Stories of Literary Movements

MRS.
DALLOWAY
Virginia Woolf
Plot Overview
Mrs. Dalloway covers one day from morning to night in one womans life.
Clarissa Dalloway, an upper-class housewife, walks through her London
neighborhood to prepare for the party she will host that evening. When she
returns from flower shopping, an old suitor and friend, Peter Walsh, drops by
her house unexpectedly. The two have always judged each other harshly, and
their meeting in the present intertwines with their thoughts of the past. Years
earlier, Clarissa refused Peters marriage proposal, and Peter has never quite
gotten over it. Peter asks Clarissa if she is happy with her husband, Richard,
but before she can answer, her daughter, Elizabeth, enters the room. Peter
leaves and goes to Regents Park. He thinks about Clarissas refusal, which
still obsesses him.
The point of view then shifts to Septimus, a veteran of World War I who was
injured in trench warfare and now suffers from shell shock. Septimus and his
Italian wife, Lucrezia, pass time in Regents Park. They are waiting for
Septimuss appointment with Sir William Bradshaw, a celebrated psychiatrist.
Before the war, Septimus was a budding young poet and lover of
Shakespeare; when the war broke out, he enlisted immediately for romantic
patriotic reasons. He became numb to the horrors of war and its aftermath:
when his friend Evans died, he felt little sadness. Now Septimus sees nothing
of worth in the England he fought for, and he has lost the desire to preserve
either his society or himself. Suicidal, he believes his lack of feeling is a crime.
Clearly Septimuss experiences in the war have permanently scarred him, and
he has serious mental problems. However, Sir William does not listen to what
Septimus says and diagnoses a lack of proportion. Sir William plans to
separate Septimus from Lucrezia and send him to a mental institution in the
country.
Richard Dalloway eats lunch with Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton, members
of high society. The men help Lady Bruton write a letter to the Times, London's
largest newspaper. After lunch, Richard returns home to Clarissa with a large
bunch of roses. He intends to tell her that he loves her but finds that he
cannot, because it has been so long since he last said it. Clarissa considers
the void that exists between people, even between husband and wife. Even
though she values the privacy she is able to maintain in her marriage,
considering it vital to the success of the relationship, at the same time she
finds slightly disturbing the fact that Richard doesnt know everything about
her. Clarissa sees off Elizabeth and her history teacher, Miss Kilman, who are
going shopping. The two older women despise one another passionately, each
believing the other to be an oppressive force over Elizabeth. Meanwhile,
Septimus and Lucrezia are in their apartment, enjoying a moment of
happiness together before the men come to take Septimus to the asylum. One
of Septimuss doctors, Dr. Holmes, arrives, and Septimus fears the doctor will
destroy his soul. In order to avoid this fate, he jumps from a window to his
death.
Peter hears the ambulance go by to pick up Septimuss body and marvels
ironically at the level of Londons civilization. He goes to Clarissas party,
where most of the novels major characters are assembled. Clarissa works
hard to make her party a success but feels dissatisfied by her own role and
acutely conscious of Peters critical eye. All the partygoers, but especially
Peter and Sally Seton, have, to some degree, failed to accomplish the dreams
of their youth. Though the social order is undoubtedly changing, Elizabeth and
the members of her generation will probably repeat the errors of Clarissas
generation. Sir William Bradshaw arrives late, and his wife explains that one of
his patients, the young veteran (Septimus), has committed suicide. Clarissa
retreats to the privacy of a small room to consider Septimuss death. She
understands that he was overwhelmed by life and that men like Sir William
make life intolerable. She identifies with Septimus, admiring him for having
taken the plunge and for not compromising his soul. She feels, with her
comfortable position as a society hostess, responsible for his death. The party
nears its close as guests begin to leave. Clarissa enters the room, and her
presence fills Peter with a great excitement.
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Communication vs. Privacy

Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa, Septimus, Peter, and othersstruggle to
find outlets for communication as well as adequate privacy, and the balance
between the two is difficult for all to attain. Clarissa in particular struggles to
open the pathway for communication and throws parties in an attempt to draw
people together. At the same time, she feels shrouded within her own reflective
soul and thinks the ultimate human mystery is how she can exist in one room
while the old woman in the house across from hers exists in another. Even as
Clarissa celebrates the old womans independence, she knows it comes with
an inevitable loneliness. Peter tries to explain the contradictory human
impulses toward privacy and communication by comparing the soul to a fish
that swims along in murky water, then rises quickly to the surface to frolic on
the waves. The war has changed peoples ideas of what English society
should be, and understanding is difficult between those who support traditional
English society and those who hope for continued change. Meaningful
connections in this disjointed postwar world are not easy to make, no matter
what efforts the characters put forth. Ultimately, Clarissa sees Septimuss
death as a desperate, but legitimate, act of communication.
Disillusionment with the British Empire

Throughout the nineteenth century, the British Empire seemed invincible. It
expanded into many other countries, such as India, Nigeria, and South Africa,
becoming the largest empire the world had ever seen. World War I was a
violent reality check. For the first time in nearly a century, the English were
vulnerable on their own land. The Allies technically won the war, but the extent
of devastation England suffered made it a victory in name only. Entire
communities of young men were injured and killed. In 1 9 1 6 , at the Battle of the
Somme, England suffered 6 0 ,0 0 0 casualtiesthe largest slaughter in
Englands history. Not surprisingly, English citizens lost much of their faith in
the empire after the war. No longer could England claim to be invulnerable and
all-powerful. Citizens were less inclined to willingly adhere to the rigid
constraints imposed by Englands class system, which benefited only a small
margin of society but which all classes had fought to preserve.
In 1 9 2 3 , when Mrs. Dalloway takes place, the old establishment and its
oppressive values are nearing their end. English citizens, including Clarissa,
Peter, and Septimus, feel the failure of the empire as strongly as they feel their
own personal failures. Those citizens who still champion English tradition,
such as Aunt Helena and Lady Bruton, are old. Aunt Helena, with her glass
eye (perhaps a symbol of her inability or unwillingness to see the empire's
disintegration), is turning into an artifact. Anticipating the end of the
Conservative Partys reign, Richard plans to write the history of the great
British military family, the Brutons, who are already part of the past. The old
empire faces an imminent demise, and the loss of the traditional and familiar
social order leaves the English at loose ends.
The Fear of Death
Thoughts of death lurk constantly beneath the surface of everyday life in Mrs.
Dalloway, especially for Clarissa, Septimus, and Peter, and this awareness
makes even mundane events and interactions meaningful, sometimes even
threatening. At the very start of her day, when she goes out to buy flowers for
her party, Clarissa remembers a moment in her youth when she suspected a
terrible event would occur. Big Ben tolls out the hour, and Clarissa repeats a
line from Shakespeares Cymbeline over and over as the day goes on: Fear
no more the heat o the sun / Nor the furious winters rages. The line is from a
funeral song that celebrates death as a comfort after a difficult life. Middleaged Clarissa has experienced the deaths of her father, mother, and sister and
has lived through the calamity of war, and she has grown to believe that living
even one day is dangerous. Death is very naturally in her thoughts, and the
line from Cymbeline, along with Septimuss suicidal embrace of death,
ultimately helps her to be at peace with her own mortality. Peter Walsh, so
insecure in his identity, grows frantic at the idea of death and follows an
anonymous young woman through London to forget about it. Septimus faces
death most directly. Though he fears it, he finally chooses it over what seems
to him a direr alternativeliving another day.
The Threat of Oppression
Oppression is a constant threat for Clarissa and Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway,
and Septimus dies in order to escape what he perceives to be an oppressive
social pressure to conform. It comes in many guises, including religion,
science, or social convention. Miss Kilman and Sir William Bradshaw are two
of the major oppressors in the novel: Miss Kilman dreams of felling Clarissa in
the name of religion, and Sir William would like to subdue all those who
challenge his conception of the world. Both wish to convert the world to their
belief systems in order to gain power and dominate others, and their rigidity
oppresses all who come into contact with them. More subtle oppressors, even
those who do not intend to, do harm by supporting the repressive English
social system. Though Clarissa herself lives under the weight of that system
and often feels oppressed by it, her acceptance of patriarchal English society
makes her, in part, responsible for Septimuss death. Thus she too is an
oppressor of sorts. At the end of the novel, she reflects on his suicide:
Somehow it was her disasterher disgrace. She accepts responsibility,
though other characters are equally or more fully to blame, which suggests
that everyone is in some way complicit in the oppression of others.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the texts major themes.
Time
Time imparts order to the fluid thoughts, memories, and encounters that make
up Mrs. Dalloway. Big Ben, a symbol of England and its might, sounds out the
hour relentlessly, ensuring that the passage of time, and the awareness of
eventual death, is always palpable. Clarissa, Septimus, Peter, and other
characters are in the grip of time, and as they age they evaluate how they
have spent their lives. Clarissa, in particular, senses the passage of time, and
the appearance of Sally and Peter, friends from the past, emphasizes how
much time has gone by since Clarissa was young. Once the hour chimes,
however, the sound disappearsits leaden circles dissolved in the air. This
expression recurs many times throughout the novel, indicating how ephemeral
time is, despite the pomp of Big Ben and despite peoples wary obsession with
it. It is time, Rezia says to Septimus as they sit in the park waiting for the
doctor's appointment on Harley Street. The ancient woman at the Regents
Park Tube station suggests that the human condition knows no boundaries of
time, since she continues to sing the same song for what seems like eternity.
She understands that life is circular, not merely linear, which is the only sort of
time that Big Ben tracks. Time is so important to the themes, structure, and
characters of this novel that Woolf almost named her book The Hours.
Shakespeare
The many appearances of Shakespeare specifically and poetry in general

suggest hopefulness, the possibility of finding comfort in art, and the survival of
the soul in Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa quotes Shakespeares plays many times
throughout the day. When she shops for flowers at the beginning of the novel,
she reads a few lines from a Shakespeare play, Cymbeline, in a book
displayed in a shop window. The lines come from a funeral hymn in the play
that suggests death should be embraced as a release from the constraints of
life. Since Clarissa fears death for much of the novel, these lines suggest that
an alternative, hopeful way of addressing the prospect of death exists. Clarissa
also identifies with the title character in Othello, who loves his wife but kills her
out of jealousy, then kills himself when he learns his jealousy was
unwarranted. Clarissa shares with Othello the sense of having lost a love,
especially when she thinks about Sally Seton. Before the war, Septimus
appreciated Shakespeare as well, going so far as aspiring to be a poet. He no
longer finds comfort in poetry after he returns.
The presence of an appreciation for poetry reveals much about Clarissa and
Septimus, just as the absence of such appreciation reveals much about the
characters who differ from them, such as Richard Dalloway and Lady Bruton.
Richard finds Shakespeares sonnets indecent, and he compares reading
them to listening in at a keyhole. Not surprisingly, Richard himself has a
difficult time voicing his emotions. Lady Bruton never reads poetry either, and
her demeanor is so rigid and impersonal that she has a reputation of caring
more for politics than for people. Traditional English society promotes a
suppression of visible emotion, and since Shakespeare and poetry promote a
discussion of feeling and emotion, they belong to sensitive people like
Clarissa, who are in many ways antiestablishment.
Trees and Flowers
Tree and flower images abound in Mrs. Dalloway. The color, variety, and
beauty of flowers suggest feeling and emotion, and those characters who are
comfortable with flowers, such as Clarissa, have distinctly different
personalities than those characters who are not, such as Richard and Lady
Bruton. The first time we see Clarissa, a deep thinker, she is on her way to the
flower shop, where she will revel in the flowers she sees. Richard and Hugh,
more emotionally repressed representatives of the English establishment, offer
traditional roses and carnations to Clarissa and Lady Bruton, respectively.
Richard handles the bouquet of roses awkwardly, like a weapon. Lady Bruton
accepts the flowers with a grim smile and lays them stiffly by her plate, also
unsure of how to handle them. When she eventually stuffs them into her dress,
the femininity and grace of the gesture are rare and unexpected. Trees, with
their extensive root systems, suggest the vast reach of the human soul, and
Clarissa and Septimus, who both struggle to protect their souls, revere them.
Clarissa believes souls survive in trees after death, and Septimus, who has
turned his back on patriarchal society, feels that cutting down a tree is the
equivalent of committing murder.
Waves and Water
Waves and water regularly wash over events and thoughts in Mrs.
Dalloway and nearly always suggest the possibility of extinction or death.
While Clarissa mends her party dress, she thinks about the peaceful cycle of
waves collecting and falling on a summer day, when the world itself seems to
say that is all. Time sometimes takes on waterlike qualities for Clarissa, such
as when the chime from Big Ben flood[s] her room, marking another passing
hour. Rezia, in a rare moment of happiness with Septimus after he has helped
her construct a hat, lets her words trail off like a contented tap left running.
Even then, she knows that stream of contentedness will dry up eventually. The
narrative structure of the novel itself also suggests fluidity. One characters
thoughts appear, intensify, then fade into anothers, much like waves that
collect then fall.
Traditional English society itself is a kind of tide, pulling under those people not
strong enough to stand on their own. Lady Bradshaw, for example, eventually
succumbs to Sir Williams bullying, overbearing presence. The narrator says
she had gone under, that her will became water-logged and eventually sank
into his. Septimus is also sucked under societys pressures. Earlier in the day,
before he kills himself, he looks out the window and sees everything as though
it is underwater. Trees drag their branches through the air as though dragging
them through water, the light outside is watery gold, and his hand on the sofa
reminds him of floating in seawater. While Septimus ultimately cannot accept
or function in society, Clarissa manages to navigate it successfully. Peter sees
Clarissa in a silver-green mermaids dress at her party, [l]olloping on the
waves. Between her mermaids dress and her ease in bobbing through her
party guests, Clarissa succeeds in staying afloat. However, she identifies with
Septimuss wish to fight the cycle and go under, even if she will not succumb
to the temptation herself.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Prime Minister

The prime minister in Mrs. Dalloway embodies Englands old values and
hierarchical social system, which are in decline. When Peter Walsh wants to
insult Clarissa and suggest she will sell out and become a society hostess, he
says she will marry a prime minister. When Lady Bruton, a champion of
English tradition, wants to compliment Hugh, she calls him My Prime
Minister. The prime minister is a figure from the old establishment, which
Clarissa and Septimus are struggling against. Mrs. Dalloway takes place after
World War I, a time when the English looked desperately for meaning in the
old symbols but found the symbols hollow. When the conservative prime
minister finally arrives at Clarissas party, his appearance is unimpressive. The
old pyramidal social system that benefited the very rich before the war is now
decaying, and the symbols of its greatness have become pathetic.
Peter Walshs Pocketknife and Other Weapons
Peter Walsh plays constantly with his pocketknife, and the opening, closing,
and fiddling with the knife suggest his flightiness and inability to make
decisions. He cannot decide what he feels and doesnt know whether he
abhors English tradition and wants to fight it, or whether he accepts English
civilization just as it is. The pocketknife reveals Peters defensiveness. He is
armed with the knife, in a sense, when he pays an unexpected visit to
Clarissa, while she herself is armed with her sewing scissors. Their weapons
make them equal competitors. Knives and weapons are also phallic symbols,
hinting at sexuality and power. Peter cannot define his own identity, and his
constant fidgeting with the knife suggests how uncomfortable he is with his
masculinity. Characters fall into two groups: those who are armed and those
who are not. Ellie Henderson, for example, is weaponless, because she is
poor and has not been trained for any career. Her ambiguous relationship with
her friend Edith also puts her at a disadvantage in society, leaving her even
less able to defend herself. Septimus, psychologically crippled by the literal
weapons of war, commits suicide by impaling himself on a metal fence,
showing the danger lurking behind man-made boundaries.
The Old Woman in the Window
The old woman in the window across from Clarissas house represents the
privacy of the soul and the loneliness that goes with it, both of which will
increase as Clarissa grows older. Clarissa sees the future in the old woman:
She herself will grow old and become more and more alone, since that is the
nature of life. As Clarissa grows older, she reflects more but communicates
less. Instead, she keeps her feelings locked inside the private rooms of her
own soul, just as the old woman rattles alone around the rooms of her house.
Nevertheless, the old woman also represents serenity and the purity of the
soul. Clarissa respects the womans private reflections and thinks beauty lies
in this act of preserving ones interior life and independence. Before Septimus
jumps out the window, he sees an old man descending the staircase outside,
and this old man is a parallel figure to the old woman. Though Clarissa and
Septimus ultimately choose to preserve their private lives in opposite ways,
their view of loneliness, privacy, and communication resonates within these
similar images.
The Old Woman Singing an Ancient Song
Opposite the Regents Park Tube station, an old woman sings an ancient song
that celebrates life, endurance, and continuity. She is oblivious to everyone
around her as she sings, beyond caring what the world thinks. The narrator
explains that no matter what happens in the world, the old woman will still be
there, even in ten million years, and that the song has soaked through the
knotted roots of infinite ages. Roots, intertwined and hidden beneath the
earth, suggest the deepest parts of peoples souls, and this womans song
touches everyone who hears it in some way. Peter hears the song first and
compares the old woman to a rusty pump. He doesnt catch her triumphant
message and feels only pity for her, giving her a coin before stepping into a
taxi. Rezia, however, finds strength in the old womans words, and the song
makes her feel as though all will be okay in her life. Women in the novel, who
have to view patriarchal English society from the outside, are generally more
attuned to nature and the messages of voices outside the mainstream. Rezia,
therefore, is able to see the old woman for the life force she is, instead of
simply a nuisance or a tragic figure to be dealt with, ignored, or pitied.
ULYSSES
James Joyce
Plot Overview
Stephen Dedalus spends the early morning hours of June 16, 1904, remaining
aloof from his mocking friend, Buck Mulligan, and Bucks English
acquaintance, Haines. As Stephen leaves for work, Buck orders him to leave
the house key and meet them at the pub at 1 2 : 3 0 . Stephen resents Buck.
Around 10:00 A . M . , Stephen teaches a history lesson to his class at Garrett
Deasys boys school. After class, Stephen meets with Deasy to receive his
wages. The narrow-minded and prejudiced Deasy lectures Stephen on life.
Stephen agrees to take Deasys editorial letter about cattle disease to
acquaintances at the newspaper.
Stephen spends the remainder of his morning walking alone on Sandymount
Strand, thinking critically about his younger self and about perception. He
composes a poem in his head and writes it down on a scrap torn from Deasys
letter.
At 8:00 A . M . the same morning, Leopold Bloom fixes breakfast and brings his
wife her mail and breakfast in bed. One of her letters is from Mollys concert
tour manager, Blazes Boylan (Bloom suspects he is also Mollys lover)
Boylan will visit at 4:00 this afternoon. Bloom returns downstairs, reads a letter
from their daughter, Milly, then goes to the outhouse.
At 10:00 A . M . , Bloom picks up an amorous letter from the post officehe is
corresponding with a woman named Martha Clifford under the pseudonym
Henry Flower. He reads the tepid letter, ducks briefly into a church, then orders
Mollys lotion from the pharmacist. He runs into Bantam Lyons, who mistakenly
gets the impression that Bloom is giving him a tip on the horse Throwaway in
the afternoons Gold Cup race.
Around 11:00 A . M . , Bloom rides with Simon Dedalus (Stephens father), Martin
Cunningham, and Jack Power to the funeral of Paddy Dignam. The men treat
Bloom as somewhat of an outsider. At the funeral, Bloom thinks about the

deaths of his son and his father.
At noon, we find Bloom at the offices of the Freemannewspaper, negotiating

an advertisement for Keyes, a liquor merchant. Several idle men, including
editor Myles Crawford, are hanging around in the office, discussing political
speeches. Bloom leaves to secure the ad. Stephen arrives at the newspaper
with Deasys letter. Stephen and the other men leave for the pub just as Bloom
is returning. Blooms ad negotiation is rejected by Crawford on his way out.
At 1:00 P.M . , Bloom runs into Josie Breen, an old flame, and they discuss Mina
Purefoy, who is in labor at the maternity hospital. Bloom stops in Burtons
restaurant, but he decides to move on to Davy Byrnes for a light lunch. Bloom
reminisces about an intimate afternoon with Molly on Howth. Bloom leaves
and is walking toward the National Library when he spots Boylan on the street
and ducks into the National Museum.
At 2:00 P.M . , Stephen is informally presenting his Hamlet theory in the
National Library to the poet A.E. and the librarians John Eglinton, Best, and
Lyster. A.E. is dismissive of Stephens theory and leaves. Buck enters and
jokingly scolds Stephen for failing to meet him and Haines at the pub. On the
way out, Buck and Stephen pass Bloom, who has come to obtain a copy of
Keyes ad.
At 4:00 P.M . , Simon Dedalus, Ben Dollard, Lenehan, and Blazes Boylan
converge at the Ormond Hotel bar. Bloom notices Boylans car outside and
decides to watch him. Boylan soon leaves for his appointment with Molly, and
Bloom sits morosely in the Ormond restauranthe is briefly mollified by
Dedaluss and Dollards singing. Bloom writes back to Martha, then leaves to
post the letter.
At 5:00 P.M . , Bloom arrives at Barney Kiernans pub to meet Martin
Cunningham about the Dignam family finances, but Cunningham has not yet
arrived. The citizen, a belligerent Irish nationalist, becomes increasingly drunk
and begins attacking Blooms Jewishness. Bloom stands up to the citizen,

speaking in favor of peace and love over xenophobic violence. Bloom and the
citizen have an altercation on the street before Cunninghams carriage carries
Bloom away.
Bloom relaxes on Sandymount Strand around sunset, after his visit to Mrs.
Dignams house nearby. A young woman, Gerty MacDowell, notices Bloom
watching her from across the beach. Gerty subtly reveals more and more of
her legs while Bloom surreptitiously masturbates. Gerty leaves, and Bloom
dozes.
At 10:00 P.M . , Bloom wanders to the maternity hospital to check on Mina
Purefoy. Also at the hospital are Stephen and several of his medi-c-al student
friends, drinking and talking boisterously about subjects related to birth. Bloom
agrees to join them, though he privately disapproves of their revelry in light of
Mrs. Purefoys struggles upstairs. Buck arrives, and the men proceed to
Burkes pub. At closing time, Stephen convinces his friend Lynch to go to the
brothel section of town and Bloom follows, feeling protective.
Bloom finally locates Stephen and Lynch at Bella Cohens brothel. Stephen is
drunk and imagines that he sees the ghost of his motherfull of rage, he
shatters a lamp with his walking stick. Bloom runs after Stephen and finds him
in an argument with a British soldier who knocks him out.
Bloom revives Stephen and takes him for coffee at a cabmans shelter to sober
up. Bloom invites Stephen back to his house.
Well after midnight, Stephen and Bloom arrive back at Blooms house. They
drink cocoa and talk about their respective backgrounds. Bloom asks Stephen
to stay the night. Stephen politely refuses. Bloom sees him out and comes
back in to find evidence of Boylans visit. Still, Bloom is at peace with the world
and he climbs into bed, tells Molly of his day and requests breakfast in bed.
After Bloom falls asleep, Molly remains awake, surprised by Blooms request
for breakfast in bed. Her mind wanders to her childhood in Gibraltar, her
afternoon of sex with Boylan, her singing career, Stephen Dedalus. Her
thoughts of Bloom vary wildly over the course of the monologue, but it ends
with a reminiscence of their intimate moment at Howth and a positive
affirmation.
Themes
The Quest for Paternity

At its most basic level, Ulysses is a book about Stephens search for a
symbolic father and Blooms search for a son. In this respect, the plot
of Ulysses parallels Telemachuss search for Odysseus, and vice versa, in The
Odyssey. Blooms search for a son stems at least in part from his need to
reinforce his identity and heritage through progeny. Stephen already has a
biological father, Simon Dedalus, but considers him a father only in flesh.
Stephen feels that his own ability to mature and become a father himself (of art
or children) is restricted by Simons criticism and lack of understanding. Thus
Stephens search involves finding a symbolic father who will, in turn, allow
Stephen himself to be a father. Both men, in truth, are searching for paternity
as a way to reinforce their own identities.
Stephen is more conscious of his quest for paternity than Bloom, and he
mentally recurs to several important motifs with which to understand paternity.
Stephens thinking about the Holy Trinity involves, on the one hand, Church
doctrines that uphold the unity of the Father and the Son and, on the other
hand, the writings of heretics that challenge this doctrine by arguing that God
created the rest of the Trinity, concluding that each subsequent creation is
inherently different. Stephens second motif involves his Hamlet theory, which
seeks to prove that Shakespeare represented himself through the ghost-father
in Hamlet, but alsothrough his translation of his life into artbecame the
father of his own father, of his life, and of all his race. The Holy Trinity and
Hamlet motifs reinforce our sense of Stephens and Blooms parallel quests for
paternity. These quests seem to end in Blooms kitchen, with Bloom
recognizing the future in Stephen and Stephen recognizing the past in

Bloom. Though united as father and son in this moment, the men will soon part
ways, and their paternity quests will undoubtedly continue,
forUlysses demonstrates that the quest for paternity is a search for a lasting
manifestation of self.
The Remorse of Conscience
The phrase agenbite of inwit, a religious term meaning remorse of
conscience, comes to Stephens mind again and again in Ulysses.Stephen
associates the phrase with his guilt over his mothers deathhe suspects that
he may have killed her by refusing to kneel and pray at her sickbed when she
asked. The theme of remorse runs through Ulysses to address the feelings
associated with modern breaks with family and tradition. Bloom, too, has guilty
feelings about his father because he no longer observes certain traditions his
father observed, such as keeping kosher. Episode Fifteen, Circe, dramatizes
this remorse as Blooms Sins of the Past rise up and confront him one by
one. Ulysses juxtaposes characters who experience remorse with characters
who do not, such as Buck Mulligan, who shamelessly refers to Stephens
mother as beastly dead, and Simon Dedalus, who mourns his late wife but
does not regret his treatment of her. Though remorse of conscience can have
a repressive, paralyzing effect, as in Stephens case, it is also vaguely positive.
A self-conscious awareness of the past, even the sins of the past, helps
constitute an individual as an ethical being in the present.
Compassion as Heroic
In nearly all senses, the notion of Leopold Bloom as an epic hero is laughable
his job, talents, family relations, public relations, and private actions all
suggest his utter ordinariness. It is only Blooms extraordinary capacity for
sympathy and compassion that allows him an unironic heroism in the course of
the novel. Blooms fluid ability to empathize with such a wide variety of beings
cats, birds, dogs, dead men, vicious men, blind men, old ladies, a woman in
labor, the poor, and so onis the modern-day equivalent to Odysseuss
capacity to adapt to a wide variety of challenges. Blooms compassion often

dictates the course of his day and the novel, as when he stops at the river
Liffey to feed the gulls or at the hospital to check on Mrs. Purefoy. There is a
network of symbols in Ulysses that present Bloom as Irelands savior, and his
message is, at a basic level, to love. He is juxtaposed with Stephen, who
would also be Irelands savior but is lacking in compassion. Bloom returns
home, faces evidence of his cuckold status, and slays his competitionnot
with arrows, but with a refocused perspective that is available only through his
fluid capacity for empathy.
Parallax, or the Need for Multiple Perspectives
Parallax is an astronomical term that Bloom encounters in his reading and that
arises repeatedly through the course of the novel. It refers to the difference of
position of one object when seen from two different vantage points. These
differing viewpoints can be collated to better approximate the position of the
object. As a novel, Ulyssesuses a similar tactic. Three main characters
Stephen, Bloom, and Mollyand a subset of narrative techniques that affect
our perception of events and characters combine to demonstrate the fallibility
of one single perspective. Our understanding of particular characters and
events must be continually revised as we consider further perspectives. The
most obvious example is Mollys past love life. Though we can construct a
judgment of Molly as a loose woman from the testimonies of various
characters in the novelBloom, Lenehan, Dixon, and so onthis judgment
must be revised with the integration of Mollys own final testimony.
Motifs
Lightness and Darkness

The traditional associations of light with good and dark with bad are upended
in Ulysses, in which the two protagonists are dressed in mourning black, and
the more menacing characters are associated with light and brightness. This
reversal arises in part as a reaction to Mr. Deasys anti-Semitic judgment that
Jews have sinned against the light. Deasy himself is associated with the
brightness of coins, representing wealth without spirituality. Blazes Boylan,
Blooms nemesis, is associated with brightness through his name and his
flashy behavior, again suggesting surface without substance. Blooms and
Stephens dark colors suggest a variety of associations: Jewishness, anarchy,
outsider/wanderer status. Furthermore, Throwaway, the dark horse, wins the
Gold Cup Horserace.
The Home Usurped
While Odysseus is away from Ithaca in The Odyssey, his household is

usurped by would-be suitors of his wife, Penelope. This motif translates
directly toUlysses and provides a connection between Stephen and Bloom.
Stephen pays the rent for the Martello tower, where he, Buck, and Haines are
staying. Bucks demand of the house key is thus a usurpation of Stephens
household rights, and Stephen recognizes this and refuses to return to the
tower. Stephen mentally dramatizes this usurpation as a replay of Claudiuss
usurpation of Gertrude and the throne in Hamlet. Meanwhile, Blooms home
has been usurped by Blazes Boylan, who comes and goes at will and has sex
with Molly in Blooms absence. Stephens and Blooms lack of house keys
throughout Ulysses symbolizes these usurpations.
The East
The motif of the East appears mainly in Blooms thoughts. For Bloom, the East
is a place of exoticism, representing the promise of a paradisiacal existence.
Blooms hazy conception of this faraway land arises from a network of
connections: the planters companies (such as Agendeth Netaim), which
suggest newly fertile and potentially profitable homes; Zionist movements for a
homeland; Molly and her childhood in Gibraltar; narcotics; and erotics. For
Bloom and the reader, the East becomes the imaginative space where hopes
can be realized. The only place where Molly, Stephen, and Bloom all meet is in
their parallel dreams of each other the night before, dreams that seem to be
set in an Eastern locale.
Symbols
Plumtrees Potted Meat

In Episode Five, Bloom reads an ad in his newspaper: What is home without /
Plumtrees Potted Meat? / Incomplete. / With it an abode of bliss. Blooms
conscious reaction is his belief that the ad is poorly placeddirectly below the
obituaries, suggesting an infelicitous relation between dead bodies and potted
meat. On a subconscious level, however, the figure of Plumtrees Potted Meat
comes to stand for Blooms anxieties about Boylans usurpation of his wife and
home. The image of meat inside a pot crudely suggests the sexual relation
between Boylan and Molly. The wording of the ad further suggests, less
concretely, Blooms masculine anxietieshe worries that he is not the head of
an abode of bliss but rather a servant in a home incomplete. The
connection between Plumtrees meat and Blooms anxieties about Mollys
unhappiness and infidelity is driven home when Bloom finds crumbs of the
potted meat that Boylan and Molly shared earlier in his own bed.
The Gold Cup Horserace

The afternoons Gold Cup Horserace and the bets placed on it provide much
of the public drama in Ulysses, though it happens offstage. In Episode Five,
Bantam Lyons mistakenly thinks that Bloom has tipped him off to the horse
Throwaway, the dark horse with a long-shot chance. Throwaway does end
up winning the race, notably ousting Sceptre, the horse with the phallic
name, on which Lenehan and Boylan have bet. This underdog victory
represents Blooms eventual unshowy triumph over Boylan, to win the Gold
Cup of Mollys heart.
Stephens Latin Quarter Hat
Stephen deliberately conceives of his Latin Quarter hat as a symbol. The Latin
Quarter is a student district in Paris, and Stephen hopes to suggest his exiled,
anti-establishment status while back in Ireland. He also refers to the hat as his
Hamlet hat, tipping us off to the intentional brooding and artistic connotations
of the head gear. Yet Stephen cannot always control his own hat as a symbol,
especially in the eyes of others. Through the eyes of others, it comes to signify
Stephens mock priest-liness and provinciality.
Blooms Potato Talisman
In Episode Fifteen, Blooms potato functions like Odysseuss use of moly in
Circes denit serves to protect him from enchantment, enchantments to
which Bloom succumbs when he briefly gives it over to Zoe Higgins. The
potato, old and shriveled now, is an heirloom from Blooms mother, Ellen. As
an organic product that is both fruit and root but is now shriveled, it gestures
toward Blooms anxieties about fertility and his family line. Most important,
however, is the potatos connection to IrelandBlooms potato talisman stands
for his frequently overlooked maternal Irish heritage.
THE GREAT GATSBY
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Plot Overview
Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the
summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the
West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated
by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have
established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth.
Nicks next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay
Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties
every Saturday night.
Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egghe was educated at Yale and
has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to
the established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for
dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile
classmate of Nicks at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a
beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic
relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Toms marriage: Jordan
tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a
gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not
long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At
a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle
begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.
As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of
Gatsbys legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they
meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent,
has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone old sport. Gatsby asks to speak
to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his
mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in
1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the
green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsbys
extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy.
Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but
he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her.
Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will
also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish
their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.
After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wifes relationship
with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans house, Gatsby stares at Daisy
with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her.
Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged
by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to
drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza
Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never
understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminalhis
fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy
realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back
to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.
When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they
discover that Gatsbys car has struck and killed Myrtle, Toms lover. They rush
back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the
car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next
day, Tom tells Myrtles husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car.
George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed
Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and
shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself.
Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and
moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people
surrounding Gatsbys life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among
the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsbys dream of
Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of

happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth.
Though Gatsbys power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him
great, Nick reflects that the era of dreamingboth Gatsbys dream and the
American dreamis over.
Themes
The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s

On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a
man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a
much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a
mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed
geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is
a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the
disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity
and material excess.
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values,
evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure.
The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music
epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws
every Saturday nightresulted ultimately in the corruption of the American
dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more
noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young
Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the
brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of
early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The
dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden,
sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as
people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from
any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American
aristocracyfamilies with old wealthscorned the newly rich industrialists and

speculators. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919,
which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to
satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.
Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these
social trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the
newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The
various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsbys parties
evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between old money and
new money manifests itself in the novels symbolic geography: East Egg
represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer
Wolfshiem and Gatsbys fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and
bootlegging.
As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter 9), the American dream
was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In
the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social
values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. The main
plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsbys dream of loving
Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective social statuses, his
resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the rampant
materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally, places and objects
inThe Great Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill them with
meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify this idea. In Nicks
mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols constitutes a central component
of the American dream, as early Americans invested their new nation with their
own ideals and values.
Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green
light at the end of Daisys dock. Just as Americans have given America
meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a
kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsbys
dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream
in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its objectmoney and pleasure.

Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which
their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished pasthis time in
Louisville with Daisybut is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles,
all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to
Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.
The Hollowness of the Upper Class
One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of
wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from
and relate to the old aristocracy of the countrys richest families. In the novel,
West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its
denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald
portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in
social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate
mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on
subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes invitation to lunch.
In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance,
epitomized by the Buchanans tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of
Daisy and Jordan Baker.
What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart,
as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are
so used to moneys ability to ease their minds that they never worry about
hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype when, at the end of
the novel, they simply move to a new house far away rather than condescend
to attend Gatsbys funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand, whose recent wealth
derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart, remaining outside
Daisys window until four in the morning in Chapter 7 simply to make sure that
Tom does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsbys good qualities (loyalty and love)
lead to his death, as he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting
Daisy be punished, and the Buchanans bad qualities (fickleness and
selfishness) allow them to remove themselves from the tragedy not only
physically but psychologically.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform
Geography
Throughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the
1920s American society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old
aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social
decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited, amoral quest for money
and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral decay and social
cynicism of New York, while the West (including Midwestern and northern
areas such as Minnesota) is connected to more traditional social values and
ideals. Nicks analysis in Chapter 9 of the story he has related reveals his
sensitivity to this dichotomy: though it is set in the East, the story is really one
of the West, as it tells how people originally from west of the Appalachians (as
all of the main characters are) react to the pace and style of life on the East
Coast.
Weather
As in much of Shakespeares work, the weather in The Great Gatsbyunfailingly
matches the emotional and narrative tone of the story. Gatsby and Daisys
reunion begins amid a pouring rain, proving awkward and melancholy; their
love reawakens just as the sun begins to come out. Gatsbys climactic
confrontation with Tom occurs on the hottest day of the summer, under the
scorching sun (like the fatal encounter between Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo
and Juliet). Wilson kills Gatsby on the first day of autumn, as Gatsby floats in
his pool despite a palpable chill in the aira symbolic attempt to stop time and
restore his relationship with Daisy to the way it was five years before, in 1917.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or
concepts.
The Green Light

Situated at the end of Daisys East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsbys
West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsbys hopes and dreams for the
future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter 1 he reaches toward it
in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsbys
quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light
also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In Chapter 9, Nick compares the
green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early
settlers of the new nation.
The Valley of Ashes
First introduced in Chapter 2, the valley of ashes between West Egg and New
York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of
industrial ashes. It represents the moral and social decay that results from the
uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for
nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight
of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their
vitality as a result.
The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes
painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may
represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral
wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly. Instead,
throughout the novel, Fitzgerald suggests that symbols only have meaning
because characters instill them with meaning. The connection between the
eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilsons griefstricken mind. This lack of concrete significance contributes to the unsettling
nature of the image. Thus, the eyes also come to represent the essential
meaninglessness of the world and the arbitrariness of the mental process by
which people invest objects with meaning. Nick explores these ideas in
Chapter 8, when he imagines Gatsbys final thoughts as a depressed
consideration of the emptiness of symbols and dreams.
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
Virginia Woolf
Plot Overview
Note: To the Lighthouse is divided into three sections: The Window, Time Passes, and The
Lighthouse. Each section is fragmented into stream-of-consciousness contributions from various
narrators.
The Window opens just before the start of World War I. Mr. Ramsay and Mrs.
Ramsay bring their eight children to their summer home in the Hebrides (a
group of islands west of Scotland). Across the bay from their house stands a
large lighthouse. Six-year-old James Ramsay wants desperately to go to the
lighthouse, and Mrs. Ramsay tells him that they will go the next day if the
weather permits. James reacts gleefully, but Mr. Ramsay tells him coldly that
the weather looks to be foul. James resents his father and believes that he
enjoys being cruel to James and his siblings.
The Ramsays host a number of guests, including the dour Charles Tansley,
who admires Mr. Ramsays work as a metaphysical philosopher. Also at the
house is Lily Briscoe, a young painter who begins a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay.
Mrs. Ramsay wants Lily to marry William Bankes, an old friend of the
Ramsays, but Lily resolves to remain single. Mrs. Ramsay does manage to
arrange another marriage, however, between Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle,
two of their acquaintances.
During the course of the afternoon, Paul proposes to Minta, Lily begins her
painting, Mrs. Ramsay soothes the resentful James, and Mr. Ramsay frets
over his shortcomings as a philosopher, periodically turning to Mrs. Ramsay
for comfort. That evening, the Ramsays host a seemingly ill-fated dinner party.
Paul and Minta are late returning from their walk on the beach with two of the
Ramsays children. Lily bristles at outspoken comments made by Charles
Tansley, who suggests that women can neither paint nor write. Mr. Ramsay
reacts rudely when Augustus Carmichael, a poet, asks for a second plate of
soup. As the night draws on, however, these missteps right themselves, and
the guests come together to make a memorable evening.
The joy, however, like the party itself, cannot last, and as Mrs. Ramsay leaves
her guests in the dining room, she reflects that the event has already slipped
into the past. Later, she joins her husband in the parlor. The couple sits quietly
together, until Mr. Ramsays characteristic insecurities interrupt their peace. He
wants his wife to tell him that she loves him. Mrs. Ramsay is not one to make
such pronouncements, but she concedes to his point made earlier in the day
that the weather will be too rough for a trip to the lighthouse the next day. Mr.
Ramsay thus knows that Mrs. Ramsay loves him. Night falls, and one night
quickly becomes another.
Time passes more quickly as the novel enters the Time Passes segment.
War breaks out across Europe. Mrs. Ramsay dies suddenly one night. Andrew
Ramsay, her oldest son, is killed in battle, and his sister Prue dies from an
illness related to childbirth. The family no longer vacations at its
summerhouse, which falls into a state of disrepair: weeds take over the garden
and spiders nest in the house. Ten years pass before the family returns. Mrs.
McNab, the housekeeper, employs a few other women to help set the house in
order. They rescue the house from oblivion and decay, and everything is in
order when Lily Briscoe returns.
In The Lighthouse section, time returns to the slow detail of shifting points of
view, similar in style to The Window. Mr. Ramsay declares that he and James
and Cam, one of his daughters, will journey to the lighthouse. On the morning
of the voyage, delays throw him into a fit of temper. He appeals to Lily for
sympathy, but, unlike Mrs. Ramsay, she is unable to provide him with what he
needs. The Ramsays set off, and Lily takes her place on the lawn, determined
to complete a painting she started but abandoned on her last visit. James and
Cam bristle at their fathers blustery behavior and are embarrassed by his
constant self-pity. Still, as the boat reaches its destination, the children feel a
fondness for him. Even James, whose skill as a sailor Mr. Ramsay praises,
experiences a moment of connection with his father, though James so willfully
resents him. Across the bay, Lily puts the finishing touch on her painting. She
makes a definitive stroke on the canvas and puts her brush down, finally
having achieved her vision.
Themes
The Transience of Life and Work

Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay take completely different approaches to life: he
relies on his intellect, while she depends on her emotions. But they share the
knowledge that the world around them is transientthat nothing lasts forever.
Mr. Ramsay reflects that even the most enduring of reputations, such as
Shakespeares, are doomed to eventual oblivion. This realization accounts for

the bitter aspect of his character. Frustrated by the inevitable demise of his
own body of work and envious of the few geniuses who will outlast him, he
plots to found a school of philosophy that argues that the world is designed for
the average, unadorned man, for the liftman in the Tube rather than for the
rare immortal writer.
Mrs. Ramsay is as keenly aware as her husband of the passage of time and of
mortality. She recoils, for instance, at the notion of James growing into an
adult, registers the worlds many dangers, and knows that no one, not even
her husband, can protect her from them. Her reaction to this knowledge is
markedly different from her husbands. Whereas Mr. Ramsay is bowed by the
weight of his own demise, Mrs. Ramsay is fueled with the need to make
precious and memorable whatever time she has on earth. Such crafted
moments, she reflects, offer the only hope of something that endures.
Art as a Means of Preservation
In the face of an existence that is inherently without order or meaning, Mr. and
Mrs. Ramsay employ different strategies for making their lives significant. Mr.
Ramsay devotes himself to his progression through the course of human
thought, while Mrs. Ramsay cultivates memorable experiences from social
interactions. Neither of these strategies, however, proves an adequate means
of preserving ones experience. After all, Mr. Ramsay fails to obtain the
philosophical understanding he so desperately desires, and Mrs. -Ramsays
life, though filled with moments that have the shine and resilience of rubies,
ends. Only Lily Briscoe finds a way to preserve her experience, and that way is
through her art. As Lily begins her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the beginning of
the novel, Woolf notes the scope of the project: Lily means to order and
connect elements that have no necessary relation in the worldhedges and
houses and mothers and children. By the end of the novel, ten years later, Lily
finishes the painting she started, which stands as a moment of clarity wrested
from confusion. Art is, perhaps, the only hope of surety in a world destined and
determined to change: for, while mourning Mrs. Ramsays death and painting
on the lawn, Lily reflects that nothing stays, all changes; but not words, not
paint.
The Subjective Nature of Reality
Toward the end of the novel, Lily reflects that in order to see Mrs. Ramsay
clearlyto understand her character completelyshe would need at least fifty
pairs of eyes; only then would she be privy to every possible angle and
nuance. The truth, according to this assertion, rests in the accumulation of
different, even opposing vantage points. Woolfs technique in structuring the
story mirrors Lilys assertion. She is committed to creating a sense of the world
that not only depends upon the private perceptions of her characters but is
also nothing more than the accumulation of those perceptions. To try to
reimagine the story as told from a single characters perspective orin the
tradition of the Victorian novelistsfrom the authors perspective is to realize
the radical scope and difficulty of Woolfs project.
The Restorative Effects of Beauty
At the beginning of the novel, both Mr. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe are drawn out
of moments of irritation by an image of extreme beauty. The image, in both
cases, is a vision of Mrs. Ramsay, who, as she sits reading with James, is a
sight powerful enough to incite rapture in William Bankes. Beauty retains this
soothing effect throughout the novel: something as trifling as a large but very
beautiful arrangement of fruit can, for a moment, assuage the discomfort of the
guests at Mrs. Ramsays dinner party.
Lily later complicates the notion of beauty as restorative by suggesting that
beauty has the unfortunate consequence of simplifying the truth. Her
impression of Mrs. Ramsay, she believes, is compromised by a determination
to view her as beautiful and to smooth over her complexities and faults.
Nevertheless, Lily continues on her quest to still or freeze a moment from
life and make it beautiful. Although the vision of an isolated moment is
necessarily incomplete, it is lasting and, as such, endlessly seductive to her.
Motifs
The Differing Behaviors of Men and Women
As Lily Briscoe suffers through Charles Tansleys boorish opinions about

women and art, she reflects that human relations are worst between men and
women. Indeed, given the extremely opposite ways in which men and women
behave throughout the novel, this difficulty is no wonder. The dynamic between
the sexes is best understood by considering the behavior of Mr. and Mrs.
Ramsay. Their constant conflict has less to do with divergent philosophies
indeed, they both acknowledge and are motivated by the same fear of
mortalitythan with the way they process that fear. Men, Mrs. Ramsay reflects
in the opening pages of the novel, bow to it. Given her rather traditional
notions of gender roles, she excuses her husbands behavior as inevitable,
asking how men can be expected to settle the political and economic business
of nations and not suffer doubts. This understanding attitude places on women
the responsibility for soothing mens damaged egos and achieving some kind
of harmony (even if temporary) with them. Lily Briscoe, who as a -single
woman represents a social order more radial and lenient than Mrs. Ramsays,
resists this duty but ultimately caves in to it.
Brackets
In Time Passes, brackets surround the few sentences recounting the deaths
of Prue and Andrew Ramsay, while in The Lighthouse, brackets surround the
sentences comprising Chapter VI. Each set of sentences in brackets in the
earlier section contains violence, death, and the destruction of potential; the
short, stabbing accounts accentuate the brutality of these events. But in
Chapter VI of The Lighthouse, the purpose of the brackets changes from
indicating violence and death to violence and potential survival. Whereas in
Time Passes, the brackets surround Prues death in childbirth and Andrews
perishing in war, in The Lighthouse they surround the mutilated but alive
still body of a fish.
Symbols
The Lighthouse
Lying across the bay and meaning something different and intimately personal
to each character, the lighthouse is at once inaccessible, illuminating, and
infinitely interpretable. As the destination from which the novel takes its title,
the lighthouse suggests that the destinations that seem surest are most
unobtainable. Just as Mr. Ramsay is certain of his wifes love for him and aims
to hear her speak words to that end in The Window, Mrs. Ramsay finds these
words impossible to say. These failed attempts to arrive at some sort of solid
ground, like Lilys first try at painting Mrs. Ramsay or Mrs. Ramsays attempt to
see Paul and Minta married, result only in more attempts, further excursions
rather than rest. The lighthouse stands as a potent symbol of this lack of
attainability. James arrives only to realize that it is not at all the mist-shrouded
destination of his childhood. Instead, he is made to reconcile two competing
and contradictory images of the towerhow it appeared to him when he was a
boy and how it appears to him now that he is a man. He decides that both of
these images contribute to the essence of the lighthousethat nothing is ever
only one thinga sentiment that echoes the novels determination to arrive at
truth through varied and contradictory vantage points.
Lilys Painting
Lilys painting represents a struggle against gender convention, represented
by Charles Tansleys statement that women cant paint or write. Lilys desire to
express Mrs. Ramsays essence as a wife and mother in the painting mimics
the impulse among modern women to know and understand intimately the
gendered experiences of the women who came before them. Lilys
composition attempts to discover and comprehend Mrs. Ramsays beauty just
as Woolfs construction of Mrs. Ramsays character reflects her attempts to
access and portray her own mother.
The painting also represents dedication to a feminine artistic vision, expressed
through Lilys anxiety over showing it to William Bankes. In deciding that
completing the painting regardless of what happens to it is the most important
thing, Lily makes the choice to establish her own artistic voice. In the end, she
decides that her vision depends on balance and synthesis: how to bring
together disparate things in harmony. In this respect, her project mirrors
Woolfs writing, which synthesizes the perceptions of her many characters to
come to a balanced and truthful portrait of the world.
The Ramsays House
The Ramsays house is a stage where Woolf and her characters explain their
beliefs and observations. During her dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay sees her
house display her own inner notions of shabbiness and her inability to
preserve beauty. In the Time Passes section, the ravages of war and
destruction and the passage of time are reflected in the condition of the house
rather than in the emotional development or observable aging of the
characters. The house stands in for the collective consciousness of those who
stay in it. At times the characters long to escape it, while at other times it
serves as refuge. From the dinner party to the journey to the lighthouse, Woolf
shows the house from every angle, and its structure and contents mirror the
interior of the characters who inhabit it.
The Sea
References to the sea appear throughout the novel. Broadly, the everchanging, ever-moving waves parallel the constant forward movement of time
and the changes it brings. Woolf describes the sea lovingly and beautifully, but
her most evocative depictions of it point to its violence. As a force that brings
destruction, has the power to decimate islands, and, as Mr. Ramsay reflects,
eats away the ground we stand on, the sea is a powerful reminder of the
impermanence and delicacy of human life and accomplishments.
The Boars Skull
After her dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay retires upstairs to find the children wideawake, bothered by the boars skull that hangs on the nursery wall. The
presence of the skull acts as a disturbing reminder that death is always at
hand, even (or perhaps especially) during lifes most blissful moments.
The Fruit Basket
Rose arranges a fruit basket for her mothers dinner party that serves to draw
the partygoers out of their private suffering and unite them. Although Augustus
Carmichael and Mrs. Ramsay appreciate the arrangement differentlyhe rips
a bloom from it; she refuses to disturb itthe pair is brought harmoniously, if
briefly, together. The basket testifies both to the frozen quality of beauty that
Lily describes and to beautys seductive and soothing quality.
HEART OF DARKNESS
Joseph Conrad
Plot Overview
Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his

journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of
great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a
Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and
then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in
the Companys stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced
into the Companys service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill
treatment at the hands of the Companys agents. The cruelty and squalor of
imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle
that surrounds the white mans settlements, making them appear to be tiny
islands amidst a vast darkness.
Marlow arrives at the Central Station, run by the general manager, an
unwholesome, conspiratorial character. He finds that his steamship has been
sunk and spends several months waiting for parts to repair it. His interest in
Kurtz grows during this period. The manager and his favorite, the brickmaker,
seem to fear Kurtz as a threat to their position. Kurtz is rumored to be ill,
making the delays in repairing the ship all the more costly. Marlow eventually
gets the parts he needs to repair his ship, and he and the manager set out with
a few agents (whom Marlow calls pilgrims because of their strange habit of
carrying long, wooden staves wherever they go) and a crew of cannibals on a
long, difficult voyage up the river. The dense jungle and the oppressive silence
make everyone aboard a little jumpy, and the occasional glimpse of a native
village or the sound of drums works the pilgrims into a frenzy.
Marlow and his crew come across a hut with stacked firewood, together with a
note saying that the wood is for them but that they should approach cautiously.
Shortly after the steamer has taken on the firewood, it is surrounded by a
dense fog. When the fog clears, the ship is attacked by an unseen band of
natives, who fire arrows from the safety of the forest. The African helmsman is
killed before Marlow frightens the natives away with the ships steam whistle.
Not long after, Marlow and his companions arrive at Kurtzs Inner Station,
expecting to find him dead, but a half-crazed Russian trader, who meets them
as they come ashore, assures them that everything is fine and informs them
that he is the one who left the wood. The Russian claims that Kurtz has
enlarged his mind and cannot be subjected to the same moral judgments as
normal people. Apparently, Kurtz has established himself as a god with the
natives and has gone on brutal raids in the surrounding territory in search of
ivory. The collection of severed heads adorning the fence posts around the
station attests to his methods. The pilgrims bring Kurtz out of the stationhouse on a stretcher, and a large group of native warriors pours out of the
forest and surrounds them. Kurtz speaks to them, and the natives disappear
into the woods.
The manager brings Kurtz, who is quite ill, aboard the steamer. A beautiful
native woman, apparently Kurtzs mistress, appears on the shore and stares
out at the ship. The Russian implies that she is somehow involved with Kurtz
and has caused trouble before through her influence over him. The Russian
reveals to Marlow, after swearing him to secrecy, that Kurtz had ordered the
attack on the steamer to make them believe he was dead in order that they
might turn back and leave him to his plans. The Russian then leaves by canoe,
fearing the displeasure of the manager. Kurtz disappears in the night, and
Marlow goes out in search of him, finding him crawling on all fours toward the
native camp. Marlow stops him and convinces him to return to the ship. They
set off down the river the next morning, but Kurtzs health is failing fast.
Marlow listens to Kurtz talk while he pilots the ship, and Kurtz entrusts Marlow
with a packet of personal documents, including an eloquent pamphlet on
civilizing the savages which ends with a scrawled message that says,
Exterminate all the brutes! The steamer breaks down, and they have to stop
for repairs. Kurtz dies, uttering his last wordsThe horror! The horror!in
the presence of the confused Marlow. Marlow falls ill soon after and barely
survives. Eventually he returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtzs Intended
(his fiance). She is still in mourning, even though it has been over a year
since Kurtzs death, and she praises him as a paragon of virtue and
achievement. She asks what his last words were, but Marlow cannot bring
himself to shatter her illusions with the truth. Instead, he tells her that Kurtzs
last word was her name.
Themes
The Hypocrisy of Imperialism

Heart of Darkness explores the issues surrounding imperialism in complicated
ways. As Marlow travels from the Outer Station to the Central Station and
finally up the river to the Inner Station, he encounters scenes of torture,
cruelty, and near-slavery. At the very least, the incidental scenery of the book
offers a harsh picture of colonial enterprise. The impetus behind Marlows
adventures, too, has to do with the hypocrisy inherent in the rhetoric used to
justify imperialism. The men who work for the Company describe what they do
as trade, and their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project
of civilization. Kurtz, on the other hand, is open about the fact that he does
not trade but rather takes ivory by force, and he describes his own treatment of
the natives with the words suppression and extermination: he does not hide
the fact that he rules through violence and intimidation. His perverse honesty
leads to his downfall, as his success threatens to expose the evil practices
behind European activity in Africa.
However, for Marlow as much as for Kurtz or for the Company, Africans in this
book are mostly objects: Marlow refers to his helmsman as a piece of
machinery, and Kurtzs African mistress is at best a piece of statuary. It can be
argued that Heart of Darknessparticipates in an oppression of nonwhites that
is much more sinister and much harder to remedy than the open abuses of
Kurtz or the Companys men. Africans become for Marlow a mere backdrop, a
human screen against which he can play out his philosophical and existential
struggles. Their existence and their exoticism enable his self-contemplation.
This kind of dehumanization is harder to identify than colonial violence or open
racism. While Heart of Darknessoffers a powerful condemnation of the
hypocritical operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues

surrounding race that is ultimately troubling.
Madness as a Result of Imperialism
Madness is closely linked to imperialism in this book. Africa is responsible for
mental disintegration as well as physical illness. Madness has two primary
functions. First, it serves as an ironic device to engage the readers
sympathies. Kurtz, Marlow is told from the beginning, is mad. However, as
Marlow, and the reader, begin to form a more complete picture of Kurtz, it
becomes apparent that his madness is only relative, that in the context of the
Company insanity is difficult to define. Thus, both Marlow and the reader begin
to sympathize with Kurtz and view the Company with suspicion. Madness also
functions to establish the necessity of social fictions. Although social mores
and explanatory justifications are shown throughout Heart of Darkness to be
utterly false and even leading to evil, they are nevertheless necessary for both
group harmony and individual security. Madness, in Heart of Darkness, is the
result of being removed from ones social context and allowed to be the sole
arbiter of ones own actions. Madness is thus linked not only to absolute power
and a kind of moral genius but to mans fundamental fallibility: Kurtz has no
authority to whom he answers but himself, and this is more than any one man
can bear.
The Absurdity of Evil
This novella is, above all, an exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and moral
confusion. It explodes the idea of the proverbial choice between the lesser of
two evils. As the idealistic Marlow is forced to align himself with either the
hypocritical and malicious colonial bureaucracy or the openly malevolent, ruledefying Kurtz, it becomes increasingly clear that to try to judge either
alternative is an act of folly: how can moral standards or social values be
relevant in judging evil? Is there such thing as insanity in a world that has
already gone insane? The number of ridiculous situations Marlow witnesses
act as reflections of the larger issue: at one station, for instance, he sees a
man trying to carry water in a bucket with a large hole in it. At the Outer
Station, he watches native laborers blast away at a hillside with no particular
goal in mind. The absurd involves both insignificant silliness and life-or-death
issues, often simultaneously. That the serious and the mundane are treated
similarly suggests a profound moral confusion and a tremendous hypocrisy: it
is terrifying that Kurtzs homicidal megalomania and a leaky bucket provoke
essentially the same reaction from Marlow.
Motifs
Observation and Eavesdropping

Marlow gains a great deal of information by watching the world around him
and by overhearing others conversations, as when he listens from the deck of
the wrecked steamer to the manager of the Central Station and his uncle
discussing Kurtz and the Russian trader. This phenomenon speaks to the
impossibility of direct communication between individuals: information must
come as the result of chance observation and astute interpretation. Words
themselves fail to capture meaning adequately, and thus they must be taken in
the context of their utterance. Another good example of this is Marlows
conversation with the brickmaker, during which Marlow is able to figure out a
good deal more than simply what the man has to say.
Interiors and Exteriors
Comparisons between interiors and exteriors pervade Heart of Darkness. As
the narrator states at the beginning of the text, Marlow is more interested in
surfaces, in the surrounding aura of a thing rather than in any hidden nugget of
meaning deep within the thing itself. This inverts the usual hierarchy of
meaning: normally one seeks the deep message or hidden truth. The priority
placed on observation demonstrates that penetrating to the interior of an idea
or a person is impossible in this world. Thus, Marlow is confronted with a
series of exteriors and surfacesthe rivers banks, the forest walls around the
station, Kurtzs broad foreheadthat he must interpret. These exteriors are all
the material he is given, and they provide him with perhaps a more profound
source of knowledge than any falsely constructed interior kernel.
Darkness
Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the books title.

However, it is difficult to discern exactly what it might mean, given that
absolutely everything in the book is cloaked in darkness. Africa, England, and
Brussels are all described as gloomy and somehow dark, even if the sun is
shining brightly. Darkness thus seems to operate metaphorically and
existentially rather than specifically. Darkness is the inability to see: this may
sound simple, but as a description of the human condition it has profound
implications. Failing to see another human being means failing to understand
that individual and failing to establish any sort of sympathetic communion with
him or her.
Symbols
Fog
Fog is a sort of corollary to darkness. Fog not only obscures but distorts: it
gives one just enough information to begin making decisions but no way to
judge the accuracy of that information, which often ends up being wrong.
Marlows steamer is caught in the fog, meaning that he has no idea where hes
going and no idea whether peril or open water lies ahead.
The Whited Sepulchre
The whited sepulchre is probably Brussels, where the Companys
headquarters are located. A sepulchre implies death and confinement, and
indeed Europe is the origin of the colonial enterprises that bring death to white
men and to their colonial subjects; it is also governed by a set of reified social
principles that both enable cruelty, dehumanization, and evil and prohibit
change. The phrase whited sepulchre comes from the biblical Book of
Matthew. In the passage, Matthew describes whited sepulchres as
something beautiful on the outside but containing horrors within (the bodies of
the dead); thus, the image is appropriate for Brussels, given the hypocritical
Belgian rhetoric about imperialisms civilizing mission. (Belgian colonies,
particularly the Congo, were notorious for the violence perpetuated against the
natives.)
Women
Both Kurtzs Intended and his African mistress function as blank slates upon
which the values and the wealth of their respective societies can be displayed.
Marlow frequently claims that women are the keepers of nave illusions;
although this sounds condemnatory, such a role is in fact crucial, as these
nave illusions are at the root of the social fictions that justify economic
enterprise and colonial expansion. In return, the women are the beneficiaries
of much of the resulting wealth, and they become objects upon which men can
display their own success and status.
The River
The Congo River is the key to Africa for Europeans. It allows them access to
the center of the continent without having to physically cross it; in other words,
it allows the white man to remain always separate or outside. Africa is thus
reduced to a series of two-dimensional scenes that flash by Marlows steamer

as he travels upriver. The river also seems to want to expel Europeans from
Africa altogether: its current makes travel upriver slow and difficult, but the flow
of water makes travel downriver, back toward civilization, rapid and
seemingly inevitable. Marlows struggles with the river as he travels upstream
toward Kurtz reflect his struggles to understand the situation in which he has
found himself. The ease with which he journeys back downstream, on the
other hand, mirrors his acquiescence to Kurtz and his choice of nightmares.
AS I LAY DYING
William Faulkner
Plot Overview
Addie Bundren, the wife of Anse Bundren and the matriarch of a poor southern
family, is very ill, and is expected to die soon. Her oldest son, Cash, puts all of
his carpentry skills into preparing her coffin, which he builds right in front of
Addies bedroom window. Although Addies health is failing rapidly, two of her
other sons, Darl and Jewel, leave town to make a delivery for the Bundrens
neighbor, Vernon Tull, whose wife and two daughters have been tending to
Addie. Shortly after Darl and Jewel leave, Addie dies. The youngest Bundren
child, Vardaman, associates his mothers death with that of a fish he caught
and cleaned earlier that day. With some help, Cash completes the coffin just
before dawn. Vardaman is troubled by the fact that his mother is nailed shut
inside a box, and while the others sleep, he bores holes in the lid, two of which
go through his mothers face. Addie and Anses daughter, Dewey Dell, whose
recent sexual liaisons with a local farmhand named Lafe have left her
pregnant, is so overwhelmed by anxiety over her condition that she barely
mourns her mothers death. A funeral service is held on the following day,
where the women sing songs inside the Bundren house while the men stand
outside on the porch talking to each other.
Darl, who narrates much of this first section, returns with Jewel a few days
later, and the presence of buzzards over their house lets them know their
mother is dead. On seeing this sign, Darl sardonically reassures Jewel, who is
widely perceived as ungrateful and uncaring, that he can be sure his beloved
horse is not dead. Addie has made Anse promise that she will be buried in the
town of Jefferson, and though this request is a far more complicated
proposition than burying her at home, Anses sense of obligation, combined
with his desire to buy a set of false teeth, compels him to fulfill Addies dying
wish. Cash, who has broken his leg on a job site, helps the family lift the
unbalanced coffin, but it is Jewel who ends up manhandling it, almost singlehandedly, into the wagon. Jewel refuses, however, to actually come in the
wagon, and follows the rest of the family riding on his horse, which he bought
when he was young by secretly working nights on a neighbors land.
On the first night of their journey, the Bundrens stay at the home of a generous
local family, who regards the Bundrens mission with skepticism. Due to severe
flooding, the main bridges leading over the local river have been flooded or
washed away, and the Bundrens are forced to turn around and attempt a rivercrossing over a makeshift ford. When a stray log upsets the wagon, the coffin
is knocked out, Cashs broken leg is reinjured, and the team of mules drowns.
Vernon Tull sees the wreck, and helps Jewel rescue the coffin and the wagon
from the river. Together, the family members and Tull search the riverbed for
Cashs tools.
Cora, Tulls wife, remembers Addies unchristian inclination to respect her son
Jewel more than God. Addie herself, speaking either from her coffin or in a
leap back in time to her deathbed, recalls events from her life: her loveless
marriage to Anse; her affair with the local minister, Whitfield, which led to
Jewels conception; and the birth of her various children. Whitfield recalls
traveling to the Bundrens house to confess the affair to Anse, and his eventual
decision not to say anything after all.
A horse doctor sets Cashs broken leg, while Cash faints from the pain without
ever complaining. Anse is able to purchase a new team of mules by
mortgaging his farm equipment, using money that he was saving for his false
teeth and money that Cash was saving for a new gramophone, and trading in
Jewels horse. The family continues on its way. In the town of Mottson,
residents react with horror to the stench coming from the Bundren wagon.
While the family is in town, Dewey Dell tries to buy a drug that will abort her
unwanted pregnancy, but the pharmacist refuses to sell it to her, and advises
marriage instead. With cement the family has purchased in town, Darl creates
a makeshift cast for Cashs broken leg, which fits poorly and only increases
Cashs pain. The Bundrens then spend the night at a local farm owned by a
man named Gillespie. Darl, who has been skeptical of their mission for some
time, burns down the Gillespie barn with the intention of incinerating the coffin
and Addies rotting corpse. Jewel rescues the animals in the barn, then risks
his life to drag out Addies coffin. Darl lies on his mothers coffin and cries.
The next day, the Bundrens arrive in Jefferson and bury Addie. Rather than
face a lawsuit for Darls criminal barn burning, the Bundrens claim that Darl is
insane, and give him to a pair of men who commit him to a Jackson mental
institution. Dewey Dell tries again to buy an abortion drug at the local
pharmacy, where a boy working behind the counter claims to be a doctor and
tricks her into exchanging sexual services for what she soon realizes is not an
actual abortion drug. The following morning, the children are greeted by their
father, who sports a new set of false teeth and, with a mixture of shame and
pride, introduces them to his new bride, a local woman he meets while
borrowing shovels with which to bury Addie.
Themes
The Impermanence of Existence and Identity

The death of Addie Bundren inspires several characters to wrestle with the
rather sizable questions of existence and identity. Vardaman is bewildered and
horrified by the transformation of a fish he caught and cleaned into pieces of
not-fish, and associates that image with the transformation of Addie from a
person into an indefinable nonperson. Jewel never really speaks for himself,
but his grief is summed up for him by Darl, who says that Jewels mother is a
horse. For his own part, Darl believes that since the dead Addie is now best
described as was rather than is, it must be the case that she no longer
exists. If his mother does not exist, Darl reasons, then Darl has no mother and,
by implication, does not exist. These speculations are not mere games of
language and logic. Rather, they have tangible, even terrible, consequences
for the novels characters. Vardaman and Darl, the characters for whom these
questions are the most urgent, both find their hold on reality loosened as they
pose such inquiries. Vardaman babbles senselessly early in the novel, while
Darl is eventually declared insane. The fragility and uncertainty of human
existence is further illustrated at the end of the novel, when Anse introduces
his new wife as Mrs. Bundren, a name that, until recently, has belonged to
Addie. If the identity of Mrs. Bundren can be usurped so quickly, the inevitable
conclusion is that any individuals identity is equally unstable.
The Tension Between Words and Thoughts
Addies assertion that words are just words, perpetually falling short of the
ideas and emotions they seek to convey, reflects the distrust with which the
novel as a whole treats verbal communication. While the inner monologues
that make up the novel demonstrate that the characters have rich inner lives,
very little of the content of these inner lives is ever communicated between
individuals. Indeed, conversations tend to be terse, halting, and irrelevant to
what the characters are thinking at the time. When, for example, Tull and
several other local men are talking with Cash about his broken leg during
Addies funeral, we are presented with two entirely separate conversations.
One, printed in normal type, is vague and simple and is presumably the
conversation that is actually occurring. The second, in italics, is far richer in
content and is presumably the one that the characters would have if they
actually spoke their minds. All of the characters are so fiercely protective of
their inner thoughts that the rich content of their minds is translated to only the
barest, most begrudging scraps of dialogue, which in turn leads to any number
of misunderstandings and miscommunications.
The Relationship Between Childbearing and Death

As I Lay Dying is, in its own way, a relentlessly cynical novel, and it robs even
childbirth of its usual rehabilitative powers. Instead of functioning as an
antidote to death, childbirth seems an introduction to itfor both Addie and
Dewey Dell, giving birth is a phenomenon that kills the people closest to it,
even if they are still physically alive. For Addie, the birth of her first child seems
like a cruel trick, an infringement on her precious solitude, and it is Cashs birth
that first causes Addie to refer to Anse as dead. Birth becomes for Addie a final
obligation, and she sees both Dewey Dell and Vardaman as reparations for the
affair that led to Jewels conception, the last debts she must pay before
preparing herself for death. Dewey Dells feelings about pregnancy are no
more positive: her condition becomes a constant concern, causes her to view
all men as potential sexual predators, and transforms her entire world, as she
says in an early section, into a tub full of guts. Birth seems to spell out a
prescribed death for women and, by proxy, the metaphorical deaths of their
entire households.
Motifs
Pointless Acts of Heroism

As I Lay Dying is filled with moments of great heroism and with struggles that
are almost epic, but the novels take on such battles is ironic at best, and at
times it even makes them seem downright absurd or mundane. The Bundrens
effort to get their wagon across the flooded river is a struggle that could have
been pulled from a more conventional adventure novel, but is undermined by
the fact that it occurs for a questionable purpose. One can argue that the
mission of burying Addie in Jefferson is as much about Anses false teeth as
about Addies dying wishes. Cashs martyrdom seems noble, but his
uncomplaining tolerance of the pain from his injuries eventually becomes more
ridiculous than heroic. Jewels rescuing of the livestock is daring, but it also
nullifies Darls burning of the barn, which, while criminal, could be seen as the
most daring and noble act of all. Every act of heroism, if not ridiculous on its
own, counteracts an equally epic act, a vicious cycle that lends an absurdity
that is both comic and tragic to the novel.
Interior Monologues
As Faulkner was embarking on his literary career in the early twentieth
century, a number of Modernist writers were experimenting with narrative
techniques that depended more on explorations of individual consciousness
than on a string of events to create a story. James Joyces Ulysses and Marcel
Prousts In Search of Lost Time are among the most famous and successful of
these experiments, but Faulkner also made a substantial contribution to this
movement.
As I Lay Dying is written as a series of stream-of-consciousness monologues,
in which the characters thoughts are presented in all their uncensored chaos,
without the organizing presence of an objective narrator. This technique turns
character psychology into a dominant concern and is able to present that
psychology with much more complexity and authority than a more traditional
narrative style. At the same time, it forces us to work hard to understand the
text. Instead of being presented with an objective framework of events,
somewhere in the jumble of images, memories, and unexplained allusions, we
are forced to take the pieces each character gives and make something of
them ourselves.
Issues of Social Class
In the American South, where Faulkner lived and wrote, social class was more
hierarchical and loomed larger as a concern than elsewhere in the United
States, and it is clearly engrained in the fabric of As I Lay Dying.Faulkner
proved to be unusual in his ability to depict poor rural folk with grace, dignity,
and poetic grandeur, without whitewashing or ignoring their circumstances.
The Bundrens find willing, even gracious hosts at neighboring rural farms, but
their welcome in the more affluent towns is cold at best: a marshal tells them
their corpse smells too rancid for them to stay, a town man pulls a knife on
Jewel, and an unscrupulous shop attendant takes advantage of Dewey Dell.
On the other hand, despite their poor grammar and limited vocabularies,
Faulkners characters express their thoughts with a sort of pared-down
poeticism. Exactly what Faulkners intentions were for his family of rural
southerners is unclearAs I Lay Dying has been read as both a poignant
tribute to and a scathing send-up of rural southern valuesbut the Bundrens
background unmistakably shapes their journey and the interactions they have
along the way.
Symbols
Animals
Shortly after Addies death, the Bundren children seize on animals as symbols
of their deceased mother. Vardaman declares that his mother is the fish he
caught. Darl asserts that Jewels mother is his horse. Dewey Dell calls the
family cow a woman as she mulls over her pregnancy only minutes after she
has lost Addie, her only female relative. For very different reasons, the griefstricken characters seize on animals as emblems of their own situations.
Vardaman sees Addie in his fish because, like the fish, she has been
transformed to a different state than when she was alive. The cow, swollen
with milk, signifies to Dewey Dell the unpleasantness of being stuck with an
unwanted burden. Jewel and his horse add a new wrinkle to the use of
animals as symbols. To us, based on Darls word, the horse is a symbol of
Jewels love for his mother. For Jewel, however, the horse, based on his riding
of it, apparently symbolizes a hard-won freedom from the Bundren family. That
we can draw such different conclusions from the novels characters makes the
horse in many ways representative of the unpredictable and subjective nature
of symbols in As I Lay Dying.
Addies Coffin
Addies coffin comes to stand literally for the enormous burden of dysfunction
that Addies death, and circumstances in general, place on the Bundren family.
Cash, always calm and levelheaded, manufactures the coffin with great craft
and care, but the absurdities pile up almost immediatelyAddie is placed in
the coffin upside down, and Vardaman drills holes in her face. Like the
Bundrens lives, the coffin is thrown off balance by Addies corpse. The coffin
becomes the gathering point for all of the familys dysfunction, and putting it to
rest is also crucial to the familys ability to return to some sort of normalcy.
Tools
Tools, in the form of Cashs carpentry tools and Anses farm equipment,
become symbols of respectable living and stability thrown into jeopardy by the
recklessness of the Bundrens journey. Cashs tools seem as though they
should have significance for Cash alone, but when these tools are scattered by
the rushing river and the oncoming log, the whole family, as well as Tull,
scrambles to recover them. Anses farm equipment is barely mentioned, but
ends up playing a crucial role in the Bundrens journey when Anse mortgages
the most expensive parts of it to buy a new team of mules. This trade is
significant, as the money from Anses pilfering of Cashs gramophone fund and
the sale of Jewels horse represents the sacrifice of these characters greatest
dreams. But the fact that Anse throws in his farm equipment should not be
overlooked, as this equipment guarantees the familys livelihood. In an effort to
salvage the burial trip, Anse jeopardizes the very tools the family requires to till
its land and survive.
THE SOUND AND THE FURY

William Faulkner
Plot Overview
Attempting to apply traditional plot summary to The Sound and the Fury is
difficult. At a basic level, the novel is about the three Compson brothers
obsessions with the their sister Caddy, but this brief synopsis represents
merely the surface of what the novel contains. A story told in four chapters, by
four different voices, and out of chronological order, The Sound and the
Fury requires intense concentration and patience to interpret and understand.
The first three chapters of the novel consist of the convoluted thoughts, voices,
and memories of the three Compson brothers, captured on three different
days. The brothers are Benjy, a severely retarded thirty-three-year-old man,
speaking in April, 1928; Quentin, a young Harvard student, speaking in June,
1910; and Jason, a bitter farm-supply store worker, speaking again in April,
1928. Faulkner tells the fourth chapter in his own narrative voice, but focuses
on Dilsey, the Compson familys devoted Negro cook who has played a great
part in raising the children. Faulkner harnesses the brothers memories of their
sister Caddy, using a single symbolic moment to forecast the decline of the
once prominent Compson family and to examine the deterioration of the
Southern aristocratic class since the Civil War.
The Compsons are one of several prominent names in the town of Jefferson,
Mississippi. Their ancestors helped settle the area and subsequently defended
it during the Civil War. Since the war, the Compsons have gradually seen their
wealth, land, and status crumble away. Mr. Compson is an alcoholic. Mrs.
Compson is a self-absorbed hypochondriac who depends almost entirely upon
Dilsey to raise her four children. Quentin, the oldest child, is a sensitive bundle
of neuroses. Caddy is stubborn, but loving and compassionate. Jason has
been difficult and mean-spirited since birth and is largely spurned by the other
children. Benjy is severely mentally disabled, an idiot with no understanding
of the concepts of time or morality. In the absence of the self-absorbed Mrs.
Compson, Caddy serves as a mother figure and symbol of affection for Benjy
and Quentin.
As the children grow older, however, Caddy begins to behave promiscuously,
which torments Quentin and sends Benjy into fits of moaning and crying.
Quentin is preparing to go to Harvard, and Mr. Compson sells a large portion
of the family land to provide funds for the tuition. Caddy loses her virginity and
becomes pregnant. She is unable or unwilling to name the father of the child,
though it is likely Dalton Ames, a boy from town.
Caddys pregnancy leaves Quentin emotionally shattered. He attempts to
claim false responsibility for the pregnancy, lying to his father that he and
Caddy have committed incest. Mr. Compson is indifferent to Caddys
promiscuity, dismissing Quentins story and telling his son to leave early for the
Northeast.
Attempting to cover up her indiscretions, Caddy quickly marries Herbert Head,

a banker she met in Indiana. Herbert promises Jason Compson a job in his
bank. Herbert immediately divorces Caddy and rescinds Jasons job offer
when he realizes his wife is pregnant with another mans child. Meanwhile,
Quentin, still mired in despair over Caddys sin, commits suicide by drowning
himself in the Charles River just before the end of his first year at Harvard.
The Compsons disown Caddy from the family, but take in her newborn
daughter, Miss Quentin. The task of raising Miss Quentin falls squarely on
Dilseys shoulders. Mr. Compson dies of alcoholism roughly a year after
Quentins suicide. As the oldest surviving son, Jason becomes the head of the
Compson household. Bitterly employed at a menial job in the local farm-supply
store, Jason devises an ingenious scheme to steal the money Caddy sends to
support Miss Quentins upbringing.
Miss Quentin grows up to be an unhappy, rebellious, and promiscuous girl,
constantly in conflict with her overbearing and vicious uncle Jason. On Easter
Sunday, 1 9 2 8 , Miss Quentin steals several thousand dollars from Jason and
runs away with a man from a traveling show. While Jason chases after Miss
Quentin to no avail, Dilsey takes Benjy and the rest of her family to Easter
services at the local church.
A Note on the Title

The title of The Sound and the Fury refers to a line from William
Shakespeares Macbeth. Macbeth, a Scottish general and nobleman, learns of
his wifes suicide and feels that his life is crumbling into chaos. In addition to
Faulkners title, we can find several of the novels important motifs in
Macbeths short soliloquy in Act V, scene v:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(V.v.1827)
The Sound and the Fury literally begins as a tale / Told by an idiot, as the first
chapter is narrated by the mentally disabled Benjy. The novels central
concerns include time, much like Macbeths [t]omorrow, and tomorrow;
death, recalling Macbeths dusty death; and nothingness and disintegration,
a clear reference to Macbeths lament that life [s]ignif[ies] nothing.
Additionally, Quentin is haunted by the sense that the Compson family has
disintegrated to a mere shadow of its former greatness.
In his soliloquy, Macbeth implies that life is but a shadow of the past and that a
modern man, like himself, is inadequately equipped and unable to achieve
anything near the greatness of the past. Faulkner reinterprets this idea,
implying that if man does not choose to take his own life, as Quentin does, the
only alternatives are to become either a cynic and materialist like Jason, or an
idiot like Benjy, unable to see life as anything more than a meaningless series
of images, sounds, and memories.
Themes
The Corruption of Southern Aristocratic Values

The first half of the nineteenth century saw the rise of a number of prominent
Southern families such as the Compsons. These aristocratic families
espoused traditional Southern values. Men were expected to act like
gentlemen, displaying courage, moral strength, perseverance, and chivalry in
defense of the honor of their family name. Women were expected to be
models of feminine purity, grace, and virginity until it came time for them to
provide children to inherit the family legacy. Faith in God and profound concern
for preserving the family reputation provided the grounding for these beliefs.
The Civil War and Reconstruction devastated many of these once-great
Southern families economically, socially, and psychologically. Faulkner
contends that in the process, the Compsons, and other similar Southern
families, lost touch with the reality of the world around them and became lost
in a haze of self-absorption. This self-absorption corrupted the core values
these families once held dear and left the newer generations completely
unequipped to deal with the realities of the modern world.
We see this corruption running rampant in the Compson family. Mr. Compson
has a vague notion of family honorsomething he passes on to Quentinbut
is mired in his alcoholism and maintains a fatalistic belief that he cannot
control the events that befall his family. Mrs. Compson is just as self-absorbed,
wallowing in hypochondria and self-pity and remaining emotionally distant from
her children. Quentins obsession with old Southern morality renders him
paralyzed and unable to move past his familys sins. Caddy tramples on the
Southern notion of feminine purity and indulges in promiscuity, as does her
daughter. Jason wastes his cleverness on self-pity and greed, striving
constantly for personal gain but with no higher aspirations. Benjy commits no
real sins, but the Compsons decline is physically manifested through his
retardation and his inability to differentiate between morality and immorality.
The Compsons corruption of Southern values results in a household that is

completely devoid of love, the force that once held the family together. Both
parents are distant and ineffective. Caddy, the only child who shows an ability
to love, is eventually disowned. Though Quentin loves Caddy, his love is
neurotic, obsessive, and overprotective. None of the men experience any true
romantic love, and are thus unable to marry and carry on the family name.
At the conclusion of the novel, Dilsey is the only loving member of the
household, the only character who maintains her values without the corrupting
influence of self-absorption. She thus comes to represent a hope for the
renewal of traditional Southern values in an uncorrupted and positive form.
The novel ends with Dilsey as the torchbearer for these values, and, as such,
the only hope for the preservation of the Compson legacy. Faulkner implies
that the problem is not necessarily the values of the old South, but the fact that
these values were corrupted by families such as the Compsons and must be
recaptured for any Southern greatness to return.
Resurrection and Renewal
Three of the novels four sections take place on or around Easter,1 9 2 8 .
Faulkners placement of the novels climax on this weekend is significant, as
the weekend is associated with Christs crucifixion on Good Friday and
resurrection on Easter Sunday. A number of symbolic events in the novel could
be likened to the death of Christ: Quentins death, Mr. Compsons death,
Caddys loss of virginity, or the decline of the Compson family in general.
Some critics have characterized Benjy as a Christ figure, as Benjy was born
on Holy Saturday and is currently thirty-three, the same age as Christ at the
crucifixion. Interpreting Benjy as a Christ figure has a variety of possible
implications. Benjy may represent the impotence of Christ in the modern world
and the need for a new Christ figure to emerge. Alternatively, Faulkner may be
implying that the modern world has failed to recognize Christ in its own midst.
Though the Easter weekend is associated with death, it also brings the hope of
renewal and resurrection. Though the Compson family has fallen, Dilsey
represents a source of hope. Dilsey is herself somewhat of a Christ figure. A
literal parallel to the suffering servant of the Bible, Dilsey has endured
Christlike hardship throughout her long life of service to the disintegrating
Compson family. She has constantly tolerated Mrs. Compsons self-pity,
Jasons cruelty, and Benjys frustrating incapacity. While the Compsons
crumble around her, Dilsey emerges as the only character who has
successfully resurrected the values that the Compsons have long abandoned
hard work, endurance, love of family, and religious faith.
The Failure of Language and Narrative
Faulkner himself admitted that he could never satisfactorily convey the story
of The Sound and the Fury through any single narrative voice. His decision to
use four different narrators highlights the subjectivity of each narrative and
casts doubt on the ability of language to convey truth or meaning absolutely.
Benjy, Quentin, and Jason have vastly different views on the Compson
tragedy, but no single perspective seems more valid than the others. As each
new angle emerges, more details and questions arise. Even the final section,
with its omniscient third-person narrator, does not tie up all of the novels loose
ends. In interviews, Faulkner lamented the imperfection of the final version of
the novel, which he termed his most splendid failure. Even with four narrators
providing the depth of four different perspectives, Faulkner believed that his
language and narrative still fell short.
Motifs
Time
Faulkners treatment and representation of time in this novel was hailed as
revolutionary. Faulkner suggests that time is not a constant or objectively
understandable entity, and that humans can interact with it in a variety of ways.
Benjy has no concept of time and cannot distinguish between past and
present. His disability enables him to draw connections between the past and
present that others might not see, and it allows him to escape the other
Compsons obsessions with the past greatness of their name. Quentin, in
contrast, is trapped by time, unable and unwilling to move beyond his
memories of the past. He attempts to escape times grasp by breaking his
watch, but its ticking continues to haunt him afterward, and he sees no solution
but suicide. Unlike his brother Quentin, Jason has no use for the past. He
focuses completely on the present and the immediate future. To Jason, time
exists only for personal gain and cannot be wasted. Dilsey is perhaps the only
character at peace with time. Unlike the Compsons, who try to escape time or
manipulate it to their advantage, Dilsey understands that her life is a small
sliver in the boundless range of time and history.
Order and Chaos

Each of the Compson brothers understands order and chaos in a different way.
Benjy constructs order around the pattern of familiar memories in his mind and
becomes upset when he experiences something that does not fit. Quentin
relies on his idealized Southern code to provide order. Jason orders everything
in his world based on potential personal gain, attempting to twist all
circumstances to his own advantage. All three of these systems fail as the
Compson family plunges into chaos. Only Dilsey has a strong sense of order.
She maintains her values, endures the Compsons tumultuous downfall, and is
the only one left unbroken at the end.
Shadows
Seen primarily in Benjys and Quentins sections, shadows imply that the
present state of the Compson family is merely a shadow of its past greatness.
Shadows serve as a subtle reminder of the passage of time, as they slowly
shift with the sun through the course of a day. Quentin is particularly sensitive
to shadows, a suggestion of his acute awareness that the Compson name is
merely a shadow of what it once was.
Symbols
Water
Water symbolizes cleansing and purity throughout the novel, especially in
relation to Caddy. Playing in the stream as a child, Caddy seems to epitomize
purity and innocence. However, she muddies her underclothes, which
foreshadows Caddys later promiscuity. Benjy gets upset when he first smells
Caddy wearing perfume. Still a virgin at this point, Caddy washes the perfume
off, symbolically washing away her sin. Likewise, she washes her mouth out
with soap after Benjy catches her on the swing with Charlie. Once Caddy loses
her virginity, she knows that no amount of water or washing can cleanse her.
Quentins Watch
Quentins watch is a gift from his father, who hopes that it will alleviate
Quentins feeling that he must devote so much attention to watching time
himself. Quentin is unable to escape his preoccupation with time, with or
without the watch. Because the watch once belonged to Mr. Compson, it
constantly reminds Quentin of the glorious heritage his family considers so
important. The watchs incessant ticking symbolizes the constant inexorable
passage of time. Quentin futilely attempts to escape time by breaking the
watch, but it continues to tick even without its hands, haunting him even after
he leaves the watch behind in his room.
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
Ernest Hemingway
Plot Overview
Lieutenant Frederic Henry is a young American ambulance driver serving in

the Italian army during World War I. At the beginning of the novel, the war is
winding down with the onset of winter, and Henry arranges to tour Italy. The
following spring, upon his return to the front, Henry meets Catherine Barkley,
an English nurses aide at the nearby British hospital and the love interest of
his friend Rinaldi. Rinaldi, however, quickly fades from the picture as Catherine
and Henry become involved in an elaborate game of seduction. Grieving the
recent death of her fianc, Catherine longs for love so deeply that she will
settle for the illusion of it. Her passion, even though pretended, wakens a
desire for emotional interaction in Henry, whom the war has left coolly
detached and numb.
When Henry is wounded on the battlefield, he is brought to a hospital in Milan
to recover. Several doctors recommend that he stay in bed for six months and
then undergo a necessary operation on his knee. Unable to accept such a long
period of recovery, Henry finds a bold, garrulous surgeon named Dr. Valentini
who agrees to operate immediately. Henry learns happily that Catherine has
been transferred to Milan and begins his recuperation under her care. During
the following months, his relationship with Catherine intensifies. No longer
simply a game in which they exchange empty promises and playful kisses,
their love becomes powerful and real. As the lines between scripted and
genuine emotions begin to blur, Henry and Catherine become tangled in their
love for each other.
Once Henrys damaged leg has healed, the army grants him three weeks
convalescence leave, after which he is scheduled to return to the front. He
tries to plan a trip with Catherine, who reveals to him that she is pregnant. The
following day, Henry is diagnosed with jaundice, and Miss Van Campen, the
superintendent of the hospital, accuses him of bringing the disease on himself
through excessive drinking. Believing Henrys illness to be an attempt to avoid
his duty as a serviceman, Miss Van Campen has Henrys leave revoked, and
he is sent to the front once the jaundice has cleared. As they part, Catherine
and Henry pledge their mutual devotion.
Henry travels to the front, where Italian forces are losing ground and
manpower daily. Soon after Henrys arrival, a bombardment begins. When
word comes that German troops are breaking through the Italian lines, the
Allied forces prepare to retreat. Henry leads his team of ambulance drivers into
the great column of evacuating troops. The men pick up two engineering
sergeants and two frightened young girls on their way. Henry and his drivers
then decide to leave the column and take secondary roads, which they
assume will be faster. When one of their vehicles bogs down in the mud,
Henry orders the two engineers to help in the effort to free the vehicle. When
they refuse, he shoots one of them. The drivers continue in the other trucks
until they get stuck again. They send off the young girls and continue on foot
toward Udine. As they march, one of the drivers is shot dead by the easily
frightened rear guard of the Italian army. Another driver marches off to
surrender himself, while Henry and the remaining driver seek refuge at a
farmhouse. When they rejoin the retreat the following day, chaos has broken
out: soldiers, angered by the Italian defeat, pull commanding officers from the
melee and execute them on sight. The battle police seize Henry, who, at a
crucial moment, breaks away and dives into the river. After swimming a safe
distance downstream, Henry boards a train bound for Milan. He hides beneath
a tarp that covers stockpiled artillery, thinking that his obligations to the war
effort are over and dreaming of his return to Catherine.
Henry reunites with Catherine in the town of Stresa. From there, the two
escape to safety in Switzerland, rowing all night in a tiny borrowed boat. They
settle happily in a lovely alpine town called Montreux and agree to put the war
behind them forever. Although Henry is sometimes plagued by guilt for
abandoning the men on the front, the two succeed in living a beautiful,
peaceful life. When spring arrives, the couple moves to Lausanne so that they
can be closer to the hospital. Early one morning, Catherine goes into labor.
The delivery is exceptionally painful and complicated. Catherine delivers a
stillborn baby boy and, later that night, dies of a hemorrhage. Henry stays at
her side until she is gone. He attempts to say goodbye but cannot. He walks
back to his hotel in the rain.
Themes
The Grim Reality of War

As the title of the novel makes clear, A Farewell to Arms concerns itself
primarily with war, namely the process by which Frederic Henry removes
himself from it and leaves it behind. The few characters in the novel who
actually support the effortEttore Moretti and Ginocome across as a dull
braggart and a nave youth, respectively. The majority of the characters remain
ambivalent about the war, resentful of the terrible destruction it causes,
doubtful of the glory it supposedly brings.
The novel offers masterful descriptions of the conflicts senseless brutality and
violent chaos: the scene of the Italian armys retreat remains one of the most
profound evocations of war in American literature. As the neat columns of men
begin to crumble, so too do the soldiers nerves, minds, and capacity for
rational thought and moral judgment. Henrys shooting of the engineer for
refusing to help free the car from the mud shocks the reader for two reasons:
first, the violent outburst seems at odds with Henrys coolly detached
character; second, the incident occurs in a setting that robs it of its moral
importthe complicity of Henrys fellow soldiers legitimizes the killing. The
murder of the engineer seems justifiable because it is an inevitable by-product
of the spiraling violence and disorder of the war.
Nevertheless, the novel cannot be said to condemn the war; A Farewell to
Arms is hardly the work of a pacifist. Instead, just as the innocent engineers
death is an inevitability of war, so is war the inevitable outcome of a cruel,
senseless world. Hemingway suggests that war is nothing more than the dark,
murderous extension of a world that refuses to acknowledge, protect, or
preserve true love.
The Relationship Between Love and Pain
Against the backdrop of war, Hemingway offers a deep, mournful meditation
on the nature of love. No sooner does Catherine announce to Henry that she
is in mourning for her dead fianc than she begins a game meant to seduce
Henry. Her reasons for doing so are clear: she wants to distance herself from
the pain of her loss. Likewise, Henry intends to get as far away from talk of the
war as possible. In each other, Henry and Catherine find temporary solace
from the things that plague them. The couples feelings for each other quickly
pass from an amusement that distracts them to the very fuel that sustains
them. Henrys understanding of how meaningful his love for Catherine is
outweighs any consideration for the emptiness of abstract ideals such as
honor, enabling him to flee the war and seek her out. Reunited, they plan an
idyllic life together that promises to act as a salve for the damage that the war
has inflicted. Far away from the decimated Italian countryside, each intends to
be the others refuge. If they are to achieve physical, emotional, and

psychological healing, they have found the perfect place in the safe remove of
the Swiss mountains. The tragedy of the novel rests in the fact that their love,
even when genuine, can never be more than temporary in this world.
Motifs
Masculinity
Readers of Hemingways fiction will quickly notice a consistent thread in the
portrayal and celebration of a certain kind of man: domineering, supremely
competent, and swaggeringly virile. A Farewell to Arms holds up several of its
minor male characters as examples of fine manhood. Rinaldi is a faithful friend
and an oversexed womanizer; Dr. Valentini exhibits a virility to rival Rinaldis as
well as a bold competence that makes him the best surgeon. Similarly, during
the scene in which Henry fires his pistol at the fleeing engineering sergeants,
Bonello takes charge of the situation by brutally shooting the fallen engineer in
the head. The respect with which Hemingway sketches these men, even at
their lowest points, is highlighted by the humor, if not contempt, with which he
depicts their opposites. The success of each of these men depends, in part, on
the failure of another: Rinaldi secures his sexual prowess by attacking the
priests lack of lust; Dr. Valentinis reputation as a surgeon is thrown into relief
by the three mousy, overly cautious, and physically unimpressive doctors who
precede him; and Bonellos ruthlessness is prompted by the disloyal behavior
of the soldier whom he kills.
Games and Divertissement
Henry and Catherine begin flirting with each other in order to forget personal
troubles. Flirting, which Henry compares to bridge, allows Henry to drop the
war and diverts Catherines thoughts from the death of her fianc. Likewise,
the horse races that Catherine and Henry attend enable them to block out
thinking of Henrys return to the front and of their imminent separation.

Ironically, Henry and Catherines relationship becomes the source of suffering
from which Henry needs diversion. Henry cannot stand to be away from
Catherine, and while playing pool with Count Greffi takes his mind off of her,
the best divertissement turns out to be the war itself. When Catherine instructs
him not to think about her when they are apart, Henry replies, Thats how I
worked it at the front. But there was something to do then. The
transformations of the war from fatal threat into divertissement and love from
distraction into pain signal not only Henrys attachment to Catherine but also
the transitory nature of happiness. Pathos radiates from this fleeting happiness
because, even though happiness is temporary, the pursuit of it remains
necessary. Perhaps an understanding of the limits of happiness explains the
counts comment that though he values love most in life, he is not wise for
doing so. The count is wiser than he claims, however. He hedges against the
transitory nature of love by finding pleasure and amusement in games,
birthday parties, and the taking of a little stimulant. That one can depend on
their simple pleasures lends games and divertissement a certain dignity; while
they may not match up to the nobility of pursuits such as love, they prove
quietly constant.
Loyalty Versus Abandonment
The notions of loyalty and abandonment apply equally well to love and war.
The novel, however, suggests that loyalty is more a requirement of love and
friendship than of the grand political causes and abstract philosophies of

battling nations. While Henry takes seriously his duty as a lieutenant, he does
not subscribe to the ideals that one typically imagines fuel soldiers in combat.
Unlike Ettore Moretti or Gino, the promise of honor and the duties of patriotism
mean little to Henry. Although he shoots an uncooperative engineering
sergeant for failing to comply with his orders, Henrys violence should be read
as an inevitable outcome of a destructive war rather than as a conscious
decision to enforce a code of moral conduct. Indeed, Henry eventually follows
in the engineering sergeants footsteps by abandoning the army and his
responsibilities. While he does, at times, feel guilt over this course of action, he
takes comfort in the knowledge that he is most loyal where loyalty counts
most: in his relationship with Catherine. That these conflicting allegiances
cannot be reconciled does not suggest, however, that loyalty and
abandonment lie at opposite ends of a moral spectrum. Rather, they reflect the
priorities of a specific individuals life.
Illusions and Fantasies
Upon meeting, Catherine and Henry rely upon a grand illusion of love and
seduction for comfort. Catherine seeks solace for the death of her fianc, while
Henry will do anything to distance himself from the war. At first, their
declarations of love are transparent: Catherine reminds Henry several times
that their courtship is a game, sending him away when she has played her fill.
After Henry is wounded, however, his desire for Catherine and the comfort and
support that she offers becomes more than a distraction from the worlds
unpleasantness; his love begins to sustain him and blossoms into something
undeniably real. Catherines feelings for Henry follow a similar course.
While the couple acts in ways that confirm the genuine nature of their passion,
however, they never escape the temptation of dreaming of a better world. In
other words, the boundary between reality and illusion proves difficult to
identify. After Henry and Catherine have spent months of isolation in
Switzerland, Hemingway depicts their relationship as a mixture of reality and
illusion. Boredom has begun to set in, and the couple effects small daily
changes to reinvigorate their lives and their passion: Catherine gets a new
haircut, while Henry grows a beard. Still, or perhaps because of, the
comparative dullness of real life (not to mention the ongoing war), the couple
turns to fantasies of a more perfect existence. They dream of life on a Swiss
mountain, where they will make their own clothes and need nothing but each
other, suggesting that fantasizing is part of coping with the banal, sometimes
damaging effects of reality.
Symbols
Rain
Rain serves in the novel as a potent symbol of the inevitable disintegration of
happiness in life. Catherine infuses the weather with meaning as she and
Henry lie in bed listening to the storm outside. As the rain falls on the roof,
Catherine admits that the rain scares her and says that it has a tendency to
ruin things for lovers. Of course, no meteorological phenomenon has such
power; symbolically, however, Catherines fear proves to be prophetic, for
doom does eventually come to the lovers. After Catherines death, Henry
leaves the hospital and walks home in the rain. Here, the falling rain validates
Catherines anxiety and confirms one of the novels main contentions: great
love, like anything else in the worldgood or bad, innocent or deserving
cannot last.
Catherines Hair
Although it is not a recurring symbol, Catherines hair is an important one. In
the early, easy days of their relationship, as Henry and Catherine lie in bed,
Catherine takes down her hair and lets it cascade around Henrys head. The
tumble of hair reminds Henry of being enclosed inside a tent or behind a
waterfall. This lovely description stands as a symbol of the couples isolation
from the world. With a war raging around them, they manage to secure a
blissful seclusion, believing themselves protected by something as delicate as
hair. Later, however, when they are truly isolated from the ravages of war and
living in peaceful Switzerland, they learn the harsh lesson that love, in the face
of lifes cruel reality, is as fragile and ephemeral as hair.
THE SUN ALSO RISES

Ernest Hemingway
Plot Overview
The Sun Also Rises opens with the narrator, Jake Barnes, delivering a brief
biographical sketch of his friend, Robert Cohn. Jake is a veteran of World War
I who now works as a journalist in Paris. Cohn is also an American expatriate,
although not a war veteran. He is a rich Jewish writer who lives in Paris with
his forceful and controlling girlfriend, Frances Clyne. Cohn has become
restless of late, and he comes to Jakes office one afternoon to try to convince
Jake to go with him to South America. Jake refuses, and he takes pains to get
rid of Cohn. That night at a dance club, Jake runs into Lady Brett Ashley, a
divorced socialite and the love of Jakes life. Brett is a free-spirited and
independent woman, but she can be very selfish at times. She and Jake met in
England during World War I, when Brett treated Jake for a war wound. During
Jake and Bretts conversation, it is subtly implied that Jakes injury rendered
him impotent. Although Brett loves Jake, she hints that she is unwilling to give
up sex, and that for this reason she will not commit to a relationship with him.
The next morning, Jake and Cohn have lunch. Cohn is quite taken with Brett,
and he gets angry when Jake tells him that Brett plans to marry Mike
Campbell, a heavy-drinking Scottish war veteran. That afternoon, Brett stands
Jake up. That night, however, she arrives unexpectedly at his apartment with
Count Mippipopolous, a rich Greek expatriate. After sending the count out for
champagne, Brett tells Jake that she is leaving for San Sebastian, in Spain,
saying it will be easier on both of them to be apart.
Several weeks later, while Brett and Cohn are both traveling outside of Paris,
one of Jakes friends, a fellow American war veteran named Bill Gorton,
arrives in Paris. Bill and Jake make plans to leave for Spain to do some fishing
and later attend the fiesta at Pamplona. Jake makes plans to meet Cohn on
the way to Pamplona. Jake runs into Brett, who has returned from San
Sebastian; with her is Mike, her fianc. They ask if they may join Jake in
Spain, and he politely responds that they may. When Mike leaves for a
moment, Brett reveals to Jake that she and Cohn were in San Sebastian
together.
Bill and Jake take a train from Paris to Bayonne, in the south of France, where
they meet Cohn. The three men travel together into Spain, to Pamplona. They
plan on meeting Brett and Mike that night, but the couple does not show up.
Bill and Jake decide to leave for a small town called Burguete to fish, but Cohn
chooses to stay and wait for Brett. Bill and Jake travel to the Spanish
countryside and check into a small, rural inn. They spend five pleasant days
fishing, drinking, and playing cards. Eventually, Jake receives a letter from
Mike. He writes that he and Brett will be arriving in Pamplona shortly. Jake and
Bill leave on a bus that afternoon to meet the couple. After arriving in
Pamplona, Jake and Bill check into a hotel owned by Montoya, a Spanish
bullfighting expert who likes Jake for his earnest interest in the sport. Jake and
Bill meet up with Brett, Mike, and Cohn, and the whole group goes to watch
the bulls being unloaded in preparation for the bullfights during the fiesta. Mike
mocks Cohn harshly for following Brett around when he is not wanted.
After a few more days of preparation, the fiesta begins. The city is consumed
with dancing, drinking, and general debauchery. The highlight of the first day is
the first bullfight, at which Pedro Romero, a nineteen-year-old prodigy,
distinguishes himself above all the other bullfighters. Despite its violence, Brett
cannot take her eyes off the bullfight, or Romero. A few days later, Jake and
his friends are at the hotel dining room, and Brett notices Romero at a nearby
table. She persuades Jake to introduce her to him. Mike again verbally abuses
Cohn, and they almost come to blows before Jake defuses the situation. Later
that night, Brett asks Jake to help her find Romero, with whom she says she
has fallen in love. Jake agrees to help, and Brett and Romero spend the night
together.
Jake then meets up with Mike and Bill, who are both extremely drunk. Cohn
soon arrives, demanding to know where Brett is. After an exchange of insults,
Cohn attacks Mike and Jake, knocking them both out. When Jake returns to
the hotel, he finds Cohn lying face down on his bed and crying. Cohn begs
Jakes forgiveness, and Jake reluctantly grants it. The next day, Jake learns
from Bill and Mike that the night before Cohn also beat up Romero when he
discovered the bullfighter with Brett; Cohn later begged Romero to shake
hands with him, but Romero refused.
At the bullfight that afternoon, Romero fights brilliantly, dazzling the crowd by
killing a bull that had gored a man to death in the streets. Afterward, he cuts
the bulls ear off and gives it to Brett. After this final bullfight, Romero and Brett
leave for Madrid together. Cohn has left that morning, so only Bill, Mike, and
Jake remain as the fiesta draws to a close.
The next day, the three remaining men rent a car and drive out of Spain to
Bayonne and then go their separate ways. Jake heads back into Spain to San
Sebastian, where he plans to spend several quiet days relaxing. He receives a
telegram from Brett, however, asking him to come meet her in Madrid. He
complies, and boards an overnight train that same day. Jake finds Brett alone
in a Madrid hotel room. She has broken with Romero, fearing that she would
ruin him and his career. She announces that she now wants to return to Mike.
Jake books tickets for them to leave Madrid. As they ride in a taxi through the
Spanish capital, Brett laments that she and Jake could have had a wonderful
time together. Jake responds, Yes, isnt it pretty to think so?
Themes
The Aimlessness of the Lost Generation

World War I undercut traditional notions of morality, faith, and justice. No
longer able to rely on the traditional beliefs that gave life meaning, the men
and women who experienced the war became psychologically and morally
lost, and they wandered aimlessly in a world that appeared meaningless. Jake,
Brett, and their acquaintances give dramatic life to this situation. Because they
no longer believe in anything, their lives are empty. They fill their time with
inconsequential and escapist activities, such as drinking, dancing, and
debauchery.
It is important to note that Hemingway never explicitly states that Jake and his
friends lives are aimless, or that this aimlessness is a result of the war.
Instead, he implies these ideas through his portrayal of the characters
emotional and mental lives. These stand in stark contrast to the characters
surface actions. Jake and his friends constant carousing does not make them
happy. Very often, their merrymaking is joyless and driven by alcohol. At best,
it allows them not to think about their inner lives or about the war. Although
they spend nearly all of their time partying in one way or another, they remain
sorrowful or unfulfilled. Hence, their drinking and dancing is just a futile
distraction, a purposeless activity characteristic of a wandering, aimless life.
Male Insecurity
World War I forced a radical reevaluation of what it meant to be masculine.
The prewar ideal of the brave, stoic soldier had little relevance in the context of
brutal trench warfare that characterized the war. Soldiers were forced to sit
huddled together as the enemy bombarded them. Survival depended far more
upon luck than upon bravery. Traditional notions of what it meant to be a man
were thus undermined by the realities of the war. Jake embodies these cultural
changes. The war renders his manhood (that is, his penis) useless because of
injury. He carries the burden of feeling that he is less of a man than he was
before. He cannot escape a nagging sense of inadequacy, which is only
compounded by Bretts refusal to enter into a relationship with him.
While Jakes condition is the most explicit example of weakened masculinity in
the novel, it is certainly not the only one. All of the veterans feel insecure in
their manhood. Again, Hemingway does not state this fact directly, but rather
shows it in the way Jake and his veteran friends react to Cohn. They target
Cohn in particular for abuse when they see him engaging in unmanly
behavior such as following Brett around. They cope with their fears of being
weak and unmasculine by criticizing the weakness they see in him.
Hemingway further presents this theme in his portrayal of Brett. In many ways,
she is more manly than the men in the book. She refers to herself as a
chap, she has a short, masculine haircut and a masculine name, and she is
strong and independent. Thus, she embodies traditionally masculine
characteristics, while Jake, Mike, and Bill are to varying degrees uncertain of
their masculinity.
The Destructiveness of Sex
Sex is a powerful and destructive force in The Sun Also Rises. Sexual
jealousy, for example, leads Cohn to violate his code of ethics and attack Jake,
Mike, and Romero. Furthermore, the desire for sex prevents Brett from
entering into a relationship with Jake, although she loves him. Hence, sex
undermines both Cohns honor and Jake and Bretts love. Brett is closely
associated with the negative consequences of sex. She is a liberated woman,
having sex with multiple men and feeling no compulsion to commit to any of
them. Her carefree sexuality makes Jake and Mike miserable and drives Cohn
to acts of violence. In Brett, Hemingway may be expressing his own anxieties
about strong, sexually independent women.
Motifs
The Failure of Communication

The conversations among Jake and his friends are rarely direct or honest.
They hide true feelings behind a mask of civility. Although the legacy of the war
torments them all, they are unable to communicate this torment. They can talk
about the war only in an excessively humorous or painfully trite fashion. An
example of the latter occurs when Georgette and Jake have dinner, and Jake
narrates that they would probably have gone on to agree that the war would
have been better avoided if they were not fortunately interrupted. The
moments of honest, genuine communication generally arise only when the
characters are feeling their worst. Consequently, only very dark feelings are
expressed. When Brett torments Jake especially harshly, for instance, he
expresses his unhappiness with her and their situation. Similarly, when Mike is
hopelessly drunk, he tells Cohn how much his presence disgusts him.
Expressions of true affection, on the other hand, are limited almost exclusively
to Jake and Bills fishing trip.
Excessive Drinking
Nearly all of Jakes friends are alcoholics. Wherever they happen to be, they
drink, usually to excess. Often, their drinking provides a way of escaping
reality. Drunkenness allows Jake and his acquaintances to endure lives

severely lacking in affection and purpose. Hemingway clearly portrays the
drawbacks to this excessive drinking. Alcohol frequently brings out the worst in
the characters, particularly Mike. He shows himself to be a nasty, violent man
when he is intoxicated. More subtly, Hemingway also implies that drunkenness
only worsens the mental and emotional turmoil that plagues Jake and his
friends. Being drunk allows them to avoid confronting their problems by
providing them with a way to avoid thinking about them. However, drinking is
not exclusively portrayed in a negative light. In the context of Jake and Bills
fishing trip, for instance, it can be a relaxing, friendship-building, even healthy
activity.
False Friendships
False friendships relate closely to failed communication. Many of the
friendships in the novel have no basis in affection. For instance, Jake meets a
bicycle team manager, and the two have a drink together. They enjoy a friendly
conversation and make plans to meet the next morning. Jake, however, sleeps
through their meeting, having no regard for the fact that he will never see the
man again. Jake and Cohn demonstrate another, still darker type of false
friendship. Although Cohn genuinely likes Jake, Jake must often mask outright
antagonism toward Cohn, an antagonism that increases dramatically along
with Jakes unspoken jealousy of Cohn over his affair with Brett. At one point,
he even claims to hate Cohn. This inability to form genuine connections with
other people is an aspect of the aimless wandering that characterizes Jakes
existence. Jake and his friends wander socially as well as geographically.
Ironically, Hemingway suggests that in the context of war it was easier to form
connections with other people. In peacetime it proves far more difficult for
these characters to do so.
Symbols
Bullfighting
The bullfighting episodes in The Sun Also Rises are rich in symbolic
possibilities. The multiple possible interpretations of these passages speak to
the depth and complexity of the text. For example, nearly every episode
involving bulls or bullfighting parallels an episode that either has occurred, or
will soon occur, among Jake and his friends. The killing of the steer by the bull
at the start of the fiesta, for instance, may prefigure Mikes assault on Cohn.
Alternatively, we can read this incident as prefiguring Bretts destruction of
Cohn and his values. Furthermore, the bullfighting episodes nearly always
function from two symbolic viewpoints: Jakes perspective and the perspective
of postwar society. For instance, we can interpret the figure of Belmonte from
the point of view of Jake and his friends. Just as Cohn, Mike, and Jake all
once commanded Bretts affection, so too did Belmonte once command the
affection of the crowd, which now discards him for Romero. In a larger context,
Belmonte can symbolize the entire Lost Generation, whose moment seems to
have passed. On still another level, Hemingway uses bullfighting to develop
the theme of the destructiveness of sex. The language Hemingway employs to
describe Romeros bullfighting is almost always sexual, and his killing of the
bull takes the form of a seduction. This symbolic equation of sex and violence
further links sexuality to danger and destruction. It is important to note that the
distinctions between these interpretations are not hard and fast. Rather, levels
of meaning in The Sun Also Rises flow together and complement one another.
The Waste Land Summary

The poem begins with a section entitled "The Burial of the Dead." In it, the
narrator -- perhaps a representation of Eliot himself -- describes the
seasons. Spring brings "memory and desire," and so the narrator's
memory drifts back to times in Munich, to childhood sled rides, and to a
possible romance with a "hyacinth girl." The memories only go so far,
however. The narrator is now surrounded by a desolate land full of "stony
rubbish."
He remembers a fortune-teller named Madame Sosostris who said he
was "the drowned Phoenician Sailor" and that he should "fear death by
water." Next he finds himself on London Bridge, surrounded by a crowd of
people. He spots a friend of his from wartime, and calls out to him.
The next section, "A Game of Chess," transports the reader abruptly from
the streets of London to a gilded drawing room, in which sits a rich, jewelbedecked lady who complains about her nerves and wonders what to do.
The poem drifts again, this time to a pub at closing time in which two
Cockney women gossip. Within a few stanzas, we have moved from the
upper crust of society to London's low-life.
"The Fire Sermon" opens with an image of a river. The narrator sits on the
banks and muses on the deplorable state of the world. As Tiresias, he sees
a young "carbuncular" man hop into bed with a lonely female typist, only
to aggressively make love to her and then leave without hesitation. The
poem returns to the river, where maidens sing a song of lament, one of
them crying over her loss of innocence to a similarly lustful man.
"Death by Water," the fourth section of the poem, describes a dead
Phoenician lying in the water -- perhaps the same drowned sailor of whom
Madame Sosostris spoke. "What the Thunder Said" shifts locales from the
sea to rocks and mountains. The narrator cries for rain, and it finally
comes. The thunder that accompanies it ushers in the three-pronged
dictum sprung from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad : "Datta,
dayadhvam, damyata": to give, to sympathize, to control. With these
commandments, benediction is possible, despite the collapse of civilization
that is under way -- "London bridge is falling down falling down falling
down."
The Waste Land Themes

Death
Two of the poems sections -- The Burial of the Dead and Death by
Water --refer specifically to this theme. What complicates matters is that
death can mean life; in other words, by dying, a being can pave the way
for new lives. Eliot asks his friend Stetson: That corpse you planted last
year in your garden, / Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Similarly, Christ, by dying, redeemed humanity and thereby gave new
life. The ambiguous passage between life and death finds an echo in the
frequent allusions to Dante, particularly in the Limbo-like vision of the men
flowing across London Bridge and through the modern city.
Rebirth
The Christ images in the poem, along with the many other religious
metaphors, posit rebirth and resurrection as central themes. The Waste
Land lies fallow and the Fisher King is impotent; what is needed is a new
beginning. Water, for one, can bring about that rebirth, but it can also
destroy. What the poet must finally turn to is Heaven, in the climactic
exchange with the skies: Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Eliots vision is
essentially of a world that is neither dying nor living; to break the spell, a
profound change, perhaps an ineffable one, is required. Hence the

prevalence of Grail imagery in the poem; that holy chalice can restore life
and wipe the slate clean; likewise, Eliot refers frequently to baptisms and
to rivers both life-givers, in either spiritual or physical ways.
The Seasons
"The Waste Land" opens with an invocation of April, the cruellest month.
That spring be depicted as cruel is a curious choice on Eliots part, but as a
paradox it informs the rest of the poem to a great degree. What brings life
brings also death; the seasons fluctuate, spinning from one state to
another, but, like history, they maintain some sort of stasis; not everything
changes. In the end, Eliots waste land is almost seasonless: devoid of
rain, of propagation, of real change. The world hangs in a perpetual limbo,
awaiting the dawn of a new season.
Lust
Perhaps the most famous episode in "The Waste Land" involves a female
typists liaison with a carbuncular man. Eliot depicts the scene as
something akin to a rape. This chance sexual encounter carries with it
mythological baggage the violated Philomela, the blind Tiresias who
lived for a time as a woman. Sexuality runs through "The Waste Land,"
taking center stage as a cause of calamity in The Fire Sermon.
Nonetheless, Eliot defends a moments surrender as a part of existence
in What the Thunder Said. Lust may be a sin, and sex may be too easy
and too rampant in Eliots London, but action is still preferable to inaction.
What is needed is sex that produces life, that rejuvenates, that restores
sex, in other words, that is not sterile.
Love
The references to Tristan und Isolde in The Burial of the Dead, to
Cleopatra in A Game of Chess, and to the story of Tereus and Philomela
suggest that love, in "The Waste Land," is often destructive. Tristan and
Cleopatra die, while Tereus rapes Philomela, and even the love for the
hyacinth girl leads the poet to see and know nothing."
Water
"The Waste Land" lacks water; water promises rebirth. At the same time,
however, water can bring about death. Eliot sees the card of the drowned
Phoenician sailor and later titles the fourth section of his poem
after Madame Sosostris mandate that he fear death by water.
When the rain finally arrives at the close of the poem, it does suggest the
cleansing of sins, the washing away of misdeeds, and the start of a new
future; however, with it comes thunder, and therefore perhaps lightning.
The latter may portend fire; thus, The Fire Sermon and What the
Thunder Said are not so far removed in imagery, linked by the potentially
harmful forces of nature.
History
History, Eliot suggests, is a repeating cycle. When he calls to Stetson, the
Punic War stands in for World War I; this substitution is crucial because it is
shocking. At the time Eliot wrote "The Waste Land," the First World War
was definitively a first - the "Great War" for those who had witnessed it.
There had been none to compare with it in history. The predominant
sensibility was one of profound change; the world had been turned upside
down and now, with the rapid progress of technology, the movements of
societies, and the radical upheavals in the arts, sciences, and philosophy,
the history of mankind had reached a turning point.
Eliot revises this thesis, arguing that the more things change the more
they stay the same. He links a sordid affair between a typist and a young
man to Sophocles via the figure of Tiresias; he replaces a line from
Marvells To His Coy Mistress with the sound of horns and motors; he
invokes Dante upon the modern-day London Bridge, bustling with
commuter traffic; he notices the Ionian columns of a bar on Lower Thames
Street teeming with fishermen. The ancient nestles against the medieval,
rubs shoulders with the Renaissance, and crosses paths with the centuries
to follow. History becomes a blur. Eliots poem is like a street in Rome or
Athens; one layer of history upon another upon another.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Summary
This poem, the earliest of Eliots major works, was completed
in 1 9 1 0 or 1 9 11 but not published until 1 9 1 5 . It is an examination of the tortured
psyche of the prototypical modern manovereducated, eloquent, neurotic,
and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poems speaker, seems to be addressing
a potential lover, with whom he would like to force the moment to its crisis by
somehow consummating their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of
life to dare an approach to the woman: In his mind he hears the comments
others make about his inadequacies, and he chides himself for presuming
emotional interaction could be possible at all. The poem moves from a series
of fairly concrete (for Eliot) physical settingsa cityscape (the famous patient
etherised upon a table) and several interiors (womens arms in the lamplight,
coffee spoons, fireplaces)to a series of vague ocean images conveying
Prufrocks emotional distance from the world as he comes to recognize his
second-rate status (I am not Prince Hamlet). Prufrock is powerful for its
range of intellectual reference and also for the vividness of character achieved.
Form
Prufrock is a variation on the dramatic monologue, a type of poem popular
with Eliots predecessors. Dramatic monologues are similar to soliloquies in
plays. Three things characterize the dramatic monologue, according to M.H.
Abrams. First, they are the utterances of a specific individual (not the poet) at
a specific moment in time. Secondly, the monologue is specifically directed at
a listener or listeners whose presence is not directly referenced but is merely
suggested in the speakers words. Third, the primary focus is the development
and revelation of the speakers character. Eliot modernizes the form by
removing the implied listeners and focusing on Prufrocks interiority and
isolation. The epigraph to this poem, from Dantes Inferno, describes
Prufrocks ideal listener: one who is as lost as the speaker and will never
betray to the world the content of Prufrocks present confessions. In the world
Prufrock describes, though, no such sympathetic figure exists, and he must,
therefore, be content with silent reflection. In its focus on character and its
dramatic sensibility, Prufrock anticipates Eliots later, dramatic works.
The rhyme scheme of this poem is irregular but not random. While sections of
the poem may resemble free verse, in reality, Prufrock is a carefully
structured amalgamation of poetic forms. The bits and pieces of rhyme
become much more apparent when the poem is read aloud. One of the most
prominent formal characteristics of this work is the use of refrains. Prufrocks
continual return to the women [who] come and go / Talking of Michelangelo
and his recurrent questionings (how should I presume?) and pessimistic
appraisals (That is not it, at all.) both reference an earlier poetic tradition and
help Eliot describe the consciousness of a modern, neurotic individual.
Prufrocks obsessiveness is aesthetic, but it is also a sign of compulsiveness
and isolation. Another important formal feature is the use of fragments of
sonnet form, particularly at the poems conclusion. The three three-line
stanzas are rhymed as the conclusion of a Petrarchan sonnet would be, but
their pessimistic, anti-romantic content, coupled with the despairing
interjection, I do not think they (the mermaids) would sing to me, creates a
contrast that comments bitterly on the bleakness of modernity.
Commentary
Prufrock displays the two most important characteristics of Eliots early
poetry. First, it is strongly influenced by the French Symbolists, like Mallarm,
Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, whom Eliot had been reading almost constantly
while writing the poem. From the Symbolists, Eliot takes his sensuous
language and eye for unnerving or anti-aesthetic detail that nevertheless
contributes to the overall beauty of the poem (the yellow smoke and the haircovered arms of the women are two good examples of this). The Symbolists,
too, privileged the same kind of individual Eliot creates with Prufrock: the
moody, urban, isolated-yet-sensitive thinker. However, whereas the Symbolists
would have been more likely to make their speaker himself a poet or artist,
Eliot chooses to make Prufrock an unacknowledged poet, a sort of artist for
the common man.
The second defining characteristic of this poem is its use of fragmentation and
juxtaposition. Eliot sustained his interest in fragmentation and its applications
throughout his career, and his use of the technique changes in important ways
across his body of work: Here, the subjects undergoing fragmentation (and
reassembly) are mental focus and certain sets of imagery; in The Waste
Land, it is modern culture that splinters; in the Four Quartets we find the
fragments of attempted philosophical systems. Eliots use of bits and pieces of
formal structure suggests that fragmentation, although anxiety-provoking, is
nevertheless productive; had he chosen to write in free verse, the poem would
have seemed much more nihilistic. The kinds of imagery Eliot uses also
suggest that something new can be made from the ruins: The series of
hypothetical encounters at the poems center are iterated and discontinuous
but nevertheless lead to a sort of epiphany (albeit a dark one) rather than just
leading nowhere. Eliot also introduces an image that will recur in his later
poetry, that of the scavenger. Prufrock thinks that he should have been a pair
of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. Crabs are
scavengers, garbage-eaters who live off refuse that makes its way to the sea
floor. Eliots discussions of his own poetic technique (see especially his essay
Tradition and the Individual Talent) suggest that making something beautiful
out of the refuse of modern life, as a crab sustains and nourishes itself on
garbage, may, in fact, be the highest form of art. At the very least, this notion
subverts romantic ideals about art; at best, it suggests that fragments may
become reintegrated, that art may be in some way therapeutic for a broken
modern world. In The Waste Land, crabs become rats, and the optimism
disappears, but here Eliot seems to assert only the limitless potential of
scavenging.
Prufrock ends with the hero assigning himself a role in one of Shakespeares
plays: While he is no Hamlet, he may yet be useful and important as an
attendant lord, one that will do / To swell a progress, start a scene or two...
This implies that there is still a continuity between Shakespeares world and
ours, that Hamlet is still relevant to us and that we are still part of a world that
could produce something like Shakespeares plays. Implicit in this, of course,
is the suggestion that Eliot, who has created an attendant lord, may now go
on to create another Hamlet. While Prufrock ends with a devaluation of its
hero, it exalts its creator. Or does it? The last line of the poem suggests
otherwisethat when the world intrudes, when human voices wake us, the
dream is shattered: we drown. With this single line, Eliot dismantles the
romantic notion that poetic genius is all that is needed to triumph over the
destructive, impersonal forces of the modern world. In reality, Eliot the poet is
little better than his creation: He differs from Prufrock only by retaining a bit of
hubris, which shows through from time to time. Eliots poetic creation, thus,
mirrors Prufrocks soliloquy: Both are an expression of aesthetic ability and
sensitivity that seems to have no place in the modern world. This realistic, antiromantic outlook sets the stage for Eliots later works, including The Waste
Land.
KURT VONNEGUT IN
POSTMODERN LITERATURE
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Everything you ever wanted to know about Kurt Vonnegut. And then some.
Kurt Vonnegut is a poster child for postmodernism.

One of the big names of the 1960s and '70s, he's remembered as a major satirist and
voice of U.S. countercultureand his works are perfect go-to texts if you're trying to
get a handle on some of the main themes and techniques of postmodern literature.
Not only do they contain a boatload of irony and dark humor; they're also not afraid to
get into more serious topics like state oppression, violence, paranoia, and the horrors
of World War II. The war, in particular, was personal to Vonnegut, who had served as
a soldier and been held prisoner during 1944-1945an experience that had a big
impact on his life and his writing.
While some of his earlier works had a pretty straightforward style, Vonnegut started
using more experimental literary techniques during the '60s. This, after all, was the
decade of the Beat Generation, Hendrix, and the Summer of Love.
Slaughterhouse-Five, which combines a World War II theme with an off-the-wall mix
of time travel and aliens, is considered his masterpieceand Vonnegut himself gave
it an A+ when he rated his works. Breakfast of Champions was even more
experimental, and, like many of Vonnegut's other texts, is heavy on metafiction and
intertextuality.
So dive in to get a taste of all things postmodern.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Vonnegut's best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), is about a soldier called
Billy Pilgrim, who travels back and forward through time, relives the events in his life,
and even finds himself abducted by aliens. Vonnegut includes plenty of references to
other textsboth real and made-upranging from Jacqueline Susann's 1966
smash Valley of the Dolls to a novel by one of Billy's pesky alien abductors. Yep:
we're talking all of the postmodern credentials: fragmentation, repetition, an
experimental structure, and intertextuality.
This isn't just a zany time travel adventure, thoughit's also a semi-autobiographical
work that tackles the tough topic of World War II. Vonnegut had his fair share of first-
hand knowledge of the war: Billy, like Vonnegut, is captured and held in building
called Slaughterhouse-Five during the bombing of Dresden. Though Billy gets out
alive, the experience has a lasting effect on him in the same way that it did on
Vonnegut.
We get a good intro right off the bat: a preface in which Vonnegut remarks that the
novel is "jumbled and jangled" since "there is nothing intelligent to say about a
massacre." If that's not a postmodern statement on war, we don't know what is.
Breakfast of Champions
With the experimental style of Slaughterhouse-Five having proved so successful,
Vonnegut flexed his creative muscles again in Breakfast of Champions (1973). The
story is about a businessman, Dwayne Hoover, who becomes fixated with a sci-fi
novel written by a guy called Kilgore Troutfixated so much so that he's unable to
recognize that it's a work offiction. It's a recipe for disaster, as Hoover gets the idea
that everyone other than him is a robot and subsequently running riot.
Yikes.
This novel clearly ticks the box when it comes to paranoia, but it contains heaps of
other postmodern themes and features, too. Vonnegut tells us straight off that that
he's trying to clear his head "of all the junk in there," and the result is a mashup of
drawings (including flags, guns, hamburgers, and a flamingo!), characters from his
past work, and even an appearance by Vonnegut within the story. Yep, we're in selfreflexive terrain.
The title itself is a reference to the slogan for Wheaties cereal, but Vonnegut piles on
the ironynot only does a waitress use the slogan while serving a martini, but
Vonnegut also throws in a reference to an Edwardian short story, "Filboid Studge,"
that's itself a satire on the marketing of breakfast cereal.
Talk about a postmodern field day.
Chew on This
Grand narratives? Forget it. Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle isn't just stuffed with ironyit
skewers Enlightenment ideals about truth and progress. Take the fictional religion of
Bokonism: truth and knowledge have often been seen as ideal, but for the
Bokonians, lies are where it's at. Vonnegut gets into satire here, challenging
accepted wisdom and suggesting that things aren't always what they're cracked up to
be.
Beginning with the premise of a guy who has become "unstuck in
time,"Slaughterhouse-Five follows Billy Pilgrim as he journeys back and forth through
the events of his life; including those during WWII. For all its craziness, the story was
inspired by the author's life, with Vonnegut using the first chapter to talk about his
wartime experiences and the difficulty that he has experienced in trying to write them
down.
JORGE LUIS BORGES IN

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Everything you ever wanted to know about Jorge Luis Borges. And then some.
Our guy Borges was one of the earliest writers to embrace what we now know as
postmodern techniques. But get this: Borges never wrote a single novelhe was all
about the short story format (plus other short works such as poems and essays),
explaining that "the short story can be taken in at a single glance. On the other hand,
in the novel the consecutive is more noticeable. And then there's the fact that a work
of three hundred pages depends on padding" (source).
Translation: he believed that everything that needed to be said could be expressed
more quickly and effectively using this shorter format. And though his works are tiny
in size, Borges packs in more experimentation than we might find in a novel 100
times the size.
These stories aren't about naturalism or realistic depictions of daily life; they're more
into the philosophical stuff and the breaking down of traditional ideas about time and
space. Despite their philosophical themes, though, these stories go down the
postmodern route in refusing to offer any grand narratives to explain human
existence. What's more, they give us early examples of intertextuality, metafiction,
and fragmentationsome of postmodernism's most recognizable techniques.
"The Library of Babel"

If you're looking for the big answers about the meaning of life and the ways of the
universethen you've come to the wrong place.
This story describes a massive library containing every text that's ever been written
and the narrator takes a postmodern angle in stating that everything
has already been written. People come from far and wide to spend their days
combing through the library's contents, trying to decode their unknown language
systems. The hope is that one of these books will offer some kind of grand meaning,
but after centuries of searching, no one's had any luck.
Maybe it's time to call it a day?
FYI: the title is a reference to a story in the Book of Genesis. Quick recap of the
passage: all human beings are united by one language and get together to build a
tower in the city of Babel. Their aim is to reach the heavens, but God isn't so
enthusiastic. His response? To make sure that people speakand are divided by
multiple languages and can therefore never take on such a project again.
It's this story that gives us the source of the word "babble," and when applied to
Borges' story, suggests that people's quest for meaning is doomed to fail. The
narrator admits that he himself has wasted years searching only to realize that the
library will probably outlast the human race, its contents forever remaining secret and
impossible to decipher.
"On Exactitude in Science"

This 1946 story is short even by Borges' standards (it's only a paragraph long!), but
it's gone on to become one of his best-known works. What's extra interesting for us is
that Jean Baudrillard used it to demonstrate the notion of hyperreality.
Borges' story is presented as a quotation from a book called Viajes de varones
prudentes by "Surez Miranda" (NB: Borges sometimes refers to real texts, but this
ain't one of 'em) that describes some, er, interesting developments in mapmaking
over the ages. It turns out that maps became larger and larger until only a life-sized
map was good enough. Of course, folks realized that this wasn't exactly convenient
and left these maps to decay.
Wacky? Yes. But the whole idea takes on another angle when we look at it as a
metaphor for hyperreality. And that's what Baudrillard did when he outlined this
concept, arguing that these maps had taken over the land that they were meant to
chart and represent. The result? The original becomes buried through the process of
simulation and we can no longer separate true from false. We might imagine that the
rotting away of the map leads to the uncovering of reality, but Baudrillard is way more
pessimistic. For him, the map has become tangled with the landscape and we're now
living in the dreaded hyperreal.
P.S. Borges wasn't the first to play with this concept: Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno
Concluded (1893) had included references to a life-sized map and remarked on how
impractical it was.
Chew on This
Want to see how Borges combines his experimental, dreamlike approach with a real,
historical setting? Check out "The Secret Miracle" (1943), in which a writer who's
been captured by the Nazis pleads for God to grant him an extra year to finish one of
his works. Jump forward to his execution, and time seems to freeze. It's super
confusing until he realizes that God has granted him an extra year in his mind. This
may not give him the chance to write anything, but it lets him finish his story. Is this
dream or reality? Borges isn't telling, but then, would you expect anything less?
Surfing from one website to another is a normal part of life for most of us, right? Well,
to see a story that predicted this kind of structure, look no further than "The Garden
of Forking Paths" (1941). On one level, we have a wartime espionage plot, but what's
more interesting is the labyrinthine bookThe Garden of Forking Pathsthat
becomes the story's centerpiece. The story also announces itself as intertextual and
self-reflexive right from the start, referring to a real history book and presenting the
story as a fragment. Put this all together and we can see why Borges is known as
one of the early postmodernists.
SAMUEL BECKETT IN
BACK
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Everything you ever wanted to know about Samuel Beckett. And then some.
Looking for a guy who represents the shift from modernism to postmodernism?
You've found him in Samuel Beckett. He may have been a pal of James Joyce (who
was one of modernism's head honchos), but from 1945 onwards, Beckett started to
focus more and more on the failings of modernism, art, and language as a type of
expression.
One of Beckett's main philosophical inquiries: in a world without meaning, how can a
writer express themselves using words?
Yes, this is deep stuff, but Beckett's work isn't just made up of high falutin essays
aimed at the beret and polo neck brigade. Instead, he produced some of the 20th
century's most iconic dramas.
Oh, and get this: in a 1993 essay on the "death of postmodernism," Raymond
Federman argued that postmodernism had died with Beckett in 1989. High praise or
what?
Waiting for Godot

On the surface, the plot of this play might seem dull: a couple of guys, Estragon and
Vladimir, spend the entire play waiting for another guy (that's Godot). It's true that
there's not much to the plot, but it works as a springboard to explore the themes of
waiting, hoping, and looking of meaning.
The verdict? Looking to the future and searching for meaning is pointless. After all
(spoiler alert!), Godot never arrives. The characters do their best to pass the time, but
ultimately, the play is circular. It was a really unconventional approach at the time,
and even now, it's not something we see every day.
"Stirrings Still"
He might be remembered for his plays, but Beckett was no slouch when it came to
prose. One of his final works, "Stirrings Still" (1988) is a rambling interior monologue
that describes a man looking back on his life. (It's written in the third person, but it's
hard not to imagine Beckett himself when you're reading it.)
This texts is typically postmodern: it uses repetitive language; it's written as a stream
of consciousness; there's no real; technically, nothing happens; there's a lot of
confusion and uncertaintyshould we go on?
Despite facing the final curtain (dude's about to due), this guy doesn't offer any grand
wisdom. Hardly a shocker, right? Rather than having any sense of order, "Stirrings
Still" is full of contradiction, confusion, and fragments, as this guy sifts through the
"hubbub in his mind." It may not be laugh-a-minute stuff, but it sums up Beckett's
career postmodern-style.
Chew on This
How's about this for an enthralling plot? A couple of guys spend their days waiting for
someone who never shows. Yeah, gripping stuff. Seriously, though, Waiting for
Godot (1949) was massively influential when it burst onto the scene, refusing to go
along with the usual dramatic conventions and becoming a pioneering example of the
"Theater of the Absurd".
Want another slab of Beckett's dystopian vision? Endgame (1958) is one of those
post-WWII texts in which the world has become an apocalyptic wasteland.
Like Godot, this play deals with despair, suffering, and the difficulty (impossibility?) of
finding meaning in the world. The characters have lost their sense of hope but they
cling on all the same. We may not get any answers or happy endings, but we do get
a classic study of the human condition.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV IN
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Everything you ever wanted to know about Vladimir Nabokov. And then some.
Nabokov is a tough nut to crack, and people love to argue about whether he's a
modernist or postmodernist. Makes sense, we guess, since there's a definite
continuity between the twoand Nabokov most likely dabbled in both.
Nabokov's most postmodern novel is Pale Fire, which, like Italo Calvino's If on a
winter's night a traveler, has an experimental narrative structure and dashes our
expectations. Not only does it draw attention to the processes of producing and
reading a text (it's totally meta), it doesn't point to art as a way of recovering lost
meaninginstead, it revels in its chaos and refuses to provide any clear-cut
answers. Along with works such as Pnin (1957),Ada or Ador (1969), and The
Gift (1970), Pale Fire helps demonstrate why Nabokov is regularly named as a
postmodern trailblazer.
Lolita
Quick recap: a thirtysomething literature professor, the unfortunately-named Humbert
Humbert, becomes obsessed with his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Dolores, and gives
her the nickname "Lolita." The nickname has since entered into popular culture to
describe the kind of "nymphet" portrayed in this novel and has been name checked in
loads of other cultural texts. The crux of the novel (pedophilia) may be controversial,
but its influence on other texts is huge, having inspired such acclaimed postmodern
authors such as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, and Salman Rushdie.
Pale Fire
Not only is Pale Fire Nabokov's most obviously postmodern work; it's also often seen
as one of the ultimate postmodern texts and an example of "the literature of
exhaustion". So what's it about? Well, it starts out with a foreword by a scholar called
Charles Kinbote, who has been entrusted with the final poem of his late friend John
Shade. The poem is called "Pale Fire," and Kinbote has been editing it for
publication. The book that we're reading includes the end result: a poem of four
cantos along with Kinbote's own commentary and notes. We're not just talking a few
footnotes eitherwith Kinbote's commentary takes up more room than the poem
itself.
Chew on This
We know that Lolita is full of intertextual references, but how many can you spot?
Head over to this page for a checklist of the many cultural shout-outs that are
sprinkled throughout this novel.
In addition to referencing various authors and texts, Nabokov is a maestro when it
comes to creating a mash up of genres. Take a look here for more on the various
types of writing that Nabokov impersonates.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK IN
BACK
NEXT
Everything you ever wanted to know about Chuck Palahniuk. And then some.
The first rule of Chuck Palahniuk: don't talk about Chuck Palahniuk.
Okay, if you haven't read (or seen) Fight Club, you have no clue what we're talking
about.
When he wrote Fight Club, he'd already completed another novel, Invisible Monster,
only for publishers to reject it because of its disturbing content. Ouch. Palahniuk
wasn't about to wallow in a pity party, though. Instead, it was this rejection that led
him to start work on Fight Cluba novel that he intended to disturb publishers even
more.
How's that for a rebel?
Despite this aim, publishers were willing to publish Fight Club. It may not have been
a massive hit at first, but the movie changed all that. This success led to a revised
version of Invisible Monsters, along with several other successful novels. It was
with Choke that Palahniuk finally scored aNew York Times bestseller, establishing its
author as one of today's most successful postmodern writers.
Palahniuk's own definition of his work is "transgressional fiction," and we have to
agree. He's not afraid to push the boundaries when it comes to subject matter, while
his writing style makes use of repetition and everyday language. He's not into writing
flowery, poetic stuffhe's more interested in how everyday folks speak and often
takes time out to let us in on their (sometimes bizarre) beliefs and theories.
Fight Club
In this book, we're introduced to a narrator who is suffering from insomnia, hates his
job, and spends his time hanging out at support groups for people with various
illnesses. He doesn't actually have these illnesses, but hey, he finds it therapeutic.
The narrator soon has other things on his mind when his apartment is wrecked by an
explosion. Luckily for him, a mysterious guy called Tyler Durden (who he first met
while on vacation) gives him a place to staythis leads to the duo setting up a club
of their own: an underground fighting ring in which disillusioned men can vent their
frustrations. Fighting is enough at first, but as time goes on, the guys pool their
energies into more explosive anarchist action
Written in 1996, Fight Club shines a light on the restlessness and powerlessness that
folks can feel in late capitalist society. They may have money and the latest goods,
but working at a job you can't stand and feeling as though you're just a cog in the
machine can be pretty depressing. The appeal behind Fight Club is that it gives these
guys a sense of control over their lives and lets them lash out against the system. As
it goes on, though, things get more confusing and we start to wonder about the
narrator's identity. And just who is this Tyler Durden anyway?
No spoilers, but it all gets really trippy. Majorly postmodern.
Invisible Monsters
Told from the viewpoint of a fashion model whose face has been disfigured by a
gunshot wound (how's about that for a gloomy intro?), this novel charts the process
of reinvention that the narrator embarks on while in hospitala reinvention helped
along by fellow patient Brandy Alexander. When the duo starts to suspect that the
narrator's ex-fianc and ex-best friend may have played a role in the narrator's
predicament (this is starting to sound like a Jerry Springer synopsis, huh?), it's time
for revenge. The narrator and Brandy go on to embark on an off-kilter road trip that
includes kidnap, robbery, and prescription drugs. It doesn't get more "transgressional"
than this.
If you thought Fight Club was a wild ride, then you've seen nothing yet. This novel is
full of plot twists and a narrative that leaps backward and forward in time.
Fragmentation? You bet. Plus, Palahniuk once again makes the most of his late
capitalist setting, commenting on consumer culture, plastic surgery, sexuality, and the
whole cult of "beauty". Though it was first published in 1999, 2012 saw the
publication of a revamped edition, Invisible Monsters Remix, that's even more crazy
and fragmented than the original.
Chew on This
What sort of genre(s) do you think Fight Club falls into? Head over to this page for
some ideas on how to describe this novel.
Identity is another big theme in Fight Club. For more on this, plus some questions to
chew on, check out this page.
WAITING FOR GODOT

Samuel Beckett
Summary
Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, meet near a tree. They converse on various
topics and reveal that they are waiting there for a man named Godot. While
they wait, two other men enter. Pozzo is on his way to the market to sell his
slave, Lucky. He pauses for a while to converse with Vladimir and Estragon.
Lucky entertains them by dancing and thinking, and Pozzo and Lucky leave.
After Pozzo and Lucky leave, a boy enters and tells Vladimir that he is a
messenger from Godot. He tells Vladimir that Godot will not be coming tonight,
but that he will surely come tomorrow. Vladimir asks him some questions
about Godot and the boy departs. After his departure, Vladimir and Estragon
decide to leave, but they do not move as the curtain falls.
The next night, Vladimir and Estragon again meet near the tree to wait for
Godot. Lucky and Pozzo enter again, but this time Pozzo is blind and Lucky is
dumb. Pozzo does not remember meeting the two men the night before. They
leave and Vladimir and Estragon continue to wait.
Shortly after, the boy enters and once again tells Vladimir that Godot will not
be coming. He insists that he did not speak to Vladimir yesterday. After he
leaves, Estragon and Vladimir decide to leave, but again they do not move as
the curtain falls, ending the play.
ENDGAME
Samuel Beckett
Plot Overview
The setting is a bare interior with gray lighting. There are two small windows
with drawn curtains, a door, and two ashbins covered by an old sheet. Hamm
sits on an armchair with wheels, covered by an old sheet. Clov stares at
Hamm, motionless. Clov staggers off-stage and returns with a stepladder and
draws open the curtains for both windows. He removes the sheet from the
ashbins and raises the lid of both and looks within. He removes Hamm's sheet.
Hamm, in his dressing-gown, a whistle hanging around his neck, and a
handkerchief over his face, appears to be asleep. Clov says, "It's finished." He
says he'll go to his kitchen and wait for Hamm to whistle him. He leaves, then
comes back, takes the ladders and carries it out. Hamm awakens and
removes the handkerchief. He wears dark glasses.
Hamm folds away his handkerchief. He questions whether anyone suffers as
much as he does. He says "it's time it ended," but he "hesitate[s]" to end. He
whistles and Clov enters. Hamm insults him and orders Clov to prepare him for
bed. He asks what time it is, and Clov replies "Same as usual." Hamm asks if
he has looked out the window, and Clov gives his report: "Zero." Hamm
commands him to get him ready, but Clov doesn't move. Hamm threatens to
hold back food from him, and Clov goes for Hamm's sheet. Hamm stops him
and asks why Clov stays with him; Clov asks why Hamm keeps him. For
Hamm, there's no one else; for Clov, nowhere else. Hamm accuses Clov of
leaving himClov concedes that he's trying to do soand that Clov doesn't
love him. He asks why Clov doesn't kill him; Clov replies that he doesn't know
the combination of the larder. From one of the ashbins, Nagg emerges in a
nightcap. Nagg cries for his pap, but since there's none left, Hamm whistles for
Clov to get a biscuit. Nagg complains, and Hamm directs Clov to close the lid
on him. Clov says there's no more nature, and Hamm refutes this, arguing that
their bodies and minds change. After some more debate, Hamm asks him
what he does in his kitchen. Clov says he looks at the wall and sees his light
dying.
Nagg emerges from his bin, biscuit in mouth, and listens. Hamm tells Clov to
leave, which Clov says he's "trying" to do and then does. Nagg knocks on the
other bin, and Nell emerges. Nagg asks her to kiss him; they try but cannot
reach, and Nell asks why they go through the "farce" every day. Their sight
(and Nell's hearing) is failing. Hamm tells them to quiet down, and thinks about
what he would dream of if only he could sleep. Nell rebukes Nagg for laughing
at Hamm's misery. Nagg tells her a story about a tailor that has often made her
laugh, especially the first time he told it to the day after they'd gotten engaged:
a tailor keeps botching and delaying a customer's orders for trousers until the
customer explodes and points out that God created the world in six days, while
the tailor has taken three months for the trousers. The tailor tells him to
compare the world with his beautiful trousers. Hamm calls for silence. Nagg
disappears, and Hamm whistles for Clov and tells him to throw the bins into
the sea. Clov checks Nell's pulse and says she has none. They discuss
Hamm's painkiller medicine and Hamm's deceased former doctor. Hamm asks
Clov to move him around on his chair and, as he can't see for himself, to hug
the walls. Hamm directs Clov to return him back to his spot in the exact center.
Hamm tells Clov to check outside with the telescope. Clov's report is "Zero."
Clov asks why they go through the farce everyday, and Hamm answers that it
is routine. Hamm wonders if he and Clov are beginning to "mean something";
Clov scoffs at this notion. Clov scratches a flea on his body. Hamm is
astounded that there are still fleas, and begs Clov to kill it, as "humanity might
start from there all over again!" Clov gets some insecticide and sprinkles it
inside his pants. Hamm proposes that he and Clov leave for the South. Clov
declines, and Hamm says he'll do it alone and tells Clov to build a raft. Clov
says he'll start, but Hamm stops him and asks if it's time for his painkillerit's
notand inquires about Clov's ailing body. Hamm asks why Clov doesn't
"finish" them, but Clov says he couldn't do it, and will leave. Hamm asks him if
he remembers when he came here, but Clov says he was too small. Hamm
asks if Clov remembers his fatherhe doesn'tand says that he was a father
to Clov.
Before Clov can leave, Hamm asks Clov if his dog is ready. Clov returns with a
three-legged toy dog, which he gives to Hamm. Hamm tells Clov to get him his
gaff, and Clov wonders out loud why he never refuses his orders. He gets it for
Hamm, who unsuccessfully tries to move his chair around with it. Hamm
recollects a madman painter-engraver friend of his who thought the end of the
world had come, seeing ashes instead of nature. Hamm asks how he'll know if
Clov has left. Clov decides he'll set an alarm clock, and if it doesn't ring, it
means he's dead. Hamm says it's time for his story, but Clov doesn't want to
hear it. Hamm tells him to wake his father, and Clov looks into the ashbin of
the sleeping Nagg.
Clov reports that Nagg doesn't want to hear Hamm's story, and wants a
sugarplum if he must listen. Hamm agrees, and Clov leaves. Hamm asks
Nagg why he produced him, and Nagg says he didn't know that it would be
Hamm. Hamm tells a story about how a beggarly man came crawling to him
on Christmas Eve. The man revealed he had left behind a small boy in his
distant home, alone, and wanted food for the boy. Hamm says he took the
man into his service, and was asked if he would take the child, if he were still
alive. Clov comes in and reports that there's a rat in the kitchen, and that he's
exterminated half of it. Hamm says he'll finish it later, but now they'll pray to
God in silence. They are all disappointed by the lack of a godly response, and
Hamm believes God doesn't exist. Nagg remembers how Hamm would call
him when he was scared as a child, and not his mother. He didn't listen to him,
he says, but he hopes the day will come again when Hamm will depend on his
father. He knocks on Nell's lid, but with no response he retreats into his bin
and closes the lid.
Hamm gropes for his dog. Clov hands it to Hamm, who soon after throws it
away. Clov cleans up the room, as he loves order, but Hamm makes him stop.
Before Clov can leave, Hamm tells him to stay and listen to his story; he
repeats the last bit, and says he's too tired to finish it, or to make up another
story. He tells Clov to see if Nell is dead; he looks into the bin and says it looks
that way. Nagg hasn't died, but he's crying. Hamm asks Clov to push his chair
under the window, as he wants to feel the light on his face. He says he feels
sunshine, but Clov says it isn't really the sun. Clov pushes Hamm back to the
center. Hamm twice calls for his father, and tells Clov to see if Nagg heard him.
Clov investigates and says Nagg isn't crying anymore, but sucking his biscuit.
Hamm asks Clov to kiss him on the forehead, or hold his hand, but Clov
refuses. Hamm asks for his dog, and then rejects the idea, and Clov leaves,
vowing that either he'll kill the rat or it'll die.
Alone, Hamm takes out his handkerchief and spreads it before him. He
considers finishing his story and starting another, or throwing himself on the
floor, but he isn't able to push himself off his seat. He ruminates on his
eventual death, and then whistles. Clov enters with the alarm clock. He reports
that the rat got away from him. Clov says it's time for Hamm's painkiller, which
relieves him until Clov reveals there's none left. Hamm tells him to look at the
earth. Clov reminds him that after Mother Pegg asked Hamm for oil for her
lamp, and he refused her, she died of darkness. Hamm feebly says he didn't
have enough, but Clov refutes this. Clov wonders why he obeys Hamm, and
Hamm answers that perhaps it's compassion.
Clov finds the telescope. Hamm asks to be put in his coffin, but Clov says
there is none left. Clov takes the telescope, goes up the stepladder, and sees
a small boy out the window. He says he'll investigate with the gaff (a hook-like
tool), presumably to kill off the "potential procreator," but Hamm says the boy
will either die outside or come inside. He tells Clov that they've come to the
end and he doesn't need him anymore, and asks him to leave him the gaff.
Before Clov leaves, Hamm asks him to say something "from your heart." Clov
repeats a few things "They said to me," and reflects on the pain of life.
Hamm stops him before he leaves and thanks him for his services. Clov
thanks him, and Hamm says that they are obliged to each other. He asks him
to cover him with the sheet, but Clov has already left. He tries to move the
chair with the gaff. Clov enters, outfitted for his journey. Hamm doesn't know
he's there, and throws away the useless gaff. He resumes telling his story
about the man and his child, repeating how the man wanted his child with him.
Hamm recalls it was the moment he was waiting for. Hamm twice calls out
"Father" and, not hearing anything, says, "We're coming." He discards his dog
and his whistle. He calls out for Clov, but hears nothing. He takes out his
handkerchief, unfolds it, and says "Youremain." He covers his face with the
handkerchief and sits motionless.
CAT'S CRADLE
Kurt Vonnegut
Summary
The narrator of Cat's Cradle, John, once set out to write a book, titledThe Day
the World Ended, about the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
For purposes of research, he wrote to Newt Hoenikker, the midget son of Felix
Hoenikker, the Nobel prize-winning physicist and one of the fathers of the
atomic bomb. He asked Newt to describe what he remembered from the day
the bomb devastated Hiroshima. Newt replied to say that he was only six
years old when the bomb was dropped. He remembers playing with his toy
trucks while his father played cat's cradle with a piece of string.
Newt explained that Felix never showed any interest in people, so when Felix
sat down to play with him that day, it was highly unusual. Felix looked so huge,
ugly, and frightening when he tried to show Newt the cat's cradle that Newt fled
the house in tears to sit with his brother, Frank, who was making various bugs
war against one another in Mason jars. Angela, Newt's six-feet-tall sister,
scolded Newt for hurting Felix's feelings, but Newt continued to complain that
Felix was ugly and scary. When she slapped Newt, Frank punched her in the
stomach. Shortly after Newt replied to John's letter, the newspapers reported
Newt's engagement to Zinka, a Russian midget dancer and rumored Soviet
spy.
John traveled to Ilium, the town where the Hoenikkers lived during World War
II, to continue researching his book. Some high school classmates of Frank
Hoenikker told John that Frank was a strange, reclusive, secretive youth.
Frank's main interests included building models and working at Jack's Hobby
Shop in town. His peers called him "Secret Agent X-9." In Ilium, John met Asa
Breed, Felix's former supervisor at the Research Laboratory. Asa informed him
that Emily Hoenikker, Felix's wife, suffered an injury to her pelvis during an
automobile accident. He attributed her death in childbirth to this injury.
Asa gave John a tour of the Research Laboratory while John interviewed him.
Asa praised Felix's ability to put his analytical, scientific mind to any task.
Once, a general asked Felix to produce a solution to mud, a constant problem
for troops on the move. Felix theorized the existence of an isotope of water,
which he named ice-nine, that was solid at room temperature. Even the
smallest seed ofice-nine dropped into a quagmire would solidify the mud and
solve the problem. John, realizing that such an action could easily lead to the
freezing of all water on earth, nervously asked if Felix had actually succeeded
in creating ice-nine, a deadlier threat to life on earth than the atom bomb. Asa
denied it, but he angrily ended the interview because he sensed that John
thought scientists were cold-hearted and dangerous.
After his ill-fated interview with Asa, John visited the local cemetery to take a
photograph of Felix's grave. He found that Emily Hoenikker's tombstone was a
20-foot high monument while Felix's tombstone was a small, modest square
marker. He learned from Martin Breed, proprietor of the local tombstone store
and brother of Asa Breed, that Angela and Frank came to his store and bought
Emily's tombstone a year after her death because Felix hadn't bothered to buy
one for her. Martin hated Felix, despite the prevailing notion that Felix was
harmless and innocent. He did not believe any man who had a hand in
creating the atom bomb could be innocent; Martin had also been in love with
Emily, his high school classmate. He implied that Emily was miserable in her
marriage to Felix, owing to Felix's lack of concern for other people and their
feelings.
Unbeknownst to John, Felix had indeed created ice-nine, without keeping
records of his discovery. Shortly before he died, on Christmas Eve at Cape
Cod, he showed the isotope to his children. The Hoenikker siblings divided
the ice-nine among themselves. Frank used it to buy himself a comfortable job
as Major General on the island republic of San Lorenzo. Angela traded hers in
exchange for marriage to the handsome Harrison Conners, a scientist
employed in top-secret weapons research for the United States. Zinka stole
Newt's share of ice-nine for the Soviet government.
Meanwhile, John was hired to write an article about Julian Castle, a multimillionaire philanthropist living on San Lorenzo. On the plane to the island,
John met Lowe and Hazel Crosby and Horlick and Claire Minton. Lowe and
Hazel were traveling to San Lorenzo to open a bicycle factory because the
island legislated no labor restrictions. Horlick was the new American
ambassador to San Lorenzo. Angela and Newt also occupied the plane; they
were en route to a celebration of Frank's engagement to Mona, the beautiful
adopted daughter of "Papa" Monzano, the island's dictator.
All of San Lorenzo's residents were practitioners of Bokononism, a religion
created by Bokonon. When Bokonon and his friend McCabe first arrived on
San Lorenzo, they wanted to make the island into a utopia. San Lorenzo had a
tumultuous history, conquered and claimed by various nations at various
times. The island was completely worthless. When McCabe and Bokonon
asserted their authority, no one intervened. McCabe and Bokonon quickly
realized that no amount of legal and economic reform would provide the
island's residents with a good standard of living. Instead, Bokonon offered the
inhabitants of the island comfort through the creation of an eponymous religion
based on happy lies. At Bokonon's request, McCabe outlawed Bokononism
and made its practice punishable by death. Thus, outlawed, the religion gave
excitement and a comprehensible meaning to the lives of the island's
impoverished masses. Every ruler since then, including, Papa Monzano,
participated in the charade.
On the island, Monzano, stricken with terminal cancer, named Frank his
successor. Uninterested in the responsibilities of the job, Frank asked John to
take his place as San Lorenzo's next President. John refused the position until
Frank told him that he would get to marry Mona as part of the bargain.
Monzano gave his blessing to the plan and wished them luck before taking the
Bokononist last rites. John briefly considered lifting the ban on Bokononism,
but he realized that he did not have the ability to offer adequate food, housing,
and social services to the populace. Therefore, he decided to continue the
charade of his predecessors.
During the ceremony in honor of San Lorenzo's Hundred Martyrs to
Democracy, John planned to announce his assumption of the Presidency.
During the ceremony, Monzano's attending physician, Dr. von Koenigswald
informed him that Monzano had committed suicide. Upon looking at the body,
John realized that Monzano's condition could only have been caused by
swallowing ice-nine and that, by extension, Felix's experiments to create the
isotope had been successful. When John demanded that Frank, Newt, and
Angela come to Monzano's bedroom, they confessed that they had divided
Felix's awful creation among themselves after he died, though they couldn't
explain why. They set about cleaning the room by melting the fragments of icenine. They decided to take a break before burning the bodies to go watch the
ceremony for the Hundred Martyrs. During the ceremony, a plane crashed into
the cliffs above Monzano's castle. A landslide ensued, taking half the castle
along with Monzano's body into the sea. All the water of the world became icenine within seconds.
Shortly after the disaster, most of the island's survivors, including Mona,
committed suicide. John, Frank, Newt, and the Crosbys survived for six
months. John wrote this narrative, Cat's Cradle, as a record of what had
occurred, while Newt painted, Hazel sewed, Lowe cooked, and Frank studied
ants. Bokonon finished writing theBooks of Bokonon, all the while commenting
on human stupidity.
HARRISON BERGERON
Kurt Vonnegut
Plot Overview
It is the year 2081. Because of Amendments 211, 212, and 213 to the
Constitution, every American is fully equal, meaning that no one is stupider,
uglier, weaker, or slower than anyone else. The Handicapper General and a
team of agents ensure that the laws of equality are enforced.
One April, fourteen-year-old Harrison Bergeron is taken away from his parents,
George and Hazel, by the government. George and Hazel arent fully aware of
the tragedy. Hazels lack of awareness is due to average intelligence. In 2081,
those who possess average intelligence are unable to think for extended
stretches of time. George cant comprehend the tragedy because the law
requires him to wear a radio twenty-four hours a day. The government
broadcasts noise over these radios to interrupt the thoughts of intelligent
people like George.
Hazel and George are watching ballerinas dance on TV. Hazel has been
crying, but she cant remember why. She remarks on the prettiness of the
dance. For a few moments, George reflects on the dancers, who are weighed
down to counteract their gracefulness and masked to counteract their good
looks. They have been handicapped so that TV viewers wont feel bad about
their own appearance. Because of their handicaps, the dancers arent very
good. A noise interrupts Georges thoughts. Two of the dancers onscreen hear
the noise, too; apparently, they are smart and must wear radios as well.
Hazel says she would enjoy hearing the noises that the handicappers dream
up. George seems skeptical. If she were Handicapper General, Hazel says,
she would create a chime noise to use on Sundays, which she thinks would
produce a religious effect. The narrator explains that Hazel strongly resembles
Diana Moon Glampers, Handicapper General. Hazel says she would be a
good Handicapper General, because she knows what normalcy is. Before
being interrupted by another noise, George thinks of his son, Harrison.
Hazel thinks George looks exhausted and urges him to lie down and rest his
handicap bag, forty-seven pounds of weight placed in a bag and locked
around Georges neck. He says he hardly notices the weight anymore. Hazel
suggests taking a few of the weights out of the bag, but he says if everyone
broke the law, society would return to its old competitive ways. Hazel says she
would hate that. A noise interrupts the conversation, and George cant
remember what they were talking about.
On TV, an announcer with a speech impediment attempts to read a bulletin.
He cant overcome his impediment, so he hands the bulletin to a ballerina to
read. Hazel commends him for working with his God-given abilities and says
he should get a raise simply for trying so hard. The ballerina begins reading in
her natural, beautiful voice, then apologizes and switches to a growly voice
that wont make anyone jealous. The bulletin says that Harrison has escaped
from prison.
A photo of Harrison appears on the screen. He is wearing the handicaps

meant to counteract his strength, intelligence, and good looks. The photo
shows that he is seven feet tall and covered in 300 pounds of metal. He is
wearing huge earphones, rather than a small radio, and big glasses meant to
blind him and give him headaches. He is also wearing a red rubber nose and
black caps over his teeth. His eyebrows are shaved off.
After a rumbling noise, the photo on the Bergerons TV screen is replaced with
an image of Harrison himself, who has stormed the studio. He says that he is
the emperor, the greatest ruler in history, and that everyone must obey him.
Then he rips off all of his handicaps. He looks like a god. He says that the first
woman brave enough to stand up will be his empress. A ballerina rises to her
feet. Harrison removes her handicaps and mask, revealing a beautiful woman.
He orders the musicians to play, saying he will make them royalty if they do
their best. Unhappy with their initial attempt, Harrison conducts, waving a
couple of musicians in the air like batons, and sings. They try again and do
better. After listening to the music, Harrison and his empress dance. Defying
gravity, they move through the air, flying thirty feet upward to the ceiling, which
they kiss. Then, still in the air, they kiss each other.
Diana Moon Glampers comes into the studio and kills Harrison and the
empress with a shotgun. Training the gun on the musicians, she orders them
to put their handicaps on. The Bergerons screen goes dark. George, who has
left the room to get a beer, returns and asks Hazel why she has been crying.
She says something sad happened on TV, but she cant remember exactly
what. He urges her not to remember sad things. A noise sounds in Georges
head, and Hazel says it sounded like a doozy. He says she can say that again,
and she repeats that it sounded like a doozy.
Themes
The Danger of Total Equality
In Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut suggests that total equality is not an ideal
worth striving for, as many people believe, but a mistaken goal that is
dangerous in both execution and outcome. To achieve physical and mental
equality among all Americans, the government in Vonneguts story tortures its
citizens. The beautiful must wear hideous masks or disfigure themselves, the
intelligent must listen to earsplitting noises that impede their ability to think,
and the graceful and strong must wear weights around their necks at all hours
of the day. The insistence on total equality seeps into the citizens, who begin
to dumb themselves down or hide their special attributes. Some behave this
way because they have internalized the governments goals, and others
because they fear that the government will punish them severely if they display
any remarkable abilities. The outcome of this quest for equality is disastrous.
America becomes a land of cowed, stupid, slow people. Government officials
murder the extremely gifted with no fear of reprisal. Equality is more or less
achieved, but at the cost of freedom and individual achievement.
The Power of Television
Television is an immensely powerful force that sedates, rules, and terrorizes
the characters in Harrison Bergeron. To emphasize televisions overwhelming
importance in society, Vonnegut makes it a constant presence in his story: the
entire narrative takes place as George and Hazel sit in front of the TV.
Television functions primarily as a sedative for the masses. Hazels cheeks are
wet with tears, but because she is distracted by the ballerinas on the screen,
she doesnt remember why she is crying. The government also uses television
as a way of enforcing its laws. When dangerously talented people like Harrison
are on the loose, for example, the government broadcasts warnings about
them. They show a photograph of Harrison with his good looks mutilated and
his strength dissipated. The photo is a way of identifying the supposedly
dangerous escapee, but it is also a way of intimidating television viewers. It
gives them a visual example of the handicaps imposed on those who do not
suppress their own abilities. Television further turns into a means of terrorizing
the citizens when Diana Moon Glampers shoots Harrison. The live execution is
an effective way of showing viewers what will happen to those who dare to
disobey the law.
Motifs
Noise
The noises broadcast by the government increase in intensity and violence
during the course of the story, paralleling the escalating tragedy of Georges
and Hazels lives. When the story begins, a buzzer sounds in Georges head
as he watches the ballerinas on TV. As he tries to think about the dancers, who
are weighed down and masked to counteract their lightness and beauty, the
sound of a bottle being smashed with a hammer rings in his ears. When he
thinks about his son, he is interrupted by the sound of twenty-one guns firing,
an excessively violent noise that foreshadows Harrisons murder. Thoughts
about the laws of equality and the competition that existed in the old days are
shattered by the sound of a siren, a noise that suggests the extent to which the
government has literally become the thought police. As Harrison barges into
the television studio, George hears a car crash, a noise that connotes the
injury of multiple people. The noise that interrupts George roughly at the same
time that his son is being executed on live TV is described only as a handicap
signal, an ominously vague phrase. Vonnegut suggests that the noise is so
awful that it cant be mentioned, just as the murder of Harrison is so awful that
George and Hazel cant fully comprehend it. The final noise George hears is
that of a riveting gun, an appropriate echo of the way Diana Moon Glampers
killed Harrison.
Symbols
Harrison Bergeron
Harrison represents the spark of defiance and individuality that still exists in
some Americans. He has none of the cowardice and passivity that
characterize nearly everyone else in the story. Rather, he is an exaggerated
alpha male, a towering, brave, breathtakingly strong man who hungers for
power. When he storms into the TV studio and announces that he is the
emperor, the greatest ruler who has ever lived, he sounds power-mad and
perhaps insane. At the same time, however, his boastfulness is exhilarating. It
is an exaggerated expression of the defiant urge to excel that some Americans
still feel. When Harrison rips off his steel restraints and handicaps, the physical
strength and beauty he reveals reminds some viewers that underneath their
own restraints and handicaps, they too are still talented or lovely. But in the
end, Harrison, symbol of defiance, is killed in cold blood by Diana Moon
Glampers, the administrator of government power. The quick, efficient murder

suggests that if a defiant spirit still exists in America in 2081, its days are
numbered.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
Kurt Vonnegut
Plot Overview
N O T E : Billy Pilgrim, the novels protagonist, has become unstuck in time. He travels between
periods of his life, unable to control which period he lands in. As a result, the narrative is not
chronological or linear. Instead, it jumps back and forth in time and place. The novel is structured
in small sections, each several paragraphs long, that describe various moments of his life.
Billy Pilgrim is born in 1922 and grows up in Ilium, New York. A funny-looking,
weak youth, he does reasonably well in high school, enrolls in night classes at
the Ilium School of Optometry, and is drafted into the army during World War
II. He trains as a chaplains assistant in South Carolina, where an umpire
officiates during practice battles and announces who survives and who dies
before they all sit down to lunch together. Billys father dies in a hunting
accident shortly before Billy ships overseas to join an infantry regiment in
Luxembourg. Billy is thrown into the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and is
immediately taken prisoner behind German lines. Just before his capture, he
experiences his first incident of timeshifting: he sees the entirety of his life,
from beginning to end, in one sweep.
Billy is transported in a crowded railway boxcar to a P O W camp in Germany.
Upon his arrival, he and the other privates are treated to a feast by a group of
fellow prisoners, who are English officers who were captured earlier in the war.
Billy suffers a breakdown and gets a shot of morphine that sends him timetripping again. Soon he and the other Americans travel onward to the beautiful
city of Dresden, still relatively untouched by wartime privation. Here the
prisoners must work for their keep at various labors, including the manufacture
of a nutritional malt syrup. Their camp occupies a former slaughterhouse. One

night, Allied forces carpet bomb the city, then drop incendiary bombs to create
a firestorm that sucks most of the oxygen into the blaze, asphyxiating or
incinerating roughly 130,000 people. Billy and his fellow P O W s survive in an
airtight meat locker. They emerge to find a moonscape of destruction, where
they are forced to excavate corpses from the rubble. Several days later,
Russian forces capture the city, and Billys involvement in the war ends.
Billy returns to Ilium and finishes optometry school. He gets engaged to
Valencia Merble, the obese daughter of the schools founder. After a nervous
breakdown, Billy commits himself to a veterans hospital and receives shock
treatments. During his stay in the mental ward, a fellow patient introduces Billy
to the science fiction novels of a writer named Kilgore Trout. After his
recuperation, Billy gets married. His wealthy father-in-law sets him up in the
optometry business, and Billy and Valencia raise two children and grow rich.
Billy acquires the trappings of the suburban American dream: a Cadillac, a
stately home with modern appliances, a bejeweled wife, and the presidency of
the Lions Club. He is not aware of keeping any secrets from himself, but at his
eighteenth wedding anniversary party the sight of a barbershop quartet makes
him break down because, he realizes, it triggers a memory of Dresden.
The night after his daughters wedding in 1967, as he later reveals on a radio
talk show, Billy is kidnapped by two-foot-high aliens who resemble upsidedown toilet plungers, who he says are called Tralfamadorians. They take him
in their flying saucer to the planet Tralfamadore, where they mate him with a
movie actress named Montana Wildhack. She, like Billy, has been brought
from Earth to live under a transparent geodesic dome in a zoo where
Tralfamadorians can observe extraterrestrial curiosities. The Tralfamadorians
explain to Billy their perception of time, how its entire sweep exists for them
simultaneously in the fourth dimension. When someone dies, that person is
simply dead at a particular time. Somewhere else and at a different time he or
she is alive and well. Tralfamadorians prefer to look at lifes nicer moments.
When he returns to Earth, Billy initially says nothing of his experiences. In

1968, he gets on a chartered plane to go to an optometry conference in
Montreal. The plane crashes into a mountain, and, among the optometrists,
only Billy survives. A brain surgeon operates on him in a Vermont hospital. On
her way to visit him there, Valencia dies of accidental carbon monoxide
poisoning after crashing her car. Billys daughter places him under the care of
a nurse back home in Ilium. But he feels that the time is ripe to tell the world
what he has learned. Billy has foreseen this moment while time-tripping, and
he knows that his message will eventually be accepted. He sneaks off to New
York City, where he goes on a radio talk show. Shortly thereafter, he writes a
letter to the local paper. His daughter is at her wits end and does not know
what to do with him. Billy makes a tape recording of his account of his death,
which he predicts will occur in 1976 after Chicago has been hydrogen-bombed
by the Chinese. He knows exactly how it will happen: a vengeful man he knew
in the war will hire someone to shoot him. Billy adds that he will experience the
violet hum of death and then will skip back to some other point in his life. He
has seen it all many times.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
Kurt Vonnegut
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
The Destructiveness of War

Whether we read Slaughterhouse-Five as a science-fiction novel or a quasiautobiographical moral statement, we cannot ignore the destructive properties
of war, since the catastrophic firebombing of the German town of Dresden
during World War II situates all of the other seemingly random events. From
his swimming lessons at theY M C A to his speeches at the Lions Club to his
captivity in Tralfamadore, Billy Pilgrim shifts in and out of the meat locker in
Dresden, where he very narrowly survives asphyxiation and incineration in a
city where fire is raining from the sky.
However, the not-so-subtle destructiveness of the war is evoked in subtle
ways. For instance, Billy is quite successful in his postwar exploits from a
materialistic point of view: he is president of the Lions Club, works as a
prosperous optometrist, lives in a thoroughly comfortable modern home, and
has fathered two children. While Billy seems to have led a productive postwar
life, these seeming markers of success speak only to its surface. He gets his
job not because of any particular prowess but as a result of his father-in-laws
efforts. More important, at one point in the novel, Billy walks in on his son and
realizes that they are unfamiliar with each other. Beneath the splendor of his
success lies a man too war-torn to understand it. In fact, Billys name, a
diminutive form of William, indicates that he is more an immature boy than a
man.
Vonnegut, then, injects the science-fiction thread, including the
Tralfamadorians, to indicate how greatly the war has disrupted Billys
existence. It seems that Billy may be hallucinating about his experiences with
the Tralfamadorians as a way to escape a world destroyed by wara world
that he cannot understand. Furthermore, the Tralfamadorian theory of the
fourth dimension seems too convenient a device to be more than just a way for
Billy to rationalize all the death with he has seen face-to-face. Billy, then, is a
traumatized man who cannot come to terms with the destructiveness of war
without invoking a far-fetched and impossible theory to which he can shape
the world.
The Illusion of Free Will

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut utilizes the Tralfamadorians, with their
absurdly humorous toilet-plunger shape, to discuss the philosophical question
of whether free will exists. These aliens live with the knowledge of the fourth
dimension, which, they say, contains all moments of time occurring and
reoccurring endlessly and simultaneously. Because they believe that all
moments of time have already happened (since all moments repeat
themselves endlessly), they possess an attitude of acceptance about their
fates, figuring that they are powerless to change them. Only on Earth,
according to the Tralfamadorians, is there talk of free will, since humans, they
claim, mistakenly think of time as a linear progression.
Throughout his life, Billy runs up against forces that counter his free will. When
Billy is a child, his father lets him sink into the deep end of a pool in order to
teach him how to swim. Much to his fathers dismay, however, Billy prefers the
bottom of the pool, but, against his free will to stay there, he is rescued. Later,
Billy is drafted into the war against his will. Even as a soldier, Billy is a joke,
lacking training, supplies, and proper clothing. He bobs along like a puppet in
Luxembourg, his civilian shoes flapping on his feet, and marches through the
streets of Dresden draped in the remains of the scenery from a production
of Cinderella.
Even while Vonnegut admits the inevitability of death, with or without war, he
also tells us that he has instructed his sons not to participate in massacres or
in the manufacture of machinery used to carry them out. But acting as if free
will exists does not mean that it actually does. As Billy learns to accept the
Tralfamadorian teachings, we see how his actions indicate the futility of free
will. Even if Billy were to train hard, wear the proper uniform, and be a good
soldier, he might still die like the others in Dresden who are much better
soldiers than he. That he survives the incident as an improperly trained joke of
a soldier is a testament to the deterministic forces that render free will and
human effort an illusion.
The Importance of Sight
True sight is an important concept that is difficult to define forSlaughterhouseFive. As an optometrist in Ilium, Billy has the professional duty of correcting
the vision of his patients. If we extend the idea of seeing beyond the literal
scope of Billys profession, we can see that Vonnegut sets Billy up with several
different lenses with which to correct the worlds nearsightedness. One of the
ways Billy can contribute to this true sight is through his knowledge of the
fourth dimension, which he gains from the aliens at Tralfamadore. He believes
in the Tralfamadorians view of timethat all moments of time exist
simultaneously and repeat themselves endlessly. He thus believes that he
knows what will happen in the future (because everything has already
happened and will continue to happen in the same way).
One can also argue, however, that Billy lacks sight completely. He goes to war,
witnesses horrific events, and becomes mentally unstable as a result. He has
a shaky grip on reality and at random moments experiences overpowering
flashbacks to other parts of his life. His sense that aliens have captured him
and kept him in a zoo before sending him back to Earth may be the product of
an overactive imagination. Given all that Billy has been through, it is logical to
believe that he has gone insane, and it makes sense to interpret these bizarre
alien encounters as hallucinatory incidents triggered by mundane events that
somehow create an association with past traumas. Looking at Billy this way,
we can see him as someone who has lost true sight and lives in a cloud of
hallucinations and self-doubt. Such a view creates the irony that one employed
to correct the myopic view of others is actually himself quite blind.
Motifs
So It Goes
The phrase So it goes follows every mention of death in the novel, equalizing
all of them, whether they are natural, accidental, or intentional, and whether
they occur on a massive scale or on a very personal one. The phrase reflects
a kind of comfort in the Tralfamadorian idea that although a person may be
dead in a particular moment, he or she is alive in all the other moments of his
or her life, which coexist and can be visited over and over through time travel.
At the same time, though, the repetition of the phrase keeps a tally of the
cumulative force of death throughout the novel, thus pointing out the tragic
inevitability of death.
The Presence of the Narrator as a Character
Vonnegut frames his novel with chapters in which he speaks in his own voice
about his experience of war. This decision indicates that the fiction has an
intimate connection with Vonneguts life and convictions. Once that connection
is established, however, Vonnegut backs off and lets the story of Billy Pilgrim
take over. Throughout the book, Vonnegut briefly inserts himself as a character
in the action: in the latrine at the P O W camp, in the corpse mines of Dresden,
on the phone when he mistakenly dials Billys number. These appearances
anchor Billys life to a larger reality and highlight his struggle to fit into the
human world.
Symbols
The Bird Who Says Poo-tee-weet?

The jabbering bird symbolizes the lack of anything intelligent to say about war.
Birdsong rings out alone in the silence after a massacre, and Poo-tee-weet?
seems about as appropriate a thing to say as any, since no words can really
describe the horror of the Dresden firebombing. The bird sings outside of
Billys hospital window and again in the last line of the book, asking a question
for which we have no answer, just as we have no answer for how such an
atrocity as the firebombing could happen.
The Colors Blue and Ivory
On various occasions in Slaughterhouse-Five, Billys bare feet are described
as being blue and ivory, as when Billy writes a letter in his basement in the
cold and when he waits for the flying saucer to kidnap him. These cold,
corpselike hues suggest the fragility of the thin membrane between life and
death, between worldly and otherworldly experience.

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MRS.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Communication vs. Privacy

Disillusionment with the British Empire

The many appearances of Shakespeare specifically and poetry in general

The Prime Minister

Bloom as somewhat of an outsider. At the funeral, Bloom thinks about the

At noon, we find Bloom at the offices of the Freemannewspaper, negotiating

and begins attacking Blooms Jewishness. Bloom stands up to the citizen,

The Quest for Paternity

recognizing the future in Stephen and Stephen recognizing the past in

capacity to adapt to a wide variety of challenges. Blooms compassion often

Lightness and Darkness

While Odysseus is away from Ithaca in The Odyssey, his household is

Plumtrees Potted Meat

The Gold Cup Horserace

THE GREAT GATSBY

Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of

The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s

aristocracyfamilies with old wealthscorned the newly rich industrialists and

in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its objectmoney and pleasure.

The Green Light

The Transience of Life and Work

Shakespeares, are doomed to eventual oblivion. This realization accounts for

The Differing Behaviors of Men and Women

As Lily Briscoe suffers through Charles Tansleys boorish opinions about

Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his

The Hypocrisy of Imperialism

hypocritical operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues

Observation and Eavesdropping

Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the books title.

reduced to a series of two-dimensional scenes that flash by Marlows steamer

The Impermanence of Existence and Identity

The Relationship Between Childbearing and Death

Pointless Acts of Heroism

Issues of Social Class

THE SOUND AND THE FURY

Attempting to cover up her indiscretions, Caddy quickly marries Herbert Head,

A Note on the Title

The Corruption of Southern Aristocratic Values

The Compsons corruption of Southern values results in a household that is

Order and Chaos

Lieutenant Frederic Henry is a young American ambulance driver serving in

The Grim Reality of War

be the others refuge. If they are to achieve physical, emotional, and

thinking of Henrys return to the front and of their imminent separation.

friendship than of the grand political causes and abstract philosophies of

THE SUN ALSO RISES

The Aimlessness of the Lost Generation

The Failure of Communication

reality. Drunkenness allows Jake and his acquaintances to endure lives

The Waste Land Summary

The Waste Land Themes

profound change, perhaps an ineffable one, is required. Hence the

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Kurt Vonnegut is a poster child for postmodernism.

JORGE LUIS BORGES IN

"The Library of Babel"

"On Exactitude in Science"

Waiting for Godot

WAITING FOR GODOT

A photo of Harrison appears on the screen. He is wearing the handicaps

Glampers, the administrator of government power. The quick, efficient murder