We shall consider the whole
frontier belt, including the Indian country and the outer margin of the “settled area” of the census
reports. This paper will make no attempt to treat the subject exhaustively; its aim is simply to
call attention to the frontier as a fertile field for investigation, and to suggest some of the problems
which arise in connection with it.

The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters
the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It
takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of
civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of
the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him.

Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts
the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment
is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and
so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails. Little by little he transforms
the wilderness; but the outcome is not the old Europe, not simply the development of Germanic
germs, any more than the first phenomenon was a case of reversion to the Germanic mark.
The fact is that here is a new product that is American.
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At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real
sense. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. As successive terminal
moraines result from successive glaciations, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and
when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics. Thus the
advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the influence of Europe, a
steady growth of independence on American lines.

1.9 Counter-Culture
‘Counterculture’ (also written counter-culture) is a subculture whose values and norms of
behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, often in opposition to mainstream
cultural mores. A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific
population during a well-defined era.

In the 1960s, youths rebelled against long-standing customs in dress, music, and personal
behavior. It challenged traditional values and unleashed a movement to reassert basic values.
The goals of the movement was to attain ‘peace and prosperity’ within the Vietnam War Era
American country and bring the troops home.

Beat writers formed one of the earliest, and most publicly engaged, movements in American
literary culture of the postwar period. They also captivated American popular culture by redefining
the genres, platforms, and technologies of modern literary production, and by making literature
the vehicle for an ethics of living that purported to subvert norms of race, gender, and class.
The Beats in the period spanning the end of World war II and the end of the Vietnam War
(1945-1975), focused on the wide breadth of their experimentation with various forms and
media (the open-form novel and poem, the modern poetry reading, the spoken word recording),
their diverse identities as authors (working-class, female, non-white), and their role in a plurality
of social movements (Free Speech, Second-Wave Feminism, Black Power).

1.10 Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance was an African American cultural movement of the 1920s and early
1930s that was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. It was known then as
the “New Negro Movement”, named after an anthology, titled The New Negro, of important
African Americans works, published by philosopher Alain Locke in 1925. The renaissance
 13

involved a group of writers and highbrows associated with Harlem, the district of Manhattan,
during the migration of African Americans from other parts of U.S.

This cultural movement marked the first time in American history that the white population
took notice of the literature of African Americans. Even though some believe that Harlem
renaissance has no influence on Africa America literature and community, Harlem Renaissance
became the period in which a group of talented black writers produced an extensive recognizable
body of literature in the three outstanding categories of essay, poetry, and art.

The Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro Movement was inspired by Marcus Garvey,
founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Alan Locke, the author of
“New Negro” and W. E. B. Du Bois, editor of “The Crisis” magazine. This movement expressed
the pride in blacks and motivated many African Americans to celebrate their culture through
literature and art. Harlem Renaissance helped shape American culture, while adding its own
elements to the American’s tradition. It offered new ways of seeing and understanding what it
meant to be Black at this crucial time in history. This shows that the movement led to new styles
of literature and new philosophical ideas regarding the issues that African Americans faced in
the early twentieth century America. This important change in African American mindsets has
survived throughout the centuries and persists even to this day.

Harlem Renaissance is among literary and artistic movements due to its connection to
civil rights and reform organizations. It surrounded everything from political writings to jazz
poetry, and is especially remembered for poets such as Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson,
and Claude McKay. Langston Hughes was perhaps the best-known Harlem Renaissance poet.

Harlem renaissance help give African American visibility and opportunity for publications.
These publications published poetry, short stories, and essays sent in by black writers, and it
encouraged them to do more, such as write, and make all forms of art, because expression was
one way to freedom.

Literature was a great way people use to show their motivation, pain and feelings. W.E.B.
Du Bois is an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, author and editor, who wanted
equal rights for African American. He help used literature to spread motivation for the black. He
promoted African American artistic talents in his writing called “A Negro Art Renaissance.” He
wanted black artist to realize their ethical assignment by being committed to showing the issue
of racial equality in their work; in response to their own experience.
14

The Harlem Renaissance was a transformable period in time when poetry changed a
nation of African-Americans to an incredible level. Langston Hughes was one of the leading
black writers in that time period, and wrote many different types of literature. He wrote, and
created a new literary art form called jazz poetry. His poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,”
provides solid unity for the African American history. His poetry covered the issues faced by
African-Americans with a combination of music, cheerfulness, and culture.

In conclusion, the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance has opened doors for today’s African-
American writers. The Harlem Renaissance was the internal spring for African-Americans
branching out into the world on their own desire. The renaissance opened a new dimension for
African-Americans and brought about the realization of “I can do it, and do it with dignity, grace,
and style.”

1.11 Rise of Black Culture and Literature

‘African American literature’ has become an inevitable part of American literature and
culture. The strong presence of African American literature has paved the way for the emergence
of Native American, Asian American, and Chicano American streams of literatures. It is only
with the significant representation of African American literature American society stands to be
cleansed from the problem of racial discrimination.

African American literature has examined the problem of racial discrimination in all its
philosophical, existential and epistemological aspects. It has travelled from mid 18th century
with slave narratives to the current times with all its socio literary exuberance initiating a literary
and cultural transformation in the fabric of American society. It was only during the mid twentieth
century after the ground breaking influential socio political texts Washington’s “Up From Slavery”
(1901) and Du Bois’s “The Souls of Black Folk” (1903) and Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes
Were Watching God”, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin devised a brand of
African American Modernism. Right’s Native Son (1940), Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and
Baldwin eloquent volume of essays The Fire Next Time argued for social and cultural
emancipation of African Americans.

The emergence of African American Women writings brought in double jeopardy of racism
in Black Women’s movement. Gloria Hull examined the dilemma of Black women in “All the
Men are Black”, “All the Women are White, But Some of Us are Brave”. This has made many
black women to turn toward each other for a better introspective and analytical understanding
 15

of Black Women’s problems. Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” (1970) and
Tony Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” (1970) addressed the question of how self-identity and respect
is achieved by a black girl in a society, which hardly values her existence.

Tony Morrison expanded her thematic range from female identity to Black people
relationship with African American past in her works “Song of Solomon” ( 1977), “Beloved”
(1987) and “Jazz” (1991). These novels have explored folk heritage, slavery and mother hood.
This is followed by Alice Walker’s “The Third Life of Grange Copeland” that discussed the
issues of poverty and family violence. She exposed the contradictions within the Black movement
depicting the issue of domestic violence, father daughter rape and female genital mutilation in
“The Colour Purple” (1982) and “Possessing the Secret of Joy” (1982).

Despite the negative representation of Black men, Alice Walker’s works have initiated the
renaissance of African Women’s writings. This has paved the way for the emergence of literature
of place, small towns, and neighbourhoods and of home. Many creative writers who are veterans
of black movements and black feminism assisted by activist stance provided insightful literary
and political essays.

Gloria Naylor’s “The Women of Brewster Place” (1982), Audre Lorde’s “Zami” (1982),
Paul Marshall’s “Praise Song of the Widow” (1983) and Gayle Jones “Corregidora” (1975) have
redrawn the map of African American literary canon. The younger writers like Sherley Ann
Williams with a sensitive portrayal of African Women’s life in “Dessa Rose” (1986), Terry McMillan
with “Waiting to Exhale” (1992) broke the new ground in the genre of fiction for Black women.

Amidst the great wealth of Black women’s creative production, African American Men’s
writing has been receiving less attention. Yet the autobiographical resonances and the sharing
of the themes continue to hold the significance and relevance African American Men’s writings.
John Edgar Wideman’s “The Homewood Triology”, “Philiadelphia fire” (1990), “Brothers and
Keepers” (1984), Charles Johnson’s “The Middle Passage” (1990), “The Oxherding Tale” (1974)
have charted out African American counter history. All these works have proved that African
American literature has unleashed a new creative talent on par with other significant streams of
Post Colonial and Post Modern literatures.

1.12 Multiculturalism
The birth of American multicultural literature was not easy but it had the good fortune to
grow in a land that had a fluid sense of identity. Even the bedrock novels of Mark Twain, William
16

Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald captured three entirely distinct Americas. Still, by the 1950s, a
different writer had begun to emerge. First came Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud, with their
deeply felt Jewish-American novels; then Ralph Ellison, with his harrowing tale of racism, “Invisible
Man”.

The literature of black America had begun almost one hundred years before with the
slave narratives of Frederick Douglass. After slavery was outlawed, it passed from the fiery
rhetoric of W.E.B. Du Bois to the striking imagery of Langston Hughes. It would go on to many
great works by James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Gwendolyn Brooks. But it wasn’t until the
1970s that black voices began to flow freely through America’s literary bloodline. With Toni
Morrison, Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed, Maya Angelou, and Jamaica Kincaid, this singularly
American literature became part of the mainstream.

The first Hispanic American to break onto bestseller lists during this time was a writer who
didn’t need to be translated: Richard Rodriguez’s eloquent memoir “Hunger of Memory”, published
in 1981, was fierce and elegiac, a striking work that challenged the tired stereotypes of Chicano
identity. Three years later, it was joined by Cisneros’s the House on mango Street, a spare and
affecting novel about a seven-year-old Mexican girl in a poor ghetto in Chicago. Readers received
it as a glimpse into an America they hardly knew.

By the 1990s, the interest in Hispanic-American letters had become brisk commerce.
After Oscar Hijuelos won the Pulitzer Prize for his sizzling novel of “Cuba, the mambo Kings
play Songs of love”, publishers competed to bring out books by Latinos from a variety of
backgrounds.

Amy Tan’s the “Joy luck Club”, published a scant decade after the Woman Warrior, and
gave way to a vigorous industry of Asian-American letters. Soon there were Gus Lee’s “China
boy”, a novel about a boy on the mean streets of San Francisco; Lisa See’s Snow flower and
the Secret fan, a historical novel set in ancient China; Gish Jen’s typical American, focusing not
on the Chinese but on what it means to be a citizen of the United States.

Today, that literature has expanded to include works by the children of immigrants from
other Asian backgrounds: Japanese-American Wakako Yamauchi; Vietnamese-American Fae
Myenne Ng; Korean-American Chang-rae Lee. America’s romance with diversity is still unfolding.
Today, multicultural writers include Americans of South Asian ancestry: Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter
of Maladies), Manil Suri (the Death of Vishnu), and Vikram Chandra (love and longing in bombay).
 17

There are African Americans with roots in foreign places: Edwidge Danticat, who writes
about Haiti, and Nalo Hopkinson, born in Jamaica. Recent years have brought, too, the work of
Americans of Middle Eastern heritage: Khaled Hosseini (the Kite runner), Diana Abu-Jaber
(Crescent), and Azar Nafisi (reading lolita in tehran).What do these writers have in common?
They share an impulse to honor their ancestors — a desire to hold fast to roots. Unlike American
immigrants of an earlier era, they balance assimilation with a staunch ethnic pride.W.E.B. Du
Bois called it a “double-consciousness;” Richard Wright, a “double vision.”

1.13 Summary
 American literature is written and produced in the United States of America.
 In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson started an influential movement known as
Transcendentalism.
 In the mid-nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne published his magnum opus
“The Scarlet Letter”, a novel about adultery.
 Henry James put American literature on the international map with novels like “The
Portrait of a Lady”.
 American poetry reached a peak after World War I with such writers as Wallace
Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and E.E Cummings.
 Henry Miller assumed a distinct place in American Literature in the 1930s when his
semi-autobiographical novels were banned from the US.
 The story of American literature begins long before the US began its existence.
 The Connecticut Wits were the first poetic circle.
 The 18th century had brought important changes in the field of literature in England.
 This was the time of ‘the Rise of the Novel’, with writers like Daniel Defoe (Robinson
Crusoe), Samuel Richardson (Clarissa Harlowe, Pamela, and sentimental novels),
Henry Fielding (Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, and satirical novels) or Walter Scott
(historical novels, Ivanhoe).
 Leslie Fiedler seems to be incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is
pathologically obsessed with death.
 ‘Transcendentalism’ was an idealistic literary and philosophical movement of the
mid-19th century.
 The Boston newspapers, which advertised their meetings, called the group the
Transcendentalists.
18

 ‘Transcendentalism’ was really a hodgepodge of ideas.

 Individuality is expressed in three different literary works of three writers, Robert
Frost, Kate Chopin and Thomas Paine.
 “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, “The Awakening” by Kate
Chopin, “Billy Budd” by Herman Melville and “The Fountain Head” by Ayn Rand,
different portrayals of individualism are introduced.
 Southern literature (sometimes called the Literature of the American South) is defined
as American Literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this
region.
 The South’s troubled history with racial issues also continually appeared in its
literature.
 Writing in Charleston, the lawyer and essayist Hugh Swinton Legare, the poets
Paul Hamilton and Henry Timrod, and the novelist William Gilmore Simms composed
some of the most important works in antebellum Southern literature.
 Frederick Douglass’s Narrative is perhaps the most famous first-person account of
black slavery in the antebellum South.
 In 1884, Mark Twain published what is arguably the most influential southern novel
of the 19th century, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.
 Southern poetry bloomed in the decades following the Second World War in large
part thanks to the writing and efforts of Robert Penn Warren and James Dickey.
 The American frontier is sharply distinguished from the European frontier—a fortified
boundary line running through dense populations.
 A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific
population during a well-defined era.
 Harlem Renaissance was an African American cultural movement of the 1920s and
early 1930s that was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.
 Harlem Renaissance is among literary and artistic movements due to its connection
to civil rights and reform organizations.
 The Harlem Renaissance was a transformable period in time when poetry changed
a nation of African-Americans to an incredible level.
 ‘African American literature’ has become an inevitable part of American literature
and culture.
 African American literature has examined the problem of racial discrimination in all
its philosophical, existential and epistemological aspects.
 19

 The emergence of African American Women writings brought in double jeopardy of

racism in Black Women’s movement.
 The birth of American multicultural literature was not easy but it had the good fortune
to grow in a land that had a fluid sense of identity.

1.14 Check your Progress

1. Give an account of 18th century. American Literature

2. Who were Transcendentalists? And what were their convictions?

3. How is the idea that individualism is the ideal goal of humanity portrayed in the
novels of American writers?

4. Give the history of Southern Literature.

5. What is a counter cultural movement?

6. Write a note on Harlem Renaissance.

7. What were the social changes due to the rise of Black culture and literature?

8. Mention the works of American of South Asian ancestry.

1.15 Model Questions

1. What were the basic themes of Southern Literature?

2. What is meant by The Frontier?

20

LESSON - 2
PASSAGE TO INDIA
By

Walt Whitman

Learning Objectives

After learning this lesson you will be able to

 understand the social scenario

 realize that material progress is necessary as it leads us to spiritual enlightenment

 explain the importance of man’s quest for God and complexity of human psyche

 understand that the poet is a man who is able to probe the mind and feelings and he
provides the soothing material for the restless people.

Structure
2.1 Introduction

2.2 Synopsis of the Poem

2.3 Summary

2.4 Key Words

2.5 Activities

2.6 Check your Answers

2.7 Model Questions &Answers

2.1 Introduction to the Poet

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 on the West Hills of Long Island, New York.
His mother was of Dutch origin and of Quaker faith that he adored. She was not very literate.
His father was carpenter and builder of houses. He was a stern disciplinarian who struggled to
support his family of nine children, four of whom were handicapped. Young Walt Whitman was
withdrawn from school at eleven so that he could support his family. He was a self taught , God
–intoxicated poet who wanted a religion uniting all of humanity in bonds of friendship.
 21

Walt Whitman was impressed by the three greet engineering achievements of his time:
the opening of the Suez Canal(1896), the laying of the transatlantic undersea cable(1866) and
the joining of the Union Pacific and Central pacific railroads at Ultah to produce the country’s
first transcontinental railway(1861). These events helped in improving communication and travel.
In Whitman’s poem we find completion of the physical journey to India and it paves way for the
spiritual path away to India, the East and ultimately to God. Whitman wants people to develop
a spiritual attitude. We must think of God and thank Him for all the beautiful things He has given
us.

2.2 Synopsis of the Poem

Whitman celebrates his time and talks of the great technological achievements. These
are the outcome of the past. The knowledge we get from the past helps us to create wonders in
the present.” For what is the present after all but a growth of the past” The foundation for the
present technological advance was laid in the past. Man should realise that God is the moving
spirit behind all this.

Whitman then reflects on the journey to India. There is a lot to learn from the fables of
Asia and Africa. These technological wonders are a part of the divine scheme of things. The
poet sings of a spiritual journey to India. Modern inventions of science are all part of a divine
scheme of “God’s purpose from the first”. These achievements should lend us spiritual knowledge.
We should realise that God is the spirit behind all this. “but in God’s name and for thy sake, O
soul”.

W hitman then displays three tableaus which illustrate man’s achievements in

communication. The first tableau is the passage through Suez Canal. A number of steamships
are going through this passage. The wife of Napoleon III (Empress Eugenie) was on board the
leading ship in a procession of sixty-eight ships when the Suez Canal was formally opened. All
around us we see the marvels of engineering- the huge machines and the workers operating
them.

The other scene describes the journey of the railway cars winding along the Platte River
to a junction of the Union and Central Pacific railroads. Columbus, a native of Genoa (Italy) will
be a happy man as his dream has come true. He discovered America in 1492 while seeking a
passage to India. His dream of linking East with West has been realised. He also says how
many captains struggled to reach India. Vasco da Gama discovered the water route from Western
22

Europe around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. He was a Portuguese explorer. He succeeds in
rounding of the world that is binding it in a circle. This is a tribute to the courage and adventurous
spirit of the west in seeking a passage to India. Whitman’ vision of history is of a running river.
It is a chain of events which is like a flowing stream. Every historical event has its own spiritual
meaning.

The earth is very vast and is endowed with beauty and power. Since the days of Adam
and Eve man has been trying to find out the meaning of life. “Wherefore unsatisfied soul?”... life
seems to make fun of man as he has not found the true meaning of life. The scientists and
explorers have achieved their goals. The poet has to reveal the relationship between Nature
and Man. He has to help man to understand the meaning of life and the greatness of God. The
Poet is the true son of God. He is the only one who can give peace of mind to man.

Continents like Europe, Asia, Africa and America are enjoying their material gains. But
only India can give them the peace of mind. It is an ancient land of history and legend, morals
and religion, adventure and challenge India has a rich heritage and it has been connected to
the modern America. Columbus is the main actor in the drama of history. All these great people
have showed us the way to live together in peace and harmony. The poet’s duty is to make us
appreciate the beauty of Nature. This is the only way a person can survive in life.

East is actually the cradle of civilization, that is ideas of progress started here. The poet
and his soul want to get wisdom from India. A poet can help man to see God through Nature.

The poet wants a mystical union with God. He wants to enjoy the beauty of Nature and
the world. This will help him to understand the meaning of life. Whitman’s mysticism is to
admire God and His handwork. One must learn to admire beauty and get happiness and peace
from it. Our soul gives us peace. We see a beautiful flower or a building. We admire its beauty;
this gives us peace. This leads us to God and we realize His greatness.

The world is vast and we are baffled by it. We are busy with material pursuits, that is ,
collecting money and enjoying luxuries of life. We do not bother to solve the riddle of life. The
best way to do this is to seek a mystical union with God. He breathes life into the world. It is God
who moves everything in life.

The journey described here is a spiritual journey. Whitman asks the soul if it is ready:”Are
thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?” Man should develop a spiritual attitude towards
 23

life, that is , he must learn to thank God for all the beauty in the world. God has given us the
ability to admire beauty. This helps us to get peace. So a man’s life is a journey in search of an
ideal. India is an ideal place for gaining spiritual knowledge. Man must always move forward.
God’s presence is felt everywhere; we should learn to respect Him and love Him.

DO YOU KNOW

Say whether the following is True or False:

1. “Dark unfathom’d retrospect” refers to past.

2. Poet is the true son of God.

3. Journey is the metaphor used for man’s progress.

4. Whitman’s faith is mysticism.

5. Vasco da Gama discovered the sea-route to India.

24

6. India is the “ soothing cradle of man”.

7. Physical journey is a prelude to the spiritual awakening.

Check Your Progress:

Answer the Following in a Sentence or Two

1. What is the function of engineering feats?

2. What are the three engineering feats mentioned by Whitman?

3. How does Walt Whitman show man’s achievements?

 25

4. What does Walt Whitman mean by “Feverish children?”

5. Why is 1492 an Important year?

6. Who provides the emotional balm?

7. Why does man shrink away from God?

8. What is Whitman’s advice to man?

2.3 Summary
 Whitman was a poet who was a God-intoxicated.

 He wants a religion which binds humanity together.

26

 Scientific and engineering wonders pave the way for man’s progress

 These explorations give joy to people and they are able to see the Divine Reality,
that is, God.

 Whitman did not want us to forget God as religion is the binding force.

2.4 Key words

Antique ponderous Seven - The so-called seven wonders of the ancient world.
These include the Pyramids of Egypt; walls and
hanging gardens of Babylon; the statue of
Jupiter(Zeus)by the Greek Sculptor Phidras

Suez Canal - A shipping canal connecting the Mediterranean at

Port Said with the Red Sea, completed in 1869.

Unfathom’d past - the glory of the past which cannot be measured.

Eclairise - to clarify (coined by W hitman from the French

eclairer)

Fable - A short story with a moral.

Tableaus - a group of models representing a scene; here it refers

to the engineering wonders.

Larkspur - a plant

Platte - a river in Nebraska. The places named in this section

are on that segment of the transcontinental railway
which has just been completed Whitman takes us
along with him on the train journey from Omaha,
Nebraska, across the plains of Wyoming, up and over
the rocky mountains, and down to San Francisco,
California on the West Coast.

Buttes - a butte is a small, steep hill isolated on a plain,

pronounced to rhyme with ‘mute’
 27

Genoese - refers to Christopher Columbus a native of Genoa

(Italy) who discovered America.

Vasco d agama - Portuguese explorer who discovered in 1498, the

water-route to India

Rondure - a circle, a sphere, here rounding

Gardens of Asia - the biblical Garden of Eden, blissful home of the first
couple before their fall from Grace

Trinitas - trinity

Adriatic - when Venice was a city state, the doge or chief

magistrate in an annual ceremony would throw a gold
ring into the Adriatic Sea to symbolize ‘wedding of
Venice to the sea.

Batouta the Moor - traveller in Asia and Africa. (303-377)

The Admiral himself - Columbus, the chief actor in the drama of history.

Palos - Seaport in Spain.

Copest, frontest God - encounter, confront God.

2.5 Activities
1. Compare the poem with another poem which has the same line of thinking.

2. Take any engineering wonder and narrate how it stimulate your emotions and leads
you to God.

2.6 Check Your Answers

Do you know

1.True 2.True 3. True 4. True 5. True 6. True 7.True

28

Check Your Progress

1.Engineering feats pave the path to spiritual knowledge. An appreciation of these will
lead us to God.

2.They are the opening of the Suez Canal, the laying of the transatlantic undersea cable,
and the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Utah.

3.Whitman shows the achievements in the form of two tableaus. One was a proof of ships
and the other was the train journey.

4. People who are involved in material pursuits and technological discoveries. They are
so excited about this that they have no time for finer aspects of life.

5.1492 is an important date as America was discovered that year

6.The poet provides this balm as he enables the people to see beauty in all things. This
gives peace to the people.

7. Whitman advises man to admire engineering wonders; at the same time he should
think of God who is the creator of this universe.

2.7 Model Question & Answer

1. Walt Whitman as a poet./ What is his contribution to American poetry?/ Critical
appreciation of the poem.

Answer: Walt Whitman was America’s most influential and innovative poet, who was
born just thirty years after George Washington was elected as the first president of the newly
formed United states. His early poems produced a few lively sketches of New Orleans life and
at least one poem” Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight”, in which the steamboat journey becomes
a symbolic journey of life:

Vast and starless, the pall of heaven

Laps on the trailing pall below;

And forward, forward, in solemn darkness,

As if to the sea of the lost we go

 29

“ I” became the main character of “Leaves of Grass”, a book of twelve untitled poems.
Whitman underwent some sort of spiritual illumination which produced a new kind of poetry.
This was seen in “Passage to India” too. According to Emerson America is a poem in the eyes
of the poets. Its ample geography dazzles the imagination. Whitman was a seer.

Walt Whitman looked on Hegel as an ally in considering life as a perpetual journey. He

started writing a new kind of poetry. Hegel believed that man, as man, is free. Whitman believed
that God is the greatest wire-puller. He wanted to bring out the multi layered greatness of
America. There was material progress and idealism too. Whitman brought out the magic of
America. He learnt about American society from experience and not from books.

Whitman gave a good picture of metaphysical democrat in “Song of Myself”. He spoke

about eternity, that is the timeless state. Life continues and God does His work. The soul receives
emotions and the poet transforms them into poems. He is like a priest. He had full faith in God.
The beauty of the world is created by God and when we admire this beauty we will be able to
realise the greatness of God. Many American poets were influenced by Whitman.

The river and the ferry become the symbol of life and the people. In “crossing Ferry”
Whitman talks of the various people he used to meet in his journey. There is interaction between
him and nature. Every small aspect is full of glory. This place Brooklyn is busy but people
should admire Nature. We are a part of the crowd. We have to keep moving. Interaction with
Nature is important as it teaches us many important things.

“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” reveals the poetic process. Experiences are
important. A bird’s song can inspire a poem. The adult loves to preserve his childhood
experiences. Subject and object when threatened by forces of death. Cradle keeps rocking: life
too keep rocking; it has ups and downs and it teaches us so many values.

Walt Whitman was sick for some time. He died on March 26, 1983. He has written:” I am
a man who sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then
averts his face”. His interaction with the world around was wonderful. He would absorb every
detail with care and sensitivity.
30

LESSON - 3
POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON
SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST
*
THE SOUL SELECTS HER OWN SOCIETY
*
BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH

Learning Objectives

After learning these poems you will be able to

 realize that success is really counted sweetest, not the success that easily got, but
success that is achieved after a struggle.

 think on the beauty and sanctity of living a quiet life which is dedicated to the divine.

 explore the idea of perpetual life.

Structure
3.1 Introduction

3.2 Synopsis

3.2 Recap

3.3 Key words

3.4 Activities

3.5 Check Your Answers

3.6 Model Questions & Answer

3.1 Introduction
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Ms.
Dickinson had an older brother Austin and younger sister Lavinia. The Dickinson family believed
in education for women and men. She was described as a shy, demure, neatly dressed young
woman often bearing on wearing flowers. She had strong religious feelings. After the 1860s
 31

she never left the bounds of the family property. She was influenced by railroad. People said
she had a fear of open spaces (agoraphobia) and anxiety disorder. She did not get married.
She died at the age of 55, on May 15, 1886 from what is described as “Bright’s Disease” which
is not truly a disease but a term used for collection of medical symptoms, including kidney
disease and hypertension.

The three poems which are prescribed for study present a philosophical strand without
making it a very heavy work. Brooding over what she has written we realize that her poems
convey a deep meaning. In a letter to her cousins she wrote. “Had we the first intimation of the
Definition of life, the calmest of us would be lunatics”. We do agree with this profound statement.

3.2 Synopsis of the Poem - “SUCCESS IS COUNTED

SWEETEST”
‘Success is counted Sweet’ is a short and sweet poem. It conveys deep thoughts about
life. Success seems sweet for one who does not succeed. We measure success by the material
benefits we get in life. Ms.Dickinson explains that success lies in the manner of doing things. If
the person gets satisfaction in doing so that is success. A person who gets success easily does
not know its value.

“If a person wants to know the taste of nectar, he/she should have tasted something
bitter”. People who do a research need to go through many books to arrive at the finding. He
feels happy that after a painful search he has got what he wanted. A person who gets anything
easily does not appreciate its value. A soldier who belongs to an army which is victorious does
not appreciate success. A soldier who is defeated will consider himself successful as he leaves
behind memories. He may also be a role- model for others.

Success for us is getting a medal or money or name. What Ms. Dickinson means is that
these things are not easily got. What we get after lot of struggle is the real success. A solider,
defeated and dying will be happy as people will admire him and praise him that is success. A
person who stands first in a competition cannot look forward to anything. It is plain success. A
person, who stands second or third, has something to look forward, he can do better than what
he did in his past. This will make him successful. We learn robust philosophy form this poem.
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3.3 The Poem - “THE SOUL SELECTS HER OWN SOCIETY”

The soul selects her own society,

Then shuts the door;

On her divine majority

Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing

At her low gate;

Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling

Upon her mat.

I’ve known her from an ample nation

Choose one;

Then close the valves of her attention

Like stone.

3.4 Synopsis of the Poem

Originally published in Dickinson’s posthumous first collection, “Poems by Emily Dickinson”,
in 1890, “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” is believed to have been written in 1862, a year
during which Dickinson supposedly produced more than 300 poems. Significantly, the poem
can be read as a description of the artist’s experience: the Soul, perhaps a poet, freely chooses
to close herself off from the world in order to pursue the solitary, interior life of creativity and
self-discovery.

In the first stanza, the speaker describes the Soul shutting a door, an image of the individual
deliberately closing herself away to pursue some greater purpose. While it might seem that the
Soul is hiding behind a closed door, there is evidence that the poem’s speaker believes her to
be exercising the power of personal choice. Chariots pause at her gate; emperors come to visit,
but she will not let them in. She is indifferent to these symbols of wealth, romance, and power.
The poem’s speaker tells us that the Soul has closed her attention to everything except “One.”
The “One” that she has chosen might be interpreted as her own creative vision.
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The poem concludes by comparing the Soul’s choice to “Stone,” indicating that it is heavy,
solid and irreversible. Once the Soul has closed herself off from the world, there is no turning
back. Like many of Dickinson’s poems, “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” comments on the
Soul of the individual and its rejection of the conventions of the larger society.

3.5 The Poem- “BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH”

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste

And I put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For his Civility –

We passed the School, where Children Strove

At Recess – in the Ring –

We passed the Field of Gazing Grain –

We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –

The Dews drew quivering and Chill –

For only Gossamer, my Gown –

My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground –

The Roof was scarcely visible –

The Cornice – in the Ground

Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet

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Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses’ Heads

Were toward Eternity –

3.6 Synopsis of the Poem

‘Death’, in the form of a gentleman suitor, stops to pick up the speaker and take her on a
ride in his horse-drawn carriage. They move along at a pretty relaxed pace and the speaker
seems completely at ease with the gentleman. As they pass through the town, she sees children
at play, fields of grain, and the setting sun. Pretty peaceful, right?

As dusk sets in our speaker gets a little chilly, as she is completely under-dressed – only
wearing a thin silk shawl for a coat. She was unprepared for her impromptu date with death
when she got dressed that morning. They stop at the place which will be her burial ground and
marked with a small headstone.

In the final stanza, we find out the speaker’s ride with Death took place centuries ago (so
she’s been dead for a long time). But it seems that it is only yesterday that she first got the
feeling that horse heads (like those of the horses that drew the “death carriage”) pointed toward
“Eternity”; or, in other words, signaled the passage from life to death to an afterlife.

3.7 Do you know?

Say whether the following is True/False:
1. Success which comes after hard work is sweetest

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

2. Dying solider is not successful.

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3. Dickinson reminds us that it’s not really up to us when we die.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..4.
Cold is something often associated with death in literature and in movies.

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5. The soul is not won by worldly rank or power.

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6. The Soul Selects Her Own Society” comments on the Soul of the individual and its
rejection of the conventions of the larger society

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3.8 Check Your Progress

1. What is success?

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2. Who is more successful, the defeated soldier or the victorious soldier?

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3. Who is the speaker of the soul selects her own society?

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4. What is the paradox in success is counted sweetest?

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5. What is the theme of the poem -Because I could not stop for death?

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6. How is death portrayed in because I could not stop for death?

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3.9 Summary
· ‘Success is the sweetest’

· Fame has both the song and the sting

· Promise of immortality is presented

· The soul makes a commitment to something or someone and does not waver in
this commitment
36

· The soul is one in which a privileged few is much more admired than a tepid majority.

· Personification of death from life to after life

Key words
Purple host - a successful army

Strains of triumph - voice of success. Noise signifying success

Nectar - A delicious drink

Soul - the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or

animal, regarded as immortal.

Obtrude - become noticeable in an unwelcome or intrusive way.

Society — the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.

Emperor - a sovereign ruler of an empire.

Immortality- the ability to live forever; eternal life.

Civility- formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech.

Gossamer- feathery, silky, silken and wispy

Tippet - a long, narrow strip of cloth forming part of or attached to a hood or sleeve.

Tulle - a soft, fine silk, cotton, or nylon material like net, used for making veils and
dresses.

Cornice - an overhanging mass of hardened snow at the edge of a mountain precipice.

Surmised- suppose that something is true without having evidence to confirm it.

Eternity- endless life after death

3.10 Activities
1. Compare the poem ‘Success is…..’ with another poem having a similar line of
thinking.
 37

2. How does the poet make “Because I could not stop for Death” a disturbing poem?

3. Discuss the theme of the poem, ‘The Soul Select her own Society’

3.11 Check Your Answers

Do You Know
1.True 2. True 3. True 4. True 5. True 6. True

Check Your Progress

1. Success is not a material gain; it is the feeling of satisfaction. It comes only after a
lot of pain and hard work.

2. The defeated solider is more successful because he is remembered for ever by

people for his valiant deeds.

3. The speaker is a person who enjoys living a nearly monastic life of privacy with a
dedication to a divine goal. The speaker also muses on the beauty and sanctity of
living such a quiet life.

4. The paradox is -It is only through an appreciation of failure and loss that we can truly
understand success. The Example of the dying solider reveals this.

5. In this poem, Dickinson explores the idea of perpetual life.

6. In Emily Dickinson’s the poem; Death is personified in the form of a gentleman. Like
any gentleman caller of the time, Death is formal and polite, with “his civility.”

3.12 Model Question & Answer

1. What is your assessment of Emily Dickinson as a poet?

Answer: Emily Dickinson’s poems were short but full of meaning. In “The soul selects
Her Own Society” the soul or psyche selects her own company. The soul makes every effort to
keep up its purity. The poet observes the scenes and brings out the beauty present in them. In
“Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, the poet introduces a speaker and the speaker is
communicating from beyond the grave, describing her journey with Death, personified, from life
to afterlife. The poet goes one step ahead and personifies Death as a gentleman. He arrives
in a carriage with Immortality to take the author to her grave. Like a true gentleman, Death is
formal and polite with “his civility”. “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” is about the death of hope and
38

religious feelings. Sensations are necessary. When you see a beautiful flower it gives you
peace, that is, sensation. Thought is when you think over it and come out with certain ideas.
Death is something which cannot be prevented but one must enjoy life. If you separate yourself
from the experience then life becomes meaningless.

“After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes” is about pain. People seem to have lost
human motivation. We have become puppets. This inability to feel pain has made them contented
- in ‘quartz contentment’. It is like a stone and people do not make an effort to enjoy life. One
must be contented and satisfied, but he should not allow himself to become weary. Mind should
be active and one should not become lazy. Ms. Dickinson believes in keeping our faculties in
working condition. We should not forget that we are a part of this world.

Emily Dickinson depicted the turmoil present in the human mind. She mentions this in
“I Felt a Cleaving in my mind”. She is interested in Truth. She does not reveal the exact truth.
She is concerned with the essence. In “The Soul Selects” She presents the power of the essence
of an experience. Sometimes we have to make a very difficult decision you may give up many
finer things of life in order to get certain things.

Ms. Dickinson did not write essays on poetry. Her duty was to wake up people. She
wanted people to think. She would meditate on any scene and this would lead her to thoughts-
to perceptions. There are so many things going on around. She wants people to admire them
and every small experience in life is important.

Emily Dickinson was a great American poet who was first in the line of feminist poets.
She also admired beauty and wanted people to feel the experiences around, that are, and she
needs people to lead a filled life. She was the Voice of New England’s Protestant culture. With
Walt Whitman she stands as one of America’s two prominent poets of the nineteenth century
and perhaps of the whole literary tradition.
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LESSON - 4
HOME BURIAL
BY

Robert Frost

Learning Objectives

After reading this poem, you will be able to

 find out the characteristics of Frost’s Poetry

 understand adjustment between man and woman

 understand differing perspectives about relationships, life, and death.

 understand Frost’s universal appeal

Structure
4.1 Introduction

4.2 Synopsis of the poem

4.3 Summary

4.4 Key words

4.5 Activity

4.6 Check your Answers

4.7 Model Questions & Answers

4.1 Introduction to the Poet

Robert Frost is a prominent American poet. He was born in San Francisco, California on
March 26, 1874. His father was a New Englander. New England is the name given to certain
states in the U.S.A. These states are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and
Rhode Island. The inhabitants of these states are described as “Yankees”. His mother, Isabelle
Moodie, was a Scot who had come to America from Edinburgh. She was a poet and wanted her
son to be names after Robert Burns. The father wanted to name him after General Lee. As a
compromise the boy was named Robert Lee Frost. He was a sickly, neurotic child. After his
40

father’s death, the family settled in the village of Salem, New Hampshire. Thus the boy was
uprooted from his birth place. He did not like the new alien environment.

Frost tried various ways of earning a living. Last he turned to writing poetry. He died in
1963. He loved nature and wrote poetry which described rural life. His poetry is a record of the
characters and habits of people from New England. We get a picture of a farmer returning
home after a hard day’s work “ After Apple Picking”. In “Mending wall” the farmer wants his land
to be secure and his garden to be protected. Hence, he says “Good fences make good neighbors”.
We find that the people in his poems are capable of adjusting to new surroundings.

Robert Frost was a farmer himself. He knew the character and the instincts of the farmers..
In “After Apple Picking” the farmer dreams of apples as in his real life he thinks only of apples.
He knew that rural life had unpleasant aspects too. His poetry is a realistic presentation of life in
New England countryside. He presents the essential qualities of humanity. His poetry is simple
but symbolic. In “Mending Wall” the wall depicts all kinds of barriers which divide man from
man. Frost deals with New England but he depicts social scene effectively. It is concerned more
with the rural way of life than with its scenery.

4.2 Synopsis of the Poem

This dramatic poem ‘Home Burial’ was written and published in 1914. In this dramatic
narrative Frost has depicted a critical situation arising between husband and wife over the
death of their son. There is the drama of social adjustment in human relationship. The son dies.
This breaks the wife completely. She is standing at the top of the staircase and peeps through
the window and sees that her husband is digging the grave of the child. On returning home, he
talks of daily concerns.

This further strengthens the wife’s conviction that her husband is not touched by the
tragedy at all. The husband tries to explain his position to her, but she is unable to follow him.
This creates a tension between them. The wife becomes almost hysterical and desperate due
to the tragedy and tries to leave the home. The husband requests her to stay and talk to him
about her grief; he does not realize why she is irritated with him for expressing his grief in a
different way. Grief-stricken, the wife lashes out at him, convinced of his apathy toward their
dead child. The husband accepts her rage, but the gap between them remains. She leaves the
house as he angrily threatens to drag her back by force. It is a highly suggestive poem, and the
 41

title is the most significant, since it does not only tell us something about the burial of the dead
child, but also about the burial of domestic peace.

The poem is about two tragedies: first, the death of a young child or the burial of a son,
and second, the death of a marriage or the burial of a relationship. Though the death of the
child is considered as the prime cause of the couple’s conflict, the larger conflict that devastated
the marriage is the couple’s incapability to communicate with one another. They both do not try
to come out of their zone of grief and don’t become the supporter of each other at the crucial
time of need. Both are grief stricken at the loss of the child, but none of them is able to realize
the way that their partner chooses to express their distress.

Home Burial is perhaps the most intense of Frost’s dramatic dialogues dramatic as Chekhov
and Sherwood Anderson were, with gesture, movement, tone of voice, and “sentencing” the
instruments of the tragedy. Grief at the loss of a first child spins the plot, and neither the wife nor
the husband is at fault; but the conflict between the father, a countryman, and the mother, a city-
bred, is nonetheless pitiful and terrible. She is hysterical, and sees her husband as a stranger,
yet she speaks one kind of truth - how the living turn quickly away from the dead - and she
“won’t have grief so” if she can change it. To the man, it seems only right that he should have
dug his child’s grave himself, in his family graveyard, visible from their bedroom window. He is
insensitive enough to repeat a country saying about rotting birch fences to his wife without
realizing how the horror of decay has augmented her grief. Yet his grief is as real as it is
controlled. He has begun to accept the death of his boy as she is yet unable to. And he speaks
another kind of truth in alternating gusts of humility and frustration, love and anger, as he
argues their reconciliation. The issue between them is mostly unresolved. The wife gives out
the threat: ‘You - oh, you think the talk is all. I must go - somewhere out of this house. How can
I make you - But time, presumably, will resolve their differences. In Home Burial the strange and
the familiar are strikingly blended. The talk is the talk of everyday, the accents of a man and wife
facing a sort of crisis. But the situation is strange -common in words, uncommon in the experience.

Frost brings larger issues into the forefront issues such as husband-wife relationship or
that between man and woman, or life and death. The title of the poem is highly significant; it
suggests not only the burial of the dead infant, but also of the domestic harmony. Home Burial,
in beauty and grandeur, ranks with The Death of the Hired Man. Frost’s these two dramatic
narratives can favorably be compared with Robert Browning’s peculiarly intense and character-
analyzing dramatic monologues like Andrea Del Sarto, Fra Lippo Lippi, My Last Duchess and
The Pauper Witch of Graf-ton (in Two Witches).
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In Home Burial, blank verse has been employed very effectively. It gives expression
to different shades of feeling and thought and is highly helpful in revealing the characters
involved. The main interest of the poem is the revelation of characters in ‘conflict’. The husband
and the wife are distinct personalities in the poem. The woman is, no doubt, hysterical and not
prepared to hear the logic of unfeeling man; the man is considerate and manly. To express the
intensities and interruptions, such a masterly use of monosyllables is notable.

Do You Know

Say whether the following is True/False:

1. Home burial was published in 1914.

2. Robert Frost is a prominent American poet.

3. The husband has begun to accept the death of his boy as his wife is unable to do
so.

4. The title of the poem suggests not only the burial of the dead infant, but also of the
domestic harmony.
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5. The Wife goes out of the house in grief.

Check Your Progress

1. What is the poem about? (Literal meaning)

2. Why is dialogue added to the poem?

3. What are the themes explored in the poem?

4. Finish the quote: “She, in her place, refusing him any help...”

5. What is the main theme in the quote: “God, what a woman! And it come to this, a
man can´t speak of his own child that´s dead”
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4.3 Summary
· Home Burial” starts with a husband watching his wife as she walks down the stairs.

· His wife pauses to look over her shoulder at something.

· He figures out that she’s looking at their child’s grave.

· The wife is so distraught by the loss of her child that she’s inconsolable.

· She blames him for not very serious about the dead of their child.

· The husband tries to convince her to just talk to him, but they have major
communication issues.

· She avoids talking to her husband and is trying to leave the house altogether.

· Her husband threatening to go after her and bring her back if she goes.

· Still, the conflict is far from finished by the end of the poem.

4.4 Keys words

Terrified - cause to feel extreme fear.

daunting look - intimidating look

Offense - annoyance or resentment brought about by a

perceived insult to or disregard for oneself.

Latch - a metal bar with a catch and lever used for fastening
a door or gate.

rumbling voice - continuous full and low-pitched throbbing sound

inconsolable - sad beyond comforting; incapable of being consoled

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4.5 Activity
Critically discuss the relationship between the husband and the wife in Frost’s “Home
Burial.”

4.6 Check Your Answers

Do you know

1. True 2.True 3.True 4.True 5.True

Check Your Progress

1. The husband and wife argue because of their son´s death. The wife is inconsolable.
The poem ends with the woman leaving the house and the man going after her.

2. To give an effect of emotion and tension between the couple. It also helps us identify
the characters personality and way of thinking.

3. Sadness, death of a child as the main argument, women shown as more caring and
nostalgic, while men shown more emotionless.

4. “With the least stiffening of her neck and silence”

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5. The main theme in the quote is the husband is more emotionless about his kid´s
death, while the wife is suffering more emotionally. Also, death could be considered
in this quote as a secondary theme.

4.7 Model Questions & Answers

Question 1. Frost as a Poet of Nature. Substantiate.

Answer: Robert Frost loved Nature. It is the region North of Boston which forms the
background of his poetry. He describes a snowfall, a tree that is bending, a brook with precision.
It is done with realism that it merges with our experience. “Birches” is a beautiful poem where
he discusses birch trees in detail. If we just close our eyes we see the trees in our imagination.
A boy is swinging on the branches but the branches do not bend. They bend only with the
weight of snow. The sun shines and the snow melts. It looks like heaps of broken glass and you
feel that the dome of heaven ahs broken. The branches while swinging go high up and it looks
as if the boy is touching the heaven.

Frost enjoys Nature. He also realizes that there is danger in nature. The surface appears
calm and peaceful but under this there is the unseen presence of something hostile. At times
when least expected, the Nature shows her violent and dangerous side. In “ Two Tramps I
Mud-time” we find that the nature can be a little dangerous. The snow melts becomes slippery.
Nature, of course, is beautiful inspite of all this.

Frost describes common experiences. He writes from personal experiences. Realism is

one prominent feature of his poetry. He loves birds and mountains and rivers and lakes. He
deals with smaller creature like ants. He sometimes brings out the pathos of their existence. He
describes the society of ants in Departmental. His world of Nature does not have soul. It is
impersonal. He talks with humor about Nature. There is no seriousness about his attitude towards
Nature. To Frost, Man is always different from other objects. His approach to Naute is practical.
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This is clearly seen in “ The Road Not Taken”. The Road is lovely but he prefers the one that is
not much used. He feels happy about his choice . He is a true modern poet, too.

Frost describes the confusion which prevails in modern life. The modern man in this
poem is not able to make the right choice. He is confused and his life does not have a clear
purpose. The protagonist in this poem is the poet himself the modern man, who wastes his
time trying to make the right choice. We cannot say that the poet is happy over his choice. Let
us accept that Frost does not regret, though some critics feel that later on in life Frost was
slightly sad.

Question 2.Frost as a Poet of Man.

Answers: Frost was a poet of man. He writes about people. His characters are simple
people drawn from the rural areas. He is a realist who knows what he is talking about. He knows
his people and places thoroughly. Frost commented. “There are two types of realists. There is
the one who is satisfied with the potato to show that it s a real potato. And then there is the one
who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I am inclined to be the second kind. To me, the
thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form”. The people in his poetry are real, loving
human beings.

Isolation and loneliness are the two prominent feelings, in Frost’s poems. In “Home Burial”
the mother keeps crying over the loss of her child. She is hysterical. Frost depicts the helplessness
of man in an indifferent world of Nature. There are the barriers between man and the immediate
natural world. Some of his people lack the courage to reclaim their land. Hence, they are left to
fight loneliness and isolation. Frost believed that there was a barrier between Man and Nature,
and Man and Man. Lack of communication leads to social alienation and emotional isolation
and loneliness. In “Mending wall” Frost makes an ironic comment on those who raise walls
between themselves and neighbors because they think that “ good fences make good neighbors”.
Symbolically, the poem is a comment on the barriers which divide and separate man from man.
In “Home Burial” there is a lack of communication between husband and wife. The Shadow of
their dead child alienates them from each other.

Frost believes that there is good in life. An old servant in “the Death of the Hired Man”
feels lonely as he has no one to look after him. Man’s essential spirit of loneliness nags people.
Man through his faith should establish communication with God. He believes that men should
live together as friends. Man should make the best of his human condition.
48

LESSON - 5
ANECDOTE OF THE JAR
BY

Wallace Stevens

Learning Objectives

After reading this poem, you will be able to

 understand the complexity of relationship between nature and man.

 analyse the importance of the environment.

 resolve the confusion that exists between man and environment.

Structure
5.1 Introduction

5.2 Introduction to the Poem

5.3 Synopsis of the Poem

5.4 Key words

5.6 Activity

5.7 Check Your Answer

5.8 Model Questions and Answers

5.1 Introduction
Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on October 2, 1879 and died at the
age of seventy –six in Hartford, Connecticut on August 2, 1955. He graduated from New York
law school in 1903 and was admitted to the New York Bar in 1904. He was steadily advancing
in business. His best writing came at the age of sixty. In the current lesson we will learn and
appreciate one of his renowned poem called “Anecdote of the Jar”.
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5.2 Introduction to the Poem

In the poem “Anecdote of the jar” Stevens portrays the complex relationship of human to
nature through confusion of who is greater than whom, how they depend on each other, the
connection between the two. The poem forces the reader to feel the confusion and chaos
present between the jar (a symbol for humans) and nature.

Stevens’ poems are about this sense of objects. In “someone puts a Pineapple together”
he asserts that each person sees in the pineapple a “tangent of himself” and the fruit so seen is
a part of the nature he contemplates. That is why the jar in” Anecdote of the jar” can make the
slovenly wilderness/surround that hill” the jar dominates while the wilderness is careless but is
aware of this new object placed in its environment. Then the poem states, “The wilderness is
now in charge. This relationship really was chaotic. In real life too Stevens is correct in his
undertaking of ideas from human to nature. This very paper is from a tree that man has cut
down, showing that nature was defenceless in this act. On the other hand, there are certainly
a number of hurricanes, avalanches and other natural calamities which are beyond man’s control.
Men can do nothing to prevent these disasters. Hence, neither human beings nor wilderness is
the dominant source.

Line 7 reads “the jar was round upon the ground” This section shows the dependency of
human beings on nature. The words “round” and “ground” show the relationship. The next line
(8) supports the hidden security of the relationship between human and the natural world. “And
tall and of a port in air”. The word “port” refers to a connecting force that ties the relationship
together. The “jar” being tall in the air represents the depth of the relationships.”Air” is used to
represent the unseen connection. We depend on air to survive. Though we have not seen,
touched or heard air, we know it is there and depend on it to live. It is the unseen connection
between mankind and natural world. The connection is very important and crucial to the
relationship.

In the third and last quatrain the speaker says of the jar’s ordering

“It took dominion every where

The jar gray and bare

It did not give of bird or bush

Like nothing else in Tennessee”

50

The point of view that controls the poem is not incoherent. The jar is the speaker’s form of
artifice and is utterly alien to the world of bird and bush. This is to say that any order, any
interpretation of the Tennessee wilderness would not be true depiction of that world as it is. The
poem is primarily about perspective and interpretation which come to mean very much the
same thing. The jar has an alien status.

The first two stanzas of the poem are based on the assumption that reality will be
known only as it is interpreted by such geometrical simplification as the jar represent. The first
and the last lines of the poem embody the start and finish of the poem in a calm way. Both end
in the word ‘Tennessee’ The first line of the poem is the beginning of the relationship. There is
mass confusion and somewhere in the poem Stevens shows a deeper meaning of the relationship
through a connection. The same word is used in the end. “like nothing else in Tennessee” that
is the end of the relationship. Stevens used the jar to represent man and successfully created
an environment not only expressed in the poem but also felt by the reader.

5.3 Synopsis of the Poem

“Anecdote of the Jar’ portrays the complex relationship between human and nature. It
deals with the confusion of who is greater than whom, how this depend on each other and
connection between the two. The relationship is really chaotic. Stevens is correct in understanding
ideas from human to nature. This was a paper from a tree that man has cut down, showing that
nature was defenceless in the act. On the other hand, there are a number of natural calamities
which work beyond man’s control. So neither human beings nor the wilder men are the dominant
source.

Do you Know?

Say whether the following is True/False.

1. Stevens portrays the complex relationship of human to nature.

2. One dominates over the other (Nature and Man)

 51

3. There is unseen connection between human and nature.

4 Air is the unseen connection between mankind and the natural world.

5 The end of the poem leaves the reader satisfied.

Check your Progress

1. What is the confusion in the complex relationship of human to nature?

2. What weakens the humans?

52

3. What is the reversal of roles?

4. Why neither human nor wilderness is the dominant source?

The poem begins with the dominance issue

There is unseen connection between the human and the nature.

Air is the unseen connection

The jar remains an alien- man is not able to merge with nature.

5.4 Key words

Wilderness- vast open land; here for chaos.

Gray and bare - the jar’s alien nature.

“Round” and “ground”- here it means the dependence of man on nature.

Slovenly- lazy: here long winding, peaceful, calm

5.6 Activity
1. Discuss an ordinary anecdote and try to derive any lesson from it.

5.7 Check Your Answers

Do you know

1. True 2. False 3. True 4. True 5. true

 53

Check your Progress

1. The relationship of nature and man is a complex one. There is confusion who is
greater than the other.

2. Nature’s power over humans has left them powerless.

3. Sometimes the jar appears powerful as it will not give into the wilderness. Then
wilderness seems to take over. This creates confusion.

4. Paper is made from trees by chopping them down- nature is powerless. Later man
is at the mercy of Nature- this is reversal of roles.

5.8 Model Questions & Answers

1. Stevens portrays the complex relationship of human to nature.
Substantiate.

Answer: “Anecdote of the jar” is an ironic criticism if the romantic spirit for interfusion of
consciousness and nature on the basis of art. The imagination of the narrator of Keats’ Ode on
a Grecian Urn” desperately asks questions about the significances of figures. The urn bears
signs of nature to which consciousness can respond. Stevens’ jar has no trace of nature; the
reader of Keats’ poem is aligned with nature, with “breathing human passion”. The poet and the
reader share the intensities of how things change. In Steven’s poem such intensities are not
shown. The jar is not a puzzle; he reveals the theme in a simple manner.

The jar is placed on top of a hill and through this we see human purpose. The
placing of the jar on the hill represents the conflict between the mind and external reality as an
impersonal play of aesthetic forces. The jar dominates over the wilderness as it stands alone by
itself. “ it did not give a bird or bush. The jar merely sheds influence. Its power is its perfection
of empty form. The jar stand majestically in the middle of the wilderness which is ‘slovenly’ that
is, careless. The jar is like an alien in the wilderness, because it does not change. The things
around it like the bird or bush change but the jar like Keats’ Grecian urn remains the same.
Thus it gains power over the wilderness. Man can gain power if he wants over nature at least,
to certain extent. Stevens seems to have created the confusion about man-nature relationship.
By using the jar to represent the man, Stevens was successful in creating an environment not
only expressed in the poem, but also felt by the reader.
54

2. Wallace Stevens as a Poet. Write about it.

Answer: Wallace Stevens believed that man should have faith in God.

Man may try to solve his problems but he needs God’s help. He must try to find the
relationship between life and the world. Stevens turned from the poetry of heaven to the poetry
of earth.

“Exceeding music must take the place of empty heaven and its hymns”.

He realised what it is to live in a world without gods and what it is to be a poet writing in
America.

“The Planet on the table” is Stevens’s farewell to his work. The poem tells us that art
resembles life. The poem reproduces the great world. Nature’s creations die but poet’s creations
keep the world alive in a miniature form. In his poems he calls himself Ariel. “ Ariel was glad he
had written his poems” his self and the sun were one. Wordsworth in “Tintern Abbey” refers to
the “mighty world/ or eye and ear- both what they half create, and what perceive” Stevens too
believes that we perceive only half the things. He believes that all of us are not alike, so our
perceptions are different. That is why it is possible to go on saying new things about old things.
The old things about which Stevens said new things include disappointments of love, love for
particular region, the fear of old age, and above all, the change of seasons-both ‘human seasons’
and the climatic ones. In another poem, he talks of Farmington River: like Wordsworth Stevens
praised the landscape and the river. He wanted to bring out the beauty in the American landscape.

According to Stevens our past is important. An artist can make the landscape come alive.
Without the artist, says Stevens in”Somnanbalisma”

“The ocean falling and falling on the hollow shore

Would be a geography of the dead;”

Stevens always believed in the past. A true human identity evolves out of interpreting and
refashioning old ideas and culture.

Stevens studied law. His first models were Shakespeare. Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley
and Browning. Added to this was the influence of the French symbolists. His first collection of
poems was Harmonium. The poems recounted experiences in the history of American poetry.
The poems in these collections do not talk of war. He was not much affected by the war. It was
 55

in the thirties that Stevens began to think a lot about the social aspects. He realised that poetry
had social value. At first, in “Mozart” he urged the poet to be “ the voice of angry fear/ the voice
of the besieging pain”

Stevens was interested in imagism. In ‘thirteen ways of looking at a Blackbird’ he makes

use of what he sees as a means of understating the world. There are different ways of looking
at things.

“I was of three minds

Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds”

In “Anecdote of the jar” he tried to exalt art over nature. He discovers that the jar cannot
merge with the wild.

Stevens wrote poems of earth. He believed that poetry is the supreme fiction. “ the poem
refreshes life so that we share,/ for a moment, the first idea......it satisfies/belief in an immaculate
beginning” there is loneliness in Stevens ‘ poetry but there is a streak of common sense and a
taste for good things which are not permanent. His belief was” how have I borne life? By creating?”
Late in his life he converted to catholic faith. Imagination created something but that is destroyed.
Later the poet can build something new out of it.
56

LESSON - 6
“ANY ONE WHO LIVED IN A PRETTY HOW TOWN”
BY

E.E Cummings

Learning Objectives

After reading this poem, you will be able to

 get a clear picture of Cummings life

 understand his themes and way of expressing his ideas

 assess Cummings as a poet.

Structure
6.1 Introduction

6.2 Synopsis of the Poem

6.3 Summary

6.4 Key words

6.5 Activities

6.6 Check your answers

6.7 Model question and answer

6.1 Introduction
E.E. Cummings (14 Oct, 1894- 3 Sep 1962) poet and painter, was born Edward Estlin
Cummings in Cambridge , Massachusetts, the son of Edward Cummings and Rebecca Clarke.
His parents encouraged him to develop his creative gifts. He served Norton- Harjes Ambulance
Crops during the World War I. He was good in painting and he affirmed life in all its forms. He
did not like forces which curbed the creativity of the individual. In 1918, he created his own
poetic style. He developed a unique form of literary cubism. He broke up his material on the
page to present it in a new , visually directed way. Cummings expressed ideas through new
grammatical usage: he used verbs as nouns, and other sentences as new linguistic creations.
 57

He did not use punctuations and capital letters. Capitals were used only for emphasis. He used
the lower case i to show that he was neglected and was the unnoticed dreamer. His two marriages
ended as disasters. This changed him from a vivacious celebrate of life to cynical hard-hitting
critic of American culture. He imitated Longfellow in his early days. Later he tried to explore
unusual means of expression.

6.2 Synopsis of the Poem

“Anyone who lived in a pretty how town” opens with spring in the first stanza. It consists of
nine four-line stanzas. The poem is predominantly written in lines consisting of four feet (each
foot represents one stressed syllable and one unstressed syllable).

The poem contains a pattern of reference to the different groups of persons mentioned. I,
anyone; II Women and Men; III children; IV no one; V someone and everyone; VI Children. The
hierarchy descends from the lovers through the indifferent mass of adults to the children who
fail remember their past. In the third part, Stanza VII and VIII concentrate on anyone’s and no
one’s death and burial. The lovers, the only people who enjoy have left stage. The children have
dropped out as they have grown up.

Anyone who lived in a pretty town would sing its praise. Women and men enjoyed
themselves. “Children guesses” that Cummings was lonely. They are closer to God and
understand spiritual truths more directly than adults. The poet feels he is unwanted in the town
but he thrives at this rejection. The children understand that there are values in his life beyond
those that make an obedient townsman. Each one has his own joy and sorrow: “Someone’s
married their everyone’s”.

The people lead a dull life. They laughed and cried and shared their joy and sorrow. The
children also grow up as dull as their parents. They are as cold as snow-there is no warmth of
feelings. “One day anyone died I guess”. No one was sad; they were indifferent to the man’s
death. This man died unloved and was buried without any feelings of sorrow. Life is one dull
movement with nothing exerting about it.

The last stanza describes the usual movements of life. “Women and men (both dong and
ding)/ summer autumn winter spring/ reaped their sowing and went their came/sun moon stars
rain”. The rhythm of life continues. The seasons change in a cyclic way. The moon stars, and
sun –all three do their work and move in cycles.
58

The poem moves by the alternation of negation of life with joy in life, the ‘someone’s’
set against ‘anyone’ and ‘no one’. These contrasts involved youth and age, innocence and
experience feelings and not feeling; the overall contrast is between harmony and disharmony.
The harmony that the poet seeks and celebrates in the poem is sounded by the bells, and
symbolized by the bells.

Do You Know
1. Is life in the town boring?

Say whether the following is True//False

2. The children forget their childhood when they grow up.

3. The unknown dead man was loved by all.

4. Everyone goes about doing his work in his own way.

 59

Check Your Progress

1. What does Cummings mean by the title?

2. Do you feel that people are selfish?

6.3 Summary
 Cummings used a very unconventional title.

 Women and men went about doing their work.

 Nature’s cycle too moved without any interruption.

 Children are closer to God. They perceive spiritual truths directly. The children
understood that Cummings was a lonely man.

 Cummings loved life in spite of the fact that he was alone.

 Rhythms of life continue. The individual is set against society and against other
people as members of society.

6.4 Key Words

 Pretty how — a pretty little town

 Dong and ding—— commerce and discussions on politics and business

6.5 Activities
1. Imagine yourself in a town like the one described by Cummings. Write down your
views.
60

6.6 Check Your Answers

Do You Know

1. Yes 2. True 3. False 4. True

6.7 Check Your Answers

1. It refers to a small town with its peaceful life and calm atmosphere

2. They are not exactly selfish, but they are indifferent. Each one is concerned with his
own interests.

3. The unknown man died and the funeral was a quiet affair. People had no feelings of
love and affection for him.

6.8 Model Question & Answer

1. E.E Cummings as a poet. What are the special features of Cummings
poetry?

American poetry is made up of different trends. The poets thought that they must capture
the sensations and feelings of men and women living now, the tempo of progress and many
aspects of modern life. Some felt that they should express what was unique in America, such as
its democracy, space and newness. Modernist sought a reality deeper than the contemporary
or the local. These modernist poets like Stevens, Frost, Eliot felt the need to do something new.
But what path to take was the question. The modernist created poetry out of sources they
themselves assembled.

E.E. Cummings was an Imagist. He liked Dadaism, a painting movement that started in
France. He was a Unitarian Minister. He rebelled against parental ethos. Imagism meant a
short, free verse, scene or happening. He used colloquial language effectively. His poems had
effects of a painting.

Cummings dismembered words into syllables and syllables into letters. He did this for the
sake of the look of the poem on the page. He arranged the letters, syllables, punctuations
marks, line length-they are arranged in order to enact feeling and carry meaning.

Cummings was a controversial poet. He was the son of a Harvard professor of political
science. His collection of poems are “Tulips and Chimneys”, followed by And, XLI, “Villa” and
 61

“No Thanks”. He did not use any punctuation. He experimented in topography, that is, the form
of the poems. An example is “Loneliness is like a falling leaf”. The feeling of loneliness is the
feeling a man gets when he watches a single leaf falling:

lle

le

af

ll

sl

onel

iness

The substance in the poem is a linguistic picture of the falling leaf. The pattern of the
large and small letters suggests the graceful, delicate twisting of the leaf as it comes rolling
down. Man is as fragile as leaf. Most often he is alone and his solitude causes him pain.
Particularly in a society which values a superficial togetherness. Man is simply blown away or
he just withers and drops.

Cummings in “Cambridge ladies” talks of the ladies here. Cambridge is part of Boston in
which Harvard University is situated. That was the hometown of Cummings. These ladies are
not capable of thinking. There are many furnished houses. They just serve the purpose of the
occupants. Similarly, the ladies are influenced by the atmosphere in which they were grown and
existed. They have no personal city of their own. Their souls have no life in them. They are not
beautiful but not ugly. They are very ordinary people, but intellectually indolent. These ladies
are interested so many things but they follow a fixed routine. They do not know how to distinguish
between good and bad; they do not know the subtle differences between shades or colours or
qualities. They tend to reduce all things to their own terms.

Cummings tried to capture America’s capacity for belief and re-orient it form secular to
transcendent values. His poetry dramatized the acute sense of an unbreakable gap between
the real and the ideal. He also described the pain that goes with this dilemma or recognition of
this defeat. This was depicted by many poets. Cummings always wanted new subjects and new
modes of expression. He wanted to explore new situations and social institutions. He always
wanted his poems to be perfect.
62

Cummings is a poet whose poetry is quite difficult to understand. He was an artist too.
People criticise him for those topographical changes. The lines of his poems are built for speed.
He gives off his poems as spontaneously as perspirations. He laughs like a school boy when he
has invented an adverb like “sayingly” or uses capitals in the middles of words instead of at the
beginning. Capital letters are used to indicate the beginning of a sentence; but Cummings uses
them in the middle of sentences. He uses them only for emphasis. Even first person singular of
the pronoun “I” is written in small letter. He just wants the attention of the readers.

Cummings has become famous because of this new way of punctuation. His emotions
are the usual ones. He does not react to anything. He just enjoys life. Hence his poems have a
lot of energy. A poem like “Next to of course God” is a satire on the so-called patriots of America.
The speaker is celebrating the past-the heroes. He seems to be keen on preserving the voice
of liberty. “Then Shall The Voice Of Liberty Be Mute”? He spoke and then drank a glass of
water. This indicates the fact that he had just learnt to speak mechanically. After talking at a
stretch he drinks a glass of water. It shows the man’s nature. He does not have any true
feelings at all. Cummings ‘style is fresh. He has a genuine gift of language.
 63

LESSON - 7
KITCHENETTE BUILDING
By

Gwendolyn Brooks

Learning Objectives

After reading this poem, you will be able to

 understand the problems of blacks

 focus our attention on the blacks and their dreams

 understand Ms. Brooks’ attitude towards the blacks.

Structure
7.1 Introduction

7.2 About the Poet

7.3 Synopsis of the Poem

7.4 Summary

7.5 Key Words

7.6 Activities

7.7 Check Your Answers

7.8 Model Questions & Answers

7.1 Introduction
Gwendolyn brooks was born in 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, but since early childhood had
lived in Chicago. She was a shy and sensitive child who stayed at home and spent her time
reading. She started writing poetry from an early age. On the eve of World War II she married
Henry Blakely. Her first poetry collection, A street in Bronzeville was published in 1945, just as
the war was coming to a close. The book presents several pictures of ordinary people who live
there in poverty, frustration, violence and loneliness. Brook’s street scenes are taken from daily
city life and from her own experiences, as in “Kitchenette Building.” Her tone is generally
64

sympathetic. This book treats subjects that are central to all of her work: the debilitating poverty
and prejudice and the efforts of the individual in search of happiness.

7.2 About the Poet

Brooks’ next collection was Annie Allen. It was published in 1949. The book is divided into
several sections, portraying Annie Allen through different poetic approaches. The first part traces
her early life in eleven brief scenes and is followed by “The Anniad” an elaborate mock-heroic
narrative of Annie’s later life. The next book “The Bean Eaters” (1960) is about blacks who are
not very rich. Here a pound of beans is more valuable than a pound of potatoes. Many of the
poems centre on the lives and struggles of black women. The people are insecure and they
wander in search of spiritual fulfilment.

The desire to escape is depicted in “The Ballad of Rudolph Reed”, the story of a black
man who moves the family to a white suburb. This “oaken” man hopes the new house will be a
haven from ghetto misery but when a stone flies through the window and strikes his daughter,
he rushes out with a gun and a knife. He wounds four men and is killed. Ms. Brooks makes her
message clear.

By the early sixties, Lee (Haki R. Madhubuti) Le Roi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Nikki Giovanni
and other young black writers began to demand African – American literary identity. Ms. Brooks
had thought of herself as a Negro. She suddenly got awareness. In 1968 she published ‘In the
Mecca’. One long poem by the same name depicts life in a big apartments building on Chicago’s
South side. The teeming tenement, the Mecca was a real building and some of them are real
individuals whose revolutionary fervour reflects Ms. Brooks’ awareness. She used the image of
whirlwind and the harvest to convey the poet’s sanction of the struggle of black people for
freedom and fulfilment.

Ms. Brooks believed that the blacks had many dreams but they could not be fulfilled. This
is seen in “Kitchenette Building”. The blacks here live in cramped surroundings. They have their
dreams but these dreams are not fulfilled. Their life is shaped by the environment in which they
live. The problems of living stifle their dreams.

7.3 Synopsis of the Poem

Gwendolyn Brooks deals with death. She speaks of spiritual death, that is, the blacks,
are not able to fulfil their dreams. The atmosphere in “Kitchenette Building” is not good. People
 65

live in cramped surroundings and have not chance to fulfil their dreams. The poem begins like
this: “We are things of dry houses and the involuntary plan”. Ht word “things” suggests that the
blacks have no life of their own. They have dreams of a bright future but are not able to fulfil
them because they do not get a chance to fulfil their dreams. “Dry hours” suggests the dull,
drab life led by the blacks. The blacks lose interest in getting what they want as their living
conditions are very bad. “Involuntary Plan”: people dying out of disappointment are one of the
tragedies of life. The blacks have dreams- they want to be successful in life. It is only a hollow
sound for them. What is very important for them is the capacity to pay rent or looking after a
family. These small jobs occupy their minds. They do not have enough money, so earning
enough is more important that fulfilling their dreams.

“Greyed in, and gray’ is meaningful phrase. “Greyed in” refers to the poor conditions in
which they live. The blacks have no choice. They have to stay in places set apart for them; the
whites do not give them freedom. Poor people like the blacks here can enjoy life only in dreams;
in actual life they have to think of so many problems of life. This contrast continues in the
second stanza.

“But could a dream send up through onion fumes

Its white and violet, fight with fried potato
And yesterday’s garbage repining in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms”

Man has to think of his everyday existence. He cannot live in a world of dreams-he has to
think of paying the rent, buying the cheapest vegetable and removing the garbage. Ms. Brooks’
description of the living conditions of the blacks is moving as well as apt. It is very bad; it is
direct contrast to the ideal world of dreams. They want some good things of life but that they
can enjoy only in dreams. The burden of daily life is too much.

The third stanza is about the psychological or spiritual environment.

“Even if we were willing to let it in

Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?”

These oppressed, suppressed people should make a beginning. Let them try to keep the
surroundings clean and have a clean thinking. Good living conditions help people to improve
their thinking and realise their dreams. No one has time to think about higher things.
66

We try to think God and spiritual ideas. But we are not able to fulfil our dreams. Ms.
Brooks very skilfully depicts the life of the blacks belonging to the poorer classes. They all live
in a small, congested building. Here water is a problem. Sanitations is poor as there is only one
bathroom for so many residents. It is a queue system and much time is wasted in these matters.
Even hot water is a scarcity and by the time the people behind get it, it becomes lukewarm.

Ms Brooks very cleverly paints the picture of absolute poverty. Nothing works well in this
building. Patience is rewarded by lukewarm water in the common bathroom on each floor.
“Onion fumes” and “fried potatoes” and other details are symbols of poverty. This is the interior
of the building which is a symbol of poverty. Blacks living in such conditions cannot aspire for
anything attractive. Their life becomes limited.

Do You Know

Say whether the following is True/False:

1. Life is comfortable for the blacks.

2. Is garbage rotting in the hall?

3. There is plenty of water in the building.

 67

Check Your Progress

1. What does” dry hours” mean?

2. What is involuntary plan?

3. What kind of life do the blacks lead?

7.4 Summary
 The blacks in these buildings lead a dull, drab life.

 The people are dying of disappointment.

 Their dreams are not fulfilled.

 The poor living conditions of the people are responsible for their unfulfilled dreams.

 The problems of daily life make their life miserable.

7.5 Key Words

Dry hours - dull, drab life

Giddy sound - dreams do not have any meaning

Onion fumes , Fried potatoes - all symbols of poverty

Aria - ong
68

7.6 Activities
1. Discuss a situation like the one seen in “Kitchenette building”

7.7 Check Your Answers

Do you know?

1. False 2. True 3. False

Check Your Progress

1. “Dry Hours” means the dull and drab life led by the blacks in this crowded apartment.

2. “Involuntary Plan” refers to the disappointment of these people.

3. The blacks lead a dull meaningless life as their dreams remain unfulfilled.

7.8 Model Questions & Answers

1. Write on the Critical Appreciation of “Kitchenette building”

Answer: Disappointment and death are main subjects of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry.
She dramatizes everyday life. Every aspect of everyday life is dramatised here. People are
entrapped, that is, caught in the trap of a drab living. In “Kitchenette building” the people live in
cramped conditions. Their dreams are suppressed and they have no time to enjoy the beauty of
life. They spend their time earning money to buy the basic needs of life. They are not able to
fulfil their dreams. The life they lead and the life they dream of are in direct contrast.

Some of Ms Brooks’ poems show the contrast between the high life and low life. We get
a picture of this in “Sadie and Maud”. Sadie has enjoyed life- “she has scraped life with a fine-
toothed comb” she has two daughters though she is not married. She is not ashamed of this.
Maud’s life is stifled by the restrictions of life. She is “ a thin brown mouse” leading a lonely life.
The rules of society have killed the spirit in her and all her dreams. Ms brooks criticises people
for being very strict in life. They must enjoy life.

“Kitchenette Building” depicts spiritual death. What is “spiritual death”? Spiritual here refers
to the death of the soul. When man is not able to fulfil his dreams and be happy, it is death for
him. He should be able to enjoy life. In “Kitchenette Building” we find this dilemma. They are
preoccupied with the small details of life. Dream here s out of place.
 69

Ms Brooks has given us an exact picture of life and its problem. There is nothing
melodramatic about this, that is, we do not cry over it. But we think over it and realize how
difficult life is. We must accept things as they are to a certain extent. Sometimes we must learn
to cope with problems. We should not lose heart. Ms Brooks does not preach- she just presents
life for us to draw our conclusions. She presents blacks and their problems very effectively.

2. Write about Gwendolyn Brooks as black poet

Or

3. The thematic value of Ms Brooks’ Poetry.

Answer: Gwendolyn Brooks led a very happy, simple life. She has a concern for the
common man as her subject. She does not depict heroic moments in her poems. She shows
people doing small acts and simple deeds. She talks of people who find joy in the family lives.
Even ordinary life can give joy to people. The blacks suffered because of the colour of their
skins. Poverty was another reason for the blacks; suffering. born on June 7, 1917, ms Brooks
was shy by nature. She always depicted black people in her poetry.

Four prominent themes in her poems were death, the fall from glory, the labyrinth and the
survival. Ms Brooks presents these social themes in her poetry. Death in her poems is negative
displacement and squalor. We see this in “Kitchenette building”. The blacks have come from
Africa. They are not able to find a comfortable place in America. In “Vacant Lot” we find that the
Africa son-in law is displaced. His wife is a whore; earring their daily bread is very difficult.

Labyrinth here refers to Ms Brook’s concern about the black men finding their way home.
These men had confusion and uncertainty in finding their way home. The basic dilemma in Ms
Brooks’ poetry is that the black man must generally either fight or die or survive by submitting.
This is spiritual death. “The Ballad of Rudolph Reed” exemplifies both choices- Rudolph choosing
to fight and die, his wife to submit and survive. Every human being wants to survive. Her first
collection was “A street in Bronzeville”. There is a delicate satire in her poems. In “Vacant lot”
she describes the plight of the blacks in a congested flat. The African son-in-law finds the olace
very uncomfortable.

Ms Brooks’ next collection was Annie Allen for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in
1950. It is arranged in three sections. “Notes from the childhood and the Girlhood,” “the Anniad”
and “The Womanhood”. The eleven poems in the first section establish Annie is a day dreamer,
who does not like the restrictions imposed by her parents and society. The poems of the first
70

two sections of Annie Allen speak of Annie in the third person; the third section opens with a
sequence of sonnets. For both whites and blacks Ms. Brooks would from now be tagged as the
first Negro to win a Pulitzer Prize. She wrote out of a deep and imaginative talent.

“In the Mecca” is a long ambitious poem. The Mecca building was a big luxurious complex
erected in Chicago in 1891 but it degenerated into an overcrowded tenement. The narrative is
grim. Mrs. Sattie returns to her apartment from hard domestic labour and begins to prepare
dinner for hr family of nine children. She notices suddenly the the youngest, Pepita, is missing.
The police are called after a fruitless search and at least the child is found to have been murdered.
The search for the lost Pepita is symbolic of the characters’ pursuit of the fulfilment of dreams
of redemption. Most of the poems here depict spiritual death.

“The Bean Eaters” is about two old people who are waiting for death. They live on the
memories of the past. Ms. Brooks presents the loneliness of a black woman. In “When Mrs.
Martin’s Booker T” Mrs. Martin is ashamed of her son’s disgraceful act. She is spiritually dead
as her son has taped a young woman. The mother insists on the son marrying the wronged girl.

Ms. Brooks depicts the confusion in the minds of the blacks. The whites should not be
accused of ill-treating the blacks. The blacks should not take to violence. They should try to
improve themselves. They should not put the blame on others. Brooks wanted the blacks to get
back their past glory. They should help people to retain their dignity. She conveys a social
message. She does not want the blacks to us violence. They must be patient but not weak.
They should assert their right and practise good principles. Gwendolyn Brooks was a poet who
gave voice to the desires and aims of the blacks without being melodramatic. She wanted the
blacks to be true human beings.
 71

LESSON - 8
LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
BY
Eugene O’Neil

Learning Objectives

After reading this drama, you will be able to

 meet the characters and come to understand their minds

 analyse the mother’s isolation

 find out the theme of the play

 analyse the character of the two sons

Structure
8.1 Introduction

8.2 About the Dramatist

8.3 Synopsis of the Drama

8.4 Summary

8.5 Key words

8.6 Activities

8.7 Check your Answers

8.8 Model Questions & Answer

8.1 Introduction
Eugene O ‘Neil was born in a Broadway Hotel on October 16, 1888 and was christened
Eugene Gladstone O’Neil. He was in a drama troupe even as an infant. Between 1942 and
1931, he produced nine plays, most of them tragedies with complex psychological implications:
All God’s Chillum Got Wings (1942), Desire under the Elms(1920), the Great God Brown(1926)
and strange Interlude(1928) various themes were woven into these plays. He was struck by a
fatal illness in 1936 two years after he won the Nobel Prize. He died on November 27, 1953.
72

8.2 About the Dramatist

Eugene O’Neil was foremost among the playwrights who brought about a revolution in
American drama. European drama had already been altered by the imaginative energy and
inventiveness of dramatists like Ibsen and Strindberg. On the British stage only Shaw was able
to break the well-established conventions of the theatre. In the United States, Eugene O’Neil
destroyed the stereotypes. Basically, he brought in ideas which had psychological aspects. He
did not echo himself in his drams. He used the language of poetic symbolism.

O’ Neil is the dramatist of an idea. One theme is prominent in his plays. It is an attempt to
express and subdue the torment of a mind in conflict. Pity, anger and despair are the human
feelings that are found in his plays as themes. The plays are attempts to explain human suffering
and justify it. Men with pride are destroyed. to O’Neil God, Fate and Mystery are all aspects of
the subconscious. The tragic struggle is of the conscious will to assert itself against an
unconscious will.

Long day’s Journey into night is powerful because it is painfully realistic. The play is full of
symbols too. The fog is the last symbol of man’s inability to know himself or other men or his
destiny. The four characters torment themselves and each other till they face each other with
tolerance. The focal point of the play is the drug addition of the mother. We see a series of
anguished dreams. Each character reveals his mind. All the Tyrone’s are doomed to destroy
and be destroyed. One could say that this is O’Neil ‘s own family. He returned to his tragic
conception of life as an endless struggle between opposite images of the self.

8.3 Synopsis of the Drama

Act One takes place in the living room of the Tyrone’s’ summer house on a day in August
1912 beginning at eight thirty in the morning. Mary Tyrone is fifty-five with a distinctly Irish face.
She is extremely nervous. James Tyrone is sixty –five. He is a stage star. Mary and James
Tyrone enter from the back parlour, having just finished breakfast. There are suggestions of
James’ speculations in real estate; concern over Mary’s recent illness of Edmund (the younger
son), the immortal nature of James (the older son). Mary is sure that James’ speculation will
fail. “His real estate bargains don’t work out so well”.

Mary is a drug addict but she has recovered. Tyrone attacks his two sons. Edmund is
criticised for his views on anarchy as well James for his lack of ambition. Edmund suffers from
 73

Tuberculosis. His father has not treated him properly because he is a miser. He blames his son
James for his immoral values. It is he who led him to liquor and women: “The less you say about
Edmunds’s sickness, the better for your conscience! You’re more responsible than any one”.

Tyrone defends Edmund as he has been doing some work. There is a long discussion of
Mary’s ailment. She feels lonely and isolated. She has never been given a home in a community
she liked where she might have friends.

Community is a group of people living together. All that she has been given is an ordinary
summer house and a round of cheap hotels in the winter. She is not able to make friends
because of her illness. She complains that her husband and sons neglect her. As the Act ends,
Edmund leaves to join Tyrone and James with his mother accusing him of not trusting her when
she is alone.

Act two is divided into two scenes, scene one begins about twelve forty-five p.m., scene
two a half –hour later. As scene one opens Edmund and Cathleen, the second girl servant are
discussing the problem of getting Tyrone and James to come in for lunch. Edmund comes and
the two boys have a drink each.

Mary enters and it is clear that she is taking morphine again. She looks detached and
Jamie is angry with Edmund for having neglected the mother. When Edmund defends himself,
Mary gives in saying: “But I suppose life has made him like that, and he can’t help it”. Tyrone
comes in and finds out that Mary is taking morphine again.

Scene two finds the family gloom. The family doctor Dr. Hardy tells Tyrone about Edmund’s
illness. The father and sons blame each other for his self –destruction. Tyrone and Mary quarrel
about small things. Mary has gone back into her past. Tyrone asks her to forget the past; she
replies: “Why? How can I? The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too. We all try to lie out
of that but life won’t let us?” Mary blames the misfortune on God’s punishment for having
another baby, Edmund, since she was not able to take care of their dead son, Eugene. Edmund
is attacked by Mary. She is left alone.

Act three begins around half past six the same evening. Mary talks to Cathleen, the maid.
They are waiting for the men to return for dinner. She talks about her past, her courtship and
marriage to Tyrone. Edmund and Tyrone come back and once again there is the family quarrel.
Tyrone reveals to Mary that Edmund had tuberculosis. There is gloom everywhere.
74

Act four, is about midnight of the same day in the Tyrone living room. Tyrone is drunk
and Jamie too is drunk. A discussion follows this and it is about Mary. Tyrone hopes she will
sleep soon as she has a habit of going into the past. Mary seems to be lost in for. Edmund just
walked most of the night enjoying the sensation of being lost in it. He is angry with the father for
sending him to a state institution for his tuberculosis cure because it is cheap.

Tyrone denies that he did this because he was a miser. He narrates how he was
poor. As a boy of ten he worked in a machine shop. This has not made him a miser; it has only
taught him to give respect for money. It is very clear that he s a miser. He is concerned again
about the cost of electricity and switches off the light to save electricity. Edmund laughs at life
because it is funny. Tyrone immediately says that nothing is wrong with life and quotes from
Shakespeare: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings”.
James is a drunkard and Edmund is ill.

Mary tries to play the piano with her hands which are affected by rheumatism. She
had two dreams before her marriage-to become a pianist or a nun. When we meet her now she
is in her dream as she has taken morphine. She is completely lost in the past. She knows she
has lost but she does not know what is.

She had direct communion with Blessed Virgin as a young girl in a convent. The
Mother Superior sends her to live a secular life to determine if convent life were truly what she
wanted. The plays ends as Mary’s speech ends: “ That was in the winter of senior year. Then in
the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and
was so happy for a time”

The thought of the main characters circles in endless repetition around four facts:
Mary’s illness, Edmund’s illness, the profligacy of James, and the miserliness of Tyrone. There
are a lot of differences of opinion in the family. Fear and mistrust seem to affect their family life.

Do You Know

Say Whether the Following is True/False:

1. Edmund’s illness is tuberculosis
 75

2. Mary is a drug addict.

3. Tyrone is not a miser.

4. Mary wanted to be a concert pianist.

5. The play is completely autobiographical

Check Your Progress

1. What, according to Tyrone, are James’ faults?

2. What were Mary’s dreams before marriage?

76

3. What is Edmund’s illness?

4. Is Tyrone a miser?

5. What is Mary Tyrone’s illness?

8.4 Summary
 The four main characters are introduced.

 Each one has some problem or the other

 Each one blames the other for it.

 Mentally all are disturbed

 The play ends on a very disturbing note.

8.5 Key words

Wall Street swindlers - a street in Manhattan where the New York stock
exchange is located.

Anarchist - one who believes that government should be

abolished.
 77

Hick - an unsophisticated person from the country.

Nietzsche - ‘a man can rise above his restrictions of morality’

Nietzsche was a German philosopher. This was his
belief.

Frankenstein - a thing that becomes destructive to its maker

Old tightwad - A miser

Black hole of Calcutta - small room in Calcutta Fort where 1146 English
prisoners were imprisoned overnight.

8.6 Activity
1. Organise a discussion regarding a family drama which bears a close resemblance
to this play.

8.7 Check Your Answers

Do you know?

1. Yes 2. Yes 3. No 4 Yes 5. No

Check Your Progress

1. Jamie has been a wastrel, spending money recklessly on wine and women. He has
led Edmund into this bad life.

2. To become a concert pianist or a nun. But she met Tyrone and married him.

3. Edmund is suffering from tuberculosis. The father wants to send him to a state
institution –Hilltown Sanatorium because it is cheap.

4. Tyrone is a miser. He wants to send his son to cheap hospital; he is very careful
about spending money on electricity; he has not given comforts to his wife.

5. Mary Tyrone is a drug addict. She was not given proper treatment. She felt neglected
and isolated.
78

8.8 Model Question & Answer

Question No. 1 Write the Critical Appreciation Of The Play

Answer: O’ Neil “Long Day‘s Journey into Night” is a play of old sorrow, written in
tears and blood. This is an artistic presentation of the torture and agony of the members of this
family. This is a result of the failure of dreams. It touches upon almost all important themes of
his earlier plays-­­man’s quest for identity, his search for belief, his attachment with his pipe
dreams and his inability to avoid harsh realities of life.

As we have seen the play has four tragic protagonists. James Tyrone is a stage actor. He
is an ambitious actor who sells his art to make money for the happiness of the family. He has
made money. He is not to provide happiness for his family. He wants economic security. He
wants to save money for the future; as a result he becomes stingy. He has tried his hand at real
estate speculations. He did succeed once, but he is not “a cunning real estate speculator”. He
hires cheap quacks to treat his wife when she suffers from sickness after the birth of her
second son Edmund. They give her morphine to soothe her pain and gradually she becomes a
drug-addict. James is unable to provide Mary with a ‘real’ home.

Mary in her younger days had dreamed of becoming a concert or a nun. But she fulfils
neither of her dreams since she falls in love with James Tyrone. She is happy for sometime but
after sometime she feels there is no happiness for her. Being an actor’s wife she travels constantly
and she has to stay in cheap hotels. This deprives her of a real home. Tyrone prefers to stay in
clubs or barrooms and Mary feels lonely and isolated. She wants to communicate with the
outside world but cannot. Hence, she takes more and more of the drug so that she can overcome
her feelings of loneliness. She feels that she has married beneath her status; only drugs help
her from the world of reality, but she does not like the foghorn. She believes that we are what
life has made us. We realise this only when it is too late. She tells us what human tragedy is;
“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They are done before you realise it, and
once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you
and what you’d like to be and you’ve lost your self forever”.

James Tyrone Jr seems to have no ambition in life. He can become a good actor but his
vices spoil his chances of becoming anything in life. He becomes a wastrel and a cynic, making
fun of everything except him. He leads his younger brother Edmund also on the path of
destruction. But Edmund is saved as he believes that something useful can be done in life.
Jamie has spoilt his brother’s life out of jealousy.
 79

Edmund the youngest member of the family has led a life of utter aimlessness and
immorality. He has got tuberculosis which in those days w was a fatal disease. His father wants
to send him to state-owned sanatorium so that he heed not spend much on the cure. He is
stingy and does not care for the human dies of his suffering. Edmund accuses his father
harbouring the feeling that since he is going to die there is no need to spend money on his
treatment. He feels the burden of his mother’s drug addiction heavy on his heart. Like his
mother he seeks the escape into the fog of unreality. “The fog was where I wanted to be...”
Everything looked and sounded unreal. He wanted to be in a world where life is pleasant. But
he wants to find some meaning of his existence.

Arguments take place over the same topic. None of the four Tyrone’s seems to be a
villain. Though Jamie is jealous of Edmund but he has love for his brother –the brothers are
close to each other. Jamie and Tyrone are dependent on alcohol. The Tyrone’s men comfort
themselves with fold wisdom about whiskey’s supposed health benefits: “It’s before a meal and
I’ve always found that good whiskey, taken in moderation as an appetizer is the best of tonics”
Alcohol had led to Jamie’s failures.

The old arguments are repeated. Mary attacks Tyrone for being stingy. Mary was from a
rich family but Tyrone was an actor. Resentment is one of the themes of the play. Most of the
pain comes from failures rather than malice.

The Tyrones are Irish Catholics but have given up the church. The parents no longer
attend the mass. Tyrone does not seem to learn anything. He continues to be stingy even when
he has money to make another real estate investment. The play is non-stop bickering but a
mixture of fighting and tender moments. The past is powerful theme –it is both a burden and an
escape. Mary is using past as a refuge. She remembers her courtships and her days at the
Catholic boarding school. The more morphine she takes, the more she gets trapped in the past.
She does not like his habit of drinking.

Actually, Mary’s version of the past is not real. She blames Tyrone for ending all her
dreams, but Tyrone gives a different version. She was too much of the world to be a nun and
she was not good as a concert pianist. Tyrone could be blamed for many things but not for the
loss of childhood dreams.

Edmund finally forgives his brother. The play cannot be called a tragedy. It is not the fall
of a great character. Here there are fallen figures. The real story of the play is not a tragic fall
80

but an act of compassion and forgiveness. Edmund has forgiven his family but cannot save
them.

Question No 2. Critically Estimate of O’Neil as a Dramatist.

Answer: Eugene O’ Neil remains an enigma. He was the founder of the American drama.
By his example he created native drama. His historical importance is clear. O’Neil besides
being a dramatist was a writer. His plays have been widely read. His life shaped his plays. His
plays seem to suggest his search for salvation, for meaning. His plays were spiritual quests too.

O’Neil continued to grow spiritually he had expressed the modern temper with its loss of
faith and spiritual confusion. He changed with the passage of time. He had spoken directly to
world audience. Some critics have called him a melodramatic

O’Neil’s theory of tragedy guided his dramatic practice through the medium of drama is
life giving process leading to a deep spiritual understanding. The emotions are of great
importance. Pity, anger, despair at the human position robbed his tragedies of the irony he
wished to convey. His words were drowned in anguish. The plays are attempts to explain human
suffering. Emotions are a better guide. He believed in emotions as against the modern scientific
philosophy which gave importance to our thoughts. Tragedy brings defeat but it also helps in
getting spiritual values.

The typical hero of an O’Neil tragedy struggles and suffers defeat. But he does not fight
against a physical enemy. His struggle is psychological and seeks victory over the enemy
within. He got mysticism from the East he described men’s dreams as illusions of Maya. One
can discover meaning through overcoming of hopes and selfish desires. A play like Long Days’
Journey into Night is a typical American tragedy but universal also.

The Hairy Ape was a play which showed man who had lost his harmony with nature. Man
must learn to live. His “The Emperor Jones” was about a man’s mind that contains ideas from
the collective unconscious. The Emperor Brutus Jones is a porter who has become emperor
and possessor of great wealth. The significance of the play lies in the character of Jones conveyed
through the revelation of his personal and collective unconscious. Evil had been his God. In
killing the crocodile is the evil of the self that is killing it. Jones has killed himself. Jones is a
tragic hero who died as he lived with grandeur. The natives have shot Jones with a silver bullet
which they made from money – an apt symbol of the destruction of self by its own pride and
greed.
 81

In many of his tragedies, O’Neil returned to his tragic conception of life as an endless
struggle between opposite images of the self. The conflict is not only hopeless. He depicts
characters who are still learning form life. “Life is for each man solitary cell whose walls are
mirrors. “Those sick, tragic heroes are egoistic and they are doomed to a lifelong search for
reality amid illusion or to self-destruction and to their own fall through pride.

Eugene O’Neil died on November 27, 1953. He was afflicted with Parkinson’s disease in
the last decade of his life. The tremor of his hands made writing difficult. The physical death
which finally came was welcome. The tragic heroes were doomed to assert their humanity by a
struggle with the soul. It is a slice of life. We see a piece of the history of mankind.
82

LESSON – 9
‘NIGHT, MOTHER'
BY
Marsha Norman

Learning Objectives

After reading this play, you will be able to

 introduce this dramatist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his plays

 enlighten the students on the social scenario of America

 throw light on the Mother-child relationship

 bring out the problems of isolation and loneliness

 analyse the theme of the play

Structure
9.1 Introduction

9.2 Background of the Play

9.3 Synopsis of the Play

9.4 Summary

9.5 Key Words

9.6 Activity

9.7 Check Your Answers

9.8 Model Questions & Answers

9.1 Introduction
Marsha Norman was born in Louisville. As a child she was a loner. Her mother, Methodist
fundamentalist, did not consider the children in the neighbourhood, good company for her
daughter. So Ms Norman spent a lonely childhood, playing the piano, reading and writing and
playing with her imaginary friend Bettering. Her first Play “Getting Out” created a sensation
when it was performed in 1977 at Louisville. Her two plays; Laundromat and the Pool Hall were
 83

one- act plays. The Hold UP, ‘Night, Mother (1983), won the Pulitzer Prize and Traveller in the
Dark ( 1984) which was about the crisis of faith suffered by a guilt-ridden surgeon were her
other plays. Norman’s sweeping psychological work focuses on an oppressed and divided
protagonist unable to understand how he or she is being destroyed. The protagonists, Arlene of
Getting Out and Jessie of ‘Night, Mother are drawn with careful attention to psychological details.
They struggle for emotional security and control over their lives. Both are victims of society
which they cannot understand.

9.2 Background of the Play

In “Night, Mother” - Jessie announces that she decided to kill herself and at the end she
did so. In the intervening ninety minutes, she and her mother fight for her life. After years of
unhappiness and frustration, Jessie has reached the point where she refuses to be taken for
granted. Her mother loses and she says “I thought you were mine”.

Ms Norman’s crippled characters never rebelled and were driven to attempt suicide. Arlene
stabs herself with a fork and Jessie shoots herself. The characters cannot look beyond their
personal grief.

9.3 Synopsis of the Play

“Night, Mother” revolves round a mother-child relationship. They accuse each other and
then ask for forgiveness, bitterness and affection. Jessie conveys her decision only to her
mother. Jessie understands that only by comprehending their separation will her mother be free
from guilt and responsibility for Jessie’s death. In the opening scene Jessie announces to her
mother that she is going to kill herself.

Jessie feels trapped in the house as she is alienated physically and mentally. No one
comes to the house. Not even a thief. The mother says: I’ve never seen a criminal in my life.
This is way too far to come for what’s out here to steal.” Jessie is isolated in all her relationships.
Her father, the only person she liked is dead. Her husband whom she silently adored has
deserted her. Her son has moved out of the house, he as a juvenile delinquent but he has now
become a criminal. Jessie’s mother is a benevolent despot. Jessie’s life is like a slave doing
work in a systematic way. She looks to all small details. Jessie alone is there to help mother.
She attends to all small details and then announces triumphantly that ‘I’m going to kill myself”
(13) she reminds the mother about the medicines she has to take.
84

Mama thinks it is a joke. She tells the daughter that the father’s gun is of no use. She has
actually bought new bullets. She bought them at a shop recommended by her brother Dawson.
She has told him that she wants it to protect herself against robbers. She does not want anyone
around as she then may kill herself. Mama advises her against suicide. “People don’t really kill
themselves, Jessie.” If Jessie is normal she will be afraid to die. Jessie wants privacy and the
mother says that it is available anywhere. Mama tries to frighten her about death.”You don’t
know what dead is like. It might not be quiet at all. What if it’s like an alarm clock and you can’t
wake up so you can’t shut it off, Ever.”

Jessie makes all arrangements in the house so that her mother will not miss her. Mama
insists on not taking to heart the personal problems because “family is just accident”.

It is obvious that she does not like anyone to interfere with her affairs. She is not worried
about Ricky her son. She looks to even the smallest details. She tries to make her mother’s life
as comfortable as possible. Thelma that is Mama was not happy with her husband. She was
jealous of Jessie because she was close to her father. “You had those quiet little conversations
after supper every night”. Thelma wanted to know what the father and daughter were whispering
about.

Jessie used to get fits; her father had the problem. Thelma puts the blame on the father.
She had always protected the daughter when she had the fits. The mother does not want to die;
she does not want her daughter to die. But Jessie feels that she is a neglected child. The
mother Thelma, we feel is possessive and has real emotions. She does not want her daughter
to die. Jessie shoots herself and Thelma cries: “Jessie, Jessie, child.....forgive me. I thought
you were mine”.

Do you know?

Say whether the following is True/False:

1. Thelma is possessive.
 85

2. Jessie wants privacy

3. Thelma pleads with Jessie not to commit suicide.

4. Jessie’s son is a criminal.

5. Jessie was not close to her father.

Check Your Progress

1. How does the play begin?

2. What is Thelma’s reaction when Jessie declares that she wants to commit suicide?
86

3. Do you think Thelma is possessive?

4. What is Jessie’s relationship with her brother Dawson?

5. Do you think that Thelma and Jessie had good relationship?

9.4 Summary
o The play opens on a note of expectation.

o The daughter Jessie is making all arrangements, attending to minor details.

o We come to know certain details about the family.

o Jessie is a representative of the modern American woman, perhaps.

o But is suicide the right solution?

9.5 Key words

 Family is just an accident- we are just into a family; we have nothing to do with it.

 Ragweed- A kind of weed.

 Epilepsy- A disorder of the nervous system causing periodic loss of consciousness.

 Barn- A large farm building used for storing hay.

 87

 Okra- a kind of plant.

 Marshmallows- spongy sweet made from sugar.

 Seizures - epileptic fits

 Phenobarb- a drug inducing sleep.

 Begonias- a plant with brightly flowers.

9.6 Activity
1. The family atmosphere is a vacuum. Can you think of any other play like this?

9.7 Check Your Answers

Do you know?
1. Yes 2. Yes. 3. Yes 4. Yes 5. False

Check Your Progress

1. The play begins with Jessie Cates making all arrangements to make her mother
happy as she is contemplating suicide.

2. Thelma is shocked. She thinks that her daughter’s decisions are funny. She asks
Jessie to take medicine for her madness

3. 3. Thelma is possessive. She does not want Jessie to use her father’s gun. She
lays emphasis on the word ‘my’ house.

4. Jessie is not friendly with her brother Dawson. She does not want Dawson and his
wife to interfere with her personal life.

5. Thelma and Jessie had good relationship but not an emotional one. Thelma was
possessive by nature. There was no rapport between the two.

9.8 Model Questions & Answers

Question No. 1 Marsha Norman as a dramatist.

Answer: Marsha Norman refuses to despair over the condition of humanity. She mostly
presents women characters. They are the common characters of life that one often passes
unnoticed on the streets. Getting Out (1977) is about the individual‘s need to confront the past.
88

Here it is a woman who is on parole for having murdered a cab driver eight years earlier. Ms
Norman makes a psychological study of the woman.

The next work third and Oak (1978) consists of two one-act plays: the Laundromat and
the Pool Room, the Laundromat is about Albert, a widow still clinging to the spirit of her lost
husband refuses to part with anything that was his. The other plays were Night, Mother (1982)
and traveller in the Dark (1984). The last –mentioned play is about the crisis experienced by a
successful surgeon who fails in his efforts to save a close friend. .Her best play to date is ‘Night,
Mother. Ms. Norman presents common representatives of humanity because they feel that the
world around them is absurd. Jessie had put all her faith in marriage, trusting to hope in a future
with her husband and son. Her husband leaves her and her son becomes a delinquent. The
mother is silly, wants to get all comforts and is totally dependent on her. The play is moral
enquiry about our right to kill ourselves. We feel that epileptics, neglected children and abandoned
wives have a hard time coping with the world.

Getting out is a play about Arlene who is out of the jail. For such people the world is a
prison. The story unfolds simultaneously in the past and present with the heroine Arlie as a
young girl and the grown-up Arlene as a young woman who has committed many sins. The
setting is a dingy one-room apartment in Louisville. We learnt that Arlene was sexually molested
by her father. She is a woman silenced by society. Though released from prison she does not
escape. She has to fight against her two selves. Norman’s plays express a bleak view of society
and human nature. Her characters are people who experience loneliness and despair. Getting
out is her first play which brought Norman instant fame. This work explores the psychological
changes in a woman just released from prison.

American drama functioned within a family circle. Dramatists like Marsha Norman exposed
the vacuum in the lives of people. Family relationships have no meaning-they are devoid of
emotional binding. The question arises if Jessie commits suicide because of small problems,
then almost every woman would have to do so. We cannot analyse why people lead a
meaningless life. They can always seek solace in so many avenues of life.
 89

LESSON - 10
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
By
Mark Twain

Learning Objectives

After reading this fiction, you should be able to

 estimate Twain as a novelist

 appreciate the adventurous narratives

Structure
10.1 Introduction

10.2 Thematic Introduction

10.3 Violence and Suffering in the Novel

10.4 Huck’s Birth and Rebirth

10.5 “Huckleberry Finn” as a Picaresque Novel

10.6 Summary

10.7 Key Words

10.8 Activities

10.9 Check Your Answers

10.10 Model Questions & Answers

10.1 Introduction
Samuel Langhorne Clemens wrote in the penname Mark Twain. He was apprenticed to a
printer where he acquired printing and newspaper skills. The writings of his earlier days in the
West featured the usual kind of hilarious exaggeration which had by then become a tradition in
American literature. He collaborated with Charles Dudley Warner in writing the Gilded Age
(1873). His major works include Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A
Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In the
present lesson we will learn a very famous fictional piece of Twain.
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10.2 Thematic Introduction

Huck berry Finn is the son of a drunkard and is a ward of the court and put out to be raised
by widow named Douglas. It is written in first person and we see all the characters and action
through Huck’s eyes. There are a series of adventures that Huck and Tom Sawyer have around
the town of St Petersburg, Missouri. Huck’s father reappears and takes him off to a cabin with
the idea of trying to gain control of his money. Huck escapes taking a canoe and hides in an
island. In the island, Jim, the slave joins him. The second section in Jackson’s island deals with
the adventures of Huck with Jim In the third section, two men join the boys as a duke and a
king. The boys realize that they are rascals and will not hesitate to be violent towards them. Jim
is sold as a slave by the two men and Huck is joined by Tom to relieve Jim from slavery. Miss.
Watson, Jim’s mistress had died leaving a Proviso in her will to free Jim. The three boys are
finally free from slavery and left in their own territory.

10.3 Violence and Suffering in the Novel

In view of the great number of instances in which people are hurt badly, there seems to be
little suffering in the novel. Young people are not touched for long by events. However, Huck is
touched when others are not. He grieves over the treatment of the duke and the king when no
one else does. Most of the people in the novel do not suffer. The worst suffering is that of Mary
Jane who cries over the lost slave family. Aunt Sally sits up all night for Tom Sawyer. Huck first
tells Mary Jane of their plans but later changes it as Tom and Jim are his only friends. The
voyage down the river makes Huck forget how men can hurt. Mark Twain points out only foibles
of man and his capacity for violence. In spite of the violence no one is dangerously hurt. Mark
Twain’s vision seems to have been dwarfed by the river.

Do You Know - I

Say whether the following is True/False:

1. Huck, Tom and Jim lived in St. Petersburg since their childhood.
 91

2. Jim was a slave in Miss. Watson’s house

3. Huckleberry Finn is both a detective and a picaresque novel

10.4 Huck’s Birth and Rebirth

When Huck feels stifled or deadened by society, he escapes to be reborn again. All
through the novel he loses his identity, assumes different names (even Tom Sawyer’s), arranges
his own murder, and is reborn every time with new and different values.

Each time that Huck escapes from some situation, the theme of his loneliness and isolation
is often touched upon. This feeling of loneliness is also correlated with the superstitions that
permeate the novel. Comforted with the vastness of their isolation Huck, Jim and other characters
put great reliance on superstitions of one sort or another. These superstitions develop into a
motif as the novel develops. The basic difference between the 3 boys and the other characters
is that they bear no allegiance to organised society and its demands.

Do You Know - II

Say whether the following is True/False:

1. Twain presents the foible of men in a very subtle way.

2. The main characters - Tom, Huck and Jim live a disorganised life
92

3. .Huckleberry Finn is both a detective and a picaresque novel

10.5 “Huckleberry Finn” as a Picaresque Novel

Huck berry Finn is the son of a drunkard and is a ward of the court and put out to be
raised by widow Douglas. It is written in first person and we see all the characters and action
through Huck’s eyes. There are a series of adventures by Huck and Tom Sawyer around the
town of St Petersburg, Missouri. Huck’s father reappears and takes him off to a cabin with the
idea of trying to gain control of his money. Huck escapes taking a canoe and hides in an island.

In the island, Jim, the slave joins him. The second section in Jackson’s island deals with
the adventures of Huck with Jim In the third section, two men, a duke and a king join the boys.
The boys realize that they are rascals and will not hesitate to be violent towards them. Jim is
sold as a slave by the two men and Huck is joined by Tom to relieve Jim from slavery. Miss.
Watson, Jim’s mistress had died leaving a Proviso in her will to free Jim. The three boys are
finally free from slavery and left in their own territory.

10.6 Summary
 Adventures of Huck with Tom and Jim is the theme of the novel.

 Adventures happen in St. Petersburg, an imaginary town in Missouri.

 Second part deals with adventures in Jackson’s island with Jim .

 Widow Douglas, Aunt sally, Mary Jane are some major characters.

 Mississippi plays a very prominent role in the novel.

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10.7 Key Words

Adventure - daring venture

Duke - An English peer of higher rank, below a prince.

Slavery - The state of being a slave; the practice of owning

slaves.

Voyage - a long journey by sea

Dwarfed - to cause to appear small by comparison

Confronted - to stand face to face

Allegiance - loyalty, obligation of loyalty

Roguish - mischievous

Complication - A difficulty; circumstance that complicates something

Climax - the highest point of interest, activity

Resolution - Firmness of purpose

Dilemma - a situation requiring a choice.

10.8 Activities
1. Childhood experiences have always been thrilling and adventurous. Present one of
your experiences in the first person. If you haven’t had any adventure, imagine one
and present it.

2. Narrate Huck’s experiences from your point of view in the third person.

10.9 Check Your Answers

Do You Know –I

1.False 2. True 3. False 4. False

94

Do You Know –II

1. True 2. True 3. False

10.10 Model Questions & Answers

Question 1. Write on the Structure of “Huckleberry Finn”

Answer: The book has three thematic units. In the first unit, the story is in St. Petersburg:
Huck, Tom, Nigger Jim and Pap. The second unit is the encounter with the outside world by
Huck and Jim. When they journey through the South, the fight between Grangerford and
Shepherdson, the duping of the King and duke, murder of Boggs, quelling of the mob by
Colonel Sherburne and the village funeral shock them. The third unit is at the Phelps farm
where Tom joins them.

Mark Twain through the three boys presents three gradations of thought and three levels
of civilisation. Tom is on the highest level, in the sense of being most civilised.

Compared with him, Nigger Jim and Huck are Primitives. He shows us the African in Jim,
imbuing him with a dark knowledge that lives in the blood and his nerve ends. Huck stands
between these too, he is the ‘natural man’ suggesting Wait Whitman’s dream of the great

American who should be simple and free. Both Tom and Jim are in bondage to
institutionalism. Tom can’t do anything against the rules of his books; Jim can’t do anything
against the rules of his taboos, fears, charms and superstitions. Only Huck is free of institutions.
Tom and Jim are always sure they are right, since each has his institution to consult and to
follow, but Huck is tormented by doubts. Huck is alone as he has no rules to go by and his voice
within guides him.

Question 2. Illustrate that “Huckleberry Finn” is Huck’s quest for freedom

Answer: Huck’s quest for freedom can be correlated to Jim’s quest for freedom from
slavery. Huck was against any institution. The entire novel supports the efforts of Huck and Jim
to live their own lives free from the restraints of compulsion Jim’s situation is such that he
knows no freedom unless he escapes to the free states or buys his freedom. Jim has never
had any money, so his only option is to flee. Jim had never thought about freedom until he was
sold out. The conventional ways of society, particularly in matters of religious practices, to Huck
are nothing. Huck feels that religion is insufficient and constantly contradicts all religious practices.
 95

His free spirit can resort to escape because he knows that he cannot fight an opponent that
cannot be overcome. Huck longs to be free of his whole past - Pap, the Widow, St. Petersburg,
school attendance, Bible lessons, etc. He has no immediate objective when he escapes. He
starts out with the ideas of going 50 miles down the river, but travels 1100 miles down the river,
and ends his voyage where he exactly started, back in the world of Tom. Jim and Huck lose
their search, except that Jim is saved by an act of God in Miss Watson’s death. Huck hopes to
fly to the open and free territory. Huck encounters varying aspects, attitudes, and restrictions of
society and learns to prefer his own individual freedom. The idea reaches the climax when
Huck opposes the dictates of the society for the sake of his friendship with Jim.
96

LESSON - 11
THE COLOUR PURPLE
By
Alice Walker

Learning Objectives

After reading this fiction, you will be able to

 understand how Americans enslaved the Africans

 discuss how men and women suffer differently

 realize why women alone can discuss women’s issues

 empathize with the Afro- Americans.

Structure
11.1 Introduction

11.2 Thematic Introduction

11.3 Universalisation of Human Suffering

11.4 Summary

11.5 Key Words

11.6 Activities

11.7 Check Your Answers

11.8 Model Question & Answer

11.1 Introduction
Alice Malsenior Walker (1944) is an essayist, poet, novelist and activist. Walker was a
confident girl until 1952, when a freak accident left her blinded in one eye due to a gunshot.
That incident had changed her life altogether and she became secluded and reserved. In 1961,
she went to Spelman College, Georgia to complete her studies. At her departure from college,
her mother gave her three special gifts - a suitcase for travelling all over the world, a typewriter
for creativity and a sewing machine for self-sufficiency. She depicts three generations of domestic
violence in her novel- The third life of Grange Copeland (1970).
 97

In 1972 she became a teacher at Wellesley college and began one of the first “Gender
Studies” classes in the nation. In searching for the course materials, walker came across the
works of Zora Neale Hurston who was a very prominent novelist during Harlem Renaissance.
Walker has been highly acclaimed for the novel- “The Color Purple” which won the Pulitzer
Prize.

The story chronicles the life of a black Afro-American girl called Celie, growing in the
Deep South in the Georgia State. Steven Spielberg made it into a feature film later. The novel
was severally criticized mostly for its representations of the male characters and Alphonso,
Celia’s husband and her step-father respectively as rapists, abusers, fiendish, foolish and
incompetent human beings. The theme of the novel is spiritual development. Walker tries to
suggest that deep in the mind of blacks there is always a thought that whites are superior and
so they should be treated with respect and reverence. Walker presents the dogmatic beliefs
about God and religion through Celie. She believes that is order to be a part of God one has to
work for Him. After the pain and suffering she had to endure from her own people, she is totally
disillusioned and realizes that her God is a passive one, blind to her troubles. Shug Avery, a
singer serves as a catalyst and introduces Celie to her God: Shug’s God is Nature. Shug makes
Celie understand that “God is inside her and everybody else”. Shug makes Celie understand
that man is corrupted everything and made women think as if he is the God. Walker presents
her views about God and religion through Shug and attacks the dominance of man in society
that has placed him at the same pedestal as God.

11.2 Thematic Introduction

Women of African origin in the US have always been keenly aware of the impact of race,
class, gender and oppression upon their lives. They have struggled individually and in groups,
spontaneously and in formal organizations to eradicate the injustices that they and their
communities face. The painful memories and the agonies that the Black experienced in America
has characterized their writings. The first Renaissance of black writing came in the late 20s and
early 30s of the 20th century. It is called ‘Harlem Renaissance’. From then till now there have
been various movements that have tried to address the problem of oppression and slavery of
the Black in US.
98

11.3 Universalisation of Human Suffering in “The Colour

Purple”
“The Colour Purple” is an account of abuses, sexual, mental and physical, which, Celie
had to endure under her mother’s husband, Alphonso, as a child and her own husband as an
adult. Celie cannot share the horror of the sexual abuse that she had faced with other members
of the family. Alphonso denies Celie the benefit of education, rapes her repeatedly and
systematically shatters her self-confidence. She is only a victim but she feels defiled and corrupt.
She interprets her position from the viewpoint of male supremacy and is not able to overcome
her feelings of guilt. Through Celie, Walker has illustrated the predicament of a defenceless
black woman. Celie is benumbed with sexual violence committed by her stepfather and accepts
her worthlessness. Even while her children are taken away from her, she watches in mute
helplessness instead of talking to her mother: Celie is married against her will and is abused as
a slave and a whore. Her husband is a widower with four children. She is ill treated by her
husband and his children. Her sister-in-law Kate and her own sister advise her to fight back.
Celie saves Nettie from their stepfather but she is beaten, humiliated and cursed by the male
members.

Celie realizes herself only when she is acquainted with Sofia, who is the wife of her elder
stepson Harpo’. Sophia is physically and psychologically strong and she perpetually reminds
Celie of what she has lacked in life. Sophia’s independent behaviour attracts Celie and makes
her realize her own plight. Shug Avery’s relationship with Celie makes her more daring. Celia
attends Shug during her illness. Shug is saved from death and a strong bond is forged between
them. Sisterhood is another salient theme of the novel. Celie’s affections find an outlet in the
tender care she gave Shug when she was sick. Celie is in a spiritual crisis when she discovers
that her husband had been concealing Nettie’s letters, Shug helps her to come away from him
with her to Memphis. Celie breaks all bonds and emerges as a powerful, confident woman. She
takes up paint making business with Shug’s help. It flourishes and Celie is now empowered.
She helps other women like Sofia to establish them independently. Man constantly marginalises
women in the novel. Yet with the help of other women they are able to overcome their initial
trauma and emerge as independent emancipated beings. Through The Color Purple Alice Walker
shows that black women can overcome all suppressions and come up as liberated beings.
 99

Do You Know-I

Say Whether the Following is True/False:

1. Harlem Renaissance is a movement that fought for the freedom of the Black

2. Harlem Renaissance is a movement that fought for the freedom of the Black

3. Sophie serves as Celie’s mentor and ideal.

Do You Know-II

Say Whether the Following is True/False:

1. Harpo is Celie’s own son

2. Empowerment of women enables them to reach out to other women who are in
need.

3. Sophie Celie, Nettie etc., are all ill treated by men who want women to be slavish
and subjective.

11.4 Summary
 Celie is abused by her step father, Alphonso and her husband

 Her suffering continues till Sofia enters her family as Harpo’s wife.

 Sofia influences Celie to think and feel independently.

 Celie assists Shug Avery during her illness and develops friendship with her .

 Celie is taken to Memphis by Shug where she succeeds in pant making and is
empowered to assist women who are suffering.

11.5 Key Words

Eradicate - to pull up by the roots

Oppression - made subjective or a slave

Secluded - to remove and keep apart from the society of others

Fiendish - an evil spirit, a devil

Dogmatic - stating opinions without evidence

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Catalyst - a thing that encourages a chemical change

Benumbed - without any feeling

Marginalized - of a nature that barely qualifies as useful

Forged - to alter or imitate

11.6 Activities
1. The treatment of women has been there in all societies. Can you imagine one
situation from your experience of the different treatment that a woman/girl is meted
out with just because she is a woman/girl?

2. Indian society is no different from the African society. Sati, child marriage, sexual
abuse, etc., have been prevalent in our society. Can you narrate an incident that
happened in the recent past with regard to injustice or ill treatment of women?

11.7 Check Your Progress

Do you Know-I

1.True 2. False 3. True

Do you Know-II

1. False 2. True 3. True

11.8 Model Questions and Answers

Question 1. Describe “The Colour Purple” as a feminist novel.

Answer: The history of Black women in United States began with the forced migration of
millions of African men and women from the interiors of the west coast of Africa. They were
transported as human Cargo across the Atlantic Ocean to plantations in the West Indies. The
enslaved Africans were then sold to European colonies. Despite their common bondages, men
and women did not experience slavery the same way. Slave women experienced sexual
exploitation, child bearing, motherhood and the slaveholder’s sexism.
 101

Slave women were exploited for their reproductive as well as productive capacities. Many
authors have defined Black Feminist Movement. But among them the most notable is Alice
Walker’s defining it as “Womanish”: “a black feminist or feminist of color”. Walker has taken the
term from the southern black folk expression of mothers to their female children, ‘You acting
womanish’. Womanish girl acted in a courageous, outrageous and wilful way that freed them
from the conventions which long limited white woman. They are the ones who want to know
more and in greater depth than is considered ‘good for one’.

Three main writers heralded the rise of a new Black Women’s creative activism. Michelle
Wallace’s controversial Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (1978) Ntozake
Shange’s play Rainbow is Enuf (1975) and Alice Walker’s powerful and provocation novel,
“The Colour Purple” (1982) which included positive portrayal of a lesbian relationship between
two black women and, unveiled the reality of sexism within the Black community. These works
allowed Black women across age, colour and occupational backgrounds to address those issues
relevant to them, which the civil rights and women’s liberation movements had overlooked.

Walker knew that at the time she wrote this novel, black women had no voice. It is through
this novel she tried to voice their feelings. She had to face severe criticism from black community
for the portrayal of black male as rapists, powerless and oppressive. Walker is not only concerned
with finding a voice but also of creating one’s own identity. Through the character of the white
missionary Doris Baines, Walker tries to assert that it is not that Southern Black women fail to
have voice but that their voice has been interpreted by others specially the whites according to
their own perspective. Doris Baines speaks on behalf of the people in Africa through the books
that she writes and highlights the fact that the people of Africa have no voice.

The second half of the novel consists of Nettie’s letters and through them we get an
insight into the Black culture. The Olinka narrative provides an analysis in race relations. According
to the Olinka narrative of creation Adam was not the first man but the first white man born to an
Olinka woman, and was cast off for his nakedness or being “colourless”. The result of this
rejection was the fallen world of racial conflict. Celie by telling that Olinka section is able to
express naturally some sophisticated ideas concerning the social construction of racial inferiority.
Through this myth Walker has suggested that inferiority as a theory of power relations will
gradually change over a period of time. When visiting Celie

Carvie, Celie’s husband’s sister criticizes his first wife Julia for being “too black”, Harpo
espouses Sofia for her “bright skin” and on leaving her, finds for himself squeak, a “yellow
102

skinned girl friend” who is however self respecting enough to ask him “do you really love me, or
just my color”? The prison where Sofia was imprisoned is a metaphor for all black people caged
by racism. Through Sofia, Walker has created a strong character that serves as a foil, to the
suppressive culture for Sofia’s confutation with the white officers’ foregrounds issues of race
and class. Celia breaks bonds and emerges out as a powerful, confident woman. Walker shows
Nettie conquering the adverse circumstances of her life through courageous actions and self-
education. Shug and Sofia defiantly oppose all operative designs of gender and racial differences
and emerge as liberated women.

Celie’s letters to God resemble slave narratives of 1930s and have caused some critics to
read the content of the novel in terms of a protest against white people’s attitude towards black
people and a quest for social change. According to Philip Royster “The Colour Purple goes
beyond sexism, racism and homophobia. The title is a celebration of the beauty, pleasures of
living, and how that celebration is at the centre of spiritual and political growth”. The colour
‘purple’ is a symbol of royalty and it represents the vast capabilities and potentialities present
in black people and when given a chance they can come up as independent and empowered
individuals who can lead their lives successfully without any body’s support. Celie in the novel is
representative of these people who ultimately managed to rule their life in their own way
independently. The novel, in short, symbolizes the miracle of human possibilities.
 103

LESSON - 12
SELF - RELIANCE
By

R. W. Emerson

Learning Objectives

After reading this prose, you will be able to

 discuss Emerson as a philosophical writer

 discuss Emerson’s style

 assess the purpose of this essay to modern man.

Structure
12.1 Introduction

12.2 Thematic Introduction

12.2.1 About the theme of Self-Reliance

12.3 Conformity and Consistency

12.4 The Need for Self-Reliance

12.5 Summary

12.6 Key Words

12.7 Activities

12.8 Check Your Answers

12.9 Model Question & Answer

12.1 Introduction
This lesson lays thrust on ‘prose’ as a genre of literature. The emergence of prose in
America and the various types of prose narratives are dealt with in this lesson.
104

12.2 Thematic Introduction

Ralph Waldo Emerson is a leading figure in the field of American literature. He started his
career as a pastor but resigned as he didn’t have faith in religious rituals. He met Coleridge,
Wordsworth and Carlyle and focused on transcendentalism. The Over Soul and The American
Scholar created a controversy and the Church authorities reacted against him. He published
his first series of Essays in 1841. Self-Reliance formed a part of this series. Another collection
entitled Representative Men was published in 1850.

12.2.1 The theme of Self-Reliance

According to Emerson, Man is the deciding factor of his life. The human soul is endowed
with the capacity to command and it enables man to take things in the proper way at the proper
time. Emerson begins with his reading of some original and unconventional verses of Washington
Allston, an eminent painter. Though education teaches man moral principles, our own actions
are responsible for shaping our lives. We hear voices in our solitude, but as the society gives us
our bread it takes away our liberty and our individual culture. To exist as ‘man’, a man should be
a nonconformist. Nothing should be taken for granted and nothing is sacred except the integrity
of one’s own mind. Emerson prefers to lead a simple, sincere, steadfast, sound and sweet life.
He is against adopting virtues for mere exhibition.

12.3 Conformity and Consistency

Conforming to dead practices scatters man’s power and energy. Emerson does not favour
consistency. He feels that the world would not fall if we contradict ourselves. One’s innate
nature shapes one’s character and hence cannot be violated. When a work is executed with
honesty and sincerity it will fetch a person honour and greatness. While reading we praise
kings and penalise the ordinary man. To Emerson it is the greatness of the ordinary man that
has raised kings to fame and popularity. So, ordinary man is more dignified and worthy of
respect, according to Emerson. He also advocates speaking truth as it would help us resist
temptations. A conscious discharge of duties by men will enable them overcome public criticism.
 105

Do You Know-I

Say whether the following is True/False:

1. Ordinary men have made kings what they are.

2. Honesty helps one resist temptations.

3. Man should perform duties by listening to his inner voice only.

12.4 The Need for Self - Reliance

Self - Reliance will bring about a revolution in religion, in education, in the day-to-day
pursuits of men, and in their modes of living. Discontentment means lack of self-reliance. A
person who travels without self-reliance can only carry “ruins to ruins”. He also warns us not to
imitate but insists on depending on ourselves. According to Emerson, society never advances.
It only changes continuously. It has changed from barbarity to civilisation and to Christianity and
from wealthy to scientific way of life. He laments that the American barbarous giant has lost
physical strength and is acquiring scientific power.

He opines that the society is a wave. It moves on, though some people who are a part of
it do not. He warns men against property. We should work and acquire and need not worry
about the wheel of fortune. Political, economical, social or favourable changes would not bring
us peace. Peace can be obtained from our own inner selves and from the success of our
principles.
106

Do You Know-II

Say whether the following is True/False:

1. We are not self-reliant if we are not content with ourselves.

2. Imitation of the various institutions helps us to be self-reliant.

3. Acquiring enormous scientific wealth has made America only physically strong .

12.5 Summary
 Independent thinking and action make men self-reliant.

 Soul’s voice directs man towards correct goals.

 Non conformity to societal norms and inconsistency mark a self-reliant man.

 Self reliance leads to realisation of the self.

 Societies have changed only due to great men who questioned established truths.

12.6 Key Words

Transcend - to go or pass beyond the limits of knowledge

Unconventional - Informal, not adhering to established rule, form or

principle
 107

Consistent - Agreement with what has been previously done.

Steadfast - Firmly fixed in faith.

Integrity - Uprightness of character, completeness.

Ecclesiastical - relating to the Christian church or its clergy

Ridicule - Mockery, make fun of.

Inhibited - the process by which an impulse is kept under control.

12.7 Activity
1. Imagine you are a self-reliant person and present a list of do’s and don’ts that are
expected of you and list out your explanations to overcome the society’s criticism
when you don’t conform to societal norms.

12.8 Check Your Answers

Did You Know-I

1.True 2.True 3.True

Did You Know – II

1.True 2. False 3. True

12.9 Model Question & Answer

1. Explain that ‘Self reliance As A Means Of Self – Realisation’

Answer: To Emerson, ‘self’ is truth and the people in this world are unreliable. A great
man is one who maintains the independence of solitude even when in a crowd. The soul of man
animates and exercises all the organs of the body like the power of memory, of calculation, of
comparison etc. It is the soul that breathes life into the body. The over soul transcends the limits
of the body and pervades everywhere. Humans should listen to their soul’s voice and
underestimating that would make us regret at a later stage.
108

The general tendency of people is to confirm to the prevailing social, religious and
ecclesiastical practices without any protest for fear of being ridiculed by others. Emerson demands
people to be like waves that are constantly moving while water does not. When man is confident
on his own self, he should also realize the futility of relying on the religious, educational and civil
institutions as guards of property. Man must be a non-conformist.

Love and hatred, good and bad are not universal but only relative terms. Man should not
be inhibited to be consistent. Foolish consistency will not be of any avail. He propounds a
theory that all things in the world have a common source. Self-reliance is the fist step towards
self-realisation. Emerson cites Milton who threw the opinions of his ancestors and gave us
Paradise Lost. Plato gave the world The Republic and The Laws as he relied on his self than on
traditions.

According to Emerson, great men look into the future and are not swayed by the popular
opinions or beliefs of their times. Self reliance depends on self-existence. Religion is no substitute
for self - reliance. Nothing is more sacred than one’s own integrity of one’s mind.
 109

LESSON - 13
WALDEN
By
H.D. Thoreau

Learning Objectives

After reading this fiction, you will be able to

 assess Thoreau as a philosophical writer

 compare Thoreau’s love for Nature with that of Wordsworth or Coleridge

 appreciate transcendentalism as an effective mode of human experience

Structure
13.1 Introduction

13.2 Thematic Introduction to Walden

13.3 Nature as Nourisher

13.4 Spring Experiences

13.5 Summary

13.6 Key Words

13.7 Activities

13.8 Check Your Answers

13.9 Model Questions & Answers

13.1 Introduction
Henry David Thoreau was the product of a mixed ancestry - Scotch, English and French.
His family’s marked inclination to reading and natural history gave young Thoreau an unusually
strong background in these fields. His home was a center of religious discussions, but Thoreau
himself never joined any church. Emerson and Thoreau became great acquaintances. Thoreau
had been meditating for some years upon the advantages of living a simple life in comparative
solitude. Maintaining himself in town was taking more of his time than he wished. Emerson
110

bought some woodland on the north bank of Walden Pond, a mile and a half south of Concord.
Soon afterwards Thoreau entered into an agreement with him which entitled him to build a
cabin and live there. It was while Thoreau was at Walden that he made his first excursion to the
Maine Woods. In the late 1840s, his interest in natural history had been rapidly growing. He had
collected specimens of various kinds of fish, reptiles and small mammals for the Harvard College
Laboratories.

13.2 Thematic Introduction to Walden

Walden is a packed book, beautifully and economically written; among many things the
autobiography of a mind and body in cooperation enjoys fullness of living. The structure of the
whole is based on the framework of the author’s life at the Pond; its sense of time established
by the passage of the seasons, through summer, autumn, and winter to triumphant spring - the
year itself a symbol of man’s iife-time. Thoreau did not stick to the chronology of his stay, but
considerably shortened it. It is most triumphant in the superb; grace with which it joins the life of
man to the life of Nature. There are four related but distinct subjects with which the book concerns
itself. They are as follows:

1. The life of quiet desperation which most men lead.

2. The economic fallacy which is responsible for the situation in which these men find
themselves.

3. What the life close to Nature is and what reward it offers

4. The higher laws, which, through some transcendental process, man begins to
perceive if he faithfully, climbs step-ladder of Nature

13.3 Nature as Nourisher

Many readers consider Walden to be a sermon. Some treat is as an attempt to rearrange
society. It is an exercise in Nature - loving or a rather irritating collection of an eccentric writer.
It is, in fact, the youth’s best companion yet written by an American. It advances a good argument
for travelling light and trying new adventures. It contains religious feeling without religious images
with the power of positive adoration and it steadfastly refuses to record bad news.

Thoreau took man’s relation to Nature, man’s dilemma in society, and man’s capacity in
elevating his spirit and, beating all these matters together he produced a work from which
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people can draw substantial nourishment. Walden is an account of a man’s journey into the
mind, and a stirring call to alert the neighbours. No one can alert his neighbour who is not wide
awake himself, and Thoreau went to the woods to make sure that he would stay awake. The
book is Thoreau’s acknowledgement of the gift of life. It is the testament of a man who resents
people’s indifference towards the poetry of God’s creation.

When he went to the woods, he went to battle, and Walden is the report of a man torn by
two powerful and opposing compulsions - the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the
world straight. One cannot join these two successfully, but sometimes something good or even
great results from the attempt of the tormented spirit to reconcile them. One reason why he
went to the woods was a perfectly simple and commonplace one. Thoreau withdrew from his
family and from his neighbours, in fact all society, in order to live in accordance with his natural
instincts.

Thoreau had talked of going to Walden Pond for a number of years before he actually
moved there to live in his 28th year. He tells us that when he first saw its crystal-clear waters as
a child, he wanted to live on its shores. He was not an escapist from civilisation. His life in
Walden Pond was very quiet. Each morning he took his bath in the pond. Afternoons he spent
in wandering through the concord woods or boating on its ponds and rivers, pursuing closely
his observations of the world around him. Evenings he devoted to his friends, with either a trip
to the village for a conversation or a few visitors in his cabin.

Do You Know-I

Say whether the following is True/False:

1. Walden is a religious text with religious images.

2. Man should turn to Nature for Peace.

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2. Emerson bought land at Walden Pond

13.4 Spring Experiences

When the ice in Walden Pond began to melt in the first week of April, Thoreau realised
that it was an epitome of the year so far as the pond is concerned. Every morning the shallow
water is warmed more rapidly than the deep, and every evening it is cooled more rapidly until
the morning. The cracking and booming of the ice indicated a change of temperature. One
attraction for Thoreau in going to the woods to live there was that he would have the leisure and
the opportunity to watch the arrival of the spring. The ice in the pond at length began to be
honeycombed; Warmer suns were gradually melting the snow; the days were growing longer.

With the advent of spring, abundant foliage made a sudden appearance. Thoreau was
deeply affected by this sight and felt that he was standing in the laboratory of the Artist who had
made the world. At the approach of spring, the red squirrels appeared and made all kinds of
noises close to Thoreau’s house, then Thoreau saw the first sparrow of spring.

The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather is a memorable crisis
which all things proclaim. Thoreau heard a robin in the distance. In the morning, he watched the
geese from the door, sailing in the middle of the pond. Even the worst kind of sinner seems
transformed to innocence and holiness. The large number of gold and silver fishes which Thoreau
caught looked like a string of jewels. Village life would stagnate but for the unexplored forests
and meadows which lie close by. While we are serious about exploring and learning all things,
we desire that all things be mysterious and unexplorable. Both the land and the sea are infinitely
wild and unfathomable. It only shows how Nature in its myriad forms is very mysterious and at
the same time attractive
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Do You Know-II

Say whether the following is True/False:

1. Winter was the best season at Walden Pond.

2. Nature has the power to redeem even the worst sinner.

13.5 Summary
 Based on Thoreau’s experiences at Walden Pond

 Need to turn to Nature for peace and relief is emphasised

 Nature’s bounty is marvelous during spring.

 Man’s life is always meaningful only when it is associated with Nature

 Thoreau’s solitude was to live according to his natural instincts.

13.6 Key Words

Desperate - in frantic need

Sermon - a serious talk on a religious or moral subject

eccentric - a person with erratic behaviour

dilemma - choice to be made between undesirable alternatives

tormented - mental anguish

foliage - a representation of leaves collectively

acquaintance - to be familiar with.

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13.7 Activities
1. Have you been to any hill station on tour? Have you loved your stay so much that
you detested to be back home? If so, present the positive aspects of the place that
made you love it.

2. Agricultural land has been used to build factories, farm houses etc. How would you
react to it as a Nature-lover? What are the drastic outcomes of this type of
urbanisation?

13.8 Check Your Answers

Do You Know-I

1. False 2. True 3. True

Do You Know-II

1. False 2. True

13.9 Model Questions & Answers

Question 1: Walden is Thoreau’s Quest for a Purity He Had Lost –
Discuss

Answer: Walden was Thoreau’s search for a reality he had lost. Purity meant a return to
the spring of life, to the golden age of his youth and active senses, when his self was not
clouded with self-consciousness. It is a record of Thoreau’s development, a development from
the sensuous, active, external summer of life through the stages of autumnal consciousness
and the withdrawal inward to the self-reflection of winter, to the promise of the rebirth in the
spring

In Walden Pond he saw the image of his purified self. The Pond was one of the oldest
scenes stamped in his memory. If Thoreau spent his youth carelessly, he now plumbed the
depths of the Pond. He affirmed reality when he discovered his soul in the whole economy of
Nature. What renewed his faith was the sign of the never-dying, all-promising generative force.
Walden was such an account of Thoreau’s moral topography, and if the lines were drawn, the
Pond itself would be his centre. Thoreau was not a naturalist but a natural historian of the
intellect, using the natural facts as symbols for his quest for inspiration and thought. The natural
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world merely reflects us. His concern with the Pond and the seasons, then, was symbolic of his
soul’s preoccupation. Thoreau was not averse to human company. Somehow the animals of
the forest aroused a much greater enthusiasm in him.

Question: 2. Elaborate on Thoreau’s Style

Answer: One of the most striking features of Thoreau’s style in Walden is the use of
paradox. He so profusely uses paradoxes that one is reminded of John Donne, Sir Thomas
Browne and other metaphysical writers. Pun lends itself to Thoreau’s purpose and underlies
many of his paradoxes: “over voyaging is only great-circle sailing”, “There is more day to dawn”,
“The Sun is but a morning star” are a few of them. The peculiar impact of the paradox lies in our
recognition that an expected meaning is dislocated by another. Thoreau’s rhetoric explores
new resources of meaning in words and challenges deep-rooted habits of thought and action:
“Read not the times, read the eternities”. He uses devices like hyperbole, loaded questions,
wordplay, proverbs and allusions to draw our attention to him.

Thoreau describes traditional knowledge and university education as impediments to

wisdom. He refers to financial security as the cause of sickness in the man who works for it. He
regards religion as a curse of God and distrust in oneself. The mock-heroic is one of Thoreau’s
standard humorous devices. Concreteness of diction is one of Thoreau’s most notable styles.
Walden is free from literary self-consciousness. The attitude of conversational informality implies
diction closer to common spoken language. Sometimes he also attains what is known as poetic
prose. Thoreau’s style is at once vigorous, pungent, epigrammatic, colloquial and at the fit
moment a soaring beauty.
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UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS
INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
MA ENGLISH - SEMESTER II
Paper - V
American Literature
MODEL QUESTION PAPER
TIME: 3 hrs Marks: 80

I. Answer any TEN of the following in about fifty words each: (10 X2 = 20 marks)

1. Who were Transcendentalists?

2. What is a countercultural movement?

3. What is meant by The Frontier?

4. What is counted as sweetest according to Emily Dickinson?

5. What does Cummings mean by the title “Any One Who Lived In A Pretty How
Town”?

6. What does” dry hours” mean in the poem “Kitchenette Building”?

7. What is Edmund’s illness mentioned in the drama “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”
by Eugene O’Neil “?

8. What is Jessie’s relationship with her brother Dawson as you know from the play
“Night Mother”?

9. Which river plays a very prominent role in the novel “Huckleberry Finn”.

10. What is “Conformity and Consistency”?

11. What is considered as the best season at Walden Pond?

12. What is the main theme in the quote: "God, what a woman! And it come to this, a
man can´t speak of his own child that´s dead"

13. Who is the speaker of the poem ‘Success is counted Sweet’?

14. What do you know about ‘The American South’?

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II. Write Short Notes on any SIX of the following, in about 250 words
each, without omitting any section: (6X5= 30 marks)
SECTION A

1. Give an account of 18th century American Literature.

2. What are the themes explored in the poem “Home Burial”?

SECTION B

3. Give the history of Southern Literature.

4. Write a note on Harlem Renaissance.

5. What is Walt Whitman’s contribution to American Poetry?

6. Write the Critical Appreciation of The Play by O’ Neil “Long Day‘s Journey into
Night.

7. Describe “The Colour Purple” as a feminist novel.

8. Assess Emily Dickinson as a poet.

SECTION C

9. Mark Twain presents the foible of men in a very subtle way. Elaborate.

10. Explain that ‘Self reliance As a Means Of Self – Realisation’ according to Emerson.

11. Whitman was a poet who was a God-intoxicated. Substantiate the view according
to the poem “Passage to India”.

12. Write about ‘Multiculturalism’.

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III. Write Short Notes on any THREE of the following, in about 750
words each, without omitting any section: (3x10= 30 marks)

SECTION A
1. Substantiate Robert Frost as a Poet of Nature.

2. Wallace Stevens portrays the complex relationship of human to nature in the poem
“Anecdote of the Jar”. Substantiate.

SECTION B
3. Write on the Critical Appreciation of “Kitchenette building”

4. Depict Marsha Norman as a dramatist with reference to the play “Night, Mother”.

SECTION C
3. Write an essay on the theme “Huckleberry Finn” as a Picaresque Novel

4. “Walden” is Thoreau’s Quest for a Purity He Had Lost – Discuss.