Engliterarium

John Donne a Metaphysical Poet

Dryden once remarked:

Donne affects metaphysics not only in his satires but in amorous verses, too, where nature only should reign.

Though Donne was influenced by the sixteenth and the seventeenth century poets, yet he did not tread on the beaten track. His concept of poetry was unconventional. In his poetry, intellect takes the form, primarily, of wit by which heterogeneous ideas are yoked together by violence. The seventeenth century poets labeled his poetry as ‘strong line poetry’, mainly, on account of his concise expression and his deliberate toughness. In his life, he was never called a metaphysical poet. After his death, his poetry was re-evaluated and some other important features were found in it, which won the name of a metaphysical poet for John Donne.

Grierson’s defines metaphysical poetry as:

Poetry inspired by a philosophical concept of the universe and the role assigned to human spirit in the great drama of existence.

This definition is based on the metaphysical poetry of Dante, Goethe and Yeats. So “metaphysical” is applicable to poetry who is highly philosophical or which touches philosophy.

Combination of passion and thought characterizes his work. His use of conceit is often witty and sometimes fantastic. His hyperboles are outrageous and his paradoxes astonishing. He mixes fact and fancy in a manner which astounds us. He fills his poems with learned and often obscure illusions besides, some of his poems are metaphysical in literal sense, they are philosophical and reflective, and they deal with concerns of the spirit or soul.

Conceit is an ingredient which gives a special character to Donne’s metaphysical poetry. Some of his conceits are far-fetched, bewildering and intriguing. He welds diverse passions into something harmonious.

When thou weep’st, unkindly kinde,
My lifes blood doth decay.

When a teare falls, that thou falst which it bore,

Here lies a she-sun and a he-moon there

All women shall adore us, and some men.

His approach is based on logical reasoning and arguments. He provides intellectual parallels to his emotional experiences. His modus operandi was “to move from the contemplation of fact to a deduction from it and, thence, to a conclusion”. He contemplates fidelity in a woman but, in reality, draws it impossible of find a faithful woman.

No where
Lives a woman true, and faire.

He does not employ emotionally exciting rhythm. His poetry goes on lower ebb. Even his love poems do not excite emotions in us. Even in a “Song” while separating, he is logical that he is not parting for weariness of his beloved.

But since that I
Must dye at last, ’tis best,
To use my selfe in jest
Thus by fain’d deaths to dye;

His speculations and doctrines are beyond common human experience. His ideas are beyond the understanding of a layman and are a blend of intellect and emotions making his approach dialectical and scholastic. He asks his beloved in “The Message” to keep his eyes and heart because they might have learnt certain ills from her, but then, he asks her to give them back so that he may laugh at her and see her dying when some other proves as false to her as she has proved to the poet.

Donne was a self-conscious artist, therefore, had a desire to show off his learning. In his love poetry, he gives illustrations from the remote past. In his divine poems, he gives biblical references like the Crucification.

Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?

Get with child a mandrake roote.

But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall.

Metaphysical poetry is highly concentrated and so is Donne’s poetry. In “The Good Morrow”, he says

For love, all love of other sights controules.

For, not in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt’ring bright, can love inhere.

Hee that hath all can have no more.

His poetry is full of arguments, persuasion, shock and surprise. Instead of conventional romantic words, he used scientific and mathematical words to introduce roughness in his poetry; e.g. he used the words ‘stife twin compasses’, ‘cosmographers’, ‘trepidation of the spheres’ etc.

His style is highly fantastic, curt and he uses rough words. He rejects the conventional style which was romantic, soft and diffused.

Paradoxical statements are also found in his poems. In “The Indifferent” Donne describes constancy in men as vice and ask them:

Will no other vice content you?

In “The Legacy” the lover becomes his own ‘executor and legacy’. In “Love’s Growth” the poet’s love seems to have increased in spring, but now it cannot increase because it was already infinite, and yet it has increased:

No winter shall abate the sring’s increase.

He deals with the problem of body and soul in “The Anniversarie” of the individual and the universe in “The Sunne Rising” and of deprivation and actuality in “A Noctrunall”. In his divine poems he talks about the Crucification, ransom, sects / schism, religion, etc.

Donne is a coterie poet. He rejects the Patrarchan tradition of poetry, adopted by the Elizabethans. The Elizabethan poetry was the product off emotions. He rejected platonic idealism, elaborate description and ornamentation. He was precise and concentrated in poetry while the Elizabethan are copious and plentiful in words.

Seventeenth century had four major prerequisites; colloquial in diction, personal in tone, logical in structure and undecorative and untraditional imagination, which were also present in Donne.

To conclude, he is more a seventeenth century poet than a metaphysical poet. There are some features in his poetry which differentiate him e.g. he is a monarch of with and more colloquial than any other seventeenth century poet. If other seventeenth century poet bring together emotions and intellect, he defines emotional experience with intellectual parallels etc. Still he writes in the tradition of the seventeenth century poets.

Pride and Prejudice: A Novel With Limited Range

Jane Austen confines her creative activity to the depiction of whatever fell within her range of personal experience. While her range of observation in life is not so wide her work has been variously called as the “Two inches of ivory” and “three or four families”. All these titles exhibit the excellence as well as the limitations of her craft and outlook.

Although she works on a very small canvas, yet she has widened the scope of fiction in almost all its directions. Her stories mostly have indoor actions where only family matters especially love and marriages are discussed. However, her plots are perfect and characterization is superb.

All of her six novels, including “Pride and Prejudice”, have been controversial since their publication, on account of Austen’s limited range. The critical view is divided in two groups – detractors and admires. The former group had criticized her on various points.

Critics object that her novels present a certain narrow physical setting. It was the period of American War of Independence and of Napoleonic Wars, but the characters of Austen are blissfully unaware of all these tumultuous events. Whole of the story of “Pride and Prejudice” revolves around Neitherfield Park, Longbourne, Hunsford Parsonage, Meryton and Pemberley.

Nature does not play any specific role in her novels. It seems to be an irony of the history of English literature that when writers like Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge and others were discovering the beauties of nature / outer world, Austen confines her characters within the four walls of the drawing room or Hall. Edward Fitzgerald states:

She never goes out of the Parlour.

Austen avoids the sense of passions described by the romantics, because of her classical views of order and control. Bronte condemns her:

… the passions art completely unknown to her.

Critics have complained that her subject matters are very much the same in all her novels and she writes the same sort of story and also that she does not introduce any great variety in her characters.

All of her six novels deal with same theme of love and marriages. There are pretty girls waiting for eligible bachelors to be married to. The opening line of “Pride and Prejudice” is the theme of her six novels. She writes:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Another limitation of Jane Austen is the feminization of her novels. Men never appear except in the company of women. All the information about Darcy is proved through Elizabeth’s point of view. Hence, the reader looks at Darcy through Elizabeth’s eye.

Even in her limited world, Austen restricts herself to the depiction of a particular class of country gentry. She excludes the matters of lower class and hardly touches aristocracy. For instance she has discussed Lady Catherine only for the purpose of satire.

There is no terrible happening in her novels. Everything happens in a civilized manner. The extreme severity in “Pride and Prejudice” is elopement of Lydia with Wickham.

Wickham may elope with Lydia.

A famous critic, Charlotte Bronte believes that Austen has no concern with the morals and she is an author of the surface only:

Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eye, mouth, hands and feet.

A. H. Wright remarks that there is very little religion in her novels. Politics is not mentioned too. There are no adventures found in her books, no abstract ideas and no discussion of spiritual or metaphysical issues.

The defence of Jane Austen’s limited range comes from the nature of her novels, the situation of her time and her physical surroundings. Austen’s novels are termed as “domestic novels”. She belongs to the era when neither the girls were allowed to be admitted to universities nor to be intermingled freely with men. So it is natural that her range is limited.

Austen was a daughter of a country clergyman. She has very less exposure to the world except her short visits to London and a few years study at Bath. Hence the world she experienced was very small. In a letter to her niece, Austen wrote:

There are four families in a country village is the very thing to work on.

Though Austen’s limitations are very self imposed yet within her deliberately restricted field, her art is perfect. Realization of one’s limitations is a positive virtue. The restricted social setting and purely interests, lend a sense of discipline to her art.

Within the limits she is superb.

She gains in depth, what she loses in broadness of canvas. Her characters stem from a class which she knows well and hence they are very realistic and life-like. Elizabeth Bennet is one of the most delightful heroines one could come across in literature. Wordsworth remarks:

Her novels are an admirable copy of life.

It would be wrong to say that her novels lack passion and profundity. Her themes are love, courtship and marriage and it is impossible to keep the feelings out from such a novel. Besides love, there are also significant emotions, like jealousy of Bingley’s, cunningness of Wickham, snobbery of Lady Catherine – all are depicted by Austen with perfect sincerity and conviction.

She also holds a definite moral concern in her novels. She laughs at the shortcomings of people to correct their behaviours. Beneath the theme of love and marriage, she deals with manners to correct the conduct of the middle class country gentry. She preaches the dictum of “know thyself”. Hence she aims at high morality. She also depicts the merits and strength of a marriage based on understanding through the wedding of Elizabeth and Darcy. The nature of her craft is defined by Austen herself as:

With bit of irony on which I work with so fine brush to produce little effect after much labour.

Within her theme and subject matter, Jane Austen is unparalleled in her skill and plot construction. The sub-plots of Jane-Bingley, Lydia-Wickham, Charlotte-Collins all are closely linked to the main Elizabeth-Darcy plot and highlight the theme of good marriage. Even in her limits, no two of her characters are repeated. G. H. Lewis remarks:

Her circle may be restricted but it is complete. Her world is perfect orb and vital sphere.

Thus it may be concluded that within her limited range Austen handles all the characters, events, dialogues and the plot of her novels in a very exquisite manner. Her art is fine, perfect and distinguishable. No doubt she is a fine flower of the expiring 18th century.

Keats’ Concept of Beauty

Keats was considerably influenced by Spenser and was, like Spenser, a passionate lover of beauty in all its forms and manifestations. The passion of beauty constitutes his aestheticism. Beauty was his pole star, beauty in nature, in woman and in art.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

He writes and identifies beauty with truth. Of all the contemporary poets Keats is one of the most inevitably associated with the love of beauty. He was the most passionate lover of the world as the career of beautiful images and of many imaginative associations of an object or word with a heightened emotional appeal.

Poetry, according to Keats, should be the incarnation of beauty, not a medium for the expression of religious or social philosophy. He hated didacticism in poetry.

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us.

He believed that poetry should be unobtrusive. The poet, according to him, is a creator and an artist, not a teacher or a prophet. In a letter to his brother he wrote:

With a great poet, the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration.

He even disapproved Shelley for subordinating the true end of poetry to the object of social reform. He dedicated his brief life to the expression of beauty as he said:

I have loved the principle of beauty in all things.

For Keats the world of beauty was an escape from the dreary and painful life or experience. He escaped from the political and social problems of the world into the realm of imagination. Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and Shelley, he remained untouched by revolutionary theories for the regression of mankind. His later poems such as “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Hyperion” show an increasing interest in human problems and humanity and if he had lived he would have established a closer contact with reality. He may overall be termed as a poet of escape. With him poetry existed not as an instrument of social revolt nor of philosophical doctrine but for the expression of beauty. He aimed at expressing beauty for its own sake.

Keats did not like only those things that are beautiful according to the recognized standards. He had deep insight to see beauty even in those things that are not thought beautiful by ordinary people. He looked at autumn and says that even autumn has beauty and charm:

Where are the song of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, –
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.

In Keats, we have a remarkable contrast both with Byron on the one side and with Shelley on the other. Keats was neither rebel nor utopian dreamer. Endowed with a purely artistic nature, he took up in regard to all the movements and conflicts of his time, a position of almost complete detacher. He knew nothing of Byron’s stormy spirit of hostility of the existing order of things and he had no sympathy with Shelley’s humanitarian and passion for reforming the world. The famous opening line of “Endymion”, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’ strikes the keynote of his work. As the modern world seemed to him to be hard, cold and prosaic, he habitually sought an imaginative escape from it. He loved nature just for its own sake and for the glory and loveliness which he found in it, and no modern poet has ever been nearer than he was to the simple “poetry for earth” but there was nothing mystical in love and nature was never fraught for him, as for Wordsworth and Shelley, with spiritual message and meanings.

Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of the Romantics while Scott was merely telling stories, and Wordsworth reforming poetry or upholding the moral law, and Shelley advocating the impossible reforms and Byron voicing his own egoism and the political measure. Worshipping beauty like a devotee, perfectly content to write what was in his own heart or to reflect some splendour of the natural world as he saw or dreamed it to be, he had the noble idea that poetry exists for its own sake and suffers loss by being devoted to philosophy or politics.

Disinterested love of beauty is one of the qualities that made Keats great and that distinguished him from his great contemporaries. He grasped the essential oneness of beauty and truth. His creed did not mean beauty of form alone. His ideal was the Greek ideal of beauty inward and outward, the perfect soul of verse and the perfect form. Precisely because he held this ideal, he was free from the wish to preach.

Keats’ early sonnets are largely concerned with poets, pictures, sculptures or the rural solitude in which a poet might nurse his fancy. His great odes have for their subjects a storied Grecian Urn; a nightingale; the goddess Psyche, mistress of Cupid; the melancholy and indolence of a poet; and the season of autumn, to which he turns from the songs of spring. What he asked of poesy, of wine, or of nightingale’s song was to help him:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget,
What thou amongst the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever and the fret,
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan.

“I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill” and “Sleep and Poetry” – the theme of both these poems is that lovely things in nature suggest lovely tales to the poet, and great aim of poet is to be a friend to soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man. Perhaps Keats would have said that he attempted his nobler life of poetry in poems like “Lamia” and “Hyperion” but it is very doubtful whether he believed that he had done justice to this elevated type of poetic creation.

Keats’ love of beauty is not ‘Platonic’ in nature. He loves physical objects and takes interest in human body. He does not become obscene but his love of beauty gives us very attractive and suggestive picture of women:

Yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender taken breath,
And so live ever.

Religion for him took definite shape in the adoration of the beautiful, an adoration which he developed into a doctrine. Beauty is the supreme truth. It is imagination that discovers beauty. This idealism, assumes a note of mysticism. One can see a sustained allegory in “Endymion” and certain passages are most surely possessed of a symbolical value. Sidney Colvin says:

It was not Keats aim merely to create a paradise of art and beauty discovered from the cares and interests of the world. He did aim at the creation and revelation of beauty, but of beauty whatever its element existed. His concept of poetry covered the whole range of life and imagination.

As he did not live long enough, he was not able to fully illustrate the vast range of his conception of beauty. Fate did not give him time enough to fully unlock the ‘mysteries of the heart’ and to illuminate and put in proper perspective the great struggles and problems of human life.

Theatre of Absurd

The term “Absurd” in its modern sense was first used by Esslin and since then it was attached to a certain outlook on life and viewpoint in literature. Absurd drama has deep roots; it can be related to the mimes of ancient times as well as to the popular comedies of Italy. It connects with nonsense writing like that of Lewis Carrol as well as with the modern movement known as the Theatre of Cruelty. “Waiting for Godot” is one of the typical examples of it.

The theme of the play shows volcanic upheaval in the political and social departments of that time.

The Theater of Absurd has been a catch-phrase, much used and much abused. The Theatre of Absurd is a Post-war phenomenon. Genet’s “The Maid” had its first performance at the Athenee in Paris in 1947; Lonesco’s “Bald Primodonna” and Adamov’s earliest plays were first produced in 1950 and Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in 1952. It will be noticed that all these first performances took place in Paris. And Paris certainly is the fountainhead of the Theatre of the Absurd. Yet it is equally strange and significant the playwrights themselves are largely exiles from other countries gathered in Paris.

BACKGROUND – PURPOSE BEHIND ABSURD PLAYS

The waning of religious faith that had started with the Enlightenment and led Nietzsche to speak of the “Death of God” by the eighteen-eighties; the break down of the liberal faith in inevitable social progress in the wake of the world war; the prediction by Marx after Stalin had turned the Soviet Union into a totalitarian tyranny; the relapse into barbarism, mass murder and genocide in the curse of Hitler’s brief rule over Europe during the Second World War and in the after math of that war. The spread of spiritual emptiness in the outwardly prosperous and affluent societies of Western Europe and the United States. No doubt that many of the sensitive and intellectual minds of the mid twentieth century had lost the meaning of life. The firmest foundations for hopes and optimism collapsed. Suddenly man himself faced with a universe that is frightening and illogical – in a word ‘absurd’. All assurance of hope, all explanations of ultimate meaning have suddenly been unmasked as nonsensical illusions, empty chatter, whistling in the dark. The whole world presents an obscure babble of voices in an un-understandable language. Everything seems to turn in nightmare and horror.

REALISM + CONCLUSION

The realism of absurd plays is a psychological and inner-realism. They explore the human subconscious in depth rather than trying to describe the outward appearances of human existence. Such plays cannot be called deeply pessimistic but an expression of utter despair. The Theatre of Absurd attacks the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodox. It aims to shock its audience out of complacency, to bring it face to face with the hard facts of human situation as writer sees. It is challenge to accept the human condition as it is, in all its mystery and absurdity, and to bear it with dignity, responsibly and precisely because there are no easy solutions to the mystery of existence. The shedding of easy solutions of comforting illusions may be painful but it leaves behind it a sense of freedom and relief. In the last resort, Theatre of Absurd does not provoke tears of despair but the laughter of liberation.

Is Swift a misanthrope?

Swift is not a misanthrope rather he is a philanthrope. It is the misconception of those who think Swift as a misanthrope. Swift only wants to reform mankind out of their follies and stupidities. He says that the chief end of all his labour is:

to vex the world rather than divert it.

Secondly, he declares that:

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities and all his love is towards individuals.

Thirdly, though Swift does not believe that:

Man is a rational animal.

Yet he believes that:

Man is capable of becoming rational if he makes the necessary efforts.

But we see that Swift is notorious for being misanthrope. He was subjected to this allegation during his lifetime because the critics, identifying Gulliver with Swift, attributed Gulliver’s blunders to Swift. That Gulliver, in the last voyage, becomes a misanthrope is undeniable and indisputable. Prima facie, it appears that by developing a negative view of mankind, he starts preferring horses to men, but a solid reason of Swift underlies this act of Gulliver.

We observe that in the fourth voyage, Gulliver reaches a country of animals, ruled by animals. There are two categories of animals living there in: ugly and repulsive brutes – Yahoos:

Yahoos who are unteachable brutes, cunning, gluttonous and disposed to great mischief.

And comparatively better and nice-looking animals – Houyhnhnms. The moment he enters the country he is confronted with Yahoos and they give him such a nasty and obnoxious treatment that he develops a disliking for them in his heart, which is later converted into hatred owing to their disgusting physical appearance and their filthy and mischievous way of life. But his first meeting with Houyhnhnms, on the other hand, proves a nice experience. And this:

First impression proves the last impression.

They secure him against Yahoos, behave properly and gracefully escort him to their abode.

The behaviour of horses shows him to be animals with an extraordinary power of understanding.

Naturally, this kind of treatment creates a sort of fondness in Gulliver’s heart for Houyhnhnms and their way of life. Upto this time, nothing is objectionable, but his fault begin when he become so enamored of Houyhnhnms that he starts hating man or equating Yahoos with men, he begins to abhor Man. He develops a general hatred against all men. All the subsequent incidents – his hatred against the Captain, against his family, etc. – reflect his misanthropy.

The blunder which Gulliver committed is that, he over-idealizes them because Gulliver is a man who is fed up with Man’s corruption. Therefore, he cannot see corruption in Man. He finds Yahoos in a detestable and abhorrent condition on account of their being a slave of emotions, sensuality and sentimentality. He says:

I confess I never saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts; and the more I came near them, the more hateful they grew, while I stayed in that country.

Houyhnhnms, in a comparatively better condition, lack that type of corruption that Yahoos have, for Houyhnhnms have no emotion.

Houyhnhnms are free from lust and greed.

Naturally, he attributes whole of Man’s corruption to emotions, passions and sentimentality. As a remedy, he starts hating emotions, passion and he falls a victim to pure intellect.

Here was neither physician to destroy my body, nor lawyer to ruin my fortune, here were no gibers, …, backbiters, …, bawds, …, ravishers, murderers or … poxes.

So, he mis-idealize Houyhnhnms, due to their pure intellect, somehow establishes a subjective ideal before him i.e. to be a man is to have pure intellect. He thinks:

The only remedy for doing away with Man’s corruption and pollution is to get rid of all kinds of emotions.

In the country of Houyhnhnms, when Gulliver has a choice, he adopts for the Houyhnhnms way of life, completely rejecting Yahoos’ path. But when he is compelled to leave the country and to break away form his beloved way of life, and to come to another way of life which he dislikes, it is but natural for him to hate it. In fact, his this ideal is perfectly erroneous. Swift says:

Idealism leads towards destruction.

So, it is wrong to detest Man, equating him with Yahoos and it is again inappropriate to set up the ideal of perfect man on the basis of Houyhnhnms’ pure intellect because neither a Houyhnhnms nor a Yahoo is a man, instead, man is a juxtaposition of both intellect and emotions.

The best code of conduct is Golden Mean which is ‘balance’.

So he mis-defines Man. However, the fact of the matter remains whether Swift becomes a misanthrope or not, but can we impute Gulliver’s misanthropy to Swift? If we virtually succeed to establish, some identity between Swift and Gulliver, Swift, too, will become a misanthrope.

But according to Swift a man is he who strikes a balance between rationality and sensuality and this balance is not gifted by birth. It has to be acquired. That’s why even Gulliver is subjected to Swift’s satire, for he loses the said balance.

That is the reason we don’t identify Gulliver with Swift and, inspite of Gulliver’s misanthropy, we call Swift a great philanthropist. As he, himself, says:

I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind.

Pride and Prejudice: Title

Pride and Prejudice was first written in 1797 under the title “First Impressions”. It was later revised and published under the title“Pride and Prejudice” in 1813.

In the novel, first impressions do play an important part: Elizabeth is misled in her judgment and estimation of both Darcy and Wickham. Her regard and sympathy for Wickham and her hostility and prejudice against Darcy are due to the first impressions. But when we study the novel deeply and seriously we can easily see that the title “Pride and Prejudice” is more apt and more befitting to it. The first impressions which the character gets of each other take up only the first few chapters. The novel is more about the pride of Darcy and the prejudice of Elizabeth and the change of attitude in Darcy and Elizabeth’s correction of her first impression.

At the apparent level, we see that Darcy embodies pride – he is possessed by family pride. As Wickham tells Elizabeth that he has a “filial pride”, in his “father and brotherly pride in his sister Georgiana” Darcy himself says that his pride consists in caring for none beyond his own family circle, thinking mean of all the rest of the world.

There is no doubt that Darcy is a proud man. Nothing can excuse his remark about Elizabeth,

… tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt me

nor, indeed, the statement that

my good opinion once lost is lost for ever.

His first appearance is insolent and we tend to agree with Mrs. Bennet’s complaint that

He walked here and he walked there, fancying himself so very great.

The set-down comes at Hansford Pride and Prejudice personage, which is the climax of Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice. In this scene, Darcy lays his proud heart at her feet and learns what she thinks of him. He admits that he remained blind to the faults of Lady Catherine and Miss Bingley and was thinking mean of those beneath him in social standing.

Elizabeth feels that Darcy is all pride. Having been prejudiced against him by his refusal to dance with her, she willfully misinterprets all his utterances, all his actions. Her prejudice clouds her usually clear judgment and she listens to Wickham’s biased account of Darcy with complete belief and declares Darcy to be ‘abominable’ (thoroughly unpleasant). Blinded by prejudice she rejects his proposal.

It is at Rosings that their process of self-discovery starts. At Netherfield Park,Elizabeth’s family – her mother and her sisters have seemed vulgar and ill-bred. At Rosings, Darcy is embarrassed by the vulgarity of his aunt Lady Catharine excessive love for Elizabeth forces him to write an explanatory letter to Elizabeth. and realizes that refinement of manners is not the monopoly of the elite. His lesson is complete by Elizabeth’s rejection of his proposal and her rejection makes him realize his misplaced pride. This Elizabeth’s moment of self-awakening comes on receiving of Darcy’s letter. Learning the truth about Wickham, she realizes her own blindness and prejudice in judging Darcy and Wickham on mere fist impressions. Now she is also able to see the validity of some of his objections to Jane and Bingley marriage. At Pemberely, she learns about Darcy’s austerity of manner. Now the Lydia-Wickham episode brings the final reconciliation. This overwhelms Elizabeth and she recognizes that Darcy is exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, will most suit her.

However, to say that Darcy is proud and Elizabeth is prejudiced is to tell but half the story. The fact is both Darcy and Elizabeth are proud as well as prejudiced. The novel makes clear the fact that Darcy’s pride leads to prejudice and Elizabeth’s prejudice stems superiority and refinement and this leads him to have a general prejudice against people beneath him in he social hierarchy. Elizabeth’s prejudice on the other hand stems from his pride. Both suffer from the faults of pride ad prejudice, but they are also the necessary defects of desirable merits: self-respect and intelligence.

It is true that Jane and Bingley are not the part of the theme of Pride and Prejudice but their love is an important link in the novel and without it the story cannot be complete. Jane is the specimen of faultless beauty and she is free from willing to see good in everyone. Similarly Bingley is easy going and friendly. Both Jane and Bingley are simple characters and are not sufficiently profound. It is the intricate characters of Darcy and Elizabeth that hold our interest and exemplify the title of the novel, “Pride and Prejudice”.

Darcy and Elizabeth are of course, the pivotal characters but the subsidiary characters also tend to demonstrate further aspects of the main themes. Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a hilarious caricature (extremely funny) of the same faults of pride and prejudice. Mr. Collins is a mixture of obsequiousness and pride. He is a sycophant, and out and out flatterer of Lady Catherine. Mrs. Bennet has a pride in her daughters and in her stupidity develops a prejudice against Darcy. Miss Bingley herself and her sister Mrs. Hurst are the mixture of pride and impertinence.

The title Pride and Prejudice is thus, very apt and points to the theme of the novel. The novel goes beyond a mere statement of first impressions and explores in depth the abstract qualities of pride and prejudice. This theme is worked out not only through the characters of Darcy and Elizabeth but also through various minor characters. It is a title which does complete justice to the theme and subject of the novel.

The Wild Duck: Title

“The wild Duck” as a title is most apt for this play because it gives us a definite clue to the major theme of the play – the value of illusions in the average man’s life. The wild duck is a precise and an all-important symbol. The wild duck symbolizes the life of Hjalmar and his father, the life of Hedvig and also Ibsen’s own life at the time he wrote this play. Gregers too becomes a symbol by wishing to play the role of the clever dog and to bring the wounded duck back to the surface. As all this symbolism is the hub and the heart of the play, the title “The Wild Duck” is most suitable for it.

Mr. Werle was sailing a boat and seeing a wild duck, had shot at, and wounded, it. The wounded duck dived down to the bottom of the sea and tangle there to never come up again. But Mr. Werle’s clever dog dived after the wounded duck and brought it up again. The wounded wild duck was taken to Mr. Werle’s house but it did not thrive there. It was passed on to Old Ekdal where it became used to its present abode, and had forgotten its natural, wild life.

The wild duck as a symbol appears first in Mr. Werle’s speech with reference to the sad fate which had overtaken Old Ekdal. He says:

By the time Ekdal was released, he was a broken-down man, past help from anyone. There are people in this world who dive to the bottom the moment they are wounded, and never come up again.

We recall this speech when Old Ekdal, speaking to Gregers, describes how a wild duck behaves when it gets wounded. If the particular wild duck had not been rescued by dog, it would have remained at the bottom and would have died there. In Mr. Werle’s opinion, Old Ekdal, after his release from the prison, was in no position to lead a worth-while life because his spirit had completely been broken by his stay in the prison.

Hedvig says on two occasions that the wild duck belongs to her though she would not mind her father and grandfather borrowing it from her. Hedvig also says that her father and grandfather look after the wild duck well and try to make it comfortable. Gregers thereupon says that the wild duck is the most important person in his house. Hedvig says that the duck is a real “wild” bird and the wild duck must be feeling sad and alien here because no one knows it and it knows no one. Gregers finds that the wild duck has a damaged wing and that it is a little lame in one foot which the dog had held between its teeth when dragging the duck back to the surface of the water.

Gregers tells Hjalmar that the latter has a strain of the wild duck in him. He elaborates that Hjalmar has dived down and taken firm hold of the sea weeds. He further says that Hjalmar has landed in a “poisonous swamp” and has got an “insidious disease”, and has dived to the bottom “to die in the dark”. So he should not worry about his miserable condition because Gregers would see that Hjalmar rises to the surface again.

Gregers means that Hjalmar is hiding himself from the reality of life like the wild duck by diving to the bottom and hiding form the real life. Gregers knows Gina past but Hjalmar was unaware. Gregers compares Hjalmar to the wild duck and himself to the dog. He aims to open Hjalmar’s eyes to those facts. The wild duck becomes a symbol of Hjalmar’s life of ignorance; while Mr. Werle’s clever dog symbolizes Gregers who has resolved to awaken the ideal. The wild duck, which is lame and has a damaged wing, also symbolizes Hjalmar’s incomplete life.

The wild duck symbolizes Hedvig too. Hedvig too is an alien in this house like a wild duck. Hedvig is a product of Mr. Werle’s sport of making love to Gina. Hjalmar has been thinking her to be his own daughter. Thus there is much in common between the wild duck and Hedvig: both are a product of Mr. Werle’s sporting nature. The wild duck is lame, has a damaged wing, and is leading an incomplete and unsatisfactory life, shut within the four walls of a dark garret. Hedvig too is leading a narrow, limited kind of life, partly because she has weak eyesight and would soon become blind. Just as the wild duck has got used to its new abode, so, Hedvig is perfectly contented with her inadequate life in this house. And yet she is leading a frustrated life like that of the wild duck.

The wild duck symbolizes Old Ekdal’s life also. He used to hunt into the forest when young. Overtaken by a disaster he was jailed for some years. After his release he finds life wretched. When in garret, he imagines himself in a forest with wild animals. The same applies to Ekdal's putting on his lieutenant’s uniform at times. He is not entitled any more to wear it but he puts it on to recall the days when he was a lieutenant. These illusions are sustaining him in life which would otherwise appear to him to be not worth living. He too has become averse to reality, like the wild duck.

Gregers plays the role of a saviour, but with disastrous results. Gregers reveals the secret of Gina’s past to Hjalmar. Hjalmar’s reaction to this discloser is one of shock. On his asking Gina about her past, she confirms everything. Hjalmar’s grief knows no limits. He scolds Gina for having kept him in the dark and accuses her of deceiving him. He also comes to know that Hedvig is not his own daughter but Mr. Werle’s. Hjalmar now cannot even bear to look at Hedvig and declares his intention to leave the house. Hedvig feels miserable when she finds that she has lost Hjalmar’s love. Gregers advises Hedvig to shoot the wild duck in order to make a sacrifice to please her father but Hedvig shoots herself. Gregers had aimed at a reconstruction of Gregers’ domestic life but he succeeds only in wrecking a young life.

The wild duck also reflects Ibsen’s personality when he wrote the play. Ibsen wants us to know that he has now forgotten to live a wild life; he has, like the wild duck, grown plump and tame and contented with his limited life. Ibsen must have asked himself at the time of writing this play how far the artist shuts himself off from life. Both Hjalmar and Gregers represent different aspects of Ibsen: on the one hand, the evader of reality, and on the other, the impractical idealist who bothers mankind with his claims of the ideal because he has a sick conscience.

The Wild Duck is a perfectly suitable title for this play. The wild duck is the most important person in the story; it is Hedvig’s dearest possession; it is looked after by Old Ekdal with great care. Old Ekdal has provided a water-trough for the wild duck to splash about. Hjalmar too is deeply attached to the bird till he learns that the man to whom it had originally belonged had seduced Gina. Hedvig’s sacrifice would have been great if she had shot the wild duck, but Hedvig makes an even greater sacrifice of her own life. In any case the wild duck is the central symbol in the play, and round the wild duck the plot hinges.

The Wild Duck: Quotations

Werle: Some people in this world only need to get a couple of slugs in them and they go plunging right down to the depths, and they never come up again.

Gina: Is Gregers still as awful as ever.

Hjalmar: She’s the only one, yes. She’s our greatest joy in life, and … she’s also our deepest sorrow, Gregers.

Ekdal: Felling, eh? …….. That’s a dangerous business, that. That brings trouble. The forests avenge themselves.

Ekdal: She did that. Always do that, wild ducks do. Go plunging right to the bottom … as deep as they can get, my dear sir … hold on with their beaks to the weeds and stuff … all other mess you find down there. Then they never come up again.

Gregers: So time stands still in there … besides the wild duck.

Hedvig: But she’s completely cut off from her friends. And then everything about the wild duck is so mysterious. Nobody really knows her; and nobody knows where she’s from either.

Hjalmar: Good Lord, you mustn’t ask me about details like dates. An invention is something you can never be completely master of. It’s largely a matter of inspiration ... of intuition … and it’s pretty nearly impossible to predict when that will come.

Relling: Personality? Him! If he ever showed any signs of anything as abnormal as a personality, it was all thoroughly cleared out of him, root and branch, when he was still a lad – that I can assure you.

Relling: I’m afraid not; I don’t give secret like that away to quacks. … But it’s a tried and tested method; I have used it on Molvik as well. I have made him a ‘demonic’. That’s the particular cure I had to apply to him.

Relling: While I remember, Mr. Werle junior – don’t use this fancy word ‘ideals’; we’ve got a plain word that’s good enough: ‘lies’.

Gregers: Dr. Relling, I shall not rest until I have rescued Hjalmar Ekdal from your clutches!

Relling: So much the worse for him. Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.

Gregers: Ah, if only you’d had your eyes opened to what really makes life worth while! If you had the genuine, joyous, courageous spirit of self-sacrifice, then you would see how quickly he would come back to you. But I still have faith in you, Hedvig.

Gregers: If you are right and I am wrong, life will no longer be worth living.

Gregers: Hedvig has not died in vain. Didn’t you see how grief brought out what was noblest in him?

Relling: Oh, life wouldn’t be too bad if only these blessed people who come canvassing their ideals round everybody’s door would leave us poor souls in peace.

Juno and the Paycock: Jingoism

Sean O’Casey was born in 1818 and died in 1964. So it makes him a contemporary of T. S. Eliot. The play has been written on the background of Irish Civil War, which has been going for centuries. There are many faction involved in the play.

There are the free staters,
There are also those who demand have ruled Ireland within the authority of English parliament
There are the unionists, who want unity with min Ireland.

Main Ireland got independence after the First World War Ireland is divided into Southern and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is now called Ulster. The people of main Ireland are Roman Catholic. The majority of Ulster is Anglican. So there is political and religious problem.

Either to unite with main Ireland

OR

To unite with England

OR

To be total independent was the main problem or enigma

“Juno and the Paycock” also has, like O'Casey’s other plays, war at its background. O'Casey is very much against the war fought under any pretext. He closely observed how war affects the society and the individuals, how war crushes the economy and the system, how war disintegrates the family structure, how it demolishes the psychology of the people and how it creates generation gap. Thus O’Casey condemns the exploitation of man-by-man, man’s inhuman treatment towards man, man’s barbarity against man. The play begins with Mary's reading a newspaper. The very first information we get form the play is of a gruesome murder.

On a little bye-road, out beyant Finglas, he was found.

O'Casey evidently has sympathies for the poverty stricken and war ridden Irish society. There is nothing predicable in Ireland. Everyone is in extreme danger. They are hanging between life and death. There are lots of references in the play regarding Ireland's religious and political history. Irish makes many attempts to shake off the foreign yoke. Foreigners are very inhuman to them. In 1916, hundred of casualties and the execution of the leaders are faultless examples of that. But this inhumanity is not just caused by foreigners. The real problem arises with the killing of Irishman by Irishman. War, or to be more exact, a civil war has no solution to man’s problem; rather it aggravates the miseries of victims. The civil war is not confined to two fractions rather it expands to the whole Ireland. The death of Robbie Tancred and Johnny Boyle are perfect examples of that. Johnny, who has lost an arm and has a hip shattered in a fight, is at the end dragged away and shot by his former republican commanders because he betrayed comrade Tancred. All this shows that Ireland is preying on herself. Earlier Johnny had undoubtedly behaved heroically but the hellish civil war compelled him to betray his comrade. This means the stupid civil war is turning into traitors because of its nothingness and hollowness purposelessness. Juno emerges as a great humanist and realist. She is a true pacifist and is against man’s inhumanity against man. She has an acute observation and knows about the truth of things. She is very realist and anti-idealist. When Mary emphasizes that one ought to stand by one’s principle being “a principle’s a principle” and tries to justify her call of strike, Juno very realistically remarks:

When the employers sacrifice wan victim, the Trades Unions go wan betther be sacrificin’ a hundred.

Being a realist, she has a firm belief in the idea that the fault does not lie with the stars but with the people themselves. She says:

Ah, what can God do agen the’ stupidity o’ men!

The opportunist class represented by Nugent has also been condemned. According to O'Casey this opportunist class is more harmful than even the combatants. They themselves become the cause of civil war and play a double role. Nugent wants other to respect “Irish people national regard for the dead” but stitches suits for the civil guards at night. The domestic tragedy, which mainly springs out form pregnancy, is due to the inhumanity of the male. That male chauvinist society cannot tolerate a mistake by a young girl. Whereas on the other hand the idiots like captain Boyle and Joxer Daly are left unaccountable. Hope for a good time is only due to the courage of women. They are very humane and cooperative. O'Casey’s criticism of life is conveyed through the repetition of significance of deep dialogues. The words of Mrs. Tancred lamentation are pungently recorded by Juno, when she too, is mourning over a slain son.

Sacred Heart of the Crucified Jesus, take away our hearts o’ stone….....an’ give us hearts o’ flesh! ….....Take away this murdherin’ hate … an’ give us Thine own eternal love!

Against the vanity and moral bankruptcy of masculine character, O'Casey elevates the mother figure when Juno plans to work for Mary and her unborn child. Juno suffers the pain of existence but she sustains life. Thus, we see O'Casey very beautifully depicts man’s inhumanity towards man. O’Casey is at heart a humanist and a pacifist. He considers life mere inevitable and all idealism is subservient to it. He condemns all principles and gives one and the only principle to live all the days of life peacefully.

Death of a Salesman: Time Motif

Half way through the first act, the reader hears something about a brother Ben. Willy wishes that he had gone to Alaska with his brother Ben. At the same time he speaks of Ben’s having walked into a jungle and when he came out Ben was rich. In the next speech, Happy tells his dad that he is going to retire him for life. Willy flares up and tells both his boys that:

… the woods are burning. I can't even drive a car.

All of these ideas and images emerge into one. Ben becomes Willy’s ideal. Here was a man who had nothing and ended up rich. The jungle that Ben walked into is symbolically the jungle of life.

Thus when Willy says that the woods are burning, he mans that life is closing in on him. Whereas, Ben conquered the jungle of life, Willy can only be trapped by the burning woods. Consequently the phrase “the woods are burning” suggests that time is running out on Willy. He no longer has enough time to do anything. This concept of time hurrying past man is again emphasized by Ben. Every time we see Ben, he has his watch out and keeps saying that he has only a few more minutes or that he has to catch a train. He is always on the move while Willy remains stagnantly still. What Ben stands for is captured in his phrase:

“When I was seventeen, I walked into the jungle and when I was twenty-one I walked out … And by God I was rich”.

Here was a man who utilized time while time has simply passed Willy by.

When Howard fires Willy, he has nowhere to turn. Now the woods are really burning. He must now rely upon boys, but his boys are not reliable. So when Biff tries to tell Willy the truth, Willy maintains that he is not interested in the past.

“… because the woods are burning, boys, you understand? There’s a big blaze going on all around. I was fired today.”

Willy then has spent his life “rising up a zero” and now there is no place for him to go. Therefore he conceives of a way out of his burning woods. This involves suicide. Through suicide he would be able to leave his sons twenty thousand dollars. But as Ben says:

“It does take a great kind of a man to crack the jungle”.

But here the jungle is no longer the jungle of life; instead it is the jungle of death. This jungle “is dark but full of diamonds”: that is, the diamonds represent the insurance money. And to Ben frantic calling that it is “Time, William, time”. Willy drives off to his own death.

Therefore, for Willy, the jungle was a life that he could never conquer and instead it became a type of burning woods that was constantly closing in upon him. But in the end, when time had completely overtaken him, the jungle became the darkness of death which wily thought he could mistakenly conquer by suicide.

Death of a Salesman: Symbolism

Symbolism is a technique, employed by a large number of playwrights, in which an object or a metaphor is described having meaning and implications beyond its apparent meaning.

Many of the symbols used in “Death of a Salesman” have specifically American connotations. The play opens with reference to cars. Caris an American symbol of individual mobility, freedom and social status. But Miller uses it in a negative and ironic manner. In the very beginning of the play Willy comes home exhausted with driving. His exhaustion with driving symbolizes his tiredness from life. The car is going out of control. This symbolism gets its final intensity in the climax of the play when Willy drives his car out of the house into darkness and death.

Even in the setting of the play symbolism and expressionistic technique are obvious. There is an angry glow of orange in the environment in which the apartment houses are bathed. When Willy is lost in his memories of the past, the house is draped in a mantle of green. Similarly when Biff and Happy picks up two women at the restaurant callously ignoring their father, the stage directions demand “lucid red”. Finally when Willy appears to be at his wit’s end trying to sow seeds, the stage is flooded with “blue” simultaneously suggesting moonlight and his desperate mood.

There are references to stockings. These references have a narrative and psychological function in the play. Stockings symbolize Willy’s guilt. Willy gives new stockings to the woman as a presents while his wife has mend for her old stockings. Stockings make Willy nervous and his reaction is sudden.

“Will you stop mending stockings? At least while I am in the house. It gets me nervous.”

Even the sound of flute in the play is symbolic. The play opens with a melodyof the flute. Here is a symbolism that subtly supports the meaning of the play. As the play closes with Linda leaving Willy’s grave the only thing left on the stage is the sound of the flute playing a rather sad dirge. Thus the melody of flute opens and closes the play or it may be said to encompass the entire drama. But the use of symbol of flute becomes more important when we come to know that Willy’s father used to make and sell flutes. In this way he was also a salesman but he used to sell flutes prepared by his own hands, whereas, Willy sells wares of some other person.

Half way through the first act, the reader hears something about Willy’s brother Ben. Willy wishes that he had gone to Alaska with his brother Ben. At the same time he speaks of Ben’s having walked into a jungle and when Ben came out he was rich. Happy tells his dad that he is going to retire him for life. Willy flares up and tells both the boys that:

“Woods are burning. I can't even drive a car.”

Ben becomes Willy’s ideal. Ben is a man who has nothing in the beginning but he ends up in riches. The Jungle than Ben walks into is symbolically the jungle of life. But the jungle becomes the woods for Willy. Thus when Willy says that ‘the woods are burning’ he means that life is closing in on him. Whereas, Ben conquered the jungle of life, Willy was trapped by the burning wood. Consequently the phrase ‘the woods are burning’ suggest that time is running out on Willy. He no longer has enough time to do anything. This concept of time is again emphasized by Ben. Every time we see Ben, he has his watch out and keeps saying that he has only a few minutes or that he has to catch a train. He is always on the move while Willy remains stagnant still.

The temporary optimism at the beginning of Act II is conveyed partly by references to seeds and tools. Willy imagines that he can make seeds grow in, but he can’t do so because of the hardness of earth. This implies that his life is a barren thing. But it is already too late and his gestures of planting in the hope of future growth are desperate and futile.

Finally it is possible to treat Willy as a symbolic character. Willy may be regarded as an American everyman. Willy is much more emphatically a representative figure, than any of Miller’s other characters. This means that Willy’s problems are much less personal dilemma than they are public issues.

Death of a Salesman: Social Drama

Arthur Miller's “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.

The play cannot attain the stature of a genuine tragedy because of its extreme social awareness nor can it be a social drama because it is fitting to call it a social tragedy and it is. Social tragedy is a modern kind of tragedy in which the conflict between the central protagonist and society is depicted and the protagonist becomes the victim of society’s ill-treatment.

Arthur Miller in his drama “Death of a Salesman” depicts the conflict within the family and the conflict between protagonist and the society. He is misfit in the capitalist society. He is the victim of a social injustice and this social injustice causes his tragedy.

Willy Loman, the protagonist, has been working in a company for almost thirsty-six years. He introduces the firm in many cities. He often says to his colleagues that he is a vital man for the firm. It is only due to Willy's effort that the firm has been introduced in many cities of America.

Willy Loman in his life, keeping David Singleman’s charming personality as a model before him, dreams of success which is for a big house, a beautiful car and a good job which earns him a lot of money. But despite his head-long service for thirty-six years, he is unable to achieve his goals of success. He is misfit in the capitalistic society in which for being successful one has to be practical and hardworking, whereas, a dreamer like Willy Loman is sure to be a victim of failure. At the age of sixty three he is working on commission and his salary is so little that he cannot pay his installments of insurance and of other households. He often has to borrow money from Charley to pay his installments.

His own failure in achieving his goal of success and his son’s failure in getting settled is frustrating and maddening him. He is in the verge of mental collapse. He cannot concentrate on his car driving and smashes his car for two or three times. Willy makes up his mind to see his employer, Howard, and ask him to give him a non-traveling job in New York and to increase his salary.

He considers himself a vital man for the firm but he is not aware of the fact that in the capitalistic society a man is needed so long as a man can raise profit for the firm. The sooner he is incapable of raising benefit for the firm, the sooner he is fired out. Willy realizes the fact when instead of considering his plea on the humanitarian grounds, Howard fires him out. Howard totally ignores his forty years service for the firm. As Willy can no more raise benefit to the firm so he is no more wanted at all. Howard says:

I cannot take blood from a stone.

Willy realizes that he is not a vital man at all for the firm and speaks the beautiful line, a satire on capitalistic society, that these capitalistic profiteers eat the fruit and throw the peels away.

To conclude we can rightly say that “Death of a Salesman” is a modern social tragedy in which conflict between man and society has been depicted. Willy Loman, the protagonist, becomes the victim of social injustice which compels him to commit suicide.