Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
6. What do you think is the content of this poem?
Ezra pound once said, “Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.” The ways in which writers intensify their language and “charge” it with meaning are many. First, they need to attend to the basic ele- ments of literature because, like architecture, a work of literature is, in one sense, a construction of separable elements. The details of a scene, a character or event, or a group of symbols can be conceived of as the bricks in the wall of a literary structure. If one of these details is imperfectly perceived, our understanding of the function of that detail—and, in turn, of the total structure—will be incomplete. The theme (main idea) of a literary work usually involves a structural decision, comparable to an architectural decision about the kind of space being enclosed. Decisions about the sound of the language, the characters, the events, the setting are comparable to the decisions regarding the materials, size, shape, and landscape of architecture. It is helpful to think of literature as works composed of elements that can be discussed individually in order to gain a more thorough perception of them. And it is equally important to realize that the discussion of these individual elements leads to a fuller understanding of the whole structure. Details are orga- nized into parts, and these, in turn, are organized into structure.
Consider Amy Lowell’s 1919 poem:
VENUS TRANSIENS*
Tell me, Was Venus more beautiful Than you are, *Amy Lowell, “Venus Transiens” from Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, ed. Harriet Monroe, April 1915. jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 165 12/11/17 11:53 AM 166 CHApTER 7 When she topped The crinkled waves, Drifting shoreward On her plaited shell? Was Botticelli’s vision Fairer than mine; And were the painted rosebuds He tossed his lady, Of better worth Than the words I blow about you To cover your too great loveliness As with a gauze Of misted silver? For me, You stand poised In the blue and buoyant air, Cinctured by bright winds, Treading the sunlight And the waves which precede you Ripple and stir The sands at my feet. Amy Lowell was one of the Imagist School of poets. Imagists relied less on the kind of discourse that John Masefield employed and more on the effort to paint a picture. The references to “crinkled waves,” “plaited shell,” “painted rosebuds,” and “a gauze / Of misted silver” all demand visualization on the part of the reader. The poem begins with three rhetorical questions that the imagery indirectly answers. The reference in the title is to the Birth of Venus, the Renaissance painting of Venus, goddess of love, standing on a seashell on the edge of the ocean, by Sandro Botticelli. Botticelli’s Venus is a nude idealizing beauty. Lowell imagines her lover, Amy Dwyer Russell, with whom she lived from 1912 to 1925, as Venus. The power of imagery in “You stand poised / In the blue and buoyant air, / Cinctured by bright winds / Treading the sunlight” conjures a picture of beauty and desire, emblematic of the goddess of love and the idealization of the living woman to whom the poem is addressed. Our structural emphasis in the following pages will be on the narrative—both the episodic narrative, in which all or most of the parts are loosely interrelated, and the organic narrative, in which the parts are tightly interrelated. Once we have explored some of the basic structures of literature, we will examine some of the more important details. In everyday language situations, what we say is usually what we mean. But in a work of literature, language is rarely that simple. Language has denotation, a literal level where words mean what they obviously say, and connotation, a subtler level where words mean more than they obviously say. When we are being denotative, we say the rose is sick and mean nothing more than that. But if we are using language connotatively, we might mean any of several things by such a statement. When the poet William Blake says the rose is sick (see “The Sick Rose” later in this chapter), he is describing a symbolic rose, something very different from a literal rose. Blake may mean that the rose is morally sick, spiritually defective, and that in some ways we are like the rose. The image, metaphor, symbol, irony, and diction (word choices) are the main details jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 166 12/11/17 11:53 AM 167
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of literary language that will be examined. All are found in poetry, fiction, drama, and even the essay. Literary StructureS The Narrative and the Narrator The narrative is a story told to an audience by a teller controlling the order of events and the emphasis those events receive. Most narratives concentrate upon the events. But some narratives have little action: They reveal depth of character through responses to action. Sometimes the narrator is a character in the fiction; sometimes the narrator pretends an awareness of an audience other than the reader. However, the author controls the narrator; and the narrator controls the reader. participate with the following narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
ULYSSES
It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel; I will drink Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy’d Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea. I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honor’d of them all,-- And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains; but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,-- jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 167 12/11/17 11:53 AM 168 CHApTER 7 Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill This labor, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me,-- That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks; The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends. ’T is not too late to seek a newer world. push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,-- One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. PERCEPTION KEY “Ulysses” 1. Who narrates this poem? 2. What do the events of the poem reveal about the narrator? 3. To whom is the narrator telling this story? Why? 4. Did the narrator have an exciting life? Is having an exciting life important for a full understanding of the poem? 5. What is the narrator telling us? 6. Where is the narrator while telling this story? The narrator of “Ulysses” is Ulysses, the hero of Homer’s Odyssey. Ulysses is the Roman name for the Greek hero Odysseus. In Homer, Ulysses spends ten jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 168 12/11/17 11:53 AM 169
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years at the battle of Troy and another ten years coming home to Ithaca to his wife, penelope. At the time of Tennyson’s poem, the great hero is an old man, but he is tired of staying at home and anxious to test his mettle—to see if he can live a life of adventure. For Ulysses the question is whether he can find a way to make life worth living. Do you admire Ulysses for demanding that he go off again on an adventure, or do you think he should stay at home with his wife, who waited twenty years for him? How do you think Tennyson would have answered that question? The Episodic Narrative An episodic narrative describes one of the oldest kinds of literature, embodied by epics such as Homer’s Odyssey. We are aware of the overall structure of the story centering on the adventures of Odysseus, but each adventure is almost a complete entity in itself. We develop a clear sense of the character of Odysseus as we follow him in his adventures, but this does not always happen in episodic literature. The adventures sometimes are not only completely disconnected from one another, but the thread that is intended to connect everything—the personality of the protago- nist (the main character)—also may not be strong enough to keep things together. Sometimes the character may even seem to be a different person from one episode to the next. This is often the case in oral literature, compositions by people who told or sang traditional stories rather than by people who wrote their narratives. In oral literature, the tellers or singers may have gathered adventures from many sources and joined them in one long narrative. The likelihood of disconnectedness in such a situation is quite high. But disconnectedness is sometimes desirable. It may offer compression, speed of pacing, and variety of action that sustains attention. Some of the most famous episodic narratives are novels: Fielding’s Tom Jones, Defoe’s Moll Flanders, and Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March. The following excerpt is an episode from Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. CHApTER VIII. OF THE GOOD FORTUNE WHICH THE VALIANT DON QUIXOTE HAD IN THE TERRIBLE AND UNDREAMT-OF ADVENTURE OF THE WINDMILLS, WITH OTHER OCCURRENCES WORTHY TO BE FITLY RECORDED At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that there are on plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire, “Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God’s good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth.” “What giants?” said Sancho panza. “Those thou seest there,” answered his master, “with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long.” “Look, your worship,” said Sancho; “what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go.” “It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that thou art not used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.” jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 169 12/11/17 11:53 AM 170 CHApTER 7 So saying, he gave the spur to his steed Rocinante, heedless of the cries his squire Sancho sent after him, warning him that most certainly they were windmills and not giants he was going to attack. He, however, was so positive they were giants that he neither heard the cries of Sancho, nor perceived, near as he was, what they were, but made at them shouting, “Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you.” A slight breeze at this moment sprang up, and the great sails began to move, seeing which Don Quixote exclaimed, “Though ye flourish more arms than the giant Briareus, ye have to reckon with me.” So saying, and commending himself with all his heart to his lady Dulcinea, imploring her to support him in such a peril, with lance in rest and covered by his buckler, he charged at Rocinante’s fullest gallop and fell upon the first mill that stood in front of him; but as he drove his lance-point into the sail the wind whirled it round with such force that it shivered the lance to pieces, sweeping with it horse and rider, who went rolling over on the plain, in a sorry condition. Sancho hastened to his assistance as fast as his ass could go, and when he came up found him unable to move, with such a shock had Rocinante fallen with him. “God bless me!” said Sancho, “did I not tell your worship to mind what you were about, for they were only windmills? and no one could have made any mistake about it but one who had something of the same kind in his head.” “Hush, friend Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “the fortunes of war more than any other are liable to frequent fluctuations; and moreover I think, and it is the truth, that that same sage Friston who carried off my study and books, has turned these giants into mills in order to rob me of the glory of vanquishing them, such is the enmity he bears me; but in the end his wicked arts will avail but little against my good sword.” “God order it as he may,” said Sancho panza, and helping him to rise got him up again on Rocinante, whose shoulder was half out; and then, discussing the late adventure, they followed the road to puerto Lapice, for there, said Don Quixote, they could not fail to find adventures in abundance and variety, as it was a great thoroughfare. For all that, he was much grieved at the loss of his lance, and saying so to his squire, he added, “I remember having read how a Spanish knight, Diego perez de Vargas by name, having broken his sword in battle, tore from an oak a ponderous bough or branch, and with it did such things that day, and pounded so many Moors, that he got the surname of Machuca, and he and his descendants from that day forth were called Vargas y Machuca. I mention this because from the first oak I see I mean to rend such another branch, large and stout like that, with which I am determined and resolved to do such deeds that thou mayest deem thyself very fortunate in being found worthy to come and see them, and be an eyewitness of things that will with difficulty be believed.” “Be that as God will,” said Sancho, “I believe it all as your worship says it; but straighten yourself a little, for you seem all on one side, may be from the shaking of the fall.” “That is the truth,” said Don Quixote, “and if I make no complaint of the pain it is because knights-errant are not permitted to complain of any wound, even though their bowels be coming out through it.” “If so,” said Sancho, “I have nothing to say; but God knows I would rather your worship complained when anything ailed you. For my part, I confess I must complain however small the ache may be; unless this rule about not complaining extends to the squires of knights-errant also.” Don Quixote could not help laughing at his squire’s simplicity, and he assured him he might complain whenever and however he chose, just as he liked, for, so far, he had never read of anything to the contrary in the order of knighthood. —tr. John Ormsby jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 170 12/11/17 11:53 AM 171
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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra called this episode, the seventh in the first book of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, “The Terrifying Adventure of the Windmills.” It is one of more than a hundred episodes in the book, and it is the most memorable and most famous. The excerpt here is only a small part of that episode, but it gives a clear indication of the nature of the entire book. Quixote has driven himself a bit crazy through his reading of the adventures of the old-style knights and has imagined himself to be one. Therefore, if he is a knight he must have adventures, so he goes out to seek his fortune and runs into what he thinks are giants with long arms. Killing them will make him a hero, and he imagines that they guard a fortune that will pay the way for the rest of their adventures. Don Quixote rides the aging Rocinante and dreams of his heroine, the “lady Dul- cinea,” a local girl who hardly knows he is alive. Quixote’s squire, Sancho panza, is a simple man riding an ass. As the episodes go on he longs more and more for home but cannot persuade his aging and frail companion to stop looking for more adventures. Since Cervantes wrote this book in the seventeenth century (contemporary with Shakespeare), literature has been drenched with adventurers and their sidekicks. Hundreds of novels, films, television shows, and radio plays have featured the pat- tern of the heroic avenger righting wrongs with the aid of a devoted assistant. Sher- lock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Batman and Robin are only a few of the incredible number spawned by the genius of Cervantes. The epi- sodic narrative works best when the character of the protagonist is clearly portrayed and consistent throughout. Don Quixote is such a character, so clearly portrayed he has become a part of folklore. The Organic Narrative The term organic implies a close relationship of all the details in a narrative. Unlike episodic narratives, the organic narrative unifies both the events of the narrative and the nature of the character or characters in it. Everything relates to the center of the narrative in a meaningful way so that there is a consistency to the story that is not broken into separable narratives. An organic narrative can be a narrative poem or a prose narrative of any length, so long as the material in the narrative coheres and produces a sense of unity. The following short story, Maxim Gorky’s “Her Lover,” is first-person narration, in which the narrative is limited to what the unnamed narrator has been told by a friend, who, essentially, is also an unnamed narrator. The student tells us the PERCEPTION KEY Episodic Narrative: Don Quixote 1. For which character is this action an adventure? 2. What tells you that there will be more adventures? 3. How well do we know the personality of Quixote? Of Sancho Panza? 4. What is the subject matter of the narrative? What is its content? 5. Determine how much Cervantes is emphasizing the action at the expense of devel- oping the characters. Is action or psychology more important? jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 171 12/11/17 11:53 AM 172 CHApTER 7 story he heard about Teresa, an unfortunate woman living alone and friendless in the same kind of simplicity as the narrator. In the course of the story the narrator reveals that his sense of class superiority is slowly challenged when he understands the complete dimension of the circumstances of Teresa’s life and her need for love. As you read, consider how the characters relate to one another and how Gorky uses the details of the narrative to build sympathy for Teresa’s situation.
HER LOVER
An acquaintance of mine once told me the following story. When I was a student at Moscow I happened to live alongside one of those ladies whose repute is questionable. She was a pole, and they called her Teresa. She was a tallish, powerfully-built brunette, with black, bushy eyebrows and a large coarse face as if carved out by a hatchet—the bestial gleam of her dark eyes, her thick bass voice, her cabman-like gait and her immense muscular vigour, worthy of a fishwife, inspired me with horror. I lived on the top flight and her garret was opposite to mine. I never left my door open when I knew her to be at home. But this, after all, was a very rare occurrence. Sometimes I chanced to meet her on the staircase or in the yard, and she would smile upon me with a smile which seemed to me to be sly and cynical. Occasionally, I saw her drunk, with bleary eyes, tousled hair, and a particularly hideous grin. On such occasions she would speak to me. “How d’ye do, Mr. Student!” and her stupid laugh would still further intensify my loathing of her. I should have liked to have changed my quarters in order to have avoided such encounters and greetings; but my little chamber was a nice one, and there was such a wide view from the window, and it was always so quiet in the street below—so I endured. And one morning I was sprawling on my couch, trying to find some sort of excuse for not attending my class, when the door opened, and the bass voice of Teresa the loathsome resounded from my threshold: “Good health to you, Mr. Student!” “What do you want?” I said. I saw that her face was confused and supplicatory . . . It was a very unusual sort of face for her. “Sir! I want to beg a favour of you. Will you grant it me?” I lay there silent, and thought to myself: “Gracious! . . . Courage, my boy!” “I want to send a letter home, that’s what it is,” she said; her voice was beseeching, soft, timid. “Deuce take you!” I thought; but up I jumped, sat down at my table, took a sheet of paper, and said: “Come here, sit down, and dictate!” She came, sat down very gingerly on a chair, and looked at me with a guilty look. “Well, to whom do you want to write?” “To Boleslav Kashput, at the town of Svieptziana, on the Warsaw Road . . .” “Well, fire away!” “My dear Boles . . . my darling . . . my faithful lover. May the Mother of God protect thee! Thou heart of gold, why hast thou not written for such a long time to thy sorrowing little dove, Teresa?” I very nearly burst out laughing. “A sorrowing little dove!” more than five feet high, with fists a stone and more in weight, and as black a face as if the little dove had lived all its life in a chimney, and had never once washed itself! Restraining myself somehow, I asked: “Who is this Bolest?” “Boles, Mr. Student,” she said, as if offended with me for blundering over the name, “he is Boles—my young man.” jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 172 12/11/17 11:53 AM 173
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“Young man!” “Why are you so surprised, sir? Cannot I, a girl, have a young man?” She? A girl? Well! “Oh, why not?” I said. “All things are possible. And has he been your young man long?” “Six years.” “Oh, ho!” I thought. “Well, let us write your letter . . .” And I tell you plainly that I would willingly have changed places with this Boles if his fair correspondent had been not Teresa but something less than she. “I thank you most heartily, sir, for your kind services,” said Teresa to me, with a curtsey. "perhaps I can show you some service, eh?" “No, I most humbly thank you all the same.” “perhaps, sir, your shirts or your trousers may want a little mending?” I felt that this mastodon in petticoats had made me grow quite red with shame, and I told her pretty sharply that I had no need whatever of her services. She departed. A week or two passed away. It was evening. I was sitting at my window whistling and thinking of some expedient for enabling me to get away from myself. I was bored; the weather was dirty. I didn’t want to go out, and out of sheer ennui I began a course of self-analysis and reflection. This also was dull enough work, but I didn’t care about doing anything else. Then the door opened. Heaven be praised! Some one came in. “Oh, Mr. Student, you have no pressing business, I hope?” It was Teresa. Humph! “No. What is it?” “I was going to ask you, sir, to write me another letter.” “Very well! To Boles, eh?” “No, this time it is from him.” “Wha-at?” “Stupid that I am! It is not for me, Mr. Student, I beg your pardon. It is for a friend of mine, that is to say, not a friend but an acquaintance—a man acquaintance. He has a sweetheart just like me here, Teresa. That’s how it is. Will you, sir, write a letter to this Teresa?” I looked at her—her face was troubled, her fingers were trembling. I was a bit fogged at first—and then I guessed how it was. “Look here, my lady,” I said, “there are no Boleses or Teresas at all, and you’ve been telling me a pack of lies. Don’t you come sneaking about me any longer. I have no wish whatever to cultivate your acquaintance. Do you understand?” And suddenly she grew strangely terrified and distraught; she began to shift from foot to foot without moving from the place, and spluttered comically, as if she wanted to say something and couldn’t. I waited to see what would come of all this, and I saw and felt that, apparently, I had made a great mistake in suspecting her of wishing to draw me from the path of righteousness. It was evidently something very different. “Mr. Student!” she began, and suddenly, waving her hand, she turned abruptly towards the door and went out. I remained with a very unpleasant feeling in my mind. I listened. Her door was flung violently to—plainly the poor wench was very angry . . . I thought it over, and resolved to go to her, and, inviting her to come in here, write everything she wanted. I entered her apartment. I looked round. She was sitting at the table, leaning on her elbows, with her head in her hands. “Listen to me,” I said. Now, whenever I come to this point in my story, I always feel horribly awkward and idiotic. Well, well! “Listen to me,” I said. jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 173 12/11/17 11:53 AM 174 CHApTER 7 She leaped from her seat, came towards me with flashing eyes, and laying her hands on my shoulders, began to whisper, or rather to hum in her peculiar bass voice: "Look you, now! It’s like this. There’s no Boles at all, and there’s no Teresa either. But what’s that to you? Is it a hard thing for you to draw your pen over paper? Eh? Ah, and you, too! Still such a little fair-haired boy! There’s nobody at all, neither Boles, nor Teresa, only me. There you have it, and much good may it do you!" “pardon me!” said I, altogether flabbergasted by such a reception, “what is it all about? There’s no Boles, you say?” “No. So it is.” “And no Teresa either?” “And no Teresa. I’m Teresa.” I didn’t understand it at all. I fixed my eyes upon her, and tried to make out which of us was taking leave of his or her senses. But she went again to the table, searched about for something, came back to me, and said in an offended tone: “If it was so hard for you to write to Boles, look, there’s your letter, take it! Others will write for me.” I looked. In her hand was my letter to Boles. phew! “Listen, Teresa! What is the meaning of all this? Why must you get others to write for you when I have already written it, and you haven’t sent it?” “Sent it where?” “Why, to this—Boles.” “There’s no such person.” I absolutely did not understand it. There was nothing for me but to spit and go. Then she explained. “What is it?” she said, still offended. “There’s no such person, I tell you,” and she extended her arms as if she herself did not understand why there should be no such person. “But I wanted him to be . . . Am I then not a human creature like the rest of them? Yes, yes, I know, I know, of course . . . Yet no harm was done to any one by my writing to him that I can see . . .” “pardon me—to whom?” “To Boles, of course.” “But he doesn’t exist.” “Alas! alas! But what if he doesn’t? He doesn’t exist, but he might! I write to him, and it looks as if he did exist. And Teresa—that’s me, and he replies to me, and then I write to him again . . .” I understood at last. And I felt so sick, so miserable, so ashamed, somehow. Alongside of me, not three yards away, lived a human creature who had nobody in the world to treat her kindly, affectionately, and this human being had invented a friend for herself! “Look, now! you wrote me a letter to Boles, and I gave it to some one else to read it to me; and when they read it to me I listened and fancied that Boles was there. And I asked you to write me a letter from Boles to Teresa—that is to me. When they write such a letter for me, and read it to me, I feel quite sure that Boles is there. And life grows easier for me in consequence.” “Deuce take you for a blockhead!” said I to myself when I heard this. And from thenceforth, regularly, twice a week, I wrote a letter to Boles, and an answer from Boles to Teresa. I wrote those answers well . . . She, of course, listened to them, and wept like anything, roared, I should say, with her bass voice. And in return for my thus moving her to tears by real letters from the imaginary Boles, she began to mend the holes I had in my socks, shirts, and other articles of clothing. Subsequently, about three months after this history began, they put her in prison for something or other. No doubt by this time she is dead. jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 174 12/11/17 11:53 AM 175
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My acquaintance shook the ash from his cigarette, looked pensively up at the sky, and thus concluded: Well, well, the more a human creature has tasted of bitter things the more it hungers after the sweet things of life. And we, wrapped round in the rags of our virtues, and regarding others through the mist of our self-sufficiency, and persuaded of our universal impeccability, do not understand this. And the whole thing turns out pretty stupidly—and very cruelly. The fallen classes, we say. And who are the fallen classes, I should like to know? They are, first of all, people with the same bones, flesh, and blood and nerves as ourselves. We have been told this day after day for ages. And we actually listen—and the devil only knows how hideous the whole thing is. Or are we completely depraved by the loud sermonising of humanism? In reality, we also are fallen folks, and, so far as I can see, very deeply fallen into the abyss of self-sufficiency and the conviction of our own superiority. But enough of this. It is all as old as the hills—so old that it is a shame to speak of it. Very old indeed—yes, that’s what it is! —Anonymous translator PERCEPTION KEY Narrator in “Her Lover” 1. Who narrates the story? 2. What is the attitude of the student narrator? Why does he hold the social views that he begins the story with? 3. How does the narrator present Teresa to us? What does he expect our view of Teresa will be? 4. How many levels of narrative are in this story? 5. Gorky reveals a change in the narrator’s views about Teresa and humanity. When does that change begin to take place? 6. To what extent do you as a reader find yourself accepting the student’s point of view in the beginning of the story? What change does this story effect in you? 7. Do you believe that the story itself comes from “an acquaintance,” or is it the pri- mary narrator’s story? The first-level narrator is first person, but we do not know who he is. The sec- ond-level narrator is known only as “Mr. Student,” which tells us that he has had little interaction with Teresa but that Teresa knows he can write, which she can- not. The social status of the two characters in the story is established in the first few words. The young student regards the older woman with some contempt. The student says she is a “powerfully-built brunette, with black, bushy eyebrows and a large coarse face as if carved out by a hatchet—the bestial gleam of her dark eyes, her thick bass voice, her cabman-like gait and her immense muscular vigour, worthy of a fishwife.” She “inspired me with horror.” The narrator expects his listener to picture Teresa and agree with his view of her. Gorky’s use of two levels of narration has the effect of separating the observer of the original narrative from the narrator who has heard the story and passes it on to us. Therefore, there is a narrative distance on the part of the unnamed man who tells us the story—and that permits him to set the story up in a way that helps us understand better the change that happens to the characters. The unnamed nar- rator does not judge the story that Mr. Student tells about his response to Teresa’s requests. jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 175 12/11/17 11:53 AM 176 CHApTER 7 We learn very quickly that while Mr. Student thinks of himself as superior to Te- resa, she sees them as both on the same social level. She does not judge him the way he judges her. She also does not see herself as he sees herself as “a little dove.” When he reacts in astonishment at her writing a love letter, she says, “Cannot I, a girl, have a young man?” The narrator then learns that Boles has been her “young man” for six years. It is at this point that the narrator begins to alter his thinking about her. Gorky uses many narrative techniques, such as irony, comparison and contrast, and the revelation of the psychological interior of his character. We are given in- sight into Mr. Student’s thoughts, into his psychology, which is marked by a sense of superiority because of his education and Teresa’s lack of education. Mr. Student also judges Teresa on her appearance and only begins to change his feelings about her after listening to her expressing her need for love. The letters she writes to Boles never arrive. The letters she writes as Boles to herself provide her with a sense of happiness. The very act of writing has made her happy. The act of writing the letters changed Mr. Student, who said, “I understood at last. And I felt so sick, so misera- ble, so ashamed, somehow. Alongside of me, not three yards away, lived a human creature who had nobody in the world to treat her kindly, affectionately, and this human being had invented a friend for herself!” The story ends with the narrator reflecting not on Teresa and her “lover” but on himself and people like him (and us): “We also are fallen folks, and, so far as I can see, very deeply fallen into the abyss of self-sufficiency and the conviction of our own superiority.” The Quest Narrative The quest narrative is simple enough on the surface: A protagonist sets out in search of something valuable that must be found at all cost. Such, in simple terms, is the plot of almost every adventure yarn and adventure film ever written. How- ever, where most such yarns and films content themselves with erecting impossible obstacles that the heroes overcome with courage, imagination, and skill, the quest narrative has other virtues. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, the story of Ahab’s deter- mination to find and kill the white whale that took his leg, is also a quest narrative. It achieves unity by focusing on the quest and its object. But at the same time, it explores in great depth the psychology of all those who take part in the adventure. Ahab becomes a monomaniac, a man who obsessively concentrates on one thing. The narrator, Ishmael, is like an Old Testament prophet in that he has lived the experience, has looked into the face of evil, and has come back to tell the story to anyone who will listen, hoping to impart wisdom and sensibility to those who were not there. The novel is centered on the question of good and evil. When the novel begins, those values seem fairly clear and well defined. But as the novel progresses, the question becomes murkier and murkier because the actions of the novel begin a reversal of values that is often a hallmark of the quest narrative. Because most humans feel uncertain about their own nature—where they have come from, who they are, where they are going—it is natural that writers from all cultures should invent fictions that string adventures and character development on the thread of the quest for self-understanding. This quest attracts our imagi- nations and sustains our attention. Then the author can broaden and deepen the jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 176 12/11/17 11:53 AM 177
LITERATURE
meaning of the quest until it engages our concepts of ourselves. As a result, the reader usually identifies with the protagonist. The quest structure in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is so deeply rooted in the novel that the protagonist has no name. We know a great deal about him because he nar- rates the story and tells us about himself. He is black, Southern, and, as a young college student, ambitious. His earliest heroes are George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington. He craves the dignity and the opportunity he associates with their lives. But things go wrong. He is dismissed unjustly from his college in the South and must leave home to seek his fortune. He imagines himself destined for better things and eagerly pursues his fate, finding a place to live and work up North, begin- ning to find his identity as a black man. He discovers the sophisticated urban society of New York City, the political incongruities of communism, the complexities of black nationalism, and the subtleties of his relationship with white people, to whom he is an invisible man. Yet he does not hate the whites, and in his own image of himself he re- mains an invisible man. The novel ends with the protagonist in an underground place he has found and that he has lighted, by tapping the lines of the electric company, with almost 1400 electric lightbulbs. Despite this colossal illumination, he still cannot think of himself as visible. He ends his quest without discovering who he is beyond this fundamental fact: He is invisible. Black or white, we can identify in many ways with this quest, for Ellison is showing us that invisibility is in all of us. PERCEPTION KEY The Quest Narrative Read a quest narrative. Some suggestions: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; Graham Greene, The Third Man; Franz Kafka, The Castle; Albert Camus, The Stranger; and Toni Morrison, Beloved. How does the quest help the protagonist get to know himself or herself better? Does the quest help you understand yourself better? Is the quest novel you have read basically episodic or organic in structure? The quest narrative is central to American culture. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is one of the most important examples in American literature. But, whereas In- visible Man is an organic quest narrative, because the details of the novel are closely interwoven, Huckleberry Finn is an episodic quest narrative. Huck’s travels along the great Mississippi River qualify as episodic in the same sense that Don Quixote, to which this novel is closely related, is episodic. Huck is questing for freedom for Jim, but also for freedom from his own father. Like Don Quixote, Huck comes back from his quest richer in the knowledge of who he is. One might say Don Quixote’s quest is for the truth about who he is and was, since he is an old man when he begins. But Huck is an adolescent, and so his quest is for knowledge of who he is and can be. The Lyric The lyric, usually a poem, primarily reveals a limited but deep feeling about some thing or event. The lyric is often associated with the feelings of the poet, although it is not uncommon for poets to create narrators distinct from themselves and to explore hypothetical feelings, as in Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” jac16871_ch07_163-195.indd 177 12/11/17 11:53 AM 178 CHApTER 7 If we participate, we find ourselves caught up in the emotional situation of the lyric. It is usually revealed to us through a recounting of the circumstances the poet reflects on. T. S. Eliot speaks of an objective correlative: an object that correlates with the poet’s feeling and helps express tha