Dream and Freedom: Topics on American Literature
自由与梦想：美国文学专题研究
朱法荣编著
The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land；
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch whose flame
Is imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome；her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities .
"Keep ancient lands your storied pomp!" cries she with silent lips.
"Give me your tired your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
(1883)
新巨人
爱玛·拉扎露丝
不似希腊伟岸铜塑雕像
拥有征服疆域的臂膀;
红霞落波之门你巍然屹立,
高举灯盏喷薄光芒,
您凝聚流光的名字 ——
放逐者之母, 把广袤大地照亮.
凝视中宽柔撒满长桥 海港
"扼守你们旷古虚华的土地与功勋吧!"她呼喊 ，
颤栗着缄默双唇: "把你,
那劳瘁贫贱的流民
那向往自由呼吸,又被无情抛弃
那拥挤于彼岸悲惨哀吟
那骤雨暴风中翻覆的惊魂
全都给我! 我高举灯盏伫立金门!"
（1883）
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Contents
Preface: A Brief Introduction to American Literature..............................................1
Chapter 1 "A City upon a Hill": Puritan Influence .......................................................6
Chapter 2 "The Glory that was Greece": European Influence ....................................13
Chapter 3 "Trust Thyself": New England Transcendentalism ....................................30
Chapter 4 "America Singing": Walt Whitman's Democratic Voice ............................43
Chapter 5 "Tell all the Truth": Emily Dickinson's Original Tone ...............................55
Chapter 6 "All American Literature begins": Mark Twain's Local Color ...................67
Chapter 7 "Mending the Wall": Bard of New England ..............................................80
Chapter 8 "Petals on a Wet, Black Bough": Imagist Poetry ......................................86
Chapter 9 " I, too": Harlem Renaissance ...................................................................92
Chapter 10 "A Rose for Emily": Southern Renaissance ...........................................101
Chapter 11 "Hills Like White Elephant": Lost Generation .......................................113
Chapter 12 "The Crucible": American Drama ..........................................................121
Reference
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Preface: A Brief Introduction to American Literature
Literature is a performance in words. It is the work of men who are especially sensitive to the
language of their time and who use the skill of language to make permanent their vision of life.
Literature can be defined as written works collectively, especially those of enduring importance,
exhibiting imagination and artistic skill. Furthermore, literature can also refer to a particular
period, language, or country, such as "Elizabethan literature," "American literature".
"American literature" is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States
and its preceding colonies. During its early history, America was a series of British colonies on
the eastern coast of the present-day United States. Therefore, its literary tradition begins as linked
to the broader tradition of English literature. However, unique American characteristics and the
breadth of its production usually now cause it to be considered a separate path and tradition.
All nations are indebted to each other and to preceding ages for the means of advancement. As
a New World, America is strikingly characteristic of an immigrant country, whose settlers came
form all quarters of the world with different languages and different customs. Actually, before
European settlers explored this land, numerous different Native American groups with a large
wealth of oral literary traditions had already existed on the continent for centuries. Unfortunately,
the making of the nation of the United States is truly a history of the invasion and colonization of
the North American continent from perspective of the Natives. Not until 1983 with the book of
The Native American Renaissance by critic Kenneth Lincoln, did the exploration in the literary
works by Native Americans begin to catch the public interest in the decade and a half after N.
Scott Momaday had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for House Made of Dawn. Today, Native
American Literature has become an indispensable part of American one.
Literature as Witness
At the very beginning of the colonist period, American literature were journals, pamphlets,
letters, autobiographies, history and writings extolling the benefits of the colonies to both a
European and colonist audience. The religious disputes that prompted settlement in America were
also topics of early writing. Other late writings described conflicts and interaction with the Indians.
In many of the texts one can sense a critical eye, a point of view not likely to be swayed by the
slogans of empire or faith or even wealth.
Literature at that time was highly religious in nature, just as Anne Bradstreet said "upon this
rock Christ Jesus" that she built her faith. Owing to the large immigration to Boston in the 1630s,
the high articulation of Puritan cultural ideals, and the early establishment of a college and a
printing press in Cambridge, the New England colonies have often been regarded as the center of
early American literature.
During the 18th century, writing shifted focus from the Puritanical ideals to the power of the
human mind and rational thought. The belief that human and natural occurrences were messages
from God no longer fit with the new human centered world. Many intellectuals believed that the
human mind could comprehend the universe through the laws of physics as described by Isaac
Newton. The enormous scientific, economic, social, and philosophical changes of the 18th century
called the Enlightenment. Enlightenment Movement is an intellectual movement that developed in
Europe in the 17th century and reached its height in the 18th century. The Enlightenment
Movement celebrated reason, equality, science and human being’s ability to perfect themselves
and their society. The 18th-century Enlightenment occupies an important position not only in the
growth of Western civilization but also in human history. It's the same story in the newly-built
United States of America.
Perhaps the question what is an American, from the very colonial period till now, has been one
of the most important discussions of American culture and identity. Benjamin Franklin's Poor
Richard's Almanac(1732-1758) and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin(1771-1790)are
esteemed works with their wit and influence toward the formation of a budding American identity.
And the most-detailed answer comes from the French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur,
whose Letters from an American Farmer in 1782 addresses, "What then is the American, this
new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture
of blood, which you will find in no other country... He is an American, who, leaving behind him
all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has
embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by
being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted
into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.
Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts,
sciences, vigor, and industry which began long since in the east; they will finish the great circle."
Literature as Nationalism
The question what is America also urges the early literature of the new nation struggled to find
a uniquely American voice in existing literary genre. European forms and styles were often
transferred to new locales and critics often saw them as inferior. Till the years between 1820 and
the Civil War, a first flowering of American literary talent came into being who helped shape
American literature for the next two centuries. This period is usually called the First American
Renaissance, the writers of which helped to forge a stable national literary perspective and
greatly influenced the nineteenth- and twentieth- century writers who came after them.
The philosopher, essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson is the pivotal figure in the
emergence of the American Renaissance. In differing ways, all the other writers can be said to
have responded to Emerson's calls for a national literature. In essays such as Nature (1836), "The
American Scholar" (1837), and "Self-Reliance" (1841), Emerson both defines what he sees as the
principal characteristics of American identity, and calls for authors to represent them. Thus, in
"The American Scholar," he announces that "our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands,
draws to a close" and demands that American writers follow his lead and "embrace the
common . . . the familiar, the low". Despite the learned nature of his own prose, Emerson stresses
the need for a literature that can celebrate the individualism, democracy, and equality that he
identifies at the heart of American life.
But Emerson is also writing at a moment of crisis: he begins Nature by stating, "Our age is
retrospective," and calls for his generation to "enjoy an original relation to the universe" and "a
poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition" rather than "groping among the dry bones of
the past." For Emerson, the dependence on a European tradition and on history rather than
self-reliance is distinctly un-American, and he makes a nationalistic demand for the "new lands,
new men, new thoughts" to shape "our own works and laws and worship".
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By and large, authors in the 1820s shared a sense of the distinctiveness of the American
landscape, its colonial history, and the legitimacy of its traditions, and worked to represent the
ways that ordinary Americans were coming to grips with their country’s contradictions.
Literature as Diversity
The literature American Civil War and WWI appears in the context of the dramatic
diversification of American experience, both ethnic and regional, and the small but insistent
movement among authors to combat the social inequities arising from too-rapid growth.
Immigration from Europe and Asia resulted in a newly heterogeneous American population, now
no longer mainly of New England descent, and now more diverse in terms of class and ethnic
backgrounds. As populations in large urban centers and all geographic areas of the country
increased, newspapers and magazines focusing on specific ethnic and regional readerships
flourished. With new publishing opportunities available to depict previously underrepresented and
“marginalized” peoples, many fictional characters, often created by authors from the same cultural
and economic backgrounds, began to challenge received notions about the American character.
But this new diversity often resulted in suspicion, antagonism, and cultural paranoia, triggering a
cultural unease that pitted urban against rural, labor against management, and immigrant against
native.
As to describe the diversified experiences as they are, American writers turned to realism
which was an attempt to accurately represent life as authors saw it through the use of concrete
descriptive details that readers would recognize from their own lives. William Dean Howells
advanced a type of realism that concentrated on affectionate portrayals of ordinary, middle-class
characters in an attempt to make the novel more democratic and inclusive. Henry James and Edith
Wharton, meanwhile, focused on refined mental states, rather than exterior surfaces and
surroundings. Their “psychological realism” attempted to find a precise language for intangible
moral situations. The realism of Mark Twain was devoted to rendering the vernacular dialects and
colloquialisms of his ordinary characters, often using humor to help readers sympathize with
roguish heroes like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
The other two verified realisms are “Local color” writing and naturalism. “Local color”, or
regional writing, is an attempt to capture distinct language, perspectives, and geographical settings
before industrialization and cultural homogenization erased them. Some regionalist writing relied
on nostalgia to generate interest in authentic but vanishing characters. Other writers found
regional specificity to be a vehicle for social change. Naturalists concentrated on lower-class and
marginalized people and merged the realist attention to detail with a strong belief in social
determinism rather than free will. Building on the theory of natural selection proposed by Charles
Darwin’s Origin of Species(1859), naturalists like Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser,
and Jack London tried to represent life scientifically rather than providentially. Characters in
naturalist novels exist in worlds where the environment determines character, events happen
randomly, the strong prey on the weak, and protagonists often have neither the intelligence nor the
resources to overcome adversity. But despite these bleak and unforgiving features, naturalist
novels present their characters as case studies to suggest social solutions.
Literature as Modernism
The dominant literary aesthetic between 1914 and 1945 is known as “modernism,” a response
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to the contradictions and pressures of contemporary life. In the same way that the country
struggled with rapid modernization, modernist authors struggled to put a current face on
traditional literature and to translate American themes and preoccupations into an international
style.
Many of the social and cultural changes of the interwar period centered around the sexual and
psychological theories of Sigmund Freud, the social and racial writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, and
the economic and political programs of Karl Marx. Freud, the inventor and chief practitioner of
psychoanalysis, developed the idea of the “unconscious,” a repository of sexual desires and
dreams. Freud’s theories helped some Americans break free from small-town, white, Protestant
values in favor of increasingly permissive and tolerant attitudes toward the sexual freedoms and
desires of women and acceptance of gay and lesbian individuals.
Modernist poetry and prose tended to be short, precise, subjective, and suggestive rather than
exhaustively detailed with exterior descriptions, to include fragments and disjointed perspectives
rather than cohesive or coherent patterns, to favor questions over pat explanations, and to reject
artificial literary order and assurances of objective truth that they did not see in the real world.
When works like T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land did include overarching patterns, they referred to
classical or mythic narratives through allusion or foregrounded the self-reflexive search for
meaning as a rationale to continue asking difficult questions. The modernist emphasis on
individual experience over objective truth also meant incorporating elements of popular culture,
which had not been thought literary enough for high art until then, mixing in colloquialisms and
dialects without the aid of an interpretive narrator. The demands of modernist style meant a small
readership but prestige and influence; modernists scorned the popular writers and desired their
fame, but accused commercially successful writers, like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, of selling
out.
The efforts of Harlem Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston
incorporated blues rhythms and folk culture into their texts, but focused on the vitality of black
culture or upbeat assessments of racial justice rather than angry denunciations of the status quo.
And modernists like Marianne Moore, H.D., Katherine Anne Porter, and Nella Larsen depicted
women’s thoughts and experiences without explicitly advocating feminist positions. A last major
development was the maturity of American drama during the interwar years thanks to experiments
by playwrights reacting to Broadway and successful mixtures of American theatrical elements.
Broadway, the center of American theatrical activity in the late nineteenth century, had begun
premiering shows and plays in New York City and then sending them to tour the rest of the United
States.
Literature as Multi-culture
After World War II, the United States emerged as the strongest world power and assumed the
role of speaking on behalf of liberal democratic ideals. The literature of the 1950s reflects the
cultural preoccupations of stability and conformity as it responded to the aesthetic project of
modernism. Many artists sought to depict what they took to be common or essential to all
Americans regardless of gender, class, ethnicity, or regional identity. Such striving for
representativeness derived in part from the grand ambitions of modernist novelists like Ernest
Hemingway, whose lingering macho challenge to write the “Great American Novel” pushed
writers to universalize or generalize so that their works could speak to any reader. Other novelists
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were inspired by William Faulkner to use regional specificity to make major statements about race,
history, and national identity. By the end of the decade, fiction writers began to suspect that
novelistic conventions were inadequate to the task of representing essential Americana, much less
contemporary reality. The “Death of the Novel” controversy, as it was called, pointed to the
dependence of novels on stable assumptions about character, plot development, and symbolism.
During the 1960s, novelists like Philip Roth were increasingly skeptical of such assumptions.
Poetry followed a course similar to that of prose in these years. Starting with finely wrought,
intricate, personal lyric meditations, which were stylistic holdovers from modernist influences,
poets in the Fifties began to experiment with formal openness and thematic inclusiveness of
non-mainstream perspectives. Two books that symbolized poetry’s break with modernist form are
Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956), with its wandering, oral rhythms and energetic rejections of
conformity, and Robert Lowell’s Life Studies (1959), featuring a less difficult, more direct style
and an autobiographical intensity. Ginsberg’s and Lowell’s works helped prepare for the
“confessional” poetry of the 1960s, which stressed the distinctiveness rather than the
representativeness of the lyric voice.
As the Cold War ended, writers worked to broaden the cultural achievements of the 1960s,
widening the scope of American experience and casting diversity and plurality as aesthetic ideals.
African American women like Toni Morrison, Lucille Clifton, and Rita Dove wrote in national,
racial, and ethnic terms; likewise, Sherman Alexie and Louise Erdrich succeeded in writing in the
often ignored or suppressed tradition of Native American literature. Immigrant writers like
Maxine Hong Kingston and Jhumpa Lahiri augmented national dialogues of assimilation and
ethnic identity for Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian Americans. Perhaps the most telling
emblem of this contemporary acceptance of new perspectives into conceptions of American
experience is the Internet. Online, new hypertext realities need only be imagined to exist virtually,
all users may join online communities, and writing exists in open-ended and interactive
relationships with its readers.
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Chapter 1 "A City upon a Hill": Puritan Influence
"A City upon a Hill" is a phrase from the parable of Salt and Light in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
In Matthew 5:14, he tells his listeners,“Ye are the light of the world. A city is set on an hill cannot be
hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth
light onto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good
works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."
"A City upon a Hill" was knowingly adopted by Puritans as their vision for America. In 1630, some
puritans set sail from England to the New World with a dream that their new nation would be a
guiding light. It would be an example for the whole world. Still aboard John Winthrop, the future
Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony made a sermon "A Model of Christian Charity", in which
Winthrop admonished that their new community would be a shining "city upon a hill", watched by
the world, " For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are
upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause
Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world",
which became the ideal the New England colonists placed upon their hilly capital city, Boston. Winthrop's
sermon gave rise to the widespread belief in American folklore that the United States of America is God's
country because metaphorically it is a Shining City upon a Hill, an early example of American
exceptionalism. And it continues to this day. In the twentieth century, the image was used a number of times
in American politics, such as in the speeches by President John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
There is no doubt that Puritanism is one of the most important aspects of the American culture.
Many of this country's beliefs come from puritan back-ground. What is Puritanism and the
meaning of it in American history?
Puritanism is a term that originates from the religious group called the Puritans. They were a
denomination formed by the great Protestant Reformation in Europe. They were known as
nonconformists and dissenters because of their refusal to submit to the Church of England.
Puritanism starts with the theology of the Puritans. First they believed in the sovereignty of God.
That is, only God had the highest power or rank. This meant that a man did not have the power to
hold authority over other men and that all Christian men are responsible only to God. Secondly, the
"Bible" was cited as the authority for law and everyday practices. Anyone who disagreed with
Biblical doctrine, or presented different ideas, was banned from the Colonies, or worse. Thirdly, and
probably the most important is the idea of Salvation by Grace. In Puritan theology, God created
mankind and cosmos. He gave mankind a beautiful garden to live, the Garden of Eden.
Unfortunately, mankind committed sin and was banished. However God, sent His grace to mankind.
He gave His people salvation and therefore they were able to live by faith. Out of this belief, came
the Covenant of Grace. The Covenant of Grace states that God approached mankind, not the other
way around and all mankind had to do was accept this covenant of grace. This allowed mankind, as
sinful as they were, the chance to return to God. The Puritans perceived their coming to America as
God's grace. America was a wilderness to the puritans. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Moses led
the Israelites into the wilderness and wandered for forty years before reaching Canaan, the Promised
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Land. The New World was, at the same time, the Wilderness and the Garden of Eden. It was
uninhabited (at least in their view), pristine, and beautiful. And they also believed in
predestination--- John Calvin's doctrine that God has already decided who will achieve salvation
and who will not. Nevertheless, these who are to be saved cannot take their salvation for granted.
For that reason, all devout Puritans searched their souls with great rigor and frequency for signs of
grace. The puritans felt that they could accomplish good only through continual hard work and
self-discipline, a principle known today as the "Puritan ethic", the basic American virtues, which
focus on hard work, frugality, plainness and temperance, introspection, self-improvement, and
self-reliance.
Just as religion dominated the lives of the Puritans, it also dominated their writings. Typically, the
Puritans wrote theological studies, hymns, histories, biographies, and autobiographies. The purpose
of such writing was to provide spiritual insight and instruction. When Puritans wrote for themselves
in journals or diaries, their aim was the serious kind of self-examination they practiced in other
aspects of their lives. The Puritans produced neither fiction nor drama because they regarded both as
sinful. However they did write poetry and produced two excellent poets in the colonial period, Anne
Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, the former called " the Tenth Muse in America" and the latter as a
Baroque Singer. Anne's moving, personal voice and Edward's devotional intensity shine through the
conventional Puritanism of their themes.
The great Anglo-American literary giants of the colonial period were Jonathan Edwards and
Benjamin Franklin, the former was famous for his sermons so filled with fire and brimstone and the
latter for his The Autobiography. Edwards, who has been called one of the four or five greatest
American literary artists, was another Renaissance Man, conversant in the ideas of Newton and
Locke, combining science and philosophy as a basis for a body of religious literature unrivaled in
logical and literary perfection in the entire history of human writing. Franklin, for his part, provided
an important literary bridge between the late Colonial and early National periods of American
intellectual culture. Franklin's Autobiography, the sort of self-improvement tract favored by the
early Puritans, used formulaic conventions of the spiritual autobiography borrowed from them while
espousing his own worldly wisdoms. Franklin, whose "Dogood Papers”"of 1722 echoed the
Protestant/Puritan work ethic to serve his secular humanism, which embraced the ethical morality of
Puritanism and modernized it in the process, making it possible for subsequent generations of
American readers to inherit the ethical legacy of Puritanism without having to embrace its spiritual
tenets.
In 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne based many of his works on Puritanism, and commonly
examined the conflict between good and evil in human nature and, particularly, the problem of
public goodness and private wickedness. Hawthorne's short story, "Young Goodman Brown" is
about a man who meets the Devil in the forest, and discovers that many of his fellow "good
Christian" townspeople are meeting the Devil as well, including his wife Faith. He cries out to Faith
to resist the Devil, but he wakes up and no one is there. He lives the rest of his life suspicious of
everyone, including Faith. In his story, Hawthorne explores the nature of religion. This story makes
the reader question whether having "faith" is enough to have a happy life, and how people who
claim to be "Christian" may not necessarily be good people.
In another famous book Moby-Dick, Hawthorne's best friend Herman Melville created a work that
was jam-packed full of Biblical references and religious meaning. The white whale is the
embodiment of evil, for Ahab, and must be hunted down and dispensed with. This is the same
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thought process many Puritans had for those who did not conform to the Puritan beliefs. By the end
of Melville's tale, the reader questions whether the real evil is Ahab or the whale. In the same way,
many question whether the moral codes of Puritanism are good or evil.
The Puritans began American literature and helped the growing nation find a voice that has carried
throughout history.
The greatness of the Puritans lay not so much in their conquest of a wilderness or in carrying their
religion into it, but in their refusal to make any intellectual concessions to the primeval forest. In the
midst of frontier conditions, they maintained schools and a college, a high level of scholarship and
of excellent writing, and a class of men devoted entirely to the life of the mind and the soul. The
concept of the frontier as moral nexus and literary matrix was initiated by the Puritans, transposed
during the American literary Renaissance, and was eventually established irrevocably in the mythos
of Old West. As Sacvan Bercovitch has demonstrated, Jacksonian literati like Dana and Cooper,
with their implicit notion of Manifest Destiny, were heavily influenced by the Puritan worldview,
which saw the colonies as a "New Israel." Whereas Puritans sought correlations between their
natural environment and the Scriptures, Jacksonian romantics read biblical promises in nature itself,
seeing, and reading, in the Alleghenies, in the prairies, and in the Hudson and Mississippi---- the
Book of Revelation.
This crypto-Puritan legacy was eventually inherited by Abraham Lincoln, whose own mythos
includes the image of the young boy poring over Euclid in a rude frontier cabin, and who, in his
maturity, pointed to our Puritan forefathers and gave us a Biblically-informed rhetoric of simplicity,
purification, and communion with the "better angels of our nature." The Civil War, and the cast of
rhetorical characters around whom it swirled, including Lincoln, Henry David Thoreau, John Brown,
Julia Ward Howe, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, manifested and reified perhaps the most enduring and
overarching Puritan legacy, which was -- and is--- a profound sense of the importance of the
American venture in the New World.
The Puritans, like Americans during the 1860's and the 1990's, saw themselves as a covenanted
people, chosen to establish a model of universal reformation. In this typology of America's mission,
as articulated by Lincoln himself, the war is presented as a punishment inflicted upon a sinning
people so that all might be redeemed. While Thoreau, dubbed “The Last of the Puritans,” bestows
his blessing upon John Brown's self-anointed role as an American Gideon, Howe sounds the
apocalyptic jeremiad of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and Stowe, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin,
presents a christogical Tom, succeeded by an antitypal George who carries into Africa "the lessons
they ... learned in America," which is to say the lessons of Puritan Protestantism, as listed by the
author: "property, reputation, and education." This is also the main theme of John William De
Forest's Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (seen by many as the first instance of
American literary realism), in which the war is portrayed as a climactic fifth act in a drama of sacred
history, starting with the Christian Revelation, followed by the Protestant Reformation, the War of
American Independence, and the French Revolution, finally culminating in the struggle for
universal freedom without distinction as to race or color.
Another writer of American realism who emerged from the fiery trial of the War Between the States,
if indirectly, was Stephen Crane. Perhaps the most cogent analysis of the sources that informed
Stephen Crane's poetics has been given by James Cox, who supplemented and completed Amy
Lowell's suggestion that the Bible gave Crane his form. While Crane is not commonly associated
with religiosity, Cox points out that Crane's father and mother were a Methodist minister and a
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devout church worker, respectively, and he submits the likelihood that another book almost
ubiquitous in nineteenth-century home libraries, The Pilgrim's Progress, informed and shaped
Crane's poetry. As with his fellow naturalist/realist Theodore Dreiser, parentally mandated church
and prayer meetings marked Crane's youth. Thirty-six of the sixty-eight poems in The Black Riders
(a title of inverted allusion to the Scriptural “Pale Rider”) demonstrably approximate Bunyan's
rhetorical and dramatic patterns of subjective revelation, interrogation and interpretation. In the
considered view of Cox, Crane's assimilation of the allegorical form and furniture of Bunyan's
world reveals him as far more the moralist and preacher than the imagist or free versifier or
symbolist: like Melville's Father Mapple, "he rants in the anguished tones of an inspired minister,"
albeit in a manner and style coming from a world in which he can no longer believe.
Another giant of American literary realism/naturalism, Theodore Dreiser, is, like Crane, known for
viewing organized Christianity rather narrowly. His great work, An American Tragedy, is framed,
or bookended, by a depiction of parental neo-Puritan ethos — plain speech and the simple heartfelt
hymn, punctuated with Scripture and preached on the streets for the edification of the Great
Unwashed — a "sterile moralism" shown to be ineffectual and irrelevant in the urban jungle of
twentieth-century capitalism. However, Dreiser, a man for whom the novel served primarily as a
vehicle for social and philosophical ideas (often ill-digested), was under the sway of Emile
Durkheim, who had defined a sociological perspective on the capitalistic secularization of godhead.
Quoting Bernard Rosenberg, a sociologist with a literary eye, Irving Howe describes this
transposition as such that “when men speak of a force external to themselves which they are
powerless to control, their subject is not God but social organization.” Dreiser brought to this
theme a sense of religious wonder and awe, and wrote: “So well defined is the sphere of social
activity, that he who departs from it is doomed.” Dreiser’s protagonists characteristically struggle
after material goods and worldly status, hoping, in Howe’s words, “for some unexpected sign by
which to relieve their bitter craving for a state of grace or, at least, illumination.” His characters
search for the Absolute as if it can be found at the very summit of material power, and Dreiser
shows well how great energies can flow from this entrenched American delusion, a distortion of the
Puritan work ethic traceable to Franklin, whose own usage regrettably equated poverty with Divine
disfavor. It is this stain which is Clyde Griffiths’ tragic flaw, and it as a sinner in the hands of an
angry secular god that his doom is sealed.
Writing of another American poet who (like Crane) is not generally regarded as a
theologically-minded thinker, Anna Juhnke notes that “religious” is one of the last adjectives
which one might choose to describe Robert Frost’s poetry. A centralized, almost solipsistic
individual, removed from the Divine, is the characteristic speaker in his works. And yet . . .
evidence that “stargazing, swinging birches, making a clearing, or flying a plane" are inadequate to
Frost’s religious inquiry is seen by the appearance of his masques on Biblical themes of heavenly
salvation, justice and mercy. Beyond self-generated attributes of love, courage and creativity,
Juhnke has described how epistemological questions regarding the possibility of something greater
than humanity, sustaining cosmic order and purpose, break through this self-contained spirituality
— questions she sees as strongly influenced by Judaeo-Christian assumptions.
Edmund Morgan has succinctly encapsulated the Puritan dilemma of remaining pure while living in
the world, and Perry Miller has elaborated upon it as being a theological statement in the dogmatic
guise of a philosophy of life. This philosophy holds, on the one hand, that individuals must act
reasonably and justly, while striving for inward communication with the force that controls the
5
world. Yet, they must not expect that force to be confined and cribbed by human conceptions of
reason and justice. So, if there is an obligation on us to be equitable, fair, and just, who among us,
asks Miller, can say that any such morality is also binding on the universe? This was exactly the
question posed by Crane in his poetry, and manifest in the vaunted "code" of Ernest Hemingway, yet
another American writer not known for his overt religiosity. Miller, amplifying his point, also asks
– after noting that there are certain amenities which men must observe in their dealings with men
— must these amenities be respected by the tiger, by the raging storm, by the lightning, or by the
cancer? If one were to add the shark to this list of unruly misanthropic natural phenomena, one
would go far towards crystallizing the philosophical underpinnings of both Crane's short story "The
Open Boat" and Hemingway's novel The Old Man and the Sea.
A final literary event in the present context might well be Arthur Miller's The Crucible, whose
troubled glance backwards at the ambivalent Puritan heritage reminds the readers of the first
American writer to exploit this theme, Nathaniel Hawthorne. The comparison draws strength from
the fact that two of Hawthorne' s ancestors, William and John, lived in colonial Salem; the former
gained notoriety for persecuting Quakers, while the latter was a judge at the infamous witchcraft
trials of 1692, the same trials employed by Arthur Miller as a metaphor for the problematic
relationship between personal and public morality engendered by Puritanism. Like Hawthorne,
Miller has brooded about the impingement of the Puritan past upon the present. Linguistically
speaking, this is a present progressive, as Miller' s work, originally conceived amidst the abuses of
McCarthyism, has bequeathed to the American political lexicon the term "witchhunt," which
reemerges whenever our society, as is presently the case, is torn between conflicting standards of
personal freedom and public accountability. If one is willing to accept Kant's definition of tragedy
as the irreconcilable clash between two moral imperatives, this (with all due respect to Dreiser),
may well be the true continuing American tragedy. It was typified by the Puritans and has resonated
down through American literature for the past four hundred years.
6
Selected Reading
The
Autobiography
by
Benjamin
Franklin
Chapter 8
It was about this time I conceiv'd the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I
wish'd to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural
inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right
and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I
had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I bad imagined. While my care was employ'd in
guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention;
inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative
conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our
slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established,
before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I
therefore contrived the following method.
In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my reading, I found the catalogue
more or less numerous, as different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name.
Temperance, for example, was by some confined to eating and drinking, while by others it was
extended to mean the moderating every other pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or
mental, even to our avarice and ambition. I propos'd to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use
rather more names, with fewer ideas annex'd to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I
included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurr'd to me as necessary or desirable,
and annexed to each a short precept, which fully express'd the extent I gave to its meaning.
These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary
7
actions.
7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak
accordingly.
8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the
injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judg'd it would be well not to
distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and,
when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro'
the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain
others, I arrang'd them with that view, as they stand above. Temperance first, as it tends to procure
that coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept
up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits, and the force of
perpetual temptations. This being acquir'd and establish'd, Silence would be more easy; and my
desire being to gain knowledge at the same time that I improv'd in virtue, and considering that in
conversation it was obtain'd rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue, and therefore wishing to
break a habit I was getting into of prattling, punning, and joking, which only made me acceptable to
trifling company, I gave Silence the second place. This and the next, Order, I expected would allow
me more time for attending to my project and my studies. Resolution, once become habitual, would
keep me firm in my endeavors to obtain all the subsequent virtues; Frugality and Industry freeing
me from my remaining debt, and producing affluence and independence, would make more easy the
practice of Sincerity and Justice, etc., etc. Conceiving then, that, agreeably to the advice of
Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily examination would be necessary, I contrived the following
method for conducting that examination.
I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I rul'd each page with red ink,
so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for
the day. I cross'd these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the
first letter of one of the virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a little
black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue
upon that day.
I determined to give a week's strict attention to each of the virtues successively. Thus, in the first
week, my great guard was to avoid every the least offence against Temperance, leaving the other
virtues to their ordinary chance, only marking every evening the faults of the day. Thus, if in the
first week I could keep my first line, marked T, clear of spots, I suppos'd the habit of that virtue so
much strengthen'd and its opposite weaken'd, that I might venture extending my attention to include
the next, and for the following week keep both lines clear of spots. Proceeding thus to the last, I
could go thro' a course complete in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year. And like him who,
having a garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at once, which would
exceed his reach and his strength, but works on one of the beds at a time, and, having accomplish'd
8
the first, proceeds to a second, so I should have, I hoped, the encouraging pleasure of seeing on my
pages the progress I made in virtue, by clearing successively my lines of their spots, till in the end,
by a number of courses, I should he happy in viewing a clean book, after a thirteen weeks' daily
examination.......
I enter'd upon the execution of this plan for self-examination, and continu'd it with occasional
intermissions for some time. I was surpris'd to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had
imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish. To avoid the trouble of renewing now
and then my little book, which, by scraping out the marks on the paper of old faults to make room
for new ones in a new course, became full of holes, I transferr'd my tables and precepts to the ivory
leaves of a memorandum book, on which the lines were drawn with red ink, that made a durable
stain, and on those lines I mark'd my faults with a black-lead pencil, which marks I could easily
wipe out with a wet sponge. After a while I went thro' one course only in a year, and afterward only
one in several years, till at length I omitted them entirely, being employ'd in voyages and business
abroad, with a multiplicity of affairs that interfered; but I always carried my little book with me.
Commentary
There are a number of "firsts" associated with the Autobiography. It is considered the first popular
self-help book ever published. It was the first and only work written in America before the 19th
century that has retained bestseller popularity since its release. It was the first major secular
American autobiography. It is also the first real account of the American Dream in action as told
from a man who experienced it firsthand.
Nevertheless, despite its groundbreaking accomplishments, the Autobiography has been attacked by
numerous critics throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The most notable of these attacks was
delivered by D.H. Lawrence in 1923, who accused Franklin of being lost in his own quirky
optimism; Lawrence argues that Franklin should have concerned himself with the darker aspects of
humanity. Lawrence even proposed an alternate list of the 13 virtues as a means of both parodying
and criticizing Franklin. Nevertheless, the Autobiography remains an important look into the history
and sociology of 18th century America. Franklin in many ways embodies the Enlightenment spirit,
and may even be thought of as the first prototypical "American."
9
Chapter 2 "The Glory that was Greece": European Influence
On July 4,1776, the Continental Congress adopted the "Declaration of Independence", which said,
"... by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these
United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved
from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the
State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved..." Till then, more than one and a half
century had passed since the fist British colony was established in Jamestown, in 1607.
And another hundred years would have to be spent in order to establish an independence in
American literature. In 1820, A British critic Sydney Smith (1771-1845) asked in Edinburgh Review,
"In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or
looks at an American picture or statue?" It is true that by 1830s most American writers had just
imitated English tradition or European style. Maybe they tried to describe the environments of the
New World but they would usually end up in European mood and tone. Even those great writers,
such as Washington Irving(1783-1859), James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851) and William Cullen
Bryant(1794-1878), who had won a wide recognition on both sides of the Atlantic, still half slept
under the shadow of European culture.
Take Washington Irving for an example. Irving was one of the first Americans to be recognized
abroad as a man of letters, and he was a literary idol at home. Irving was born in 1783 when the
colonies finally achieved the independence for which they had been fighting for seven years, Irving
may be regarded as the first author produced in the new republic. As a boy he read widely in
English literature at home, modeling his early prose on the graceful Spectator papers by Joseph
Addison, also delighted by many other writers, including Shakespeare, Oliver Goldsmith, and
Lawrence Stern. From 1804 to 1806, young Irving made his first journey to Europe and took every
opportunity to study the environment and the person with whom he came into touch. And in 1814,
he was again sent to England to serve as his family firm's representative in Liverpool and after the
firm's bankrupt, he took refuge in traveling and writing. During his 17 years' stay and travel around
France, Germany, Italy and Spain, he had already come into friendly relations with a number of the
leading authors of the day, a group of which included Scott and Southey. With the encouragement of
his English friends, especially under Scott's helpful direction that there was a great wealth of unused
literary material in German folktales, Irving completed a series of short stories and published them
in England in 1820 under the title of The Sketch Book. The book was mainly written in English
way about English scenes. Just as the author said in the Account of Himself, "Never need an
American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery. But Europe
held forth all the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces
of art, the refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local
custom. My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated
treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a
chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement-- to tread, as it were, in the
footsteps of antiquity -- to loiter about the ruined castle--to meditate on the falling tower--to escape,
in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy
grandeurs of the past."
Among 14 stories in The Sketch Book, only 4 ones are about America. The most beloved story is
10
"Rip Van Winkle" whose source was discovered in German folktales and some passages of which
are close paraphrases of the original.
The story of "Rip Van Winkle" is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War.
In a pleasant village, at the foot of New York's "Kaatskill" Mountains, lives the kindly Rip Van
Winkle, a colonial British-American villager of Dutch descent. Rip is an amiable though somewhat
hermitic man who enjoys solitary activities in the wilderness, but is also loved by all in town—
especially the children to whom he tells stories and gives toys. However, a tendency to avoid all
gainful labor, for which his nagging wife (Dame Van Winkle) chastises him, allows his home and
farm to fall into disarray due to his lazy neglect. One autumn day, Rip is escaping his wife's nagging,
wandering up the mountains with his dog, Wolf. Hearing his name being shouted, Rip discovers that
the speaker is a man dressed in antiquated Dutch clothing, carrying a keg up the mountain, who
requires Rip's help. Without exchanging words, the two hike up to an amphitheatre-like hollow in
which Rip discovers the source of previously-heard thunderous noises: there is a group of other
ornately-dressed, silent, bearded men who are playing nine-pins. Although there is no conversation
and Rip does not ask the men who they are or how they know his name, he discreetly begins to
drink some of their liquor, and soon falls asleep. He awakes in unusual circumstances: it seems to be
morning, his gun is rotted and rusty, his beard has grown a foot long, and Wolf is nowhere to be
found. Rip returns to his village where he finds that he recognizes no one. Asking around, he
discovers that his wife has died and that his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else.
He immediately gets into trouble when he proclaims himself a loyal subject of King George III, not
knowing that the American Revolution has taken place; George III's portrait on the town inn has
been replaced by that of George Washington. Rip is also disturbed to find another man is being
called Rip Van Winkle (though this is in fact his son, who has now grown up). The men he met in
the mountains, Rip learns, are rumored to be the ghosts of Hendrick (Henry) Hudson's crew. Rip is
told that he has apparently been away from the village for twenty years. An old local recognizes Rip
and Rip's now-adult daughter takes him in. Rip resumes his habitual idleness, and his tale is
solemnly taken to heart by the Dutch settlers, with other hen-pecked husbands, after hearing his
story, wishing they could share in Rip's good luck, and have the luxury of sleeping through the
hardships of war.
Besides the origin of the story coming from Europe, the author's attitude toward the Independence
War, taking it as a dream, obviously was more in English people's stance than in Americans'. So
Irving was sometimes accused by some home critic of having become so absorbed in his English
sympathies as to have lost his patriotism. And he was even considered as an English writer produced
by the United States.
Another example of European influence on American literature can be found in Edgar Allan
Poe(1809-1849). Poe was a magazine editor, a poet, a short story writer, a critic, and a lecturer. He
introduced the British horror story, or the Gothic genre, to American literature, along with the
detective story, science fiction, and literary criticism. Poe became a key figure in the
nineteenth-century flourishing of American letters and literature. Famed twentieth--century literary
critic F.O. Matthiessen named this period the American Renaissance. He argued that
nineteenth-century American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman crafted a distinctly American literature that
attempts to escape from the long shadow of the British literary tradition. Matthiessen paid little
attention to Edgar Allan Poe, although he long had a reputation in Europe as one of America's most
11
original writers.
Poe was born at Boston, in 1809 and went to England at the age of 6 after he was adopted by a
prosperous tobacco exporter of Richmond. His five years' study in England made him read Latin
pretty sharply. Later at the University of Virginia, Poe won honorable mention in Latin and French.
He had not read widely, but he knew his Milton well, and probably his Shakespeare and his Pope
and he was familiar with the chief Romantic poets of the age immediately preceding his own. When
Poe came to maturity William Cullen Bryant and John Greenleaf Whittier were the leading
American poets. He had nothing to learn from them and turned for nourishment to the English
Romantic poets. He was strongly influenced by the aesthetic theories of Coleridge, identified with
the rebellious persona of Byron, and was inspired by the epic poetry of Shelley and the lyrics of
Keats. Most of his earlier verses are manifestly imitative, Byron and Moore and Coleridge and
Shelley being his chief models. Even his tragic character was believed to be like the reckless Byron:
"He was mad, bad, and dangerous to know." And his famous poetic principle, "a poem is opposed to
a work of science by having, for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth", is lifted from Coleridge.
Furthermore, Poe particularly admired two of his English contemporaries. He declared of Elizabeth
Barret, "her poetic inspiration is the highest--we can conceive nothing more august, Her sense of Art
is pure in itself." He later dedicated his famous poem "The Raven" to Elizabeth Barret. Poe was
even more enthusiastic about the mournful lyricism, the poetic excitement, the pure idealism, and
the ethereal beauty of Alfred Tennyson. He exclaimed: "I consider Tennyson not only the greatest
Poet in England , at present, but the greatest one, in many senses, that England, or any other Country,
ever produced."
Poe's constant theme is either the death of a beautiful woman and the grief occasioned thereby, or
the realm of shades--- the spirit-world -- a subject to which he was strongly attracted. Poe chose to
stand in the line of European tradition rather than American one or southern one. One of his famous
poem "To Helen" can best illustrate such philosophy.
To Helen
Helen, thy beauty is to me
....Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
....The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
....Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
....To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
....How statue-like I see thee stand,
....The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
....Are Holy Land!
Poe opens the poem with a simile–“Helen, thy beauty is to me / Like those Nicéan barks of yore”
12
–that compares the beauty of Helen (Mrs. Stanard, Background) with small sailing boats (barks)
that carried home travelers in ancient times. He extends this boat imagery into the second stanza,
when he says Helen brought him home to the shores of the greatest civilizations of antiquity,
classical Greece and Rome. It may well have been that Mrs. Stanard’s beauty and other admirable
qualities, as well as her taking notice of Poe's writing ability, helped inspire him to write poetry that
mimicked in some ways the classical tradition of Greece and Rome. Certainly the poem's allusions
to mythology and the classical age suggest that he had a grounding in, and a fondness for, ancient
history and literature. In the final stanza of the poem, Poe imagines that Mrs. Stanard (Helen) is
standing before him in a recess or alcove in front of a window. She is holding an agate lamp, as the
beautiful Psyche did when she discovered the identity of Eros (Cupid). It seems to be an inevitable
reaction to look toward Europe and long to return to the classic ages.
In some of his short stories, or in his landscape studies, he shows himself a master of English style.
And in some of his tales of incident he achieves a realism and a minuteness of detail that betray
unmistakably the influence of Defoe. And within the realm of the lyric he confined himself to the
narrowest range of ideas.
Not until 1850 did American writers find their own voice and establish their own literature
achievements. On August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson, so called American Confucius, made a
speech "The American Scholar" to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, in which he admitted
that sixty years after declaring independence, American culture was still heavily influenced by
Europe, and declared," In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be ?
free and brave. " Emerson, for possibly the first time in the country's history, provided a visionary
philosophical framework for escaping "from under its iron lids" and building a new, distinctly
American cultural identity. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. declared this speech to be America's
"Intellectual Declaration of Independence".
Further more, in 1850, Herman Melville, who suggests in his "Hawthorne and His Mosses" , "Some
may start to read of Shakespeare and Hawthorne on the same page. ... Shakespeare has been
approached. There are minds that have gone as far as Shakespeare into the universe. ... Believe me,
my friends, that Shakespeares are this day being born on the banks of the Ohio. And the day will
come, when you shall say who reads a book by an Englishman that is a modern? ... Now, I do not
say that Nathaniel of Salem is a greater than William of Avon, or as great. But the difference
between the two men is by no means immeasurable. Not a very great deal more, and Nathaniel were
verily William." In the following years of the 19th century, the Fireside Poets, led by Henry
Wordsworth Longfellow, ect, were the first group of American poets to rival British poets in
popularity in either country, nearly surpassing Alfred Lord Tennyson, a British Poet of Laureate.
The 20th century witnessed a great achievement in American Literature with 11 American Nobel
Prize winners in Literature and a variety in national literary awards, including American Academy
of Arts and Letters, Pulitzer Prize(Fiction, Drama and Poetry, as well as various non-fiction and
journalist categories), National Book Award(Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry and Young-Adult Fiction),
American Book Awards, PEN literary awards(multiple awards), United States Poet Laureate,
Bollingen Prize, Pushcart Prize, O. Henry Award, ect. Unique American characteristics and the
breadth of its production now cause it to be considered a separate path and tradition.
Gothic novel
The word Gothic originally referred to the Goths, an early Germanic tribe, then came to signify
13
Germanic, then medieval. Gothic architecture now denotes the medieval type of architecture,
characterized by the use of the high pointed arch and vault, flying buttresses, and intricate recesses,
which spread through western Europe between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries.
The Gothic novel, or in an alternative term, Gothic romance, is a type of prose fiction which was
inaugurated by Horace Walpole's the Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story(1764)---the subtitle refers to
its setting in the middle ages--and flourished through the early nineteenth century,. Some writers
followed Walpole's example by setting their stories in the medieval period; others set them in a
Catholic country, especially Italy or Spain. The locale was often a gloomy castle furnished with
dungeons, subterranean passages, and sliding panels; the typical story focused on the sufferings
imposed on an innocent heroine by a cruel and lustful villain, and made bountiful use of ghosts,
mysterious disappearances, and other sensational and supernatural occurrences. The principal aim of
such novel was to evoke chilling terror by exploiting mystery and a variety of horrors. Many of
them are now read mainly as period pieces, but the best opened up to fiction the realm of the
irrational and of the perverse impulses and nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the orderly surface of
the civilized mind.
The term Gothic has also been extended to a type of fiction which lacks the exotic setting of the
earlier romances, but develops a brooding atmosphere of gloom and terror, represents events that are
uncanny or macabre or melodramatically violent, and often deals with aberrant psychological states.
In this extended sense the term has been applied to Mary Shelley's remarkable and influential
Frankenstein(1817). Still more loosely, gothic has been used to describe elements of the macabre
and terrifying in such later works as Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte's Jane
Eyre, Charles Dickens' Bleak House and Great Expectations.
America, especially southern America, has been fertile in Gothic fiction in the extended sense, from
the terror tales of Edgar Allan Poe to William Faulkner's Sanctuary and Absalom, Absalom.
14
Selected reading
Ligeia
by
Edgar
Allan
Poe
And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who
knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For
God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of
its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels,
nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of
his feeble will.
- Joseph Glanvill
(1838)
I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with
the lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering.
Or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the character of my beloved,
her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence
of her low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily
progressive that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I believe that I met her first and most
frequently in some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family --I have surely heard her
speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! in studies of a nature
more than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word
alone --by Ligeia --that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more. And now,
while I write, a recollection flashes upon me that I have never known the paternal name of her who
was my friend and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally the wife of
my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? or was it a test of my strength of
affection, that I should institute no inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own --a
wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion? I but indistinctly recall the
fact itself --what wonder that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended
it? And, indeed, if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided,
as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over mine.
There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In
stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain
attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness
and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her
entrance into my closed study save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her
marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance
of an opium-dream --an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which
hovered vision about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of
that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the
heathen. "There is no exquisite beauty," says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms
and genera of beauty, without some strangeness in the proportion." Yet, although I saw that the
features of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity --although I perceived that her loveliness was
15
indeed "exquisite," and felt that there was much of "strangeness" pervading it, yet I have tried in
vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of "the strange." I examined the
contour of the lofty and pale forehead --it was faultless --how cold indeed that word when applied to
a majesty so divine! --the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the
gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the
luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet,
"hyacinthine!" I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose --and nowhere but in the graceful
medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection. There were the same luxurious
smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same
harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed
the triumph of all things heavenly --the magnificent turn of the short upper lip --the soft, voluptuous
slumber of the under --the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke --the teeth glancing
back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her
serene and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the chin
--and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty, the fullness and the
spirituality, of the Greek --the contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes,
the son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been, too, that in these eves of
my beloved lay the secret to which Lord Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than
the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the
tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals --in moments of intense excitement
--that this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was her
beauty --in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps --the beauty of beings either above or apart
from the earth --the beauty of the fabulous Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most
brilliant of black, and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly irregular
in outline, had the same tint. The "strangeness," however, which I found in the eyes, was of a nature
distinct from the formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be
referred to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we
intrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for
long hours have I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night,
struggled to fathom it! What was it --that something more profound than the well of Democritus
--which lay far within the pupils of my beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a passion to
discover. Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of
Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.
There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the science of mind, more
thrillingly exciting than the fact --never, I believe, noticed in the schools --that, in our endeavors to
recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of
remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. And thus how frequently, in my intense
scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression --felt it
approaching --yet not quite be mine --and so at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh strangest
mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that
expression. I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed into my spirit,
there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment
16
such as I felt always aroused within me by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I
define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes
in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine --in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a
stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the
glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven --(one especially, a star
of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the large star in Lyra) in a
telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by
certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among
innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of Joseph Glanvill, which
(perhaps merely from its quaintness --who shall say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment;
--"And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor?
For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to
the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
Length of years, and subsequent reflection, have enabled me to trace, indeed, some remote
connection between this passage in the English moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An
intensity in thought, action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index, of that
gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate
evidence of its existence. Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the
ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of
such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at
once so delighted and appalled me --by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and
placidity of her very low voice --and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast
with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.
I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense --such as I have never known in woman. In
the classical tongues was she deeply proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in
regard to the modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon any theme of
the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the academy, have I
ever found Ligeia at fault? How singularly --how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife
has forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her knowledge was such as I have
never known in woman --but where breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the
wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now clearly perceive,
that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her
infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the
chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily occupied during the earlier
years of our marriage. With how vast a triumph --with how vivid a delight --with how much of all
that is ethereal in hope --did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but little sought --but less known
--that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all
untrodden path, I might at length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to
be forbidden!
How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some years, I beheld my
well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a
17
child groping benighted. Her presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many
mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting the radiant lustre of her
eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less
and less frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a
too --too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave, and
the blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the gentle
emotion. I saw that she must die --and I struggled desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael. And the
struggles of the passionate wife were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There
had been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would have come
without its terrors; --but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of
resistance with which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle.
would have soothed --I would have reasoned; but, in the intensity of her wild desire for life, --for
life --but for life --solace and reason were the uttermost folly. Yet not until the last instance, amid
the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her demeanor.
Her voice grew more gentle --grew more low --yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning
of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I hearkened entranced, to a melody more than
mortal --to assumptions and aspirations which mortality had never before known.
That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom
such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion. But in death only, was I fully impressed
with the strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she pour out before me
the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I
deserved to be so blessed by such confessions? --how had I deserved to be so cursed with the
removal of my beloved in the hour of her making them, But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate.
Let me say only, that in Ligeia's more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all
unworthily bestowed, I at length recognized the principle of her longing with so wildly earnest a
desire for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is this wild longing --it is this eager
vehemence of desire for life --but for life --that I have no power to portray --no utterance capable of
expressing.
At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me, peremptorily, to her side, she bade
me repeat certain verses composed by herself not many days before. I obeyed her. --They were
these:
Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedlight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
18
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly -Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!
That motley drama! --oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased forever more,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness and more of Sin
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! --it writhes! --with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out --out are the lights --out all!
And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
"O God!" half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic
movement, as I made an end of these lines --"O God! O Divine Father! --shall these things be
undeviatingly so? --shall this Conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee?
Who --who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels,
nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to fall, and returned solemnly to
her bed of death. And as she breathed her last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur
from her lips. I bent to them my ear and distinguished, again, the concluding words of the passage in
Glanvill --"Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the
19
weakness of his feeble will."
She died; --and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely
desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the
world calls wealth. Ligeia had brought me far more, very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of
mortals. After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering, I purchased, and put in
some repair, an abbey, which I shall not name, in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of
fair England. The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the
domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with both, had much in
unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial
region of the country. Yet although the external abbey, with its verdant decay hanging about it,
suffered but little alteration, I gave way, with a child-like perversity, and perchance with a faint hope
of alleviating my sorrows, to a display of more than regal magnificence within. --For such follies,
even in childhood, I had imbibed a taste and now they came back to me as if in the dotage of grief.
Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and
fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the
Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold! I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of
opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a coloring from my dreams. But these absurdities
must not pause to detail. Let me speak only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither in a
moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my bride --as the successor of the unforgotten
Ligeia --the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.
There is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of that bridal chamber which is not
now visibly before me. Where were the souls of the haughty family of the bride, when, through
thirst of gold, they permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment so bedecked, a maiden and a
daughter so beloved? I have said that I minutely remember the details of the chamber --yet I am
sadly forgetful on topics of deep moment --and here there was no system, no keeping, in the
fantastic display, to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high turret of the castellated
abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size. Occupying the whole southern face of the
pentagon was the sole window --an immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice --a single pane,
and tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon, passing through it, fell with a
ghastly lustre on the objects within. Over the upper portion of this huge window, extended the
trellice-work of an aged vine, which clambered up the massy walls of the turret. The ceiling, of
gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and
most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most central
recess of this melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with long links, a huge
censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that there
writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of
parti-colored fires.
Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were in various stations about --and
there was the couch, too --bridal couch --of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony,
with a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic
sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged lids
20
full of immemorial sculpture. But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! the chief phantasy of all.
The lofty walls, gigantic in height --even unproportionably so --were hung from summit to foot, in
vast folds, with a heavy and massive-looking tapestry --tapestry of a material which was found alike
as a carpet on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy for the bed,
and as the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially shaded the window. The material was the
richest cloth of gold. It was spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about a
foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. But these figures
partook of the true character of the arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view. By a
contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of antiquity, they were
made changeable in aspect. To one entering the room, they bore the appearance of simple
monstrosities; but upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and step by step, as
the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of
the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of
the monk. The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong
continual current of wind behind the draperies --giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the
whole.
In halls such as these --in a bridal chamber such as this --I passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the
unhallowed hours of the first month of our marriage --passed them with but little disquietude. That
my wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper --that she shunned me and loved me but little
--I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with a
hatred belonging more to demon than to man. My memory flew back, (oh, with what intensity of
regret!) to Ligeia, the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I revelled in recollections of
her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love.
Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. In the
excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug) I would
call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the
glens by day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my
longing for the departed, I could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned --ah, could it be
forever? --upon the earth.
About the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the Lady Rowena was attacked
with sudden illness, from which her recovery was slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her
nights uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in
and about the chamber of the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of her
fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length
convalescent --finally well. Yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a second more violent disorder again
threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never
altogether recovered. Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more
alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians. With the
increase of the chronic disease which had thus, apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution
to be eradicated by human means, I could not fail to observe a similar increase in the nervous
irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and
now more frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds --of the slight sounds --and of the unusual
21
motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded.
One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this distressing subject with more than
usual emphasis upon my attention. She had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been
watching, with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated
countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans of India. She partly arose,
and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which I could not hear
--of motions which she then saw, but which I could not perceive. The wind was rushing hurriedly
behind the tapestries, and I wished to show her (what, let me confess it, I could not all believe) that
those almost inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures upon the wall,
were but the natural effects of that customary rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor,
overspreading her face, had proved to me that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She
appeared to be fainting, and no attendants were within call. I remembered where was deposited a
decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her physicians, and hastened across the chamber
to procure it. But, as I stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a startling
nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable although invisible object had passed
lightly by my person; and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich
lustre thrown from the censer, a shadow --a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect --such as
might be fancied for the shadow of a shade. But I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate
dose of opium, and heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having found the
wine, I recrossed the chamber, and poured out a gobletful, which I held to the lips of the fainting
lady. She had now partially recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I sank upon an
ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her person. It was then that I became distinctly aware
of a gentle footfall upon the carpet, and near the couch; and in a second thereafter, as Rowena was
in the act of raising the wine to her lips, I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the
goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a
brilliant and ruby colored fluid. If this I saw --not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine
unhesitatingly, and I forbore to speak to her of a circumstance which must, after all, I considered,
have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of the
lady, by the opium, and by the hour.
Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately subsequent to the fall of the
ruby-drops, a rapid change for the worse took place in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the third
subsequent night, the hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone,
with her shrouded body, in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride. --Wild
visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the
sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing
of the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called to mind the
circumstances of a former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had seen the
faint traces of the shadow. It was there, however, no longer; and breathing with greater freedom, I
turned my glances to the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand
memories of Ligeia --and then came back upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the
whole of that unutterable wo with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded. The night waned; and
still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing
22
upon the body of Rowena.
It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a sob,
low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery. --I felt that it came from the bed of ebony
--the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious terror --but there was no repetition of the
sound. I strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse --but there was not the slightest
perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I had heard the noise, however faint, and my soul
was awakened within me. I resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body.
Many minutes elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the mystery.
At length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble, and barely noticeable tinge of color had
flushed up within the cheeks, and along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of
unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no sufficiently energetic
expression, I felt my heart cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally
operated to restore my self-possession. I could no longer doubt that we had been precipitate in our
preparations --that Rowena still lived. It was necessary that some immediate exertion be made; yet
the turret was altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the servants --there were
none within call --I had no means of summoning them to my aid without leaving the room for many
minutes --and this I could not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my endeavors to call back
the spirit ill hovering. In a short period it was certain, however, that a relapse had taken place; the
color disappeared from both eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the
lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive
clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous
illness immediately supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had been so
startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate waking visions of Ligeia.
An hour thus elapsed when (could it be possible?) I was a second time aware of some vague sound
issuing from the region of the bed. I listened --in extremity of horror. The sound came again --it was
a sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw --distinctly saw --a tremor upon the lips. In a minute afterward
they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth. Amazement now struggled in my bosom
with the profound awe which had hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that
my reason wandered; and it was only by a violent effort that I at length succeeded in nerving myself
to the task which duty thus once more had pointed out. There was now a partial glow upon the
forehead and upon the cheek and throat; a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame; there was
even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady lived; and with redoubled ardor I betook myself to the
task of restoration. I chafed and bathed the temples and the hands, and used every exertion which
experience, and no little medical reading, could suggest. But in vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the
pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole
body took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and all
the loathsome peculiarities of that which has been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.
And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia --and again, (what marvel that I shudder while I write,)
again there reached my ears a low sob from the region of the ebony bed. But why shall I minutely
detail the unspeakable horrors of that night? Why shall I pause to relate how, time after time, until
near the period of the gray dawn, this hideous drama of revivification was repeated; how each
23
terrific relapse was only into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death; how each agony
wore the aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how each struggle was succeeded by I
know not what of wild change in the personal appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry to a
conclusion.
The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had been dead, once again stirred
--and now more vigorously than hitherto, although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its
utter hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move, and remained sitting rigidly
upon the ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of which extreme awe was perhaps
the least terrible, the least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now more vigorously than
before. The hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy into the countenance --the limbs relaxed
--and, save that the eyelids were yet pressed heavily together, and that the bandages and draperies of
the grave still imparted their charnel character to the figure, I might have dreamed that Rowena had
indeed shaken off, utterly, the fetters of Death. But if this idea was not, even then, altogether
adopted, I could at least doubt no longer, when, arising from the bed, tottering, with feeble steps,
with closed eyes, and with the manner of one bewildered in a dream, the thing that was enshrouded
advanced boldly and palpably into the middle of the apartment.
I trembled not --I stirred not --for a crowd of unutterable fancies connected with the air, the stature,
the demeanor of the figure, rushing hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed --had chilled me into
stone. I stirred not --but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad disorder in my thoughts --a
tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living Rowena who confronted me? Could it indeed
be Rowena at all --the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, why
should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth --but then might it not be the mouth of
the breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the cheeks-there were the roses as in her noon of life --yes,
these might indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with its dimples,
as in health, might it not be hers? --but had she then grown taller since her malady? What
inexpressible madness seized me with that thought? One bound, and I had reached her feet!
Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had
confined it, and there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of
long and dishevelled hair; it was blacker than the raven wings of the midnight! And now slowly
opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. "Here then, at least," I shrieked aloud, "can I
never --can I never be mistaken --these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes --of my lost
love --of the lady --of the LADY LIGEIA."
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Commentary
“Ligeia” is Poe’s most successful attempt to merge the Gothic grotesque with the traditional love
story, elements also combined in “Berenice” and “Morella.” Ligeia gives the story its name, and
every detail of the plot draws its purpose from her character because she is the object of the
narrator’s love. Ligeia perseveres in spite of the obstacles—death and light—that Poe, as the author,
places in her way. Ligeia dies, but her memory remains the primary fixation of the narrator’s mind.
The blonde-haired Rowena replaces her as the narrator’s wife, but the darkness of the marriage
bedroom suffocates the blonde, and Ligeia returns in Rowena’s body, imbuing the blonde’s body
with her darker tones.
Poe contrasts light and darkness to symbolize the conflict of two philosophical traditions. Ligeia
emerges mysteriously from the Rhine, a river in southwest Germany. Being German, she symbolizes
the Germanic Romantic tradition, closely related to the Gothic, that embraced the sensual and the
supernatural. Ligeia’s mind is the center of the irrational and mystical, not the rational. The cold
Lady Rowena is an ice queen from the north. She represents rationality. Rowena embodies the
austerity and coldness of English empiricism, a philosophical tradition based on rational methods of
observation, calculation, and analysis.
Rowena suffers from her confinement within a Gothic bridal chamber that is dark and filled with
unnatural decorations. The narrator preserves Ligeia’s sensuality and Romanticism’s artificiality in
the chamber’s architecture and decorations. Rowena fears the red drops and the gold tapestries
because they seem so unreal. Figuratively, Rowena dies because she is deprived of sunlight and
nature. If the grotesque chamber is, in part, responsible for Rowena’s death, then the lady Ligeia
can be considered a symbolic accomplice.
Ligeia’s ultimate victory is her return from the dead. Ligeia’s return confirms that the narrator has
lost his power’s of rationality and lost touch with reality. Though some critics emphasize the
unreliability of the narrator because of his abuse of opium, Poe is less concerned with the quality of
the narrator’s senses than with the power of his visions—what he sees, not how he sees it. This is
not to say that Poe undervalues the narrator or means for us naïvely to believe his bizarre and
contradictory confessions. Whether or not Ligeia’s return from the dead is actually, physically real
or an opium-induced delusion, her apparent physical manifestation at the end of the story means that
she has become more real for the narrator than a memory.
Many of Poe’s narrators are unreliable because of paranoia and guilt about their own crimes, as in
“The Black Cat,” in which the narrator is anxious about the discovery of his murder. In “Ligeia,”
the narrator is obsessed with lost love. His love embraces contradictions. For instance, he
passionately loves a woman without knowing her last name. But for Poe, these contradictions are
symptoms of love. Poe offers the possibility that love brings Ligeia back, if only in the eyes of the
narrator. The mysteriousness of Ligeia’s eyes spreads symbolically to the narrator’s eyes. If Ligeia
conceals vast knowledge behind her eyes, then the narrator somehow inherits her eyes’ power to
take in unnatural knowledge—to see the dead. The difference lies in the narrator’s ability to convey
his knowledge to us, allowing us to witness and judge the return of the lady Ligeia. Neither we nor
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the narrator ever saw what was behind Ligeia’s eyes, and their mystery lent them their allure.
While “Ligeia” strives to be a love story, it relies heavily on the sort of Gothic imagery for which
Poe became famous. “Ligeia” resembles a criminal story like “The Tell-Tale Heart” with its
emphasis on the narrator’s obsession with specific body parts. Eyes are crucial to both stories, and
in this tale, Ligeia’s hair takes on the same importance. The Gothic dimension of this obsession
involves the fantasy of reducing a human being to her body parts. The Gothic emphasis on anatomy
raises the possibility that aspects of human identity reside in specific body parts, throwing into
question the notion of an immortal soul. What survives of Ligeia is not her soul, but the materialized
form of her body, conveyed symbolically, in the last scene of the tale, by her dark hair. The story
only dramatizes the unconscious longings of the narrator to see his lost love again, and it gives these
longings the physical shape of Ligeia’s body. The love story, then, reverses the murder and
dismemberment of a horror story like “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Love becomes the ability to revive a
dead body.
Chapter 3 "Trust Thyself": New England Transcendentalism
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In the early 1830s, a young Boston pastor found himself wrestling with his faith. His wife of less
than two years had died of tuberculosis, and the grieving pastor began questioning his beliefs. At the
time, many religious and scholarly institutions downplayed the importance of the individual. The
Industrial Revolution, which introduced mass production, had shown that machines could actually
replace people. Individuals, it seemed, did not matter. The pastor was troubled by this notion. He did
not believe that individuals were insignificant. On the contrary, he felt that the human mind was the
most important force into the universe. The pastor was so passionate about his search for a mew
way of thinking that he resigned his position and traveled to Europe to visit with some of the great
philosophers of the day.
The pastor was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and what seemed like one man's crisis of confidence became
a revolution in American thought. When Emerson returned to the United States in 1833, he helped
forge the Transcendentalist movement. In practical terms, the Transcendentalist movement was a
ripple in history, lasting a mere ten years and producing only two major books----Emerson's
Nature(1836)and Thoreau's Walden(1854).Nevertheless, the influence of the Transcendentalists on
American life and letters continues to this day.
According to Emerson, the human mind is so powerful it can unlock any mystery, from the
intricacies of nature to the wonder of God. To Emerson, "the individual is the world." This was a
radical thought in an age that gave all authority to the organized institutions of government, religion,
and education. Emerson first proposed his ideas in 1833 in a speech at Harvard University. His
audience responded with great enthusiasm. Then, he took his ideas further, proposing that every soul
and all of nature was part of an "Over-Soul," a universal spirit to which all beings returned after
death. In other words, every being was part of the mind of God. In an 1842 lecture, Emerson noted
that, "The Transcendentalist.....believes in miracles, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to
new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy." Emerson's supporters
flocked to Concord, Massachusetts, to visit with him. During the height of Transcendentalist
activities, Emerson's Concord house attracted so many great minds that it was dubbed the "Athens
of America"
As early as the second and third centuries, a view of God as a unity and the suggestion that Jesus
was human and not a deity emerged in the doctrines of monarchianism and the teachings of Arius,
later declared heretical by the Church. During the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century,
certain rationalists revived the Platonic emphasis on reason and the unity of God, and the Socinians
emphasized the humanity of Jesus. British and American Unitarianism originated from Calvinism
and an increasingly scientific view of the universe, which inspired more liberal clergy to emphasize
reason and morals. It developed into a religious movement that stressed the use of reason in religion,
and denied the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. American transcendentalism
emerged in New England Congregationalist churches that rejected the eighteenth century revival
movement in favor of moderation, reason, and morals. In 1787, the Anglican King’s Chapel, which
had been abandoned by its British rector after the American Revolution in 1776, became Unitarian.
In 1825, the creation of the American Unitarian Association, under the leadership of William Ellery
Channing (1780–1842), made what had previously been a liberal wing of Congregationalism into a
separate denomination.
During the first decade of the nineteenth century, Unitarians predominated over Harvard with the
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election of Rev. Henry Ware Sr. as Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805, and of Rev. John Thornton
Kirkland as President in 1810. The younger Transcendentalists were educated at Harvard, and it was
there that they began to protest against the state of intellectualism at the university and the doctrine
of the Unitarian church which was taught at Harvard Divinity School. Unitarianism had encouraged
the individual to exercise intellect and free conscience in a quest for divine meaning, and
Transcendentalism was a natural consequence for those who were not satisfied with sobriety,
mildness, and calm rationalism and sought a more intense spiritual experience. As Minister at the
Second Church in Boston, Emerson, publicly rejected the practice of the Lord’s Supper in 1832,
and left his pastorate, renouncing what he termed the "corpse-cold Unitarianism of Brattle Street
and Harvard College." In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson concluded his Harvard Phi Beta Kappa
Address, The American Scholar, with these words:
We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. The
study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread
of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defense and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of
men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which
also inspires all men.
Some scholars depict Unitarianism as a bridge between Calvinism, which had conceived of religion,
in part, as humanity's quest to discover its place in the divine scheme, and the means of spiritual
regeneration; and Transcendentalism. By abandoning the notion of original sin and human
imperfectability, Unitarianism prepared for the possibility that man could live in joy and wonder,
without self-accusation. The Transcendentalists believed that finding God depended on inner
striving toward spiritual communion with the divine spirit.
"The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in
the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in
inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate
itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything
unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of inspiration
is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so he resists all attempts to palm other rules
and measures on the spirit than its own...."
"It is well known to most of my audience, that the Idealism of the present day acquired the name of
Transcendental, from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, of Konigsberg, who replied to the
skeptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there was nothing in the intellect which was not
previously in the experience of the senses, by showing that there was a very important class of ideas,
or imperative forms, which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired;
that these were intuitions of the mind itself; and he denominated them Transcendental forms. The
extraordinary profoundness and precision of that man's thinking have given vogue to his
nomenclature, in Europe and America, to that extent, that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive
thought, is popularly called at the present day Transcendental...."
The Transcendentalists drew their inspiration from many sources: Platonism and Neoplatonism;
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Indian and Chinese scriptures; the writings of mystics such as Emanuel Swedenborg and Jakob
Böhme; the post-Kantian idealism of Thomas Carlyle and Victor Cousin; and German and English
Romanticism as expressed in the literature of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Goethe. Under these
influences, the Transcendentalists developed their ideas of human "Reason," or intuition, and made
a distinction between "rue reason" and a merely analytic understanding.
Transcendentalism began as a protest against the general state of culture and society of the time, and
in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the doctrine of the Unitarian church which
was taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among Transcendentalists' core beliefs was an ideal
spiritual state, which transcends the physical and empirical and is only realized through the
individual's intuition, rather than through the logical deduction or the doctrines of established
religions. They emphasized the essential unity of all creation and the innate goodness of humanity,
which they believed would manifest itself if given the freedom to do so.
Like the Romantics, the Transcendentalists believed that subjective intuition was at least as reliable
a source of truth as the empirical investigation which underlay both deism and the natural theology
of the Unitarians. In 1833, Frederic Henry Hedge, once professor of logic at Harvard and now
minister in West Cambridge, published an article in The Christian Examiner, entitled "Coleridge,"
explaining and defending the Romantic/Kantian philosophy, and proposing that a correspondence
existed between internal human reality and external spiritual reality. The Transcendentalists desired
to ground their religion and philosophy in transcendental principles which were not based on, or
falsifiable by, the experience of the physical senses, but derived from the inner, spiritual or mental
essence of the human. Immanuel Kant had called "all knowledge transcendental which is concerned
not with objects but with our mode of knowing objects." The Transcendentalists, largely
unacquainted with German philosophy in the original, relied primarily on the writings of Thomas
Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Victor Cousin, Germaine de Staël, and other English and French
commentators for their knowledge of it. They were, however, well-acquainted with the ideas of the
English Romantics, and the Transcendental movement may be partially described as a slightly later,
American outgrowth of Romanticism. Another major influence was the mystical spiritualism of
Emanuel Swedenborg.
The Transcendentalists also drew inspiration from Indian philosophy. Emerson read fully the
available philosophic literature from India. In a letter to Max Mueller, Emerson wrote: "All my
interest is in Marsh's Manu, then Wilkins' Bhagavat Geeta, Burnouf's Bhagavat Purana, and
Wilson's Vishnu Purana, yes, and few other translations. I remember I owed my first taste for this
fruit to Cousin's sketch, in his first lecture, of the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna and I still
prize the first chapters of the Bhagavat as wonderful." Thoreau was fascinated by Sir William Jones'
translation of The Laws of Manu,which he found and read in Emerson's library. Thoreau read the
Dharma Sastra in 1841, when he was twenty-four, and had the Bhagavad Gita with him during his
stay by Walden Pond.
"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat
Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our
modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be
29
referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down
the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of
Brahma, and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or
dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water-jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for
his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is
mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges."
Emerson's most famous protege was Henry David Thoreau. As a twenty-year-old student, Thoreau
heard Emerson speak at Harvard and was thrilled by his ideas. Not content to merely discuss
Transcendentalist philosophy, Thoreau wanted to put it into action. In 1845, he built a rough cottage
in the woods at Walden Pond and went there to live alone. He sought to experience life on a simpler
level, in harmony with nature, untied to material things. Thoreau lived at Walden Pond for two years
and wrote about his experiences. The result was his classic collection of essays, Walden. Like other
Transcendentalists, Thoreau was a fierce abolitionist. In protest against slavery and the Mexican
War, he refused to pay taxes and was imprisoned. Although Thoreau spent only a single night in jail,
the experience gave him insights into the relationship of individuals to government. The theory of
nonviolent civil disobedience that he developed as a result has had a profound effect on society,
both in the United States and around the world. During India's struggle for independence in the
1940s, Mahatma Gandhi adopted Thoreau's ideas. Here in America, nonviolent civil protest served
as the guiding principle for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during the civil rights movement.
The influence of the Transcendentalists is so woven into the fabric of American culture that it is
almost invisible, like the air--so bountiful we take it for granted. Yet, whenever writers celebrate the
individual, whenever they look to the natural world as a mirror of human lives, whenever they state
a belief in the power of intuition to grasp fundamental truths, they owe a debt to the great, brief
meeting of minds in Concord.
Selected Reading
30
Walden
Hery David Thoreau
Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a
house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In
imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their
price. I walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with
him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher
price on it -- took everything but a deed of it -- took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk -cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough,
leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker
by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly.
What is a house but a seat? -- better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely
to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the
village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a
summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see
the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may
be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard,
wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door,
and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow,
perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms, -- the refusal was all I
wanted, -- but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual
possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected
materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave
me a deed of it, his wife -- every man has such a wife -- changed her mind and wished to keep it,
and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world,
and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten
dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it
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far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was
not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and
materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my
poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a
wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,
"I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute."
I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the
crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for
many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has
fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the
skimmed milk....
All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale -- I have always cultivated a
garden -- was, that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no
doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last I shall plant, I shall be
less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live
free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the
county jail.
Old Cato, whose "De Re Rusticâ" is my "Cultivator," says, and the only translation I have seen
makes sheer nonsense of the passage, "When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind,
not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once.
The oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good." I think I shall not buy greedily,
but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at
last.
The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe more at length, for
convenience putting the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write
an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only
to wake my neighbors up.
When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there,
which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not
finished for winter, but was merely a defense against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the
walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The
upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look,
especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon
some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or
less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a
year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a
goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep
over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music.
The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that
hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.
The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, was a tent, which I used
occasionally when making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the
boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this more substantial
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shelter about me, I had made some progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so slightly
clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive somewhat
as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had
lost none of its freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the
rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, "An abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning."
Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having
imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which
commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those smaller and more thrilling songsters of
the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager, -- the wood thrush, the veery, the scarlet
tanager, the field sparrow, the whip-poor-will, and many others.
I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south of the village of Concord
and somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and
about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord Battle Ground; but I was so
low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my
most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed me like a
tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the
sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft
ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily
withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle.
The very dew seemed to hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides of
mountains.
This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm in August,
when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the
serenity of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake
like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being,
shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven
itself so much the more important. From a hill-top near by, where the wood had been recently cut
off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills
which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream
flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked
between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with
blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and
more distant mountain ranges in the northwest, those true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, and
also of some portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this point, I could not see over
or beyond the woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to
give buoyancy to and float the earth. One value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into
it you see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as important as that it keeps butter cool.
When I looked across the pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood
I distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the
earth beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of
intervening water, and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry land.
Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I did not feel crowded or confined in the
least. There was pasture enough for my imagination. The low shrub oak plateau to which the
opposite shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the steppes of Tartary,
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affording ample room for all the roving families of men. "There are none happy in the world but
beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon," -- said Damodara, when his herds required new and larger
pastures.
Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those
eras in history which had most attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed
nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more
celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair, far from noise and
disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new
and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the
Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness
from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest
neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of creation where I had
squatted; -"There was a shepherd that did live,
And held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him by."
What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than
his thoughts?
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say
innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got
up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did.
They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang to this effect:
"Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand
that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint burn of a mosquito
making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was
sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was
Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings.
There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting
vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the
awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us
awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can
be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of
some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within,
accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling
the air -- to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove
itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an
earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing
a descending and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its
organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All
memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas
say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable
of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children
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of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace
with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and
labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to
throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been
slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness,
they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only
one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions
to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite
awake. How could I have looked him in the face?
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite
expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more
encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few
objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium
through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest
of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his
most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get,
the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and
see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation,
unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so
sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close,
to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to
get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were
sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For
most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God,
and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy
him forever."
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men;
like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue
has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An
honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his
ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three,
and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on
your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms
and quicksand and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not
founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great
calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary
eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a
German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a
German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called
internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy
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and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by
luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in
the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan
simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the
Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour,
without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a
little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work,
but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are
not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who
will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those
sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails
are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are
sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if
some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when
they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and
wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an
exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers
down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we
are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to
save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven't any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus'
dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parish
bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the
outskirts of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so many
times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow
that sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much more
to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire -- or to see it put out, and
have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly a
man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What's
the news?" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every
half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed.
After a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. "Pray tell me anything new that
has happened to a man anywhere on this globe" -- and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a
man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that
he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye
himself. ....
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and
mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without
perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry, -determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be
upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian
shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed
nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the
engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We
36
will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet
downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and
appearance, that allusion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and
Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we
come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake;
and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might
found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a
Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered
from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer
on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart
and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only
reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if
we are alive, let us go about our business.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and
detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish
in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the
alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is
a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy
with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated
in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout
and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the
richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and
here I will begin to mine.
Further Reading
37
Henry David Thoreau: Appreciation
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson’s essay on Thoreau is a mix of biography, eulogy, and personal criticism. It shows that
Emerson believed Thoreau capable of far greater accomplishments than he achieved in his life.
When Thoreau died in 1862, Emerson was a national figure, the Great American Philosopher.
Thoreau was a minor, local personality. These excerpts from Emerson’s funeral oration (expanded
and printed later in The Atlantic Monthly) give his views, positive and negative, of this one-time
disciple who has now eclipsed him in stature.
He graduated at Harvard College in 1837, but without any literary distinction. An iconoclast in
literature, he seldom thanked colleges for their service to him, holding them in small esteem, whilst
yet his debt to them was important. [After a brief stint manufacturing pencils and inventing a better
pencil, he decided] that he should never make another pencil. “Why should I? I would not do again
what I have done once.” He resumed his endless walks and miscellaneous studies, making every
day some new acquaintance with Nature, though as yet never speaking of zoology or botany, since,
though very studious of natural facts, he was incurious of technical and textual science.
He was a born protestant. He declined to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any
narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living well.
He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself.
There was somewhat military in his nature, not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely
tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to
pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full
exercise.
He was a speaker and actor of the truth, born such, and was ever running into dramatic situations
from this cause. … In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond,
and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for
him.
In 1847, not approving some uses to which the public expenditure was applied, he refused to pay his
town tax, and was put in jail. A friend paid the tax for him, and he was released. The like annoyance
was threatened the next year. But as his friends paid the tax, notwithstanding his protest, I believe he
ceased to resist.
No truer American existed than Thoreau. His preference of his country and condition was genuine,
and his aversion from English and European manners and tastes almost reached contempt. He
listened impatiently to news or bon mots gleaned from London circles; and though he tried to be
civil, these anecdotes fatigued him. The men were all imitating each other, and on a small mould.
Why can they not live as far apart as possible and each be a man by himself?
His robust common sense, armed with stout hands, keen perceptions and strong will, cannot yet
account for the superiority which shone in his simple and hidden life. I must add the cardinal fact,
that there was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which showed him the
material world as a means and symbol. This discovery, which sometimes yields to poets a certain
casual and interrupted light, serving for the ornament of their writing, was in him an unsleeping
insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient
to the heavenly vision.
38
He understood the matter in hand at a glance, and saw the limitations and poverty of those he talked
with, so that nothing seemed concealed from such terrible eyes. I have repeatedly known young men
of sensibility converted in a moment to the belief that this man was the man they were in search of,
the man of men, who could tell them all they should do.
Mr. Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields, hills and waters of his native
town, that he made them known and interesting to all reading Americans, and to people over the sea.
It was a pleasure and a priviledge to walk with him. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and
passed through it as freely by paths of his own. He knew every track in the snow or on the ground,
and what creature had taken this path before him.
His interest in the flower or the bird lay very deep in his mind, was connected with Nature, — and
the meaning of Nature was never attempted to be defined by him. … His power of observation
seemed to indicate additional senses. He saw as with a microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and
his memory was a photographic register of all he saw and heard. And yet none knew better than he
that it is not the fact that imports, but the impression or effect of the fact on your mind. Every fact
lay in glory in his mind, a type of the order and beauty of the whole.
His poetry might be good or bad; he no doubt wanted a lyric facility and technical skill, but he had
the source of poetry in his spiritual perception. … His own verses are often rude and defective. The
gold does not yet run pure, is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey. But if
he want lyric fineness and technical merits, if he have not the poetic temperament, he never lacks
the causal thought, showing that his genius was better than his talent.
Had his genius been only contemplative, he had been fitted to his life, but with his energy and
practical ability he seemed born for great enterprise and for command; and I so much regret the loss
of his rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition.
Wanting this, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry-party.
Pounding beans is good to the end of empires one of these days; but if, at the end of years, it is still
only beans?
The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we were the less
prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a
son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in the midst his broken task which none else
can finish, a kind of indignity to so noble a soul that he should depart out of Nature before yet he
has been really shown to his peers for what he is. But he, at least, is content. His soul was made for
the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is
knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.
Chapter 4 "America Singing": Bard of American Democracy
39
The poetry of the United States naturally arose first during its beginnings as the
Constitutionally-unified thirteen colonies. Like most literate people Americans took a great deal of
pleasure in reading and writing poetry. They marked the course of history, gave thanks to public
figures, learned their theology, examined their consciences, mourned the dead, honored their loved
ones, celebrated the creation, and translated the Bible in a variety of poetic forms. Unsurprisingly,
most of the early colonists' work relied on contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and
theme. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), a wife of the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, was
known as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America. Edward Taylor (1642-1729), a Cambridge
graduate, a minister and a physician in the frontier town of Westfield, followed the meditation and
the Metaphysical style in Europe. Both poets left many meditations on Puritan beliefs as well as the
explorations on the tension between this world and the next that transcends the age in which they
lived. And the self-scrutiny has long become the tradition of American poetry, which plays a vital
part in the work of T S Eliot, Allen Tate, Hart Crane, John Ransom, Robert Lowell, ect.
The 18th century in America was the age of revolution and the age of the reason, which produced
lots of eminent prose writers but few poets. Philip Freneau (1752-1832) was believed to be born in a
time not ripe for poetry, but his obsession with the beautiful, transient things of nature and the
conflict in his art between the sensuous and the didactic are central to the concerns of American
poetry, and earns him the title: the Father of American poetry. The first significant poet of the
independent United States was William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), whose great contribution was
to write rhapsodic (praising) poems on the grandeur of prairies and forests. Other notable poets to
emerge in the early and middle 19th century include Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1803–1882), Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Henry David Thoreau
(1817–1862), James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), and Sidney Lanier (1842–1881). As might be
expected, the works of these writers are united by a common search for a distinctive American voice
to distinguish them from their British counterparts. To this end, they explored the landscape and
traditions of their native country as materials for their poetry .
The final emergence of a truly indigenous English-language poetry in the United States was the
work of two poets, Walt Whitman (1819–1892) and Emily Dickinson (1830–1886). On the surface,
these two poets could not have been less alike. Whitman's long lines, derived from the metric of the
King James Version of the Bible, and his democratic inclusiveness stand in stark contrast with
Dickinson's concentrated phrases and short lines and stanzas, derived from Protestant hymnals.
What links them is their common connection to Emerson (a passage from whom Whitman printed
on the second edition of Leaves of Grass), and the daring originality of their visions. These two
poets can be said to represent the birth of two major American poetic idioms—the free metric and
direct emotional expression of Whitman, and the gnomic obscurity and irony of Dickinson—both of
which would profoundly stamp the American poetry of the 20th century.
Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 –March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and
humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating
both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often
called the Father of Free Verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry
collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. Today, he is
widely recognized as one of the greatest and most influential poets the Untied Stats has ever
40
produced.
Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a
volunteer nurse during the American Civil War in addition to publishing his poetry. Whitman's
major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an
attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. The image of the grass came
from the 17th poem of Song of Myself :"This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the
water is, /This the common air that bathes the globe. "He continued expanding and revising it until
his death in 1892. The poems in later editions became less confusing, repetitious, and raucous, and
more symbolic, expressive, and universal. He viewed the volume as a single long poem that
expressed his evolving vision of the world. Using his poetry to convey his passionate belief in
democracy, equality ,and the spiritual unity of all forms of life, he celebrated the potential of the
human spirit. From its first appearance as twelve unsigned and untitled poems, Leaves of Grass
grew to include 383 poems in its final edition(1892). The collection captures the diversity of the
American people and conveys the energy and intensity of all forms of life. I the century since
Whitman's death, Leaves of Grass has become one for the most highly regarded collections of
poetry ever written.
Walt Whitman has been claimed as America's first "the Bard of Democracy", a title meant to
reflect his ability to write in a singularly American character. A British friend of Walt Whitman,
Mary Smith Whitall Costelloe, wrote: "You cannot really understand America without Walt
Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he
would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet
Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America." Andrew Carnegie called him "the
great poet of America so far". Whitman considered himself a messiah-like figure in poetry. Others
agreed: one of his admirers, William Sloane Kennedy, speculated that "people will be celebrating
the birth of Walt Whitman as they are now the birth of Christ".
The literary critic, Harold Bloom wrote, as the introduction for the 150th anniversary of Leaves of
Grass: "If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even
if, like myself, you have never composed a line of verse. You can nominate a fair number of literary
works as candidates for the secular Scripture of the United States. They might include Melville's
Moby-Dick, Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Emerson's two series of Essays and The
Conduct of Life. None of those, not even Emerson's, are as central as the first edition of Leaves of
Grass."
Whitman's vagabond lifestyle was adopted by the Beat movement and its leaders such as Allen
Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and 1960s as well as anti-war poets like Adrienne Rich and
Gary Snyder. Whitman also influenced Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and was the model for the
character of Dracula. Stoker said in his notes that Dracula represented the quintessential male which,
to Stoker, was Whitman, with whom he corresponded until Whitman's death.
The development of these idioms can be traced through the works of poets such as Edwin Arlington
Robinson (1869–1935), Stephen Crane (1871–1900), Robert Frost (1874–1963) and Carl Sandburg
(1878–1967). As a result, by the beginning of the 20th century the outlines of a distinctly new poetic
tradition were clear to see.
This tradition was sustained into the 20th century to the extent that Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and T.
S. Eliot (1888-1965) were perhaps the most influential English-language poets in the period during
World War I. By the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to their American
41
contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry they wanted to write. Toward the
end of the millennium, consideration of American poetry had diversified, as scholars placed an
increased emphasis on poetry by women, African Americans, Hispanics, Chicanos and other
sub-cultural groupings.
Poetry Terms
1. What is Poetry?
Poetry is a literary genre that communicates experience in the most condensed form. Besides from
the basic demand that poetry say something, poetry is characterized by the following elements: a
musical effect created by rhythm and sounds, a precise and fresh imagery, and multiple level of
interpretations suggested by the connotation of the words and by allusions.
Poetry is a multidimensional language: an intellectual dimension, an emotional one, a sensuous one,
and an imaginative one. These dimensions work together to pass experience to the reader. Poetry
tries to say the most in the fewest possible words.
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility: it takes its origin
from emotion recollected in tranquility.(William Wordsworth)
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the best minds, eth very image of life
expressed in tis eternal truth. (P B Shelley)
Poetry begins in delight, and ends in wisdom.( Robert Frost)
Poetry make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings to which we
rarely penetrate. (T S Eliot)
2. Kinds of Poetry
Narrative Poems: Narrative poetry is poetry that has a plot. The poems that make up this genre
may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex. It is usually nondramatic,
with objective regular scheme and meter. Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls and lays.
Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of the British Isles from the
later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the
Americas, Australia and North Africa. Most northern and west European ballads are written in
ballad stanzas or quatrains (four-line stanzas) of alternating lines of iambic (an unstressed followed
by a stressed syllable) tetrameter (eight syllables) and iambic trimeter (six syllables), known as
ballad meter. Usually, only the second and fourth line of a quatrain are rhymed (in the scheme a, b, c,
b), which has been taken to suggest that, originally, ballads consisted of couplets (two lines) of
rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a
self-contained story, often concise and relying on imagery, rather than description, which can be
tragic, historical, romantic or comic. Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of
fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a refrain, sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and
sometimes of entire stanzas.
Lyrics: Lyrics are poems with a regular rhyme scheme and a limited length. Lyric derives from the
Greek word, meaning "singing to the lyre". A lyric poem is one that expresses a subjective, personal
point of view. The most popular form of lyric poetry in the Western tradition is the 14-line sonnet,
either in its Petrarchan or its Shakespearean form; other forms of the lyric include ballades,
villanelles,odes, pastourelle and canzone.
An ode is typically a lyrical verse written in praise of, or dedicated to someone or something which
42
captures the poet's interest or serves as an inspiration for the ode. The initial model for English odes
was Horace, who used the form to write meditative lyrics on various themes. The earliest odes in the
English language, using the word in its strict form, were the Epithalamium and Prothalamium of
Edmund Spenser. A;though an ode is a serious poem expressing the speaker's passion, it may be
passionate about anything. Especially during the nineteenth century, the ode tended to become less
public and more personal and introspective. Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" or Keats's "Ode to a
Nightingale" are examples of this introspection. The English ode's most common rhyme scheme is
ABABCDECDE.
Dramatic Poems: Dramatic poetry is essentially any poetic verse that is meant to be spoken as well
as performed by actors in front of an audience. In early Greek drama, both comedies and tragedies
were written in verse, as characters in these plays were usually gods or kings, who were expected to
speak in a stylized and articulate manner befitting their station. Prior to the 19th century in the West,
drama typically took the form of poetic verse. Playwrights such as William Shakespeare used verse
as a medium that could communicate a more complex portrayal of a character's emotions and
motivations than prose. Within this genre, there are different types of dramatic poems, including
verse, monologues and closet dramas.
While a dramatic monologue is written in verse, it is different from a poetic soliloquy found within
a play, in which a character delivers a monologue in verse form though the rest of the play may be
written in prose. The dramatic monologue was one of the favored forms of 19th-century British poet
Robert Browning, whose works in this genre include "The Last Duchess" and "Soliloquy of the
Spanish Cloister." In Browning's dramatic monologues, a single narrator recites the poem in its
entirety, interacting with specific people who are known to the audience only from clues within the
verse.
Free Verse: Free verse is composed of rhythmical lines varying in length, following no strict
metrical patterns, usually unrhymed. Often, the pattern is based on repetition and follows
grammatical structure. Although free verse may appear unrestrained, it does follow the rules
outlined above.
Haiku: Haiku is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterized by three qualities:
1)The essence of haiku is "cutting" (kiru). This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two
images or ideas and a kireji ("cutting word") between them, a kind of verbal punctuation mark
which signals the moment of separation and colours the manner in which the juxtaposed elements
are related.2)Traditional haiku consist of 17 on (also known as morae), in three phrases of 5, 7 and 5
on respectively. Any one of the three phrases may end with the kireji. Although haiku are often
stated to have 17 syllables, this is incorrect as syllables and on are not the same.3)A kigo (seasonal
reference), usually drawn from a saijiki, an extensive but defined list of such words. The majority of
kigo, but not all, are drawn from the natural world. This, combined with the origins of haiku in
pre-industrial Japan, has led to the inaccurate impression that haiku are necessarily nature poems.
In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line while haiku in English often
appear in three lines to parallel the three phrases of Japanese haiku. Such forms were greatly
admired models for the Imagist poets, an early twentieth-century movement that attempted to shed
excess words to create poems of clear, concise details.
3. Elements of poetry
Rhythm: Rhythm is the regular recurrence of sounds and is at the heart of all natural phenomena:
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the beating of a heart, the lapping of waves against the shore, the croaking of frogs on a summer's
night, the whispering of wheat swaying in the wind. Poetry, which explores these phenomena, often
tries to reflect the same rhythms by using repeated words and phrases as well as the repetition os
stresses and pauses. Poetic rhythm is an essential element to help to establish a poem's mood, and ,
in combination with other poetic elements, it conveys the poet's emphasis and helps communicate
the poem's meaning.
Meter:Meter is basic to a poetic rhythm which refers to the recurrence of regular units of stressed
and unstressed syllables. A stress (or accent) occurs when one syllable is emphasized more than
another, unstressed,syllable.
Foot: Foot is the basic unit of meter which refers to a group of syllables with a fixed pattern of
stressed and unstressed syllables. According to the number and position of the stressed syllable,
there are mainly six patterns of foot in English poetry:Iamb(-- \); trochee(\ --); Anapest(-- -- \);
Dactyl (\-- --); Spondee( \ \); Pyrrhic(-- --). And according to the number of feet, a lone of poetry is
measured to be monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter and
octameter, ect.
Caesura: It's a Latin word meaning "a cutting" within a line. A caesura occurs after a punctuation
mark or at a natural break in phrasing. When scanning a poem, you indicate a caesura with two
parallel lines:¶ Sometimes, more than one caesura occurs in a single line. Lines that have distinct
pause at eh end---usually signaled by punctuation--are called end-stopped lines. Lines that do not
end with strong pauses are called run-on lines or enjambment. End-stopped lines seem formal, or
even forced, but run-on lines more natural.
Rhyme: In poetry or music, a structural or semantic pattern formed by the repetition of syllables
with identical or similar sounds. It is usually classified into: perfect rhyme: final vowel and
consonant sounds must be the same, "sleep/deep"; Imperfect rhyme or near rhyme, slant rhyme,
approximate rhyme or consonance occurs when the final consonant sounds in two words are the
same but vowel sounds are different, "learn/barn"or "pads/lids"; Eye rhyme occurs when two words
look as if they should rhyme but do not, "watch/catch". Rhyme can also be classified according to
the position of the rhyming syllables in a line of verse. The most common type of rhyme is end
rhyme, which occurs at the end of the line; internal rhyme within a line and beginning rhyme at
the beginning of a line. Rhyme can also be classified according to the number of corresponding
syllables. Masculine rhyme (rising rhyme) occurs when single syllables correspond, "can/ran";
feminine rhyme (falling rhyme or double rhyme) occurs when two syllables, a stressed one followed
by an unstressed one, correspond, "ocean/motion"; triple rhyme occurs when three syllables
correspond.
Rhyme Pattern or scheme: parallel rhyme: aabb; cross rhyme: abab; circular rhyme: abba.
Stanza: A stanza is a group of lines (of any number of lines, most frequently of four line) bound
together by an end rhyme.
Image: An image is a verbal picture of an object, action, abstract idea, or sensation.
Voice: Just as fiction depends on a narrator, poetry depends on a speaker who describes events,
feelings, and ideas to readers. The speaker is not the poet but rather a creation that the poet uses to
convey his or her ideas.
Tone: The tone of a poem conveys the speaker’s attitude toward his or subject or audience by using
rhyme, meter, word choice, sentence structure, figures of speech, and imagery.
Theme: Theme refers to the ideas the poet explores, the concerns the poem examines. The
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controlling idea of a poem is the idea continuously developed throughout the poem by sets of key
words that identify the poet's subject and his attitude or feeling about it. It may also be suggested by
the title of a poem or by segment of the poem. It is rarely stated explicitly by the poet, but it can be
stated by the reader and it can be stated in different ways. For instance, poems about nature may
praise the beauty of nature, assert the superiority of its simplest creatures over humans, consider its
evanescence, or mourn its destruction. The sentence expressing theme must be generalized. In other
words, it should be applicable to almost everyone.
4. How to analyze the poetry
Rephrase the poem in your own words.
Consider the poem’s voice.
Study the poem’s diction and look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary.
Examine the poem’s imagery.
Identify the poem’s figure of speech.
Listen to the sound of the poem.
Look at the poem’s form.
Consider the poem’s use of symbol, allegory, allusion, or myth.
Identify the poem’s theme.
Selected Reading
Song of Myself
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By Walt Whitman
1
I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my
lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in
the barn,
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind,
2
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
46
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor
feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
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The past and present wilt -- I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
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The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Commentary
"Song of Myself" is the final title Walt Whitman gave to his long, changing, remarkably fluid poem
47
that he originally published as "Leaves of Grass" in the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855).
From the beginning, Whitman was busy embedding deep in his poem impossible contradictions, and
he always wedded opposites with his omnipresent "and." He would not be the poet of slaves or the
poet of masters but rather the poet of slaves and masters. Whatever democratic voice he invented
would have to speak for both, or it was doomed to be partial and thus not representative. And to
stand between masters and slaves was to stand in a politically and sexually charged space,
historically a place of rape and torture, but a place also where mixing and hybridity began. There is
no easy space to inhabit in American history, and Whitman was courageous enough to insist on
speaking for the full range of American identities, from the most powerful to the powerless, and to
recognize that there are no slaves without masters, no masters without slaves, and that only when
every individual begins to recognize the slave and the master within could a democratic voice begin
to merge and emerge.
And it was nothing less than the creation of a democratic voice that Whitman was after; he sought in
"Song of Myself " to voice an "I" that would for the first time articulate just what a nonhierarchical
sensibility would sound like. He was not speaking in his poem as the Walt Whitman of the
mid-1850s but rather as a Whitman projected far into a more perfectly realized democratic future.
He was teaching Americans how to think and speak democratically, in a freer and looser idiom, in a
more conversational and less formal tone. He achieved an uncanny combination of oratory,
journalism, and scripture haranguing, mundane, and prophetical in the service of identifying a new
American attitude, an accepting voice that would catalog the diversity of the country and manage to
hold it all in a vast, single, unified identity: "I am large. . . . I contain multitudes". This new voice
spoke confidently of union at a time of deep division and tension in the culture, only five years short
of the outbreak of the Civil War, and it spoke with the assurance of one for whom everything, no
matter how degraded, could be celebrated as part of itself: "What is commonest and cheapest and
nearest and easiest is Me". His work echoed the lingo of the American urban working class and took
pride in an American language that was forming as a tongue distinct from British English.
Part of that new American speech involved a much more open acknowledgment of sexuality and the
body than the culture was accustomed to. "Song of Myself " was fueled by erotic energy "Urge and
urge and urge, / Always the procreant urge of the world" and the narrator initiates his journey with a
bizarre sex act:
"I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning; You settled your head athwart my
hips and gently turned over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your
tongue to my bare striped heart, And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my
feet."
The physical encounter here has been variously read as a homosexual act, heterosexual intercourse,
or a kind of charging up of the body by the soul. Whitman is sometimes categorized as a
transcendentalist but his beliefs are more "descendentalist," with the soul entering the body to
energize the senses instead of the soul transcending the physical world. For Whitman, soul without
body was unthinkable, and in this generative scene, the tongue is plunged into the heart, initiating a
union of physical voice and heartthrob the seat of love and emotion and the organ of life, pumping
blood to the head and hands and genitals. In "Song of Myself," the narrator's body speaks and sees
and hears and touches and tastes and smells, absorbing the world through heightened senses:
"Welcome is every organ and attribute of me . . . / Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile". This
erotic drive would urge the democratic self to cross boundaries of race and gender and class: "Who
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need be afraid of the merge? / Undrape . . . you are not guilty to me" . All human beings inhabit
bodies, and democracy starts, Whitman believed, with a full acknowledgment of the body's desires
and drives: they are what unify us.
In the very act of identifying himself, Whitman emphasizes his unashamed sexuality and easy
sensuality, simultaneously making it clear that the whole point of his poem is to give voice to the
previously voiceless, to let the slaves speak as part of the democratic conversation.
In the first edition of Leaves, the poem occupied forty-three pages, beginning with "I celebrate
myself / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to
you" , and ending with "Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, / Missing me one place search
another, / I stop some where waiting for you" . This long poem became his best-known work, an
epic of American individualism, setting out to expand the boundaries of the self to include, first, all
fellow Americans, then the entire world, and ultimately the cosmos. Throughout the poem, Whitman
probes the question of how large the new democratic self can become before it dissipates into
contradiction and fragmentation, and each time he seems to reach the limit, he dilates even more:
"My ties and ballasts leave me . . . I travel . . . I sail . . . my elbows rest in the sea-gaps, / I skirt
sierras . . . my palms cover continents, / I am afoot with my vision" . Cataloging a huge array of
urban and country scenes, portraying people at work in myriad occupations, incorporating vast
geographical stretches, redefining life and death as one continuous and evolving dynamic process,
Whitman's "I" takes the reader on a dizzying journey through American history, biological evolution,
and a variety of religions, absorbing everything and rejecting nothing. His plea is that we all learn to
accept and live in plurality, difference, and contradiction: "Do I contradict myself ? / Very well
then . . . I contradict myself " .
Whitman creates two great characters in this poem: "I" and "you." The "I" becomes a model voice
of American democracy. The "you" becomes an identity space the reader is invited to occupy. It is
possible to hear the "you" in "Song" as addressed to the entire nation or the entire world, and it is
also possible to hear it as intimately addressed only to the individual reader at a particular moment.
"Song" opens with "I" and ends with "you," and the poem enacts a transfer of the absorptive energy
from poet to reader, who by the final lines is sent off alone to continue the journey the poem began.
The deep structure of the poem seems to be a half-submerged slave-escape narrative, in which the
speaker is seeking to liberate the reader from every kind of enslavement religious, philosophical,
moral, social, as well as physical. Chattel slavery was only the most conspicuous and blatant form
of soul-killing coercion operating in mid-nineteenth-century America, and Whitman knew the
culture was generating other forms, including the emerging "wage slavery" brought on by incipient
capitalism, which had already begun to sap the individuality and pride that Whitman had admired in
the artisanal culture he grew up in. Instead of using their hands in creative and skilled work, more
and more Americans were becoming hired hands, selling their labor in a demeaning marketplace
that treated humans as interchangeable machine parts and paid them by the hour. So "Song of
Myself " takes the reader on what the poet calls "a perpetual journey" , one that turns into an escape
narrative for those who need to liberate themselves from the enslaving beliefs and possessions that
prevent individual growth, need to put "creeds and schools in abeyance" and embark on a new road:
"Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, / You must travel it for yourself " .
An actual slave-escape narrative surfaces in the poem at key points, as when the speaker states "The
runaway slave came to my house" , was welcomed in, given a room that opened onto the narrator's
49
room, and shared the table with the "I," who gave the slave food, water, a bath, clean clothes, and
hope. Soon, a kind of Utopian space seems to open up as the "I" watches white workers taking part
in a "shuffle and breakdown" , black dances that seem to be loosening up and liberating the white
laborers. Then the narrator describes in detail a working "negro" who "holds firmly the reins of his
four horses" and has a "glance" that "is calm and commanding" as the sun "falls on the black of his
polish'd and perfect limbs". As the democratic escape narrative progresses, racial boundaries are
crossed and blacks acquire agency, pride, and beauty. Later, more distinctions collapse as the "I"
literally gives itself over to a runaway slave who is captured, and speaks as the slave instead of for
or to or of the slave: "I am the hounded slave ...I wince at the bite of the dogs".
Whitman's free verse picked up the rhythms of American speech and issued in vast, flowing
sentences that ran over his lengthy lines, each one an extended exhalation of breath, complete with
an early "stream of consciousness" effect produced by Whitman's idiosyncratic use of ellipses
instead of more standard punctuation. His poetry, he announced at the beginning of "Song of
Myself," was based on "respiration and inspiration", the breathing in of the world around him in all
its diversity and the breathing out again in words that echoed that world. Whitman invents a style
that captures the easy influx of sensory experience, and, throughout "Song of Myself," he pictures
himself as the ultimate absorber of physical sensations, his five senses wide open, allowing each
moment to redefine who and what he is: "In me the caresser of life wherever moving" ; "I am of old
and young, of the foolish as much as the wise" ; "I resist anything better than my own diversity" ;
"To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, / All are written to me, and I must
get what the writing means" . The speaker of "Song" is someone whose senses are charged up,
heightened, electric:
"I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop, They seize every object and lead it
harmlessly through me. I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy. To touch my person
to some one else's is about as much as I can stand. Is this then a touch? . . . quivering me to a new
identity."
Whitman turns the impersonal act of reading into an intimate sensory experience and talks to his
reader as if the print on the page were itself a sentient being aware of the reader's presence:
"Listener up there! Here you . . . what have you to confide to me?". We as readers are being
addressed more directly than we are used to by a writer, and we are even being asked to respond, to
confide to the "I" of this poem our secrets, dreams, anxieties. Whitman's exclamation to the reader
"Listener up there!" comes as a shock because it expresses awareness of the physical position of the
reader in relation to the text, of the reader's face hovering above the page. Whitman creates, in other
words, a new democratic act of reading, where the author is not so much the "authority" as the
companion, someone not only to be listened to but also talked to. Whitman always believed that a
democracy would have to develop new, more rigorous reading habits, and readers would have to
learn to wrestle with authority and never passively accept what persons in authority claimed.
Democracy would require a new concept of "author" and "reader," a more intimate interaction
between the "I" and the "you" of any text. "Song of Myself " sets out to enact this new relationship
and in so doing, to forge a democracy.
Three versions of "Song of Myself " (1855, 1856, and 1860) appeared before the Civil War, three
more (1867, 1871, and 1881) after. After the Emancipation Proclamation and Reconstruction, the
historical currency of "Song of Myself " changed dramatically, and the poem, when read in the
context of Whitman's later work, receded into a nostalgia for a dreamed-of democracy that was
50
never realized, that was shattered by the war, by the persistent racial strife in the culture after
emancipation, and by growing class disparities. In each new edition, Whitman tamed "Song" a bit
more, channeling the original nonstop flow into numbered sections and replacing the innovative use
of ellipses with more standard punctuation. By the twentieth century, most people had stopped
reading "Song" as a poem growing out of the specific turbulent social history of 1850s America, and
many began reading it as primarily a spiritual or mystical text. But in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first century, "Song of Myself " was examined anew as a key text in nineteenth-century
American cultural studies, a poem that responds acutely to the tensions of class, race, and
sexualities well as to linguistic, religious, and scientific issues that defined the United States in the
years leading up to the Civil War.
Chapter 5 "Tell all the Truth": Queen of American Poetry
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In many ways, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were twins: they defied the moral pieties of the
day; they radically subverted the accepted patterns of rhythm, rhyme, and linguistic usage. But
because Whitman was a man who had worked in the newspaper and printing business---a man who
was well acquainted with the marketing principles of the publishing world-- from the very
beginning of his career Whitman took immense care to construct a public image of "The Poet". He
crafted a voice for the preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass that promises to speak for all
the people; he included a frontispiece engraving of himself in working clothes, hand on hip, facing
the reader with nothing whatsoever to hide. As a consequence, people are inclined to read
Whitman's poetry with his image of "The Poet" in mind. However, Emily Dickinson was a equally
great poet who happened to be a woman. She did not bother to argue that women should write
strong poetry; instead ,she devised ways to create strong poetry as a woman poet--- repeatedly
renegotiating forms and conventions that had long been established as singularly male.
When Emily Dickinson went upstairs and closed the door, she entered life by rejecting it. Her life
was one of the richest and deepest ever lived on the continent. And her poetic language is filled with
wild animation and vital energy. Just as she herself declared in her poem that every day she tried out
ways of behaving "If I should be a Queen tomorrow", Emily Dickinson has reigned unchallenged as
the Queen of American poetry.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was born in Amherst,
Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted
and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent
a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst.
Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and
her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were
therefore carried out by correspondence. "You ask of my companions. Hills sir, and the sundown,
and a dog large as myself." These , and not her family, were actually her companions, together with
a few books and her own soul. She had an alert introspection that brought her more than the wealth
of the Indies. "I find ecstasy in living," she said to Higginson, and spoke truly, as her poems show.
In an unexpected light on orchards, in a wistfulf mood of meadow or wood-border held secure for a
moment before it vanished; in the few books that she read--her Keats, her Shakespeare, her
Revelation; in the echoes, obscure in origin, that stirred within her own mind and soul, now a
tenuous melody, now a deep harmony, a haunting question, or a memorable affirmation;
---everywhere she displayed something of the mystic's insight and joy. And she expressed her
experience in her poems, forgetting the world altogether, intent only on the satisfaction of giving her
fluid life lasting form, her verse being her journal. Life, Love, Nature, Time and Eternity are her
subjects, but she often brought dazzling originality to the trifle topics. She naturally concerned
herself with neither past nor present, but with the things that are timeless. In her poems, she
explored the truth of her fulfillments and her un-fulfillments-- with nature, man and God. Her poetry
was eminently spontaneous-- as fresh and artless as experience itself. She expressed herself with an
eye single to the truth. Something she derived from her reading, no doubt, from Emerson, the
Brownings, Sir Thomas Browne; but rarely was poet less indebted. From her silent thought she
derived what essential in her work, and her whole effort was to state her findings precisely. She
could not deliberately arrange her thoughts: "when I try to organize, my little force explodes and
leaves me bare and charred." If she revised her work, as she did industriously, it was to render it not
more attractive but truer. "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant".
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Her poems are remarkable for their condensation, their vividness of image, their delicate or pungent
satire and irony, their childlike responsiveness to experience, their subtle feeling for nature, theiir
startling abruptness in dealing with themes commonly regarded as trite, their excellence in
imaginative insight and still greater excellence in fancy. Emily Dickinson sometimes takes us to
strange places; one never knows what is in store. But always she is penetrating and dainty, both
intimate and aloof, challenging lively thought on our part while remaining, herself, a charmingly
elfish mystery.
Dickinson found poetic freedom within the confines of a meter familiar to her from earliest
childhood; within that form she multiplied aural possibilities by what a later audience called off
rhymes or slant rhymes. Her precise syntactical allocations, which would run across the end of the
conventional stopping place of a line or a stanza break, forced her reader to learn where to pause to
collect the sense before reading on. She brought to poetry her schooling in contemporary science, as
well as her lifelong alertness to contemporary events, and seized on the familiar genre of the
occasional poem, a poem suggested by some event or experience, as her way of responding to the
events of the day, including many passages she encountered in her reading.
Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred
poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was
usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time.
Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack
titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of
her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until
after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that
the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in
1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Higginson and Mabel Todd, both of whom heavily edited
the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first
time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson.
Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early
20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.
Most often Dickinson's poetry pulls in one way or another against the various patterns that compart
conventional order to poetry--- sometimes strenuously. This habit of resistance, so characteristic that
it even lends a distinctive visual element to the inscription of Emily Dickinson's poems upon the
page, had two origins. First, as we have seen, no one had prepared a place for a woman poet of
original genius--traditional verse forms had evolved almost exclusively for a male voice--and those
men of letters whose constructions of the Poet dominated the American mid-nineteenth century
wrote with a brazen certainty that this poet would be a he, a certainty so deep it did not require
defense. Inevitably, then, if a woman wished to write incomparably well, to have that courage of
treatment for which Emerson praised Whitman, she was constrained to fly into the face of
convention. Second, Emily Dickinson espoused an openly rebellious attitude toward God and
toward the various forms of male authority that He epitomized as "Burglar! Banker--Father!".
Discovering aesthetically effective strategies to break the rules was her poetic mode of defying this
authority -- an intrinsic expression of both power and play, and a deeply satisfying way to assert her
own unassailable autonomy.
In 1890, in a preface to the first published selection of her poems, Thomas Wentworth Higginson
53
laid out the essential elements of the standard scenario: he defined Dickinson's works as a pure
"expression of the writer's own mind.... Verse...like poetry torn up by the roots, with rain and dew
and earth still clinging to them." Dickinson commands an astonishing range of tone, attitude, voice,
and subject--all the while speaking as I. And the poems are dense and powerful; they would be
difficult under the best of circumstances. Like Whitman, in her strongest poems Dickinson
sometimes uses such radically subversive tactics that they disrupt the cohesive properties of
language itself.
The most striking characters of Dickinson's poetry are the extensive use of dashes and
unconventional capitalization and the idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery. Dickinson avoids
pentameter, opting more generally for trimeter, tetrameter and, less often, dimeter. Sometimes her
use of these meters is regular, but oftentimes it is irregular. The regular form that she most often
employs is the ballad stanza, a traditional form that is divided into quatrains, using tetrameter for the
first and third lines and trimeter for the second and fourth, while rhyming the second and fourth
lines (ABCB). Though Dickinson often uses perfect rhymes for lines two and four, she also makes
frequent use of slant rhyme. In some of her poems, she varies the meter from the traditional ballad
stanza by using trimeter for lines one, two and four, while only using tetrameter for line three. Late
20th-century scholars are "deeply interested" by Dickinson's highly individual use of punctuation
and lineation (line lengths and line breaks), Dickinson's broken meter, unusual rhythmic patterns,
and assonance, her use of the strong imagery and unexpected, fresh metaphors.
Dickinson left no formal statement of her aesthetic intentions and, because of the variety of her
themes, her work does not fit conveniently into any one genre. She has been regarded, alongside
Emerson (whose poems Dickinson admired), as a Transcendentalist. Apart from the major themes
such as flowers and gardens, the Master poems, Morbidity, Gospel poems, the Undiscovered
Continent , Dickinson's poetry frequently uses humor, puns, irony and satire.
Dickinson's poetry is remarkable for its emotional and intellectual energy as well as its extreme
distillation. In form, everything about it is tightly condensed. Words and phrases are set off by
dashes, stanzas are brief, and the longest poem occupies less than two printed pages. Yet in theme
and tone her poems grasp for the sublime in their daring expression of the soul's extremities.
Stylistic tendencies such as her inclination toward symbolically freighted words such as
"Circumference," her ironic wit, her adoption of personae, her penchant for oxymoron
("sumptuous--Despair--" [P505, p. 387]; "Heavenly Hurt" [P258, p. 185]), her punctuation that
withholds traditional syntactic markers, her omission of titles, her recording of poems in multiple
versions with variant words and stanzas, her willingness to leave poems unfinished, and even the
distinctive amount of white space she left on the page force readers to involve themselves directly in
this poetry in a way that forecloses definitive readings even while encouraging an exceptional
degree of intimacy between reader and poet. Dickinson's imagery ranged widely from domestic and
garden metaphors, through geographic and scientific references drawn from her education, to
literary allusions (especially to the Bible, Shakespeare, Dickens, and the Bront 雜). The poems
express extremes of passion--love, despair, dread, and elation--and do so in many voices (that of the
child, for instance, or the bride, the nobleman, the madwoman, or the corpse).
Although these lyrics characteristically withhold evidence of the occasions that precipitated them,
they suggest various narratives of religious searching and of romantic love reciprocated but
unfulfilled. Consequently there has been much speculation about whatever crises in Dickinson's life
54
may have spurred her to poetic expression: literary ambition in conflict with both societal
restrictions on women and her own reticent disposition, the eye problems that threatened her
lifelines of reading and writing, or perhaps a religious conversion or even a psychological
breakdown. Much of that speculation focuses on presumed romantic attachments to Charles
Wadsworth and/or Samuel Bowles, both married men and therefore unattainable. Whether either of
these men was the "Master" she addressed in three passionate letter drafts apparently written in
1858 and 1861 remains a question. The only romantic attachment that has been documented was
with Judge Otis Phillips Lord, a widowed friend of her father, from the late 1870s to 1884, many
years after most of her poems were written. Other candidates for the role of Dickinson's forbidden
lover include Susan Gilbert Dickinson and Sue's friend Kate Scott Anthon Turner. Letters as well as
poems demonstrate the intensity of the poet's engagement with her friends while leaving to the
reader's imagination whatever private dramas she may have concealed when telling Higginson that
"my life has been too simple and stern to embarrass any" (L330, p. 460).
We do know that Dickinson took profound pleasure in her reading, her gardening, her friendships,
and her share in nurturing Austin's and Sue's three children. She also devoted herself, as did her
sister, to long-term care of their invalid mother. Her life was marked increasingly by deaths within
the family (her father in 1874, her mother in 1882, and her eight-year-old nephew in 1883) and in
her circle of friends. Samuel Bowles died in 1878, Josiah Holland in 1881, Charles Wadsworth in
1882, Otis Phillips Lord in 1884, and Helen Hunt Jackson in 1885. She felt bereaved by deaths of
favorite authors also, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1861), George Eliot (1880), and Ralph
Waldo Emerson (1882). Grief confronted her repeatedly with religious doubts she had coped with
earlier in poems exploring her "Flood subject" of immortality (L319, p. 454), though Dickinson's
late writings, especially letters, suggest an increasingly hopeful sense of her relationship with God.
She suffered from kidney disease, perhaps associated with hypertension, for several years before she
died.
Were Emily Dickinson known only by public achievements, she would soon have been forgotten.
While the poet died, however, her poems lived. Back in 1862, opening her correspondence with
Higginson, she challenged that man of letters to tell whether her verse "breathed" (L260, p. 403).
Lavinia Dickinson, who came upon a box with the stitched fascicles and other poetic manuscripts
while settling her sister's affairs, resolved to display Emily's genius to the world and eventually
enlisted Mabel Loomis Todd, a friend and their brother's mistress, to edit them. Higginson assisted
with publication and promotion of Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890) and Poems by Emily
Dickinson (1891). Todd alone then responded to public interest by publishing an 1894 edition of
selected Dickinson letters and a third collection of Poems in 1896. Roberts Brothers of Boston
brought out all four volumes, the first of which sold out rapidly with eleven editions printed within a
year. A legal dispute between Lavinia Dickinson and Todd over Austin's estate then put an end to
Todd's editing. No further Dickinson writings came to press until after Susan Dickinson's death in
1913, when her daughter, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, published a selection of poems her aunt had
sent to her mother as The Single Hound (1914). Bianchi followed that with correspondence and
biography reflecting her own sense of family tradition in The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson
(1924), personal reminiscences in Emily Dickinson Face to Face (1932), and successive volumes of
poems. After Bianchi died, Todd and her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, brought out the
remaining poems in their possession as Bolts of Melody (1945). Gradually, as public acceptance of
Dickinson's writing grew, editors represented poems more in accordance with her wording, spelling,
55
and punctuation. When Thomas H. Johnson presented The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955) in a
scholarly three-volume variorum edition, he was hailed for making her art available to readers in its
full brilliance. Since then, however, Ralph W. Franklin's two-volume facsimile edition of the poet's
fascicles in The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (1981) has shown that Dickinson's lineation
was often less conventionally hymnlike than it appears in Johnson's edition, that the poems occupy
space in more revealing ways than can be reproduced in print, and that variants play a significantly
complicating role in an inherently ambiguous, open-ended poetry that resists editorial closure while
demanding reader engagement.
From the first appearance of Poems during the 1890 Christmas season, readers have responded
variously to Emily Dickinson. Arlo Bates, a Boston critic, remarked ambivalently that Dickinson's
poetry was "so wholly without the pale of conventional criticism, that it is necessary at the start to
declare the grounds upon which it is to be judged as if it were a new species of art." Yet William
Dean Howells declared that "if nothing else had come out of our life but this strange poetry we
should feel that in the work of Emily Dickinson America, or New England rather, had made a
distinctive addition to the literature of the world" (Buckingham, pp. 29, 78). Dispraise of her style
(initially perceived as crude and unpolished) and admiration for her daring treatment of subject
matter--both religious and erotic (often in one poem)--was matched by popular curiosity about the
poet's life. Attention focused early on the mysteries of her seclusion, with speculation about the
romantic disappointment readers typically detect in Dickinson's poetry when they construct
narratives to link her lyrics (a tendency first encouraged by the Todd-Higginson editions with a
section of each book devoted to "Love" poems and later by Johnson's attempt to group poems
chronologically in a way that makes them look autobiographical).
Although interest in one or more lovers continues, as does attention to the poet's religious quest and
to her quiet subversion of gender assumptions, Emily Dickinson's poems steadily gain recognition
as works of art, both individually and collectively, especially when read in her original fascicle
groupings, which establish not just her unquestionable brilliance but her frequently underestimated
artistic control. The regard Dickinson has won in the little more than a century since her poems
introduced her to the world has established her as the most widely recognized woman poet to write
in the English language and as an inspiration, both personally and in terms of craft, to modern
women writers. As a voice of New England's Protestant and Transcendental cultures in fruitful
tension and of the spiritual anxieties unleashed by the Civil War (during which she wrote the great
majority of her poems) and as an avatar of poetic modernism, Emily Dickinson now stands with
Walt Whitman as one of America's two preeminent poets of the nineteenth century and perhaps of
the whole American literary tradition.
Selected Reading
56
Collected Poems
By Emily Dickinson
1129
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---
632
The brain is wider than the sky
57
For —— put them side by side
The one the other will contain
With ease —— and You —— beside
The brain is deeper than the sea
For —— hold them —— blue to blue
The one the other will absorb
As Sponges —— buckets —— do
The brain is just the weight of God
For —— Heft them—— Pound for Pound
And they will differ —— if they do
As Syllable from Sound
89
A WORD is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
20
I TASTE a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!
Inebriate of air am I,
5
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove’s door,
10
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
15
Leaning against the sun!
58
712
BECAUSE I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 't is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.
754
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified And carried Me away And now We roam in Sovereign Woods And now We hunt the Doe And every time I speak for Him The Mountains straight reply And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master's Head 'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow - to have shared To foe of His - I'm deadly foe None stir the second time On whom I lay a Yellow Eye Or an emphatic Thumb Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I For I have but the power to kill,
Without--the power to die--
449
I DIED for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
Over the fence –
Strawberries - growOver the fence –
I could climb - if I tried, I know –
Berries are nice!
But - if I stained my Apron
God would certainly scold!
Oh dear, I guess if He were a Boy –
He'd - climb - if He could!
Further Reading
2
Emily Dickinson
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: May 13, 2010
KNOCK, knock, knock. That’s me, rapping on the front door of a large brick house set high above
Main Street in Amherst, Mass. September 1963. I’m 16.
A woman in a white uniform — a nurse? a maid? — appears. “Someone important to me once
lived here,” I say. “I wonder if I could look inside.”
She’s puzzled. Speaking softly, as if not to wake a sleeper, she explains that the owner is upstairs
and can’t come down. “Oh, no need to bother anyone. I just want a peek.” She hesitates, sees I’
m earnest and harmless, and stands back. I go in.
A Victorian interior. Polished wood floors; soft, dim light. A curving staircase. To the right a library;
to the left a parlor. I step into one room, cross to the other, then stand by the staircase trying to soak
the place in. But this is awkward. The woman is waiting. I glance up the stairs and then say thank
you. She lets me out.
Emily Dickinson was born in this house, known as the Homestead, in December 1830 and died
there on May 15, 1886. She spent much of her adult life inside it, in an upstairs corner bedroom,
writing poems and letters all night at a table the size of a child’s school desk, sewing the poems into
packets, locking the packets away for discovery after she’d gone.
Growing up in New England, I’d known about her life, or the romantic version of it — how she
was a recluse, how she dressed in white — for years. And I’d read many of her nearly 1,800
poems. I was a bookish, verse-writing odd-fit kid with authority issues, looking for a hero. By a
hero I mean someone you admire but, more than that, identify with and somehow want to be. In
Dickinson I found what I was after. So it was a big experience for me to go to that house that day,
and be where she had been.
As I’ve since learned, she’s a hero, or an object of fascination, to many people, which is why she
periodically takes a star turn in culture, as she is doing now. She’s the subject of two books, a novel
titled “The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson,” by Jerome Charyn, and a new biography by Lyndall
Gordon, called “Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds,” due out
next month. And through June 13 the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx has an elaborate
exhibition devoted to her, with a re-creation of her Homestead garden, a selection of handwritten
manuscripts and a marathon reading of her poems.
Unsurprisingly, after decades of close attention, there are many versions of Emily Dickinson to
choose from.
Where scholars once focused on her isolation, they’re now seeing her life as clamorous with
company. (Her written correspondence extended to upward of a hundred people.) And they’re
scrutinizing her connections to her time: to the Civil War, to Victorian literature, to the provincial
class system she was born into.
Feminist theory and queer studies have contributed to reshaping her personality profile. A shy,
passive, recessive figure has been transformed into an active, mettlesome, gender-challenging
presence, a poet in control of her art and environment, and fully conscious of the mechanics of
personal myth.
3
True, the distance between fact and fiction remains hazy, with the perky Belle of Amherst on one
end of the spectrum and an agoraphobic basket case on the other. The portrait of Dickinson as a
sexually precocious schoolgirl in the picaresque Charyn novel is almost total fantasy with a few
grains of truth. The Gordon account of the Homestead as a hornet’s nest of jealousies and
resentments is accurate as to facts but operatic in its effects.
The Dickinson I first knew and grew up with also came from a pair of books. My introduction was
a thin, square volume called “Famous American Poets” by Laura Benét. Published in 1950, it
consisted of brief, chronologically ordered, determinedly upbeat biographies of popular writers from
Clement Clarke Moore to Carl Sandburg with Dickinson right in the middle. And a very 1950s
Dickinson this was, starting with the portrait used as an illustration.
Only one verified photograph of Dickinson exists, a daguerreotype made when she was 16 or 17. It
shows a slender girl in a dark, drop-shoulder dress that left her neck bare. Her hair is pulled back
from her large pale face. Her exceptionally wide-set eyes look, without particular focus, straight
ahead. Her lips are slightly parted. She’s seated, with a sprig of pansies held loosely in her hands.
This portrait was in the Benét book, but radically touched up. Dickinson now wore a white dress
with a frothy neck-covering lace collar. She had been given a fluffed-out girlish hairdo and her
facial features had been softened. This altered image dated back to 1890. It was prepared as the
author portrait for the first, posthumous volume of Dickinson’s verse. And it was of a piece with
changes made to the poetry by its editors, who normalized her expressive punctuation, smoothed her
rhythms and held back certain types of poems, notably those angry or erotic in content.
Prettification was a marketing strategy, and 60 years later Benét perpetuated it. Her life of
Dickinson was the story of a well-bred young woman who, after a single disappointment in love,
took the genteel option of retiring to her home, where she wrote, raised flowers, addressed a
Calvinist deity and died content with her lot.
That Dickinson was a useful figure to two American eras with much in common. In the 1890s a rich
nation unnerved by urbanism, immigration and racial violence was looking back with nostalgia for a
simpler, whiter, rural version of itself. Dickinson, sold as a kind of village folk figure whose
withdrawal was a rejection of the modern world, became a spokeswoman for that past.
She played a related role in the cold war years. As paranoia about Communism and nuclear
destruction grew in lockstep with expanding American might, the country again dreamed up a
yesterday, this one peopled by God-fearing pioneers. Dickinson, the nunlike individualist, again
filled the bill.
That was the Dickinson image I was encountering, but even back then I could see that it didn’t jibe
with the poetry. A three-volume edition of the complete poems, cleaned of Victorian
“improvements,” finally arrived in 1955. My town library acquired a copy, and I pored over it. I
found Benét’s wistful poetess there, but I also found another writer, a terse, intense, startlingly
imprudent one, who wrote about holding a bomb in her bosom, being afraid to own a body, and
feeling a cleaving in her mind. At her most extreme, she was a terrorist:
Had I a mighty gun
I think I’d shoot the human race
My hero had appeared.
Then I came across a second Dickinson biography, this one tucked away in the library stacks,
4
Rebecca Patterson’s 1951 “Riddle of Emily Dickinson.” The old gussied-up portrait was on the
cover, but set on a black ground and surround by pattern of luridly colored leaves, a noirish design
of a kind I associated with murder mysteries. I took the book home and was stunned by what I read.
Like Benét, Patterson attributed Dickinson’s seclusion and poetry to a thwarted romance. But she
proposed that the love object was a woman.
The revelation, true or not, was explosive for a teenager who knew he was gay and was still isolated
in that knowledge. As always, I went immediately back to Dickinson’s poetry and discovered there
a dynamic I had sensed but hadn’t been able to name: fluidity of gender.
She spoke as a woman, a man, a little girl, a little boy, a lover active and passive. Suddenly she was
throwing out a power-of-example lifeline. Not only was she an outsider, she was also, so it seemed,
an outlaw, on the margins, where I felt I was too.
Patterson, who died in the 1975, took a lot of heat for her book. Scholars demolished its thesis;
critics scorned its True Romance style. But the real problem, I suspect, was that no one in that
blacklisting era wanted to hear about same-sex love, particularly in connection with a writer
enshrined as an American Classic.
In any case, Patterson’s book was just one among many contributions to what has long been an
almost obsessive focus of Dickinson studies: speculation about her love life. Various men have been
assigned a heartthrob role: from village beaus to an elderly family friend. In 1998 the literary
historians Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith persuasively argued that Dickinson's
sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson, was both a love object and literary collaborator.
But why do we so badly need to have this poet paired off with someone? Why do we need to make a
failure in love — and because Dickinson was single, failure is always assumed — the explanation
for her art? We don’t consider “Walden” or “Moby Dick” or “Leaves of Grass” the products
of amorous psychopathology. Yet the notion lingers that Dickinson’s poetry was a disturbed
response to some unfulfilled need, her retirement a symptom of sickness.
I never saw it that way. From the start I thought of her Homestead bedroom as an empowerment
zone. She knew the work she wanted to do; there were serious odds against her doing it, social and
personal. At some point she realized, emphatically, that she had to create a place of absolute
concentration, where no distractions stood between her and her work, where no talk interfered with
the new language she was inventing; where she could ignore the knock on the door, refuse the
callers, control access.
She was well aware that she was putting herself outside the range of normality. But I never had the
impression that she yearned to be inside it. Just the opposite. When once asked whether she didn’t
miss going out, seeing friends, living the life everyone else lived, she answered, “I never thought of
conceiving that I could ever have the slightest approach to such a want in all future time.” Then she
added, “I feel that I have not expressed myself strongly enough.”
Some people who encountered her in person found her challenging and demanding company. She is
that way as a writer too. She insists on having conversations about subjects most of us steer clear of.
Death, for example. She has been described as morbid, obsessed with mortality. To me she was
simply a realist.
She wrote about death because it is so obviously important, and because she rejected customary
means of avoiding or sugar-coating it, like religion. And she rejected religion out of an abiding
mistrust of power, specifically the power of dogma. From these layered rejections emerged a
5
religious poetry without belief, or a poetry of faith in the interrogative voice.
The one power Dickinson trusted was the power of language, which she loved. And that love is, I
think, the main thing I’ve gained from her, even if I’ve put it to lesser uses. By her own account she
experienced an acute physical reaction to words, a euphoric shock.
I know exactly what she meant, because her poetry has that effect. Ambush is its strategy. It knocks
the breath out of you and leaves you giddy, like a nanosecond-long roller coaster ride. If you visit
the Dickinson show at the New York Botanical Garden, which I recommend, and watch people’s
faces as they read the poems posted around the grounds, you may see that power in action.
It's a power she acquired in part by being, in some essential way, an outsider, but also from seeing
that identity, not as a disability, but as a saving grace, and one that carries responsibilities:
The Province of the Saved
Should be the Art — to save
I love to think of kids, especially contrarian, odd-fit kids, coming across Dickinson's Twitter-size
poems for the first time, then learning about her life, a life that years ago, for at least one other kid,
made being different not just O.K., but something to want to be.
And maybe those kids will decide to pay a call on her. The Homestead was a private residence in
1963 when I was there.
Two years later Amherst College bought it; now it's a museum, with thousands of people visiting
every year. In my mind, I visit too; a lot. Dickinson means as much to me now as she ever did,
maybe more. I keep coming back to knock on that front door.
Chapter 6 "All American Literature begins": Mark Twain's Local Color
6
Mark Twain is Samuel Langhorne Clemens' most famous literary pseudonym. Mark Twain pulled
off a rare literary feat--- he created stories, novels, and essays that were both wildly popular in his
own day and models of wit and skill more than a century later. Twain was so influential that, fifty
years after his death, Ernest Hemingway said "all American literature begins with Twain's novel The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." And William Dean Howells observed, Twain was unlike any of
his contemporaries in American letters: "Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes--- I knew them all
and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists; they were like one another and like
other literary men; but Twain was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature." He was lauded
as the "greatest American humorist of his age," and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of
American literature."
Mark Twain [pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910), quintessential American
humorist, lecturer, essayist, and author wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876):
"Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home barely in season to help Jim,
the small colored boy, saw next-day's wood and split the kindlings before supper--at least he was
there in time to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the work. Tom's younger
brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already through with his part of the work (picking up chips),
for he was a quiet boy, and had no adventurous, trouble-some ways." (Ch. 1)
Protagonist Tom Sawyer is introduced together with his friends Joe Harper and Huck Finn, young
boys growing up in the antebellum South. While the novel was initially met with lukewarm
enthusiasm, its characters would soon transcend the bounds of their pages and become
internationally beloved characters, inspiring numerous other author's works and characters and
adaptations to the stage, television, and film. The second novel in his Tom Sawyer adventure series,
Huckleberry Finn (1885), was met with outright controversy in Twain's time but is now considered
one of the first great American novels. A backdrop of colourful depictions of Southern society and
places along the way, Huck Finn, the son of an abusive alcoholic father and Jim, Miss Watson's
slave, decide to flee on a raft down the Mississippi river to the free states. Their river raft journey
has become an oft-used metaphor of idealistic freedom from oppression, broken family life, racial
discrimination, and social injustice. Ernest Hemingway wrote “All modern American literature
comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."
"We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of
solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't
ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle.
We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all—that night,
nor the next, nor the next.." (Ch. 12)
Missouri was one of the fifteen slave states when the American Civil War broke out, so Twain grew
up amongst the racism, lynch mobs, hangings, and general inhumane oppression of African
Americans. He and some friends joined the Confederate side and formed a militia group, the
'Marion Rangers', though it disbanded after a few weeks, described in "The Private History of a
Campaign That Failed" (1885). His article "The War Prayer" (1923) "in the churches the pastors
preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our
good cause" is Twain’s condemnation of hypocritical patriotic and religious motivations for war. It
was not published until after his death because of his family’s fear of public outrage, to which it is
7
said Twain quipped "none but the dead are permitted to tell the truth."Though he never renounced
his Presbyterianism, he wrote other irreligious pieces, some included in his collection of short
stories Letters From Earth (1909):
"Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is a sort of low grade
nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time
he is a sarcasm."
Mark Twain grew to despise the injustice of slavery and any form of senseless violence. He was
opposed to vivisection and acted as Vice-President of the American Anti-Imperialist League for nine
years. Through his works he illuminates the absurdity of humankind, ironically still at times labeled
a racist. Though sometimes caustic “Of all the creatures that were made he [man] is the most
detestable," as a gifted public speaker he was a much sought after lecturer "information appears to
stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter." —from his Preface to
Roughing It (1872). He is the source of numerous and oft-quoted witticisms and quips including
"Whenever I feel the urge to exercise I lie down until it goes away"; "If you don't like the weather in
New England, just wait a few minutes"; "Familiarity breeds contempt — and children"; "The past
does not repeat itself, but it rhymes" ; and "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Twain
is a master in crafting humorous verse with sardonic wit, and though with biting criticism at times
he disarms with his renderings of colloquial speech and unpretentious language. Through the
authentic depiction of his times he caused much controversy and many of his works have been
suppressed, censored or banned, but even into the Twenty-First Century his works are read the
world over by young and old alike. A prolific lecturer and writer even into his seventy-fourth year,
he published more than thirty books, hundreds of essays, speeches, articles, reviews, and short
stories, many still in print today.
Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri on 30 November 1835, the sixth child born to Jane
Lampton (1803-1890) and John Marshall Clemens (1798-1847). In 1839 the Twain family moved to
their Hill Street home, now the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum with its famous
whitewashed fence, in the bustling port city of Hannibal, Missouri. Situated on the banks of the
Mississippi river it would later provide a model for the fictitious town of St. Petersburg in
Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
When Twain's father died in 1847 the family was left in financial straits, so eleven year old Samuel
left school (he was in grade 5) and obtained his first of many jobs working with various newspapers
and magazines including the Hannibal Courier as journeyman printer. “ So I became a
newspaperman. I hated to do it, but I couldn't find honest employment.” He also started writing,
among his first stories "A Gallant Fireman" (1851) and "The Dandy Frightening the Squatter"(1852).
After traveling to and working in New York and Philadelphia for a few years he moved back to St.
Louis in 1857. It was here that the lure of the elegant steamboats and festive crowds drew his
attention and he became an apprentice 'cub' river pilot under Horace Bixby, earning his license in
1858. As a successful pilot plying his trade between St. Louis and New Orleans, Twain also grew to
love the second longest river in the world which he describes affectionately in his memoir Life on
the Mississippi (1883).
"The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book — a book that was a dead language to
the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most
cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once
and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day."
8
An important part of a river pilot’s craft is knowing the waters and depths, which, for the mighty
Mississippi and her reefs, snags, and mud are ever changing. To ‘mark twain’ is to sound the
depths and deem them safe for passage, the term adopted by Clemens as his pen name in 1863. In
1858 his brother Henry died in an explosion on the steamboat Pennsylvania. Life on the river would
provide much fodder for Twain’s future works that are at times mystical, often sardonic and witty,
always invaluable as insight into the human condition.
With the outbreak of Civil War in 1861 passage on the Mississippi was limited, so at the age of
twenty-six Twain moved on from river life to the high desert valley in the silver mining town of
Carson City, Nevada with his brother Orion, who had just been appointed Secretary of the Nevada
Territory. He had never traveled out of the state but was excited to venture forth on the stagecoach
in the days before railways, described in his semi-autobiographical novel Roughing It (1872). Twain
tried his hand at mining on Jackass Hill in California in 1864, and also began a prolific period of
reporting for numerous publications including the Territorial Enterprise, The Alta Californian, San
Francisco Morning Call, Sacramento Union and The Galaxy. He traveled to various cities in
America, met Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Dickens in New York, and
visited various countries in Europe, Hawaii, and the Holy Land which he based Innocents Abroad
(1869) on. Short stories from this period include “Advice For Little Girls” (1867) and “The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County” (1867).
In 1870 Twain married Olivia 'Livy' Langdon (1845-1904) with whom he would have four children.
Three died before they reached their twenties but Clara (1870-1962) lived to the age of eighty-eight.
The Twain’s home base was now Hartford, Connecticut, where in 1874 Twain built a home, though
they traveled often. Apart from numerous short stories he wrote during this time and Tom Sawyer,
Twain also collaborated on The Gilded Age (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
A Tramp Abroad (1880), Twain’s non-fiction satirical look at his trip through Germany, Italy, and
the Alps and somewhat of a sequel to Innocents Abroad was followed by The Prince and the Pauper
(1882). Hank Morgan, time traveler in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) reflects
Twain’s friendship with pioneering inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla and interest in
scientific inventions. Twain also continued to uphold a busy lecture series throughout the United
States. In 1888 he was awarded an honorary Master of Art degree from Yale University.
For some years Twain had lost money in various money making schemes like mining, printing
machines, the Charles L. Webster Publishing Co., and The Mark Twain Self-Pasting Scrap Book
though he never lost his sense of humour. In 1892, friend and fellow humorist and author Robert
Barr, writing as ‘Luke Sharp’ interviewed Twain for The Idler magazine that he owned with
Jerome K. Jerome. Twain’s novel The American Claimant (1892) was followed by The Tragedy of
Pudd'Nhead Wilson (1894), first serialized in Century Magazine. Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) was
followed by Tom Sawyer, Detective in 1896. His favourite fiction novel, Personal Recollections of
Joan of Arc (1896) was first serialised in Harper’s Magazine. By 1895, unable to control his debts,
he set off on a world lecture tour to Australia, Canada, Ceylon, India, New Zealand, and South
Africa to pay them off. Following the Equator (1897) is his travelogue based on his tour, during
which he met Mahatma Gandhi, Sigmund Freud, and Booker T. Washington.
With another successful lecture tour under his belt and now much admired and celebrated for his
literary efforts, Mark, Livy and their daughter Jane settled in New York City. Yale University
bestowed upon him an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1901 and in 1907 he was awarded an
honorary Doctor of Letters by Oxford University. The same year A Horse's Tale and Christian
9
Science (1907) were published. While traveling in Italy in 1904, Livy died in Florence. For Twain’s
70th birthday on 30 November 1905 he was fêted at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York, where he
delivered his famous birthday speech, wearing his trademark all-year round white suit. That year he
was also a guest of American President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt at the White House and
addressed the congressional committee on copyright issues. He was also working on his biography
with Albert Bigelow Paine. His daughter Jane became very sick and was committed to an institution,
but died in 1909 of an epileptic seizure. In 1908 Twain had moved to his home 'Stormfield' in
Redding, Connecticut, though he still actively traveled, especially to Bermuda.
Mark Twain died on 21 April 1910 in Redding, Connecticut and now rests in the Woodlawn
Cemetery in Livy’s hometown of Elmira, New York State, buried beside her and the children. A
memorial statue and cenotaph in the Eternal Valley Memorial Park of Los Angeles, California
states:"Beloved Author, Humorist, and Western Pioneer, This Original Marble Statue Is The
Creation Of The Renowned Italian Sculptor Spartaco Palla Of Pietrasanta." Twain suffered many
losses in his life including the deaths of three of his children, and accumulated large debts which
plagued him for many years, but at the time of his death he had grown to mythic proportions as the
voice of a spirited and diverse nation, keen observer and dutiful reporter, born and died when
Halley’s Comet was visible in the skies.
"Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are
for all—the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved." —Twain’s last
written statement.
Local color or regional literature is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect,
customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region. Influenced by Southwestern
and Down East humor, between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century this mode of
writing became dominant in American literature. According to the Oxford Companion to American
Literature, "In local-color literature one finds the dual influence of romanticism and realism, since
the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic
scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description" . Its
weaknesses may include nostalgia or sentimentality. Its customary form is the sketch or short story,
although Hamlin Garland argued for the novel of local color.
Regional literature incorporates the broader concept of sectional differences, although in Writing
Out of Place, Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse have argued convincingly that the distinguishing
characteristic that separates "local color" writers from "regional" writers is instead the exploitation
of and condescension toward their subjects that the local color writers demonstrate.
One definition of the difference between realism and local color is Eric Sundquist's: "Economic or
political power can itself be seen to be definitive of a realist aesthetic, in that those in power (say,
white urban males) have been more often judged 'realists,' while those removed from the seats of
power (say, Midwesterners, blacks, immigrants, or women) have been categorized as regionalists."
See also the definition from the Encyclopedia of Southern Literature.
Many critics, including Amy Kaplan ("Nation, Region, and Empire" in the Columbia Literary
History of the United States) and Richard Brodhead (Cultures of Letters), have argued that this
literary movement contributed to the reunification of the country after the Civil War and to the
building of national identity toward the end of the nineteenth century. According to Brodhead,
"regionalism's representation of vernacular cultures as enclaves of tradition insulated from larger
cultural contact is palpably a fiction . . . its public function was not just to mourn lost cultures but to
10
purvey a certain story of contemporary cultures and of the relations among them" (121). In
chronicling the nation's stories about its regions and mythical origins, local color fiction through its
presence--and, later, its absence--contributed to the narrative of unified nationhood that late
nineteenth-century America sought to construct.
A variation of this genre is the "plantation tradition" fiction of Thomas Nelson Page and others.
Characteristics Setting: The emphasis is frequently on nature and the limitations it imposes; settings
are frequently remote and inaccessible. The setting is integral to the story and may sometimes
become a character in itself.
Characters: Local color stories tend to be concerned with the character of the district or region
rather than with the individual: characters may become character types, sometimes quaint or
stereotypical. The characters are marked by their adherence to the old ways, by dialect, and by
particular personality traits central to the region. In women's local color fiction, the heroines are
often unmarried women or young girls.
Narrator: The narrator is typically an educated observer from the world beyond who learns
something from the characters while preserving a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes ironic
distance from them. The narrator serves as mediator between the rural folk of the tale and the urban
audience to whom the tale is directed.
Plots. It has been said that "nothing happens" in local color stories by women authors, and often
very little does happen. Stories may include lots of storytelling and revolve around the community
and its rituals.
Themes: Many local color stories share an antipathy to change and a certain degree of nostalgia for
an always-past golden age. A celebration of community and acceptance in the face of adversity
characterizes women's local color fiction. Thematic tension or conflict between urban ways and
old-fashioned rural values is often symbolized by the intrusion of an outsider or interloper who
seeks something from the community.
Techniques Use of dialect to establish credibility and authenticity of regional characters.
Use of detailed description, especially of small, seemingly insignificant details central to an
understanding of the region.Frequent use of a frame story in which the narrator hears some tale of
the region.
Selected Reading
11
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
By Mark Twain
In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on
good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W.
Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that
Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only
conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley,
and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as
long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.
I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in
the ancient mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an
expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and
gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about
a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley a
young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I
added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any thing about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel
under many obligations to him.
Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me
down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he
never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial
sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable
narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so
far from his imagining that there was any thing ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as
a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. To
me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling,
was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W.
Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:
There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49 or may be it was the
spring of '50 I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other
is because I remember the big flume wasn't finished when he first came to the camp; but any way,
12
he was the curiosest man about always betting on any thing that turned up you ever see, if he could
get any body to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change sides. Any way that suited the
other man would suit him any way just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky,
uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance;
there couldn't be no solitary thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on it, and -take any side
you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush, or you'd find
him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet
on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he
would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar,
to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and
a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it
would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that
straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on
the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made
no difference to him he would bet on any thing the dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very
sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn's going to save her; but one morning he
come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was considerable better thank the Lord for
his inftnit mercy and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Providence, she'd get well yet;
and Smiley, before he thought, says, "Well, I'll risk two- and-a-half that she don't, any way."
Thish-yer Smiley had a mare the boys called her the fifteen- minute nag, but that was only in fun,
you know, because, of course, she was faster than that and he used to win money on that horse, for
all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something
of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way;
but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate- like, and come cavorting and
straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one
side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing
and sneezing and blowing her nose and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near
as you could cipher it down.
And he had a little small bull pup, that to look at him you'd think he wan's worth a cent, but to set
around and look ornery, and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on
him, he was a different dog; his underjaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of a steamboat, and
his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the furnaces. And a dog might tackle him, and bullyrag him, and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson
which was the name of the pup Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied, and
hadn't expected nothing else and the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time,
till the money was all up; and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j'int of
his hind leg and freeze on it not chew, you understand, but only jest grip and hang on till they
thronged up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he
harnessed a dog once that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off by a circular saw,
and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make a
snatch for his pet bolt, he saw in a minute how he'd been imposed on, and how the other dog had
him in the door, so to speak, and he 'peered surprised, and then he looked sorter discouraged-like,
13
and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as
much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind legs
for him to take bolt of, which was his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece
and laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name
for hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was in him, and he had genius I know it, because he hadn't had
no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he
could under them circumstances, if he hadn't no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I think
of that last fight of his'n, and the way it turned out.
Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom- cats, and all of them kind of
things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He
ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'klated to edercate him; and so he never
done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you
he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog
whirling in the air like a doughnut see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple, if he got a good
start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of catching
flies, and kept him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as far as he could see him.
Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do most any thing and I believe him.
Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor Dan'l Webster was the name of the
frog and sing out, "Flies, Dan'l, flies!" and quicker'n you could wink, he'd spring straight up, and
snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor again as solid as a gob of mud, and
fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd
been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightforward as he
was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could
get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead
level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on
him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for
fellers that had traveled and been everywheres, all said he laid over any frog that ever they see.
Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down town sometimes
and lay for a bet. One day a feller a stranger in the camp, he was come across him with his box, and
says:
"What might it be that you've got in the box?"
And Smiley says, sorter indifferent like, "It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, may be, but it
an't it's only just a frog."
And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, "H'm
so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?"
"Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, "He's good enough for one thing, I should judge he can
outjump any frog in Calaveras county."
14
The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and
says, very deliberate, "Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."
"May be you don't," Smiley says. "May be you understand frogs, and may be you don't understand
'em; may be you've had experience, and may be you an't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've
got my opinion, and I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county."
And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, "Well, I'm only a stranger here, and I
an't got no frog; but if I had a frog, I'd bet you."
And then Smiley says, "That's all right that's all right if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go and get
you a frog." And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set
down to wait.
So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized
his mouth open and took a tea- spoon and filled him full of quail shot filled him pretty near up to his
chin and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a
long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and says:
"Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore- paws just even with Dan'l, and I'll
give the word." Then he says, "One two three jump!" and him and the feller touched up the frogs
from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders so
like a Frenchman, but it wan's no use he couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he
couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was
disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course.
The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked
his thumb over his shoulders this way at Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate, "Well, I don't see no
p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long time, and at last he says, "I do
wonder what in the nation that frog throw'd off for I wonder if there an't something the matter with
him he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow." And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of the neck, and
lifted him up and says, "Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pound!" and turned him upside
down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the
maddest man he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketchd him. And[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what was wanted.]
And turning to me as he moved away, he said: "Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy I an't
going to be gone a second."
But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond
Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley,
and so I started away.
15
At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he button- holed me and recommenced:
"Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yeller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only jest a short stump
like a bannanner, and "
"Oh! hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!" I muttered, good-naturedly, and bidding the old gentleman
good-day, I departed.
Further Reading
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County -- A Tall Tale by Mark Twain
16
Melissa Howard The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain is a satirical tall
tale that relies on humor and exaggeration to make a point. Mark Twain’s short story, The
Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is often used as an example of the American tall tale.
Reading the story as a simple tall tale can be a serious mistake. Some of Twain’s favorite ideals are
found in the story and it is a biting commentary on the self-delusion of Americans.
The Format
The Jumping Frog is a story given to us as a tall tale. When the Jumping Frog was originally
published in 1865, the format of the tall tale was a familiar and popular story format to most
American’s. A tall tale was a humorous and exaggerated story, which was told by American
frontiersmen to show-off their exploits and to trick the gullible Easterners.
Twain presented the tall tale in a familiar and popular format of a ‘framed story.’ In this case,
Twain uses an epistolary format where the narrator writes a letter in which he encloses the narration
of the story. The narrator is an Easterner (assumed to be Twain) who doesn’t believe the story and
finds it an absurd tale. The narrator also believes that the storyteller, Simon Wheeler, is serious
when he tells the story of Jim Smiley. He writes of Wheeler that “all through the interminable
narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that...he
regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in
finesse.” The naive Westerner’s (Wheeler) ability to trick the sophisticated Easterner (Twain) is an
essential part of a tall tale.
The Satire
By presenting his story in a familiar format, Twain makes his audience comfortable and allows
himself the freedom to make fun of all corners of American Society at that time. The tall tale was
often used by Easterners to poke fun of the illiterate poorly educated Westerners. In the tall tale
format, the Easterner provided the frame of the story by relating it and by his commentary on the
story. Often, however, the Easterner was the real butt of the joke as he was fooled by the Westerner
into believing the story was real.
One way in which Twain succeeded at poking fun of all corners was by portraying himself as the
stereotypical cultivated Easterner. By poking fun of himself rather than a generic Easterner, Twain
was able to be more shocking and offensive.
Besides the narrator and Simon Wheeler, Twain mentions two notable Americans in this tale that
provide additional and interesting commentary on the view of Americans that Twain is presenting.
The first character is Smiley’s bull dog pup, Andrew Jackson. The pup is a good dog but not a very
impressive fighter until the chips are down. When Smiley places a bet, the dog’s character changes
and he grabs the hind leg of his opponent and hangs on until the fight is finished; the higher the
stakes, the more stubborn the dog.
Mark Twain's Early Works Endangered Red-Legged Frog in California Mark Twain Biography The
bull dog pup was named after the seventh president of the United States Andrew Jackson. Jackson
was informal and easy going when not doing business but could be pugnacious and stubborn when
confronted with adversity. Jackson was very free in how he lived and acted in the White House and
he was not the least formal. But when the chips were down he fought for what he believed in
regardless of whether it was right or wrong. Jackson was a proponent of democracy and the rights of
the common people. Twain admired Jackson’s view and agreed with it.
The second notable character mentioned by Twain is Dan’l Webster the notorious Jumping Frog.
Smiley caught himself a frog to use for gambling. He trained the frog to jump on command and so
17
the frog, Dan’l, became a champion jumper. However, Wheeler says that despite his ability Dan’l
Webster is modest and straightforward. Unfortunately, Dan’l loses a bet for Smilely when a stranger
loads him with quail shot.
The frog is named after Daniel Webster a famous American statesman and orator. Webster was a
capable and successful man. However, while he always aspired to the presidency, he never became
president. Some equate the frog’s failed match-up with the stranger’s frog to Webster’s failed
designs on the White House.
In Conclusion
When the Jumping Frog was published, America seemed almost to be two countries. Easterners
were educated, cultivated, and civilized. Westerners were illiterate, resourceful, and uncivilized.
Both parties often held each other in contempt. Twain’s ability to make fun of all corners of
America allows him to create an all-encompassing portrait of America at that time; a country where
both Easterners and Westerners were gullible as well as crafty and intelligent.
Chapter 7 "Mending the Wall": Bard of New England
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet, a quintessential
New England poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command
of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New
England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical
18
themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime,
receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.
Frost is a poet who often seems liked for the wrong reasons—a poet who is read much but often not
very carefully. The subtle wit of his language, his broad humor, and his frequent despair are too
often overlooked for his regional-ness, his folksiness, and his public persona. However, regardless
of who reads him and for what reasons, what really matters are the poems; they stand alone by
virtue of their own strength, independent of the associations surrounding them. Though perhaps
influenced by, or in agreement with, statements by Imagists, Frost nonetheless belonged to no
school; he worked outside of movements and manifestos to create his own sizeable niche in English
literature.
His works include: A Boy’s Will, in 1913; North of Boston, 1914; Mountain Interval, in 1916;
New Hampshire, in 1923 (Pulitzer #1); West-Running Brook, in 1928; Collected Poems, in 1930
(Pulitzer #2); A Further Range, in 1936 (Pulitzer #3), A Witness Tree, in 1942 (Pulitzer #4); A
Masque of Reason , in 1945; Steeple Bush , and A Masque of Mercy in 1947; Complete Poems, in
1949; In the Clearing, in 1962.
Frost’s crowning public moment was his recitation of “The Gift Outright” at John F. Kennedy’s
inauguration in January of 1960. He died on January 29, 1963.
Selected Reading
Collected Poems
19
By Robert Frost
1 Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing: 5
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made, 10
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go. 15
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 20
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across 25
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it 30
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
20
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, 35
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. 40
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.” 45
补墙
有一点什么，它大概是不喜欢墙，
它使得墙脚下的冻地涨得隆起，
大白天的把墙头石块弄得纷纷落：
使得墙裂了缝，二人并肩都走得过。
士绅们行猎时又是另一番糟蹋：
他们要掀开每块石头上的石头，
我总是跟在他们后面去修补，
但是他们要把兔子从隐处赶出来，
讨好那群汪汪叫的狗。我说的墙缝
是怎么生的，谁也没看见，谁也没听见
但是到了春季补墙时，就看见在那里。
我通知了住在山那边的邻居；
有一天我们约会好，巡视地界一番，
在我们两家之间再把墙重新砌起。
我们走的时候，中间隔着一垛墙。
我们走的时候，中间隔着一垛培。
落在各边的石头，由各自去料理。
有些是长块的，有些几乎圆得像球．
需要一点魔术才能把它们放稳当：
“老实呆在那里，等我们转过身再落下！”
我们搬弄石头．把手指都磨粗了。
啊！这不过又是一种户外游戏，
一个人站在一边。此外没有多少用处：
在墙那地方，我们根本不需要墙：
他那边全是松树，我这边是苹果园。
我的苹果树永远也不会踱过去
吃掉他松树下的松球，我对他说。
他只是说：“好篱笆造出好邻家。”
春天在我心里作祟，我在悬想
能不能把一个念头注入他的脑里：
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“为什么好篱笆造出好邻家？是否指着
有牛的人家？可是我们此地又没有牛。
我在造墙之前．先要弄个清楚，
圈进来的是什么，圈出去的是什么，
并且我可能开罪的是些什么人家，
有一点什么，它不喜欢墙，
它要推倒它。”我可以对他说这是“鬼”。
但严格说也不是鬼．我想这事还是
由他自己决定吧。我看见他在那里
搬一块石头，两手紧抓着石头的上端，
像一个旧石器时代的武装的野蛮人。
我觉得他是在黑暗中摸索，
这黑暗不仅是来自深林与树荫。
他不肯探究他父亲传给他的格言
他想到这句格言，便如此的喜欢，
于是再说一遍，“好篱笆造出好邻家”。
（梁实秋译）
2 The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
2
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20
3 Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice, 5
But if it had to perish twice, 5I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Analysis
Summary
The speaker considers the age-old question of whether the world will end in fire or in ice. This is
similar to another age-old question: whether it would be preferable to freeze to death or burn to
death. The speaker determines that either option would achieve its purpose sufficiently well.
Form
“Fire and Ice” follows an invented form, irregularly interweaving three rhymes and two line lengths
into a poem of nine lines. Each line ends either with an -ire, -ice, or -ate rhyme. Each line contains
either four or eight syllables. Each line can be read naturally as iambic, although this is not strictly
necessary for several lines. Frost employs strong enjambment in line 7to great effect.
Commentary
An extremely compact little lyric, “Fire and Ice” combines humor, fury, detachment, forthrightness,
and reserve in an airtight package. Not a syllable is wasted. The aim is aphorism—the slaying of the
elusive Truth-beast with one unerring stroke. But for Frost, as usual, the truth remains ambiguous
and the question goes unanswered; to settle for aphorism would be to oversimplify.
We can attribute part of the poem’s effect to the contrast between the simple, clipped precision of its
vocabulary and the vague gravity of its subject. The real triumph of “Fire and Ice,” however, is in its
form.
The language remains simple, but the devastating, soaring anticlimax of the final two lines is lost.
Those lines draw their soft-kill power from form: from their rhymes; from the juxtaposition of their
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short, punchy length with that of the preceding lines (and their resonance with the length of the
second line); and from the strong enjambment in line 7, which builds up the tension needed for the
perfect letdown.It is one thing to pull off an offhand remark about the end of days; it is another to
make it poetry. Frost masterfully accomplishes both in a single composition.
4 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer 5
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake. 10
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep, 15
And miles to go before I sleep.
5 Design
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.
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6 Dust Of Snow
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
Chapter 8 "Petals on a Wet, Black Bough": Imagist Poetry
Image is the representation of sense experience through language. Or an image is a picture made
out of words and a poem may itself be an image composed from a multiplicity of images.----by CＤ
Lewis; Or an image is a verbal picture of an object, action,abstract idea, or sensation.---by J W
Morrison
Most images tend to be visual in nature, but they may also suggest the way things sound, smell,
taste, or feel to the touch. In order to make the invisible, the intangible, and the abstract become the
visible, the tangible, and the concrete in their poetry, poets carefully choose words that create the
most vivid images, in this way poets can share their thoughts and experience with us by creating a
world that we all know and Imagery is the use of vivid description, usually rich in sensory words, to
create pictures, or images, in the reader's mind.
Imagery involves one or more of your five senses (hearing, taste, touch, smell, sight). An author
uses a word or phrase to stimulate your memory of those senses. These memories can be positive or
negative which will contribute to the mood of your poem. Imagery is the representation in poetry of
sensory experience. In other words, imagery is a device by which poets appeal to our senses.
Although we usually think with words, many of our thoughts come to us as pictures or sensations in
our mind. Such imagined pictures are called imagery. Imagery is closely to , even inseparable from,
figurative language, the language which says one thing and means another.
2
Imagism is a poetic movement of England and the United States, flourished from 1909 to 1917.
Originating in the aesthetic philosophy of T. E. Hume, the movement insists on the creation of
images in poetry by "the direct treatment of the thing" and the economy of wording. The Imagists
had distinct theories of poetry; the most important and best-known are the following six principles
which exerted widespread influence on American modern poetry:
1. To use the language of common speech; to employ always the exact word, not the merely
decorative word.
2. To create new rhythms as the expression of new moods. We do not insist upon “free verse” as the
only method of writing poetry. ```We do believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better
expressed in free verse than in conventional forms.
3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject.
4. To present an image. We are not a school of painters; but we believe that poetry should render
particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous.
5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred of poetry.
6. Finally, most of us believe that is hard and clear, never blurred of poetry.
The leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell. Other important American Imagist
poets were H. D. and John G. Fletcher.
The typical imagist poem is written in free verse and undertakes to render as precisely and tersely as
possible, and without comment or generalization, the writer’s impression of a visual object or scene;
often the impression is rendered by means of metaphor, or by juxtaposing, without indicating a
relation, the description of one object with that of a second and diverse object.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a
modernist aesthetic in poetry. In the early teens of the twentieth century, he opened a seminal
exchange of work and ideas between British and American writers, and was famous for the
generosity with which he advanced the work of such major contemporaries as W. B. Yeats, Robert
Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and
especially T. S. Eliot.
His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation of Imagism, a movement in
poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry—stressing clarity,
precision, and economy of language and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in
Pound's words, "compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the
metronome." His later work, for nearly fifty years, focused on the encyclopedic epic poem he
entitled The Cantos.
Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, in 1885. He completed two years of college at the University
of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from Hamilton College in 1905. After teaching at Wabash
College for two years, he travelled abroad to Spain, Italy and London, where, as the literary
executor of the scholar Ernest Fenellosa, he became interested in Japanese and Chinese poetry.
Pound greatly promoted those whose poetic talents he admired. Almost single-handedly, Pound
popularized ancient Chinese poetry by translating it for a wide audience. He befriended poets as
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diverse as Robert Frost and D. H. Lawrence. His most successful protégé was T. S. Eliot. Pound
helped get Eliot's poems into print and, after leaving London for Paris in 1920 and becoming the
Paris correspondent of The Dial (New York), not only assisted Eliot in editing The Waste Land but
acted to have it published in that journal. During World War II, Pound supported Mussolini and
broadcast on his behalf over Italian radio from Rome until 1945. These talks were anti-semitic and
anti-capitalist. US forces arrested him for treason at Genoa that year and incarcerated him in an
army training facility near Pisa. For some weeks he was kept in a smallish wire cage in the
compound courtyard. About this time, he wrote the Pisan Cantos (New Directions, 1948), which
won the Bollingen Prize the next year -- for good reason, because these are the poems of a great
spirit. The Army then sent Pound to Washington, D.C., to stand trial for offences that might have
warranted a death-sentence. The court judged him unfit, by reason of insanity, to stand trial and
committed him to a mental institution, St. Elizabeth's Hospital, in Washington. Released in 1958,
owing to lobbying of the literary community led by his many friends, and especially Robert Frost,
Pound returned to Italy. He died on November 1, 1972, in Venice.
Selected Reading
Collected Poems
4
By Ezra Pound
1. A Pact
1I make truce with you, Walt Whitman -2I have detested you long enough.
3I come to you as a grown child
4Who has had a pig-headed father;
5I am old enough now to make friends.
6It was you that broke the new wood,
7Now is a time for carving.
8We have one sap and one root -9Let there be commerce between us
3. The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plum.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed.
You went into far Ku-to-ye, by the river of swirling eddies,
and you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
2
Too deepp to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
and I will come out to meet you
as far as Cho-fu-Sa.
3. In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Notes: In Pound’s poem In a Station of The Metro, the image of "Petals on a wet, black bough" is
so fresh, striking and vivid that it serves remarkably well to present Pound's impression of the faces
in the crowd in a 1912, in Paris, not in speech, but in splashes of color. Since the beginning of bad
writing, writers have used images as ornaments and wrote 39 lines. Few months later the poet
revised the long poem into 2 lines as a one-image poem. The image is itself the speech. The image
is the word beyond formulated language. The one-image poem is a form of super-position, and it is
one idea set on top of another.
Comparison: This poem can be compared with the following one written by Williams
C Williams
The Red Wheelbarrow
by Williams C Williams (1883-1963)
So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
3
Notes: What we seem to have is an ordinary prose sentence broken up in a peculiar way. The very
arbitrariness of the slashing (cutting) across the prose sentence may be important: the sentence is
denied its own structure, and the reader is left staring at the image.
We have to focus our attention upon words, more words, in a very special way, and the poem
assumes a puzzling portentousness (solemnly self-important-ness), the sort of portentousness that
any object, even the simplest and most ordinary (in this case the wheelbarrow), assumes when we
fix attention exclusively on it and cut it off from the rest of the world. Reading this poem is like
peering at an ordinary object through a pin prick in a piece of cardboard. The fact that the tiny hole
arbitrarily frames the object endows it with an exciting freshness that seems to hover on the verge of
revelation.
The poem The Red Wheelbarrow exemplifies the Imagist-influenced philosophy of "no ideas but in
things". The poem, written in five minutes or so, is said to portray the scene outside the window of
one of Dr. Williams' patients, a very sick young girl he was attending in Passaic, New Jersey. This
provides another layer of meaning beneath the surface reading. The poem is supposed to be bare and
plain. Williams was trying to veer away from what he saw as the "European" wordiness of other
poets, to create a typical "American"image with his poem.
The subject matter of The Red Wheelbarrow is what makes it the most distinctive and important. He
lifts a brazier(火盆) to an artistic level, exemplifying the importance of the ordinary; as he says, a
poem “must be real, not 'realism', but reality itself." In this way, it holds more in common with the
haiku of Bashō than with the verse of T. S. Eliot.
4
Chapter 9 " I, too": Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance (c. 1918–1930): A flowering of African-American literature, art, and music
during the 1920s in New York City. W. E. B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk anticipated the
movement, which included Alain Locke’s anthology The New Negro, Zora Neale Hurston’s novel
Their Eyes Were Watching God, and the poetry of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen.
The Harlem Renaissance was a phase of a larger New Negro movement that had emerged in the
early 20th century and in some ways ushered in the civil rights movement of the late 1940s and
early 1950s. The social foundations of this movement included the Great Migration of African
Americans from rural to urban spaces and from South to North; dramatically rising levels of
literacy; the creation of national organizations dedicated to pressing African American civil rights,
“uplifting” the race, and opening socioeconomic opportunities; and developing race pride,
including pan-African sensibilities and programs. Black exiles and expatriates from the Caribbean
and Africa crossed paths in metropolis such as New York City and Paris after World War I and had
an invigorating influence on each other that gave the broader “Negro renaissance” (as it was then
known) a profoundly important international cast.
The renaissance had many sources in black culture, primarily of the United States and the
Caribbean, and manifested itself well beyond Harlem. As its symbolic capital, Harlem was a
catalyst for artistic experimentation and a highly popular nightlife destination. Its location in the
communications capital of North America helped give the “New Negroes” visibility and
opportunities for publication not evident elsewhere. Located just north of Central Park, Harlem
was a formerly white residential district that by the early 1920s was becoming virtually a black
city within the borough of Manhattan. Other boroughs of New York City were also home to
people now identified with the renaissance, but they often crossed paths in Harlem or went to
special events at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Black intellectuals from
Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and other cities (where they had their own
intellectual circles, theatres, and reading groups) also met in Harlem or settled there. New York
City had an extraordinarily diverse and decentred black social world in which no one group could
monopolize cultural authority. As a result, it was a particularly fertile place for cultural
experimentation.
While the renaissance built on earlier traditions of African American culture, it was profoundly
affected by trends—such as primitivism—in European and white American artistic circles.
Modernist primitivism was inspired partly by Freudian psychology, but it tended to extol
“primitive” peoples as enjoying a more direct relationship to the natural world and to elemental
human desires than “overcivilized” whites. The keys to artistic revolution and authentic
expression, some intellectuals felt, would be found in the cultures of “primitive races,” and
preeminent among these, in the stereotypical thinking of the day, were the cultures of sub-Saharan
Africans and their descendants. Early in the 20th century, European avantgarde artists had drawn
inspiration from African masks as they broke from realistic representational styles toward
abstraction in painting and sculpture. The prestige of such experiments caused African American
intellectuals to look on their African heritage with new eyes and in many cases with a desire to
2
reconnect with a heritage long despised or misunderstood by both whites and blacks.
Most people would agree that poetry, rather than fiction, drama, or the other literary arts, was
either central to this literary movement or the foundation on which African American writers built
as they attempted to establish themselves and their careers as part of the brave new world of
African American culture in the 1920s.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was the first black writer in America to earn his living from
writing. Langston Hughes became the voice of black America in the 1920s.Freedom of creative expression,
whether personal or collective, is one of the many legacies of Hughes, who has been called “the architect” of the
black poetic tradition. He is certainly one of the world’s most universally beloved poets, read by children and
teachers, scholars and poets, musicians and historians.
Born in Joplin, Missouri, he had a migratory childhood following his parents' separation,
spending time in the American Mid-West and Mexico. He attended Columbia University from
1921-1922 but left, disillusioned by the coolness of his white peers. Hughes' experience of racial
exclusion was compounded by his sexual orientation which made him doubly separate from the
"norm" of white society. His homosexuality remained hidden throughout his life, and referred to
in his writing only through coded references, in the manner of one of his literary heroes, Walt
Whitman. However, he did feel able to speak out against the racial oppression he witnessed all
around him and had experienced first hand, and his first poems were published in the magazine
Crisis which was run by which was run by the National Association for the Advancement of
Coloured People. After leaving University, Hughes travelled, first on a freighter to Africa - where
the lack of political and economic freedom of the native people disturbed him - and then
extensively in Europe before heading back to the USA. On his return he published his first
collection, The Weary Blues, to great acclaim. From 1928-1930 he lived in New York and was a
prominent member of the 'Harlem Renaissance', the name given to the flowering of intellectual
and cultural activity amongst the black community of New York at the time. As well as poetry,
Hughes's prolific output included plays, essays and articles, some of which expressed his
admiration for the Soviet Union and socialist principles. This led him to be investigated by the
McCarthy Committee during the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s and it took a while for him
to restore his reputation. However, by the 1960s his services to literature were recognized by the
government and he was made a cultural emissary to Europe and Africa for the US State
Department. Hughes died in 1967 in New York having lived into the Decade of Protest and seen
many of the reforms he'd fought for introduced. It is said Langston Hughes helped to change the
sound of American literature.
Hughes wrote one of his most important works in 1926, "The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain." It spoke of black writers and poets who want to be considered as poets, not black
poets. Hughes thought this meant they wanted to write like white poets. He argued there was a
need for race pride and artistic independence:
"We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves
without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren't, it doesn't matter. We
know we are beautiful. And ugly too...If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not,
their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know
how. And we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves."
3
As his success as a writer grew, Langston Hughes began to explore other ways to spread his
message. He wrote children's stories and several plays. By 1940, he had opened black theater
groups in Harlem, Chicago and Los Angeles.
While writing for a black newspaper, Hughes created someone called "Jesse B. Semple." The
name "Jesse B. Semple" represented Hughes's writing style: Just Be Simple. Semple was a
common man of the people who "tells it like it is." His experiences help other people understand
the world in a clearer light. Hughes spoke through his character.
This chapter selected 4 of Hughes's best known poems. One of Hughes's poetic innovations was to
draw on the rhythms of black musical traditions such as jazz and blues, but in 'The Negro Speaks
of Rivers' it's the heritage of Negro spirituals which is recalled by the poem's majestic imagery
and sonorous repetitions. Written when Hughes was only seventeen as he travelled by train across
the Mississippi, 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' is a beautiful statement of strength in the history of
black people, which Hughes imagines stretching as far back as ancient Egypt and further into
Africa and the cradle of civilization. The poem returns at the end to America in a moment of
optimistic alchemy when he sees the "muddy bosom" of the Mississippi "turn all golden in the
sunset". In the poem, the persona moves steadily from dimly starred personal memory("I've
known rivers")toward a rendezvous with modern history(Lincoln going down the Mississippi and
seeing the horror of slavery that, according to legend, would make him one day free the slaves).
The death wish, benign but suffusing, if its images of rivers older than human blood, of souls
grown as deep as these rivers, gives way steadily to an altering, ennobling vision whose final
effect gleams in the evocation of the Mississippi's ("muddy") culture and history, irradiated by the
poet;s vision, changes within the poem from mud into gold. This is a classic example of the
essential process of creativity in Hughes.
'I, Too' written just before his return to the States from Europe and after he'd been denied passage
on a ship because of his colour, has a contemporary feel in contrast to the mythical dimension of
'The Negro Speaks of Rivers'. It is no less powerful however, in its expression of social injustice.
The calm clear statements of the 'I' have an unstoppable force like the progress the poem
envisages. Hughes's dignified introductions to these poems and his beautiful speaking voice
render them all the more moving.
Though "Dreams" is a poem of hope, it seems significant that he writes, in the second stanza,
“when” instead of “if,” a testimony to the difficulty of his own life, and the lives he so closely
observed in his work. A later poem, “Dream Variations,” is much more characteristic of how
Hughes was able to use image, repetition, and his almost hypnotic cadence and rhyme to marry
political and social content to the structures and form of poetry. “Dream Variations,” articulates
that very dream and is only slightly less well-known, or known primarily because of the last line,
which became the title of John Howard Griffin’s seminal work on race relations in the sixties.
4
Selected Reading
Collected Poems
By Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of River
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
5
Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Dream Variations
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me—
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.
Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
6
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
I, too, sing America
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
'Eat in the kitchen,'
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamedI, too, am America.
Further Readings
I have a dream
By Martin Luther King Jr.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration
for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the
Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to
millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a
joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the
7
Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One
hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of
material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of
American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to
dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic
wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were
signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that
all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on
this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred
obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back
marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are
insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this
check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is
no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now
is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and
desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation
from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make
justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of
the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom
and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the
Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation
returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the
Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the
foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads
into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of
wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of
bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and
discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and
again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a
distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here
today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to
realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can
never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.
8
We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain
lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long
as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which
to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like
waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of
you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your
quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the
winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with
the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go
back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and
ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a
dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of
former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of
injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and
justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having
his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in
Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and
white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be
made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and
the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."?
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this
faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of
brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle
together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one
day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with
new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
9
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and
every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of
God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be
able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Chapter 10 "A Rose for Emily": Southern Renascence
Southern literature (sometimes called the literature of the American South) is defined as American
literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region. Characteristics of
Southern literature include a focus on a common Southern history, the significance of family, a
sense of community and one's role within it, a sense of justice, the region's dominant religion and
the burdens/rewards religion often brings, issues of racial tension, land and the promise it brings,
a sense of social class and place, and the use of the Southern dialect.
In its simplest form, Southern literature consists of writing about the American South—the South
being defined, for historical as well as geographical reasons, as the states of South Carolina,
Georgia, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas,
Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and Arkansas. Pre-Civil War definitions of the South often
included Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware as well.
In addition to the geographical component of Southern literature, certain themes have appeared
10
because of the similar histories of the Southern states in regard to slavery, the American Civil War,
and Reconstruction. The conservative culture in the South has also produced a strong focus within
Southern literature on the significance of family, religion, community in one's personal and social
life, the use of the Southern dialect, and a strong sense of "place."The South's troubled history
with racial issues also continually appears in its literature.
Despite these common themes, there is debate as to what makes writers and their literature
"Southern". For example, Mark Twain, arguably the father of Southern literature[why?], defined
the characteristics that many people associate with Southern writing in his novel The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn. He even referred to himself as a "Southern writer"[citation needed]. In
addition, many famous Southern writers headed to the Northern U.S. as soon as they were old
enough to make it on their own. So while geography is a factor, the geographical birth of the
author is not the defining factor in Southern writing.
Early and antebellum literature. During the 17th and 18th centuries, English colonists in the
Southern part of the American colonies produced a number of notable works. Two of the most
famous were early memoirs of Virginia: Captain John Smith's account of the founding of
Jamestown in the 1610s and 1620s, and William Byrd II's secret plantation diary, kept in the early
18th century. Both sets of recollections are critical documents in early Southern history.
After American independence, in the early 19th century, the expansion of cotton planting and
slavery began to distinguish Southern society and culture more clearly from the rest of the young
republic. During this antebellum period, South Carolina, and particularly the city of Charleston,
rivaled and perhaps surpassed Virginia as a literary community. Writing in Charleston, the lawyer
and essayist Hugh Swinton Legare, the poets Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry Timrod, and the
novelist William Gilmore Simms composed some of the most important works in antebellum
Southern literature.
Simms was a particularly significant figure, perhaps the most prominent Southern author before
the American Civil War. His novels of frontier life and the American revolution celebrated the
history of South Carolina. Like James Fenimore Cooper, Simms was strongly influenced by
Walter Scott, and his works bore the imprint of Scott's heroic romanticism. In The Yemassee, The
Kinsmen, and the anti-Uncle Tom's Cabin novel The Sword and the Distaff, Simms presented
idealized portraits of slavery and Southern life. While popular and well regarded in South
Carolina—and highly praised by such critics as Edgar Allan Poe -- Simms never gained a large
national audience.
Some critics regard Poe himself as a Southern author—he was raised in Richmond, attended the
University of Virginia, and edited the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1837. Yet in his
poetry and fiction Poe rarely took up distinctively Southern themes or subjects; his status as a
"Southern" writer remains ambiguous.
In the Chesapeake region, meanwhile, antebellum authors of enduring interest include John
Pendleton Kennedy, whose novel Swallow Barn offered a colorful sketch of Virginia plantation
11
life; and Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, whose 1836 work The Partisan Leader foretold the secession
of the Southern states, and imagined a guerrilla war in Virginia between federal and secessionist
armies.
Not all noteworthy Southern authors during this period were white. Frederick Douglass's
Narrative is perhaps the most famous first-person account of black slavery in the antebellum
South. Harriet Jacobs, meanwhile, recounted her experiences in bondage in North Carolina in
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. And another Southern-born ex-slave, William Wells Brown,
wrote Clotel; or, The President's Daughter -- widely believed to be the first novel ever published
by an African-American. The book depicts the life of its title character, a daughter of Thomas
Jefferson and his black mistress, and her struggles under slavery.
In the second half of the 19th century, the South lost the Civil War and suffered through what
many white southerners considered a harsh occupation (called Reconstruction). In place of the
Anti-Tom literature came poetry and novels about the "Lost Cause of the Confederacy." This
nostalgic literature began to appear almost immediately after the war ended; The Conquered
Banner was published on June 24, 1865. These writers idealized the defeated South and its lost
culture. Prominent writers with this point of view included poets Henry Timrod, Daniel B. Lucas,
Abram Joseph Ryan, and Sidney Lanier and fiction writer Thomas Nelson Page. Others, like
African American writer Charles W. Chesnutt, dismissed this nostalgia by pointing out the racism
and exploitation of blacks that happened during this time period in the South.
In 1884, Mark Twain published what is arguably the most influential southern novel of the 19th
century, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ernest Hemingway said of the novel, "All modern
American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." This
statement applies even more to southern literature because of the novel's frank dealings with
issues such as race and violence.
Kate Chopin was another central figure in post-Civil War Southern literature. Focusing her
writing largely on the Acadian/Cajun communities of Louisiana, Chopin established her literary
reputation with the short story collections Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897).
These stories offered not only a sociological portrait of a specific Southern culture but also
furthered the legacy of the American short story as a uniquely vital and complex narrative genre.
But it was with the publication of her second and final novel The Awakening (1899) that she
gained notoriety of a different sort. The novel not only shocked audiences with its frank and
unsentimental portrayal of female sexuality and psychology. It paved the way for the Southern
novel as both a serious genre (based in the realism that had dominated the western novel since
Balzac) and one that tackled the complex and untidy emotional lives of its characters. Today she
is widely regarded as not only one of the most important female writers in American literature, but
one of the most important chroniclers of the post-Civil War South and one of the first writers to
treat the female experience complexity and without condescension.
During the first half of the 20th Century, the lawyer, politician, minister, orator, actor, and author
Thomas Dixon, Jr. wrote a number of novels, plays, sermons, and non-fiction pieces which were
12
quite popular with the general public all over the USA. Today Dixon is perhaps best known for
writing a trilogy of novels about Reconstruction, one of which was entitled The Clansman (1905),
a book which would eventually become the inspiration for D. W. Griffith's infamous 1915 film
The Birth of a Nation. Overall Dixon wrote 22 novels, numerous plays and film scripts, Christian
sermons, and some non-fiction works during his lifetime.
In the 1920s and 1930s, a renaissance in Southern literature began with the appearance of writers
such as William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Caroline Gordon, Allen Tate, Thomas Wolfe,
Robert Penn Warren, and Tennessee Williams, among others. Because of the distance the Southern
Renaissance authors had from the American Civil War and slavery, they were more objective in
their writings about the South. During the 1920s, Southern poetry thrived under the Vanderbilt
University "Fugitives." In nonfiction, H.L. Mencken's popularity increased nationwide as he
shocked and astounded readers with his satiric writing highlighting the inability of the South to
produce anything of cultural value. In reaction to Mencken's essay, "The Sahara of the Bozart,"
the Southern Agrarians (also based mostly around Vanderbilt) called for a return to the South's
agrarian past and bemoaned the rise of Southern industrialism and urbanization. They noted that
creativity and industrialism weren't compatible and desired the return to a lifestyle that would
afford the Southerner leisure (a quality the Agrarians most felt conducive to creativity). Writers
like Faulkner, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949, also brought new techniques such
as stream of consciousness and complex narrative techniques to their writings. For instance, his
novel As I Lay Dying is told by changing narrators ranging from the deceased Addie to her young
son.
The late 1930s also saw the publication of one of the best-known Southern novels, Gone with the
Wind by Margaret Mitchell. The novel, published in 1936, quickly became a bestseller. It won the
1937 Pulitzer Prize, and in 1939 an equally famous movie of the novel premiered. Southern
literature became popular across genres; children's books like Ezekiel, published in 1937 by
writer/illustrators like Elvira Garner, drew audiences outside the South.
Southern literature following the Second World War grew thematically as it embraced the social
and cultural changes in the South resulting from the American Civil Rights Movement. In addition,
more female and African American writers began to be accepted as part of Southern literature,
including African Americans such as Zora Neale Hurston and Sterling Allen Brown, along with
women such as Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Ellen Glasgow, Carson McCullers, Katherine
Anne Porter, and Shirley Ann Grau, among many others. Other well-known Southern writers of
this period include Reynolds Price, James Dickey, William Price Fox, Davis Grubb, Walker Percy,
and William Styron. One of the most highly praised Southern novels of the 20th century, To Kill a
Mockingbird by Harper Lee, won the Pulitzer Prize when it was published in 1960. New Orleans
native and Harper Lee's friend, Truman Capote also found great success in the middle 20th
century with Breakfast at Tiffany's and later In Cold Blood. Another famous novel of the 1960s is
A Confederacy of Dunces, written by New Orleans native John Kennedy Toole in the 1960s but
not published until 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and has since become a cult classic.
"It has become a cliche in commentaries on the South, New South, or Sunbelt, that the region has
13
lost its distinctiveness and has been absorbed into the mainstream of America. We are even told
that we can no longer speak of southern sensibility. Yet everyone who looks at our literature is
immediately struck by differences, sometimes subtle but often obvious enough, that set us apart
from the rest of the nation. For instance, there is the southern language that colors our fiction or
the southern novelists' emphasis on racial themes and narratives centered around family."
Southern poetry bloomed in the decades following the Second World War in large part thanks to
the writing and efforts of Robert Penn Warren and James Dickey. Where earlier work primarily
championed a white, agrarian past, the efforts of such poets as Dave Smith, Charles Wright, Ellen
Bryant Voigt, Yusef Komunyakaa, Jim Seay, Kate Daniels, James Applewhite, Betty Adcock and
Rodney Jones have opened up the subject matter and form of Southern poetry.
Today, in the early twenty-first century, the American South is undergoing a number of cultural
and social changes, including rapid industrialization/deindustrialization and an influx of
immigrants. As a result, the exact definition of what constitutes southern literature is changing.
Some critics specify that the previous definitions of southern literature still hold, with some of
them suggesting, only somewhat in jest, that all southern literature must still contain a dead mule
within its pages. Still, the successful crime novels of James Lee Burke are not ashamed of making
a point of their own southernness; their nationwide popularity has been attributed to their southern
appeal.
Others, though, say that the very fabric of the South has changed so much that the old
assumptions about southern literature no longer hold. For example, Truman Capote, born and
raised in the Deep South, is best known for his novel In Cold Blood, a piece with none of the
characteristics associated with "southern writing." Other southern writers, such as popular
"author" John Grisham, rarely write about traditional southern literary issues. John Berendt, who
wrote the popular Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, is not a Southerner.
Among today's prominent southern writers are Tim Gautreaux, William Gay, Padgett Powell, Pat
Conroy, Fannie Flagg, Randall Kenan, Ernest Gaines, John Grisham, Mary Hood, Lee Smith, Tom
Robbins, Tom Wolfe, Wendell Berry, Cormac McCarthy, Ron Rash, Chris Offutt, Barry Hannah,
Anne Rice, Edward P. Jones, Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Maron,, R.B. Morris, Anne Tyler,
Larry Brown, Horton Foote, Allan Gurganus, Clyde Edgerton, Daniel Wallace, Kaye Gibbons,
Winston Groom, Lewis Nordan, Richard Ford, Ferrol Sams, Natasha Trethewey, Olympia Vernon,
Jill McCorkle and Jesmyn Ward, who won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction for her
novel, Salvage the Bones.
14
Selected Reading
A Rose for Emily
by William Faulkner
I
WHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of
respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of
her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at
least ten years.
It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires
and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been
our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august
names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish
decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now
Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the
cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate
soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.
Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the
town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict
that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the
dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would
have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's
father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way
of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and
only a woman could have believed it.
When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this
arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax
notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at
the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call
or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin,
flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice
was also enclosed, without comment.
They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputation waited upon her, knocked
at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons
eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a
stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. The
Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the
15
Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when
they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the
single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss
Emily's father.
They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her
waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her
skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in
another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water,
and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of
coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated
their errand.
She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman
came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold
chain.
Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me.
Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves."
"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff,
signed by him?"
"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I have no
taxes in Jefferson."
"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see We must go by the--"
"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But, Miss Emily--"
"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) "I have no taxes in
Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show these gentlemen out."
II
So SHE vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years
before about the smell.
That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart--the one we
believed would marry her --had deserted her. After her father's death she went out very little; after
her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call,
but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man--a young man
then--going in and out with a market basket.
"Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen properly, "the ladies said; so they were not
surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the
high and mighty Griersons.
A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.
"But what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said.
"Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there a law? "
"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stevens said. "It's probably just a snake or a rat that
nigger of hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to him about it."
The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident
deprecation. "We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to
16
bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something." That night the Board of Aldermen met--three
graybeards and one younger man, a member of the rising generation.
"It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain
time to do it in, and if she don't. .."
"Dammit, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?"
So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about the house
like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of
them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder.
They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they
recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light
behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly across the lawn
and into the shadow of the locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went away.
That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering
how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons
held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite
good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a
slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his
back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So
when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even
with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really
materialized.
When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people
were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become
humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.
The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as
is our custom Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her
face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers
calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they
were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.
We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young
men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to
that which had robbed her, as people will.
III
SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look
like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic
and serene.
The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's
death they began the work. The construction company came with riggers and mules and
machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee--a big, dark, ready man, with a big
voice and eyes lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the
riggers, and the riggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew
everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer
Barron would be in the center of the group. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on
17
Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the
livery stable.
At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, "Of
course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer." But there were still
others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse obligewithout calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, "Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her."
She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of
old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the two families.
They had not even been represented at the funeral.
And as soon as the old people said, "Poor Emily," the whispering began. "Do you suppose it's
really so?" they said to one another. "Of course it is. What else could . . ." This behind their hands;
rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the
thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: "Poor Emily."
She carried her head high enough--even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she
demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted
that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the
arsenic. That was over a year after they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the two female
cousins were visiting her.
"I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman,
though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained
across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to
look. "I want some poison," she said.
"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom--"
"I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."
The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is--"
"Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"
"Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--"
"I want arsenic."
The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag.
"Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what
you are going to use it for."
Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he
looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her
the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the package at home there was
written on the box, under the skull and bones: "For rats."
IV
So THE NEXT day we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best thing.
When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will marry him." Then
we said, "She will persuade him yet," because Homer himself had remarked--he liked men, and it
was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks' Club--that he was not a marrying man.
Later we said, "Poor Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the
glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a
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cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.
Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the
young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist
minister--Miss Emily's people were Episcopal-- to call upon her. He would never divulge what
happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again
drove about the streets, and the following day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's relations
in Alabama.
So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments. At first
nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily
had been to the jeweler's and ordered a man's toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each
piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men's clothing,
including a nightshirt, and we said, "They are married." We were really glad. We were glad
because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.
So we were not surprised when Homer Barron--the streets had been finished some time
since--was gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off, but we
believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's coming, or to give her a chance to get rid
of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent
the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along,
within three days Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at
the kitchen door at dusk one evening.
And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro
man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we
would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime,
but for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be
expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times
had been too virulent and too furious to die.
When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next
few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it
ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like
the hair of an active man.
From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when
she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one
of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris'
contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent
to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes
had been remitted.
Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting
pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious
brushes and pictures cut from the ladies' magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and
remained closed for good. When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let
them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to
them.
Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out
with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the
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post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs
windows--she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house--like the carven torso of an idol in a
niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to
generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.
And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro
man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to get
any information from the Negro.
He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from
disuse.
She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head
propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.
V
THE NEGRO met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed,
sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through
the house and out the back and was not seen again.
The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town
coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father
musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men
--some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily
as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted
her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past
is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided
from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.
Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in
forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the
ground before they opened it.
The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid
pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal:
upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table,
upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so
tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just
been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung
the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.
The man himself lay in the bed.
For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body
had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love,
that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath
what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon
him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted
something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils,
we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
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William Faulkner speaks on "A Rose for Emily" in 1955:
I feel sorry for Emily's tragedy; her tragedy was, she was an only child, an only daughter. At first
when she could have found a husband, could have had a life of her own, there was probably some
one, her father, who said, "No, you must stay here and take care of me." And then when she found
a man, she had had no experience in people. She picked out probably a bad one, who was about to
desert her. And when she lost him she could see that for her that was the end of life, there was
nothing left, except to grow older, alone, solitary; she had had something and she wanted to keep
it, which is bad—to go to any length to keep something; but I pity Emily. I don't know whether I
would have liked her or not, I might have been afraid of her. Not of her, but of anyone who had
suffered, had been warped, as her life had been probably warped by a selfish father . . . . [The title]
was an allegorical title; the meaning was, here was a woman who had had a tragedy, an
irrevocable tragedy and nothing could be done about it, and I pitied her and this was a salute . . .
to a woman you would hand a rose.
Chapter 11 “Hills Like White Elephant”: The Lost Generation
In the 1920's the White Anglo Saxon Protestant work ethic was the only culture that
was considered valued by the majority of Americans. It was because of ethics such
as this which made the cosmopolitan culture of Paris so alluring.
American Literature went through a profound change in the post WWI era. Up until
this point, American writers were still expected to use the rigid Victorian styles
of the 19th Century. The lost generation writers were above, or apart from, American
society, not only in geographic terms, but also in their style of writing and
subjects they chose to write about. Although they were unhappy with American culture,
the writers were instrumental in changing their country's style of writing, from
Victorian to modern.
During the 1920's a group of writers known as "The Lost Generation" gained
popularity. The term "the lost generation" was coined by Gertrude Stein who is
rumored to have heard her auto-mechanic while in France to have said that his young
workers were, "une generation perdue". This refered to the young workers' poor
auto-mechanic repair skills. Gertrude Stein would take this phrase and use it to
describe the people of the 1920's who rejected American post World War I values. The
three best known writers among The Lost Generation are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest
Hemingway and John Dos Passos. Others among the list are: Sherwood Anderson, Kay
Boyle, Hart Crane, Ford Maddox Ford and Zelda Fitzgerald. Ernest Hemingway,
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perhaps the leading literary figure of the decade, would take Stein's phrase, and use it
as an epigraph for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Because of this novel's
popularity, the term, "The Lost Generation" is the enduring term that has stayed
associated with writers of the 1920's.
The "Lost Generation" defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness apparent in literary
figures during the 1920s. World War I seemed to have destroyed the idea that if you
acted virtuously, good things would happen. Many good, young men went to war and
died, or returned home either physically or mentally wounded (for most, both), and
their faith in the moral guideposts that had earlier given them hope, were no longer
valid...they were "Lost."
These literary figures also criticized American culture in creative fictional
stories which had the themes of self-exile, indulgence (care-free living) and
spiritual alienation. For example, Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise shows the
young generation of the 1920's masking their general depression behind the forced
exuberance of the Jazz Age. Another of Fitzgerald's novels, The Great Gatsby does
the same where the illusion of happiness hides a sad loneliness for the main
characters. Hemingway's novels pioneered a new style of writing which many
generations after tried to imitate. Hemingway did away with the florid prose of
the 19th century Victorian era and replaced it with a lean, clear prose based on
action. H also employed a technique by which he left out essential information of
the story in the belief that omission can sometimes strengthen the plot of the novel.
The novels produced by the writers of the Lost Generation give insight to the
lifestyles that people lead during the 1920's in America, and the literary works
of these writers were innovative for their time and have influenced many future
generations in their styles of writing.
This temporary emigration of American talent into cosmopolitan cities such as Paris,
is significant to American culture in two parts. One, because it aided in the desire
for a cosmopolitan culture to be established and to exist in America. Two, because
when American Culture became more defined, European and other countries began to
recognize a distinctive Democratic American culture.
Who was involved in it?
T.S.Eliot
T.S. Eliot was born into a prominent New England family. His education consisted
of Harvard University, the Sorbonne, and the University of Oxford. Eliot was a
disciple of the author/editor Ezra Pound who will be discussed later. His permanent
residence became London, because Eliot found London more appealing due to its
cultural tradition. Eliot's studies and interests stemmed from anthropology,
mythology, and religion. His works ranged from subjects such as religion, serenity,
the Italian poet Dante, English metaphysical poets, and Elizabethan dramatists.
22
His poetry has no fixed verse, form, or regular pattern, with an occasional rhyme
scheme. Eliot's most celebrated work "The Wasteland" is a long poem, which construes
his views of the modern society, in comparison of the past. Eliot gave Ezra Pound
the poem to edit, and pound and his wife cut through the poem, often emitting large
portions that they felt irrelevant. In "The Wasteland" Eliot incorporates many
footnotes. Some critics claimed it was Eliot's egocentrism that allowed him to do
this, because he felt smarter than the average person did, and they would need the
footnote to decode his writings. Others said he was crazy (he did suffer a nervous
breakdown while writing "The Wasteland." Eliot was an essential figure in the
modernistic times, and his methods of literary analysis, such as he develops in
the work "Sacred Wood" influenced literary criticism for future writers.
From "The Hollow Men"
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was born into an affluent family, which enabled her to spend a
considerable amount of time in Europe. Having such a diverse background, Stein did
not know the conventional life that many Americans lived. Her areas of study include
Radcliffe College, where she studied with the philosopher William James. To further
her education, Stein attended Johns Hopkins Medical School, but she did not have
the drive to finish her degree. Stein used her knowledge of medicine and philosophy
(particularly what she learned from James about stream of consciousness) and
incorporated them into her writings. Stein then went off to Europe, and with her
brother Leo, set up a salon which was visited by such figures as Picasso, Henri
Matisse, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway. With influences such as Picasso,
Stein explored Cubism, with concentration on illumination of the present moment.
A good example of this was the work "Tender Buttons." Stein's first and most
celebrated work was "Three Lives"- where she tried to establish new verb forms,
and a way to enable the reader's consciousness to be able to study the workings
of another mind. Dialogue was a main focus, because dialogue allowed the reader
to understand the perceptions of the characters, while allowing the reader to
understand the perceptions of the self. Freud was also an influence, as seen in
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Stein's attempt to get into ones conscious and unconscious mind while merging the
two together.
From "The Gentle Lena"
Poor Lena had no power to be strong in such trouble. She did not know how to yield
her sickness nor endure. She lost all her little sense of being in her suffering.
She was so scared, and then at her best, Lena, who was patient, sweet, and quiet,
had not self-control, nor any active courage.
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway is probably one of the most celebrated authors of his time. Hemingway
is well known for his fiction. His take on fiction is something invented or imagined.
Main topics were centralized around his love of embellishment of the facts.
Hemingway did not have the education as many other writers of his time, rebelling
against his parents attempts to send him to colleges. His idea of education did
not consist of lectures, and research papers, but of life experiences, and his love
of reading. Hemingway's readings centered around Russian writers such as Tolstoy
and Turgrnev, Tolstoy was a primary influence in Hemingway's writings. WWI also
had a profound impact on him as well, as he was an ambulance driver during the war.
He hated the abstract, especially abstract words such as honor, glory, and courage.
Hemingway held strong to old beliefs, and symbolism, as he used symbolism to depict
the Protestant religion he could not accept. He used observation and description
in his works, rather than rhetoric views. The concept of war fascinated Hemingway,
as well as the experiences one could endure in a lifetime. One of the most famous
works, "Farewell to Arms" depicted the uselessness for words such as honor and glory,
because they were not the first things in a soldier's mind as he walked onto the
battlefield. Hemingway's works were raw, and dilled with the notion that one could
be inside the characters mind, the concrete, and not around in the abstract view
of his works. From "Big Two Hearted River Part I" From the time he had gotten down
off the train and the baggage man had thrown his pack out of the open car door things
had been different. Seney was burned, he knew that. He hiked along the road, sweating
in the sun, climbing to cross the range of hills that separated the railway from
the pure plains.
Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, the son of a doctor and a music
teacher. He began his writing career as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. At age eighteen, he
volunteered to serve as a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I and was sent to Italy, where
he was badly injured by shrapnel. Hemingway later fictionalized his experience in Italy in what
some consider his greatest novel, A Farewell to Arms. In 1921, Hemingway moved to Paris,
where he served as a correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star. In Paris, he fell in with a group of
American and English expatriate writers that included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude
Stein, and Ford Madox Ford. In the early 1920s, Hemingway began to achieve fame as a
24
chronicler of the disaffection felt by many American youth after World War I—a generation of
youth whom Stein memorably dubbed the “Lost Generation.” His novels The Sun Also Rises
(1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929) established him as a dominant literary voice of his time.
His spare, charged style of writing was revolutionary at the time and would be imitated, for better
or for worse, by generations of young writers to come.
After leaving Paris, Hemingway wrote on bullfighting, published short stories and articles,
covered the Spanish Civil War as a journalist, and published his best-selling novel, For Whom the
Bell Tolls (1940). These pieces helped Hemingway build up the mythic breed of masculinity for
which he wished to be known. His work and his life revolved around big-game hunting, fishing,
boxing, and bullfighting, endeavors that he tried to master as seriously as he did writing. In the
1930s, Hemingway lived in Key West, Florida, and later in Cuba, and his years of experience
fishing the Gulf Stream and the Caribbean provided an essential background for the vivid
descriptions of the fisherman’s craft in The Old Man and the Sea. In 1936, he wrote a piece for
Esquire about a Cuban fisherman who was dragged out to sea by a great marlin, a game fish that
typically weighs hundreds of pounds. Sharks had destroyed the fisherman’s catch by the time he
was found half-delirious by other fishermen. This story seems an obvious seed for the tale of
Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea.
A great fan of baseball, Hemingway liked to talk in the sport’s lingo, and by 1952, he badly
“needed a win.”His novel Across the River and Into the Trees, published in 1950, was a disaster.
It was his first novel in ten years, and he had claimed to friends that it was his best yet. Critics,
however, disagreed and called the work the worst thing Hemingway had ever written. Many
readers claimed it read like a parody of Hemingway. The control and precision of his earlier prose
seemed to be lost beyond recovery.
The huge success of The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952, was a much-needed vindication.
The novella won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it likely cinched the Nobel Prize for
Hemingway in 1954, as it was cited for particular recognition by the Nobel Academy. It was the
last novel published in his lifetime.
Although the novella helped to regenerate Hemingway’s wilting career, it has since been met by
divided critical opinion. While some critics have praised The Old Man and the Sea as a new
classic that takes its place among such established American works as William Faulkner’s short
story “The Bear” and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, others have attacked the story as
“imitation Hemingway” and find fault with the author’s departure from the uncompromising
realism with which he made his name.
Because Hemingway was a writer who always relied heavily on autobiographical sources, some
critics, not surprisingly, eventually decided that the novella served as a thinly veiled attack upon
them. According to this reading, Hemingway was the old master at the end of his career being torn
apart by—but ultimately triumphing over—critics on a feeding frenzy. But this reading ultimately
reduces The Old Man and the Sea to little more than an act of literary revenge. The more
compelling interpretation asserts that the novella is a parable about life itself, in particular man’s
25
struggle for triumph in a world that seems designed to destroy him.
Despite the soberly life-affirming tone of the novella, Hemingway was, at the end of his life, more
and more prone to debilitating bouts of depression. He committed suicide in 1961 in Ketchum,
Idaho.
"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he
knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as
strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to
only one-eighth of it being above water." *Death in the Afternoon,* Scribner's, 1932, Chap. 16,
192.
After the publication of his last major work, The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
explained his "iceberg" theory of fiction writing in a Paris Review interview:
If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is
seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate
and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something
because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.
In other words, a story can communicate by subtext; for instance, Hemingway's Hills Like White
Elephants never once mentions the word "abortion," though that is what the story's characters
seem to be discussing. Often, especially in works that follow in Hemingway's footsteps, less is
more.
This statement throws light on the symbolic implications of art. He makes use of physical action
to provide an interpretation of the nature of man's existence. It can be convincingly proved that,
"while representing human life through fictional forms, he has consistently set man against the
background of his world and universe to examine the human situation from various points of
view".
Hemingway is a renowned American author of the Twentieth century who centers his novels
around personal experiences and affections. He is one of the authors named "The Lost
Generation." He could not cope with post-war America, and therefore he introduced a new type of
character in writing called the "code hero". Hemingway is known to focus his novels around code
heroes who struggle with the mixture of their tragic faults and the surrounding environment.
Traits of a typical Hemingway Code Hero are a love of good times, stimulating surroundings, and
strict moral rules, including honesty. The Code Hero always exhibits some form of a physical
wound that serves as his tragic flaw and the weakness of his character.
Hemingway defined the Code Hero as "a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor,
courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful."
The Code Hero measures himself by how well they handle the difficult situations that life throws
at him. In the end the Code Hero will lose because we are all mortal, but the true measure is how a
person faces death.
The Code believes in "Nada," a Spanish word meaning nothing. Along with this, there is no after
26
life.
The Code Hero is typically an individualist and free-willed. Although he believes in the ideals of
courage and honor he has his own set of morals and principles based on his beliefs in honor,
courage and endurance. A code hero never shows emotions; showing emotions and having a
commitment to women shows weakness. Qualities such as bravery, adventuresome and travel also
define the Code Hero.
A final trait of the Code Hero is his dislike of the dark. It symbolizes death and is a source of fear
for him. The rite of manhood for the Code Hero is facing death. However, once he faces death
bravely and becomes a man he must continue the struggle and constantly prove himself to retain
his manhood.
A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Of the many people he created in his books, Hemingway was his own best creation.
Selected Reading
Hills Like White Elephant
By Ernest Hemingway
27
Further Reading
Banquet Speech
As the Laureate was unable to be present at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm,
December 10, 1954, the speech was read by John C. Cabot, United States Ambassador* Having
no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish
to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this prize. No writer who knows
the great writers who did not receive the prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no
need to list these writers. Every one here may make his own list according to his knowledge and
his conscience. It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a
speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart.
Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is
fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he
possesses he will endure or be forgotten. Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for
writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public
stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and
if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is
beyond attainment. He should always try for something that he never been done or that others
have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed. How simple the writing
of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written.
28
It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he
can go, out to where no one can help him. I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should
write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you!
Chapter 12 "The Crucible": American Drama
Compared with poetry and fiction, the American theatre had not always been a powerful forum.
Even before the 1920s, the American stage was known for light, escapist fare, and was a showcase
for actors, not writers. It was Eugene O'Neill who introduced a new level of seriousness and
ushered in a century of great drama. "I want to be an artist or nothing," Eugene O'Neill said at the
29
age of twenty-five. He pursued that goal relentlessly. When he died forty years later, he had
written more than fifty plays, and won the Nobel Prize and four Pulitzer Prizes. O'Neill
experimented with different styles--sometimes realistic, sometimes symbolic, and sometimes
political. Beyond the Horizon(1920), his first play produced on Broadway, was a smash hit. The
frequent a waterfront saloon. A Long Day's Journey into Night(1956), O'Neil's greatest play,
recounted the playwright's traumatic childhood. It was not produced until after his death in 1953.
Tennessee Williams, born in 1911, in rural Mississippi, also became determined to be a writer
while still a teenager. His first major play, The Glass Menagerie, appeared on Broadway in 1945,
and was a huge hit. Based loosely on his own family, the play moved audiences with its
compassion for a mother and sister who cling to their ever-fading dreams. In 1947, Williams
shocked audiences with the intensity of his play A Streetcar Named Desire. The play presented a
hard-hitting stroy, filed with cruelty but also with beauty. Its effect on audiences was so great that
it inspired dozens of writers to imitate it. Williams wrote more than 60 plays. By the time he died
in 1983, he had become one of the most influential-and imitated--writers of all time.
Another stage giant is Arthur Miller(1915-2005). In 1947, his play All My Sons opened on
Broadway to immediate acclaim, establishing Miller as a bright new talent. Two years later, he
won international fame and a Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman(1949),which critics hailed as
a modern American tragedy. "The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged screen in front
of which all American writing plays itself out," Arthur Miller has said. "Whoever is writing in the
United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend
to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to man's
pretensions." In Miller's more than thirty plays, which have won him a Pulitzer Prize and multiple
Tony Awards, he puts in question "death and betrayal and injustice and how we are to account for
this little life of ours."
For nearly six decades, Miller has been creating characters that wrestle with power conflicts,
personal and social responsibility, the repercussions of past actions, and the twin poles of guilt and
hope. In his writing and in his role in public life, Miller articulates his profound political and
moral convictions. He once said he thought theater could "change the world." The Crucible,
which premiered in 1953, is a fictionalization of the Salem witch-hunts of 1692, but it also deals
in an allegorical manner with the House Un-American Activities Committee. In a note to the play,
Miller writes, "A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical
malevolence." Dealing as it did with highly charged current events, the play received unfavorable
reviews and Miller was cold-shouldered by many colleagues. When the political situation shifted,
Death of a Salesman went on to become Miller's most celebrated and most produced play, which
he directed at the People's Art Theatre in Beijing in 1983.
A modern tragedian, Miller says he looks to the Greeks for inspiration, particularly Sophocles. "I
think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to
lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing-his sense of personal dignity," Miller writes.
"From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual
attempting to gain his 'rightful' position in his society." Miller considers the common man "as apt
a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were." Death of a Salesman, which opened in
1949, tells the story of Willy Loman, an aging salesman who makes his way "on a smile and a
shoeshine." Miller lifts Willy's illusions and failures, his anguish and his family relationships, to
the scale of a tragic hero. The fear of being displaced or having our image of what and who we are
30
destroyed is best known to the common man, Miller believes. "It is time that we, who are without
kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly
lead in our time-the heart and spirit of the average man."
Arthur Asher Miller, the son of a women's clothing company owner, was born in 1915 in New
York City. His father lost his business in the Depression and the family was forced to move to a
smaller home in Brooklyn. After graduating from high school, Miller worked jobs ranging from
radio singer to truck driver to clerk in an automobile-parts warehouse. Miller began writing plays
as a student at the University of Michigan, joining the Federal Theater Project in New York City
after he received his degree. His first Broadway play, The Man Who Had All the Luck, opened in
1944 and his next play, All My Sons, received the Drama Critics' Circle Award. His 1949 Death of
a Salesman won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1956 and 1957, Miller was subpoenaed by the House
Un-American Activities Committee and was convicted of contempt of Congress for his refusal to
identify writers believed to hold Communist sympathies. The following year, the United States
Court of Appeals overturned the conviction. In 1959 the National Institute of Arts and Letters
awarded him the Gold Medal for Drama. Miller has been married three times: to Mary Grace
Slattery in 1940, Marilyn Monroe in 1956, and photographer Inge Morath in 1962, with whom he
lives in Connecticut. He and Inge have a daughter, Rebecca. Among his works are A View from the
Bridge, The Misfits, After the Fall, Incident at Vichy, The Price, The American Clock, Broken
Glass, Mr. Peters' Connections, and Timebends, his autobiography. Miller's writing has earned
him a lifetime of honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, seven Tony Awards, two Drama Critics
Circle Awards, an Obie, an Olivier, the John F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the
Dorothy and Lillian Gish prize. He holds honorary doctorate degrees from Oxford University and
Harvard University.
Throughout his life and work, Miller has remained socially engaged and has written with
conscience, clarity, and compassion. As Chris Keller says to his mother in All My Sons, "Once and
for all you must know that there's a universe of people outside, and you're responsible to it."
Miller's work is infused with his sense of responsibility to humanity and to his audience. "The
playwright is nothing without his audience," he writes. "He is one of the audience who happens to
know how to speak."
Selected Reading
31
The Crucible
Arthur Miller
A NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL ACCURACY OF THIS PLAY
This play is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian. Dramatic
purposes have sometimes required many characters to be fused into one; the number of girls
involved in the crying-out has been reduced; Abigail's age has been raised; while there were
several judges of almost equal authority, I have symbolized them all in Hathorne and Danforth.
However, I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest
and most awful chapters in human history. The fate of each character is exactly that of his
historical model, and there is no one in the drama who did not play a similar - and in some cases
exactly the same - role in history.
As for the characters of the persons, little is known about most of them excepting what may be
surmised from a few letters, the trial record, certain broadsides written at the time, and references
to their conduct in sources of varying reliability. They may therefore be taken as creations of my
own, drawn to the best of my ability in conformity with their known behavior, except as indicated
in the commentary I have written for this text.
ACT ONE
(AN OVERTURE)
A small upper bedroom in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris, Salem, Massachusetts, in the
spring of the year 1692.
There is a narrow window at the left. Through its leaded panes the morning sunlight streams. A
candle still burns near the bed, which is at the right. A chest, a chair, and a small table are the
other furnishings. At the back a door opens on the landing of the stairway to the ground floor. The
room gives op an air of clean spareness. The roof rafters are exposed, and the wood colors are raw
and unmellowed.
As the curtain rises, Reverend Parris is discovered kneeling be-side the bed, evidently in prayer.
His daughter, Betty Parris, aged ten, is lying on the bed, inert.
At the time of these events Parris was in his middle forties. In history he cut a villainous path, and
there is very little good to be said for him. He believed he was being persecuted wherever he went,
despite his best efforts to win people and God to his side. In meeting, he felt insulted if someone
rose to shut the door without first asking his permission. He was a widower with no interest in
children, or talent with them. He regarded them as young adults, and until this strange crisis he,
like the rest of Salem, never conceived that the children were anything but thankful for being
permitted to walk straight, eyes slightly lowered, arms at the sides, and mouths shut until bidden
to speak.
32
His house stood in the town?- but we today would hardly call it a village. The meeting house was
nearby, and from this point outward - toward the bay or inland - there were a few small-windowed,
dark houses snuggling against the raw Massachusetts winter. Salem had been established hardly
forty years before. To the European world the whole province was a bar-baric frontier inhabited
by a sect of fanatics who, nevertheless, were shipping out products of slowly increasing quantity
and value.
No one can really know what their lives were like. They had no novelists - and would not have
permitted anyone to read a novel if one were handy. Their creed forbade anything resembling a
theater or vain enjoyment. They did not celebrate Christmas, and a holiday from work meant only
that they must concentrate even more upon prayer.
Which is not to say that nothing broke into this strict and somber way of life. When a new
farmhouse was built, friends assembled to raise the roof, and there would be special foods cooked
and probably some potent cider passed around. There was a good supply of ne'er-do-wells in
Salem, who dallied at the shovelboard in Bridget Bishop's tavern. Probably more than the creed,
hard work kept the morals of the place from spoiling, for the people were forced to fight the land
like heroes for every grain of corn, and no man had very much time for fooling around.
That there were some jokers, however, is indicated by the practice of appointing a two-man patrol
whose duty was to walk forth in the time of God's worship to take notice of such as either lye
about the meeting house, without attending to the word and ordinances, or that lye at home or in
the fields with-out giving good account thereof, and to take the names of such
persons, and to present them to the magistrates, whereby they may be accordingly proceeded
against. This predilection for minding other people's business was time-honored among the people
of Salem, and it undoubtedly created many of the suspicions which were to feed the coming
madness. It was also, in my opinion, one of the things that a John Proctor would rebel against, for
the time of the armed camp had almost passed, and since the country was reasonably - although
not wholly - safe, the old disciplines were beginning to rankle. But, as in all such matters, the
issue was not clear-cut, for danger was still a possibility, and in unity still lay the best promise of
safety.
The edge of the wilderness was close by. The American continent stretched endlessly west, and it
was full of mystery for them. It stood, dark and threatening, over their shoulders night and day, for
out of it Indian tribes marauded from time to time, and Reverend Parris had parishioners who had
lost relatives to these heathen.
The parochial snobbery of these people was partly responsible for their failure to convert the
Indians. Probably they also preferred to take land from heathens rather than from fellow
Christians. At any rate, very few Indians were converted, and the Salem folk believed that the
virgin forest was the Devil's last preserve, his home base and the citadel of his final stand. To the
best of their knowledge the American forest was the last place on earth that was not paying
homage to God.
For these reasons, among others, they carried about an air of innate resistance, even of persecution.
Their fathers had, of course, been persecuted in England. So now they and their church found it
necessary to deny any other sect its freedom; lest their New Jerusalem be defiled and corrupted by
wrong ways and deceitful ideas.
They believed, in short, that they held in their steady hands the candle that would light the world.
We have inherited this belief, and it has helped and hurt us. It helped them with the discipline it
33
gave them. They were a dedicated folk, by and large, and they had to be to survive the life they
had chosen or been born into in this country.
The proof of their belief's value to them may be taken from the opposite character of the first
Jamestown settlement, farther south, in Virginia. The Englishmen who landed there were
motivated mainly by a hunt for profit. They had thought to pick off the wealth of the new country
and then return rich to Eng-land. They were a band of individualists, and a much more ingratiating
group than the Massachusetts men. But Virginia destroyed them. Massachusetts tried to kill off
the Puritans, but they combined; they set up a communal society which, in the beginning, was
little more than an armed camp with an autocratic and very devoted leadership. It was, however,
an autocracy by consent, for they were united from top to bottom by a commonly held ideology
whose perpetuation was the reason and justification for all their sufferings. So their self-denial,
their purposefulness, their suspicion of all vain pursuits, their hard-handed justice, were altogether
perfect instruments for the con-quest of this space so antagonistic to man.
But the people of Salem in 1692 were not quite the dedicated folk that arrived on the Mayflower.
A vast differentiation had taken place, and in their own time a revolution had unseated the royal
government and substituted a junta which was at this moment in power. The times, to their eyes,
must have been out of joint, and to the common folk must have seemed as insoluble and
complicated as do ours today. It is not hard to see how easily many could have been led to believe
that the time of confusion had been brought upon them by deep and darkling forces. No hint of
such speculation appears on the court record, but social disorder in any age breeds such mystical
suspicions, and when, as in Salem, wonders are brought forth from below the social surface, it is
too much to expect people to hold back very long from laying on the victims with all the force of
their frustrations.
The Salem tragedy, which is about to begin in these pages, developed from a paradox. It is a
paradox in whose grip we still live, and there is no prospect yet that we will discover its resolution.
Simply, it was this: for good purposes, even high purposes, the people of Salem developed a
theocracy, a combine of state and religious power whose function was to keep the community
together, and to prevent any kind of disunity that might open it to destruction by material or
ideological enemies. It was forged for a necessary purpose and accomplished that purpose. But all
organization is and must be grounded on the idea of exclusion and prohibition, just as two objects
cannot occupy the same space. Evidently the time came in New England when the repressions of
order were heavier than seemed warranted by the dangers against which the order was organized.
The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the
balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom.
When one rises above the individual villainy displayed, one can only pity them all, just as we
shall be pitied someday. It is still impossible for man to organize his social life without
repressions, and the balance has yet to be struck between order and freedom.
The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression. It was also, and as importantly, a long
overdue opportunity for every-one so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the
cover of accusations against the victims. It suddenly became possible - and patriotic and holy - for
a man to say that Martha Corey had come into his bedroom at night, and that, while his wife was
sleeping at his side, Martha laid herself down on his chest and nearly suffocated him. Of course it
was her spirit only, but his satisfaction at confessing himself was no lighter than if it had been
Martha herself. One could not ordinarily speak such things in public.
34
Long-held hatreds of neighbors could now be openly ex-pressed, and vengeance taken, despite the
Bible's charitable injunctions. Land-lust which had been expressed before by constant bickering
over boundaries and deeds, could now be elevated to the arena of morality; one could cry witch
against one's neighbor and feel perfectly justified in the bargain. Old scores could be settled on a
plane of heavenly combat between Lucifer and the Lord; suspicions and the envy of the miserable
toward the happy could and did burst out in the general revenge.
Reverend Parris is praying now, and, though we cannot hear his words, a sense of his confusion
hangs about him. He mumbles, then seems about to weep; then he weeps, then, prays again; but
his daughter does not stir on the bed.
The door opens, and his Negro slave enters. Tituba is in her forties. Parris brought her with him
from Barbados, where he spent some years as a merchant before entering the ministry. She enters
as one does who can no longer bear to be barred from the sight of her beloved, but she is also very
frightened because her slave sense has warned her that, as always, trouble in this house eventually
lands on her back.
Tituba, already taking a step backward: My Betty be hearty soon?
Parris: Out of here!
Tituba, backing to the door: My Betty not going die...
Parris, scrambling to his feet in a fury: Out of my sight! She is gone. Out of my - He is overcome
with sobs. He clamps his teeth against them and closes the door and leans against it, exhausted.
Oh, my God! God help me! Quaking with fear, mumbling to himself through his sobs, he goes to
the bed and gently takes Betty's hand. Betty. Child. Dear child, Will you wake, will you open up
your eyes! Betty, little one...
He is bending to kneel again when his niece, Abigail Williams, seventeen, enters - a strikingly
beautiful girl, an orphan, with an
Act One 9
endless capacity for dissembling. Now she is all worry and apprehension and propriety.
Abigail: Uncle? He looks to her. Susanna Walcott's here from Doctor Griggs.
Parris: Oh?. Let her come, let her come.
Abigail, leaning out the door to call to Susanna, who is down the hall a few steps: Come in,
Susanna.
Susanna Walcott, a little younger than Abigail, a nervous, hurried girl, enters.
Parris, eagerly: What does the doctor say, child?
Susanna, craning around Parris to get a look at Betty: He bid me come and tell you, reverend sir,
that he cannot discover no medicine for it in his books.
Parris: Then he must search on.
Susanna: Aye, sir, he have been searching' his books since he left you, sir. But he bid me tell you,
that you might look to un-natural things for the cause of it.
Parris, his eyes going wide: No - no. There be no unnatural cause here. Tell him I have sent for
Reverend Hale of Beverly, and Mr. Hale will surely confirm that. Let him look to medicine and
put out all thought of unnatural causes here. There be none.
Susanna: Aye, sir. He bid me tell you. She turns to go.
Abigail: Speak nothing of it in the village, Susanna.
Parris: Go directly home and speak nothing of unnatural causes.
Susanna: Aye, sir. I pray for her. She goes out.
35
Abigail: Uncle, the rumor of witchcraft is all about; I think you'd best go down and deny it
yourself. The parlor's packed with people, sir. I'll sit with her.
Parris, pressed, turns on her: And what shall I say to them? That my daughter and my niece I
discovered dancing like heathen in the forest?
Abigail: Uncle, we did dance; let you tell them I confessed it - and I'll be whipped if I must be.
But they're speaking of witch-craft. Betty's not witched.
Parris: Abigail, I cannot go before the congregation when I know you have not opened with me.
What did you do with her in the forest?
Abigail: We did dance, uncle, and when you leaped out of the bush so suddenly, Betty was
frightened and then she fainted. And there's the whole of it.
Parris: Child. Sit you down.
Abigail, quavering, as she sits: I would never hurt Betty. I love her dearly.
Parris; Now look you, child, your punishment will come in its time. But if you trafficked with
spirits in the forest I must know it now, for surely my enemies will, and they will ruin me with it.
Abigail: But we never conjured spirits.
Parris: Then why can she not move herself since midnight? This child is desperate! Abigail lowers
her eyes. It must come out - my enemies will bring it out. Let me know what you done there.
Abigail, do you understand that I have many enemies?
Abigail: I have heard of it, uncle.
Parris: There is a faction that is sworn to drive me from my pulpit. Do you understand that?
Abigail: I think so, sir.
Parris: Now then, in the midst of such disruption, my own household is discovered to be the very
center of some obscene practice. Abominations are done in the forest Abigail: It were sport, uncle!
Parris, pointing at Betty: You call this sport? She lowers her eyes. He pleads: Abigail, if you know
something that may help the doctor, for God's sake tell it to me. She is silent. I saw Tituba waving
her arms over the fire when I came on you. Why was she doing that? And I heard a screeching and
gibberish coming from her mouth. She were swaying like a dumb beast over that fire!
Abigail: She always sings her Barbados songs, and we dance.
Parris: I cannot blink what I saw, Abigail, for my enemies will not blink it. I saw a dress lying on
the grass.
Abigail, innocently: A dress?
Parris - it is very hard to say: Aye, a dress. And I thought I saw - someone naked running through
the trees!
Abigail, in terror: No one was naked! You mistake yourself, uncle!
PARRIs, with anger: I saw it! He moves from her. Then, re-solved: Now tell me true, Abigail. And
I pray you feel the weight of truth upon you, for now my ministry's at stake, my ministry and
perhaps your cousin's life. Whatever abomination you have done, give me all of it now, for I dare
not be taken unaware when I go before them down there.
Abigail: There is nothing more. I swear it, uncle.
Parris, studies her, then nods, half convinced: Abigail, I have Sought here three long years to bend
these stiff-necked people to me, and now, just now when some good respect is rising for me in the
parish, you compromise my very character. I have given you a home, child, I have put clothes
upon your back - now give me upright answer. Your name in the town - it is entirely white, is it
36
not?
Abigail, with an edge of resentment: Why, I am sure it is, sir. There be no blush about my name.
Parris, to the point: Abigail, is there any other cause than you have told me, for your being
discharged from Goody Proc-tor's service? I have heard it said, and I tell you as I heard it, that she
comes so rarely to the church this year for she will not sit so close to something soiled. What
signified that remark?
Abigail: She hates me, uncle, she must, for I would not be her slave. It's a bitter woman, a lying,
cold, sniveling woman, and I will not work for such a woman!
Parris: She may be. And yet it has troubled me that you are now seven month out of their house,
and in all this time no other family has ever called for your service.
Abigail: They want slaves, not such as I. Let them send to Barbados for that. I will not black my
face for any of them! With ill-concealed resentment at him: Do you begrudge my bed, uncle?
Parris: No - no.
Abigail, in a temper: My name is good in the village! I will not have it said my name is soiled!
Goody Proctor is a gossiping liar!
Enter Mrs. Ann Putnam. She is a twisted soul of forty-five, a death-ridden woman, haunted by
dreams.
Parris, as soon as the door begins to open: No - no, I cannot have anyone'. He sees her, and a
certain deference springs into him, although his worry remains. Why, Goody Putnam, come in.
Mrs. Putnam, full of breath, shiny-eyed: It is a marvel. It is surely a stroke of hell upon you.
Act One Parris: No, Goody Putnam, it is - 1 3
Mrs. Putnam, glancing at Betty: How high did she fly, how high?
Parris: No, no, she never flew Mrs. Putnam, very pleased with it: Why, it's sure she did. Mr. Collins saw her going over
Ingersoll's barn, and come down light as bird, he says!
Parris: Now, look you, Goody Putnam, she never - Enter Thomas Putnam, a well-to-do,
hard-handed landowner, near fifty. Oh, good morning, Mr. Putnam.
Putnam: It is a providence the thing is out now! It is a providence. He goes directly to the bed.
Parris: What's out, sir, what's - ?
Mrs. Putnam goes to the bed.
Putnam, looking down at Betty: Why, her eyes is closed! Look you, Ann.
Mrs. Putnam: Why, that's strange. To Parris: Ours is open. Parris, shocked: Your Ruth is sick?
Mrs. PuTNAM, with vicious certainty: I'd not call it sick; the Devil's touch is heavier than sick.
It's death, y' now, it's death driving into them, forked and hoofed.
Parris: Oh, pray not! Why, how does Ruth ail?
Mrs. Putnam: She ails as she must - she never waked this morning, but her eyes open and she
walks, and hears naught, sees naught, and cannot eat. Her soul is taken, surely.
Parris is struck.
PuTNAM, as though for further details: They say you've sent for Reverend Hale of Beverly?
Parris, with dwindling conviction now: A precaution only. He has much experience in all
demonic-arts, and I Mrs. Putnam: He has indeed; and found a witch in Beverly last year, and let you remember that.
Parris: Now, Goody Ann, they only thought that were a witch, and I am certain there be no
element of witchcraft here.
37
Putnam: No witchcraft! Now look you, Mr. Parris Parris: Thomas, Thomas, I pray you, leap not to witchcraft. I know that you - you least of all,
Thomas, would ever wish so disastrous a charge laid upon me. We cannot leap to witchcraft. They
will howl me out of Salem for such corruption in my house.
A word about Thomas Putnam. He was a man with many grievances, at least one of which
appears justified. Some time before, his wife's brother-in-law, James Bayley, had been turned
down as minister of Salem. Bayley had all the qualifications, and a two-thirds vote into the
bargain, but a faction stopped his acceptance, for reasons that are not clear.
Thomas Putnam was the eldest son of the richest man in the village. He had fought the Indians at
Narragansett, and was deeply interested in parish affairs. He undoubtedly felt it poor payment that
the village should so blatantly disregard his candidate for one of its more important offices,
especially since he regarded himself as the intellectual superior of most of the people around him.
His vindictive nature was demonstrated long before the witch-craft began. Another former Salem
minister, George Burroughs, had had to borrow money to pay for his wife's funeral, and, since the
parish was remiss in his salary, he was soon bankrupt. Thomas and his brother John had
Burroughs jailed for debts the man did not owe. The incident is important only in that Burroughs
succeeded in becoming minister where Bayley,
Thomas Putnam's brother-in-law, had been rejected; the motif of resentment is clear here. Thomas
Putnam felt that his own name and the honor of his family had been smirched by the village, and
he meant to right matters however he could.
Another reason to believe him a deeply embittered man was his attempt to break his father's will,
which left a disproportionate amount to a stepbrother. As with every other public cause in which
he tried to force his way, he failed in this.
So it is not surprising to find that so many accusations against people are in the handwriting of
Thomas Putnam, or that his name is so often found as a witness corroborating the super-natural
testimony, or that his daughter led the crying-out at the most opportune junctures of the trials,
especially when - But we'll speak of that when we come to it.
Putnum - at the moment he is intent upon getting Parris, for whom he has only contempt, to move
toward the abyss: Mr. Parris, I have taken your part in all contention here, and I would continue;
but I cannot if you hold back in this. There are hurtful, vengeful spirits laying hands on these
children.
Parris: But, Thomas, you cannot Putnam: Ann! Tell Mr. Parris what you have done.
MRs. Putnam: Reverend Parris, I have laid seven babies un-baptized in the earth. Believe me, sir,
you never saw more hearty babies born, And yet, each would wither in my arms the very night of
their birth. I have spoke nothing but my heart has clamored intimations. And now, this year, my
Ruth, my only - I see her turning strange. A secret child she has become this year, and shrivels like
a sucking mouth were pulling on her life too. And so I thought to send her to your Tituba Parris: To Tituba! What may Tituba - ?
Mrs. Putnam: Tituba knows how to speak to the dead, Mr. Parris.
Parris: Goody Ann, it is a formidable sin to conjure up the dead!
Mrs. Putnam: I take it on my soul, but who else may surely tell us what person murdered my
babies?
Parris, horrified: Woman!
38
MRs. Putnam: They were murdered, Mr. Parris! And mark this proof! Mark it! Last night my Ruth
were ever so close to their little spirits; I know it, sir. For how else is she struck dumb now except
some power of darkness would stop her mouth? It is a marvelous sign, Mr. Parris!
Putnam: Don't you understand it, sir? There is a murdering witch among us, bound to keep herself
in the dark. Parris turns to Betty, a frantic terror rising in him. Let your enemies make of it what
they will, you cannot blink it more.
Parris, to Abigail: Then you were conjuring spirits last night.
Abigail, whispering: Not I, sir - Tituba and Ruth.
Parris turns now, with new fear, and goes to Betty, looks down at her, and then, gazing off: Oh,
Abigail, what proper payment for my charity! Now I am undone.
Putnam: You are not undone! Let you take hold here. Wait for no one to charge you - declare it
yourself. You have dis-covered witchcraft Parris: In my house? In my house, Thomas? They will topple me with this! They will make of it a
Enter Mercy Lewis, the Putnams?servant, a fat, sly, merciless girl of eighteen.
Mercy: Your pardons. I only thought to see how Betty i
Putnam: Why aren't you home? Who's with Ruth?
Mercy: Her grandma come. She's improved a little, I think - she give a powerful sneeze before.
Mrs. Putnam: Ah, there's a sign of life!
Mercy: I'd fear no more, Goody Putnam. It were a grand sneeze; another like it will shake her wits
together, I'm sure. She goes to the bed to look.
Parris: Will you leave me now, Thomas? I would pray a while alone.
Abigail: Uncle, you're prayed since midnight. Why do you not go down and PARRis: No - no. To Putnam: I have no answer for that crowd. I'll wait till Mr. Hale arrives. To
get Mrs. Putnam to leave: If you will, Goody Ann...
PutnAM: Now look you, sir. Let you strike out against the Devil, and the village will bless you for
it! Come down, speak to them - pray with them. They're thirsting for your word, Mister! Surely
you'll pray with them.
Parris, swayed: I'll lead them in a psalm, but let you say nothing of witchcraft yet. I will not
discuss it. The cause is yet unknown. I have had enough contention since I came; I want no more.
Mrs. Putnam: Mercy, you go home to Ruth, d'y' hear?
Mercy: Aye, mum.
Mrs. Putnam goes out.
Parris, to Abigail: If she starts for the window, cry for me at once.
Abigail: I will, uncle.
Orris, to Putnam: There is a terrible power in her arms to-day. He goes out with Putnam.
Abigail, with hushed trepidation: How is Ruth sick?
Mercy! It's weirdish, I know not - she seems to walk like a dead one since last night.
Abigail, turns at once and goes to Betty, and now, with fear in her voice: Betty? Betty doesn't
move. She shakes her. Now stop this! Betty! Sit up now!
Betty doesn't stir. Mercy comes over.
Mercy: Have you tried beating her? I gave Ruth a good one and it waked her for a minute. Here,
let me have her.
Abigail, holding Mercy back: No, he'll be coming up. Listen, now; if they be questioning us, tell
39
them we danced - I told him as much already,
Mercy: Aye. And what more?
Abigail: He knows Tituba conjured Ruth's sisters to come out of the grave.
Mercy: And what more?
Abigail: He saw you naked.
Mercy: clapping her hands together with a frightened laugh: Oh, Jesus!
Enter Mary Warren, breathless. She is seventeen, a subservient, naive, lonely girl.
Mary Warren: What'll we do? The village is out! I just come from the farm; the whole country's
talking witchcraft! They'll be calling us witches, Abby!
Mercy, pointing and looking at Mary Warren: She means to tell, I know it.
Mary Warren: Abby, we're got to tell. Witchery's a hanging error, a hanging like they done in
Boston two year ago! We must tell the truth, Abby! You'll only be whipped for dancing and the
other things!
Abigail: Oh,-we'll be whipped!
Mary Warren: I never done none of it, Abby. I only looked!
Mercy, moving menacingly toward Mary: Oh, you're a great one for looking aren't you, Mary
Warren? What a grand peeping courage you have!
Betty, on the bed, whimpers. Abigail turns to her at once.
Abigail: Betty? She goes to Betty. Now, Betty, dear, wake up now. It's Abigail. She sits Betty up
and furiously shakes her. I'll beat you, Betty! Betty whimpers. My, you seem improving. I talked
to your papa and I told him everything. So there's nothing to Betty, darts op the bed, frightened of Abigail, and flattens her-self against the wall: I want my
mama!
ABIGAIL, with alarm, as she cautiously approaches Betty: What ails you, Betty? Your mama's
dead and buried.
Betty: I'll fly to Mama. Let me fly! She raises her arms as though to fly, and streaks for the
window, gets one leg out.
Abigail, pulling her away from the window: I told him every-thing,' he knows now, he knows
everything we Betty: You drank blood, Abby! You didn't tell him that!
Abigail: Betty, you never say that again! You will never-Betty: You did, you did! You drank a charm to kill John Proctor's wife! You drank a charm to kill
Goody Proctor!
Abigail, smashes her across the face: Shut it! Now shut it!
Barry, collapsing on the bed: Mama, Mama! She dissolves into sobs.
Abigail: Now look you. All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam's dead sisters.
And that is all. And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the
other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy
reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear
parents?heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I
can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down! She goes to Betty and roughly sits her
up. Now, you - sit up and stop this'
But Betty collapses in her hands and lies inert on the bed.
Marry Warren, with hysterical fright, What's got her? Abigail stares in fright at Betty. Abby, she's
40
going to die! It's a sin to conjure, and we Abigail, starting for Mary: I say shut it, Mary Warren!
Enter John Proctor. On seeing him, Mary Warren leaps in fright,
Proctor was a farmer in his middle thirties, He need not have been a partisan of any faction in the
town, but there is evidence to suggest that he had a sharp and biting way with hypocrites. He was
the kind of man - powerful of body, even-tempered, and not easily led - who cannot refuse support
to partisans with-out drawing their deepest resentment. In Proctor's presence a fool felt his
foolishness instantly - and a Proctor is always marked for calumny therefore.
But as we shall see, the steady manner he displays does not spring from an untroubled soul. He is
a sinner, a sinner not only against the moral fashion of the time, but against his own vision of
decent conduct. These people had no ritual for the washing away of sins. It is another trait we
inherited from them. and it has helped to discipline us as well as to breed hypocrisy among us.
Proctor, respected and even feared in Salem, has come to regard himself as a kind of fraud. But no
hint of this has yet appeared on the surface, and as he enters from the crowded parlor below it is a
man in his prime we see, with a quiet confidence and an unexpressed, hidden force. Mary Warren,
his servant, can barely speak for embarrassment and fear.
Mary Warren: Oh! I'd just going home, Mr. Proctor.
Proctor: Be you foolish, Mary Warren? Be you deaf? I for-bid you leave the house, did I not? Why
shall I pay you? I am looking for you more often than my cows!
Mary Warren: I only come to see the great doings in the world.
Proctor: I'll show you a great doing on your arse one of these days. Now get you home; my wife is
waiting with your work! Trying to retain a shred of dignity, she goes slowly out.
Mercy Lewis, both afraid of him and strangely titillated: I'd best be off. I have my Ruth to watch.
Good morning, Mr. Proctor.
Mercy sidles out. Since Proctor's entrance, Abigail has stood as though on tiptoe, absorbing his
presence, wide-eyed. He glances at her, then goes to Betty on the bed.
Abigail: Gah! I'd almost forgot how strong you are, John Proctor!
Proctor, looking at Abigail now, the faintest suggestion of a knowing smile on his face: What's
this mischief here?
Abigail, with a nervous laugh: Oh, she's only gone silly some-how.
Proctor: The road past my house is a pilgrimage to Salem all morning. The town's mumbling
witchcraft.
Abigail: Oh, posh! Winningly she comes a little closer, with a confidential, wicked air. We were
dancing in the woods last night, and my uncle leaped in on us. She took fright, is all.
Proctor, his smile widening: Ah, you're wicked yet, aren't y? A trill of expectant laughter escapes
her, and she dares come closer, feverishly looking into his eyes. You'll be clapped in the stocks
before you're twenty.
He takes a step to go, and she springs into his path.
Abigail: Give me a word, John. A soft word. Her concentrated desire destroys his smile.
Proctor: No, no, Abby. That's done with.
Abigail, tauntingly: You come five mile to see a silly girl fly? I know you better.
Proctor, setting her firmly out of his path: I come to see what mischief your uncle's brewing now.
With final emphasis: Put it out of mind, Abby.
Abigail, grasping his hand before he can release her: John - I am waiting for you every night.
41
Proctor: Abby, I never give you hope to wait for me.
Abigail, now beginning to anger - she can 抰 believe it: I have something better than hope, I
think!
Proctor: Abby, you'll put it out of mind. I'll not be coming for you more.
Abigail: You're surely sporting with me.
Proctor: You know me better.
Abigail: I know how you clutched my back behind your house and sweated like a stallion
whenever I come near! Or did I dream that? It's she put me out, you cannot pretend it were you. I
saw your face when she put me out, and you loved me then and you do now!
Proctor: Abby, that's a wild thing to say Abigail: A wild thing may say wild things. But not so wild, I think. I have seen you since she put
me out; I have seen you nights.
Proctor: I have hardly stepped off my farm this seven month.
Abigail: I have a sense for heat, John, and yours has drawn me to my window, and I have seen
you looking up, burning in your loneliness. Do you tell me you've never looked up at my
window?
Proctor: I may have looked up.
Abigail, now softening: And you must. You are no wintry man. I know you, John. I know you.
She is weeping. I cannot sleep for dreaming I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house
as though I'd find you coming through some door. She clutches him desperately.
Proctor, gently pressing her from him, with great sympathy but firmly: Child Abigail, with a pash of anger: How do you call me child!
Proctor: Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But I will cut off my hand before I'll
ever reach for you again. Wipe it out of mind. We never touched, Abby.
Abigail: Aye, but we did.
Proctor: Aye, but we did not.
Abigail, with a bitter anger: Oh, I marvel how such a strong man may let such a sickly wife be Proctor, angered - at himself as well: You'll speak nothing of Elizabeth!
Abigail: She is blackening my name in the village! She is telling lies about me! .She is a cold,
sniveling woman, and you bend to her! Let her turn you like a Proctor, shaking her: Do you look for whipping?
A psalm is heard being sung below.
Abigail, in tears: I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my
heart! I never knew what pretense Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all
these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my
eyes? I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet! He
turns abruptly to go out. She rushes to him. John, pity me, pity me!
The words going up to Jesus?are heard in the psalm and Betty claps her ears suddenly and whines
loudly.
Abigail: Betty? She hurries to Betty, who is now sitting up and screaming. Proctor goes to Betty
as Abigail is trying to pull her hands down, calling Betty!?
Proctor, growing unnerved: What's she doing? Girl, what ails you? Stop that wailing!
The singing has stopped in the midst of this, and now Parris rushes in.
Parris: What happened? What are you doing to her? Betty! He rushes to the bed, crying, Betty,
42
Betty! Mrs. Putnam enters, feverish with curiosity, and with her Thomas Putnam and Mercy lewis.
Parris, at the bed, keeps lightly slapping Betty's face, while she moans and tries to get up.
Abigail: She heard you singing and suddenly she's up and screaming?
Mrs. Putnam: The psalm! The psalm! She cannot bear to hear the Lord's name!
Parris: No. God forbid. Mercy, run to the doctor! Tell him what's happened here! Mercy Lewis
rushes out.
Mrs. Putnam: Mark it for a sign, mark it!
Rebecca Nurse, seventy-two, enters. She is white-haired, leaning upon her walking-stick.
Putnam, pointing at the whimpering Betty: That is a notorious sign of witchcraft afoot, Goody
Nurse, a prodigious sign!
Mrs. Putnam: My mother told me that! When they cannot bear to hear the name of Parris, trembling: Rebecca, Rebecca, go to her, we've lost. She suddenly cannot bear to hear the
Lord's Giles Corey, eighty-three, enters. He is knotted with muscle, canny, inquisitive, and still powerful.
Rebecca: There is hard sickness here, Giles Corey, so please to keep the quiet.
GILEs: I've not said a word. No one here can testify I've said a word. Is she going to fly again? I
hear she flies.
Putnam: Man, be quiet now!
Everything is quiet. Rebecca walks across the room to the bed. Gentleness exudes from her. Betty
is quietly whimpering, eyes shut, Rebecca simply stands over the child, who gradually quiets.
And while they are so absorbed, we may put a word in for Rebecca. Rebecca was the wife of
Francis Nurse, who, from all accounts, was one of those men for whom both sides of the
argument had to have respect. He was called upon to arbitrate disputes as though he were an
unofficial judge, and Rebecca also enjoyed the high opinion most people had for him. By the time
of the delusion, they had three hundred acres, and their children were settled in separate
homesteads within the same
26 The Crucible
estate. However, Francis had originally rented the land, and one theory has it that, as he gradually
paid for it and raised hi: social status, there were those who resented his rise.
Another suggestion to explain the systematic campaign against Rebecca, and inferentially against
Francis, is the land war he fought with his neighbors, one of whom was a Putnam. This squabble
grew to the proportions of a battle in the woods be-tween partisans of both sides, and it is said to
have lasted for two days. As for Rebecca herself, the general opinion of her character was so high
that to explain how anyone dared cry her out for a witch - and more, how adults could bring
them-selves to lay hands on her - we must look to the fields and boundaries of that time.
As we have seen, Thomas Putnam's man for the Salem ministry was Bayley. The Nurse clan had
been in the faction that prevented Bayley's taking office. In addition, certain families allied to the
Nurses by blood or friendship, and whose farms were contiguous with the Nurse farm or close to
it, combined to break away from the Salem town authority and set up Tops-field, a new and
independent entity whose existence was resented by old Salemites.
That the guiding hand behind the outcry was Putnam's is, indicated by the fact that, as soon as it
began, this Topsfield-Nurse faction absented themselves from church in protest and disbelief. It
was Edward and Jonathan Putnam who signed the first complaint against Rebecca; and Thomas
Putnam's little daughter was the one who fell into a fit at the hearing and pointed to Rebecca as
43
her attacker. To top it all, Mrs. Putnam - who is now staring at the bewitched child on the bed soon accused Rebecca's spirit of tempting her to iniquity, a charge that had more truth in it than
Mrs. Putnam could know,
Mrs. Putnam, astonished: What have you done?
Rebecca, in thought, now leaves the bedside and sits.
Parris, wondrous and relieved: What do you make of it, Rebecca?
Putnam, eagerly: Goody Nurse, will you go to my Ruth and see if you can wake her?
Rebecca, sitting: I think she'll wake in time. Pray calm your-selves. I have eleven children, and I
am twenty-six times a grandma, and I have seen them all through their silly seasons, and when it
come on them they will run the Devil bowlegged keeping up with their mischief. I think she'll
wake when she tires of it. A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it;
you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back,
Proctor: Aye, that's the truth of it, Rebecca.
Mrs. Putnam: This is no silly season, Rebecca. My Ruth is bewildered, Rebecca; she cannot eat.
Rebecca: Perhaps she is not hungered yet. To Parris: I hope you are not decided to go in search of
loose spirits, Mr. Parris. I've heard. promise of that outside.
Parris: A wide opinion's running in the parish that the Devil may be among us, and I would satisfy
them that they are wrong.
Proctor: Then let you come out and call them wrong. Did you consult the wardens before you
called this minister to look for devils?
Parris: He is not coming to look for devils!
Proctor: Then what's he coming for?
Putnam: There be children dying in the village, Mister!
Proctor: I seen none dying. This society will not be a bag to swing around your head, Mr. Putnam.
To Parris: Did you call a meeting before you - ?
28 The Crucible
PuTNAM: I am sick of meetings; cannot the man turn his head without he have a meeting?
Proctor:, He may turn his head, but not to Hell!
Rebecca: Pray, John, be calm. Pause. He defers to her. Mr. Parris, I think you'd best send
Reverend Hale back as soon as he come. This will set us all to arguing again in the society, and
we thought to have peace this year; I think we ought rely on the doctor now, and good prayer.
Mrs. Putnam: Rebecca, the doctor's baffled!
Rebecca: If so he is, then let us go to God for the cause of it. There is prodigious danger in the
seeking of loose spirits. I fear it, I fear it. Let us rather blame ourselves and PutNAM: How may we blame ourselves? I am one of nine sons; the Putnam seed have peopled
this province. And yet I have but one child left of eight - and now she shrivels!
Rebecca: I cannot fathom that.
Mrs. Putnam, with a growing edge of sarcasm: But I must! You think it God's work you should
never lose a child, nor grand-child either, and I bury all but one? There are wheels within wheels
in this village, and fires within fires!
PuTNAM, to Parris: When Reverend Hale comes, you will proceed to look for signs of witchcraft
here.
Proctor, to Putnam: You cannot command Mr. Parris. We vote by name in this society, not by
acreage.
44
Putnam: I never heard you worried so on this society, Mr. Proctor. I do not think I saw you at
Sabbath meeting since snow flew.
Proctor: I have trouble enough without I come five mile to hear him preach only hellfire and
bloody damnation. Take it to heart, Mr. Parris. There are many others who stay away from church
these days because you hardly ever mention God any more.
Parris, now aroused: Why, that's a drastic charge!
Rebecca: It's somewhat true; there are many that quail to bring their children Parris: I do not preach for children, Rebecca. It is not the children who are unmindful of their
obligations toward this ministry.
Rebecca: Are there really those unmindful?
Parris: I should say the better half of Salem village PuTNAM: And more than that!
Parris: Where is my wood? My contract provides I be supplied with all my firewood. I am waiting
since November for a stick, and even in November I had to show my frostbitten hands like some
London beggar!
Giles: You are allowed six pound a year to buy your wood, Mr. Parris.
Parris: I regard that six pound as part of my salary. I am paid little enough without I spend six
pound on firewood.
Proctor: Sixty, plus six for firewood PARRis: The salary is sixty-six pound, Mr. Proctor! I am not some preaching farmer with a book
under my arm; I am a graduate of Harvard College.
Giles: Aye, and well instructed in arithmetic!
Parris: Mr. Corey, you will look far for a man of my kind at sixty pound a year! I am not used to
this poverty; I left a thrifty business in the Barbados to serve the Lord. I do not fathom it, why am
I persecuted here? I cannot offer one proposition but there be a howling riot of argument. I have
often wondered if the Devil be in it somewhere; I cannot understand you people otherwise.
Proctor: Mr. Parris, you are the first minister ever did demand the deed to this house Parris: Man! Don't a minister deserve a house to live in?
Proctor: To live in, yes. But to ask ownership is like you shall own the meeting house itself; the
last meeting I were at you spoke so long on deeds and mortgages I thought it were an auction.
Parris: I want a mark of confidence, is all! I am your third preacher in seven years. I do not wish
to be put out like the cat whenever some majority feels the whim. You people seem not to
comprehend that a minister is the Lord's man in the parish; a minister is not to be so lightly
crossed and contradicted PutnAM: Aye!
Parris: There is either obedience or the church will burn like Hell is burning!
Proctor: Can you speak one minute without we land in Hell again? I am sick of Hell!
Parris: It is not for you to say what is good for you to hear!
Proctor: I may speak my heart, I think!
Parris, in a fury: What, are we Quakers? We are not Quakers here yet, Mr. Proctor. And you may
tell that to your followers!
Proctor: My followers!
PARRis - now he's out with it: There is a party in this church. l am not blind; there is a faction and
a party.
45
Proctor: Against you?
PuTNAM: Against him and all authority!
PRoctoR: Why, then I must find it and join it.
There is shock among the others.
Rebecca: He does not mean that.
Putnam: He confessed it now!
Proctor: I mean it solemnly, Rebecca; I like not the smell of this authority.?
Rebecca: No, you cannot break charity with your minister. You are another kind, John. Clasp his
hand, make your peace.
Proctor: I have a crop to sow and lumber to drag home. He goes angrily to the door and turns to
Corey with a smile. What say you, Giles, let's find the party. He says there's a party.
Giles: I've changed my opinion of this man, John. Mr. Parris, I beg your pardon. I never thought
you had so much iron in you.
Parris, surprised: Why, thank you, Giles!
Giles: It suggests to the mind what the trouble be among us all these years. To all: Think on it.
Wherefore is everybody suing everybody else? Think on it now, it's a deep thing, and dark as a pit.
l have been six time in court this year Proctor, familiarly, with warmth, although he knows he is approaching the edge of Giles tolerance
with this: Is it the Devil's fault that a man cannot say you good morning without you clap him for
defamation? You've old, Giles, and you've not hearing so well as you did.
Giles - he cannot be crossed: John Proctor, I have only last month collected four pound damages
for you publicly saying I burned the roof off your house, and I Act One Proctor: Against you? Putnam: Against him and all authority! PRoctoR: Why, then I must
find it and join it. There is shock among the others. Rebecca: He does not mean that. Putnam: He
confessed it now!
Proctor: I mean it solemnly, Rebecca; I like not the smell of this authority.?
Rebecca: No, you cannot break charity with your minister. You are another kind, John. Clasp his
hand, make your peace.
Proctor: I have a crop to sow and lumber to drag home. He goes angrily to the door and turns to
Corey with a smile. What say you, Giles, let's find the party. He says there's a party.
Giles: I've changed my opinion of this man, John. Mr. Parris, I beg your pardon. I never thought
you had so much iron in you.
Parris, Surprised: Why, thank you, Giles!
Giles: It suggests to the mind what the trouble be among us all these years. To all: Think on it.
Wherefore is everybody suing everybody else? Think on it now, it's a deep thing, and dark as a pit.
I have been six time in court this year Proctor, familiarly, with warmth, although he knows he is approaching the edge of Giles tolerance
with this: Is it the Devil's fault that a man cannot say you good morning without you clap him for
defamation? You've old, Giles, and you've not hearing so well as you did.
GILEs - he cannot be crossed: John Proctor, I have only last month collected four pound damages
for you publicly saying I burned the roof off your house, and I Proctor, laughing: I never said no such thing, but I've paid you for it, so I hope I can call you deaf
without charge. Now come along, Giles, and help me drag my lumber home.
PuTNAM: A moment, Mr. Proctor. What lumber is that you've dragging if I may ask you?
46
Proctor: My lumber. From out my forest by the riverside.
Putnam: Why, we are surely gone wild this year. What anarchy is this? That tract is in my bounds,
it's in my bounds, Mr. Proctor.
Proctor: In your bounds! indicating Rebecca: I bought that tract from Goody Nurse's husband five
months ago.
PuTNAM: He had no right to sell it. It stands clear in my grand-father's will that all the land
between the river and Proctor: Your grandfather had a habit of willing land that never belonged to him, if I may say it
plain.
Giles: That's God's truth; he nearly willed away my north pasture but he knew I'd break his fingers
before he'd set his name to it. Let's get your lumber home, John. I feel a sudden will to work
coming on.
Putnam: You load one oak of mine and you'll fight to drag it home!
GiLEs: Aye, and we'll win too, Putnam - this fool and I. Come on! He turns to Proctor and starts
out.
Putnam: I'll have my men on you, Corey! I'll clap a writ on you!
Enter Reverend John Hale of Beverly.
Mr. Hale is nearing forty, a tight-skinned, eager-eyed intellectual. This is a beloved errand for him;
on being called here to ascertain witchcraft he felt the pride of the specialist whose unique
knowledge has at last been publicly called for. Like almost all men of learning, he spent a good
deal of his time pondering the invisible world, especially since he had himself encountered a
witch in his parish not long before. That woman, however, turned into a mere pest under his
searching scrutiny, and the child she had allegedly been afflicting recovered her normal behavior
after Hale had given her his kindness and a few days of rest in his own house. However, that
experience never raised a doubt in his mind as to the reality of the under-world or the existence of
Lucifer's many-faced lieutenants. And his belief is not to his discredit. Better minds than Hale's
were - and still are - convinced that there is a society of spirits beyond our ken. One cannot help
noting that one of his lines has never yet raised a laugh in any audience that has seen this play; it
is his assurance that ?We cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise. Evidently we are
not quite certain even now whether diabolism is holy and not to be scoffed at. And it is no
accident that we should be so bemused.
Like Reverend Hale and the others on this stage, we conceive the Devil as a necessary part of a
respectable view of cosmology. Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotions and
actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer. It is as impossible for most men to conceive
of a morality without sin as of an earth without sky. Since 1692 a great but superficial change has
wiped out God's beard and the Devil's horns, but the world is still gripped between two
diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are
attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined
to the same phenomenon - such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few
who have grasped the history of ideas. When it is recalled that until the Christian era the
underworld was never regarded as a hostile area, that all gods were useful and essentially friendly
to man despite occasional lapses; when we see the steady and methodical inculcation into
humanity of the idea of man's worthlessness - until redeemed - the necessity of the Devil may
become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to
47
whip men into a surrender to a particular church or church-state.
Our difficulty in believing the - for want of a better word - political inspiration of the Devil is due
in great part to the fact that he is called up and damned not only by our social antagonists but by
our own side, whatever it may be. The Catholic Church, through its Inquisition, is famous for
cultivating Lucifer as the arch-fiend, but the Church's enemies relied no less upon the Old Boy to
keep the human mind enthralled. Luther was himself accused of alliance with Hell, and he in turn
accused his enemies. To complicate matters further, he believed that he had had contact with the
Devil and had argued theology with him. I am not surprised at this, for at my own university a
professor of history - a Lutheran, by the way - used to assemble his graduate students, draw the
shades, and commune in the classroom with Erasmus. He was never, to my knowledge, officially
scoffed at for this, the reason being that the university officials, like most of us, are the children of
a history which still sucks at the Devil's teats. At this writing, only England has held back before
the temptations of contemporary diabolism. In the countries of the Communist ideology, all
resistance of any import is linked to the totally malign capitalist succubl, and in America any man
who is not reactionary in his views is open to the charge of alliance with the Red hell. Political
opposition, thereby, is given an inhumane overlay which then justifies the abrogation of all
normally applied customs of civilized inter-course. A political policy is equated with moral right,
and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence. Once such an equation is effectively made,
society becomes a congerie of plots and counterplots, and the main role of government changes
from that of the arbiter to that of the scourge of God.
The results of this process are no different now from what they ever were, except sometimes in
the degree of cruelty inflicted, and not always even in that department. Normally the actions and
deeds of a man were all that society felt comfortable in judging, The secret intent of an action was
left to the ministers, priests, and rabbis to deal with. When diabolism rises, however, actions are
the least important manifests of the true nature of a man. The Devil, as Reverend Hale said, is a
wily one, and, until an hour before he fell, even God thought him beautiful in Heaven.
The analogy, however, seems to falter when one considers that, while there were no witches then,
there are Communists and capitalists now, and in each camp there is certain proof that spies of
each side are at work undermining the other. But this is a snobbish objection and not at all
warranted by the facts. I have no doubt that people were communing with, and even worshiping,
the Devil in Salem, and if the whole truth could be known in this case, as it is in others, we should
discover a regular and conventionalized' propitiation of the dark spirit, One certain evidence of
this is the confession of Tituba, the slave of Reverend Parris, and another is the behavior of the,
children who were known to have indulged in sorceries with her.
There are accounts of similar klatches in Europe, where the daughters of the towns would
assemble at night and, sometimes with fetishes, sometimes with a selected young man, give
them-selves to love, with some bastardly results. The Church, sharp-eyed as it must be when gods
long dead are brought to life, condemned these orgies as witchcraft and interpreted them, rightly,
as a resurgence of the Dionysiac forces it had crushed long before. Sex, sin, and the. Devil were
early linked, and so they continued to be in Salem, and are today. From all accounts there are no
more puritanical mores in the world than those enforced by the Communists in Russia, where
women's fashions, for instance, are as prudent and all-covering as any American Baptist would
desire. The divorce laws lay a tremendous responsibility on the father for the care of his children.
Even the
48
36 The Crucible
laxity of divorce regulations in the early years of the revolution was undoubtedly a revulsion from
the nineteenth-century Victorian immobility of marriage and the consequent hypocrisy that
developed from it. If for no other reasons, a state so powerful, so jealous of the uniformity of its
citizens, cannot long tolerate the atomization of the family. And yet, in American eyes at least,
there remains the conviction that the Russian attitude toward women is lascivious. It is the Devil
working again, just as he is working within the Slav who is shocked at the very idea of a woman's
disrobing herself in a burlesque show. Our opposites are always robed in sexual sin, and it is from
this unconscious conviction that demonology gains both its attractive sensuality and its capacity to
infuriate and frighten.
Coming into Salem now, Reverend Hale conceives of himself much as a young doctor on his first
call. His painfully acquired armory of symptoms, catchwords, and diagnostic procedures are now
to be put to use at last. The road from Beverly is unusually busy this morning, and he has passed a
hundred rumors that make him smile at the ignorance of the yeomanry in this most precise science.
He feels himself allied with the best minds of Europe - kings, philosophers, scientists, and
ecclesiasts of all churches. His goal is light, goodness and its preservation, and he knows the
exaltation of the blessed whose intelligence, sharpened by minute examinations of enormous
tracts, is finally called upon to face what may be a bloody fight with the Fiend himself.
He appears loaded down with half a dozen heavy books. Hale: Pray you, someone take these!
. Parris, delighted: Mr. Hale! Oh! It's good to see you again!
Taking some books: My, they've heavy!
Hale, setting down his books: They must be; they are weighted with authority.
Act One Parris, a little scared: Well, you do come prepared! 37
Hale: We shall need hard study if it comes to tracking down the Old Boy. Noticing Rebecca: You
cannot be Rebecca Nurse?
Rebecca: I am, sir. Do you know me?
Hale: It's strange how I knew you, but I suppose you look as such a good soul should. We have all
heard of your great charities in Beverly.
Parris: Do you know this gentleman? Mr. Thomas Putnam. And his good wife Ann.
Hale: Putnam! I had not expected such distinguished company, sir.
Putnam, pleased: It does not seem to help us today, Mr. Hale. We look to you to come to our
house and save our child.
Hale: Your child ails too?
Mrs. Putnam: Her soul, her soul seems flown away. She sleeps and yet she walks...
PutNAM: She cannot eat.
Hale: Cannot eat! Thinks on it, Then, to Proctor and Giles Corey: Do you men have addicted
children?
Parris: No, no, these are farmers. John Proctor Giles Corey: He don't believe in witches.
Proctor, to Hale: I never spoke on witches one way or the other. Will you come, Giles?
Giles: No - no, John, I think not. I have some few queer questions of my own to ask this fellow.
Proctor: I've heard you to be a sensible man, Mr. Hale. I hope you'll leave some of it in Salem.
38 The Crucible
Proctor goes. Hale stands embarrassed for an instant.
49
Parris, quickly: Will you look at my daughter, sir? Leads Hale to the bed. She has tried to leap out
the window; we discovered her this morning on the highroad, waving her arms as though she'd
fly.
Hale, narrowing his eyes. Tries to fly.
Putnam: She cannot bear to hear the Lord's name, Mr. Hale; that's a sure sign of witchcraft afloat.
Hale, holding up his hands: No, no. Now let me instruct you. We cannot look to superstition in
this. The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone, and I must tell you all
that I shall not proceed unless you are prepared to believe me if I should find no bruise of hell
upon her.
Parris: It is agreed, sir - it is agreed - we will abide by your judgment.
Hale: Good then. He goes to the bed, looks down at Betty. To Parris: Now, sir, what were your
first warning of this strangeness?
Parris: Why, sir - I discovered her - indicating Abigail - and my niece and ten or twelve of the
other girls, dancing in the forest last night.
Hale, surprised: You permit dancing?
Parris: No, no, it were secret MRs. Putnam, unable to wait: Mr. Parris's slave has knowledge of conjuring sir.
Parris, to Mrs. Putnam: We cannot be sure of that, Goody Ann Mrs. Putnam, frightened, very softly: I know it, sir. I sent my child - she should learn from Tituba
who murdered her sisters.
Parris, a little scared: Well, you do come prepared!
Hale: We shall need hard study if it comes to tracking down the Old Boy. Noticing Rebecca: You
cannot be Rebecca Nurse?
Rebecca: I am, sir. Do you know me?
Hale: It's strange how I knew you, but I suppose you look as such a good soul should. We have all
heard of your great charities in Beverly.
Parris: Do you know this gentleman? Mr. Thomas Putnam. And his good wife Ann.
Hale: Putnam! I had not expected such distinguished company,
sir.
Putnam, pleased, It does not seem to help us today, Mr. Hale. We look to you to come to our house
and save our child.
Hale: Your child ails too?
MRs. Putnam: Her soul, her soul seems flown away. She sleeps and yet she walks...
Putnam: She cannot eat.
Hale: Cannot eat! Thinks on it. Then, to Proctor and Giles Corey: Do you men have afflicted
children?
Parris: No, no, these are farmers. John Proctor Giles Corey: He don't believe in witches.
Proctor to Hale: I never spoke on witches one way or the other. Will you come, Giles?
Giles: No - no, John, I think not. I have some few queer questions of my own to ask this fellow.
Proctor: I've heard you to be a sensible man, Mr. Hale. I hope you'll leave some of it in Salem.
38 The Crucible
Proctor goes. Hale stands embarrassed for an instant.
Parris, quickly: Will you look at my daughter, sir? Leads Hale to the bed. She has tried to leap out
50
the window; we discovered her this morning on the highroad, waving her arms as though she'd
fly.
Hale, narrowing his eyes: Tries to fly.
Putnam: She cannot bear to hear the' Lord's name, Mr. Hale; that's a sure sign of witchcraft afloat.
Hale, holding up his hands: No, no. Now let me instruct you. We cannot look to superstition in
this. The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone, and I must tell you all
that I shall not proceed unless you are prepared to believe me if I should find no bruise of hell
upon her.
Parris: It is agreed, sir - it is agreed - we will abide by your judgment.
Hale: Good then. He goes to the bed, looks down at Betty. To Parris: Now, sir, what were your
first warning of this strangeness?
Parris: Why, sir - I discovered her - indicating Abigail - and my niece and ten or twelve of the
other girls, dancing in the forest last night.
Hale, surprised: You permit dancing?
Parris: No, no, it were secret Mrs. Putnam, unable to wait: Mr. Parris's slave has knowledge of conjuring sir.
Parris, to Mrs. Putnam: We cannot be sure of that, Goody Ann Mrs. Putnam, frightened, very softly: I know it, sir. I sent my child - she should learn from Tituba
who murdered her sisters.
Rebecca horrified: Goody Ann! You sent a child to conjure up the dead?
Mrs. Putnam: Let God blame me, not you, not you, Rebecca! I'll not have you judging me any
more! To Hale: Is it a natural work to lose seven children before they live a day?
Parris: Sssh!
Rebecca, with great pain, turns her face away. There is a pause.
Hale: Seven dead in childbirth.
Mrs. Putnam, softly: Aye. Her voice breaks; she looks up at him. Silence. Hale is impressed.
Parris looks to him. He goes to his books, opens one, turns pages, then reads. All wait, avidly.
Parris, hushed: What book is that?
Mrs. Putnam: What's there, sir?
Hale, with a tasty love of intellectual pursuit: Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and
calculated. In these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises. Here are all your
familiar spirits - your incubi and succubi; your witches that go by land, by air, and by sea; your
wizards of the night and of the day. Have no fear now - we shall find him out if he has come
among us, and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face! He starts for the bed.
Rebecca: Will it hurt the child, sir?
Hale: I cannot tell. If she is truly in the Devil's grip we may have to rip and tear to get her free.
REBECCA: I think I'll go, then. I am too old for this. She rises.
Parris, striving for conviction: Why, Rebecca, we may open up the boil of all our troubles today!
Rebecca: Let us hope for that. I go to God for you, sir.
Parris, with trepidation - and resentment: I hope you do not mean we go to Satan here! Slight
pause.
Rebecca: I wish I knew. She goes out; they feel resentful of her note of moral superiority.
PuTNAM, abruptly: Come, Mr. Hale, let's get on. Sit you here.
Giles: Mr. Hale, I have always wanted to ask a learned man - what signifies the reading of strange
51
books?
Hale: What books?
Giles: I cannot tell; she hides them, Hale; Who does this?
Giles: Martha, my wife. I have waked at night many a time and found her in a corner, reading of a
book. Now what do you make of that?
Hale: Why, that's not necessarily Giles: It discomfits me! Last night - mark this - I tried and tried and could not say my prayers.
And then she close her book and walks out of the house, and suddenly - mark this - I could pray
again!
Old Giles must be spoken for, if only because his fate was to be so remarkable and so different
from that of all the others. He was in his early eighties at this time, and was the most comical hero
in the history. No man has ever been blamed for so much. If a cow was missed, the first thought
was to look for her around Corey's house; a fire blazing up at night brought suspicion of arson to
his door. He didn't give a hoot for public opinion, and only in his last years - after he had married
Martha - did he bother much with the church. That she stopped his prayer is very probable, but he
forgot to say that he'd only recently learned any prayers and it didn't take much to make him
stumble over them. He was a crank and a nuisance, but withal a deeply innocent and brave man.
In court once he was asked if it were true that he had been frightened by the strange behavior of a
hog and had then said he knew it to be the Devil in an animal's shape. That frighted you he was
asked. He forgot everything but the word frighted, and instantly replied, I do not know that I ever
spoke that word in my life,?
Hale: Ah! The stoppage of prayer - that is strange. I'll speak further on that with you.
Giles: I'd not saying she's touched the Devil, now, but I'd admire to know what books she reads
and why she hides them. ' She'll not answer me, y see.
Hale: Aye, we'll discuss it. To all: Now mark me, if the Devil is in her you will witness some
frightful wonders in this room, so please to keep your wits about you. Mr. Putnam, stand close in
case she flies. Now, Betty, dear, will you sit up? Putnam comes in closer, ready-handed. Hale sits
Betty up, but she hangs limp in his hands. Hmmm. He observes her carefully. The others watch
breathlessly. Can you hear me? I am John Hale, minister of Beverly. I have come to help you, dear.
Do you remember my two little girls in Beverly? She does not stir in his hands.
Parris, in fright: How can it be the Devil? Why would he choose my house to strike? We have all
manner of licentious . people in the village!
Hale: What victory would the Devil have to win a soul already bad? It is the best the Devil wants,
and who is better than the minister?
Giles: That's deep, Mr, Parris, deep, deep!
Paaris, with resolution now: Betty! Answer Mr. Hale! Betty! Hale: Does someone afflict you,
child? It need not be a woman, mind you, or a man. Perhaps some bird invisible to others comes
to you - perhaps a pig, a mouse, or any beast at all. Is there some figure bids you fly? The child
remains limp in his hands. In silence he lays her back on the pillow Now, holding out his hands
toward her, he intones: In nomine Domini Sabaoth sui filiique ite ad infernos. She does not stir.
He turns to Abigail, his eyes narrowing. Abigail, what sort of dancing were you doing with her in
the forest?
Abigail: Why - common dancing is all.
Parris: I think I ought to say that I - I saw a kettle in the grass where they were dancing.
52
Abigail: That were only soup.
Hale: What sort of soup were in this kettle, Abigail?
Abigail: Why, it were beans - and lentils, I think, and Hale: Mr. Parris, you did not notice, did you, any living thing in the kettle? A mouse, perhaps, a
spider, a frog - ?
Parris, fearfully: I - do believe there were some movement - in the soup.
Abigail: That jumped in, we never put it in!
Hale, quickly: What jumped in?
Abigail: Why, a very little frog jumped Parris: A frog, Abby!
Hale, grasping Abigail: Abigail, it may be your cousin is dying. Did you call the Devil last night?
Abigail: I never called him! Tituba, Tituba...
Parris, blanched: She called the Devil?
Hale: I should like to speak with Tituba,
Parris: Goody Ann, will you bring her up? Mrs, Putnam exits.
Hale: How did she call him?
Abigail: I know not - she spoke Barbados.
Hale: Did you feel any strangeness when she called him? A sudden cold wind, perhaps? A
trembling below the ground?
Abigail: I didn't see no Devil! Shaking Betty: Betty, wake up. Betty! Betty!
Hale: You cannot evade me, Abigail. Did your cousin drink any of the brew in that kettle?
Abigail: She never drank it!
Hale: Did you drink it?
Abigail: No, sir!
Hale ". Did Tituba ask you to drink it?
Abigail: She tried, but I refused.
Hale: Why are you concealing? Have you sold yourself to Lucifer?
Abigail: I never sold myself! I'd a good girl! I'd a proper girl! Mrs. Putnam enters with Tituba, and
instantly Abigail points at Tituba.
Abigail: She made me do it! She made Betty do it!
TiTUBA, shocked and angry: Abby!
Abigail: She makes me drink blood!
Parris: Blood!!
Mrs. Putnam: My baby's blood?
TiTUBA: No, no, chicken blood. I give she chicken blood!
Hale: Woman, have you enlisted these children for the Devil?
TiTUBA: No, no, sir, I don't truck with no Devil!
Hale: Why can she not wake? Are you silencing this child?
TiTUBA: I love me Betty!
Hale; You have sent your spirit out upon this child, have you not? Are you gathering souls for the
Devil?
Abigail: She sends her spirit on me in church; she makes me laugh at prayer!
Parris: She have often laughed at prayer!
Abigail: She comes to me every night to go and drink blood!
53
TiTUBA: You beg me to conjure! She beg me make charm Abigail: Don't lie! To Hale: She comes to me while I sleep; she's always making me dream
corruptions!
TiTUBA: Why you say that, Abby?
Abigail: Sometimes I wake and find myself standing in the open doorway and not a stitch on my
body! I always hear her laughing in my sleep. I hear her singing her Barbados songs and tempting
me with TiTUBA: Mister Reverend, I never Hale, resolved now: Tituba, I want you to wake this child.
TiTUBA: I have no power on this child, sir.
Hale: You most certainly do, and you will free her from it now! When did you compact with the
Devil?
Tituba: I don't compact with no Devil!
Parris: You will confess yourself or I will take you out and whip you to your death, Tituba!
PuTNAM: This woman must be hanged! She must be taken and hanged!
Tituba, terrified, falls to her knees: No, no, don't hang Tituba! I tell him I don't desire to work for
him, sir.
Parris: The Devil?
Hale: Then you saw him! Tituba weeps. Now Tituba, I know that when we bind ourselves to Hell
it is very hard to break with it. We are going to help you tear yourself free Tituba, frightened by the coming process: Mister Reverend, I do believe somebody else be
witchin?these children.
Hale: Who?
Tituba: I don't know, sir, but the Devil got him numerous witches.
Hale: Does he! It is a clue. Tituba, look into my eyes. Come, look into me. She raises her eyes to
his fearfully. You would be a good Christian woman, would you not, Tituba?
TiTUBA: Aye, sir, a good Christian woman.
Hale: And you love these little children?
Tituba: Oh, yes, sir, I don't desire to hurt little children.
Hale: And you love God, Tituba?
TiTUBA: I love God with all my bein?
Hale: Now, in God's holy name Tituba: Bless Him. Bless Him. She is rocking on her knees, sobbing in terror.
Hale: And to His glory Tituba: Eternal glory. Bless Him - bless God...
Hale: Open yourself, Tituba - open yourself and let, God's holy light shine on you.
TiTUBA: Oh, bless the Lord.
Hale: When the Devil comes to you does he ever come - with another person? She stares up into
his face, Perhaps another person in the village? Someone you know.
Parris: Who came with him?
Putnam: Sarah Good? Did you ever see Sarah Good with him? Or Osburn?
Parris: Was it man or woman came with him?
TiTUBA: Man or woman. Was - was woman.
Parris: What woman? A woman, you said. What woman?
54
TiTUBA: It was black dark, and I PaRRis: You could see him, why could you not see her?
Tituba: Well, they was always talking; they was always running round and carrying on Parris: You mean out of Salem? Salem witches?
TiTUBA: I believe so, yes, sir.
Now Hale takes her hand. She is surprised.
Hale: Tituba. You must have no fear to tell us who they are, do you understand? We will protect
you. The Devil can never overcome a minister. You know that, do you not?
Tituba, kisses Hale's hand: Aye, sir, oh, I do.
Hale: You have confessed yourself to witchcraft, and that speaks a wish to come to Heaven's side.
And we will bless you, Tituba.
Tituba, deeply relieved: Oh, God bless you, Mr. Hale!
Hale, with rising exaltation: You are God's instrument put in our hands to discover the Devil's
agents among us. You are selected, Tituba, you are chosen to help us cleanse our village. So speak
utterly, Tituba, turn your back on him and face God - face God, Tituba, and God will protect you.
TITUBA, joining with him: Oh, God, protect Tituba!
Hale, kindly: Who came to you with the Devil? Two? Three? Four? How many?
Tituba pants, and begins rocking back and forth again, staring ahead.
Tituba: There was four. There was four.
Parris, pressing in on her: Who? Who? Their names, their names!
Tituba, suddenly bursting out: Oh, how many times he bid me .kill you, Mr. Parris!
Parris: Kill me!
TiTUBA, in a fury: He say Mr. Parris must be kill! Mr. Parris no goodly man, Mr. Parris mean
man and no gentle man, and he bid me rise out of my bed and cut your throat! They gasp. But I
tell him No! I don't hate that man. I don't want kill that man. But he say, You work for me, Tituba,
and I make you free! I give you pretty dress to wear, and put you way high up in the air, and you
gone fly back to Barbados! And I say, You lie, Devil, you lie! And then he come one stormy night
to me, and he say, look! I have white people belong to me. And I look - and there was Goody
Good.
Parris: Sarah Good!
TiTUBA, rocking and weeping: Aye, sir, and Goody Osburn.
Mrs. Putnam: I knew it! Goody Osburn were midwife to me three times. I begged you, Thomas,
did I not? I begged him not to call Osburn because I feared her. My babies always shriveled in her
hands!
Hale: Take courage, you must give us all their names. How can you bear to see this child suffering?
Look at her, Tituba. He is indicating Betty on the bed. Look at her God-given innocence; her soul
is so tender; we must protect her, Tituba; the Devil is out and preying on her like a beast upon the
mesh of the pure lamb. God will bless you for your help.
48 The Crucible
Abigail rises, staring as though inspired, and cries out.
' Abigail: I want to open myself! They turn to her, startled. She is enraptured, as though in a pearly
light. I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him; I
wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw
Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!
55
As she is speaking, Betty is rising from the bed, a fever in her eyes, and picks up the chant.
Betty, staring too: I saw George Jacobs with the Devil! I saw Goody Howe with the Devil!
Parris: She speaks! He rushes to embrace Betty. She speaks! Hale: Glory to God! It is broken,
they are free!
Betty, calling out hysterically and with great relief: I saw Martha Bellows with the Devil!
Abigail: I saw Goody Sibber with the Devil! It is rising to o great glee.
PutNAM: The marshal, I'll call the marshal!
Parris is shouting a prayer of thanksgiving.
BETTY: I saw Alice Barrow with the Devi1!
The curtain begins to fall.
Hale, as Putnam goes out: Let the marshal bring irons!
Abigail: I saw Goody Hawkins with the Devil!
BeTTY: I saw Goody Bibber with the Devil!
Abigail: I saw Goody Booth with the Devil!
On their ecstatic cries
THE CURTAIN FALLS
ACT TWO
The common room of Proctor's house, eight days later.
At the right is a door opening on the fields outside. A fireplace is at the left, and behind it a
stairway leading upstairs. It is the low, dark, and rather long living room of the time. As the
curtain rises, the room is empty. From above, Elizabeth is heard softly singing to the children.
Presently the door opens and John Proctor enters, carrying his gun. He glances about the room as
he comes toward the fireplace, then halts for an instant as he hears her singing. He continues on to
the fireplace, leans the gun against the wall as he swings a pot out of the fire and smells it. Then
he lifts out the ladle and tastes. He is not quite pleased. He reaches to a cupboard, takes a pinch of
salt, and drops it into the pot. As he is tasting again, her footsteps are heard on the stair. He swings
the pot into the fireplace and goes to a basin and washes his hands and face, Elizabeth enters.
Elizabeth: What keeps you so late? It's almost dark.
Proctor: I were planting far out to the forest edge. Elizabeth: Oh, you've done then.
Proctor: Aye, the farm is seeded. The boys asleep?
Elizabeth: They will be soon. And she goes to the fireplace, proceeds to ladle up stew in a dish.
Proctor: Pray now for a fair summer.
Elizabeth: Aye.
Proctor: Are you well today?
Elizabeth: I am. She brings the plate to the table, and, indi-cating the food:. It is a rabbit.
Proctor, going to the table: Oh, is it! In Jonathan's trap?
Elizabeth: No, she walked into the house this afternoon; I found her sitting in the corner like she
come to visit.
Proctor: Oh, that's a good sign walking in.
Elizabeth: Pray God. It hurt my heart to strip her, poor rabbit. She sits and watches him taste it.
Proctor: It's well seasoned.
Elizabeth, blushing with pleasure: I took great care. She's tender?
Proctor: Aye. He eats. She watches him. I think we'll see green fields soon. It's warm as blood
56
beneath the clods.
Elizabeth: That's well.
Proctor eats, then looks up.
Proctor: If the crop is good I'll buy George Jacob's heifer. How would that please you?
Elizabeth: Aye, it would.
Proctor, with a grin: I mean to please you, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth - it is hard to say: I know it, John.
He gets up, goes to her, kisses her. She receives it. With a certain disappointment, he returns to the
table.
Act Two Proctor, as gently as he can: Cider?
Elizabeth, with a sense of reprimanding herself for having forgot: Aye! She gets up and goes and
pours a glass for him. He now arches his back.
Proctor: This farm's a continent when you go foot by foot dropping seeds in it.
Elizabeth, coming with the cider: It must be.
Proctor, drinks a long draught, then, putting the glass down: You ought to bring some flowers in
the house.
Elizabeth: Oh! I forgot! I will tomorrow.
Proctor: It's winter in here yet. On Sunday let you come with me, and we'll walk the farm together;
I never see such a load of flowers on the earth. With good feeling he goes and looks up at the sky
through the open doorway. Lilacs have a purple smell. Lilac is the smell of nightfall, I think.
Massachusetts is a beauty in the spring!
Elizabeth: Aye, it is.
There is a pause. She is watching him from the table as he stands there absorbing the night. It is as
though she would speak but cannot. Instead, now, she takes up his plate and glass and fork and
goes with them to the basin. Her back is turned to him. He turns to her and watches her. A sense of
their separation rises.
Proctor: I think you've sad again. Are you?
Elizabeth - she doesn't want friction, and yet she must: You come so late I thought you'd gone to
Salem this afternoon.
Proctor: Why? I have no business in Salem.
Elizabeth: You did speak of going, earlier this week. Proctor - he knows what she means: I
thought better of it since.
Elizabeth: Mary Warren's there today,
Proctor: Why'd you let her? You heard me forbid her go to Salem any morel
Elizabeth: I couldn'd stop her.
Proctor, holding back a full condemnation of her: It is a fault, it is a fault, Elizabeth - you've the
mistress here, not Mary Warren.
Elizabeth: She frightened all my strength away.
Proctor: How may that mouse frighten you, Elizabeth? You Elizabeth: It is a mouse no more. I forbid her go, and she raises up her chin like the daughter of a
prince and lays to me, I must go to Salem, Goody Proctor; I am an official of the court!?
Proctor: Court! What court?
Elizabeth: Aye, it is a proper court they have now. They've sent four judges out of Boston, she
says, weighty magistrates of the General Court, and at the head sits the Deputy Governor of the
57
Province.
PRoCTOR, astonished: Why, she's mad.
Elizabeth: I would to God she were. There be fourteen people in the jail now, she says. Proctor
simply looks at her, unable to grasp it. And they'll be tried, and the court have power to hang them
too, she says.
Proctor, scoffing, but without conviction: Ah, they'd never hang Elizabeth: The Deputy Governor promise hanging if they'll not confess, John. The town's gone
wild, I think. She speak of Abigail, and I thought she were a saint, to hear her. Abigail brings the
other girls into the court, and where she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel. And folks
are brought before them, and if they scream and howl and fall to the floor - the person's clapped in
the jail for bewitching them.
Proctor, wide-eyed: Oh, it is a black mischief.
Elizabeth: I think you must go to Salem, John. He turns to her. I think so. You must tell them it is
a fraud.
Proctor, thinking beyond this: Aye, it is, it is surely.
Elizabeth: Let you go to Ezekiel Cheever - he knows you well. And tell him what she said to you
last week in her uncle's house. She said it had naught to do with witchcraft, did she not?
Proctor, in thought: Aye, she did, she did. Now, a pause.
Elizabeth, quietly, fearing to anger him by prodding: God for-bid you keep that from the court,
John. I think they must be told.
Proctor, quietly, struggling with his thought: Aye, they must, they must. It is a wonder they do
believe her.
Elizabeth: I would go to Salem now, John - let you go tonight.
Proctor: I'll think on it.
Elizabeth, with her courage now: You cannot keep it, John,
Proctor, angering: I know I cannot keep it. I say I will think on it!
Elizabeth, hurt, and very coldly: Good, then, let you think on it. She stands and starts to walk out
of the room.
Proctor: I am only wondering how I may prove what she told me, Elizabeth. If the girl's a saint
now, I think it is not easy to prove she's fraud, and the town gone so silly. She told it to me in a
room alone - I have no proof for it.
Elizabeth: You were alone with her?
Proctor, stubbornly: For a moment alone, aye. Elizabeth: Why, then, it is not as you told me.
Proctor, his anger rising: For a moment, I say. The others come in soon after.
Elizabeth, quietly - she has suddenly lost all faith in him: Do as you wish, then. She starts to turn.
Proctor: Woman. She turns to him. I'll not have your suspicion any more.
Elizabeth, a little loftily: I have no Proctor: I'll not have it!
Elizabeth: Then let you not earn it.
Proctor, with a violent undertone: You doubt me yet?
Elizabeth, with a smile, to keep her dignity: John, if it were not Abigail that you must go to hurt,
would you falter now? I think not.
Proctor: Now look you Elizabeth: I see what I see, John.
58
Proctor, with solemn warning: You will not judge me more, Elizabeth. I have good reason to think
before I charge fraud on Abigail, and I will think on it. Let you look to your own improvement
before you go to judge your husband any more. I have forgot Abigail, and Elizabeth: And I.
Proctor: Spare me! You forget nothing and forgive nothing. Learn charity, woman. I have gone
tiptoe in this house all seven month since she is gone. I have not moved from there to there
without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart. I cannot
speak but I am doubted, every moment judged for lies, as though I come into a court when I come
into this house!
Elizabeth: John, you are not open with me. You saw her with a crowd, you said. Now you Proctor: I'll plead my honesty no more, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth - now she would justify herself: John, I am only Proctor: No more! I should have roared you down when first you told me your suspicion. But I
wilted, and, like a Christian, I confessed. Confessed! Some dream I had must have mistaken you
for God that day. But you've not, you've not, and let you remember it! Let you look sometimes for
the goodness in me, and judge me not.
Elizabeth: I do not,judge you. The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you. I never thought
you but a good man, John - with a smile - only somewhat bewildered.
Proctor, laughing bitterly: Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer! He turns suddenly
toward a sound outside. He starts for the door as Mary Warren enters. As soon as he sees her, he
goes directly to her and grabs her by her cloak, furious. How do you go to Salem when I forbid it?
Do you mock me? Shaking her. I'll whip you if you dare leave this house again!
Strangely, she doesn't resist him, but hangs limply by his grip.
Mary Warren: I am sick, I am sick, Mr. Proctor. Pray, pray, hurt me not. Her strangeness throws
him op, and her evident pallor and weakness. He frees her. My insides are all shuddery; I am in
the proceedings all day, sir.
Proctor, with draining anger - his curiosity is draining it:. And what of these proceedings here?
When will you proceed to keep this house, as you are paid nine pound a year to do - and my wife
not wholly well?
As though to compensate, Mary Warren goes to Elizabeth with a small rag doll.
Mary Warren: I made a gift for you today, Goody Proctor. I had to sit long hours in a chair, and
passed the time with sewing.
Elizabeth, perplexed, looking at the doll: Why, thank you, it's a fair poppet.
Mary Warren, with a trembling, decayed voice: We must all love each other now, Goody Proctor.
Elizabeth, amazed at her strangeness: Aye, indeed we must.
Mary Warren, glancing at the room: I'll get up early in the morning and clean the house. I must
sleep now. She turns and starts off.
Proctor: Mary. She halts. Is it true? There be fourteen women arrested?
Mary Warren: No, sir. There be thirty-nine now - She suddenly breaks op and sobs and sits down,
exhausted.
Elizabeth: Why, she's weepin'! What ails you, child?
Mary WARREN: Goody Osburn - will hang!
There is a shocked pause, while she sobs.
Proctor: Hang! He calls into her face. Hang, y' say?
59
Mary Warren, through her weeping: Aye.
Proctor: The Deputy Governor will permit it?
Mary Warren: He sentenced her. He must. To ameliorate it: But not Sarah Good. For Sarah Good
confessed, y' see.
Proctor: Confessed' To what?
Mary Warren: That she - in horror at the memory - she some-times made a compact with Lucifer,
and wrote her name in his black book - with her blood - and bound herself to torment Christians
till God's thrown down - and we all must worship Hell forevermore,
Pause.
Proctor: But - surely you know what a jabberer she is. Did you tell them that?
MARY WARREN: Mr. Proctor, in open court she near to choked us all to death.
Proctor: How, choked you?
Mary Warren: She sent her spirit out.
Elizabeth: Oh, Mary, Mary, surely you Mary Warren, with an indignant edge: She tried to kill me many times, Goody Proctor!
Elizabeth: Why, I never heard you mention that before.
Mary Warren: I never knew it before. I never knew anything before. When she come into the court
I say to myself, I must not accuse this woman, for she sleep in ditches, and so very old and poor.
But then - then she sit there, denying and denying, and I feel a misty coldness climbing up my
back, and the skin on my skull begin to creep, and I feel a clamp around my neck and I cannot
breathe air; and then - entranced - I hear a voice, a screaming voice, and it were my voice - and all
at once I re-membered everything she done to me!
Proctor: Why? What did she do to you?
Mary Warren, like one awakened to a marvelous secret in-sight: So many time, Mr. Proctor, she
come to this very door, begging bread and a cup of cider - and mark this: whenever I turned her
away empty, she mumbled.
Elizabeth: Mumbled! She may mumble if she's hungry.
Mary Warren: But what does she mumble? You must re-member, Goody Proctor. Last month - a
Monday, I think - she walked away, and I thought my guts would burst for two days after. Do you
remember it?
Elizabeth: Why - I do, I think, but Mary Warren: And so I told that to Judge Hathorne, and he asks her so. Sarah Good,?says he, That
curse do you mumble that this girl must fall sick after turning you away??And then she replies mimicking an old crone - "Why, your excellence, no curse at all. I only say my commandments; I
hope I may say my commandments,?says she!
Elizabeth: And that's an upright answer.
Mary Warren: Aye, but then Judge Hathorne say, recite for us your commandments!?- leaning
avidly toward them - and of all the ten she could not say a single one. She never knew no
commandments, and they had her in a flat lie!
Proctor: And so condemned her?
Mary Warren, now a little strained, seeing his stubborn doubt: Why, they must when she
condemned herself.
Proctor: But the proof, the proof!
Mary Warren, with greater impatience with him: I told you the proof. It's hard proof, hard as rock,
60
the judges said.
Proctor, pauses an instant, then: You will not go to court again, Mary Warren.
Mary Warren: I must tell you, sir, I will be gone every day now. I am amazed you do not see what
weighty work we do.
Proctor: What work you do! It's strange work for a Christian girl to hang old women!
Mary Warren: But, Mr. Proctor, they will not hang them it they confess. Sarah Good will only sit
in jail some time - recalling - and here's a wonder for you; think on this. Goody Good is pregnant!
Elizabeth: Pregnant! Are they mad? The woman's near to sixty!
Mary Warren: They had Doctor Griggs examine her, and she's full to the brim. And smoking a
pipe all these years, and no husband either! But she's safe, thank God, for they'll not hurt the
innocent child, But be that not a marvel? You must see it, sir, it's God's work we do. So I'll be
gone every day for some time. I'd - I am an official of the court, they say, and I - She has been
edging toward onstage.
Proctor: I'll official you! He strides to the mantel, takes down the whip hanging there.
Mary Warren, terrified, but coming erect, striving for her authority: I'll not stand whipping any
more!
Elizabeth, hurriedly, as Proctor approaches: Mary, promise now you'll stay at home MARY Warren, backing from him, but keeping her erect posture, striving, striving for her way:
The Devil's loose in Salem, Mr. Proctor; we must discover where he's hiding!
Proctor! I'll whip the Devil out of you! With whip raised he reaches out for her, and she streaks
away and yells.
Mary Warren, pointing at Elizabeth: I saved her life today!
Silence. His whip comes down.
Elizabeth, softly: I am accused?
Mary Warren, quaking: Somewhat mentioned. But I said 1 never see no sign you ever sent your
spirit out to hurt no one, and seeing I do live so closely with you, they dismissed it.
Elizabeth: Who accused me?
60 The Crucible
Mary Warren: I am bound by law, I cannot tell it. To Proctor: I only hope you'll not be so
sarcastical no more. Four judges and the King's deputy sat to dinner with us but an hour ago. I - I
would have you speak civilly to me, from this out.
Proctor, in horror, muttering in disgust at her: Go to bed.
Mary Warren, with a stamp of her foot: I'll not be ordered to bed no more, Mr. Proctor! I am
eighteen and a woman, how-ever single!
Proctor: Do you wish to sit up? Then sit up.
Mary Warren: I wish to go to bed!
Proctor, in anger: Good night, then!
Mary Warren: Good night. Dissatisfied, uncertain of herself, she goes out. Wide-eyed, both,
Proctor and Elizabeth stand staring.
Elizabeth, quietly: Oh, the noose, the noose is up!
Proctor: There'll be no noose.
Elizabeth: She wants me dead. I knew all week it would come to this!
Proctor, Without conviction: They dismissed it. You heard her say Elizabeth: And what of tomorrow? She will cry me out until they take me!
61
Proctor: Sit you down.
Elizabeth: She wants me dead, John, you know it!
Proctor: I say sit down! She sits, trembling. He speaks quietly, trying to keep his wits, Now we
must be wise, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, with sarcasm, and a sense of being lost: Oh, indeed, indeed!
Proctor: Fear nothing. I'll find Ezekiel Cheever. I'll tell him she said it were all sport.
Elizabeth: John, with so many in the jail, more than Cheever's help is needed now, I think. Would
you favor me with this? Go to Abigail.
Proctor, his soul hardening as he senses... : What have I to say to Abigail?
Elizabeth, delicately: John - grant me this. You have a faulty understanding of young girls. There
is a promise made in any bed Proctor, striving against his anger: What promise!
Elizabeth: Spoke or silent, a promise is surely made. And she may dote on it now - I am sure she
does - and thinks to kill me, then to take my place.
Proctor's anger is rising; he cannot speak.
Elizabeth: It is her dearest hope, John, I know it. There be a thousand names; why does she call
mine? There be a certain danger in calling such a name - I am no Goody Good that sleeps in
ditches, nor Osburn, drunk and half-witted. She'd dare not call out such a farmer's wife but there
be monstrous profit in it. She thinks to take my place, John,
Proctor: She cannot think it! He knows it is true.
Elizabeth, reasonably? John, have you ever shown her some-what of contempt? She cannot pass
you in the church but you will blush Proctor: I may blush for my sin.
Elizabeth: I think she sees another meaning in that blush.
Proctor: And what see you? What see you, Elizabeth?
Elizabeth, conceding? I think you be somewhat ashamed, far I am there, and she so close.
Proctor: When will you know me, woman? Were I stone 1 would have cracked for shame this
seven month!
Elizabeth: Then go and tell her she's a whore. Whatever promise she may sense - break it, John,
break it.
Proctor, between his teeth: Good, then. I'll go. He starts for his rifle.
Elizabeth, trembling, fearfully: Oh, how unwillingly!
Proctor, turning on her, ripe in hand: I will curse her hotter than the oldest cinder in hell. But pray,
begrudge me not my anger!
Elizabeth: Your anger! I only ask you Proctor: Woman, am I so base? Do you truly think me base?
Elizabeth: I never called you base.
Proctor: Then how do you charge me with such a promise? The promise that a stallion gives a
mare I gave that girl!
Elizabeth: Then why do you anger with me when I bid you break it?
Proctor: Because it speaks deceit, and I am honest! But I'll plead no more! I see now your spirit
twists around the single error of my life, and I will never tear it free!
Elizabeth, crying out: You'll tear it free - when you come to know that I will be your only wife, or
no wife at all! She has an arrow in you yet, John Proctor, and you know it well!
62
Quite suddenly, as though from the air, a figure appears in the doorway. They start slightly. 1t is
Mr. Hale. He is different now - drawn a little, and there is a quality of deference, even of guilt,
about his manner now.
Hale: Good evening.
Proctor, still in his shock: Why, Mr. Hale! Good evening to you, sir. Come in, come in.
Hale, to Elizabeth: I hope I do not startle you.
Elizabeth: No, no, it's only that I heard no horse Hale: You are Goodwife Proctor.
Proctor: Aye; Elizabeth.
Hale, nods, then: I hope you've not off to bed yet.
Proctor, setting down his gun: No, no. Hale comes further into the room. And Proctor, to explain
his nervousness: We are not used to visitors after dark, but you've welcome here. Will you sit you
down, sir?
Hale: I will. He sits. Let you sit, Goodwife Proctor.
She does, never letting him out of her sight. There is a pause as Hale looks about the room.
Proctor, to break the silence: Will you drink cider, Mr. Hale?
Hale: No, it rebels my stomach; I have some further traveling yet tonight. Sit you down, sir.
Proctor sits. I will not keep you long, but I have some business with you.
Proctor: Business of the court?
Hale: No - no, I come of my own, without the court's authority. Hear me. He wets his lips. I know
not if you are aware, but your wife's name is - mentioned in the court.
Proctor: We know it, sir. Our Mary Warren told us. We are entirely amazed.
Hale: I am a stranger here, as you know. And in my ignorance I find it hard to draw a clear
opinion of them that come accused before the court. And so this afternoon, and now tonight, I go
from house to house - I come now from Rebecca Nurse's house and Elizabeth, shocked: Rebecca's charged!
Hex,a: God forbid such a one be charged. She is, however - mentioned somewhat.
Elizabeth, with an attempt at a laugh: You will never believe, I hope, that Rebecca trafficked with
the Devil.
Hale: Woman, it is possible.
Proctor: taken aback: Surely you cannot think so.
Hale: This is a strange time, Mister. No man may longer doubt the powers of the dark are gathered
in monstrous attack upon this village. There is too much evidence now to deny it. You will agree,
sir?
Proctor, evading: I - have no knowledge in that line. But it's hard to think so pious a woman be
secretly a Devil's bitch after seventy year of such good prayer.
Hale: Aye. But the Devil is a wily one, you cannot deny it. However, she is far from accused, and
I know she will not be. Pause. I thought, sir, to put some questions as to the Christian character of
this house, if you'll permit me.
Proctor, coldly, resentful: Why, we - have no fear of questions, sir.
Hale: Good, then. He makes himself more comfortable. In the book of record that Mr. Parris
keeps, I note that you are rarely in the church on Sabbath Day.
Proctor: No, sir, you are mistaken.
Hale: Twenty-six time in seventeen month, sir. I must call that rare. Will you tell me why you are
63
so absent?
Proctor: Mr. Hale, I never knew I must account to that man for I come to church or stay at home.
My wife were sick this winter.
Hale: So I am told. But you, Mister, why could you not come alone?
Proctor: I surely did come when I could, and when I could not I prayed in this house.
Hale: Mr. Proctor, your house is not a church; your theology must tell you that.
Proctor: It does, sir, it does; and it tells me that a minister may pray to God without he have
golden candlesticks upon the altar.
Hale: What golden candlesticks?
Proctor: Since we built the church there were pewter candle-sticks upon the altar; Francis Nurse
made them, y' know, and a sweeter hand never touched the metal. But Parris came, and for twenty
week he preach nothing but golden candlesticks until he had them. I labor the earth from dawn of
day to blink of night, and I tell you true, when I look to heaven and see my money glaring at his
elbows - it hurt my prayer, sir, it hurt my prayer. I think, sometimes, the man dreams cathedrals,
not clapboard meeting houses.
Hale, thinks, then: And yet, Mister, a Christian on Sabbath Day must be in church. Pause. Tell me
- you have three children?
Proctor: Aye. Boys.
Hale: How comes it that only two are baptized?
Proctor, starts 'o speak, then stops, then, as though unable to restrain this: I like it not that Mr.
Parris should lay his hand upon my baby. I see no light of God in that man. I'll not conceal it.
Hale: I must say it, Mr. Proctor; that is not for you to decide. The man's ordained, therefore the
light of God is in him.
Proctor, flushed with resentment but trying to smile: What's your suspicion, Mr. Hale?
Hale; No, no, I have no Proctor: I nailed the roof upon the church, I hung the door Hale: Oh, did you! That's a good sign, then.
Proctor: It may be I have been too quick to bring the man to book, but you cannot think we ever
desired the destruction of religion. I think that 抯 in your mind, is it not?
Hale, not altogether giving way: I - have - there is a softness in your record, sir, a softness.
Elizabeth: I think, maybe, we have been too hard with Mr. Parris. I think so. But sure we never
loved the Devil here.
Hale, nods, deliberating this. Then, with the voice of one ad-ministering a secret test: Do you
know your Commandments, Elizabeth?
Elizabeth, without hesitation, even eagerly: I surely do. There be no mark of blame upon my life,
Mr. Hale. I am a covenanted Christian woman.
Hale: And you, Mister?
Proctor, a tripe unsteadily: I - am sure I do, sir.
Hale, glances at her open face, then at John, then: Let you re-peat them, if you will.
Proctor: The Commandments.
Hale: Aye.
Proctor, looking off, beginning to sweat: Thou shalt not kill.
Hale: Aye.
Proctor, counting on his angers: Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods,
64
nor make unto thee any graven image. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain; thou shalt
have no other gods before me. With some hesitation: Thou shalt remember the Sabbath Day and
keep it holy. Pause. Then: Thou shalt honor thy father and mother. Thou shalt not bear false
witness. He is stuck. He counts back on his fingers, knowing one is missing. Thou shalt not make
unto thee any graven image.
Hale: You have said that twice, sir. Proctor, lost: Aye. He is failing for it. Elizabeth, delicately:
Adultery, John.
Proctor, as though a secret arrow had pained his heart: Aye. Trying to grin it away - to Hale: You
see, sir, between the two of us we do know them all. Hale only looks at Proctor, deep in his
attempt to define this man, Proctor grows more uneasy. I think it be a small fault.
Hale: Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small. He rises; he
seems worried now. He paces a little, in deep thought.
Proctor: There be no love for Satan in this house, Mister.
Hale: I pray it, I pray it dearly. He looks to both of them, an attempt at a smile on his face, but his
misgivings are clear. Well, then - I'll bid you good night.
Elizabeth, unable to restrain herself: Mr. Hale. He turns. I do think you are suspecting me
somewhat? Are you not?
Hale, obviously disturbed - and evasive: Goody Proctor, I do not judge you. My duty is to add
what I may to the godly wisdom of the court. I pray you both good health and good fortune. To
John: Good night, sir. He starts out.
Elizabeth, with a note of desperation: I think you must tell him, John.
Hale: What's that?
Elizabeth, restraining a call: Will you tell him?
Slight pause. Hale looks questioningly at John.
Proctor, with difficulty: I - I have no witness and cannot prove it, except my word be taken. But I
know the children's sickness had naught to do with witchcraft.
Hale, stopped, struck: Naught to do - ?
Proctor: Mr. Parris discovered them sportin' in the woods. They were startled and took sick.
Pause.
Hale: Who told you this?
Proctor, hesitates, then: Abigail Williams.
Hale: Abigail!
Proctor: Aye.
Hale, his eyes wide: Abigail Williams told you it had naught to do with witchcraft!
Proctor: She told me the day you came, sir.
Hale, suspiciously: Why - why did you keep this?
Proctor: I never knew until tonight that the world is gone daft with this nonsense.
Hale: Nonsense! Mister, I have myself examined Tituba, Sarah Good, and numerous others that
have confessed to dealing with the Devil. They have confessed it.
Act Two 69
Proctor: And why not, if they must hang for denying it? There are them that will swear to
anything before they 抣 l hang; have you never thought of that?
Hale: I have. I - I have indeed. It is his own suspicion, but he resists it. He glances at Elizabeth,
then at John. And you - would you testify to this in court?
65
Proctor: I - had not reckoned with going into court. But if I must I will.
Hale: Do you falter here?
Proctor: I falter nothing, but I may wonder if my story will be credited in such a court. I do
wonder on it, when such a steady-minded minister as you will suspicion such a woman that never
lied, and cannot, and the world knows she cannot! I may falter somewhat, Mister; I am no fool.
Hale, quietly - it has impressed him: Proctor, let you open with me now, for I have a rumor that
troubles me.' It's said you hold no belief that there may even be witches in the world. Is that true,
sir?
Proctor - he knows this is critical, and is striving against his disgust with Hale and with himself
for even answering: I know not what I have said, I may have said it. I have wondered if there be
witches in the world - although I cannot believe they come among us now.
Hale: Then you do not believe Proctor: I have no knowledge of it; the Bible speaks of witches, and I will not deny them.
Hale: And you, woman?
Elizabeth: I - I cannot believe it.
Hale, shocked: You cannot!
70 The Crucible
Proctor: Elizabeth, you bewilder him!
Elizabeth, to Hale: I cannot think the Devil may own a woman's soul, Mr. Hale, when she keeps
an upright way, as I have. I am a good woman, I know it; and if you believe I may do only good
work in the world, and yet be secretly bound to Satan, then I must tell you, sir, I do not believe it.
Hale: But, woman, you do believe there are witches in Elizabeth: If you think that I am one, then I say there are none.
Hale: You surely do not fly against the Gospel, the Gospel Proctor: She believe in the Gospel, every word!
Elizabeth: Question Abigail Williams about the Gospel, not myself!
Hale stares at her.
Proctor: She do not mean to doubt the Gospel, sir, you can-not think it. This be a Christian house,
sir, a Christian house.
Hale: God keep you both; let the third child be quickly baptized, and go you without fail each
Sunday in to Sabbath prayer; and keep a solemn, quiet way among you. I think Giles Corey appears in doorway.
Giles: John!
PRoctoR: Giles! What's the matter?
Giles: They take my wife.
Francis Nurse enters.
Giles: And his Rebecca!
Proctor, to Francis: Rebecca's in the jail1
Francis: Aye, Cheever come and take her in his wagon. We've only now come from the jail, and
they'll not even let us in to see them.
Elizabeth: They've surely gone wild now, Mr. Hale!
Francis, going to Hale: Reverend Hale! Can you not speak to the Deputy Governor? I'd sure he
mistakes these people Hale: Pray calm yourself, Mr. Nurse.
66
Francis: My wife is the very brick and mortar of the church, Mr.. Hale - indicating Giles - and
Martha Corey, there cannot be a woman closer yet to God than Martha.
Hale: How is Rebecca charged, Mr. Nurse?
Francis, with a mocking, half-hearted laugh: For murder, she's charged! Mockingly quoting the
warrant: or the marvelous and supernatural murder of Goody Putnam's babies.?What am I to do,
Mr. Hale?
Hale, turns from Francis, deeply troubled, then: Believe me, Mr. Nurse, if Rebecca Nurse be
tainted, then nothing's left to stop the whole green world from burning. Let you rest upon the
justice of the court; the court will send her home, I know it.
Francis: You cannot mean she will be tried in court!
Hale, pleading: Nurse, though our hearts break, we cannot flinch; these are new times, sir. There
is a misty plot afoot so subtle we should be criminal to cling to old respects and ancient
friendships. I have seen too many frightful proofs in court - the Devil is alive in Salem, and we
dare not quail to follow wherever the accusing finger points!
Proctor, angered: How may such a woman murder children?
Hale, in great pain: Man, remember, until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful
in Heaven.
GiLES: I never said my wife were a witch, Mr. Hale; I only said she were reading books!
Hale: Mr. Corey, exactly what complaint were made on your wife?
Giles: That bloody mongrel Walcott charge her. Y' see, he buy a pig of my wife four or five year
ago, and the pig died soon after. So he come dancing in for his money back. So my Martha, she
says to him, Walcott, if you haven't the wit to feed a pig properly, you'll not live to own many,?she
says. Now he goes to court and claims that from that day to this he cannot keep a pig alive for
more than four weeks because my Martha bewitch them with her books!
Enter Ezekiel Cheever. A shocked silence.
CHEEvER: Good evening to you, Proctor.
Proctor: Why, Mr. Cheever. Good evening.
Cheever: Good evening, all. Good evening, Mr. Hale.
Proctor: I hope you come not on business of the court.
Cheever: I do, Proctor, aye. I am clerk of the court. now, y' know.
Enter Marshal Herrick, a man in hi" early thirties, who is some-what shamefaced at the moment.
Giles: It's a pity, Ezekiel, that an honest tailor might have gone to Heaven must burn in Hell.
You'll burn for this, do you know it?
Cheever: You know yourself I must do as I'd told. You surely know that, Giles. And I'd as lief
you'd not be sending me to Hell. I like not the sound of it, I tell you; I like not the sound of it. He
fears Proctor, but starts to reach inside his coat. Now believe me, Proctor, how heavy be the law,
all its tonnage I do carry on my back tonight. He takes out a warrant. I have a warrant for your
wife.
Proctor, to Hale: You said she were not charged!
Hale: I know nothing of it. To Cheever: When were she charged?
Cheever: I am given sixteen warrant tonight, sir, and she is one.
Proctor: Who charged her?
Cheever: Why, Abigail Williams charge her.
Proctor: On what proof, what proof?
67
Cheever, looking about the room: Mr. Proctor, I have little time. The court bid me search your
house, but I like not to search a house. So will you hand me any poppets that your wife may keep
here?
Proctor: Poppets?
Elizabeth: I never kept no poppets, not since I were a girl.
Cheever, embarrassed, glancing toward the mantel where sits Mary Warren's poppet: I spy a
poppet, Goody Proctor.
Elizabeth: Oh! Going for it: Why, this is Mary's.
Cheever, shyly: Would you please to give it to me?
Elizabeth, handing it to him, asks HaLe: Has the court discovered a text in poppets now?
Cheever, carefully holding the poppet: Do you keep any others in this house?
PRocvoa: No, nor this one either till tonight. What signifies a poppet?
Cheever: Why, a poppet - he gingerly turns the poppet over - a poppet may signify - Now, woman,
will you please to come with me?
Proctor: She will not! To Elizabeth: Fetch Mary here.
Cheever, ineptly reaching toward Elizabeth: No, no, I am for-bid to leave her from my sight.
Proctor, pushing his arm away: You'll leave her out of sight and out of mind, Mister. Fetch Mary,
Elizabeth. Elizabeth goes upstairs.
Hale: What signifies a poppet, Mr. Cheever?
Cheever, turning the poppet over in his hands: Why, they say it may signify that she - He has
lifted the poppet's skirt, and his eyes widen in astonished fear. Why, this, this Proctor, reaching for the poppet: What's there?
Cheever: Why - He draws out a long needle from the poppet - it is a needle! Herrick, Herrick, it is
a needle!
Herrick comes toward Aim.
Proctor, angrily, bewildered: And what signifies a needle!
Cheever, his hands shaking: Why, this go hard with her, Proc-tor, this - I had my doubts, Proctor, I
had my doubts, but here's' calamity. To Hale, showing the needle: You see it, sir, it is a needle!
Hale: Why? What meaning has it?
Cheever, wide-eyed, trembling: The girl, the Williams girl, Abigail Williams, sir. She sat to dinner
in Reverend Parris's house tonight, and without word nor warning she falls to the floor. Like a
struck beast, he says, and screamed a scream that a bull would weep to hear. And he goes to save
her, and, stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, he draw a needle out. And demanding of her
how she come to be so stabbed, she - to Proctor now - testify it -were your wife's familiar spirit
pushed it in.
Proctor: Why, she done it herself! To Hale: I hope you've not takin?this for proof, Mister!
Hale, struck by the proof, is silent.
Cheever: It is hard proof! To Hale: I find here a poppet Goody Proctor keeps. I have found it, sir.
And in the belly of the poppet a needle's stuck. I tell you true, Proctor, I never warranted to see
such proof of Hell, and I bid you obstruct me not, for I Enter Elizabeth with Mary Warren. Proctor, seeing Mary Warren, draws her by the arm to Hale.
Proctor: Here now! Mary, how did this poppet come into my house?
Mary Warren, frightened for herself, her voice very small: What poppet's that, sir?
Proctor, impatiently, pointing at the doll in Cheever's hand: This poppet, this poppet.
68
Mary Warren, evasively, looking at it: Why, I - I think it is mine.
Proctor: It is your poppet, is it not?
Mary Warren, not understanding the direction of this: It - is, sir.
Proctor: And how did it come into this house?
Mary Warren, glancing about at the avid faces: Why - I made it in the court, sir, and - give it to
Goody Proctor tonight.
Proctor, to Hale: Now, sir - do you have it?
Hale: Mary Warren, a needle have been found inside this poppet.
Mary Warren, bewildered: Why, I meant no harm by it, sir.
Proctor, quickly: You stuck that needle in yourself?
Mary Warren: I - I believe I did, sir, I 76 The Crucible
Proctor: to Hale: What say you now?
Hale, watching Mary Warren closely: Child, you are certain this be your natural memory? May it
be, perhaps, that someone conjures you even now to say this?
Mary Warren: Conjures me? Why, no, sir, I am entirely my-self, I think. Let you ask Susanna
Walcott - she saw me sewin?it in court. Or better still: Ask Abby, Abby sat beside me when I
made it.
Proctor, to Hale, of Cheever: Bid him begone. Your mind is surely settled now. Bid him out, Mr.
Hale.
Elizabeth: What signifies a needle?
Hale: Mary - you charge a cold and cruel murder on Abigail.
Mary Warren: Murder! I charge no Hale: Abigail were stabbed tonight; a needle were found stuck into her belly Elizabeth: And she charges me?
Hale: Aye.
Elizabeth, her breath knocked out: Why - ! The girl is murder! She must be ripped out of the
world!
Cheever, pointing at Elizabeth: You've heard that, sir! Ripped out of the world! Herrick, you heard
it!
Proctor, suddenly snatching the warrant out of Cheever 抯 hands: Out with you.
Cheever: Proctor, you dare not touch the warrant.
Proctor, ripping the warrant: Out with you!
Cheever: You've ripped the Deputy Governor's warrant, man!
Proctor: Damn the Deputy Governor! Out of my house!
Hale: Now, Proctor, Proctor!
PRoctoR: Get y' gone with them! You are a broken minister. Hale: Proctor, if she is innocent, the
court Proctor: If she is innocent! Why do you never wonder if Parris be innocent, or Abigail? Is the
accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God's fingers? I'll tell you
what's walking Salem - vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but
now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes
the law! This warrant's vengeance! I'll not give my wife to vengeance!
Elizabeth: I'll go, John - Proctor: You will not go!
69
Herrick: I have nine men outside. You cannot keep her. The lair binds me, John, I cannot budge.
Proctor, to Hale, ready to break him: Will you see her taken? Hale: Proctor, the court is just Proctor: Pontius Pilate! God will not let you wash your hands of this!
Elizabeth: John - I think I must go with them. He cannot bear to look at her. Mary, there is bread
enough for the morning; you will bake, in the afternoon. Help Mr. Proctor as you were his
daughter - you owe me that, and much more. She is fighthing her weeping. To Proctor: When the
children wake, speak nothing of witchcraft - it will frighten them. She cannot go on.
Proctor: I will bring you home. I will bring you soon. Elizabeth: Oh, John, bring me soon!
Proctor: I will fall like an ocean on that court! Pear nothing, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, with great fear: I will fear nothing. She looks about the room, as though to fix it in her
mind. Tell the children I have gone to visit someone sick.
.She walks out the door, Herrick and Cheever behind her. For a moment, Proctor watches from the
doorway. The clank of chain is heard.
PRoctoR: Herrick! Herrick, don't chain her! He rushes out the door. From outside: Damn you,
man, you will not chain her! Off with them! I'll not have it! I will not have her chained!
There are other men's voices against his. Hale, in a fever of guilt and uncertainty, turns from the
door to avoid the sight; Mary Warren bursts into tears and sits weeping. Giles Corey calls to Hale.
Giles: And yet silent, minister? It is fraud, you know it is fraud! that keeps you, man?
Proctor is half braced, half pushed into the room by two deputies and Herrick.
Proctor: I'll pay you, Herrick, I will surely pay you!
Herrick, panting: In God's name, John, I cannot help myself. I must chain them all. Now let you
keep inside this house till 1 am gone! He goes out with his deputies.
Proctor stands there, gulping air. Horses and a wagon creaking are heard.
Hale, in great uncertainty: Mr. Proctor - Proctor: Out of my sight!
Hale: Charity, Proctor, charity. What I have heard in her favor, I will not fear to testify in court.
God help me, I cannot judge her guilty or innocent - I know not. Only this consider: the world
goes mad, and it profit nothing you should lay the cause to the vengeance of a little girl.
Proctor: You are a coward! Though you be ordained in God's own tears, you are a coward now!
Hale: Proctor, I cannot think God be provoked so grandly by such a petty cause. The jails are
packed - our greatest judges sit in Salem now - and hangin's promised. Man, we must look to
cause proportionate. Were there murder done, perhaps, and never brought to light? Abomination?
Some secret blasphemy that stinks to Heaven? Think on cause, man, and let you help me to
discover it. For there's your way, believe it, there is your only way, when such confusion strikes
upon the world. He goes to Giles and Francis. Let you counsel among yourselves; think on your
village and what may have drawn from heaven such thundering wrath upon you all. I shall pray
God open up our eyes.
Hale goes out.
Francis, struck by Hate's mood: I never heard no murder done in Salem.
Proctor - he has been reached by Hale's words: Leave me, Francis, leave me.
Giles, shaken: John - tell me, are we lost?
Proctor: Go home now, Giles, We'll speak on it tomorrow.
Giles: Let you think on it. We'll come early, eh?
Proctor: Aye. Go now, Giles.
Giles: Good night, then.
70
Giles Corey goes out. After a moment:
Mary Warren, in a fearful squeak of n voice: Mr. Proctor,
80 The Crucible
very likely they'll let her come home once they've given proper evidence.
Proctor: You've coming to the court with me, Mary. You will tell it in the court,
Mary Warren: I cannot charge murder on Abigail.
Proctor, moving menacingly toward her: You will tell the court how that poppet come here and
who stuck the needle in.
Mary Warren: She'll kill me for saying that! Proctor continues toward her. Abby'll charge lechery
on you, Mr. Proctor!
Proctor, halting: She's told you!
Mary Warren: I have known it, sir. She'll ruin you with it, I know she will.
Proctor, hesitating, and with deep hatred of himself: Good. Then her saintliness is done with.
Mary backs from him. We will slide together into our pit; you will tell the court what you know.
Mary Warren, in terror: I cannot, they'll turn on me Proctor strides and catches her, and she is repeating, I cannot, I cannot!?
Proctor: My wife will never die for me! I will bring your guts into your mouth but that goodness
will not die for me!
Mary Warren, struggling to escape him: I cannot do it, I cannot!
Proctor, grasping her by the throat as though he would strangle her: Make your peace with it!
Now Hell and Heaven grapple on our backs, and all our old pretense is ripped away - make your
peace! He throws her to the poor, where she sobs, "I cannot, I cannot...?And now, half to himself,
staring, and
Act Two 81
turning to the open door: Peace. It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we
always were, but naked now. He walks as though toward a great horror, facing the open sky.
e, naked! And the wind, God's icy wind, will blow!
And she is over and over again sobbing, I cannot, I cannot, l cannot, as
THE CURTAIN FALLS*
*Act II, Scene 2, which appeared in the original production, was dropped by the author from the
published reading version, the Collected Plays, and all Compass editions prior to 1971. It has not
been included in most productions subsequent to the revival at New York's Martinique Theatre
in ?1958 and was dropped by Sir Laurence Olivier in his London production in 1965. it is
included here as an appendix on page 148.
ACT THREE
The vestry room of the Salem meeting house, now serving as the anteroom of the General Court.
As the curtain rises, the room is empty, but for sunlight pouring through two high windows in the
back wall. The room is solemn, even forbidding. Heavy beams jut out, boards of random widths
make up the walls. At the right are two doors leading into the meeting house proper, where the
court is being held. At the left another door leads outside.
There is a plain bench at the left, and another at the right. In the center a rather long meeting table,
with stools and a considerable armchair snugged up to it.
71
Through the partitioning wall at the right we hear a prosecutor's voice, Judge Hathorne's, asking a
question; then a woman's voice, Martha Corey's, replying.
Hathorne's Voice: Now, Martha Corey, there is abundant evidence in our hands to show that you
have given yourself to the reading of fortunes, Do you deny it?
MARTHA CoREy's Voice: I am innocent to a witch. I know not what a witch is.
HATHoRNE's Voice: How do you know, then, that you are not a witch?
Martha Corey's Voice: If I were, I would know it.
HATHoRNE's Voice: Why do you hurt these children?
Martha Corey's Voice: I do not hurt them. I scorn it!
Giles?Voice, roaring: I have evidence for the court!
Voices of townspeople rise in excitement.
Danforth's Voice: You will keep your seat!
Giles Voice: Thomas Putnam is reaching out for land!
Danforth's Voice: Remove that man, Marshal!
Giles?Voice: You've hearing lies, lies!
A roaring goes up from the people.
Hathorne's Voice: Arrest him, excellency!
Giles?Voice: I have evidence. Why will you not hear my evidence?
The door opens and Giles is half carried into the vestry room by Herrick.
Giles: Hands off, damn you, let me go!
Herrick: Giles, Giles!
Giles: Out of my way, Herrick! I bring evidence Herrick: You cannot go in there, Giles; it's a court!
Enter Hale from the court.
Hale: Pray be calm a moment.
Giles: You, Mr. Hale, go in there and demand I speak.
Hale: A moment, sir, a moment.
Giles: They'll be hangin my wife!
Judge Hathorne enters. He is in his sixties, a bitter, remorseless Salem judge.
Hathorne: How do you dare come roaring into this court! Are you gone daft, Corey?
Giles: You've not a Boston judge yet, Hathorne. You'll not call me daft!
Enter Deputy Governor Danforth and, behind him, Ezekiel Cheever and Parris. On his appearance,
silence falls. Danforth is a grave man in his sixties, of some humor and sophistication that does
not, however, interfere with an exact loyalty to his position and his cause. He comes down to
Giles, who awaits his wrath.
Danforth, looking directly at Giles: Who is this man?
pARRIS: Giles Corey, sir, and a more contentious Giles, to Parris: I am asked the question, and I am old enough to answer it! To Danforth, who
impresses him and to whom he smiles through his strain: My name is Corey, sir, Giles Corey. I
have six hundred acres, and timber in addition. It is my wife you be condemning now. He
indicates the courtroom.
Danforth: And how do you imagine to help her cause with such contemptuous riot? Now be gone.
Your old age alone keeps you out of jail for this.
Giles, beginning to plead: They be tellin?lies about my wife, sir, I 72
Danforth: Do you take it upon yourself to determine what this court shall believe and what it shall
set aside?
Giles: Your Excellency, we mean no disrespect for Danforth: Disrespect indeed! It is disruption, Mister. This is the highest court of the supreme
government of this province, do you know it?
GiLES, beginning to weep: Your Excellency, I only said she were reading books, sir, and they
come and take her out of my house for Danforth, mystified: Books! What books?
Giles, through helpless sobs: It is my third wife, sir; I never had no wife that be so taken with
books, and I thought to find the cause of it, d’t see, but it were no witch I blamed her for. He is
openly weeping. I have broke charity with the woman, I have broke charity with her. He covers
his face, ashamed. Dan-forth is respectfully silent.
Hale: Excellency, he claims hard evidence for his wife’s defense. I think that in all justice you
must Danforth: Then let him submit his evidence in proper affidavit. You are certainly aware of our
procedure here, Mr. Hale. To Herrick: Clear this room.
HERRiCK: Come now, Giles, He gently pushes Corey out.
Francis: We are desperate, sir; we come here three days now and cannot be heard.
Danforth: Who is this man?
Francis: Francis Nurse, Your Excellency.
Hale: His wife’s Rebecca that were condemned this morning.
Danforth: Indeed! I am amazed to find you in such uproar; I have only good report of your
character, Mr. Nurse.
Hathorne: I think they must both be arrested in contempt, sir.
Danforth, to Francis: Let you write your plea, and in due time I will Act Three 87
Francis: Excellency, we have proof for your eyes; God forbid you shut them to it. The girls, sir,
the girls are frauds.
Danforth: What’s that?
FRANcis: We have proof of it, sir. They are all deceiving you.
Danforth is shocked, but studying Francis.
Hathorne: This is contempt, sir, contempt!
Danforth: Peace, Judge Hathorne. Do you know who I am, Mr. Nurse?
Francis: I surely do, sir, and I think you must be a wise judge to be what you are.
Danforth: And do you know that near to four hundred are in the jails from Marblehead to Lynn,
and upon my signature?
Francis: I Danforth: And seventy-two condemned to hang by that signature?
Francis: Excellency, I never thought to say it to such a weighty judge, but you are deceived.
Enter Giles Corey from left. All turn to see as he beckons in Mary Warren with Proctor. Mary is
keeping her eyes to the ground; Proctor has her elbow as though she were near collapse.
Parris, on seeing her, in shock: Mary Warren! He goes directly to bend close to her face. What are
you about here?
Proctor, pressing Parris away from her with a gentle but burnt motion of protectiveness: She
73
would speak with the Deputy Governor.
Danforth, shocked by this, turns to Herrick: Did you not tell me Mary Warren were sick in bed?
Herrick: She were, Your Honor. When I go to fetch her to the court last week, she said she were
sick.
Giles: She has been strivin?with her soul all week, Your Honor; she comes now to tell the truth of
this to you.
Danforth: Who is this?
Proctor: John Proctor, sir. Elizabeth Proctor is my wife.
Parris: Beware this man, Your Excellency, this man is mischief.
Hale, excitedly: I think you must hear the girl, sir, she Danforth, who has become very interested in Mary Warren and only raises a hand toward Hale:
Peace. What would you tell us, Mary Warren?
Proctor looks at her, but she cannot speak. Proctor! She never saw no spirits, sir.
Danforth, with great alarm and surprise, to Mary: Never saw no spirits!
Giles, eagerly: Never.
Proctor, reaching into his jacket: She has signed a deposition,
sir Danforth, instantly: No, no, I accept no depositions. He is rapidly calculating this; he turns from
her to Proctor. Tell me, Mr. Proctor, have you given out this story in the village?
Proctor: We have not.
Parris: They’ve come to overthrow the court, sir! This man is Danforth: I pray you, Mr, Parris. Do you know, Mr. Proctor, that the entire contention of the state
in these trials is that the voice of Heaven is speaking through the children?
Proctor: I know that, sir.
Danforth, thinks, staring at Proctor, then turns to Mary Warren: And you, Mary Warren, how came
you to cry out people for sending their spirits against you?
Mary Warren: It were pretense, sir.
Danforth: I cannot hear you.
Proctor: It were pretense, she says.
Danforth: Ah? And the other girls? Susanna Walcott, and - the others? They are also pretending?
Mary Warren: Aye, sir.
Danforth, wide-eyed: Indeed. Pause. He is baffled by this. He turns to study Proctor’s face.
Parris, in a sweat: Excellency, you surely cannot think to let so vile a lie be spread in open court!
Danforth: Indeed not, but it strike hard upon me that she will dare come here with such a tale.
Now, Mr. Proctor, before I decide whether I shall hear you or not, it is my duty to tell you this. We
burn a hot fire here; it melts down all concealment.
Proctor: I know that, sir.
Danforth: Let me continue. I understand well, a husband’s tenderness may drive him to
extravagance in defense of a wife. Are you certain in your conscience, Mister, that your evidence
is the truth?
Proctor: It is. And you will surely know it.
Danforth: And you thought to declare this revelation in the open court before the public?
Proctor: I thought I would, aye - with your permission.
Danforth, his eyes narrowing: Now, sir, what is your purpose in so doing?
74
PRoctoR: Why, I - I would free my wife, sir.
Danforth: There lurks nowhere in your heart, nor hidden in your spirit, any desire to undermine
this court?
Proctor, with the faintest faltering: Why, no, sir.
Cheever, clears his throat, awakening: I - Your Excellency.
Danforth: Mr. Cheever.
Cheever: I think it be my duty, sir - Kindly, to Proctor: You’ll not deny it, John. To Danforth:
When we come to take his wife, he damned the court and ripped your warrant.
Parris: Now you have it!
Danforth: He did that, Mr. Hale?
Hale, takes a breath: Aye, he did.
Proctor: It were a temper, sir. I knew not what I did.
Danforth, studying him: Mr. Proctor.
Proctor: Aye, sir.
Danforth, straight into his eyes: Have you ever seen the Devil?
Proctor: No, sir.
Danforth: You are in all respects a Gospel Christian?
Proctor: I am, sir.
Parris: Such a Christian that will not come to church but once in a month!
Danforth, restrained - he is curious: Not come to church?
Proctor: I - I have no love for Mr. Parris. It is no secret. But God I surely love.
Cheever: He plow on Sunday, sir.
Danforth: Plow on Sunday!
Cheever, apologetically: I think it be evidence, John. I am an official of the court, I cannot keep it.
Proctor: I - I have once or twice plowed on Sunday. I have three children, sir, and until last year
my land give little.
Giles: You’ll find other Christians that do plow on Sunday if the truth be known.
Hale: Your Honor, I cannot think you may judge the man on such evidence.
Danforth: I judge nothing. Pause. He keeps watching Proctor, who tries to meet his gaze. I tell you
straight, Mister - I have seen marvels in this court. I have seen people choked before my eyes by
spirits; I have seen them stuck by pins and slashed by daggers. I have until this moment not the
slightest reason to sus-pect that the children may be deceiving me. Do you 'understand my
meaning?
Proctor: Excellency, does it not strike upon you that so many of these women have lived so long
with such upright reputation, and PARRis: Do you read the Gospel, Mr. Proctor? Proctor: I read the Gospel.
PARRIs: I think not, or you should surely know that Cain were an upright man, and yet he did kill
Abel.
Proctor: Aye, God tells us that. To Danforth: But who tells us Rebecca Nurse murdered seven
babies by sending out her spirit on them? It is the children only, and this one will swear she lied to
you.
Danforth considers, then beckons Hathorne to him. Hathorne leans in, and he speaks in his ear.
Hathorne nods.
Hathorne: Aye, she’s the one.
75
Danforth: Mr. Proctor, this morning, your wife send me a claim in which she states that she is
pregnant now.
Proctor: My wife pregnant!
Danforth: There be no sign of it - we have examined her body.
Proctor: But if she say she is pregnant, then she must be! That woman will never lie, Mr.
Danforth.
Danforth: She will not?
Proctor: Never, sir, never.
Danforth: We have thought it too convenient to be credited. However, if I should tell you now that
I will let her be kept another month; and if she begin to show her natural signs, you shall have her
living yet another year until she is delivered - what say you to that? John Proctor is struck silent.
Come now. You say your only purpose is to save your wife. Good, then, she is saved at least this
year, and a year is long. What say ' you, sir? It is done now. In convict, Proctor glances at Francis
and Giles. Will you drop this charge?
PRocToR: I - I think I cannot.
Danforth, now an almost imperceptible hardness in his voice: Then your purpose is somewhat
larger.
Parris: He’s come to overthrow this court, Your Honor!
Proctor: These are my friends. Their wives are also accused Danforth, with a sudden briskness of manner: I judge you not, sir. I am ready to hear your
evidence.
Proctor: I come not to hurt the court; I only Danforth, cutting him op: Marshal, go into the court and bid
Judge Stoughton and Judge Sewall declare recess for one hour. And let them go to the tavern, if
they will. All witnesses and prisoners are to be kept m the building.
Herrick: Aye, sir'. Very deferentially: If I may say it, sir, I know this man all my life. It is a good
man, sir.
Danforth - it is the reflection on himself he resents: I am sure of it, Marshal. Herrick nods, then
goes out. Now, what deposi-tion do you have for us, Mr. Proctor? And I beg you be clear, open as
the sky, and honest.
Proctor, as he takes out several papers: I am no lawyer, so I'll Danforth: The pure in heart need no lawyers. Proceed as you will.
Proctor, handing Danforth a paper: Will you read this first, sir? It’s a sort of testament. The people
signing it declare their good opinion of Rebecca, and my wife, and Martha Corey. Danforth looks
down at the paper.
Parris, to enlist Danforth’s sarcasm: Their good opinion! But Danforth goes on reading, and
Proctor is heartened.
Proctor: These are all landholding farmers, members of the church. Delicately, trying to point out
a paragraph: If you’ll notice, sir – they’ve known the women many years and never saw no sign
they had dealings with the Devil.
Parris nervously moves over and reads over Dan forth’s shoulder.
Danforth, glancing down a long list: How many names are here?
Francis: Ninety-one, Your Excellency.
PaRRis,'sweating: These people should be summoned. Danforth Looks up at him questioningly.
76
For questioning.
Francis, trembling with anger: Mr. Danforth, I gave them all my word no harm would come to
them for signing this.
Parris: This is a clear attack upon the court!
Hale, to Parris, trying to contain himself: Is every defense an attack upon the court? Can no one
-?
Parris: All innocent and Christian people are happy for the courts in Salem! These people are
gloomy for it. To Danforth directly: And I think you will want to know, from each and every one
of them, what discontents them with you!
Hathorne: I think they ought to be examined, sir.
Danforth: It is not necessarily an attack, I think. Yet Francis: These are all covenanted Christians, sir.
Danforth: Then I am sure they may have nothing to fear. Hands Cheever the paper. Mr. Cheever,
have warrants drawn for all of these - arrest for examination. To Proctor: Now, Mister, what other
information do you have for us? Francis is still standing, horrified. You may sit, Mr. Nurse.
Francis: I have brought trouble on these people; I have Danforth: No, old man, you have not hurt these people if they are of good conscience. But you
must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there
be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time - we live no longer in the dusky
afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God’s grace, the
shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it. I hope you will be one of those.
Mary Warren suddenly sobs. She’s not hearty, I see.
Proctor: No, she’s not, sir. To Mary, bending to her, holding her hand, quietly: Now remember
what the angel Raphael saint to the boy Tobias. Remember it.
Mary Warren, hardly audible: Aye.
Proctor: no that which is good, and no harm shall come to thee.?
Mary Warren: Aye.
Danforth: Come, man, we wait you.
Marshal Herrick returns, and takes his post at the door.
Giles: John, my deposition, give him mine.
Proctor: Aye. He hands Danforth another paper. This is Mr. Corey’s deposition.
Danforth: Oh? He looks down at it. Now Hathorne comes behind him and reads with him.
Hathorne, suspiciously: What lawyer drew this, Corey?
Giles: You know I never hired a lawyer in my life, Hathorne.
Danforth, finishing the reading: It is very well phrased. My compliments. Mr. Parris, if Mr.
Putnam is in the court, will you bring him in? Hathorne takes the deposition, and walks to the
window with it. Parris goes into the court. You have no legal training, Mr. Corey?
Giles, very pleased: I have the best, sir - I am thirty-three time in court in my life. And always
plaintiff, too.
Danforth: Oh, then you’ve much put-upon.
Giles: I am never put-upon; I know my rights, sir, and I will have them. You know, your father
tried a case of mine - might be thirty-five year ago, I think.
Danforth: Indeed.
Giles: He never spoke to you of it?
77
Danforth: No, I cannot recall it.
Giles: That’s strange, he give me nine pound damages. He were a fair judge, your father. Y’ see, I
had a white mare that tinge, and this fellow come to borrow the mare - Enter Parris with Thomas
Putnam. When he sees Putnam, Giles?ease goes; he is hard. Aye, there he is.
Danforth: Mr. Putnam, I have here an accusation by Mr. Corey against you. He states that you
coldly prompted your daughter to cry witchery upon George Jacobs that is now in jail.
Putnam: It is a lie.
Danforth, turning to Giles: Mr. Putnam states your charge is a lie. What say you to that?
Giles, furious, his fists clenched: A fart on Thomas Putnam, that is what I say to that!
DANFoRth: What proof do you submit for your charge, sir?
Giles: My proof is there! Pointing to the paper. If Jacobs hangs for a witch he forfeit up his
property – that’s law! And there is none but Putnam with the; coin to buy so great a piece. This
man is killing his neighbors for their land!
Danforth: But proof, sir, proof.
Giles, pointing at his deposition: The proof is there! I have it from an honest man who heard
Putnam say it! The day his daughter cried out on Jacobs, he said she’d given him a fair gift of
land.
Hathorne: And the name of this man?
Giles, taken aback: What name?
Hathorne: The man that give you this information.
Giles, hesitates, then: Why, I - I cannot give you his name.
Hathorne: And why not?
Giles, hesitates, then bursts out: You know well why not! He’ll lay in jail if I give his name!
Hathorne: This is contempt of the court, Mr. Danforth!
Danforth, to avoid that: You will surely tell us the name.
Giles: I will not give you no name, I mentioned my wife’s name once and I’ll burn in hell long
enough for that. I stand mute.
Danforth: In that case, I have no choice but to arrest you for contempt of this court, do you know
that?
Giles: This is a hearing; you cannot clap me for contempt of a hearing.
Danforth: Oh, it is a proper lawyer! Do you wish me to declare the court in full session here? Or
will you give me good reply?
Giles, faltering: I cannot give you no name, sir, I cannot.
Danforth: You are a foolish old man. Mr. Cheever, begin the record. The court is now in session. I
ask you, Mr. Corey Proctor, breaking in: Your Honor - he has the story in confidence, sir, and he Parris: The Devil lives on such confidences! To Danforth: Without confidences there could be no
conspiracy, Your Honor!
Hathorne. I think it must be broken, sir.
DANFoRTH, to Giles: Old man, if your informant tells the truth let him come here openly like a
decent man. But if he hide in anonymity I must know why. Now sir, the government and central
church demand of you the name of him who reported Mr. Thomas Putnam a common murderer.
Hale: Excellency Danforth: Mr. Hale.
78
Hale: We cannot blink it more. There is a prodigious fear of this court in the country DANFoRth: Then there is a prodigious guilt m the country. Are you afraid to be questioned here?
Hale: I may only fear the Lord, sir, bat there is fear in the country nevertheless.
Danforth, angered now: Reproach me not with the fear in the country; there is fear in the country
because there is a moving plot to topple Christ in the country!
Hale: But it does not follow that everyone accused is part of it.
Danforth; No uncorrupted man may fear this court, Mr. Hale! None! To Giles: You are under
arrest in contempt of this court. Now sit you down and take counsel with yourself, or you will be
set in the jail until you decide to answer all questions.
Giles Corey makes a rush for Putnam. Proctor lunges and holds him.
Proctor: No, Giles!
Giles, over Proctor’s shoulder at Putnam: I’ll cut your throat, Putnam, I’ll kill you yet!
Proctor, forcing him into a chair: Peace, Giles, peace. Re-leasing him. We’ll prove ourselves. Now
we will. He starts to turn to Danforth.
Giles: Say nothing more, John. Pointing at Danforth: He’s only playing you! He means to hang us
all!
Mary Warren bursts into sobs.
Danforth: This is a court of law, Mister. I’ll have no effron-tery here!
Proctor: Forgive him, sir, for his old age. Peace, Giles, we’ll prove it all now. He lifts up Mary’s
chin. You cannot weep,
Mary. Remember the angel, what he say to the boy. Hold to it, now; there is your rock. Mary
quiets. He takes out a paper, and turns to Danforth. This is Mary Warren’s deposition. I - I would
ask you remember, sir, while you read it, that until two week ago she were no different than the
other children are today. He is speaking reasonably, restraining all his fears, his anger, his anxiety.
You saw her scream, she howled, she swore familiar spirits choked her; she even testified that
Satan, in the form of women now in jail, tried to win hex soul away, and then when she refused Danforth: We know all this.
Proctor: Aye, sir. She swears now that she never saw Satan; nor any spirit, vague or clear, that
Satan may have sent to hurt her. And she declares her friends are lying now.
Proctor starts to hand Danforth the deposition, and Hale comes up to Danforth in a trembling
state.
Hale: Excellency, a moment. I think this goes to the heart of the matter.
Danforth, with deep misgivings: It surely does.
Hale: I cannot say he is an honest man; I know him little. But in all justice, sir, a claim so weighty
cannot be argued by a farmer. In God 抯 name, sir, stop here; send him home and let him come
again with a lawyer Danforth, patiently: Now look you, Mr. Hale Hale: Excellency, I have signed seventy-two death warrants; I am a minister of the Lord, and I
dare not take a life without there be a proof so immaculate no slightest qualm of conscience may
doubt it.
Danforth: Mr. Hale, you surely do not doubt my justice.
Hale: I have this morning signed away the soul of Rebecca
Nurse, Your Honor. I’ll not conceal it, my hand shakes yet as with a wound! I pray you, sir, this
argument let lawyers present to you.
79
Danforth: Mr. Hale, believe me; for a man of such terrible learning you are most bewildered - I
hope you will forgive me. I have been thirty-two year at the bar, sir, and I should be con-founded
were I called upon to defend these people. Let you consider, now - To Proctor and the others: And
I bid you all do likewise. In an ordinary crime, how does one defend the accused? One calls up
witnesses to prove his innocence. But witchcraft is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an
invisible crime, is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? The witch and the victim.
None other. Now we cannot hope the witch will accuse herself; granted? Therefore, we must rely
upon her victims - and they do testify, the children certainly do testify. As for the witches, none
will deny that we are most eager for all their confessions. Therefore, what is left for a lawyer to
bring out? I think I have made my point. Have I not?
Hale: But this child claims the girls are not truthful, and if they are not Danforth: That is precisely what I am about to consider, sir. What more may you ask of me?
Unless you doubt my probity?
Hale, defeated: I surely do not, sir. Let you consider it, then.
Danforth: And let you put your heart to rest. Her deposition, Mr. Proctor.
Proctor hands it to him. Hathorne rises, goes beside Danforth, and starts reading. Parris comes to
his other side. Danforth looks at John Proctor, then proceeds to read. Hale gets up, finds position
near the judge, reads too. Proctor glances at Giles. Francis prays silently, hands pressed together.
Cheever waits placidly, the sublime official, dutiful. Mary Warren sobs once. John Proctor touches
her head reassuringly. Presently Danforth lifts his eyes, stands up, takes out a kerchief and blows
his nose. The others stand aside as he moves in thought toward the window.
Parris, hardly able to contain his anger and fear: I should like to question DANFoRtH - his first real outburst, in which his contempt for Parris is clear: Mr. Parris, I bid you
be silent! He stands in silence, looking out the window. Now, having established that he will set
the gait: Mr. Cheever, will you go into the court and bring the children here? Cheever gets up and
goes out up-stage. Danforth now turns to Mary. Mary Warren, how came you to this turnabout?
Has Mr. Proctor threatened you for this deposition?
Mary Warren: No, sir.
Danforth: Has he ever threatened you?
Mary Warren, weaker: No, sir.
Danforth, sensing a weakening: Has he threatened you?Mary Warren: No, sir.
Danforth: Then you tell me that you sat in my court, callously lying, when you knew that people
would hang by your evidence? She does not answer. Answer me!
Mary Warken, almost inaudibly: I did, sir.
Danforth: How were you instructed in your life? Do you not know that God damns all liars? She
cannot speak. Or is it now that you lie'!
Mary Warren: No, sir - I am with God now.
Danforth: You are with God now.
Mary Warren: Aye, sir.
Danforth, containing himself: I will tell you this - you are either lying now, or you were lying in
the court, and in either case you have committed perjury and you will go to jail for it. You cannot
lightly say you lied, Mary. Do you know that?
Mary Warren: I cannot lie no more. I am with God, I am with God.
80
But she breaks into sobs at the thought of it, and the right door opens, and enter Susanna Walcott,
Mercy Lewis, Betty Parris, and finally Abigail. Cheever comes to Danforth.
CHEEvER: Ruth Putnam 抯 not in the court, sir, nor the other children.
Danforth: These will be sufficient. Sit you down, children. Silently they sit. Your friend, Mary
Warren, has given us a deposition. In which she swears that she never saw familiar spirits,
apparitions, nor any manifest of the Devil. She claims as well that none of you have seen these
things either. Slight pause. Now, children, this is a court of law. The law, based upon the Bible,
and the Bible, writ by Almighty God, forbid the practice of witchcraft, and describe death as the
penalty thereof. But likewise, children, the law and Bible damn all bearers of false witness. Slight
pause. Now then. It does not escape me that this deposition may be devised to blind us; it may
well be that Mary Warren has been conquered by Satan, who sends her here to distract our sacred
purpose. If so, her neck will break for it. But if she speak true, I bid you now drop your guile and
confess your pretense, for a quick confession will go easier with you. Pause. Abigail Williams,
rise, Abigail slowly rises. Is there any truth in this?
Abigail: No, sir.
Danforth, thinks, glances at Mary, then back to Abigail: Children, a very augur bit will now be
turned into your souls until your honesty is proved. Will either of you change your positions now,
or do you force me to hard questioning?
Abigail: I have naught to change, sir. She lies.
Danforth. to Mary: You would still go on with this?
Mary Warren, faintly: Aye, sir.
Danforth, turning to Abigail: A poppet were discovered in Mr. Proctor’s house, stabbed by a
needle. Mary Warren claims that you sat beside her in the court when she made it, and that you
saw her make it and witnessed how she herself stuck her needle into it for safe-keeping. What say
you to that?
Abigail, with a slight note of indignation: It is a lie, sir.
Danforth, after a slight pause: While you worked for Mr. Proctor, did you see poppets in that
house?
Abigail: Goody Proctor always kept poppets.
Proctor: Your Honor, my wife never kept no poppets. Mary Warren confesses it was her poppet.
Cheever: Your Excellency. Danforth: Mr. Cheever.
Cheever: When I spoke with Goody Proctor in that house, she said she never kept no poppets. But
she said she did keep poppets when she were a girl.
Proctor: She has not been a girl these fifteen years, Your Honor.
Hathorne: But a poppet will keep fifteen years, will it not?
Proctor: It will keep it is kept, but Mary Warren swears she never saw no poppets in my house,
nor anyone else.
Parris: Why could there not have been poppets hid where no one ever saw them?
Proctor, furious: There might also be a dragon with five legs in my house, but no one has ever
seen it.
Parris: We are here, Your Honor, precisely to discover what no one has ever seen.
Proctor: Mr. Danforth, what profit this girl to turn herself about? What may Mary Warren gain but
hard questioning and worse?
Danforth: You are charging Abigail Williams with a mar-velous cool plot to murder, do you
81
understand that?
Proctor: I do, sir. I believe she means to murder.
Danforth, pointing at Abigail, incredulously: This child would murder your wife?
Proctor: It is not a child. Now hear me, sir. In the sight of the congregation she
were twice this year put out of this meetin?house for laughter during prayer.
Danforth, shocked, turning to Abigail: What’s this? Laughter during - !
Parris: Excellency, she were under Tituba’s power at that time, but she is solemn now.
GiLEs: Aye, now she is solemn and goes to hang people! Danforth: Quiet, man.
Hathorne: Surely it have no bearing on the question, sir. He charges contemplation of murder.
Danforth: Aye. He studies Abigail for a moment, then: Continue, Mr. Proctor.
Proctor: Mary. Now tell the Governor how you danced in the woods.
Parris, instantly: Excellency, since I come to Salem this man is blackening my name. He Danforth: In a moment, sir. To Mary Warren, sternly, and surprised: What is this dancing?
Mary Warren: I - She glances at Abigail, who is staring down at her remorselessly. Then,
appealing to Proctor: Mr. Proctor Proctor, taking it right up: Abigail leads the girls to the woods, Your Honor, and they have danced
there naked Parris: Your Honor, this Proctor, at once: Mr. Parris discovered them himself in the dead of night! There’s the child she is!
Danforth - it is growing into a nightmare, and he turns, astonished, to Parris: Mr. Parris Parris: I can only say, sir, that I never found any of them naked, and this man is Danforth: But you discovered them dancing in the woods? Eyes on Parris, he points at Abigail.
Abigail?
Hale: Excellency, when I first arrived from Beverly, Mr. Parris told me that.
Danforth: Do you deny it, Mr. Parris?
Parris: I do not, sir, but I never saw any of them naked.
Danforth: But she have danced?
Parris, unwillingly: Aye, sir.
Danforth, as though with new eyes, looks at Abigail.
Hathorne: Excellency, will you permit me? He points at Mary Warren.
Danforth, with great worry: Pray, proceed.
Hathorne: You say you never saw no spirits, Mary, were never threatened or afflicted by any
manifest of the Devil or the Devil’s agents.
Mary Warren, very faintly: No, sir.
Hathorne, with a gleam of victory: And yet, when people accused of witchery confronted you in
court, you would faint, saying their spirits came out of their bodies and choked you Mary Warren: That were pretense, sir.
Danforth: I cannot hear you.
Mary Warren: Pretense, sir.
Parris: But you did turn cold, did you not? I myself picked you up many times, and your skin were
icy, Mr. Danforth, you Danforth: I saw that many times.
Proctor: She only pretended to faint, Your Excellency. They’ve all marvelous pretenders.
Hathorne: Then can she pretend to faint now? Proctor: Now?
82
Parris: Why not? Now there are no spirits attacking her, for none in this room is accused of
witchcraft. So let her turn herself cold now, let her pretend she is attacked now, let her faint. He
turns to Mary Warren. Faint!
Mary Warren: Faint?
Parris: Aye, faint. Prove to us how you pretended in the court so many times.
MARy Warren, looking to Proctor: I - cannot faint now, sir. Proctor, alarmed, quietly: Can you not
pretend it?
Act Three 107
Mary Warren: I - She looks about as though searching for the passion to faint. I - have no sense of
it now, I DANFoRrth: Why? What is lacking now?
MARY Warren: I - cannot tell, sir, I Danforth: Might it be that here we have no afflicting spirit loose, but in the court there were
some?
Mary Warren: I never saw no spirits.
PARRis: Then see no spirits now, and prove to us that you can faint by your own will, as you
claim.
Mary Warren, stares, searching for the emotion of it, and then shakes her head: I - cannot do it.
Parris: Then you will confess, will you not? It were attacking spirits made you faint!
Mary Warren: No, sir, I Parris: Your Excellency, this is a trick to blind the court!
Mary Warren: It’s not a trick! She stands. I - I used to faint because I - I thought I saw spirits.
Danforth: Thought you saw them!
Mary Warren: But I did not, Your Honor.
Hathorne: How could you think you saw them unless you saw them?
Mary Warren: I - I cannot tell how, but I did. I - I heard the other girls screaming, and you, Your
Honor, you seemed to believe them, and I - It were only sport in the beginning, sir, but then the
whole world cried spirits, spirits, and I - I promise you, Mr. Danforth, I only thought I saw them
but I did not.
Danforth peers at her.
PARRIs, smiling, but nervous because Danforth seems to be struck by Mary Warren 抯 story:
Surely Your Excellency is not taken by this simple lie.
Danforth, turning worriedly to Abigail: Abigail. I bid you now search your heart and tell me this and beware of it, child, to God every soul is precious and His vengeance is terrible on them that
take life without cause. Is it possible, child, that the spirits you have seen are illusion only, some
deception that may cross your mind when Abigail: Why, this - this - is a base question, sir.
Danforth: Child, I would have you consider it Abigail: I have been hurt, Mr. Danforth; I have seen my blood running out! I have been near to
murdered every day because I done my duty pointing out the Devil’s people - and this is my
reward? To be mistrusted, denied, questioned like a Danforth, weakening: Child, I do not mistrust you Abigial, in an open threat: Let you beware, Mr. Danforth. Think you to be so mighty that the
power of Hell may not turn your wits? Beware of it! There is - Suddenly, from an accusatory
83
attitude, her face turns, looking into the air above - it is truly frightened.
Danforth, apprehensively: What is it, child?
Abigail, looking about in the air, clasping her arms about her as though cold: I - I know not. A
wind, a cold wind, has come. Her eyes fall on Mary Warren.
Mary Warren, terrified, pleading: Abby!
Mercy Lewis, shivering: Your Honor, I freeze!
Proctor: They’ve pretending!
Hathorne, touching Abigail’s hand: She is cold, Your Honor, touch her!
Mercy Lewis, through chattering teeth: Mary, do you send this shadow on me?
Mary Warren: Lord, save me!
Susanna Walcott: I freeze, I freeze!
Abigail, shivering visibly: It is a wind, a wind!
MARY Warren: Abby, don’t do that!
Danforth, himself engaged and entered by Abigail: Mary Warren, do you witch her? I say to you,
do you send your spirit out?
With a hysterical cry Mary Warren starts to run. Proctor catches her.
Mary Warren, almost collapsing: Let me go, Mr. Proctor, I cannot, I cannot Abigail, crying to Heaven: Oh, Heavenly Father, take away this shadow!
without warning or hesitation, Proctor leaps at Abigail and, grabbing her by the hair, pulls her to
her feet. She screams in pain. Danforth, astonished, cries, that are you about and Hathorne and
Parris call, take your hands op her! and out of it all comes Proctor’s roaring voice.
PRocToR: How do you call Heaven! Whore! Whore!
Herrick breaks Proctor from her.
Herrick: John!
DAnFoRTH: Man! Man, what do you 110 The Crucible
Proctor, breathless and in agony: It is a whore! Danforth, dumfounded: You charge - ? Abigail: Mr.
Danforth, he is lying!
Proctor: Mark her! Now she’ll suck a scream to stab me with, but Danforth: You will prove this! This will not pass!
Proctor, trembling, his life collapsing about him: I have known her, sir. I have known her.
Danforth: You - you are a lecher?
Francis, horrified: John, you cannot say such a Proctor: Oh, Francis, I wish you had some evil in you that you might know me! To Danforth: A
man will not cast away his good name. You surely know that.
Danforth, dumfounded: In - in what time? In what place?
Proctor, his voice about to break, and his shame great: In the proper place - where my beasts are
bedded. On the last night of my joy, some eight months past. She used to serve me in my house,
sir. He has to clamp his jaw to keep from weeping. A man may think God sleeps, but God sees
everything, I know it now. I beg you, sir, I beg you - see her what she is. My wife, my dear good
wife, took this girl soon after, sir, and put her out on the highroad. And being what she is, a lump
of vanity, sir - He is being overcome. Excellency, forgive me, forgive me. Angrily against himself,
he turns away from the Governor for a moment. Then, as though to cry out is his only means of
speech left: She thinks to dance with me on my wife’s grave! And well she might, for I thought of
84
her softly. God help me, t lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a whore’s
vengeance, and you must see it; I set myself entirely in your hands, I know you must see it now.
Act Three 111
Danforth, blanched, in horror, turning to Abigail: You deny every scrap and tittle of this?
Aalu.: If I must answer that, I will leave and I will not come back again!
Danforth seems unsteady.
Proctor: l have made a bell of my honor! I have rung the doom of my good name - you will
believe me, Mr. Danforth! My wife is innocent, except she knew a whore when she saw one!
Abigail, stepping up to Danforth: What look do you give me? Danforth cannot speak. I’ll not have
such looks! She turns and starts for the door.
Danforth: You will remain where you are! Herrick steps into her path. She comes up short, fire in
her eyes. Mr. Parris, go into the court and bring Goodwife Proctor out.
Parris, objecting: Your Honor, this is all a Danforth, sharply to Parris: Bring her out! And tell her not one word of what’s been spoken here.
And let you knock before you enter. Parris goes out. Now we shall touch the bottom of this
swamp. To Proctor: Your wife, you say, is an honest woman.
Proctor: In her life, sir, she have never lied. There are them that cannot sing, and them that cannot
weep - my wife cannot lie. I have paid much to learn it, sir.
Danforth: And when she put this girl out of your house, she put her out for a harlot?
Proctor: Aye, sir.
Danforth: And knew her for a harlot?
Proctor: Aye, sir, she knew her for a harlot.
Danforth: Good then. To Abigail: And if she tell me, child, it were for harlotry, may God spread
His mercy on you! There is a knock. He calls to the door. Hold! To Abigail: Turn your back. Turn
your back. To Proctor: Do likewise. Both turn their backs - Abigail with indignant slowness. Now
let neither of you turn to face Goody Proctor. No one in this room is to speak one word, or raise a
gesture aye or nay. He turns toward the door, calls: Enter! The door opens. Elizabeth enters with
Parris. Parris leaves her. She stands alone, her eyes looking for Proctor. Mr. Cheever, report this
testimony in all exactness. Are you ready?
Cheever: Ready, sir.
Danforth: Come here, woman. Elizabeth comes to him, glanc-ing at Proctor's back. Look at me
only, not at your husband. In my eyes only.
Elizabeth, faintly: Good, sir.
Danforth: We are given to understand that at one time you dismissed your servant, Abigail
Williams.
Elizabeth: That is true, sir.
Danforth: For what cause did you dismiss her? Slight pause. Then Elizabeth tries to glance at
Proctor. You will look in my eyes only and not at your husband. The answer is in your memory
and you need no help to give it to me. Why did you dismiss Abigail Williams?
Elizabeth, not knowing what to say, sensing a situation, wetting her lips to stall for time: She dissatisfied me. Pause. And my husband.
Danforth: In what way dissatisfied you?
Elizabeth: She were - She glances at Proctor for a cue.
Danforth: Woman, look at me! Elizabeth does. Were she slovenly? Lazy? What disturbance did
85
she cause?
Elizabeth: Your Honor, I - in that time I were sick. And I - My husband is a good and righteous
man. He is never drunk as some are, nor wastin?his time at the shovelboard, but always at his
work. But in my sickness - you see, sir, I were a long time sick after my last baby, and I thought I
saw my husband somewhat turning from me. And this girl - She turns to Abigail.
Danforth: Look at me.
Elizabeth: Aye, sir. Abigail Williams - She breaks op.
Danforth: What of Abigail Williams?
Elizabeth: I came to think he fancied her. And so one night I lost my wits, I think, and put her out
on the highroad.
Danforth: Your husband - did he indeed turn from you?
Elizabeth, in agony: My husband - is a goodly man, sir.
Danforth: Then he did not turn from you.
Elizabeth, starting to glance at Proctor: He Danforth, reaches out and holds her face, then: Look at me! To your own knowledge, has John
Proctor ever committed the crime of lechery? 1n a crisis of indecision she cannot speak, Answer
my question! Is your husband a lecher!
Elizabeth, faintly: No, sir.
Danforth: Remove her, Marshal.
Proctor: Elizabeth, tell the truth!
Danforth: She has spoken. Remove her!
Proctor, crying out: Elizabeth, I have confessed it!
Elizabeth: Oh, God! The door closes behind her.
Proctor: She only thought to save my name!
Hale: Excellency, it is a natural lie to tell; I beg you, stop now before another is condemned! l may
shut my conscience to it no more - private vengeance is working through this testimony! From the
beginning this man has struck me true. By my oath to Heaven, I believe him now, and I pray you
call back his wife before we Danforth: She spoke nothing of lechery, and this man has lied'
Hale: I believe him! Pointing at Abigail: This girl has always struck me false! She has Abigail, with a weird, wild, chilling cry, screams up to the ceiling.
Abigail: You will not! Begone! Begone, I say!
Danforth: What is it, child? But Abigail, pointing with fear, is now raising up her frightened eyes,
her awed face, toward the ceiling - the girls are doing the same - and now Hathorne, Hale, Putnam,
Cheever, Herrick, and Danforth do the same. What’s there? He lowers his eyes from the ceiling,
and now he is fright-ened; there is real tension in his voice. Child! She is transfixed - with all the
girls, she is whimpering open-mouthed, agape at the ceiling. Girls! Why do you - ?
Mercy Lewis, pointing: It’s on the beam! Behind the rafters
Danforth, looking up: Where!
Abigail: Why - ? She gulps. Why do you come, yellow bird?
Proctor: Where 抯 a bird? I see no bird!
Abigail, to the ceiling: My face? My face?
Proctor: Mr. Hale Danforth: Be quiet!
86
Proctor, to Hale: Do you see a bird?
Danforth: Be quiet!!
Abigail, to the ceiling, in a genuine conversation with the bird, as though trying to talk it out of
attacking her: But God made my face; you cannot want to tear my face. Envy is a deadly sin,
Mary.
Mary Warren, on her feet with a spring, and horrified, pleading: Abby!
Abigail, unperturbed, continuing to the bird? Oh, Mary, this is a black art to change your shape.
No, I cannot, I cannot stop my mouth; it’s God’s work I do.
Mary Warren: Abby, I’m here!
Proctor, frantically: They’ve pretending, Mr. Danforth!
Abigail - now she takes a backward step, as though in fear the bird will swoop down momentarily:
Oh, please, Mary! Don’t come down.
Susanna Walcott: Her claws, she’s stretching her claws!
Proctor: Lies, lies.
Abigail, backing further, eyes still fixed above: Mary, please don’t hurt me!
Mary Warren, to Danforth: I’d not hurting her!
Danforth, to Mary Warren: Why does she see this vision?
Mary Warren: She sees nothin?
Abigail, now staring full front as though hypnotized, and mimicking the exact tone of Mary
Warren’s cry: She sees nothin?
Mary Warren, pleading: Abby, you mustn’t!
Abigail AND All THE Girls, all transfixed: Abby, you mustn’t!
MARY Warren, to all the girls: I’m here, I'm here!
116 The Crucible
Girls: I’m here, I’m here!
DAnFoRth, horrified: Mary Warren! Draw back your spirit out of them!
Mary Warren: Mr. Danforth!
GiRLs, cutting her op: Mr. Danforth!
Danforth: Have you compacted with the Devil? Have you?
Mary Warren: Never, never!
Girls: Never, never!
Danforth, growing hysterical: Why can they only repeat you?
PRoctoR: Give me a whip – I’ll stop it!
Mary Warren: They’ve sporting. They - !
Girls: They’ve sporting!
.Mary Warren, turning on them all hysterically and stamping her feet: Abby, stop it!
Girls, stamping their feet: Abby, stop it!
Mary Warren: Stop it!
Girls: Stop it!
Mary Warren, screaming it out at the top of her lungs, and raising her fists: Stop it!!
Girls, raising their fists: Stop it!!
Mary Warren, utterly confounded, and becoming overwhelmed by Abigail’s - and the girls?- utter
conviction, starts to whimper, hands half raised, powerless, and all the girls begin whimpering
exactly as she does.
87
Danforth: A little while ago you were afflicted. Now it seems you afflict others; where did you
find this power?
Act Three Mary WARREN, staring at Abigail: I - have no power. Girls: I have no power. Proctor:
They 抮 e gulling you, Mister! 117
Danforth: Why did you turn about this past two weeks? You have seen the Devil, have you not?
Hale, indicating Abigail and the girls: You cannot believe them! Mary Warren: I Proctor, sensing her weakening: Mary, God damns all liars!
Danforth, pounding it into her: You have seen the Devil, you have made compact with Lucifer,
have you not?
Proctor: God damns liars, Mary!
Mary utters something unintelligible, staring at Abigail, who keeps watching the bird?above.
Danforth: I cannot hear you. What do you say? Mary utters again unintelligibly You will confess
yourself or you will hang! He turns her roughly to face him. Do you know who I am? I say you
will hang if you do not open with me!
Proctor: Mary, remember the angel Raphael - do that which is good and Abigail, pointing upward: The wings! Her wings are spreading! Mary, please, don’t, don’t - !
Hale: I see nothing, Your Honor!
Danforth: Do you confess this power! He is an inch from her face. Speak!
Abigail: She’s going to come down! She’s walking the beam!
Danforth: Will you speak!
Mary Warren, staring in horror: I cannot! Girls: I cannot!
Parris: Cast the Devil out! Look him in the face! Trample him! We’ll save you, Mary, only stand
fast against him and Abigail, looking up: Look out! She’s coming down!
She and all the girls run to one wall, shielding their eyes. And now, as though cornered, they let
out a gigantic scream, and Mary, as though infected, opens her mouth and screams with them.
Gradually Abigail and the girls leave op, until only Mary is left there, staring up at the bird,
screaming madly. All watch her, horrified by this evident fit. Proctor strides to her.
Proctor: Mary, tell the Governor what they - He has hardly got a word out, when, seeing him
coming for her, she rushes out of his reach, screaming in horror,
Mary Warren: Don’t touch me – don’t touch me! At which the girls halt at the door.
Proctor, astonished: Mary!
Mary Warren, pointing at Proctor: You’ve the Devil’s man!
He is stopped in his tracks.
Parris: Praise God!
Girls: Praise God!
Proctor, numbed: Mary, how - ?
Mary Warren: I’ll not hang with you! I love God, I love God.
Danforth, to Mary: He bid you do the Devil’s work?
Mary Warren, hysterically, indicating Proctor: He come at me by night and every day to sign, to
sign, to Danforth: Sign what?
Parris: The Devil’s book? He come with a book?
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Mary Warren, hysterically, pointing at Proctor, fearful of him: My name, he want my name. I’d l
murder you, he says, of my wife hangs! We must go and overthrow the court, he says!
Danforth’s head jerks toward Proctor, shock and horror in his face.
Proctor, turning, appealing to Hale: Mr. Hale!
Mary Warren, her sobs beginning: He wake me every night, his eyes were like coals and his
fingers claw my neck, and I sign, I sign...
Hale: Excellency, this child’s gone wild!
Proctor, as Danforth’s wide eyes pour on him: Mary, Mary!
Mary Warren, screaming at him: No, I love God; I go your way no more. I love God, I bless God.
Sobbing, she rushes to Abigail. Abby, Abby, I’ll never hurt you more! They all watch, as Abigail,
out of her infinite charity, reaches out and draws the sobbing Mary to her, and then looks up to
Danforth.
Danforth, to Proctor: What are you? Proctor is beyond speech in his anger. You are combined with
anti-Christ, are you not? I have seen your power; you will not deny it! What say you, Mister?
Hale: Excellency Danforth: I will have nothing from you, Mr. Hale! To Proctor: Will you confess yourself befouled
with Hell, or do you keep that black allegiance yet? What say you?
Proctor, his mind wild, breathless: I say - I say - God is dead'
Parris: Hear it, hear it!
Proctor, laughs insanely, then: A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy
face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as
I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!
Danforth: Marshal! Take him and Corey with him to the jail!
Hale, starting across to the door: I denounce these proceedings!
Proctor: You are pulling Heaven down and raising up a whore!
Hale: I denounce these proceedings, I quit this court! He slams the door to the outside behind him.
Danforth, calling to him in a fury: Mr. Hale! Mr. Hale!
THE CURTAIN FALLS
ACT FOUR
A cell in Salem jail, that fall.
At the back is a high barred window; near it, a great, heavy door. Along the walls are two benches.
The place is in darkness but for the moonlight seeping through the bars. It appears empty.
Presently footsteps are heard coming down a corridor beyond the wall, keys rattle, and the door
swings open. Marshal Herrick enters with a lantern.
He is nearly drunk, and heavy-footed. He goes to a bench and nudges a bundle of rags lying on it.
Herrick: Sarah,. wake up! Sarah Good! He then crosses to the other bench.
Sarah Good, rising in her rags: Oh, Majesty! Coming coming Tituba, he’s here, His Majesty’s
come!
HERRicK.: Go to the north cell; this place is' wanted now. He hangs his lantern on the wall.
Tituba sits up.
Tituba: That don’t look to me like His Majesty; look to me like the marshal.
Herrick, taking out a ask: Get along with you now, clear this 121
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Herrick, grabbing Tituba: Come along, come along.
Tituba, resisting him: No, he coming for me. I goin' home!
Herrick, pulling her to the door: That’s not Satan, just a poor old cow with a hatful of milk. Come
along now, out with you!
Tituba, calling to the window: Take me home, Devil! Take me home!
Sarah Good, following the shouting Tituba out: Tell him I’m going Tituba! Now you tell him
Sarah Good is going too!
In the corridor outside Tituba calls on - take me home, Devil; Devil take me home!?and
Hopkins?voice orders her to move on. Herrick returns and begins to push old rags and straw into a
corner. Hearing footsteps, he turns, and enter Danforth and Judge Hathorne. They are in greatcoats
and wear hats against the bitter cold. They are followed in by Cheever, who carries a dispatch case
and a flat wooden box containing his writing materials.
HERRick Good morning, Excellency. Danforth: Where is Mr. Parris?
Herrick: I’ll fetch him. He starts for the door.
Danforth: Marshal. Herrick stops. When did Reverend Hale arrive?
Herrick: It were toward midnight, I think.
Danforth, suspiciously: %hat is he about here?
Herrick: He goes among them that will hang, sir. And he prays with them. He sits with Goody
Nurse now. And Mr. Parris with him.
Danforth: Indeed. That man have no authority to enter here, Marshal. Why have you let him in?
Herrick: Why, Mr. Parris command me, sir. I cannot deny him. Danforth: Are you drunk,
Marshal?
Herrick: No, sir; it is a bitter night, and I have no fire here. Danforth, containing his anger: Fetch
Mr. Parris.
Herrick: Aye, sir.
Danforth: There is a prodigious stench in this place.
Herrick: I have only now cleared the people out for you.
Danforth: Beware hard drink, Marshal.
Herrick: Aye, sir. He waits an instant for further orders. But Danforth, in dissatisfaction, turns his
back on him, and Herrick goes out. There is a pause. Danforth stands in thought.
Hathorne: Let you question Hale, Excellency; I should not be surprised he have been preaching in
Andover lately.
Danforth: We’ll come to that; speak nothing of Andover. Parris prays with him. That’s strange. He
blows on his hands, moves toward the window, and looks out.
Hathorne: Excellency, I wonder if it be wise to let Mr. Parris so continuously with the prisoners.
Danforth turns to him, interested. I think, sometimes, the man has a mad look these days.
Danforth: Mad?
Hathorne: I met him yesterday coming out of his house, and I bid him good morning - and he
wept and went his way. I think it is not well the village sees him so unsteady.
Danforth: Perhaps he have some sorrow.
Cheever, stamping his feet against the cold: I think it be the cows, sir.
Danforth: Cows?
Cheever: There be so many cows wandering the highroads, now their masters are in the jails, and
much disagreement who they will belong to now. I know Mr. Parris be arguing with farmers all
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yesterday - there is great contention, sir, about the cows. Contention make him weep, sir; it were
always a man that weep for contention. He turns, as do Hathorne and Danforth, hearing someone
coming up the corridor. Danforth raises his head as Parris enters. He is gaunt, frightened, and
sweating in his greatcoat.
Parris, to Danforth, instantly: Oh, good morning, sir, thank you ' for coming, I beg your pardon
waking you so early. Good morning, Judge Hathorne.
Danforth: Reverend Hale have no right to enter this Parris: Excellency, a moment. He hurries back and shuts the door.
Hathorne: Do you leave him alone with the prisoners?
Danforth: What 抯 his business here?
Parris, prayerfully holding up his hands: Excellency, hear me. It is a providence. Reverend Hale
has returned to bring Rebecca Nurse to God.
Danforth, surprised: He bids her confess?
Parris, sitting: Hear me. Rebecca have not given me a word this three month since she came. Now
she sits with him, and her sister and Martha Corey and two or three others, and he pleads with
them, confess their crimes and save their lives.
Danforth: Why - this is indeed a providence. And they soften, they soften?
Parris: Not yet, not yet. But I thought to summon you, sir, that we might think on whether it be not
wise, to - He dares not say it. I had thought to put a question, sir, and I hope you will not Danforth: Mr. Parris, be plain, what troubles you?
Parris: There is news, sir, that the court - the court must reckon with. My niece, sir, my niece - I
believe she has vanished.
Danforth: Vanished!
Parris: I had thought to advise you of it earlier in the week, but Danforth: Why? How long is she gone?
Parris: This be the third night. You see, sir, she told me she would stay a night with Mercy Lewis.
And next day, when she does not return, I send to Mr. Lewis to inquire. Mercy told him she would
sleep in my house for a night.
Danforth: They are both gone?!
Parris, in fear of him: They are, sir.
Danforth, alarmed: I will send a party for them. Where may they be?
Parris: Excellency, I think they be aboard a ship. Danforth stands agape. My daughter tells me
how she heard them speaking of ships last week, and tonight I discover my - my strongbox is
broke into. He presses his fingers against his eyes to keep back tears.
Hathorne, astonished: She have robbed you?
Parris: Thirty-one pound is gone. I am penniless. He covers his face and sobs.
Danforth: Mr. Parris, you are a brainless man! He walks in thought, deeply worried.
Parris: Excellency, it profit nothing you should blame me. I cannot think they would run off
except they fear to keep in Salem any more. He is pleading. Mark it, sir, Abigail had close
knowledge of the town, and since the news of Andover has broken here - '
Danforth: Andover is remedied. The court returns there on Friday, and will resume examinations.
Parris: I am sure of it, sir. But the rumor here speaks rebellion in Andover, and it Danforth: There is no rebellion in Andover!
Parris: I tell you what is said here, sir. Andover have thrown out the court, they say, and will have
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no part of witchcraft. There be a faction here, feeding on that news, and I tell you true, sir, I fear
there will be riot here.
Hathorne: Riot! Why at every execution I have seen naught but high satisfaction in the town.
Parris: Judge Hathorne - it were another sort that hanged till now. Rebecca Nurse is no Bridget
that lived three year with Bishop before she married him. John Proctor is not Isaac Ward that
drank his family to ruin. To Danforth: I would to God it were not so, Excellency, but these people
have great weight jet in the town. Let Rebecca stand upon the gibbet and send up some righteous
prayer, and I fear she’ll wake a vengeance onyou.
Hathorne: Excellency, she is condemned a witch. The court have Danforth, in deep concern, raising a hand to Hathorne: Pray you. To Parris: How do you propose,
then?
Parris: Excellency, I would postpone these hanging for a time. Danforth: There will be no
postponement.
Parris: Now Mr. Hale’s returned, there is hope, I think - for if he bring even one of these to God,
that confession surely damns the others in the public eye, and none may doubt more that they are
all linked to Hell. This way, unconfessed and claiming innocence, doubts are multiplied, many
honest people will weep for them, and our good purpose is lost in their tears.
Danforth, after thinking a moment, then going to Cheever: Give me the list.
Cheever opens the dispatch case, searches.
Parris: It cannot be forgot, sir, that when I summoned the congregation for John Proctor’s
excommnnication there were hardly thirty people come to hear it. That speak a discontent, I think,
and Danforth, studying the list: There will be no postponement.
Parris: Excellency Danforth: Now, sir - which of these in your opinion may be brought to God? I will myself strive
with him till dawn. He hands she list to Parris, who merely glances at it.
Parris: There is not sufficient time till dawn.
Danforth: I shall do my utmost. Which of them do you have hope for?
Parris, not even glancing at the list now, and in a quavering voice, quietly: Excellency - a dagger He chokes up.
DANFoRth: What do you say?
Parris: Tonight, when I open my door to leave my house - a dagger clattered to the ground.
Silence. Danforth absorbs this. Now Parris cries out: You cannot hang this sort. There is danger
for me. I dare not step outside at night!
Reverend Hale enters. They look at him for an instant in silenceHe is steeped in sorrow, exhausted, and more direct than he ever was.
Danforth: Accept my congratulations, Reverend Hale; we are gladdened to see you returned to
your good work.
Hale, coming to Danforth now: You must pardon them. They will not budge.
Herrick enters, waits.
Danforth, conciliatory: You misunderstand, sir; I cannot par-don these when twelve are already
hanged for the same crime. It is not just.
Parris, with failing heart: Rebecca will not confess?
HAr.E: The sun will rise in a few minutes. Excellency, I must have more time.
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Danforth: Now hear me, and beguile yourselves no more. I will not receive a single plea for
pardon or postponement. Them that will not confess will hang. Twelve are already executed; the
names of these seven are given out, and the village expects to see them die this morning.
Postponement now speaks a floun-dering on my part; reprieve or pardon must cast doubt upon the
guilt of them that died till now. While I speak God’s law, I will not crack its voice with
whimpering. If retaliation is your fear, know this - I should hang ten thousand that dared to rise
against the law, and an ocean of salt tears could not melt the resolution of the statutes. Now draw
yourselves up like men and help me, as you are bound by Heaven to do. Have you spoken with
them all, Mr. Hale?
Hale: All but Proctor. He is in the dungeon.
Danforth, to Herrick: What’s Proctor’s way now?
Herrick: He sits like some great bird; you’d not know he lived except he will take food from time
to time.
Danforth, after thinking a moment: His wife - his wife must be well on with child now.
Herrick: She is, sir.
Danforth: What think you, Mr. Parris? You have closer knowledge of this man; might her
presence soften him?
Parris: It is possible, sir. He have not laid eyes on her these three months. I should summon her,
' Danforth, to Herrick: Is he yet adamant? Has he struck at you again?
Herrick: He cannot, sir, he is chained to the wall now.
Danforth, after thinking on it: Fetch Goody Proctor to me. Then let you bring him up.
Herrick: Aye, sir. Herrick goes. There is silence.
Hale: Excellency, if you postpone a week and publish to the town that you are striving for their
confessions, that speak mercy on your part, not faltering.
Danforth: Mr. Hale, as God have not empowered me like Joshua to stop this sun from rising, so I
cannot withhold from them the perfection of their punishment.
Hale, harder now: If you think God wills you to raise rebellion, Mr. Danforth, you are mistaken!
Danforth, instantly: You have heard rebellion spoken in the town?
Hale: Excellency, there are orphans wandering from house to house; abandoned cattle bellow on
the highroads, the stink of rotting crops hangs everywhere, and no man knows when the
harlots?cry will end his life - and you wonder yet if rebellion’s spoke? Better you should marvel
how they do not burn your province!
Danforth: Mr. Hale, have you preached in Andover this month?
Hale: Thank God they have no need of me in Andover.
Danforth; You baffle me, sir. Why have you returned here?
Hale: Why, it is all simple. I come to do the Devil’s work. I come to counsel Christians they
should belie themselves. His sarcasm collapses. There is blood on my head! Can you not see the
blood on my head!!
Parris: Hush! For he has heard footsteps. They all face the door. Herrick enters with Elizabeth.
Her wrists are linked by heavy chain, which Herrick now removes. Her clothes are dirty; her face
is pale and gaunt. Herrick goes out.
Danforth, very politely: Goody Proctor. She is silent. I hope you are hearty?
Elizabeth, as a warning reminder: I am yet six month before my time.
Danforth: Pray be at your ease, we come not for your life. We - uncertain how to plead, for he is
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not accustomed to it. Mr. Hale, will you speak with the woman?
Hale: Goody Proctor, your husband is marked to hang this morning,
Pause.
Elizabeth, quietly: I have heard it.
Hale: You know, do you not, that I have no connection with the court? She seems to doubt it. I
come of my own, Goody Proctor. I would save your husband’s life, for if he is taken I count
myself hi: murderer. Do you understand me?
Elizabeth: What do you want of me?
Hale: Goody Proctor, I have gone this three month like our Lord into the wilderness. I have
sought a Christian way, for damnation 抯 doubled on a minister who counsels men to lie.
Hathorne: It is no lie, you cannot speak of lies.
Hale: It is a lie! They are innocent!
Danforth: I’ll hear no more of that!
Hale, continuing to Elizabeth: Let you not mistake your duty as I mistook my own. I came into
this village like a bridegroom to his beloved, bearing gifts of high religion; the very crowns of
holy law I brought, and what I touched with my bright confidence, it died; and where I turned the
eye of my great faith, blood flowed up. Beware, Goody Proctor - cleave to no faith when faith
brings blood. It is mistaken law that leads you to sacrifice. Life, woman, life is God’s most
precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it. I beg you, woman,
prevail upon your husband to confess. Let him give his lie. Quail not before God’s judgment in
this, for it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride. Will you
plead with him? I cannot think he will listen to another.
Elizabeth, quietly: I think that be the Devil’s argument.
Hale, with a climactic desperation: Woman, before the laws of God we are as swine! We cannot
read His will!
Elizabeth: l cannot dispute with you, sir; I lack learning for it.
DANFoRth, going to her: Goody Proctor, you are not summoned here for disputation. Be there no
wifely tenderness within you? He will die with the sunrise. Your husband. Do you under-stand it?
She only looks at him. What say you? Will you contend with him? She is silent. Are you stone? I
tell you true, woman, had I no other proof of your unnatural life, your dry eyes now would be
sufficient evidence that you delivered up your soul to
Hell! A very ape would weep at such calamity! Have the devil dried up any tear of pity in you?
She is silent. Take her out. It profit nothing she should speak to him!
Elizabeth, quietly: Let me speak with him, Excellency.
Parris, with hope: You 抣 l strive with him? She hesitates.
Danforth: Will you plead for his confession or will you not?
Elizabeth: I promise nothing. Let me speak with him.
A sound - the sibilance of dragging feet on stone. They turn. A pause. Herrick enters with John
Proctor. His wrists are chained. He is another man, bearded, filthy, his eyes misty as though webs
had overgrown them. He halts inside the doorway, his eye caught by the sight of Elizabeth. The
emotion flowing between them prevents anyone from speaking for an instant. Wow Hale, visibly
affected, goes to Danforth and speaks quietly.
Hale: Pray, leave them, Excellency.
Danforth, pressing Rale impatiently aside: Mr. Proctor, you have been notified, have you not?
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Proctor is silent, staring at Elizabeth. I see light in the sky, Mister; let you counsel with your wife,
and may God help you turn your back on Hell. Proctor is silent, staring at Elizabeth.
Hale, quietly: Excellency, let Danforth brushes past Hale and walks out. Hale follows. Cheever stands and follows, Hathorne
behind. Herrick goes. Parris, from a safe distance, ayers:
Parris: If you desire a cup of cider, Mr. Proctor, I am sure I - Proctor turns an icy stare at him, and
he breaks op. Parris raises his palms toward Proctor. God lead you now. Parris goes
Alone. Proctor walks to her, halts. It is as though they stood m a spinning world. It is beyond
sorrow, above i,". He reaches outhis hand as though toward an embodiment not quite real, and as
he touches her, a strange soft sound, half laughter, half amazement, comes from his throat. He pats
her hand. She covers his hand with hers. And then, weak, he sits. Then she sits, facing him.
Proctor: The child?
Elizabeth: It Slows.
Proctor: There is no word of the boys?
Elizabeth: They 抮 e well. Rebecca 抯 Samuel keeps them.
Proctor: You have not seen them?
Elizabeth: I have not. She catches a weakening in herself and downs it.
Proctor: You are a - marvel, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: You - have been tortured?
Proctor: Aye. Pause. She will not let herself be drowned in the sea that threatens her. They come
for my life now.
Elizabeth: I know it.
Pause.
Proctor: None - have yet confessed?
Elizabeth: There be many confessed.
Proctor: Who are they?
Elizabeth: There be a hundred or more, they say. Goody Ballard is one; Isaiah Goodkind is one.
There be many.
Proctor: Rebecca?
Elizabeth: Not Rebecca. She is one foot in Heaven now; naught may hurt her more.
Proctor: And Giles?
Elizabeth: .You have not heard of it?
Proctor: I hear nothin? where I am kept.
Elizabeth: Giles is dead.
He looks at her incredulously.
Proctor: When were he hanged?
Elizabeth, quietly, factually: He were not hanged. He would not answer aye or nay to his
indictment; for if he denied the charge they’d hang him surely, and auction out his property. So he
stand mute, and died Christian under the law. And so his sons will have his farm. It is the law, for
he could not be condemned a wizard without he answer the indictment, aye or nay.
Proctor: Then how does he die?
Elizabeth, gently: They press him, John.
Proctor: Press?
Elizabeth: Great stones they lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. With a tender smile for
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the old man: They say he give them but two words. more weight, he says. And died.
Proctor, numbed - a thread to weave into his agony: more weight,?
Elizabeth: Aye. It were a fearsome man, Giles Corey.
Pause.
Proctor, with great force of will, but not quite looking at her: I have been thinking I would confess
to them, Elizabeth. She shows nothing. What say you? If I give them that?
Elizabeth: I cannot judge you, John.
Pause.
Proctor, simply - a pure question: What would you have me do?
Elizabeth: As you will, I would have it. Slight pause: I want you living, John. That’s sure.
Proctor, pauses, then with a flailing of hope: Giles’s wife? Have she confessed?
Elizabeth: She will not.
Pause.
Proctor: It is a pretense, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: What is?
Proctor: I cannot mount the gibbet like a saint. It is a fraud. .' am not that man. She is silent. My
honesty is broke, Elizabeth; I am no good man. Nothing’s spoiled by giving them this lie that were
not rotten long before.
Elizabeth: And yet you’ve not confessed till now. That speak goodness in you.
Proctor: Spite only keeps me silent. It is hard to give a lie to dogs. Pause, for the first time he
turns directly to her. I would have your forgiveness, Elizabeth,
Elizabeth: It is not for me to give, John, I am Proctor: I’d have you see some honesty in it. Let them, that never lied die now to keep their souls.
It is pretense for me, a vanity that will not blind God nor keep my children out of the wind. Pause.
What say you?
Elizabeth, upon a heaving sob that always threatens: John, it come to naught that I should forgive
you, if you’ll not forgive yourself. Now he turns away a little, in great agony. It is not my soul,
John, it is yours. He stands, as though in physical pain, slowly rising to his feet with a great
immortal longing to find his
Act Four 137 answer. It is difficult to say, .and she is on the verge of tears. Only be sure of this,
for I know it now: Whatever you will do, it is a good man does it. He turns his doubting,
searching gaze upon her. I have read my heart this three month, John. Pause. I have sins of my
own to count. It needs a cold wife to prompt lechery.
Proctor, in great pain: Enough, enough Elizabeth, now pouring out her heart; Better you should know me!
Proctor: I will not hear it! I know you!
Elizabeth: You take my sins upon you, John Proctor, in agony: No, I take my own, my own!
Elizabeth: John, I counted myself so plain, so poorly made, no honest love could come to me!
Suspicion kissed you when I did; I never knew how I should say my love. It were a cold house I
kept! In fright, she swerves, as Hathorne enters.
Hathorne: What say you, Proctor? The sun is soon up.
Proctor, his chest heaving, stares, turns to Elizabeth. She comes to him as though to plead, her
voice quaking.
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Elizabeth: Do what you will. But let none be your judge. There be no higher judge under Heaven
than Proctor is! Forgive me, forgive me, John - I never knew such goodness in the world! She
covers her face, weeping.
Proctor turns from her to Hathorne; he is op the earth, his voice hollow.
Proctor: I want my life.
Hathorne, electrified, surprised: You’ll confess yourself?
Proctor: I will have my life.
Hathorne, with a mystical tone: God be praised! It is a providence! He rushes out the door, and his
voice is heard calling dawn the corridor: He will confess! Proctor will confess!
Proctor, with a cry, as he strides to the door: Why do you cry it? In great pain he turns back to her.
It is evil, is it not? It is evil.
Elizabeth, in terror, weeping: I cannot judge you, John, I cannot!
Proctor: Then who will judge me? Suddenly clasping his hands: God in Heaven, what is John
Proctor, what is John Proctor? He moves as an animal, and a fury is riding in him, a tantalized
search. I think it is honest, I think so; I am no saint. As though she had denied this he calls angrily
at her: Let Rebecca go like a saint; for me it is fraud!
Voices are heard in the hall, speaking together in suppressed excitement.
Elizabeth: I am not your judge, I cannot be. As though giving him release: Do as you will, do as
you will!
Proctor: Would you give them such a lie? Say it. Would you ever give them this? She cannot
answer. You would not; if tongs of fire were singeing you would not! It is evil. Good, then - it is
evil, and I do it!
Hathorne enters with Danforth, and, with them, Cheever, Parris, and Hale. It is a businesslike,
rapid entrance, as though the ice had been broken.
Danforth, with great relief and gratitude: Praise to God, man, praise to God; you shall be blessed
in Heaven for this. Cheever has hurried to the bench with pen, ink, and paper. Proctor watches
him. Now then, let us have it. Are you ready, Mr. Cheever?
Proctor, with a cold, cold horror at their efficiency: Why must it be written?
Danforth: Why, for the good instruction of the village, Mister; this we shall post upon the church
door! To Parris, urgently: Where is the marshal?
Parris, runs to the door and calls down the corridor: Marshal! Hurry!
Danforth: Now, then, Mister, will you speak slowly, and directly to the point, for Mr. Cheever’s
sake. He is on record now, and is really dictating to Cheever, who writes. Mr. Proctor, have you
seen the Devil in your life? Proctor’s jaws lock. Come, man, there is light in the sky; the town
waits at the scaffold; I would give out this news. Did you see the Devil?
Proctor: I did.
Parris: Praise God!
Danforth: And when he come to you, what were his demand? Proctor is silent. Danforth helps.
Did he bid you to do his work upon the earth?
Proctor: He did.
Danforth: And you bound yourself to his service? Danforth turns, as Rebecca Nurse enters, with
Herrick helping to sup-port her. She is barely able to walk. Come in, come in, woman! Rebecca,
brightening as she sees Proctor: Ah, John! You are well, then, eh?
Proctor turns his face to the wall.
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DANFoRTh: Courage, man, courage - let her witness your good example that she may come to
God herself. Now hear it, Goody Nurse! Say on, Mr, Proctor. Did you bind yourself to the Devil’s
service?
Rebecca, astonished: Why, John!
Proctor, through his teeth, his face turned from Rebecca: I did.
140 The Crucible
Danforth: Now, woman, you surely see it profit nothin?to keep this conspiracy any further. Will
you confess yourself with him?
REBECCA: Oh, John - God send his mercy on you!
Danforth: I say, will you confess yourself, Goody Nurse?
Rebecca: Why, it is a lie, it is a lie; how may I damn myself? I cannot, I cannot.
Danforth: Mr. Proctor. When the Devil came to you did you see Rebecca Nurse in his company?
Proctor is silent. Come, man, take courage - did you ever see her with the Devil?
Proctor, almost inaudibly: No.
Daiforth, now sensing trouble, glances at John and goes to the table, and picks up a sheet - the list
of condemned.
Danforth: Did you ever see her sister, Mary Easty, with the Devil?
Proctor: No, I did not.
Danforth, his eyes narrow on Proctor: Did you ever see Martha Corey with the Devil?
Proctor: I did not.
Danforth, realizing, slowly putting the sheet down: Did you ever see anyone with the Devil?
Proctor: I did not.
Danforth: Proctor, you mistake me. I am not empowered to trade your life for a lie. You have most
certainly seen some person with the Devil. Proctor is silent. Mr. Proctor, a score of people have
already testified they saw this woman with the Devil.
Proctor: Then it is proved. Why must I say it?
Danforth: Why just? you say it! Why, you should rejoice to say it if your soul is truly purged of
any love for Hell!
Proctor: They think to go like saints. I like not to spoil their names.
Danforth, inquiring, incredulous: Mr. Proctor, do you think they go like saints?
Proctor, evading: This woman never thought she done the Devil’s work.
Danforth: Look you, sir. I think you mistake your duty here. It matters nothing what she thought she is convicted of the unnatural murder of children, and you for sending your spirit out upon
Mary Warren. Your soul alone is the issue here, Mister, and you will prove its whiteness or you
cannot live in a Christian country. Will you tell me now what persons conspired with you in the
Devil 抯 company? Proctor is silent. To your knowledge was Rebecca Nurse ever Proctor". I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. Crying out, with hatred: I have no tongue
for it.
HALE, quickly to Danforth: Excellency, it is enough he confess himself. Let him sign it, let him
sign it.
Parris, feverishly: It is a great service, sir. It is a weighty name; it will strike the village that
Proctor confess. I beg you, let him sign it. The sun is up, Excellency!
Danforth, considers; then with dissatisfaction, Come, then, sign your testimony. To Cheever: Give
it to him. Cheever goes to Proctor, the confession and a pen in hand. Proctor does not look at it.
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Come, man, sign it.
Proctor, after glancing at the confession: You have all wit-nessed it - it is enough.
Danforth: You will not sign it?
142 The Crucible
PROCTOR: You have all witnessed it; what more is needed?
Danforth: Do you sport with me? You will sign your name or it is no confession, Mister! His
breast heaving with agonized breathing, Proctor now lays the paper down and signs his name.
Parris: Praise be to the Lord!
Proctor has just finished signing when Danforth reaches for the paper. But Proctor snatches it up,
and now a wild terror is rising in him, and a boundless anger.
Danforth, perplexed, but politely extending his hand: If you please, sir.
Proctor: No.
Danforth, as though Proctor did not understand: Mr. Proctor, I must have Proctor: No, no. I have signed it, You have seen me. It is done! You have no need for this.
Parris: Proctor, the village must have proof that Proctor: Damn the village! I confess to God, and God has seen my name on this! It is enough!
Danforth: No, sir, it is Proctor: You came to save my soul, did you not? Here! I have confessed myself; it is enough!
Danforth: You have not con Proctor: I have confessed myself! Is there no good penitence but it be public? God does not need
my name nailed upon the church! God sees my name; God knows how black my sins are! It is
enough!
Danforth: Mr. Proctor Proctor: You will not use me! I am no Sarah Good or Tituba,
Act Four 143
I am John Proctor! You will not use me! It is no part of salva-tion that you should use me!
Danforth: I do not wish to Proctor: I have three children - how may I teach them to walk like men in the world, and I sold
my friends?
Danforth: You have not sold your friends Proctor: Beguile me not! I blacken all of them when this is nailed to the church the very day they
hang for silence!
Danforth: Mr. Proctor, I must have good and legal proof that you Proctor: You are the high court, your word is good enough! Tell them I confessed myself; say
Proctor broke his knees and wept like a woman; say what you will, but my name cannot Danforth, with suspicion: It is the same, is it not? If I report it or you sign to it?
Proctor - he knows it is insane: No, it is not the same! What others say and what I sign to is not
the same!
Danforth: Why? Do you mean to deny this confession when you are free?
Proctor: I mean to deny nothing!
Danforth: Then explain to me, Mr. Proctor, why you will not let Proctor, with a cry of his whole soul: Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my
life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that
hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!
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Danforth, pointing at the confession in Proctor’s hand: Is that document a lie? If it is a lie I will
not accept it! What say you?
144 The Crucible
I will not deal in lies, Mister! Proctor is motionless. You will give me your honest confession in
my hand, or I cannot keep you from the rope. Proctor does not reply. Which way do you go,
Mister?
His breast heaving, his eyes staring, Proctor tears the paper and crumples it, and he is weeping in
fury, but erect.
Danforth: Marshal!
Parris, hysterically, as though the tearing paper were his life: Proctor, Proctor!
Hale: Man, you will hang! You cannot!
Proctor, his eyes fully of tears: I can. And there’s your first marvel, that I can. You have made
your magic now, for now I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to
weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs. Elizabeth, in a burst of terror,
rushes to him and weeps against his hand. Give them no tear! Tears pleasure them! Show honor
now, show a stony heart and sink them with it! He has lifted her, and kisses her now with great
passion.
Rebecca: Let you fear nothing! Another judgment waits us all!
Danforth: Hang them high over the town! Who weeps for these, weeps for corruption! He sweeps
out past them. Herrick starts to lead Rebecca, who almost collapses, but Proctor catches her, and
she glances up at him apologetically.
Rebecca: I’ve had no breakfast.
Herrick: Come, man.
Herrick escorts them out, Hathorne and Cheever behind them. Elizabeth stands staring at the
empty doorway.
Parris, in deadly fear, to Elizabeth: Go to him, Goody Proctor! There is yet time!
From outside a drumroll strikes the air. Parris is startled. Elizabeth jerks about toward the window.
Parris: Go to him! He rushes out the door, as though to hold back his fate. Proctor! Proctor!
Again, a short burst of drums.
Hale: Woman, plead with him! He starts to rush out the door, and then goes back to her. Woman!
It is pride, it is vanity. She avoids his eyes, and moves to the window. He drops to his knees. Be
his helper! - What profit him to bleed? Shall the dust praise him? Shall the worms declare his truth?
Go to him, take his shame away!
Elizabeth, supporting herself against collapse, grips the bars. of the window, and with a cry: He
have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!
The final drumroll crashes, then heightens violently. Hale weeps in frantic prayer, and the new sun
is pouring in upon her face, and the drums rattle like bones in the morning air.
THE CURTAIN FALLS
ECHOES DOWN THE CORRIDOR
Not long after the fever died, Parris was voted from office, walked out on the highroad, and was
never heard of again.
The legend has it that Abigail turned up later as a prostitute in Boston.
Twenty years after the last execution, the government awarded compensation to the victims still
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living, and to the families of the dead, However, it is evident that some people still were unwilling
to admit their total guilt, and also that the factionalism was still alive, for some beneficiaries were
actually not victims at all, but informers.
Elizabeth Proctor married again, four years after Proctor’s death.
In solemn meeting, the congregation rescinded the excommunications - this in March 1712. But
they did so upon orders of the government. The jury, however, wrote a statement praying
forgiveness of all who had suffered.
Certain farms which had belonged to the victims were left to ruin, and for more than a century no
one would buy them or live on them.
To all intents and purposes, the power of theocracy in Massachusetts was broken.
Further Reading
From On Social Plays
Arthur Miller
Time is moving; there is a world to make, a civilization to create that will move toward the only
goal the humanistic, democratic mind can ever accept with honor. It is a world in which the
human being can live as a naturally political, naturally private, naturally political, naturally
private, naturally engaged person, a world in which once again a true tragic victory may be
scored.
But that victory is not really possible unless the individual is more than theoretically capable of
being recognized by the powers that lead society. Specifically, when men live, as they do under
any industrialized system, as integers who have no weight, no person, excepting as customers,
draftees, machine tenders, ideologists, or whatever, it is unlikely (and in my opinion impossible)
that a dramatic picture of them can really overcome the public knowledge of their nature in real
life. In such a society, be it communistic or capitalistic,am is not tragic, he is pathetic. The tragic
figure must have certain innate powers which he uses to pass over the boundaries of the known
social law--the accepted mores of his people--in order to test and discover necessity. Such a quest
implies that the individual who has moved onto that course must be somehow recognized by the
law, by the mores, by the powers that design--be they anthropomorphic gods or economic and
political laws as having the worth, the innate value, of a whole people asking a basic question and
demanding its answer. We are so atomized socially that no character in a play can conceivably
stand as our vanguard, as our heroic questioner.
Our society--and i am speaking of every industrialized society in the world--is so complex, each
person being so specialized an integer, that the moment any individual is dramatically
characterized and set forth as a hero, our common sense reduces him to the size of a complainer, a
misfit. For deep down we no longer believe in the rules of the tragic contest: we no longer believe
that some ultimate sense can in fact be mad of social causation, or in the possibility that any
individual can, by a heroic effort, make sense of it. Thus the man that is driven to question the
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moral chaos in which we live ends up in our estimate as a possibly commendable but definitely
odd fellow, and probably as a compulsively driven neurotic. In place of a social aim which called
an all-around excellence--physical, intellectual, and moral--the ultimate good, we have set up a
gal which can best be characterized as "happiness"--namely, staying out of trouble. This concept
is the end result of the truce which all of us have made with society. And a truce implies two
enemies. When the truce is broken it means either that the individual has broken out of his
ordained place as an integer, or that the society has broken the law by harming him unjustly-- that
is, it has not left him alone to be a peaceful integer. In the heroic and tragic time that act of
questioning the- way- things- are implied that a quest was being carried out to discover an
ultimate law or way of life which would yield excellence: in the present time the quest is that of a
man made unhappy by rootlessness and, in every important modern play, by a man who is
essentially a victim.We have abstracted from the Greek drama its air of doom, its physical
destruction of the hero, but its victory escapes us. Thus it has even become difficult to separate in
our mids the ideas of the pathetic and of the tragic. And behind this melting of the two lies the
overwhelming power of the modern industrial state, the ignorance of each person in ti of anything
but his own technique as an economic integer,and the elevation of that state to a holy, quite
religious sphere.
Reference
• Columbia History of American Literature;
• Norton Anthology of American Literature;
• Understanding Poetry
• Understanding Fitction
• Charles E Bressler.Literary Criticism. Higher Eduction Press.2004.
• 常耀信，《美国文学选读》
，南开大学出版社，1991；
• 董衡巽，《美国文学简史》
，人民文学出版社，2003；
• 陶
洁， 《美国文学选读》， 高等教育出版社，2006.
• 杨岂深，《美国文学选读》
，上海译文出版社，1985.
•
http://www.sparknotes.com/
•
http://www.enotes.com/
• http://professionals.collegeboard.com/
•
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/
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