Arthur Miller “Death of a salesman” is not a tragedy according to the conventional concept of tragedy in which the hero and fate come into conflict and fate causes the tragedy of the hero or the central protagonist.
Jane Austen is not a proclaimed moralist. Unlike Fielding, her aim is not to propagate the morality. She believes in art for the sake of art. She is the pioneer of the novels.
Chaucer has given a very true and realistic picture of the ecclesiastical characters of his age. He satirizes the corrupt and worldly minded clergies and on the other hand he appreciates the good characters and presents a model picture of him.
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“Heart of Darkness” has a multiplicity of themes interwoven closely and produces a unified pattern. The theme of isolation and its consequences constitute a theme in this book, though a minor one. Marlow and Mr. Kurtz illustrate this theme, dominate the novel and have symbolic roles. Both these men stand for much more than the individuals which they certainly are.
Marlow strikes us from the very start as a lonely figure. Although he is a member of a small group of people sitting on the deck of the streamer called the “Nellie”. He is, at the very outset, differentiated from the others. He sits cross-legged in the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes without a lotus-flower. Then he begins his story, and nowhere in his narration does he appear to be feeing perfectly at home among other people. He seems to have the temperament of a man who would like to stay away from others, though he would certainly like to observe others and to mediate upon his observations.
When Marlow goes to Brussels for an interview, he depicts himself as an alien who has stepped into an unpleasant environment. The city of Brussels makes him think of a “whited sepulcher”. This feeling clearly shows that he has nothing in common with the people of this European city, though he is himself a European. Then he finds something ominous in the atmosphere of the office of the Company. The two knitting-women strike him as mysterious and sinister beings.
"In the outer room the two women knitted black wool, feverishly."
Even the doctor tells him that he is the first Englishman to have come under his observation. Marlow says:
'The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while. "Good, good for there," he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head.
There seems to be a distance even between Marlow and his aunt who has got him the job. She is enthusiastic and cordial enough, but Marlow has his reservations. He thinks that she is a most unrealistic woman. She is under the impression that the white men go into the backward regions to confer benefits upon the savages. But, in Marlow’s opinion, this view of the white men is entirely wrong.
When voyaging upon the sea in order to get to the Congo Marlow found himself to be perfectly idle and isolated from all the others on board the steamer because he had no point of contact with them. The sound of the sea-waves was the only source of comfort to him because these sounds seemed to be like “the speech of a brother”. He finds a kinship with the sea-waves but no kinship with the human beings on board the steamer.
The effect of isolation upon Marlow is profound. He is by nature somewhat unsociable. He is a kind of philosopher who meditates upon whatever he sees. Isolation further heightens his meditative faculty. Finding no point of contact with others, Marlow becomes more of a thinker, and more of a philosopher-cum-psychologist and studies the character and habits of Mr. Kurtz; and it is because of his isolation that he falls a victim to the influence of Mr. Kurtz whom he has himself described as a devil. This isolation can have grave consequences.
Mr. Kurtz is another isolated figure. He has become an absolutely solitary man after his prolonged stay in the Congo. He is not solitary in the sense that he does not mix with other. In fact, he has begun to identify himself with the savages and has become a sharer in their activities and in their interests. He participates in their “unspeakable rites” and he gratifies, without any restraint, his various lusts and his monstrous passions.
“The wilderness has caressed him, loved him, embraced him, entered his blood, consumed his flesh and has taken complete possession of his soul.”
In the case of Mr. Kurtz, it is isolation which proves the man’s undoing. Being cut off from all civilized society at the Inner Station of the Company, Mr. Kurtz begins slowly to fall under the influence of the savage till he becomes one of them. Gradually he acquires great power and begins to be regarded as a god by them. Thus now he has to keep himself at a distance even from them. He “presides” over their midnight dances which end with “unspeakable rites”.
But he is a solitary figure in the context of his western education and European upbringing. Even among the savages, he stands far above them. The savages regard him as a man-god. Mr. Kurtz is indeed a deity for the savages, and therefore he is a solitary figure even among them. Perhaps the savage closest to him under these conditions is the native woman who is his housekeeper and also perhaps his mistress. But the evil within him has already acquired huge proportions. Thus the effects of isolation in Mr. Kurtz’s case are disastrous.
The Hemingway Hero is defined by a static set of characteristics. These characteristics remain essentially the same throughout all of Hemingway's works. The Hemingway Hero is always courageous, confident, and introspective. He does not let his fears get to him. The Hemingway Hero is expressed differently in each of his novels, though. Sometimes he is young, and sometimes old. In Hemingway's novels “The Nick Adams Stories” and “Old Man and the Sea”, the Hero is introduced differently. In “The Nick Adams Stories”, Nick Adams begins as a naive, young boy then becomes the Hero within the view of the reader as his early life and the events that influenced his life most are the entirety of this memoir-style novel. In “Old Man and the Sea’, though, the old man does not develop into a hero. Santiago begins as an old man who has already attained the Heroic qualities that he will demonstrate intentionally throughout the rest of the story.
This is a unique and remarkable approach, and after the failure of his previous book, certainly a risky one. The book is not a portrait; it is not static, despite that the main character's morals – his ideals- never really change. A reader of his previous works might feel that they have seen these characteristics in Hemingway's works before.
Nick, the main character in “The Nick Adams Stories”, is in many ways is like Hemingway himself. Setting up camp and fishing and cooking by himself, Nick lifts his spirits by creating his own personal utopia. He remains and is static, unchanging example of Hemingway's idealistic of heroism. In fact, Nick Adams is probably the most autobiographical of Hemingway’s characters. Instead he relied, like Nick Adams, on finding his own escape from reality, making his own “good place”. Like Nick Adams, Hemingway found nature to be the best escape for him from his troubled world.
The "Hemingway Hero" was not an original invention of his. The Hero, universally, expresses one key quality: Grace Under Pressure (GUP). Nick travels into the forests of northern Michigan to find a release from the agony and emotional wounds the war has left him.
THE HEMINGWAY CODE HERO
Closely related to the concept of stoicism is the "CodeHero," a phrase used to describe the main character in many of Hemingway's novels. Some critics regard Santiago as the finest, most developed example of these code heroes.
In this phrase, "code" means a set of rules or guidelines for conduct. In Hemingway's code, the principal ideals are honor, courage, and endurance in a life of stress, misfortune, and pain. Often in Hemingway's stories, the hero's world is violent and disorderly; moreover, the violence and disorder seem to win.
The "code" dictates that the hero act honorably in the midst of what will be a losing battle. In doing so he finds fulfillment: he becomes a man or proves his manhood and his worth. The phrase "grace under pressure" is often used to describe the conduct of the code hero.
Hemingway defined the Code Hero as "a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful." He measures himself by how well he handle the difficult situations that life throws at him. In the end the Code Hero will lose because we are all mortal, but the true measure is how a person faces death. He believes in "Nada," a Spanish word meaning nothing. Along with this, there is no after life.
The Code Hero is typically an individualist and free-willed. He never shows emotions; showing emotions and having a commitment to women shows weakness. Qualities such as bravery, adventuresome and travel also define the Code Hero.
Ironically, the code hero can also be afraid of the dark in that it symbolizes the void, the abyss, the nothingness (nada) that comes with death. However, once he faces death bravely and becomes a man he must continue the struggle and constantly prove himself to retain his manhood.
The code hero or heroine (like Catherine Barkley) must perform his or her work well to create a kind of personal meaning amidst the greater meaninglessness. Still, life is filled with misfortunes, and a code hero is known by how he endures those misfortunes. Ultimately, the code hero will lose in his conflict with life because he will die. But all that matters is how one faces death. In fact, one should court death, in the bull ring, on the battlefield, against big fish, because facing death teaches us how to live. Along with this, the code hero must create and follow certain rituals regarding death because those rituals help us. The bullfighter must have grace and must make his kills clean. He must face noble animals. He must put on his suit a certain way. Similarly, a fisherman shouldn't go out too far. He should respect the boundaries the fish have established for fishermen. Religion is helpful only in that it provides us with rituals. But religions are wrong when they promise life after death.
If an individual faces death bravely, then he becomes a man, but he must repeat the process, constantly proving himself, until the ultimate defeat.
The Hemingway man was a man’s man. He was a man involved in a great deal of drinking. He was a man who moved from one love affair to another, who participated in wild game hunting, who enjoyed bullfights, who was involved in all of the so-called manly activities, which the typical American male did not participate in.
Throughout many of Hemingway’s novels the code hero acts in a manner which allowed the critic to formulate a particular code.
He does not talk about what he believes in.
He is man of action rather than a man of theory.
Behind the formulation of this concept of the hero lies the basic disillusionment brought about by the First World War. The sensitive man came to the realization that the old concepts and the old values embedded in Christianity and other ethical systems of the western world had not served to save mankind from the catastrophe inherent in the World War.
A basis for all of the actions of all Hemingway code heroes is the concept of death. The idea of death lies behind all of the character’s actions in Hemingway novels.
“When you are dead you are dead.”
There is nothing more. If man cannot accept a life or reward after death, the emphasis must then be on obtaining or doing or performing something in this particular life. If death ends all activity, if death ends all knowledge and consciousness, man must seek his reward here, now, immediately. Consequently, the Hemingway man exists in a large part for the gratification of his sensual desires, he will devote himself to all types of physical pleasures because these are the reward of this life.
It is the duty of the Hemingway hero to avoid death at almost all cost. Life must continue. Life is valuable and enjoyable. Life is everything. Death is nothing. With this view in mind it might seem strange then to the casual or superficial reader that the Hemingway code hero will often be placed in an encounter with death, or that the Hemingway hero will often choose to confront death. From this we derive the idea of grace (or courage) under pressure. This concept is one according to which the character must act in a way that is acceptable when he is faced with the fact of death. The Hemingway man must have fear of death, but he must not be afraid to die. By fear we mean that he must have the intellectual realization that death is the end of all things and as such must be constantly avoided in one way or another. A man can never act in a cowardly way. He must not show that he is afraid or trembling or frightened in the presence of death. If man wishes to live, he lives most intensely sometimes when he is in the direct presence of death. The man has not yet been tested; we don’t know whether he will withstand the pressures, whether he will prove to be a true Hemingway man. It is only by testing, by coming into confrontation with something that is dangerous that man lives with this intensity. In the presence of death, then, man can discover his own sense of being, his own potentiality.
THE NADA CONCEPT
Aside from death being a part of the concept of the code hero, there are certain images that are often connected with this view. His actions are often identified by certain definite movements or performances. He is often called a restless man. By restless is meant that he will often stay awake at nighttime and sleep all during the day. The reason for this is that for the Hemingway man sleep itself is a type of obliteration of the consciousness. Night is a difficult time for night-itself-the darkness of night—implies or symbolizes the utter darkness that man will have to face after death. Therefore the code hero will avoid nighttime. This will be the time he will drink or carouse or stay awake.
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE CODE HERO
If the old values no longer serve man, what values will? Hemingway rejects abstract qualities—courage, bravery, etc. These are all just words. For example, courage may involve a single act of courage. This does not mean that a man is by nature courageous. A man who has been courageous in war might not be courageous in some civil affair or in some other human endeavor. What Hemingway is searching for are absolute values, which will be the same and constant at every moment of every day and of every day of every week.
Ultimately therefore, for Hemingway the only value that will serve man is an innate faculty of self-discipline. This is a value that grows out of man’s essential being, in his inner nature. If a man has discipline to face one thing on one day he will still possess that same degree of discipline on another day and in another situation.
The Hemingway man is never a sloppy drunk. The man who cannot hold his liquor does not possess the proper degree of discipline.
This discipline functions in other ways also. For example, the Hemingway hero will often say:
“Don’t let’s talk about it.”
This means after he has performed some act of bravery he will not discuss it. Talking is emotionalism. It is the action that is important. If you talk about the act too much you lose the importance of the act itself. The same is true of talking about love.
The Hemingway code hero is also a person of some degree of skill. It is seldom mentioned what the character does, but we do know that Frederic Henry has been a good architect. It is in the act of doing that which a man is good at doing that the code character finds himself. Rinaldi makes the statement that he only lives while he is performing an operation. Thus the Hemingway man detests people who are mediocre. There are enough people who are like the Hemingway hero that he will not associate with the ordinary or mediocre person.
This attitude leads to the concept of the loyalty that a Hemingway hero feels for other people. He feels an intense loyalty for a small group of people. He cannot feel a sense of loyalty to something abstract, but as far as the intense, personal, immediate friendship is concerned, he is totally devoted to this smaller, this more personal group.
In conclusion, the Hemingway hero is a man whose concepts are shaped by his view of death, that in the face of death a man must perform certain acts and these acts often involve enjoying or taking the most he can from life. He will not talk about his concepts. He is a man of intense loyalty to a small group because he can’t accept abstract things. He does not talk too much. He expresses himself not in words, but in actions. The Hemingway man is not a thinker, he is a man of action. But his actions are based upon a concept of life.
Seeking the bohemian lifestyle and rejecting the values of American materialism, a number of intellectuals, poets, artists and writers fled to France in the post World War I years. Paris was the center of it all.
American poet Gertrude Stein actually coined the expression "lost generation." Speaking to Ernest Hemingway, she said:
"You are all a lost generation."
The term stuck and the mystique surrounding these individuals continues to fascinate us.
Full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.
There were many literary artists involved in the groups known as the Lost Generation. The three best known are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. Others usually included among the list are: Sherwood Anderson, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Ford Maddox Ford and Zelda Fitzgerald.
Ernest Hemingway was the Lost Generation's leader in the adaptation of the naturalistic technique in the novel. Hemingway volunteered to fight with the Italians in World War I and his Midwestern American ignorance was shattered during the resounding defeat of the Italians by the Central Powers at Caporetto. Newspapers of the time reported Hemingway, with dozens of pieces of shrapnel in his legs, had heroically carried another man out. That episode even made the newsreels in America. These war time experiences laid the groundwork of his novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929). Another of his books, The Sun Also Rises (1926) was a naturalistic and shocking expression of post-war disillusionment.
John Dos Passos had also seen the brutality of the war and questioned the meaning of contemporary life. His novel Manhatten Transfer reveals the extent of his pessimism as he indicated the hopeless futility of life in an American city.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is remembered as the portrayer of the spirit of the Jazz age. Though not strictly speaking an expatriate, he roamed Europe and visited North Africa, but returned to the US occasionally. Fitzgerald had at least two addresses in Paris between 1928 and 1930. He fulfilled the role of chronicler of the prohibition era.
His first novel, This Side of Paradise became a best-seller. But when first published, The Great Gatsby on the other hand, sold only 25,000 copies. The free spirited Fitzgerald, certain it would be a big hit, blew the publisher's advance money leasing a villa in Cannes. In the end, he owed his publishers, Scribners, money. Fitzgerald's Gatsby is the story of a somewhat refined and wealthy bootlegger whose morality is contrasted with the hypocritical attitude of most of his acquaintances. Many literary critics consider Gatsby his best work.
The impact of the war on the group of writers in the Lost Generation is aptly demonstrated by a passage from Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night (1933):
"This land here cost twenty lives a foot that summer...See that little stream--we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk it--a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation."
The Lost Generation writers all gained prominence in 20th century literature. Their innovations challenged assumptions about writing and expression, and paved the way for subsequent generations of writers.
The Lost Generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who were rebelling against what America had become by the 1900’s. At this point in time, America had become a great place to, “go into some area of business” (Crunden, 185). However, the Lost Generation writers felt that America was not such a success story because the country was devoid of a cosmopolitan culture. Their solution to this issue was to pack up their bags and travel to Europe’s cosmopolitan cultures, such as Paris and London. Here they expected to find literary freedom and a cosmopolitan way of life.
A cosmopolitan culture is one which includes and values a variety of backgrounds and cultures. In the 1920's the White Anglo Saxon Protestant work ethic was the only culture that was considered valued by the majority of Americans. It was because of ethics such as this which made the cosmopolitan culture of Paris so alluring. American Literature went through a profound change in the post WWI era. Up until this point, American writers were still expected to use the rigid Victorian styles of the 19th Century. The lost generation writers were above, or apart from, American society, not only in geographic terms, but also in their style of writing and subjects they chose to write about. Although they were unhappy with American culture, the writers were instrumental in changing their country's style of writing, from Victorian to modern.
Hemingway is probably one of the most celebrated authors of his time. Hemingway is well known for his fiction. His take on fiction is something invented or imagined. Main topics were centralized around his love of embellishment of the facts. Hemingway did not have the education as many other writers of his time, rebelling against his parents attempts to send him to colleges. His idea of education did not consist of lectures, and research papers, but of life experiences, and his love of reading. Hemingway's readings centered around Russian writers such as Tolstoy and Turgrnev, Tolstoy was a primary influence in Hemingway's writings. WWI also had a profound impact on him as well, as he was an ambulance driver during the war. He hated the abstract, especially abstract words such as honor, glory, and courage. Hemingway held strong to old beliefs, and symbolism, as he used symbolism to depict the Protestant religion he could not accept. He used observation and description in his works, rather than rhetoric views. The concept of war fascinated Hemingway, as well as the experiences one could endure in a lifetime. One of the most famous works, "Farewell to Arms" depicted the uselessness for words such as honor and glory, because they were not the first things in a soldier's mind as he walked onto the battlefield. Hemingway's works were raw, and dilled with the notion that one could be inside the characters mind, the concrete, and not around in the abstract view of his works.
THE AIMLESSNESS OF THE LOST GENERATION
World War I undercut traditional notions of morality, faith, and justice. No longer able to rely on the traditional beliefs that gave life meaning, the men and women who experienced the war became psychologically and morally lost, and they wandered aimlessly in a world that appeared meaningless. Jake, Brett, and their acquaintances give dramatic life to this situation. Because they no longer believe in anything, their lives are empty. They fill their time with inconsequential and escapist activities, such as drinking, dancing, and debauchery.
In “The Sun Also Rises” it is important to note that Hemingway never explicitly states that Jake and his friends’ lives are aimless, or that this aimlessness is a result of the war. Instead, he implies these ideas through his portrayal of the characters’ emotional and mental lives. These stand in stark contrast to the characters’ surface actions. Jake and his friends’ constant carousing does not make them happy. Very often, their merrymaking is joyless and driven by alcohol. At best, it allows them not to think about their inner lives or about the war. Although they spend nearly all of their time partying in one way or another, they remain sorrowful or unfulfilled. Hence, their drinking and dancing is just a futile distraction, a purposeless activity characteristic of a wandering, aimless life.
Coleridge poses numerous questions regarding the nature and function of poetry and then answers them. He also examines the ways in which poetry differs from other kinds of artistic activity, and the role and significance of metre as an essential and significant part of a poem.
He begins by emphasizing the difference between prose and poetry.
“A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition.”
Both use words. Then, the difference between poem and a prose composition cannot lie in the medium, for each employs words. It must, therefore, “consists in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object being proposed.” A poem combines words differently, because it is seeking to do something different.
“All it may be seeking to do may be to facilitate memory. You may take a piece of prose and cast it into rhymed and metrical form in order to remember it better.”
Rhymed tags of that kind, with their frequent, “sounds and quantities”, yield a particular pleasure too, though not of a very high order. If one wants to give the name of poem to a composition of this kind, there is no reason why one should not. As Coleridge says:
“But we should note that, though such rhyming tags have the charm of metre and rhyme, metre and rhyme have been ‘superadded’; they do not arise from the nature of the content, but have been imposed on it in order to make it more easily memorized.”
The “Superficial form”, the externalities, provides no profound logical reason for distinguishing between different ways of handling language.
“A difference of object and contents supplies an additional ground of distinction.”
The philosopher will seek to differentiate between two ways of handling language by asking what each seeks to achieve and how that aim determines its nature. “The immediate purpose may be the communication of truth or the communication of pleasure. The communication of truth might in turn yield a deep pleasure, but, Coleridge insists, one must distinguish between the ultimate and the immediate end.” Similarly, if the immediate aim be the communication of pleasure, truth may nevertheless be the ultimate end, and while in an ideal society nothing that was not truth could yield pleasure, in society as it always existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure has always existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure without having any concern with “truth, either moral or intellectual”.
“The proper kinds of distinction between different kinds of writing can thus be most logically discussed in terms of the difference in the immediate aim, or function, of each.”
The immediate aim of poetry is to give pleasure.
But, “The communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically composed” – in novels, for example. Do we make these into poems simply by superadding metre with or without rhyme? To which Coleridge replies by emphasizing a very important principle: you cannot derive true and permanent pleasure out of any feature or a work which does not arise naturally from the total nature of that work. “To ‘superadd’ metre is to provide merely a superficial decorative charm.” “Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If metre be superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it.” Rhyme and metre involve, “an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound” which in turn “are calculated to excite” a “perpetual and distinct attention to each part.”“A poem, therefore, must be an organic unity in the sense that, while we note and appreciate each part, to which the regular recurrence of accent and sound draw attention, our pleasure in the whole develops cumulatively out of such appreciation, which is at the same time pleasurable in itself and conductive to an awareness of the total pattern of the complete poem.”
“Thus a poem differs from a work of scientific prose in having as its immediate object pleasure and not truth, and it differs from other kinds of writing which have pleasure and not truth as their immediate object by the fact that in a poem the pleasure we take from the whole work in compatible with, and even led up to by the pleasure we take in each competent part.” Therefore, a legitimate poem is a composition, in which the rhyme and the metre bear an organic relation to the total work; in it, “parts mutually support and explain each other, all in their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of, metrical arrangement.”
Thus Coleridge puts an end for good to the age old controversy whether the end of poetry is instruction or delight or both. Its aim is definitely to give pleasure, and further poetry has its own distinctive pleasure, pleasure arising from the parts, and this pleasure of the parts supports and increases the pleasure of the whole.
Not only that, Coleridge also distinguishes a ‘Poem’ from ‘Poetry’. According to Shawcross:
“This distinction between ‘poetry’ and ‘poem’ is not very clear, and instead of defining poetry he proceeds to describe a poet, and from the poet he proceeds to enumerate the characteristics of the Imagination.”
This is so because ‘poetry’ for Coleridge is an activity of the ‘poet’s’ mind, and a ‘poem’ is merely one of the forms of its expression, a verbal expression of that activity, and poetic activity is basically an activity of the imagination. As David Daiches points out:
“’Poetry’ for Coleridge is a wider category than that of ‘poem’; that is, poetry is a kind of activity which can be engaged in by painters or philosophers or scientists and is not confined to those who employ metrical language, or even to those who employ language of any kind. Poetry, in this large sense, brings, ‘the whole soul of man’, into activity, with each faculty playing its proper part according to its ‘relative worth and dignity’.”
This takes place whenever the ‘secondary imagination’ comes into operation. Whenever the synthesizing, the integrating, powers of the secondary imagination are at work, bringing all aspects of a subject into a complex unity, then poetry in this larger sense results.
“The employment of the secondary imagination is, a poetic activity, and we can see why Coleridge is led from a discussion of a poem to a discussion of the poet’s activity when we realize that for him the poet belongs to the larger company of those who are distinguished by the activity of their imagination.”
A poem is always the work of a poet, of a man employing the secondary imagination and so achieving the harmony of meaning, the reconciliation of opposites, and so on, which Coleridge so stresses; but a poem is also a specific work of art produced by a special handling of language.
The harmony and reconciliation resulting from the special kind of creative awareness achieved by the exercise of the imagination, cannot operate over an extended composition; one could not sustain that blending and balance, that reconciliation, “of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshens, with old and familiar objects”, and so on, for an indefinite period. A long poem, therefore, would not be all poetry. Indeed, Coleridge goes to the extent of saying that there is no such thing as a long poem. Rhyme and metre are appropriate to a poem considered in the larger sense of poetry, because they are means of achieving harmonization, reconciliation of opposites, and so forth, which, as we have seen, are objects of poetry in its widest imaginative meaning.
In a legitimate poem, i.e. in a poem which is poetry in the true sense of the word, there is perfect unity of form and content. The notion of such organic unity runs through all Coleridge’s pronouncements of poetry. Rhyme and Metre, are not pleasure superadded for,
“Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.”
Nothing that is, “superadded”, merely stuck on for ornament or decoration, can really please in a poem; every one of its characteristics must grow out of its whole nature and be an integral part of it. Rhyme and metre are integral to the poem, an essential part of it, because the pleasure of poetry is a special kind of pleasure, pleasure which results both from the parts and the whole, and the pleasure arising from the parts augments the pleasure of the whole. Thyme and metre are essential parts for by their, “recurrence of accent and sound”, they invite attention to the pleasure of each separate part, and thus add to the pleasure of the whole.
“When, therefore, metre is thus in consonance with the language and content of the poem, it excites a ‘perpetual and distinct attention to each part’, ‘by the quick reciprocations of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited’, and carries the reader forward to the end ‘by the pleasurable’ activity of the mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself. There is no stopping for him on the way, attracted by the parts; nor any hastening forward to the end, unattracted by the parts. It is one unbroken pleasure trip from the parts to the whole.”
Thus Coleridge's contribution to the theory of poetry is significant. First, he puts an end for good to the age old controversy between instruction and delight being the end of poetry, and establishes that pleasure is the end of the poetry, and that poetry has its own distinctive pleasure. Secondly, he explodes the neo-classical view of poetry as imitation, and shows that it is an activity of the imagination which in turn is a shaping and unifying power, which dissolves, dissipates and creates. Thirdly, he shows that in its very nature poetry must differ from prose. He controverts Wordsworth's view that ‘rhyme and metre’ are merely superadded, shows that they are an organic part of a poem in the real sense of the word.
Wordsworth and Coleridge came together early in life and mutually arose various theories which Wordsworth embodied in his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” and tried to put into practice in his poems. Coleridge claimed credit for these theories and said they were “half the child of his brain”. But later on, his views underwent the change; he no longer agreed with Wordsworth’s theories and so criticized them.
In his Preface, Wordsworth made three important statements all of which have been objects of Coleridge's censure.
First of all Wordsworth writes that he chose low and rustic life, where the essential passions of the heart find a better soil to attain their maturity. They are less under restraint and speak a plainer and more emphatic language. In rustic life our basic feelings coexist in greater simplicity and more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated. The manners of rural life, sprang from those elementary feelings and from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily realized and are more durable. Lastly the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.
Secondly, that the language of these men is adopted because they hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived. Being less under social vanity, they convey their feelings and ideas in simple and outright expressions because of their rank in society and the equality and narrow circle of their intercourse.
Thirdly, he made a number of statements regarding the language and diction of poetry. Of these, Coleridge refutes the following parts: “a selection or the real language of men”; “the language of the men in low and rustic life”: and, “Between the language of prose and that of metrical composition there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference”.
As regards the first statement, i.e. the choice of rustic characters and life, Coleridge points out, first, that not all Wordsworth characters are rustic. Characters in poems like Ruth, Michael, The Brothers, are not low and rustic. Secondly, their language and sentiments do not necessarily arise from their abode or occupation. They are attributable to causes of their similar sentiments and language, even if they have different abode or occupation. These causes are mainly two:
Independence which raises a man above bondage, and a frugal and industrious domestic life.
A solid, religious education which makes a man well-versed in the Bible and other holy books excluding other books.
The admirable qualities in the language and sentiments of Wordsworth’s characters result from these two causes. Even if they lived in the city away from Nature they would have similar sentiments and language. In the opinion of Coleridge, a man will not be benefited from a life in rural solitudes unless he has natural sensibility and suitable education. In the absence of these advantages, the mind hardens and a man grows, ‘selfish, sensual, gross and hard hearted’.
As regards the second statement of Wordsworth, Coleridge objects to the view that the best part of language is derived from the objects with which the rustic hourly communicates. First, communication with an object implies reflection on it and the richness of vocabulary arises from such reflection. Now the rural conditions of life do not require any reflection, hence the vocabulary of the rustics is poor. They can express only the barest facts of nature and not the ideas and thoughts which results from their reflection. Secondly, the best part of a man’s language does not result merely from communication with nature, but from education, from the mind of noble thoughts and ideals. Whatever rustics use, are derived not from nature, but from The Bible and from the sermons of noble and inspired preachers.
Coleridge takes up his statements, one by one, and demonstrates that his views are not justified. Wordsworth asserts that the language of poetry is:
“A selection of the real language of men or the very language of men; and that there was no essential difference between the language of prose and that of poetry”.
Coleridge retorts that:
“‘Every man’s language’ varies according to the extent of his knowledge, the activity of his faculties, and the depth or quickness of his feelings”.
Every man’s language has, first, its individual peculiarities; secondly, the properties common to his class; and thirdly, words and phrases of universal use.
“No two men of the same class or of different classes speak alike, although both use words and phrases common to them all, because in the one case their natures are different and on the other their classes are different”.
The language varies from person to person, class to class, place to place.
Coleridge objects to Wordsworth’s use of the words, ‘very’ or ‘real’ and suggests that ‘ordinary’ or ‘generally’ should have been used. Wordsworth’s addition of the words, “in a state of excitement”, is meaningless, for emotional excitement may result in a more intense expression, but it cannot create a noble and richer vocabulary.
To Wordsworth’s argument about having no essential difference between the language of poetry and prose, Coleridge replies that there is and there ought to be, an essential difference between both the languages and gives numerous reasons to support his view. First, language is both a matter and the arrangement of words. Words both in prose and poetry may be the same but their arrangement is different. This difference arises from the fact that the poetry uses metre and metre requires a different arrangement of words. Metre is not a mere superficial decoration, but an essential organic part of a poem. Even the metaphors and similes used by a poet are different in quality and frequency from prose. Hence there is bound to be an ‘essential’ difference between the arrangement of words of poetry and prose. There is this difference even in those poems of Wordsworth’s which are considered most Wordsworthian.
Further, it cannot be confirmed that the language of prose and poetry are identical and so convertible. There may be certain lines or even passages which can be used both in prose and poetry, but not all. There are passages which will suit the one and not the other.
Thus does Coleridge refute Wordsworth’s views on the themes and language of poetry.
Eliot attributed a great deal of his early style to the French Symbolists--Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Laforgue--whom he first encountered in college, in a book by Arthur Symons called The Symbolist Movement in Literature. It is easy to understand why a young aspiring poet would want to imitate these glamorous bohemian figures, but their ultimate effect on his poetry is perhaps less profound than he claimed. While he took from them their ability to infuse poetry with high intellectualism while maintaining a sensuousness of language, Eliot also developed a great deal that was new and original. His early works, like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and The Waste Land, draw on a wide range of cultural reference to depict a modern world that is in ruins yet somehow beautiful and deeply meaningful. Eliot uses techniques like pastiche and juxtaposition to make his points without having to argue them explicitly. As Ezra Pound once famously said, Eliot truly did "modernize himself." In addition to showcasing a variety of poetic innovations, Eliot's early poetry also develops a series of characters who fit the type of the modern man as described by Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others of Eliot's contemporaries. The title character of "Prufrock" is a perfect example: solitary, neurasthenic, overly intellectual, and utterly incapable of expressing himself to the outside world.
As Eliot grew older, and particularly after he converted to Christianity, his poetry changed. The later poems emphasize depth of analysis over breadth of allusion; they simultaneously become more hopeful in tone: Thus, a work such as Four Quartets explores more philosophical territory and offers propositions instead of nihilism. The experiences of living in England during World War II inform the Quartets, which address issues of time, experience, mortality, and art. Rather than lamenting the ruin of modern culture and seeking redemption in the cultural past, as The Waste Land does, the quartets offer ways around human limits through art and spirituality. The pastiche of the earlier works is replaced by philosophy and logic, and the formal experiments of his early years are put aside in favor of a new language consciousness, which emphasizes the sounds and other physical properties of words to create musical, dramatic, and other subtle effects.
However, while Eliot's poetry underwent significance transformations over the course of his career, his poems also bear many unifying aspects: all of Eliot's poetry is marked by a conscious desire to bring together the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the emotional in a way that both honors the past and acknowledges the present. Eliot is always conscious of his own efforts, and he frequently comments on his poetic endeavors in the poems themselves. This humility, which often comes across as melancholy, makes Eliot's some of the most personal, as well as the most intellectually satisfying, poetry in the English language.
Tragic-comedy is a play which claims a plot apt for tragedy but which ends happily like a comedy. The action is serious in theme and subject matter and tone also sometimes but it seems to be a tragic catastrophe until an unexpected turn in events brings out the happy ending. The characters of a tragic-comedy are noble but they are involved in improbabilities. In such a play tragic and comic elements are mixed up together. Fletcher, in his “Preface to the Faithful Shepherdess”, defines a tragic-comedy as:
“A tragic-comedy is not so called in respect to mirth and killing, but in respect it wants death which is enough to make it no tragedy. Shakespeare’s ‘Cymbeline’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’ may also be categorized as tragic-comedy.”
The English edition of “Waiting for Godot”, published in 1956 describes the play as a “tragic-comedy” in two acts. There are many dialogues, gestures, situations and actions that are stuff of pure comedy. All musical devices are employed to create laughter in such a tragic situation of waiting. The total atmosphere of the play is very akin to dark-comedy. For example, Vladimir is determined not to hear Estragon’s nightmare. The latter pleads with him in vain to hear him, saying that there is nobody else to whom he may communicate his private nightmares.
The audience burst out in laughter when they see Estragon putting off and on his boots. Vladimir’s game with his hat appears as if this is happening in a circus. Vladimir is suffering from prostrate problem. Vladimir's way of walking with stiff and short strides is as funny as Estragon’s limping on the stage. Estragon’s gestures of encouraging Vladimir to urinate off-stage are farcical. The comedy in this play at certain times gives the impression of Vaudeville. There are many dialogues:
Estragon: Let’s go. Vladimir: We can not. Estragon: Why not? Vladimir: We are waiting for Godot. (They do not move.)
These dialogues occur like a comic paradigm in the play.
Estragon and Vladimir put on and take off each other’s hat as well as that of lucky again and again. It shows that in the world of tramps, there is no place of significant actions. The most farcical situation in the play is the one where the tramps are testing the strength of the cord with which they wish to hang themselves. The cord breaks under the strain. One cannot have an uninhabited laugh at the situation for there is also something deeply uncomfortable.
“Waiting for Godot” has several moments of anguish and despair. Someone beats Estragon daily.
Estragon: Beat me? Certainly they beat me.
Estragon’s feet and Vladimir’s kidneys are also taken to be granted. The tramps resent that they should be asked whether it still hurts. It goes without saying that it hurts all the time. When Vladimir asks Estragon whether his boots are hurting him, he responds:
“Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!”
A little later Estragon asks Vladimir about his kidney trouble and the latter replies in the same words:
“Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!”
In fact his trouble is so bad that it does not even permit him to laugh. Life lies all bleak and barren before them and that only valid comment on it is the one with which the play opens, “Nothing to be done”. Theirs is a world of negation in which inactivity is the safest course; as Estragon says:
“Do not let us do anything, it’s safer”.
The tramps are living at the barest level of existence. Carrot, turnips and radishes are all they have to eat. Estragon’s remarks show tragedy and helplessness:
The situation of Lucky is quite pathetic, especially in view of his glorious past, as Pozzo describes it. His speech tells us that in his sonar moments Lucky must have brooded deeply over the anguish of the human situation. The anguish breaks in his incoherent harangue:
“… the flames, the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labours abandoned left unfinished graver still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard (melee, final vociferations) tennis … the stones … so calm …Cunard … unfinished …”
The comedy in “Waiting for Godot” at once turns into tragedy when the audience thinks about the helplessness of tramps. Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for someone who never comes. In order to pass time they indulge in irrelevant, meaningless activity. The element of force fades away and miserable condition of man looms large in our imagination. Their life can be compared with that of a prisoner for whom there is no escape, even suicide is impossible. Every activity is a mockery of human existence.
The changing of farce into absurdity brings a lot of tragic sentiment in the play. Estragon’s nakedness is a picture of ‘man’s miserable condition’. The absurd living is a major source of tragedy. The source is the situation of pointless waiting of Estragon and Vladimir. They do not know who Godot is. They are sure neither about the time nor about the place of their appointment. They even do not know what will happen if they stop waiting? Lack of essential knowledge makes them totally impotent and powerless. They are glued to a situation. Nothing is certain all they can say is “Nothing to be done”.
The total effect of this co-mingling of tragic and comic suggests that Samuel Beckett’s is a realistic dramatist who looks at life from a position of a pessimist and an optimist. The form of tragic-comedy is highly suitable to this vision of life. The climax of Beckett’s tragic-comedy is the role of Lucky. He is wearing servant’s vest while holding his master’s overcoat, a basket and a stool. His neck is tied with one end of the rope. His appearance is not only fantastic but grotesque also. The moment we realize that he is a half-wit; he becomes an image of man’s misery. We are all the more sorry for Lucky when it is revealed that Pozzo has learnt all the beautiful things of life from lucky. But now Pozzo is taking the same person to sell in a fair. The relationship of a ringmaster and his trained animal, changes into a relationship of an owner and a slave. It is an exploitation of a man by a man who stops the audience from bursting out into laughter. Comedy has been checked by tragic element or sentiments, while the effect of tragedy has been mitigated by farce created through characters, dialogues, gestures and actions.
We can sum up with the remarks of Sean O’ Casey,
“Beckett is a clever writer, for within him there is no hazard of hope; no desire for it; nothing in it but a lust for despair and a crying of woe, not in a wilderness, but in a garden.”
“Waiting for Godot” is not a play to which traditional ideas of plot, action, structure etc. do apply. To a certain extent, Beckett has deliberately discarded or parodied such conventions. There is double-structure in “Waiting for Godot” linear and cynical. The structural devices can be seen in dialogues, characterization and bringing out of the themes. In cyclical structure, there is no change, no movement, development, nothing happens but linear things have their ways of changing.
The major structural devices are parallels. The two acts are bold experiments in use of parallelism, which is saved from the monotony by an admixture of contrast in it. Repetition or paradigm is primarily dominant in the play. In each act Vladimir asks Estragon how he spent the night, in each act Vladimir offers to embrace Estragon and latter does not, at first, kindly take this gesture. Every now and then, Estragon says:
“Let’s go.”
Vladimir patiently says:
“We can’t.”
Estragon wants to know why not, and Vladimir replies that:
“We’re waiting for Godot.”
This is followed every time by a sigh of Estragon. In each act Estragon wants to be allowed to sleep. In each act when they were at the ends of their wit, they indulge in meaningless trivialities. By the arrival of Lucky and Pozzo, in both the acts the tramps are helped at a particularly tedious moment. When they feel that their situation is absolutely unbearable, they toy with the idea of committing suicide, but in each case there is a major hurdle in their way. Each time they console themselves with a thought that they will bring a piece of rope next day with which they would commit suicide.
Recognition and forgetfulness also act as structural principles in both the acts. In both the acts the tramps take the arrival of somebody else to be that of Godot. The wait is terminated in both the acts by the arrival of a messenger. Before going away, they together think of suicide. In each act, they say that they are leaving and do not leave the place.
The conversation itself takes a rhythmic course. In Act-I Vladimir asks Estragon about his foot and Estragon in return asks Vladimir about his kidney trouble. Vladimir wants to relate to Estragon an incident in the New Testament and Estragon in return wants to relate an anecdote about an Englishman, but both are not ready to hear each other. Vladimir requests Estragon to take interest in his conversation. Similarly Pozzo asks Vladimir and estragon to give ear to his speech.
In both acts Vladimir asks Estragon whether he recognizes the place, each time Estragon’s memory fails, similar is the case with Pozzo. In Act II Pozzo is unable to collect that he met Estragon and Vladimir on the previous day. Likewise Estragon and Pozzo also disbelieves the common notion of time and place in both the acts Estragon sleeps soundly and meanwhile Vladimir feels boredom. Estragon is woke up by Vladimir. Estragon has nightmare every time to tell to Vladimir but Vladimir is not interested to hear it.
Act I:
Estragon: I had a dream.
Vladimir: Don’t tell me.
Estragon: I dreamt that.
Vladimir: Don’t tell me.
Act II.
Estragon: I was falling …
Vladimir: It’s all over, it’s all over.
Estragon: I was on the top of a …
Vladimir: Don’t tell me.
Both the acts end with the same pair of dialogues:
Estragon: Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We are waiting for Godot.
The play gains a structural cohesion because the rhythmic repetition of certain themes, incidents and situations.
There is a parallelism and contrast even in characters. Estragon and Vladimir are both tramps who are facing a common situation of bored waiting. But Estragon is weaker and more temperamental whereas Vladimir is strong, protective and clear-headed. At crucial times Estragon goes to sleep. Estragon always blames Vladimir for troubles but Vladimir is much tolerated. Vladimir has greater control on himself than Estragon. There are parallels and contrasts in Lucky and Pozzo also.
The structure of “Waiting for Godot” is unique. Nevertheless there are important modifications in Act II which makes us pronounce that the pattern outside Estragon and Vladimir's world is linear. The tree in Act II shows sign of growth as four or five leaves have sprout on the dead branches of it. Lucky and Pozzo do arrive as in act I but now in Act II Pozzo has become blind and Lucky dumb. The messenger boy of Act I look after Godot’s goats whereas the messenger boy of Act II looks after his sheep. In Act II Lucky does not deliver a tirade.
“Waiting for Godot” on philosophical level maintains a close relationship with the philosophy of Hera-Clatus who is of the view that “change is the crux of life”. But Samuel Beckett presents an opposite situation where he depicts “nothing happens twice”. There are anecdotes, incidents, agreements, conversations, contradictions, questions and meaningless answers. The play seems like sympathy of ‘Mozart’.
